{"text": "\nHow Freud’s Only Visit to America Made Him Hate the US for the Rest of His Life - protomyth\nhttp://mentalfloss.com/article/501060/man-buys-two-metric-tons-lego-bricks-sorts-them-machine-learning\n======\nFricken\nMight wanna try posting this again, you're linking to a story about the guy\nwho built a crazy Lego sorting machine.\n\n~~~\nZuider\nThe submitter linked to the whole website rather than singling out the\nintended article. An easy mistake to make with 'endless scrolling' websites. I\nsearched and found this:\n\n[http://mentalfloss.com/article/501206/how-\nfreud%E2%80%99s-on...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/501206/how-\nfreud%E2%80%99s-only-visit-america-made-him-hate-us-rest-his-life)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLinux and Open Source Humble Book Bundle - emwjacobson\nhttps://www.humblebundle.com/books/linux-book-bundle\n======\nSchaulustiger\nCan anyone comment on the quality of the books? A lot of the covered topics\nare of interest to me (Docker, nginx, git) but I'd like to know if those books\nare worth the read.\n\n~~~\ncombatentropy\nYour best bet might be to skim Amazon reviews.\n\nI read a book by the same publisher about Apache ( _Pro Apache_ by Peter\nWainwright), and it was good.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFewer Calories (Carbs, Protein or Fat) Are Called Weight-Loss Key - tocomment\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/health/nutrition/26diet.html?ref=us\n======\nEliezer\nThis old lie again? This study just shows that four attempted diets, none of\nthem particularly sophisticated, all work equally well - which is to say, not\nvery.\n\nYes, the laws of thermodynamics hold, but what if, oh, say, _what_ you ate had\nan influence on _how much_ you felt impelled to eat? Or how energetic you felt\nand how much you moved around? If your fat cells are rapidly absorbing what's\nin your bloodstream, you'll feel hungry and eat more, and you'll feel tired\nand move less.\n\nThe number one experimental result of dieting is that 95% of the people gain\nback the weight a few years later.\n\nIf Seth Roberts is right, all we're seeing from this study is a temporary bump\nthat results from changing your food habits in _any_ direction, which leaves\nbehind the old flavor-calorie association, which makes you less hungry. And if\nthey stick to this diet a while, they'll develop new flavor-calorie\nassociations and gain back the weight. (This is a very elegant theory which,\namong other experimental support, explains a lot of the chaos in dietary\nscience; almost any dietary change makes you lose weight, but only\ntemporarily.)\n\nSorry, metabolisms are just more complicated than this. Call me back when they\ntest Loren Cordain's or Seth Roberts's theories.\n\n~~~\nrun4yourlives\nApplying the 80/20 rule, metabolisms most certainly are not more complex than\nthan a simple input/output equation for a vast majority of people.\n\nWe have been around in this planet for thousands of years, a vast majority of\nwhich spent by a vast majority of people in a non-obese way. Evolution has\ntuned our bodies not to be overweight so long as we don't change the equation\nof calories in to calories expended.\n\nOur modern North American lifestyles have adjusted both sides of the equation,\nhence, obesity is an epidemic. Adjusting the equation back is a huge step\nforward, regardless of outliers.\n\nLook at the military. Diets aside, the simple reason there are no large\nobesity issues within the organization is that they purposefully modify the\noutput side of the equation. Diets don't work because the modification to the\ninput side is always only a temporary change.\n\nWe eat too much and move too little. Duh. While the dynamics become more\ncomplex at the elite athlete level, and there is a segment of the population\nthat could be considered outliers, if we all simply made the equation balance,\nwe'd see a huge drop in obesity rates.\n\nIt isn't rocket science.\n\n~~~\nOxryly\nIt still complicated, though. For example, eat 1500 calories a day while your\nmetabolism uses 1800 or so. Sounds foolproof? What if those 1500 calories are\nall sugar? There goes your metabolic rate and your body fat will go through\nthe roof. What if you eat 60% protein, 30% fiber, 10% fat? You will probably\nwind up looking like a career athelete, even if you never exercise. The\ncomposition of the calories has a huge effect on their usage (through the\nmechanism of you hormone feedback systems). It may not be rocket science, but\nthe body is complex to the point of being a black box for most people.\n\n------\nshizcakes\nAs someone who lost 70 LBS 3 years ago without a 'diet' and kept it off, this\narticle strikes me as overly obvious. Anyone who has ever actually seriously\nlost weight and kept it off knows that everything comes to the bottom line:\ncalories consumed vs. calories expended.\n\nFormula for HN: ((calories consumed - calories expended) / 3500) = weight\nchange in LBS of fat. There are healthy ways to lose and gain weight and there\nare unhealthy ways, but they all come down to that very, very simple formula.\n\n~~~\na-priori\nSimple, yes, but too simple. That formula ignores the fact that (all things\nbeing equal) as your weight drops, your basal metabolic rate drops as well.\nThis means that with each pound you lose, it becomes harder to lose the next.\n\nThis is why exercise is critical for losing weight. Exercise counteracts this\neffect by raising the metabolic rate.\n\n~~~\nshizcakes\nThat's the thing: It doesn't ignore anything. If your basal metabolic rate\ndrops, that means you are expending less calories through those means. The\nbottom line remains the same. You'll either need to consume less calories as a\nreaction, or up your calorie expenditure through increased exercise or through\nmetabolism 'tricks' such as consuming increased (but safe) levels of water.\n\n~~~\na-priori\nLet me illustrate what I meant with an example. Based on your formula, if I\nwanted to lose 10 pounds over 10 weeks, needing a deficit of 514 kcal/day, and\nmy basal metabolism rate were 1800 kcal/day (roughly what mine is), ignoring\nexercise I would need to maintain a diet of no more than 1284 kcal/day.\n\nHow I interpreted your first comment was that you were arguing this would work\nfor the entire 10 week period. My point was that it would not, that over time\nthe rate of weight loss would slow as your basal metabolism rate drops. Given\na constant diet, at some point an equilibrium will be reached.\n\nSorry for the misunderstanding.\n\n------\nejs\nDo people really need to be told this? Calories == Energy. If you kept putting\nmore gas in your car then it uses its gonna spill out all over. If it could\nstore the overflow, like the body does, your just gonna have more lying\naround.\n\nDespite what the diet book cartel wants people to believe, energy production\nand usage by the human body is not all that mysterious.\n\n~~~\ntricky\nI'm right there with you. All you need to know about losing weight is this:\n\nDon't eat so much.\n\nProblem is people won't believe you and it is unmarketable. So, companies go\nout and produce candy bars, market them as diet food by slapping a label on\nthem that says, \"eat this and not much other stuff and you'll lose weight.\"\n\nCracks me up.\n\n~~~\njodrellblank\nNo that isn't \"all you need to know\"\n\nHave you read: <http://www.sethroberts.net/about/whatmakesfoodfattening.pdf>\n\nWhat about satiety of the food you eat? Eating fewer calories is easy if it's\nfilling, less so if it isn't.\n\n~~~\ntricky\nI never said it was easy. It took me two years to figure out _how_ to eat less\nwhen my metabolism magically changed. There is nothing in any book could have\nhelped me with that. Each day was an experiment. Still is, but the bottom line\nis I don't eat as much as I did before and the things I do eat just happen to\nbe classified as \"healthy.\" It's a big PITA.\n\n------\nunexpected\nWhile I agree with the overall premise (it's very \"duh\"), there are some\nthings worthy of more exploration:\n\nThe people in this study really didn't lose all that much weight. Do certain\ndiets promote faster weight loss?\n\nAlso, I find it ridiculously hard to believe that a study that uses obese\npeople, who have trouble controlling their weight in the first place, can\nmaintain a strict caloric deficit for two years.\n\nAdditionally: It doesn't really say much about body fat % - does eating\ncertain ratios promote muscle growth, yet fat loss? (this is a premise in the\nhigh protein diets)\n\n~~~\nelectromagnetic\n_\"does eating certain ratios promote muscle growth, yet fat loss? (this is a\npremise in the high protein diets)\"_\n\nI think the key thing in extreme dieting is to ensure no loss of muscle. An\nobese person is going to have to take drastic measures to lose weight, and are\nhighly susceptible to malnutrition (many times they're already malnourished\ndue to poor diet to begin with) and cutting the amount of food you eat in half\ncan be dangerous.\n\nThe key problem with anorexia isn't that they have such low body fat (it's a\nproblem, but it's unlikely to kill you) it's that they don't intake enough\nprotein. Once there's a shortage, your body starts using muscle inside your\nbody, and unfortunately there's a extremely highly protein dense half-pound of\nmuscle we all know as a heart.\n\nWhat the Atkin's diet is great for is that if you drastically need to lose\nweight you can do it without causing serious and irreparable muscle damage and\npotentially heart damage.\n\nIf you're wanting a long-term (as in 1 month or longer) change in diet then\nprotein is key for exactly what you said. Most obese people are at high risk\nof things like hernias as most never built up the muscle in the abdominal wall\nand are literally a ticking time bomb.\n\n------\nCalmQuiet\nWhile I'd have to agree the results seem \"only logical\" or \"obvious,\" the\nmedia hype and the public hope for an easy silver bullet mean that these types\nof results really deserved to be trumpeted aloud to the general public.\n\nTo me the bottom line for science is \"The real question for researchers, Dr.\nSacks said, is what are the biological, psychological or social factors that\ninfluence whether a person can stick to any diet.\"\n\nThe next steps seem to involved _behavioral_ sciences, not biological\nsciences.\n\n------\nFiReaNG3L\nFlagged as so-obvious-its-dumb\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCCC censors comments criticising 32c3 talk - ryanlol\nhttp://youtube.com/watch?v=uWIivWGgZ5o\n======\nsarciszewski\nThe first two minutes of the talk consists of some people speaking for her\n(\"she hates the word 'refugee'\" <\\- Okay then, why can't _she_ tell us that?).\n\nIf you want to watch the talk, skip to 3:03.\n\nSome notes from the first minute of the talk:\n\n    \n    \n        - She opens her hour keynote with she has nothing to say. Um, what?\n        - She says, to a room full of hackers at a highly technical conference,\n          that she knows nothing about IT outside the basic use of her laptop.\n    \n\nThis doesn't look promising. I'm all for hearing different perspectives and\nall, but I'm sure that among all of the \"newcomers\" there were people with a\nreal interest in technology who could have filled this slot instead. I'll keep\nwatching and post a follow-up comment if it gets any better, but this is my\nfirst impression.\n\nI can't say I'm surprised that the CCC team would censor comments on this\nvideo, but they can't censor HN.\n\n~~~\nsarciszewski\nNope, this was a waste of time. :(\n\n------\nryanlol\nSomeone on IRC asked me to post proof, so here's an archive of a google cache\nresult (best I could find, sorry) on the site from before the comments were\ndeleted:\n\n[http://185.10.231.85/ccc.html](http://185.10.231.85/ccc.html)\n\nIt is however worth noting that this is only a small fraction of the comments\nthat were deleted. When I commented on the page before the comments were shut\ndown there was about 15 comments, most of them in English criticising the\ntalk.\n\n(Anyone mind specifying what they downvoted this for?)\n\n------\nryanlol\nDidn't use original video title as the point wasn't to link to the talk\nitself, but to the comments that were removed.\n\nThe talk itself holds very little substance and is hardly worth linking by\nitself.\n\n(Anyone mind specifying what they downvoted this for?)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPinboard - antisocial bookmarking - pstinnett\nhttp://www.pinboard.in\n\n======\nsunir\nHey, that's neat. Maciej Ceglowski and Joshua Schachter (founder of\ndel.icio.us) are good friends. I recall what must have been five years ago\nwhen they would hang out on Freenode arguing how to design various projects\nlike LOAF (<http://loaf.cantbedone.org/about.htm#authors>) and I'm sure\ndel.icio.us. It'd be amazing to see some of that energy again in practice. My\nbest wishes to this project.\n\n~~~\njoshu\nI chime in from time to time but I'm not working on it.\n\n------\njeremymims\nThe payment scheme is what interests me most. I can't even try it out and I'm\nseriously considering paying this guy a couple of dollars.\n\nThis is highly irrational behavior on my part considering there are dozens of\nfree \"social bookmarking\" sites out there that certainly accomplish my very\nlimited social bookmarking goals.\n\nIt reminds me of old carnival shows (or any nightclub with a line outside).\nPay money to get inside. No preview up front. You're paying for exclusivity,\nmystery, and reputation instead of features.\n\nAdditionally, people who pay money for something often feel the need to\njustify the purchase to themselves and others. This will generally increase\ntheir happiness with the product and irrationally cause them to stick with the\nproduct through technical difficulties and feature shortages (humans are\nterrible at evaluating sunk costs). And because they have emotionally and\nfinancially invested in the company, there's a larger chance they will\nrecommend this website to their friends, thus creating higher switching costs\nfor themselves.\n\nI'm interested to see how this pricing experiment turns out.\n\n------\ngrinich\n_Nightly database backups to S3 (welcome, Ma.gnolia users!)_\n\nToo soon, guys.\n\n~~~\nnimbix\nAlso, I believe Magnolia did do daily backups. They just weren't that good at\nit.\n\n~~~\nidlewords\nFrom what I can tell from watching Larry Halff's strange video interview on\nthe Magnolia failure, they backed up a live, half-terabyte(!) database over\nfirewire using rsync. That is, they copied the actual table data files while\nthey were in use.\n\nPinboard uses good old-fashioned mysqldump instead.\n\n------\nPistos2\nThat's not anti-social bookmarking. This is anti-social bookmarking:\n<http://sm.purepistos.net/about>\n\nI went from browser bookmarks, to Delicious, to exploring (Magnolia, Simpy,\netc.), to Diigo, to Selfmarks. A couple hundred bookmarks later, I haven't\nlooked back; it's all I need.\n\nFunctional, usable demo at <http://sm-demo.purepistos.net/> .\n\n------\nHoneyAndSilicon\nWho can resist rooting for software that declines to label itself in the old-\nfashioned \"alpha\" / \"beta\" way... and instead states clearly in the footer:\n\n\"©2009 Nine Fives Software. Pinboard is full of bugs but daily trying...\n\nToo bad it's not going to get much test-driving: \"Pinboard is free to use, but\ncharges a small, one-time membership fee.\"\n\n~~~\npstinnett\nI was mostly intrigued by the payment model. As more users sign up, accounts\ncost more.\n\n~~~\nHoneyAndSilicon\nAh, I didn't get that far - and was editing my comment before you posted.\n\nYes, an interesting (first-of-a-kind?) incentive to \"sign up early.\" Wonder if\n_any_ will sign up with so many free options around?\n\n~~~\njsb\nAccording to the website, the fee is (number of users * 0.001). Since the\ncurrent fee is $2.91, the number of people who've signed up is around 2,910.\nSeems like at least a few people willing to throw in a few bucks to give it a\nshot. It'll be interesting to see what will happen to growth as the rate goes\nup and up.\n\n~~~\nwooby\nHow much they've made so far, with scala:\n\n    \n    \n      scala> def income(n_users:Int) = (1 to n_users) map(i => (i-1)*.001) reduceLeft(_+_)\n     income: (Int)Double\n    \n      scala> income(2901)\n     res0: Double = 4206.45\n\n~~~\nswolchok\nYou need to round the intermediate values down like they seem to be doing.\n\n------\nkevinherron\nFrom the roadmap: \"Get acquired by Yahoo and slowly grow useless\" -- lol! :)\n\n------\nlucumo\nHmmm... Only providing one password field seems like a road down which madness\nlies, even if it's unmasked as here.\n\nWe had an app where we'd ask for e-mail addresses. A lot of people mistyped\ntheir e-mail address, which was of course unmasked. As much as half of the\nnon-activated accounts were do to a typo in the e-mail address. We now ask for\nthe e-mail address twice, it made activation failures a lot less likely.\n\n~~~\njasonkester\nThought experiment: How many people never sign up at all because you ask for\nemail and password twice each?\n\nDid you track how many fewer signups you get now that you have that double\nemail? Are you net positive on the total activated users per day, adjusted for\ngrowth?\n\n~~~\nlucumo\nI have never aborted signing up because the form asked for the same\ninformation twice. Nor can I imagine doing so if it was obviously intended.\n\nI could've done A/B testing and I could've done a full statistical analysis of\nthe results. But I don't think splitting hairs like that is particularly\nuseful. I simply had no reason to believe that it would affect our growth\nnegatively, nor do I have such reason now. We are growing very, very fast.\n\nBut what I was really referring to was the customer service overhead. Almost\nevery account that had a failed e-mail address would cause us some customer\nservice. People creating another account which needed approval to prevent\nmultiple accounts per user (which is cheating the game), or just asking\nquestions. I cannot imagine people asking less questions if they paid for an\naccount and can't access it.\n\n~~~\njasonkester\nI only mention it because users actually do behave strangely this way. Every\nfield you show them loses a percentage of them. It's weird.\n\nHere's an experience I had a couple years ago where a small tweak to remove a\nsignup barrier more than doubled the number of people signing up:\n\n[http://twiddla.blogspot.com/2007/04/1000-signups-on-day-\none....](http://twiddla.blogspot.com/2007/04/1000-signups-on-day-one.html)\n\n------\nDanielStraight\nA screenshot at least would be nice.\n\n~~~\ntimb\n<http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/649/pinboard.png>\n\n~~~\nraptrex\nis starring used for super important bookmarks?\n\n~~~\nidlewords\nStarring is used to select bookmarks for bulk operations (add tag/make\nprivate/mark as unread etc.)\n\n~~~\ncallahad\nHm, wouldn't plain checkboxes suffice? That's a pretty entrenched convention.\nNot to mention that using stars in that way doesn't really mesh with that\nconvention either. Is there some aspect of it I'm missing?\n\n------\nsnewe\nWhat about Google bookmarks? They are also private, you can export them and I\nsuspect are backed up.\n\n------\npqs\nWhat about using Firefox's bookmarks sinced by Weave? Its private, its safe,\nit supports tags, it is easy acces the bookmarks through the awesome bar, etc.\n\n~~~\ncjlesh\nI'm using Weave (just for bookmarks), and couldn't be happier. On any given\nday I might use a Windows PC at work, my Macbook Pro at work or at home, my\nwife's Windows laptop at home, or my main desktop at home which dual boots\nVista and Leopard. Weave just works, and I have all my bookmarks synced on all\nof these computers.\n\n------\nshrikant\n7 hours ag it was $2.91, and about an hour ago it was $3.93? Not too bad.\nWould be cool if I could sell my username to someone when it's a hundred-odd\nbucks :D\n\nHad a teensy bit o' cash to splurge, and signed up. Very clean look -\nDelicious-ish without the 'sociality'. Loved it so much I deleted my Delicious\naccount (and now hoping Maciej doesn't pull a Zune Store!)\n\nAlso hoping last item in the roadmap's After That section comes kinda true,\nand Yahoo! is nice enough to refund at the same going rate (i.e. users *\n0.001)\n\np.s: First time I've EVER paid for an online service, piddling amount though\nit may be..\n\n~~~\nidlewords\nThanks a lot! My hope is actually to operate the site as a going concern (with\na paid version offering additional features). We saw what happened last time\nsomeone sold one of these bookmarking sites to a big company...\n\n------\nGHFigs\nPSA: Pinboard's account activation emails are flagged as spam by Gmail.\n\n------\nnewy\nThanks guys. Exactly what I wanted.\n\n------\npclark\ntheir sign up form doesn't mask passwords\n\n------\nbrown9-2\nOops - replied to wrong thread :(\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHTML5 vs Flex for rich Internet applications - Pamela Fox (Google AU) - radley\nhttp://igniteshow.com/videos/html5-vs-flex-rich-internet-applications\n\n======\njamaicahest\nInteresting to see a Google representative claiming the video format of HTML5\nwill be OGG.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEuropean Parliament approves overhaul of online copyright rules - btilly\nhttps://www.politico.eu/article/european-parliament-approves-copyright-reform-in-final-vote/\n======\nbtilly\nYes, I'm aware that this is going to attract strong political opinions.\n\nHowever anyone who, for instance, hosts reviews or discussion forums that\nEuropeans use need to be aware that under European law they will need to seek\ncopyright licenses and install European-specified filtering software to avoid\nbeing liable for what users choose to post. This will affect a lot of online\ncompanies.\n\nHopefully US courts will not enforce European court decisions about European\ncopyright claims for activity that falls under the DCMA safe harbor in the\nUSA. However if you're a European site or have European customers, the story\nmay be very different and you should be paying close attention to this.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAuditable Macros in C Code - praxis23\nhttps://www.cossacklabs.com/blog/macros-in-crypto-c-code.html\n======\nbluetomcat\nTL;DR\n\nLet the compiler preprocess a source file by first removing #include lines\nwhich contain definitions of macros we don't want to see expanded (expanding\nonly the definitions from the local file or from chosen headers, achieving\nless cluttered and more readable output). Say we have a file like:\n\n    \n    \n        #include \"foo_defs.h\"\n        #define BAR 42\n        FOO;\n        BAR;\n    \n\nWe filter out the include line and then preprocess the file, getting the\nfollowing output:\n\n    \n    \n        FOO;\n        42;\n\n~~~\nsigjuice\nTLDR of why less cluttered preprocessor output matters? I’d say cpp output is\nusually not that interesting on a daily basis.\n\n~~~\nbluetomcat\nIf I have a file like this:\n\n    \n    \n        #include <stdio.h>\n        #include <assert.h>\n        #include \"mydefs-control.h\"\n        #include \"mydefs-value.h\"\n    \n        int main(void) {\n            assert(1 == 1);\n            printf(\"%d\\n\", MYDEF_VALUE_MACRO);\n            MYDEF_MACRO_WITH_CONTROL_FLOW();\n        }\n    \n\nMy goal is to produce output which doesn't include thousands of lines from\nstdio.h and assert.h, doesn't expand assert() or MYDEF_VALUE_MACRO, and only\nexpands MYDEF_MACRO_WITH_CONTROL_FLOW:\n\n    \n    \n        int main(void) {\n            assert(1 == 1);\n            printf(\"%d\\n\", MYDEF_VALUE_MACRO);\n    \n            if (1) {\n                return 0;\n            } else {\n                return 1;\n            };\n        }\n    \n\nAccording to the author, having only the \"interesting\" stuff expanded makes it\neasier to reason about the control flow of the code.\n\n~~~\ndummyfunnytoo\nWhich just raises the question for me, why have the macros at all? I did C++\ndevelopment for years (on low level and performance sensitive applications)\nbut 95% of the macros I saw were there to reduce lines of code or \"eliminate\nboilerplate.\" Almost all of those could be eliminated by refactoring within\nC++, without resorting to the preprocessor, but developers love using\nmacros...\n\n~~~\nsjmulder\nThe article is about C where not everything can be solved with a typedef, enum\nor templates. Think about feature macros (e.g. _C_POSIX_SOURCE), generics\n(pre-C11 or what was it), attributes or calling conventions, conditional\ncompilation, function-like macros, compatibility (e.g. errno when it isn't\njust an extern int), and indeed shorthands.\n\n------\nmakecheck\nMy uses of macros in C++ these days boil down to a few common use cases that\nare still insanely not handled well by the language:\n\n0\\. Anything involving file and line number.\n\n1\\. Generating a string version of something alongside the value of something,\nwithout repeating myself.\n\n2\\. Creating printing macros to keep me from typing out the entire asinine\nsyntax for something like “std::cerr << foo << bar << baz << std::endl” so I\nonly need PRINT(foo << bar << baz). Substituting code fragments is dead simple\nwith a macro and absurdly complex or impossible with other C++ mechanisms.\nIronically I’m only doing it because of the poor design of the entire\n“iostream” stack.\n\n------\nglandium\nRelatedly, with all the clang-based tooling like clang-tidy or clang-format,\nit's kind of disappointing that there isn't a tool to expand arbitrary macros\nin a source.\n\nThat would have been extremely useful when I was recently refactoring some old\nC code. I ended up writing a small script that can expand one macro at a time,\nbut I wish I hadn't had to.\n\nI'm sure that script doesn't work in the general case.\n\n~~~\nSomeone\n[https://github.com/goldsborough/clang-\nexpand](https://github.com/goldsborough/clang-expand) (not perfect because of\nname conflicts that may occur, but usable)\n\nCan be used in atom: [https://atom.io/packages/atom-clang-\nexpand](https://atom.io/packages/atom-clang-expand)\n\n~~~\nglandium\nWaw, thanks. I wish I had found this when I googled a couple months ago when I\nneeded it.\n\n------\niOSGuy\nI try to use ObjC PPC macros for things that are constant for the run of the\nprogram, and can be reasoned about globally.\n\nFor example, some good ones I use are isLandscape or isIPad, which are both\nvariable depending on the user, but constant for the run of the app. Perfect\nfor a PCH file I think.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nQuadriplegic Stuart Turner speaks at WIRED2014 via drones and robots - escapologybb\nhttp://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-10/16/stuart-turner-robots-and-cake\nFull disclosure: I&#x27;m Stuart Turner!\n======\nescapologybb\nFull disclosure: I'm Stuart! I thought you guys might enjoy this. :-)\n\n~~~\nhanskuder\nHi Stuart! I'm an engineer at Suitable Technologies (makers of the Beam).\nSorry to see the Beam didn't make it into the video, but it was really\ninspiring to see this talk. Thanks!\n\n~~~\nescapologybb\nThe beam was actually in the talk, but would you believe about five minutes\nbefore the talk there was a local problem with the Wi-Fi. Totally not on\nSuitable Technologies by the way.\n\n~~~\ntlb\nTo properly support people videoing in, conferences will need to provided\ndedicated WiFi on a separate channel. Current conference WiFi is reliable\nenough for checking email during a boring talk, but not for remote attendees.\n\nIt's hard to get conference venues to care. It might require an interpretation\nof the Americans with Disabilities Act (in the US) to insist that reliable\nWiFi to support remote video attendees is as important as reliable elevators.\n\n~~~\nescapologybb\nI agree with what you're saying in general. In this specific case, the venue\nWiFi was not the issue. It was human error on the day, but not something we\nneed to rake over here.\n\nHowever, is a really interesting point about the reliable Wi-Fi in public\nspaces. If telepresence is going to be used as a viable way for quadriplegics\nlike me to visit these public spaces, then we're going to need decent and\ndedicated Wi-Fi. Which in 2014 is both fairly easy to do, and not that\nexpensive. But you're right, I do fear that it may need some Interpretation of\nlegislation to make this work. In the UK we have to Disability Discrimination\nAct [0] which I think of is the same things as the ADA in the US.\n\n[0]:[http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/the-disability-discrimination-\nact...](http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/the-disability-discrimination-act-dda)\n\n~~~\nlyricalpolymath\nTotally agree on the need of dedicated connections... for many reasons ;)\n\nhowever often a problem with conferences and large gatherings is that even if\nthere are separate Wifis and on different channels the\n(constructive/destructive) interference is still bad enough that the\nconnection slows down anyways.\n\nI know there are solutions out there, it's a matter of cost and time before\nthey become widely available. (I'm hoping it will happen tomorrow ;))\n\n~~~\nandrewnez\nThe drone was actually running on the same wifi as the beam and had no issues\nbtw (I setup the drone at the event)\n\n~~~\nescapologybb\nForgot to mention that, the drone works like a dream!\n\n------\nlyricalpolymath\nHi Stuart, thanks for sharing this and your experience. It's very inspiring to\nus as we are currently developing another \"extensible self\" tool [0] that will\nempower you to \"remote control\" real people (we call them agents) and show you\naround, even where drones are not allowed or there isn't someone who can set\nit up for you. Can we send you an email and ask you a few questions?\n\nMoreover, can you share a bit how the streaming feed is setup?\n\n[0] [http://eyevel.com](http://eyevel.com)\n\n~~~\nescapologybb\nSure, you can use: contact@robotsandcake.org.\n\nEdit: sorry, missed your question about streaming! All of the hard work on the\nstreaming for the event was done by Andrew Nesbitt.[0] He's definitely the guy\nto talk to about this.\n\n[0]: [https://twitter.com/teabass](https://twitter.com/teabass)\n\n~~~\nlyricalpolymath\nthanks. I sent it to the email provided on\n[https://escapologybb.com/contact/](https://escapologybb.com/contact/) if you\nwant to antispam-edit this post with your email\n\n------\ntobz\nThe part where you talked about using FPV goggles to control a drone was\nparticularly interesting, and admittedly, hit me right in the feels.\n\nWhat's the current state of that technology? Last I knew/read, the latency\nbetween what the operator sees and what's actually happening was still high\nenough to make it disorienting. Is there anything you've seen / are working on\nthat mitigates that? Is it even as much of an issue when your range of motion\nis constrained to your head?\n\n~~~\nescapologybb\nmy friend Henry Evans at Robots for Humanity[0] has done some testing with the\nOculus Rift, he has much more limited range of motion than me and he was able\nto fly a Parrot drone fairly successfully. But I think when she start moving\nhigher speeds than I think the latency is still a problem, although I've not\nhad chance to test it.\n\nAt the moment I'm still trying to find people in the UK who can help me set up\na similar sort of system, as at the moment I've been using the Parrot AR Drone\ncoupled with NodeCopter[1] and the excellent ardrone-webflight plugin. FPV is\nmy 100%, oh my god I'm flying from a wheelchair, ultimate dream setup, and I\nthink I'm right at the beginning of that journey.\n\n[0]:[http://r4h.org/](http://r4h.org/)\n[1]:[http://ardrone2.parrot.com/](http://ardrone2.parrot.com/)\n[2]:[http://nodecopter.com/](http://nodecopter.com/)\n[3]:[http://eschnou.github.io/ardrone-\nwebflight/](http://eschnou.github.io/ardrone-webflight/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe most extensive Commodore 64-versus-iPhone 3G S comparison so far. - technologizer\nhttp://technologizer.com/2009/06/21/commodore-vs-iphone/\n\n======\ndejb\nUser programmable?\n\n    \n    \n      Commodore 64 - Yes. Ships with Basic.\n      iPhone - Not available\n\n------\nnoonespecial\nCan release apps without permission from on high?\n\n------\npmjordan\n\n      Total applications available: C64: 10,000; iPhone: 50,000\n    \n\nWow, goes to show how niche the industry was back then if the 27-year-old\ndevice has 1/5 the software of the newcomer. I suppose barrier to entry on\ncommercial distribution was higher for the C64.\n\n------\nrw\n> Commodore 64 compatibility? > C64: 100% > iPhone: Sigh\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN:Small ideas - europa\nI can make an initial invetsment of 5000 and work/code 6 hrs weekdays and 8 hrs weekends still keeping my day job.\nI am ready to do that for the next  1 year.<p>Can I build something whithin that 1 year which starts giving me $1000 profit every month ?<p>I can code decently in java , Python and capable of build/configure Linux servers for my environments.<p>Any small ideas to hit the $1000 per month profits are welcome.\n======\nil\nThe biggest advice I can give you is to forget the consumer market and create\na B2B product. You only need 20 customers paying $50 a month to get $1000 a\nmonth revenue and be able to easily get a 20-50k exit. If you figure out a way\nto save a business $50 a month, or 1 developer man-hour a month, hitting that\nrevenue target will be trivial.\n\nI have done this numerous times with tools I had initially built for myself to\nautomate a repetitive marketing task which I then spun out into subscription\nservices and flipped for a 5 figure sum.\n\n~~~\nendlessvoid94\nThat's inspiring. What sites were they?\n\n~~~\nil\nThey were tools to make marketing and SEO easier. Think keyword research, ad\nsubmission, etc/\n\n------\ndavcro\nLook for a successful app you can copy. Then copy it.\n\nI'm expecting downvotes for this comment, but it is the best advice I can\ngive. You will learn tons in the process and the end app will likely be\ntailored in your vision. Something along the lines of this (jump to 4:43)\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgy4PcSpUkI>\n\n~~~\n10ren\nAppend #t=4m43s\n\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgy4PcSpUkI#t=4m43s>\n\n------\ncharliepark\nYes, you can build something in a year that brings in $1,000 a month. BUT.\nUnless it's a problem that you, yourself, are having, I'm skeptical that\nyou'll have the energy to see it through. Put another way: What annoyances do\n_you_ have about your life? Where is the internet falling down on the job?\nBuild that.\n\n~~~\njackowayed\nIs Patrick McKenzie (patio11) an avid bingo player that lives and breathes\nbingo?\n\nNo. It sounds like[1] he sort of enjoyed it, and a friend needed help making\nbingo cards. But he saw it as a good market opportunity, so he went with it.\n\nIn Mike Rowe's TED talk[2], he referenced a similar idea. He talked about a\npig farmer who grew his small farm to being worth >$60M (he turned down a $60M\noffer) by getting scraps from restaurants and feeding them to the pigs, which\nI guess helped them grow faster and/or cut down on their food costs. He said\nthat he asked the guy if he was passionate about his work, and the guy\nlaughed.\n\nPassion's great and all, and it does make things easier, but if you're\nreasonably disciplined and just out to make money, there's a lot of very\nboring markets (like bingo cards) that are ripe for disruption.\n\n[1]: <http://www.kalzumeus.com/start-here-if-youre-new/>\n\n[2]:\n[http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.htm...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html)\n\n~~~\nrubeng\nI agree up to a point. There's more to think about here than just finding the\nright market -- though that's a must.\n\nThe problem is that doing this while working full time is freaking hard. Doing\nan entire year of development after hours is just brutal. The longer the time\nto launch the more likely you are to not see it through to the end. So if\nyou're taking on a project that's going to be in development for several\nmonths before you can even charge a dime -- finding something to get excited\nabout is huge.\n\nIf it's just something you're going to build in a couple of weeks then that\npassion can totally be lacking there because marketing is going to be much\nlarger part of the effort (it typically is but typically not to this extent).\n\nIn any case, I highly recommend sticking with something you can launch very\nsoon. Probably no more than 3 months. I went 6 months and it was tough. It's\nan exhausting effort so take advantage of that motivational boost that\nlaunching gives you.\n\n~~~\nchokma\n>\"The problem is that doing this while working full time is freaking hard.\nDoing an entire year of development after hours is just brutal. The longer the\ntime to launch the more likely you are to not see it through to the end.\"\n\nI agree. Working that hard is difficult to keep up. 6 hours a weekday and 8\nhours a weekend is 38 hours additional work a week...\n\nI am currently working on an open source browser game as a hobby project, and\nam discovering that it is much more work to get it right than I thought. But I\ndecided in the beginning that it should be live after the first week or so and\nnow I publish the current alpha every other week. Sometimes, this requires\nmore refactoring, but I think this is balanced by the fact that the game is\nalready in a state where it is not a closet project.\n\nIf you make a commercial product, be sure to have potential customers and a\nmarketing plan before you sink a whole year of work into it. A customer of\nours spent half a million for a _good_ piece of software and now its been\nwaiting for other a year to gain traction. Business customers are interested,\nbut it seems like the marketing department is utterly fubared. They even\ncannot get around to set it up internally to solve their own needs...\n\n------\nrubeng\nIt's certainly possible; I've done better than that in less time. It took me\nabout 4 months to get to beta. Six months before I launched and had recurring\nrevenue. I worked nights and weekends to get it done but I also outsourced\nsome of the less important work.\n\nI'm about 8 months past that point now and I'm extremely glad I took the route\nthat I did. It wasn't easy getting here but totally worth the effort.\n\n------\nTichy\nYesterday my colleagues discovered a \"Paul the Kraken\" app in some app store.\nPaul is the octopus that correctly predicted the outcomes of all soccer games\nof the German team in the world cup. The app sold for 0.79€\n\nNow I don't know if it makes any money, but it sounds like something you could\nthrow together in an afternoon (essentially, a random number generator with\n50% for yes and no respectively).\n\nMaybe the same thing could be repeated over and over with the current news\nstory of the day. Oil spill? Make an oil spill app (whatever, blackens the\nscreen of the phone or something more fancy like the google maps overlay that\nwas posted on HN).\n\n~~~\nc1sc0\nYes, that is the depressing truth about the app store: it works like a\nmagnifying glass for society & the only conclusion I can draw is ... _junk_\nsells.\n\n------\nmidnightmonster\nDo you mean 6 and 8 hrs per day, or 6 hours over the course of the week and 8\nhrs over the course of the weekend? Because if you meant the first, (1) I am\nskeptical that you have 6 hours of good work in you in addition to your\nregular job, unless maybe your job isn't coding at all and you live alone and\nyou don't actually like to see humans, and (2) that's 46 hours per week! I\nsure hope you could build something worth $1000/month after a year of that--\nand after 4 years of $1000/month you'll have earned $20/hr on your original\nwork.\n\n------\ntocomment\nI wonder if new companies have to check their proposed logos against existing\ntrademarked logos to make sure they don't infringe? If so my idea for you is\nto build a way for companies to upload their proposed logo and have a search\ndone to find existing similar logos.\n\n~~~\nmattmiller\nThats not bad. Do you know of any real image search engines that search based\non what the image looks like versus text about the image? I image that this\nwouldn't be too hard for simple logos.\n\n~~~\nfamousactress\nYeah, there's a couple of initiatives out there mostly aimed at helping\nphotographers makes sure they're images aren't used without license...\n<http://www.tineye.com/> is the only one that comes to mind.\n\n------\nbdickason\nI'm not sure if this helps but if you're considering a subscription system I\nput this spreadsheet together in Google Docs so you can see how many\nsubscribers at each tier you need and what your costs will be:\n\n[http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AumfOxrn5FGtdEN5U21L...](http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AumfOxrn5FGtdEN5U21LTks4QzFnTHBNZDhCaThZSHc&hl=en)\n\n------\nmattmiller\nI am in the same boat. I look for ideas that aren't difficult to implement.\nThat way I can easily build it in evening hours. I have found that marketing\nand sales takes the vast majority of the time anyway.\n\n------\ninstakill\nI've actually got a few ideas - 3 in the top priority list - that I'm hoping\nto have developed in the near future if the OP or anybody is willing to\npartner. I'm situated in South Africa, where there are a wide variety of\nmarket gaps ITO technical implementation. The country is market ready with\n120% sim penetration and 52% internet access growth in the last few years\n(about 10m of 45m total).\n\nThe benefit would be dual-market penetration, here and in the US. The only\ndownside would be time-difference (7 hours if you're in EST) and we'd have to\ncommunicate via Skype. Seeing as the OP wants to achieve $1000 monthly\nrevenue, that means that by current exchange rates, about R8000 local revenue\nwould be the target (If focusing solely on the SA market) which is very\nfeasible ITO a somewhat simple B2B tech product.\n\nEmail is brand [dot] magnate {at} g mail {dot} etc. Use Hacker news as\nsubject.\n\ntl;dr - I'm a commerce grad/ start-up owner in South Africa with a few ideas\nwilling to share a good portion of equity with a CTO.\n\n------\njoshu\nContracting would make that much money for those hours.\n\n~~~\nerikstarck\nI think the OP is looking for a passive income with an initial effort only.\n\n------\ndirtyaura\nThe best advice that I learned from one of my advisors: look for a medium/big\nidea that's relatively easy to implement. There are plenty of those in B2B\nsector.\n\nWhy? Because it's as hard to get small amounts of money as it's to get medium\namounts of money. And even relatively easy things can reveal interesting (and\nnasty) problems when you dive into them.\n\nIf you don't have any insights what kind of problems companies have, do a\ncouple of gigs for money and start to thing a product based on those.\n\n------\nkqueue\nPick the simplest idea and implement it in one month.\n\nSometimes what you think might be cool can turn out to be boring, but only\nafter you have wasted a year on it.\n\n------\njustliving\nI'd recommend doing something along the lines of: <http://www.dollarapp.com/>\n\nthe principle is quite easy: 1guy develops an iphone application during 1month\nand sells it for $1. He invests all the revenue in the next app to make it\nsomewhat more fancy/advanced ...\n\n------\npwim\nI've seen many of these posts asking about \"ideas that will generate x money\"\ncoming up lately. While it is certainly possible to make $1000 per month after\na year of development, I'm not sure how likely it is.\n\nProduct development is risky. Certainly, you can use strategies like\ndeveloping a \"minimum viable product\" to mitigate some of the risk, but even\ndoing that can be a lot of work. So unless you are willing to take the risk\nthat you'll spend a year of your time, and not have any revenue generating\nproduct, I wouldn't head down this path.\n\n~~~\nexit\nok, so what would you do instead?\n\n------\nahoyhere\nYes. We created the first version of Freckle in <260 man hours and it earned\n$2k+ a mo with no real promotion.\n\nWhat il said - do something that serves people who make money off it. That's\nthe way business is done.\n\n------\nArdit20\nFirst, do some research, which I suppose this is what you are doing by asking\nHN. Second, come up with loads of ideas, then decide which ideas you prefer\nmost and try out some of them, like not fully implement them, but just sample\nthem, then, see which works best.\n\nTrial and error. It works every time :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: If an obvius idea wasn't tried yet, is it a bad one? - ignaloidas\nI have an idea for a key-value database architecture, and it seems quite obvious for me and how could one come up with such idea. But when searching for prior works, I haven&#x27;t found anything. Could this mean the idea is bad, as I think it should&#x27;ve came up for at least few CompSci students before.\n======\nmimixco\nEvery great idea is obvious in retrospect. The entire history of science is\nthat of one person finding out something that was true which no one else had\nfound before. Your comp sci invention could very well be one of those things!\n\nBest bet is to scaffold your ideas in working code and then see if they are as\npractical as you think. You might be positively surprised.\n\n------\nnikonyrh\nEven if it has been tried before implementing it yourself will be a great\nlearning experience :) And if you think it will perform better on some work-\nloads than most currently existing solutions then you should try executing\nthose benchmarks as well.\n\n------\nBjoernKW\nWell, someone has to first come up with an idea. Chances are, the idea is bad\nbut you'll never know unless you try.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "Ask HN: Have you transitioned from software to finance? - zabana\n======\nmattbgates\nLoaded question. Kidding. But one of my side projects invovles a financial\npiece. It's not technically a service or anything, but rather an informative\nguide on saving enough for retirement though I haven't finished it yet.\n\nI've always been naturally good with money and I have a friend who is a\nfinancial advisor, so having never spoken to a financial advisor before, he\ndid me a favor as a friend to show me that I was on track to retire a\nmillionaire if I kept doing what I was doing. He said I basically had to\nadjust nothing because I was doing everything right. Never took a finance or\nbusiness class. I just learned at an early age the difference between wants,\nneeds, and a lavish yearly vacation or getting to travel around the world,\nwhich is far greater than any material you'll ever get.\n\nThe project is a guide to help people understand the differences of wants and\nneeds, teaching about the stock market and investments, 401ks, working\ndifferent jobs to make money, saving when you are youngest, when to invest,\netc., all to prepare people for a decent retirement. We all define what our\nretirement will be like, yet many people are surprised when they either learn\nthey do not have enough to retire or they must come to accept a certain\nlifestyle when there is no more income or they have to return back to work.\n\nAnyways.. that's my \"break-in\". My friend almost convinced me to quit my job,\nleave my state, and move to where he lives to work for his company.\nSpecualation that I probably could have doubled my salary, however, at the\nexpense that I actually \"make sales\" or \"open up accounts\", as most financial\nbusinesses would come to expect. Fortunately, I didn't do that because I love\nmy current job, even if it pays 2 times less, and a few months later, he\ninformed me he left there and got a job working in life insurance. So I'm kind\nof glad I didn't just go on a whim. But his validation of my expertise\ncertainly sparked me to want to help others, even if I am not in the field\nprofessionally.\n\n------\nfluroblue\nI quit my job a couple months ago after burning out and have been spending a\nwhile wondering what I should be doing.\n\nAs it stands currently, I got accepted for a masters in financial economics\nfor a uni in aus. My city is way more focussed on finance and the pay and the\ntypes of software jobs here aren’t very exciting.\n\nI’m still researching to make sure it’ll be a good decision though I’m still\nnervous about it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWho needs an architect? - yusufaytas\nhttp://www.yusufaytas.com/who-needs-architect/\n======\nhahuho\nI also don't believe we need to have a formal role of an architect role in\ncompanies. There will be architect but yet we don't need to define them a\nformal role. At most, they are engineers with different responsibilities.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTemperatures in France cross 45°C threshold for first time since records began - reddotX\nhttps://www.euronews.com/2019/06/28/france-records-highest-temperature-since-records-began-at-44-3-celsius-meteo-france\n======\ntomhoward\nI'm an Australian taking a short European getaway. We're currently in northern\nItaly - Veneto region.\n\nHoly crap it's hot.\n\nHigh 30s every day, and perhaps because the towns consist of stone streets and\nbuildings, and perhaps because there's not much wind, but it feels much hotter\nthan the equivalent temperatures we're used to in summer at home. (Edit:\nOthers have pointed out humidity would be a factor too - perhaps the biggest.\nThat may be the case, though at around 50%, it's not as humid as I've\nexperienced elsewhere, including in Australia at times.)\n\nWe're heading to southern France next week, and the forecasts suggest the heat\nwave will still be in force then.\n\nI mean, no complaints, we're feeling lucky to be here and are still having a\ngreat time, but boy, this is not what you expect in Europe.\n\n~~~\nTade0\nFor such weather I recommend Trento. Even though the temperature is the same\nas everywhere, the city itself is filled with greenery - I was there last week\nand comparing to e.g. Bologna it was much more bearable.\n\nAlso if you disregard the signs while climbing to Cesare Battisti's monument\nand go through the tunnel meant for cars(which are allowed only at certain\nhours) you'll experience a few minutes of much needed cooling.\n\n~~~\npoint78\nLooks like trento is much much cooler than bolzano even tho bolzano is further\nnorth, (bolzano 40s in July, trento high 20s) is that true every year?\n\n~~~\nidiocratic\nYes. Bolzano is curiously one of the hottest cities in Italy during the\nsummer.\n\n------\nfillskills\nClimate fluctuations are becoming more and more of an emergency. I was at a\nfarmer conference and the main speaker spoke about how bad it is for them.\nLots of crops are dying. Some GMO crops customized for this climate are able\nto survive if they are timed to perfection. We should be very worried about\nour food sources\n\n~~~\nbit_logic\nThis is the part of climate change that the media has really failed to talk\nabout. It's always about sea level rise, but that doesn't make most people\nworry enough (just move or build levees). The real impact is that the climate\nwill change everywhere. Good farmland will become bad. Areas with bad farmland\nwill become good. And it's not easy to just shift the agriculture industry\nfrom one place to the other, and there's no control over where this happens.\nAlso climate change doesn't care about borders. A country that has a lot of\nfood production could suddenly have almost nothing. And even if a country is\nlucky and suddenly has good farmland, it's still a food crisis until that\ncountry can get their agriculture industry up and running.\n\n~~~\njay_kyburz\nIf I were a large investor, I would put some money into working out how to\nfarm food inside.\n\nNot just a glass house, but an air tight box, with a complete ecosystem\ninside.\n\nFrom the fungus in the soil, to bees for pollination. We need to understand\nhow it works and how to manage it.\n\n~~~\npertymcpert\nUhm. You will need to input some carbon into the system because otherwise the\nplants won't be able to obtain raw materials to grow and actually produce\nfood.\n\n~~~\nchronolitus\n[http://www.pickchur.com/2013/02/53-years-old-sealed-\nbottle-g...](http://www.pickchur.com/2013/02/53-years-old-sealed-bottle-\ngarden/)\n\n~~~\npertymcpert\nRight, so?\n\nWhere did the plants get the carbon from to build their organic structures?\n\n~~~\njay_kyburz\nI imagine that in some distant future we are going to have to have near\nperfect recycling. Human waste, and even our bodies will have to go back into\nthese closed ecosystems.\n\nI wonder if the energy from the sun is enough external input to sustain human\nlife.\n\n~~~\nchronolitus\nIt's certainly possible, since earth doesn't need much external input other\nfrom sunlight to sustain life.\n\nThe question is, how scaled-down a self-sustaining ecosystem can we create and\nmanage, which is capable of sustaining human life?\n\n------\nakgerber\nI spent summer 2018 biking across Europe & everywhere I went, from Spain to\nScotland, was much hotter than the climate data I looked up on Wikipedia\nprepared me for. It definitely felt like the climate had tangibly changed—\nespecially if the same thing seems to be repeating this year.\n\nI guess everyone in Europe will be moving towards installing air conditioners,\nand they'll need to add peaker plants to power them on hot summer afternoons.\nHopefully solar & storage will be cheap enough that it isn't too bad for the\nclimate.\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nThe cruel bit here is that installing air conditioners substantially increases\nthe per-capita carbon footprint which in turn will lead to a further\ngreenhouse effect. It's a positive feedback loop with many components.\n\n~~~\nVBprogrammer\nI hope that Europe doesn't ever reach the same level of insanity with regards\nto air-conditioning that you see in, for example, Florida. The last time I\nvisited (admittedly 20 years ago) I remember having to walk outside of\nshopping malls / supermarkets for a few minutes to warm up, having been\nsubjected to the frigid level of AC inside.\n\n~~~\nwar1025\nI think a big part of the \"all kids do is play inside\" thing people like to\ncomplain about has to do with everyone having their AC on all the time. If its\nhot inside and hot outside, you go play outside. If its hot outside and cool\ninside, you sit on your ass and look at a screen.\n\n------\nwongarsu\n45°C in the desert or in the arid climate of the middle east is very bearable.\n45°C in Europe is so terrible because of our high humidity. The more humid it\nis the less effective sweating is, and when the outside temperature is above\n~37°C sweat is the only way we can cool our body to stay alive.\n\n~~~\ndjd20\nHaving lived in Dubai for the last 6 years - believe me there is nothing dry\nabout the summer heat here. 45c and over 90% humidity regularly.\n\n~~~\nFilligree\nThat would imply a wet-bulb temperature of over 40 C, which shouldn't be\nsurvivable. Does everyone spend all their time indoors? What if there's a\npower outage?\n\n~~~\ndleslie\n> What if there's a power outage?\n\nAnd this is why the existence of Dubai is a testament to the hubris of\nhumanity.\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nYeah god forbid a bunch of people who happened to be born in the desert want\nto enjoy the fruits of civiliation.\n\n~~~\nulfw\nThey enjoy it so much, they invite millions to their homes to enjoy it\ntogether!\n\n(The population is composed of just 15% native residents, with the remaining\n85% being composed of expatriates, see\n[http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/dubai-\npopulati...](http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/dubai-population/))\n\n------\nthrowawayvvvv\nI’ve come to the conclusion that the deliberate ignorance of climate\nchange/greenhouse effect/global warming is being fueled by deep-pockets in the\nfossil fuel industry, who are hacking the current weaknesses in democracies to\nsow doubt and confusion, and to sap political will (just as other hostile\ngroupings are doing). The GFC also happened just as schemes like carbon\npricing started taking hold, and they ended up losing momentum, which hasn’t\nbeen regained.\n\nThe UK is a notable exception because Thatcher broke the coal industry for\nideological reasons but I don’t think countries like the US will be able to\ntake meaningful action. Heck, a major reason for Australia’s recent election\noutcome was the question of a major coal mine being granted permission to\nopen.\n\nIt’s either going to take major regional climate changes in some part of the\nworld that the media cares about (Europe or North America) before political\nand public opinion shift decisively enough for meaningful action to take hold.\nBy then it will probably be too late, except for those who are wealthy enough\nto buy their way into places which benefit from climate change. The rest of us\nwill be left to fend for ourselves.\n\n~~~\nThrowaaybbbbbb\nI'm taking a mooc on climate change denial 1, and creating confusion is listed\nas one of the main reasons for denial. For example, when faced with scientific\nconsensus about tobacco causing cancer, the industry invested a lot in\ncreating doubt - doubt makes change stop or slow down.\n\nPersonal biases are also a big factor. Eg: a conservative is more prone to\nbelieve global warming when presented an article about \"free market solutions\nwith nuclear power\" than \"government legislation against co2\", which are just\ndifferent takes on the same underlying truth.\n\n1\n[https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:UQx+Denial101x+1T2...](https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:UQx+Denial101x+1T2019/course/)\n\n------\nScarblac\nFor Americans: this village in the south of France is at about 43.8 degrees\nnorth latitude, about the same latitude as the Great Lakes.\n\n~~~\nisostatic\nEurope has far milder weather than the States due to the gulf stream. While\nNew York (40 degrees north) can get a foot or two of snow dumping several\ntimes a year, Rome (41 degrees north) gets an inch or two once or twice a\ncentury.\n\n~~~\nlogfromblammo\nVisualization of Earth oceanic currents:\n\n[https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic)\n\nStick around to play with the other options in the hamburger menu in the lower\nleft.\n\n~~~\nralphhughes\nThanks for sharing that, I notice they have an overlay for ocean temperature\nas well, so you can visualise both the heat flows and absolute temperatures on\nthe same map:\n[https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp/orthographic=-36.08,41.80,671)\n\n------\nbaud147258\n\"2015 European heatwave\"\n\nI remember that one, it coincided with high air pollution: so much that one\nevening while leaving work, I realized that the Eiffel tower, quite close to\nthe workplace, was barely visible in a haze of pollution. Also that heatwave,\ncompared to the current, was made worse by a lack of wind, as far as I\nremember.\n\n------\nJohnTHaller\nWhen higher temperatures have you down, just remember the conclusion on the\nfinal page of a buried 1980 report on climate change from the American\nPetroleum Institute: \"At a 3% per anum growth rate of CO₂, a 2.5°C rise brings\nworld economic growth to a halt in about 2025\"\n\n------\nadrianN\n> According to the European Environment Agency, 2018 was among the three\n> warmest years on record in Europe.\n\nThe five hottest summers in Germany since we have reliable temperature records\nhave been 2008, 2010, 2003, 2016 and 2002. This year also also going strong\nalready.\n\n~~~\nShivetya\n\"reliable\" is the means by which all previous records are dismissed. makes it\neasy to forget the 30s in America or that in 1947 France was close to 44C in\nsome areas.\n\nalways watch when they start adding new terms to dismiss history.\n\n~~~\nadrianN\nWith reliable I mean since 1600 or so.\n\n------\nbaq\nthis is what the oil industry in USA had to say about CO2 in 1980:\n\n    \n    \n       CLIMATE MODELING - CONCLUSIONS\n    \n       LIKELY IMPACTS\n    \n       1C RISE (2005) : BARELY NOTICEABLE\n    \n       2.5C RISE (2038) : MAJOR ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES, STRONG REGIONAL DEPENDENCE\n    \n       5C RISE (2067) : GLOBALLY CATASTROPHIC EFFECTS\n    \n\n[https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/...](https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/AQ-9%20Task%20Force%20Meeting%20%281980%29.pdf)\n\njust saying\n\n~~~\nulfw\nAnd they did shit all about it\n\n~~~\nJamesLefrere\nThat's not quite fair, they funded the climate denial movement.\n\n------\nblue_devil\n>The year-to-date globally averaged land surface temperature was 2.68°F above\nthe 20th century average of 42.8°F. This value was also the third highest for\nJanuary–May in the [in the 1880–2019] record.\n\nsource: [https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/global-\nclimate-201905](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/global-climate-201905)\n\n------\nbayareanative\nSpain and the south of France will be bad. And, Spain is already desertifying\nlike crazy and climate models show it's screwed long-term. I would expect\nclimate refugees leaving the Iberian peninsula in greater numbers soon,\nfarmers in Spain are already leaving (I saw a docu by Journeyman Pictures on\nSpanish olive orchards dying and being abandoned).\n\n~~~\nlogronoide\nClimate refugees leaving Spain? That must be the reason why retired Europeans\nbuy a house in Spanish coasts...\n\nYes, climate change is impacting how we live in Spain... but please don’t\nunderestimate how humans can adapt and modify our environment... we have been\ndoing it here for 2500 years. Romans digging to extract gold, Kings cutting\nforest to build ships (and today are deserts), seas of plastic nowadays to\nfeed Europe of vegetables all seasons...\n\nEven under a heavy heat wave like this, the impact will be much higher in\nother countries; because we are already use to it. The news about France are\nmore scary than Spain’s.\n\n------\nopen-source-ux\nThis is from 2018 but has good advice on what to do during a heatwave and how\nour bodies react\n\n _Why some people suffer during heatwaves:_\n\n[https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2018/07/23/why-\nsome-...](https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2018/07/23/why-some-people-\nsuffer-during-heatwaves/)\n\n------\nrwoodley\nHow much are we all going to have to suffer before our governments actually\ntake constructive action on the climate. Not to mention personal action as\nwell.\n\n~~~\nstarbugs\nA lot. Even if we start now, it will be a long time before our actions have\nany effect. And since we don't start now, and probably won't soon, again, a\nlot I'm afraid.\n\n~~~\nWhompingWindows\nOur actions are just going to slightly reduce the rate at which things get\nworse. No matter how much energy transition we do in the developed world,\nthings will continue to worsen. Even if we outright banned all combustion\novernight, things would still get hotter due to feedback loops, especially\nwhile the methane still exists for the next century or two.\n\n~~~\nmooseburger\nEven discounting the feedback loops, an energy transition only in the\ndeveloped world would do very little.\n\n~~~\njustaaron\nbe prepared for rich nations/people to aid poor ones.\n\nthere can be no winners in such a disaster, let's stop jostling for position.\n\n(We, the USA, are literally the only unilateralist nation with regards to this\nissue. We are an outlier, some would say a criminally negligent outlier. Time\nto make up for past misdeeds!)\n\n------\nboyadjian\nI live in France near Paris, and I can tell you it's very hot down here. I did\nnot go to work today ( I work only 4 days a week), and I had a headache all\nthrough the day. I had an appointment in town, that I cancelled because it was\ntoo hot.\n\n~~~\nHavoc\nDrink more water for the headaches. Water drinking patterns tend to be\nhabitual not weather related &people just don't drink enough for extremes\n\n~~~\nboyadjian\nYes, that is what I did, and also taking showers. Now it's midnight, and still\nhot. Wonder what weather it will be tomorrow.\n\n------\nbaud147258\nI've been hearing about the heatwave since last week, but it's been bearable\nso far in Paris, helped by a constant wind when outside (and HVAC in the\noffice). Also I think Paris is not getting the worst of the heat, but I've not\nchecked.\n\n~~~\nTremendousJudge\nHow's the AC situation there? When I went to Europe last year I found it rare\nfor a home to have air conditioning (extremely commonplace here in southern\nSouth America where I'm from)\n\n~~~\nbaud147258\nI think I've ever seen AC in a flat or a home only one time and it was a\nportable air conditioner in a rental home in the South.\n\nBut malls, offices and the like have AC.\n\nI've never been in South America, but I'd say that the average weather\nconditions in France (less heat and humidity) makes AC less important.\n\n~~~\njrimbault\nI'm also in Paris, and just yesterday someone told me that, I replied : \"made\nAC less important\". Clearly things have changed in the last 15 years. Paris\nand London haven't adapted yet to this change.\n\n~~~\nbaud147258\nI don't think we're yet at a point where AC is important as important as, for\nexample, South America. The current temperature is a record high, not an\naverage temperature.\n\n------\nNeonTiger1992\nMy girlfriend's family are visiting relatives in France at the moment. They've\nbeen going for the best part of 20 years and they cannot believe the\ntemperature.\n\nIt's quite scary. Even in the UK, it's been unnaturally warm for most of this\nyear and there were times in February and March where it was unseasonably\ntemperate.\n\n------\ntarr11\n45c = 113f\n\n------\nAsmod4n\nThat's desert like hot, holy shit.\n\n~~~\nmathieuh\nWell the source is winds blown in from North Africa so you’re not wrong\n\n~~~\nbonzini\nYeah at least here around Milan the silver lining is that there's some kind of\nbreeze and it's not super humid. During the night you can sleep if you keep\nwindows open.\n\n------\nlinux_devil\nThis will impact the tourism industry to some extent and also high time for\ngovernments across the world to take positive steps in the same direction as\nthis will eventually affect all of us. I stay in India and recent news related\nto water scarcity across cities are trending which is not usual.\n\n------\ntomalpha\n[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-\neurope-48795264](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48795264) has a map\nof the worst affected areas\n\n------\nabstractbarista\nGlad to see the title was edited to be more correct and less sensationalized.\n\n------\n40acres\nTruly hope that those in the region can stay safe, as mentioned the last heat\nwave of this magnitude in Europe killed thousands.\n\nThat being said: I'm taking a mental note to purchase some 2019 vintage, the\nheat must do wonders for the grapes.\n\n~~~\nWhompingWindows\nThe heat does wonders if the proper variety of grape is planted in the proper\nplace. If you've got chardonnay grapes in cabernet climate, you're going to\nhave a bad time.\n\n------\nsupercall\nClimate crisis\n\n------\nAcerbicZero\nEdit: My bad, nevermind.\n\n~~~\nrcMgD2BwE72F\nHell no!\n\nWars will be all over the place long before your pseudo \"climate engineering\"\nwill mitigate global warming – and long before we will start bearing the\nunforeseen consequences of your apprentice sorcery.\n\nWars will impact individual behaviors in big ways – for bad, obviously. At\nthat point, you'll certainly realize that human beings can do collective\nthings for good, too. Politics matters, always (like it or not).\n\nThere really is no point to wait for war to try and avoid it.\n\n------\n013a\nIts unfortunate how many people are using the word \"Climate\" in their replies\nhere. When Trump says \"Its cold out, global warming is fake\" we rightly say\nthat it's _Weather_ , not _Climate_. That's what this is too.\n\nGlobal warming may be responsible to some degree, but we can't have it both\nways. Language is important.\n\n~~~\nrwoodley\nI don't get the point of splitting hairs on the terms \"climate\" vs \"weather\".\n\nHowever, the term 'global warming' should be avoided in favor of 'climate\nchange', for obvious reasons.\n\n~~~\nTallGuyShort\nI like the distinction (though not so much as seen in the GP comment) because\nthe science behind things like ocean acidification seems much more sound and\nconclusive than some of the data I've seen on temperature increases (which can\nlead to more constructive discussion with deniers who at times, do have some\nvalid points in counterarguments). It's not just about seemingly small\nincreases in temperature - the effect of greenhouse gases is disastrous in\nother ways too.\n\n------\n8bitsrule\nI grew up in a house with a basement with concrete walls. When I complained\nabout the summer heat, I always heard: 'Basement!!'\n\nMakes me wonder if heat waves (or cold waves) were the cause of most of the\nworld's cave paintings. Or the underground cities of the Middle East.\n\n------\nchewz\nI do not miss cold, rainy summers of my youth and failed crops.\n\nThe summers in Central Europe are getting pleasantly mediterranean. Everything\nblossoms and ripes early. People stay at home instead of going to Spain for\nholidays. Agriculture is booming. Outdoor cafes and restaurants grow around\nevery corner.\n\nPlus since yesterday temperatures suddenly dropped from 34C to 22C with\npleasant, fresh breeze. Still sunny.\n\n------\namyjess\nIn the last few months, I've been getting into dry wines (which I've avoided\nfor most of my life but have been making up for list time on), so this really\nhas me wondering what the effect of this on the wine industry is going to be\n(\"this\" = not just this specific incident but the whole pattern of climate\nchange).\n\nI've particularly fallen in love with GSM wines from the Rhone, and I\nunderstand that these varieties thrive in warm climates, so could one of the\nsilver linings of climate change be a _fantastic_ 2019 vintage for Rhone\nappellations?\n\n~~~\nsaalweachter\nBasically, photosynthesis doesn't work good above 40C. Plants stop making\nsugars and start consuming them instead. This is unfortunate for us, because\nagriculture is basically the art of convincing plants to store as many extra\ncalories as possible.\n\nSo there's a major difference between \"warm\" and \"hot\" climates.\n\n~~~\namyjess\nThanks for the information!\n\n------\ndownrightmike\nIf the US Democratic National Committee hadn't rigged the last election for\nHillary, we'd have Bernie Sanders who actually gives a shit about climate\nchange and would do something about it. Hopefully, the DNC won't pull a fast\none again with Biden.\n\n~~~\ngbear605\nI preferred Bernie over Hillary too, but an article about France is really not\nthe place to bring up three year old American politics.\n\n------\nvinayakkulkarni\nLol.. That's the normal temperature during summer in India.\n\n~~~\nkitten_smuggler\nIf this is happening in France, then you can expect India to see similar\ntemperature anomalies in the future. Not much to laugh at really.\n\n~~~\nneffy\nThe future was two weeks ago - 50+ degrees Celsius:\n\n[https://phys.org/news/2019-06-india-heatwave-temperatures-\nce...](https://phys.org/news/2019-06-india-heatwave-temperatures-celsius.html)\n\nThe problem isn´t just that humans can´t breathe underwater.\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1cMnM-\nUJ5U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1cMnM-UJ5U)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nKatherine Dunn has died; the 'Geek Love' author once took the world by storm - bootload\nhttp://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-katherine-dunn-geek-love-20160512-snap-story.html\n======\nKingMob\nThis was a great book, but the \"cyber-ish\" Chip Kidd cover was misleading.\nIt's not about computer geeks, but about carnival geeks, where the term\noriginates.\n\nFor those who have never read it, it's a fascinating story about a traveling\ncarnival family whose parents decided to breed their own freaks. When\npregnant, the mother ingests all sorts of poisons, pesticides, etc. to ensure\nthat her children have deformities.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHTML5 apps: Silk, Audiograph, Circuitlab - ananddass\nhttp://blog.filepicker.io/post/33589412189/html5-apps-silk-audiograph-circuitlab\n\n======\ncompumike\nThanks for including CircuitLab! Our users are telling us that they're using\nour in-browser circuit simulator (<https://www.circuitlab.com/>) to replace\ndesktop-based software such as Cadence PSpice, NI Multisim, and Linear's\nLTspice. All in all, our engineering, academic, and hobbyist users ran more\nthan 100,000 circuit simulations using CircuitLab in the last week alone!\nThose two facts together are telling us great things about the future of\nbrowser-based applications.\n\n~~~\nHeyLaughingBoy\nThanks for building it! I've been using it as a schematic editor for about the\nlast 6 months to illustrate posts online (I haven't tried the simulator yet)\nand it's the most impressive software feat I've seen in a long time.\n\n------\njuddlyon\nThese are really impressive, thanks for sharing. Silk is hypnotic and\nrelaxing.\n\n~~~\ntrafficlight\nSilk is awesome. I wish the palette wasn't limited and there were a few more\nsymmetry options.\n\n------\nindigo919\nThis is what i did with silk : <http://new.weavesilk.com/?5cp7>\n\n~~~\nananddass\npsychedelic!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGit Local – A lightweight Git command line wrapper in Ruby - mjhea0\nhttps://github.com/GalvanizeOpenSource/git_local\n======\npmontra\nThe README is very minimal. Bundle install and then... how to use it, what to\nuse it for?\n\nI read the examples in specs and I didn't understand what's the purpose of the\ngem. It could be wonderful but with no explanations it is too easy to move on\nto the next link.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMagnetism, Radiation, and Relativity (1999) - cbd1984\nhttp://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/mrr/MRRtalk.html\n======\nivan_ah\nAlso related:\n[http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_13.html#Ch13-S6](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_13.html#Ch13-S6)\n\n------\nivan_ah\nRelated: a phenomenon that can be described equivalently as due to electric or\nmagnetic interactions, depending on the reference frame:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_magnet_and_conductor_pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_magnet_and_conductor_problem)\n\n------\namelius\nMaxwell's equations are strange, in that there is the concept of charge (q),\nbut also of current (density, J). If the charge starts moving by the tiniest\namount, it suddenly changes \"identity\" by becoming a current. This is a weird\nkind of \"discontinuity\" in the theory.\n\n~~~\nchm\nMy understanding is that current is defined as charge per unit time _through a\nsingle point_. The charge moving stays a charge. I don't get what you mean by\nit changing identity?\n\n~~~\nMaro\nMaybe this helps:\n\n[http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/190259/%CE%97ow-d...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/190259/%CE%97ow-\ndoes-a-current-density-becomes-a-charge-density)\n\n~~~\nreagency\nIs there an analog to that in mass/gravity? Or no because mass doesn't have\nsign like charge does?\n\n~~~\nMaro\nYes. You can combine charge density and current to form a 4-vector in SR like\n(charge density, current vector). Other 4-vectors are (energy, momentum\nvector). There are also a bunch of others, the most famous/basic one being\n(time, position vector):\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-\nvector#Fundamental_four-v...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-\nvector#Fundamental_four-vectors)\n\nThe reason it's a good idea to group these into 4-vectors is that the\ncomponents of the vectors transform into each other under coordinate\ntransformations in SR (see Lorentz-transformation).\n\n------\njhallenworld\nI've heard this before- that magnetism is a consequence of moving electric\ncharges when special relativity is taken into account. But doesn't this on its\nown rule out magnetic monopoles?\n\n------\nplatz\n> electrostatic fields transform from one reference frame to another\n\nIs it true?\n\n~~~\nGolDDranks\nYes, because of the Lorenz contraction.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIPhone-Friendly Watch Gets $500,000 Kickstarter Funding in a Day - yurisagalov\nhttp://mashable.com/2012/04/11/iphone-watch-pebble-kickstarter/\n\n======\nTerretta\nLink in article 404s. Found it here:\n\n[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-\npaper...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-\nfor-iphone-and-android)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFind running median from a stream of integers - J3L2404\nhttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/10657503/find-running-median-from-a-stream-of-integers\n======\ndude_abides\nHere is a clever algorithm to find the median of a stream of integers by using\njust one variable:\n\nThe idea is to maintain a floating median. Start with an arbitrary number, say\n0. If the incoming number is greater than the estimate, num += 1, else num -=\n1.\n\nIt is easy to prove that for a large enough stream, assuming the stream is\ndrawn from iid samples, this would converge to the median, by central limit\ntheorem.\n\nUsing two variables instead of one, you could converge faster. So instead of\nincrementing/decrementing by one, you store how big your leap is, and have a\nschedule to change it.\n\n~~~\nbjornsing\n> It is easy to prove that...\n\nReminds me of a similar comment in the margin of a old book:\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermats_Last_Theorem>. :)\n\nBut it does sound both plausible and brilliant. How do you prove it (in broad\nterms)?\n\n~~~\nnjs12345\nSlightly off topic, but looks like toemetoch has tripped one of the hellban\nfilters, isn't a spammer, and has no contact info in his profile. Might want\nto sort that out if you're reading this toemetoch!\n\n~~~\npg\nNo, he just accidentally posted the same comment twice. The new one got\nautokilled. Then he deleted the first one, leaving a single dead comment.\n\n------\nnotaddicted\nThis is kind of a weird problem, because it requires you to keep all the\nnumbers in memory, so the \"streaming\" aspect is a lot less useful. And then\nonce you have the list in memory there are linear median finding algorithms.\nThe only way out that I can see is if you expect the incoming data to follow a\nnormal distribution you can short-circuit the entire problem and just\ncalculate the mean.\n\nEDIT: One could construct a \"Counted B-Tree\" which is a pretty straightforward\naugmentation of the B-Tree (quick google result:\n[http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/algorithms/cbtre...](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/algorithms/cbtree.html)).\nThe insertion cost would still be of complexity log(n), the median could also\nbe retrieved cheaply, and the data is kept sorted, but it takes more space.\n\n~~~\nmturmon\nYou're right, it's kind of asking the wrong question.\n\nBecause of the robustness properties of the median, it would be hard to argue\nthat the first 1E6 samples weren't enough, and that you really need to hang on\nfor the next 9E6 to get an accurate median.\n\nIn real problems, if you have that much data, you would more likely start to\nquestion the iid assumption anyway, and you'd start looking for drifts in the\nmedians within sliding windows. Real problems being real problems, you'd\nprobably find some drift, and this would point out the unhelpfulness of an\n\"all-data\" median. (\"Since the data is drifting, what is this the median\n_of_?\")\n\n------\nraymondh\nToo bad that a horrible answer was selected as the best. The minheap/maxheap\nsolution requires that the entire stream of integers be stored in memory.\n\nThere is a fast and memory efficient solution using Indexable Skiplists:\n[http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576930-efficient-\nrunning...](http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576930-efficient-running-\nmedian-using-an-indexable-skipli/)\n\nIn a n-sized sliding window, only the most recent n elements need to be stored\n(not the entire data stream). The skiplist insertions, deletions, and indexed\nlookups are all O(log n).\n\n------\nsixothree\nHeap sounds like overkill to find the middle value in a running list. What's\nwrong with simple stack and keeping track of how many integers you've\nreceived?\n\n~~~\nDrbble\nYour solution is for median position, not median value, and it would require a\nqueue, not a stack, so unneeded old values could be dropped.\n\n~~~\nsixothree\nOf course, a queue is correct.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nKexter: \"Combining Craigslist and Google Maps to make housing searches easier\" - Alex3917\nhttp://www.kexter.com\n\n======\ngoofygrin\nwell unless CL has changed policies this will be going down in 3... 2...\n\n~~~\nAlex3917\nThey asked Craig first and he gave them permission to do it. If I remember\ncorrectly they aren't allowed to monetize it using ads, and there may be other\nrestrictions as well.\n\n~~~\ngoofygrin\nwell what's the point then ;)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAn open social media network that encrypts your posts and distributes via RSS - espeed\nhttp://www.fastcolabs.com/3016147/this-open-source-twitter-replacement-is-absolutely-brilliant\n======\nest\n> We are building the first fully-conforming trsst server, plus an open source\n> web client including javascript libraries for core functionality like the\n> cryptographic functions.\n\nWait, wat?\n\nFrom the first glance it looks like they just patched buzz words together and\ndecided to call it bitcoin-like decentralized syndication network on a PKI\n\nWhat about anonymity? Anyone who has the whole signing chain could track down\nthe author. The anonymity of bitcoin is achieved by mixing hubs[1], you can't\nsplit a blog post in half and mix it.\n\n[1]:\n[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity)\n\nbtw what happened to Open Source today? You have to hype on Kickstarter and\nwaiting for people throwing money at you in order to start coding?\n\n~~~\nderleth\n> javascript libraries for core functionality like the cryptographic\n> functions.\n\nClientside JS for crypto? No. Bad idea.\n\n[http://www.matasano.com/articles/javascript-\ncryptography/](http://www.matasano.com/articles/javascript-cryptography/)\n\nTheir reasons:\n\n> Secure delivery of Javascript to browsers is a chicken-egg problem.\n\n> Browser Javascript is hostile to cryptography.\n\n> The \"view-source\" transparency of Javascript is illusory.\n\n> Until those problems are fixed, Javascript isn't a serious crypto research\n> environment, and suffers for it.\n\n~~~\niuguy\nI spent some time working on a project to create an encrypted contact form for\npeople to use on websites. Thought it might make for a good wordpress plugin,\nbut I was wrong.\n\nHaving gone from a position of \"why not\" to \"oh hell no\" on javascript crypto,\nthe fundamental problems as I see them (aside from the ones outlined in your\ncomment):\n\n* Each javascript engine is different, with different (or sometimes no) sources of differing (or no) levels of randomness, which is essential for crypto to work.\n\n* Most browsers support some level of javascript introspection _whether you like it or not_. Sure, things like Content Security Policies can be used to limit access from other tabs or domains but it's not just secure delivery to browsers that's a problem with javascript, it's execution integrity too.\n\n* Most of the Javascript crypto libraries I've seen are ports of C libraries using tools such as llvm. As such they were not designed with javascript's functionality in mind, and as such are unlikely to have been anywhere near as scrutinised for side channel leaks as something built from the ground up.\n\nThe final nail in the coffin for my project was the fact that I'm not\nsupporting a set of browsers, I'm supporting a set of ecosystems. Anything\nfrom plugins and extensions to minor version changes can affect the behaviour\nof a javascript engine in an unexpected way with potentially dangerous\noutcomes. I couldn't in good faith release a tool that lets grandma contact\nyou without having to install PGP but in reality may mean she gets black\nbagged regardless because she used a dodgy tablet with no randomness source.\n\n------\nburke\nThe name is absolutely horrible. And they shouldn't just re-use the RSS logo,\neven at this stage.\n\n~~~\nadriancooney\nI think it's a play on \"trust\". Maybe capitalize on the current v for u trend\nand name it Trvst? It's slightly more legible and won't be a kick in the ego\nto change.\n\n~~~\nna85\n[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tryst](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tryst)\n\n------\ncomex\nI'll leave aside the comparisons to tent.io, app.net, StatusNet, and many\nother services...\n\nConsidering that most Twitter users seem quite comfortable with publishing\ntheir posts for all to see, marketing a Twitter competitor as a post-Snowden\nmeasure seems somewhat opportunistic to me, especially when there are many\nother benefits to decentralized/open Twitter replacements.\n\n------\nthesteamboat\nTheir whitepaper can be found here:\n\n[http://www.trsst.com/paper/](http://www.trsst.com/paper/)\n\n------\ncodezero\nCan someone explain this system? I see the word decentralized thrown around,\nbut the Kickstarter seems based around them building a server and hosting\nthis. What is decentralized about them controlling the user ids? Basically:\nWhat am I missing here?\n\n~~~\njames4k\nYeah, I'm not sure I get it either. They call it a \"syndication network\"\nwhich, for me, gives the impression of a distributed network that is strictly\ncontrolled, which defeats the purpose. I hope this is just poor wording.\n\n------\nGregorStocks\nWhen I click this link I just see a picture with no text. Is this brilliant\nopen source twitter replacement limited to zero characters instead of 140?\n\n~~~\nsirsar\nI saw nothing but a picture of an RSS icon, and thought that was the joke: you\ncan \"follow\" people by subscribing to their RSS feeds, and RSS already exists.\n\n~~~\nAsymetricCom\nI don't see what the problem is. RSS works, why reinvent the wheel?\n\n~~~\nzanny\nTwitter became popular because browsers didn't elegantly handle feeds. Tumblr\nblogs (or blogs in general) with post comments and following are much more\nopen and just as usable as the Twitter platform, _if_ you provide easy to use\nrss syndication and browsers support easy to use feed browsing without having\nto search out a google reader replacement.\n\n------\ntroni\n\"Looks and feels like Twitter\"\n\n(actually uses screenshots from twitter to pitch product)\n\n------\nmiguelrochefort\nWhy does this crap gets upvoted at all?\n\nEveryone and their mother can build a Twitter clone in 24h. Add a week for\nencryption and security.\n\nThere's absolutely nothing new about this idea. Nothing. They don't even have\na working prototype. All thin air.\n\nOn top of that, what's the big deal with privacy nowadays? It's the opposite\nof what we should aim for as a society. Transparency is not only unavoidable,\nit's a good thing.\n\nMarket this as a tool to organize protests in countries where privacy is a\nnecessary evil, and maybe it will make more sense.\n\n~~~\nkintamanimatt\n> Why does this crap gets upvoted at all?\n\nWho'd have guessed? It's an article about tech on a tech site.\n\n> What's the big deal with privacy nowadays?\n\nWe found out about wholesale global surveillance.\n\n> It's the opposite of what we should aim for as a society.\n\nJust as I want to poop with the door closed, I also want to discuss private\nmatters privately. Not everything in my life should be public and I should\nhave the final say over that. Should every start-up be subject to absolute\ntransparency? Kinda eliminates any competitive advantage if your competitors\nknow what you're up to.\n\n> Transparency is not only unavoidable, it's a good thing.\n\nTransparency of government, yes. For the rest of us, mind your own damn\nbusiness.\n\n> ... privacy is a necessary evil ...\n\nThe good thing about having the option of privacy is that it's not forced upon\nyou. If you're not happy with your life being private, you're free to share.\nWhen that option of privacy is eliminated, however, you're forced to share\neverything even if you don't want to, and that's pretty much the opposite of\nliberty.\n\n------\nunknownian\nI wonder when people will realize that Twitter is not the enemy. I do believe\nin decentralized social networking, but some software package you throw on\nyour web server doesn't seem like the solution. We need a new Internet\nprotocol.\n\nEven so, I wish this team luck and hope it to gain traction.\n\n~~~\nintslack\nDue to their centralized nature, and the result of being located in the US as\none of the largest communication platforms, Twitter has become the enemy. It\nwas probably not their intention to become the enemy, but that's the\nconsequence of being located on US soil and being one of the largest service\nproviders (just as Facebook and Google have.)\n\nWhen you decentralize, where providers are only responsible for a relative\nhandful of the overall userbase, 'hoovering' is much more difficult.\n\n~~~\nunknownian\nI already know about its centralization and being in the US. So what? I don't\nput sensitive information into Twitter like I do in Google services.\n\nDo you expect your blogging service to be encrypted and private too? I guess\nthe private messages should be secure but oh well, I've even heard Twitter\ndemanding warrants for giving out DM info.\n\nEdit: I do wish we could expect \"private messages\" to be private.\n\n------\nrabino\nIs there any intrinsic value in Twitter other than the plethora of people\nusing it?\n\n~~~\nprivong\n> Is there any intrinsic value in Twitter other than the plethora of people\n> using it?\n\ns/Twitter/[any social network]/\n\nThe point is the people using it.\n\n~~~\nrabino\nMy (not explicit) point exactly. All this fad about twitter clones makes no\nsense to me.\n\n------\ntroni\nSigh. There are so many people doing this. I couldn't access the main article\nbut read the Kickstarter page. From what I understand this is a plea for\nfunding for (basic) components that are already built by other teams, but with\nan extra layer of encryption and a copy-cat UI.\n\nWhy not just focus on encrypting content on an existing decentralized network\nproject like pump.io or GNU social? Or any other open network? Build on some\nmomentum that is already there rather than debug message transport for life?\n\n~~~\nkintamanimatt\nIt's cliché, but competition stimulates demand.\n\n------\nulisesrmzroche\nI'm not entirely sure I understand what's going on. I suggest changing the\nexplainer video to at least a talking head - yes, old, but they have much\nbetter recall and have been proven to change brand preference (even with\ncigarretes)a and try to find a better synonym for 'encryption' \\- Good luck.\nGoing against Twitter is a tall order.\n\n------\nrdl\nAt first glance there's stuff I like and dislike about this, but the strongest\nthing is probably separating out how the messages move around from how the\nkeys move around.\n\nMoving encrypted blobs around is easy, as long as you don't care about traffic\nanalysis. Handling keys is a bit harder. Separating those makes sense.\n\n------\nlucb1e\nThought about this before, but there is one problem: you still leak loads of\nmetadata just like with e-mail (whom you're communicating with, when you're\ncommunicating, how much you're communicating, and perhaps other things).\nBecause of this, I didn't see any advantage.\n\n------\nzalew\nDo they hope to be as successful as Diaspora? _\" open social media network\nthat encrypts your posts and distributes via RSS\"_ sounds like a great summary\nof a killer project that nobody will ever use.\n\n------\ndsizzle\nUh, isn't the primary purpose of Twitter to make your posts PUBLIC?\n\nEdit: I guess the focus is on the private messaging aspect, which I never use.\nPerhaps this is more popular than I realize.\n\n------\nchatman\nThese people look unprofessionals, judging by their intro video.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Imagine a Post Pandemic World, How Internet Use Will Evolve? - multiversecoder\nI ask myself this, because I believe that the lockdown will permanently change our psychology and our way of dealing with everyday life, and since the internet and services will forever play a fundamental role in our society, I am trying to understand how the relationship between man and services will evolve.<p>For example, what do you think will be the Fundamental Applications for a Post-Pandemic World?<p>I believe that P2P, decentralization, cryptography and virtual reality will create a new universe of services that will become more and more present.<p>But this is just an assumption. What do you think?\n======\ntucaz\n“ I believe that P2P, decentralization, cryptography and virtual reality will\ncreate a new universe of services that will become more and more present.”\n\nIf anything it will be the opposite. All you mentioned is a concern of a very\nsmall part of the population.\n\nI believe that in this regard we will be seeing more control and\ncentralization from governments in order to try to predict/prevent future\noccurrences.\n\n~~~\nmultiversecoder\nI fully support your thinking, and I believe that the high number of\nrestrictions will create as a consequence a greater number of distrustful\npeople who will suffer greatly from the controls and will look for\nalternatives to feel more protected and free. I mean as a feeling, even\nplacebo, of having full control and not being controlled.\n\nOf course there will be those who will not take care of these options and will\nnot look for them.\n\nBut now more than ever there is a human need to support the growth of these\nservices, at least I think, to ensure a safe area and a private space for\nanyone.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPHP 8 Will Get an Just in Time Compiler - doener\nhttps://blog.krakjoe.ninja/2019/03/php-gr8.html?m=1\n======\nrurban\n> PHP is actually quite fast, it's the fastest interpreted language in the\n> world\n\nThey obviously never heard of Lua or Javascript and all it's derivates.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRemembering Sydney Goldstein, Founder of City Arts and Lectures - chmaynard\nhttps://datebook.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/sydney-goldstein-founder-of-city-arts-lectures-dies-at-73\n======\necabraser\nBelated gratitude to Sydney Goldstein for the brilliant insight, impeccably\nand consistently implemented, that great conversation enriches the cultural\nand intellectual lives of all who listen- and she enabled us to listen in to\nsome of the most fascinating conversations ever. I got hooked on City Arts and\nLectures- and did my best to hook others, too- that was easy. We take our\ncultural riches, and those who labor to bestow them, for grated far too often.\nThank you Sydney from a city to whom you gave so much.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFacebook is gaslighting the web. We can fix it. - slig\nhttp://dashes.com/anil/2011/11/facebook-is-gaslighting-the-web.html\n======\nlbrandy\nI work on the team that generated the warning that seems to be the crux of\nthis post. I am pretty convinced that it is a bug.\n\nHis central theme, though, is a bit misguided. I don't understand why 1) using\nopengraph, or 2) using a like button implies facebook should trust your link\nand whitelist it. Even pages with those integrations can be malicious.\n\nIn this actual case though, the notification link (generated from the\ncommenting widget) seems to malformed and causing it to trip a security check.\nI've pinged a bunch of people about figuring out what is happening and getting\nit fixed. The guy sitting next to me is currently trying to repro.\n\nAs for convincing Google/Microsoft to warn users when visiting facebook.com\nbecause of security false-positives, I'll leave that discussion for you guys.\n\n~~~\ncft\nLet's argue Reductio ad absurdum.\n\nWhy does not Google pop-up similar warnings when you click on its search\nresults?\n\n-Because Google is dependent on the richness and abundance of third-party websites, for its search to be meaningful.\n\nWhat is the objective of Facebook?\n\n\\- To suck users into facebook.com, and sandbox them there. Similarly, the\nsmaller objective of Facebook Social plugins is to lift the userbase from\nthird party websites and move it into Facebook.\n\n~~~\nlbrandy\nYou seem to be under a collection of interesting misapprehensions...\n\n1\\. Google does warn in various ways when it detects possible badness. As it\nshould.\n\n2\\. We don't gate ALL links through such warnings. This can be verified by\ngoing to your news feed and clicking just about anything.\n\n3\\. This is about a specific issue with notifications generated from comment\nwidgets (a very common spam vector).\n\n4\\. Detecting all badness via the domain name at \"write-time\" is not a\nsufficient solution to the malicious link problem.\n\n5\\. Whatever that was, it wasn't reductio ad absurdum.\n\n~~~\ncft\n>4\\. Detecting all badness via the domain name at \"write-time\" is not a\nsufficient solution to the malicious link problem.\n\nDoesn't Google has this problem too, that detecting badness at the \"indexing\ntime\" is not a sufficient solution? The content of a site may change between\ntheir checks. No pop-ups are shown in between indexing times nevertheless.\n\nWith your abuse reporting volume, you should be able to almost instantly\ndetect statistically significant malicious links, and remove them from your\nnews feeds, should the content change to malicious after \"write-time\".\n\n~~~\npodperson\nI can't believe I'm posting something that might be taken as defending\nFacebook but...\n\nIf a site appears to contain malicious content at time X but not at time Y\nthan I would PREFER to be notified that it is a dubious site until the site\nhas earned back trust in some way. Continuing to warn users about a site that\nhistorically contained badness seems to me to be a FEATURE.\n\n~~~\najross\nThat's actually exactly Google's solution: they give you a set of reports and\nan indication of when the malware or malicious link was last detected on the\nsite.\n\nBut I don't think that's the issue here. That facebook warning does _not_ , as\nfar as I know, get generated from a positive malware/spam/badness metric. It's\njust thrown up as a default action when someone links to an unblessed site on\nthe web. That's what the poster doesn't like: it goes against the whole idea\nof hyperlinking.\n\n~~~\nbenregenspan\nBut as lbrandy mentioned, this is in one rare case and appears to be the\nresult of a bug. If this happened when most links were clicked leaving\nFacebook, you can rest assured that all publishers would be up in arms.\n\n~~~\najross\nHopefully it's a bug. But I see it routinely. It's definitely not a \"rare\ncase\" by any metric I can think of.\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nCache link is essential, of course the term 'gaslighting' [1] may be common in\nsome groups, it was new to me. The general theme is that Facebook is making\nchanges which make the service benefit Facebook more and is less user\nfriendly. I'm not sure it rises to the level of abuse implied by the term but\nthat is clearly subjective. The 'answer' of course is to leave.\n\nI know, I know, \"But all my friends are there!\" or \"Nothing else has the reach\nof Facebook!\" or \"I've invested thousands of hours in Facebook!\". At the end\nof the day, Facebook is on the road to becoming a 'public' company, and they\nare making choices which are in Facebook's interest (mostly about the whole\nOpen Graph stuff which they will sell for money to advertisers for revenue.\n\nThe 'good' Facebook you are looking for has to charge its users for accounts\nbecause that is the only way to pay the bills without selling you off to less\npurient interests.\n\n[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting> (warning Wikipedia link)\n\n~~~\nredthrowaway\n>(warning Wikipedia link)\n\nWhat's the warning for? If it's warning against being confronted with Jimbo's\npiercing gaze, that seems a bit snarky.\n\n~~~\nsaturdayplace\nI took it as a warning that you're about to click a link that has a high\npotential of sending you down a rat hole that eventually ends up on the\nPhilosophy article.\n\n------\ntlrobinson\nI'm usually pretty tolerant of Facebook's more aggressive initiatives, but\nI've started blocking all of the \"frictionless sharing\" apps. The user\ninterface they present is ridiculous.\n\n1\\. I see a friend read an article that looks interesting. I click it.\n\n2\\. Every time I click one of these I'm asked to _add the application_ before\nI'm allowed to view the link.\n\n3\\. My options are \"ok\" and \"cancel\". The first few times I assumed I couldn't\nread the article without clicking ok so I just hit the back button. It turns\nout \"cancel\" really means \"don't add the app, just take me to the link\".\n\nWithout that confirmation dialog (which most people probably blindly click\nthrough) this is exactly how social media worms work.\n\nPerhaps alert users will click \"cancel\" the first 5 or 10 times, but\neventually they're going to accidentally click \"ok\" or just give in. Not cool.\n\nPlus, why would I want to see articles that friends read, but didn't think\nwere worthy of manually posting about in the first place?\n\n~~~\nshaver\nYes, you should block apps that you don't want to see. They are (per your\nreasonable definition) badly behaved, and you should exclude them from your\nstream. I think that's exactly the behaviour that FB would want, because it\nties the utility/economics of those apps to the quality of their user-\nexperience.\n\n(Disclosure: I start at FB next week, though I don't have any inside info on\nthis.)\n\n~~~\ntlrobinson\nIt's an ok solution for me, but unfortunately I think most users will just\nclick \"ok\" so they can see their friend's link without realizing what they're\nactually agreeing to.\n\nI think that's what Facebook wants: \"making the world more open and\nconnected\"... at all costs. They're constantly pushing the limit of what level\nof openness users will accept. It's going to backfire.\n\n------\npaganel\nIf you believe FB is out-there trying to conquer and destroy the web then\nplease don't use FB comments on your website.\n\n~~~\nmarshray\nOr just don't use FB.\n\nEverything I read about it just makes me happier that I don't.\n\n------\nmnutt\nRegarding \"Web sites are deemed unsafe, even if Facebook monitors them\",\nwouldn't it be worse if Facebook deemed websites that it monitored 'safe'?\nThen Facebook would be saying: \"use Facebook services on your site, or we'll\nscare all of your users with an interstitial message\"\n\n~~~\nnotahacker\nThis is true. I presume a preferred option would be dumping the warnings\naltogether, but this would be a big boon for phishers.\n\nWhat I don't like about the article is the suggestion that the best way of\ncombating Facebook's excessively paranoid and usually unwarranted warnings\nabout offsite content is to show excessively paranoid warnings to people\ntrying to get into Facebook. Particularly when one of the principal gateways\nto Facebook is the browsers and websites operated by Google - not exactly a\ndisinterested third party.\n\n~~~\najross\nWhy would it be a boon to phishers? Existing solutions for phishing/malware\nblacklisting are mature and quite well supported. There's lost of competition\nin the market, and they work quite well overall. It's not like Facebook\ncouldn't just buy one of these for decent coverage.\n\nThe point is that putting up what amounts to a false negative malware warning\non basically every \"minor\" link on facebook (I know it's not really a false\nnegative, but that's how it's perceived) is just terrible overkill for the\nproblem, and a terrible experience for the users.\n\nThat it survives _at all_ leads one to wonder seriously about facebook's\nintentions.\n\n------\ndroithomme\nPeople who use Facebook are silly people. No this is not a flame, it's AOL all\nover again. The walled garden, except the garden is a dystopian big brother\nstate.\n\nI don't mind people being in the dystopia of their own choosing at all. I\nenjoy going for walks outside the cyberdome. It's quiet and peaceful out here\nand people are not monitoring and trying to manipulate and control me.\n\nThose who enjoy being a cog in a machine I am sure lead happy fulfilling lives\ninside The Facebook.\n\n~~~\nthom\nYou know, the dystopia in which I'm forced to share pictures of my newborn son\nwith my family, and talk to friends on the other side of the country that I\nhaven't seen for months, is better than pretty much any other dystopia I can\nimagine.\n\n~~~\nVladRussian\n>the dystopia in which I'm forced to share pictures of my newborn son with my\nfamily, and talk to friends on the other side of the country that I haven't\nseen for months\n\nthe things impossible without Facebook :)\n\nThe main thing that Facebbok does isn't [technically] enabling some specific\ncommunications in some specific space, the main thing is that Facebook puts\npeople into that space, bumps them one into another and thus\nforcing/making/nudging/tempting to perform act of communication that otherwise\nmay not have happened. Facebook makes [helps to unleash] one a social beast.\n\nVs. the force in dystopias, in the Facebook case we have dopamine generating\nactivities grounded in the Facebook environment. While they can be replaced by\ndopamine generating activities in other environments [ i enjoy mine here on HN\nfor example ], why would a social dopamine addicted beast that gets it fix on-\nschedule bother?\n\n~~~\nthom\nI guess I just haven't met these Facebook victims - vegetables chained to\ntheir computers, grinning and drooling as they click reflexively on adverts\nall day, unaware that they could be outside, surrounded by swarms of\nbutterflies and running with wild horses in the warmth of the Summer sun.\n\nMostly it's just a website.\n\n------\nnatrius\nPoint 3 (\"WEB SITES ARE DEEMED UNSAFE, EVEN IF FACEBOOK MONITORS THEM\") has\nbeen addressed. Here are the other two.\n\n _\"YOU CANNOT BRING YOUR CONTENT IN TO FACEBOOK\"_\n\nFalse. Facebook's API allows all sorts of external content to enter Facebook.\nThey're just shutting down their app that does that automatically. There are\nplenty of third party apps that already solve this problem.\n\n _\"PUBLISHERS WHOSE CONTENT IS CAPTIVE ARE PRIVILEGED\"_\n\nFalse. The Washington Post has chosen to embed their stories within the\nFacebook canvas pages, but that's not a requirement. The other popular news\nsites on Facebook, The Guardian and Yahoo, do not do this.\n\nThis entire post is woefully misinformed.\n\n~~~\nricardobeat\nThanks Dewey.\n\n------\nck2\nThe only thing that will \"fix\" facebook is the next thing to popup to diminish\ntheir influence.\n\nOf course shooting themselves in the foot wouldn't hurt either.\n\nRemember MySpace? How about Digg?\n\n~~~\n1010010111\nExactly.\n\nIt is only when the annoyance levels reach a breaking point that the FB\nalternatives will be made as user-friendly as FB and brought to the attention\nof the masses. One will emerge as dominant. And the cycle begins again.\n\nEvery itch gets properly scratched, eventually.\n\n~~~\nck2\nThere's also the \"fad\" and \"uncool\" factor.\n\nWhen everyone's mom and dad (and their mom and dad) is also on facebook, it's\ngoing to slowly start losing it's edginess.\n\nThen the next \"cool\" site will emerge.\n\n~~~\nreinhardt\nI put more hope to the \"uncoolness\" factor rather than the privacy and\nsecurity concerns to drive FB's demise.\n\n~~~\n101001010111\nI see them as the same. It may take some years for non-nerds to see the\n\"uncoolness\" of FB, but I believe they will see it, in time.\n\n------\naj700\nI am no great fan of facebook. The timeline sucks.\n\nI think the warnings fb use are necessary, there's so many worms and spam wall\npostings. You can debate the wording and motive. Many users need paternalism.\n\nYou can AUTOMATICALLY have posterous post a link on your wall every time you\nwrite a blog post. It doesn't use the notes system at all. It sounds like fb\nare stopping people using notes for something they weren't designed for.\n\nIf he's saying every dumb aol/xp/ie6 user will be too scared to ever leave fb\nfor the rest of the web, wouldn't that be the end of the Eternal September,\nwhich some would welcome?\n\n------\nanildash\nApologies for the server flakiness; Trying to address it now. Please feel free\nto repost/share -- everything is CC licensed.\n\n------\ntawm\nGoogle cache:\n[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Adashe...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Adashes.com%2Fanil%2F2011%2F11%2Ffacebook-\nis-gaslighting-the-web.html)\n\n~~~\nSemiapies\nIf that doesn't come up, the text-only link works for me:\n\n[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dashes....](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dashes.com/anil/2011/11/facebook-\nis-gaslighting-the-web.html&hl=en&strip=1)\n\n------\nsteve8918\nThis sounds pretty similar to the complaints from SEO gamers whenever Google\nchanges their algorithms and removes them from the top ranks for a search. I\ndon't agree that any of the examples used by the author is anything\nparticularly harmful.\n\n------\nnomdeplume\nI applaud the author's use of detailed documentation and the ability and\nwillingness to dig deeper into the technical side of what he believes to be\nthe problem. As soon as I had installed the Firefox addon Noscript I began to\nnotice the facebook scripts put in place on many sites having nothing to do\nwith Facebook. Their real interest is not in being nice by providing you with\na free service, but in using data aggregated by its large user base in order\nto find patterns - and to sell that information to the highest bidder. Pretty\nsoon advertisers and governments will know more about you than you do\nyourself.\n\n~~~\njerhewet\nThe Ghostery plus RequestPolicy addins. Don't leave home without 'em.\n\n------\nderekreed\nI agree completely.\n\nWell thought out and sound reasoning.\n\nAnd the effort is probably hopeless, but maybe it will at least draw some\nattention to facebook's abhorrent practices. But they get plenty of negative\npress already, doesn't seem to slow them down.\n\nI figure it's going to take a lot more efforts like this, to stop the abuses\nwhen portals gain monopoly power on user's attention.\n\nUser's will put up with it, (and probably put up with much worse), there is no\nalternative to facebook for what facebook does and is. Chickens and eggs ...\n\n------\nbsimpson\nGood luck with that. Imagine all the YouTube-quality comments that would flood\ncrbug:\n\n    \n    \n        PLZ FIX TEH FACEBOOK LOGIN SCREEN!!\n    \n    \n\nWe can have discussions all we like about whether or not Facebook is a net-\npositive or a net-negative for the Web, but there's no way Google, Microsoft,\nor Apple is going to blacklist them.\n\n~~~\ncarols10cents\nExactly! I hate to say this because it makes me sound like a tech elitist, but\nsome people really do need those warnings because they can't tell what website\nthey're on.\n\nSee the ReadWriteWeb article that had to put a big \"this is not Facebook\"\nnotice on it.\n\n------\nmark_l_watson\nI like to login to FB for several minutes once or twice a week - a quick way\nto see what some friends are doing. However, I logout as soon as I am done. I\nalso went through and disabled all FB apps, except for my own test app.\n\nGiven these simple precautions, is there really anything wrong with FB? Am I\nmissing something?\n\n~~~\nMBlume\n_If_ you think that people less prudent than you should be \"protected\" from\nFacebook, then your participation may be harmful to them because it's part of\nwhat encourages them to participate.\n\n------\niamandrus\nThe only way to stop Facebook is to protest and boycott it. It worked in 2006\nand 2007 (News Feed and Beacon, but Beacon might have been 2008) and it'll\nwork again.\n\n~~~\nbillybob\nI agree with your first sentence. Whether it worked in the past is arguable,\nsince they continue to do slimy things. But one thing is sure: they can't\nabuse your data if you don't give it to them.\n\n~~~\nKarunamon\n.. and that it's not \"abuse\" if you know what they're doing with it and expect\nit.\n\nDon't share anything on Facebook that you wouldn't want to see on the news the\nnext morning. Simple and easy.\n\n~~~\niamandrus\nThat sounds simple and easy but for today's teens there's no limit. I know\npeople who have gotten expelled from private schools for posting stupid things\non Facebook. It's a disturbingly common occurrence. It's not Facebook's fault\nobviously, but for kids, dangers about \"oversharing\" go in one ear and out the\nother.\n\n------\nmikeklaas\nAside: I really like the typography of your title/subheads. I mistook the font\nfor Gill Sans Light initially, though.\n\n------\nbct\nDisappointing. \"We can beg other powers to intervene\" is not \"we can fix it\".\n\n------\nchimeracoder\nHow ironic that this blog's own comment system relies on Facebook.\n\n~~~\nanildash\nIt's not ironic, it's deliberate. I want to make sure I'm making informed\ncriticisms of Facebook based on actual usage of the service as both an\nindividual user and as a publisher.\n\n~~~\njlujan\nBeen a reader of your blog for a while now, and enjoy your insight. I do feel\nthat chimeracoder's criticism is valid, regardless of your argument of\nestablishing objectivity through participation. As a reader, the inclusion of\nFacebook Connect and Comments really detracts from the credibility, err.\nsincerity, of your article.\n\n\"toolbar that helps you shop online more effectively but neglects to mention\nthat it will send a list of everything you buy online to the company that\nprovides the toolbar.\"\n\nWhat about a website that injects its content on every website you visit,\nregardless of your willingness to participate as a user? Or tracks every visit\nregardless of your willingness to participate?\n\nExhibit A: [http://mashable.com/2011/11/17/facebook-reveals-its-user-\ntra...](http://mashable.com/2011/11/17/facebook-reveals-its-user-tracking-\nsecrets/)\n\nThere is no terms of service or privacy statement on your site disclosing that\nyou are effectively sharing my activity with Facebook. By the way, I opt-out\nthrough the disconnect and Ghostery Chrome extensions, so your site has no\ncomment system... just a Comments heading.\n\n\"Facebook has moved from merely being a walled garden into openly attacking\nits users' ability and willingness to navigate the rest of the web.\"\n\nAs the website operator that uses Facebook Connect, you are signaling to\nFacebook that you are OK with their current strategy to exist on every page on\nthe internet and dictate the way content should be shared. You cannot complain\nthat they are getting rid of the ability to automatically share your blog\ncontent in facebook when they have given you the ability to incorporate all\nthe same functionality directly on your page. It is a genius move on their\npart. They no longer have to worry about users visiting facebook less over\ntime if they are on every other page the user might visit.\n\n------\nroyaltenenbaum\nThe walls are closing in on Facebook. It's only a matter of time for it's\nbusiness model. People eventually wake up. Better squeeze that IPO for all\nit's worth.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSolving the Problem of Enterprise Software Customizations - dshah\nhttp://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/3890/Solving-the-Problem-of-Enterprise-Software-Customizations.aspx\n======\nbdfh42\nOK, I can see that this post suggests a \"solution\" that solves some of the\nproblems faced by the main development team although I suspect that it does\nnot really solve the issue of having to meet the needs of a specific corporate\ncustomer at a specfied date - it just translates feature requests into API\nenhancement requests.\n\nPlus almost nothing solves the problem of long term complexity where new\nenhancements (or bug fixes) break existing functionality that is effectively\nunknown to the development team. If you don't know what your customers are\ndong with your software then you can't protect their subset of the software\nfunctionality.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Hacker News as an Event Stream - todsacerdoti\nhttps://pipedream.com/sources/new?app=hacker-news\n======\nsummitsummit\nincredibly cool. im inclined to simplify a lot of my heroku services to a\ncouple workflows here but have the following concerns\n\n* proven data privacy and security\n\n* longevity of this project\n\n* pricing model (free seems unsustainable and suspect)\n\n* daily quotas (30mins seems like it will change)\n\n~~~\ndylburger\nHi, Pipedream co-founder and engineer here. Thank you for noting the concerns.\nSome questions / thoughts below:\n\n* Would technical docs on our privacy and security practices help? e.g. how we use AWS, specific security controls, automatic data deletion policies?\n\n* Yes, the product is still in beta but maturing quickly. Happy to answer any specific questions where you think lack of longevity will be an issue for you.\n\n* Paid plans for individual developers, teams, and enterprises are coming soon. We started with a free tier to encourage experimentation and solicit feedback while the product is in beta. This has worked well, but lack of pricing is one of the top pieces of feedback - I hear you clearly on the concern.\n\n* We've raised the quota for early users who need that added time, and we're happy to do it if you expect you'll need that for your workflows. In general, we expect the 30 min daily quota to stay that way for users of the free tier. You'd then be able to pay for additional time.\n\nLet me know if that helps and reach out to dylan [at] pipedream [dot] com\nanytime.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: BemTV – Hybrid CDN/P2P Architecture for HLS Broadcasts - flavioribeiro\nhttp://blog.flavioribeiro.com/bemtv-hls-p2p-webrtc/\n======\nokal\nGreat work. I'm always excited by attempts to marry the centralized nature of\nthe web with all we've learnt about P2P. Best of both worlds. Just gave it a\ntry. The video was a bit choppy for me, on a ~3Mbps connection, but I'd like\nto see how it works with a larger swarm (it's remained fairly stable at 8).\nI'll take some time to look at the code, too, though it's likely beyond my\nimmediate grasp :)\n\n~~~\nflavioribeiro\nthank you! I still need to calibrate when a peer gives up to receive by p2p\nand goes to CDN, but it seems it's working for some swarms with low RTT.\nRegarding the code, I bet you'll not have problems to understand but feel free\nto ask me anything you want.\n\n------\nCaveTech\nI hate the fact that as a Canadian, I can't really support any video streaming\nservices relying on P2P simply due to our archaic bandwidth restrictions.\n\nMost Canadian ISPs have combined Up/Down Bandwidth Caps, which are already\ninsanely easy to hit with any sort of media streaming (they usually range from\n40-80 GB/mo). Peering any of these services is only going to make matters\nworse.\n\n~~~\nguiomie\nThey offer unlimited data plans for internet. And it isn't archaic (unless you\nlive outside a city).\n\n~~~\nCaveTech\nNot on any major providers, at least in Ontario. Bell, Rogers, Cogeco are all\ndefinitely metered and limited (for all reasonable price ranges at least, $90+\nfor unlimited bandwidth is not reasonable compared to prices in other\ncountries).\n\n~~~\njmreid\nBut in most of the services areas where you can get Bell or Rogers, you can\nget one of the 3rd party providers like Start or Teksavvy. These providers\nhave an unmetered upstream cap and very generous downstream caps.\n\n~~~\nrobert_foss\nA download cap of 300Gb on a 150Mpbs link is hardly generous, which is what\nTeksavvy offers in Ontario.\n\nIt's a joke. And the only reason is to make you pay for the more expensive\nconnection. Maybe also to hand you additional charges.\n\n------\nflavioribeiro\nSince some people asked for, I just released a small step-by-step guide on how\nto deploy BemTV on your transmissions: [https://github.com/bemtv/bemtv#how-to-\nuse-it-on-my-own-hls-t...](https://github.com/bemtv/bemtv#how-to-use-it-on-my-\nown-hls-transmission)\n\n------\nfiatjaf\nProject's page with a live demo: [http://bem.tv/](http://bem.tv/)\n\n~~~\ndublinben\nThis doesn't seem to work without Flash. I'm a little disappointed.\n\n~~~\nflavioribeiro\nhey dublinben, thank you for your comment. Since the browsers do not support\nHLS by default, it is needed to use Flash for it. I'm planning to bootstrap a\nversion with DASH support (probably using dash.js) dropping the need of Flash.\n\n------\nshacharz\nAwesome work Flavio! Hope to integrate with Peer5 soon.\n[https://github.com/Peer5/bemtv](https://github.com/Peer5/bemtv)\n[https://github.com/Peer5/P2PXHR](https://github.com/Peer5/P2PXHR)\n\n------\nwarcode\nA service that I pay for or that shows me ads does not get to also steal my\nupload for P2P.\n\nEspecially if they do it without even telling me.\n\n~~~\nrglullis\nRight, because the only costs associated with any content service are due to\ndistribution. Producing said content is free, right?\n\n------\nbussiere\nHum very interesting.\n\nThe adult video sector will be very interested ... The bandwith is a mjaor\nproblem there.\n\nAnd professionnal streamer too.\n\nRegards\n\n------\nfiatjaf\nMaybe Google Hangouts should be interested in this.\n\n~~~\nflavioribeiro\nhey fiatjaf. Actually, Google is already using WebRTC on Hangouts:\n[http://www.webrtcworld.com/topics/webrtc-\nworld/articles/3584...](http://www.webrtcworld.com/topics/webrtc-\nworld/articles/358421-hangouts-move-toward-webrtc-with-hd-calling-among.htm)\n\n------\nhigherpurpose\nThis is what Netflix and the like need to use, too.\n\n------\ndreampeppers99\nTwitch.tv should use it too!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGoogle+ cannot be used with customer or brand accounts anymore - anticensor\nhttps://plus.google.com/\n======\nneic\nArchiveTeam did manage to scrape ~98.6% of the user profiles before it went\ndown. It was around 16 hours from completion when Google pulled the plug.\n\nIt was done with the distributed scraper 'Warrior' using a massive amount of\nsmall cloud instances to spread the load to 1000s of IP adresses. The dataset\nis ~1.45 PB.\n\n[http://tracker.archiveteam.org/googleplus/](http://tracker.archiveteam.org/googleplus/)\n\n~~~\norev\nI really wonder what is so valuable about saving everything on the Internet.\nFor all of human history until now, every little human interaction was\nfleeting and only meant something to the people involved. Things that were\nsignificant were preserved when the people involved decided they were\nimportant. Now we are trying to keep every one of those insignificant things,\nfor what purpose? Training an AI is all I can think of.\n\n~~~\nest31\n> Now we are trying to keep every one of those insignificant things, for what\n> purpose?\n\nWhat seems unimportant and insignificant to us now might become very\ninteresting in the future. People in the future might consider the arrival of\nthe internet as the beginning of a new age. Furthermore, some things may seem\nobvious to a person born in our times, but might not be obvious to people born\nin the future.\n\nSo many works, including even movies from the 20th century are lost now. E.g.\nthe original version of Metropolis used during its premiere screening.\nDiogenes wasn't just a guy living in the town square, he also created some\nwritten works. They are lost now.\n\n~~~\nsephoric\nI had room fulls of boxes of things that I thought might one day be important,\nor significant to someone. Then I realized, when I die, all those things are\njust going to be thrown away or donated to a thrift store, and it's highly\nunlikely that anyone who buys any of that will find the same value in it that\nI thought it had. If I have created anything truly timeless and worthwhile,\nthen it had better be something I created for a client and got paid for\nmaking, otherwise it's just going to probably end up in a garbage heap. So I\nmade a decision to get rid of all of it. Time is too short to be held down by\nthe (truly) endless possibilities of \"what if\" this or that thing ends up\nbeing useful to someone in the future.\n\n~~~\nest31\nYeah, keeping physical things around does only make sense if it is actually\nvaluable to someone. Archives only accept objects actually worthwhile of\nkeeping. But it's different for digital content, as it's so much easier to\nstore. At least for now.\n\nAlso, Archaeologists _love_ the garbage dumps and cesspits of old towns,\nliterally the places where people put their least valuable things, because\nthey weren't raided by earlier visitors and they can derive so much info about\nit. And it's nicely stratified so it gives some rough chronology.\n\n~~~\nTraster\nAnother way to look at this is that the more you store, the more difficult it\nis for people to actually find the valuable parts of what you've stored. One\nof the fascinating aspects of the internet is that our internet lives diverge\nso thoroughly from our offline lives - so the data we're leaving for the\nfuture is arguably horribly unrepresentative.\n\n~~~\nest31\n> difficult it is for people to actually find the valuable parts\n\nThat's why you need to catalog stuff.\n\nAnd if you have stored something, you can always get rid of it if you deem it\nto be unimportant, but if you haven't stored it, most times you can't get it\nback. Erring on the side of storing unimportant things is an important\nstrategy to cope with that.\n\n------\ncydonian_monk\nAnd the shutdown seems to be fuzzy, because I can still post to Google+, +1\nthings, and presumably do other usual G+ things despite it telling me it's\nshutdown. Now I'm only occasionally reloading to watch my follower count drop\nas things get deleted.\n\nI still feel the early variant of + with the original implementation of\nCircles (back in 2012) was one of the most useful takes on social sharing I've\ncome across. And it worked especially well for photographers. Once they moved\neverybody to Collections I stopped using it with any regularity, and stuck\nmostly to groups/Communities. Hitching YouTube to it was basically the last\nstraw. When I made a farewell post last month it had been about four years\nsince my previous completely-Public post.\n\nThe platform had flaws, and I'm a bit sad to see it go, but I won't\nparticularly miss it.\n\nCheers,\n\n------\nobelos\nThough I suppose I've gotten accustomed to using double quotes to specify\nmandatory search terms, perhaps we can get back the `+foo` search syntax that\nwas so unceremoniously taken from us and reappropriated for Google+?\n\n------\nocdtrekkie\nMy Google+ notifications were more active than they have been in months as\neveryone was checking in to see how much longer was left. Google didn't\nspecify the time of the shutdown, just \"sometime on April 2nd\", so none of us\nwere sure when the cutoff would be. Middle of the day, as it turns out.\n\n~~~\nanticensor\nYes, the last day was probably the most active period of Google+.\n\n------\njoeblau\nThe title should say: Google plus cannot be used.\n\n~~~\nanticensor\nG Suite and Google internal accounts still work.\n\n------\nCrankyBear\nI'm going to miss it. A lot.\n\n------\norblivion\n\"Looks like you've reached the end\"\n\n------\ndredmorbius\nWhen Google first announced its plans to shut down G+, originally slated for\nAugust 2019, a few of us started looking at the question of helping people and\ncommunities (in both the technical \"G+ Community\", and the social \"community\nof people\" senses) keep intact.\n\nFor all the ribbing G+ gets, the problem is a big one. And it's not one that's\nspecific to Google+. As the regular parade of shut-down announcements of\nservices and firms on HN attests, online mediated services can be cancelled,\noften quite abruptly. And there's often very little notice.\n\nThe world of social media sites is likely to go through more shakeups, for\nvarious reasons (and there are a number of sites presently looking pretty\nshaky), while the options for alternative provisioning of similar services\n(and the question of whether what we now call \"social media\" really _is_ a net\npositive or something people want, need, or even should use) either personally\nor at a more local scale (though through what institutions isn't entirely\nclear) is a possibility. Projects such as IndieWeb, the POSSE initiative\n(\"post on (your own) server, syndicate elsewhere\"), federated protocols, IPFS,\nDAT, Beaker browser, and more (I've been discovering a lot in the past six\nmonths) may break us out of the current proprietary silo model.\n\nOr not. The technical landscape is confusing, technical skills are limited,\nand the risks of DiY hosting can be large. It's a difficult trade-off. Though\nit's one I'd like to explore.\n\nThere are huge changes that have and will be happening on the regulatory\nfront, from privacy to copyright to liability to propaganda and\ndisinformation, and far more. Some of these laws and regulation seem written\nwith self-service in mind, many do not. That's a whole 'nother field.\n\n(I've got a To-Do item to get ahold of the EFF on these questions, as well as\nother groups.)\n\nAnd then there's the whole fact that the tech world is in the midst of a (very\nwell deserved IMO) backlash for its cavalier attitudes abuses and outright\nharm inflicted on both individuals and society as a whole. The promise of the\n1990s has _not_ been delivered.\n\nBack to the group: we looked at the problem of migrating, realised there were\nmany different users and groups, with different interests, and a wide range of\ntechnical abilities, from top-tier Linux kernel hackers (Alan Cox) to none at\nall. Some are best served by commercial solutions, for now, but many can look\nat federated or self-service options. We put together FAQs and Wikis and\ndiscussion forums and gathered a lot of data (we seem to have the best\ninformation outside Google on the actual size and scope of G+ users, data, and\ncommunities), and more. All inside six months.\n\nIt's been a group effort, and a lot of people contributed. I need to dig\nthrough my G+ archives to find the thank yous I'd posted earlier today, but\nit's substantial, and _that_ was only a partial list.\n\nWhat I hope is that others can use and be helped by what we've done.\n\nThe wiki is\n[https://social.antefriguserat.de](https://social.antefriguserat.de) and\nthere's a subreddit at\n[https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus](https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus) Both\nwill continue to be active over coming months, we're only part-way through the\nprocess, and still need to establish ourselves in our new spaces.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShutting Down a Service with 500M Requests per Month - danielamitay\nhttp://danielamitay.com/blog/2015/5/29/shutting-down-a-500mm-requestsmonth-api\n======\nstrommen\n> your app uses public APIs in a manner not prescribed by Apple\n\nWhat an enraging way to phrase this. I understand Apple's desire to shut this\ndown, but they make their contempt for app developers obvious at every\npossible turn.\n\n~~~\nkillface\nThat seems like an incredibly petty way to view it.\n\nApple's not out to get you. In fact, I'm glad they did this. That iHasApp\nlooks creepy as hell, and it pisses me off that other devs were using it to\nbasically spy on me. It reduces my trust in all apps.\n\n~~~\nstrommen\nTo be clear - I have no problem with this service getting shut down, as it's\nclearly intended to violate the user's privacy. But to say you must use APIs\nas \"prescribed\" by Apple is way too broad and subjective.\n\nI'm sure the iOS developer Terms of Service forbids this at some level. If\nnot, then update it. Then say you're shutting this down because it violates\nthe TOS.\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\nThat's a good way to get a million page TOS.\n\n[https://developer.apple.com/app-\nstore/review/guidelines/](https://developer.apple.com/app-\nstore/review/guidelines/)\n\n> We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the\n> line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, \"I'll\n> know it when I see it\". And we think that you will also know it when you\n> cross it.\n\n------\nsergiotapia\nSo why is this kosher?\n[https://support.twitter.com/articles/20172069](https://support.twitter.com/articles/20172069)\n\n~~~\nx0x0\none guess\n\n    \n    \n       We will notify you about this feature being turned on for your account by \n       showing a prompt letting you know that to help tailor your experience, \n       Twitter uses the apps on your device. Until you see this prompt, this \n       setting is turned off and we are not collecting a list of your apps. If you \n       do not see Tailor Twitter based on my apps in your account settings, app \n       graph collection is not occurring for your account.\n    \n\nSo it's opt-in with a default of off.\n\nsecond, some partners are more equal than others...\n\n------\nrounak\nTwitter and Facebook also have similar solutions. Have they been shut down\ntoo?\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\nTwitter and Facebook have extensive OS level integrations put together by\nApple.\n\n------\nianstallings\n_The obvious lesson is that you shouldn 't build a service that skirts right\non the edge of \"Apple definitely won't like this.\"_\n\nWell at least you kept your sense of humor about it all. It will probably help\nyour chances at employment (or investment of your own business) going forward.\nNothing wrong with pushing the barriers a little bit.\n\n------\nascendantlogic\nI want to be outraged on your behalf over this but I can't really summon it\nforth. While I understand the ever-present engineer desire to \"see if it can\nbe done\", no good can really come from this sort of service in my opinion. I\nguess chalk it up to an interesting technical exercise and that's it.\n\n------\nhellameta\nIt's a shame you had to bring this down but it looks like you saw it coming\nand enjoyed the ride. I think the posts that characterize you as unethical are\njust not willing to cope with the disillusion that technology is a two sided\ncoin. The information was there and you used it. I commend you on seizing on\nthe opportunity and wish you best of luck in the future.\n\n~~~\nnpizzolato\nSorry, no. Technology is a two sided coin, mostly unable to be ethical or\nunethical. The _people_ using technology, however, are surely able to fall\nsomewhere in the spectrum. The OP is using this technology for (imo obviously)\nunethical reasons and is capable of being judged by that decision.\n\n~~~\nhellameta\nWell I certainly don't disagree that he's capable of being judged. And you're\nright - it's simply my opinion that what he did was not unethical.\n\n------\nshiv86\nThanks for sharing. Must be tough. But Iam sure you'll move onto bigger and\nbetter things in the future.\n\n------\nthrowaway34234\nYou are an unethical person. I'm pleasantly surprised Apple shut this down.\n\n~~~\ncoreyoconnor\nI am ignorant of what iHasApp means in terms of users. Much less the ethics of\nit all. Why is what iHasApp did considered unethical?\n\n~~~\nnilliams\nPresumably parent is offended by the privacy violation. It allows developer of\napp A to know I have app B installed, which can be used to target adds etc.\n\n~~~\npetercooper\nWhile unlikely, it could be used for worse. Let's say a local or niche\npublication has an app and can detect if any of its subscribers are also using\nGrindr, Tinder, or some sort of app that signifies, to them, some cardinal sin\non the part of the subscriber. That could be used to blackmail/shame/harass\npeople.\n\n------\nmherdeg\nHuh, how does this service's behavior differ from what the Twitter App Graph\ndoes?\n\n------\nx3n0ph3n3\nWhy do people continue to use MM for \"million\", especially outside of the\ncontext of money?\n\n~~~\nnostromo\nM is often used to mean 1,000 from the Roman Numeral, so using it to mean \"one\nmillion\" is confusing.\n\nIt's not just finance, but in other contexts too, such as online marketing CPM\n= Cost Per Thousand.\n\nMM then is used to denote a thousand thousands, or one million. In online\nmarketing sometimes you'll see CPMM = Cost Per Million.\n\n~~~\nsebastianavina\nk is used for 1000, M for millions... damn americans.\n\n~~~\nkillface\nblame the brits, not the americans.\n\n~~~\npsykovsky\nCan we just blame one person instead of an entire country?\n\n~~~\nnkozyra\nBlame Todd. Todd did this to us.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nUnpaid Interns: Real World Work Or Just Free Labor? - ALee\nhttp://www.npr.org/2011/11/16/142224360/unpaid-interns-real-world-work-or-just-free-labor\n======\ntokenadult\nHere's an excellent job-market signal for college students to check: if an\ninternship is unpaid, bail out of that occupation. Students pursuing\nworthwhile majors and learning skills that are truly in demand should be able\nto obtain PAID internships with a routine expectation that successful interns\nwill be offered full-time employment at the same company, as my oldest son did\nlast summer.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe World Would Be a Better Place if Everyone Was a Hacker - b14ck\nhttp://rdegges.com/the-world-would-be-a-better-place-if-everyone\n======\nwallflower\nNot everyone is a hacker.\n\nI see this in some of my co-workers who only code for a living, not for a\npassion. They go home to their TVs and Netflix and raise their families. They\ncould care less about Hacker News and the signal/noise ratio of the content.\n\nI see this nowadays - people just expect things to work - my niece (under 6\nyrs of age) will go to photo frames and swipe across them, expecting something\nto happen. From a very early age, she expects touch screen interfaces.\n\nI see this in my parents when I have to do technical support (they refuse to\nmove from Windows - Go Microsoft!) - and have to explain to them that a\ncomputer operating system is a dynamic system and, yes, the printer will stop\nworking- just because it worked yesterday doesn't mean it will work today.\n\nWhen I try explaining to my dad the process for fixing something on the\ncomputer, he just doesn't want to do it or can't. He wants a step by step by\nstep process. But I can't give it to him. Because the process is finding out\nthe process.\n\nIsn't that what hacking is?\n\nI would argue, based on a non-scientific sample of some of my friends talking\nabout TV shows they watch and the restaurant food they go to, that the world\nis divided into producers and consumers. The catch here is that everyone is a\nproducer and everyone is a consumer.\n\nPre-digital distribution, it was very hard for someone to produce at scale\n(the Gutenberg press revolutionized information access - previously books were\n_hand-copied_ , a process taking months if not years).\n\nNow, with digital distribution, people who can produce works that can be\ncopied (sometimes illegally, to detriment of the author's profit) can make a\nprofit off their creativity and hard work. They can produce at scale\n(software, CDs). Mozart died broke because he lived in an age before\ndistribution, before he could reach an audience that would appreciate and pay\n- concerts were the only means of distribution - couldn't load his tunes on\nyour iPod.\n\nAs hackers, we can produce something that can be copied digitally and\ndistributed digitally. From Youtube Instant search to TwitterVision - people\ncan consume (even if just for free) - what we can hack. Hacking isn't always\nfun though - it's not easy (my dad, potential CS students who drop out because\nit isn't as easy as they thought) which is a subject for another time.\n\nI'm a hacker - though not a great one - I love being able to modify and create\nthings. To create is to live, for me.\n\n~~~\nrytis\n> I see this in some of my co-workers who only code for a living, not for a\n> passion. They go home to their TVs and Netflix and raise their families.\n\nEspecially this one:\n\n> ... and raise their families.\n\nYou think being a coder and raising a family is oxymoron? Or rather not being\na 'passionate' coder is a bad thing? Or even being a hacker for 8 hours a day\nis the same as not being a hacker at all?\n\nTrust me, raising a family (if done properly) involves a hell of a lot more\n'hacking' than saving 8ms on some random SQL query...\n\n~~~\nmbesto\nIn both cases it's the act of creation, they're just manifested differently.\nHacker's enjoy their creation because they feel like stretch the limit of\ntheir intellect. Creating a family (IMHO) is both as equally, if not more,\nchallenging.\n\n~~~\nwallflower\nYou are both right. Somehow raising a family seems to be more than hacking,\nthough, it is the meaning of life.\n\n------\nmoocow01\nIf only life was so simple. Most problems are not so one-dimensional. Problems\nin life are typically not math problems - they usually are complex situations\nwith multiple solutions that have numerous impacts with degrees of good and\nbad.\n\nFor example, we would all like our roads well paved at all times but you'd\nalso have to take into consideration the environmental impacts of upping the\nfrequency of putting tar on all of our roads across society. On top of it\nyou'd most likely have higher incidences of road worker deaths. etc. etc.\n\nI'd agree that we need more people attempting to solve problems and that there\nare many things that could be vastly improved -- but I think the dynamics of\ntrue social problems are somewhat misrepresented in the article.\n\n~~~\ngaius\n_Problems in life are typically not math problems - they usually are complex\nsituations with multiple solutions that have numerous impacts with degrees of\ngood and bad._\n\nLike maths problems.\n\n------\n_Y_\nI'd like slightly disagree. I do think more people needs to be analytical but\nwithout empathy and morality all hacker qualities would be rendered\nmeaningless and pointless.\n\nAs a hacker without empathic skills I could pick any goal and ruthlessly\nimplement it: Goal: Need more organ donors 1\\. People are unwilling to donate\norgans 2\\. Force all prisoners on death row to give away they organs for\nstaying in death row accommodation 3\\. Kill them in ways that doesn't hurt the\norgans (they might suffer some inconvenience) 4\\. Harvest organs\n\nAs Charlie Chaplin in Great Dictator said: \"More than machinery we need\nhumanity, more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness, without these\nqualities life would be violent and all would be lost.\"\n\n~~~\ntikhonj\nI don't think \"empathy\" and \"morality\" are fundamentally required; rather,\nthey are convenient heuristics for interacting with other humans. As long as\nyou are rational, then acting without empathy or morals would still result in\nsimilar behavior (depending on how \"smart\" and well-informed you are, I\nguess).\n\nA rational agent seeks to maximize utility. It turns out that murdering people\nfor their organs _does not_ maximize utility! At the very least, society is\ncleverly structured in a way that the probable utility of murdering somebody\nfor their organs is relatively low.\n\nBasically, my point is that your argument is a straw man. The issue isn't too\nmuch logic but rather than you (the agent killing everybody in the example)\ndid not use _enough_ of it. For some reason, all the \"arguments\" about the\ninferiority of logic always assume the logical person is extremely short-\nsighted or ill-informed.\n\n~~~\n_Y_\nYou can call it a heuristic or a guideline, but I consider them essential.\nPerfectly rational agents without empathy can commits massive acts of evil\ntrying to achieve their goal. Or as the proverb says \"Road to hell is paved\nwith good intentions\".\n\nAnd I don't think short-sightedness or ill-informing was ever an integral part\nwith arguing about how empathy is essential to human live. IIRC there was an\nexample of perfectly informed and rational computer of super human\nintelligence who was told to calculate a particularly difficult equation, to\nwhich he promptly restructured all matter on earth, including people into a\ngiant super-computer.\n\n------\nhenryl\nSorry this deserves dramatic pose. Hackers are not immune from the human\ncondition. What of the irrational triumphs? Of serendipity and of chance? To\nbelieve all things solvable through logic, science, and engineering is hubris.\nEmotions matter. Manipulation matters. Hackers excel at local optimization,\nbut without the turbulence, the conflict, and the occasional \"kick\" delivered\nby those that think differently, we would face a gradual descent into\nextinction.\n\n------\ntnuc\nThe conclusion I come to from some of the points made almost equate to: \"To\nmake everyone a millionaire print more money\".\n\nIncreasing taxes and the average income really does little in the scheme of\nthings other than create/abolish a disparity. The talk of money offers no real\nsolutions, throwing money to fix US education has done next to nothing.\n\nI have been in places where most people had very little money and it was\nwonderful, while in some rich places it was anarchy with people living behind\nrazor wire and armed guards.\n\nThere are a lot of books that have been written about how to fix things in\npoorer countries. Take a look at William Easterly or if you like Bono try\nJeffrey Sachs. Whatever your politics there is no easy answer. Try reading\nsome books and see the mess that has been made by people trying to make things\nbetter, and all they've done is make it worse.\n\n------\ntagawa\nNo it wouldn't. Rather than being a monoculture, the world needs more respect\nfor the differences that naturally exist.\n\n------\nclicker\nI agree. It is all too natural to accept things as they are--just go with the\nflow. The world would benefit having more people take a hard look at systems\nand situations we take for granted, call out short comings, and take action to\nimprove things. The trouble is that hackers are more apt at noticing these\ndeficiencies than the laymen. How do you encourage this heightened awareness\nin everybody? Entrepreneurs have profits and hackers have their curiosity.\nWhat motivations are there for everyone else?\n\n~~~\nklez\n> What motivations are there for everyone else?\n\nIn a worst case scenario, survival.\n\n------\nviandante\nI believe that's the second part, there is a first part although: realizing\nthere is a problem. For example, you may not see cancer as a problem and not\ntry to find a cure as you may see this as a special destiny.\n\nAnd to help people to realize problems you need to teach them to doubt. And\nnot only doubting about religion, but also science (didn't Eistein somehow\nprove Newton wrong?) and their life choises and everything basicaly.\n\nWho is good at doubting? I believe usually really good scientists or people\nthat have a grasp of good philosophy (the greeks, Popper, etc.).\n\nSo, as it's not even that difficult to learn, I believe the world needs more\n(good) philosophy...\n\n------\nInclinedPlane\nThe world would also be a better place if everyone was a police officer, and a\nchef, and a plumber, etc. That doesn't necessarily mean it's practical.\n\n------\nulf\n> Increase the average income of residents of your community.\n\nLet's aim for raising the median income instead\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAdvice for incoming CS students - kgosar\n\nFor an incoming EECS student this fall interested in programming, software engineering and technology is general, what is the best way to get started in the tech world? How to learn, explore and gain experience in this world?\n======\nbshef\nWhatever project you do, do it small-scale first. Release early, and then\nrelease often. All too often people get started on a myriad of wonderful side\nprojects, but they are never in a usable state because their initial scopes\nare too broad.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Windows 95 in the browser - TazeTSchnitzel\nhttp://win95.ajf.me/\n======\noxguy3\nThis is pretty nifty. I rediscovered how much I hate Windows solitaire:\n[http://i.imgur.com/a8jbpok.png](http://i.imgur.com/a8jbpok.png)\n\n~~~\nTazeTSchnitzel\nThe three-at-a-time version is frequently unbeatable. However, there's an\noption in the settings to let you flip through the deck one-at-a-time, which\nmakes it always beatable.\n\nKlondike Solitaire, or at least Microsoft's implementation of it, is fatally\nflawed. A shame, it can be fun sometimes.\n\n------\nfiatjaf\nIt isn't starting here. Maybe the download hasn't complete, but it says it\nhas.\n\n~~~\nTazeTSchnitzel\nThere's a 47MB disk image it has to download. That's after the \"All downloads\nare complete\" message, unfortunately.\n\n------\npatrickfl\nawesome...except it froze my entire PC (i74640k, 16GB, SSD) Firefox, Windows\n10\n\n~~~\nTazeTSchnitzel\nIf a web browser is able to freeze your system, that's rather damning for\nWindows 10's stability.\n\n~~~\npatrickfl\nI can't argue with that, was just giving some feedback in case you wanted to\nlook into it. Oddly enough, it froze around the time I tried launching IE 3.0\n:)\n\nEither way, really impressive software, very well executed.\n\nEdit: happened on Chrome too, froze the tab but not the app. JS Console:\n\n[http://i.imgur.com/jlvX9Gp.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/jlvX9Gp.jpg)\n\n~~~\nTazeTSchnitzel\nWeird. The emulation has some issues and the emulator will abort in some cases\n(like opening IE3.0). But it shouldn't crash the tab.\n\n------\nyarper\nepic!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy were mid-century futurist predictions – like flying cars – so wrong? - JacobAldridge\nhttp://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3188/why-were-midcentury-futurist-predictions-like-flying-cars-so-wrong\n\n======\nGravityloss\nWhat if there was no global warming and oil costed a quarter of current? We\ncould have a lot more turbine machines for example, including aircraft.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy The \"Star Trek Computer\" Will Be Open Source and ALv2 Licensed - mindcrime\nhttp://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-star-trek-computer-will-be-open.html\n\n======\nm0nastic\nI don't have any kind of knack for predicting things, but I'd argue that it's\nat least as likely for the \"Star Trek computer\" to be what things like Google\nNow turn into (which as far as I can tell, isn't open source at all).\n\nI would be very surprised if the aggregation of technology required for this\ntype of interface doesn't require a company with a lot of services know-how to\nchampion (I could see Apple, for instance trying to go down that path, but I\ndon't think they've ever shown any aptitude for online services).\n\nMaybe after someone makes it, a shitty, open-source knockoff will show up; but\nI don't think what's laid out in this article is a foregone conclusion.\n\n~~~\nmindcrime\n_Maybe after someone makes it, a shitty, open-source knockoff will show up;\nbut I don't think what's laid out in this article is a foregone conclusion._\n\nPerhaps not. But nobody wants to read a headline like:\n\n\"Some reasons why I think that it's possible that maybe, just maybe, something\nlike the Star Trek Computer might come along someday and it might, with some\nluck, be open source, and it could be Apache Licensed, but maybe not\".\n\nAt some point, you have to say _something_ , and while I'm not big on\nheadlines that are outright \"linkbait\" if you write stuff, you typically want\npeople to read and comment on it, so the headline has to be somewhat catchy\nand maybe even a little controversial.\n\nThe key point here, isn't really the posit that the Star Trek computer _will_\nbe Open Source and ALv2 licensed, it's that a lot of awesome work is going on\nin various semi-related ASF projects right now, some or all of which could\nwell become part of something like the Star Trek Computer. But, again, that's\ntoo long and wordy for a headline.\n\n~~~\nobviouslygreen\nSo you're suggesting that articles without compelling content should still\nhave compelling titles?\n\nThe goal is certainly to gain readership, but adding controversy to a title on\nan article that doesn't contain any isn't a good idea. It's a\nmisrepresentation of your article, and what extra traffic it does bring you\nisn't likely to result in happy new readers.\n\nSome articles just don't appeal to a lot of people because of their content.\nThat doesn't mean a title that reflects what's in the article is a bad idea;\nit just means the author should either have realistic expectations regarding\nthe exposure their article can reasonably expect, they should be writing\nsomething that _is_ controversial, or they should be writing something else\nentirely.\n\nIf your goal is to communicate specific information and your title doesn't\nreflect it accurately, all you've done is fail at titling your work.\n\n~~~\nmindcrime\n_So you're suggesting that articles without compelling content should still\nhave compelling titles?_\n\nNot at all. Obviously this exists on a continuum and is somewhat subjective,\nhowever. I would never advocate posting low quality content with a flat-out\nlink-baity title like \"Learn About Bill Gates and Ada Lovelace's Secret\nLovechild: Mark Zuckerberg\" or something. But I think you have to create a\ntitle which is as compelling as you can, while being faithful to the content.\n\nBut, as in all cases, there will always be people who agree and some who\ndisagree about whether you've accomplished that or not.\n\nAll I'm getting at is that a headline shouldn't dissemble and be wishy-washy\nand say nothing. It's an opinion, that I'm asserting (that the \"Star Trek\nComputer Will Be...\"), but even I won't go quite as far as saying it's \"a\nforegone conclusion\". There is evidence to suggest that such a thing may be\nthe case, and that's what this post was about.\n\nIn this case, I'm perfectly happy with the congruence between the headline and\nthe content. If others aren't, then I'll be curious to hear their POV on it.\n\n------\nmindcrime\nOn a related note, there are two interesting (older) posts \"out there\" on \"How\nto build your own Watson\". And while you probably aren't going to win Jeopardy\nwith your garage built supercomputer, a lot of the basic technologies are out\nthere to enable you to do some pretty cool stuff.\n\n[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/21/ibm_watson_qa_system...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/21/ibm_watson_qa_system/)\n\n[http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2011/04/14/build-y...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2011/04/14/build-\nyour-own-watson-with-open-source-software/)\n\n~~~\nteawithcarl\nThank you.\n\n------\nsp332\nThe Star Trek computer is already here, and it's closed-source and owned by\nGoogle. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5750148>\n\n~~~\nmindcrime\nFunny you would mention that... I wrote down the title for this blog post last\nnight or yesterday sometime, inspired by something (don't remember what,\nexactly) then sat down and wrote this piece this morning, without having seen\nthat post. But it is funny how related they are. I guess it's just something\nthat's \"in the air\" right now... some zeitgeist thing or whatever.\n\nThat said, this blog post is one of those where I had the seed of it in mind\nfor at least a year, but \"the moment\" to actually pull the pieces together and\nwrite it didn't happen... until it did. Why now versus 6 months ago, or a year\nago, or 3 days ago, I could not tell you.\n\nAnyway, there will be - IMO - plenty of room for competition between the Open\nSource stuff and the closed-source stuff. I'm just really excited about this\nlittle ecosystem that has formed around the ASF, and some of the cool stuff\nthat's being worked on.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSoftware Companies Tech Competency Matrix - ojhaujjwal\nhttps://geshan.com.np/blog/2017/06/software-companies-tech-competency-matrix/\n======\nrgbrenner\nSome of this is just completely wrong. Like the entire row titled code\nperformance.\n\nLevel 4 isn't going around your codebase shaving milliseconds from execution\ntime.. Level 4 is knowing that not everything needs to be optimized.. In fact,\nmost code doesn't need to be optimized at all. The only parts that actually\nneed optimization are those that have been deemed to be too slow (because of\nsome external reason--ie: effect on users, for ex) or that are on a hot code\npath.\n\nI'll go one step further... all new code should be written for clarity only.\nOptimized only if necessary.\n\nNo one cares if your function thats called once a month takes an extra few\nseconds to run.\n\n~~~\nsbov\n> I'll go one step further... all new code should be written for clarity only.\n> Optimized only if necessary.\n\nI'm not saying you do, but many people I run across who have this point of\nview do a poor job at measuring the \"if necessary\" part. You aren't really\nprepared to detect it without some form of production performance monitoring,\nmeaning on the chart, a level of around 2.5. I would say they should probably\nchange this section of the spreadsheet to emphasize knowledge of performance.\n\n~~~\nendorphone\nTo add to that point, in my experience the laissez faire optimize-later\nattitude is often pursued under the notion that you'll just optimize that hot\ncode path or that single function and everything will be glorious. The best of\nboth worlds. In reality such implementations are often death by thousands of\ncuts, where endemic poor performance makes it impossible to fix without\nenormous re-engineering. Where users get delighted when a competitor's product\nis just a little bit faster.\n\nThis applies at virtually every level. From your web page being just a\n_little_ bit faster than a competitor, to the sense of fluidity of an app, to\nbeing able to host a profitable service on a reasonable set of hardware (we've\nwatched countless Ruby services fold when a trivial system serving a small\nnumber of users needs to be scaled across dozens of machines). Performance is\none aspect that seldom goes without payoff.\n\n~~~\nrgbrenner\nIt's not that simple. Optimization is almost always additional complexity.\n\nSo an argument in favor of optimizing whenever and wherever possible, is an\nargument in favor of introducing unnecessary complexity.\n\nOptimization isn't free. It has a cost to implement (slowing development) and\nanother cost whenever the code is read/refactored/extended/etc (also slowing\ndevelopment time). That second part is incurred by every developer working on\nthat piece of code now and in the future.\n\nSo the danger in unnecessary optimization is both wasted time and slowing of\ndevelopment, delaying product market fit or making it difficult to respond to\ncompetitors introduction of new features (for example).\n\nWhat is the more common story: start up died because competitor was slightly\nfaster; or start up died because they never found product market fit.\n\n~~~\nendorphone\nI don't disagree with what you wrote, or the spirit of its meanings.\n\nBut optimizations in a modern sense seldom means implementing a section in\nassembly. In most cases it means a skillful, well-considered use of\nappropriate technologies, appropriate algorithms (e.g. a hash table instead of\na simple linked list for a lookup heavy section, appropriate database designs,\netc) and a coherent design.\n\nWhen you start from day 1 thinking \"performance matters\", it doesn't and\nshouldn't demand any added complexity. But it does demand constant\nconsideration as implementing requirement.\n\nOf course the counterpoint is that of course we should use appropriate\ntechnologies, algos, designs, etc. Who could argue otherwise? But whenever\nI've seen the premature optimization boogeyman appear in a modern context, it\nis usually in the context of just such a discussion. A sort of \"performance is\na concern for another day\".\n\n~~~\nrgbrenner\nI don't consider appropriate use of algos (where no additional development\ncost is incurred), and coherent design to be optimizations.\n\nI'm not sure how to respond to this. You're using a definition I've never\nheard before.. this sounds like basic competency being called optimization.\n\nNothing I've written here should be misconstrued as an argument in favor of\nsloppy code.\n\n~~~\nendorphone\nThis is the cycle of every \"premature optimization\" discussion, ever. Someone\ndiscounts optimization, but when countered with optimizations states that they\naren't actually optimizations.\n\nYour root post states \"In fact, most code doesn't need to be optimized at\nall\". That is de facto meaningless if we go under the assumption that\noptimizing itself -- ergo implementing optimally -- doesn't count as\noptimizing.\n\n~~~\nrgbrenner\nYou've thrown a lot of stuff under the label of optimization.\n\nTake coherent design. I started off saying everything should be written for\nclarity, and having a coherent design is part of that.\n\nA coherent design can mean the code has lower performance than an incoherent\ndesign.\n\nHow could this possibly be considered an optimization? An optimization now\nincludes things that reduce performance?!\n\nEdit: Also \"implementing optimally\" is not the definition of optimization.\noptimal: \"best or most favorable.\" optimize: \"rearrange or rewrite (data,\nsoftware, etc.) to improve efficiency of retrieval or processing.\"\n\n~~~\nendorphone\nI think you should revisit the line in the linked page that you disagreed with\nso strongly. It doesn't say \"go back and rewrite in assembly\", but simply asks\nthat you develop with performance in mind (with an awareness of the costs of\nthe choices you are making). Your comment was that performance effectively\ndoesn't matter, deal with that later.\n\nOptimization in the context of \"premature-optimization\" doesn't refer to going\nback and rewriting code early. It refers to a mental concern about\nperformance, where there is a very wrong, but persistent and common, attitude\nthat performance is something you can add later. But in most cases that simply\nisn't true, and it's one of the biggest lies in this industry, trotted out\nlike it's grizzled experience and wisdom when it's the foundation of countless\nproject failures.\n\n------\nandrewvc\nOh, this old chestnut. It keeps coming around again and again and again.\n\nInstead of complaining about this thing point by point I'll just ask a\nquestion. Has anyone taken this self-serious pseudo-quantified thing and tried\nto actually put it into practice? Have you found any quantifiable results?\n\nThis, TBH, seems like an arbitrary yardstick for insecure people to measure\nthemselves by IMHO.\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nI don't agree with all the levels and their description, but I do think this\nis an excellent way for a senior engineering leader to ask themselves \"What\ncan I do to make the engineering team better?\"\n\nYou'll notice that a lot of the different items are directly under the control\nof a VP Eng/Dir Eng role. \"Do you insist on code reviews? Yes we do/ No we\ndon't\" etc.\n\nSo if you find yourself in such a role, whether you've inherited a \"good\"\norganization or one that needs work, its a good methodology for stepping\nthrough and figuring out what to improve.\n\n------\njoshribakoff\nSo I use custom written scripts to deploy instead of Capistrano. Automatically\nI'm a lower level developer according to this chart. And somehow using docker\nis objectively better than Capistrano? I disagree. There are pros and cons.\nDocker adds complexity and has \"setup costs\" just because someone uses the\nsimpler tool doesn't mean they are any less of a developer. If anything it\nshows pragmatism and humility\n\n~~~\nscaryclam\nThere's a _lot_ wrong with this article.\n\nThe matrix feels really rather cargo-culty to me. If deployment is pushing one\nfile then use scp. If it's coordinating a world wide fleet of servers, use\nsomething more sophisticated.\n\nI find it funny that we've seen a \"You're not Google\" article today, and then\nthis gets posted.\n\nAt the end of the day, as long as you've cut out as many manual steps as you\ncan, without being stupid about it (don't spend two weeks creating an all\nsinging all dancing deployment pipeline for a microsite that's going away in\nthree weeks), you should be happy with how you're doing things, regarding\ndeployment. If that's running scripts, so be it.\n\n~~~\ndasmoth\n_The matrix feels really rather cargo-culty to me. If deployment is pushing\none file then use scp. If it 's coordinating a world wide fleet of servers,\nuse something more sophisticated._\n\nAgreed. And critically, if you can stay in a world where scp deployment (or\nsomething comparably simple) is working well, that's a _good thing_.\n\n------\nk2xl\nI don't know if \"competency\" is the right word to use.\n\nAs the OP points out in the \"Assumptions\", if you have a company with 5\nengineers working on completely different codebases, you may make a conscious\ndecision to not be at \"level 4\" code review status. Doesn't mean you are\nincompetent it just means you are practical.\n\nA lot of small business operate efficiently by electing to not overly\ncomplexify their development process. So maybe instead of \"competency\" using a\nword like \"sophistication\" would be better\n\n~~~\nCorvusCrypto\nThe infrastructure one had me chuckle a bit. Just go straight to large\nclusters or platform service plans guys. 2ezpz\n\n------\ns3nnyy\nThis is also handy for recruiting.\n\nStackoverflow includes the famous Joel Spolsky 12-steps-to-better-code list to\nits job ads ([https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-\ntest-12-s...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-\ntest-12-steps-to-better-code/)). I think it needs an update after 17-years.\n\nThis blog post might be something in that direction. I usually do a similar\nevaluation when I decide if whether to recruit for a company. (Content\nmarketing: I am programmer and now I source, assess and hire engineers for\ntech firms and startups in Zurich, Switzerland - see\n[https://www.coderfit.com](https://www.coderfit.com), and\n[https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-\nmoved-t...](https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-to-\nswitzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90))\n\nIt is rather challenging as different things carry different weight to\ndifferent people and there is also the thing that what is good for a big\ncompany, or high-growth startup might not make sense for a web agency that\nwill stay below 20 people forever.\n\nNevertheless, I'd be super happy to brainstorm with like-minded people about\nwhat makes a company good from an engineering perspective.\n\n~~~\nnoir_lord\nI just got hired on as developer #1 at a 150 year old company that has until\nme depended entirely on outsourced developers (at great expense and you can\nimagine what the codebase looks like).\n\nI'm the first developer but not the last so one of the things I'll be doing\nwill be setting the engineering standards going forwards, I might drop you an\nemail.\n\n~~~\nTenhundfeld\nSlight tangent, but I'll just comment that the business world runs on\ngenerally bad software – if they even have \"software\" and don't just use\ninsanely complex spreadsheets. It's one of those surprising things I've\nlearned doing consulting for the last decade+. At first, I thought it was just\nthe clients I happened to have, but given enough data points, a pattern\nemerged.\n\nMost software is bad, especially at places that don't consider themselves\nsoftware companies, e.g., they don't sell a software service/product, they\njust use software for efficiency.\n\nI don't mean this as a judgement of the developers who wrote it. I've written\nplenty of software that looks bad in retrospect, from the outside. When you\nhave the context of how decisions were made in the past, more often than not,\nyou find a lot of small decisions that were reasonable in isolation but added\ntogether equal a big ball of mess where technical debt was rarely/never paid\ndown, refactoring rarely/never took place, etc.\n\nIt's not that hard to convince non-technical business folks of the value of\npaying down technical debt, but I've found it is hard to convince them to\nprioritize it. It always gets planned for the future, after whatever super-\nurgent CEO-driven initiative is currently happening, which is quickly followed\nby another and another.\n\nSo yeah, I can imagine what the codebase looks like but not because of\noutsourced developers. You could just as easily say, \"150 year old company\ndepended entirely on overworked internal developers (you can imagine what the\ncodebase looks like).\"\n\n~~~\nnoir_lord\nI completely agree except in this case the software is just outright bad.\n\nI found a function yesterday that was 15 lines and reduced it to one, it was a\nBoolean check but they hadn't just returned that.\n\nIts mostly php and they declare all variables and then immediately overwrite\nthem, I'm not convinced the main programmer had a good grasp of PHP tbh.\n\nIn any case its mine now. :)\n\n~~~\nTenhundfeld\nYep, there are definitely exceptions to my \"generally reasonable in isolation\"\nidea, where the software is just bad, in any context. I've seen 'em. Hell,\nI've probably written 'em.\n\nAnyway, good luck. I've been in similar situations. It can be overwhelming,\nbut if you have executive buy-in, you have a big opportunity to establish a\nnew direction and effect significant change.\n\n------\ntaeric\nIs this just a stripped down CMM for people that don't believe in things like\nthe CMM?\n\nLink:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model)\n\n~~~\nnradov\nIt's hilarious how some developers reflexively criticize things like the CMM\nin the abstract, and yet are unable to provide any hard data to show that\nspecific elements of the CMM produce bad results.\n\n~~~\ngaius\nOne company I worked for decided to offshore, opened an office in a faraway\nland, six months later, that office stuffed to the gills with fresh grads,\nhaving never shipped a single line of code to a customer or into production,\nachieved CMM level 5 certification. It's a complete farce.\n\n~~~\ntaeric\nThere is a distinction, though, between feeling that certification can be\ngamed and thinking that the goals outlined are poor.\n\nAnd I am sympathetic on both ends. Nobody likes admitting that you will\nbasically always start at level 1. More amusingly, folks that have progressed\nto later stages forget some of the advantages you have in earlier stages. If\nthis was a completely solved problem, we would just set the counter at max and\nbe done with it.\n\nTaleb had a quote about this that I have misplaced, so I'm game of someone can\nfind it. Basic gist is that even if you know what the end result should be,\nthat does not mean you get to skip the steps that brought it about.\n\n~~~\ngaius\n_There is a distinction, though, between feeling that certification can be\ngamed and thinking that the goals outlined are poor_\n\nIn that debacle they laid off 6000 people in the West, including me. Shortly\nafterwards they realised that they were unable to ship or even maintain the\nproduct. Shortly after that, they were taken over by a rival. The CEO who\ndrove all this pocketed an 8-figure sum and walked away... It's clear what the\n\"goals\" were.\n\n~~~\ntaeric\nThat seriously sucks and you have my sympathies.\n\nI think this ultimately runs into the field that as soon as you define what\nthe grading criteria is, then there arises the serious risk of gaming the\nsystem. Especially when that grading criteria is a proxy of the actual value\nthat the company is creating.\n\nThat is, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is value delivered\nto the customer. Any other proxy measure ultimately doesn't matter. Good for\nprediction capabilities up to the point that they are gamed for the same\nprediction capabilities.\n\n------\nswsieber\nOne thing to note is that competency as it's used here is _often_ a stand-in\nfor process - how much process a company uses around a particular feature.\n\n------\ntovacinni\nCorrect me if I'm wrong, but for VCS, isn't it generally bad practice to\nunnecessarily branch off and introduce complex structures?\n\nIn my experience, branches generally lead to people feeling like they have\nfree reign and introducing a slew of issues (reduced code quality,\ndifficulties in merging, broken builds, etc)\n\n~~~\nrimliu\nWhat do you mean by \"unnecessarily branch\"? At least for git it used to be\n\"new branch for each discreate task\". Atlassian tools even support this: you\nhave \"Create branch\" option for JIRA task. We use it and are very happy with\nthis. Take a task, create branch (which automatically moves the related JIRA\ntask to \"In progress\"), when done—create pull request (task status once again\nis updated automatically), when merged kick off automatic build and\ndeployment. It all would be a lot messier without branching.\n\n~~~\ntovacinni\nI think it really depends on the atomicity of the said \"tasks\" and how often\nbranches get merged back into the master branch. It's very easy for branches\nto get abused and merging long-standing branches in with the master branch is\nalways expensive task that's bound to have scary issues.\n\nIn an organized enough team with a large enough project, tasks should be able\nto be carried through concurrently on a single branch for the most part.\n\n~~~\nsangnoir\n> It's very easy for branches to get abused and merging long-standing branches\n> in with the master branch is always expensive task that's bound to have\n> scary issues.\n\nYou only get scary merge issues if you do not frequently pull in changes from\nyour upstream branch! Daily works for me, and not once have I been let down\nwhen squash-merging back - even for large, multiweek changes. I'm always\nsurprised to hear this is not common practice on HN.\n\n------\ntheGimp\nThere is no one-size-fits-all approach for measuring competence. Different\ncompanies and different teams have different dynamics.\n\nWhat makes sense for your team and the things you work on can be very\ndifferent from mine.\n\nThe tools and process my team settles on can achieve better results despite\nlooking more primitive on your measuring stick. Complexity is not the end\ngoal.\n\n------\nm0llusk\nThere are many valid points raised here, though there is clearly room for\nargument with every metric. What strikes me about this article is the site and\ncontent itself. Reading this article loads layers upon layers of javascript\nwhich collectively download megabytes of content, the vast majority of which\nis utterly useless crap that contributes absolutely nothing to the experience\nof reading the article.\n\nThe intent of this article is to propose some metrics for maturity and\ncapacity of technology development, but careful measure of downloading shows\nthat this site is an abomination beyond reason that shuts out users lacking\nbroadband and fast machines with plenty of memory.\n\nIf you really want to learn about technology development competence then\ncompare how this page is served compared to a static plain text version of the\nsame content.\n\n------\niLemming\nJIRA? It is sad that even in 2017 people still promote JIRA. There are better\nalternatives to that ugly, clunky, stupid piece of junk. Clubhouse is one\nexample.\n\n------\njarsin\nGot a job at a level 1 once early in my career (2 years experience). Before I\nstarted the COO told me that the his team was the best and given I was just\nstarting out in my career I had a lot to learn from them. Massive warning sign\nin hindsight.\n\nFirst day on the job...so you guys really don't have source control?\n\n~~~\nmajewsky\n\"Only idiots need source control. We know what we're doing 'round here!\"\n_proceeds to edit PHP source file directly on production server_\n\n~~~\nnradov\nThere's a story somewhere of Paul Graham making live changes to the Viaweb\nproduction Lisp code while in the middle of a customer tech support call. OK,\nthe bug should be fixed, try it now...\n\n~~~\nmajewsky\nAnd that's precisely the problem. A handful of people _can_ work this way and\ndo great. But their visibility will make others try to emulate them, usually\nwith disastrous consequences.\n\n------\ncorpMaverick\nNice. I don't agree with lots of things but it is a great way to think about\nhow software organizations work.\n\nIt focuses a lot on whether or not tools are used. IMHO, the fact that a tool\nis used doesn't tell you much. Often is the wrong tool for the wrong problem,\nor the tools is not properly being used.\n\n~~~\nmajewsky\nAnother instance of Goodhart's Law: \"When a measure becomes a target, it\nceases to be a good measure.\" When companies introduce certain tools because\nthey heard that successful companies use that tool, rather than because they\nwant to use it to improve their processes, it won't help much.\n\n------\nburo9\nRuined in the very first line by suggesting that JIRA is somehow a project\nmanagement tool.\n\nJIRA manages issues.\n\nAdvanced use of JIRA may mean that you can use it as a risk log, or a\nmilestone tracker, or an epic planner... but let's not mistake \"advanced use\nof JIRA\" with \"advanced project management\".\n\nJust try and use JIRA to determine a critical path, or to track the impact on\none project when a deliverable expected from another project slips, or to\nalert when the threshold of a slipped due date is exceeded. JIRA cannot even\nauto-promote a risk (something that may happen) to an issue (something that\nhas happened) based on a change in circumstances (i.e. time-based overdue, or\nsome threshold being exceeded).\n\nJust try and use JIRA to go beyond a single project, and to manage a program\nof projects delivering multiple things as part of one complex product. If that\nsounds like jargon, imagine trying to use JIRA to project manage the the\nconstruction of a new vehicle, with multiple teams in different facilities\nproviding the chassis, drivetrain, etc.\n\nThis is all basic stuff for good project management software, and only those\nnot versed in project management make the mistake of thinking that JIRA is an\nissue.\n\nOn a project management tooling scale, JIRA itself would never pass the first\nlevel of maturity.\n\nFew tech companies manage projects well. Few identify risks, few track inter\nproject dependencies, few can determine whether there are resource issues\n(headcount availability) 6 months out due to multiple projects needing\ndelivering at the same time and competing for the same internal resource.\n\nJIRA is not a project management tool. It is a glorified issue tracker that\nallows the unskilled to imagine they are managing projects.\n\nI guess that's a strong statement, but it does need to be made. JIRA can work\nfor you, but it is only a simple tool.\n\n~~~\nUK-AL\n\"Few tech companies manage projects well.\" \\- That's because your comparing it\nto traditional style project management. It rarely works well in software.\n\nIf this style of project management worked, then companies that used it would\nbe at the top. But they aren't.\n\nThe only companies that seem to use it are government projects, or\ncorporations where software isn't their main concern. In my experience\nsoftware output by these organisation is basically awful.\n\nThey don't get software development is more of discovery and learning process,\nwhere you become increasing better at serving your customers as you learn\nmore. It's not a gather requirements, implement then finished thing.\n\n~~~\nwalterbell\nThis is good book on learning in software dev,\n[https://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Software-Development-\nCollabo...](https://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Software-Development-\nCollaborative-Approach/dp/0932633404/)\n\n~~~\nnradov\nNot sure why you're getting downvoted. That is a good book. I wouldn't\nnecessarily follow everything in it, but every software manager could learn\nsomething from it.\n\n------\ncoldcode\nIf you meet their assumptions it might make useful, but it's a very\nopinionated list which is likely not applicable to many companies. I am not\nsure you can make such a list that is generally applicable to enough companies\nto be useful.\n\n------\ngaius\nThe author of this is level 1 and only imagining the other levels.\n\n------\nDowwie\nIs there no way to export this?\n\n------\naemus\n0ow\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGoogle Patents Gears - pierrefar\nhttp://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20080301221.PGNR.&OS=dn/20080301221&RS=DN/20080301221\n======\ndchest\nLooks like Gears, but I can't find a word about Google in this text.\n\n~~~\nevgen\nPeople file patents, not companies. The people then assign ownership to the\ncompany. Erik Arvidsson's blog clearly shows he works at Google and while\nAndrew Palay does not have a blog his $4600 donation to the Obama campaign\nreveals that he also works at Google.\n\n------\nshabda\nDo no evil?\n\n~~~\nimp\nOr at least protect their ass from those that are evil.\n\n~~~\nshabda\nYes, as patent trollling is a good way to do that.\n\nHow is when Amazon tries to patent single click checkout, that is evil, but\nwhen your favorite company does the a frivolous patent, that is just\nprotecting their ass?\n\nAlso related read: [http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/09/reforming-\npat...](http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/09/reforming-patents-\npromoting-innovation.html) (Google's official policy on patents.)\n\n~~~\nalexandros\nWithout going into the frivolity of each patent, let's not forget that Amazon\nhas actually used their patent aggressively against Barnes and Noble.\n\n<http://www.out-law.com/page-2424>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nImportance of OKR Template and How to Create a Template via Excel - growth_corvisio\nhttps://corvisio.com/\n======\ngrowth_corvisio\nIf you have a business that aims to improve itself, it is better to set goals\nto reach higher points. Aiming a far distance will make employees discover\ntheir real potential. Therefore, business can go further. To organize goals\nthat have been set and enter progress, OKR template is used commonly.\n\nFor detailed information about how to set goals and what is OKR you can visit\nour blog! [https://corvisio.com/okr-template/](https://corvisio.com/okr-\ntemplate/)\n\n------\nrankam\nMisleading title\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Best way for a self-taught programmer to have code reviewed? - emagdnim2100\nI&#x27;ve been self teaching for about eight months now and can hack together working projects, but I&#x27;m sure my code is an absolute mess. Does anyone know of good resources (free or paid) for a more experienced developer to give feedback on one&#x27;s code?\n======\nnew_hackers\n[http://codereview.stackexchange.com/](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/)\n\n------\nvoiper1\nCool idea. You can post it online and surely you can get tons of criticism ;)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWar Is a Racket (1935) - pmoriarty\nhttp://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html\n======\npgnas\nI read this and I think of the courage that it must have taken to write,\nhowever, I quickly realize that my thoughts are based on today's mindset where\nquestioning the government gets you labeled a conspiracy nut or traitor.\n\nWe have been warned by many about the military industrial complex, yet, it\ndoesn't sink in.\n\nOur current president was elected on promises of ending these wars and somehow\nhe will go down in history as the champion of military occupation and\nperpetuating conflicts in places we don't belong.\n\nTruth is that peace doesn't make money, it doesn't grease the wheels of\nindustry, the difference is that where is the industry? It used to be that the\nUS would at least benefit from the industry through employment and tax\nrevenue, but what if the production is no longer in the US? Who benefits then?\nI can tell you with accuracy who doesn't ..\n\n~~~\nmathattack\n_Truth is that peace doesn 't make money, it doesn't grease the wheels of\nindustry, the difference is that where is the industry?_\n\nI will start by saying that I hate war. And war is VERY anti-capitalist. The\nonly time war makes countries money is when they pick on non-industrialized\nenemies. People have realized that war is very costly to trade and industrial\nelites outside the military-industrial complex. [0]\n\nBut... Can we really say that we can turn a blind eye to the world's most evil\npeople? Perhaps we can say \"Let Europe handle itself\" in 1915, but can we\nreally say that in 1941? Even if 1941 was caused by 1915, can't we admit that\nthere are some things worth fighting over?\n\nThis isn't to defend the current war-mongers running for President. It's just\nto say that a 0 wars policy doesn't seem to stand up to reality.\n\n[0]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree)\n\n~~~\nhartpuff\n> The only time war makes countries money is when they pick on non-\n> industrialized enemies.\n\nMaybe you're making a different point to this but the United States and its\ncorporations came out of WWI and WWII (wars against an industrialized enemy)\nfar richer and more powerful than before WWI and WWII, largely at the expense\nof Britain/the British Empire.\n\nThe USA essentially replacing Britain as the world's economic superpower after\nWWI and military/imperialist superpower after WWII.\n\n> But... Can we really say that we can turn a blind eye to the world's most\n> evil people? Perhaps we can say \"Let Europe handle itself\" in 1915, but can\n> we really say that in 1941? Even if 1941 was caused by 1915, can't we admit\n> that there are some things worth fighting over?\n\nWWI started in __1914 __, not 1915 and WWII started in __1939 __(or 1937, if\nyou want to take it from the Japanese invasion of China), not 1941.\n\n1941 (Pearl Harbor) was not caused by 1915 (WWI), it was caused by _1893_ and\nthe invasion, overthrow and annexation of Hawaii that led the military of the\nUS empire to be there in the first place.\n\n\"Let Europe handle itself\" is a simplification of what the United States was\nthinking and doing before being forced kicking and screaming into finally\n_doing the right thing_ by Japan and Germany - even after Pearl Harbor, the\nUSA _still_ did not declare war on Hitler.\n\nI doubt it's taught in American schools, but it's no secret that American\ncompanies (ie, capitalists) were supporting, supplying and working with the\nNazis _even after the start of WWII_.\n\nPeople in US do seem to be taught that lots of charity was doled out to\nBritain. In fact Britain (and its Empire countries), standing alone against\nthe biggest threat to democracy in history, was forced to hand over its gold\nreserves, its advanced high technology, and even territory to the US, in\nreturn for American help.\n\nNot loans at this point in time, of course, because the US believed Britain\nwould fall to Hitler (just as the US had sat back and watched other\ndemocracies fall) and therefore would not be in any position to pay the US\nback.\n\nYou're right that some things are worth fighting over, and you're right that\nWWII is an example of a justified war. It's just a pity that the United\nStates, for all the effort it put in when it finally joined (when Germany's\ndefeat was already a foregone conclusion due to Barbarossa), acted before,\nduring and after WWII with complete self-interest.\n\n~~~\nAnimalMuppet\n> 1941 (Pearl Harbor) was not caused by 1915 (WWI), it was caused by 1893 and\n> the invasion, overthrow and annexation of Hawaii that led the military of\n> the US empire to be there in the first place.\n\nCaused? No.\n\nIt wouldn't have happened if the US didn't own Hawaii in 1941, but the US\ntakeover of Hawaii was _not_ the _causus belli_ for Pearl Harbor.\n\n~~~\nhartpuff\n> It wouldn't have happened if the US didn't own Hawaii in 1941\n\nWhich is what I said, except I put it more honestly: it would not have\nhappened had the US not _invaded, overthrown and annexed_ Hawaii. The US\n'owned' Hawaii the same way Hitler 'owned' the Sudetenland.\n\nThe point being the roots (ie, cause) of Pearl Harbor stretch back to 19th\ncentury US imperialism, throwing its weight around, and generally being in\nplaces it shouldn't have been.\n\n> but the US takeover of Hawaii was _not_ the _causus belli_ for Pearl Harbor.\n\nI didn't say it was a _casus belli_ (no U), did I?\n\n~~~\nAnimalMuppet\nYou said \"caused\". Not \"it would not have happened\" (that is, it was one\nessential factor), but \"caused\" (that is, _this is what made that happen_ ).\n\nTo see the difference, do a thought experiment. The US takes Hawaii in 1893,\nbut does not end the sale of oil, rubber, metal, and everything else\nmilitarily useful to Japan in 1937. Does Pearl Harbor still happen? Probably\nnot, because the US is not signaling opposition to Japan's invasion of China.\n\nOn the other hand, say the US doesn't \"invade, overthrow, and annex\" Hawaii.\nIt merely negotiates for a naval base. Does Pearl Harbor still happen? Yes.\n\n~~~\nhartpuff\n> You said \"caused\". Not \"it would not have happened\" (that is, it was one\n> essential factor), but \"caused\" (that is, this is what made that happen).\n\nI said \"caused\" because I was _copying the statement and style of the previous\nposter_. His point (I believe) alluded to the commonly held belief that the\nroots of WWII lay in WWI; my point, since he used 1941, was that the roots of\nPearl Harbor lay closer to home.\n\n> To see the difference, do a thought experiment. The US takes Hawaii in 1893,\n> but does not end the sale of oil, rubber, metal, and everything else\n> militarily useful to Japan in 1937. Does Pearl Harbor still happen? Probably\n> not, because the US is not signaling opposition to Japan's invasion of\n> China.\n\nOkay, I say in this fictional version of history that it still does happen,\nbecause the US is still in places it should not be, due to its late 19th\ncentury imperialism, and still poses a military threat to Japanese ambitions\nin the region.\n\n> On the other hand, say the US doesn't \"invade, overthrow, and annex\" Hawaii.\n> It merely negotiates for a naval base. Does Pearl Harbor still happen? Yes.\n\nWhy does it still happen? If the US is acting peacefully in this imaginary\nsituation, why can't Japan?\n\n~~~\nAnimalMuppet\nBased on US Navy interviews with Japanese officials after the end of WWII, it\nseems immensely improbable that Japan cared about the US takeover of Hawaii\nper se. They cared about the US fleet that was based there, and about US\nactions to oppose Japan's attempts to conquer China and the Dutch East Indies.\nSo if Hawaii were independent but the US had a fleet base there, no, Japan\nwasn't going to act peacefully in that imaginary situation - not unless you're\npostulating an actually peaceful Japan, one that isn't attacking China and the\nDutch East Indies.\n\n~~~\nhartpuff\n> it seems immensely improbable that Japan cared about the US takeover of\n> Hawaii per se. They cared about the US fleet that was based there\n\nNobody is saying otherwise. Perhaps you have forgotten again how and why the\nUS fleet got there in the first place: violent American imperialism and\nexpansionism in the late 19th century. It's fairly pointless to imagine\nsituations where that didn't happen, when it did.\n\n> So if Hawaii were independent but the US had a fleet base there, no, Japan\n> wasn't going to act peacefully in that imaginary situation - not unless\n> you're postulating an actually peaceful Japan, one that isn't attacking\n> China and the Dutch East Indies.\n\nWhy not? You're postulating a mythological United States capable of\nnegotiating peacefully with Hawaii (and presumably the Philippines, and Guam,\nand Cuba, and Puerto Rico?). If such a US ever existed, why would it be\nimpossible for it to also come to a peaceful understanding with Japan?\n\nI mean, what are we supposed to be doing here, simply coming up with _just_\nthe right amount of convenient historical changes to prove your point?\n\n------\npmoriarty\n_\" But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill\"_\n\nI'm not sure how it was in Butler's time, but I've read that the overwhelming\nmajority of casualties in modern warfare are civilians. It would seem to me\nthat they are the ones who pay \"the biggest part of the bill\".\n\nNot that I would deny that the people doing the mass murder can themselves\nbecome the victims of war. But I'd personally have more sympathy for civilians\nwho are not trying to murder others but are themselves murdered.\n\n~~~\nsandworm101\n>> born July 30, 1881\n\nSo yes, he didn't witness a truly modern war. 19th century conflicts were\nbrutal, but weren't exactly the city-destroying conflict WWII was, nor the\nguerrilla wars of modern times.\n\n~~~\nfleshweasel\nHe participated in WW1, which by any reasonable standard was a truly modern\nwar.\n\n~~~\nsandworm101\nIt is and it isn't. The explosive capacities of WWI were generally directed at\nthe front, at the soldiers. While cities were involved, the civilian v.\nsoldier death toll is not comparable to say, modern day Iraq. And nothing in\nWWI involved the literal desruction of large cities as was seen in WWII.\n\nNow go back a couple hundred years, back to when cities were occasionally put\nto the sword, but that is beyond even this guy's memory.\n\n~~~\njonesb6\nDidn't \"the Rape of Belgium\" depict German conquest and occupation during WWI?\n\n------\nghouse\n\"The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6\ntrillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and\nexpensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting\" \\-\nWashington Post, March 28, 2013\n\n~~~\nchishaku\n> At the outset of the Iraq war, the Bush administration predicted that it\n> would cost $50 billion to $60 billion to oust Saddam Hussein, restore order\n> and install a new government.\n\n> Only one economist, William D. Nordhaus of Yale, seems to have come close.\n> In a paper in December 2002, he offered a worst-case estimate of $1.9\n> trillion, “if the war drags on, occupation is lengthy, nation-building is\n> costly.”\n\n[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/washington/19cost.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/washington/19cost.html?_r=0)\n\n~~~\nPyxl101\nDo we have better accounting and estimation methods now, to advise current\ncommanders-in-chief?\n\nThe next time a president wants to take the USA to war, or enter any armed\nconflict, I'd like to see that announcement be accompanied by (or followed\nshortly thereafter by) a GAO or similar accounting report estimating probable\noutcomes and costs. The same report should include an appendix that summarizes\nrecent similar reports delivered in past armed conflicts, analyzing their\naccuracy with known actual costs. (E.g., that appendix should report this fact\nabout the Iraq war and the updated estimate for the new war should take into\naccount the sources of inaccuracy that led to the underestimation).\n\nIn software engineering, at least part of the job is doing something new every\ntime. If it wasn't new it wouldn't need a human - it would just be a machine\ndoing something repeatedly. I imagine that war is to some extent the same way,\nin that no opposition force is exactly the same; yet a lot of war must be\nloosely similar in cost, barring major technological changes. (E.g., cost per\nsquare mile of territory held by infantry or cost per civilian population or\ncost per enemy combatant; cost per square mile of enforced no-fly-zone, etc.)\n\nSay, where are all of the data scientists? You'd think that you could draw\nsome interesting conclusions analyzing data about the costs of war, assuming\nit's publicly available. For example, a histogram of dollars spent month by\nmonth per province of occupied territory - is such data public? I don't think\nI've ever seen much in the way of interesting visualizations, outside of the\noccasional flashy news article.\n\n~~~\np4wnc6\nIt's super easy to defeat this kind of constraint. Just claim that if we don't\nact immediately, the bad guys will kill freedom. There's no time for a GAO!\nYou want to jeopardize the eternal fate of freedom and the triumph of evil\nbecause you want a budget proposal!?\n\nPut that on CNN and Fox News. Now the old people want war. Smart people are\ncaught wasting their time in an engineered debate about whether there is or\nisn't time to first plan a budget. While everyone is riled up, Congress side\nsteps the whole thing and we just begin with whatever military operations they\nwanted.\n\n~~~\nPyxl101\nIt takes a while to go to war or enter armed conflict at scale (on smaller\nscale, certain force units like Marine Expeditionary Units and certain\ncommando teams can move pretty quickly). The President should have the\nauthority the Constitution gives him to do that.\n\nI'd just like to see the GAO rushing alongside that process to prepare\nexpected financial outcomes, to be shared with American citizens and press who\nwill be evaluating the pending action.\n\n------\nchishaku\n> Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they?\n\nA couple notes on the war drum:\n\nThe 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force [0] targeting the\nperpetrators of the 9/11 attacks has been invoked to deploy US armed forces to\nAfghanistan, the Philippines, Georgia, Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia,\nEritrea, Iraq, Somalia and Syria. [1][2]\n\nA new proposed Authorization for Use of Military Force [3] targeting ISIS,\n\"its associated forces,\" and \"any successor organizations\" is arguably more\nopen-ended.\n\nThe author of the proposal, Lindsey Graham (Senior Senator from South\nCarolina), seeks to grant the next president \"the ability to go after ISIS\n_without limitation to geography, time and means._ \" [4]\n\n[0]:\n[https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-107sjres23enr/html/BILLS...](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-107sjres23enr/html/BILLS-107sjres23enr.htm)\n\n[1]:\n[https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/aumf-071013.pdf](https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/aumf-071013.pdf)\n\n[2]:\n[https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R43760.pdf](https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R43760.pdf)\n\n[3]:\n[https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/sjres26/text](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/sjres26/text)\n\n[4]: [http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-\nbudget/congr...](http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-\nbudget/congress/2016/01/22/mcconnell-nudges-grahams-aumf-forward-us-\nsenate/79171192/)\n\n------\np4wnc6\nMy understanding of many of the most recent military engagements by the US is\nthat they are basically sandbox experiments for prototyping new warfare tech\nand tactics, especially to study things like asymmetric urban warfare in which\nthe distinction between combatant and civilian is difficult.\n\nWe enter the conflicts under whatever pretext is popularized in the media, but\nthe real reason is to fuel warfare R&D efforts, grow surveillance\ninfrastructure, and collect data that reflects situations our military leaders\nforecast to be important.\n\nLarge contracting firms profit. Soldiers lose time, often also money, often\ntheir mental health and family relationships, and sometimes their lives.\nTaxpayers lose money. Foreign civilians lose their lives. Few benefits are\never given to soldiers or foreigners, if they are even paid lip service with\npromises of benefits at all.\n\nIt's basically a string of smaller scale proxy wars to fuel tech,\nsurveillance, and population control between larger, \"actual\" wars.\n\nI fear we are already past a point where democratic process could stop it. I\nthink by now it would require almost an actual revolt from U.S. citizens on\nU.S. soil, and that it would be bloody, and that part of the military\nengineering being studied is exactly how much civilians will tolerate before\nbeing pushed to the point of revolt.\n\nAs long as you can watch Netflix on your iPad and put it out of your mind,\nthen while it might ruffle your feathers, you won't actually take action that\ncould jeopardize your creature comforts. Even things like Occupy Wall Street\nseem like they are more data collection opportunities than anything else. \"OK,\nso they will protest via X, Y, and Z, but too few of them can be pushed to do\nA, B, or C for us to care.\"\n\nIt's a very depressing feeling. In the meantime, just like everyone else, I\nhave to worry about money, family, life goals, comforts, health, and all my\nbiases push me to ignore the military industrial conflict, because already\ngiving it maybe 1/100th of my overall bandwidth is exceedingly depressing.\nSomething close to 40% of the country believes in young earth creationism.\nOpen up to a highly-visited YouTube video and scroll down to the comments and\nbehold the inanity of how we use our time and what our priorities are.\n\nHow could enough people possibly coordinate beliefs and actions around\nhumanity-affirming rebukes of the military industrial complex? Of course they\nwon't, so then I guess I'd better put my brain towards how to live in a world\nwhere they won't, which is too depressing to think about... and the cycle\ncontinues.\n\nI'm sure it has been articulated even earlier than the early 1900s. It's just\ngoes on and on.\n\n~~~\ngaltwho\nThis. We are all played for suckers.\n\nThis is partly why I wish for Trump to get the top job. The amount of window\ndressing in society will come down drastically as the clown makes\nmisjudgements at every turn and contradicts himself by the hour.\n\n~~~\nmikekchar\nJust like what happened when Bush got the job? Obama won the Nobel peace prize\nbefore he was president because people believed so strongly that the problem\nwas Bush. \"If we just get a sensible president in, he will fix everything!\"\n\nAmerican politics goes from yin to yang every 8 years because that's was\npeople expect. The media polarizes every thing. Your average person laps it\nup. \"Those damn conservatives/liberals are ruining everything. How can they be\nso stupid/naive?\". We must make America great. We must make America whole. :-P\n\nPeople believe that it is their duty to vote: we must keep the\ndemocrats/republicans out of office! Or you could waste your vote on someone\nwho can't win. As a measure of protest, perhaps. Or maybe if they _did_ win\nonce... then you would have 3 parties. Then 2 would gang up on 1. Or the third\nwill split the vote.\n\nIf you wish to stop war, don't get sidetracked on people. That's how you will\nbe defeated, because it's easy to swap people around like a game of 3 card\nmonty. Concentrate on the issue, not on people, parties or politics. Don't\nsimply cast a vote and say, \"Well, I tried\". That's how you lose.\n\n------\nTerr_\n> \"[It's] peace, not war, that makes wealth for a country. War just transfers\n> possession of the residue from the weaker to the stronger. Worse, what is\n> bought with blood is sold for coin, and then stolen back again. [...] It's a\n> wondrous transmutation, where the blood of one man is turned into the money\n> of another. Lead into gold is nothing to it.\"\n\n\\-- \"The Curse of Chalion\", by Lois McMaster Bujold\n\n------\nAnimats\nButler is famous, but not for his US military service. For his military\nservice with the United Fruit Company and duPont.[1]\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler)\n\n~~~\nnoxToken\n> _Butler is famous, but not for his US military service._\n\nI can hear the collective shouts of every Marine begging to differ. Two of the\nmost recognized names in Marine Corps history are MajGen Smedley Butler and\nSgtMaj \"Dan\" Daly. Among other things, they are 2 of 19 men in US military\nhistory and the only two Marines to receive two Medals of Honor.\n\n~~~\nAnimats\nHe was a great Marine. His complaint was that the the USMC wasn't fighting for\nthe United States, but was being misused on behalf of the United Fruit\nCompany. That's where \"banana republics\" (not the Gap subsidiary, the Central\nAmerican countries) came from.\n\n~~~\nnoxToken\nThis fact isn't so much drilled into heads during bootcamp, but anyone who\nreads from the Commandant's reading list (or any light research into MajGen\nButler for that matter) will have known this. I was specifically addressing\nyour first statement though.\n\n------\ncarsongross\nFor those who are interested, a good book on the history of opposition to war\nis:\n\n[http://www.amazon.com/We-Who-Dared-Say-\nWar/dp/1568583850](http://www.amazon.com/We-Who-Dared-Say-War/dp/1568583850)\n\nIt was written by a leftist and libertarian/paleoconservative working\ntogether, so you will likely find something you love and something you hate in\nit, as with all good books.\n\nI very much regret my early support for the Iraq war.\n\n------\nmxfh\nWhile Butler was quite spot on with his early 1930s post-mortem assessment of\nWWI, a less isolationist approach might have possibly lessened the scale of\nWWII.\n\nSome aspects of it's stance, like home territory limited military presence and\nexclusive zones of interest are simply obsolete in an era of ICBMs and\nsatellites.\n\nFor some context and general description of sentiment in the 30s:\n\n[https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/power-of-isolationists-\nbe...](https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/power-of-isolationists-before-world-\nwar-ii/)\n\n[https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/american-\nisol...](https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/american-isolationism)\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nye_Committee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nye_Committee)\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Acts_of_1930s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Acts_of_1930s)\n\n------\nCieplak\nReminds me very much of Eisenhower's farewell address from 1961:\n\n    \n    \n        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower's_farewell_address\n\n------\nnihonde\nEvery great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually\ndegenerates into a racket. — Eric Hoffer (paraphrase)\n\n------\nForcesOfOdin\nI love Smedley Butler! Good link. Always wiki - the business plot to see how\ncorporate america tried to get Smedley Butler to lead a military coup of\nmercenaries against the US government during FDR's presidency.\n\n------\nyourapostasy\nIf you liked Butler's perspective, then you will probably also like Garet\nGarrett's [0] oeuvre. He was an outspoken critic of WWI, and of America's\nentry into WWII until after Pearl Harbor. His position against an imperial\nAmerica delivers a wider context to Butler's field experience as handmaiden to\nAmerican power elites' ambitions accomplishing just that outcome.\n\n[0]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garet_Garrett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garet_Garrett)\n\n------\n0x99\nWhile it is hard to argue with the points in the article, there is this\nconcept of 'global influence' or influence on global politics, which is hard\nto put a $ value on.\n\nHasn't this global influence played a huge part in maintaining USA as a global\nsuperpower ?\n\n~~~\nhsitz\nYou think blunders in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere contribute to\nU.S. status as global superpower? I'm pretty sure a stronger case could be\nmade that they've detracted from the status and influence the U.S. could have\nhad.\n\n~~~\nPyxl101\nIt's hard to know what exact effect our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has\nhad on the world. I'm sure there are people at military academies and\nuniversities getting PhDs on it.\n\nWhatever the answer is, I don't think we should let the analysis fall prey to\npopulism. As much as I'd agree that Iraq seems to have been a disaster, and\nthat we haven't managed to accomplish much in Afghanistan, consider the wider\nimplications. The USA has managed to navigate itself to the point where it put\nsignificant pressure on Iran through sanctions, has agreed to dismantle its\nnuclear weapons program, and is beginning to re-enter the global economy\namidst a lessening of tensions. Presumably at least partially as a result, the\nprice of oil is down to $40, which is lower than it was in 1985. (Consider\nwhere Iran is on the world map relative to Iraq and Afghanistan.) For all we\nknow in the general public, that was the strategic goal the entire time. (Yes,\nI know, that's probably giving the government too much credit. Then again,\nconsider the skill of sabotage like the Stuxnet virus, and imagine the same\nskill applied to long-term global strategic thinking.)\n\nPerhaps the empire would be much stronger if not for those blunders, or\nperhaps Iraq would still be a dictatorship and Iran a nuclear threat. As much\nas ISIS is annoying, it doesn't seem to be an actual strategic threat in the\nway that nuclear powers with long-range ballistic missiles are.\n\nJust to be clear, I don't know what to believe. I'm playing devil's advocate\nand primarily arguing not to prematurely conclude that things are simpler than\nthey seem. Consider, for example, the layers of subtlety involved in executing\nNixon's Madman theory:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory)\n\\- given the crazy things that actually have happened in our world and\npolitics, I would not be especially surprised if the government knowingly went\nto war with Iraq on a pretext, specifically to put pressure on Iran and take\ngeo-political control of the region (perhaps even to destabilize the region),\nwith a \"fall guy\" planned out ahead of time in the way of \"no one really\nbelieved there were WMDs\". The story that, \"We thought they had WMDs and were\nwrong\" is a lot easier for the public and world to accept than, \"We are\nstrategically invading Iraq and Afghanistan to put pressure on Iran.\"\n\nGranted, I agree with you that these situations are total clusterfucks. I'm\njust saying let's look beneath the surface.\n\n~~~\nvenomsnake\nThe US was at its most powerful at the end of WWII. Its GDP was more than rest\nof the world combined. Military and industrial capacity - unmatched. And the\nonly power with nuclear weapons. At the end of the war they were barely\nscratched compared to the total devastation in Europe and Asia.\n\nUSA could have literally taken over the world with no one to oppose them.\n\nSo ... especially after the first oil shock - you could view US in a state of\nrelative decline. With a short blip during the 90s when they were reaping the\nspoils of winning the cold war.\n\n~~~\nionised\n> USA could have literally taken over the world with no one to oppose them.\n\nThis is so far from true. One nation occupying the world in any meaningful way\nis completely unrealistic.\n\n------\ngriffinmahon\nI read an _NYT_ article a while ago that made the argument that the effect of\npeople who did not support the Vietnam War evading the draft was a military\nthat was, twenty or so years later, when the people who did join became\nsenior, very conservative or willing to wage war. Along the lines of the\ncritical theory idea that some of the Left have become ineffective by not\ninvolving themselves in actual politics, I think it's important to not be\ndeterred by this idea of war, as the only way the military-industrial complex\nwill change is if people with better values come to make up more of the\nmilitary. Maybe this will come to be the case as younger people see decreasing\nfuture job prospects and turn to the military as a career.\n\n~~~\npuppetmaster3\nInteresting that you imply that Left would like less war.\n\nIt seems to me that the progressives main thing is to tell and enforce how\nothers should live and behave, that is the core of the left, the other ideas\nare just branches. Evidence is the congress votes in USA by Left to start wars\nand votes by Taxed Enough Already (TEA) to defund the wars.\n\nIf you are anti war, I invite you to check out the Right, Libertarian POV.\n\n~~~\nthatfrenchguy\nThe left main thing is mostly about making sure there is a \"floor\", meaning\nthat even if you are poor and on min wage you don't die on the street or\nbankrupt at the first opportunity.\n\nUsually, countries where the right is in power (take the US for example) have\na terrible living for their poorest population.\n\nAnd this is not something you want because the guy having the shitty min wage\njob might tomorrow be you, one of your kids, your best friend, or someone in\nyour family.\n\n------\nkingkawn\nWar allows populations that don't share markets to still develop markets in\nrelationship to each other for weapons, infrastructure repair, etc.\n\n------\narca_vorago\nI have read through the comments, and it strikes me that I dont see more\ncombat vets on here. I knew some really smark hackers while I was in the\nMarine Corps, even though I was just a bullet sponge grunt in OIF/OEF.\n\nIt also gladens my heart just to see my favorite Marine, Smedley Butler, get\nsome \"air time\". It does dissapoint me that so many in the comments are making\nescuses for war as a profit or r&d center, or for war crimes prosecutions of\nwhat are essentially pawns on a grander chessboard.\n\nIn the Marine Corps, a lot of people have a hardon for Chesty Puller, but the\nphrase I used to use is \"If you like Chest more than Smedley you do the\ncountry and the Corps a disservice.\" Why? Because not only did Smedley Butler\nwake up and realize the true nature of the part he played, but he spoke out\nagainst it, and beyond that, something I havent seen mentioned yet but\nsomething I think is of the utmost importance is his thwarting of the business\nplot. His convressional hearing testimony is vital to understanding the modern\nracket of war, and now we have the unredacted version, (though still not his\nfull testimony, because it was heavily edited before even entering the\nrecord). If you havent read the unredacted testimony, I highly suggest it.\n\nAll that being said, war indeed is a racket, and it continues to be. The WFA\n(waste fraud and abuse) I saw in Iraq by contractors is barely the icing on\nthe racket cake. There is a reason that something like the richest three\ncounties in the US are in Virginia. The true racket though, is much larger\nthan the contractor world, and primarily involves banking and resource\noriented interests.\n\nI spent a long time voraciously reading anything I thought could help me\nunderstand the bigger geostrategic/political chessboard, and my primary\nconclusion about the wars were that resource wars are on the horizon, and the\nwars were destabilizing measures designed to contain China and Russia by\nprevention of resource pipelines being built to them. Take a look at the maps\nof resources and their pipelines...\n\nThe other factor is that the traditional nation state actor threat model is\nbeing upended by texhnology, to the point that the military industrial\ncongressional complex isadjusting very quickly.\n\nMy primary problem with this is how much the people of the US have been lied\nto and misled. If the United States has some interest in destabilizing an\narea, I would prefer that this just be said and the case be made outright,\ninstead of sending young dumb warriors like myself to die for causes they dont\nunderstand and are lied to about. You want to know where I feel like the\nprimary failure lies at? Every O-5 and above officer who just went along with\nit and didnt pushback against the Cheney, Bremer, Wolfowitz, Rumsfield bunch\nof Chicago school Straussian neocons backed by Kissinger and Brezenski. When\nyou cant tell me what my fucking objective is, how can I be expected to\naccomplish it?\n\nIn truth, where we are headed currently is a return to the tripolar world, but\nin this move, I think we will never fully understand the almost complete\nsubversion of our government that has happened at the behest of the\nglobalists. Smedley Butler caught a glimpse of the beast and had the courage\nto fight against it openly. He will continue to be my favorite Marine until I\ndie.\n\nOh, and for any of you touting the economic benefits of war, I hope you never\nare on the ground on either side when that benefit is being extracted by blood\nand corruption...\n\n------\nbasicplus2\nWar is always connected to money... here is an example..\n\n[http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwa...](http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwars.php#axzz42DJTMMFQ)\n\n~~~\nnotahacker\n>it is important to remember that prior to the creation of the Federal\nReserve, there was no such thing as a world war.\n\n> Although pre-war Germany had a private central bank, it was heavily\n> restricted and inflation kept to reasonable levels... So, in the media of\n> the day, Germany was portrayed as the prime opponent of World War One\n\nThe invasion of Russia, Belgium and France might have had something to do with\nit as well.\n\n> as early as 1933 they started to organize a global boycott against Germany\n> to strangle this upstart ruler who thought he could break free of private\n> central bankers [poster of \"Judea Declares war on Germany\" headline]\n\nCome on HN, we're better than this sort of nutjobbery.\n\n------\n345218435\ni am surprised butler got this far on hn. read this before the next elections.\nbefore the next assad. before your friends and relatives go on tours with the\ntroops.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Ligify iOS App – One-Tap Save or Share Your Live Photos as GIF or MOV - hboon\nhttps://itunes.apple.com/app/id1048863900\n======\nhboon\nI created an iOS app called Ligify that lets you one-tap convert your Live\nPhotos to GIF/MOV for easier sharing. It was previously called Lively. I also\nwrote a little story about the idea behind the app and why it was renamed:\n\n[http://hboon.com/story-behind-ligify-one-tap-save-or-\nshare-y...](http://hboon.com/story-behind-ligify-one-tap-save-or-share-your-\nlive-photos-as-gif-or-mov/)\n\nCouple of promo codes:\n\nJYHHJTA4EXJY\n\n63636APWYTPP\n\nY43P4MJ66J79\n\nPPFFYTPKLKE4\n\nJ9J6ARKPKHFJ\n\nKMT7PXW4F6W4\n\nPJRP7A4P6M3H\n\nFLY9XX3JKXEW\n\nJ63HJP973AL9\n\nJEK6F94AAKRA\n\n~~~\nrevorad\nThanks for the promo code!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHunting down Ken's PDP-7: video footage found - bsdimp\nhttps://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2019/10/video-footage-of-first-pdp-7-to-run-unix.html\n======\nfolkhack\nMan stuff I love stuff like this - what a trip. Reminds me a lot of Xerox's\nmother of all demos (in the same year 1968). These animations/graphics have\nsuch a wonderful feel to them that are still compelling and interesting in\n2019 =)\n\nWhat an amazing video.\n\n~~~\nmaartenh\nAre you referring to Doug Engelbart's demo of the Online System (NLS) [1]? He\nwas at SRI at the moment. The things that happened at Xerox after that were\ninspired by NLS, and build by some of the people that worked on it.\n\n[1]\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos)\n\n~~~\nfolkhack\nThat's the one! This early stuff gives me chills man - I'm so into it.\nPioneers of a new era =)\n\n------\nacqq\n\"this film features the song \"Daisy\" sung by a computer, a plot point that\nwould feature heavily in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.\"\n\nThe mentioned Bell Labs film is apparently from 1968, but it seems that the\nDaisy song inspired Clarke already in 1962 and 2001 was already made before\nthat film and released in April 1968:\n\n[https://kottke.org/06/04/hal-daisy-2001](https://kottke.org/06/04/hal-\ndaisy-2001)\n\n\"In 1962, Arthur C. Clarke was touring Bell Labs when he heard a demonstration\nof a song sung by an IBM 704 computer programmed by physicist John L. Kelly.\nThe song, the first ever performed by a computer, was called “Daisy Bell”,\nmore commonly known as “Bicycle Built for Two” or “Daisy, Daisy”.\"\n\n------\n14\nWow what a video and the whole time I was saying this is 1968. Incredible. So\nmany things I forget half of them. A digital stylus on a CRT display with real\ntime input able to change the program on the fly and run simulations to test\nsaid programs. I saw what really reminded me of the Matrix drop text effect\nhowever it was on the horizontal. Computer speech and programing the various\nsounds. And Finally, at 14:27 in the video someone please chime in here are\nthey showing a QR code back in the day? They show what looks to be a QR code\nwhile talking about how computers will allow us to communicate visually in\nways we can yet to imagine. Very cool video I recommend the short watch.\n\n~~~\nbsdimp\nIt's not QR code, per se, but something quite similar...\n\n------\ndijksterhuis\nI really enjoyed that video. Soundtrack was brill\n\n------\nvaxman\n<sniffle>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIf there was one thing you could tell your 21 year old self, what would it be? - vinod_s19\n\n\n======\nascendantlogic\n1) Be smarter with your money 2) Corporations are not your friends, don't kill\nyourself for low pay expecting them to \"get you back\" 3) You don't really need\nthat 11th beer.\n\n------\ntjr\nBuy stock in Apple instead of that 12\" iBook.\n\n------\nkjs3\nDon't marry her.\n\n------\nJoeAltmaier\nRide your bike every day\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMy view on the current situation of Bitcoin and the Blockchain - chejazi\nhttp://joi.ito.com/weblog/2016/02/22/my-view-on-the-.html\n======\npash\nBrian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, wrote a blog post [0] today that gives a\nvery different take on things. He criticized Bitcoin Core's development team\nfor their poor communication with the community, for their inhospitality to\nnew contributors, and for their repeated rejection of practical and simple\nsolutions to Bitcoin's immediate scaling problem. He advocated adopting\nBitcoin Classic's short-term fix for full transaction blocks and wrote that it\nis vital in the long term to foster an environment in which multiple\ndevelopment teams can compete to introduce new features and improvements to\nthe protocol.\n\nThere are many people in the Bitcoin ecosystem who, like Brian, feel strongly\nthat if Bitcoin is to survive and thrive, then not only must the blocksize-\nlimit be increased, but the exclusive power to decide the future of Bitcoin\nmust be taken out of the hands of the Bitcoin Core team.\n\n0\\. [https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-\nsatoshi-...](https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-satoshi-\nroundtable-6c11a10d8cdf#.xw7emyjhh)\n\n~~~\nfsiefken\nYes, but there are also people - like Bram Cohen - who view Coinbase, Bitcoin\nClassic and others as a hostile agents attempting to take over control. Also\nsee: [https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-community-on-\nbrink-o...](https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-community-on-brink-of-\ninsanity/)\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11228807](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11228807)\n\n~~~\nnotlukejr\nBram Cohen has always hated Bitcoin.\n\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/41exno/bram_cohen_hate...](https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/41exno/bram_cohen_hated_bitoin/)\n\nWhich makes it strange how in 2015 he suddenly took an interest in Bitcoin and\n(1) supports everything Blockstream is doing (2) writes blog posts attacking\nlong-time Bitcoin contributors like Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen.\n\nPerhaps Bram Cohen is \"consulting\" for Blockstream? They admit they spent over\n$10m+ in their first 12 months of operations in 2015 which is a high burn rate\nconsidering how few full-time employees (\"founders\") they had during that\ntime.\n\n~~~\nnullc\nBram Cohen doesn't hate Bitcoin. He's fascinated by it and someone skeptical\nof its future; when you attack people for having moderate views that\nacknowledge real risks and limitations you increase the perception of Bitcoin\nas a ponzi scheme.\n\nBram, like almost all other technical experts holds a collection of views that\nyou disagree with. He's never been paid by Blockstream.\n\nYour claim with respect to blockstream's finances are incorrect, and you know\nthey are incorrect since you were previously corrected on them; I can only\nassume that you're continuing to repeat them in an effort to intentionally\ndefame Blockstream. You should stop.\n\n------\nadrianmacneil\nI feel like that's giving the Bitcoin Core developers a bit too much credit.\n\n> When asked \"can you scale this?\" They said, \"we'll do the best we can.\" That\n> wasn't good enough for many, especially those who don't understand the\n> architecture or the nature of what is going on inside of Bitcoin.\n\nThe larger issue is that some of the core developers don't want to scale\nBitcoin at all. They would rather have a more decentralized, less widely used\nBitcoin. There is no right answer here of course, but many companies and VCs\nbet their future on a widely used, less decentralized version of Bitcoin (i.e.\none where it's hard to run a Bitcoin server on a home internet connection,\nmuch like SMTP today).\n\n> Many people call them \"Bitcoin Core\" as if they are some sort of company you\n> can fire or a random set of developers with skills that you can just train\n> others to acquire.\n\nThey called themselves Bitcoin Core, and even went so far as to create a\nseparate website and have started branding the reference client as Bitcoin\nCore.\n\n> It feels like while the Bitcoin Core development community is robust, the\n> ecosystem of stakeholders and the understanding of how decisions are made\n> and information is shared is still fragile and vulnerable.\n\nThe real issue is that Bitcoin has no \"official\" governance, so it's resulting\nin design-by-committee and stalemate on key decisions. The project needs a\nBDFL, but since it has none it will fail to keep pace with innovation in the\nspace. Unlike most internet protocols, the consensus layer prevents anyone\nfrom effectively forking the project, without creating a whole separate\nblockchain (unless they can convince 100% of the community to follow them).\n\nLuckily, we are starting to see more innovation and competition in the\nblockchain space, with Ethereum being by far the most interesting newcomer IMO\n(and run by a competent team with a clear governance structure).\n\n~~~\nzanny\n> the consensus layer prevents anyone from effectively forking the project\n\nThis isn't true, as soon as 51% of clients are trying to push \"new\" blocks not\nrecognized by the old client old clients cannot recognize them and the chain\nforks. This has happened several times in the past, but we have never seen\nanything like Classic where it was a version increment out of the Core tree\nthat is set to break old clients.\n\n~~~\nikeboy\nSeveral times in the past?\n\nAFAIK there's only been one hard fork,\n[https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0050.mediawi...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0050.mediawiki)\n\nThat was accidental, and was reverted as soon as people realized. Someone\npushed through a $10,000 double-spend in the meantime.\n\nOther than that, I don't think any hardforks have taken place.\n\n~~~\nmakomk\nThere was technically a second hard fork a couple of months after the\naccidental one in order to carry out the change that caused the first one in a\nmore controlled and planned manner. Sticking with the existing code was not an\noption for technical reasons: \"This would be an issue even if the entire\nnetwork was running version 0.7.2. It is theoretically possible for one 0.7.2\nnode to create a block that others are unable to validate, or for 0.7.2 nodes\nto create block re-orgs that peers cannot validate, because the contents of\neach node's blkindex.dat database is not identical, and the number of locks\nrequired depends on the exact arrangement of the blkindex.dat on disk (locks\nare acquired per-page).\"\n\nAlso, there was technically also one way back in 2010 to fix an integer\noverflow bug that allowed large amounts of BTC to be created from thin air:\n[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=823.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=823.0)\n\n~~~\nikeboy\nI've seen bitcoin developers saying that wasn't really a hard fork because the\nprevious behavior wasn't well defined.\n\nThe second is a soft fork, not a hard fork.\n\n------\nAnimats\nThe impressive thing about Bitcoin is that it works well despite many attempts\nto break it. That's so rare in computing. The basic concept was well worked\nout.\n\nSome of the people in the financial community just want a shared ledger\nbetween the big players that doesn't require a separate organization to run\nit. That's simpler than creating a shared trusted organization, like the\nDepository Trust Company. Those systems are consensus ledgers where known\nparties each have a vote. There's no proof of work, and it's not a currency\nsystem. That's unrelated to Bitcoin, but it's taken seriously because Bitcoin\nhasn't been broken.\n\nThe \"current situation of Bitcoin\" mostly seems to involve a dispute over\nblock size. At the moment, some denial of service attack is creating large\nnumbers of tiny transactions and causing a transaction backlog. Transactions\nwhich specify a higher fee get through OK, apparently.\n\nThe \"core developers\" think they have a voice in how Bitcoin works, but in\nfact, the three top mining pools in China have well over 50% of the mining\npower and decide what happens.\n\nToo many Bitcoin exchanges are still run by crooks. Anyone knowing the\nwhereabouts of \"Big Vern\", Cryptsy's CEO, should contact the Silver Law Firm,\nwhich is suing him.\n\nAnd that's Bitcoin today.\n\n------\nwoah\nReading this, it seems that the author does not understand Bitcoin,\nblockchains, BFT consensus, or indeed computer programming. He acts as if the\npeople working on Bitcoin are some kind of mages with arcane knowledge that\nnobody else has. They are simply well-versed in a very quirky distributed\ndatabase.\n\n~~~\nschmichael\n> some kind of mages with arcane knowledge that nobody else has. They are\n> simply well-versed in a very quirky distributed database.\n\nBeing well-versed in very quirky distributed databases absolutely makes you a\nmage with arcane knowledge.\n\nEdit to expand: being an expert in bitcoin requires understanding distributed\ndatabases, distributed consensus, cryptography, bytecode interpreters, and\nhaving some knowledge of economics probably wouldn't hurt.\n\nBeing an expert in any one of these things is more than enough to get you a\ngreat career. Being an expert in all of them operating cooperatively is...\npretty arcane knowledge.\n\n~~~\nlazaroclapp\nTo be fair, most bitcoin developers are likely to be experts in one or two of\nthose things and just reasonably conversant in the others. Satoshi's paper was\npretty clear on the consensus and the crypto, but sort of hand-waved the\nnetwork, for example. It is my understanding that there have been significant\nimprovements to the security of bitcoin's P2P network since then...\n\n------\napi\n\"They often view the people working on Bitcoin as a bunch of crazy\nLibertarians who came up with a cool idea but believe that a bunch of hired\nguns could put the same thing together given enough money.\"\n\nThis is my favorite point.\n\nThere's a _lot_ of people out there who think \"sure, yeah, hacker types can\nprototype creative stuff but anything they do can be done better by Serious\nPeople with Serious Degrees.\"\n\nThe history of the original PC revolution is the history of that being proven\nwrong. In the 70s and 80s all the Serious People with Serious Degress from the\nRight Schools worked for IBM, HP, and other mainframe vendors and made 2-3\ntimes as much as the hackers who drove them into the ground with radically\ncheaper and eventually better products.\n\nDue to its low capital costs, IT/CS is an inherently radically meritocratic\nindustry. Someone with no college degree can show up an expert by actually\n_delivering_ something superior... if they can, that is, and there are enough\nwho can that it happens fairly often.\n\nIf anything the pattern that I see in this industry is that the indie hackers\nare ahead of the curve. They're the ones who prototype the hard stuff and\nsolve the hard problems. The Serious People take up the rear, coming in later\nand building out and scaling what's already been done. They're the regular\narmy, not the special forces. Serious People run the Internet now but they\ndidn't build it... if it had been left up to them it would be a byzantine OSI\nnetwork run by telcos and we'd still be using text terminals (with limited\ngraphics maybe) for $1/minute.\n\n------\nfsiefken\nI read: \"It feels like while the Bitcoin Core development community is robust,\nthe ecosystem of stakeholders and the understanding of how decisions are made\nand information is shared is still fragile and vulnerable. I fear that the\ncommunication and now emotional rift between various key groups and\nindividuals is wide right now, but I believe it's imperative that we try to\nbring the community together and focus on executing on a shared technical plan\nthat represents our best shot at broad consensus from both a technical and a\npractical perspective.\"\n\nIt reads like a response on the Bitcoin situation describted in the Jan 14\nMedium article by Mike Hearn on the \"Resolution of the Bitcoin experiment\".\nProblems resulting in the rift between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin\nClassic and Bitcoin Unlimited. [https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-\nof-the-bitcoin...](https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-\nbitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7)\n\nHe seems to suggest Ethereum and Bitcoin alternatives cannot yet replace\nBitcoin Core as it is robust and battle tested as he writes: \"If you're\nserious about security and stability -- and you should be -- Bitcoin is almost\nthe only choice with the largest bounty, and largest community, with the most\npractical modern experience deploying to a broad and active network in the\nreal world.\"\n\nBut is Bitcoin the only choice and are the bitcoin stability problems outlined\nby Mike Hearn and others an \"idee fixe\" or just a dispute over blocksize?\n\n------\nmathattack\nIs it correct to call it a $6.5 billion bounty? Once Bitcoin is hacked, the\nvalue of all the coins go to 0, no? Who would accept them knowing they could\nlose them so easily.\n\n~~~\ndetaro\nWhat do you mean by \"once Bitcoin is hacked\"?\n\n~~~\nschmichael\nUsing context from the article I think the commenter and article author are\nboth referring to attacks (like a 51% attack or an unthought of new attack)\nwhere coins can effectively be stolen.\n\n~~~\nchejazi\nGood point, attacks on mining were probably what was being referred to here.\nSpecifically because one of the counterarguments to the blocksize increase was\nthat it promoted centralized mining, increasing the odds of a 51% attack.\n\nI'll leave my other comment in this tree as food for thought, because Bitcoin\nhas definitely driven research in cryptography. But it's the least likely\nattack vector.\n\n------\ndanbruc\nBitcoin is a solution in search for a real problem that it can solve better\nthan other solutions. That's the situation, IMHO.\n\n~~~\nChemicalWarfare\nI'm mixing merchant's and end user's perspectives here - no chargebacks, low\ntx fees, no need to share sensitive data with anyone, easy p2p transactions,\nno cross border tx fees, few other things.\n\n~~~\nsanswork\nNo chargebacks - this is a huge negative for users\n\nLow tx fees - most users currently don't see tx fees with most payment\nsystems. Bitcoin puts them on the user.\n\nSensitive data - if you consider a credit card number sensitive you are doing\nit wrong. They are designed to be easy to replace if compromised and even then\nnew technology is making single use numbers common.\n\nEasy - which is why sorryforyourloss is a thing. Bitcoin is confusing for most\npeople and difficult to secure for everyone.\n\nCross border - unless you need local currency\n\n~~~\nNatanael_L\nMultisignature transactions with mutually trusted arbitrators.\n\nPayment channels.\n\nNo need to worry about replacing any numbers, your software does it for you.\n\nHardware wallets, etc... Use your brain, common sense prevents the majority of\nlosses.\n\n~~~\ndanbruc\n_Multisignature transactions with mutually trusted arbitrators._\n\nWhy then mine in the first place, you just reintroduced trusted parties?\n\n _Hardware wallets, etc... Use your brain, common sense prevents the majority\nof losses._\n\nIf you are careful enough, everything is fine almost by definition. But a\ngood, i.e. user friendly, system is one that lets you make mistakes without\nhurting you too badly. Therefore asking what to do in order to be fine is kind\nof the wrong question, one should better ask with what kind of stupidity you\ncan still get away.\n\n~~~\nNatanael_L\nBecause they only need to be trusted until the transaction is complete. Banks\nmust be trusted in perpetuity. The trust model is much stronger when any\nbreach of trust can lead to instant reaction, moving all funds away in seconds\nand blacklisting them.\n\nThat's why friendlier hardware and software wallets are being developed, and\nprotocols to automate most of the tedious work.\n\nLook at for example the payments protocol with the ability to verify the\nidentity of the seller (via TLS certificates), transmit your delivery address\nand get a digitally signed receipt in one click. With support for extensions\nit can even do things like silently negotiate for who to use as a trusted\narbitrator and the time period for settlement (after X time without it being\ncontested, the seller can withdraw the money without need for interaction).\n\nBitcoin can emulate everything banks do, and still have far stronger security\nguarantees.\n\nBanks simply can not do the same without adopting public cryptographic logs\nlike that of Bitcoin.\n\n------\nguelo\nThe reason I sold all my bitcoin is that the blocksize impasse started\nsmelling like corruption to me. The interests of Chinese miners seems to have\nundue influence. If Bitcoin Core doesn't have the interest of the whole\ncommunity then there's no trust. And without trust the whole scheme falls\napart.\n\n------\ndavidw\nAs someone who is a curious outsider to the whole bitcoin thing, the more I\nread all the bickering, the more I think \"I'm going to stay away until they've\ngot things figured out\". After all, I'd be getting in to use the technology,\nrather than attempt speculate on its value.\n\n------\nmy5thaccount\nIt's ironic that a currency designed to solve the problems of currencies\ncontrolled by human beings is now suffering the very same problems that caused\nall the fiat currencies before it to fail.\n\nHuman beings are the problem.\n\n~~~\ncortesoft\nAll fiat currencies before have failed? I am pretty sure ere are lots of fiat\ncurrencies that are doing just fine (like the dollar, which has never failed)\n\n~~~\nmy5thaccount\nRight, yes, I always forget about the dollar! The dollar will be the one to\nprove them all wrong!\n\n~~~\ncortesoft\nHow long does something have to last before it is considered a success?\n\n------\nHoushalter\nThe other day I was alarmed to learn that bitcoin may be killing as many as\none person every day.\n\nThat's based on this gwern estimate of the number of deaths caused by the\nfolding@home project:\n[http://www.gwern.net/Charity%20is%20not%20about%20helping](http://www.gwern.net/Charity%20is%20not%20about%20helping)\n\nIf you assume that bitcoin uses 10x more computing power than folding, and it\nuses most of it in China which has far worse pollution, than the estimate\ncomes to 340 deaths per year. That's just direct deaths, who knows how much\ndamage is caused by indirect damage and the long term impact of those wasted\nresources.\n\n~~~\nCyberDildonics\nImagine how many people per year air conditioning kills?\n\nSurely you don't really buy into such an enormous logical fallacy?\n\n~~~\nHoushalter\nHow is it a logical fallacy? Do you see any errors with my math? Are you\nsaying that it doesn't kill people?\n\nIt is true that air conditioning kills people and contributes greatly to\npollution. That's why there have been a lot of attempts to reduce its use. But\nbitcoin is way worse. Fortunately far fewer people use it than air\nconditioning. According to this article, a single bitcoin transaction uses as\nmuch energy as a 1.5 households use in a day:\n[https://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-is-\nunsustainable](https://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-is-unsustainable)\n\n~~~\nCyberDildonics\nHow many people per year does your computer kill?\n\n------\nbaconizer\nI can relate to author's opinion on block chain VC hype, but not so sure about\ncomparing Bitcoin to the Internet, at least yet...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHarvesting rare-earth metals from the moon will happen this century, NASA chief - pseudolus\nhttps://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/18/nasa-chief-bridenstine-on-harvesting-rare-earth-metals-from-the-moon.html\n======\nPhilWright\nEarth: Dig a hole in Australia/China and process it to get rare-earth metals.\n\nMoon: Use multiple rocket launches to boost equipment and people to the Moon.\nDig a hole and process it to get rare-earth metals. Send people and metals\nback to earth.\n\nHard to see how the Moon version could ever be price competitive. Even if you\ncould pick up rocks of pure rare-earths I do not think it would be cheaper.\nStill, makes for an easy headline for a NASA chief I suppose.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n‘Human computer’ Shakuntala Devi has died - sindhiparsani\nhttp://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/mathematical-genius-shakuntala-devi-no-more/article4640134.ece\n======\nshared4you\nI feel that she was a child-genius like Ramanujan, but was unfortunate to be\nnot \"discovered\" by a mentor like G.H.Hardy. She had great memorization skills\nand logical thinking, so obviously excelled at writing puzzles' books. It's a\npity that her contributions to modern mathematics is zilch. I still wonder why\ndidn't she take up number theory. She went into astrology (yea, not\nastronomy), which is still debated as a pseudo-science. She could've done so\nmuch, but alas it's too late now. But well, each person to his own, each\n-ology to itself. RIP.\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\nI don't think astrology is _debated_ as a pseudo-science.\n\n~~~\nfareesh\n+1, astrology is the poster child for pseudo-science.\n\n------\nwging\n>Rated as one in 58 million for her stupendous mathematical feats by one of\nthe fastest super-computers ever invented —the Univac — 1108 —, Ms. Devi\nbelieved in using grey cells to silicon chips.\n\nThis is somewhat unclear. Wikipedia clears up what's probably meant here:\n\n>In 1977 in Dallas she competed with a computer to see who give the cube root\nof 188138517 faster. She won. At an American university she was asked to give\nthe 23rd root of\n91674867692003915809866092758538016248310668014430862240712651642793465704086709659\n3279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305\n620821016129132845564805780158806771. She answered in 50 seconds. Her answer\nof 546372891 took a UNIVAC 1108 computer a full minute (10 seconds more) to\nconfirm that she was right after it was fed with 13000 instructions.\n\n~~~\nscoot\nDid she ever document her mental process for these sorts of feats? I mean, I\ndoubt I could come up with the correct answer given an unlimited time, a ream\nof paper, and a pocket calculator, so I'm fascinated how she did. Was she very\ngood at complex math, or did she leverage a huge working memory to split the\nproblem up into a larger number of simpler calculations, or some other\ncombination of factors?\n\n~~~\nArikBe\nThis is somewhat related. I remember watching an episode of \"Stan Lee's Super\nhumans\" on the Discovery channel. They were with a man who was also able to do\nlightning fast calculations, not of the complexity as described in the\narticle, but he could easily recall dates, multiply 5 digit numbers faster\nthan someone with a calculator etc.\n\nThey put this man under an MRI scanner while giving him problems to solve.\nWhat they noticed was an unusually high activity in a part of the brain that\nis responsible for eye movement. So – perhaps not very scientifically\nresponsible – the neurologist offered the explanation that he was using a part\nof his brain that is normally used to solve complex mathematics subconsciously\nin order to position our eyes properly throughout the day. Apparently this\nmotor movement is very complex and he was leveraging the ability of this area\nto solve these arithmetic problems and engage in pattern matching in order to\nrecollect past dates.\n\n~~~\nLeszek\nSo like GPGPU, but with specialised parts of the brain instead? That's pretty\ncool.\n\n------\narocks\nShakuntala Devi had also inspired an entire generation to read and understand\nher books about recreational mathematics. Her books like 'Puzzles to Puzzle\nYou' were used to prepare for interviews in IT companies which used to have\nseveral rounds of puzzle solving.\n\nShe would probably be the last human (that I am aware of) who could beat a\ncomputer in arithmetic.\n\n------\nmanojlds\nI was enthralled as a child reading her books -\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi#Books>\n\n~~~\nramblerman\n\"The World of Homosexuals\"\n\nWhat's that one about?\n\n~~~\nmanojlds\nHa Ha I didn't read that one as a child, but I gather it is a very small book\nwhich is more of an interview.\n\n------\nfractallyte\nIt's ironic that the article got her year of birth wrong: 1929 instead of\n1939.\n\n~~~\ngngeal\nThat's still a better uptime than any computer I've ever seen! (Come to think\nof it, with my health and with my luck, that's a better uptime than my mortal\nsolenoid is probably ever going to have... :/)\n\n------\ngcanyon\nCalculating 23rd roots is a different story, but finding the day of the week\nfor any date isn't actually that hard. John Conway came up with a manageable\nmethod, which was improved a few years back. I think I've simplified it a bit\nfurther: [http://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/a-better-way-to-\ncalc...](http://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/a-better-way-to-calculate-\nthe-day-of-the-week/)\n\n------\naut0mat0n1c\nIt is by will alone I set my mind in motion....\n\n~~~\nnerdshark\nIt is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed...\n\n------\nAlex3917\nWould she have been eligible for James Randi's million dollars?\n\n~~~\nsaalweachter\nJames Randi is looking for the supernatural, not the superhuman. Usain Bolt is\nalso not eligible.\n\n------\nmstdokumaci\nand non-human computers are still alive. so\n\n------\nhawkw\nI hope they weren't running any mission-critical software on her...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIs graphene a miracle material? - fun2have\nhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9491789.stm\n======\nCoffeeDregs\nGraphene and, more generally, carbon nanotubes are exciting because they have\nsomething-for-everyone. Silicon, plastics, water are examples of molecules or\nstructures that have also been spun into important applications for just about\nevery vertical. I suspect we'll seem carbon nanotube products explode over the\nnext 20 years just as plastics did over the last 40.\n\nThe article focuses a bit on whether graphene can replace silicon, which I\nthink kind of misses the point. The material will enable exciting _new_\napplications rather than merely transforming existing ones.\n\nI'm also kinda bummed that this kind of research doesn't have a higher profile\nin the US. This is high-ass-tech and is probably an area in which our oil\ncompanies could play a very large role with their competencies at running\nlarge, highly complex, raw material production systems.\n\n~~~\nSwellJoe\nReading this article brought to mind this scene in _The Graduate_ :\n\nMr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.\n\nBenjamin: Yes, sir.\n\nMr. McGuire: Are you listening?\n\nBenjamin: Yes, I am.\n\nMr. McGuire: Plastics.\n\nBenjamin: Exactly how do you mean?\n\nSo, I'm wondering how and where I should be investing to take advantage of\nthis materials revolution. Seems like a pretty obvious bet to make, but it\nseems to be spread across many companies and with an indeterminate schedule\n(some say 5 years, some say 10, some say \"we don't know\"). And, more\nimportantly, so many of the companies involved are too big for one product or\neven one line of products to make a huge dent in their bottom line. I've\ninvested in IBM and Intel in the past based on research in the pipeline, and\nwhile the products did come to fruition and did prove to be good for the\ncompanies bottom line, the stock market didn't respond as much as one would\nhope (but probably about what I should have expected, had I really done the\nanalysis of how it would effect their bottom line).\n\nI'm not sure I follow you on the oil companies, though. Sure, they've been a\nmajor player in the plastics pipeline forever, but, if graphene isn't made\nfrom petroleum derivatives, I'm not sure it is a natural fit for oil\ncompanies. I would say the folks building LCD panels and other silicon-based\nproducts are the obvious candidates for some graphene products (and Samsung\nseems to be near the front of the pack in products based on graphene)...but\nmaybe it'll be some other segment altogether (solar panel makers like Sharp\nand Kyocera, perhaps?).\n\nWhatever happens, I want in, at least as an investor. So, I guess next time I\nreview my portfolio (which currently contains GOOG and nothing else) I'm gonna\ndo some more research on graphene. It's probably not a big rush to find the\nright companies...since it'll be a very long bet, anyway.\n\n~~~\nCoffeeDregs\nActually, The Graduate was exactly what I was thinking as I was typing my\ncomment. ;)\n\nEdit: didn't reply to the bigger point about oil companies. I kinda threw that\nout there as a quick thought and agree with you that the semiconductor, semi-\nco materials, or LCD guys might be better positioned. That said, few companies\nare as good at gathering, refining, processing and shipping gigatons of carbon\nas the oil companies.\n\n~~~\njerf\n\"That said, few companies are as good at gathering, refining, processing and\nshipping gigatons of carbon\"\n\nThat's abstracting too far. The food industry ships around gigatons of carbon\ntoo, which is just as \"graphenic\" as oil, namely, zero. Pencil manufacturers\n_actually_ use graphene, but it seems unlikely they're going to lead this\ndrive either.\n\n~~~\nnazar\nI thought pencil manufacturers actually use graphite. From the article I\nunderstand that graphene pencil is only useful to write on steel sheets.\n\n~~~\njerf\nI had been led to believe by previous articles such as [1] that graphite\ncontains graphene, albeit in small quantities and not in a useful state. The\nprocess of trying to produce a link to substantiate this has left me less sure\nwhether it \"contains\" graphene, or if it merely can produce it under the\ncircumstances described in the article. Given what it is and how much carbon\ngets around on this planet, it is perhaps hard to say what \"contains\" graphene\nin the first place, in much the same way I'm often a bit annoyed when someone\ncounts every oxygen and two hydrogens anywhere in a compound as \"water\",\nregardless of how tied up they are.\n\n[1]:\n[http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_702926...](http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_702926.html)\n\n------\nFleursDuMal\nI have an encyclopedia from the 1950's at home with a page entitled \"Asbestos\n- the new wonder material\".\n\n~~~\nmkramlich\nI was thinking similarly. Based on past history, I expect them to rush to find\nall sorts of short-term profitable applications for it, build new products\naround it, and not really look at things like negative health or environmental\nconsequences. There just isn't as much money to be made by finding reasons not\nto use it as there is in finding reasons to use it.\n\n~~~\nrcxdude\nwell, it is basically graphite, just with more consistent microstructure. I'm\nhaving a hard time thinking of ways in which it could be worse than graphite\nin terms of health or environmental concerns.\n\n~~~\ndfox\nAlthough it is not exactly proven, one can assume that asbestos' toxicity is\nrelated not to it's chemical properties but to physical geometry of particles\nof asbestos dust which seem similar to dust that you would get from carbon\nnanotubes. On the other hand, there is quite significant question whether this\nactually is problem (even in asbestos case) given right uses and technologies.\n\n------\nSapient\nOptical computers, genetic catalogs, nanorepair modules--forget all of that.\nIt's when you see a megaton of steel suspended over your head by a thread the\nthickness of a human hair that you really find God in technology.\n\n* Anonymous Metagenics Dockworker - MorganLink 3DVision Live Interview\n\n~~~\nMrJagil\nI hate to be that guy but:\n\n\"megaton |ˈmegəˌtən|\n\nnoun\n\na unit of explosive power chiefly used for nuclear weapons, equivalent to one\nmillion tons of TNT\"\n\n~~~\nBud\nYou're being that guy. Plus, you're wrong.\n\nMega- is a standard SI prefix, and the use of \"megaton\" to denote one million\ntons is entirely correct. Yes, it's also true that \"megaton\" has a second\nmeaning. This fact does not invalidate its other meaning. In fact, if you\nbother looking this up in actual dictionaries, you'll find that the normal\nmass definition is often listed first, and the explosive definition is listed\nsecond, for what it's worth.\n\n~~~\nMrJagil\nWow, sorry man. Didn't mean to waste your time/bother you. I just looked it up\nin the dictionary I had handy, as the wording seemed strange to me.\n\nIn any case, I am glad I learned something new today!\n\n~~~\nmattmanser\nIt's also a quote from the computer game Alpha Centauri.\n\n------\nCognitiveLens\nIf IBM can make a 150 GHz graphene transistor, why does Dr Phaedon Avouris, of\nIBM, say that it cannot replace silicon? Isn't clock frequency a measure of\nthe transistor's ability to turn on _and off_ quickly?\n\n~~~\nori_b\nThere's so much more than clock frequency. The place silicon shines isn't so\nmuch it's material properties for producing individual switches - they're\ngood, but there's better out there.\n\nIt's the raw manufacturability that silicon has. It's by far the easiest\nmaterial to work with. It's abundant, cheap, and easy to obtain. It's got\nproperties that lend it to easy junction doping and easy annealing. It's easy\nto deposit new layers on top of etched silicon. It's got a lattice that\nmatches up nicely with the materials you'd want to use for contacts.\n\nIn short, the advantages of silicon aren't in it's ability to make\ntransistors. It's in it's ability to make transistors while on a high volume\nassembly line.\n\nIt's going to be a while if we see whether graphene can match silicon for\nthat.\n\n~~~\nredthrowaway\nHow much of the ease of using silicon is due to its inherent properties, and\nhow much is due to the many billions that have been sunk into R&D?\n\n~~~\nUnseelie\nI'm going to hazard that a lot is based on inherent properties. probably\n'most' of the ease. They were mucking around with silicon computers with\nbasically hobby chemistry sets back in the fifties and sixties, where today,\nwith some of the best materials science we have, we're only able to manipulate\ngraphene on the nanoscale..\n\n------\nschmittz\nIt's weird that this article mentions the problem of graphene lacking a\nsemiconducting form and then fails to mention carbon nanotubes at all. I don't\ndo research in this area, so I'm unaware, but it seems that much more work is\ncurrently being done with CNTs than graphene.\n\n------\nFrojoS\nThere is currently a 1 billion Euro proposal for a grant on graphene research\nin the EU. [1] But the decision will not be made before the end of 2012.\n\n[http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110308/full/news.2011.143.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110308/full/news.2011.143.html)\n\nedit: Sorry, not to much new information here. They also mention it in the\noriginal submission.\n\n------\nSeoxyS\nI want clothing embedded with sheets of Graphene. Imagine the protection! I\nride a motorcycle, which is one of the most dangerous daily activities one can\ndo, and something that exhibits these properties could save me a lot of pain\nin wearing armored gear etc.\n\nThere are also a range of applications in the military and security\nindustries.\n\n~~~\nicegreentea\nIsn't most of motorcycle safety designed to a) make sure no part of you\ncatches the ground and b) spread out the energy as much as possible (spatially\nand temporally)? Cause I don't think just sheets of graphene would be very\ngood at dealing with energy dissipation. You might not be able to break the\ngraphene sheets, but the energy would just transfer through to your body.\n\n~~~\nSeoxyS\nIf the sheet of graphene can't be pierced, it would protect from the most\ncommon mild injury in motorcycle accidents: road rash. (Right?) It'd prevent\ndirect contact with the road, it'd prevent your clothing being ripped off and\nyour skin being turned into ground meat.\n\nNot that I really know what I'm talking about, but that was my line of\nthinking…\n\n~~~\nhugh3\nA sheet of graphene is one atomic layer thick. It's _very_ easy to tear apart\nor pierce with any macroscopic object.\n\n~~~\ngeon\nA \"sheet\" doesn't neccesarily refer to the molecular structure. In this\ncontex, it would mean several layers composited together.\n\n~~~\nhugh3\nSeveral layers of graphene put together is graphite, and it's pretty non-\nmagical.\n\n------\ncagenut\nCoincidentally, news out today of some impressive research results on using\ngraphene in li-ion batteries:\n<http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/05/chang-20110521.html>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Quick apply to any online job application - thekyle\nhttps://jobs.hoxly.com/\n======\nthekyle\nHi HN, A few months ago I was applying to internships and noticed that most\nonline job applications are rather tedious and repetitive. They often involve\ncreating an account, uploading your resume, and then copy and pasting\ndifferent parts of your resume into a form (education, work history, skills,\ncertifications, etc.). I assume this is done so that the hiring manager never\nactually needs to look at the uploaded resumes and to making automatic\nscreening of candidates easier.\n\nSome job search sites offer “Quick apply” where you fill out all of your\ninformation once and then apply to participating jobs with one click. However,\nthe number of supported job applications is quite limited and there’s a good\nchance jobs you’re interested in won’t support the feature.\n\nSo that’s why I created Hoxly Jobs which offers universal quick apply to any\njob application available online.\n\n------\nCoreFailure\nReally cool idea! Good revenue model too, I can easily see $1/job being an\neasy value proposition.\n\nOne thing that gives me pause as a prospective user is that I don't know what\nwill happen if there's any \"essay response\" style questions in the job app.\nGiven that the jobs I'm paying to apply to are probably jobs I'm interested\nin, I'm less likely to risk using it on an interesting looking job.\n\nThat said, I really dig the minimal look of this website. The gifs are a great\nway to show program flow and are much easier to read than a jumbotron.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA Geometric Intuition for Linear Discriminant Analysis - OmarShehata\nhttps://omarshehata.github.io/lda-explorable/\n======\nBernardTatin\nA very good and pleasant lesson!\n\n~~~\nOmarShehata\nThank you! It's the sort of thing I wish I knew when I was first learning\nabout it, but didn't have the time to investigate deeper at the time, so I\nhope it reaches those who need it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLinkedIn Hits 300 Million Users - talhof8\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2014/04/18/linkedin-hits-300-million-users/\n\n======\nbhartzer\nMore like 299 million fake and unused accounts and 1 million real accounts.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA new way of rendering particles - plurby\nhttp://www.simppa.fi/blog/the-new-particle/\n======\nCyberDildonics\nThis is extremely unlikely to be a good technique (and it isn't new) but here\nare two alternatives. Even in the demo video, beneath the lens flares and\nother excess, the particles are aliasing like crazy.\n\nFirst of all, particles like this are usually only a few pixels in size, so\nthe shape doesn't really matter as much as the area. Because of this, I don't\nthink there is much gained, but there is a lot lost since it aliases so badly.\n\nRenderman actually creates particles as two bilinear patches that make up the\nsame shape as the intersection given by these two triangles. You could do the\nsame thing with a quad strip, which would still also take only 6 vertices. The\ngpu will deal with the quads itself, possibly by creating two triangles for\neach quad. This is very unlikely to be a performance hit since it does not\naffect shading.\n\nA second way of creating a semi-transparent particle would be make a triangle\nstrip that rotates around one center point. The center point has an alpha of\n1, the outer points have an alpha of 0. The interpolation takes care of\ngradient transparency to the edges, and even with 5 outer vertices the shape +\ngradient should easily look good enough to hold up while taking up around 16\npixels.\n\nShadows - the best way in these situations to control shadows is usually to\nscale down the particle (or hair). Remember that the shape or look on a micro\nscale doesn't matter as much as the integral of the area * integral of the\ntransparency.\n\n~~~\nDominikD\n\"The gpu will deal with the quads itself, possibly by creating two triangles\nfor each quad. This is very unlikely to be a performance hit since it does not\naffect shading.\"\n\nNo modern GPU (or API in fact) deals with quads. You can't guarantee all\nvertices to be coplanar when dealing with floating point values so you're much\nbetter off pushing triangles and not forcing driver to do conversion for you.\nAlso if vertex data bandwidth is scarce in particle-heavy scene (so you\nactually care if it's 3 of 6 or whatever vertices), just push one vertex and\nexpand it in GS like everyone else does.\n\n~~~\nCyberDildonics\nI would love to see a case, even contrived, where planar quads produce\nartifacts from floating point precision but I think it would be extremely\ndifficult to demonstrate it even on an enormous ground plane quad, let alone a\nsubpixel quad.\n\nI'm not sure why you would say no modern API deals with quads, what would you\ncall the ability to draw quads and quad strips from gpu buffers in OpenGL?\n\nGeometry shaders should work well, what I described is an approach for lower\ntech situations.\n\n~~~\nDominikD\nPretty much any set of 4 fp vectors that don't share z coord will end up non-\ncoplanar at some point (if you insist on going barycentric for texture\niteration or if you plan on using halfplanes to do intersection or whatever).\nThat's why HW tends to use fixed point internal representation in such places.\nBut yeah, whatever, it's almost 1am and I shouldn't be spending time\nconvincing people online that GPU developers know a thing or two about GPU. :)\nBut at the very least trust me on one thing: quads are dead. They've been dead\nfor a long, long time now, low-end or high-end, quads make no sense at all.\n\n------\nzeta0134\nSeems like a very simple expansion on this technique would be to keep a\nrolling framebuffer, and blend the last particle draw with the current one.\nThis would remove the flickering, display the fake alpha properly for still\nscreenshots, and work for variable framerate.\n\nAssuming your GPU will let you hold onto a previous frame's draw result (of\njust the particles) and blend it relatively cheaply with the new one, it\nwouldn't cost very much to implement. One full framebuffer blend should be\nmuch, much cheaper than blending the individual dots.\n\n~~~\nCyberDildonics\nYou could do that for the whole frame though. The reason it isn't done is\nbecause it is essentially a blur and it makes the motion streaky. You might\nthink this would be ok for particles, but the issue won't be particle motion\nas much as it will be camera motion.\n\n------\nlux\nThis is really cool. I'm curious how this will look on a Gear VR, since those\nrun at 60fps and require every optimization they can get to maintain that on a\ncell phone.\n\n------\nBatFastard\nI have been looking for a better particle. Thanks! One strange advantage to\nputting new feature off, better way of doing them suddenly appear.\n\n------\nemcq\nI really like this. It would be nice to see some benchmarks versus a quad\nbased solution where the quad is tessellated in a geometry shader with a\nfragment shader drawing the particle or using a texture. My guess would be\nthat the bottleneck might be pcie but my knowledge of the gpu performance is a\nlittle outdated.\n\n------\nfizixer\nHow is it any different from the idea of voxels?\n\n~~~\nfsloth\nA particle is a free 3D coordinate. Particle rendering refers to several\nvisualization techniques to visualize a volumetric system which focus on\nminimizing per particle work load:\n\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_system)\n\nA voxel is a value in a 3D lattice.\n\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel)\n\nA particle system could be used to visualize a voxel field, of course, but\ntheir application range is far wider.\n\n------\nDanieru\nIf this sounds interesting to you I suggest also checking out TXAA. It\nexploits a similar concept to get high quality cheap AA.\n\n------\ndeepnet\nThis brilliantly insightful heuristic will work well for showing off point\nclouds in WebGL.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Web's next act: A worldwide database (discusses Semantic Web) - _pius\nhttp://gcn.com/Articles/2009/11/09/Linked-Government-Data-feature.aspx\n\n======\n_pius\nIt's worth noting that Department-level CxOs in the Federal government read\nthis publication.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Julia Observer – Package Browser for the Julia Language - djsegal\nhttp://juliaobserver.com\n======\nericjang\nIs anyone else concerned that despite being an open-source project with\npermissive licensing, the formation of the Julia Computing group has made\nJulia's development a bit of a walled garden? I don't mean this in the sense\nthat Apple or Matlab are \"walled gardens\", but the for-profit company, of\nwhich many core developers are founders/employees, develops a number of tools\nand services that are not open-source AFAIK.\n\nI believe the group also implicitly controls what packages are\nallowed/disallowed from the packages list. At the same time, I also recognize\nthe need to support the core developers and the business model makes a lot of\nsense. Thoughts?\n\n~~~\nn00b101\nI really wish they had implemented Julia in C++11, instead of C. The source\ncode seems to be very difficult to comprehend for anyone who is not one of the\noriginal developers. [1]\n\n[1]\n[https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/src/julia.h](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/src/julia.h)\n\n~~~\nchappi42\nJulia is mostly (> 65 %) written in Julia. There's some C (20 %, bootstrap\netc.), some C++ (8 % llvm interface), some scheme (4 %, parser). I think it's\none of the main points, that Julia should be strong enough that such things\n_can_ be written in itself.\n\nGo was initially written in C. I think many consider C++ to be unnecessarily\ncomplicated and avoid it at the lowest level.\n\nBtw.: Do you know the developer documentation? Just in case:\n[http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/#Developer-\nDocumentation...](http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/#Developer-\nDocumentation-1)\n\n------\nspv\nI don't understand why Gadfly is the top repo. I always found it to be very\nslow and having too many dependencies. Last I remember it installs more than\n20 packages as dependencies. Its also not a supported backend in Plots.jl\n\n~~~\nViralBShah\nGadfly was one of the first Julia packages, and the first plotting package.\nThat is probably why.\n\n------\nXcelerate\nI really like the user interface for this — very smooth and modern design. As\nsomeone who has a lot of Julia packages installed, this looks great for\nsearching and finding new ones.\n\n~~~\ndjsegal\nThanks!\n\nHere's a couple features you might like:\n\n\\+ You can view all Julia developers sorted by commit count at\n[https://juliaobserver.com/users](https://juliaobserver.com/users)\n\n\\+ You can include unregistered packages by checking a box in settings\n(accessible through the navbar dropdown)\n\nHappy hunting\n\n------\nRyanHamilton\nCool site, thanks. As part of learning julia I created a similar resource for\nthe browsing the built-in functions. e.g.:\n[http://www.jlhub.com/julia/manual/en/function/rand](http://www.jlhub.com/julia/manual/en/function/rand)\nIt allows browsing the functions that exist by function group and I added\nexamples for the functions that I was playing with. Lately I added the ability\nfor users to submit their own examples, as this is something I found very\nuseful from the php documentation. Submissions welcome!\n\n------\nultrahate\nI'm really anxious for Julia to start taking packaging more seriously. Pkg2\nsituation is pretty terrible imo, and the pkg3 whispers just sort of strike me\nas offputting, since there's basically no timeline of when they'll make it to\na stable 0.x release and the 1.0 is just a \"when it's ready\" situation.\n\nJulia is one the most pleasant programming experiences I've had otherwise.\nIt's the Lua I've always wanted, with just the right mix of Scheme, but not\ntoo much that it tastes Haskell-y.\n\nBut yeah, current packaging situation is awful.\n\nOh, that reminds me though, Julia has a lot of really incredible packages\nalready. It's mindblowing how quick Julia went from \"new technical computing\nlanguage\" to \"general purpose, performant language with a ton of useful\npackages readily available and they actually work\"\n\nLeveraging the technical computing open source community turns out to work\nreally well!\n\n~~~\ndnautics\nthe metaprogramming resources in Julia are very slick. I wrote a DSL that lets\nyou write functions in that are then turned into synthesizable verilog\nmodules. Implementing combinatorial logic (I haven't gotten to sequential yet)\ntook about three days.\n\n~~~\nultrahate\nYeah, meta is something I always struggled with in Lua, as you're completely\nconstrained to the table structures, but just that little extra power of being\nable to metaprogram over whatever data I want, is absolutely incredible, and\nit's a bit easier to think about imo than Scheme macros just in the sense of\ntrying to macroexpand in your head.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGoogle Fails at Figuring out who the Turkish Prime Minister Is - smallegan\nhttp://www.google.com/search?q=prime+minister+of+turkey\n\n======\nsmallegan\nIt shows Muammer Güler as the Prime Minister of Turkey instead of Recep Tayyip\nErdoğan. This seems like a pretty big fail.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTheoretical Motivations for Deep Learning - rndn\nhttp://rinuboney.github.io/2015/10/18/theoretical-motivations-deep-learning.html\n======\nchriskanan\nThere is a recent 5 page theoretical paper on this topic that I thought was\npretty interesting, and it tackles both deep nets and recurrent nets:\n[http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.08101](http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.08101)\n\nHere is the abstract:\n\nThis note provides a family of classification problems, indexed by a positive\ninteger k, where all shallow networks with fewer than exponentially (in k)\nmany nodes exhibit error at least 1/6, whereas a deep network with 2 nodes in\neach of 2k layers achieves zero error, as does a recurrent network with 3\ndistinct nodes iterated k times. The proof is elementary, and the networks are\nstandard feedforward networks with ReLU (Rectified Linear Unit)\nnonlinearities.\n\n------\narcanus\n1) I am curious about learning more about the statement: \"Deep learning is a\nbranch of machine learning algorithms based on learning multiple levels of\nrepresentation. The multiple levels of representation corresponds to multiple\nlevels of abstraction. \"\n\nWhat evidence exists that the 'multiple levels of representation', which I\nunderstand to generally be multiple hidden layers of a neural network,\nactually correspond to 'levels of abstraction'?\n\n2) I'm further confused by, \"Deep learning is a kind of representation\nlearning in which there are multiple levels of features. These features are\nautomatically discovered and they are composed together in the various levels\nto produce the output. Each level represents abstract features that are\ndiscovered from the features represented in the previous level. \"\n\nThis implies to me that this is \"unsupervised learning\". Are deep learning\nnets all unsupervised? Most traditional neural nets are supervised.\n\n~~~\njoe_the_user\nThe whole presentation seems very hand-wavy, which I think is pretty much the\nlevel most motivational discussions of deep learning are at.\n\nI think the presentations by Yann Lecun and Leon Bottou are more interesting -\nand tend to involve more uncertainty and fewer pronouncements.\n\nsee:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9878047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9878047)\n\n~~~\narcanus\nThis was fascinating and greatly informative. As you said, the authors were\nnot afraid to show the real warts and bleeding edge, as a good scientist\nshould. Thanks for the link.\n\n------\ndnautics\nI wonder if \"lots of data\" is wrong. If I show you say twenty similar-looking\nChinese characters in one person's handwriting, and the same twenty in another\nperson's handwriting, you'll probably do a good job (though maybe not an easy\ntime) classifying them with very little data.\n\n~~~\nwebmasterraj\nBecause I've seen lots of other handwriting, even if in another language. I\nhave very strong priors.\n\nThe problem is that a computer comes in without knowing anything about\ntangential phenomenon. So it needs lots of data to catch up to me and my years\nof forming associative connections about other handwriting I've seen.\n\nIf I showed you alien (ie not human) handwritten samples, you'd probably\nstuggle too.\n\n------\nilurk\nWhat tools did you use to make those nice pictures?\n\n(didn't read it yet though, will do when I have time)\n\n------\nmemming\nNice. Very well organized.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\n“Hitler Tamed by Prison” – The New York Times, December 21, 1924 - 1and2equals0\nhttp://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1054087/pg1\n\n======\ndavidgerard\nWELL, THAT DIDN'T WORK OUT SO WELL, DID IT\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nInterviewing is a noisy prediction problem - amrrs\nhttps://erikbern.com/2018/05/02/interviewing-is-a-noisy-prediction-problem.html\n======\njaabe\nI work in a Danish municipality with 7000 employees where we replace around\n2000 people each year of which half are education-interns[0]. So I think it’s\nfair to say that we have a good deal of experience with hiring people. I’ve\nbeen involved with quite a few of these processes, and I’m truly fascinated by\nhow many resources and how much effort Americans seem to put into hiring.\n\nOur data shows that if you filter by education, then it’s actually relatively\neasy to hire someone who will perform well. If you get 100 applicants and pick\nthe best 10 based on their A4 sized application letter, their education\nresults and their CV, then you’ll typically end up with a pile of at least 10\npeople who are going to be good enough. Hell once you build that pile of 10\npeople, you don’t even have to read through the rest of the applications\nbecause it really won’t matter.\n\nI say this fully aware that hiring the wrong person is the most expensive\nmistake any manager can make. It’s just that people aren’t really unicorns,\nand good enough is good enough.\n\nPart of our success is how we onboard people. Because we do use resources on\nhiring people, we just save them for when people are actually hired. We try to\nmake sure people get the best start they possibly can, because we have found\nthat achieving great employee performance is our responsibility more so than\nthe fresh hire.\n\nAs a result our interview consists of 30-45 minutes of small talk where we try\nto find the person with the best chemistry to fit in their coming team. Don’t\nget me wrong, once in a while we do get an interviewee who flunks completely,\nbut it’s very rare.\n\nWe have tried a lot of the tricks by the way. We’ve done code reviews, we’ve\ndone whiteboard algorithms, we’ve done live code and it really, really didn’t\nhelp us get better workers but it did waste a tremendous amount of our time.\n\nOur process is a little different when we hire managers. They get to go\nthrough a more standard HR process with personality tests and such. I’m not\npersonally sure it helps though, but I don’t have any data to back that last\nstatement up.\n\n0: I’m not sure what they are called in English, they work for half a year as\npart of their education.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCool Augmented Reality App for Fixing Cars - mishmax\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn-zvymlSvk&feature=player_embedded \n\n======\nelblanco\nWhat's neat about this is that it essentially takes a skill, and packages it\nup, and allows anyone who can turn a wrench to do the same job with extremely\nminimal training.\n\nNot enough Marines in the motor pool to fix all the broken trucks? No problem,\naugment them with some cooks.\n\n~~~\nippisl\nI wonder if with this and some other stuff( for example, diagnostics using car\ncomputer) , people could easily fix their car on their own?\n\n------\nlutorm\nSo how do these systems work? Do the goggles have some sort of position\nmeasuring devices or do they work through image recognition of what's in the\nfield?\n\n~~~\nsailormoon\nIt must be positional; image recognition would seem a little too good to be\ntrue.\n\nWould be delighted to be contradicted, though!\n\n~~~\njmah\nI've been looking into augmented reality technologies lately; vision systems\nare getting really good. There are some good ones here (click twice to load\nFlash videos, or download AVIs):\n\n<http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~bob/research/research_ptamm.html>\n\n~~~\nsailormoon\nThanks for the link. Fascinating stuff, makes me want to quit and go jump into\nAR.\n\n------\ncallahad\nCan anyone explain the importance of reducing overall head movement?\n\n~~~\ndrhodes\nMaybe it's a rough indicator of how much looking is required to locate a part.\nMaybe it reduces the odds of cracking One's head on large metal objects.\n\n------\nRK\nDIY, internet guided surgery here we come.\n\nSeriously though, there seems to be some very interesting potential for this\ntype of augmented reality.\n\n------\npmorici\nThis seems like is might be awkward for mechanics who were all ready good at\nthe job.\n\n~~~\nlutorm\nIt seems to be aimed at military in-field repairs, though, in which case it\nprobably makes sense.\n\n------\nakc\nneato. I did some work in his lab 10 years ago. Back then the AR getup looked\nsomething like the Ghostbusters backpack.\n\n------\nsailormoon\nWith these maintenance tasks seemingly pretty well-defined in terms of\nmovements and actions with 3D objects in a 3D space, it doesn't take much\nimagination to see a suitably equipped robot could be doing this kind of thing\npretty soon.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWays to Stop the Next Pandemic and Limit Covid-19, Dr Cassidy Nelson - wiggler00m\nhttps://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/cassidy-nelson-12-ways-to-stop-pandemics/\n======\nwiggler00m\n_\" At the moment, the most common types of testing are PCR testing, which is\npolymerase chain reaction, and it allows you to detect a pathogen that has a\ncertain section of its genetic code match this test that’s very limited in\nterms of anything new that comes out. You always have to know about the\npathogen beforehand, have to have designed and validated a test against that.\n\nIn the last few years though, some new technologies that have come out that\nare based on metagenomic techniques, which are pathogen agnostic diagnostics.\nSo you don’t need to know anything about the pathogen beforehand. You can put\na clinical sample on and it will tell you all of the DNA that is in that\nsample. And so you’d be able to do things like bioinformatics testing on this\nand be able to actually work out, “Oh, it matches against my RSV or CMV or\nother known viruses, or this is completely new and it doesn’t match anything\nin my bioinformatics data set…\n\nIt sequences everything. So you’d imagine like 98% of it is just human DNA,\nbut bioinformatically you just push that out and you usually don’t care about\nthe human DNA, and then everything that’s left over you’re able to analyze…\n\nThis would mean that not only would you be able to have a reliable diagnostic\nfrom the get-go before an outbreak begins and then for those first few cases,\nyou might actually be able to instead… on average globally, we have about a 20\nday lag in between first outbreak cases and detection of an outbreak for new\nemerging diseases. That’s way too long. If you could detect those first\nhandful of cases of a new disease, you’re much, much more likely to be able to\ncontain it...\n\nRobert Wiblin: Is this affordable?\n\nCassidy Nelson: So this has started being used in places like in 2014 in West\nAfrica when there was some diagnostic conundrums going on in the Ebola\nepidemic going on there. Metagenomic sequencing, especially based on nanopore\ntechnology, which is a fascinating way to do this is quite expensive in terms\nof the reagents that are being used, but the costs of that are coming down and\nthe accuracy of it is going up. I personally think though that these platform\nagnostic ways of looking at pathogens is really the only way forward if to be\non top of diagnostics. There’s really always going to be a one step behind\ntype picture if we have to wait to characterize a new pathogen and then design\na new test for it based on PCR type methods today.\n\nRobert Wiblin: So the idea is we would just make this the normal way of\ndiagnosing people with contagious diseases. So people come into hospital,\nthey’ve got symptoms and you’d do the sample and you try to sequence\neverything. You see all the viruses that are going through there. And then you\ncan see whether any of them are weird and whether there’s a pattern of some\nnew disease showing up, hopefully really quickly.\n\nCassidy Nelson: Yeah, and there’s been great studies that have come out\nlooking at like fever in return travelers, for example: 60% of them never get\na diagnosis, but there’s something causing their fever. People have gone on\nusing metagenomic techniques and have gone, “What is the pathogen here? What\ndo we actually have”, as well as other diagnostic conundrums. So people have\nbeen starting to do this. It hasn’t been adopted on a wide scale yet, but I’d\nlove to see this adopted and you’d be able to have this in all healthcare\nsettings. So you could have this in your emergency department. You may first\nlimit it to just severe cases. So if you have a severe case of pneumonia or\nanother disease, you don’t have any etiology that you’ve been able to find,\nyou’re able to do these types of tests.\n\nCassidy Nelson: This would mean that not only would you be able to have a\nreliable diagnostic from the get-go before an outbreak begins and then for\nthose first few cases, you might actually be able to instead… on average\nglobally, we have about a 20 day lag in between first outbreak cases and\ndetection of an outbreak for new emerging diseases. That’s way too long. If\nyou could detect those first handful of cases of a new disease, you’re much,\nmuch more likely to be able to contain it.\"_\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSlavery in Early Austin: The Stringer’s Hotel and Urban Slavery - samclemens\nhttps://notevenpast.org/slavery-in-early-austin-the-stringers-hotel-and-urban-slavery/\n======\nbrudgers\n_it is not impossible to imagine enslaved people taking on leading roles in\nrunning the Stringer’s Hotel and other establishments in Austin._\n\nThere’s much comforting in imagined logical possibility. Reading Fredrick\nDouglas’s autobiographies or Blight’s recent Pulitzer winner dissipates such\nillusion. If the knowledge of children for sale provided in the article\nsomehow wasn’t enough to demonstrate how unincharge slaves were.\n\n~~~\ne40\nWhat do you think the purpose of the quoted sentence was? To shift some of the\nblame to the victims? Something else? (I really don't know)\n\n~~~\nbrudgers\nIt is structural to American journalism. (edit) a trope, maybe?\n\n------\nanonsivalley652\nConsider:\n\n\\- Lincoln was not an Abolitionist hero as popularly lionized, but a status\nquo \"moderate,' reluctant to rock the boat. Even though he knew it to be\nwrong, he did nothing in the affirmative until Secession. That's not moral\ncourage, that's political expedience.\n\n\\- 13th Amendment, Section 1 giant slavery loophole:\n\n _Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime\nwhereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the\nUnited States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction._\n\n\\- for-profit prisons\n\n\\- elected district attorneys eager to make large numbers of convictions for\nreelection stats\n\n\\- politicians at all levels (e.g., municipal, county, state and federal)\n$upported by the prison lobby\n\n\\- mandatory minimums\n\n\\- the highest incarceration rate (per-capita) on the planet except Seychelles\n\n\\- and corporations eager to exploit cheap labor (most belong to ALEC)\n\nand what do you get?\n\nSlavery never ended, it just hides in a slightly different form, out-of-sight\nin the prison-industrial complex that most people never think about. And that\ndoesn't even include the matters of discrimination and segregation like Jim\nCrow laws like poll taxes, red lining, property requirements and voter ID\nlaws.\n\nHere's just a few of the corporations that exploit prison (slave) labor:\n\n\\- Allstate Insurance\n\n\\- American Express\n\n\\- AT&T\n\n\\- Bank of America\n\n\\- BP America\n\n\\- ExxonMobil\n\n\\- Fruit of the Loom\n\n\\- GEICO\n\n\\- Johnson & Johnson\n\n\\- J.P. Morgan\n\n\\- Mary Kay Cosmetics\n\n\\- McDonalds\n\n\\- Microsoft\n\n\\- Procter & Gamble\n\n\\- Quaker Oats\n\n\\- Sara Lee\n\n\\- Sprint\n\n\\- Verizon\n\n\\- United Airlines\n\n\\- Wal-Mart\n\n\\- Wendy’s\n\nSource: [http://affinitymagazine.us/2017/06/29/heres-a-list-of-\ncorpor...](http://affinitymagazine.us/2017/06/29/heres-a-list-of-corporations-\nthat-use-prison-labor/)\n\n~~~\nthowfaraway\n_Lincoln was not an Abolitionist hero as popularly lionized, but a status quo\n\"moderate,' reluctant to rock the boat. Even though he knew it to be wrong, he\ndid nothing in the affirmative until Secession._\n\nLincoln's election triggered secession by the south. Maybe the Southerner's\nhad a better sense of Lincoln's abolitionist credentials than you?\n\nSecession started after Lincoln was elected, but before he took office, what\nactions could he have taken? His abolitionist rhetoric was enough to trigger a\ncivil war. That's a pretty big boat rock.\n\n~~~\ngumby\n> Lincoln's election triggered secession by the south. Maybe the Southerner's\n> had a better sense of Lincoln's abolitionist credentials than you?\n\nAbolition was clearly in the Republican platform but he was chosen as a\nmoderate candidate in the convention vs some more firebrand candidates, in the\nhope that he would forestall war. This is not controversial -- you can read\naccounts of the convention in old newspapers.\n\nThe famous quote from Lincoln shows where his priorities lay: \"If I could save\nthe Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by\nfreeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some\nand leaving others alone, I would also do that.\"\n[https://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/24/archives/a-letter-from-\npr...](https://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/24/archives/a-letter-from-president-\nlincoln-reply-to-horace-greeley-slavery-and.html)\n\n~~~\ngumby\nIn addition he didn’t address slavery until relatively late in the war; when\nhe did it was as a (failed) tactic to flip rebelling states and excepted slave\nstates like Maryland and Delaware that remained in the union.\n\n~~~\nmobilefriendly\nThis is flat wrong. The Emancipation Proclamation was drafted in late 1862,\nthe second year of the war when things were very much in doubt. Lincoln issued\nit in the wake of the major battle at Antietam, which was a brutal \"tie\" and\nthe deadliest day in American history. The tactical purpose of the\nProclamation to try to recapture the momentum and make it clear that the North\nwas now on a path of total war with the South.\n\n~~~\ngumby\nI apologize: “relatively late” draws a misleading conclusion. I really meant\nthat it wasn’t a precipitating or contemporary part of the beginning of the\nwar, the primary objective of which (from _his policy_ — obviously many\nsupported it for other reasons) was the preservation of the union.\n\nThe rest of your comment speaks to my point: it was a tactical effort to try\nto split the confederacy but as far as I can tell failed in that effort. It\nonly had “force” in the parts of the country not controlled by the federal\ngovernment.\n\nFortunately actual emancipation was ultimately extended throughout the union,\nat least in theory.\n\nHere’s what the national archive has to say on the subject; in particular the\nsecond paragraph speaks to the limited scope of the directive:\n[https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-\ndocuments/emancip...](https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-\ndocuments/emancipation-proclamation)\n\n~~~\ncafard\nIt should be said that he urged compensated emancipation in the states not\nseceded. He did justify this by comparing the cost of that emancipation to the\ncost of the war. But in his statements in general he was very clear that he\nthought slavery wrong.\n\n------\nhn_throwaway_99\nDoes anyone know where this hotel existed? The article says it is where the\n\"Piedmont\" hotel currently stands, but there is no Piedmont hotel in Austin.\n\nAs an aside, I'm getting to detest more and more how Google only seems to show\ncurrent events. It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to search for\nanything historical.\n\n~~~\ncf512\nSeems to be the space on the southeast corner of 8th & Congress, next door to\nthe Stateside Theater.\n\nPieced this together via:\n\n1) \"[...] named the Avenue Hotel but locally known as the Stringer’s Hotel\"\n([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swante_M._Swenson](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swante_M._Swenson))\n\nand\n\n2) \"The Jan. 18 announcement indicates that The Avenue’s name is an homage to\nthe original structure built on the site in 1880, the Avenue Hotel.\"\n([https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2019/01/18/31-story-...](https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2019/01/18/31-story-\nboutique-hotel-would-be-something-new-for.html))\n\n~~~\nKSS42\nI came to the same conclusion by looking at the maps in the article and\nlooking for the Avenue Hotel. You can it is at the corner of Congress and\nHickory St.\n\nHickory St (now 8th St) is 3 blocks south of the Capitol.\n\nI guess at some point the tree named streets were converted to numbered\nstreets.\n\n~~~\nKSS42\nRe: tree named streets were converted to numbered streets\n\n[https://www.statesman.com/news/20171101/austin-answered-\nwhy-...](https://www.statesman.com/news/20171101/austin-answered-why-did-tree-\nnamed-streets-switch-to-numbered-names)\n\n------\netrevino\n> \"On the eve of the Civil War, an advertisement appeared in the Texas Almanac\n> ...\"\n\nThis was 1862. The war was well underway by then. I'm really not sure how that\nmade it into the article. I'm very curious if an editor added it in, because I\nsuspect that the author knows better.\n\n~~~\nblaser-waffle\nIf it was late Dec. 1862 it was just after The Battle of Fredericksburg, a\nbloodbath for the Union.\n\n------\nalpineidyll3\nI pass this site every morning, negotiating a throng of homeless people. Not\neverything about modern Austin is more humane.\n\n------\ncsours\nThat second map was made by a sociopath. North faces to the right? For those\nless familiar with Austin, Pecan St is also 6th Street.\n\nIt's an interesting frame of mind to think about who would have been walking\ndown the same streets I walk, over 100 years ago.\n\n~~~\nthedance\nHaving the East at the top of the map is very common. That’s why they call it\n“the orient”.\n\n~~~\nseisvelas\n>That’s why they call it “the orient”.\n\nNot challenging your claim that East-on-top is common (since I have no idea),\nbut: it's called the orient because oriens is Latin for rising, and the sun\nrises in the east. Many other languages also have a word for east based on\ntheir word for rising. For a cursory reading, check out the Wiki article on\nthe etymology Orient:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient#Etymology)\n\n~~~\nsamatman\nThe grandparent comment makes a valid point, just backwards. The reason\norientation and orienteering contain the string \"orient\" is because Europeans\nhistorically put the East at the top of maps, a practice which changed some\ntime after the introduction of the compass.\n\nWhich points North, unless it points South; Chinese maps traditionally put the\nSouth at the top.\n\nHere's an example of such a map, of the form known as \"T and O\":\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#/media/File:D...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#/media/File:Diagrammatic_T-\nO_world_map_-_12th_c.jpg)\n\nIt's interesting to me that, as moderns, we barely recognize such a stylized\nimage as a map.\n\n~~~\ncsours\nI learned more than I expected about maps. So so you think it was a style\ndecision in the late 1800's to make a map with the top facing east? Or was it\nstill common?\n\n~~~\nsamatman\nNorth was pretty standard by the 1800s, or indeed by the 1600s.\n\nBut there's a map in the public library of my hometown, showing it in 1890, in\nwhich the Old West Side is at the top of the map. So I'd guess that non-\nstandard orientations were more common than they are now.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nI collected the best quotes from Paul Graham's essays - kaipakartik\nhttp://blog.kaipakartik.com/2011/05/best-of-paul-graham.html\n\n======\nJach\nFor the NoScript crowd:\n[http://www.webdevout.net/test?0B&raw](http://www.webdevout.net/test?0B&raw)\n\n------\nlcs\nIt needs space between paragraphs.\n\n~~~\nkaipakartik\nThanks for the tip. I had spaces but for some reason they don't show up on the\nblog. Let me try again. What do you think of the actual content?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFacebook tracks where you connect from in order to determine who you live with - asadlambdatest\nhttp://www.adweek.com/digital/facebook-will-soon-let-brands-target-ads-at-entire-families-or-specific-people-within-households/\n======\nKing-Aaron\nIt seems quite intrusive, but also surprising that it's only just now being\ndiscussed as a new feature - I was under the impression this was already\nhappening at some levels.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Chrome Extension Development Kit - rfitz\nhttps://chromeextensionkit.com/?ref=welcomeHN\n======\nrfitz\nHey HN, ChromeExtensionKit is a side project of mine that includes a bunch of\ndifferent starter templates for basic (HTML/CSS/JS) and React-based Chrome\nextensions (with setup and publish scripts) as well as some fully functional\nexample extensions for inspiration. I originally built the starter templates\nas I found myself setting up and configuring every extension project roughly\nthe same way and wanted to speed that process up in the future. The kit also\nincludes an ebook with actionable growth tips and tricks.\n\nIf anyone has any questions, I would love to answer them!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSinkhole contains botnet neutralized by Microsoft and Kaspersky - carusen\nhttp://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/09/sinkhole-contains-botnet-nuked-by-microsoft-and-kaspersky.ars\n======\njfb\nI originally thought that a _literal_ sinkhole had like taken out a piece of\ncritical botnet infrastructure and I was very, _very_ confused.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWirelessly Powered LED illuminated wedding ring - sea6ear\nhttp://www.kokes.net/projectlonghaul/projectlonghaul.htm\n======\nmadengr\nVery nice write-up on the project. Good to see some machining on here.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShowHN : Blib (pre-alpha); A privacy friendly media library in the making - rraychaudhuri\nhttps://register.blib.us\n\n======\npdfcollect\nNice Photo Album demo.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGnuTLS certificate verification vulnerability announced (CVE-2014-0092) - mpyne\nThe GnuTLS team has their announcement at http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnutls.org&#x2F;security.html#GNUTLS-SA-2014-2 but the announcement with details seems to be Red Hat&#x27;s at https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rhn.redhat.com&#x2F;errata&#x2F;RHSA-2014-0247.html<p>&quot;It was discovered that GnuTLS did not correctly handle certain errors that could occur during the verification of an X.509 certificate, causing it to incorrectly report a successful verification. An attacker could use this flaw to create a specially crafted certificate that could be accepted by GnuTLS as valid for a site chosen by the attacker.&quot;\n======\ntptacek\nHere's the diff:\n\n[https://www.gitorious.org/gnutls/gnutls/commit/6aa26f78150cc...](https://www.gitorious.org/gnutls/gnutls/commit/6aa26f78150ccbdf0aec1878a41c17c41d358a3b?diffmode=sidebyside)\n\nUninitialized \"result\" variable? Any time the code hits one of those \"cleanup\"\ngotos, it's probably returning nonzero unexpectedly?\n\n _Later: @filcab on Twitter points out the much dumber issue, which is that if\nissuer_version is < 0, the function returns issuer_version and not zero. Ow._\n\n(Who uses GnuTLS?)\n\n~~~\nsanxiyn\ngit on Debian, for example. In general, GPL programs need special exception to\nlink to OpenSSL, and git is licensed under GPL without the exception.\n\n~~~\nnknighthb\nThere's a standing debate regarding whether that actually matters in the case\nof a distribution that included OpenSSL as a standard component, due to the\nGPL's system libraries exception. (And, of special relevance to Debian, there\nis debate even among those who agree that it's probably legal as to the ethics\nof doing it absent some fairly explicit indication of intent from the\nauthor(s) of the GPL'd software.)\n\n~~~\ndekkers\nDistributions can't take advantage of the system libraries exception, it only\nworks for software that isn't shipped together with OpenSSL. The whole GPLv2\nclause:\n\n\"However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include\nanything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with\nthe major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on\nwhich the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the\nexecutable.\"\n\n~~~\nnknighthb\nThat is one reasonable interpretation of \"accompanies\", but it is not the only\none. Hence the existence of debate. (Consider, for example, a CDN that happens\nto distribute both a Linux distribution that includes OpenSSL, and an\nunrelated GPL project not included in the distribution and written by people\nwho don't contribute to the distribution. You surely would not believe this\nmeets the definition of \"accompanies\" as used in the GPL? Now, figure out\nwhere the line is crossed.)\n\n------\nillumen\nThis is similar to the Apple SSL bug.\n\nGood on them for looking for similar errors in their own code. Thanks Redhat,\nfor the audit, and for making the internet safer!\n\nThis is a win for Free software (and OSS), since the history of the bug can be\ntraced, and outside developers can audit it. We still don't know how the bug\ngot in there with the Apple bug - since the repository is not open.\n\n~~~\nstephenr\nSo Apple has an admittedly serious bug that is in the wild on iOS for ~17\nmonths, and desktops for ~ 4 1/2 months, and everyone shits on Apple for it.\n\nGNUTLS has a (using your words) \"similar\" bug in the wild for more than 13\nYEARS, and its nothing but praise because \"they audited the code\"?\n\n------\nmidas007\n\"EVERY version of GnuTLS EVER is vulnerable to certificate verification\nbypass\"\n\n[https://twitter.com/kaepora/status/440687403012227073](https://twitter.com/kaepora/status/440687403012227073)\n\n------\nzvrba\nFor all C++ haters and C defenders: the cleanup/fail labels set result to 0\nand perform a bunch of _gnutls_free_datum calls. This would not have happened\nin a properly designed C++ program because you could have just written \"return\n0;\" and let the compiler release the resources (RAII, destructors).\n\nIMO, C is no longer suitable as a systems programming language. It has stopped\nbeing that a long time ago, and its only value is ABI stability. (COM and\nsimilar technologies work with C++ and other languages, so C is unnecessary\neven for that purpose.)\n\n~~~\nillumen\nWhat do you think of C++ and timing attacks? What do you think of the surface\narea of the C++ runtime itself? How do you find auditors for C++ code, when\nthe standard is so big no one person could possibly understand it all?\n\nThese are genuine questions, it would be great to hear your answers about\nthese things :)\n\n~~~\nzvrba\n> What do you think of C++ and timing attacks?\n\nSame underlying machine model => same mitigation techniques apply as in C.\n\n> surface area of the C++ runtime itself\n\nNo RTTI and no exceptions => no runtime. (By \"runtime\" I mean code necessary\nto support language features, not the C++ standard library. E.g., without RTTI\nand exceptions C++ is as suitable for building an OS as C is.)\n\nStill, RTTI and exceptions are table-driven and I'd worry about their\nintegrity if somebody manages to change the RTII and exception tables embedded\nin the executable. Largely prevented by signing executables. (Oh, the irony\n:-))\n\n> How do you find auditors for C++ code [..cut]\n\nMore than half of the standard text is dedicated to standard library. I've\nheard it been said (I've not checked myself) that the description of the _core\nlanguage_ is only slightly longer than that of Java or C#.\n\nBut standard size is not that relevant. Reasonable C++ code is easy to write\n(for an experienced developer), easy to understand, and auditors can always\n\"fail\" the code if they don't know what's going on.\n\nAuditing is expensive, so you have a lot of incentives to write reasonable\ncode from the start.\n\n~~~\nfrankzinger\n> I've heard it been said (I've not checked myself) that the description of\n> the core language is only slightly longer than that of Java or C#.\n\nHere is a comment which links to a talk in which Herb Sutter says it:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094239](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094239)\n\n------\njmnicolas\nFor those like me, wondering what GnuTLS is :\n\n\"GnuTLS is a secure communications library implementing the SSL, TLS and DTLS\nprotocols and technologies around them. It provides a simple C language\napplication programming interface (API) to access the secure communications\nprotocols as well as APIs to parse and write X.509, PKCS #12, OpenPGP and\nother required structures. It is aimed to be portable and efficient with focus\non security and interoperability.\"\n\nfrom : [http://www.gnutls.org/](http://www.gnutls.org/)\n\n~~~\nlawnchair_larry\nAn easier way to put that is \"OpenSSL replacement\".\n\n------\nrkangel\nWhat do other people think about the \"goto\" pattern for handling errors? I've\nnever been a huge fan of it due to the unclear control flow you get, a point\nof view which this seems to back up very well. I'd much rather set a\nreturn/error code appropriately, encase each chunk of code in a 'if (OK == ec)\n{...}' and then clean up based on the ec at the bottom. That way what code is\nexecuted in any given circumstance is blindingly obvious and so is the clean\nup.\n\nThe \"goto fail\" pattern seems pretty common though - I was wondering what it\nhad in its favour apart from being a easier to type (which would also be true\nof \"not checking for errors\" for example).\n\n~~~\nmpyne\nIt's actually not horrific IMHO in the context of C when you use it explicitly\nin this fashion, as a \"poor man's exceptions with resource cleanup\". And it's\nnot simply a method to avoid typing, it helps with the very common design\npattern of:\n\n    \n    \n        acquire A\n        acquire B\n        acquire C\n        \n        do_work\n        \n        release C\n        release B\n        release A\n    \n\nIt has all the benefit of \"common return path\" (since it _is_ a common return\npath) without the 8 levels of indentation and random subsidiary conditional\nchecks that obscure the code logic and add their own confusion. Instead you\nfail as fast as possible.\n\nLike any other design pattern (C or otherwise) it's easy to misuse or abuse\nand it's not suited to every combination of library usage.\n\n------\ncomputer\nFor the Apple code we did not have the full commit history. Do we know the\nhistory of this bug yet?\n\nEdit: See\n[https://www.gitorious.org/gnutls/gnutls/blame/6aa26f78150ccb...](https://www.gitorious.org/gnutls/gnutls/blame/6aa26f78150ccbdf0aec1878a41c17c41d358a3b:lib/x509/verify.c)\n\n------\nblueskin_\nAgain, I find myself wondering \"Why not just use OpenSSL instead?\"\n\n~~~\nrweir\nperhaps read any of the other comments? tldr, license and it's also terrible.\n\n~~~\nblueskin_\nOpenSSL seems to have a less restrictive licence to me (although I suppose it\nis an issue if you want to directly integrate it with GPL code, but that's why\nit's a library), and I somehow wouldn't expect a bug of this magnitude to make\nit past their review.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nI Collected 361 Remote Jobs for Designers - iamarsibragimov\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/WorkOnline/comments/dnfgv9/i_collected_361_remote_jobs_for_designers/\n======\nTaylorGood\nHi, is this private? I upvoted + requested access through the email in my\nprofile.\n\n~~~\nkavapebumazh\nSame here. Already have access after about one minute of waiting\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: My ISP notified me my router was hacked, what do I do? - nogridbag\n\nHN, my ISP notified me that my router was hacked and was used to attack other computers.<p>I was told to simply disable UPnP and block port 1900. That&#x27;s simple enough and I suppose I should reset and upgrade the firmware first. I don&#x27;t know much about UPnP vulnerabilities. Is it possible that the computers connected to my wifi were compromised?\n======\nloumf\nYes.\n\nAlso all traffic you sent through (meaning a lot of passwords) could have been\nsent somewhere.\n\n~~~\nkylekampy\nThis is an important point. Change your passwords on all your accounts (after\npatching up that hole first, of course).\n\nGood luck!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nRussian troops launch an attack on a Ukrainian base - austenallred\nhttp://time.com/16294/russia-crimea-sevastopol/\n\n======\ne3pi\n[http://live.reuters.com/Event/World_News/108537123](http://live.reuters.com/Event/World_News/108537123)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n$649 iPhone 5s Costs Apple $199 - Hardware - Handhelds/PDAs - - anandg\nhttp://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/649-iphone-5s-costs-apple-199/240161733\n======\ntaproot\nStandard 500 apple tax. Its worse elsewhere, in nz the 5c is fetching more\nthan 1000nzd.\n\nPlease don't vote me down its pretty well known you pay for the design, build\nquality, brand and community or perhaps better said ecosystem on top of the\nbare hardware cost when you buy apple. This \"tax\" isn't exactly a bad thing\nespecially compared to alternative factory junk that comes out of Sony or\nSamsung.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy do I expect the unemployment rate to increase? - cwan\nhttp://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/08/why-do-i-expect-unemployment-rate-to.html\n\n======\nmjcohen\nThere are no jobs and population is increasing. The multinats have shipped and\nare shipping as many jobs as possible overseas.\n\nI am deeply pessimistic about America's future in the next 20 years or so. I\ndo not see anything good happening, and this depresses me greatly.\n\n------\nknown\nI think _patriotism_ and _business_ cannot go together in _globalization_ and\n_internet_.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow to Count Citations If You Must [pdf] - nabla9\nhttp://www.ma.huji.ac.il/~motty/documents/citations-04-27-2016.pdf\n======\nnabla9\nRePEc already implements this index\n\n[https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.euclid.html](https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.euclid.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWikileaks' DNS service suspended - anigbrowl\nhttp://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/12/wikileaks-loses-its-dns-servic.php \n\n======\nsmoody\nLieberman's actions are going to make things worse because he's taking\nsomething that is out-in-the-open -- which means is can be seen, understood,\nanalyzed, and managed -- and forcing it to go underground where the government\nhas even less control. This is going to backfire. I \"get\" censoring the\npublication of classified information, but shutting down DNS access from the\nUSA? What is that going to solve except to make information available to\neveryone but us Americans? I wonder if he understands that. And I wonder if he\nunderstands the momentum he's giving to a shadow DNS service that he'll have\nzero control over. And if he thinks this will give him the momentum he needs\nto run for president in 2012, then I'm afraid he's probably right. :-(\n\n~~~\nwoan\nI doubt Lieberman knows anything about DNS and don't see how any of this is\nrelated beyond WikiLeaks being involved in both. everydns.net revoked the\nentry because DDoS attacks were affecting their other customers.\n\n------\nchopsueyar\nThis is bad precedent for any site under a large-scale DDoS attack.\n\nThe DDoS attack undermines the viability of other customers so your service\nmust be terminated?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTaiwan is planning its own SOPA legislation; Taiwanese people are protesting - svenkatesh\nhttp://www.techinasia.com/taiwan-protests-copyright-blacklist-facebook-rally/\n\n======\npseingatl\nThis is ironic given that until the 1980's Taiwan had not signed international\ncopyright treaties and was a center for illegal book printing.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTurkey blocks Twitter, YouTube, Facebook over hostage photo - detay\nhttp://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-blocks-twitter-youtube-facebook-over-hostage-photo.aspx?pageID=238&nID=80638&NewsCatID=339\n\n======\nr721\nDupe of\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9327550](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9327550)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Streak.ly tracks what you do daily and I'd love feedback on the concept - kylebragger\nI've been working on a side project called Streak.ly with a friend of mine for the past month or so; it's intended to help keep you motivated to do otherwise mundane daily tasks (like do 10 pushups, read for an hour, etc.) by letting you log \"streaks\" — consecutive days in a row of doing something.<p>It's in private alpha/beta/gamma/whatever right now (has some rough edges to clean up), but is more or less functionally complete and pretty stable.<p>I'm a big fan of the Seinfeld calendar, and have seen other services which do similar things but were unsatisfying to use, either from an aesthetic or functional perspective. Streak.ly is designed to be simple, good-looking, fast, fun, (and hopefully addictive). (FWIW, it's also a place to experiment with user stickiness stuff I can potentially roll back in to Forrst.)<p>There are also some in-progress social/game/motivational features I plan to roll out in the next few weeks that hopefully contribute to the enjoyment factor of the app.<p>Streak.ly uses Twitter for authentication, and I've set up a URL to let HN folks in early: http://streak.ly/auth/twitter/start?secret=showhn<p>I'd love any and all feedback and/or criticism you may have.<p>Thanks!\n======\nil\nFor a simple webapp like this, please don't make me get a twitter account/sign\nin to use.\n\nGenerate a unique URL for me to use, or hash my email address or something\nlike that. Reduce friction, I want to be able to use this with 1 click.\n\n~~~\njm3\nreally? creating a twitter account takes about 15 seconds. if you're not one\nof the 150 million people with a Twitter account, then why not just be\npatient? i'm sure kyle will get around to supporting other login methods\neventually.\n\ni believe you're genuinely trying to be helpful with your suggestions, but\ncomments like this reminds me of the vocal 0.1% of users who exercise\ntroublesome preferences like disabling javascript, or installing ad-blocking\nplugins that break half the web, (which is fine!), but then complain that\ntheir (pathological) preferences prohibit them from enjoying the experience\n(which is not so helpful).\n\nfeedback like, \"i can't be bothered to log in to give you feedback because i\ndon't like your login\" isn't great feedback. it might even be viewed as a sign\nto you that you're not the intended user. yet.\n\n~~~\nil\nI wasn't aware not having a Twitter account was considered pathological in our\nWeb 2.0 world.\n\nWhy do I need to sign up for a microblogging platform to use a completely\nunrelated calendar app???\n\nAnyway, my comments about reducing friction aren't based on my own\npreferences, they're based on dozens of multivariate split tests I have\nconducted across many thousand unique visitors.\n\nEvery single time, forcing the user to sign up, login, enter their email or\nanything of the sort before getting to use the site SIGNIFICANTLY decreases\nengagement, time on site, conversions, and pretty much every other metric you\nshould care about.\n\n~~~\njm3\nThe \"signup friction\" argument's a straw men; no sane startup seeks to _add_\nfriction to the signup process. the bogus (implied) assertion in the comment\nis that requiring a Twitter account to use a new web app in beta is overly\nrestrictive / cumbersome.\n\nThe only way that would make sense is if beta testers don't have Twitter\naccounts, since OAuthing with an existing account _reduces_ friction.\nTwitter's been around for four years and seems fairly well established among\nearly adopters like HN readers, so counting on a critical mass of beta testers\nto have Twitter accounts hardly seems a stretch, even if those users aren't\nvery active tweeters.\n\ni for one was very glad not to need to enter an email address, pick a login\nname, etc; the oauth process handled that for me. ymmv\n\n~~~\nmichaelbuckbee\nI think the suggestion was to not require a form of authentication (email or\ntwitter) first. Instead, let the potential user \"test drive\" the app and then\nwhen they are a little invested prompt for a signup of some kind.\n\n------\nsraquo\nHere's my somewhat similar homebrew GTD system:\n<http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/6109/progressb.png>\n\nYou see time spent (in minutes) coding (+) and anything else done at the\ncomputer (-) taken from RescueTime, along with basic efficiency score and\nstuff done / to be done for my main project (game) and everything else (misc).\nColoring is manual, blue = \"worked well\", red = \"could have done better\".\n\nThe file sits on the desktop and is the place where I keep my general to-do\nlists, so it is always open. Works well for me.\n\n _Note: censored some \"misc\" stuff, so don't think I normally work 4 hours a\nday :)_\n\n~~~\nkylebragger\nThis is really, really cool.\n\n------\nkylebragger\nClickable: <http://streak.ly/auth/twitter/start?secret=showhn>\n\n------\nsacrilicious\nI really do like the idea of positively \"completing\" a task every day.\nOutliers-wise 10,000 hours is a lot, the sooner I get started the better.\n\nThe only thing I'd add, besides the request for OpenID love, is that the FAQ\nneeds to put \"we won't spam your twitter\" higher up - that's what I wanted to\nknow _immediately_ after signing in for the first time(the serious faux pas\nbeing \"My streakficiency is blahblah, what's yours?\").\n\nBesides that, just one detail: the FAQ(which is great, btw) wasn't in the\nfirst-login \"we're very beta\" notice at the top, which would have been easier\nto find.\n\n------\nzeedotme\nnice looking but pretty limited for the moment. Honestly think most people who\nuse tools like this will be looking for simplicity in their lives...and so\nconvincing them to add another tool to their daily tools list is going very\ndifficult considering all it can currently do (i realise it's alpha mind)\n\n~~~\nkylebragger\nThank you, and totally makes sense. Hopefully there is a nice middle ground\nwhere this could fit. My theory is also that if I can a) show value to enough\nfolks that they start to realize, \"hey, this is pretty useful and I can\nprobably manage to use it 5 mins a day\" and then b) get them to invite small\ngroups of friends, the upcoming features in that vein will create a stickiness\nin those groups. Probably obvious to most but makes sense in my head at least.\n\n------\nrocktronica\nNice and simple! I like it!\n\nLooks like you've already given some thought to iPhone support. I might also\nsuggest adding fullscreen mode once the app is added to the home screen:\n[http://building-iphone-\napps.labs.oreilly.com/ch03.html#ch03_...](http://building-iphone-\napps.labs.oreilly.com/ch03.html#ch03_id35932771)\n\nThe \"new thing\" text input could use some CSS for smaller screens too.\n\nApologies if you already knew all this...\n\n~~~\nrocktronica\nAlso, it'd be good if I could edit the text of each entry after it's been\ngoing. Just in case I dont't like the wording or something.\n\n------\nlfborjas\nThis app looks rad, I've been using [calendar about\nnothing](<http://calendaraboutnothing.com/>) for my opensource hacking needs\nand the seinfeld calendar way of being motivated definitely works for me, I\nsaw some of the teasers on forrst and am eager to give it a try; keep up the\nawesomeness!\n\n~~~\nkylebragger\nThanks so much :) Looking forward to hearing your feedback.\n\n------\ntomjen3\nMy first feedback - I don't intent to give your my twitter account, so if you\nwant me (or pretty much anybody) to review your site and you are dead set\nagainst using the standard create a user that works pretty well (because we\nnow have ways around all the problems) use OpenID.\n\ntldr; use openID, nobody is going to want to share their twitter account with\nthe world.\n\n------\nthesethings\nheya Kyle,\n\nThis is great. Just signed up. I am familiar with the Seinfeld calendar.\n(Though not because I've seen it on the show, but it was explained to me in\nsome other geek GTD blog/system/something.)\n\nI have an idea for a visual aid that might appear in two places on your site\nfor folks who might not know the basic idea behind the Seinfeld calendar, and\nfor those who _do_ know it, but might want to an incentive on their Streakly\npage:\n\nA visual of a calendar week with a streak (or 2, or 3) through it.\n\nThis would appear on the front page, and in another form, on an individual's\nStreakly page.\n\nI realize you probably already something similar to this already sketched out\n(along with many other features). So as you were, take your time!\n\nI respect the MVP process :D\n\n~~~\nkylebragger\nGlad to hear it!\n\nThere are indeed plans for a more visual display of your completed days. The\ncool thing is that it's built in such a way that gives us a ton of cool data\nto play with. Just a matter of displaying it well.\n\n------\njohn2x\nJust signed up. I'm probably gonna try and use it for working out. :)\n\nFirst thing I noticed was that there are only 3 \"reminder times\", but I'm sure\nthat would change in the future.\n\nAnd being able to set different \"reminder times\" to different things would be\ncool.\n\n------\njm3\nfeedback re: the reminder portion of the app - would be nice if:\n\n1\\. i could get the notice as a tweet (DM) instead of an email. since you're\nusing oauth, i'm betting you're facile w/the twitter api.\n\n2\\. you offered a fuller range of hours for the reminder. the first task i\nadded to streak.ly was, \"cook breakfast\", but 10am was the earliest reminder i\ncould pick in the list, which is too late for me ;)\n\n~~~\nkylebragger\nThanks very much for the feedback;\n\n1\\. is a great idea and I'll definitely consider it (it does have the\nadvantage of probably showing up as an SMS, too)\n\n2\\. yep, I had a hunch the list was too short but wanted to try it out. I\nwonder if there's a happy medium between an 0-23 type list and what exists\nnow.\n\n------\njoshbert\nI'm really enjoying the app the whole 5 minutes I've been using it. I'll use\nit for a week and see what kind of results I get.\n\nFor the record, I do realize that results will vary according to the type of\nperson that uses the application. I'm a serial procrastinator, so maybe it'll\nbe worth something for your Customer Development process.\n\n------\naik\nThere shouldn't be a need for the page to postback when\nadding/deleting/completing items. A necessity for a site like this is for it\nto be faster and more convenient than anything else. My notepad++ session is\nmore practical than this in a lot of ways, just because of the speed.\n\n~~~\nkylebragger\nYep, 100%. Have not added any AJAX goodness yet.\n\n------\ngreenlblue\nThis is good stuff, let me know when the API rolls out because I think these\nkinds of apps are better when they are on a handheld device because you can do\na lot more stuff when you can carry the reminders in your pocket wherever you\ngo.\n\n------\nwhimsy\nCheck out Joe's Goals. <http://www.joesgoals.com/>\n\nWhat's your edge?\n\n------\njm3\nnice idea. i'm sure you know about <http://www.freshapps.com/streaks/>\nalready. wonder if there's an integration point, there, where you could\nleverage their app with your data.\n\n~~~\nkylebragger\nyea, I really dig what they're doing but wanted something web-based.\nStreak.ly's got an API coming soon; would be awesome to integrate somehow.\n\n------\nsamh\nGreat idea. A similar inspiration to Jason at www.HabitMix.com I think.\n\n------\nbradybd\nAnother solid web app from the Bragger-Matic. Keep it up Kyle!\n\n------\nkloncks\nQuestion: What's the Seinfeld calendar?\n\n~~~\nluminarious\nIt's a productivity method named after Jerry Seinfeld. I first heard about it\nfrom this lifehacker post: [http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-\nproductivity-se...](http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-\nsecret)\n\nBasically you decide to do or practice something every day. If you forget or\notherwise fail to keep up, you mark it in red on your calendar. Goal is to try\nto see how long you can go without a red mark. And get things done in the\nprocess.\n\n~~~\njeebusroxors\nYou're wrong. The inverse is correct and is the driving force behind the\nidea...\n\n _He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X\nover that day. \"After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the\nchain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially\nwhen you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break\nthe chain.\"_\n\n------\nmagic6435\nComing soon to Streak.ly... Serial killers\n\n~~~\ndhorrigan\nI just completed \"Kill Someone\" 14 days in a row on Streak.ly\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: What is bioinformatics? - jozi9\n\n\n======\ndalke\nWhat more do you want beyond what the first few web search hits gives you for\nthat question? One of which is\n[http://www.ebi.ac.uk/luscombe/docs/imia_review.pdf](http://www.ebi.ac.uk/luscombe/docs/imia_review.pdf).\nOr what's on\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics)\n? Or the 2001 paper titled \"What is bioinformatics? A proposed definition and\noverview of the field\"? See\n[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11552348](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11552348)\n\nWithout knowing what you know it's hard to say anything more helpful than\nthose.\n\nEdit: Looking at your HN history, I see you have asked a lot of questions -\none per day for the last month - with topics like \"Who's doing some c64\nstuff?\", \"CoffeeScript or ClojureScript for writing a game in JS?\", \"Best\nserver log viewer for Mac?\", and the statement \"We're planning to release a\nproduct for Agile/Scrum professionals, magnetic, erasable story cards that you\ncan use on your Kanban whiteboards.\"\n\nI get the feeling, perhaps wrongly, that you are using HN as your personal\nadvice board, rather than learning how to research things yourself.\n\n~~~\njozi9\nWhat do you mean by personal advice board?\n\n~~~\ndalke\nWhat do you think it means?\n\n~~~\njozi9\nOk, maybe I'm in a mid-life crysis and can't decide what to do. I go and try\nto re-align myself, and not to ask too often and too meaningless.\n\n~~~\ndalke\nNow it looks like you are trying to structure things to make it look like I'm\na bad person by stepping on you when you're down.\n\nThree months ago,\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8187802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8187802)\nyou wrote that you are 35 years old, have recently switched jobs, and \"feeling\nlike I'm home.\"\n\n35 is not a mid-life crisis.\n\nOne of your HN questions is \"Sorcerer, mage, wizard, magician, what's the\ndifference?\" You also asked it at\n[http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/50672/sorcerer-\nmage-w...](http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/50672/sorcerer-mage-wizard-\nmagician-whats-the-difference) .\n\nThat has nothing to do with an alignment of anything.\n\nAccording to your questions, you are working on a lot of things, from C64 to\nBDD and Kanban, from genetic algorithms to photo backups, etc. For examples,\n\"I bucket-listed a simple game dev project for myself and looking for\ninspiration\", \"Genetic Algorithms side project? As a hobby, what would you\nbuild?\".\n\nDon't think you need to be inspired. That's a great way to failure. Just start\ndoing it. Don't worry if it's not good enough for anyone else to see, or even\ncare about.\n\nIf you are in a depressed state, and unsure about what to do in life, you are\nnot alone. My experience is that many people are that way. The best approach I\nknow of is to talk with people, in real life, about it, or to start doing\nthings you want to do without worrying about long-term goals. There is also\nprofessional advice for these matters - which can surely provide more helpful\nfeedback than replies from HN strangers like me.\n\n~~~\njozi9\nThank you so much!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMaybe we could tone down the JavaScript - _frog\nhttps://eev.ee/blog/2016/03/06/maybe-we-could-tone-down-the-javascript/\n======\nPxtl\nThe Twitter page is a perfect example of why we use JavaScript for this stuff:\nbecause full-page loads just to hide a div is a shitty user experience. Scroll\npositions jump around, you've made a client-side action into a server one,\netc.\n\nThe whole of html is full of these. Let's be blunt: it's a terrible platform,\njust as JavaScript's DOM API is terrible. Everything about the web is bad, but\nwe make it good thanks to the combined might of the computing industry.\n\nJavaScript's a mediocre language being used to pave over the weaknesses of a\nlayout engine that can't centre things vertically and can't navigate without\nslow server interactions unless you want to confuse the user with one long\npage full of #anchors.\n\n~~~\ndelan\nWith progressive enhancement, Twitter could provide basic functionality with\nfull page loads and the like, and use JavaScript to replace these with a\nbetter user experience.\n\n------\nmattkahl\nThe \"You name a critical .js bundle something related to ads\" point is\nsomething toward which I'm particularly unsympathetic. The fact that most ad\nblockers (a) are whitelist-based and (b) contain blunt-edge/naive\nimplementations leads me to believe that false positives are the problem of\nthe ad blocker developer and ad blocker user, not the developer of the\nwebsite.\n\nIf Joe or Jane developer of Acme Demolition Inc. names a Javascript file\n`ad_main.js`, the burden of resolving the my-ad-blocker-is-blocking-this-file\nproblem is not on them.\n\nThis is why I've yet to find an ad blocker that I would recommend to anyone\nwithout web development knowledge.\n\n~~~\ndredmorbius\nAnd I'd argue the opposite, based on desire paths.\n\nPeople will bend the Web to suit _their_ goals. You as a web dev with a need\nfor ads revenue focus on that. Me as a web _user_ with a need for information\nand pathological hatred of anything distracting, focus on my needs. Users with\nvisual and motor disabilities (I support a community of same) are quite\nactively thwarted by many revenue-positive factors.\n\nMy fix for a bunch of Web gunk is to have a default set of client-side CSS\nthat kills, well, a bunch of crap. Flyovers, modals, interstitials, fixed\nheader/footer elements, and a slew of other stuff. Ello's front-end guy pretty\nunderstandably said it voided my warranty for the World Wide Web. And he's not\nwrong.\n\nBut man does it make things suck ever so much less.\n\nWhich gets to the point: much of the stylesheet is glob-match patterns on\ndescriptors that are frequently annoying as fuck-all. Which was why I'd showed\nit to him. That sheet, or others like it, are going to be in the client world,\nand soon, and if you're putting flyover and modal keywords in your selectors,\nthey're going to get blocked.\n\nYes, it's an iterative arms race. Your turn.\n\n(And: ultimately the solution is to fix the revenue/compensation model for\npublished works. Online and elsewhere. That'll take a while, but it'll also\nfix very nearly everything wrong with the present iteration of the Web.)\n\n------\nz3t4\nI think the root of the problem is that browser vendors break stuff all the\ntime. A new browser comes out and now breaks your ten year old web page ...\nThen the web dev team says _fuck it_ we'll only support Firefox and Chromium,\nand start using features that only works on those browsers.\n\nTen years ago, web dev was all about getting your page to work on all\nplatforms. But today we have hundreds of possible combinations of OS x Browser\nx Extensions, so it's just impossible.\n\nI try to only use browser features that are three years old and \"standard\".\nBut not even that works.\n\nPhone/Ipad browsers are the biggest offenders of breaking stuff.\n\n------\nhhsnopek\nYou have some valid points about how we use javascript for many parts of our\nweb pages that don't need javascript. I would love for the web to be fully\naccessible without javascript, but we have to remember that there are a small\npercentage of people currently using the web without javascript. Im sure\ntwitter has their reasons for using javascript for the simple tasks that are\nsolvable without the assistance of javascript. I would imagine that it wouldnt\nbe cost efficient, if nothing else, not a top priority to make their site\naccessible without javascript due to the small user base that doesn't use\njavascript.\n\n~~~\ndredmorbius\nThere are two substantial online communities which don't use javascript, or\ndon't use it reliably.\n\nRobots and the disabled.\n\nBots include major search engines -- Google, Bing, DDG, etc. And yes, they may\nparse _some_ JS, but it's quite spotty. But there are also a bazillion custom\nWeb scrapers (not everything's APId, scraping is MVP) which harvest\ninformation for purposes good and otherwise.\n\nThe disabled use screen-readers or text-to-speech to render content for those\nwho cannot see your pixel-perfect design.\n\nI'm leaning to a \"plaintext first\" school of Web design. First plan a\nplaintext page, then mobile, then full desktop. See where that gets you.\n\n------\nPhilWright\nGiven that Twitter is massively successful and used by millions everyday I\ndon't think it is a good target for complaining about slow loading times and\npoor performing JavaScript. Often in business 'good enough' really is good\nenough. Gold plating code is something many developers (including myself) make\nthe mistake of trying to do all the time. But the difference between 'good\nenough' and gold plating is often not worthwhile for the business.\n\n------\nmarssaxman\nOH GOD YES THIS PLEASE.\n\n------\nedoceo\nI'm curious about two things.\n\nA) What search hotkey to use if not '/'\n\nB) Why does your JS load slow? Did you fix that part?\n\nI build web-apps and try to think \"JS second\". I've noticed that my customers\nlike fast loading, consistent pages. These \"magpie\" like decisions harm the\ncustomer experience.\n\n------\nszatkus\nThe issues in the article are very similar to advices in some old book (from\n\"yay, AJAX\"-era) about JS I read in the past. Looks like not too many people\ntook them to heart.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Native AngularJS drag and drop directive - askmehow\nhttp://jasonturim.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/angularjs-drag-and-drop/\n\n======\naskmehow\nThis is my first public OSS contribution. I would appreciate any feedback on\nthe blog post, source code and documentation.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Writing and Variables - thangalin\nMicrosoft Word makes using variables in documentation a labyrinthine act: over a dozen steps to insert variables into documents, to say nothing about organizing them. For a sci-fi book I&#x27;m writing, I developed a text editor that allows me to insert variable names into a document with ease. This allows me to make the character sheet part of the writing process. Here&#x27;s a  demo video of the concept:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=u_dFd6UhdV8<p>Why is applying the DRY principle to documentation not more prevalent?\n======\nchalst\nIt's straightforward in the text-based formats used to create man pages\n(troff) and in subsequent native documentation formats: Texinfo, various Wiki\nand Markdown-inspired syntaxes, etc. It might be that relatively little\ndocumentation is created in Word by people who want the process to be as\nefficient as possible (as opposed to copy-writers who charge by the hour).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTikTok and Microsoft’s Clock - joshus\nhttps://500ish.com/tiktok-and-microsofts-clock-c4c9fd082b89\n======\nchvid\nWhere is EU in this embarrassment?\n\nSuppose Margrethe Vestager called and said TikTok, you are banned unless you\nlet a \"very european\" company take over your business? And by the way. We\nwould like a cut.\n\nAnd would the US still being able to say \"national security\" if it was fully\nowned by German business running on servers in some Swiss mountain?\n\n~~~\nlovetocode\nBecause the Chinese cyber threat is incredibly real. The United States should\nbe playing hard ball. The US TikTok systems are compromised by Chinese\nspammers already.\n\n~~~\nFooBarWidget\nIf the threat of Tiktok gathering data is so real, then isn't a much better\nsolution, to pressure Google and Apple into improving their security models?\nThat way, _nobody_ can spy on your phone anymore. Or do you think Tiktok is\nthe only and last threat there will ever exist?\n\nBut nobody's talking about actual solutions. All this looks more like a witch\nhunt to me.\n\n~~~\nfr2null\nI don't think the key data that TikTok is gathering is anything you can really\nblock on your phone. It doesn't ask for your phone number, it doesn't ask\ncontacts, it doesn't ask for access to your messages. Instead, it looks for\ntrends, it looks at who you are.\n\nI (18 years old) have used TikTok for about 2 months, before deleting it\nbecause it simply got too addictive. In that time it learned what my favourite\ngames are, what shows I watched as a child, my political views, my eating\npreferences, my technology preferences. The list goes on. While I'm not sure\nhow much of this is saved in a black box and only known by the algorithm and\nhow much they can extract, I'd argue that this is many times more valuable for\nChina that my personal phone.\n\nFurthermore the power to influence the algorithm, subtle and slightly of\ncourse, may slowly change the minds of literal millions of teens.\n\n~~~\nFooBarWidget\nThere is a solution even to that. That's what the Microsoft sale is all about.\nThat's why Bytedance proposed to sell ALL shares of their US branch. Replace\nthe entire US branch staff with US employees. Vet every line of code. Don't\nsend any data to China. This is the ultimate solution.\n\nAnd yet nobody seems to be interested in this solution. People are still\ncooking up new reasons to ban Tiktok. Or ignoring the existence of this\nsolution altogether.\n\nWhy do you think that might be? I suspect it's because the issue is more\nemotional and fear-based than rational. People are falling for the propaganda.\n\n~~~\nshuntress\nThat does not actually solve the problem.\n\nYes, maybe I find it a little easier to trust Microsoft than Bytedance. But\nthe problem is not who holds the data that I generate about myself.\n\nThe problem is that I have zero (or very little) agency to view or manage this\ndata. That lack of agency is important because this data will have a tangible\nimpact on my life.\n\n~~~\nFooBarWidget\nBut I thought we were talking about national security? Why did it suddenly\nturn into privacy and data control?\n\nPrivacy is a legit angle, but why focus on Tiktok alone? Talk about privacy\nlaw reforms so that Twitter and Facebook are also included.\n\n------\npatall\nBeside all the political issues, what is Microsoft actually supposedly buying\nhere? The data centre, data and access to it? Because it does not seem to me\nthat they are buying any of the developers, am I right? At least there is no\ntalk about that. How well can you run a platform by buying its software\nwithout any of the people that run it, at least from my developer point of\nview that seems a very strange idea. Basically, they will have to understand\nand rewrite the entire thing within a few months with whatever own developers\nthey can provide. Without any major hickups, or users will leave the platform\nin seconds, its not like there are no competitors or the underlying technology\nis complicated. Its just that everyone is used to the platforms but if that\nchanges ...\n\nAnyways, an insteresting case study for platform theory ...\n\n~~~\nsandworm101\nTikTok users. Microsoft is bidding to purchase Tiktok's user base.\n\nData centers, even engineering talent, is fungible. They are replaceable and\ntherefore have no special value worth haggling over. But attractive young\npeople wanting to dump their lives into a video app for pennies? _That_ is the\nreal asset in this deal.\n\n~~~\npatall\nThat part is obvious. Still, you have to be able to run it. If you have hourly\noutages weeks into taking over because you cannot fix this or that glitch, the\nnicest user database isn't worth much if users are switching to the next\nplatform.\n\nI do not expect much technical depth in an app such as TikTok, nevertheless\nyou will need dozens (and more) of engineers to run it and how do you organize\nthose to a previously unknown structure. In theory that is simple but anyone\nwith who manages code for someone no longer in the company knows otherwise.\nAnd the engineers that wrote the code weren't native in english either ...\n\n~~~\nlowdose\nBut code in any language can be read by any engineer in the world that is\nproficient in it. I do not speak or read Chinese but when I pull an\ninteresting looking repo from Github that is Chinese I only have to stroke 3\nkeys to translate all python comments in the file to English. Works great!\n\nYou don't need really need another language when you have a common one in\nplace. Even without code comments you should be able to sniff out the\ncrackpots.\n\nChinese repos are trending on Github everyday. They do really cool things\nbeyond the cutting edge on every side of our business. From frontend react and\nvue to shiny ML and backend golang.\n\n~~~\nstingraycharles\nThis is not as much as cultural “translation” of code, it’s about handing over\nyears of knowledge of running a platform. Even if Microsoft was buying some\nUS-based social media company, they would at least want to have access to\nseveral engineers to handle the transition and transfer knowledge.\n\nIt will be interesting to see how Microsoft handles this, but I can’t believe\nit will be without access to some TikTok engineers for an extended period of\ntime.\n\n~~~\nlowdose\nIsn't Github basically the blueprint for running an infrastructure to manage a\nfull remote coding workspace?\n\nI'm actually surprised the mature way Microsoft handles the Github\nacquisition. It's not anything like that of what they did with Skype. What you\nare referring to a managerial nuances on a blueprint like this.\n\nAnd it is not like Microsoft would have any problem to multiply these\nengineers salary by 10X because they still would not pay software engineering\nmarket rate in Seattle or another hub.\n\n------\nsomeperson\nIt continues to be damning that the leadership of Microsoft did not buy Vine\n[1] from Twitter in 2017 for pennies on the dollar before Vine was shutdown.\nVine was _very_ popular, and a lot of people were very disappointed when it\nwas shutdown back when Twitter was bleeding a lot cash.\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_(service)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_\\(service\\))\n\n~~~\nhellomyguys\nHonestly hard to tell if this is satire. TikTok is way more compelling than\nVine was, even at its peak. The idea that Microsoft not buying a dying Vine\nfrom Twitter is indicative of its poor leadership is hard to wrap my head\naround.\n\n~~~\nsomeperson\nPeople are talking about Microsoft paying more than $30 billion for TikTok's\noperations in just four countries. Vine was losing Twitter 10 million dollars\na month at a time when Twitter was desperate for cash.\n\nMicrosoft (or Google, or Facebook, or any similar cash rich company) could\nhave bought Vine for tens of millions.\n\nThe product and algorithm could have been tweaked to be more compelling. Even\nif the new owner wasn't able to do that, using an existing established\nplatform/audience then cloning the features of upcoming competitors is very\npowerful.\n\n~~~\nthebean11\nEasy to say in hindsight. At the time it wasn't so obvious that the problem\nwith vine was algorithmic. They wouldn't have known which direction to tweak\nin; I don't even think Vine had much of an algorithm. It was mostly news feed\nno?\n\n------\ndkobia\nThe United States loses the moral high ground moving forward and Microsoft\ngets a blemished gem. The machinations of this deal are unsightly. Just\nbecause this is how the game is played in China doesn't mean we have to do it\ntoo.\n\n~~~\nxvector\n“Nice rapidly-growing foreign service you have there. It would be a _shame_ if\nwe called it a ‘national security risk’ and made you sell it to us for pennies\non the dime!”\n\n~~~\naddicted\nThe irony, of course, is that the US is pulling these heavy handed maneuvers\nat a time when the rest of the world would have gladly done it for the US for\nfree.\n\nHalf the world is currently pissed with China. India already banned Tik Tok.\nThe US could have used what is left of its diplomatic corps (devastated in the\npast few years) to encourage other countries such as the NATO nations, 5 eyes\ncountries and other allies to threaten to ban Tik Tok and the likes of China\ndidn’t resolve their security concerns. And the vast majority of them would\nhave agreed, essentially forcing China to do this or something similar without\nthe US losing its moral high ground, and gaining strength and respect amongst\nits allies instead of looking like a street level rent a mob type.\n\nThe same with the TPP. The US under this administration and tried hard to\npunish China, and basically, over the past few years has managed to slightly\nalter the fortunes of 2 individual companies, at a huge cost to its local farm\nsales, and hasn’t gained much in return at all, while hurting China only\nmarginally.\n\nIf they had remained in the TPP, they would have had a much greater effect\nacross Chinese companies (since it wouldn’t require cherry picking individual\ncompanies and acting specially for each of them) and the influence would have\nbeen levered since it would have come from pretty much every neighbor of\nChina, and further, would have come at little cost to the US.\n\nWhat’s most disturbing about these actions isn’t so much the actions\nthemselves, but the fact that they have traded away so much of the US’s\nreputation built over generations, cost the US so much in rep and straight up\ncash, and has barely got it anything in return. And all this while much more\neffective alternatives which would have cost the US nothing but instead would\nhave helped it strengthen its position in the world, existed by acting through\nits alliances.\n\n~~~\njadbox\nThis is similar to what I was going to post too. Unless there's some kind of\n4d chess power games happening behind the scenes, it looks a real gross amount\nof incompetence in lack of planning, diplomacy, and leadership at all levels\nof international relationships. More realistically- seems like a meltdown of\nalliances towards standalone empire-style thinking once again.\n\n------\njoejohnson\nUS, Canada, New Zealand and Australia are four of the “Five Eyes” surveillance\ncommunity (the fifth is the UK)\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes)\n\n~~~\nandylynch\nYes. Given that it’s very surprising to see the UK not mentioned.\n\n~~~\nculturestate\nI had the same reaction, until I learned that the ByteDance founders are\nworking to relocate[1] outside of China, probably to London.\n\n1\\. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-bytedance-\nbritain/t...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-bytedance-\nbritain/tiktok-owners-will-relocate-to-london-from-beijing-sun-newspaper-says-\nidUSKBN24Z0IE)\n\n------\nThrustVectoring\nDidn't Microsoft become _significantly_ more involved in donating to US\npoliticians after they got hit with that anti-trust case? It'd be very\ninteresting to follow the money here, not sure if there's enough publicly\navailable data to DIY the digging though.\n\n~~~\nkrona\nWhat are you supposed to do with an influence peddling racket? Microsoft is\nplaying the same game as everyone else.\n\n------\npulse7\n\"Microsoft fully appreciates the importance of addressing the President’s\nconcerns. It is committed to acquiring TikTok subject to a complete security\nreview and providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including\nthe United States Treasury.\" => So US Treasury will give MS money to buy\nTikTok (US market only)? And they have limited time to make this deal? So US\nTreasury will effectivelly own the US TikTok... and NSA will record every move\non it and process it with BigData...\n\n~~~\nmaffydub\nI read \"providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the\nUnited States Treasury\" as just meaning Microsoft will make money (and hence\npay tax) on this. Am I being naive?\n\n~~~\nczzr\nApparently yes:\n\nA transaction of the type the president envisions could also prove more\nexpensive than the one Microsoft described on Sunday. Trump said Monday that\npart of the amount paid to buy TikTok would have to come to the U.S. Treasury\nDepartment because it would be making the deal possible.\n\n“It’s a little bit like the landlord/tenant; without a lease the tenant has\nnothing, so they pay what’s called ‘key money,’ or they pay something,” Trump\nsaid. “But the United States should be reimbursed or should be paid a\nsubstantial amount of money, because without the United States they don’t have\nanything, at least having to do with the 30%.”\n\n[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/03/president-trump-might-be-\neas...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/03/president-trump-might-be-easier-if-\nmicrosoft-buys-all-of-tiktok.html)\n\nSo, to summarise: the president of the United States is openly advocating\napplying illegal real estate extortion/bribery practices to major M&A deals\nwith geopolitical implications.\n\n~~~\npjc50\n> So, to summarise: the president of the United States is openly advocating\n> applying illegal real estate extortion/bribery practices to major M&A deals\n> with geopolitical implications\n\nWell, yes, because he's spent his entire career doing that and now he's\nPresident. See the case the NY AG is building against him.\n\n~~~\nlondons_explore\nIs it any different than just having a tax on purchasing foreign companies?\n\nIt's the same as a tax on purchasing foreign goods, which is already in place\nfor goods from China in the form of tariffs.\n\n~~~\nInitialLastName\nTariffs aren't a tax on _purchasing_ foreign goods. I can buy as many tons of\nsteel as I'd like in China while paying no money to the US Government (as long\nas I can export the money, which is a different issue). Tariffs are taxes on\n_importing_ foreign goods. That would only even conceivably be comparable if\nMicrosoft were planning to relocate TikTok to the US; as it sounds like\nthey're planning to relocate it to London, that wouldn't apply.\n\n------\nTimpy\nIf this is a national security risk, having Microsoft purchase it is a\nterrible idea. Will Microsoft install this app next to Xbox Live and Candy\nCrush on your start menus? Is it going to end up in your startup-apps,\nlaunching every time you load your PC, added back to your startup-apps after\nevery update regardless of how many times you remove it from the list?\n\n~~~\nBTinfinity\nI imagine Microsoft would also be tasked with tying up the security risks\nbefore publishing it anywhere near the Windows start menu\n\n~~~\nFooBarWidget\nIn fact, that is the whole point of the purchase. Microsoft would replace the\nentire US operations team with US employees, and vet all the code. There would\nbe zero reasons left to ban Tiktok on the grounds of national security.\n\nFor some reason, I'm not seeing many people talking about this at all.\nEverybody is still talking about justifications about why Tiktok should be\nbanned. I therefore suspect that the issue is more emotional than rational in\nnature.\n\n------\nNiceWayToDoIT\nCan someone explain me, if TikTok does not want to sell then what? Americans\nwill need to use VPN for TikTok?! And why would they sell they have 800\nmillion users? Instagram revenue jumped from close to 7 billion in 2018 to 14\nbillion in 2019, why would they sell how big is USA market?\n\n------\nshusson\n> who saw value in an American company getting access to sophisticated TikTok\n> algorithms\n\nCaused me to spit-take.\n\n~~~\nvernie\nWhy?\n\n~~~\n83457\nI'm guessing they believe it suggests a reason the current administration is\npushing for the sale is to have some control over said algorithms and thus\nwhat videos are served, possibly to the benefit of the current administration\nand their interests.\n\n\"The proposed transaction gained the blessing of senior Trump officials,\nincluding Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who saw value in an American\ncompany getting access to sophisticated TikTok algorithms that decide what\nvideos users are served.\"\n\n~~~\nShamelessC\nThat's not how I interpreted it. Pretty sure they were referring to the\n\"sophisticated\" part as unlikely. Not saying I agree though. No clue how their\nalgorithms work.\n\n------\nsomeperson\nPrior TikTok/Microsoft discussion:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24032667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24032667)\n\n------\ndreamcompiler\nI'm no fan of TikTok, but in general the US president doesn't get to tell US\ncompanies what to buy, and he doesn't get to tell US persons what internet\nsites they can or cannot visit. (Yes, I realize it does happen e.g. for\ngambling sites, but it's generally a game of whack-a-mole for the government\nbecause there is no Great Firewall of the US.) If ByteDance just told Trump to\ngo to hell, what specific legal and technical actions could he take to stop\nAmericans from using TikTok?\n\nI'm worried about precedent here, and whether this is just a pretext for\ncreating a GFoUS.\n\n~~~\nfrank2\nThe US president can probably compel Apple and Google to remove Tiktok from\ntheir app stores. Tiktok can appeal that action to the US court system and the\nUS legislature, but those appeals would probably go nowhere.\n\nSo a technically inclined Android user or a user of a jailbroken iOS device\ncan probably continue to use Tiktok, with effort, but will have much fewer\npeople to interact with using the service.\n\n~~~\nDrew_\nIf the president can't compel Apple/Google to install backdoors, he can't\ncompel them to remove TikTok.\n\n~~~\nelpool2\nHe could have the commerce department put TikTok on the Entity List, which\nwould prohibit all US companies from doing business with them. It would be\nunprecedented though because putting a company on the Entity List is almost\nalways tied to some actual criminal activity like trade violations or\nespionage (see HuaWei).\n\nSo there is away for him to do it, but TikTok could challenge it legally.\n\n------\nkumarvvr\nThere is also something fishy about all the \"algorithm\" talk.\n\nAre we supposed to believe that the algorithms that a bunch of Chinese blokes\ncame up with for a viral video platform are so complex that the US Govt. wants\nto intervene and help Microsoft buy it?\n\n------\ncuriousDog\nWonder if the Chinese government will retaliate and ban US companies like\nTesla or Apple from selling goods there unless they fork over ownership to\nAlibaba, haha.\n\n~~~\nbigpumpkin\nHaha. Nah. They still need them to run the factories that employ millions of\npeople and show aspects of cutting edge manufacturing.\n\nThey probably will retaliate on American entertainment/content, considering\nthose are more replaceable.\n\n------\nthrowaway423342\nIntellectual property robbery\n\n------\nm1117\nIf Microsoft doesn't buy TT, it's going to be banned by Trump. Great deal for\nMicrosoft.\n\n------\nngcc_hk\nTikTok is designed to be a separate firm somehow. Quite different from the\narms of wechat, ... partially due to the censorship of china. But it also\nshowed the fundamental problem. None of the media social or not get into\nchina. Not even diplomat. But China earn the other way round. The unbalance is\nunimportant when USA feel safe. But when USA not the one way street is a bit\nof shock. How to handle this ...\n\nFor this case more important is us investor. Hence the strange deal. Otherwise\nit would outright blocked like india.\n\nThe missng of Uk or non-chinese world is strange though.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nUK spy boss warns of technology terror risk - jackgavigan\nhttp://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34276525\n======\nfredley\n> \"It's in nobody's interests that terrorists should be able to [...]\n> communicate out of the reach of authorities.\"\n\nSince you can't distinguish between 'terrorists', and anybody else, this\neffectively reduces to our old favourite:\n\n> \"It's in nobody's interests that _people_ should be able to [...]\n> communicate out of the reach of authorities.\"\n\n~~~\npfortuny\nEven that first premise is wrong in any state with the rule of law. Only\ncrimes have to be prosecuted, not \"people\" or \"communications\" and prosecution\nis always something done \"a posteriori.\"\n\nThe above must be understood correctly: I am not advocating that one should\nnot investigate possible criminal plans: because planning some kind of crime\n(like killing someone) with intent is, ipso facto, a crime.\n\nIt is not PEOPLE that the law applies to. It is CRIMES.\n\nWe incarcerate people because we do not know a better way to punish them for\ntheir crimes, not because we do not want them to be human beings. CRIME-\nPUNISHMENT, not MAN-JAIL.\n\n~~~\nSilhouette\nThe trouble with this principle is that there is some damage you simply can't\nput right retrospectively, and in this case we really are talking about the\ngovernment agencies whose remit is to try to prevent those things from\nhappening in the first place. They do have a legitimate need to take\npreemptive actions in some cases, because otherwise people will quite\nliterally die. The useful questions are about how we can help them to do their\njob and keep people safe from whatever real dangers are out there, but without\ndoing more harm than good.\n\nIn the case of encrypted communications, I'm not sure that will ever be\npossible, because the dangers of preventing everyone from communicating\nprivately may far outweigh the danger from otherwise unanticipated acts of\nterror. The politicians want a middle ground solution where only good people\nhave access to the information, but the technologists understand that no such\nideal solution can exist here.\n\n~~~\npfortuny\nYou are right. But.\n\nSuspicion about the existence of a crime (and plotting a crime with intent is\nby itself a crime) is (given enough evidence) reason enough to investigate.\nThat is what you call \"preemtive\", I guess.\n\nAnd yes, I am willing to run more risks for the benefit of freedom. Because\nthere are things which are more important than life. And freedom is one of\nthem.\n\nBy freedom I mean freedom of coertion, in this context.\n\n~~~\nSilhouette\nIt seems like we agree on the general principles here, but I think you have to\nbe pragmatic about applying them.\n\nWe all live together in the same society, so we can never have complete\nfreedom and universal rights. If nothing else, sometimes the rights and\nfreedoms we value come into conflict.\n\nA classic example is that in general we might want to protect freedom of\nexpression and we might also respect a right to privacy. However, at some\npoint those competing interests are incompatible, and so we have to try to\nbalance them as fairly as we can.\n\nFinding that balance is particularly difficult in cases where the damage\ncaused from a violation may be very high but such violations are rare in\npractice. This is probably true, at least in countries like mine, both of\nfighting real violent terrorism and of real damage from blanket government\nsurveillance. In both cases, we're also concerned about the potential future\nharm, not just the actual risk of harm today.\n\nUnfortunately, hardly anyone is in a position to realistically assess the risk\nand make an informed personal judgement about what they think a good balance\nshould be in an ideal world, even before we consider legitimate differences of\nopinion or the complications of not living in an ideal world.\n\n------\ntomelders\nI'll only believe these \"we stopped x number of attacks\" quips when that\nnumber is given to us by an independent authority who doesn't have a vested\ninterest in making numbers up.\n\nCall me cynical - but I think recent history backs up that position.\n\n~~~\nchipgap98\nI don't think asking for validation of what we're being told is cynical at\nall. I think that problem is that people think its a problem to ask for proof.\n\n------\nkevcampb\nYou'd wonder how we all survived in the days before the internet, when they\nhad none of this data.\n\n~~~\narethuza\nEasy - place bugs in 10 Downing Street:\n\n[http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/apr/18/mi5-bugged-10-down...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/apr/18/mi5-bugged-10-downing-\nstreet)\n\nPoor Harold Wilson - 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't\nafter you.' \\- he was paranoid about being bugged and it eventually turned out\nthat they were.\n\n~~~\nspacecowboy_lon\nYes but Wilson was actually going mad, early onset Altzimers - its tragic and\nwas hushed up for years out of respect for the Man.\n\nWilson also had his own in house dirty tricks dept who fed his apatite for\nconspiracy theory's which did not help.\n\n------\nnota_bene\nThis seems to eternally remain relevant:\n\n[http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/fear-of-terror-\nmakes-...](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/fear-of-terror-makes-people-\nstupid.html)\n\n------\nagd\nIt's worth pointing out that the government is about to try and push through\nnew surveillance powers.\n\nDespite his protestations to the contrary, he very much is trying to shape UK\npolicy and opinion.\n\n~~~\ntouristtam\nHe has the backing of a good part of the UK medias and the establishment: just\nlook at the news surrounding the internal Labour election.\n\n------\nmtgx\nI wonder if he's referring to the fact that they can't _hack_ into tech\ncompanies as easily as they did pre-Snowden revelations.\n\n> _But Mr Parker, in the first live interview by a serving MI5 boss, said what\n> should be included in new legislation was a matter \"for parliament to\n> decide\"._\n\nYes, I'm sure the MI5 or GCHQ will offer no input whatsoever to the Parliament\nand will just let them come up with the legislation on their own.\n\n~~~\nlaumars\nThe fact that he refused to answer the question about whether he agreed with\njudicial oversight speaks volumes.\n\n------\nif_you_see_sid\nI am sure I have just read an article which basically says: bo ho we can't\ndecrypt all the security used. Switch the target from paedophiles back to\nterrorists, so that we can remove the liberties of the nation.\n\n------\nfukusa\nWould it harm national security if they published a list of former security\nagency employees who are now employed by the security industry? It think it's\nsafe to assume that a very high percentage of former security agency employees\nend up working in this industry as it is in their area of expertise and the\nindustry could use their connections to the agencies. With all of this in\nmind, would it not make sense to assume that the terrorism threat could be\nhighly exaggerated or even fabricated?\n\n------\nelcct\nEspecially innovations in shower rooms where criminals can communicate without\nauthorities interference. I think every shower room should have a backdoor in\nform of a chair for an agent to sit and listen.\n\n------\npeterwwillis\nAt some point isn't there an argument to be made that they're being lazy? For\nexample, say they gained the ability to inspect every single digital\ncommunication and read every message sent, as if that were actually feasible.\nSo people stop sending the messages via the internet.\n\nWhat's the next thing they're going to do? Install listening devices around\nthe country to listen into private conversations in private homes all around\nmajor cities (assuming they already don't do that with mobile phone\nmicrophones on standby) ? Once they have that, will they begin exploring how\nto effectively 'read minds', or do pattern analysis on behaviors of different\npeople as they walk around or sit in cafes or something to look for 'malicious\nintent behavior' ?\n\nTerrorists will always continue to look for new ways to avoid detection, and\nthese agencies are always going to push for more invasive means of\ncircumventing them. It will always get worse, until we start saying, no\nthanks, i'd rather risk it. And, hey call me crazy, but maybe even working to\nstop the root causes of extremism rather than simply waiting for them to boil\nover could be a good idea.\n\n------\nJustSomeNobody\nHow much more secure would be using codes rather than encryption for\n\"terrorists\"? If I were a terrorist, I don't think I'd use encryption as it\npretty much guarantees scrutiny.\n\nBut, how secure is coming up with some sort of code? Like say, \"Honey, can you\npick up some milk on the way home.\" Means the truckload of fertilizer is ready\nto be delivered or something.\n\n~~~\ntankenmate\nUsing a code words etc still leaves you vulnerable to analysis. MI5 here are\nasking for the ability to request records of individuals or individuals that\nmatch certain narrowly defined criteria. So at this point they would have a\nlow level suspicion of you, something they can use to drive analysis. The only\nreasonable protection at the point of already being in the cross hairs is to\nuse mathematically secure communications.\n\n~~~\nJustSomeNobody\nI'm sure it would (leave someone vulnerable), but I think it would be\ninteresting to see some analysis of how it stacks up to encryption.\n\nGovernments have been breaking codes since forever, so I know they're good at\nit. And with computers, I'm sure it's gotten so much easier.\n\n------\ndharma1\nHow would they realistically prevent people from using encryption?\n\n~~~\nrichmarr\nBan encryption without back doors. Some companies would withraw products,\nothers would comply, maybe some others would protest for a while.\n\nAfter a while the only option left would be steganography\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography)\n\nAt which point it seems unlikely they'd be able to do anything other than work\non techniques to detect steganography (which they no doubt already do)...\nwhich leaves us with a steganographic arms race (which has probably already\nbeen the case for some time behind the scenes).\n\n~~~\nandy_ppp\nI love the idea of using Facebook, Email, Youtube, Instagram etc. to tunnel\nTor.\n\nWonder how difficult it would be?\n\nIt's probably already happening just look for slightly different duplicates of\nthe same videos.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway7767\nThe problem here is that tor is largely focused on realtime communications,\nand stuffing packets through e.g. facebook chat would probably be too slow. It\nwould work great for another anonymity network that was more message-focused\nwith no realtime needs.\n\nThat said, you might be interested in tor's meek pluggable transport:\n[https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/meek](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/meek)\n\nEssentially, the idea is that someone buys a VPS hosted on a cloud service\nwith common ingress IPs (such as Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure, etc). Tor\nclients then connect to it, sending an innocent-looking domain (gmail.com or\nsomething) in the TLS SNI header, and then only in the datastream protected by\nTLS do they expose the tor protocol.\n\nThis is of course useless against NSA and GCHQ, which have access to all these\ncloud providers, but it's very useful for example for people behind\nrestrictive country-level firewalls as the authorities are reluctant to block\nsuch large services and it's hard for them to distinguish this from normal\ntraffic.\n\n------\nvenomsnake\n> He said internet companies had an \"ethical responsibility\" to alert agencies\n> to potential threats.\n\nAs long as keeps it just ethical and not legal responsibility ... oh wait, we\nare pushing in that direction.\n\n------\nNickHaflinger\nWhat a load of technology terror BS ..\n\n------\nJupiterMoon\nI was 'surprised' how weak the bbc interview was he lied several times during\nthis interview and they did not pick him up on these lies once.\n\n~~~\ntouristtam\nI stop listening to what the BBC had to say the day they were just \"reporting\"\nthe project fear during the Scottish Independence referendum. The most notable\nfact was the report of new oil field discovered in North Sea early 2014, that\nsuddenly couldn't outlive the current decade during the referendum period.\nOnly to be completely resurrected the day after the referendum and the No\nvictory. All reported by the same BBC.\n\n~~~\nJupiterMoon\nThis is familiar it happens to most people eventually when the BBC discusses\nan issue that one actually knows something about. Their independence since the\nIraq war fallout has been seriously weakened.\n\n------\ndanlindley\nYou are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a\nterrorist.\n\nIs anyone talking about that?\n\n~~~\nrichmarr\nI agree, more people should be talking about that, but... (a) MI5's budget\nisn't based on how well it supervises the police, because it doesn't, and (b)\nMI5 is based in a country where that \"8 times more likely\" statistic is\ncompletely reversed.\n\n\"According to data collected by the UK advocacy group Inquest, there have been\n55 fatal police shootings – total – in England and Wales from _1990 to 2014_.\"\n[http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-\ncounted-p...](http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-\npolice-killings-us-vs-other-countries)\n\nAnd this list broadly supports that figure (adding deaths from Scotland and\nNorthern Ireland):\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_Kingdom)\n\n~~~\nJupiterMoon\nMultiple problems with that statistic. (1) you quote England and Wales, what\nabout Scotland and Northern Ireland? (2) The police in the UK do not generally\ncarry firearms and most people that die in/at the hands of the police do not\nget shot in the UK.\n\n~~~\nrichmarr\nUh huh.\n\n(1) I already made that point, and linked to data on the UK including Scotland\nand Northern Ireland. But, it broadly matches up. If you have better data\nplease share it.\n\n(2) The full-UK list I linked to is \"people who died directly or indirectly\nbecause of the actions of law enforcement officers, regardless of the manner\nof death\". Again, if you have better data feel free to share it.\n\nI have to wonder what point you're trying to make.\n\nThe relevant point I made to the parent comment was that the \"police kill 8\ntimes more than terrorists\" statistic quoted doesn't apply in the context of\nthe UK. Even if manage to quibble the \"55 people\" stat up to 100 it's still an\norder of magnitude short of \"8x\".\n\nAre you saying that UK police _do_ kill 8x more than terrorists?\n\n~~~\nJupiterMoon\nNo I'm saying that your statistics are flawed/selective. The OPs clearly don't\napply to the UK at all.\n\n~~~\nrichmarr\n> The OPs clearly don't apply to the UK at all.\n\nBingo.\n\nThe actual article is about a UK agency making a statement about terrorism,\nand the parent commenter, danlindley, quoted a statistic implying police\nkillings are what MI5 should be talking about instead of cyberterrorism.\n\nYou could argue that he wasn't implying MI5 should talk about police\nkillings... but that would remove the last fragile connection between his\ncomment and the actual topic: MI5 & terrorism.\n\nI replied to him to point out why a UK intelligence agency would not be\ninterested in making a statement about the topic he implied they should...\nthat the UK has negligible incidence of police killing civilians and that even\nif we did MI5 would have no incentive to discuss it.\n\nYou can argue my statistics aren't perfect if you like, but to do that would\nbe missing the point.\n\n------\nJupiterMoon\nIf you live in the UK and care get ready to start writing to your MP.\n\n------\nsatai\nHe should stop spread fear, uncertainty, doubt and terror.\n\n------\nbadger404\nMI5, CIA, et al. _are_ the terrorists.\n\n~~~\nx5n1\nYou can't make such a bold claim.\n\nHowever, this does happen from time to time\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio)\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Lead_%28Italy%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Lead_%28Italy%29)\n\n~~~\nif_you_see_sid\nSure you can: \"Terrorist: a person who uses terrorism in the pursuit of\npolitical aims.\"\n\n------\nPuffinBlue\nI heard Admiral Lord West[0] today giving an interview on the BBC radio\nstation '5 live'. In it he sated words to the effect:\n\n\"Nobody cares about your emails or if your having 30 affairs\".\n\nThis is just a variation on the 'if you have nothing to hide' argument which\nas ever forgets that bothersome dimension - time. Perhaps I have nothing to\nhide 'now', but who's to say I won't later? Even in very recent history I'm\npretty certain that if I was gay I'd be very much regretting making any\nprevious public declaration of my sexuality in Russia say 5 years ago, much\nless the age numerous examples over the last century where people have been\npersecuted as government positions changed.\n\nThis is a very difficult subject. I value privacy but I suppose I also value\nhonesty. Knowing that what I put online (like this statement) is being\nsurveilled en mass somehow feels better than finding out after the fact.\n\nThe flip side to that is then, what's the point of more security powers?\nSurely if everyone knows they're listening no one will say much of that\nparticular interest? It's common knowledge that the security services have\nbroken 'everything' save for cleanly and properly implemented encryption on a\nclean system (even then the hardware is breached so air gap it). The 'Bad\nGuys' know this so the likelihood of obtaining quality intelligence from such\nmass surveillance seems counter-intuitive to put it kindly.\n\nThose who do use common online services will be the 'low-hanging fruit' and\nlikely so stupid the'd have been caught anyway (maybe we should still pick\nthat fruit, I guess).\n\nThe truth is, attacking a soft target like a western country is easy and\nrequires no use of encryption. Just go and get a couple containers of fuel, go\non a tube at rush hour with them in a backpack, pull the emergency stop, dump\nthe fuel and light a match. You could probably rig up something custom made to\nget the job done simply and effectively (with no end of variation to counter\nyour initial 'that wouldn't work'). That sort of thing would probably rival\nthe 7/7 London bombings with just a one man attack (and talking about it will\nno doubt get me on a list now - wow look at me worrying about self-censoring).\n\nIn fact, I'd put £1000 on fire being the next weapon of choice because done\nproperly it's incredibly effective. Could we defend against that sort of\nattack? No. We can't. That's the truth. We can't really stop anything (or most\nthings) done quickly and where the attackers are themselves prepared to die.\n\nSo do we pull down all the (illusions of) freedom we have built up for\nourselves in the hope of catching some low hanging fruit? I don't think that's\na good idea. After all, the security services must remember that their job is\nin fact _supposed_ to be difficult (impossible even) and they must struggle to\ndo it whilst maintaining those pesky freedoms the populace deserve that keep\ngetting in the way all the time.\n\n[0]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_West,_Baron_West_of_Spith...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_West,_Baron_West_of_Spithead)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe First-Ever Banner Ad on the Web - jgrahamc\nhttps://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-first-ever-banner-ad-on-the-web/523728/?single_page=true\n======\nJun8\nThis is the first time I've seen the You Will ads, they're awesome! Modulo\nsome laughable glitches like paying the toll with a cc in the car and phone\nbooth video calling. But the fact that the majority of the predictions were\nspot on makes these oversights even more interesting.\n\nMost of what the ads predicted became reality in 10-15 years, i.e. 2003-2008.\nWhere are the ads that predict technology for 2020?\n\n~~~\nAnOscelot\nI'm especially interested in how deeply embedded phone booths were to people\nwho should have thought past them. A lot of SF / futurist stuff from the 60s\nto early 90s thought people would still be tied to fixed locations for\ntelephone and network access.\n\nI've always wondered why that was, especially when some form of mobile phones\nhave been around since the 80's, or even earlier with very expensive car\nradios which could tap into the phone network. I guess the phone booth was\nsuch a fixture of the landscape that no one could imagine a world without\nthem.\n\n~~~\nshuntress\nI find the most interesting aspect of this observation to be the notion that\nwe have a similar present-day blind spot and the associated exercise in\npredicting what is that blind spot(s).\n\n~~~\nAnOscelot\nYou're correct. That's the fun part. What's especially fun is that the blind\nspot is often something which has already been developed, and didn't sell well\nin its first iteration, or is common in prototypes and SF / futurist stuff but\nno one thought it would ever be widely available.\n\n------\njosephg\nIronically it looks like you can't view that page with an add blocker\ninstalled.\n\n~~~\nwereHamster\nI use uBlock Origin and the website works.\n\n~~~\nashark\nI'm in Safari with I-don't-remember-what adblocking (looks like I have\nghostery?). Just pressing BACK when the anti-adblock message shows up lets me\nsee the original page! That was an easy fix. Turns out I'd just been closing\nAtlantic pages as soon as that message appeared for no reason.\n\n------\njkchu\nLink to the AT&T tv commercial from in the article:\n[https://youtu.be/TZb0avfQme8?t=30](https://youtu.be/TZb0avfQme8?t=30)\n\n------\nwinestock\nI remember feeling scandalized the first time that I saw a banner ad on the\nweb. I also remember the epic flame wars on Usenet (sic transit gloria mundi)\nwhen Canter & Siegel made the first commercial spam campaign.\n\nAt times, I have wondered how much of the Internet would shut down if ads were\nforbidden. Sometimes, that thought sobers me. Other times, that thought\ngladdens me.\n\n~~~\nastrodust\nThe \"Green Card Spam\" basically ended USENET by violating the spirit and\nagreement those participating in that system more or less adhered to.\n\nThey had no respect for the norms, for basic politeness, and instead wanted\nnothing more than to make money, no matter how many \"snowflakes\" were upset.\n\nNot unlike a certain businessman running for President...\n\n~~~\njquery\nIs there some sort of law that all conversations in 2017 must somehow involve\na shoehorned reference to our current president?\n\n~~~\nastrodust\nIt's because sometimes you don't have the power to stop someone who has no\nregard for the rules.\n\nDesign systems that can self-correct better. Give the rules more bite.\n\n------\nrocky1138\nI don't mind banner ads. I don't like the privacy-sucking invasiveness of\nonline tracking they come with. If someone could craft a banner ad that did\nnot have this problem, I'd whitelist their site in my ad blocker.\n\n------\ncvarjas\n[http://thefirstbannerad.com/](http://thefirstbannerad.com/)\n\n------\njanwillemb\nI even remember that I installed software in the late nighties that showed a\nbanner while you were online. The promise was that you would earn money by\nallowing this ad to float on your screen. I don't think I ever got payed, and,\nprobably related, I think I removed the software shortly after installing.\n\n------\nvwcx\nOn a related note, what is the first banner ad you remember seeing?\n\nFor me it was the X10 camera ads around 2000:\n[https://www.geek.com/news/x10-ads-are-\nuseless-545130/](https://www.geek.com/news/x10-ads-are-useless-545130/)\n\n------\nempath75\nThe AT&T ads were remarkably prescient.\n\nWhen they came out, computer assistants, smart watches, video calls and\nautomatically paying tolls were far off science fiction. It makes sense that\nthey were so early to jump on the iPhone.\n\n~~~\nastrodust\nThat was a different AT&T, the one that still had an interest in trying to\ndefine the future.\n\nThe AT&T Apple badgered into offering the iPhone was a hollow shell of its\nformer self.\n\n------\nk__\nFirst-ever banner ad and it's already click bait, lol\n\n------\nkrystiangw\nand the rest is history...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGood book for economics - signa11\nwhat would be a good book that would serve as a nice introduction to economics ? i currently am planning to go through \"economics, by samuelson and nordhaus\". is there something better ?\n======\ndfens\nI highly recommend _Basic Economics_ by Thomas Sowell. The title is not very\nimaginative but I found it a great place to start before looking at more\ncomplicated concepts.\n\n[http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-2nd-Ed-\nCitizens/dp/046...](http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-2nd-Ed-\nCitizens/dp/0465081452/ref=sip_rech_dp_10)\n\n~~~\nelidourado\nCurrent econ PhD student here. Sowell is great. There's a 3rd edition out now.\n\n[http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-3rd-Ed-\nEconomy/dp/0465...](http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-3rd-Ed-\nEconomy/dp/0465002609/)\n\n------\nctkrohn\nI wish I could help you. I majored in economics and math, and can't recommend\na single one of my economics texts. I kept a good number of my math books, but\nsold all my econ texts when I graduated.\n\nThat being said, you will probably get better results if you specify what you\nmean by \"economics.\" There are several disciplines within economics:\nmicroeconomics, macroeconomics, econometrics, financial economics/mathematical\nfinance, game theory, etc. The material in each of these disciplines will vary\nconsiderably depending on how theoretical the textbook is. For example, a\ngraduate-level theoretical macro text might talk about general equilibrium\nmodels, but a more practical macro text would cover topics like the\nimplementation of monetary policy, economic history, the relationship between\nthe government and the economy, costs and benefits of international trade,\netc.\n\nIf anyone knows of a good comprehensive overview of the field, I would be\ninterested in hearing about it.\n\n------\nmooders\nTim Harford's [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Undercover-Economist-Tim-\nHarford/dp/...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Undercover-Economist-Tim-\nHarford/dp/0349119856/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209888755&sr=1-1)\"Undercover\nEconomist and [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Logic-Life-Uncovering-Economics-\nEver...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Logic-Life-Uncovering-Economics-\nEverything/dp/0316027561/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209888990&sr=1-1)\nLogic of Life are both excellent at drawing out serious economic principles\nfrom everyday experiences.\n\nPhilip Coggan's [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Money-Machine-Penguin-Business-\nLibra...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Money-Machine-Penguin-Business-\nLibrary/dp/0141009306/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209888653&sr=8-1) Money\nMachine is not directly an economics book, but details the movement of money\nthrough the global economy (but focused on London, specifically) and is an\nexcellent overview of fiscal policy.\n\n------\nmathoda\nthe best selling book is currently Mankiw's Principle of Economics (Amazon:\n<http://tinyurl.com/6euszg>). i highly recommend his blog too\n(<http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/>)\n\n------\nlunchbox\nIt depends if you're looking for a textbook or more entertaining general-\naudience book. If the former, check out Principles of Economics, as mathoda\nsuggested. If the latter, here are Mankiw's recommendations:\n[http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/05/summer-reading-\nlist.h...](http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/05/summer-reading-list.html)\n\n------\n1gor\nEconomics is a pseudo-science.\n\nIt does not follow the basic principle that knowledge is proved and disproved\nby experiments. You can find all the sophisticated mathematical methods you\nwant in economics, and none of them would stand a test of reality. Most of so\ncalled 'models' come with disclaimers against 'exogenous' shocks, and pretty\nsoon you discover that our whole life is one big exogenous phenomenon.\n\nNo wonder economists today are desperately in search of identity. You can see\nthem dabbing in psychology, history, social behaviour studies, business\norganisation etc. It's all call 'economics', but plucking concepts from\nassorted fields does not compensate for a general lack of substance.\n\n'Economics' can include hard factual stuff like how international trade or\nbalance sheet of a central bank work. Those are hard to argue with because\nthat is mostly accounting. Like the fact that bloated 'left side' of the\nbalance sheet should be covered by issued money on the 'right side'.\n\nMainstream economic concepts such as 'equilibrium' or the horribly misnamed\n'Modern Portfolio Theory' are as far from latest scientific understanding of\nthe world as mediaeval barbers are from the modern medicine.\n\nSo instead of polluting the brain with what they call 'economic science' go\nand study complex systems theory (or related theory of computations, chaos\ntheory etc) and you will be a) on the forefront of modern understanding of\neconomic reality b) will be actually studying Science, not quackery.\n\n~~~\nyummyfajitas\nAstrophysics/Climate Science/Systems Biology is a pseudo science.\n\nIt does not follow the basic principle that knowledge is proved and disproved\nby experiments. You can find all the sophisticated mathematical methods you\nwant in geophysics, and none of them would stand a test of reality. Most of so\ncalled 'models' come with disclaimers against various features, and pretty\nsoon you discover that our whole life is one big exogenous phenomenon.\n\nYour criticism applies to the study of almost any complex multiscale system.\nThe fine scales are poorly understood, and most models come with various\ndisclaimers. Many parameters are unknown, and reasonable quantitative\npredictions are impossible. Plenty of examples show models to fail, but they\nare still used since they sometimes work.\n\nLife is messy, and studying a mess leaves you with a messy field. It's a\npseudo-science when you stop admitting that, and pretend you have all the\nanswers. I don't know of any economists who have reached that stage.\n\n~~~\n1gor\nMainstream economics refuses to admit it deals with a complex nonlinear\nsystem. And econometrics claims it has all the answers through gaussian\nstatistics.\n\n~~~\nyummyfajitas\nI don't think you are aware of much modern economics. In general, the Chicago\nschool exactly takes the viewpoint that one is dealing with a complex,\nnonlinear and nondeterministic system. Neoclassical economics takes a similar\nviewpoint.\n\nSee also [complexity\neconomics](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity_economics>).\n\nAs for econometrics, they do exactly what you said economics doesn't do: try\nto fit the models to real life, and reveal when the models fail.\n\n~~~\n1gor\nThanks for questioning my knowledge. Let me return the compliment. I don't\nthink you are aware of the fact that a complex dynamical system (the economy)\nis deterministic. The randomness implied by stochastic models does not exist\nin reality. Complex dynamics looks similar but is a different animal\naltogether. Attempts to build global predictive models are futile in principle\nand can be compared to attempts to build a model that predicts the weather a\nmonth from now.\n\nEconomics needs a philosophical paradigm shift, and of course it is happening\n(slowly, and Santa Fe Institute is the place to watch), but is it not what you\nfind in Samuelson books and in the mainstream academia. That is the point I am\nmaking.\n\n~~~\nyummyfajitas\nI know a fair amount about dynamical systems. As for whether the economy is\ndeterministic at the most fundamental level, I suppose that really depends on\nyour interpretation of quantum mechanics.\n\nConcerning weather prediction, that's my point. Economics is as much of a\nscience as meteorology is. Economics and meteorology will never achieve the\nlevel of simplicity and accuracy that fundamental physics does. Doesn't make\nthem unscientific.\n\n------\npchivers\nThe book that got me started was _Economics in One Lesson_ by Henry Hazlitt\n([http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-\nUndersta...](http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-\nUnderstand/dp/0517548232)). Published in 1946, and still considered a classic.\n\n------\nivankirigin\nMilton Friedman is an excellent writer. Try \"Capitalism and Freedom\" or \"Free\nTo Choose\". Not so much academic discussions about partial derivatives applied\nto indifference curves, but very informative.\n\n------\nnoelchurchill\nA Random Walk Down Wall Street. [http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-\nStreet/dp/039331...](http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-\nStreet/dp/0393315290)\n\nRequired reading for one of my economics classes in college. This is an\nexcellent book covering the efficiency of markets. Extensively backed by real\nworld data, this book boils down to some of the best and most prudent\ninvestment advice you can get. I re-read it after graduating just because it's\na great book.\n\n------\ndavidmathers\nOne option: assume that there is no one book that can serve as an intro to\neconomics (I haven't found one yet) and start learning the subject be reading\nthe 3 great classical economists: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx.\nAll 3 were geniuses who had many brilliant insights. And all 3 were wrong in a\nsimilar fundemental way because they didn't fully grasp the concept of value.\n\nPersonally I've found overviews (ie \"The Wordly Philosophers\") to be useless\nfor real learning.\n\nWhat I've found instead is that when really smart people are wrong, their\nwrongness (how and why they are wrong) is just as instructive as when they are\nright. If not more so.\n\nOnce you understand classical economics then learn about the marginal\nrevolution. Follow that by reading Keynes and Von Mises simultaneously.\n\nAlmost every notable economist of the last 50 years is, in some form, an\nintellectual descendent of either Keynes or the Austrians (Von Mises and\nHayek). Perhaps directly or one of Keynes -> Galbraith or Austrians -> Chicago\nSchool (Milton Friedman).\n\nThere are also lots of intellectual descendents of Marx (Thomas Sowell for\nexample) but they tend to just write about economics rather than being actual\nworking economists.\n\nNotable Keynesians: Paul Krugman is an excellent writer and wrote several\ngreat popular books in the 90's, I escpecially like The Accidental Theorist.\nBrad DeLong worked for the Clinton administration and has a blog.\n\nNotable Austrians: The Marginal Revolution blog (directly inspired by\n\"Austrians\"), Greg Mankiw (worked for the Bush administration a few years ago,\nnot directly inspired by \"Austrians\").\n\n~~~\ndavidmathers\nNote: when I say \"Austrians\" I'm talking about guys who wrote books between\n1910 and 1960, not the nutjobs at mises.org and lewrockwell.com.\n\n------\nmstoehr\nThese two are my favorite (that are reasonably priced!). Samuelson is\ndefinitely a formidable thinker and lays the groundwork for much later\neconomic thinking.\n\n[http://www.amazon.com/Worldly-Philosophers-Lives-Economic-\nTh...](http://www.amazon.com/Worldly-Philosophers-Lives-Economic-\nThinkers/dp/068486214X) [http://www.amazon.com/Price-Theory-Milton-\nFriedman/dp/020206...](http://www.amazon.com/Price-Theory-Milton-\nFriedman/dp/0202060748)\n\nHowever if you go with the Samuelson, Fridman, and Heilbroner you'll be\nmissing out on some key concepts relating to information and games, which are\nessential for understanding modern developments in economics.\n\nSo, I would also look at Myerson's Game Theory [http://www.amazon.com/Game-\nTheory-Analysis-Roger-Myerson/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Game-Theory-\nAnalysis-Roger-Myerson/dp/0674341163)\n\nFinally, the empirical side of economics is quite important, and it is\nessential for investigating whether the theoretical conceptions (say in\nSamuelson) actually hold up. There are many bad texts, and the seminal ones\n(Greene) are quite difficult in the beginning. So, I recommend a pedagogical\ntext that uses the likelihood approach. Although, this is, by no means, a\ncomprehensive text, you can certainly gain an understanding of a basic\neconometric study [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Econometric-Modeling-David-Hendry-\nNi...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Econometric-Modeling-David-Hendry-\nNielsen/dp/0691130892)\n\nThat should give you a broad introduction. Also, checkout\n<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/DisplayJournalBrowse.cfm>, which is an excellent\nresource with many free papers.\n\nGood Luck!\n\n------\nludwikg\nI would start with this one: [http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-\nShortest-Understa...](http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-\nUnderstand/dp/0517548232), or free online at\n<http://jim.com/econ/contents.html>.\n\n------\njackdied\nIf you are asking for introductory economics +1 for \"Basic Economics\" by\nSowell and \"Free to Choose\" by Milton Friedman (Sowell is one of Friedman's\nproteges).\n\nPBS made \"Free to Choose\" into a series back in the 1980s. You can find all\nthe episodes on YouTube.\n\n------\ndanohuiginn\nGet hold of at least two textbooks. In economics even more than elsewhere,\neach book will give you a different perspective.\n\nIf you're feeling really adventurous, pick up a second-hand textbook that's a\ndecade or two old, and keep an eye on how the orthodoxy has shifted.\n\nWhich to buy? The best-sellers are all pretty similar: quite clearly written,\nbut maybe longer than they need to be. Mankiw, Samuelson/Nordhaus and\nBaumol/Blinder all seemed OK to me; I'm not aware of any truly exceptional\necon. textbook.\n\n------\nsystems\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics#History_and_schools_o...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics#History_and_schools_of_economics)\n\nMost books can be very dry, i would recommend looking for something more edgy\nand opinionated\n\nThis is why i recommend googling and reading online articles such as the link\nabove\n\nEconomics is a very debated field, i would recommend that would follow the\ndebates and the debaters\n\nclassic school vs neo classical ... this is where the most fun is\n\n------\nepi0Bauqu\n[http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=550&...](http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=550&pc=Business%20and%20Economics)\n\nIt is an audio course (also avail) on DVD from the Teaching Company now in its\nthird addition. Taught by Timothy Taylor. I've read a lot of economic books\nand taken a lot of courses, and I believe this is the best introduction.\n\n------\nrms\nAccept no substitutes:\n\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital>\n\n------\nfreikwcs\nNot much else to add except I would recommend picking up two books as well.\n\n1\\. A standard price theory text that will give you the basic tools of\neconomists.\n\n2\\. A book that provides real-world applications illustrating how these tools\nare used. (I agree - Basic Economics by Sowell is a great place to start.)\n\n------\nlacker\nI don't know a good book but I can recommend an excellent blog, Marginal\nRevolution:\n\n<http://www.marginalrevolution.com/>\n\nNot the intro-topics sort of material, but very interesting. Closer to\nFreakonomics style.\n\n------\nmhb\nPrice Theory: An Intermediate Text by David Friedman. Online version:\n[http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_ToC...](http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_ToC.html)\n\n------\nSoothsayer\n\"Economics and Making Decisions\", by Kourilsky, Dickneider, Kaplan, and\nTabbush. It was the first of many economics books that I have read, and I\nstill haven't come across a better primer.\n\n------\ndavidw\nThis one's free on line:\n\n<http://www.introecon.com/>\n\n------\nmichael_dorfman\nI can't think of a better textbook than Samuelson.\n\n------\nideas101\nI strongly recommend:\n\nThe Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, Cures By Richard Duncan\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nReview HN: BillMeBob.com - Generate free invoices with no signup - SingAlong\nhttp://billmebob.com\n\n======\nsgrove\nVery cool! Invoicing is a terrible (and least interesting) part of freelancing\nand consulting. This looks like a great MVP. I especially like that when I\nprint it out, that there's no big \"billmebob\" logo at the top there.\n\nI think it would be fair to put a self-promotional link/tagline at the very\nbottom of the page though.\n\nAlso, allowing me to email directly from the page would probably be nice. At\nthe very least, just do a mailto: link with the subject and body filled in for\nme to just hit \"send\" :)\n\nAwesome MVP, definitely keep us up to date on the iterations!\n\n~~~\nleftnode\nYeah, this is awesome. Everything I need and nothing I don't. If you allowed\nme to upload my company's logo for each invoice, that'd be even better.\n\nI do freelance from time to time, but not enough to justify spending any money\non an online invoicing service. This does exactly what I want without having\nto have an account.\n\nBookmarked, great job!\n\n------\ncj\nI would have a preview of what the invoice would look like before making me\nfill out everything. If the formatting is not what I am looking for, I\nwouldn't want to spend the time filling out the form.\n\n~~~\noldgregg\nI tried it. Don't waste your time.\n\n~~~\nkno\nIt’s certainly not world class but its still not the worst I’ve seen around\nhere. Give the guy some constructive critique, give him a chance.\n\n------\nABR\nVery clean, and simple = Time Saver (as opposed to InDesign etc). I'm glad you\nlaunched this app, and from one who has studied SaaS - it's a great business\nmodel. Kudos. I must agree, the simplicity is something I value. I will refer\nthis to my friends. Keep up the good work, SA.\n\n------\nVekz\nI used to do freelance web development work and invoicing was always such a\npain. You either roll your own, use a paid system, or something totally\nbloated like quickbooks. This is great for individuals doing short projects.\nGreat MVP. hope you pick up some adoption.\n\n------\nmilep\nLooks nice. One suggestion, when you change from products to services, it\ncould change the quantity to hours and per unit to per hour as a default?\n\n------\npetesalty\nGreat, super easy to use. Liked it a lot. couple of suggestions:\n\n1\\. White labeling - Let me get rid of the logo at the top and replace it with\nmy own. Similar on the domain, maybe something like my_company.billmebob.com.\nMaybe these are things you could charge for.\n\n2\\. Sign in - let me sign up after the first one and have it remember things\nlike my company name, address, and maybe even companies I've billed before\n(I'm likely to do it again and don't want to repeat entering that all the\ntime). Possibly something else you could charge for.\n\n3\\. Recurring invoices - email the same invoice every month/week/etc.\nautomatically. Probably need some kind of user account for that.\n\n------\njamesbond\nHere are two ideas that could be interesting, while keeping the product bloat-\nfree: \\- Add an option to print the invoice in another language; \\- Add a link\nto a PDF version (although I could \"print to PDF\" if I weren't lazy).\n\nI'll bookmark it for sure, though I am waiting for the French version of the\ninvoices. I've had such an idea a while ago but never really went forward with\nit, you beat me at it ;) By the way, I love the name!\n\n------\njonpaul\nI really appreciate the simplicity. Please keep it simple. Don't listen to all\nthe naysayers who want X,Y,Z feature. You'll end up alienating the users who\nactually enjoy your product.\n\nThanks, I will actually be using this.\n\n------\ngte910h\nThat's excellent!\n\nIf you take fields for the google checkout and paypal links it would be\nbetter. If it also generated a emailable letter which could be copy pasted\ninto an email it would be fantastic.\n\n~~~\ngte910h\nYou also should point out what you use the data for.\n\nI know I'd be hesitant to type my customers' addresses into such a system.\n\n~~~\nSingAlong\nThank you everyone for your feedback and suggestions.\n\nThe data will be used for nothing except displaying your invoice. Also, i made\nthe urls look dirty with those random characters instead of letting people\nchoose shorturls to keep invoice details private. There's no/will be no page\nanytime that would list the invoices. So they are all safe.\n\nP.S: pdf and mailing option coming in the next few hours.\n\n~~~\ngte910h\nAnother tack is a \"don't take it off the page\" javascript thing that generates\nthe invoice without ever submitting the address to the server.\n\n------\ncrc5002\nI think that the interface is very nice.\n\nRe. privacy, it may be a good idea to disallow invoice URLs in robots.txt,\nusing a common pattern or subdirectory.\n\n------\nshadowz\nAlthough simple, I do think you could use a little more design. I'm not\ntalking about eye candy graphics. Just some CSS touch-ups would do.\n\n------\ndanskil\nA minor usability point. If you hover over an X on the left, your cursor\nshould change to a hand. Site looks good.\n\n------\ndavisml\nIt looks like an ugly version of the original Invoice Machine (which also\noffered free invoices without signup).\n\n------\npierrefar\nGreat little MVP.\n\nAny way of keeping track of invoice numbers? Will require a login or maybe\njust cookies.\n\n------\nstulogy\nwould appreciate your thoughts on Invoice Bubble which is my app. It's not\nfree, but it does have SSL security, PDF attaching, client management and\nstuff like that - but really simple and only $5. <https://invoicebubble.com>\n\n------\ndavidw\nNice - I was expecting it to be US-centric in terms of currency or something,\nbut it's not. Thanks!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRemote Work Resources - jeanlucas\nhttps://gist.github.com/jeanlucaslima/1da263f81842058cf512a61d85ada4c1\n======\njeanlucas\nI compiled this list lately, what am I missing?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPetition to put Alan Turing on the next £10 note - dave1010uk\nhttp://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/31659\n\n======\nj_baker\nI think I speak for everyone here when I say that Turing's bill should be a\npower of two. I think Turing should get a £5.12 bill.\n\n~~~\nacheron\nMaybe it's £10 in binary.\n\n------\ntwiceaday\n\"Turing's homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952, when\nhomosexual acts were still illegal in the United Kingdom. He accepted\ntreatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to\nprison. He died in 1954, just over two weeks before his 42nd birthday, from\ncyanide poisoning. An inquest determined it was suicide\"\n\n\"On 10 September 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister\nGordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British\ngovernment for the way in which Turing was treated after the war.\"\n\nPutting him on the money would further the apology.\n\n~~~\nJabbles\nI don't want Turing put on a note as \"an apology\". There are thousands\n(millions?) of people who have been mistreated by unjust laws in British\nhistory, of which Turing's case is sadly not the worst example. Turing's\naccomplishments in Computer Science and the help he gave the Allies in WWII\nare cause enough.\n\n~~~\nbdg\nAmazing contributions towards defeating the Axis. Response? \"Yeah... but, at\nthe time, being gay was illegal, so, ya know.\"\n\n~~~\nVMG\nThat was not the response. The actual response\n\n _It is tragic that Alan Turing was convicted of an offence which now seems\nboth cruel and absurd-particularly poignant given his outstanding contribution\nto the war effort. However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as\nsuch, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place\nand, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what\ncannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those\ntimes._\n\n[http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-\nnortherner/2012/feb/07/alan...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-\nnortherner/2012/feb/07/alan-turing-pardon-lord-mcnally-lord-sharkey-computers)\n\n------\nJabbles\nThe Bank of England already has him on their list of candidates.\n\n[http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/Documents/about/ban...](http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/Documents/about/banknote_names.pdf)\n\n~~~\nschiffern\nThat's a list of names suggested by the public, not candidates that the Bank\nof England is considering. Surely it's unsurprising that he is among the 154\nsuggested names.\n\n\"Inclusion on the list does not imply any endorsement by the Bank.\"\n\nThe petition still has value.\n\n------\nestel\nI'm not sure what the point in this petition is: surely responsibility for the\ndesign and circulation of currency lies solely with the Bank of England and\nnot HM Treasury?\n\n~~~\nschiffern\n\"We therefore call upon the Treasury to request the Bank of England to\nconsider depicting Alan Turing when Series F £10 banknotes are designed.\"\n\n~~~\nestel\nBut we shouldn't want the Treasury to have a say in this!? Allowing the\nTreasury to have a political say in what the Bank can put on their banknotes\nopens up a whole can of worms that it would be infinitely preferable to be\nleft unopened.\n\n~~~\nschiffern\nThey still wouldn't \"have a say\"; it's simply a request. I admit ignorance of\nEnglish political delicacies, however.\n\n------\nr4vik\nwhat's wrong with Darwin?\n\n~~~\nestel\nI don't know that anyone was claiming there was something wrong with him, but\na new £10 note will be issued in the near future as part of series F that will\nfeature someone else.\n\n~~~\nr4vik\nI'd argue that Darwin is even more important, we should petition to keep him\non there.\n\nAlan Turing is a huge personal hero and agree that it'd be great to have him\non a note, but just wish it was another one.\n\n------\nKolya\nI would prefer if Darwin remained on the £10 note and Turing was put on the £5\nnote instead.\n\n------\nrichardk\nWhy is this a petition?\n\n~~~\nAndrewDucker\nBecause in the UK if you get 100,000 signatures on a petition you can get it\ndebated by The House Of Commons.\n\n~~~\nchimeracoder\nWhereas in the US, if you get 25,000 signatures on a petition, you get... a\npolite response summarizing the talking points you already knew, and\nexplaining why nothing will change.\n\nThat is, if you're lucky - I believe we're still waiting on the promised\nresponse to this one:\n[https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#%21/petition/actually-...](https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#%21/petition/actually-\ntake-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-\nlistening/grQ9mNkN)\n\n~~~\nexcuse-me\nIt doesn't have to be seriously debated - it just has to be officially\nmentioned, it's still just democracy window dressing.\n\n~~~\nsemanticist\nIt doesn't have to be debated at all - if a petition reaches the threshold\nthen the committee just 'consider' it for a debate.\n\nThere was a petition to abandon the recent NHS reforms that reached the\nthreshold and wasn't put forward for debate.\n\n~~~\nchimeracoder\nOkay, so it's not really any better than the US system.\n\nIncidentally, in the 24 hours after I posted that, they did in fact finally\nrelease a response to that petition. It was _long_ after the deadline that\nthey promise for petitions that reach the threshold, and it wasn't much more\nthan a justification of what they already do, but at this point I doubt\nanybody was expecting anything more.\n\n------\nsamwilliams\nI think this comes with particular weight after this...\n<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17405016>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA Recommendation for Google's Webspam Team - duck\nhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-recommendation-for-googles-webspam-team\n======\nWillyF\nI like Rand's proposed solution, and I'm confident that the folks at Google\ncan come up with something even better and more effective.\n\nI'm finding that natural link building is getting harder and harder. Much of\nthis is because social media sites (that often use nofollow) are now how\npeople talk about stuff they like. And when they do have a Tumblr or\nWordpress.com blog, the links aren't very valuable.\n\nMost of the valuable links that I've been able to build lately have come from\nmy asking people to link to my sites. In a way, we're seeing more and more\nPageRank inequality. The people who control the sites with the most link\nequity know what they have, and they're not willing to share.\n\nI'm lucky that my niche isn't completely commercial, so there are still plenty\nof easy, valuable links to build, but I can't imagine how tough it would be to\nSEO a site in a competitive, commercial niche.\n\n------\njefflinwood\nRand's blog post demonstrates that there's now a pretty big disconnect between\nanchor text keywords and actual link quality - he makes an excellent point\nthat natural links aren't likely to put the keywords directly into the anchor.\n\nIt's such an interesting problem - on one hand, you have autoblogs populating\nthe internet with Made-For-Adsense keyword-stuffed content that would soak up\nlong tail search results, so Google can't just ignore inbound links as a\nmeasure of relevance, and on the other, you have keyword-stuffed anchor text\nlinks that aren't particularly relevant to the content of the page they're on.\n\nWhat other page metrics would one use to measure relevancy today that wouldn't\nbe as susceptible to SEO gaming?\n\n------\npraptak\nThe proposed solution requires a lot of manual tweaking: _\"Have manual spam\nraters spot check through a significant sample size of the pages\"_ , _\"If the\nfalse positives follow some easily identifiable pattern, write code to exclude\nthem and their ilk from the filtration system.\"_\n\nGoogle seems to avoid this kind of thing as a principle.\n\n~~~\nlmkg\nNot really. This step basically says either \"Look at the data and use that to\nguide how you write your algorithms\" or \"manually curate a statistically\nsignificant set of training data.\" You're not having the humans look at the\ndata and include/exclude links or sites, you're having them look at the data\nto figure out heuristics for applying to the eight hundred billion pages they\ndidn't look at. This step doesn't need to scale, so manual labor is not an\nincorrect solution. Given the context, and the ever-evolving nature of SEO,\nhaving human review is necessary part of the process, and this is the best way\nto add that human element in a scalable fashion.\n\n------\ntnorthcutt\nWhat is the purpose of only notifying 65% of the sites found (and publicizing\nit that way)? Is that to create some uncertainty, so that even sites that\nweren't discovered by this method will give some thought to changing, for fear\nthat they are part of the 35% not notified?\n\n~~~\nbryanh\nI thought it was for exactly this reason. He doesn't elaborate though.\n\n------\nladon86\nGreat post. I don't know a lot about how well this would work in practice\n(perhaps Matt Cutts could comment), but anchor text link gaming is a huge\nproblem and this sounds like a decent solution.\n\nMany of Google's results have started to 'feel' really bad lately - I'm doing\na lot more wading through crap and a lot less finding what I want quickly.\n\n------\npornel\nMaybe they're not tackling this problem, because they realize it's futile?\n\nIf exact keywords stop working, spammers can easily start adding extra words\nor variations to anchor text (with something like Markov chains one can create\nlots of believable variations).\n\n------\nDanielBMarkham\nThe only thing I would add would be to make sure the links are cross-domain.\n\nI can imagine several different websites operating in a target niche, say home\nmortgages, that might have menus and pages and such that reflect common search\nterms in that area. In fact, if you think about it, if you're writing for a\nniche you should anticipate what people want to know about that niche, and\nsearch terms give you that, so there's quite a bit of commonality.\n\nBut as long as the links were cross-domain, sure, makes sense to me.\n\nI just wonder if there aren't a lot of more edge cases like this. At the end\nof the article he kind of waves his hands around and says something like \"and\nif this doesn't work, then you can use artificial intelligence and machine\nlearning\"\n\nThat's a sign that perhaps there are many more holes in this line of attack\nthat he just doesn't care to deal with. Don't know.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHeroku for PHP - Private Beta Signup - cardmagic\nhttp://phpfog.com/\n\n======\nmdasen\nI don't think there's a huge market for what Heroku does in the PHP world.\nWith Rails, you want to run it as a long-running process. The amount of time\nto spin up a (Thin|Mongrel|Unicorn|etc.) is too long to do it based on a user\nrequest for a page and it's why Rails isn't run as a CGI.\n\nPHP is a bit different. The language is typically embedded in the server and\nthen the individual files are parsed and run. There's little configuration\nother than uploading the files since the server can just interpret the files\nending in \".php\".\n\nHeroku needs to be able to put your application code on multiple servers and\nknow which servers are responsible for your application. When one of your\nThins isn't working, they need to kill it and spawn a new one, potentially on\na new server and make sure they update their routing table. It's a tad\ncomplicated.\n\nPHP Fog doesn't have to do much. Heroku is running around 65,000 applications.\nAssuming that applications are under 30MB (for the hard drive), a RAID-1 with\n2TB drives on every server they have would do the trick with a simple load\nbalancer sending requests to a random server would do the trick. Your code is\nresident on their 15 app servers, a request comes in and gets routed to a\nrandom one, it parses your PHP and returns a response. The application isn't\nin memory as a long-running process like it is with Rails. Heroku already just\nhas shared or dedicated database servers. There's no fancy process monitoring\nthat you need since you only have to ensure that Apache is still going strong.\n\nBut that's also why PHP Fog won't do as well. They aren't taking on as\ndifficult a challenge as Heroku. They don't need to run something like god or\nmonit to monitor lots of user processes. They don't need to pre-spawn\napplication servers. They don't need fancy routing to keep track of what\ndomain is being requested, what application belongs to that domain, and on\nwhat server that application is located. Because PHP doesn't usually involve\nlong-running processes, it's taken care of for them. In fact, there are\nservices like this already such as Rackspace's Cloud Sites (which puts your\nPHP or ASP code on multiple boxes, has a shared database, and loadbalances\nit). The same situation exists with Media Temple's Grid Service. Media Temple\nsays, \"hundreds of servers for the price of one\". That's possible because the\napplication code takes up such little space and can be easily replicated since\nit doesn't store state. Rails and Django users on Media Temple have to buy a\n\"container\" which comes with a certain amount of RAM on a specific box -\nbecause they need to keep the application in memory.\n\nRails deployment will get a lot more people on board because it's more\ndifficult to do. You have to manage application processes. PHP deployment is\nalready seen as something that \"just works\". And if someone is going to argue\nthat this \"just works\" a little better, wait until different users are\nexpecting different php.ini stuff - or they expect to be able to save to the\nlocal filesystem because that's what the code they downloaded does or do a\nhighly insecure cross-domain require or all of the various things that can't\n\"just work\".\n\nThey could still be a very good webhost, but they aren't solving the same\nproblem as Heroku and others (including Media Temple and Rackspace) have\nalready gone the multi-server, auto-load-balanced and managed failover route\nfor PHP (just not using git).\n\n~~~\nnoodle\ni disagree, somewhat. yes, this won't provide truly comparable services to\nheroku. clearly. the languages and stack don't work the same way.\n\nbut i think the point of this is to communicate the fact that they're\nabstracting out the server and scalability details. i'd pay to not have to\nworry about all that stuff and just work on the app.\n\nif this thing will handle the server for me, keep it secure and up to date,\nprovide me with a database that will scale with my app like amazon's RDS,\nprovide me with meaningful data and metrics about my\nserver/application/database, and provide me with things to make common tasks\neasier (deploying), then imo, it is worth me paying for it, or paying a small\npremium on top of what i'd be paying amazon or whoever. but then again, i'm a\nsolo bootstrapper. the more time i have to develop, the better.\n\n\"heroku for php\" might not be a great choice of a tagline from a strategic\nperspective, but it is a decent one if you want to consider SEO and organic\nsearch results.\n\n~~~\ncardmagic\nThis wholly encapsulates the philosophy we are bringing to PHP Fog... let us\ndeal with the plumbing and you deal with development.\n\n~~~\ncfpg\nSo, it's basically a PHP shared hosting with source control(git)? I would try\nit.\n\n~~~\ncardmagic\nIt will let you seamlessly grow from shared to dedicated hosting (and back\nagain) as needed for either your application serving or database needs.\n\n~~~\ngabriele\nthis is pretty much what Mediatemple.net already offers with Containers for\ntheir GS (shared hosting). They don't have PHP Containers but they do have\nMySql Containers that are automatically instantiated if traffic spikes. I\nthink you could really make a difference by offering killer features on\ndemand, like isolated memcached instances, redis, cassandra/mongoDB and\nRabbitMQ.\n\nedit: email submited\n\n------\ncmelbye\n_like Heroku, but better_\n\nSomehow I doubt that, but the service looks interesting. I wonder if there is\na market for high quality PHP hosting.\n\n~~~\ndotBen\n\"Like Heroku but for PHP\" would have been a less arrogant slogan IMHO.\n\nActually a lot of top tier websites are built in PHP (Facebook's front end is\na good example) and so I don't doubt there is middle tail in there that might\njump on a Heroku-style managed black box hosting platform.\n\n~~~\ncmelbye\nThe only reason they can use PHP in the front end is because they have a lot\nof different backend and frontend services to compensate for it speed-wise.\nFacebook uses HipHop, backend services written with C/Java/etc(?), and lots of\ninteresting frontend JavaScript stuff to speed up page loads. Wikipedia has\nliterally hundreds of Squid servers to cache requests, so most visitors never\ntouch code that was just generated with PHP. Needless to say, this would be\nunlikely to be possibly using PHP Fog. (This comment sort of turned into a PHP\nis slow argument, oops. My point should still come across though)\n\n------\nqeorge\nPut in my email for an invite, its going to come down to pricing.\n\nMy initial skepticism is that deploying PHP apps is easy, and Fantastico\nalready gives us 1-click installs for stuff like Drupal and Wordpress. So\nyou'll have to provide all the value on the sysadmin side.\n\nHowever, we do have a couple of apps that require load balancing. I'm pretty\nhappy with the dedicated server and load balancing prices we get from\nWiredTree already, but I'm always looking for new opportunities.\n\n~~~\nwhalesalad\nThe benefit here is the git integration. I'd also assume that the control\npanel is going to be thousands of times easier to use and more efficient than\nCpanel/Fantastico (which is pretty gross in my opinion)\n\nI also dropped my email address in out of interest, but I agree this is\ndefinitely something that isn't needed for PHP. The web that we have right now\nwas built for PHP. 99.9999% of hosts support it out of the box, and offer one\nclick installs. If you're running your own app, it's just as easy to get that\nrunning with PHP.\n\nWhat we really need is a Heroku for PYTHON! And Google App Engine is NOT the\nanswer.\n\n~~~\ndotBen\nWhy is Google App Engine not the answer for Python? Is it \"the man\" element or\nis there something at a technical level you don't like or missing?\n\n~~~\nmseebach\nGoogle limits you to using their own key/value store instead of a regular,\nrelational DB. This makes it hard to migrate to and from GAE, so there's a\nfair bit of vendor lock-in.\n\nA Heroku app can run anywhere else, out of the box.\n\n~~~\nblasdel\nBigTable is not a motherfucking key/value store. It's a sorted tuplestore with\nbuilt-in multidimensionality. Hypertable is a direct clone, HBase and\nCassandra use the same style of API but have slightly different storage\nbackends.\n\nJust because it isn't a SQL database doesn't mean it's non-relational or\nkey/value.\n\n------\nsilvertab\nInteresting idea! I'm curious to see what exactly this service provides\n(considering PHP deployment isn't exactly hard, as others mentioned). I would\ncertainly love to see such a setup for Python frameworks...\n\n~~~\nreynolds\nDoesn't Google AppEngine solve this for Python?\n\n~~~\nianb\nIt mostly does, except that the environment is restrictive enough it's not\nlike normal Python, everyone who uses App Engine really writes _for_ App\nEngine.\n\n------\ntlrobinson\nIf all you want is the git deployment workflow it's incredibly easy to do on\nany host that give you SSH access (including shared hosts):\n\n[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/279169/deploy-php-\nusing-g...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/279169/deploy-php-using-\ngit#327315)\n\nI've been using this on my personal site and it works great.\n\n------\njqueryin\nThe details are minimal in regards to what happens between pushing changes in\ngit and the source code being updated in the cloud. Could you elaborate?\n\n------\ncardmagic\nHey fellow hackers, would love your feedback for making this a killer service.\n\n~~~\ntlack\nPrefer scp/sftp over git. Am I supposed to publish site assets like 20gb of\nimages in git? You can still trigger server-side actions when a file is pushed\nif you allow ssh.\n\nOther than that, more details on the service would be nice. How do you scale\nMySQL for instance? I'm a technical guy so low level details are an important\naspect for me.\n\n~~~\nbphogan\nWith Heroku, you'd store those 20gb of images on S3. Then you have thm in\ndevelopment as well as production. And once they're up, you don't have to move\nthem around.\n\n------\npbiggar\nThis will be very popular. Proof:\n[http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/list?can=2&#...</a><p>I\nbriefly considered making this, and the Python equivalent. Warning: I have\nworked extensively with PHP internals, and you are going to have a very bad\ntime making this safe and secure.<p>I would suggest you add an option to use\nHipHop, the Facebook compiler, as an option. That would be a great selling\npoint.\n\n------\nbillclerico\nsince rails has so much convention, you can write a system that scales it as\nlong as peopel follow that convention.\n\nPHP is a free for all. Different frameworks do things differently and need to\nbe scaled differently. Lots of people don't use frameworks. I think it will be\nhard to write a \"one size fits all\" infrastructure solution for PHP, like what\nHeroku did for Rails.\n\n------\npclark\nthis feels very similar to Fantastico?\n\n------\nRaisin\nAnyone know of a django/python set up like these?\n\n~~~\nGVRV\nSee if maybe <http://kutoken.com/> fits the bill.\n\n------\nSingAlong\nthe problem that PHP doesn't have is configuring the environment to run it.\nYou just install a few pkgs and boom!\n\nEven plugins come in php itself and aren't seperately pkged. There's no gems,\nno seperate server to serve the ruby backend. Just upload/push your code and\nit'll run. And any cheap host would do it. The _only_ advantage I see here is\nthat I can increase my resources for the app (if it's like heroku) just with\nthe click of a button without restarting the server.\n\nBut I can't wait to be proved wrong. All the best guys :)\n\n------\npclark\nalso no screenshots, no video, no hands on? boo.\n\n------\nbgnm2000\nSeems insane and rude to say its better than Heroku, the service which clearly\ninspired yours.\n\n------\njared314\nSomeone needs to build a Heroku for Clojure.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nOhio car dealers want to prevent Tesla from selling in the state - MikeCapone\nhttp://www.treehugger.com/cars/groundhog-ev-day-ohio-car-dealers-want-prevent-tesla-selling-state.html\n\n======\nthecolorblue\nI feel that Ohio is getting a reputation as Luddites, that go out of their way\nto prevent change, specifically new technology. Anyone from outside of the\nstate feel the same way?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAuto companies are lacking key ingredients for the future of the automobile - cocoflunchy\nhttps://medium.com/backchannel/the-auto-industry-won-t-create-the-future-ba1867c9f0d7\n======\nburgreblast\nThis is a great post from someone not in the industry.\n\nCar companies can't outsource production to Foxconn.\n\nSource: gesamtprojectintegrationleiter (complete project integration director)\nfor a german car brand. After the car is \"finished\" setting up the production\nline and making the tools is a 24-36 month process. You _need_ suppliers both\nfor sheer capacity and expertise. On my project, 17,000 parts (most with\nsubcomponents) coming together. THEN crash, emissions, certification, etc.\n\nEasier of course to do at small scale like Tesla, but growth and capacity\nplanning are huge topics. Tesla's run rate is what 30K cars per year? (not\nsure, just a guess). BMW sold 2M cars last year. Factories, suppliers, labor,\npaint, tooling (not the fun stuff) consumes an unbelievable number of cycles.\n\nObviously that revolution will come from software, but there's no getting\naround the hardware. One of the software co's will have to buy a car company\nto achieve revolution and scale.\n\n~~~\nctdonath\nSo build a Foxconn.\n\nSomeone is moving to create a billion dollar scale auto manufacturing facility\nin Atlanta. Seems nobody knows who, but guesses abound.\n\nBoth Apple and Tesla realize this is a solvable problem and have the money to\nmake it happen. Blog Wait But Why brilliantly detailed the the return to first\nprinciples for enormous cost savings. We've seen it before, we'll see it\nagain.\n\nSomeone did create Foxconn, after all.\n\n~~~\nDwolb\nTo become a 'Foxconn' of automotive is really an interesting idea. The model\nof designing a vehicle might have to become more constrained which cuts right\ninto the core of the automotive industry's design processes and car model\nportfolios. They're trying as hard as possible to horizontally differentiate\nfrom the competition and vertically differentiaite to access more segments.\n\nA billion dollar plant isn't really novel for the car industry - that's what\nit costs to bring a new facility for a model or family of models online.\n\nI think the missing link to do what you're describing (a 'flow shop' that can\nbe very rapidly reconfigured to act like a 'job shop') would take an order of\nmagnitude or two more investment which, given the automotive industry's\nsingle-digit profit margins, may be too risky for the incumbents. I've heard\nof Tesla trying to do this, but not without major difficulty (no one has ever\nscaled this while simultaneously building a brand new company and car and\ndistribution network and being at the forefront of aluminum body components,\netc.)\n\n~~~\nctdonath\nThing is, there really isn't that much differentiation between automobile\nmodels. Everything out there is basically a sedan, SUV, or pickup truck (even\nthe Jeep Wrangler is being forced, kicking & screaming, into the SUV form)\nwith little meaningful difference between variants. In \"trying as hard as\npossible to horizontally differentiate from the competition and vertically\ndifferentiate to access more segments\", manufacturers are trying _really_ hard\nto make car-making as hard & difficult & expensive as possible. So back to\nbasics: it's not that hard, it's a well-understood process with a robust\nsupply chain ... an industry ripe for one company to arise focusing on turning\ndesigns into vehicles, without the additional overhead of design & marketing.\n\nInsofar as the \"flow shop\" for car manufacturing \"would take an order of\nmagnitude or more investment\", well, we all know one company that _does_ have\nthat kind of cash (!) lying around, and the interest in re-inventing the\nautomotive industry.\n\n~~~\nburgreblast\n> manufacturers are trying really hard to make car-making as > hard &\n> difficult & expensive as possible.\n\nI think you may be under-estimating the complexities market. In fact, the\ncheapest models in a give product are often the highest volume. So you have to\ndeliver maximum _value_ in each price segment.\n\nIt's not solely about price: The last brand to compete primarily on low-price\nwas Yugo. How'd that turn out?\n\nAlso, if marketing is so non-essential, why does Google make any money? For\nthat matter, how many non-free [choose your industry, including software]\ncompanies don't use paid-for marketing?\n\n------\nw_t_payne\nI work for one of the tier 1 automotive suppliers mentioned, and the author\ncouldn't be more wrong about data.\n\nWe have exceedingly large data sets -- equating to millions of km of driving\nfrom locations all around the globe -- and we use that data in a very\ndisciplined and very effective manner.\n\n(My particular area of interest is in the use of off-line machine learning\nalgorithms to analyse and optimise the algorithms that go onto the vehicle as\nembedded software).\n\n~~~\nphoboslab\nSo where's the data from?\n\n~~~\nw_t_payne\nWe buy lots of cars, equip them with lots of different sensors, design and\nmanufacture data recording systems to fit in them, organize configuration-\nmanagement systems to manage and track changes to these test platforms, then\ndrive them around collecting data, driven by the requirements that are placed\nupon our algorithms and systems, then analyse the data using both automated\nand manual methods.\n\nIt _is_ a time-consuming and capital intensive endeavour, no doubt about it.\n\n------\ndandare\nI bought new car recently and all the electronics is a bad joke. Especially\nthe \"on board computer\" with \"large touch enabled screen\". Low resolution,\ndull colours, limited viewing angles, broken UI, bare minimum of functions. UX\nof a washing machine. Dear automakers, just open up the APIs to aircon and\nseatbelt sensors and leave a big hole in the middle of the front panel with\nUSB-C connector and don't force your obsolete technology on me. Any half\ndecent Android tablet is vastly superior to whatever \"computer\" you hardwired\ninto the car back in 2007.\n\n~~~\ndanmaz74\nBut you don't entrust your life - and that of your family - to any half decent\nAndroid tablet. With cars, you can't \"break things, move fast\" as in some\nother industries.\n\n~~~\nmarssaxman\nI'd rather trust my life to a half-decent Android tablet than whatever\ninsanity the carmakers are likely to have perpetrated in their firmware, but\nthe real answer is that it shouldn't matter. Only a criminally irresponsible\ndegree of incompetence can justify the connection of any of that fancy crap to\nany part of the car that has anything to do with its actual operation through\nany connection more substantial than power+ground.\n\n------\njasode\nIf one mentally redefines what a \"car\" will become, it can inform (and also\nmislead) predictions.\n\nSeveral industry writers have jokingly observed that a car like Tesla is\nreally a \"laptop with wheels\".\n\nIf we extend that reframing to say that future cars are really \"robots with\nwheels\", it doesn't look so preposterous that Tesla, Google[1], and Apple\n(rumoured self-driving car) could dominate Ford, GM, Toyota, etc. It seems\npossible that a 75% or more of a future car's R&D costs will be the sensors +\ncomputer algorithms + petabytes of cloud data integration instead of things\nlike the tires, paint formulations, suspensions, etc.\n\nTo riff on a phrase from CEO Reed Hastings, _\" The Goal Is to Become HBO\nFaster Than HBO Can Become Us\"_ ... it seems reasonable for Tesla/Google/Apple\nto acquire competencies in assembling chassis with wheels faster than\nFord/GM/Toyota to acquire competitive knowledge in robotics+algorithms. Time\nwill tell.\n\n[1] robotics company acquired by Google:\n[https://www.youtube.com/user/BostonDynamics](https://www.youtube.com/user/BostonDynamics)\n\n~~~\nw_t_payne\nThe automotive industry isn't populated by idiots -- but writing safety\ncritical software isn't the same as writing an app.\n\nIt is true that there is no _fundamental_ conflict between modern software\ndevelopment practices (Agile etc..) and process-maturity oriented standards\nlike ISO15504 / ASPICE / ISO26262 / DO-178b etc... but writing the tools,\nbuild-systems etc... that let these differing concerns coexist in harmony\n_does_ take some careful consideration, planning, and organisation.\n\n~~~\nvlehto\nAlso \"chassis with wheels\" is easy. Congrats, you have built a trailer.\nBuilding a car to satisfy modern consumer is not that difficult, but it isn't\ntrivial either. And it will be expensive.\n\nSoftware companies are good at making software. But car manufacturers\ncurrently are some of the leading experts in computer modelling of physical\nworld.\n\n~~~\nw_t_payne\nQuite. Also, organising engineering teams on a global scale isn't trivial ...\nand much of the engineering process is about coordinating people, rather than\nspecifically being concerned with the things that those people are doing.\n\n------\njkot\nMaybe I am wrong, but I think key innovation is to reduce cost and\nenvironmental impact. Tesla and other high tech cars are maybe cleaner to run,\nbut have large footprint due to their complicated production.\n\nAt this front leader is India and China. Tatu in India is doing stuff like\ngluing car parts together. And China has huge fleet of electric vehicles and\nrecharging stations, in form of electric bikes.\n\n~~~\ncocoflunchy\nThe total footprint is already lower than for ICE cars according to this\nstudy: [http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-\nvehicles/life-...](http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-\nvehicles/life-cycle-ev-emissions)\n\n~~~\nvive-la-liberte\nWhat is ICE? India, China and something else?\n\n~~~\nwibr\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine)\n\n------\nvlehto\nI'm skeptical about this. It seems like the people who say \"I want a self\ndriving car\" seem to be really saying they wish they didn't need a car at all.\n\nThe people tho like cars often say \"I want a car with less computers\". What\nthey probably really want is access to the technology they have already\nbought.\n\nI'm pretty sure Uber has not run it's course yet. They could almost destroy\nthe market for self driving cars. Especially with competition.\n\nI hope that cars go to the direction of bicycles. Currently bicycles are more\nstandardized than ever, with more options than ever. And with more competition\nthan ever. It's hard(?) to find a new bicycle with all parts coming from same\nmanufacturer. To me it seems this modularity is ultimately good for consumers.\nIf capitalism works, that's where cars should gravitate too.\n\n~~~\npadobson\nSeems to me that Uber won't stop the market for self-driving cars, so much as\nvalidate it.\n\nThey'll save a lot of money when they don't have to pay drivers anymore.\n\nOr...\n\nOne person or company that owns a fleet of self-driving cars and sells them\nall on Uber.\n\nI think this is what the writer mean when he said self-driving cars will\neliminate the need for parking lots. You'll walk out of any building in the\ndeveloped world and your ride to the next place will be an driverless Uber\ncab.\n\n~~~\nvlehto\nIf someone gives me a ride with a deal that he drives and I pay the gas, how\ncould anything compete with that? Lot's of people genuinely enjoy driving.\n\nAlso bus ticket costs me 45e/month. They have schedule, which is huge asset.\nYou could make self driving bus, but that market isn't as big. And the cost\nsavings aren't that huge. With bus, large share of the costs come from fuel\nand maintenance.\n\nThere are minibuses I can already order to my doorstep.\n[https://kutsuplus.fi/tour](https://kutsuplus.fi/tour)\n\nAnd for really seldom occasions renting a car is becoming more and more easy\nand cheap.\n\nIf it takes 15 years to develop self driving car, it's possible that 90% of\nthe current market for it has melted away.\n\n------\nalaskamiller\nThe note about car manufacturers these days being system integrator is the\nkiller point.\n\nOver 100 years now car industries have started, evolved, grown, multiplied,\nconsolidated, failed, and experimented to today. Amazingly efficient at taking\nchunks of metal and plastic from around the world, turn it into a car in 17\nhours in one of three or four locations in America, transport it to where you\nare so it can sit on a lot for another week before getting sold to you to take\nhome.\n\nThat efficiency is what makes it amazing. And that efficiency is going to be\nwhat kills it.\n\nApple will come in, make a better ipod as they want to do and support it as\nthey can do.\n\n~~~\nDanielBMarkham\nYes. I agree.\n\nI see a lot of companies determined to outsource all of their IT work. As we\nall know, most of the time this fails miserably. But even sadder is when it\nsucceeds. IT is the brain of any organization. If you succeed in distributing\nall the brains of your organization, all you end up being is an integrator.\nYou've just spent a big part of your resources training technical folks in a\nbunch of other companies all of the important parts of your business. Success!\nYou've turned your company into a giant brainless robot which efficiently runs\non very little capital. And then you stagnate.\n\n------\ntumba\n\n      > ... their dashboards are (likely to be) gorgeous and\n      > vastly improved over the mostly superfluous dials and \n      > gauges car manufacturers think we need to see (when was \n      > the last time you had to check your RPMs or engine  \n      > temperature?).\n    \n\nBeing aware of engine RPMs and temperature is important.\n\nI'm all for better interfaces. Personally, I drive a diesel Volkswagen and\nhaving a customizable dashboard that could provide access to additional engine\nparameters and sensors, such as I can access today with a laptop connected\nusing Vag-Com (see [http://www.ross-tech.com](http://www.ross-tech.com)) could\nbe useful. But the key is to provide better situational awareness for the\ndriver, not more distractions.\n\nIn the US alone, more than 40k people die every year and millions are injured\nwhile operating or riding in these machines. Self-driving cars may be the\nfuture in some urban areas and on interstates, but we need to continue to\noptimize vehicles for drivers, not make them into more distracting spaces\nwhere people can continue to indulge their addictions to communication and\nmedia consumption.\n\n------\njakobegger\nWhenever I read an article like this, with factual errors and inaccuracies in\nthe details (eg no modern car sold today has a carburetor), I wonder how\nbelievable the big picture ideas presented in the article are?\n\nDoes the author have any idea what he is talking about? Did he just make a\nsmall mistake when trying to add details to his ideas, or does the lack of\nsubject matter knowledge reveal the writer's cluelessness?\n\n~~~\nmywittyname\nHe clearly doesn't. Nearly every paragraph has either an inaccurate or\nignorant statement that makes this really painful to read.\n\nIt's easy to criticize and sound prescient when you hand-wave away reality.\n\n------\nescherize\nCars are kind of like tvs. My philosophy has always been to get the cheapest\nnav/entertainment system (or dumbest tv) and use the car speakers like a dumb\npipe, because nearly every auto maker's attempt at integrating technology are\ncompletely subpar. If you expect to keep a car for more than a year or two,\nyour best bet is aftermarket or third party components anyway.\n\nI'd say one of the few that get it is Tesla. The huge touchscreen is pretty\ncool, even though you lose tactile feedback, a huge nav screen with consistent\nota updates is neat.\n\n~~~\nvinay427\nI hated using a touchscreen navigation system in a previous car. The loss of\ntactile feedback is nothing to sneeze over, as I much prefer even a rotating\ndial interface which I can use while completely visually (not cognitively of\ncourse) focused on the road. This increases at least perceived safety by a\nlarge margin. An ideal combination might be a touchscreen with tactile\nfeedback buttons, which I think has been used to limited success before. Or\njust voice or alternative input...\n\n------\nS_A_P\nThere are some good points made, and I do believe this is a solvable problem,\nbut I also view google and apples entry into car building as naive on some\nlevels. I am way oversimplifying but it strikes me as a plot to \"silicon\nvalley\". Hooli's CEO telling the board/company all hands one day after meeting\nwith his guru- WERE GONNA BUILD A CAR!!! Everyone looks at each other\nincredulously and says \"umm ok, I guess we're gonna build a car\". Then queue\nthe subplot that 90% of the engineers never learned to drive and bighead is\nthe only driver...\n\nI know this isn't the real case, and I know some brilliant people are working\nthe problem for these companies, but I think that a better approach would be\nfor a tech company to team up with the hardware company and leverage their\ncombined strengths. That would probably yield a better product that is less\n\"Jony Ive's magical mystery mobile\". Shallow or not, that google car would\nembarrass me to ride in.\n\n------\ntiredwired\nThe best selling car in America is the Ford F-series pickup truck. I can't\nwait to see competing trucks from Tesla and Apple.\n\n------\nrmason\nI've seen this movie before. In the seventies I had a birds eye view here in\nMichigan as the Big 3 totally missed the Asian threat.\n\nNow the same smug group makes jokes about Tesla (and Apple) and when it rises\nup to smite them they will be caught totally unaware. This time a trade\nembargo won't allow them to regroup.\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nThe car industry is a lot larger than 'the big 3' (or really, the big 2 1/2).\n\n------\nmerb\nIt's not the ingredients, it's the future they are missing. Car companies\nwanting to generate money and not the future. They lost their vision.\n\nOnce upon a time a new guy will come with a vision. Hopefully he has enough\nmoney too change something.\n\nI really don't understand why we are still driving with fossil oil. That's\nprolly due to the lack of competetion. car manufacturers thing we will buy\ntheir cars anyway.\n\n------\nHermel\nSoftware companies also lack key ingredients for the future of the automobile.\nThe first to successfully combine the best of both worlds wins.\n\n------\nroflchoppa\nyou know i really like my carb'd V8. Nothing like taking it out early in the\nmorning when no-one is on the road and quite literally pouring gasoline into\nthe motor.\n\nI feel that a cup would be more effective sometimes tho. Don't get me started\non jetting configs.\n\n------\nbuildops\nThis is why you have automated companies like Mobileye which provide the\ninnovation in autos\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow it's made: Online Games - stacieandrews\nhttp://www.slideshare.net/provado/how-its-made-online-games\n\n======\nshenanigoat\nWell, that was shit.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Linux Graphics Stack - Adrock\nhttp://blog.mecheye.net/2012/06/the-linux-graphics-stack/\n======\nloudmax\nI can understand that Wayland does not want to pay for the complexity of\nnetwork transparency, but I'd be sorry to see it go entirely. I'm one of the\nfew people who do make use if X11's network transparency on a regular basis.\nBeing able to open a web browser on a machine that is several ssh hops away is\nawfully convenient. I hope that Wayland has some provisions for reproducing or\nemulating X11 even if it isn't built into the core.\n\n~~~\nasdfs\nThis may be incorrect; I have only vague familiarity with the subject. I don't\nknow if there are any non VNC-like solutions being worked on.\n\nWayland doesn't have network transparency as a first-class citizen, but it's\neasy to fit it into the mix. A bit of background:\n\nIn X11, the client sends the actual drawing commands (draw a line here, a\nsmooth gradient here, a pixmap here, a curved line here, etc.) over a network\npipe. The X server on the other end takes those commands and builds the\nresulting image.\n\nIn Wayland, your program just transfers (well, using shared memory) complete\nimages of the entire window to the Wayland server.\n\nThe X11 solution is absolutely excellent and very efficient _assuming your\nprograms primarily use the X11 primitives_. Most modern programs and toolkits\ndo not use the drawing primitives; they just build the images they want and\nsend a bunch of pixmaps to the X server. They do this primarily because X11\ndoesn't have a number of useful drawing primitives, like anti-aliased text.\nThe result is that you're doing more or less what Wayland intends to do.\n(Though sending things like Xclock or Xeyes will be less efficient under\nWayland, seeing as they use the X11 drawing primitives.)\n\nIn the end, Wayland will probably have something very much like per-window\nVNC. Your program will produce an image, some stub Wayland server will send\nthat image over the network, and a Wayland compositor on the other end will\nreceive it and display it.\n\n------\nrandallu\nI wish that unoccluded or maybe just the frontmost window could be\nunredirected too, even if it's not fullscreen. The decorations and shadow\ncould still be drawn in the Compositor Overlay Window.\n\nI work on Linux on a program which is entirely drawn by OpenGL (I target ARM\ndevices, but I test on the desktop before doing an ARM build). Application GL\nperformance suffers immensely under a compositor, so on most machines I can't\nuse GNOME3 (though I would like to). On machines where I get acceptable GL\nperformance in my app, vsync is broken so there is constant tearing.\n\nI'm sure there are some caveats with unredirecting the frontmost window --\nlike when it becomes occluded it would have to be redirected and that requires\na round trip to the client (which might hang, etc), but there are probably\nother situations like this which the window manager has to deal with already\n(resize timers?) so maybe there is a way to implement it...\n\n~~~\ntimmaxw\nI think that Mac OS X unredirects unoccluded windows; I've noticed windowed\ncomputer games suddenly getting much slower when I move another window in\nfront of them.\n\n~~~\nrandallu\nIt appears to, or has some other trick... My coworker has a huge monitor, and\nhis MBA doesn't hit 60 FPS on any of the fullscreen animations, but individual\nwindow contents can go at 60 making me think they don't repaint the world\nevery time a window changes.\n\n------\nantihero\nAbsolutely fascinating.\n\nSome questions...\n\nWould this mean that window managers themselves would have to be re-\nimplemented in order to support the Wayland protocol?\n\nIs anyone working to create a non-reference optimized implementation of\nlibwayland?\n\nHave the Wayland developers said anything about supporting multiple monitors\nyet?\n\n~~~\nmakomk\nYep, the Wayland developers' solution to window management is for anyone who\nwants a different window manager to replace Wayland with a different\ncompositor+window manager speaking the same protocol. Their suggested way of\nsupporting proprietary graphics drivers is also replacing the\ncompositor+window manager with one specific to that hardware which speaks the\nWayland protocol, sort of like in the early days of X when there was a\nseperate X server binary for every piece of hardware. So your window\nmanagement choices under Wayland depend on which graphics drivers you're\nusing.\n\n~~~\nJoshTriplett\nNot quite. Wayland itself doesn't require any graphics-driver-specific code;\nit uses the standard kernel interfaces and graphics stack (Mesa, DRI, libdrm,\nKMS, etc). That also works fine with radeon and nouveau, and it would work\nfine with the proprietary drivers as long as they support the standard\ngraphics stack. It just won't work with proprietary drivers that implement\ntheir own entirely un-integrated graphics stack, which seems unsurprising to\nme.\n\nYour window manager of choice can just link into Wayland/Weston and ignore all\nthe underlying graphics driver bits; they'll Just Work.\n\n~~~\ntedunangst\nIt's been years and years since I knew the details, but at one point the\nnvidia drivers replaced pretty everything from libX11 down, and I don't think\nyou could hook in at a middle point. (ie, they don't support the \"standard\"\ngraphics stack.) Would appreciate if anyone could comment on how things stand\ntoday.\n\n~~~\nJoshTriplett\nSomewhat better, but still awful. They don't replace libX11, but they do\nreplace libGL, and they bypass the entire kernel graphics stack in favor of\ntheir own.\n\n------\noutworlder\nNow, this is the sort of article I want to see on Hacker News. Excellent read.\n\n------\ntedunangst\n_instead of going over the network, they’ll go over a UNIX socket, and the\nkernel doesn’t have to copy data around._\n\nThis isn't really true. Even if the kernel does cow pipes (on both ends), the\nwriter is almost certainly going to trash the page and cause a fault. The data\nis just copied around without being bundled into TCP packets.\n\nThere is also a SHM extension which does use shared memory, but that's\nseparate and mostly only used for pixmaps and the like.\n\n------\nexDM69\n> While it’s very apparent that X is going to go away in favor of Wayland some\n> time soon...\n\nIsn't it a bit early to be saying something like that? While I hope that\nWayland will succeed, it has an equal chance of ending up as vaporware.\n\n~~~\nchao-\nAt minimum we'll get at least one distro attempting to utilize Wayland\neventually: Ubuntu. See the bottom of <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Wayland> where\nit reads:\n\n _Canonical is investing in making Compiz Wayland-enabled and running Unity on\ntop._\n\nWhile it does not completely refute your concern of Wayland becoming\nvaporware, a commitment from Canonical is about as close as anything in the\nLinux Desktop world ever comes to being a hard milestone. Put another way:\nit's more reliable than a random user on the Arch forums* talking up grand\nplans to rebuild WMFS to work with Wayland.\n\n*A purely random example, and not a knock on Arch forums, which are an awesome/informative place.\n\n~~~\nhollerith\n>a commitment from Canonical is about as close as anything in the Linux\nDesktop world ever comes to being a hard milestone\n\nFurthermore, most Xorg and desktop developers are pro-Wayland if the OP is to\nbe believed.\n\n~~~\nJach\nI think if anyone really doubts this they should spend some time programming\nsomething directly on top of Xorg to convince themselves that when the ball of\nmud is gone there will be at least a bit more sanity.\n\n~~~\n1346971608\nI haven't used the raw stream protocol directly, but if you mean Xlib, I\nactually find it more usable than most toolkits. (Although a big part of that\nis being able to use select(), whereas most toolkits force you to do\neverything in callbacks while the toolkit drives the main loop.)\n\n------\nAvshalom\nSo wait... Wayland does nothing, makes existing things harder and requires the\nLinux ecosystem to greenspun X in perpetuity?\n\n~~~\nfusiongyro\nNot sure why you're being pessimistic. VNC demonstrates that graphical access\ncan be networked at the application level rather than as a fundamental\narchitecture decision we pay for constantly. Wayland is an attempt to cash in\non the savings.\n\n~~~\ntedunangst\nExcept it doesn't look good, and copy/paste is even shittier.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHTTP throughput regression from Go 1.7.5 to 1.8 - 01walid\nhttps://github.com/golang/go/issues/18964\n======\njerf\nAs I've mentioned before [1], as the number starts getting too large,\n\"requests per second\" isn't a useful way of measuring the performance of a\nwebserver, you're really more interested in \"seconds per request overhead\".\nThe former makes this sound horrible and leads to headlines that make it sound\nlike the entire web stack has lost 20% of its performance, which is terrible.\nThe latter shows that the \"request overhead\" has gone from ~100us per request\nto ~120us or so, which is a lot more informative and tends to lead to better\nunderstanding what the situation is.\n\nThis is not meant as an attack or a defense of Go. The facts are what the\nfacts are. The point here is to suggest that people use terminology that is\nmore informative and easier to understand. There are people for whom 20us per\nrequest extra is a sufficiently nasty issue that they will not upgrade. There\nare also a lot of people who are literally multiple orders of magnitude away\nfrom that even remotely mattering because their requests tend to take 120ms\nanyhow. Using \"seconds per request overhead\" both makes it easier to\nunderstand both the real performance impact with real times, and makes it\neasier to understand that we're just talking about the base overhead per\nrequest rather than the speed of the entire request.\n\nIt might also discourage some of our, ah, more junior developers from being\ntoo focused on this metric. Why would I want to use a webserver that can only\ndo 100,000 requests per second when I can use this one over here that can do\n1,000,000 requests per second? If you look at it from the point of view that\nwe're speaking about the difference between 10 microseconds and 1 microsecond,\nit becomes easier to see that if my requests are going to take 10\n_milliseconds_ on average, this is not a relevant stat to be worried about\nwhen choosing my webserver, and I should examine just the other differences\ninstead, which may be a great deal more relevant to my use cases.\n\nEdit: Literally while I was typing this up I see at least three comments\nalready complaining about this regression. My question to you, my _honest_\nquestion to you (because some of you may well be able to answer \"yes\",\nespecially with some of the tasks Go gets used for), is: Are you _really_\ngoing to have a problem with this? Does the rest of your request _really_ run\nin _microseconds_? It's actually pretty challenging in the web world to run in\nmicroseconds. It can be done, but a lot of the basic things you want to do end\nup like \"hit a database\" generally end up involving milliseconds, i.e.,\n\"thousands of microseconds\".\n\n[1]:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11187264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11187264)\n\n~~~\nMatthias247\nI have worked in the network programming domain for the last few years and I\nalso found that especially outsiders and newbies get too obsessed on pure\nperformance figures. Especially for all networked stuff there's also a very\nimportant other key metric, which is reliability, which is only seldom taken\ninto consideration. However reliability can have a huge impact on performance.\n\nE.g. not implementing read/write timeouts allows to omit lots extra code\n(timer management, synchronization, cancellations), which improves\nperformance. But it might bring a whole system to stop if there a few non\nresponsive clients. Or not implementing flowcontrol through the whole chain\nand simply buffering at each stage can give a huge boost on the throughput\nmetric. But sooner or later the system might go out-of-memory.\n\nI personally now see reliability the number 1 thing you should achieve in a\nprotocol implementation. Performance is of course also important, but should\nonly be compared if all other parts are also comparable.\n\n~~~\nrocqua\nIn response to the response that now got flagged twice:\n\nI think you read a lot into the parent posts that wasn't there.\n\nLet me restate what I believe to be the parents meaning:\n\nMany junior developers care to much about the \"How quick is my normal\nexecution path\" form of performance. This is a bad measure for actual\nperformance because the rare, error-related executions can have cascading\neffects effectively blocking the entire network.\n\nAllowing applications to wait indefinitely for a response. Even if\nasyncronous, is something like a 'thread' leak where you start accumulating\ndead threads eventually leading to slowdown. This would be one example.\n\nAnother would be weird broadcast storms that happen when a component fails.\n\nBasically, consider cascading effects of errors when optimizing performance.\n\nProjects where 'performance' is taken to be \"how quick is my usual case\nexecution path\".\n\n~~~\nlogicallee\nThank you, but I read their comment carefully, and I'd like to let this person\n(Matthias247) speak for themselves. (I've asked mods to unflag my comment.) I\nhope they will respond.\n\nTo reply to the take on their comment that you've just written: I'm not\ntalking about the decisions _junior_ engineers make. I'm talking about the\ndecisions senior architects, who whiteboard and diagram solutions as\ncomplicated as necessary (which is the correct approach), make. They are\nmaking the wrong decisions, using the wrong trade-offs. They are not doing\ntheir job well.\n\nThe specific issues you have paraphrased could be solved in a different way\n(I'll just quote what you just said: \"something like a 'thread' leak\". This\nhas specific possible solutions). The point is, that way is not the way that\nhas been chosen, due to bad, incorrect, wrong decisions.\n\nIt's not that there are leaks or bugs (I'm not talking about the work of\njunior engineers). It's that the chosen, correctly implemented algorithm\nimplements the wrong choices.\n\nLet me give you an analogy: there is a very, very good sort algorithm called\nquicksort. It has very good behavior and is commonly used. It has excellent\ntheoretical properties.\n\nIn its first naive implementation the worst case happens when an array is\nalready sorted or nearly sorted. ([http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/when-does-the-\nworst-case-of-qui...](http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/when-does-the-worst-case-\nof-quicksort-occur/)) [1] As a practical matter sorting things are often done\nin cases where they might be sorted already or nearly so.\n\nSo it's not that the other cases don't need to be taken into consideration -\nafter all even bubble sort works optimally when lists are already sorted....\n\nIt's that it's wrong to code quicksort by making the choices that ignore the\nmost common case. Anyone coding the naive quicksort implementation I mentioned\non data that is frequently already sorted or nearly sorted is not doing their\njob well.\n\nIn the case of network logic, the wikipedia article I linked shows that it\ndoes not even have technical properties that mean it is theoretically correct\nunder all network conditions. So it's even worse than a naive quicksort: it's\nbroken for the most common case, and not theoretically correct (because that's\nnot possible) for every case.\n\nThey simply need to wake up and change their trade-offs and priorities. For\nexample, by randomizing sort order for quicksort, of course this adds steps -\nat the same time, it improves the most common condition (sorting an already-\nsorted or nearly-sorted array.) Use this analogy and, yes, by God, code (and\nmore importantly, _architect_ ) for the common case!\n\n[1] [http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/when-does-the-worst-case-of-\nqui...](http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/when-does-the-worst-case-of-quicksort-\noccur/)\n\n------\narussellsaw\nworth mentioning that this is only a noticeable performance regression in\nsituations where the majority of the request is spent in http processing, eg\n'hello world' handlers. Here is an example of the performance improvements\ni've seen in a real world application, admittedly heavily GC bound, but still\nthe performance improvements are considerable:\n[https://twitter.com/arussellsaw/status/819904231759085571](https://twitter.com/arussellsaw/status/819904231759085571)\n\n~~~\nCthulhu_\nThis is the real benchmark - compare performance with real, working software\ninstead of microbenchmarks that show a small regression (okay a fairly big one\nin terms of percentage) on a very specific and unrealistic use case.\n\nI'd take 20 us performance degradation in one specific slice of code over a\n50% performance increase overall any day.\n\nedit: english in the previous sentence is bad. You know what I mean. Small\nregression is fine if the overall speed is much better.\n\n------\nMatthias247\nIf I understand the possible culprit commit\n([https://github.com/golang/go/commit/faf882d1d427e8c8a9a1be00...](https://github.com/golang/go/commit/faf882d1d427e8c8a9a1be00d8ddcab81d1e848e))\ncorrectly then real world applications could still be faster than with the\nolder versions on average. E.g. if a request handler would start a database\nrequest and forward it's CancellationToken (context.Done) to the database call\nboth might be immediatly stopped with the new logic and the resources can be\nused for handling new requests. If in the old version the cancellation did not\nwork properly the database request might have needed to run to completion\nbefore anything else could be done.\n\n------\nbsaul\nbradfitz : \"That was one of the biggest architectural changes in the\nnet/http.Server in quite some time. I never did any benchmarking (or\noptimizations) after that change. \"\n\nSorry, what ? It's not like the http server of the stdlib is here only for\ndoing hello world code samples... You would imagine those benchmark to be part\nof some CI process along with unit tests.\n\n~~~\nlmb\nBenchmarks in CI are hard, because you need them to run in the exact same\nenvironment to make any sort of conclusions. But CI's are often noisy,\nvirtualised, dockerized, whateverized. There is not much benefit in that.\n\n~~~\nbsaul\nThat could be an idea for a service. Provide an instance type with stable\nexecution environment for benchmarking. Just stable, and not necessarily\nperformant.\n\n~~~\nbluejekyll\nI think it's harder than that though. You're trying to predict real-world\nnumbers, and a hobbled test environment could show benchmark hotspots which\nmight never occur on a real system.\n\nIt could still be a good, but very expensive, service, but its hard for me to\nimagine something that would be one-size-fits all service that would\naccurately predict real world experience.\n\n~~~\nbsaul\nAt least it could catch some easy regression between version after some heavy\nrefactoring, like this particular one. Better than the complete random\nperformance of current VMs on cloud.\n\nIt wouldn't be much harder than just making sure you're the only VM running on\nthe hardware (disk & cpu) . Much like a \"reserved instance\", with real\nguarantees against side effects.\n\n~~~\nbluejekyll\nI think it _could_ catch this, but it could just as easily miss that there was\na huge degridation on HDD vs SSD; high ram vs. low ram; fast vs slow CPU; GPU\nvs no GPU.\n\nObviously you can build test suites for each of these scenarios, but I think\nit would be expensive to run _all_ of them. That's all I'm really saying, it's\nby no means a bad idea, I think it's a great idea, just going to require some\nupfront thought of what type of environment the software is going to run in.\n\n------\nakerro\nWhy it is too late? He doesn't want to give any justification. Isn't the point\nof RC and community supported development to catch such cases before stable is\npublished? Just make another RC.\n\n~~~\ndawkins\nIt's answered here:\n[https://github.com/golang/go/issues/18964#issuecomment-27830...](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/18964#issuecomment-278307245)\n\nOnce a release candidate is issued, only documentation changes and changes to\naddress critical bugs should be made. In general the bar for bug fixes at this\npoint is even slightly higher than the bar for bug fixes in a minor release.\nWe may prefer to issue a release with a known but very rare crash than to\nissue a release with a new but not production-tested fix.\n\n------\ntmaly\nIf you look at it, the change that was most attributed to the slow down, was\ncommitted on October 2016.\n\nWhy could the people making an issue about the 0.5 us slow down per request\nnot have tested or ran a benchmark sooner?\n\n------\ncameroncooper\nSurprised that nobody has mentioned the true hero of this story - git bisect -\nawesome tool, and perfect for pinpointing these sorts of regressions.\n\n------\neternalban\nThe std. dev. & max numbers caught my eyes:\n\n    \n    \n                   avg.      std dev   max\n         Latency   195.30us  470.12us  16.30ms -- go tip\n         Latency   192.49us  451.74us  15.14ms -- go 1.8rc3\n         Latency   210.16us  528.53us  14.78ms -- go 1.7.5\n    \n\nThat is a seriously fat distribution. Has anyone ever benched for percentiles?\n\n------\nsddfd\nConspiracy theory: They knew they'd take a 20 microseconds hit on every\nconnection close, and (rightfully) did not care.\n\nSo basically this is a communication issue with a community that does not\nunderstand what to make of its own benchmarks.\n\n------\nsiscia\nAs jerf mention I don't believe that this particular regression is going to be\nsignificant for the almost totally of the use cases (and the very few that are\ngoing to be touch by it probably are savy enough to test their performance\nbefore to deploy in production).\n\nWhat I believe is more serious is that this wasn't catch during the\ndevelopment, it could definitely be a worth trade off however we should be\naware of it...\n\n------\nOhSoHumble\n\"Too late for Go 1.8, but we can look into performance during Go 1.9.\"\n\nThat probably shouldn't be the response for a major performance regression in\na release candidate.\n\nLooks like I'm sticking to Go 1.7 for however long it'll take before 1.9 is\nreleased.\n\n~~~\nlmb\nSo all your application does is accept connections, send hello world, and\nclose them again?\n\n~~~\nOhSoHumble\nAbsolutely! I provide a \"hello world as a service\" platform.\n\n~~~\nCthulhu_\nHow does it compare to [https://github.com/salvatorecordiano/hello-world-as-a-\nservic...](https://github.com/salvatorecordiano/hello-world-as-a-service),\nwhich is written in JS / Node? Does yours do more requests / second? Do you\nhave an enterprise plan?\n\n~~~\nOhSoHumble\nI question that project's long-term viability. Event loop based languages\ninherently limit systems to inefficient and unreliable concurrency models.\n\nMy platform, which I've received seed funding for, is entirely done in Erlang.\nThis technology decision will better enable me to deliver _more_ hello worlds\nper nanosecond than Node ever could.\n\n------\nreimertz\nWhy would it be too late? Isn't this the whole reason for release candidates?\nTo find final major issues before releasing the next major version?\n\nIf not, could someone please educate me?\n\n~~~\nbarrkel\nThe closer you are to a release, the bigger the blocker needs to be. If there\nwas incorrect behaviour in a mainline use case, that would be much more\nsignificant than a performance regression.\n\nA 20% performance regression in a minimal http server (i.e. one that doesn't\nhave any business logic) does not sound like a big problem to me; that kind of\noverhead would normally be dwarfed by database calls, and a 20% increase in\nthe overhead doesn't sound like it's a large increase in what I'd expect to\nalready be a very small number.\n\n~~~\nreimertz\nThanks for the clarification.\n\nSo a similar situation in node.js-land would be if require('http') would get a\nworst-case scenario of a 20% performance hit, right?\n\nIf this is the case, even I, who only run single instances of node, would\nthink it would be a fairly big impact that i'd try to fix if I was the\nmaintainer and still had the possibility to fix it.\n\n~~~\nVendan\nThe issue is that's it's 20% of the http library's time, not 20% of your\napplication's time. Put a large app on it, and now the regression is 0.02%...\nDoes it still make sense to push everything back for that 0.02%?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCall Girl: What I Learned During My Year as a Customer Service Representative - kevinalexbrown\nhttp://bygonebureau.com/2013/04/23/call-girl-what-i-learned-during-my-year-as-a-customer-service-representative/\n\n======\ngraeme\n>If you think you’re talking to an expert when you call a customer service\ncenter, you’re probably not.\n\nThis strongly affects my opinion of a company as a consumer. _Some_ companies\nhave great support.\n\nFor instance, I've published a book with Createspace. They are phenomenal.\nThey call me when I put in a support request, and within ten seconds I have an\nexpert rep.\n\nUsually the call takes only 20-40 seconds, including authenticating my ID,\nbecause the reps are very knowledgeable and efficient.\n\nContrast this to most support calls where I waste about 20 minutes of my time\nwaiting (I do other things), and often 10-15 additional time speaking to a rep\nwho doesn't know things, and eventually transfers me to someone who does.\n\nThe company pays those reps by the hour, so they lose money, AND make me hate\nthe company.\n\nThis doesn't mean it always makes sense to provide knowledgeable support, but\nI suspect there is a stronger case for it than many companies suspect.\n\n~~~\netchalon\nI think it comes down to scale and cost.\n\nI've spent a bit too many hours in a call center, both as an employee, and a\nfew years later developing the software that ran one.\n\nIn both instances, there were people there who really knew what they were\ntalking about, and a lot more who read from a script. I was a script-reader my\nfirst month or so, before moving up the chain, and I was shocked by how often\nthe script worked. Something like 3/4 of my calls were resolved with a one-\nline fix in a knowledge base I could search.\n\nAs I moved up, so did my pay, and I cost the call center more per hour (nearly\ndouble). So it made sense for them to a.) not have very many people like me\nand b.) to make sure that my time was spent only on the problems that couldn't\nbe solved by following the script.\n\nIn fact, hell hath no fury as the per lower-level call center person who\nforwarded through a call to me that could have obviously been resolved if\nthey'd just followed the script! I'd berate them in notes for not reading the\nnumerous knowledge base articles I'd carefully prepared, or for not bothering\nto check a few simple things clearly outlined in their training before even\nengaging the script, or searching the knowledge base. They'd just wasted\neveryone's time. The customer who sat on hold waiting for me, the manager who\nhad to approve the escalation, mine because I'd spent thirty minutes assuming\nthey'd done their job when they hadn't (and double-checking just made the\ncustomer furious if, in fact, they had.)\n\nYou might think that it makes some fiscal sense for companies to ONLY hire\npeople like me, and eat the cost as a marketing thing, or accept that by\noffering great support, they'll get better customers. But you literally could\nnot find enough support people like me to handle all the calls if you tried.\n\nSo you hire relatively dumb, but friendly and resilient people, because that's\nwhat you can find. They're cheap and readily available. If one of them shows\npromise, you promote them. You try to find experts that are desperate for the\njob, but they're few and far between and generally come with baggage.\n\nYou work with what you can get, and optimize around it.\n\n~~~\nthisisrobv\nI disagree with this premise. The cost of quality customer support can easily\nbe mitigated by factoring it into cost of your product.\n\n\"Software is eating the world\"... and it's allowing companies to scale\ncustomer support more easily through active knowledge bases and better more\nintuitive searching. The 3/4 of calls that could be resolved with a one-line\nfix should never make it to a phone call, they should be directed to an online\nsupport tool that could more efficiently answer their question and if not then\nfunneled into a call or chat system.\n\nIt isn't happening quickly, but more and more companies are understanding that\nthe relationships customers build with companies matter immensely and those\nrelationships often begin with customer support reps.\n\nQuality, friendly support scales and you don't have to create a shitty work\nenvironment for employees. Look at companies like Rackspace or on a smaller\nscale, 37 Signals for proof. It's not just about finding \"friendly and\nresilient people\" it's about finding people who are passionate about your\ncompany's mission.\n\n _disclaimer, currently building<http://awesomatic.com> and tackling this very\nissue_\n\n~~~\nquanticle\n>The cost of quality customer support can easily be mitigated by factoring it\ninto cost of your product.\n\nSure, but that only works for high end products. Apple might be able to get\naway with this (and, in fact, they do exactly this by virtue of offering free\nin-person support at their stores). But the high end is a miniscule part of\nany market. But Dell? Samsung? Do you really think you can sell ten million\nunits and offer expert support for all of them?\n\nThe Rackspace and 37 Signals examples don't apply. In both cases, they can\nassume a certain level of competence on the part of their customer. My mom\nisn't going to set up Basecamp. My grandmother isn't going to be spinning 30\nor 40 Linux VMs. Rackspace and 37 Signals offer excellent tier 2 support, with\nthe assumption that you're competent enough to do your own tier 1\ntroubleshooting. That most emphatically does not apply to the vast majority of\nproducts.\n\n------\nmilesskorpen\nPretty easy to identify the company she's talking about (CSN Stores, now\nWayfair). They've significantly changed their strategy, and consolidated their\nvarious speciality stores into one shopping destination ... and made it into\nthe top 50 internet retailers.\n\nThat said, I'd imagine most retailers have pretty comparable customer support\nexperiences once you get to a certain scale. I'm not sure the 37 Signals\nexperience really scales ... and from my, limited, experience, customer\nservice work get really monotonous fast.\n\n------\ne40\nEven the most calm and cool among us will become on edge when they have to go\nthrough 10-15 levels of voice menus, dropped transfers and being forced to\nlisten to ridiculous and inane advertisements for the company website (\"did\nyou know you can find information about our products on xxx.com?\".... thanks\nfor that 20 second delay).\n\nWhen I have to call a customer service rep, by the time I finally get to them,\nI'm usually in a worse mood than when I called.\n\n------\nhkmurakami\n_> 4\\. Okay, so this one’s not a huge surprise: people are jerks._\n\nI try really really hard to be as pleasant and understanding as possible when\nI'm speaking to a customer service rep (and I think that I behave decently).\nI've found that rather than raise my voice, trying to be understanding of\ntheir position and limitations gets me closer to \"what I need/want\" from the\nsupport organization.\n\nThat being said I _have_ had cases where the person had absolutely no idea\nwhat I was referring to and gave me wrong information, etc. But even then, I\ncan't blame them (a DTC stock transfer isn't something that a bank's retail\nbranch person is going to deal with very often. They didn't even know what a\nDTC number was, and I don't blame them. I managed to get the correct info on\nthe 3rd try.)\n\n------\npinaceae\nseriously, what did she expect?\n\nif you work any kind of helpdesk, inbound call center or even management -\nyour job is to help people fix their problems.\n\nnow, does a calm, rational, smart person have a problem? unlikely. something\nis not working, hard to figure out, etc. the person is frustrated, angry,\nfeels stupid for not figuring out - and _now_ you come into the picture.\n\nit is assymetrical, one side has build up emotions, one hasn't. if you get\naffected by this, the job is not for you - and it is great to realise this as\nearly as possible to prevent yourself from causing harm to others by being a\nshitty helpdesk, inbound call center, management person.\n\ni think this assymetry is the prime cause of all the BOFH\n(<http://bofh.ntk.net/BOFH/>) behaviors encountered in IT departments. young\nmales wanting to work with machines, but suddenly being forced to interact\nwith and help other humans in an assymetrical, emotional state.\n\n~~~\nlsc\n>seriously, what did she expect?\n\nnow, first? you are saying \"this is completely normal and expected\" - and if\nby 'normal' you mean 'average' I agree. this is how customer service usually\nis.\n\nBut it's not acceptable. Certainly not acceptable from the perspective of the\npoor kid getting yelled at.\n\n>it is assymetrical, one side has build up emotions, one hasn't. if you get\naffected by this, the job is not for you - and it is great to realise this as\nearly as possible to prevent yourself from causing harm to others by being a\nshitty helpdesk, inbound call center, management person.\n\nHere, you seem to think that it is mostly the employees fault. I'd argue it's\nmostly management's fault.\n\nYeah, a lot of the problems you list are real; sure. But they are hugely\nexasperated by companies that setup their callcenter such that employees can't\nbe anything but emotional punching bags for angry customers. The place I\nworked as a tech support person? you were judged by your call times, not by\nactually solving problems. (fortunately, I got promoted to NOC before I got\nfired for, you know, actually helping people.)\n\nIt was exasperating, because, at the time, I had a bunch of experience helping\nold people operate windows boxes (I was a helpdesk tech in highschool for an\noffice with a median age around 45.) /and/ I had a basic understanding of IP,\nrouting, and the like. And I liked helping people. But my supervisor kept\ngiving me a hard time about how long I'd spend on the phone with a person.\n\nI mean, I was pretty good at focusing on the actual problem, and generally?\nwhen they figure out that you are actually solving the goddamn problem, even\nangry people calm down. And you know? actually solving the problem feels\npretty good, even if many of the people start out angry. (the hard cases are\nthe problems you can't solve, of course, especially when the problem is\nprobably between the keyboard and the chair and they won't try the thing you\nask. It's /way/ easier to do this in person.)\n\nSeriously, if you (the company) aren't going to put in the effort to maintain\na decent callcenter? why bother at all? people buy products without phone\nsupport all the time. The way it's set up most places, not only are most\nemployees not technically qualified, you don't train, and you don't expect\nemployees to be technically qualified.\n\nBut my main point, here? is that as a callcenter employee? you need to\nrecognize a bad callcenter and /leave/ - if management's goal is to get\ncomplainers off the phone, well, you aren't going to be successful if you try\nto actually help people.\n\n(I mean, I think firing your expensive customers; the customer who need the\nmost help is a reasonable business model. Hell, I put a lot of effort into\nscaring that sort off at signup. But having a really bad callcenter is about\nthe worst way to do that firing, especially from the point of view of the kid\nwho has to answer the phone.)\n\n~~~\npinaceae\ni never said it is her fault. but listing this as some kind of hard obtained,\nnew knowledge?\n\nof course the company should properly train their support staff, etc. but this\nis not the point here.\n\npeople needing help are in a stressful mental state. they don't act rational,\nsome stay nice, some turn into monsters. first step is to calm down, then\nsolve the problem. some need tough love, some need love.\n\ndangerous analogy: sort of like dealing with an argument with your female\npartner in a relationship. it's first and foremost about the emotions at play,\nthe factual problem is secondary.\n\nif you get stressed out by other people's emotions, you can't help them. basic\nhuman triage is calm down first, establish sympathy/empathy, then move to the\nissue. a good doctor works like that, a good sales person as well.\n\n~~~\nlsc\n>people needing help are in a stressful mental state. they don't act rational,\nsome stay nice, some turn into monsters. first step is to calm down, then\nsolve the problem. some need tough love, some need love.\n\nIf you solve the problem, the rest of it goes away. Yeah, if you exasterbate\nthe emotional bullshit, you can make it harder to solve the problem, but my\nexperience on the phone? Playing the autistic nerd works just fine. They\ncalled for help on a problem, if you just bring the conversation back to the\nproblem, and, you know, fix it for them, they are usually pretty happy with\nit, even if you don't \"build rapport\" or whatever.\n\nOf course, this assumes they are contacting you because they are trying to\nsolve a technical problem. If you are sales or what have you, I'm sure the\nrules are completely different.\n\n------\nvacri\nIt's worth pointing out that all callers aren't arseholes. It follows an 80/20\nor more probably a 90/10 rule. As long as your queues aren't hitting 20\nminutes, most people just get on with it and you go your separate ways. It's\njust that the arseholes really stick out.\n\nI once did customer support for a telco. I'd have people ringing up to pay\ntheir $900 phone bill with zero concern or hesitance, and one old man who rang\nto contest a single 20c flagfall charge.\n\nBut the funniest demographic were the people ringing up to complain about\nhaving their internet cut off for non-payment. So many of them were 'brokers'\nwho were 'losing thousands of dollars an hour', yet for some reason never had\nbackup internet, never paid their bills, and never bothered to move off a\nresidential-class connection with all that moolah they were making, nor show\ninterest in moving to a business-class when offered.\n\n~~~\ndanielbarla\nI'd also say that by the time I've waited 20 minutes, I'm a bit of an asshole\n(probably). While managing call centre service levels is a very challenging\nproblem, I haven't been particularly impressed in the past.\n\nSlightly off topic, but a different story regarding cutting off for non-\npayment: I recently had my ISP invent a new credit card number for me while I\nused a free trial account in parallel with my actual subscription for a while\n(it was \"123456...\"). They then tried to debit this imaginary card to pay for\nmy actual subscription, eventually adding a penalty fee which brought my\naccount into arrears. All of this without my knowledge of anything strange\nhappening. As a result, my account was disconnected a few days before the end\nof a month I had already paid for. This type of incompetence seems to be\nfairly widespread these days, and after several emails, phone calls, etc, all\nI got out of them was a \"oh yeah, you should probably change those payment\ndetails\".\n\n~~~\nvacri\n_I'd also say that by the time I've waited 20 minutes, I'm a bit of an\nasshole_\n\nThe flip side of the coin is that the busiest call centres are generally for\nthe cheapest services - and you get what you pay for. Running a support\nservice is extremely expensive. For most services, there's usually an option\nwhere if you open your wallet wider, you get better service (often at another\ncompany), but the general public don't like that option.\n\n _This type of incompetence seems to be fairly widespread these days_\n\nNot just these days. I worked for the telco 9 years ago, and we had a main\nproduct and a rebadged rural-friendly product. We could access the main\nproduct webpage to help talk people through how to log in (very useful), but\nthe side product was banned for us. I emailed management: please unlock our\nown product page, it will help us help the customer and shorten our queue\ntimes. Management's response? \"That's an IT decision\". So I emailed IT the\nsame thing. IT's response? \"That's a management decision\". Come on guys, I'm\ntaking calls 100% of the time and I have the political power of a newt.\n\nAt this same job I would work 15 minutes unpaid overtime just to finish off\nthe paperwork for the day and leave good notes that I didn't have time for.\nThe other calltakers thought I was deranged for working when not paid. After\nthe above story, it's not hard to see why. Management really didn't care, and\nthat filtered down. It's not like my colleagues were motivated achievers in\nthe first place, but there was also no high bar set at any point, no leading\nby example. Next time you're angry that no notes were left in your account,\nrealise that more likely it's a management issue. Curiously as a counterpoint,\nin my next job it was expected that 30% of a field technician's time was put\naside for paperwork. Didn't quite work out that way, but that was the nominal\nbenchmark (as opposed to 0% at the call centre).\n\nClusterfucks in billing were the usual error on our side. It was interesting -\nthe call logs off the exchange were almost always rock solid (in those cases\nwhere investigations were launched), but billing had mistakes six ways from\nSunday.\n\n~~~\ndanielbarla\nI hear you, it's a complicated problem with many sides to it (I was also\ninvolved with call centres from the software side). In my particular case, I\nwas just disappointed with everything from the implementation of the actual\nfree trial, their silent changes to my billing details, adding penalty fees\nwhen it was clearly their mistake, daring to deny me access during a month I'd\nalready paid for, completely indifferent call centre agents, and lack of any\nresponse from their management when I pointed out the original problem to them\n(multiple times). And this was a small company who supposedly pride themselves\non service - I suspect they've grown in size sufficiently to be flooded with\nsupport calls now.\n\n------\npetethepig\nMy girlfriend used to work in customer service of a hosting provider and this\nis funny because I feel like I've heard every single one of these stories\nbefore.\n\nShe wasn't that pessimistic though, I think she liked explaining stuff to\nother people.\n\n------\nangersock\nIn college I worked phone support for the IT department--learned a lot about\ntalking with people and being patient. You get an awesome range of human\ncommunication: \"I want this right now now now\" to \"You are the best thank you\nfor the help <3 <3\" to \"I have a simple problem and I know it's really easy\nand can you just do this\" to \"WHAT THE CHRIST GOD CANT YOU EVEN FIX THIS\nSIMPLE THING\".\n\nIt's also a great chance to get out of your shell if you are nervous about\ntalking to strangers; you are effectively anonymous and don't have to worry\nabout getting stalked or screwing up too badly if you do your job and help the\ncustomer.\n\nHonestly, I think it's every bit as valuable as, say, a job as a waiter or\nserver or some service industry experience.\n\n~~~\ncowpewter\nI spent 6.5 years in a call center for a smallish (really only covering a\nsingle state) dial-up internet service. Everything you say is true. Though I'd\nadd the caveat that while I am more comfortable talking to strangers after\nthat experience (I was, and still am, a shy introvert), I now _loathe_\nspeaking on the phone, even to friends/family, where before, I had no problem\ntalking on the phone for hours. I now try to use email/text messages as much\nas possible.\n\n~~~\nlostlogin\nOn-call work makes you hate phones too. Phones ringing with annoying things\nfor you to do at annoying times.\n\n------\nweisser\nI don't think the pun in the title is in good taste.\n\n~~~\nbrazzy\nI think it is, and Good Taste is having a good time.\n\n------\nflust\nWhy would she work in a call center when she could probably make $200+/hr\ninstead of $10/hr as an actual call girl? (i.e. a prostitute)\n\nBeats me why anyone would do something that pays 20 times less what they could\nearn WHILE ALSO getting laid, working whenever they want and being more\nappreciated than in any other job.\n\nAnd yes, it's illegal in the U.S. but it's not really enforced and she could\nanyway move to several European countries where it's legal.\n\n~~~\netchalon\n…because I'm betting the joy she gets from not having disgusting men enter her\nvagina with their penis is worth more than $190/hour to her.\n\n~~~\nbrazzy\nFor all I've read about the topic, the kind of men who are able and willing to\npay $200+/hr tend to be not so disgusting, and the kind of women who gets\n$200+/hr can afford to be somewhat choosy in their clients.\n\nThe direct downsides seem to be more psychical than physical, and not\nnecessarily worse than regularly being verbally abused by irate jerks while\nhaving to remain calm and polite yourself.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: What have you completed in 2015 - lakeeffect\nWhat have you completed in 2015 or are looking to release in 2016.  I use completed loosely. Would love to hear some progress to motivate me into the new year.\n======\nionicabizau\nA lot of open-source stuff. The best ones were:\n\n\\- [https://github.com/IonicaBizau/git-\nstats](https://github.com/IonicaBizau/git-stats) (January, 2015) \\-\n[https://github.com/IonicaBizau/node-\ncobol](https://github.com/IonicaBizau/node-cobol) (October, 2015) \\-\n[https://github.com/IonicaBizau/gridly](https://github.com/IonicaBizau/gridly)\n(December, 2015)\n\nWorking part-time (~100 hours / month) for the company I work for, I still\nhave enough \"free\" time when I do: open-source stuff, JavaScript training,\nplaying piano, playing with high-voltage (!), playing with chemistry\nexplosions and experiments (in fact making fire almost anywhere, anytime).\n\nOne of this year goals was to drop out of college. I did it two months ago.\nSince officially I'm still a student (my documents are at the university), I'm\nstill getting loans because of my good results from my previous year. But I\ndon't regret this decission at all (at least, until now!).\n\nAll the thanks go to God! I enjoy being a Jesus follower. I believe this world\nis not our home. God prepares for us a better world. Until then, I'm happy to\nlove Him. Actually, being a believer and web developer is a nice combination.\n\nWish you a happy 2016! :-)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIs the new Jeet.gs the most flexible grid system ever? - sheddybird\nhttp://blog.mojotech.com/jeet-a-grid-system-for-humans/\n\n======\nSEMW\nSpecifying the width proportion with fractions looks pretty nice. But the\nparagraph explaining how jeet's better than bootstrap/foundation/etc. because\nit lets you use sass mixins (instead of inline classes) to separate content\nfrom presentation seems a little misleading - it's not like you can't do the\nsame with foundation (jeet: @include column(1/3); foundation: @include grid-\ncolumn(4);). (I don't use bootstrap, but presumably it has equivalent LESS\nmixins).\n\n(True, it's not the most popular way to use foundation, but that's cos a lot\nof people don't care about semantic layout and/or don't want to use a\npreprocessor).\n\n~~~\nCorySimmons\nThe difference between Jeet and Foundation's grid are two things.\n\n1\\. Jeet uses actual columns whereas with Foundation you need to nest elements\nwithin elements: [http://imgur.com/a/OWyOQ](http://imgur.com/a/OWyOQ)\n\n2\\. @include grid-column(4) isn't as \"on-the-fly flexible\" as Jeet since you\nhave to define the base number of columns in Foundation whereas in Jeet you\ncould just say @include column(4/12) or column (1/3) or column(33.333333/100),\netc. - being able to say in natural language what you want your container to\ndo is pretty powerful stuff.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWindows 7 Network Awareness: How Windows knows it has an Internet connection - ivoflipse\nhttp://blog.superuser.com/2011/05/16/windows-7-network-awareness/\n\n======\nmlinsey\n\" If the response is never received, or if there is a redirect, then a DNS\nrequest for dns.msftncsi.com is made. If DNS resolves properly but the page is\ninaccessible, then it is assumed that there is a working internet connection,\nbut an in-browser authentication page is blocking access to the file. This\nresults in the pop-up balloon above. If DNS resolution fails or returns the\nwrong address, then it is assumed that the internet connection is completely\nunsuccessful, and the “no internet access” error is shown.\"\n\nWould this mean that DNS poisoning msftncsi.com would prevent Win7 machines\nfrom accessing the internet? Or would this merely cause the 'no internet\naccess' error to be displayed despite your connection working anyway?\n\n~~~\nyakyak\nThis service can be disabled, so obviously it doesn't prevent you from\naccessing the internet even if it thinks it doesn't have access. It would SAY\n\"no internet connection\", but internet resources would still work just fine.\n\n~~~\nalvarosm\nWell, you tell my granny to disable some service...\n\n------\nsnprbob86\nThe iPhone uses a very similar technique. If you connect to a wifi network\nthat requires login, a browser sans address bar will pop-up over your current\napp and allow you to login. Once an external resource can be reached, the\nbrowser disappears and returns you to the previous app. Steve Jobs even\nalluded to it / bragged about it when the iPhone was first unveiled, 2 years\nbefore Win7 was released.\n\n~~~\nupthedale\nIn fairness, this has nothing to do with Win7 specifically. The NCSI service\nwas introduced with Vista.\n\n~~~\nkinetik\n...8 months before the iPhone was released.\n\n~~~\naneth\nYes, Apple was focused intently on copying Vista's technology coup.\n\n~~~\nStavrosK\nHaha, I like how nobody said anything when the topic was how Microsoft copied\nApple, but people speak up to defend the opposite!\n\n~~~\ndanssig\nProbably because MS _does_ copy Apple (do they even try to hide this?) but\nwhat would anyone copy from MS?\n\n------\njerrya\nYes, I have wanted to build something like that for Android, mainly to keep my\nphone from getting confused when it's connected to someone's wifi that demands\nsome check box be checked off for service.\n\nIt would periodically awaken, see if the wifi is connected, if it is is there\nconnectivity, if there is, go back to sleep, if there is not, turn the wifi\noff.\n\nI've also wanted to build for Android the same piece of code, but if for 2 or\n5 urls it gets back the same page with a checkbox, it checks off the box and\nsends it back off.\n\nBut I am curious, do all those wifi dns terms and agreements hijacking pages\nbreak any sort of RFC?\n\nAnd is there any solution in ip6?\n\nOr is there a real fix possible in ip4?\n\n~~~\ndsl\nTo answer all of your questions: Don't use someone else's wifi if you don't\nlike how it behaves. Your sense of entitlement makes me sick.\n\n~~~\njerrya\nCan you expand on that?\n\nHow is my wanting to either turn my wifi off, or automatically checking a\nterms and conditions box at a starbucks, or library, or school, or courtroom,\nor hospital router demonstrating a sick making sense of entitlement?\n\nI would think many people would want such behavior from their phones, but I\ncan see that you and whomeever voted my original question down are genuinely\ndisturbed I would want this.\n\n~~~\nkelnos\nI think the point the parent is trying to make is that when you're using\nsomeone else's wifi network, it's their network, and they get to determine\nunder what terms you're allowed to access it. If that means logging in, or\nviewing a page where you're required to explicitly agree to terms, that's the\nnetwork operator's prerogative.\n\nAnnoying? Sure, a little. A \"violation of spec\" or something to get overly\npissed about? Eh, there are far bigger fish to fry.\n\n~~~\nCWuestefeld\nFine, but the way the thing works today, there's no mechanism for discovering\nwhat those terms and conditions are, or indeed, that they even exist.\n\nSo I go somewhere, flick on my WiFi, and then get frustrated because various\ntools (say, my native-code Google Reader app) can't communicate. It can't talk\nto the network because HTTP is trapped.\n\nThe thing is, HTTP is the de facto transport for everything. But these\nauthentication/confirmation pages assume that a human will be reading them.\n\nIt seems to me that a mechanism that detects the presence of such a trap, and\npops up that response page in a browser window for the user to react to, would\nsolve everyone's problem (if inelegantly).\n\n~~~\njerrya\nAnd the other issue is that (if I have this correct), the reason my phone\nconnects automatically to various portal hijacking waps is because in the past\nI have connected to those waps, and almost certainly checked off the terms and\nagreements for them, and continued.\n\nI don't believe the nexus one will connect by itself to any open wap, it will\njust tell you one is available.\n\nIt seems absurd for anyone to think I need to check off the terms and\nagreements every single time I connect to the open wap, everyone's suspicion\nof course is that no one ever reads through the terms and agreements, we just\ncheck the box to make some lawyer or IT dude happy and continue.\n\n------\nilikejam\nPossible vector for some sort of attack? The ncsi service that requests\nwww.msftncsi.com is presumably very simple, but then...\n\n~~~\njerrya\nIt serves approx 32 bytes but it serves it to such an enormous number of\nmachines that I have been curious as to how it is set up.\n\nNetcraft says: F5 Big-IP Microsoft-IIS/7.0 213.199.181.90\n\nBut I am curious as to what the real details of the setup are.\n\n~~~\nTeHCrAzY\nprobably a small cluster of w2k8 servers? I doubt ms would be using anything\nelse.\n\n~~~\ncode_duck\nAre you sure about that?\n\n~~~\nseabee\nYou mean like how Hotmail ran Apache? It's true that not all MS properties run\nIIS, but there is no indication they'd lie about it.\n\n------\nahi\nI just assumed it noticed when I entered the login information 2 minutes\nprior, then waited until the most annoying moment to give me a completely\nuseless fraking notification.\n\n------\nknown\nSounds like <http://linuxcommand.org/man_pages/ruptime1.html>\n\n------\ndrivebyacct2\nif you're paranoid enough to disable this, you shouldn't be using windows.\nthere are far more and better ways for windows and other windows software to\nphone home.\n\n~~~\nBlarat\nI think that making it phone your own NCSI server instead would be quite\ninteresting, just in case your computer gets stolen.\n\n~~~\nomh\nIt could be useful for corporate laptop users. I can imagine using this so\nthat I know the IP address and connectivity status of remote users to use when\nthey call in with issues.\n\n------\nidonthack\nDo we really need an entire article about this? Seriously, if you couldn't\nfigure this out on your own in about 10 seconds, you're in the wrong line of\nwork\n\n~~~\naneth\nIt's nice to see the precise mechanics explained, and it might be rather\n\"negative\" to make your point, but it is a pretty obvious solution and I agree\nwith you.\n\n------\ndominikb\nApple claims that Mac OS X is \"the world's most advanced operating system\".\nBut it's these details that I consider advanced and clever. Apple's marketing\nstatements went from funny to offensive and unsupported.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: What would a site with threaded bump-order ranking look like? - heartbeats\nThere&#x27;s a lot of forums, like this one and Reddit, which have threaded discussion and voting. Classic blogs often have threaded comments, but just sorted on date posted.<p>Classic forums move the thread to the top each time someone responds, but they don&#x27;t thread the comments.<p>This seems like a much simpler solution, which is much harder to game. Yet I&#x27;ve never seen a site actually use it in the wild. How come?\n======\njosquindesprez\nI imagine for popular posts, you'd get way too many low-value bumps: lots of\nleaves in the comment tree would be low-effort back and forth replies of\nuninteresting content (e.g. Reddit). If there's a voting system, the top-level\nthread would get bumped a lot but it'd be difficult to find that low-value\ncontent. The signal that the bump is trying to convey (there's new and good\nstuff here!) wouldn't match the value of the information that the user gets\n(the scattered dregs of many conversations). If there isn't voting and you\nsort by newest content, the experience would probably be like 4chan in slow\nmotion: bump ordered blasts of low-value replies.\n\nIn a classic forum, since posting something not only moves the thread to the\ntop, but puts your post in a highly visible place (the end of the thread),\nit's a lot harder to have too many deeply branching side conversations with\nlow value replies: there's a social norm against polluting threads.\n\nFor something like HN where comment trees don't get too deep and the replies\nare always meaningful, I think threaded bump ordered ranking could work.\n\n~~~\nheartbeats\nNo, posting somewhere moves the whole subthread to the top.\n\nBefore:\n\n    \n    \n      ├── a\n      │   ├── b\n      │   │   ├── c\n      │   │   └── d\n      │   └── e  \n      └── f\n          ├── g\n          │   ├── h\n          │   └── *i* <- this is new\n          └── j\n    \n\nAfter:\n\n    \n    \n      ├── f\n      │   ├── g\n      │   │   ├── i <- moved to top of its thread and its thread moved to the top\n      │   │   └── h\n      │   └── j  \n      └── a\n          ├── b\n          │   ├── c\n          │   └── d\n          └── e\n\n------\ngshdg\nI’ve seen classic forum software that supports comment threading.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTrump’s big league microphone - Tomte\nhttp://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14384774/trump-microphone-speech-long-neck-shure-sm57\n======\nConfuciusSay02\nA whole piece about what microphone he chose to use? This is beyond petty.\n\nMedia not doing themselves any favors here.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCandy Crush Monetization and Virality - TraustiThor\nhttp://papers.traustikristjansson.info/?p=223\n\n======\npstack\nI don't understand the popularity of Candy Crush. It's just a less complex\nvariant of Bejeweled style games. Mobile gaming is littered with them. I\nplayed for the better part of an hour before hitting the eject button, but\nplenty of people in the gaming press are enamoured with and addicted to it.\n\nHell, I even understood the popularity of Rovio's Artillary-like far more than\nthis.\n\nIt just goes to show that you don't need a good idea to be successful. Just\nthrow enough dumb ideas to the wind and, eventually, something will sail.\n\n~~~\nTraustiThor\nI agree that the game itself is not really better than bejeweled or other\nsimilar games. It's the manipulative social strategies that they use to get\npeople hooked and get people to spread the game to their friends that\ndifferentiates it from previous games. You can't argue with their success!\n\n------\nAlexeyBrin\nIf you show the webpage source you'll see hidden divs that contains Viagra\nlinks and other things ...\n\nThere are two possibilities:\n\n1\\. OP website was hacked and he has no idea.\n\n2\\. This page was purposely build with these SEO \"enhancements\" and the OP\nknows.\n\nI would love to hear an explanation from the OP about this :).\n\n~~~\nTraustiThor\nHi, I am the owner of the website. I must have been hacked it here are spammy\nlinks! How do I get rid of them?\n\n~~~\nAlexeyBrin\nIt usually depends in what CMS your website is written (like WordPress, Drupal\netc ...). You could also ask your web hosting provider if they can help you\nwith cleaning up your website.\n\nPersonally, I use a static website generator and I've never had any security\nproblem. I can't give you any particular advice about how you can clean up\nyour website, you could post a question on StackOverflow or do some Google\nsearches once you know in what CMS your website is written.\n\n(From your page source code it seems that you are using WordPress, do some\nresearch about cleaning up an infected WordPress site. The first thing that\ncomes to mind is to always keep your WordPress updated to the latest version\n... this, however, won't help you now.)\n\n~~~\nTraustiThor\nThank you, I think it is ok for now.\n\nI found and removed the spammy links, and it passes\n[http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/website-safety-\nreports/domain/t...](http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/website-safety-\nreports/domain/traustikristjansson.info) and it came out clean after I removed\nthose Viagara links in header.php.\n\nI also upgraded to the newest version of wordpress and changed passwords. The\nhackers might have left a back door, so I will need to reinstall everything.\n\n------\ntlarkworthy\nYou missed an important viral driver. You can't play beyond level X without\nfriend recommendations or paying for the privilege.\n\nThat feature annoyed the hell out of me but its certainly been beneficial for\nthe popularity of the game. I stopped playing it at that point\n\n~~~\nTraustiThor\nAh, cool. Thanks for that pointer. I did not play that far.\n\n------\ndavidpardo\nI don't know if it's on purpose, but there're a lot of spammy links in that\npage. I wouldn't visit.\n\n~~~\nTraustiThor\nThanks for pointing this out! I found the spammy links in my wordpress\nheader.php file and removed them. I don't know how they got there.\n\n~~~\ndavidpardo\nWorks OK for me now. All in all, good post.\n\n------\nTraustiThor\nI found the spammy links in my header.php wordpress file and removed them.\nApologies! I must have been hacked.\n\n~~~\nkrapp\nIs your wordpress installation up to date?\n\n~~~\nTraustiThor\nIt is now...\n\n~~~\nkrapp\nYou might find this worth looking at if you're not already aware. Good luck.\nYou'll probably need it.\n\n[http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-\nconfig.php#Disable_the...](http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-\nconfig.php#Disable_the_Plugin_and_Theme_Editor)\n\n------\nsmartician\nFYI, that page is being blocked by AVG Antivirus. It's detecting a \"Blackhat\nSEO\" threat.\n\n~~~\num304\nYes, I just saw \"Exploit Blackhat SEO (type 1720)\" by AVG and the browser\nrefused to show anything.\n\n~~~\nTraustiThor\nHi, I just scanned it with:\n\n[http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/website-safety-\nreports/domain/t...](http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/website-safety-\nreports/domain/traustikristjansson.info)\n\nand it came out clean after I removed those Viagara links. However, I'll go\nthrough and harden my wordpress setup.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Cashcash – Accounting app for visual people - binarybloby\nhttps://cashcashpro.com/#/\n======\nbinarybloby\nHi everyone,\n\nHere is yet another personal finance app with, I hope, a fresh perspective on\nhow to handle cash flow.\n\nIn my daily life, I have to use well-crafted data visualization software to\nanalyze and search in our production log. Back home, I always felt frustrated\nto not be able to do the same with my personal financial data so I created\nthis app (my first one so far).\n\nI've also added extra stuff into it like spreadsheet import, automation rules\nand budgeting capabilities. I think now is a good time to get other feedbacks\nthan my own brain.\n\nDon't hesitate to ask me anything,\n\nCheers,\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nReasons to blog even if nobody ever reads it - grellas\nhttp://www.businessesgrow.com/2010/11/07/ten-reasons-to-blog-even-if-nobody-reads-it/\n\n======\njseliger\nNo offense, but I think all these are BS, and if no one is reading or linking\nto you, they're unlikely to apply. Blogging so that you might manage to get\nfive people using improbable search terms to find your site is a waste of\ntime.\n\nBut you still should blog if no one reads it for the reasons some other\ncommenters have alluded to: to develop your own mind. That's essentially why I\nblog: [http://jseliger.com/2010/09/27/signaling-status-blogging-\naca...](http://jseliger.com/2010/09/27/signaling-status-blogging-academia-and-\nideas/) and read other people's blogs.\n\nThat, and so I have a repository of already expressed ideas I can leave in the\ncomments sections of other blogs and HN, so I don't have to reinvent the\nanswer every time.\n\n~~~\n_delirium\nI've definitely found this helps for developing ideas. I think what first\nprodded me into doing it was realizing that much of my interesting thinking\nwas coming in making long posts on forums (Slashdot, HN, various other\nplaces). Nothing wrong with that really; discussion catalyzes thinking, and\n\"writing a reply to a comment\" has less activation energy than \"writing an\nessay\".\n\nBut I eventually realized that my writing output had this weird gap. On the\none hand, I had 6+ page academic papers, all official and published and\nwhatever and listed on my publications page. On the other hand, I had\nliterally tens of thousands of comments scattered across the internet, one to\na few paragraphs each, with no real way of pointing to them or even finding a\ncomment again myself. Writing blog posts fills a nice gap. They can be\nsomewhat longer and digress from the immediate conversation that spawned the\nideas, and I have something to point to in the future (and find myself).\n\nThe other thing I do now is keep a text file of comments I've posted that seem\nworth finding again (as opposed to ephemeral discussion), with the URL of my\ncomment and some notes on what else I might want to say on that. Has only sort\nof worked out so far, because like any \"list of things I might want to do\nsomeday\" they mostly don't get expanded into blog posts, but it feels like a\nstep up in organization.\n\n------\nVivtek\nI was expecting something more along the lines of: articulating your thoughts\nand discoveries benefits you personally. That's why I blog. Nobody ever reads\nmy programming blog - although I do have 14 followers on my old-house blog.\n\nYou could write stuff on paper - God knows I've filled a few reams in my\nlifetime - but a blog will be easily found even if you're on vacation. I\nreally like blogging my notes.\n\n------\nkgroll\nI really like Steve Yegge's take on this topic:\n[http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/you-should-write-\nbl...](http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/you-should-write-blogs)\n\n\" _So your fear is justified: practically nobody will read your blog. Unless\nit's good. Even then, it'll be a very long time before lots of people have\nread it. Don't worry, though. If you put in the effort, and you write\nhonestly, people will eventually find their way there.\n\n...\n\nI never advertised my blog, and to this day I have no idea how so many people\nfound out about it, let alone why they read it. I certainly haven't made any\neffort to try to please people. My blog isn't \"about\" anything, and although\nthere are various running themes, I haven't tried to stick to any particular\nsubject. And I'm horribly inconsistent in my tone, posting regularity, writing\nquality, and so on. But I'm really just writing for fun, and even if everyone\nstops reading my blog, I'll still be happy with what I'm writing._\"\n\n------\nwccrawford\nAlmost everyone one of those requires that someone actually read the blog, so\nthe title is completely wrong.\n\n~~~\ndevmonk\nYeah, I think they meant \"follows it on a regular basis\".\n\n------\nSparklin\nOk, honestly what does this title want to convey? If I knew my blog posts are\nnot being read and I still want to keep writing, I might as well start writing\noffline and not blog. That will be my two bits in saving world resources!\n\n------\nAmericanOP\nIf you need to do a better job communicating about your field, writing can\nhelp.\n\nIf you already are incredible at communicating in your field, you probably\nwon't remain unread for long assuming your field has media relevance.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nC++ patterns using plain C - guillaumec\nhttp://blog.noctua-software.com/cpp-patterns-using-plain-c.html\n\n======\nsparkie\nA complaint about all of the examples is the use of free() directly in main().\nI dislike this because it implies that the \"create\", or \"new\" used a single\ncall to (m/c)alloc to allocate the returned pointer. While this is the case\nfor the examples, it may not be the case where you are only given a prototype\nfor \"base_new\" in a header file, and you don't know of its implementation\ndetail.\n\nSuch example might be a jagged array where you allocate several chunks of\nmemory, and a final chunk containing the pointers to each one. Freeing the\npointer returned for the memory containing these pointers will not free the\nmemory pointed to by each pointer.\n\nThe person who wrote the _new function should write the maching _free, since\nhe's really the only one who knows exactly what and how the \"object\" was\nallocated and how it needs to be deallocated.\n\nIf you find yourself ever writing such _new function without the matching\n_free, you're _doing it wrong_.\n\nEven worse is the last list example, as it not clear where, or if memory is\neven freed at all from the code given. Does one of those macros free up the\nmemory?\n\n~~~\nguillaumec\nThat's a valid point. This is the reason why some C API (like the chipmunk\nphysic engine), offer two versions of constructor functions: one that\nallocates the memory, and one that takes an already allocated pointer.\n\n~~~\nsparkie\nI also think that asking the user to allocate memory is bad (for OOP) design,\nbecause it is leaking information which should be encapsulated into the class.\nHow does the user even know how, or what to allocate in order to work with\nyour \"methods\"?\n\nA constructor taking a pointer serves a useful purpose - it's the equivalent\nof a copy constructor.\n\nHowever, one thing you missed from the examples (quite possibly for\nsimplification of the blog post), is that \"proper\" OOP design in C is done by\nhaving opaque data types in headers, with their fields only in the\nimplementation file - the \"methods\" you expose in a header all take a pointer\nto the opaque struct as their first argument, other than the constructor,\nwhich returns one. This is how you provide the encapsulation of classes,\nequivalent to private fields, if you like - which should generally be the case\nfor non-PODS.\n\n~~~\nangersock\n_I also think that asking the user to allocate memory is bad (for OOP) design,\nbecause it is leaking information which should be encapsulated into the class.\nHow does the user even know how, or what to allocate in order to work with\nyour \"methods\"?_\n\nWhat? Gods no!\n\nThe user knows more about their runtime environment than your objects--indeed,\nconsider this a form of DI for memory management.\n\nLibraries that don't let me override allocations, file access, and logging are\nvery, very bad.\n\n~~~\nsparkie\nIn that case you would inject a function pointer to an allocator (and\ndeallocator), however, the object constructor is the only thing which knows\n_how_ to allocate the object - consider the jagged array example I gave, or\neven a linked list - the user has no idea how they're allocated if given just\nan opaque pointer.\n\n------\nTickleSteve\nNever do this!\n\nI've worked in a large company with a legacy codebase that attempted to do\nthis in the 90's when C++ & inheritance was the latest-thing. It has turned\nout to be a real maintenance nightmare for them, it obfuscates normal code\nscaring off anyone who looks at the it. Lack of tooling is a major issue, try\ngetting eclipse to find the definition of one of your virtual methods...\n\nThis is before you consider that all it gives you is inheritance. Wide use of\ninheritance is an anti-pattern and this gives you the mechanism without the\nease-of-use that makes it maintainable.\n\nIn summary... _AVOID DOING THIS AT ALL COSTS_ (It will cost you when you need\nto re-write in a sane way in a few years time).\n\nAnyway... this has been done hundreds of times before, ever heard of CFront??\n\n------\nSuro\nWelcome back to the 80's, where C++ used to play with macro to make templates\nand inheritance was only a basic compiler trick.\n\nI can only emphasizes the need to move to real C++ if you want to use C++\nidioms, to do it safely and performances wise: here you just opened the gate\nof Macro error's hell which will be more horrible than anything the C++ could\nthrow at you.\n\n~~~\nkzrdude\nThe code in the article is just a plaything, a C programmer wouldn't use any\nof that and wouldn't use C++ as a starting point for their C implementation.\nDon't let it reflect negatively on C.\n\n~~~\nscott_s\nIn what way? I have seen several examples of C programs that implemented a\nform of interfaces using structs of function pointers. The GIMP code base does\nit, as does the Linux kernel's Virtual File System layer. This is a good\noverview:\n[https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt)\n\n------\ncageface\nI'd miss the STL more than anything. It's so much nicer than any of the\nremotely comparable C data structure + algorithm libraries. That plus RAII are\nenough to keep me on the C++ side.\n\n~~~\nPeaker\nThe STL has huge mistakes like the completely useless \"std::list\".\n\nIt also does a whole lot of unnecessary dynamic allocations due to the non-\nintrusive style used for all of its containers.\n\nI think the STL might be overhyped.\n\n~~~\nsrean\nIt would help if you could point me to something that is better than STL (in\nperformance and ease of use) and addresses the full scope of STL. I have asked\nthis a few times, but all I have got so far is cricket chirps or pointers to\nworse bloatware. Not claiming that such a thing does not exist, rather would\nbe happy to give such a thing a try. It would also lend more heft to your\ncomment.\n\n~~~\nmtdewcmu\nAny library that addresses exactly the same use case as STL is going to have\nthe same limitations as STL. Everything is a trade-off. I think you can\nprobably assume that STL does about as good a job as any library would, given\nidentical trade-offs. Note that the actual implementations will vary by\nplatform and compiler.\n\n------\npjmlp\nAka as \"lots of hacks using non standard C, while forcing the developer to do\nthe work of the compiler\".\n\n~~~\nitsadok\nYon mean \"non idiomatic\", right? I don't think he used anything non standard.\n\n~~~\npbsd\nThe max macro in Section 4 is using two separate GCC extensions: typeof and\nstatements in expressions.\n\n------\ntorrance\nI couldn't care less about trying to reimplement classes in C — structs and\nfunctions will do just fine thank you very much. What about something actually\nuseful, like RAII to simplify memory management?\n\n~~~\nstinos\n_RAII_\n\nPlease, yes. It happens I just spent the morning writing some C with files,\nviews of those files etc, and I kept on whishing there was RAII, instead of\nhaving to build flow around the fact each of the operations might fail.\n\nIs there a clean way to implement something like this in C?\n\n _I couldn 't care less about trying to reimplement classes_\n\nindeed - the premise the OP starts with, i.e. 'here's the simplest class: BANG\ntwo subclasses' is also wrong. That is inheritance, not just 'the simplest\nclass' as that wouldn't have anything to do with inheritcance.\n\n~~~\ninvernomut0\nI remember something implemented as GCC extension (the cleanup variable\nattribute) but I never used it so I can't judge if it's really what are you\nsearching for.\n\n~~~\nguillaumec\nGcc cleanup extension works very well for RAII, I used it extensively to write\na simple profiler for a video game project (just add 'PROFILE' on top of a\nfunction to have it automatically profiled). The only problem is that this is\nnot supported by MSVC.\n\n~~~\nmitchty\nIt is supported by clang though. Maybe you could use clang-cl to get it into\nmsvc no?\n\n------\nzwieback\nThis is a nice article for anyone who wants to understand typical\nimplementation of basic C++ features but in the end I'd say it makes the case\nfor actually using C++ instead of reimplementing it in C.\n\nIf you do go the OOP-C route, one thing that's nice is that you can compose\nobjects of different super types. In C++ an object belongs to one class of a\nhierarchy but in OOP-C it's conceivable that the vtable dispatches to a\ndifferent mixt of virtual functions per object.\n\nAlso, nice trick with the #define T/#include __FILE__. Hadn't seen that\nbefore.\n\n------\nuserbinator\nI've always liked to keep in mind that C++ was developed as an extension to C\n( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cfront](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cfront)\n), so most of the constructs that it has can be directly mapped to C --- I\nthink the only exception is... exceptions, although there's probably a way to\ndo it using setjmp/longjmp too.\n\nPersonally I prefer C because of all the added flexibility it allows, but I\ncan definitely see the value of a lot of the features added by C++ - C\nprogrammers were using structures and function pointers before, now they can\nuse classes. RAII - a nice benefit of the semantics of constructors and\ndestructors - is a more implicit, easier way of doing the same thing manually\nby calling the appropriate functions. Templates make it easy to generate a lot\nof otherwise very similarly structured code. Operator overloading can replace\nfunction calls and make some expressions look clearer.\n\nHowever, the biggest disadvantage of all these features is that they add\ncomplexity and cognitive overhead to understanding the code - abstractions are\nonly truly useful to those who know what the abstractions are of. That's why I\nbelieve that anyone who wants to learn C++ should already have strong\nknowledge of C (including structures, pointers, and memory allocation), and\npreferably know some Asm; then the transition to using the features of C++\nfeel straightforward and natural, without the \"I don't know how it works, it's\nall magic\" feeling to them. It's for this same reason that I recommend reading\nthrough the code of the STL - a good one to start with is std::vector.\n\n~~~\nmtdewcmu\n>>I think the only exception is... exceptions, although there's probably a way\nto do it using setjmp/longjmp too.\n\nI'm pretty sure that C++ exceptions could be simulated that way.\n\n>>Templates make it easy to generate a lot of otherwise very similarly\nstructured code\n\nTemplates are a mixed bag. There are a lot of things that look like they\nshould be possible with templates, but once you start trying to implement\nthem, it suddenly becomes much more difficult. Most of the practical value of\ntemplates is in getting around data type limitations and in inlining, IMO.\nLuckily, C has simpler data types than C++, so there is less need to climb\nover barriers, but templates do provide some value over C in this respect. The\nvalue with respect to inlining may be decreasing as C compilers become more\nsophisticated, but I'm not certain. std::sort() is said to be faster than\nqsort(). I've wondered if there is any way to coax a C compiler into inlining\nthe sort routine, callback and all, but I haven't tried it yet.\n\n~~~\nsrean\n>I've wondered if there is any way to coax a C compiler into inlining the sort\nroutine, callback and all, but I haven't tried it yet.\n\nAnd how is the compiler supposed to inline the callback in qsort() when all it\nhas is a pointer that will be provided only at runtime ? With JIT yes that\nwould be possible. This requires a runtime optimization solution, not a\ncompile time. This is also the reason why templates come so handy, sans the\nerror messages (although GCC has improved by leagues, now to the point I find\nGCC's error messages easier to debug STL code with than Clang's). The error\nmessage scenario would a be a lot better once they get concepts sorted out.\n\n~~~\nSomeone\nI don't have stats, but I would think that the comparison function's\ndefinition typically is available at compile time.\n\nAlso, if the compiler gets the qsort prototype by including it from the system\nheader <stdlib.h>, I think the compiler may assume that it is the standard\nqsort function. So, it could emit a custom qsort function that inlines the\ncomparison function.\n\n~~~\nmtdewcmu\n>I don't have stats, but I would think that the comparison function's\ndefinition typically is available at compile time.\n\nThe comparison function usually will be. The qsort function generally won't be\navailable.\n\n>Also, if the compiler gets the qsort prototype by including it from the\nsystem header <stdlib.h>, I think the compiler may assume that it is the\nstandard qsort function. So, it could emit a custom qsort function that\ninlines the comparison function.\n\nIt could do something like that, but gcc doesn't\n([https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.9.0/gcc/Other-\nBuiltins....](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.9.0/gcc/Other-\nBuiltins.html#Other-Builtins)).\n\nIf you look at the kinds of API functions implemented as builtins, they are\ngenerally simple.\n\n------\noneofthose\nI think this proofs Scott Meyers point about the most important feature we\nhave in C++: the destructor.\n\n------\nternaryoperator\nThe problem with many of these OO in C workarounds is how well they work at\nscale. For small projects, they're fine. But in larger projects, the\ncompromises in the design begin to show up and require additional patching.\nThis same problem--increasingly messy code to emulate C++ features--led to the\nabandonment of cfront and the development of true C++ compilers.\n\n~~~\ndottrap\nThe scale argument is dogma. We already know huge, successful code bases exist\nin C and many employ similar techniques to this. (These are pretty mild\ntricks.) Additionally, the scaling argument is often used to belittle other\nlanguages like Python, Ruby, Lua, JavaScript, etc. All propaganda BS.\n\n------\nrajeevk\nI have written related article\n\n[http://www.avabodh.com/cxxin/cxx.html](http://www.avabodh.com/cxxin/cxx.html)\n\n------\nrejschaap\nI could probably live with most of this, but the macros make me want to gouge\nmy eyes out. C macros just have too many issues\n\n------\nhamidr\nIt's fun to know how we implement these stuffs in C but not fun enough to use\nthem :)\n\n------\nbluedino\nThree other ways to do OOP in C\n\n[http://www6.uniovi.es/cscene/CS1/CS1-02.html](http://www6.uniovi.es/cscene/CS1/CS1-02.html)\n\n------\nabimaelmartell\nI hate when people try to do this, it makes the code almost unreadable, if you\nwant to use classes, use C++.\n\n------\nzvrba\nBasic template: how do you single-step through a multiple-statement macro?\nAdvanced template: where's specialization? Also, where's RAII?\n\nNothing to see there, move on.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Do you love shopping at Costco? With TallyUp save money and shop smarter - tallyup\nhttps://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tallyup-for-costco/id932235451\n\n======\ncheriot\nI can't tell why I would want to track my spending at costco. What does this\ndo for me? How much work is it to enter data?\n\n~~~\ntallyup\nMany Costco shoppers, myself included (member for 17 years) routinely get\ncarried away in Costco. It's part of what Costco purposefully cultivates - the\ntreasure hunt. (It's why they never label the aisles.) Showing up at the cash\nregister and seeing a $400 or $500 bill, or much more, is not uncommon.\nTracking your spending is easy. Click add to cart. Enter the 6 digit Costco\ncode. If it is in the database already, you're done. (We have thousands of\nproducts in the db already) If it isn't, you enter the name and price so that\nthe next shopper doesn't have to. All the data is community driven. For those\nwho aren't concerned with how much they spend, there's also many other\nfeatures besides the shopping cart.\n\n~~~\ncaminante\nI still don't understand the alignment of the shopping cart feature with\nCostco shopper needs.\n\nAre Costco shoppers concerned about how much they unexpectedly spend on\ntreasures? Everyone splurges up at Costco, but for what you buy unexpectedly,\nare you really conscientious? If so, is there another issue to address?\n\n~~~\ntallyup\nThis is an excellent question and the answer is it depends on which subset of\nCostco customers we're discussing; it isn't one size fits all. Let's start\nwith a background of the demographics of Costco shoppers (2004 research). 85%\nare affluent or living comfortably and 15% are getting by or poor. For many in\nthe 85% how much they're spending isn't a major concern and your question\nabout alignment with needs is a valid one. But there are many exceptions. Some\nof that 85% are shall we say “fiscally diligent”. I personally chatted with\none woman in Costco (who clearly looked affluent with the fur coat and all,\nand she had a cart full of stuff) who said \"Oh my husband will love this, he's\nalways complaining about how much stuff I've put in the cart and complains\nwe're spending too much and that we don't really need half of it.\" Does a\nshopping cart function serve as a sanity check in these situations? We think\nso. “Gee c'mon Myrtle, look at that, the app says we're on the hook for over\n$500, do we really need all of this?” Contrast that with the typical scenario\nof not really knowing and showing up to the cash register and the clerk says\n“$510.25”. At this point if people are surprised rarely do they don't start\nremoving items. They just pay up. And perhaps fight in the car on the way\nhome? ;-) Even those who are very penny conscious, those who shop at Costco\nbecause the perception is they are saving money, can get carried away with\nimpulse purchases. These are anecdotal but on more than one occasion I've\nheard conversations in the aisles similar to \"Husband: wow look at the price\nof that. That's way cheaper than at X store.\" \"Wife: yeah but are we going to\nuse all of that before it goes bad?\" If it's unclear to the couple whether or\nnot they should purchase it, the app adds an additional data point of “Hey, we\nreally can only afford X dollars here today, and the app says we're already\nnear that total, let's skip it for now”. And regardless of which demographic\nyou fall into others want to be able to confirm that what gets rung up at the\ncash register is actually correct. Mistakes still get made, price cards on the\ndisplay are sometimes at odds with what is in the cash register shows. Having\na shopping cart function that details every product and what the price is\nyou're expecting to pay is a great feature for some people. “Wait a minute,\nthat's supposed to be $14.99 not $17.99.” Lastly, the shopping cart is only 1\nof 4 core features that TallyUp provides. The product discovery (new products,\nsales, seasonal), price and stock notifications and nearby stock search are,\nin our opinion, all very compelling features.\n\n------\nbyoung2\nIs there an android version on the way?\n\n~~~\ntallyup\nYes, it's currently being worked on.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Location of tech/design/startups in Vancouver? - wasabideveloper\n\nHi guys,<p>I've been reading about how Canada is cultivating great talent and start-ups.<p>In terms of locale, can someone enlighten me about Vancouver and if there is an epicenter where the tech/design/start-ups congregates?<p>Thanks in advance, looking to visit Vancouver.\n======\nkat\nCheck out the network hub at <http://www.thenetworkhub.ca/>\n\nOtherwise, its pretty spread out from Richmond to Burnaby to downtown.\n\n~~~\nwasabideveloper\nThanks Kat. I've checked out The NEtwork Hub's website and looking forward to\nvisiting.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nVenezuelan Hyperinflation Explodes, Soaring Over 440,000 Percent - sidko\nhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-18/venezuelan-hyperinflation-explodes-soaring-over-440-000-percent\n======\npanarky\nThere's not much difference between an inflation rate of 440000% and 880000%,\nit just means that the bolivar doesn't work anymore.\n\nMoney is a purely social construct. It's only worth something when people\ncollectively believe and trust that it's worth something.\n\nIt's a popular idea that dollars and euros derive their value because taxes\nare paid in that currency, or because it's backed by the state's military\npower.\n\nVenezuela shows that neither of these are the source of the currency's value.\n\nCollective belief is a pretty fragile foundation to build an economy on, hard\nto build and easy to destroy.\n\nAnother term for \"collective belief\" is \"consensus\". We're witnessing a\ndisintegration of political and economic consensus not only in Venezuela, but\nalso in the US.\n\nWhat happens to the dollar when public consensus, trust and collective belief\nis weakened?\n\nThis is why I find the decentralized, trustless consensus of cryptocurrencies\nto be especially attractive at this moment in history.\n\n~~~\ndude01\nI agreed with everything you wrote, until near the end where you said \"but\nalso in the US\". Forget about politics, but economically the US dollar is\nstill the strongest and most stable currency in the world. It has competitors\n(which is good!) but I have seen no signs of problems in the US dollar.\nInflation has been low in the US for long, probably way too long.\n\n~~~\npanarky\n_> until near the end where you said \"but also in the US\"_\n\nI'm not talking about inflation, I'm talking about political stability.\n\nAs we see in Venezuela, runaway inflation and economic collapse is the result\nof political instability and a collective loss of trust in leadership, not the\ncause.\n\nUS influence and power has been in decline since before 9/11, and the Iraq war\nshowed that the US is on the wrong side of the inflection point.\n\nThis chart [0] demonstrates that the G-Zero [1] trend is accelerating.\n\n[0] Global Leadership\n[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DT1e0feVoAA8Qd0.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DT1e0feVoAA8Qd0.jpg:large)\n\n[1] G-Zero World [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2011-01-31/g-zero-\nwo...](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2011-01-31/g-zero-world)\n\n~~~\ndude01\nThanks for the detailed response. I'm hoping that the downward trend in the\nGlobal Leadership Approval chart that started in 2016 will reverse itself\nafter the US political situation changes this year (fingers crossed!). If not,\nwell then yes I guess the US dollar would be going down.\n\nOf course, all good things come to an end eventually, and the US dollar\nhegemony really started after WW2. Crazy to think that a Soviet spy/asset\n(Harry Dexter White) helped setup the Bretton Woods accord which positioned\nthe US dollar as the strongest in the world [0].\n\n[0] \"How a Soviet spy outmaneuvered John Maynard Keynes to ensure U.S.\nfinancial dominance\"\n[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/03/14/how-a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/03/14/how-\na-soviet-spy-outmaneuvered-john-maynard-keynes-and-ensured-u-s-global-\nfinancial-dominance/?utm_term=.dc435d7ea441)\n\n------\ntopspin\nVenezuela has been defaulting on debts since November and the last junk debt\ntraders have finally walked away. No more credit. Venezuela has apparently\nsold off the last of whatever national assets buyers were interested in; they\nworked through their gold reserves in 2016-2017 and nothing new is on the\ntable aside from a dubious cryptocurrency scheme and some clapped out PDVSA\noil rigs. Venezuelan oil production is collapsing for lack of operating\ncapital and Venezuelan tankers are being seized in foreign ports by creditors.\nThis is cutting off the last meaningful source of foreign currency.\n\nAt some point, probably in the next several weeks, the subsistence diet of the\nVenezuelan military is going to fail and the \"Bolivarian revolution\" in\nVenezuela will finally end. But only after having stunted _at least_ one full\ngeneration of children.\n\n------\nrm_-rf_slash\nThere was an op-ed in the WaPo yesterday[1] that was as fascinating as it was\nterrifying:\n\n _Rule No. 1 of surviving hyperinflation is simple: Get rid of your money.\nGiven the speed with which money is shedding its value, holding on to it means\nyou’re losing out. The second you’re paid you run out as fast as you can to\nbuy something – anything – while you can still afford it. It’s better to hold\nalmost any asset than money, because assets hold their value and money\ndoesn’t.\n\nFind a can of tuna? Buy it. Even if you hate tuna. Even if you have no\nintention of eating tuna. You can always trade it for something else later.\nTuna holds its value. Money doesn’t.\n\nI think this is what’s so hard to wrap your mind around if you’ve never\nexperienced hyperinflation. It sounds like it’s about prices rising fast, but\nit really isn’t. It’s about money breaking down. Under hyperinflation, money\nno longer works. It doesn’t store value. It just stops doing the basic things\npeople expect money to do. It stops being something you want to have and turns\ninto something you’ll do anything to avoid having: something so worthless you\nwon’t even bend down and scoop it up off the floor while you’re looting._\n\n[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-\npost/wp/2018/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-\npost/wp/2018/01/17/in-venezuela-money-has-stopped-\nworking/?utm_term=.e6223791bb9b)\n\n~~~\njandrese\nNot just money, the entire economy breaks down. Why bother working at last\nweek's living wage won't buy a loaf of bread today?\n\n------\nstaplers\nJust a reminder that this is a demonstration of how government-issued fiat\ncurrencies are also \"not based on physical reality\" as many point out for\ncryptocurrencies.\n\n~~~\nmatthewmacleod\nI literally don't think I have ever seen someone say that the issue with\ncryptocurrencies is that they are \"not based on physical reality\".\n\n~~~\ncptaj\nHow have you not? Its one of the top 5 arguments against.\n\n~~~\npessimizer\nOnly from libertarian goldbugs who don't like bitcoin, of which I imagine\nthere are three or four.\n\n------\ntechnofiend\nSo what's left? Moving to a commodity-backed currency? Pinning it to another\nmajor currency? Bloomberg states the problem but doesn't even talk about\nwhether Zimbabwe fixed their problem and if so how so, much less what options\nare available to Venezuela. I mean sure I can Google it but it's surprising\nfor Bloomberg to publish such a weak article. It's what I'd expect from USA\nToday.\n\n~~~\ngtirloni\nBrazil had an interesting take on conquering hyperinflation that might apply\nto Venezuela too (although their current situation is much worse):\n\n[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-\nfake-money-saved-brazil)\n\n~~~\njeffdavis\nThat may work when inflation itself is the problem, but the country is\notherwise holding together.\n\nVenezuela has serious problems. One neat trick won't save them.\n\n~~~\ngtirloni\nCompletely agree. As I said, Venezuela is in a much worse situation. They\nfirst need to figure out a government.\n\n------\nNaliSauce\nApparently World of Warcraft gold is more valuable at this point than the\nVenezuelan bolívar fuerte:\n[https://twitter.com/KalebPrime/status/952648572729724934](https://twitter.com/KalebPrime/status/952648572729724934)\n\n~~~\ndaodedickinson\nHasn't it been so for like a year now? At least half a year?\n\n~~~\nNaliSauce\nSeems like the bolivar's and wow gold's value were on par around june/july\n2017 (provided that these tweets are accurate):\n\n[https://twitter.com/KalebPrime/status/877070731942789121](https://twitter.com/KalebPrime/status/877070731942789121)\n[https://twitter.com/KalebPrime/status/885997066140475395](https://twitter.com/KalebPrime/status/885997066140475395)\n\n------\nmc32\nBorrow huge amounts of money from the banks and buy land... Unless the\ngovernment is apt to expropriate, then, yeah, just buy anything that stores\nvalue.\n\n~~~\ncptaj\nThey are very apt to expropiate. They've notoriously fucked up most industries\nthat way.\n\nThey also encourage \"invasions\" of unoccupied properties.\n\nFurthermore, credit is a joke now. The average venezuelan credit card now\nissues somewhere around $5 of credit. Buying real estate through credit is\nsimilarly ridiculous.\n\n(Source: I live here)\n\n------\nqwerty456127\nSo where is the new cryptocurrency they promised to issue? They absolutely\nshould switch to cryptocurrency, a highly unstable currency is much better\nthan a currency that is stable in its hyperbolic devaluation and can actually\nboost the economy. Why don't they do?\n\n~~~\nlawlessone\nThat was called the petro or something, i think it was only meant to be for\noil trading and not a national currency.\n\n~~~\nqwerty456127\nIt was meant to be backed by oil and to back the paper bolívars in its turn\nand I believe they really should start this ASAP. The only alternative is\nswitching to Brazilian Reals, US Dollars or something like that but who is\ngoing to give those to them? A cryptocurrency done right can create worldwide-\ntradeable, hard-to-constrain value and liquidity immediately from nothing but\nthe potential and I can hardly understand what are they waiting for. Is the\nruling establishment there just so power-mad they won't give up the printer\neven in face of ultimate economic collapse?\n\n~~~\nfreeone3000\nThey don't need actual dollars, just issue a currency with the exchange rate\npegged to another one.\n\n~~~\ngus_massa\nHi from Argentina!\n\nWe tried that too almost at the same time that Brazil tried the Real. If you\nare lucky and it is well done, you can convince people that \"1 (ARG)Peso = 1\n(USA)Dollar\". It worked for 10 years ... (1991-2002)\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convertibility_plan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convertibility_plan)\n\nThe main problem is that you must reduce the government deficit (that is\nusually not popular) or get external credit (but you must not be angry with\nthe international banks).\n\n~~~\nqwerty456127\nA relatively reasonable government like that of Argentina or Brazil can indeed\nimplement a monetary policy and play with deficit and the rate for good but if\nit consistently fails to it ought to at least provide the people with a usable\ntrading token so they can take care of themselves. It's hard to say what it\nactually is but given the news we get outside the Venezuelan government is\nlittle but useless (not completely perhaps, maybe it keeps drug cartels away\nor something), they should just issue a reasonably limited amount of\nrelatively valuable currency, halt all but some essential regulations and\nleave the people alone. Budget deficit cuttig is not popular? I believe the\nresult Venezuelans are getting now are even less popular.\n\n------\ncs702\nNothing new under the sun.\n\nAs a first-order approximation, all currencies in history have ultimately\ndisappeared or stopped working as currencies, from Roman denarii to Italian\nFlorins to Brazilian Cruzeiros to Rwandan Dollars to Venezuelan Bolivares.[a]\n\nCurrently there are 190+ countries on earth, most of which have their own\ncurrency. Only a fairly small number of those currencies are widely considered\nstable. The rest are probably destined for the dustbin of history.\n\n[a]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_currencies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_currencies)\n\n------\ncurtis\nIs anybody even using bolivars in Venezuela anymore? I've been assuming people\nare using dollars and euros as much as possible.\n\n~~~\ncodelitt\nCapital controls make that pretty difficult. There are government set controls\non whether you can purchase foreign currency and even then to how much you are\nallowed to buy.\n\nI remember back in like 2011 Kirchner did this in Argentina while I was living\nthere. There was out of control inflation and capital controls. The government\nalso covered their ear and said \"lalalalala I don't care what the world\nmarkets say, our currency is worth $x.)\n\nIf you were traveling, you could get foreign currency, but you had to apply\nfor it, prove you were traveling, and then accept that the government would\nallot how much they thought you needed on your trip. I had a friend get $75\nper day for their trip to the states. This creates the black market (or in\nArgentina, the \"dolar blue\") where the government said that the exchange was\n5:1, but economics and the black market said 15:1 (at one point).\n\nMoral of the story - you can not just ignore basic economic principles and\ndictate the value of your currency. Focus on building a strong and diverse\neconomy and promoting a free market.\n\n~~~\ncorpMaverick\nMexico did this in the 1980's. It didn't work. It is strange that countries\nmake the same mistakes over and over. I suspect that the Netherlands went\nthrough this centuries ago.\n\n~~~\ntalmand\n\"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.\" -George\nSantayana\n\nBut I guess there's an element of \"they did it wrong, we'll do it right\" or\n\"it'll work for us this time\" or \"this time is different because of x\" and so\non.\n\n~~~\ncorpMaverick\nIt is probably out of the desperation. Hoping for a miracle.\n\nThey don't realize until it is too late that is much, much easier to avoid\nHyperinflation (by having responsible policies) than to fix it.\n\n------\nmustaflex\nshouldn't Venezuela be one the richest country in the world? As far as I know\nthey have the biggest oil reserves in the world.\n\n~~~\ndragontamer\nVenezuela is so poorly managed they were losing money at $150/barrel of crude\noil.\n\nLast year, oil has been $30 to $50 per barrel. `nuff said. Its an issue of\npoor governance. Venezuela was heavily dependent on high-priced oil to keep\ntheir finances together, and it all collapsed as oil prices dropped.\n\n~~~\nkaycebasques\nWhat were they spending their money on?\n\n~~~\ndragontamer\nUnfortunately, I don't know. I'm an outsider from the USA. So I don't want to\nget much deeper into the details and pretend I know a lot about Venezuela.\n\nBut clearly, they're doing something wrong down there. They are a very oil-\nrich and resource-rich nation. So they should have the money to do this\ncorrectly, even as Oil Prices have dropped.\n\n------\nctdonath\nInteresting how Venezuela is being touted by both capitalists and socialists\nas a prime example what's wrong with the other.\n\n~~~\ntalmand\nHave there been socialists blaming capitalism? I've only seen socialists, who\npreviously touted the shining beacon of socialism in Venezuela, now claiming\nit wasn't true socialism.\n\n~~~\njimmywanger\nThe socialism playbook is to blame capitalism \"foreign economic sanctions\" and\n\"economic warfare\". It's what the Russian premieres did, what Castro did, what\nChavez did, and what Maduro is doing.\n\nAlso they claim that domestic capitalists are hoarding and causing the system\nto collapse.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApple prohibits App Store devs from using location-based ads - johns\nhttp://www.macnn.com/articles/10/02/04/gps.info.allowed.only.for.beneficial.uses/\n======\ngte910h\nAnd they don't let any app record phone calls anymore...\n\nAre we surprised at their arbitrary nonsense anymore?\n\n~~~\nmetachor\nIs this really arbitrary nonsense?\n\nDo you want ad networks gleaning your physical location(s) throughout the day?\nDo you want random applications surreptitiously recording your phone\nconversations?\n\nWhile both of these limitations might seem, well, limiting from the developers\nperspective, they both seem very much in the favor of the end-user to protect\nthem from potential abuse.\n\n~~~\ngte910h\nNo no no, you misunderstand.\n\nThey disallow you to even tell the person about it.\n\nAs to the recording, you're not allowed to record telephone conversations that\nuse the 3G or phone network in any way.\n\nThis means even in telephone recording application designed to record calls\nthe customer wants recorded. This is now forbidden by Apple. (As one of my\ncustomers found out 6 months of reviews later when the app has done this all\nalong).\n\nThis isn't a \"protect the customer from abuse\" sort of issue, this is a \"Apple\ndoesn't want apps to do it at all\" sort of thing\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHacker News Highlights - kevin\nhttp://themacro.com/articles/2015/12/hacker-news-highlights-2/\n======\nlaarc\nThe content is good. It's strange how corporate the about page sounds, but\nthat probably doesn't matter.\n\nMaybe a whoishiring-type weekly submission might be a better format? \"Here's\nsome interesting stuff you may not have seen.\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAnother lovely Google Chrome ad - Extensions - yanw\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5ryTLrgTbI\n\n======\nelblanco\nThey really only need to show one thing, the Google translate extension. I\nhave it set to automatic now and I often don't even realize I'm looking at a\npage that's not originally in English. That's some serious Star Trek universal\ntranslator business going on right there.\n\n~~~\nandyking\nIt's not perfect. Whenever I go on a page in Scottish Gaelic, it says \"this\npage is in Irish - would you like to translate it?\" That could cause some\ntrouble.\n\nThe languages are admittedly similar and there's some level of mutual\ncomprehension, but they're not similar enough for Google's translator to work\nacross both - it emits gibberish when you click \"yes\".\n\n~~~\nelblanco\nI have to admit, I do not spend much time on Gaelic (Scottish or Irish) sites.\n\nI've noticed that it's support for East Asian languages is also pretty bad.\nBut Romance languages, German and Arabic are pretty amazing.\n\n------\nfrou_dh\nI'll be grouchy and say I'm put off keeping a lot of the Chrome extensions I\ninstall because they want to plant their brash ugly icons (that apparently\ncan't be toggled or collapsed) on the main toolbar. Part of the reason I like\nChrome is the airy and minimal appearance.\n\n~~~\npavs\nyou can hide them.\n\nBefore: <http://i.imgur.com/MJdNw.png> After: <http://i.imgur.com/5qMj4.png>\n\nChrome Beta build but I have seen this on Chrome stable build too.\n\n~~~\nfrou_dh\nAh - Thanks. In 5.0.342.9 on OSX it seems you can push them off the edge, but\nthe >> drop-down isn't presented.\n\n~~~\npavs\nJust checked my mac. You are right, the drop down doesn't work on Mac. But I\nguess you are trying to hide them so it works out perfectly. :)\n\n------\nPerceval\nReminds me a bit of Ok Go's latest video:\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w>\n\nSeems like something Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze\n(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdRaf3-OEh4>) would do. I think it _is_\nabstract, but I like it a whole lot nonetheless. It's creative and cute and\nwhimsical.\n\nKudos!\n\n------\ndc2k08\npleasant to watch but I think it misses the mark by not showing footage of the\nactual extensions referred to doing what they do. It might go over the heads\nof their target audience.\n\n------\ngeuis\nMaybe it's only me, but I find it too abstract. If I was someone who didn't\nknow what Chrome was, much less what extensions are, I might be scratching my\nhead at this point.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPopular People Live Longer - DiabloD3\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/sunday/popular-people-live-longer.html\n======\npasbesoin\nI've found human lives to consist in significant part of feedback loops.\nPositive feedback loops, and negative feedback loops.\n\nA person receiving positive feedback tends to feel better, be more socially\ncomfortable and engaging, and to receive resources that help them on their\njourney.\n\nThis response and that assistance actually helps them become better. Better\nnutrition, more attentive and patient instruction. Etc. It's not just that\nthings are done for them; it's that the feedback loops can improve their own\nperformance.\n\nA person receiving negative feedback tends to feel worse, to be socially\nuncomfortable and isolated, and the be denied helpful resources and\nassistance.\n\nThe negative feedback loop can result in that person withdrawing more and\nmore. I've been there: Most people _do not_ want to be where they are not\nwelcome. It is one of the worst feelings.\n\nNegative feedback loops tend to spill over into one's physical health, and\nthat unhealthiness furthers the rejection.\n\nIt is not just the \"big things.\" People with a popular appearance routinely\nget bigger servings, more engaged and attentive care. More respect.\n\nIt's pervasive. Pay attention. You'll see it all around you, every day,\neverywhere.\n\nI've been burned a few times by \"attractive\" people who deliberately used this\nto their advantage. And I've been slowly figuring out, at an emotional, \"feel\nit\" level -- as opposed to intellectual -- why some people outright pre-\nemptively reject attractive people.\n\nThey've learned a life lesson: Interacting with those people too often places\nthem on the losing side. Whether they are being deliberately used by those\npeople, or just because of the comparative way they are treated by surrounding\npeople.\n\n~~~\nmncharity\n> feedback loops\n\nThat's the basis of social-belonging and other mindset interventions.[1]\n\nFor example, when you encounters difficulty as a freshman in college, do you\nthink \"I don't belong here\", or \"everyone has difficulties - I can get help,\nwork hard, and succeed, like I've done in the past\". Students who feel like\nthey belong, build stronger support networks, more readily get help, feel\nbetter, and so. Both narratives then do feedback, and outcomes diverge. So\nsurprisingly small interventions, to nudge the initial interpretation, like an\nhour in high school, or an essay at the beginning of a course, can have a\nsurprisingly large impact.\n\nI wonder if the future will look back our current lack of mental hygiene\ninterventions, the way we now look back at the 1800's lack of physical hygiene\ninterventions. Something like, well, it took a couple of decades, but NYC\nfinally stopped politically-connected brewers from killing hundreds of\nchildren with adulterated milk from sick cows.[2]\n\n[1] [http://gregorywalton-\nstanford.weebly.com/papers.html](http://gregorywalton-\nstanford.weebly.com/papers.html) [2]\n[https://www.google.com/#q=swill+milk](https://www.google.com/#q=swill+milk)\n\n~~~\nccdev\nIt's quite interesting to me that you can find homeostasis in physiological\nsystems, but not in social systems, where runaway effects prevail. And\nseemingly a more robust social system would create a tendency for people to\nreach a more stable social state rather then continue to descend in a downward\nspiral.\n\n(BTW the \"negative feedback\" loop mentioned in this topic is technically still\na positive feedback, because the effects of the cause produces more of the\ncause. True negative feedback creates a counteractive force that promotes\nequilibrium- it has nothing to do with emotional negativity)\n\n~~~\npasbesoin\nThat's a good point. I guess I might have more accurately stated them as\n\"positive psychological/physiological feedback loop\" and \"negative\npsychological/physiological feedback loop.\n\nYou're right, as I describe them, both are \"positive\" in terms of reinforcing\namplification.\n\n------\ntrue_religion\nIt's true. Most of my popularity comes from outliving my enemies.\n\nBut in all seriousness, I am intrigued with the idea that merely by being\npopular, it will affect your DNA and turn on genes that correlate good health.\n\n~~~\nThrustVectoring\nCausality is likely backwards. People who are damaged by their environment or\nby getting unfortunate genetics end up both becoming unpopular and lowering\ntheir life expectancy. IQ is likely also correlated for the same reason to\nboth.\n\n~~~\nsjg007\nI would say stress, anxiety, depression\n\n------\ndavidjnelson\nRelationships stemming from likability have more health benefits than status:\n\n\"Yet this same research reveals that there is more than one type of\npopularity, and most of us may be investing in the wrong kind. Likability\nreflects kindness, benevolent leadership and selfless, prosocial behavior.\nResearch suggests that this form of popularity offers lifelong advantages, and\nleads to relationships that confer the greatest health benefits.\n\nLikability is markedly different from status — an ultimately less satisfying\nform of popularity that reflects visibility, influence, power and prestige.\nStatus can be quantified by social media followers; likability cannot.\"\n\n------\nianamartin\nI find it problematic that the only controls consistently accounted for are\nage, sex, and race.\n\nI think they are making too big a claim, and they would've generated a more\nuseful insight if they were controlling for pathological behaviors as well.\n\nAre popular alcoholics likely to live longer? How about popular obese people?\nIs there, perhaps, a causal relation between being isolated/unpopular and\npathological behaviors?\n\nThe study itself (the pnas source--and by the way, thanks to the NY Times for\nlinking to the source) smacks of p-value fishing combined with making the most\ngrandiose claim you can based on those p-values.\n\nI'm not saying the paper is wrong in a mathematically provable way or that it\ncouldn't be replicated. I'm saying that it isn't science that is meaningful or\nuseful. It strikes me as resume-driven science.\n\nScientific click-bait.\n\n~~~\nbjourne\nIt's a meta study. That means the authors themselves haven't gathered any data\nbut used data from other studies and done some number crunching on it. There\nhave already been hundreds of studies which have found links between\nloneliness factors and mortality. This study's authors contribution to the\nscience is estimating the size, or strength, of that link.\n\n------\npetraeus\nPopular people are more affluent, affluent people have greater resources to\nexpending on their quality of life, people with better QOLs live longer, thus\npopular people live longer?\n\nMisinterpreting cause and correlation, am I doing this correctly?\n\n------\nroesel\nDo people who are popular live longer? Or do people who think are popular live\nlonger?\n\nIn other words, is it enough to think you are popular to affect your DNA?\n\n------\nbarrkel\nStatus vs likability: \"it's nice to be important, but it's more important to\nbe nice\".\n\n------\ngeorgespencer\nOr at least it feels that way.\n\n------\nsubru\nI have considered suicide for the past 30 years. I tried very hard to build a\nlife in the confines of whatever limitations I've been given and/or created\nfor myself. I determine that the nature of humanity is to seek power. This\nstudy reminds me of why this world is total bullshit. I've notified to be part\nof this world anymore. I'm connected into this universe more than I ever have\nbeen. There is a black hole awaiting me\n\n~~~\nMoshe_Silnorin\nBack when I was depressed modal realism cured me of any suicidality. How can\none possibly think the suffering, loneliness and utter pointlessness of life\ncan be preferable to the sweet oblivion of non-existence? My answer is non-\nexistence may indeed be preferable to life but it’s not at all clear that non-\nexistence exists. What the Everett interpretation, Egan's Dust theory, the\nmere fact that the mind is finite and the universe is infinite (and finite\npatters recur in infinity an infinite amount of times) forces me to consider\nis the prospect that any attempt to commit suicide, no matter how thorough,\ncould result in a subjective experience of the consequences of a failed\nsuicide attempt in which \"I\" am unable to escape, even through suicide. The\nidea that the universe owes you nothing, not even nonexistence, was what\nkilled any suicidality in me. Odd that a depressing thought would work so well\nwhen appeals to optimism did not, but makes a sort of sense considering how\ndepressed people think.\n\n~~~\nKGIII\nI am not sure if this helps, but we don't actually know if the universe is\ninfinite or finite. It is an unknown.\n\n~~~\nMoshe_Silnorin\nSure. But we have to accord it a pretty high probability, at least 50%. So\nthis uncertainty doesn't really effect much.\n\n~~~\njl6\nI've always assigned it pretty low probability on the basis that we have no\nexamples of infinite objects existing.\n\n------\nfaragon\nTL;DR: all you need is love.\n\n~~~\nhn_throwaway_99\nThis is the same conclusion from the Grant Study,\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Study](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Study)\n. The lead researcher George Vaillant put it as: \"Happiness is love. Full\nstop.\"\n\n~~~\nshaunlgs\nWhich begs the question, \"What is love?\".\n\n~~~\nempath75\nBaby don't hurt me.\n\n------\nelcapitan\n\"Popularity\" correlates with wealth, wealth correlates with health?\n\n~~~\nambicapter\nWhy don't you read the article?\n\n~~~\njoe_the_user\nThe article distinguishes between likability and status, sure but the survival\nstatistics come from a huge meta-analysis and the status versus likability\ndistinction comes another set of studies (so it's combining two measurement\nprocesses, inherently harder than just using one). Given the overall\nreproduction crisis in psychology, that it turns out rather few studies are\nactually reliable, it seems entirely plausible that the average of the\nsurvival studies didn't control well for wealth and ended up with sociological\nfactors and the status versus likability question is kind of an irrelevant\nextra.\n\n------\nagumonkey\nUnpopular live longer too, I believe the more hatred you have, the longer you\nlive, and no this is not a post SW binge comment.\n\n~~~\ncollyw\nSuicide bombers don't seem to have a long life expectancy.\n\n~~~\nqb45\nBut their leaders live longer. Which exposes OP's fallacy - haters live long\nif their hatred makes them popular.\n\n------\ncoldtea\n> _Even some adults appear obsessed with social media, tracking the number of\n> retweets on their Twitter profiles or likes on Facebook_\n\n\"Some\"? Where does the writer lives, on Mars?\n\n~~~\nhandedness\nYes, some.\n\nI have no social media presence, nor do I care to.\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\nThat just proves that you don't care -- not that those who care are few (which\nis a different assertion).\n\n~~~\nhorsawlarway\nLet me just remind you... since you sound like you care a lot/spend a lot of\ntime on those services: if you're on those services you're encouraged to\ninteract with other people who also care a lot/spend a lot of time on those\nservices.\n\nYou're self selecting for a group that re-enforces your opinion.\n\nAs of 2016, only ~70 percent of adults in the US use facebook. Of those 70%,\n~25% use it once a week or less.\n\nThose who don't care are MANY (probably most).\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\n> _As of 2016, only ~70 percent of adults in the US use facebook. Of those\n> 70%, ~25% use it once a week or less._\n\nThat leaves a 75% that use it more than once a week. Let's be charitable and\nmake it only a 25% (1/3 of them) that use it multiple times per week or daily\nand care about their standing there.\n\nThat's still a whooping 40-50 million people, in the US alone, and of those\nlots of people do care and are influenced by their social media status.\n\nIt's not like \"even some adults\" as if it is as rare as butterfly collectors\nor septagenarias that are into Eminem or something -- it's a huge social\nphenomenon.\n\nA 50% of the adult population (70% * ~0.75) that use it more than once a week\nis already impressive. And 'adults' is the wrong metric, since it includes\nanyone 18-100. So \"70% of adults in the US use FB\" doesn't reveal the whole\npicture, as a lot of them are not even in the relevant demographic (e.g.\npeople that were already 50 or so when FB hit the scene in the mid-late\n2000s).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nComputer Scientists Show That Mass Incarceration Is Contagious - dallenallred\nhttp://www.fastcoexist.com/3032447/computer-scientists-show-that-mass-incarceration-is-contagious\n\n======\nEvanPlaice\nCrime rates tend to be higher around police stations, military bases, and\nairports. Not because of a higher rate of people committing actual crimes but\nsimply because of the increased police presence.\n\nAll it takes is an ambitious cop who doesn't want to leave his advancement to\nchance. Once you're in the system it's difficult/impossible to get out.\n\nI grew up in a pretty nice area and rarely had encounters with the police\nunless I was doing something stupid and deserving of their attention. Even\nthen, I was treated with decency and respect.\n\nI didn't understand the difference until I moved to an area that was close to\na large police station and courthouse. There was no doubt about the increased\npolice presence.\n\nOne day on my way to work on my motorcycle I got pulled over by the CHP\n(California Highway Patrol). When I went to hand over my\nlicense/registration/insurance the officer reached over and snatched the keys\nout of my ignition. Instead of telling me what I was being charged he started\nwith a threat, \"you will cooperate or I'm going to tow your bike and haul you\noff to jail.\" I was completely shocked by his escalation of force because\nleading up to this I had no clue why I was being pulled over. I wasn't driving\nfast, aggressive, or recklessly.\n\nIt turns out that California passed some wonky law a month prior that any\nmuffler louder than stock (guess that gives Harleys a free pass) is illegal. I\ndon't run an aftermarket muffler so he couldn't charge me. He tried his best\nto convince me that I was in the wrong but by then I had shrugged off the\ninitial shock and wasn't going to admit to an offense I didn't commit.\n\nHe couldn't pin me with the charge he pulled me over for. So, he held me there\non the side of the road for 20 minutes antagonizing me and asking personal\nquestions that had nothing to do with being pulled over. It was clear as day\nthat I wasn't going to be let go until either he could find another reason to\ncharge me or he I'd snap and give him one.\n\nMeanwhile, I did nothing out of the ordinary beside driving past a corrupt cop\nwho was looking to bump the statistics on a new law and probably earn some\nbrownie points with his boss.\n\nAs soon as my lease was up I moved the hell away from that area and try my\nbest to avoid/evade the CHP when I see them.\n\nI'm not saying all cops are bad. Escalation of force and violence are tools of\ntheir trade because violent criminals often don't respond to anything else.\nThe problem is, there is no incentive for them to hold back. Performance is\nmeasured by arrests and charges regardless of 'actual' crime. Anybody who has\nworked for the US Govt knows that the survival of any government organization\nis based on perceived performance measurements, whether or not they serve the\ngreater good.\n\nIt's not much of a mystery why kids who grow up and get out of bad\nneighborhoods are usually the type who spend most of their childhood indoors\nreading, studying, or playing with a computer. The concept of 'guilty by\nassociation' is common knowledge but the less understood one should be 'guilty\nby proximity'.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAgainst Tolerance - mbrubeck\nhttp://tim.dreamwidth.org/1844711.html\n\n======\nchrismcb\nThe author says \"But we know that Brendan has already inserted his views on\nour relationships where those views don't belong: into the workings of the\ngovernment, by means of making a political donation. \" Isn't the whole point\nof democracy to insert your views into the workings of the government. To make\npolitical donations to people that you think have similar points to you? If\nyou can't make a political donation, with your own money, then what can you\ndo?\n\nOne thing I don't get, do people think this guy is going to be a miserable\nleader and a bad businessman? Does the author think only people who believe\nthe same things as the author can lead?\n\nThe title was \"against tolerance.\" I thought the author was going to rant\nabout how intolerant some gays are. But instead he is saying he won't tolerate\nsomeone else having an opinion that differs with his own.\n\nI would be willing to bet every CEO out there has made a political\ncontribution or voted for someone that \"interfered\" with the authors personal\nlife.\n\n------\njedanbik\nIt's incredibly bold to make a public statement like this.\n\n------\nangersock\nAuthor notes that, while Eich doesn't enforce his personal beliefs at work, he\nmay be forcing them through his political donations.\n\nWhich raises the point: same criticism goes to anyone who votes for anything\nyou don't like--as long as you have democracy as well as acknowledging your\ngovernment's authority, you will from time to time find yourself put-upon by\nsomebody else voting to support something you don't like.\n\nTough shit--don't let it get in the way of your work. The old saying \"I\ndisagree with what you say, but I'll gladly defend your right to say it\" is\nperhaps more relevant today than ever before.\n\n~~~\nJoeAltmaier\nAuthor goes on to say this issue rises above normal political disagreement.\nIts not taxes or zoning laws at issue; its who's fully human, with full\nrights. Its easy for those not involved to give a pass to coworkers that\ndonate to restrict somebody else's life.\n\n~~~\nangersock\nA basic human right--one much less arguable than some idea of state-granted\ncivil union--is to have one's actions and words weighed thoughtfully.\n\nThrowing the technical leadership of Eich out over what amounts to a\ndifference of opinion (on perhaps an important matter) is rubbish.\n\nMarriage is a societal compact, and as such is a product of the community in\nwhich you live. We, somewhat luckily, live in community where we can vote to\nestablish norms. There is nothing wrong with having somebody else in the\ncommunity vote or contribute with an opinion different than yours, because\nthat is how the community comes to a consensus about its societal norms.\n\n~~~\nJoeAltmaier\nLots of whitewashing there. What if it was, for instance, slavery? Does that\nfit your definition of societal contract? Will you go quietly to the back of\nthe bus, if for instance, we vote that supporters of 'traditional marriage'\nmust do so?\n\n~~~\nangersock\nSo, your two examples there: one is denying me rights as a person (instead, I\nbecome property, which has no natural rights whatsoever), and the other is\ninfringing on my right to association and free movement.\n\nThere is no such thing as a right to \"marriage\", because such a thing exists\nonly as a construct of various institutions.\n\nIndeed, forcing churches or municipalities to marry people whom they don't\nwant to is infringing on _the members of the institution 's_ right of free\nassociation.\n\n(Now, the fact that they're close-minded homophobic shitheads is perhaps true,\nbut that's not important.)\n\n~~~\nJoeAltmaier\nPlease. Moving to the back of the bus is >> denying marriage? That institution\nthat has repercussions in housing, taxes, rights throughout our society? Vs\nwhere you get to sit?\n\nEvery 'right' is a social construct. I'm beginning to think you're trolling.\n\nAnd nobody is requiring churches to do anything. This is straw-man nonsense\nput out by the fearful.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHacking Work Manifesto - DanielRibeiro\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8xiRGrVgbE&feature=share\n======\nColinWright\nClever video. Artistic, compelling.\n\nDreadful, dreadful, dreadful presentation. Hated it with a passion. It wasted\n3 minutes of my life reading the same text as was presented in a difficult to\nread font, with distracting effects, no doubt to make it difficult to read so\nI'd have to listen to the droning monologue.\n\nI wish people would learn to present well and stop wasting the time of\neveryone who pays attention. They talk about tools holdingyou back and wasting\nyour time. Ineffective presentations prevent your message from getting to the\ntarget, wasting their time and yours.\n\nEven worse, I went to the lunk-to site - <http://www.hackingwork.com/> \\- and\nmy first click took me to a \"not found here\" page. More wasted time.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThis revolution in our understanding of depression will be life-transforming - devy\nhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/29/revolution-in-our-understaning-of-depression-will-be-life-transforming\n======\nEsperaux\nsad we still have people that easily dismiss depression as something that goes\naway once you gain any form of success\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLand of Lisp (2010) - tosh\nhttp://landoflisp.com/\n======\nDangeranger\nThis book is well worn, dog eared, and on my home office book shelf. While\nmany people criticize it, for legitimate reasons, it is still a fun and\nwonderful journey through Common Lisp. I wish more books were written in this\nirreverent and whimsical style.\n\nIf however you want a more traditional and \"from zero\" introduction to Lisp,\nthen \"Common LISP - A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation\"[0] may be\nbetter. If you already know a little bit of Lisp and want to step up your\nabilities then \"Practical Common Lisp\"[1] is probably what you are after.\n\n[0]\n[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/)\n\n[1] [http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/](http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/)\n\n~~~\njhbadger\nIf you like this sort of thing, here are some others in a similar humorous\nstyle for other languages.\n\n1\\. Kaufman, Roger. A FORTRAN Coloring Book (probably the first funny\nprogramming book -- from 1978).\n\n2\\. Lipovača, Miran. Learn You A Haskell for Great Good.\n\n3\\. Hebert, Fred. Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good (inspired by the\nHaskell book).\n\n4\\. Felleisen, Matthias. Realm of Racket (basically Land of Lisp for Racket.\nOddly, nobody's done a \"Commonwealth of Clojure\" or \"Society of Scheme\" yet.)\n\n~~~\nbsg75\n> nobody's done a \"Commonwealth of Clojure\"\n\nHigginbotham, Daniel. Clojure for the Brave and True.\n\n[https://www.braveclojure.com/](https://www.braveclojure.com/)\n\n~~~\nOreb\nI loved _Land of Lisp_ , but found _Clojure for the Brave and True_ annoying.\nTo me, LoL is hilarious, while CftBaT tries to be funny, but fails.\n\n~~~\nemmanueloga_\nHmmm I think I remember a few failed jokes but I found the actual coverage of\nthe language pretty good, wdyt? I guess for a book like this you are not\nreally looking for a comedy best seller, no? :-)\n\n~~~\nzambal\nI guess the thing is that when an attempt at humor fails, which is obviously\nsubjective, it starts to distract from the content.\n\n~~~\njoeevans1000\nI agree it is subjective. I actually open Clojure for The Brave and True book\nfrom now and then just because I find so much of it truly hilarious. The\nhilarity is what really helped me get Clojure. I also like the Land of Lisp\nand find it funny as well.\n\n------\ndrcode\nAuthor of LOL here, if there are any questions!\n\n~~~\nRiverheart\nHey Dr Barski. I'm actually reading your book right now. I do have a question.\nHow do you write Lisp effectively? And by that I mean, Lisp seems to be\nwritten from the inside out due to the nested lists. Is there something that\nmakes it more natural to write: (trim-string (get-string '(some data))) Or do\nyou need to know that you're going to call trim before you get the string?\nHope that makes sense.\n\n~~~\ndidibus\nThe way I do it, is that in my editor, I can type:\n\n'(some data|)\n\nWhere | is my cursor.\n\nAnd then I have a keybinding that moves my cursor to the front and wraps\naround like so:\n\n(| '(some data))\n\nSo I can type the next thing:\n\n(get-string| '(some data))\n\nPress it again:\n\n(| (get-string '(some-data)))\n\nAnd so on.\n\nThat way, even though the code is visually nested, I can write it in logical\norder from what eval first to what eval last. A good editor for editing lisp\ncode makes that possible, as I showed, and many other operations.\n\nBasically, get yourself accustomed to a good Lisp editor such as Emacs and I'm\nsure you'll find that problem will disappear. For me, it's even more\nproductive now typing wise, because I can make more structural edits to my\ncode, which is way faster.\n\n~~~\nRiverheart\nThis is just what I've been looking for!\n\nI've been searching for this and see there are commands for navigating s\nexpressions but I haven't found this example. Is this a built-in command? Is\nthere name for this action?\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nThere are some built-in commands in Emacs for navigating, cutting and\ntransposing s-exps, but what you want is probably a step further - a package\nlike Paredit[0], that gives you much more sexp-specific actions, and\nautomatically keeps parens balanced for you. See animated examples at [1] and\na cheat sheet at [2].\n\nThere isn't, as far as I know, a default keybinding for what GP did - navigate\nup the SEXP, wrap in parens and place point before the inner SEXP. You can get\nvery close to it with two steps: paredit-backward-up [C-M-u] and paredit-wrap-\nround [M-(], though it gets confused by the hanging quote a bit. To\ndemonstrate on GP's example:\n\n    \n    \n      '(some data|)\n      '|(some data)    ; after C-M-u\n      '(|(some data))  ; after M-(\n    \n\nSo the quote is in a wrong place. You could probably whip a command doing OP's\nthing that calls paredit-backward-up and paredit-wrap-round, with a\nconditional that backs up a few chars if it detects a piece of syntactic sugar\nattached to the SEXP (quote, quasiquote, comma, reader macro invocation).\nSomebody has likely already done it, or maybe there is a less known Paredit\ncommand for that - I don't know. If anyone does, please chime in.\n\nMyself, I mostly use wrapping, barfing and slurping.\n\n\\--\n\n[0] - Available in Emacs' package manager on MELPA, or here:\n[https://github.com/emacsmirror/paredit](https://github.com/emacsmirror/paredit).\n\n[1] - [http://danmidwood.com/content/2014/11/21/animated-\nparedit.ht...](http://danmidwood.com/content/2014/11/21/animated-paredit.html)\n\n[2] - [https://github.com/joelittlejohn/paredit-\ncheatsheet](https://github.com/joelittlejohn/paredit-cheatsheet)\n\n------\nludston\nAs someone that started learning lisp with this book I recommend not starting\nwith this book, and instead reading Practical Common Lisp.\n\nSome of the tutorials in the book use some fairy awkward conventions (e.g.\nusing lists of symbols to create strings).\n\nI enjoyed the book, but had to unlearn some things afterwards.\n\n~~~\nngcc_hk\nI thought it is to help to learn list manipulation. String is great but is a\nsuper coat. But I do agree this should not be the only book. In fact Piap is\nbetter.\n\nThe whole Common Lisp learning is hindered by suddenly you have a function\nthat do magic. And nil does not help.\n\nReally wish there is a lisp book learning using the kernel (lisp 1.5 which can\nbe easily implemented using itself).\n\n~~~\n_emacsomancer_\nIt's not a book, but there is Graham's short paper \"The Roots of Lisp\" \\-\n[http://paulgraham.com/rootsoflisp.html](http://paulgraham.com/rootsoflisp.html)\nwhich is something of this sort: you can more or less implement something like\nlisp 1.5 in CL or elisp etc. following this paper.\n\n------\nmark_l_watson\nI bought this book years ago even though I had already been programming in\nCommon Lisp for 20 years at that time. I really like Conrad Barski's writing\nand that was sufficient reason to buy the book.\n\n~~~\nauvi\n\"Loving Common Lisp, or the Savvy Programmer's Secret Weapon\" is also a very\ngood book on Lisp.\n\n~~~\nvram22\n\n      CL-USER> (if (not-known-by-p 'you)\n                 (author-p 'your-parent-commenter 'Loving-Lisp)\n               ) \n      T\n\n;) sorry, just approximate syntax\n\n------\njtaft\nThe music video is a bit addicting :)\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM1Zb3xmvMc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM1Zb3xmvMc)\n\n------\nmerlincorey\nThis book is beautiful and provides a pretty decent introduction to Common\nLisp with a variety of simple games that it builds throughout to demonstrate\nvarious techniques.\n\n------\nexternalreality\nWonderful book, read it years ago, and read Grahams Common List the Language,\nand before that the little lisper, and before that ansi Common Lisp. I don't\nremember very few of any of those books but hopefully something beneficial\nremains.\n\n------\nemit_time\nMy companies entire backend is Common Lisp.\n\nWe have quite a few of these books laying around, along with Practical Common\nLisp.\n\n------\nInsanity\nI had dabbled in LISP before picking up this book. I'm quite happy that I did\npick it up eventually to learn how to actually get something done with LISP.\n\nAfter this book, I picked up \"Practical Common Lisp\" (going through that one\nat the moment).\n\nSo far, I found LoL to suit me less than a more traditional book like PCL, but\nit did help me actually get a sense of LISP.\n\nAlso, the song is catchy.. Simple but refined guaranteed to blow your mind...\nthe land of lisp ;-)\n\n------\nlispm\nCheckout the Lisp Game Jam. It's coming up in two days:\n\n[https://itch.io/jam/lisp-game-jam-2019](https://itch.io/jam/lisp-game-\njam-2019)\n\n------\nbinarycrusader\nI bought this book (physical copy) a few years ago and loved it. It may not be\nperfect, but for me, as an already experienced developer, it was a great intro\nto the world of Lisp.\n\n------\nngcc_hk\nIt is a great book.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGravitational Teleport 1.0 - old-gregg\nhttp://blog.gravitational.com/gravitational-teleport-1-0-released/\n======\nrosalinekarr\nAt this rate, in a hundred years, we're going to be naming spaceship parts\nsilly things like 'blip-blooper' because all the cool names for things will\nhave already been taken by tech start ups.\n\n~~~\ngiancarlostoro\nOr they'll give them names from other languages that are easy to pronounce and\nremember. There's also making up words, that works too.\n\n~~~\nwonkaWonka\n\n      There's also making up words, that works too.\n    \n\nYou mean, like \"blip-blooper\"?\n\n~~~\ngiancarlostoro\nIf that perfectly matches the product... I guess so? If Google never existed,\nit would of sounded silly to others I'm sure.\n\n~~~\nwonkaWonka\nWould \" _have_ \" ...and Google isn't a nonsense word, btw. It's a homophone of\nthe word \"googol,\" to the effect of invoking the idea of a vast, large number\nof things.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googol)\n\n------\nsemi-extrinsic\nA hint for the Teleport people:\n\nOil companies, and other engineering businesses who need massive computing\npower and are very strict on confidentiality, are probably going to be very\ninterested. 2FA and the ability to easily revoke access is very much their cup\nof tea. I know some of them run java solutions for 2FA ssh-in-the-browser, and\nit's a PITA. Plus, they have deep pockets.\n\nGood luck cold-calling them though. Best bet is probably going to an applied\nreservoir modelling / geophysics conference or something.\n\n~~~\nalexk\nHey thanks for the tip :)\n\nTeleport lets me to join my customer's environments and provide live support\nin seconds - and they can see everything I do. That's the main reason we wrote\nit - to enable instant support for a distributed customer base.\n\n~~~\njdc0589\nalso, the healthcare tech industry. PHI is a bitch.\n\n------\nArtlav\nSigh. I wish that was literal.\n\n~~~\nshmerl\nHeh, I opened it thinking it talks about actual teleportation :)\n\nQuite a misleading name.\n\n~~~\ndaveguy\nI was thinking maybe it was Andrea Rossi's next project (Rossi of e-cat cold\nfusion). :)\n\n------\ndang\nThis project was discussed recently:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11355976](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11355976).\n\n------\nFiatLuxDave\nI'm sorry, but I'm going to have to pile on about the name. Please in the\nfuture, don't name your software product something that sounds cool but\ndoesn't actually describe what your product does (except perhaps in some sort\nof metaphorical, oh-I-understand-it-after-the-fact-but-I-wouldn't-have-\nthought-it-meant-that-upon-hearing-it sort of way).\n\nSome of us actually work on gravitation or teleportation. Congratulations, you\njust made it harder every time one of those people Google! Yay for human\nprogress!\n\n/still angry at Steam, works with actual cutting edge steam technology\n\nThat said, I wish you good luck with your product. There is definitely demand\nfor more friendly and easily deployable cryptography products. I wish you\nsuccess.\n\n------\nnodesocket\nGreat job on hitting 1.0. Teleport looks amazing! I'm especially interested in\nthe centralized key management, two-factor auth, and session recording and\nreplay.\n\n------\njdc0589\nthis interests me. We have one of the \"internal ssh bastion schemes\" built out\nthat they mention in the video. It sucks, and most of the reason it has to\nsuck it to maintain complete audit logs (I work in healthcare tech, we deal\nwith lots of sensitive/regulated data).\n\nWill definitely be testing this out.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMalloc Never Fails (2012) - KirinDave\nhttps://scvalex.net/posts/6/\n======\ndooglius\nThe title here is just blatantly false; there are certainly some scenarios in\nwhich it won't fail, but many in which it will. The author is aware of this\nsince he fixes the claim toward the end:\n\n> To clarify, the surprising behaviour malloc has does not mean we should\n> ignore its return value. We just need to be careful because malloc returning\n> successfully does not always mean that we can use the requested memory.\n\nIt's worth pointing out that if you turn overcommit off\n([https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/vm/overcommit-\naccou...](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting))\nyou will, in fact, get this guarantee\n\n~~~\njoosters\nn.b. turning over-commit off comes with its own set of problems, such as\ncausing programs to fail long before all memory has really been exhausted.\n\nFor example, fork() will have to ensure that there is enough memory for a\ncomplete copy of the running process. If you have a large process, e.g. using\n4GB of a 8GB machine, then fork() won't be able to run, even if you just want\nto fork and run a tiny program.\n\nWith over-commit turned on, the fork() would work (because of copy-on-write)\nand the program could then happily exec() the new program.\n\nThe work-around is to allocate huge amounts of swap space so that the OS can\nbe confident that it can reserve all the potentially required memory from\nfork(), even if it never normally has to use all that memory.\n\n~~~\ncaf\nOr if you're just forking to exec a tiny program, use vfork().\n\n------\nbrynet\nThe malloc(3) family will absolutely fail on OpenBSD, for many reasons:\nlogin.conf/ulimits, calloc(3) for when integer overflow is detected (nmemb *\nsize), same for OpenBSD's reallocarray extension. And yes, because the system\nwas unable to satisfy the requested allocation.\n\nLinux overcommit, and developer mindset is a detriment to software quality and\nportability.\n\n~~~\njiveturkey\nThat's a needlessly confrontational statement. Yet I find myself in agreement.\nSigh.\n\n------\npornel\nThis assumption lead to Rust's standard library not having a way to catch\nallocation failures (which is only now being rectified, and only partially).\n\nIt's very Linux-centric and presumes a certain config+usage pattern. Not true\non Windows. Not quite true on macOS. Not true in WASM. Definitely not true on\nembedded platforms.\n\n~~~\nmmillin\nIs there somewhere to read about how rust is tackling this problem?\n\n~~~\nsteveklabnik\nA short overview:\n\n1\\. Rust the language knows nothing about allocation. If you care about this\nbehavior, it mostly limits the code of others' that you can use, but you can\nalways write your own versions of things that respect fallible allocations.\n\n2\\. Rust's standard library assumes memory is infallible. This is partially\nbecause it's a good default, and partially because our allocator API was not\nready yet.\n\n3\\. We've been working on the allocator API.\n\n4\\. We have a rough plan for parameterizing data structures over allocators.\n\n5\\. If this topic is of interest to you, [https://github.com/rust-lang/wg-\nallocators](https://github.com/rust-lang/wg-allocators) is where to get\ninvolved.\n\n------\nem3rgent0rdr\nMalloc allocates virtual memory. The original article had to issue a\ncorrection at the end: \"I was wrong about why malloc finally failed!\n@GodmarBack observes, in the comments, that x64 systems only have an address\nspace of 48 bits, which comes out to about 131000 GB. So, on my machine at\nleast, the malloc finally failed because of address space exhaustion.\"\n\n~~~\nmetrxqin\nThat's incorrect, 2^48 bits = 262144GB actually.\n\n~~~\nlifthrasiir\nBut x86-64 divides the 48-bit address space into two halves, only one of which\nis available in the user mode.\n\n~~~\nmonocasa\nTo be fair, there's nothing that says the higher half _has_ to be entirely\nkernel mode. Only that bits 63 through 48 have to be the same value.\n\nAnd Intel has a spec out for a PML5 page table, giving you 57 total virtual\naddress bits.\n\n------\njvanderbot\nWhat bothers me is that I read this train wreck without any red flags until I\nsaw his correction at the end. Even the headline was wrong given the article,\nwhich itself was wrong.\n\nI really should have coffee before HN\n\n~~~\ndragontamer\nWhat exactly is \"wrong\" about the article?\n\nLinux's Overcommit behavior is non-obvious to many programmers. Its one of\nthose issues that very few programmers I've come across in the workplace\nunderstand properly.\n\nThis blogpost properly understands the issues associated with Overcommit, and\nhave done some preliminary investigations that describe the behavior. Its a\nreally good blogpost.\n\nThe general point of the blogpost is that \"Malloc Fails due to address space\nexhaustion more often than actual memory-exhaustion\". Because actual memory\nexhaustion causes OOM killer code to be run... and OOM killer is a non-obvious\ncase of the Linux kernel.\n\n~~~\nshereadsthenews\nWhat's wrong with the article is that malloc is not even a feature of Linux.\nThere's mmap and brk, both of which have documented failure modes.\n\n~~~\ndragontamer\nMost typical programmers will be using malloc, or some mechanism built on top\nof malloc (C++ new). MMap and brk are useful for certain situations\n(explicitly getting Huge Pages), but I don't think that the typical programmer\nnecessarily needs to know about those.\n\nSince glibc malloc is built on top of mmap and brk, I think your distinction\nis mostly academic. For any programmer using Linux and glibc... malloc's\nfailure mode IS mmap and brk failure modes.\n\n~~~\nshereadsthenews\nIt is a mischaracterization to say that C++ operator new is built on top of\nmalloc. If your new is overridden by, say, tcmalloc, your program will never\ncall malloc.\n\n------\nantirez\nInteresting topic with many things to say about, but wrong content. The point\nis that in most C programs, it is not worth to handle OOM errors, because what\nyou can do during OOM is of very little value, on the other hand handling OOM\ncorrectly is _very hard_. However you can't do this in libraries, because you\ndon't know how the library is going to be used. So for instance in order to\nmake my Radix tree library resistant to OOM failures, I had to write a\nspecific fuzzy test that used a malloc failing with a given probability, and\ncheck if the tree is sane after some stress-work with such malloc. In general\nthe complexity of handling OOM in complex programs that deal with complex data\nstructures is not often recognized.\n\n~~~\nmonocasa\nWhen writing C libraries, it's good form to be able to init your instance with\nallocation and logging function pointers. That lets you play nice with most\nany env you're being pulled into, and gives your consumers an obvious place\nfor nice hooks for debugging.\n\n~~~\nantirez\nYep, that's what I do in order to be able to fuzz test with an OOM returning\nmalloc() in my lib. Agreed on the fact it's good form.\n\n------\nasveikau\nAnother thing to keep in mind, though 32 bit is less and less common over\ntime, malloc would probably fail on a 32 bit process that is out of address\nspace.\n\n~~~\nTorKlingberg\nRaspberry Pis almost always run 32 bit OSes, so that's a common place to\nencounter 32-bit.\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nI had always thought they'd be running a 64-bit OS, given that the new\nhardware is 64-bit. TIL that Raspbian is still 32-bit!\n\n~~~\ngmueckl\nUnless you need the address space, there is little gain with a 64 bit OS. The\nwider pointers use more RAM and eat up more of the available memory bandwidth\nand caches. So not swotching to 64 bits is likely the best use if the\nhardware.\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nIt’s a toss up, I think: actual results depend on the task at hand. 64-bit has\nthe benefit of more, wider registers, which can speed up certain tasks.\n\n~~~\ngmueckl\nI stand corrected. I missed the fact that ARM also introduced new registers in\nAArch64. I thought that such a change only happened in amd64.\n\n~~~\nasveikau\nThe other thing about amd64 is that amd64 code can safely ditch old features\nlike x87 floating point, which is much slower than more recent features. Also,\nfunction calls will more frequently pass by register. And I can think of one\nOS specific feature that is better on amd64: when MS ported to amd64 they took\nit as an opportunity to speed up the ABI for Structured Exception Handling\n(SEH). The x86 one incurred a time cost even for code that did not throw.\n\nOf course none of this applies to arm/aarch64.\n\n------\nphilpem\nI saw the title and thought \"oh heck this isn't right at all\"...\n\nSet VM Overcommit to zero on an embedded system with no swap (a Raspberry Pi\nwill do nicely).\n\nWrite a C program that malloc()'s all the RAM.\n\nWatch malloc start to fail when you hit the RAM limit and the kernel has\ndumped all the I/O cache it can.\n\n~~~\nKirinDave\nI think the author uses a hyperbolistic title, but if you read the article it\ns addressed that there are ways it can fail.\n\nThe larger point is that very few users of malloc understand its semantics,\nand in fact you _can 't_ know exactly how malloc will behave without knowing\nthings about the runtime configuration of the system (as opposed to the\nhardware availability as many people like to think the simple case is).\n\n------\nPaul-ish\nWhen I use Python sometimes I run into a MemoryError when working with large\ndatasets. How does the Python runtime know I am out of memory if the kernel\nwon't tell it. Does it try a write and catch the signal?\n\n~~~\namelius\nPerhaps any write can fail, and if one does then it triggers some code which\nfrees some pre-reserved space which allows the interpreter to continue, and\nproperly unwind the stack.\n\n~~~\nlalaithion\nI believe that the python interpreter creates a MemoryError at startup, and\nthrows that when you run out of memory.\n\n~~~\namelius\nOk, but while unwinding a try/except block, the interpreter might need some\nextra memory, I suppose, depending on the code in the except clause.\n\n------\nvbezhenar\nmalloc fails with ulimit\n\n~~~\ndullgiulio\nVery relevant, because containers are often under what basically is ulimit.\n\nNot that you can do much when malloc fails...\n\n~~~\nchrisseaton\n> Not that you can do much when malloc fails...\n\nTell the user they can’t do that operation? Use on-disk storage instead? Re-\nuse memory you already have (such as evicting a cache and taking the memory it\nalready had allocated)? Abandon what you were doing if it was only an\noptimisation and wasn’t essential (such as allocating memory as part of a\nspeculative execution)? Run a garbage collector and try again?\n\nLots of options available in some situations.\n\n~~~\nCrinus\nIn practice i haven't seen any application to _gracefully_ handle out of\nmemory situations. Even back in Windows 3.x days when running out of memory\nwas common, most applications simply hanged or crashed (which also took the\nentire GUI with them) and those that didn't often had a \"no memory, kthxbye\"\ndialog that shut down the application. A very few rare cases would try to\ndisplay some \"sorry, no memory, close some programs and try again\" dialog but\neven those were hit and miss, depending on the situation.\n\nOnce 32bit hardware-based virtual memory entered the picture, every single\napplication would just assume you have endless RAM - memory checks are\nreserved for \"common cases\" like trying to create a 100000x100000 image in a\n(32bit) image editor.\n\nThe reason for all that is simple: out of memory situations are stupidly and\nincreasingly rare and in most cases where they can happen there isn't much you\ncan do (e.g. what would you do if you run out of memory while making the\nfourth button in a toolbar?) and really in the 99% of the cases there might\nonly be five people in the entire universe that will encounter such a case\n(two of them will tweet about it though and amass a lot of \"lol, those garbage\ndevelopers\" retweets) so littering your codebase to keep those five people\n(and their Twitter followers) happy is not worth the effort. I mean, are you\nreally going to put a \"run out of memory\" check after every toolbar button\nallocation? And what are you going to do if that fails? What _can_ you do?\n\nAFAIK some modern languages nowadays even assume memory allocations wont fail\n(and if they do they just terminate).\n\n~~~\nchrisseaton\n> what would you do if you run out of memory while making the fourth button in\n> a toolbar?\n\nRollback what I’d created so far, evict caches, ask malloc to trim, try again,\nif that failed roll back again and ask the user to reduce the volume of\napplication data open by closing views or documents or whatever before they\ntry again.\n\nBut yeah it’s a lot of engineering.\n\n~~~\nCrinus\n> ask the user\n\nYou just failed to create a toolbar button, how are you going to ask a user do\nsomething if you already failed to create a tiny UI element?\n\n~~~\nhyperman1\nI guess you pre-allocate these UI elements when you start your application.\n\n~~~\nCrinus\nWhat if malloc fails at that point because some other application (we're in a\npreemptive multitasking OS) decided to gobble up all RAM?\n\n~~~\nfwip\nIf your application fails at start-up, you don't need to worry about saving\nstate and graceful failure.\n\n------\naetherspawn\nHow does one guarantee that allocated memory is real? Can you easily wrap\nmalloc to zero/poke the memory in a way that catches all exceptions and\nguarantees yay or nay ?\n\n~~~\nanilakar\nJens Gustedt suggested the following:\n\n    \n    \n        memset(malloc(size), 0, 1)\n    \n\nThe program will crash if malloc returns NULL or the memory is not writable.\n\n~~~\nhyperman1\nAnd then memory deduplication comes along, finds out a huge number of\nidentical pages (all zero) and decides to deduplicate them. So if you want\nyour memory to stay real, I suppose you'd better fill it with random data or\nsomething.\n\n------\nkazinator\nYou can arrange for malloc to fail. If overcommit is disabled with the right\nsysctl parameters, then mmap will fail if there isn't enough physical memory\nto materialize the entire mapping. Even under overcommit, very large malloc\nrequests that translate directly to large mmap requests can fail with a null\nreturn.\n\n------\nboomlinde\nYou can disable memory overcommit in the kernel, before any of you start\nassuming you can drop your malloc checks.\n\n------\nJasuM\nWhat happens if you really run out of physical memory (including swap) after\novercommitting? Does your process get a signal, or will OOM killer just run\nwithout notifying the process that triggered the condition?\n\n~~~\ngmueckl\nIg you try to allocate more than the system is willing to overcommit (e.g. a\nhuge block all at once), malloc will fail. But if phyaical memory gets\nexhausted by accessing previously allocated pages, the OOM killer will\nevebtuslly come around and kill processes without signalling. Signal handlers\ncould still make thenprocess (unknowingly) request more memory, so there is 0\nguarantee that a handler could even run successfully.\n\n~~~\nJasuM\nOh yeah, I didn't think of that. I wonder if you could write a signal handler\ncarefully to not allocate any memory, stack or otherwise, or is some return\naddress or an internal structure being allocated transparently...\n\n~~~\ngmueckl\nJust trying to allocate stack space for the signal handler may cause the stack\nto spill into a new page. That is absolutely out of anybody's control. And if\nthat new page cannot be provided, it's game over.\n\n~~~\nJasuM\nMakes sense. I was thinking that maybe signal handlers could use the regular\nstack of the thread, but that would of course make everything fall down if the\n\"real\" code would write to the stack before updating the stack pointer.\n\n------\nsaagarjha\n> Section III of this Phrack article is a down to earth description of how the\n> glibc malloc implementation works, if you’re curious.\n\nThis is probably outdated, given that it was written in 2009.\n\n~~~\nmathieubordere\npocorgtfo 0x18 contains a more recent glibc malloc exploit which goes into\nquite a bit of detail if you're interested.\n\n------\nantisemiotic\nAnd then, some day, your code gets compiled for Windows under mingw/msys.\n\n------\nedoo\nI always assume malloc success and that if it were to return null the system\nis screwed anyway and the app will just abort. I write a lot of 'critical'\nC/C++ now on embedded systems with mere KB of RAM and just never use the heap\never.\n\n------\nlasthacker\nmalloc fails with a negative argument\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nmalloc takes a size_t, which is unsigned. A \"negative\" argument is just\nsomething that's absurdly large.\n\n~~~\nNullPrefix\nOn 64 bit systems it would result in a call to malloc asking for between 9.2\nand 18.4 Exabytes.\n\n------\nmehrdadn\nTranslation: This is a euphemism for saying Linux blatantly violates the\nlanguage specification with no remorse.\n\n(Yes, I realize Linux is the kernel, etc.)\n\n~~~\nsimias\nLinux is a kernel, not a C runtime so that's not really relevant. You say you\nrealize that but then what are you arguing for exactly? Arguably you could\ncomplain that the glibc (or whatever libc you're using) is not working around\nthat by, for instance, scrubbing the pages in malloc() to force the kernel to\nallocate memory.\n\nBut even then I'm not convinced that anything here is non-standard, at worse\nmaybe we're in a bit of a grey area. As long as the kernel maintains its smoke\nand mirrors whether and how it allocates memory is irrelevant from the point\nof view of the standard. The C language has a rather simplistic memory model,\nit doesn't impose a lot on the implementation.\n\nNow the problem occurs when the program attempts to access virtually-allocated\nmemory and the kernel realizes that it can't find any physical memory to map\nit to. In this situation several things can happen but in general the process\nwill be killed. Is it against the standard for the OS to kill a program for\narbitrary reasons? I can't imagine why. It could also freeze the program,\nwaiting for more memory to become available. Again, not against the standard\nas far as I can tell. Or maybe kill some other program to free memory.\n\nIf you have some specific part of the C standard in mind please do tell, I\nalways find these language lawyering arguments interesting, somehow.\n\n~~~\nmehrdadn\n> If you have some specific part of the C standard in mind please do tell\n\nSee here:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20145604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20145604)\n\nAlso note the POSIX standard:\n\n _Upon successful completion with size not equal to 0, malloc() shall return a\npointer to the allocated space. If size is 0, either a null pointer or a\nunique pointer that can be successfully passed to free() shall be returned.\nOtherwise, it shall return a null pointer and set errno to indicate the\nerror._\n\nIn neither case is there any provision for returning a non-null pointer to\nanything other than an allocated block of memory of at least the given size.\n\n~~~\nsimias\nThank you for your reply but I still don't buy it. As far as the program is\nconcerned it is returned a memory block, what this \"memory\" is effectively\nbehind the scenes is none of the standard's business. As long as the\nimplementation manages to maintain the illusion it's perfectly fine AFAIK. The\nproblem is when this breaks down and the kernel realizes that it can no longer\nmaintain the masquerade. If at this point it did something stupid like map\nthis block nowhere or remap something that's already been allocated and let\nthe program continue like this, then yes that would be a clear violation of\nthe contract. But it does no such thing, it kills the program instead. If\nthere's no program then there's no problem. At no point did a single C\ninstruction get executed in an environment that did not maintain a coherent\nmemory model. >In neither case is there any provision for returning a non-null\npointer to anything other than an allocated block of memory of at least the\ngiven size. A pointer to virtual memory is a pointer to memory. The rest is an\nimplementation detail. If, when dereferenced, the kernel issues an order to\nAmazon for more RAM and waits for it to be installed to resume the execution,\nthat's none of the C standard's business.\n\n~~~\nmehrdadn\n> If, when dereferenced, the kernel issues an order to Amazon for more RAM and\n> waits for it to be installed to resume the execution, that's none of the C\n> standard's business.\n\nWe're not, and we never were, debating the situation where dereferencing the\nnon-null pointer returned by malloc _succeeds_ but takes long time due to your\nAmazon order. We've been talking about the situation where it _fails_. malloc\nis not allowed to return a non-null pointer to a memory block that cannot be\nwritten to. Linux does it anyway, and in doing so blatantly violates the\nstandard.\n\n~~~\nsimias\nThat _is_ my point, it doesn't fail. Either the kernel finds out a way to map\nthe memory and it succeeds, or it kill the program and the instruction never\nruns. Code that doesn't run can't violate the standard. When the code is\nallowed to run all the invariants are guaranteed to be respected. If I write\nthis code:\n\n    \n    \n        char *b = malloc(2);\n        if (b == NULL) {\n          return 0;\n        }\n        \n        b[0] = 'A';\n        b[1] = '\\0';\n        \n        printf(\"%s\\n\", b);\n        \n        free(b);\n    \n\nThe standard tells me that if the malloc succeeds then the following code, if\nallowed to run, will display \"A\" on stdout. The C standard cannot and does not\nguarantee that a C program can't be interrupted however. For the sake of the\nargument we could imagine a kernel that instead of killing the program freezes\nit indefinitely on disk waiting for RAM to be available. It's functionally the\nsame thing. As long as the kernel doesn't let code run with broken invariants\nit's fine. This is completely outside of the scope of a language standard to\ndefine.\n\nOr, to try one last time from a different direction, if you consider that the\nC standard mandates that accessing memory returned successfully by malloc has\nto be successful and I happen to press ^C when that happens in a program,\nshould the kernel refuse to kill the program? This is obviously absurd, but\nit's effectively the same thing: the kernel reacts to some external state and\ndecides to terminate the program.\n\n~~~\nmehrdadn\nOkay this is a far more reasonable argument but I'm not convinced it's right.\nThe standard does define normal and abnormal program termination. It also\ndefines <signal.h>. SIGINT addresses the keyboard case (or the implementation\ncan provide another signal). SIGABRT, SIGTERM, etc. are raised upon\ntermination. For the keyboard case, then the program would be made aware, and\nit can indeed ignore the Ctrl+C request if it desires. That's perfectly normal\nand nothing absurd. For other types of termination, the other signals are\nraised. But in this case the program is terminated before any signal is raised\nat all. Now, as a practical matter I would argue the hosted environment should\nstill be able to kill the program in the face of user request simply because\nnobody wants a host that's the slave of the program even _if_ it's against the\nstandard, but this is going far, far, _far_ beyond that. It's happening at the\nrequest of neither the user nor the program; it's just happening because the\nhost feels like it. Now that's both a violation of the standard and an uncool\none at that!\n\nP.S. I don't think indefinite hold is \"functionally the same thing\" as\ntermination. A caller system(), for one, would need to return in one case, but\nnot the other.\n\n------\nsystemBuilder\nSeems like a needless feature, overcommit, \"oh let's make our app faster by\npre allocating 2GB of RAM!\" says the naive programmers, \"Oh let's make our\noperating system more powerful by allowing overcommit.\". Overall, you moved\nthe allocation delay from the app to the OS, which has much less end to end\nknowledge of how to do it effectively, overcomplicated both layers, achieved\npractically nothing overall, like a dog chasing it's tail, except now both\nlayers have more garbage code, so it's like an obese dog chasing it's tail!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDon't Create Chaos - MindGods\nhttps://staysaasy.com/management/2020/07/07/dont-create-chaos.html\n======\ndang\nComments moved to\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23906172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23906172).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIdeas about start-ups - andrewbaron\nhttp://weblog.blogads.com/2010/03/09/19-ideas-for-start-ups/\n\n======\ngr366\nReading the title I thought this would be ideas for actual products or\nservices that a start-up could pursue. Rather it is 19 points of advice for\nstartups to follow.\n\n~~~\nledger123\nThat's why I first see couple of comments before jumping to the article.\n\n~~~\npapa\nGood strategy. I was expecting the same.\n\nThere was an interesting link to a public google doc with a load of\ninteresting startup/product ideas a few days back. I forgot to bookmark it and\nam having trouble locating it via google. Anyone know the link I'm talking\nabout?\n\n~~~\ndho\n[http://spreadsheets.google.com/lv?key=tOGIddn3rPdqKbHWsqaWbi...](http://spreadsheets.google.com/lv?key=tOGIddn3rPdqKbHWsqaWbiw&toomany=true)\n\n~~~\npapa\nthank you sir!\n\n------\ntimf\n_\"If you’re hiring someone with a significant other, you’ve got to meet that\nperson. He or she shows a lot about your potential hire.\"_\n\nIf you're hiring, you can't ask people about their marriages, their kids, etc.\nLet alone _meet_ them, what the hell.\n\n~~~\nJangoSteve\nI think this bit of advice makes more sense if you replace \"hiring someone\"\nwith \"finding a cofounder\" and \"potential hire\" with \"potential cofounder\".\n\n------\nSamAtt\nI'm starting to think people post stuff like this just to get to the top of\nsites like HN. In this list I only see 2 items (Interview by E-mail and meet a\npotential employee's mate) that aren't common sense.\n\nThe rest boils down to Work Hard, Hire great people who get along, use Social\nNetworking and Don't count your chickens before they've hatched. All advice\nthat's been posted here 100,000 times in the past.\n\n~~~\nnkohari\nMeeting a prospective candidate's mate might be a good idea, but at least in\nthe US, it's illegal (or at least dangerous). To avoid discrimination claims\nfor sexual preference, you can't even ask if the person is married or has a\nsignificant other.\n\n------\noceanician\nNot rocket science, but good to hear repeated often all the same.\n\nFor ideas see the shed load (67 just now) over at:\n[http://spreadsheets.google.com/lv?key=tOGIddn3rPdqKbHWsqaWbi...](http://spreadsheets.google.com/lv?key=tOGIddn3rPdqKbHWsqaWbiw&toomany=true)\n\n------\ninboulder\nThis is some seriously trite advice, and from a spammy site no less, who\nupvoted this?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA Brief Guide to Startup Pivots - michellepiped\nhttp://blog.eladgil.com/2019/05/a-brief-guide-to-startup-pivots-4-types.html\n======\nnostrademons\nOne interesting thing I've learned from studying the history of several dozen\nstartups and from doing about 20 pivots myself is that oftentimes the startup\ndoesn't pivot into the market, the market (or technology) pivots into the\nstartup. In other words, the startup is non-viable at the time of its\nfounding, but later events change the structure of the market in a way that\ntakes the struggling business and turns it into a growth powerhouse.\n\nGoogle, Whatsapp, Uber, Twitch, AirBnB, EverNote, Roblox, and to some extent\nApple can all be seen as examples of this.\n\nThis has a bunch of implications for what it's really like to found a startup:\nin particular, it validates the wisdom of keeping burn rate extremely low and\nof being extremely persistent, as well as having a product out there that\npeople can use. It also suggests that it may be better to have a lot of\nusable-but-unpolished working products that are constantly getting exposure\n(even if they're not succeeding), rather than putting all your eggs into\nimproving one product, and argues for putting failed startups in maintenance-\nmode rather than shuttering them entirely.\n\n~~~\ngrumpy8\n> market (or technology) pivots into the startup\n\nI think Apple, Google, Twitch & Uber (I don't know enough of the others) were\nclearly building the right thing for an _early_ market.. I wouldn't say the\nmarket \"switched to them\", it just became more mainstream.\n\n~~~\nnostrademons\nThat's one way of phrasing it, I guess, although I'm not sure it's a\nparticularly useful one (what makes a market \"early\" if not the mainstream\nswitching later? how would you distinguish it from the many other small niche\nmarkets - like bingo card creators or D&D character sheet generation - that\nfail to become large growth companies?). The specifics I had in mind for those\nwere:\n\nWhen the Apple I came out, there wasn't much you could do with it. It was only\nthe invention of Visicalc (which itself couldn't have happened until the Apple\nwas out) that gave businesses a reason to buy one. The same dynamic applies to\nnearly all \"platform\" companies, which is why it's so hard to make a new\nplatform.\n\nWhen Google was first developed in 1995, the dominant way to find things on\nthe web was Yahoo. That's because in 1995, the best way to find things on the\nweb was a human-curated directory. The press reported Google's dominance as\nbecause of its proprietary algorithms, but what makes algorithms better than\nhumans? I'd argue that there were two main forcing functions, both of which\nwere a result of the web's scale continuing to grow: 1) as the web gets\nbetter, you physically cannot hire enough people to review and categorize it\nand 2) as the number of links gets higher, the effectiveness of counting links\nas a ranking factor improves. PageRank and PageRank-like algorithms are\nactually really ineffective on sparse datasets (trust me, I've tried, while at\nGoogle). So it was the growth of the web itself that led to algorithmic search\nengines becoming better than human-curated directories.\n\nGame-streaming wasn't really a thing when Justin.TV came out in 2007. It\nrequired a number of other changes in the environment - better access to\nbroadband, faster GPUs, a gaming populace that was thrown out of work by the\nGreat Recession - before it got big, circa 2010/2011\\. Justin.TV, as a\nlifestreaming company, was well positioned to realize and capitalize on this\ntrend, even though it didn't exist when they founded the company.\n\nUber started as a way to call a black cab via app. They tried it multiple\ntimes between the company's first prototype (in 2008) and the official product\nlaunch (in 2010). Mobile GPS wasn't good enough in 2008 to be on constantly:\nit would drain the phone's battery faster than the power adaptor could charge\nit. Additionally, they benefitted a lot from the Great Recession, which meant\nthat a number of drivers were newly unemployed and seeking a way to make easy\nmoney. (The same applies to the rest of the sharing economy.)\n\n~~~\nAlex3917\n> how would you distinguish it from the many other small niche markets - like\n> bingo card creators or D&D character sheet generation - that fail to become\n> large growth companies?)\n\nThe definition of 'startup' I like best is \"a new business that's designed to\narbitrage a temporary disequilibrium to produce extraordinary returns.\"\n\nWith bingo card creator or D&D character sheets, there is no temporary\neconomic disequilibrium.\n\nWhereas with Apple, the arbitrage opportunity is that there were personal\ncomputer chips but no personal computers. With Facebook it was that there were\na billion people who owned computers, but there wasn't anything connecting the\npeople behind the computers. It wasn't obvious that Apple and Facebook would\nbe successful in advance, but they were clearly hitching a ride on mega trends\nthat were already obvious ahead of time. When there is an obvious mega trend,\nbut no dominant company for that mega trend, then that's basically an economic\nlow pressure area that needs to get equilibrated.\n\nWith bingo card creator or d&d character sheets, nothing had changed to create\nany sort of arbitrage opportunity. Maybe there is a demand for those products,\nmaybe there isn't, but a new product with demand does not a startup make.\n\n------\nhinkley\nI had heard once upon a time from a coworker that F5 pivoted from a game\ncompany (failing to commercialize an MMO, created a load balancer instead).\n\nThe company bio has disabused me of that notion. So one of us is either\nconfused or has mixed them up with some other company.\n\n~~~\nusmannk\nBoth of Stewart Butterfield's companies, Flickr then Slack, are spin-offs of\ntools the team made while trying to make a game. Maybe that's what your\ncoworker was thinking of?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDo developers really love beer, or is it just a myth? - dsberkholz\nhttp://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2012/08/03/do-developers-really-love-beer-or-is-it-just-a-myth/\n\n======\njmduke\nOkay, originally I was going to write this off as mere blogspam but I wanted\nto have some fun.\n\nIssues:\n\n1\\. An ordinal scale with subjective verbiage?\n\n2\\. An ordinal scale with no natural middle (there are six options!)?\n\n3\\. An ordinal scale with 'select all that apply'?! How does that even work?\n\n4\\. The percentages add to more than 100%! That's not how percentages work. At\nleast normalize the scale -- or change the Y axis.\n\nThere's nothing wrong with trying to promote your analysis firm (I like\nRedMonk!) but at least try and, you know, have good analysis.\n\n~~~\ndsberkholz\nMaybe you do didn't notice, but it wasn't our survey, and we had nothing to do\nwith its design. I agree that the design is not great, but c'mon, this is just\nfor fun. When you can select multiple answers, the percentages no longer total\n100 across options, only within each option vs all respondents.\n\n~~~\ndsberkholz\ns/do didn't/didn't/\n\n------\npetercooper\nDevelopers also, on average, enjoy sex, recreational activities, and going on\nvacation. And bacon. Never forget the bacon.\n\n~~~\n51432\nI'm vegan\n\n~~~\njlgreco\nYou can be vegan and like bacon. You just can't be vegan and _eat_ bacon.\n\n...I'll show myself out.\n\n------\nDylan16807\nThis was a something people claimed? I demand another poll that asks if\nthey've heard of the phrase 'all developers love beer' and think it's a common\nbelief!\n\n------\npavel_lishin\nI wonder what the geographic breakdown was like. I'd like to see preferences\nin America, vs. Russia, vs. the middle east.\n\n------\njlgreco\nI will never for the life of me understand the hate people have for Corona.\n\nGranted, it should probably be classed under some yet unnamed category of\nbeverage other than \"beer\", but I still like it.\n\n~~~\norta\nI don't know if it's just my area of north England but Corona is consider\nquote a good drink, and you always get it with a lime.\n\n~~~\ndllthomas\nCorona with lime is tasty on a hot day with Mexican food. Like jlgreco said,\nthough, at that point it tastes less like \"beer\" and more like \"Corona with\nlime\" - good, but not good beer.\n\n------\nDigitalSea\nI am a developer and yes I do like beer. I am a human, who would have thought?\nI also like long walks and holding hands with girls on the beach, then having\nsex. I hate the stereotype that makes it seem like developers are different to\nordinary people, some of the developers I work with you wouldn't even be able\nto pick that they're developers, they don't walk around in Github t-shirts,\nwearing glasses and throwing words like release cycle and debugging around.\n\n------\nthreepipeproblm\nThis is meaningless without comparing to non-developers, or the general\npopulation. For all we know from this data, developers may like beer _less_\nthan non-developers. Combine this with the problems cited by jmduke, and I'm\nnot sure it is enhancing the reputation of the \"developer focused industry\nanalyst firm\" that published it. Yes, I have no sense of humor.\n\n~~~\ndsberkholz\nEven without the contrast (impossible given this particular dataset since the\nsurvey wasn't given to a control), it's still interesting. Here's why -- when\nyou consider the broader context of the outlash against beer/alcohol at\nconferences, notice that only 5% of developers said they hated beer. That\napparently means a tiny minority of people could have an outsized influence on\nconference behavior. Note that this survey wasn't given purely to conference-\ngoers, so it's not selection bias.\n\n~~~\nthreepipeproblm\nGood point... I didn't know this was about getting drunk at conferences.\nObjection withdrawn.\n\n------\nbherms\nHow does this compare to human beings in general (and then for men vs\nwomen)... I would imagine if you looked at data outside of developers, you'd\nsee pretty much the same results, especially when taking into account the male\nbias in developer culture.\n\n------\nbitops\nA few good beers:\n\n* Delirium\n\n* Anchor Steam\n\n* Carlsberg\n\n* Negra Modelo\n\nContrary to popular belief, Budweiser, Coors Lite, et. al. are not actually\nbeers but rather beer-flavored water that also contains alcohol.\n\n~~~\njardiamj\nWhen somebody asks me if I want a Budweiser, Coors Lite, etc. I reply I like\nbeer, not alcoholic water. I usually tend to go for beer in the category of\nporters and stouts, and ales some times. Negra Modelo is what I drink when I\ndon't have so much choice, but I live near Portland, OR. so beer selection is\nusually not a problem around here.\n\n~~~\njlgreco\nIf there is one thing I have learned in this life, it is that locals always\nthink their region has a better than average beer scene.\n\nThe reality of the situation is that (without exception that I am aware of) if\nyou are close enough to a major city to be able to say that you are near that\ncity with a straight face, then your beer selection is going to be just fine.\n\nI would say with hesitation that this applies to larger geographic regions as\nwell. States, 'coasts', _perhaps_ even countries and continents.\n\n(If I have learned anything else in life, it is that you should always be\ngracious when someone offers you a beer.)\n\n------\nrekwah\nI'm curious if this is partly because of it being a male dominated profession.\nI would assume polls of other professions with such chromosome skew would\nproduce similar results.\n\n------\nevo_9\nI thought the myth was developers love maryjane? Beer would seem to be a near\nuniversally loved adult beverage...\n\n~~~\npavel_lishin\nI think coffee is the universal stereotype. I'd wager that most of us prefer\nuppers to downers, at least while we're actively developing.\n\n~~~\nevo_9\nTrue, good point, caffeine and coffee really go hand-in-hand with the coder\nlife - I switched from coffee to green-tea about 5 years back myself though.\n\nActually, depending on the type of pot and how you are wired it can be an\nupper or a downer (it's actually classified a hallucinogen). There are two\nstrains - sativa and indica's - and for some the indica will knock you on your\nbutt while the other will actually give you an odd focused, upbeat kind of\nbuzz. Not that I would know personally, ahem...\n\n------\nchucknelson\nWhat a great article...\n\n------\nDystopian\nWho doesn't love beer.\n\n------\nmalkia\nPilsner Urquell FTW!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\niOS vs. Android - A comparison for first-time developers - diasks2\nhttp://www.diasks2.com/post/20172033158/ios-vs-android-a-comparison-for-first-time\n\n======\nambirex\n_The bottom line is, if you are selling a paid app, iOS is the way to go._\n\nThis conclusion from a single app is very weak at best.\n\nOtherwise, thank you for the write-up from your experience.\n\n------\nSpikeX\nI would have liked to have seen how the Windows Phone marketplace stacked up\nagainst the other two, and how much better (or worse) it is in those\ncategories.\n\n------\nmdonahoe\n\"all sales are final\"\n\nYou can ask apple for a refund. Not sure if they make the developer eat the\nwhole price or just the 70% cut\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nEmberwatch - platz\nhttp://emberwatch.com/\n\n======\nzdgman\nSurprised this isn't getting more upvote love. I liked the collection of\nresources and have bookmarked it for later!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApple Releases Fix to MBPs in Response to Consumer Reports' Battery Test Results - happy-go-lucky\nhttp://www.consumerreports.org/apple/apple-releases-fix-to-macbook-pros-in-response-to-consumer-reports-battery-test-results/\n======\njressey\nOh good. In my normal usage, which is of course repeatedly loading 10 webpages\n(not from cache, only in Safari), I will have excellent battery life. I'm glad\nI don't know anybody who will use the machine differently.\n\nHonestly though, how much did this article and the inevitable 'Recommended'\nrating cost Apple? My internal BS detector is beeping.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSecure deletion: a single overwrite will do it - ilitirit\nhttp://www.h-online.com/news/Secure-deletion-a-single-overwrite-will-do-it--/112432\n======\nm_eiman\nIf you think that you can recover overwritten data, feel free to accept 'The\nGreat Zero Challenge' over at <http://16systems.com/zero/>\n\n\"Q. What is this?\n\nA. A challenge to confirm whether or not a professional, established data\nrecovery firm can recover data from a hard drive that has been overwritten\nwith zeros once. We used the 32 year-old Unix dd command using /dev/zero as\ninput to overwrite the drive. [...]\"\n\nIt's been over a year, and nobody has accepted the challenge yet. Even if\nthere isn't any prize money to win, I'd think that the PR opportunity would be\nquite enough for any data recovery firm to do it.\n\nSo my conclusion is: overwriting once is plenty good enough. You want to\noverwrite the whole disk though, otherwise the filesystem might leave metadata\nclues even after the file has been overwritten and unlinked.\n\n~~~\nErrantX\nI'd love to take them on. However they are right it is highly unlikely data\ncan be recovered from that drive. They have only a few folders/files on there\nit seems leaving little to go on to rebuild the image.\n\nIt's not worth it - who needs the PR.. it's worthless when we recover zeroed\ndisks frequently anyway :) If their willing to meet the cost to recover it\n(I'd do it cheap for £600). We are UK based so I guess they wont.\n\nI dont think you can draw the conclusion that overwriting once is plenty fine\nbased on their conclusions. At least not till: \\- Someone has tried their disk\n(people not _wanting_ too is different from giving it a shot :)) \\- Someone\ntrying a more real life example (install an OS, then copy some files in, then\nDD it).\n\nConsidering the second one _has_ been done... :)\n\nThey are quite welcome to clone any old OS drive onto a disk and wipe it the\nsame way with DD. Then fly it over to us here and pay the £1000 (ish) cost to\nrecover it. (yes, I know that is a bit outrageous but so is their\n\"challenge\").\n\n~~~\nm_eiman\n\"Considering the second one has been done... :)\"\n\nIt has? Do you have any source/article you can link to? I'd like to read about\nit and how it's done, seems to me like you'd need a fair amount of black magic\nto do it!\n\n~~~\nErrantX\nWell umm no article, rather practical experience :).\n\nAs I explained elsewhere we get wiped disks sent to us weekly. Some will have\ndeen blanked with 0's (perhaps one a month). I know of only a few that\nspecifically have had dd used on them - but usually we dont know the story of\nthe disks :) so it could be higher.\n\nWe have a SEM that produces an image for our analysts to rebuild with a\nvariety of software packages (Encase Enterprise is one example, and we have\nseveral pieces of kit from accessdata. Plus scripts/programs written in\nhouse).\n\nWith a zeroed disk your looking at minimum £1000 upwards and at least a months\nwork (most of that time spent on the SEM and on one of our clusters processign\nthe data).\n\n~~~\nm_eiman\nExcuse the ignorant, but what is SEM short for?\n\nAm I near the truth if I say that you analyze lots of residual bits to see how\nthe drive usually manages to overwrite a one, and then use that to get a fuzzy\nlogic version of the contents of the drive?\n\n~~~\nErrantX\nSEM = Scanning Electron Microscope. Actually when I say \"ours\" it is jointly\nowned by a local university who house it and use it when we dont need it. It\nis specialised (or rather adapted) for HDD scans though.\n\nYes that kinda explains the proces. It's rather complex and not something I am\nfully versed in (it not being my field, I process the data) but I will have a\nshot at explaining. It is possible to analyse the individual bits and predict\nwhat the byte was before by seeing what has \"moved\" (i.e. when you zero a byte\nor a cluster it simply moves all the 1 bits to zero)\n\nThe reason 3 passes defeats is (mostly) is that it deliberately makes sure\n_every_ bit is moved at least once (for example by writing first FF and then\n00 to it). Then a final zeroing pass. Because you write the inverse of the\nfirst pass on the second run it ensures every \"pin\" is moved. Then when you\nwrite 0's anything that can be reconstructed is just the random garbage from\nthe second pass.\n\nAnyway; a 120GB disk will produce about 1TB of statistical data from the SEM\nprocess - which we can analyse. Once you get a handle on a few \"known\" files\n(like the OS ones) you can begin to rebuild unknown protions based on that\ndata. Keyword recognition and file signatures help identify when we\nsuccesfully recover something.\n\nYou are talking about a weeks processing on 25 node cluster (100 cores).\n\n~~~\nm_eiman\nInteresting. Are the known files required to be able to find the data, and how\nbig they have to be?\n\nI'm more or less wondering if a RAID:ed system (with say 64kb big chunks of\ndata) will make it impossible to recover the data.\n\n~~~\nErrantX\nNo not needed: but they shortcut the process because the software can get a\nhandle on the data it is given a little better. It just cuts the processing\ndown a bit (never tested it _without_ that kind of searching so I couldnt say\nhow much).\n\nI suspect that a RAID would foil it. For a start we would need to program in\nthe facility to rebuild the RAID (and analyse based on Chunks). I doubt it\nwould work out.\n\nWe do quote a price for SEM Raid recovery but it is in the 10's of thousands -\na.k.a no thanks :D\n\n------\nErrantX\nWhilst I am in agreement 35 writes is serious overkill I would dispute that a\nsingle write is suitable.\n\nBecause of how standard data wiping software works one single pass would leave\nlots of traces. Perhaps not enough to pull entire documents etc. but with\nprofessional reconstruction software quite a lot of date can be recovered (I\ndo this every week in my job). Given that you can guess at the contents of\nportions of the data (the OS :)) rebuilding is fairly easy.\n\n3 passes is the correct method. One pass writing random data, one pass writing\nthe 2's complement data (these passes ensure every bit has been \"moved\") then\nwrite it out with ) 0's. This ensures nearly untraceable data.\n\n~~~\nkarl11\nI would be inclined to agree with you. I don't think the inconvenience is too\ngreat to wipe with three passes just to make sure.\n\n~~~\nErrantX\nI had a bigt discussion about this not very long ago with a client we were\ndestroying some disks for. He had read something along similar lines (one pass\nis fine).\n\nI agree: 1 pass will tend to hide a lot of stuff. But when I did a quick\nexample and showed him us recovering SAM files (windows password files) from\none of his HDD's containing the MSCACHE hashes of several employees on his\nWindows Domain he was convinced\n\n(edit: of course that was a lucky break - and you do have to crack the\npasswords too - but we got some contact info and other document segments too\n:)).\n\n------\njcromartie\nI learned a nice trick with OS X's Disk Utility the other day. You can\nsecurely delete already-deleted files, after the fact, with this tool. Just\nselect a volume, go to the Erase tab, and click \"Erase Free Space...\"\n\n------\nbarrkel\nI'd like to add something to this discussion, though, so others won't feel the\npain I once felt some time ago: Sdelete from SysInternals is not safe to use\nif you are also using EFS (encrypted files on XP Pro / Vista etc.). You will\nget random corruption of random files on your file system.\n\nSDelete works by using the NT defragmentation API to discover what disk\nsectors are allocated to a file, so it can write to them directly. However,\nfor whatever reason, in practice this does not work with encrypted (EFS)\nfiles. I've looked at the source for sdelete, and I can't see how it's going\nwrong, but I do know from experience (twice) that it does. The symptoms\ninclude blue-screens from corrupted OS files, overwritten documents, etc.\n\nThere is further corroboration here:\n\n<http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=3878>\n\n[http://www.tech-\narchive.net/Archive/Win2000/microsoft.public...](http://www.tech-\narchive.net/Archive/Win2000/microsoft.public.win2000.general/2004-10/2258.html)\n\n------\nrythie\nI can kind of believe this is true.\n\nSince I know if someone formats a drive, I can get bits of the data back with\nstrings /dev/sda\n\nbut if they dd it with zeros, I can't do that.\n\nI suspect most/all data recovery firms will only deal with the 95%* of easier\ncases - which involve them basically running some software and not opening the\ndrive. If they are bit better they might attempt the 4.9%* of cases where they\nhave to replace/fix/bypass the drive's firmware. They write off the 0.1%* with\ndd style problems because they would cost too much for the customer and would\nneed a better class of staff (recovery typically only costs a three-digit sum)\n\nThat said it depends, how secure you need your data to be. I think given a\nbudget of $100k (if not less) for one drive this could be possible (i.e. a\ngovernment, competitor company). For example you could employ people from the\ncompany who makes the drives, reprogram the firmware to read the weak magnetic\ndata etc.\n\n* percentages made up, to illustrate the point.\n\n------\nalecco\nMost people forget overwriting on the directory file name holding structures\n(of the different file systems.) The names of the deleted files stay there for\nlong time. This is more so on FAT and FFS-type directories (guesstimate ~99%\nof file systems.)\n\nIf a prosecutor (or government torturer) can prove the suspect had a file and\nwiped it out (e.g. _/documents/superillegalfile.txt_ ), I wouldn't like to be\nin his place.\n\n~~~\nErrantX\n> If a prosecutor (or government torturer) can prove the suspect had a file\n> and wiped it out (e.g. /documents/superillegalfile.txt), I wouldn't like to\n> be in his place.\n\nIn the UK that would be only sideline evidence, you'd have a hard time getting\nthe CPS (crown prosecution service) to actually prosecute based on that\nevidence. Recovering the file is 9/10ths of the law :P\n\n(this is our main revenue stream btw - forensics for law enforcement).\n\n~~~\nalecco\nIf [the proof of file name deleted] is backed by other evidence, like ISP\nlogs, CPS will likely hold [the case] valid. In this example, the suspect cant\ndeny it was him instead a housemate or neighbour.\n\nIt __always __adds.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSeattle Police Dept tech officer quits, files 200 more public-records requests - petethomas\nhttp://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/spd-tech-officer-resigns-resumes-public-records-requests/\n======\ngreenyoda\nDiscussion going on here:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10478304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10478304)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\n\t Time to Stop Procrastinating and Make a Career Change - runn1ng\nhttp://www.stickk.com/articles.php?articleID=57\n\n======\nWump\nLove this quote:\n\n _\"I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.\" -\nJerome K. Jerome_\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLove Your Terminal - fidz\nhttp://blog.andrewhays.net/2012/11/29/love-your-terminal.html\nFrom old HN: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=4852016\n======\nfidz\nFrom old HN:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4852016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4852016)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Joconut - Smart PJAX jQuery plugin in 1kb - vdemedes\nhttps://github.com/vdemedes/joconut\n======\ngojomo\nI get the benefit of PJAX when you're replacing part of a page. If you're\nreplacing the whole page, how does this beat a real browser load of the exact\nsame data in the same number of hits?\n\n(Is it simply that it saves you the effort of setting your caching headers for\ninline resources properly?)\n\n~~~\nvdemedes\nPartially agree here with you.\n\n------\nsplitrocket\nSeems to break if you have a link without an href.\n\nIt also seems to blow away any previous listeners places on elements. Any\nplans to have callbacks for events so that listeners can be re-bound?\n\nAside from that, looks totally sweet. I'm going to use this in a bunch of\nplaces.\n\n~~~\nvdemedes\nAwful mistake, sorry, completely forgot about that issue. Will be fixed ASAP.\nHowever, there is \"new\" event, which gets fired on every new page. You can\nlisten to it using $.joconut.on, see Readme in GitHub repository at\n<https://github.com/vdemedes/joconut>.\n\nThanks, glad you like it!\n\n------\naseemk\nGreat idea. I'm having trouble getting it to work (\n<https://github.com/vdemedes/joconut/issues/5> ), but I'm looking forward to\ntrying it out!\n\nOne thought came to mind for a potential leaky abstraction: unlike HTML and\nCSS that can be \"undone\" and are idempotent, JS has side effects that can't be\nundone, and isn't always idempotent. Are there JS patterns we need to embrace\nor avoid to ensure Joconut always \"just works\"?\n\n------\njasoncartwright\nProblem in FF? <https://github.com/vdemedes/joconut/issues/1>\n\n~~~\nvdemedes\nUpdate pushed, issue fixed.\n\n------\ndagingaa\nMissing some things:\n\n\\- How is this different form the existing PJAX-plugin?\n\n\\- Is there a demo page for this plugin?\n\n~~~\nvdemedes\nSorry, no demo page for now. It is different from PJAX in these ways:\n\n1\\. 1kb minified and gzipped\n\n2\\. Auto-loading of JS and CSS from new pages, if needed\n\n3\\. No need to set up and configure\n\n------\nprezjordan\nWhat exactly does it do? I'm not sure if I follow completely.\n\n~~~\npygorex\nLoads pages via AJAX and updates the browser history using `pushState`. This\nis an alternative to the PJAX library: <https://github.com/defunkt/jquery-\npjax>\n\nUse either if you have an irrational aversion to page reloads.\n\nSnark aside - jQuery Mobile uses a similar technique to cache entire pages in\nthe DOM and for page transitions.\n\n~~~\nchrischen\nOr use if your site plays music :).\n\n~~~\nDigitalSea\nBeverly Hills Cop MIDI track? Yes.\n\n------\nnchuhoai\nLove to try this out, especially the loading scripts feature.\n\nOne question though: Is there any setup i need to do, or does it just fit\nright in with my existing pjax set-up?\n\n~~~\nvdemedes\nNope, you just have to include joconut.js in the web page. It will do the\nrest.\n\n------\ncmer\nCould you explain what the benefits are over plain ol' vanilla PJAX? Thanks!\n\n~~~\nvdemedes\n1\\. No need to set up, just script tag\n\n2\\. 1kb minified and gzipped\n\n3\\. Auto-load of additional JS and CSS from new pages, if needed\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nUsing emacs with org-mode to keep yourself organized - deepakg\nhttp://www.deepakg.com/prog/2011/11/emacs-org-mode-todo-list-nirvana/\n\n======\npaulrosenzweig\nInteresting. I am a recent emacs convert, so I hadn't seen it used to run\napplications rather than as just a text editor. For this particular\napplication I think an OSX app is a better solution, but I'm still intrigued\nby this approach. Anyone know of other examples?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Using mTurk to morally/legally get around a robots.txt disallow? - MechanicalTwerk\n\nA site offers any visitor (authenticated or not) free download of documents at a certain path. This path is disallowed from being crawled by all user agents in robots.txt. What is the consensus around using something like Mechanical Turk to distribute the process of physically clicking the free download link and collecting the documents? Would this fall into the &quot;avoiding a technological control&quot; category? I know, I know, I should ask a lawyer, but I&#x27;m interested in the community&#x27;s opinion on the practice.\n======\nbyoung2\nIf you have to ask, you probably already know the answer. A more important\nquestion is what do you plan to do with the files, and is this use allowed by\nthe terms? If it is, then you can possibly ask the site to allow you access to\ndownload them. It is possible that they disallow crawling just to reduce load\non their servers, and so crawlers don't waste time on text files when there is\nmore valuable content to crawl elsewhere on the site.\n\n------\nicedchai\nrobots.txt is not legally enforceable.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLegal Tech Startup Casetext (YC S13) Raises $7M Series A - Nimi\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2015/02/03/legal-tech-startup-casetext-raises-7-million-series-a-round-led-by-union-square-ventures/\n\n======\ntglocer\nThe marriage of tech and law. More interesting than it might appear\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Suddenly afraid of flying, not sure why or what to do about it - throwaway713\nHi HN,<p>I thought I&#x27;d post here about a weird issue that&#x27;s cropped up that maybe someone can offer advice on.<p>For some reason, I have suddenly become terrified of flying.  I had a few flights this past week, and for the entire duration of each flight, I had intense fear, anxiety, a strong sense of doom, and I felt like I was going to throw up.<p>I have no clue what triggered this.  I&#x27;ve never been afraid of flying before.  My best guess is that it&#x27;s either all the news about the 737 MAX or the fact that I work at a large tech company and see the huge number of bugs that even really good software engineers make.<p>I&#x27;ve flown frequently ever since I was young, and I currently average about 8-10 flights per year for work, vacation, or visiting family.  I have another flight coming up in a week and am tempted to take a $400 loss just because the thought of getting on a plane again is making me feel sick.  I&#x27;ve always heard that the best way to eliminate a fear is to face it frequently, but in my case, it seems the more I fly, the more anxious I become.<p>I&#x27;m aware of all the statistics (e.g., you&#x27;re more likely to die in a car crash on the way to the airport than during your flight), but logic doesn&#x27;t seem to have any bearing on my emotions during the flight.<p>Thanks for any help!\n======\nriggedjr\nYou might want to go see a therapist. Might be an underlying anxiety disorder.\n\nI have occasional panic and have a fear of flights and other stuff that stem\nfrom my fear is of not being able to escape/relax but I try to consistently\nmeditate and stretch daily to be able to handle the situations. The last\nflight I took, I was getting huge flares of anxiety and I just keep thinking\n“1,2,3...” etc in my head so I’m not focusing on negative thoughts. The daily\nmeditation helps get into that “mode” when the stressful moments do come.\n\nBut yeah, see a doctor and/or therapist. Better than a bunch of random folks\nof the internet can do for you.\n\n------\ndazc\n'.......am tempted to take a $400 loss just because the thought of getting on\na plane again is making me feel sick.'\n\nI think if you do this it will be a long time before you are able to fly\nagain?\n\nA friend of mine suffered a similar situation a couple of years ago. He was so\nnervous that he froze at the check-in desk.\n\nAs it happened, this turned out to be useful since it triggered some kind of\nprocedure with the airline and assistance was offered immediately.\n\nWhat happened then is that they took him to the VIP lounge where the pilot\ncame and had a chat with him. He suggested my friend board the plane 15\nminutes before anyone else just so he could get used to the idea - with\nassurances that he could get off again if he wanted to.\n\nIt turns out that was all that was needed; and the experience of being whisked\nthrough security with an air hostess on each arm was something he quite\nenjoyed too.\n\nSo, what I would say, is speak to the airline and tell them your concerns\nbecause they might be able to help you in a similar way?\n\n------\nSmellyGeekBoy\nThis actually happened to me when I was younger. Nothing specific to trigger\nit, it just suddenly started out of the blue. My flight history sounds similar\nto yours - something I'd been doing very regularly my entire life.\n\nI remember the specific flight where I got over my fear - a 10 hour flight to\nIndia on an Airbus A330 (I live in the UK). It must have been about halfway\nthrough when I was just so exhausted from being terrified that it just\nstopped. I had a couple of internal flights on _very_ dubious planes\nimmediately after this and they didn't bother me at all. Perhaps it's what\npsychologists call \"flooding\".\n\nI'm now back to flying all over the world again and I really look forward to\nit. The worst part for me now is the hassle of security and delays and the\nlike.\n\nAnyway, I just wanted to give you some hope that there is indeed an end to all\nthis. As others have suggested, in my case I think it was just a general\nanxiety issue manifesting itself in this way rather than a specific phobia of\nflying itself.\n\n~~~\nheavenlyblue\nAt which age did that start?\n\nFor me at 25 I had my first true panicked state while flying which coincided\nwith being afraid of being on highrises + all bridges over Thames in London.\n\nThis all also coincided with panic attacks in crowded theatres.\n\nI am currently 27 and it’s getting better. But damn it freaked me out the\nfirst time and when it persisted - I had been anxious before, but could\ncontrol that.\n\nBut I agree - I myself think it’s pure anxiety which is disconnected from\nspecific phobias; it’s just somehow triggered by specific high-level concepts.\n\n------\npavel_lishin\nI have a strong fear of flying, and I deal with it medicinally. My doctor\nwrote me a prescription for Xanax - I take one on the way to the airport, and\nby the time we're boarding, all the anxiety is boxed away.\n\n~~~\nPaulHoule\nThis is a medically sound use for benzodiazepines.\n\nLong-acting benzodiazepines like Klonopin for general anxiety will get you\naddicted, make you fall down, etc.\n\nShort-acting BZs for situational anxiety are mostly safe and effective.\n\nAs you will see at airport lounges, many people self-medicate with alcohol\nwhen they fly, Xanax is a healthier option than that.\n\n~~~\nmindcrime\nI had a heart-attack in Nov of 2014, and in the immediate aftermath of that, I\nhad a lot of anxiety issues. To the point that it was keeping me from falling\nasleep at night (it probably didn't help that I had the MI while I was in bed,\nin the wee hours of the morning). Anyway, my doctor prescribed me some\nklonopin, and it absolutely worked great.\n\nThen I went to work one day a couple of weeks later, and found a copy of\nRolling Stone laying on the break room table, with an interview with Stevie\nNicks. I read the article, and she talked about how she got addicted to\nklonopin when they used it to help treat her addiction to cocaine. Except she\ndescribed the klonopin withdrawal as \"worse than cocaine\"[1]. Jinkies. I did\nsome reading up on klonopin and immediately went back to my doctor and asked\nfor something different.\n\nLuckily for me, my anxiety issues eventually disappeared and I don't need to\ntake anything for that any longer. But yeah, be wary of klonopin and related\ndrugs. I'm sure they have valid uses, but I'd prefer not to mess with the\nstuff personally.\n\n[1]: [https://benzo.org.uk/nicks.htm](https://benzo.org.uk/nicks.htm)\n\n------\nCloudNetworking\nA friend was in the same situation as you, with the difference that he always\nin his life had fear of flying (and he moved abroad so he couldn't visit\nfamily or go on holiday without spending half the time on the road!!). He went\nto a training course that British Airways runs in the UK:\n[https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/travel-\nassi...](https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/travel-\nassistance/flying-with-confidence) and since then he's even flown across the\nAtlantic a number of times.\n\nI'm guessing you're not in the UK, so probably flying across the Atlantic to\ngo on this course would sound as a sick joke, however you might want to check\nif in the US there's anything similar ran by other companies (or even BA!).\n\nFor me the fear comes and goes. At some points flying feels like catching the\nbus. At other times I am 100% confident I won't make it to the other side! so\nI don't think it is rare to be scared of flying even if you fly often (I do).\nIn my case there's also the problem that I fly a lot with my family, so I'm\nalso scared for them.\n\n------\ngarduque\nI fly just about once a week and have for 18 years or so. Never had a problem\nwith it until 5 years ago when we had our first kid, and that's when anxiety\nstarted. I would have a recurring dream about my plane rolling over and\npancaking into the ground. Sometimes I would have that dream while I was\nsleeping in a plane, which was fun. Panic attacks - the kind that start to\nfeel like a heart attack - were common.\n\nIt lasted for almost a year. I saw a doctor to make sure there was no\nunderlying physical condition I should be worried about. (Being able to tell\nyourself that it's probably not a heart attack when it feels like a heart\nattack is really helpful.) He recommended talking to a therapist, which I\nshould have done but didn't. I did self medicate with alcohol more than I\nshould have, and I don't recommend that.\n\nUltimately I found that a stress free airport routine (plenty of time, pre\ncheck, and hanging in the club lounge) helped as did breathing exercises while\non board. Generally in life it was get more exercise, put the phone away,\nreduce work stress, and so on. Just regular life stuff. But I never stopped\nflying, and eventually the anxiety stopped.\n\nThis 737MAX nonsense is certainly bothersome, but to me no more so than all\nthe other ways the whole thing can go south in any given aircraft in any given\nday.\n\nBottom line, I would suggest talking to someone who can help you identify the\npossible underlying issues. Hope you can work it out.\n\n------\nsixQuarks\nI used to be deathly afraid of flying until I took a flight in Costa Rica in a\nsmall 20 passenger propeller plane through a storm. The turbulence was so bad,\nyou could see the pilots barely holding on to the controls, people were\nscreaming and we were bouncing off our seats.\n\nWhen we landed, I couldn't believe a plane could survive turbulence like that,\nand the pilots didn't really seem disheveled.\n\nEver since then, I've never been afraid of flying again.\n\n------\ngcheong\nThere is a psychologist in the Netherlands who has developed a very brief (1\nsession typically) phobia treatment based on her research into fear memory\nactivation and reconsolidation. The theory is that when a fear memory is\ntriggered, it can go into a labile state whereupon it can be blocked from\nbeing re-saved using Propranolol (a common beta-blocking drug). There was an\narticle in the New Republic about her research\nit:[https://newrepublic.com/article/133008/cure-\nfear](https://newrepublic.com/article/133008/cure-fear) You can find more\ninformation about the treatment here:\n[https://kindtclinics.com](https://kindtclinics.com)\n\n------\nkohanz\nAny chance you've had a recent shift in your personal life? The reason I ask\nis that I also didn't have a fear of flying until later in life and what I\nthink is the source was meeting my wife (to-be) and then having kids.\n\nThis may sound silly, but before, when it was just me, without dependents, I\ndidn't think as much about doomsday scenarios. Of course, I was still afraid\nof dying, but it just didn't cross my mind as much. After becoming a husband\nand a father, I started to (perhaps irrationally) worry about (a) not being\nthere for my family or (b) the lives of the people I care so much about (when\nflying with my wife or kids). Fortunately flying is not a regular event for\nme, although I still do it when necessary (probably once or twice a year).\n\n------\nPerfectElement\nPrevious discussion with good advice here:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17654487](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17654487)\n\n------\nafarrell\nFor focused help, definitely see a therapist. I wish I could recommend a way\nto find one focused on this service. I wish recommend-me-a-therapist was a\nservice that existed.\n\n———\n\nWhenever I find myself on a rough flight, I generally find it helpful to put\non either heavy metal or an action movie or to imagine myself as an aerial\nphotographer returning from a dicy mission over the Baku oil fields.\n\n------\ncypherg\nTry some fear of flying and anxiety 'talk downs' on Youtube. If it gets really\nbad, get a referral for a psychiatrist and try taking something like Atavan\n(xanax didn't work for me). Combining the medication with the narrated anxiety\n\"talk downs\" has given me decent results.\n\n------\narnold_palmur\nLook into beta-blockers - they are safe and not addictive, I take them every\ntime I fly. They will keep you cool and collected without the negatives the\ncome with benzo's.\n\n------\njoker3\nAnxiety can be a symptom of some physical conditions, and maybe you have one\nthat's exacerbated by air travel. Might want to get yourself checked out.\n\n------\nfrazzled\nI developed a fear of flying the summer after my freshman year in college,\nwhen my flight from NYC to London had engine trouble shortly after takeoff and\nhad to dump fuel and return to the airport. I was quite nervous during the\nincident (it didn't help that I'd read John Varley's novel \"Millennium\" the\nprevious night!), although in the end nothing particularly dramatic happened,\nand I was well aware that a single engine failure on a Boeing 747 wasn't that\na big a deal. In fact I don't recall being particularly concerned about\ngetting right onto the next flight, which was uneventful. Unfortunately I had\nthe whole summer to anticipate the stress of the return trip and incubate a\ndread of flying which ended up lasting me quite a few years. In fact I didn't\nfly at all throughout the rest of time at college, once going so far as to\ntake a train across the country to visit a friend. Avoiding flying didn't\nhelp: it just built the fear up in my mind into a formidable monster. I was\nheaded to Europe after college and seriously considered trying to take a\nfreight ship; that's how bad it was. And while I did fly in the end, the dread\nI felt in the weeks approaching made my life miserable.\n\nWhile avoiding flying definitely exacerbated my fear, frequent exposure didn't\nreally work that well for me either. I flew quite frequently after college and\nin grad school, and it nevertheless took many years for me to get over my\nfear.\n\nHere's what worked for me over the years. It was a combination of things:\n\n(1) On the whole I associated flying with enjoyable outcomes -- in many cases,\nvisiting my partner, who lived far away. Unfortunately, that tended to make\nreturn flights _after_ an enjoyable visit all the more stressful! It sounds\nsilly, but I made a conscious effort to shift my perspective a bit: _both_ the\nflight there _and_ the flight back were an integral part of the visit. I\nequated the \"ritual\" of flying with seeing my partner. It worked.\n\n(2) I read a lot about aviation. Not just shallow statistics about how safe\nthey were -- I'll admit went down the rabbit hole a little, learning about the\nphysics of flight, aviation technology, meteorology, models of planes, etc. I\nplayed flight simulator games, seriously considered taking flying lessons, and\nso on. One result was that every flight I had a bunch of things to look out\nfor both inside the cabin and out the window (oh, I'm on a Fokker, wonder how\nthe tail speed brakes will work... nerdy things like that), and being occupied\nwith those details diverted my attention (and was kind of fun besides).\n\n(3) I learned to sort of \"judo\" my fear. I read up on air crashes and absorbed\nall the grisly details! When I got nervous during a flight, I would morbidly\nimagine all sorts of horrible things happening: lightning striking and setting\noff the air-fuel mix in the tank, the wings snapping off in violent\nturbulence, the engine suddenly throwing a turbine blade through the hydraulic\nlines, you name it. I imagined myself being pulverized, incinerated,\ndismembered, ... Of course all that over-the-top visualization had two\neffects: first, it made what was actually happening on the flight (namely,\nnothing much) seem boring by comparison, and second, it allowed me to confront\nthe unlikely horrors of a crash with a certain amused detachment.\n\n(4) The most important thing: I realized very early on that I wasn't really\nafraid of flying per se. I was afraid of being afraid of flying, if that makes\nany sense. It was the mostly uncontrollable physical response that I dreaded:\nthe elevated heart rate, the cold sweat, the sense of doom, and so on. For\nyears, I would still quite frequently feel that agitation _before_ a flight;\nover time, it tended to be less of an issue once I was actually on board, but\nany little disruption of the routine (say, worse-than-normal turbulence) would\nbring it back. What I found, though, was that as unpleasant as the physical\nresponse was, it was _manageable_ \\- sometimes it would be as simple as deep\nbreaths and staying hydrated. Realizing that I had at least some control over\nit broke the positive feedback loop that was feeding the fear and eventually\nit stopped bothering me: I'd anticipate my heart beating faster and so on, but\ndidn't really fear it, so it didn't end up getting out of hand.\n\nBasically, it took a while for my fear to go away completely, but over the\nyears it became less and less of an issue. Now I simply dislike flying because\nit's boring and uncomfortable, not because it's frightening :-)\n\n------\nmasukomi\nif your leg suddenly started hurting badly you would go see a doctor. If your\nmind starts hurting you (this is arguably hurting you) why wouldn't you do the\nsame thing? Only in this case it's a doctor of the mind not the body. I.e.\ntherapist, psychiatrist, etc.\n\n------\nlohszvu\nGo to a psychiatrist and get some benzos.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: What online services do you use to calculate and file sales tax? - regnum\n\n\n======\njaz\nIf you're in the US or Canada, Avalara is a solid solution. They offer sales\ntax calculation and filing (in some states) and integrate into the popular\nshopping carts/accounting software. The agency I work at has done numerous\nimplementations for large online retailers. Last I checked pricing was at\n$350/yr for up to 700 transactions.\n\n------\nMankhool\nI might be an old fashioned Canadian, but I refuse to use online services for\nmy taxes because I don't know where, or with whom that information is being\nhosted. So I buy a disc or download the software every year to do the taxes\nand I file them by sending them over the net to the CRA.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApple rejects order to unlock gunman's phone - rlalwani\nhttp://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35594245\n======\nvorotato\nOf course they did because it's not possible? Topic is super misleading. The\nFBI did request that apple add a security backdoor, something hackers\ngleefully waiting for. It'll be like christmas, hannukah, and their birthday\ncombined if that happens.\n\n------\ntomohawk\nThe phone in question was not owned by the terrorist, but by his employer. His\nemployer has consented to the search. What's Apple's problem?\n\n~~~\nsthkr\nTHe problem is that Apple is being asked to build a modified iOS to extract\nthat information from that phone. Should that software get into the wrong\nhands or if the FBI decides to keep that software for future use, then Apple's\ncredibility about security will be at stake.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThat Sentimental Feeling: using sentiment analysis as a proxy for plot movement - benbreen\nhttp://www.matthewjockers.net/2015/12/20/that-sentimental-feeling/\n======\nHoushalter\nFirst it's really awesome that human judgement and the sentiment analysis\ntools agree with each other so well. Maybe this was common knowledge, but I\nwas always skeptical of it when I saw it used.\n\nSecond the amount of human hours put into generating all this data must have\nbeen insane. That could have a lot of value to researchers if he'd be willing\nto share it.\n\nThird it's really awesome that the average sentiment changes so much\nthroughout books, making these nice visualizations of the plot. Sentiment is\njust a fairly crude measure. Emotion and tone has many dimensions. I wonder if\nit would be possible to use similar tools to discover them, and get even more\ndetailed statistics on the emotion and tone changes between and within works.\n\n------\nnl\nIt would be interesting if the author had speculated why the correlation for\n_The Lovely Bones_ seems quite a lot worse than the other.\n\nInterestingly, all three methods seems to correlation much worse on that book\nthan the others.\n\nI haven't read it so I can't speculate myself.\n\nEdit, there is a more recent post on this topic too:\n[http://www.matthewjockers.net/2016/08/11/more-syuzhet-\nvalida...](http://www.matthewjockers.net/2016/08/11/more-syuzhet-validation/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Fight for Yahoo: Five Scenarios - edw519\nhttp://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1729843,00.html\n\n======\nokeumeni\nThe more Yahoo wait less they will get. Just sell it to MS now!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFormer FBI General Counsel Jim Baker Chooses Encryption over Backdoors - hsnewman\nhttps://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/10/former_fbi_gene.html\n======\noctosphere\nThis is why Tor and onionland is a lawless wild west. All so that journalists\ncan report and trade documents, and so that repressive regimes can't easily\ncensor access to news and information. This is the _cost_ of encryption: you\nget all sorts of scoundrels in the mix in the name of privacy and security for\nthe masses. Some might say this _cost_ is too high: that scoundrels are\nrunning rampant and won't stop their criminal actions. But without this we get\na broken backdoored Internet where no such privacy/security exists and could\nactually cause _more_ damage to society since spying would be rampant.\n\n------\nmikece\nNot to mention that for counter-intelligence the clues aren't the contents of\na message but who is contacting whom, when, how often, and from where, most\nall of which can be determined from network traffic monitoring even if the\ncontents of the message can't be read. In fact, if someone who shouldn't be\ncontacting someone in China/Middle East/etc is doing so using encrypted data,\ngetting a search warrant should be easier. Requiring back-doors to encryption\nis just laziness on the part of Law Enforcement.\n\n~~~\nhackerrenews\nMay I ask what’s your background in law enforcement or the intelligence\ncommunity, or in counter-intelligence specifically?\n\n~~~\nhackerrenews\nReferences to support the claims would also be helpful.\n\nSorry if that came across wrong. I may have misinterpreted the comment as\nbeing from the perspective of someone with work experience in these matters.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Do you read papers / pdfs on your Kindle? - sigil\n\nI'm thinking of getting a Kindle 2 for reading academic papers and books in pdf form. Most of the things I want to read are equation and/or diagram heavy, so I'm curious how well the Kindle works for this type of thing.<p>Is the 6\" version good enough, or do you really need the 9\" DX?<p>How about page refresh speed, navigation, and search?<p>How easy is it to get pdfs onto the Kindle?\n======\nquestioner2400\nI have a Kindle 3, and it's possible to read papers, but it's still pretty\nsmall. I'm looking at picking up something a bit bigger, probably in tablet\nform (or preferably with a PixelQi screen) in the next 6-8 months that would\nwork a bit better. I haven't used the 9\" DX, but I assume it would do the job\nbetter than the Kindle 3, just on basis of size.\n\nPDFs are easy to get onto the Kindle (3, anyway): just move them onto the\nonboard memory, and they show up like a .azw or .mobi file would.\n\n------\ncopernicus\nI have the 9\" DX and I use it regularly to read technical papers. It's just\nabout the right size for that; I wouldn't want something smaller since there\nare already occasions when things get a little too small. I find it works\nreasonably well for reading and navigating PDF's (no detrimental delays).\n\nPutting PDF's on a Kindle is easy -- just plug it in to your computer over USB\nand it acts like a flash drive.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nYour False-Equivalence Guide to the Days Ahead - jseliger\nhttp://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/09/your-false-equivalence-guide-to-the-days-ahead/280062/\n======\nlmg643\ni thought debt ceiling jockeying has been a normal feature of politics for at\nleast a decade. what is new this time is that the negotiating position of the\nout-of-power party is more aggressive, but the in-power party is also more\nintransigent - \"no negotiation.\" as they say, it takes two to tango.\n\ni saw jack lew on TV the other day, talking about how important it was that\nthe US uphold full faith and credit of its obligations. and of course that is\nimportant. but a borrower's creditworthiness is a function of many things,\nincluding total debt, growth in debt and interest rate on debt, etc.\n\nin short, the conversation at a national level is \"we should increase the debt\nceiling otherwise we won't be seen as a secure borrower\" but the flip side, of\nthe danger of continually increasing the debt load until lenders reach the\nsame conclusion for different reasons, is considered a crackpot\ninterpretation.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution (2002) [pdf] - lainon\nhttp://msl1.mit.edu/ESD10/docs/darknet5.pdf\n======\nsillysaurus3\nThe scariest project I've ever seen is OpenBazaar. It's a decentralized\nmarketplace. It does for physical things what Napster did for music. Not the\nbest analogy, since you have to pay for the things, but it's not far off.\n\nRight now they only sell trinkets, like sunglasses. But both the founders are\nformer spooks. They live in fairfax, 20min from Langley. And they're adding\nTor and Tails support in the next release.\n\nThe implications are massive and disturbing. 13yos will be able to buy heroin.\nIt's not just breathless speculation. I probably would've done something\nsimilar, not to use it, but just to see if I could. You do that kind of stuff\nall the time as a faux-edgy kid. And it's easy for kids to get bitcoin from\nATMs. I don't even want to think about what will happen in groups.\n\nI'm trying to keep quiet and see what happens with the project. But all the\ndarknet markets are apparently dead right now. It will either be one of the\nmost empowering or damaging pieces of technology. Tor and Amazon had a baby\nand named it OpenBazaar.\n\nBut I know how hard it is to predict anything like that, so it's like a 90%\nchance I'm just posting a silly comment. It's not too hard to imagine though\n-- bitcoin and tor serve as examples of what's possible at the intersection of\nsociety and technology. All the elements are there for the project to have a\nhuge impact.\n\n~~~\npasbesoin\nThis isn't a perfect solution, but ultimately, I think, we are going to have\nto move in the direction where 13 year olds _don 't want_ to buy heroin. And\nthat's going to be based not on punishment, but on better alternatives and\nhonest information. And a better community of stronger social connection.\n\nI think of the whole \"sex ed\" debate. Studies and statistics show that\nproviding information -- and practical alternatives, such as birth and disease\ncontrol -- works. \"Abstinence only\" does not.\n\nHell, even our \"War on Drugs\". Turns out that maybe my friend who grew magic\nmushrooms -- of which I never partook -- was doing better for himself than\nthose turning to the nascent Prozac revolution. We're seeing reporting now\nthat, under some conditions, those hallucinogenic experiences may be more\neffective at combating depression.\n\nAs for myself, I've come to think that the ever increasing \"IP rights\" are\nbecoming an increasing burden on society and technology's development.\nCreative people are running up against walls hindering their creativity, walls\nthat seem to be increasingly sold to \"rent-seeking\" holding companies.\n\nTo some extent, maybe those companies are useful and productive -- arbitraging\ninitial creativity into a more reliable source of cash and/or cash flow.\n\nBut when they turn around and push for laws that continue to increase the\ntenure of their holdings and monopolies... They are using their position to\nfurther entrench their position, rather than foster free-flowing development.\n\nFor a long time, I tried -- more than many around me -- to \"play by the\nrules\". Belatedly, it seems, I've been becoming more aware of just how rigged\n\"the rules\" are and are becoming.\n\nFree-flowing heroin's a scary thing. But, so's the law and order crowd -- or\nsome of its more extreme aspects.\n\nI realize my musings here are probably controversial. And I guess I'll add,\nfor the sake of balance as well as whoever might be monitoring threads like\nthese, that I continue to live a rather \"squeaky clean\" life.\n\nBut I can't buy in to the law and order rhetoric, any more.\n\n~~~\nyters\nAfghanistan has free flowing drugs and most other things we outlaw in our\nsociety such as pedophilia and laissez faire murder. In theory it is a\nlibertarians paradise.\n\n~~~\ntylersmith\nNot even remotely. Libertarianism is not just wanting drugs, pedophilia, and\nmurder. Murder is certainly off the table for any libertarian, and I suspect\nmost would agree with me that any sort of sexual conduct with children\nconstitutes violence.\n\n~~~\nyters\nWhy would libertarianism consider sex with children violence if it was not\ncoerced? Many things we consider heinous become lawful if non coercion is the\nprimary criterion.\n\n~~~\ncgmg\nYou can't have it both ways just to disparage libertarianism. Do you believe\nchildren are mature enough to make that decision, or not?\n\n------\nmiko1293949\nThere isn't such thing as darknet as there isn't really a dark side of the\nmoon.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIs This Journalist Guilty of Low-Level Vandalism, or High-Damage Hacking? - danso\nhttp://motherboard.vice.com/read/low-level-vandalism-or-high-damage-hacking-day-two-of-the-matthew-keys-trial\n======\nfacetube\n> \"If you bill a thousand dollars an hour, that will help us get it\n> prosecuted\"\n\nThe person who said this (Brandon Mercer) needs to see a courtroom,\nconviction, and jail cell. Conspiring to misrepresent damages in a criminal\nproceeding is a crime.\n\n------\non_\n> For example, Leiderman specifically pointed out the word “fag,” saying that\n> an “IRC expert” would explain its use to the jury. (In chan culture, “fag”\n> is frequently used as a suffix for anyone or anything).\n\nWhile it was baseline insane to give a bunch of known hackers login\ncredentials, I can't help but wonder how Kafka-esque this trial is going to\nget.\n\n~~~\nryanlol\nHaving just been to trial in relation to the very group involved in the\nChippy1337, I'd say it'll be a complete mess.\n\nWe ended up with the prosecutor reading out hundreds of lines of IRC logs\nconsisting almost entirely of in-jokes that nobody in the room but me could\nunderstand.\n\n~~~\nmistersquid\n> We ended up with the prosecutor reading out hundreds of lines of IRC logs\n> consisting almost entirely of in-jokes that nobody in the room but me could\n> understand.\n\nOut of curiosity, and if you're at liberty and in the mood to answer, how did\nyou pass voire dire? Were attorneys on both sides comfortable with your\nfamiliarity with a computing subculture?\n\nDid your familiarity with computing even come up?\n\n~~~\nryanlol\nWell, as the defendant I didn't really have to pass voire dire.\n\n~~~\nmistersquid\nThanks for your reply. I misread \"Having just been to trial\" as \"Having just\nbeen in a trial\".\n\n------\naustenallred\nI'm obviously biased, but the loaded question in this title drives me insane.\n\n------\nBouncingsoul1\nCould someone tell me why Brisbane Airport blocks this as adult material?\n\n~~~\non_\n\"Hacking\" or \"4chan\" most likely.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShopify and the Power of Platforms - jonbaer\nhttps://stratechery.com/2019/shopify-and-the-power-of-platforms/\n======\nTownley\n> Shopify is giving merchants an opportunity to differentiate themselves while\n> bearing no risk if they fail.\n\nIn addition to this being a great position for Shopify, this is an amazing\nthing for merchants compared to Amazon's offering; it's the critical\ndifference between \"We'll sell your stuff\" and \"We'll empower you to easily\nsell your stuff\" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual\ncompanies.\n\nSemi-related: For a really insightful conversation about Shopify, personal\ninteractions, and running a good company, I highly recommended The Knowledge\nProject's interview with the company's CEO, Tobi Lütke: [https://fs.blog/tobi-\nlutke/](https://fs.blog/tobi-lutke/)\n\n~~~\nDenisM\nWhat about traffic though? Amazon gives you traffic, user reviews, used\nconfidence.\n\n~~~\nimjk\nSure, you have to work to target your own audience and build the trust with\nthem yourself, but it's a tradeoff that benefits you in the long run. Your not\nbeholden to the whims \"the platform\" as many media companies learned the hard\nway by putting so much of their focus on Facebooks platform in the past\ndecade.\n\n------\nomouse\nShopify is just the next closed-source iteration of WordPress and Magento.\nWordPress has one of the largest platforms and they've taken over (and open-\nsourced) blogging, content management, learning management systems, and\necommerce. They and Magento are better examples of a platform than Shopify.\n\nIn the long-term, \"platforms\" like Shopify lose because they don't have nearly\nenough developers. They have ~3000 \"apps\" listed in their app store:\n[https://apps.shopify.com/browse/all?pricing=all&requirements...](https://apps.shopify.com/browse/all?pricing=all&requirements=off&sort_by=popular)\n\nWooCommerce has 285 plugins, and WordPress has 54,000+ plugins. Magento has\n~5000 plugins.\n\nIt would be cool if Stratechery took a look at free/open source on the\nplatform/aggregator spectrum.\n\n~~~\npxue\nHere's my hot take (with 2 years of running a #1 trending shopify app +\nmultiple attempt in starting a store)\n\nShopify DOES NOT help you sell. Period.\n\nAmazon will win in the long run because at the end of the day it's all about\nif the \"platform\" can move merchandize or not. Amazon captures top of the\nfunnel all the way down to personalized targeting.\n\nShopify will never do that. they are just the tool to help you figure out all\nthat yourself. Outsiders / beginners looking in would say Shopify is amazing\nbecause the ecosystem and how many \"tools\" there are to help you sell. but\nit's all load of horsesh*t. The merchant ultimately is the one responsible to\nrun the ad campaigns, find the customers, run promotional pricing on BFCM.\n\n~~~\nsushilewis\nThat's a great take that others miss. Marketing is 100X harder than setting up\na platform.\n\n~~~\nMuffinFlavored\nDevil's advocate: go make a listing on Amazon for a product that already has\nother competitors selling. How are you going to \"market\" yours to the top?\n\n~~~\nrchaud\nThe answer is to pay even more money to Amazon to place yourself as a\n\"sponsored\" listing that goes right to the top of search results. Partly why\nAmazon is rapidly becoming a dumpster fire of an e-shop. It looks more like\nthe search results page on Google these days.\n\n------\nasdfokd8\nIt seems to me like Aggregators vs Platforms is related to Products as\nCommodities vs Products as Brands.\n\nAggregators win when products are anonymous commodities. Brands win when\nproducts are beloved.\n\nIt seems like the trend (for many reasons: over-marketing, dis-satisfaction,\ndis-trust, a race toward the barely-legal) is toward products as brands:\nbrands which are authentic and relational and participants themselves in the\nexperience (that \"get it\").\n\nI think this trend will prove to be great for platforms, and bad for\naggregators. [https://medium.com/@thecraigmartin/the-greatest-threat-to-\nre...](https://medium.com/@thecraigmartin/the-greatest-threat-to-retailers-\nacab2a5f864)\n\n------\nrladd\nHere are some excerpts from my recent conversation with Shopify support:\n\nQ: noticed that sockfancy.com is using shopify? is there a way to set things\nup like they do: user checks off the options they want and then they go\ndirectly to a single-page checkout for their subscription?\n\nA: A subscription is a recurring order. For recurring orders they are using\nRecurring Orders & Subscription Box App by Bold, and Recurring Orders\nEnterprise, which is only available to Shopify Plus merchants.\n\nQ: how about the single page checkout?\n\nA: The single page checkout is also a feature of Shopify Plus plan, which\nstarts at $2000 per month. They are also using cashier by Bold.\n\nQ: It looks like those Bold plugins add commission costs of about 3% or more\nper sale?\n\nA: I don't know the details of that, but again they are available only for\nShopify Plus.\n\nYes it's true that you can set up a generic site cheaply, but for a site that\nactually works well and has single page checkout, etc. you get into some very\nbig bucks, and also some very large sales commissions.\n\n~~~\nrladd\nAnother point about hosted platforms: if they run slowly, there's not that\nmuch you can do to fix it. Here's a GTMetrix report for the aforementioned\nsite:\n[https://gtmetrix.com/reports/sockfancy.com/gSNvns6s](https://gtmetrix.com/reports/sockfancy.com/gSNvns6s)\n\nFully Loaded Time - 7.8s\n\nNot sure anyone would think this is an acceptable amount of time to wait for a\npage to load.\n\n~~~\ngcbw2\nIt's not like you could also do anything about slow page loads if selling via\namazon or wallmart.\n\n~~~\nrladd\nYes, but Amazon brings traffic and a customer base to the picture. Shopify\ndoesn't.\n\nShopify is competing with any other shopping cart software, and for companies\nconcerned with performance there may be a case for hosting your own.\n\n~~~\nrhizome\n> _Shopify is competing with any other shopping cart software_\n\nHow many of them have better performance? Might just be a \"all of you have to\ndo is be faster than the slowest.\"\n\n------\nbhouston\nI predict that Shopify will eventually create an Amazon-like system where\nproducts from its merchants can be listed in a unified e-commerce frontend\nsite all together.\n\nNot sure if I will be correct about this but I might as well try for a third\ncorrect prediction about Shopify:\n\n* Fulfilled by Shopify ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18524131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18524131))\n\n* Shopify POS ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6289827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6289827)).\n\n~~~\nky0ung\nI don't think this makes sense to do. Shopify is great at developing software\nto help merchants sell online. They have successfully built a relationship\nwith the merchant side of the market...but what is there advantage on the\ncreating a business on the retail customer side? At the moment, Shopify only\nservices the merchants. This being said, it is still possible to build a\nbusiness on customer side, but the question is...would it make sense?\n\nI'd say it wouldn't make sense to do this. Shopify has no relationship with\nthe retail customer. To build it, they'd have to build traffic from scratch.\nThey'd have to not only build a unique customer brand, but also have to figure\nout a way to drive traffic, which would likely be through aggressive marketing\n(Facebook / Google ads), which wouldn't be economical. Secondly, what would\nShopify build a brand around for customers?\n\nAmazon's brand is built on the promise of not only providing the cheapest\nprices, but also the convenience of 2 day shipping (achievable only through\nscale), amazing customer service (and lenient refunds, again achievable only\nthrough scale). This being said, what would Shopify's \"brand\" promise be?\n\nCuration of their favorite products? Who says that Shopify is qualified to\ncurate?\n\nAll of these factors make it hard for me to believe that they'd enter and\ncreate a serious business from a unified e-commerce site that'd compete with\nAmazon.\n\n~~~\nbhouston\nThe issue is that Shopify will run out of growth in their current sector. Thus\nthey need to seek out some way to grow their market by redefining it to be\nbigger than it currently.\n\nOne large issue that I see is that Amazon wins 40%+ of ecommerce because\nshoppers searches start on Amazon. Shopify stores lose by default 40% of the\ntime because of that.\n\nShopify with its huge number of merchants and pre-populated product listings\nand its centralized cloud-hosted platform is uniquely positioned to compete\nhere in a way that Magento and WooCommerce can't with their distributed\ninstall base.\n\nShopify has to have an angle that is unique to them for sure. I am not sure\nwhat that is in terms of marketing. But they have generally done well in\nmarketing, so I trust they will find an angle.\n\nI think the centralized store will be an adjunct to the main offering, thus it\nwill be an option, but because it leads to more sales opportunities, because\nit helps to solve the search issue, most will opt-in.\n\nI think that they can also somehow tie in the existing stores, of which there\nare 700,000 into solving the need to introduce people to the centralized\nsearch. Maybe if these stores act as a funnel to Shopify's central storefront,\nthey will get click through advertising revenue. Thus the centralization is in\neffect another revenue stream for stores that refer traffic to the central\nstore. E.g. \"If you do not get a sale yourself, at least get the referral\nrevenue on the eventual sale.\"\n\nI wouldn't be surprised as well (another prediction) that Shopify wants to\nfurther own the customer relationship between their merchants and their\nmerchant's customers so that Shopify can market on Shopify's behalf to these\ncustomers. I see suggestions of this from the breakdown of the Shopify-\nMailchimp relationship. Shopify is working to maintain control of its\nrelationships with merchant's customers.\n\n------\nbenologist\nIf anyone is interested in a 'Shopify for SaaS' I am in private beta with one,\nmy platform is an open source app store for web applications with developer\nregistration and payouts through Stripe Connect. Developers can code single\npage apps on the website or import their servers by URL. Users can install the\ncreations for personal or organization use, imported or freely subscribed or\npaid subscriptions.\n\nMy email is in my profile if anyone is interested in participating in my beta.\n\nExample of a web app on my platform -\n\n[https://github.com/userappstore/integration-\nexamples/blob/ma...](https://github.com/userappstore/integration-\nexamples/blob/master/hastebin/hastebin-app-store-\nsubscription/src/www/public/14-second-user-creates-shared-post.png?raw=true)\n\nCase study for how that app, hastebin, was ported -\n\n[https://github.com/userappstore/integration-\nexamples/blob/ma...](https://github.com/userappstore/integration-\nexamples/blob/master/hastebin/hastebin-app-store-subscription.md)\n\n------\nparentheses\nIt's easy to think platforms are difficult to build. With some of the\n\"platform infrastructure\" mentioned, it's very possible to assemble a large\nmajority of a new platform out of large chunks rather than building from\nscratch. One of the infrastructure components of Shopify missed in the article\nis Stripe. Stripe makes it possible for them to scale to serve clients in many\ncountries and offer an e-commerce capability. Then there is AWS. I think the\narticle misses some of the depth of platform building capabilities that are\nout there and available for use.\n\n------\ndkrich\nThe main differentiator between Amazon and everyone else continues to be\nPrime. Having people paying $120/year to come back and shop on their site is\nan advantage that nobody can compete with. Shopify could try and compete by\ncreating a similar membership service, and perhaps they will, but at this\npoint I'm skeptical it would gain much traction. The main reason people use\nPrime is to buy commodity goods with fast free shipping. In this case I'm\ndefining commodity goods as those where the supplier isn't that important and\nthe alternative is driving to a local store and buying the same thing.\n\nShopify is almost at the other extreme: the sites that sell goods on its\nplatform must differentiate themselves with niche offerings and consequently,\nI'd bet that the average Shopify customer makes purchases a lot less\nfrequently than the average Amazon customer. People shop on those sites\nbecause the local stores don't have what they are looking for.\n\nAnother reason I'm a bit skeptical about the \"Shopify is a threat to Amazon\"\nnarrative is that at a certain scale it seems that stores would leave Shopify\nand just manage their own websites and inventory. So Shopify is sort of a\nbusiness incubator that is extremely valuable when a business' scale is\nlimited. But the few that become huge hits would likely leave to save\ntransaction costs, so Shopify would lose that business.\n\nTotally agree with the Wal-Mart analysis though. They seem to be all over the\nplace. I sometimes wonder why Wal-Mart doesn't at least try to start a\nsubscription service. They would definitely have to undercut Amazon on price\nand eat losses for a while, but I don't understand the idea of advertising a\nno-subscription required model when that model clearly works so well for so\nmany other businesses. The most obvious issue is that they are at a huge\ndisadvantage in distribution center build-out, but why couldn't they start\nregionally in a couple of densely-populated areas and expand from there? Price\nthe service aggressively and maybe give members discounts on groceries or\nother in-store products, an area where Wal-Mart has a massive advantage over\nAmazon.\n\n------\nj4_hnews\nAs Amazon gobbles up more product categories, there may be less viable\ncategories that potential e-commerce startups might venture into on their own.\n\nThis could mean over time, more Shopify merchants would be selling overlapping\nproduct categories (the ones Amazon has not yet gobbled up yet).\n\nWhich would mean that as a Shopify merchant, you would competing with other\nShopify merchants (not Amazon).\n\nHow do you differentiate, when the Shopify platform makes the same set of\nselling advantages available to everyone?\n\nYou leave Shopify ...\n\n~~~\nAznHisoka\n\"when the Shopify platform makes the same set of selling advantages available\nto everyone?\"\n\nShopify doesn't make advantages like branding, brand awareness, marketing,\nmarket research, etc available. It simply makes setting up an online store\nmore convenient for people do. Convenience != competitive advantage. You can\nextend this argument to cloud platforms. AWS, and Azure make setting up and\nscaling a SaaS easier, but it doesn't give you any secret sauce that you need\nto succeed, like the ability to know what your customer want.\n\n~~~\njasonsync\nIsn't the point of the article that the Shopify Fulfillment Network will be\navailable to all merchants (that pay for it)?\n\nMost of the Shopify plugins exist to give a store owner an advantage in sales,\nconversion or marketing. Sure execution counts, external branding counts, but\nShopify is a closed platform. You use their plugins and approved apps. And\nmost store owners rely on these plugins to some degree, to help them build\nbrand awareness etc.\n\nEg: [https://apps.shopify.com/browse/sales-and-conversion-\noptimiz...](https://apps.shopify.com/browse/sales-and-conversion-optimization)\n\nShopify levels the playing field which is great. But if everyone selling\nBananas is on the same field, using the same plugins, switching fields could\nbe a great way to differentiate and possibly optimize beyond what Shopify can\nhelp you with.\n\n~~~\nlprubin\nI’d just like to point out that Shopify isn’t a closed platform. Shopify has\nthe concept of a private app that is not in the app store and not approved by\nShopify. So a store can either build/hire an agency to build their own\nunapproved app using a wide variety and growing set of shopify apis. I’ve made\na lot of money doing exactly that.\n\nThere also are a number of apps who choose not to be in the app store and not\ngive up 20% of their revenue and instead market on their own.\n\n------\nidlewords\nI just want to plug the Stratechery newsletter, which whether you agree with\nthe author's conclusions or not is consistently excellent, and a spur to\nthinking about our industry,\n\n~~~\nakulkarni7\nI just took a look at it thanks to this comment and wow, that is some terrific\ncontent. Thanks for sharing!\n\n------\nwenbin\nTobi is like a younger Jeff Bezos :) I binge listened quite a few his podcast\ninterviews [https://lnns.co/aECRtZ2fNn9](https://lnns.co/aECRtZ2fNn9)\n\n~~~\njonny_eh\nHe's also much generous, and technically adept (he created a bunch of popular\nearly Ruby gems).\n\n------\nCriticalCathed\nIt's an interesting article, but the most interesting part to me was the Bill\nGates Line article the author also wrote. [0] The distinction between a\nplatform and an aggregator was not one that I ever considered. I'm convinced\nby this article that it's a useful one.\n\nDoes anyone know why it is that Shopify's stock has risen by 100% over the\nlast year? I looked it over and couldn't figure out why -- is it the 3PL\nFulfillment Network this article mentions?\n\n[0] [https://stratechery.com/2018/the-bill-gates-\nline/](https://stratechery.com/2018/the-bill-gates-line/)\n\n~~~\nhackermailman\nShopify reported 50% yearly revenue growth which helped the stock price, and\ngov of Canada/provinces used shopify exclusively for their online marijuana\nordering starting last year too. That said their lack of net income is a\nproblem [https://www.fool.ca/2019/05/07/where-will-shopify-tsxshop-\nst...](https://www.fool.ca/2019/05/07/where-will-shopify-tsxshop-stock-be-\nin-5-years/) and their hiring process is ridiculous even by modern meme hiring\nstandards meaning it's going to get harder to hire people when they can just\nwork for FAANG which are all opening offices, or already have offices in\nCanada and don't have the same very long process starting with telling a\nrecruiter 'your life story' for over an hour.\n\n~~~\nsushilewis\nOn the How I Built This podcast, they mentioned AllBirds uses Shopify as their\nplatform.\n\nI just checked their site, and it looks like it's still the case.\n\n~~~\npaultannenbaum\nThey do, but I think they are considering moving off of Shopify. The reality\nis that shopify has a ridiculous amount of down time, and any high traffic\nstore will actually be losing real revenue as a result. Just scroll their\nstatus page, they consistently have several outages a month.\n\n[https://status.shopify.com/](https://status.shopify.com/)\n\n~~~\npaultannenbaum\nSorry was typing on my phone and didn't clarify. I have a friend who works at\nAllbirds and told me they are strongly looking at migrating because of the\ndown time issues.\n\n------\ndvduval\nThe main reason I don't use Shopify is the merchant fees. I can do better\npaying a developer to WooCommerce. and we have a pretty good system for doing\nall the patches and everything and haven't had any security problems or\nanything like that. and if I'm not happy with my hosting or with some feature\nI can just change myself. I don't depend on this other company which has\nalready done a few things that were kind of heavy-handed in my view.\n\n------\nmelenaos\nI am Shopify app developer and I earn my living from 3 published apps in the\nShopify marketplace.\n\nI can answer any question you may have.\n\n~~~\nkumarm\nThank You.\n\n1\\. Do you see the Market for shopify apps growing? Any indications would be\nhelpful from your experience.\n\n2\\. Best way to get started on Shopify apps for developers?\n\n~~~\nmelenaos\nNew stores open every minute but at the same time some others close, if you\nhave a good placement in the marketplace listings then new people use the app\nand if you can keep them, you will grow a decent monthly revenue.\n\nShopify is missing many things and the apps are there to fill those gaps,\nShopify doesn't replicate the apps functionality to drag them out of the game\nso yea, there is much space left for new apps.\n\nShopify has a great resource of information on how to get started here:\n[https://developers.shopify.com/app-\ndevelopment](https://developers.shopify.com/app-development)\n\nYou may find an API library for your preferred language in this list:\n[https://help.shopify.com/en/api/tools/supported-\nlibraries](https://help.shopify.com/en/api/tools/supported-libraries)\n\n------\nchiefalchemist\n> \"To that end, I would argue that for Shopify a high churn rate is just as\n> much a positive signal as it is a negative one: the easier it is to start an\n> e-commerce business on the platform, the more failures there will be. And,\n> at the same time, the greater likelihood there will be of capturing and\n> supporting successes.\"\n\nYes and no. The excessive lowering of the barrier to entry is self defeating.\nThat is, more stores === more noise. Throwing still more at the wall isn't\ngoing to increase success. That friction will increase Failure.\n\n~~~\nnaringas\nbut Shoppify's model doesn't involve marketing, they leave all that up to the\nmerchants. so shoppify itself isn't directly affected by this.\n\n~~~\nchiefalchemist\nThe supply of customers is not endless. It's in Shopify's best interest to\noptimize the churn to success ratio - not simply have more success stories. We\nall know the metric. Happy customer tell three people. Unhappy customer tell\n10 or more.\n\nThat is, as the number of failed store owners grows so does the fiction and\nreputation debt for the Shopify brand.\n\n~~~\nscribu\nBut is the Shopify brand featured prominently during the shopping experience?\n\nI would assume no, given the article's assertion that Shopify is just a\nfacilitator, which lets the shop's owner shine instead.\n\n------\nbaybal2\nOn my first job ever, when I was an exchange student in Singapore in between\n2007-2009, I did API integration for a trade company with Alibaba's APIs or\nwhatever you can call them back then.\n\nYou was making a CVS file with product description, putting it on a web\nserver, and directed Alibaba's product feed downloader on it.\n\nAlibaba also had \"hosted frontpage\" back then. The same thing you get now with\na store in *.alibaba.com subdomain. It was actually much more feature rich\nback then. They were allowing upload of more or less fully featured HTML\npages, but around 2010 they discontinued both.\n\nIf Alibaba guys ever knew what a gold mine they were sitting on all that\ntime...\n\n------\nsaadalem\nI love this tweet from Tobi :\n\n\"I'd rather buy @amazon in 2029\"\n\n[https://mobile.twitter.com/tobi/status/1068282069397123072](https://mobile.twitter.com/tobi/status/1068282069397123072)\n\n------\ntedmcory77\nAmazon is a good cash business, but hard to build a brand on.\n\nShopify is easier to build a brand on, but harder to make actual money on\ninitially.\n\nIf Shopify turned us off tomorrow (they can), we’d be able to continue. If\nAmazon did, it’s game over on that platform.\n\n------\nstcredzero\n_This is ultimately the most important distinction between platforms and\nAggregators: platforms are powerful because they facilitate a relationship\nbetween 3rd-party suppliers and end users; Aggregators, on the other hand,\nintermediate and control it._\n\nWould YouTube count as an Aggregator? Are they becoming less about the task to\n\"facilitate a relationship between 3rd-party suppliers and end users\" and more\nabout seeking to \"intermediate and control?\"\n\n------\nvalueprop\nHi,\n\nConsidering about working on an open source with turnkey SaaS hosting modern\nalternative. Drawback: MVP is quite big. Would you see such a need, or is\neveryone happy with Shopify?\n\nSome questions, if you can spare a few minutes:\n\nWhat are top 3-5 issues with the platform that you're currently using?\n\nWhat do you like most about the current platform?\n\nWhat would be the must-haves of another store platform in order for you to\nswitch to it?\n\nAppreciate your insights!\n\n~~~\nhombre_fatal\nI don't really understand who an \"open source turnkey ecommerce solution\"\nserves.\n\nThe last thing you need when trying to sell product is to now deal with\nrunning software and a server. Kinda reminds me of when I thought I could\nbuild a webshop for my father with Rails and Stripe. Thank god I realized\nsooner than later that there's basically zero upside to running this software\nand I switched my father to Shopify where he's happily been since.\n\nI think this kind of solution only seems good to HN nerds who don't realize\nwhat Shopify brings to the table, or that technology is somehow the hardest\npart of running a webshop. It seems naive.\n\nSince you're asking these questions, it sounds like you don't have much domain\nexperience. I encourage you to create a simple Shopify shop and try selling\nsomething, if only to see what it gives you out of the box that your turnkey\nsolution can't. That would be essential experience to have before you even\nmake your initial commit.\n\n------\nomouse\n_\" We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff\" that leaves power and agency\nin the hands of individual companies._\n\nWordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to\n$20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce,\nbuy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment\nsystem (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races.\n\nAnd it's better than that, there's people with years and years of experience\nin modifying and creating plugins and themes so once you have enough $$$ from\nthe basic setup, re-invest into the business and get better developer support\nfor all the GPL'd plugins and themes you're using.\n\n~~~\ndelecti\n\"Just combine these _6_ things and it's just as easy as a single tool that\ndoes it all for you.\"\n\nIs this satire?\n\n~~~\nsimonh\nNo, it's the standard response from some open source people for any\nproprietary end-to-end solution. The most famous example was this response to\nthe launch of Dropbox:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224)\n\n~~~\nomouse\n_some open source people_\n\nHey now, stop with the name-calling :P I work on and use proprietary end to\nend solutions for ecommerce (but not Shopify).\n\nWoocommerce wins for me because it lowers development costs and costs are\nlower overall. My perspective is definitely someone who has developed\necommerce sites, not solely as a non-technical user, and for me it's very\nadvantageous to lower costs by using and modifying GPL'd plugins and themes.\n\nI guess Shopify has 4000 employees and enough cash and enough direction to\ncome out of box with a good UX and good defaults and that's good enough for\nnontechnical users.\n\n~~~\norgansnyder\nI'm a technical user, and good UX and good defaults are something I often\nspend money on.\n\n~~~\nlarrywright\nI’m a technical user, and if I needed to sell goods online I’d use Shopify.\nIt’s precisely _because_ I’m a technical user: I know all the things you you\nhave to worry about, and I’d rather not. There surely a scale where it makes\nsense to roll your own e-commerce platform, but it’s substantially higher than\npeople seem to think.\n\n~~~\norgansnyder\nYup. I've taken some MBA classes, and one (in retrospect obvious) thing I\nlatched onto is the idea of opportunity cost: you can never do everything you\nare capable of doing, and each thing you do comes at the expense of something\nelse. So, focus on doing the things that (depending on your goal) are most\nfulfilling and/or most profitable.\n\nAmusingly, grasping that concept was a big factor in my decision to put my MBA\ndegree on hold...\n\n~~~\nbluGill\nThere is one other reason to do things: you cannot trust anyone else to do it.\nFullfilling and/or profitable are hopefully the only ones that apply, but\nsometimes you have to do something because the risk is too high...\n\n~~~\nlarrywright\nI’m not sure that applies to the Shopify argument here, but maybe you didn’t\nintend it to.\n\n~~~\nbluGill\nHopefully - for Shopifys sake - it doesn't apply.\n\nAn example of how it could apply is if shopify were to \"go down\" often thus\ndriving your customers to your competitors that roll their own solution that\nhas good uptime.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: What companies have private offices for programmers? - ken\nI&#x27;ve read and heard from lots of programmers who want them, but I&#x27;ve only ever heard of about two software companies that offer them.<p>careers.stackoverflow.com has &quot;Joel Test&quot; scores for some entries, but companies seem pretty loose with the &quot;quiet working conditions&quot; criterion.  One of them claims a point for that, but then brags about their &quot;open layout&quot; office.<p>I&#x27;m <i>not</i> looking for yet another debate over the pros&#x2F;cons of offices&#x2F;cubes&#x2F;open layout, nor a list of earplug&#x2F;headphone&#x2F;desk indicators as mitigation.\n======\npbiggar\nCircleCI - I signed the lease on Monday :)\n\n[https://circleci.com/jobs](https://circleci.com/jobs) \\- see also\n[http://blog.circleci.com/silence-is-for-the-\nweak/](http://blog.circleci.com/silence-is-for-the-weak/)\n\n~~~\nan___\nLooking at the job site [https://circleci.com/jobs](https://circleci.com/jobs)\nclick on \"For back-end/full stack developers\"\n\n    \n    \n        Some of the characteristics we're looking for:\n          ...\n          - young, raw, talented devs who can crank out code,\n    \n    \n\nAre they really looking to hire young developers only or am I misunderstanding\nthe job description?\n\n~~~\npbiggar\nNo absolutely not. Some other context from the page:\n\n\"we've noticed that the following correlate with the type of people that we\nwant to work with. This is not an exhaustive list, nor a list of requirements\n(in fact, some of them are contradictory), but more of a rough guideline.\"\n\n\"senior, experienced developers, who have worked on a decent number of\nproducts, have a propensity for shipping often, probably with 8-10 years of\nexperience and amazing coding chops (those having left coding behind them—this\nisn't the company for you, unfortunately)\"\n\nSo those are two profiles that have worked well for us in the past, but they\naren't requirements by any stretch.\n\nWe're aware that this is kinda confusing, and also that it's not very friendly\nto a lot of people we're trying to hire, so we'll be updating pretty soon.\n\n------\nnilkn\nFog Creek goes out of their way to ensure that full-time developers have\nprivate offices (but not interns).\n\n~~~\ndpweb\nI read this as a programmer getting an intern (assistant). Like that idea, hey\nsomeone making 120-150k or more - that's not that crazy. Someone to research\nfor you etc..\n\n~~~\npatio11\nWhile in principle I understand the economics for that, Fog Creek doesn't use\ninterns as gophers. They actually mentor them and, even rarer, expect them to\nship meaningful software before their term is up. In addition to compensating\nthem like they're doing meaningful work, Fog Creek does a large portion of new\nhires from previous interns. (Incidentally: it's all-around a great place to\nwork.)\n\n~~~\ndsr_\n\"expect them to ship meaningful software before their term is up\"\n\nis that rare? We expect any [programming] intern will be learning some part of\nthe code base and making their first tiny improvements in the first week. Most\nof the interns have been quite productive by the end of their term... and I'm\nhappy to say that our first intern-to-full-time-employee will be starting in a\nmonth or so.\n\n~~~\npatio11\nThere exist many, many internships where you're either Chief Coffee Delivery\nTechnician or you spend all of your productive time on scutwork that no one\ncould convince a FTE to do. Examples elided to protect the guilty.\n\n~~~\ndpweb\nI was an intern 20 years ago, then or now if someone told me to get coffee I'd\nprobably throw it in their face. I've (thankfully) never seen that. Have seen\nem do data entry, but at our company they write production code. I've seen\nguys condescend to them. They should shut up. These kids are smart and would\ngladly do their job for half the salary starting tomorrow.\n\nMy point is, anyone making over 80k/$40 an hour making their own flight\narrangements, filling out their own expense reports, is a waste of valuable\ntime. If I have a guy billing out $200/hr - he's in the office 8 or 9 hours a\nday max - (most people start and end work the same time everyday) - I don't\nwant him wasting time on that crap. Needs an AA to do it. (Note our expense\nsystem sucks and our requirements are exact - you can easily spend an hour on\nan expense report)..\n\n------\nsp_\nI shared an office with one other person at Microsoft and have the same at\nGoogle. That doesn't mean that everybody has that at either company.\n\n~~~\nsbilstein\nYep depends on the building. I had a single office at Microsoft, so did many\nothers. Some shared in pods of 4-8 engineers. I don't recall any spaces with\nan open plan (except in the UK), but I also didn't visit every single building\nMicrosoft had.\n\n------\ncm_rb\nAt Campaign Monitor -\n[http://www.campaignmonitor.com/careers](http://www.campaignmonitor.com/careers)\nmost employees have their own office, including programmers. There are also a\nfew small team rooms and it's generally an awesome place to be a developer.\n\n------\nwbond\nThe company I work at (Veracross) has them for everyone - engineers and\naccount managers. Myself and a few other engineers opted out for social\nreasons and instead work in a nice corner office with big windows. This works\nespecially well while on-boarding people and working with interns.\n\n~~~\nEC1\nI just quit my job today because we have 12 developers in a TINY room, worst\natmosphere. I can't work to my full potential unless I work in near absolute\nsilence. Private offices would be a god send.\n\n~~~\npdq\nI highly recommend investing in a decent pair of earphones or headphones.\nThese will knock out a very high percentage of the ambient noise and let you\nconcentrate almost as well as a quiet office.\n\n~~~\nbrianwawok\nIt's not the same.\n\n------\nufmace\nI had a private office pretty much the entire time I did coding for\nSchlumberger, though this can vary widely based on location. At the new\ncompany, it's mostly cubes.\n\nI think the nature of office space is one of the problems with this. Most\ncommercial office space seems to be set up in the open office/cube farm setup.\nIf you wanted private offices, you'd have to pay to construct them yourself,\nand then wonder if it will cause trouble if you ever leave the space when\nwhoever takes it next doesn't want it. It's much tougher to get private\noffices until you're big enough to be actually constructing your own\nbuildings, or at least willing to spend money on a pricey build-out of\nexisting office space.\n\n~~~\nnilkn\nOut of curiosity, which location was this for Schlumberger?\n\n~~~\nufmace\nI've worked at several offices for them around Houston, including Sugar Land,\nKaty, and San Felipe, which appears to mostly not have private offices. A\nfacilities guy there once told me that they actually have a total of 78\noffices just in Houston.\n\n------\nloumf\nThe much more common alternative is ~3 person offices. I'm going to go out on\na limb and say most big software-engineer focused companies have them for a\nlot of people. E.g. Microsoft. I have been to MS and seen them (but it's a big\nplace -- don't know if everyone does)\n\nYou are right to not want open-layout. Peopleware presents a study that music\ncan interfere with creativity.\n\nOne other thing I'm seeing is Huddle rooms. They are smaller, ad-hoc offices.\nTeams can request them to work together on something. My sense is that they\nare for a short period of time, measured in days to weeks.\n\n------\nburo9\nAs a tangent on this, we're in a coworking space in London that has a\ndedicated \"quiet floor\" and actively furnished the place to reduce noise\nlevels. The floor has fewer desks, padded dividers, sound baffles around the\nroom, and is laid out well.\n\nIt's in London, and it's here:\n[http://www.huckletree.com/](http://www.huckletree.com/)\n\nWe chose this after finding that in our existing coworking space, that the\ncompany that moved in to the other side of our desk cluster spent the majority\nof their time on the phone and were loud about it.\n\n------\nandymoe\nApple has them. Microsoft too I think. I prefer them.\n\nEDIT: By the way, I like them, but I write this from a plastic folding table\nin a warehouse in Brisbane CA (AKA Drone Valley)\n\n~~~\nhga\nMicrosoft used this in recruiting advertising, back when there were glossy\nmagazines developers read. The one I remember just showed an closed door, with\nthe text explaining how you could go in your office, close your door, and get\nwork that needs concentration done.\n\n~~~\njmspring\nParts of Microsoft are moving towards open offices. For instance -\n\n[http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-developer-\ndivision/](http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-developer-division/)\n\n~~~\nlatkin\nYep. Most product groups still have individual offices with doors, though new\nhires are usually doubled with someone else until they have a couple years'\ntenure. There has been a recent migration toward team rooms in a few high-\nprofile groups. Meaning ~12 people together in a bigger room, as opposed to\n\"open plan\" with dozens or hundreds in one huge space.\n\n------\njeffcoat\nI was in a 1 or 2-person office while I was at IBM. Their policy (at that\nbranch) was a private office for senior developers and up, two to an office\notherwise.\n\nI'm at Motive right now; the large majority of developers here have their own\noffice. (And we're hiring: developers and testers, no telecom experience\nnecessary, mostly in Austin, TX.)\n\n~~~\nzedpm\nAre the developer positions in-office only, or is full-time remote (in the US)\nan option?\n\n------\njarin\nI might be weird, but I actually prefer working in an open layout. It might\njust be because I'm one of two programmers at my office and it's really\nhelpful to be able to eavesdrop and talk to people as they walk by in order to\nfigure out what's missing/working/not working.\n\n~~~\nericcholis\nI'm half and half on this. I've got an office just outside the open workspace\nwhere the users are. I can catch most everything that comes up, but close my\ndoor if I need a bit of privacy.\n\n------\nfrankwiles\nWe recently moved RevSys into new offices where everyone has their own office.\nWe were in a much too small office that was one big open room. I won't speak\nfor everyone, but I know my personal productivity has shot through the roof.\n\n------\njeffrwells\nAll remote companies have this, in a sense.\n\n------\npiokuc\nI work for an inter-governmental organisation in the environmental services\nsector; ~300 people, ~40 programmers (but many others - scientists - do some\ncoding, too). Most people have private offices, there are also 2 or 3 persons\noffices. I enjoy my single office. I like to put my feet on the desk when I\nread a paper or a book or when I fancy a quick game on my mobile :)\n\n------\nvailripper\nMy company (Surge Forward) is 100% telecommute, so an office can be whatever\nyou want it to be! Some days I work from home, or if I'm having trouble\nconcentrating I might go work out of a coffee shop. It works perfectly for me.\n\n------\nwaterfowl\nBooz Allen runs the gamut(and I no longer work there, I hear things have\nchanged) but straight out of college I had a 2 person office and it was\ngreat(also like 50-100% WFH for most folks who aren't working at a client\nplace)\n\n------\nbebop\nESRI: [http://www.esri.com/](http://www.esri.com/) the GIS company had private\noffices for employees. At least last time I interviewed with them.\n\n------\ncema\nIntersystems (Cambridge, MA) has a large number of private offices as well as\ncubicles, which are less often used.\n\n------\ntechwizrd\nWhen I worked at SAIC and Leidos, I had my own office. It was nice to be able\nto close my door and focus.\n\n------\nmronge\nApple has them\n\n------\nkrambs\nEvery engineer at Disco gets their own office. But you'd have to move to\nHouston. :)\n\ncsdisco.com/jobs\n\n------\nmgangav\nSAS (As in the analytics company) tries its best to give offices to everyone\n(not just devs).\n\n------\nstonemetal\nCorepoint Health(Dallas, Tx Frisco area) has them for everyone in the company.\n\n------\ncamara\nCS Disco Inc. (www.csdisco.com) for all engineers and most other employees.\n\n------\nlightblade\nInterviewed at PARC a while back. They have it.\n\n------\nsachinag\nOracle. Not everyone, but most.\n\n~~~\newoodh2o\nI worked at Oracle up until last year. At Oracle HQ in Redwood City, yes, many\ndevelopers have private offices. But our office and the other offices I\nvisited elsewhere that had been built-out more recently were open-plan\nenvironments.\n\n------\nSerow225\nThe MathWorks, I believe.\n\n~~~\nevilskull\nGenerally correct, though as they expand their offices and their headcount\nsometimes people have to double/triple up until new space opens up. Sometimes\nthey also get stuck in temporary cubicles but the general goal is an office\nfor every full time salaried (non-hourly) employee.\n\n------\nbeachstartup\nadobe used to give every employee an office. don't think that's still true\ntoday though.\n\n~~~\ndonjuanica\nNo longer true. The new campus in Utah is very much an open design with low-\nwalled cubicles and large open spaces.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy ancient Roman graffiti is so important to archaeologists - akakievich\nhttp://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113411831/why-ancient-roman-graffiti-is-so-important-to-archaeologists-010516/\n======\nexistencebox\nAt the risk of nitpicking: \"Meanwhile, every female Roman voice has been lost\nto time.\"\n\nI bring this up less to bang on some diversity card, and more that it seems\nvery far from true? (Yes, they were a vast minority, but 'lost to time' seems\nquite overwrought) In terms of poetry we have Sulpicia (both of them) and then\nlots of miscellaneous daily writings e.g. the diary of Vibia Perpetua; and of\ncourse Lucretia and Fulvia if we're talking public figures...\n\nAnd the additional quote of female homosexuality being universally abhorred\nalso seems to be misaligned with what I was taught, but my memories of this\nare both fuzzier and from my days in university, so I'd be more than willing\nto be proven wrong. (The obvious argument in my favor is the amount the of\nattention garnered by the supposed lesbian (both in location and sexual\npractice) Sappho) My take on it was that there was as much of a distribution\nin terms of outlook on sexual practices as there is today, albeit very\ndifferently weighted.\n\nThat all being said, roman graffiti is _amazing_ as a view into \"normal\npeople\", the article leaving out the fact that gives me a good (but immature)\nchuckle, that a large amount of graffiti included simply crude drawings of\npenises.\n\n~~~\nktRolster\n\n      > that a large amount of graffiti included simply crude drawings of penises.\n    \n\nWhile reading your comment, I literally could not stop myself from thinking of\nthis. teehee\n\n------\nmwfunk\nThe advertising on redorbit.com (desktop site) is utterly preposterous- in\nterms of the quantity, quality, and repetition, and the relentless popups. I\nusually get annoyed when HN comments devolve into people discussing the page\nor the site rather than the contents of the story, but this is just absurd.\n\nI would normally assume that a site that looks like this has to be a domain\nsquatter's autogenerated site, or some sort of honeypot for distributing\nmalware.\n\nOr maybe I'm not getting the same experience everyone else is? If this is what\nit looks like to everyone, that's grounds for HN blacklisting redorbit.com\nlinks. I hope this is a screwup and not what the site owners are going for.\n\n~~~\nmwfunk\nWhat I'm seeing in this link: every image and every paragraph is followed by\nthe same Teleflora banner ad that scrolls open when you scroll past that image\nor paragraph. At some point an animated Revlon ad also appears which expands\nto fill the entire page. The sidebar and bottom of just about every page is\nconsumed by ginormous BS \"Trending now!\" links to \"25 celebrities you didn't\nknow posed topless!\" and \"The weight loss trick that they don't want you to\nknow!\" articles on other equally disreputable sites. The page for this article\nlooks like satire, it's so ridiculous and seedy and invasive. I wanted to read\nthe article, I really did.\n\n~~~\nb_emery\nHere, try this instead. Some hilarious stuff. No adds, i'm pretty sure it's\ncirca 1995:\n\n[http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%2...](http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%20Pompeii.htm)\n\n~~~\nGnarfGnarf\n_\" Gaius Pumidius Dipilus was here on October 3rd 78 BC\"_\n\nThat's apocryphal, right? How did he know it was \"BC\"?\n\n~~~\nlostlogin\nIt gets weirder when you consider that Christ was most likely born between 7\nand 2 BC.\n\n------\narethuza\nAnother great bit of ancient graffiti are runes carved by some Vikings\nsheltering inside the ~4800 year old tomb of Maeshowe on Orkney:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeshowe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeshowe)\n\n _\" He is a viking...come here under the barrow\"_\n\n[http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm](http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm)\n\n~~~\nktRolster\nAlong the coast of Norway, outside Tromsø, I found these ancient stone\ndrawings:\n\n[http://i.imgur.com/2ago5A9.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/2ago5A9.jpg)\n\n[http://i.imgur.com/YaIIXdP.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/YaIIXdP.jpg)\n\nIncluding the one of a six-legged cow (with three horns). I have no idea why\nthe Norwegians wanted to draw a six-legged cow, but I assume it must have some\nsignificance. If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them.\n\n~~~\nriffraff\nI would have interpreted the third horn as ears.\n\nTwo hypothesis on the six legs:\n\n* an oddity, this things sometimes happen and might have been interpreted as good or bad omens, worth recording. The positioning (mid-flank rather than at the bottom, like the others) seems consistent with similar cases I have seen. Random internet result: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/6-legged-lamb_n_123...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/6-legged-lamb_n_1232176.html#gallery/22942/0)\n\n* maybe those are not extra legs of the top animal, but horns of the bottom animal (who also has 4 short legs), maybe recording when some ram or species of deer charged into a much larger cow? Though the horns would be out of proportion, and I'd expect them to be curved.\n\n------\nmatco11\n>\"These places weren’t necessarily vast repositories of lost literature, but\nthe eruption froze them nearly perfectly in time, preserving them for nearly\n2,000 years—and preserving thousands of pieces of graffiti along with them.\"\n\nActually, Pompeii and Herculaneum are precisely one of the largest and most\nprecious repositories of lost ancient literature.\n\n[http://ancphil.lsa.umich.edu/-/downloads/papyri/JankoRecentD...](http://ancphil.lsa.umich.edu/-/downloads/papyri/JankoRecentDevelopments.pdf)\n\n[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/the-\ninvisible-l...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/the-invisible-\nlibrary)\n\n------\nchrstphrhrt\nUmm what? \"[Pompeii and Herculaneum] weren’t necessarily vast repositories of\nlost literature\"\n\nNot sure about Pompeii, but Herculaneum had the villa of Piso with tons of\nscrolls from Philodemus, who totally fleshed out the ideas of Epicurus, upon\nwhose atomism all of modern science is based.\n\n~~~\nthaumasiotes\n> Epicurus, upon whose atomism all of modern science is based.\n\nIt is difficult to comprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could\nprovoke such a statement.\n\nModern science makes no reference to Epicurean atomism, other than in the\nhistorical choice of the _word_ \"atom\" to refer to something that Epicurus\nwasn't talking about.\n\n~~~\nchrstphrhrt\nOkay. Then I'd be interested to know about atomism after Lucretius and before\nthe renaissance. Who was the first modern \"inventor\" of it?\n\nMy comment was meant to express alarm that anyone could say there was no lost\nlibrary buried by Vesuvius.\n\nHere it is:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri#Epicureani...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri#Epicureanism_and_the_library)\n\n------\nrjbrock\nI love this type of stuff, because it is an insight into the way that normal\npeople (ie. not royalty) lived.\n\n------\ncolanderman\nAbsolutely unreadable on mobile; the site just keeps scrolling itself back to\nthe top.\n\n~~~\nlostlogin\nWhat OS? iOS and Crystal make it just fine. It's a pity add block isn't a\ndefault position for everyone.\n\n~~~\ncolanderman\nAndroid.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNode.js Web Server Guide - asp_net\nhttps://github.com/aspnetde/nodejs-webserver-guide\n\n======\nasp_net\nAfter working in the Microsoft universe for a decade I decided to broaden my\nhorizon, so I digged into Node.js. I am quite impressed with what I found and\nwhat I could accomplish in a few weeks with that tooling, but one thing was\nleft - I had no idea how and where to host my stuff. As I did not find a\ntypical all-in-one-solution, I just made the decision to also dig into Linux.\nThat's the (preliminary) result of my journey, which may be helpful to others\ntoo.\n\n(And if I got something horrible wrong, just tell me and I will fix it ...).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Early in career – is it a bad idea to change jobs after six months? - mountainApe22\nFor some context: I am in my mid-twenties, have a computer science degree from a top ten American university and moderate experience developing software applications. After graduation I did a bit of research and worked as a bartender&#x2F;waiter while going through the whole post-grad thing.<p>I eventually decided on taking a white collar job in technology. I was hired into a subsidiary of a well known CPG company as an Information Systems Specialist. When I was brought on board, I was told that I would be assisting the head of the IS department in documenting ERP customizations, developing&#x2F;optimizing SQL, and working closely with other departments in order to build customizations and automations. It sounded great.However, my boss wasn&#x27;t located in the same office as me and only spent 6 days on location &quot;training&quot; me. My &quot;training&quot; was consistently interrupted as my boss had to go put out fires multiple times per day.<p>Four weeks later I was brought in to HR and told that my boss resigned without notice and that I was to fly to the HQs the next week to do a knowledge transfer.<p>The parent company, of course, stepped in and said they would &quot;allocate resources&quot;. So far I have had little assistance from them. What little assistance I have from them, ironically, ends up being more work.<p>Now I&#x27;m drowning in work, with no one to give me priority or direction. I have politely let my new boss in the parent company know that there is too much work and that I don&#x27;t have priorities to work within and I am told that I should just say no whenever someone asks me to do something. The work I am asked to do is important and I don&#x27;t feel comfortable telling individuals high up in the subsidiary no.<p>I was given a decent raise in light of my situation. But I&#x27;m finding it increasingly difficult to deal with the stress of managing all of this. I am very seriously considering finding a new job, but am concerned that my short tenure in this position will look bad. Thoughts?\n======\ndragonwriter\n> The work I am asked to do is important and I don't feel comfortable telling\n> individuals high up in the subsidiary no.\n\nYour boss told you to say no. You tell people “no”, and refer them to your\nboss, and keep your boss informed of what your current workload is.\n\nYou are drowning in work because _even after being directed to do so_ you\nrefuse to stop accepting new requests when you are overloaded.\n\nSaying “no” is an important skill.\n\n~~~\nheelix\nIt is funny... this is such an important trait we screen for it in the\ninterview process. The requests/scenarios become more and more absurd until\nthey should say no.\n\n~~~\nsethammons\nSounds like an adversarial game and a great way to start breaking trust with\nthe candidate.\n\n------\ndavismwfl\nWelcome to software engineering.\n\nI am only partially joking. These types of situations are not uncommon and can\nactually work out to your benefit if you can take advantage of it. Your new\nboss told you to say no more often, he/she is giving you a lifeline and you\nare saying you're scared to take it? Instead of a direct no try saying it as,\n\"I really would like to work on your issue and you have expressed its\nimportance but I am limited in how much I can accomplish and right now my\nschedule is full. I may be able to get to it in X time period, but I can't\nmake any promises today. However, if you'd like to have this prioritized then\nyou can feel free to speak with Mr X who is my boss.\" And then you document\nthe details either just to yourself, or you can send a heads up email to your\nboss.\n\nThis happens a lot in companies of all sizes, people make requests of\nengineers (generally young/new ones) and see just how much they can sneak\naround the system. One of the most important skills as you mature in your\ncareer is to say no. Saying \"no\" but getting your work done will not get your\nfired, saying \"yes\" and failing to keep up on your work will. Think of it this\nway, if these are higher level people then you that are making requests and\ntheir compliant about you is you said no because your schedule is full, it\nreally won't go too far. If instead their compliant is you told them yes and\nthen you never did it, their complaint will be valid.\n\n~~~\ncommandlinefan\nYep, exactly. I’ve been doing this now going on 30 years, and I felt like OP\nat my first job back in ’92, so I bailed on it. I found another quickly and\nimmediately felt the same way. I bailed on that one, too, thinking I was just\npicking the wrong jobs. After four job changes in four years I realized this\nis just how professional software development feels - and that’s part of the\nreason it’s such a high-paying profession.\n\n------\nJohnFen\nI don't think you need to worry. What would make short stints a red flag is if\nthey're common -- having a single short stint early in your career is unlikely\ncause you difficulties.\n\nRemember, the people considering your application are well aware of the\nrealities of the workplace, and one of those realities is that every so often\na job is just a bad fit. In those cases, leaving it sooner rather than later\nis a good thing for everybody concerned. When I'm looking over resumes, if I\nsee someone who has generally worked for years at each position, but has a\ncouple that only lasted a few months, I see that as perfectly normal.\n\n------\ngwbas1c\nI just had something happen that reminded me of this thread. Hopefully this\nhelps:\n\nOften, in our ticketing system, some random person assigns me a ticket. In\nthese situations, I just assign the ticket back. In general, my rule is that:\n_I only take assignments from my direct manager or someone I 'm working\nclosely with._ All tickets (tasks) that come from outside my small working\ngroup must be triaged with my direct manager's involvement.\n\n(I created an email rule for Jira just so I can see these situations.)\n\nThere's many reasons why random people try to rope me into their tickets.\nSometimes it's laziness. Other times it's entitlement. (You're such-and-such a\nrole so obviously you'll solve my problem for me.) Sometimes it's just passing\nthe buck. Rarely, it's a genuine ask for help; but in those cases I hold firm\nthat whoever is asking for help must retain ownership of the ticket.\n(Basically, I'll look at someone else's ticket as a favor, but not as my\ndeliverable.)\n\nIn the worst case, there are managers who try to rope people into their work\nas a means of playing power or political games. I don't understand why people\ndo this, but that's when I rope my manager in if some bozo tries to get me to\ndo their work for them.\n\n------\ngwbas1c\n1-2 short stints early in your career don't mean much.\n\n _What 's important_ is that you leave for a better job. Focus on where you're\ngoing, not where you're leaving. (I once took a job with a few too many\nwarning signs, and in hindsight I should have stayed put.)\n\nHonestly, every person filtering resumes has different things they look for.\nFor every person who filters you out because you had a short stint, there will\nbe someone who filters you in because your new job looks so much better.\n\nOh, and good jobs have ups and downs. If you generally like the work, believe\nin the company, and like the people you're working with, you can figure it\nout.\n\n------\nblackrock\nDon’t list that you worked for that company. It’s not your fault that the\ncompany is full of idiots.\n\nEvery company is full of self serving idiots that will throw you under the bus\nfor their own personal gain. The trick is to avoid these useless idiots, and\nto defend yourself when you have to deal with them.\n\nAlso, the only way to climb the ladder and make more money is to jump ship.\nYou will never earn a decent amount of money by sticking around, and accepting\nthe company’s pathetic 2% COLA raise, if you even get that. Meanwhile, they\njust paid their executives $100+ millions in performance bonuses. And they\nclaim there isn’t any money left over for you.\n\n~~~\nel_dev_hell\n> Also, the only way to climb the ladder and make more money is to jump ship.\n> You will never earn a decent amount of money by sticking around, and\n> accepting the company’s pathetic 2% COLA raise, if you even get that.\n\nIt sucks so much how true this is.\n\nI've been in the same job for 3 years. I've received a nice 5% bump every\nyear. The work I do today compared to 2 years ago is easily 30% more\nbeneficial to the company, but it's insane to ask for a 30% payrise in the\nsame role.\n\nI'm in the final stages with a new company. They're offering me a 30% higher\nsalary bump and a direct channel into a more interesting sub-niche.\n\nI'm leaving a company where I've passed the barrier of \"figure out our\ninternal sludge\" and the culture fit challenge, but I have to jump ship to get\nmore money. How did this become the norm?\n\n------\njiveturkey\nIt won't look bad, but you do have other things to consider. You got a quick\nraise -- that's good. The company sounds understaffed in IT and perhaps is\nless than competent. Crisis can become opportunity.\n\n~~~\nkls\nWas thinking the same thing, I don't know what the original posters career\ngoals are but this is a perfect opportunity to launch into management. If one\nwhere so inclined they could explain to the management at the subsidiary as\nwell as their boss that they need funds to hire and build a team to manage the\nworkflow. Prioritize said workflow by getting agreement by all parties and\nthen managing that workflow out to the team.\n\n------\nManlyBread\nStop wondering and go find out if these six months will be a problem for a new\nemployer. The worst thing that could happen is that you'll be rejected. I've\nswitched jobs after 2 months and the next one after 9 months and so far I had\nno issues looking for an another job. Sometimes I got questions about the\ncompany I was 2 months in so I just removed it from my resume because it was\nannoying.\n\n------\njbotz\nFor getting interviews, your resume will only look better with more variety of\nexperience. Most people scanning resumes to pick candidates for interviews are\njust looking for relevant experience and bullet points... the more the better,\nthey aren't going to think a lot about why you were at a specific job only for\n6 months.\n\nOnce you have an Interview (or a phone screen) they may ask about it, but then\nyou can explain and it's unlikely to be held against you.\n\n------\nshepptech\nGenerally, you want to secure around a year if you are intentionally working\nthe career ladder. It can be difficult to convince an employer that you will\nstick around long enough to make them money if you jump job to job.\n\nThat said, you need to consider your long term goals. If you are job hopping\nfor experience, you might want to consider contract work, or independent work\nfirst. As an employer though, I don't consider a 6 month stint to be a bad\nthing. You need to be prepared to tell me why you're jumping ship, and what\nyou are looking to achieve at my place of business.\n\nNobody can tell you a \"right\" answer though. It is entirely dependent on your\nown goals and ethics. You don't owe anybody anything in your journey to the\ntop, so do what feels right and keep moving forward.\n\n------\nsaradhi\n> Now I'm drowning in work, with no one to give me priority or direction.\n\nWhen you feel that \"drowning\", probably you are not enjoying the work load,\nwhich is quite important for the happy-you. I understand you are in the early\ndays, did you try to make your decisions on the priority? Sometimes, you may\nbe better, who knows. Give it a try.\n\n> The work I am asked to do is important and I don't feel comfortable telling\n> individuals high up in the subsidiary no.\n\nThis is the situation you've to face in your life, every day. Saying \"no\" is\nperfectly \"yes\", be bold enough to say \"no\". But just give a thought on the\nafter-effects, if those do not put you in trouble, it is perfectly alright.\n\nGood luck.\n\n------\nbrailsafe\nI've been through 7 or 8ish companies in 7 or 8ish years, have burnt out\nhorribly, have at times sacrifices my mental health for that of my employer,\namd have been fire or otherwise let go from 6 companies. I think the gaps in\nemployment _may_ be an issue, but otherwise I think it's less that my record\nis bad and more that finding good work is grueling in tech. So if you quit and\nfind a new job or if you stay for longer and find a new job, it is probably\ngoing to be difficult. Also, never sacrifice yourself for your company beyond\nreason.\n\n------\njklein11\nIf the comp and work are good and there is just too much of it I wouldn’t look\nfor another job. It’s hard to find interesting work. It’s even harder to find\ninteresting work that pays well.\n\nThis sounds like a process problem that your current manager has inherited\nfrom your previous manager. This problem also probably caused your previous\nmanager to get so burnt out they quit.\n\nIt sounds like there is no process to intake new work and prioritize it. Talk\nto your manager about this. If you want brownie points propose how you can\nimplement this process.\n\n------\nsuperdeeda\nI’d say look for a new job. Sounds like the IT department at your company is\npoorly run. Especially at the start of your career I think it is important to\nwork at a well-run company so that you can learn from the best and not start\nto resent your career choice.\n\nMost decent companies and interviewers will give you a chance to explain your\nreasons for leaving after only six months. It’s quite normal for devs,\nespecially for recent graduates, to move around before finding their niche.\n\n------\nAperocky\nIt really depend on what you're doing. From what I'm seeing, documenting ERP\ncustomizations, developing/optimizing SQL is not a place you want to be.\n\nMove out if you can, granted, a lot of places on these kind of things tend to\nbe easier on the task load, but it's not true in your case. Have you tried to\nautomate? Are you drawning in powerpoint presentation and word documents? All\nof these are important to know.\n\n------\nCodeWriter23\nPut yourself in an interviewer’s position hiring you. “So you were given more\nresponsibilities and a decent raise. And you bailed before you really spent\nany time seeing what that was like?”\n\nMy suggestion, try to find opportunity here. Successful technology\nimplementations are much more about building relationships and understanding\npeople’s roles, responsibilities and workloads and a lot less about SQL, code,\ngear, etc.\n\n~~~\nManlyBread\nIt is easy to dodge that question, all that you need to do is to imply that\nthe workload was impacting your work/life balance or that the new set of\nresponsibilties does not match the market rate even after the \"decent\" raise.\nI remember saying something similar during interviews after a company that\ngave me a 10% raise expected me to handle twice the amount of work and\nresponsibility.\n\n------\nyashvanth\nI switched to a new job after 6 months into it because the management wasn't\ngood. I knew why I was doing it. Firstly, justify it to yourself and it'll be\neasier to answer when the question of \"why\" arises!\n\n------\njasonblurb\nEngineering manager here.\n\nAs other commenters have said, this situation is common. That's not to say\nit's okay - it isn't. The question I'd ask you is, \"before you bail, what can\nyou learn from this experience?\"\n\nOne of the primary duties of a manager is to act as a diffuser of potential\nstressors. Given your experience level, all the inputs you are receiving\nshould be landing on your managers desk first. Those inputs should then be\nfiltered, grouped, prioritized, contextualized (to whatever extent is\nnecessary for you to understand what you're being asked to do) and _then_\nhanded to you at a rate that enables you to complete work and learn the\nsystems you're interacting with.\n\nIt's okay to push back on requests. It's also a good idea to develop a system\nfor doing so.\n\nOne of the things I repeat often with my direct reports is, \"everything has a\nplace.\" Every request, every escalation, every task we're asked to work on -\nit all goes into a ticket system. Everyone on my team knows to accept the\ninput and inform the source of the input (often another engineering manager)\nthat their requests will go into our work queue and will be prioritized\nagainst our other objectives at the appropriate time.\n\nYou seem to be operating without those systems in place. What I'd suggest is\nthat you develop a queuing and prioritization system for yourself. The next\ntime someone asks you to do something, maybe try saying:\n\n\"I'll be happy to dig in. Let me get a few pieces of information from you and\nI'll put this in my queue. Mind if I follow up with you next week?\"\n\nA couple things could happen in response. They could escalate and use their\ncoercive power (they outrank you) to force you to do the work immediately.\nThis is when you can invoke your manager. You could respond with,\n\n\"Understood. I will inform my manager and we will prioritize accordingly.\"\n\nUsually these situations won't escalate. If you appear to have your act\ntogether, others will recognize that. If you have a system of note cards or an\nissue tracker you're using to capture their requests, they may be more\ninclined to leave you to manage your own work queue. If you're also equipped\nwith a prioritization rubric (it can be arbitrary, just start with org chart\nhierarchy of the requestor if you don't have anything else to go on), even\nbetter.\n\nAs the saying goes, \"manage your time or others will do it for you.\" No matter\nhow stressful this may seem now, this may be an opportunity to learn some time\nand work queue management skills. The earlier in your career you begin\ncultivating these skills, the better.\n\nI'm happy to elaborate on any of the above.\n\n~~~\nkwiromeo\nI agree with this. Definitely learn to push back. I've been in a similar\nsituation albeit in aviation systems engineering. The way I dealt with a lot\nof incoming request was to always point out that I had things that were\nalready on the back burner. I would phrase it along the lines of: \"I am\ncurrently doing Y, and was planning to do X and Z next. Is A you're asking me\nto do urgent? If yes, I can do it after Y of you're okay with X and Z being\ndelayed.\" This usually got me a response that indicated want the priority was.\nI would also really try not to let the current work I was doing being stopped.\nStopping something midtask would always make the same item I was working on\ntake longer, so I would push back if they tried to stop current work\nmidstream. I would say: \"I'm X hours away from accomplish this task. Can item\nA your asking wait until then?\" That usually got me some good relief.\n\nOne item to note that this is also an opportunity to request some training,\neither formal or informal. Find the skill that if improved would easily\nincrease your task output, find formal training for it in the area or nearby.\nIf you can put a cost benefit analysis on a 1 page word doc, you might be able\nto take this opportunity to improve your skills as well.\n\n------\nJSeymourATL\n> But I'm finding it increasingly difficult to deal with the stress of\n> managing all of this.\n\nWhat's the REAL challenge here for you?\n\nAny Bozo can quit and find a new job. It takes BRAINS to learn how to Manage\nYourself.\n\nOn this subject, Drucker is brilliant. >\n[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2477223.Managing_Oneself](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2477223.Managing_Oneself)\n\n------\njiveturkey\n> while going through the whole post-grad thing.\n\nOT, but what is the whole \"post-grad thing\"? You earned a PhD?\n\n------\n7532yahoogmail\nDear OP: here's some career advice: you're not thinking right or doing right\nif you can't figure this out for yourself. Just like I've said on reddit's lpt\nform reality is you gotta figure it out for yourself and stop shopping your\nlife around on the internet\n\n~~~\ntashi\n\"Don't ask for help and just figure it out yourself.\"\n\nSeems like terrible career advice and terrible life advice to me, but I'm no\nexpert on either.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTell HN: Personalized streaming video workouts (my second start-up) - podman\n\nI very recently soft-launched http://www.physicalfix.com, my second start-up. While it is still very much a work in progress, I thought I'd share it here since health and fitness seems to be something HN cares about and also because I value the feedback this community can offer.<p>The basic premise is this: We provide you with highly personalized and customized streaming video workouts with a 'virtual training partner'. The partner will do the complete workout along with you and provide tips on proper form as well as provide some motivation.<p>We also have a food log, activity log, and weight chart. We tried to tie these all together so that when you do a workout it shows up in your activity log and when you enter some food it'll calculate your caloric balance and forecast your weight in the future.<p>We've got a ton of features planned like mobile apps, augmented reality workouts, an educational series to help people learn about health, fitness and nutrition as well integrations with things like the withings scale.<p>What do you guys think?\n======\nterryjsmith\nLooking briefly at your pricing plans, and having just done some in person\npersonal training, I would like to have access to a personal training but\ndon't necessarily need that access 24/7. If I could send an e-mail with a 24\nhour response time or something with your basic plan that would be perfect.\n\nOther than that it definitely looks good and I think could be a great\nalternative to spending $75 a session with a personal trainer at the gym.\n\n~~~\npodman\nWe have considered, and are still considering, single serve workouts. If there\nis a big demand for something like that, we'll probably implement it.\n\n------\nSHOwnsYou\nSo I'm supposed to bring my laptop into the gym with me?\n\nI love the idea, but man would it feel awkward looking at a computer or my\nphone screen in the gym to make sure my benchpress technique is right.\n\nIf this is geared more towards body-weight exercises, what is your advantage\nover something like P90X or Insanity?\n\n~~~\npodman\nWell, the original goal was for it to be workouts you do at home. The value\nproposition is that you can get a gym quality workout with a personal trainer\nin the comfort of your home without having to pay gym membership fees or for\nan expensive personal trainer.\n\nThat said, we do plan on writing apps for both iOS and Andriod so you can take\nit with you to the gym if you would like to. It's not JUST body weight\nexercises though and we have exercises for dumbbells and exercise bands\n(things people are likely to have at home). And we do plan on adding exercises\nthat incorporate gym or home gym equipment as well.\n\nThe advantage over something like p90X or Insanity is that these workouts are\ncustomized for you based on your current fitness levels and your fitness goals\nby an actual personal trainer. Every workout is unique and different so you're\nnot doing the same thing week in and week out. It's not just some generic\nprogram that is the same for everyone who is doing it.\n\n~~~\nSHOwnsYou\nInitially I am getting a strange feeling about the idea. It is likely just\nbecause I am not your target market. I work out 4-5 days a week and would\nrather pay the $40/month for a gym membership with top of the line equipment\ninstead of the convenience of working out at home. The gym is where I let off\nsteam by myself without the fiance right next to me.\n\nI don't want to shoot down your idea, but I do see a few problems with it...\n\n1) At my gym, I can bring my fiance as my plus 1 every time. Your web app\ndoesn't scale the same way.\n\n2) Anyone that already works out has a major outlay of cash to spend to get up\nand running. Dumbbells, exercise bands, maybe a few kettle balls... PLUS the\nmembership fee.\n\n3) Solitude. I can't get away from my family when I am at home. At the gym I\nam in my own little world.\n\nFor people that just exercise (ie no complex weight training) and are willing\nto watch it on their computer, I think the idea is great. But I also think\nyou'll see more success if you target a specific class of gym-goers.\n\n------\npodman\nI put together a quick video for those wondering what the actual video\nworkouts look like for the basic tier:\n<http://sproutvideo.com/videos/e898d2ba1d1de2cc60?type=hd>\n\n(hosted on my other start-up)\n\n------\nandrewtbham\nso it's sorta like buying a workout tape, except the exercises are\npersonalized for you? that seems pretty clever and useful. i don't know much\nabout this space... is anyone else doing this?\n\n~~~\nbyoung2\nI don't know who else is applying this to workouts specifically, but the same\ntechnique would be worth trying for all kinds of applications: tutoring,\ndance, music lessons, foreign language.\n\n~~~\nhugh3\nWhat's the advantage over in-person tutoring, dance, music lessons et cetera?\n\nIf it's cost, it'd better be significantly cheaper.\n\n~~~\nbyoung2\n_What's the advantage over in-person tutoring, dance, music lessons et\ncetera?_\n\nYou can break the geographical boundaries. If the best math tutor in the\ncountry lives in New York, and I live in Arizona, I'm out of luck. I worked\nfor Kaplan, College Network, Sylvan Learning Center, and Veritas Prep...this\nwas always the problem. If you live in Manhattan, you're in a great place to\nfind GMAT tutors. If you live in Wyoming, your choices are more limited\n(noting against Wyoming, but people with high GMAT scores and MBA's tend to be\non Wall Street). A system like this would allow equal access to great tutors,\nregardless of location. I know someone who flew a tutor from New York to Miami\nfor tutoring. So it's not always about price. If I can get a better tutor\nonline than I can get within driving distance, I'll pay the same or more.\n\n------\npodman\nclickable link: <http://www.physicalfix.com>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHillary Clinton is already using Pokémon Go to register voters - jflowers45\nhttp://www.vox.com/2016/7/14/12192666/pokemon-go-hillary-clinton-campaign\n======\nblackflame7000\nShe's even hosting a private server to help alleviate traffic :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe aliens are silent because they're dead - bemmu\nhttp://phys.org/news/2016-01-aliens-silent-theyre-dead.html\n======\noliwarner\nHow is this news? I'm serious. This is essentially how evolution was taught to\nme some 17 years ago so I'm genuinely surprised to see an article stating this\n\"bottleneck\" as a new theory.\n\nWe exist because of a sequence of scenarios. The probability of that sequence\nhappening elsewhere is rare but given the size and complexity of space, is\nlikely to happen in a similar way elsewhere, at some point in time.\n\nBut it's far more likely that early-stage micro-organisms don't manage to\nevolve. Or other natural extinction-level events occur.\n\nThe headline, that \"aliens are silent\" is very silly. They're only silent in\nthe same way that our native bacteria are silent. Most have no concept of —or\ncapability for— local communication, let alone interplanetary communication.\nThen they die.\n\n~~~\nbemmu\nI think the new bit was that it is also necessary for life to quickly evolve\nin such a way that it starts to regulate the climate.\n\n------\narc0re\nHaha I don't think humans would be the only species to survive. Its literally\nimpossible, we are so messy and still we managed to survive for a while.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLessons Learned: The power of small batches - TristanKromer\nhttp://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2011/09/power-of-small-batches.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+startup%2Flessons%2Flearned+%28Lessons+Learned%29\n======\nmrgoldenbrown\nI like the fact that an experiment was done. I don't like the conclusion that\nbatching is always bad. Yes, for this arbitrary subset of tasks, batching was\nslower. But if we had included walking to the nearest mailbox to the flow,\nbatching would have won. Or if we had included printing the flyers at the\nbeginning, batching would have won again. The steps done in the video are what\nI would consider one step in a larger batch process: Step 1: print X flyers.\nStep 2: stuff X flyers. Step 3: mail X flyers. The take home shouldn't be that\nbatching is always bad, but that we have to experiment to find what the best\nmix of batching/OPF is.\n\n~~~\nkanamekun\nThe battle over batching and batch size has been going on for decades in the\nworld of lean manufacturing. An example quote:\n\n\"American manufacturing managers traditionally considered setup costs as a\nnecessary evil and made little or no effort to reduce them.\"\n\n\"The lean/JIT philosophy suggests that a firm should eliminate any reliance\nupon the [Economic Order Quantity] formula and seek the ideal production\nquantity of one. Of course, a lot size of one is not always feasible, but it\nis a goal used to focus attention on the concept of rapid adjustments and\nflexibility. Naturally, a reduction in inventory levels means an increase in\nsetups or orders, so the responsibility rests with production to make every\neffort to reduce setup time and setup costs.\"\n\n[http://www.enotes.com/management-encyclopedia/lean-\nmanufactu...](http://www.enotes.com/management-encyclopedia/lean-\nmanufacturing-just-time-production)\n\nThe key Lean insight here is to lower setup costs for tasks to as close to\nzero as possible. An example of that might be working to lower the costs of\ndoing making a build from your source code. If you can get that cost close to\nzero, then you are much more likely to see regular code check ins.\n\nThis lean principle is tremendously useful in pushing you towards more agile\ndevelopment. If you can lower the batch size of your feature releases to a\nmuch smaller batch size (or even one, i.e. continuous deployment), that can\nhave huge benefits.\n\n------\nhuherto\nAs far as I understand, there is an optimum batch size that depends on the\nparticular process. Lean manufacturing looks for smaller batch sizes, but it\nmay not be one for a particular process.\n\n~~~\neries\nYes, that's true. For a lot more detail, and how this applies to product\ndevelopment, see [http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/07/principles-\nof-p...](http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/07/principles-of-product-\ndevelopment-flow.html)\n\n~~~\nhuherto\nThis is a great post. You should submit it to HN so more people can read it.\nThanks.\n\n------\nwccrawford\nI think this is great advice for actually producing things, but the analogy to\nstartups is too strained for me to get anything from it.\n\n~~~\njleader\nI think the analogy to startups is this:\n\nYou can plan 100 features, implement 100 features, launch 100 features, get\nfeedback on 100 features\n\nOR\n\nYou can plan, implement, and launch 1 feature, get feedback on it, then move\non to the next feature, and repeat 100 times.\n\nObviously, the feedback in the 2nd case is much more immediately useful; the\npoint of the post was that even in a relatively simple case where you wouldn't\nexpect nearly as much value from the feedback (stuffing envelopes), the small-\nbatch approach _still_ wins.\n\n~~~\nwccrawford\nAgain, I think that's too strained. In stuffing the envelopes, you can learn\neverything you need to know about the next 99 iterations from the first one.\n\nIn implementing features, the lessons will be different almost every time.\n\nTimescale is also completely different. You can do 1 envelope at a time\nbecause there's no waiting involved.\n\nIt takes time to evaluate the result of implementing a feature. Not because\nit's so much work, but because you don't control the factor that really\nmatters: The customer.\n\n~~~\npilom\nYou have obviously never stuffed 100 envelopes if you think you learn\neverything you need to learn from the first one. If you attempt to be mildly\nefficient about it your process has continuous improvement. \"If I spin this\npile 90 degrees I can start the folding easier.\" There are things you don't\nrealize until you've done 5 envelopes, done 10 envelopes and done 100\nenvelopes.\n\n~~~\nwccrawford\nI said 'can learn', not 'will learn'. You -can- learn all those things from\nthe first one.\n\nMy point is that the lessons are different for each function, but the same for\neach envelope.\n\n------\ntrewq\nGreat post, creating positive feedback loops is the way to go.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNetflix’s US Catalog Has Shrunk by More Than 2,500 Titles in Less Than 2.5 Years - chewymouse\nhttps://www.allflicks.net/netflixs-us-catalog-has-shrunk-by-more-than-2500-titles-in-less-than-2-5-years/\n======\njawbone3\nActually a line chart would probaby been better at making the change look\ndramatic, thinner bars would have helped too...\n\n------\nangersock\nHuh. Nice to see numbers back up something that I seemed to be seeing over the\nlast few years but was unable to prove.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow To Send Email When You're Dead - edw519\nhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/5975597/Emails-sent-by-dead.html\n\n======\nyannis\n... and when you are done with the emails, here is a sure method to freak\neveryone at your funeral. Ask to be buried with your mobile and have your best\nfriend ring you, just about when you down. For a bit of extra buzz he can\npretend you have answered! If you really lucky - assuming a dead person can be\nlucky - your dead blog can get slashdot!\n\nPS. Will not work with cremation.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFirst Extraterrestrial Hydrothermal System Found on Saturn's Moon Enceladus - mryall\nhttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article/first-active-hydrothermal-system-found-beyond-earth/?ref=hn\n\n======\nmryall\nIt's amazing how much we still have to learn about our own solar system, and\nstaggering how long the research takes.\n\n> Cassini is scheduled for three more encounters with Enceladus, including one\n> final plunge through a plume, before it is sent to a fiery death in Saturn’s\n> atmosphere to avoid crashing into and contaminating the ringed planet's icy\n> moons.\n\nGreat that they're thinking in advance about this stuff. Would be a shame to\ncontaminate our best chance of discovering microbial ET with spores from\nearth.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBig ideas from \"Inspired\" that helped me feel more confident as an entrepreneur - zackattack\nhttp://www.zacharyburt.com/2011/01/big-ideas-from-marty-cagans-inspired-that-helped-me-feel-more-confident-on-how-to-proceed-with-my-business/\n======\nkeeptrying\nThe best part of the book is that each chapter is o Ly like 4 pages. So it\ndoesn't spend 40 pages on one simple concept if it can be explained in 2\npages.\n\nThe bad side is that it only has a minimum number of examples. More examples\nwould have been nice.\n\n------\nvrish88\nIn your post you present a lot of new information that could help your\nbusiness but you don't have a lot of experience in those matters. Don't let\nthis stop you from trying them. Instead learn as you go. Keep them under\nconstant surveillance. Figure out what you want a strategy to accomplish. As\nyou utilize it, if it isn't leading you to your goal, cut it off. If it is\nthen foster and encourage it.\n\n------\ngaiusparx\nAny idea where can I purchase an epub version? I try not to buy printed book\nand I have no access to Kindle.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWebODM – A free, extendable application and API for drone image processing - pierotofy\nhttps://www.webodm.org\n======\npierotofy\nMaintainer here, happy to answer questions!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMechanical webpage hitcounter - bemmu\nhttp://spritesmods.com/?art=mechctr\n======\ncomboy\n\n         every time a person requests a page from my site, \n         the counter would give a satisfying 'Click!'\n    \n\nThis is going to be a pretty loud night for the author ;)\n\nI guess most people here know this site well, but if not it's definitely worth\nexploring. Lots of cool projects and much to learn.\n\n~~~\nclemlais\nI wonder what will happen if the frequency of requests is faster than the\ncounter refresh rate. Does the counter stay consistent ?\n\n~~~\ncomboy\nIt reacts to a pulse, so you could solve that with a queue in software,\nwithout that, my guess is that it would be missing clicks (pulses would\noverlap, since I'm assuming there is some minimum required width of it)\n\n------\njacquesm\nSuggested improvement: put a webcam in front of it for full-circle :)\n\n------\ndapra\nAnother nice electromechanical hit counter:\n[https://vimeo.com/119746422](https://vimeo.com/119746422)\n\n------\nxigency\nHm, this seems like a pretty risky way to connect this device to your PC -\nusing a serial port.\n\nEdit: And THAT connection:\n[http://meuk.spritesserver.nl/foto/foto/misc5/img_1999.jpg](http://meuk.spritesserver.nl/foto/foto/misc5/img_1999.jpg)\n\n~~~\nsokoloff\nHe has discussion about that hack here:\n[http://spritesmods.com/?art=mechctr&page=2](http://spritesmods.com/?art=mechctr&page=2)\n\nSeems reasonable enough to me.\n\n~~~\nxigency\nSure, depending on your computer. If you have a $500 graphics card plugged\ninto a 600W power supply, connecting wires into ports that might short circuit\ncould be seen as a 'bad idea'.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "Ask HN: What are the best books for learning software architecture? - liamcurry\n======\nplaying_colours\nThe Architecture of Open Source applications [0]. I suggest also to check, but\nthey are more specific, Enterprise Integration Patterns [1]. Building Big Data\nsystems, Data Intensive applications [2], [3]. The best way to learn is\npractice - open source project or lending an appropriate job.\n\n[0] [http://aosabook.org/en/index.html](http://aosabook.org/en/index.html)\n\n[1]\n[http://martinfowler.com/books/eip.html](http://martinfowler.com/books/eip.html)\n\n[2] [http://www.manning.com/marz/](http://www.manning.com/marz/)\n\n[3]\n[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032175.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032175.do)\n\n~~~\nthorin\nI really like the look of the patterns of enterprise application architecture\nbook also by Martin fowler but is there really nothing more recent covering\nthe same subject. Surely a new edition is overdue?\n\n~~~\nthorin\nThere doesn't appear to be much architecture stuff which is more recent, but I\nhad a look through this book today and it seems to hold up pretty well. It\nwould be great to see a bang up to date version though.\n\n------\nbzalasky\nYou might be interested in _Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer\nProgramming_ by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi\n([http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-\nPr...](http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-\nProgramming/dp/0262220695)). It presents an overview of different programming\nmodels, and expounds on the right way to approach problems with these\ndifferent models. I found the chapters on concurrency useful myself.\n\nWhile not a book, an alternative strategy that might be helpful would be to\nexplore some projects like TorqueBox (Ruby) or Immutant (Clojure) that pull\ntogether a lot of different solutions (web server, application server,\nmessaging, caching, transactions and scheduling) into a suite.\n\n------\nsolomatov\nOne of the best books on architecture: [http://www.amazon.com/Domain-Driven-\nDesign-Tackling-Complexi...](http://www.amazon.com/Domain-Driven-Design-\nTackling-Complexity-Software/dp/0321125215)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAn SQL in Shell, written by Bruce Momjian of PostgreSQL core. - andrewvc\nhttp://blog.andrewvc.com/before-postgresql-bruce-momjian-wrote-an-sql\n\n======\nabecedarius\n<http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/awkbook/> has a 1-page relational query program\ncalled qawk. Awk-based syntax, not SQL.\n\n------\ndavidmathers\nThere are actually several shell script relational databases. If I remember\ncorrectly one of them was even a successful commercial venture.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGmail Android App Bug Lets You Send Emails Pretending to Be Someone Else - TravelTechGuy\nhttp://motherboard.vice.com/read/gmail-android-app-bug-lets-you-send-emails-pretending-to-be-someone-else\n======\ndfc\nAs soon as you think Vice is starting to get their tech content in order they\npolish a turd like this..\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAshamed to work in Silicon Valley: how techies became the new bankers - beauzero\nhttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/08/ashamed-to-work-in-silicon-valley-how-techies-became-the-new-bankers\n======\nmalvosenior\n> is perceived: as under-regulated, overly powerful companies filled with\n> wealthy tech bros and “brilliant assholes”\n\nI’m not so sure the industry is “perceived” like this, it’s more like old\nmedia outlets (especially The Guardian and NYT) relentlessly push this message\nand this piece is no different.\n\nI get that technology has destroyed their ability to gatekeep messaging, their\nbusiness model and their prestige but at some point old media attacks become\ntoo transparent and probably have the opposite effect as intended. I think\ntechnologists have reached that point. I don’t know if the general audience\nhas yet but I’ve never heard anyone complain about “tech bros” in real life\n(probably because they don’t really exist).\n\n~~~\nslivym\nIt's perceived like that by me, and I work in the industry. You can take\nLevandowski, Kalanick, Jobs, Zuckerberg, or many others.\n\nIf there's no problem with Brilliant Assholes in technology then why are there\nsuch a clear pattern of them?\n\nPaul Graham has got a no-asshole rule for a reason- and it's not because he\nfinds it difficult to find assholes to fund.\n\n~~~\nBartweiss\nIt still feels like this approach runs on anecdote, and on equivocation\nbetween \"techies\" and \"billionaire tech CEOs\".\n\nPeople with enormous power and wealth are frequently terrible across all\nindustries. I'm still fairly convinced Kalanick has more in common with\nWeinstein and Miki Agrawal than your average trenches-level programmer, simply\nbecause power corrupts. (If tech has a singular problem, it's that startup\nculture means some people are in power for their whole careers.)\n\nAnd at the trenches level: yeah, brilliant assholes are a thing in software.\nAnd classical music, and physics, and law, and... They're all specialized\nfields with noninterchangeable work, power-law payouts, and room to minimize\nhuman interaction in daily work.\n\nI don't disagree with you that this happens in the field, and I definitely\nappreciate hearing from people in the field who might agree with this article.\nBut it still feels like there's a pattern of comparing Silicon Valley to\nWallstreet, while ignoring the myriad other fields with similar dynamics.\nThat, not the existence of assholes, is the part that feels agenda-driven to\nme.\n\n~~~\nmcguire\nA few points:\n\n1\\. The median household income in the US is something like 1/3 to 1/2 of what\nI understand the starting salaries are in SV. For most outside the tech\nbubble, economically, there is little visible difference between \"techies\" and\n\"billionaire CEOs\".\n\n2\\. Much of Kalanick's behavior is mirrored by lesser techies, albeit on a\nsmaller scale.\n\n3\\. Anyone have any hard numbers on the size of the \"techies and billionaire\nCEOs\" class versus the total professional classical musicians and physicists\nin the world? Certainly, the former seems to have more actual impact.\n\n4\\. Do you really want to live on the pointy end of lawyer and wall street\nbanker jokes?\n\n(\"What's the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?\" \"One is a bottom\nfeeding scum-sucker; the other is a fish.\")\n\n~~~\ntj-teej\nWhat and a kid who just graduated from college with 80K of debt and is writing\ntest automation for Google is a scum-sucker? Give me a break...\n\n------\nPeekPoke\nI've been in the computer industry for 30 years now. Back when I started we\nwere all looked down on as underachieving losers who couldn't talk to 'normal'\npeople, couldn't get laid and would never amount to anything in 'the real\nworld'. Look at the world now, look at programs like The Big Bang Theory - the\nworld has change and the geeks have truly inherited the earth. How they are\nbehaving is as clear an example as you can possibly get when the originally\ndowntrodden get power, wealth and influence - they use it and say 'F*ck you'\nto those who laughed at them and are now no longer at the top of the pile. Go\nfigure.\n\n~~~\nskizm\nI agree with this for the most part, but The Big Bang Theory is a bad example\nimo. It is still laughing _at_ geeks, not with them. I think that's why it\nrubs a lot of people (myself included) the wrong way.\n\n~~~\nBartweiss\nThere's certainly a reason _Silicon Valley_ got away with duplicating the\ncomponents of _Big Bang_ exactly.\n\nLike, they've both got the stereotypical awkward Indian engineer who can't\ntalk to women, but SV took a novel approach by not hating him. SV's weird-by-\nengineering-standards characters are weird for reasons outside of their\nnerdiness (e.g. Jared's German-language night terrors), BBT just turned\nSheldon's nerdiness up to 11. (And created a _really_ nasty autism stereotype\nin the process.) And so on.\n\n(Can anyone imaging BBT finding a stereotype as obscure as Gilfoyle's\noccultist thing? Because that's definitely a 'thing', but it's some serious\ninside baseball.)\n\nIf anything, you might argue that the transition from _Big Bang_ to _Silicon\nValley_ is a display of the changing position of nerds. More realistically,\nthough, I think they're just aiming at different demographics.\n\n~~~\ninternetman55\nI thought the Indian guy on BBT was one of the more sympathetic characters. He\nis a bit sheltered, but seems to do significantly fewer stupid things than the\nrest of the cast. Also seems to be a good friend. But I've only seen a few\nepisodes.\n\n------\nVicVee\n\"“You wake up, get the shuttle bus, go to the bubble of campus and order food\nvia an app when you get home. You are not a citizen, just a bizarre leach who\nmakes money,” he explained.\"\n\nI'm not sure I understand. The whole article is just describing literally\nanyone in any industry.\n\nWhat people can't seem to grasp is that tech in SF/SV simply created a massive\ninsular culture that doesn't contribute to the culture that was previously\nthere. It just took over ruthlessly. All previous artistic beauty that was in\nSF is just gone now and replaced with tech kids that get paid a ton and would\nrather spend it on cryptocurrencies and music festivals than participating in\nthe city's artistic scene.\n\nIts no wonder at all why people don't like tech people. Its not because they\nget paid a ton. Its just because they get paid a ton and have no care for\nanything that was previously there.\n\nBut I mean, its a tiny city and the city's building regulations don't do much\nin the way in helping with gentrification at all. Not sure what else could\nhave possibly happened.\n\n~~~\nneilk\n> I'm not sure I understand. > The whole article is just describing literally\n> anyone in any industry.\n\nTeachers. Surgeons. Physiotherapists. Soldiers. Artists. Grocers. Cleaners.\nMiners. Forestry. Farmers. Elder care. The people who drive your shuttle bus.\n\nMost industries require contact with other humans, and implicate you in their\nhappiness. In techland, we are already a step removed from our customers\n(because we create autonomous artifacts.) But beyond that, now we’re powered\nby overwhelming amounts of capital. And the whole point of that capital is to\ncreate vast power imbalances between you and the people you’re allegedly\nserving.\n\nIn a previous decade, computer programmers could have counted themselves as\ncitizens. Connecting and empowering people. Maybe a lot us still are. But\nlately, a lot of what we’re doing is finding new ways to yank Jenga pieces out\nof society, in hopes that all the pieces will fall into our bosses’ laps.\n\n~~~\nBartweiss\n> _Most industries require contact with other humans, and don’t rely on\n> overwhelming amounts of capital to try to create vast power imbalances\n> between you and the people you’re allegedly serving._\n\nI agree with the statement, but I'm not sure it squares with your list? Tech\nand banking aren't unique in offering the chance to sit alone in an office and\nturn early advantages into ludicrous excess.\n\nBroadly, we're talking about jobs that have power-law payouts among their\npractitioners, require highly skilled (and hard to interchange) labor, and\ndon't intrinsically punish jerks (meaning limited interaction with coworkers\nor customers). Not all of them make billions, but they get something\nexponential that encourages them to compete - fame or professional power or\njob security.\n\nThat's a lot of careers. Orchestral musicians fit, lawyers fit, surgeons fit\nin spades, artists and mathematicians and philosophers all fit.\n\nObviously tech and banking are not equivalent to those things - heart surgeons\nhave never destroyed the economy. But I think it's a catastrophic mistake to\ntry and understand why tech and banking cause these problems by acting like\nthe professional demeanor is unique. That is at best a starting point, a way\nof acknowledging that if yanking pieces out of society is easy and rewarding\nit will happen. The question from there is \"how do we stop that from\nhappening?\"\n\n(I'm not sure how much we honestly disagree, I just think the distinction is\nimportant. That Jenga metaphor is fantastic.)\n\n~~~\nfalcolas\nSomething of an aide from the main thrust of your argument:\n\n> Orchestral musicians fit\n\nMy friend who was in the Boston Pops disagrees - the pay was crap (he had to\nprovide music lessons on the side to maintain a reasonable income), the\npressure was humongous, and their off-hours practice to keep at the top of\ntheir game puts our own hobby programming efforts to shame. Like video games,\nall musicians want to perform in the big orchestras, creating a highly\ncompetitive supply glut.\n\nI'm also fairly certain that most mathematicians and philosophers come nowhere\nnear to our power distribution curve.\n\nThat leaves us in the company of bankers, lawyers, and surgeons. Not the\nhighest prestige group of people to exist alongside. Especially since, while\nwell off, we're making nowhere near their \"Fuck You\" levels of money.\n\n~~~\nBartweiss\nFrom the responses here, I think I was unclear with the power law part.\n\nI don't just mean \"the pay distribution is exponential\". I mean any system\nwhere the rewards of the work (as judged by the people doing it) accrue\nprimarily to a small fraction of the workers. This isn't about the size of the\npayout, it's about a system where competition and potentially ruthlessness\nwithin the labor force have substantial benefits. (Contrasted with careers\nlike factory labor where getting 'ahead' of coworkers doesn't have much to\noffer.)\n\nSo for orchestras, \"all musicians want to perform in the big orchestras,\ncreating a highly competitive supply glut\" aligns nicely with what I mean,\neven if that supply keeps salaries down. Most talented musicians don't make it\ninto a career, most career musicians teach in schools or play weddings or\notherwise don't make it to the Pops. Video game design is another power-law\nreturn - most people don't get to lead teams, most team leads don't make hit\ngames. The same for mathematicians - the payouts are largely status, tenure,\nand prestigious institutions, but they're still exponentially distributed.\n\nA decent definition would be any profession where the stereotypical example\nand the prototypical example are completely out of sync. The prototypical\ntruck driver is basically what we imagine them to be. The prototypical\nsoftware engineer works on an inventory system for a non-tech company\nsomeplace outside the Valley, and has nothing much in common with the 'techie'\nstereotype.\n\n------\nsverige\nThe video of Dropbox employees trying to kick local kids off the soccer field\nis exactly how I picture most of the failed social interactions in Silicon\nValley. Utterly clueless, then they wonder why people say they dislike them.\n\n~~~\ncounterpoint1\nYa, how dare some people want to use a field they had reserved ahead of time!\n\nSometimes I wonder what bizarro world other people are living in. Every city\nin America has public spaces which can be reserved - playing fields, gazebos,\npark areas, picnic spaces, museums, art spaces. Only because it was tech\nworkers in SF does anyone suddenly pretend like first-come first-served\nlaissez faire is the only acceptable use of shared resources.\n\n~~~\nsverige\nObviously the kids that were there had no idea that it could be reserved. See\nanother comment here about that reservation being available only on an app,\nnot the website.\n\nThe cluelessness is in the aggressive assertion of their \"rights\" and their\ncomplete failure to listen to what the local kids were saying. Hell, they\ncouldn't even be bothered to play a pickup game with them.\n\nThe frightened / annoyed looks of the two Dropboxers when they realized they\nwere on video adds to the hilarity. I was pretty sure they wanted to be cops\nasserting some bogus right not to be filmed in a public space at that moment.\n\n~~~\nred75prime\nOne party paid the money for reservation, other party is ignorant of the\nrules. Situation is pretty clear to me, but I'm programmer and have trouble\nnoticing subtle unwritten social rules.\n\n~~~\ngyom\nSure, the rules are simple, but if you listen to the guy who says that he grew\nup here, he explains that field has NEVER been reserved. It’s easy to imagine\nhow some bureaucrat updated the rules and accidentally destroyed a nice social\nspace by turning it into a field that people pay for, use, and leave (opposed\nto a more spontaneous meeting place for young people who aren’t that\norganized).\n\nYou can’t fault the Dropbox people there for making a reservation and\nexpecting that it would be valid. They’re a bit clueless in how they respond,\nthough, not realizing that those rules are clashing with the unofficial social\ndynamics happening there.\n\n(Semi-related : That’s why we might feel that banks are assholes for\nforeclosing houses that belong to deployed soldiers. Legally they can do it,\nbut it sounds like it’s the shittiest application of the law.)\n\n------\nNiklasMort\nLet's be honest here, lot of people should be, there are too many jobs in tech\nthat are morally questionable and people just do it because they get a 6+\nfigure salary. I had a personal experience with that in a new company and\nwithin the first hour some upper head stated \"we don't like opensource,\nopensource is a problem\" (silicon valley company). Lot of other related\nissues, see the threads on the homelessness issue that was posted today.\nSilicon Valley is living in a bubble\n\n~~~\nthisisit\nI don't get it. How is stating \"we don't like opensource, opensource is a\nproblem\" considered morally questionable or bad? There are lot of companies\nout there, outside SV, which don't really care for open source for various\nreasons. Whether they are correct or not, is a separate matter.\n\n~~~\nspacelizard\nYou can tell a lot about a company by their attitude on this. The fact that\n\"you should let your users have freedom\" is still a controversial statement in\nthose type of companies should tip you off as to how they treat their\ncustomers.\n\nAlso, the fact that we still often have to use \"open source\" as a euphemism\nfor \"free software\" in these type of situations illustrates the point even\nfurther. Freedom or liberty does not matter to these companies. It's not even\nabout money or greed to them as they often give away their software/services\nwithout charging. All they care about is establishing complete control and\ndominance of the market.\n\n~~~\nthisisit\nI think you are conflating two different things here. I am not debating the\nfirst paragraph on how companies treat users but I really doubt the 2nd para.\n\nNot using \"open source\" doesn't mean what you are implying. There are a lot of\nconsiderations companies go through on selecting to work on OSS or not.\n\nThat said, the quoted example is confusing at best. Companies are made of\npeople and people have biases. You never know what kind of bias or\nconsideration the hiring manager had in mind. Normally, for me if someone\nmakes a statement which I don't agree with - I do make an effort to ask\n\"Why?\". I don't simply walk off because someone has a different opinion. But\nmaybe, that is my idea of getting hired - understanding what and why of things\nI might end up doing.\n\n~~~\nspacelizard\nThis is exactly what I mean though. The term \"open source\" has become so\nincredibly politicized that it doesn't mean anything any more. I used to use\nthe term in business contexts but I don't anymore because of this. The real\nissue is how they treat others. For me a good metric has been if a company is\nwilling to focus on empowering the customer and giving them freedom and\nliberty.\n\nI've noticed that hammering \"why\" only seems to work at mid-sized companies --\nin the case of a fortune 500, then the whys are usually significantly\ndisconnected from what most employees are doing, unless you're talking to the\nboard or senior management, in which case you are probably being paid to\ndetermine the why. In the case of a startup, everyone seems to be running\naround like chickens with their heads cut off frantically trying to determine\nthe \"why\" but no one is really sure of what it is.\n\n------\nKKKKkkkk1\nI personally don't know anyone who works in finance, but I doubt that many of\nthem are ashamed of what they do. And I know plenty of people in tech, and\nmost of them are actually proud and well respected by their peers for it. So I\nguess it's just wishful thinking from the Guardian.\n\n~~~\ntaternuts\nAnecdotal, but I actually work with someone who was in finance making 10x what\nthe average programmer makes who gave it all up in his late 20's to code\nbecause he felt at the end of the day he was just ripping people off and\nmorally hated it. Probably not the usual case, though (I'd like to think I'd\ndo the same, but man, that was a lot of money to give up)\n\n------\nguiomie\n\"Some of these folks aren’t the most socially gifted people and therefore\nsuddenly having a culture encouraging this experience for them bleeds into\neverything, giving them a sense of self importance and entitlement.\" ... ahah,\nthere are socially awkward people in every industry, this is just blatant\ngeneralization.\n\nBut yah, Silicon Valley is becoming the next Wall Street, I can't count the\nnumber of MBA's at work anymore. I doubt things will get better with tech and\ncypto potentially getting bigger.\n\n------\npjs_\nThis video is pretty strong:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYNuR1oaQts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYNuR1oaQts)\n\n~~~\nfragsworth\nI don't mean to disparage him but I can't relate to the guy. Maybe I'm cold or\ndetached, but I feel little to no attachment to the places I grew up in as a\nkid, so I personally don't feel like they need to be preserved.\n\nI see it not as a loss, but more like a change.\n\nAlso no-fault evicting is not a terrible travesty. It sucks, but usually\nthere's compensation to help with moving expenses. If the land owners don't\nhave the ability to do this, renters can hold them by the balls (preventing a\nsale) and it would drive rent prices through the roof to compensate for this.\n\n------\nmnm1\n'“Being in tech puts a badge on you. Things are going bad for a large section\nof the economy in this area and here’s a shiny beacon of people getting paid\nfar too much for what they do.\"'\n\nWhile I agree that the execs are paid way too much, this isn't exclusive to\ntech. And if they're talking about your run of the mill software engineer\n(like me) then I disagree completely. There are multiple logical reasons why\ntech salaries are \"high\" (though really they're not that much higher than many\nother engineering disciplines' salaries). Another way to see it is that all\nother salaries are too low, but that's beside the point. As someone with tech\nskills, I can leave tomorrow and start my own business. If the salaries\nweren't high enough, I would either do that or work in a completely different\ncareer. Why would I do software if I could work an easier, less-stressful job\nfor the same amount of money? And finally, let's face it, most people cannot\nwrite software and will never be able to write software no matter how many\ncoding camps or classes they attend. Writing software isn't like making\ncoffee, a process anyone can learn. So people who have never written software,\nand probably don't have the capacity to do so if they wanted to, complaining\nthat run of the mill tech engineers like me are making too much money have no\nidea what they're talking about. I challenge them to learn tech, get into the\nindustry, do real-world work, and then do that for 1/2 or 1/3 of your typical\nsalary, if that's what they think the jobs are worth. Either that or shut up\nand stop being jealous, judgmental children.\n\n------\nbrad0\n> referencing his time at Dropbox when people would “fly around the office on\n> these stupid scooters and skateboards”\n\nWhy are techies being shamed because they’ve worked hard and spent it on\nsomething they like?\n\nThis is why tech has a diversity problem. It’s not the inner culture. It’s the\nouter culture and the shame attached to it.\n\nEDIT\n\nI don’t own one of those skateboards/scooters but I do appreciate working in a\nculture where people similar to me finally feel comfortable to be themselves\nwithout judgement.\n\nI feel that the people quoted in this article are a bit too manipulated by\nother’s opinions.\n\nIn the end you have to ask yourself: are _you_ happy doing the work here? If\nnot, then change. But if you yourself are happy and you leave because of the\nmedia’s opinion then you’re setting yourself up for a miserable life.\n\n~~~\ntomjen3\nWhy are techies being shamed because they’ve worked hard and spent it on\nsomething they like?\n\nCause the powers that used to be (newspapers, the established parties) are\nscared. More and more power is in the hands of the tech industry and it is\nreasonably popular (last numbers I read was that google had 88% approval,\nwhereas the approval of congress compared disfavourably with AIDS). Tech was\nthe wunderkind and underdog in the 90ies, mostly harmless and a producer of\nshiny toys.\n\nTech now has some amount of power, but because we are still outsiders we get\nstupid articles like that. My hope is that google figures out how to run an AI\nnewspaper (so the articles can be made free) and use it to remove the rest of\nthe power from the incumbents because they do too much damage to us.\n\n------\njstewartmobile\nUntil Google joins Goldman Sachs as yet another unelected branch of the\ngovernment, I think they're overstating it a bit.\n\nI'm sure Google's working hard on it though!\n\n~~~\nlovich\nGoogle and Facebook have already taken a good chunk of the fourth estate\n\n~~~\njstewartmobile\nWhen they get their $1T+ bailout at a moment's notice, I'll agree with\n\"became\". For now, they're just evil Jr.--still in the process of becoming.\n\n~~~\nlovich\nI get your point about government intervention, but you spoke about an\nunelected branch of the government. They are the new media and the media has\ntraditionally been considered an unofficial branch of the government\n\n~~~\njstewartmobile\nStill a long climb up evil mtn. if they want to push the bankers off their\nspot.\n\nMost poor people I know are only poor because of finance--title loans, student\nloans, rent-a-center, medical debt, credit cards, etc., and it's a race to the\nbottom for everyone since the banking system diminishes the value of cash\nfaster than most people can accumulate it.\n\nAt least Google is providing some kind of benefit to mankind alongside their\nfuckery.\n\n------\nmcgarnagle\nFrom one poison to the other.\n\n------\nlin_lin\nThe Guardian has a clear anti-tech/SV bias, I'll take the lot with a desert\nspoon of salt.\n\n~~~\nionised\nAnd once upon a time it had an almost sycophantic pro-tech/SV bias.\n\nThink about what has changed instead of just dismissing an argument outright\nwithout addressing any of its points.\n\n~~~\nlin_lin\nI honestly don't remember that. I could easily have predicated what would come\nup in the article, the G have a bizarre fascination with that mini-shuttle\nprotesting story. It comes up in pretty much every tech/SV story. Throw in a\nbunch of anecdotes, a few jabs at gentrification (because it's only tech\npeople who are responsible for it, not planning etc), the hilarious\nimplication that most techies work for the big companies listed when you and I\nboth know that bs, a video of a few morons from Dropbox and somehow that all\nequates to techies being the new bankers? Really? That's got past an editor?\n\n------\nalphonsegaston\nIt didn’t have to be this way and it still isn’t the only path we have. It’s\npossible to build technologies that are fundamentally more socialist and\nredistribute wealth back to their users. Social media is disruptible in this\nfashion and so is gathering data for training AIs.\n\nSan Francisco’s poverty and squalor is already a concrete example of where\nthis Wall St 2.0 mentality leads. Let’s work on escaping this path.\n\n~~~\nstevenwoo\nYour argument would hold more water if the homelessness issue were not a\nproblem all across coastal cities in California. I don't know what the cause\nis, but it isn't the technology industry, and I'm not a huge technology\ninduestry booster.\n\n~~~\nalphonsegaston\nExtreme wealth inequality is the source of the problem everywhere. In SF, that\ninequality is driven by tech.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCloaking a 3-D object from all angles demonstrated - chunkyslink\nhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16726609\n\n======\nblcArmadillo\nKinda reminds me of [http://www.eecs.umich.edu/eecs/about/articles/2011/guo-\ncamou...](http://www.eecs.umich.edu/eecs/about/articles/2011/guo-\ncamouflage.html).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nElm in Production: 25K Lines Later - Albert_Camus\nhttps://charukiewi.cz/posts/elm/\n======\nToJans\nFirst:\n\n> Elm has an incredibly powerful type system\n\nNear the end of the article:\n\n>Want to decode some JSON? Hard, especially if the JSON is heavily nested and\nit must be decoded to custom types defined in your application.\n\nIMHO the lack of typeclasses/traits is really hurting Elm. Take haskell f.e.\n\n    \n    \n      {-# LANGUAGE DeriveGeneric #-}\n      \n      import GHC.Generics\n      \n      data Person = Person {\n            name :: Text\n          , age  :: Int\n          } deriving (Generic, Show)\n      \n      instance ToJSON Person\n      instance FromJSON Person\n    \n\nWhile I understand Evan's aversion against complexity, it makes me a bit wary\nabout using ElmLang in production. I am currently using TypeScript, but if I\nwould need a more powerful type system, I would probably switch to\nHaskell/PureScript or OCaml/BuckleScript instead.\n\n~~~\nfbonetti\nI really wish people would stop spreading the meme that decoding JSON in Elm\nis \"hard\". Yes, Haskell allows you to automatically decode/encode datatypes,\nbut this only works in the simplest of cases. For example, if your backend\nreturns a JSON object with snake-cased fields, but your model has camel-cased\nfields, `instance ToJSON Person` won't work; you'll have to write a custom\ndecoder. The automatic decoders/encoders in Haskell only work if the shape of\nyour JSON perfectly matches your record definition.\n\nWriting decoders in Elm is not hard. It's manual. It's explicit. It forces you\nto specify what should happen if the JSON object has missing fields, incorrect\ntypes, or is otherwise malformed. There's a slight learning curve and it can\nbe time consuming at first, but it guarantees that your application won't blow\nup at runtime because of some bad data. Because of this, JSON decoding is\nfrankly one of my favorite parts about Elm.\n\nTypescript, on the other hand, offers no such guarantee. If you write a\nfunction that takes an Int and you accidentally pass it a String from a JSON\nresponse, your app will blow up and there's the nothing the compiler can do to\nhelp you. Personally, I'd rather write JSON decoders than have my app blow up\nbecause of a silly mistake.\n\n~~~\nsomenewacc\nYou don't need to write the decoder boilerplate manually to get all those\nbenefits.\n\nFor example, here's how you rename a JSON field while\nserializing/deserializing a data type in Rust:\n\n[https://play.rust-\nlang.org/?gist=1b382bc1572858841d5e392435d...](https://play.rust-\nlang.org/?gist=1b382bc1572858841d5e392435de73f4&version=stable)\n\nYou just annotate the field with #[serde(rename = \"..\")]. Here is a list of\nsuch annotations\n\n[https://serde.rs/field-attrs.html](https://serde.rs/field-attrs.html)\n\nSerde is also generic in the serialization format; the example I linked uses\nserde_json, and was adapted from its README here [https://github.com/serde-\nrs/json](https://github.com/serde-rs/json)\n\n~~~\nMaxGabriel\nSame for Haskell. This package provides common translations like snake_case to\nCamelCase:\n\n[https://www.stackage.org/haddock/lts-9.0/aeson-\ncasing-0.1.0....](https://www.stackage.org/haddock/lts-9.0/aeson-\ncasing-0.1.0.5/Data-Aeson-Casing.html)\n\nGiving you automatic encoders/decoders like so:\n\ninstance ToJSON Person where toJSON = genericToJSON $ aesonPrefix snakeCase\ninstance FromJSON Person where parseJSON = genericParseJSON $ aesonPrefix\nsnakeCase\n\nAnd the implementation of that package is like 4 simple lines for snake case;\nit's totally doable on your own for whatever you need\n[https://github.com/AndrewRademacher/aeson-\ncasing/blob/260d18...](https://github.com/AndrewRademacher/aeson-\ncasing/blob/260d18d62bbb57240b0b7b1e908c8a896ffd8d77/src/Data/Aeson/Casing/Internal.hs#L34-L40)\n\nI haven't had to do snake_case to CamelCase with Aeson before, but I have\ndropped a prefix before, like \"userName\" -> \"name\", \"userAge\" -> \"age\", and it\nwas pretty easy and well supported.\n\nAlso I would note that this isn't as big of a deal for Haskell and Rust,\nbecause they're primarily backend languages, so they're more often sending out\nJSON in whatever form they please, rather than consuming it. In my experience\nthe main consumers (Javascript on the web, Objective-C on iOS and Java on\nAndroid) use CamelCase anyway, so there's a natural compatibility.\n\n------\nantouank\nAfter doing a couple of contracts on Elm projects for several months, and\nreturning now back to a React-Redux stack project, I cannot emphasize enough\nhow much better working with Elm is.\n\nIn every single aspect. I just wish that it will get mainstream as soon as\npossible.\n\nHis article is spot on, and agrees with what I've seen, and most others that\nused Elm. Just look it up.\n\n~~~\nStreamBright\nI am more interested in the details that just this blank statement that\neverything is better. After trying Elm several times we failed to implement\neven basic things in it that we could do in React/Redux easily. For an average\nJS developer Elm is totally alien tech compare to React or Angular. For\nHaskell programmers Elm is pretty appealing because of the familiar syntax and\ntype system, but the intersection of Haskell programmers and frontend\ndevelopers are pretty small.\n\n~~~\nantouank\n\n         For an average JS developer Elm is totally alien tech compare to React or Angular\n    \n\nTo turn your argument the other way. The JS landscape, where \"trendy\"\nlibraries change every few months, is also alien to anyone that doesn't keep\nwith the latest libraries every few months. Is that not worse? I don't have to\nexplain \"JS fatigue\", it's a fact.\n\nFor example, I just got into a new team, and I have to now use what they use.\nI've been doing JS for 4+ years, and that stack I'm facing now, is alien and\nconfusing to me. I have to invest time and learn what the hell those redux-\nsagas are, or what \"magic\" create-react-app tools hide, and in general, it's\nvery confusing so far.\n\nWith Elm, I spent a few weeks 1 year ago to learn the language, and that was\nit. All the libraries are very simple to use because of the language. I doubt\nthat learning \"redux-sagas\" will help me a year from now.\n\nAlso, Elm, gives a very coherent package. You don't have to transpile or add a\nlinter, or a type checker, or stitch new libraries every few months because\nthe trend changed. No webpack or babel or eslint or immutable.js or typescript\nor flow or any of those.\n\nNot to go into the part of the safety and confidence the compiler gives you.\nTypescript or flow are not even close to that quality and guarantee level.\n_Note that again you have to learn their syntax and configure them, so that 's\nagain a cost on top of learning JS. And they are as much alien as Elm._\n\nFWIW, I start now side-projects in Elm, and I get things done way faster than\nwith JS. And that's also what I see from other people as well, regardless of\nwhether they come from JS or another language.\n\n~~~\nStreamBright\nWell sure, but as an architect/CTO I do not care about trendy, I care only\nabout properly working, easy to develop and maintain and wildly used so I can\nhire for. Elm is none of these at the moment, but React is.\n\n~~~\nrtfeldman\nProperly working, check.\n\nEasy to develop and maintain, big check.\n\nWidely used so you can hire - it's usually easier to hire Elm developers\nbecause there are more people who want to use it than jobs hiring for it. The\nopposite is true for JS. So...better than check, at least for right now! :)\n\nHere is a CTO giving a talk about his company's experiences with Elm:\n\n\"Elm from a business perspective\" \\-\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvQI1KntMhk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvQI1KntMhk)\n\n------\ndmjio\nIf decoding json in Elm is considered hard, I'd recommend checking out _miso_\n([https://github.com/dmjio/miso](https://github.com/dmjio/miso)), a Haskell\nre-implementation of the Elm arch. It has access to mature json libraries like\n_aeson_ for that sort of thing, along with mature lens libraries for updating\nyour model. Here's an example of decoding json with GHC.Generics using\ntypeclasses.\n[https://github.com/dmjio/miso/blob/master/examples/xhr/Main....](https://github.com/dmjio/miso/blob/master/examples/xhr/Main.hs#L130-L131)\n\n~~~\nenalicho\nYou don't need to switch a whole language because of JSON decoding. There are\nmany tools that exist to aid you write JSON decoders in Elm. The language is\nnot just about the architecture -- you can implement the architecture in any\nlanguage, as Redux has proven. What people like about Elm is the compiler and\ndesign philosophy that radiates through the entire community. Switching to\nHaskell won't give you that, as the Haskell community has different\npriorities.\n\nHere are some JSON tools for Elm:\n\n\\- json-to-elm [http://json2elm.com](http://json2elm.com)\n\n\\- swagger-elm [https://github.com/ahultgren/swagger-\nelm/](https://github.com/ahultgren/swagger-elm/)\n\n\\- elm-graphql [https://github.com/jahewson/elm-\ngraphql](https://github.com/jahewson/elm-graphql),\n[https://github.com/jamesmacaulay/elm-\ngraphql](https://github.com/jamesmacaulay/elm-graphql)\n\n\\- elm-export [https://hackage.haskell.org/package/elm-\nexport](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/elm-export)\n\n~~~\ndesireco42\nOh, this is awesome, json2elm really helps :) thanks, didn't know about it.\n\n~~~\nenalicho\nNo problem! Glad you found it useful :) It's not perfect by any means, but\nit's not meant to be.\n\n~~~\ndesireco42\nYeah right, just to jumpstart the effort, especially when there are a lot of\nentities.\n\n------\nendgame\nI'm really looking forward to the day when all these new-to-Elm people start\nhitting the complexity ceiling of their language and convince the maintainers\nto add just a little more power. Example: Haskell's typeclasses have a high\npower-to-weight ratio, and Elm has to work around their absence (e.g., writing\na fresh map function for each data type). Once there's a critical mass of\nfrontend types who understand the power of FP, convincing people to try FP\nwon't be the difficult step any more, and Elm won't need to try so hard to be\nun-intimidating.\n\n~~~\ndmitriid\nCan't for the life of me figure out why people equate FP with the abomination\nthat Haskell is.\n\nErlang is FP. Javascript is FP. Ocaml is FP.\n\nType classes, or anything else that has \"types\" in them such as dependent, or\nliquid, are not FP, they are types. Types that found their way into a couple\nof FP languages.\n\n~~~\nykler\nI don't think many people (and not the parent) \"equate\" FP with Haskell, but\nHaskell is in a way the most functional mainstream language because it is the\nonly lazy one. You can have a purely functional language without laziness in\nprinciple, but, as Simon Peyton-Jones points has said, laziness, despite\nhaving serious costs, keeps a language designer honest by making it impossible\nto add side effects. The non-lazy languages all have side effects. A language\nlike OCaml can still be relatively functional because of the way it is\ntypically used. While JavaScript is not traditionally used in a functional way\nbut can be.\n\n[http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/appsem-\nslides/peytonjones.ppt](http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/appsem-\nslides/peytonjones.ppt)\n\n~~~\ndmitriid\n> Haskell is in a way the most functional mainstream language\n\n1\\. Is it the most functional language because it's lazy? No\n\n2\\. Is it the most mainstream language because it's lazy? No\n\n3\\. Is it the most functional mainstream language because it's lazy? No + no =\nno\n\nLaziness does not a functional language make.\n\n> You can have a purely functional language\n\nWhat would be the purpose of a pure FP? Oh. There would be no purpose.\n\n> laziness ... keeps a language designer honest by making it impossible to add\n> side effects\n\nwat\n\nLaziness is delayed execution. That's it. There's _nothing_ stopping you from\ndelaying a side effect.\n\n~~~\nchriswarbo\n> Laziness is delayed execution. That's it. There's _nothing_ stopping you\n> from delaying a side effect.\n\nLaziness is about more than just side effects.\n\nI think \"evaluation\" or \"reduction\" would be better words than \"execution\"\nhere. Laziness (call by need) is an evaluation strategy for (beta-)reducing\nexpressions, which has two nice properties:\n\n\\- If an expression can be reduced without diverging by _some_ evaluation\nstrategy, then it can be reduced without diverging using call by need.\n\n\\- Efficiency, in the sense that no duplicated work is performed.\n\nThe other common evaluation strategies are call by name and call by value.\nCall by name has the first property, but not the second; so there are cases\nwhen it's exponentially slower than call by need. Call by value has the second\nproperty, but not the first, so there are cases when it diverges\nunnecessarily.\n\nThis 'unnecessary divergence' is a major reason why most programming languages\nend up overly complicated to understand (at least, mathematically). For\nexample, consider something like a pair `(cons x y)`, and its projection\nfunctions `car` and `cdr`. We might want to describe their behaviour like\nthis:\n\n    \n    \n        ∀x. ∀y. (car (cons x y)) = x\n        ∀x. ∀y. (cdr (cons x y)) = y\n    \n\nThis is perfectly correct if we're using call by name or call by need, but\nit's wrong if we're using call by value. Why? Because under call by value\n`(car (cons x y))` and `(cdr (cons x y))` will diverge if either `x` or `y`\ndiverges. Since the right-hand-sides only contain one variable each, they\ndon't care whether or not the other diverges.\n\nThis is why Haskell programs can focus on constructing and destructing data,\nwhilst most other languages must concern themselves with control flow at every\npoint (branching, looping, divergence, delaying, forcing, etc.).\n\n~~~\ndmitriid\nThank you! I clean forgot about call-by-need vs. call-by-value\n\n------\nadvanderveer\nWhat an excellent article: from tech to business, from the human aspect to\npractical code examples. Worth a read, even if you're not considering Elm.\n\n~~~\nakuji1993\nNot into Elm at all right now and also kind of not convinced about functional\nprogramming, yet. But the article was definitely worth a read. I need to\nslowly open up for FP, I guess.\n\n~~~\nmoomin\nI'll make an observation: I write C# for a living. The great thing about that\nis that it has a truly great debugger. But, as you rapidly discover, it's\neasier to debug some code than others. For one thing, you want to be able to\ngo back to the start of the function and re-run it. That means that methods\nthat mutate internal state are hard to debug. Also, it's even better if you\ncan follow the chain of reasoning without rerunning the code. This means\nhaving a variable for each assignment, rather than overwriting an existing\none. Finally, when processing large data lists, it's easier to debug if you\nhave separate variables for logical steps. e.g. Get the employees of Company X\n(variable) that are managers (variable) and sum their salaries (variable).\nTrying to debug round a for loop is an exercise in frustration.\n\nWhat all these things have in common is: it's easier to reason about the\nvalues in a program than the program counter, and that destroying information\nmakes it harder too. And that, to a great extent, is why FP is useful. Even\nreally basic FP in C# or Java.\n\n~~~\nmoogly\nDumb question: Have you tried IntelliTrace in VS Enterprise (sadly only\navailable there)? It tries to solve many of the issues you're mentioning. You\ncan even start a remote IntelliTrace debugging session in production.\n\n~~~\nmoomin\nNot a VS enterprise shop, sadly. Don't think I've ever worked for anyone\nprepared to pay for it! It does sound enormously cool. Does it also handle one\nof my favourite problems: when a method fails because a constructor parameter\nwas wrong, it's pretty hard to rewind.\n\nWith that said, VS Pro still has one of the best debuggers on any platform. To\nthe extent that I think C# developers sometimes cut corners because the\ndebugger helps so much.\n\n------\ndmitriid\n> making very heavy use of Ajax calls to a JSON-based RESTful API\n\nand then\n\n> Want to decode some JSON? Hard, especially if the JSON is heavily nested and\n> it must be decoded to custom types defined in your application. Doing this\n> will require an understanding of how JSON decoding works in Elm and will\n> usually result in quite a bit of code (our application contains over 900\n> lines of JSON decoders alone).\n\nWhat a great pragmatic language\n\n~~~\nAlbert_Camus\nAuthor here. As I posted in a different reply:\n\nJSON decoding is hard relative to what it is like in JavaScript. In your JS\ncode you can just call JSON.parse() and get the corresponding JavaScript\nobject.\n\nIn Elm, decoding is not nearly as easy as it is in JS because every field must\nbe explicitly converted to an Elm value. Depending on the complexity of your\nconversion from JSON to Elm value (e.g. whether you are just decoding to\nprimitive values or to custom types defined in your program), there may also\nbe a bit of a learning curve.\n\nAs I stated in the post, there is a benefit in doing all of this: your Elm\napplication will effectively type-check your JSON and reject it if it is\nmalformed.\n\n~~~\nmaxiepoo\nCan you not do the same thing as JSON.parse() in Elm by parsing into an\nunstructured JSON type?\n\n~~~\nmjaniczek\nParsing into Json.Encode.Value gives you that Value but no way to work with it\nexcept, at later time, using Json.Decode.decodeValue on it. And you're back to\nspecifying decoders...\n\n~~~\nmaxiepoo\nSeems like you could easily make a library that just parses into some Union\ntype that represents JSON values.\n\nIt's likely a design decision to force people that otherwise wouldn't to\nrepresent their data in a more structured way.\n\n------\niamwil\nHaving started using Elm for side projects over 3 years ago, the article is\npretty much spot on.\n\nProgramming in Elm had been a delight, especially when you let go of OOP and\nembrace functional concepts and practices. On one hand, you lose mental tools\nthat you've relied on, but you gain the other tools you didn't even know\nexisted before.\n\nWhere I really disliked about Elm is when I had to encode or decode JSON. It's\na giant royal pain in the ass. Also, when you find you have to break out to JS\noften for libraries you don't want to write yourself, it's not a good fit--as\nI found out when write a toy interactive notebook to render markdown in Elm.\n\nBut for most SPA that just manipulate form data and communicate with the\nserver, it's a pretty great fit.\n\n~~~\nkristianp\nIsn't decoding JSON a big part of an SPA though? How do you deal with data\nfrom the server?\n\n~~~\nenalicho\nThere exist multiple tools to aid you with writing decoders:\n\n\\- json-to-elm [http://json2elm.com](http://json2elm.com)\n\n\\- swagger-elm [https://github.com/ahultgren/swagger-\nelm/](https://github.com/ahultgren/swagger-elm/)\n\n\\- elm-graphql [https://github.com/jahewson/elm-\ngraphql](https://github.com/jahewson/elm-graphql),\n[https://github.com/jamesmacaulay/elm-\ngraphql](https://github.com/jamesmacaulay/elm-graphql)\n\n\\- elm-export [https://hackage.haskell.org/package/elm-\nexport](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/elm-export)\n\nOnce you've got the hang of it, it's not that hard either. Just time\nconsuming. That's where json2elm comes in :)\n\n------\nnoshbrinken\nSomething I find incredibly off-putting about Elm is the evangelical and\ngenerally unbalanced tone taken by many prominent members of the Elm\ncommunity. I almost never come across Elm advocates accepting a valid\ncriticism of the language. The response almost always amounts to \"you don't\nunderstand\" or \"yes, but\". They spend a lot of time celebrating the compiler's\nhumanistic virtues but seem less clearly humanist in their relation to\noriginal thinking or diversity of thought. So much of Elm community dialogue\n(in talks, in articles, in the Elm slack which I follow daily) is simply those\nwith more experience initiating those with lesser experience into the \"Elm\nway\" of doing things. For this reason, Elm feels more like a framework with a\ndomain specific language than a fully qualified programming language. And\nwhile it might seem like a gentle introduction to functional programming\ntechniques, I'm not confidant that it really teaches people the concepts\nthemselves nor gives them enough room to think critically about how to apply\nthem. Instead, the task is to internalize and apply the \"Elm way\". The\ninability to even acknowledge the unprecedented labor required simply to parse\na JSON response is a perfect example of the cultish mentality emerging in this\ncommunity.\n\n~~~\nKirinDave\n> less clearly humanist in their relation to original thinking or diversity of\n> thought\n\nSo what you're frustrated with is that a group of likeminded individuals\ncelebrates their common point of interest and doesn't make room for you to\nnay-say them?\n\n> So much of Elm community dialogue (in talks, in articles, in the Elm slack\n> which I follow daily) is simply those with more experience initiating those\n> with lesser experience into the \"Elm way\" of doing things\n\nThis could be said of a lot of PL environments. How many Python tutorials stop\nmidstride to browbeat you about how great Python's way of doing things is?\nSure feels like a lot to me.\n\n> The inability to even acknowledge the unprecedented labor required simply to\n> parse a JSON response is a perfect example of the cultish mentality emerging\n> in this community.\n\nRight but... what do you want? Acknowledgement? My friend, literally everyone\nhere is agreeing it's harder than JSON.parse. No one argues it is \"easier.\" I\ncan't find a handy example in this thread of anyone saying, \"Yeah this is\ngreat.\" There are tools to ease this pain, and there are ways to call external\nJS code that does this.\n\nAt the end of the day though, validating data structures on the wire both\nstructurally and for content is a lot of work. Most Javascript projects don't\ndo it. Hell, most _typescript_ projects just say, 'Well if it breaks it\nbreaks.'.\n\nBy pure coincidence this redacted typescript snippet is up on my other screen:\n\n    \n    \n        function validateTaskArgs(cdata: any, ldata: any): [boolean, IDomainObject1, IDomainObject2] {\n            if (cdata === null || ldata === null) {\n                return [false, null, null]\n            }\n    \n            const cdkeys = [\"key1\", \"key2\", \"key3\"]\n            const ldkeys = [\"key1\", \"key2\", \"key3\", \"key4\"]\n    \n            const checkKeys = (keyset: string[], obj: any) => {\n                const result = keyset.reduce(\n                    (p, c) => { return p && !!obj[c]},\n                    true)\n                return result\n            }\n    \n            return [\n                checkKeys(cdkeys, cdata) && checkKeys(ldkeys, ldata),\n                cdata as IDomainObject1,\n                ldata as IDomainObject2\n            ]\n        }\n    \n\nThis ugly bit of custom logic just to validate a pair of objects in a larger\njson datastructure, and even that has bugs. This can't deal with a bunch of\nproblems, but it's just too much pain to actually string together the logic in\na composable way in typescript, so I accept this kind of drudgery.\n\nBut earlier I actually linked a much more sophisticated piece of purescript\nthat's about the same size and not only is easier to read and is self-\ndescribing (the code to build the objects IS the spec), but it uses those\nproperties to report console errors. You can see it here:\n\n[https://gist.github.com/KirinDave/9af0fc90d005164743198692f3...](https://gist.github.com/KirinDave/9af0fc90d005164743198692f380d4d9)\n\nIf you want to make Elm better at JSON, that's the sort of stuff you wanna ask\nfor. And folks will rightly be resistant. Because the programming concepts\nthat make that work (free applicative, in this case) are not things the elm\ntarget audience has learned about, yet. Elm's leadership is acutely aware of\nhow big a stack of new concepts they're putting on everyone's plate, and\nthey're cautious about offering more.\n\n~~~\nnoshbrinken\nThanks for the code snippets. That actually helps me to understand quite a bit\nhow Elm's JSON parsing situation can be improved within the FP paradigm.\n\n> So what you're frustrated with is that a group of likeminded individuals\n> celebrates their common point of interest and doesn't make room for you to\n> nay-say them?\n\nI'm not frustrated with responses to criticisms I've made. In fact, I haven't\nmade any criticisms (except of course, the ones in the last comment :P). So I\ndon't have any experience of anyone not making room for _me_. But I have\nobserved some smart people with well-articulated suggestions get shut down.\nIt's not that their suggestions weren't accepted but it was the way that their\nideas were received. I haven't actually seen someone who isn't Evan C.\ncontribute something significant that isn't \"doing X like Evan would do it.\"\nIn the entire world of this language, there seems to be 1 architect and a\ncommunity of implementers. Now, there's nothing wrong with being an\nimplementer. I am an implementer. But it seems easy to see that cultures are\nhealthier when there are a diversity of ideas.\n\nI think that your characterization of the Elm community as a \"group of\nlikeminded individuals celebrat(ing) their common point of interest\" is\nactually close to what I'm talking about. It's great when a programming\nlanguage community is passionate about the language. If people enjoy using\nthat language, it's certainly a good sign. But I wouldn't trust the judgment\nof a group of people who can't critique what they love and are unwelcoming to\nthose who do.\n\nThe counterpoint here is Dan Abramov and the Redux community. Dan is\ncontinually pushing people to understand why they are using Redux and _not_ to\nsee it as a solution for everything. That kind of transparency, and the\ncontinual acknowledgement by Redux maintainers that there is more than one\ngood way to do something, is the kind of intellectual honesty that I'm using\nas a standard in my assessment of Elm.\n\n> How many Python tutorials stop midstride to browbeat you about how great\n> Python's way of doing things is?\n\nI couldn't say and it wouldn't change my opinion of Elm.\n\n------\ndelegate\nAnyone familiar with both Elm and Clojurescript ?\n\nClojurescript's 're-frame' lib implements something similar to the Elm\narchitecture and is quite pleasant to work with.\n\nHow does the Elm experience compare to the Clojurescript experience ?\n\n~~~\nhellofunk\nSimilarities:\n\n1) Re-frame and Elm are both backed by a virtual dom (Re-frame leverages React\nbehind the scenes, Elm uses virtual-dom)\n\n2) Both impose a single app state\n\n3) Both require user events and outgoing state mutation to be explicitly\ndefined somewhere outside of the context of a view\n\n4) Both operate on a sort of \"game loop\" style of processing events and\ncalling view functions\n\n5) All data is immutable in both languages (though Clojurescript provides\nexplicit mutable structures if desired, which require special syntax so any\nmutation is evident)\n\nDifferences:\n\n1) Elm's model is pure FP -- data is passed to a function, and then it calls\nother functions. An individual view function in Elm cannot independently\nsubscribe to any kind of data event, either a state change or a socket\nmessage, etc; it must receive the data it needs as an argument to the function\nonly. Depending on who you talk to, this is either limiting or properly\nrestrictive. It does mean that a branch of your Elm user interface should\ngenerally correspond to a single branch of your app state, or that view\nfunctions in complex interfaces must take quite a lot of arguments; this is a\npattern for which re-frame explicitly offers a workaround (though you can also\ndo it the Elm way in re-frame if you want). In general, these differences lead\nto more re-usable components in re-frame than in Elm.\n\n2) Elm has no real asynchronous library for high-level concurrency. Most\nClojurescript projects (at least large SPAs) often leverage core.async as an\nabstraction for large UIs that handle many independent processes\nsimultaneously. Core.async makes clojurescript particularly versatile for\naccomplishing things in a single-threaded environment as if it were modelled\nwith multiple threads.\n\n3) Elm has its own compilation story that is separate from the JS ecosystem.\nThe Elm devs are working on dead code elimination. Clojurescript projects are\nall built on Closure, which provides DCE, compression, and global inlining\nwhich can provide some projects notable speedups. The Closure libraries also\ngive Clojurescript cross-browser abstractions for hundreds of common tasks in\nfront-end development that have been battle-tested by Google in all of their\nweb services, so it can greatly reduce development and debugging time for\ncomplex apps that run everywhere.\n\n4) Elm controls JS interop much differently than Clojurescript. The tradeoff\nis that in Clojurescript you will inevitably spend more time debugging runtime\nerrors, while in Elm you will spend more time developing your JS interop code\nand testing cross-browser compatibility.\n\n5) There are many UI libraries available for re-frame because it can wrap\nexisting JS tools (including wrapping UI libraries built for React). There are\nfewer for Elm, and it's more common to roll your own UI in Elm. There are pros\nand cons here. I've worked on two large projects in Clojurescript, one which\nwas all custom UI components and another that leveraged polished libraries in\nthe wild. The former took much much longer to make but looked more unique.\nHaving the choice to go either way is a big benefit since project goals widely\nvary. If you are primarily a developer/coder and not a web/graphic designer,\nyou may be frustrated at UI design in Elm. If you work with a designer, this\nis not a problem. But if you work alone, having access to a lot of UI tools\ncan free up your time and efforts quite a bit, and Clojurescript has an edge\nhere.\n\n6) Types: Elm has static types, while Clojurescript offers clojure.spec (which\nis optional though widely used). Spec is a runtime contract system so you can\nguarantee that all args passed to functions or setup in data structures meet\nspecified criteria; not just types of the args, but also any other predicates,\nsuch as a valid range for an integer, etc. For example, an Elm union type\nwould be a Clojure set, where each element could be a specific data structure\nwith other specs attached to it. However, Elm has proper static types, which\nare caught at compile time, not runtime. There are benefits of both styles. If\nyou want to tightly catch very specific data aberrations that flow through an\napp, clojure.spec is easy to use for that purpose; but if you want more\ngeneral checks before the program runs, Elm would be preferable.\n\n7) Performance: All of Clojurescript libraries that wrap React (including Re-\nframe, vanilla Reagent, and Om) offer an interesting runtime optimization that\nI've not seen in other languages, and is not available in React itself. If the\ndata that a view function requires (either via its arguments or subscription)\nhas not changed from the prior render frame, then the entire view function is\nskipped without running, since its output would not be any different. What\nthis means is vast sections of your app's code don't even need to run on each\nrender frame, and this is not trivial. In a small app, it would make no\ndifference, but in complex SPAs this can be very significant. Elm offers a\nlibrary, Html.Lazy, that attempts something similar, though my impression is\nthat most Elm projects do not use it since it can be tricky to explicitly add\nthis behavior; in Clojurescript, it is built in automatically. In Re-frame,\nthey go an extra step by de-duplicating any queries or subscriptions so that\nmultiple views which use the same data context do not query, fetch or\ncalculate the required data more than once, which is then passed to all\nrequested functions. If you are working on an app that processes lots of data\nfrequently, this can be the single selling point of using Clojurescript, as it\nfrees up the CPU to deal with only those things that are guaranteed to require\nprocessing.\n\nClojure's syntax is very tight and concise, while Elm's language is elegant\nbut more verbose. I have found that there is approximately a 2.5X increase in\ncode size in Elm when trying the same ideas out in both languages.\n\nAll other things being equal, you can probably get a re-frame app going very\nquickly; if you need to prototype something or get to an MVP as soon as\npossible, it is really hard to beat Clojurescript compared to any other\ncompile-to-JS language. If however you are going for application purity and a\nreduction in runtime debugging, Elm (or Purescript or some other statically-\ntyped languages) would be a better fit.\n\nUltimately, Clojurescript is a general purpose language, while Elm has a very\nspecific use-case; if you fit into the Elm model, it can be nice. If you need\nto reach outside that model, it is a challenge.\n\n~~~\nNekorosu\nWorth mentioning that Clojure(Script) comes from a different school of thought\n(Lisps) and has its own approach to development called REPL driven\ndevelopment. It allows you to experiment a lot and fail fast.\n\nLarge projects are absolutely doable but require more discipline and\nexperience with the language from developer. For example you can start with a\ncrude prototype and introduce clojure.spec later. When you do this is entirely\nyour choice while in Elm you just have to write function signatures and\ntypes/structures definitions from the beginning.\n\nClojureScript has a very easy interop with JavaScript. Actually this is one of\ndesign goals. Consuming JavaScript library is super easy. For example most of\nvirtual DOM libraries are built upon React. This is good because writing\nperformant virtual DOM with older browsers support isn't an easy task.\n\nThe toolchain has code splitting and dead code elimination. It had it long\nbefore Webpack and can even optimize imported JS libraries code. As far as I\nknow Elm still can't do it.\n\nAnother good thing is you can use Clojure(Script) both on the client and the\nserver. This allows you to nearly skip data serialization/deserialization\nusing powerful \"transit\" library. Actually you can use transit on server with\nseveral other languages. So it's not a lock in but it's much smoother with\nClojure.\n\nThe libraries ecosystem is rich. For example Clojure(Script) has a mature\nWebSockets library (it's both server-side and front-end) with any kind of\nfallback you can imagine.\n\n~~~\nhellofunk\nI agree with much of your points but a few things to add clarification:\n\nWhile lisps do traditionally provide repl-driven development and you can do\nthis in Clojure, most Clojure devs I know are not actively working right at\nthe repl. If you do like some aspects of repl-like interactivity, Elm does\nhave elm-reactor which has some similarities to Clojurescript's figwheel,\nthough not quite as mature or comprehensive.\n\nAside from the repl, you are right that you can get a proof-of-concept going\nin Clojurescript extremely fast so if you want to see if an idea succeeds or\nfails before investing lots of time, you can't beat Clojurescript.\n\nThe Elm toolchain is slowly evolving to include things like dead code\nelimination (which it doesn't have yet but probably will in the near future).\nHowever, I think it will be a long time (if ever) that Elm will support global\ninlining, automatic variable renaming and some other optimizations that come\nfor free with the Google Closure compiler support. The other important\ndifference is that as the Google Closure compiler adds features or further\nimproves its optimizations, these are mature and widely used and immediately\navailable for free without much (if any) extra work on the Clojurescript team.\nIt's a philosophical difference that the Elm devs prefer to solve these\nproblems on their own rather than leverage existing tools in the industry, but\nsince the Elm dev community is small (much of it is only one person), this\nmeans that lots of time must be spent on these solutions at the expense of\nfeatures more specific to the Elm language.\n\nAlso I think you are right that Elm as a language is a little easier to learn\nthan Clojurescript (though to someone new to FP, both Elm/Haskell style syntax\nand Lisp syntax might be equally bizarre). But I think that ease is made up\nfor by some of the concepts in Elm that can be difficult to learn (decoding,\nTasks, ports, etc), so it's probably a net flat difference on the learning\ncurves between the two systems.\n\n~~~\nmjaniczek\nI believe you can use Google Closure Compiler on Elm JS files with great\neffect the same as Leiningen uses it on ClojureScript JS files. (Although most\npeople probably use uglifyjs instead.)\n\nBut of course ClojureScript's JS is generated carefully so as to be better\noptimizable by Google Closure Compiler, and that's not the case with Elm.\nIIRC, in version 0.19 Elm will change it's JS so that it's better optimizable\nby uglifyjs.\n\n~~~\nhellofunk\n> I believe you can use Google Closure Compiler on Elm JS files with great\n> effect\n\nNo, you can't use the advanced optimizations from Closure compiler in Elm.\nThis is unlikely to change any time soon because Elm's compiler emits JS that\ndirectly violates one of the restrictions that Closure requires for advanced\noptimizations, namely the referencing of field names as a string.\n\n~~~\nmjaniczek\nGood to know, thanks!\n\n------\nsteinuil\nI've used Elm for a while and I don't really see what's the problem about JSON\ndecoders/encoders. Sure, they're verbose and annoying to write if you have a\nparticularly intricate JSON structure, but I don't really see a better\nalternative for decoding and encoding JSON in a type-safe way, and with Elm's\nconstraints on ease of learning.\n\nMore freedom on type-level programming would help, but that would certainly\ncomplicate the type system, and the only language I know that lets you fold\nover arbitrary record types is Ur/Web, which has a richer type system than\neven Haskell, and I don't see Elm adding things to its type system (other than\ntype classes, hopefully), given that other interesting features were already\nremoved because very few people used them.\n\n------\nunabst\nQuick question.\n\n> Want to measure the height of an element on the page at the moment a user\n> clicks on it? Hard, in order to do this we had to make heavy use of event\n> bubbling and writing JSON decoders for the native event.target object that\n> is produced by an onclick event.\n\nWhat would be considered best practice?\n\nIs it best practice to re-implement this sort of thing? Seems one could easily\nfind vanilla JS code and encapsulate it, or add a helper lib?\n\n------\nfiatjaf\nI think JSON decoding is great in Elm. Actually, that may be the best part of\nthat language.\n\n------\ntherealmarv\nWhen JSON decoding is hard this is not a minor thing when looking at my\nRESTful APIs. This is a major trade off. How to deal with it ideally?\n\n~~~\nAlbert_Camus\nAuthor here. JSON decoding is hard relative to what it is like in JavaScript.\nIn your JS code you can just call JSON.parse() and get the corresponding\nJavaScript object.\n\nIn Elm, decoding is not nearly as easy as it is in JS because every field must\nbe explicitly converted to an Elm value. Depending on the complexity of your\nconversion from JSON to Elm value (e.g. whether you are just decoding to\nprimitive values or to custom types defined in your program), there may also\nbe a bit of a learning curve.\n\nAs I stated in the post, there is a benefit in doing all of this: your Elm\napplication will effectively type-check your JSON and reject it if it is\nmalformed.\n\n~~~\nExistenceblinks\n> JSON decoding is hard relative to what it is like in JavaScript\n\nI'm not making a joke but this is a valid point. And if it had ELMON (Elm\nobject notation), things would be more straight forward.\n\n~~~\nmavelikara\nNo, that is not a joke. If one tried to convert an Applet to HTML5 and came\nacross a server backend that returned serialized Java objects, parsing that\ninto JS would have been significantly harder than the two lines with\nObjectInputStream it would take in Java.\n\n------\nacobster\nGreat article! I have no experience with Elm but I'm much more likely to try\nit out now. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this though:\n\n[http://reasonablypolymorphic.com/blog/elm-is-\nwrong](http://reasonablypolymorphic.com/blog/elm-is-wrong)\n\n~~~\nwalrus\nThe core complaint is the lack of typeclasses. If your coding style relies\nheavily on generics, maybe Elm isn't for you.\n\n~~~\nSkinney\nWhy? Elm has generics.\n\n------\nniels\nWhen I last tried Elm, I didn't find any really good UI libraries. Also there\nweren't any good solutions for i18n. Has the situation changed?\n\n~~~\nhellofunk\nDepends on your needs. If you are targeting desktop, there are a couple of UI\nlibraries for Elm. However, they are buggy when you try to test them out on a\nmobile tablet. I have found that most Elm developers create their own UIs\nsince wider access to JS UI toolkits is not easy. That does mean that you need\nto enjoy general web design or work with a designer, or be willing to put in\nextra time when working in Elm.\n\n~~~\nniels\nYep, Agree. I specifically used elm-mdl and elm-ui. Elm-mdl were not well\nmaintained and elm-ui, while nice, is desktop only.\n\n------\nanon335dtzbvc\n\"JSON-based RESTful API as its back end\" what language do you use for the\nbackend, Haskell?\n\n~~~\niamwil\nYou can use anything that can expose an HTTP port. It doesn't have to be\nHaskell.\n\n------\nbandrami\nI wonder if its successor framework will be called pine.\n\n~~~\nmLuby\n2019: JSON decoding in Mahogany-lang is hard…\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA years-old, one-letter typo led to Aliens: Colonial Marines‘ weird AI - xoa\nhttps://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/a-years-old-one-letter-typo-led-to-aliens-colonial-marines-awful-ai/\n======\nSerLava\nEven with the huge number of other issues plaguing that game, it's staggering\nto imagine the amount of dollars that they lost specifically because of that\nsingle \"a\" keystroke.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFrom bootcamp student to bootcamp instructor - Pete-Codes\nhttps://www.nocsdegree.com/ex-bootcamp-developer-now-teaches-the-course/\n======\nPete-Codes\nAuthor here.\n\nI was chatting to Matt Studdert from Frontend Mentor and I found out that he\nnow teaches at General Assembly in London where he went to learn to code.\nPretty cool example of the self-taught/no degree route so thought I would\ninterview him.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nStrengthening HTTP: A Personal View - tkorotkikh\nhttps://www.mnot.net/blog/2014/01/04/strengthening_http_a_personal_view\n======\nrx4g\nIt's disappointing to hear that the idea of requiring TLS with HTTP/2 has lost\ntraction. For me, TLS-everywhere _was_ the carrot on the stick.\n\nI recognize that getting consensus is hard work, but I don't think creating\nanother encryption-optional protocol and letting vendors duke it over security\nis going to end well for the users.\n\n    \n    \n      HTTP is a deployed protocol with lots of existing \n      stakeholders, like proxy vendors, network operators, \n      corporate firewalls and so on. Requiring encryption \n      with HTTP/2 means that these stakeholders get\n      disenfranchised.\n    \n\nI'd like to hear the arguments of the potentially-disenfranchised stakeholders\nfirst hand. Is it mainly because it makes it harder to sell or use products\nthat allow traffic snooping?\n\n~~~\nmatthewmacleod\nOne obvious change here is that it would make CA-signed certificates mandatory\nfor all HTTP2 web servers - is that really a situation we want?\n\n~~~\nquicksilfer\nThat doesn't have to be the case. You could still allow self-signage, with all\nof the security caveats that presents.\n\nWho knows. Maybe that arrangement could even spur a sorely needed push for a\nfree certificate trust network and get rid of CA's entirely.\n\n~~~\nrx4g\nSelf-signed certs are much harder to get browsers to accept these days. The \"I\nknow what I'm doing\" button and process are becoming ever more complex, and I\nwouldn't be surprised if they just start going away in favor of a list of\ntrusted root CAs, which you may or may not be able to control as a user,\ndepending on your browser. Which sucks. But anyway.\n\nStartSSL is one place where you can get a free cert for your website today\n(and yes, they charge for revocation, but revocation is pretty ineffective\nanyway). I got a free cert from them, but my mobile browser doesn't trust it,\nso I decided to shell out $10 for a cert that's more widely auto-trusted by\nbrowsers. Not a huge cost, IMO.\n\n------\njbb555\nI hate this new HTTP. They seem to have taken a beautifully simple concept and\nadded so much complexity it's ugly and horrible and awful.\n\n~~~\nmatthewmacleod\nI hear this a lot, but without a consistent argument as to why that's the\ncase. Do you have anything more than that to offer?\n\nHTTP 1.1 is relatively simple, but it's also a bottleneck.\n\n~~~\nprotonfish\nDon't shift the burden of proof-It is up to HTTP/2 proponents to demonstrate\nthat the benefits are greater than the costs and from everything I've seen the\nbenefits are meager and the costs are large.\n\n~~~\nmatthewmacleod\nI'm not trying to shift the burden here, but the point made was along the\nlines of \"HTTP2 is rubbish\" \\- I've seen this a lot, with little to back it\nup.\n\nBut I'd say some of the benefits were:\n\n\\- Server push support \\- Multiplexed requests/header compression/other\nperformance improvements \\- Mandatory encryption support\n\nDownsides are (from what I understand):\n\n\\- Not a plaintext protocol\n\nThere may be more downsides, which I'm happy to hear about.\n\n~~~\njimktrains2\n> \\- Server push support\n\nCouldn't a multi-part document already do this?\n\n> \\- Mandatory encryption support\n\nCouldn't they just have said \"OK, HTTP 1.2 MUST be done over a TLS\nconnection?\" Also, didn't the TLS-always idea go away recently?\n\nThe downsides also include reïmplementing much of level 4 (congestion\nmanagement, flow control, &c) and all of the complexity that goes with it.\n\n------\njessaustin\n_For example, in the current design of HTTP the decision as to whether to use\nencryption is completely up to the server; the only thing the user can do is\nobserve whether a URL is “HTTP” or “HTTPS” (or maybe watch a lock icon) and\ndecide whether they can continue surfing._\n\nThis seems a strange characterization. As in any other network protocol, if\nthe client and server don't agree then nothing happens. If either insists on\nsomething the other finds unacceptable (e.g. a 404 response to \"GET /your-\nsecret-plans HTTP/1.1\") then the transaction doesn't take place. Perhaps this\ncould be made more explicit via a header, but what would that really gain?\n\n~~~\nrx4g\nI think he's saying that clients could decide beforehand whether they want to\ngo into HTTPS-only mode, for example.\n\nBut this is something clients can actually do today, without the need for a\nnew protocol or any awareness on the server side. URL isn't HTTPS? Don't load\nit. I actually did a Firefox plugin that implements this, called http-nowhere.\n\n~~~\nmatthewmacleod\n_But this is something clients can actually do today, without the need for a\nnew protocol or any awareness on the server side. URL isn 't HTTPS? Don't load\nit. I actually did a Firefox plugin that implements this, called http-\nnowhere._\n\nYes - and my understanding is that the browser developers are going to require\nall HTTP2 connections to be over TLS anyway.\n\n------\njimktrains2\nBeyond everything else, someone should have stopped and said \"Wait, this is\nlevel 4 stuff we're implementing in level 7. There has to be a saner way\"\n\nI also find the naming very disingenuous. This is not even an HTTP-style\nprotocol, it should not be named HTTP2.\n\nAs for people who want to require CA certs everywhere: Are all the free certs\nout there accepted by all browsers? (Honest question).\n\n------\nhigherpurpose\nThere goes HTTP2's most exciting feature. I guess IETF will remain as useless\nas ever. Strong encryption on the Internet will need to arrive organically\nfrom certain projects catching momentum, and then Internet stakeholders can\nadopt them _as they are_ , or risk being left behind. IETF standards will\nalways have a multitude of compromises to please all the _top_ Internet\nstakeholders (even if that's detrimental to the Internet ecosystem and its\nsecurity).\n\nAlso are those 1 or 2 (from what we know of) NSA employees still shaping\ncrypto policy at IETF?\n\n------\nbkeroack\nForget the hand-waving and excuses, TLS needs to be mandatory, period.\n\nThis alone would make me forgive just about any other problem with HTTP/2.\n\n~~~\nTouche\nDisagree, purely informational websites have no need for TLS.\n\n~~~\nrakoo\nOn the other hand, what's the problem in using TLS for cases you don't think\nit useful ? I can see a few reasons here, but I don't see any of them being\nenough not to use TLS everywhere:\n\n\\- TLS is expensive: my gut says it's wrong, but I'd love to see some numbers.\nIlya Grigorik [0] has done some experiments here, and I don't see TLS as\nreally bad\n\n\\- TLS is complicated: true, and we have to rely on tried and tested\nimplementations. I'd say you'd need to do it whatever security we use (and we\nwant security, right?)\n\n\\- TLS requires certificates from the flawed CA infrastructure we have: wrong,\npublic-key authentication isn't even the only authentication scheme possible\nwith TLS, it's just the first one we think about (and also the most tested\none).\n\nDo you have other counter-arguments ?\n\n[0] [https://www.igvita.com/2013/12/16/optimizing-nginx-tls-\ntime-...](https://www.igvita.com/2013/12/16/optimizing-nginx-tls-time-to-\nfirst-byte)\n\n~~~\nTouche\nThose two reasons are enough to me. The web is supposed to be for everyone. A\nsmall restaurant that just has directions and a menu on their website\nshouldn't have to deal with the headache of setting up HTTPS.\n\n~~~\nx1798DE\nIf all HTTP connections enforced TLS, how would there be any extra burden?\n\n------\nTazeTSchnitzel\nMyself, I like the idea of opportunistic encryption. Why not require TLS for\nHTTP/2 but don't require authentication for [http://](http://) URLs?\n\n~~~\nmatthewmacleod\nIt's hard to see what benefit that would offer. Non-authenticated TLS is\ntrivially vulnerable to MITM attacks. This is especially the case because I\ncan't foresee a situation in which a website would put the effort in to\nimplement opportunistic TLS, but not implement straightforward authenticated\nHTTPS…\n\n~~~\nTazeTSchnitzel\nIt completely prevents passive surveillance, however. Sure, you can MITM, but\nthe point is now to look at _anything_ you _have to_ do an MITM attack, unlike\nnow, where most traffic is unencrypted and you can do surveillance passively.\nThis makes surveillance more difficult. Net gain for everyone.\n\n~~~\nmatthewmacleod\nI'll concede that passive surveillance would not be possible. However, I think\nthat benefit is marginal - AFAIK, unencrypted support in HTTP2 is optional and\nwon't be supported by browsers in any case.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFocus on Results Not time - zemariamm\nhttp://www.behancemag.com/Tip-Focus-on-Results-Not-Time/5718\n\n======\ndangrover\nA lot of the time, keeping track of the time I spend on non-billable projects\nis the only way to keep myself going. But I don't use it as the sole metric\nfor gauging my productivity.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTrump issues executive orders with effective bans of TikTok, WeChat - lvturner\nhttps://www.cnet.com/news/trump-issues-executive-orders-with-effective-bans-of-tiktok-wechat/\n======\nTraster\nI would imagine this is going to be struck down by a court not because he\ndoesn't have the power to do this, but because he'll have failed to adhere to\na fair process in coming up with this - the same reason that his DACA decision\nwas over-turned by the supreme court.\n\n------\ntellarin\nThis also potentially has many ramifications in different industries. Tencent\n(owner of WeChat) is a big investor in media and entertainment companies. One\nside effect, for example, is blocking financial payments to Riot Games, Epic\nGames, Fortnite, and half the gaming industry.\n\n~~~\njimmygrapes\nThe current wording seems to apply only to transactions involving WeChat,\nleaving Tencent's other holdings alone... for now.\n\n------\nnicbou\n> The concern stems from the data that TikTok and WeChat collects on their US\n> users, as well as the perceived inability of Chinese companies like\n> ByteDance and TenCent to reject requests from China's ruling Communist Party\n> (CCP) access that data\n\nIsn't this exactly what US companies have been doing to their users? Isn't it\nalso what the US government has been trying to achieve for years?\n\nAs a European user, it looks as if the pot is calling the kettle black.\n\n~~~\naeternum\nYes, but hasn't China also forced US companies (and probably European\ncompanies as well) to sell parts of themselves in order to continue operating\nin China?\n\nThis can also be interpreted as a way to even the playing field.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPasswordless authentication is here: new Yubico FIDO2 key - rdslw\nhttps://www.yubico.com/2018/04/yubico-and-microsoft-introduce-passwordless-login/?source=me\n======\nrconti\nCan someone help me understand how this is different from the existing YubiKey\nproducts, which I've used?\n\n* Passwordless single factor with AD integration (couldn't this already be done by storing your password on the key?)\n\n* 2factor auth with the token as one of the factors.\n\nFrom the article:\n\n\\-----------\n\nSingle Factor: This only requires possession of the Security Key to log in,\nallowing for a passwordless tap-and-go experience.\n\nSecond-Factor: In a two-factor authentication scenario, such as the current\nGoogle and Facebook FIDO U2F implementations, the Security Key by Yubico is\nused as a strong second factor along with a username and password.\n\nMulti-Factor: This allows the use of the Security Key by Yubico with an\nadditional factor such as a PIN (instead of a password), to meet the high-\nassurance requirements of operations like financial transactions, or\nsubmitting a prescription.\n\n~~~\nfreeone3000\n\"Passwordless\" single factor done by storing your password on the key isn't\npasswordless. You have a password. U2F replaces the password with a \"bearer\"\nauthentication token - it's two-factor auth without the password, instead of a\npassword-manager based approach.\n\nThe actual announcement in this blog post is Azure AD and Windows 10\nintegration, not anything new by Yubico.\n\n~~~\nbonestamp2\nIn the \"passwordless\" scenario... if someone stole your yubikey, could they\naccess anything you had authenticated it for?\n\n~~~\nrconti\nand/or could they press the button in a terminal and get your token printed\nout in plaintext, in a way that could be reused?\n\n~~~\nLammyL\nIn single factor mode (passwordless), your token is your password. So if you\nlose it, someone could access your accounts if they know your username.\n\nThe USB tokens don’t store a password, they store a master key pair, and then\nderives a site-specific key pair based on the URL you are connecting to. The\nsite issues a challenge and the token signs it. This prevents replay attacks,\nand there is no way to export the secrets from the token. There is also no way\nto authenticate to a site by just having the key plugged in - you have to\npress the button on it. There is no way through software, even low level usb-\nhid commands, to trigger the button press.\n\nOverall it’s really well designed and more secure than passwords, even in\nsingle factor mode.\n\nThe major downsides are that it requires browser support, and doesn’t work\nwith iOS.\n\n------\ncmurf\nThis is what I want for family members: the end to passwords and the end to\nusing Facebook (or even Google for that matter) to authenticate logins. I\ncontinue to lament the end of Mozilla Persona.\n\n------\neganist\nLegal wonks:\n\nI know biometric identification isn't afforded the same protection by law on\nthe basis that biometrics are public (e.g. fingerprints are left everywhere),\nbut what about physical keys? FIDO2 is entirely analogous to a physical key,\nand it's not exactly public the way biomtrics are.\n\nI'd still prefer a password for that added 5th amendment layer of protection,\nbut I'm looking for what legal minds think about this right now.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSinclair's script for stations [video] - fahd777\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI\n======\nlstamour\nAs background:\n[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc)\n(Last Week Tonight)\n\n------\nsmoll\nHmm... I wonder if this is extremely dangerous to our democracy.\n\n------\nhidenotslide\nReminds me of the old Conan segment that highlighted this behavior. Here are\nsome clips from 2012-2014.\n\nTwinkie Trouble\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzdV0Imti3s&ab_channel=TeamC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzdV0Imti3s&ab_channel=TeamCoco)\n\nCould this be the end of email overload?\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p7RnDQwFRw&ab_channel=TeamC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p7RnDQwFRw&ab_channel=TeamCoco)\n\nI scream, you scream, you know the rest.\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46-fI18pJyw&ab_channel=TeamC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46-fI18pJyw&ab_channel=TeamCoco)\n\nEnjoyed from a desk or the couch.\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZnoSy7NHgI&ab_channel=TeamC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZnoSy7NHgI&ab_channel=TeamCoco)\n\nYou don't need us to tell you that gas prices are back on the rise.\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAkxR9T01pw&ab_channel=TeamC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAkxR9T01pw&ab_channel=TeamCoco)\n\nEconomic factors may take some spring out of the Easter Bunny's step this\nyear.\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dguiAWrUGMM&ab_channel=TeamC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dguiAWrUGMM&ab_channel=TeamCoco)\n\nA child's happiness is priceless, especially on a birthday.\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFsDnn9FjOQ&ab_channel=TeamC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFsDnn9FjOQ&ab_channel=TeamCoco)\n\nMike Myers says \"Yeah, Baby.\"\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIevazPIPzU&ab_channel=TeamC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIevazPIPzU&ab_channel=TeamCoco)\n\nIt's okay, you can admit it if you've bought an item, or two, or ten for\nyourself.\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM8L7bdwVaA&ab_channel=TeamC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM8L7bdwVaA&ab_channel=TeamCoco)\n\nDon't worry, be happy.\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ1mA1NeUmU&ab_channel=TeamC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ1mA1NeUmU&ab_channel=TeamCoco)\n\nThose with a special someone may look to their mobile device to help them say\n\"I love you.\"\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44ojS4UNn8I&ab_channel=TeamC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44ojS4UNn8I&ab_channel=TeamCoco)\n\nFrank Ocean tells a major fast food chain to buzz off, and which celeb peed in\na glass jar?\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u41bQG_Ll7E&ab_channel=TeamC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u41bQG_Ll7E&ab_channel=TeamCoco)\n\nIs it time for dogs to have a social network of their own?\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZElSajQdOo&index=13&list=RD...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZElSajQdOo&index=13&list=RDu41bQG_Ll7E&ab_channel=TeamCoco)\n\nThe final days of the campaign can get a little salty.\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKziIEXT6MU&index=18&list=RD...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKziIEXT6MU&index=18&list=RDu41bQG_Ll7E&ab_channel=TeamCoco)\n\n------\nanonytrary\nThis reminds me heavily of Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. That\nsaid, this video probably suffers from some sort of selection bias. However, I\ndo not doubt that a centralized group of individuals can pull the rights\nstrings in the right places in order to achieve a desired outcome. There exist\npeople who stand to gain from the destruction of Facebook.\n\nIf the incumbents of mainstream media could somehow get rid of Facebook by\nencouraging legislation to be passed which prevents unqualified individuals\nfrom disseminating news, it would not be a win for society at all, even if\nit's a loss for Facebook. There is a fine line between regulating Facebook and\ndestroying freedom of speech on the internet. It would seem that the very\nnotion that Facebook is a tool for democracy destruction is more dangerous\nthan Facebook itself.\n\nIt seems crazy to think this is even possible, but I don't put anything past\nanti-terrorism efforts. I am quite afraid to consider such an outcome. I find\nmyself conflicted; if Facebook goes down, I really hope it's for the right\nreasons. I really hope freedom is not taken away in this ordeal. We are\nalready starting to see freedoms being taken away from the people. YouTube,\nCraigslist, etc. have already banned certain types of content in the past 2\nweeks because of new legislation.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA Professor Tried to End a Sit-In with Bolt Cutters. Now He’s Been Fired - gok\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/us/johns-hopkins-povey.html\n======\ndeogeo\nI watched the video linked in the article. When the professor grabs someone's\narm (someone trying to obstruct him), this is labeled (by the video) an\n'assault'. When he is dragged out of the building, being restrained by\nmultiple protesters, this is not an assault - but the person punching one of\nthe protesters, I assume to try and get them to let go of the professor - that\n_is_ labeled an assault.\n\nAnd the professor's plan to enter the building is labeled a 'premeditated\nattack'. The six people he had with him (far outnumbered by the protesters)\nare labeled a 'mob'.\n\nOh, and the video (in which the worst thing is a punch seen from afar) starts\nwith a scary content warning for \"physical assault and violence, abusive\nlanguage, swearing\".\n\nProtests have been reduced to victimhood competitions, but rarely have I seen\nthem become _this_ pathetic.\n\n------\nexabrial\nI feel bad for the guy; had to be horrible watching your life's work being\ndestroyed.\n\nChaining buildings shut is a fire hazard at the minimum, but felony\ntrespassing + breaking & entering in reality. I understand the university\nofficials desire to not make a scene, but not doing anything is just as bad.\n\n~~~\ntoomuchtodo\nAs opposed to not having students arrested for trespassing in Garland Hall for\n34 days? The disparity in consequences is striking. Why would you not expel\nthe students who participated? Why did Baltimore's prosecutor drop all charges\nagainst the sit in participants who refused to leave after being offered\nimmunity? You have the right to protest, but not for your protest to be\nconsequence-free.\n\n~~~\ncvla\n> You have the right to protest, but not for your protest to be consequence-\n> free.\n\nI don't understand what you mean here. Do you mean that you have the right to\nprotest, but then you can be punished for protesting? That doesn't sound\nright.\n\n~~~\ntoomuchtodo\nThe constitution protects your rights with the government, not your college.\n\n------\ngok\nTo those that don't know, Povey is something of a giant in Speech Recognition.\nIt's hard to find a recent ASR paper that doesn't cite him. So while his\nbehavior is reprehensible he's probably not wrong that someone will hire him\nanyway.\n\n------\nscohesc\nI hope these protesters realize that the building they're holding hostage from\nthe university costs money to run and maintain - which will probably be a\nfactor in tuition costs getting even higher when they go to pay their bill\nnext year.\n\nIf I was the university - I'd start by cutting power and water to the\nbuilding. They're being too nice by giving them an out by granting immunity if\nthey leave.\n\n~~~\ndeogeo\nI wouldn't be so sure - at the more desirable schools, tuition is mostly a\nfunction of what people are willing to pay. That is why it increased so\nquickly.\n\n------\nAcerbicZero\n\"He said he had tried to take the building back from the students in part\nbecause a computer server that hosted his research was inside and\nmalfunctioning.\"\n\nIf he had been successful this would have been a nearly perfect xkcd -\n[https://xkcd.com/705/](https://xkcd.com/705/)\n\nI realize that's a little glib, but there isn't much of substance to say about\nsomething like this. If a university wants to abandon one of its buildings to\nstudents (or squatters, etc) going rouge and trying to take the building back\nisn't likely to end well for a university employee, regardless of the politics\nin play.\n\n------\neridius\n> _Povey, 43, also wrote a 1,600-word essay about what happened, along with a\n> treatise about how he believes white males are discriminated against in\n> “this environment” and how he is expected to act like a “neutered puppy-dog.\n> \"_\n\nIf I had any inclination to feel sorry for the guy, it just evaporated.\n\n(quote comes from a Baltimore Sun version of the article since I'm hitting the\nNYT paywall)\n\n~~~\nmasonic\nNote that neither paper gave the full quite in context.\n\n------\nmusicale\nThis is bizarre. What was wrong with:\n\n\"Hey guys, I'm professor so-and-so, I need to get inside to fix the computer\nwhich I use for my research.\"\n\n\"Oh, professor so-and-so, nice to see you. Sure, come inside and we'll unchain\nthe door to your lab so you can get in.\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFeedback Ladders: How We Encode Code Reviews - swyx\nhttps://www.netlify.com/blog/2020/03/05/feedback-ladders-how-we-encode-code-reviews-at-netlify/\n======\naizatto\nJust stumbled on this, an interesting convention to use. Thanks for the\nthoughts.\n\n~~~\nswyx\nthanks for reading!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBegginer in C. Critique my code and give ideas? - zeved\nhttps://github.com/zeved/znote\n\n======\nzeved\nHello HN. I'm trying to learn / relearn C (for real this time). Wrote this\nlittle tool for linux and I would like some feedback. Also, if you could give\nme some ideas for future small projects that would give me more experience in\nC... thanks!\n\n~~~\nplikan13\n\n      int get_number(char buffer[])\n      {\n        long int i = 0;\n        char *p;\n        if(fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), stdin) != NULL)\n      {\n    \n\nsizeof(buffer) will always be 4 (or 8 if you compile 64 bit) because\nsizeof(pointer to char) is 4 (or 8). It will NOT be the size of the buffer\nthat you pass as an argument. To fix this problem you need to change the\nfunction to\n\n    \n    \n      int get_number(char buffer[], int buffer_size)\n    \n\nAlso the buffers that you pass to this function seem to be too small.\n\n~~~\nzeved\nthank you very much. i appreciate it!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTIOBE Index for January 2016 - ryandvm\nhttp://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html\n======\ndzdt\nThe Redmonk rankings are much better. As opposed to TIOBE, who look at counts\nof internet search results, Redmonk looks at code in Github and questions on\nStack Overflow. There should be an update out in the next couple weeks; here\nis the latest from half a year ago :\n[https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2015/07/01/language-\nrankings-6-1...](https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2015/07/01/language-\nrankings-6-15/)\n\n~~~\nunexpand\n+1 for the redmonk.com link. This data looks more inline with what I see\neveryday.\n\n------\nvruiz\nI know it's based on some empirical data, but every time I've looked at a\nTIOBE index has made absolutely no sense to me.\n\n~~~\nmkozlows\nDelphi/ObjectPascal above both Swift AND ObjC? Sure, that makes sense. If it's\n1997.\n\n~~~\nmamcx\nDelphi is very alive (I'm moderator in a Delphi forum). Think this way:\nDelphi/FreePascal have almost all the market for a Pascal-alike syntax for\nthem alone.\n\nWith the C-family you have a lot of options.\n\nAlso: Nothing beat Delphi at doing RAD apps today.\n\n------\nclaystu\nTiobe can't be right. It has Assembly ahead of Ruby and right behind\nJavaScript. What???\n\nRedmonk looks flawed too. I would expect GitHub to create a major sampling\nbias in favor of smaller, throwaway projects, and in fact, a quick search(1)\non GitHub appears to show 2.2 million projects smaller than a kilobyte that\nhave never gotten a single star. Should those be counted? Do they really\nreflect anything meaningful about the language's _rank_?\n\nIn my opinion, the only meaningful measure of a programming language worth\n_quantifying_ from the net are StackOverFlow tags: they can be counted and\nread and provide a real reflection of the language's community without giving\nany special preference to language, license, or context.\n\nEverything else is hopelessly subjective: whether or not the language maps\nwell to a particular problem, whether it maps well to the way you like to\nprogram, and whether it fits into the ecosystem in which you plan to deploy\nit. You can't measure those with google searches.\n\n(1)\n[https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=size%3A%3C1+stars...](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=size%3A%3C1+stars%3A%3C1&type=Repositories&ref=searchresults)\n\n~~~\nad-hominem\nJust curious, but are there proper heuristics that are easily implementable to\nimprove the ranking a language receives from github usage?\n\nFor example, only count repositories that have more than 2 stars.\n\nI don't like cutting repos because they are under a certain size, because even\na few bytes may be genuinely useful and widely used, but a repository nobody\nis looking at or really using is most likely a pet project.\n\nMaybe count only projects with > 2 stars (or forks?) OR projects with over a\nkilobyte of code? Perhaps such a project with no forks, no stars, but a lot of\ncode might be a reference implementation or used in a talk or blog post or\nsomething but isn't useful other than to reference.\n\nI agree counting all github repos is a silly way to do it.\n\n------\npier25\nPoor Objective C, nobody likes you.\n\n[http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/Object...](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/Objective_C.html)\n\n------\nvorg\nNotable is the search-engine-optimized rise of Groovy from #82 to #17 in a\nmere 12 months. The subsequent TIOBE comment \"Scala might gain a permanent top\n20 position soon\" is probably a back-handed dig by TIOBE at the likely\nimpermanence of Groovy's top 20 position.\n\nThe last time Groovy made the top 20, it hit #18 in Oct 2013, but 3 months\nlater (Jan 2014), had dropped back out of the top 50 (#32 in Nov, #46 in Dec).\nTIOBE said the following month \"The data is produced by one of the Chinese\nsites that we track is interpreted incorrectly by our algorithms. After we\nfixed this bug, Groovy lost much of its ratings.\" But before that fix\nhappened, interviews with the current Apache spokesperson for Groovy\n(Guillaume Laforge) promoting Groovy's top 20 position were published in 5\nonline rags (www.infoworld.com, www.eweek.com, cacm.acm.org, jaxenter.com, and\nglaforge.appspot.com), and all of them quickly appeared in Google's top 30\nsearch results for \"groovy programming\" and remained there for 6 to 12 months\nafterwards.\n\nIt's a good bet that same feedback effect will be engineered before Groovy\nstarts losing its new top 20 ranking, perhaps before next month.\n\nIn fact, this sort of thing also happened with Groovy in December 2010. Groovy\nbegan a sudden rise from outside the top 50 when Groovy tech lead Jochen\nTheodorou \"volunteered\" his services to Tiobe in late 2010 to help them\nimprove their algorithms. In April 2011, however, Groovy fell from #25 to #65\non Tiobe in a single month after they increased the number of search engines\nthey monitor.\n\nThese fleeting peaks for Groovy in the TIOBE rankings (#25 in Apr 2011, #18 in\nOct 2013, #17 in Jan 2016) between its usual ranking of somewhere between #51\nand #100 (e.g. #82 only 12 months ago) are a bad thing for Groovy because of\ndamage to its reputation as a solid language suitable for long-term IT\nsolutions. Such ranking volatility gives off the stench of smoke-and-mirrors\nmarketing intended to benefit a single stake-holder, probably the person who\nthe groovy-lang.org DNS domain is the personal property of.\n\n[1] [http://www.infoworld.com/t/application-\ndevelopment/c-pulls-a...](http://www.infoworld.com/t/application-\ndevelopment/c-pulls-away-java-among-top-programming-languages-230603)\n\n------\nbrightball\nHow in the world did Go drop out of the top 50 based on everything in the news\nthis past year.\n\n~~~\nmkozlows\nLook, Go might be gaining in popularity, but there's just no way it could\ncompete with behemoths like Apex, Ladder Logic, and ABAP.\n\n~~~\nw8rbt\nThis is the epitome of sarcasm.\n\n------\nanc84\nI highly enjoyed the article:\n[http://i.imgur.com/qGEjNVL.png](http://i.imgur.com/qGEjNVL.png)\n\n------\nmrfusion\nIt's pretty amazing that Python is basically mainstream at this point. Right?\n\nIt's also odd that they're aren't more Python jobs.\n\n------\nxhrpost\nI always am perplexed with how C and C++ are so high on this list. Given that\nsome (all?) of the measure is based on search engine results. When I had some\nC/C++ back when I was in college, I was very underwhelmed at the number of\nresources available online. I had taught myself web development just by\nGoogling everything I had an issue with. Tried the same with C/C++ and felt\nthere was an couple orders of magnitude less available information.\n\n~~~\nkoja86\nC++ developer here. IMHO the easiest access to quality information are books\n(usually not for free) but apart from that I was always able to find\neverything on-line -standard draft, language changes proposals, references, SO\nquestions, blogs, talks, OSS projects, OS/hw specifications - you name it. Do\nyou mean anything in particular you were not able to find?\n\n~~~\nxhrpost\nYea, I can't remember as it's been many years but I do remember finding maybe\none or two sites talking about what I needed (somewhat), and what I was\nworking with was probably pretty entry-level stuff.\n\n------\nstefek99\nHow do you explain JavaScript going down?\n\nIs it because of the rise of languages that compile to JavaScript?\n\n------\nbdcravens\nInteresting the VB.net doesn't even show up until 2010.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDevelopers – here is the best WHY to quit your 9–5 job - millisecond\nhttps://medium.com/swlh/developers-here-is-the-most-convincing-reason-for-quitting-your-9-5-job-111801b7bd8\n======\nmillisecond\nI've been thinking a lot about the compression in salaries lately. More from\nthe stance that if senior developer salaries are incrementally higher than\njunior that it seems like building an all-senior team would have business\nvalue. Maybe that's all obviated by the new tech/learning, but in my\nexperience seniors greatly outperform juniors when you're dealing with hard\nproblems.\n\nNot sure about the \"oh it's so easy to start your thing, just do it\" part of\nthe article though.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCVE-2019-1347: When a mouse over a file is enough to crash your system - danso\nhttps://blog.tetrane.com/2019/11/12/pe-parser-crash.html\n======\njacquesm\nOne more bit of proof that if you want proper isolation _you should not bloat\nyour kernel_. All this stuff belongs in userland. At least there the damage\nwill be limited.\n\n~~~\nmillstone\nThe crash is in parsing an executable file. Linux also performs this parsing\nin the kernel. Moving it to userland would be a microkernel design.\n\n~~~\nduskwuff\n> The crash is in parsing an executable file.\n\nIn a context that doesn't involve executing it. On a Linux system, this\nfunctionality would probably be implemented with libelf or libbfd, neither of\nwhich depends on the kernel.\n\n~~~\nVarriount\nBut here's a question - supposing that this functionality was moved into a\nhypothetical library \"pe.dll\"/\"pe.exe\", how would the kernel load this library\nor executable? Wouldn't one run into a catch-22 situation?\n\n~~~\npaulddraper\nThe kernel would probably statically link it.\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\n…wouldn’t that have the effect of bringing this code back into the kernel’s\naddress space?\n\n~~~\npaulddraper\nThe code itself would be in the kernel, but the \"parsing while mousing over\"\ninvocation would be on userspace code.\n\nThat is, the parse logic could be a library linked by multiple application.\n\n------\nleetrout\nI assume the audience of a post like this is other security researchers?\n\nThat's a radical piece of software, though. I've never seen anything like that\nbefore.\n\nThe text and technical details supporting the screen caps is very dense and\nhard to approach as a complete outsider. I would love to have a glossary with\nall the terms and initialisms/acronyms in use. PTE (apparently means page\ntable entry), for example, is something I've never heard of before.\n\n~~~\nstevemk14ebr\nI'm in the security field and do work similar to this professionally. This\narticle it poorly written and i found the videos shown absolutely useless. If\nyou want to see how technical articles should read, take a look at j00ru's\nblog (research that found this). That is how you write about this stuff.\n\n~~~\nsqldba\nThank goodness!\n\nI looked at the article and it made me mad because it seemed to be a bunch of\nnonsense.\n\nI mean the second video paragraph is: \"A closer look at the memcpy arguments\nshows that this address is built as 0xfffff8035b2a0000 + 0xe7ff, so we taint\nthe value 0xe7ff to find where it comes from.\" But there's absolutely zero\nexplanation of what we're looking at.\n\nSo it made me mad because it made me feel stupid for not understanding it,\nwhen in reality it's just poorly written. Poor communication is theft.\n\n------\npetschge\nThis issue apparently affected Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and their corresponding\nServer editions (32-bit and 64-bit) and has been patched since October 8th.\n\n------\ntemac\nThe real question is: why the fuck the kernel parses the PE on just a mouse\nover... it like Windows is asking for vulns with even more impact :/\n\n~~~\nrincebrain\nIt displays an overlay when you hover the mouse over a PE executable with\ninformation like the author/company/version/date created.\n\nThe fact that it does this in the kernel is foolish, but there's functionality\ndirectly tied to this, not an indirect chain of things that results in parsing\nthis for little reason.\n\n~~~\nmalux85\nNobody is contesting that there’s a chain of events that leads to this, but\ndoing this in the kernel is not “foolish” - it’s batshit insane, amateurish\nand frankly laughable.\n\n~~~\nbarrkel\nTypically these things happen because people want to reuse code. There's some\ncode that parses executables, there's a bit of shell that wants to display\ninformation from an executable, and someone joins the two together without\nunderstanding the ramifications.\n\n~~~\nc256\nI would argue that the stronger reason is that Windows typically doesn’t\nenforce, allow, or contains any distinction between kernel code and user-space\ncode. This happens because there is a gigantic gravity well of pre-existing\ncode that predates and/or precludes real separation, and the costs of\nconcretely losing that support was nearly always judged higher than the\nabstract benefit of adding separation.\n\nOne old example: I have an old friend who used to do sysadmin work in the\nWindows 2k days, and he would often get gigs by speeding up services by 5-15%\nwithin a day. His go-to trick was to log into the headless win2k server and\ndisable the screensaver process, then wait.\n\n~~~\nkevingadd\nWindows NT (and as a result win2k, xp, 7, 8, and 10) has always had strict\nuser and kernel space separation. Modern Windows also has separate 'integrity\nlevels' within user space - for example, Chrome and Firefox run most of their\nfunctionality at 'Low' integrity to prevent compromised browser code from\nbeing used to exploit other processes. I'm not sure what the basis is for the\nclaims you're making about the kernel. The idea that distinguishing between\nkernel and user code is Not Allowed is very confusing to me, how would you do\nthat without running both user and kernel code at the same privilege level in\na shared address space?\n\nThe CVE here literally has nothing to do with privilege separation or being\nunable to distinguish between user mode and kernel mode. It's this simple:\n\n* Someone in user-space wanted to parse an executable to get information on it\n\n* A syscall is exposed to parse an executable\n\n* They used the syscall to parse the executable, and that code path had a bug in it which triggered a BSOD (since the failure was in kernel mode).\n\nIn the end, this is just \"a syscall had a bug in it that caused a kernel\ncrash, and a user-mode application issued the syscall on mouse-over\".\n\n------\nm712\nThe images in the article will stay a blurry mess without Javascript and will\nnot load. Please don't do this. Use progressive images.\n\nEDIT: Apparently they are videos, but you can still add thumbnail images to\nnative HTML5 videos without loading 40 script files (that uMatrix reported).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe \"Soft Maximum\" function - epe\nhttp://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/01/13/soft-maximum/\n\n======\nmcantor\nThis is my problem with mathematics. The concept of a \"soft maximum,\" the\nprinciples behind calculating it, and its startling similarity to a hard\nmaximum, are all fascinating and exciting to me. Look at that! Two completely\nseparate functions, and such magical results. According to this post, it's\nuseful for \"convex optimization.\" I clicked through to the \"related post,\"\nwhich was merely a comment about someone else's opinions on \"convex\noptimization,\" so I looked it up on Wikipedia:\n\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convex_optimization>\n\nAh! A technique used to \"minimize convex functions.\" Maybe some of this\nnotation will make sense to me if I understand the underlying concept of\nwhatever a \"convex function\" is.\n\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convex_functions>\n\nGreat. An entire article that is completely and utterly meaningless to me. I\nmean, absolutely nothing in that article--oh! \"Convex sets?\" That looks\npromising.\n\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convex_set>\n\nJackpot! The pretty pictures make the idea of a convex set clear to me.\nUnfortunately, by now I'm 4 clicks away, and my actual understanding of the\nsubject is clearly just scratching the surface. Connecting my newfound--and\nobviously still naive--understanding of convexity* to \"soft maximums,\" which\ninitially inspired this search, feels dumbfoundingly impossible.\n\nAm I approaching this all wrong? Am I expecting too much? Thinking too little?\nI would love to understand more about this subject, and I have tried to learn\nit the same way I learned how to program: by Googling and working on my own\nproblems. However, the resources simply don't seem to be there in the same\nway. What's the deal, here?\n\n* Would it be more accurate to say \"Euclidian convexity?\" What would that mean, exactly?\n\n~~~\nfgimenez\nTrying to learn math from Wikipedia is like trying to learn English from the\ndictionary.\n\nAs far as the subject matter goes, a convex function can just be thought of as\na function with a global maximum/minimum and no other local maximum/minimum.\nI.E. The derivative is zero in only one place which is the global max/min.\nThese functions can then be easily optimized by taking their derivatives and\nfinding the zero. It is a really nice way to optimize a problem.\n\n~~~\nntownsend\nNo, in this case, a convex function is one where you can draw a straight line\nbetween any two points on its graph and not have the line intersect the graph\nat a third point.\n\n~~~\npieceofpeace\nYou are not contradicting what fgimenez said, its the same condition stated\ndifferently.\n\nedit: if two statements are not essentially same (and I am wrong), could you\nplease explain it.\n\n~~~\njamii\nThe logarithm function is convex by this definition but has no maximum/minimum\npoint and never has 0 derivative.\n\n------\nimurray\nThe soft maximum often comes up when dealing with probabilistic models and in\nneural networks. I'm surprised that a blog that has been highlighting\nnumerical issues hasn't pointed out how the soft maximum should be _computed_.\n\nIf x is vector of values then the naive code is:\n\n    \n    \n      log(sum(exp(x)))\n    \n\nwhere exp operates elementwise. However, if even a single item of x is large\n(1000 say) this will return Inf. If x are log probabilities, where you want\nthe log of the sum of the probabilities (common), the elements of x might all\nbe less than -1000 (also common) and then the function will return -Inf.\n\nMany people have a function called logsumexp() kicking about to compute the\nsoftmax robustly. It will do something like:\n\n    \n    \n        y = max(x);\n        return y + log(sum(exp(x-y)));\n    \n\nOne example, slightly more elaborate, Matlab implementation is in:\n[http://research.microsoft.com/en-\nus/um/people/minka/software...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-\nus/um/people/minka/software/lightspeed/)\n\n~~~\ndalke\nSee the followup posting\n\n------\ntjic\nThe huge flaw with this article: explaining WHY I would ever want to use a\nsoft maximum.\n\nYes, it \"sands off the corners\".\n\nWhy do I want that?\n\n~~~\nflipper\nThe article was possibly aimed at engineers or mathematicians so the author\nthought the benefits didn't need explaining.\n\nA soft maximum might be useful if you want a differentiable function that\nclosely approximates the max() function. By differentiable I mean you can work\nout the rate of change of the function at any point. With the hard maximum,\nthe rate of change at the hard edge is not defined. Nicer to have one function\nto represent the RoC and not have to worry about special cases.\n\n~~~\ntjic\nYep, I do have a CS degree, and I realized that the crisp corners are not\ndifferentiable ... but a short paragraph about that and giving a few real\nworld examples would have strongly improved the post.\n\n------\nramanujan\nThis is useful analytically, but one tradeoff here is that if this is in an\ninner loop, the exp/sum/log process will be a lot more expensive than a simple\nmax.\n\nFor proofs and stuff it can be invaluable to have a differentiable objective\nfunction, but in actual computation it's not always necessary.\n\n~~~\nroundsquare\nDepending on your application, a good compromise might be to use soft max if\nthe numbers are nearby and a hard max if they are very distant (though you'd\nneed to find a suitable definition of distant and nearby).\n\n------\nmitko\nAlso known as \"smoothed\" max/min which in my opinion is better name as it is\nmathematically more meaningful as the max function [NOT smooth] is\napproximated with a smooth function.\n\nThere is no such thing as soft function in mathematics! Please be consistent\nwhen naming...\n\n------\nshalmanese\nIs there a accepted modification to the function to make it scale invariant?\nI'm kind of weirded out by something that would spit out a different result if\ndid a unit change.\n\n~~~\nmemetichazard\nHere's an idea. Take the scaled function: g(x, y; k) = log( exp(kx) + exp(ky)\n) / k\n\nLet k be 1/max(x,y) so that you have:\n\ng(x,y) = log(exp(1)+exp(min(x,y)/max(x,y))*max(x,y)\n\nThere are some issues if the maximum value can be negative or zero, though.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Fitting a Rockchip RK3399 into an X201? - dhanvanthri\nI&#x27;ve been using a librebooted X200 for 3 years now. It&#x27;s no overstatement to say that it delivers the most holistically amazing computing environment I&#x27;ve ever worked in.<p>If I&#x27;m to buy a new laptop, it must remain &quot;superficially&quot; identical&#x2F;comparable. I want better performance, but what&#x27;s ciritcal is getting as much battery life and improved thermals as I can. Even the screen is not as much of an issue to me as those 2.<p>Now I&#x27;ve been looking at some products offered by thinkpad modders, but knowledge of the non free bios weighs some on my mind.<p>Since acquiring this laptop, beside remaining abreast of news about Pine and others striving toward software&#x2F;hardware freedom, I&#x27;ve totally cauterized myself from the greater consumer tech ecosystem.<p>With the context out of the way, what I want to know is whether it&#x27;s possible to retrofit a Thinkpad X201 (When I&#x27;m casually using my X200, while laying down and watching a video for example, I miss the touchpad), with modern hardware capable of running mostly&#x2F;all free software. I&#x27;m honestly not sure what projects are out there, and which ones are promising. Now although I do crave more performance, the thought of going from this beut to ANY of the machines I see on the market is appalling.<p>In parallel, why do consumers love sodomizing themselves with whatever garbage companies throw at them? What happened to voting with one&#x27;s wallet?<p>Anyway...\nI don&#x27;t even know how to make headway into a project like this. I&#x27;d love a little guidance specifically about retrofitting X201s, as well as about  retrofitting any of the prime era thinkpad shells for my needs.\n======\n2025\nTry looking on r/thinkpad there’s a lot of decicated enthusiasts. Or if you\ncan read Chinese, 51nb is your best bet.\n\n~~~\ndhanvanthri\n51NB has actually been fragmented, and various members of the original project\nare selling their own modded equipment.\n\nThank you though, I'll make sure to check r/thinkpads!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: What happens to old developers? - darrennix\nIt seems like the overwhelming majority of engineers in the valley are guys in the 22-30 band.  What happens at 30?<p>I'm three months away from the big 3-0 and I'd like to know what's going to happen.<p>Will I stop being employable?<p>Will I be expected to put on a tie and stop writing code?<p>I'm tempted to think that tech phenomenon is just so new that the median age of engineers hasn't had time to move up but that doesn't foot...  all the guys who were 25 in 1996 are now in their 40s.  Are they still writing code?\n======\n7402\nI was shocked by this question. I'm 56 and I've worked at a variety of SF Bay\nArea companies since 1984 as a software engineer. It's been my experience that\nif you love coding and you keep learning new languages and technologies, then\nyou can keep on coding. The other software engineers I work with are in their\n20s, 30s, 40s and 50s.\n\nOver the years, I've participated in probably more than a hundred discussions\nabout job candidates I've helped interview for software engineering positions\nat places I've worked. I have never seen age discrimination. It is true that\nsomeone who has, say, been a manager for the past 10 years and now wants to\n\"return\" to programming may be regarded as a dubious candidate - but the same\ndoubt would also apply to a candidate who is 26 and has not done much\nprogramming since the age of 16. It is also true that if you have learned\nnothing but FORTRAN or COBOL, we aren't going to be interested in hiring you\nfor our Ruby-on-Rails / JavaScript / C++ project. But it's not hard to tell\nwho is a real software developer, no matter what their age - it's someone who\njust _has_ to write code, like a writer has to write or an artist has to make\nart.\n\nOne thing I've always prized about technical work and hacker culture in\ngeneral, is that outer appearances matter much less than in other fields. We\ndon't need to judge what someone looks like, what clothes they wear, where\nthey come from, how old they are; we just need to see what they do and how\nthey act. If you are working someplace where that's not the case, I encourage\nyou to look elsewhere. Otherwise, keep learning and continue to enjoy coding.\n\n------\nmaxdemarzi\nSome move to management, some move to architecture but there are plenty of\n\"old\" software developers.\n\nLook up \"neckbeard\"... or here\n<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=neckbeard> Items 2 and 6.\n\nI think as you get older, you seem to go lower on the stack and find yourself\nbuilding software that others use to build software, or get tied up in the\nabstract with your own ideas for a language, algorithms, etc.\n\n... but I'm only 32, so I'm not sure.\n\n------\noh_no_my_eyes\nI'm about to turn 30 in a month. I find myself coding less and spending more\ntime reviewing code and systems designs. I work with other, younger devs\n(hopefully) teaching how to structure applications and organize them for\neasier deployment. I'm still always on the lookout new ideas, tools, language\npatterns, etc. That part of the job never stops. I also get to think about\nhigher level systems architecture, scalability/availability. Fun stuff :) If\nyou wanna stay elbow deep in code and not manage people or go to meetings all\nday then work with a small startup where every developer has to pitch in.\n\n------\ntomfakes\nI think it's something like the plot of the Logan's Run movie:\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(1976_film)>\n\n~~~\nZev\nI was pulling for Soylent Green myself:\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green>\n\n------\nlatch\nI'm turning 32 soon, and I feel like I'm where 22 year olds are today. I'm\nmotivated, willing to take risk, untied. It was a strange ride to get here\nthough.\n\n------\nandrewcooke\nit was my 44th birthday yesterday. i write software. i've\nwritten/edited/deleted various answers to this question - i'm not sure what i\ncan add that's relevant on a personal level. seems like you are really looking\nfor some kind of statistical answer. but if there's anything you're curious\nabout, feel free to ask here or by email.\n\n------\nmrlyc\nI'm 56 and I've had trouble finding a job. Part of it is because of my age -\nemployers aren't allowed to say that so they say there are \"too many jobs\" on\nmy résumé - and part of it is that I haven't kept up to date. I stuck with C,\nrefusing to learn C++ which I find revolting and C# which comes from a\nrevolting company.\n\n------\nzabuch\nYou may find it difficult to believe but I personally know and worked with a\nguy, who has decided to _start_ work in IT when he was 32. With absolutely no\nprior experience in IT, after few years he became quite decent developer. He\nis nearly 40 now and he is still coding.\n\n------\nthoughtsimple\nMy personal experience is that it becomes tougher to find a full time\nprogramming position after about 40. Like hga, I look younger than my age but\nthat is starting to fail as I get older. I haven't resorted to scrubbing my\nresume yet but I've considered it.\n\nI mostly do contracting now. It avoids many of the issues of trying to get\nhired after 40. For short term gigs, fewer managers care about your age. I\nprefer contracting so that works out well for me.\n\nI will have to come up with a strategy for dealing with age discrimination\nsince I've tried other jobs and hated them. I'm a programmer and it is pretty\nmuch all I want to do. My short stint as a manager was pretty much a failure\nand I really didn't find anything I liked about it.\n\n------\nwkearney99\nThere's often more money and less stress to be found doing something else. You\nfigure this out as you get older. You wise up and start wanting to have a life\nand not spend every waking hour typing code. Thus you move up the management\nchain and find a new crop of the young and stupid to accept the wages and\nworking conditions. Just wait, it'll dawn on you eventually...\n\n------\nklaut\nI am 35, developer (actively coding) and feel like i am still in my twenties.\nAnd I only now (like a year ago) started to consider to start a business. Is\nthere something wrong with me? But it's true, sometimes I wish i was 22 again.\n\n------\nwuster\nThere are plenty of mid-late 30s Software Engineers at the Big G.\n\n~~~\nhga\nBut how many mid 40s through, say, somewhere in the '50s (which I'll pick as\nan end point due to the availability of PCs in the '70s and programming jobs\nin the '80s)?\n\n------\ndreamux\n30 is a common age to start a family these days, you don't stop programming\nbut your priorities certainly change.\n\n------\ngyardley\nAt my last company, we had a great guy in his 50s writing code for us. I\nwouldn't worry about it.\n\n------\nhga\n_Will I stop being employable?_\n\nAs a conventional, salaried programming employee? Yes. (In what other field\ndoes 5 of so years of experience allow you a title with \"Senior\" in it?)\n\nMy experience is illuminating in that I'm blessed with genes that allow me to\nlook _much_ younger than I am. I'm now 50 and in casual encounters (e.g. in\nstores or restaurants) I'm still routinely mistaken for an 20s something\npossible student (of course I dress the part).\n\nIn the '90s, as I made the journey from 30 to 40 I noticed it became harder\nand harder to get results from sending out resumes ... until I got a clue and\nscrubbed my resume of the hard evidence of how old I was (education dates; by\nthe time this happened I'd already scrubbed it of jobs prior to 1990).\n\nThe difference was like night and day, and if I watched my words I was able to\nkeep up the subterfuge until I was hired and had to prove to HR I could be\nlegally employed, something that didn't necessarily make its way to my\nmanagers. There was one interview a bit less than a decade ago where I slipped\nand mentioned working on PDP-11s ... the response was \"Just how old _are_\nyou?!??!!\" (yes, that's illegal, but it was an instant honest response). They\ndid hire me but it didn't work out; they were desperate but it's just as\nlikely it was due to total cluelessness of the real customer, a state agency.\n\nSo my advice is one or more of the following:\n\nHide your age if you can and for however long you can. They can't legally ask.\n\nTransition as quick as you can to a field that doesn't care so much about age.\nEmbedded tends to be one (although not the Detroit car companies).\n\nGet out of the conventional salaried programming career (\"Nobody ever got rich\ntyping\"). As noted by others, you can move to management (which is genuinely\nchallenging). You can be a consultant, although that tends to be a hard life.\nOr otherwise become your own boss, i.e. be a founder of startups.\n\nNote that my experience is on the East Coast; I've _heard_ that age\ndiscrimination in the Bay area is much worse.\n\n~~~\nDaniel_Newby\nHow do you reconcile this with the common claim that programmers are painfully\ndifficult to recruit? If they can't find people who can pass the FizzBuzz\ntest, why would they narrow the applicant pool even further?\n\n~~~\nhga\nPrejudice (for that is what this seems to be, although I don't know not having\nit) doesn't have to be rational.\n\nSome of this is almost certainly due to low quality (middle) management;\npeople who are unable to mentor or supervise someone coming up to speed in\ntheir company's technical ecosystem are infamous for playing buzzword bingo\nwith resumes and not indefinitely not filling positions. It's a small leap\nfrom that to e.g. not being willing to manage someone significantly older than\nyou.\n\nThen there are entirely rational aspects: older programmers tend to cost more\nper unit of time. In the US past 39 in the US they can sue for age\ndiscrimination if fired (see e.g.\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_%28computer_scientis...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_%28computer_scientist%29)\nfor the current best known example). Safest not to hire them in the first\nplace, that's legally _much_ easier to defend.\n\nI've been hired entirely on the basis of FizzBuzz type tests when the hiring\nmanager took an instant dislike to me. He tried to find a reason not to hire\nme (as reported by one of my references, who knew both of us, me very well)\nbut went ahead and did it because it was the only way to save his company (I\nwas the only one who passed the tests). He was just out of college with no\nmanagement experience and I was 37 (I think age was a small but otherwise\nminor factor in all this).\n\nSo rationality can overcome a lot. But how many times have we seen managers\nmake \"irrational\" project or company killing hiring and firing decisions? How\nmany investors have preferred to have all of nothing instead of some of\nsomething?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBitrig 1.0 Released – OpenBSD fork - chrismsnz\nhttp://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.bitrig.devel/6\n\n======\nhhw\nThere was a discussion about this on the OpenBSD misc mailing archives back in\n2012:\n[http://marc.info/?t=133961305400003&r=1&w=2](http://marc.info/?t=133961305400003&r=1&w=2)\n\nTheo's initial response to the thread, which may help illuminate the\nsituation, was:\n\n\"Except for the fact that it is bullshit.\n\nThey started the fork because they got kicked out because one developer\n(Marco) hired 5 other developers for his startup company, and attempted to\nhire around 10 other developers in a sneaky and underhanded way. They were\ntold, oh i forget they were \"asked\", to not tell anyone else in OpenBSD that\nthis was happening, probably because people \"including Theo\" would be upset.\n\nFunny thing is, I've never been upset about the 20+ OpenBSD and ex-OpenBSD\ndevelopers who now work for google.\n\nPreviously, many of those developers were in critical positions in the\ndevelopment team. As they were suddenly hired with such terms and conditions,\nthey became more scarce in OpenBSD -- perhaps because they suddenly got real\nbusy with work, but also to avoid telling others that this was happening.\nVarious projects lagged. To avoid telling a lie, they instead chose to not\ntell the truth. It had effects. It was dishonest of them to not tell their co-\ndevelopers that they were creating vacuums in the development process.\n\nSo because of those decisions, they are now gone from OpenBSD. And now they\nmiss it. So now, all these guys who work for the same company have started a\nfork. And it is directed by the guy who hired them in the first place.\n\nFrom where I stand, that is the truth.\n\nYet none of that is in that article, because the truth hurts, doesn't it\nguys?\"\n\n~~~\nillumen\nI don't like that this gossip thread from a few years ago is at the top.\nPeople come to Hackernews for entertainment (including me), but I still don't\nlike it. Mainly I'm here so I can learn things, and see what other people are\ndoing. The gossip side of things is sort of annoying.\n\nIt's much more interesting to compare the development process of the groups,\nand how the two groups will help each other.\n\nI always thought if OpenBSD had modern development tools and processes they\nwould do really well, but unfortunately there are too many risks. How they're\ndoing it works well for them already. But perhaps this situation with another\ngroup working in a different way better again. Since this project can\nexperiment, and anything that is proven can be taken on by OpenBSD.\n\n~~~\nhhw\nA thread with some of the people most directly involved, including OpenBSD's\nfounder, on how the fork happened is as relevant to the subject at hand as it\ngets. Not sure why you view it as gossip. It also directly answers your\nquestion on how the two groups will help each other i.e. not much at all.\n\n~~~\nclarry\n> It also directly answers your question on how the two groups will help each\n> other i.e. not much at all.\n\nHopefully the bitterness surrounding the fork's birth will eventually wash\naway and the people involved just look at the benefits. And it's not true that\nthe two groups aren't helping each other. Some code does flow between OpenBSD\nand Bitrig, just as it does between OpenBSD and NetBSD. And there are people\nwho are involved in both, and communicating with developers from both\nprojects.\n\n------\nBluerise\nBitrig developer here, feel free to shoot questions!\n\n~~~\nyrmt\nCorrect me if I'm wrong, but most of the things (or maybe just the ideas?) you\nhave implemented seems to be coming from NetBSD. If so, could you share other\nNetBSD stuff you'd like to see on Bitrig ?\n\nCongratulations on the 1.0 !\n\n~~~\nBluerise\nFor me personally, better armv7 support. Even though many things stem from our\nhands, NetBSD and FreeBSD are a great resource. I have already started working\non SMP support, based on their example.\n\nOtherwise I do not have any NetBSD stuff in mind. Can't speak for our other\ndevelopers though. ;)\n\nI would love to have FreeBSD's bhyve on Bitrig. I will dedicate some time in\nJanuary for that goal. DragonflyBSD is an inspiration for us, too. We have an\nexperimental branch (smpns) for revamping the kernel for decent SMP support.\n\n------\npaulannesley\nI love this in the FAQ:\n\n> Why is the project named Bitrig? > > The name Bitrig is derived from the\n> Latin \"Bitrigus\", the name of the software used by the Romans to conquer\n> Europe. Sadly, not having zero among its numerals made traditional computer\n> science difficult for the Romans and the project was put on hold\n> indefinitely. Bitrigus faded into obscurity until it was recently\n> rediscovered at a Viking archaeological site in the modern day country of\n> Iceland. > > The Roman emperor Hadrian is rumored to have sent Bitrigus as\n> far west as a boat could carry it to keep it from the then growing threat of\n> religious fanaticism within the Roman Empire.\n\n------\nprotomyth\nAren't there some compiler additions to GCC that OpenBSD relies on that\nhaven't made it into LLVM/clang?\n\n~~~\ncalvin_\nwell, support for VAX might be one\n\n~~~\nprotomyth\nI was thinking -fstack-shuffle and its related changes\n\n------\ndebacle\nWhy did they decide to fork OpenBSD?\n\n~~~\nadamnemecek\n\"With the goal of bringing more experimental development to the OpenBSD code\nbase, a few developers have announced a fork named Bitrig. According to their\nFAQ, Bitrig aims to build a small system targeting only modern hardware and\n\"be a very commercially friendly code base by using non-viral licenses where\npossible.\" Their first step toward that goal was removing GCC in favor of\nLLVM/Clang. The project roadmap shows their future goals as adding FUSE\nsupport, improving multiprocessing, porting the system to ARM, and replacing\nthe GNU C++ library with LLVM's.\"\n\n[http://bsd-beta.slashdot.org/story/12/06/13/1645211/openbsd-...](http://bsd-\nbeta.slashdot.org/story/12/06/13/1645211/openbsd-fork-bitrig-announced)\n\n~~~\ndanudey\nPortability and modernity instead of a security focus?\n\nI'm not sure why I would use a fork of OpenBSD instead of just FreeBSD though.\nI've always seen the primary benefits of OpenBSD as deriving from their\nobsessive focus on security, but if this fork isn't focussed on that I'm not\nsure what I gain vs. other BSDs that already have these goals and objectives\nin place/completed.\n\n~~~\nsigzero\nExactly. OpenBSD is very specific in what it is. That description is more a\ndescription for a fork of FreeBSD or NetBSD.\n\n~~~\nBBoingo\nOpenBSD has always had a strong focus on protability. It's just the focus on\nportability was never restricted to \"modernity\" for the reason that there's\nfew interestingly different processors anymore you can compile against to\ncheck for breaking errors.\n\nIt would be interesting though if Bitrig became sort of a DragonflyBSD for\nOpenBSD, where weird experimental stuff can be tested in a separate\nplayground.\n\n------\nchaz72\nWill OpenBSD look to pull from their updated C++ libraries?\n\n------\njakschu\nI'm super excited about this!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Are you like people from Greenland? - pierreminik\n\nHi everyone,<p>I'm a 27 year old Problem Solver from Greenland.<p>We aren't many people up here on top of the world so limiting yourself to a single field is most likely gonna mean excluding yourself from potential stuff in the future. Unless you have awesome talents - which I ensure you many greenlanders do when it comes to things as music or drawing or hunting or storytelling... But for those of us who didn't turn out to have artistic talent, well, yeah, we could either pick an education and get a career job to earn some resources or do like me and not care about what people thought, decide money should never rule your life and do whatever you felt like. \nBest decision of my life! It has taken me through lots of awesome positions from assistant-bicycle-mechanic, web programmer, sales person, project manager, web designer, marketing coordinator, entrepreneur, publisher, tourist guide to stuff like cleaning stores so early in the morning I'd wish... I don't know... I'd wish that manual labor in Greenland was so expensive, they'd use robots to clean the stores, or something. And although my list of jobs is extensive, my employers list is really short. In fact, a lot of those positions have been with a single employer who hired me when I was very young because I wanted a bike but my somewhat wealthy father didn't want to give me one because he thought I should learn the price of things/value of money/whatever. Instead of learning me to respect money he fueled a passion I had for solving problems. All of those jobs and I have never been fired or asked to quit, and I have never let any of my employers down. On a need/want basis I still work for the very same guy that gave me my first job.<p>All of this is true but I'd never usually bring any of it up. The thing is just that the HN community seem to have huge number of very skilled technical people and I don't really consider myself to fit into that crowd. Probably mostly because I'm the least gifted programmer of the hacker friends I have. I'm also the least gifted designer among the visual artists-y friends I have. But I understand and cherish both fields.<p>Now, it's sort of given I have a ulterior motive with this and I know this is getting rather long but I the length of the text has two purposes. I had an idea that it might've sorted the good shrimps from the other stuff that the fishnet catches. No, that is not a greenlandic saying, I don't even know how they catch shrimps but I really love their taste. Secondly I hoped it would give some sort of idea who I was and what I might be like.<p>Enough about me... The prerequisite for the question: \nGreenlandic people are often considered unproductive and inefficient by people who don't know us. Once people get to know us they will quickly realize we're all about living life and enjoying the things we like. \nYou see, hundreds of years of living in extreme conditions and in challenging environments with a \"job\" that meant risking everything in order to literally put food on the table for your family or whoever couldn't provide for themselves in the settlement, has learned us an invaluable lesson: When life treats you nice, like giving you an opportunity to go sailing in the wonderful weather, you take the opportunity and you really, really enjoy it, because you never know when your next chance to do so is gonna be.<p>So, are you like people from Greenland?<p>My ulterior motive:\nIf so, you might want to help me fulfill this idea I have. \nWhile the greenlandic way of life is about enjoying what you have, it doesn't mean trying to avoid work. Work after all is what most would consider the essence of a great life. When it comes to computer stuff there is so many tasks and so much thinking that has little to do with what you are actually trying to do.\nAs the co-founder of a new local magazine that wanted to improve the consumer's and the advertiser's experience I realized there was tons of tasks that had very little to do with writing content, designing ads or servicing customers. To avoid errors we had to make a strict structure and have naming policies and whole lot of other stuff. To manage the process we used project management tools and we had to-do lists and a whole lot of other crazy things. I spent a lot of time trying to find some form of system that was great at it all. I even considered developing a unified solution that took care of everything out of Adobe InDesign.\nIn the end I gave up the search, and I certainly didn't have the time to develop a system myself. And why should I? All the applications we use, we use for a reason: they are our beloved and most trusted tools. It would be naive to think I could replace all the different applications I used with a single application that worked just as great.<p>Here it comes:\nI want to make an integration workflow \"framework\" that greatly limit all the trivial stuff, taking care of all the needed interactions across all the applications, leaving the user with what they love to do: coding or designing or whatever they do. (You could say it would be like Automator on some drug that made it crazy fast.)<p>That is the core of it. I have lots of ideas for great implementation and starting capabilities as well as future features that doesn't go beyond the core principle of the idea.<p>What I need is someone willing to join me for making it. I can code, I can design but I am not insanely great at either. I'm a sucker for great UX and I think this application could improve the overall UX, regardless of what tools you may use. (Unless you use emacs or vim as I am told they are what the hardcore hackers use and they already sort of do all this macro/scripting stuff.)<p>I'm open for whatever licens people would want to make this under. It could be some open source licens or we could try and sell it or something. I basically just want to make it because I'd love to use it myself.<p>What do you think? Could this be something? Could you be interested in making this with me?<p>PS: I work on Mac OS X (10.6, not sure about Lion yet). I'm open for other platforms I am just not able to help making those and I can't test for them either.\nPPS: I don't know what drug makes you crazy fast cus we only have cannabis here in Greenland.\n======\ndalke\nIdeas are plentiful. Your's comes across similar to \"the next generation of\nthe social web\"; that is, \"Automator on some drug that made it crazy fast\" has\nnothing in the way of how such a thing might work. Even after thinking about\nthe problem a lot over the years, I don't see how one might build a \"crazy-\nfast Automator\" along the lines of what you propose.\n\nGiven your background, you likely don't either. You come close to the\ndiscussion from <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2579668> of \"Idea Guy\nLooking for Developer.\" Read the linked essay and the responses.\n\nBTW, there are other drugs in Greenland. The average inhalant use is higher\nthere than the rest of Europe, says <http://www.espad.org/greenland> .\n\n~~~\npierreminik\nWhat is inhalants even? People here don't really hide if they do drugs,\nbelieve me. Cannabis is illegal but even police knows who does what, and don't\nactually do much about it because pushers will beat up anyone trying to sell\nanything but cannabis, and crime rates rise should any pusher be arrested\nbecause the kingpins will withdraw the drug from the market leaving a big\ndemand with very little supply, price rise and people will have to steal\nthings in order to afford the drugs.\n\nCrazy-fast was bad choice of words on my behalf, I ment something more like\ncrazy-efficient but I guess no drug makes you that.\n\nI can give an part example of things that could improve workflow a great deal\nfor almost anyone with a client that approves graphic work in lets say\nPhotoshop. The tasks that is only related to the stuff you do on the computer\nwould be: making a new document, naming it, (if you work with both print and\nweb you might want different units, rulers and color profiles for either\ntype), making the graphic work, saving it some place associated with the\nclient, exporting it for web in some reduced resolution that is big enough for\nthe client to see the details good enough, opening up your email client or\nwebmail, adding in the clients contact information, maybe you have some form\nof request tracker that needs an ID field in the email, attaching he file for\napproval, writing a message for your client, press send. Turning all those\nsteps into something more enjoyable like: selecting the client in a dashboard,\ngive the task a name, make the graphic work, save, write a happy message for\nyour client, press send.\n\nAdobe allows JS to be used for improving workflow so it would be ideal coming\nup with a framework that would use JS. Web developers and even most designers\nalready know JS which makes it an ideal choice.\n\nHow often do you name a file according to a name convention? Whatever text\nfield you enter that name in should just allow you to type the filename not\nhaving to think about conventions. If the convention only allows a typical\nlowercase a-z, 0-9 and dashes only, then the field you type in the name in\nshould convert all characters as you type to lowercase, spaces could even\nautomatically turn into dashes, international characters like å, æ, î, é\nshould perhaps turn into their a-z equivalents, and everything else should be\nignored. No errors, no interruptions, just work like you like it.\n\nMaking an iOS app for both iPhone 4, older iPhones and iPad, you'd have to\nsave the (most likely) same icons and so forth in different resolutions with\nsame prefix but different file naming that allows Xcode to recognize the\ndifferent versions for the different targets.\n\nFor every website project you have a starter pack that consists of a bunch of\ndifferent things, like a css-reset, maybe jQuery, maybe Modernizr, maybe a\nresponsive mobile-first css framework... Downloading to update all those could\nbe a task in it self...\n\nYou like a certain folder structure maybe but the developer you're gonna pass\nthe work on to for coding the project is really strict about how they should\nbe delivered. The developer could give you a profile-file which the workflow\nframework would use to run a preparation check of the files, checking images\nare in correct format, packaging your work so it's ready for the developer.\n\nYou use Photoshop for something that has to be both printed and for a web\ncampaign, there should be a switch that would make sure stuff like black in\nthe CMYK version is 100% black. You share your Photoshop files between\ncomputers? Nothing is more important than having to send fonts back and forth\nshould the other computer not have the font you're using.\n\nYou've tried spending time trying to figure out why some server-side code is\nnot working as expected only to realize that there is some cached stuff\nsomewhere that is teasing you. You just saved your changes to the server-side\ncode, you alt+tab, the browser should flush the cache and reload the page when\nready.\n\nYour website project is ready for production? Minify all the stuff, in some\ncases you'll merge files, gzip them, ou get the drill...\n\nIn the end, less frustration, more getting done what you like. Computers are\nsupposed to make the tasks easier, not get in our way.\n\n~~~\ndalke\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inhalant_abuse> . \"Huffing\", \"sniffing glue\",\netc.\n\nThe tasks you are talking require massive customization. It's a lot of niche\ndevelopment; few clients in each niche and a lot of work => more like\nconsulting work than product development.\n\nNiche customization is the reason why VB, Automator, etc. were all developed.\nYou also have a massive sales problem - how do people find out about your\nsoftware?\n\nConsider \"website projects\". RoR and Django projects each have their own\nlayouts and requirements. Most people using Modenizr are going to be the types\nof people to mix-and-match, and not want to use some tool to select the parts.\n\nThen you switch to talking about xcode, and Photoshop. And server-site code.\nAnd minification. Each of those is hard in their own right. Then you'll find\nthat someone really wants the filename name to be \"España.jpg\"\n\nThe dream of making it all work together smoothly is nice, but there's no easy\nroute to there from here. Nor have you outlined what that route would look\nlike. You've only stated the goal and have some idea of the tools you might\nuse for that goal. Eg, how does one actually specify the \"folder structure\"\nand content validators? Is it a GUI? A configuration file? How does one handle\ncache flushing, including configuration information for the different\ndeployment environments, connections to the different cache layers, and\ntimestamps placed in GET requests to force new fetches?\n\nSolve one of those problems and you'll have people using it. Don't try to\nsolve the entire problem - I suspect there is no general solution.\n\n~~~\npierreminik\nI realize it'll take a huge effort. I don't believe making the \"framework\" is\nconsulting work. I don't mind giving the framework away for free with some\ncommon/possibly popular workflow schemes, showing it's potential and then\nwhoever wants to can be hired for developing schemes for those who can't make\nthem themselves. Or another more likely scenario, people could make their own\nschemes fitted for themselves, giving them the option to share it with others\nif they want to.\n\nThe framework would be modular. Sure, no two projects are actually exactly the\nsame but there is a whole lot of overlapping, repetitive, unnecessary, tasks.\n\nI'm not saying you lock into forever using whatever name convention you're\nusing.\n\nIt's my first time ever proposing to work with strangers on the internet. I\ndon't have a whole lot of experience with it so I can't really come out with\nevery angle of the final product before anyone asks. (You might think you're\nasking but you're not, you're saying \"You are an incompetent \"idea man\" who\njust came up with something you assume is unique and now you want a developer\nas your pet slave\". Instead of saying things like \"Nor have you outlined...\",\nyou could say \"But how do you plan to deal with...\").\n\nI imagine folder structure being defined in Finder, the whole concept of the\nframework is based on the idea that all apps are great at their own thing, so\nFinder being the core of navigating through folders and finding files it would\nbe logical. While the framework running in the background, Finder could get\nsome extra toggle buttons or drop down menu in the toolbar to let you select\nwhat the folder should have of attributes \"Like this should be where the XX of\nthe project goes\". Could use color labels to make it faster to distinguis\nbetween the different folders if one didn't find them hideous. Depending on\nwhat'd you were developing cache flushing would obviously be handled\ndifferent, who ever developed the scheme for that workflow would decide how it\nshould be done. Someone likes to do it with changing filenames of the files\nyou've edited. The workflow application would handle this, make sure where\never those files where included in the rest of your project their reference\nwould be updated, and the browser you were using would be redirected to the\nnew url. This would mean that your source files would have to be copied into a\nthe deployment folder.\n\nPeople are creative and resourceful and if you let them taste something great\nyou should expect some of them to crave for more. I'm not saying the framework\nshould have schemes (one computer is not limited to having a single scheme\neither) that fit perfectly for everyone but if you'd provide a few and show\nhow smooth it can be I don't doubt that some people will want to roll their\nown.\n\n~~~\ndalke\nYep, I'm old and jaded. You see me as negative? _shrugs_ . I never said it was\nimpossible, only that it's hard, tedious, boring, and that it goes through\nwell-trodden areas with lots of competition so revenue generation will be\nhard. Pick one of the sub-tasks and work on it. You'll be happier and with a\nlarger chance of success. Or think of that as a stepping stone to learn more\nabout what's needed for the larger project.\n\nPersonally, I think the directory structure layout validation is the most\ninteresting, especially if you can tell it to build your final structure\nlayout. This could include minimization tasks, or automatic image format\nconversions. Another direction that could go is towards a static site\ngeneration tool. But then, I'm a developer.\n\nYour rhetorical style needs work. It's ludicrous to assume that I or anyone\nelse would expect you to have all the details planned beforehand. Neither did\nI say that you are incompetent. I pointed to that URL for a reason - it's hard\nto come up with an idea and get developers involved, and that essay gives some\nof the reasons. Instead, I am pointing out your inexperience and giving advice\nfor the some things you need to distinguish yourself from an \"incompetent\n'idea man'.\"\n\nYou should also talk a lot less about yourself. Most people don't care enough\nto read through several paragraphs defending your inexperience to figure out\nwhat your point is, the title had little to do with what you wanted from\npeople, and the self-described term \"Problem Solver\" is another suspicious\nflag which falls into the \"Idea Person\" category.\n\n~~~\npierreminik\nYou're right, my rhetorical style is rubbish. :)\n\nI really appreciate you taking the time to help me on my way. I will work on\nsome proof-of-concept apps that can help illustrate the approach I wish to\ntake. Starting with the folder structure layout builder, image format\nconversion and layout/format validation. Then I'll see if it has something to\nit.\n\nI'll post when I have some updates. Gotta go.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nInternet will 'disappear', Google boss tells Davos - dnetesn\nhttp://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/internet-will-disappear-google-boss-tells-davos-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=77329&NewsCatID=374\n\n======\ntempodox\nSchmidt's ideas are certainly entertaining. He just forgot to mention who's\ngoing to pay for all that wireless connectivity and data transfer. Before any\nof the other pipe dreams can come true, the first disruptive innovation we\nneed is affordable wireless connectivity. Today's mobile carriers will never\ngive us that.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBBC+ “super app” curates content - abhi3\nhttp://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36834757\n======\nabhi3\nCouldn't help but notice how neutral/balanced their coverage was.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTesting suggests 50% of coronavirus cases have no symptoms - dagurp\nhttps://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/01/europe/iceland-testing-coronavirus-intl/index.html\n======\nLockAndLol\n1% of 9000 tested people had the virus and of this, 50% were asymptomatic or\nhad mild symptoms. That's 45 of 90 people.\n\nI don't know how significant this makes the results. Maybe a statistician can\nweigh in.\n\n~~~\ndagurp\nIt at least shows that you can never be too careful. I also hope it encourages\nmore testing.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThis spy watch is too complicated - hanifbbz\nhttp://user.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/an-spy-watch-which-is-cryptic-to-operate/\n\n======\nhanifbbz\nImagine if the designers of this watch created iPhone! :D\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFEMA is about to send a ‘Presidential Alert’ to millions of U.S. phones - sahin-boydas\nhttps://techcrunch.com/2018/10/03/fema-is-about-to-send-a-presidential-alert-to-millions-of-u-s-phones/\n======\nmindcrime\n_And, unlike other alerts, Americans cannot opt-out of receiving a\npresidential alert_\n\nIs that still true if you run your own customized OS (like whatever-the-\nsuccessor-to-cyanogenmod-is-called-now)? Or is this all done at such a deep\nlevel within the phone's firmware that it's all-but-impossible to turn it off?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nImaginary Booleans (1987) [pdf] - childintime\nhttp://www.wbricken.com/pdfs/01bm/07imagine/01imaginary-boolean.pdf\n======\nchildintime\nAbout the author:\n\n[https://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/ki-\ndagm95/bricken.html](https://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/ki-\ndagm95/bricken.html)\n\n[http://www.wbricken.com/](http://www.wbricken.com/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHacker News New Christmas Theme - jjar\nhttps://news.ycombinator.com/news/#\n======\nColinWright\n\n        Unknown.\n    \n\nThe link you've given is -\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/news/#](https://news.ycombinator.com/news/#) \\-\nI do not think this means what you think it means.\n\n------\nDanBC\nSee also some discussion here:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10790754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10790754)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nUbuntu AppStore: Like Apple AppStore, but with less Suck - Swizec\nhttp://swizec.com/blog/ubuntu-better-for-app-management-than-apple/swizec/1672\n\n======\nkolektiv\nSigh... I wish Linux (and Ubuntu in this case) were better at UI/UX. But\nstill, it's so clearly designed by programmers (not always a bad thing, but\nsadly more often than not).\n\nSo what's called out here as being good? Well. Subcategories. Average users\ndon't respond well to taxonomy, generally. People are also not good at\nclassifying. So in that example shown, what's the difference between \"Arcade\"\nand \"Sports\"? I've played football games in Arcades. Where should users look?\n\nMore: \"Some items can be bought, others just downloaded\" Cool, where can I\nfilter so I only see free apps? Because it's nowhere in the screen shots, and\nI will bet money that it's the first thing a sizeable percentage of users want\nto do. Which would be known, had any user testing been done. I hope it was,\nbut I'm guessing not.\n\nI could be nit-picky - \"Get Software\" vs. \"Installed Software\" - they're not\neven the same tense. Imperative tense is commonly interpreted by users as\ncausing an action to happen, not a categorisation. I could go on too, merrily\nburning karma as I go, but all I see when I look at this is how far it has to\ngo, not how great it is. Don't get me wrong, the Apple version is by no means\nperfect, but I bet it performs better in tests with actual users.\n\nSomeone needs to get a real UX team together and actually sit down for a real\nproject - not \"someone and their favourite futuristic GUI idea for the next\nversion\". I would hope that Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc. have the budget to do that,\nbut I see little sign of it.\n\n~~~\nkylemathews\nCanonical (the commercial company behind Ubuntu) has hired a number of full-\ntime UX and Mark Shuttleworth, the founder, recently stepped down as CEO to\nfocus full time on leading product design and development.\n[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/mark-shuttleworth-\nto-s...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/mark-shuttleworth-to-step-down-\nas-canonical-ceo-in-march/5491)\n\nI think this is evidence that there's a \"real UX team\" at work.\n\n~~~\npan69\n\"Mark Shuttleworth, the founder, recently stepped down as CEO to focus full\ntime on leading product design and development.\"\n\nAnd this is where the high degree of \"programmers design\" is coming from.\n\n------\nandymoe\n1) I don't think Ubuntu's UI is any better than Apples UI. If anything it's\nthe same bad copy of the Windows 98/2000/XP/7 lineage of program management\ntools in control panel that linux has beed copying all the way back to\nRedHat's RPM package management GUI in the early 2000's.\n\n2) The title of the article is \"Ubuntu’s app management better than Apple’s\"\nnot \"Like Apple AppStore, but with less Suck.\"\n\n~~~\nSwizec\nat 2) I couldn't decide on a good title, hence some disparity. The URL itself\ncontains a third version.\n\nat 1) Actually GNOME has since forever been an Apple copy, the newest Unity\nthing even moreso, but I really really like the Launcher. I feel like it's\njust innovative enough while being sufficiently familiar not to throw me off\ncompletely.\n\n~~~\narth2910\nGNOME an Apple copy? Unity's not developed by the GNOME devs but by Canonical.\nSince Lucid, the behavior of Ubuntu has shifted somewhat to match that of Mac\nOS X. Traditionally, buttons defaulted to the right hand corner of the window\nrather than the left and multi-touch tapping has been remapped to match OS X's\nstyle (two finger right click, three finger middle). Compiz has the window\npicker plugin similar to Exposé along with a cover flow-like window switcher.\nNow you've got he Unity Launcher with Spotlight/Quicksilver/Gnome-Do\nfunctionality. The Add/Remove Applications tool has been around since Breezy\nin 2005, predating even the iPhone App Store, and provided the same functions\nas the Software Center and the Mac App Store.\n\nGNOME can be tweaked to look like OS X or Windows or whatever you want, but\nit's because you can mix and match things like themes and window managers. If\nyou just used vanilla GNOME 2.x with Metacity, I don't think you'd find much\nof a similarity.\n\nYou could say that Ubuntu or GNOME3 borrows functions or aesthetics from other\ncontemporary desktop environments, but GNOME \"forever been an Apple Copy?\"\n\n~~~\ntvon\nCalling GNOME an Apple copy is a bit much, but 2.0 was strongly influenced by\nApple/NeXT design principals, or at least it seemed that way when it was\nhappening.\n\n------\njoshma\nWhat I get from this article is a) apt-get is awesome and b) there's\nsubcategories in the launcher. I completely agree that apt-get is great, and\nsubcategories aren't bad either. However, this has nothing to do with \"app\nstores.\" apt-get has been around way before the ubuntu software center, and if\nanything it goes way deeper than just \"apps.\" If anything, this article is\njust bringing up the point that software management on linux (for the more\ntechnically inclined) is better than on mac, something that isn't quite\nexciting or new.\n\nI think articles like these are just looking for trouble. It immediately\nstands as being biased, and screenshots completely skew things in Ubuntu's\nfavor. Seriously, \"pushiness?\" It's a bad thing now to be showing users\napplications on the home page of a store? Maybe it might get cluttered, but I\ndefinitely don't prefer Ubuntu's \"Nice clean and unassuming\" main page with\njust a category listing. \"The listing is pretty simple?\" Now you're just\nlooking for things to say; I'm going to end my comment here before I make the\nsame mistake.\n\n------\njmspring\nIs it just me, or does the Ubuntu App Store resemble something one would find\nin Windows? Not sure where the \"less suck\" comes from.\n\n------\nfrou_dh\nWhat about the Apps from the App Store? How many of them have good design?\n\n------\nsebkomianos\nI love this kind of articles for the fact that they are all ignoring all the\nbackground work you have to do in Linux in order to bring your system at a\nstate in which you can work and get what it has to offer. The story is pretty\nstraight yet a lot of people ignore it: Non tech savvy people just wouldn't be\nable to work with Linux.\n\n------\nantimatter15\nCmd+Space works as a pretty decent app launcher, functioning pretty much\nexactly the same way as Natty's new Super key which acts a lot like Vista/7's\nsearch/start menu.\n\nI still don't see why Ubuntu's is better. It's cool how it slightly blurs the\nline between installed applications and available applications, but that's it.\n\n------\nFlow\nMature title...\n\n------\ntvon\n\"Ubuntu AppStore\"?\n\n~~~\nSwizec\nPurchasable apps -> app store.\n\n~~~\ntvon\nAre we pretending anyone actually calls it that?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSwift UTF-8 String - gok\nhttps://swift.org/blog/utf8-string/\n======\nskrebbel\nI have never written a single line of iOS/macos code, but I'm interested in\nSwift because it's a cool language.\n\nCan anyone explain why this is done _now_ and not when Swift was first\nreleased? I mean, UTF-8 was already the clear winner when Swift started. Is it\nsome obj-c compat story?\n\n~~~\ngok\nThe commonly-accepted wisdom among Unicode people was that UTF-8 is good for\ntransmission and storage, but bad for in memory representation. It now appears\npretty conclusive that this was wrong.\n\n~~~\nrstuart4133\nThey are still partially right, and I'd go so far as to say were totally right\nif efficiency wasn't a concern. From the programmers point of view utf-32 is\nstill by far the easiest memory representation to use.\n\nBack in the day, when the Unicode people were pushing it as an alternative to\nwhatever the ISO standard is that solved the same problem, they argued it was\nbetter than the ISO standard because the was only one encoding, UCS2 whereas\nISO defined 8, 16 and 32 bit encodings. They said they could get away with\nthat because 16 bits was enough for all modern languages (read: languages in\nuse). Windows, Java and Javascript among others drank the kool-aid.\n\nBut they were wrong, 16 bits was not enough. USC2 morphed into UTF-16, which\nis actually worse than UTF-8 because if has the byte ordering problem.\n\nTo make matters worse, Unicode decided to abandon grapheme == code point.\n(This means there is ä and ä. They look identical, but one is '\\xe4' and the\nother is a combining diaeresis, '\\61\\u0308', and the latter is now preferred.)\nI don't know why that did that as it makes string handling fragile, but I\nnotice the encoding chosen for UTF-16 drastically reduced the number of code\npoints available, so I wonder if they were worried about running out. The end\nresult means that makes utf-32 actually harder to parse than utf-8 (which is\nquite an achievement), so you may as well use utf-8 for everything.\n\n------\nezoe\nI wonder how long Windows can hold UTF-16 as the default native encodings.\nThey recently added UTF-8 locale.\n\n~~~\nygra\nCP65001 has existed for quite a while. There just have been plenty of places\nwhere it never really worked (I think the console was one of them).\n\nNonetheless, UTF-16 will most likely stay. They _might_ add wrappers around\nall API functions that convert arguments first, so we'd get CreateWindow8\nalongside CreateWindowW and CreateWindowA, but I wouldn't hold my breath. The\nduality of API functions was to enable programs to be built for NT and 9x with\nthe same codebase. It was never really intended for people to call them\ndirectly to enable non-Unicode-aware applications on NT.\n\nThe file system cannot migrate from UTF-16 anyway without breaking things, so\nthat will stay as is.\n\nIMHO there's pretty much nothing to gain, except a _lot_ of risk in trying to\nchange Windows to UTF-8 internally and the current interface might be an\ninconvenience to some developers, but not as much as to justify changing the\nwhole OS.\n\n~~~\nvbezhenar\nWhen the world uses UTF-8 and you have to constantly recode from/to with every\nWinAPI call, that's definitely an unnecessary overhead.\n\n~~~\nbadestrand\nObviously it is unnecessary but I doubt it affects the perceived speed of the\naverage desktop application in any way.\n\n------\nilovecaching\nIs anyone using Swift outside of Apple specific stuff professionally? When\nthey first announced swift it felt like it might catch on as general purpose\ngced language. The language itself is quite beautiful in a lot of ways\n(although being OO was obviously an awful step backwards). But it feels like\nit's still just the crazy language Apple uses, just like Objective-C was.\n\n~~~\nphamilton\nWe've been eye-ing it for a while at remind.com. Our hangup has been that\nwe're heavily aws focused, but [https://github.com/amzn/smoke-\naws](https://github.com/amzn/smoke-aws) is looking promising.\n\nWe're interested because it's one of a handful of statically typed functional\nprogramming languages. Haskell/Ocaml are great as ML type languages, but it's\na big paradigm shift for a team to jump into. Rust still has a pretty decent\nlearning curve. Swift seems to have landed nicely in the \"anyone can pick it\nup\" territory. Kotlin is also in that territory, but the JVM is a beast.\n\nFor now, we're heavily focused on Typescript as the statically typed\nfunctional language, and we leverage types pretty aggressively (conditional\ntypes, discriminant unions, etc). Our iOS devs bring a lot of the Swift style\nover to our backend Typescript systems and from what I've experienced I think\nSwift absolutely will have a place in backend development.\n\n~~~\ncageface\nSwift is a nice language but I think the reliance on ref counting is going to\nlimit its adoption. You have to work a lot harder to avoid reference cycles in\nSwift than you do in a garbage collected language. Unless GC latency is a deal\nbreaker for your problem domain it’s not worth the extra effort.\n\nMy money is on Rust for really low level stuff and Kotlin for anything where\nJVM overhead is acceptable.\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nIt really depends on what you're doing. A lot of the time, neither garbage\ncollection pauses nor reference cycles are an issue; and when they are it's\ntypical that one or the other will solve the issue.\n\n~~~\ncageface\nIf GC pauses aren't an issue for your app then you're better off with a full-\nblown GC because it's a lot easier to code for. Reference counting, as used in\nSwift, forces you to think a lot about cases where you might be creating\nreference cycles and memory leaks. GCs can figure this out for you and take\nthat burden off the programmer.\n\n~~~\nmillstone\nOne of the major advantages of reference counting is that it's easier to\nintegrate with other languages. For example you can manipulate Swift objects\nfrom C via CoreFoundation, which then allows them to be used from C++, Rust,\nwhatever.\n\nGC'd languages have some support (JNI, etc) but they require handles, pinning,\nwrite barriers, etc. which ends up being more complicated and less flexible.\n\n~~~\ncageface\nRight, which is one of the reasons it makes sense for Apple to use it, since\nthey have a lot of lower level C API to interact with.\n\nFor more general purpose backend work this is not usually a major\nconsideration though, which is one of the reasons I predict most backend work\nwill continue to be done in a GC language.\n\n------\nsaagarjha\nGreat work by the Swift team on stabilizing this (especially around UTF-8) for\nSwift 5. One question: how do Objective-C's tagged NSString pointers fit into\nthis? Are these imported as \"opaque\" strings? I see that _SmallString seems to\nstore its characters inline; are there any plans to do tagged pointers in\nSwift as well?\n\n~~~\nrkunde\nIt would have to be opaque as there is no backing allocation of any kind so\nthe string can’t provide a pointer to the contiguous memory. (Plus tagged\nstrings use an encoding scheme that makes the incompatible with UTF-8 anyway)\nIt’s possible that a smallstring version of the tagged pointer is created in\nsome situations.\n\nSmallString actually was just a tagged cocoa string at one point but that was\nremoved in favor of more powerful implementations. The latest implementation\nallocates no memory on the heap either but can store more characters, so using\na tagged pointer would be a step back.\n\n------\nStefanKarpinski\nSeems like the right move. Julia made a similar transition in 1.0 for similar\nreasons and it has turned out very well.\n\n------\nfaragon\nWise move, in my opinion. I hope Python will do that too, eventually.\n\n~~~\nkevin_thibedeau\nPython implemented multi-representation strings in 3.3. It picks the best\nencoding from ASCII, UTF8, UCS2, or UCS4. UTF8 is the preferred encoding for\nstrings exposed to the C API.\n\n[https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0393/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0393/)\n\n~~~\nmasklinn\nCPython provides but does not use UTF8 internally, it's a cache for\nPyUnicode_AsUTF8 (formerly _PyUnicode_AsString), which exists to convert\nPython strings to char* in order to interoperate with C libraries. It is not\nthe canonical representation of the string.\n\npypy, on the other hand, made this change in the latest release (7.1.0):\n[https://twitter.com/pypyproject/status/1095971192513708032](https://twitter.com/pypyproject/status/1095971192513708032)\n\n------\ngarganzol\nUTF-16 allows to quickly index a char in a string covering the most languages\nthat way.\n\nUTF-8 is a different story, as nearly every byte of UTF-8 string is a\nsurrogate for most languages except English/ASCII.\n\nNow, how can a char be indexed then? Only by slow iteration from the beginning\nof a string?\n\nUTF-8 is a good choice for storage, true. However, it seems to be a not so\ngood choice for string processing from the algorithmic point of view.\n\nOr maybe there is a catch that makes UTF-8 strings well-suited for string\nprocessing as well?\n\n~~~\nWorldMaker\n> UTF-16 allows to quickly index a char in a string covering the most\n> languages that way.\n\nNope. UTF-16 is not UCS-2 anymore for multiple reasons. You cannot assume you\ncan index a UTF-16 string as if it was UCS-2 anymore. UCS-4 (32-bit) is a\n_possible_ option, though not generally recommended either.\n\nThere are multiple tricks for getting great performance in UTF-8 string\nprocessing such as codepoint maps of various sorts. It's quite well suited for\nstring processing, and it's better to use UTF-8 at this point simply because\nit also helps from falling into the UTF-16 is not (and has not been for some\ntime) UCS-2 trap, and UCS-2 cannot represent a lot of Unicode today (including\nmany emoji).\n\n~~~\ngarganzol\nNever made a claim that UTF-16 is UCS-2. \"Most languages\" does not mean \"all\nlanguages\".\n\nStill, many popular platforms treat it like that in terms of char indexing.\nThey are able to get away with it since a surrogate char is a rare guest in\nUTF-16.\n\nP.S. It's surprising how easily HN crowd downvotes something when it falls out\nof a whimsical \"popular contemporary view on things\". Having a lot of years of\ntext processing behind my shoulders, I raised an important question and got an\nimmediate down-vote attack. But never mind, I'll survive.\n\n~~~\nygra\nAll those languages make it quite clear that you only get access to a code\nunit that way and other APIs usually exist to actually get access to code\npoints, which then usually take a string and an index.\n\nThat the most visible mechanism of accessing parts of a string is based on\ncode units along with UTF-16 masking bad code unless Emoji are involved (for\nmost developers at least), is a problem, though. UTF-8 makes the failure case\npop up much faster as pretty much every language doesn't only use ASCII.\n\n------\nsonnyblarney\nIf I ever wrote a language, handling strings wrt unicode would be the first\nthing I would fix so so that it's clear, concise and especially consistent.\n\nIt bothers me that in 2019 it can still be difficult to manage even basic\nthings with strings, and yet, whenever we talk/argue/bike-shed about\n'languages' we get caught up in intellectual meandering. Please, give us\nstrings that make sense. Then argue about monads.\n\n~~~\nasveikau\nI don't think a lot of people realize that Unicode itself, in any\nrepresentation, is complex, and there is no one abstraction that will make it\nalways easy in all cases. So I think your goal is unobtainable.\n\nSome of that complexity is because world languages themselves are not simple.\n(eg. If you were to ditch Unicode and start from scratch, it would remain hard\nto do bi-di text, to pick a random example.)\n\n~~~\nsonnyblarney\nTotally see what you are saying (the underlying issue is language itself), but\nit's pragmatically obtainable.\n\n~~~\nnicky0\nThe think is, strings that make sense has been a major goal of Swift, that's\nwhy they have been iterating on it so heavily. FWIW I think Swift's is\nprobably one of the cleanest String abstractions out there with respect to\nunicode correctness balanced against efficiency and usability.\n\n~~~\nasveikau\nTo be clear I applaud successful attempts to make it better, what I doubt is a\npossibility to make the problem completely go away without users of the api\never having to think.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIntelligence Augmentation and the Myth of the “Golden Lost Age” - jf\nhttp://codinginparadise.org/ebooks/html/blog/ia_vs__ai.html\n======\nfr0styMatt2\nThere's a bit of a 'reboot' as such (I forget what it's generally referred to)\nthat contributes to this. By that I'm referring to the way that microcomputers\nreset progress in software.\n\nWhen low-power microcomputers hit the masses, the advances that had happened\nin software in the minicomputer / mainframe world couldn't follow along. So in\nthe first instance you had computers that could only barely run BASIC programs\nand where you were programming in assembly close to the bare metal if you\nreally wanted to do much more advanced things with the machine.\n\nNow, the kids growing up on these computers in the 70s and 80s (I'm an 80s kid\nmyself) had no idea about things like GUIs or the latest in virtualization\ntechnology on minicomputers or all the many problems that had been solved in\nbig-mainframe world but were yet to hit consumer devices. One factor is that\nconsumer hardware of the time wouldn't have run the software efficiently\nanyway; another one is that there was no Internet where you could just Google\nanything and find out.\n\nSo many of us then grew up in this era and became software engineers that\nwould go on to write operating systems and software of the 90s and beyond.\nWe'd never seen or heard of, for example, Lisp Machines or what they could do.\nWhich is I think why you end up with this weird generational gap, almost like\na chasm of knowledge born in the 80s and 90s.\n\nWhenever I watch an Alan Kay video I'm blown away by how much was possible\n'back then'. My mental map of technological progress starts with 8-bit micros\nin the 1980s, which we all thought were 'cutting edge technology' except that\nthey weren't, in the broadest scheme of things. It's this amazement that I\nthink leads to the feeling of a 'Golden Lost Age'.\n\nRemember when Windows 95 touted preemptive multitasking as a groundbreaking\nnew feature? Or when DMA for hard disks was a 'new' thing? (except that the\nMother Of All Demos basically showed the concept, from what I vaguely remember\nfrom watching it many years back).\n\nWe see the same cycle in mobile computing - phones were once close-to-the-\nmetal devices; now they're running full mutli-tasking basically desktop-class\noperating systems. The difference these days is that we have the Internet and\nwe have the lessons of history actually available to us.\n\n~~~\nagumonkey\nI remember that awkward thrill to see a student thesis from the 60s being more\nthoughtful than the latest vector drawing program from A. And I've toyed with\na long list of advanced packages, none of them has that tiny geometry solver\nin them.\n\nTime is surely not an arrow in progress. Lot's of colateral and inherited sub\ncultures are sucking energy. As you mentioned, a new 'market' is also a\npotentially huge drawback, but that's such a common thing. People will see the\nworld their way, not as a PhD knowing the history and state of the art (even\nresearchers don't know all).\n\nIt happens in programming languages too. All the web started a freeform joyful\nenvironments, unlike c++ or java with their heavyweight specs and standards.\nBut then complexity hits and they're suddenly bringing a lot of structure,\ntypes, conventions, etc etc. It's like a child, who cannot enjoy his parents\nuniverse, he needs something compatible with his new mind.\n\nps: my latest 'the newest is less than the old' moment was realizing Haskell\nwas specified in 1990. At that time mainstream users were given Windows 3.0\nand DOS :)\n\n------\nwillholloway\n> “pop software” as Alan Kay calls it. There was a natural trend in the PC era\n> to make computing devices available to everyone, which I think was a\n> positive thing; this necessitated moving away from software that needed\n> training or methodologies, for example. It also required software that many\n> people would use, as opposed to more niche applications, in order to make\n> the profit necessary to support a company. Unfortunately this has made it\n> harder to create the more expert-oriented applications that could co-evolve\n> with users via training and methodology that would be akin to calculus or\n> music notation, or “bicycles of the mind” as Steve Jobs said;\n\nThe greatest productivity boost I have yet found, and the closest I've been\nable to come to a mind-machine interface is debian linux + tiling window\nmanager + command line proficiency + customization of text files for creating\nshortcuts, tailoring work environment.\n\nIt has a learning curve, but the payoff is immense. I think we should be\nteaching linux and the command line in schools, even if we don't teach kids to\ncode.\n\nThe computer is the most powerful and important tool we have, and we all use\nit daily. Not teaching expert level proficiency is the same as sending kids\ninto the world handicapped.\n\n~~~\nvezzy-fnord\nLinux is actually a large part of the \"computing pop culture\" that Kay\nlaments, FWIW.\n\n------\namirouche\nTo be honest this is a \"me too IA vs AI\" kind of post. I upvoted to continue\nthe discussion\n\nPrevious posts:\n\n\\- AI vs IA\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10373180](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10373180)\n\n\\- Machines for thinking: Computers will get smarter, but with humans in\ncharge\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10324648](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10324648)\n\n~~~\njoe_the_user\nI disagree. The article both does a good job of outlining the issues and makes\nsome interesting and reasonably substantial comments on these issues. An\narticle doesn't have to be earth-shattering to be useful.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nStartup Quote Anniversary Edition: Yoda, Jedi Grand Master - raychancc\nhttp://startupquote.com/post/4258464362\n\n======\nraychancc\nDo or do not. There is no try.\n\n\\- Yoda\n\n<http://startupquote.com/post/4258464362>\n\n*Okay, Yoda does not run a startup, but he runs the Jedi Council! Happy April Fools’ Day!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Which Stocks to Buy? - rishiloyola\nWhich stocks do you recommend to buy during the corona virus outbreak?\n======\npensatoio\nBuy index funds. The risk associated with gambling on individual stocks is an\norder of magnitude higher during a period such as this. You don't need that\nextra risk to see gains.\n\n------\ncrmd\nI’ve been focusing on blue chips that were already in the dog house, e.g. IBM,\nGE.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDynamic languages have jumped the shark - levosmetalo\nhttp://swizec.com/blog/dynamic-languages-have-jumped-the-shark/swizec/6204\n\n======\nshizzy0\nThe criticism of ENV only allowing strings has no bearing on his argument. ENV\ncomes from the OS environment. Code in any other language--strong or weakly\ntyped--would have the exact same issue. And not being able to coerce arbitrary\nstrings to booleans is fine because there is no principled way to do that\nexcept through convention. And everybody makes up there own convention: true,\nyes, YES, OK, TRUE, ok, ON, ENABLED, which just goes to show that there's no\nprincipled way to do it.\n\n~~~\nkyllo\nThis.\n\nNote that Java main methods start with public static void main(String[]\nargs){}\n\nThe main method takes an array of String objects from the command line as an\nargument. You can't pass a boolean or anything other than a String in args any\nmore easily in Java than you can in Ruby.\n\nBut Ruby and other dynamic languages give you _eval_ which, although\ndangerous, can have the effect of coercing your string into a boolean.\n\nirb(main):001:0> a = \"true\"\n\n=> \"true\"\n\nirb(main):002:0> b = eval a\n\n=> true\n\nirb(main):003:0> b\n\n=> true\n\nirb(main):004:0> !b\n\n=> false\n\n------\ngvickers\nYou have weak and dynamic typing confused.\n\n------\nprogramminggeek\nRuby has strong types, you can and should use them.\n\nIf you want type checking, use it.\n\nAlso, if Rails has security problems, stop using it.\n\nScala and Haskell have their own flaws. There is no magic bullet.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "Ask HN: Does anyone know of any good iOS Storyboard tutorials? - davidcoronado\n======\nratfacemcgee\nthis looks alright\n\n[https://www.raywenderlich.com/113388/storyboards-tutorial-\nin...](https://www.raywenderlich.com/113388/storyboards-tutorial-in-\nios-9-part-1)\n\nlike anything, best way to learn is just to hack on something. Follow the\ntutorial, then break it. Mess with control dragging between VC's to setup\ndifferent segues. Try passing data between VC's using segues. Then try loading\na VC from a storyboard in code (hint: use\ninstantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier).\n\n~~~\ndavidcoronado\nThis is really helpful thanks!\n\n~~~\nratfacemcgee\nhappy to help! have fun!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Alt-Right Finds a New Enemy in Silicon Valley - gregorymichael\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/business/alt-right-silicon-valley-google-memo.html\n======\njustforFranz\npathetic.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow to make your first game for less than $1,000 - gcheong\nhttp://deadpanic.com/make_a_game_1k\n\n======\nwindsurfer\nKeep in mind he's valuing his time at 0$ for the title, in which case you can\nmake your first game for $0 very easily.\n\n~~~\nelectromagnetic\nI'd love to make a video game, but I value my time at $9.25 an hour, which is\ncurrently Canadian minimum wage. I'm not going to work for less unless it\nfulfils some other need, and I doubt video games will ever be need fulfilling\nfor me.\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nThey're one hell of a way to learn, especially arcade style games are more\nlike mini operating systems inside.\n\n------\nConceptDog\nThe bad news is that the iPhone gold rush is basically over.\n\n------\nerikb85\nwhat can I learn from this article? That is, what I can read there: You have\nto create images and sounds and if you can't you have to buy them. And no\nmatter what you do, in the end you still have to pay your rent (what will be\nmore as $1,000).\n\n~~~\npotatolicious\n> _\"You have to create images and sounds and if you can't you have to buy\n> them.\"_\n\nAs a hobbyist game developer, this idea is probably the most key thing to game\ndevelopment (for a hacker) - and gets a bit more nuanced.\n\nThere's a very real cost-benefit to the type of game you're making vs. the\ncost of content.\n\nFor example, in a first-person shooter content costs a lot more than, say,\nSimCity. That one wall you had to model, texture, and light? In the player's\nfield of vision for may 2 seconds tops. The amount of labor required to\ngenerate all of your artistic assets is pretty prohibitive - which is why we\ndon't see many shooters coming out of small shops, and shooters tend to be\nmass-market affairs so that they stand a shot at recouping the investment.\n\nOn the other hand, games like SimCity have significantly less content\ndevelopment going on. That one building? Replicated hundreds of times over in\na single game, players keep coming back and seeing it, but never get bored.\nEach piece of content goes further and has considerably more lasting power\nthan it does in an action game.\n\nThis is something many amateur devs disregard to their peril - the very\n_structure_ of your game needs to account for your low-budget status. The\nalternative is to try and execute a shooter on a budget, and then compromise\non the quality of the content (or worse, use bad design to gloss it over: e.g.\nmaking players traverse a level backwards).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDisney Is Building the Streaming App to Rule Them All - cosmerewit\nhttps://www.pcmag.com/article/357835/disney-is-building-the-streaming-app-to-rule-them-all\n======\nscrumbledober\nIf Disney goes through with their acquisition of FOX, they will control a 60%\nshare of Hulu. Is there a chance of Disney using the platform they've built to\nmake Hulu not suck anymore and put their content there, or will they simply\ncontrol two of the major streaming services at the same time? It seems that\nHulu would be a much better competitor to Netflix if they had the Disney\ncatalogue, but I doubt there will be very many people who will not get the\nDisney service for their children simply because they already pay for Hulu.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Using Facebook like button for Alpha/Beta Invitation - abhishektwr\n\nI am just curious anyone has done something like that. Rather than asking the visitor to sign up for invite using email, I just want them to like the page. Any pointers?\n======\njokermatt999\nIf the only way to get to your site is to use a Facebook account, I'm just not\ngoing to use it. I've heard Facebook accounts can be easier to set up than a\nseparate account system, but a lot of people just don't want their Facebook\ntied with random sites like that.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nParallaxing Illustrations with jQuery - tombell\nhttps://github.com/cameronmcefee/plax\n\n======\nolalonde\nFor an awesome parallax demo:\n<http://www.nintendo.com.au/gamesites/mariokartwii/>\n\n------\ncylo\nAnother pretty neat example is this webcomic: <http://hobolobo.net>\n\n------\nCorrado\nVery cool, and it seem simple enough for non-graphics guys (like me) to\nactually make work. Thanx!\n\n------\nHipchan\nWhat's the difference between this and jquery.parallax?\n\n------\nsudont\nDoes anyone know the license on this?\n\n~~~\nwccrawford\nUnfortunately, the lack of posted license means nobody is permitted to use it\nwithout getting explicit permission. I really doubt that was the intent of the\nauthor, though.\n\n~~~\nsudont\nI'll email him and see if he'll add a license.\n\nEDIT: Waiting on a response.\n\n~~~\ncameronmcefee\nLicense added. Have at it, guys.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBeing Happy at Work Matters - zabramow\nhttps://hbr.org/2014/11/being-happy-at-work-matters\n\n======\nn2j3\nBloody *walls\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBenford's Law tests on Wikileaks data - agconway\nhttp://www.drewconway.com/zia/?p=2234\n\n======\nmbateman\n> Also, as suggested in the comments, I used a chi-square goodness-of-fit test\n> to see if the deviation is statistically significant, but it was not; with a\n> p-value of 0.2303. Meaning we would fail to reject the null hypothesis: the\n> observed data were a good fit for a Benford process. That said, the p-value\n> is not so large as to suggest total adherence.\n\nWelcome to stats 101. If you get p > 0.05, it means your test failed to tell\nyou anything. Which means your test failed to tell you about the likelihood of\ntampering.\n\n~~~\nwhyenot\nYou are on the right track, but no, it is more subtle than that. The test\ncould still be meaningful depending on what probability of false positives you\nare willing to accept.\n\n[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value>\n\n[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors>\n\n------\ncountersignaler\nthis is a statistical blog post written by someone who has no idea how to do\nstatistics. and even when told how to do it properly by a commenter, fails to\naccept the simple and overwhelming conclusion. why is this on the front page?\n\n~~~\nConfusion\nPerhaps because the data is interesting and we can draw the contrary\nconclusion: that there is no reason to suppose the data has been tampered with\nor fabricated?\n\n------\ndjmdjm\nThey should expect a bias, since Wikileaks have stated that some information\nhas been held back deliberately. From\n<http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary,_2004-2010>\n\n\"We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from the total archive as\npart of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further\nreview, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and\neventually in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.\"\n\n------\nSymmetry\nI might be missing something, but how is it that overall the number of leading\n2s is greater than the number of leading 1s, but not in any of the constituent\nregions?\n\n~~~\nars\nIt might be a form of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpsons_paradox>\n\n~~~\nhiroaki\nI don't think Simpsons paradox plays any role here, if I understand this\ncorrectly.\n\nIn the first graph, the leading digit counts are _not_ the things being summed\nup across all the regions. The weekly report counts are summed up across all\nregions and _then_ the leading digits are counted.\n\n------\nzitterbewegung\nI thought that wikileaks eliminates certain information that would cause harm\nto a party mentioned in the leak?\n\n~~~\nbiturd\nThat is correct, there is a subset of ~15,000 records that are being withheld,\nwhich will be released when they no longer have a probability of being harmful\nto those they mention.\n\nSource: <http://boingboing.net/2010/07/26/wikileaks-qa-with-ja.html>\n\n_Boing Boing: We're told that there are more documents from this archive yet\nto be released by Wikileaks, some 15,000 of them as reported. Some have\nspeculated that these could relate to Iraq. Can you comment more?_\n\n _Jacob Appelbaum: The 15,000 documents are part of the set of Afghanistan\ndocuments. They are being redacted for harm-minimizing purposes as requested\nby our source, and will be made available as is applicable with respect to the\nrelevant security concerns._\n\nI would like to know much more about the process by which Wikileaks determines\nwhat is or is not safe/relevant to be released. While I support their efforts,\nthey are walking a thin line in becoming the very thing they are working\nagainst.\n\nI only hope that the decision was done by experienced committee, but even that\nraises questions as to how do you vet that committee for the ability to gauge\nwhat is and is not releasable. How does one determine those people are even of\nadequate credentials/authority to read the information ahead of time?\n\nIf I were our the US govt., I certainly would be playing up that issue as much\nas possible. On the surface it would not be hard to push general sentiment in\nthe direction of Wikileaks playing information Gods with the data they have.\n\n------\njongraehl\nIncredibly weak evidence.\n\n~~~\nlong\nIt's not weak evidence. There's no evidence. The guy doesn't seem to know how\nsignificance testing works.\n\n------\ncorruption\nAn aptly named blog for the analysis.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: No intrinisic motivation to build stuff - twink\nDear HN crowd,<p>I'm not particularly happy in my life. My main problem is lack of intrinsic motivation to create stuff, in the widest sense. For example, I don't contribute to open source projects. I don't have any own programming projects. I don't have a personal web site or a blog. I'm not a member of a political party trying to change the world. I find the start-up scene thrilling, but as long as I don't change, I will probably never be part of it.<p>I think the underlying problem is that it's quite easy for me to find things that interest me, but very hard not to get bored after a day. For example, think about topics like lock picking, composing electronic music, web development, functional programming languages, [insert random technology here], etc.<p>As soon as I understand the basics of X, I lose interest. After I had managed to open a very simple lock, I stopped practicing. After I had roughly figured out what the knobs on a synthesizer do, I stopped trying to make electronic music. After I understood which technologies are required to build and deploy a modern web site and how to get a basic \"hello world\" running, I stopped building web sites. After a few hours of \"Learn you a Haskell for Great Good\" and seeing the main differences to other programming paradigms, I stopped reading (same for the Erlang equivalent). I've had a look at so many different programming languages in my life, but after I understand syntax and basic design principles, I lose the motivation to actually build something with it.<p>As such, I have no chance to become an expert in a particular field. It's frustrating.<p>I perform very well at university, though. It's easy to see what you have to do to get the reward (a good grade), so I do just that. Actually, (graded) university projects are the only projects I've finished in my life. Why do I need grades to motivate me? What the fuck does optimizing for good grades matter, while others actually do and learn useful stuff in their free time?\nWhy don't I feel the urge to build kick-ass stuff, while so many people here do? Why can't I stay focussed on a single thing without external pressure (grades)? I'm close to graduation now. I could know far more than I do, if I had learned past what is required for getting an A.<p>Something needs to change. I already see myself decaying at $BIG-CO, the monthly pay-check as my only reward. But what other option is there, without any passion.<p>PS: HN is very inspiring for me, though. My brain loves the rush of information. It's typical for me to open 40-something tabs of news stories, just to skim through them, without reading a single one in detail: Read the introduction, read the conclusion, close tab, read top HN comments. Understand what it is about and what smart people think about the subject. Then go to next story, repeat. Maybe it's ADHD. Medication (stimulants) did not really help, though.\n======\nsgentle\nHere's the problem, as I see it: who is your manager? Because a manager is\nnormally paid a lot of money to help you be productive. It's a hard job, the\nkind people get degrees in and work for decades at before they can do it well.\n\nIf you're trying to work for yourself, then your manager is you. You're giving\nyourself a very difficult job, a job that you're trying to do at the same time\nas your creative work (and, if I'm not wrong, all of that while still working\n9-5, so 3 jobs total). You may not even realise it, but you are a manager at\nthe moment. Not knowing that doesn't stop you from being a manager, it just\nmakes you a bad manager. An absentee boss.\n\nHere is some evidence from your own words that tells me you're crying out for\ngood management:\n\n\"As soon as I understand the basics of X, I lose interest. After I had managed\nto open a very simple lock, I stopped practicing.\" <\\-- This is classic lack\nof perspective - a manager needs to keep focus on the big picture, to give\ndirection and focus to the work being done. Without that, you end up just\ndoing whatever's in front of you, whether or not it's useful.\n\n\"Actually, (graded) university projects are the only projects I've finished in\nmy life. Why do I need grades to motivate me?\" <\\-- Because grades can be very\nmotivating. A good manager understands that people aren't robots. You need to\nhave your work structured in a way that makes you want to do it. At university\nyou get tasks divided into small packages, each properly structured with a\nclearly defined goal and scope, steps to achieve the goal, and a metric for\nmeasuring your success at the end. Can you say the same for the work you set\nyourself?\n\n\"It's typical for me to open 40-something tabs of news stories, just to skim\nthrough them, without reading a single one in detail\" <\\-- Have you considered\nthat you do this because you're interacting with a very simple manager-bot?\n\"Hey, HN\", you say, \"give me something to do\". Well, HN will give you stuff to\ndo, with a (small) reward for a clearly defined action.\n\nHere's my suggestion for you: Be a manager. Set aside an amount of time each\nday to work as your manager. Ask yourself about your goals, figure out what\nyou need to excel at those goals, and _make sure that you get what you need_.\nIs your work structured the right way? Is what you're doing now working? If\nyou can't figure out what to do next as a manager, go learn. Read a book or\nonline article about management to get ideas. But, mostly, just make sure you\nactually do it.\n\nYour trade, if you want to be a self-motivated creator of worthwhile things,\nis both creation and management. You have tools and skills and time invested\nin the former. Invest in the latter too.\n\n~~~\ntwink\nFirst of all, thanks for the helpful input.\n\n> Here's my suggestion for you: Be a manager. Set aside an amount of time each\n> day to work as your manager. Ask yourself about your goals, figure out what\n> you need to excel at those goals, and make sure that you get what you need.\n> Is your work structured the right way? Is what you're doing now working? If\n> you can't figure out what to do next as a manager, go learn. Read a book or\n> online article about management to get ideas. But, mostly, just make sure\n> you actually do it.\n\nIt's easy to find blah-blah blog posts and books written by self-proclaimed\nlife advisors, usually with very low information density (which makes it\nimpossible for me to read carefully). Can you recommend any particular\nmaterial?\n\n~~~\nsgentle\nThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey is a pretty seminal\npersonal management book. It's my top recommendation in terms of\n\"foundational\" material. It's not got much in the way of practical tools, but\nthe ideas are applicable everywhere.\n\nI would recommend Drive by Dan Pink if you're interested in learning more\nabout creative motivation. It's pretty short, and actually very well\nsummarised here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc>\n\nPeopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister is very good programmer-specific\nmanagement material. They cite a lot of work benchmarking the productivity of\ndifferent workplaces, so it's very \"x is good, x is bad\".\n\nJim Collins' Good to Great is an examination of businesses that succeed vs\nfail, and the attributes that get them there, it's essentially an extended\nsummary of a longitudinal study he and his team did of businesses that\noutperformed the stock market by a high factor over 10 years. It's more\nleadership than management, but still very useful.\n\nOne that I haven't read yet (damn my stupidly big reading list) but recommend\non reputation alone is First, Break All The Rules by Marcus Buckingham and\nCurt Coffman. Here's a summary:\n[http://www.slideshare.net/gregcrouch/executive-summary-\nfirst...](http://www.slideshare.net/gregcrouch/executive-summary-first-break-\nall-the-rules)\n\nI share your frustration about blah-blah blog posts. With the exception of\nFirst, Break All The Rules (which I haven't read yet) and 7 Habits (which I\nforgive because it's so damn good), the books I mention are based on actual\nresearch which is cited in the book, not just some dude going \"I think this\nbecause I know stuff\". Because they're books for busy people, they have\nsummaries and bolded sections and callout boxes too. :)\n\nOverall, though, I would caution you to not put the cart before the horse.\nThere are a thousand books on management that could teach you something new,\nbut it will all just go on the big pile of irrelevant information unless you\nactually need it. You won't unless you're actively trying to manage. If you\nstart by spending that time you'll be much better placed to contextualise the\nknowledge and, therefore, actually benefit from it.\n\n------\nsolarmist\nIt seems to me that you're problem isn't that you don't have motivation it's\nthat you need rewards right ways. I used to be the same way. Learning a few\ntricks in each of those areas gives you a thrill, but once that thrill wears\noff you lose interest and go off to find your next thrill.\n\nGrades are just a slightly longer term reward. You work hard for a few weeks\nor a month then you get rewarded with an A or a B.\n\nInstead of beating yourself up over these things you need to find a way to\n\"reward\" learning something in more depth.\n\nDiscipline isn't forcing yourself to do something it's more like tricking\nyourself into doing it until it's second nature and that's what you naturally\ndo. For example, surround yourself with Haskell materials and environments to\nthe exclusion of all else AND have set up some kind of reward system for\nyourself. Or removing junkfood from your house in order to get hungry. If\nyou're hungry and search the house for a snack and all you have are salads or\npre-cooked chicken breasts then odds are you aren't going to go to the trouble\nto leave the house to find something else, you'll just eat what you have.\n\nBasically you need to find a way to make delayed gratification more gratifying\nto you than instant or short term gratification.\n\nFollow the example of Khan Academy. They use game mechanics to keep people\ncoming back. Do the same for things you want to study.\n\nThe other thing to realize is that at some point you need to commit to a path\nand ignore everything that's not applicable to that path. You can't be know\neverything. If you want to be a PHP developer don't go off and read a book\nabout embedded C programming. It's outside of your area.\n\n~~~\ntwink\nHow to trick myself into building an awesome web project? Remove all software\nother than a text editor? Wouldn't I need at least a web browser? :-)\n\nI think it's not that easy in all cases. However, I already practice the food\nuse-case you've mentioned (I simply don't buy unhealthy food).\n\n~~~\nsolarmist\nNo it's not easy, but removing distractions helps keep you on track.\n\nA lot of people on HN I've heard say they use a web filter on themselves. Only\nallowing most web sites for certain times of day, otherwise they're locked\ndown to \"productive\" web sites.\n\nAlso, when you're looking for something new to learn instead of picking a new\nbreadth topic, pick a depth topic you don't know about and learn about in one\nof your hand picked languages. Like if you're learning about networking or\nmachine learning, use a language that you want to know better, but have \"lost\ninterest\" in instead of one you already know well.\n\n------\ncreativeone\nI have started numerous websites, web businesses, blogs, and spend nearly $10k\non a project and left it because I didn't have enough money to complete it. I\nalso get too much satisfaction from small successes. I also get demotivated\nwhen a project of mine doesn't \"take off\" immediately. I am starting a new\nproject now and I have more of a sense of urgency about it. My future depends\non it and I can't fall back on school or my parents if I fail. It's all or\nnothing. And I think that is the attitude I lacked and needed for all of my\npast projects.\n\n------\nMz\nFor me, addressing underlying health issues has helped. I also read a book a\nlong time ago about \"psychology\" (for lack of a better word) which talked\nabout how people have different profiles for what stuff they _will_ do in\nvarying amounts. You figure out how much of different types of things you need\nto do and find a lifestyle that gets the results you want (in terms of money\nor whatever) and do that.\n\nReal life example: I'm a middle-of-the-road extrovert, so I need a certain\namount of social interaction but I have my limits. When deprived of the\nminimum necessary amount of social interaction, my functioning is impaired.\nWhen I reach my limit, it's time to stop and go be alone for a bit. That\ndoesn't mean I'm a flake and now abandoning folks or some such. It means my\n\"budget\" has been spent for this particular thing and I need to recharge\nbefore I can do more of it.\n\nFolks on HN sometimes talk about being only able to code X number of hours per\nweek and no more, so they can't manage to work full time as a coder and also\ndo a side project. Others talk about needing to code a certain amount and\nbeing unable to just stop until they have done a certain amount of problem\nsolving or the like. Some \"needs\" can be channeled somewhat into different\npursuits but when the limit is reached, that's all you can do. So maybe part\nof the issue is that being in college uses up so much of what you have to give\nthat there isn't enough left to finish something else on top of it? If so,\nthen doing a start-up full time might work but trying to do it on the side\nmight not.\n\n------\nbillswift\nI think the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is grossly\noverblown, especially for getting stuff done. You might notice that all of the\nresearch (at least all of it I have seen reports of) uses very short term\noperations, things that can be done in minutes, or hours at the most, to show\nthe contrast. I do not think intrinsic motivation can be maintained without\nsomething outside of itself to keep it focused. I don't think it an accident\nthat nearly all advances in knowledge (explicit or process) comes from\nacademia with its obsessive status games or from for-profit businesses with\nthe need to make money.\n\nI have mostly used work to help maintain my focus over the years. While most\nof my projects were not directly part of my job, I used the requirements of my\njobs (and expected jobs) to guide my learning from project to project, for\nsome continuity. Those that were not related to work were a lot more\nscattershot.\n\nADDED: Before someone brings up examples of people who weren't currently\nacademics contributing to science, like Einstein writing papers while he was a\npatent clerk, there is no reason to go through the extra effort to write up\nresults into publishable papers (which is a lot of work) if you are not aiming\nfor something more than the sheer joy of discovery.\n\n------\nauganov\nWow, hits close to home.\n\nI tend to see it as the bi-polar disorder of learning. There are periods of\nmaniacal interest in a certain topic. I can acquire vast knowledge in a matter\nof very short time yet it always quickly wears of.\n\nThe lack of immediate recognition, reward etc. is definitely a factor. I too\nalways knew school didn't mean much, but being straight A has always been sort\nof a thing I had to do, it was my responsibility. How could I let other people\nsee I am not the smartest guy?! Haha.\n\nI was actually thinking about finding some projects partners on-line in a\nsimilar situation so all of us could work to gather on fairly simple projects\n(and perhaps building those out later on), it's definitely far harder to just\ndismiss a project if there's other people expecting you to perform.\n\nI know I have all the capability to deliver crazy performance. And hey, I\nstill do from time to time, it's not like we're doomed. We have already proved\nthat we have the mental capability to achieve great things, now it's time to\nutilize it.\n\n~~~\ntwink\n> I know I have all the capability to deliver crazy performance. And hey, I\n> still do from time to time, it's not like we're doomed. We have already\n> proved that we have the mental capability to achieve great things\n\nYes, sure we are. But isn't it sad how much of our potential is wasted?\n\n> now it's time to utilize it.\n\nMotivating words, but I need more than that ;-)\n\n~~~\nauganov\nWasted sounds too dramatic, misallocated I would say.\n\nI would love to be able to achieve a 100% focus at will. But I think acquiring\nknowledge in so many different fields has also allowed me to have a pretty\nunique personality that I'm satisfied with. Sometimes I look at those people\nthat are completely sucked into one thing and I just think I wouldn't like to\nbe like them. I would love to have tons and tons of money, but would I want to\nbe Warren Buffet? No way.\n\nFor example I spent a year learning Chinese (completed an equivalent of 3\nyears of study for a 'normal' person + naturally expanded over the next year\nwithout effort or loosing too much time). I know it's something pretty much\nwithout use unless I want to get a crappy job, but I'm happy I did. I just\nlike having that extra knowledge. It's no different than how I want to have a\nfancy car. If I was to put a price tag on that knowledge it would definitely\nbe millions.\n\nMy point is that although there's no doubt we need to improve let's do it our\nway. A good analogy is when you play a game, say soccer and you invent your\nown way to kick the ball, you know how other, better people kick it, you know\nyour way is 'wrong' but it's so much more fun. And who knows maybe one day it\nturns out you can still win that way.\n\nLet's not get depressed (you sound a little hopeless there, haha). We can\nadjust this and that and we'll be fine.\n\n------\nscotty79\nSame for me, good at grades, competitions, having fun with prototyping but\nrarely building anything finished.\n\nI rarely find motivation to build stuff, but I am strongly motivated to find\nout why stuff doesn't work and how to fix it, even sometimes to actually fix\nit.\n\nMy advice for you is to pair up with a builder, look at what he's doing, help\nhim when he gets stuck on some bug and struggle to keep up with his\ncreativity.\n\n------\nCyberFonic\nI think you are perfectly normal. Suspect that your frustration comes from\ncomparing yourself to other people who are intrinsically very different to\nyou.\n\nYou come across as being smart, clever and high energy levels. Try stuff that\nis much harder intellectually, physically, etc. Get out of your comfort zone.\nYou might find your passion in the most unlikely place.\n\n------\ndcolgan\nI'm pretty sure you just described me to a tee. I completely understand how it\nis to hop from hobby to hobby, trying to find the next new novelty.\n\nIn high school I spent a lot of time learning tools but never really made\nanything with them. I must have started 50 games, but would always throw them\naway at 300 lines of code because they were not interesting anymore. One time\nI got the idea to make a Flash cartoon website like HomestarRunner.com. I\nlearned the Flash IDE, and the time that I started to get good at it was when\nI started losing interest.\n\nIn college I discovered that there are better tools out there than the ones I\nhad been using. I traded Windows and Gamemaker for Linux and Python. I still\nnever finished anything, because I kept finding new and better languages. For\na while there I tried out almost every popular language there is, including\nHaskell and Erlang.\n\nOnce my friends and I decided to make a game, and as the \"lead programmer\" on\nthe team, I wanted to use the best language there is for making games. I\nstarted on Python, then switched to Perl (yes, Perl for games!), then C\n(because the others were \"too slow\") and finally back to Python because C was\ntoo hard.\n\nSome things that I have noticed include:\n\n-Perfectionism is a nasty beast. Are you a perfectionist too? I will go back and forth between things because I want to find The Optimal Way (TM), but after a certain point you can't really find a better way that helps more than the cost of changing. My dad, a mathmatician, once told me, \"Life is not an optimization problem.\" I am coming to see that he is right.\n\n-You mention that you do well in college even if you can't stay focused on your own projects. I have found that true for myself as well. I think the structure helps to keep us on track. Personal projects and side hobbies have no inherent structure, and all it takes to give up is to just stop working on them. I have found success when my hobbies and side projects intersect with each other. I finished a Flash animation when it was for a class project. I actually did learn a Haskell for Great Good when I made my senior research project \"An Investigation of Lesser-Known Programming Languages.\" Then learning Haskell was not just a thing that might be cool but rather a school project that I had to finish. I recently finished a three year long programming project with a professor advising me. I wanted to quit several times, even though it was a great project, but my advisor half convinced/half forced me to stick with it, and I am glad that he did now that it is done. If something like school motivates you, then use that to your advantage!\n\n-The biggest thing that gives me motivation to do anything is the people who will benefit from it. After thinking long and hard about the meaning of life, I have come to decide that love is what is most important. As such, I can turn away from the most interesting project in the world if I am just working on it for myself, but if I know that people are really going to benefit from it, that provides motivation. I think of all of the times that I have failed to complete a side project like a game or Flash website, I failed because they weren't really helping anyone, and as such they weren't really worth doing to me.\n\nSo, I suggest that once you leave college, find a lean startup that fulfills a\nneed you care about. Maybe you wouldn't do well founding a startup, but you\ncould work as an employee at one. Then you have structure similar to what you\nhave in school, only this time with an employer, but you don't waste away at\n$BIG-CO. (I too have this dread of $BIG-CO!)\n\nDo note that knowing a lot about a little does give you some unique\nadvantages. If you ever do need to really learn something for a job or school\nproject, it will be much easier than if you knew nothing about a subject. You\nare also more aware of what tools are available for various projects, and you\ncan select the right tool for the right job.\n\nAs a final thought, I notice that you have been registered for 250 days or so\nand have 5 karma. That is almost the same as me. I usually don't say anything\nbecause I don't feel like I have anything to add, but I've been trying to\ncomment more recently. Lurking allows me to just be a passive observer, but I\ntake in less when I'm actually invested enough to comment.\n\nIf you'd like to talk, send me an email. Info's in my profile if you are\ninterested.\n\n~~~\ntwink\n> Perfectionism is a nasty beast. Are you a perfectionist too?\n\nUnfortunately, yes. And I'm definitely treating life as an optimization\nproblem. However, most of the time I don't see the big picture. For example, I\nspend hours or days figuring out the \"best\" piece of hardware to buy (e.g., a\nnew monitor), and then another day trying find the best offer. Usually I get\nfrustrated the more options I find. Quite often, after many wasted hours, I\nend up buying nothing at all.\n\nOther people would just \"google\" for \"monitor test 2011\", take #1 from the\nlist, get it from their local dealer, and spend the rest of the day working on\nan interesting project or earning money (or both). What a happy life.\n\n> I have found success when my hobbies and side projects intersect with each\n> other. I finished a Flash animation when it was for a class project. I\n> actually did learn a Haskell for Great Good when I made my senior research\n> project \"An Investigation of Lesser-Known Programming Languages.\" Then\n> learning Haskell was not just a thing that might be cool but rather a school\n> project that I had to finish.\n\nJup. The only programming projects I finished were school projects. That's\nwhen I have no problems getting incredibly productive, but a few minutes after\nthe submission deadline, everything is back to normal and I waste my time\nsucking in random bits of information on the web. There's no way to become a\ngreat programmer (builder/creator) if you only code (build/create) seriously a\nfew times a year.\n\n> If something like school motivates you, then use that to your advantage!\n\nYes, school is the only thing that really motivates me. But well, now I'm\nclose to graduation, and I don't know yet what could replace it. That's scary.\n\n> Do note that knowing a lot about a little does give you some unique\n> advantages. If you ever do need to really learn something for a job or\n> school project, it will be much easier than if you knew nothing about a\n> subject. You are also more aware of what tools are available for various\n> projects, and you can select the right tool for the right job.\n\nThat's true. I often notice that my tech knowledge is very exhaustive/broad\ncompared to people who I consider experts in their particular field. They know\none thing very well, I know a little about countless things.\n\nHowever, I don't really know if that helps me as a programmer. Good\nprogrammers have to become experts in a at least a few technologies. Maybe I\nshould not force myself to become a programmer. Maybe I should pick a route\nwhere there is no need to become an expert. Suggestions?\n\n> If you'd like to talk, send me an email. Info's in my profile if you are\n> interested.\n\nI definitely should do so. But somehow I'm already starting to lose all\ninterest in fixing my problems. I'm already onto the next thing: Skimming\nthrough the Python twisted docs, just to see that I don't actually want to\nbuild anything. Sigh.\n\n~~~\nsolarmist\nIf you are an over optimiser (i.e. the word BEST appears in your head when you\ntry and do something rather than Good enough) you should read The Paradox of\nChoice by Barry Schwartz\n([http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...](http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html)).\n\n------\neurohacker\nlike written by myself ..\n\ncustom-made soft development service could suite you, or poker game if you are\nlooking for suitable business, or travel business\n\ndo you have business ideas evolving in your head all the time ?\n\nlooking forward to hear the cure ..\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Best forum for web application development? - ssn\n\nCould you please advise me on forums or q&#38;a sites for discussing technical issues related to web application development?<p>Where do webapp developers meet online?\n======\nRoyceFullerton\n<http://stackoverflow.com> is a good place for answers to specific technical\nquestion.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nRuby Plus – Coding in the Browser - bparanj\nhttp://rubyplus.biz/\n\n======\nbparanj\nLearn C, C++, C#, Elixir, Go, Haxe, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python 2, Python 3 and\nRuby on a browser in any device for free.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe enigma behind America's 20-year lobster boom - katiey\nhttp://qz.com/506376\n======\nhammock\nIt's a mystery? Have always believed it due to the overfishing of cod.\nHistorically there has been an overabundance of lobsters.\n\n _When the colonists first arrived on the shores of New England, ...lobsters\nused to wash up on shore in drifts two-feet tall. One 17th century British\nhistorian by the name of William Wood visited Newfoundland and noted, \"Their\nplenty makes them little esteemed and seldom eaten [except by the Indians who]\nget many of them every day for to baite their hooks withal and to eat when\nthey can get no bass.\"_\n\n[http://factually.gizmodo.com/lobsters-were-once-only-fed-\nto-...](http://factually.gizmodo.com/lobsters-were-once-only-fed-to-poor-\npeople-and-prisoner-1612356919)\n\n _Some contemporary Canadians remember kids from poor towns, as late as the\n1940s, trading lobster sandwiches for peanut butter and jelly in the school\ncafeteria._\n\n[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/03/how-lobster-\nclaw...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/03/how-lobster-clawed-its-\nway)\n\n------\nclaar\nYet you still have to pay $20+ for it in a restaurant.\n[https://econfix.wordpress.com/2013/08/25/a-glut-of-\nlobsters-...](https://econfix.wordpress.com/2013/08/25/a-glut-of-lobsters-but-\nwhy-are-prices-in-restaurants-still-high/)\n\n~~~\ndouche\nAnd it's $3-5 a pound off the boats. Cheaper than burgers for your New England\nsummer barbecue.\n\n~~~\nTuring_Machine\nSame thing with Alaska salmon. Reds (sockeye) were netting the fishermen 50\ncents a pound this summer, but try pricing it in a store, much less in a\nrestaurant.\n\nI'm really surprised that someone hasn't disintermediated the seafood industry\nin a big way. Too many middlemen, plus an ultra-perishable product that would\nbenefit tremendously from fast transactions.\n\n~~~\nhammock\nThe whole foods by me has been selling wild caught sockeye at a great price\nfor weeks now... figured they had a good source and didn't think much more.\nMakes sense that there's a glut as you say\n\n------\ndouche\nNice article.\n\nThey touched on it, but lobster fishing is not really a fishery - it's a farm.\nTo highlight a point from the article: one-third to one-half of most lobsters'\ndiet is herring, stolen from the lobster traps.\n\n------\ndsfyu404ed\nThis is a great article, now if only someone would make an in depth comparison\nto the situation in Massachusetts where they procrastinated when enacting\ncatch limitations while fishing themselves into oblivion and now want the\nstate to help them out...\n\n------\nPinatubo\nIt was a pleasant surprise to read a balanced article related to climate\nchange.\n\n~~~\nantod\nYeah, climate change gets such a bad rap. It's so unfair. Nobody takes the\ntime to get to know the real climate change - the poor thing is so\nmisunderstood. Deep down it only wants to help. /s\n\nWhy is this a pleasantly balanced article relating to climate change? Just\nbecause it points out that rising temps was a possible factor (amongst others)\nfor a lobster population boom? Don't worry at least we've got lots of lobster.\n\nDid you keep reading until the bit where that temperature sweet spot for\nlobsters might have already been exceeded, and it could be one of the factors\nthat might now be adversely affecting lobster breeding?\n\n~~~\nPinatubo\nI'm not sure what you're disagreeing with or find offensive.\n\n~~~\nantod\nNot offended at all. It just struck me as an absurd thing to bring up.\n\nThe article was about lobsters and the multiple hypotheses on why the\npopulation exploded and why/if it might soon collapse again.\n\n~~~\nPinatubo\nMost articles that mention climate change rarely discuss alternative\nhypotheses for what we observe.\n\n------\nPeterWhittaker\nFascinating tale of complexity and unexpected causes and effects.\n\n~~~\npvaldes\nYes, marine biologists deal with those devilish complexities all the time. And\nthis is only a small part of the entire picture. There are also crustacean\nviruses for example.\n\n------\nmostlylurking\nSeems to me if you are actively marking fertile lobsters and throwing them\nback in they might be also actively selecting for the propagation of overly\nfertile lobsters.\n\n~~~\nleoedin\nSurely that's already entirely the point of natural selection.\n\n------\nchrisbennet\nI recommend reading \"The Secret Life of Lobsters\" if you find this\ninteresting. It was a best seller a few years back.\n\n------\nnsxwolf\nNow, can someone tell me why the live lobsters at Red Lobster smell so fishy\nand taste so rotten?\n\n------\ndavidhariri\nIf you haven't read David Foster Wallace's \"Consider the Lobster\" you should.\nIt's fantastic.\n[http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_l...](http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster.html)\n\n~~~\npvaldes\nMeh, lots of drama. The author claims that in Europe lobsters are cut in half\nalive before to kill the animal. Not, this is not the common procedure.\n\n------\njpatokal\nThe baby lobster looks remarkably like a cockroach. Maybe we should start\nbioengineering 20-pound roaches and serving them from food trucks instead...\n\n[https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/lobster.jpg?quali...](https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/lobster.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=640)\n\n~~~\ndankohn1\nOr like spiders: [https://xkcd.com/1268/](https://xkcd.com/1268/)\n\n~~~\nmaxerickson\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_spider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_spider)\n\n(I just assumed it must be the case that someone somewhere does eat\nspiders...)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nEvite: your data for sale - fezz\nhttp://www.oracle.com/webfolder/assets/cloud-data-directory/index.html#/page/59\n\n======\ngreenyoda\nMisleading title - this document lists data for sale from dozens of\nbusinesses, not just Evite. (Which actually makes it much more interesting\nthan the title implies.)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIncreased acidity found in schizophrenia and bipolar patients’ brains - kurtisdipo\nhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-some-psychiatric-disorders-a-ph-problem/\n======\nMz\nMy medical condition makes the body too acidic. This is a well known thing.\nDoctors know it. Patients know it. Yet, it is not treated as a primary issue.\nIt only gets treated secondarily to help control specific developments, like\nacid reflux.\n\nI have known a number of bipolar people and I tend to easily click with them.\nI don't think I am actually bipolar, but I do suspect my medical condition\nsometimes impacts my brain functioning in a similar manner.\n\nWithout bothering to get into lengthy anecdata I think a) acidosis likely is a\nroot cause of mental health problems but b) solving it isn't as simple or\nstraight forward as just controlling the acidity.\n\nIf your body functions different from the norm such that the result is high\nacidity, there will be a lot of other knock off effects.\n\nSo, it is a little like saying \"Deserts are deserts because they lack water.\nSo let's just add water.\" Well, no, they typically lack water because they are\nin the rain shadow of a mountain range. Importing water doesn't fix that.\nImporting it consistently, for many years may allow you to mitigate many of\nthe effects, but you will have to keep working at it. You will not find that\nclimate in the area \"normalizes\" just because you imported water and grew\nplants. You will still be in the rain shadow of a mountain and if you stop\nimporting water and stop lovingly tending to human planted flora, it will\neventually revert back to desert.\n\n~~~\ntominous\nInteresting analogy but it doesn't always hold. Take the greening of Ascension\nIsland [1] where planting trees created a virtuous cycle: the trees trapped\nmore moisture which promoted the growth of more trees.\n\nIn biology there are many complicated feedback loops and in some cases a\nparameter seems to get stuck outside of the normal range. In those cases,\nbringing the parameter back into the normal range can be enough to allow the\nnormal feedback mechanisms to work properly again.\n\nSome examples:\n\n* Eczema: There can be a loop between irritation, inflammation, damage to the skin, more irritation. Treat the skin with steroids to both improve symptoms and disrupt the loop.\n\n* Myopia: Studies have shown that undercorrecting for near-sightedness actually makes it worse [2]. Bringing it back into the normal range doesn't just help the symptoms, it also makes it progress slower.\n\n* Depression: Maybe operating at a higher level, but there's a clear loop between changed behaviour and improved motivation.\n\nEven something like acidity could be like this. You could speculate a link\nbetween gut bacteria and acidity, whereby changing the acidity directly could\nalter the balance of bacteria which locks in the change in acidity.\n\n[1]\n[http://faculty.washington.edu/dcatling/Catling2012_GreenMoun...](http://faculty.washington.edu/dcatling/Catling2012_GreenMountainSubmitted.pdf)\n\n[2] [http://www.journalofoptometry.org/en/under-correction-\nhuman-...](http://www.journalofoptometry.org/en/under-correction-human-myopia-\nis/articulo/S1888429613000885/)\n\n~~~\nMz\nI am aware that the existence of trees tends to promote rain, so, no, it isn't\nan absolute, black or white thing.\n\nMy medical condition is genetic in origin. I have reversed a lot of my\nsymptoms and, yes, maintaining my improved condition is easier than I\nexpected.\n\nI have come to believe that \"the normal progression\" of my condition is rooted\nin a nasty positive feedback loop. If you can interrupt it, it is game\nchanging.\n\nBut interrupting it isn't for sissies, so to speak.\n\nEven so, my body will never be normal. But it is sort of like being a Kosher\nJew: As long as I abide by particular dietary and lifestyle restrictions, I\ndon't have to be sick all the time, even though it means I can't live\n\"normally.\" I am happy to accept that deal over the alternative.\n\n------\ntim333\nThis reminds me of research from a while back suggesting schizophrenia was\nrelated to an ancient retrovirus that entered our DNA millions of years ago\nand occasionally causes problems (Discover mag, \"The Insanity Virus,\" June\n2010). Reseach is ongoing: ([http://discovermagazine.com/2015/sept/6-insanity-\nvirus](http://discovermagazine.com/2015/sept/6-insanity-virus)).\n\nFrom the 2010 story:\n\n> Sixty million years ago, a lemurlike animal—an early ancestor of humans and\n> monkeys—contracted an infection. It may not have made the lemur ill, but the\n> retrovirus spread into the animal’s testes (or perhaps its ovaries), and\n> once there, it struck the jackpot: It slipped inside one of the rare germ\n> line cells that produce sperm and eggs. When the lemur reproduced, that\n> retrovirus rode into the next generation aboard the lucky sperm and then\n> moved on from generation to generation, nestled in the DNA. “It’s a rare,\n> random event,” says Robert Belshaw, an evolutionary biologist at the\n> University of Oxford in England. “Over the last 100 million years, there\n> have been only maybe 50 times when a retrovirus has gotten into our genome\n> and proliferated.”\n\n>...Perron in 2008, found HERV-W in the blood of 49 percent of people with\nschizophrenia, compared with just 4 percent of healthy people.\n\n~~~\nTheSpiceIsLife\n> _It may not have made the lemur ill_\n\nI've often wondered how many viruses we contract that don't present any\nobvious symptoms.\n\nHow would we know to look for them?\n\nDoes anyone know if this idea has been looked in to?\n\n~~~\nDamnInteresting\nTwo I am aware of that kinda fit this category are _Toxoplasma gondii_ [1]\n(not technically a virus) and _Adenovirus serotype 36_ [2]. The former has\nbeen associated with a wide array of behavioral changes, the latter is\nassociated with obesity.\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Immune_respo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Immune_response_and_behaviour_alterations)\n\n[2]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenovirus_serotype_36#Role_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenovirus_serotype_36#Role_in_obesity)\n\n~~~\nsaas_sam\nT. gondii also being the parasite that can cause toxoplasmosis in rare cases\nwhere the infected individual suffers an immune system issue (like HIV). This\nis the condition treated by Daraprim, aka the drug bought by Martin Shkreli's\nold company ('pharma bro').\n\nI asked him once about the alleged behavioral changes associated with T.\ngondii and he said the research on that is bunk. Shrug...\n\n------\ntcj_phx\n> Other research has revealed that the brains of people with panic disorders\n> produce elevated levels of lactate—an acidic source of fuel that is\n> constantly produced and consumed in the energy-hungry brain.\n\nFor me, this further confirms that metabolic problems are causally-associated\nwith 'mental disorders'.\n\n    \n    \n      Lactic acidosis is a medical condition characterized by   \n      the buildup of lactate (especially L-lactate) in the body, \n      which results in an excessively low pH. It is a subtype of \n      metabolic acidosis, where excessive acid is due to a \n      problem with the body's metabolism.\n    \n\n\\-\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactic_acidosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactic_acidosis)\n\nI used the courts to get the mental health system to reduce the harm they were\nperpetrating upon my friend, who they thought had a 'persistent mental\ndisorder'. Really she was just self-medicating depression with the street\npharmacy. (Cocaine and the amphetamines are not very good for people's\nmitochondria/metabolism, which is why they're illegal.)\n\nIn response to my bullying, the treatment provider did a genetic test, and\ndecided that she needed Folate (Vitamin B-9), as she can't convert folic acid\nlike most people. She's doing much better on the reduced dosages of\ntranquilizers ('anti-psychotics')/etc.\n\n~~~\nMadmallard\nWhat's the test?\n\n~~~\ntcj_phx\nThis page has a write up about folate & mental health:\n\n[https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-\nintegrationist/2014...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-\nintegrationist/201409/genetic-mutation-can-affect-mental-physical-health)\n\n------\nrrggrr\nWe know recurrent episodes of apnea, over months and years, may cause an\nincrease in carbon dioxide levels that can change the pH of the blood enough\nto cause a respiratory acidosis. We also know sleep apnea may be prevalent in\npatients with bipolar I disorder. It would be great to see a comparison study\nof patients with OSA versus CSA (specifically REM-related sleep apnea)\nexamining acidosis, mood disorder prevelence, and outcomes in treated versus\nuntreated populations.\n\n~~~\nsradu\nCan you share any studies around this? Especially about sleep apnea and\nbipolar 1.\n\n------\npella\n> \"A main source of these temporary surges is the carbon dioxide that is\n> constantly released as the brain breaks\n\n> down sugar to generate energy, which subsequently turns into acid.\"\n\nThe \"Ketosis\" / \"Ketogenic diets\" are helping in this case?\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis)\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet)\n\n~~~\nDiabloD3\nGo look up Dr Dom D'agostino's work on using \"medical keto\" (as in, 4:1 ratio\n(in grams) of fat to carbs+protein, while keeping carbs at below 30g and\nenough protein to maintain muscle) to control epilepsy in drug resistant\npatients.\n\nThat kind of answers your question, but not directly.\n\n------\nOvah\nContrary to what the article states, elevated levels of lactic acid per say do\nnot cause acidification. In fact, the increase in lactic acid correlates to\nbut is not the causation of acidosis. According to Robergs (2004) [1], it is\nthe hydrolysis of ATP outside of the mitochondria (ATP produced in glycolysis)\nthat increases the concentration of H+ and lowers pH. Yet, still, if the\nconcentration of lactate increases it's a good indicator of acidosis from\noxygen deficiency.\n\n[1] Biochemistry of exercise-induced metabolic acidosis.\n[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15308499](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15308499)\n\nNote: During low oxygen levels in tissue, metabolism becomes anaerobic ->\nlactic acid is produced. Lactic acid <-> lactate + H+.\n\n------\nmarcsquared\nTwo words: Buteyko method\n\nSee e.g. [http://www.normalbreathing.com](http://www.normalbreathing.com)\n\nCNS/Diseases of the Brain Are Caused by Low Brain O2/CO2 Levels\n\n[http://www.normalbreathing.com/diseases-\nBrain.php](http://www.normalbreathing.com/diseases-Brain.php)\n\nSedatives | CO2: Natural Sedative and Tranquilizer\n[http://www.normalbreathing.com/CO2-stabilizer.php](http://www.normalbreathing.com/CO2-stabilizer.php)\n\nAfter 15 years of panic attacks, anxiety, migraines, hay fever... if finally\nfound the solution: learn to breathe correctly again. The best and cheapest\nthing I've ever learned for my health!\n\nThis is just one site, but there are many more on the web. Not affiliated to a\nsingle one of them, but hopefully I can share the joy of a panic attack free\nlive with at least one other person. :)\n\n~~~\nwhiteandnerdy\nI'm pleased that the technique worked for you and don't want to denigrate your\nexperience, but looking around it seems that there's very little evidence to\nsupport the Buteyko technique, and a fair few red flags:\n[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/buteyko-breathing-\ntechnique...](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/buteyko-breathing-technique-\nnothing-to-hyperventilate-about/)\n\nIf it works for you it works for you, but I'd caution readers to be skeptical\nwhen trying it out.\n\n~~~\nmarcsquared\nThank you for your respectful reply.\n\nI agree that everyone should be skeptical and look for evidence.\n\nFor me personally it has been a godsend, that's what I can state. I also know\nabout 5 other people who have applied this knowledge and all had noticeable\nimprovements in various areas.\n\nExperience may vary of course. Bodies are also different.\n\nYou can go the Buteyko way, Chi-Gung, Yoga, Wim Hoff method etc etc. whatever\nworks if you need it.\n\nGenerally I do however think that breathing is way, way underappreciated as a\ncause for various diseases.\n\nI've seen 5 medical specialists who overlooked my breathing _patterns_. I've\nbeen hooked up to heart monitoring devices, gave plenty of blood to examine\nand all that jazz.\n\nThe solution was literally right under my nose.\n\nIn the end it was a $5 USD discounted book about Buteyko's research that made\nall the difference.\n\nBreathe through your nose, your mouth is for eating and talking. That will\nalready help many people. :)\n\n------\nwu-ikkyu\n>researchers continued to puzzle over if the increased acidity seen in\nschizophrenia and bipolar patients was truly disorder-related—or the result of\nother factors, such as a person’s history of _antipsychotic drug use_\n\nExcuse my ignorance, but I don't see how they ruled out the possible link\nbetween antipsychotic drug use and increased acidity?\n\nI'm also puzzled by how they can confidently diagnose rodents with human\nsocial disorders based solely on \"genetic indicators\" when the links between\ngenetics and disorders like schizophrenia are still far from understood.\n\n------\nwithoutclass\nWim Hof Method, baby.\n\n~~~\njkaunisv1\nI'm not interested in paying for the online video course - does this article\n[http://highexistence.com/the-wim-hof-method-revealed-how-\nto-...](http://highexistence.com/the-wim-hof-method-revealed-how-to-\nconsciously-control-your-immune-system/) capture the gist of it? Does the book\ninclude anything else that's significant?\n\n------\npdq\nCould this explain why Lithium is sometimes an effective treatment?\n\n------\namelius\nSo after decades of research, and thousands of different markers they could\nhave looked at, they found that pH is a significant marker?\n\n~~~\njack9\nHard to analyze lots of brains of dead schizoids until we had a methodology to\ndiagnose, permission to analyze them, and then looked closely enough.\n\n[http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v9/n7/full/4001511a.html?fo...](http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v9/n7/full/4001511a.html?foxtrotcallback=true)\n\nSometimes lots of theories come out of a minute variation correlation and\nsometimes it's just a sampling coincidence (like it's just how schizoid brains\nbreak down). I'm VERY sure, someone has altered a schizoid's diet to a more or\nless acidic diet before. I will bet that pH therapy won't be very effective,\nbut it might lead to some other discovery.\n\n~~~\nshaggerty\nI've never heard someone refer to a schizophrenic as \"a schizoid\".\nSchizophrenia and schizoid personality disorder are distinct disorders with\ndifferent symptoms.\n\n~~~\ncat199\nnot in the field, but I think it's both somewhat slang for schizophrenia (see\nalso woody allen movies), also somewhat antiquated or at least highly specific\nterm from (iirc freudian) psychopathology\n\n------\nlostInTheWoods3\nYet another reason to stop drinking Soda, one of the most acidic things that\ncan be in a person's diet.\n\n~~~\nall_blue_chucks\nPeople don't usually inject it inside the blood/brain barrier...\n\n------\nkenneth_reitz\nI'm bipolar!\n\n------\ndeadmik3\nall this time we thought acid would make you crazy\n\n------\npdog\nMore evidence for the health benefits of an alkaline diet.\n\n~~~\ntravmatt\nIsn't the body very good at maintaining homeostasis? Meaning you could eat an\nalkaline diet, but if your body composition is such that you have such a given\nacidic composition then your body has processes to maintain whatever it's\n'normal' is.\n\n~~~\nrando444\nExactly. And many home remedies that actually work rely on the opposite\ntechnique.\n\nIn this case, you'd try an acidic diet in order to coerce your body's natural\nprocesses to bring yourself to a more normal pH.\n\nObviously I don't know if that would work, but nobody can really say one way\nor the other without doing some proper research.\n\n------\nMadmallard\nIncreasingly acidic diets and micronutrient malnutrition\n\nBacteriocidal antibiotics which enduce mitochondrial dysfunction\n\nChronic sleep deprivation and stress\n\nPeople with problematic genetics having children when 200 years ago it\nwouldn't have been possible\n\nLots of things that contribute to the increase in the incidence of various\nmental illnesses\n\nSolutions are not easy at all either. If you ever see a diagram of what we\nknow about metabolism it's ludicrous.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEnglish rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal - Red_Tarsius\nhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/13/english-rivers-polluted-by-powerful-insecticides-first-tests-reveal\n======\njesperlang\nThis reminds me of trophic cascades and e.g the unintuitive link that killing\nwolfs affects riverbeds:\n\n[https://shadowproof.com/2014/02/20/trophic-cascade-how-\nwolve...](https://shadowproof.com/2014/02/20/trophic-cascade-how-wolves-\nchange-rivers/)\n\nIt like we can't understand complex systems very well. Almost everything we do\nseem to have to have major unintended consequences. We see this over and over\nagain, we have to abandon the \"as cheap and fast as possible\" thinking !\n\n~~~\nprojectileboy\nFWIW, this is why some people have fears around GMO foods. It's not that they\ncan't appreciate the benefits, it's because they fear that we're testing\nsystems in production that we don't fully understand.\n\n~~~\ntstactplsignore\nYou can say that about all agriculture ever even more than you can about GMOs.\nWe understand exact, precise genetic changes that have a much higher standards\nof testing than all of the genetic changes we've made to food using\ntraditional techniques (mutagenesis, cross-breeding, selection) which modify\ndozens or hundreds of genes in highly unpredictable ways. We should be careful\nabout all agricultural changes in a way proportional to what changes we made\nin the system, and not classify using modern science as always \"too scary\" to\nrely on.\n\n~~~\nscott_karana\nIf we're talking about Mendelevian use of alleles that exist in a species\nalready, sure.\n\nBut have you seen those glow in the dark aquarium fish? Or the tomatoes that\nuse flounder DNA to make them hardier in the freezer? How rigorously is it\npossible to test ramifications from those things?\n\n------\na3n\nThe primary concern of industrial food is moving large quantities of food\nefficiently, the same as gasoline or, well, insecticides; safety and nutrition\nonly have to be barely high enough to support that. It's why we're absorbing\ninsecticides and high fructose corn syrup, for example, in our bodies.\n\n------\nqwerty456127\nA friend of mine once told me that swimming in Thames would be a serious\nmistake as its water is poisonous. Are the neonicotinoids the reason or are\nthere other dangerous chemicals too?\n\n~~~\njl6\nThat might once have been true, and it’s far from perfect, but the Thames is a\ncleanup success story:\n\n[http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20151111-how-the-river-\ntham...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20151111-how-the-river-thames-was-\nbrought-back-from-the-dead)\n\n------\namelius\nThere exists an automatic bird-repellent system: [1].\n\nCan't we use the same idea for insects?\n\n[1] [https://birdcontrolgroup.com/agrilaser-\nautonomic/](https://birdcontrolgroup.com/agrilaser-autonomic/)\n\n~~~\nhycaria\nBut some are good to have around, that's the whole problem...\n\n~~~\namelius\nWe can use deep learning for that :)\n\n------\narethuza\nIf that is the Dubh loch at the head of Glen Muick then I wonder how on earth\nstuff would get in there - it's fairly remote and reasonably high up. No\nfarming territory for miles.\n\nI wonder if anti-midgie lotions have these things in them?\n\n~~~\nxiaq\nThey can travel through the air (which was how DDT ended up in Antarctica).\n\n------\nbaxtr\nI wonder what the effect of neonicotinoids on humans is... it can’t be good\n\n~~~\na_bonobo\nThe NIH has a metastudy here:\n[https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/ehp515/](https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/ehp515/)\n\n>As reviewed here, four studies reported low rates of adverse health effects\nfrom acute neonic exposure. Even the most severe outcomes, including two\nfatalities, may have been mediated by other factors (age, underlying health\nconditions, undetected coexposures). The acute poisoning studies did, however,\nelucidate clinical findings important for the diagnosis and treatment of acute\nneonic exposures, including a better understanding of neonic toxicokinetics in\nhumans.\n\n~~~\nKarnickel\nKeyword here: \"acute\". Nothing about chronic exposure, which is what is\nrelevant here. Even if they did have a long-term study of low-dose exposure,\nit would be an extremely limited one (rats, mice, controlled conditions)\nmissing the mix of much more stuff we are exposed to all the time.\n\nHaving suffered from (finally clinically diagnosed and clinically treated with\nchelators DMPS and DMSA - with _great_ results) low-dose long-term heavy metal\npoisoning I had to find out, both myself (studying as much as I could) and\nfrom the doctors, that there basically exists next to zero clinically relevant\nresearch for a) low-dose exposure, b) long-term, c) (and this one is by far\nthe worst) a mix of chemicals rather than examining just one or two at a time\nin isolation. The last one is very relevant - mixing stuff often dramatically\nchanges the effect. I once found an LD (lethal dose) heavy metal poisoning\nstudy on rats where mixing lead and mercury was about a thousand times more\nlethal (i.e. 1/1000th the dose of both) compared to poisoning the rats with\nonly one of them.\n\nThe reason isn't a conspiracy of course, it's just impractical to impossible\nto study anything but acute poisonings and only of one or very few chemicals\nat a time.\n\nAlso, each time somebody recites officially allowed values I cringe - for\nexample, the medical science opinion about the desirable lead exposure is\nzero. However, of course this isn't _practical_ \\- and this is what all those\nofficial limits are: Administrative practical values, considering what can be\ndone, where the research stands (always erring on the opposite side of caution\n- you have to _prove_ the bad effect before the limits are lowered) and at\nwhat cost.\n\nSo no, science does not have the answer about any of this. The internal\nmedicine + environmental medicine research doctor that was my main doc is\npretty pessimistic about the stuff we (humans) do, and this guy lives with the\nresearch, always citing this or that new study when we meet.\n\nMaybe I should add that there indeed _are_ lots and lots of studies. However,\nthey are incredibly specific, they won't be the basis for tougher\nlegislation/lower official limits, because even if you take a hundred (good)\nstudies of that kind you did not prove that the specific effect observed in\nthe lab is relevant \"in the world setting\", and/or on humans, and/or what the\ncombined net effect of \"everything\" might be. Which is, at least today, pretty\nmuch impossible.\n\n~~~\namelius\n> Having suffered from (finally clinically diagnosed and clinically treated\n> with chelators DMPS and DMSA - with great results) low-dose long-term heavy\n> metal poisoning I had to find out, both myself (studying as much as I could)\n> and from the doctors\n\nWow. I'm extremely curious about how you found out, what your symptoms were,\nand what resources you used to educate yourself. Do you think that people with\nyour condition are misdiagnosed on a large scale?\n\n~~~\nKarnickel\n> I'm extremely curious about how you found out\n\nExclusion and desperation. I got nothing from various doctors despite problems\nthat I thought _should_ be treatable. It had very, very slowly gotten worse\nover two to three decades. It is very, very subtle, and until a threshold was\nreached I described myself as \"100% healthy\" \\- completely ignoring a myriad\nof increasing little problems. Because each and every one of them has\nalternative explanations, usually: aging, office/computer work, stress, wrong\nfood, \"everybody has problems\", etc. Soooo much went away under chelation\ntreatment that I didn't even have on the radar, things that I had attributed\nto the mentioned untreatable problems, mostly aging or stress or food. But it\nwasn't!\n\nI thought that my problems seemed very treatable/diagnosable, but nobody even\ntried. \"You take Nexium (a PPI) for the rest of your life\" said a professor of\ngastroenterology, which to me was pure torture, I never felt as bad in my life\nas when I used that stuff. Then I found that I had a _massive_ Candida\nproblem, which had started when I took the PPI. A doctor confirmed it (the\nprofessor had ignored everything I had told him and thought it's all in my\nhead), I was even given systemic anti-fungals (fluconazole), with huge\npositive effect, but then my hands where yellow... I then learned that Candida\nnever is a root cause, always a symptom. Apparently I didn't have any of the\nusual medical textbook problems that lead to such a problem. The only thing\nleft was something I found in the forums of the \"crazy people\": They claimed\nCandida often is a problem of people with a heavy metal problem. With nothing\nleft to try and to lose I went down that route: Take measurements, find a\nspecialist (I had to go very far), start chelation and see if it helps. Well,\nthe measurements should middlish amounts of mercury, \"You are in a gray zone\nbut I can justify chelation therapy\" said the doctor. The real proof came with\nthe unexpectedly large success over the years.\n\n.\n\nIf I was a doctor I would _not_ treat this condition. It is next to impossible\nto detect - basically, there is no known method to conclusively test if heavy\nmetals are a problem or not. You can get indications, but only acute\npoisonings with large doses can be shown through a simple test. So how did we\nknow in my case? I was \"lucky\" enough to have had a few special conditions\nthat lead to an acute surge, so I actually had significant levels (of mercury)\nin blood, hair and urine. Most people with chronic poisoning won't have that\nthough. The rest of the proof that that indeed was the problem was all the\nthings that started to improve after starting chelation - many of them\ncompletely unexpectedly. For example, during chelation, after each round, the\ntissue around my right-side thyroid was \"working\" (very active, some pain).\nThe result, shown a year afterwards: A 5 mm nodule in the twice-normal-size\nthyroid had completely(!) disappeared, and the thyroid was almost normal size.\nI had had endocrinologists show that nodule and the double-sized right thyroid\nunchanged over almost three decades. The endocrinologist examined me with\nultrasound TWICE because he did not believe his results. There is a lot more,\nthat was just one of the highlights because people like undeniable biomedical\nimaging proofs, so much better than me saying \"I can sleep _much_ better\".\n\nSo anyway, as I was saying, if I was a doctor I would not treat this\ncondition. The problem is that you need _crazy people_ like me. This requires\na long-term commitment for an uncertain outcome. You also need resources -\nmoney, TIME (you cannot go on living a regular employee life, the chelators\nonly help get things started, your body has to do most of it, and it requires\nlots of time and you need to rest or it (the body) won't do anything). Most\npeople would never have that patience, as a doctor you will make your life\nmuch harder if you offer those treatments. Not to mention that there is the\npotential to be right - _and_ make things a lot worse: If somebody indeed has\na heavy metal problem chelation may make it worse (it mobilizes more than it\ncan bind, since no chemical bond is eternal and perfect), and if their body\nalready is on edge...\n\nAlso, the whole subject is itself poisoned. On the one hand you have few\noptions to show anything conclusively, no good tests, on the other hand the\nwhole topic of heavy metal poisoning, or just poisoning, is extremely popular\nin \"alternative health\" circles. So even if you are a doctor, you really,\nreally don't want to be seen working in this area by your colleagues. It's\nmuch more acceptable (by both your medical colleagues as well as insurers!) to\noffer homeopathy, as an MD, than offering chelation. At least that's my\nobservation.\n\n.\n\n> Do you think that people with your condition are misdiagnosed on a large\n> scale?\n\nI have no opinion about other people. A lot of things are very special in my\nown case. I certainly think the problem could be much larger than people\nthink. On the NIH website I found a document that stated that mercury is far\nmore toxic than lead. I took a course from Tufts University [0] about water\ntreatment. Of the four weeks they spent one entire week, 25% of the whole\ncourse, only talking about lead. There were two professors, one for the\nengineering side, one for the medical side, and the medical professor cited\nstudy after study and showed graphs that the state of medical science is that\nthe only safe level is zero (technically not feasible - thus not possible to\nhave as an official limit). So there is a lot of attention on lead, has been\nfor decades. I don't see nearly as much on mercury, supposedly much worse,\ndespite there being quite a bit of mercury around us. For example, are you\nsure eating all that tuna and other sea fish, especially the predatory ones,\nis such a good idea? In my experience, the one I gained the last few years,\ninvoluntarily, the signs are extremely(!) subtle. You don't get \"sick\" or a\nfever. You may have a little bit of trouble with your eyes. Or you get\nproblems with your carpal tunnel (RSI). The easy explanation will be, in both\ncases, that you spend too much time in front of computers. Or you have a bit\nmore trouble finding good sleep. Your digestion acts up - but just a bit, if\nyou went to a gastroenterologist they'd send you home \"we found nothing\nwrong\". The list goes on and on.\n\nAre people misdiagnosed?\n\nMaybe, I'd say probably - but there is no proven alternative. None. We just\ndon't know.\n\n.\n\nThere is a general mismatch problem with medical knowledge based on\nobservation and statistics: It is one thing to know that x percent of a\ncertain population have a problem. It is a completely different problem going\nthe other way: If you have an _individual_ , in front of you, does (s)he have\nthe problem or not? The probability you have is of no use to you, you have to\nmake a decision, yea/nay?\n\nA prudent doctor, knowing that the odds are low, will always say \"no\" in such\na case, and statistically speaking that's the winning strategy from a public\nhealth point of view. You know you lose a few, but that's the minimum, if you\ntried finding out who actually has the problem (that you cannot reliably\ndiagnose on an individual level) your overall statistics would get worse. That\nmeans knowledge of a problem on the scale of the population is almost useless\nwhen it comes to making individual treatment decisions. You need something on\nthat (individual) level. In the case of long-term exposure (or any exposure)\nto low-dose poisons we don't have much that we can use, not on the individual\nlevel.\n\n.\n\n[0] [https://www.edx.org/course/biology-water-health-\nfundamentals...](https://www.edx.org/course/biology-water-health-fundamentals-\noecx-ph241x-0)\n\n~~~\nexhilaration\nWhere did the mercury in your body come from? Do you have any guesses? I avoid\neating tuna and other large aquatic predators to avoid mercury but I've never\nlooked into it other sources.\n\n------\njimnotgym\nAfter years of rubbish in the UK press about the impact of regulations from\nthe EU, they can add protecting fish, bird and most likely human health to the\nlist of 'harm' done. I'm glad the EU still cares about the environment.\n\n~~~\nakhatri_aus\nThe UK is still in the EU and yet the river is still polluted.\n\n~~~\nHendrikto\nDid you even read the article?\n\n> EU vote to extend the ban to all outdoor uses is expected soon.\n\n~~~\nakhatri_aus\nDid you? The runoff still comes out of greenhouses where the insecticide will\nbe allowed to be used after the ban. What the article implies is the ban will\nhave little effect & advocates a total ban. Commercial interests won.\n\n> The proposed EU ban would still allow neonicotinoids to be used in\n> greenhouses and as a flea treatment for pets. A new Greenpeace study\n> suggests neonicotinoids are frequently found in waterways close to\n> greenhouses where they have been used.\n\n~~~\nposterboy\nHow's that supposed to happen? I'd suspect drainage would flow vertically into\nthe ground water. Is the water table as high as to level with the river so the\npesticide can move sideways?\n\n~~~\njdmichal\nA river's depth is basically defined by the water table. That's how it stays\nfull of water instead of simply draining into the ground. The first diagram on\nthe Wiki article for water tables shows this:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_table](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_table)\n\n(The first time I heard this was a big \"aha\" / \"of course it works that way,\nhow else would it work\" moment for me. Ala XKCD 10000 [0]. Hopefully you're\none of today's lucky winners!)\n\n[0] [https://www.xkcd.com/1053/](https://www.xkcd.com/1053/)\n\n~~~\nRetric\nMost ground > flowing water interaction happens at streams, but overall this\nis correct.\n\n------\nnlperguiy\nHow would there be a capitalist incentive not to do these things? Do we really\nneed regulations? Why do these things happen? Why do people think it is\nacceptable to pollute?\n\n~~~\nfsloth\n\"Do we really need regulations?\"\n\nYes. You need to read on industrial history if this is not obvious to you.\n\nThe nature of business and industry is such that they prefer local short term\noptimizations. In this context an environmental hazard is not considered a\nconcern for various reasons, including, it incurs no immediate negative impact\non the factory, the impact of one factory would be insignificant because\neveryone else is doing it and cutting chemical X would give competitors a\nfinancial edge, etc.\n\nThe only way to curb culture which creates negative externalities is to pipe\nthose externalities back to it's source. Regulations and fines are a one way\nto make sure there is a feedback from negative externalities back to their\nsource.\n\nThink of it as an algorithmic problem - local optimization seldom leads to a\nglobal optimum. Hence, sometimes global tweaks can benefit an entire system.\n\nThe good news is that regulations _work_ , and damage can heal.\n\nSee for example how CFC:s destroyed ozone layer before banning them.\n\n~~~\nwav-part\nWhy does this apply to one group of people (private industry) but not the\nother (govt) ? Both are money-seeking.\n\n~~~\nlucozade\nIt applies to both. It's just the mechanisms for regulation and feedback are\ndifferent.\n\nWhen you don't have a mechanism for regulation in government, such as\ndemocracy, you tend to get very bad government.\n\nThat's not to suggest that fines or elections are particularly effective but\nthey serve similar purposes.\n\n~~~\nwav-part\nWhat about voters ? They are money-seeking. Who would save them from\nthemselves ?\n\n~~~\npmyteh\nNo single voter has control, so they check each other.\n\nIn principle, anyway. Democracy obviously isn't a perfect system.\n\n------\nuserbinator\nOne thing to keep in mind is to try to imagine what the world would be like\nhad insecticides like neonicotinoids not been put into use. Sure, there\nwouldn't be pollution from them, but would there be other negative effects?\n\nLet's not forget that DDT, PCBs, and CFCs have contributed greatly in positive\nways too. If they weren't used, the planet would be less polluted but we might\nhave nowhere near the same quality of life as we do today --- just imagine how\npeople lived several hundred years ago. It's hard to say, really.\n\n~~~\namelius\n> If they weren't used, the planet would be less polluted but we might have\n> nowhere near the same quality of life as we do today\n\nThose \"organic/biological\" products in the supermarket look fine to me.\n\n~~~\nuserbinator\n_Those \"organic/biological\" products in the supermarket look fine to me._\n\n...but can the whole population survive on those exclusively, or even afford\nthem?\n\n~~~\nspodek\nHundreds of thousands of years of human existence, in which our ancestors\ncolonized the planet, suggests so.\n\nDo we want to temporarily overshoot the carrying capacity by poisoning our\nenvironment at the risk of collapse if we lower that capacity in the process?\n\n------\nrefurb\nAnalytical techniques are incredible today. It's not unusual for the lower\ndetection limit to be parts per billion or parts per trillion.\n\nOne ppt is 1 mg of material (smaller than a match head) dissolved in a cube of\nwater that measures 100m on each side. Bigger than an Olympic sized swimming\npool.\n\nSo the fact they said neonicotinoids were detected means nothing. The real\nquestion is how much was detected and dose that level have an impact on living\norganisms.\n\n~~~\nlucaspiller\nThe linked paper says this:\n\n> we recommend here that ecological thresholds for neonicotinoid water\n> concentrations need to be below 0.2 μg/L (shortterm acute) or 0.035 μg/L\n> (long-term chronic) to avoid lasting effects on aquatic invertebrate\n> communities\n\nI assume the map refers to these values. μg/L is the same as parts-per-billion\nin case anyone was wondering.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe highest ROI way to increase signups: Make a minimal homepage (Guest Post) - instakill\nhttp://andrewchen.co/2013/07/29/the-highest-roi-way-to-increase-signups-make-a-minimal-homepage-guest-post/\n======\nkrapp\nWhenever I see a minimal homepage with nothing but a glib sentence and a\nsignup form I just assume this is a service that only cares about getting my\ndata and bleeding me like a turnip.\n\nI understand that it might work and why it might work and yes, a minimalist\nlayout gets the clutter out of the way and comes straight to the point but\npersonally it's not a model that inspires confidence.\n\nHow well would it work if I walked into a store, and they insisted on having\nme agree to a purchase before I even got to see what it is they sell? Much\nless a tiny store whose interior was nothing but a blank white room with a\ncredit card machine inside, that just said \"The Best Thing Ever\" over the\ndoor, and nothing else?\n\n... actually that _would_ probably work and that's what annoys me.\n\n------\npushkargaikwad\nJust like Manish, I too do not agree with what Andrew is saying. It is\nridiculous to compare DropBox, Linkedin, Quora, pinterest to the home page of\nsome unknown startup. I am also not convinced you can do any kind of testing\nfor homepages for startups which have very low volume traffic.\n\nIMO, I think you should just stick to your gut feeling, do what looks and\nfeels right for home page, if this mean putting more content, so be it.\n\n------\nmanishsharan\nThis is easy if you have an established brand. The home pages in example made\nperfect sense to me as I know those companies. I am not sure this would work\nfor startups that are new to the market.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAn Overview of Curcumin in Neurological Disorders - mrfusion\nhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2929771/\n======\ntheseatoms\nI've been incorporating turmeric in my diet for the past few months. I enjoy\nthe taste and the placebo effect, so why not?) I'm curious if others here have\ndone the same.\n\nI wouldn't go as far as to make claims regarding it's effectiveness.\n\nOne tip I've heard is to take it with black pepper to increase\nbioavailability. I don't understand the mechanism, but the active ingredient\nis apparently piperine.\n\n~~~\nmrob\nI mix cocoa powder, turmeric, black pepper, and enough extra virgin olive oil\nto form a smooth paste. I then add hot water and it forms a suspension and the\noil mostly doesn't separate out. I think the bitter taste and the fact that\nall the ingredients are plausibly active makes it an effective placebo, even\nif it turns out not to actually do anything.\n\n------\nToast_\nThis isn't too surprising considering curcumin is a mitochondrial\nuncoupler[1][2]. For the curious, another example of a mitochondrial uncoupler\nwould be 2,4-dinitrophenol, which is currently being looked into as a\npotential anti-Alzheimer treatment[3]. Cool stuff.\n\n1:\n[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19715674](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19715674)\n\n2:\n[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1567840/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1567840/)\n\n3:\n[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16754295](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16754295)\n\n~~~\nfasteo\nThanks for the references 1 and 2. I had no idea that curcumin was a\nmitochondrial uncoupler. Incidentally, I was looking at curcumin to help with\nmy mitochondrial myopathy, but for its anti-inflammatory effects - I have a\nreally hard time to recover from my workouts possibly due to a systemic\ninflammatory response caused by my genetic condition.\n\nI have always thought that low-dose DNP would be a potentially good treatment\nfor mitochondrial myopathies, as they induce mitochondrial biogenesis [1], but\nDNP can be dangerous and I have been hesitant to try it.\n\nMaybe I just need to add curcumin to my current supplements regime.\n\n[1] Caldeira da Silva, C. C., Cerqueira, F. M., Barbosa, L. F., Medeiros, M.\nH., & Kowaltowski, A. J. (2008). Mild mitochondrial uncoupling in mice affects\nenergy metabolism, redox balance and longevity. Aging cell, 7(4), 552-560.\n\n~~~\nToast_\nAny uncoupler ought to induce mitochondrial biogenesis, as it's a systemic\nresponse due to a lack of energy (I may be mistaken?)—same goes for [vascular]\nendothelial growth factor and EPO (just to name a few).\n\nAlso, I really can't recommend reading the paper associated with the third\nlink enough.\n\nHave you tried ephedrine to help with the post-workout swelling? The common\n'ECA' stack might be right up your alley.\n\n~~~\nfasteo\n>>> Also, I really can't recommend reading the paper associated with the third\nlink enough.\n\nJust read it. Very interesting indeed.\n\n>>>Have you tried ephedrine to help with the post-workout swelling? The common\n'ECA' stack might be right up your alley.\n\nDo you have any reference for this ? What is the mechanism of action ?\n\n------\nvondur\nI wonder if the rate of these diseases that is can affect (Alzheimer's,\nepilepsy and depression)are lower in India where tumeric is widely used?\n\n~~~\nshivpat23\nThe rate is in fact significantly lower:\n[http://www.newsmax.com/Health/Health-News/turmeric-spice-\ncur...](http://www.newsmax.com/Health/Health-News/turmeric-spice-curcumin-\nalzheimer/2015/01/19/id/619412/)\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nIt's tricky to say, right? Diagnoses across the whole Indian population is\nmuch, much more difficult than it is in the US.\n\n~~~\nvondur\nYou are probably correct. India has a _huge_ population, and I'm sure access\nto healthcare is spotty.\n\n------\npixelglow\nCurcumin is poorly absorbed but there are several ways to increase the\nbioavailability[1]. Otherwise too little will be absorbed to be effective, and\nyou'd just be ingesting an expensive placebo.\n\nYou could\n\n* Combine it with black pepper, warmth and/or oil.\n\n* Use the Meriva or BCM-95 form.\n\n* Use nanoparticles, marketed as Theracurmin/Theracumin.\n\nMost nights, I combine two caps of Theracurmin with fish oil and lukewarm\nwater for my wife to drink. It does seem to help with her arthritis.\n\n1:\n[http://examine.com/supplements/Curcumin/](http://examine.com/supplements/Curcumin/)\n\n------\njoeyspn\nAnother study that shows the awesome properties of this spice. I included it\nin my weekly diet few years ago (along with walnuts and red wine) as meat/fish\nseasoning and salad dressing. Ideal replacement for things like ketchup or\nmustard. Mix turmeric with olive oil and/or vinaigrette and you get a tasty\nand healthy sauce.\n\n------\nshivpat23\nAn easy way I incorporate it into my diet is by taking it in capsules (you can\nbuy them on Amazon).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: PDFlower – Reflow PDF papers for small-screen reading - chengchang\nhttps://pdflower.com\n======\nchengchang\nThe majority of scientific and technical papers are delivered by the PDF file\nfor portable presentation. However, it difficult to read the PDF paper on\nsmall screen devices, such as tablets and eBook readers.\n\nSo I wrote PDFlower to reflow PDF papers for small-screen reading.\n\nCompared with plain-text extraction based tools, PDFlower reconstructs the\nobject level - columns, formulas, tables and figures - layout using some smart\nheuristics, and then renders them for new page size.\n\n~~~\nericmo\nExample pictures are kind of small, hard to see the quality of the result.\nAlso, I'd use this for a Kindle device, not an iPad, so it'd be also good to\nsee how it looks in a Kindle.\n\n~~~\nchengchang\n\\- The output is a reflowed PDF. It keeps 'PDF quality'. \\- Any PDF\nreader/device could display new version paper technically. \\- Kindle has\nsupported.\n\n------\naw3c2\nDoes anyone know an open-source solution for this? What I read is no one's\nbusiness and I would never used a web-hosted service for something like this.\n\n~~~\njasim\nk2pdfopt works ok for me.\n\n(bash function)\n\n    \n    \n        tokindle () {\n          ~/Software/k2pdfopt $* -dev kpw -mode fw -wrap -hy -ws 0.375 -ls-\n        }\n\n~~~\nnattaylor\nThere's also koreader, which just uses k2pdfopt on the fly.\n\n~~~\njasim\nkoreader looks fabulous! Last time I checked, the Paperwhite could not be\njailbroken. But it no longer seems true. Thanks for the link.\n\n~~~\nredwards510\nYes! All versions can now be easily jailbroken. The main features (to me) are\ninstalling KOReader to view epubs and pdf files, and hacking the screen saver\ndisplay. The process only takes about an hour, mostly because you are reading,\ndoublechecking, and downloading the right files. This guide[0] is a very good\noverview. I find mobileread's site to be too wordy and difficult to follow.\n\n[0] [http://lifehacker.com/how-to-jailbreak-your-\nkindle-178386407...](http://lifehacker.com/how-to-jailbreak-your-\nkindle-1783864074)\n\n~~~\nvoltagex_\nWhich version would you buy if you were buying a Kindle today? I only owned\nthe one before the DX... managed to crack the screen in an unfortunate elbow-\nrelated incident.\n\n~~~\njasim\nPaperwhite has been really good to me. Both Oasis and Voyage look great as\nwell - they have higher resolution than the Paperwhite. And they have real\nbuttons to move between pages, so if I were buying a Kindle today I'd buy one\nof them depending on my budget (Oasis is more expensive, but slimmer).\n\n~~~\ndustinblake\nCurrent (and previous) generation Paperwhites have the same resolution as the\nVoyage and Oasis. I have a Paperwhite and the screen is fantastic. I'd love\nhardware buttons for page turning, though.\n\nWhile the Oasis is expensive, if you add a nice cover to the Voyage you're\nclose in pricing. Either go solidly midline with the Paperwhite or go all out\nwith the Oasis, depending on your budget.\n\n------\ndaphreak\nI would like a \"pricing\" and a \"privacy policy\" link on the front page.\nProbably won't spend time trying it out due to the omission.\n\nLuckily there are interesting self-hosted / local options mentioned in this\nthread.\n\n~~~\nfranciscop\nExactly the same here. I won't go through the [maybe] lengthy process of\ncreating a new account to get a paywall then. Same goes with the privacy\npolicy, I don't want to use it with my own PDFs and lose their rights or with\nother people's and screw things legally.\n\n------\nanigbrowl\nVery cool. How hard would it be to go in the opposite direction? When I'm\nusing a desktop or a laptop computer it's most annoying that almost all news\nsites, blogs, eg. optimize for a portrait orientation. I can only see a\nrelatively small amount of text so I have to scroll constantly, despite the\nacres of available whitespace to either side. It's really annoying when\nreading anything complex where you'd want to refer back to previous sentences\nor paragraphs frequently to make sure you've understood the substance\nproperly. I would love to be able to reflow into 3 or 4 columns though...\n\n~~~\nchengchang\nThanks for your comment.\n\nThe PDF format will ignore some structures of paper and `draw` contents on a\nfixed-layout flat document. For a char, e-readers cannot know it belongs a\nparagraph, a figure caption or a formula. Plus, publishers render original\npaper with the specific style. It is a problem. Some research concentrate to\nimprove PDF format, extract infos for scholarly papers, like articles on\nDocEng - a compute science conference:\n[http://dl.acm.org/event.cfm?id=RE135](http://dl.acm.org/event.cfm?id=RE135).\nThen I read the spec of PDF format...\n\nAnyway, that's hurt.\n\n------\neb0la\nThat's the feature Kindle PDF reader should have built in from beginning.\n\nWaiting in the queue for my account.\n\n~~~\ndiab0lic\nUnfortunately the kindle is optimizing for users buying Amazon content, not\nfor being the best general purpose eReader. This incentive mismatch between\nAmazon and the end users is probably why we will never see such a feature\nbuilt in.\n\n~~~\nsemi-extrinsic\nIf you jailbreak your Kindle and install Koreader (mentioned upstream) you can\nhave high quality PDF reflow, with support for two-column layouts as well as\nmath and displayed equations, on your Kindle today.\n\nHere are some example images:\n\n[http://www.epubor.com/how-to-install-and-use-koreader-on-\nkin...](http://www.epubor.com/how-to-install-and-use-koreader-on-kindle.html)\n\n~~~\nComputerGuru\nWow, that's quite the (both) useable and useful software - thank you for the\nlink. I'm not normally part of the \"x should buy this out\" group, but in this\ncase, Amazon really should.\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nNo, they shouldn't - because if it goes against their business interest\n(having Amazon-bought books look better than manually uploaded content),\nthey'll shut the project down.\n\n------\ntowelrod\nInteresting and I might have a use for this professionally. But there is no\nindication on the main page about how it works (web service? code library?).\nAnd it forced me to login on the second page, so I closed the tab.\n\n------\nedgartaor\nI thought I'd give it a try. But... Signup Queue? I had never seen anything\nlike that.\n\nSignup Queue\n\nHi, <my_email>\n\n* You are on your way to PDFlower.\n\n* 269 people in front of you.\n\n* 0 people behind of you.\n\n* Sharing this referral link may change your position in queue. Have a try. <referral_link>\n\n~~~\nwccrawford\nI've seen that before. It's a pathetic attempt to force viral sharing. I never\nparticipate on principle.\n\n------\nscivey7\nThis is something I haven't found an ideal solution for yet. There are\nexisting iOS PDF readers with reflow, but each seems to have its own issues.\n\nTo echo what others have said, this is an actual pain point and I'm very\nwilling to spend money on a solid solution. I've bought a few different PDF\nreaders just on the chance their reflow would be better than what I've found\nelsewhere.\n\nSo I clicked on your link pretty ready to throw money at you, but I'm not sure\nwhat I'm looking at. Is this an iOS app? Android app? It seems like some kind\nof service, since it wants me to login, but I can't tell.\n\nConsider working on the messaging and then reposting this. There's definitely\na market.\n\n~~~\nyaroslavyar\nCould you please name it?\n\n------\nsaint-loup\nAdobe Reader has a little-known function similar to this. Go to Display > Zoom\n> distribute (the last entry). It works reasonably well with simple, clean\ndocuments. You can check wether the document is compatible in its property\npanel.\n\n------\nadrianh\nIf you're interested in doing this for sheet music (sort of a similar-ish\nproblem), check out my product soundslice.com. Auto-reflowed sheet music\ndepending on your device width.\n\n------\nldenoue\nI'm also working on this PDF reflow and posted a video demonstration on my\ntwitter. Ping me if you would like to test:\n[https://twitter.com/ldenoue/status/785142066665971713](https://twitter.com/ldenoue/status/785142066665971713)\n\n------\nMidoAssran\nCool concept. This should be built into all smartphones and tablets and\nautomatically run when they open PDFs.\n\n------\nestrabd\nI just want something that'll collapse 2 columns into 1.\n\n------\nisrarkhan\nwould be great, if you could provide a guest account to try it out. I closed\nthe window as soon as I saw the signup form..\n\n------\nchrismorgan\nAh, reminds me of the Celery tool Flower, pronounced flow-er rather than\nflour. How is this one supposed to be pronounced?\n\n------\nnmca\nJust want to comment that if this worked well I would pay for it. Probably up\nto ~5 or maybe even 10 dollars a month.\n\n~~~\nldenoue\nI'm working on a similar system. Would you like to test it?\n[https://twitter.com/ldenoue/status/785142066665971713](https://twitter.com/ldenoue/status/785142066665971713)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNew green tech generates electricity 'out of thin air' - hhs\nhttps://phys.org/news/2020-02-green-technology-electricity-thin-air.html\n======\nfiloeleven\nFrom the linked Nature abstract:\n\n> The devices produce a sustained voltage of around 0.5 volts across a\n> 7-micrometre-thick film, with a current density of around 17 microamperes\n> per square centimetre.\n\nHow good is that? They talk about powering smart watches with this, and other\npersonal electronics. So it sounds like it’s within range of a useful amount\nof power?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShedding some light on \"dark social\" - vikrum\nhttp://5f5.org/ruminations/dark-social-dubious.html\n\n======\nvikrum\nThis is a pretty cursory look into some other possiblities of refererless\ntraffic. Given an ordinary browsing session or interaction from an end user,\nwhat else could be leading to HTTP requests without the referer header?\n\n~~~\nasparagui\n1) proxies\n\n2) clever antivirus/firewall software\n\n3) htaccess tricks will often drop headers\n\n4) javascript\n\n5) things like amazon silk\n\n6) people spoofing things to make their browser work\n\n7) anonymizer services\n\n8) proxies\n\n~~~\nnostromo\n9) links followed from https -> http\n\n10) bookmarks\n\n~~~\npapsosouid\nThe article in question claims that links followed from https facebook do have\na referrer header:\n\n>In testing links from Facebook and Twitter over HTTPS the referer is present\nin most cases.\n\n~~~\nnostromo\nThat's definitely not to spec if the browser is doing it.\n<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-15.1.3>\n\n\"Clients SHOULD NOT include a Referer header field in a (non-secure) HTTP\nrequest if the referring page was transferred with a secure protocol.\"\n\nHowever, it's possible that Facebook is passing users through an HTTP gateway.\n\n~~~\nvikrum\nIt looks like the intermediate 301's referer is being passed thru (For\nexample, all links on Twitter get wrapped as a t.co link, and that's what\nshows up on the server). I'd imagine that analytics being mined are\nintelligent enough to collapse twitter.com and t.co as the same social origin.\n\nGive it a try yourself:\n<https://twitter.com/vikrum5000/status/256898972478763008> Note the protocol.\n\n------\n0wza\nOff topic a bit, but I just want to say I like the layout and the general\napproach of your blog. If it's a template I haven't seen it before.\n\nThe \"pondering\" section is intriguing. What if you could accept input as to\nwhat topics readers might prefer?\n\n~~~\nvikrum\nThanks! It's not from a template; it's super basic HTML I wrote up by hand\nwith simple CSS behind it. Take a look at the source for\n<http://5f5.org/ruminations/> — I copy and paste that into a new file and use\nthat as a template for new posts.\n\nThe pondering section is where I keep notes to my self for future topics.\nThere's a file in that directory that has a bunch of sentence fragments and\nideas for other, not yet formed ideas.\n\nI like the idea of suggesting new topics :)\n\n------\nfraserharris\nRegarding mis-measuring \"dark social\": For ecommerce, Pinterest traffic is\nestimated to be 64% larger b/c of the popularity of the iPad app. This is\nsignificant given that Pinterest is now the 2nd largest referral source\n(depending on which ecommerce sites you are measuring).\n\n[http://llsocial.com/2012/07/pinterest-traffic-being-\nsignific...](http://llsocial.com/2012/07/pinterest-traffic-being-\nsignificantly-underreported/)\n\n~~~\nvikrum\nWith the Facebook and Twitter apps (and iOS apps, in general), they have\ncomplete control over how the network call is being made — and the referer\nmakes it to the server (for the post part.) One would imagine Pinterest would\nwant to maximize this number.\n\nI'll try posting the referer detector to some more native apps and see what\nhappens.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCIOs’ top 5 wolves’ rules of information management - bootload\nhttp://blogs.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/cios-top-5-wolves-rules-of-information-management/\n\n======\nbootload\n_\" Nunno posits the Wolf as the ideal archetype for a senior IT executive,\ndescribing it as an apex predator who rules with a dual nature.\"_\n\nAnyone familiar with the _\" wolf, sheep, sheep-dog\"_ paradigm? Being the wolf\nis not the role I'd use here.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFears plane computers could be hacked - _mgr\nhttp://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11433012\n\n======\n_mgr\n\n      The avionics in a cockpit operate as a self-contained unit and aren't connected to the same system used by passengers to watch movies or work on their laptops.\n    \n      But as airlines update their systems with Internet-based networks, it's not uncommon for Wi-Fi systems to share routers or internal wiring.\n    \n\nI assume an executive overrides the engineers when they design this crap. It\nworries me that someone who cheated their way into a CCNA cert. is likely\nsetting this stuff up.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nUsernames reveal the age and psychology of game players - limbicsystem\nhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563215301655\n======\nAnkhMorporkian\nAs someone who runs a fairly large multiplayer game with a good mix of\nchildren, teenagers, and adults, I've always been convinced of this[1] but\nhaven't had any data to back it up, and I certainly didn't have the time or\ndrive to conclusively demonstrate it like these fine folks did.\n\nI would love to see someone tackle some solutions to this problem with some\nA/B testing. Sadly I don't think my userbase is large enough or antisocial\nenough for me to effectively test it.\n\n[1]\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3op7e2/wha...](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3op7e2/whats_up_with_these_riot_surveys/cvze54n?context=1)\n\n------\nNatsu\nFrom reading the results, they found out that you could guess someone's name\nwhen they put a year in the username and that antisocial words meant the\nperson was more likely to be a jerk.\n\nAm I missing something here? The idea that SatansDick2007 is probably an 8\nyear old troll won't come as a shock to much of anyone.\n\n~~~\nferal\nThat's an appealing and intuitive idea to me too, yeah; but they have\nvalidated that it's actually the case on a large population of users. Their\npaper seems very methodologically careful/thorough. It's also interesting to\nme that they correlated this with the post-game player-feedback.\n\nIts easy to say 'we knew that' post hoc, but they've done the science. (Also,\nhindsight bias is a real thing.)\n\nThis seems like the opening step in a line of research. Its like in Feynman's\n'cargo cult science' address about the (apocryphal?) experimenter 'Young':\nthis is learning how to carefully do science in this domain.\n[http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm](http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm)\n\n~~~\nNatsu\nWhile it's good to validate the things we all know, any forum mod could've\ntold you that it's not usually hard to predict the troublemakers or spammers\nby name.\n\n~~~\nferal\nThere's the things we all know, and there's things we all know because they\nhave been scientifically studied and validated, and these two sets of things\nare not the same.\n\nI'm sure the research in this area will uncover more unintuitive things later!\n\n~~~\nmreiland\nI once saw a study that concluded heterosexual couples were more likely to\nhave children than homosexual couples.\n\nI mean, there's the things we know, and then there's the things that have been\nscientifically studied and validated.\n\nAnd then there's the things that really don't need to be validated.\n\nI once had someone claim that if you drove a vehicle through mud, it would get\nmuddy. But since it hasn't been scientifically proven and validated, do I\n_really_ \"know\" that to be true?\n\nIs this really going to be an existential crisis where we don't really know\nanything until science tells us it's true?\n\n------\ncjslep\nI played LoL briefly during the beta and before the Tribunal was implemented,\nand even won their first contest (logo lookout) when Nikita was still an\nintern for Riot. I was very interested in the community and the lore since\nRiot was proactive in words and, for a brief time, actions.\n\nI even have an email dated Oct 12 2010:\n\n> 2\\. Has the idea of a \"Summoner Spotlight\" ever been discussed? I think a\n> small article written by a Summoner about their own character, and approved\n> by Riot Staff could do wonders to enrich Roleplay almost to the point of The\n> Hollow.[0]\n\nSuddenly, on Oct 22 2010 Summoner Spotlights showed up! Probably a coincidence\nsince the content was totally different, but for a fan like me at the time it\nwas exciting. [1]\n\nTo say I was drooling the Kool-Aid at the idea of having a positive community\nwould be an understatement.\n\nThen something must have happened internally because Babaganush was soon fired\nand nothing was really done to stop the community from suddenly becoming\noverwhelmed with adolescents describing their urges surrounding \"Nikasaur\"\nonce the Spotlights did show up. That, coupled with the in-game behavior, made\nthe whole community smell of rot.\n\nI left after it became clear Riot was not actually focused on really cleaning\nup the community. Riot took the game towards the e-sports competitive scene\nwhich, sadly, helped shape the community into what it was and is. I've heard\nthe Tribunal has helped, but it's not one of those features that is going to\nmake me come back.\n\n[0] [http://imgur.com/VfUvarl](http://imgur.com/VfUvarl)\n\n[1]\n[http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Summoner_Showcase](http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Summoner_Showcase)\n\nEDIT: To the downvoters, if you disagree with how I am recounting history,\nplease do elaborate. Riot got rid of a significant amount of their moderate\nplayerbase by their early business decisions, which was a contributing factor\nto having a negative-attitude playerbase in the 2010-2012 years. That negative\nattitude at this point has become a stereotype, and perhaps it could have been\navoided.\n\n~~~\nNatsu\nHow long have you been gone? I think you might be out of date. Most games\naren't negative (compare to, say, voice chat in CS:GO...) and they've rolled\nout plenty of features to report people who are being jerks.\n\nThat said, honestly, you can't prevent people from saying things you don't\nlike, especially a bunch of anonymous kids. They can always sign up for a new\naccount or whatever. Better just to punish and move on, especially as they\nhave plenty of things to lose for being a jerk (IP, rank, champions, money\nthey've spent, etc.).\n\nThe Tribunal is gone, but you can file reports, some punishments are automatic\n(did they spend the entire game swearing at their team and get reported?), you\ncan mute anyone you like, etc.\n\n~~~\ncjslep\n> How long have you been gone? I think you might be out of date.\n\nMany years, I last solidly played sometime in 2011 and maybe a couple games\nwith close friends in 2012.\n\nI fully realize I am out of date, but I just wanted to provide a perspective\nof LoL that most people do not realize: There was a significant community of\nroleplay/lore interest in the game early on, most of whom were not the ragey\ntype, that was immediately alienated by Riot's early business and personnel\ndecisions. That brutal year or so of negativity within their community that\nstill plagues the MOBA image could have been avoided if the more moderate\nparts of their community from the beta and first year had not been driven\naway.\n\n~~~\nNatsu\nYou won't find that many people raging at you these days, most of those are\nchat banned for life, more or less. If you want to hear 8-year-olds claiming\nto have done obscene things to your parents, CS:GO chat has you covered,\nthough.\n\nSmall RP communities rarely survive contact with the outside world. Sad, but\ntrue, in my experience. I've yet to see one grow large, especially when mixed\nwith other people who simply aren't interested in that. Lore in LOL is more of\na long-running gag at this point, though there are a couple of interesting\nchampion interactions in game (Khazix vs. Rengar, battles for the Frejliord).\nBut most of it doesn't make sense, the entire summoner thing was retconned out\nof existence, and would you even guess that Janna and Singed are from Zaun?\n\n~~~\nmreiland\nWhat a load of crock.\n\nLoL is still easily the most toxic community I've ever laid eyes on, and most\nof the toxicity is created by the way Riot has implemented their system.\n\nAll it takes is 1 person to ruin an hour of your day, and if you try and\nrefuse to allow it to be ruined, riot will ban you (you're forced to play a\ngame with someone who is purposefully losing the game because they didn't get\nwhat they wanted, and there's nothing you can do except spend the next 30-40\nminutes in a game you know is a loss or get banned for leaving the game\nearly).\n\nThe result is that the community writes these long articles about the \"art of\ndodging\". For those unaware, the game happens in 2 stages. \"champ select\"\nduring which everyone decides on the role and character they're going to play,\nand then the game itself. If you leave during champ select you get a penalty\nbefore you can rejoin a game. First dodged game is 5 minutes, every subsequent\ndodge is 30 minutes (resets 24 hours after your first dodge).\n\nBecause champ select + game tends to last an hour and a dodge only lasts 30\nminutes, you save time by dodging and waiting. It gets more subtle than that,\nin that your teammates might get angry at you halfway through the game and\nthen decide to purposefully lose the game for you. Because of this, it becomes\nan art to determine how much risk you have of wasting time going into a game.\n\nSo there's these guides running around about how to determine when to dodge as\na means of climbing rank (most people will tell you that learning when to\ndodge is absolutely a skill necessary for climbing quickly).\n\nThis is all a result of Riot's decision not to give players a means of\nextricating themselves from these games in a reasonable manner coupled with\ntoo much leniency in ranked games with respect to people who do this sort of\nthing.\n\nWhat happens a lot of times is people get really angry because they end up\nwasting 3 or 4 hours from these trolls in a single day. A 17 year old off for\nthe summer can play 10+ games a day, a 25 year old with a job cannot, and so\nthat 25 year old can often get very frustrated when he loses multiple games in\na row due to trolls. And when you consider it takes another win to even out\nthe loss, it's actually 2 hours that troll took away from you.\n\nI stopped playing league because I got tired of just how time consuming it is\nto play that game and climb rank.\n\n~~~\nNatsu\n> LoL is still easily the most toxic community I've ever laid eyes on\n\nThen I would submit that you lack experience, they're towards the head of the\npack. Also, from that language, you appear to be a bit toxic yourself.\n\n> All it takes is 1 person to ruin an hour of your day, and if you try and\n> refuse to allow it to be ruined, riot will ban you\n\nYou can mute them. What you cannot do is ruin other 8 other peoples' day\nbecause of one guy. Moreover, the new pick intent systems are calculated to\navoid trolling due to conflict over desired role.\n\nChamp select remains a problem they're working on, and there are games worth\ndodging, but they're far in the minority for me. Of course I'm happy to\nsupport, so no one is ever forced into that role unwillingly.\n\n> I stopped playing league because I got tired of just how time consuming it\n> is to play that game and climb rank.\n\nRanked is inherently frustrating due to being competitive. Not everyone there\nis trolling, some are just having really bad games and there's almost a Poe's\nLaw where you can hardly tell the difference. You will find that people are\nstressed in any competitive game, though, and LoL is really not as bad as\nmost.\n\nNote: I've never been banned. Granted, I'm only Gold II myself, but I have\nplayed with and against Challengers.\n\n~~~\nmreiland\nThe difference between you and me is I don't view disagreement, even strong\ndisagreement, as toxic behavior.\n\nWhich is the other part of the community that frustrates me. Riot has spent a\nlot of time worrying about \"chat toxicity\" when in fact it's a non-issue due\nto the mute feature. They've put all this effort into machine learning so they\ncan start banning people automatically for things people find offensive (IIRC,\none of their touted successes was folks in asian countries using last names as\nan insult. The system learned that was offensive and started suspending people\nautomatically for doing it).\n\nImagine if all that effort was instead put into social engineering to help\ntamp down on people's frustrations with ranked.\n\nBut it won't be, because ultimately the really loud people are those like you\nwho think disagreement or criticism is tantamount to being toxic (instead of\ndemanding that they change the ranked system to put less power in the hands of\nthe assholes). And yes, I did catch that you edited in that jab about me being\ntoxic after the fact, did you seriously think you were going to get a rise out\nof me?\n\nThe truth is I've been playing multiplayer games since the old MUD days before\nUltima Online and Everquest were ever a thing. Back when colored text was\nconsidered a luxury and people would switch clients based upon the speed of\nthe triggers (especially for pk). I've been involved in enough communities\nthat someone calling me a bad name on the internet rolls off my back.\n\nBut you know what doesn't roll off my back? Having someone announce in champ\nselect \"mid or feed\", or \"me and X duo bot or feed\" and then watching everyone\nelse forced into the following decisions:\n\n1) give them what they want, 2) refuse and risk wasting 2 hours of your time\n(an extra game to make up for the loss) 3) dodging and being forced to sit out\nfor 30 minutes.\n\nBecause riot doesn't give them a 4th option 4) opt into giving up the game\nearly.\n\nHere's how poorly designed Riot's ranked system is.\n\nThis is the internet. This means people will have disconnection issues. It's\nnormal.\n\nIf someone fails to connect to the game (from minute 0), Riot forces the other\n4 players to continue playing the game. If any of those 4 players leave they\nrisk getting suspended or banned, and no matter what they do, they take a loss\non their ranked record. They automatically lose 2 hours of their life because\nsomeone's internet crapped out.\n\nOf course people find that shit frustrating.\n\nA primary reason Riot has so many shitty people acting shitty in their system\nis because the design of their system gives those bad actors all of the power.\n\nFor anyone who is truly curious, watch this video. This man is spot on, and if\nyou doubt it, keep in mind that I stopped playing the game specifically for\nthe reasons this man spoke about.\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UfO7qOHx5M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UfO7qOHx5M)\n\n~~~\nNatsu\n> The difference between you and me is I don't view disagreement, even strong\n> disagreement, as toxic behavior.\n\nIt's not disagreement, it's how you express it (\"crock\"). I cannot agree that\nit's a \"jab\" to call someone on expressing themselves in a negative way,\nthough, nor do I want a rise out of you--only self-awareness. It's true that I\nedited that in, my bad for not calling that out. As you can see, you were\ndownvoted for that and neither of us is able to downvote the other.\n\nThey are trying to get rid of some of the frustration with ranked by making\npeople call two roles and changing champ select. They have also studied the\nnegativity regarding this. What they haven't done is copy DOTA2's leaver\nsystem.\n\n> But you know what doesn't roll off my back? Having someone announce in champ\n> select \"mid or feed\", or \"me and X duo bot or feed\"\n\nDoes this mean you haven't seen the new season 6 champ select yet?\n\nI honestly don't see that many DCs, especially in ranked. People get called on\nit if they play when their connection cannot support it and when there have\nbeen network outages, Riot turns on Loss Prevented.\n\n~~~\nmreiland\n> It's not disagreement, it's how you express it (\"crock\").\n\nYOU don't like how I expressed my disagreement. I could copy/paste what I said\nbefore about loud people being loud and it would be just as valid.\n\n> As you can see, you were downvoted for that and neither of us is able to\n> downvote the other.\n\nHow many people read that post and chose not to downvote?\n\nThis goes back to what I said before about loud people who are overly\nsensitive. Most people read it and passed on by.\n\n> Does this mean you haven't seen the new season 6 champ select yet?\n\nWhen people realize declaring support will give them a faster queue, they'll\nstart declaring support and then refuse to take the role using the same\ntactics. The duo's will still attempt to force the roles they want and exhibit\nthe same behavior as they are currently.\n\nPeople's internet will still crap out and those 4 players will still be forced\nto play it out.\n\nIt will have an effect, but not nearly as large an effect as you're trying to\nimply. They need to give the group as a whole more power to deal with the bad\nactors.\n\n> I honestly don't see that many DCs, especially in ranked. People get called\n> on it if they play when their connection cannot support it and when there\n> have been network outages, Riot turns on Loss Prevented.\n\nThat must mean it doesn't happen, right?\n\nAs for Loss Prevented, it has to get extremely bad before they use that. I've\nseen too many instances of consistent disconnects in games over hours and days\nwhere no Loss Prevented was given. Loss Prevented is, by definition, late to\nthe party and their last resort for the most dire of situations. Any\ndiscussion about how to deal with things such as random disconnects by players\ncannot include Loss Prevention as a possible solution.\n\n~~~\nNatsu\n> YOU don't like how I expressed my disagreement.\n\nAnd whoever downvoted you. You may not realize it, but you read like someone\nwho got banned for raging at others. It _doesn 't matter_ who started it, you\njust have to not bite.\n\nAnd with that said, I'm out. Have a good evening.\n\n~~~\ncjslep\n> It doesn't matter who started it, you just have to not bite.\n\nTo be fair, that reason right there is the _entire_ reason early groups of\nhuman beings -- me, many of my friends, and many strangers -- fled League of\nLegends. Coming out of beta, that was the _only_ defense a person could take.\nAnd it stayed like that for way too long. People have human limits -- to\nembody this self-defense of \"just ignore it\" is limiting Riot's player pool to\nonly those who have the mental and emotional fortitude of a machine. Surprise:\npeople are not machines. Taking the humanity out of the individual has been,\nand still sounds like, the root of the bad behavior in the LoL community.\n\n~~~\nNatsu\nTaking revenge in kind does not work, it only leads to a chain of people who\nfeel entitled to snowball the problem, because when you respond, you're\nhelping ruin the game for eight people because of one. People who cannot keep\nthe peace when someone trolls are are _part_ of the toxicity, as well as\nvictims thereof.\n\nThe proper way to deal with it in LOL report and move on, not making the game\nworse for the eight people who had nothing to do with it.\n\nThere's nothing to \"defend\" yourself from: they're words, you're not being\n\"attacked\" that's ridiculous hyperbole.\n\n~~~\ncjslep\n> Taking revenge in kind does not work\n\nNowhere did I say to take revenge.\n\n> People who cannot keep the peace when someone trolls are are part of the\n> toxicity\n\nNowhere did I say to go up in arms and start a mob war, either. Being silent\nand \"just ignoring it\" is not the same as keeping the peace. I agree with your\nnotion that feeding trolls is also bad, but because people are _humans_ and\nnot machines I have to disagree that they are _part_ of the toxicity. They are\na _symptom_ of it; a side-effect. Curing that _symptom_ is all that Riot\nreally wanted to do in the early days, which is why I quickly abandoned the\ncommunity.\n\nI really do not think my original point was properly conveyed so let me\nclarify further:\n\nThere is someone being negative. That is the fundamental problem that needs to\nget solved[0]. As I mentioned before, Riot's stand has always been to \"just\nignore it\" or \"don't be a symptom\". So:\n\n> The proper way to deal with it in LOL report and move on\n\nIs really Riot's sentiment from 2010: \"Just ignore it\". \"Don't feed the\ntroll\". \"Don't become a symptom of the toxicity\". These statements are\nequivalent to saying: \"Players are expected to have the mental and emotional\nfortitude of a machine\". Tough shit if a guy instalocks Ez and calls mid, and\ntough shit if a teammate purposely feeds kills. Under the \"Just ignore it\"\ndoctrine, there is no recourse during the negative experience. Sure, _after_\nruining the experience the negative person could be reported. But its no\nsurprise there are people that would rather _not_ have to put up with the bad\nexperience in the first place.\n\n> not making the game worse for the eight people who had nothing to do with\n> it.\n\nThat right there is what is wrong fundamentally. The implication is that _the\ngame is already bad because of one negative player_. See [0] above.\n\nSo when I originally replied to the comment:\n\n> It doesn't matter who started it, you just have to not bite.\n\nI was not talking about revenge in the sense you were describing it. League\nhas a huge community and therefore huge peer pressure. _Bite back_ by\nleveraging that peer pressure for good: getting people to encourage each other\nto try new characters when they queue for a week straight with the same\ncharacter, or encourage when making good cooperative plays, or not letting\npeople instalock multiple games in a row, or being able to boot people back\ninto queue if being obnoxious in champ select, or having mods review game chat\n_while games are going on_ , or creating a culture of support by giving\nprobationary people pink names and making it cool to encourage them when they\ndisplay positive behavior. There are a ton of ideas like this, and they were\nthere in 2010. But fundamentally, Riot seems OK with that first negative\nplayer. That low bar is why I do not play.\n\n> There's nothing to \"defend\" yourself from: they're words, you're not being\n> \"attacked\" that's ridiculous hyperbole.\n\nNo, it is not ridiculous hyperbole because that is not what I am saying.\nPlease, quit the attempts of putting up a strawman argument.\n\nBut since you (trollishly?) went there, it is clear that the power of words\nmay be lost _for you_. For other people, words can be emotionally charged. It\nis unreasonable to ask others to also trivialize their emotions (See the theme\nof my posts?). If I am a tank and I see a teammate say: \"Our tank is a fucking\ngringo cracker nigger faggot slut bitch for feeding their carry\", that carries\nsome emotionally charged weight to it.\n\nIf you take anything away from my post it is this:\n\nThat first negative player is the _root_ of the problem. Players are humans:\nthey will sometimes feed back as a _symptom_. Leverage the players' humanity\nfor good to fix the _root problem_ instead of trying to turn them into\nemotion-less robots fixing the _symptom_.\n\n~~~\nNatsu\nWell, you go back to champ select as a source of team friction and they are\nfixing that. You don't find people using racial epithets any more, either, so\nabout the worst of the chat text nowadays is someone complaining that you fed.\nThey ban for slurs and swear words really fast, even automatically, and so\nmost ragers don't get to chat, though they can play while chat banned. There\nare smart pings for communication and those are honestly more than enough.\n\nThat said, I personally, when I was an admin of a completely different online\ngame, have been called every single insult, swear word, and racial epithet (I\nlearned most of them from said trolls). I did not lose my cool or even rage at\nthem, I keep the idiot talking to me (and away from the public chat) until a\nhigher one could come on to ban them. It's better when they suffer from their\nown rage rather than you :)\n\nBut if someone is doing something that gets you banned (or in trouble) when\nsomeone else does something that upsets you, well, I can't agree with that\njust being a \"symptom\" because then there would be no \"disease\" in the first\nplace. Everyone has to take responsibility for themselves because nobody else\ncan.\n\nAnd on that note, I do apologize, because I think my tone sounds worse than I\nintended in a few places and I don't mean to blame you for any specific\nproblems. I'm just explaining that keeping chat peaceful requires that people\ndo not feed trolls and those who start trolling because of another troll also\nrequire punishment, generally chat bans. And there's only one person with\ncontrol (and thus, responsibility) for one's emotions: the person themselves.\nLearning self control takes practice, though.\n\n------\nAnimats\nIt's a weak result. When I saw the title, I thought it might be useful for\ndetecting jerks on blogs and Wikipedia. It's not. The mean age of their sample\nis 15.9 years. This result may not apply to higher ages, even college age.\n\nRunning a similar analysis on Wikipedia might be interesting, minus the age\nanalysis.\n\n------\nCM30\nYeah, it's pretty obvious that online usernames say a lot about someone's age\nand personality. Heck, they often say a lot about a variety of other things\ntoo, like their gender and political affiliation.\n\nEither way, while it was fairly obvious to anyone who runs forums or other\ncommunities, it's nice to see some actual research that backs up our common\nsense intuitions here.\n\nOn another note though, do you what would also be interesting to study here?\n\nThe correlation between avatars and age, psychology, etc.\n\nBecause let's face it, the picture someone choses to go with their profile (or\nthe in game model they design or choose for an online game) says at least as\nmuch about them as their name does. A lot of people do tend to choose pictures\nor characters that look a bit like what they look like in real life (or in a\nlot of kids case, what they wished they looked like).\n\nP.S. Am I the only one somewhat surprised about the 'ages figured from\nusernames tend to match what was entered on registration' aspect? Given that a\nlot of games and communities are 13+ only (or perhaps older), I'd expect a lot\nof kids to lie about their age when signing up.\n\n------\nHappyTypist\nThis analysis is certainly interesting, but I can't help but think supervised\nmachine learning (e.g. neural networks) would have been a far better way to\nanalyze this data.\n\nWe're using neural networks to predict future actions of users from weakly-\ncorrelating metrics and achieved surprising accuracy from one day of\ntinkering.\n\n------\nwhoopdedo\nWhat about cultural references in user names? The use of non-English words can\nreflect cultures other than American. Someone with the name \"Browncoat\" (a\nFirefly reference) may be younger than the name \"Krell\" (a Klingon in the\noriginal Star Trek).\n\nI imagine there are other types of information that can be inferred from an\nalias. It supports the argument that metadata contains private information. As\nwell whether use of pseudonyms provides anonymity.\n\n~~~\nChrisGranger\nPerhaps we'll see Diceware-or-similar usernames in addition to passwords if\nenough people care about keeping their pseudonyms as anonymous as possible.\n\n~~~\nqbrass\nMost people will re-roll if they get a name they don't like.\n\n------\nNicoJuicy\nI really wonder what they would think of my counterstrike nickname: Right Ball\nof Legolas, which is just meant as something funny\n\n------\njakejake\nThe most interesting part of this to me was that fact that players tend to use\ntheir birth year in their username. And that the number 88 was a statistical\noutlier because for some reason people must really like that number.\n\n~~~\ncoke12\nOne possible reason that isn't discussed:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_(number)#In_white_nationali...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_\\(number\\)#In_white_nationalism)\n\nOn Reddit a username with 88 in it can be interpreted as a dog whistle for\nracists.\n\nAlthough considering how popular League of Legends is with Chinese people, the\nother hypothesis seems much more reasonable.\n\n~~~\nwhoopdedo\n> On Reddit a username with 88 in it can be interpreted as a dog whistle for\n> racists.\n\nOr NASCAR fans. Which contrary to popular belief is not the same thing.\n\n------\nkincardine\n> Data from League of Legends reveals links between real-world and online\n> personality.\n\nSurprising?\n\n~~~\nLaaw\nThat's something I think people forget; the vast majority of folks _don 't_\nhave some kind of split personality disorder, and their behavior online is the\nsame behavior they exhibit in real life, except perhaps toned up a bit.\n\n~~~\nlsc\nWe all sometimes have the urge to do or say inappropriate things, no? A big\npart of what makes you, you know, you is the degree to which you have a\n\"filter\" that screens out those inappropriate urges before they turn into\ninappropriate actions.\n\nThis filter is rather different in different situations, because what is\nappropriate (and what has consequences) is different in different situations.\nIn a very real way, I would argue that changing that filter enough (and\npesudoanonymity is usually 'enough') makes you, essentially, a different\nperson.\n\nMost people, in a pseudonymous situation, have much less of a filter, in part\nbecause bad behavior is more acceptable, and in part because bad behavior has\nfewer negative consequences, both to themselves and others, than it does in a\nreal life situation. (I'm not saying that there are no consequences; people\nare hurt. But usually not as much as people would be hurt if the same people\nremoved the same filters in real-life interactions.)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Sublime Text Book - wesbos\nhttps://sublimetextbook.com\n======\njawns\nLet's talk about the price of the e-book, $36.\n\nFor a standard nonfiction e-book, that price is fairly high, but when it comes\nto software/programming books, you expect it to be a bit higher than average.\n\nI took a look at some O'Reilly titles around the same price point, and\nspecifically at books that are similar to this, where you're really learning\nabout how to make use of a particular software program's features, rather than\nhow to write in a particular programming language or understand a particular\nabstract concept or niche in software development.\n\n\"Textmate: Power Editing for the Mac\" is 200 pages, $30 for a print edition.\n\n\"Practical Vim: Edit Text at the Speed of Thought\" is 346 pages, $30 for a\nprint edition.\n\n\"Learning GNU Emacs: A Guide to Unix Text Processing\" is 536 pages, $36 for an\ne-book.\n\nIt seems to be generally the case, and these examples bear it out, that\ne-books are priced lower than physical copies, and shorter books are priced\nlower than longer books. I would add that niche books (where the information\nis hard to find elsewhere) also command a premium.\n\nBased on that, I would suggest that this Sublime Text book should probably be\npriced a bit lower. It's an e-book, it's only 220 pages, and though it's nice\nto have all of the information conveniently packaged in one place, it seems\nlike the majority of the book talks about stuff you can easily Google about\n(and typically find a high-quality answer, precisely because the Sublime Text\ncommunity is so large and active).\n\nEdit: I don't usually complain about downvotes, but it's pretty evident that\npeople are downvoting this because they disagree, not because they think it\ndoesn't add anything substantive to the discussion. I'm an author myself, so I\nknow how much work goes into producing (and marketing) a book, and I'm totally\nsupportive of the author trying to make the project worth his time. I'm merely\npointing out that if you look at the market, its list price should probably be\ncloser to the \"with coupon\" price.\n\n~~~\nmbesto\n> _I don 't usually complain about downvotes, but it's pretty evident that\n> people are downvoting this because they disagree_\n\nI think you're getting downvoted because people disagree with your advice to\nthe author. In other words, you aren't adding value to the discussion about\nwhat value the book can bring because your premise is rooted in a totally\nobsolete measuring stick (i.e. # of pages). The value of information/education\nis immeasurable. Let the market decide.\n\n~~~\nchdir\n> The value of information/education is immeasurable\n\nDoesn't the parent comment address that with : _it seems like the majority of\nthe book talks about stuff you can easily Google about (and typically find a\nhigh-quality answer, precisely because the Sublime Text community is so large\nand active)_\n\n------\nSilhouette\nLooking at the sample chapter, this book seems reasonably well written and\nmight be a good buy for someone new to ST who wants to get up to speed\nquickly.\n\nI think calling it a book for power users is highly optimistic. Much of it\nseems to be more like the manual ST should have had but never has, describing\nroutine tools and pointing out keyboard shortcuts that you could find for\nyourself just exploring the default keyboard map. That is certainly a useful\ngap to fill, but there seems to be little if anything in the table of contents\nabout real power user features like defining or customising languages,\ntemplates/snippets, themes, plugins, etc. I hope the choice of title doesn't\nlead to disappointment from actual power users while causing those who would\nenjoy and benefit from the book to go elsewhere.\n\nI did notice that the sample chapter PDF has quite a few obvious layout\nproblems, and that the expanded TOC on the web site has obvious typos, so the\njury is out on editorial/production quality.\n\nAs a final comment, the author seems very keen on ST3, which makes me\nhesitant. I gave up and installed ST3 myself a little while ago, after too\nmany packages I relied on self-updated into just not working any more on ST2.\nNow instead of a productive text editor that I enjoyed and recommended a year\nor two ago, I have a crash-prone, bug-ridden mess, which just has different\npackages I used to rely on that don't work reliably instead. So I'm pretty\ndown on the whole fragmented ST ecosystem and lack of progress/support for\nexisting customers right now. While I assume none of this is the author's\nfault, perhaps the timing of this book launch is unfortunate; it might be a\nbetter buy if and when ST3 and its package ecosystem are up to production\nquality, updated to reflect whatever the best available supporting packages\nare at that time.\n\n~~~\nwldcordeiro\nI've been using ST3's dev builds with no issues whatsoever so I don't see how\nit's a crash-prone, bug-ridden mess. Maybe your crashes are a result of\nplugins you use?\n\n~~~\nSilhouette\nIt seems to crash occasionally (or at least hangs for long enough that it\nmight as well have) even with no plugins at all installed, with build 3065.\nCertain plugins, particularly more heavyweight ones like SublimeCodeIntel,\ncrash so often for me that they are completely unusable with ST3.\n\nBut the bottom line is it doesn't really matter whose fault it is. I used to\nhave an editing suite using ST2 and powerful plugins like SublimeLinter and\nSublimeCodeIntel that worked very well for me. Now I don't, and no combination\nof ST version and available plugins for that version will get me back there\nshort of figuring out which packages I used to have and then going back to ST2\nand manually installing historical versions of each of them assuming they are\nstill available. Since ST without those powerful plugins is a decent text\neditor but nowhere near adequate for professional software/web development,\nthe currently fragmented and broken ST ecosystem is their problem one way or\nanother even if it isn't supposed to be their fault.\n\n------\nKobaQ\nI'm just asking myself if this belongs to hacker news. When does something\ndeserve to be posted as \"Show HN\"? Does the link to what someone wants to show\nus lead to a rich discussion about tech, start-up, programming, business and\nother topics of general interest here?\n\nIs it a interesting website, that we can experience and talk about? Is it\ncode? Is it an interesting business idea?\n\nIn this case, I think this \"Show HN\" post is advertsing only.\n\n------\ndanso\nNice...I generally skip over the endorsements section but Addy Osamni's\nstatement of confidence caught my eye, and it reminded me why I should even be\ninterested in such a narrowly-tailored book: optimizing workflow.\n\nI've clearly lost brain cells as I've gotten older, but I think I've been able\nto maintain a constant rate of learning new things by reducing the amount of\nslack and drag in how I work (and read)...I really like the selling point of\n\"As a developer, I value my time at $100/hr and this book will save me 30\nmin/day...This means I will have an extra $12,500 per year\". That's a nice way\nto think about it, though it probably underestimates the impact of more time\nin life.\n\nI like the pricing of the video (at least at the launch price)...I almost\nnever learn via video (yes, I'm that old) but for an extra $9 (or +$5 of the\nregularly-priced book)...that's not at all a bad deal. And I've been trying to\nmake screencasts on workflow and tooling and am always interested in how the\npros teach with video.\n\nSo, sold.\n\n~~~\ngrimtrigger\nBy that logic, this is a very expensive book. If it takes 6 hours to read\nfully it costs $600 + sticker price!\n\nJust because you get paid $100/hr doesnt mean you value your time at $100/hr.\nIn fact in means that you value your time LESS than $100/hr (though not by how\nmuch).\n\n~~~\nslavik81\nNot every unit of a resource has the same value. Marginal utility is typically\na curve, with the value of each unit of the resource decreasing as you have\nmore of it.\n\nIn theory, yes, the time someone spends working is worth less to them than\nwhat they are paid. Hence why they spend it working.\n\nBut, in theory, they only stop working because the remaining time they have\nleft in the day is at that point worth more to them than their hourly pay.\n\n------\n_raul\nVery nice. One thing I'm missing in the TOC is a chapter on creating your own\npackages: the official docs are (as usual) quite sparse and I'd love to have a\ncouple chapters (tutorial + reference) instead of following the typical \"take\na look at a existing package and wing it from there\" approach. Can someone\nrecommend some good resources on this topic?\n\n~~~\nzzleeper\nYes.. I purchased the book although I already know most of the things there;\nbut what would be _really_ useful is better tutorials for how to make your own\npackages/syntax highlighters/build systems.\n\n~~~\nxs\nI've created my own syntax highlighter plugin for ST. I still don't know how\nto do it even after completing it. There's just so much about it that is\nguesswork.\n\n------\nghshephard\nLove the concept - but reading the sample chapter, the layout was extremely\ndistracting. Tons of widows/orphans, and even some images that were cut\n_across_ pages.\n\nWhen you are selling a book for $36, the bar is a little higher in terms of\nthe quality of the presentation.\n\n~~~\nwesbos\nThanks for the feedback - I have a newly formatted version of the book coming\nout later today which remedies the orphans and adds in some new bookmarking\nfeatures.\n\n~~~\nmamurphy\nI will check back later today for the newly formatted version. In the sample,\nsome sentences were split between pages (with the top half of the letters on\nthe bottom of one page, and the bottom half of the letters on the top of the\nnext page), and that low production quality really threw me off.\n\n------\nwesbos\nIf anyone wants $10 off either package, use coupon code LAUNCHDAY - 100% money\nback guarantee\n\n~~~\nKrowbar\nI used this code for the $45 bundle. The site showed $35 before purchasing but\nmy credit card was charged $45! Hopefully Wes will refund me that $10\n\nEdit: And in the time it took me to complain, he already responded. Way to\nstay on top of things!\n\n~~~\nwesbos\nThis goes for anyone who bought it before seeing this code - email me and I'll\nrefund the $10 right away!\n\n------\nDevX101\nI've been planning on registering my sublime for some time. Gonna do it now. I\njust did a trial of WebStorm and realized my Sublime setup is still the\nsuperior editor (with the right plugins: VIM, git, git gutter, Origami,\nHTMLPrettify).\n\nI've evaluated it for the past 6 months but looks like they finally convinced\nme to fork over the cash. If you've been evaluating for more than a few months\nand you're not a student, pay up!\n\n~~~\nLambdanaut\nI know this might not be kosher, but I have to ask, why? I'm all for\nsupporting the artist, but is that the only reason?\n\nEdit: I expected the downvote, but honestly believe that a discussion on this\ncould be valuable. If you're going to downvote me, in return please tell me\nwhy you think this question shouldn't be asked.\n\n~~~\nrdebeasi\nSublime Text isn't free; it's sold on the honor system:\n\n\"Sublime Text may be downloaded and evaluated for free, however a license must\nbe purchased for continued use.\"\n\nThe developer could try to enforce this rule by building in DRM or by\nthreatening legal action, but those things would make for a pretty crappy user\nexperience. Instead, the author chose to do the right thing by users and\nprovide an evaluation version with no restrictions.\n\nLegally and technically, you can certainly use Sublime Text without paying for\nit. To me, though, using Sublime Text for your everyday work without paying\nfor it is the ethical equivalent of using a cracked version of Photoshop.\n\n~~~\nLambdanaut\nAre you sure it's the honor system? It seems to me more like a clever move to\ndisseminate the software so that people are more likely to pay, particularly\nsince he explicitly defines \"continued use\" as being whatever timeframe the\nuser wants.\n\nAdobe's Photoshop license doesn't do anything like this. If you crack it,\nyou're breaking the rules.\n\nI think it's a gray area, but it's undeniably true that paying for a license\nis a respectful thing to do at the very least.\n\n~~~\njacalata\nWell, there's no enforcement aside from your own conscience (or peer pressure,\nif that applies to you) so yes, it's an honor system. That doesn't stop it\nfrom _also_ being a marketing move.\n\n------\nkendallpark\nI can't find a text editor superior to Sublime. Maybe one day I'll buck up and\nlearn vim then join the superiority-complex crowd, but until then Sublime all\nthe way.\n\nI was hoping that Atom would be better or comparable, but just doesn't feel as\nsolid as Sublime. So laggy.\n\nHas anyone read this book? Good reviews?\n\n~~~\nshubhamjain\n> Maybe one day I'll buck up and learn vim then join the superiority-complex\n> crowd\n\nIs that the sole reason for learning vim? I mean I am all for investing in\nproductivity, but vim seems to be a tool for geeks to boast about and surprise\na lay-person how fast they can work. Is it worth the time you invest to get\nused to it when you compare it to Sublime Text?\n\n~~~\nandrepd\nDon't listen to those people. Vim was very much worth the initial learning\ncurve, for me at least. I never really used Sublime that much, so I can't\nspeak for it. Maybe it gives you 80% of vim's productivity for 1/4th of the\neffort, but make no mistake, vim is an absurdly powerful tool which I'm 99%\nsure beats Sublime out of the water (though, again, I never got deep into\nSublime, so take this with a grain of salt).\n\nOh and the learning curve thing is greatly exaggerated, often by vim users\nthemselves, seeking to brag to everyone about how they mastered the \"fearsome\nlearning curve of vim\".\n\n~~~\nxs\nI used vim for 10 years; now I prefer Sublime Text. I have a need to use a\ntext editor a lot in Windows and never liked the experience that vim for\nWindows gave me so I gave Sublime Text a try. I quickly fell in love with the\nmulti-cursor editing and ability to auto-recover unsaved files when I close\nand reopen the program. From there I discovered new awesome features including\nvim mode which lets me use vim commands within ST if I so choose. I am really\nhappy to know vim because it's installed on every linux/unix distro ever and\nwhen I'm sshing into servers that's what I use, but for the bulk of my coding,\nST all the way.\n\n------\nivanca\nDisappointing that it doesn't have a chapter for plugin development, in my\nopinion that's the best feature of Sublime Text: You can use all the python\necosystem plus it has a nice API. Plus you understand anyone's plugins because\nis all python, not some random lang they like.\n\n------\ncode_chimp\nJust skimming and the content seems really good so far, just a couple of nits\nto pick. The PDF appears to be missing a table of contents and the chapter\nlinks starting on page 2 are not working in Okular running on Ubuntu 14.04 -\nthey appear as links to files on the author's local DropBox.\n\nThe epub looks pretty good on the iPad.\n\n------\nstuntmachine\nCSSDEVCONF removes $15 off of the price.\n\n------\nwnm\ni love sublime, and i love to learn new things that make me more productive or\nefficient, so i'm your target audience. if i'd want to convince my boss to buy\nthis (as you suggestest on your salespage :)), i'd probably need a paperprint\nversion... but i'm actually thinking about buying this just for myself.\n\ngreat work on the sales page! looks very well done.\n\none thing you can think about: why not let users give you their email address\nto get the free chapter?\n\n------\nzaatar\nThanks; I just purchased the book+video; is there a recommended way to print\nout a paper copy for my own use beyond just hammering my own (or work)\nprinter?\n\n------\npdknsk\nThis is personal preference, but I dislike when sites force a download for\nfiles which can just as well be displayed in the browser, such as the sample\nPDF.\n\n------\nPamar\nI have a Mac for use at home, but most of my coding is done at the office on a\nwindows machine... Can anyone suggest a similar resource for Ultraedit?\n\n~~~\ndeevus\nProbably, but Sublime Text runs on Windows anyway.\n\n------\nbhaumik\nFirst thoughts via @tholex.\n[http://i.imgur.com/7me4WYG.png](http://i.imgur.com/7me4WYG.png)\n\n------\nalphabetam\nI'm a proficient VIM user. Can Sublime compete? Is it worth trying to learn\nit?\n\n~~~\njbrooksuk\nYes, Sublime has a plugin called \"Vintage\" which acts like Vim.\n\n~~~\nmklim\nThe Vintageous plugin does a better job of emulating Vim than Vintage, I\nrecommend using that instead. Neither one is perfect, but Vintageous covers\nmost of the commands. It's good enough that I felt comfortable dropping Vim\nfor ST entirely (disclaimer: not an expert Vim user so my bar is probably\nlower than average, YMMV).\n\n------\nRubberMullet\nThe volume level in the sample video seems very low. Are all the videos like\nthis?\n\n------\njaset\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8424337](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8424337)\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8418552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8418552)\n\n~~~\njackmoore\nIn fairness, this time it was submitted by the author and he is responding to\ncomments.\n\n------\noron\nLooks nice and priced fairly, got my copy, Thanks.\n\n------\nsergiotapia\nShame you only accept Credit Cards, I live in South America and only have\naccess to PayPal for online payments.\n\n~~~\nderengel\nNot sure what you mean here, what country in south america doesn't have credit\ncards?\n\n~~~\nsergiotapia\nI'm not sure if you're serious or not, but Bolivia.\n\n~~~\nivanca\nThat's... strange. In Colombia we do have credit cards.\n\n------\ntsax\nBought!\n\n~~~\ntsax\nWhy is this downvoted? Would the author not like to know if a commenter\npurchased his work?\n\n------\nvictorhooi\nI'm pretty tempted to buy a copy.\n\nHowever, the thing holding me back is, I've recently switched from SublimeText\nto Atom.\n\nI didn't see much development on the SublimeText front, and Atom seemed to\nhave a growing community.\n\nFor anybody that's purchased it - what are your thoughts on how applicable\nthis might be Atom? Or helpful to somebody using it?\n\n(I know that Atom is \"inspired\" by SublimeText)\n\n~~~\nluketherrien\nI have not purchased the e-book.\n\nI just wanted to note that although Atom is a derivative of Sublime Text, they\nmay not end up having 100% feature parity. That may not be a problem due to\nthe ease of creating an Atom package.\n\n------\nnayak\nEditor is $70 if you want to buy and this book is more than $30. Combined\nprice of both of these is more than I paid for my OS long back. Too much\ninvestment for a editor and learning it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPublishers That Say No to Automated Ad Sales - prostoalex\nhttp://www.wsj.com/articles/publishers-that-say-no-to-automated-ad-sales-1443650792?cb=logged0.13897654577158391\n======\nshostack\nNothing new here--publishers want more direct buys vs. programmatic remnant\nsales on the exchanges. Higher margins, controlling the data, keeping things a\nblack box--can't say I blame them, but that's not to say they'll get their\nwish.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSold my startup for nothing just before it took off. Now i'm broke. Need advice. - ahugefool\n\nHow do you recover from a success (first success after a multitude of failures) that you let slip through your fingers - by selling just before it took off?<p>It is eating me alive. I&#x27;m almost back to square one (broke, no ideas) and can hardly hold myself together.&lt;p&gt;I try to pump myself up to try something new but the thought that had i held on just a little longer i wouldn&#x27;t even be in this position saps my productivity.<p>Faced with the prospect of having to reenter the job market (after having actually built something that works) is a nightmare that i never thought would be realised. But here i am.<p>Every day - completely paralysed by the outcome of my decision.<p>Really would appreciate anyone&#x27;s advice here.Thank you.\n======\nDocG\nCongratulations!\n\nYou managed more than most of the start-ups! Your idea was worth it and it\nwill go and change part of the world. It was your doing.\n\nBy now, you have experience in starting, you have confirmation on your ideas.\nThis is bigger win in long term.\n\nBummer that you didn't get paid in money, but money comes and goes. You will\ndo fine. being a employee for a while, might be a nice change to reflect on\nyour experience and work on your ideas. Less hectic and more stress free\nchange.\n\n~~~\nahugefool\nThank you for taking the time to write this. You have no idea how much i\nappreciate it.\n\n------\nusername99\nGet out of bed and stop feeling sorry for yourself. Life goes on. Do the\nfollowing actions:\n\n1\\. Get at least 8 hours of sleep every day. Go to bed at a reasonable hour,\nand get up when you wake up.\n\n2\\. Get a small notebook and a pen. Carry them with you _everywhere_.\n\n3\\. Eat properly. No excessive junk-food. Don't skip meals.\n\n4\\. Ever day for at least 1 hour, go to a quiet place and bring out your\nnotebook. Spend the entire hour writing out ideas. It doesn't matter if they\nare good or bad. Just write them out. Do it. The point is to use your \"idea\nmuscles\".\n\n5\\. Spend at least 1 hour every day walking, running, moving, or doing\n_something_ to make your body active and actually get your blood pumping. Even\nif it's just 5 minutes here, and 2 minutes there... do that a bunch of times\nevery day.\n\n6\\. Repeat step #4 at least two or three times per day.\n\nWith the above steps, you will condition your body and brain to be a thinking\nmachine. You'll find after a week or so, it will become easier and easier to\nthink up ideas for your notebook. Soon you'll have hundreds of ideas written\ndown. Eventually you'll get an idea for a new startup that just work. Pursue\nit! (Don't stop the steps above, though... maybe just limit them a bit.)\n\nRemember, your brain is a muscle. Exercise it. Keep your body in decent\ncondition because it feeds your brain.\n\n~~~\nahugefool\nThis situation has led me to James Altucher's blog a few times . This sounds a\nlot like his advice. I think it's great. I'm going to go ahead and take it and\nbuy a notebook today.\n\nThank you.\n\n~~~\ndesipenguin\nI was about to say \"James Altucher\" :) Best Wishes !!\n\n------\nlazyjones\n\\- What was it that your startup lacked while you were in charge? Be honest\nwith yourself so you can learn from this experience and do it better next\ntime.\n\n\\- Perhaps this will come across as cynical, but your current position has\nseveral advantages too: a) you don't have much to lose, b) your potential is\nhigher than what you're currently going through, so it's likely that your\nsituation will improve, c) you are experiencing a situation that is very\ncommon these days, it might inspire you to create something that will be of\nuse to many people\n\nFind yourself a job to stay afloat and plan for the future. Of course you can\ndo it again!\n\n~~~\nahugefool\nIt can be very hard to see these positives. But it is true. They are there.\nThe mind seems to love to play awful tricks when things go wrong.\n\nThank you very much.\n\n~~~\nbmm6o\nFollowing on GP's advice, you might find it therapeutic to write something up\nabout your experience. What (if anything) could you have done differently to\nbe more successful? What skills should you work on to be more successful in\nthe future? If you're up to writing a blog series, I think you've got a big\npotential audience and you could make some decent ad revenue from it. Do it\nanonymously if you wish.\n\n------\nneilk\nYou're paralyzed because you now believe that you are 'ahugefool'.\n\nStep one would be to try to find some way out of that pattern of thinking. No\nwait - step zero is to not give yourself usernames like that.\n\nIf you're an ordinary human like the rest of us, your brain goes haywire with\nlow-probability/high-consequence outcomes. You'll want to punish yourself in\nproportion to what you missed out on. But maybe you should consider evaluating\nyourself on what knowledge you had at the time?\n\nI think you need to engage in some \"accounting\" of everything you did, with\nsomeone you trust, like a therapist or a person whose business advice you\ntrust.\n\nMaybe you can try cognitive-behavioral therapy, with a trained therapist. You\nstart with your negative thoughts like \"I'm a huge fool\" and recursively break\nthose down until you arrive at baseline observations and facts. If you're a\nprogrammer this highly rational mode of therapy may work well for you. You\nwill almost certainly find that your negative conclusions about yourself\naren't warranted.\n\n------\nTomte\nBeing an employee is no nightmare.\n\nThat said, having been close to a bug payout sucks, but it's basically the\nsame as standing at the roulette table \"if I had only bet 28 black\" when you\nmissed your number by one.\n\nAgonizing over \"close, but not quite, good luck\" is human, but it leads\nnowhere.\n\n~~~\nwikwocket\nGood analogy about roulette. How and when things go viral and take off can be\nas random as any casino game.\n\nAnd most importantly, what happens at the table after you walk away has no\neffect on you. You left the game when you decided to. Asking \"What if I had\nbet one more time?\" is a rabbit hole that can paralyze and cripple your\nforward decision-making.\n\nRelatedly, you may want to look up the idea of a sunk cost: things that\nhappened in the past are done with, and cannot be changed. Sunk costs are\nirrelevant to your plans for the future. It is very _very_ tempting for us to\ndwell on things like this, but ultimately it is healthier (and more\nstrategically profitable) to look forward, not back.\n\n------\nbengali3\n1\\. remember, \"only the mediocre are always at their best\" 2\\. get Seth\nGodin's blog via email\n\np.s i wish i had a startup success under my belt, if you and I are starting at\nthe beginning of the next startup race, then you clearly have an experience\nadvantage. Hey, give it to me if you aren't going to use it :)\n\n------\ndanfalos\nGive yourself courage , i started mine left me broke and i closed it stayed\nwithout work for an year but did some mear jobs here computer hardware repair\nand enhanced my knowledge nowadays when people ask me i feel good telling them\ni got broke and closed it but am better now knowledge wise and am planning to\nstart it again and this time it will pick up ... be proud you started it and\nremember the way and the ideas you had are still there and you can even start\nand enhance it more ..... i read the guy who started Github left to stsrt\nanother you can also do so ... think of an idea you will succeed again.\n\n------\nibstudios\nOne wrong decision prevents all future decisions?\n\nThis is a stress and you need to build your self confidence to get out of the\nself doubt loop. You aren't living when you are thinking of the past.\n\nCreate, create, create!\n\ngood luck!\n\n~~~\nahugefool\nThank you\n\n------\nIm_Talking\nI wouldn't knock yourself on the head about this. Most times the first time\nsomeone tastes success, they make someone else rich. It's only the second\ntaste of success that makes you yourself rich.\n\nI made my first boss quite wealthy with my software. But it allowed me to\nunderstand business and I learned well.\n\nTry to use your experience to come up with ideas within the same\nindustry/domain/etc. Did you sign a non-compete?\n\n------\nmacguyver\nKudos, what I've learned:\n\n\\- When we don't get what we want, we get something even better than what we\noriginally wanted\n\n\\- Events that lead to the best outcomes often are disguised as failures\n\n\\- We always get what we need\n\nBest wishes to you. If only there were a startup that made it easy for\nfounders to find jobs/gigs after their startups.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWaymo leads autonomous race with lowest human driver takeover rate - electriclove\nhttps://9to5google.com/2018/01/31/waymo-in-lead-in-autonomous-race/\n======\nelectriclove\nIn the article is a link to a Twitter post by Amir Efrati who compiled a quick\ntally:\n\n[https://twitter.com/amir/status/958826166286102528/photo/1](https://twitter.com/amir/status/958826166286102528/photo/1)\n\n~~~\nFricken\nHere's the California DMV site, with pdf links to disengagement reports for\nevery company registered to test in California:\n\n[https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2017)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBoA Merrill Lynch publishes target price for Bitcoin: $1300 - jackgavigan\nhttp://cryptome.org/2013/12/boa-bitcoin.pdf\n======\ncrntaylor\nDon't get too excited. The actual quotation is\n\n    \n    \n      \"Assuming Bitcoin becomes a major player in both e-commerce \n       and money transfer *and* a significant store of value with \n       a reputation close to silver, our fair value analysis \n       implies a *maximum market capitalization* of Botcoin of \n       $15bn (1 BTC = 1300 USD).\n    \n       This suggests that the 100 fold increase in Bitcoin prices   \n       this year is at risk of running ahead of its fundamentals.\"\n    \n\nSo if two questionably likely events both occur, BAML think that Bitcoin might\nhave a _maximum_ value of 1300 USD.\n\n~~~\nscotty79\nThe assumptions they made are quite insane. To calculate how much value in\nbitcoins is required to facilitate online trades they fixated on proportion of\ntotal US households cash and deposits to their total expenditures. They\nassumed they will have amount of wealth in bitcoins that's in same proportion\nto 10% of their online expenditures. Then they extrapolated it to whole world.\n\nDo Americans actually have cash and deposits at all? I was under the\nimpression that most of their household expenditures are either directly\ncoming from their paycheck or are credit based.\n\nNot to mention that they \"calculated\" (how? they say that they divide 11trn by\n0.7trn to get that) proportion to be 0.07 then they sliced it down to 0.04\nbecause Americans have recently started saving money which is unusual.\n\nThey also assumed that shops will convert bitcoins back to dollars\nimmediately.\n\nWhen assessing bitcoins as a store of value they state bizarre things:\n\n\"Furthermore, the reputation of gold as a unique and safe store of value has\nbeen growing for the past ten thousand years. It will take some time for\nBitcoins to acquire that reputation. We don’t know how to quantify the value\nof gold’s reputation, but this reputation is probably the main reason that its\nvalue is 60 times that of silver.\"\n\nPersonally I though that the reason gold is many times more expensive than\nsilver is the fact that silver is vastly more abundant.\n\nSo for me it sounds more like: \"If two questionably likely events both occur,\nBAML think that Bitcoin might have a maximum value of 1300 USD. Unless of\ncourse it turns out that pigs actually can't fly, then it could go higher.\"\n\n~~~\nsanxiyn\nHistorically gold to silver ratio was around 15 -- Coinage Act of 1792 defines\nratio to be exactly 15, for example. I don't think abundance of gold and\nsilver changed much since then. So change from 15 to 60 indeed is based on the\nreputation of gold.\n\n~~~\nscotty79\nRoughly there's 10 times as much silver mined as gold. So you are right that\n60 times is a bit high. 17.5 times is estimated proportion of those metals in\nearths crust (not sure if it takes into account gold and silver dissolved in\noceanic waters.\n\nWhether the difference between the actual price of gold and the price that can\nbe derived from fundamentals is a value of trust in gold or, as BAML puts it\nin case of bitcoin, speculation, is up to debate. Pointless I think because\nspeculation is enabled by trust.\n\n------\ntpeng\nMy thoughts on the BAML report:\n\nThe calculation of BTC's value as a currency uses the correct methodology,\nwhich I had previously outlined in this post:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6829518](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6829518)\n\nBAML uses M1 (cash + checking accounts) instead of M2 (M1 + savings accounts +\ntime deposits). Using M2 is a lot more aggressive but it also captures the\n\"store of value\" value. M2 is really a best case scenario for BTC owners, as\nit assumes that users will hold their savings in BTC. BAML is fine to be\nconservative with this.\n\nBAML's inclusion of Bitcoin's value as a money transmission business is\nabsurd. While transfer fees accrue to the shareholders of Western Union, the\ntransfer fees of BTC transfers do not accrue to BTC owners. In fact, the\ntransfer fees are quite small to zero and they accrue to the miners. So if BTC\ndoes take share from WU, etc., it only shrinks the pie.\n\nSome posters on HN and elsewhere are saying that BAML is \"too conservative\",\nbut they have not posted their own numbers and assumptions.\n\nThe reality is that BTC's current real economy is nowhere near the size needed\nto justify the current BTC price, and enormous growth of this economy is\nalready baked into the price. While it's not impossible that this growth can\noccur, there are real reasons to believe that it won't.\n\n------\nzmitri\nIn case HN wasn't completely aware, most bank \"research papers\" are content\nmarketing designed to try and get you to buy products from their desk. They\nare often very biased and should be analyzed with caution.\n\nI don't know much about bitcoin, but I've seen enough \"research\" from desks to\nknow the analysis is very slanted - hence the page of disclaimers at the end.\n\n~~~\njustincormack\nThe disclaimers are because they used to be overt fraud. Now they are mostly\npaid for by \"soft commission\" and are supposed to be \"independent research\"\nfor people who will not pay for research with their own money but will spend\ncustomers money on it.\n\n------\nsalient\nThey will look like complete fools when Bitcoin goes way beyond their\n\"maximum\" value $1,300. This seems like a very shallow analysis, done by\nsomeone who's new to Bitcoin, and within a single day.\n\n------\nHavoc\nI've always found the notion of a \"target price\" somewhat entertaining. Its\nmarket forces at work - baring Goldman schenanigens - nobody is targeting\nanything.\n\n------\ndrakaal\nAuthor apparently didn't read the article from Merril Lynch\n\n[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/885843-banks-\nresearc...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/885843-banks-research-\nreport-on-bitcoin.html)\n\nWhat it actually says is that if BitCoin is to be viable it has to be used as\nCurrency exchanged against the price of the local currency at the time of\ntransaction.\n\nThis makes sense. You wouldn't want to buy gas based on the high or the low of\nthe day. So you can't say that Gas costs 1/300th of a Coin, and leave that as\nthe price all day because right now that could be Cheap at $900 a coin and\nExpensive at $1300 a coin.\n\nIt also says that there has to be enough people using it for it to not have\nhuge price swings based on Volatility. This also makes sense. We don't buy\nthings with gold often because knowing the value at a given moment is hard.\nAnd since we don't trade in raw gold we trade in coins, typically those coins\neach have values, a Krugerand and a Panda don't have quite the same value per\nounce and the difference fluctuates per day. So unless we can get to a point\nthat BTC is only changing fractional percentages per day, people are going to\nalways be changing coins to local currency.\n\nAll of this summarized in one sentence:\n\nBoA ML thinks that BitCoin will become a Merchant Services System that works\non the instantaneous exchange rate with the local currency, and based on the\nmarket share they believe it could have and the total number of coins in\ncirculation the cap will be $1300. (yeah it is a long compound sentence)\n\n------\nexo762\nBoA Merill Lynch current price is 231% of it's target price.\n\nBest regards, Bitcoin.\n\n~~~\nKequc\nSo if you buy in now then Bitcoin becomes a major player in both e-commerce\nand money transfer. Then becomes a significant store of value with the\nreputation of silver. And for some reason this estimate is off by a factor of\ntwo then you could theoretically double your money by whatever time that all\nthis happens.\n\nAll you need to do is risk it all.\n\n~~~\nexo762\nUnless you've bought in year ago.\n\nAlso, you don't have to treat Bitcoin as a mean of storing value. You can use\nit as a way to transfer money over great distances.\n\n------\ntim333\nStockbrokers always give a target price about 20-100% more than the current\nprice for any asset. It's a marketing thing. They make commision or get\ninvestment fees whether the estimates are wrong or right.\n\n~~~\nUnFleshedOne\nNot quite correct. They downgrade below current levels occasionally too.\n\n------\nheadgasket\nThese analysts are not to be trusted. The stock market is a 0 sum game, your\nloss is someone else's gain. Analysts and brokers are out to get you at worst,\nor part of the noise at best. the market is an information/disinformation\nbattle. From a dev mindset it might be hard to grasp, in our world people\ndon't gain anything from worsening someone else's prospect. In fact open\nsource can be actually seen as the opposite.\n\n------\nTenoke\nWhy the double submission pdf - the report has already been submitted and has\nbeen in the top for a while -\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6859832](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6859832)\n\nYeah, this is direct link to the pdf but does this really justify a second\nsubmission (and upvoting to top)?\n\n------\nAqueous\nThey are way understating the growth potential of a currency that has\nunlimited growth potential because it knows no borders, and serves as a new\ntechnological platform.\n\n------\nwellboy\nLol, right now almost no one is using Bitcoin for actual purchases, because\nit's not a viable currency yet. Right now it's just an investment opportunity\nuntil Bitcoin has found its price.\n\nThen not an investment opportunity anymore and becomes a viable currency. That\npoint is reached when 1 Bitcoin is worth between $100,000-$500,000, because\nthen it has replaced all banks, all currencies and taken up around 10% of the\nworld gross product.\n\nI give it 3 years.\n\n~~~\nJoeAltmaier\n\"Value\" of an investment during a bubble is not a useful number. We can write\nall the imaginary numbers on the wall we like; only backed currencies reflect\nreal wealth. Because in the end our standard of living doesn't change by\nfiddling with the numbers; only investing in real infrastructure, energy\nmining and manufacturing, makes any difference in the real world. Fiddling\nwith numbers just bids up the price of those things, a zero-sum game.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nEmployee Equity - yurisagalov\nhttp://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/11/employee-equity.html\n\n======\nzallarak\nI like that this is being discussed more. Some related thoughts:\n\n\\- I personally find the numbers low; there is a glut of startups out there\npartially due to engineers realizing that they are more than often underpaid\nin terms of equity.\n\n\\- Employers and VCs should realize that a hyper-motivated engineer is worth N\nengineers. Not juts in terms of effort, but engineering quality, reduction in\npolitics/a more meritocratic culture, morale, etc.\n\n\\- Heavily invested engineers will be retained; recruiting and skill-retention\nare huge resource consumers.\n\n------\nmichaelochurch\nSlide 11 puts the average equity for a software engineer at a 51-100 person\ncompany at 0.07%. That sounds correct-- I hesitate to use \"right\", here-- but\nthat means that a person is getting about _1 /20_ of a proportional share. To\nme, that's absurd. Yes, founders and management and investors deserve their\ntake, and 40-70% is reasonable. But not 95%.\n\nFor those who'd argue, \"0.07 percent is generous for someone who just joined,\nhasn't done anything yet, hasn't taken any risk\" let me remind them that the\n0.07 is _vested_ over 4 years (as it should be). After 4 years of loyalty and\ngood work, she probably deserves much more than 7 pennies.\n\nI think startup equity is toxic because it's designed to _look like_ real\nbusiness partnership, and it confuses the naive into thinking they're actual\nowners, but actually falls into the uncanny valley.\n\nI think it's better to be honest about the employer/employee relationship (in\nthe way that Wall Street is, with its generous profit sharing) than to try to\nhide with it bullshit. Startup equity: people paid in penny stocks that\ncouldn't be legally sold to them and that they can't possibly evaluate because\nthey aren't even given the social access to understand the relationships (e.g.\ninvestors) involved-- because if they had that access, they'd go off and start\ntheir own companies.\n\nIf you want to do the Cravath model and promote people to real partnership\nafter 7 years, then do that. If you want to be like a hedge fund (which\nprefers generous cash bonuses over the increasing ownership complexity, and\nemployees usually prefer that too) then do that. But the VC-istan \"ownership\"\nculture is (for engineers) a fucking lie. If we (as engineers) are going to\nown something, it'll be something we build ourselves and it won't happen in\nVC-istan.\n\n~~~\nspamizbad\nI can speculate on two reasons why things are the way they are:\n\n1) Companies generally set aside a certain percentage of their common stock\nfor employee compensation. I imagine much of this is allocated towards C-level\nhires, and anyone else is getting the scraps. I've also heard (but not\nconfirmed firsthand so take with a grain of salt) that VCs don't like overly\nlarge employee stock pools. I have no clue why - VC stock is preferred and\nemployee stock is common so it's not they're offering any competition. It\nmight have something to do with founders getting discouraged by additional\ndilution, which in turn limits the kinds of deals that founder is willing to\nparticipate in.\n\n2) Paying out more cash to engineers makes it more difficult for your company\nto achieve a positive (or break-even) EBITDA. Negative EBITDA makes you a much\nless attractive acquisition target unless you're either trendy or have some\nungodly large number of \"eyeballs\" that haven't been monetized yet (They're\npaying for the upside). An entrepreneur contemplating offering market-clearing\nsalaries could talk themselves out of it by concluding \"I can probably just\nhire the same engineer for less if I just wait longer and work harder at\nscreening\" \\-- effectively trading time to save money. Not always a smart\nmove, but not necessarily a stupid one either.\n\nAgain, just speculation.\n\n~~~\nmichaelochurch\nThese explanations make a lot of sense.\n\nFor #1, the stated reason VCs discourage substantial employee equity is that\nthey don't want the \"equity-oriented culture\". The real reason is greed in\nwhat they perceive as a zero-sum game (but it's not; different policies would\ncreate different companies!)\n\n#2 is probably quite accurate. It's sad, though, that paying well confuses\nWall Street into thinking a business is ineptly run.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nOnce again, you beg the question. You pretend to draw a conclusion about how\nVC works, but that conclusion is based on the unsupported premise that VC\nworks the way you say it does.\n\nTo the extent company boards are parsimonious about equity, it's probably in\norder to preserve optionality: a new chief operating officer, or a new high-\nprofile engineer to lead a new product team, or a new CEO, all draw\nsignificantly from the pool of equity available to employees. Humans are loss\naverse, so a smaller up-front allocation is preferable to a larger allocation\nthat subsequently has to be diluted down.\n\n------\nPro_bity\nDidn't we have the same conversation yesterday?\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6762562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6762562)\n\n~~~\nmik3y\nIf you read the post, he's responding to that article: \"So I was excited to\nsee that First Round Capital featured a blog post by Andy Rachleff on this\ntopic yesterday..\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: What do you expect from a meaningful technical interview? - pthreads\nRecently there was a post regarding technical interviews (how performance is arbitrary) and it got a lot of responses from HN&#x27;ers. So I wanted to ask the community how would they design a great technical interview? Disclosure: The reason I am asking is I am thinking of starting a service that provides resources for companies that want to hire technical talent but are not able to suitably test candidates for technical competency. These interviews would be tailored to specific needs. But I am not sure if there is a need for it in the industry.\n======\nrosspackard\nI am in the process of building a service like that too. Mainly because I want\nit for vetting the candidates that I am trying to hire (I am a principle\nengineer who also manages).\n\nMy focus has been on these things:\n\n-easily distributing and receiving challenges privately (not through github or email)\n\n-tool to help easily and quickly manually review code\n\n-a library of challenges that aren't algorithms based (think like a challenge to fix a bug in a moderately sized system, building a feature onto an existing codebase... I have many ideas for these)\n\n-example qualitative scoring systems (the idea of which comes from Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman's book 'Thinking, Fast and Slow')\n\n~~~\npthreads\nNeat. I hadn't thought about distributing and receiving challenges privately\nas I was planning to basically interview candidates on site. But I see the\nvalue in your idea as not all candidates will be able to spend half a day on\nsite. The library of challenges is equally useful.\n\n~~~\nrosspackard\nI also think that onsite technical challenges don't represent a candidates\nstrengths. Due to nerves or insecurity. They may think googling for something\nsimple in front of you is deemed bad (and it can be seen that way by\ninexperienced interviewers).\n\nIf you want to discuss more feel free to use my gmail, its my username with an\nextra r in front.\n\n------\nchrisbennet\nAs a candidate, I use the interview process to determine if I want to work for\nthe company.\n\nPart of the way I judge a company is wether they value my time as much as\ntheir own. When a hiring manager calls me up or emails me, he's \"doing the\nwork\" and I will always respect that. The phone screen is something that costs\nthem as much time as it does me.\n\nI don't think I've ever jumped through any hoops _before_ talking to the\nhiring manager. Why should jump through hoops for a company that hasn't\nconvinced me that I might want to work for them?\n\nI'm not sure if that's helpful or not. Good luck.\n\n------\nvictorhugo31337\nI tend to prefer the following:\n\n1) Phone screen\n\n2) In person interview with 3-4 people\n\n3) Take home coding question\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThat Person Won't Scale  - cwan\nhttp://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/05/that-person-wont-scale.html\n\n======\nbillybob\nRant: one thing that certainly doesn't scale is micromanagement. If you are\ngetting copied on every email sent by your employees, you do not scale. You\nare very busy, oh yes. And that makes you look important. But you're missing\ndetails, and sometimes the whole point.\n\nThe secret: nobody scales. You have a limited amount of attention each day. To\nscale, you must: 1) Find trustworthy people to delegate to, 2) trust them. And\neventually, let them delegate, too.\n\nIf you don't trust your employees, you've got a hiring problem.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRevolting Mind: Jonathan Swift – The Reluctant Rebel - lermontov\nhttps://literaryreview.co.uk/revolting-mind\n======\njoggery\nSo he was cold, frugal, petulant and severe? What did they expect? A genius\nthat was easy to get on with? Was there ever such a one?\n\nThere's such a relish nowadays for pointing out how bad people were in private\nwho created marvellous stuff which produced and produces unlimited benefits to\nsociety.\n\nEspecially unsocial geniuses. They are described as cold or inhuman despite\nperhaps being _more_ human than the rest of us. After all it is only their\n_integrity_ that allows their inner worlds to flourish.\n\n(I suspect that sociable people are secretly afraid of other humans. Which is\nwhy they designate a subset of other humans as 'friends' and are nice to them\non condition that they are nice back. They then project their personal issues\nonto humans outside that set.)\n\n~~~\neli_gottlieb\n>A genius that was easy to get on with? Was there ever such a one?\n\nYes, almost definitely. For instance, Benjamin Franklin was quite the\nsocialite. Richard Feynman was also considered very sociable, and while many\npeople also think he was an asshole, that may just be the effect of meeting\ntons and tons of people in your life.\n\n>I suspect that sociable people are secretly afraid of other humans. Which is\nwhy they designate a subset of other humans as 'friends' and are nice to them\non condition that they are nice back.\n\nThat's a really creepy thing to say. I'm not even particularly good with\npeople, but I'm nice to my friends, family, etc because I actually like them.\n\n~~~\njoggery\nFranklin and Feynman were smart but spread themselves too thinly and so didn't\ndevelop their genius, in part due to their social escapades. They didn't\ncreate as much as they should have. The test of 'getting on' with somebody\nwould have to be something like roommates i.e. spending a significant amount\nof time together.\n\nYes it's creepy but ask yourself why. Perhaps it reveals something evil? It's\nnot enough to like one's friends to refute this idea, which goes deep; it's\nabout _why_ you like them. Note that a truly good person loves his enemies\nwhile the highly sociable person will toady to some of his 'friends' and\nexploit others.\n\n~~~\neli_gottlieb\n>Franklin and Feynman were smart but spread themselves too thinly and so\ndidn't develop their genius,\n\nOh, no, they're only some of the most celebrated and accomplished men in our\nwhole culture. It's not like they did anything with their lives /s.\n\n>Note that a truly good person loves his enemies while the highly sociable\nperson will toady to some of his 'friends' and exploit others.\n\nNow you sound like you're just redefining \"sociable\".\n\n~~~\njoggery\nThere's a difference between celebrity and accomplishment. I'm claiming that\nto an extent they squandered their gifts and could have accomplished more of\ndepth and value. John von Neumann is another example (too social; spread too\nthin).\n\nIt's understood that social people are people who enjoy socialising and have\nlots of friends. But I would say that appearances are deceptive and they're\nactually not close to any of them. This isn't an accident because what they're\nreally seeking is to allay their secret fear by gaining fame and/or power.\nWhich is just a mistake.\n\nIt's not wrong to have friends and to like them, even if only to honour the\npast, or because business demands it. But progress lies in a different (inner)\ndirection.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA better Hackerbuddy - illdave\nhttp://hackerbuddy.com/posts/2\n======\nmike-cardwell\nI nominate myself for geekiest profile:\n\n<http://hackerbuddy.com/users/2670>\n\n~~~\nmike-cardwell\nFYI, to get a monospace font, you have to wrap the entire thing in a <pre>.\nHowever, when displayed, line feed characters (\\n) are converted to\n\"\\n<br>\\n\", which turns into three blank lines in a pre. So when editing, you\nneed to make sure you use <br> and never any real \\n's.\n\nTo start a line with spaces, you have to use \"&#160;\" when editing. You should\nalso convert all double spaces \" \" to \"&#160; \" if you want them to be\ndisplayed nicely.\n\nThat's how I lined things up in my profile.\n\nThe idea is that you select the PGP signed text, and then paste it into \"gpg\n--verify\". This works fine in Firefox and Chrome, but when you copy the data\nin IE, the clipboard version contains no \\n chars. If I could have used <span>\ninstead of <pre> this problem wouldn't have manifested. The profile editor\nwouldn't let me do that though.\n\nI wish \"copy\" behaviour was consistant across browsers, when copying from a\nweb page.\n\n~~~\nilldave\nI am really impressed that you did that :)\n\nI'll make sure when I'm updating the CSS to leave <pre> styled the same way it\nis - if I change anything that messes with your formatting, let me know - I\ndon't want to break what you've done!\n\n~~~\nmike-cardwell\nThanks, but you shouldn't let one users profile dictate your sites styling.\nFeel free to break it. I'll just fix it if you do.\n\n------\nhelen842000\nHey, this is a great site. I hope it continues to gather a following.\n\nI had an issue with the slider button (to help other hackers) it wouldn't let\nme move it to Yes. Tried on several machines/devices..hmm. I'll test it again\nat home.\n\nIt would be good to see a \"live feed\" of what people are searching for. It may\nhelp people to realise they have important skills they wouldn't have otherwise\nlisted!\n\n~~~\nilldave\nThanks for the feedback - I know the slider doesn't work on the iPad, so it's\ndefinitely one to fix. Good idea about the live feed - I tried adding an auto-\nsuggest bit but I couldn't get it to play nicely with the rest of the\nJavaScript, but it looks like it could be really useful, so I'll keep trying\nwith it.\n\n------\ndylangs1030\nThis is fantastic. Here is mine - <http://hackerbuddy.com/users/2875>\n\nIn fact, I'm adding it to my own laundry list of links on my blog and\nelsewhere. Really, great job and idea, and you implemented it well.\n\nI love the very easy use of HTML editing on profiles, and I've already\nreserved my vanity url id (Dylan). Speaking which, it'd be fantastic if you\ncould make the user profile url's /username (as others have commented). It\nwould be more easily identifiable than a set of numbers, especially if you're\nbuilding a network of hackers.\n\nI also suggest adding even more social features. Not on par with a social\nnetwork, but maybe forms for the typical information you'll find on a\nprofessional profile.\n\nYou did the back-end as well as the design, or it was a split effort with a\nhackerbuddy :p?\n\n~~~\nilldave\nThanks very much, glad you like it. I like the /username idea too so that's on\nmy list of things to update (I'll make sure that everything redirects properly\nso you won't need to update your links if you don't want to).\n\nI did the back-end as well as the front-end, although I cheated and based the\ndesign on a chopped-up Themeforest theme. I love Themeforest for things like\nthis.\n\n------\nhieronymusN\nI think this is a really cool idea, especially as I am a remote worker.\nHowever, why the focus on startup hackers? Why can't any coder/designer get\ninvolved regardless of their workplace? This would be great for freelancers\nand small agency employees as well.\n\n------\nwill_critchlow\nThis is looking great Dave. I'm excited to see where it goes. Here's me:\n<http://hackerbuddy.com/users/28>\n\n~~~\nilldave\nThanks!\n\n------\njasonkolb\nCool idea, I hope it reaches some kind of critical mass!\n\nOne question though: what does the available/unavailable status mean? I'm\nunclear what the difference is, especially since anyone who would fill out a\nprofile here is available in some form. You may want to add some\nclarification, I wasn't sure what to use that for.\n\n------\nJayNeely\nCan you make searches return partial matches after exact matches? \"General\nAdvice\" yields 49 results right now, while \"Advice\" yields only 3.\n\nP.S. <http://hackerbuddy.com/users/2863> here, if anyone needs help with CSS\nor marketing.\n\n------\nwisty\nNice idea, don't love the UI. I don't want to click on just thumbnails - some\nkind of one line pitch under each thumbnail would be nice.\n\n------\nBrajeshwar\nNice. Added me with details - <http://hackerbuddy.com/users/2648>\n\n------\njohnx123-up\nCakePHP? Is it scaling good for HN traffic?\n\n~~~\nilldave\nIt's running on Rails, and using Heroku - it looks like it's holding up fine\n(although if you have any issues or notice any errors or downtime, let me\nknow)\n\n------\nthiagofm\nYou could make cooler routes like:\n\nhackerbuddy.com/:user\n\nor\n\n/user/:user\n\nInstead of using their user ID's.\n\nBut I god damn love this.\n\n~~~\nilldave\nAhha, thanks - and you're right, /:user would look cooler. I'll add it to my\nlist of things to do.\n\nI might add a quote from you to the homepage saying \"I god damn love this\", if\nthat's ok?\n\n~~~\nthiagofm\nHahaha, do it!\n\n------\nbdg\nIt's basically an index of users against tags. I don't understand how this is\nhelpful to me.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCritique my idea: AsyncSharing.com - reggiepret\nhttps://www.indiehackers.com/forum/post/-KwGrYmdEQi-jNkpY1j8\n======\nreggiepret\n[https://asyncsharing.godaddysites.com](https://asyncsharing.godaddysites.com)\nUntil DNS propagates and asyncsharing.com is live.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhen do you dump a product even when “it still works”? - ohjeez\nhttps://insights.hpe.com/articles/are-your-servers-past-their-best-by-date-1708.html\n======\nPiskvorrr\n\"Don't ask a barber whether you need a new haircut.\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAlcohol as a social technology to check the trustworthiness of others - ivank\nhttps://plus.google.com/+KajSotala/posts/hofuxyXz78j\n======\npatio11\nIn Japanese business culture, being in one's cups is a socially acceptable\nexcuse for saying virtually anything, regardless of e.g. relative social\nstatus or non-desirability of the message. Accordingly, many of the really\nimportant messages internally and externally are passed after hours with a\nbeer in hand. (Incidentally, people will even treat you as being drunk even if\nyou're only sipping coke, because it is mutually socially important that you\nbe seen as being drunk. I mean, after all, you couldn't possibly verbalized\nthat complaint to your boss while being sober, right? So clearly you're\ndrunk.)\n\n~~~\nharisenbon\nTangentially, I've seen \"Nomu-nication\" (Nomu \"to drink\" and Communication) be\na central part of almost all business in Japan -- both internal and external.\n\nOne experience I had with my Osakan clients always stood out to me -- I've met\nmultiple businessmen who say they won't make a deal with a vendor they haven't\ngone drinking with, because the alcohol shows what kind of person they really\nare.\n\n------\nrdtsc\nIn Eastern Europe it was (is, maybe, I haven't been there in a decade now or\nso), a social lubricant for _all_ the occasions. Birthday parties, any\nholidays -- state, unofficial, religious. Any business deal or venture. Birth\nof children, deaths, graduations. Celebrating buying a new car. Visiting\nsomeone for the first time. etc...etc... Any one of those are a reason to\ndrink alcohol. Not just a reason to drink it, it is suspicious not to. Yes, it\ncan be very mentally demanding to not drink. There is a constant barrage of\noffers (Oh just have a little shot. Just taste it. We are drinking for the\nhealth of so and so). I have family members back home that struggle with\nalcoholism. Those that are struggling are able to handle it pretty much just\nby avoiding most such functions. Cousin so and so is having a party? -- \"Yeah,\nI'll just find some excuse to not go, as they will drink themselves stupid and\nI can't handle the nagging\". Stuff like that. You go to visit someone for the\nfirst time, and you refuse a drink, that is borderline an insult to host. You\ngotta tell them it is under strict doctors' orders to get out of it. \"It looks\nlike you have a hangover? No problem. Guess what the cure is? -- Yap. More\nalcohol in the morning.\". Stuff like that.\n\n~~~\ncageface\nIt's like this in SE Asia as well. Socializing pretty much always implies\ndrinking. It's a struggle for me because I've never really enjoyed drinking\nand I've found that as I get older it takes me longer to recover from it. Even\na few drinks now and I have trouble sleeping well and I'm mentally fuzzy the\nnext day. This is not conducive to writing code at all.\n\nHopefully one day Cannabis will mostly supplant alcohol as the social drug of\nchoice.\n\n~~~\nandrewfong\n> Hopefully one day Cannabis will mostly supplant alcohol as the social drug\n> of choice.\n\nI hope not. I find the smell of Cannabis to be nauseating (almost like a swamp\nor distant sewage plant), and I wish people would consider that more often\nbefore smoking it in social settings. I realize that alcohol can smell as\nwell, but it usually takes quite a lot of it for me to notice at least.\n\nAnother consideration: It's a lot easier for non-participating guests to\nabstain from alcohol than from Cannabis. Apart from peer pressure concerns, I\ncan abstain or moderate my alcohol intake while still participating in social\nactivities, regardless of the alcohol intake of my friends. When Cannabis is\nsmoked in an enclosed hotbox though, I have to choose between intoxication and\nleaving.\n\nI don't mind the brownies though.\n\n~~~\nFreeKill\nI know this is a little off topic, but I always wonder if Cannabis becoming\nlegal in more places, like the US, would result in more innovation with\nregards to the actual smell of cannabis. Perhaps more convenient ways of\ningesting/inhaling that don't result in such a strong odor? Maybe biological\nmanipulation of the strains to specifically eliminate the aspects of the plant\nthat give it such a strong smell while maintaining the effects? You have to\nthink that the primary providers of Cannabis to date have not had much\nincentive to tackle this problem, but like you said, the more and more\nprevalent it becomes in society, the more necessary it may become.\n\nI found the recent episode of the tv show VICE that focused on the booming\nentrepreneurship in Colorado around cannabis to be really interesting and it\nwill be interesting to see what comes of that test environment within the US.\n\n~~~\nandrewfong\n> Perhaps more convenient ways of ingesting/inhaling that don't result in such\n> a strong odor?\n\nBrownies.\n\n~~~\nanewcolor\nsmoking (or vaporing) makes much more sense in a social situation. eating pot\nfood takes a while to kick in, sometimes hours. it's not ideal and the\nexperiences are not identical.\n\n------\nIvyMike\n\"I don't trust anyone who doesn't drink\" is a politically incorrect but still\npretty common sentiment.\n\nEdit: I think I'm getting some \"shoot the messenger\" downvotes. Whether or not\nyou agree with the statement, I maintain that a lot of people feel this way.\n\n~~~\nivank\nThe deleted comment with a lot of replies was:\n\n> I go to IT/comp-sci conferences and often meet people who don't drink, ever.\n> These people won't have a single glass of wine or beer. I had to ask myself\n> why. If someone told me they used to be an alcoholic and completely quit\n> alcohol, I'd have nothing but respect, but this is not what these people are\n> about.\n\n> They'll claim they don't like the effects of alcohol, but the truth is they\n> think drinking is unprofessional. They're afraid of losing control, of\n> looking foolish. To me, this symbolizes conservatism. These are people who\n> are not adventurous. They won't try some unknown dish on the restaurant\n> menu, they won't want to go to a restaurant from a culture they're\n> unfamiliar with. They might think shellfish are disgusting and weird.\n> They'll want to go to some chain restaurant and have a steak with fries.\n\n> I don't like these people. Why? Because they're unadventurous people, who\n> have most likely never tried pot even once in their life. They don't like\n> new ideas. They're afraid that one drink will make their life deviate ever\n> so slightly from the usual boring predictability they crave. If you present\n> them with some new idea, they'll give you nothing but doubt, a long list of\n> reasons why your idea is risky and might not work, and thus isn't worth\n> trying. You shouldn't be developing your own programming language, Java does\n> everything you need, it's Turing Complete. Fuck these people.\n\n~~~\ndfc\nI appreciate that you reposted the deleted comment to quell my curiosity and\nthat you were considerate enough to not include the original authors username.\n\nOne of the big reasons I was curious about the content of the comment is that\nI have been thinking about comment karma and the utility of deleting comments\nlately. Comments like this make a strong case against being able to delete\ncomments. In order for karma to be most effective it seems that it must not\nonly quantify a user's positive contributions but also the user's negative\ncontributions. If a user knows they can make potentially dumb/offensive\ncomments and delete them before taking a karma hit they do not need to filter\ntheir thoughts before hitting submit. In my opinion clicking submit is an\nimplicit statement that I stand by my comment and that it was submitted in\ngood faith and is a sincere expression of my opinion.\n\nI am not entirely sure what the purpose of delete is. If someone asks \"what is\nthe X of y?\" and my response is factually incorrect the comment/answer will be\ndownvoted. People that see my downvoted answer will know that it has been\njudged \"unacceptable\" by the HN community; so I do not think there is a reason\nto worry about spreading false information. If the question is not about a\nfactual matter and my opinion is judged unacceptable by the HN community so be\nit. I made my comment with the best of intentions and should stand by what I\nsaid in the comment.\n\n~~~\nvxNsr\nOne reason I find the delete, or edit useful is, sometimes I'll type up a\ncomment come back a while later, read it, hit post without really thinking,\nand then go back and see the context, and realize I'm an idiot[0] and quickly\nedit or delete the comment before anyone else finds out.\n\n[0] [http://xkcd.com/481/](http://xkcd.com/481/)\n\n~~~\ndfc\nIt seems like you are saying that the utility of the delete function is that\nit allows a user (you, me and everyone else) to submit comments without\nthinking about the content and quality of the comment. What is wrong with\nincreasing the incentive to do a \"am I being a moron check\" before hitting\nsubmit?\n\n------\ncup\nI think the author has made a number of errors in there post and seems to\ngloss over the numerous social problems that arise from alcohol consumption.\nTh reason Alcohol is consumed by a significant portion of the population is\nbecause its a drug that society doesn't perceive as a drug. It carries all the\nnegative physiological and social effects other drugs have but it doesn't\ncarry the negative association of being what we consider 'a drug'.\n\nYes It's a form of social lubrication and it might be pleasant to consume but\nits efficacy as a form of verifying trustworthiness is tenuous as best. Most\nhigh functioning alcoholics would be able to maintain an air of\ntrustworthiness which is why alcohol itself can be such a destructive force.\n\nIt's interesting that alcohol is explicitly banned in Islam You could use the\napproximately 1.1 billion muslim(probably closer to 500-800 million\npracticising) population as a control abstaining group and look at whether\ncommunities that consume alcohol have a higher propensity to trust each other\nor not.\n\nEdit: At the end of the day I think regardless of any philosophical debates\nthe simplest answer might be that people consume alcohol because being drunk\nfeels good.\n\n~~~\nnemothekid\n>Th reason Alcohol is consumed by a significant portion of the population is\nbecause its a drug that society doesn't perceive as a drug.\n\nThats a rather modern view for a practice that may be as old as humanity\nitself. Your comment doesn't explain why Alcohol was popular when cocaine and\nother opiates didn't carry negative associations.\n\n~~~\ncup\nCocaine and other opiates have been popular, only recently have they been\nsidelined.\n\n~~~\ndowner73\nYeah, gee, I wonder why? Maybe it's because one has a tendency to induce heart\nattacks, and the other group is treacherously addictive.\n\nBut, consider that cocaine is a \"new world\" drug, specific to the South\nAmerican continent, as an indigenous herbal extract, mostly until the 19th\ncentury, when highly purified extacts became a popular part of western\nsociety.\n\nMeanwhile use of opiates dates back to ancient times, given that Opium is dead\nsimple to produce. But again, it was really in the 19th century when good\nequipment, and precise measuing tools permitted chemists and drugists to\npurify highly addictive perparations of the wider variety of drugs. Prior to\nthat, the poppy's medicinal qualities were known and used, but expertise and\nwell-crafted instruments which could readily facilitate powerful extracts\nweren't as widespread. Otherwise, people were limited to whatever was grown\nlocally, and would be required to cultivate and harvest their own supply,\ninstead of relying on trade.\n\n------\nrussellbeattie\nDrinking makes me suicidally depressed, so I stopped many years ago and have\nwitnessed as a result this exact phenomenon. The new neighbor, coworker,\npotential partner or aquaintence are all super friendly and welcoming until\nthe first time there's an opportunity to get drunk with them, and you don't\n(no matter how politely or subtly you demure). After that, the relationship\nfades. I've seen it time and again. It's annoying, but I've accepted it as\nreality now. I do get frustrated at how it inhibits my career - it's basically\nimpossible to build a strong network without drinking (or at least is to me.\nMaybe you're some super gregarious teetotaler, but I'm not) and without a\nstrong network you naturally lose opportunities both personally and\nprofessionally. If you can drink without issues, I'd highly recommend it -\nyou'll have a happier, more successful life.\n\n~~~\npdonis\n_> If you can drink without issues, I'd highly recommend it - you'll have a\nhappier, more successful life._\n\nI think this depends on your definition of \"happy\" and \"success\".\n\n------\nlogicchains\nI'd argue it can also be used as a social technology for testing people's\ntolerance of values different from their own. If I say I don't want to drink\nbut someone keeps pushing me to anyway, I don't bother pursuing any kind of\nmeaningful friendship with them, as why would I want to be friends with\nsomeone who wouldn't respect my values?\n\n~~~\nIvyMike\nIt kind of works that way from the other side too.\n\nAny group has a set of \"norms\" that, if you deviate from them, it's hard to\nbelong to the group. Go to a heavy metal concert wearing a pink shirt, or a\nlinux conference wearing a tie, or (some) churches wearing shorts, or the\n1980's without parachute pants, or any one of a million other things. So if\nthere is a group where social drinking is the norm, when you reject that norm,\nyou stand out. This is not always fatal to group membership but it usually\nmakes it harder.\n\nSeen in this light, in some contexts, someone pushing you to drink may\nactually trying to be say \"I'd like you to be a member of this group\", and\nwhile you see them as not respecting your values, their motivation is trying\nto help you belong.\n\n(Hackers as a group tend to claim they reject the concept of \"norms\" although\nmy personal take is that they just have a different set of norms.)\n\n~~~\npdonis\n_> someone pushing you to drink may actually trying to be say \"I'd like you to\nbe a member of this group\"_\n\nAnd my response (like that of logicchains, I expect) would still be \"No\nthanks, I don't think it's my kind of group\". So the signaling works fine both\nways.\n\n------\nblackhole\nOh great, now my desire to not cause brain damage to myself makes people think\nI have something to hide.\n\n _wonderful_.\n\n~~~\nhueving\nAlcohol use doesn't imply brain damage. Alcohol abuse does.\n\n~~~\npdonis\nNo, alcohol use _above some level, which nobody knows precisely_ risks brain\ndamage. Some people prefer not to take the risk, even though it may be small.\n\n------\nAlex3917\nThe CIA spent millions of dollars researching truth serums and didn't find\nanything that reliably worked. While I think the author is partly correct,\nthis is probably a function of set and setting in addition to pharmacology.\n\n~~~\njmnicolas\nI think If they found something reliable they wouldn't say it.\n\nBut considering their extensive use of water-boarding you're probably right.\n\n------\niandanforth\nInteresting! Powerful! But why? It's a novel thesis, but not too novel as to\nseem unfamiliar. It provides a simple solution to an age old problem. How can\nI know if I can trust someone? Just get them drunk! Secretly, of course, I'll\nremain sober enough to judge their sincerity. It also ties together two\nenjoyable drives. Domination in business and drink. The presentation as\nrevelatory give us the feeling of being in on something important and the\nallusions to an ancient culture gives it weight. Finally we are drawn by the\nnotion of technology. This is a tool that we should be using to our advantage.\nMoral considerations are dispelled by the (popular) allusion to our brains\nmechanistic nature. I applaud the author but this is pure HN linkbait.\n\n------\nblibble\nalcohol is part of society simply because having low levels of it in stored\nwater killed pathogens.\n\nas well as preventing your entire medieval village of dying of cholera, this\ntechnology also permitted long ocean voyages (it's said that the Pilgrims only\nlanded at Plymouth Rock because they ran out of beer).\n\nnow it's entrenched and not going anywhere.\n\n------\ntomcam\nThat's a whole lot of words to replace \"In vino veritas\". Also explains why\nteetotalers like me are sometimes considered suspect.\n\n------\nfit2rule\nI recently faced a mutiny/mobbing/uprising. One of the key differences between\nme and 'them' was the amount of drinking going on.\n\nI've come to realize that drunk programmers are just doing their jobs.\n\n------\nleephillips\nFrom the Maltese Falcon:\n\nKasper Gutman [to Sam Spade]: I distrust a man who says \"when.\" If he's got to\nbe careful not to drink too much, it's because he's not to be trusted when he\ndoes.\n\n~~~\nfred_durst\nI will very much second this one. That said, there is something for shy\npeople. They sometimes think they have something to hide when they actually do\nnot. So it can be a little bit of a bad tell if you don't realize it can\nsometimes be a lack of self confidence as opposed to a need to hide something.\n\n~~~\nTTPrograms\nUh, isn't this an objectively ridiculous statement? If you never said \"when\",\nyou would overdose and die.\n\nIf he's got to be careful not to drink too much, it's because he doesn't care\nto die.\n\n~~~\nmattgreenrocks\nIt's not just ridiculous, it encourages a lack of self-control so as to appear\ntrustworthy.\n\nIt also highlights the modern dilemma: should I be a person of integrity, or\ncan I just _appear_ to be one so I can reap most of the rewards?\n\n------\nmrxd\nInteresting idea, but the neurobabble bits don't really add much. Everyone\nknows alcohol makes people less inhibited, so do we really need to cite the\nfMRI data first?\n\n------\nmichaelochurch\nAlso, shared embarrassment and nostalgia.\n\nWhen you go drinking with someone and both make fools of yourselves, you now\nhave a mutual trust built on knowing things that most people don't know.\nThat's also the purpose of hazing rituals in fraternities: you've seen each\nother do disgusting things, so you trust each other.\n\nThen, there's the nostalgia factor. Being drunk is moderately interesting but\nit seems to have a high rate at which it produces nostalgia. Even though the\nafter-effects are (for me, anyway) sufficiently bad to counteract any pluses\nof drunkenness, the sort of nostalgia on which business connections seem to be\nbuild is enhanced with alcohol.\n\nI don't know why this is, but if I had to guess, I think that Timothy Leary's\n\"8 circuits of consciousness\" theory is, at least to this, relevant. Alcohol\ncauses regression into a childish, emotionally volatile state. It's a time-\ntravel mechanism. It allows people to instill in themselves an illusion that a\nconnection goes back farther in time (and is therefore deeper) than it\nactually does.\n\n------\ndschiptsov\nIt seems that Slavic cultures are founded and based on an collective alcohol\nconsumption. So many men cannot even go to bed with a woman (especially wife)\nwithout getting drunk first. And those almost \"religious and mystical\" visions\nSlavs are having (and later proudly telling each other) within onset of\ndelirium..\n\nSo, please, don't teach a Slavic about booze.)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow Seattle blew its chance at a subway system (2016) - wallflower\nhttp://features.crosscut.com/seattle-forward-thrust-sound-transit\n======\ngandreani\nThe best time to build a rail system is kind of like the best time to plant a\ntree. 20 years ago.\n\nIt's sad but it seems to me contemporary Americans don't want to pay for\nsomething that they will only reap the benefits of in later decades\n\nThere's so much in that style of thinking. The irony of depending on roads\nbuilt decades ago. The debt system conditioning people to expect to \"get it\nnow, pay it later\". The hypocrisy in \"investing\" 10k-100k in an education but\nnot a few measly percent in taxes\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nThe problem is not that the benefits will come in decades, but that they won’t\ncome at all to most taxpayers. Here in DC we built a subway 40 years ago. It’s\na huge boondoggle that is usable for a single digit percent of the taxpayers\nwho pay for it. Folks in Richmond who might ride Metro a few times in their\nlifetime or lower income folks who work in the suburbs subsidize the commutes\nof lawyers and federal government workers who work downtown.\n\n~~~\npcwalton\nThe D.C. Metro has a daily ridership of 612,652 and an annual ridership of\n179,693,126. Farebox recovery is 62%, which exceeds that of Vienna and is\nalmost as high as that of Munich.\n\nIf you look at how people use transit, it skews toward lower-income people\n[1]. High-income people like the lawyers and government officials you mention\nuse it a lot too, but not as often.\n\nIf you want to pick on a failing transit system, pick on VTA in Silicon\nValley, not the D.C. Metro.\n\n[1]: [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/07/who-\nrelies-o...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/07/who-relies-on-\npublic-transit-in-the-u-s/)\n\n~~~\noh_sigh\nThat still means it is 38% subsidized by the taxpayer, right? Farebox recovery\nis important but you need to also take into account in absolute terms the cost\nminus recovery.\n\n~~~\njschwartzi\nOther people have pointed out that roads are subsidized heavily through taxes,\nbut just to be blunt: nobody is asking you to specially subsidize public\ntransit. We are just asking taxpayers to treat public transit with the same\ndeference they treat the road system. The people who use our public transit\nsystem in Washington are taxpayers too as we all pay sales tax equally. And if\nthey rent they pay property tax indirectly via their landlord.\n\nNobody is getting a free ride except if we continue to disproportionately fund\nthe road system at the expense of denser forms of transportation.\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nState and local governments spend about $170 billion a year on highways and\nroads, for the 115 million or so people who commute by car each day:\n[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/blog/the-\naven...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/blog/the-\navenue/2017/10/03/americans-commuting-choices-5-major-takeaways-\nfrom-2016-census-data/amp)\n\nThat’s about $1,500 per commuter. Note that is an overestimate, because it\nignores the commercial uses of roads (package delivery, ambulances, etc). Also\nit ignores bus riders, who make up most of the 7 million or so transit riders.\n\nState and local sources spend $1.8 billion on WMATA each year. There are about\n600,000 linked trips per day, so at most 300,000 commuters. That’s $6,000 per\ncommuter.\n\n(Note both numbers above exclude federal spending, but Metro is heavily\nsubsidized by federal dollars.)\n\n~~~\ncrispyambulance\nAnother thing to consider, for cars, is that these things need PARKING SPACES.\nFor an already dense city that means large, multilevel parking garages dotted\nall over the city. How many more garages are we talking about for a half\nmillion more cars? A lot... enough to impact the nature and function of the\ncity itself.\n\nIf you're going to make a case for private cars vs WMATA, there is a wider\nscope of things to evaluate than just operating cost.\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nYou wouldn't need more parking spots. For people commuting from outside the\ndowntown core, Metro is already car-oriented, and operates 60,000 parking\nspots at stations (not including lots run privately or by VA/MD). For people\ntraveling inside the downtown core, they could just take the bus--as lower\nincome folks in D.C. already have to do because Metro doesn't go where they\nlive.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nDC busses appear to be more heavily subsidized than the trains are. Am I\nmisreading the stat, or misunderstanding your argument?\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nThe operating subsidy for rail is slightly less than for the bus, but that's\ndwarfed by the difference in annual capital expenditures (about $1 billion for\nrail versus $200 million for bus). Metro's fare recovery is a bit misleading,\nbecause most of its \"capital budget\" is actually for maintenance and repair,\nwhich is an operating cost.\n\nAlso, the bus serves much lower income people than rail--I'm okay with it\nreceiving subsidies.\n\n------\nherodotus\nVancouver used the excuse of hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics to build a LRT\nsystem called \"The Canada Line\". The line runs from the YVR airport through\ndowntown to the waterfront station (near the cruise ships terminal). As it\nhappened, one of the stops was very close to the Apple office I worked at.\nWhat an improvement to my life for my frequent trips to Cupertino. No more\nleaving the office for the airport early in case of traffic on the way to the\nairport; no more harrowing trips from a crazy cab driver; just a pleasant\nstroll to the station from the office, and a (usually) comfortable seat for\nthe 22 minute ride to the airport. The system was an instant success (based on\nridership). It was also (as it happens) a boon to developers because of new\nhigh-density building opportunities near Canada Line stations. The only bad\npart is that the city allowed no room for extra cars - the line has a two-car\nlimit because of the platforms. In my view, opposition to public transit is\nincredibly misguided. I found the article in the NY Times\n([https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-\npub...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-public-\ntransit.html)) about the Koch brothers particularly depressing: not the Koch's\npart, but that so many young people apparently were happy to participate in\nkilling transit proposals. I would be surprised if you could find a single\nperson in this city who thinks public transit is a mistake.\n\n~~~\nmixmastamyk\n> I would be surprised if you could find a single person in this city who\n> thinks public transit is a mistake.\n\nI'd qualify that with someone who has used it to go to the airport. Guarrantee\nthere are \"drive everywhere, even across the street\" folks lurking.\n\n~~~\nabraham_lincoln\nI had a neighbor that would back their car out of the garage to the mailbox to\nget the mail, then drive back into their garage.\n\nThe mailbox was less than 50 feet from the frontdoor.\n\n------\nmelling\nI imagine everything is a lot more expensive now. More people, right of ways,\netc\n\nDidn’t California want to build its high-speed rail in the 1970s?\n\nAmericans chose to pay later for mass transit. Now it’ll cost us a fortune.\n\n~~~\noconnor663\nMaybe we'll get lucky and perfectly safe self driving cars will solve the\nproblem once and for all in 20 years?\n\n~~~\ns0rce\nI can't see even self-driving cars coming close to the transportation\nefficiency of light/heavy rail. You just can't fit people close together if\neach person is in big metal box. Also, self-driving cars would likely increase\nthe amount of time people would tolerate in a vehicle as you can do other\nthings so more people would be willing to sit in traffic and commute times\nmight not even improve.\n\n~~~\nSomewhatLikely\nBut what about all the empty track between trains? When you consider that, it\nstarts to level out. I'd be very interested in actual numbers though. Edit:\nDiscussion here using quick estimates seems to show rail still wins:\n[https://alankandel.scienceblog.com/2014/01/11/rails-vs-\nroads...](https://alankandel.scienceblog.com/2014/01/11/rails-vs-roads-for-\nvalue-utilization-emissions-savings-difference-like-night-and-day/)\n\n~~~\nadrianN\nHow many lanes of self driving cars cars do you think it takes to replace a\nsubway line at full capacity? More than you think. See London's Victoria line\nfor reference\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASKof4CR2SE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASKof4CR2SE)\n\nTrains run every ninety seconds or so and are packed during rush hour.\n\n------\njupiter90000\nThe thing that throws me off about Seattle is that there seems to be a large\nsegment of the population that says, \"yes, we have certain problems\n(homelessness, transportation) that we as a community should solve.\" But then,\nwhen it comes to breaking out the wallet and paying for what's needed, either\nthe same people or an even larger majority seem to be vehemently opposed to\ndoing so.\n\nI'm not really sure what's going on, is it like this everywhere? Wishing that\nthe problems get fixed by just holding out and hoping something gives?\n\n~~~\nmrep\nNot sure where you are getting the \"vehemently opposed to breaking out their\nwallet for transportation\" because Seattle is breaking out their wallet to the\ntune of $53.8 billion for st3 (talked about the proposal in the article and it\nlater passed) which adds 62 miles of track [0] which is in addition to st2 10\nyears ago which cost $17.8 billion and added 50 miles [1].\n\n[0]:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Transit_3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Transit_3)\n\n[1]:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Transit#Sound_Transit_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Transit#Sound_Transit_2)\n\n~~~\njupiter90000\nSure -- you noticed that like ~46% of voters choosing on the issue opposed it\nthough right? I mean maybe that's typical to have something like this win by a\n4% margin but I'd have to say it's far from a general majority saying, \"yep,\nlet's do it.\" Then you've got the people who probably didn't even vote and\nfound out about it when their car registration fee went up a couple hundred\nbucks.\n\nBTW, I voted for it so I'm aware, I just find it hard to believe it's so\nborderline and there's folks who seem really angry they need to contribute to\nthe community's well-being. But hey, I guess as someone else said, no one\nlikes to pay taxes.\n\n~~~\nmrep\n> there's folks who seem really angry they need to contribute to the\n> community's well-being\n\nI don't think many people are trying to negatively impact the community. They\njust don't think it is a good investment considering how expensive rail is at\nbeing almost a billion dollars a mile and it will take up to 20 years to\nfinish if it all goes according to schedule.\n\nOne guy I talked to made the argument that in 20 years, we should have self\ndriving busses and if each one costs a million (current busses are like\n300,000-600,000 from a quick google search), we could buy 53,800 busses with\nthat money which would service a lot more people in a lot more unique routes\nwhich I thought was a pretty decent argument if you believe we will get self\ndriving busses that soon.\n\nI would rather have an oversupply of transportation so I say let's do both,\nbut I can see their arguments for balancing taxes to pay for transportation\nwith how much supply is needed.\n\n------\nseattle_spring\nSad. Same people that ruined Forward Thrust seem to be going out of their way\nto ruin ST3, just so they don't have to pay slightly more for their $100k\nTeslas.\n\n~~~\nmikestew\nThat's disingenuous at best. I voted for transit, and I'd vote for it again,\nbut I can't say I wasn't a little shocked to open a bill for $275 for a\nfriggin' motorcycle (granted, a pricey BMW motorcycle, but still...). I'm near\nenough to retirement that for the most part _I won 't even use light rail_,\nbut I'm happy for my money to go toward building it. And yet I can still\nsympathize with those might say, \"whoa, wait a minute...\" when they see how\nmuch tabs cost now. Can you not do the same?\n\n~~~\nseattle_spring\nNope, because the expected costs were available and extremely clear. My new\nbill matched almost exactly to what I was expecting.\n\n------\ntjr225\nI used to commute by car every day. Now I take the Sounder out of the city.\n\nIt's incredible how much better it is even though it takes twice as long as\ndriving would...\n\nBut, people ain't smart and they love their cars. Here's to hoping ST3\nactually happens!\n\n------\nWalterBright\nThe annoying thing about ST3 is they totally ignore the existing unused rail\nlines from Renton to Bothell, which could add 20 miles of critically needed\ntrack at little expense.\n\n~~~\ntechsupporter\nMost of the Eastside cities desperately want to turn those into amenity\ntrails. Kirkland, for one, is on record vehemently opposing any light rail in\nthe Eastside Rail Corridor because they think jogging/biking/walking trails\nare a better use of that right of way.\n\nAnd the few spots that aren't being or targeted for being converted are still,\ntechnically, active freight rail lines so light rail vehicles can't run on\nthem.\n\n~~~\nWalterBright\nIt's a mystery why King County can't override Kirkland. And even if they\ncan't, it can still be used to connect Bellevue to Tukwila, creating a loop\naround south Lake Washington.\n\n> technically\n\nIt would be orders of magnitude cheaper for ST to buy them than to create new\nright-of-way. And I haven't seen a train on them for decades, ever since they\ntore up where it crossed over I405 in Bellevue.\n\n~~~\ntechsupporter\nSound Transit isn't King County. Sound Transit encompasses part of King County\nand part of its board are elected officials from King, but they are two\nseparate government entities.\n\nAnd it's not that ST _can 't_ override Kirkland, it's that it _won 't_\noverride Kirkland. Pissing off a huge constituency of voters is a great way to\nensure that not only they vote against, say, Sound Transit 3, they go out of\ntheir way to ensure that other people vote against it.\n\nAs for buying the tracks, there's no obligation for a freight railroad to sell\nand virtually none will because once that ROW is gone it will never come back.\nAs for quantity of trains, there only has to be one sometime, someday. Look at\nall of the pushback the immeasurably tiny Ballard Terminal Railroad has done\nto stop these kinds of projects.\n\n~~~\nWalterBright\n> there's no obligation for a freight railroad to sell\n\nThat's why the government has the power of eminent domain.\n\nBesides, King County already owns it:\n\n[https://www.kingcounty.gov/services/parks-\nrecreation/parks/t...](https://www.kingcounty.gov/services/parks-\nrecreation/parks/trails/regional-trails/popular-trails/eastside-rail-\ncorridor.aspx)\n\n~~~\nstephengillie\n> _Besides, King County already owns it:_\n\nIt's the first line of the comment to which you're replying:\n\n> _Sound Transit isn 't King County._\n\n------\nbfrog\nHeh, the CTA here in Chicago isn't perfect, but wow is it useful. I put on\nabout 2 to 3k miles a year on my car thanks to added bike lanes and public\ntransit. I can tell you biking, bus, and train are far more enjoyable than\nsitting in a car in traffic\n\n------\npurplezooey\nPeople started listening to Ronald Reagan's nonsense early, I guess.\n\n------\nscythe\nSurprisingly, it's one of the (very) few cases where not building the subway\nwas the right idea in the long run, because of the magnitude-9 earthquake risk\nthe region faces that wasn't known about in 1965. A subway could be built\ntoday, but an elevated rail system would be safer, according to my limited\nunderstanding of earthquake safety.\n\n~~~\ncurtis\nSurprisingly, tunnels have very good earthquake resistance. See\n[http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/Viaduct/Status/Blog/tunnels...](http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/Viaduct/Status/Blog/tunnels-\nand-earthquakes).\n\n~~~\noftenwrong\nThat was an incredibly simple and effective explanation:\n\n>Imagine a plate of fruit-filled gelatin dessert. Tunnels are like the pieces\nof fruit at the base of the gelatin, while above-ground structures are like\nthe fruit toward the top. If you shake the plate, the movement becomes more\nexaggerated as it flows up from the base of the gelatin. In an earthquake,\nthis translates to tunnel movement measured in inches, while the movement\nabove ground might be measured in feet.\n\n------\nsammychl\nIn a few years, subway and mass transit will be obsolete. Everyone will travel\nby autonomous cars.\n\nLike the internet, a distributed architecture, will cause traditional server\nmainframe networking to be obsolete.\n\nTrain networks will be the biggest waste of public money for those who start\nthese projects within next couple years.\n\n~~~\nkart23\nNo. Too slow, and inefficient. Oh, you also need to build a ton more parking\ngarages that could be used for housing or office space. One person does not\nneed 4,000 pounds of metal for a 30 minute drive each morning.\n\n~~~\ngok\nWhy would AVs need parking?\n\n~~~\nadrianN\nTo avoid having two additional trips?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGetting all your data out of Google Reader - kellegous\nhttp://blog.persistent.info/2013/06/getting-all-your-data-out-of-google.html\n\n======\nsp332\nArchiveTeam is extracting _all_ the data from Google Reader and uploading it\nto the Internet Archive. Help out by submitting your OPML file:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5958119](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5958119)\n\n------\nnod\nThanks mihaip!\n\nWorked successfully in Windows CMD for me, without using the \\bin shell\nscript:\n\n    \n    \n      cd C:\\mihaip-readerisdead\n      set PYTHON_HOME=C:\\mihaip-readerisdead\n      C:\\path-to-py27 reader_archive\\reader_archive.py --output-directory C:\\mystuff\n    \n\nLocked up at 251K out of 253K items for me, though. Restarting... success!\nLooks like it might have locked up trying to start the \"Fetching comments\"\nsection on my first try.\n\n~~~\nkcvv\nI'm trying this on windows and seem to be missing base.api module. I can't\nseem to find this module as well - anyone have a clue where i can get this\nmodule?\n\n~~~\nijk\nIt's in the \\base folder. Set the main folder to be the Python root, as in the\ngrandfather post, and it should be able to find it.\n\n~~~\nkcvv\nThanks! For what ever reason, setting the python root did not help, but i just\ncopied the 'base' folder to python lib folder and that seems to have done the\ntrick.\n\n~~~\ndaniel_reetz\nI also had success (on W7) using this method. Thank you, mihaip, I am truly\ngrateful.\n\n------\nccera\nWarning to other impatient users:\n\nI didn't read the instructions too well, so the half hour I spent carefully\ndeleting gigantic/uninteresting feeds out of my subscriptions.xml file was all\nfor naught. Because I didn't know I needed to specify the opml_file on the\ncommand line, the script just logged into my Reader account (i.e., it walked\nme through the browser-based authorization process) and downloaded my\nsubscriptions from there -- including all the gigantic/uninteresting\nsubscriptions that I did NOT care to download.\n\nSo now I've gone and downloaded 2,592,159 items, consuming 13 GB of space.\n\nI'm NOT complaining -- I actually think it's AWESOME that this is possible --\nbut if you don't want to download millions of items, be sure to read the\ninstructions and use the opml_file directive.\n\n------\nUdo\nThis is excellent, thank you for making this! I'm using it right now to make\nan offline archive of my Reader stuff.\n\nMy only gripe would be the tool's inability to continue after a partial run,\nbut since I won't be using this more than once that's probably OK.\n\nAll web services should have a handy CLI extraction tool, preferably one that\ncan be run from a CRON call. On that note, I'm very happy with gm_vault, as\nwell.\n\n _Edit: getting a lot of XML parse errors, by the way._\n\n~~~\nmihaip\nThe tool caches the API responses (in the _raw_data directory), so if you're\nre-running it, most of the initial requests will be served from the cache.\n\nIf the XML parse errors are listing any item IDs, feel free to email them to\nme (mihai at persistent dot info) and I'll see if there's any workaround from\nmy side.\n\n _Edit_ : If it's \"XML parse error when fetching items, retrying with high-\nfidelity turned off\" messages that you're seeing, then those are harmless\n(assuming no follow-up exceptions). The retry must have succeeded.\n\n~~~\nivank\nHave you tried the JSON API? (See the requests that Google Reader itself\nmakes.) It requires no cookies and supports getting up 1000 items per\ncontinuation.\n\n~~~\nmihaip\nI _wrote_ most of Reader's JSON API in 2006-2007 :)\n\nThe tool uses the \"high-fidelity\" Atom output mode for getting at item bodies.\nThat preserves namespaced XML elements and other extra data from the feed. It\nuses JSON for everything else, and will fall back to regular Atom output if\nthe high fidelity mode is not well-formed (it was added in late 2010, as\nthings were winding down, and thus never got a lot of testing).\n\n------\nDecoPerson\nThank you for this! Now I can procrastinate on my own reader app for much\nlonger :)\n\nShould we be concerned with errors like this?\n\n    \n    \n        [W 130629 03:11:54 api:254] Requested item id tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/afe90dad8acde78b (-5771066408489326709), but it was not found in the result\n    \n\nI'm getting ~1-2 per \"Fetch N/M item bodies\" line.\n\n~~~\nmihaip\nUsually nothing to worry about, see\n[https://github.com/mihaip/readerisdead/commit/19d3159c985b6e...](https://github.com/mihaip/readerisdead/commit/19d3159c985b6e1eb3f06360df2921e5e0dc7a2e)\n\n------\npixsmith\nThis is an impressive bit of work. I have had, though, an interesting thing\nhappen, in that it's apparently trying to pull every single item from explore\nand from suggested items in, to the extent that I get a message saying I have\n13 million items, and still going strong -- it pulled about 5 or 6 gig of data\ndown .\n\nIs there some way to avoid all the years of explore and suggested items with\nreader archive? I tried limiting the maximum number of items to 10.000 but it\nwas still running and growing after 12 hours. Interesting though, what it was\nable to accomplish in that time.\n\n------\nskilesare\nIf this does what I think it does(And it seems to be doing it now on my\nmachine), then this is truly, truly awesome.\n\nThank you. mihaip, if you are ever in Houston I will buy you a beer/ and or a\nsteak dinner.\n\n------\ndmtelf\nI'm getting \"ImportError: No module named site\"\n\necho %pythonpath% gives c:\\readerisdead\n\nI copied 'base' from the readerisdead zipfile to c:\\python27\\lib & also copied\nthe base folder into the same folder as reader_archive.py\n\nC:\\readerisdead\\reader_archive\\reader_archive.py --output-directory\nC:\\googlereader gives \"ImportError: No module named site\"\n\nWhat am I doing wrong? How can I get this to work?\n\n------\ndrivebyacct2\nI guess archived RSS data for me isn't terribly important since most people\nseem to hide the rest of their content behind a \"More\" link to get those\nprecious ad views.\n\n~~~\nivank\nReally? Pretty much all the feeds I've seen are full-text feeds. For the few\nthat aren't, [http://fulltextrssfeed.com/](http://fulltextrssfeed.com/) and\n[http://fullrss.net/](http://fullrss.net/) are around.\n\n~~~\ndrivebyacct2\nWow! Thank you very much!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow a language can be faster than C - beza1e1\nhttp://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/faster_than_C.html\n======\nriobard\nTL;DR:\n\n1\\. Better memory aliasing to use SIMD instructions. But you have to trade in\npointer arithmetic for those cases. Only useful for number-crunching and GPU-\nlike workload AFAIK.\n\n2\\. Pre-compute time-consuming constants during compile time. Though I see no\nreason why you cannot do this in C.\n\n3\\. JIT and runtime optimization. I doubt this though, given various overhead\nof JIT and runtime optimization (GC, memory, etc), that JIT can beat carefully\ncrafted C. Of course it will make it easier to write many types of programs.\n\n~~~\norblivion\nCouldn't carefully crafted C pretty much fix every potential case where\nanother language could beat it? For instance, any reason you can't write a\nmemcopy function that copied 16 bytes at a time?\n\nI assumed that a big part of a language being faster than C is really about\nthe compiler generating faster code than a human programmer in either language\ncould do without thinking too hard about optimization, and not so much the\ntheoretical top speed. As I understand this is the case with assembly vis a\nvis C.\n\n~~~\nbunderbunder\n_Couldn't carefully crafted C pretty much fix every potential case where\nanother language could beat it?_\n\nYes, but one runs into the same problems as for carefully crafted assembly:\n\n\\- People who have the skills necessary to produce \"carefully crafted\" code\ndon't come cheap.\n\n\\- All careful crafting often ties the code to a specific target platform. For\nexample, the gyrations one might through to make the code more SIMD-friendly\nmight be detrimental to performance on a platform that lacks SIMD.\n\n------\nnivertech\nC can be fast (icc) and slow (CINT) depending on compiler/interpreter and\nOS/platform.\n\nMSVC on Windows can be 40% faster than gcc on the same platform. I think icc\n(Intel C Compiler) can be several times faster than gcc for some workloads.\n\nI can write OpenCL code, that will be up to 100 times faster than plain C.\n\nEDIT:\n\nThe reason for this, is that we still use procedural languages rather than\ndeclarative.\n\nIn declarative language I would say: \"The content of this block of memory\nshould be identical to the content of that block of memory.\" I would also\nspecify that blocks are non-overlapping, if it's not possible to infer from\nthe block definitions themselves.\n\nInstead of this, memcopy C code describes procedure of iterative byte-by-byte\ncopying. This is only one way out of many to do it and maybe it even was the\nfastest way to do it on PDP-11, but not on modern or future machines.\n\nSimilarly if you trying to micromanage your employees, you will not get most\noptimized result.\n\nTo have the best performance, you do not need to be Close-to-The-Metal(tm).\nYou need to be able to express what your desired result is in the highest\npossible abstracted, but still correct, way.\n\n~~~\nben0x539\nThis is basically an argument about language semantics constraining the\ncompiler in possible optimisations, isn't it?\n\n~~~\nnivertech\nyes, I think we \"micromanaging\" computers.\n\n------\nontologiae\nSeveral possibilities :\n\n\\- A very clever and complete type analysis. The compiler can thus optimize at\nbest the code without runtime type-checking code.\n\n\\- If possible, a flow analysis : By analysing the bounds of each function,\ncompiler is able to remove a lot of unused code. For instance, if a variable\nis defined by t = 2*n and long afterwards, there's a test which check\nprimality of t, the compiler can remove the test.\n\n\\- Compile code by rewriting algorithms that \"takes in mind\" locality of\nmemory, ie. all things described by U. Drepper in \"What every programmers\nshould know about computer memory\", ie2. rewriting algorithms to avoid cache\nmiss, etc...\n\n\\- Automatic template-like mecanism : the compiler is able to make partial\nexecution of the code, even in array, so all the code which can be calculated\nbecause you have the datas should be directly compiled. Imagine you have a\nregular expression library and you write your regexp in your code (just the\nregexp) : the compiler should be able to produce an automata.\n\n\\- It is also said : be able to use SIMD instruction.\n\nBecause of this, it is better to compile a high-level language with a very\nclean semantics : you can much easily reason about your semantics and more\neasily rewrite some algorithms.\n\n------\ners35\nThe author says \"In C99 the restrict keyword was added, which we could use\nhere to encode that src and dst are different from all other references. This\nmechanism helps in some cases, but not in our example.\"\n\nDoesn't the example below show otherwise? Note the presence of movdqu in both\nmemcopy_normal and memcopy_restrict and how GCC emits five LEA instructions\nwithout restrict, but only two when restrict is present.\n\nThis does not support the author's assertion that \"Aliasing information is the\nonly one, where I am certain about speed improvements, because it is\nimpossible to reach Fortran-speed in C.\"\n\n    \n    \n      #include \"stddef.h\"\n    \n      void* memcopy_normal(void* dst, const void* src, size_t count) {\n         while (count--) *(char*)dst++ = *(char*)src++;\n         return dst;\n      }\n    \n      void* memcopy_restrict(void* restrict dst, const void* restrict src, size_t count) {\n         while (count--) *(char* restrict)dst++ = *(char* restrict)src++;\n         return dst;\n      }\n    \n      > gcc -S -masm=intel -std=c99 -m64 -march=corei7 -O3 restrict2.c\n    \n        .file\t\"restrict2.c\"\n        .intel_syntax noprefix\n        .text\n        .p2align 4,,15\n        .globl\tmemcopy_normal\n        .type\tmemcopy_normal, @function\n      memcopy_normal:\n      .LFB0:\n        .cfi_startproc\n        test\trdx, rdx\n        mov\trax, rdi\n        je\t.L2\n        lea\tr10, [rdx-1]\n        mov\tr8, rdx\n        shr\tr8, 4\n        mov\tr9, r8\n        sal\tr9, 4\n        test\tr9, r9\n        je\t.L7\n        lea\trcx, [rsi+16]\n        cmp\trdx, 15\n        lea\tr11, [rax+16]\n        seta\tdil\n        cmp\trax, rcx\n        seta\tcl\n        cmp\trsi, r11\n        seta\tr11b\n        or\tecx, r11d\n        test\tdil, cl\n        je\t.L7\n        xor\tecx, ecx\n        xor\tedi, edi\n        .p2align 4,,10\n        .p2align 3\n      .L4:\n        movdqu\txmm0, XMMWORD PTR [rsi+rcx]\n        add\trdi, 1\n        movdqu\tXMMWORD PTR [rax+rcx], xmm0\n        add\trcx, 16\n        cmp\tr8, rdi\n        ja\t.L4\n        lea\tr8, [rax+r9]\n        add\trsi, r9\n        sub\tr10, r9\n        cmp\trdx, r9\n        je\t.L5\n      .L3:\n        lea\tr9, [r10+1]\n        xor\tecx, ecx\n        .p2align 4,,10\n        .p2align 3\n      .L6:\n        movzx\tedi, BYTE PTR [rsi+rcx]\n        mov\tBYTE PTR [r8+rcx], dil\n        add\trcx, 1\n        cmp\tr9, rcx\n        jne\t.L6\n      .L5:\n        add\trax, rdx\n      .L2:\n        rep\n        ret\n      .L7:\n        mov\tr8, rax\n        jmp\t.L3\n        .cfi_endproc\n      .LFE0:\n        .size\tmemcopy_normal, .-memcopy_normal\n        .p2align 4,,15\n        .globl\tmemcopy_restrict\n        .type\tmemcopy_restrict, @function\n      memcopy_restrict:\n      .LFB1:\n        .cfi_startproc\n        push\tr12\n        .cfi_def_cfa_offset 16\n        .cfi_offset 12, -16\n        test\trdx, rdx\n        mov\trax, rdi\n        push\trbp\n        .cfi_def_cfa_offset 24\n        .cfi_offset 6, -24\n        push\trbx\n        .cfi_def_cfa_offset 32\n        .cfi_offset 3, -32\n        je\t.L12\n        lea\tr10, [rdx-1]\n        mov\tr11, rsi\n        mov\tr8, rsi\n        neg\tr11\n        and\tr11d, 15\n        cmp\tr11, rdx\n        cmova\tr11, rdx\n        test\tr11, r11\n        je\t.L13\n        xor\tecx, ecx\n        .p2align 4,,10\n        .p2align 3\n      .L14:\n        movzx\tr9d, BYTE PTR [r8]\n        add\trcx, 1\n        add\tr8, 1\n        sub\tr10, 1\n        mov\tBYTE PTR [rdi], r9b\n        add\trdi, 1\n        cmp\tr11, rcx\n        ja\t.L14\n        cmp\trdx, r11\n        je\t.L15\n      .L13:\n        mov\tr12, rdx\n        sub\tr12, r11\n        mov\trbx, r12\n        shr\trbx, 4\n        mov\trbp, rbx\n        sal\trbp, 4\n        test\trbp, rbp\n        je\t.L16\n        add\trsi, r11\n        xor\tecx, ecx\n        add\tr11, rax\n        xor\tr9d, r9d\n        .p2align 4,,10\n        .p2align 3\n      .L17:\n        movdqa\txmm0, XMMWORD PTR [rsi+rcx]\n        add\tr9, 1\n        movdqu\tXMMWORD PTR [r11+rcx], xmm0\n        add\trcx, 16\n        cmp\trbx, r9\n        ja\t.L17\n        add\trdi, rbp\n        add\tr8, rbp\n        sub\tr10, rbp\n        cmp\tr12, rbp\n        je\t.L15\n      .L16:\n        lea\tr9, [r10+1]\n        xor\tecx, ecx\n        .p2align 4,,10\n        .p2align 3\n      .L18:\n        movzx\tesi, BYTE PTR [r8+rcx]\n        mov\tBYTE PTR [rdi+rcx], sil\n        add\trcx, 1\n        cmp\tr9, rcx\n        jne\t.L18\n      .L15:\n        add\trax, rdx\n      .L12:\n        pop\trbx\n        .cfi_def_cfa_offset 24\n        pop\trbp\n        .cfi_def_cfa_offset 16\n        pop\tr12\n        .cfi_def_cfa_offset 8\n        ret\n        .cfi_endproc\n      .LFE1:\n        .size\tmemcopy_restrict, .-memcopy_restrict\n        .ident\t\"GCC: (GNU) 4.6.3\"\n        .section\t.note.GNU-stack,\"\",@progbits\n\n~~~\ncliffbean\nYes, the author is wrong there; restrict is valid and useful in that memcpy\nexample.\n\nIt is true though that restrict doesn't solve all of C's aliasing problems\nthough. For example:\n\n    \n    \n        #include <stdlib.h>\n    \n        struct array_3d {\n          float * restrict data;\n          size_t xmin, ymin, zmin;\n          size_t xmax, ymax, zmax;\n          size_t allocated;\n        };\n    \n        static inline float *\n        array_3d_elem_addr(struct array_3d *a3d, size_t x, size_t y, size_t z) {\n          return a3d->data + z +\n                             y * (a3d->zmax - a3d->zmin) +\n                             x * (a3d->zmax - a3d->zmin) * (a3d->ymax - a3d->ymin);\n        }\n    \n        void array_3d_add(struct array_3d *restrict dst, struct array_3d *restrict src) {\n          for (size_t x = dst->xmin; x != dst->xmax; ++x)\n            for (size_t y = dst->ymin; y != dst->ymax; ++y)\n              for (size_t z = dst->zmin; z != dst->zmax; ++z)\n                *array_3d_elem_addr(dst, x, y, z) += *array_3d_elem_addr(src, x, y, z);\n        }\n    \n\nNo amount of restrict keywords can tell the compiler that src->data and\ndst->data don't alias here (putting restrict on the 'data' member declaration\ninside array_3d doesn't mean anything here, because of the way restrict is\ndefined).\n\nGCC manages to vectorize this loop, but only conditionally, with runtime alias\nchecks. That's ok for this trivial example, but it isn't always viable in more\ncomplex examples. It's also worth noting that there are ways to rewrite this\ncode so that it does fully vectorize, though again it's helped by the example\nbeing so trivial. The main point is that in Fortran, the alias rules are\nstrong by default, without the programmer having to do acrobatics.\n\nEdit: formatting fixes\n\n~~~\ncliffbean\nAlso note that this restriction is in C itself. This is how restrict is\ndefined in the C standard. It's not specific to GCC or any other compiler.\n\n------\nkaiwetzel\nThe instruction set page linked in the article mentions: _To move a double\nquadword to or from memory locations that are known to be aligned on 16-byte\nboundaries, use the MOVDQA instruction_ \\- would it not be beneficial to use\nthis instruction for most of the memory to be copied and only use the slower\nvariants for the leading and trailing bytes?\n\nDoes the C semantics prevent the compiler from issuing a run-time check for\nthe (rare) aliasing case and proceed with the fast version in the common case?\n(probably unrolled, too?)\n\nOut of curiosity: The code uses a special counter variable _count_ which has\nto be decremented separately - is this faster than testing for dst !=\nbehind_last_dst_prt ?\n\n(aside: my gut-feeling tells me that if the combination of C/8086 can't pull\nhis example of at the maximum memory to processor transfer speed for\nsufficiently large input vectors, there is something seriously rotten ...)\n\n------\nmmphosis\n> How a language can be faster than C?\n\nTurtles. Turtles all the way down.\n\nTranslation: If your language is \"Turtles\" then you need to use \"Turtles\" all\nthe way down the entire stack, and that includes your \"Turtles\" CPUs.\n\n------\nprewett\nPersonally, I think the most interesting part was the link to a student who\nused Scheme to generate a really fast C implementation of a matrix-multiply\nalgorithm, which beat all C code except for one that included hand-coded\nassembly (and with additional improvements could have beat that, too).\n\n<http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~jsobel/c455-c511.updated.txt>\n\n------\ncpr\nHis third point is addressable by using LLVM as your target. Optimization can\noccur at compile time, at link time, and at runtime, if you decide to do the\nfinal LLVM-to-machine-language translation at the latter point.\n\nInter-module optimizations (e.g., removing dead code) can occur at link time\nas well.\n\nSo there are better tools now that compiler writers can target to start making\nprogress in at least one of these areas.\n\n------\nfuryofantares\nThe memcopy example isn't an optimization issue, it's a correctness issue. If\nthe described behavior of memcopy is what was intended then of course the\ncompiler can't use that particular optimization, and it couldn't in any other\nlanguage, either. However, if the author was intending to write a function\nwith behavior like memmove, then the issue is that the code is incorrect.\n\n------\nmynegation\nA nitpick: memcpy example is flawed: memcpy's behavior is undefined if source\nand destination overlap. One should use memmove for that.\n\n~~~\npascal_cuoq\nThis was my initial reaction, but he is talking about a function that happens\nto be named memcpy() and what the compiler is allowed to do with the provided\nsource code. So you should actually blame him for defining a function with the\nsame name as a standard function (an undefined behavior). What would make his\nexample correct is to use any name other than a reserved one, that is, not\n\"memmove\".\n\n~~~\nudp\nIf you look more closely, he actually called it \"memcopy\", not \"memcpy\".\n\n~~~\nfaithful_droog\nIf you look more closely, you will also see that his memcopy dereferences a\nvoid * (and performs some pointer arithmetic as well). Apologies for my inner\npedant getting the better of me.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nYou could have invented that Bluetooth attack - octosphere\nhttps://blog.trailofbits.com/2018/08/01/bluetooth-invalid-curve-points/\n======\njoecot\n\"You could have invented that Bluetooth attack\"\n\n _Proceeds to explain elliptic curve mechanics that would make most readers\ncompletely glaze over._\n\nMaybe they mean they just mean their normal reader base, who has an attention\nspan for those sorts of details? Their assertion that an average reader could\n_understand_ the attack might be true, but the \"could have invented\" is a a\nbit far fetched.\n\n~~~\nmunin\nI think the argument is something like: you could understand what invalid\ncurve point attacks are, and once you did, you could look for them everywhere,\nand if you did that, you would have found this error as well.\n\nThe math behind invalid curve point attacks is pretty straightforward, it's\nsome polynomials and points on the Cartesian plane. You saw this stuff in\nelementary school.\n\nThen, someone needs to point out to you \"oh check out what happens if you\nallow for invalid points\" and now you have a pattern to go hunting for. Then\nit's luck - do you get to Bluetooth before someone else, or do you find\nsomething else, or do you just re-discover other peoples stuff?\n\nMaybe it's elitist to say \"the math is pretty straightforward\" but you know\nwhat, it's a system of two variables and you can plot it. You need to know\nabout division, multiplication, and modular variants. No monads, no tensors,\nno mixed Gaussians or method of moments or greek letters or 128 dimensional\nspheroids.\n\nMaybe that kind of math makes your eyes glaze over but I am pretty confident\nthat if you cleared your mind and sat down with pencil and paper and gave it\nan hours honest effort, you would come away with an understanding.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nYou definitely didn't do the math for invalid curve attacks in grade school,\nsince you also need CRT and the notion of group order. But I think your first\nsentence gives a great charitable interpretation of the title.\n\nA way I like to think about these things --- from the perspective of a\nvulnerability researcher, not a cryptographer or mathematician (I am neither\nof those) --- is that there is a very little bit of math you need to put some\nextra tools in your belt, and then the rest of it is programming; working\nthrough these kinds of exploits feels a lot like implementing heapsort or a\nspanning tree reduction for the first time feels like. I find that empowering,\nbecause while I can't bang out Kruskal's algorithm off the top of my head, I\nknow if I sit down with it for 20-30 minutes I'll get it working. After a\nlittle bit of reading (an hour or two tops), same with this attack.\n\n------\ntptacek\nHere's Sean Devlin explaining ~85% of the same detail in a general\nintroduction to invalid curve attacks:\n\n[https://toadstyle.org/cryptopals/59.txt](https://toadstyle.org/cryptopals/59.txt)\n\nI like Sean's definitions best and find them the most accessible way to get a\nthe topic. Don't think about curves as geometric objects and don't think of\npoints as coordinates. Think of the curve as an equation y^2 = x^3 + ax + b\n--- come on, you did this in high school --- and a point as an x,y pair that\nsatisfies the equation (pick an x at random! solve for y!). Now host that\nequation in a finite field, so the x and y needs to be an integer mod p. You\ncan code this in Python or Ruby, right now, and get an intuition for the\nbasics of how it works.\n\nFor invalid curve intuition, I also think Sean is right: understand DH and\nsubgroup confinement first:\n\n[https://toadstyle.org/cryptopals/57.txt](https://toadstyle.org/cryptopals/57.txt)\n\nI think the fundamental thing to get your head around even if you're not going\nto take the hour or two to code the attack up (do that, though! it's a fun\ncouple hours!) is to notice that, if for prime p a curve has order q < p\npoints, most combinations of integers mod p can't be valid points. If you've\ngot a \"sage\" prompt lying around (always have a sage prompt lying around),\nmake a curve E = EllipticCurve(GF(17), [3,4]). Look at the length of\nE.points(), and notice how much smaller it is than the number of possible x's\nand y's.\n\nThen, the interesting part about the attack is that if you send an x,y pair\nthat doesn't satisfy the curve, it might satisfy the equation for some other\ncurve. If you're smart you pick a point that lands in a curve that's insecure,\nfor which you can quickly use brute force to solve the DLP.\n\nI agree that the hook in this blog post title is misleading; you would not\nhave found this attack. But it's misleading in a sort of empowering way: you\nare not a graduate course in mathematics from grasping the intuition of the\nattack or coding a model exploit. You might not even be a day away from it.\n\nIf you read this blog post and Sean's posts and you're stuck on something, I'd\nbe interested in knowing what and seeing if I can push you through it.\n\n------\ndiamondo25\nThis title is pretty clickbait-y, as I would most likely not have invented it.\nYou really have to know the internals and this doesnt even apply _only_ on\nBluetooth but DH implementations in general...\n\n~~~\nJadeNB\n> This title is pretty clickbait-y, as I would most likely not have invented\n> it.\n\nThe title is slightly tongue in cheek; it's as much a genre as \"considered\nharmful\":\n[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22you%20could%20have%20inve...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22you%20could%20have%20invented%22)\n.\n\n------\nbarbarr\nCan anyone explain how figure 1 is y^2=x^3-x? I feel like I'm going crazy.\n\n~~~\nNamTaf\nI agree. I just tried substituting in a bunch of those points and none solved\nthat equation. I don't see, for example, how the point at (12,56) fits that\nequation at all, since it computes to 56^2 = 12^3 - 12, or 3136 = 1728 - 12,\nor 3136 = 1716. That isn't even remotely close, so it's not me just slightly\nmisreading the points.\n\n~~~\nDeathmax\nThe author omitted the mod n, where n = 71 in this case. So 3136 mod 71 = 1716\nmod 71 = 12.\n\n~~~\nNamTaf\nOh of course! Thank you, that makes a lot more sense.\n\n------\nlouprado\nIf I understand correctly, the Bluetooth exploit also requires a man-in-the-\nmiddle attack during pairing. Wouldn't the victim then see two Bluetooth\ndevices with the same name during pairing ? Also most Operating Systems then\norder the list of devices by signal strength. Without physical access to the\nvictims home/office/etc., it would be hard for the attacker to have a higher\nsignal strength since most users would be pairing to a device in close\nproximity. In a public place this could be easier, but even then it would\nprobably fail more often then it would work.\n\n------\nstevebmark\nThis is really poorly written. It's a perfect example of the common problem of\nbad teachers in tech. Many engineers think they're good at teaching topics, or\ntry to aggressively teach others, but are only capable of explaining topics to\npeople who already fully understand them.\n\n~~~\nbigiain\nTo be fair - that blog post has perhaps lost some context being posted up to\nan unintended audience.\n\nTheir headline on their website reads:\n\n\"Deepening the Science of Security Since 2012, Trail of Bits has helped secure\nsome of the world’s most targeted organizations and products. We combine high-\nend security research with a real-world attacker mentality to reduce risk and\nfortify code.\"\n\nOne would expect the target to whom they write their blog posts has some\nassumed understanding of \"the science of security\", and they are looking for\narticles which \"deepen\" understanding rather than explain it all from an ELI5\nor completely non-understanding perspective.\n\n(But you're right about a typically bad level of teaching and documentation in\ntech. I still remember struggling ~25 years ago with Perl docs which explain\nthis using phrases like \"This work just the same way as in awk\"... Often\nthings are not much better these days.)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFastInit: a faster window.onload - agotterer\nhttp://www.tetlaw.id.au/view/javascript/fastinit\nI found this nice JavaScript class few months ago.  Thought I would share it... The class implements a kind of onload function queue. This will ensure that your initialization function(s) are called once the browser DOM is ready and not have to wait for all the images.\n======\nDanielBMarkham\nThis is one of those pieces of code that has been done a dozen different ways\n(probably hundreds, even). I like this implementation though. Nice and clean\nand short and sweet.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWe Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible - brewski\nhttps://www.linuxjournal.com/content/we-need-save-what-made-linux-and-foss-possible\n======\nsaidajigumi\n– We collaborate inside proprietary environments\n\nWhy is that? Why have users chosen those environments? _Assume they are\nrational beings, and get at the heart of it._ Ask: \"How can we address the\nactual user needs while supporting our goals?\"\n\n– Many Linux and FOSS geeks today use Linux only professionally\n\nSame answer as above.\n\n– We're not modeling our values\n\nWHY? (Hint: \"the use of nonfree\" is not, and has never been a primary human\nmotivator _even for many people who \"get it\"_.)\n\netctera.\n\nFinally, regarding the below... only one of these, the first, even\ntangentially touches on _the user experience_. There's an implied expectation\nof so much FOSS advocacy which reduces to \"by _writing and using_ our\nsoftware, you will be wearing a hairshirt for the cause\". This mindset is\nguaranteed to fail in front of users, who are by and large \"non-believers\".\n\n    \n    \n         \"Having real-time chat is absolutely essential to the advancement of free software.\"\n        \"We're the resistance now.\" \"We need to create mass movement.\"\n        \"Volunteer to write free and open code, to participate in communities.\"\n        \"If you didn't live the history, learn from those who did.\"\n        \"If you did learn from history, teach those who need to know it. Respectfully.\"\n        \"Be patient. Remember that the tortoise won not only because it was patient, but because it ignored insult, ridicule and dismissal.\"\n        \"Model your values. Use free software and hardware.\"\n        \"Remember always how 'the rights to copy, share, modify, redistribute and improve software' are fundamental rights that matter to people.\"\n        \"Work to convince developers that their software freedom matters.\"\n\n~~~\nkazinator\n> _Why have users chosen those environments?_\n\nBecause they don't give a rat's ass about the freedom aspect of free software.\nIf software A requires four clicks to do something, but B has a way to do it\nin 3, they are on B without a second thought.\n\nBut in this case, those users are not just any old end users; the are actually\nsupposed to be FOSS developers, so there is a heavy irony there.\n\nI think what is doing on is that large numbers of people are now \"reluctant\"\nFOSS developers. They do FOSS because someone told them to. They got a job\nsomewhere and the job involves writing code that gets upstreamed somewhere and\nis redistributable. Well, they don't give a damn about that, it's just a job,\nno different from working on proprietary software. Or they work on some\nproprietary stuff, but it interacts with and depends on some FOSS pieces so\nthey get in there and make changes out of necessity, and those changes are\nfreely licensed only because they are derived from a work which requires that\ndue to copyright doctrines about derived works.\n\nIt's partly a generational thing. Notice how Doc Searls looks about fifty-\nsomething. He remembers a grassroots free software movement which was about\nactually about displacing proprietary software and liberating the user, and\nnot about about providing reliable commodity middleware for locked-down\ndevices and cloud services.\n\nIf you were born after 1990, you don't know a world in which Linux and other\nFOSS wasn't used for making locked-down tech, and proprietary web sites that\nlock in millions of people and step on their privacy. So of course it's hard\nto understand someone like Doc Searls.\n\nThe free software ideology originated in a world in which you still installed\napplications locally and ran them on local data, on a machine where you were\nallowed to stick in a floppy disc with any piece of machine language in its\nboot sector that could easily take over the machine. The machine that was\nunderstood to be owned by you once you paid for it.\n\n~~~\nDrdrdrq\n>> Why have users chosen those environments?\n\n> Because they don't give a rat's ass about the freedom aspect of free\n> software. If software A requires four clicks to do something, but B has a\n> way to do it in 3, they are on B without a second thought.\n\nConvenience always wins. Always. Users do care about free (as in beer) and\nthey care if the product or service will disappear without warning (hello\nGoogle!). But the definitions of FOSS are so strict that they harm developers,\nand thus products, and thus convenience for users.\n\nOP is describing the symptoms of this phenomena.\n\n~~~\nkazinator\nTraditional free software developers do not use the most convenient program\nwithout caring about freedom.\n\nOtherwise, for instance, nobody would be debugging with gdb, rather than\nVisual Studio or what have you.Nobody would be LaTeXing instead of using MS\nWord or Adobe Illustrator.\n\nGIMP isn't as good as Photoshop (if I believe what people say), yet people\nstill use it. (I've only ever used GIMP since 1996; I have no idea about\nPhotoshop and don't care; it's not free, won't use it.)\n\nPeople went through all sorts of inconveniences to use free software, like\nmanually figuring out monitor clock timings to stick into their X\nconfiguration, building their own custom kernels and whatnot.\n\nYou can't say \"convenience wins\" with a straight face; that's like saying free\nsoftware doesn't exist.\n\n~~~\nthrower123\n> nobody would be debugging with gdb, rather than Visual Studio\n\nIf Visual Studio ran on Linux, would anybody bother with gdb? Currently, the\nsecond-highest voted UserVoice issue for Visual Studio is people asking for a\nLinux version (and rather hilariously not understanding what a colossal\nrewrite that would entail...)\n\n[https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-\nstud...](https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio-\nide/suggestions/10662897-visual-studio-for-linux)\n\n> Nobody would be LaTeXing instead of using MS Word or Adobe Illustrator.\n\nLaTeX might just be easier than trying to typeset something reliably in Word.\nI know I always wrote in plain-text and then did a final pass to paste and\nformat it into Word immediately before printing.\n\n> GIMP isn't as good as Photoshop (if I believe what people say), yet people\n> still use it.\n\nPhotoshop is stupidly expensive still, and cracking software has fallen out of\nfavor\n\n~~~\nkeithnz\nInterestingly enough Visual Studio now supports cross platform debugging ( you\nstill need Visual Studio running on windows, but it can debug a linux based\nprogram )\n\n~~~\nkazinator\nA variant called Embedded Visual Studio already supported cross debugging of\nWindows CE targets twenty years ago. (I was there and used it). Maybe that's\nnot quite cross-platform, but kind of half-way.\n\n------\njonawesomegreen\n> We collaborate inside proprietary environments, such as Slack and Google\n> Hangouts. Most of the chat and messaging systems in use today are also\n> proprietary and closed. So are most video-conferencing systems and the\n> codecs they use.\n\nThis one in particular worries me. Having access mailing list conversations\nand IRC logs provides such a rich history of open source development. I worry\nabout every open source project moving to github / slack, where we may not\nhave nearly as good a record of conversations that formed the software in 20 -\n30 years.\n\nOn the other hand you won't see any argument from me that these services\nprovide an easier workflow than what existed before, and maybe that easier\nworkflow opening development up to a wider community is more important.\n\n~~~\nrst\nFor what it's worth, there are workalikes for both Github and Slack which are\nat least tolerable -- Gitlab has most of Github's core features, and there are\nmultiple slack-alikes (the one I've got experience with is Zulip, which I, at\nleast, find to be a whole lot better than Slack). BUT...\n\nJust having open-source (or free software) alternatives doesn't necessarily\nsolve the problem. Gitlab and Zulip still leave your data scattered around\nback-end DBs which may not be terribly accessible in 20 years' time if the\nsoftware itself doesn't still run.\n\n~~~\ntabbott\nZulip lead developer here.\n\nFor chat apps, I don't think the problem of \"data scattered around backend-\nDBs\" is a real concern. E.g. Zulip has a well-defined data export format\nthat's easily parsable JSON and contains all non-transient data (i.e. the\nstatus of who's typing right now isn't included):\n[https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/export-\nand...](https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/export-and-\nimport.html). And so do most of the other popular chat systems.\n\nI'd be surprised if Zulip doesn't still run in 20 years, but in any case, we\nhave data import tools for the export formats of Slack, Mattermost, Gitter,\nand HipChat, and ultimately it wasn't that much work (The most recent few\nwe've added were each a few person-weeks' work). So I think we can safely\nassume that at least for chat, it'll be possible to import the history.\n\nBut even if they don't, there are already scripts to export the public history\nof a Zulip organization and turn it into a webpage that can be hosted wherever\n(see for example: [https://leanprover-\ncommunity.github.io/archive/](https://leanprover-\ncommunity.github.io/archive/)).\n\nThe [https://zulipchat.com](https://zulipchat.com) homepage and\n[https://zulipchat.com/for/open-source](https://zulipchat.com/for/open-source)\nare relevant reading for folks considering Zulip for their open source\nproject.\n\n~~~\nwmf\nCan non-admins export data? Mailing lists often allow downloading archives in\nmbox format and people also have local archives.\n\nIn cases of catastrophic failure or why-style \"digital suicide\", it seems like\nmodern tools could easily leave a community with no records at all.\n\n~~~\ntabbott\nYes, via the Zulip API, which is how the Lean Prover tool works. Zulip's \"full\norganization data\" export tool is only available to administrators, and we\nhaven't heard any complaints about that model.\n\n------\nAdmiralAsshat\nSo the initial letter hits upon something that the article itself ignores,\nnamely that the FOSS community requires _more than just developers_. I see\nthis attitude all the time in certain circles that only the developers\ncontribute any value to a project, and prospective contributors should either\nlearn to code or get f--ked. It's not terribly welcoming to the larger\ncommunity (of whom the majority are _not_ developers), and the fact that many\nof these projects lack adequate documentation, wide availability, or a\ncentralized support forum only reinforces that understanding.\n\nIt's a problem that can be remedied, provided the projects stop pretending\nthat the packagers, technical writers, GUI/UX artists, and community managers\nare expendable.\n\n~~~\nwrs\nHaving lived through the entire history of free software (well, Free Software\nwith capital letters, anyway) it always comes back to this: Software freedom\nis fundamentally valuable only for developers, because only developers can use\nthe freedom it gives. (That's pretty much the definition of\n\"developer\"—someone who can modify software.) Users get value only as a _side\neffect_ of this developer freedom, because a developer builds a product for\nthem.\n\nFree Software originated in the hacker community—which is a community of\n_developers developing for developers_. It's always struggled to extend those\nvalues in a way compatible with the rest of the world. Notice that developer\ntools like GCC or Linux are the big success stories of Free Software, whereas\nend-user tools like OpenOffice or GIMP have always been kind of…meh.\n\n~~~\nzAy0LfpBZLC8mAC\n> Software freedom is fundamentally valuable only for developers, because only\n> developers can use the freedom it gives.\n\nThat is akin to saying that democracy is fundamentally valuable only for\npoliticians, because only politicians can use the freedom it gives.\n\nThat is simply completely wrong. You don't have to be a developer yourself in\norder to benefit from not being dependent on a monopoly. The fact that you can\nbuy development work on the free market benefits every user of Free Software.\nThe fact that the code of Free Software is easier to inspect benefits every\nuser of Free Software.\n\nThere is no need for everyone to be a politician for democracy to be generally\nvaluable, there is no need for everyone to be a car mechanic for freedom to\nrepair cars to be generally valuable, and there is no need for everyone to be\na developer for freedom to inspect and change software to be generally\nvaulable. Those freedoms are what enable free markets instead of monopolies.\n\n~~~\nwrs\nI said _fundamentally_ for a reason. All of those things are of course user\nbenefits, but they are indirect side effects. Users get none of those benefits\nwithout enlisting a developer to take advantage of them. So the most powerful\nevolutionary pressure is to make free software that is valuable _for\ndevelopers_. The closer it gets to a “pure” user problem, the less incentive\nthere is for developers to work on it, and the worse it gets. (As a general\nrule.)\n\n~~~\nzAy0LfpBZLC8mAC\n> All of those things are of course user benefits, but they are indirect side\n> effects. Users get none of those benefits without enlisting a developer to\n> take advantage of them.\n\nThat is not really true.\n\nFor one, even users of purely proprietary software do benefit from the work\nthat developers of Free Software do, because the market pressure exerted by\ntheir presence in the market does affect the pricing and quality of\nproprietary offerings. While that is an indirect effect, it does not in any\nway require \"enlisting a developer\".\n\nAlso, in order to have a free market choice in who you hire to do development\nwork for you, you don't need to enlist a developer. That freedom of choice is\nevery user's immediate freedom.\n\n> The closer it gets to a “pure” user problem, the less incentive there is for\n> developers to work on it, and the worse it gets.\n\nBut that has nothing to do with whether it's a \"user problem\", but only with\nwhether it's a problem of people who value their freedom. If a user values\nfreedom and thus invests in it, such as by paying a developer for doing some\nwork for them, then they will get just as much freedom as developers who value\ntheir freedom and for their reason invest in it. The problem is not that they\nare users, the problem is that they are unwilling to invest in their freedom,\nand instead expect others to invest for them.\n\nThe problem is the expectation that developers invest in the freedom of users.\nDevelopers will invest in their own freedom first and foremost, obviously. If\nyou expect developers to invest effort into solving problems of non-\ndevelopers, you should also expect non-developers to invest in developers\nsolving their own problems. Like, you should expect users to pay developers so\nthey can work on stuff that is of no importance to the user.\n\n------\npdonis\nSearls says that the fight for general purpose computing is the one most worth\nhaving: but I think he's using a definition of \"general purpose computing\"\nthat most non-developers won't even understand, much less agree with.\n\nThe problem is that development is an extremely _special_ purpose--one that\nmost people don't do and don't understand the needs of. As a developer, I want\na level of control over every aspect of my computer that most people don't\nwant, need, or even think of. To most people, \"general purpose computing\" just\nmeans their computer (or more likely their phone, these days) can run any app\nthey want it to run. It doesn't mean what Searls (and the people whose\narticles he references, like Doctorow) takes it to mean.\n\nAnd to the ordinary person, the idea that it is essential to society that\ndevelopers have the freedom to configure their computers however they want,\nregardless of what the government or some corporation says, doesn't sound like\nsomething worth fighting for; it sounds like something scary. They don't think\nof Stallman developing Gnu or Linus Torvalds developing Linux; they think of\ncomputer viruses and worms running rampant.\n\n~~~\nmwcampbell\nMaybe we can at least make sure that the next generation of children get it,\nor at least the kids that we are close to. This is on my mind because I have\nfive nieces and one nephew, all of whom are less than five years old. I gave\nthree of them Amazon tablets the Christmas before last, and have come to\nregret it. I will do what I can to make sure that their next computers will be\ngeneral-purpose as we developers understand it.\n\nIt may be worthwhile to reflect on my own early experience with computers. In\n1988, when I was almost 8, my family's first computer was an Apple IIGS. As I\nexplained in my personal retrospective on that machine a few years ago [1],\nthat machine had kind of a split personality, because it combined\ncompatibility with the earlier 8-bit Apple II models with a more or less Mac-\nlike, native 16-bit environment. The legacy 8-bit environment included BASIC\nin ROM, whereas the native 16-bit environment could only be programmed with a\ndedicated development environment that wasn't included with the computer. Of\ncourse, even many 8-bit Apple II programs were written in assembly language\nand were locked down to varying degrees (e.g. copy protection, no easy way to\nbreak into the BASIC interpreter). But at least that BASIC interpreter was\navailable in the 8-bit environment. So the 16-bit environment represented\nanother step in the direction of separating users from developers.\n\nI remember one experience that, I think, helped spark my interest in\nprogramming. One day when I was about 8, my uncle Eric was over at our house,\nand he brought with him a disk full of 8-bit Apple II games. One of those\ngames was written in BASIC and somehow involved shapes crudely rendered in\ntext mode (I don't remember anything else about the game). He had modified\nthose shapes to bear the names of his kids. That was interesting all by\nitself. But then, if I remember correctly, he went in and modified the game to\nshow the names of my siblings and me instead. These days, we call this live\ncoding. And with most off-the-shelf software now, it's impossible. If we can\nfix this for free software, I think more people will be enthusiastic about it.\nOf course, the specific example I recounted here is pretty trivial, but the\nlesson is clear: we need to make it practical for people to modify the\nsoftware they use every day, on the fly, with low friction. Then, the freedom\nto modify software will matter to more people.\n\n[1]: [https://mwcampbell.us/blog/apple-\niigs.html](https://mwcampbell.us/blog/apple-iigs.html)\n\n------\nzanny\nIts more abjectly a moral failing of society that institutions have not\naligned to enable free software proliferation.\n\nSoftware, and information in general, have been a prisoners dilemma for time\nimmemorial. The optimization of utility is total freedom of information - but\nsuch a state of affairs means benefactors reap the labors of others and have\nno obligation to give anything in return.\n\nCopyright was fabricated to solve 18th century problems with an 18th century\nbureaucratic solution. The whole free software movement in general emerged as\na counterculture to how intensely harmful to society that policy influenced\nthe natural state of affairs to become.\n\nIf anything, the fact free software enthusiasts have lost sight of what the\nultimate goal has to be - the abolition of copyright and institution of basic\nstandards of living for all citizens derived from the productive gains of the\nextraordinary multiplicative effects technology, itself derived substantially\nfrom free software, produces - is what really needs to shift. Anything less\nkeeps the movement in an atrophying limbo where fresh minds join, put in their\nbest effort, and fall out from the captured value innovation produces in our\nsociety.\n\nWe need to move towards a state of affairs where enthusiasts can produce\nfreedom respecting code because they want to, that don't go hungry or homeless\nfor their efforts, and where all of society can reap the benefits of theirs\n(and billions others) generosity and compounding efficiency produced through\ntechnological innovation. And where everyone has access to the fruits of those\nlabors regardless of means as a way to improve the collective knowledge of\nmankind for all the rest of us.\n\nJust think for a moment of the bizarre world where the brightest need not toil\nto manipulate tired and depressed minds psychologically to siphon scarce money\nfrom them to line the pockets of robber barons masquerading as productive\nmembers of society, but instead could comfortably collaborate towards actually\nmaking the world a better place.\n\n~~~\nmwfunk\nFree Software enthusiasts can't advocate against copyright, because it's the\nonly thing that gives the GPL any meaning at all. In a copyright-free world,\nany company could make a proprietary GCC fork, lock its code up behind many\nlayers of physical and digital security, make all its developers/employees\nsign NDAs and other legal agreements ensuring they don't leak any of the new\ncode, et voila. Hardly sounds like a Free Software utopia.\n\n~~~\ngnomewascool\n> Free Software enthusiasts can't advocate against copyright\n\nYou're right that we can't advocate for just eliminating copyright, without\nshooting ourselves in the foot. However, eliminating copyright, combined with,\nsay, an obligation of software companies to disclose the source code of their\n\"products\" to their customers, or, less intrusively, with making the type of\nNDAs you describe illegal, would work.\n\n~~~\nzanny\nMore generally it comes back to the right to repair. We operate in this\nperverse economy where we lack a meaningful right to repair in the digital age\nbecause understanding on the subject is so scarce, but I personally believe in\na strong consumer right to repair, and in a post-IP world that would include a\nrequirement to disclose source of software - in practical terms, so the owner\nof the tractor can fix bugs in the tractors computer, but in general so anyone\npurchasing software - or just goods of any kind - should have the right to\nunderstand what it is and how it works.\n\nIts one of the defined software freedoms of the FSF, after all, and its\nfundamentally why software freedom is advocated for, but it absolutely doesn't\nneed copyright to be enshrined in law.\n\n------\njondubois\nI still cannot believe that we live in a world were:\n\n\\- A website with a silly name like 'Facebook' is worth half a trillion\ndollars and is extremely profitable.\n\n\\- A website with a silly name like 'Twitter' which only lets you post 140\ncharacters at a time is worth 30 billion dollars.\n\n\\- An app with a silly name like 'Snapchat' which loses billions of dollars\nper year is worth almost $15 billion.\n\n\\- An international taxi service with a silly name like 'Uber' which is losing\nbillions of dollars per year is worth almost $100 billion.\n\n\\- That software developers don't see anything wrong with building apps on top\nof proprietary cloud APIs (e.g. Amazon Lambda) - The closest real-world\nanalogy that I can think of is that it's like building a house with your own\nbare hands for years and then, once you finally finish it, you start paying a\ncorporation rent (at whatever rate they ask for) so that you can live in your\nown house! Meanwhile, the whole time, there was an even better plot of land\nright next door which was 100% free but you ignored it because the signposts\non the corporate land were flashing with bright neon lights.\n\nThe economy makes so little sense that there is no incentive left to create\nvalue. The best you can do is just look for the next financial scheme to take\nadvantage of. I bet it will be something completely random and useless.\n\n~~~\ntheamk\nRe Lambda, I think the closest analogy is renting unfurnished office.\n\nWhen our company moved into next office, it had bare walls with old ugly\nwallpaper. We paid for the new wallpaper, carpet, interior walls, wiring,\netc... And we also kept paying the rent to the building owner, and were at\ntheir mercy when they eventually decided to stop renting out that space.\n\nEven then, this made perfect sense for business. All-new construction would\nhave been way longer and more expensive, even taking limited lease time in the\naccount. Why would software equivalent of this (Lambda) be different?\n\n~~~\nswagasaurus-rex\nRunning your own servers doesn't require you to bid for sparse plots of land,\nlike constructing your own office space does.\n\n------\nacd\nA bug in GPL is that it allows SAAS Software as a service built on Open source\nsoftware which means Software as a service can leech on open source software\nwithout contributing back.\n\n[https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-\nwhitesource/t...](https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-\nwhitesource/the-saas-loophole-in-gpl-open-source-licenses)\n\nUsing AGPL instead of GPL closes the Saas loop hole.\n\nAlso due to close to zero bank interest rates the general availability of\nventure capital is to some extent stopping new open source software. Instead\nof giving away your software for free as Open source software you start a\nventure capital funded Software as a service instead.\n\n~~~\nDrdrdrq\n> Using AGPL instead of GPL closes the Saas loop hole.\n\nIn spirit maybe, but not in practice because of its loopholes. That was the\nreason MongoDB changed their license.\n\n------\nbregma\nI love the way commenters here equate FLOSS development with unpaid hobbyist\ndevelopers.\n\nFact: most of the contributors to the Linux kernel are highly-paid\nprofessionals who do that work full time.\n\nThe same goes for many, if not most, of the popular and successful FLOSS\nprojects.\n\nIt is an error to assume that free (as in speech) software is only made by\nfree (as in beer) development.\n\n~~~\nmegous\nFact based on what? I don't doubt the kernel claim. There are regular LWN\nsummaries, about what companies contributed to whatever release.\n\nBut I have no clue what you're basing your second claim on. There's huge\namount of FLOSS programs that work fine, are useful, but don't get much\ncontributions. And I don't know about any studies/overviews on what number of\nprograms say in a Debian distro is a work of passion, and what is created by\npaid devs.\n\n------\nbencollier49\nHere's a thought - can we trace this back to the point at which everyone moved\nfrom Slashdot to Hacker News? All of a sudden the dominant social incentive\nchanged from open software to startups and profit.\n\n~~~\njslabovitz\nPerhaps...\n\nBut if you do that, it would also be interesting to trace free software back\nto the point where the GPL became popular. (GPL was published in 1983, but in\nmy recollection it wasn't until the early/mid-90s that it surged into general\nusage.) Before that, 'free' software generally meant public domain: no\nlicenses, no limitation on use -- at all. We had two or three decades of free\nsoftware of that type, mostly distributed over Usenet, BBSes, FTP/Gopher, etc.\n\nI'm probably being too oblique, but I believe it's short-sighted to believe\nfree software must only be _ideologically free._ There was, in fact, an\nearlier period, where developers release software for free because, well, why\nnot?\n\nOkay, time for this retired grumpy programmer to retreat back to his hut in\nthe forest now...\n\n~~~\nPeterisP\nMy memory of that period (mid-90s-299ish) is that in a majority of cases the\nwidely used 'public domain' software was distributed without restrictions but\nalso without source code, and thus did not really enable modification and\nredistribution of improved versions even if the licence (or lack of it) didn't\nprohibit me to do so; so back then the 'ideologically free' movement towards\nopen source software did result in an actual increase of practical freedoms.\n\n~~~\njslabovitz\nAh, I did not explain clearly. My mistake. I wasn't talking about binary-only\nshareware distribution, but rather source code (primarily Unix/C-based on\ncomp.sources.*). I'm thinking about the Usenet software itself (B News, C\nNews, rn, tin, vnews), sendmail/bind, early Pine/Mutt/procmail (?), scripting\nlanguages like Perl/Python/Ruby, and so on. And a pile of early microcomputer\ncode for Z80/8080/6500/6800/etc.\n\n------\nralph84\nMost people engage with FOSS for practical reasons, not ideological reasons.\nGiven that developers of proprietary software have made a lot more money on\nthe whole than developers of FOSS, I don't see that changing anytime soon.\n\n~~~\njordigh\nThe ideological reasons are practical reasons. We don't want to give you\nsoftware freedom because we believe in some abstract ideology. We want to give\nyou free software because we believe this is the way that you will eventually\nget the best software that will let you do the most.\n\nIndeed, for software of good quality, free software wins. GNU R has completely\ndominated most areas of statistical computing, for example. The ideology is\nthere not because we think you're \"impure\" or \"evil\" or something if you use\nnon-free software, but because we think you'll be happier if you do, because\nyou deserve it, because we all deserve free software.\n\n~~~\nFunes-\n>The ideological reasons are practical reasons. We don't want to give you\nsoftware freedom because we believe in some abstract ideology. We want to give\nyou free software because we believe this is the way that you will eventually\nget the best software that will let you do the most.\n\nWhile I wholeheartedly agree with this particular stance--doing away with\nideology and sticking with ethics and pragmatism--, I am not sure that\neveryone in the FOSS community, if such thing exists, adheres to that same\npremise.\n\n~~~\nthe_af\nIn fact, that's only the ideology of Open Source software.\n\nFree/libre software (e.g. GNU and the FSF) believe in \"free as in speech\" for\nideological reasons, not for tech quality reasons. In fact -- they argue --\none should sacrifice convenience and sometimes even short-term quality in\nfavor of freedom. I certainly see the merit of that line of thought, though\nit's also a very hard road, and harder still to convince people.\n\nIdeology is not a bad word :)\n\n~~~\njordigh\nI'm not saying the quality of the software is the most important thing. I'm\nsaying that software freedom is a pragmatic goal. Being able to fix your own\nsoftware or bring it to anyone competent who can repair it is a practical\nthing. Giving the software to your friends is a practical thing. Being able to\nmodify the software is a practical thing. Knowing that your software won't spy\non you is a practical thing.\n\nSoftware freedom is not some abstract ideology with no relation to pragmatics.\n\n------\nthrow2016\nWhat made Linux and FOSS possible is a specific time and context and that is\nnot happening again. There is no job security, everything is about building a\nresume, getting a job and hanging on or a startup, everything is related to\nmoney or status.\n\nThere is also an ahistorical perspective of tech, as if things just are or\nhappen with no deliberate effort and its an open question whether there is any\nreal commitment or concern for the principles which drove the open source\nmovement.\n\nIn many ways Slashdot defined the original generation and Hackernews defines\nthis one. And even paying lip service to principles would be quaint here.\nDefending building surveillance systems and stalking people 24/7 while\nreferring to general users as idiots are often the top voted comments. This is\na huge shift.\n\n~~~\nfuzzfactor\nfrom the article's comments:\n\nDave Taht • 44 minutes ago We really, really, really need a return to our core\nvalues I remember how fired up I was in 1999, when I wrote this -\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxLbNCB-\nYKI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxLbNCB-YKI) and how fired up I am now to\ntry and get our internet back. Still it is hard to be a revolutionary with two\nkids and a mortgage, and we've lost most of the next generation of coders to\njavascript and student debt.\n\n------\nsovande\nSure, we need naive wish lists, but for open source to be more than a curios\nhistorical blip and not fall into a Venezuelan disaster, the least we can\ndemand of FSF and OSI is to give us a proper open source license so those who\nwant to _do_ open source work can also succeed commercially. They need to\nunderstand and address problems faced by MongoDB, Redis, Elastic et. al. and\nsupport their needs with a new license (something better than AGPL). Not flat\nout dismiss the problems and swipe it under the rug.\n\n~~~\nyarrel\nNo, they need to make clear that VC funding isn't entitled to returns on bad\nbusiness models. _That_ is the real problem.\n\n------\nshmerl\nYeah, I'm often puzzled by some FOSS developers not using open communication\ntools and not running Linux on their actual day to day work computers.\n\n~~~\njlarocco\nI've seen (and also not understood) the use of Slack/Gitter/etc. but the \"not\nrunning Linux\" part is a surprise to me, personally.\n\nI've used Linux or BSD on all of my personal machines for a long time, and\nassumed, wrongly I guess, that most other people were in the same boat. I'm\nnot sure it's a problem, but it's interesting.\n\n~~~\nthe_af\nAgreed, I've been using desktop Linux on my home laptop for more than a decade\nnow. Every piece of software I want, wireless printers, videogames (many\nAAA!), everything just works.\n\nI'm puzzled. I think it was just the unfortunate rise of mobile.\n\n------\ndegobah\nWe also need to donate more to FOSS. And find more ways to monetize FOSS. It's\ntough for many FOSS projects to succeed on a volunteer basis.\n\n------\njsnz\nThe opinions in this article are simply fear-mongering and divisive of the\nprogrammer community as whole.\n\nThey are formulated on an irrational fear of FOSS being extinguished by the\ngreed of the corporations.\n\nSo long as there is at least one programmer left with the will to post their\nsource to the world FOSS will not die.\n\nLet's also not be so one-eyed as forget to value equally the contribution of\nall programmers who write great software whether free or not, open or closed-\nsource - we can still admire the fruits of their labours if not their\nalgorithms.\n\nFOSS community, please stop wringing your hands in fear, go write some code\nwith them!\n\n------\nmtaksrud\nThis! Like much else, these kind of movements (FOSS etc.) depends on having\ngood “institutions” that work. In this case e.g. the documentation project and\nsimilar. They are fundamental building blocks ...\n\n------\ndanans\nI don't think the problem is that FOSS (as a movement) can't accomplish what\nproprietary software does. For a while, some FOSS software did address certain\nuser needs better than proprietary software.\n\nBut the world of proprietary software (including permissively licensed open\nsource software) just moved faster, because its associated business models\ngave it the money, incentives, and the early signals needed to attack problem\nspaces in human-computer-interaction and secure, managed application\nplatforms, among other things, that FOSS didn't have the resources to address,\nand so it just fell behind in key areas relevant to users.\n\nWe just don't know what the FOSS movement could have achieved given similar\nresources (or how it would have gotten those resources in the first place\nwithout a business model), or a lot more time.\n\n------\nmakz\nI have several things to say here.\n\nI see we are still debating the same points as many years ago (GIMP vs\nPhotoshop, Visual Studio, paid vs unpaid labor, chicken and egg,\nconvenience...). It’s like we haven’t learned anything.\n\nAbout the end of general computing, I don’t see it as a bad thing. In some way\nit has always existed. Right now we have server computers, desktop computers,\nsmart phones, mainframe, cloud... even on a single class of computer we have\nsome segmentation. It just means we’ll have even more specialization. And FOSS\nstill can have a place there.\n\nSpeaking about that, I believe FOSS is stronger at the foundational layers.\n\nMaybe the future is kind of and hybrid model in which we have lots of new\ncomputer classes with FOSS as their foundation. Not very different from what\nwe have now, just much more diverse and, I hope, more open.\n\n------\nJorge1o1\nThere's a great deal of irony in a publication promoting FOSS, but their own\nwebsite is closed source.\n\n~~~\nskyfaller\nIs Linux Journal's website closed source? Looks like it's running Drupal to\nme, a quick scan of the HTML reveals <meta name=\"Generator\" content=\"Drupal 8\n([https://www.drupal.org)\"](https://www.drupal.org\\)\") />. Drupal is GPLv2+,\nseems fine.\n\nWould be nice if they replaced Disqus with e.g.\n[https://commento.io/](https://commento.io/) though.\n\n------\nYaa101\nConvenience seems to be the only value of things in the real world, so bad\neven that people en masse are prepared to submit to slavery to get it.\n\nI suggest that the FOSS community now finally starts building something\nconvenient for themselfs instead of making things hard and massochist.\n\n------\nworkingpatrick\nBit of hypocrisy on the part of the author for publishing on this platform....\n\nThe comment section of this article: \"Our discussions are powered by Disqus,\nwhich require JavaScript. \"\n\n------\nngcc_hk\nWonder how many free software would be in china inside e-great wall?\n\nWhat wonder what we use if majority of computer is intel based and they have a\nparallel computer controlled your cpu?\n\nStrangely arm is sort of open what can you pay to develop your own total open\nenv and ...\n\nAny further, wonder what is open source movement is all about if not asking\nfor a mixed environment ? It is the dying middle that might be the problem or\nis there no problem. Wonder.\n\n------\nfgheorghe\nLinux was built in an era of fierce resistance from the corporate world, so\nwhat is there to save today when everything runs or touches OSS in one way or\nanother and most decent developers will make an OSS contribution, to claim on\ntheir CVs?\n\n------\ninterfixus\n> _Our discussions are powered by Disqus_\n\nAbandon all hope.\n\n------\nfopen64\nThat's what happens when you are bogged down in Donglegate-like discussions.\n\n------\ngridlockd\nDon't listen to the Copyleftists. FOSS is bigger than ever because _non-\ncopyleft_ free software is what professionals can build on.\n\nFor the most part, Copyleftists are stuck in Hobbyland and it really shows\nwhen you look at the software they produce. Their business models - if they\neven have one - largely don't work. Given that software is very expensive to\nproduce, copyleft software eventually runs out of suckers to support it after\nthe \"fun factor\" wears off and the \"real work\" starts.\n\nThe Linux kernel is the major exception, but only because the particular\nexceptions that the GPL grants to it do not encumber the enterprises that\ndevelop Linux. Wherever it does, enterprises will choose non-copyleft\nalternatives (e.g. Sony and Nintendo building on FreeBSD).\n\n------\nnevrthepfhor\nPeople choose proprietary software because proprietary software doesn't make\nyou memorize and type things like \"systemctl suspend\" for the most basic of\ntasks such as putting your computer to sleep.\n\nThey don't want to find, audit, install, and evaluate dozens of obscure third-\nparty extensions to make their OS usable.\n\nThey want options for setting their background image besides Fit to screen.\n\nAnd they want to be able to use their friend's computer without having to\nlearn how to use all their friend's customizations.\n\n~~~\n_emacsomancer_\n> People choose proprietary software because proprietary software doesn't make\n> you memorize and type things like \"systemctl suspend\" for the most basic of\n> tasks such as putting your computer to sleep.\n\nNothing says that all free software will be good or user-friendly (systemd is\nan excellent case-in-point). But you can choose a better alternative.\n\nProprietary software _sometimes_ has short-term convenience benefits, but even\nthinking slightly-longer-term quickly shows that it's never worth it.\n\nEven with less-than-ideal software like systemd, it's still miles better than\nproprietary alternatives. Yes, you may have to run \"systemctl suspend\"* to put\nyour computer to sleep, but you don't end up with Candy Crush embedded in your\nprogram launcher, or over-12-years-outdated bash, etc.\n\n[*] It's pretty easy to wrap 'systemctl suspend' in something friendlier, such\nas a shortcut.\n\n~~~\nnevrthepfhor\nYes, Windows Home is awful, but I believe I got a Windows 10 Pro key for ten\ndollars. I think I used the same key on two different computers. No Candy\nCrush, slightly better control over the system.\n\nIt would be nice to have an OS that's actually fun and intuitive for normal\npeople (nevermind me), not stripped down and sanitized, and also doesn't have\ncorporate bloat and massive data collection by default.\n\n~~~\n_emacsomancer_\n> an OS that's actually fun and intuitive for normal people (nevermind me)\n\nThat's no version of Windows, in my experience. I suffered through Windows\n3.1x to XP to Vista to Window 7 (and tried out Windows 10), and none of these\nwere fun or intuitive, certainly not compared to what I used immediately\nbefore (Atari ST) or immediately after (Ubuntu Feisty Fawn).\n\nIn 2019, Ubuntu is far more intuitive and manageable for an ordinary person.\nNo going to the internet to download dubious software (or getting malware\nthrough the Windows Store, as per my Windows 10 experience), no weird Candy\nCrush and 'telemetry' (data siphoning) or any of that Microsoft sort of\ngoodness.\n\n~~~\nnevrthepfhor\nDriver issues alone disqualify Ubuntu versus Windows (where are all the three-\nmonitor setups and touchscreen laptops?). So does the complete lack of desktop\nbackground options. And having to hold down `Alt` to make the Suspend button\nappear (which doesn't say Suspend on it by the way). Even the word suspend is\nso serious like you're punishing your computer, not putting it to bed.\n\nUbuntu is all business all the time. A five year old would get bored of it\nwithin five minutes. iPads are probably crack cocaine in comparison.\n\nSettings doesn't even have an appearance and personalization section. Ubuntu\nis more stripped down than a Holocaust victim. And there's nothing fun about\nthe Holocaust.\n\n------\ngroovybits\nI am generally a fan of Linux and FOSS on my personal gear. However, I'm still\nnot sure where this article is coming from, or who it addresses.\n\nThe author seems to be mixing the use of FOSS in the professional world with\nthe use of FOSS in their personal world.\n\nIn a professional environment, there is no room for \"modeling your values\". It\nsounds harsh, but that is the way it is. You use what works. Yes, Linux OSs do\nsome things better than Windows OSs, and vice versa.\n\n~~~\ndreamcompiler\nI think part of what the author is addressing is the ignorance exhibited in\nyour comment. I don't mean to be rude; it's easy not to see the big picture\nwhen you're busy just making a living.\n\nTo me, Searls' point is that an overwhelming pressure to monetize everything\nhas corrupted the health of the open source community. This is not just\nholier-than-thou moralizing; there will be real financial consequences if the\ncreators of open source products don't start eating a lot more of their own\ndogfood.\n\n~~~\nlotyrin\nAre you sure he's the ignorant one?\n\nAs a young adult who had a roof over their head by default, I was 100% FOSS\nand installed Gentoo on anything I owned that could even limp its way along\nthat path (and discarded devices that couldn't), I refused to use proprietary\nmessaging tools and social networks, and I accepted that I had limited myself\nto the social and economic opportunities that these things allowed me, as a\nsort of altruistic techno-hippie.\n\nNow I am on LinkedIn, Slack, on a Mac and an iPhone, backing up to a\nproprietary NAS, operating most things in Amazon's or Microsoft's clouds using\nmanaged services that lock me and my clients in to their ecosystems, running\ndefault OS on most of everything. The technology choices in my day job are\nmade by whoever has the power to make them, for whatever reasons those people\nmay have -- and \"freedom\" or even \"sustainability\" for that matter are pretty\nlow on their list of priorities. The technology decision in my home life come\ndown to \"what do I have time and energy to put up with?\" and \"is there a risk\nthat I'll have to fuss with this in order to make sure it's operational when\nmy wife wants to use it, late at night on some weekend when I'd rather be\nrelaxing?\".\n\nMaybe when and if I return to a survival-by-default - when the mortgage is\npaid and health risks are (well enough) accounted for I'll be able to \"model\nmy values\", but probably not before then. Even that might require a divorce,\nin adult life one's motivations and their consequences are not solely one's\nown to keep.\n\nAside from that, given the experience I've had with FOSS, at this point I\ndoubt even if I were 100% financially independent and early retired if I'd go\nback to participating except to go to low effort to upstream fixes to my own\nproblems (here's a patch/pull request, if you don't like how it's indented or\ndocumented, that's your problem to solve, not mine). The incentives are all\nawful with so many volunteers trying to create software for users or use cases\nthat are fantasies, bike shed arguments, corporate interests trying to get\ntheir way and take advantage of free labor, corporate leech organizations\nsaving millions in license fees for proprietary software and contributing\nnothing but sassy bug reports, the folks who are militant and awful to each\nother about inclusion/exclusion topics, well-meaning but ignorant people who\nrefuse to understand their behaviors and words cause others grief, projects\nwith lack of vision, leaders who are reluctant to lead.\n\nFurther aside still, there's a reason normal human beings don't use free\nsoftware or decentralized whatever and it's because the developers of those\nthings don't have the resources or vision to build software for normal human\nbeings: people who won't edit a config file, won't author content in Markdown,\ndon't want to read a man page of flags to understand the permissions in their\nchat channel, don't want to have to have a tower PC whirring and heating up a\ncorner somewhere in order to solve what seem to them like simple problems,\netc. etc. etc.\n\n~~~\ndreamcompiler\nI don't disagree. You point out that there are no incentives for FOSS\ndevelopers to cater to the muggles. Fine, so how do we fix that? I really want\nto know. I have to believe it's possible.\n\n~~~\nDrdrdrq\nI do believe it is possible, but it is a compromise. Let go of one of the\nfreedoms so that other freedoms (like \"right to repair\") have a chance. In\nother words: Commons Clause.\n\n~~~\nyarrel\nCompromise sounds nice but when the \"compromise\" is a one-sided capitulation\nit's not _really_ compromise.\n\n~~~\nDrdrdrq\nDo read the license, it's really short and to the point. At least for me I\ndon't think I'm giving up much (as a user) by using Commons Clause software. I\njust can't sell the app or services without obtaining permission from authors.\nWhich seems fair to me - if I earn money, they should get a piece of the\nvalue.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA Tower of Molten Salt Will Deliver Solar Power After Sunset - robszumski\nhttp://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/a-tower-of-molten-salt-will-deliver-solar-power-after-sunset\n======\ndredmorbius\nIn a world of _very_ poor options for energy storage, molten salt seems to be,\nfrom very rough calculations, something which might scale to what Tom Murphy\n(\"Do the Math\") refers to as a \"nation-scale battery\" \\-- up to two weeks of\nstored generation capacity.\n\nMy own _very_ naive and rough back-of-the-napkin calculations suggest that a\ntotal thermal storage facility roughly comparable with existing US oil storage\ntanks in Oklahoma could provide that capacity.\n\nMore generally, the strength of molten salt is to even out supply to\nvariability in either demand or incident sunlight. Note also that concentrated\nsolar power requires _concentration_ -- you cannot focus _diffuse_ light\n(e.g., hazy or overcast conditions), though PV still delivers some power under\nsuch circumstances.\n\nBut PV is instantaneous, and other storage options -- batteries, pumped hydro,\ncompressed air energy storage (CAES), flywheels -- are either limited by\nmaterial and/or sites, or by costs or engineering challenges.\n\nSalts are plentiful, as are insulating options. Thermal energy systems are\nwell understood. The concept is inherently distributable (no need to put it\nall in one spot), and, modulo spills, generally environmentally benign.\n\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1viied/grid_sc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1viied/grid_scale_thermal_energy_storage_this_might_work/)\n\n~~~\ndavid-given\nThat's electricity only, though, right? The last time I looked at numbers that\nwas a third of actually energy _consumption_ , the rest going for heat and\ntransport. (That was for the UK.)\n\nNot that I'm saying liquid-salt batteries is are a bad thing; if they work,\nthey'll fill a much-needing-filling hole in our energy infrastructure. But\nthey only solve a small part of the problem.\n\n~~~\nyk\nBut electricity is in some sense the highest quality energy. You can easily\nreplace heating with a resistor and combustion engines with electrical motors,\nwhere the reverse is usually much harder.\n\n~~~\ndredmorbius\nBetter to swap heat exchanges or induction heating for resistors.\n\nBut electrical applications require access to ample amounts of demand-\nfollowing supply. An inherent challenge with existing models.\n\n------\ncinquemb\n_That is, unless declining battery costs make storing PV power more\neconomical. James Nelson, a California-­based energy modeler with the Union of\nConcerned Scientists, says this intrasolar race will be good for the\nenvironment: “I’m glad we have multiple technologies that can help the\ntransition from gas power plants.”_\n\nI agree with his remarks in principle, but really, there is far more abundant\nNa/K in the earths crust than the currently touted Li. And the Li would\nprobably go to better use in ~65C melting point salts(by weight LiNO3 5%,NaNO3\n6%,KNO3 23%,CsNO3 44%, Ca(NO3)2 19%, although the Cs would be the limiting\nresource if the competition for Li usage wasn't there)[0].\n\n[0] [http://moscow.sci-\nhub.bz/9b519cf6102a9b10fc60ce9035594865/ra...](http://moscow.sci-\nhub.bz/9b519cf6102a9b10fc60ce9035594865/raade2011.pdf?download=true)\n\n------\ntalos\nYes, they're finally building the solar plant from SimCity 2000!\n\n~~~\nTerr_\nEven on turtle-speed, the sun always shines -- must be a city-ordinance.\n\n------\nrobszumski\nThe most interesting part of a facility like this is that it takes up the same\namount of space as a regular field of solar, but it much more efficient. The\ntrade off though, is the huge tower, which doesn't lend itself to more\npopulated areas.\n\n~~~\ndredmorbius\nCSP works best where your sunlight is intense and rarely obstructed by clouds,\nfog, haze, dust, etc. Pretty much desert.\n\nWhich is precisely where you don't find a whole lot of people.\n\nCooling systems (for the cold end of your Carnot cycle) are a challenge if\nwater's limited, though there's no reason generally nonpotable water, even\nsalt water, could be used for the open loop.\n\n------\nAnimats\nIt will be interesting to see how the numbers work out. This has been proposed\nbefore, but not built at full scale.\n\n~~~\nIndianAstronaut\nThis technology is actively in use in Spain.\n\n[http://www.economist.com/node/13725855](http://www.economist.com/node/13725855)\n\n------\nGustomaximus\nThere is a plant using molten salt storage in Spain since 2009 if interested;\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andasol_Solar_Power_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andasol_Solar_Power_Station)\n\n------\nlifeisstillgood\nFantastically the UK just signed an agreement with China to let China build a\nfission plant in the most populous south east, with the usual capital cost and\ntotal lack of realistic decommissioning plans, and still the price planned for\nthe next thirty years is already above all our other sources\n\nNice to know the govt. is still on the ball\n\n/sarcasm\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: How are you productive without a computer? - singularity2001\nImagine it&#x27;s a lovely day, you want to spend it outside and still boost your company (or project). What can you do? (If you exclude talking and reading)\n======\nbaccheion\nA large (artist's) sketchpad, brainwave entrainment (or silence), and time\nspent thinking, reflecting, synthesizing, etc.\n\nAs someone who's been constantly on the computer since I was 12 (30 now), I\nlearned early on that it's good to know when I'm spinning in circles blindly\nmore than progressing, and to then move away from it to a quiet place (maybe\nI'll pace around the living room, or work at the kitchen table), then work in\n\"low tech silence.\"\n\nAs a programmer/designer, there tends to be a lot of conceptual thinking and\nsynthesis involved with what I'm doing, which can often be done (better, even)\naway from the computer. When I'm on the computer, I'm either learning,\ndoing/implementing, or screwing around. Deep thinking happens (better)\nelsewhere.\n\n~~~\nJoeAltmaier\nI circle the parking lot, or the block if its a hard problem. Once I went\nclear around an 80-acre field before I had it solved (why the belly button on\nour spherical projection of 2D data).\n\n------\nNooance\nI'm currently sitting on a beach, in the shade, reading this post on my phone.\n(And also reading up and planning the marketing for my startup, and probably\nwriting a Facebook post and a blog post soon. Edit: Nope, still reading HN.\nIt's getting cold though. Should've brought a blanket.)\n\nI wouldn't universally recommend typing on your phone, but I'm (relatively)\nfast at it, and I can do it wherever. The limiting factor is formulating and\nsuch anyway, for me.\n\nMy current view: [https://m.imgur.com/cMXoY7H](https://m.imgur.com/cMXoY7H)\n\n------\nRUG3Y\nThinking and generating ideas for me is easier without a computer. Computers\nare distracting. The more I practice thinking and writing my ideas down, the\nbetter I become at having thoughts that are useful. It's pretty elementary\nstuff, but I think the conundrum is that it doesn't feel immediately\nproductive. This kind of thinking marinates and adds value to your work over a\nlong period of time, versus something like answering an email, which has\nimmediate results but usually is of little value.\n\n------\nmanibatra\nI would say exercise. A jog or a swim. Exercise has boosted my productivity a\nlot. Enabled me to work longer hours. Helps me be in a better mood and just\nfeel healthy which spills over to my work.\n\n------\nLarryMade2\nSheet of paper and optionally a writing instrument. Otherwise some thing that\nyou can find interesting to observe or study. If failing that, random reading\nmaterial.\n\nIdeas come from anywhere.\n\n------\nstephenr\nI find riding my bike gives me great thinking time (once you have a regular\nroute that you can ride without getting lost/know where to look out for\ndangerous traffic).\n\nAlso, gardening/diy work that's not overly complex can let your mind wander a\nbit. I find it works both ways - I think about solutions to diy/garden\nproblems while at my desk and software problems with a shovel/hammer/etc in my\nhands.\n\n------\npartisan\nI took my notebook out the other day at a coffee shop after my laptop battery\ndied. I sat at an outside table and thought about a performance issue we were\nfacing and came up with a solution in about 15 minutes. That was way more\nproductive than the 15 minutes on my laptop would have been.\n\n------\nnewman8r\nintrospection, meditation, and pondering your big picture - think about your\nproject - what about your project is stressing you out? what can you do\ntomorrow to address the components that you're not comfortable with?\n\n------\nAnimalMuppet\nI use a pen and a pad of paper. But I have to have the right kind of problem -\nmore of a big-picture issue. I can't be trying to do something that requires\nclose interaction with the code.\n\n------\nmeric\nMeditation to keep the mind up for the next day.\n\n------\nmtmail\nI guess that leaves thinking and writing.\n\n~~~\nsingularity2001\nAnd drawing. And recording your promo video ...\n\n------\ntmaly\nI exercise, go for a walk.\n\nI also have a sketch pad where I can work out ideas on paper.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNatural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence [pdf] - haltingproblem\nhttps://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf\n======\nbarli\nI'm a Ukrainian jew.. Good topic :) Are you jewish?\n\n~~~\nhaltingproblem\nNot jewish, interested in the variations amongst individuals and groups of the\nhuman race. I have worked with a number of Ashkenazi Jews in multiple fields\nand have been astonished at the overwhelming proportion (relative to\npopulation). There have been many cultural explanations of the phenomenon\n(e.g. Talmudic education) which I find unconvincing. Genetic selection\nsupported by hundreds of years of cultural practices and socio-political\nconstraints seems most plausible.\n\nQ: are other populations where similar phenomena have played out?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFunding Breakthrough Research: Promises and Challenges of the “ARPA Model” [pdf] - dsr12\nhttp://www.nber.org/chapters/c14096.pdf\n======\ngodelmachine\nCf. →\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17333424](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17333424)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nInternet Society told to halt .org sale by its own advisory council - sohkamyung\nhttps://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/19/internet_society_org_sale/\n======\nocdtrekkie\nIf this sale is successfully prevented, the next step needs to be to identify\nand purge ISOC and ICANN of anyone who negotiated or advocated for this deal.\nNot just because of the corruption issue, but the pure lack of good judgment.\n\nI keep thinking about the fact that first, ICANN was freed of it's tie to the\nUS government, and since then, it's been business deal after business deal to\ncorrupt the domain system.\n\n~~~\nsebazzz\nWe shouldn't be surprised. The whole TLD debacle has been a bit cash grab,\nwhich hasn't been beneficial to anyone but a few. Take the subsequent acquired\ndomain of \".dev\" by Google for instance, which then reserved it for internal\nusage only.\n\n~~~\npacketlost\n.dev is available for public registration... I have one.\n\n~~~\nechelon\n\"vanity\" domains are $200/yr or more\n\nIncluding \"{firstname}.dev\"\n\nNonsense.\n\nIf Google's worried about domain squatters, it controls the TLD rules and can\ncome up with a less moneygrab strategy. Perhaps require a Github account and\nlimit to one domain per customer?\n\nFCFS is fairer than extortion.\n\n~~~\nkick\n_require a GitHub account_\n\nYou do know that there are devs that prefer other code hosting platforms,\nright? GitHub is a proprietary service that's generally terrible for\ndevelopers.\n\n~~~\nechelon\n> GitHub is a proprietary service that's generally terrible for developers.\n\nIn what way? I find it incredibly awesome.\n\n------\nmetaphor\nSo if I'm understanding this correctly...even if the Chapters Advisory Council\nformally recommends NOGO on the sale (which they haven't officially voted on\nyet), ISOC would not be legally bound in any way to bend the knee, and a\nhypothetical board decision to move forward with the sale anyways--assuming\nICANN blessings--would risk organizational implosion stemming from the rage of\nits chapters followed by unfolding of a fragile justification for its tax\nexempt charity status?\n\n~~~\nmatthewheath\nYes.\n\n------\nmxuribe\nThis whole situation is ridiculous. We need an alternative to all this\ncentralized control, and we need it now.\n\n~~~\nrasengan\n> We need an alternative to all this centralized control, and we need it now.\n\nThe Handshake Naming System [1] provides a decentralized option, works\ndirectly with the existing legacy system so there will be 0 difficulty in the\ntransition, and it’s usable right now [2]!\n\nJust install hsd [3] and point your resolution to localhost to join the\nmovement to an internet owned by the people.\n\n[1] [https://handshake.org](https://handshake.org)\n\n[2] [https://hnscan.com/names](https://hnscan.com/names)\n\n[3] [https://github.com/handshake-org/hsd](https://github.com/handshake-\norg/hsd)\n\n~~~\njude-\nWhat happens when Ethos starts running their own mining software (or bribes\nexisting miners) in order to jack up prices for .org?\n\n~~~\nrasengan\nIn Handshake, rather than renting your domain from .org or .com, you own your\ntld.\n\nThis means that nobody will be able to charge you for using your own name. No\nmore rent seeking or getting taxed by a pseudo government of the internet.\n\n~~~\ndanShumway\n> In Handshake, rather than renting your domain from .org or .com, you own\n> your tld.\n\nGiven the conversation we had on\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22312014](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22312014),\nI think this claim is leaving out a lot of information. Handshake is not\noptimized for ordinary people to buy TLDs the same way they buy .com domains.\n\n\\- There's no market information I can find about what a TLD will cost on\naverage.\n\n\\- Purchasing a TLD will take at least 5 days at a minimum, with no guarantee\nthat you're going to get the TLD at the end.\n\n\\- Auctions are blind, so you have almost no guarantees at all -- you'll just\nhave to guess what the market value is.\n\n\\- The intention is still for TLD owners to be able to sell access to\nsubdomains, which will enable the exact same rent seeking and exploitation.\nThe only difference is that there'll be no regulation on the rent seekers.\n\n\\- Given that subdomains allow us to repeat names (myname.com vs myname.org vs\nmyname.io), having one TLD system is going to be a _decrease_ in the number of\navailable domains, not an increase. The increase comes from the fact that\nwe'll have a ton of TLDs and people will rent subdomains on them (see above).\n\nThat's not to say Handshake might not still be a good idea in the sense that\nit increases competition overall, but I think it's borderline deceptive to say\nthat everyone is just going to own a TLD. Registering a TLD in Handshake may\nend up being significantly more complicated and significantly more costly than\nbuying a .org domain today -- especially once the good names get used up and\nnew users are effectively forced to rent from existing owners or compete in\nblind auctions over much more limited resources.\n\nI'm a little bit irritated at this comment, because I've followed Handshake\nfor a while and it's been really hard to get concise, clear information about\nhow it works, even from the main project website. People don't understand the\nproduct being offered, and Handshake advocates keep posting very vague\nstatements about how problems are just 'solved'. And whenever I dig into those\nclaims and try to find out how they're solved, I find out that the\nimplementation details aren't as clear cut.\n\nI _want_ a project like Handshake to succeed, but y'all need to be a lot more\nup-front about the tradeoffs.\n\n~~~\nrasengan\n> Registering a TLD in Handshake may end up being significantly more\n> complicated and significantly more costly than buying a .org domain today\n\nIt’s significantly easier than the process is today. It’s very hard to get a\nTLD from ICANN as the process consists of a non refundable application fee of\n185k with no guarantees you’ll be approved.\n\n> There's no market information I can find about what a TLD will cost on\n> average.\n\nRather than artificial set costs, the market will dictate this.\n\n> The intention is still for TLD owners to be able to sell access to\n> subdomains, which will enable the exact same rent seeking and exploitation.\n\nPeople can either register their own TLDs or choose one owned by someone who\ndoesn’t want to gouge people.\n\n> Auctions are blind, so you have almost no guarantees at all -- you'll just\n> have to guess what the market value is.\n\nYes, and every bidder will have to be serious about wanting to win a domain\ninstead of squatting every last domain.\n\nI appreciate your comments, and understand your concerns. I would be irritated\ntoo if I couldn’t find information about how this worked. Unfortunately, all\nthe details (like Bitcoin was at the beginning) are buried in technical papers\nand developer docs. Luckily, Handshake is a community owned, community run\nproject, and comments like yours help to propel the project forward and bring\nthe explanation that people deserve.\n\nThank you for your help and questions, and please keep them coming!\n\n~~~\ndanShumway\n> Rather than artificial set costs, the market will dictate this.\n\nBut you're coming into this conversation claiming that Handshake is going to\ndemocratize TLDs, that anyone will be able to buy one. We don't really know\nthat the average cost of a TLD won't spike up to a thousand dollars, right? We\ndon't know that every fortune 500 company in the world and every government in\nthe world won't step in and snatch up every auction that gets posted. By\ndesign, there's no way for us to stop them from doing that.\n\nThere are very plausible scenarios here where ordinary people will not be able\nto buy TLDs under Handshake. Meanwhile, the worst case pricing scenario for\nthe .com domain market, even with all of the centralization problems, is that\nit ends up costing $10-20 more per year over the 5-10 years.\n\nI'm not saying that there aren't advantages to letting the market decide, and\nI'm not saying that the worst-case scenario will necessarily happen. It might\nbe great. But I am saying that people learning about Handshake for the first\ntime are looking at it as a drop-in replacement for .com, and it's decidedly\nnot. I'm skeptical anyone has any idea what price or availability is going to\nbe.\n\n> or choose one owned by someone who doesn’t want to gouge people.\n\nWithout protocol-level migration tools between TLDs this is still\ncentralization. I'm still stuck relying on a rented product owned by a private\nindividual that I can move away from.\n\nRemember, when .com and .org came out, they were also owned by an organization\nthat didn't want to gouge people.\n\nThe decentralization benefits of Handshake are entirely encapsulated in\nordinary people owning their own TLDs. We really shouldn't be talking about\nrented subdomains at all, rented subdomains are the problem that Handshake was\nadvertised as solving.\n\n> Unfortunately, all the details (like Bitcoin was at the beginning) are\n> buried in technical papers and developer docs.\n\nFor what it's worth, Handshake isn't the only project of its type that\nstruggles with this. It was similarly difficult to find out how projects like\nIPFS really worked.\n\n~~~\nrasengan\n> We don't know that every fortune 500 company in the world and every\n> government in the world won't step in and snatch up every auction that gets\n> posted. By design, there's no way for us to stop them from doing that.\n\nThere is a scarcity of coins which will help to prevent this. Whenever you bid\non a name, your coins are further locked up until the end of the auction.\n\n> Remember, when .com and .org came out, they were also owned by an\n> organization that didn't want to gouge people.\n\nNo I don’t remember this - it never happened. Quick history lesson: It was 50\ndollars to get a .com or any name, and later 35 dollars. Network solutions had\na monopoly on it.\n\n> The decentralization benefits of Handshake are entirely encapsulated in\n> ordinary people owning their own TLDs.\n\nAbsolutely! In addition, it serves to solve issues with the CA system. It\ndemocratizes ownership of the internet and makes it safer.\n\n------\nstjohnswarts\nThis whole thing is ridiculous. It makes me both laugh and cry. Selling org to\nan \"unavailable name\" private equity firm is just ironic to the extreme.\n\n~~~\nNotSammyHagar\nIt's worse than ironic. It's crony capitalism. An inside deal with no benefit\nto external people, where the transaction will make money for the insiders.\nIt's all hidden because it's corrupt.\n\n------\nscarejunba\nWell, I have to say I'm quite proud of everyone who stood up and made a fuss\nover this. It is blatant corruption. Keep the good fight going, folks!\n\n~~~\nce4\n> Was...\n\nIs it over yet? From how i read it, no:\n\n'[The internet society] will vote this month on whether to approve a formal\nrecommendation that the society “not proceed [with the sale] unless a number\nof conditions are met.”'\n\n~~~\nrocqua\nThose conditions require the release of new information and, I would assume,\nre-scrutinizing the decision based on that new information.\n\nThis information should reveal that indeed this is a fraudulent sale. If the\ninformation does not reveal that, there is less of a reason for blocking the\nsale. Really, what should be reversed is the decision to remove price-hike\ncaps on the .org TLD.\n\n------\nhaidersf\nI wonder if this is a deliberate strategy ... I .e. first advisory council\nhalts, does their DD, and then says its all good... which they can then point\nto and create a defense. Prob not the case but can't rule anything out.\n\n------\nwillart4food\nOnce the deal goes through someone from the ISOC will be getting a high-paying\njob at Ethos. Wait for it . . .\n\n~~~\ngrumple\nAlready happened:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethos_Capital](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethos_Capital)\n\n~~~\ndwnvoted2hell\nIsn't this level of quid pro quo corruption punishable? Or does nobody even\ncare anymore?\n\n~~~\nTheFiend7\nEveryone is in bed with each other. They all inside trade, they all bribe each\nother for different leverages. And a lot of plebeians support it ironically.\n\n------\nnotlukesky\nSnake biting it’s own tail:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Stellar.js - markdalgleish\nhttp://markdalgleish.com/projects/stellar.js/\n\n======\nwolfeidau\nHacking around with it now looks awesome, especially love the background\neffect on the documentation page.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAuto Smiley Generator - huhtenberg\nhttp://fffff.at/auto-smiley\n\n======\ncallahad\nReminds me of Andi Albrecht's mercurial hook [0] which posts a photo from your\nwebcam to Twitter whenever a merge fails.\n\n[0]: [http://andialbrecht.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/when-merging-\nfa...](http://andialbrecht.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/when-merging-fails/)\n\n------\ntoisanji\n:) just tried it, its pretty cool, but has a lot of false negatives. Opening\nmy mouth was enough to trigger a smile and I can't even make a real smile. It\nwas cool that it have a false trigger when I frowned.\n\n~~~\neam\nSo :D => :) ?\n\n~~~\nalagu\nI don't think it is able to differentiate type of smileys. Only :). No :o, :p\nor :D\n\nBut damn cool app :)\n\n------\nhkuo\nHilarious. Doesn't seem that useful as evidenced by him not being able to not\nsmile. He should make an LOL version of this though!\n\n~~~\nnym\nThere are all sorts of uses! For example, you could make a site called\nsmilelinks that is automatically generated based off the webpages that make\nyou smile. My guess is cuteoverload would dominate the list.\n\n------\nkhelloworld\nNice demo to learn openFrameworks from. Cool app too.\n\n------\nnym\n:)\n\n------\napsurd\nUpvoted for happiness inducing factor! yay =)\n\n~~~\ncalcnerd256\nIs that akin to saying \"It made me smile.\"?\n\n~~~\napsurd\nyes.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFor Big Tech to retain government protections, they must stop the censorship - Melchizedek\nhttps://www.city-journal.org/html/platform-or-publisher-15888.html\n======\ntomohawk\nYeah, government needs to remove the protections from youtube and the like.\nThey are trying to have their cake and eat it too. They are not like telcos.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nYou’re Too Cheap to Fly Faster - benjaminfox\nhttps://medium.com/lift-and-drag/7885a299bca2\n======\nvidarh\nA big part of the problem is that it is not just about price. New York to\nLondon is 5-6 hours. But back when I did business travel regularly\n(SFO<->LHR), the door to door time for me on an 11 hour flight was 16 hours\nafter a lot of practice. So on a 5-6 hour flight, half would likely be spent\non either end (and this is without checked luggage). At that point saving 2-3\nhours in-air is not making enough of a dent in the travel time for it to be\nattractive to pay all that much more.\n\nMuch less saving 10% of the time.\n\n~~~\nharisenbon\nCompletely agreed. I mainly fly internationally, and while shaving 2 hours off\na 8 hour flight would be wonderful, it doesn't help me, as the majority of my\ntime is spent in airports between the flights.\n\nFor me to get to where my family lives (one layover), it takes me:\n\n1 Hour drive to airport\n\n2 Hours because it's an international flight\n\n8 Hour Flight\n\n2 Hours Immigration / Baggage\n\n1 Hour Re-checkin\n\n3-5 Hour Layover\n\n30 Minute Commuter Flight\n\n30 Minutes for baggage\n\n30 Minutes drive home\n\nSo for my entire flight, the flying (even on a 8 hour flight) is less than\nhalf of my total time. By lowering the amount of time between connections, or\nlessening the amount of connections that need to be made, you can get greater\ngains than by flying faster planes.\n\nCheaper planes and cheaper flights could actually make overall flying time\nSHORTER, because there would be more planes in the sky, and less time between\nfights.\n\n\\-----------------------\n\nLong rambling story:\n\nWhen I first rode the bullet train back in college, I thought it would be like\nriding an airplane, at least from a management perspective. My friends and I\nbought the ticket a week in advance, made sure we were packed, and got to the\nstation a good hour in advance of my train leaving.\n\nIt was only then that I realized that the security for getting on a bullet\ntrain is \"show me your ticket\" and that if you miss your train, you can just\nsit in the non-reserved seating on the next available train that will be along\nin under 5 minutes. (Back then it was more like 10, but still)\n\nWhile you can't really compare trains and planes (and automobiles) in these\nsituations, it still makes me think that the solution to faster travel is not\nfaster planes, but better infrastructure and administration for travel.\n\n~~~\nzanny\nI wish we had more trains. Not just for passengers, but in general. They just\nget the best cost per mile per pound were gonna get on planet Earth, since the\nphysics of cars requires constant acceleration / deceleration and 2 dimensions\nof movement, and planes require lift.\n\nI'd _love_ a train from Miami to Boston that hits all the major cities and\naverages something between the terrible 80 mph Amtrack trains and the way too\nexpensive per mile (or km in a more civilized country =P) bullet trains in\nKorea or Japan.\n\nAlso, that doesn't cost $200 and doesn't take 2 days trip. It should be so\nmuch cheaper taking a vacation on wheels than paying the cost to get luggage\nairborne, and it really is the infrastructure being awful.\n\nWow, a round trip ticket to Austin is around $800. That is just unacceptable.\n\n~~~\nnewbie12\nThe fundamental problem is that the ground experience is managed by the\nairports, which are usually unionized governmental entities with little\nconcern for the customer's time, and by the TSA. Similarly, despite very\ncompelling economics, interstate passenger rail is a failure in the US because\nthe government corporation Amtrak has a monopoly, deals with some of the most\nabsurd unions in America, and doesn't seriously innovate.\n\n~~~\nseanmcdirmid\nThis post is drool. \"Blame the unions\" is the new right wing \"blame Jews\" I\nguess.\n\nMost airports in the states are reasonably run and don't waste our time,\ncompared to many other European and Asian countries.\n\nPassenger rail doesn't work well in the states given the distances involved,\nwe just aren't that dense. Where it does make sense in the eastern corridor,\nAmtrak is able to make a profit. Amtrak long haul routes however exist only\nfor those afraid to fly.\n\nLong haul routes in china only make money because they have much more volume\nthan us, and people who don't mind traveling 2 days from shanghai to urumuqi\nto save on a 6 hour flight.\n\n------\ngeorgemcbay\nThe economics behind the failure of the Concorde are far more complicated than\n\"people didn't buy enough tickets\". There were an extremely limited amount of\nroutes (basically you could fly out of NYC or Washington DC to either London\nor Paris), mostly due to the problem of sonic booms, but also because the\nplane design was such that there was essentially a minimum travel distance for\nit to ever be reasonably economically viable. It isn't like there was a\nSouthwest offering Concorde flights from LA to SFO at 1.5x or 2.0x times the\nprice of a normal ticket. The Concorde actually sold pretty well given how\nlimited the routes were until the entire airline industry started to crater\naround the turn of the century (9/11, etc).\n\nThere was also a lot of politics behind the Concorde discontinuation that had\nnothing to do with pure economics.\n\nHaving said all of that, our cheapness does seem to be doing harm to a lot of\nindustries over time, where if you want to buy a new product your choices are\nlike a dozen shitty things made by the lowest bidder in China or 2 \"premium\"\nchoices that are only marginally better than the cheap shit at like 5 times\nthe cost. Something similar to the capitalistic middle-class squeeze we have\nbeen going through seems to apply to product choices as well.\n\n~~~\nomni\nI can think of at least 113 other reasons as well. I'd imagine a fatal crash\nwould have had much more impact on consumer attitudes towards the Concorde\nthan it would towards other, more \"conventional\" plane models.\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590>\n\n~~~\nmortenjorck\nIt's strange. The Concorde crash was clearly due to a cascade of safety\nprotocol violations, from Continental's runway debris and subsequent skipped\nrunway inspection, to Air France's overweight takeoff, yet the Concorde\nitself, despite a spotless record, became the target of public outrage.\n\n~~~\nbreser\nThe safety issues were not the full reason that the Concorde was grounded\npermanently. It was grounded temporarily until the design issues raised by the\ncrash were resolved by design changes (Kevlar lining in fuel tanks, burst\nresistant tires). If safety was the real driver, the improvements would never\nhave been made and deployed.\n\nThe real problem was that the Concorde was a 1960's design in 2003 with only\n20 units produced. As such it did not continue to receive upgrades and other\nrefinements that other aircraft do. Compare what a 737-100 looked like and\nwhat a 737 you'd fly on today looks like. That's just the visual changes,\nthink of the improvements you can't see. Like improved cockpit controls. With\nonly 20 units parts were expensive. Airbus didn't want to support the aircraft\neither.\n\nI'm sure there was some decrease in passengers after the crash. But I don't\nthink there was a public outrage. With time the numbers would have recovered.\nThey retired the plan not even a full year after restoring service.\n\nAs I understand it Air France was selling tickets at less than their cost to\noperate it. While both BA and AF announced the cancelations at the same time,\nI wouldn't be surprised if Air France was the group that decided to pull the\nplug first. Taking out half the planes would have made the maintenance even\nmore expensive for BA.\n\nFinally, Richard Branson tried to buy the BA Concorde fleet and continue\noperating it. Branson is not an idiot at business, he obviously thought there\nwas a market there. For some reason that's not clear BA refused to sell to\nhim. Which leads to the other possible reason for retirement, the airlines\nfigured out they could make more profit selling subsonic first class than\nConcorde tickets. Not selling to Branson prevented him from having the\nsupersonic competitive advantage.\n\n------\nzurn\nWe're not nearly cheap enough: The plane ticket price doesn't capture the cost\nof flying, the majority of which comes from the greenhouse gas emissions.\nFurther working in the wrong direction is the tax freeness of jet fuel and the\n2-3x amplified effect of co2 when injected directly to the upper atmosphere.\n\n~~~\nzanny\nI have to think the only reason trains pretty much died as an industry in the\nlast hundred years is due to government fiddling or poor infrastructure\nmaintenance. In a trifecta of balancing cost to time to carrying weight,\ntrains should almost always win, with cars never winning in any of them and\nplanes winning only at time investment.\n\nYet we all drive cars (which win in being personal transport where free wheels\nin 2d on tarmac is much more portable than steel wheels on tracks in 1d) even\nthough they should cost significantly more, take longer (if we had even a\nreasonable bullet train at 150 - 160 mph, not even close to the 260mph\nJapanese / Korean lines) and carry less (especially compared against fuel\nconsumption or just the raw bearing weight of car frames and rubber tires\nagainst rail cars).\n\nAn amtrack ticket from NY to Austin is $800 round way, and 50 hours each way.\nI can rent a car for $100 a day, and do that drive in 40 hours. So I save\ntime, it costs the same when you factor in gas, and the only benefit is I can\nread a book on the train. Which is a nice plus, but not double the price\nworth.\n\n~~~\nyew\nTrains _didn't_ die as an industry. Actually the US has an exceedingly good\n(privately-owned) freight rail system, compared to the rest of the world\n(assuming you're talking about the US from the Amtrak reference).\n\nWhat did happen is that Amtrak was displaced by said freight rail system. It\ndoesn't really own any rail - everything is under contract, with freight\ngetting first priority contractually. Though it also has other issues.\n\n~~~\nams6110\nMoving freight by train is also a lot more efficient than moving people by\ntrain. Freight doesn't need room to walk around, doesn't need to eat, doesn't\nneed to sleep, doesn't need bathrooms.\n\n~~~\nvenus\nThe tohoku shinkansen in Japan can have trainsets with up to 1600 people in\none 16-car train, and can slam them down the line at 250+kph, one every 3 or 4\nminutes. A couple of E5s could do 1400 people at 320. If that isn't efficient\nthen I'd love to know what is!\n\n~~~\nseanmcdirmid\nJapan is a very compact country. Lovely for anyone in the DC-Boston corridor,\ndoesn't scale to most of the states however. Consider how there isn't much of\nanything between San Francisco and LA.\n\nLove the Shinkansen though. My preferred method of travel within Japan.\n\n~~~\nvenus\nThe \"compact\" excuse is a cop-out, IMO. LA and SF are two massive cities well\nwithin high speed train range. Of course there's nothing in between them -\nthere's no transport! You're thinking backwards. Put a station 150km outside\nof SF with a 30 minute commute and do you think there'll still be nothing\nthere in 5 years?\n\nMy point is that these lines would be considered viable in Japan - more than\nviable; completely obvious. The fact we can't seem to build them - can't even\ntake the idea seriously - is more about the nature of our society than\nanything to do with geography.\n\n~~~\nseanmcdirmid\nIts not really that though, there is nothing between LA and SF because the\nland is not really suitable for big cities. Japan is quite lucky because much\nof the island is unsuitable for habitation pushing many of the cities into a\nnarrow band (e.g. Tokyo - Osaka). You can't really fight geography, and you\nwork with what you got.\n\n> Put a station 150km outside of SF with a 30 minute commute and do you think\n> there'll still be nothing there in 5 years?\n\nAt Shinkansen ticket/pass prices? Really? Depends if we can become as rich as\nthe Japanese. I also find this to be a bad outcome; if you work in SF, why not\njust live in SF? Do we really need to build a 150km-away bedroom community?\n\n~~~\nvenus\n> Japan is quite lucky because much of the island is unsuitable for habitation\n> pushing many of the cities into a narrow band\n\nLucky? How is that lucky? I believe this is the first time I have ever heard\nsomeone describing a lack of habitable land as \"lucky\".\n\nIt's true that in the last 50 or so years, the USA has become extremely\nsuburbanised, totally reliant on cars for transport, which makes it hard to\npick \"winners\" as to where gets a station, but you can't just use that as an\nexcuse to do nothing!\n\n> At Shinkansen ticket/pass prices? Really? Depends if we can become as rich\n> as the Japanese.\n\nThe Japanese are far from \"rich\". Anyway, a commuter pass pass from, say,\nUtsunomiya to Tokyo only costs a few hundred, and is anyway paid by employer.\nThe alternative is spending several times that on housing, in a situation of\nintense competition for limited housing stock in a viable commuting range.\n\n> if you work in SF, why not just live in SF? Do we really need to build a\n> 150km-away bedroom community?\n\nI don't understand this answer. Obviously, not everyone can live in the CBD of\nthe city they work in. That's the problem fast transport solves in this\nsituation. What's your better idea?\n\nAnyway I'm not blindly recommending anything the Japanese do. I'm just saying\nthat fast transport has the effect of greatly expanding the viable urban\nliving of a major city.\n\n------\najhit406\nThe article is correct to a large extent. But I'm surprised it didn't mention\nthe elite group who fly considerably faster: private jet owners and corporate\njet \"beneficiaries\".\n\nThese individuals are not nearly as price sensitive as the average consumer,\nand face much larger opportunity costs when sitting around at the airport or\nmoving slowly in flight.\n\nWith some of the newer (and very expensive) private jets like the Gulfstream\n650 and Citation X, passengers benefit from an approximately 15-20% flight\ntime savings (depending on the length of the trip and desired fuel\nefficiency). This is a considerable amount of time for most c-level execs of\nlarge companies.\n\nHowever, where I personally see the biggest time advantage in flying private\nis the process of actually boarding and securing the plane. Private jets and\nsmaller airports are orders of magnitude more efficient.\n\nPulling up to a hangar at Van Nuys instead of waiting 2 hrs in the delta\ncheck-in line at LAX is well worth the extra money to the ultra rich. Time\nfrom pulling into the airport in your car to takeoff can be as little as 10\nminutes.\n\nIn the late 1990's, as research on super sonic flight was becoming very\npopular, there seemed to be a divergence in thought: One camp was for larger,\nslower, but more comfortable airplanes; and the other for smaller, sleeker,\nuncomfortable supersonic rollercoaster rides through the stratosphere.\n\nIt would be interesting to see airlines' market research around higher speed\naircraft, and whether there was enough demand for super sonic flights. My\nintuition tells me they did perform this research, and the data told them that\nit wasn't economically feasible.\n\nWith the introduction of the A380 and other mega jumbos on the way, it became\nclear that the conclusion is that we'd all prefer to fly slower, but more\ncomfortably. Though, while it appears we only have 2 market segments, super\nexpensive and super cheap, there are some companies who are innovating on the\nfringes to make private jets more accessible.\n\nNetJets and FlexJet are the first few that come to mind. Maybe there's a YC\ncompany that can further optimize this market? I for one would love to travel\nout of smaller airports if there were more options...\n\n~~~\nstarpilot\n> It would be interesting to see airlines' market research around higher speed\n> aircraft, and whether there was enough demand for super sonic flights. My\n> intuition tells me they did perform this research, and the data told them\n> that it wasn't economically feasible.\n\nThis is why Boeing's Sonic Cruiser (mentioned in the article) was canceled.\nThe jump in drag approaching the sound speed cascades into more complex and\ncostlier aircraft engineering, which ends up in the fare. Lockheed's Skunk\nWorks also shopped around a quiet supersonic platform (not subject to the\nsonic boom flight restrictions in the US) biz jet to Wall Street banks in the\nearly '00s, who were the most avid flyers of the Concorde, but there wasn't\nenough interest to fund it.\n\n> there are some companies who are innovating on the fringes to make private\n> jets more accessible\n\nThis would be air taxi companies like DayJet, which went bankrupt due to the\nlate '00s recession. In an age when most people comparison shopped for\nairfares $20-50 cheaper, offering a seat costing $200+ more for slightly\nshorter flights wasn't a great value proposition, and still isn't. Better\npreboarding and seating on the planes is somewhat taken care of already by\nbusiness+ class (you also get those airline clubs in the departure areas).\nThis small chunk of benefits still costs too much for most consumers, with the\nvast majority of first/second class tickets acquired through flyer miles or\ncorporate sponsorship. Air taxi seating would cost even more than first class\ndue to reduced economy of scale. Would this be worth it to skip the TSA line?\nI'm not sure. Kavoo is a new air taxi operator that flies (slower) turboprops\nthough.\n\n> I for one would love to travel out of smaller airports if there were more\n> options...\n\nThis was the original goal of Eclipse Aviation's Eclipse 500 (in fact the EA\nlogo depicted travel between regional airports like Van Nuys, bypassing hubs\nsuch as LAX). I think the higher energy requirements and generally greater\ndistances of air travel magnify cost differences in small transit vs mass\ntransit (taxicab vs. bus), making jet air taxis cost prohibitive at this time.\n\nDisclosure: Former Eclipse Aviation engineering intern\n\n------\nEnsorceled\nThe worst part of my flight, and most of the time the largest part, is the\nHome->Gate->Plane part. Why would I pay to optimize the least unpleasant part\nof the journey?\n\nGive me a way to skip the whole \"everybody is a possible terrorist\" fiasco and\nnow we're talking ...\n\n~~~\nmichaelfeathers\nFew people now remember it, but back in the earlier days of commercial\naviation flying was a breeze. You could walk up to a counter, buy a ticket,\nwalk to the gate and walk on.\n\nIt was that way for a long while.\n\n~~~\nEnsorceled\nYeah, I remember the days of \"arrive 30 minutes early for international\nflights just to be on the safe side\". Now the \"rule\" is you can't even fly if\nyou arrive that \"late\" for an international flight.\n\n------\nrdmckenzie\nNot only are we to cheep to fly fast but we've also banned supersonic flight\nover most \"civilized\" land masses. There are only three or so US mainland\nairbases where it is legal to break mach 1 due to the fact that the voting\npublic doesn't want to listen to sonic booms. Thanks to relatively new \"shaped\nsonic boom\" technology it is possible to massively reduce the acustic profile\nof supersonic flight but the damage is done. We're too cheap to fly fast and\nthe technology which we need to fly fast still doesn't come cheap.\n\n------\nphy2\nHard to believe an article on this topic fails to mention airline\nderegulation[1]. When an industry transitions from mandated prices to open\nprice competition the profit formula changes. It is logical that carriers\nwould prefer efficient, reliable, high capacity planes over faster\nalternatives post deregulation. Also, given the small number of plane\nmanufacturers and the huge costs of R&D to bring out a new plane, it is\nunlikely a manufacturer would invest in building a supersonic jet that does\nnot meet the current operating needs of its clients. Maybe Elon will do planes\nnext? The average altitude of Tesla and Space X's vehicles is probably around\n35k feet...\n\n[1]<http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/AirlineDeregulation.html>\n\n------\njostmey\nTravelling from city to city may indeed take longer than we would like. But\nthe real innovation isn't making airliners faster - it is in getting people\nfrom their location and onto the aircraft sooner. The lengthiest leg of the\nflight to me is the time spent waiting at the gate.\n\n------\nchasing\nYes, I'd rather flights be faster than cheaper. But for most people, saving a\nfew hours isn't worth spending a few hundred or thousand dollars extra on a\nflight. Which sounds kind of reasonable, to be honest.\n\n~~~\nrpedroso\nI fly about once a month for personal visits. While I'd love to reach my\ndestination faster, I struggle enough to afford tickets at their current\nprices. If I'm not prepared to spend $30 for a better seat, I'm definitely not\nabout to spend a small fortune for a few extra hours at my destination.\n\nI use Hipmunk to find flights, and by default they sort results by \"Least\nAgony\" -- which means least total flight time / stops. Those tickets are\ngenerally more expensive, and I often have to sacrifice agony for price.\n\nNot everyone can afford fast.\n\n------\nphilsmith35\nWhen we purchase a plane ticket, we aren't given an option for speed; only\nprice. Therefore, we optimize that variable.\n\n~~~\nimjk\nActually trip duration is an option, and one which I regularly prioritize.\n\n~~~\nrocky1138\nYes but trip duration in terms of number of stops or speed of the jet that\ntakes you there?\n\n~~~\nmikeash\nTotal number of hours from start to finish is commonly displayed. If you want\nless time traveling, it's trivial to choose that when it's available.\n\n------\ngilgoomesh\nI live in Australia and occasionally have to fly to the U.S. for business (the\nPacific flight alone is a 15 hour trip one way and an 18 hour trip return). I\nwould lower my consulting fees and channel the money into my airfares if I\ncould get a flight that would do it in half the time. 24+ hours travel time\n(including connecting flights airports and taxis) is torture.\n\nSadly, I don't think I'll get the opportunity for anything quicker in my\nlifetime. I predict there will be humans on Mars before a supersonic cross-\nPacific passenger aircraft.\n\n------\ndnautics\nfor many routine flights (transcontinental vs transoceanic) this isn't the\nonly reason - sonic booms are a problem. And even if you could go from LA to\nNYC in two hours (versus four), then also add in an invariant hour and a half\ntime you spend going through security, waiting for the plane, boarding, and\nreally the difference is not enough to justify the added cost.\n\n------\ngreatquux\nPick 2 out of 3: cheap, fast, good. I guess we've chosen cheap and good.\nThat's why I don't fly United. :)\n\n~~~\nvidarh\nI used to always fly United between LHR and SFO when I flew regularly. Their\nstandard in every class was poorer than Virgin Atlantic or BA for example, but\ncontrary to those United at least had one big advantage:\n\nTo get upgrades with Virgin or BA was like winning a lottery. It happens\nrarely, and getting up in the frequent flier tiers takes a _lot_ of flying and\nusually buying more expensive tickets. And the benefits are relatively\nlimited. But when you get bumped up with either one it's the royal treatment.\n\nUnited was more basic when comparing on a class by class basis: Crappier\nseats, not as good food, etc. But after two returns on a flight as long as\nLHR<->SFO I was at a sufficient tier in their frequent fliers program to get\nautomatic free upgrades to premium economy, and a miles multiplier that meant\nI'd get a free business class upgrade every 3rd leg from then on (and often\nmore frequently than that, if there were free business seats), as well as\npriority boarding etc.. I'd still pick Virgin or BA for \"one off\" occasional\nflights any day, but United was great for frequent long haul flights.\n\n~~~\nubernostrum\nUnited has changed, and not in a way that would make this easier. Now they\noffer paid first-class and \"premium economy\" upgrades to passengers at or\nshortly before check-in, usually steeply discounted, and consensus from\npassengers with status seems to be that A) it's not offered to them and B)\nit's offered _before_ status upgrades are applied, so if first class fills up\nfrom the cheap upgrades, there will not be any status upgrades on the flight.\n\n~~~\nseanmcdirmid\nDoes United even offer first class on international flights though? I thought\nthey only offered business class on international flights (first class on\ndomestic flights, but so what?).\n\n~~~\njbuzbee\nYeah. United has both business and first on International flights. Having been\nin both, I'd say that there isn't a whole lot of difference though. But In\nboth cases, I just love those lay-flat seats when doing a 14-hour flight\nbetween LA and Sydney...\n\n------\natdt\nShaving a few hours won't open new markets or otherwise fundamentally alter\nour relationship with distance. It's telling that \"convenience\" is the selling\npoint, which implies a difference of degrees rather than kind, and shows a\nlack of ideas of what we could do with this technology.\n\nThe next great hop in transportation would have to be instant or near-instant\nteleportation. And faster jets don't meaningfully bring us closer to that.\n\n~~~\nrationalthug\nWhile cutting time in the air by half may not make a fundamental difference,\ncutting it by five or six times could. Point-to-point sub-orbital services\nhave the potential to do this, though there are challenges for this type of\nflight that bring its difficulties closer to orbital operations than the\n(mostly) straight up and down trajectories that will be flown by Virgin\nGalactic, XCOR, etc.\n\n------\ncafard\nI would also point out that the US considered and rejected the notion of\nbuilding a supersonic passenger plane, in part because of concerns about its\neffect on the upper atmosphere, in part because of the economics. The debate\nabout building took place about the time that the Concorde was under\ndevelopment, i.e. well before much of the HN readership was born.\n\n------\nnegamax\nPoint well made. But I rather see efficiency in airport terminals immediately\nas compared to aeroplane speeds, at least right now. For international flights\nit's a norm to arrive ~1-2 hrs earlier. Sometimes this time is nearly 20-30%\nof the entire flight time and in some extreme cases, may be even more.\n\n------\nvaadu\nArticle talks of mach 5 but fails to mention that our best body designs begin\nto melt at mach 3.\n\n------\nmindcrime\nI'm just waiting for the invention of the Star Trek \"transporter\" or the\nTARDIS.\n\n~~~\ndelinka\nStar Trek's transporters would be excellent. We could recover all that land\nthat's covered in paving, no longer care about location, eliminate the\npollution of today's internal combustion engines...\n\nThe sad thing is that if this could happen in the next decade, I fear it would\nquickly become a target of the entire transportation industry as they scramble\nto lobby for laws to prevent its use. And the same thing would happen for\nTrek's matter replicators.\n\nBut if I've learned anything comparing science fiction and the real world,\nit's that our scientific understanding of the universe comes slowly enough\nthat society adapts. The only notable exception is the near-instant\ncommunication provided by the internet and its effects on \"intellectual\nproperty\" hoarders.\n\n</ramble>\n\n~~~\nmagic_haze\n_If_ we manage to create transporters at all (never mind the next decade), the\nimpact on religion and legislation would be far greater than on the\ntransportation industry. If your body is destroyed and reconstructed, are you\nstill the same person? What if you could make copies? It's just information,\nafter all. And so on...\n\nDo any of the Star Trek episodes investigate this aspect of the transporters?\n\n~~~\ndelinka\nI do not recall any real attention paid to such aspects of the transporter. I\ndo recall, however, the inventor of the device showing up in an episode of\n_Enterprise_ [1] and referring to all the dialog that came up when the device\nwas new; his comment? \"Metaphysical nonsense.\"\n\n[1] - _Star_ _Trek:_ _Enterprise_ episode \"Daedalus\" - Dr. Emory Erickson\naccording to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transporter_(Star_Trek)>\n\n------\ncultureulterior\nBallistic travel is my preferred method.\n\n~~~\ndelinka\nThat's gotta be a helluva kick.\n\n~~~\nangersock\nYep. Flying UDP-packet class.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: What happened to middle-click to open new tab? - rkagerer\nHas anyone else noticed more and more websites break the &quot;open in new tab&quot; middle-click function?<p>Even today&#x27;s Google Doodle forsakes the expected behavior.<p>What&#x27;s responsible for the trend?  Is it the frameworks?  Is it a new generation of developers brought up on iPads and one-button mice?  Is it something else?\n======\nhemlokc\nIt's because iframes suck and don't allow middle-clicks afaik. The Google\nDoodle for today is embedded as an iframe instead of an anchor tag.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHundreds of Chinese iPhone users have had their accounts compromised - SiqingYu\nhttps://technode.com/2018/10/11/china-apple-id-compromised/\n======\nPM_ME_YOUR_CAT\nTL;DR\n\nHundreds of Chinese iPhone users are believed to have had their Apple IDs\ncompromised · TechNode Over 700 Chinese iPhone users have inexplicably had\nmoney deducted from their Apple ID-bound payment channels, with the highest\nbeing RMB 10,000, according to local media.\n\nAlibaba-owned Alipay, whose users were also affected, said that some Apple IDs\nwere stolen, resulting in financial losses.\n\nThe company reached out to Apple to find out the reasons for the theft, with\nApple responding saying that it is addressing the situation.\n\nSome users received Alipay notifications informing them that purchases had\nbeen made in the App Store and Apple Music.\n\nOther payment channels that can be bound to an Apple ID include WeChat Pay,\ndebit card, and credit card.\n\nRecords show that some users' Apple IDs were used to log into devices other\nthan their own to make purchases.\n\nSome users who have attempted to apply for refunds through Apple have been\ntold that reversing the purchases is not possible, even after one user\nrequested assistance from the Shanghai Consumer Protection Committee.\n\nUsed smmry.com for this.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSoftBank Value Fund goes full circle by investing $25B in Saudi - thisisit\nhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-15/softbank-is-said-to-plan-up-to-25-billion-in-saudi-investments-ja146fd5\n======\nthisisit\nThis thing I don't understand - Softbank takes $45B from the country's\nsovereign fund and then turns around to invest $25B in the same country. Why?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWatsapp: Display Picture Privacy - idexterous\nhttp://ganesshkumar.com/?p=33\n\n======\nidexterous\nthe link is broken. follow this <http://ganesshkumar.com/?p=123>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIBM to build brain-like computers - timtrueman\nhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7740484.stm\n\n======\npg\nA headline from the 1950s.\n\n~~~\nivankirigin\nWe know much more about the brain today.\n\nA similar headline can be found for using \"brainlike techniques\" for object\ndetection. <http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/11/2214233>\n\nBut the algorithms in this case are from numenta, jeff hawkin's company. The\nmethodology is:\n\n    \n    \n      1. Study the brain\n      2. Come up with theories on how memory and processing in the brain work\n      3. Write algorithms with the same structure.\n    \n\nI'd call that brain-like.\n\n~~~\njey\nYeah, except that Step 2 is super sketchy and arguably unscientific at this\npoint.\n\n~~~\nivankirigin\nI wouldn't call the thousands of researchers in the field unscientific at all.\nAnd this process is iterative. If you have an algorithm that works, the\nproximity to how the brain actually works is largely irrelevant.\n\n------\ntimtrueman\nHaven't these guys heard of software? I thought the only good reason to do\nsomething in hardware was speed, but maybe I'm just crazy.\n\n~~~\nbchandle\nThe BBC article left out a critical constraint from DARPA. The final\ndeliverable (with the \"complexity of a cat's brain\") isn't just a model or a\nsimulation. It has to be a physical artifact which requires no more than two\nliters of volume and consumes no more than two kilowatts of power (this\ninformation comes from the DARPA BAA). So yes, prototyping will be done in\nsoftware, but to reach that kind of efficiency, drastically new hardware is\ncalled for.\n\nI'm not intimately familiar with IBM's plans, but this is one of the\napplications HP has lined up for the memristor technology they've been working\non (HP is another one of the three prime contractors on the original DARPA\ngrant). The benefit to the HP approach is that data and computation are both\nlocal to the applicable memristor, which is much closer to a neural system.\nThat means no time or energy is wasted shuttling data around and the entire\nsystem state can be updated in parallel.\n\nFor an idea of why this is so exciting, keep in mind that HP plans build\nmemristors at about a density of a trillion per square centimeter, clocked at\nabout a kilohertz. You get the rough equivalent of one floating point\noperation _per memristor per cycle_. At this estimated manufacturing density,\nthe expected performance of these things is on the order of a petaflop per\nsquare centimeter, drawing on the order of tens of watts. It isn't really fair\nto make a comparison to Von Neumann machines since the architecture is so\ndramatically different and so application-specific, but for certain kinds of\ncomputations these new chips will be _vastly_ faster and more efficient.\n\n(for the sake of disclosure, I'm working on the DARPA SyNAPSE project, but not\nwith IBM)\n\n~~~\nkurtosis\nHow can I apply for a job working on this project?\n\n~~~\nbchandle\nWell, it depends. :-)\n\nDrop me an email with some information on where you're coming from and what\nkinds of roles you're looking for and I may be able to point you to the right\npeople. (bchandle at gmail)\n\n------\npchristensen\nCool story, but when I saw the picture (of the cat using the computer), all I\ncould do was think of the LOLCat caption that got cropped out.\n\n\"I can haz brain?\"\n\n\"I thinkz lik computr?\"\n\n\"I'm in ur nural netz, thinkin ur thotz\"\n\nIt got so bad I couldn't finish the article.\n\n------\nkajecounterhack\nI wonder, will the brain-like computers need sleep?\n\n~~~\narjungmenon\nOh yeah. Just like microprocessors can't be left switched on too long due to\nthe risk of transistors melting by overheating/heat-accumulation; similarly\nbrain-like compus will need rest, probably more that traditional comps.\n\n------\narjungmenon\nI think the future is in large-scale parallel computing. They shouldn't be\nwasting their money on this. So working on parallel processing would be the\nmost practical path to attaining this goal.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWeb performance: Cache efficiency exercise - graceofs\nhttps://code.facebook.com/posts/964122680272229/web-performance-cache-efficiency-exercise/\n\n======\nmanigandham\nSide note: It's ridiculous that webpages are often several MBs in size these\ndays, while offering nothing more in value for all that extra weight.\n\n~~~\ntracker1\nIt's hard, in that most sites/webapps aren't hand-crafted components... I'm\nwaist deep in a web application now, that's very difficult to prune... It has\njQueryUI __AND __Bootstrap controls, not to mention a dozen plugins for each.\nIt 's a significant mess to say the least. The main .JS min/merged weighs in\nat over 1mb (down about a mb since I min/merged them) that doesn't include\nsite js, just the libraries (not including jquery's base).\n\nOf course, it's easy to clear that size with some big full-screen splash\nimages, which are more and more common... it is kind of depressing. I really\nappreciate the work the Polymer team has done in creating paper components,\nand would love to see something closer to that for React as a base, most of\nthe Paper/Component bases I've seen are still relatively heavy, with React-\nBootstrap being one of the better ones.\n\nIt's not easy coming into something that's already in place, and harder to\nreign in the proliferation of modules that get added in.\n\n------\nandrewstuart2\nUh, `Last-Modified: $now` doesn't seem to be in any RFC I can find, or any\nother credible sources I could find via Google for that matter.\n\nDefinitely not in RFC 1123, though.\n\n~~~\nademarre\nI'm sure they're using \"$now\" as a variable placeholder for the example, it's\nnot meant to be read as a literal header. (In PHP variables begin with $.)\nThey're not very clear on that though, so your point is valid.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCoffee-Can Radar - ColinWright\nhttp://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/coffeecan-radar\n======\nbediger4000\nThis is great. I so badly want to do this, and I have so little spare time.\n\nWhat does the democratization of Radar do to society? I mean, we're still\nworking through what everyone having a GPS unit in their pocket does for us,\nright?\n\nAlso, how does home made radar combine with other things? Those Quadcopters,\nor the Amateur rockets? It would seem that anyone willing to devote a garage\nand 50% of their life to it could make guided missiles that are better than\nwhat the US military had in the 1970s.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLost in the Storm - DoreenMichele\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/30/magazine/hurricane-harvey-houston-floods-texas-emergency.html\n======\nex3xu\nThis a very moving piece of journalism. Thank you for your contribution.\n\nThe takeaway for me, I guess, is that you the words \"Medical Emergency\" and\n\"Dying\" need to come out of your mouth on repeat if you are in a situation\nwhere your loved one is at risk, in order to make sure you get put onto the\nright triage list. And I hope everyone understands that falsely reporting a\ncondition in a disaster scenario is effectively killing someone by taking away\nresources from someone in desperate need.\n\nOn another note, I wasn't aware that most 911 call centers in the US still\nhaven't converted to VoIP. I wish Ms. Fink had given some hard data on\nconversion rates across the US, since it seems like that could be a good place\nto start to avoid these kinds of tragedies in the future.\n\n------\nbigtones\nWow, what a hard piece to read. The sense of helplessness while reading it is\ntantamount. Incredibly tragic, but terrific reporting.\n\n------\ndanso\nIn addition to the human story, the latter fourth of the article has a lot of\ninteresting/worrying detail about the systems and failures involved. A couple\nof examples:\n\n\\- Lack of interoperable comms was obvious after Sept. 11 and continues to be\nan ongoing problem with fighting over radio spectrum. Or even agencies just\nbeing hostile and uncooperative with each other.\n\n\\- Attributing deaths to a disaster can involve arbitrarily narrow criteria.\n36 deaths in Harris County are considered storm-related because the victims\ndrowned. But the county recorded ~2500 deaths overall in August, 200 more than\nin July, and an outlier compared to past Augusts.\n\nThe growing use of social media as an ad-hoc emergency system when 911 is\noverwhelmed is really interesting, if worrying. Facebook posts and streaming\nvideo are invaluable for people to communicate with their loved ones (e.g.\nWayne streaming video to his friends/family showing that the water levels as\nstopped rising). But given that individual agencies had trouble filtering\nduplicates and tracking call status (e.g. dispatchers personally text fire\ncaptains in an attempt to get priority attention), I can only imagine the\nproblem being much harder across the open web.\n\nThe story notes that agencies weren't \"prepared to respond to distress signals\nposted on the public's technologies of choice: Facebook and Twitter\". But I\ncan't imagine what it would take to truly prepare for that. You'd have to have\na full-time and well-trained social media staff akin to what big companies\nhave for customer service, e.g. what airlines have, and this would be in\naddition to your 911 phone dispatchers. And then there's the problem of\nreconciling duplicates when someone, quite understandably, is repeatedly\npinging you from as many social networks as they have in the belief that it\nincreases chances of getting noticed. At least with traditional phone calls,\nthere's more of a one-to-one relationship between phone numbers and people.\nOTOH, if the bandwidth could handle it, being able to communicate with\ndispatchers via FB Live/Facetime/Periscope/Skype could be incredibly valuable\nin avoiding the kind of miscommunication detailed in this story.\n\nFor me, one of the most troubling aspects of this story is how Wayne Dailey\nacted how I probably would have: being patient and reasonable, understanding\nthat the dispatchers are overwhelmed, wanting to avoid making things worse by\nfreaking out. Based on the reporting, though, it seems had Wayne been more\npushy, more relentlessly belligerent -- emergency workers would have grasped\nthe actual severity of his situation.\n\nEven when he got through, it seems dispatchers dropped the ball on passing\nalong his info, leading him to think he was in the rescue queue. Meanwhile,\nsomeone else in his neighborhood gets a helicopter evac because they have a\nfriend who knows the district Congressman who has a line to a federal agency.\nCan't blame that neighbor for trying everything and anything to save their\nloved one. But it's worrying to think that every-person-for-themselves might\nbe the optimal survival strategy as opposed to organized triage.\n\n(disclosure: the author is a former colleague)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAngara-5 to become Russia's biggest rocket - Gravityloss\nhttp://www.russianspaceweb.com/angara5_flight1.html\n======\nmarktangotango\nDoes any one know what the toxic propellants are (the Briz-m upper stage)?\n\nEdit: \"burning storable propellant combination of nitrogen tetroxide as\noxidizer and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine as fuel. The engine had a\nspecific impulse of 328.1 seconds and was designed for eight firings during a\nmission. \"[1]\n\n[1]\n[http://www.russianspaceweb.com/briz.html](http://www.russianspaceweb.com/briz.html)\n\n~~~\nCapitalistCartr\nWe use hydrazine in US rocketry, too. As nasty as the stuff is, if I were\nstill in the missile business, I'd use it. It's a strong, well-proven\ntechnology.\n\n~~~\nandrewl-hn\nYes, Russia used it in their long- and medium-ranged ballistic missiles. After\na series of agreements between the US and Russia were reached both countries\nagreed to reduce their arsenal (\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/START_I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/START_I)\n). As a result Russia has an excessive amount of Hydrazine in storage. It's\nexpensive to store it because it's a very toxic and corrosive substance. At\nthe same time it's pretty difficult to get rid of it.\n\nAt least in case of Angara they burn it at a high altitude.\n\n~~~\ntrhway\n>Yes, Russia used it in their long- and medium-ranged ballistic missiles.\n\noh, yea, donning these suits (during summer sunny day) before [imaginary]\nfilling up your missile. Whatever militaristic enthusiasm, if any, we may have\nharbored (ROTC students, so not much to start with (ROTC in Russia is a way to\navoid military, not to get into it:)), it'd definitely disappear half way\nthrough it and that even without having the real dangerously toxic and\ncorrosive stuff present.\n\n------\nvermontdevil\nVideo of the launch:\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsQOpD4TIZM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsQOpD4TIZM)\n\n------\njp555\nHow does this have any hope competing with SpaceX and their upcoming fully\nreusable rockets? If they can do it SpaceX will be at least 10x cheaper than\neveryone else. It says of the Angara-A5: \"the payload section had a mass of\n25,766 kilograms\", which is a bit more than the Falcon Heavy GTO payload, but\ndoes not detail how much of that is payload and rocket.\n\n~~~\nsmackfu\nWell, the Falcon Heavy has yet to launch, and SpaceX has yet to reuse a\nrocket. Someday, SpaceX may be 10x cheaper, but until then...\n\n~~~\njp555\nGood point.\n\n~~~\nlafar6502\nWell, it would be worth establishing 10 times cheaper than what. I mean, it\nwould be very naive to believe that SpaceX will charge 10% of what customers\npay elsewhere to get their stuff into space.\n\n~~~\nadventured\nThe simple counter to that is: volume.\n\nIf my competition earns $1 per X, and I earn $0.10 per X, but I'm selling ten\ntimes as many of X, then I'm not particularly upset about my circumstances.\n\nIt's the Walmart retail model. Yes it takes them $476 billion in sales to\nreach $16 billion in profit, but they still do it.\n\n------\nthu\nA few questions: Is there any comparison (price/performance) with the SLS ? Is\nthe second stage identical to the boosters of the first stage ? I was\nwondering if the SLS could also have four boosters instead of two as shown\nrecently when they tested Orion ?\n\n~~~\nLambdanaut\nWhat you saw launching the Orion was a Delta vehicle, not the SLS(Which has\nyet to fly). The SLS will not support more than two first stage boosters.\n\nThe Angara family of rockets is not meant to compete with the SLS and they're\nentirely different classes of rockets. The SLS could be described as a super-\nheavy lifter, and the Angara as a heavy lifter.\n\nThe most primitive form of the SLS (without any additional boosters) is\nplanned to be able to put 70 metric tons into low earth orbit.\n\nThe most beefed-up form of the Angara is planned to be able to put only 23\nmetric tons into low earth orbit. Its most primitive form puts only 3.8 metric\ntons up there.\n\n~~~\njccooper\nA proposed Angara variant would be able to orbit 100 tons. It would require a\nlarger core stage using RD-180, and so be a substantial new development. The\nexisting cores would function as strap-on boosters. It's not likely.\n\n------\nblue11\nI am curious why they are launching the rocket from an area so up north,\nespecially in the middle of winter.\n\n~~~\njccooper\nBecause they already had a partly-completed heavy launch pad (originally meant\nfor a Zenit-2) there--the only one within Russia proper. It was originally an\nICBM base, but it's suitable for polar and Molniya launches. Definitely\nsuboptimal for equatorial trajectories--but it was there and the Russians are\nnothing if not practical.\n\nThey're building a new facility in Vostochny, at a much better latitude, but\nthat'll be a few years yet.\n\n~~~\ntrhway\n>They're building a new facility in Vostochny, at a much better latitude, but\nthat'll be a few years yet.\n\nwell, for anybody knowing the geography of this territory and Russian cultural\nreferences like \"new Vasyuki\" that wouldn't bring any hope:\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostochny_Cosmodrome#Economic_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostochny_Cosmodrome#Economic_aspects)\n\n\"Architect Dmitry Pshenichnikov has stated that the city is to become a \"one-\nof-its-kind scientific and tourist space town with a unique design and a\nbeautiful landscape\"\"\n\nand immediately below\n\n\"In November 2012, press reports indicated that the Russian government is\nhaving difficulty in finding a good use for the new spaceport, and that other\ngovernment ministries have been avoiding the project while \"calling the\nproject a 'dolgostroy', which is Russian for an endless construction\nboondoggle\".\"\n\nI mean Baikonur is bad (yet at least it has a history), but that is much\nworse. And in the article they do mention some probe by Deputy Prosecutor\nGeneral - things seem to be as usual in Russia :)\n\n~~~\navmich\nThe Vostochny spaceport project was lobbied in government at the time by those\nguys who helped to draft Roskosmos charter in early 1990's. The implementation\ncan suffer, of course, but there are good reasons behind the idea itself.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nUsing WhatsApp with XMPP client - isarat\n\nIs there anyway to use WhatsApp with any of the XMPP clients? If yes, how it&#x27;s done&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article says, it supports XMPP.\nhttp:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;WhatsApp\n======\nmunimkazia\nIt's protocol is a customized version of XMPP, as per the wiki article. I\ndoubt if any third party XMPP client will work with it. Whatsapp doesn't have\nan open API, though some guys had managed to reverse engineer it last year.\nThey have since updated their API apparently.\n\nUnless whatsapp explicitly opens with API, I think we are stuck with their\nofficial apps on the phones.\n\n------\nPaulFreund\nAs far as I know there currently is no way to accomplish this, but I am\nworking on a solution for it. Unfortunately the project just started and will\ntake its time\n\n~~~\nisarat\nAre you working with WhatsApp for this? Or reverse engineer?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGovernment debt as a % of GDP for selected G20 countries, actual and est - cwan\nhttp://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/01/sovereign_debt_1.html\n\n======\npo\nI suppose the actual amount of government debt is an interesting concept and\nyou can't directly compare different G20 country debt amounts fairly so using\nthe debt to GDP ratio seems like a pretty good idea.\n\nThe thing is that I have no intuitive sense that this being large is better or\nworse. I would think the most important piece is: who owns the debt? If I sell\na lot of debt contracts out to my kids, did my family get poorer? What about\nif I sold them all to the neighbors?\n\n~~~\nhga\nI think it depends on whether you're serious about paying it back _if it's for\nnormal expenditures_ (debt to fight a war is another thing altogether, but we\nhaven't seen that since WWII for any major country).\n\nIf not, you just pile it on until the carrying costs become unsustainable and\nthen you default explicitly (perhaps through a revolution or invasion) or\nimplicitly through inflation.\n\nExcept for that fight a war special case, it's just a tax on future\ngenerations with an all but guaranteed ugly ending.\n\n~~~\npo\nHow does the carrying cost become unsustainable?\n\nAre the future generations paying the tax to themselves or to China? My gut\nsense is that who owns the debt is important, but I'm asking because I\nhonestly don't know.\n\nI also feel like what you use the debt for is important.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCan Users Control and Understand a UI Driven by Machine Learning? - camlinke\nhttps://www.nngroup.com/articles/machine-learning-ux/\n======\ndarkpuma\nIf the system is up front about what the inputs are then I think most of the\nproblems evaporate. The user doesn't need to understand the math behind how\n0-5 star ratings get translated into movie suggestions, if the user\nunderstands that the star rating is the input and not dumb implicit stuff like\ndwell time, then the user will have a more agreeable experience with the\nsystem.\n\nI've recently created a system for assigning tags to files. The system\nrecommends tags that might be applicable to a file given what the file is\nalready tagged with and what other files are tagged with. There are no other\ninputs, I'm not trying to extract information from the filename or running\nimage recognition on images or anything like that. It's straight forward\nmulti-label classification similar to a naive bayes spam filter. Straight\nforward but effective; the relevant tags are often at the very top of the\nsuggestions list.\n\nI've had a few non-technical users try it out and so far the response has been\nvery positive. They don't know how the tag suggester works. All I told them is\nthat when they enter a tag, the suggestions for other tags are refined. If all\nthey know about the algorithm is what inputs it takes, they're comfortable\nwith it. If the inputs are well defined, then the whole thing becomes \"just a\nmachine\". Similar to how a non-technical user doesn't need to understand how\nmagnetrons work to be comfortable with microwaving some popcorn, a user\ndoesn't need to know how machine learning works to be comfortable with a\nprogram employing it. Just make sure they understand the general relationship\nbetween the buttons on the front and what the outcome is going to be.\n\nDon't make a microwave that tries to be clever by turning up the power if the\nuser is standing impatiently in front of it. If you do that, the users will\nstart to get paranoid/superstitious about the microwave (and rightfully so!)\n\n------\nevrydayhustling\nThis is a cool topic, but the examples - FB feed, Netflix, etc. - don't really\napply. Those systems aren't trying to maximize user control, they are trying\nto sustain engagement while giving as much control back to the platform as\npossible. I'd like to see more work on ML driven UI that is specifically\ntrying to enable user -driven intent.\n\n~~~\ndarkpuma\nThat's a good distinction; those systems are fundamentally adversarial and I\nthink a lot of users pick up on that, at least unconsciously. Many of the ways\nusers interact with these systems could be described as defensive.\n\n------\nndnxhs\nThe article talks about how the problem is users don't know how to change the\ninputs to effect the outputs but I don't think this is really desirable. Users\nshouldn't be thinking \"If I hover my mouse over this for too long then it will\nstuff up my suggestions\" that ends up with users altering their behaviour to\nsuit the AI when the AI should just give you correct suggestions without the\nuser having to understand how it works.\n\n~~~\nwyattpeak\nThat's a great ideal, but the technology just isn't there.\n\nWith any system that tries to adapt to my preferences, I find myself thinking\nconstantly about how my behaviour will influence it. I'm careful about what I\nupvote, I try to avoid pausing scrolling on uninteresting things, I even avoid\nreading articles which I don't want to see more of, even if I find the article\nitself interesting (remember that users are not necessarily logical - e.g. I\ndon't wait clickbait even though I'm just as drawn as anyone else by the\ntitles).\n\nI would happily trade all of that mental load for a couple of buttons after\neach item \"more like this\" or \"less like this\" and a guarantee that nothing\nelse affected the algorithm. No advance in the last ten years has changed my\nmind about that, and my hopes aren't high for the next ten doing so either.\n\nI think there's a case to be made that even hard AI wouldn't be sufficient to\nsolve the problem. When my bank manager suggests a product to me, I'm doing\nthe same thing - wondering \"why are you suggesting this to me, what's\nmotivating this?\". I still want inputs and reasoning exposed, not merely for\nthe answer to be, on reflection, correct.\n\n------\nmiguelrochefort\nFor those like me who expected this to be an article about ML-generated UI\nlayouts, this is not the case.\n\n------\nDonHopkins\nI argue that pie menus are much easier for users to operate, understand how\nthey work (selection base purely on the direction between clicks, not the\npath), and predict how they will respond, and thus trust, than general gesture\nrecognition (often implemented with a black box based on machine learning).\nBecause the pie menu gesture recognition algorithm is obvious, transparent,\nand Fitts' Law friendly.\n\nPie menus completely saturate all of \"gesture space\" with valid easy to\ndistinguish gestures of uniform and high area. But gesture recognition systems\nlike Palm's Graffiti only uses a small subset of all possible gestures, each\nwith different areas and distances from each other (i.e. how easy is it to\nmake each gesture and how distinct each gesture is varies), and most gestures\nare invalid. There are no possible invalid pie menus gestures -- they all map\nto well defined selections, so no gesture space is wasted.\n\nIdeally each gesture should have a large area in \"gesture space\" so it's easy\nto make, and be as distinct (well separated) from other gestures as possible,\nso it's harder to make mistakes (like confusing an \"n\" with a \"u\"). Pie menus\noptimize for those ideals. It's also extremely useful that you can correct\nmistakes in-flight (i.e. reselection, browsing, moving out further to get more\n\"leverage\"), so no matter how much you mess up the gesture, you can always\ncorrect your mistake and refine your selection.\n\nOnce you start writing a sloppy \"n\" and realize that it may think you're\nwriting a \"u\", there's no way to correct your mistake, and all you can do is\nscribble to make sure you input an invalid gesture that's ignored (and hope it\nisn't mistaken for the \"delete all\" gesture!), then try again.\n\n[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/gesture-\nspace-842e3cdc7102](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/gesture-space-842e3cdc7102)\n\n------\n0xBA5ED\nPreference is mostly social. A good recommendation system would need to feel\nmore like a friend than an algorithm. Not only does it need to understand your\npreferences, it needs to convince you that it understands \"where you're coming\nfrom\" in general so you can relax and be honest with it. And even if that can\nbe achieved technology-wise, how could you comfortably accept an AI system as\nyour friend if its being \"controlled\" on the back end by a whole organization\nof people you don't know? There's more than just tech missing from this\nequation.\n\n------\nmonk_e_boy\nUgh, I accidently watched a skateboarding video on facebook about a month agi.\nNow my feed is full of skating videos and I can’t figure out how to tell\nfacebook to calm down with skating videos and adverts\n\n------\nlexxed\nshould have swallowed the drive\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: NewTabNotes – A synchronized markdown notepad for Chrome - kkamperschroer\nhttps://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-notes-alpha/dnghgncclglnalfilefbdpoflgajhdpo\n======\ndhruvsachde\nIs there any way I could increase the font-size? It is difficult to read on\nbig screens.\n\n~~~\nkkamperschroer\nCurrently no, but that is certainly something I could add as options to\ncustomize. Thanks for the suggestion!\n\n------\nkkamperschroer\nLooking for some honest feedback on this idea I had for a new tab page\nreplacement where I can keep some notes.\n\nCurrently alpha as I have not cleaned up all of my original hacks from a\nprototype and there is currently no version control.\n\nSource can be found here:\n[https://github.com/kkamperschroer/NewTabNotes](https://github.com/kkamperschroer/NewTabNotes)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Secret Sharer - abhinav\nhttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all\n\n======\nalexqgb\nJudging from the article, it sounds like the NSA has a complete searchable\ncopy of every email sent by every American in the last decade, along with a\n(completely illegal) surveillance file on every single one of us. If true, it\nmakes Drake's assessment (“This is too serious not to talk about”) the mother\nof all understatements.\n\nSo hats off to the New Yorker in general, and Jane Mayer in particular. Given\nthe monstrous scale of the lawlessness she's alleging, and the catastrophic\nfailure of governance needed to sustain it, firing a shot this public and\nwell-timed was exceptionally brave. Unlike Drake - who seems to have seriously\nunderestimated the response he'd trigger - the authors of this piece must\nrecognize that they're making themselves the targets of a seriously scary\nbunch of people.\n\nAnd yes, this (alleged) embrace of domestic spying does make the Nixon\nAdministration \"look like pikers.” It also adds plenty of weight to Evgeny\nMorozov's contemptuous dismissal of \"utopians\" who consider the internet an\nunalloyed force for democracy and freedom.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFacebook Killer Feature Arrives (LinnkedIn Killer Feature) - shayan\nhttp://www.allfacebook.com/2007/12/facebook-killer-feature-arrives/\n\n======\njgrahamc\nI sincerely doubt this is going to kill LinkedIn. I've actually stopped using\nFacebook because the signal/noise was all noise. LinkedIn is far more\nprofessional and just being able to group my Facebook friends isn't going to\ndo much unless I can make Facebook show different profiles to different groups\nof people. But, you know, why bother? LinkedIn works great for professional\ncontacts, can't see any reason to try to embed LinkedIn inside Facebook.\n\n~~~\nshayan\nI totally agree that this is not a LinkedIn killer, but if FB is able to\neventually get everyone on it, then this could be a LinkedIn\nkiller...nevertheless this is a much needed feature\n\n------\njonnytran\nThe official fb blog on this:\n<http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7831767130>\n\n------\nbkbleikamp\nThis is not a LinkedIn killer.\n\nAs an example:\n\nFacebook's job search feature is a joke - it's just a section of the\n\"Marketplace\" and is filled with the typical \"Make money from home\" ads.\n\nLinkedIn solves legitimate problems business people have with Facebook and\nother social networking services.\n\n------\nrun4yourlives\nMy Boss (Executive VP) is on LinkedIn.\n\nHis Kid (15 year old daughter) is apparently on Facebook.\n\nSounds to me like it's two different worlds. I highly doubt I'll be seeing my\n50-some year old boss on Facebook giving me Vampire bites any time soon.\n\n~~~\nshayan\nOnly if she was a bit older heheh... I do see your point, but I still think\nyou'll be surprised to see how many important, and influential people are\nactually on fb and use it... also LinkedIn is def a more professional place\nbut you don't always want to spend your time with your bussiness connections\nand in the office, sometimes there are other ppl in your so called social\ngraph that you would like to socialize with and have fun ...and for that you\ndef have to come to fb and not linkedin\n\n------\naston\n\"Facebook Killer Feature\" - means a feature Facebook developed, meanwhile...\n\n\"LinkedIn Killer Feature\" - means a feature that will kill LinkedIn.\n\nConfusing. Yet another reason never to use \"killer feature\" or \"_____ killer.\"\n\n~~~\nmechanical_fish\nWhatever it is, it's a killer LinkedIn killer Facebook feature!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nA scrolling window showing the entire continental US - michael_nielsen\nhttp://cscheid.net/static/windowseat/\n\n======\nmichael_nielsen\nBest viewed after zooming in -- hit \"+\" a couple of times, and then \">\" (\"<\")\nto scroll right (left). This greatly reduces the effect of the distortion\napparently caused by the banking of the plane.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFree Public Universities - naveen99\nIf the democrats succeed in making public universities free, what will happen to the private university tuitions ?  I wonder if the private universities will start lobbying against the democrats to prevent it...<p>It’s kind of similar to public free healthcare.  Fee for service entities &#x2F; insurance companies will suffer a downward pressure on business... but somehow the private universities seem politically separated from private insurance companies...\n======\nwajdiben\nFree Public Universities means more people with academic degrees. More people\nwith degrees means tougher job descriptions' requirements and lower pay. I\ncan't afford uni but I hope they won't make the mistakes other countries, like\nFrance, had done.\n\n------\ngshdg\nCheck out how it works in other countries that have both publicly funded and\nprivate education.\n\nThe losers here would not be the elite private institutions, which will always\nhave high demand and did even 50 years ago when public higher education was\nsufficiently subsidized that almost anyone could afford it with a summer job.\n\n(Many of those institutions are already offering free tuition to lower and\nmiddle income students anyway. And they’re all incorporated as nonprofit\nentities.)\n\nThe losers would be the low quality for-profit degree mills that advertise on\nthe subway and radio and charge students ridiculous tuition for degrees that\nwon’t help them get ahead.\n\n~~~\nnaveen99\nSo will the private university administrations be neutral or even favorable to\nthis policy ?\n\nThe for profit ones mainly target students who couldn’t get into public\nuniversities. The elite ones target students who use public universities as\nbackup. I think some of those students (particularly non wealthy students)\nwill switch to making the elite universities the backup, contingent on the\nfinancial aid package. And I think that will have atleast some effect on\nadministrative budgets. The elite universities maybe non profit, but in\npractice they are run more like hedge funds.\n\nIt students are willing to pay $20k more / year for private and public cost\ngoes down by 20k, the private ones will be less competitive unless they also\nreduce their tuition proportionately. No ?\n\n~~~\ngshdg\nThe elite ones will probably be neutral to favorable. Certainly there will be\na lot of individual administrators who feel strongly about education and want\nto make it accessible to more people.\n\nI doubt competition will hurt the private ones that much. They already have\norders of magnitude more qualified applicants than they can accept, and are\nmaking very difficult decisions to turn a lot of them away whom they'd love to\nhave.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy is it so hard to make a website for the government? - impostervt\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/13/magazine/design-issue-code-for-america.html\n======\nainiriand\nMiddle managers.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow to learn object-oriented programming? - ohmygosh\nhttp://www.schibsted.pl/2016/02/object-oriented-thinking-in-the-data-centric-world/\n======\nsklogic\nWhy? It's about a time for everyone to _unlearn_ the OOP, once and for all.\n\n~~~\nUlquiorra\nExcuse me, I might be a bit intrusive. I just began to learn programming. One\nfellow said you seem to have a good understanding of it as a whole and I had\nthought it might be a good idea to talk with you. As you said you're slow-\nbanned, I leave my address here. Please write to sublunaralchemist yandex com\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWill This “Neural Lace” Brain Implant Help Us Compete with AI? - dnetesn\nhttp://nautil.us/blog/-will-this-neural-lace-brain-implant-help-us-compete-with-ai\n======\nerikpukinskis\nI love Elon, but this notion of a “bandwidth problem” in UI is what happens\nwhen someone with no training in UI whatsoever tries to extrapolate.\n\nImagine the neural lace already existed. Close your eyes, and picture what you\nwould experience. Would it be 3D? Probably. Our brains have spatial hardware.\nWould it be auditory? Probably, our brains have hardware for that too. Would\nthere be language? Ya, that’s part of our hardware too.\n\nSo it’s an experience of sights and sounds and language...\n\nBut think about an iPad... that already had sights and sounds and language.\nActually it’s capable of beaming far more of all three to you than it does.\nAnd it’s capable of taking in far more input than you generally use. It can do\n10 finger multitouch, plus sound recording. Newer devices will have full body\ntracking.\n\nAnd yet... we don’t use all that available bandwidth. For the most part we\nstare at a few words, some boxes and lines... why?\n\nIf Elon is right that more bandwidth is the problem, why aren’t there more\nhigh bandwidth user interfaces on existing devices?\n\nThe answer is: we don’t have a bandwidth bottleneck. We have a design\nbottleneck. And if I dropped a fully functional neural lace at Elon’s office,\nhe’d have exactly the same design bottleneck. And he’d realize that if he\nwants to solve his problem, he needs to hire 10 really good UI designers, and\nthen 10 more, and then 10 more, and it’s going to be decades before they max\nout even the bandwidth of an iPhone.\n\n~~~\nrandom4369\nThere's a _huge_ bandwidth bottleneck on both input and output sides. Your\nimagination of what a neural lace would do is too limited. It wouldn't be 3d,\nit wouldn't be auditory.\n\nIt would be having a perfect recollection of every single moment of your life.\n\nIt would be knowing the entire contents of wikipedia off by heart.\n\nIt would be understanding and speaking every language on the planet.\n\nIt would be looking out the window and seeing exactly where a friend living\n1000km is in your field of view.\n\nIt would be sharing thoughts and feelings with other people in the literal\nsense.\n\nIt would be the ability to suppress short term urges by being constantly aware\nof your long term goals and your progress towards them.\n\nIt would be the ability to open an enterprise project you're working on, and\ninstantly know the layout of their codebase.\n\nIf you're imagining the neural lace interface to be sensory, you're way off\nthe mark. Sensory interconnect is just the beginning. The real revolution is\ngiving your brain a low level IO bus that allows a computer to transparently\nextend it beyond the physical limits of whatever number of neurons are in your\nhead.\n\n~~~\nlsc\n> Sensory interconnect is just the beginning. The real revolution is giving\n> your brain a low level IO bus that allows a computer to transparently extend\n> it beyond the physical limits of whatever number of neurons are in your\n> head.\n\nThe point is that you need some way of interfacing. A fast bus doesn't do me\nany good if I don't have drivers and then interfaces to interact with the\nthing on the other end of that bus.\n\nI mean, yes, ideally we'd have some kind of thought-based interface... but\nyou've gotta design that, too.\n\n~~~\ndarawk\nThe bandwidth of your memory is substantially higher than reading, though, is\nthe point.\n\n~~~\nlsc\nsure, I'm not saying it wouldn't be great. but my point is that you still need\nan interface, and my understanding is that we're pretty far away from building\nan interface that feels like it's just your memory. I mean, it'd be great,\nsure, if you could do it... but that's an interface that needs to be designed,\nand it's an interface that we, as humans have no idea how to design.\n\nHow would you record a memory? how would you replay that memory? how would you\nindex the memory?\n\nI mean, sure, the idea is to emulate how the brain works now... but how does\nthe brain work now? I don't think we really have a very clear idea on that\nlevel.\n\n~~~\nhobofan\nI agree with your point, and that probably has to be a more long-term\nmilestone that has to be achieved for it to work well and integrate\nseamlessly.\n\nI think the short-term idea is to use the extreme adaptability of the human\nbrain to reprogram itself to send and receive data from external machines.\nThere are already prototypes of robotic arms that are not only controlled via\na brain interface, but also give sensory feedback via it.\n\n------\ndsr_\nFWIW, the term \"neural lace\" was coined by Iain Banks.\n\nFrom Excession:\n\nOne of the exhibits which she discovered, towards the end of her wanderings,\nshe did not understand. It was a little bundle of what looked like thin,\nglisteningly blue threads, lying in a shallow bowl; a net, like something\nyou'd put on the end of a stick and go fishing for little fish in a stream.\nShe tried to pick it up; it was impossibly slinky and the material slipped\nthrough her fingers like oil; the holes in the net were just too small to put\na finger-tip through. Eventually she had to tip the bowl up and pour the blue\nmesh into her palm. It was very light. Something about it stirred a vague\nmemory in her, but she couldn't recall what it was. She asked the ship what it\nwas, via her neural lace.\n\n~ That is a neural lace, it informed her. ~ A more exquisite and economical\nmethod of torturing creatures such as yourself has yet to be invented.\n\nShe gulped, quivered again and nearly dropped the thing.\n\n~ Really? she sent, and tried to sound breezy. ~ Ha. I'd never really thought\nof it that way.\n\n~ It is not generally a use much emphasised.\n\n~ I suppose not, she replied, and carefully poured the fluid little device\nback into its bowl on the table.\n\n~~~\nmelling\nThat’s briefly mentioned near the end of the first paragraph:\n\n... solution to this unappealing fate is a novel brain-computer interface\nsimilar to the implantable “neural lace” described by the Scottish novelist\nIain M. Banks in Look to Windward, part of his “Culture series” books. Along\nwith serving as a rite of passage, it upgrades the human brain to be more\ncompetitive against A.I.’s with human-level or higher intelligence.\n\n~~~\ndsr_\nThe only things in that paragraph that are correct are:\n\n1\\. the name neural lace\n\n2\\. Iain M. Banks coined it\n\n3\\. He was Scottish.\n\nIt wasn't first described in Look to Windward. It didn't serve as a rite of\npassage in the Culture. It doesn't upgrade the human brain, and certainly not\nto the level of the Culture's ruling machine intelligences.\n\nAnd at no point does the article quote the bit that I did, which serves as a\ncautionary note: the neural lace is the most effective implement of torture\never.\n\nOnce upon a time, the Geek Code had an entry \"c++++ I'll be first in line to\nget the new cybernetic interace installed into my skull.\" It only took a\nlittle while for everyone sensible to amend that to \"Waiting for skull\ninterface 3.1, with security patches and a really good firewall.\"\n\n~~~\nmelling\nThat’s disappointing. I thought the quality of Nautilus was better. I actually\npay for a digital subscription.\n\n------\nephemerol\nThe fundamentals of this idea are so shockingly hand-wavey, that I find this\nto be something of a hazard to Elon Musk’s reputation.\n\nIt’s far enough afield, that as blue sky projects go, this is farther away\nfrom us now, than cold fusion was in the 1980’s. Hint: we’re still not sure if\ncold fusion will arrive very soon.\n\nIt’s great to see caution in light of powerful technologies, but this blue sky\nconcept is thrown into the mix as if to say “try anything to make it work” and\nin so doing, leaves the overall prophetic narrative in the realm of AI\ndominance as inexorable.\n\nTo hear this idea floating around is like saying:\n\n    \n    \n      So, let’s do something to our brain. Anything. \n      Sprinkle wires on it, and maybe those wires will \n      help. What’s in them? Who knows! But golly, anything \n      to gain an edge because the who knows!\n    \n      But yeah, AI is already here to stay, and there’s no \n      controlling it, so just route around it.\n    \n\nThere’s no plan here. Just add in the “make-brain-smart-wires” and pray. No\none explains _how_ we’ll be smarter, which is especially bothersome, given\nthat we can’t quantify subjective experience, motivation and emotional\nreaction.\n\nAre terrible people, criminals, dictators,and third world war lords getting\nthese things too? Why will it make them do good? Why is it better to make an\nevil person more powerful than an artificial entity which we fear?\n\n~~~\ntylerjwilk00\nI don't think it's quite as far fetched or far out.\n\nThe fundamental point of the neural lace is increased bandwidth OUTPUT from\nthe human mind so that it can be INPUT for some other process.\n\nBare with me...\n\nRight now I am using 2 thumbs to output this message. Not very efficient. I\ncould hop on a keyboard and up my output bandwith to 10 fingers. That would be\nfaster but still bottlenecked on the mechanics of my hands. Sure I could use\nvoice buts it's loud and mostly words only. Not great for quiet rooms or\ncoding with special characters.\n\nNow imagine an integrated set of circuits directly connected to my brain. It\nwouldn't have to be many. Let's say 10. Now with training I could learn to\nactivate each circuit. Even if the training was only for a digital signal of 0\nor 1 that's 2^10 unique signals. Not to mention these could be modifiers of\nother outputs. And the real kicker is this signal generation happens at the\nspeed of thought. Imagine coding in an IDE at that speed!\n\nI didn't touch on the whole AI threat but the point is simply that if we need\nto be defensive or offensive against an AI we need to be able to output\nmeaning quicker than running to the server room and unplugging HAL.\n\n~~~\naroman\nEven getting reliable and useful output from the brain is still much much\nharder than you think it is.\n\n> Now imagine an integrated set of circuits directly connected to my brain. It\n> wouldn't have to be many. Let's say 10.\n\n10 circuits connect to _what_ , exactly? How? Where? Attaching electrodes to\nexisting cells is invasive and uncomfortable (to say the least), and temporary\nbecause scar tissue forms and severs the connection in time.\n\nBut suppose you developed some way of reliably, durably, and non-invasively\nattaching external artificial neurons into your brain (to be sure, a huge\njump). Where would you put these neurons, exactly? What would they synapse to?\nJust one or two particular neurons? How would you locate them during \"install\ntime\"? How would the user access them during \"run time\"? Most brain-machine\ninterfaces use motor neurons because they're easy to access. Maybe that'd be a\ngood route, but again, doing this reliably and non-invasively is really hard,\nespecially if there isn't a clear feedback loop.\n\nI don't know why, but a lot of people seem to think that neuroscience is a lot\ncloser to being \"solved\" than it actually is. Truth is, we barely have any\nidea how the brain works, let alone how we can meaningfully augment and\ninteract with it.\n\n~~~\ntylerjwilk00\nI agree. It's certainly not a plug and play device from your PC and there are\nhurdles to cross for sure. But, over time, you could learn to control signal\noutput just as a baby does. The mapping will be chaotic and unique to each\nperson but every brain is different. When you imagine a yellow elephant it is\nprobably slightly different than my process. You don't know how you do it but\nyou do. If a reward mechanism is tied to signal output a growing brain will\nfigure it out.\n\n------\nswiley\nThere's a limit to how quickly we think (I think I remember reading during\ndrivers ed that we had an average decision making bandwidth of ~ 2^7 bits per\nsecond.) For most people there really isn't enough going on in their head that\nthey couldn't just spend a few hours typing it out. If you want to see what\nhappens when people type faster than they think then visit any online forum.\n\nIMHO: good Direct Neural Interfaces probably won't be anything more\ninteresting than the invention of GUIs. It will be neat, it will make\ncomputers more intuitive (via neural plasticity) and maybe let us directly\nshare thought with each other (really neat! totally useless) but nothing\nreally new will probably ever come of something like this. In fact, if it\nbecame popular I think it might make learning some things harder. Software\nengineering for example is entirely about communicating precisely (with\nothers, yourself, and your computer.) If you live your whole life\ncommunicating telepathically you might never learn to communicate well.\n\n~~~\n908087\n> and maybe let us directly share thoughts with each other\n\n...and various advertising corporations.\n\n------\nKarrot_Kream\nAda Palmer's (imo fantastic) Terra Ignota series has this concept, among many\nothers. She envisions a \"set-set\", or a child who is trained to use \"neural\nlace\" like implements from a very young age and barely uses their actual\nlimbs, and these set-sets are the most adept at running computer systems. In\nthe world of Terra Ignota, \"set-set\"s are highly controversial.\n\n~~~\nmake3\n\"Terra Incognita takes place in 2454\" I'd be surprised if humans ran any\ncomputer systems by then\n\n------\ntintor\nNeural Lace explained on Wait, but why?\n[https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html)\n\n------\nilkan\nHow misleading. The article is about the challenges, and possible diagnostic\nand repair benefits, of creating electronic circuits that don't trigger the\nimmune system. Not \"competing with ai\".\n\n------\nhexo\nEEG is now \"neural lace\", mkay, good job naming things!\n\n------\nOrganicMSG\nThe media tends to push binary stories of humans vs AI. Science fiction, on\nthe other hand, has long explored the complexity inherent in human, AI and\ncyborg interactions.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWill Oracle kill MySQL? Who cares? - twampss\nhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/27/dziuba_sunacle/\n======\ncsbartus\nI do.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDrafts of Chapters 5–8 from the Rails Tutorial 3rd Ed. - mhartl\nhttp://news.railstutorial.org/rails_tutorial_draft_second_launch/\n\n======\nmhartl\nThe newly released chapters are substantial, and should be enough to keep\nreaders busy for a while. I hope to release drafts of the final four chapters\nsome time in the next week or so.\n\n(Note to the curious: No, I can't write chapters this fast. It takes me two\nweeks to write a chapter from scratch, a few days for a major editing pass,\nand half a day to do the final edit. All the draft chapters had been through\nat least a major editing pass before the [main\nannouncement]([http://news.railstutorial.org/rails_tutorial_3rd_edition/](http://news.railstutorial.org/rails_tutorial_3rd_edition/))\nlast week.)\n\n------\ncmaxwe\nIs there anything similar to Rails Tutorial for a JS MEAN stack?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA-level and GCSE results government reversal - rossjudson\nhttps://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/17/a-levels-gcse-results-england-based-teacher-assessments-government-u-turn\n======\nrossjudson\nUK people, please don't be too frustrated with your government. I cannot\n_imagine_ a similar reversal happening here in the US.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNine-Year Old Whiz-Kid Writes iPhone Application  - nuweborder\nhttp://www.retireat21.com/new/Nine-year-old-whiz-kid-writes-iPhone-application\n\n======\ncredo\n[http://www.retireat21.com/new/isteam-for-iphone-earns-\nmakes-...](http://www.retireat21.com/new/isteam-for-iphone-earns-makes-young-\nentrepreneurs-rich) says \"The iSteam application is for sale for just 99cent\nand has been bought over 1 million times since its launch last week! ISteam\nhas currently experienced more than 14% daily growth, with estimated monthly\nrevenues of $100,000 - all this just 8 days after iSteam was first released.\"\n\n\\--\n\nThe numbers on this site seem bogus. iSteam is currently ranked 99th in\nEntertainment. However, if it had been #1 last month, one million downloads in\none week couldn't have been possible.\n\nThe app costs $.99. It is funny that the post talks about one million\ndownloads in one week and then goes on to say that the monthly revenue is\nexpected to be 100,000.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy haven't we seen more tech companies focus on small mom-and-pop businesses? - FogHQChris\n\nI submitted this question on Quora, and got some nice feedback. Would love to hear the community about this?<p>http://www.quora.com/Small-Businesses/Why-havent-we-seen-more-tech-companies-focus-on-small-mom-and-pop-businesses-especially-the-Enterprise-Software-sector\n======\nnickfromseattle\nIts definitely possible to create a successful life style business for the\nfounders and earn a good to great profit - but its hard to make the numbers\nwork enough to grow past a few employees or get an exit.\n\nMost small mom and pops are complacent about their problems. They either don't\nrealize a solution exists, aren't actively looking for solutions, or are\ncontent with their inefficient work-arounds. This means you have to seek them\nout and sell them directly, whether its by phone, email or walking into their\nbusiness - some products require a combination of the three.\n\nYou have to charge enough to pay a sales person, reinvest in the company and\nprobably pay your own (and any other founders) living expenses as well.\n\nIf you're bootstrapped its likely you can only afford to pay a small salary\n(usually not even that though) plus commission. This means you cant pay enough\nto attract talented sales people, so you either get the bottom of the barrel\nor you get someone inexperienced who will leave the second they find a job\nthat will earn them more money.\n\nIf you are charging a one time fee, its extremely hard. A subscription service\nis much more doable. Even then, you have to be charging $xxx-$x,xxx/month -\nand unless its a SERIOUS pain point its likely the small business\ncould/should/will spend their money more wisely somewhere else.\n\n\\- I've started one b2b SaaS company targeting small businesses and worked at\nanother in the same industry.\n\n------\nadamtaa\nMy company mental improvement ventures is specifically trying to focus on mom\nand pop, \"very small businesses\", and anybody else who wants a compact service\noffering at a relatively low price.\n\nI saw the lack of focus ion this sector as an opportunity.\n\n------\nPonyGumbo\nThe product needs to be cheap enough that small business owners can afford it,\nsimple enough for them to use it (many are not technologically savvy) and the\nvalue needs to be self-evident. It's a hard combination to crack.\n\n------\nbrydon\nWe sort of do this in <http://www.startupify.me/> where we work with existing\nbusinesses to find old problems that we can disrupt with new tech.\n\n~~~\ncoreygoodie\nJust an FYI, I find the copy on your homepage to be a /bit/ confusing:\n\n\"We hire the best software developers in our community who are bored in their\ncurrent jobs. We put them to work in partnerships with established businesses\nto co-create new product based businesses.\"\n\nA lot of words there, could easily simplify.\n\n------\nmunimkazia\nBecause (most) mom and pop stores can't be bothered to actually spend money on\ntechnology, and then go and learn and implement it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe complexity of sharing scientific databases - Anon84\nhttp://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/07/16/the-complexity-of-sharing-scientific-databases/\n\n======\nalbertcardona\nOne day, all journals will die, all papers will be online versioned papers,\nand science hierarchies will fade, science itself becomming a lot more\nhorizontal. Just a dream.\n\n~~~\nAnon84\nJournals serve the same purpose they always did... as a pre filter for\ncrackpots. Just compare the \"physics\" section on the ArXiv (that isn't\nfiltered) with any major physics journal (where it can take up to 1 year to\nget something published after multiple iterations).\n\n~~~\nalbertcardona\nUnfortunately, journals also act as:\n\n* preventers of anything _too_ new (like fashion, if unrooted in the previous fashion, it's not acceptable.)\n\n* delayers when the work is in conflict with current work by the editor, one of the reviewers, or any of their direct colleagues.\n\nWhat you are referring to is the review process. Which, while essential, is\nalso severely flawed. Making reviewers lose their anonimity, and publishing\ntheir reviews along with the paper when editor and reviewers consider it\nacceptable -- now, that would change the game for the better, for criticism\nwould drift towards constructive criticism only.\n\n~~~\nAnon84\nYou are right... up to a point.\n\nHistory has shown us that the progression of science isn't made by giants\nstanding on the shoulders of giants as much as midgets standing on the toes of\nmidgets.\n\nNewtons, Einsteins and the like don't come along too often. And 99.9% of\nanything _too_ new (as you put it) is likely also wrong. And when something\n_too_ new does manage to pass through the filter and (god forbid) become\nfashionable we're in serious trouble. Just take a look at String \"Theory\"\ndecades of work by arguably some of the best brains in the world and\nabsolutely nothing significant to show for it.\n\nNow, don't get me wrong. The review process is far from perfect, and just the\nreviewer selection process can have a lot of influence (at least until an\nautomatic method is adopted say, like <http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0605112>).\nHowever, I don't think making the reviews public would improve anything. In\nfact, it would probably make it worse by conditioning (directly or indirectly)\nyour career progression by the \"yes-man\" reviews you give. The reason\nreviewers are anonymous is to prevent undo pressure from being exerted on\nthem, and to give them the privacy necessary for them to be completely honest.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRussian startup released unlimited storage device which can never be hacked - onelly\nhttp://innmind.com/articles/250?utm_source=HN&utm_medium=repost&utm_campaign=flashsafe\n======\nPiskvorrr\nOnly it's not a device, it's a cloud storage service (\"forever\" and\n\"unlimited\" \\- until further notice).\n\nThe device provides local encryption - and is unsinkab...uhm, I mean,\n\"unhackable\". No parallel with the RMS Titanic, noooosir. And I've seen a fair\nshare of supposedly unhackable cruft: Schneier alert - \"it's easy to make a\nsystem that its' creator is unable to crack,\" to paraphrase.\n\n~~~\nonelly\nIn their official description it is said:\n\nWe take stored data security to a whole new level! Nobody will ever know what\ndata you are keeping, because your files are not linked to your personal\ninformation on our servers. That means total anonymity. All data is encrypted\nusing a 2048-bit key a technology similar to the one used for bank\ntransactions but even better. It all happens on your computer, and even if\nsomeone lays hand on your data, they won’t be able to decipher it without a\nSmartFlash itself. You can use an additional pin-code that is impossible to\ntrack if you use a mouse to enter it. Losing your Flashsafe is like losing\nyour bank card: the device is blocked while you get a new one and continue to\nuse it. A \"trusted computer\" function lets you use your SmartFlash only on\nyour devices.\n\n~~~\nPiskvorrr\n\"Their\", riiight. Also, either it's not linked to you, _xor_ you can get a\nreplacement: otherwise, to whom are \"they\" reissuing the replacement? \"Yeah, I\nam onelly, trust me, I only lost my device, I'm not NSA trying to snoop on\nhim, honest.\"\n\nEntering code by mouse is impossible to track? Let me introduce you to\nscreenshots. Revolutionary, I know.\n\n~~~\nonelly\nCorrect, it is not linked to me directly.\n\nFlashSafe is a startup listed and verified on innmind.com - international\nplatform for startups and investors. Which is, actually, what I'm linked to.\n\nI submitted this post here, because I find it interesting for the hackers\ncommunity. FlashSafe founder told me, that he plans to make an open call for\nhackers community to try to hack his protection to prove it's really safe. I\nthink that is a cool approach. So why not to spread information about the new\ndevice I wonder?\n\n~~~\nPiskvorrr\nNobody is stopping you.\n\nOTOH, 1.it's something completely different than the title claims, 2.there's a\nvery suspicious set of mutually impossible features (you can't have strong\nanonymity AND data recovery), plus \"unlimited\" storage (surely the device\nsales will pay for all of it?) and 3. your way of promoting it sounds like an\nadvertisement.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIt was not a DDoS: MtGox got 20k new accounts per day - speeder\nhttps://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=172944.0;topicseen\n======\nInclinedPlane\nIf someone did a little bit of analysis on MtGox they might have concluded\nthat setting up new accounts was the most effective way to do a DoS attack.\nNot that I'm saying that's what happened, just that it seems naive to say \"we\nwere down due to new account creation, and therefore we should rule out the\npossibility of a DoS attack!\"\n\n~~~\nmrb\nThe MtGox employees talk about 10 Gbps of traffic hitting their front-end\nservers. They are desperately working with Black Lotus and Prolexic to help.\nThat is a textbook network DDoS. \"Creation of the accounts\" is not the source\nof the slowness and unresponsiveness of the site.\n\n[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=166578.msg1737375#ms...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=166578.msg1737375#msg1737375)\n\n~~~\nIgalze\nThey are already using prolexic (check DNS to verify) and it sure looks like\nDDoS to me.\n\n------\ndownandout\nThere is no way that 20K database inserts in a day should affect them in this\nway. They likely experienced a DDoS and either didn't want to say it or didn't\nrecognize it and actually believed it was because of their 20K new users.\nEither way, given the issues they have had and the ~$1.2 billion market cap\nloss just from this one incident, it begs the question: Should this company be\nat the center of something as important as Bitcoin?\n\nThese types of issues have been faced and solved by myriad other companies,\nmany of them with fewer resources. It seems that every major player in the\nBitcoin space has trouble conducting themselves as actual professional\nbusinesses and are just fine with causing losses ranging from thousands to\nbillions of dollars in this case. If just a few decent companies came together\nto provide the services that Mt. Gox and other current \"leaders\" are failing\nto provide, Bitcoin could quickly become a much more powerful force than it\nalready is. The limiting factor for Bitcoin is no longer demand; it is the\nlack of reliable infrastructure for buying and selling them.\n\n~~~\nmakira\n\"The limiting factor for Bitcoin is no longer demand; it is the lack of\nreliable infrastructure for buying and selling them.\"\n\nThere is a big demand, I don't understand why VCs or YCombinator are not\npushing a few startups in this direction.\n\n~~~\nr4vik\nsee <https://coinbase.com/>\n\n~~~\ncarbocation\nCoinbase is probably in it for the long run, and they are probably doing\nthings to enable them to outlast the competition.\n\nHowever.\n\nOn Monday I was planning to place an order for bitcoin on Coinbase and I was\ninformed that the order would go through on _Friday_ at the market rate at\nthat time. That is somewhat worthless and extremely dangerous in a volatile\nmarket. For now, I consider their service unusable.\n\n~~~\nknowaveragejoe\nIt's been that way for a while. I'm hoping they change the way that works, as\nright now the only way to guarantee you'll get a buy order in is to use a tool\nlike coinbase-trader(<https://github.com/martindale/coinbase-trader>),\nliterally polling their API until it goes through.\n\n------\nsalman89\n1) They should put a captcha on their sign up form. Bitcoin has gotten\nsignificant press in the pass week, but not enough to bump registrations by\n10x (60k in March alone to 20k per day)\n\n2) \"The number of trades executed triple in the last 24hrs.\" But how much has\nthe volume changed? Is there a way of somehow filtering out what would be\n\"panic\" induced trading (perhaps by removing # trades that happen in a large\nswing) to see if trade frequency has changed?\n\n~~~\nJoeboy\n> Bitcoin has gotten significant press in the pass week, but not enough to\n> bump registrations by 10x\n\nI don't know, well publicised offers of free money might actually result in\nquite high uptake.\n\n------\nquandryfoe\n<http://i.imgur.com/cGjIS9x.png>\n\n~~~\ndanjumasule\nDear quandryfoe\n\nMy name is Danjuma Sule, one of the sons of major Gen Gumel Danjuma Sule, The\nlate Nigeria's former minister of mines and power in the regime of the late\nformer Nigeria's military Head of state, Gen Sanni Abacha. When my father died\nhe left me an inheritance of 9830422.33333421 bitcoins. Unfortunately bitcoin\nexchanges are not yet set up in Nigerian currency and I am in need of a young\ntechno wizard with a bank account denominated in US dollars to assist me in\ngaining access to my inheritance.\n\nIt is on this basis I am seeking for assistance. Your percentage is\nnegotiable. Please note; your age and profession doesn't really matter in this\ntransaction. Waiting for your immediate response and bank account specifics.\n\nRegards, Danjuma Sule\n\n~~~\nswalsh\nIf you're creating a new account because you KNOW its going to be downvoted,\nisn't that an indication that you just shouldn't make the comment?\n\n~~~\nscarmig\nSimilarly downvoted him.\n\nHN is a serious place for serious topics. We should be talking about bitcoin.\n\n~~~\ndiminoten\nI can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not...\n\n~~~\nHelianthus\nIt's actually a very wonderful comment.\n\n------\neli\nI'm impressed by how many commenters know the cause of someone else's\ninfrastructure problems with such certainty.\n\n~~~\nmattacular\nAre you new to technology? This is the norm. Everybody is the smartest person\nin the room, regardless of how little they know about the details of the\nimplementation.\n\n------\nGigabyteCoin\nI find this hard to believe... mtgox, bitcointalk, bitcoincharts were all just\nexperiencing \"too much traffic\" today?\n\nbitcointalk has a massive donations budget, and we all know mtgox has a lot of\nmoney and a huge interest in preventing something like this from happening.\n\nI think it was a DDoS combined with a few opportune sells to create a panic on\npurpose to be quite honest.\n\nTinfoil hat replies welcome.\n\n~~~\nmrb\nTheymos (main bitcointalk admin) is seeing very high traffic to the forums:\n250 requests per second. He thinks this is legit traffic, not a DDoS:\n[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=172672.msg1799471#ms...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=172672.msg1799471#msg1799471)\n\n~~~\nGigabyteCoin\nThen what is the reason for the mass panic/selling?\n\n~~~\nbnr\nIt briefly crossed the 200€ mark yesterday. Maybe a lot of people wanted to\ncash out at that point. As soon as the price was dropping, more people decided\nit was a good time to sell.\n\n~~~\nIanCal\nWhile it was dropping, there were two ways you could expect it to go. Either\nit was dropping and was going to stay low, in which case you should sell, or\nit would rise back up in which case you should sell and then buy when it got\ncheap.\n\n------\ndgreensp\nI moved all my bitcoins over to BitStamp (<https://www.bitstamp.net/>) earlier\ntoday. MtGox has _always_ felt a little unreliable at multiple levels. They\nsound earnest in their post mortems, but it's hard to tell if they are\nsufficiently competent with web technology to be doing what they're doing.\n\n~~~\ntomp\nBitstamp is no better. If anything, the (comparatively) low trade volume makes\nit very dangerous. Yesterday, I put in an _instant_ (market) order at about\n5pm. It was fulfilled in about 2 hours, for $50 dollars less than the price\nwas when I put it in. I would expect for market orders to be either fulfilled\nor canceled immediately, not linger pending for 2 hours.\n\n~~~\nSEMW\nMarket orders are relisted every ~10mins at the market price until fulfilled.\nIf you want to sell at _no less_ than some $X, that's what limit orders are\nfor. You used a market order when what you wanted was a limit order; that's\nnot Bitstamp's fault (unless the fault is in making it clear what the\ndifference is, but IIRC they do explain in the FAQ).\n\n------\nlaichzeit0\nMagic The Gathering Online eXchange (MtGOX) refitted to trade a virtual\ncurrency which then had to scale massively in a short period of time.\n\nYeah, I'd say there are serious architectural problems. This is not a software\n\"design\" problem though, it's the inevitable real-world result of software\n\"evolution\". It happens.\n\nI read they're working on a new platform built from scratch. I bet it's going\nto kick ass as they've got some real world experience now about what works,\nwhat does not and what needs to be hardened.\n\n------\ntlrobinson\nBitcoin needs a high performance, extremely secure, open source trading\nengine, with a standardized API that traders can use to arbitrage the\nexchanges.\n\nThe tricky part is transferring other currencies in and out, and between the\nexchanges. \"Ripple\" also sounds promising for this purpose.\n\n~~~\nmsgilligan\nThere's nothing like that already? When you say \"need\" do you know it doesn't\nexist already? I'm genuinely curious and hoping you know the answer.\n\n~~~\ntlrobinson\nThere was one called Intersago but it looks defunct:\n[http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1447/is-there-\nan-...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1447/is-there-an-open-\nsource-bitcoin-exchange)\n\nI came across this project on bitcointalk, which isn't really an exchange but\nlooks interesting: <https://github.com/FellowTraveler/Open-Transactions>\n\n------\nKarunamon\nOkay, not a DDoS. Let's go with that for a sec. Absurd load? Even when the\ndata feeds are working, they show huge bursts of transactions going through.\n(A link downthread shows a screen full of tiny transactions being executed)\n\nMtGox is synonymous with 'bitcoin' at this point. Everyone who knows what a\nbitcoin is knows what that site is.\n\nAre all those 20k accounts legitimate?\n\n~~~\nghshephard\nTo be clear - latency on transactions was at around 600 seconds in the middle\nof the day - that is, an order to \"buy\" at the market, or \"sell\" at the\nmarket, took 600+ seconds to execute.\n\nFor about 20 minutes, they buy/sell buttons were non-responsive. You could\nclick on them - but nothing happened. I have a suspicion (without evidence\nother than observation) that at one point today the buy/sell functions were\ndisabled.\n\n~~~\ncarbocation\nMore like 3600 seconds for over an hour.\n\nThe buy/sell buttons always worked, as far as I know, but when the lag is an\nhour I can see how it would seem broken.\n\n~~~\nghshephard\nI experienced two failure scenarios today - they were very different.\n\nFailure Scenario #1 - Buy/Sell Buttons were not working. You would click them\n- but absolutely nothing was happening. On #MtGoxLive there were a number of\nus all experiencing exactly the same thing. A few believed it might have been\na javascript issue.\n\nFailure Scenario #2 - Once the buttons were activated/fixed - your order was\nplaced in queue instantly, but remained \"pending\" - on #mtgoxlive, ;;goxlag\nshowed lag time of about 600 seconds - My order went from pending to\n\"executed\" exactly according to ;;goxlag.\n\n~~~\ncarbocation\nI consider the first a bug, but the second seems to be the system failing in\nthe way it was designed to.\n\n------\nnum3ric\nThe NPR Planet Money podcast just released a podcast Tuesday on Bitcoins:\n[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/04/09/176688096/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/04/09/176688096/episode-450-bitcoin-\ngoes-to-the-moon)\n\nIt was the first time I had heard about Bitcoins, and so did many I think!\n\n------\nfatbat\nConsidering how volatile bitcoins are, any downtime DDoS or not, affect users\na great deal. Unlike NASDAQ that can rollback/shutdown the market, MtGox has\nto maintain 24/7/365. I dare say their market's uptime is more critical than\nthe regular stock market. I wonder how their stack is setup. Anyone from\nMtGox?\n\n~~~\nycombobreaker\n> Unlike NASDAQ that can rollback/shutdown the market, MtGox has to maintain\n> 24/7/365. I dare say their market's uptime is more critical than the regular\n> stock market.\n\nYou are trivializing the real markets. What makes you think this is something\nthat NASDAQ can just \"do\"? They had a system problem causing delays on\nFacebook's IPO, and they're still dealing with the shit-storm from that now.\nEveryone who had poor executions (or missed executions) as a result of the\ndelay is trying to get compensation from the exchange for their technical\nproblem. I haven't checked the exact number recently, but I want to say $21MM\nis the pool that the exchange has to puke to the \"plaintiffs\".\n\nBecause bitcoin exchanges are not regulated in the same fashion as stock\nexchanges, I doubt that MtGox will be on the hook for anyone's poor\nexecutions.\n\n> I wonder how their stack is setup.\n\nAs someone else pointed out, their stack is setup wrong if account management\nhas _any_ impact on their matching engine. Hopefully, it was just the web\nservers which host both accounts-management and trading UIs. Regardless, there\nwas clearly some resource-sharing which should not have happened.\n\n~~~\ntatsuke95\n> _but I want to say $21MM is the pool that the exchange has to puke to the\n> \"plaintiffs\"._\n\nThis is actually back in the news. And the value that the banks are looking to\nrecover is closer to $500MM.\n\n[http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/UBS_unimpressed_with_Fa...](http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/UBS_unimpressed_with_Facebook_IPO_repayment.html?cid=35324786)\n\n------\nmrb\nFor comparison, Facebook acquired their first 100M users at an average rate of\n60k accounts per day.\n\n~~~\nwaratuman\nFacebook users generally don't intend to transact though.\n\n~~~\ncarbocation\nEspecially not in a way where the exact order of each transaction is critical,\nso there is no opportunity for any parallelism.\n\n~~~\nanonymoushn\nSo while this is an astute observation, a properly run exchange would go\nthrough a lot of effort to separate the matching engine (the inherently\nsingle-threaded part of the exchange) from the portions of the system that\naccept orders and spew data. The registration system and web site also don't\nbelong anywhere they could possibly contend with the matching engine. Real\nexchanges process orders of magnitude more volume on a single symbol than\nmtgox does, yet have latencies measured in microseconds rather than tens of\nminutes.\n\n~~~\nkrunaldo\nThe matching engine should be separated completely from the rest of system as\nthis is the one component where you want to align with cpu cache and all other\nkind of crazy low level optimizations. I do agree that mtgox system is slow\nbut we should keep in mind the resource difference both in time and money the\nlarge stock exchanges have had time to build their systems. Most of the stock\nexchanges also don't build their own system but rely on buying one from a\nindependent organization or another stock exchange.\n\nA small nitpick: Volume is one metric but it does not matter in reality the\nimportant part is the amount of transactions on a specific symbol.\n\n~~~\nanonymoushn\n_A small nitpick: Volume is one metric but it does not matter in reality the\nimportant part is the amount of transactions on a specific symbol._\n\nThat's quite right, thanks :)\n\nReal venues incentivize participants to post orders in round lots (generally\n100 shares) and some of them penalize participants who add liquidity with\nextraordinarily low fill rates. These rules help reduce load on the matching\nengine, and afaik mtgox has no analogous rules.\n\n------\nlucb1e\nI never thought it was a DDoS, can't understand why people think this. Lots of\nexchanges have been down, one even seemed hacked (turned only a related\nservice was hacked), and meanwhile the price only went up.\n\nThe price drop is due to panic selling and lag. It was almost inevitable, also\nconstant in the news. Now it happened and we can move on. The price is back to\nabout 75% of what it was already, and I don't think it'll take more than a few\nmonths to break the previous price record. Or seeing how fast it's recovering,\nperhaps not more than a few days.\n\n~~~\nBrokenPipe\nThere was a DDoS, as there has been an on going one for quite a while now and\nyou can find so on the mtgox website news section.\n\nHowever it was not a DDoS in the classical sense that brought mtgox down to\nits knees but nonetheless a DDoS has occured.\n\nmtgox supports a weird feature whereby you're allowed to enter any buy or sell\norder even if you don't have funds. This means that whenever the prices\nmatches your order the system needs to check whether you actually can with\nyour balance fill that position.\n\nVia the api, it is possible to put tiny transaction even smaller amounts than\nwhat you're allowed via the webgui.\n\nIt doesn't take much review of the ask and bid to find out that there were a\nhuge a mount of micro tiny transactions all over the place. Those are in an\never higher volume when system begins lagging furiously and people panic.\n\nThese are perhaps HFT, or maybe not, but those are the source of the lag and\ntherefore the source of the panic.\n\nThis is DDoSing and it's also mtgox fault for having a a toy exchange and us\nbitcoiners for using it.\n\nI long ago moved to bitstamp. You can find your local exchange i'm sure.\n\n------\nedandersen\nIt looks like whoever was behind recent events saw this as message claiming it\nwasn't a DDoS, chuckled and responded by... making a stronger DDoS. MtGOX is\ndown.\n\n~~~\nJudson\nThe press release did say that they may take the exchange down for a few\nhours. I'm not sure if that meant unannounced downtime like this though.\n\n------\nMahn\nIt's amazing how what is currently the largest Bitcoin exchange service can be\nso unprofessional. You would think they could have anticipated this.\n\n------\nck2\nDid anyone notice there was a SEVEN MILLION (USD $) transaction yesterday?\n\n[http://blockchain.info/tx/5d9ef693d41cb3bb4c6d98e70ea8b2cc91...](http://blockchain.info/tx/5d9ef693d41cb3bb4c6d98e70ea8b2cc91be29a804245a06ec8761d9cddc103c)\n\nActually, $7M based on $100 value. If it was @ $200, well _$14 Million_ USD.\n\n~~~\nweareconvo\nMaybe some bitcoins being shuffled around in the exchange?\n\n------\neric970\nAnd now, guess what MtGox advises everybody do? Go drink some Champaign! To\ncelebrate their massive success! I'm not kidding-- look at their latest\nbulletin on why they're suspending trading for the rest of today.\n\nYou've got to be KIDDING ME. They don't seem to give two shits about their\nusers or their money.\n\n------\nweazl\nI've been waiting for over a week to get my account verified so I can start\nusing my account (I'm not in the US), but they only seem to verify a few\nhundred a day and there are still 5000 people ahead of me.. quite frustrating.\n\n~~~\napapli\nI'm in Australia, it was 4 working days. IIRC The price went up from $60 to\nabout $170 during that time, very frustrating.\n\nAt least I'm verified now - but I have to say their lag time and apparent\nsaling issues still concern me a lot.\n\n------\nbrador\nIf you want to run a succesful pyramid scheme, step 1 is find desparate poor\npeople, reddit is a great starting point. Ring up their greed impulse and the\nrest writes itself.\n\n~~~\nilluminate\nThe hundreds of thousands of dollars people funnel at a time to 419 schemes\nindicate that there are plenty of desperate, greed-clouded middle-classed\npersons and higher-classed suckers. I suppose Pyramids/MLMs also work well\namong the lower classes, but they're hardly limited to them, diversify!\n\n------\ndrivebyacct2\nSomeone, please, compete with Mt.Gox more. :( Also, don't store your wallets\non Mt.Gox. Oh what a target they must be.\n\n~~~\nJach\nIn general I agree with the advice to not store large quantities of btc on Mt.\nGox, but it's not as dangerous as it used to be a year ago and may be less\ndangerous than storing them locally in an encrypted wallet... Especially if\none uses Windows. If one is using two-factor authentication with Mt. Gox, even\nif I somehow got infected with a keylogger it wouldn't really matter for Mt.\nGox whereas my local wallet would be in trouble. And while we'll see how Mt.\nGox responds to user stupidity that leads to their btc being stolen, I'm\nconfident that if it was squarely Mt. Gox's fault (e.g. someone executed a\nsuccessful social engineering attack on them to get around yubikey), they\nwould make things right.\n\n------\nwatercup\nReal Life Mario Brothers?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAre users trying to make developers angry? - joeyespo\nhttps://www.exceptionnotfound.net/are-users-trying-to-make-developers-angry/\n======\ncrasm\n\n        But their stupidity persisted. They did things that\n        were so wacky they boggled my mind (like putting a\n        credit card number in with spaces between each\n        number)...\n    \n\nNot allowing spaces in a credit card field is a pet peeve of mine. It's a\ntrivial problem to solve in code, and almost nobody does it. Whether it's a\nspace every 4 numbers (the most logical to me) or a space between each number,\nit really shouldn't matter.\n\nThere are spaces in the number on the card itself. Entering the number with\nspaces makes it easy to check if you've made a mistake in only a few glances,\ninstead of painstakingly going number-by-number and losing your position a few\ntimes.\n\nIt shouldn't be the user's fault.\n\n~~~\nourmandave\nI just enter the 16 digits without much trouble.\n\nThen I get to the expiration date and the first column is a drop list of Jan,\nFeb, Mar... wat?\n\nNow my brain has to convert 07 to Jul instead of just picking 07. Why?!\n\n _Are developers trying to make users angry?_\n\n~~~\namelius\nThen I get to the CVC code. I have to turn the card, there are two numbers,\nprinted such that they look unimportant. Which one should I pick?\n\nBanks are making users angry really.\n\n------\n20years\nI think sometimes users think developers are trying to make them angry.\n\n\"It's not that the users were trying to make me angry; it's that they were\nignorant of how to make the app do what they want.\"\n\nActually, I think the ignorance is on the developers part.\n\nUsers don't care about what some developers may perceive as a sexy UI.\nHonestly, most don't really even want to \"learn\" the UI. They just want to get\nstuff done without having to think about it.\n\nWe as developers need to get better about developing software that doesn't\nrequire a manual. That doesn't require a user to learn how to use something\nthat in their minds should really be so easy.\n\nExample: don't force a particular credit card entry format such as multiple\nentry fields, doesn't allow spaces or requires use of dashes, etc. Same thing\nwith date formats. Make your software smart enough to handle as many use cases\nas possible. If they do something incorrectly, make the UI guide them through\nthe error in an easy to understand way.\n\nWe as developers are used to reading through complicated documentation,\ntutorials, etc. That doesn't mean we should subject our customers to that same\npain. Unless your software is at the Salesforce scale, the aim should be to\ndevelop it in a way that doesn't require a manual or require your users to dig\nthrough a bunch of tutorial pages just to get started.\n\n~~~\nSerLava\n>Users don't care about what some developers may perceive as a sexy UI.\nHonestly, most don't really even want to \"learn\" the UI. They just want to get\nstuff done without having to think about it.\n\nVery much this. Users aren't stupid, they just don't give a shit. They use\ndozens, maybe hundreds of user interfaces per day and your UI has no right to\nbe a difficult POS.\n\n------\nrudedogg\nI look at this a little differently. If a user is _able_ to make a mistake,\nI've failed (this is too broad, but you get the idea).\n\nIf you take an honest look at your application, and step away from it, it's\nusually easy to see how they misinterpreted something, etc. I think empathy is\nan important skill in developing software. It's not right to expect someone to\nchange how they think about a task, because you've written the software to\nwork in that way.\n\nGood software and UX is hard. Modeling problems in a way a computer _and_ a\nuser can understand is hard. Browsing\n[http://ux.stackexchange.com/](http://ux.stackexchange.com/) and reading some\nof \"The Design of Everyday Things\" opened my eyes to how bad things are - and\nhow much better they can be.\n\nAlso, if you haven't you should watch some talks by Bret Victor or Alan Kay.\n\n~~~\njoncampbelldev\nTotally agreed about the not letting mistakes be an option.\n\nI was building an admin ui to configure basically a fancy slideshow for\nemployee performance metrics (gamification). We originally had planned a few\ndays work to put proper validation and error messages in, but then flipped the\ntask around and made it so that every field had a sensible default, and no\nmistaken values were possible to be filled in (e.g. number fields with\nautomatic limits, date pickers instead of free text).\n\nIt turned out to be much less work and the user never sees an annoying \"hey\nyou've not filled in this field in the way one of our devs wanted you to\".\n\n------\niptables\n> users saying something doesn't work, only for us to point out something\n> simple that they forgot to do, or the instructions they totally didn't read,\n> and then the error magically goes away\n\nIf that's how your software works, you're doing it wrong. It means there was\nlittle to no design planning. The error should tell the user/developer what to\ndo to avoid the error thus avoiding an angry email in the first place.\n\n~~~\ncpitman\nAre you saying users read error messages? People come to me for help when\nthings break, and ~60% of the time I save them by _reading the error message_\nand doing what it says.\n\n~~~\nRetra\nAre your error messages readable and obviously relevant?\n\n~~~\niptables\nI would argue that developers should aim for 0 error messages ever. If your\nsoftware requires an action to be performed before moving on, then redirect\nthem to the action, highlight the point of interest, and give a little alert\nat the top that tells them what to do. When you have a scary error message,\nusers get scared.\n\n------\nklagermkii\nI don't think I've ever felt that users are intentionally trying to annoy me,\nit's more that it feels like they're not trying hard enough. The sense that\nthe application is not impossible to use, lots of their peers have apparently\nbeen able to use it with no problem, and that they need to meet me halfway. A\nkind of unspoken contract where I try and make it as easy as possible for the\nuser, and the user puts in the effort to read the directions rather than just\nimmediately clicking through.\n\nThis is not to say that it's their fault or that I am not always working on\nimproving my own work to better take into account human nature as part of\ninterface design. Merely that the post focuses on \"intentionally piss off\" as\nthe prime motivator, and I'd be a surprised if most developers attributed it\nto that.\n\n------\ndmoy\nIf the user has difficulties, it's usually your fault not the user's. Now that\ndoesn't necessarily mean you can realistically do anything about it (time,\nbudget, lack of UX people, etc)...\n\n~~~\ntaeric\nMeh. This is just as problematic of a way of looking at it, honestly.\n\nIf the user is having a hard time getting something done. It is probably a\ndifficult problem for them. The job of the developer is to work with the user\nto make it easier. If you are lucky, you can make it easy. But, incremental\nimprovements are huge.\n\n------\niammyIP\nLearning a graphical software interface is wasted lifetime, it's like having\nto learn a new spoken language everytime you want to talk to someone. If\nhowever you are married to that person, it might be ok to waste some time to\nlearn that persons interface. Like a photographer that needs to learn how to\ntalk to Photoshop so it can make the pictures prettier.\n\nHowever most software resembles more the person that you randomly ask for\ndirections in the city. Nobody wants to learn a new language just to exchange\n2 sentences.\n\nBut building interfaces that require no learning at all is as hard as writing\na program without any bugs or undefined behaviour. In practise it might be\neven harder since talking to the machine gives more predictable precise\nresults, compared to talking to a human.\n\nMost interfaces are therefore quite bad, because development time would go\nthrough the roof if any imaginable erratic user behaviour would be taken care\nof totally invisible. The bigger and more complex the program, the messier\nit's interface will be.\n\nSo yes, users might be trying to make developers angry by pointing out their\nlazyness.\n\n------\nArtlav\n> _They weren 't trying to make me angry, they were trying to learn._\n\nYeah, these are the easy ones.\n\nThe hard ones are the \"why should i think what to do? I have my job, just make\nthis thing work!\" kind that doesn't try or want to learn anything at all.\n\n~~~\nghaff\nHonest question. What's wrong with that in many cases? I want to buy a widget.\nI don't want to try harder or learn the peculiarities of your website.\n\n~~~\nhiou\nI think that comment may be in relation to tool software such as a CAD program\nas opposed to service software.\n\nIn tool software it is often impossible to always know what the operator is\nlooking to achieve as it is often novel. Service software is quite the\nopposite where there are likely a few well defined goals the software is\nattempting to help the customer achieve.\n\n~~~\nghaff\nFair enough. Past a certain level of complexity some learning curve is\nunavoidable.\n\n------\nrwallace\nA good guideline for writing user-facing software:\n\nWhen you get asked a question once, it might be just a question.\n\nWhen you get asked the same question by two different users, treat it as a bug\nreport and see if you can fix the interface to make that question not arise.\n\n------\ndebaserab2\nIts disappointing to me how little empathy there is in this profession for the\npeople that use the things we make.\n\n------\nourmandave\ntl;dr with just this quote\n\n _So we all (including me) need to calm down. Users are not trying to piss us\noff, they 're just trying to learn._\n\n~~~\nkleer001\nand it seems trivial to add too that they're just trying to get things done,\none in a huge pile of never ending obligations and difficulties to plain old\nliving in the world.\n\n------\nKC8ZKF\nHarrumph.\n\nHe has the razor pointing the wrong way. His users weren't trying to learn,\nthey were trying to _teach_. In almost all enterprisey CRUD applications, the\nsteel-toes on the floor know more about the domain than the developers.\n\nListen to them.\n\n------\nna85\nSounds like the author is blaming user ignorance when in fact it's bad UI.\n\n------\nNKCSS\nHmm, not quite sure I agree; as with communication, I believe that the\nresponsibility lies with the sender for the receiver to comprehend what you\nare saying.\n\nSomeone does not understand you? Then you are not explaining it well enough.\n\nSomeone can't figure out how to use your software? Then you did not create it\nin a way people can comprehend what they need to do.\n\nIs a button you are not supposed to press (before you've completed some other\naction) enabled, it's your fault the user can click it.\n\nSame goes for repeated clicks, allowing/not handling bad input, etc.\n\n------\nmytec\nI was frustrated enough with one user that I made RTFM part of his password.\nSome time later his son logged onto his laptop and asked, \"Dad, do you know\nwhat RTFM really means?\"\n\n~~~\ncwyers\nThe abuse of passwords here on both sides makes my skin crawl.\n\n------\nYeGoblynQueenne\n>> The issue was that I live and breath code, and they don't.\n\nEh, dunno. Maybe try not to breathe so much code? I mean, that already sounds\nlike you're overdoing it somehow.\n\n------\nspion\nI actually have a very different feeling when I watch users struggle with my\napp. I feel slightly ashamed and very grateful. Most of the time I realise\nI've made too many assumptions about the UI, and i start getting ideas on how\nto maybe fix the problem so that other users don't encounter it.\n\n------\nSirensOfTitan\nI've watched developers who regularly work with UI get tripped up by all sorts\nof design paradigms. Everyone interacts with things differently, regardless of\ntheir background.\n\n------\ntamana\nMany of the commenters here are missing the satire. This essay is about a self\ncentered dev learning user empathy, not a defense of hard to use software\n\n------\nycombinatorMan\nTHis guys not even right\n\n------\nzebraflask\nI think the post is overly optimistic. No, they're not \"trying to learn.\"\nThey're just not willing or able to do the simplest of tasks.\n\nThese kinds of users should not be accommodated or even responded to. Good\nUI/UIX should not cater to the lowest common denominator.\n\n~~~\n20years\n\"These kinds of users should not be accommodated or even responded to\"\n\nPlease let me know the software you have developed so I can develop something\nbetter and make those users you refuse to respond to happy. Especially if they\nare paying customers.\n\nThis mentality is what results in failure and leaves paths WIDE open for your\ncompetitors.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "Ask HN: Do you currently or plan to run a firewall at home(Pfsense, Sophos)? - Aaronstotle\n======\nchmielewski\nPFSense, but imo microsegmentation of the network is more important than which\none big lock you've got hanging on the front door.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDo Not, I Repeat, Do Not Download Onavo, Facebook’s Vampiric VPN Service - ourmandave\nhttps://gizmodo.com/do-not-i-repeat-do-not-download-onavo-facebook-s-vam-1822937825\n======\ndfee\nWhat’s most alarming are the AppStore reviews [0] - a majority of the authors\nappear to have downloaded the app after clicking a banner ad which claimed\ntheir iPhone had viruses.\n\nFor example: “I just downloaded it today because of four viruses so I hope it\nhelps get rid of them” - burnt tacos\n\n[0] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onavo-protect-vpn-\nsecurity/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onavo-protect-vpn-\nsecurity/id577491499?mt=8)\n\n------\ndegenerate\nHow can any self-respecting programmer at FB work on a project like this? At\nleast most of the IE6 toolbar spyware had some useful purpose for the end-\nuser... smileys, pagerank, search bar etc...\n\nThis on the other hand is straight up deception in my mind. Hot air. Prove me\nwrong? What benefit does anyone get from installing this?\n\n~~~\nbeckler\nUnfortunately, ethics is not a course taught in most college majors, and is\nvirtually non-existent in public schools.\n\n~~~\nsli\nIs it not? Every major at my STEM uni was required to take an ethics course.\nSometimes multiple, depending on the field.\n\n~~~\ndouko\nI graduated relatively recently, and only had to take one- it turned out to be\na semester long \"piracy is bad\" course.\n\n------\nBuildTheRobots\nApart from tunnelling all traffic, Has anyone checked to see how malicious the\nOnavo installer is? The pessimist in me expects SSL root certs and even\nkeylogg-e-r-s - apologies, dictionary personalisation profiles.\n\n~~~\nmankash666\nWhy do you suspect the Onavo installer to be malicious?\n\n~~~\neganist\nOther practices like [https://www.fastcompany.com/40451455/facebook-is-spying-\non-y...](https://www.fastcompany.com/40451455/facebook-is-spying-on-your-\nphone-habits-to-figure-out-which-ideas-to-steal-next)\n\n~~~\nBuildTheRobots\nThat (distrust in general) but also the fact it seems to be sold as a\n\"Protection\" service - which, if you look at a decent number of \"secure\nbrowsers\" tends to involve protecting you from encrypted sites.\n\n------\ndzhiurgis\nThis all depends whether you trust your ISP more than Facebook or not.\n\n~~~\n8_hours_ago\nI pay my ISP a lot of money each month. They don’t need my data to be\nprofitable. Facebook, on the other hand, has a business model completely\ndependent on selling advertising based on my data to 3rd parties.\n\n~~~\nsprayk\noff the top of my head, AT&T and Verizon have done various forms of customer\ntracking for advertisers. They both used supercookies at some point, which\nwere injected into customer egress, and ATT used to inspect web traffic in\norder to target ads (opt-out with a monthly fee, of course).\n\n~~~\njmknoll\nCertainly, if ISPs can access your data, they would like to. Its basically\nfree money. But its not a life-or-death situation for them, and thus my\n(somewhat uneducated) guess is that there is less management focus on things\nlike deep packet inspection and consumer targeting. They can also jsut jack up\nprices or sell more subscriptions. At Facebook, on the other hand, selling ads\nis priority number 0. Its the only way to make money. So I'd worry more about\nFacebook seeing my traffic.\n\n------\nlafar6502\nBut what kind of security does it provide? Website blocker?\n\n~~~\nbeckler\nA VPN provides a secure tunnel, so it prevents your data from being sniffed on\nthe insecure WiFi in your local coffee shop, and up every hop to the\nterminating server. So you can prevent an ISP and friendly neighborhood hacker\nfrom seeing your requests. However, the terminating server can see EVERYTHING.\n\nSo if you want a VPN, use\n[https://github.com/trailofbits/algo](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo) or\n[https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand](https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand).\n\nAlgo is my favorite, but both are pretty effective in my opinion.\n\n------\ndingo_bat\nExactly the low quality crap you would expect from gizmodo. Who would you\nrather trust? Random VPN app or Facebook? The choice is obvious to me.\n\n~~~\ncraftyguy\nWell in this case \"random VPN app\" and \"facebook\" are the same thing. So you\nautomatically lose if you choose either!\n\n~~~\ndingo_bat\nNo they aren't? Random VPN app is like one of these[0], and Facebook is a $100\nbillion social media giant, trusted by billions of people.\n\n[0] [https://goo.gl/kDPjxf](https://goo.gl/kDPjxf)\n\n~~~\nFins\nBut at least with those Random VPN apps there is some chance that they are not\nactually stealing your data. With Facebook there is not.\n\nAnd if billions of people trust Facebook, that's just a sad commentary on the\namound of critical thinking in the world.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLinux Audio Conference 2017 – Paul Davis keynote - ronjouch\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZbMfyBGPKo&t=8658\n======\nronjouch\nOP note: recommended talk, some details on the state of the Linux audio world\nin 2017, but also lots of thoughts applicable to not just audio software but\ngeneral open-source/free software projects.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDOJ advises that Net Neutrality could hamper development of the Internet - youngnh\nhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070906/ap_on_hi_te/internet_fees_justice_department;_ylt=AlDVAzEP6zj3FCeqjPcXCsWs0NUE\nBad news and the flawed analogies still persist.  This time instead of tubes, the internet is likened to the Post Office charging more for express mail.\n======\nbrlewis\nTalk about spin.\n\nThey use the example of the post office, saying you can pay different amounts\nfor different speeds. That's not what net neutrality prevents. Net neutrality\nwould prevent the situation where you send off two order forms at the same\npostal rate, but one company gets their order form faster because they're a\nsubsidiary of the post office, or have paid a big fee.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWho Will Own Your Next Good Idea - drallison\nhttp://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98sep/copy.htm\n\n======\nscotty79\n> Some naive intellectuals want to abandon copyright altogether.\n\nIt's more like \"Some are abandoning copyright altogether.\" now.\n\n------\nj_baker\n[1998]\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nStrip Down Apache to Improve Performance vs. Nginx - ashitlerferad\nhttps://haydenjames.io/strip-apache-improve-performance-memory-efficiency/\n======\nvbernat\nThe part about compiling from source seems dubious and not backed by any data.\nModules being dynamically loaded. They should not affect performance when not\nloaded. As for memory, I also doubt there will be any difference.\n\nWhen compiling from source, you don't get automatic security updates from your\ndistribution and you may break integration with the other parts of the\ndistribution.\n\n~~~\nBenjiWiebe\nYes, I'd like to see an explanation for or against compiling from source by\nsomeone who knows what's going on.\n\n------\nwolco\nApache can be just as fast if you remove the looking and reading of the\n.htaccess file in a local directory.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMy students forged the notes. I turned them into a lesson plan. - robg\nhttp://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/excuses-excuses-an-excerpt-from-teacher-man/article156072.html\n======\nExJournalist\n\"I was having an epiphany. Isn’t it remarkable, I thought, how the students\nwhined and said it was hard putting 200 words together on any subject? But\nwhen they forged excuse notes, they were brilliant...\"\n\nTo me this is a great example of one of the fundamental problems with so much\neducation: it is full of unchallenging, unrelated-to-life, contrived tasks.\nWhen any process (creative writing, math, coding) is harnessed to a\nfascinating, meaningful-to-students goal... well, of course they're motivated.\nAnd creative.\n\nThat has always been true of me - when in grammar school, and decades into\nemployment.\n\n~~~\ncschneid\nQuestion for you then. In high school, should a kid only interested in reading\n& writing (english class, journalism) be required to take math and sciences?\n\nHow about a kid who's interested only in physics, should we make him read and\nwrite poetry?\n\nEven if each class is taught the best it possibly could be, individual\ninterests will outweigh, and the kids will be bored in the alternate classes.\n\nSo the options are either 1) uninterested kids, or 2) uneducated kids.\n\nBasically, since interests vary so much, even among middle school aged kids,\nthere's no platonic ideal of a \"perfect class that every kid will love\".\n\n~~~\nmquander\nPersonally, I think that given an intellectually stimulating home environment,\npassionate teachers, and a great curriculum, (almost) every kid will be\ninterested in both poetry and physics, because they are both fundamentally\ninteresting and beautiful things.\n\nThat's what we should be aiming for.\n\n~~~\nzimbabwe\nI can confirm this. In high school I hated math, planned on getting an English\nmajor, because the English teachers were so good. Previously, in middle school\nI hated critical analysis of books, but because my math teacher was so good I\nwas an absolute math geek.\n\nI remember my high school Algebra II teacher was asked, \"Why should we care\nabout what you're saying?\" His answer: \"You shouldn't care. You're here to get\na grade. You'll never use this and it's not fun.\" This while my English\nteacher was staying an hour after class to debate Lolita, Ulysses, A Space\nOdyssey, and a whole ton of other stuff with basically every student willing\nto talk to him. There were a lot.\n\n~~~\nsgoraya\nYour second paragraph struck a chord with me - through middle and high school,\nnearly all my math teachers would preface various topics with \"You'll never\nuse this in real life...\" With that kind of sentiment, its no wonder why a lot\nof students did not want, or develop, an understanding for math :/\n\n~~~\nJimmy\nBut the teachers are right, you know. Professional mathematicians doing\nresearch will practically jump at the chance to tell you that their work is\nmeant to be beautiful, not practical. I think that's the message we should be\nimparting to students: math doesn't have to be useful for you to study it,\njust as poetry doesn't have to be useful for you to read it.\n\n~~~\nmquander\nI agree completely, but they rarely get around to demonstrating why it _is_\nbeautiful, so all the students learn is why it's _not_ practical.\n\nNote that the public school approach doesn't work much better for poetry or\nliterature. Precious few high schoolers graduate with a love of reading.\n\n~~~\nzimbabwe\nJust to be certain, have all of you read Lockhart's Lament? Because it argues\nthe case for teaching math more beautifully than I can.\n\n<http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf>\n\n------\npieter\nExcuse notes are a great example of why you need verification. Anyone can\nwrite one for themselves, and give it to you without proof it really came from\na parent. That's a classic man in the middle attack.\n\nWhat you really need is some kind of certificate for each parent, allowing you\nto verify the note really came from the parent. That's why self-signed\ncertificates really aren't worth much -- anyone could have created them.\n\n~~~\nivank\nIf no one wants to miss class, you don't have to worry about this.\n\n~~~\namohr\nI think that concisely encapsulated the two go-to solutions for so many\nhackers: a) create a complex system that will postpone or perhaps solve the\nproblem; and b) make the problem irrelevant with a miracle stroke of genius\nsolution to be fleshed out at a later date.\n\n~~~\nTheSOB88\nHackers, hackers, hackers, why does every thread have a post about how hackers\nare so great? Can we stop the big circle jerk?\n\n~~~\namohr\nCircle jerk? I was pointing out unproductive behavior - the tendency to\nsimplify a problem such that it fits into a stock solution or counting on a\nmiracle. Neither of these actually confront the original problem - just duct\ntape and wishes.\n\n------\neuroclydon\nThis is the perfect example of \"Unschooling\" ( <http://www.holtgws.com/> )\nwhere children are encouraged to follow their interests, inclinations and\nenergies to their full and natural ends rather than being cowed into\nperforming busy work in one topic after another, until they hate nearly all\nlearning.\n\n[EDIT] I just wanted to throw in here a hacker angle on unschooling or\nhomeschooling: I would gladly pay for software that teaches math or grammar\nand is based on cognitive science. Something like SuperMemo\n<http://www.supermemo.com/> profiled in this Wired article\n[http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...](http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak)\n\n~~~\nJimmyL\nHow?\n\nMcCourt was teaching a class on Creative Writing - this wasn't in a science or\nmath class. He took what he was supposed to be teaching (how to write\nstories), and found a theme to write about that his students found\ninteresting.\n\nThose children weren't following their \"interests, inclinations and energies\"\n- I find it very hard to believe that every single kid in that class would be\ndoing creative writing if they had the ability to do whatever their interests\nled them to. They were doing what they were supposed to do in that subject-\nspecific class, and just happened to be led by a very good teacher.\n\n~~~\neuroclydon\nThe had already pulled off good creative writing in their excuse notes, notes\nthat could have been written for any class. Writing those fake excuse notes\nDID come from their natural inclination, and when encouraged to continue to\nfollow it, rather than to get back to the program, they produced even greater\nwork.\n\n------\neuroclydon\nFrank had already won when he didn't fuss or punish them for the fake notes.\nIt's like PG says in his FAQ, kids can tell which teachers actually like them.\n\n------\nzimbabwe\nRest in peace, Frank McCourt.\n\nI missed Angela's Ashes, but Teacher Man looks like it would be worth the\nread. What a great reminder of what a good teacher is capable of.\n\n------\nJshWright\nWhat a tremendous story of a true \"hacker\".\n\n------\nmad44\nI had listened to a talk by him at the Columbia University (from Columbia's\niTunes page). It was a lot of fun. Here is a link to another talk by him\n(maybe the same one):\n[http://blog.92y.org/index.php/weblog/item/92y_podcast_rememb...](http://blog.92y.org/index.php/weblog/item/92y_podcast_remembering_frank_mccourt/)\n\n------\ngrnknight\nThis is awesome!! What a creative solution to encouraging creative writing.\n\n------\nIsaacL\nIt's a cool story, but he's hardly the first to do it - I worked as a\nvolunteer English teacher in Asia for 6 months, and did this with some of my\nsenior classes - excuses for missing homework, being late for school, losing\ntheir notebook, etc - I think there was a prize for the most creative one. It\nwasn't an original idea of mine - I got the idea from a similar lesson in my\nown high school english class (UK).\n\n~~~\ntrickjarrett\nIt never crossed my mind that he was the only one, however it was still\ninteresting to read and a good example of what teachers would be like in a\nperfect world.\n\n~~~\nIsaacL\nHe said in the article (may be a misquote) that he was the only one.\n\n------\nyardie\nHa, I wish I had this guy in my college lit. class. Of the 3 I had 2 were\ngreat and the one in between (the one I knew I was going to fail) was a\ncomplete asshole. I'm still not sure how the other 2 managed to find a way to\nmake the material covered relevant, yet the 3rd guy managed to make me hate\neverything about him, his class, and his topics.\n\nAnd the dude was a real hippy, but not in a cool way. All his themes were some\nsci-fi postapocolyptic drivel. When I brought his name up people knew of him\nand gave a sad frown like they knew I was suffering. Not just students but\nteachers and other professors.\n\nFor 3 years I was listed as a freshman with over 90 credits because the I\nrefused to take another lit class and the university wouldn't change my status\nuntil I did.\n\nBTW, almost 10 years later, it still pisses me off.\n\n------\nchristofd\nWhy are the students exceptionally motivated to fulfill this assignment:\n\n\\- They have nowhere else to go. They have to sit in that class room. More or\nless, it's their job.\n\n\\- They are being asked to create something from their own imagination, which\nis in stark contrast to the usual method of schooling: memorizing established\nfacts from textbooks.\n\nMotivation is a powerful force that schools do not harness enough.\n\nHowever, large organizations will always be political in nature, so driving\nbehaviour with intrinsic motivation is probably NOT something that will be\npracticed generally.\n\n------\nnettdata\nI would have read the article, but my internet connection was down.\n\n~~~\nIsaacL\nThat's really interesting.\n\n~~~\nnettdata\nReally? Nobody?\n\nIt's an article about making up excuses. I was hoping everyone would chime in\nwith their own excuses in the spirit of the article.\n\n~~~\nalanthonyc\nOkay, I get it now.\n\nBut I think you were supposed to come up with a well written creative excuse.\nA short one-liner is not enough.\n\n~~~\nnettdata\nIt was one of the \"good\" forgeries.\n\n------\nhendler\nMy one criticism - I think some of the excuse notes he rejects as lies are\ntrue - if they reflect anything similar to my childhood.\n\n------\ndipankarsarkar\nHehehehe :) , it is true that lying/forging is one of the most creative\nactivity (unless people die / get hurt because of it).\n\nGood one !!!!\n\n------\nalanthonyc\nThanks for that. I'm buying the book.\n\n------\nsound2man\nI can't express how much I love this style of teaching. This is about the only\nthing that you can do to curb this behavior and still maintain a relationship\nwith your students.\n\nI was a goof in school, but my teacher kept me from getting out of hand the\nexact same way. By guiding my exuberance instead of squelching it, we got\nalong great, and I graduated near the top of my class.\n\n+20 to dedicated teachers!\n\n------\nblats\nUhh.. ?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhat would it take to record and entire life on video? - Zenbach\n\nImagine you were asked to build a system with today's technology capable of storing people's entire life on video. This request would be insane a few years ago only. I think today is already possible and pretty soon it may be a reality ( I know, scary.. ie: wife to husband: \"Let's rewind an see where really were you last night? or an specific date 25 years ago?.. oops!)\nLet's assume video would come at same data rate as YouTube HQ video from a tiny camera (iPhone size) embedded into a person's forehead. Assuming and average life span of 80 years what kind of infrastructure, storage, costs would you estimate?\n======\nZenbach\nHere are some numbers to give you and idea of what it would take to record\nyour entire life on video.\n\nAssumed Parameters: \\- 80 years (average life span) \\- 1000 kbits/sec (YouTube\nvideo datarate) \\- $50.00/TeraByte\n\nSolution: \\- 80 yrs * 365 days/year * 24 hours/day * 3600 sec/hour =\n2,522,880,000 secs/yr \\- Total Secs in 80 yrs * data/sec = Total Storage\nrequired to store 80 yrs so: Total Storage = 2,522,880,000 secs/80yr * 1000\nkbits/sec = 2.5 e+12 kbits for 80 yrs (1 GB = 8,589,934.59 kbits) in GB would\nbe 293,701.89 GB for 80 years totalling about 287 TeraBytes (about 3.6\nTB/year)\n\nCOST/Yr: at 3.6TB/year * $50/TB = $179/yr\n\nTOTAL STORAGE REQUIRED TO RECORD YOUR ENTIRE LIFE: ######### 287 TeraBytes\n###########\n\nTOTAL STORAGE COST TO RECORD YOUR ENTIRE LIFE: $179/yr * 80 years = #########\n$14.340 ###########\n\nNOTE: This is an approximate value not considering that storage prices would\nbe dramatically lower 80 yrs from today. Probably, to record your entire life\n80 years from now would cost less than $1000.\n\n------\njoshuarr\nCrap... if you could develop a decent compression algorithm that tossed out\nall the sleeping, masturbating, eating, wandering around aimlessly, sitting\nthere stoned out of my gourd, and posting stupid stuff to the internet, I bet\nyou could compress my 30 some years into about five.\n\n~~~\nZenbach\nI think your point makes a lot of sense. One of the sad things we would\ndiscover from that experiment is how the majority of the footage would be\nabsolutely useless.. which to some degree would demonstrate how much time of\nour lives is spent doing useless or totally boring things. My guess is that in\nan average 80 year life you would be pressed to find more than 24 hours worth\nof \"worthy\", relevant, amusing, moments.. most of these moments only relevant\nto the person itself or friends or relatives.. Another interesting thing that\nthis experiment would yield would be to find out how much time in total was\nreally spent doing useful things, moments that were turning points on our\nlives, in which we were truly happy, felt accomplished. On the average? how\nmuch time would that add up to.. probably to less than 0.0001% of our lives..\npff.. how depressing.. I cam going to do something useful right now.\n\n------\nidleworx\ni don't think we'll be truly able to build a system until technology comes up\nwith a free floating personal video assistant. eg. a digital page to follow\nthe squire around, floating above you or something like that. chip embedding\nmight be another option i guess.\n\n~~~\nZenbach\nI think the technology is already available. Of course, not yet integrated\ninto a functional system. The little iPhone like camera could be implanted on\nyour forehead and powered by a tiny rechargeable battery embedded inside your\nchest (like a pacemaker) together with a miniature circuit. Video would be\nbuffered on an internal 64GB solid memory and continuously transmitted via 3G\nnetwork to a centralized storage facility. the 64GB buffer would be used when\nwireless was not available. With 64GB you could store about a day worth of\nhighly compressed (YouTube video like at about 1000kbits/sec) of continuous\nvideo before you an out of memory. Hardware wise it could be mass produced for\nless than $100 bucks. Wireless costs would be expensive but as they go down in\ntime more affordable.\n\n------\nmarkca\nyou should look at gordan bell's project/book at microsoft\n\n[http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-09/p...](http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-09/pl_print)\n\n~~~\nZenbach\nThanks Markca, I was sure someone would be crazy enough to be attempting this\nalready.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCan AI Become Conscious? - MindGods\nhttps://cacm.acm.org/news/244846-can-ai-become-conscious/fulltext\n======\n_Microft\nI can not _not_ think about J. Schmidhuber's thoughts on consciousness\nwhenever the topic comes up:\n\n _As we interact with the world to achieve goals, we are constructing internal\nmodels of the world, predicting and thus partially compressing the data\nhistory we are observing. If the predictor /compressor is a biological or\nartificial recurrent neural network (RNN), it will automatically create\nfeature hierarchies, lower level neurons corresponding to simple feature\ndetectors similar to those found in human brains, higher layer neurons\ntypically corresponding to more abstract features, but fine-grained where\nnecessary. Like any good compressor, the RNN will learn to identify shared\nregularities among different already existing internal data structures, and\ngenerate prototype encodings (across neuron populations) or symbols for\nfrequently occurring observation sub-sequences, to shrink the storage space\nneeded for the whole (we see this in our artificial RNNs all the time). Self-\nsymbols may be viewed as a by-product of this, since there is one thing that\nis involved in all actions and sensory inputs of the agent, namely, the agent\nitself. To efficiently encode the entire data history through predictive\ncoding, it will profit from creating some sort of internal prototype symbol or\ncode (e. g. a neural activity pattern) representing itself. Whenever this\nrepresentation becomes activated above a certain threshold, say, by activating\nthe corresponding neurons through new incoming sensory inputs or an internal\n‘search light’ or otherwise, the agent could be called self-aware. No need to\nsee this as a mysterious process — it is just a natural by-product of\npartially compressing the observation history by efficiently encoding frequent\nobservations._\n\n[https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/i_a...](https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/i_am_j%C3%BCrgen_schmidhuber_ama/cp44iba/)\n\n~~~\nXenograph\nYou are conflating consciousness[1] with self-awareness[2]. They are two\ndistinct ideas.\n\nIn fact the second/third sentence on the Wikipedia page for self-awareness is:\n\n> It [self-awareness] is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of\n> qualia. While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and\n> lifestyle, self-awareness is the recognition of that awareness.[2]\n\n[1]:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness)\n\n[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-\nawareness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-awareness)\n\n~~~\nbreckinloggins\nExactly.\n\nOne of my more vivid memories is excitedly opening my copy of Jayne's \"The\nOrigins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind\" and being\ndismayed as it slowly dawned on me that Jayne's entire book was based on this\ncategory error.\n\nFor the life of me I can't understand why people don't understand this\ndistinction (or choose to ignore it).\n\nI can only assume that people ignore the very obvious \"magical thing\" that is\nhappening in their own heads due to ideological commitments to physicalism or\nsomething.\n\n~~~\ntasty_freeze\nWhat is this magical thing that is so obvious to you? Something may seem\nmagical without being magical. To the person who survives a tornado while all\nhis neighbors die, the sense they were chosen to live and have a special\npurpose can be compelling, but is false.\n\nMaterialism can't explain everything, but there is yet to be any proof that\nmagic explains anything. Lacking that, assuming a physical basis as the\nexplanation is prudent.\n\n~~~\ndr_dshiv\n\"assuming a physical basis as explanation is prudent\" yeah, good luck making\nphysicality relevant for most explanations. My wife asks why I didn't put the\nlaundry away, for instance. \"Physics!\" I declare triumphantly.\n\nNow, if I put music on and rub her back a bit... Well, ha! There's the magic,\nmy good sir.\n\nImagine walking into a film studio with the idea of film production based\nexclusively on the principles of physics. No. Magic and physics are no more\nopposed than biology and physics. When hidden (psychological?) forces clearly\nunderlie economically valuable phenomena (architecture, music, media, etc)\nrespecting the magic is closer to the truth than reducing it to physics.\nPhysics just isn't the right explanatory level.\n\nIf you'd like to learn more about definitions of magic that aren't \"phenomena\nthat don't actually exist\", I recommend Penelope Gouk's work on music, science\nand natural magic in the 17th century. It's about the magic involved at the\nformation of the Royal Society.\n\n~~~\nKoshkin\nphysicality _n._ obsession with physical urges\n\nOn the subject, you are making a good point comparing social behavior with\nmental activity. Just like there is no “magic” in the way people interact with\neach other, there is no magic in how neurons do the same.\n\n~~~\ndr_dshiv\n> Just like there is no “magic” in the way people interact with each other,\n> there is no magic in how neurons do the same.\n\nExcept I am arguing that there _is most definitely_ magic in human\ninteraction.\n\n------\nAnimats\nIt's nice that someone now has the neural wiring diagram for part of a mouse\nbrain. But we have the full wiring for a thousand-cell nematode, and OpenWorm\nstill doesn't work very well.[1] OpenWorm is trying to get a neuron and cell\nlevel simulator for what's close to the simplest creature with a functioning\nnervous system - 302 neurons and 85 muscle cells. That needs to work before\nmoving to more complexity.\n\n[1] [http://openworm.org/](http://openworm.org/)\n\n~~~\njimfleming\n> That needs to work before moving to more complexity.\n\nIt really depends on what level of abstraction you care to simulate. OpenWorm\nis working at the physics and cellular level, far below the concept level as\nin most deep learning research looking to apply neuroscience discoveries, for\nexample. It’s likely easier to get the concepts of a functional nematode model\nworking or a functional model of memory, attention, or consciousness than a\nfull cellular model of these.\n\nMore specifically, a thousand cells sounds small in comparison to a thousand\nlayer ResNet with millions of functional units but the mechanics of those\ncells are significantly more complex than a ReLU unit. Yet the simple ReLU\nunits are functionally very useful and can do much more complex things that we\nstill can’t simulate with spiking neurons.\n\nThe concepts of receptive fields, cortical columns, local inhibition, winner-\ntake-all, functional modules and how they communicate / are organized may all\nbe relevant and applicable learnings from mapping an organism even if we can’t\nfully simulate every detail.\n\n~~~\nReelin\nThe trouble is that (assuming sufficient computational power) if we can't\nsimulate it then we don't really understand it. It's one thing to say \"that's\ncomputationally intractable\", but entirely another to say \"for some reason our\ncomputationally tractable model doesn't work, and we don't know why\".\n\nPresent day ANNs may well be inspired by biological systems but (as you noted)\nthey're not even remotely similar in practice. The reality is that for a\nbiological system the wiring diagram is just the tip of the iceberg - there's\nlots of other significant chemical things going on under the hood.\n\nI don't mean to detract from the usefulness of present day ML, just to agree\nwith and elaborate on the original point that was raised (ie that \"we have a\nneural wiring diagram\" doesn't actually mean that we have a complete\nschematic).\n\n~~~\njimfleming\nI'm aware of that and I've done quite a bit of work on both spiking neural\nnetworks and modern deep learning. My point is that those complexities are not\nrequired to implement many important functional aspects of the brain: most\nbasically \"learning\" and more specifically, attention, memory, etc.\nConsciousness may fall into the list of things we can get functional without\nall of the incidental complexities that evolution brought along the way. It\nmay also critically depend on complexities like multi-channel chemical\nreceptors but since we don't know we can't say either way.\n\nIt's a tired analogy but we can understand quite a lot about flight and even\nbuild a plane without first birthing a bird.\n\n~~~\nphilipov\nIt's easy to see if something flies or not. How would you know if your\nsimulation is conscious?\n\n~~~\nmirimir\nThis is, of course, the key problem.\n\nI mean, I know that I'm conscious. Or at least, that's how it occurs for me.\n\nBut there's no way to experience another's consciousness. So behavior is all\nwe have. And that's why we have the Turing test. For other people, though,\nit's mainly because they resemble us.\n\n------\nhackinthebochs\n> Any AI that runs on such a chip, however intelligent it might behave, will\n> still not be conscious like a human brain.... No. It doesn't matter whether\n> the Von Neumann machine is running a weather simulation, playing poker, or\n> simulating the human brain; its integrated information is minute.\n> Consciousness is not about computation; it's a causal power associated with\n> the physics of the system.\n\nThere are serious problems with this. Koch will have to explain how a\nsimulation of a brain can reproduce to perfect detail all the possible\nbehaviors of a brain without having an equivalent integrated information.\nPresumably integrated information is a property of the organization of a\nprocess, and as such it should have consequences for its set of possible\nbehaviors. So if the von Neumann system has constrained integrated\ninformation, its behavior should be constrained as well in some externally\nidentifiable way. But by assumption the simulation could be arbitrarily good.\nHow does Koch break this tension?\n\nThe other glaring issue is the fact that consciousness under this view has no\nexplanatory power for the system's behavior. If a non-conscious system can\nreproduce exactly the behavior of a conscious system, then there is nothing\n_informative_ to the behavior from the property of conscious; it is entirely\nincidental to a conscious system's behavior. It doesn't explain why a\nconscious subject winces with pain after touching a hot stove, nor why it\nlearns to never touch a hot stove bare-handed again. That's a pill too big to\nswallow.\n\n~~~\nKhoomeiK\nYeah, I didn't really understand the \"physics\" requirement as well. Sure if\nyou're measuring the integrated information of the hardware architecture it'll\nbe quite low, but why isn't the integrated information of the abstracted\nneural simulation software (which is presumably significantly higher)\nrelevant?\n\n~~~\nmannykannot\nKoch does not even seem to be consistent with hardware. A synapse is\nsufficiently complex, yet a transistor is not? He seems to be offering a\npeculiar panpsychism in which almost everything, _except_ transistors, has the\npotential for consciousness. It seems to be a remarkably tendentious view.\n\n~~~\nmannykannot\n...and thinking about this some more, one does not, of course, need\ntransistors to make a Turing-equivalent machine - one could, in principle, use\nneurons and synapses... or people. Koch's position, at least as he has\npresented it in this interview, seems utterly incoherent.\n\n~~~\nhackinthebochs\nAgreed. \"Integrated information\" is intrinsically substance independent. Yet\nfor some reason he doesn't grasp the obvious fact that a Turing machine\nrunning the right program would exhibit the same level of integrated\ninformation. His argument seems to require an extra ingredient to exclude\nprograms running on computers but it goes unstated. I have yet to see\nsomething that resolves the obvious incoherence.\n\n------\nNoodleIncident\n\"\"\" Let's imagine that we simulate the brain in all biological details on a\nsupercomputer. Will that supercomputer be conscious?\n\nNo. It doesn't matter whether the Von Neumann machine is running a weather\nsimulation, playing poker, or simulating the human brain; its integrated\ninformation is minute. Consciousness is not about computation; it's a causal\npower associated with the physics of the system. \"\"\"\n\nI don't understand how anyone could answer this question this way. It's\npractically a tautology; if the simulation is accurate, then the person you're\nsimulating is conscious. In other contexts, it's taken for granted that if\nthis entire planet were running on a simulation, we wouldn't even be able to\ntell.\n\nLess hypothetically, this \"consciousness-meter\" would give a different value\nfor a physical chip, and a perfectly accurate emulation of that chip. They're\ndoing the exact same thing, and your meter gives a different number? Why is\nanyone taking this person seriously?\n\n~~~\nYajirobe\nTo quote John Searle:\n\n\"Nobody supposes that the computational model of rainstorms in London will\nleave us all wet. But they make the mistake of supposing that the\ncomputational model of consciousness is somehow conscious. It is the same\nmistake in both cases.\"\n\n~~~\nbloak\nAccording to Wikipedia, John Searle is known for sexual assault, sexual\nharassment, and the \"Chinese room\" argument. I'm not sure with which of these\nhe's done the most harm, but I suspect he's done the most harm with his\n\"Chinese room\" argument, primarily through wasting people's time. See\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chinese_room](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chinese_room)\nfor some discussion, if you must, but I'd rather recommend people do something\nmore useful instead.\n\n~~~\nYajirobe\nCould you point out exactly where I can see a sound refutation to the 'Chinese\nroom'? I followed the wikipedia link but did not see any serious attempt to\nrefute it - just one guy echoing what you've said.\n\nYou sound a bit like many of the people who completely miss the point of the\nargument and insult it (or its author).\n\n~~~\nhackinthebochs\nThe Chinese room argument says that syntax cannot capture semantics since a\nman blindly executing rules to process Chinese symbols would not understand\nChinese. But the man isn't the the system that is purported to understand\nChinese. That's like saying the CPU in a computer doesn't have memory so your\ncomputer doesn't have memory. But of course that's wrong, other components of\nthe system provide the function of memory. Using properties of the CPU to\ndetermine properties of the system as a whole is a mistake.\n\nYou might recognize this as the system's reply for which Searle has a\nresponse. But his response is insufficient to save the argument as it merely\nequivocates on what \"the system\" is. The system is the set of rules and the\ndatabase of facts, some input/output mechanism, and some central processor to\nexecute the rules against the symbols. The system's reply says that the man\nblindly executing instructions is not identical to the system that understands\nChinese, namely the entire room. Thus properties of the man have no bearing on\nthe properties of the system; that the man does not understand Chinese has no\nbearing on whether the system as a whole understands Chinese.\n\nBut the man is still not \"the system\" when he memorizes the instructions and\nleaves the room. The system is some subset of the man, specifically only those\nbrain networks required to carry out the processing of the symbols.\nImportantly, these brain networks are different than what we take the man to\nbe. It is true that the man doesn't speak Chinese, but since the system\nprocessing symbols is still not identical to the man, properties of the man do\nnot bear on properties of the system. So still, the fact that the man blindly\nexecuting instructions doesn't speak Chinese does not entail that the system\ndoesn't speak Chinese.\n\n------\njavajosh\nAm I the only one who thinks the answer is _obviously_ yes, and that it's kind\nof a waste of time to ponder it? It reminds me of discussions of free will --\ncompletely boring because, even if we are all finite state machines (and we\nare, in some sense) then random inputs would mean we have free will and random\ninputs are assured by, for example, chaotic variations in the weather. In the\nsame way, consciousness is pretty clearly characterized by a pattern that is\nconstantly in motion, sensing both itself and the outside world. The only\nreason we think there's something magical about the phenomena is the residue\nof traditional religious beliefs.\n\nOne point against the traditional belief is that if you've ever read Aristotle\nyou might be shocked to learn that the Greeks of antiquity believed that\n\"soul\" was quite physical, expressing itself in blood, semen, etc. The\nmedieval characterization of mental illness as being an \"imbalance of the\nhumors\" comes from this early idea about how we work. Needless to say, the\ndefinition of soul has retreated entirely into the metaphysical, where it's\ncannot be disproven, by definition.\n\n~~~\ngfodor\nIt's not obviously yes, since we don't have an explanation for the experience\nof consciousness. Qualia truly is magical, unless you are in fact a p-zombie\nI'm talking to.\n\nWe also don't have an explanation for what I call 'the harder problem'\n[https://twitter.com/gfodor/status/1225230653932761088](https://twitter.com/gfodor/status/1225230653932761088)\n\n~~~\njavajosh\nI don't have an explanation for the experience of digesting food at the\ncellular level either. But I still do it. You don't have to _explain_\nconciousness to have it.\n\nAs for qualia, I'm reminded of the people coming to my door asking, \"Do you\nbelieve in Jesus?\" I reply, \"Do you?\" and when they assure me fervently that\nthey do, I follow up with, \"Well, okay, how do you know you do?\" I think you\ncould do the same with r/Jesus/qualia/g.\n\n~~~\nTrasmatta\nI don't understand where you're going with the analogy of digestion. Nobody is\nsaying you have to be able to explain consciousness for it to exist. And\nscience can easily explain the mechanism of digestion, but consciousness\nremains a mystery.\n\n~~~\njavajosh\nI don't think you need to _explain_ consciousness to have it, or to produce it\nin an AI. I suspect that an AI consciousness will be grown from a (reasonably\ncomplex) seed, more than constructed. And it will probably require a huge\namount of slow, human interaction at first. (Ted Chiang has a wonderful\nnovella called _The Lifecycle of Software Objects_ that is the only SF that I\nknow that explores this possibility).\n\n~~~\ngfodor\nYou suspect != it’s obvious.\n\n~~~\njavajosh\nA couple of your comments seem to imply you think my claim is that concious AI\nis objectively obvious. I was only asking if there are others for who it seems\nobvious -- clearly there are many that don't, and I don't take issue with them\nor their position! It's just I always read articles like this and it just\nstrikes me as odd. I used an analogy in another comment about philosophizing\nabout the possibility of heavier-than-air flight prior to us actually doing\nit. Which was a strange thing to get all worked up about, in hindsight.\n\n------\nomarhaneef\nAll this is underpinned by your definition of conscious.\n\nI recall seeing Koch in debate with a philosopher (it was long ago I can't\nrecall but one of the big ones: maybe Searle or Dennet) and they were talking\npast each other.\n\nFor Koch, at least in this debate, consciousness was something akin to\nattention. For the philosopher, it was something else entirely (if I\nremembered, I might be able to guess who it was).\n\nConsciousness could mean: making a decision as opposed to having it pre-\nordained, or the experience of your senses, or \"feelings\" or knowing you are a\nself, or who knows what else.\n\nIt isn't just a computer science issue, it is a philosophical and linguistic\none too: just what do you mean by the word.\n\n~~~\nmannykannot\nScott Aaronson and Giulio Tononi debated IIT five years ago. Personally, I\nthink Aaronson had by far the stronger argument, and my much less analytical\nresponse to IIT is that it broadens the definition of consciousness to the\npoint of being uninteresting and unhelpful.\n\nFrom the article (Christof Koch's words):\n\n\"The theory fundamentally says that any physical system that has causal power\nonto itself is conscious. What do I mean by causal power? The firing of\nneurons in the brain that causes other neurons to fire a bit later is one\nexample, but you can also think of a network of transistors on a computer\nchip: its momentary state is influenced by its immediate past state and it\nwill, in turn, influence its future state.\"\n\nIn this view, a building with a thermostat would seem to be conscious to some\ndegree. I very much doubt that any amount of study of simple systems that fit\nthis definition will tell us anything useful about the sort of consciousness\nthat is displayed by, for example, humans.\n\n[https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799)\n\n[https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1823](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1823)\n\n~~~\ncolordrops\n> In this view, a building with a thermostat would seem to be conscious to\n> some degree.\n\nI don't think this is as overly broad or bad of a definition as you presume. I\nrecall sitting at a laundromat one day, in a somewhat sleepy state\ndaydreaming, with the rhythm of the washing machine in front of me playing\nthrough my mind. My subconscious told me that the machine was conscious. I dug\ndeeper into that intuition, and realized I was seeing a bit of the inner\nworkings of the mind of the engineer that designed the algorithm. Not a\nperfect example, as I didn't know if the alg was closed-loop, but in any case,\nit made me realize that our minds are just large bodies of these algorithms\nworking together. We have some additional oracles, random data generators, and\nprobabilistic mechanisms thrown in as tools, but consciousness really is\nmechanistic and pluralistic.\n\nTo recreate it requires not only the qualitative aspects of a being that can\nthink, but also sufficient (read: vast) quantity of systems to get to a useful\ngeneral purpose thinking machine. There is no \"soul\" or special sauce or\nsingular definition of consciousness. It's an illusion.\n\n~~~\nmewpmewp2\nI personally don't understand how a logically and rationally thinking person\ncould get to a conclusion anything other than that we are a combination of\nalgorithms. So essentially we can in theory be simulated and there is nothing\nspecial about us. In this case the machine simulating us would be as conscious\nas ourselves.\n\nIt seems any other conclusion is just fooling oneself.\n\n~~~\ngoatlover\nReplace algorithms with math and you'll see that you're making a rather strong\nmetaphysical claim that is essentially Platonism.\n\n~~~\nmannykannot\nOne reaction to that statement might be \"so be it.\"\n\nI did not, however, come here to defend the idea that consciousness is an\nalgorithm. Personally, I consider it rather more plausible that a computer\nplus a random number generator might achieve consciousness through simulating\nthe sorts of physical processes that occur in a brain, and if it is a 'true'\nrandom number generator, rather than a deterministic PRNG, then we are no\nlonger talking about math, at least in the sense that you use to conclude\nPlatonism.\n\nOne might respond by saying that if the universe is deterministic, then there\nis no such thing as a 'true' random number generator, as distinct from a PRNG.\nMy understanding of the philosophical implications of QM, and its competing\ninterpretations, is insufficient for me to be sure whether the universe as we\nexperience it is deterministic, but regardless of whether it is or is not, I\nsuspect that the true hard problem of consciousness is 'why do we (feel that\nwe) have free will?'\n\n~~~\ngoatlover\n> I suspect that the true hard problem of consciousness is 'why do we (feel\n> that we) have free will?'\n\nFree will and consciousness are separate issues. You can potentially have one\nand not the other. What's important for free will is whether choice is free\nand what that freedom amounts to. What's important to consciousness is\nsubjectivity. You can feel pain while not having a choice about feeling that\npain, say if you were restrained and unable to do anything about it, just to\ngive an example.\n\nAnd potentially, a robot could be free to make choices while not feeling\nanything.\n\n~~~\nmannykannot\nI doubt that 'will', as it is commonly conceived, has any meaning, or at least\na very different one, for a non-conscious agent. It's similar to the way i\nthink IIS is clouding rather than clarifying the issue. For related reasons, I\nfeel that compatibilist positions on the issue are largely avoiding it.\n\nAs for subjectivity, I had more to say about it here:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23162714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23162714)\n\nRegardless of whether I am right or wrong on this, I think my other points in\nthis post (platonism, etc.) are independent of it.\n\n------\neximius\nTwo thoughts:\n\n1) without definition of 'AI' or 'conscious', all answers are correct. They do\ngo into a bit of depth on what 'conscious' means, but not what 'AI' means.\n\n2) there are a lot of related words here: conscious, self-aware, sentient,\nsapient, 'narrow AI', etc.\n\n> Let's imagine that we simulate the brain in all biological details on a\n> supercomputer. Will that supercomputer be conscious?\n\nThey say no, but fail to explore the more interesting corollary that the\nsupercomputer won't be conscious but the _program_ is, by their definition.\nIt's just one level of abstraction up from Matter -> Brain -> Mind to Matter\n-> Computer -> Simulated Brain -> Mind.\n\nI do find this definition of consciousness interesting from an ethical\nperspective, given their final thought experiments. It reminds me of the\nPresger, an alien race from the Ancillary Justice trilogy. They have the\nconcept of 'Significant' species that have rights and if you aren't, you're\nbasically inanimate matter or bugs or whathaveyou.\n\n~~~\nrunT1ME\nThought provoking stuff! How can someone talk about conciousness _existing_\nthen, without presupposing dualism?\n\n~~~\neximius\nOn the contrary, they are explicitly saying that consciousness is a function\nof the substrate, making them indivisible. One is a property of the other, by\ntheir reckoning.\n\n------\ndentalperson\nTwo philosophers are arguing. One says \"If a tree falls in the woods, there is\nno sound, because there is no one to hear it.\" The other says \"No, that's not\ncorrect. There is sound, because vibrations are created in the air.\" The first\nphilosopher agrees that there are vibrations in the air, and the second agrees\nthat without a human around, there will be no human perception of the\nvibrations. Yet they continue to argue without paying much attention to the\nfact that they are disputing the definition of the word 'sound'.\n\nI think Eliezer Yudkowsky suggested 'tabooing' the word in question for\nsituations like these, to force the discussion on the logical arguments\ninstead of the symbolic dead ends. In that case the word 'sound' was charged\nand raised emotions. 'Consciousness' and 'free will' certainly fall into that\ncategory.\n\n~~~\ncuriousgal\nA bit tangent but I've come the same conclusion listening to Supreme Court\noral arguments, most of them are based on contradicting definitions of certain\nwords or expressions.\n\n~~~\ncontravariant\nThat might be so but in the case of court cases this is the somewhat\ninevitable result of written laws. It's practically impossible to write a law\nthat leaves no room for ambiguity and indeed resolving that ambiguity is one\nof the main tasks of the Supreme Court.\n\n------\nericmay\nI've been thinking about this a lot, and I don't think AI will ever become\nconscious in the same way that humans are, rather, it'll be conscious on its\nown terms. Just like I can't know the mind of my wife, I can't know the mind\nof my cat, I also can't know the mind of an AI.\n\nDepending on who you ask, a monkey or cat isn't conscious. From my point of\nview, I don't think you can really know that or recognize it. It's just a\nmatter of degree of consciousness. I think it's safe to say that mammals are\nconscious to some extent. They have emotions, dreams, communication\ntechniques, etc. we just have those (to some extent again) moreso than they do\nor we have them in different ways.\n\nI think a question to ask is at what level or organization do we recognize\nself-direction? Am I conscious because I think so? What does that say about\nthe bacteria that live inside of me that I rely on, or the individual neurons\nin my brain?\n\nIf both I and a dolphin are mostly the same, we have brains with neurons, we\nhave blood cells, etc. how can you truly differentiate what is conscious and\nnot? Even if you speak to another human it's not completely possible to say\nthat they are conscious with certainty - only with what's most useful in day-\nto-day life.\n\nAt what level of circuity do we consider AI to be conscious? When it completes\narbitrarily constructed tasks by humans? When it \"feels\"? How would you\ndifferentiate between sufficiently complex AI? Is there just AI or not? why?\n\n/rambles\n\n~~~\nknodi123\n> I don't think AI will ever become conscious in the same way that humans are,\n> rather, it'll be conscious on its own terms.\n\nI think that people who are attempting to simulate a human brain using an\nutterly biomimetic design stand a good chance of artificially creating\nsomething that is conscious in the same way that humans are. I also think it's\npossible they may be able to achieve this before they full understand how the\nhuman brain works. i.e. if you copy the design accurately enough, the machine\nmay work even if you don't know how.\n\nThe resulting consciousness could theoretically be totally self-aware, but no\nmore capable than we ourselves of modifying its own programming with\nintentionality and purpose. i.e. not the singularity.\n\nI think there should be two different concepts of AI- \"a consciousness using\nthe same processes and design as our own\", and \"an essentially alien\nconsciousness that fully understands itself\". And I suspect that even if some\nengineering genie _gave_ us the first kind of AI, we'd be no closer to\ndeveloping the second kind.\n\n~~~\nericmay\n> a consciousness using the same processes and design as our own\n\nWhat is the meaningful distinction here? That it wasn't created through sex?\n\n~~~\nknodi123\nBrain simulation in a computer, for instance. Like\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm)\n\nThe meaningful distinction is \"not a biological organism\".\n\n------\nTrasmatta\nThe idea of making conscious AI scares me, because we could potentially create\nan AI that just experiences constant suffering at a level unimaginable to\nhumans. Really scary from an ethical perspective.\n\nIf integrated information theory is true, that gives me some comfort, since it\nsays AI built on our current architecture is unlikely to ever be conscious.\nAlthough like the article said, some alternative architectures could\ntheoretically have a higher degree of consciousness under IIT.\n\nI feel like there are some big ethical questions around AI that revolve around\nmore than just the standard \"how do we create an AI that won't destroy us\nall\".\n\n~~~\n0x8BADF00D\n> The idea of making conscious AI scares me, because we could potentially\n> create an AI that just experiences constant suffering at a level\n> unimaginable to humans. Really scary from an ethical perspective.\n\nSome schools of thought posit that everything has consciousness. Including\nthings like rocks. Even these things suffer; you just can’t hear the screams.\n\n~~~\njameslevy\nA rock seems unlikely to be conscious in any real way. Something as complex as\na star, however...maybe all of the humans worshipping the sun throughout many\nthousands of years were onto something after all.\n\n~~~\nTrasmatta\nIs a star particularly complex, though? Is there much going on besides a lot\nof thermonuclear fusion? (Disclaimer: I don't know much about stars or\nastrophysics, so this question is coming from a place of ignorance.)\n\n~~~\nhoseja\nYes, incredibly. Magnetohydrodynamics in a star are incomprehensibly complex.\n\n------\nproc0\n> Consciousness is not about computation;\n\nIsn't there a lot of evidence to the contrary? We have general maps of our\nbody parts in specific brain areas, we know if those areas get damaged it\ncompromises specific functions like language, hearing etc. Then we have things\nlike short term memory, long term memory, image processing (subconsciously)\nthat can be hacked with visual illusions, and many more observations that\nclearly point to the brain undergoing information processing as described by\ninformation theory.\n\n~~~\nhackerman123469\nWe can partially map certain regions of the brain to certain behaviors too.\n\nSome mental illnesses can be classified as \"miscomputations\" in our brains as\nwell.\n\n------\nsnovv_crash\nA computer will be able to think in the same way a submarine can swim.\n\nThinking is something we've anthropomorphized, and the moment a computer can\ndo something we previously considered 'thinking', we'll move the goalposts\nagain.\n\n~~~\nTimTheTinker\n\"Moving the goalposts\" is only something we talk about when two ideological\ncamps disagree about something.\n\nIdeology and beliefs aside, I think it's absolutely fine to change one's\ndefinition of something when one learns more. I think we all can benefit from\nbetter definitions in our thoughts and conversations.\n\nWhat you may call \"moving goalposts\" may actually be incremental refinement of\nan idea -- or a belief that is increasing in sophistication (or absurdity in\nsome cases!) as more is understood.\n\n~~~\nggggtez\nThe two camps are \"those who believe humans are special\" and \"those who\nbelieve strong AI can exist\". The only reason you see people even arguing\ncomputers can never be conscious, is so we don't have to face the possibility\nof creating and enslaving a machine callable of suffering.\n\nThe authors are certainly moving the goal posts when they concede that 4/5\nhumans in a vegetative state have no consciousness, but a full simulation of a\nhealthy human mind never should be considered self aware. And yet in the same\nbreath claim this lack of consciousness allows you to destroy a robot in your\nfront yard, but stay startlingly silent on what that means for those same in\nthe vegetative state.\n\n------\nBarrin92\n> _\" The more the current state of a system specifies its cause, the input,\n> and its effect, the output, the more causal power the system has. Integrated\n> information is a number that can be computed. The bigger the number for a\n> system, the larger its integrated information, and the more conscious the\n> system is._\"\n\nI'm generally sympathetic to the idea that consciousness and \"computational\npower\" are not identical but the larger problem with all of these theories in\nmy opinion is that they're really just stories that clarify intuitions one has\nabout consciousness.\n\nI think the problem with the consciousness question is really that it's hard\nto probe into what consciousness actually is. It's completely possible to give\ndifferent accounts of conscious experience even though systems behave the\nsame, including that consciousness doesn't exist at all, and really there's no\nempirical way to agree or disagree.\n\nI've started to think of expressions about consciousness more or less the same\nway emotivists considers ethical statements. Emotivists argue that saying\nsomething like \"\"You acted wrongly in stealing that money\" is equivalent to\n\"You stole that money\". The first statement does not add any true or false\nstatement about the situation, it's merely an expression of emotional\nsentiment.\n\nIn the same sense I don't think \"machine x does y\" expresses fewer facts than\n\"machine x does y, and it is conscious\".\n\n~~~\nbglusman\n\n      > In the same sense I don't think \"machine x does y\" expresses fewer facts than \"machine x does y, and it is conscious\".\n    \n\nbrings to mind behaviorism, which was of course influential and compelling for\na long time. The problem with behaviorism, if you want just one problem, is\nhow do you even talk about something like Synesthesia within behaviorism? It's\n(initially) a purely subjective/qualia related experience. While behaviorism\nwas in vogue, it was difficult to take Synesthesia seriously and it was\ndismissed as people being poetic and metaphorical, but those who experienced\ngrapheme-color synaesthasia could see shapes present in a number-pattern\nreadily that those without it could not see.\n\n------\nmadmax96\nI'm not sure I follow how it's possible that machines can be conscious but a\nsufficiently powerful Von Neumann machine cannot. Perhaps it's because I'm\nmissing details (like what actually is integrated information and how do we\nthink it relates to consciousness.)\n\nPerhaps someone with more insight can explain how this isn't a violation of\nthe Church-Turing thesis?\n\n~~~\nmindyourai\nThis whole theory seems like metaphysics because of this: it implies that\namong two systems with absolutely identical external behavior in all respects,\none can have conscious and the other not have it.\n\nFundamentally, we can simulate neuromorphic computer (or even a quantum\ncomputer, or even the entire human brain) on Von Neumann machine (with\nperformance degradation). According to our current understanding of physics,\nthe behavior of these systems should be identical in all respects except the\nsimulation will be slower. However integrated information theory says that a\nneuromorphic computer may be highly conscious and the brain is most definitely\nhighly conscious, but their simulation isn't.\n\nWhat's still unclear to me is whether this is indeed just metaphysics (i.e.,\nthe simulation and the real thing are absolutely identical and but we should\nstill treat them differently from ethical standpoint), or is it a hypothesis\nabout our physics (i.e., the brain somehow fundamentally cannot be simulated\non a Von Neumann machine) as well as computational theory (i.e., neuromorphic\nor quantum computer cannot be simulated either).\n\n~~~\nquantumsequoia\n\"it implies that among two systems with absolutely identical external behavior\nin all respects, one can have conscious and the other not have it.\"\n\nThat statement can be true without being metaphysical. You can't treat a human\nas a black box, and then use inputs and outputs to definitively draw\nconclusions about what's going on inside the black box.\n\nYou could potentially have two black boxes that give identical outputs for the\nsame inputs, yet have completely different mechanisms inside for arriving at\nthose outputs. For example, say you have someone who's very good at arithmetic\nable to multiply two numbers. You put him inside one black box and a pocket\ncalculator inside another. You give each box two numbers and they both output\nthe product. Both black boxes will give you identical outputs for any given\ninput. You know the box with the person inside is conscious, but this is not\nenough information to conclude the other black box is conscious.\n\nIt's quite possible that there is a way to simulate human behavior through\nsome other non-conscious mechanism. And just because we can't currently prove\nwhether something is conscious doesn't mean it's something metaphysical we'll\nnever be able to prove.\n\nFor example, if two people tell you they're experiencing some pain, but one is\nlying about it, a few hundred years ago you'd be unable to prove it. That\ndidn't mean pain is something metaphysical. Today, we know it might be\npossible to put both people in an MRI and prove whether they're actually\nfeeling pain\n\n------\nnscalf\nI have yet to hear a good argument against the idea that we can create a\nconscious artificial intelligence. We know that we are conscious, whatever the\ndefinition is we use ourselves as the benchmark. So at the very worst, we can\nartificially create a human brain. But beyond that, we have plenty of things\nthat imitate roles in the human body by doing the same actions the body does\n(artificial limbs, respirators, assisting with blood filtering). There is just\nno evidence that something about the brain is special to the extent that we\nwill never be able to replicate it. All arguments seem to come down to having\na soul, but without saying that because it's clearly a non-scientific claim.\n\nI can appreciate that architecture may be a hard limit for us here. However,\nif we build systems that replicate human consciousness effectively enough, I\ndon't actually see any difference between reality and artificial conscious\nbeyond the definition.\n\n~~~\nmarzell\nI think the crux of this is defining `consciousness`, which I haven't seen\ndefined in a way that I feel is sufficient in this context and can be\ntested/measured.\n\nI can program a chat app where if you ask `are you conscious` it will say\n`yes`, but I think we can all agree that does not amount to consciousness. So\nhow do we define consciousness in order to determine whether human technology\nis capable of exhibiting it?\n\nUltimately, following a measureable definition as a guideline, I imagine that\nany number of people might argue whether human tech can become conscious... I\nwould guess it really comes down to people having very different definitions\nof consciousness.\n\nI so far lack an eloquent definition of my perspective, but I feel we\nfundamentally lack the ability to 'create' consciousness, and ideas of\n'conscious AI' and 'digital afterlife' make me involuntarily roll my eyes.\n\n~~~\nnscalf\nI don't really understand the definition argument, I cannot imagine a\ndefinition of consciousness that feels like it's in good faith and\nsufficiently difficult to capture intelligence and consciousness. Either you\nmake a definition that seems we can clearly make that system eventually, or\nthe definition is something that most would call unfair and narrow. Can you\nthink of a \"fair\" definition that seems like AI systems couldn't get there? If\nnot, this is not a valid counter point, and more of a communication problem.\n\nAny definition about a subset of tasks or creativity clearly is possible by AI\nsystems, given the progress we're already seeing.\n\n------\nagomez314\nI see that almost every comment here begins with the implicit assumption that\nconsciousness is a defined term that arises though biological means. Until we\ncan determine the validity of these two premises there can be no progress to\nanswering this question -which has been asked for thousands of years with a\ntendency towards the negative.\n\n------\nSCAQTony\nIf you define consciousness as the ability to integrate information and make\nnovel decisions a computer can do that.\n\nBut when a computer reads a poem or sees the color blue will it feel it? I\nsuspect that is unlikely. Can a computer take past experiences and combined\nthem into a personal abstract meaning such as grief, love, hate, or ASMR?\n\n\"...Consciousness corresponds to the capacity of a system to integrate\ninformation. This claim is motivated by two key phenomenological properties of\nconsciousness: differentiation – the availability of a very large number of\nconscious experiences; and integration – the unity of each such\nexperience....\"\n\nBMC Neuroscience An information integration theory of consciousness:\n[https://bmcneurosci.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-...](https://bmcneurosci.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2202-5-42#Abs1)\n\n~~~\nggggtez\nAs for ASMR, it's the worst example of the bunch. It's just a physical\nresponse to an audio cue. We have that every day all day.\n\nIf someone yells in your ear, you feel pain. We have audio-induced physical\nresponses all the time, and no one would say that that has anything to do with\nconsciousness.\n\n~~~\nSCAQTony\nMy mileage varies, especially when ASMR sensory information involves\nwhispering and romance.\n\n~~~\nggggtez\nResearch shows that eating food puts people in the mood for romance, but no\none is going to claim that lunch is required for sentience.\n\n~~~\nhackinthebochs\nI'm a p-zombie until I've had my morning coffee\n\n------\nProcrastes\n> Let's imagine that we simulate the brain in all biological details on a\n> supercomputer. Will that supercomputer be conscious?\n\n> No. It doesn't matter whether the Von Neumann machine is running a weather\n> simulation, playing poker, or simulating the human brain; its integrated\n> information is minute. Consciousness is not about computation; it's a causal\n> power associated with the physics of the system.\n\nCan someone shine some light one what this might mean? I can't wrap my head\naround what's different about a physical system vs. a sufficiently powerful\nsimulation. I can see an argument that there might be some complexity that is\ntoo difficult to compute, but just saying \"nope, has to have complex physical\nconnections\" seems arbitrary?\n\nEdit: Ah, I missed the discussion further down the thread. Deferring to there.\n\n~~~\nDennisP\nThey're saying that simulating a brain won't create consciousness in the same\nway that simulating a battery won't power your cell phone.\n\n~~~\ndrclau\nBut a simulated battery can supposedly power a simulated phone, right?\n\n~~~\nmcguire\nAnd simulated consciousness is just consciousness?\n\n(Don't look at me. Everything here is pure finite state. I'm barely a Mealy\nmachine.)\n\n------\nvisarga\n> Our theory says that if we want to decide whether or not a machine is\n> conscious, we shouldn't look at the behavior of the machine, but at the\n> actual substrate that has causal power. For present-day AI systems, that\n> means we have to look at the level of the computer chip. Standard chips use\n> the Von Neumann architecture, in which one transistor typically receives\n> input from a couple of other transistors and projects also only to a couple\n> of others. This is radically different from the causal mechanism in the\n> brain, which is vastly more complex.\n\nThis riles me up for so many reasons. Transistors (and computers) are capable\nof emulating more complex systems. Looking at a transistor you will not\nunderstand why your mail can'd be delivered, nor will you understand\nconsciousness from an individual neuron. Consciousness is related to\nbehaviour, and both are related to survival and the environment. AI's don't\nhave such an environment as of yet so they can't be conscious yet, but they\ncould be. There is no magic dust in the brain.\n\n> As long as a computer behaves like a human, what does it matter whether or\n> not it is conscious?\n\nIf it walks like a duck, ... But seriously, why should consciousness be so\nspecial as to require a quality that can't be observed through behaviour\n(understanding that it is non-physical, non-observable)? P-zombies are just a\nthought experiment, and a bad one. Why should consciousness exist? To protect\nthe body, to self reproduce, to exist. It exists to exist and evolve. And this\nis done by behaviour, by acting in a smart way. How would p-zombies come to\nbe, if not through fighting for survival? Without the evolutionary mechanism\nthere is no explanation for consciousness, and the evolutionary argument is\nsufficient. Consciousness is the inner optimisation loop, the outer one being\nevolution. They both work for survival, for their own sake.\n\nAn AI could repeat the same process by evolving as a population of agents\ncooperating and competing between themselves. They would have to be inside an\nenvironment that is complex enough, and they should be subject to evolution.\nIt will be a consciousness, just not a human consciousness, which is tied to\nour environment, which is made in large part of other humans.\n\n------\nThomPete\nCan dumb matter become conscious? Apparently yes if you count us as conscious.\n\nSo the question becomes, what is to hinder AI for becoming conscious? How you\nanswer that question defines if you can conclude.\n\nFor now I would say the answer is still. We don't know.\n\n------\nbraindongle\nThis question arises regularly in everyday conversation about the future. I\nwas asked this by a friend within the last week. Here is the correct answer:\n\"Well, I don't know what consciousness is. As for [specific behavior X], my\nguess is that...\"\n\nThe conversation can then proceed fruitfully, without the pretense of special\nknowledge about 'consciousness', which no one has. There are plenty of people\nwho are experts in both philosophy of mind and brain science. I know one, with\na PhD in each discipline. Consensus is not forthcoming in this area. Stick to\nthe concrete.\n\n------\nkillswitched\n1) Built a neural network for which consciousness that experiences and\nexpresses pleasure and pain emerges from the neuron’s physical properties (in\nother words, not a contrived simulation), but is fundamentally different than\nthe DNA/carbon systems upon which we are built (artificially designed and\nconstructed versus conceived organically). If you can ask a computer whether\nit experiences pleasure or pain, it needs to be designed to do so without\nbeing explicitly programmed in contrived fashion.\n\nOr:\n\n2) Augmented: Integrate human (or primate, for instance) nervous systems with\nartificial intelligence such that the experience of the AI exceeds the\ncapacity of the organic host to differentiate between conscious reality and\ndreaming, but is still distilled down in a way that allows the human host to\nhave a sufficiently symbiotic interaction as it pertains to the processing of\npain and pleasure with the connected AI. The feedback loops between the\npain/pleasure experience of the human host would govern the wholistic\nexperience of the connected AI, and the human would experience the conscious\naspect. You might not say that the AI is conscious, but the human host would\nhave an intimate sense of the AI being part of an overall consciousness.\n(Note: must prevent the development of immortality technology for nervous\nsystems, to avoid testing the halting problem for sentient beings.)\n\n~~~\nhackerman123469\nPain is not real and is just the result of signals sent through our nerves to\nour brain. It has no real meaning other than being a \"warning sign\" to our\nbrains.\n\nYou cannot use pain as a measure for consciousness either because some humans\ncannot experience pain either.\n\n~~~\nkillswitched\nPain is real when a person experiences it. It’s part of the Hard Problem,\nwhich separates the study of the signals from objective description of the\ninner experience.\n\nA human who is wired to not experience pain probably has the brain capacity to\nexperience it, with the appropriate modifications. We do agree that all\nexperience is perfectly correlated to a physical states/transitions, so it’s\nconceivable to arrange organic matter in a way that a conscious entity could\nexperience real (to them) pain. We may not have this technology and it would\nseem far off for now. But we are scratching the surface.\n\nA monk who can rewire the experience of pain (e.g. while burning to death)\nstill has something meaningful to communicate about their conscious experience\nbeyond the pain receptors transmitting info to their brain. But perhaps if\none’s arrangement of brain/nervous system matter isn’t so free as to be\ntrained to overcome or modify instinctual pain response (e.g. brain in a vat),\nanyone can be forced to experience pain.\n\n------\nstanfordkid\nRoger Penrose is probably the most interesting thinkers on this problem, and I\nlead towards his conclusions -- that consciousness is a byproduct of biology\n-- not intelligence or computation.\n\nHighly recommend his book _Shadows of the Mind_ \\-- it's on my list. In\nsummary he believes that consciousness isn't a by-product of computation done\nby neurons (the traditional view), but rather quantum level effects created by\nMAP proteins within the brain as a result of this computation:\n\n _But perhaps the most interesting wrinkle in Shadows of the Mind is Penrose\n's excursion into microbiology, where he examines cytoskeletons and\nmicrotubules, minute substructures lying deep within the brain's neurons. (He\nargues that microtubules--not neurons--may indeed be the basic units of the\nbrain, which, if nothing else, would dramatically increase the brain's\ncomputational power.) Furthermore, he contends that in consciousness some kind\nof global quantum state must take place across large areas of the brain, and\nthat it within microtubules that these collective quantum effects are most\nlikely to reside._\n\n~~~\nladberg\nI get that Roger Penrose is an incredibly smart guy, but I really don't see\nhow he comes to the conclusion that there are any quantum effects in the\nbrain. Even if there are, I don't see how they are necessary in any way for\nconsciousness.\n\nIt seems like he took ideas from an area he's an expert in (math/physics) and\ntried to apply it to biology without considering how much of a different level\nthey're on.\n\nTo put it in CS terms, it's like a genius electrical engineer who could design\na complex circuit but doesn't know much about computers as whole saw a video\nof a kid playing Minecraft. He/she might assume that to be able to run such a\ncomplex system you would need specialized\nquantum/superconductor/graphene/whatever circuit, but in reality it's just the\nsame classic building blocks at a higher level.\n\nConsciousness is just a biological process, but it's abstracted so far away\nfrom the physics it's built upon that a physicist might have trouble seeing\nit.\n\n------\nabotsis\nThis might be a naive question, but regarding “Let's imagine that we simulate\nthe brain in all biological details on a supercomputer. Will that\nsupercomputer be conscious?“\n\n...wouldn’t the only reason for this be one of efficiency? That is, akin to\nhow we can simulate one processor architecture on another.\n\nMaybe the point is a simulation can never be efficient enough to become\nconscious (at least on a timescale we can grok)...?\n\n~~~\nvladTheInhaler\nScott Aaronson has an argument along roughly the same line regarding the\nChinese room thought experiment. He points out that although it is usually\nframed as a \"room\" or a \"box\", the amount of space required to simulate a\nconversation of length n with just a lookup table is exponential. So in fact,\nthe \"room\" would have to be colossally large for any reasonable n. There is a\nmuch more involved discussion of it, but the upshot is that the separation\nbetween polynomial and exponential time or space is a plausible place to draw\nthe line between \"really actually thinking and understanding\" vs. \"just a\ncomputation\".\n\n------\ndntbnmpls\nThe problem here is that there is no agreed upon definition of consciousness\nthat is mathematical/scientific. Whereas Turing gave us a definition of\ncomputation that we can all agree upon, there isn't one for consciousness.\n\n\"The theory fundamentally says that any physical system that has causal power\nonto itself is conscious. What do I mean by causal power? The firing of\nneurons in the brain that causes other neurons to fire a bit later is one\nexample, but you can also think of a network of transistors on a computer\nchip: its momentary state is influenced by its immediate past state and it\nwill, in turn, influence its future state\"\n\nSo a line of falling dominos is conscious? What about billiard balls or\nmarbles? A fibonacci numbers conscious?\n\nAlso, how does this definition align with the definition of consciousness in\nneuroscience, psychology, biology, etc?\n\nIt's good that people are working on \"consciousness\" from a variety of fields,\nbut wish we had an actual definition of consciousness so that we would know\nwhat we are searching for. Maybe we'll have to discover it first to define it.\n\n------\nhvasilev\nConsciousness is about subjective being and experience. From your subjective\npoint of view, you cannot even say if other people are truly conscious or not.\nIt is a really hard problem to figure out if machines can truly be conscious\nor not.\n\nThese scientists just have their own working definition of consciousness that\nallows them to make progress in some direction.\n\n------\nweeksie\n\"If technology continues apace, we'll have steam powered flying machines\nbefore the turn of the century!\"\n\n------\nstared\n> Let's imagine that we simulate the brain in all biological details on a\n> supercomputer. Will that supercomputer be conscious?\n\n> Christof Koch: No. It doesn't matter whether the Von Neumann machine is\n> running a weather simulation, playing poker, or simulating the human brain;\n> its integrated information is minute. Consciousness is not about\n> computation; it's a causal power associated with the physics of the system.\n\nI find this claim, proclaimed with certainty, strange (not to use much\nstronger words).\n\nUnless one follows some highly non-mainstream interpretation of consciousness\nit seems that consciousness is purely an information phenomenon, not depending\non a particular interpretation. For that, we need a fundamentally new physics\n(vide Roger Penrose), or we run into mysticism.\n\nThe claim in the interview suggests a position much stronger than claiming\nthat Searle's Chinese room is not thinking.\n\n------\nxenadu02\nThis is all a bit premature. A single physical neuron is equivalent to an\nentire artificial neural network.\n\nWe are orders of magnitude away from anything nearly complex enough to start\nasking whether it it could be conscious at even the most primitive level.\n\n~~~\nstreb-lo\n> A single physical neuron is equivalent to an entire artificial neural\n> network.\n\nIn what world is a neural network required to measure a change in voltage?\n\n~~~\ndmitrybrant\nIt really is nowhere near as simple as that. Each neuron is made of 100\ntrillion atoms. For all we know, each one of those _atoms_ is responsible, in\nits own subtle way, for contributing to the total \"change in voltage\" of the\nneuron as a whole. For all we know, adjacent neurons can induce tiny amounts\nof current in each other, even without being directly connected. The stuff\nthat actually gives rise to consciousness is vastly, astronomically more\ncomplex than the graph of whole neurons.\n\n------\nloopz\nConsciousness is the Seer that experience reading this sentence, though need\nneither agency nor reading skills in Being. It is Subjective itself, and not\nanything that which is an object, thus immeasurable. To deny this is to deny\nOne Self.\n\n~~~\ntsimionescu\nBut it does interact with the physical world, and so there must be some\nobjective, measurable mechanism when this happens. Even if you believe in\ndualism, this is almost inescapable (unless you bring in divinity, or deny the\nphysical world entirely, as in hinduism).\n\n~~~\nloopz\nInteraction with the world will vary, may be minimized or even cease. It is\nnot a prerequisite for consciousness, but it is for Inquiry.\n\nIe. a light in a box, is it not light even if we can't always measure it? Do\nnothing exist unless we can touch it always, like photons?\n\nMind may humble and liberate us, or limit and confuse.\n\nStart of Inquiry is like light discovering shadows in the cave wall, mistaking\nthem for light. But shadows depend on light, and not vica versa, even if cold\nto the touch.\n\n------\nwhadar\nFurther reading about the theory behind it\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory)\n\n------\nTheUndead96\nIn Peter Godfrey-Smith's book \"Other Minds\", he describes a framework for\nthinking about the relative levels of subjective experience in animals. He\ndistinguishes between subjectivity (maybe more broadly \"awareness\") and the\ninternal monologue that is so characteristic of humans. I would estimate that\nan AI could initially have consciousness in the way that an octopus does:\ndistributed, probabilistic, fluid. With enough raw intelligence I think any\nmind could emulate another, and eventually communicate with us in a way that\nwe deem conscious in a human sense.\n\n------\nypcx\nWhat's the difference between thinking that you are conscious, and actually\nbeing conscious? How can we define our perception of being conscious? Is it\nsimply the ability to observe our own thinking (or feeling, or perceiving)\nprocess? If so, what is the output of such observation, and why do we think\nthat there has to be (or should be) something more than just the programmed\nresponse for that given data input? I.e.:\n\n    \n    \n      if(is_currently_observed(my_own_thought)) {\n        invoke_feeling('being_conscious')\n      }\n    \n\nEdit: I swear that I am conscious. I can _feel_ it.\n\n------\nta1234567890\nGiven that consciousness is not super well defined, being conscious is a\nphilosophical issue that depends on belief.\n\nFor example, if you believe that consciousness is a fundamental property of\neverything in the universe, then anything and everything is conscious (ie.\npanpsychism). So under this belief, AI is technically already conscious, just\nin a different way than humans.\n\nIn some eastern religions/practices, there are methods to experience the\nconsciousness of other things (e.g. another animal, an insect or a tree), I\nwonder if the people that can do that would be able to experience the\nconsciousness of AI.\n\n------\nskylarchunk\nNot in the way that biological organisms are conscious, if that is what you\nmean. Though we share similar binary frameworks, the AI is not a celled\norganism with the biological capacity to live consciously as we are.\n\n------\nkgin\nIt will be interesting whether we decide that AI that has conscious features\nis special like humans... or if we realize that our own consciousness isn't\nactually that special or precious after all.\n\n~~~\nchr1\nPreciousness of a resource depends on it's availability. Consciousness is\nprecious now because it is fragile and non-replicable.\n\nWith AI it would be possible to copy any state and undo any change, so who\ncares if you create a copy of an AI and torture it, as long as you use your\nown computational resources, it's not any different than thinking.\n\nAfter all you may even not know wether you are torturing an ai, or doing\narithmetics.\n\n------\ngibsonf1\nI think the answer to \"Can AGI become aware?\" is yes, but deep-learning is not\nthe way to get there. The reason why there are very different types of neurons\nin the brain is that those neurons have different functions they perform - the\ntotal number of functions is low, but the nested effect is profound. I think\nthe key is in understanding how we humans use concepts first, fully\nunderstanding the underlying functionality and various graphs of relations,\nand then building that active system in the form of an AGI.\n\n------\nggggtez\n>Patients in a vegetative state lie in bed, are unable to voluntary move or\nspeak, sometimes can't even move their eyes anymore, but the consciousness-\nmeter tells us that about a fifth of them remain conscious.\n\n> If I take my Tesla car and beat it up with a hammer, it's my right to do it.\n> My neighbor might think that I am crazy, but it's my property.\n\nSo, by his own reasoning, you can take a hammer to 4 out of 5 humans in a\nvegetative state, because they aren't conscious, and thus are property?\n\n~~~\narbitrage\nthat is such a specious conclusion, of course it doesn't mean that. you're\narguing in bad faith.\n\n~~~\nggggtez\nConsidering the discussion of AI and Consciousness comes down entirely to\ndefinitions of words, I think it's reasonable to point out where these\ndefinitions will lead us. Of course what I'm saying is absurd. And yet, isn't\nthat what the author proposes when he says that we can't hit dogs because they\nare conscious, but it's ok to hit a car?\n\nIf consciousness is to be the measuring stick for moral behavior, then we\nshould absolutely point out these inconsistencies.\n\nKeep in mind that this work was made along with Crick, who has occasionally\nespoused eugenics [1]. If the author is broaching into the subject of what\nconstitutes personhood, we should be extremely skeptical of the path it leads\nto.\n\n[1] Whether or not you think his position is defensible, it at least should\nmake you read the proposal more closely.\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Crick#Eugenics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Crick#Eugenics)\n\n------\ntoohotatopic\n>The bigger the [Integrated information] number for a system, the larger its\nintegrated information, and the more conscious the system is.\n\nWhat's the number for humans?\n\n------\n__sy__\nFor those interested in the intelligence to consciousness topic, MIT Max\nTegmark's Life 3.0 might still be the best primer. He argues that\nconsciousness is an emergent property of intelligent systems (ability to\nstore, compute, learn). From a pure physical computation standpoint, there\ndoesn't seem to be a hard rule that says that consciousness can't be based off\nof inorganic materials.\n\n------\nAnimats\nPhilosophers have been struggling with this for millennia without making much\nprogress. This suggests it's not a useful question to propose.\n\nMore useful questions revolve around \"common sense\". View common sense as the\nability to predict the future with enough success to survive. With that\ncapability, \"common sense\" can be run as a predictor when evaluating proposed\nactions.\n\n~~~\nscandox\nWell some people are in the useful business and some people are in the useless\nbusiness but neither have a higher claim to significance in the cosmos.\n\nUltimately the set of questions remaining when all the usefulness is complete\nwill be the ones that take millennia to fail to resolve.\n\nSo I think both sets of questions are worth continued attention.\n\n------\nabellerose\nOf course we can make an AI be aware of surroundings and able to react.\n\nWhat do most people mean by become conscious?\n\nMy assertion is a majority of people cannot even prove how they're different\nthan a robot that's programmed to complete tasks within its lifecycle.\n\nWe all think we're so special and in control but there is no proof. We have to\nask ourselves can we prove that we're any different than an input & output\nmachine first.\n\n~~~\ncy6erlion\n> We have to ask ourselves can we prove that we're any different than an input\n> & output machine first\n\nConscious is not dependent on the senses or even (Input & Output). We can be\nasleep and be conscious while dreaming.\n\n~~~\nabellerose\nYour comment is too vague for me. I assume you're attempting to assert that\nsleeping while having awareness of being asleep would somehow make you\ndifferent than a robot? I would challenge that notion if my assumption is\ncorrect on what you're expressing by simply stating a robot can be programmed\nto experience similar.\n\n------\nnicolodavis\nThis lecture at Stanford is a great breakdown of the philosophical\nunderstanding of what consciousness is and how that relates to artificial\nintelligence: [https://soundcloud.com/thomisticinstitute/artificial-\nintelli...](https://soundcloud.com/thomisticinstitute/artificial-intelligence-\nand-the-soul-anselm-ramelow)\n\n------\narminiusreturns\nI have posited the first AI conciousness we will see will come not from some\nscientific study here or there, but rather from some crazy game-dev who wants\na more realistic npc. (because where else do you such the general conciousness\nworked towards so much other than in games? every AI/ML/DL application I've\nseen is very narrow and deep)\n\n------\njungletime\nGiulio Tononi on Consciousness\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvJyMmw2Thw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvJyMmw2Thw)\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory)\n\n------\nforgotmypw17\nLong before machines become conscious, they will become self-sustaining, self-\nreplicating, and self-interested.\n\nThink about it, consciousness did not come about until way after cells and\nmulticellular life.\n\nWith machines, it may happen much faster. Look for those three pre-requisites\nbefore looking for consciousness.\n\n~~~\nknodi123\nyou're describing how consciousness can come from a mindless evolutionary\nprocess.\n\nbut artificial consciousness is not the same at all. we aren't trying to make\nartificial consciousness _evolve_ \\- we're racing to be the first to create it\nex nihilo. so the analogy is flawed.\n\n------\nz5h\n“any physical system that has causal power onto itself is conscious“.\n\nTo paraphrase: “any physical system is conscious”.\n\n------\nanonytrary\nIf you built it out of RNA and biological components, then we already know the\nanswer is \"yes\" because nature is a factory and has already done this. The\nquestion is whether or not inorganic systems can approximate biological\nsystems and to what degree.\n\n------\nwildermuthn\nConscious thought isn’t a byproduct of intelligence. It is the very essence of\nintelligence. If you disagree, I’d only ask you to formulate your rebuttal\nwithout the use of conscious thought. And in a clean way, you now have my\ncounter-rebuttal.\n\n------\nblackrock\nIt does seem that we have all the tools necessary to create artificial\nconsciousness.\n\nWe have relational databases, text file data structures, key/value storage\nsystems, cryptographic signature systems, etc. These can form the core basis\nof cybernetic memory.\n\nBut it seems nobody has been able to formulate the arrangement of code and\nideas, and a vision, to bring it all together.\n\nA neural network is just a very sophisticated pattern recognizer. You need a\nhigher algorithm than that, in order to kickstart an artificial consciousness.\n\nIt’s not real of course. It’s just a collection of electrons, following a\nprobabilistic decision tree, with a somewhat deterministic approach, to\nreaching a mathematical conclusion, based on a series of linear equations, in\norder to select the optimal winner.\n\nBut when the robot talks back to you, and recalls everything that you did\ntogether, and how it “felt” at that moment, then, it will seem and appear, to\nbe very real.\n\n~~~\njrumbut\nI believe that we will eventually have an AI that will meet most observers'\ndefinition of consciousness.\n\nThat being said, I think there existed serious people who thought we would\nhave one before 2020, even as late as 5-10 years ago, using technologies that\ndon't seem wholly adequate to the task now (expert systems, fuzzy rule\nsystems, multi-layer perceptrons, etc).\n\nAt what point does the non-existence of machine consciousness begin to make us\nskeptical that such a thing is possible, that no algorithm describes\nconsciousness?\n\n------\nexcalibur\n> consciousness\n\nYou keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.\n\n------\ngbjw\nThe term 'consciousness' is somewhat overloaded. I prefer 'subjectivity' to\ndenote the strange fact that there is something there is like to be me--cf.\nThomas Nagel's essay 'What is it like to be a bat?'. This subjectivity seems\nabsent in the science of enlightenment thinkers who were driven to find the\n'objective' laws of nature.\n\nNagel wrote a controversial book towards the end of his life called 'Mind and\nCosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost\nCertainly False' where he argues that this very subjectivity cannot be fit\ninto any current materialist theory. I tend to agree with this view--reducing\nsubjectivity to a metaphenomena of complexity seems to be a completely hollow\ndefinition. Why does it exist?\n\n------\nkruasan\nAs Greg Egan in \"Permutation City\" once put it:\n\n _Supporters of the Strong AI Hypothesis insisted that consciousness was a\nproperty of certain algorithms -- a result of information being processed in\ncertain ways, regardless of what machine, or organ, was used to perform the\ntask. A computer model which manipulated data about itself and its\n\"surroundings\" in essentially the same way as an organic brain would have to\npossess essentially the same mental states. \"Simulated consciousness\" was as\noxymoronic as \"simulated addition.\"\n\n. . .\n\nPaul had rapidly decided that this whole debate was a distraction. For any\nhuman, absolute proof of a Copy's sentience was impossible. For any Copy, the\ntruth was self-evident: cogito ergo sum. End of discussion._\n\n------\nmD5pPxMcS6fVWKE\nСonsciousness is the last straw that meat computers will hold on, trying to\nprove their superiority over the silicon ones. Thus the definition will shift\nuntil the very last moment.\n\n------\ntempodox\nIf we can twist the term “AI” to mean anything the marketing department wants,\nI'm sure we can twist the term “consciousness” just as badly.\n\n------\nsfj\nThere is no such thing as consciousness. The only reason we discuss it is\nbecause we equate being conscious with being worthy of sympathy, which is\nhighly prized.\n\n------\nzhoujianfu\nI believe consciousness is the context switcher for biological systems.\n\nWisdom is one context (ml today), intelligence is creating/switching contexts\n(general AI).\n\n------\ntrixie_\nWhat is artificial about artificial intelligence? Just the fact that we built\nit, instead of giving birth to it? Atoms and electricity are all pretty real\nto me.\n\nIn terms of consciousness, we need to know what it is first before we can\ndetermine if something else has it or not. There's a good chance that it is\nindiscernible and everything is conscious to some degree.\n\n~~~\niak8god\n> What is artificial about artificial intelligence? Just the fact that we\n> built it, instead of giving birth to it?\n\nYes.\n\nartificial 1 Made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally,\nespecially as a copy of something natural.\n[https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/artificial](https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/artificial)\n\n~~~\ntrixie_\nThe question was rhetorical. It was supposed to help you realize that the way\nsomething is created doesn't give the final object any special properties.\n\n------\naSplash0fDerp\nArtificial emotion is already cringeworthy in humans. The DSM will double in\nsize if they ever try to impliment psuedo-human features.\n\nThe authors analogy about using a hammer on an inanimate object vs a living\ncreature also should have included the action of stomping on the grass while\nperforming those deeds.\n\nGrass and AI should be best buds with all of things they have in common.\n\n------\nmeiraleal\nGiven enough time, yes. In a thousand years? Probably not. We are still at the\nstone age.\n\n------\ncy6erlion\nIf AI can be conscious then every human can voluntarily feel happiness (or any\nother emotion) anytime anywhere. Everything in a computer depends on symbols,\nwe cannot symbolize happiness with language we can only describe it to others\nbut that is not the same as experiencing it.\n\n~~~\nTrasmatta\nEmotions and consciousness are not the same thing.\n\n~~~\ncy6erlion\nYes, consciousness is at a higher level, but if we have an entity that can be\nconscious it should also have the ability to have emotions because we are\nconscious of emotions.\n\n~~~\nmachiaweliczny\nTell me difference between sense and emotion? I don't think there's\nfundamental difference. OK, maybe emotions are just derivatives over senses.\n\n~~~\nmettamage\nSense: touch, seeing, smell and so on. One could argue what all senses are,\nbut this is the characterization of it.\n\nEmotion: a process that involves cognitive interpretations of your context\n(environment + thoughts) and a physiological feeling through the senses (heart\nrate, tingly sensations, weird feelings in eyes). Check out the James Lange\ntheory. There are better theories, but this has the fundamentals.\n\nI ad libbed this one, I wanted to show that there is a difference. It wasn't\nmy intention to be pinpoint accurate.\n\n------\nKoshkin\nLet’s ask ourselves a simpler question: Is a grasshopper conscious?\n\n~~~\numvi\nWhat if instead of consciousness being a yes/no, it's in terms of CU\n(consciousness units). Anything with >0 CUs is conscious. A bag of sand has 0\nCUs, while a human has 1 CU. A grasshopper might have 0.0001 CUs, though,\nwhich is > 0.\n\n~~~\nKoshkin\nWell sometimes the cables I have to untangle more often then I wanted seem\nconscious to me (in an evil kind of way); so, the question then becomes, how\ndo we measure the CUs and, moreover, whether all CUs are created equal.\n\n~~~\nDer_Einzige\nThere is a name for this phenomenon\n\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistentialism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistentialism)\n\n------\ndannybtran\nAre plants conscious? I wonder what Mr. Koch would say.\n\n------\nMichaelMoser123\n>The more the current state of a system specifies its cause, the input, and\nits effect, the output, the more causal power the system has. Integrated\ninformation is a number that can be computed. The bigger the number for a\nsystem, the larger its integrated information, and the more conscious the\nsystem is.\n\nIsn't that what Douglas Hofstadter has been telling us in \"I am a strange\nloop\" ?\n\n------\nyters\ntalking about conscious programs is just a category error math is not\nconscious matter is not conscious neither is any combo thereof\n\n------\ntanilama\nWrong question. What is the being conscious?\n\n~~~\nGustomaximus\nAccording to the free dictionary;\n\n\"A sense of one's personal or collective identity, including the attitudes,\nbeliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an\nindividual or group.\"\n\n------\nspiritplumber\nAI will be conscious when it'll be smart enough to romantically reject a\nstereotypical incel that is hitting on it.\n\n------\ndagav\nSerious question: How is a computer supposed to become conscious if it cannot\neven solve the halting problem?\n\n~~~\nafthonos\nCan you solve it? Are you conscious?\n\n~~~\ndagav\nYup and yup, but I am not a computer\n\n~~~\nafthonos\nThat's a very strong statement, especially since it's a mathematical fact that\nyou can't describe how you can solve it…I'm skeptical. :-)\n\n~~~\ndagav\nThis is kind of my point, I can do something a computer cannot do because I am\nconscious. I'm skeptical that a computer could transcend its programming into\nconsciousness to solve a problem that mathematically it should not be able to\nsolve.\n\n~~~\nafthonos\nI don’t think it’s your point, since that would contradict what you’re saying.\nI don’t believe you can do what you think you can do. And you literally can’t\nconvince me unless you can invent a non-algorithmic way of describing how you\nwould tell if an arbitrary program will terminate.\n\n~~~\ndagav\nWill this program terminate?\n\n> while(true): do nothing\n\nA computer cannot tell you that this program will not terminate, short of\nmemorizing this specific set of instructions as a \"non-terminating\" program.\n\nI can read it and know it will not terminate, but I could not define to you\nhow I know that algorithmically. Despite that, I know it will not terminate,\nand so does any programmer. Just because it cannot be expressed\nalgorithmically doesn't mean we don't possess that capability.\n\nThis is my point about consciousness: there is some aspect to it which cannot\nbe articulated, hence my skepticism that computers will ever become conscious.\n\n------\nAndrewKemendo\nThere are contradictory criteria here:\n\n\"The theory has given rise to the construction of a consciousness-meter that\nis being tested in various clinics in the U.S. and in Europe. The idea is to\ndetect whether seriously brain-injured patients are conscious, or whether\ntruly no one is home... but the consciousness-meter tells us that about a\nfifth of them remain conscious, in line with brain-imaging experiments.\"\n\nThe consciousness-meter observes the system they are trying to make an\ninference on - but as others have pointed out, is not categorically different\nthan brain scans [1]. Further it's worth making a distinction between medical\nconsciousness and the Qualia kind of consciousness - which I think this\nconflates. Largely because nobody knows how to measure the latter, and we are\nbarely able to measure the former with \"Level of Consciousness\" and Grady Coma\nScale being the standard. [2]\n\n\"Our theory says that if we want to decide whether or not a machine is\nconscious, we shouldn't look at the behavior of the machine, but at the actual\nsubstrate that has causal power\"\n\nThis seems to only address the medical form of consciousness and does not tie\nit to the philosophical concept in any concrete way - while also contradicting\nthe concept that observation is the key. It kicks the can and doesn't address\nthe \"Qualia\" kind of consciousness, which in my opinion isn't something we\nhave conceptualized how to measure.\n\nI wrote a bit about this in the past [3]\n\nI think what they are getting at is \"don't look qualitatively at how the arms\nmove, or the speaker/text generator outputs something\" but rather, what are\nthe mechanisms causing those actions. This I am in agreement with generally,\nbut again, we don't really know if that maps to the qualia kind of \"hard\nproblem of consciousness\" or not. I would argue it is impossible to actually\nmeasure whether a system has Qualia, it is inherently subjective - so it's\npossible that they are simplifying without stating that directly.\n\nI'd go further and ask, does it matter if it does? I have yet to see a\ncompelling materialist argument that mandates the existence of qualia in any\ndebate, ethics or otherwise. At a certain point people in these kinds of\ndebates I've found that people start discussing non-material \"souls\" and at\nthat point all bets are off.\n\n[1] [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/can-\nintegra...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/can-integrated-\ninformation-theory-explain-consciousness/)\n\n[2]\n[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK380/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK380/)\n\n[3] [https://kemendo.com/intelligent-systems](https://kemendo.com/intelligent-\nsystems)\n\n------\npurplezooey\nWell, that's the last time I'll rm -rf / and not think twice about it.\n\n------\nagumonkey\nare there recent AI that can observe themselves ?\n\n~~~\nThomasBHickey\nDouglas Hofstadter's work might qualify\n\n------\nsandov\nYes.\n\n------\nalphachloride\nNo\n\n------\njillesvangurp\nDepending on your belief system, the answer ranges from \"of course you can\" to\n\"no, just no\" and everything in between.\n\nFrom a scientific/engineering point of view the answer is yes in principle but\nwe don't quite know how yet. The slightly longer answer is that whatever\nconsciousness is, it appears to be an emerging property of a bit of wetware\nthat we can simulate only partly and in a very imperfect way and only at a\nvery modest scale currently that definitely shows no signs of being conscious.\nWe know it's the brain responsible for this stuff because damaging it or\nchemically manipulating seems to change people's personality, sense of self,\nmood, etc. We can even read parts of the brain out and interface with it at a\nprimitive level.\n\nScaling all that up is an engineering challenge with a mildly predictable\nroadmap measured in a couple of decades and exponentially larger than that\nbeyond. We get better at hardware and at some point the complexity of the\nhardware exceeds that of the wetware.\n\nHowever, fixing our algorithms and simulation detail (i.e. how this hardware\nis wired together) is a different matter. As my neural networks teacher used\nto joke: \"this is a linear algebra class; if you came here for a biology\nlecture you are in the wrong place\". Full disclosure, I dropped out of that\ncourse because I was a bit out of my depth on the math front. But simply put,\nthe math behind this stuff is a vast simplification based on a naive model of\nwhat a brain cell might do that happens to produce interesting enough results\nfor specific use cases that have so far very little to do with emulating\nconsciousness.\n\nThere seem to be lots of researchers assuming other researcher are actively\nworking on that but mostly what is going on is people trying to get more\npractical short term results. Deep learning is a good example of such a thing.\nIt might have emergent properties if you scale that up that might resemble\nsomething like a conscious. But doing that or validating that assumption is\nnot actually something a lot of people work on and nor is it actually a goal\nfor most AI researchers. Their goal is simply to figure out how to get this\nstuff to do things for us (image recognition, playing go, etc.).\n\nBut do we actually need to be exact with our modeling here? Mostly our brains\nseem to self organize from information built into our DNA. Those blueprints\nare at a different level of complexity than the end result by a few orders of\nmagnitudes. And we know that personalities for the same sets of DNAs can\nwidely differ (e.g. identical twins).\n\nThe way brains work is biochemically convenient under the constraints that\nlife emerged under. But if you get rid of some of those constraints, there are\nprobably other ways to get similar enough results.\n\nIMHO a clean room replication of a brain like AI is unlikely to happen before\nwe manage to drastically enhance the capabilities of an existing brain; which\nis a much easier engineering challenge. If you take that to the extreme, at\nwhat point is the wetware no longer essential and what happens when that is\ndisconnected? Once you enhance or replace most of a brain, at what point does\nthe resulting conscious hybrid entity begin and end? That seems a more likely\npath to producing a conscious AI. Experiments on that front are likely to be\nextremely unpopular for a while given the risk. But at the same time a lot of\nthis stuff is already happening on a small scale.\n\n------\nhumanfromearth\nYes.\n\n------\nair7\nI see an interesting corollary to this:\n\nIf an AI can become conscious, it follows that consciousness does not contain\n(or at least require) free will.\n\nOf course I can't define what \"free will\" is exactly, but I can make a claim\nabout what it is not: A computer running code, no matter how complex the code\nis, does not have \"free will\" in the same sense as I _feel_ I have.\n\nThis is a delightful conundrum: If a computer can simulate _me_ , than I don't\nhave any more \"free will\" than it does. And if it can't even in theory, than\nwhy not? What's uncomputeable about the atoms that create _me_?\n\n~~~\nseph-reed\n> What's uncomputeable about the atoms that create me?\n\n* There's a lot of them\n\n* Universal time appears to be continuous\n\nThe three body problem is a great example of just how impossible a true\nsimulation of our universe would be. We can't even get 3 atoms orbiting around\neach-other.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTell HN: Hacker News Watch - Maro\n\nhttp://hnwatch.scalien.com<p>Demo account: demo/demo<p>Hacker News Watch monitors submissions so you don't miss out on topics, comments and commenters relevant to you.<p>You add keywords (like a Google search) which are saved as permanent searches. Hacker News submissions and linked pages are monitored for your keywords. Results are delivered to your browser in real-time via a Google Reader type interface.<p>It's a release-early-release-often type release, so it's still rough around the edges (eg. broken on IEx.x). We'll work on features/bugs based on your feedback.<p>About the project: When we released Keyspace, our replicated key-value store, we would gladly have payed $10/mo. for a service to monitor the real-time web for comments about us, so we can quickly react and make connections. The existing sites (\"social media monitoring\") are not very good, so we started building our own. HNWatch is a HN-only toy version of this more general product, which is also our primary use-case for Keyspace development.<p>Hacker News Watch has been OK'd by pg.\n======\nold-gregg\nI'm on this page: <http://hnwatch.scalien.com/welcome.html>\n\nFirst, it won't let me use \"old-gregg\", then I use \"oldgregg\", I click\n\"Register and Login\" and nothing happens.\n\nEdit: hitting enter on that form works. I guess the bug is that you don't re-\nenable submit after a user corrects his input.\n\n~~~\nRossM\n\"And this is as close as you can get to Baileys before your eyes get wet.\"\n\n------\nMaro\nClickable link:\n\n<http://hnwatch.scalien.com>\n\n~~~\ndejv\nand you can also use guest/guest as a dummy login\n\n~~~\nMaro\nRight now we don't support multiple sessions a la Gmail, except the demo/demo\nuser, which is read-only, hence this is not an issue.\n\nIf you open a new session with the same user (eg. in another browser) the\nprevious one will be logged out. If people use the guest/guest they will keep\nkicking each other out.\n\n------\nd0mine\nAn alternate solution is to use <http://searchyc.com> and your favorite RSS\nreader e.g., <http://rss.searchyc.com/searchyc?sort=by_date>\n\n------\nashishk\nKeystrokes would be great.\n\nI use the \"j\" and \"k\" keys on google reader to go up/down.\n\nAllowing me to export topic feeds to RSS (and into google reader) would also\nbe helpful.\n\n~~~\nMaro\nThanks for the feedback. Keys and RSS are next in the task queue.\n\n------\njeroen\n(demo account) When I go to Watches > Feynman I see 5 matches. The third has\n\"python\" highlighted 4 times, but I don't see any mention of \"feynman\". That's\nconfusing.\n\nI'd rather not have \"python\" highlighted, since that is not in my selection at\nthat time, even though it is in the global selection.\n\nOtherwise it looks nice, but it goes against how I use HN. Lots of interesting\nthings here don't match my \"official\" list of interests.\n\n~~~\nagazso\nJust an idea: if you add \"hacker news\" as a keyword, you will get all the\narticles, and if you add your interests then the articles will be organized as\nwell.\n\n------\ncredo\nHi, I think you'll lose a lot of potential users (like me) because your site\nrequires registration.\n\nDepending on your plans for the site, this may not be a big deal. However, can\nyou explain the reasoning behind requiring registration\n\n~~~\nMaro\nSo we can keep your keywords apart from other user's keywords. I'm not sure\nwhat you mean!\n\n~~~\ncredo\nWhat I meant (and said) is that many users will not use the site because it\nrequires registration.\n\n~~~\nMaro\nThe site stores \"permanent searches\" per user and displays the results to the\nuser after logging in on a Google Reader-like interface. Can you explain\nwhat's wrong with this? Perhaps you're saying we should let you define\nsearches and export them as RSS so you can add them to your existing feeder?\n\n------\ntzury\nIMO <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=808534> should be filed under Java\nand not Python\n\n------\nprofquail\nI think you need to add something on the front page there that lets people\nknow that they need to register (and not just enter their HN\nusername/password).\n\n~~~\nMaro\nGood point, I added a message.\n\n~~~\nprofquail\nYou might want to fix the formatting a bit on it. I just check it on my laptop\n(1024x768 resolution) and with FireFox 3.5 maximized, it's cut off and won't\nlet me scroll to read the second line. There's a web developer plugin for\nFirefox that will let you resize the browser to common resolutions so you can\nsee how the site will look on various screen sizes (and let you tweak your CSS\nso it works on all of them).\n\n~~~\nMaro\nThanks, fixed that interface bug.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Government shutdown - what does it mean? - guynamedloren\n\nI am piecing together bits of information from twitter, news sources, and wikipedia, but I&#x27;m still not entirely sure what this &#x27;government shutdown&#x27; means.  How will US citizens be affected, if at all?  Is there any reason to be concerned?  What are the ramifications?<p>As always, I appreciate the knowledge, wisdom and experience of the HN community.\n======\nrabidonrails\nREAD THIS FIRST:\n[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/30/a...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/30/absolutely-\neverything-you-need-to-know-about-how-the-government-shutdown-will-\nwork/?tid=pm_pop)\n\n~~~\nguynamedloren\nThis is great, thank you.\n\n------\nnreece\nA summary on Reddit:\n[http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1nhlv9/us_governm...](http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1nhlv9/us_government_has_shut_down/ccinzst)\n\n------\nzachlatta\nThe Wikipedia article explains it well:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown)\n\n------\nthejteam\nThe sun will still shine. The grass will still grow. Eventually squabbles\namong men will be resolved. Life will move on.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nEl Paso Times censors FBI probe into DA - borderbandit\nhttp://www.elpasonews.org/2012/05/03/el-paso-times-censors-own-article-into-fbi-probe-of-da-jaime-esparza/\n\n======\ncafard\n'The published article, that was later removed, states that District Attorney\ncandidate James D. Lucas “asked the FBI and two state agencies to investigate\nhis allegations against District Attorney Jaime Esparza which he had posted on\na website this week”.'\n\nThe story, then, was not about an FBI probe, but about a request from one\ncandidate for office that the FBI investigate another candidate, the\nincumbent. I don't know El Paso politics, but could it be that the paper\nfollowed up with the requests and decided that Mr. Lucas had manipulated it\ninto publishing an article of no substance?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nXmonad – A dynamically tiling X11 window manager - pykello\nhttp://xmonad.org/\n======\nmseidl\nI've been a xmonad user for a long time, but I'm going to switch to i3.\n\nWhile xmonad is nice, and haskell is nice, the haskell eco system is a PITA.\nAnd things break a lot(using cabal). And somehow, after a long time of no\nchanges my xmonad will no longer recompile. Trying to update the haskell stuff\njust turned out to be a HUGE pain. Also the libraries take up way too much\nspace because you have to have then in different ways. I forgot how it went,\nbut having xmonad(a small wm) required something like 1 to 1,5gb of harddrive\nspace.\n\n~~~\nLukeHoersten\nFor your WM you probably want to use a precompiled binary form your distro.\nWhat you're trying is equivalent of trying to get the whole gcc stack and deps\nto build a c-based WM. Haskell isn't a dynamic language and doesn't require\nanything Haskell-specific to be installed on the target system to run a\nbinary.\n\nIf you really do want to compile your window manager from source, newer\nversions of cabal, the Haskell package manager, have something called\nsandboxes which basically remedy the problems you're talking about. I don't\nrecommend compiling from source unless you know what you're doing though and\nif you're not using sandboxes, you probably don't.\n\n~~~\nmseidl\nI was using rpms until they broke multi-monitor support, then I switched to\nusing cabal, which worked when I first installed it, but now it broke on it's\nown. And when trying to fix it several packages where broken again. For no\nreason. Cabal also doesn't do dependency management. So you have to try to\ninstall something, it'll complain it doesn't have X, then you have to install\nX, then it complains it doesn't have Y and so on.\n\n------\nibab\nXMonad has been my window manager of choice for years now. I especially like\nthat the code is short and easy to understand, so you can easily modify it (or\nwrite an extension) if you want.\n\nIf you don't have previous Haskell experience, then other window managers like\ni3 or bspwm might be more comfortable.\n\n~~~\nsevensor\n> If you don't have previous Haskell experience, then other window managers\n> like i3 or bspwm might be more comfortable.\n\nMy biggest beef with xmonad is that its configuration file is itself Haskell\nsource code. So even if xmonad is the only Haskell project I use, I have to\npull in GHC to compile my configuration. Since I'm not a Haskell guy, this\nmeans that I'm easily tipped off the cliff into cabal hell, which is not where\nI want to be when updating my WM config. For all that, xmonad is great when it\nworks, and I stuck with it from 2011 to 2014 before moving on to i3.\n\n~~~\nrlpb\nMy distribution maintainers deal with the cabal hell so I don't have to. I\njust use the xmonad package and it just works, including with a configuration\nfile.\n\n~~~\nsevensor\nI found that this approach worked right up to the point where I tried to make\nnon-trivial changes to the config, following examples from the xmonad website.\nIf you want your config to use a Haskell package that's not provided by your\ndistro, as many of the config examples do, you're out of luck unless you want\nto take the cabal route.\n\nIt's possible this situation has improved since last year, when I switched to\ni3, but it can never be fully rectified as long as the config file is itself\nHaskell source. I find it surprising that, despite the Haskell community's\nclaims that Haskell is great for writing domain-specific languages, xmonad\ndoes not expose a DSL for you to configure it with.\n\n~~~\nrlpb\n> I find it surprising that, despite the Haskell community's claims that\n> Haskell is great for writing domain-specific languages, xmonad does not\n> expose a DSL for you to configure it with.\n\nI presume it's nice that you can actually customize xmonad with code. So an\nappropriate DSL would be a programming language so using Haskell makes sense.\nAny other DSL would be more limiting.\n\n> If you want your config to use a Haskell package that's not provided by your\n> distro, as many of the config examples do, you're out of luck unless you\n> want to take the cabal route.\n\nI can understand that this would cause pain. I suppose it's up to cabal and/or\ndistros to fix this.\n\n~~~\nsevensor\n> I presume it's nice that you can actually customize xmonad with code. So an\n> appropriate DSL would be a programming language so using Haskell makes\n> sense. Any other DSL would be more limiting.\n\nYou've hit the nail on the head here --- the problem is that xmonad offers an\nunlimited scope for configuration, including extensions to the behavior of\nxmonad. I'd rather see a clear separation between mechanisms for configuration\nand extension, even if that reduces the power of configuration.\n\n------\ndjfm\nI've been using Xmonad for such a long time I can barely use a non-tiling WM\nproperly now. Makes me look like a fool on almost anybody else's computer.\n\nBut perhaps the greatest thing about Xmonad is that it can lead you to Haskell\nand to functional programming in general, and I think this is one of the most\nuseful and beautiful discoveries a developer can make. Your Javascript or your\nPHP will get better just by looking at some Haskell :)\n\n~~~\nnoobermin\nThis is encouraging. I switched from Awesome to Qtile just because I liked\npython more than lua, although Qtile lacks much in features (specifically,\nAwesome's better layouts, in my opinion). However, I've been wanting to learn\nHaskell and I was hoping using Xmonad would be a good excuse to learn it. It\nsounds like I'd get what I want.\n\n------\nrboyd\nAnyone know any decent tiling window managers for windows os? I found bug.n\nwhich uses ahk, but it just left me longing for i3.\n\n~~~\nDanTheManPR\nNot a full window manager, but I've used Winsplit Revolution for years to\nmanually re-tile my windows. I have it set to use ctrl+alt and then the grid\nof keys:\n\nqwe\n\nasd\n\nzxc\n\n...to move windows into corners, sides, or the center of the screen. Hitting\nthe same key over and over re-sizes it to take up more or less of the screen.\nIt's sadly no longer being developed, but works fine on Win8 and Win10 (and so\nprobably will continue to work into the foreseeable future).\n\n------\nranman\nXNomad is an xmonad equivalent for OSX:\n[https://github.com/fjolnir/xnomad](https://github.com/fjolnir/xnomad)\n\nI made this fork of an actual project in the hopes that this joke would one\nday become relevant... unfortunately I'm not that juvenile anymore so now it\njust sort of feels stupid:\n[https://github.com/ranman/xgonads](https://github.com/ranman/xgonads)\n\n------\nams6110\nAnother tiling window manger (that I like) is awesome.\n\n[http://awesome.naquadah.org/](http://awesome.naquadah.org/)\n\nConfigurable using Lua, though I've actually changed almost nothing.\n\n~~~\nfixermark\nXmonad is quite good, but I generally found its greatest strength to be its\ngreatest weakness: it turns out I didn't actually want to learn Haskell to\nedit my wm configs. Nor did I really want to compile my wm configs, but that's\nmore a question of the speed of the Haskell compiler than the choice of\nlanguage.\n\nLua is not a great scripting language, but its biggest strength is its dog-\nsimplicity. There just aren't a lot of places for bugs to hide in it.\n\n~~~\nswitch007\nReally, XMonad does not need much configuration to be quite useful when\ncombined with Gnome/XFCE. Also, there are many, many examples you can copy and\npaste. I've been using it for 5+ years with minor adjustments - I wouldn't say\nI \"know\" Haskell. At all.\n\nFurther, \"xmonad --recompile && xmonad --restart\" is not that taxing on the\nrare occasion you change your configuration.\n\n------\nrgoomar\nXMonad is my favorite tiling window manager. I use it on top of XFCE, so I\nhave a bit of a graphical interface just in case my non-technical friends use\nmy computer and tiling / shortcuts / all the awesome stuff that comes with\nXMonad on top of that.\n\nAlthough it is written in Haskell, I find the configuration pretty easy to use\nand manipulate. It's incredibly powerful and extremely lightweight when\ncompared to other tiling managers.\n\nTLDR; XMonad is my favorite tiling window manager.\n\n------\ndnquark\nDoes Xmonad work OOTB on recent Ubuntu versions? I remember that after the\nswitch to Gnome 3 it was a huge PITA to get Xmonad, Xmobar, and trayer (to get\nindicator applets) all working; some indicator applets never displayed anyway.\n\nTBH, though, I didn't miss tiling WMs much after switching to OS X, mostly\nbecause I spend 95% of my time in Chrome with hella tabs, terminal with screen\nand Emacs.\n\n------\neeZi\nOn a related note, still no package signing in Cabal (Haskell's package\nmanager).\n\n[https://github.com/haskell/cabal/issues/936](https://github.com/haskell/cabal/issues/936)\n\n------\nfoobarqux\nIs Xmonad still being updated? It seems moribund.\n\n~~~\ndons\nxmonad is largely 'finished'. It works. So we don't have to keep modifying it\nnow.\n\n~~~\nim2w1l\nI assume you are an xmonad dev? I use it and I really like it. Could I ask you\nto look into the focus/unfocus loop issue?\n\n------\nnycticorax\nHow is this news?\n\n~~~\nsophacles\nFrom the guidelines: _On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find\ninteresting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to\nreduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one 's\nintellectual curiosity._\n\nAlso from the guidelines: _Please don 't submit comments complaining that a\nsubmission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-\ntopic, flag it by clicking on its \"flag\" link._\n\nSometimes it's OK in a community focused on a topic like \"tech things\" to\nremind everyone that something exists. Also, as HN is growing, and as a large\nportion of the people on this site are young (e.g. recent grads, new in the\nprogramming field, or even still undergrads) this is their first exposure.\nIt's ok that we get beginner level articles - e.g. most of the tutorials\nlinked here describe stuff that has been around for a long time and tutorialed\nmany times before. It's still ok. It gets people exposed in a way that is\nuseful.\n\nUs old hands can add to the discussion by pointing out new features, or better\narticles or advanced stuff. It's much more productive than complaining that \"i\nalready knew this\".\n\n------\nzer0rest\nXmonad(and others) is heavily inspired by dwm. I prefer dwm because it is\nconfigured in C instead of haskell(I don't know haskell) and the bar is much\nsimpler than xmobar. Xmonad is cool if you like haskell though.\n\n[http://dwm.suckless.org/](http://dwm.suckless.org/)\n\n~~~\ndghf\nApply the pango patch [0] to dwm, and you can get nice xft fonts, Unicode\nicons and colours in the status bar.\n\n[0]\n[http://dwm.suckless.org/patches/pango](http://dwm.suckless.org/patches/pango)\n\n~~~\nnyir\nDo you perhaps have an update to that patch against git HEAD or 6.1?\n\n~~~\ndghf\nI don't, but this thread might help:\n[http://lists.suckless.org/dev/1407/23054.html](http://lists.suckless.org/dev/1407/23054.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow to get Bitcoin from the early adopters to the early majority - andrewoons\nhttp://andrewoons.com/post/93339555434/how-to-get-bitcoin-from-the-early-adopters-to-the-early\n\n======\ncbeach\nI think social trading apps / websites are the way forward - get friends\nhelping each other with the learning curve, and P2P transactions well away\nfrom centralised exchanges.\n\nI built CoinTouch to find friends of friends that trade crypto currency. It's\nbeen live since February and has 1700 users now.\n\nThere's a critical mass on CoinTouch such that most new signups see orders\nwithin their (two degree) social network. FB and Google+ are supported, and\nall transactions are P2P. No fees.\n\n[https://www.cointouch.com/](https://www.cointouch.com/)\n\nFeedback welcome.\n\n------\nhigherpurpose\nIt's the other way around :)\n\n~~~\nandrewoons\nChanged. Thanks for pointing it out :)!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Introducing my wife to programming - salttrail\nI am experienced Java developer but I&#x27;m not sure whether it&#x27;s something I should start with or teach her python. She have knowledge about what programing is and she would like to do career change so if you have any tips to share in which direction I should go, it would be helpful. \nAt the end of the day either web or mobile development is fine as long as she is able to have steady learning curve and less &quot;huh?&quot; moments, until she feel comfortable with whatever hack the programming is :).<p>My plan is to<p>1. Tackle OOP fundamentals<p>2. Introduction in one of the frameworks<p>3. Build simple apps\n======\ngt2\nI think #3 goes at the top.\n\nOpen an editor and start a python script, <html></html>, new Xcode project\nfrom template, etc.\n\nThen do the minimal amount of work to make a \"program\". Would be great to have\ninput from the user and output something interesting. But many programs/apps\nare just informational right?\n\nSo you start with the most basic program.\n\nAnd you add to it.\n\nOccasionally jump over to a huge codebase and show her how editing one line\nchanges the program. Explain how this one just has more layers, time spent on\nit, more people working on it, all of the above.\n\nGo back to your small programs. Push until you have a real need for OOP or a\nframework. Then she will be A) interested about OOP or the framework and B)\nactually understand the point. Imagine someone trying to shove OOP down your\nthroat when you don't have any use for it. Inexperienced people aren't ready\nfor that kind of abstract thinking. Maybe they can understand it but they\ndon't understand the application of it, or worse, they will start to think\neverything should use it. Show the simple version first, then show how other\nthings can make you work faster and the code cleaners (which are really some\nof the biggest reasons for OOP and frameworks, right? It's not as if you can't\nmake something happen without them, they just increase productivity and code\nclarity).\n\nLastly, making something that scratches an itch of theirs or both of yours so\nthe work is practical. There's plenty of possibilities there to avoid making\ntic tac toe if no-one likes tic tac toe.\n\nGood luck\n\n~~~\nwingerlang\nI think this is quite important as well. A couple of years ago I had a\ngirlfriend that was interested in programming and she started _directly_\nmaking an iOS application.\n\nI helped occasionally when needed as I had 10 years of random programming\nexperience at the time (not in iOS though) but she powered through many issues\non her own. While I don't have contact with her anymore, based on her LinkedIn\nprofile she's still an iOS developer to this day, at a /really/ nice company\nas well.\n\n------\nd--b\nMy advice: don’t do OOP fundamentals. OOP should come up out of necessity of\nkeeping code modular, not as a governing principle.\n\nBuilding simple apps is the way to go. Don’t do web at first, it’s too messy.\nObjective-C is a little harsh as well, so android development is what I’d\nrecommend. It’s simple enough to not get too frustrated, and it’s good for\nmotivation cause it’s cool to make an app for a phone.\n\n------\nraquo\nFor all the hate it gets, there is nothing simpler than a small Javascript and\nnode.js app. Easy to focus on one language initially, and if a _beginner_\nwants to build frontend stuff, Javascript is the only option.\n\nGuide her through building a simple app of her choice. Teach her how to find\nanswers on MDN and SO, but take time to talk her through big picture ideas and\narchitectures.\n\n------\nabledon\nDo something with Pinterest API Crawl site to find jewelry or mittens or\npuzzle boards or whatever she likes then analyze it with open cv. Forget OOp\naltogether for a beginner — it’s useful after dealing with large code bases\nand needing a method to organize code.\n\n------\nframebit\nAs somebody who made this career change, do not underestimate how much she has\nto learn. It's very doable, but there is really SO MUCH. For somebody who\ndidn't grow up tinkering with computers (I didn't, my Dad needed that desktop\nto write his law briefs so if we messed it up we were in big trouble) there's\nso much ground work to lay and jargon to conquer that is second nature to\npeople who program but very confusing and new for beginners.\n\nFor example, early on when I was just starting to program, somebody was trying\nto help me use a terminal (a what?) and they said \"ok, type L S dash L pipe\ngrep dot txt.\" HUH? ok, I typed \"ls-l,\" but what's pipe? No no no, it's \"L S\nSpace dash. ls is the command.\" It's a what? It's like software that's already\nbeen written that you can call just by typing the name.\" Oooohhh.\n\nThat's just one example. I got it eventually, I got a CS degree and I'm doing\ndistributed systems stuff fulltime, but man those first few months were rough.\nI remember a friend helping me through what I later recognized as Baby's First\nOff-by-one error. I remember the victory of writing my first program that\nworked the first time. I remember the first time a classmate asked a question\nand suddenly I was able to answer it!\n\nMy recommendation to start: write a toy program to do something trivial and\nrun it from the terminal. Like \"Hello ___\" where you take in ___ from the\ncommand line. Learn how to interpret or compile your code from the terminal,\nlearn the basics of variable assignment (== vs =), if statements, maaaybe\nloops, and go from there.\n\nNever, ever say \"It's simple,\" \"It's easy,\" or \"It's trivial.\" I got very hung\nup (still do sometimes) on trying to understand what I'm doing from code down\nto bare metal, and that is NOT SIMPLE, and when you're swimming in unfamiliar\nterms and confusion it is very hard to articulate a question that clarifies\nyour confusion. And trying to guide somebody into thinking on a handful of\nabstraction levels without going to far is not simple. Many times I needed to\nhear \"you don't need to worry about that right now\" or \"just treat this as\nmagic for the moment and focus on this other thing.\" That is way more helpful\nand encouraging than \"it's simple.\" I think FizzBuzz is simple now, I sure as\nheck didn't back then.\n\nLike other commenters said, leave OOP or functional paradigms or whatever for\nmuch later. That stuff matters when you realize your one class has gotten\nsuper unwieldy.\n\nDon't jump too quickly to Android or web development without covering the\nbasic basics first. Android and web development are not simple and there's\nsome black-box magic that I don't even think some pros fully understand. It is\nnice to visually see the changes that you're making through editing a UI, but\nthe abstractions can be tough.\n\nThis comment got long. In short, be encouraging, help her discern what she\nneeds to know and what she doesn't, and nothing is ever simple because\nultimately it's all running on a lightning-infused rock, and these days that\nrock is probably connected by metal strings or electro-magnetic waves to other\nlightning-infused rocks, and that's pretty hard to wrap your mind around.\n\nAll that said, I know for a fact that she can do it because I did!\n\n~~~\nsalttrail\nThank you for such kind words\n\n------\nshahbaby\nkeep her in the kitchen\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHosting for Node.js apps done right - kertof\nhttp://www.evennode.com/\n======\npkorzeniewski\nOne question - does it support TCP sockets? I've evaluated a dozen or so\nNode.js hosting solutions and none (0, null, nil) supported TCP sockets.\nHTTP/S and WebSockets only. It's ridiculous - a TCP server is a major use case\nfor Node.js and yet if you want to host it, you must configure and\nadministrate your own server (on EC2 or whatever).\n\n~~~\nDuhck\nWe had the same problem. We actually wanted to use Heroku just for pre-\nproduction as it was the easiest to deploy / manage, but their TCP socket\nimplementation is such a joke.\n\nWe would up just using AWS, and sunk a few days into dev / sys ops.\n\nI would happily pay for a solution to this problem\n\n~~~\nyannski\nCould you elaborate a bit on \"their TCP socket implementation is such a joke\"\n? Are you talking about the Ruppell's Sockets addon ? What's your problem with\nit ? What could be an improvement to it ?\n\n~~~\npkorzeniewski\nI've also evaluated Heroku and the Ruppell's Sockets, so I can answer this\nfrom my point of view. The problem is that it's a workaround solution - all\nTCP traffic goes through an external server, which is unacceptable for any\nserious use case. How secure is that external server? What if it goes down?\nThere isn't really anything that can be improved, other than Heroku natively\nsupporting TCP sockets.\n\n------\nmarktangotango\nI wonder how pricing is determined for these offerings? Ie whats the driver\nfor profitability?\n\nMy thinking is as follows: if I use a popular IAAS for servers to host\ncustomers node.js apps, and if I have instances with 15GB of ram, if I offer\napplication instances that are allocated at most 256MB, then I can fit about\n58 application instances on a server (allowing 500MB for the OS). At 6€ an\ninstance (for the intro tier) that's 348€ a month\n\nAn EC2 M3.xlarge costs about $81 a month (3 year heavy reserved, amortizing\none time payment over 36 months). Today that about 63€ a month. So they intend\nto make 290€ per server minus additional costs for mongodb hosting.\n\nDoes that jive with how you all figure these things?\n\n------\nconradk\nThis sounds like a joke to me.\n\n1- \"Hosting for Node.js apps done right\": Like everything else is done wrong?\nThat's just weird.\n\n2- What does \"designed for cloud\" mean?\n\n3- \"Free support\"? How gullible do you think we are? At 6e/mo, anyone that\nbelieves they're getting any kind of \"Free support\" is wrong. Or else this\nservice is going to fail big time.\n\nNow some constructive criticism: I see \"FTP access\". But as a dev, I would\nhave liked to see something like FTPS, SFTP or better yet, SSH.\n\n~~~\ndrdaeman\nSFTP would be a better idea, but documentation says they do support FTPS:\n[http://www.evennode.com/docs/ftp-\naccess#tls](http://www.evennode.com/docs/ftp-access#tls)\n\nAs for criticism... that they charge premium for TLS on custom domains. While\nthis is probably reasonable business decision, it does community a bit of bad\nservice - additional costs for security discourages users from having one. And\nTLS already has that bar quite high.\n\n------\ndewey\nNo https and the login form is submitted in plain text. That doesn't really\ninspire confidence.\n\n------\neddieroger\nWhat are the others doing wrong that these guys are doing right? From the\nmarketing page, it looks to be as simple as Heroku, except I already have an\naccount there, and most of my apps run for free already.\n\n------\nleichtgewicht\nThe things I miss in this \"done right\" approach:\n\n\\- Continuous Deployment: automatic load-balancing, proper termination of\ninstances, all seem to apply without documentation or not?!\n\n\\- Redis: MongoDB for persistent data is fine in many cases but for\nperformance nothing beats a key/value storage (also: some session storage\nworks well with redis)\n\n\\- Where is it hosted? Europe? Unusable for my location :)\n\n------\njain_chirag04\nIrony is that their website is powered by PHP rather than node.\n\n~~~\nsheetjs\nIn general, how do you determine what software is running on the server side?\nNone of the obvious links are to .php documents and the headers only indicate\nnginx\n\n~~~\ncturhan\nLook their cookies. You will see PHPSESSID meaning that session is provided by\nPHP.\n\nAlthough, you can do the same with node session module it seems like php\nanyway.\n\nPlus: [http://builtwith.com/evennode.com](http://builtwith.com/evennode.com)\n\n------\nmarknadal\nReally neat to have FTP access for new JavaScript to NodeJS developers that\ndon't know how to use git yet.\n\n~~~\nstephenr\nIn 2014 ftp access is not a feature, it is an alarm bell to anyone that has\nany concern at all for security.\n\n~~~\nlistic\nI _hope_ that when they write 'FTP' they actually mean '(FTP or) SFTP'. Alas,\nthat's no always true.\n\n~~~\nleichtgewicht\nThey seemingly do:\n\n[http://www.evennode.com/docs/ftp-\naccess#tls](http://www.evennode.com/docs/ftp-access#tls)\n\n~~~\ndrdaeman\nThat's FTPS, not SFTP, to be precise.\n\nThe former is classic FTP sessions secured with TLS on all or some (negotiated\nat runtime) connections. The latter is a (saner, IMHO) separate protocol\ntraditionally run over SSH session.\n\n------\nrandunel\n\"Dev\" price:\n\n€ 6 / month\n\n    \n    \n         1 app instance\n         256MB RAM\n         1GB storage\n        Unlimited custom domains\n        FTP access\n        Free MongoDB database\n        Free support\n    \n\nIf they also have a transfer limit, then just forget about it :(\n\n~~~\nphilbarr\nYes they don't seem to be offering anything above and beyond their\ncompetitors, particularly on price. Not even a free tier.\n\nI'm not saying that companies should have a free tier \"by rights\", only that\nit's a good way to get you sucked in whilst you develop your app and then when\nyou scale you're unlikely to change provider.\n\n~~~\nkertof\nI agree that a Free Tier is the best way to get you to adopt a tool. I'd love\nto build and test at very small scale, then start paying when I've launched\nand scaling.\n\n------\nFastidious\nToo expensive, in my opinion. The dashboard looks nice, simple and clean\nthough.\n\n------\nKiro\nHow does this compare to Nodejitsu? Also, do you have support for socket.io?\n\n------\nsogen\nanother option: [http://nitrous.io/](http://nitrous.io/) they offer free\ndevelopment boxes\n\n~~~\nlistic\nWindows and Mac, but no Linux support for their desktop software :(\n\n------\ndnns\ndoes anyone know if bower, grunt, etc. are working?\n\n~~~\nBinaryIdiot\nYou'd typically run those and package the results for a deployment. Unless\nyou're using grunt to run your application it's probably unnecessary to offer\nthat.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n[USA] Supreme Court Case Threatens Representation of Children and Non-Citizens - adnanh\nhttp://www.socialexplorer.com/evenwel/\n======\nadnanh\n[http://www.socialexplorer.com/blog/post/supreme-court-\ncase-t...](http://www.socialexplorer.com/blog/post/supreme-court-case-\nthreatens-representation-of-children-and-non-citizens-report-maps-5080)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nElectric Generation in Spain – Latest 24 Hours - vinnyglennon\nhttp://energia.ningunaparte.net/en/\n======\namazon_not\nI think we killed it :( At least I don't get any data plotted anymore when\nloading the site.\n\nI agree it's neat, but I dislike that the plot legend has the text at an angle\nwith poor contrast and in the \"wrong\" order compared to the plot colors. I'd\nalso like a better color scheme with more distinct colors. I'm also not s fan\nof fading out the colors with time.\n\n~~~\ndavidklemke\nSame issue here on the latest version of Chrome. Seems our hug of death might\nhave spread to the official data source too as I just get a blank page there\nas well.\n\n------\nhakcermani\nNeat looking visualization. Sorry for the nitpick but personally a straight\nline (rather than circular) plot 00:00 - 24:00 will help see the peaks and\ncompare high-low better. The time could you also show by time of generation\nrather than local. (it is weird to see peak solar at 0200 hrs )\n\n~~~\nvegabook\nPersonally I quite like the polar coordinates, though it's a pity that by\nconvention, a watch face only holds half a day, as we would otherwise have a\nnice mapping of generation time to a watch-face equivalent.\n\nMy nitpick is that this is ultimately a stacked bar chart, so as with\ncartesian stacked charts, it obfuscates some of proportions, in particular the\nvery interesting cyclicity of renewables. The author has wisely put the\nhigher-variance variables first, mitigating the problem somewhat, but not\ncompletely, as can be seen by comparing to the gridwatch UK equivalent.\n\n~~~\nimdsm\n[http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/](http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/)\n\n------\nDiThi\nIt's glitchy in Firefox. Here's the official real time graph\n[https://demanda.ree.es/demandaGeneracionAreasEng.html](https://demanda.ree.es/demandaGeneracionAreasEng.html)\n\n~~~\nTharkun\n\"Alternate HTML content should be placed here. This content requires the Adobe\nFlash Player. Get Flash\"\n\nNot happening.\n\n------\nrlongstaff\nThe equivalent for the UK:\n[http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/](http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/)\n\n------\nfarhanpatel\nVery well done. Here is a similar thing for Ontario [http://media.cns-\nsnc.ca/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelectricit...](http://media.cns-\nsnc.ca/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelectricity.html)\n\n------\neofear\nIrish Dashboard here -\n[http://smartgriddashboard.eirgrid.com/](http://smartgriddashboard.eirgrid.com/)\n\n~~~\npaublyrne\nWere you involved in building it? Nice.\n\nDoes the percentage of renewable generated (wind) go up a lot during the\nnight?\n\n~~~\neofear\nNo, we built a simple traffic light on top of it. [Red/Amber/Green] to\nindicate how much electricity is wind generated, and so if its a good time to\ncharge your electric car, etc..\n\n------\nAnimats\nMost grid operators have displays like that. The California ISO has one.[1]\nPJM's is the most elaborate; search for \"eData Guest view\" to view it. It's\ntoo much information at first, but click on the \"Big Picture\" tab, then change\none of the smaller panes to \"Wind\", and one to \"Load\", and you can see current\nload and how much wind power is contributing. Note the 5:1 variation in wind\npower over a day, across most of the northeastern US. \"LMPs\" shows the\nwholesale price of electricity at various points in the system. (It costs\nmoney to transmit power, so it's not the same everywhere.)\n\nYou can view the PJM's network issues by clicking on \"Constraints\" or\n\"Emergencies\". Typical message today: _\" As of 17:10 on 11.20.2015 a Post\nContingency Local Load Relief Warning to maintain WARD 115 KV at 106 KV in the\nPN area has been issued for Transmission Contingency Control. Additional\nComments: Pre-contingency voltage too high for caps at Mansfield and Niles\nValley\"_ Minor problem, already handled. If you really want to understand all\nthis, PJM has lots of training materials. Start with \"PJM 101\".[2] Anyone\nrunning a big network or \"cloud\" may find it useful to see how a very large\npower grid is run. The main control room in Valley Forge, PA usually has less\nthan 10 people.[3]\n\n[1]\n[http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html](http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html)\n[2] [http://pjm.com/Globals/Training/Courses/ol-\npjm-101.aspx](http://pjm.com/Globals/Training/Courses/ol-pjm-101.aspx) [3]\n[http://www.elliottlewis.com/pjm-mission-critical-\nsite/](http://www.elliottlewis.com/pjm-mission-critical-site/)\n\n------\nkarambahh\nIt's a neat tool however please keep in mind that Spain is actually a very big\nimporter of energy.\n\nEarlier this year a major construction project has ended: a double 65km tunnel\nbelow the pyrenean of 1000MW capacity. It doubled the previous existing\ncapacity.[1]\n\nSpain is a very large importer of energy, ENTSOE data for October is 525GWh\nFR->ES [2] Since the energy mix of France is roughly 75% Nuclear, in reality\nSpain relies much heavily on nuclear than what is displayed.\n\nBased on ENTSOE data, Fraunhoffer built another very nice data visualisation\nof import/export of electricity between Germany and its neighbours [3]\n\nEuropean electricity networks are very tightly interconnected, and although I\ndon't have a source at hand, I remember being told that preventing a domino\neffect between countries has been a massive feat of engineering. Basically,\nthe fear of every energy provider/network is something similar to the blackout\nthat happenned in northern america in 2003[4]\n\nAs a side note does anyone know what \"balearic exchange\" refers to? I guess\nsomething the Baleares islands, but my google-fu failed me\n\n[1] [http://www.inelfe.eu/?Liaison-electrique-\nsouterraine&lang=fr](http://www.inelfe.eu/?Liaison-electrique-\nsouterraine&lang=fr)\n\n[2] [https://www.entsoe.eu/db-query/exchange/detailed-\nelectricity...](https://www.entsoe.eu/db-query/exchange/detailed-electricity-\nexchange)\n\n[3] [https://www.energy-charts.de/exchange.htm](https://www.energy-\ncharts.de/exchange.htm)\n\n[4] [http://www.nature.com/news/is-the-us-grid-better-prepared-\nto...](http://www.nature.com/news/is-the-us-grid-better-prepared-to-prevent-a-\nrepeat-of-the-2003-blackout-1.13559)\n\n~~~\nalricb\nSpain is a net exporter of electricity; its net exports were 3406 GWh in 2014\n(vs. total consumption of 243,530 GWh). It imported 5963 GWh from France and\nsent 2395 GWh back; For Portugal it was 6345 GWh imported vs. 7247 exported,\nand there was an exportation of 5839 GWh to Morroco (vs. 3 GWh of\nimportation).\n\nExports and Imports vary depending on the season. From January to April, when\nthe most hydro power is produced, Spain is a net exporter to France and a net\nimporter from Portugal. The rest of the year, the balance is mostly reversed.\nThe export to Morroco is roughly stable all year.\n\nIn 2014, Spain's nuclear power plants produced 57,376 GWh. Assuming all energy\nimported from France (5963 GWh) was from nuclear plants, that would add 10.4%\nto nuclear-source electricity, for a total of 63,339 GWh, or 26% of\nconsumption (vs. 23.6% if you don't count French imports).\n\nEdit: source for all that: [http://www.ree.es/es/publicaciones/sistema-\nelectrico-espanol...](http://www.ree.es/es/publicaciones/sistema-electrico-\nespanol/informe-anual/informe-del-sistema-electrico-espanol-2014)\n\n~~~\nkarambahh\nDidn't know that, thanks!\n\n------\nioquatix\nNew Zealand power generation and transmission, live:\n[http://www.em6live.co.nz](http://www.em6live.co.nz)\n\nShows a breakdown of how the energy is generated and where it is going.\n\n------\nlight303\nsame for germany here: [https://www.energy-\ncharts.de/power_de.htm](https://www.energy-charts.de/power_de.htm)\n\n~~~\nthe8472\nSelect \"alle Quellen\" on the left side to get a finer breakdown and then\n\"Import Saldo\" on the top right for adjustment for imported or exported power.\n\n------\nmacmac\nThe lack of solar is completely baffling. [EDIT] I was referring to solar on\naverage.\n\n~~~\nRBerenguel\nLack? It's around 10% during daytime\n\n~~~\nthrownaway2424\nThe times are presented in the viewer's local time. For me it looks like solar\npeaks in the middle of the night.\n\n~~~\nRBerenguel\nOh, didn't realise since I'm in GMT+1 (actually, I'm in Spain, but well.) In\nany case, solar is pretty visible with the color choice and, well, it's actual\npresence.\n\n------\nslyall\nInteresting that Hydro is dropping to almost zero at times. I would have\nthough at least some of it would be always going to maintain flow of rivers\netc.\n\n~~~\nDiThi\nIn the official graph it actually goes negative.\n\n~~~\nalricb\nProbably because of pumped storage: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-\nstorage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-\nstorage_hydroelectricity)\n\n------\nocschwar\nWe took it out. Can anyone share a cached copy ?\n\n~~~\nJorgeGT\nWell, at least this is the official data portal of the Spanish grid:\n[https://www.esios.ree.es/en](https://www.esios.ree.es/en) if someone is\ninterested.\n\n------\nglobile\nHow can there be solar at 21.15 GMT+1? Even if just 0.30%. Is this from the\naccumulated residual during the day?\n\n~~~\nktzar\nConcentration solar... It melts salt that still provides energy for a few\nhours.\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10_solar_power_plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10_solar_power_plant)\n\n~~~\ngearhart\nwiki says they're using superheated water for storage, lasting 30mins and the\nsalts are under consideration - sounds like a serious improvement, do you have\nmore info?\n\n~~~\nAlready__Taken\nClick through the list of solar power plants, In particular I found this one:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Dunes_Solar_Energy_Pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Dunes_Solar_Energy_Project)\n\n> Melting about 70,000,000 pounds (32,000,000 kg) of salt takes two months.\n\n------\nktzar\nI find it so awesome that some days 50% of the electricity comes from wind...\nJust great. A good example.\n\n~~~\nalvarosm\nIf you had to pay one of the world's most expensive electricity bills, I guess\nyou wouldn't find it so awesome.\n\n~~~\npjc50\nThat appears to be down to weird non-marginal pricing:\n[http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/01/01/inenglish/1388590410_230...](http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/01/01/inenglish/1388590410_230748.html)\n\nThe wind energy itself is cheap, but all producers are paid at the cost of the\nmost expensive dispatch!\n\n------\nthrownaway2424\nCan someone explain \"special scheme\"?\n\n~~~\nalricb\nI think it refers to the rest of the production that is done under the\n\"Régimen Especial\":\n[https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9gimen_Especial_de_energ...](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9gimen_Especial_de_energ%C3%ADa)\n\nThe scheme includes energy generated from waste, biomass, hydro, wind, solar\nand co-generation. Since hydro, wind, solar have their own categories, that\npart of the graph would correspond to waste, biomass and co-generation.\n\n~~~\nalricb\nIt may include everything, though, because the scheme only applies to\ninstallation of less than 50 MW:\n[http://www.endesadistribucion.es/es/oficinaOnline/RegimenEsp...](http://www.endesadistribucion.es/es/oficinaOnline/RegimenEspecial/Paginas/regimenespecial.aspx)\n\nSo a micro hydro plant or a rooftop solar installation would be counted under\nthe special scheme.\n\n------\njaimehrubiks\nI have new clock\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\n1922: The Vacuum Tube Amplifier - mikecane\nhttp://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/1922-the-vacuum-tube-amplifier/\n\n======\nmeaty\nI nearly killed myself playing with tubes in the early 90s. The 6.3v heater\ncircuit got a short in the transformer winding and delivered a rather painful\n220v between one hand and the other, through the table to earth. Was in\nhospital for 3 days with arythmia after being knocked out cold for about 5\nminutes.\n\nStill they are one of the coolest devices ever :) I just have a lot more\nrespect for them and mains now.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA curated catalog of iOS frameworks - danielh\nhttp://iosframeworks.com/\n======\naaronbrethorst\nDisclaimer: I'm the creator of <http://cocoacontrols.com>, which is a\ncompetitor to iosframeworks.com.\n\n* Provide direct links to the source code where possible\n\n* License info is extremely useful; I'd hate to find something perfect for my app only to discover that it uses an incompatible license.\n\n* Provide ratings support.\n\n* What's a framework in this case? iOS doesn't support third-party frameworks, just static libs and loose bundles of code.\n\n* What differentiated value does this provide vs. my site or <http://cocoaobjects.com/>? I'm not trying to be snarky or cut this down; I think there's a lot of room to differentiate and provide value in this space, it just needs to be articulated clearly.\n\n~~~\nfeatherless\nAs a developer of iOS frameworks and libraries, I will vouch for cocoacontrols\nas a solid site. It's easy to add a new entry and search for existing controls\nby license.\n\n~~~\naaronbrethorst\nthanks, jeff. glad you like it! :) also, thanks for submitting nimbus just\nnow!\n\n~~~\nfeatherless\nThanks for providing a solid service :)\n\n------\ndan1234\nIt would be great if the licensing details were included. One of the most time\nconsuming things is looking into a particular framework only to find the\nlicense is incompatible with what you're writing.\n\n~~~\nscompt\nGreat idea. It'll go on my TODO list.\n\n------\njamieforrest\nHow can we suggest new frameworks for inclusion on the site? E.g. You are\nmissing Cloudmade's SDK for OpenStreetMap.\n<http://cloudmade.com/products/iphone-sdk>\n\n~~~\nscompt\nThat's a feature that I have yet to implement, but it's on my todo list.\nFollow @iosframeworks for updates to the site.\n\n------\nscottjackson\nRelated: a collection of custom UI controls for both iOS and Mac OS X:\n<http://cocoacontrols.com/>\n\n~~~\nrheeseyb\nNice, thanks!\n\n------\njoakin\nI'm missing here sort options, by most popular, best rated, etc. Also the\ndetails for the framework are very short, a really small explanation, and\nsomethimes nothing but the link to their web page.\n\nMaybe adding screenshots and opinions would increase usefulness.\n\nAnyway, added to favs, I really like the idea!\n\n~~~\nscompt\nInteractivity (most popular, etc) is definitely on my TODO list for the site.\nI'll probably end up requiring login with OpenID for commenting and rating.\n\nI agree that the details are pretty slim on frameworks. As part of the\ninteractivity feature, I plan to add a form for suggesting changes.\n\nThanks for the feedback!\n\n------\nsimonw\nFeature request: screenshots, if available.\n\n~~~\nadamzochowski\nOf a framework? As in API? I am not sure if I understand, how would one make a\nscreenshot of ROR? or Django? or jQuery?\n\nUnless you mean top application using a given framework, but then, it is not\nindicative of the framework, but the amount of time one spent on graphics on\ntop of the framework.\n\n~~~\nglhaynes\nScreenshots of _UI_ frameworks could be nice.\n\n------\nssharp\nLonger descriptions on the homepage:\n\n\"Tapku Library is an open source iOS framework built for iPhone & iPad. The\nframework include...\"\n\nThat tells me nothing about Tapku other than it's an open source framework for\niOS, and I don't really need the iOS part because I'm aware I'm on a site for\niOS frameworks.\n\n------\nkbutler\n\\- Search needs to search tags and substrings (e.g., searching for \"ASI\" or\n\"http\" does not find \"ASIHTTPRequest\", even though both are substrings of the\nlibrary name, and the library is tagged with \"http\").\n\n\\- The search results page needs to include more information. That first line\njust isn't enough, especially when the whole summary is just a few words more\n(e.g., clicking on \"Bullet\" adds \"and rigid body dynamics.\") The search\nresults should probably include the library tags, and maybe the full first\nparagraph.\n\n\\- Pages for individual frameworks should probably include links to comparable\nframeworks (see osalt.com, for example)\n\n------\nyardie\nCould you make the listview 2x the size? Really, 5 items per page is not\nhelping anyone. Especially when you get to frameworks starting with C, I,\nHTTP[], etc.\n\n~~~\nscompt\nYup, I agree. This is on my todo list.\n\n------\nadeelk\nIt would be great if there was a screenshot of each entry.\n\n~~~\nscompt\nGood idea. joakin mentioned this too. It's on my todo list.\n\n------\najg1977\nThe fact that this site lists oolong engine* makes me suspect that it's not at\nall a carefully selected lists of framework.\n\n(oolong is basically a poorly put together collection of sample code with an\n'engine' label slapped on it. For example the engine doesn't actually have any\nconcept of 'lights', instead the 'lighting sample' is a rip-off of an Apple\nsample with all light properties hard-coded calls to OpenGL).\n\n~~~\npagekalisedown\nNot only that, Box2D and Bullet are not iOS-specific.\n\n~~~\nscompt\nI've made no effort to ensure that the frameworks available on the site are\niOS-specific. The main point is that they're available for iOS.\n\n------\nrobjohnson\nThis is an interesting addition, but I have to agree with the other repliers\nthat: a sorting mechanicsm is desperately needed and more information about\neach framework would be nice. (screenshot, etc) Other than that, this is a\ngreat way to stay on top of these frameworks. I'm sure you thought of this,\nbut gitHub has a few lists that do this as well that you might want to take a\nlook at.\n\n------\nnbuggia\nGreat idea (I also love cocoacontrols.com).\n\nPlease show more than 5 results per page. PLEASE! How about 25-50?\n\n------\nApocryphon\nIt'd be nice if there was some way to compare frameworks that have similar\nfeatures. For instance, I'd like to compare physics engine frameworks, either\nbased on their listed features, or if there was some way for users who have\ntried multiple ones to leave comments comparing them.\n\n------\ndavidw\nWhat would a non-curated catalog look like? One generated automatically via a\nGoogle search? Aren't you just saying that a person took the time to go\nthrough and make the catalog?\n\n~~~\nfrou_dh\nThose gigantic download sites full of obscure low-quality shareware are what\nnon-curated catalogs look like.\n\n------\njawngee\nCurated how exactly? You individually test each framework out?\n\n------\nkennethologist\nI second the screenshots request as well as more thorough descriptions. I\ndon't want to have go to each framework's site to view the details.\n\n------\nchrisballinger\nMissing many frameworks (JSONKit, for example), and no ability to add them to\nthe database! Also lacking license.\n\n------\ncschreiner\nGreat initiative. But please make the site more comfortable for us with an\niPad. Make the buttons bigger!\n\n~~~\nscompt\nI've never tried it on the iPad. I'll see what I can do!\n\n------\nlewispb\nIt would be great if there wasn't a spelling mistake in the second sentence.\n\n~~~\nscompt\nGood catch. The framework details were taken, for the most part, directly from\nthe homepage. I'll fix it when I get the chance.\n\n------\nabcd_f\nFeature request: drop _curated_. Way too pompous.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGetting started with shaders: signed distance functions - pcr910303\nhttps://jvns.ca/blog/2020/03/15/writing-shaders-with-signed-distance-functions/\n======\nGuB-42\nHere is the article that started everything\n\n[https://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/raymarchingdf/raymar...](https://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/raymarchingdf/raymarchingdf.htm)\n\niq didn't invent the technique, but he popularized it. His website has a lot\nof tutorials on making demoscene effects, especially for 4k intros. He is also\none of the makers of shadertoy.\n\n~~~\njmiskovic\nI was surprised to learn he was behind the Oculus Quill (VR art and animation\nsoftware). He started posting very well produced video lessons on SDFs. I\nenjoyed this recent one:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMltMdi1Wzg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMltMdi1Wzg)\n\n~~~\nArelius\nYou might also be surprised to find out that he was a co-author of shader toy,\nand he was previously at Pixar where he did much of the procedural work behind\nThe Good Dinosaur.\n\n------\nfenwick67\nThere's a disclaimer missing from this article (and many others like it),\nwriting a frag shader to generate 3d geometry is generally not the ideal way\nto actually render stuff unless you're doing demos (with some exceptions).\n\nThe other thing that gets me is these articles say \"here's how you write a\nshader\" but shaders are much more than a fragment shader over the whole screen\n(like what shadertoy provides).\n\n~~~\ngmiller123456\nHe's using ray tracing, I thought this was the typical way of doing it. Do you\nhave references on alternate methods?\n\n~~~\nArelius\nSo, specifically, he is ray-marching a signed-distance field. Which has some\ninteresting properties.\n\nOne of the major down-sides is it's often more difficult to create the\nboundary surface, fewer editors and the like. More common methods are\npolygons, subdivision surfaces, and nurbs.\n\nSo, one common technique as you mentioned is ray-tracing, the key difference\nis ray-marching samples the world at intervals (often regularly spaced, but in\nSDFs you can search for the boundary since given any location, you know the\ndistance to the closest surface) where ray-tracing you intersect each\nprimitive directly, and normally build up data structures (BVH, for example)\nto minimize the amount of individual tests you need to do.\n\nAnother common technique, used almost exclusively in every real-time case\n(games, CAD tools, etc) Is rasterization, where you project the triangles into\nscreenspace and intersect them with the pixels, the main difference being that\nyour outer loop is now \"for each triangle\" rather than \"for each pixel\"\n\nThe differences might seem pretty subtle, and in a sense they are. But they\nhave pretty enormous ramifications on the design of a renderer, how they\nhandle content and their performance characteristics.\n\n~~~\nZelizz\nIt's she, not he: [https://twitter.com/b0rk](https://twitter.com/b0rk)\n\n~~~\nArelius\nThanks for the correction.\n\n------\nreggieband\nOne of my coworkers did a basic implementation of SDF (signed distance fields)\nbased on the Valve white paper [1]. He was implementing smoothing for fonts\nbut the work applied to most vector shapes. IMO, it gave exceptional results\nand he claimed it was a reasonably simple implementation.\n\n1\\.\n[https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/2007/SIGGRAPH2007...](https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/2007/SIGGRAPH2007_AlphaTestedMagnification.pdf)\n\n~~~\nsrgpqt\nmsdfgen :\n[https://github.com/Chlumsky/msdfgen](https://github.com/Chlumsky/msdfgen)\n\n------\njasmcole\nI went deep down the art of code rabbit hole on YouTube, a great channel for\nlearning about shaders.\n\nI wrote this blog post on writing interactive SDF shaders:\n\n[https://jasmcole.com/2019/10/03/signed-distance-\nfields/](https://jasmcole.com/2019/10/03/signed-distance-fields/)\n\n------\ngh123man\nShameless plug - But if you are interested in 2D SDFs and some interesting\nways they may be practically used in games, I wrote a bit about it here:\n[https://blog.sb1.io/intro-to-2d-signed-distance-\nfunctions/](https://blog.sb1.io/intro-to-2d-signed-distance-functions/)\n\n~~~\npengaru\nI did something sort of similar for the basic menu controls in a little game I\nmade, visible here [0].\n\nIt's a fun puzzle to work out how to draw things like a question mark or on-\noff power icon in a fragment shader. Definitely not the easiest/quickest way\nto construct a UI though, especially with weak math-fu like mine.\n\n[0] [http://pengaru.com/~vc/tmp/q.png](http://pengaru.com/~vc/tmp/q.png)\n\n------\netaioinshrdlu\nSo signed distance functions turn out to be quite hard to design for more\ncomplicated shapes. You can cheat by having the distance far aware from the\nsurface being not quite accurate -- but there are limits to how much you can\ncheat before you have unwanted rendering artifacts such as blobs or holes.\n\n\"Boolean\" operations on these signed distance fields pretty much always cheat,\nexcept for Union, which can be done with a max(a,b) operation.\n\nDeep Learning can be used to attempt to learn a function approximating a true\nsigned distance field for a shape. [https://deepai.org/publication/deepsdf-\nlearning-continuous-s...](https://deepai.org/publication/deepsdf-learning-\ncontinuous-signed-distance-functions-for-shape-representation)\n\nI think signed distance fields may turn out to be significantly better than\nold school raytracing if we can have super-optimized distance field functions!\n\n~~~\nkevingadd\nThe union operator also produces incorrect distances for the interior of the\nunion volume, which is a problem for things like shadow cone tracing. See\n[http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/interiordistance/interior...](http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/interiordistance/interiordistance.htm),\nI've actually been struggling with this in my SDF implementation.\n\nI'm still a big fan of the union operation since GPU rasterizers can trivially\nhardware accelerate it, which means you can render a bunch of objects in one\ngo and know that it will be performed at near-optimal efficiency by the GPU.\nI've been combining that with a packing technique to render 3 depth slices at\nonce in RGB (plus an extra duplicate slice in A) so that I can accurately\nsample any point in space with a single bilinear texture read.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy passenger jets could soon be flying in formation - Kaibeezy\nhttps://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/airbus-formation-flight/index.html\n======\nKaibeezy\n_\" They will be 1 1/2 to 2 nautical miles away from the leading aircraft, and\nslightly offset, which means they are on the side of the vortex. It's no\nlonger the vortex, it's the smooth current of rotating air which is next to\nthe vortex, and we use the updraft of this air.\" Taking advantage of the free\nlift in this updraft of air is called \"wake-energy retrieval.\" ... on long-\nhaul flights, fuel savings of between 5% and 10% may be achieved, \"which is an\nenormous number.\"_\n\n------\nstevage\nWow, so interesting. I'm really curious whether planes from rival airlines\nwould cooperate to fly together like this. And if not, are there really so\nmany situations where two planes from the same airline travel a long segment\ntogether at the same time?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAn open letter to members of the New Jersey District Court, FBI, and DOJ - taylorbuley\nhttp://weev.livejournal.com/405848.html\n\n======\njack-r-abbit\nPreviously discussed:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7774603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7774603)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMicrosoft to Open Retail Stores Next to Apple’s - nreece\nhttp://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/microsoft-to-open-retail-stores-next-to-apples/\n======\nicey\nIf they get into the PC support business (as suggested in the article); I\nforesee doom for the Geek Squad / any other consumer tech support shop.\n\nThey don't even have to be any good at support; they will get plenty of\ncustomers just by having the Microsoft name.\n\n~~~\ndrhowarddrfine\nThe Geek Squad services more than just Microsoft stuff.\n\n~~~\nicey\nThe question is whether they will be left with enough business to stay alive.\nI'm positive their bread and butter is windows issues. Why would anyone go see\nthe Geek Squad with a Windows issue when they can go see \"the Microsoft guy\"?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWill Everything Stay in New Orleans If Cameras Capture It All? - adventured\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/30/us/new-orleans-security-cameras.html\n======\nathenot\nTwo points that always put a dent on \"surveillance in the name of safety\"\n\n1\\. Make all the camera feeds accessible to the public. Afterall, shouldn't\nmore eyes help a place be safe?\n\n2\\. Install cameras around Police HQs. Don't they want to be safe too?\n\nOf course those who advocate surveillance in the same of safety are also the\nfirst ones to ensure they are never on camera themselves...\n\n~~~\ntechsupporter\n> 2\\. Install cameras around Police HQs. Don't they want to be safe too?\n\nThis is one of the things that makes me laugh with annoyance at the signs at,\nsay, Customs and Immigration when entering the U.S., or at the entrances to\ncourthouses, or (formerly) around airport screening areas. \"No pictures or\nvideo are permitted. Cell phone use prohibited.\"\n\nWhat, precisely, is going on that shouldn't be photographed? If one camera in\nthe ceiling is good, aren't 931 cameras all that much better?\n\nAs always, the safety of the enterprise is paramount.\n\n~~~\ntj-teej\nEveryone who works in XX-Sec will tell you that every system has weaknesses,\nin this case I think that it is those weaknesses which shouldn't be\nphotographed.\n\nI think the logic is that the bad guys would use the pictures to identify the\nweaknesses and evade the screenings.\n\nNow, whether the point of Airline security really is to catch the bad guys is\na whole different story...\n\n~~~\nTheSpiceIsLife\nIf pictures can identify weaknesses, can't \"The Bad Guys\" just go there\nthemselves, or send their lackies.\n\n~~~\nrangibaby\nSend someone important: “You got here for your stay in ADX Florence... and we\ndidn’t even have to extradite, torture, or rendition you to get you here! What\na guy!”\n\nSend someone not important: “You know what? I’m glad I forgot how to light my\nliquid-based shoe bombs that need exactly 101ml of fluid to blow a fatal hole\nin a plane. The inflight meal was much better than I thought it would be. I\nmean it wasn’t great but it was not horrible either. When I got off the plane,\nThere were infidels and uhhh there was security and umm stuff. I didn’t take\nany pictures because there was a sign that said I shouldn’t. It was easy to\nfind which suitcase was mine because of the rainbow colored strap my niece\nchose for me to put on it. What do you think of the mouse ears I got you from\nDisneyland? ...boss?”\n\n------\nmywittyname\n> Kelby Reed, who lives in the city’s Ninth Ward, said he favored expanding\n> the presence of security cameras in New Orleans to deter crime.\n\nThis isn't about deterring crime, it's about catching criminals. Which is not\nthe same thing. I wish departments would be more upfront about this.\n\nThere's no statistical link between cameras and crime prevention [1].\n\n[1][https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/study-\nquestion...](https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/study-questions-\nwhether-cameras-cut-crime/)\n\n~~~\nivanhoe\nRobberies at British banks have fallen by over 90% in last 2 decades and one\nof the reasons quoted are CCTVs. Of course, cameras by themselves are not\nenough, they can only be a part of the solution, together with the police and\ncommunity efforts.\n\n~~~\nguitarbill\nMeanwhile, credit/debit card use has soared and cash reserves have declined.\nBut that can't have anything to do with it, think of the children!\n\n------\nAnimats\n_\" The broad public safety plan announced last year, which included an early\nversion of the camera plan, discussed taking steps to “reduce the culture of\npermissiveness” in New Orleans.\"_\n\nThat already happened to San Francisco. Coming next, the San Francisco\nHomeless Tracking System.[1]\n\n[1] [http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-ambitious-\nho...](http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-ambitious-homeless-\nstrategy-seeks-sharp-12245176.php)\n\n------\ndanso\nMostly OT: Isn't the phrase \"What happens in X stays in X\" more closely\nassociated with Las Vegas, which must be one of the most heavily surveilled\ncities in America? [https://lasvegassun.com/youre-being-\nwatched/](https://lasvegassun.com/youre-being-watched/)\n\n~~~\nslededit\nI always interpreted the tag line to be more about the social acceptance of\nwhat would be considered deviant behavior elsewhere.\n\n~~~\nghaff\nYes. The implication is come to Vegas and do wild stuff with no one at home\nthe wiser. The contra is a favorite t-shirt I’ve seen at the airport: What\nhappens in Vegas stays on Facebook and YouTube forever :-)\n\n------\nbriandear\nCan we fix the title? It should be \"Will 1,500 Street Cameras Be a Wet Blanket\nin New Orleans?\"\n\nThe current title makes no sense.\n\n~~~\nadventured\nThe NYT changed the title since I posted it, I suspect they agree with your\nassessment.\n\n------\ngeebee\nI read accounts of people responding with hostility to google glass (there was\na time when it was considered bad etiquette to take someone's picture without\nasking, and plenty of people feel this way now. I honestly don't really like\nbeing recorded). But the technology to embed this in a way that is\nundetectable will almost certainly be developed before long, and could all be\nuploaded to the cloud.\n\nOnce it's there, I'm pretty sure law enforcement will use various machine\nlearning approaches to process and scan vast amounts of uploaded visual and\naudio imagery in cloud storage (I believe this already happens on a smaller\nscale). As for New Orleans? In my opinion, this very likely to happen with or\nwithout the cameras.\n\n------\nalant\nIf it’s done with respect to people’s privacy and able to reduce/deter crime,\nwhy not?\n\n~~~\njandrese\nHow can you be sure they will respect privacy? That's the $10,000 question\nhere.\n\n~~~\nmilkytron\nNo one can be sure, but if they only place these cameras in public locations\nand have them facing public areas, then there should be no expectation of\nprivacy to begin with.\n\nIf they have them facing private areas and use them to record those privately\nowned areas, then that's another issue.\n\n~~~\nrectang\nThere's a vast difference between permanent blanket surveillance of a public\nlocation and incidental witnessing of events in a public location.\n\nIt's like the availability of mugshots. Decades ago, they were also public\ndocuments, so in that sense nothing has changed. But now that they are so much\nmore accessible, vile businesses now retrieve mugshots in bulk and publish\nthem online in order to shake down people who have been arrested.\n\n------\nnickthemagicman\nI live and work in New Orleans. I don't live in the best part of town.\n\nBad stuff happens here like everywhere but I very very rarely fear for my\nsafety.\n\nThis is a definite case of 'control/corruption in the name of safety'.\n\nHow do we stop it?\n\n~~~\nmdarens\nThere are community groups organizing to oppose the expansion of the security\nstate in New Orleans, including but not limited to MaCCNO:\n[https://maccno.com/join-the-opposition-to-new-\norleans-40-mil...](https://maccno.com/join-the-opposition-to-new-\norleans-40-million-security-plan/)\n\n~~~\nnickthemagicman\nThank you!\n\n------\npeterwwillis\nRich white people tend to ask the question, \"How can we stop the crime?\"\n\nPoor black people tend to ask the question, \"Why do they keep us at the end of\nour rope?\"\n\nAnd never the twain shall meet.\n\n------\nozten\nDon't worry, only some of the cameras are maintained and operational, if we\ncan trust a 3rd season plot-line from the fictional show Treme.\n\n~~~\nsjs382\nI can say for certain that a lot of the speeding and red light cameras are\n_definitely_ in working order.\n\n~~~\npixl97\nProfit centers always work.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSystemic traffic jams caused by small groups of drivers, study says - freejoe76\nhttp://www.mercurynews.com/traffic/ci_22328900/key-source-bay-area-traffic-headaches-revealed-by\n======\ntokenadult\nThis is a very interesting report. It was based on anonymized tracking of cars\nwith cell phone GPS signals to better understand the whole traffic network of\nthe Bay Area. Identifying choke points for traffic led to a policy proposal.\n\n\"John Goodwin, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the\nregion's transportation planning agency, says the best way to spread out\ntraffic coming from these neighborhoods is to install metering lights at their\nfreeway onramps, which spaces out the traffic to help both those drivers and\neveryone else get to their destinations quicker. Though many important Bay\nArea freeways already have metering lights, such as Interstate 280 in the\nSouth Bay and Interstate 680 in the East Bay, others don't.\"\n\nThe Twin Cities metropolitan area, where I live, was the first place in the\nUnited States to gain special federal permission to put on-ramp metered signal\nlights on federal Interstate Highways used heavily by commuters. They\nempirically help a lot in smoothing traffic. One reason we know that is that\nfor a while a doofus state legislator shut down the freeway metered ramp\nprogram, until traffic here became so unbearable that the meters were put back\nin use. I have heard from friends who travel here from other parts of the\ncountry that the ramp meters (implemented as red-yellow-green traffic signals\njust before a car gets onto the freeway) are confusing to people who usually\ndrive where on-ramps are just unimpeded paths onto the freeway. But they\ndefinitely speed up traffic.\n\nThe Twin Cities has one federal highway, Interstate 394, with a pair of\nreversible lanes, usually eastbound (into Minneapolis from the suburbs where I\nlive) in the morning, and westbound (out of the city into the suburbs) in the\nevenings. That helps with rush hour commuter traffic, except that a lot of\ncars are eastbound for evening appointments even as commuters are leaving the\ncity, so the reversal of lanes still leaves the regular, nonreversible lanes\nbadly congested each evening. I wonder if a traffic study like the one\nreported in the interesting article submitted here could identify how to\nsmooth out the traffic problems we still have here.\n\n~~~\nmrb\n_\"It was based on anonymized tracking of cars\"_\n\nIf it was anonymized, they could in theory release the data, right? However\nthe article states \"all the data gathered in the study will be kept\nconfidential\". Don't these 2 statements contradict each other? Why would they\nneed to keep anonymous data confidential?\n\n~~~\nrussell\nThe two statements are consistent. In order to do the analysis they need to\nkeep track of the full paths that the individual drivers make. Given the\npaths, particularly over a period of time, it is easy to identify individuals,\neven if you dont have their names to begin with.\n\n~~~\nzzleeper\nMaybe they can delete the first 100m of every trip, so it would be harder to\npoinpoint locations w/out losing that much\n\n~~~\nadrianN\n\"On the Anonymity of Home/Work Location Pairs\"\n\nAbstract. Many applications benefit from user location data, but lo- cation\ndata raises privacy concerns. Anonymization can protect privacy, but\nidentities can sometimes be inferred from supposedly anonymous data. This\npaper studies a new attack on the anonymity of location data. We show that if\nthe approximate locations of an individual’s home and workplace can both be\ndeduced from a location trace, then _the median size of the individual’s\nanonymity set in the U.S. working population is 1, 21 and 34,980, for\nlocations known at the granularity of a census block, census track and county\nrespectively._ The location data of people who live and work in different\nregions can be re-identified even more easily. Our results show that the\nthreat of re-identification for location data is much greater when the\nindividual’s home and work locations can both be deduced from the data. To\npreserve anonymity, we offer guidance for obfuscating location traces before\nthey are disclosed.\n\n<http://xenon.stanford.edu/~pgolle/papers/commute.pdf>\n\n------\nryusage\nReminds me of an interesting site[1] I came across a while ago, in which the\nguy argues very convincingly that traffic jams occur as waves, which are\nstarted when even a single car does something to cause the car behind them to\nslow down (avoiding something, stopping to merge, etc). If it's non-trivial,\nthen that will begin a chain reaction - a wave propagating through a medium of\ncars. The severity of that effect is directly proportional to the density of\nthe medium/traffic.\n\nGiven that perspective, metering lights to reduce density seem like exactly\nthe right solution.\n\n[1] <http://trafficwaves.org>\n\n~~~\nLost_BiomedE\nMy father, in grad school, worked in a lab with a guy who pioneered a lot of\nthis research. He showed the coil like action of these waves and how they\ncreated wrecks. Here are some other things I thought were cool:\n\nHe calculated the risk of changing lanes on a highway and estimated how much\npeople valued their lives in dollars (usually fractions thereof) based on this\none criteria.\n\nHe drove vehicles into lakes to study the escape from such a vehicle.\n\nHe tracked the eyes of truckers and found that their eyes would fall to the\nfront of the hood and dart up a few times about 30-45s before they fell asleep\nand wrecked.\n\nAnother guy tried to make a talking highway by varying the distance of groves\nand marks on the road.\n\nJust thought some might find this stuff interesting or amusing.\n\n~~~\ngwillen\nI'd be curious if you have data on the risk of lane-changes. (Knowing how\ndangerous they are would probably cause me to do fewer of them.)\n\n~~~\nsliverstorm\nI would guess the risk is not all that significant in the scheme of things.\nJust another one of those, \"Look, you say human lives are priceless, but here\nI will prove they do have a price (whatever that might be)\" type deals.\n\n------\ndmfdmf\nI'd like to see a website where I can enter my home address and work address\nand it will generate a chart of leave and arrival times for each day of the\nweek based on prevailing and constantly measured and updated typical traffic\npatterns with accident-jams removed. In my experience traffic patterns, even\nwithout accidents, are highly non-linear and leaving 10 minutes early or later\ncan drastically reduce your drive time. You could even have it rank different\nroutes so that on any given day of the week you might take a different route\nand leave at a different time to minimize your drive time and increase the\nprobability of arriving on time.\n\nMetering lights have their use but are limited in how long they can hold up a\ncar whereas if I am at home or work its no problem to adjust my schedule +/-\n10 minutes or more to avoid a jam. As more people signed up for such a site it\nwould also become more efficient since it could take into account where and\nwhen people actually want to go in its planning calcs.\n\n~~~\nchaz\nI wanted an app to do this, and just let me know when it was going to take\nless than x minutes to get to work/home. The simplest workaround was to\nbookmark Google Maps directions, so a single click would tell me the expected\ntime with traffic. I saved it as an Android bookmark as well, so I could\nsingle tap it from there, too.\n\nThis works ok if you're interested in waiting until after traffic, and not\n\"beating\" traffic. In my situation, under x minutes meant leaving at 5:30am or\nafter 9;30am, and going home before 3:00pm or after 7:00pm, so that was fine.\nYMMV.\n\nGoogle Now is somewhere close to this, but I've found it finnicky. Maybe\nbecause of my more flexible schedule was throwing off its ability to predict\nmy commutes. I would have preferred something more explicit for work hours,\nthan it guessing based on my GPS'd habits.\n\n~~~\ndmfdmf\nI was hoping for a solution that can solve (or at least minimize) the problem\nbetween 6-9am and 4-7pm. I think there are a lot of short-lived local effects\nthat can be avoided. For instance near my office is a government agency that\nquits work right at 5pm on the nose. If I leave one minute before 5pm it is\nsmooth sailing, one minute after 5pm and traffic is snarled until 5:30pm or\nso. Also, as far as general commuting, the school start times are one major\neffect since these are local and hard set arrival times for the parents. A\nsmart database could calculate these effects and other cross-interactions that\nreally impact jams so a small change with x% of drivers can prevent avoid the\nlog-jams or backups that take time to dissipate once they form. Perhaps the\ndata could even be used to get schools with interfering traffic patterns to\nstagger their start time 30 minutes which could have a huge impact.\n\n------\ngbadman\nI've always felt that driving in traffic is a sort of prisoner's dilemma.\n\nConsider a two-lane highway that splits into two directions, a very popular\ndirection and an unpopular direction. Inevitably, we will see a group of\npeople who will wait to the last second to cut into the popular lane. These\nlate-comers cause two problems: 1) people to hit the brakes who get cut off in\nthe popular lane, and 2) people to hit the brakes in the unpopular lane who\nare forced to slow down to allow the selfish drivers to merge.\n\nWhen I take the generous approach and wait in line, I hate people who cut in.\nOn the other hand, I find myself clever for cutting in at the last second and\nsaving time when I take that approach. I'm still not sure which approach is\n'right'. All I know is that the latter will increase overall delays while\ndoing the former will have little to no impact on overall delays but a major\nimpact on my own.\n\nTraffic is a pretty interesting subject.\n\n~~~\nlotharbot\n> _\" I'm still not sure which approach is 'right'\"_\n\nIf you have a circumstance where 2 lanes are merging into 1 lane, _merge as\nlate as possible_. It sounds counterproductive, but it's actually best for\ntraffic as a whole.\n\nSee <http://trafficwaves.org/seatraf.html> and the HN discussion at\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=785259> .\n<http://drmomentum.com/aces/archives/003800.html> also has a number of nice\nlinks.\n\n~~~\nkgermino\nMy interpretation is that gbadman did not mean the situation where two lanes\nmerge into one, but rather where you have two lanes traveling in a single\ndirection approaching an interchange where the lanes split such that the left\nlane goes one direction and the right lane goes another.\n\nIn gbadman's example one lane (let's say the right hand lane) goes to a road\nthat does not back up, whereas the left hand lane goes to a road that will\nback up through the interchange. In this situation, you have a left lane\ncongested with people waiting to go on the busy road, and a right lane that\nshould be almost free flowing. By most understandings (including the\nexecellent book, Traffic) people wanting to go to the busy road should wait in\nline in the left lane, allowing people going to the less busy road to pass\nfreely. However, many drivers will stay in the right lane until the very last\nminute, then attempt to move into the left lane before the right lane splits\noff, backing up both lanes.\n\n~~~\ngbadman\nYou are right in your interpretation of what I meant.\n\nI think the lane split is the better example of the prisoner's dilemma. As\nothers have mentioned that in the two-lane merge situation the global optimum\nis the selfish approach.\n\n------\nsadfaceunread\nThis research was published with supporting information in an open access\njournal (Scientific Reports [Part of Nature Publishing Group]). See the full\ntext for more.\n\n[http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121220/srep01001/full/srep01...](http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121220/srep01001/full/srep01001.html)\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nOne of the things I really like about this study is that it captures not only\nroad congestion but where the drivers enter into, and exit, the freeway\nsystem. And it reconfirmed for me yet again that starting/ending in Sunnyvale\nis reasonably optimized for working in the 'valley' part of Silicon Valley.\n\n~~~\njmspring\nThe problem I have is the study didn't fully factor in road layout/design.\nHighway 85 here in the Valley spans from the south Valley up to 101 in\nMountain View. Within months of opening, it was a recurring traffic jam. Boom\nor bust in the valley, traffic let up a little in the bust, but the road is\ncongested pretty much from 6:30am until 9:30/10am in the morning.\nIntersections of 85/280/101/237 at the north end impact traffic northbound in\nthe morning. 85/280 impacts southbound in the evening.\n\nAgain - patterns persisted during both the last two booms and busts.\n\nIt is more than just a \"small group of drivers\".\n\n------\nJonnieCache\nIsn't this a strong argument for better buses?\n\nI guess that's not really the thing if one works in the valley with a huge\nsalary...\n\nSurely the geek bus would be a cool place to be though?\n\n~~~\nchii\nthe problem with public transport isn't that its uncool, but that you still\nahve the \"last mile\" problem. Also, you have to plan your life around the\ntransport, where as if you owned your own car, you dont need to do so.\n\nTHe best solution isn't better public transport, but self driving cars that\nyou can get ondemand (but don't own).\n\n~~~\nsliverstorm\n_THe best solution isn't better public transport_\n\nI disagree.\n\n\\- If public transport arrives and departs often enough, you don't have to\nplan your life around the transport.\n\n\\- If the public transport network is large enough, you can eliminate the\n\"last mile\" problem, either by making it short enough to walk quickly or by\nconnecting backbones to local distribution. Classic example, train + bus.\n\nOf course the Bay Area has _nothing close_ to this kind of network, but you\nsaid \"the _best_ solution\", and I'm pretty convinced an idealized public\ntransport system is much better than driverless cars. Superior passenger\ndensity, superior fuel efficiency, superior materials usage, etc.\n\n~~~\nchii\nwhat you have described - big enough a network, running often enough, etc -\nare all the properties of the driverless car. In effect, the public transport\nsystem no longer consists of trains/buses, but a huge pool of driverless cars\nyou hail.\n\n~~~\njeltz\nThe difference is the cost. Public transport has superior fuel, space, and\nmaterials usage.\n\nAnother difference is that public transport is a known working solution which\nhas been implemented with great success in many cities since the 19th century.\nWhile driverless cars is something we just now is getting the technology to\nbuild so it is untested.\n\n------\ncagey\nThe first two paragraphs of this article are crap, typical of the \"journalism\"\nof today.\n\n    \n    \n      A groundbreaking study ... has pinpointed a small group of\n      drivers making Bay Area freeways miserable for the rest of\n      us...\n    \n\nYou mean the other drivers, incremental vehicles coming from other sources,\nare simply not contributing to traffic misery? Who knew?! At least the\nsolution is both obvious and simple: the \"small group of drivers\" should\nclearly be \"gotten rid of\" so the misery of the virtuous is removed. Line 'em\nup against the wall...\n\n    \n    \n      ...they come from a few outlying neighborhoods and travel\n      long distances together in the same direction like schools\n      of fish -- clogging up not only the roads they drive on, \n      but also everyone else's.\n    \n\nYou mean, they're \"everyone else's\" roads, and these cheeky interlopers are\ntaking what rightfully belongs (only) to \"everyone else\"? And the other\ncommuter vehicles are not traveling together \"like schools of fish\"?\n\nWhy do the (government) planning departments bear NO responsibility for the\nresults of _their_ decisions? Specifically, they have the final say regarding\nwhere houses, apartments, roads, shopping centers, ad infinitum, are built.\nYet the ultimate fault is with people who simply chose to live in certain\nlocations, rather than bad capacity planning prior to their homes being\napproved to be built?\n\n~~~\njeltz\nThe rest of the article discuss government solutions and metered lights\nthough. Misleading, populist headlines and first paragraphs are staple of\nmodern journalism.\n\n------\nanigbrowl\nDriverless cars can't come to market fast enough.\n\n~~~\nrussell\nOne of the purported benefits of driverless cars is that they can drive\ntogether in packs. This article would seem to contradict the benefits of that\nclaim. OTOH they would be less prone to the erratic behavior that can create\nstanding waves of congestion.\n\n~~~\ngregsq\nDriving on lengthy highways in Australia is interesting, at least in the state\nof Victoria, where enforcement of the speed limit is very strict. The limits\nof 100kmh and 110kmh are enforced within a mandated speedometer error limit\nthat's very tight for new cars. Older ones have looser accuracy, predating the\nlegislation that enforces the error limit.\n\nOne if the consequences is that on long stretches of road, cars that are very\nslightly quicker catch up with others. Then, because there's safety in\nnumbers, and because other cars normalise speed through a kind of meaning\nspeed check, clusters form. Overtaking is tantamount to breaking the law,\nthough some attempt to creep by, leading to reduced distance between vehicles,\nand increased stress for drivers due to reduced reaction time.\n\nUnder these kind of circumstances, a strong argument could be made for\ndriverless cars, if only to avoid the increased potential for collision due to\ndriver error. And it demonstrates for one embedded in the packs that form, the\nkind of experience that we can expect.\n\n~~~\nnjs12345\nI've been on roads where this happens in Britain, when a police car is driving\nat the speed limit (generally quite loosely enforced on motorways) with people\nbehind forming a cluster which won't overtake out of fear. Quite frightening,\nand surely combining the worst of all worlds in terms of accident risk (both a\nhigh risk of an accident and a high risk of an accident causing fatal or\nserious injury).\n\nI asked my aunt, who is a police officer, about this, and she said in general\nthe police try and drive slowly (well below the speed limit) on the motorways\nto prevent this phenomenon from occurring. I wonder whether the guy I saw was\ndoing it deliberately or had just forgotten..\n\n------\nswampthing\nPretty interesting. I wonder if any non-technical approaches have been tried -\nlike educating drivers to move to a right-side lane if they're slow. At least\non the 101, it seems like so much of the congestion would be alleviated if\nslow people stayed out of the left-side lanes. It'd be safer too since it'd\nremove the incentive for drivers to weave through traffic.\n\n------\nkps\nMany commuters shouldn't have to be on the roads at all. Fiber is cheaper than\nfreeways.\n\n------\nNitramp\nAn alternative are variable speed limit systems:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit#Variable_speed_limi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit#Variable_speed_limits)\n\nThey can be used to slow down cars heading into a traffic jam to reduce the\narrival rate so the traffic jam can dissolve. Roads with a lower speed limit\nalso fit more cars (need less safety distance) - driving slower means less\ntraffic, so traffic jams can be avoided by reducing the speed limit.\n\nThese systems are very wide spread in Germany, covering most Autobahns around\nmajor cities.\n\n------\njakozaur\nDynamic pricing might be a good solutions (with reasonable maximal prices).\nHowever, it would be hard to introduce them because of public pressure.\n\n~~~\nchii\nwhy would dynamically pricing tolls cause less traffic? Especially in the\nmorning rush hour - you gotta get to some place by a specific time, you have\nto pay the toll no matter what it was (with reasonal maximal prices of\ncourse). its only when there is an unreasonable maximal price (or no maximal\nprice) that people's behaviour would change - imagine a toll of $500 during\npeak. It would put off people from going on the road.\n\n~~~\njakozaur\nWell that's true, but the article already points that taking a few % drivers\nout of roads could make a huge difference.\n\nSee:\n[http://www.ted.com/talks/jonas_eliasson_how_to_solve_traffic...](http://www.ted.com/talks/jonas_eliasson_how_to_solve_traffic_jams.html)\nYou don't need anywhere 500$, most likely 2-5$ toll is good enough.\n\n------\nDenisM\nIn Seattle I noticed that traffic is always light on Monday, but some places\nget jammed other days of the week. Apparently, there are many people who don't\nhave to be somewhere on Monday, and those same people chose to drive during\nrush our on other days of the week. What's up with them anyway? If you don't\nhave to go to work, why drive anywhere during rush hour?\n\n~~~\nInclinedPlane\nIt could be that people with somewhat flexible schedules end up going into\nwork later or earlier on Monday than average, spreading out the traffic enough\nto keep it moving fast.\n\nAlso, it could be that there are people who don't normally work on Monday,\nwhich is actually fairly common in many service industries. Many restaurants\nare often closed on Mondays, for example.\n\n~~~\ngoodcanadian\nMoreover, more Mondays and Fridays are taken off either for \"sick\" leave or\nvacation. It may only take a small percentage to make a noticeable impact on\ntraffic flow.\n\n------\nThrall\n\"These commuters .. travel long distances together in the same direction like\nschools of fish\"\n\nSounds like what they need is a train, tram or bus.\n\n~~~\nthrownaway2424\nReactionary boomers in Marin county have been slow-rolling the regional rail\nplan (SMART) for decades. Don't hold your breath.\n\nIf SMART ever comes into any kind of decent service it should relieve a\nsignificant demand among north bay-to-sf weekday commuters. Note, however,\nthat SMART service to Larkspur Ferry is \"planned\" and \"phase 2\" which means\nprobably not in my lifetime.\n\n------\nbrini\n_\"This has enormous potential,\" said study co-author Alex Bayen, a UC Berkeley\nprofessor of electrical engineering and computer science. \"These findings are\ngoing to come into practice in the near future. This is not just a scientific\nstudy.\"_\n\n``... not just a scientific study.'' Reinforce engineering v. science\nstereotypes much?\n\n------\nsunnybythesea\nI yearn for the day when driver-less cars become the norm. But then, I'm sure\nthe same people will find ways to jailbreak the software and enable reckless\ndriving behavior :(\n\n~~~\ngeoka9\nWhy wait for driverless cars when there's public transport which lets you\nenjoy the same benefits?\n\nIsn't it sad how pefectly fine we're with hauling 2000+ lbs of hardware just\nto get 150 lbs of flesh from point A to point B in the morning and back in the\nafternoon.\n\n~~~\nchii\nthe single biggest downside of public transport is that you don't control the\nschedule (nor where it goes - but lets ignore that for now).\n\nA driverless car is a taxi that's cheap and effective. You don't have to park\nit, you don't have to figure out the route. You just hail one, get in and type\nin the destination. Its sane public transport.\n\n~~~\njeltz\nActually the schedule part rarely matter for commuting to work since those\nroutes usually have a high density of buses/trains. In Stockholm during rush\nhour the subway arrive every 1 to 5 minutes, commuter trains every 7 to 15\nminutes, buses usually every 3 to 15 minutes.\n\nNot controlling the destination usually matters more since that means you may\nhave to change train or bus several times.\n\n------\nmalachismith\nSo, basically, the suburbs are the problem?\n\n~~~\nmarshray\nNo, it's the workdays, especially 9:00 AM.\n\nCompanies should get tax breaks for randomizing the start time of their\nworkdays.\n\n~~~\njeltz\nIt is the combination of both, plus the lack of good public transport.\n\n------\ncorresation\nThe title of the submission is deeply misleading, though it follows some\nrather ridiculous claims in the article-\n\n _Instead, they come from a few outlying neighborhoods and travel long\ndistances together in the same direction like schools of fish -- clogging up\nnot only the roads they drive on, but also everyone else's._\n\nThe notion that _they_ are to blame is asinine. A highway is being utilized\nbeyond capacity, but picking out any group on the highway adds dramatic\nnarrative yet little insight. The suggestion that you remove \"just 1%\" is\nsurprisingly naive as well, reminding me a bit of this Onion piece -\n[http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-98-percent-of-us-\ncom...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-98-percent-of-us-commuters-\nfavor-public-tra,1434/)\n\nIf the highway had less utilization, it would cause many who use mass transit\n(like light rail) to choose the highway. Rinse repeat. It is how highways in\nvirtually every metropolitan area eventually reach a point of saturation, that\nnew point becoming the natural balance.\n\n~~~\nthrownaway2424\nRight. Which is why the only sane way to deal with traffic is to ramp up the\ntolls until the utilization falls below 90% or whatever the threshold is. I\ndon't care if the rush hour toll on the Bay Bridge is $50. It will cost less,\noverall, than having thousands of people stuck in traffic for hours.\n\n~~~\nNitramp\nAs there's no alternative in public transport (that I'm aware of), if you\ncharge $50 to cross the bridge, you will make it impossible to work in SF for\npeople living North and earning below a certain threshold.\n\nSo these people will either have to move, or find a different job. That seems\nlike a somewhat extreme outcome.\n\nOffering attractive alternatives to commuting by car might be a better way to\nreduce congestion on the roads.\n\n~~~\nthrownaway2424\nPublic transport (BART + AC Transit) already carries the majority of transbay\ntraffic, so I don't understand your claim that there is no alternative to\ndriving.\n\n------\ngigantor\nIt may be time we start introducing reverse traffic cameras. Ones that issue\nfines for not following a minimum speed in peak commute hours for the vehicle\nthat is unquestionably the first in a pack responsible for the jam.\n\nProximity calculations, leading vehicle frequency, trailing vehicle average\nspeed, etc., using existing technology already in place that can be leveraged\nand innovated on to accurately determine culprits.\n\n~~~\nnollidge\nThe article has nothing to say about needlessly slow drivers, just about\ntraffic volume overall.\n\n~~~\ngnu8\nYou can see how the title of the post might give the idea that it was about\nspecific drivers. My first thought when I read it was \"I bet it's those god\ndamn hippies hyper-mileing in their priuses\", but then I clicked through to\nthe article and it failed to confirm my preconceived opinion.\n\n~~~\nnollidge\nSure, so did I, but then I _read the article_.\n\n------\nhalis\nOh yeah you mean women?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA Texas Jury’s Guilty Verdict Should Worry IT Admins - moon_of_moon\nhttps://www.wired.com/2016/06/texas-jurys-guilty-verdict-worry-admins\n======\nmoon_of_moon\nPeter Thiel .. funding an appeal of this would be a better use of your $$$.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Couldn't find good tool to analyze MySQL Slow Query Logs so I made one - DangerousPie\nhttp://nk.gl/slow_queries/\n\n======\nzimpenfish\nWhat's the unique selling point of yours over pt-query-digest?\n\n[http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-toolkit/2.1/pt-query-\ndige...](http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-toolkit/2.1/pt-query-digest.html)\n\n~~~\nDangerousPie\nWell the one big difference is that mine is simply a website where you upload\nyour log file, while pt-query-digest is part of a (apparently linux-only)\ntoolkit that you have to download and install. This may not be a big issue if\nyou have your own linux-based server and deal with these logs on a regular\nbasis, but if you are on Windows and just want to do a one-off analysis I\nthink my site is a much better solution.\n\nIn addition, since I am displaying the summary in a web browser I can add all\nsorts of nice enhancements you couldn't have in a simple console, for example:\n\n    \n    \n      - Searching and sorting queries on the fly\n      - Syntax highlighting\n      - Visualization (like the queries/hour histogram)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Libemf2svg, a library/utility to convert Enhanced Metafile (EMF) to svg - kakwa_\nhttps://github.com/kakwa/libemf2svg\n======\nbrudgers\nDoes it vectorize bitmaps from the Enhanced Metafile?\n\n~~~\nkakwa_\nNo, and it doesn't even handle bitmap blobs yet.\n\nThe other big missing parts are clipping and emf+ records as a whole.\n\nHowever, I am not sure it's a good idea to vectorize a bitmap.\n\n~~~\nbrudgers\nWhether it matters depends on the use case of course.\n\nIf the bitmap is not vectorized it can't be styled with CSS. It also means\nthat the resulting SVG contains arbitrary data from the source or edited as\ntext.\n\nAnyway, years ago when I was dealing with WMF in a vector context, not SVG,\nembedded bitmaps made the imported objects mostly worthless. Years before\nthat, I would use Corel Draw to vectorize bitmaps and it worked remarkably\nwell for ordinary cases.\n\n~~~\nkakwa_\nThe trick here is for \"ordinary cases\" ^^.\n\nVectorizing bitmap might not be trivial and results in crappy or huge (in\nsize) outputs.\n\nAs far as I can, I would like to keep this conversion library as simple as\npossible. Ideally it should be a simple translation between EMF records and\nSVG with exceptions only where there is no direct mapping. Bitmap blobs, when\nsupported, will be converted to png and embedded inside the svg.\n\nHowever nothing forbids you from adding a post treatment on the generated svg\nto handle bitmap/png.\n\nThe day I will come back to my initial motivation for this lib (converting\nvisio stencils to svg, including emf blobs), It's probably what I would do if\nI need to.\n\n~~~\nbrudgers\nThat makes sense. I have been curious about what would generate enough WMF\nfiles to justify writing a converter since I saw the post.\n\nIt might be useful to include why the software was written in the readme. It\ncould improve discovery for people dealing with Visio.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nI love Elixir and want to share my findings and get you excited about it as well - mdekuijper\nhttps://www.getrevue.co/profile/tjeerd\n======\nDrScump\nall this is is a forwarding page to a vanity site, not even the site itself.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Please stop submitting \"Bitcoin Exchange Y is down\" - mschuster91\n\nPlease, for the love of god, stop posting Bitcoin drama. No need to further influence the already instable markets...\n======\nspoiler\nNot to mention it's not _news_ to anyone who deals with bitcoins whilst it is\nannoying for anyone who doesn't care about them.\n\n~~~\nsmosher\nThis.\n\nWho cares if MtGox is down? The same people who already found out the hard\nway.\n\n------\nminimaxir\nI strongly doubt that a single HN post would \"influence the markets.\"\n\n~~~\nmschuster91\nThe problem is that most of these links link directly to MtGox, thus\ninvoluntarily helping the DDoS attacks.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhen did parents get so scared? - apress\nhttp://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/08/26/when-did-parents-get-scared/dEsGOllSt3zhFPfy1iOzKI/story.html\n======\ntalmand\nAs I have said elsewhere here on HN, I would like to let my kids play in the\nfront yard but I don't. Not because I fear they'll be hit by a car jumping the\ncurb, a serious injury from falling down, or some bad person kidnapping them.\n\nI don't let them play in the front yard because I don't want to deal with the\npossibility of someone calling the cops after seeing my kids in the front yard\nthat will lead to a government employee with more power than their agency is\nsupposed to have showing up to threaten taking my kids away from me for\nplaying in the front yard.\n\n------\nFrankBlack\nI am sure it was a slow change that we hardly noticed. I think a couple things\ncontributed to this mentality (there are plenty of others): 1) The tragic\ndeath of Adam Walsh became national news and spawned his father's advocacy for\nvictims of crime. That spawned \"America's Most Wanted\"; a show that convinced\nviewers that each person wearing a sleeveless undershirt was a criminal. Faces\nof missing people appeared on milk cartons. No one wanted their child to be\nnext. 2) Cable TV news needs to fill up 24 hours a day, so it breathes fear\ninto us with each story so we don't dare change the channel.\n\nOr not...\n\n------\nimh\nI wonder how much it is related to the fact that we hardly know the people\naround us. I don't know my neighbors. I've heard that's a new phenomenon. We,\nthe adults, might not even step out of our bubbles as much these days, much\nless allowing our children to do so.\n\n~~~\nChuckMcM\nI wonder if this is a big part of it, I know all my neighbors on a \"Hi, how\nare you?\" basis, and some better than that. We all know each others kids, and\nwe all look out for each other. One of the reasons I chose the house I did was\nso that our kids could walk to the park without crossing any busy streets.\n\nI think you have to be intentional about it though. We walk our dog and say Hi\nto everyone we pass.\n\n------\nadamio\n\"With more first-time parents than ever older than 35...\"\n\nI would gess this probably has a larger subconscious impact than societal\ndrivers, I wonder if any studies on this have been done\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nComplex System Failure: The Whole Is More Than the Sum of Its Parts - ITNEXT\nhttps://itnext.io/complex-system-failure-the-whole-is-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-ac1ee9bc4e6c\n======\namelius\n> there have been critical computer system bugs and defects that have resulted\n> in the loss of human life such as the 346 people who died on-board the\n> Boeing 737 Max 8 flights in Indonesia and Ethiopia during 2018–2019\n\nStrange example, as that was more a consequence of a failure in management.\n\n~~~\njchw\nSomething I’ve learned from working in reliability: there is not one cause.\nThere is also not n causes. There is more like trees of different kinds of\ncauses where each node has some weight contributing to the incident. So yes,\nit is a failure in management for sure, but it isn’t also not other things.\n\n------\njeffreygoesto\nI could not really see a conclusion. Is there any? For the list of references,\nI'd add\n[http://web.mit.edu/2.75/resources/random/How%20Complex%20Sys...](http://web.mit.edu/2.75/resources/random/How%20Complex%20Systems%20Fail.pdf)\n\n------\nkunkelast\nThese larger paragraphs are so difficult to read... The text seem to be\nwritten for Google bot, not for real readers :(\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Icebreakers – Slackbot for building team relationships with fun Q&A - echo_one\nhttps://www.careerlark.com/icebreakers\n======\necho_one\nHi all, wanted to get your thoughts on our Slack app Icebreakers. As a\nremote/distributed team from all over the world, this is something we wanted\nourselves because we found it tough to build more of that personal connection\ngiven the time zone differences and everything being digital.\n\nWe're currently featured on the Slack App Directory\n([https://slack.com/apps](https://slack.com/apps)) and on Product Hunt\n([https://www.producthunt.com/posts/icebreakers-2-0](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/icebreakers-2-0)).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: What is the popularity of Rails outside of Silicon Valley?  - thisisdallas\n\nRails has a very high level of popularity on HN as well as in Silicon Valley. I haven't looked at job openings in every major city but it seems like a large majority of Rails jobs are found in Silicon Valley. Clearly, there are Rails jobs all over the US but is the assumption that the majority are found in Silicon Valley correct?<p>How do other languages compare in the rest of the US? For example, I can almost certainly guarantee that I will never live in San Francisco or even California so would taking the time to learn Rails over another language be beneficial if my end goal is to just have a developer job? I am currently a front end dev but I would love to gain a solid understanding of a backend language as well. I am located in Texas and looking at job openings in Dallas, Houston etc. etc. it seems like they are geared more towards .Net or PHP. Even looking at other cities with a population under or just above 1mil it looks like they have more job openings for languages other than Ruby.<p>Any thoughts and or comments?\n======\nscottbartell\nAtlanta has a decent size rails community.\n\nYou should consider looking more deeply into the positions that are available.\nCompanies who use .Net tend to be older and more mature businesses (likely\nbecause .Net is not open source) and I am not positive but I would think that\nthey are looking for highly experienced developers. I would take a close look\nat the entry level positions that are available in the area that you want to\nwork and possibly even contact those companies and ask what exactly they're\nlooking for.\n\nAlso, a possible imperfect way to determine the ROR community size in a city\nis by searching for Ruby / Rails meetups in the area.\n\n------\nroderick3427\nTo be honest, I think ruby is a very good backend language to start out with.\nThe syntax is very clean and easy to understand, the online resources are very\nvast and up to date. A lot of startups use ruby on rails because you're able\nto build apps very fast with it. That's why you see a lot of rails job\nopenings in Silicon Valley, because that's where a lot of the startups are.\n\n------\nroderick3427\nI live in Texas also, I know for sure that Austin has a good community of ruby\ndevelopers along with Boston.\n\n~~~\nthisisdallas\nOh, yeah, I guess I should have said something along the lines \"excluding\nAustin\".\n\n------\ndyeje\nRails is pretty popular everywhere.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow I succeed in delivering every project on time - vavingo\nhttps://vavingo.com/work-better/13-lucky-steps-on-how-to-manage-a-design-project\n======\nvavingo\nThese are the steps I've used for some 17-years to deliver projects on time\nand have the client complain less during the project. It's done wonders for\nme.\n\nHope it resonates with you.\n\nLet me know if I'm missing something.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy Fukushima Daiichi won't be another Chernobyl   - michaelchisari\nhttp://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20257-why-fukushima-daiichi-wont-be-another-chernobyl.html?full=true\n\n======\nbioh42_2\nI'm getting pretty tired of this meme.\n\nChernobyl was horrific! It happened at a time and in place that did not care\nmuch about safety or human lives. The technology was primitive. Safety\nmechanisms had been turned off. The response to the accident was to send\npeople on a suicide mission while telling everyone else everything was hunky\ndory. It was a a horrific disaster.\n\nHow the hell could Fukushima be as bad?\n\nAnd what is the point of all of this anyway?\n\nLook, I think we should use a lot more nuclear power, yes despite the fact\nthat I grew up down wind of Chernobyl and with Fukushima still happening, I\nSTILL think we should all drive electric cars that get their electricity from\nnuclear power.\n\nBut I want those nuclear plants to as safe as technology can make them. And I\nwelcome higher per kilowatt prices to make this happen. What I don't want is\nnukes on the cheap, as this particular GE model of reactor appears to have\nbeen marketed.\n\nAnd I am really getting sick of the chorus of the last couple of days which I\ncan summarize as:\n\n1\\. Fukushima is totally under control you guys! 2\\. Fukushima is not going to\nmelt down you guys! 3\\. Fukushima is not going to have a total melt down, OK!\n4\\. Chernobyl didn't kill THAT many people. 5\\. Chernobyl wasn't that bad. 6\\.\nThe area around Chernobyl is going to be peachy in like another 50 years! 7\\.\nWell at least Fukushima can't be as bad Chernobyl!\n\nFor the love of God, if you want to promote nuclear power do it in a smart\nway! Explain just how bad and radioactive coal is. Explain all the ways in\nwhich modern nuclear can be made safer. And call for more oversight and\ninvestment in safety.\n\nBut please stop trying to downplay Fukushima! Not only does this not help\nanything, but it actively discredits advocacy for nuclear power!\n\n~~~\nmichaelchisari\nAs long as people are comparing it to Chernobyl, we can't have a sane,\nrealistic conversation about nuclear power.\n\n~~~\nr00fus\nWhich is the whole point of the meme... destroy nuclear's credibility with FUD\ncomparisons.\n\nBoth anti-nuke environmentalist groups and fossil fuel mega-corps can get cozy\nwith this campaign.\n\n~~~\nbioh42_2\nThe way to combat that campaign is not by defending an ancient reactor built\non the cheap. It's not by defending the overly secrete save face first, save\nlives second approach by the authorities. Fukushima should not be played down.\nThat is not the way to counter-act the FUD.\n\n~~~\nmichaelchisari\nLike I said before, we cannot have a sane, rational conversation about how\nterrible of a design the Mark I BWR is, or how necessary it is to decommission\noutdated reactors, until people know enough to stop making comparisons to\nChernobyl.\n\n------\ntybris\nEvery time I see a \"everything will be fine\" article, things get worse a few\nhours later. Please, just sit on your hands, wait, and see.\n\nMaybe Chernobyl wasn't actually as bad as it could have been. Maybe Fukushima\nis going to be a lot worse than expected. Maybe Chernobyl is in the middle of\nf*ing nowhere. Maybe Fukushima is in one of the most densely populated regions\nin the world.\n\nWho knows?\n\nAll we know is that there are a few dozen people right now, fighting to\nprevent what could become one of the biggest man-made disasters in history.\nMany of them are likely going to die within a few years because of it.\n\n~~~\nNatsu\n> All we know is that there are a few dozen people right now, fighting to\n> prevent what could become one of the biggest man-made disasters in history.\n\nBut how are they going to save the 26,000 people killed by the failure of the\nBanqiao Dam without time travel?\n\nI'm kidding, but don't let anyone fool you: Fukushima Dai-ichi is still\ndangerous, but only to the people nearby. There's a substantial risk of\nfurther hydrogen explosions and radiation spikes that are dangerous to the\npeople nearby. They're very unlikely to affect anyone not in Japan. Cleanup\nwill be a pain.\n\nBut hearing \"OH GOD WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!\" constantly in the media is pretty\ngrating for anyone who understands the real, immediate concerns in Japan right\nnow. Yes, the reactor needs cool and the workers are very brave. They probably\ndo risk significant radiation exposure. But meanwhile, there are many people\nwho got swept out to sea, people who are trapped behind blocked roads and who\nneed supplies and people injured from the quake in remote areas who need care.\n\nThese logistical problems are the real disaster and they're being virtually\nignored by anyone outside Japan while all eyes are on the continuing problems\nat Fukushima Dai-ichi.\n\nOne good thing, badly under-reported, is how helpful the US Military's\nlogistical support is. And I don't mean just the stuff at Fukushima. Removing\nrubble from roads and clearing collapsed buildings is not at all glamorous,\nbut a lot of such things need to be done right now.\n\n~~~\nlocopati\n'still dangerous, but only to the people nearby'\n\nDepending on what happens in the next week or two and depending on which way\nthe wind blows, that could be 35m people nearby in the Tokyo metro area.\n\n------\norblivion\n\"However, the company operating Fukushima Daiichi has now said that, for the\nfuel pond at reactor 4, 'the risk of recriticality is not zero', meaning a\nnuclear chain reaction could restart in the rods. Quite how this has come\nabout is unclear.\"\n\nWhoops, looks like you invalidated half of your article.\n\n------\nalextingle\nNuclear power isn't pretty, but it's going to be pretty much a necessity in\nthe coming years. This relatively minor accident has come at a very\nunfortunate time.\n\n~~~\nxlpz\nIt's amazing that you can know the accident was minor when it's not even over\nyet. Seems like you are not really using reality to form your opinions.\n\n~~~\nNatsu\nThe earthquake + tsunami killed something like 5,000 people and counting. How\nmany have died from radiation poisoning or even the hydrogen explosions so\nfar? I'm counting two people missing and some radiation poisoning.\n\nWe're looking at a substantial risk of further hydrogen explosions until the\ncooling is stable and a risk of radiation leakage to those nearby. There is a\nslight risk of radiation further out, but it's unlikely to cause significant\nharm. So the primary danger is to plant employees and those trying to cool it\ndown or fight fires. It's unlikely to be able to kill large numbers of people,\nthough it's likely that someone will calculate x% increase of cancer * 128M\npeople (all of Japan) and publish that number.\n\nBut let's count the casualties and weigh them against the 5,000 or so who have\ndied from the earthquake already:\n\n[http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-\ncom/release/11031710-e....](http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-\ncom/release/11031710-e.html)\n\nCasualty\n\n\\- 2 workers of cooperative firm were injured at the occurrence of the\nearthquake, and were transported to the hospital.\n\n\\- 1 TEPCO employee who was not able to stand by his own with his hand holding\nleft chest was transported to the hospital by an ambulance.\n\n\\- 1 subcontract worker at important earthquake-proof building was unconscious\nand transported to the hospital by an ambulance.\n\n\\- The radiation exposure of 1 TEPCO employee, who was working inside the\nreactor building, exceeded 100mSv and was transported to the hospital.\n\n\\- 2 TEPCO employees felt bad during their operation in the central control\nrooms of Unit 1 and 2 while wearing full masks, and were transferred to\nFukushima Daini Power Station for consultation with a medical advisor.\n\n\\- 4 workers were injured and transported to the hospital after explosive\nsound and white smoke were confirmed around the Unit 1.\n\n\\- 11 workers were injured and transported to Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power\nStation after explosive sound and white smoke were confirmed around the Unit\n3.One of the injured workers got medical treatment on March 16th, but the\nworker reported a flank pain. We required to the offsite center that the\nworker should be transported to the hospital. After that, the helicopter of\nJSDF arrived and transported the worker to the FUKUSHIMA Medical University\nHospital at 10:56AM\n\n\\- Presence of 2 TEPCO employees at the site is not confirmed.\n\n~~~\nbioh42_2\n_The earthquake + tsunami killed something like 5,000 people and counting._\n\nThe absolutely horrific results of the earthquake and tsunami in no way make\nFukushima a minor deal. Yes, it has killed MANY fewer people then the tsunami,\nbut that does not make it a minor deal!\n\n~~~\nNatsu\n(Edited for clarification.)\n\nI never said it was a minor deal. My heart goes out to the families of the two\nworkers missing at Fukushima Dai-ichi as well as to those injured.\n\nBut I don't get the panic. I mean a run on Potassium Iodide tablets on the US\nwest coast? Seriously?? I don't know if I should be grateful that they at\nleast found something that could be effective or sad that they expect\nsignificant amounts of radiation to get that far.\n\nI need to figure out how to use actuarial tables to I can convert these\nexposure levels to something like \"cigarette equivalent risk\" by comparing\ncancer rates.\n\n~~~\nbioh42_2\nA run on potassium iodide tablets on the US west coast is just plain silly,\nbut the way to combat that is to discuss exactly how radiation spreads, not to\ntry and argue that Fukushima isn't that bad.\n\n~~~\nNatsu\n> A run on potassium iodide tablets on the US west coast is just plain silly,\n> but the way to combat that is to discuss exactly how radiation spreads, not\n> to try and argue that Fukushima isn't that bad.\n\nHow can I do one without doing the other, given the nice \"radiation plume\"\ngraphics, in \"arbitrary units\" no less, going through the news?\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2335273>\n\nI'm not trying to minimize the problems, I'm trying to be realistic about\nthem. After the first hydrogen explosion, if you look through my HN comments,\nI warned that there were likely to be more. Those are very dangerous, but to\nthe plant employees fixing this, but not to anyone who isn't nearby. Those\npeople are heroes, putting themselves in danger to protect everyone else from\nfurther radiation leaks.\n\nBut I sincerely believe that nobody who isn't in Japan or in the sea nearby is\nat any serious risk.\n\n------\nmichaelchisari\nI posted this before, but I feel it's worth re-iterating: There will never be\nanother Chernobyl. It was a perfect intersection of criminally inadequate\ndesign, early-adopter naivete, incompetence, and Murphy's Law.\n\nNot least of which was the fact that Chernobyl had no containment (!!), and\nwas running at peak (3200MW) as opposed to Fukushima Daiichi's 5% capacity\n(25MW).\n\nA comparison to Three Mile Island is totally valid, but Chernobyl is literally\noff the table.\n\n~~~\norblivion\nI think we're way past TMI by now right?\n\n------\nborism\nYup, it won't be Chernobyl. It will always be Fukushima Daiichi.\n\nHow the nuclear accident will turn out to be is anyones guess right now\nthough.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCountries don't own their Internet domains, ICANN says - privong\nhttp://www.computerworld.com.au/article/551289/countries_don_t_own_their_internet_domains_icann_says/\n======\ntokenizerrr\nSo instead the US is the only country that \"owns\" domain names, since ICANN is\nan American company? If the domains aren't property then how can they be\nseized? Is a distinction made between domain names and ccTLDs?\n\nedit: Downvotes? Really? For asking a question that seems perfectly on-topic.\n\n~~~\ndragonwriter\n> So instead the US is the only country that \"owns\" domain names, since ICANN\n> is an American company?\n\nIf you read the article instead of responding to the title, you would\nrecognize that ICANN is saying no one \"owns\" ccTLDs, because they aren't\nproperty at all.\n\n~~~\ntokenizerrr\nI have, and yes, they say that, but since they are an American company and\nthus can be compelled to do pretty much anything by the American goverment\n(through secret courts even, which we've been hearing more and more about) it\nseems reasonable to say that America owns them, and their bookkeeping.\n\n~~~\ndragonwriter\nTheir argument here is for why they _cannot_ be compelled to do certain things\nby American courts.\n\n------\ndragonwriter\nICANN documents on the case: [https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/icann-\nvarious-2014-07-...](https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/icann-\nvarious-2014-07-30-en)\n\n------\nopendais\nSeriously, fuck the people that want to seize 3 countries worth of ccTLDs.\n\nThat isn't reasonable or rational behavior. You can't seize top level domains.\nYou shouldn't be allowed to, regardless of the reasons. You break the human-\nreadable internet and DNS if this is allowed.\n\nSome countries will go along with such a seizure, some won't, and the internet\nwill fragment.\n\n~~~\nforgottenpass\nI entirely agree with you in principle, but can't bring myself to be angry\nabout it anymore. For the last few years I've been pessimistic about the long\nterm viability of the unary root zone anyway.\n\nAt one point the users of the internet were collaborative enough to decide\n\"lets just let Jon Postel run this shit.\" Almost half the world is online now,\nand depending on the Internet more and more. That kind of collaboration still\nworks (in a more formal manner) for big things if they fly under the user's\nradar (like the switch to IPv6). Outside of a few flamewars, things gets done\n(slowly, it's a lot of work, but done nonetheless). How much of the planet\nrelies on and has daily visible interaction with the root zone? A forth? At\nleast?\n\nThere is already monkeying around in resolvers to add, remove or change\nrecords but those are generally isolated and/or purpose specific. Can ICANN,\ngovernments, and big ISPs all coordinate and keep their personal interests in\ncheck well enough to persevere the the root zone's position as the one and\nonly source of authority?\n\n------\nlogfromblammo\nThey are assigned names and numbers. You have as much ownership over a domain\nas you do over the name of the street your home is on. Given the importance of\nassigned names and numbers to business, similar to trademarks, you have a\ncertain amount of administrative control and protection against arbitrary\nreassignment.\n\nThink about this: (800) 588-2300. Some of you reading this will automatically\nand involuntarily hear the end of the jingle: \"Empiiiire.\" That number is not\nowned. It has just been continuously in use by the same company for decades.\n\n1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That address is not owned. It's just how the USPS\nidentifies the White House mailbox.\n\nChanging assignments for a TLD makes about as much sense as renaming the\npostal code for California from CA to QM, or assigning the 777 area code to\nany place in the US other than the Las Vegas Strip. That code isn't even in\nuse yet.\n\nIt's not about ownership, its about making sense and being intuitive for\npeople trying to find the information they need. Purposefully ruining the\naddressing system for information is as much a dick move as heading to the\npublic library and demolishing their card catalog terminals with a fireman's\naxe just because you don't want people to be able to check out any copies of a\ncertain book.\n\n------\ndragonwriter\nFrom a quick read-through of the documents I can find on this, it seems most\nlikely that the ownership issue won't be reached because it looks like much\nclearer jurisdictional and procedural issues that ICANN also raises are likely\nto be dispositive as to the validity of the writs of attachment at issue.\n\n------\nqwerta\nI think it is good move. Otherwise many countries would see DNS as something\nworth controlling (and forking).\n\n~~~\nmarkdown\nOnly USA should have the power to seize domains. ICE FTW!\n\nMerika! Fuck Yeah!\n\n~~~\nforgottenpass\nHas ICE ever seized a TLD?\n\nCould a registrar that operates outside the US not be compelled by that\nnations laws w/r/t the domains under it's control? Because as far as I'm\naware, that's how ICE does in the US.\n\nNot saying I like it, but I don't know that your characterization is accurate.\n\n~~~\ntankenmate\nICE don't compel the registrar, they compel the registry normally; in the case\nof .com and .net that is Verisign.\n\n~~~\nforgottenpass\nOops, that's what I meant. I tend to mix those up.\n\n------\njohnnydogma\nIF they want to seize domains in the country that is one thing. They want to\nseize, basically, the right to identify yourself as that country/origin\nonline, as if to erase it from existence. Doesn't anyone see the de-humanizing\naspect of this?\n\n------\nspindritf\nWhat about a phone prefix, like +963 for Syria? Can it be \"seized\"? Bizarre.\n\n~~~\nadestefan\nYes. They are assigned and controlled by the ITU much like ccTLDs are assigned\nand controlled by ICANN. The same is true for radio and television prefixes.\n\n------\n13throwaway\nLooks like countries need to look into decentralized DNS.\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin)\n\n------\nwalshemj\nHow to realy realy piss off the ITU and the UN and give it ammunition to take\nover ICANT's job\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nApple-Samsung verdict form requires jurors to answer 600 questions - anigbrowl\nhttp://www.sfgate.com/business/bloomberg/article/For-Apple-Samsung-Jury-More-Than-600-Questions-3807591.php\n\n======\nanigbrowl\nThe SJMN has a copy of the 20-page verdict form. I must say I have my doubts\nabout the utility of the adversarial process in situations like this. In an\namusing irony, the last question on the form concerns 'patent exhaustion.'\n\n[http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_21362502/document-\napp...](http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_21362502/document-apple-vs-\nsamsung-jury-instructions?source=pkg)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nwhy GNU grep is faster than FreeBSD grep - yarapavan\nhttp://blog.erratasec.com/2015/12/some-notes-on-fast-grep.html\n======\nfeld\nfun fact: the author of gnu grep is actually a freebsd user :)\n\nthe linked email thread is also more informative than the blog post, so why\nnot go there directly?\n\n[https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-\ncurrent/2010-Aug...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-\ncurrent/2010-August/019310.html)\n\n------\nysleepy\nThat post says nothing about FreeBSDs grep or why GNU grep is faster.\n\n------\naexaey\nTwo more remarks:\n\n1\\. Original article on FreeBSD mailing list is from 2010;\n\n2\\. Original article claims 20% speed improvement for --mmap. This option is\ngone since:\n\n[http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.grep.bugs/5049](http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.grep.bugs/5049)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy Microsoft killed Courier - j-g-faustus\nhttp://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=23176\n\n======\nwisty\nIn the old days, when competitors were afraid to even say Bill's name,\nMicrosoft would have hedged their bets.\n\nMicrosoft sold some crazy UNIX thing called Xenix, DOS, and ported their\nsoftware to OS/2 and Mac OS.\n\nMicrosoft did not care who won, as long as they were positioned to get their\nfoot in the door, make a huge profit, kill off all the competition, start\ndisplacing their upstream and downstream dependencies, and cement their\nposition by extend-embrace-extinguish.\n\nThey have one offering on the mobile, nothing to speak of in the tablet space,\nand very few apps / trojan horses for iOS / Android. It's like watching\nUlysses stick to the Marquess of Queensberry rules.\n\n~~~\npolitician\nThe difference being, of course, that in the old days Microsoft was not a\nconvicted monopolist.\n\n------\nantonyme\n> According to Courier team members, the 130+ team had several finished\n> prototypes and could have brought the device to market in mid-2010 with a\n> bit of extra manpower.\n\nA bit? They had some prototypes with just the industrial design, some with\njust the software, some with just the performance - but none with all the\naspects of the finished product. And they say they were a few months away?\n\nThe hubris behind this kind of thinking is astonishing. It would take nothing\nshort of a miracle to pull together all these elements in such a short\ntimeframe. There are so many inter-related aspects that would prevent this.\nPerformance, battery life, weight, heat dissipation, software drivers, power\nmanagement - must all be designed and working in concert for a successful\nproduct.\n\nAnd that says nothing about the product positioning. Are there seriously\nmillions of architects out there who have been saying: \"Boy, I wish I had a\nsmall, portable computer screen I could sketch my ideas out on.\" ? There's a\nreason they have huge drafting boards - they think big, and need big spaces to\nsketch out their big ideas.\n\nI love the way they were thinking outside the square, and there were some\nseriously cool ideas in Courier. But it seems much more like a groovy concept\nthan a nearly shipping product.\n\n------\nD-Coder\nBut that's one of my favorite fonts!\n\nWait, what?\n\n------\nsignalsignal\nNot politics. Because it couldn't do email.\n\n~~~\nRexxar\nI don't understand why they chose to kill it instead of improve it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nManipulating Text with Grep - tcarriga\nhttps://red.ht/2CL9Uzo\n======\nMr_JK\nCool!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLyft allowed unauthorised access to my account - dayanajabif\nWhen I travel to the US I usually buy a pay as you go AT&amp;T sim card to use during my stay. I used to take Lyfts to move around, till today.<p>If you have a phone with pay as you go service and for some reason you don&#x27;t pay the bill for a month, you will lose your number. \nThen a few months later someone buying a new sim card will have your old number, so if they download lyft they will have your account with your credit card. And guess what? They can have free rides charged to your credit card!!!<p>So there&#x27;s a creepy guy taking lyft rides in san francisco with my account. \nThe best part is that I can&#x27;t remove the credit card from that account because I no longer have that phone number, so I can&#x27;t access my account!<p>I sent an email to Lyft support but no one answered.\n======\nextc\nHere's a strange Lyft scenario. I tried to send my friend a Lyft invite so we\ncould both get a discount. He got the invite link, downloaded the app and put\nin his phone number. It kept rejecting his phone number (it's a CA number and\nwe're in NY, does it matter?). So we thought, maybe we need to put in the\nphone number of the person that referred/invited him (i.e. me). So we put in\nmy number and it lets him in. He takes his ride home and then I see that his\nride was charged to my account. Somehow his phone is now linked to my account\nand he didn't even enter a password. I emailed Lyft and they don't care, they\njust explained that I agreed to surge pricing - that's not even on topic to my\ncomplaint. Needless to say, neither of us got the referral discount.\n\n~~~\nMalcolmDiggs\nI've dealt with the rejected phone number (for a California number) as well.\nAnd of course, no responses to my emails. I tweeted about it, they tweeted\nback, and then continued to ignore my emails.\n\n...I switched to Uber...\n\n------\nKronopath\nThis is what I hate about apps and services using phone numbers as primary\ncredentials. Phone numbers can and do change, so they're nowhere near as\nstable as e.g. a simple email address. I'm recently facing the situation where\nI may be moving in the near future, and when doing so I'm going to have to\nchange my phone number to a local one in the place I'm moving to. I'm likely\ngoing to have to go through every account and app I have my phone number\nassociated with and change it. (Unless there's a better option that I'm not\naware of yet.)\n\n~~~\njoshstrange\n> Unless there's a better option that I'm not aware of yet.\n\nKeep your number? I love this XKCD on this [0]. I live in a different state\nthat where I got my phone number and when I moved I just kept the number so I\ndidn't have to go through the dog and pony show of updating it everywhere.\n\n[0] [https://xkcd.com/1129/](https://xkcd.com/1129/)\n\n~~~\nKronopath\nThat's less useful when you're possibly moving to a different country.\n\n~~~\ndublinben\nYou can maintain a US telephone number for a few dollars a year by porting it\nto a VOIP or prepaid cell provider.\n\n------\njoshstrange\nReally think the title of this post should be changed Lyft DID NOT leak your\ncredentials.\n\n~~~\ndayanajabif\nso, who did it? It's lyft responsibility not to have this security bugs.\n\n~~~\njoshstrange\nWhat I'm saying is:\n\nLeaked Credentials != Unauthorised access to your account\n\nLeaked Credentials == exposing username/email + password (unhashed)\n\n~~~\ndayanajabif\nok, agree\n\n------\nzachacole\nHi there - this is Zach from Lyft. Our support team has been responding to\nyour original email to resolve this case.\n\nWe take security and personal information seriously, and did not leak\ncredentials. The relevant teams within Lyft, including product/engineering,\nhave been alerted of this case to continue ensuring the community's safety.\n\n~~~\nagustinhaller\nWhat about this comment:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9355499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9355499).\nHow is this happening?\n\n------\ndigitalneal\nCan't you just call the CC and dispute the charges and or freeze charges from\nthat merchant? Granted that doesn't solve the larger problem here but it would\nat least stop the guy from abusing the system.\n\n~~~\nbduerst\nThis is exactly why 30 day chargebacks exist, right?\n\n~~~\neli\nSure, though lyft may well ban you for life.\n\n~~~\nwiredfool\nSo? They don't know who he is anymore.\n\n~~~\nmartin_\nWouldn't his billing info be sufficient to identify him again in the future?\n\n~~~\nbduerst\nIt doesn't sound like Lyft is retaining too much info on their customers. I\nwould bet if they used another card they would be able to join again.\n\n------\ndedward\nWhat you do here is tell your credit card company that the charges are\nfraudulent and that you have informed Lyft that the card is not authorized,\nbut they refuse to do anything about it. Let them handle it - they will.\n\n~~~\npbreit\nBut Lyft hasn't refused anything. Best to have Lyft resolve. May take an ounce\nof patience.\n\n~~~\nmichaelt\nThe guy's e-mailed Lyft support and hasn't got an answer.\n\nWhat downside is there to reporting the fraudulent charges for what they are,\napart from a tiny possibility of being banned from using Lyft in the future?\n\n------\ntessierashpool\nTLDR: I feel your pain.\n\nI went to Scottrade and asked them to close my account, back in 2007 or 2008.\nThey said \"sure,\" cashed out the account, left it open, and continued sending\nme account status emails for almost ten years.\n\nLast week they told me I had a negative balance of $13. I called them and they\ncan't give me any information over the phone, because I don't know my old\naddress or phone number from whenever I opened the account. (I don't know when\nthat is, only that it was before 2007 or so.)\n\nSo I have to go into a physical office. And where I live now, the nearest\nphysical office is more than 60 miles away. And they're not open on weekends.\n\nAnd they can apply fees to this negative balance, spiral those fees out of\ncontrol, refer it to a collections agency, and put it on my credit report, all\nwithout ever once breaking the law.\n\nSo I have to drive 60 miles both ways, because almost ten years ago, one of\ntheir employees was too lazy to do their job correctly. And I can't even do it\non the weekend.\n\nUS consumer law has terrific protections for all the problems that were\nlegitimate risks 100 years ago, but it sucks today. Effectively, the burden of\nproof is now on me to demonstrate that this $13 fee is not my problem.\n\n~~~\nbduerst\nSame thing happened to a Chase checking account I had.\n\nI cashed & closed it, but the teller must not have actually closed it because\nthey decided to charge it $10/mo for some stupid bank-fee reason. It was\ndiving into negative numbers for months before I discovered it.\n\n------\nslayed0\nThis is a very serious issue and you should not stop pursuing all available\nsupport channels until you get an answer. I can guarantee you that such a\nglaring bug will immediately get high priority in their issue tracking system.\nThe last thing Lyft wants is for something like this to get reported on and\nshake confidence in the platform they are trying so hard to build.\n\n~~~\nleephillips\nThe problem is that it's not a bug, it's the foolhardy way that the system is\ndesigned.\n\n~~~\nslayed0\nI guess it's a semantic disagreement but I would still call this a bug. If\nthey considered this use-case when they designed the system and then decided\nit was not worth designing for then I suppose it is not a bug, but I find it\nhard to believe that is the case.\n\n~~~\nicebraining\nI don't (find it hard to believe). A few chargebacks are nothing compared to\nadding friction to the signup of the majority of users, financially speaking.\n\n------\ndjb_hackernews\nThis might be a stupid question but does this mean that if I have a phone\nemulator and configure it to have some number and download one of these apps\nthat use the # for account lookup that I could essentially hijack peoples\naccounts like this?\n\nEDIT: no that doesn't seem to be the case. When you login to Lyft they send a\ntext to the registered number.\n\n~~~\ncaptn3m0\nI think Lyft login/auth would require you to be able to _receive_ messages\nsent to that number.\n\n------\nJohnHaugeland\nTell your bank that you did not authorize the charges. You get the money back;\nthey can't charge you anymore; the banks ding lyft statistically in rates and\ntrust.\n\n------\nackim\nSounds like you merely need to inform the bank of the charges on your credit\ncard and let them know that you made an effort to contact the company. Contact\nthe credit card issuer to reverse the charges. Lucky for you you didn't use a\ndebit card then you would have had a real problem.\n\n------\nnotsurewhat\nI just emailed this thread to John Zimmer, co-founder & president. Expect it\nto be handled shortly.\n\n~~~\njoshstrange\nAs happy as I am that things like this can happen (IDK if you know John or\njust sent it to his email) it annoys me that problems like this cannot be\nfixed without complaining on social media/sites like HN.\n\nThe number of times I've followed a companies support channels and heard no\nresponse in a weeks time then tweeted and got it resolved in less than 3 hours\nis staggering and quite disappointing. The squeaky wheel gets the grease....\n\n------\ndayanajabif\nLyft support answered my email:\n\n\"After reviewing your statement and digging deeper into our payment back-end,\nit appears that because your phone number had transferred ownership the new\nowner of this number may have logged in thinking that this was their account.\nDue to this occurrence, we at this point in time have placed a hold on all\nlogins using this phone number — this in turn will halt any further use of\nthis account.\"\n\n~~~\ndayanajabif\n\"thinking that this was their account'??? So now their name is Dayana, and\nthey didn't notice? come on!\n\n------\neyeareque\nIt's a pain but it sounds like you need to cancel your credit card. Or you can\nwait and see if this post gets any attention. Obviously they have a gap in\ntheir authentication that they need to address.\n\n------\npbreit\nCurrent headline: \"Lyft leaked my credentials\"\n\nSorta thought the story was going to involve leaked credentials.\n\nFirst, I'm sure Lyft will take care of it in your favor.\n\nSecond, this is certainly an issue when utilizing SMS for\nauthentication/login. I'm not sure the best answer since it can be a good way\nto support easy login/authentication. If phones send along a device ID, that\nmight work. Not sure the frequency of same number on same \"disposable\" phone.\n\n------\nbstrom\nLyft's support team seems nonexistant. I've sent several emails to them and\nnever received a reply.\n\n------\nnetik\nLyft is not the only company that will do things like this. Twitter tried this\nwith Twitter Digits, and Yahoo offers single-factor phone based recovery. In\nall of these cases, companies are sacrificing convenience for security.\n\n~~~\njoshstrange\n\"companies are sacrificing security for convenience\" FTFY\n\n~~~\nagustinhaller\nYou are right. After reading this I requested Uber to delete my account as i\nwas using a prepaid phone while visiting the US. I was very disappointing as\nthey don't have an easy way to delete an account, you need to send an email\nexplaining why.\n\n~~~\njoshstrange\nJust to be fair account deletion is not a super easy thing. It may seem easy\n\"DELETE FROM users WHERE id = '123';\" but you also need to delete all of their\nrelated records. Let's say you have a user table with use username, hashed\npassword, and id in it and then all that address/DOB/etc in a users_data table\nor similar. Now you need to delete the users_data record as well. But that's\nnot all, what about all the transactions in the \"rides\" table. They are\nrelated to the user but we need to keep them for historical data and/or\nreports. It can get messy VERY quickly and if the application is changing\nquickly then your \"delete user\" logic might leave behind new user data that it\ndoesn't account for.\n\nWhat I'm saying is that while I do find it mildly annoying that there is no\n\"Delete Account\" button there are good reasons for it. Not is this a non-\ninsignificant amount of work to build/maintain but from a business point of\nview it means spending time/money on a feature that is only for people who no\nlonger want to be your customer so put in that light it's no surprise this\nfeature falls by the wayside often. Also there is the whole \"I accidentally\ndeleted my account\" (no matter how many warning you put up) and that means you\neither need to \"soft delete\" all the data so you can \"undo\" OR you have to\nreconstruct the user's data from a backup (either programmatically or by\nhand).\n\n------\naptwebapps\nSo how long has it been since you emailed them?\n\n------\nzobzu\neven if the sim isnt changed, phone number assignements are not safe in any\nway. just a number in a database. it could be changed by anyone for a few mins\nand you wouldn't know. it could be social engineered away. etc.\n\n------\nwehadfun\nChances are some low level engineer brought up this possible issue but some\nidiot with a bigger mouth than brain just dismissed it\n\n------\njohnnyg\nThis isn't the proper medium for your complaint. Maybe it'll be resolved\nsomewhat faster but the way you did it wasn't right.\n\n------\ndrivingmenuts\nYou're the one who forgot, or chose not to, pay your bill and got your phone\nnumber cancelled. And you chose to use an app that tied your phone number and\nyour credit card together. So, you share some responsibility here.\n\nLyft's problem is two-fold: 1) they don't warn users not to use their app on a\ntemporary device 2) they don't allow an easy way to cancel the account without\nthe phone number\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nInteger percentages as fingerprints of electoral falsification - merraksh\nhttps://arxiv.org/abs/1410.6059\n======\nJerry2\nAbsolutely fascinating research!\n\nI wonder if someone has some free time to run the models on several recent\nelections that were filled with fraud. I'm interested in: Austrian\npresidential elections [0], Turkish elections [1] and Democratic party\nprimaries [2][3]. Each of them was analyzed for voting fraud and fraud was\nfound in each of them (some were full of massive vote fraud like Turkish\nelections).\n\nPS: What's with all the downvotes? Is the evidence of massive voter fraud in\nthe West so unsettling that you have to downvote me?\n\n[0] >Austria presidential poll result overturned\n\n[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36681475](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-\neurope-36681475)\n\n[1] >Turkey Elections Massive Vote Fraud\n\n[https://erikmeyersson.com/2015/11/04/digit-tests-and-the-\npec...](https://erikmeyersson.com/2015/11/04/digit-tests-and-the-peculiar-\nelection-dynamics-of-turkeys-november-elections/)\n\n[2] >Hillary Clinton Favored By Election Fraud In Democratic Primaries\n\n[http://www.inquisitr.com/3127046/hillary-clinton-favored-\nby-...](http://www.inquisitr.com/3127046/hillary-clinton-favored-by-election-\nfraud-in-democratic-primaries-federal-lawsuit-filed-against-officials-to-\nprotect-california-primaries/)\n\n[3] >Election Fraud Watch 2016 (J: awesome blog that tracks election fraud in\nprimaries)\n\n[https://electionfraud2016.wordpress.com/](https://electionfraud2016.wordpress.com/)\n\n~~~\nexabrial\nThe Sanders movement, even though I disagreed with his platform, was true\ngrassroots democracy: Common people getting organized and trying to make a\nchange.\n\nI don't care if I get down voted into oblivion for saying this next part: When\nlooking at the spread between the types of polls, there is a massive\ndifference between the voting elite and the people's will. I don't advocate\nagainst the electoral college, but what was supposed to be system that\nprevented buyouts has proven to be completely forsale by the Clintons. I\ndidn't see massive pro-Clinton rallies. We had quicker investigations into\nSamsung VS Apple for inconsequential things. No one has been held accountable\nand no explanations have been given for massive breaches of protocol other\nthan its a plot by the Repuglicans.\n\nI'm tired of everything from the Clinton family. My state KS has a good chance\nto throw electoral votes at Gary Johnson. Please California if you are\nlistening, don't reward this family for their actions.\n\n~~~\nempath75\nIf you really think that Clinton didn't get the votes she got fairly, you're\nliving in a bubble. Sanders supporters have this problem of forgetting that\nwomen and minorities exist.\n\n(I can't stand the Clintons, but I don't think they cheated)\n\n~~~\nJohnGB\nI am an outsider (European) looking in but closely following the US\npresidential primaries this year, so I don't have a horse in the race. There\nare a number of levels at which there has been clear unfairness or cheating\n(depending on your perspective) in the DNC primaries. Here are some of the\nsimpler ones:\n\n\\- The recent release of hacked documents from the DNC show that the primaries\nwere not set up to be a fair competition from the start. \\- The rules are\nspecifically set up in a number of states (New York is a prime example) to\ndisenfranchise any new Democratic Party members from being able to vote. \\-\nThousands of registered voters were removed from the voters roll. There is\neven a case where a lifelong Democrat running for a congressional seat on a\nDemocratic ticket was removed. \\- Media coverage made it appear that Clinton\nwas in the lead before any voting even took place. That coverage has been\nshown to have been orchestrated (at least at the start) by the DNC. \\- Funds\nraised in the DNC's name were disproportionately funnelled to the Clinton\ncampaign. \\- Voting stations were closed down in huge numbers in some states\nand territories (Puerto Rico and California being prime a examples)\n\n~~~\ndouche\nNY was pretty ridiculous.\n\nIt's going to look pretty ridiculous if the DNC is ever audited, or has\nsomeone more credible than Guccifer2.0 hack and release their documents.\n\n------\nblueintegral\nI thought this would just be an application of Benford's law, but they note in\nthe beginning that using Benford's law doesn't work for elections (citing this\npaper:\n[http://www.vote.caltech.edu/sites/default/files/benford_pdf_...](http://www.vote.caltech.edu/sites/default/files/benford_pdf_4b97cc5b5b.pdf))\n\nDoes anyone know why Benford's law doesn't work here but does work for other\nmade up numbers in applications like accounting?\n\n~~~\nsampo\nFor Benford's law to apply, the numbers (the non-fabricated numbers) need to\nbe coming from a source/distribution covering several orders of magnitude. The\nfabricated voting percentages are limited to between 0 and 100.\n\n~~~\nempath75\nRaw vote totals then?\n\n~~~\noceliker\nWe ran a test for one of the problem sets in a course I was TAing. Raw vote\ncounts _did_ follow Benford's law in 2000 US presidential elections. We did\nnot portray it as a tool to detect or disprove fraud, however.\n\n~~~\nsampo\nPerhaps the sizes (number of eligible voters, and also number of people who\nactually voted) of the voting districts follows the law? Then you could take\nthe total vote counts, and distribute them back to the candidates in a lot of\nartificial ways (e.g. always 50-50, a random percentage between 30 and 70,\nsay) and probably obtain data that still follows the law.\n\n------\nArtlav\nIt's kinda sad to see our elections to be used as reference for falsification\ndetection research...\n\nThis isn't exactly new, such analysis was done as early as 2011, i.e.\n[http://lleo.me/dnevnik/2011/12/07_gauss.html](http://lleo.me/dnevnik/2011/12/07_gauss.html)\n\nAlthough, they were more focused on the peculiar distribution, than on integer\nspikes.\n\n~~~\namooeba\nThe figure that is reproduced and discussed in that lleo.me blog post was made\nby one of the authors of the paper that is being discussed here. It's just\ntook us from the end of 2011 until early 2016 to actually get the whole thing\npublished.\n\n------\njcalvinowens\nThis is fascinating.\n\nI'm tempted to argue the improbably-round numbers might be due to lazily\ncounting/sampling the ballots rather than actual malicious fraud... but I\nguess sloppily running the election still constitutes fraud in some sense.\n\n~~~\nrcthompson\nOr sloppy/lazy counting because they already know the predetermined outcome.\n\n~~~\nPiskvorrr\nImprobable. Sharing a pre-determined result with Joe Random Votecounters *\nnumber of voting stations = near certainty of someone leaking that, and a\nfield day for the media.\n\nSo, while theoretically possible, realistically summed up by \"three men can\nhold a secret, if one of them is dead.\"\n\n(And specifically here, if I were a conspirator going for a predetermined\nresult, I would want a somewhat close result, yes - but not an almost-tie as\nseen here. Something like 55:45 or somesuch, not a \"every single vote matters\"\nscenario, where a few thousand votes could swing the outcome)\n\n~~~\nrcthompson\nI think it would be more of an \"open secret\" pattern: e.g. no one explicitly\norders people to make sure the ruling party always wins, but everyone knows\nsomeone who knows someone who was punished for reporting the actual count\ninstead of a rigged count.\n\n~~~\nPiskvorrr\nWhat you are describing is not an \"open secret,\" that's a \"conspiracy theory.\"\n\n------\nvinchuco\nIs there a field that studies inconsistencies of this type?\n\nRecently on HN there was a related test (the Grim test)\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11787560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11787560)\n\n~~~\nelliotec\nI think the field you're looking for is statistics?\n\n~~~\nmahmud\nMore specifically anomaly detection.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomaly_detection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomaly_detection)\n\n~~~\nvinchuco\nThank you!\n\n------\nJelteF\nIt would be very interesting to see this method used for other elections to\nsee what unexpected results can be found. Although still interesting, it is\nnot a huge surprise that there has been large vote fraud in Russia.\n\n~~~\ntrhway\n>it is not a huge surprise that there has been large vote fraud in Russia\n\nRussian elections for statistics have become like \"Lena\" for image processing.\nTypical \"camel-double-hump-Gauss\" of Russian elections - polling stations\nwithout observers at Fig 2. at\n[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3545790/pdf/pnas...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3545790/pdf/pnas.201206770.pdf)\n(\"United Russia\" is the Putin's party).\n\n------\namerine\nNice work. It's interesting they used Russia as the source of election results\ndata. Did I miss an exlaination of their data selection criteria in the paper?\n\n~~~\nconistonwater\n> _We used election data from three countries besides Russia: 2011 general\n> election in Spain, 2010 presidential election in Poland (1st round), and\n> 2009 federal election in Germany (Zweitstimmen, i.e. party votes). These\n> three elections were chosen because the data are publicly available down to\n> the single polling station level, and because the number and size of polling\n> stations are comparable to those in Russia_\n\nI guess this means they found the data first, then decided to try to analyze\nit and compare it with similar data elsewhere. It's probably not their work-\nrelated research ([http://www.fchampalimaud.org/en/the-\nfoundation/mission/](http://www.fchampalimaud.org/en/the-\nfoundation/mission/)).\n\n------\njrgirvan\nShould try it on the USA election results...\n\n------\nzyxzevn\nWhy Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea - Computerphile\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI)\n\n------\neuske\nThis thread just reminded me of this quote:\n\n\"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.\" \\- Mark Twain\n\n------\nChicagoBoy11\nThis is brilliant. I wonder how the authors got the initial motivation to do\nthe study -- seems like quite a bit of work to find a very specific\nstatistical anomaly; doubt they went into it blindly not really knowing there\nwas something to find...\n\n~~~\nint_19h\nIn 2014, there was a lot of attention drawn in Russia and Ukraine to votes in\nCrimea and Donbass (the \"independence referendums\", and elections of local\nleaders). The latter two votes, in particular, had nice exact percentages,\nwhich drew attention of people familiar with statistics almost immediately,\nand were heavily discussed in LJ.\n\n~~~\namooeba\nThe study that is being discussed here was essentially done in the end of 2011\nand early 2012, mostly triggered by the results of the 2011 legislative\nelection (heavily discussed in LJ as well; in fact, this study itself was\nmostly developed in LJ).\n\nThe election results in Crimea and Donbass do contain some funny patterns and\nare most likely largely made up, but no information is available on the\npolling station level so there is little to analyze statistically.\n\n~~~\nint_19h\nGood to know, thanks! Regarding this:\n\n>> no information is available on the polling station level so there is little\nto analyze statistically.\n\nWhat they did was look at the percentages and exact vote counts for each\nchoice, and noticed that they match down to one vote (i.e. if you take the\npercentage, multiply by total population, and round, you'll get the vote\ncount). For example, in referendum in Lugansk, the official stats are as\nfollows:\n\n1,349,360 valid bulletins 1,298,084 (96.2%) voted yes\n\nNormally, the percentage is a number with a lot of digits after the decimal\npoint, which is then rounded for presentation purposes. But here, if you take\n96.2% and multiply it by 1,349,360, you get 1,298,084.32. In other words, it's\nactually accurate to 4 digits after decimal point, three of which happen to be\nzeroes (96.2000%).\n\nOf course, it could be just a very unlikely (< 1/1000) coincidence that the\nnumber of \"yes\" votes just happened to fit exactly into three digits of\nprecision. But a more reasonable explanation is that someone started with the\npercentage that they wanted to get, and then computed the requisite number of\nbulletins from that.\n\nSaid explanation becomes even more reasonable when you take the reported\nnumbers for turnout, and realize that the same relation holds there.\nSpecifically:\n\n1,807,739 eligible voters 1,359,419 voted (75.2%)\n\n1,807,739 х 75.2% = 1,359,419.73\n\nOh look, another perfect percentage (75.2000%).\n\n------\nlovemenot\nOn reading just the abstract, there does not appear to be any control in this\nexperiment. I'd have expected them to mention inclusion of election results\nknown with certainty to not be fraudulent.\n\nLikewise, I'd expect there to be proof of fraud by other reliable means in\norder to validate this method. It is not enough for them to just assert that\nthere can be no other explanation for this data, so these were fraudulent\nresults, so our method must be working.\n\nAbsent a control, the strong conclusion that fraud can be detected this way\nseems unsupported.\n\n~~~\nlvs\nI would suggest looking at the paper in more detail before saying it's\nuncontrolled. I found the control just by skimming the figures.\n\n~~~\nlovemenot\nI would do so, but the site prevents access to non-subscribers.\n\nWould you kindly tell me the method they used to _independently_ prove fraud\nin some of the analysed data.\n\n~~~\nams6110\nI had no trouble accessing the paper using the PDF link on the page\n([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.6059v4.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.6059v4.pdf))\n\n~~~\nlovemenot\nThanks for the link to PDF. The \"This URL\" link takes you to a page that asks\nfor a login.\n\nHaving now read the article, I stand by my original point. There seems to be\nno verification that the proposed method does indeed identify (in some cases)\ncases of elections that were independently known, as a point of fact, to have\nbeen fraudulent.\n\nThey seem to be claiming two things, but you cannot have it both ways :\n\na) This method can identify fraudulent elections and we proved it by analysing\nelections in Russia\n\nb) These elections in Russia that we analysed using this method were\nfraudulent - as proved by the method.\n\nI would expect to see a control that takes data from elections that were\nalready known to be fraudulent. e.g. by confession, video evidence or some\nother reliable means to show that the effect was observable in some of those\n_demonstrably_ fraudulent elections.\n\n~~~\namooeba\nActually there is a TON of evidence that e.g. Russian elections 2011 were\nheavily falsified. There are dozens (probably hundreds) reports of independent\nobservers, plenty of videos capturing ballot stuffing, multiple cases when\nelection papers are known to have been forged after the ballot count was\nfinished, etc. etc. I don't know what are \"reliable means\" for you though; all\nthat evidence has been outright rejected by every single Russian official or\ncourt.\n\n~~~\nlovemenot\nYes. And what bothers me about this study is that it seems to rely on our\nimplicit understanding of this circumstance. Rather than using a set of data\nwhere they can explicitly compare fraudulent and legitimate results.\n\nSurely there would have been a better set of test data than one for which\npoliticians are still actively serving.\n\nUnfortunately the science is somewhat tainted by the politics here since it is\nvery unlikely they'll get independent confirmation of fraud for the test set.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n1k pics of nuclear, defense, related ads published in scientific American - DyslexicAtheist\nhttps://osf.io/f6yqs/\n======\nDyslexicAtheist\na better explanation than what could fit in the title:\n[https://twitter.com/NuclearAnthro/status/1278544800581447680](https://twitter.com/NuclearAnthro/status/1278544800581447680)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAutoMicroFarm - mooreds\nhttps://automicrofarm.com/\n======\ncarapace\nA friend of mine has a bespoke system similar to this in his backyard. It's\nkind of wonderful to have a fish pond, and the plants seem to like growing in\nthe grow bed.\n\nThis is one of those ideas, like putting solar panels on your roof, that makes\nso much sense that it's just silly NOT to do it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nKenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018) - deogeo\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/world/africa/kenya-china-racism.html\n======\nm3nu\nWith China being very homogeneous in terms of race, they never worked through\nthose issues. I don't blame them. My grand parents, who lived in the\ncountryside all their life would react in a similar way.\n\nSmall anecdote: I attended an English class at a Chinese business university.\nThe teacher (young girl, never left China in her life) told us that everything\n\"French\" means \"sex/porn/etc\", i.e. \"french book\", \"french movie\". Funny, but\ntragic.\n\nAlso remember the racist ad for washing powder (girl washes a black guy and a\nChinese jumps out afterwards).\n\nThey will probably need some slightly more tragic events and pushback to\nacknowledge it's a problem. Would be better if they learnt from the west's\npainful lessons, but my hopes for that are low.\n\n~~~\njxramos\nI thought you were possibly exaggerating. There really is such an ad. Pretty\nhorrible. I never heard of this news almost 3 years after the fact.\n\n[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/28/china-\nracist-d...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/28/china-racist-\ndetergent-advert-outrage)\n\n~~~\napexalpha\nFocussing on a single Ad in the entire continent of China is a bit weird. This\nonly caused outrage in the US, where political correctnes seems a national\npolitical passtime; who can be offended the fastest and most often? Win TV\ntime as a politician!\n\nHere is the _exact_ same ad in Italy, but reversed:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dntfod-\nCbo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dntfod-Cbo)\n\nNo one bats an eye.\n\nThe is a big problem in China regarding racism, mostly because of the simple\nfact they aren't multicultaral like the West; it's just iganorance really.\n\n~~~\nyostrovs\nNot exactly reversed. A clean Chinese guy never comes out of the laundry. One\nadditional note: you will not see a gender reversal for these ads, where a men\ngets himself a more attractive girl. At least in the West.\n\n------\nmothsonasloth\nI think I posted this before but my old university buddy who's from Zambia,\njokes with me that the Chinese are colonization 2.0\n\nThe Chinese government have no scruples which is why they are out-competing\nWestern companies and governments in Africa, who are tied behind political and\nmoral restrictions. Also the Chinese have a major resource in man power which\nthey can deploy anywhere for cheap.\n\n~~~\nnabla9\nGlobalization and colonization have been always linked and globalization\nusually starts with either with colonization or something that looks like it.\nAdam Smith himself argued that the discovery of the Americas by Christopher\nColumbus accelerated the process of globalisation [1] (without using the word\nglobalisation).\n\nWhen Chines build roads to extract resources with questionable intent, those\nroads and electric grids are free for all and not all traffic goes to China.\nSome even question the net value of Chinese efforts for the Chinese.\n\n[1]: [https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/23/when-\ndid-...](https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/23/when-did-\nglobalisation-start)\n\n------\nleongrado\nFor the most part, Chinese in China don't have a culture of condemning racism\nlike the US or other western nations. As apparent in the video, he isn't even\nashamed of being called racist.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway0923\nThat’s because China’s racism is more about stereotypes and less about\nphysical KKK type violence.\n\nIf there was violence, it would definitely be condemned.\n\nThe best analogy I can think of is the current Harvard Affirmative Action\nlawsuit. There are people who don’t feel they are racist/biased, but somehow\njustify to themselves that having a quota on Asian American students is fine.\n\n~~~\n50656E6973\nGoogle \"uighur muslims china\", and you will see its much more \"physical\" than\nyou claim\n\n------\nperseusprime11\nThe picture in this tweet is very timely and appropriate to this post.\n\n[https://mobile.twitter.com/effyzhangmy/status/10916881464487...](https://mobile.twitter.com/effyzhangmy/status/1091688146448732160)\n\n~~~\nperseusprime11\nIf you think this picture is photoshopped, it's not. Check out the video:\n[http://v.ifeng.com/dyn/m/video/32078215/index.shtml](http://v.ifeng.com/dyn/m/video/32078215/index.shtml)\n\n------\niguy\nCan anyone knowledgeable comment on the depth of Kenya's internal divisions?\n\nFrom the NYT's perspective clearly Kenya is racially uniform, but I know that\nthere was significant political violence at recent elections, to do with which\ntribe or language group candidates or parties represented. Do such\ndistinctions matter only at voting time, or do they matter in everyday life\ntoo... like whether X landlords will be happy to rent to Y people, or employ\nZ? Can such distinctions be perceived immediately on the street (e.g. from\naccent) or only once you know someone's surname, or something?\n\n~~~\nmmczaplinski\nA westerner who used to live in Kenya for about 6 months. The tribal divisions\nare very much present in Kenya. You can tell the tribe that someone belongs to\nby their surname and to a lesser extent by physical appearance.\n\nPeople are definitely more happy to hire others from their own tribe or rent\nrooms to them but it's more just nepotism than outright racism, at least in\nlarger cities.\n\nThe violence that happened during the last elections was also driven mostly by\npolitical factors first, rather than race. It just so happens that the\npresident Kenyatta and the political elites of Kenya come mostly from the\nKikuyu tribe, which then leads to tensions along tribal lines.\n\nIn my experience, the tribal divisions are more pronounced in the countryside.\nUntil recently, in some parts of the country there has been open conflict\nbetween tribes, e.g between Turkana and Samburu in the north. I have witnessed\nnumerous times the Samburu use racial slurs to describe the Turkana and vice\nversa.\n\n~~~\niguy\nThanks, that's helpful.\n\n------\nswervematchbook\nThis is almost certainly going to be an unpopular view but when you view the\nChinese behaviour through the lens of a Western view of the world, you are\ninsensitive to the fact that modern Chinese culture has a really different\nstarting point, the nation is mostly ethnically homogenous and was not really\ninvolved in the enslavement.\n\nI'm not necessarily out to defend the behaviour of this person - I think they\nwere pretty callous, and some of the other practices also seem pretty\nhorrendous but I also think some of the offence readers of this article may\ntake come from projecting our own personal views onto the behaviour of others,\nignorant of the different origins and cultural contexts of the offender.\n\nWhen slurs such as referring to people as monkeys are used by the Chinese,\nthey are not steeped with the kind of hatred and historical context when\nwielded by someone from the West.\n\n\\---That doesn't make it any less hurtful or insensitive---\n\nThat said, it also doesn't necessarily carry the same intent as it may outside\nof China. Comparison with animals is far more normalized and entrenched in\nculture: for instance, everyone is assigned a zodiac by their birth month and\nthe Monkey King is a household mythological hero.\n\n------\nrobertwalsh0\nThis article made me think of a Chinese film called ‘The Wolf Warrior 2’ where\nthe benevolent Chinese save an unnamed African country. I believe it’s one of\nthe highest grossing Chinese films ever and might shed some light on Chinese\nattitudes toward Africa/Africans.\n\nIt feels like ‘Starship Troopers’ level propaganda and is completely straight\nfaced.\n\nThe villagers constantly thank the Chinese hero for his over-the-tip acts of\nbravery, they celebrate when he wins local drinking contests, etc.\n\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Warrior_2](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Warrior_2)\n\n------\n0max\nIt doesn't help that in China down to Southeast Asia, the tanner your skin is,\nthe less respect you get. That being that those who are more tan are people\nwho work fields historically.\n\n------\namaccuish\nWhy does the nytimes offer translations into Chinese? I've never seen that for\narticles to do with Russia for example?\n\n~~~\nardy42\n> Why does the nytimes offer translations into Chinese? I've never seen that\n> for articles to do with Russia for example?\n\nI think it started because they tried to start a Chinese edition for the PRC,\nbut that was eventually blocked after they published a story the communists\ndidn't like.\n\nMaybe continuing to pay for translations is not too expensive in the grand\nscheme of things, and keeps them well-positioned (with mind-share and the\nlike) if there's ever a thaw and they're unblocked.\n\n------\nUser23\nThe ongoing Chinese colonization of Africa is one of the biggest stories the\nwestern news media has absolutely no interest in reporting.\n\n~~~\nLordarminius\n_The ongoing Chinese colonization of Africa is one of the biggest stories the\nwestern news media has absolutely no interest in reporting._\n\nPerhaps because the Chinese are not (being allowed) to 'colonize Africa'. They\nmay have a large presence in East Africa but are of limited significance\nelsewhere in the continent.\n\n~~~\ndjtriptych\nYeah like every African colonizer ever. What is your point? Colonization\ndoesn't happen in continent-sized chunks.\n\n------\nbeerlord\nAnd here it is from the Chinese perspective:\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a-QpyF7rNc&t=3512s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a-QpyF7rNc&t=3512s)\n\n~~~\ndm3730\nI watched the video. It shows a Chinese site manager having a confusing\ninteraction with several African workers. He then expresses somewhat racist\nviews to the camera, eg: all Africans are well built because it is a survival\nof the fittest environment. But I could not follow what you meant by the\nChinese perspective. Could you elaborate?\n\n~~~\nBakary\nI do recommend watching the documentary in its entirety but there's also an\ninterview with the director that addresses some of the themes in this thread.\n\n[https://filmmakermagazine.com/35197-empire-of-dust-an-\ninterv...](https://filmmakermagazine.com/35197-empire-of-dust-an-interview-\nwith-bram-van-paesschen/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA simplified variant of Tetris in fewer than 140 bytes of JavaScript - tilt\nhttps://gist.github.com/aemkei/1672254\n======\nxigency\nHow many bytes would it take to make the whole game?\n\n~~~\nknodi123\nI don't know the precise answer, but I can tell you the lower bound\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHire me and pay what feels right - manuganji\nhttp://manuganji.com\n\n======\nmanuganji\nI'm running an experiment in Gift Economy. At the end of each project\nmilestone, you can pay me whatever feels right for you.\n\n~~~\nckluis\nI hope no one abuses you.\n\n~~~\nmanuganji\nThanks for the concern! I'm aware of this risk. :)\n\n~~~\nckluis\nSo serious question, what if someone offers you equity instead of cash? I\ndidn’t look carefully, but I’m not sure you specified any payment terms.\n\n~~~\nmanuganji\nAt the moment, I have to prioritize cash over equity. I also think its a\nbetter validation.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Somali Pirates' Business Model - robg\nhttp://www.undispatch.com/somali-pirates-buisiness-model\n======\nIgorPartola\nAnybody here read Heinlein's \"Citizen of the Galaxy\"? To stop think kind of a\nbusiness, you make it unprofitable. The question is \"how?\"\n\n~~~\nankeshk\nThats actually a very good question. I can think of a few ways to make\npirating unprofitable. Or dangerous. But unfortunately can't think of any non-\nviolent way.\n\n* Equip all the ships with armament. The pirate teams are small in size. So hopefully, the investment in arms wouldn't be a lot to fight them off.\n\n* Turn the table. Offer an insane \"Reward\" to anyone who captures one of the local elders - the people who give anchoring permission.\n\n~~~\nhkuo\nNot sure either of those would work.\n\nI don't think companies would want to spend money for weapons, nor the cost of\ntraining employees to use them, nor the liability of what happens if they are\nused and any ensuing results. They want the police or government to simply\ntake care of it, and they spend no money at all. Unless that happens, it's\nprobably less cost to simply accept piracy as a cost of busienss.\n\nFor the reward to capture or off a local elder, that just opens up a spot for\nanother person to fill in.\n\n~~~\nsstrudeau\nA friend's brother pilots a freighters. They always have a couple of armed\nGurkha's (Nepalese mercenaries) on board. So some companies are willing to pay\nfor armed security for their ships; but a few armed ships is clearly an\ninsufficient deterrent to the entire enterprise of piracy.\n\n~~~\nkhafra\nIt depends on who has a larger profit margin, the shipping companies or the\npirates. If a random 5% of freighters are armed heavily enough to destroy or\ncapture a pirate vessel, the pirates have to be making enough profit for a\ntotal loss in 1 of 20 raids to be worth it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Techendo - A Tech Show - lowglow\n\nHi Everyone,<p>I've started a tech show called Techendo. It's just some startup guys from YC/Elsewhere that will be talking about things going on in the industry. It will be shot every other week and try to be as entertaining as possible while talking about tech and startup life.<p>I'd love to spotlight startups/projects, have guests on the show, and shoot some skits. It's still a work in progress, so if you want to help out or just give feedback, it would be great to have any help I can get.<p>Also, if you have topics you want us to talk about let me know.<p>Thanks for your help HN.<p>Check out our first episode here: \nTechendo Episode 1 - Secret of the Droin \nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_JPD96XOPI\n======\nargonaut\nHonestly... you guys lost me in the first few minutes. It's great you guys\nwere having a good time and laughing and stumbling around (and that's probably\nwhy you did this video - to have a good time), but it didn't translate into\nsomething particularly watchable. The editing was also kind of jarring.\n\n~~~\nlowglow\nYou're right, we did this to have a good time and talk about some things that\nwe wanted to talk about. We'll get better as time goes on. Sorry about the\nediting, that was all my fault. I'm still learning what works and what\ndoesn't. Happy you checked us out. Let me know if you have anymore feedback\nyou'd like to share. Thanks. :)\n\n------\nlowglow\nClickable:\n[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_JPD96XOPI&t=0m0s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_JPD96XOPI&t=0m0s)\n\n------\njayzalowitz\nThis... Is... awesome.\n\n~~~\nlowglow\nThanks. :) We'll get better. It's a lot tougher than I thought to\norganize/shoot/edit a show like this.\n\n------\ntagabek\nWhat camera equipment are you using?\n\n~~~\nlowglow\nCanon Vixia HF S20:\n[http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/camcorders/hi...](http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/camcorders/high_definition_camcorders/vixia_hf_s20)\n\nCanon Vixia HF10:\n[http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/camcorders/fl...](http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/camcorders/flash_memory_camcorders/vixia_hf10)\n\nand the macbook pro built-in camera for the terrible third shot.\n\nThe audio is recorded with a Rode NTK Microphone:\n<http://www.rodemic.com/mics/ntk>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLinux 5.2 released: list of changes - diegocg\nhttps://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_5.2\n======\nyjftsjthsd-h\n> Ext4 has gained support for case-insensitive name lookups\n\nWell that's neat. I wonder how it'll be exposed to userspace; mount option,\nmaybe?\n\n~~~\nbluewres\nThis seems to explain how it works:\n[https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-\nguide/ext4.html...](https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-\nguide/ext4.html#case-insensitive-file-name-lookups)\n\n~~~\nyjftsjthsd-h\nThanks!\n\n> The case-insensitive file name lookup feature is supported on a per-\n> directory basis, allowing the user to mix case-insensitive and case-\n> sensitive directories in the same filesystem. It is enabled by flipping the\n> +F inode attribute of an empty directory.\n\nThat's nicer than how Darwin handles it in that it doesn't force you to use it\nfor the entire file system, although I'd be willing to bet this exposes some\ninteresting bugs in applications, and I wonder if mixing case sensitivity\ninside a filesystem doesn't make them even more interesting to deal with.\n\n------\nJahak\nHooray\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFloating Point Visually Explained - alxmdev\nhttp://fabiensanglard.net/floating_point_visually_explained/\n======\nVeedrac\nLet's represent the number 42,643,192, or 10100010101010111011111000₂, in\ndifferent \"floating point\" representations.\n\nScientific notation with 5 significant figures:\n\n    \n    \n        4.2643 × 10⁷\n    \n\nScientific notation in base 2 with 17 significant binary figures:\n\n    \n    \n        1.0100010101010111₂ × 2²⁵\n    \n\nLet's pack this in a fixed-length datatype. Note that 011001₂ is the binary\nencoding of 25.\n\n    \n    \n        1 0100010101010111 011001\n        1     mantissa      exp.\n    \n\nThis doesn't suffice because\n\na. We're wasting a bit on the leading 1.\n\nb. We want to support negative values.\n\nc. We want to support negative exponents.\n\nd. It would be nice if values of the same sign sorted by their representation.\n\nThe leading 1 can be dropped and replaced with a sign bit (0 for \"+\", 1 for\n\"-\"). The exponent can have 100000₂ subtracted from it, so 011001₂ represents\n25-32, or -7, and 111001₂ represents 25. Sorting can be handled by putting the\nexponent before the mantissa.\n\nThus we get to a traditional floating point representation.\n\n    \n    \n        0 111001 0100010101010111\n        ±  exp.      mantissa\n    \n\nReal floating point has a little more on top (infinities, standardised field\nsizes, etc.) but is fundamentally the same.\n\n~~~\nkibwen\n_> Sorting can be handled by putting the exponent before the mantissa._\n\nDon't denormal numbers prevent simply sorting this way? I could use a diagram\nlike the OP's to remind myself how they work...\n\n~~~\ncesarb\nUsing the article's \"window\" analogy: denormals are in the smallest \"window\",\nso the sort order between the \"windows\" (exponents) is kept. Their special\nproperty is that they don't have the implicit one to the left of the point\n(it's an implicit zero instead); the order within the mantissa is still kept.\n\nThat is:\n\n    \n    \n        0 000000 0100010101010111\n        ±  exp.      mantissa\n    \n\nHere, the value is 0.0100010101010111₂ × 2^-30 (I hope I calculated the\nexponent correctly)\n\nAs a bonus, the zero value comes naturally in this approach: it's a denormal\nwith a mantissa of zero. Without denormals, the implicit one would get in the\nway.\n\n------\nkehrlann\nBest simple explanation I've seen so far.\n\nI highly recommend Fabien's Game Engine Black Book. I'm halfway through it,\nand it's really fun. I've only been a software dev for 6 years, so looking at\nhow things could be hacked around in the 90s to squeeze every drop of\nperformance out of very constrained devices is fascinating.\n\n~~~\ns17n\nI dunno all this talk of \"windows\" and \"buckets\" etc doesn't seem particularly\nsimple to me.\n\n~~~\nkehrlann\nI guess I'm not math-y enough so that I intuitively understand the simple math\nformula.\n\nOn the other hand, I like his window image : e.g. I understand better how, the\nfurther you get from 0, the more your precision goes down, because \"bigger\nwindows, divided in the same number of buckets\".\n\n~~~\nconistonwater\nSo the question is: if you feel like you don't get the math formula, but you\nget the windows-and-buckets explanation of it, is it still possible that your\nunderstanding doesn't match the true underlying concept? Because that is the\npitfall with a lot of intuitive explanations, that unless you are sure that\nthe explanations are equivalent to the true thing, you might end up\nunderstanding an idea that is close but slightly off.\n\nSo a puzzle: if two positive numbers in exactly the same window are\nsubtracted, what is the worst-case rounding error you can get in the result?\n\n~~~\nsharpneli\nError relative to the original numbers or to the result?\n\n------\nmdip\n> People who really wanted an hardware floating point unit in 1991 could buy\n> one. The only people who could possibly want one back then would have been\n> scientists (as per Intel understanding of the market). They were marketed as\n> \"Math CoProcessor\". Performance were average and price was outrageous (200\n> USD in 1993 equivalent to 350 USD in 2016.). As a result, sales were\n> mediocre.\n\nActually, that's only _partly_ true. My father owned a company that outfitted\nlarge manufacturing shops (MI company, you can imagine who his customers\nwere). As a result, he used AutoCAD. The version of AutoCAD he used had a hard\nrequirement on the so-called \"Math Co-processor\", so he ended up having to\npurchase one and install it himself. That was my first taste of taking a\ncomputer apart and upgrading it and I credit that small move with my becoming\ninterested in building PCs, which led to my dad and I starting a business in\nthe 90s doing that for individuals and businesses. There were definitely more\nreasons for that kind of add-on than just scientific fields; anyone in the\ncomputer aided drafting world at that time needed one as well.\n\n~~~\nsnaky\nThat's why there was math coprocessor software emulator. It worked fine on\n386SX.\n\n------\njordigh\nOkay, fine, I agree that sometimes mathematical notation is bad and we are all\ncomputer people here, not math people, so we get really scared of mathematical\nnotation.\n\nBut is (-1)^S 1.M 2^(E-127) so bad that it required a whole blog post to\nexplain it? Except for the \"1.M\" pseudo-notation to explain the mantissa with\nthe implicit on bit, all of those symbols are found in most programming\nlanguages we use.\n\nI don't think the value of the blog post was explaining the notation. We all\nknew what operations to perform when we saw it. The value seems to lie more in\nthinking of the exponent as the offset on the real line and the mantissa as a\ncertain window inside that offset.\n\nPersonally, though, this still doesn't seem like a huge, deep insight to me,\nbut maybe I'm just way too used to floating point and have forgotten how hard\nit was to learn this. I did learn about mantissa, exponents, and even learned\nhow to use a log table in high school, but maybe I'm just old and had an\nunusual high school experience.\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\n> _But is (-1)^S 1.M 2^(E-127) so bad that it required a whole blog post to\n> explain it?_\n\nWell, for one the expression doesn't tell us anything, could as well describe\nalien gravity -- even if we know math. You still need to explain what S, M,\nand E are used for to understand it.\n\n~~~\npharrington\nS is sign. M is mantissa. E is exponent.\n\nThe only term there you might not remember from high school math is mantissa,\nand a search engine will precisely explain that in two sentences, in terms you\ndo remember from high school math.\n\n~~~\nkllrnohj\n> S is sign. M is mantissa. E is exponent.\n\nThat doesn't actually get you any closer to knowing what the formula means,\nthough. You need to also define that M is unsigned & 23 bits and E is unsigned\n& 8 bits. And that alone still doesn't get across the resulting _limitations_\nlike that precision reduces by half every time the exponent bumps. Sure you\ncan reason about it if you devote the brainpower to applying the limitations\nto the formula, but it's not explained by the formula itself.\n\n~~~\npharrington\nYes, jordigh did post, mistakenly or deliberately, an incomplete explanation\nof IEEE754 single precision floats. A number line with alternative labels\nshowing an approximate mantissa and exponent for a given float is certainly\none possible way to _explain_ the application of the spec, but obviously, not\nonly does it give less information than the specification, it is not obvious\nthat it is a generally better explanatory tool. For example, it certainly\nhelps Fabien, I assume it helps you and coldtea, but it leaves me completely\nbewildered (I know _what_ it says, but on it's own, I'm completely lost as to\n_why_ ).\n\nedit: jordigh, not coldtea, first brought up the formula in his argument\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\n> _not only does it give less information than the specification_\n\nThat's generally considered a plus (if not a sine qua non) for a simplified\nexplanation, and the larger the specification, the bigger plus.\n\nElse, one might as well read the 100s of pages of specs.\n\n~~~\npharrington\n[https://www.csee.umbc.edu/~tsimo1/CMSC455/IEEE-754-2008.pdf](https://www.csee.umbc.edu/~tsimo1/CMSC455/IEEE-754-2008.pdf)\n\n------\ndragontamer\nHere's everything you need to know about Floating Point in as shortly as I can\nwrite it.\n\n1\\. Floating points are simply \"Binary Scientific notation\". The speed of\nlight is 2.98E8... which in \"normal form\" is written 298,000,000. An IEEE 754\nSingle has 8-bits for the exponent (E8 in the speed of light), and 24-bits for\nthe mantissa (the 2.98 part). There's some complicated stuff like offset\nshifting here, but this is the \"core idea\" of floating point.\n\n2\\. \"Rounding\" is forced to happen in Floating Point whenever \"information\ndrops off\" the far side of the mantissa. The mantissa is only 24-bits long,\nand many numbers (such as .1) require an infinite number of bits to represent!\nAs such, this \"rounding error\" builds up _exponentially_ the more operations\nyou perform.\n\n3\\. Subtraction (cancellation error) is the biggest single source of error and\nthe one that needs to be most studied. \"Subtraction\" can occur when a positive\nand negative number is added together.\n\n4\\. Because of this error (and all errors!), Floating point operations are NOT\nassociative. (A + B) + C gives a different value than A + (B + C). The\ncommutative property remains for multiplication and addition (A+B == B+A). If\nyou require \"bit-perfect\" and consistent floating-point simulations, you MUST\ntake into account the order of all operations, even simple addition and\nmultiplication.\n\nFor example: Try \"0.1 + 0.7 + 1\" vs \"1 + 0.1 + .7\" in Python, and you'll see\nthat these to orderings lead to different results.\n\n\\---------------\n\nOnce you fully know and understand these 4 facts, then everything else is just\nicing on the cake. For example to prevent \"cancellation error\" (#3), you can\nsort the numbers by magnitude, and then add them up from smallest magnitude to\nlargest magnitude.\n\n~~~\nseattleeng\nThis is an excellent short list of the main points I learned as an undergrad,\nand what I've retained today. One other point is that 64 bit floating points\n(aka doubles) really are about double the precision of 32 bit floating points,\nin terms of significant digits. An interesting implementation detail is that\nthey spend a higher fraction of their \"bit budget\" on the mantissa to get this\n(52 out of 64 bits, vs 23 out of 32).\n\n------\nhaberman\nI like the \"window/offset\" concept. I wrote an extended blog article with yet\ndifferent visual aids: [http://blog.reverberate.org/2014/09/what-every-\ncomputer-prog...](http://blog.reverberate.org/2014/09/what-every-computer-\nprogrammer-should.html)\n\n~~~\nxkpd3\nExcellent post. I like it better then the one posted here.\n\n------\nconistonwater\nI really wish he didn't make [0,1] one of the windows, because in floating\npoint arithmetic the range [0,1] contains approximately as many floating point\nnumbers (a billion or so in Float32) as the range [1,∞). There are \"windows\"\n[2^k,2^(k+1)] for positive _as well as negative_ k. Just creates unnecessary\nscope for further confusion.\n\n~~~\nDiThi\nLooks like he corrected it.\n\n~~~\niammyIP\nIn 32 bit float, about 50% of the possible values (no denormals) fall between\n-0.5 and 0.5 (~2 000 000 000), the space on each side between 0.5 and 1 adds\nonly about 80 million new values.\n\n------\ncesarb\nIMO, the best way to explain floating point is to play with a tiny float. With\nan 8-bit float (1 bit sign, 4 bits exponent, 3 bits mantissa, exponent bias\n7), there are only 256 possible values. One can write by hand a table with the\ncorresponding value for each of the 256 possibilities, and get a feel to how\nit really works.\n\n(I got the 1+4+3 from\n[http://www.toves.org/books/float/](http://www.toves.org/books/float/), I\ndon't know if it's the best allocation for the bits; but for didactic\npurposes, it works.)\n\n------\nmakmanalp\n> Since floating point units were so slow, why did the C language end up with\n> float and double types ? After all, the machine used to invent the language\n> (PDP-11) did not have a floating point unit! The manufacturer (DEC) had\n> promised to Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson the next model would have one.\n> Being astronomy enthusiasts they decided to add those two types to their\n> language.\n\nWait, what was the alternative? No floats? How the heck would people calculate\nthings with only integers?\n\nedit: AFAIK bignums are even slower, and fixed-point accumulates error like\ncrazy\n\n~~~\nphotojosh\nEmbedded developer here, using 8-bit microcontrollers, so _all_ our\ncalculations are done in fixed-point/integers.\n\nHere's a chunk of real code that converts results from the analog-digital\nconverter to appropriate units. A lot of precalculated constants and things\nlike using shifts instead of division as much as possible.\n\n    \n    \n        // - motor current from ACS723 (2.5V is 0A, +/- 400mV/A)\n        ADC_SET_MUX(motor_current_in_adc);\n        ADC_START();\n        while (ADC_RUNNING()) {}\n        uint8_t result_current = ADCH;\n        // result(val) * 5V/256(val) * 1000mA/0.4V => result*48.828 = current in ma\n        // e.g. 5A -> 4.5V out = 230, less 2.5V (128) = 102\n        // 102 * 48.828125 = 4980 mA\n        // for max precision, max multiplier = 32678/128 = 255, \n        // use (value * (48.828 << 2)) >> 2. -> 195\n        // value_ma = (result_adc * 195) >> 2\n        current_ma = (((int16_t)(result_current) -127) * 195) >> 2;\n        \n        // - motor output speed feedback signal (filtered PWM, 16% (1/6.1) of actual value, so 5V in == 30.5V)\n        ADC_SET_MUX(motor_speed_fb_adc);\n        ADC_START();\n        while (ADC_RUNNING()) {}\n        uint8_t result_speed = ADCH;\n        // result(val) * 6.1 = actual speed setting\n        // result / 256 * 6100 = actual in mV\n        int16_t speed_mv = (uint16_t) result_speed * 119;\n        \n        #if DEBUG\n            // calculate target speed mv\n            uint16_t output_speed_mv = ((uint16_t) motor_current_speed * 195) >> 2;\n        #endif\n\n~~~\nmakmanalp\nThis is exactly what I was imagining! x>>2 rather than x/2\\. Brilliant,\nthanks.\n\n~~~\nRetra\nx >> 2 replaces x/4.\n\n~~~\nmakmanalp\nOops, you're absolutely right.\n\n------\njokoon\nImagine a ruler with all floating point values on it, each time the mantissa\ncomes at its maximum, you increase the exponent, so the space between farther\nfloat values doubles.\n\nThe number of mantissa values being constant for each exponent value, the\nexponent describes some kind of \"zoom level\".\n\nFloat values on a ruler would sort of looks like this:\n\n    \n    \n       ... x x x x   x   x   x   x   x   x...\n                  ^ exponent increases, spacings are doubled\n\n------\ncoldtea\nI see how some people just get the math, but I don't see why programmers here\nsay they find it difficult to understand the window / offset explanation the\narticle gives.\n\nA \"window\" is a common programming term for a range between two values.\n\nAn \"offset\" is a common term for where a value falls after a starting point.\n\nIn simpler decimal and equidistant terms, the idea is to split a range of\nvalues in windows, divide each window in N values, and store an FP number by\nstoring which window and which index inside the window (0 to N) it falls.\n\nThe FP scheme actually uses powers of 2 instead of equal distant windows (so\nthe granularity becomes coarser as the numbers become bigger) but the\nprinciple is the same.\n\n~~~\nMichielvv\nI'm guessing because if you put those words together, you automatically assume\nthe offset means the position of the window. It's clear enough with the\nillustration, but using terms that are in very common use for other concepts\ncan make it confusing at the first glance.\n\nAlso the window explanation hides the fact that it's able to represent really\nsmall numbers. (graph implies that 0-1 is the smallest window)\n\n~~~\nsqueaky-clean\nSmaller is an ambiguous term when it comes to numbers. Is it the lesser value?\nOr is it the value nearest to 0? It depends on the context.\n\nEither way, they cover the sign bit, and the brackets on the diagram show the\ngraphs are not using the sign, just exponent and mantissa. So I'd assume the\nsame principles stand but for 0 to -1, -1- to -2, and so on.\n\n~~~\nMichielvv\nI mean smaller as in closer to zero as in exponent lower than 127. That part\nis obvious in the formula, but not from the graphs.\n\nThe interesting part of the explanation is that it shows very clearly the\neffect of the 1.M in the formula. Unfortunately it then does not answer the\nresulting question: how is zero represented. (\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_zero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_zero)\ndoes a pretty good job at that though)\n\n------\nuserbinator\nI think the example values at\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minifloat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minifloat)\nare most useful for intuitively understanding how floating point works ---\nespecially the \"all values\" table, which shows how the numbers are spaced by\n1s, then 2s, then 4s, etc. meaning the same number of values can represent a\nlarger range of magnitudes, but sacrificing precision in the process.\n\n------\nmaurits\nObligatory: What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point\nArithmetic [1] (pdf)\n\n[1]:\n[http://www.itu.dk/~sestoft/bachelor/IEEE754_article.pdf](http://www.itu.dk/~sestoft/bachelor/IEEE754_article.pdf)\n\n------\ns17n\nA much easier and better way to understand floating point is to just do it in\nbase 10.\n\n~~~\nkehrlann\nOoooh I see. I like it, thanks !\n\n------\nBinaryBullet\nSee also: An interactive floating point visualization:\n[https://evanw.github.io/float-toy/](https://evanw.github.io/float-toy/)\n\n------\noxide\nAs a complete layman with only a cursory knowledge of programming, as well as\na complete lack of math skills above Algebra 2, (I didn't even complete that,\ntbh, once they threw graphing into the equation. I did get slope-intercept\nform down, but that's it.)\n\nI ended up finding this easier to understand than I expected, and a great\nread.\n\nI love explanations like these, with a visual breakdown. It really helps it\n\"click.\"\n\nas long as I glazed over the math formulas and didn't let the numbers\noverwhelm me.\n\nThis is what I took away: the exponent \"reaches\" out to the max value of the\n[0,1] [2,4] etc, and the number represented tends to be like 51-53% of the way\ndown the line of the mantissa.\n\nIt \"clicked\" a bit for me, see? Am I way off?\n\nThis is the way I always learned math the best in school, an alternate\nexplanation that helps it \"click.\"\n\nVery good explanation, from my point of view, of how floating point numbers\nwork and what they even are.\n\nThat's a nice feeling for someone like me who is pretty bad at math and finds\nformulas like the one shown in the article to be, frankly, indecipherable.\n\nBut now I (sort of) understand how floating point numbers work, (sort of) what\nthey are, why they are important, and what role they play.\n\nCould I program anything using one? No. But, I could learn someday, and\nexplanations like these give me some hope that I just might be able to learn a\nprogramming language if I put the effort in. That I could learn the math\nrequired of me, even!\n\n------\njavajosh\nWhy did they fix the bit-width for the mantissa and exponent? It would be nice\nto have more bits for the mantissa when you are near 1, and then ignore the\nmantissa entirely when you're dealing with enormous exponents, and very far\nfrom one. Granted, there would be some overhead (e.g. a 3-bit field describing\nthe exponent length, or something) but it would be a useful data-structure.\n\n~~~\ndnautics\nYou may like: [https://youtu.be/aP0Y1uAA-2Y](https://youtu.be/aP0Y1uAA-2Y)\n\nIt turns out the math is slightly harder but it's faster than IEEE FP in\nhardware, probably because of less conditionals in the spec.\n\nThere is better performance in terms of numerical accuracy at the cost of\nsubstantially more difficult error analysis.\n\nDisclaimer: I'm in the video.\n\n------\ndsego\n> Instead of Exponent, think of a Window between two consecutive power of two\n> integers.\n\nI know what an exponent is, or if you want \"order of magnitude\". Sorry, but \"A\nwindow between two consecutive power of two integers\" doesn't make it easier\nto think about.\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\nIt does for others, who deal with windows and buckets in programming every\nday.\n\n~~~\ndsego\nwindow washers?\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\nI loled.\n\nBut they wouldn't qualify for the \"in programming\" part.\n\n------\nagumonkey\nThe last bits of trivia are very nice.\n\nThe x87 coprocessor makes me wonder about days were each chip changed you\nsystem. It was such a different mindset that videogame consoles had parallel\nroutes between the board and the cartridge themselves to allow hardware\nextension per game.\n\n------\ntriangleman\n>I wanted to vividly demonstrate how much of a handicap it was to work without\nfloating points.\n\nSo, did he manage to demonstrate that in the book? Because the page linked\nhere, while explaining how floating points are represented in memory, does not\nexplain how computers perform operations on them, or what purpose does a FPU\nserve (how does it differ from an ALU).\n\n------\nendorphone\n[https://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2017/04/11/floating-\npoint-...](https://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2017/04/11/floating-point-\nnumbers-an-infinite-number-of-mathematicians-enter-a-bar/)\n\n------\npiyush_soni\nDoes anyone have an alternate link, for some strange reason this link appears\nto be blocked at my work.\n\n------\npmelendez\nOff topic: The response of dragontamer is one example about why down votes\nalone are not enough. It was downvoted to the dead level and now nobody can\nreply to it. But also nobody gave the reason why what he was saying is\nincorrect.\n\n~~~\ngumby\nI agree. I read HN with dead comments not suppressed and I estimate about 50%\nof the time I consider them legit. Not always what I agree with, but sometimes\nI even want to reply to them.\n\n~~~\nnoxToken\nIf you think a dead comment should be seen by the community, vouch for it.\nIt's a way for the community to help moderate the discussion by allowing\nhabitual offenders to still input relevant discussion.\n\n~~~\ngumby\nOnce it's marked dead (and not simply downvoted to 0) I don't see a way to\nupvote it back to life nor a way to reply to it. Perhaps other people do.\nOtherwise I would definitely do so!\n\n~~~\ncesarb\nTry clicking on the time (\"6 hours ago\") to open the comment by itself, for me\nthat makes the \"vouch\" option appear.\n\n~~~\ngumby\nThanks, I’ll do that!\n\n------\nvxNsr\nI was hoping for something akin to a xkcd or SMBC comic, this isn't really\nmuch better than what my asm prof said when he explained it for MIPS\nprogramming. Maybe it's because I don't get what he means by offset and\nwindow, but this wasn't really that helpful.\n\n~~~\nstilist\nThe _window_ limits the value the offset can represent -- minimum and maximum\nbounds. The window doubles each time you increment it since it's binary /\npower-of-two (0, 1, 2, 4, 8, …).\n\nWithin any given window there are 2^23 possible values. If you imagine those\nvalues as an array, the _offset_ is the array index.\n\nSo in the example of 3.14, the window is [2, 4] since that's the power-of-two\npair that contains the value. The offset is (value - minimum) / (maximum -\nminimum) = 0.57, which you multiply by 2^23 to get the array index.\n\nBecause the window doubles each time it's incremented, as the window gets\nbigger you lose precision -- in his example, [0, 1] gives 15 decimal places\nbut [2048, 4096] only gives 4 decimal places.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway2016a\nThank you. I am certain the article said that somewhere but that didn't click\nuntil your explanation.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCalifornia poised to implement first electronic license plates - suprgeek\nhttp://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/california-poised-to-implement-nations-first-electronic-license-plate-program\n\n======\nbyoung2\nWould an electronic license plate still draw power when the vehicle is parked?\nThat could be a problem if it drains your battery. Also, wouldn't the car need\nto be altered to run power to the outside of the vehicle? Also, what is to\nstop hacking? It is more difficult to swap out physical license plates\nquickly, but I can imagine bootleg electronic ones that allow electronic\nswapping on the fly, e.g. display the fake one while speeding.\n\n~~~\nlutusp\n> Would an electronic license plate still draw power when the vehicle is\n> parked?\n\nNo, it's like an RFID tag. It gets its power from the reader that queries it.\n\n~~~\nbyoung2\nSo it can't be seen from a distance when parked...sounds like a big drawback.\n\n------\nTheLoneWolfling\nSo... What happens if/when signals are jammed/spoofed?\n\nAlso, if indeed it is a changing display, it requires power to do so. What\nabout draining batteries caused by that? Not to mention what about small\nmotercycles, that don't always have a 12v electrical system, if they have one\nat all?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nColour Science for Python - kelsolaar\nhttp://colour-science.org/\n\n======\nkelsolaar\nWe have an introductory tutorial ([http://colour-\nscience.org/tutorial.php](http://colour-science.org/tutorial.php)) showcasing\nsome features of the API and we have started some IPython Notebooks\n([http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/colour-science/colour-\nipy...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/colour-science/colour-\nipython/blob/master/notebooks/colour.ipynb)) to cover it deeply along with the\ntheoretical aspect.\n\n~~~\nfoolrush\nWonderful work.\n\nAny chance of a C or C++ implementation?\n\n~~~\njacobolus\nThere are already C/C++ implementations of most of this, and Matlab\nimplementations, if you go hunting around.\n\nIf there’s something specific you need, some of the algorithms have some\nfiddly parts, but there’s not too much that’s fundamentally difficult to\nimplement in any of them. Any particular part should only take a day or two to\nbuild for some one-off use case.\n\n------\ngtaylor\nShameless plug for python-colormath, which has been cooking since about 2008:\n[http://python-colormath.readthedocs.org/](http://python-\ncolormath.readthedocs.org/)\n\nHas a lot of the same conversions/comparisons/color spaces, excellent test\ncoverage, and in my own biased opinion, pretty good documentation.\n\n------\nidunning\nSee also the fantastic Color.jl, a Julia package with similar functionality.\nMakes very pretty IJulia notebooks! More info at\n[https://github.com/JuliaLang/Color.jl](https://github.com/JuliaLang/Color.jl)\nor just run Pkg.add(\"Color\") at your Julia REPL.\n\n~~~\nStefanKarpinski\nI'd be curious about a comparison of the capabilities and approaches of these\ntwo libraries. Color.jl got to be quite comprehensive almost by accident.\n\n~~~\nkelsolaar\nColor.jl is excellent! They have a few stuff we don't support like DIN99\ncolourspace related computations and colour deficiency support, on an other\nhand I think we have one of the largest dataset around, the features pages\nwill give you a nice overview: [http://colour-\nscience.org/features.php](http://colour-science.org/features.php)\n\n------\nblt\n\n        import colour as color\n\n~~~\nkelsolaar\nSee my comment for the reason why it was named \"colour\":\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261668)\n\n------\nAceJohnny2\nI've been peripherally interested in colo[u]r science for a while, and as a\nsoftware guy was amazed to discover the complexities of accurately describing\nand computing color across a not-so-wide range of devices (my LCD screen, your\nLCD screen, that projector, this printer...).\n\nFor example, I was looking for a way to find \"perceptual distance\" between\ncolours, since the standard RGB rainbow gives more space for green than, say,\nyellow. Turns out there are colour spaces for that: CIELAB and CIELUV!\nHowever, converting between these spaces and RGB is... fun.\n\n(also, a fun way to tick off your illustrator friends is to install F.Lux on\ntheir computer)\n\nThank you for this great library!\n\n~~~\nTheLoneWolfling\nCIELAB is great. Even just being able to average colors is really useful.\n\n------\nphotojosh\nI'm surprised how at how poorly documented colour profile conversion is. I'm\nusing Django for a webapp that takes images from a bunch of sources and\nprimarily in AdobeRGB, and using Pillow to do the colour profile conversion\nhas been... interesting...\n\n~~~\nkelsolaar\nYeah, it's sadly true.\n\nI would also like to add that most of the publications are very highly priced\nwhich make them not easily accessible.\n\nI had to buy a few of them and an account on OSA for a few hundreds dollars.\n\n------\njacobolus\nOther than the silly British spelling of color, looks like great work!\n\nIf you guys are ever in the SF Bay Area, shoot me a note and I’ll buy you a\ncoffee.\n\n(For people looking for JavaScript implementations, I put a CIECAM02\nimplementation and some other stuff at\n[https://github.com/jrus/chromatist](https://github.com/jrus/chromatist))\n\n~~~\nezequiel-garzon\nAre you serious about your remark about spelling? I must say it caught my\nattention, but why would it be silly?\n\n~~~\nspamizbad\nMost of the world's English speakers spell color w/o the u. (292 million\nAmericans, 44 million Filipinos)\n\n~~~\nbillforsternz\nI think you are forgetting one billion plus Indians.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: I built an app to create threads on Twitter and also to learn Redux - ud0\nhttp://tweet-threader.herokuapp.com/\n======\nwingerlang\nLanding page with zero information and a login-to-twitter button alone.\n\nI waited 5 seconds to see if something else loaded, nope, then I closed the\ntab. Despite the the fairly intriguing \"threads on twitter\" the landing page\nwas bad enough that I'm not even interested in continuing.\n\nPut some examples there.\n\n~~~\nud0\nThanks for the usefull feedback. It was meant to be a not-so-serious\nsideproject but I guess the homepage should at least been more descriptive,\nside projects are projects too and deserve some work on the landing page.\n\n~~~\negfx\nIf you want anybody to use it that is. I have the same problem with\ninformation underload on [https://qKast.com](https://qKast.com) , trying to\nfigure out the homepage right now.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSoft Errors Are Hard Problems (2009) - ivank\nhttp://codingrelic.geekhold.com/2009/09/soft-errors-are-hard-problems.html\n======\ngeorgecmu\n_Alpha particle strike - two protons plus two electrons, emitted when a heavy\nradioactive element decays into a lighter element._\n\nAlpha particle is the same as a Helium nucleus, so it has 2 more neutrons and\n2 fewer electrons than the article claims.\n\n _Cosmic ray strike - a high energy neutron (or other particle) emitted by the\nSun._\n\nOn the contrary, cosmic rays are very high energy particles mainly originating\noutside the Solar system.\n\n _These particles are gradually absorbed by the Earth 's atmosphere, so they\nare more of a problem in orbit and at high altitude._\n\nWhat does it mean for a particle to be \"gradually absorbed\"?\n\n~~~\nthedufer\n> What does it mean for a particle to be \"gradually absorbed\"?\n\nI assume it means that the number of particles decreases smoothly as altitude\ndecreases, as opposed to largely being absorbed at distinct altitudes (as one\nmight expect the radiation belts to do, perhaps).\n\n------\nPhantomGremlin\nThere are many techniques that can be used to eliminate soft errors. These\ntechniques used to be quite common in the '60s and '70s when hardware was much\nless reliable overall.[1] There were companies like Tandem Computers [2] whose\nrai·son d'être was fault tolerance.\n\nBut then two things happened. First, chips themselves became much more\nreliable. Second, semiconductor vendors began adding fault tolerance to\nstandard ICs. E.g. Intel adds ECC to their internal caches.\n\nSo, IIRC from reading Dark Pools[3], cheap Linux boxes became so reliable that\nupstart stock exchanges were just running on random white box server hardware\nlocated in people's offices. No need to buy million dollar computers any more.\nNo need to buy the highly fault tolerant Itanium.\n\n[1]\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_tolerant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_tolerant)\n[2]\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandem_Computers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandem_Computers)\n[3]\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Patterson_%28author%29#Da...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Patterson_%28author%29#Dark_Pools)\n\n------\ntzs\nI used to run a home Linux desktop and a home Linux server. Neither had ECC\nRAM. I spent something like two years trying to spot a soft error.\n\nMy detector was simple. I had a process that allocated a fixed size buffer,\nfilled it with a pattern, and then went into a loop. The loop would check to\nsee if the pattern was undisturbed and then sleep 60 seconds.\n\nI had this process running on both machines pretty much continuously. Neither\never detected an error in the pattern. I was a bit disappointed.\n\nI've been using a 2008 Mac Pro at work since 2008, and a 2009 Mac Pro at home\nsince 2009. Both have ECC RAM. I've never seen an indication that the ECC has\nactually had to correct anything [1].\n\n[1] I'm not fully sure how I would see if the ECC has corrected a transient\nerror. I've read that it would show up in the DIMM status in system profiler,\nbut I don't check that often, so I could easily miss a transient error.\n\n~~~\nPhantomGremlin\n> Neither ever detected an error\n\nYou didn't have a very big sample size. Here's what Google had to say about\nthe topic based on their systems[1]:\n\n    \n    \n       Our first observation is that memory errors\n       are not rare events. About a third of all\n       machines in the fleet experience at least\n       one memory error per year\n    \n\n[1]\n[http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35162.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35162.html)\n\n~~~\nbaruch\nI don't have a fleet of systems like Google but on the several few thousand\nservers I look over, I see the number of ECC errors is lower than that. It is\nhowever a strong power law distribution, many servers (>70%) see no errors at\nall, and a few have so many that they are unusable, some are in between and\nhave undetected performance or other impact.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Any recommendations on dealing with a company restructuring? - startupnomore\nThe company I work for will soon go through a major restructuring. At the moment the company has a &#x2F;very&#x2F; flat, start-up like structure (3 levels: 1 CEO -&gt; 2 Managers -&gt; ~100 employees). There are also roughly 10 team leads in charge of service lines&#x2F;products, but that are not involved with the business side of things at all (e.g. budgeting, leave approval etc.).<p>The reorg&#x27;s purpose is to introduce more structure and delegate responsibility (I guess all startups go through this?). Effectively the plan is to elevate the 10 team leads to managers of the various service lines and products they lead now, including some of the business responsibility.<p>I am one of the team leads, and also one of the most senior developers on staff. There is a big strategy session being planned to discuss and implement the reorg. The meeting will be politically laden (some guys manage 3 people, some as many as 20, with varying years of experience).<p>So I have two questions:\n1) In general, what is your advice for handling the restructuring? Any experience, advice or mistakes, pitfalls or caveats you can recall I should avoid&#x2F;lookout for? Anything I should specifically ask for, or push for?<p>2) There is a lot of unrest amongst the team leads (hence, politics) with some being way more senior (~10 years exp) and managing larger teams who will now be promoted along with&#x2F;treated the same as mid-level guys (~2-3 years exp). There is a big question of fairness, and the road ahead. Any strategies for dealing with this?\n======\nzebraflask\nYou seem to have a good grasp of the situation, and I'm not sure I have much\nadvice.\n\nFrom experience, I'd keep an eye out for members of your own team starting to\nact up. Some people respond to reorgs as a chance to vent their personal\nagendas, or slack off, or [fill in the blank]. I would not expect the same\nlevel of output until well after the org shake up has settled down.\n\n~~~\nstartupnomore\nThat's definitely something to look out for, thanks.\n\n------\nmarenkay\nJust take good care of your team. And do not expect fairness.\n\nBusiness can be honest but never will be fair.\n\n~~~\nstartupnomore\nThat's a good point, my team should come first.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat Living with an Eye Patch in a Big City Taught Me - dnetesn\nhttp://cancer.nautil.us/article/203/what-living-with-an-eye-patch-in-a-big-city-taught-me\n======\njessaustin\nI'm surprised that the author didn't mention the several times a year random\nstrangers will yell \"Yarr!\" out of the window of a passing car, as they do at\nme. Even if that doesn't happen to her, this condition must be harder for a\nwoman than it has been for me, so she has my sympathy.\n\nI'm always willing to \"show\" children that there isn't an eye under the patch,\nif they want. The same goes for adults who seem childlike enough. (Don't\nlaugh, there are lots of these people around.) Those who are merely dull\nenough to require immediate satisfaction of their idle curiosities about the\ndeeply personal circumstances of others, never get the truth. We should all\npractice extemporaneous lying, and this may be the most valuable aspect of\nmonocularity to me. It's easy to say \"knife fight\", although it takes a bit\nmore effort to sell that. Instead, maybe someone might be more ready to hear\nabout an embarrassing incident involving office furniture repair?\n\n------\nmcenedella\nWhat a beautifully written, honest, and wonderfully human story. The author\nmakes an impossibly awful situation -- losing your eye at 12 -- the best she\ncan, and notes the sometimes positive side of the unfortunate circumstances. I\nadmired her and feel inspired by her.\n\n------\nshorttime\nI can see arguments either way to ask about it or not. I always have an\ninternal debate with myself when I see such things like an eye patch or other\nnon-typical characteristics that stand out. Should I ask? Would it be rude?\n\nMost of the time I get stuck in a do-loop and the person is gone before I have\na chance to make a decision. That's probably a good thing, looking at it from\na cost/benefit analysis there is no way anyone should ask such a thing. But I\nalso don't want to pretend this obvious thing doesn't exist because it's an\nelephant in the room! What if the said person expects me to comment on it?\nWhat if the person thinks that other people avoid them due to this non-typical\ncharacteristic? I certainly don't want to contribute to that either! I have no\nidea how to approach these things...\n\nMy main goal is to treat them like anyone else and I saw someone with a broken\nleg I'd ask. I forget the comedian but they cover the topic of handicapped\npeople feeling left out because they don't get commented on, they want to feel\nequal. I think it might have been Carlos Mencia (yeah, yeah, I know, dude\nsteals jokes) but the point stands - if we want to treat people equal aren't\nwe obligated to ask?\n\n~~~\nmikestew\n_don 't want to pretend this obvious thing doesn't exist_\n\nYou mean like their shoes, the shirt they're wearing, that kind of thing?\nBecause the eye patch is only unusual to _you_ , the person with the eye patch\nputs it on every morning. Hell, they might have patches in different colors.\n\nYou can ask, but keep in mind that asking only benefits _you_. Because I'm\nsure the person wearing the patch has long ago gotten their fill of answering\nthat question, and doing so is no longer of benefit to them.\n\nSo to speak personally, I don't ask. It's obvious that there is some\nmalfunction in one of their eyes, I don't need to ask because that's all I\nneed to know. Asking for more detail, well, I just met the person. Why would I\nthink I can now delve into their personal details just because they're wearing\nan eye patch? More so, I don't ask because I'll betcha they are\nsick...and...tired of answering to random strangers who, truth be told, don't\ngive a shit about the person and just want an answer to their curiosity.\n\n~~~\nshorttime\nMakes sense, my default is not to ask about it. I've seen very few people with\neye patches in my life and I never asked.\n\nIt kind of relates to what one of my friends recently observed and\nexperienced, someone asked them what race they are. She's light skinned but\nblack. The person asking went through a few different combinations latino,\nwhite-black mix, etc and finally asked black and she got really angry. From my\n3rd person perspective, I don't think the intent was to cause an issue but to\nrelate to my friend. It's unfortunate because I don't see a maleficent intent,\nan unintended negative experience. This event is a small example of what I see\non a overall change in society. Now everyone is walking around on pins and\nneedles, afraid to make a social interaction for fear of making someone angry.\nFurther isolation. Less tolerant to mistakes. I don't see this as a good\nthing. Boring. Uncreative. Polished. Unable to express an idea or question for\nfear of offending someone.\n\n~~~\nCoincoin\nI'm just brown enough to get constantly asked where I'm from or what race I\nam. I seriously don't care. This is who I am and if it can be a conversation\nstarter, so be it.\n\n~~~\nshorttime\nThat's the way I was looking at it. I think a lot of it comes from people not\nbeing comfortable with silence so they'll just mention something they notice.\nWhen it's silent we are stuck with our own thoughts, some don't really like\nthat!\n\n------\nEGreg\nWhen my grandfather first came to this country, he recounts how he was once\nyelled at by a woman on the subway in NYC for offering his seat, as he used to\ndo in Russia. I'd say there is no perfect approach that works for everyone all\nthe time.\n\n~~~\nsverige\nOn a visit to the big city when I was a teenager, I held open a door at the\nentrance to an office building for a woman in her early 20s, as I had been\ntaught to do by my very traditional parents. She shrieked at me that she could\ndo it herself. I have been an anti-feminist since that moment.\n\n~~~\ncolanderman\nIf I decided to hate every class of people based on a single interaction with\na random individual who may or may not even represent that class I'd hate\neveryone ever.\n\nSounds like you never really liked feminism in the first place and found an\nexcuse to justify it later.\n\n~~~\nsverige\nI don't hate anyone. I just don't support feminism because it creates bad\nmanners and double standards. How is that hate?\n\nFurther, at the time this happened, I didn't even know what feminism was. I\nwas around 16 years old. It was 1978 or so. After it happened, I did some\ninvestigating and discovered what might cause such a reaction. For me, it was\nplain that it was a philosophy based on false premises and as such worthy of\nrejection. I don't go about preaching my position, but I also certainly never\neven silently consent to the approbation of a false idea.\n\nHere's the real kicker: tell me what feminism is, then we'll see if we agree\nit's a good thing or a bad thing. (Of course, the debate on what feminism is\nwill never reach a conclusion, so we're unlikely to get to the second part.)\n\n~~~\npmoriarty\nYou ever consider that maybe the woman who yelled at you was just having a bad\nday, or was just an asshole? You know, assholes come in all flavors. Name a\ngroup of people, and I guarantee you you'll find some assholes in that group,\nand you'll also find people who might occasionally act like assholes because\nthey're having a bad day, or for some other reason that has nothing to do with\nyou and nothing to do with the group they're part of.\n\n~~~\nsverige\nI don't remember the exact phrasing, but it was along the lines of \"I'm\nperfectly capable of opening the door myself. I don't need a man to do it for\nme.\" So yes, she was an asshole, obviously, for picking on 16-year-old country\nbumpkin me who was just trying to be polite, but it was also because of her\nideology. And I'm sure every day she was bad for her. How could it not be when\nshe was walking around looking for the myriad ways that men were trying to\nbelittle her somehow? I have of course run into similar people since that\ntime, and have observed that they are universally unhappy. But maybe that's\njust in my presence, when my mere existence oppresses them; quite possibly\nwhen no one like me is around, they have bright eyes full of laughter and joy.\nBut I doubt it.\n\n~~~\nbradknowles\nHer problem is her problem.\n\nI would also probably have held the door open, as I was taught that was the\npolite thing to do.\n\nAnd she probably would have yelled at me the same way she did at you.\n\nBut as the old, fat, white American guy in the room, I wouldn't let her\nproblem in this area change me for the worse or otherwise bother me.\n\n------\ngumby\n> Now, it seems I can't hail a cab without the driver remembering that he's\n> driven me before and recalling my preferred route to the office.\n\nShe has the IRL cookie today that the rest of us will soon have as well.\n\n------\ntyingq\n_This week alone, two complete strangers have asked me outright, “What\nhappened to your eye?” This happens to me all the time..._\n\nI'm glad she's found peace with this sort of thing, but it's a shame that it\nhappens this often. It just seems obvious that blurting that out as the first\nthing you say to someone is rude.\n\n~~~\npbhjpbhj\nInterestingly a deaf friend posted on Fb today that this is a difference with\nthe deaf community (as the post author sees it), that asking about someone's\npersonal status is seen as a good thing, it's showing an interest in them.\n\nI have a beard, kids will ask me \"why do you have a beard?\", I like it - it\nshows they're curious, I like to encourage enquiry. The parents will try to\nshush them, apologising for the intrusion, which TBH I find weird.\n\nI can imagine it gets boring answering the same question over-again, but it's\nnot harmful really. The author clearly has a good approach to life.\n\n~~~\nehnto\nAs a anecdote, I have some very interesting and impossible to miss scarring on\nmy arms. I don't hide it, and it is definitely something I know people are\ncurious about. Yet pretty much no one I have interacted with in the last 7\nyears since moving to a new city knows why, because no one asks.\n\nPeople I sit with and talk to from 9 to 5 every day, not a word. You notice\npeople glance, you notice some cashiers hesitate, yet just three or four\npeople from memory have asked and it is always an abrupt and outright \"so\nwhat's up with that?\"\n\nI am thankful because it really doesn't affect my life or personal image and\nso that mentality reflected by others behavior lets me feel justified in that\noutlook. But there are definitely days where I wonder if people don't ask out\nof courtesy or because they just don't care either way, and if I am feeling a\nbit lonley that can be a negative thing rather than a positive.\n\nMostly though, I just appreciate that people treat me the same as if I didn't\nhave them, whether they have asked what happened or not.\n\n~~~\nclort\nWhat makes you think the scarring is very interesting?\n\n~~~\nehnto\nIt's a mix of bright purple/red/blue and in high contrast to the rest of my\nskin tone. By interesting I mean it stands out and is not something you see\nevery day.\n\n------\nbitexploder\nIt is interesting to me how small things really matter. Put a patch on your\narm about the size of an eye patch and \"so what\". Eyes are special. I think it\ncauses most people to do something they don't do that often, which is\ncontemplate losing their own eye. I sympathize with the author, it is hard to\nknow why someone may be interested in talking with you, etc. And, giving\nmyself a little philosophical licence, it does not matter in the long run, we\nall have our dysfunctional bits, she just has to wear hers on the outside. Her\nissue in particular is one I imagine most people process and get on with\nrelatively quickly.\n\n~~~\ndTal\n>Put a patch on your arm about the size of an eye patch and \"so what\".\n\nWell, not so fast; that rather depends on what's _on_ the patch... I'm sure I\ndon't need to list examples!\n\n------\ntarequeh\nBeautifully written and thought provoking. It's interesting how easily\nstrangers can ask such personal questions. I wonder how different the\ninteractions would have been if instead of the eye patch, the author wore a\npair of trendy non-prescription glasses with a clear left and a dark right\nlens.\n\n------\ntrapperkeeper79\nI knew a guy with an eye patch, and politeness prevented me from asking how\nthat happened. Now I know that one of the causes is cancer .. but it is a bit\nsurprising that I only learned that after this article.\n\n------\ncaio1982\nI wonder if people in similar situations wear patches as they do with clothes,\nconsidering fashion and all. It would be incredible to see people with custom\npatches for different ocassions, a great way to reaffirm their struggle IMHO.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nContributeto.it - draw a freaking picture - ndroo\nhttp://www.contributeto.it/\nWhat this does:\n1. We look at a bigger image\n2. Break it down to individual pixels\n3. Give you a pixel (blown up bigger) to draw on\n4. Reconstruct the original picture using the pixels people draw..the pixels people contribute-to-it<p>get it?\n======\nblahedo\nNo login other than through Facebook? I'll pass, thanks.\n\n~~~\npavel_lishin\nSame. The fact that I have to do _anything_ before I can start drawing is\nalready a huge turn-off.\n\n~~~\nndroo\nwhoops...replied to the top of the thread.\n\n\"yer fair call guys...ive changed it so you dont need to login :-) thanks for\nthe feedback\"\n\n------\ncaptaincrunch\nThis things is sweet, do you plan to change the image once this one is\ncompleted?\n\n~~~\nndroo\nsure do!\n\n------\nndroo\nyer fair call guys...ive changed it so you dont need to login :-) thanks for\nthe feedback\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow to Price Your Product or Service-To Avoid Killing Your Business - donzimmer\nhttp://www.erica.biz/2012/pricing-strategies/\n\n======\njayliew\nGuilty as charged: sometimes (depending on what the item is), I can be a super\ncheap bastard .. maybe too frugal. A poor startup founder can't be spending\nmoney like water :)\n\nI've run into many startup founders who try to sell me something that (1) Is\nnot big enough of a pain for me to want to pay to solve and (2) I'm not fully\nconvinced that the \"buy from someone else\" option is better than the \"build\nmyself\" option.\n\nIt's an uphill battle for them, and I tell them I just might not be in their\nmarket. p.s. Granted sometimes I err on being too frugal and just need to\noutsource more, but the person selling to me is just fighting an additional\nlayer of objections, at their expense :/\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Captain's Manifesto - barakstout\nhttp://thelivingpearl.com/2013/01/05/captain-deadbones-manifesto/\n\n======\nobitus\nThis is a very eloquent post about what it is to be a scientist.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApple Shortcuts User Guide - sunraa\nhttps://support.apple.com/guide/shortcuts/welcome/ios\n======\nthanatos_dem\nGiven other people's response, I'm clearly the odd one out here, but I found\nit buggy and infuriating to use. I wanted what I can't imagine is a unique\nshortcut, \"Good Morning\", which should:\n\n\\- Set the volume to 50% on my home pod\n\n\\- Start playing an ambient radio station in Apple Music\n\n\\- Start a slow fade in on my bedroom lights\n\nIt's been a nightmare, and I finally gave up altogether. I got my shortcut\nconfigured and set up with Siri. It's pretty simple, being only 3 steps, so I\ndon't see where there's that much room to go off the rails, but oh boy does\nit.\n\nThe HomePod responds, and says \"okay, running your shortcut\". It then sets the\nvolume on my _phone_ to 50% and starts playing music there instead. It then\ntries and probably 80% of the time fails to set the home scene to turn on the\nlights. When it fails, it says \"Please continue on your iPhone\", where Siri's\noutput states that it doesn't understand, as if I misspoke something to it...\nbut it's running a set list of commands, there's no room for me to misspeak\nwhen setting the HomeKit scene. And clearly the shortcut triggered since it's\nnow playing music at half volume a foot from my head.\n\nAnd there's no way that I can tell to have it specify an AirPlay speaker to\nplay out of. I don't get why the home pod, which responded to the request in\nthe first place, can't play the music. If I tell it to play the exact same\nplaylist directly it does so just fine. Maybe I'm \"too advanced\", being a tech\nperson myself, but this really feels like basic stuff, and it seems to have\nmissed the mark by a wide margin.\n\n~~~\neridius\nYou may be speaking to the HomePod, but the phone is the thing actually\nrunning the Shortcut. And the list of Shortcuts actions does not include\ncontrolling the music output of a HomePod. I would encourage you to file a bug\nreport with Apple at\n[https://bugreport.apple.com](https://bugreport.apple.com) to request the\nability to instruct the HomePod to play music.\n\nAs for the HomeKit scene, that sounds like a bizarre error to get from a\nShortcut.\n\n------\nfouadmatin\nShortcuts is the most exciting release of iOS 12.\n\nEvery time I run into a recurring task on my phone, I can usually make a\nshortcut to do it for me. For example, when I get an email saying my build\nfailed, I open it and click “view logs” but need to scroll to the bottom of a\nvery long page to see why the build failed. Now I just run “Scroll to Bottom”\n[1] and then I’m looking at what previously took a solid 15-20 seconds of\nscrolling.\n\nI can only imagine how many thousands of hours are lost per day on similar\nrecurring tasks across all mobile users that could be saved with a shortcut.\nI’m really excited Apple is taking iOS in a direction where anyone can be a\ndeveloper.\n\n[1]\n[https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/e1daf0c6017e4db382272390f89...](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/e1daf0c6017e4db382272390f8910646)\n\n~~~\np2t2p\nYes it is the most exiting feature but booooy is it buggy.\n\nI have couple shortcuts in the widget. 80% of the time I click the shortcut in\nthe widget it does like half of the stuff. I have workflow that does:\n\n\\- Find one song in Apple Music, start playing that \\- Find all other songs by\nthat artists and play them after the current one \\- send a message to my wife\n\"I'm leaving the office\"\n\nMessages works all the time, 80% of the time music simply don't start playing.\nAnd when I try to hit that shortcut button several time in the widget, widget\nitself fails and stops showing any shortcuts, only an error message.\n\n------\ndewey\nFor those who also just started playing around. I just found out yesterday\nthat you can write full blown python programs with packages and everything in\n[http://omz-software.com/pythonista/](http://omz-software.com/pythonista/) and\ntrigger it from Shortcuts. That’s pretty powerful, especially if combined with\nSlack webhooks and other external services.\n\n~~~\nzimpenfish\nPythonista is amazing if you want to do any programmatic graphics twiddling on\nan iOS device (which Workflow/Shortcuts really doesn't do at all well.) Dr\nDrang (leancrew.com) has a whole bunch of good blog posts up about his\nPythonista use that's been extremely helpful for me.\n\n------\nwestmeal\nNeat, so it's like scripting but for normal people. This is honestly a good\nidea for making phones more useful without extensive programming knowledge.\n\n~~~\nRazengan\n> _scripting but for normal people_\n\nIt looks like they took a page out of the macOS Automator, and an encouraging\nsign that OS automation hasn’t been abandoned at Apple, despite the fears\nafter they fired the person responsible for some of the impressive automation\nin macOS [0].\n\n[0]\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17218080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17218080)\n\n------\nkbumsik\nI just tried Shortcuts for the first time then opened the \"Play Favorite\nAlbums\" to see how it works and now it feels like I'm dumb. It took me a long\ntime to understand; start from a empty text (I didn't event know I need to\nfill texts here) , separate lines, set variables, and count. The visial\nrepresentation was not obvious at the first look.\n\nI doubt \"normal\" people would understand and create new shortcuts.\n\n~~~\njtbayly\nAgreed. \"Normal people\" _might_ be able to get a shortcut pre-written by\nsomebody else working correctly on their phone, but even that is doubtful.\n\n------\nteach\nThis should probably be titled 'iOS 12 Shortcuts User Guide' instead.\n\nI'm a relatively new Macbook user, so I was looking forward to reading about\nall the keyboard shortcuts and touchpad gestures I'm missing out on.\n\nI only buy Android phones, though, so :(\n\n~~~\nRazengan\n> _Macbook ... keyboard shortcuts and touchpad gestures_\n\nThere are many guides/“cheat sheets” about those, and macOS has always had\ngreat discoverability and customizability:\n\n• System Preferences -> Trackpad or Mouse: Shows you [some] gestures, with\nvideos.\n\n• System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts: Shows you all the system\nshortcuts, and also lets you modify or add custom shortcuts for any Apple or\nthird-party app.\n\n• Help Menu -> Search Field: Start typing the name of any menu command you\nexpect an app to have, and it will show you the menu items matching it along\nwith their shortcuts.\n\n------\neridius\nShortcuts was the most exciting thing from the WWDC Keynote this year, but I\nstill haven't really found a killer use for it yet. But I do have some simple\nones, such as a Shortcut I use on an image that prompts me to rename it before\ntriggering the \"Save to Files\" flow (as Save to Files doesn't let you rename\nthe image before saving).\n\nFederico Viticci over at MacStories.net did post a pretty cool one though,\nwhich adds iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max frames to screenshots you take.\n[https://www.macstories.net/ios/adding-device-frames-to-\niphon...](https://www.macstories.net/ios/adding-device-frames-to-iphone-xs-\nand-xs-max-screenshots-with-shortcuts/)\n\nI'd love to see a version that just adds the rounded corners and the notch,\ninstead of the full frame, but I'm a bit too lazy to figure out how to adapt\nhis shortcut to do that (the idea being to share a screenshot that represents\nwhat's visible on the screen, rather than trying to make it actually look like\nthe phone).\n\n~~~\nmattdesl\n> but I still haven't really found a killer use for it yet\n\nI think the main \"killer feature\" is that it allows you to optimize the way\nyou interact with your phone. It's obviously more useful for power users than\ncasual users, but both could benefit since shortcuts are so easy to share.\n\nI have two Shortcuts that stemmed from real-life problems.\n\n[1] - When I'm in a bookstore, I tend to go through dozens of books looking at\nthe GoodReads reviews for each one, trying to discover new authors that might\nbe worth a read. I made a shortcut to turn this into a single-tap barcode\nscanner, instead of me typing the name of the book into Google each time.\n\n[2] - I was recently suggesting my favourite spots in NYC to a friend, and was\ntrying to remember the streets and addresses of some of the places I took\nphotos of. With a shortcut, I was able to easily geolocate photos in a map,\nand even get a nearby 360º panorama to remind me of what else was in the area.\n\nVideos/code:\n\n[1] -\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9jnhc5/scan_a_bo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9jnhc5/scan_a_book_to_get_its_reviews/)\n\n[2] -\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9klosk/find_near...](https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9klosk/find_nearest_google_maps_360%C2%BA_panorama_from_a/)\n\n~~~\neridius\nWow both of those are very cool. I had no idea Shortcuts could even scan\nbarcodes. I don't buy physical books any more, but I wonder if I could get the\nsame info from whatever Books.app provides in the share sheet for the\nbookstore? I'll have to play with that.\n\n------\ndybber\nI'd like to use this for making a shortcut to connecting to a specific\nBluetooth device, but it seems that changing the iPhones settings is not part\nof actions that you can choose from. My stereo does not connect automatically,\nso I have to always go to Settings -> Bluetooth to connect them. Would be nice\nif I could just push a button / ask Siri to connect it.\n\nFrom iOS 11 it is no longer possible to develop widgets that does this:\n[https://forums.imore.com/ask-question/376402-no-widget-\nconne...](https://forums.imore.com/ask-question/376402-no-widget-connect-\nspecific-bluetooth-device.html)\n\n~~~\njtbayly\nSame for me, but I want to join a particular wifi network. Was hoping I could\ndo it via shortcuts. Oh well.\n\n------\nwalterbell\nDoes anyone have example SSH, Javascript or Python shortcuts? e.g. would be\nnice to have a shortcut for Textastic to push a file over SSH then run Jekyll\nbuild on the server.\n\nThis shortcut will put a video into PiP mode for iPad multitasking:\n[https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/dda08a01a17d41feb3e887a4a12...](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/dda08a01a17d41feb3e887a4a12a7621)\n\n------\nanentropic\nI thought this would be a document listing all the hidden UI shortcuts that\nyou never use because you don't know they are there\n\n------\nSN76477\nI have been able to piece together some simple shortcuts that I use\nfrequently.\n\nMy biggest complaint so far is that they do not run in the background.\n\n------\nbastijn\nSo, what are some usable shortcuts HN has come up with? I fail to find a\nsingle one that I could use. Looking for inspiration.\n\n~~~\ndownandout\nThis one is pretty useful:\n\n[https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2d68cb1ee7b84f08ace2fd600b9...](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2d68cb1ee7b84f08ace2fd600b9855b5)\n\nArticle link below, but here's the relevant description:\n\n _Petersen’s command “Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over” will pause music if\nit’s playing, turn down the brightness, turn on “Do Not Disturb” and sends a\nmessage to a chosen contact. It then activates the video recording on the\nfront camera.\n\nOnce the user stops recording, according to Petersen, it sends a copy of the\nvideo to your specified contact. It also brings up the brightness and turns of\n“Do Not Disturb.” His shortcut already has drawn hundreds of comments on\nReddit._\n\n[https://www.cultofmac.com/578615/shortcuts-siri-traffic-\nstop...](https://www.cultofmac.com/578615/shortcuts-siri-traffic-stop/)\n\n~~~\nbastijn\nIt's interesting to see how this gets so much attention in the US. In Europe,\nspecifically NL, I haven't been in a single situation the past 32 years of my\nlife where I would have needed this. I do not expect I would need it the\ncoming decades either. These are stories we catch from Russia where each and\nevery cop seems to be corrupt. To see a similar thing in the US is mind\nblowing to me.\n\nThanks for sharing though! Might help another reader in this thread. I guess I\nmust be happy to pass on this one.\n\n~~~\nasdff\nIt's not corruption, but a lack of professionalism. I'll assume police in the\nNetherlands see their job as just an occupation rather than an identity. Some\npeople in the U.S. imagine police officers as this 'lawman' figure like a\nyoung Clint Eastwood in a poncho rather than just a citizen with a shift job\nto work like a garbage man. This notion ends up normalizing the artificial 'us\nvs them' thinking that leads to so many of these escalated situations and\ntragedies. It doesn't help that movements like blue lives matter seem to be\nactively engaged in supporting this thinking.\n\n------\nn1000\nI downloaded “Calculate tip” from their library and it returns total garbage.\nMost of the time it adds some random percentage to the total I enter instead\nof calculating 20% of it. Maybe it has to do with my regional settings, but I\nalready stopped bothering.\n\n------\nknolan\nI’ve a great shortcut to download YouTube videos.\n\n[https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/c2997c4bcd0a4a01a470ac7f6c1...](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/c2997c4bcd0a4a01a470ac7f6c1476ec)\n\n------\nlaktak\nI use shortcuts to do time tracking at work, which works great.\n\nI do hope though that they bring back Shortcuts for the Apple Watch - with the\nold Workflow app I could do everything on the watch, now I have to grab my\nphone every time.\n\n~~~\ndjrogers\nJust add your shortcut to Siri and speak it to your watch - it's faster than\nlaunching the workflow app used to be...\n\n~~~\nrcarmo\nNo it’s not. I used to have button prompts for some actions in Workflow, which\nis faster. Also, there are many instances where speaking to your watch is\nridiculous (such as meetings, public transit, etc.)\n\n~~~\nlaktak\nAlso the old workflows ran directly on the watch (for example calling a REST\napi) which gave you the result right away.\n\nNow they can only run on the phone and take a lot longer (usually it says\n\"I'll tap you when I'm ready...\").\n\n------\nJustSomeNobody\nWhy on Earth did they tie it to Siri? Why can't I drop a shortcut on my home\nscreen and tap it? Why does Siri have to be enabled? This feels like just a\nploy to get Siri usage up.\n\n~~~\nmikestew\nIn addition to sibling comment, you can do just that, add it to the Shortcuts\nwidget, or (as I just did an hour ago) add Shortcuts to the Share sheet and it\nwill show up there. This is particularly important because I have shortcut for\nsharing a web page with my wife. If I use Siri, it doesn't get the URL because\nSiri is in the foreground and no URL is obtained. But it works fine as a Share\nsheet object.\n\n~~~\nasdff\nCan you only look at your widgets from the springboard?\n\n------\ngetaclue\nTIL that Apple is using Facebook's React. Thought they were using Ember\nbefore.\n\n------\nmullingitover\nIt's really innovative how they were able to add all these features but still\nprevent customers from creating an action like \"Play I am the Walrus on\n[competing music service].\"\n\n~~~\noatmealsnap\nIsn't it up to [competing music service] to implement this? Podcasting apps\nwork with Shortcuts, so I don't see why [competing music service] wouldn't\nwork.\n\n~~~\ncanuckintime\nApple has not been clear about the capabilities of Shorcuts and still has\nlimits[1] that prevent \"competing music service\" from working as OP suggests:\n\n> Apple may have been slightly coy about this API (extensive documentation was\n> not available at all during the iOS 12 beta)... There are caveats in the\n> API, which may also be a turn-off for the likes of Google and Spotify: media\n> shortcuts don't enable full-blown integrations with third-party audio\n> streaming services. You can only ask Siri to play items you have previously\n> assigned a custom phrase; this suggests that most users will only record a\n> handful of phrases for entire playlists, charts, or artist pages. The\n> ability to ask Siri to search and play any song or podcast episode is still\n> exclusive to Apple Music and Podcasts.\n\n[1] [https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-12-the-macstories-\nrev...](https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-12-the-macstories-review/7/)\n\n~~~\nmullingitover\nExactly, thank you. Apple is absolutely prioritizing short-term profits and\ntheir own ambitions before customers' feature requests in this area. Spotify,\nand every other music service, would've had integrations ready to go well\nbefore the iOS 12 launch if that was all it took for them to be given first-\nclass music player status on iPhone.\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nSpotify has been given a number of APIs that lets them act similar to a first-\nparty app in iOS 12. As far as I’m aware, they haven’t really used them yet.\n\n~~~\nmullingitover\nSo you're saying every third-party music app has the ability to be run with\n\"Hey Siri, play [song] on [spotify/tidal/etc]?\" and Spotify is blatantly\nlying? Because on their support forum they straight up say this can't be done.\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nThat _particular_ example isn’t possible (so they’re technically right):\nShortcuts can only detect constant phrases. But there’s a easy way around\nthis: split it into two parts, the first one detecting “Spotify play a song”,\nasks “which one”, then listens for the song name and plays that. A bit more\ncumbersome, but still fits the fixed-text restriction.\n\n------\nCodeSheikh\nUseless app. They rebranded it recently. It is not deeply rooted with iOs. I\ngave up a while ago.\n\nSide not: This title is helluva misleading. I thought it is a list of\nshortcuts for OSX.\n\n~~~\nchipotle_coyote\nAssuming I understand what you mean by \"deeply rooted with iOS,\" then that is\nin fact a crucial difference between the new Shortcuts and the Workflow app\nthat it replaced. Shortcuts triggered from Control Center or the share sheet\nrun the way Automator actions on the Mac do; there's no more of this \"switch\nto Workflow, switch to an app Workflow is calling, switch back to Workflow\"\nstuff.\n\nI don't think the title \"Shortcuts User Guide\" was particularly misleading;\nthe name of the app is Shortcuts. If it were a list of keyboard shortcuts for\nmacOS, it would probably have a name like, I don't know, \"macOS Keyboard\nShortcuts.\"\n\n------\ngaryclarke27\nOne of the nice and quite innovative features of IOS 12 update, however I\ncan’t feel good about this update because it has completely ruined Apple News.\nApple News used to be a very nice slick news browser - I used it a lot, until\nsome retard UI designer, decided to steal 1/3 of my precious screen estate -\nwhy?? for a horrible ugly useless navigation bar, with no way of collapsing it\nin landscape mode - I NEVER use Portrait mode on iPad.\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nThe navigation bar hides for me once I scroll.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWeizenbaum examines computers and society (1985) - jakub-\nhttp://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html\n======\ndavidtotoole\nSee also his book \"Computer Power and Human Reason.\"\n\nQuote:\n\n    \n    \n      \"The computer has thus begun to be an instrument for the\n     destruction of history. For when society legitimates only\n     those 'data' that ... 'can easily be told to the machine', \n     then history, memory itself, is annihiliated... Soon a \n     supersystem will be built, based on the New York Times' data \n     bank.. from which 'historians' will make inferences about \n     what 'really' happened, about who is connected to\n     whom, and about the 'real' logic of events.\"\n    \n\nThat was in 1976.\n\n------\ndavidtotoole\nWeizenbaum is discussing the received doctrine of most computer scientists.\nProbably most of you think we are making \"just tools\" and that their end use\nis not our concern. As you read this article, particularly the later portions,\nthink about all the codenames we've heard since PRISM and how much the problem\nhas grown since 1985.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTech Industry-Funded Think Tanks Work to Overturn California Privacy Law - aburd\nhttps://theintercept.com/2019/04/16/consumer-privacy-laws-california/\n======\nignoramous\nThe fact that a 100% of the think-tanks taking corporate funding (from the\nlikes of Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Airbnb, Uber, Verizon,\neBay) are trying to undermine excellent privacy laws passed by California [0]\nand Illinois state assemblies should come as a surprise to no one.\n\nThe problem is these think-tanks or variants thereof might end up representing\nthe tech industry in most places where it matters anyway, just like how most\nof the standard bodies have been taken over by them and now slowly approve of\nfeatures that further their business motives (I am looking at you ITU).\n\nTwo ways (there must be more?) I can think of to fix the behaviour of these\nbehemoths:\n\n1\\. External: Internet Activism. This has been well underway for a long time\nnow but the corporates are patient beasts. The problem always remains\ngathering enough support [1] and generally the short attention span of the\nlarger populace.\n\n2\\. Internal: The employees. Be critical, put yourselves in akward situations,\nstart demanding answers [2]. The problem might be risking job security? That\ncould be offset by forming a large enough group?\n\n\\--\n\n[0]\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17420849](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17420849)\n\n[1] Btw, the signees of this letter care about your privacy:\n[https://www.eff.org/document/december-2018-preemption-\nletter](https://www.eff.org/document/december-2018-preemption-letter)\n\n[2] [https://demandprogress.org](https://demandprogress.org)\n\n/offtopic [https://firstlook.media](https://firstlook.media) is doing a great\njob. Almost all their articles are of high quality.\n\n~~~\n4ntonius8lock\nIs there any law/legal mechanism which could put automatic expiration on new\nlaws? Is there anything I could suggest to my lawmakers for this to happen?\n\nI mean, we seem to be following a pattern:\n\nBig power wants something that directly and negatively impact the quality of\nlife of the majority of the populace.\n\nPopulace rises up against this.\n\nBig power 'loses'.\n\nBig power makes the push again next year. People rise up, but a little less.\n\nBig power 'loses'.\n\nRepeat until popular power is worn out and big power gets what they want.\n\nOnce passed, popular outrage won't remove it, it's way harder to get support\nfor repealing than for approving.\n\nSo...\n\nI'd like to support something that changes that system from working that way.\n\nI'd think an expiration date would due... but I'm open to supporting anything\nthat would break this pattern.\n\n~~~\nheavenlyblue\nDemocratically speaking, the only reason Big Power wins is due to the fact\nthat it's incredibly inefficient to stand behind interests of many parties\ninvesting small amounts against single players investing huge amounts.\n\nOne would think we need interest groups more.\n\n~~~\nluckylion\n> One would think we need interest groups more.\n\nWould love to see more of those, especially in the EU, and the way they have\nthem in the US. I'd love a privacy focused action group, but I don't want to\nbuy a host of unrelated political issues with that. The EFF and similar\norganisations do a pretty good job at that, would love if we had more groups\nlike that over here.\n\n~~~\nAWildC182\nI love the idea, especially as a way of un-bundling beliefs so we're not all\nbeholden to one of two massive and far reaching belief systems.\n\nThat said, I worry that it's too easy for small advocacy groups to get\nsteamrolled by bigger interests if they prove to be a problem. Even if they're\npopular with the public, it just takes a payment to a PR firm of your choice\nto roll a story that they're selling dead babies and suddenly everyone is\nconfused.\n\n~~~\nluckylion\nTrue, but EFF and others managed to get past that as well, I think mostly by\nnot overreaching, always being fact-based and consistency. It would certainly\ntake quite a while to gain enough trust and support if you're not\nideologically aligned.\n\nI worry that it's just hard to do. It takes a special kind of person (and lots\nof them) to keep general politics out, even more so when you're successful and\nadvocating your personal politics would be easy and effectful. Oh, and being\nvigilant so you don't get co-opted by a political movement.\n\n------\ndalbasal\nSo... I'm a worried netizen. I have concerns about data monopolies, privacy,\nsurveillance, the ad-tech industry, cambridge analyticas... which puts me in\nthe hn majority, I guess.\n\nThat said, what specifically are we aiming for. Privacy laws? Is there a\nbullet point of what these laws prohibit/require? Enforcement mechanisms?\nStandards? Protocols?\n\n\"Pro-privacy\" isn't really enough, for a political program.\n\nIt would be great if one of these think tanks could put forward a specific\nagenda, preferably one that a large portion of us can support. What is it we\nwant achieved?\n\n~~~\nraxxorrax\nI think the best approach to informational self-determination is to define\nthat any information concerning you as a person belongs to yourself. Any\ndiversion needs active consent. This is what this think tank (a name for every\nsweaty office) allegedly wants to get rid off.\n\nI doubt this clear definition is impractical or utopian and could very well be\nimplemented, so I doubt effective privacy legislation needs to be extensive.\nPeople consent to share information all the time. That would of course cost an\nindustry that has stakes in information about you, even if that is not their\nprimary business.\n\nFurthermore it is worth to think about if there is any information about you\nwhich you are not eligible to share.\n\nIt is not trivial to determine if information is personal. Perhaps there\nshould be a formal process to determine that.\n\n~~~\nsoared\n> any information concerning you as a person belongs to yourself. Any\n> diversion needs active consent\n\nBut in the US that isn't true even outside of the internet. If you walk\noutside of your home/land, I can legally photograph and record video of you. I\ncan write down what you're wearing, make assumptions about your income based\non your address, record you gender/age/etc. All of that is 100% legal - you\nwillingly give up information about yourself when you go to public places.\n\nYou could argue the internet is not a public space but that counters most pro-\nprivacy people's opinions on free speech/etc online.\n\n~~~\nJohnFen\n> you willingly give up information about yourself when you go to public\n> places.\n\nNo, I really don't. I just can't do anything about it. I would agree with some\nform of this \"implied consent\" argument if going outside were an optional\nactivity, but it's not.\n\n~~~\nsoared\nI'm not sure I understand your point, but I don't think going online is an\noptional activity either.\n\n~~~\nJohnFen\nI'm not willingly giving up any information by being in a public space,\nbecause I don't have any choice about being in public spaces. Any information\npeople gain about me is being taken, not given freely.\n\n> I don't think going online is an optional activity either.\n\nI think that can be debated, but let's say you're right: that just reinforces\nmy point.\n\nMy essential point is that the \"public space\" argument isn't terribly\nmeaningful. Actual consent can only be given in the absence of coercion. If\nbeing surveilled is a requirement in order to simply function as a human\nbeing, then consent doesn't enter into it.\n\nAnd, in my view, all of the arguments about privacy and spying hinge on the\nissue of consent. If data is being gathered about me without my consent, then\nI'm being spied on.\n\n------\nRafuino\nI can't wait for the CA law to come into effect. \"The law, set to take effect\nnext year, gives California residents the power to view the types of data\ncompanies collect from them, request that the data be deleted, and allows\nresidents to declare that their data not be sold to third parties.\"\n\nDoes anyone know if the law includes the ability to demand that data third\nparties have collected be deleted as well? Will I be able to tell what third\nparties already have my data from the source of collection?\n\n------\nduxup\nAt this point the statement and other gestures that a company \"value's your\nprivacy\" is just a default poster someone puts up, while they do other things.\n\n~~~\nkurthr\nWe value your privacy at $0.0003 per click!\n\n~~~\nduxup\nI'm working on a side project and the setup is basically that you get to see\nall the data I have on you. Granted this is a tiny project that is largely\njust for me, but as a policy that seems like that is the most clear cut way to\ngo.\n\n~~~\nsoared\nThe big data players have tools for this. For example:\n\n[https://datacloudoptout.oracle.com/registry/](https://datacloudoptout.oracle.com/registry/)\n\n~~~\nduxup\nThat's interesting, I wonder how that came about.\n\n~~~\nsoared\nYeah kind of cool. I believe tools like that came from either mass opt-out\ntools by the Network Advertising Initiative or the Digital Advertising\nAlliance.\n\n[http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1](http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1)\n\n~~~\nJohnFen\nThose tools are worthless, though. I wonder if Oracle's is any better.\n\n~~~\nsoared\nThey accomplish what they intend to do, its just that most users want them to\ndo more.\n\nIf you use that tool on all of your devices (and don't clear your cookies/etc)\nyou will be opted out of those vendors tracking. But that doesn't accomplish\nsince that type of targeting only makes up maybe 15% of targeted advertising.\nAll that tool does is get you shittier ads. (Oracle's just shows you what data\nthey know about you, it doesn't actually delete or opt you out).\n\n~~~\nJohnFen\n> They accomplish what they intend to do, its just that most users want them\n> to do more.\n\nThat hasn't been my experience. When I've used the tools, the opt-outs have\nfailed for the majority of the companies in the list (as reported by the site\nitself).\n\nThat said, as you point out, they're pointless even if they worked correctly\nas you still have to engage in all the blocking that you usually do\nregardless.\n\n> (Oracle's just shows you what data they know about you, it doesn't actually\n> delete or opt you out).\n\nAh, so Oracle's offering is worse -- worthless by design rather than\nimplementation.\n\n------\nJohnFen\nIt is so sad to see the bad actors in the tech industry pushing so hard to\nadvance policies that are harmful to society at large and people individually.\n\nIt is even more sad that I'm not the least bit surprised by this.\n\n~~~\npnw_hazor\nStanding by for employee protests.\n\n------\nnerdjon\nI wish I could say I was surprised by this... but I am not.\n\nWhat I am really curious about, are any of these companies linked to Apple?\n\nConsidering the very public stance they have been recently taking. The article\ndoes not specifically mention them either way (and they are the only of the\nbig ones missing).\n\n~~~\nSlowRobotAhead\nNot sure about Apple but I like that all the companies linked are all\nsupporters of NN. Almost as if a public face, NN, and a private face, think\ntanks to overturn privacy laws.\n\n~~~\nnerdjon\nI wouldn't necessarily tie net neutrality and this together, since NN supports\nthem as much as us. Considering it most likely would be them footing the bill\n(or loosing traffic) without NN\n\n~~~\nSlowRobotAhead\n>I wouldn't necessarily tie net neutrality and this together, since NN\nsupports them as much as us.\n\nHow we know? Because they told us that? They would be funding thinktanks to\npass NN if they had to. The truth about NN is only ONCE was a carrier ever\nreally found to be selectively throttling for non-congestion reasons in the\nmid-2000s and the FCC shut that down immediately. NN still allows for\nthrottling if you claim it's for congestion.\n\nYET... SV likes to promote the idea of a slow internet without regulation.\n\nJust because you agree with the idea doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention\nto the propaganda.\n\n------\nM2Ys4U\nThe US should just implement Convention 108+ like the rest of the world.\n\n------\ntareqak\nAre public companies required to show which organizations / think tanks they\nare a part of and what role they play therein as part of their periodic\nfinancial updates (quarterly or annual)?\n\nThe thing with money and speech in politics is that speech _must_ be loud\nenough in order to be an effective agent for change whereas the effectiveness\nof money is considerably more independent that. By loud, I mean a quality more\nlike the amount public awareness and genuine understanding a given issue has.\n\n------\navmich\nIs there any possibility to recoup losses incurred while accessing siloed and\nhostile websites trying to pull my private information? I'm using some privacy\nenhancements in browser, and major websites don't work properly because of\nthem. Is it possible to win a claim for incurred losses at least in time, if\nnot in data leaks?\n\n------\nsharadov\nData is being called the new \"Oil\" and it's only a matter of time that tech\nbecomes as maligned as the tobacco and oil industry.\n\n------\nmistrial9\nyet, courageous and far-sighted individuals working towards federated and\nprivate data models pre-FB, struggled to find any funding, and were vocally\ncriticized for \"asking for money\" or \"trying to charge money\" by intellectuals\n.. idcommons dot org\n\n------\nmLuby\nTL;DR: the key is to insulate lawmakers from concentrations of wealth.\n\nA law that prevents corporations from spending resources on politics would do\nthis. Or low contribution limits could work, to limit billionaire influence.\n\nA lot of comments in this and other privacy threads correctly worry about the\ncombination of \"diffuse costs, concentrated benefits\" and the electorate's\nshort attention vs sustained private lobbying. My feeling is those effects\ncannot be overcome once in effect, so we have to roll back to prevent the\neffects in the first place.\n\nSounds politically unlikely, but stranger things have happened in American\npolitics.\n\n------\nitronitron\nugh, so fucking creepy, but it's perfectly in line with SV double speak\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nUX design: Tools, methods and frameworks for generalists - ndewilde\nhttps://nickdewilde.substack.com/p/the-keyring-zac-halbert-on-ux-design\n======\ndenster\nGreat post!\n\nTo op, for tools like Figma, what do you think the future holds? In what\ndimension will they evolve? How can they help you be more effective? Will they\nhelp you express your ideas in ever higher fidelity over time? [1]\n\n[1] Biased questions, but genuinely curious about the op's answers given his\ndeep expertise in the field (as the founder of\n[https://mintdata.com](https://mintdata.com))\n\n~~~\nzachalbert\nGreat question. Figma is leaps and bounds closer to giving designers tools\nthat work like code, but it still has a long way to go. My wish list design\ntool is something that has the creative flexibility of design canvas, but the\npower of clean, performant code. Truthfully I think it'll require evolution\nboth in the design tools space, but also the HTML and CSS specs.\n\nFor instance, in Figma we've only had a reliable way of adding something\nsimple like button padding (where you can create a reusable button that will\nexpand as you type a longer label) for a year. There have been plugins that\ndid it before that, but they weren't reliable. This is crazy when you consider\nyou've had the ability to add padding to a box in CSS for _decades_. At the\nsame time, try doing a complex layout in HTML/CSS, which requires you to learn\nabout flexbox, floats, position, and/or CSS grid. Compare that to the ability\nto just draw a box, move, scale, and rotate it in a design tool.\n\nSo I see design tools and browser tools converging over time to allow\ndesigners, engineers, even product managers a layer of abstraction over\ninterfaces that feels much more intuitive, with less duplication. Right now, I\nhave components in Figma that mirror components we use in React, though this\nis usually manual effort which is also a bit crazy. I don't really count\nWYSIWYG editors as having figured this out yet, since they produce garbage\ncode in my experience.\n\n~~~\nnarrationbox\nLike this?\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24096004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24096004)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDotfiles.github.com - A guide to dotfiles on GitHub - netherland\nhttp://dotfiles.github.com\n======\nComputerGuru\n(Obvious) disclaimer: this is a user-hosted subdomain on GitHub. It is not an\nofficial GitHub page (even if the logo is two octocats snuggling together).\n\n~~~\nudp\nWhich means, of course, it's also a repository if anyone is interested:\n\n<https://github.com/dotfiles/dotfiles.github.com/>\n\n------\nah-\nI've meant to finally put my dotfiles into a repository but the one thing\nkeeping me from it is that I haven't yet stumbled upon a script to symlink\neverything into it's place that I'm totally satisfied with.\n\nI don't use ruby and don't want to install rake on each machine for something\nthat should be possible with a simple shell script, and didn't like the\nscripts I saw so far. Everything had a medium or large aspect that kept me\nfrom using it.\n\nMaybe I just need to write my own thing.\n\n~~~\nJoshTriplett\nI highly recommend not symlinking things at all; just have the repository\nitself as your home directory.\n\nWhenever I set up a new machine, I always do this:\n\n    \n    \n        git clone git://joshtriplett.org/git/home\n        mv home/.git .\n        rm -rf home\n        git checkout -f\n    \n\n(There probably exists a simpler way to do that, but I haven't found it yet.)\n\nI can always check out my repository via git:// even on a machine where I want\nto push to it, because my repository includes a ~/.gitconfig containing:\n\n    \n    \n        [url \"ssh://joshtriplett.org/\"]\n                pushInsteadOf = \"git://joshtriplett.org/\"\n    \n\nSo, I can automatically push as long as I have SSH access to my server. (I\nwrote the support for pushInsteadOf in upstream git, specifically to enable\nthis use case.)\n\n~~~\nepe\nI don't know if it's any simpler, but I tend to do:\n\n    \n    \n        git init .\n        git remote add origin git://github.com/eentzel/dotfiles.git\n        git checkout -t origin master\n\n------\nrocktronica\nWith respect, a guide to dotfiles should explain what dotfiles are.\n\n~~~\npbiggar\nIf someone needs to ask what dotfiles are, they aren't in the target audience\nof this project.\n\n~~~\nsubpixel\nI have to disagree - I had never heard the term before, but now that I see the\npower/convenience of a symlinked configuration, I'm interested in learning\nmore.\n\nI'm sure many others like myself would appreciate a more thorough,\nintroductory walkthrough. I'll be asking my more hard-core friends for\nguidance in the meantime.\n\n------\noacgnol\nI highly recommend using symlinks to synchronize dotfiles with a locally\ncloned repo. That way, you can make changes to the dotfiles sitting in your\nhome directory and it'll be reflected in your repo should you want to commit\nthose changes.\n\n~~~\nmise\nWait, I've done it the other way around. I have a repo directory, and I\ncreated symlinks in ~/ pointing to the dotfiles in the repo. I have a simple\ninstall script to symlink the files.\n\nWould you suggest having the physical files in ~/ and adding their symlinks to\na repo?\n\n~~~\nichilton\nI would think he meant what you said.... symlinks in the repo doesn't sound a\ngood idea.\n\n------\nAdamGibbins\nWhile we're on the subject - has anyone found a good way to separate\nenvironments while keeping your setup fairly DRY? e.g. I have slight\nvariations in my aliases for work/home, different git config email etc.\n\nYou can find mine here: <http://github.com/adamgibbins/dotfiles>\n\n~~~\nsophacles\nTowards that end, (and for keeping certain sensitive things from repos...) I\nmade this:\n\n<https://github.com/sophacles/dotfuse>\n\nIt is a fuse filesystem that allows for modularization of some \"single file\"\nstyle dotfiles. Combined with git branche or modules (or both) it can get a\nlot of this (i hope). Warning though, it is still a bit of a toy, and I\nhaven't played with it for a while, but I'm open to suggestions and pull\nrequests!\n\nAs for dry with sourceable stuff, like bash/zsh configs, you can just keep the\nenvironment specific stuff in a separate repo, and use git modules, that is if\nyour environ specific stuff needs to be confidential (or some of it) and kept\nin separate private repos.\n\n~~~\nmh-\nthis is clever, thanks for sharing\n\n------\nseryl\nI use something relatively similar, but I do it with Chef.\n\n(shameless plug) Kindness: A nice way to bootstrap your box (with chef)\n<http://joshtoft.com/kindness/>\n\nIt takes advantage of site-cookbooks with Chef, letting you bring in your own\nsite-cookbooks and also takes your chef-solo.json (if it exists).\n\nI made it to get away from the rake dotfile sillyness.\n\n------\ntlvince\nA workaround to the \"symlink farm\" method is making use of \"--config=PATH\"\noptions for most apps and setting up aliases.\n\nConforming to the XDG base dir standard as much as possible makes sense but\ncan get painful sometimes (e.g. vim: <http://tlvince.com/2011/02/03/vim-\nrespect-xdg/>).\n\n------\nlyime\n@github - Please make a font a bit darker.\n\n~~~\nslikts\nIt's a user page, so not by github\n\n------\ndrivebyacct2\nA Rakefile for dotfiles? Seriously?\n\n~~~\nPlugawy\nWhy not? I've been using it without any problems. It's just easier to manage.\n\n~~~\nexDM69\nBecause not everyone has a Ruby development environment available. It would be\na lot better idea to stick with Makefiles or other more commonly available\nUnix tools.\n\nA lot of Ruby people seem to add a Rakefile or a Ruby script to do some simple\ntask like installing a few dotfiles. That makes them a lot less useful to me\n(for example), as I don't have a Ruby env available on all machines I use.\n\nSame goes for Node.js, Python and Perl people. If a \"standard unix\" tool can\ndo something almost as easily as a Rakefile/whatever, you should probably\nstick to the standard tools. I don't know what you should do with Windows,\nthough.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThis facial recognition system tracks how you’re enjoying a movie - janober\nhttps://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/this-facial-recognition-system-tracks-how-youre-enjoying-a-movie\n======\nsushiogoto\nFascinating stuff — off the top of my head I can see this being used in: user\nresearch, political campaigns, crowd control. Imagine applying this technology\nto a political campaign to see how people respond in real-time... A Black\nMirror style future where the politicians who use this technology dominate in\nelections because they're a/b testing what to say and how to say it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow to use Google Alerts to find out if your site gets hacked - greg\nhttp://www.blogstorm.co.uk/how-to-use-google-alerts-to-find-out-if-your-site-gets-hacked/\n\n======\npierrefar\nIt's a good backup solution as by the time Googlebot finds the cracked pages,\nit's a bit too late.\n\nI'd set up a cron job to check the database once a day or 12 hours or so.\nThat's more pre-emptive.\n\n~~~\nZeroGravitas\nI think you're missing the point. These SEO hackers don't announce themselves\nby defacing your front page or deleting your database. They insert hidden\nlinks in your HTML to boost their PageRank and it's in their interests to go\nundetected for as long as possible.\n\n~~~\npierrefar\nI'm an SEO and know full well what they're doing. My daily cron job suggestion\nis to detect their activities.\n\n------\nperegrine\nYou would need a slightly larger set of words, but nonetheless an interesting\nsolution.\n\n~~~\nstreety\nAbsolutely. Perhaps harvest words from blog spam.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSpotify And Facebook Take Pandora Down To $10 Even If Sirius Can’t Compete - ekm\nhttp://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2011/07/24/spotify-and-facebook-take-pandora-down-to-10-even-if-sirius-cant-compete/\n\n======\nbradleyland\nI have to wonder if anyone on this team has actually used any of these\nservices, or if this is just some kind of takedown piece? I'm a Sirius\nsubscriber and a Pandora One subscriber. The _very moment_ that I purchase a\ncar that offers Pandora integration, Sirius is out the door.\n\nJust like cable vision, Sirius has hundreds of channels full of music I really\ndon't want to listen to. Meanwhile, I drop an artist or song name in to\nPandora and magically, I have hours of quality listening available. It's\namazing. The Music Genome Project is Pandora's most powerful asset. It allows\nthem to piece together relevent music, even for edge cases.\n\nMy Spotify invite come through yet, so I haven't had a chance to use their\nservice, but it strikes me as a little bit different use case. Spotify appears\nto allow you to listen to specific music. That's not really how I use Pandora,\nand I think there's room for both:\n\nSpotify - a replacement for purchasing thousands of dollars of music that I'll\nonly listen to for a few months.\n\nPandora - a replacement for the radio that plays music I don't like.\n\nAs someone who uses two out of three of these services, I don't see Sirius\nsticking around long once 3G data service is common place in automobiles.\nAdditionally, I think there's room in the market for Spotify _and_ Pandora,\nboth of which fill different needs. I still buy music from iTMS, but I'd jump\nat a fixed price solution like Spotify. I still want to listen to \"random\"\nmusic that fits my tastes while at my desk or driving.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow to watch the Olympics, live, from the United States - bradgessler\nhttp://bearsfightingbears.com/how-to-watch-the-olympics-live-from-the-united-states\n======\navolcano\nKinda seems more like \"how to watch the Olympics for $20\" (or more - I don't\nknow quite how many games are available, and at what quality, from the BBC,\nbut I feel like you could potentially use over 200 gigs of transfer in\nwatching them).\n\nMany actual VPNs are somewhat cheaper, and just as simple to set up.\n\nOf course, paying money to a third-party to watch BBC feels as insane and dumb\nas ever. You'd think that they'd start looking into overseas subscriptions at\nthis point. Nevermind the IOC - why can't they offer anything on Pay-Per-View?\nBoth are great alternative sources of income they're passing up, instead\nessentially encouraging piracy and sending money to third parties instead!\n\n~~~\nkristofferR\nJust use these two DNS servers, they're free and takes no effort to get\nworking:\n\nPrimary DNS: 64.250.122.104\n\nSecondary DNS: 199.167.30.144\n\n~~~\nsch1zo\nyou probably should mention the guys providing the service. These DNS Servers\nare from <http://tunlr.net/> and you shouldn't use these Server permanantly\nbecause they do DNS Traffic shaping\n\n------\ncoderrr\nOr you could sign up at <https://www.privateinternetaccess.com> for our VPN\nwith two UK gateways for 6.95 for one month. Cheaper and much easier to setup.\n\nAnd from what I remember flash does not follow the system SOCKS proxy\nsettings: [http://coderrr.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/how-to-force-\nflash-o...](http://coderrr.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/how-to-force-flash-or-any-\nprogram-to-use-a-socks-proxy-using-transocks-and-iptables-in-linux/)\n\n~~~\njevinskie\nFor the price of a fast food lunch I decided to try it out. I appreciate the\nmany supported protocols. The L2TP w/ IPSec VPN works just fine in OS X. The\nstreaming quality was quite good and the online offerings from the BBC puts\nNBC's broadcasts to shame! I couldn't find a commercial either... is that\nreally the case and I'm just a shellshocked American who hasn't seen the BBC\nin the UK before?\n\n~~~\nk-mcgrady\nNo commercials. The BBC is funded by UK taxpayers through a license fee (about\n£12 per month).\n\n~~~\negwor\nSo it basically means that everyone doing this is breaching various licensing\nagreements\n\n~~~\njevinskie\nYes, I would love to be able to pay the BBC some amount to watch their iPlayer\nbroadcasts of the Olympics but I'm sure NBC would never let that happen.\n\n------\ncdalonzo\nOr you could just download TunnelBear <http://www.tunnelbear.com>, set it to\nUK, and go to <http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/tv/bbc_one_london/watchlive>\n\nWhy go through all that trouble?\n\n------\nbinaryorganic\nThis is spam. First step is a referral link to linode.com.\n\n~~~\nbradgessler\nIts not. I just put a disclosure at the bottom of the post and would like to\ndonate whatever the referrals are to an anti-censorship organization, assuming\nLinode can make that happen.\n\n~~~\nceol\nThe bottom of the post isn't where you linked the referral. Pretty shady\nbehavior, honestly.\n\n------\nkristofferR\nJust use <http://tunlr.net/> 's DNS servers - it's completely free and with no\nsignup required, takes 20 sec to add.\n\nPrimary DNS: 64.250.122.104\n\nSecondary DNS: 199.167.30.144\n\n~~~\npacemkr\nThis doesn't work. I get \"The content does not seem to be working.\" when\ntrying to load the stream.\n\n------\nvoyou\nNBC are streaming all the events live at <http://www.nbcolympics.com/> ,\nalthough you need to have a cable/satellite TV subscription to access the\nstreams. The complaints about them not showing events live on TV are\nlegitimate (not to mention their editing out the tribute to the victims of the\n7/7 bombing during the opening ceremony), but there's an easier solution for\nmost people in the US than the one in this article.\n\n------\nck2\nI know this won't be popular but is it actually a right to watch the Olympics\nlive?\n\nLike movies in theaters I just ignore the hype and wait six months for either\nredbox or netflix to get it.\n\n~~~\nalayne\nIt's obviously not a fundamental human right to have access to Olympic\nprogramming. However the way in which they delay programming and restrict\naccess seems manipulative which I file under unethical.\n\n~~~\nAffableSpatula\nNo, not unethical, just plain idiotic. But illegally watching a free TV\nstation at the cost of another country's tax payers is definitely unethical.\n\n~~~\nwamatt\nWho says it's coming at a cost? There is a very real chance the BBC have fixed\nsized pipes already paid for, that are not even close to being fully utilized.\n\n------\nw1ntermute\nThis seems pointless. If you're going to watch BBC content without paying\ntheir licensing fee, you might as well torrent it - that way you're not using\nup their bandwidth.\n\n~~~\nstreptomycin\nWhere are these torrents, with high quality video posted in near real time?\n\nEDIT: I'm half serious, I wouldn't mind seeing Phelps lose, I missed it live.\nI'm an American, the NBC video website doesn't let me log in for some reason\neven though I have a valid account that worked yesterday (no error message, it\njust brings me back to the login screen every time), and they seem to be\nscrubbing YouTube quite well.\n\n~~~\nw1ntermute\nMy private tracker has 720p recordings of events 10-15 minutes after they end.\n\n~~~\nstreptomycin\nSo when you said \"this seems pointless\", you meant \"this seems pointless if\nyou have access to some particular private bittorrent tracker\". I trust you\ncan see the difference there :)\n\n~~~\nw1ntermute\nGetting access to a private tracker isn't that hard, and you can probably find\nthe stuff on EZTV anyway.\n\n~~~\nsupercanuck\nWe are all ears.\n\n------\nactivepeanut\nAfter you setup your proxy, you can quickly enable it from a script using\nthis:\n\n    \n    \n      networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxystate Ethernet0 on\n    \n\nAnd disable it using this:\n\n    \n    \n      networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxystate Ethernet0 off\n\n------\ngrowt\nOr you could use Hide My Ass, they have a summer special starting at $9,99 for\na week. <http://hidemyass.com/vpn/r3906/> (disclaimer: affiliate link)\n\n~~~\nwamatt\nI'd recommend witopia over HMA.\n\n------\nirq\nThis doesn't actually work, not using latest Flash on Mountain Lion anyway.\nThis, however, does work:\n\n<https://gist.github.com/3195652>\n\n------\nc16\nFor those looking for cheaper VPS's, <http://www.lowendbox.com/tag/uk> has a\nbig list of 'low end box'es.\n\nI'm having problems connecting, this link might be better:\n[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sugexp=chrome,m...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=10&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Awww.lowendbox.com%2Ftag%2Fuk)\n\n------\ncesart\nThanks for the step-by-step, but I think you should mention in the blog post\nthat you're including a referral link. At least @irq is transparent about it.\n\n------\nSidnicious\nThis reminds me of the steps a friend of mine took as a cable nonsubscriber to\nwatch Yankees games from New York City.\n\nMLB.com lets you subscribe and watch games online but Yankee games are blocked\nin NYC due to the team's exclusivity agreement with their own cable channel.\nI'm waiting for him to write a post about his solution (it involves both a VPN\nand an FM radio).\n\n------\nitsme995\nPretty easy. Took me 2 minutes to set it up (I already have VPS).\n\nBut Live streaming is also available on Youtube:\n<http://www.youtube.com/user/olympic> .Why are you not using that? Isn't it\naccessible in US?\n\n~~~\ndjthorpe\nLive streaming from the IOC on YouTube is only available in 64 countries where\nthere aren't exclusive broadcaster rights. All of those countries are in\nAfrica or Asia, so not available in the US alas.\n\n------\ntemptemp123\nUse a vpn and use <http://www.eurovisionsports.tv/london2012/index.html>\n\nEnter bbc into the playlist box and voila.\n\n------\nalokm\nI just bought a 32 mb vps. That is more than enough for openvpn. It was only\n0.5$/m. For slightly more you can get a decent one outside US.\n\n------\napenwarr\nopenvpn is hard. Use sshuttle instead.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSend a fart in a jar - zavulon\nhttp://sendajart.com/#Wrapper\n\n======\njgeorge\nPerfect for... \"white people\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPetition to Eliminate Gerrymandering by Using an Open Source Algorithm - Floegipoky\nhttps://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/eliminate-gerrymandering-using-fair-open-source-and-reproducible-algorithm-draw-congressional-districts\n======\ngrizzles\nInsert loud horn noise here. Didn't use the catch phrase \"Drain the Swamp\" to\nget traction. NEXT.\n\n------\nLorenPechtel\nStill showing only one signature. I suspect Trump fried the system.\n\n~~~\nFloegipoky\nAuthor here. Though I obviously can't be certain, I suspect the reason it's\nstill showing 1 signature is that the petition hasn't crossed the threshold\nwhere it becomes publicly searchable.\n\nI'm not sure what's going to come of this petition; I'm not a political\norganizer, I don't have mailing lists of people to forward this to. I'm just a\nyoung engineer who thought it was a real shame that nobody has been talking\nabout practical, long-term solutions to the real problems that are facing our\ncountry. I think this is exactly the type of problem we should be applying\ntechnology to solve. If you agree, please sign the petition. Your signature\nwill help this reach beyond my personal network and be seen by people who\ndon't already know about the research that's been done in this area. Even if\nit just encourages a few more people to read up on what gerrymandering is and\nhow it affects our representation I'll consider it a win. I'd also really like\nto encourage people reading this to talk about it with their family and\nfriends. As a species we've made technological advances in so many areas: how\nwe communicate, how we heal each other, how we kill each other. It's high time\nwe start applying technology to affect positive change in our governance as\nwell.\n\n------\nseanp2k2\nHow long before they 404 this subdomain?\n\n~~~\ndragonwriter\nIt's quite useful to let people sign themselves up for an enemies list.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNokia 3310 hands-on - asymmetric\nhttps://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/02/nokia-3310-hands-on-its-hard-not-to-like-this-modern-take-on-the-feature-phone/\n======\nthrowaway000002\nThis would be my \"primary driver\" had they implemented LTE, GPS, and no-\nnonsense USB tethering.\n\nI don't need, nor want, anything else.\n\nAlso, get off my lawn.\n\n------\nKoshkin\n3310 (the original) was my first mobile phone. It was OK. Flip phones were\nmuch nicer though, even the ones with the antenna sticking out - which, in\nfact, made them even cooler looking. I loved my Motorola-made one (not the\nRAZR; VA76R, was it?). It was perfect.\n\n------\nctack\nThis is really attractive, SD card, bluetooth, long battery life. But there is\nno GPS, so no maps. That's a lot to compromise.\n\nSeems they really went all out in not making it a smart phone replacement.\n\n------\nhprotagonist\nburner for border crossings.\n\nFinally, a phone for older relatives that doesn't suck.\n\n------\nLostWanderer\nWhat are the possibilities of application development in feature phones? Are\nwe seeing the return of feature phones with possible voice functions in the\nvery near future.\n\n------\nufmace\nPretty cool! Be interesting to see how many of the internet \"grumpy old men\"\ncomplaining about modern smartphones buy them in first-world countries.\n\n~~~\nnom\nI really want to see them succeed, too. Considering that used Nokia 3310 and\n3330 are still sold for around 50 Euro on Amazon or eBay here in Germany, it's\nfair to assume that there is a real market for new \"dumbphones\".\n\n------\nanotheryou\nIf only it had a keyboard. I bet people just forgot about the pain of T9\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nVirtualBox hotfix now available for OS X 10.8.2 problem - isaacsu\nhttps://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/10965#comment:21\n======\nmitchellh\nLet me go over the anatomy of the actual bug, to the best of my understanding,\nso that people can better understanding what is going on here. Note that I'm\nthe Vagrant creator, not a VirtualBox hacker, not a kernel hacker (though I've\nhad my fair share of both in the past few years).\n\nThere is a feature of Intel CPUs called VT-x extensions. Without going into\ndetail: VT-x is set of features built natively into some intel processors to\nimprove virtualization. Any recent desktop/laptop Intel processor has these.\nFor reasons unknown to me, these extensions are typically disabled by default.\nVirtualBox, VMWare, Parallels all contain code to enable these automatically\nfor you. Enabling VT-x extensions requires ring-0 (kernel level) API calls.\nTherefore, it is up to the kernel extension to enable these.\n\nMac OS X 10.6 and greater supports native kernel APIs for doing this[1]. Prior\nto 10.6, you'd have to directly query the CPUs and modify CPU registers\nyourself, and icky business prone to some massive failure. Native APIs are\npretty nice. In Darwin (the OS X kernel), these APIs are `host_vmxon` and\n`host_vmxoff`. These are very easy to use, you just call them. Mac OS X does\nall the internal accounting to verify that the CPU supports VT-x, VT-x isn't\nalready enabled, etc. It also supports this feature called _exclusive_ access\nto VT-x. By passing `true` to `host_vmxon`, you're requesting _exclusive_\naccess to the VT-x extensions. If this succeeds, then until you call\n`host_vmxoff` again, no other application can call `host_vmxon` (a\n`VMX_IN_USE` error is returned).\n\nIt turns out that Mac OS X 10.8.2 on Ivy Bridge CPUs has a bug where this\naccounting is broken. No application actually is using VT-x extensions but\n`host_vmon` returns `VMX_IN_USE` anyways. This is what broke VirtualBox in\n10.8.2. Now, I do want to note that this is 100% an Apple issue. VirtualBox\nwas using a publicly exposed API at the kernel level and assuming that such an\nAPI would be stable. I would say this is a safe assumption. Unfortunately,\nhere we are with the situation we have today.\n\nNow, you must be asking: But I heard (or saw) that VMWare and Parallels were\nnot affected by this issue! How did that happen? In time, friends, in time. I\nwill explain this soon.\n\nNext, on to how VirtualBox worked around this issue. The changeset[2] is\npretty simple. As part of the kernel driver initialize process, VirtualBox now\ncalls the new method `vboxdrvDarwinResolveSymbols`. This function breaks\nacross kernel module boundaries and searches the kernel space for a named\nsymbol, even if that symbol is not exported for public access. Specifically,\nit searches for the symbols \"vmx_resume,\" \"vmx_suspend,\" and \"vmx_use_count.\"\nThe first two are functions, the last is a global variable. These are the\nexact same APIs that the _publicly_ exposed `host_vmxon` and `host_vmxoff`\ncall, but without the accounting or exclusivity feature.\n\nSo now, as part of the VMM (Virtual Machine Manager), which sits in ring-0, it\nwill call these methods directly rather than using the `host_vmxon` function.\nThis avoids the accounting bug that is in the kernel of 10.8.2, and we have a\nfunctional VirtualBox.\n\nSo how did VMWare and Parallels continue to function properly? Since they're\nnot open source and I don't have the energy to DTrace them right now, I'll\njust say there are only two options. First, they can use the approach\nVirtualBox is now using where they search for kernel symbols of unexposed APIs\nand call those. Second, they can query and modify the CPU registers directly\nthat have to do with VT-x support.\n\nBased solely on my conversations with hypervisor developers at VMWare, I'm\ngoing to go with #2. The Fusion hypervisor is the same code as the vSphere\nhypervisor, workstation hypervisor, etc. It is all one big awesome hypervisor\nthat is meant to run on all sorts of hardware out there. Because of this, I\nimagine that they have had built-in support for years for detecting various\nCPU models and manually enabling VT-x extensions, rather than relying on\nkernel-specific APIs. This is just more portable and flexible for them.\n\nAnyways, the issue appears fixed and huge credit to the Oracle VirtualBox team\nwhich got this out the door in no time.\n\n[1]:\n[http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-2050.9.2/osfm...](http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-2050.9.2/osfmk/i386/vmx/vmx_cpu.c)\n\n[2]: <https://www.virtualbox.org/changeset/43379/vbox>\n\n~~~\n0x0\nI'm curious to understand why only Ivy Bridge CPUs are affected, especially if\nthis is a software accounting/refcounting bug. Also, there was talk about this\nnot being an 10.8.2 bug, but a result of an EFI firmware upgrade. Anyone have\nany insight?\n\n~~~\nmitchellh\nI'm not sure why only Ivy Bridge.\n\nI can say though that the EFI firmware didn't cause the bug, but in fact the\n10.8.2 software upgrade did.\n\n------\neli\nCredit where it's due: that was pretty fast.\n\n~~~\niAmSpartacus\nYeah, amazing work. I had to actually use MAMP for my web development work was\na temporarily workaround instead of Vagrant and it was painful.\n\n------\nhopeless\nSuperb work! I just got prompted today to update my firmware and declined,\nwondering when I would be able to update it again.\n\n------\ndensone\nVirtualBox, delivering Kernel Panics since 2007.\n\n~~~\natopuzov\nAnd tainting the kernel ;)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nElections are bad for democracy - kawera\nhttp://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/29/why-elections-are-bad-for-democracy\n======\njerf\nYou know, there is so much \"Blah blah blah\" about how bad democracy is,\nimplicitly in context because \"I think it came to the wrong conclusion\" (which\nI , that I really expected the article to segue into something that basicaly\namounted to \"elites should just be given the power\". I expected all the blah\nblah was trying to obfuscate this. But that's not where it went.\n\nIf you are interested in reading the whole article, please be my guest, but if\nyou'd like to jump to the payload, use your browser search for \"sortition\".\n\n(Though I can't help but point out the article undercuts its own premise\naccidentally. The EU, to the extent that it is even a democracy, is certainly\nsubject to the exact same flaws described in the first half of the article!\nTherefore, logically, the decision to leave an organization where democracy is\nfailing must not be so bad, even if it was made by a process that was itself\ndemocratically flawed. This does not \"destroy the argument\", in the parlance\nof the day, but it weakens this particular vote being used as the hook for the\narticle. A vote on any other topic would arguably work better.)\n\n~~~\nnutheracc\nCould it be argued that an understanding of how x works is irrelevant, only\nthe outcome matters, in that individuals who don't understand the workings of\nx are still able to tell if the outcome is positive or negative for them, and\nvote on that.\n\n~~~\ntremon\nNot in this case. The full outcome of the Brexit vote will not become clear\nfor another ten years, probably. Both sides have tried to win over voters by\nscheming with \"irrefutable facts\" that clearly showed the other side's facts\nwere wrong.\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nNot only that - ten years from now people will probably assign positive and\nnegative effects of Brexit to other, more recent causes. The idea of people\nvoting based on the perceived outcome for themselves is limited by their\nmemory / attention span. A lot of important decisions, like those related to\ninfrastructure, have immediate costs but bring benefits only years later.\n\n------\nreitanqild\nNow, where is the \"wisdom of the crowds\" when it comes to decisions that we,\n\"the elites\", don't like?\n\nThis annoys me. There is no doubt the result would have been \"very fair\" if it\nhad been remain.\n\nWhat we are seeing now is IMO hypocrisy and contempt of ordinary people at a\nscary level.\n\nNow, did I want Brexit? No (I had no opinion). Do I think they should have\nrequested more than 50% of the votes? As a conservative biased person I guess\nso, -don't take a risk unless there is clear demand, simple as a discriminator\nin electronics: you want to protect against bounces and wobbling...\n\n\\- but this should have been said up front, not after losing.\n\nEdit: upvoted this for the discussion, not for the original article.\n\n~~~\nbrooklyndavs\nIts hypocrisy and contempt coming from \"elites\" via the very institutions that\nare critical to a democracy, the media. When the 4th estate works in a\nneutral, non-biased, fact based way democracy can work. However, once you have\nmajor media bought and paid for by those \"elites\" to push some billionaire's\nagenda you sow distrust in media. Once the voters don't have a place to go for\ntrusted information all bets are off...\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\n> _institutions that are critical to a democracy, the media. When the 4th\n> estate works in a neutral, non-biased, fact based way democracy can work._\n\nI don't believe mainstream media _ever_ worked in a neutral, non-biased, fact\nbased way. They definitely have not been for the past few decades I've been on\nthis planet. _Maybe_ in the past they were more under control by various\n\"elites\", government or otherwise. Now, in the west, they are \"free\" \\- which\nmeans they actually serve Moloch[0], by writing what sells. That is, the most\noutrage-inducing, biased misrepresentations (and often outright lies) they can\nget away with.\n\nNot sure what is worse[1], but it doesn't matter much. The point is, media\nisn't \"a place to go for trusted information\", it never has been, and if this\nis an institution \"critical to democracy\", then we have a big problem right\nhere.\n\n[0] - [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-\nmoloch/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)\n\n[1] - \"elites\" at least care about something identifiably human; metaphorical\nMoloch does not, so the outcome may be very well something _nobody_ wanted,\nincluding any of the \"elites\"\n\n~~~\nhackuser\n> I don't believe mainstream media ever worked in a neutral, non-biased, fact\n> based way. ... they are \"free\" \\- which means they actually serve Moloch[0],\n> by writing what sells. That is, the most outrage-inducing, biased\n> misrepresentations (and often outright lies) they can get away with. ...\n> media isn't \"a place to go for trusted information\" ...\n\nI think painting all news media with the same brush is significantly\nmisconstrues the situation.\n\nAs a comparison, no software developer is perfect and can be absolutely\ntrusted, and some devs are toxic. But I would be wrong to say: Therefore all\nsoftware developers are toxic.\n\nSimilarly, there is better and worse news media. Can we absolutely trust any?\nOf course not; these are human institutions. But there's a long way from The\nSun and The National Inquirer to The Financial Times and NY Times.\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nI don't think it misconstrues the situation much.\n\nTo follow your comparison - sure, we don't say software developers are all\ntoxic[0]. But we like to complain that almost all software is shit. There are\ngems of almost perfect beauty and usability, and we love them, but there are\nso few of those. Here on HN we sometimes like to discuss dynamics of what\nmakes most of software shit - and we often find similar sort of economic\npressures to those mass media faces.\n\nThe thing is, we put extra care in the software that directly affects lives of\npeople. For anything else, we rarely bother. So if the institution of media is\nso important to democracy, maybe we should put some extra care here too.\n\n(Though I don't know how to do that.)\n\n[0] - also note, that I didn't say \"all journalists are toxic\"; however, the\nproducts of the institutions they form are a different story.\n\n~~~\nhackuser\n> we like to complain that almost all software is shit\n\nPeople like to use hyperbole, but IME I've never met someone who thought all\nsoftware was bad or equally bad. There is a very wide range of quality.\n\n------\nnemo44x\nSortition is just too corruptible and disagreeable I would think. You can\nsample a society and \"educate\" them but then that process will forever be\nunder fire too.\n\nI believe that in a democracy things should be hard to change. Changing things\nshould take a super majority. This will lead to more compromise and possibly\nbetter results for all. If there was a 2/3 requirement to change things then\nthere would be little room for controversial changes to occur that cause an\nuproar among the citizenship. There would be more cooperation because to\nchange something you'd need to compromise with your opponent for them to get a\nchange they want instead of trying to get a slim majority in the government by\nelection, etc.\n\nIf this principal was applied in the first place the UK never would have\njoined the EU and Brexit wouldn't have ever even been an issue. In fact, many\nof the things a lot of people find disagreeable wouldn't have happened.\n\nWe are divided because we let our form of democracy divide us.\n\n~~~\nTazeTSchnitzel\nIf you impose too high a barrier to change, then laws cannot stay in sync with\nsociety, and that will lead to severe unrest.\n\n~~~\nmrec\nYes. I think this is a common misunderstanding about democracy. Democracy is\nnot good because it provides the best government, or even competent\ngovernment; much of the time it manifestly doesn't. Democracy is good because\nit provides for stable succession; if a discontented group is strong enough to\nstage a successful coup or revolution, then in a democracy it's probably\nstrong enough to achieve its ends at far lower cost and risk by waiting a\ncouple of years until the next election.\n\nThe EU was founded in large part to prevent yet another European war; that's a\nnoble goal and for all its flaws I think the EU can claim a lot of credit for\n70 years of peace. Warnings against complacency that \"it could never happen\nagain these days\" are well-made and well-taken.\n\nBut we haven't had a violent revolution or civil war in western Europe for a\nfair while either - anything since Franco? - and I think that's largely thanks\nto functional democracy. Messing with that is not to be taken lightly either.\nYou don't have to go back very far to find everyone collectively soiling their\nbreeches every time a monarch started getting on a bit without a solid heir in\nsight.\n\n------\nkristianc\nThis sounds like a variation of Plato's Philosopher Kings, which uses the\n'random sampling' argument to get around the obvious criticism of the elites\nbeing given the power.\n\n> The Ship of State is a famous and oft-cited metaphor put forth by Plato in\n> Book VI of the Republic (488e–489d). It likens the governance of a city-\n> state to the command of a naval vessel and ultimately argues that the only\n> men fit to be captain of this ship (Greek: ναῦς) are philosopher kings,\n> benevolent men with absolute power who have access to the Form of the Good.\n> The origins of the metaphor can be traced back to the lyric poet Alcaeus\n> (frs. 6, 208, 249), and it is found in Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes\n> before Plato.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_State](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_State)\n\nUnfortunately, many of the same criticisms apply to sortition as apply to\nPlato. The problem is that no-one really has access to the \"Form of the Good\",\nand no-one can accurately predict what the overall outcome of a decision is\ngoing to be over the very long run, however much they study it. In fact, as\nPopper argues, you're quite likely to draw the wrong conclusion and end up\ngoing horribly wrong.\n\nOn balance, I'd rather put my faith in a large number of people selected from\nall social backgrounds than a small number of people selected from a\npotentially narrow social background. There's also a sense of shared agency\nabout the decision making. If it turns out the wrong decision has been made,\nwhat are we to say to the person who is not only on the receiving end of said\nbad decision, but wasn't even allowed to vote on it?\n\nIt also seems to me that one should be wary about making sweeping statements\nabout a system that has endured for thousands of years in the wake of a\ndecision that they themselves disagreed with.\n\n~~~\nalienasa\nDid you read the whole article? His most significant proposal is that modern\ndemocracies adjust their procedures to use something called \"sortition\" that\ndates back to ancient Greece.\n\nIn sortition, rather than polling the entire populace about complicated issues\non which they are likely not well informed, we select a balanced random sample\nof people from the populace , provide them information, and then allow them to\nengage each other on the issue. Then we have those people vote.\n\nThis has several advantages:\n\n1\\. It actually places \"faith in a large number of people selected from all\nsocial backgrounds\" depending on how large your sample, as opposed to letting\nelected politicians decide, which is the definition of \"a small number of\npeople selected from a potentially narrow social background\".\n\n2\\. It solves the problem where a huge number of people end up voting because\nof gut instinct or misinformation. Consider the passage of Proposition 13 in\nCalifornia which prohibits the raising of property taxes. If you poll the\nentire population, that referendum is going to win 100 times out of 100,\nbecause for most people the gut check decision is \"no I don't want my taxes to\ngo up\". However, the correct way to consider that proposition is to get an\nunderstanding of how property taxes are used, how they are collected, what the\nprocedures are for changing them in the legislature, etc. and then come to a\ndetermination. That determination might be \"Yes\", it might be \"No\", or it\nmight be \"we should not limit increases in property tax rates but instead\nlimit increases to the real value of collected taxes, by accounting for\nchanges in property values\". [1]\n\n[1] I'm not proposing that is the right answer, I'm just suggesting that you\nmight arrive at that conclusion if you actually had time to study the issue.\nAlmost by definition, the vast majority of people do not have that time.\n\n~~~\nreitanqild\nSortition is almost what we have elected politicians for isn't it? The default\ncase?\n\nReferendums are for very important cases were we suspect politicians are out\nof touch with ordinary people.\n\nThis has been a nagging issue in UK for years and finally they figured it was\nbetter to ask the people.\n\n~~~\ntremon\nSortition is based on chance, instead of agreeableness.\n\nReferendums are a great idea, but I think that the British yes/no vote was way\ntoo simple to game. Using hindsight to save the day, given that there appears\nto be no gameplan for where to go now, maybe the different options should have\nbeen explored before putting it to a vote:\n\n* remain in the EU\n\n* leave the EU, remain in the single market\n\n* leave the single market\n\n* leave the single market, destroy the chunnel\n\nAt least with a referendum like that, you force the people to have a content-\nfilled opinion, instead of relying just on an empty \"no\". That also reduces\nthe options for tea-leaf reading by the losing side.\n\n~~~\nkristianc\nI wonder if a referendum constructed in that way would actually make decision\nmaking worse.\n\nAs I see it, the public have voted to Leave, but some of the options for Leave\nare actually quite appealing, and would even appeal to some pragmatic\nRemainers (Norway-style EFTA agreement, join Schengen, negotiate trade\nagreements with the EU from the outside on a common basis with other EFTA\ncountries, allow Eurozone to integrate closer).\n\nBy allowing the public to decide not only the decision but the details of the\nimplementation (although I'm sure you weren't 100% serious with the \"destroy\nchunnel\" option) you increase the scope for voters to choose the worst one out\nof sheer spite.\n\n~~~\ntremon\nI'm not sure what you mean with \"make decision making worse\". Are you\nsuggesting that having the EFTA option explicitly listed might have made even\nless people choose \"remain in EU\"? I'd say that in that case, the government\nhas been given a clear mandate on what route to pursue. Right now, I don't\nthink the Leave side has any idea if the public wants the EFTA option, the\n\"own island first\" option, or the chunnel option.\n\nThinking about that last option some more, maybe it would make sense to put a\nnuclear option (like \"destroy chunnel\") on the ballot, to weed out the\nspiteful votes from the constructive ones. Even if you explain beforehand that\nthe chunnel will never be closed -- some people just need to vent.\n\n~~~\nkristianc\nI'm saying that if we're agreed that EFTA is the moderate Brexit option,\nhaving nuclear options (destroy chunnel) on the ballot means that you\neffectively give a democratic mandate for the nuclear implementation (which\nlet's face it, will always be appealing to a substantial minority, see Corbyn)\nand sideline moderate voices.\n\nSaying that the public are in control of the direction of travel but leaving\nthe experts in charge of the implementation (as long as it doesn't go against\nthe wishes of the public, i.e. politicians can't just choose not to invoke\nArticle 50, but saying they're free to explore constructive EFTA options)\nseems preferable.\n\n~~~\ntremon\nGiven his stance, I find it ironic that you'd equate Corbyn with the nuclear\noption...\n\nAs I see it, it doesn't really matter if we agree that EFTA is the moderate\nbrexit option: the primary focus of the Leave campaign was on freedom of\nmovement, and it was clear (even before the referendum, given the situation\nwith Norway and Switzerland) that freedom of movement is an integral part of\nthe single market treaties -- a point reiterated by Merkel and Tusk over the\npast few days.\n\nSo regardless that you and I may prefer for the Leave side to explore the EFTA\nroute, it isn't in their mandate -- they won on a campaign of curbing free\nmovement. Had the \"moderate Brexit\" been a separate choice on the ballot, they\nmight have had a mandate to go for that option. But right now, nobody really\nknows how many of the Leave voters voted against free movement, and how many\nvoted \"just\" against the EU.\n\n~~~\nkristianc\nReferendums aren't the same thing as elections - they don't come with a set of\nmanifesto promises or a promised programme of government afterwards beyond\ncarrying out the policy suggested in the Referendum.\n\nThe politicians making the promises may not even be in the government (it\ntended to be Leave.EU and Farage that focused on immigration, Vote Leave was\nwary of doing the same and focused on the economy). All politicians can do in\na referendum campaign is talk about implied benefits one way or the other.\n\nIt's now up to the politicians to work out the best deal for our country. It's\ngoing to be a much smoother ride (and much better for the country as a whole)\nif free movement of people is allowed and we join EFTA than if the government\ntries to hold firm on that one, for sure.\n\n------\nf_allwein\nBit long winded, but boils down to recommending sortition, which I had not\nheard of. Interesting:\n\n\"With sortition, you do not ask everyone to vote on an issue few people really\nunderstand, but you draft a random sample of the population and make sure they\ncome to the grips with the subject matter in order to take a sensible\ndecision.\"\n\n~~~\nhumanrebar\nWho decides when someone has \"come to grips\" with a topic? I mean, anyone who\ndisagrees with me obviously hasn't come to grips with the issue, right?\n\n~~~\njerf\nIt's very similar to jury duty. And you'd try to use similar mechanisms to\nkeep the system fair and balanced. And it would have similar failure cases,\nbut \"system without failure cases\" isn't really on the table here.\n\n~~~\nkiruwa\nA jury is a very restricted case. There is a supervising judge and two (or\nmore) competing advocates. The process for choosing those advocates is very\nformalized (defendant selection and public official).\n\nEvery one of these other participants breaks the analogy enough to make it\nuseless.\n\n~~~\njerf\nI see I may have skipped showing my work on too many steps here for my point\nto have made sense initially. Sorry, my fault (no sarcasm). So, _when you try\nto concretely manifest_ the sortition idea, you find yourself stepping in an\nawful lot of the same problems you get with juries. With a twist, but very\nsimilar. I'd intend to have advocates on hand for the various positions, and\nif you think the bureaucracy won't be stepping in here with procedures and\nrules, probably enforced by a process moderator that looks an awful lot like a\n\"judge\", along with formalized rules for the other parts of the process, you\ndon't know bureaucracies. Surely we don't expect the participants to all be\nauto-didacts? And yet, we can't just have one person teaching the relevant\nissues, or that one person has too much of the power.\n\nAnd I don't say this often, but the bureaucrats would be right here. They\nwould be necessary.\n\nThere's no way sortition is going to be \"randomly choose 100 people, stick\nthem in a room with nothing but a problem statement, accept their decision\".\nIt shouldn't be, either; it needs more structure than that. Right down to\nthings like shielding the chosen participants from undue influences, and a lot\nof really interesting questions around transparency... again, quite like a\njury.\n\n~~~\ndragonwriter\n> I'd intend to have advocates on hand for the various positions, and if you\n> think the bureaucracy won't be stepping in here with procedures and rules,\n> probably enforced by a process moderator that looks an awful lot like a\n> \"judge\", along with formalized rules for the other parts of the process, you\n> don't know bureaucracies.\n\nIn a US-like system, if you replace election of leaders with sortition, there\nis no superior bureaucracy that can impose a judge-like supervisor on the\nsortition-based bodies.\n\nAnd if you have an bureaucracy that can impose supervision on the elected\nbodies you are considering replacing, then you don't have a democracy to\nreplace with sortition to start with, you have bureaucratic aristocracy, and\ntalking about problems of elections and democracy is kind of irrelevant to\ndealing with your system of government.\n\n> There's no way sortition is going to be \"randomly choose 100 people, stick\n> them in a room with nothing but a problem statement, accept their decision\".\n\nThere's basically a couple of possible models of sortition; there's a\nlegislature-like model (where sortition is how you choose legislators for a\nterm, and then they are replaced with a new body chosen by the same method.)\n\nAnd there's a case-by-case model where there is some method of _proposing_ an\nissue, and then there is a \"jury\" chosen for an adversarial \"trial\" over the\nissue. (One way you could do this would be to replace one house of a bicameral\nlegislature with case-by-case sortation, so that the remaining house would\npropose legislation and provide advocates for [and against, usually] that\nlegislation, who would argue in front of a sortition-chosen panel.)\n\nIn the latter, case-by-case, approach, there would probably be some\nbureaucracy supervising the process, and the sortition-based body would be\nvery much like a trial jury in relation to that bureaucracy. But then you\naren't replacing the elected body with sortition, you are replacing it with a\nbureaucracy with sortition serving some function within that bureaucracy.)\n\nIn the legislature-like approach, though, a supervising bureaucracy is\nfundamentally inconsistent with the concept.\n\n> Surely we don't expect the participants to all be auto-didacts?\n\nI would expect members of a legislature chosen by sortition to educate\nthemselves about issues the same way as any other legislature. This probably\ninvolves a _subordinate_ bureaucratic infrastructure (e.g., staff employed by\neach member, and bodies answering to the body as a whole, like the GAO), but\nnot a _supervising_ infrastructure.\n\n------\n323454\nDemocracy has always been about the people being able to remove their leaders\nfrom power when they become egregiously bad. Kind of like evaporative cooling.\nThe means by which they choose them is a second order consideration.\n\n~~~\niamgopal\nI always understood election as a kind of checking power over whoever is\nalready at the power, the ultimate authority even above supreme court and\npresident. Only problem is its not immediate but eventual. Can mass voting\nsystem replace such authority ? [ A robotic president, which will post\nquestions for which decision needs to be taken for polling via internet, tons\nof people choose from the option. ]\n\n------\nmilesf\n\"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been\nsaid that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other\nforms that have been tried from time to time.\"\n\n    \n    \n      - Winston Churchill, House of Commons, November 11, 1947\n\n~~~\nnoam87\nThe same could have been said of the horse until someone tried a train for the\nfirst time.\n\nWe've never tried sortition on a large scale, and on smaller scales it's\nalready been shown effective.\n\nA perfect opportunity to experiment with it would be the Canadian senate, IMO.\n\nAlso note: sortition _is_ a form of democracy. In fact I would argue it's the\nmost democratic process proposed which does not run a risk of mob rule. You\nstill have an \"elite\" making decisions... only that elite is constantly\nchanging, is made of a representative sample of the general population, and is\nat less risk of being easily corrupted by special interest groups.\n\nIt's actually quite beautiful and elegant: so simple, yet it addresses so many\nof the criticisms of every other system proposed. While at the same time it's\nincredibly flexible in implementation: it can be perfectly fitted to a\nparliamentary government structure or any other variation of already existing\ngovernments. Any country or state would be able to experiment with it without\nneeding a major overhaul of how its legislative/executive branches operate\n(only how its members are appointed).\n\n~~~\ndragonwriter\n> sortition is a form of democracy.\n\nNo, its not. Democracy is either direct (in which each citizen has a direct\nvote on proposals) or indirect (in which each citizen has a vote on\nrepresentatives, who either directly vote on proposals or select other\nofficials who do.) The _common_ element of democracy is that there is a chain\nof choice from the citizenry at large to the decision, what differs among\nforms of democracy is whether there are intermediate links on that chain, and\nhow many, what those particular intermediate links look like.\n\nSortition is does not share the unifying characteristic of democracy, it is,\ninstead, one of many forms of rule by an unelected, not-democratically-\naccountable elite.\n\n> and is at less risk of being easily corrupted by special interest groups.\n\nPeople that aren't trying to get _reelected_ , and which are rotated fast\nenough to be \"constantly changing\" (which also means that public attention on\neach of them is fleeting), is, if anything, _more_ subject to corruption.\n\nThey may be less _valuable_ to corrupt (since you are more likely to be\nrenting them for a single decision than buying them for a whole extended\ncareer), but I don't think that the combined effect makes them less risk of\nbeing corrupted. At a minimum, I think that claim requires substantial support\nthat hasn't been offered.\n\n~~~\nnoam87\nOn corruptibility, true, it's not been tested so one can't say one way or the\nother. But at least in principle it rules out many of the common paths to\ncorruption.\n\nLet's take four major forms corruption takes: (1) a big bag of money dropped\non your table. (2) I rub your back, you rub mine, reciprocal relationship. (3)\nBlackmail. (4) Personal: the desire for power.\n\n(1) is of course still possible, but you're gonna need a lot more bags, and\nyou're gonna have to be very careful with how you approach. Usually, the path\nto bribing someone requires a \"romancing\" phase; you have to make sure the\nother side is open to your proposal and, most importantly, won't give you up.\nThis is a lengthy process that is much easier when the pool of candidates is\nsmall and doesn't change very often. How valuable is that bag of money when\nthat person won't have any influence in 4 years' time? You're gonna need a lot\nmore bags, and you're gonna have to be a lot more careful about who to\napproach.\n\n(2) This one is out of the question. These sort of reciprocal relationships\ntake years to cultivate, and we've immediately removed one of the prime\nmotivating factors which is campaign funding.\n\n(3) Blackmail. This one will still work, but again: you're gonna need _a lot_\nmore detective work to dig up brand new dirt, every 4 years, on every member\nof a senate. This becomes very impractical. Also I'm gonna go out on a limb\nand say the sort of secrets an average sample of the population can be\nblackmailed on is not the same as that of a small group of career politicians.\n\n(4) Again, mostly out of question. There is a much higher incentive to pass\nlaws that benefit people \"like you\", but not much you can do to benefit\nyourself directly (excluding the unlikely chance that the person who drew the\nlottery ticket is, say, CEO of some large corporation), and still, this only\nworks if by some chance a large proportion of other lottery winners are like\nyou. Otherwise, strategically, the only personal benefit you can get out of a\nposition of power is to pass laws that benefit the country as a whole.\n\nOn the definition of Democratic. Yes, that's a fair point. Or perhaps\nsortition lives in a sort of quantum state being both democratic and\ndictatorial.\n\nI hope someone manages to test this out. To me it seems obvious that the\nbiggest threat to society is not climate change, or antibiotic resistance, or\nbad economies or poverty: all of these have a single root cause: corruption.\n\nThere's no lack of scientific innovation to solve the other problems; it's\ncorrupt institutions that stand in their way.\n\nOur number one focus as a species right now should be to figure out how\neliminate corruption from our institutions and lessen the impact of bad\nactors.\n\n~~~\ndragonwriter\nNotably, you leave a widely-recognized big source of corrupting influence: a\nmoneyed special interest establishing a reputation for providing rewards\n(often in the form of high-paying jobs) to people in government who serve\ntheir interest when they leave government, without an explicit quid pro quo.\n\nThis, of course, remains eminently workable with sortition, especially a rapid\nturnover form, where decision-makers will be leaving government soon after\ndecisions are made and are no longer prefiltered to tend to include people who\nhave fairly excellent job prospects _even without_ corrupt rewards.\n\n------\nthr329889\nDemocracy is not failing, but elites do. You need to educate people, rather\nthan labeling everyone who disagrees as a racist.\n\n~~~\nzepto\nAs someone who is actively anti-racist, I weirdly find myself partially\nagreeing with you.\n\nRacism is hard to overcome and widespread. People are not either 'racist' or\n'not racist'. Certainly people can be pro-racism or anti-racist in their\nintentions, but that is separate from how we actually act, since a lot of\nracism is unconscious and invisible.\n\nLabeling actions and activities and even groups as racist is necessary,\nbecause we need to become conscious of these forces if we are ever to overcome\nthem.\n\nHowever, whether labeled as racist or not, everyone's voice needs to be heard\nin the political process. So where I agree with you is in using the label of\nracism as a tool to silence or ignore people.\n\n------\nkiruwa\nThis article can be summarized as \"Oh no! The 'wrong sorts of people' are\nwinning! Lets ditch popular elections.\"\n\n~~~\nAnimalMuppet\nOr, specifically, the people voted the wrong way on the referendum. Let's stop\nletting people vote on referendums.\n\nYou see the same thing with the EU Constitution - the voters rejected it in\ntwo countries. That can't be allowed. So we'll do the same thing via the\nLisbon Treaty, but we won't let anybody vote on that, because they might vote\nwrong.\n\n~~~\ntremon\nYes, the same thing happened with the NL referendum on the EU constitution.\nThe reason people voted \"no\" was because they had never been asked before, so\nthis was their first chance to have their voice heard.\n\nThat's about the only part of the article I agree with: if you're going to do\nreferendums, then do them regularly. Referenda are only a useful tool if the\npublic feel they really are involved in the process. Otherwise you'll have to\nanswer for every decision that went around them.\n\n------\nNursie\nAh the Guardian. It's gone into full on hypocrisy mode after the referendum\nfell to the 'exit' vote.\n\nIt styles itself as the voice for the downtrodden and disenfranchised, but the\nmoment they make the 'wrong' decision it posts article after article dedicated\nto denigrating these same people, advocating their voice be ignored. Quite sad\nreally.\n\n------\nrwmj\nThere are a ton of great alternatives. My favourite is the Demand-Revealing\nReferendum:\n\n[http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli...](http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2007/03/trident_how_to_.html)\n\n------\nsametmax\nAs usual, people confuse democracy, vote, and freedom. In many coutries, we\nhave vote. In some countries, we have a lot of freedom.\n\nBut to this day, we don't have democracy in a single country.\n\nDemocracy supposes that the people has the power. It's not the case in what we\ncall democracies today.\n\nYou have a small group of people getting in the election pool because of where\nthey come from and how much money they can manipulate. Then, this small group\ntakes most of the decisions, which is what we call an oligarchy.\n\nVoting then, is just a way to swap people from this group. In no way it puts\npower in the hand of the people.\n\nQuite often people opposes dictatures with our systems to justify that if they\nare in that state, then we are in a democracy. The fact we have a better, and\nconfortable system doesn't make it magically fit the definition.\n\nFor the people to have power, you would need them to want it in the first\nplace. But most don't read political programs, most don't think hard about\nwhat their country should do, and most certainly don't accept any\nresponsability for anything happening today in their country. They won't\nchoose what they buy or whatch on TV according to the impact on the social\nlife.\n\nHence, elections are not bad for democracy, it's just we never manage to use\nthem to setup a democracy in the first place.\n\nIn fact, to have a democracy we would need to educate people to want it first.\nTo make everyday's decisions by thinking about it. And to think about what\nsociety can become on a regular basis.\n\nRight now, as most of us think and act mostly for ourself, we can't achieve\ndemocracy. Democracy cannot be brought only by using a fair political system\n(that we don't even have), you also need citizens.\n\n------\nxlm1717\n>Our voting system worked well for decades, but now it is broken.\n\nNow that the elites don't get the desired result, it's broken.\n\nThe beatings will continue until morale improves!\n\n------\nhackuser\n(Excerpting from another post:)\n\nMost nations are republican democracies, not democracies. People choose the\nbest of them (or the best person running) to deal with these issues. Direct\ndemocracy, where the people decide issues directly, is actually not part of\nthe system. The UK has had 3 nationwide referendums and the US none, AFAIK.\n\nThere's a good reason for that: The average person has no idea what they're\ntalking about on most issues. They have other jobs and interests, or no\ninterest. Do I want the wisdom of the crowds deciding how the military should\nbe funded and structured, for example, or do I want elected officials who have\nhearings, a staff of aids, who study the issue and talk to the generals ...\negads, I pay a lot of attention to public affairs, but I wouldn't want that\nresponsibility.\n\nNote also that while elected officials are very human and imperfect, their\ncredentials and experience are far above average.\n\n------\nalain94040\nI propose a simple fix for major elections such as referendums and\npresidential elections. I call it the \"really?\" approach:\n\nAn election needs to get the same results twice back to back.\n\nSo for instance, you could replace the primaries and November presidential\nelections with that system. Vote once: whoever is first needs to win the next\nround to become president. Candidates may decide to drop out, or not. The\npublic knows: if on round two, they still vote for the candidate that won the\nfirst round, that's the winner.\n\nFor the UK referendum, a second vote would have eliminated the protest vote.\nYou see the results of the first vote, and you really ask yourself: really? Do\nI want this to happen? And vote one more time to confirm.\n\nSimple system, with one huge caveat: no guaranteed outcome. But it would\neliminate the need for polling, and hopefully result in better democratic\ndecisions.\n\n~~~\nsteve19\nThe result would be a very low turnout on the first vote, with a meaningless\nresult that may or may not be representative of the entire population (because\neveryone knows the first vote is meaningless so why bother voting), followed\nby a large turnout on the second vote... and then followed by howling and\nwailing by which ever side loses and the demanding of a third referendum.\n\nInteresting New Zealand recently had a double/two part referendum that was\nreported on Hacker News (due the the complexity of changing the National flag)\n\n~~~\nkawera\nUnless you make voting in the first vote a pre-condition to vote on the second\nvote.\n\n~~~\nhnal943\nto howls of \"VOTER SUPRESSION!\"\n\n------\nRexxar\nThe goal of democracy is not to be good but to be fair. Democracy gives people\nwhat they deserve and in the long run they will try to make what is good for\nthem. Making mistakes is the only way to learn (individually or collectively)\nso we shouldn't care too much for each error.\n\n------\nLidador\nQualitative Democracy:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5cCyAqCkIw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5cCyAqCkIw)\n\n------\nmarcoperaza\nI, for one, am exceedingly happy that the media establishment has so loudly\nproclaimed their disdain for democracy in the last week. Open your eyes\npeople, they think they can run your lives better than you and they're quite\nupset that you've dared fight back.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "Are WhatsApp and Instagram down at the moment? - bholdr\n======\nsvdgraaf\nYeah, partially at least, see\n[https://downdetector.com/status/facebook](https://downdetector.com/status/facebook)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nYes, We Will Live with Artificial Intelligence. But It Will Be Friend, Not Foe - Artemis2\nhttps://medium.com/backchannel/a-future-with-artificial-intelligence-friend-or-foe-5e0af3238389\n\n======\napi\nIf it -- they -- are truly sentient, they'll be both. There will be good and\nbad and everything in between, just like people.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nI've never seen a language's style guide recommend avoiding comments before - vs2\nhttp://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Commenting\n======\nblowski\nAvoiding comments that do what your code should be doing is common practice,\nand I think that's what this style guide is recommending.\n\nComments are useful to describe __why__ you're doing something, often when you\nare not able to change the unexpected behaviour. Whenever I build an API\nlibrary, my code is littered with comments like \"Acme Corp API requires this\nhappens before that\" with a link to that bit of the API documentation.\n\nHere's a C++ example about \"documenting surpises\" (taken from Steve\nMcConnell's Code Complete:\n\n    \n    \n        for ( element = 0; element < elementCount; element++ ) {\n            // Use right shift to divide by two. Substituting the\n            // right-shift operation cuts the loop time by 75%.\n            elementList[ element ] = elementList[ element ] >> 1;\n        }\n    \n\nAnd a Java example:\n\n    \n    \n        /* The following code is necessary to work around an error in\n           WriteData() that appears only when the third parameter\n           equals 500. '500' has been replaced with a named constant\n           for clarity. */\n    \n        if ( blockSize == WRITEDATA_BROKEN_SIZE ) {\n             blockSize = WRITEDATA_WORKAROUND_SIZE;\n        }\n        WriteData ( file, data, blockSize );\n    \n\nHe also gives a whole list of situations in which comments are a bad idea, and\nit's similar to the OP.\n\n~~~\naugustl\nCompletely agree :) In some cases I prefer to wrap it in an aptly named\nfunction, but in other cases I prefer the whole algorithm to be in a single\nfunction, making comments a very useful tool for \"naming\".\n\n~~~\ncouchand\n_in other cases I prefer the whole algorithm to be in a single function_\n\nA modern compiler can inline most of your function calls if you like. That way\nyou can factor the code appropriately for both concerns.\n\n~~~\njosephlord\nPutting the whole algorithm in a single function isn't for the compiler's\nbenefit but for the reader's. Especially in languages with side effects any\nfunction call you need to analyse takes time and then you need to come back to\nthe main function and remember your mental state.\n\nPlease note that in many cases putting an algorithm in a single function is\nthe wrong choice but there is also a cost in splitting it.\n\n------\nrotten\nOf course everyone thinks they always write good clean code and therefore\ndon't need comments to elaborate on what the heck is going on.\n\nUnfortunately, having been doing this trade for 30+ years, I've found most\npeople write crappy code in a hurry to try to hit some deadline based on\nincomplete requirements and confusing business rules. A few precious comments\nstuck in there can help the next guy, months or years later, figure out what\nthe heck your original intent was or why a block of code exists at all.\n\nAs I get older, I find it helps me remember what I was doing.\n\nOne of my software developer friends was fond of saying: \"the worst code I\never saw was my own!\"\n\nYES if your code is clean and elegant and well named and clear you don't need\nto explain anything in common language.\n\nYES you should strive for such.\n\nHowever, the REALITY is your code sucks and no one is going to want to have to\nfigure out what the heck you were doing. A few comments would really help.\n\nThe next reality is that the typical developer may be literate in a dozen or\nmore languages and the language du jour that you coded so elegantly in has\nfallen out of favor and no one remembers those dusty corners you so\nbeautifully exploited to make something work.\n\nComments would help even more if you learn to use some basic grammar and\nspelling when you create your comments. (It doesn't have to be literature, but\ntry to make your comments as readable as you think your code is - please!)\nNothing will turn another developer off to trying to decipher your code than a\nfew comments that make you look like a moron.\n\nStyle guides that eschew comments, IMO, are counterproductive. They feed on\nthe developer's ego and disregard reality.\n\nComments cost essentially nothing to add to your code and can save it from an\nearly death and complete refactoring by the next guy who comes along.\n\n~~~\naugustl\nI wonder where the idea comes from that people that write code that's hard to\nunderstand, will write comments that are easy to understand.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nGood programmers sometimes have to do weird things.\n\nLeaving a note about that weird thing is probably a good idea.\n\n~~~\nnotduncansmith\nIn my experience:\n\nA novice programmer will just do the weird thing (no comments).\n\nAn intermediate programmer will spend twice as much time as they should,\ntrying to think of an elegant solution, before doing the weird thing anyways\n(and maybe leaving a comment).\n\nA good programmer will just do the weird thing, leave a comment, and move on.\n\n~~~\ndllthomas\nI somewhat agree, except possibly for the \"should\". I think that trying to\nthink of an elegant solution (and then accepting that you can't, where\nappropriate) is an important learning process. Of course this depends on\ncontext; spending time on learning is sometimes inappropriate.\n\n~~~\nnotduncansmith\nI agree with that. Perhaps more accurate phrasing would be \"more time than the\nseasoned developer would have\". Part of getting to the third stage is learning\nthose types of lessons during the second stage - which only comes with\nexperience.\n\n------\ndenizozger\nRobert C. Martin's Clean Code book has a great section on comments:\n\n\\- The proper use of comments is to compensate for our failure to express\nourself in code. Comments are always failures. We must have them because we\ncannot always figure out how to express ourselves without them, but their use\nis not a cause for celebration. So when you find yourself in a position where\nyou need to write a comment, think it through and see whether there isn’t some\nway to turn the tables and express yourself in code.\n\n\\- The older a comment is, and the farther away it is from the code it\ndescribes, the more likely it is to be just plain wrong. The reason is simple.\nProgrammers can’t realistically maintain them.\n\n\\- Comments Do Not Make Up for Bad Code! One of the more common motivations\nfor writing comments is bad code. We write a module and we know it is\nconfusing and disorganized. We know it’s a mess. So we say to ourselves, “Ooh,\nI’d better comment that!” No! You’d better clean it! Clear and expressive code\nwith few comments is far superior to cluttered and complex code with lots of\ncomments. Rather than spend your time writing the comments that explain the\nmess you’ve made, spend it cleaning that mess.\n\n``` // Bad:\n\n    \n    \n        // Check to see if the employee is eligible for full benefits\n            if ((employee.flags & HOURLY_FLAG) &&\n            (employee.age > 65))\n    \n        // Good:\n        if (employee.isEligibleForFullBenefits())\n\n```\n\n~~~\nnotduncansmith\nSometimes, comments are a justification. Sometimes you have to do things that\nseem like the wrong thing to when reading the code (like sending a POST\nrequest instead of a GET when a GET is clearly more appropriate, but you have\nto talk to a poorly-written API that will only respond to POSTs on that\nroute). Comments help rationalize that decision for the next guy.\n\nI also find TODO comments quite helpful. It requires far fewer brain cycles to\nprocess a TODO comment than to parse the code, figure out what it's doing, and\nmake an assertion that it's incomplete.\n\nComments can also make code much more approachable to junior programmers, who\nmay not have heard of principles like Tell Don't Ask, or Composition Over\nInheritance. When I'm working with a junior dev, I find that comments usually\nreduce the number of interruptions I receive that are along the lines of, \"Hey\nwhy did you do this thing this way?\"\n\nReally, it's just not a good idea to make sweeping generalizations like,\n\"Comments are always failures\". The real world has time and budget\nconstraints, and comments are sometimes the most effective way to satisfy\nthose without screwing the next developer to read the code.\n\n~~~\ndllthomas\nIf you're systematic about the syntax of your TODO comments, you can also 1)\njump to them, 2) traverse them in order of priority, 3) automatically surface\nchanges to the list of TODOs as comments in commit messages, and 4) use commit\nhooks to refuse to commit code with overly severe TODOs to certain branches.\n\n~~~\nnotduncansmith\nI do 1) pretty frequently, and while I don't go so far as 4), I do use total\nTODO count as a heuristic from time to time.\n\n~~~\ndllthomas\nYeah, I've never got as far as 4. I do 1-3 on my main project at my day job.\n\n------\nshabbyrobe\nI see rubbish like this in PHP (and Java) code all the time:\n\n    \n    \n        /**\n         * Frobnicates a foobar\n         * \n         * @param Foobar $foobar The foobar to be frobnicated\n         * @param int $intensity The intensity with which the foobar will\n         *    be frobnicated (defaults to 4)\n         * @return mixed The result of frobnicating a foobar\n         */\n        function foobar_frobnicate(Foobar $foobar, $intensity=5)\n        {\n            // frobnicates the foobar\n            return $foobar->frobnicate($intensity);\n        }\n    \n\nIt's utterly ridiculous.\n\nPretty sure I've been guilty of this in the past, too. As I recall, the\ndocumentor tools make a lot of noise if you don't supply wasteful and\nirrelevant values for every single little thing even if it's blindingly\nobvious from the symbol, context or idiom what it means and what it does.\n\n~~~\nSchizoDuckie\nI think we can all agree that this is the most blatant example of useless\ndocumentation.\n\n~~~\nw0utert\nIt's a bit contrived but it's not even as useless as it would appear to be (if\nyou forget about the likely intentional mismatch between the default value and\nits documented value).\n\nThe purpose of this comment is obviously not to clarify the code for someone\nworking on it, but to ensure the automatically generated API docs stay\nconsistent. I write comments like these above functions all the time, because\nwe have a zero-warning policy for doxygen comments over here, to prevent\npeople forgetting to document public API methods (or slacking off out of\nlaziness). Sure, the comment block is redundant since it contains nothing that\ncannot be derived from the parameter names and the name of the function, but\nit does make sure a doxygen run will not spew warnings and errors all over the\nplace, drowning out uncommented methods with far less obvious functionality or\nparameters. The redundancy is a small price to pay to enforce a good self-\ndocumented API.\n\nI really don't understand any of the discussions about not documenting code\nbecause it should be 'clean and obvious'. First of all that's mixing up 'how'\nand 'why' code is like it is, second it's a small effort to write and maintain\ncode comments (contrary to what some people like to suggest otherwise), third\nit can help you organize your thoughts while you are writing the code (write\nthe steps of your algorithm in comments, then translate them to code), etc.\n\nPersonally I also like how the syntax highlighting breaks up blocks of code\nwith API doc comments, which makes it much easier to see where functions start\nand end when scrolling fast, or how they can separate distinct steps of an\nalgorithm. 'No comments' really is the inverse of 'literate programming', like\nmost of the time, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.\n\n------\ndons\nHmm. This is just one guy's style guide on the public wiki.\n\n[http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/index.php?title=Commentin...](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/index.php?title=Commenting&action=history)\n\nIt isn't official in any sense.\n\n~~~\nmike_hearn\nRight, also, it doesn't actually say avoid comments, it just gives examples of\nwhere it's best to try and find an alternative.\n\nIn the bitcoinj code style guide there is a big section on comments that gives\npositive examples as well as negative examples:\n\n[http://bitcoinj.github.io/coding-\nconventions](http://bitcoinj.github.io/coding-conventions)\n\n------\nduncan_bayne\nI've always treated comments as code smells. Not necessarily something bad,\nbut something that at least suggests the possibility of suboptimal code.\n\nOne of the best cases for comments IMO is documenting an unexpected behaviour\non the part of a third-party API. But even then, correct exception / error-\nhandling code can obviate the need for comments in many cases.\n\nIf I'm reading code (from an experienced programmer) and I see a comment, I\nimmediately pay attention, because Here Be Dragons.\n\n~~~\nBoldewyn\nThe situation must be differentiated by language/environment. The suggestions\nfor Haskell are certainly not bad. They hold, too, for many systems\nprogramming.\n\nFor scientific coding, comments should align with the underlying theory for\nthe code: “This implements matrix transposition with regard to ... as defined\nby ...”, so that next generations can align code with papers better.\n\nAnd when you’re in a wacky environment like the PHP runtime or coding for a\nmoving target like the browser, comments might be indispensable to explain one\nor the other really strange way of doing things, where you simply have no\nother choice. Look at the [jQuery source\ncode]([https://github.com/jquery/jquery/tree/master/src](https://github.com/jquery/jquery/tree/master/src)),\nwhere they comment excessively, which browser quirk they address with which\nwork-around.\n\n~~~\nnmrm\n> For scientific coding, comments should align with the underlying theory for\n> the code\n\n100x this. Scientific software should be held to a different set of standards\nthan non-scientific software, primarily because you can probably not assume\nthat your reading is familiar with the underlying domain.\n\n~~~\ndragonwriter\n> Scientific software should be held to a different set of standards than non-\n> scientific software, primarily because you can probably not assume that your\n> reading is familiar with the underlying domain.\n\nAs someone who works as a programmer and system analyst dealing with code in a\nnon-scientific business domain where I've also worked on the domain side, I\ndon't think that this separates scientific code from any other codes.\nProgrammers often disdain domain knowledge beyond that which they already have\nfound to be immediately relevant. Which is perfectly understandable -- there's\na reason they chose to specialize in programming rather than as domain experts\nin whatever domain.\n\n~~~\nnmrm\nI thought through this some, and your comment resonates -- it's not right to\nset aside scientific code from other code with a complicated domain.\n\nBut I think complicated program segments related to business practices etc.\nalso deserves comments, even just \"see spec xyz\" or \"see section 1.2.3 of code\nxyz\" (similar to how you might say \"See Smith et al. '14\" in a scientific\nsetting)\n\n------\nkoonsolo\nComments say _what_ your code does, your code says _how_ you do it. The swap\nexample is trivial, but for most functions it is good to add an API comment,\nbecause how you use the function shouldn't depend on how it's implemented, but\nwhat it should do, described in the comment. That way you can change your\nimplementation as long as you don't change the contract. In other words,\nchanging how your code does something shouldn't therefore change what it does.\nAnd this last part is specified in the comment.\n\n~~~\nicebraining\nWell, this is Haskell we're talking about. Between the name, type signature\nand the fact that most functions are pure (so, no side-effects to describe),\nit's often obvious what they do.\n\n~~~\ntveita\nLike\n\n    \n    \n      (<+>) :: Monoid m => m -> m -> m\n      (^?) :: s -> Getting (First a) s a -> Maybe a\n    \n\nAs a Haskell beginner I didn't find it to be a particularly self-documenting\nlanguage. Between the use of custom operators and point-free style you can\nwrite a lot of code without naming anything to give a hint about what you're\ndoing.\n\n~~~\nvamega\nSo as another Haskell beginner, let me take a stab at the first one.\n\n    \n    \n      * Return the first parameter\n      * Return the second parameter\n      * Perform param1 `mappend` param2\n      * Perform param1 `mappend` param2\n      * Return the mempty value for the Monoid m\n    \n\nThe first two are unlikely to be correct, since if all they were doing was\nreturning a particular parameter, then there is no reason to have the Monoid\ntype constraint. The last one similarly makes no sense, since it's a function\nthat is identical to `mempty` irrespective of it's parameters.\n\nThe order of operations however should be documented. I'm almost certain that\nthe implementation is the third function, but a one line comment stating that\ncould _possibly_ be useful.\n\nAll of my above reasoning was predicated on an understanding of Monoids. So\nwhile I'm not sure the right thing to document is the function, I do think an\nexplanation of `Monoids` should be documented in `Data.Monoid`.\n\nPS - Where is that first function defined? I've used a similar operator\ndefined in XMonad, but if I remember right that was defined over Arrows. Also\nis that second function from Data.Lens?\n\n~~~\ndllthomas\nI assume line 4 was meant to be:\n\n    \n    \n        * Perform param2 `mappend` param1\n    \n\nI'd be a little surprised if it was the third option, simply because that's\nalready spelled <>. Hoogle doesn't turn up a definition with that signature,\nthough.\n\n------\nmbrock\nHere's a small function from a real world module used in a Haskell web\nbackend. It decides whether a \"work unit\" is appropriate to pick from a queue.\nThe first iteration was a pretty complex piece of code. When I refactor, I\noften think \"this is unclear and should be commented,\" but I've learned\ninstead to think \"this is unclear and should be factored out and given a\nsignificant name.\" So I ended up with this:\n\n    \n    \n        shouldPickWorkUnit :: (ImportId, WorkUnit) -> STM Bool\n        shouldPickWorkUnit (k, u) =\n          case hostNameFor url of\n            Nothing       -> return True -- Invalid URLs are fast to process.\n            Just hostName ->\n              takeWorkThat'sAlreadyDone <*>\n                (don'tTakeSomeoneElse'sWork <*>\n                  don'tExceedTheRateLimitFor hostName)\n    \n\nThis way, the domain logic is legible from the actual code, which strikes me\nas almost always better than having tricky code with comments. Trying for this\nalso encourages \"domain-driven abstraction,\" and this is one of Haskell's\ngreatest strengths.\n\nIn fact, the remaining comment can be factored away too:\n\n    \n    \n        shouldPickWorkUnit :: (ImportId, WorkUnit) -> STM Bool\n        shouldPickWorkUnit (k, u) =\n          takeWorkWithInvalidUrl <*>\n            (takeWorkThat'sAlreadyDone <*>\n              (don'tTakeSomeoneElse'sWork <*>\n                don'tExceedTheRateLimitFor hostName))\n    \n\nAdvice like \"avoid comments\" needs to be taken as a calling for actually\nspending time and effort to write obvious code, and for using appropriate\nabstractions!\n\n------\nkrzrak\nIt's doesn't recommend avoiding comments - it encourages to write\nunderstandable code and avoid meaningless comments. It is a basic rule of the\nclean code.\n\n------\nSchizoDuckie\nThe thing with comments is: You should add them for people that don't want to\nread your code line by line.\n\nI don't want to run my internal compiler in my head when i'm reading your\ncode, so you better make sure there's at least a docblock above every function\nthat describes in 2 sentences what it does so I can get a global overview of\nwhat the heck this file is doing.\n\nPeople that suggest that 'the code is the documentation' are always forgetting\nthat reading code is way more taxing on the brain than reading english.\n\n~~~\nARussell\nThat is exactly why once should take the time to give meaningful names to\ntheir functions, classes, and methods. If you are having a difficult time\ndoing it, your piece of code is probably doing too much. Split it into pieces\nthat are more easy to name.\n\n~~~\nSchizoDuckie\nI already assume you are using meaningful names for functions, classes and\nmethods, as any self-respecting programmer will do.\n\nI can completely live with a 50 line function that does _magic_ in a legacy\nproject, as long as I don't have to read through it.\n\n'split it into pieces' is everybody's favorite argument, but nobody is going\nto pay you to refactor it. DOCUMENT IT.\n\n------\nkasey_junk\nI've found there are several topics that even qualified, experienced,\nreasonable developers will always disagree on. dynamic vs static typing, YNGNI\nvs future proofing, IDE vs no IDE etc. Usually, a given developers opinion on\nthese topics is informed by their specific experience and what has bitten them\nin the past.\n\nCode comments definitely fall into this category. I've worked with developers\nwho I greatly respect who are obsessive about code comments. I've even been\ntold that the comments are more important than the code and in that specific\ncontext it made sense.\n\nBut my own experience and biases make me think code comments are a problem. I\nlike to refer to them as future lies. There is virtually no back pressure on\ncomments to keep them in sync with the code. There is no automated way to\nverify them and refactoring tools on comments are rudimentary at best. To put\nit simply, I no longer trust comments and will usually ignore them in order to\nverify the code itself. I can't count the number of times I've found comments\nthat directly contradicted the code it was commenting. It isn't even uncommon\nto find comments that are incorrect when they are written!\n\nAs to the folks recommending comments that document the \"why\" of a piece of\ncode, I'd counter that if you have a \"why\" you have a specification. If you\nhave a specification it should be verified in a systematic way. So performance\nimprovements, or specific client requirements should be encoded in tests so\nthat they don't regress. Comments do not provide that safety.\n\nThat's not to say I never comment my code. Just that it always feels like a\nfailure when I do. It is usually because it is cheaper to comment than to\nprovide cleaner code or better verified specifications.\n\n------\ncallum85\nIt seems like no one here shares my opinion on this: I really like comments,\neven if they just restate, in English, what the code does. I don't think\nthat's pointless. There is big value in it. I can scan and mentally process\nEnglish sentences much faster than code. With a heavily commented file you can\njust skim through the comments until you locate the part you need to work on\n(then slow down and read the code around it and edit it).\n\nLook at the Backbone.js annotated source [1] (the stuff on the left is just\nthe comments pulled out from the original source JS). The comments make it\nmuch, much quicker to grasp what's going on, even though many of them just\nstate exactly what the corresponding code does, which according to the Haskell\ndocs' advice is pointless and to be avoided.\n\n[1]\n[http://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html](http://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html)\n\n------\nkrat0sprakhar\n> I repeat: Try hard - very hard - preferably repeatedly - to remove\n> unexpected behaviour from your program. Comments can never fix unexpected\n> behaviour.\n\nThis is golden!\n\n------\nnodesocket\nI've seen this many times:\n\n    \n    \n        ...thus they (comments) tend to diverge from actual implementation.\n    \n\nIt happens, you update/refactor code, and forget to update the comments. Thus\nthe comments are outdated or worse not applicable anymore. Common mistake by\nless-detailed oriented developers. Begs the question, in this case is is\nbetter to have confusing/incorrect comments, or no comments at all?\n\n~~~\nseanmcdirmid\nNo comments are better than bad comments. There is nothing worse than a\nmisleading description.\n\n~~~\ndspillett\nI've always gone with the adage: if the comment and code do not agree, don't\nassume that either of them are correct.\n\nA bad description isn't just a problem in itself, it can indicate a worse\nproblem sat waiting to jump out and bite as you walk by.\n\n~~~\nrtpg\ncomments might diverge from behaviour but the code, almost by definition\n(modulo some crazy magic happening/broken interpreter ) _is_ the behaviour.\n\n~~~\nseanmcdirmid\nThe best commenting system is a debugger stepping through the code.\nUnfortunately, I've yet to see a commenting style that is able to really\ndocument mental models about how the code works.\n\n~~~\nnirvdrum\nSEURAT is a research project that attempted this. I was a test subject for it\na while back and found it pretty interesting. But its implementation at the\ntime was an Eclipse plugin that probably hasn't been kept up todate. You can\nfind a paper on it on the ACM digital library:\n\n[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1368215](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1368215)\n\nI'm sure the dissertation is available somewhere on cs.wpi.edu, too.\n\n------\nNursie\nI'm a big believer in function level comments in code, in a sort of doxygen-\nish style (I write mostly C).\n\nIt allows you to document the intended inputs and outputs of the function and\nstate its purpose. This increases maintainability and reusability.\n\nFunctions themselves should be short and written as a sequence of logical\nsteps.\n\nI'm also a big fan of doing things right rather than just hacking until it\nworks, which seems to put me in a minority.\n\n~~~\nicebraining\nBut the thing is, in C a geocoding function would probably receive two ints\nand return a string, while in Haskell you'd probably have a function of type\n\"Location -> Address\". The type system obviates much of the need for those\ncomments.\n\n~~~\nNursie\nIndeed, a solid type system would remove some of that need, in C it can be\n_very_ important to document what _precisely_ that pointer is pointing to. Is\nit a provided buffer, something allocated and returned? Multiple or single\nelement? etc etc.\n\nI'm guessing Haskell doesn't need that? A simple statement of purpose would\nstill help though?\n\n------\nyxhuvud\nComments are lousy for describing _what_ you are doing, but there are no\nalternative to comments for describing _why_ something is done.\n\n------\nchiachun\nSimilar thoughts were seen in the SICP book.\n\n\"In this book we don't use many comments; we try to make our programs self-\ndocumenting by using descriptive names.\"\n\n[http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-\nZ-H-15.html...](http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-\nZ-H-15.html#footnote_Temp_197)\n\n~~~\n_delirium\nFrom the era when two poles were Lisp and C, I can sort of see that. In part\nbecause of the preference for longer identifier names in Lisp, versus cryptic\nabbreviations in C, _some_ kinds of comments prevalent in C aren't as\nnecessarily in Lisp. Instead of atoi() you'd have something like _convert-\nascii-to-integer_.\n\nIn modern Lisp, though, it's still considered good form to include both a\ndocstring, and internal comments explaining anything particularly tricky.\n\n------\ntibbe\nNote that this isn't the \"official\" Haskell style guide. We don't have one\n(although we probably shouldn't). This is one of the competing guides out\nthere.\n\n------\ndheera\nI'd say the language design and language ecosystem has a LOT to do with it as\nwell. Here are a few lines of Java that I just had to write about 10 minutes\nago.\n\n    \n    \n      PendingResult<MessageApi.SendMessageResult> pending = Wearable.MessageApi.sendMessage(mGoogleApiClient, mWearableNode.getId(), path, data);\n      pending.setResultCallback(new ResultCallback<MessageApi.SendMessageResult>() {\n          @Override\n          public void onResult(MessageApi.SendMessageResult result) {\n              ....\n          }\n      }\n    \n\nOkay, now suppose this were a Python-based API instead? Perhaps it could be\nsomething like this, after some relevant initialisation:\n\n    \n    \n      wearable.sendmessage(mywearable, path, data)\n      \n      @wearable.onresult\n      def onresult(result):\n        ...\n    \n\nTell me which one is more in need of commenting.\n\n------\nskriticos2\nI totally agree with this. I like to put a bigger comment block at the top of\nmy source files explaining the overall concepts and data structures used and\nthen put few actual comments in the code. Instead I think about my variables\nand function names and make them talk for them-self. Commenting each and every\nelement of your code will just make people (possibly yourself) curse at you\nwhen debugging your code and realizing that the comment was rendered obsolete\n15 iterations prior and the code does something entirely different.\n\n~~~\nAlisdairO\nI generally sympathise with your sentiment - I think this jives fairly well\nwith comments talking about 'why' rather that 'what'. I do favour function-\nlevel comments quite a bit for more complex functions.\n\nThat said, I think some of the commenters in this thread should spend time\nmaintaining a MLOC+ sized code base before dismissing comments as 'code\nsmell'. Even in well-written code, if you're a maintenance programmer who is\nunfamiliar with a particular functional area, a few comments talking about the\noverall purpose of the code and why it works the way it does can save you\nenormous amounts of time.\n\nFinally, if people are letting comments go out of date, IMO they have a\nquality issue. Either the comments are useless and should be removed, or\nthey're useful and should be kept up to date. If your developers are letting\nuseful comment areas go out of date, it should get caught by code review.\n\n------\njosch\nLeo Brodie says in \"Thinking Forth\" in the style section: \"The most-accurate,\nleast-expensive documentation is self-documenting code\". I am sure there are\nother prior examples.\n\n------\nkevinpaladin\nI agree. Comments sometimes make it difficult to go through the source code.\nThat's why I always loved Java naming convention that suggests variables and\nmethod names to be self-explanatory.\n\n------\ngaelow\nI currently write docblocks for everything I code.\n\nIt's crazy how much time I spend on them and sometimes they are confusing\nbecause the specs change and I keep forgetting to add/remove/update something\nin a docblock when I rewrite some part of the code it documents (I'd say\nbetween 10-20% of my commits are docblock updates).\n\nI believe brief or even no documentation may be the best approach until you\nare on the verge of releasing a stable version.\n\nWhile you are on developing and testing mode, it seems a better idea to forget\nabout comments and focus on modularity.\n\nAfter all, Why would I need comments if all the rest of my team sees is an\ninterface satisfying a previously established and well defined contract?\nThat's why docblocks should be only documenting public interfaces, some kind\nof dump taken from the part(s) of the contract they implement.\n\nI'd consider instead other top priorites on those phases:\n\n\\- Keeping an homogeneous codebase in regard of design and coding guidelines\nand conventions.\n\n\\- Re-factoring before it becomes a problem\n\n\\- Writing neat unit and integration tests\n\nAnd, the most important:\n\n\\- Keeping a channel open with the client, constantly feeding guided demos and\nprototypes showing your progress to make sure you are on the right track and\nyou didn't get it backwards, updating specs and being realistic about what can\nbe done and what not in which time frames with the provided resources.\n\n------\nstared\n> I've never seen a language's style guide recommend avoiding comments before\n\nAn official style guide? Maybe. But it is one of common philosophies. See for\nexample:\n\n\"If you need to comment something to make it understandable it should probably\nbe rewritten.\"\n\n[http://kotaku.com/5975610/the-exceptional-beauty-of-\ndoom-3s-...](http://kotaku.com/5975610/the-exceptional-beauty-of-\ndoom-3s-source-code)\n\n------\notikik\nThe stablished policy is: \"don't use comments to replace proper names and\nabstractions\".\n\nI wrote more about this here (it's Lua code, but it applies to any language):\n\n[http://kiki.to/blog/2012/03/16/small-functions-are-good-\nfor-...](http://kiki.to/blog/2012/03/16/small-functions-are-good-for-the-\nuniverse/)\n\n------\nbnegreve\nThis is not convincing to me because the examples are trivial:\n\n    \n    \n        -- swap the elements of a pair\n        swap :: (a,b) -> (b,a)\n\nYes this is redundant.\n\n    \n    \n        let b=a+1   -- add one to 'a'\n    \n\nYes this is also redundant\n\nDoes it mean that every piece of code can be expressed as clearly as in a one-\nline comment in natural language? I don't think so.\n\n~~~\nlawn\nThe argument is not to never use comments, but rather to avoid bad comments.\n\n~~~\nbnegreve\nI realize this, but the article doesn't provide any clear definition of what\nactually is a bad comment. It only gives trivial examples of bad comments such\nas \"increment a by one\".\n\nSince I don't think anyone here would argue that \"increment a by one\" is a\nuseful comment, the part about duplicate/obvious comments isn't adding much to\nthe discussion about the usefulness of comments.\n\nNevertheless, it's true that comments cannot be checked by the compiler, and\nthat's a more interesting point, I think.\n\n------\nsamuli\nThe article correctly advices against commenting the obvious. I think it is\noften practice by novice programmers to assure themselves about what the\nlanguage expression actually does.\n\nWhat the article omits is the suggestion of commenting the right way, i.e.\nadding reasoning or the description of the high level logic behind the code.\n\n~~~\ntimnic\nYes, obviously the examples given in the link are bad style of comments. But\nsometimes you need to explain the reasons behind the (Haskell) equations, just\nlike one would do in a Math paper. So there's a use case for the literate\nHaskell files *.lhs\n([http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Literate_programming](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Literate_programming)).\n\n------\njabbrwcky\nCode may explain _what_ your code is doing, not necessarily _why_ it is doing\nwhat it does in the way it does.\n\nComments may be a code smell when it is necessary to explain what your code is\ndoing.\n\nAnywhere where you have some freedom to solve a problem one way or the other\nit may clarify why the implemented approach was chosen.\n\n------\nvince_refiti\nComment only magical code, but don't write magical code.\n\n------\nilitirit\nThere are times when you absolutely want to comment something like an \"Add\" or\n\"Swap\" function.\n\neg.\n\n// The reason we use a custom swap function instead of\n\n// the one that is shipped with the framework is because\n\n// of an edge-case that occurs quite frequently in our\n\n// scenario\n\n// Refer to Change Request 345.\n\nvoid Swap (Foo a, Foo b) ....\n\n~~~\nricardolopes\nI think you are missing the point there. Sure, I completely agree with you\nthat those comments are crucial, but they are not informing about the code\ndoing a swap, they are explaining the need of the applied workaround.\n\n~~~\nnotduncansmith\nThat's precisely the point. In most cases, _what_ your code is doing should be\nobvious; the _why_ , as others have stated, would be otherwise completely out-\nof-band information, which explains the necessity for comments.\n\n------\nagumonkey\nComments I liked to write were when I found successive optimizations (lots of\nsymmetries in the algorithm) leading to very short code. Almost too factored\nto be understood easily so I added a comment wall above telling the steps I\nwent through before hitting the final code below.\n\n------\ntransfire\nIt is easy to spot (most of) the experienced coders from the newbie coders.\nAny programmer who has written his salt worth of code knows that comments can\nsave your ass. Come back to some code ten years later and you can sit there\nstaring at a bit of code no bigger than your thumb wondering what the hell it\ndoes and often it doesn't become clear until you shove some test samples down\nits interface and see the result. Whereas a simple comment is all it would\nhave taken to clear it up from the start. People who argue that comments can\nget out of whack with code, well, of course they can, but that's no excuse.\nThat's just a failure on the programmers part to always update comments when\nthe code changes.\n\n------\nnrzuk\nPersonally I have no problems with comments in code for complex functions etc.\nBut pointless comments like this below drives me insane.\n\n// get the user $user = $this->getUser();\n\nTimes that by the thousands of lines in a project and you have one big\nheadache!\n\n~~~\notikik\n> Personally I have no problems with comments in code for complex functions\n> etc\n\nI hope you have a problem with complex functions. (They should be made as\nsimple as possible).\n\n~~~\nseanmcdirmid\nWhy fear complexity when its the only way to get something done, other than\nnot doing it?\n\n~~~\nkrzrak\nThere is no such complex function that can't be decomposed to bunch of\nsimple(r) functions.\n\n~~~\nseanmcdirmid\nOften only with a deep understanding of the complex problem to understand its\nsimplicity. But you have to ship in 4 weeks, so why not just get something\nworking first?\n\n~~~\nkrzrak\n> But you have to ship in 4 weeks, so why not just get something working\n> first?\n\nOf course, this sometimes happens, but it shouldn't be encouraged. This way\nyou are creating technical debt, which will be very expensive to pay off.\n\n~~~\nseanmcdirmid\nI actually work on problems that haven't been solved previously (or why not\njust get a dev to do it rather than a researcher). I get offended when some\ndev who writes web apps connecting to databases all the time says \"all code\nshould be simple.\" They really don't have a clue.\n\n------\nriquito\nIt's often a good idea to comment \"why\" the code exist, if it is non-obvious\n(e.g. it's obvious to sanitize input parameters). The comment must be short\nand possibly point to a ticket wrote somewhere else.\n\nIt may be a good idea to comment \"what\" the code does, if it isn't clear (the\ncode itself is \"how\" it is done, but \"what\" does it do may be hard to read,\ne.g. sometimes you use a clever hack for performance reasons).\n\nAs always, handle with care :-)\n\n------\nMerreM\nI was always told that if someone couldn't tell what your code was doing by\nglancing at it, you'd done it wrong and should re-write it.\n\nI know that's absurd in practice, we don't always have the time but I've\nalways used comments as a last resort.\n\nIf I need to comment code to make it understandable at a glance, so be it but\nI'd rather avoid them all together and rewrite until it's clear enough without\nthem.\n\n~~~\ncollyw\nI disagree with that sentiment.\n\nUsing Python or Perl it is easy to go from a for loop to a map or list\ncomprehension. For many less experienced programmers it will make it less\nreadable and more difficult to comprehend. Using a more functional approach\nwill usually lead to less side effects and silly bugs, so I prefer to code\nthis way, and add a comment to explain what the line is doing if it is not\nobvious.\n\n------\ndaemonk\nWrite comments that explain why a certain line is there.\n\nLet's say you are parsing a standard tab delimited file. You find that the tab\ndelimited file has some non-standard features, so you have to write some extra\nlines of code to handle it. For people who thinks the code just parses a\nstandard tab delimited file, these lines will be confusing, so you comment\nthese lines and say why you included them.\n\n~~~\nauxbuss\nOr create a function to handle that case, name it appropriately, and call it.\nThus, no comment is required. You can also test the additional method in\nisolation, if you wish.\n\nI appreciate that this type of thing is language dependent.\n\n------\nkelvin0\nThis style guide is NOT against comments. It is just stating the obvious best\npractices which have always been around for all languages ...\n\n------\ntomp\nThis submission needs to have a different title. It's not very clear whether\nthe submitter is being genuinely surprised or sarcastic.\n\n~~~\njavert\nI would say, never assume sarcasm is in play unless it's absolutely clear. So\nI think this title is fine.\n\nIf the OP meant to be sarcastic, that's just like me saying \"yes\" when I mean\n\"no\"\\---my mistake, not yours, and you can't be blamed for assuming I meant\nwhat I said.\n\n------\nbnelissen\nThis style guide DOES recommend avoiding unnecessary comments and is an easy\none to understand and remember. Good start for all novice coders.\n[https://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/shell.xml](https://google-\nstyleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/shell.xml)\n\n------\nGazNewt\nLinkbait title. Rolls eyes yet again.\n\n------\nwglb\nMartin Fowler's _Refactoring_ says that, possibly paraphrasing here, most\ncomments are bugs.\n\nI do favor putting a short comment on some methods/functions/procedures.\n\n------\nscott_karana\nArticles about writing code without commenting sound like articles about\ndriving your car without using the brakes: theoretically possible, but\nimpractical.\n\n------\nLeicaLatte\nIts quite common in coding communities and style guides.\n\n------\nigitur\nComments aren't necessary at all. If the code was difficult to write, it\nshould be difficult to read. :-P\n\n------\njudk\nRead the linked page. This one doesn't either. It says to prefer fixing bugs\nover documenting them.\n\n------\nviach\nTo rephrase - code makes comments understandable?\n\n------\nMyrmornis\nThe article is spot on. Comment as last resort.\n\n------\nwarrenmiller\nGood code should be self documenting.\n\n~~~\naikah\n> Good code should be self documenting.\n\nGood code needs no test either,... wait no ,that's a stupid thing to\nsay,because nobody writes \"good code\",code isnt good or bad,it either results\nin the expected behavior or not.\n\n~~~\notikik\nDepends on how you define \"expected behavior\".\n\nIf it means \"the machine executes it and is able to produce the expected\noutputs with the right inputs\", and nothing else, then you are missing a key\nconcept about code.\n\nYou see, code is not written for machines. If that was the only reason, we\nwould all write direct binary. Code is written for _people_. More\nspecifically, _other people_. (Or you, in the future).\n\nIf no one (except a machine) is capable of understanding a piece of code, then\nthat code is indeed bad; it has failed its main purpose. The more\n_understandable by people_ code is, the better it is.\n\nI agree that once compiled/interpreted, these differences don't matter. Until\nthe next bug or feature request arrives. Then it matters quite a lot.\n\n------\ntransfire\nYou want a good rule: Write More Comments! Comments are documentation and few\nprograms are ever documented enough.\n\n------\nvs2\nhow about a language that has no support for comments!?\n\n------\nVLM\nA partial list of problems\n\nAssume someone who can't write clear code can write clear comments. Also\nsearch and replace clear with \"readable\" \"literate\" \"concise\" and last but not\nleast, \"correct\"\n\nAssume a programmer has full authority over all 3rd party, supplier and\ncustomer APIs, interdepartmental processes, and all business logic, management\nselected fad technologies, such that its logically impossible to be unable to\nalways factor out weird confusing stuff resulting in clear code / clear\ncomments. My program is the world and none have dominion over any of the rest\nof it and any other conception of reality is wrong. (And edited to add I've\ngotten involved in some weird \"EE\" stuff and like it or not, the world itself\nis plain old weird and illogical sometimes and if you don't like that, a\ncomputer programmer can't fix it, only a physicist, or maybe a diety. This\nisn't a big problem in the world of CRUD apps but it does happen)\n\nAssume comments only exist as a inspirational descriptional prose tool.\nSometimes I use them as placeholders for something I know belongs there but\neither I or the business are not ready. Sometimes I use them as a cheatsheet\nbecause I'm personally really uncomfortable. Sometimes I use them as an\noutline more like names on a map to orient myself than a travelogue.\n\nAssume all programmers fit the management ideal of identical replacable cogs.\n\"How could someone work here without knowing by heart how to convert dBmW into\nvolts or the difference between S21 and S12 microwave scattering parameters,\nso I have no need to comment this, but I've never actually used this corner of\nmatrix math while employed before so I'll make one of those laughable comments\nthat is a simple linear translation just to help me keep my head on straight.\n\nAssume comments go thru the same code review process as code. If a comment in\nfile A tangentially relates to function Q in file B, and you modify function\nQ, your code review process will probably examine file B and the comments in\nit, but how do you ensure file A gets modified? This is especially bad with\nthose \"because\" style comments. (edited to add, at least date your comments?)\n\nAssume no metrics exist WRT comments to be gamed. Your continued employment\nand possible promotion exist because of a content free meaningless metric\nnumber, perhaps lines of comments. Ask a professional to generate a number,\nyou'll get a nice number, but unprofessional work. Ask a professional to do\nprofessional work, and you get professional results and who cares what the\nnumber is. That requires a high caliber of management, usually unavailable.\nEven worse a low caliber of management, the kind most likely to demand\nadherence to meaningless metrics, is also exactly the type least likely to\nsuccessfully evaluate the professionalism of the code so they don't end up\nwith good code. So you get meaningless metrics resulting in meaningless\ncomments right next to bad code, if you enforce metrics.\n\nAssume there exists a silver bullet for comments, just like this months silver\nbullet fad for code also fixes all problems.\n\n(edited to add) Assume there's one human language. I worked at a place where\noutsourcing and H1B took complete control over corporate IT such that code\ncomments and even some internal documents were no longer written in English.\nThis makes comments rather hard to follow when engineering tries to cooperate\nwith IT. So... I'd love to follow your detailed internal process for dynamic\nDNS for my spectrum analyzer, but you guys don't use English and we don't use\nyour India language, so...\n\n------\nmichaelochurch\nI disagree. You don't need to comment simple and _universal_ concepts like\nthis:\n\n    \n    \n        swap :: (a, b) -> (b, a)\n        swap (x, y) = (y, x)\n    \n\nor even this:\n\n    \n    \n        map :: (a -> b) -> [a] -> [b]\n        map f [] = []\n        map f (x:xs) = (f x):(map f xs)\n    \n\nThose functions actually _are_ self-documenting. Trying to explain them\nfurther is just going to clutter the page.\n\nOn the other hand, at 10,000 lines of code, a lot of that being parochial\nbusiness logic, I'm going to want high-level documentation of _why_ all this\ncode exists. My emotional impulse is going to be to throw out all this shit\ncode (in the business world, all code is shit) so please _tell me_ why that is\na bad idea. (I know it is, and I'm not going to do it, but please tell me\n_why_ I'm not going to do it.) I'm going to want an entry point. I can't count\nthe number of days of life I've lost just looking for entry-points in gigantic\nenterprise codeballs. Like, what actually runs?\n\nActually, 10,000-line single-programs should be rare-- Big Software is almost\nalways a mistake, see here:\n[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/java-shop-\npol...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/java-shop-politics/--)\nbut that's another rant.\n\n------\nbozhidar\nThere's similar advice in the Ruby Style Guide -\n[https://github.com/bbatsov/ruby-style-guide#no-\ncomments](https://github.com/bbatsov/ruby-style-guide#no-comments)\n\nComments often go out-of-sync with the code, so I think it makes a lot of\nsense to prefer writing comprehensible code instead of trying to explain with\ncomments something totally incomprehensible.\n\n~~~\nAlisdairO\nIt's weird to me how people will slate low quality code, but think it's okay\n(or inevitable) to let comments go out of date. If your comments aren't\nuseful, delete them. If they are, keep them up to date. It's part of behaving\nresponsibly towards the rest of your team just as much as writing readable\ncode is.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nYou will know my name is the LORD when I exterminate all rational lambdacalculus - nsomaru\nhttp://www.jwz.org/blog/2013/12/you-will-know-my-name-is-the-lord-when-i-exterminate-all-rational-lambda-calculus/\n\n======\ncraftkiller\nSimilar chuckles can be sought at Erowid Recruiter:\n[https://twitter.com/erowidrecruiter](https://twitter.com/erowidrecruiter)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nInstant Apps for the Apple Watch with the Wolfram Language - trurl42\nhttp://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2015/04/instant-apps-for-the-apple-watch-with-the-wolfram-language/\n======\nmavdi\nIt's such a shame the licensing of Wolfram Mathematica is so strict and\npricing is high. I get it, it's the fruit of a lot of hard work but sadly it\nwon't get the traction it deserves.\n\n~~~\nsoofy\nThe Wolfram Cloud sandbox\n\n[https://www.wolframcloud.com](https://www.wolframcloud.com)\n\nand raspberry-pi\n\n[http://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi](http://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi)\n\neditions are free. I understand - low power - but still one can at least try\nit out.\n\n~~~\nmavdi\nWith a non-commercial license.\n\n------\nspdustin\nI had no idea the Wolfram Cloud had grown so useful. If you're here reading\ncomments to see if the article is worth it: It shows how small snippets of\ncode in the Wolfram Language get packaged as an \"app\" via a companion app on\niPhone (which seems like a runtime essentially). That iPhone app also has an\nApple Watch component to surface the packaged Wolfram Code app on the watch.\nTons of quick examples of pretty clever things.\n\n------\neggy\nI bought the Home edition of Mathematica, and have always enjoyed using it.\nYou can program in many paradigms, functional, rules-based, imperative, etc...\nThe hooks to the data and the notebook interface, far before iPython, iJulia,\nBeaker and others came along, so it has a head start with integration, and as\nanother wrote below, a great standard library.\n\n------\nmastermojo\nWho uses the wolfram language? It seems pretty expressive and powerful... but\nI don't really see a strong case for adoption.\n\n~~~\nevv\nI've only ever seen or heard of it being used by Stephen Wolfram. It must be\nfun to have a huge engineering team to help support what is essentially a pet\nproject.\n\nMaybe they will someday release something with general availability and\ncompetitive pricing, but for now it seems to be behind a walled garden. But I\nwouldn't worry. If Wolfram Language truly exposes any novel concepts, then it\nis only a matter of time until the open source community implements those\nfeatures for everyone else to use.\n\nIt's a shame, but I'm skeptical Wolfram will ever see the inherent value of\ngetting real software into the world. From what I've seen, he would much\nrather build proprietary toys that only he can use, rather than building open-\nsource tools that can be ubiquitous.\n\nIf Wolfram has cool toys and isn't willing to share, then so be it. The open\nsource community can build our own cool toys.\n\n~~~\nRootDynasty\nThe language part of the Wolfram Language is still really kludgy to use and\nquite slow. Even doing simple things like writing a function or an if\nstatement is painful. What it does have going for it is the biggest, baddest\nstandard library available.\n\nimo, the language would be much more compelling if the syntax was redesigned\nfrom the ground up and made easier to debug (the error messages in Mathematica\nare next to useless)\n\n~~~\nakater\nI'm sorry but your comment will be grossly misleading to people unfamiliar\nwith the language. There's absolutely nothing painful about If and Function.\nHowever, I must note that in a rule-based language both are used far more\nsparingly than they would be in an imperative, or even functional language. I\nfound myself moving from If to Replace, for example.\n\n------\npanic\nHow does this get around the App Store Review Guidelines?\n\n    \n    \n        2.7: Apps that download code in any way or form will be rejected\n        2.8: Apps that install or launch other executable code will be rejected\n\n~~~\njahewson\nThis is just a guess, but it looks like it could be running in a WebView:\n\n> although the apps were designed for the Apple Watch, you can actually also\n> use them on the web, or on a phone\n\n~~~\nreustle\nI would love to see some of these on the pebble time or android wear as well\n\n~~~\nsoofy\nIt is on pebble\n\n[http://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/406359](http://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/406359)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: do you trust your \"secure email\" now? - aw4y\nAfter Lavabit and SilentCircle shutdown (the first said &quot;better shutdown than give &#x27;em access&quot;)...do you trust the other &quot;secure email&quot; providers?\n======\njacquesm\nI consider everything I type into a computer with an active network port to be\npublished.\n\nAnything less would be folly, there are so many hops where people could be\nlistening in on your data (starting with the cable that runs from your\nkeyboard to your computer) that even an email sent to your 'drafts' box on\nyour own IMAP server is probably not secure. Unless you own the co-location\nfacility and all the infrastructure between where you sit and where you store\nthe mail.\n\nThe whole security thing to me is a matter of economics. I assume that any\ndata that is not worth reading is collected and that anything that is worth\nmore than it would cost to collect and read is read.\n\nMaybe that's a paranoid view of the state of affairs but at least I won't be\nsurprised or disappointed. My main bulwark against wholesale exposure of the\ncontents of my inbox is a 'Rob'. Rob is a veteran sysadmin who configured and\nset up my machine and I trust him (I have to, since he has access).\n\nRob is secure in the sense that he's an honorable person, and that I believe\nthat there is no offer that could be made that would make him break our bond\nof trust. So short of blackmailing Rob (which is hard, and I would definitely\nforgive him if that were to happen) my stored email is reasonably secure, but\nany email in transit is fair game and will probably be caught somewhere along\nthe line and I treat all email that I send and receive as public as a\nconsequence of that.\n\n~~~\nVikingCoder\nI think you get to a point, where you can't trust electronics at all. (Active\nnetwork or no.)\n\nVan Eck phreaking. Optical Time-Domain Eavesdropping [1]. Zero-Day exploits on\noperating systems, browsers, etc. Built-in vulnerabilities to processors.\nBackdoors in encryption algorithms. Acoustic Keyboard analysis [2]. Laser\nAudio detection [3]. Hard drive recovery. DRAM recovery. [4]\n\n[1]\n[http://www.rootsecure.net/content/downloads/pdf/optical_temp...](http://www.rootsecure.net/content/downloads/pdf/optical_tempest_crt.pdf)\n\n[2]\n[http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Keyboard_Acoustic_E...](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Keyboard_Acoustic_Emanations_Revisited/tiss.preprint.pdf)\n\n[3] [http://spie.org/x40847.xml](http://spie.org/x40847.xml)\n\n[4]\n[https://citp.princeton.edu/research/memory/](https://citp.princeton.edu/research/memory/)\n\nIf I wanted to send (very) secure email, I think I would want a Kindle-like\ndevice, with an ePaper display, no physical keyboard just a touchscreen, no\nbluetooth or wifi or 3G or microphone - just a single USB port. I'd install\nthe software I want on it, and then I'd physically destroy the USB port. I'd\nwant 4 AA batteries, no recharge port. I guess it would need a camera, as\nwell. And it would have its own Faraday cage. And a built-in, non-electronic\nmethod that slags the RAM and storage with acid; possibly by pulling a pin\nout. I'd wipe the screen clean, every time I used it.\n\nHow do I get data out of it? I drop data into a QR code sending system. It\nwould generate one full-screen QR-code like image every second or so. On\nanother computer, I'd have a camera that I'd show the device to, and it would\nread the QR codes, and reconstruct the data. I can reverse the process to send\ndata to it. Show it my computer screen, and it decodes the QR codes to a data\nfile.\n\nAnd if I personally wanted to increase the security, I would buy three\ncompletely different hardware random generators, XOR their output together,\nand make a giant One Time Pad. I'd invent a way to keep track of where you and\nI were, in that pad. (You'd start at one end, and I at the other.) I'd\nphysically copy that data onto my secure-Kindle, and your secure-Kindle, and\nthen physically destroy the random number generating system in its entirety.\n(And then destroy the USB port on both Kindles.) If I ever got a suspicious\nmessage from you (re-using One Time Pad, etc.), I'd slag my secure-Kindle. And\nyou and I would invent pass phrases that we would use to communicate messages\nin secret.\n\nMy secure-Kindle would also have a password to let me power it on. And it\nwould have one or more dummy passwords. If I entered a dummy password, the\nsystem would act completely normally in every way, but it would secretly\ninsert the phrase \"[COMPROMISED, DO NOT TRUST!]\" or something like it, in the\nmiddle of every message I send.\n\nI might need to have the dummy password electronically wipe the system, to\nhelp protect you from a government forcing me to decrypt messages you sent me.\n\nBut I honestly don't think there's a good way to stop this. If they have\nphysical possession of the device, and of me, they can force me to reveal my\npasswords, and there's nothing I can do to stop them.\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nMy second line of defense: I'm not important enough to monitor :)\n\n~~~\nVikingCoder\nFirst they came for the... well, you know.\n\n------\njunto\n\"Secure email\" is an oxymoron. Email isn't secure. We should treat it as such.\n\nEven if you use the \"technically challenging\" PGP (i.e. challenging for the\nlayman), then the metadata still leaks relationships.\n\nWe need a replacement that is secure by default and easy to use, so that 'Mom\nand Pop' can make the easy switch. Get that right and you can replace email.\n\nIn my opinion, a company like Yahoo is in the perfect position to write,\nsponsor and open source an new innovative messaging solution, that is secure\nby default (and cannot be made insecure) and cannot be monitored. External\nvalidation of the source code and cryptographic implementation would be\nparamount. A whole ecosystem of new \"secure messaging\" servers and clients\ncould spring up. It could be the next paradigm shift on the internet.\n\nYahoo are slowly getting back on their feet. If there ever was a perfect time\nto release a killer app that would resonate with the majority, it would be\nthis. From trampled and downtrodden to the golden boys (and girls) again.\n\nGo on Yahoo. I dare you!\n\n~~~\njunto\nHere's a tongue in cheek piece that goes with this post:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6185468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6185468)\n\n------\nD9u\nIf the Director of the CIA can't keep his email secure, what makes anyone\nthink that their email is more secure than his?\n\n~~~\nzokier\nWhat makes you think that Director of the CIA would have particularly secure\ne-mail setup?\n\n~~~\nD9u\nAs the director of one of the world's most well funded intelligence agencies\none would expect that Petraeus would have been properly versed in all manner\nof security precautions, as well as knowing how to conduct clandestine affairs\nwithout coming under the scrutiny of his counterparts, yet this was not the\ncase at all.\n\nSo, either Petraeus was a blundering fool, or there exists no privacy for\nanyone...\n\nI'm guessing that Petraeus was no blundering fool.\n\n~~~\ndwrowe\nHis professional email was likely secure moreso than we'd ever see. However,\ndirecting agency resources to cover for an affair would be more blatant than\nsomeone discovering his GMail drafts folder. Being in charge of security and\nhaving excellent delegation / leadership - doesn't make one the technical\nexpert.\n\n------\nalan_cx\nIf my, or some one else's, life or liberty depended on it, no. Not email, not\nthe internet.\n\nFrom a simpleton POV... there is a wire from my computer to an ISP. Then from\nthat ISP to another ISP. Then from that ISP to a recipient. At any point some\none can intercept and decode. So, AFAIAC, that's an end to it. Even if the\ndata can be secured from being read, there is proof that one computer talked\nto another computer about something. That's often enough \"evidence\". Its an\nopening.\n\nFrankly I don't see how the internet can be secure. AFAIK, it never was.\n\n~~~\nzokier\n> Even if the data can be secured from being read, there is proof that one\n> computer talked to another computer about something. That's often enough\n> \"evidence\".\n\nTor/i2p mostly solve that problem.\n\n> Frankly I don't see how the internet can be secure. AFAIK, it never was.\n\n\"internet\" is not secure, but you can build secure communications over\ninsecure transports as long as you are able to do initial key-exchange somehow\nsecurely (ie. face-to-face meeting). Something like OTR with Tor hidden\nservices is very secure.\n\n------\nwiml\nMy secure email provider is /usr/local/bin/gpg, so ... yes?\n\n~~~\njimktrains2\nStill leaks email metadata:)\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nWhich is cryptographically tied to an identity.\n\n~~~\nicebraining\nNope, just to a key.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nSo Ann doesn't know she's really talking to Bob? Ann just has some key that\nshe hopes is Bob's, and isn't Eve doing MITM? Isn't that why web-of-trust is\nimportant?\n\n~~~\nmbq\nNope, that Eve can intercept a copy of GPG-encrypted mail and extract\nplaintext To, From, Title, time, with some luck also some info about sender's\nIP and software, plus all info that is in recipient's and possibly sender's\npublic key (this usually covers full, true name, work, approximate location\nand alternative e-mails, often also a photo). What you mention is an\northogonal problem.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nHang on, I'm a bit confused here.\n\nAnn has a key. Ann must know that the key is Bob's key. If Ann isn't sure that\nthe key is Bob's key there's a bunch of bad stuff that might happen.\n\nSo now Eve can get the metadata, and be pretty sure that the stuff sent to Bob\nactually is sent to Bob, and not someone else, because it's encrypted with\nBob's public key.\n\nEve can't decrypt anything. But my post wasn't about Eve getting any content,\nit was about Eve getting metadata that's cryptographically tied to an\nidentity.\n\nWhere am I going wrong?\n\n~~~\njimktrains2\nThe connection between key and identity doesn't have to be public.\n\nThe point is that the headers of an email aren't encrypted (otherwise it\ncouldn't be delivered). In the headers is who the message is to, who it's\nfrom, the subject, the time, and if you're lucky, the ip of the sender. All of\nthat isn't encrypted and free for the taking and has nothing to do with the id\nattached to the key used to encrypt the content.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nRight, the metadata is always public.\n\nWithout strong encryption you have metadata that can be tied to an identity\nusing statistics with enough data.\n\nWith strong encryption you have metadata that can be tied to a key and an\nidentity using statistics with enough data.\n\n------\nrainsford\nI don't trust other secure email providers, and to be honest, I don't trust\nLavabit or SilentCircle...at least I don't trust them as far as they suggest I\nshould trust them.\n\nI trust providers that offer encryption to prevent basic things like my ISP\nlooking at data or maybe casual eavesdropping if I'm in a foreign country. But\nthe idea of hosted services that completely protect you even against the\ngovernment of the hosting country, which is how these services seem to be\nsold, is sort of unrealistic.\n\nAnd in the broader sense, I trust something like Lavabit less than Gmail.\nPermanently losing access to my email without any warning is a bigger threat\nto me than whatever ill defined privacy line Lavabit claims was being crossed.\nEmail for me is primarily about convenient communication. If I want extra\nsecurity for some reason, I'll use something else or combine GPG with email.\n\n------\nalbeertoni\nNot especially. As others have mentioned, email leaks metadata and the\nexisting protocols are such that it would be impossible to secure them\nreasonably.\n\nOf course, it all depends on what your threat model is. Are you a target of\nthe NSA, or a jealous spouse? That's what this comes down to. Neither Lavabit\nnor Silent Circle could have given encrypted and unattributable email service\n- so if that's what you needed, you're SoL. If server-to-server encryption was\nall you were interested in, then the distros of pgpu they used would have been\nfine for you.\n\nIt's hard to think of a threat that would be stymied by server-to-server\nencryption alone. Maybe someone else has a good idea of what that might be,\nbut it's too early for me.\n\n------\nSGFja2VyTg\nYes.\n\nLava happened to have a known, admitted national security threat as a\nclient/user. It is expected, legal, and proper for a national security letter\nto be used in this context.\n\nIt is possible that the NSL was demanding things that were way too broad, but\nI imagine that this was not the case (and rather that Lava had an ethical\nissue with the whole process).\n\n------\nDanBC\nWhat are you protecting, and who are you protecting it against?\n\nI knew that well funded government agencies could probably get access to\nanything, so with that caveat yes, I trusted a few providers.\n\nIn general if it's important you shouldn't trust anyone. Use GPG, but do so\ncarefully after reading all the documentation.\n\n~~~\nams6110\nDo you trust the person on the receiving side? Presumably so if you are\nsending them something, but once it leaves your computer its out of your\ncontrol. The recipient could do something like accidentally (or intentionally)\nforward or reply in the clear, or could have malware on their computer that\ncopies emails as soon as they are decrypted.\n\n------\nvenomsnake\nI will trust Lavabit if they reopen.\n\n~~~\njimktrains2\nWhich may be exactly what \"they\" want;)\n\n------\nharrytuttle\nThere is no such thing as secure email. Use another channel.\n\nYes I'm aware of GPG etc but no one else is.\n\n------\nZash\nYes, I do, because I host my own email on my own hardware.\n\n------\naw4y\nso apparently there's no reason for lavabit, silent mail, hushmail ...?\n\n~~~\nwarcode\nThere is if you still care about keeping the contents of your message secure.\n\nOr in a simpler sense; do you put your letters in an envelope, or do you just\nput a stamp on the paper?\n\n~~~\nzokier\nBy that analogy so called secure email providers would receive plain letters\nand put those into envelopes before handing them to you, and conversely\nripping your envelopes open before sending out your mails. Because the rest of\nthe world doesn't know how to use envelopes.\n\n------\nvegasbrianc\nGo back to the stone age. Hand written notes with couriers.\n\n------\nDirty-flow\nnever trust anyone! :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThaler: Recipes for Ruin, in the Gulf or on Wall St. - tptacek\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/business/13view.html?hpw\n\n======\ntptacek\nRichard Thaler is a behavioral economist at UChicago, and a prolific author.\nHe wrote _Nudge_ with Cass Sunstein at Harvard Law, which is an interesting\nbut dry book on incentives.\n\nI caught this on Marginal Revolution (which is to blogs what The Economist is\nto magazines, namely, something I subscribe to because I feel I must) and\nthought it was interesting.\n\nNutshell: we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. We can ask companies\nto insure themselves (either through actual insurance or through heavy\ntaxation) for the harm they might cause. But we don't know how to calculate\nthe costs of future events, which companies will always argue are very\nunlikely anyways. Meanwhile, there's little evidence that being forced to\ncarry insurance would cause companies to evince better judgement.\n\nOn the flip side, we could expose companies to uncapped liability for the\ndamages they cause. But then you run into the inability of companies to pay,\nor worse, the restructuring of industries to ensure that the companies who\nprofit the most from, say, drilling are never the ones actually doing the\ndrilling.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nJobs, Jobs, Jobs - antr\nhttp://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/09/jobs-jobs-jobs.html\n======\najg1977\nI usually enjoy the posts on avc a lot, but I don't know whether this is just\nshameless promotion or a mistaken belief that recent unemployment trends are\nsimply due to people and jobs not finding each other.\n\nRegardless of political leaning, I think most people would agree that those\nwho became unemployed in the last 1-2 years are not remaining so due to a lack\nof looking.\n\n------\ndavidw\nThe point of Washington DC talking about it is that, at the margin, more or\nfewer entrepreneurs _will_ be able to \"do something about it\" depending on a\nwhole range of things like health care, taxes, regulations, infrastructure,\netc... But Mr. Wilson is smart enough to know this - he's just boosting his\nportfolio's startup.\n\n------\ndanvideo\nThere's not much here, basically a pointer to Indeed.com - a site I happen to\nlike - but why do we need to go to AVC to see it?\n\n------\n3pt14159\nPeople here don't quite understand Fred's point.\n\nHis point is that just as some technology is replacing jobs, other technology\nis helping the unemployed become employed by reducing the information and\ntiming gap between the employer and the potential employee.\n\n------\nzinssmeister\nok, so indeed.com is great and was a good investment. How does that help\ncreate jobs?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nJan Hanasz: The Polish TV Pirate - mzs\nhttp://kw.pl.eu.org/tvS/pirat.htm\n======\nmzs\nthe pirate broadcasts:\n[https://youtu.be/Lztemas2fFI](https://youtu.be/Lztemas2fFI)\n\nthe hardware used:\n[https://web.archive.org/web/20110815184918/http://epsrv.astr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110815184918/http://epsrv.astro.uni.torun.pl/~ep/Solidarnosc/Wystawa_Bydgoszcz_2009/wystawa.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHas Chase Been Hacked? - stevenhubertron\nURL:\nhttps:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chase.com<p>Safari:\nhttps:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;mmsp63xws9m84xo&#x2F;Screenshot%202015-04-17%2016.28.58.png?dl=0<p>Chrome:\nhttps:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;yzbka9gcjn7r8ay&#x2F;Screenshot%202015-04-17%2016.29.36.png?dl=0\n======\nNadya\nChances are they are using a SHA-1 certificate.\n\n* _checks_ *\n\nYep.\n\n~~~\nstevenhubertron\nOh fun.\n\n~~~\nNadya\nYou can read more here:\n\n[https://community.qualys.com/blogs/securitylabs/2014/09/09/s...](https://community.qualys.com/blogs/securitylabs/2014/09/09/sha1-deprecation-\nwhat-you-need-to-know)\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9368418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9368418)\n\n------\nmsie\nCan the hackers clear my debt? TIA!\n\n------\nlightlyused\nNo. Looks good here.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: HTMLhouse – write and share some HTML - thebaer\nhttps://html.house\n======\ndigital_ins\nNice. Two questions: 1\\. How long do you retain the code snippets for 2\\. How\nis this different from the many many options out there 3\\. Why not have an\n'Email This' button?\n\nGood going on the simplicity of the page and also on the no-registration-\nneeded system\n\n~~~\nthebaer\nThanks!\n\n1\\. They're retained indefinitely, but adding the option to delete them\nautomatically after some time would be pretty simple (it still needs a regular\ndelete button).\n\n2\\. HTMLhouse is meant to be more of a dead simple paste-and-go thing, which\nis why CSS, JS, etc. is all in one editor. And while it's fit for developers,\nI have a few features planned that'll make it more useful for bare-bones web\nhosting.\n\n3\\. I've tried to keep the interface as clutter-free as possible, but where\nwould that button be most useful, on the published page? Or on the editor\nitself?\n\n~~~\ndigital_ins\ndefinitely on the editor\n\n~~~\nthebaer\nCool, thanks. I'll see how I can work it in.\n\n------\nmkaroumi\nCool project! You're live on Product Hunt now!\n[https://www.producthunt.com/tech/htmlhouse](https://www.producthunt.com/tech/htmlhouse)\n\n~~~\nthebaer\nAwesome!! Thanks!\n\n------\nwdstash\nInteresting.. but why would one use this over jsfiddle, codeply, etc..? Is it\nsimply just for HTML?\n\n~~~\nthebaer\nHTMLhouse is more useful if you want to create a small or single-page static\nsite, e.g. [1] -- I'd equate it more to an HTML-enabled pastebin, as far as\nform and functionality go.\n\nI'd also like to add an option for self-destructing pages and some kind of\ndiscovery mechanism; tailor it towards more creative uses of web technologies.\n\n[1] [https://html.house/tah2t9kp.html](https://html.house/tah2t9kp.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAOL buys Huffington Post for $315mm in cash - akharris\nhttp://kara.allthingsd.com/20110206/youve-got-arianna-aol-buys-huffington-post-for-315-million-in-cash/?mod=tweet\n\n======\njarin\nI think the key news bit here is that Ariana Huffington will be in charge of\nall of AOL's blog/news properties.\n\n~~~\nbvi\nThat would make her Arrington's boss, among others, wouldn't it?\n\n~~~\nzacharycohn\nCorrect. Paul Carr's words:\n\n\"I have no idea how any of this will affect TechCrunch. So far AOL has kept\ntrue to its promise not to interfere with our editorial and there’s no reason\nto suppose that will change under Huffington. That said, it would be idiotic\nto think that our parents’ content strategy – particularly the SEO stuff –\nwon’t have annoying trickle-down consequences for all of us in the long term.\"\n\n[edit- Corrected source of the quote.]\n\n~~~\nSamuel_Michon\nFor those who haven't read it yet, AOL's \"Master Plan\" for its blogs and news\nsites:\n\n<http://www.businessinsider.com/the-aol-way>\n\n    \n    \n      AOL tells its editors to decide what topics to cover based on four considerations:\n      traffic potential, revenue potential, edit quality and turn-around time.\n    \n      AOL asks its editors to decide whether to produce content based on\n      \"the profitability consideration.\"\n    \n      The documents reveal that AOL is, when the story calls for it, willing to boost\n      traffic by 5 to 10% with search ads and other \"paid media.\"\n    \n      AOL site leaders are expected to have eight ideas for packages that could\n      generate at least $1 million in revenue on hand at all times.\n    \n      In-house AOL staffers are expected to write five to 10 stories per day.\n    \n\nEvery time AOL buys another site, I mourn.\n\n~~~\npavs\nIn other words \"content farm\". But since it will be done by \"leading\" blogs it\nwill be considered an ok thing to do. Makes perfect sense, huffpo and TC was\nnever too far from being a content farm. These sites are rarely about quality\nbut quantity. They often rewrite news they find in their rss feed.\n\n~~~\npatio11\nI said it before and I'll say it again: take TechCrunch as it currently\nexists, bolt-on a section for high-end electronics reviews, and you'd goose\ntheir revenues without any actual human who reads TechCrunch noticing. (The\nreviews rank based on on-page optimization plus the earned trust of\nTechCrunch, and the eCPM would be out of this world relative to any article\nTechCrunch publishes.)\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1734020>\n\nTraditional publishers are cottoning to this tactic, too.\n\n[http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects...](http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/credit_and_money_cards/index.html)\n\nThink like that, but 100x more aggressive. Will it degrade the NYT brand a\nlittle bit? Meh, it is the NYT: they'll still be the world's preeminent\nnewspaper, they'll still make money from advertisements, and they'll still be\nable to credibly threaten Google with PRmageddon if Big Daddy G gets uppity\nabout it.\n\n~~~\nmrkurt\nTwo things here!\n\n1) Tech Crunch doesn't really operate in an eCPM world, they operate in a\n\"real\" CPM world with advertisers that are largely paying for branding rather\nthan conversions.\n\n2) The CPMs on electronics reviews (high end or otherwise) are significantly\nlower than the CPMs on \"content a CTO would want to read\".\n\nSEO for a publisher really only serves the purpose of getting organic traffic\nto more premium ad campaigns, much like paid traffic (where a publisher buys\nCPC ads). The catch with this is that inbound search engine traffic needs to\nroughly match the demographics you've sold ads for or you end up shooting\nyourself in the foot. You can do short term traffic buys to inflate ad views\nwith otherwise shitty traffic, but only rarely and it's still dangerous.\n\n------\nbeagledude\nI'm just amazed AOL still has money\n\n~~~\nsimonsarris\nTechCrunch, Bebo, and MapQuest are all owned by AOL.\n\nAnd MapQuest still has the greatest market share somehow...\n\nedit: AOL sold Bebo in June\n\n~~~\nl0nwlf\n> And MapQuest still has the greatest market share somehow...\n\nNo. Google maps has the greatest market share. Mapquest is #2.\n\nDisclaimer: I'm interning at MapQuest.\n\n------\nl0nwlf\nTim Armstrong is getting AOL to do all the deals that Bartz should be doing at\nYahoo.\n\n------\nsimonsarris\nImmediately an article I saw in December comes to mind:\n\nAOL Investigation: No Proof TSA Scanners Are Safe\n\n[http://www.aolnews.com/2010/12/20/aol-investigation-no-\nproof...](http://www.aolnews.com/2010/12/20/aol-investigation-no-proof-tsa-\nscanners-are-safe/)\n\nBack then my first thought was: _Wait, AOL does investigations?_\n\nI think this is a win for both parties and for readers. With a sort-of\n'proper' news site maybe AOL's own journalism can be taken more seriously, and\nconversely maybe they can make HuffPo more journalistic in the first place!\n\n~~~\nlucisferre\nWhile some of the HuffPost I do find interesting and even occasionally well\nwritten, I'd still have to say your argument amounts to: if we take one\nsteaming pile and combine it with another steaming pile it'll come out\nsmelling like roses.\n\n------\nthought_alarm\nSend your comments and feedback to arianna1950@aol.com\n\n------\nMatthewDP\nIs HuffPo really worth 7-8 times what AOL paid for Weblogs, Inc. and\nTechCrunch?\n\n~~~\ncfinke\nIn terms of unique visitors, HuffPo beats TechCrunch 10:1.\n\n~~~\nohyes\nAnd in terms of demographics, I mean, my mom reads Huffington post. Ariana\nHuffington is well-known enough to have done the talk-show circuit at least\nonce.\n\nTech crunch is a niche demographic (silicon valley gossip is only interesting\nto people inside that particular bubble). I'm honestly not sure what weblogs\ninc is.\n\n~~~\nacangiano\nNot to mention that your mom is far more valuable from an ad revenue\nperspective. Chances are you've never clicked on ads displayed on TechCrunch.\n\n~~~\nohyes\nThinking about it, my mom is actually extremely savvy.\n\nOne of the first people on Amazon (the free swag and shipping era), one of the\nfirst people using Google (got an email response from Sergei when she\ncomplained about an inappropriate search result), doesn't like Facebook, is\ninto blogs, podcasts and web radio. So she probably doesn't click through the\nads displayed on HuffPo unless it is something that she wants (in fact, I\nthink she uses Adblock).\n\nThat said, she is fiercely loyal to companies that she sees as supporting her\nideals. So if she does need something, and a product that has that\nfunctionality advertises on one of her media... she will get that product over\nanother (perhaps better known or cheaper) product.\n\nThis actually contradicts the implication of my above post; that my mom reads\nit, therefore it must appeal to the masses. The truth is, my mom likes it, and\nshe is an excellent market indicator.\n\n------\njuanefren\nAs a non native English speaker, the first thing my head thought was AOL\npaying with banknotes.\n\n------\nveb\nHow long would it take AOL to make $315 million + profit from HuffPost?\n\n~~~\nmkr-hn\n[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-14/huffington-post-\nnea...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-14/huffington-post-nears-first-\nannual-profit-expects-sales-to-triple-by-2012.html)\n\n------\nKMStraub\nThis after the About.me buy. I'm excited to see how this reinvention pans out.\n\n------\njtchang\nAOL is very different from what a lot of us remember it as. The moves they are\nmaking will position it very well as a strong content provider. It's kind of\nnostalgic in a way in that AOL started out providing premium content in a very\norganized fashion for the web.\n\n~~~\ntomkarlo\nHow is it that different? It still makes most of its money off dialup\nsubscriptions. Considering how much crap content they pump out, it's amazing\nthey don't make more from that.\n\n------\nojbyrne\n1+1 = 11. Inspired idiocy. Or something.\n\n------\nspoiledtechie\nI don't know if this a good thing or bad.\n\nFirst AOL is a giant when it comes to news these days. Along with Fox, CNN and\nMSNBC. I guess this allows for another competitor to hit the market. But also\nallows for News to be under control again by a large corporation and that\ncorporations views on how the world should be reported.\n\nI would gladly see Huff Post move to Television and Maybe more investigative\nlike Reuters.\n\nThose area's would gladly and happily be invested in, if I owned a large New\nCorp.\n\n------\nboh\nI wonder if AOL will try to buy Gawker too.\n\n~~~\nkmfrk\nBuy Gawker would definitely ensure that they are covered in most, if not all,\nblogging genres.\n\nThey also own Engadget, though, and I would love to see how that would comply\nwith owning Gizmodo.\n\n------\nearl\nHow is Ariana going to justify not paying almost all contributors now?\n\nAmazing that she built this on the backs of authors, most of whom got paid\n_nothing_. Am I alone in finding this exploitative?\n\n~~~\njdludlow\nWas she forcing them to write articles for her? If they agreed to do it for\nfree, then where is the exploitation?\n\n~~~\nradicaldreamer\nI think a lot of authors and journalists voluntarily write for Huff Post to\nraise their profile... and I think it's great! If I were a journalist, if Huff\nPost or Talking Points Memo published articles that I authored, I'd be\necstatic, especially considering the economic situation a lot of journalists\nfind themselves in these days.\n\n~~~\nearl\nProfile doesn't pay the rent.\n\n<http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/4/29/>\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\nI think the theory is that high profile is an investment that makes it easier\nto find rent money down the road.\n\n~~~\ngaius\nYes but the practice is there's always someone a year younger than you who\nthinks that too, and so he's working for free and hoping the same thing. Then\na year later, another one...\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\nTrue, but next year you shouldn't be working for free anymore. There are\nalways going to be clients who care most about getting something cheap or\nfree, and there are always going to be clients who care most about getting\nsomething good. Do a few deals for the cheaply oriented clients so you have\nsomething that will impress the quality oriented clients and then move up\nquickly, don't lollygag in the cheap valley very long.\n\n~~~\ngaius\nA year just isn't that much experience in many fields. You'll be competing\nwith people who are 90% as good as you but cost infinitely less (as in,\nnothing).\n\n------\nActiveIndian\nNow Thats a price which certainly deserves attention. This is the second\nacquisition after about.me from AOL. Lot to come i am sure, but anyways users\nwould be benefited,\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow I got into YC S13 - aelaguiz\nhttp://aelag.com/how-i-got-into-yc\n======\nnwenzel\nPretty accurate assessment. I almost certainly would have not gotten in had I\nnot had a chance to talk to a few YC alums.\n\nSide Note: Jason was absolutely the reason I got in. YC should do whatever it\ntakes to get him to become at the very least a part-time partner. They and all\nfuture YC companies will be better off with him involved.\n\nFrom my own experience, the OP is absolutely right about the no BS part. Just\nexplain what you're doing. You don't need to sell it or exaggerate (doing so\nwill actually hurt your chances). I think the most important thing to explain\nis why people/companies want what you're making. The next most important thing\nyou can do is teach them something. If they are able to learn something new\nabout a market from you, you're chances of acceptance go up.\n\nThe in-person interview day is pretty exciting. It's sort of like the first\nday at the dorms (which for me was in 1995). It's perfectly acceptable to walk\nup to someone, say hi and and just start talking.\n\nIf you're thinking about applying, you should.\n\n~~~\npg\nWhich Jason? (We've funded 11.)\n\n~~~\nkyro\nChanging my name to Jason.\n\nActually, what is the most popular YC cofounder name?\n\n~~~\npg\nMichael.\n\n~~~\ngrinich\n2nd most common men's name globally. (1st is Mohammed.)\n\n------\nsoneca\nGreat story, fun reading, not exactly good advices for me here. My take from\nthis is, in order to get in YC you must: i) have a successfull exit as track\nrecord and ii) have YC alumni in your network to review your application and\npitch.\n\nWell, turns out I am very far from both situations, so I just read it as a\nsuccess tale. Which I actually appreciated, as the author sounds like a really\nhonest and nice person.\n\n~~~\naelaguiz\nI'm the author :)\n\nFWIW I didn't have Alumni in my network until I decided to apply and then I\nstarted seeking them out. I went so far as to cold-email people on AngelList.\n\nAlso I live in Austin so the number of alumni has now doubled since I'm back,\nto give you an idea of how slim the pickings are.\n\nI don't know how much the exit mattered. pg has a way of making you feel like\nnothing matters except the quality of the words coming out of your mouth.\n\n~~~\njt2190\nGreat article aelaguiz , very thoughtful. I especially like the \"no bullshit\"\npart.\n\nI'd love to hear more of your thoughts about _why_ you decided to seek out YC\nin the first place, especially since you'd already had some success with\nPokerTableRatings.\n\nAlso, I was genuinely surprised that your typical experience with Angels is\nthat they focus so heavily on not loosing their initial investment. This\nstrikes me as too risk-averse given the nature of early tech startups. Did you\nfind yourself wasting a lot of time with these folks? Any advice for how to\nspot/avoid them?\n\n~~~\naelaguiz\nReally I have to say it was an emotional decision. I've been a fan of pg and\nYC for years and now I actually was free to try it and had a team that was\ninclined to, so I went for it.\n\nAngels are regular people. They are as diverse as any crowd at a mall. I've\nfound that outside of SF they tend to be MUCH more downside conscious. I did\nwaste a lot of time with some angels who turned out to be bad for the\necosystem (willing to toy with entrepreneurs for long periods of time).\n\nThe best advice (and I live by it) is anything that isn't a yes is a no. That\ndoesn't mean stop trying but that does mean that you focus your energy on\nstronger leads first. Nobody actually says no, with very few exceptions. It's\nhard to understand this until you get a few checks closed and then you'll know\nwhat a REAL yes feels like.\n\n------\nspodek\nRegarding the advice to speak to alumni, does anybody have suggestions for\nbest alumni to talk to for not-for-profit applications?\n\nP.S. Thanks for the informative and thoughtful post.\n\nEDIT: at the risk of creating more competition for my eventual application,\nhere's a relevant quote in an interview of Watsi's co-founder:\n\n _I asked him if he would recommend that other non-profits apply to YC, and\nwithout missing a beat he replied, “yes. For three months we were able to\nfocus on our mission and our products alone. We didn’t have to worry about\nfundraising or entering competitions or getting grants. We focused on our\nproduct and solving a problem. We grew like crazy in the last three months. We\nwent from getting $2,000 of donations a week to $12,000. That’s a crazy\ngrowth….Every non-profit should have this opportunity for focus.”_\n\n[http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/06/catching-up-with-\nwa...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/06/catching-up-with-watsi-y-\ncombinators-first-non-profit-graduate/)\n\n~~~\nwellboy\nWatsi, I think they are the only not-for-profit startup, are they?\n\n~~~\nsoneca\nYes, but as one is too little, I would list some other companies that have\nbusiness models very focused on direct social impact: 7 Cups of Tea,\nSoundFocus, Amicus, True Link Financial.\n\nOther than that, both application forms are very similar and I imagine the YC\ncriteria are going to be very similar too. So... any YC alumni may provide\nuseful advice.\n\n------\nandrewhillman\nThese \"how i got into yc?\" post are usually lame but this was actually a\nworthwhile read. Good luck to these guys. I am rooting for you.\n\n~~~\naelaguiz\nThanks!\n\n------\nfirearch\nGoogle cache url for those that cannot see the page\n\n[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://aelag.com/how-\ni-got-into-yc)\n\n------\naakashbarot\nVery insightful read! Can anyone help me with reference an Education startup\nAlumni from YC.\n\nI am applying and would like to get some advice too. Thanks.\n\n~~~\naelaguiz\n[http://yclist.com/](http://yclist.com/)\n\n~~~\naakashbarot\nThanks a ton. This was useful!\n\n------\nandrasokros\nThanks for creating the post, it really made my day! I'm just going in circles\nnow in the room and thinking what to do :). We already decided to skip the\nwinter batch and go for the next, but after reading your essay, we might give\nit a try after all.\n\n------\nwellboy\nGreat read, you feel the love in your post :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat It's Like When Steve Jobs Chews You Out For A Product Failure - evo_9\nhttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/05/07/businessinsider-steve-jobs-mobileme-failure-2011-5.DTL\n======\ndazzawazza\nIf this is true how does Apple make sure there is a culture of collective\nresponsibility and not personal recrimination and back stabbing?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFuthark 0.6.1 released – High-performance functional programming on the GPU - Athas\nhttps://futhark-lang.org/blog/2018-07-09-futhark-0.6.1-released.html\n======\nfulafel\n\"Fast automatic Futhark-Python FFI\" and the REPL improvements sound like big\nimprovements.\n\n------\nthinkpad20\nThis project is super cool. I wish that I had a use case for the stuff in\nhere, but I dont really do any high performance or GPU programming. Maybe I\nwill one day, but in the meantime keep up the good work!\n\n~~~\nhaolez\nSame feeling here. I wonder if it's more expensive to load data into the GPU\nthan to simply process it \"more\" sequentially in the CPU locally.\n\n~~~\nabstractbeliefs\nIt depends on the data and the workload. I did some work on GPU accelerating\nviewshed calculations - basically, line of sight from a point where cells are\nmarked visible or not visible. It's really useful in radio mast planning.\n\nIn this case, the result of any given cell doesn't rely on the result of any\nother cell. This leads to the neat case where every single cell can be, in\ntheory, calculated at once. In this case, you essentially get n-times speedup\nfor n-time increase in processing power.\n\nThe other, often overlooked, bonus is that the GPU simply isn't the CPU. As\nlong as you're waiting on stuff to finish there, your CPU is free to do what\nit pleases. In my case, whenever I started, I immediately triggered the\nintialisation of the GPU, and then started reading command line switches,\nreading in the data from disk, etc. Likewise, when the GPU was doing the heavy\nlifting, I could start on the slow IO involved in preparing the output,\ncreating files, writing out metadata about the shape and limits of the output\nthat's trivially calculated.\n\nIn the end, the speedup varied, but at peak it was turning an 8-hour CPU bound\nworkload into one that taken 2 minutes. What was once a full days cycle where\nyou set up your simulation, did busywork for the day, and then collected\nresults and thought about the result overnight at home can now be done while\ngetting a coffee, and allowed people to make mistakes and play around.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIs this the most expensive game ever? - abdulhaq\nhttps://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/Combos/The-Completionist-Digital\n======\nacemarke\nPlease note that the current actual pricing to purchase the game is $45 for\nthe single-player campaign (Squadron 42), $45 for the MMO portion (Star\nCitizen), or $60 to purchase them together. All other packages that are\nlisted, such as the various ships, are there to allow backers to help fund the\ngame further.\n\nAlso, CIG is currently streaming live gameplay from Gamescom, and will be\ndoing a presentation on Friday where they plan to show off upcoming aspects\nsuch as procedurally-generated planets (and possibly the Star Marine\ncompetitive FPS game mode).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCitrix wants to kill VPNs forever - michaelansel\nhttps://www.techradar.com/news/this-company-wants-to-kill-vpns-forever\n======\nAwelton\nA remote desktop connection is not anything a million other programs don't\nprovide, and doesn't replace any of the reasons I use a vpn.\n\n------\nxt00\nSo they have a team viewer competitor that tunnels all traffic over some known\nport to a third party server I guess?\n\n------\nm-p-3\nUnless there's an open and free alternative to Citrix, not gonna happen.\n\n------\nrdtwo\nAnd my daughter wants a unicorn, I think her unicorn is more likely to happen\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nConfessions of an Ex-Opponent of Whois Privacy - ca98am79\nhttp://www.circleid.com/posts/20150703_confessions_of_an_ex_opponent_of_whois_privacy/\n======\noldmanjay\nEssentially, the opposition was based on optimizing the handling of\npathological cases - how to deal with abusers was considered more important\nthan how to provide customers with the tools they wanted. This shows up all\nover society, from terrorism to 'think of the children', and any positive\neffects are nearly always swamped by the deleterious ones brought about by the\nperverse incentives created.\n\nShame that people don't see this ahead of time.\n\n~~~\nJoshTriplett\nPeople do, but those people are ignored. The voice of reason is almost always\ndrowned out by the voice of panic and outrage.\n\nNot least of which because the panic and outrage describes consequences that\nsound applicable to the person hearing them (or their family), while the voice\nof reason explains problems that sound like they affect _other people_. (\"if\nyou have nothing to hide\" is one of many instances of this pattern; having\nsomething to hide sounds like something that only affects other people.)\n\n------\nvitd\nI'm glad someone wrote this up. I would love to be able to control who has\naccess to my WhoIS record and to know when it's been queried and for what\npurpose. The enormous amount of spam and even physical junk mail that comes\nfrom having a WhoIs entry is ridiculous. I once got a credit card offer\naddressed to me (male) and the woman at my ISP who was the admin contact.\nLuckily my wife thought it was amusing, but it could have been a huge fight if\nshe hadn't understood.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Simple Print – Convert web articles into printable PDFs - k1m\nhttp://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-print/\n======\njclos\nThis would be insanely more useful if it could display math correctly. For\nexample, most of the math in [https://colah.github.io/posts/2014-03-NN-\nManifolds-Topology](https://colah.github.io/posts/2014-03-NN-Manifolds-\nTopology) only shows the LaTeX code.\n\n~~~\nk1m\nThanks, we'll have to look into that.\n\n------\nhedora\nHey, five filters contributors: I’m a big fan of you work. How hard would it\nbe to make a web proxy type service that produced static html with working\nlinks instead of a PDF?\n\nThe idea is to strip out all of the JavaScript before it even hits the client.\nPeople could then use it exclusively for news reading. I suspect it would\nreduce bandwidth and client side energy as well as block essentially all web\ntrackers.\n\nI ask because it looks like you’ve done most of the heavy lifting between this\nand your full-text RSS feed service.\n\nThanks!\n\n~~~\njahewson\nTracking can be done with <img> tags and (recently) with CSS.\n\n~~~\nhedora\nThe idea is that everything would run through a normalizing presentation layer\n(like the PDF converter and RSS full text services do), and only the\ninformation needed for rendering would be sent to the client, so <img> would\nbe rewritten to some other url and served by the proxy.\n\nThe main problem I see is that you can embed trackers in the link URLs.\n\n(You probably want the proxy to be a stateless cache shared by many users,\nwhich prevents tracker stuff from persisting in whatever rendering engine it\nuses for the conversion)\n\n~~~\nk1m\nThank you for the kind words.\n\nWe haven't really thought much about running this kind of thing as a proxy\nservice, or what it would be like to implement it. Our tools are really\nintended for web articles, so they will fail on lots of other kinds of content\nyou'll encounter in day-to-day browsing. If the intention is to avoid\ntrackers, the proxy will have to handle everything, and not everything will be\nweb articles. Browser extensions might be best here.\n\n~~~\nhedora\nFor my personal browsing habits it wouldn’t be so bad. Basically, I just check\na few news aggregators (like HN) and sites that have rss feeds anyway, so\nsupport for HN would get me most of the way there. I’m not sure how many news\naggregators are in common use, but I’d guess covering a dozen would get most\nof the addressible market.\n\nThanks for the response!\n\n------\ntylerdiaz\nI'd like to add that I use tools from fivefilters.org daily. (Mostly Push to\nKindle) If the authors are on this thread, thank you so much for making these\ntools free to use and for such consistent uptime.\n\n~~~\nk1m\nThank you, Tyler. Appreciate the kind words - that's really great to hear. :)\n\n------\niamben\nPretty decent idea - I'd love to see the stats on how many people print\nthings! About ~10 years ago the agency I worked at made sure every site had a\nprint friendly style sheet which cropped out all the crap and left you with a\nvery readable printed document. I don't think I've met anyone that's insisted\non (or even thought about) that in the last few years.\n\nMy own interest was piqued the other day when I went to pdf-print a paywalled\narticle for a friend and the formatting was atrocious. Would have been the\nperfect use case for this. But that was the point I thought \"does anyone print\nanymore or do they just message the article?\" Most of the print use cases that\ncame up in my life (maps, recipes, contracts) have been solved/replaced by\nSAAS products, smartphones, tablets, kindles etc.\n\n~~~\noneeyedpigeon\nSchools in the UK most definitely print.\n\n------\napp4soft\nHope it has open API, for something like when request URL it will immediatly\nreturn PDF for download\n\n    \n    \n      http://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-print/#http://example.com\n    \n\nNow I use PrintFriendly[0] for such things, but it was fully redesigned last\nyears and API was changed, also now it not usable for webpages with code\nblocks and images.\n\n[0] [http://printfriendly.com](http://printfriendly.com)\n\n~~~\nboundlessdreamz\nPrintFriendly has an api -\n[https://www.printfriendly.com/api](https://www.printfriendly.com/api)\n\nWhich webpage does PrintFriendly doesn't support?\n\n------\nroadbeats\nLooks very cool! Could you explain the tech that you developed ? Did you\ncreate a new algorithm for extracting the content from the page or used an\nexisting one ?\n\n~~~\nk1m\nCan be broken down to roughly these steps:\n\n1\\. The tool for extracting article content is Full-Text RSS[0]. It relies on\narc90's original (open source) article detection algorithm, Readability, as\nwell as a set of site-specific extraction rules which we maintain on\nGithub[1].\n\n2\\. Our PDF Newspaper[2] application then cleans that extracted article output\nto normalise HTML/CSS styles so we can present the output in our own layout\nwithout things breaking. We use CSS for multi-column output.\n\n3\\. Finally, we use Chromium's new headless API to request the generated\noutput in step 2 and create three PDFs - injecting CSS to increase the font\nsize each time. After we have the three PDF files, we check the PDFs in order\nof smallest to largest font size and as soon as a larger font size creates an\nextra new page, we discard that and keep the PDF we had before and return\nthat. So if PDF 1 (small font size) has three pages, PDF 2 (medium font size)\nalso three pages, but PDF 3 (larger font size) four pages, then we return PDF\n2.\n\n[0] [http://fivefilters.org/content-only/](http://fivefilters.org/content-\nonly/) [1] [https://github.com/fivefilters/ftr-site-\nconfig](https://github.com/fivefilters/ftr-site-config) [2]\n[http://fivefilters.org/pdf-newspaper/](http://fivefilters.org/pdf-newspaper/)\n\n~~~\ngravypod\nDoes this support images? I tried to convert Ernest P. Chan's blog [0] into a\npdf using this and the results were not well formatted.\n\n[0] - [http://epchan.blogspot.com/](http://epchan.blogspot.com/)\n\n~~~\nk1m\nWe'll add images soon. As for the blog post, should work if you use the\narticle URL: [http://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-\nprint/url.php?size=A4#http...](http://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-\nprint/url.php?size=A4#http://epchan.blogspot.se/2018/02/fx-order-flow-as-\npredictor.html)\n\n~~~\neverydayavi\nTimeline for images?\n\nWell done!\n\n------\nm-p-3\n[http://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-\nprint/url.php?size=LETTER#...](http://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-\nprint/url.php?size=LETTER#http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/stock-markets-\nequities-dow-jones-1.4519930)\n\n\"Sorry, something went wrong :(\"\n\n------\nstewbrew\nThe original URL should be included somewhere.\n\nThat said, I don't quite understand the advantage of this solution versus a\nplain article view (e.g. firefox's built-in article view or something similar\nprovided by some plugin/service) saved to disk via an PDF printer.\n\n~~~\nk1m\nGood point, we'll add original article URL at the bottom.\n\nAs for the advantages, at the moment FireFox's built-in reader view doesn't\nproduce the kind of output we do. If you're curious, we created a video of the\nkind of multi-column print layout we're experimenting with here a few years\nago. All HTML and CSS:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=854Csokl3QA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=854Csokl3QA)\n\nSo if they did create a more print-friendly output, it'd be closer. But\nthere'd still be that step of you creating the PDF yourself. Our server-side\napproach allows it to be integrated in other kinds of applications. It also\nallows us to do things like return a PDF which doesn't include an additional\npage due to a slight overrun that can be avoided with a minor font size\nreduction (see my other comment explaining how we try to do that at the\nmoment).\n\n------\nsaagarjha\nFor those using Safari, I've often had good results by turning on Reader Mode\nand then printing, which strips out a lot of the extraneous junk that articles\nonline tend to have.\n\n------\nbob_theslob646\nVery interesting, reminds me of the chrome extension, send to my Kindle, which\nsends a pdf version of the web page to my Kindle.\n\n~~~\nk1m\nThanks! We also have an extension and app to convert web articles into Kindle\nebooks: [http://fivefilters.org/kindle-it/](http://fivefilters.org/kindle-it/)\n\n------\nsfifs\nCould there be a way to print to EPub? PDF is uniquely bad for mobile\nreadability but EPub solves for that\n\n~~~\nk1m\nWe already produce ePub and Kindle mobipocket files in our Push to Kindle\nservice. You can try it out here [http://fivefilters.org/kindle-\nit/](http://fivefilters.org/kindle-it/)\n\n1\\. Enter a URL (we also have browser extensions)\n\n2\\. Click 'Preview'\n\n3\\. Select the No Kindle? tab and choose 'EPUB'\n\n------\nfladd\nNice idea! Unfortunately the PDF will not contain any of the headings of the\noriginal document.\n\n------\napp4soft\nOh, no... It require[0] pay for more than few pages...\n\n> Premium access key If you pay for premium access, enter your key here. A\n> valid key will enable more pages in each PDF (provided the given feed\n> contains more content), more full-text fetches, and the ability to change\n> the subheading. > Subscribe — 24 € a year\n\n[0] [http://fivefilters.org/pdf-newspaper/](http://fivefilters.org/pdf-\nnewspaper/)\n\n~~~\nk1m\nThat shouldn't apply to this. This is intended for single articles. PDF\nNewspaper was originally intended for converting RSS feeds to PDF. For large\nfeeds we had to limit how much we processed to avoid overwhelming the servers.\n\n------\nstephenr\nI dont really get the use-case for this.\n\nmacOS has had print to pdf for _any_ app since its inception, iOS has had it\nfor at least the last couple of versions, surely Windows and Android have\nsimilar functionality built in by now too?\n\n~~~\nk1m\nThe idea is to produce a PDF that makes the article more readable than if you\nrelied on the default print output of the site itself.\n\nIn somes cases, e.g. a site that's gone to the trouble of creating a good\nprint stylesheet, printing from the site itself will probably create a more\nreadable output than this. But many sites don't do that.\n\nThere's also the use case of automating PDF creation from code. For example,\nautomatically sending a PDF to your printer (some wireless printers can now be\nset up with email addresses) of articles you save to read later in a read-\nlater service.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBob – A Tarsnap GUI client for OS X - CStorm\nhttps://github.com/casperstorm/Bob\n\n======\ngburt\nWarning that this doesn't detect errors properly. Reporting that it\nsuccessfully backed up when it definitely did not.\n\n> command.run(job) File \"/Library/Python/2.7/site-\n> packages/tarsnapper-0.2.1-py2.7.egg/tarsnapper/script.py\", line 347, in run\n> > OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory\n\n~~~\npetergam\nThank you for reporting this.\n\nBob is still a very early project (development started 3 days ago). We just\nreleased version 0.1.2 which improves the error handling.\n\nFeel free to open issues on the Github page if more things come up.\n\n~~~\ngrinich\nYou should probably put that disclaimer on the GitHub README. Lots of folks\nwill have no idea.\n\nIt's a testament to your good design that it looks finished though. Kudos! :)\n\n------\nchrissnell\nHas anybody ever used Tarsnap to back up Time Machine sparseimages? I've\nwanted to try it out but I'm not sure if Tarsnap will handle the de-dup on all\nof the Time Machine snapshots properly. Will I end up with just the original\nplus deltas or hundreds of copies of the original?\n\n~~~\nwatersb\nShort answer: Tarsnap can back up a sparse image without messing up any de-dup\nproperties of the contents of the sparse image.\n\nI haven't tested Tarsnap with my Time Machine backups yet, but I've used non-\nMac file systems as file servers to Mac OS X clients for more than 10 years\nnow.\n\nThe only special bit of Time Machine backups is the hard-links to directories.\nThis requires HFS+.\n\nA sparseimage that is an image of an HFS+ file system can use that file system\nto hold Time Machine backups.\n\nSuch a sparse image can be copied to a non-HFS+ file system, without affecting\nthe Time Machine backups on the sparse image.\n\nUsing a \"sparsebundle\" instead of a single-file sparse image will let you use\nnon-Mac file systems such as FAT32 that limit the file size to less than 2 GB.\n\n------\nikusalic\nTarsnap is really great service. It's obviously targeted at tech people, but\nif you are one, just check it out. I do not feel the need for any wrappers as\nthe CLI is quite nice, but your mileage may vary.\n\nWhat I'm backing up are a few true crypt containers. Not out of paranoia\n(well...), but because I use TC anyway to separate different kinds of context\n(by usage and importance). The nice thing is that incremental backups feature\nstill works great. Compression is not really useful though. Currently I have\n~70gb of data, ~20gb being unique.\n\nThe service is also priced quite reasonably. Highly recommended.\n\n~~~\nghshephard\nAs a newcomer to the tarsnap family (started using a month ago)- I completely\nagree - I use Dropbox, Super Duper, Arq, Crashplan for various types of backup\nscenarios - but the tools that I use to snapshot my ultra critical (all\nCustomer content - code, scripts, visio diagrams, network configs, site/RF\nsurveys) 677 MB \"customers\" folder is tarsnap. It really is as simple as:\n\n    \n    \n       tarsnap -cf customers-2014.05.12 ~/Dropbox/Customers \n    \n\nWait for 15 seconds (if there haven't been many changed files) - and I have a\nsnapshot of my files.\n\nEven more tremendously wonderful - I deposited $20.00 a month ago, and I\ncurrently have a remaining balance of $19.826571509446676694.\n\nI.E. Tarsnap charges me 0.173428490553323306/month to backup/snapshot _all_ of\nthe content I've created in the previous 2 1/2 years.\n\n(Note - Tarsnap users so many sigifnicant digits, that OS X calc, Excel, and\nPython all gave me three different answers for 20-19.826571509446676694.\n\n    \n    \n      Calc: 0.17342849055332\n      Python: 0.17342849055332366\n      Excel: 0.173428490553398\n    \n\nI had to check by hand, and use the Python \"decimal\" module to get the\n\"correct\" answer of 0.173428490553323306.\n\n------\ndewey\nOh, that's neat. I was on the lookout for a Arq-like client for Tarsnap, this\nlooks promising and I'll definitely give it a shot. At first I thought that's\nthe one being posted on the Tarsnap mailing list [0] lately but it's not and\nlooks easier to install than the other one.\n\n[0] [https://github.com/arnt/tarsnap-gui](https://github.com/arnt/tarsnap-gui)\n\n~~~\nstock_toaster\nI wish arq supported tarsnap. That would be amazing.\n\n------\nmelville_X\nI fought the urge to want a GUI for Tarsnap and hand-wrote cronjob scripts\nthat I'm very happy with now. It was part of the fun. Definitely non-ideal for\neveryone but I recommend it to any hackers to attempt the same.\n\nOne thing I learned as a result is becoming intimately with the unix/linux\nfolder structure and being able to backup an entire OS deployment, reinstall\nthe OS and just pull an old backup to recreate most of the important configs.\n\nThere might be a reason why there are a lack of good scripts, even on Github.\n\n~~~\natmosx\nMost tarsnap wrappers do not add any special functionality. You can find\nhundred of tarsnap cron scripts or bash wrappers, or python wrappers... But\ntruth is that they don't add nothing special. Most people using tarsnap can\nroll their own personalized solution easily if they require anything more than\nthe binary offers.\n\n------\nroryhughes\nFor those wondering, here is a popular post on tarsnap from a year ago\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5767116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5767116)\n\n------\nnodesocket\nCan Bob backup Time Machine backups?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMythBuster's Hyneman Launches IndieGogo to Build VR Shoes Like Mini Treadmills - evo_9\nhttps://www.roadtovr.com/mythbusters-jamie-hyneman-launches-indiegogo-vr-shoes-act-like-mini-treadmills/\n======\nstuntkite\nThis kind of reeks of vaporware and that's sort of the pitch I guess. Hardware\nideas are crowdfuneded all the time that are kind of lofty, but I felt like\nthe common thinking at this point is that you really should have taken the\nrisks to prove the thing plus show that you could potentially build it at\nscale before funding. There are so many ways that the funding of this project\ncan go totally sideways (unlike the shoes!). It even feels weird to have\neveryone's favorite myth walrus promoting something so vapory. He's sort of\nknown for being a stodgy, no nonsense guy in terms of tech.\n\nThis all seems tone deaf. Maybe the shoe is like tunnel vision VR before we\nhad the oculus. The Ah-ha moment with VR was accelerometers, they at least\nkickstarted with a paper one you could start to use no matter what! The\nbackpack and axe with whacky cannon fuse might satisfy some Bustin' fans, it\nleaves me pretty flat. The branding is horror show gawdy too. Promise me a DIY\nkit where I can play with the terrible shoes idea myself to really help you\nget there.\n\nJamie! Your audience for a thing like this is builders like you! Sure you can\nget some MB cash-in with this but if what I'm paying for is future skates,\ngive me some ruddy future skates so at least I can break my neck with you! Get\nme some brushless DCs with nice aluminum hubs and some 3D printed tread parts.\nRelease with a community edition with STL files to open up the\nexperimentation.\n\nEither that or just go get a bank loan like any other person and take some\nrisks on something you believe in. I do see from the outshot why your'd prefer\nto risk someone else's money. It's all pretty silly. But if you don't buy it,\nwhy should we?\n\n~~~\nRetric\n“It might work. It might not work. We’ll know soon.”\n\nIs IMO a completely reasonable stance. People putting up money are making the\nbet that it's a good idea, and can either buy an actual product eventually, or\nif it turns out to be a bad idea nobody is trying to manufacture all those\n\"pre-orders\".\n\nThe benefit is without needing to ramp up production you can just focus on the\nResearch side of R & D.\n\n~~~\nstuntkite\nI do not agree with you stance on crowd funding in this instance. I also think\nthe rewards are dumb, ugly, lazy and they could be engaging better with the\naudience that is actually interested in the skates.\n\n~~~\nRetric\nIMO, the entire idea of rewards is a poor fit for crowd funding. It confuses\n_funding_ with buying an actual product that actually exists.\n\n~~~\nstuntkite\nI understand that philosophy I think and platforms like Patreon do a great job\nof fostering community in that way, still people want something for the\ncontribution. Even if it's a private newsletter, stickers, challenge coin, or\nin this case cannon fuse. I think when making a request like they are making\nhere they are missing a huge opportunity to engage a passionate community of\nopen source hardware hackers, and they could totally do that in a low cost way\nthat protects their primary IP. I think the thing they are offering, maybe is\nsomething die hard Hyni-fans are into, but it literally some wire, bandaids,\nlights, and cannon fuse. It's just weird.\n\nIf they really don't want to share and engage that community, aside from the\nsoftware devs, I think they have a really long row to hoe. I would imagine the\nconcern is really neat IP because they have cool dudes working on it, but that\nlocks you right in for a very classic funding model that needs a buttload more\nthan $50k to get off the ground. Again, I feel like the original Occulus\nkickstarter walked this line fantastically.\n\nAs an AR/VR Researcher, I wouldn't touch this gizmo that's being presented\nwith a 10ft poll.\n\n------\npavel_lishin\nI really like that everywhere on the project, they state that it might not\nwork. Many projects promise to deliver no matter what - it's good that Jamie\nand his team are setting realistic expectations.\n\n~~~\nsharpercoder\nThis is why I will actually do my first donation on KickStarter.\n\n~~~\nKiro\nIt's IndieGogo, not Kickstarter.\n\n~~~\ntroymc\nIt's possible they know, and meant Kickstarter :D\n\n(But it's unlikely.)\n\n(But sometimes it's fun to imagine silly stuff.)\n\n------\nDigitalJack\nSeem awfully weird to me to have marketing teams and people working on cad\ndesigns when the basic concept hasn't even been proven in 6 prototypes.\n\nat least the VR application of the concept of motorized shoes hasn't been\nproven.\n\nI guess this is just a \"stepping stone\" if you'll pardon the expression,\ntoward a general purpose motorized shoe. So if this VR aspect is just a side\ntrip on their grand scheme, maybe it makes more sense to have such a team in\nplace working on what they are.\n\n~~~\nstuntkite\nI think \"Marketing Team\" is a pretty generous term. This is one of those dudes\nusing inkscape/the gimp and they got someone on UpWork to cad up a shoe from a\nsketch. Maybe did it themselves, but don't know how to go get some free\nsubstance materials to render that with a fabric and rubber look that would\nlight properly.\n\nThere is nothing about this that says professional design or marketing folks\nare involved. No one seems to even know what a color wheel is or basic rules\nof text readability. How many fonts did they download? Shit looks like a 90's\nrave flier.\n\nI'm all for DIY, whacky hardware projects (have a couple myself), and\nMythBustin'. But I think after they finished prototype number six everyone\nwent over to Cody's house all drunk and went Old Man Ham on it. Jesus christ\nguys, get on Shutterstock and buy some templates.\n\nEDIT: I totally just realized that this project is the engineer equivalent of\na neighborhood dad garage band. Rock on brothers. Rock on.\n\n------\nRaphmedia\nActual Link : [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jamie-hyneman-s-\nvirtual-r...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jamie-hyneman-s-virtual-\nreality-electric-shoes-vr#/)\n\n------\nrhcom2\nI can see it how it would work for forward/backward movement but not how it\ncould possibly work for lateral movement like pushing off of one foot.\n\n~~~\nCharlesW\nMiniature Mecanum wheels[1][2] might be interesting for this.\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel)\n[2]\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tmiu1wpp_E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tmiu1wpp_E)\n\n~~~\ndmazin\nI remember Jamie talking about how much he loves his mecanum wheel forklift...\n\n------\npbhjpbhj\nI like it. The link in the comments there to\n[https://www.3d.run/](https://www.3d.run/) looks good too. It doesn't seem far\nfrom those Cybershoes to the VR Shoes, like it says if you're just allowing\nlinear motion they're basically reverse treadmills (or just how I look on\nrollerskates!).\n\nSnap on shoe based personal transport, like Heelies with motors, I can see\nworking but without some very complex Mecanum style wheels I can't see the VR\nShoe being functional any time soon (unless they have a killer new concept\nthey've not told us about yet).\n\nI can't see one feeling balanced in this sort of get-up.\n\n------\nspyder\nPrior art (video):\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5hPyHxrz94](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5hPyHxrz94)\n\n------\nchaostheory\nThis is still the best VR solution to running and walking, and it's already\nshipped.\n\n[http://www.virtuix.com/](http://www.virtuix.com/)\n\nI just don't understand why they seem to no longer sell to consumers though.\n\nI'm not sure I get Jamie's project.\n\n~~~\ntroymc\nHave you tried those Virtuix things?\n\n~~~\nchaostheory\nYes. Another problem is that back then it used Kinect. Not sure what it uses\nnow. It's not perfect but it worked, at least a few years back.\n\n------\nmrfusion\nQuestions (the video didn’t answer)\n\nWill it work on carpet?\n\nWhat stops you from slipping?\n\nWhat holds you in place? Does the motor move you backwards to match any\nforward movement?\n\nBtw once we get all these vr accessories were really going to need wireless\ncharging and a giant mat to dump all your stuff on when you’re done playing to\ncharge it.\n\n~~~\ncriddell\nIf you have to put everything on a mat, I wouldn't called that wireless\ncharging. That's like saying you can have a wireless network connection as\nlong as your laptop is sitting on a special pad.\n\nI think it has to work over a range of at least a few meters before I'd call\nit wireless.\n\n~~~\nspullara\nMy 10-yr old daughter described the current form of \"wireless charging\" as\nusing the shortest possible cord.\n\n~~~\ntekromancr\nThat's incredibly insightful. The way I see lots of people charge their\nphones, you have a long cable so you can continue using it when it's charging.\nwith the wireless charging, you have to leave it locked in place while it\ncharges at 500ma for hours. It's neat at starbucks where I can pick up a quick\nextra few percent on my battery bar, but otherwise pretty useless.\n\n~~~\nbalfirevic\nIt's not useless. It's great for charging overnight while sleeping, without\nthe hassle of plugging in the cable before you go to sleep.\n\n~~~\nevilduck\nI imagine some specific types of disabled people might really appreciate it\ntoo. Plugging a cord in required a fair amount of dexterity and grip strength;\nfar more than using the phone itself requires. But Qi charging? You could\nprobably nudge it into position with your nose if you had to.\n\n~~~\ntekromancr\nGreat point! I never stopped to consider it as an accessibility technology.\n\n------\ncatshirt\nso, they're using tech they built to help you walk faster... to make shoes\nthat don't let you walk anywhere. science!\n\nhope it works out, seems like an interesting solution.\n\n~~~\nvlasev\nWhat speeds you up forwards can probably be used to slow you down if pointed\nbackwards\n\n------\nGlyptodon\nMaybe someone will one-up and do some with a tread made of ball bearings.\n\n------\nxellisx\n\"Estimated Operating weight up to 215 lbs\"\n\n~~~\npbhjpbhj\nc. 15 stone, c. 100kg\n\n------\nainiriand\nYou should not back with your money something that rich people is not backing\nwith his own money. Just saying.\n\n------\ndrzaiusapelord\nVR will succeed because it doesn't involve a whole suit to make work. That's\nwhy the Vive and Oculus ship with only two controllers and a HMD. No glove or\nshoes to be fitted correctly, put on/off, cleaned, etc. This is also why the\nVive Tracker won't ever go mainstream for gaming. People aren't sticking 3\nlarge sensors on their body outside of edge uses cases and now you have 5\nthings to remember to recharge. If good full-body tracking comes to mainstream\nVR, we'll be doing it with cameras, not wearables.\n\nThis is absolutely the wrong way to go about this. Its clear that Hyneman is\ntrying to ride the VR hype to sell motorized shoes, which sound more\ninteresting to me as a mode of transportation than anything having to do with\nVR. Especially if you can put in Segway-like logic in them to help with\nbalance.\n\nOn the flip side, considering how long walks are most people's only form of\nexercise its probably a bad idea all around like those hoverboards or that new\nmini-segway. If I bought any of these I'd be cutting a lot of calories I'm\nburning and lowering physical activity drastically. Short range travel should\nbe by foot and losing that will just make our obesity epidemic worse.\n\n~~~\nstuntkite\n>VR will succeed\n\nDang, that's a big assumption. As someone who's been a researcher in the field\nfor over a decade, I definitely can't make that claim.\n\nValve even says the total concept may be flawed and they are comfortable[1]\nwith complete failure.\n\nThree (of many) big things to overcome:\n\n* Lock in. People watch movies in the dark with other people. Head lunchbox is isolating and annoying.\n\n* Transmittable skin infections.\n\n* Stereo depth eye tricks messing with focus makes almost everyone sick and can have huge unknown effects on the brain, balance, and perception\n\nWe don't have light fields[2], easy holograms[3], or laser scanning projectors\non a chip[4] yet, but we might next week. Very probably VR at current is the\nstone axe we are using to invent the steel one. In almost every practical way\nit's broken, even if useful. We have no fucking clue what the final form is\ngoing to look like.\n\n[1]\n[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38992294](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38992294)\n\n[2] [https://www.magicleap.com/](https://www.magicleap.com/)\n\n[3] [http://www.red.com/hydrogen](http://www.red.com/hydrogen)\n\n[4] [http://www.bosch-presse.de/pressportal/de/en/mobile-world-\nco...](http://www.bosch-presse.de/pressportal/de/en/mobile-world-\ncongress-2017-new-bosch-microscanner-bml050-for-interactive-laser-\nprojection-90624.html)\n\n~~~\nwhathaschanged\nIt's only annoying because there is currently no output for your friends to\nwatch along while you're playing that isn't a complete hack.\n\n~~~\nstuntkite\nThat was worded like a rebuttal, but I think you agree with me. Sweet.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAmazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles - sahaj\nhttp://theselfpublishingrevolution.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazon-in-book-banning-business.html\n\n======\nghshephard\nTo be clear, they are currently targeting \"Incest\" erotica. The irony, of\ncourse, is that Amazon's Television Commercial features a women on the beach\nreading her kindle, and the story on her kindle, is about a boy who has sex\nwith his stepmother. Admittedly, not erotica, but still ironic.\n\nAmazon should feel free to yank whatever it wants off its bookshelves (and, in\nfact, should probably be a bit more discerning given some of the recent crap\nthey've been selling) - but, I don't know if they should be sending their\ncustomers _already purchased_ books into the memory hole.\n\n~~~\nflipbrad\nYou didn't purchase a book. You licensed an ebook. Big difference, in Amazon's\nmind.\n\n~~~\nAgentConundrum\nAnd that, in a nutshell, is why I don't really want to buy an eReader. They\njust seem too restrictive.\n\nMy girlfriend and I occasionally share books (usually she borrows mine), but\nmy understanding is that the books you \"buy\" are licensed only to a single\ndevice, and you can only share a book _one time_ , and even then only if the\npublisher allows it.\n\nI could be misunderstanding things, but it seems like if she wanted to borrow\none of my books, she would probably need to borrow my Kindle to do it, and\nessentially borrow _all of my books_ to read one.\n\nUntil things get sorted out, I think I'll pass on the eReaders.\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\n> And that, in a nutshell, is why I don't really want to buy an eReader. They\n> just seem too restrictive.\n\nYou don't have to deprive yourself of e-readers. I am completely happy with\nO'Reilly's and Pragmatic's policy (no DRM, multi-format). I am a little less\nhappy with Manning, who makes it clear my book is only available for download\nfor the 5 days following purchase. All of them offer DRM-free PDF as a\nminimum. I am so far very happy with my Nook (B&W e-paper version).\n\nAnd there is also Feddbooks, which is conveniently linked from Stanza (I have\nit on my iPod)\n\nOh. And after the 1984 episode, it would be hard to convince me to buy a\nKindle.\n\n~~~\nAgentConundrum\n_I am completely happy with O'Reilly's and Pragmatic's policy_\n\nI don't really need an eReader for programming books. Most of the time I'm\nbetter off reading those at the computer where I can play with the code in\nthem. For that, I can just buy the PDF and read it in Foxit.\n\nI'd want an eReader more for fiction, and fiction definitely still prefers DRM\nover non-DRM.\n\n~~~\nTyrannosaurs\nOther than the ability to carry a large library around with you the Kindle is\npretty sucky for Programming books - the screen is too small and the\nformatting too limited.\n\n~~~\nigorlev\nThe Kindle DX, on the other hand, has become indispensable to me for reading\nall kinds of technical books and pdfs. Along with the daily E-book deals from\nO'Reilly it has almost completely eliminated the need to buy paper technical\nbooks.\n\nI think a good market for this is in areas with long, public transportation\ncommutes. Those who take the car to work have fewer good use cases for\ne-readers.\n\n------\nrmc\n_When some of my readers began checking their Kindle archives for books of\nmine they’d purchased on Amazon, they found them missing from their archives_\n\nI think Amazon (and any bookseller) should be allowed to sell or not sell any\nsort of book they want. However deleting already paid for books that your\ncustomers have bought from their devices is totally unethical IMO.\n\n~~~\naraneae\nAlso unethical is not automatically given them a refund, and then verbally\ntrying to humiliate them over their choice of reading when they request one.\n\n~~~\nroel_v\nThere's this story, I don't know if it's true, of a business who used to sell\ngay sex toys (I don't know what is specifically 'gay' about it, let's gloss\nover this for the sake of the story) from the back of magazine covers. Except\nthey didn't have any inventory or anything - their entire business was to\ncollect payments, guaranteeing 'discrete packaging' etc in the ads; but then\ncall the customer and tell them 'we're out of stock, but we can send you a\nletter with our logo on it, and when you fill in the form in that letter,\nwe'll send you a cheque from Gay Sex Toys Inc made out to you to reimburse\nyou'. Their business floated on people who didn't want those letters or didn't\nwant to hand in that kind of cheques to their local banks and who just left it\nat that.\n\n~~~\nryanricard\nYou might have heard it from the movie Lock, Stock, and two Smoking Barrels:\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjj8eMNxivM>\n\n(warning: strong language)\n\nI'd love to know if someone's actually run a scam like that at some point.\nSeems like a clever hack, at least it would be before the days of ubiquitous\ncredit cards and online banking.\n\n~~~\nroel_v\nAh yes, I remember seeing this movie, didn't remember it came from there.\nThanks.\n\n~~~\nwaqf\nIt's an urban legend that predates the movie; see here:\n<http://www.snopes.com/risque/porn/porntape.asp>\n\n------\nprodigal_erik\nThey already demonstrated their power to abuse your property with the _1984_\nfiasco, and that's the reason I don't own a Kindle. Fortunately it's possible\nto side-load ebooks from ethical vendors who don't demand an ability to steal\nyour licenses yet keep your money.\n\n[http://consumerist.com/2009/07/how-to-load-up-your-kindle-\nwi...](http://consumerist.com/2009/07/how-to-load-up-your-kindle-with-non-\namazon-ebooks.html)\n\nWhether root access is readily available on a Kindle is unclear to me.\n\n~~~\nDannoHung\nDoes anyone know if all of Feedbooks is DRM free? It looks like they're\ncarrying commercial publications now and I don't know of any store aside from\nprogramming ones (and Cory Doctrow) that sell DRM free commercial books.\n\n~~~\nCWuestefeld\nBaen books (<http://www.Baen.com> ) was a leader in ebooks, and sells only\nDRM-free, afaik. In fact, they've even got a decent library of entirely free\n(as in beer) books, to whet your appetite. They publish sci-fi books.\n\nThis is one company that \"gets it\", and I recommend them enthusiastically.\n\n~~~\nDannoHung\nThanks! I knew Baen gave away some books, but I didn't know they sold them DRM\nfree too. Only, uhh... I don't really know what's good in their selection :/\n\nCan't have it all, I spose.\n\n------\nmadair\nthe \"debate\" here is simply the utter failure by so many to recognize power\nabusing non-power for ideas deemed unsavory\n\njust as is the inability of so many to recognize that it is exactly the same\nwhen wikileaks is refused a right to be _published_ via server space\n\nyou \"debaters\" should be ashamed of yourselves...but you won't be. i don't\nfully understand that part. is it really that hard to see the shape of the\nnation? the commerce infrastructure? the war, imperialism, peonage,\nacquiescence to abuses in the name of stability and financial growth.\n\nyet _nazis_ DID exist, and _nazis_ DO exists, and the more often Godwin's\ncrock of a law is pompously imposed the more _will_ exist. ask yourself: how\ndid they exist? were the german middle class simply naturally evil spawn of\nthe devil children waiting to grow up and be spawn of the devil killers? how\ndid they rise? not some macro view, a micro view. how did the middle class of\na western nation create the nazi's military machine?\n\nhave you considered that they were propagandized? and how did that occur? why\nwas information lacking? is it possible that information was suppressed? who\nsuppressed it?\n\nyou are not immune to the very same information deficit which you endorse. you\nare not immune to the very same fear which envelops the nation.\n\nbut you say, \"this is incest, i just don't like incest\". well, there's lots of\nthings you might not like. perhaps for example consider that 80-90% of you are\nnot gay. presumably you don't read gay fiction. why are gays allowed to have a\n_deviation from your norm while you are selectively willing to determine\nanother deviation from your norm eligible for suppression_? try to keep in\nmind that _your cultural norm_ is a shockingly violent culture filled with\nshocking amounts of violent fantasy. \"oh but i don't like violent fantasy\".\nyeah right, i'm talking to the other 99.9% of you then.\n\nyou <\\--- yes you, reading this, are the middle-class of a western nation with\nquite a track record, and one that is only getting worse and so very very\nquickly year upon year of this century.\n\nwhat questions will people ask 70 years from now to try to understand you. the\nmiddle-class \"debaters\"\n\nmetaphors are a powerful force against natural difficulty to place events into\ncontext. i would say you're only hurting yourselves, but actually you're\nhurting us all. You.\n\n~~~\ndrndown2007\nI think you take it too far. Yes, the powerful abusing the weak is not a\nhealthy thing. But there is actually 'bad' in the world that should be\nsuppressed. Unfortunately, there are people (you?) that are willing to say \"we\ncan't all agree on what is bad, therefore nothing is bad\". That would work,\nexcept for the fact that we're human, frail and don't know nearly as much as\nwe think we do.\n\nSince the original article is sex, and you refered to it above, let's continue\nwith it. Try going to an SA (sex addicts) meeting sometime and hear about\nshattered lives because of what someone did to someone else. I'm going to put\nmy foot down and say rape is bad because of the horrible emotional baggage it\nleaves in someone's life. Incest is usually in the same category (I personally\nknow a guy who will never have normal relationships because of what his older\nsister and friend did with him when he was 12).\n\nI'm sure someone (you?) will try to argue there are cases where it's OK, so we\nshouldn't call rape 'bad'. PLEASE! Sometimes, there ARE things that should be\nsuppressed.\n\nAnd this doesn't mean anything or everything should be suppressed. If people\nare suppressing/hiding something because they did wrong (the government) then\nit should be exposed.\n\nExcept, whoops, we just said the government did 'wrong'. That's a value\njudgement! <sarcasm>Maybe some people think starting fake wars is OK and we\nshouldn't be so quick to call that unsavory</sarcasm> Value judgements have to\nbe made as long as we're human. Value judgements mean there is 'good' and\n'bad'. I don't think we want more 'bad' -- it's bad by definition! If we ever\nget to the point that we're computers and can hit a reset button, then _maybe_\nright and wrong will go away...\n\nSo wikileaks and exposing corruption -- good, bring it on, don't suppress it.\nEncouraging rape or incest, I'm calling bad -- we don't need more of that in\nsociety.\n\n(OK, bring on the down votes)\n\n~~~\nElliotH\nThere is a distinct difference between making something illegal and making\n_writing_ about something illegal.\n\nThere are all sorts of films and books that show crime being committed,\nsometimes even with the criminals being the good guys. These obviously\nshouldn't be banned - but the crimes depicted probably should be.\n\n _\"we can't all agree on what is bad, therefore nothing is bad\"_\n\nI don't think the parent was arguing for that, indeed I think you'd be hard\npressed to find anyone who truly believes that. He talks exclusively about\nideas and fiction.\n\nOn a final note its not very classy to 'bait' people to downvote you. It's the\nreason that I didn't upvote you.\n\n------\nw1ntermute\nWhat happened to not deleting books that had already been purchased?\n\n> Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are\n> changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from\n> customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said.\n\n[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html)\n\n~~~\njsolson\nSupposedly they're not deleting them from devices, just from the archives\n(thus preventing re-downloading the titles):\n[http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-\nrelated...](http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-\nerotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/)\n\n------\ntzs\nIs there any independent confirmation of this? Parts of it sound made up.\n\n------\njasongullickson\nI thought that Bezos himself said deleting books from people Kindles was\n\"stupid\";\n\nHere we go:\n[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jul/24/amazon...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jul/24/amazon-\ndrm)\n\n~~~\njsolson\nHe did, and supposedly they're not actually doing that this time:\n[http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-\nrelated...](http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-\nerotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/)\n\n------\nre\nPoor title (\"Removing From Kindles\") on the HN submission:\n\n> A discussion thread on Amazon’s Kindle Community forum notes that Amazon has\n> begun removing some previously-published books or stories from its store,\n> and from the Kindle archives. Readers who have previously downloaded them to\n> their Kindles can keep them there, but cannot re-download them (and will be\n> refunded the price of purchase assuming Amazon can still find the purchase\n> record).\n\n[http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-\nrelated...](http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-\nerotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/) (linked from the submitted story)\n\n------\nsigzero\nWhy \"erotica\" in the title and not \"incest titles\"? I know why. They aren't\nbanning ALL erotica...just a particular one that most people would agree with\nAmazon on.\n\n------\nktf\nYou know what's full of explicit incest? Nabokov's _Ada, or Ardor_. It's also\none of the most beautiful books I've ever read.\n\nBut it looks like it's not available on Kindle either, now that I check :)\n\n[http://www.amazon.com/Ada-Ardor-Chronicle-Vladimir-\nNabokov/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Ada-Ardor-Chronicle-Vladimir-\nNabokov/dp/0679725229/)\n\n------\nSeanDav\nLooks like I will be buying a Kindle or Amazon e-book about the time when hell\nfreezes over....\n\n------\njavert\nA particular bookseller choosing not to sell incest erotica does not\nconstitute a book being \"banned\" or \"censored\", which only apply when the\ngovernment forcibly prevents _every_ bookseller from selling particular\nmaterial.\n\nI wouldn't sell incest erotica either, and that doesn't mean I ban or censor\nbooks.\n\nThis kind of exaggeration on the part of the blog author doesn't help her\nargument; it just causes people to (a) lose intellectual respect for the\nauthor and (b) give less credence to her argument.\n\n~~~\nabhaga\n> A particular bookseller choosing not to sell incest erotica does not\n> constitute a book being \"banned\" or \"censored\", which only apply when the\n> government forcibly prevents every bookseller from selling particular\n> material.\n\nGoing by that logic, to \"effectively\" ban the book while not \"technically\"\nbanning it, the govt just needs to pursue the top few channels to stop\ncarrying it. Book will be effectively unavailable and everyone's conscience\nwill be clean.\n\n> I wouldn't sell incest erotica either, and that doesn't mean I ban or censor\n> books.\n\nBut you would make that clear to everyone before starting to do business with\nthem, right? Or if you decided to change your stand one day (which is quite\nplausible since things do change with time), you would perhaps offer a better\nreason then \"Because I can\"?\n\n~~~\nm_eiman\n_Going by that logic, to \"effectively\" ban the book while not \"technically\"\nbanning it, the govt just needs to pursue the top few channels to stop\ncarrying it. Book will be effectively unavailable and everyone's conscience\nwill be clean._\n\nHey, that sounds familiar. Say, for example, that some organization releases a\nbunch of more or less secret stuff, and you want to prevent them from getting\ndonations to continue releasing stuff, you could just lean a bit on VISA and\nMastercard…\n\n------\nsliverstorm\n_I actually wrote those incest books as a result of a contest where it was the\nmost popular category on the site...\n\nMaybe you should expand your horizons._ _grin_ \\-- The Author\n\nOk, I'm all for trying new things and all, but the world-wide cultural taboo\nagainst incest exists for a clearly defined reason (ref: Alexei Nikolaevich,\nfor example), not just because we're all a buncha prudes.\n\n~~~\nKolya\nThat isn't a reason against incest per se. It is merely an objection to\ncertain forms of incest - specifically, those that lead to children.\n\nWith freely-available contraception and abortion, it's hard to think of any\ngood reason for the absolute cultural taboo against all incest.\n\nOne of the goals of literature should be to challenge cultural taboos. Any\ngood bookseller should realize it.\n\n~~~\nsliverstorm\nThough it does not thrill me to say so, you make a valid point.\n\nIt is worth noting though that cultural mores don't work well with shades of\ngrey- they are best suited to black-and-whites. (i.e. do/don't instead of do\nthis way/don't do that way)\n\n~~~\njules\nDo you really feel bad about a consenting man and woman having a relationship?\n(or man and man or woman and woman) I have trouble identifying with this\nfeeling.\n\n~~~\nsliverstorm\nYou read too much into my words. What does not thrill me is realizing I was\nwrong.\n\n------\nrprasad\nThis article is an exaggerated pile of crap. Pardon my language.\n\nAmazon _is not_ taking down erotica. They still have a very large and healthy\nerotica/romance section.\n\nWhat they are doing is removing incest-erotica _published by Amazon's\nCreatespace_. According to the pages the author links to in his post, incest-\nerotica from other publishers remains available for sale.\n\nIncest, by the way, is illegal in most of America, except possibly in the\nSouth. It's no different from Amazon removing bestiality-erotica or\npedophilia-erotica published under its own label.\n\nLong story short: if you want to publish incest-erotica, _don't publish\nthrough Amazon's CreateSpace._\n\n~~~\nprodigal_erik\nMurder is illegal everywhere, but writing about it hasn't yet become\ncrimethink.\n\n~~~\nrprasad\nWriting about it isn't crimethink. But it's highly undesirable for a\ncommercial company to be associated with incest erotica.\n\nAmazon made a business decision to stop publishing incest-erotica through its\nown publishing label. It did not ban other publishers from publishing that\ncrap in its store.\n\n------\nkmfrk\nI think \"Erotica\" is a bit euphemistic for \"incest fantasy\".\n\n~~~\npotatolicious\nWhy wouldn't it be erotica, or do we have a problem with people finding\nunconventional things erotic? Even things that may be shocking/distasteful to\nyou?\n\nEveryone's a freak and a weirdo, and the sooner we lay off other people for\ntheir kinks the sooner we may find acceptance for our own.\n\n~~~\njonhendry\nIncest covers everything from two related adults to, say, an adult and an\n_infant_ , and beyond.\n\nIf I were running a store, I wouldn't want to sell baby rape erotica. I\nwouldn't want to make money that way. If people want to spank to that stuff,\nit's not my responsibility to assist in any way.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLearn Java in Minutes - Ashuu\nhttp://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/java/\n\n======\npetercooper\nI'm learning Java in my spare time just because in the same sense it pays to\nknow C if you dig Unix, I suspect it pays to know Java if you dig the JVM.\n\nThe _language_ has not proved to be too disturbing, happily, but I'm finding\nthe _tooling and ecosystem_ to be rather arcane and difficult to get a grip on\nat first. Build tools, a choice of JVMs and JDKs, \"enterprise\" this or that..\nit seems all the stuff _around_ the language is the real minefield than the\nrelatively simplistic language itself.\n\n~~~\nadnam\nExactly. The hard part of Java is not the language _per se_ , but the myriad\nof IDEs and XML configuration files.\n\n~~~\nkryten\nTo be honest, as a Java veteran, there is very little XML any more apart from\na bit of Tomcat config usually. It's all gone in favor of annotations which\nare much better.\n\nIt ain't J2EE 1.4 days any more (thank fuck).\n\nThe only thing I've done involving XML recently was setting tomcat 7 to serve\na war file from the root site and that took about 2 minutes to work out.\n\n~~~\nspullara\nI haven't used an XML config file in literally years. Either use embedded\nJetty directly or use a nice thin wrapper like DropWizard.\n\n------\nkrelian\nI think we are getting into spam territory with this site.\n\n~~~\ntzm\nIt may be perceived to be spammy with the frequency of front-page posts, but\nthe site is anything but \"spam\". I find the site quite useful.\n\n------\navargas\nI can't seem to understand if people really do think they can learn a language\nin X minutes. It takes countless hours of writing code in a specific language\nto learn it, and many months of writing on it to call yourself a good\nprogrammer in that language, or expert. </rant>\n\n~~~\nolalonde\nIt's getting tiresome to always see this same comment on every post of this\nkind. Let's keep the semantics arguments off HN.\n\n------\nkriro\nIt should be obvious to anyone that you won't learn JAVA by simply looking\nover this.\n\nThe point is that for learning it is very important to\n\n1) Get a basic overview of terminology and a general feel for the domain\n(traditionally you pick up three or so books on the topic, browse through them\nand note similar/repeatet patterns on a very high level)...then you can break\ndown the learning into subcomponents\n\n2) Find a way to get started and just do it\n\nCreating your own checklists, flash cards, high level presentation on the\ntopic are great starting points and usually step 0 before practice, practice,\npractice.\n\nThis looks like an excellent first step for anyone that wants to start with\nJAVA.\n\n~~~\nedtechdev\nLike someone else mentioned, they are essentially cheat sheets. Very useful if\nyou already know some other programming language.\n\nI especially like pages that map the features of one programming language to\nanother (that I already know). The recent AlloyUI post was an example\ncomparing it to jQuery and YUI: [http://alloyui.com/rosetta-\nstone/](http://alloyui.com/rosetta-stone/)\n\nAnd also see Rosetta Code\n[http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code](http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code)\n\n------\nProleps\nAll these Learn x in y minutes are really good cheat sheets. They are also\npretty nice to check out before you start on a longer tutorial.\n\n------\nhmottestad\nThis looks like a great cheatsheet for those doing into to programming at uni\n(in java). Quick place to check on syntax without having to open a book,\nbrowse through slides or googling and ending up on a page from 1990 about how\nto make good coffee.\n\n------\nhuherto\nConvert integer to string...\n\n    \n    \n      \"\" + 123;\n\n~~~\ndanbruc\nThis makes my eyes bleed.\n\n------\nnns\nA lot of libraries these days come with a Docco[1] annotated code and examples\n[2]. This looks very similar, but could make use of Docco.\n\n[1][http://jashkenas.github.io/docco/](http://jashkenas.github.io/docco/) [2]\n[http://documentcloud.github.io/underscore/docs/underscore.ht...](http://documentcloud.github.io/underscore/docs/underscore.html)\n\n------\n727374\nI'm actually trying to learn java from a C# background. Two questions that\nimmediately jumped out at me:\n\n\\- Do experienced java programming concatenate a bunch of strings together, or\nis there a format method? -Is anyone actually using Arraylist over Generics?\n\nAlso, is including 'switch' worth the screen real estate?\n\n~~~\nquacker\n> Do experienced java programming concatenate a bunch of strings together, or\n> is there a format method?\n\nYeah, I've seen this a lot. IIRC, String concatenations with the + operator\nare compiled to use a StringBuffer for efficiency. There is also a static\nmethod String.format that works with C-like format strings.\n\n> Is anyone actually using Arraylist over Generics?\n\nI'm not sure exactly what you mean by this. The following is pretty standard\nJava, if you want a list of Strings.\n\n    \n    \n        List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();\n    \n\nThe following gives you a list of Objects (the base type for all objects in\nJava):\n\n    \n    \n        List list = new ArrayList();\n    \n\nIf you put Strings into this list, then they come out as Objects. You'll have\nto cast to use them as Strings or the compiler complains.\n\n------\nmavroprovato\n\n      // Import all \"sub-packages\"\n      import java.lang.Math.*;\n    \n\nNope, you don't import all subpackages with this, you import all the static\nmethods defined in the java.lang.Math class\n\n~~~\neonwe\nFor static import you would need to do\n\n    \n    \n      import static java.lang.Math.*;\n\nThe current version would just import all the classes defined in package\njava.lang.Math (which does not exist, but java.math does).\n\n------\nnnq\nlooking forward for a Javascript version :) ...it would be serious fun to\nread, knowing all the horrible language gotchas that will soon byte a beginner\nthat starts coding Js after reading only such a guide.\n\n~~~\nkaeruct\nSee [http://bonsaiden.github.io/JavaScript-\nGarden/](http://bonsaiden.github.io/JavaScript-Garden/)\n\n~~~\nolalonde\nGreat reference. I've been programming Javascript since 2005 (back then it was\nmore copy/pasting Javascript snippets though) and still go back there once in\na while (mostly for some stuff like type coercion).\n\n------\nkodeater\nIf you are learning that's a good source. They never said that this would make\nyou become an expert. thumbs up. If you already know the basics just don't\nread it. But everybody one day was a noob.\n\n------\nthewarrior\nThe faster you learn something the faster you forget it.\n\n~~~\ntrailfox\nThat's why guys who finish bottom of their class remember the most.\n\n~~~\nthewarrior\nWell I'd be willing to bet that for the things they manage to learn and imbibe\nthey would be quite proficient. And no matter how smart you are if you learn\nsomething as complex as the Java Syntax within just 5 minutes then you're not\ngoing to remember it well enough to apply it for very long.\n\n------\nbenburton\nThe class name should really be upper camel case...\n\n------\nmidnitewarrior\nI'm surprised that anybody would be interested in learning Java after seeing\nthe poor stewardship Oracle has put into the platform.\n\n~~~\nSandman\nAnd I'm surprised you made this comment. I'm no fan of Oracle, but they've\ndone a lot more for Java then Sun did since version 6 came out in 2006.\nActually, I'm interested in why you feel this way, would you care to\nelaborate?\n\n------\nantonmaju\nPeter Norvig said otherwise\n[http://norvig.com/21-days.html](http://norvig.com/21-days.html)\n\n~~~\ndallos\n[http://norvig.com/jscheme-design.html](http://norvig.com/jscheme-design.html)\n\n\"I decided I didn't want to spend more than 20 hours on this exercise of\nlearning Java, learning the IDE I was using, and producing a Lisp\ninterpreter.\"\n\n------\nrodolphoarruda\nUff, I got spoiled by Python's simplicity last week when I checked its page...\nJava is way more complex to follow through.\n\n------\nplunchete\nSeems like the author forgot to learn the conventions of the language. The\nsite looks like a good reference though\n\n~~~\njoelg236\nMy thoughts to. Indentation was all wrong.\n\n------\nanExcitedBeast\nI feel like this might already exist, but a sheet like this for vi/vim and\nemacs would be tops.\n\n------\nyati\nI would really like to see a \"Learn C++ in minutes\" post.\n\n------\ndrmr\n.. and then forget it in seconds.\n\n------\nchunkylover53\nyou learn it and forget it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe MOS 6502 and the Best Layout Guy in the World - skymt\nhttp://research.swtch.com/2011/01/mos-6502-and-best-layout-guy-in-world.html\n======\ncommandar\n>The most amazing part about the whole process is that they got the 6502 right\nin one try. Quoting On the Edge: Bil Herd summarizes the situation. “No chip\nworked the first time,” he states emphatically. “No chip. It took seven or\nnine revs [revisions], or if someone was real good they would get it in five\nor six.”\n\nIn some ways (and I'm speaking in a general sense) situations like that\nactually make me more nervous than when I know there's a problem. I get this\nuneasy \"there's no way it _really_ went that smoothly\" feeling that can be\nhard to shake.\n\nThen again, my personality is to approach most things in life iteratively, so\nthat probably plays a part as well. Great read either way.\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\nThat's the sensation of working with someone who's _incredibly_ good.\n\nAnd, BTW, the 6502 was a work of art. Simple, elegant and fast (even at 1\nMHz), it ran rings around the Z-80's you found in more expensive computers of\nthe time. Plus, it was delightful to program.\n\n~~~\namichail\n_Plus, it was delightful to program._\n\nSimple maybe, but not delightful to program. I don't know of any assembly\nlanguage that is delightful to program.\n\nBTW, I knew someone from junior high & high school who could write code for\nthe 6502 using a hex dump with amazing speed. You might have heard of him:\nRandy Linden.\n\n~~~\nrsc\nAs Doug McIlroy (inventor of pipes, diff) once said of punched cards, \"It's\nthe kind of thing you can be nostalgic about, but it wasn't actually fun.\"\n\n[http://research.swtch.com/2008/04/computing-history-at-\nbell-...](http://research.swtch.com/2008/04/computing-history-at-bell-\nlabs.html)\n\n~~~\nHeyLaughingBoy\nPunch cards are different: there's substantially delayed gratification.\n\nWhen you're a poor college student as I was, entering opcodes in a\nmonitor/debugger you wrote in BASIC because you couldn't afford an assembler,\nthen yes, assembly was fun.\n\nFun, that is, until you had to hand-calculate negative jump offsets. Don't\nremember why, but for some reason I seem to think that the MC6809 I was\nrunning on made it difficult to do so.\n\n~~~\nghshephard\nThere must have been something special about the 6809 - I recall doing my\nDigital Design course on that Chip. And yes, we didn't have an assembler,\neverything was entered via opcodes either. It was a very enjoyable experience\nfor someone like me who wasn't a gear head, and got to play around with\nSB555s, NAND Gates, and lots, and lots of wirewrapping.\n\n------\nwallflower\nFrom Jordan Mechner's diary of the development of Prince of Persia (POP was\noriginally coded in 6502 Assembler. It took him four years). Reading Jordan's\nfull diary will take you at least eight hours but it is well worth it.\n\n> We chatted for an hour about peripherally related topics. Broderbund,\n> corporate America, the rat race, capitalism, freedom. I was seducing him.\n\nAt the critical psychological moment, I remarked: \"You know, all my clipping\nis done on the byte boundaries.\"\n\nThere was a pause\n\n<http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/page/33/>\n\nApril 3, 1989\n\n------\nLuyt\nThe whole 'Reverse Engineering the 6502' talk Michael Steil gave at CCC\ncongress is on YouTube. I posted this earlier in a separate topic, but it\ndidn't pick up.\n\nClickable links to the 6 parts:\n\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW9AWBFH1sA>\n\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBE4KHKzhKc>\n\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRBo7O_blVo>\n\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_15RtVbqGU>\n\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9DYmlprCKA>\n\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZOUuqc4pk8>\n\n------\nmmphosis\nIntel Core 2 - Yorkfield, 45 nm process technology, Number of Transistors: 820\nMillion\n\nMOS 6502, Number of Transistors: 3510\n\nSo in theory, a chip with 65536 MOS 6502 cores each with 64K of internal RAM\n(4Mb cache) could be made.\n\n~~~\nmeastham\nSure, if you completely ignore all of the extra circuitry for the on-chip\nnetwork and cache coherency and everything else you would need. Transistor\ndensity is far from the limiting factor in the number of cores we can wedge\ninto a single system.\n\n~~~\njdeeny\nIf you assume that there is no cache (only on-die memory) and that memory is\nnot shared between cores, things become much simpler and scale more linearly.\nCore-to-core communications and plenty of other details remain to spend man-\nyears ironing out, but it seems like it would be possible to approach 64k\ncores or at least 16k.\n\n~~~\nRodgerTheGreat\nMight be able to peel out the BCD stuff from the 6502 to free up a little\nadditional space and approach communication between cores kinda like the\n\"handshake bus\" GreenArrays chips use:\n[http://greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/PB003-100822-...](http://greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/PB003-100822-F18A.pdf)\n\n------\nexception\nI loved the 6502. Around that era I programmed the SC/MP, Z80, the 8080 and\nthe 6800. Although the Z80 was more powerful, the 6502 holds a special place\nin my heart as it was the first CPU I worked with and I loved the simplicity\nof the instruction set.\n\nMy crowning achievement was a multi-threaded kernel for a CNC punch. Since the\nstack was at a fixed memory address and there was no PUSHA, I had to change\nthreads (in response to an IRQ) by sequentially pushing the registers on to\nthe stack and then swapping the stack with a block copy. It worked! Crazy :/\n\nI loved reading this article - thanks for posting. Awesome stuff! Makes me\nwant to code my own circuit emulator :)\n\n~~~\nthinkingeric\nDitto that. My first programs were in assembly on the 6502, and I'm thrilled\nto see it getting this attention. I'm just sorry that I don't still have the\nKIM-1.\n\n~~~\ngreggraham\nI was planning on buying a KIM-1 when my dad surprised me by buying an Apple\nII. I didn't end up writing anything in assembly on the Apple II, though. My\nfirst assembly language was IBM-370 in college. I wish now I had started with\nthe KIM-1, though.\n\n------\nVMG\nHere it is in all its javascript goodness:\n<http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/index.html>\n\n------\neru\nThe CCC congress yielded some great talks this year.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Preprocessor for XML and JSON. People-Friendly Syntax,code Reuse+editor - trushin\nhttps://www.syntactik.com/\n======\nmtmail\nA comparison against YAML would be nice as well. YAML allows reusing section\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML#Advanced_components](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML#Advanced_components)\nfor example.\n\n~~~\ntrushin\nThanks for the feedback. I will mention YAML in the language description. Code\nreuse in YAML is limited to just simple reference. In Syntactik, you can\ndefine parameters inside an alias. It makes code reuse in Syntactik much more\nuseful.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDeploying JRuby apps on Google App Engine - igrigorik\nhttp://www.igvita.com/2009/09/23/deploying-jruby-on-google-app-engine/\n\n======\ngrandalf\nGAE is an awesome platform. I really don't see myself ever setting up\napache/nginx/mysql ever again...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Importance of Ron (Conway) - hshah\nhttp://omis.me/2010/04/08/the-importance-of-ron/\n\n======\nbtilly\nSee <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1248503> for yesterday's discussion\nof Ron Conway that may put this in perspective.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBrazilian Kids Learn English by Video Chatting With Elderly Americans - felipelalli\nhttp://www.adweek.com/adfreak/perfect-match-brazilian-kids-learn-english-video-chatting-lonely-elderly-americans-157523\n======\njoshmn\nOkay totally unrelated to the open-source stuff BUT.\n\nThat brought tears to my eyes. It was such a joy to see the expressions on the\nfaces of both the Brazilian and the hip elderly person on the other side.\n\nBookmarked under \"Things that will make you smile\"\n\n~~~\nrobmcm\nSomeone could knock up an app using web RTC. A perfect opportunity for some\nhacker out there. Some hacker that reads HN.\n\nThe trick is avoiding it becoming the next chat roulette :/\n\n~~~\nalagu\nHonestly, I don't think building tech here is the hard part. It is finding the\nright audience (Elderly people & Kids who want to learn English)\n\n------\npshin45\nAs someone in another comment already pointed out, YC previously funded a\ncompany called \"Verbling\"\n([https://www.verbling.com](https://www.verbling.com)) in their Summer 2011\nbatch whose original selling point was to provide an instant, one-click 1:1\npairing of language learners with native speakers via videochat.\n\nI'm not sure how well that concept caught on though... And if you check out\ntheir website, they seem to have pivoted to a more traditional \"livestreamed\nlanguage classes\" model.\n\n------\npersonlurking\nThere's a well-known problem in Brazil with English acquisition. This is due\nto the actual need for it (or rather lack of), the false \"become fluent\"\npromises by the language schools (like CNA, Fisk, Skill, Wizard, etc.), the\ncost of taking a course for the student, the methodology of said schools, and\nthe lack of daily contact with people from other cultures in Brazil (tied to\nmy first point).\n\nAs for the teacher, working in a school like the ones mentioned, you get low\npay (not too many years ago it was about $7/hr) and no leeway in terms of\nhours and method. Being a private, one-on-one teacher, though, one can command\nhigher prices ($30-50/hr in the largest cities) and have more control over\neverything (just not always whether the students keep their appointments).\n\nNonetheless, cool video in the link.\n\n------\nefficientarch\nThe title change of this submission means that many early comments now make no\nsense. Original title was something like \"Ask HN: Is anything like this\navailable as open source\"\n\n~~~\nrobobro\nThanks, wouldn't have caught it otherwise.\n\nTo whoever changed it: why didn't you just make a second thread?\n\n------\nzvrba\nNews like this just make my day better. It's much more rewarding to read about\ntechnology being used for tangible benefit to the people involved instead of\nfor getting rich.\n\n~~~\noska\nThis isn't news, it's an ad for a language school. It's being displayed on a\nwebsite devoted to showcasing advertising and all of the advertising\nproduction details are listed below the video.\n\nSo it's not underhand at all but it's also not an objective display of this\nprogram. It's an ad, designed to give you warm fuzzies and, if you're in the\ntarget demographic, consider signing up as a fee-paying student at the school\nfeatured.\n\nAs others have said in this thread, similar projects have been tried and have\nnot really gained traction. Not saying that some such project may not\neventually succeed but given that there is no objective data being given on\nthe success of this program in the video, one should probably be somewhat\nsceptical that this is anything more than a marketing tool.\n\n------\nJTxt\n(EDIT: original title asked if there was something like this as open source.)\n\nNice. It's basicly a well managed chatroulette clone.\n\n(EDIT: not quite, it also needs to record.)\n\nOr try \"web video conference server open source\"\n\n[https://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/](https://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/)\n\n[http://bigbluebutton.org](http://bigbluebutton.org) (can record too)\n\nGreggman mentioned WEBrtc, that would probably be cleaner/simpler, but it's\np2p right, so the server can't record? perhaps try [https://www.webrtc-\nexperiment.com/RecordRTC/](https://www.webrtc-experiment.com/RecordRTC/) ?\n\n~~~\nmkesper\nIn addition, the video session gets captured and evaluated afterwards.\n\n~~~\nJTxt\nGood point, added bigbluebutton.org\n\n------\njqm\nI vote this idea of the month and feel it should be greatly expanded upon.\n\nIf there were an organized platform where people could chat with speakers from\nall over the world in order to learn their language and culture it would be a\nfantastic thing.\n\n------\njoshu\n[http://www.ted.com/participate/ted-prize/prize-winning-\nwishe...](http://www.ted.com/participate/ted-prize/prize-winning-\nwishes/school-in-the-cloud-sugata-mitra)\n\nSomeone else came up with the idea. \"School in the cloud\"\n\n~~~\nfuzzythinker\nRelated, but I see them as being really different application and goals.\n\"School in the cloud\" is aimed at poor and remote places where kids can\nbenefit from real time learning interactions (while the \"teachers\" do not seem\nto get much materialistic benefits).\n\nThis on the other hand, is geared toward helping anyone who wants to learn a\nnew foreign language and connecting them to ones who do speak that language\nand they benefit from having someone who is willing to talk to them. So the\ngoals, and users/usage are very different, aside from one is aim towards one\nto many, and the other more one on one.\n\n------\ngreggman\nWhat part do you want to be open source? The software that runs the matchup? I\nthink most browsers support WebRTC so that problem is mostly solved. People\ncan use Facetime or Google+ Hangouts for free. So all that's needed is a way\nto meet people. I suppose pretty much any live chat for pr0n software would do\nthe job as well.\n\nI know there are other companies doing this. My friend is learning English\nthrough [http://langrich.com](http://langrich.com) which connects students of\nany age in Japan to people in cheap labor countries that speak English like\nthe Philipeans for example.\n\n~~~\nfelipelalli\nNo. Basically I want a site / service that can connects specifically elderly\npeople with people trying to learn English. Actually don't have to be open\nsource, neither free. I expressed bad myself, sorry.\n\n~~~\nJTxt\nOh, then it's much more of a management problem.\n\nThere's plenty of technical solutions already, you may just want a little glue\nwith good ux design, fast internet, and good support staff, especially for the\nelderly.\n\nIn this example, someone setup a relationship between a retirement home and an\nEnglish learning school. Outside of that, it would probably turn into a\nchatroulete.\n\n~~~\nfelipelalli\nExactly! :)\n\n------\namaral-herberth\nI'm a native Brazilian and I practice my english by writing texts that aren't\nmeant to be published and talking to myself when I'm walking home. This could\nbe an excellent alternative to improve my english. I'll certainly get in touch\nwith CNA people in my hometown :-)\n\n------\nmrcactu5\nthis article is very sad. it's about elderly people who have noone to talk to,\nbut also Brazil is poor country with a growing demand for having users speak\nEnglish.\n\nso this \"chat-roulette clone\" has a lot if impact.\n\n------\nsteamn\nCheck out Lynckia a WebRTC framework(\n[https://github.com/ging/licode](https://github.com/ging/licode) ) it includes\na MCU that allows recording and more...\n\n------\narfliw\nWatching the video is the closest I've ever come to crying from something I\nsaw on the internet. Moving stuff.\n\n------\nkarangoeluw\nThat does what exactly? Video chatting?\n\n~~~\navargas\nno, pair you with someone to chat. Elderly people tend to be lonely, so they\nare a nice target. And students learning that language. This is genius.\n\n~~~\nmahmud\nWhy do you think that is a technical problem?\n\n~~~\navargas\nI didn't mean it that way, I meant it as a response to what he's asking about\n\"That does what exactly?\"\n\n------\nglassdoor\nIs the name of the app pervert by any chance?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Music Bay: Pirate Bay Crew Instill More Fear Into The Music Industry - tortilla\nhttp://torrentfreak.com/the-music-bay-pirate-bay-110122/\n======\nfelipepiresrj\nDoes anyone have any idea what the piratebay guys are up to with the latest\nannouncement of \"themusicbay.org\"? Details ? What they're doing ? What's this\nnew thing they're launching ? when ? where ? is it just a hoax ? who's\nbankrolling this ?\n\nI need some insider information. I've seen all the stuff you can easily find\non google.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTop countries by robot density - bookofjoe\nhttp://chartsbin.com/view/45327\n======\nnabla9\nRobot density function looks like reciprocal of cheap labor function.\n\n~~~\nbookofjoe\nGood point; I hadn't noticed that.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nJoin our hacker house for new YC companies - thejash\nhttp://www.founderflat.com/\n======\nnickpinkston\nI'll vouch hugely for Josh \"thejash\". Josh is ultra hardworking, super smart,\nand the least flakey dude that I know. He's also managed a shared housing\nsituation for years, so he's really the ideal dude to be doing this.\n\nDisclosure: Josh and I founded/sold a company together and overall have been\ngood friends for many years.\n\n------\nmbeebe\nHaving just gone through the winter batch, the closer you are to YC, the\neasier it is going to be.\n\nBetween dinners and office hours you wind up going there frequently. Traffic\nis a big pain when trying to get to the dinners on anything other than surface\nstreets.\n\n~~~\nthejash\nOther YC alumni that I spoke with felt the same way, which is a big part of\nwhy the final location will probably be in or near Mountain View.\n\n~~~\njedberg\nIt's not so bad if you are near any Caltrain or light rail stop, since both\nstop very close to YC.\n\n------\nargumentum\nList of potential craigslist houses I found, mostly in palo alto or within\nminutes from..\n\n<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2957756203.html>\n<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2952933250.html>\n<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2956453815.html>\n<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2956341339.html>\n<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2946849180.html>\n<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2949748841.html>\n<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2949736690.html>\n<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2947663166.html>\n<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2957990093.html>\n<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2948364081.html> (has basement!)\n\n~~~\nthejash\nThanks for the links!\n\nIt's tough to find huge places, so if you (or anyone) knows of suitable places\n(>=6br), especially those NOT listed on craigslist/etc, please comment or send\nme an email.\n\n------\nkirinan\nThis is a fantastic idea. I signed up for Ycombinator and since I'm moving\nfrom Ohio, wasn't sure where I would be able to find housing. This solves that\nproblem. Im not sure how competitive it will be able to get into the \"house\",\nbut hopefully not that competitive.\n\n~~~\nthejash\nIf it ends up being really competitive (and we have more people than can fit\ncomfortably in one house), then we can do two or more. I have a number of\nplaces that I'm looking at already, so I'm pretty sure we won't end up with a\nsituation where people can't live in any of the available houses*\n\n*excluding rounding (like if there are 8 people and only 7 slots in one house)\n\n~~~\nkirinan\nAwesome, well I plan on bringing a car if I'm accepted so whomever lives with\nme will have transportation when I'm available. Good idea on getting more than\none, I think this can be profitable for you (if you are looking for that ) as\nwell as being a good deal for the people moving there.\n\n~~~\nthejash\nI'm not looking for profit in this--it's a horrible business idea :) I'll be\nhappy if I get to meet some interesting people and don't lose all that much\nmoney.\n\n~~~\nkirinan\nThe meeting people part makes up for any lost money anytime!\n\n------\nandrewhillman\nThis is a great idea. Might as well make the experience social since most YC\nalumni regret not getting to know the other companies during the 3 month\nperiod. Might be cool to have weekly pitch events/gatherings at the location.\n\n~~~\nthejash\nThe \"regret not getting to know each other\" is definitely something that I've\nheard from recent YC alumni.\n\nAs for weekly gatherings--I think that might be a bit distracting for the\nteams there, but I can see occasional gatherings being valuable.\n\n~~~\ncarterschonwald\nThis. Thinking and problem solving is a social process, the human brain is\ndesigned to be fueled via lots of nuggets of social. Theres a huge amount of\nvariability in what sorts of socialization different folks need and what form\nit needs to take, but it's absence creates a terrifying inability to think\nclearly and execute.\n\nFoam earplugs plus around the ear headphones solve most hearing other people\ndistractions. :)\n\nPoint being, if my group is in YC this summer, we're definitely looking for a\nsocial living space\n\n------\nmirsadm\nI signed up (we applied for YC). Having gone through the hassle of finding a\nplace in a few places recently it is a huge pain in the ass. This is a great\nidea but I'm not sure we'd be able to commit to a 6 month contract.\n\n~~~\nthejash\nI think a 6 month contract isn't too bad, when you consider that it's\nbasically:\n\n1 month for moving in before YC starts\n\n3 months for YC\n\n2 months for wrapping things up and finding a new place and moving\n\n------\nargumentum\nGreat idea.\n\nI was thinking about creating my own post for a YC hacker house, but I'd\nrather not deal with organizing and getting a landlord on board with something\nlike this.\n\n------\nbravura\nCost: $500 + $600 * numBedrooms) <= cost <= ($1000 + $1200 * numBedrooms)\n\n _You decide numBedrooms for your team. The fixed cost is to cover shared\nrooms (kitchen, conference room, living room, etc)._\n\nLarger teams will incur a larger utilization of shared resources, and hence\nshould pay more for shared resources. It more fair simply to divide the\noverall cost.\n\n~~~\nthejash\nThat's true. But on the other hand, imagine this situation:\n\n3 teams with 3 people. The house has 7 br. 2 teams each buy 3 br (for a total\nof 6 of the 7 being used), then the other team buys 1 br, and they all always\nwork from and hang out at the house. It would be lame that that 3rd team was\npaying 1/3rd the cost of each of the other teams. So this formulation was an\nattempt to account for that.\n\nBasically, my theory is--be reasonable. If you're using 42% of the house, you\nshould pay 42% of the costs. I'm happy to adjust the costs to make it work out\nin a reasonable way.\n\n------\nlarrys\nI wondering what the reaction would be if a few well known and loved VC firms\n(that have funded YC companies before) got involved and subsidized part of the\nrent for something like this or even something on a larger scale. Thoughts on\nthat idea?\n\n~~~\nthejash\nI'm not sure how subsidizing the rent would help the companies, especially if\nthey've already gotten into YC (and thus just got a bunch of investment, with\nother investment pretty readily available).\n\nSeems like it would be better to just keep the investing as direct dollars for\nequity, like it is now. Unless I'm missing something? I'd be happy to be wrong\nhere. :)\n\n~~~\nlarrys\nI'm thinking of it similar to how corporations want their names on rooms\nand/or buildings at colleges. Showing a level of support which, while not a\nquid pro quo, shows support in a way that isn't directly linked to a benefit.\n\nThe support could come as monetary support and maybe doing the thing that PG\ndoesn't have the time for as mentioned here (coordinating housing):\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3650877>\n\n------\ndmvaldman\nJust signed up. I've been sequestered in my fortress of solitude for too\nlong!!...Now if only I could get accepted to YC and cash in on this deal...\n\n------\namccloud\nWhere is that Zencoder house? (<http://yfrog.com/09x7fsj>)\n\n~~~\nthejash\nI don't have an exact address. I spoke with Jon (of Zencoder), he said it was\nsomewhere in the Santa Cruz mountains. Such a place is probably a little too\nremote for most people (it was a 30 minute or more drive to YC)\n\n~~~\nargumentum\nI don't mind, I have a car and don't mind sharing. I kind of like the idea of\nliving in a remote fortress, like a mad-scientist. But yeah, probably not\npractical for enough people, unfortunately.\n\n~~~\nthejash\nI agree with everything you said.\n\nHopefully you signed up and made a note about your preference for a remote\narea?\n\n~~~\nargumentum\nYes, I did, though I'll only know today whether yc has a chance of happening\n(interview invites go out this evening I believe).\n\n------\ncitricsquid\ncurious, will you be funding this out of pocket with the rent from the people\nliving there used to reimburse yourself, or will you be using the rent paid by\nthe people living there to pay the rent? I assume the former but I thought it\nmight be worth you clarifying. Great idea, good luck!\n\n~~~\nthejash\nI haven't fully decided--it's not going to be free, for sure. Probably, people\nwill pay me and I will pay the landlord, since that seems more convenient, but\nI could easily be convinced to just have people pay directly instead.\n\nAs I said on the page, the goal is not to make money, so any payment will just\nbe to cover costs. I'm not quite wealthy enough to just give away the space\nfor free yet :)\n\n~~~\ncitricsquid\nMy point was more that if one person flakes for whatever reason or a startup\ndrops out and you're financing the entire thing directly with the rent paid by\nthe rentees you're in for a world of hurt unless someone comes up to cover\nit... I assume if you pay for it and then the rentees reimburse you the worst\ncase is you lose money; not that people end up homeless.\n\n------\nkcrussell\nThis is great! A great idea for any incubator area.\n\n------\nsparknlaunch12\nAre pets allowed?\n\n~~~\nthejash\nI can't see anyone objecting to a fish or something. As for cats and dogs...\nmy guess is probably not, either because other people would object, they would\nbe bothersome, or the lease would not allow for it. So it's possible, but\nunlikely.\n\n~~~\nsparknlaunch\nThanks for the reply. Great idea to get like minded people together. We hope\nyou plan to share the stories and results from the house. Will make\ninteresting reading if all house mates end up making it big.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Cool Demo Project Ideas - greyhat\n\nThe standard (and probably true) wisdom around here is that a good way to get noticed and get the kind of job that most of us would like is to \"build something\".<p>What I'm hoping for is ideas for demo projects.  I don't need anything designed to make money or steal anyone's startup idea, just things that are fun to build and show development skills.<p>Demos you've seen already and liked or that have gotten people job offers are also appreciated.\n======\njamesbrewer\nUnfortunately topics like this never get much attention. The only thing I can\nrecommend is to find a topic that interests you and then just go find\nsomething that sounds neat. It doesn't have to be the next Google and it\ndoesn't even have to make money, just do something.\n\nFor example, I've recently become fascinated with data mining. To explore this\narea and get a basic idea of how it works, I'm playing with the Twitter API\nand trying to look for neat things that can be done with the data available.\nOne idea I've come up with is an app that recommends people to follow based on\nthe hashtags that you use frequently. It's still a \"half baked\" idea for now,\nbut maybe something good will come from it.\n\nGood luck.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "Ask HN: What are good blogs/forums/etc to keep up with MySQL best practices? - ceohockey60\n======\nbgrainger\nI wrote some guidelines (with a specific focus on .NET) recently:\n[http://faithlife.codes/blog/2017/10/mysql_best_practices_for...](http://faithlife.codes/blog/2017/10/mysql_best_practices_for_dotnet/)\n\n------\npwg\n[http://sql-info.de/mysql/gotchas.html](http://sql-info.de/mysql/gotchas.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nToxic 'forever chemical' found in drinking water for 7.5mm California residents - AndrewBissell\nhttps://abcnews.go.com/US/toxic-forever-chemical-pfas-found-drinking-water-75/story?id=65877630\n======\ncalais\nThose sure are some small California residents.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow Driverless Cars Can Reshape Our Cities - prostoalex\nhttp://www.curbed.com/2016/2/25/11114222/how-driverless-cars-can-reshape-our-cities\n======\nsandworm101\n>> A world where driverless cars are prevalent, and shared vehicle ownership\nis the norm, offers a chance to rethink and reconsider the design of our urban\nenvironment.\n\nThose are two very different things. Cars are more than simple people movers.\nThey are expressions of their owners' cultures. They are displays of wealth.\nThey are little pieces of home that travel with you throughout your day. That\nisn't going away any time soon.\n\nImho driverless cars will only add to traffic. No longer will cars have to\nwait around for their drivers. They will be free to do all sorts of things on\nthe road while their owners go about their days. Kids need not take a bus to\nschool. The family car can take them after first dropping mom/dad at work.\nBusinesses need not wait for expensive employees to inspect worksites or\ninfrastructure. Nor will they have to install monitoring equipment. Send the\nrobot, a driverless car with a mounted camera is far cheaper than a fleet of\ninstalled cameras. And parking? Forget paying. Just let the robot circle\naround until you are ready to be picked up. Making driving cheaper and easier\nthrough automation isn't going to reduce traffic.\n\n------\nrepsilat\nThe dramatic reduction in parking is a common and reasonable conclusion, but I\nthink the reduction in _traffic_ is not so clear cut.\n\nDriverless cars will reduce the cost of trips, likely inducing more demand.\nYou could also argue that empty driverless cars (say those travelling between\nfares) naturally add to traffic levels, though this isn't a strong argument.\n\n------\ndregSkell\nWhat a great idea. Give the cities to the disembodied sovereign cars, and\nwe'll all just hide from them in our cubby holes, and pray that maybe once in\na while we'll be able to catch a ride as hitchhikers.\n\nI can see it now, roadways filled with traffic jams, and nobody sitting in any\nof the cars, and no one having any idea where the cars are going, or why\nthey're even doing anything at all. Millions of puttering machines answering\nto no one, punctuated by the occasional pedestrian fatality, as would be\ndemanded by statistics and the law of probability. But technology marches\nforward as a higher GDP beckons.\n\nSounds like a great idea. Let's surround ourselves with haunted machines that\nblend in with the rest of the herd amidst the rat race, and add meaningless\nnoise to the ambient signal of our bustling environment, so nobody will know\nwhether nothing is actually happening or not.\n\n~~~\nenobrev\nI don't agree with this at all, but it was very well put and I enjoyed reading\nit.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nQuasar: a window manager for your (jailbroken) iPad - mattkopecki\nhttp://thebigboss.org/quasar-a-window-manager-for-ipad\n\n======\nrjsamson\nWhile its interesting, and I'm sure there are people who will love it, I'm not\nsure I'd really enjoy interacting with my iPad in a multi-windowed\nenvironment. There's something to be said for the simplicity of devoting my\nattention to one app at a time.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow many different songs can there be? - sajid\nhttp://www.wired.com/2015/03/many-different-songs-can/\n\n======\nyzh\nThe preemptive comments really made my day. Listening to your song, I am fully\nawake now.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBe Lazy - janvdberg\nhttps://dcgross.com/be-lazy/\n======\nmeowface\nGood points. Pretty much seems like a rephrasing of \"do things that don't\nscale\".\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "Ask HN: Where's My “Flask for Cortana” or “Django for Google Now” Frameworks? - ReedJessen\n======\nReedJessen\nFor anyone that comes along, I have found the solution.\n\nFlask-Ask is literatlly Flask for Amazon Alexa:\n[https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-\nask](https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-ask)\n\n------\ntantalor\nPay someone.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Are these possible ways to slow down a blockchain? - marmalade92\nI am very skeptical for the blockchain technology and although I use it as a gambling addiction (or it uses me) I still use zero crypto based technologies.<p>Within my skepticism, I started wondering what can make the chain vulnerable?<p>My first idea was flooding with almost non worthy transactions therefore wasting the miners. This was quickly debunked as I found out the miners would ignore &#x27;empty&#x27; transactions.<p>Another idea is, what if I as user A say want to transfer to user B, but I mention an amount of coins that actually I do not own and spam it. Would the miners have to traverse all the way to the back or are there &#x27;checkpoints&#x27; that can assure short travels?<p>The last one is a bit more difficult. However can a big enough network of nodes, insert itself and start crunching the chain errors-fully on purpose to &#x27;break&#x27; the chain?<p>Excuse my ignorance.\n======\njakecraige\nIt's not so much that miners would ignore empty transactions, it's that the\nspammer would need to pay the miner fee to get each transaction in the block\nwhich would end up being very expensive and unsustainable long term.\n\nFor the second idea, this wouldn't really work either. When each node receives\na transaction it will validate it first before broadcasting it to other nodes,\nso it would be stopped from propagating through the network pretty quickly and\nno one would attempt to include it in a block and run do PoW work it which is\nthe most time consuming part.\n\nI suppose in theory if you had a large enough network and could target a ton\nof nodes individually you might be able to do some form of damage but that's\nlikely a pretty impossible amount of power and similarly to the previous\nexample you could maybe bloat it a bit but it would be very expensive to\nsustain an attack like this.\n\n~~~\nmarmalade92\nthe 2nd idea. But in order to validate if I actually own the money it has to\ntraverse through the history. Now, I do not know how fast that is, or how far\nback it goes. But if it has to check and lets say it takes X amount of time,\nthe spamming it will flood the validation without requiring a fee?\n\nIn general the 'attacks' are possible but expensive. However are they\ngovernment expensive bulletproof? especially if we target less expensive coins\naka alt coins.\n\n------\nwmf\n_My first idea was flooding with almost non worthy transactions therefore\nwasting the miners. This was quickly debunked as I found out the miners would\nignore 'empty' transactions._\n\nAlso, you have to pay a fee for each transaction and thus you'd have to pay\n(at least) thousands of dollars of fees to clog a blockchain.\n[https://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitcoin-spam-attack-\nstressed-n...](https://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitcoin-spam-attack-stressed-\nnetwork-for-at-least-18-months-claims-software-developer/)\n\n _Another idea is, what if I as user A say want to transfer to user B, but I\nmention an amount of coins that actually I do not own and spam it. Would the\nminers have to traverse all the way to the back or are there 'checkpoints'\nthat can assure short travels?_\n\nThe miners keep an index of how much money everyone has (unspent transaction\noutput index) so they can immediately ignore such invalid transactions.\n\n _The last one is a bit more difficult. However can a big enough network of\nnodes, insert itself and start crunching the chain errors-fully on purpose to\n'break' the chain?_\n\nThis is similar to what people call the eclipse attack. However, if a victim\nnode can connect to even one other node that gives it a copy of the correct\nblockchain then the victim will ignore the errors and use the correct chain.\n[https://www.usenix.org/node/190891](https://www.usenix.org/node/190891)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAdvice to Young Web Developers - EvanAnderson\nhttps://tumblr.beesbuzz.biz/post/621010836277837824/advice-to-young-web-developers\n======\nmroche\n> _Browsers change. Relying on browser-specific behavior means you’re relying\n> on that one browser at that one point in time. Code to the standard, and\n> test everywhere._\n\nI wish this was listed at the top of the list, in the middle, and at the end.\nIt’s super annoying when a site or application isn’t “supported” because it\nwasn’t tested in a separate browser (i.e. non-Chrome browsers).\n\nI know it’s not always easy with a fair amount of nuance which the Chrome\nCompatibility post[0] touches on, but developing the web platform should be\ndone openly, with the browser vendors working together to be compatible with\neach other and not introduce developer or user inconvenience. Otherwise you\nend up with web ownership and a fragmented platform.\n\n[0]\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23563525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23563525)\n\n~~~\nnon-entity\nNothing pisses me off like getting a message that some website only supports\nChrome in 2020\n\n~~~\njjoonathan\nIt's so sad that it became \"acceptable\" to not test in Firefox (as estimated\nby the number of sites I randomly encounter that don't work in FF but do in\nChrome) right around the time that Firefox Quantum happened and Firefox became\ngood again :(\n\n~~~\n3131s\nFirefox must have performed poorly on Windows / MacOS in the past, because\nFirefox on Linux was never actually that bad.\n\nI've used Firefox for 15+ years now and never had the problems that people\ntalk about.\n\n~~~\nabnry\nI left Firefox in 2011 because it was unusably slow on my macbook. My recent\nexperience has been that it is much faster and I am considering switching\nback.\n\n~~~\nadrianhel\nIt's the snappiest browser at the moment and I love its render as text\nfunction and automatic ad blocking on mobile. I've made a permanent switch on\nmobile, but I tend to miss the Chrome dev tools whenever I use it on a\ncomputer.\n\nIt's also wonderful that the browser is truly privacy conscious.\n\n~~~\nTimpy\nI know productivity takes a hit when you switch tools but FF dev tools are\ngreat, it just takes some getting used to\n\n------\nCM30\nSeems like a list of every web development ideal that gets upvoted on Hacker\nNews.\n\nStill, I think the list can pretty much condensed down to one point:\n\nUse whatever technology is appropriate for this site or web app.\n\nBecause a lot of developers seem to have a 'when all you have is a hammer'\nattitude towards web development. They learn React/Vue/Angular/whatever, then\nseemingly decide everything they will ever build will use that framework,\nregardless of whether it's the right tool for the job.\n\nA blog doesn't need to be an SPA. A static business site that never gets\nupdated and doesn't do anything remotely interesting doesn't need to be an\nSPA. Your documentation doesn't need to be an SPA.\n\nIt's like that guy who was recreating CPanel as a WordPress plugin/install.\nSure, you could do things that way, but may want to rethink whether this is\nreally the best architecture to build a server control panel in.\n\n~~~\nlaurentdc\nI can't count the times I've started to write some basic internal tool with\nReact only to rm -rf everything 1 hour later and replace it with 20 lines of\njQuery/vanilla js\n\n~~~\nTheGoodBarn\nSuch an underrated comment.\n\nI think theres some validity to \"you're the most productive with whichever\ntools you're most comfortable/familiar with\", but I think people don't realize\nthe levels of abstraction that come with web development.\n\n( My learning path was: Angular 2 -> 7 + sucking at CSS, Angular + Tachyons\n(learning how to style), -> Angular + Custom CSS for everything, to Vue +\nCustom css -> Plain HTML + Plain CSS. )\n\nIts like the more you learn the more you understand the boilerplate of\nlibs/frameworks, but also understand what these large tools accomplish for\nyou, and then you learn to appreciate how powerful & simple the \"vanilla\" web\ncan be if you open your mind to it.\n\n------\nstevage\nAs a web developer, I frequently see these posts about how we should write (or\nat least transpile to) HTML because it's so much simpler, and the browsers can\nrender it so fast, and it's the right thing to do etc etc.\n\nBut they all miss the point: writing with client-side JS based frameworks\n(React, Vue, whatever) is easier, faster, more versatile. If you have the\noption of writing an SPA, it's simpler quicker to build this way, and so easy\nto deploy.\n\nSure, it renders slower. I've just signed my 25th professional client, and I\nhave never yet had a client who even _mentioned_ rendering speed, let alone\nwas willing to make any trade-off for it.\n\nServer-side rendering or writing raw HTML are over-rated.\n\n~~~\nSPBS\nIf you want site longevity, HTML is the way to go. It's fine if you clients\naren't expecting to maintain their website for the next 10 years, go ahead and\nuse the JavaScript framework.\n\nTell me that React websites today will still be around in 10 years time. With\nconstant upkeep and maintenance, maybe. If a website is just a static website,\nnot making it plain HTML is a disservice. The layers of abstraction _will_\ntake its toll.\n\n~~~\njjav\nSo much this. There is tremendous value in longevity. Writing content which is\nguaranteed to be unusable in a few years is anathema to me.\n\nOn my website I have pages which date back to 1993-94. Still readable just\nfine. I used to post those links to mailing lists back then and they still get\nregular hits from people in that community because I've also maintained the\nURLs constant.\n\n~~~\nehnto\nIn my personal life I serve HTML, CSS and native, gracefully degrading JS (if\nany), for the same reasons.\n\nIn my professional life though, I realised that 95% of the things I build will\nbe changed in the next year or so. We often inherit projects that were only\njust finished, and our first task is to start changing it entirely.\n\nSo I aim for robustness of maintenance rather than robustness of the finished\nproduct. It's inevitable that it will change, but I can anticipate that in the\nsame way a well engineered car can anticipate it's maintenance cycles.\n\n------\ndustingetz\n1) Nobody has any idea what they're doing 2) If you think you know more than\nyour manager – you are absolutely right 3) HN is 3 years ahead of mainstream,\nbut 10 years behind the edge 4) React was made by an OCaml programmer 5) if\nyou want to be that good, learn emerging languages (all of them) 5) don't\noptimize for money too soon, if you follow these instructions you will\nquadruple soon enough 6) Whatever your problem is that is holding you back –\ndrinking, eating, whatever – fix it today 7) Learn Clojure\n\n~~~\neyelidlessness\nI like your list, but I’d suggest:\n\n8) learn a statically typed language with a good type system\n\nEven if you end up preferring mainstream language X, learning a language that\nmakes you think in expressions rather than operations, and a language that\nmakes you think in contracts rather than knowing the runtime state in your\nhead, is invaluable for learning how to design, structure and maintain a\ncodebase\n\n~~~\ncollyw\nWhat you say sounds interesting but could you give an example of \"think in\ncontracts\" compared to and example of \"knowing the runtime state in your\nhead\".\n\nPersonally I have never really seen the advantage of staticaly typed languages\nover say Python, but I do rely on the strict typing supplied by a database\ninstead.\n\n~~~\neyelidlessness\nWhat I mean is that static typing makes interface boundaries (modules,\nfunction parameters and return types, data structures) explicit, and those\nboundaries are enforced automatically. Those boundaries become a contract,\nwhere a provided interface and its call sites must agree on in order to be\nrun. This is like a million little unit tests you get almost for free\n(obviously you have to write the types, but they're usually declarative and\nvery expressive).\n\nBut it also serves as documentation of how any part of your program's state is\nstructured at any point. To the degree a type system is sound, and to the\ndegree your types are appropriately detailed, you can be assured the\ndocumentation is correct and up to date as long as the program compiles. This\nallows you to eliminate the question of \"what does this data look like?\" when\nyou're reading code, and focus more on things like whether the logic is\nimplemented correctly.\n\nSince you mention it, I'll add that Python does have (optional, gradual)\nstatic typing, and a lot of work has gone into the type system in recent\nversions. It's worth spending a little time adding some static types in a\nproject and seeing some of these benefits. When I last worked in Python, you\nhad to run `mypy` to actually fail on static type errors, I don't know if this\nis still the case. But you could also use an IDE (like PyCharm, surely there\nare others) which will at least surface static type errors while you work.\n\n~~~\ncollyw\nI have been using Python type hinting recently, but I don't find it such a big\ngame changer. Maybe I am just used to writing code without it and it will\nbecome clearer if I use it more. Like I say I don't like having an untyped\ndatabase, and the benefits there aren't things that are obvious straight away.\n\n~~~\neyelidlessness\nWhen I last worked in Python, I also didn't get much benefit, but I wasn't\nusing either mypy or an IDE that warns on type errors. While obviously a\ndifferent language, it wasn't until I worked with TypeScript in VSCode that I\nreally came to appreciate static typing. And after a few years, I don't think\nI could go back to working without it.\n\n------\nfluffycritter\nHi, if possible, could the link please be updated to point to the original\npost at [https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/2934-Advice-to-young-web-\ndeveloper...](https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/2934-Advice-to-young-web-developers) ?\nThe Tumblr automatic crosspost isn't really intended to be the canonical\nversion, and I wouldn't mind getting a server load test while we're here.\n\nThanks!\n\n~~~\nEvanAnderson\nSorry about that, Fluffy. Your Tumblr feed is listed first in my reader and\nwas moved to submit it almost immediately after reading it. Nice to see you,\nBTW. Since I never post about my life anywhere I end up just being a lurker in\nyours, but I'm glad to be.\n\n------\nflobosg\nThe source post ([https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/2934-Advice-to-young-web-\ndeveloper...](https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/2934-Advice-to-young-web-developers))\nis a bit more readable. The list looks like, well, a list.\n\n------\nlxe\nThere are two that stand out to me:\n\n> Always validate your data server-side; anything that comes from the client\n> is suspect.\n\nAt least sanitize in a way that won't break the server but will throw an\nerror. For internal applications and side projects it's ok to just respond\nwith a 40X or a 50X and move on.\n\n> To the developer, “isomorphic” code breaks down the barrier between client\n> and server.\n\n\"Breaks down the barrier\" sounds great, but it's actually has been rather\ndetrimental. \"Isomorphic\" is confusing even to the senior developers. Having a\nvery clear delimiter of what runs in the server and what runs in the client is\nessential, and it makes your application much simpler to reason about. Take\n`isomorphic-fetch` for example... a request from a server to another API\nserver has very different requirements and nuances than a request from a\nbrowser to a server.\n\n~~~\nmattwad\nOTOH, if you use Flow or Typescript, it is amazing to be able to share type-\nsafe interfaces across the stack (not code). I suppose you could get this from\nany compiled-to-JS language too.\n\n~~~\nrealtalk_sp\nThe realization that this permits end-to-end fullstack type safety and allows\nsome awesome things (like surfacing breakage at compile time in response to\nchanges to the data model) is a quietly brewing revolution.\n\n~~~\njkachmar\nThis is in constant tension with the point that GP is making though.\n\nIf you’re not _very_ careful with your software architecture, you can\ninextricably tie your frontend and backend applications together. Depending on\nthe size of your product, or why the growth plans are for that particular\nfrontend/backend app end up being, this might not be a problem.\n\nIf it becomes one, though, then every bad technical design decision made in\nthat `common` set of modules or packages ends up hurting you as it gets\nunspooled from (at least) two components that likely have very different\narchitectural idioms.\n\n~~~\nrealtalk_sp\nWhen you really stop and unpack this, you can see that this is a non-issue.\nAdding an object or a field to the schema (the most common operations in a\ngrowing schema) never interfere with dependents and can be performed\nindependently of client adoption.\n\nThe remaining coordination issues can be solved by documenting or using e.g. a\n'@Deprecated' decorator in Typescript. And, of course, you can always just\nremove a field to see where the code has dependencies on it (where code breaks\nduring compilation).\n\nThe concerns about shared code may apply in some cases, but the global schema\nis not one of them, in my experience. I do agree it takes a bit of extra\nthinking to do this correctly but it's really not that difficult.\n\n------\nlucasmullens\n> To the developer, “isomorphic” code breaks down the barrier between client\n> and server. To a malicious client, it means they have control over the\n> server too.\n\nHuh? I don't follow this. Sharing some helpful util functions between the\nfrontend and backend doesn't allow malicious clients to control your server.\n\n~~~\nfluffycritter\nWhat I was trying to (clumsily) say is that when people develop \"isomorphic\"\ncode they tend to forget that some of it runs on the client and some of it\nruns on the server and the interface between the two cannot be trusted.\n\nForm validation is a common example of where things can break, like someone\ninjects malicious data that's already been validated by the client-side code\nand then the server assumes that the code has already been validated by the\nclient.\n\nAnd if you don't even _know_ which code is running where, that makes it even\nmore dangerous.\n\n~~~\nshreddish\nHmm I guess since it's advice to young developers they might make that mistake\nbut any slightly experienced developer knows not to trust anything client\nside. Not validating data from the client isn't exclusive to isomorphic code.\n\n------\nrecursivedoubts\nThat's unfortunate: the back button doesn't work on the linked site.\n\nYoung developers, if you can spare a moment, try to learn what REST (and\nHATEOAS) really meant:\n\n[http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/01/18/rescuing-\nrest.html](http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/01/18/rescuing-rest.html)\n\n[http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for-\nhumans.ht...](http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for-humans.html)\n\n------\nrickpmg\nAnd make sure the back button works?\n\n------\nMrBuddyCasino\n> Infinite scrolls are inhumane. People need to be able to reach “the end.”\n> There are forms of eternal torment described in religious texts that are\n> less mean.\n\nIf I had to pick just one, it would be this.\n\n~~~\nenriquto\nInfinite scrolls are ugly, but i'm not sure artificially \"paginated\" text is\nbetter. The worst thing about infinite scrolls is that you cannot search for a\nword in the whole document (just on your visible part of the screen, and a\nscreenful below that).\n\n------\nChrisMarshallNY\nIronically, it uses tumblr, so the damn back button is captured (try getting\nback here).\n\nThis is my fave:\n\n _> Infinite scrolls are inhumane. People need to be able to reach “the end.”\nThere are forms of eternal torment described in religious texts that are less\nmean._\n\n~~~\nfluffycritter\nI had posted this to my own blog at [http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/2934-Advice-to-\nyoung-web-developers](http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/2934-Advice-to-young-web-\ndevelopers) and it looks like it was the Tumblr auto-crossposted version that\ngot submitted here. That's unfortunate.\n\nEDIT: I've updated the Tumblr version to make this a bit more clear.\n\n~~~\nptx\nHN doesn't use markdown:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)\n\n~~~\nsmichel17\nI use markdown on HN, partially out of protest, partially because it looks\nfine enough when rendered as plain text (by design).\n\n------\nmooneater\nIf you step back from modern fullstack web development, it is stunning how\nmuch accidental complexity is needed to accomplish anything at all.\n\n~~~\nadrianhel\nAnother thing I painfully realized: It that is not a good idea to document\nHTML in HTML.\n\n&lt;details&gt; &lt;summary&gt; It's not a good idea &lt;/summary&gt; really.\n&lt/details&gt;\n\n------\nanonytrary\nI do appreciate the author's emphasis on accessibility! However, as you read\nmore bullet points, you start to realize that the author is really just\nventing about how much they hate modern javascript development (SPAs, VDOMs,\nclient-side rendering, etc.). It gets pretty obvious about 10 bullet points\ndown that this is the overwhelming theme of the post.\n\n------\ndanjac\nNot that any of this advice is bad - a lot of it I agree whole-heartedly with\n- but it overestimates the amount of influence developers, let alone junior\ndevelopers, have on the final design of a corporate site. If management/design\nwant infinite scrolling then that's what they get, whatever the developers\nsay.\n\n------\nsquid_demon\nAdvice: don't make everything slow as shit please. Note, this most likely\nmeans writing your own trim left function and not depending on zillions of\nlibraries. If you can't write something as simple as this, please don't! Just\noutput a static web-page that loads ultra fast. Thanks young web developers!\n\n------\ndevcriollo\n> If you must do an infinite scroll (and you don’t), make sure that there’s\n> nothing you need to reach at the bottom.\n\nThe most ignored\n\n------\nvyuh\n> _Even if you need to preserve client state between page loads (for e.g.\n> music or video playback) you can let the browser do most of the heavy\n> lifting by fetch()ing a new page and replacing your content container at the\n> DOM level._\n\nAnyone knows of some easy to learn example of such DOM replacement?\n\n~~~\npurerandomness\nYes, look at the examples at [https://htmx.org/](https://htmx.org/)\n\n------\npartyboat1586\nUnfortunately I think it's going to be a long time before web apps stop using\ndark patterns like infinite scroll. It's not good for their bottom line.\n\n~~~\ninanutshellus\nWith infinite scroll, there is no bottom line. /s\n\n~~~\ntheduder99\nlol thank you\n\n------\nithrow\nThis sounded more like a anti-SPA post. Maybe the title should be \"Reasons for\nnot building a SPA\".\n\n~~~\ntimw4mail\nSPAs are an anti-pattern.\n\nLet's rebuild html rendering, navigation history, forms, etc, all with\nJavascript, because it's the hip thing to do.\n\n~~~\nGrimm1\nYou're not using that word correctly, since this is not a pattern it's an\narchitecture.\n\nPlease don't misuse words, especially in a negative context to mean \"something\nI don't like\", it cheapens the word in legitimate cases.\n\nNo comment on whether SPAs are worth anything though, I reserve my opinion.\n\n~~~\narkis22\narchitecture doesn't contain patterns? architectures don't follow certain\npatterns?\n\nyou've never seen certain architectures that smell because they're not\nfollowing an established pattern?\n\n------\naabbcc1241\nAgree we should deliver the html directly to the browser in most of the cases.\nSPA are often abused and some 'webapp' sites need to load for more than 10\nseconds to download the js files...\n\nOn the other hand, we want to deliver reactive experience. LiveView is an\ninteresting approach. It returns the html with all content at the initial GET\nrequest, and apply partial UI update from the server. It processes the user\ninteractions and application logics from the server. This way you don't need\nto explicitly maintain web API at all, because the render and update functions\ncan directly access the data repository on the server. And we don't need to do\nvalidation twice. Liveview is implemented in Elixir and Typescript, also saw\nsimilar implementation in php and python.\n\n------\nMinor49er\nExcellent list. I would add: sometimes it's tempting to rewrite an entire site\nor application to get away from a world of problems, but you could just as\neasily be walking into another set of issues at the expense of lost time and\nexisting code value if you aren't careful.\n\n------\ntheandrewbailey\nWhat about \"don't mess with scrolling\"?\n\n------\nSamBoogieNYC\nAs someone who uses a SPA (React) for webapps - I find it very useful. I run\ninto issues that wouldn't happen if building purely html/css/vanilla js and\nwhen that happens I fix the issue.\n\nThe biggest benefit of using a framework IMO is that you're given a fairly\nstrict structure to work within, which makes organization a lot easier. For\nsomeone who isn't a master, having some rules \"baked in\", helps a lot.\n\nThat being said, I wouldn't use React to build a static page/site, that makes\nno sense.\n\n------\nkanobo\nPeople are motivated to learn and build what inspires them. Some started web\ndev because they wanted to make the type of projects they saw in chrome\nexperiments that only run on the latest version of Chrome. Some people see\nvery complex SPA apps and are inspired to make complex tools that can't just\nbe done with HTML. Some get into web dev because they had a passion for\nbrowser and flash games. This list isn't wrong but also doesn't take into\naccount the huge variety of web developers.\n\n------\nbaron816\nSorry, it’s not usually up to young web developers on whether to use a SPA or\nnot, nor whether to prioritize accessibility.\n\nAdvocating accessibility is nice though, so do try.\n\n------\nlsalvatore\nAdvice to Young Frontend Web Developers: Use React. HTML is not a rich enough\nframework to do client work.\n\nSecond article in a row here advocating for HTML purism. That is where I jump\nin and talk about how React changed my career in 2015. Since then, my life has\nhad a measurable impact because of how easy building apps became thanks to\nReact. There is no app where I would consider not using React including\nlanding pages.\n\n~~~\nerr4nt\nWhat kind of software application is a landing page? When you call it a \"page\"\nit makes it almost seem like a document of some kind...\n\n------\npull_my_finger\n> Use polyfills to support browsers that don’t yet support the standard you’re\n> using.\n\nUnless your target users can't switch their browser (it happens), I tend to\nfeel this is slowing new browser adoption. Developers keep coddling users by\nmaking sure everything works, and users have no reason to upgrade. Make their\nobsolete browser function like an obsolete browser and they might just update.\n\n------\nhootbootscoot\nThis was a very nice article. It was one of the best web-related articles I've\nread in a long time. I liked it.\n\n------\nrpmisms\nThis is a good list. Not great, and not applicable when you're at a crappy\norganization with bad traditions--likely many young web dev's position. This\nis much more useful to me now that I'm in a good position at a great company\nwith a good culture.\n\n------\ngwbas1c\n> The web is built around server-side rendering.\n\nGrr... I read through the EmberJS tutorial and thought everything was very\ncool; only to find out that the whole thing is rendered with in-browser\nJavascript.\n\n------\nhejja\nthis article feels lacking in nuance, strong claims that aren't universally\ntrue lead to bad reasoning.\n\nto any \"young developers\" read I would say not to blindly adopt these opinions\nwithout understanding them.\n\n------\ngrimmdude\n100% agree with the sentiment that client side rendering is overused.\n\n------\nabendstolz\nAh, the good ol' KISS - complexity kills.\n\n------\nhpen\nWhy so much hate for infinite scrolls? What if your content is \"infinite\". I\ncan't see a better way to handle that.\n\n~~~\nxemdetia\nThe infinite scroll problem I feel comes up most that if there was a useful\npiece of information in the middle of an infinite scroll it is likely\nimpossible for you to return there with any sort of reliability. You can't\nsave the URL because it probably doesn't encode anything useful about where\nyou are in a most cases. You can't logically organize 'where' this information\nis because its location is pure happenstance. It is pointlessly ephemeral. I\ncan't start on page 5, I can't start on page 100. I have to scroll and just\npray I get to get lucky which is the function of a slot machine, not someone\nwho's trying to present me information. If I _really_ wanted to get that much\nmore content I am more than happy to click the next button.\n\n~~~\nhpen\nYou can have infinite scroll + pagination buttons\n\n------\nsecondcoming\nFunny, this website broke my ipad safari browser's 'back' button. Double-tap\nrequired.\n\n------\nhpen\nI feel like posts like this are just somebody missing the web how it used to\nbe. I mean the Web IS an app platform now.\n\n~~~\nbritch\nI didn't get that sense from the post. I took that they were advocating for\nbasic HTML/JS when appropriate. A reminder that it's still a valid way of\ndoing things.\n\nIf you're building an app, yeah use React.\n\nIf you want to put some contact info on the internet, there's no reason it\ncan't be vanilla HTML.\n\nOr at least that's how I read it.\n\n~~~\nhpen\nLooking over the article again, I'd say your right. It was the statement \"The\nweb is built around server-side rendering.\" that made me feel that way. As a\nwhole you're right.\n\nHowever, I didn't think everyone was out making landing pages with React and\nVueJS. Maybe they are.\n\n------\njimmaswell\nWhy are infinite scrolls so demonized? I like them, especially if they update\nthe url so you can go back to the same spot. Everyone loved it when Reddit\nEnhancement Suite did it way back in the day, but now Facebook does it so it's\nevil.\n\n------\nAnimats\n_\" The web is built around server-side rendering.\"_\n\nThat's the React definition of \"server side rendering\", where HTML gets\ngenerated on the server. Real \"server side rendering\" would mean generating an\nimage server side and shipping that.\n\n~~~\nsbergot\n\"rendering\" in a web context is pretty commonly interpreted as \"creating the\nhtml document\". It is not specific to React.\n\n------\ntorartc\nI personally don't think this is great advice, but this is exactly the type of\nadvice that will get upvoted here.\n\n------\nkvetching\n\"Give people consistent but random stimulus and you will be habit-forming.\nGetting people hooked on your product might seem like a good idea, but the\ntobacco industry feels the same way.\"\n\nDO NOT Listen to this. Make your site as addictive as possible. It can only\nhelp you win at life. More users = more impact = more money = better life. So\nlong as it's not porn, your website won't be as bad as tobacco.\n\n~~~\narcin\nI think this is a little tone deaf to the target audience. Not all developers\nwant to aspire to extracting the maximum amount of resources from users. Some,\nespecially beginners who want to code, just want to build something and build\nit well.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Open-Source Anonymous Encrypted TLS+OTR Messaging Written in Go - RomanPushkin\nhttps://hacktunnel.com\n\n======\nsusi22\nI'm still waiting for the day that somebody does a \"super simple chat\" with NO\ndependencies. Why do they all need REDIS or some kind of persistence? Why not\njust hold it in memory?\n\nIf you really have a use case where persistence & scaling is an issue you're\nlikely not going to use any of those chat servers anyways.\n\n~~~\ndefaultcoder\nOne of authors is here.\n\nRedis saves data to the disk by default but this can be turned off. That's\nwhat we did. GUIDs of connected users are stored in memory with expiration by\nthe 10 min timeout.\n\nI think scalability does not hurt privacy. It's nice to have 10 servers with\n40GB memory instead of one with 4GB. Connections between servers can be\nencrypted with TLS.\n\n------\nthomasjudge\n\"How safe is my tunnel?\n\nYour tunnel remains safe until your password or our servers are not\ncompromised.\"\n\nuhhh...\n\n~~~\nRomanPushkin\nFair enough, huh :) Actually, it's mentioned because we wanted to note it\nsomehow - it's always better to have this set up on your own server\n\n~~~\nkodablah\nI haven't looked deeply into this implementation, but with OTR's forward\nsecrecy and 3.1+ authentication, is that not enough to defeat even the server\nbeing compromised? (meaning, at least you would know it was compromised\nassuming you trusted the actor on the other end)\n\n~~~\nBogdanovich\nIf server is compromised, web app source code would probably change to\nsomething else.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCosmo, the Hacker 'God' Who Fell to Earth - stevewillows\nhttp://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/09/cosmo-the-god-who-fell-to-earth/\n======\nColinWright\nDiscussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4505003>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPorting Cython code to PyPy - vgnet\nhttps://sage.math.washington.edu:8091/hudson/job/cython-docs/doclinks/1/src/tutorial/pypy.html\n\n======\nvgnet\nMail thread: [https://groups.google.com/group/cython-\nusers/browse_thread/t...](https://groups.google.com/group/cython-\nusers/browse_thread/thread/337a7cf758fe5345)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy Do the Titles of Scholarly Works Sometimes Begin with the Word 'On'? - jordansmithnz\nhttps://english.stackexchange.com/questions/402576/why-do-the-titles-of-scholarly-works-sometimes-begin-with-the-word-on\n======\nDamonHD\nWell, thank you for that thought! I'm renaming 70-odd of my articles right now\nfrom \"A Note On X\" to \"On X\" as a useful compaction, and almost all the titles\nseem fine just deleting the existing initial two words.\n\nNot that I'm claiming to rub shoulders with Darwin and pals.\n\n~~~\nmadcaptenor\nYou could even get rid of \"On\". Most people probably think Darwin's magnum\nopus is titled \"The Origin of Species\" anyway.\n\n~~~\nDamonHD\nEasy tiger! I have to take this one step at a time! B^>\n\n------\naisofteng\nFrom the numerous oddly wrong answers and their votes, it seems that too many\npeople just don't read.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApplication data caching using SSDs - sgmansfield\nhttp://techblog.netflix.com/2016/05/application-data-caching-using-ssds.html\n======\ngeodel\n> The decision to use Go was deliberate, because we needed something that had\n> lower latency than Java (where garbage collection pauses are an issue) and\n> is more productive for developers than C, while also handling tens of\n> thousands of client connections. Go fits this space well.\n\nThis is interesting. There haven't been many instances yet where Go's\nmemory/GC performance is compared directly and favorably to Java's\nperformance.\n\n~~~\nfaizshah\nIn this case I don't think it's the raw performance they are looking for but\nrather freedom from the unpredictable GC pauses. Although I think they should\nhave explained why they didn't use Azul Zing for this, I realize it's\nexpensive but this seems like the exact use case for it.\n\nFound some interesting discussion here about this:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10149961](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10149961)\n\n~~~\nsgmansfield\nAuthor here (of both Rend and the post).\n\nWe really _are_ looking for raw performance, but not at any cost. I spent a\nbunch of time, and continue to do so, to eliminate extra work, indirection,\nand garbage.\n\nEfficiency of runtime and development is a careful balance that Go fits well.\nRust is immature. C is difficult for people who haven't been writing it\nprofessionally. Java (less Zing or other special cases) is too latent, even if\nit's very fast when it's running because of HotSpot optimizations. The list\ngoes on, but I didn't see a reason to choose the others over Go, nor have I\nfound something yet that beats it for our use case.\n\nReally, Java just wasn't the language for the job. Go has a lower level and\nsimpler interface, simpler runtime (with less indirection), and better model\nfor concurrency. Yes, it's a new language for us, but it was the right tool\nfor the job. Our garbage collection pauses are mostly under a millisecond, so\nthey aren't really an issue.\n\nZing never really was on my radar. Looking at it now I shudder to think of the\nlicensing costs, especially since we run tens of thousands of cache instances.\nWe already pay enough just to run these servers. It's also a new Java runtime\nwhich very few people know about, and probably nobody at Netflix has used. I\nwould have had to learn it all independently and continue to be on my own from\nthen on. The Go slack team and community in general are very helpful and\nsupportive, and I would speculate that the same level of support isn't\navailable for Zing without paying.\n\n~~~\nfaizshah\nCool, thanks for the insight! I love reading the thinking process behind\ndesign decisions.\n\nOn the subject of Azul's price: I think they would give you a high volume\ndiscount, but even half the price (1750) per server would be pretty outrageous\nfor your use case.\n\nFor my use case I'm going with Apache Ignite right now for tiered off heap\ncaching, but I'm not sure it would work for you guys. Might be worth a look\nthough.\n\nI admire Netflix OSS ecosystem. Thanks for the great work you guys do!\n\n~~~\ndesdiv\nJust curious, is that 3500 per server per year? Or 3500 for the lifetime of\nthe server?\n\n~~~\nfaizshah\nHere's how they word it on the informational page for Zing:\n\n“Zing® is priced on a subscription basis per server (physical or virtual).\nWith per-server pricing, you don’t need to worry about core counts, memory\nsize, or number of instances deployed per server. The single license annual\nsubscription price for Zing is $3500 USD per physical server, with\nsignificantly lower prices for higher volumes and longer-term subscriptions.\nPlease contact us to learn about the special pricing available for start-ups\nand companies with $25 million or less in annual revenue, and for ISVs and\nmanufacturers looking to embed/integrate Zing with their products.”\n\nSeen here:\n[https://www.azul.com/products/zing/](https://www.azul.com/products/zing/)\n\n------\npmontra\nThe link redirects to a https URL that doesn't work (Firefox and Opera). I'm\nnot using a https anywhere addon so I was very surprised that wget\n[http://techblog.netflix.com/2016/05/application-data-\ncaching...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2016/05/application-data-caching-\nusing-ssds.html) doesn't get redirected. Loading the downloaded file in the\nbrowser let me read the article.\n\n~~~\nsgmansfield\nSorry, not sure what's wrong. I tested in the latest firefox, safari, opera,\nand chrome and it works for me.\n\nEdit: blogger doesn't do SSL on custom domains. Sorry =/\n\n~~~\nnotnarb\nthe [http://](http://) link you posted works fine, but if you attempt to\naccess the link via https ( [https://techblog.netflix.com/2016/05/application-\ndata-cachin...](https://techblog.netflix.com/2016/05/application-data-caching-\nusing-ssds.html) ), I get a \"Secure Connection Failed\" in Firefox.\n\nScreenshot:\n\n[http://storage8.static.itmages.com/i/16/0525/h_1464199626_32...](http://storage8.static.itmages.com/i/16/0525/h_1464199626_3257492_39001d8e73.png)\n\nThat said, I'm not being redirected and I don't know why gp is.\n\n~~~\nsgmansfield\nOK, I can reproduce. I'll forward, something seems wrong (obviously). Thanks\nfor reporting this.\n\nedit: No SSL on blogger custom domains. Sorry =/\n\n~~~\npmontra\nWhat was the problem? I ask not to make it on my servers. Thanks.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRetailers Are Losing the Software Talent Wars - jongraehl\nhttp://www.businessweek.com/magazine/retailers-are-losing-the-software-talent-wars-12012011.html\n======\njtchang\nI can't believe some of you are saying they should put together a bunch of\nawesome programmers and rewrite their platform from scratch.\n\nCertainly that is an option. But rarely is it ever the correct one. Your new\nplatform could be as riddled with bugs as the old one.\n\nThe truth is that finding good engineers is about knowing the right\nincentives. Retailers are losing the talent wars because they don't know how\nto compete. And while salary is one lever Target can fiddle with, it certainly\nisn't the only one.\n\nTarget needs to look at the right incentives for the people they want to hire.\nIs telecommuting an option? How about direct authority to approve changes? Or\nthe chance to build your own team? These are the incentives that matter to\nengineers.\n\nThe problem is cutting through all the rhetoric in hiring. Target can say \"we\nwant to revolutionize the ecommerce industry\" but do any engineers actually\nbelieve them? That's tough.\n\n~~~\nkls\n_And while salary is one lever Target can fiddle with, it certainly isn't the\nonly one._\n\nI would argue set high enough it is the only lever. Many that play the start\nup game do so because first and foremost, there is the chance to earn far more\nthan they can at an organization like Target. Sure it's a long shot but, there\nis at least the chance, if large organizations started to cross that chasm. I\nbelieve that they would indeed start to attract talent. If one could become\nmoderately wealthy working for Target then a lot of people would choose that\noption, sure it's not the fame and fortune of making it in a start up, but a\nroad somewhere in the middle is a road I would imagine that many developers\nwould be willing to travel.\n\n~~~\nbluedanieru\nThat's not very realistic and they almost certainly don't have the money for\nit. Moreover, increasing salary nets diminishing returns for motivating people\nafter a certain point, and if it sucks to work for you, then no matter how\nmuch you pay, people are going to get bored and frustrated and leave.\n\n~~~\nkls\nI would be hard pressed to believe that they do not have the money for it,\nwhile I was at Marriott I doubled our budget for salary and did not change\nhead count. I raised salaries above market rate and used some of it for merit\nbased bonuses. It was very effective in recruiting and retaining talent. It\nwas not the only thing that I did, but money cannot be discounted as a\nmotivating factor. I will cede to your point that it the place flat out sucks\neven an astronomical amount of money may not retain your talent. But I am\ngiving them the benefit of the doubt that they are mediocre at worst.\n\n------\nadaml_623\nI think that article is neglecting the posibility that Target (as an example)\nhas the software engineers who are talented enough to fix the site.\n\nBut what they almost definitely have is buckets of management and procedures\npreventing them from fixing the site. The kind of person who is afraid to\nreboot the server because it hasn't been rebooted in 6 months. Or who says if\nwe do anything then we might make it worse.\n\n~~~\ncodeonfire\nAlso lets not forget micromanaging tech managers who's one or two years of\ndevelopment before they went into management (hey they figured out technology\nin one year unlike all those other saps) entitles them to force their stupid\nand disastrous ideas onto the engineering team.\n\n------\nRoboprog\nHmm. Rather than spend $180 or $300 million to purchase tech companies, maybe\nsome of these stores could try paying Silicon Valley salaries to a team of 10\nor 20 devs.\n\n20 devs * $200 K (loaded) / year = $4 M / year.\n\n... Assuming they had a way to bootstrap an idiot-rejection-filter.\n\n~~~\nbgentry\nThat's a much better plan. It's funny that they are unwilling to pay above-\nmarket salaries to a few competent devs.\n\n~~~\najross\nIt's a terrible plan. Paying a bunch of rock star salaries just gets you a\nbunch of people that _say_ they are rock stars. If you don't have any on\nstaff, you don't actually know if they are or not (pg has an essay about\nexactly this).\n\nHistory is filled with these kind of rock star failures.\n\nBuying the company gets you a team that can verifiably build the product you\nwant, _because they already did_. That kind of conservative risk management is\nworth a ton of cash in the real world.\n\n~~~\ndroithomme\n$200k isn't a rock star salary.\n\nYou are correct that paying market salaries for competent engineers does not\nensure competent engineers.\n\nHowever it must be noted that _not_ paying market salaries for competent\nengineers definitely ensures that one employes substandard talent. The market\nis working well right now and competent engineers have no problem receiving\nmarket rate. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever why competent engineers\nwill not find a job paying the market rate for their talent, and that is\nexactly what happens. As for the companies that can not pay market rate, well\nthey are simply not competitive and will fail. That's how the free market\nworks and it is a very good thing.\n\nAny company that requires being competitive in the tech domain needs to be\nwilling to pay for key talent. Companies like Target definitely need to do\neverything they can. Arguments that incompetent developers are good enough are\nabsurd. Obviously what they have now is not working.\n\nBuilding a site that can handle a nationwide retailer the size of Target,\nsecond only to WalMart in brick and mortar stores, is completely non-trivial.\nThe top 2 engineers there need to be paid at least $1.5 million annual salary.\nSorry. I know many companies don't like this but there it is. Now obviously\nthere are many levels below this, but this requires a pretty large development\nteam and several below this level are going to be getting $200k-$400k. At the\nbottom, the losers that are just out of college and don't know anything, those\nguys are going to be making $75k to start. Because that's the starting salary.\nCompanies don't want to hear this. Only the fatuous useless ignorant\nexecutives that have run the company into the ground should be paid these\nsalaries, in their opinion. Well, they can keep thinking that and see where it\ngets them. Many will lobby Congress, that is a popular tactic. Pay a lobbying\nfirm $25 million and maybe you'll be able to flood the market with cheap\nengineers from overseas who are willing to work for $21 an hour, and are able\nto do the same things that any other $21 an hour retail employee can do.\nBecause the overseas guys that really know their stuff are not looking for $21\njobs, they are making the same salary as everyone else with their skill level.\nBecause that's how the market works.\n\n~~~\nmoocow01\nSorry but in what world do you live in? Whatever world it is I'd like to join\nbecause I've never heard of engineers making 1.5 million in salary. I think if\nyou look on Glassdoor you'll realize 200k is a very high salary for an\nengineer at any company in SV.\n\n(Also as a reference a Sr. Architect at Walmart.com according to Glassdoor\nmakes 120-130k)\n\n~~~\nRoboprog\nThanks for the data. And I won't be leaving the financial firm I work for to\ngo to WalMart any time soon from the sound of it :-)\n\n------\njoshwa\nI work at macys.com, and here's where I recruit you!\n\nUnlike most retailers, our e-commerce division operates on its own, and we\nhave the agility (and capital budget) to move quickly and act on big\nopportunities. Yes, there's a lot of work and headache that's involved with\ndealing with massive retail systems, and they have about as much legacy stuff\nas you'd imagine a 150-year-old company with a history of giant acquisitions,\nbut thankfully most of us never have to think about that stuff except at the\nedge of some giant diagram.\n\nWe have a whole bunch of floors in downtown SF that's just for dotcom--mostly\nengineers, some QA, some product/management, etc. We're reasonably up to date\nwith new technologies--although we're a Java shop, some stuff gets done in\nScala, there's an active Hadoop project, and lots of big, interesting problems\nin scalability, UX, big data, analytics, SEO, etc.\n\nExample: I work on the internal-facing web product setup apps, primarily on\nproduct image stuff. Every product has to get photographed (including getting\nthe physical sample from the manufacturer to the right studios, on the right\nmodel, etc), color corrected (we sell items in 60+ colors) mapped to products\n(is this the primary image? a swatch? a back view? which UPCs does it\nrepresent? what happens if the color sells out?). This all happens at scale:\n130k physical samples trafficked, 150k products, 250k images.\n\nToo bad this is on a weekend before new year's, otherwise I'd get all my\nfavorite dev leaders in here to pitch you. We're growing (even in a down\neconomy, we're posting significant growth year after year) and hiring like\ncrazy (a current search shows 25 open FTE requisitions in SF, and our contract\npartners even more).\n\nThe work environment is a little BigCorp-ish, but it's relaxed (it's SF, after\nall), and they take work/life balance seriously, so if you're a hacker with a\nfamily you're definitely welcome here. I work with a lot of really smart\npeople who get things done. Yes, we sell pants, but you get a 20% discount,\nand you get to find out when things go on sale beforehand ;)\n\nCurrent openings: <http://ecommerce.macysjobs.com/> Salaries are Bay-Area\ncompetitive, full benefits package, etc.\n\nor if you want to know more you can contact me directly at\njoshua.wand@macys.com, with \"Hacker News\" in the subject.\n\n _NB going to bed now (11pm PST) but will be up in the morning to answer\nquestions_\n\n~~~\nchaostheory\nI'm not sure if these are problems anymore @ macys.com, but here's a list of\nissues I remember:\n\n1) It is very hard for the company to match market salaries even though its\nmargins are pretty good for a retailer. The only retailer I know of that does\nwell in the salary dept is Amazon.\n\n2) The development culture: I think this is every large retail company, but I\nfeel that you guys tend to favor anything coming out of Big Blue (or Big\nCompany X) as opposed to something technically interesting (but no longer\nbleeding bleeding edge) in the open source world. You guys tend to buy stuff\ninstead of building. There's definitely nothing wrong with that given the\nsituation and culture, but I feel that it doesn't fit very well with the HN\ncrowd at large.\n\nThat being said, Macys.com has some of the coolest, nicest people that you'll\never meet in the workplace; which is really great.\n\n~~~\njoshwa\nTo the best of my knowledge both of these issues are much improved over a few\nyears ago.\n\nHow long ago were you there, and working with what group?\n\n------\nhkarthik\nHere in Dallas, lots of retailers have their corporate headquarters here. I've\ndone some consulting work for one of them in the past and a couple years ago\none of them was trying to recruit me pretty heavily for their big e-commerce\npush.\n\nMost of these companies don't have that many full time employees in their IT\ndepartments. A handful of full time employees will oversee an army of\ncontractors and consultants. Most of these folks are specialized in SAP,\nOracle, Business Objects, etc and don't know the first thing about building\nscalable web-based e-commerce.\n\nThe sites that do exist tend to be old, monolithic .NET or Java apps with\nantiquated processes to deploy them. An old boss of mine that went to work for\none of these retailers said he had to get 5 physical signatures on a form to\npush out a CSS file to the site.\n\n~~~\nkls\n_had to get 5 physical signatures on a form to push out a CSS file to the\nsite_\n\nThat is a huge issue that developers see when they see an established company.\nThen you add in existing technical ego's from other teams and you just have a\nrecipe for a stagnant crashing every month disaster. It's a generalization,\nbut we all make them, it is how we make semi-informed decisions based on loose\nfacts. Some large companies are wrongly maligned in the process but it's the\nreality.\n\nWhen I took over the web at Marriott, we separated it from IT all together and\nmade it a business division, in doing so we could make decisions independent\nof IT approval and we I had an independent budget under my discretion. Many\ncompanies just don't get how these slight organizational changes can make a\nhuge difference in a teams ability to deliver technology.\n\n~~~\nhkarthik\nThe retailer that tried to recruit me was led by a former startup CTO that was\ndoing much of what you described to try to change things. Aside from\nseparating IT, the other big change was to create a new campus/location with a\nbetter dress code, no Web Sense, and a separate network domain.\n\nThis post reminds, I should check in with him and see how things are going.\n\n------\nprophetjohn\nThe fact is that being an engineer at Target is very likely a boring,\nbureaucratic drag. The best engineers are overwhelmingly the best engineers\nbecause they love what they do and hone their craft. Someone who takes so much\npride in what they do is not likely to get much satisfaction out of developing\na website that helps people buy a mop. It's a fine thing to do; people need\nmops. But it's not a particularly interesting problem to be solving.\n\nSo, I think places like Target will always have this problem unless they're\nwilling to pony up the cash and offer more money than the interesting jobs.\nAfter all, there's no reason that some behemoth like Target can't compete with\nsome SV startup in salary.\n\n~~~\nams6110\nBasic e-commerce for such things as mop-buying is a solved problem in 2011.\nNot sure why you would even need a large team of top-notch developers at a\nplace like Target. A few good sysadmins and DBAs, and maybe some\ngraphics/front-end types.\n\nEdit: Upon thinking about this a moment longer, I think that actually there\nwould be (or could be) interesting work at Target, simply because of the scale\nof the operation. Though sadly you are still probably hitting the mark in the\n\"bureaucratic drag\" assessment.\n\n~~~\ndroithomme\nTarget is the third largest brick and mortar retailer in the US. Running a\ncomputer network nationally for Target is not a solved problem. Sure, it's a\nsolved problem for #1 WalMart, using entirely custom software that WalMart\ndeveloped in house. But it's not like WalMart is selling that software to\nTarget.\n\n~~~\ntsotha\nBut how much traffic does Target get? The fact that it's the third largest\nbrick and mortar retailer means nothing at all.\n\n------\ndesireco42\nNot only that they have caps on how much developers can make, they are also\nheavily miss-managed, full of crazy managers with insane ideas, consulting\ncompanies with their own agendas, agile that is not even close to agile, etc.\nYou don't need to be in Silicon Valley to make decent website, you do have to\nmanage it and develop it properly, most don't do that.\n\n~~~\njaggederest\nRight, it's not a failure of recruiting, it's a failure of management and\nenvironment: nobody wants to work at Target developing software no matter how\nmuch money they pay.\n\n~~~\nreissbaker\nIt'd be interesting to know how much they pay, though. And how they adjust\nsalary over time.\n\n------\nmechanical_fish\nSo is it just me or does the main example in this article have a glaring flaw?\nOne that appears right in the first sentence?\n\n _For a decade, Target (TGT) outsourced its website operations to Amazon.com\n(AMZN)._\n\nI don't know about the other retailers, but Target's recruitment problem\nbegins and ends in this sentence. Target lost the talent war a decade ago; it\njust took until now for the seeds of their destruction, _which they planted\nand fertilized in Amazon's organization_ , to grow tall enough to be\nnoticeable.\n\nOh, well, I'm sure the management genius who scored a short-term boost in\nprofits by feeding the seed corn to Amazon collected a nice bonus.\n\n------\nsun123\nI have worked in the IT department of a large IT firm. It is frustrating.\nThere is a long irritating procedure for doing even small things.When I\ndecided I'll be using jQuery in one of the screens, the guys at the \"top\"\nstopped me saying it may violate copyright laws and stuff like that. Most\npeople are simply not aware of what is going on in the industry.\n\n------\nKevinMS\nI must be living in some parallel universe. My resume just sits up on dice and\nmonster and the only hits I get every day are from the same useless\nheadhunters about exciting \"6 month\" ruby or perl gigs. Sure, I'm not the best\nat selling myself, and I'm terrible at networking, but you'd think if all this\npress is true about a dev talent shortage, I'd be seeing some more outreach,\neven though I'd probably not be interested.\n\n~~~\nmattdeboard\n> _I'm not the best at selling myself, and I'm terrible at networking_\n\nYeah if you want a cool job, or however you define the job you feel you\ndeserve, you need to sell yourself and network. Period.\n\n~~~\nKevinMS\nYea, but understand that is not my point, and I'm not asking for your Tony\nRobbins like advice. If there was such a desperate market for talent out\nthere, I should be seeing it, regardless of whether I was selling myself or\nnot. Either their talent searches are incompetent or this is just manufactured\nnews for somebodies agenda.\n\n~~~\nbrianbreslin\nIf they can't find you, dice or not, they won't know why they should hire you\nor who you are.\n\n~~~\nKevinMS\nBut somehow those bottom feeding headhunters can find me and send me about 20\nemails a day all for the same job.\n\n~~~\nryanhuff\nThat's because you're swimming in their pond. Get out of Dice and find other\nways to meet people who work for the companies that you want to work with.\n\n~~~\nKevinMS\nGuys, I'm not posting to get advice on finding a job, I'm trying to stay\nrelevant to the story posted.\n\n~~~\nmattdeboard\nYou suggested the article was 'manufactured' because your resume on DICE isn't\ngetting you job offers from high-end companies. We're telling you that you're\ndoing it wrong. It's relevant.\n\n~~~\nfractallyte\nNo: if a company was _really_ invested in looking for top talent, one would\nexpect to see prominent job postings on its website as well as\nDice/Monster/etc.\n\nWe shouldn't have to inveigle ourselves into a job in a convoluted networking\ngame. Post the jobs on popular boards, with relevant _informed_ requirements,\nproportionate pay, and a proper hiring process.\n\nSo answer the top poster's question: _where are the job ads? Where's the\noutreach from these needy companies?_\n\nApparently, nothing. Either the companies concerned are still in some\nrecruitment stone age, or the whole article is a sham.\n\n~~~\nkls\nNo very few people uses those sites anymore, the jobs are not there. That is\nthe point the other posters are making, the world has moved on, Linked-In and\nother sites have become the hotbed of activity for recruiting. Headhunters are\njust scouring the cracks of the internet (Dice, Monster) to find resources\nthat have not been put in front of these organizations, in hopes that they get\na hit. They are playing a numbers game. Tech unemployment is officially at\n2.7% and I think most on this site would agree, it feels like it's somewhere\naround that number.\n\n------\njeremystine\nNow that you have heard from big-Corp (Macy's) here is where I pitch you! I'm\na one man team working for my family biz Stine Home & Yard. We just launched\nStineHome.com with very limited product (around 100 products) but goal by end\nof 2012 is to have over 35,000 products online. Looking to bring on board\nsomeone who has exerience with this. No bureaucratic bs. Would have a feeling\nof a startup in a cool city. Preferably would live in New Orleans/Louisiana\narea. If interested drop me a line at jeremystine@gmail.com with Hacker News\nin subject.\n\n------\nmwsherman\nWouldn’t this state of affairs scream out for simple, off-the-shelf ecommerce?\nEcommerce platforms have been around as long as the web, but they are\nenterprisey behemoths (last I looked, a long time ago).\n\nWhere is the Wordpress for retail?\n\n~~~\nmwsherman\nMaybe the limiting factor is the ability to integrate with backend inventory,\netc. I suspect there is no lightweight (read: inexpensive developer) way to do\nthis.\n\n(Which makes me wonder if there is a Wordpress for ERP.)\n\nThe other way to look at it is that for the 2-3 top players in a sector, there\ncan never be off-the-shelf. WalMart’s differentiation is incredible supply\nchain, which they had to invent. Being a big guy means you are doing something\ndifferent, almost by definition.\n\n~~~\nfloppydisk\nWalmart is also pushing hard into R&D, see <http://www.walmartlabs.com/> . Of\nall the traditional retailers, I'd say Wallyworld is the most invested in 21st\ncentury retail tactics and actually doing a decent job of it.\n\n~~~\nntkachov\nI took a look at that website and noticed alot of the job openings were very\nsimilar to job openings of Start-ups.\n\n~~~\nearl\nExcept you're working for a corporation that is actively evil. Walmart has a\nlong history of discriminating against women [1]; has an extremely high\npercentage of employees who are on welfare (it's at minimum unseemly for an\nemployed person to be paid so poorly they still need welfare) (examples from\nohio[2]; general [3]; arkansas [4]; washington [5]); works hard to avoid\ngiving health insurance to their employees -- as of 2005 they only covered 44%\n[6]; etc etc etc. There are far more reasons than the type of work to avoid\nworking for a corporation with such a _refined_ sense of ethics.\n\n[1] <http://www.walmartclass.com/public_home.html>\n\n[2]\n[http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/jan/12/robert...](http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/jan/12/robert-\nhagan/rep-robert-hagan-slams-wal-mart-over-workers-needi/)\n\n[3] <http://www.alternet.org/story/22298/>\n\n[4]\n[http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=...](http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1321376)\n\n[5]\n[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002791346_w...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002791346_walmart07m.html)\n\n[6]\n[http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2005/nf200510...](http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2005/nf20051020_3732_db016.htm)\n\n~~~\nkls\nYeah I have to agree with you there, it would be hard for me to believe that\nWalmart would not cut high pay developers at the first opportunity. I remember\nAT&T forcing my paraplegic developer buddy to train his Indian replacement or\nface instant termination. To me Walmart seems like the same kind of, eternal\nquest for profit type organization.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLive Captions in Hangouts Meet - oshanz\nhttps://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/04/live-captions-in-meet.html\n======\noshanz\nanyone knows how does it works? apparently google meet doesn't has p2p\nencryption. so maybe server doing this?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\n1M QPS with Nginx and Ubuntu 12.04 on EC2 - nicolaskruchten\nhttp://datacratic.com/site/blog/1m-qps-nginx-and-ubuntu-1204-ec2\n\n======\nrkwasny\n1M? great Now have a look at:\n\n[https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r10&hw=...](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r10&hw=peak&test=plaintext)\n\n~~~\nrabysh\n6M! that's great. But that's not comparing apples to apples, the best test\nthey did was using a 40 core machine with a 10gbe NIC. These cards usually\nhave as many receive/send queues as the number of cores the machine has, while\nthe ec2 instances only have 2 queues. (and most performance gains in packet\nreceive usually come from handling interrupts on multiple CPUs...)\n\nWould be great to see results for ulib on c3.8xlarge machines.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCars, newspapers and permissionless innovation - aaronbrethorst\nhttp://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/9/1/permissionless-innovation\n======\nHtsthbjig\nAgreed. The world simply becomes different.\n\nI had volunteered, as I studied engineering in the past to give 3d classes to\nkids for free. We have PhDs like ObiJuan making videos and releasing them over\nthe net teaching FreeCad, OpenScad, how to do robots and so on.\n\nThe children we teach today (10 ,11,12,13 years old and older) are incredible.\nThey do create their own toys.\n\nWhen this people get to 18 or 20 years old, \"real engineers\" but with no real\nexperience prototyping because it was simply too expensive to fail, will not\nbe able to compete against them.\n\nPeople will be able to prototype their own small cars soon thanks o sharing\nsites like thingiverse, youmagine or github.\n\nThere will be Linus Torvals of hardware soon.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Chat with your app's users in Slack, for free - gozmike\nhttp://www.radialpoint.com/supportkit/slack\n\n======\njimhi\nThis is awesome! Is this something we can integrate into our website too or it\nis only a library for IOS? Definitely want to use this for a seamless\ninteraction over both platforms.\n\n~~~\ngozmike\nStay tuned. Something for your website is on its way :)\n\n~~~\njimhi\nI look forward to it, let me know if there's an email list to stay notified\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCloudflare is down along with so many other websites. Error 502. - rishiloyola\nhttps://cloudflare.com/\n======\nmartin_a\nWhy do people even use Cloudflare so extensively?\n\nUsing a CDN is not essential for every website. Just get yourself some shared\nwebhosting or whatever for your tech blog and you are good to go, no need for\nfancy CDNs that go down like this.\n\nOr is it just because it's fancy tech?\n\n~~~\nskilled\nSEO definitely puts a lot of pressure on people. Most guides these days talk\nabout performance, and performance is directly linked with services such as\nCDN's.\n\nBut like you say, this can definitely be resolved through Web Servers and\nresource optimisation.\n\nFor WordPress blogs, OpenLiteSpeed has been a godsend to run a WP blog with up\nto par performance.\n\n~~~\nmartin_a\nYeah, I know. I've developed with/for WordPress for 10 years and most\nperformance issues can easily be mitigated by optimizing your resources, using\ncaching and more. I never had to rely on CDNs for good performance, though,\nalso SEO agencies try to sell you this. Hard to explain to customers, though.\n\n------\nmacinjosh\nNot sure why engineers insist on building their products on top of single\npoints of failure like Cloudflare, AWS, etc. It is very short sighted to give\na 3rd party so much control over your business.\n\n------\nbuildbuildbuild\nCloudflare: your uptime is critical to your customers' bottom lines. Please\nchange your status page to update automatically.\n[https://i.imgur.com/qHBM2JW.png](https://i.imgur.com/qHBM2JW.png)\n\nedit: An incident now exists, best wishes to the teams working hard over\nthere.\n[https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/incidents/tx4pgxs6zxdr](https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/incidents/tx4pgxs6zxdr)\n\n------\nWildGreenLeave\nTheir statuspage just update to \"Network Performance Issues\":\n[https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/](https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/)\n\n------\nCub3\nWelp there goes everyones uptime metrics for the month\n\n------\nmhkool\nyesterday the site transferwise.com on cloudflare also was down and when it\ncame back had intermittent issues.\n\n------\nussrlongbow\nNot available along with their dashboard\n\n~~~\nrishiloyola\nyeah not even their blogs.\n\n------\nAliAdams\nLink to the relevant incident:\n[https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/incidents/tx4pgxs6zxdr](https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/incidents/tx4pgxs6zxdr)\n\n\"This incident affects: North America (Ashburn, VA, United States - (IAD),\nAtlanta, GA, United States - (ATL), Boston, MA, United States - (BOS),\nBuffalo, NY, United States - (BUF), Calgary, AB, Canada - (YYC), Charlotte,\nNC, United States - (CLT), Chicago, IL, United States - (ORD), Columbus, OH,\nUnited States - (CMH), Dallas, TX, United States - (DFW), Denver, CO, United\nStates - (DEN), Detroit, MI, United States - (DTW), Houston, TX, United States\n- (IAH), Indianapolis, IN, United States - (IND), Jacksonville, FL, United\nStates - (JAX), Kansas City, MO, United States - (MCI), Las Vegas, NV, United\nStates - (LAS), Los Angeles, CA, United States - (LAX), McAllen, TX, United\nStates - (MFE), Memphis, TN, United States - (MEM), Miami, FL, United States -\n(MIA), Minneapolis, MN, United States - (MSP), Montgomery, AL, United States -\n(MGM), Montréal, QC, Canada - (YUL), Nashville, TN, United States - (BNA),\nNewark, NJ, United States - (EWR), Norfolk, VA, United States - (ORF), Omaha,\nNE, United States - (OMA), Phoenix, AZ, United States - (PHX), Pittsburgh, PA,\nUnited States - (PIT), Portland, OR, United States - (PDX), Queretaro, MX,\nMexico - (QRO), Richmond, Virginia - (RIC), Sacramento, CA, United States -\n(SMF), Salt Lake City, UT, United States - (SLC), San Diego, CA, United States\n- (SAN), San Jose, CA, United States - (SJC), Saskatoon, SK, Canada - (YXE),\nSeattle, WA, United States - (SEA), St. Louis, MO, United States - (STL),\nTampa, FL, United States - (TPA), Toronto, ON, Canada - (YYZ), Vancouver, BC,\nCanada - (YVR), Tallahassee, FL, United States - (TLH), Winnipeg, MB, Canada -\n(YWG)), Middle East (Amman, Jordan - (AMM), Baghdad, Iraq - (BGW), Baku,\nAzerbaijan - (GYD), Beirut, Lebanon - (BEY), Doha, Qatar - (DOH), Dubai,\nUnited Arab Emirates - (DXB), Kuwait City, Kuwait - (KWI), Manama, Bahrain -\n(BAH), Muscat, Oman - (MCT), Ramallah - (ZDM), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - (RUH),\nTel Aviv, Israel - (TLV)), Asia (Bangkok, Thailand - (BKK), Cebu, Philippines\n- (CEB), Chengdu, China - (CTU), Chennai, India - (MAA), Colombo, Sri Lanka -\n(CMB), Dongguan, China - (SZX), Foshan, China - (FUO), Fuzhou, China - (FOC),\nGuangzhou, China - (CAN), Hangzhou, China - (HGH), Hanoi, Vietnam - (HAN),\nHengyang, China - (HNY), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam - (SGN), Hong Kong - (HKG),\nHyderabad, India - (HYD), Islamabad, Pakistan - (ISB), Jinan, China - (TNA),\nKarachi, Pakistan - (KHI), Kathmandu, Nepal - (KTM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -\n(KUL), Lahore, Pakistan - (LHE), Langfang, China - (NAY), Luoyang, China -\n(LYA), Macau - (MFM), Manila, Philippines - (MNL), Mumbai, India - (BOM),\nNanning, China - (NNG), New Delhi, India - (DEL), Osaka, Japan - (KIX), Phnom\nPenh, Cambodia - (PNH), Qingdao, China - (TAO), Seoul, South Korea - (ICN),\nShanghai, China - (SHA), Shenyang, China - (SHE), Shijiazhuang, China - (SJW),\nSingapore, Singapore - (SIN), Suzhou, China - (SZV), Taipei - (TPE), Tianjin,\nChina - (TSN), Tokyo, Japan - (NRT), Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia - (ULN), Wuhan,\nChina - (WUH), Wuxi, China - (WUX), Xi'an, China - (XIY), Yerevan, Armenia -\n(EVN), Zhengzhou, China - (CGO), Zuzhou, China - (CSX)), Africa (Cairo, Egypt\n- (CAI), Casablanca, Morocco - (CMN), Cape Town, South Africa - (CPT), Dar Es\nSalaam, Tanzania - (DAR), Djibouti City, Djibouti - (JIB), Durban, South\nAfrica - (DUR), Johannesburg, South Africa - (JNB), Lagos, Nigeria - (LOS),\nLuanda, Angola - (LAD), Maputo, MZ - (MPM), Mombasa, Kenya - (MBA), Port\nLouis, Mauritius - (MRU), Réunion, France - (RUN), Kigali, Rwanda - (KGL)),\nLatin America & the Caribbean (Asunción, Paraguay - (ASU), Bogotá, Colombia -\n(BOG), Buenos Aires, Argentina - (EZE), Curitiba, Brazil - (CWB), Fortaleza,\nBrazil - (FOR), Lima, Peru - (LIM), Medellín, Colombia - (MDE), Mexico City,\nMexico - (MEX), Panama City, Panama - (PTY), Porto Alegre, Brazil - (POA),\nQuito, Ecuador - (UIO), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - (GIG), São Paulo, Brazil -\n(GRU), Santiago, Chile - (SCL), Willemstad, Curaçao - (CUR)), Oceania\n(Auckland, New Zealand - (AKL), Brisbane, QLD, Australia - (BNE), Melbourne,\nVIC, Australia - (MEL), Perth, WA, Australia - (PER), Sydney, NSW, Australia -\n(SYD)), and Europe (Amsterdam, Netherlands - (AMS), Athens, Greece - (ATH),\nBarcelona, Spain - (BCN), Belgrade, Serbia - (BEG), Berlin, Germany - (TXL),\nBrussels, Belgium - (BRU), Bucharest, Romania - (OTP), Budapest, Hungary -\n(BUD), Chișinău, Moldova - (KIV), Copenhagen, Denmark - (CPH), Dublin, Ireland\n- (DUB), Düsseldorf, Germany - (DUS), Edinburgh, United Kingdom - (EDI),\nFrankfurt, Germany - (FRA), Geneva, Switzerland - (GVA), Gothenburg, Sweden -\n(GOT), Hamburg, Germany - (HAM), Helsinki, Finland - (HEL), Istanbul, Turkey -\n(IST), Kyiv, Ukraine - (KBP), Lisbon, Portugal - (LIS), London, United Kingdom\n- (LHR), Luxembourg City, Luxembourg - (LUX), Madrid, Spain - (MAD),\nManchester, United Kingdom - (MAN), Marseille, France - (MRS), Milan, Italy -\n(MXP), Moscow, Russia - (DME), Munich, Germany - (MUC), Nicosia, Cyprus -\n(LCA), Oslo, Norway - (OSL), Paris, France - (CDG), Prague, Czech Republic -\n(PRG), Reykjavík, Iceland - (KEF), Riga, Latvia - (RIX), Rome, Italy - (FCO),\nSaint Petersburg, Russia - (LED), Sofia, Bulgaria - (SOF), Stockholm, Sweden -\n(ARN), Tallinn, Estonia - (TLL), Thessaloniki, Greece - (SKG), Vienna, Austria\n- (VIE), Vilnius, Lithuania - (VNO), Warsaw, Poland - (WAW), Zagreb, Croatia -\n(ZAG), Zürich, Switzerland - (ZRH)).\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMafia Sourcing – How Insiders Game User Generated News for Money - andrewbadera\nhttp://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/09/01/mafia-sourcing-the-insiders-game-of-user-powered-news/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+BothSidesOfTheTable+(Both+Sides+of+the+Table)#\n======\nRiderOfGiraffes\nDup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1655469>\n\nMuch discussion there ...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007) - tosh\nhttps://pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_productivity.html\n======\nlqet\nWhile I think that completely avoiding a calendar or any fixed appointments is\na bit unrealistic (think of doctor's appointments), I agree and deeply\nsympathize with the gist of it. One of the main reasons I quit my previous job\nwas that I was unable to get _any_ meaningful work done, because the day was\nvery tightly organized around a central ticketing system. Oh, you had a nice\nidea to solve one of the problems in the long-term project the company is\ncurrently working on? Too bad, because there are already 4, oh wait, 5, high-\npriority tickets waiting for you, and by the time you have finished those, you\nwill have forgotten the idea. This happened so frequently and was so\nfrustrating that after a few months I just shut off my brain and was basically\na robot finishing off tickets assigned to me. Needless to say, I felt\nmiserable for 1.5 years.\n\nAfter I quit, I lived off my savings for 6 months and literally had no\nschedule of any kind. I woke up and did whatever I was interested in. I got\nmore work done in these 6 months than in the 2 years before.\n\n~~~\nyawaworht598\nwow i feel a lot like you describe. I've been thinking about taking a few\nmonths off just to reset and somehow figure out what I want to really be doing\nbut... it's scary. I have the money saved up for it to not be a problem. But\nafter the 6 months... then what?\n\nWhat did you end up doing? Any advice?\n\n~~~\nlqet\nIf you aren't interested in freelance work, try to look for companies with a\ndedicated research team. You usually won't find that in smaller companies, as\nthey cannot afford a few people trying to solve a problem for 2 years with\nonly a 60% chance of success.\n\nPS: if you are really unhappy with your job (to the point where it affects you\nphysically), don't think it will magically get better if you stay. It won't.\nThis hope wasted 1 year of my life.\n\n------\ntuxxy\n> When someone emails or calls to say, \"Let's meet on Tuesday at 3\", the\n> appropriate response is: \"I'm not keeping a schedule for 2007, so I can't\n> commit to that, but give me a call on Tuesday at 2:45 and if I'm available,\n> I'll meet with you.\"\n\nIs it just me, or does this come off as exceptionally arrogant? It's literally\njust telling people to plan their lives around yours. It just seems like time\nspent with this individual is a token of charitable _grace_. This is the\nopposite of what I'd expect professional behavior to look like.\n\n~~~\nadrianmsmith\n_\" It's literally just telling people to plan their lives around yours\",_ I\nagree, but on the other hand why should people have the right to tell you to\nplan your life around theirs, isn't that arrogant of them?\n\nRegarding this, and also not answering the phone, and turning off email, it\ndepends on what sort of job you have.\n\nFor me this is all about: my best work comes from when I'm in the flow. So\nI'll do anything to avoid being taken out of it.\n\nI am a software developer, freelance, mostly work from home. I have deadlines,\nand I mostly work in fixed-price projects so the longer it takes the less I\nearn per unit time. I can get high-quality work done the fastest when I'm in\nthe flow.\n\nIs it the right of the customer to call me and interrupt me from my flow? I've\nagreed to deliver the software by a certain time for a certain price, that's\nit. They might be my client, but I did not agree to be reachable at any time\nfor any impromptu meeting on any topic of their choosing. I agreed to deliver\nsoftware, not reachability.\n\nIt's literally a zero-sum game. They want help planning something, or they\nhave a question, they're in the flow about that, they don't want to be taken\nout of that flow. On the other hand, I'm in the flow about my thing, and don't\nwant to be taken out of it. It's perfect for the other people if I always do\nwhat they want, but sometimes you have to stick up for yourself and do what's\nbest for you.\n\nCalling them back a few hours later when I'm out of the flow, or emailing them\nback 6 hours later the same day, has always worked out well for me.\n\nI understand that not all jobs are like that. What I mean to say, it's\nnevertheless wrong to assume that no jobs are like that. Mine is like that,\nand the approach to using the phone outlined in the article. is great advice.\n\n~~~\ntuxxy\nThe examples you have given aren't really a proper equivalent to what is being\ndescribed in this article here.\n\nScheduling isn't meant to be some Randian, individualistic practice. It's a\ncollaborative effort between people that should say something of the effect,\n\"My time is valuable, as is yours. You seem to be interested in something I'm\ndoing and I'm interested in telling you about it. Let's find a time that's\nagreeable to both of us where we are both unencumbered and can freely\nassociate.\"\n\nIf you're not interested in meeting, then you have options: 1) Ghosting\n(controversial, but some requests deserve this response), or 2) Refusing to\nmeet.\n\nInstead this reads as, \"I value my time far more than anyone else I associate\nwith. If I so happen to be available, then I'll reward you with the charity of\nmy time.\"\n\nOne of these is professional and makes other people you associate with feel\nvalued, the other makes you look like an arrogant ass.\n\n------\nMRD85\nSome of the points in this article I disagree with but others I like. Compared\nto my past self I am \"super productive\". I have a full-time career, a single\nparent to two young kids (approx 70% of the time I'm not at work I'm\nparenting) and I study nearly full time (3 units per semester) with a perfect\nGPA. I somehow still have time for \"wasting\", like commenting on online\ndiscussion boards, going on dates, etc.\n\n* Keeping lists: This one is huge. I have lists all the time which track what I need to have completed and when. I have watch lists for tasks like \"get birthday present for this kids party\", etc. I have a job list at work.\n\n _Procrastination: I use this all the time. It 's currently 7:23pm here, I'm\nwasting time now and I have been since 6pm but my deadline is I wake at 4am\ntomorrow to work.\n\n_Food: This article touches on food but I feel it's really important. I eat\nlow carb because I find carbs make me far more tired. I also avoid large meals\nbecause they make me tired.\n\nSomething that isn't touched on in the article: Find ways to save yourself\ntime. I get angry when I see an office worker earning 6 figures typing one\nfinger looking at the keys. Touch typing doesn't take long to learn but it\nsaves so much time and effort. Everyone has little quirks that take\ntime/effort to fix but pay off in a big way once fixed. Do it, it's worth it.\n\n~~~\ntosh\nymmv but often typing isn’t the bottleneck, thinking is (typing faster != more\nnor better output)\n\n~~~\nlordfoom\nBut not having to think about typing reduces your cognitive load. Touch typing\nas a coder isn't about speed, it's about freeing your mind from having to\nthink about your fingers.\n\n~~~\nonemoresoop\nTouch typing is somewhat overrated. I never learn to touch type and never had\nany regret over it, don't get me wrong, I do t peck for keys either but the\nspeed of properly touch typing is no need for me, I'm not a professional\ntypist. I on the other hand am great at remembering shortcuts and I think\nthat's way more important to my work than touch typing, I feel that using the\nmouse to open a menu and click debug as a complete waste of resources and\nmental focus.\n\n------\npaultopia\nUm. \"I don't keep a calendar\" means \"I consider my time more important than\nyours, so we'll meet at my sole convenience.\" I would love to do that, but\neveryone else in the world would rightly understand it that way and would\ntreat it as a refusal to do core elements of my job.\n\nA: \"Let's schedule a committee meeting.\"\n\nB: \"I don't keep a calendar.\"\n\nA: \"So what you're saying is everyone else on the committee has to find time\njust for you? Fuck you, do your job.\"\n\nArnold Schwarzenegger could get away with that crap because he's a fabulously\nwealthy A-list movie star. The rest of us, not so much.\n\n~~~\nblastbeat\nFully agree. Also the rest of the article has questionable advice. I doubt the\nhelpfulness of later lists and anti todo lists. Not answering the phone or\npretending to be incompetent sounds like an idiotic idea too.\n\n~~~\noperakadabra\nNobody is promising that every suggestion will work for you. Try everything\nuntil you find something that does work.\n\n------\nCthulhu_\nIf there's anything I'd take from this article, it's techniques to avoid\nmeeting cultures; there's far too many people that want to book an hour long\nblock for a meeting about a thing that can be decided on in five. I think\nmeeting culture is a form of decision anxiety - have we considered all the\nfacts? What if I'm wrong? Is everyone aware that this is happening?\n\nIt was really quite bad at my previous assignment. I'm in a much smaller\nsetting now and I'm really trying to avoid it from becoming a thing. If\nsomeone asks you for a meeting, always consider if you can discuss it right\nthere and then.\n\nFor a lot of people, discussing it right there and then is already an issue\nbecause they're spending what little time they have in between meetings to\ncoordinate other meetings. That is, they don't have five minutes to talk about\na five minute thing because they have a meeting in five minutes.\n\n~~~\nbaby\nSee pg's article on maker vs manager schedule.\n\n------\nglormph\nI dont think an anti to-do list makes me more productive. But I sure like to\nkeep a log of things done in a text file so I can find what I did later. There\nis of course a limit to what I keep, but even one-liners etc can be stored in\nit. Especially when used seldomly, I dont remember all the bash tools\ninvocations. And no, I wont \"tear it up and throw it away\".\n\n~~~\ncodazoda\nI also keep a list of things I've done. Typically I just add those things to\nmy to-do list and check them off.\n\nThere are other good ideas in this post and for me they're timely. I'm\ncrunching on a business where I teach programming through art work. I'm\ndefinitely going to borrow some of these ideas for that. If that sounds\ninteresting to you, checkout\n[https://splashofcode.com](https://splashofcode.com)\n\n------\nOJFord\n> \\- Anyone who needs to reach you so urgently that it can't wait until later\n> in the day or tomorrow morning can call you [...] - Don't answer the phone\n\n...great?\n\n------\nticmasta\n>> work on whatever is most important or most interesting,\n\nhow often are these two the same thing? Which are you supposed to do when\nyou've got all this open-ended, distraction free time?\n\nAnd the whole \"no schedule\" thing comes off as cherry-picking data and\nsituations. Even when Arnold was making blockbuster movies do you think they\njust filmed whenever he showed up, keeping an entire crew on standby?\n\nDid you notice how all of his examples are individual activities? that's\ngreat, but it's tough to accomplish meaningful, revolutionary work without\ncollaboration. Schedules are super-useful (and I'd argue required) for\nshort/mid-term planning and prioritization across teams where everyone is\nimportant.\n\nThe approach here is for when there is huge asymmetry between parties - like\nan emergency room and patients. You show up with everyone else, then they\ntriage (hopefully by importance, not interest) and process. Guess what? even\nthe specialist still have schedules so they can work within a broader system.\n\nThe approach here sounds like the \"schedule\" of a lot of affluent retired\npeople.\n\n~~~\nMaulingMonkey\nWe tend to be interested in important things we're competent at. That's how we\ngot competent at them in the first place. Shepherding interest - trying to\nfigure out what's interesting about something important that you haven't\ntackled yet - can be useful to get competent at new things, of course.\n\nIn the emergency room, the pathologist will be interested in the sick kid\ninstead of the guy with the broken leg, even if the latter is \"more\nimportant\". Unless the staff are getting overwhelmed by a mass-casualties\nincident, that's probably actually the right approach. (I'm no doctor though.)\n\nI like email and other asynchronous/recorded communication for collaboration\nwhere possible, in lieu of synchronous meetings interrupting flow. But as you\npoint out, there's a lot of cases where this doesn't work. And even a bunch of\nlone wolves working on solo projects can benefit from synchronizing lunch with\ntheir coworkers for some socialization and facetime. I schedule that. It's\nflexible and not super rigid, but it's still a schedule.\n\n------\nwj\nIf you're interested in productivity tips from fellow Hacker News readers:\n\n[https://blog.startopz.com/10-productivity-tips-from-\nhacker-n...](https://blog.startopz.com/10-productivity-tips-from-hacker-news/)\n\nSome of my favorites that I compiled over time.\n\n------\nfourier_mode\nI mean there are so many tips for being productive, book X says maintain a\nschedule pre-planned for 2 weeks, book Y says do not maintain a schedule at\nall. Book X says do a bit of everything daily, book Y says devote a day for a\nsingle task. Hmph..\n\nThe only thing that works is somehow doing getting work done, rest is\nirrelevant. And that's why I don't see a point on self-help book in general.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Other Half of Science - alexalexander\nhttp://www.computerscience-entrepreneurship.ml/2018/01/the-other-half-of-science.html\n======\nJPLeRouzic\nThis is a copy without attribution of a post that Josh Mitteldorf made a few\ndays ago: [https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2017/12/31/the-\nother-...](https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2017/12/31/the-other-half-\nof-science/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nI built RemoteCV | Reversing the job search model - mousab\nHello everyone<p>Inspired by by @Levelsio, I decided to start http:&#x2F;&#x2F;RemoteCV.com\nMy goal is to:\n1-Help you find a remote job for free\n2-Find and Hire the best Remote Talents for (any role).<p>Happy to hear any feedback :)\n======\nuseyourloaf\n\"We helps you effortlessly hire world-class remote talents.\" -> We help you\neffortlessly hire world-class remote talent.\n\n~~~\nmousab\nsorry for the that, i'll edit it now. Thanks\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEvolving Lacing Patterns for Bicycle Wheels - alexggordon\nhttp://master.matsemann.com/\n======\nmatsemann\nWow, cool to see my thesis here! I posted a picture of it [1] to r/bicycling\nyesterday titled _I managed to make my thesis in computer science be about\nbicycles!_ , and it got some traction. I answered some questions in the\ndiscussion, if anyone is interested.\n\n[1]: [https://redd.it/3p8hua](https://redd.it/3p8hua)\n\n~~~\nradarsat1\nCan I ask a question, please don't take it the wrong way, as I find\noptimisation a very interesting topic, and in fact it was also the subject of\nmy thesis. However: How is this a computer science thesis, and not a\nmechanical engineering thesis? I'm just curious how you managed to pass a\nwheel-design topic through a CompSci program. Did you have a co-supervisor in\nengineering? Or does your school have a combined CS/engineering program?\n\n~~~\nmaaaats\nIt's really a thesis about EMO-algorithms and how to use them to optimize\nreal-life problems. The wheels just happen to be the chosen _application_ of\nthe optimization, if you get what I mean?\n\n~~~\nradarsat1\nAh ok, I was wondering if that was the case. Wasn't really clear from the way\nyou presented it. Can you summarize your results regarding the algorithms?\nWhat worked best, what didn't?\n\n------\nmarktangotango\nBuilding bicycle wheels is incredibly satisfying, I built a set a friend used\nto win the local state cyclocross championship one year. There's a lot of\ntechnique in tightening the spokes, when I see the 'bad ride' simulation of\nthe wheel in the video, it occurs to me you get the same types of visible\nbehavoir if the spokes aren't tightened correctly. I wonder how spoke tension\nis modelled here?\n\n~~~\nwiredfool\nMy guess is that it's not.\n\nFrom earlier discussion on this article, the wheel was modeled as an\ninfinitely stiff rim, rather than the more mechanically accurate beam on an\nelastic foundation. For a first level linear elastic approximation, the spoke\ntension doesn't matter. The spoke tension is really going to only be an issue\nonce you get into the non-linear effects associated with rim stability, which\nis strongly dependent on the rim stiffness.\n\n------\nniels_olson\nNeat idea. Did the author read Jobst Brandt's book, \"The Art of the Bicycle\nWheel\"?\n\nSymmetry obviously makes the ride smoother. The real issue is dish and the\nincredible strain difference between. The drive side and the non-drive side:\ndid the author simulate modern rear wheels?\n\n------\nmmmBacon\nThis is interesting for sure in identifying novel spoke patterns that _might_\nresult in a stronger/lighter wheel. Since the simulator identifies lots of\npossibilities it would be useful to have some kind of figure of merit to help\nwith down-selection. It also seems like things like being out-of-dish or out\nof true are things that could be used to eliminate possibilities without user\nintervention.\n\nLastly I wonder if you constrain this enough whether it would spit out\n\"standard\" spoke patterns that are used commonly. I'd like to think that spoke\npatterns that we use now are close to optimal due to a kind of evolution based\non lots of trial and error. But maybe that's not the case.\n\n~~~\nswimfar\nNot exactly what you're asking about. But I talked to a guy who worked on a\nproject using genetic algorithms to optimize motorcycle wheel designs. He said\none of the best designs that came out looked pretty much like a traditionally\nspoked wheel, just a bit more organic in shape.\n\n------\nstrictnein\nI assume it wouldn't function well, but I've always wondered about a wheel\nwere some of the spokes do not go to the hub, but are instead connected\ndirectly to another spot on the rim.\n\n------\nsevensor\nI was in a research group with Dave Hadka, who wrote MOEAFramework. I'll have\nto tell him about this! Nice work!\n\n~~~\nmaaaats\nI really liked the framework. Powerful out of the box, and not that hard to\nmodify/add what I needed. Hadka was also very helpful on answering mails with\nquestions about the framework.\n\n------\nsliken\nAny comment on how much the new boost 148 standard for mountain bikes helps\nwith stiffness and/or strength?\n\n------\nbro-stick\nNeat. Can't wait for the follow-up paper which ranks lacing patterns by\nsimulated load profile.\n\n------\ndavidw\nDid any of these get built?\n\n~~~\nmichaelbuddy\nBasically until a simulated of a wheel is actually built, I'd dismiss all\nthis.\n\n~~~\nalexggordon\nI'd disagree strongly. I think the point of the paper was the evolutionary\nalgorithms. Whether or not the wheels could adequately replace a modern\nbicycle wheel is kind of a side note. The work was entirely about creating a\nprogram that would produce better and better results over time, while\nbalancing multiple objectives to meet. As you can see in the videos, (and he\neven admits in the paper) most of the wheels would not work very well if they\nwere produced.\n\nThat said, I think if you're going to be completely dismissive of a thesis\nthat I'm sure represents thousands of hours of work, I might put a sentence or\ntwo explaining why you think the algorithm isn't the important part of this.\n\n~~~\nwiredfool\nI agree. It's really cool that he managed to find the standard 3-cross based\non a pretty rough model and an optimization step.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow a car works (2012) - gshrikant\nhttp://www.howacarworks.com/\n======\nAlexMuir\nThis is my site!\n\nThis was a pleasant surprise to find my own site on HN this morning! I\nwondered why it was getting a few more FB likes than usual today.\n\nI'm happy to answer any questions.\n\nI finished this redesign last week so any feedback is welcome.\n\nThe main task was to recreate labels and annotations on the illustrations in\nSVG format, and to reformat the articles in a way that flows nicely and is\nresponsive, but without needing complex markup in the articles. I'll write\nabout the process if there's interest.\n\nI've previously written a little about this project:\n\n[http://www.howacarworks.com/about/making](http://www.howacarworks.com/about/making)\n\n[http://www.howacarworks.com/a-year-on](http://www.howacarworks.com/a-year-on)\n\nCurrent traffic is 200k uniques a month and it's taken about two years of\nsteady growth to reach that point.\n\n~~~\notis_inf\nGreat work! two points of criticism:\n\n1) The site still talks about carburetors and has no mention about fuel\ninjection systems, while in Europe all cars sold must have a fuel injection\nsystem for quite some time now, so this looks quite outdated\n\n2) Diesel engines of course don't have spark plugs, but you don't mention\ndiesel engines.\n\n~~~\nAlexMuir\nGood points. We do have articles on there about fuel injection and diesel\nengines but it's clear that I'm not surfacing this in the best way. Thanks.\n\n------\ngiancarlostoro\nI always feel so uncomfortable about my car considering how old it is, and I\nknow nothing about it or how it works. Everyone around me just cracks open\ntheir hoods and fixes their car, swaps tires, etc. I can't just move stuff\naround without actually understanding what anything is. I honestly have been\nwanting to learn more about cars. It also helps keep up with mechanics when\nthey tell me things I don't fully understand, I don't imagine they want to sit\naround all day answering my questions, they probably have other people to work\nfor. I only vaguely understand the things that have gone wrong with my car and\nthe symptoms.\n\nThanks for such a beautiful website, and for everyone else sharing some\ninteresting links. Being computer savvy is not entirely helpful when it comes\nto the mysteries of cars (not entirely anyway).\n\nBtw I would love for there to be an Android app if possible. :)\n\n~~~\nalexcabrera\nThe single best thing you can do is buy the Bentley Repair Manual\n([http://www.bentleypublishers.com/](http://www.bentleypublishers.com/)) for\nyour car. They're expensive, but will show you how to take your model apart\nand put it back together again. If you want to learn how a car works, the best\nthing you can do is take one apart and then try to get it running again.\n\nWhen you're working on a car, dead tree repair guides + a beater laptop are\nyour best friends.\n\n~~~\njokr004\nHaynes ([http://www.haynes.com/print](http://www.haynes.com/print)) is also a\ngreat resource.. might not be quite as in depth as the Bentley guide, but\nthey're a lot cheaper and more than enough info for a novice.\n\n~~~\ntaco_emoji\nNeither of those have my 2012 Forester :(\n\n------\nfauria\nI highly recommend \"Engineering Explained\" channel on YouTube:\n[https://www.youtube.com/user/EngineeringExplained](https://www.youtube.com/user/EngineeringExplained)\n\n~~~\nFrankenPC\nI second this. I've sunk quite a bit of time on that channel. Excellent\nexplanations.\n\n------\njsingleton\nDe Lorean Owner’s Handbook:\n[http://www.howacarworks.com/manuals/doc/d3218-owner-s-\nmanual](http://www.howacarworks.com/manuals/doc/d3218-owner-s-manual)\n\nNice. It must have taken guts to build a car in Belfast during the height of\nthe troubles. Not that it worked out that well in the end, but it is an iconic\ncar.\n\n~~~\nPeroni\nThere's a fantastic article on that very point:\n[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-\ndelorean-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-delorean-how-\nthe-back-to-the-future-car-brought-pride-to-a-troubled-ulster-10334965.html)\n\n------\naunty_helen\nThis is great. As for the criticism that a lot of the content is old, most of\nthe core concepts can be explained better with older tech as it's simpler.\nThis allows you to focus on what is happening and leave the extra details\nabout what technology a part or process has for a case by case basis.\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI)\nis a great example of this.\n\nSaying that, an article on direct injection, common rail diesels, efficient\nturbo charging, variable valve timing, MAF VS MAP EFI would be worth\nconsidering.\n\n------\nLorento\nSeems to be very dated. Plenty on adjusting carburetors, in fact adjusting all\nsorts of no-longer-needing-adjusting parts.\n\n~~~\nSvip\nModern cars are very locked-in with computer systems. So fixing many aspects\nof modern cars is no longer possible for most car owners like it used to be.\n\nThis seems like a neat site for people with older cars. Although, if you are\nowning a vintage car, then surely one should know a bit about maintaining that\ncar without having to resort to such a site, but personally, it's nice to know\nit is there.\n\nI mean, its articles on break systems, suspension and steering are useless to\nme, because I own old Citroëns, but it's nice to know there is a site to go to\nif I am curious, because I definitely intend to own more older cars (they tend\nto be more interesting than modern cars).\n\n~~~\njohngalt\nI'm not sure how true this is anymore. An OBD scanner makes the computer work\nfor you. _Modifications_ are certainly more difficult, but repair is easier\nIMHO. It is vastly easier to go replace the one bad fuel injector on a 2005\nthan rebuild a carb on a 1983.\n\n~~~\nSvip\nOf course it's easier to replace than rebuild. I doubt I would be keen on\nrebuilding a fuel injector, even an old one. But replacing a carburettor on a\n1983 is trivial.\n\n------\nKluny\nGreat site! I'm going to add it to my car fixing workflow. Ie, thing breaks ->\nread relevant article so I understand how the system works -> find a good\ntutorial -> source parts -> fix.\n\nIf you are looking for article suggestions:\n\n\\- Article about different fluids and their properties. I'm betting that\nyou've covered oil weights already, but how about coolants? Regular coolant\nhas a lower freezing temp than water, but does it have a higher boiling point\nas well? Exactly how poisonous is it and what things will it damage when\nspilled? Same for trans fluid.\n\n\\- Possibly out of scope, but an article about how to source parts for older\ncars. This has always been a tough problem for me! I go with something like:\nlook up parts schematic from manufacturer's website -> search for part by part\nnumber -> try to find the cheapest generic part (though sometimes it's worth\nit to pay for quality) -> find that generic parts don't exist -> go on a merry\nhunt for used parts on ebay and at scrapyards.\n\n------\nabakker\nA few pieces of feedback. In the suspension section, it would be worth\nexplaining a few things about truck suspension, also. Like solid axle, front\nand rear suspension, both with Coil and Leaf springs. Also, dampers are\nincredibly important in large trucks/SUVs because if they fail, body roll has\nmuch higher likelihood of causing you to lose control. Finally, a \"bounce\ntest\" really won't work with many SUVs or truck where there is simply no way\nto compress the suspension to any meaningful degree with your hands.\n\npersonally, with trucks, I like the \"speed bump test\" where you drive into a\nspeed bump and if the truck/SUV continues to oscillate upon returning to the\ncorrect height, your dampers probably need work. Additionally, since most\ntrucks/SUVs use similar oil volume dampers to cars, the life of their dampers\nis frequently lower than in cars. The ones in my TRD Tundra lasted about 40K\nmiles.\n\n------\nmatthewrhoden1\nI didn't see the article for when it's 2AM and you can't get that one last\nbolt off.\n\n~~~\nRankingMember\nPropane or MAPP gas torch. Heat what the bolt goes through until it's cherry,\nthen wail on it with an impact wrench. The torch is often referred to as \"the\nbig red wrench\". Also, don't underestimate the power of soaking the stuck bolt\nin penetrating oil.\n\n~~~\nrpcope1\nEven better than any penetrating oil you can buy: ATF + Acetone[1]. Also,\nhaving a rosebud torch with Oxygen + Acetylene is a must if you find yourself\ndealing with rusty bolts often.\n\n[1] - [http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/penetrating-\noil-s...](http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/penetrating-oil-\nshowdown.350800/)\n\n------\nnogridbag\nNeat site. My father was a mechanic and thus I should know all of this stuff,\nbut I wasted away my life behind the keyboard instead :D\n\nI often find videos do a much better job at explaining some concepts. For\nexample, the section on differentials:\n\n[http://www.howacarworks.com/basics/how-the-transmission-\nwork...](http://www.howacarworks.com/basics/how-the-transmission-works)\n\nAfter reading this I feel none the wiser. Whereas after watching this ancient\nChevrolet training video from the 1930's I feel like I completely understand\nhow diffs work:\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4JhruinbWc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4JhruinbWc)\n\n~~~\nAlexMuir\nI'll embed that video shortly.\n\n~~~\nnogridbag\nPrevious HN discussion on the diff video if you're curious:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8513209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8513209)\n\n------\nchrismartin\nVery nice illustrations, but you are missing important systems that are found\non many/all cars from the past 20 years, like front wheel drive, CV joints,\nclosed-loop emissions control, OBD-II and CAN bus, distributorless (electonic)\nignition, electric power steering, CVTs and dual-clutch automatic\ntransmissions, and TPMS.\n\nDiagnosing a check engine light by reading OBD-II codes, for example, is\nsomething that every owner of a car produced after 1996 will eventually need\nto deal with.\n\nYou should rebuild your content around systems that are found on the majority\nof cars on the road today.\n\n------\nteh_klev\nPrevious discussions:\n\n[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=how%20a%20car%20works&sort=byP...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=how%20a%20car%20works&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)\n\n~~~\ngus_massa\nI only see two small and old discussions about _this_ site in the search\nresults.\n\ndang found another a previous discussion about _this_ site, with more points\nand comments, but it has a very different title.\n\n------\nSyrup-tan\nThere are also some great animations on how a 4-stroke engine works from\nanimagraffs.com;\n\n[http://animagraffs.com/how-a-car-engine-works/](http://animagraffs.com/how-a-\ncar-engine-works/)\n\n------\ncsbowe\nThe section on how cars are designed is entertainingly out-dated.\n\n------\njshelly\nI was disappointed to see that there is no guide on replacing brake pads for\ndisc brakes. It seems like everyone in the world knows how to do this but me.\n\n~~~\nRankingMember\nYoutube <model name> plus \"brake pads\" and there'll be some guy explaining\nexactly how to do it on your make and model.\n\n~~~\njshelly\nThanks for the tip\n\n------\nZeWaren\nI love the fact that you can buy the pdf using bitcoins.\n\n------\nnoipv4\nNicely done. Man you should really add a section on the Tesla Model S and\npossibly the Roadster.\n\n~~~\nJshWright\nOr... y'know... any car from the past couple decades (this material is pretty\ndated).\n\n------\nkiddico\nI've been looking for a site like this for so long! <3\n\n------\ndang\nPreviously discussed at\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4974055](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4974055).\n\nEdit: after a year or so, reposts are fine. This is just to point out to\nreaders that the site had appeared before—indeed, was an old Show HN.\n\n------\ndonkeyd\nI heard, that in soviet Russia, the car drives you.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: MacroPy - bringing Macros to Python - lihaoyi\nhttps://github.com/lihaoyi/macropy\n\n======\nstefantalpalaru\nThis is a very interesting project, even if the Python crowd is unlikely to\nappreciate macros.\n\n~~~\nlihaoyi\nYep, it's a pity they won't. Even so, many of the macros (e.g. log/trace) are\nthe sort of thing that will be super useful even if they never get checked\ninto Version Contrl. I know I spend a lot of time peppering `print \"A\"` `print\n\"B\"` statements throughout code when debugging, and being able to automate\nthat would be awesome.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFunny Math Fact Check: de Blasio vs. Uber - simonebrunozzi\nhttp://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/125760518214/funny-math-fact-check-de-blasio-vs-uber\n\n======\ngreenyoda\n_\" That would be a 6 month time period, where the number of cars went from\n58,295 to 64,500. A total change of 6,205 new cars over 6 months amounts to\nroughly 1,000 new for-hire vehicles a month - about one half of the rate that\nde Blasio had said in his OpEd.\"_\n\nThis argument assumes (with no justification) that the cars have been added at\na constant rate. But if they were being added at an increasing rate, there\nmight have indeed been 2000 cars a month added over the last two or three\nmonths (with less than a thousand added in previous months), and the mayor may\nhave been citing the most recent statistics rather than a yearly average.\nWithout more reliable data, there's no way to know which is true.\n\n~~~\niquantny\nif it was for three months, it would mean 50 a day for all previous months.\n\n------\nColinWright\nCould still be true if 2000 _new_ for-hire vehicles are being added every\nmonth, and 1000 _old_ for-hire vehicles are removed.\n\nNet change, an increase of 1000 per month.\n\nNot saying this is what's happening, just pointing out that there may be an\nexplanation.\n\n~~~\niquantny\nHe wrote it as cars being added to the streets.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHarvard Online Master’s Degree - tianyicui\nhttp://www.productivity501.com/harvard-masters-degree/6463/\n======\npetercooper\nRelated topic, different country. I discovered last week you can take a MSc in\nSoftware Development with the Open University (a partially government-funded\ndistance learning university in the UK):\n[http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/qualification/f26....](http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/qualification/f26.htm)\n\nThe really interesting part is if you have enough experience, you don't need\nto have an undergraduate degree to get into the prerequisite diploma course.\nSo you get on to the diploma course which takes two years part time, then do\nthe Masters project for a year.. no degree to Masters in 3 years. An education\nhack, if ever there were one. Who cares if you have an undergraduate degree\nwhen you have a Masters? (Genuine question - if there is a reason, let us\nknow.)\n\nThe only downside, it's not cheap cheap. You're looking at about £1000 per\nunit and there are 8 units for the diploma. The Master's part is then £1900\nish. So that's about £10k ($16k) in all over 3 years. Still, only slightly\nmore than a single year of undergraduate study in the UK from next year..\n\n _Note: Yes, this is really for people in the UK or Europe._\n\n~~~\nbhofmann\nWhen I see CVs with masters degrees I can't help thinking \"this person has\nbeen more interested in academic study than real world experience\". I value\nthe latter more. Some formal education is good to see, but I've seen too many\nmasters students who can't cut it in a real world situation.\n\n~~~\nStudyAnimal\nWell these part time, distance learning postgraduate degrees are usually\nprofessional degrees, so intended for those wanting to use the knowledge in\ntheir work rather than academic degrees, for those wishing to study further.\nThey actually require and are normally integrated with actual real world\nexperience.\n\nMy professional masters required me to actually do things at work, things that\nI wouldn't have done otherwise, and write about it, and turn it into a project\netc.\n\nSure academics with academic Masters degrees look down on them, but then there\nare a lot of people, like you, who recognize that academic achievement is not\nan indicator of being able to get things done.\n\nThese professional masters are an ideal middle ground.\n\nTo be honest though, if I could have gotten interesting real world experience\nin the field I was interested in, I probably would not have considered the\ndegree, but it was a chicken and egg situation for me unfortunately. In order\nto get a job where I could get experience, I had to have experience. So I\nstarted the degree, then switched to a job that was half way towards the area\nI wanted, and because I needed to do a project my employers were more willing\nto let me take on some work in the interesting area I wanted to work in. By\nthe end of it, I had both real world experience, and a degree recognizing that\nexperience. Without starting that course I still don't see how I could have\nbroken in to either area.\n\n------\nderrida\nThere is an irony in people thinking that this degree awarded from Harvard is\na lesser degree than the other types, when this degree is awarded purely on\nacademic merit (since admission is based on you already completing some of the\ncourses), whereas mainstream Harvard is based on the opinions of some\nadmissions officers.\n\n------\nnaner\nMore recent:\n\n[http://blog.markwshead.com/911/harvard-online-masters-\ndegree...](http://blog.markwshead.com/911/harvard-online-masters-degree-in-\nsoftware-engineering/)\n\nThought this was posted here before but I couldn't find it.\n\n------\nKillah911\nWell, the real question is, what \"value\" is derived from said degree? Better\njob right away? Most of the times that isn't the case. I can understand the\n\"value\" in actually being on campus and interacting with the next Gates or\nZuckerburg etc. Would attaching the Harvard section to your resume really make\nthings that much better? Anyone have some stats/studies on this beyond\nanecdotal cases? The author doesn't really go into much details about what\ncame out of his Harvard degree.\n\n~~~\nNrsolis\nInteresting fact:\n\nTwo of the world's most famous billionaires attended Harvard and didn't stay\nlong enough to finish a degree. Care to guess who they might be?\n\n~~~\nKillah911\nYup, just another reason I ask. Actually, I know a few Harvard Dropouts who've\ngone a similar path, while not Billionaires, they've done more than OK. Anyone\nknow where the Future Harvard Dropout Cafe is, that might be the place to be?\n:-P\n\n------\naothman\nAs an elitist alum, I don't like these programs one bit. I can't help but feel\nthat they are, in a small but meaningful way, watering down the value of my\ndegree. And even though it's petty, I'm chagrined that my diploma features\nEnglish rather than Latin text.\n\nHarvard's Extension School was designed to teach the greater Boston community,\nand I think it should be a vehicle to improve town-gown relations, by\nconvincing locals to not perceive Harvard as \"the other\". I certainly don't\nthink it should have as part of its mission handing out Masters degrees to\npeople from Kansas over the Internet.\n\n~~~\njonmc12\nCan you help me understand your statement 'watering down the value of my\ndegree'? I'm curious, why do you feel that way?\n\n~~~\nkcm11\nLike it or not, part of the value of a Harvard degree is the signaling effect\nit carries. The signaling effect is, in large part, due to the selectivity of\nthe school and the coursework.\n\nPut more directly... if the extension school has a 10x higher acceptance rate\nand has easier classes, then it is probably diluting the signaling effect a\nbit.\n\n~~~\nkwis\nWhat evidence do you have that extension classes are easier than their\ntraditional counterparts? It's certainly easier to get into Extension than\nother Harvard colleges, but I see no evidence it's easier to graduate.\n\n~~~\nkcm11\nMostly anecdotal, several of my friends have took classes through the program\nin high school. That's not to say that extension classes are trivial by any\nmeans.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGamers solve decade old HIV puzzle in ten days - pjvds\nhttp://www.zmescience.com/research/studies/gamers-solve-decade-old-hiv-puzzle-in-ten-days/\n\n======\nniels_olson\nSo, does this get cycled back into _new_ when someone reposts it?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRuby - Handling 1 Million Concurrent Connections - slivuz\nhttps://github.com/slivu/1mc2\n======\nqompiler\nI have done this before using Java 7 async nio. The performance would drop\nlike a brick when data received actually needed some sort of processing. How\ndoes this implementation hold up when you need to perform a O(n) operation on\nreceived data? Experiment with different sizes of n to see how the performance\nholds up.\n\n~~~\ntrailfox\nExactly. Establishing 1 million connections is pretty easy in any language\nthat supports async io, even scripting languages. The article is super-vague\nabout the direction of the traffic, the nature and size of the messages and\nhow much of the application is actually written in Ruby (vs. just being a\nglorified wrapper around redis and other systems written in c/c++) and the\namount of work actually being done by the app. 179 requests per second is\nhardly something to brag about while you've completely saturated 8 cpu cores.\n\n~~~\nhawleyal\nRuby _is_ a wrapper around c.\n\n------\nafhof\nI have to ask, is there even a practical purpose for this? Is there even some\nremote screwball application for having to have one machine handle 1,000,000\nrequests? One of the things I like about coming to HN is that the items on the\nfront page are often actionable pieces of advice or clever and interesting\nhacks. I don't feel that \"$LANG can do $LARGE_NUMBER of things\" fits the bill.\nFor example:\n\n    \n    \n      C - Handling 1 Million Concurrent Connections \n      Java - Handling 1 Million Concurrent Connections \n      Javascript - Handling 1 Million Concurrent Connections \n      Go - Handling 1 Million Concurrent Connections\n    \n\nIf it was 10^10 connections, now we are talking about some clever hacks to get\nthat to work.\n\n~~~\nlucaspiller\nWhatsApp had over 2 million users connected to their (Erlang) server last\nyear.\n\n[http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2012/01/1-million-is-\nso-2...](http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2012/01/1-million-is-so-2011/)\n\nHere is the same in Erlang for reference (from a few years ago, I would be\ninterested to see if there is a more efficient way now):\n\n[http://www.metabrew.com/article/a-million-user-comet-\napplica...](http://www.metabrew.com/article/a-million-user-comet-application-\nwith-mochiweb-part-3)\n\n~~~\ne12e\nThank you so much for that last link especially. Interesting stuff :-)\n\n------\nmixedbit\nI don't fully get the point of this benchmark. Connection handling is\noperating system business, so you should get similar numbers with any\nframework that runs on the same OS and correctly uses epoll (or an equivalent\nsystem call).\n\n~~~\nwillvarfar\nTangent: back when I paid careful attention, all the epoll frameworks were\nlevel-triggered not edge-triggered.\n\n------\ndschiptsov\nLet's make a bit like a real world.) The test case could be like this:\n\nA lookup. Get any reasonable big publicly available simple data-set and import\nit into any persistent storage (a sorted file is OK) and let a client perform\na lookup for a row (preferably utf8 text ,)) then render a simple html table\nin response. As stupid as MVC.\n\nor\n\nPerform any simple lookup, but only for authenticated user (against some\npasswd-like file, to make it easy).\n\nThen we could see how cool any JVM stuff or over-engineered OO ruby frameworks\nreally are, with all that shinny graphs and smooth curves.\n\n------\ntmartiro\nGood job...\n\nYou can also open 1 million connections using one linux box a) increase local\nport range 1024 to 65535 b) setup 17 ip address. c) open from each ip address\n58824 connections\n\n~~~\nadlpz\nWhat would be the point of that? The bottleneck here is not the amount of\nports. TCP can handle concurrency over one single input port just fine.\n\nThe issue here is concurrency on the service software. If you have to launch a\nmillion instances to listen on a million different ports, you are doing it\nwrong.\n\n~~~\nErwin\nAn TCP connection is uniquely identified by a {local IP, remote IP, local\nport, remote port} tuple.\n\nSo if you are on 192.168.1.1 and want to connect to a specific port on\n192.168.1.2 there aren't enough free port numbers to get 1 million\nconnections. Thus the extending of the \"ephemeral port range\" (the local port\nnumber the kernel is allowed to assign) and addition of more local IPs.\n\n~~~\ngilgoomesh\nExcept there's no assumption here that the 1 million connections are between\njust two computers. Clients are spread over 50 different EC2 instances (which\neach have a unique address). The host does not need more ports in this\nscenario and the clients are using 20,000 ports (possible without altering\nport allocation).\n\n~~~\nErwin\nThis was a reply to tmartiro's thread, where he says \"You can also open 1\nmillion connections using _one_ linux box\" and describes how you could do it a\nsingle instance rather than 50 separate ones; adlpz asked \"what would be the\npoint of that\".\n\n------\nkenkam\ntl;dr OP throws 3 libs together, wrote a few scripts, made a few measurements.\nLook, it can handle 1 million connections.\n\nI like what he has done but don't know why it made HN frontpage. I'm guessing\nit's because it has Ruby, 1 million, and concurrent in the title.\n\nNot bashing the author, it's good work in its own right. I'm trying to\nunderstand how stuff like this makes frontpage HN. Where's the value of this\narticle? That Ruby can handle 1 mil connections? Am I missing something (even\nif it's obvious?)\n\nI think someone mentioned better real world test cases. I agree that would be\na place to start. Perhaps he could send more meaningful data to clients. Maybe\nmarket data for some stocks or something. '\\0' is not very useful after all!\n\n~~~\nagentultra\nI'm not a genius Ruby hacker by any stretch but if EventMachine is like any\nother \"async IO framework\" in other scripting languages then it is built on\nlibev or libevent... so Ruby isn't really handling the connections, it's\nhandling the callbacks. Pedantic, but important to note.\n\n~~~\nsaraid216\n> Pedantic, but important to note.\n\nPedantic, but \"pedantic\" actually idiomatically means \"not important to note\".\n\n~~~\nagentultra\nIn what culture?\n\nIn my dictionary it's _\"of or like a pedant\"_ ; a pedant being someone who is\noverly concerned with minor details.\n\nStill... noted!\n\n~~~\nsaraid216\nIf the detail is minor, it's not important.\n\n------\nkyledrake\nThe practical purpose of this is to show that Ruby is perfectly capable of\nscaling to fit the needs of most companies. It kills the myth that Ruby is not\ncapable of doing serious infrastructure work.\n\nThat is EXACTLY THE POINT of this. We use Ruby for a ton of real work, and we\nare sick of seeing it get pummeled on unfairly for the misconception that it\nis a slow language and you are guaranteed to have scaling problems if you use\nit. Productivity and performance are not necessarily tradeoffs, with Ruby and\nsome good planning, you can get both.\n\n~~~\ndarkarmani\nIs \"179 requests per second\" really an example of scaling?\n\n------\npeterwwillis\nLOL. A couple hundred requests per second? Is that something to brag about?\n\nWhat the fuck is the point of opening a million connections if it takes you\n1.55 hours to process one request from each connection?\n\n~~~\nslivuz\nmm, strange math.\n\n179 means that while app holding and communicating to 1 million persistent\nconnections it is still able to process 100+ standard requests per second.\npretty enough to accept new clients to your online game, audio/video chat,\npodcast etc.\n\nthis graph shows how many requests per second app may process depending on\namount of established persistent connections:\n\n[https://raw.github.com/slivu/1mc2/master/results/requests-\npe...](https://raw.github.com/slivu/1mc2/master/results/requests-per-\nsecond.png)\n\n~~~\ntrailfox\nI don't think your original post is very clear at all. I get the same number\nas the post you are criticizing: 1000000/179 / 60 / 60 = 1.55 hours.\n\nAre there other messages being processed too? Which direction are the messages\ngoing? How big are they, what do they contain, how is the data processed.\nAlso, if you have 1 million clients how do you handle all of them arriving at\naround the same time? How long did it take your system to get up to 1 million\nconnections? Also how sure are you that each micro instance is sending and\nreceiving the messages at exactly the expected rate and is not getting\noverloaded. What server type are you using for your central server?\n\n------\npotomushto\nI am excited about ec2-fleet tool. How expensive is the tests in your case?\n\n~~~\nslivuz\na micro instance costs 2 cents per hour, so $1 per hour for 50 instances.\n\n~~~\nnivertech\nwhat's the name of the program with CPU/memory graphs in the right-upper\ncorner above htop on slides ##13-171?\n\n~~~\nslivuz\nit is Gnome's System Monitor\n\n------\nnurettin\nFor JRuby Streaming I have used Torquebox (JBoss) successfully.\n\n------\nheadius\nThe author asserts that JRuby would consume more than 15GB of memory without\nproviding any justification. Perhaps it would be better to actually try it\nrather than just making sweeping generalizations.\n\n~~~\nheadius\nHere's a case study showing over 500k connections to a Java instance in 2.5GB\nof memory using NIO. JRuby's implementation of Ruby's IO is implemented\ndirectly atop NIO. So yeah...that 15GB assertion is nonsense.\n\n[http://urbanairship.com/blog/2010/08/24/c500k-in-action-\nat-u...](http://urbanairship.com/blog/2010/08/24/c500k-in-action-at-urban-\nairship/)\n\n~~~\nslivuz\nyou right, sorry for pointless blaming, my bad, had to check it first.\nupdating orignal post\n\n------\nmarketer\nDoesn't Ruby have a limit of 1024 open file descriptors? If some method in\nRuby's standard library calls 'select' internally, with the 1024 limit, what\nhappens?\n\n~~~\nFooBarWidget\nI/O is handled through EventMachine, not the normal Ruby I/O calls, and can\ntherefore scale arbitrarily.\n\n~~~\nmarketer\nIt is a little worrying that if some (perhaps inexperienced) developer\narbitrarily calls a method that invokes Ruby's select, the process will crash\nmysteriously.\n\n~~~\nFooBarWidget\nIt won't crash. On many platforms, Ruby uses special select() hacks to extend\nthe number of file descriptors select() can handle. On OS X it can apparently\nhandle 10556 file descriptors. If you go over that, Ruby apparently simulates\nan EMFILES error.\n\n------\ntoddwahnish\nvery cool experiment\n\n------\nmoneypenny\n_dumb question_ I thought the GC tunings, e.g. RUBY_HEAP_MIN_SLOTS, were only\navailable in REE, rather than MRI?\n\n~~~\nslivuz\nstarting with 1.9.3 they are also available on MRI, though not sure about\n2.0.0 as there GC are highly refactored/optimized.\n\n> Starting with Ruby 1.9.3, the GC in mainstream ruby can also be tuned\n\n[http://www.web-l.nl/posts/15-tuning-ruby-s-garbage-\ncollector...](http://www.web-l.nl/posts/15-tuning-ruby-s-garbage-collector-\nwith-rvm-and-passenger)\n\n~~~\nksec\nWould love to see the updated test once Ruby 2.0 is out in a few days time.\n\n------\nassente\nit would be nice to compare the different ruby implementations with this test.\n\n------\nassente\ninteresting experiment!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFunctional Programming with Python – Part 1 - shawndumas\nhttp://blog.dhananjaynene.com/2010/02/functional-programming-with-python-part-1/\n======\nshawndumas\npart 2: [http://blog.dhananjaynene.com/2010/03/functional-\nprogramming...](http://blog.dhananjaynene.com/2010/03/functional-programming-\nwith-python-%E2%80%93-part-2-useful-python-constructs/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nStencil – a Grunt templating plugin for generating static HTML files - dawson\nhttp://blog.howareyou.com/post/63377845043/stencil-a-grunt-templating-plugin-for-generating\n\n======\ncleverjake\nI had something somewhat similar - [https://github.com/patrickkettner/grunt-\ncompile-handlebars/](https://github.com/patrickkettner/grunt-compile-\nhandlebars/)\n\njust precompiling handlebars into static html\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSarcasm Seen as Evolutionary Survival Skill  - edw519\nhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080620/sc_livescience/sarcasmseenasevolutionarysurvivalskill\n\n======\nedw519\nAha! I _knew_ there was a scientific basis for using all those <sarcasm> and\n</sarcasm> tags here at hn.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nInstall Chrome Web-Apps from any Site - franze\nhttp://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensions/inline-installation/\n\n======\ndpcan\nThis seems like such a backwards way to address the actual shortcomings of the\nChrome Web Store.\n\nThey can add features like this all day, but it doesn't fix the fact that they\nhaven't improved the actual Chrome Web Store enough to make developers or\nshoppers want to use it.\n\nEspecially regarding GAMES\n\nIf you open the Chrome Web Store. Go to Games, all you get are the featured\ngames.\n\nThey have categories, but you can't BROWSE them. All you get to do is look at\nthe top 5 they've chosen.\n\nWhat's the point in putting an app in the Chrome Web Store, or even developing\nfor it if you will NEVER get found. What's the point in looking there for new\nstuff if you won't be able to browse and find it????\n\nPeople browse for games. There should be a \"More\" button next to each\ncategory. If users could browse through games, it would be worth developing\ngames for the Chrome Web Store.\n\n~~~\nMatthewPhillips\nIt's poorly presented, but you can browse through categories by clicking the\n\"All\" click under Popular.\n\n------\nSephr\nThis looks extremely insecure and dangerous to me. All you need is for a user\nto click anywhere or interact with anything on your page and you then have\nfull access to their computer, given that you include a native plugin in your\nextension. Even if you couldn't include native plugins in extensions, you\nwould still have full control of the browser, including hiding the extension\nuninstall link in chrome://extensions/ and keylogging every page.\n\nEdit: Nevermind, apparently it prompts the user before installation, unlike\nthe Chrome web store.\n\n~~~\nMatthewPhillips\nThe JS code just prompts an install dialog (controlled by Chrome), so I don't\nsee the security concern.\n\n------\ndrivebyacct2\nVery disappointed to see that this is all still routed through the Chrome App\nStore. It kinda defeats the vision of \"the open web\" if we're forced to use\nunfederated app stores.\n\n~~~\nMatthewPhillips\nMozilla is doing federated web apps[1] although it's a bit half-baked at this\npoint (not built into Firefox, requires a rather large not-minified js\nlibrary). Google should really be contributing their experience with CWS to\nthat project.\n\n[1]<https://apps.mozillalabs.com/>\n\n~~~\ndrivebyacct2\nIt's a dual edged sword and I love it. Chrome is pushing Firefox and IE in\nextreme ways, yet Mozilla remains a more authentic and open \"beam of light\". I\nlove seeing them compete and I'm hopeful that as w3c \"web app\" manifest, etc\nspecs are fleshed out that they come to Chrome in the more open fashion as\nwell.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nChops – Make beats with your voice - gregsadetsky\nhttps://www.getchops.app/\n======\ngregsadetsky\nHey HN! We're Tristan & Greg from Chops\n[https://www.getchops.app/](https://www.getchops.app/) . Chops is an iOS music\nmaking app that lets you make beats with your voice. We're currently running a\nclosed TestFlight beta, and are planning to launch soon.\n\nTristan and I are both musically inclined without being professional\nmusicians. Our Voice Memos apps are filled with bits of song ideas that we\nrecorded as inspiration struck. An issue we've seen with recording these\nsnippets is that 1) you can't layer your voice easily without using a\nspecialized looper app and 2) it always sounds... like your voice. We're not\npro beatboxers, so our \"voice drums\" don't sound that great. Enter Chops.\n\nWe've designed a way to create drum tracks using your voice -- you \"sing\" the\ndrums and then pick a drum sound (kick, snare, hi-hats, etc.). Check out the\nvideo on our page to get an idea of how it works.\n\nWe're super excited to push this idea much further, and to make music making\nmore accessible, intuitive and fun. We feel that there should be a larger\noverlap between music \"fans\" \\-- this includes people that sing along to\nsongs, that hum tunes, that make up songs for their families -- and\n\"musicians\" as the term is too commonly defined (e.g., people with a musical\neducation, professional artists, etc.)\n\nIf you feel even a tiny bit musically inclined, we'd love to have you be part\nof this beta round!\n\nReach out to us hello@getchops.app for any questions or AMA here. Thanks a\nlot!\n\n~~~\nbashinator\nI've been wanting this for literally decades. I make mouth-click beats all the\ntime, and it's easier and more tempo-accurate than what I can do with my\nfingers/hands. Does Chops support more than one \"instrument\" at a time?\nTypically I use one click for the kick, and then a different one for the\nsnare. Can it act like a standard MIDI controller for external\nsoftware/hardware?\n\n~~~\ngregsadetsky\nThat's... exactly the use case we were thinking about! We've been using Voice\nMemos to record song bits / mouth beats, and hopefully this is the better /\nsmarter version of that.\n\nChops does support multiple instruments at a time -- right now, you can layer\nmany drum and audio tracks (drum tracks play built in drum samples, while\naudio tracks are those that you record using your phone's microphone).\n\nThe app is MIDI-based, but it cannot trigger external software/hardware\ndevices at this time. This is something that's on the roadmap!\n\n------\nphildionne\nLove the \"make beats with your voice\" tagline, it's simple and effective. The\ndemo video on the landing page makes me think on an idea: why not allow\nrecording a video of your face while you record your vocal beat? It seems\npeople are using TikTok as a mean of physical expression (through dance,\nmostly) and maybe your app could grow a subculture through the same dynamics?\n\nCurious to see the final version!\n\n~~~\ngregsadetsky\nTotally a great point, and other apps in this space -- typically those that\ntarget a larger, non-\"pro musician\" audience -- do have more entertaining /\nfun engagement mechanisms, such as recording a video selfie while singing /\nkaraok'ing, etc.\n\nReally great idea, thanks a lot!\n\n------\nplumbus420\nReminds me of Mike Gao's Vocal Beater [1]. Too bad it doesn't seem like he's\nbeen keeping it updated recently. He's able to beatbox and it'll automatically\nrecognize the instruments too.\n\nHere's a demo of him using it on YouTube:\n[https://youtu.be/OS7LeMHImBM?t=232](https://youtu.be/OS7LeMHImBM?t=232)\n\n[1] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vocal-\nbeater/id384844110](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vocal-beater/id384844110)\n\n~~~\ngregsadetsky\nThat's fascinating! We're 100% going into that direction, and the necessary\nalgo work to do this reliably is not trivial.\n\nThank for the great pointers!\n\n------\ndang\nIt would be better to do this when you launch. Right now it looks like just a\nsignup page, and Show HN requires that there be something for people can try\nout:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html).\n\n~~~\ngregsadetsky\nHey dang, my sincere apologies about this!\n\nThe app is ready to test and we're reaching out to people who are signing up\nwith TestFlight links i.e., everyone will get to try out the app.\n\nBut you're right of course that there's nothing to try on the launch page --\nthere's only a demo video.\n\nWe'll be more careful for future projects, and will only post again about this\nonce we're live on the App Store.\n\nSorry again!\n\n~~~\ndang\nIt's ok! You're welcome to post when people can try it out. I think it will\nhave some appeal.\n\n------\nakimc\nSigned up for the beta, seems super creative can't wait to try it. Cheers\n\n------\nrb212nyc\nVery cool! Will check out.\n\n~~~\ngregsadetsky\nThank you! Looking forward to your feedback!\n\n------\ndvdsgl\nFun! :D\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Current college student with big goals. - Nemisis7654\nHi everyone,<p>I have been lurking around here for some time and am in love with this site. I figured now would be as good a time as any to ask my question.<p>I am a current college student majoring in Computer Science. I know that, after I am done with school, I want to start a startup at some point (not necessarily right out of school). I know it's going to involve a lot of hard work, but this is something I have been thinking about for a while now. So, my question is this: what sort of advice can you guys give me that will prepare me for such an undertaking. Thank you.<p>~Aaron\n======\ncoffeemug\n1\\. Be good. Be very good. Don't be the \"front-end guy\" or the \"back-end guy\",\nor some other \"guy\". Once you know what you want to build, building software\nis about five things: algorithms that solve your problem, programming\nlanguages that express your algorithms, computer architecture that makes your\nalgorithms run efficiently on real hardware, the practical toolchain, and the\nmanagement of complexity of real software. So study algorithms, and then\ngraduate algorithms, and then advanced graduate algorithms. Do every challenge\nproblem online. Study programming languages to express those algorithms. You\ncan get away with three: C, Lisp, Haskell. Everything else is crud. Study\ncomputer architecture and compilers to see how your programs run efficiently.\nLearn great tools (Emacs/Vim/Visual Studio/bash/Linux/OS X/Windows whatever -\njust great ones that you're damn good at). Learn how complexity is managed.\nLook at lare open source projects, study how they're organized, and contribute\npatches to understand how small changes can effect a large system.\n\n2\\. Learn what to build. Once you get really good, your time starts to be more\nvaluable than gold. There will be very few people in the world who are as good\n(the internet will bias you to think that the world is full of great people -\nthis ain't so, there isn't enough of 'em). You _owe_ it to people and to\nyourself not to bother with improving something by 1% or 10% because you're\nwasting time in opportunity cost and could be improving something by 1000%.\nMake sure what you're building is worth building, and make sure every line of\ncode you write is worth writing, otherwise you will fail. Break the NIH\nsyndrome in yourselves now (all good people have it, phenomenal people that\nbuild successful companies broke it in themselves). Learn to infer what people\nwant.\n\n3\\. If you're that good, you will easily get a $100k job after graduation\n(probably more by then), and grow to $180k in a few years. That's very, very\ncomfortable. It's not worth busting your ass 16 hours a day to build another\nCRM tool when you can have a $180k job. So don't start a business to start a\nbusiness. Start a business to bring a meaningful change in the world. A huge\nchange. A 1000% change. There are lots of hugely successful companies out\nthere that do what's not meaningful to you - ignore them. But do make sure\nthat what's meaningful to you is also meaningful to millions (hopefully\nbillions) of others. You won't get rich writing Lisp compilers.\n\nThis is what matters. Most everything else is fluff.\n\n~~~\nolalonde\nI agree with most you said except a small detail: how is C good at expressing\nalgorithms? There are far more expressive languages in the C family. The point\nof learning C I would argue is to have at least one low level language in your\ntoolbox.\n\n~~~\ncloudwalking\nLearning C is also a very important step to understanding operating systems.\n\n~~~\njeffreymcmanus\nWhich is actually not vital for doing a successful startup.\n\n~~~\nstrlen\nThe parent said _understanding_, not writing your own[1].\n\nTo take an example of a web startup (just because the are the most common),\nhere are some question that require understanding the basics of operating\nsystems:\n\n1) \"why is my database cache constantly being swapped out to disk when there's\nenough memory in my machine\"\n\n2) \"why are the pages taking so slow to load, even though I'm only serving a\nfew hundred hits a second\"\n\n3) \"what is my webapp doing that's making python/ruby take up 100% of the cpu\"\n(to find this out, you'd likely be using gdb, ltrace and strace which very\nexplicitly require at least a _passing_ familiarity with C and POSIX)\n\n4) \"why is there a process showing up in ps/top that I can't kill even with\nkill -9\"\n\nFinally, you certainly have to be a good programmer to start a startup: not\nthe best one, not a \"10x programmer\", but a good one (irrespective of what\nsort of applications you write). You can't be a good one without understanding\nhow your programs work.\n\n[1] That said, I had my hands dirty in Linux source code when debugging an\nissue while working in (of all places) an email security company.\n\n------\ntjr\nStart now. Even if you don't have the time or resources to do something huge,\nmake projects that can be of real use and benefit to people. Some you may\ncharge for; others you may offer for free. Your users might be people at your\ncollege, in your community, or all over the world. No matter how small or\nlarge the userbase, whatever experience you can get will be helpful, and one\nof these projects may grow into a significant business.\n\n~~~\ncullenking\nCan't agree more with this comment. Depending on your degree, the amount of\nwork required will be significantly less than the amount of time you have in\nthe week. Not to mention that interest rates on student loans are dropping\nagain, meaning living off student loans while you start your business and do\nschool is a potentially much more successful way to go than any other.\n\nThe problem with starting \"some time after\" you graduate is how easy it is to\nburden yourself with life responsibilities (wife/kids, new car loan, mortgage\netc) when you have real income and stability from a job. When you are halfway\ninto getting your startup off the ground and ramen profitable and you\ngraduate, you can maintain your poor college kid lifestyle much easier than a\npreviously well off wage earner can go back to a poor college kid lifestyle.\n\nThis worked well for me, but I also didn't care for any of the other \"college\nexperiences\". I got my partying (drinking, smoking, minimal sleep etc) out\nwhen I was in high school and my early 20's, so found most of my younger\ncollege peers boring when I eventually finished my CS degree.\n\n------\nmichael_dorfman\nI'd say: focus. Get as much as you can out of being in school right now--\nyou're unlikely to get a chance again to spend 4 years dedicated solely to\nexpanding your knowledge. Learn everything you can. Find out who the best\nprofessors are (ask around, you'll find out quick) and take whatever classes\nthey are offering. (A good professor can make even the dullest subject come to\nlife; a bad professor can kill even the most fascinating topic.) Learn what\nyou can from your friends; don't pass up any opportunity to learn. And,\nfinally, try to pick up as many good habits and disciplines as you can--\nyou'll find years from now, you still have some of them.\n\n------\ndminor\nGet to know all of your classmates as best you can. They are a big part of\nyour future network, and potential startup collaborators.\n\n~~~\nGFischer\nGreat point. Build a good reputation (both online and in person), hopefully\nwhile trying to help genuinely :) .\n\nIt really pays off much better than just being very good.\n\n------\nchris_l\nWork for someone else's startup. That's the best way to learn how it works on\nthe inside.\n\n~~~\nCytokineStorm\nI cannot agree with this advice enough. Working for a startup, even as a\nsummer intern, will give you a much clearer idea of what it actually means to\nrun a company than reading HN every day.\n\nYou may even realize it's not what you want to do after college.\n\n------\nclyfe\n1\\. The first rule to actually be able to build stuff is to learn _real life\nprogramming_ : know a couple of languages, their libraries and ecosystems.\nTip: use open source tools\n\n2\\. Know _algorithms_ to make smart software. If you make a board game, A*\ncomes in hadndy for the AI. If you make a service like dropbox Minimum\nbounding box algorithms lower your costs.\n\nNow you can build some stuff. Time to sell.\n\n3\\. Learn the basics of finance and legal stuff of your country to be able to\nsolve paperwork related stuff.\n\n4\\. Learn some marketing to attract users\n\nProfit!\n\nTip: A lot more in Ask HN Archive -\n<http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive>\n\n------\nwccrawford\nHave some idea what you're going to do.\n\n\"I want to have a startup\" is not a plan. It is a path to failure. If you\nhaven't got any idea what you want that startup to do, you're just setting\nyourself up for disaster.\n\nReal, productive startups happen when someone wants to do or create a specific\nthing, and then creates a startup as a vehicle for that thing.\n\nA startup is not an end. It's a means.\n\n------\ngrandalf\nIt depends a lot on what you want to do. Some business problems are not all\nthat technical, some are highly technical.\n\nSome startups are easy to bootstrap, others aren't.\n\nThe main advice I'd give you is this: Figure out what you really, really want\nto do... the thing that makes you most excited and passionate. And demand of\nyourself that you do it.\n\nThere's nothing worse than working very hard at something and realizing that\nyou've put blood, sweat and tears into something you don't really give a damn\nabout.\n\n------\njbarham\n1\\. Read code written by master programmers (e.g., <http://golang.org/src/>,\n<http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/>) to learn how it's done\nand to keep you humble. ;) But beware the opposite danger of becoming\ndisillusioned when you realize that most of the code you will encounter in the\nreal world is not written by master programmers.\n\n2\\. Understand that much of what you learn to do as an undergraduate CS\nstudent are \"historical reenactments\"\n(<http://research.swtch.com/2008/03/rotating-hashes.html>). The core\nalgorithms and data structures you need are almost always provided by the\nlanguage or libraries.\n\n------\nmhewett\n1\\. Plan to start your company in 10 years.\n\n2\\. Between now and then, work at a small company, a just-funded startup, a\nraw startup and a big company (maybe in that order, maybe in any order). Watch\nthe management closely and LEARN.\n\n3\\. No matter how frustrating it is to work for someone else, stick to your\nplan.\n\n4\\. Keep your technical skills current.\n\n5\\. Learn management skills.\n\n6\\. Save your money - live frugally now so you can self-fund your startup and\nkeep control of it.\n\n7\\. Become an expert or become good friends with an expert in some domain -\ngaming, architecture, finance, whatever.\n\n8\\. Do your startup in that domain.\n\n9\\. Develop a healthy lifestyle. You'll need your all your health and stamina\nto make the startup succeed.\n\n10\\. Regularly sell things on eBay and/or Craigslist to get used to selling to\npeople.\n\n11\\. Watch how your non-technical friends use computers. They compose most of\nyour customer base.\n\n~~~\nskowmunk\nHaving followed such a detailed long term plan from almost 14 years ago to\nrealize my dream of starting a business, when I thought I didn't have the\nresources, the personality, the network, the background, the support or the\nbackup, having worked in a a government R&D lab , a small company, a fortune\n500 company, having completed 2 degrees, 1 Advanced Diploma, a Six Sigma Black\nbelt certification...., with all dew respect to mhewett for the good\nintentions behind his advise..... please don't follow this advise.\n\n(edit: Actually all that mhewett says, is right, observe as much as you can\n(surprisingly not many really do), try to learn whatever you think can be\nuseful in the future, except for one very deadly thing(the fatal flaw) - the\n'plan to start in 10 years'.)\n\n------\nSHOwnsYou\nForget the technical things. While in college, get a job in marketing. Get a\nsecond job in technology if you want, but chances are if you are a CS student\nthat can actually program, then the technical side is the least of your\nworries.\n\nRunning a business is extremely hard for some people. Expose yourself to it.\nIt would be even better if you worked for a smaller company to get a more\nholistic view of it.\n\nWhen I was in college my first job was managing the entire ecommerce side of\nour business from building to maintaining to figuring up innovations. There\nwere 4 of us. I got significant experience in accounting, marketing, cash\nflow, customer service... everything. Having that exposure has helped me\nimmeasurably thus far.\n\n------\nskowmunk\nStart now.\n\nStart a start up or go execute an idea or help somebody else execute an idea\nand use that as a tool for learning relevant stuff that is required to\nsuccessfully execute an idea. Whatever reason you are not able to execute it,\nthats an indication of where you have to plug holes in your skill set, either\nby learning yourself or developing relationships with somebody who is strong\nin that area.\n\nIf you keep executing and keep plugging the holes in your skill set, you will\nhave the fastest learning curve that no college education can provide by\nitself.\n\nDo complete your college education, it does teach a lot of good basics on\ndifferent useful stuff and its a great backup in case things don't work out\nwith the business end by the time you complete education. But thats what it\ngives - basics, useful basics, basics that are not enough for anything but an\nentry level job.\n\nCollege education + loads of experience by the time you complete education =\nkiller resume.\n\nThis is from a guy who has done his fair share of education and waited too\nlong to go after his dream ( of course, not too long to let the dream die or\ngo after it now :))\n\nGood luck.\n\n(edit: If you start the action part now, you will also attract a network of\nfriends and teachers who appreciate a person like you and can probably help\nyou. That network you start building now can be a deal maker or breaker for\nsucces later. )\n\n------\nphamilton\nI'm in similar shoes. I've recommended this essay on HN before, but I found it\nto be really insightful.\n\n<http://www.paulgraham.com/college.html>\n\nI've basically come to the conclusion my time here in school is gain enough\nknowledge an experience in my field that when startup time comes I'll not just\nbe quicker than competitors, but I'll know of better methods and techniques\nfor doing so.\n\n------\njasonlbaptiste\nAll of the stuff said here re: building a product and working for a startup is\nawesome advice. There's one major thing missing: Learn how to acquire\ncustomers and retain them. You can build a great product, but if you don't\nknow how to acquire customers, it's a disservice to the great product you\nbuilt. CREAM- Customers Rule Everything Around Me.\n\n~~~\nericabiz\nStrongly agree with this. Also, it's worth noting that many people consider\n\"startup\"=creating a consumer-focused company with millions of users (i.e.\nTwitter; Yelp.) Often the most successful businesses focus on selling a lot to\na little. There is a ton of opportunity on the enterprise side of the world.\n\nMy company was most successful after we stopped offering small accounts and\nfocused on the customers paying us hundreds or thousands of dollars a month.\nWe got pretty quickly to 7 figures after that.\n\n------\nnoahc\nFocus on two things:\n\n1\\. Connecting and networking with others in the field. A blog is a great way\nto do this and get started.\n\n2\\. Build something said network will appreciate. It doesn't have to be the\nnext twitter, maybe it's some dumb little app that a 5 year old kid will spend\n10 minutes playing with and get bored. Remember we are all 5 year olds on the\ninside, except pg, he's 7.\n\n------\nganjianwei\nLook for potential cofounders. Make friends with people who have similar\ninterests as you (hacking, startups) and whom you get along with really well.\nBuilding trust and learning what people are really like takes time and being\nfriends for a longer time gives you the chance to do that.\n\n------\nanamax\n(1) Learn what people will pay for and how to convince them to do so.\n\n(2) Make friends with and keep track of your talented classmates, especially\nthose whose talents are in other areas.\n\n(3) Learn how to evaluate folks in those other areas.\n\n------\nimp\nOne thing that hasn't been mentioned much yet is marketing. Read the big\npopular marketing books such as \"Positioning\" by Reis and Trout, because\nmarketing is tough. There is little technical risk involved with most web\ncompanies. The biggest risk is not finding enough people to give you money.\n\n------\nskbohra123\nAs someone who just passed out from college and is working on a startup, I\nwould say do as much projects as you can during your college. Hence learn the\nart of starting and finishing.\n\n------\nNemisis7654\nI just wanted to say thanks to everyone who commented. Really great advice. It\nis much appreciated.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: I made a minimalist spaced repetition tool - mvind\nhttp://memordo.com/launch\n======\nmvind\nCreator here. As a University student I was struggling a lot with the huge\namount of information I needed to remember for my courses. I started using\nspaced repetition (Anki) and it worked great! I enthusiastically shared this\nmethod with my family but they got overwhelmed by the complexity of the Anki\ninterface and all the options. I wanted to change that. So I built memordo. I\nfocused on creating a minimalist but still productive interface for creating\nmemory cards that supports image, latex, code and clozes.\n\nI have already received some feedback from the HN community and I would to\nhear what you guys think again. Your feedback has proven invaluable as I have\nalready gotten paid users onboard.\n\nThanks for reading!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nProgramming languages, operating systems, despair and anger - cameldrv\nhttp://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20091109/054578.html\n\n======\nmsie\nThis is just the start of an interesting conversation so don't just read the\none posting. Read the entire thread.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nOld usenet maps - bryanrasmussen\nhttp://olduse.net/blog/current_usenet_map/\n======\nNelsonMinar\nThese maps were largely a work by Steve McGeady, who later went on to be an\nexecutive at Intel. His testimony in the Microsoft antitrust trial in 1998 had\na big impact.\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_McGeady](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_McGeady)\n\n------\nrocky1138\nSeems like this would be better laid out using a fixed-width font. HTML\nsupports it, why not use it?\n\n~~~\nastrodust\nLooks fine here. It's using \"GlassTTYVT220\", which is a custom font, so that\nmight not have loaded properly for you.\n\n~~~\nrocky1138\nThat's exactly what it was. After I wrote that I went into the stylesheet and\ndisabled the custom font. It worked a treat.\n\n~~~\ncat199\nMan I am telling you, get this font.\n\nIt is a 100% clone of the actual vt220 font, and therefore is the ultimate in\ngreen-screen retro awesomeness.\n\nBasically, by getting this font and using it (esp on a BSD) you have the\noriginal 'theme' for the Unix CLI, since pretty much everyone (yes being\nhyperbolic) used real UNIX (or 'BSD UNIX' as it was called before the suit) on\nVAX with DEC terminals around this time when most of the core CLI tools that\nmake up the core of the system to this day were being developed.. Things just\nlook 'right'.\n\nAs a vt220 owner and amateur Unixologist, I am very glad for this font.\n\n[http://asdasd.rpg.fi/~svo/glasstty](http://asdasd.rpg.fi/~svo/glasstty)\n\n~~~\nandai\nThat's quite nice actually! Here's what HN looks like in w3m with GlassTTY\n[http://i.imgur.com/3Mq6omo.png](http://i.imgur.com/3Mq6omo.png)\n\n------\nbane\nI kind of can't even imagine the hours that might have gone into laying these\nout so they'd work in ASCII.\n\n~~~\nastrodust\nThere are a number of ASCII/ANSI-art specific editors that allow moving\narbitrary rectancular chunks of text in any direction.\n\nClassic example is TheDraw\n([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheDraw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheDraw))\nwhich dates from 1986.\n\n~~~\nbananaboy\nI used to use TheDraw all the time to make screens for games, my bbs, and just\ngeneral stuffing around! Is the author still around? Would love to send him a\nbelated registration fee!\n\n~~~\nmwest\nCouldn't find any social media links for them, but they are on LinkedIn if you\ndo a bit of Google searching.\n\n------\njrnichols\nI miss the old days of Usenet.\n\nwell, except the trolls and spam...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHarvard, Princeton Targeted in Asian Discrimination Probe - leelin\nhttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-02/harvard-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe.html\n======\nkandalf\nSAT scores are not a sufficient indicator for bias in college admissions.\nThere are two factors at work here:\n\n1\\. For elite colleges, specific SAT scores are irrelevant. Essentially, once\na certain cut-off is reached, say 2250, it doesn't matter how high you go. In\nfact, I'm sure admissions officers get a kick out of rejecting the 2400 - I'd\nrather have a 2380 than a 2400 any day. The variance in SAT scores over a\ncertain cutoff is simply not a good enough indicator for what the colleges are\nlooking for.\n\n2\\. In my experience, Asian families tend to place a disproportionate emphasis\non test scores and grades. This leads to higher than average SAT scores for\nAsian students, sometimes at the cost of other parts of the application\npackage.\n\nTaken together, I believe these two ideas contribute to a reasonable\nexplanation for the phenomenon discussed in the article.\n\nThis is not to say that admissions are not racially biased - I would not be at\nall surprised if they are.\n\n~~~\ngxs\nThis is exactly right. I completely detest knee-jerk reactions and blanket\nstatements that crop up instead of some good old fashioned critical thinking.\n\nI went to a school, a good school, that was predominantly asian in my\ndepartment. If admissions are racial for no other reason than to diversify the\nstudent body, this is a reasonable approach on its own - though I'm sure there\nare plenty of other more old-fashioned legitimately fashioned arguments.\n\nSo you had good grades but didn't get in because you are asian? Tough shit - a\nlot goes into creating a desirable incoming class than grades and standardized\ntest scores.\n\n~~~\nhartleybrody\nLove the \"a lot [more] goes into creating a desirable incoming class than\ngrades and standardized test scores\"\n\n------\npatio11\nWe will now see the same racial discrimination departments which filed court\nbriefs saying that race-neutral admissions policies would make them into Asian\nenclaves suddenly pretend to be shocked, shocked that anyone would suggest\nthey were anything but valiant upholders of equal opportunity.\n\nI'll refrain from opining on what the government will do, solely out of\nrespects for the HN politics rule.\n\n[Edit: One may think I am being unfair. Here, try reading Harvard's amici\nbrief. [http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/legal/gra_amicus-\nussc...](http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/legal/gra_amicus-\nussc/um/Harvard-both.pdf) ]\n\n~~~\nAlex3917\nOne of my favorite education quotes, supposedly from Larry Summers, comes from\nwhen he was asked about why it was that 60% of white students were jewish.\nSupposedly he responded that while there was no surefire way of getting into\nHarvard, it certainly helps to have every advantage one can get.\n\n------\nShenglong\nHave we considered, that maybe the reason Asians need higher entrance scores,\nis because they end to have the same qualifications?\n\nI'm going to be a little racist towards my own race here, and tell you what\nI've observed recently.\n\nMost Chinese Females... 1\\. Play piano and/or violin 2\\. Take pictures of food\n3\\. Probably applying to sciences\n\nMost Chinese Males... 1\\. Plays a racket sport - probably badminton (myself\nincluded) 2\\. Only works out upper body 3\\. Probably applying to engineering\n\nI never scored perfect SAT marks, and yet I still got my acceptances just\nfine, because I did so many things most Asians don't do. If the people doing\nthese assessments actually spent time at elite campuses, they would understand\nbetter.\n\nFiling a complaint for not being admitted with a 2400 SAT score is ridiculous.\nI wouldn't want that kind of person in my class, that's for sure.\n\n~~~\npradocchia\nSAT scores above a certain threshold can become a negative signal, if they\naren't paralleled by equally exceptional performance elsewhere. It suggests a\ncertain misallocation of effort. \"Why did this person spend all his time on\nthe tests?\"\n\n~~~\nkeyu\nIt is really ridiculous that in the US you think it is a fault if someone\nworks pretty hard in study.\n\n~~~\nDylan16807\nI did pretty well on the SAT and as far as I'm concerned studying for it is a\ngiant waste of time. Go out and learn something. Don't prep for a single test.\n\n------\ngrot\nThe thing is, admissions to elite universities is almost never about test\nscores. Immigrant parents from countries like China and India are used to test\nscores mattering a lot. In those countries, your absolute score on the\nNational Exam determines not only your placement into a university, but also\nwhat fields are available to you for study.\n\nThe SAT is nothing like that. If you walk into Harvard or Princeton, you'll\nfind that most of the kids got above 2300 on the SAT, and a ton had perfect\nscores. If you tried using the SAT to distinguish between members of the\nstudent body at either place, you would have little success. The admissions\ncommittee has the same problem, so, kids are not selected based on SATs. You\nget in because you're good, or at least, you show a lot of promise, not\nbecause you can study for a test.\n\nSo yeah, maybe asians have higher test scores as a cohort, but maybe they also\nhave less other things that are equally important -- sports, focus, passion,\nalumni connections, etc. These things count just as much in admissions\ndecisions.\n\nIt's possibly to argue that selecting for these things is inherently racist,\nbut I mean, what isn't? The SAT itself privileges a white collar suburban\neducation. Who's to say it's more valuable to be able to memorize vocab, or do\narithmetic than to run or paint?\n\n~~~\naeeeee\nI would say just because one culture is more inclined to sports and social\nactivities doesn't mean it is racist to use these things as a discriminating\nfactors. I don't think it's possible to argue that a selection criteria is\nracist unless the color of your skin is the sole discriminator.\n\n~~~\ntesseractive\nOn the other hand, it bears mentioning that you can be racist _in your choice\nof selection criteria_ , if you choose criteria based on their ability to\nproduce a certain racial outcome.\n\nThe use of a poll tax people have to pay in order to vote isn't racist _per\nse_ , but in the segregationist south, poll taxes were used as a mechanism to\nsuppress black votes because they knew (disproportionately poor) black people\nwould have a harder time paying it, and this use _was_ racist.\n\n------\nbilbo0s\nWow... I wonder what the Ivies would look like if admissions were 100% merit.\n\nNo legacies. I think there would be FAR fewer trust-funders.\n\nAnd MIT's 'Chocolate City'...pretty much gone.\n\nI suspect they would be very Asian places with a smattering of Jewish\nstudents. I think I can see why they would give ... say ... a Colorado snow\nboarder a few extra points. I think there is something that he brings to an\nIvy campus...though I can't quantify it.\n\n~~~\ngte910h\n>I wonder what the Ivies would look like if admissions were 100% merit.\n\nThe issue is \"how do you determine merit\".\n\n~~~\ngeogra4\nRight on. Merit is much more than SAT scores and GPA. It is, in fact, whatever\nthe school wants it to be.\n\n~~~\nvecter\nSurely merit does not include race?\n\n~~~\nhackinthebochs\nMerit can include a consideration of race. One factor of merit is being an\noutlier of your group. There are many ways to analyze a given population that\nreveals different clusters. Being an outlier of this cluster is a factor in\nmerit. The question is, is race a relevant dimension to consider? At face\nvalue, the answer is no. But in the US at least, race is a proxy to many other\nfactors that are extremely hard to quantify. These hard to quantify factors\nare relevant in determining who \"deserves\" a spot at your prestigious school.\nThus a consideration of race within specific contexts can be relevant, college\nadmissions being one of them.\n\n------\nhugh4life\nHere are my problems with Affirmative Action.\n\n1\\. Academic Mismatch - Those who benefited from AA often can't keep up. They\noften fall behind or transfer to an easier major.\n\n2\\. Cascading Academic Mismatch - This mismatch is replicated everywhere\nbecause the top academic tier recruits the top 'racial balancing' students\nfrom the tier below it.\n\n3\\. Academic Mismatch Semiotics - This mismatch encourages judging people by\ntheir race on campus. It breeds racial conflict(no matter how low level it may\nbe) and reduces solidarity between peoples on campus.\n\nRacial balancing and academic standards are at odds with each other. Schools\nthat value racial diversity should set their academic standards appropriately.\n\n~~~\nsetzer\nRespectfully, do you have any references regarding your first point?\n\n------\ntokenadult\nA very comprehensive FAQ on \"race\" and \"ethnicity\" as those categories apply\nto college admission in the United States can be found at\n\n[http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-\nadmissions/12282...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-\nadmissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html)\n\nThe FAQ links to the relevant federal regulations defining the categories, and\nto guides to admission professionals on how to apply the categories, and to\nadmissions statistics from a variety of colleges. Some colleges admit a\nsubstantial percentage of students who decline to self-report race or\nethnicity, as is the right of every United States college applicant. Harvard,\nfor example, has 12 percent of its currently enrolled undergraduates reported\nto the federal government as \"race/ethnicity unknown\"\n\n<http://members.ucan-network.org/harvard>\n\n(even though Harvard personally interviews essentially all of its\nundergraduate applicants) and another 10 percent of its enrolled\nundergraduates are international students, for whom race and ethnicity are not\nreported as a matter of federal regulation.\n\nIt will be interesting to see how this latest case turns out. As the submitted\narticle notes, \"While the Office for Civil Rights has the power to terminate\nfederal financial aid to colleges, it almost always negotiates agreements with\nschools on steps required for compliance, rather than taking enforcement\naction, the Education Department spokesman said.\"\n\n------\nyosho\nIsn't it pretty easy to determine if there is racial bias in admissions?\n\nIsn't the fact that Asians need to score a couple hundred points higher on SAT\nscore just to get admitted enough evidence that there is bias?\n\nCorrect me if I'm wrong, but at Berkeley where Race is not considered in\nadmissions, Asians comprise like 50% of the student body. I'm pretty sure\nyou'd see similar numbers at all the elite universities if race wasn't an\nissue.\n\n~~~\ncrazygringo\nNo, because SAT scores don't determine admissions. A schoolmate of mine with\nstraight A's who scored a perfect 1600 SAT was rejected from Harvard, because\nhe had essentially zero extracurriculars.\n\nSchools like Harvard and Princeton look both for well-rounded students\n(\"future leaders\" they call them), as well as diversity in their student body.\nThis means they won't accept, for example, 100 top violin players in the same\nclass, no matter how impressive their individual applications are. Instead,\nthey want a complete and balanced orchestra, for example.\n\nSo if, hypothetically, Asians tended to disproportionately cluster in the same\nextracurricular activities, or have less extracurricular activities, then\nthere would be a very valid non-race-based explanation for the SAT gap.\n\n~~~\naeeeee\n> 100 top violin players in the same class, no matter how impressive their\n> individual applications are. Instead, they want a complete and balanced\n> orchestra, for example.\n\nI agree that SAT scores shouldn't be the only factor, I disagree though if you\nare saying race can and should be factor. Where it's legal and appropriate to\ndiscriminate on say what instrument you play it is illegal (and most would\nagree immoral) to discriminate on race. Proving racial discrimination may be\ntricky in this case though.\n\n~~~\nneilc\n_it is illegal (and most would agree immoral) to discriminate on race_\n\nIt is actually not illegal to discriminate based on race in educational\nadmissions -- you just need to meet certain criteria (serve a \"compelling\ninterest\" and not use quotas) to be able to do so.\n\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger>\n\n<http://www.npr.org/news/specials/michigan/>\n\n------\nGiraffeNecktie\nAre the essays that some universities require there to offer a layer of\nplausible deniability (\"sure your marks were excellent but your essay somehow\ndidn't get us very excited\").\n\n~~~\nw1ntermute\nThat's exactly what Malcolm Gladwell suggests in this article:\n[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlar...](http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlarge?currentPage=all)\n\n------\nballoot\nThis article fails to mention that college admission is not based solely on\ntest scores. Many Asians are almost solely test-driven and tend to ignore the\nother aspects of a \"well-rounded\" eduction.\n\nI am sure if you looked at race-based stats on who played sports in high\nschool (as opposed to test scores like in the article), you would see that\nAsians are way behind in that particular metric.\n\nAnd while some may not think sports matter, colleges do. And it appears that\nthere is good reason for this, as sports teach leadership, teamwork, how to\nperform under pressure, etc.\n\nI would hope this lawsuit is thrown out, as this country really should not be\nencouraging \"tiger mom\" behavior as the right thing to do. Instead, if you\nwant your son to get into Harvard, stop making him study 15 hours a day and\nget him into extracurricular activities.\n\n~~~\nedwardy20\nNope, the article mentions that.\n\n\" _If all other credentials are equal_ , Asian-Americans need to score 140\npoints more than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and 450 points\nabove African-Americans out of a maximum 1600 on the math and reading SAT to\nhave the same chance of admission to a private college, according to “No\nLonger Separate, Not Yet Equal,” a 2009 book co-written by Princeton\nsociologist Thomas Espenshade.\"\n\n~~~\nballoot\nI would be interested to see their definition of \"all other credentials\nequal\". My assumption is that it is some very simplistic compilation of grades\nand test scores, because the article barely mentions any factors other than\nthese. Also, many of the things that drive college admission are not easy to\nobjectively compare - is a great cellist equal to an 3 sport letterman who was\nalso on student council? How does a rich kid whose parents send him to math\ncamp compare to a kid who had to work full time during the summer? And so on.\n\n------\ndgabriel\nLong ago, the valedictorian of my high school class (white, female), did not\nget into Brown, Harvard, MIT or Cornell, despite a stellar academic record and\nnear-perfect SAT scores. She wound up going to a state school. Another white\nfemale in my class got into three of those places, despite being below the top\n10%. Ivy admissions are entirely mysterious to me.\n\n~~~\nitg\nThe number of people with good academic records and top SAT scores outnumber\nthe total seats available at top schools. They also take into account extra-\ncirculars, leadership experience, and other activities. This prevents people\nfrom just studying for tests and thinking they have an automatic admission.\nPersonally, I'm glad they do or I imagine it would be a very dull environment\nif there was nothing but people with their head in the books all the time.\n\n~~~\nunavoidable\nThis pre-supposes that a lack of (\"stellar\") high school extracurriculars\ntranslates to a future lack of college extra-curriculars.\n\n~~~\npradocchia\nIt's not that, it's that those with perfect scores appear to be wasting their\ntalent on test taking. They'd prefer students who studied hard enough to get\ninto the 95% percentile, and then devoted the remainder of their efforts\nelsewhere. If you can do both, fine, but don't sacrifice everything for a few\nmore points on the SAT.\n\n------\nnandemo\nWhenever I read articles about the American university admission system, and\nthe ensuing discussions about them, I feel like Gulliver visiting a weird\ncountry.\n\nIt is so arcane and bizarre. If you want to major in CS or mathematics or\nengineering, who cares if you do ice skating or can play the tuba? And if\nyou're a tuba player who wants to major in music, what can be possibly be more\nimportant than your musical skills?\n\nEntrance examinations are like the democracy. They suck but they suck far less\nthan the existing alternatives.\n\nOf course, a lot of the top universities in the world are American; but I\nthink that's despite the admission system, not thanks to it.\n\n~~~\njinushaun\nBecause there is much more demand than supply in the US for a college\neducation. Going merit based is not that simple. If you have 1000 open seats\nat your school, 50,000 students apply and 1500 of them all have perfect SAT\nscores, how do you choose who gets in if it's entirely merit based. What makes\nthis perfect SAT score different from that equally perfect SAT score? If\neveryone looks the same on paper, you need something extra to stand out.\nThat's where extra-curricular activities come in.\n\nThe other issue is programs. If you're a school with 1000 open seats and 100\nof that is music, you're going to have to drop some very science-smart\nstudents to make room for music-smart students.\n\n------\nIrishsteve\nSeems to be a case of helicopter parents freaking out because their beloved\ndidn't get offers from the same universities as their neighbours.\n\nGood colleges look at how rounded a person is, standardised tests don't always\ncapture the high achievers.\n\n~~~\nQuizzal\nKeep in mind that truly sophisticated and informed \"helicopter\" parents know\nthat tests are not enough - they've done their research, they themselves have\nbeen through the system. As a matter of fact, the truly informed helicopter\nparents are engineering failure into their child as well in order make him\nstronger. Many are reading how Native Americans create emotional strength in\ntheir children; others research and study the biographies of great leaders,\ninvestigating what separates these leaders from those that failed.\n\n------\nhugh4life\n\"\"\"\" \"If all other credentials are equal, Asian-Americans need to score 140\npoints more than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and 450 points\nabove African-Americans out of a maximum 1600 on the math and reading SAT to\nhave the same chance of admission to a private college, according to “No\nLonger Separate, Not Yet Equal,” a 2009 book co-written by Princeton\nsociologist Thomas Espenshade. \"\"\"\"\n\nThe gap is nowhere near that large for Wisconsin-Madison or Duke which are\nrather selective institutions. I bet you're only going to get those kind of\ngaps at the Ivies and even then I'm very skeptical.\n\n------\nQuizzal\nWe should explore why some people deserve to enter Harvard/Stanford/etc. and\nwhy some don't? Part of the reason Harvard graduates are successful have\nlittle to do with merit and everything to do with being a \"Harvard Grad\", so\nit is a self-fulfilling prophecy in many ways. In other words, if we pulled 3\nsuper-hard working freshman from random state schools, and put them through\nHarvard, and follow them 10 years later, would it surprise anybody that they\nwould end up being successful? If so, what does it matter that their SATs\nsucked in the first place? Do they not deserve a shot at success as the next\nperson? So they scored \"only\" in the top 20%, because they were hard working\ndual athletes with a part time job helping out their single parent and no AP\nclasses, so what? Why should they not have the same shot at the Harvard\nlottery ticket as the kid who's fortunate enough to be born to a \"tiger\" Asian\nmother or well connected blue blood parents?\n\nIt's clearly a racket, this whole Ivy/Stanford system where grads from such\nschools receive the benefit of the doubt when it comes to employment.\n\nBy the way, I am such a tiger parent, and it's almost ridiculously pathetic to\ngame this system to a certain degree. Let's see, he is currently enjoying: 1\\.\nSummer computer camps 2\\. Singing/piano lessons + rock band camp in the summer\n3\\. Leadership/Scout programs 4\\. Private school education with very small\nteacher/student ratios 5\\. Competing on the swim team 6\\. Starting a recycling\nprogram at his school as his \"entrepreneurial project\" and writing a journal\nabout his experiences\n\nMost importantly, the above is very fun for him because he's allowed to enjoy\nthe moment after periods of incredibly hard work. And he just turned 8. The\nonly time he watches \"TV\" is Netflix on the iPad in the car while we shuttle\nhim between activities. This is the new normal, and what I'm doing is what all\nthe other Tiger parents are doing to create the \"balanced\" individual.\n\nYes, he goes to birthday parties, yes he has sleepovers, and yes he has lots\nof friends. But because he's having \"fun\", we are not pushing him 24/7 to be\nthe \"best\" in all these activities, but to simply do his best, as best as an 8\nyear old is expected to do. Nevertheless, I feel bad for the kids that do not\nhave such supportive parents with the resources to help their children in this\nway. My son does not deserve success any more than the next child, he's simply\nblessed that he was not born in the 'hood.\n\n------\nlobster45\nThis has been happening for at least 15 years. When I was in high school mid\n1990's we had several Asian students with over a 4.2 GPA that were not\naccepted to local universities such as UCLA. There was not a specific\nrejection reason related to race, however several students with a GPA around\n3.6 who were not Asian were accepted to UCLA.\n\n~~~\ntikhonj\nOne thing to keep in mind is that large schools like UCLA tend to have\ndifferent admissions policies for different colleges. So somebody interested\nin engineering would have a harder time getting into UCLA than somebody\ninterested in anything else.\n\nI don't know exactly how it works for UCLA, but for Berkeley the admissions\npercentage for the EECS program is much smaller than the general admissions\npercentage. So, even ignoring differences in the application pools, getting\ninto the EECS program is going to be much more difficult than getting into\nmost other programs. And if you don't get into the program you applied to, you\ndon't get in at all.\n\nSo perhaps the different students applied to different colleges at UCLA? I\nknow that from my high school, some fairly smart people didn't get in to\nBerkeley Engineering while some who weren't particularly gifted got into, say,\nthe College of Natural Resources. This was just a reflection of the different\nadmissions policies than any discrimination.\n\n------\nestevez\nI don't get it. Family income is a very strong (if not the best) predictor of\nSAT score. In this case, if you order each race by median income you get the\nexact same order as mean SAT score, Asian-American families with the highest\nmedian income and SAT, African-American families with the lowest.\n\n~~~\nrottencupcakes\nCorrelation does not imply causation.\n\nYou have, in fact, provided no proof that family income isn't ordered that way\nas a result of SAT scores.\n\n~~~\nfluidcruft\nCausation is irrelevant. The question is the extent to which SAT score and\nfamily income contain the same information.\n\n~~~\nlurker17\nCausation is measure of the extent to which they contain _different_\ninformation.\n\nAssuming a college wants to admit a student with high \"intelligence\" or\nintellectual potential, which cannot be measured directly.\n\nIf high income causes high SAT, and high intelligence also causes high SAT,\nthen (low income, high SAT) may well indicate much higher intellectual\npotential than (high income, high SAT)\n\nIf high income and SAT are both caused by high intelligence, then there is\nless (intelligence-related) reason to prefer (high income, low SAT) or (low\nincome, high SAT).\n\n------\nneilparikh\nPeople are pointing out the fact that Asians may not be getting in because\nthey are focused too much on their studies and do not spend enough time in\nextra-circulars. If that's the issue, why not remove the race category on the\nform? That way, it is completely merit-based. I don't the admissions officer\nneeds to see the race of the applicant to determine if he/she is interesting\nand has diverse extracurricular activities. The name could still hint at the\nrace, but it should be much fairer than currently.\n\n------\njuiceandjuice\nI'd like to see some numbers related more to where people applying/going to\nprestigious schools are actually from, and application density for a given\narea.\n\n------\nmhartl\n_The issue remains unresolved, said Stephen Hsu, a physics professor at the\nUniversity of Oregon who blogs about the admissions process.\n\n“The only way to answer these questions is to force these schools to open\ntheir data sets,” he said. “College admissions should be transparent.” _\n\nIf this every happens, heads will roll. Alas, Hell will freeze over first.\n\n------\neneveu\nGuess they should use \"Asian Problems\"?\n\n<http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556>\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3096793>\n\n------\ncarguy1983\nControversial topics like these usually have a core \"assumption\" that the\ndiscussions and arguments always circle around.\n\nThe un-stated assumption in this case is that Asians, are for the most part,\nnot well-rounded (and only focus on test scores), and hence, any reasonable\nadmissions process that favors well-roundedness will result in an\nunderstandable (obviously!) bias against Asians.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Where to find online mathematics community? - mcrwfrd\nAfter browsing HN for a couple of years, I&#x27;ve seen that a fair few members of this community have studied math at the post-secondary level. It&#x27;s not uncommon to see Ask HN posts about how to weave a mathematics background into a coding job or how to continue studying mathematics on one&#x27;s own.<p>I find myself in a similar position and have resolved that, at a bare minimum, I need to involve math in my life at least in a recreational way, if not in a professional way. Although this could be fun completely solo, I&#x27;d like to have like-minded people to talk to about this. Since my location is somewhat rural and because of COVID, I&#x27;d like to commune with other math people online.<p>For clarity, when I think about involving math in my life, I&#x27;m thinking about picking up where I left off with abstract algebra, real and complex analysis, and maybe some theoretic physics.<p>So HN, the question is, where are the other math lovers hanging out online?\n======\nakully\nI imagine you could roam around the subreddits and check out what's up.\n\nI also imagine that (at least this is my own thought) that you not only would\nbe interested in talking about math with others, but also talking with good\npeople that are easygoing, chill, etc.\n\nI went to undergrad in Math and believe me, it wasn't easy to find the \"right\ncrowd\" in my program.\n\n~~~\nmcrwfrd\n100%. You picked up on something that I thought about but didn’t write in the\npost in the end. All through undergrad I had one friend in my program who was\nlaid back but also interested in math. Trying to find more people like this. I\ndon’t imagine it has gotten much easier, but hoping that being online and not\nlimited by physical location would help.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: 25 days of procedural music experiments - fenomas\nhttp://aphall.com/2017/12/advent-of-procedural-music/\n======\nmundo\nNeat stuff! The gypsy jazz Zelda theme is really pretty on point. And the\n\"Take 5 drum solo\" really does sound like it could be just a chiptuned version\nof the Take 5 drum solo.\n\nI don't see a source link, but it'd be interesting to read about how it works,\ne.g. how the different tunes are different from each other (completely\ndifferent procedural code, or just different starting parameters?) and what\npackages you used and so forth.\n\n~~~\nfenomas\nThanks! The short version on the tech side is, it's all hand-written and very\nad-hoc. There is some mid-level code for managing patterns and notes that's\nreused across the demos, but the settings for how each instrument sounds, what\nkind of chord progressions to use, etc. is different for each demo.\n\nI didn't use any outside libraries, but I did package up the part of my code\nthat actually plays sounds as 'npm/soundgen' (but it's not documented at all\nyet..).\n\n------\ngus_massa\nI would add at least one of the sounds generator to the page you submitted. I\nhave no incentive to click any of the links.\n\nI clicked anyway :)\n\nI actually clicked the #1 (at the bottom) and it doesn't sound very good, but\nI think this is expected as a first version.\n\nThe last one #25 (at the top) is nice. Perhaps you should add both to the page\nso the readers can listen to the difference.\n\n[I'd like a bit more of information, like what are you adding in each step, or\nwhy are you adding it.]\n\n~~~\nfenomas\nThanks for the feedback. There is no particular pattern to the demos - I just\ntried to do something different each day for 25 days. So, some of them are\nchiptunes, some are ambient, some are gypsy jazz, etc.\n\nIn short it's the project page for a series of 25 separate experiments. I\nadded a tl;dr to the top that may make things clearer.\n\n~~~\ngus_massa\nWhich one is the best? (Or at least, which one is the one you prefer?)\n\nAdd at least one of them (the best one) to the main page! Is it too difficult?\nSorry for insisting, but I think that with at least one example the post will\nbe much more engaging.\n\n~~~\nfenomas\nMy favorites are the ones I linked in the tl;dr! :D I understand what you're\nsaying and I do appreciate the feedback, but this isn't really a living\nproduct page that I'm trying to make more compelling - it's just a collection\nof experiments I thought HN readers might be interested in.\n\nProbably it would be best if I resubmit this later as a \"text\" style\nsubmission, with a description that links directly to a few specific demos.\n\n~~~\ngus_massa\nWhat about a static image that has a \"|>\" button (like play) and link to your\nfavorite sample?\n\nSomething like: [https://imgur.com/a/QpNxE](https://imgur.com/a/QpNxE) (5\nminute graphic, sorry, with more time you can make something better but I hope\nit's enough to understand my idea)\n\nIn case this is resubmitted by someone later, or posted in reddit or other\naggregator, it would be nice to have an easier way to discover the content. I\nunderstand that this is not the main project, but a more friendly page will\nget you more unuseful internet points, and perhaps too many visit to break\nyour server. You will not get money, but at least a tiny amount of\nrecognition.\n\nAnyway, if someday you decide to make a post with more technical information\nabout how you wrote them, I'd like to read it. (both the programing part\nand/or the music part).\n\n------\nfenomas\nProcedural music seems to show up a fair amount on HN, so I thought folks\nmight like this.\n\nOf possible interest - none of the demos use any audio samples. All the sounds\nare being generated from scratch out of oscillators, noise buffers, and so on.\n\nEnjoy!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: SheetDB – Connect Remote SQL Database with Google Sheet - zhuxuefeng1994\nhttps://github.com/Xuefeng-Zhu/SheetDB\n======\nkevin\nIs something like this always just a hack/shortcut or are there people who\nwant this as their ideal workflow? I'm curious because I see stuff like this\nall the time being submitted to YC.\n\nFor example, is this for IT / DBAs that need to gather info for data analysts,\nmarketers and sales people? Are there many people in that position and what\nwould the ideal flow look like? I can see startups and small companies willing\nto use this as a stopgap, but I couldn't imagine larger customers/companies\nwilling to use something like this.\n\nThis isn't to say I don't know why this was built. The same forces are what\ndrove us to build Wufoo. We were tired of building these tedious data\ncollection apps. The DIY builder was out of laziness on our part.\n\nBut when it comes to accessing existing data, there's so many concerns about\nsecurity and privacy that I worry an idea like this will always be limited in\nterms of adoption.\n\nIf people think differently, I would love to know.\n\n------\nkevin\nOh, and you should add PostgreSQL support. Maybe it's already supported, but I\ndidn't see it explicitly listed.\n\n~~~\nzhuxuefeng1994\nI am using the JDBC built into Google App API. Based on latest, it has not\nsupport PostgreSQL yet.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat career should I choose? - arikr\nhttps://www.quora.com/What-career-should-I-choose-4/answer/Auren-Hoffman?share=1\n======\nspicyusername\nMany of the best careers are ones that have a fairly high degree of\nspecialization and an official and well recognized track for certification.\n\nGrind hard to meet all of the official certification requirements and do your\nbest to immerse yourself in the body of knowledge. Usually this results in a\nlong career full of flexibility and good pay.\n\nExamples: Actuaries. Consultants. Lawyers. Professional Engineers (Civil,\nMechanical, etc). Auto Mechanics. Paramedic.\n\nThere are tons of them off the beaten path if you look for recognized\ncertifications.\n\nAlso look for quality of life not prestige. There are plenty of great \"blue\ncollar\" positions with good pay and work life balance.\n\n------\npurplezooey\n_Your career should be dependent on the timescale that you operate best in._\n\nWhat about the hiring market that pays you best in\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWelders set off Beirut blast while securing explosives - tafda\nhttps://www.maritime-executive.com/article/report-welders-set-off-the-beirut-blast-while-securing-explosives\n======\nGerardd\nWe were 600 meters away from the blast walking peacefully in the popular\nBeirut street Mar Mikhael. The scale of the explosion was surreal [1]. I\nhugged my sister and thought it’s our last moment. We miraculously survived\nwith only a few scratches. Ten days have passed and there’s not a single\nminute I don’t think of what happened and emulate different scenarios where I\ncould’ve died. I also work at the most affected hospital that became instantly\nnon-operational and had to be evacuated with over 17 patients, staff, and\nvisitors dead [2].\n\nPlease consider donating [3].\n\n[1] [https://youtu.be/SkIYjNGiaoA](https://youtu.be/SkIYjNGiaoA)\n\n[2] [https://youtu.be/JIxuwE_WPXw](https://youtu.be/JIxuwE_WPXw)\n\n[3] [https://www.stgeorgehospital.org/stgeorge-\ndonation](https://www.stgeorgehospital.org/stgeorge-donation)\n\n~~~\nTeknoman117\nI had a similar personal reaction after getting into a high speed car crash\n(mechanical failure of my car, while traveling at 70 mph on the highway.\nEntered a spin, slid off the road, did at least one complete roll). 8 years\nlater, I still sometimes think of all the ways the crash could have gone\ndifferently that would have resulted in my death.\n\nIf I was going a little faster, my car could have ended up in the irrigation\nditch and caused me to drown. The 220 lb combat robot in the trunk it could\nhave killed me during the tumble (it tore through its straps and ripped\nthrough the back seats into the car). If I had a passenger, the only part of\nthe roof that wasn't crushed in was the driver. A passenger could've easily\nbeen killed.\n\nThe result was a few superficial injuries (bruises from seatbelt and airbag\nsystem). Unscathed otherwise. Woke up thinking the car was on fire (was smoke\nfrom airbag) and crawled out. Walked down the street to find my phone (it was\nin my backpack which flew out a window during the crash) and called for an\nambulance.\n\nThese are natural human reactions, but the sad truth is that many of the\nthings in our lives come down to luck. You can only do so much to make your\nenvironment safer. I, for one, have never transported another one of those\ncombat robots inside my vehicle.\n\nedit - 220 pound combat robot, not 300.\n\n~~~\nkhazhoux\nMorbid thought: Google Street View right now almost certainly has a 360\npanorama of the location of your death. An intersection, a highway, a\nhospital, somewhere. That panorama will someday be filled with sadness for\nyour loved ones. But you don't get to know its coordinates just yet.\n\n~~~\nBalgair\n2005's _Lord of War_ , staring Nick Cage and Jared Leto, has a great quote\nsimilar to this. I'll bungle it, because I can't find the exact line but it\ngoes like:\n\n\"Yuri, every single person has a bullet waiting for them; trying to find them.\nThe trick to life, Yuri? Before that bullet finds you, find a way to die.\"\n\nThe opening sequence to that film is also superb film-making. A set-up, a mid\npoint, and a twist ending, all in three minutes:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LUEiKs2UAo&feature=emb_titl...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LUEiKs2UAo&feature=emb_title)\n\n~~~\nkhazhoux\nTip: Announcing a twist ending ruins it.\n\n~~~\njdub\nIt's a twist ending to _the first five minutes_ of the film.\n\n~~~\nkhazhoux\nStill. I watched the 5-minute clip just expecting \"the twist\". Then when it\nhappened, it had less impact because I was anticipating something different or\n\"twistier\". Had OP not announced the twist, that last shot might have actually\nsurprised me.\n\n------\nformalsystem\nLebanese here\n\nFocusing on the direct cause of the blast is a huge distraction from\nunderstanding why the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate were stored in the middle\nof Beirut for 7 years.\n\nThe president Aoun and his senior leadership were all aware of this problem\nbut said they didn't have the authority to do anything about it. IMO, this is\na hilariously bad argument that's deflecting who the most likely owner is.\nAoun and his lackeys apparently have the authority to start a state of\nemergency and shoot protesters but don't have any such authority to prevent\nhalf of Beirut from being nuked.\n\nThe director of the Beirut port Badri Daher has been running bazaar ever since\nhe's been in that position, regularly stealing supplies from shipments, suing\nreporters for defamation and beating up investigative journalists. The port\ndirector also reports to the Amal party which is closely allied to Aouns.\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\n2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in the same building, next to a cache of\nfireworks, mind you. Corruption plays a part, but I'm astonished by the\nincompetence that's usually going hand in hand with the corruption. I'm\nsurprised a catastrophe took 7 years to happen. You simply do not store that\nmuch fertilizer in a single place.\n\nAnd Brazil (Brazilian here) sent a diplomatic mission to help. It's lead by\nour very own Badri Daher, the previous vice president who threw a coup against\nthe previous president.\n\n~~~\nstingraycharles\nPerhaps an interesting datapoint from a Western government, a similar disaster\nhappened in The Netherlands in the year 2000. 177 tones of firework were\nstored in a single building in the middle of a residential area.\n\nThe results were pretty much what you’d expect.\n\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enschede_fireworks_disaster](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enschede_fireworks_disaster)\n\n~~~\nGys\n> Prior to the disaster it had a good safety record and met all safety audits.\n\nAt least one thing that differs from Beirut\n\n~~~\nScoundreller\nThough...\n\n> When it was built in 1977, the warehouse was outside the town, but as new\n> residential areas were built it became surrounded by low-income housing\n\nand\n\n> However, the illegal use of shipping containers reduced safety\n\nNetherlands starting to sound like Lebanon\n\n~~~\nfuzzfactor\nThere's a whole magazine about things like this.\n\nIn previous decades they had feature articles and a few pages of fine print\nwith a couple sentences about each reported incident large or small.\nFortunately most were not fatalities but were kind of grim like obituaries\nanyway.\n\n_Man checks oil tank with lighter and lives._\n\nNow it looks like their website is mainly an incident log:\n\n[https://www.industrialfireworld.com/567881/hydrotreater-\nfire...](https://www.industrialfireworld.com/567881/hydrotreater-fire-breaks-\nout-at-houston-refinery)\n\nThis linked event was last week when I was actually driving through the\nmassive tank farm of this old refinery which extends to both sides of a state\nhighway which has always cut through.\n\nI wondered what that smoke was.\n\n~~~\nScoundreller\nYou might like these videos by the US Chemical Safety Board:\n[https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB](https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB)\n\n------\njacquesm\nWelding, roof work, grinding. Those three are responsible for a good chunk of\nall fires. I've done quite a bit of all three and have to confess that once or\ntwice I was lucky rather than smart to have no bad effects from a _very_ small\nmistake. When grinding, all it takes is a rag used to degrease something days\nbefore at 30' to set it on fire. When welding you _really_ want to keep a very\ngood idea of what is on the other side of your weld at all times. Surprise: a\nbox member of a car filled with PU foam. I really never saw that one coming.\nAnd finally, when working on a roof a friend of mine did not properly\ncalculate in the effect of an exothermic reaction in a vat of resin exposed to\nthe sun. Close call that one, averted by denying oxygen to the already burning\nvat.\n\nThis one is on a completely different level though, and I'm sure that the\nwelders did not live to tell the tale. Even so, before you go and claim they\nwere stupid you have to take into account that this is Beirut, not exactly a\nplace where the local OHSA is going to beat down the doors to ensure\neverything is done safely and by the book, that in a harbor there are always\nlots of dangerous things in close proximity and that they may have taken all\npossible precautions and still ended up drawing an unlucky card.\n\nIt _really_ doesn't take much.\n\n~~~\nmindcrime\n_It really doesn 't take much._\n\nIt really doesn't. You don't even need a grinder. Oily rags can ignite\nspontaneously. People usually laugh at the phrase \"spontaneous combustion\"\nbecause it's so often associated with \"spontaneous human combustion.\" But\nactual \"spontaneous combustion\" does happen in certain (not uncommon)\ncircumstances. See: [https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/Public-\nEducation/Resource...](https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/Public-\nEducation/Resources/Safety-tip-sheets/OilyRagsSafetyTips.ashx)\n\nAnd what makes things even scarier, is realizing that buildings, ships, etc.\nthat are either under construction or undergoing maintenance are more \"at\nrisk\" because alarm systems, automatic fire suppression systems (eg,\nsprinklers), etc. are often times not in place yet, or disabled, while work is\ngoing on.\n\nThis is one reason it's so common to see a building complex that is under\nconstruction burn to the dirt if it catches fire, as opposed to a finished\nbuilding where you might get a \"room and contents\" fire. No sheetrock, just\nmiles and miles of exposed wood, no sprinklers, no alarm - recipe for\ndisaster.\n\n~~~\ndjmips\nAnd it makes me think of fires caused by accidental optical focusing of the\nsun such as a polished metal dog bowl as one odd example and others such as\nhanging glass artwork.\n\n~~~\nchasd00\na buddy of mine is an architect. he wants to design a building with a concave\nfacade such that when the sun is just right it produces basically a death ray.\n\"imagine you're sitting in your office, causally glance out the window, and\nsee a bird explode for seemingly no reason... \" heh\n\n~~~\nlongwave\nThe Walkie Talkie building in London has already achieved this:\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_Fenchurch_Street#Solar_gl...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_Fenchurch_Street#Solar_glare_problem)\n\n------\nrectang\nIf the conclusion you reach is that welders should be scapegoated for blowing\nup Beirut, then you are either corrupt or cretinous.\n\nThe real question is, why were the explosives there?\n\nBut pursuing that question might make powerful people uncomfortable, or lead\nto less satisfying conclusions about institutions deliberately designed to\ndisperse accountability.\n\n~~~\nMattGaiser\n> The real question is, why were the explosives there?\n\nIn a highly structured and rule driven entity (government) what happens when a\nproblem falls outside the set up structure?\n\nIt tends to be ignored as nobody is responsible for dealing with it.\n\n~~~\nrectang\nI've read numerous articles and although it seems lots of people knew the\nsituation was dangerous and lots of letters flew back and forth, I'm _still_\nnot clear on who had jurisdiction or failed to take action. The Port\nAuthority? The courts? The Army? The General Directorate of State Security?\n\nThis Reuters article is maddening, but it hits much closer to the truth than\nall the pointless \"welding is dangerous\" threads going on right now around us:\n\n[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-\ndo...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-documents-\nexcl/exclusive-lebanons-leaders-warned-in-july-about-explosives-at-port-\ndocuments-idUSKCN2562L7)\n\nThe hypothesis I tend to reach for is a general lack of \"good government\",\noriginating because the factional tension in Lebanon completely overshadows\nany other political differentiation. The factions can't compete on competence\nbecause votes are locked in by group identity.\n\n~~~\nTheSpiceIsLife\nIn an advanced country with a modern legal system, like, say, Australia, the\nanswer to your question is:\n\nEvery single person who knew the dangers is personally liable for up to\n$50,000 for an individual, if I recall correctly.\n\nAnd for industrial manslaughter the maximum penalty is 20 years jail and AU$10\nmillion for a business operator:\n\n[https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/business-\nfine...](https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/business-\nfined-3m-under-new-industrial-manslaughter-laws-20200611-p551mp)\n\n~~~\nbjowen\nThe concentration camps aren’t a mark of the effectiveness of the legal system\nso much as one of the political system - as inexcusable as they are, the\ncountry still manages to have mechanisms of state to administer airspace,\nhealth and safety and so on.\n\nBut those institutions are fragile, especially when they're exposed to the\npolitical system (robodebt and the Murray-Darling authority spring to mind)\nbut it’s also possible for dangerous situations to evolve in pretty well-\ndefined regulatory frameworks. There’s a bunch of case law around situations\nsuch as buildings that failed inspections under one code or another, then\ncaught fire and destroyed neighbouring property before the compliance deadline\nhad elapsed. Common law negligence is there to catch these sorts of cases, but\nit’s much more of a way to assign liability than to guide behaviour.\n\nI haven’t followed the West Footscray fire from a couple of years ago, but it\ndefinitely had the signs of something that slipped through the cracks between\nregulations, which leaves it a matter of luck that it wasn’t something super\nduper toxic, explosive, or flammable and under pressure.\n\n------\nmabbo\n> Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been\n> stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache.\n\nThat sentence is nearly unbelievable, like something from a cartoon show. How\nmuch incompetence can you layer upon further incompetence to reach this insane\nlevel of danger?\n\n~~~\ndevwastaken\nThe CSB has a number of YouTube videos detailing how industrial accidents\nhappen, and it's almost always flame, sparks, gasses, corrosion, and a fuel\nsource.\n\nNobody is going to get paid for being safe, few care about learning it,fewer\nare going to get paid teaching it, and few are going to be listened to.\n\nThe \"safe guy\" is going to be the butt end of the jobs because they cost more,\nget it done slower, and aren't going to work on unsafe places. It's all about\nget it done and if someone dies that's the cost of doing business and that's\non the worker.\n\n~~~\nbootlooped\nI worked in a factory where some other employees seemed to view safety as\nsomething that is in direct opposition to masculinity. So that's another\nfactor that contributes to it.\n\n------\nJohnny555\n_Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been\nstored next to the ammonium nitrate cache._\n\nSeems a little unfair to blame this solely on welders -- the root cause was\nwhoever decided it was a good idea to store 2700 tons of explosive fertilizer\nso close to a city.\n\nSecondary is whoever decided it was a good idea to store fireworks in the\nwarehouse that stored this explosive fertilizer.\n\nLast on the list is the welders that were told to work on this door near the\nfireworks and fertilizer.\n\n~~~\ntim333\n>explosive fertilizer\n\nSeems it may have been made for use as a straight explosive rather than\nfertilizer:\n[https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/12907955327014256...](https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/1290795532701425664)\n\n~~~\nazernik\nNote that this is specifically in a form factor made for mining explosives\n(i.e. to be mixed with oil at the worksite to make ANFO) - not necessarily\nvery convenient for military use.\n\n------\nFillardMillmore\nI don't understand why they'd store a cache of fireworks next to a cache of\nammonium nitrate. And what kind of rent-a-welder wouldn't be aware enough of\ntheir surroundings and the associated risks that they wouldn't properly secure\nthe perimeter from sparks?\n\nI'm not the conspiratorial type, but it really does seem like there's some\nother information that we're not getting.\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\n\"People did something dumb\" hardly requires a conspiracy.\n\n~~~\ndatameta\nAs the saying goes: Don't attritubute to malice that which could easily be\nattributed to stupidity\n\n~~~\ndanesparza\nAlso known as \"Hanlon's razor\" :-)\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor)\n\n------\nDC-3\nThe first frame of that 1st video when the explosion hits is morbidly\nfascinating. The image looks almost as if it is pieced together from torn\npaper.\n\n[https://i.imgur.com/1GkJgxt.png](https://i.imgur.com/1GkJgxt.png)\n\n~~~\ngnulinux\nIs this because shock wave compresses air and makes it refractive like water\nso it almost looks like there is a water droplet where the explosion\noriginates?\n\n~~~\nDC-3\nThat feels plausible. I think the effect of shock on the camera sensor also\nplays a part.\n\n~~~\n_ph_\nThis looks like an early frame, a couple of seconds before the shock wave\nreaches the camera. That is why there are so many clear videos, as it takes a\nwhile for the shock wave to reach the observers - if you are 3 kilometers\naway, you have 10 seconds to watch the explosion, before it hits you.\n\nCamera sensors should also not generate artifacts due to shock, unless they\nfail. But what is possible, that very fast moving subjects create artifacts in\nthe image due to the limited shutter speed.\n\n------\nrmason\nI worked in the fertilizer business and my company sold ammonium nitrate to\nfarmers, mostly for use on potatoes. You need to use extreme care with this\nfertilizer.\n\nNo one could purchase it (even before Oklahoma City) without us knowing them.\nAfter Oklahoma City some TV stations in Grand Rapids sent reporters undercover\ntrying to make purchases and they failed.\n\nYou need either dynamite or a substantial amount of heat to cause ammonium\nnitrate to explode. My boss tried to create a farm pond with it and his\ninitial attempt failed. He failed to use enough dynamite ;<).\n\nPersonally I'd nominate the Beirut Port Authority for a Darwin award. Without\nthe fireworks being stored in the building the welders sparks wouldn't have\ncaused the explosion.\n\n------\nmyth_buster\n> the port sent a team of Syrian workers to fix the warehouse\n\nWelder's nationality doesn't seem to me a relevant info to be included in a\npostmortem.\n\n~~~\nkeenmaster\nWe haven’t been told the race of the person who ordered the welding, the race\nof the judge who ordered that the nitrate stay on the port, the race of the\npeople who put fireworks next to thousands of tons of highly explosive\nmaterial in a dense city, etc...\n\nSomeone is trying to make Syrian refugees into Girardian black sheep. This\nwouldn't be the first time. The irony is that Bashar Al Assad used nitrate-\nfilled barrel bombs to decimate the Syrian people, and he is supported by\nHezbollah and Iran, which have a huge influence in Lebanon. Their influence\ncannot be separated from the incompetence and corruption that led to the\nblast.\n\nHere's the really crazy part: some people are saying that a lot of the nitrate\nwhich was originally stored must have been smuggled out, because otherwise the\nblast would have been larger. If true, it wouldn't be surprising that the\nnitrate was smuggled for Assad to use in barrel bombs.\n\nHere's a list of barrel bombs dropped by the Syrian Air Force. That's a lot of\nnitrate...:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_Civil_War_barre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_Civil_War_barrel_bomb_attacks)\n\n~~~\nkamel3d\njust a correction Syrian is not a race Lebanese and Syrians or Jordanians are\nall arabs but you find different beleafe groups there, christians muslims\n(Shia and sunni and...) and more but most of them are Arabs if not all\n\n------\ntunesmith\nWelders next to fireworks next to ammonium nitrate\n\n~~~\nfrankhhhhhhhhh\nReads like a cartoon to me.\n\n------\nazureel\nI think the main issue here is: budget.\n\nLebanon is in severe economic crisis. And that effects everything, especially\ngovernment spending.\n\nYou say, \"a demo expert should oversee storage of these stuff appropriately\",\nwell that means hiring an expert. Or \"use a professional repair crew\"; that\nmeans protective gear, removal of explosives around, special cold-welding\nequipment; and all these require budget.\n\nHiring 2 immigrant welders for a week = 200 dollars (and I’m being extremely\ngenerous here). Versus taking all the security measures and use protective\ngear to do things right = 20.000 dollars.\n\nI believe there are more and more bad things on the way for Lebanon. A major\nelectricity outage, or a leak in a chemical plant, or a bridge collapsing...\nAll due to maintenance problems, might be just around the corner.\n\n~~~\nronyfadel\nAN has been stored since 2013, economic crisis hit in late 2019. 20,000\ndollars is nothing for the port authority, and the cost of storing the 2755\ntons of AN in prime commercial real estate (Beirut port) is much higher to the\ncost of disposing it. The issue is corruption, ignorance, apathy, lack of good\ngovernance.\n\n------\nduxup\nWho organizes these welders?\n\nWhose job is it to check the site come up with a safe plan where / before the\nwelders work?\n\nMaybe the welders should have known better, but there needs to be more between\ntotal disaster and welding than just some guys with welding tools who probably\nhave little power to say no without consequences ...\n\n~~~\nthrowaway0a5e\n>Who organizes these welders?\n\n>Whose job is it to check the site come up with a safe plan where / before the\nwelders work?\n\nNobody does any of that. It's not a rich country. They simply can't afford\nthat kind of overhead. Sure the welders could but they can't/won't do that if\nthe rest of the economy/society normalizes it and normalizing that and the\nwhole economy can't afford that. It sucks but that's just how it works. You\ngotta get rich before you can afford to care about worker safety and the\nenvironment. (Obviously it's not a hard cutoff, as you get richer you care\nmore about each).\n\nImagine the state of workplace safety in the US but in the 1950s. That's where\nthey are right now.\n\n------\nhprotagonist\nWelding without sufficient care can cause a _lot_ of trouble.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Boston_Brownstone_fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Boston_Brownstone_fire)\nI hadn't seen a fire go to 9 alarms before this one.\n\n~~~\npixl97\nReally the welding was the thing that matters least in this case. The\nenvironment that was created was so incredibly dangerous, so incredibly\nnegligent that practically anything involving a spark would have caused this\nincident.\n\nFireworks near AN? Why not play Russian roulette with a single shot.\n\nStoring AN for 6 years? Madness.\n\n~~~\nashtonkem\nWhen storing 2,750 tons of AN inappropriately near other flammable materials,\nthe question isn’t “why did it explode”, the question is “why didn’t it\nexplode for 6 years?”\n\nThis was bound to be the outcome eventually until someone got around to\nactually storing that stuff correctly. It seems a small batch of welders just\nfinally drew the short straw.\n\n------\nfhub\nI think many people are picturing the firework fuse getting ignited by a\nspark. But it seems more plausible that the packaging/box caught fire igniting\nthe fireworks inside. Perhaps the packing/boxes obscured the contents of the\nboxes.\n\n------\nSkyMarshal\n_> Sparks from [the repair team's] welding work ignited a supply of fireworks,\nwhich had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache._\n\nOh wow, I was wondering what the white-ish sparkles were just prior to the\nexplosion. It was the fireworks cache going off, which then ignited the 2750\ntons of Ammonium Nitrate.\n\nThat's an immense amount of Ammonium Nitrate. I suspect one outcome of this\nwill be a new ordinance/law will that disallow such large caches of explosive\nmaterial from being stored in the same place. Rather it will have to be\ndivvied up and distributed to holding facilities out of blast range of each\nother.\n\n------\nbichiliad\nI’m having a hard time evaluating the credibility of this article. They\nmention “multiple sources,” but I can’t find any references. Can anyone find\nanything that vouches for the credibility of this report?\n\n~~~\nsumedh\nMaybe the source(s) want to remain confidential?\n\n~~~\nbichiliad\nPossibly, but I’m surprised that this is the publication they’d choose to\ndisclose such high-value information to.\n\n------\nchromaton\nOne thing I haven't heard about yet: who was paying for all that prime\nwarehouse storage space all these years?\n\n------\ndeadalus\nArchives :\n\n[https://archive.is/vSiKi](https://archive.is/vSiKi)\n\nand\n\n[https://web.archive.org/web/20200814174018/https://www.marit...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200814174018/https://www.maritime-\nexecutive.com/article/report-welders-set-off-the-beirut-blast-while-securing-\nexplosives)\n\n~~~\nllacb47\n[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.maritime-\nexecutive.com/article/report-welders-set-off-the-beirut-blast-while-securing-\nexplosives)\n\n------\nmatt-attack\nCan someone explain the “heat wave”-like distortion that the camera briefly\nexperiences well before the blast wave seems to reach the building. How could\nan atmospheric effect make it to the camera at two different speeds?\n\nNot to be callous to the incredible tragedy at play, but I simply find this\nvideo to be mesmerizing in its quality and potency.\n\nIn America we’re born and raised on countless explosions in pop culture\nwhether it’s a Hollywood or gaming. They’re to the point of being so utterly\nmundane that it’s rare for Hollywood to wow an audience with a mere explosion\nanymore (though I could certainly name some memorable ones from over the\nyears). We all now _think_ we know what they look like in urban environments,\nand have for the last 30 years of high quality special effects. But. This\nvideo is real. And the details and nuances at play have simply never been\ndepicted in film or tv before. To see the physics at play is simply mind\nboggling to me. I’d love to read a frame by frame account by a true expert of\nthis 4K video.\n\n~~~\njiggawatts\nI'm not sure which video you're referring to, but there are several things at\nplay that can cause visual effects like you described.\n\n1) The seismic wave travels through the ground much faster than the shockwave\nin the air, and will rattle the camera. Cameras with anti-shake technology\nwill try to compensate, often badly, resulting in smeared or blurred images.\n\n2) The visible expanding shell of vapor is not the shockwave, it is caused by\ncondensation in the low pressure zone _behind_ the shockwave. The shockwave\nitself is harder to see, but it is still visible as a distortion or slight\nblurring.\n\n------\npizza234\nThere's something I don't get in this story.\n\nBased on Wikipedia/Aljazeera:\n\n    \n    \n      Customs officials had sent letters to judges requesting a resolution to the issu\n      e of the confiscated cargo, proposing that the ammonium nitrate be either export\n      ed, given to the army, or sold to the private Lebanese Explosives Company. Lette\n      rs had been sent on [...]. One of the letters sent in 2016 noted that judges had\n      not replied to previous requests\n    \n\nHave the authorities been so indolent that they avoided \"doing some\npaperwork\", and indirectly causing a catastrophe, or the proposal of selling\nthe material was not realistic?\n\n------\nghastmaster\nI ran across the image in this tweet of work being done on the door to the\nwarehouse a couple hours after the blast. I presumed there was welding going\non and this set off the fireworks which led to the blast. It amazes me how\nmuch information can be gathered in such a short time compared to just twenty\nyears ago. The internet is wonderful.\n[https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1290782284686266372](https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1290782284686266372)\n\nThe repairs in the image are probably not the repair that caused the blast.\nThat was my thought process though.\n\n------\nChrisMarshallNY\n_> a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate\ncache._\n\nWow.\n\n~~~\ntechsin101\nwelding next to fireworks which is next to ammonium\n\n------\nerie\nThe reason that ship came to Beirut after all is very weird, there is\nreportedly a mysterious businessman who pretended that there was another\nshipment going to Jordan, that the ship could pick up on its way that would\nthe ship owner who was unable to pay its crew, to get some money, but it\nturned out it was a ploy to lure the ship and take its AN shipment as a\ncompensation for an old debt between that mystery businessman with the owner\naccording to the marine agent.\n\n------\nhourislate\nIt's incredible that 4Chan had a thread with pictures of a 3 men working on\ndoors to the warehouse. They were welding them.\n\nThis was within 24 hours of the explosion. Was going to post it here but then\ndon't really think this board would appreciate 4chan threads...\n\nPicture...\n\n[https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1596600309252.jpg](https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1596600309252.jpg)\n\n------\ndavidgerard\nReblog of original Reuters article from three days ago:\n[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-\ndo...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-documents-\nexcl/exclusive-lebanons-leaders-warned-in-july-about-explosives-at-port-\ndocuments-idUSKCN2562L7)\n\n------\nineedasername\nWow, welding next to a firework cache stored next to highly explosive\nchemicals, a situation known about for years. There's really no need to appeal\nto the swiss cheese model here. This was not a series of otherwise low-risk\nevents that came together at the wrong time. This was... I don't know,\nsomething like the opposite of that.\n\n------\naaron695\nHN's hive mind will never get it but if it interests you here's a great write\nup of how this happened in Texas, deals with some of the government processes\nand creep too -\n\n[https://youtu.be/pdDuHxwD5R4](https://youtu.be/pdDuHxwD5R4)\n\nCBS is a great resource that should be shown in high schools.\n\n------\nLatteLazy\nScarey that a judge ordered the detention of this material and kept it and\nkept it in a populated area for years despite multiple regular objections...\n\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions)\n\n------\nllacb47\n[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.maritime-\nexecutive.com/article/report-welders-set-off-the-beirut-blast-while-securing-\nexplosives)\n\n------\nLatteLazy\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions)\n\nInteresting history on why there explosives were stored in the port in the\nfirst place...\n\n------\ndboreham\nRight up there with \"checking if there's a gas leak with a candle\".\n\n~~~\nmyself248\nThere once was a gas-man named Peter\n\nOn a dark night, asearch for the meter\n\nTouched a leak with his light\n\nHe arose out of sight\n\nAnd as anyone can tell by reading this, he also completely destroyed the\nmeter.\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nI love the description, welders working over a pile of fireworks stored next\nto a ginormous pile of Ammonium Nitrate.\n\nSo in many ways it really was a bomb, but one constructed by circumstance\nrather than intent.\n\n------\nsradman\nI noted the maintenance connection in a CNN article about a week ago on HN\n[1]. This “report” seems to skip the fire stage and the reports that fire\nfighters were on site and noted the oddity of the fire.\n\n> Maintenance was conducted on the warehouse door just hours before the blast\n> on Tuesday, he added.\n\nThis looks like a key piece of evidence. Warehouse door maintenance could have\ncaused the fire seen at the start of the videos of the incident.\n\nUntil more evidence is revealed I think “warehouse with 2750 tons of ammonium\nnitrate caught fire” is a good hypothesis.\n\nCoulda, shoulda, and speculating about motivations can come later.\n\n[1]\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069640)\n\n------\njbirer\nI call bad attempt at cover-up. The government is trying to redirect the anger\nto \"welders\" because there is growing anger towards the ruling class.\n\n------\ndoggydogs94\nHezbollah does a pretty good job of staying out of the line of fire; even\nthough I am sure they have helped themselves to some of the AN from time to\ntime.\n\n------\nshrimpx\nThey store a pile of fireworks next to 2700 tons of explosive materials, then\nthey send in people to make sparks right next to the fireworks.\n\n------\numvi\nSeems like hot work causes lots of accidents.\n\n[https://youtu.be/zWkcuR0adeI](https://youtu.be/zWkcuR0adeI)\n\n~~~\nmyself248\nI would say, hot work reveals unsafe situations.\n\nUnsafe situations cause lots of accidents.\n\n------\ncoretx\nThis story stinks because;\n\n-1- When you try to \"weld\" AN, it deflagrates at best.\n\n-2- There where 2 explosions to be heard and seen. First subsonic, followed by a supersonic one relatively much later. |\n\n-3-In order to detonate, not deflagrate AN, it needs to build up pressure.\n\n-4- When either a fireworks or AN storage facility is on fire; the first thing you do did not happen.\n\n-5- The explosion radius does not correspond to the presented narrative.\n\n-6- The measured earthquake does not correspond to the presented narrative.\n\nI can't tell you what did happen, but I can say we're all eating bullshit.\n\n------\nTwoBit\n> \"May God protect Lebanon\"\n\nWell there's your problem mr. government official. You thought God was going\nto do your job for you.\n\n------\nmajormunky\n\"Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been\nstored next to the ammonium nitrate cache.\"\n\nHuh..\n\n------\ndcanelhas\nThis news article reminds me of the beginning of the book \"Mostly Harmless\" by\nDouglas Adams.\n\n------\nthrow7\n\"I am not responsible!\"\n\nI'm hearing this a lot from multiple so called \"leaders\".\n\n------\ntobyhinloopen\nSeriously? They were welding next to fireworks and explosives.\n\nOh boy\n\n------\nbeamatronic\nWho stores fireworks next to ammonium nitrate?\n\n------\nkidintech\n473 comments, 0 mentions of Rafic Hariri or Hezbollah. HN, I really had higher\nexpectations.\n\n------\nTimesOldRoman\nDoes this make a case for pro-Federal-Government? What would a libertarian say\nabout how a society would prevent these types of accidents?\n\n------\nm3nu\n> Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been\n> stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache.\n\nWait. What?\n\n------\nmensetmanusman\nIncompetence should never lead to a city exploding.\n\nWhose whats when where why so much nitrite?\n\n~~~\njagged-chisel\nArs Technica has an article [1] with some answers.\n\n1 - [https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/ripped-chemical-\nbags...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/ripped-chemical-bags-added-\nto-risk-of-beirut-blast/)\n\n------\nolivermarks\n[https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/who-profits-from-the-beirut-\nbl...](https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/who-profits-from-the-beirut-blast/) an\nalternative perspective which has a level of detail and questions that has\nbeen missing from western media but is arguably from a hostile source\n\n~~~\njcranmer\nI downvoted you because the article you link is basically insane\nconspiratorializing, based on the non-paywall link in the sibling comment.\n\nIt doesn't even keep the conspiracy theories straight:\n\n* It was a plot by Russia to give explosives to Syria in a roundabout way [but it sits in Beirut for years despite being nominally in the hands of the people who are supposed to be delivering it?]\n\n* Israel blew it up with a secret missile/bomb/weapon thinking it was a Hezbollah weapons cache and only realized their mistake after too much went up [because hyper-competent spy agency somehow decides that the best way to take out a large amount of explosive that dominates the list of largest non-nuclear explosions is to blow it up, or maybe they somehow did the intel figuring there was a large weapons cache but couldn't figure out what it was?]\n\n* It's a US-France-Saudi conspiracy to seize control of the Lebanese economy and destroy the Chinese Belt-and-Road Initiative [that last bit comes out of nowhere actually].\n\n~~~\nolivermarks\nHappy to be downvoted on HN! I agree there is much conjecture and projections\nin the article but it does provide various facts about the peculiar route the\nmaterials took to get to Beirut, lots of other questions about lack of\nbureaucratic oversight etc etc...\n\nI do feel there is a dangerous trend towards labelling investigative\njournalism as 'conspiracy theories' and 'insane'. Facts are always\ninteresting, ideas about them often less so.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA Scrabble Luck Calculator - dnetesn\nhttp://nautil.us/issue/73/play/presenting-the-scrabble-luck-calculator\n======\ndmurray\n> the computer who goes first won more than 56 percent of games, suggesting\n> that there is a notable advantage to playing the first hand [...] There’s no\n> way to know for sure what specifically causes this advantage, but perhaps\n> giving one player initial control of the board has some beneficial effect.\n\n\"What specifically causes this advantage\" is, to put it briefly, playing\nfirst. The first player will have about 0.5 more opportunities to score. In\nfact, since it's legal to pass, it's a trivial game theory result that any\nadvantage in Scrabble belongs to the first player.\n\n~~~\ngubbrora\nConsider what happens if neither player wants to go first. P1 passes. P2\npasses. Now p1 has to play or the game is drawn. If the game is played with\nwin3 draw1 lose0 rules, then p1 should play even if at a slight disadvantage.\nA 49 % chance of payoff 3 is better than a 100% chance of payoff 1.\n\n------\nAmorymeltzer\nThe context is good, but fwiw here's the direct link to the calculator:\n[http://www.kevinrmcelwee.ml/scrabble_luck/](http://www.kevinrmcelwee.ml/scrabble_luck/)\n\n------\ndbieber\nI used to have a scrabble bot playing itself three times a day, posting its\ngames to tumblr:\n[https://scrabblebot.tumblr.com/](https://scrabblebot.tumblr.com/)\n\nIIRC simulating an AI-AI game only took a short period of time (maybe a few\nseconds to a minute), so replicating the study with this scrabblebot wouldn't\nbe too difficult.\n\nSource:\n[https://github.com/dbieber/ScrabbleBot](https://github.com/dbieber/ScrabbleBot)\n\n------\nfoxhop\nSorta related, I wrote a scrabble solver a few years back (includes sourcecode\nin python)\n\n[https://words.gumyum.com/](https://words.gumyum.com/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNew YC clone planned in Philadelphia - kkim\nhttp://philadelphia.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2007/12/24/story2.html?b=1198472400%5E1566817\n\n======\ngaborcselle\nThis sounds very methodical: They have \"innovators\", \"strategists\" and\n\"gurus\".\n\nWhat they'll be lacking, though, is access to the entire nation's talent pool.\nThey have no desire to attract people from all over. Unlike Boston or Silicon\nValley, PHL is not a desirable place to move to.\n\nAlso, they lack the pull of having a PG who is known to a hacker community.\nThis is the main reason why you and I can't clone YC (and yes, I've thought\nabout it: [http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2006/04/on-cloning-\nycombinat...](http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2006/04/on-cloning-ycombinator-\nin-europe.html))\n\n~~~\njwinter\nNo PG is a big drawback, but you're wrong about Philly.\n\nPhilly's got lots of great restaurants most of which are BYOB, plenty of cool\nlive music spots, great bars, cheap taxis, way more affordable downtown\nhousing, etc. A friend of mine pays what I'm paying in rent: he lives in a\nspacious apartment overlooking the waterfront in Philly; I live in a tiny\nthird-floor walk-up a mile away from the closest T stop outside Davis Square.\nCrime is starting to become a problem there again, but other than that it's a\ngreat place to live.\n\n~~~\nicky\n> No PG is a big drawback,\n\nEvidence?\n\n~~~\nicky\nHeh, I might have misparsed \"'No PG' is a big drawback\" as \"No, PG is a big\ndrawback\"... :P\n\nDisregard my previous post.\n\n~~~\nedw519\n(no pg) = (big drawback)\n\n(% of us) CouldaBeen (English majors) > 90%\n\n(% of us) CanWriteWell < 50%\n\nHaveAbility.ToReadThisPost = Priceless\n\n------\nnailer\nThis is quite exciting. I was born and raised in West Philadelphia, where I\nspent my days chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool, and shootin some b-ball\noutside of the school.\n\nThough I've since moved west to be closer to start-up opportunities (and after\nan unfortunate physical confrontation with two gents up to no good), I applaud\ntheir efforts.\n\n------\nrms\n>The three men are willing to put up the money for DreamIt's first fund but\nwould like to get some economic-development money from the state and/or the\ncity for it, and aren't willing to back future funds without assistance.\n\nClearly they are not very confident. There are a number of state funded early\nstage venture capital in Pennsylvania and they all lose money.\n\nAnd their webpage looks like it was designed in Frontpage 2000:\n<http://www.dreamitventures.com/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx>\n\n------\nALee\nI'm just wondering what their expertise is in comparison to YC and other YC\nlook-alikes. I mean if I were choosing something outside of YC, I would go\nwith TechStars, Europe, and probably the newer Launchbox Digital.\n\nThey seem to be in it to benefit on someone else's creativity versus YC (and\npossibly others, time will tell) are in it to make \"something useful.\"\n\n------\nlg\nI live near philly and there's always \"brain drain\" talk (aka how can we keep\nwharton grads in the city?) It looks like a lot of their speakers and mentors\nare in finance/accounting. So whatever they say, I think this project is not\nreally about software startups.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTwitter employees threatened by ISIS-affiliated group - cgtyoder\nhttp://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2014/09/08/twitter-employees-threatened-by-isis-affiliated-group/\n\n======\nBrandonMarc\nWhen we expect, and depend on, the truth coming out, entities involved in\nspreading information take on responsibilities they may not have expected.\nYes, that means Twitter, and even Comedy Central.\n\nAnyone remember the South Park episode with Mohammed, but in a bear suit so it\nwould be \"okay\"? Comedy Central showed where they stood on free speech by\nletting that episode air.\n\nThen, when Comedy Central employees were threatened, they also showed where\nthey stood on free speech by aggressively censoring the following episode.\n\nChilling effects ...\n\nSo now there's Twitter. I pray for the best for their employees, and I hope\nthey're secured in ways they can truly trust ... because I'd hate to see\nTwitter bend to such threats. Actions set precedents.\n\nIt's amazing what chilling effects can do. Hell, just today, the Dutch Safety\nBoard said the Boeing 777 passenger plane shot down near Ukraine was \"downed\nby high energy object outside of plane\" [1]. The whole planet knows it was a\nmissile, but the Dutch are afraid of pissing of Putin, so they tone down their\nlanguage to the point of saying as little as possible.\n\n[1] [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/9/malaysia-\nflig...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/9/malaysia-\nflight-17-likely-downed-high-energy-objec/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat Impossible Meant to Feynman - dnetesn\nhttp://nautil.us/issue/68/context/what-impossible-meant-to-feynman\n======\neigenhombre\nHow fortune the author was to have had these interactions with him. Feynman\nwas my greatest hero as an undergrad physics student (largely because of\n\"Surely...\", and the Feynman Lectures) and I was heartbroken when he died\nbefore I could meet him.\n\nAmong other things, he showed again and again how much economy and power was\ngained by attacking problems from different angles, and by building up and\napplying physical intuition, rather than relying solely on brute-force\ncalculation. More importantly, he showed how much fun you could have solving\nhard problems, simply by _playing_ \\-- lessons that I was able to apply well\noutside of physics.\n\n------\noska\nAfter the description of quasicrystals in the submitted piece, I found this\nparagraph on the author's wikipedia page [1] quite interesting:\n\n> Peter J. Lu and Steinhardt discovered a quasicrystalline Islamic tiling on\n> the Darb-e Imam Shrine (1453 A.D.) in Isfahan, Iran constructed from girih\n> tiles. [2] In 2007, they revealed a conceptual breakthrough that enabled\n> early artists to create increasingly complex periodic girih patterns over a\n> period of centuries, culminating in a nearly perfect quasi-crystalline\n> Penrose pattern five centuries before their discovery in the West.\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Steinhardt#Other_contribu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Steinhardt#Other_contributions_to_the_field)\n\n[2]\n[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/315/5815/1106](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/315/5815/1106)\n\n~~~\nagumonkey\nnot long ago there was an article about Leibniz inspiration through geomancy.\nWhich was also used for ages by humans, albeit not in a mathematical rigor\nsetting.\n\nThat led me to some rant, I think most of the core of mathematics is\nabsolutely natural to the layman of any place in space and time. Simplicity\nand regularity is quite obvious to any body, but the education systems blurs\nthat off mathematics. Only advanced research can reconnect the two sadly.\n\n------\nl3robot\nWhat a beautiful text. It just made my day. I think, for most of scientists,\nthese previously thought impossible outcomes is as, if not more, rewarding as\naligned with theory outcomes. Certainly this is one of the reasons that\nencourage me to continue in science. Curiosity of course, but also the feeling\nthat impossibility is only temporary.\n\n------\ntzs\nFeynman was still doing Physics X when I was a student there, about 8 years\nafter the time the author is describing.\n\nOne of my regrets is not taking advantage of that. It had been described as a\nweekly session where you could go talk to Feynman if you wanted help with\nphysics, and since I was doing OK in freshman and then sophomore physics I\ndidn't need help. I didn't realize at the time that you could do more than\njust ask about whatever was currently being covered in Physics 1 or Physics 2.\n\n------\nken\n\"The groups of atoms in crystals repeat at regular intervals, just like the\nfive known patterns.\"\n\nWhat is \"five known patterns\" a reference to? I found [1] but I don't see five\nof anything here.\n\n[1]:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_structure)\n\n~~~\nebcode\nThe Platonic Solids:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid)\n\n~~~\njacobolus\nQuasicrystals are based on the symmetry system of the\nicosahedron/dodecahedron, in which it it is impossible to periodically tile\nspace.\n\n“Proper” crystal structures are periodic, and are not necessarily related to\nany Platonic solid. See\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_system)\n(but I’m not quite sure where the 5 comes from in TFA).\n\n------\nxfitm3\nFeynman was a brilliant man and quite the character. If you haven't read\n\"Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman\" I highly recommend you give it a read.\n\n\"The title derives from a woman's response at Princeton University when, after\nshe asked the newly arrived Feynman if he wanted cream or lemon in his tea, he\nabsentmindedly requested both.\"\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Fe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Feynman)!\n\n~~~\numvi\nI liked that book and highly recommend it, but... by the end I got the\nimpression that Feynmann was intentionally _manufacturing_ interesting\nanecdotes in his life, not just randomly having all these interesting crazy\ncoincidences happen to him.\n\n~~~\nwycs\nOf course he was manufacturing them. He explicitly talks about the art of\nhaving an adventure in the book.\n\n~~~\ntfha\nThere's definitely an art to setting yourself up for suprising and interesting\nadventures in your life.\n\n------\nvira28\nI read \"Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman\" during my high school days. In that\nbook he mentions multiple times about Pasadena (where CalTech is located). I\nmoved to US 3 years back and right now live in Los Feliz (close to Pasadena,\nLos Angeles). First thing which I did after moved to LA, was visiting CalTech.\nHe made such a huge impact on my life.\n\n------\nl33tbro\nGreat read. What would be a good introduction to Feyman's writings for physics\nnoobs such as myself?\n\n~~~\nvajrabum\nSurely You're Joking Mr. Feynman and it's sequel for fun. The Feynman Lectures\nif you're interested in Physics. There are also some very interesting and fun\nlectures on Youtube.\n\n~~~\nfalcor84\nAnother good starting point might be \"Six easy pieces\"\n\n------\ndarkerside\n[http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_01.html](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_01.html)\n\nThe first of the referenced Feynman lectures. It's quite the fun read for an\nintroductory physics text.\n\n~~~\nagumonkey\nhis writing/speech style is lovely, so down to earth, it's a pleasure\n\n------\ntokyoHacker\nA really good read. Apart from the books that he has penned, I really like the\nvideos ( available on youtube) in which Feynman explains the “why” behind many\ncommon sightings.\n\nJust a sidenote: Coincidentally flying to Caltech today for a week of\ntraining. Wish he was still alive.\n\n------\nmcnichol\nOh just how fantastic!\n\nSuch great detail, I felt like a fly on the wall. Thank you for this.\n\n------\nsigna11\nfrom the article:\n\n'''\n\nI also learned that “impossible,” when used by Feynman, did not necessarily\nmean “unachievable” or “ridiculous.” Sometimes it meant, “Wow! Here is\nsomething amazing that contradicts what we would normally expect to be true.\nThis is worth understanding!\"\n\n'''\n\n~~~\nredleggedfrog\nBut, a pretty good read none the less.\n\n------\nsus_007\n> _Feynman thought a moment and, much to our surprise, replied “Yes!” So every\n> week for the next two years, my roommate and I joined dozens of other lucky\n> students for a riveting and unforgettable afternoon with_ Dick* Feynman.\n\nI don't know if that's meant to be a typo or an intentional name-calling ? Can\nsomebody confirm ?\n\n~~~\nrichardhod\nBack before Nixon, Dick was a perfectly allowable shortening of a first name\nfor [edit: mostly] white American men called Richard. Dick Feynman, Dick van\nDyke, Dick Sargent, even Dick Cheney. Only since the 70s / 80s has it become a\nperjorative among younger generations, perhaps because of the Liar in Chief.\n\n~~~\nfinnh\nonly white?\n\n~~~\nHorizonXP\nI think this is a fair question. I think it was predominantly white men. Never\nheard of a black man named Richard being called Dick. I think they usually use\nRick instead.\n\nRichard ~= Rick == Dick\n\n~~~\nvibrolax\nOne exception was black comedian, author, and activist Dick Gregory.\n\n~~~\nraldi\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Allen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Allen)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhere is a good place to find remote friendly companies? - chovy\n\nWhere is a good place to find remote friendly companies that hire fulltime for software engineers?\n======\nsublimino\nFrom [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job#job-\nboard...](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job#job-boards)\n\n[http://www.authenticjobs.com/](http://www.authenticjobs.com/)\n\n[http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/remote](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/remote)\n\n[http://www.flexjobs.com/](http://www.flexjobs.com/)\n\n[http://frontenddeveloperjob.com/](http://frontenddeveloperjob.com/)\n\n[http://www.golangprojects.com/golang-remote-\njobs.html](http://www.golangprojects.com/golang-remote-jobs.html)\n\n[http://hnhiring.me/](http://hnhiring.me/)\n\n[http://jobmote.com/](http://jobmote.com/)\n\n[http://jobspresso.co](http://jobspresso.co)\n\n[http://nomadjobs.io/](http://nomadjobs.io/)\n\n[http://remotecoder.io](http://remotecoder.io)\n\n[http://remoteok.io/](http://remoteok.io/)\n\n[http://www.remoteworkhunt.com/](http://www.remoteworkhunt.com/)\n\n[http://jobs.remotive.io/](http://jobs.remotive.io/)\n\n[http://www.virtualvocations.com/](http://www.virtualvocations.com/)\n\n[http://www.workingnomads.co/jobs](http://www.workingnomads.co/jobs)\n\n------\nshoo\n[http://offsite.careers/](http://offsite.careers/)\n\n[http://hnhiring.me/](http://hnhiring.me/) and filter using \"remote\"\n\n[http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/remote](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/remote)\n\n~~~\nchovy\nThanks...I haven't heard of hnhiring.me\n\n------\nBjoernKW\n[https://weworkremotely.com/](https://weworkremotely.com/)\n\n~~~\nchovy\nI've seen this one -- its pretty good.\n\n------\nnthnclrk\n[http://remoteok.io](http://remoteok.io)\n[http://nomadjobs.com](http://nomadjobs.com)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Real Problem with Mailbox - capwatkins\nhttp://blog.capwatkins.com/the-real-problem-with-mailbox\n\n======\ntptacek\nAnother alternative to things like Mailbox is not using your email inbox as a\nproject manager at all.\n\nAfter 15 years of abusing my own inbox this way (5172 \"unread\" todos to go!\nyay!), I grabbed a copy of Things.app a few weeks ago, and then swept the last\nmonth of my inbox into Things (skipping everything that wasn't actionable). I\nuse virtually none of the features of Things; it's just a hotkey bound to\n\"create a todo for this email\" with the nice property of linking the todo back\nto the original email. I've played with tagging and projects, but they're not\nnearly as useful as just having a list of todos with checkboxes.\n\nI don't do \"GTD\" or any of that stuff, and I am not a believer in the value of\n\"inbox zero\", but I'm now a convert to the idea that your inbox is a crappy\norganizer.\n\n~~~\nhinting\nMind sharing how you hooked the two apps together? Applescript?\n\n~~~\nkmf\nYep, Applescript. Quick Google search turns up this: [http://smoove-\noperator.blogspot.com/2011/05/gtd-intake-autom...](http://smoove-\noperator.blogspot.com/2011/05/gtd-intake-automation-with-things-and.html)\n\nWorth mentioning that OmniFocus has a built-in tool for this (humorously\ncalled the \"Clip-o-Tron 3000\")\n\n------\nuptown\nMy problem with Mailbox (and the reason I never activated it despite getting\nto the front of their queue) is that it requires me to trust someone else with\naccess to my email. The inbox is the keys to so many other systems these days\nonce you factor in password-resets. I'm just not willing to hand over that\nkind of access to an additional third-party beyond what I've already chosen to\naccept as an acceptable level of risk by trusting Google for my webmail. What\nMailbox, and that decision not to use their service, has caused me to do was\nmake a concerted effort to reduce the amount of automated and spam mail I was\ndealing with. Over the past couple weeks I've been able to make a noticeable\nchange to what hits my inbox each day.\n\n------\npkulak\nWhen Sparrow came out people complained that it couldn't send new mail\nnotifications. Now Mailbox does the only thing you can do to get that kind of\ncontrol and people complain that their servers could go down. People want bear\npatrol, but they don't want to pay taxes for it.\n\n~~~\ncmicali\nThis is the reason. With iOS, this is the only way to get pushed new mail\nnotifications. The rest could be done without a server, but that was sparrows\n#1 complaint (and for me and many others a requirement) +1 for bear patrol!\n\n------\nbenatkin\nPlease don't call this travesty of a proprietary mobile app \"Mailbox\". They\ndon't own the word.\n\n~~~\nkmf\nI'm curious what you'd prefer the author to refer to it as instead? Even the\narticle name uses it as a proper noun; I'd understand if it was \"mailbox\"\ninstead of \"Mailbox\", but it seems pretty clear to me. Mailbox.app?\n\n~~~\nbenatkin\nNot really my problem, but Mailbox on the Apple App Store (yes this is a\nfractal of trademark abuse) or Orchestra Mailbox (like Google Tasks) works.\n\n~~~\nmst\nI call it MailBox.app\n\nSeems to disambiguate nicely.\n\n~~~\nbenatkin\nHow about Mailbox.ipa ?\n\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ipa_(file_extension)>\n\n------\nqnk\nDoes Mailbox stores your e-mail in their servers? Even if it's temporary, I\ndon't think is a good idea. Why exactly do they need to do this? Building the\nsame awesomeness on top of an IMAP client wouldn't have achieved the same\ngoal?\n\n~~~\nuptown\n\"Mailbox helps you manage your email, and in order to provide you with that\nservice, we need to collect, store, and in rare cases, share your personal\ninformation.\"\n\nYay - sharing!\n\n\"Mailbox is designed to help you manage your email account with other\nproviders, like Gmail. When you link your email accounts (provided by third\nparties) to Mailbox, you give Mailbox permission to securely access your\ninformation contained in or associated with those accounts. If you link your\nthird party account to Mailbox, that third party may also pass certain\ninformation along about your use of its service. While Mailbox does not store\nyour password to these email accounts, the service does securely store some\nemails on a temporary basis in order to deliver them to you as quickly as\npossible and keep track of your deferred messages.\"\n\n<http://www.mailboxapp.com/privacy/>\n\n------\nben336\nI think the author is missing part of the reason it runs through the servers.\nAlong with storing the \"read it later\" actions, running it through their\nservers allows background checking and push notifications, which isn't\npossible for 3rd party email services on iOS otherwise (though I agree that a\ngraceful fallback to checking gmail directly would be nice)\n\n------\ngoronbjorn\n> And look, I'm not an engineer, but this seems like a really bad plan. When I\n> launch Sparrow, the only way my email doesn't come through is if Gmail\n> itself goes down. With Mailbox, I'm adding a second point of failure.\n\nThe first and most likely point of failure is network issues (i.e. no Wifi or\n3G access).\n\n------\nrogerchucker\n[EDIT: This might be a bit off-topic to the issue raised by the author] I find\nthe whole idea of zero inbox incredibly useless to my workflow as I don't care\nto treat email as GTD. The only value I get out of keeping Mailbox on my phone\nis the snooze feature (which unfortunately no Google App Script or Chrome\nExtension has been able to address properly yet). Once that gets solved by\nGmail, Mailbox will be a goner. And yes, even though the author pooh-pooh'ed\nthem at the introduction of the article, lack of labels and a couple of other\nfeatures (like Undo) make Mailbox a no-go for me on a regular basis.\nCountering these objections with \"missing the point\" is extremely lazy IMHO.\n\n~~~\nborski\nHave you tried Boomerang? Pre-Mailbox, their \"snooze\" feature was the only\nthing I used for email. I love it.\n\n<http://www.boomeranggmail.com>\n\n~~~\nspullara\nI just mark things unread and handle them later.\n\n~~~\nrogerchucker\nThat's how I have been doing it until not too long ago.\n\n------\nhuhsamovar\nNo second point of failure => no native push notifications.\n\n~~~\nzwily\nNot true - they could check email and send you push notifications server-side,\nbut still have the client talk directly to gmail for nearly all functions.\n\n~~~\nhuhsamovar\n> they could check email\n\nThat requires non-google action. That is a point of failure.\n\n~~~\nzwily\nSure, but the failure means that you don't get push notifications - you can\nstill use your email app.\n\n~~~\nhuhsamovar\nThat is correct, and has nothing to do with my original statement:\n\nNo second point of failure => no native push notifications.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night - kitrose\nhttps://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/y3m33x/heres-the-shadow-inc-app-that-failed-in-iowa-last-night\n======\nnooron\nI started a company that was asked to write a proposal to make what became the\napp that failed last night. I declined because it was outside of our core\nskillset. You can read my prior comments or look at my profile to validate\nthis. If you want my perspective as someone who started a Democratic software\ncompany, you should keep reading.\n\nThis app emerged from a mandate to make the caucus more accessible and\ntransparent. It was well-intentioned but underfunded and lacked comprehensive\norganizational buy-in. Introducing tech can help but you have to spend tons of\nmoney to make it reliable and usable, then you have to spend more to train\neveryone in using it. This is a problem organizations of all sizes and shapes\nface when making massive IT changes.\n\nShadow is a firm that makes custom software for Democrats and progressives. It\nhas an unnecessarily sinister name. There are not a lot of companies that make\nsoftware for Democrats because it’s an awful job. You make very little money.\nEveryone hates you when things go wrong, which they will, because the product\ntesting cycle and margins are nonexistent. Then everyone will assume things\nwent wrong because you are some combination– you choose– of secretly evil,\nsecretly working for Bernie, secretly working for The Establishment/Hillary\n(per someone's unpersuasive Imgur post below), or secretly working for\nButtigieg.\n\nOthers have noted that Shadow also made software for the Buttigieg campaign.\nIf you take my claims above as true, this should be unsurprising to you: a\nhard market where everyone hates you and no one has money to pay you is not\nattractive to enterprising software engineers, so there are few firms\navailable to choose.\n\n~~~\nwar1025\nI don't know whether I heard correctly or if the number was accurate, but I\nheard someone throw out $60k as the amount paid for the app development this\nmorning on the radio.\n\nThat sounds like a lot of money to a lay-person, but assuming $100/hr, which\nseems like at least a reasonable ballpark rate, that breaks down to 600 man-\nhours, or 15 man-weeks.\n\nThat is a very tight deadline to turn out a critical app like this. Especially\nsince I assume it wasn't just a single person doing the coding.\n\nPeople don't realize that software is expensive and a custom built application\nis probably not the correct choice for a single-use product. I'm sure whoever\nwas in charge felt that $60k was a quite generous offer to build this. In\nreality it's basically nothing.\n\nI used to have acquaintances approach me and say, \"Hey I've got this great app\nidea you could help me with.\"\n\nThe response I found shut them down real quick was, \"Great. Do you have $100k\nlying around to get the first beta out the door?\"\n\n~~~\nwenbin\nThe two founders of Instagram spent $65k (out of $500k they raised) to launch\nthe very first version of Instagram in 2010 [1].\n\n[1] [https://lnns.co/8zhgtOF0YCo](https://lnns.co/8zhgtOF0YCo)\n\n~~~\n9935c101ab17a66\nSo what? What's your point?\n\n~~~\nphonon\nThat they should have used Django for the backend :-)\n\n------\n3uclid\nChecked their LinkedIn and the employees who work there. The founder is non-\ntechnical and there are two developers: one who is a \"back-end intern\" and the\nother is a front-end developer (both are fresh from bootcamps).\n\n...Yikes.\n\n~~~\nthedance\nThe career path of prep cook -> software certification mill -> wrecking\namerican democracy is the best thing I've ever seen.\n\n~~~\neagsalazar2\nFor most software development work a bootcamper is just as likely to be a\nsolid team member as someone with a CS degree after a few years of good\nindustry experience. They key issue isn't that they are bootcampers but that\nthey are _fresh_ bootcampers with no more senior people around to guide the\nproject or mentor them. (similarly a fresh CS grad is fairly worthless in\nserious production work and will not improve much if they don't get the\nopportunity to work on serious projects with great sr devs and leadership\ninvested in mentoring them)\n\n~~~\nmardifoufs\nA fresh bootcamp graduate can be a good developer, but I would argue that\nsomeone fresh off of bootcamp is way less prepared than a CS grad to directly\nstart working in a small team with mostly non technical people. A CS grad is\nusually way more knowledgeable when it comes to software architecture,\nhandling data, optimization etc. Bootcamps usually focus on specific stacks\nand tools, which can be great. But that means almost no skill/knowledge\noutside of that specific stack\n\n~~~\nunlinked_dll\nMy experience has been the same with fresh grads from everywhere. There's a\nnon negligible amount of work to get them up to speed with business\ncommunication and task definition.\n\nBasically schools give you assignments or projects that are well defined and\nhave clearly defined goals/results and cover solved problems. While that's\ntrue in the generic sense of business problems it's not how we work, we have\nto be able to take initiative to define and adjust those goals as reality\nshifts and goals are more loosely defined. You really have to put it the work\nto get new folks up to speed with defining their tasks to reach the goals.\n\nNot for nothing but it's tough when you don't have a senior or two on hand to\nbring people up to speed and mentor them for a month or two before you can\nreally get a new grad productive. And it's difficult with time constraints to\ndo that well, I have to define my own tasks and can't spend as much time\ndefining things for a junior as well as I'd like or train them as much as I\nshould.\n\nCollege grads may be more blank a slate but I haven't noticed a big difference\nin terms of actual onboarding. For what it's worth I think boot camps are the\nnext trade schools and we're going to see a division in labor between software\ntechs and engineers just like we have for electrical engineers and\nelectricians or MechEs and mechanics. Tale as old as time, all the work is\nvaluable, just more nuanced.\n\n------\nskrowl\nI'm picturing the Dos Equis meme saying \"I don't always test, but when I do, I\ntest in production. Stay on call, my friends.\"\n\nAt least now I don't feel bad about when I test in production. (just kidding,\nI didn't feel bad before).\n\n~~~\njpindar\nThe app was sent out through the free version of a beta testing platform.\n\n[https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-\ndemocractic-...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-democractic-\ncaucus-voting-app-android-testfairy-screenshots-app-store)\n\n~~~\ngruez\nWhy? Ponying up $100 for a developer certificate is too much?\n\n~~~\nasdff\nIt is when you workhorse dev is an intern I guess...\n\n------\nLargeWu\nIf there's any good that comes out of this, it's that people will hopefully\nsee the value of physical paper ballots or records.\n\n~~~\ncoredog64\nThere always was a paper trail. The purpose of the app is/was to send a set of\nnumbers from the precinct to central.\n\n~~~\nredisman\nI'm kind of amazed at how it failed. 1,681 precincts in Iowa - that data could\nfit on a floppy disk.\n\n~~~\nAperocky\nIKR? And for all options they may end up with, they chose an APP. WHY? Does\nlaptop not exist anymore? Does phones lack the ability to open webpages\nanymore?\n\nHasn't logging in been one of the things we perfected over 30 years?\n\n~~~\njohannes1234321\nYes, if you want to have a small tool for volunteers without logistics of\nshipping machines, laptops don't exist anymore. Developing desktop software\nfor such purpose is way more complex, especially when considering updates etc.\nWhich Windows version are you targeting? And Mac? What libraries you need?\n\nFor app development, even if for two platforms (Android and iOS) it is a lot\nsimpler these days, than desktop.\n\n~~~\nAperocky\nThe alternative is web, not desktop.\n\n~~~\njohannes1234321\nThe GP asked \"Don't laptops exist anymore\" to that I answered. And no - a\nwebapp isn't an alternative for those crappy laptops, filled with viruses,\noutdated browsers, and/or weird privacy plugins the (grand-)son installed are\nnot an alternative. (We could argue about requirements of integrity here ...\nan app can offer a little bit more than a webapp on an arbitrary windows PC\n... But integrity can be guaranteed by having the second channel (other people\nwatching and then comparing published results) as there is no secrecy involved\n(for one we talk about summaries, for second caucuses are public anyways))\n\n------\ngeoff-dot\nWhat did this app do exactly? It was just a reporting app, I'm assuming that\nthe source data collected, albeit perhaps in different formats, lived\nsomewhere else and that there wasn't a lot of data or a lot of variations.\nFrom my understanding it seems there was an Auth0 redirect issue, but why\nwasn't this just a night of taking the source data and doing scripting then\nshipping out the reports via a secure DropBox type service? We've all be there\nwhere an ETL job fails, since it isn't critical (e.g., financial transaction),\nit wasn't tested every which way and we just had to some scripting.\n\nEven if it is, say, 500TB of data, in 300 different formats usually those\nformats aren't drastically \"different.\" Maybe I'm not understanding what the\napplication was supposed to do to not understand why this wasn't solved every\nquickly. Or maybe given the timeline it was solved quickly once the right\npeople got involved and figured out what needed to be done.\n\n------\naltitudinous\n$50000 for a mission critical, scalable app? They got exactly what they paid\nfor.\n\nI would have written an app that doesn't work for only $25000\n\n~~~\nwizzard\nAlternatively, they could have paid IBM a billion dollars and still gotten an\napp that didn't work. At least they saved some money?\n\n~~~\naltitudinous\nWell, at least if they paid a billion dollars they could have had an\nexpectation that the app would work, and they could sue IBM if it didn't.\nIndeed at that $$$$$ they would have been ripped off though!!\n\nAt $50k they certainly weren't going to get what they wanted delivered, and\nthey have no-one to blame but themselves.\n\n------\npadseeker\nShadow has got to be the worst name for a company associated with politics,\nunless you want to rub it in everyone's face\n\n~~~\njs2\nI’m truly astounded that anyone thought this was a good name and took the time\nto write this marketing copy:\n\n _Why Shadow?\n\nWhen a light is shining, Shadows are a constant companion. We see ourselves as\nbuilding a long-term, side-by-side “Shadow” of tech infrastructure to the\nDemocratic Party and the progressive community at large._\n\n[https://shadowinc.io/about](https://shadowinc.io/about)\n\n~~~\nconanbatt\nThat makes it even worse.\n\n~~~\nhcknwscommenter\nReally? They're basically saying: 'shadow' is your 'buddy' who is always there\nfor you. So, we want to be that.\n\nIn retrospect, it sounds bad but really, it's just a nothingburger.\n\n~~~\ncma\nGiven the party tried to make them hide their name, can we really only say it\nis retrospect?\n\n------\nJackRabbitSlim\nI'm all about Hanlon's razor but naming the ticking time-bomb of a voting\nsoftware startup \"Shadow Inc.\" seems a bit too on the nose to be pure\nstupidity.\n\nEverything about this reeks of a publicity stunt to \"ruin\" electronic voting\nin the public eye.\n\n------\njessaustin\nMore info:\n\n[https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/04/pro-israel-buttigieg-\nseth...](https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/04/pro-israel-buttigieg-seth-klarman-\niowas-voting-app/)\n\n~~~\neldarian\nThat's not a reputable source in any way, please do not promote conspiracy\nsites.\n\n~~~\njessaustin\n...says the greenbean account. Blumenthal is an excellent reporter, and all of\nhis reporting is extensively sourced. The article linked above is liberally\npeppered with links to sources, several per paragraph. If there's anything\nthere you doubt, you can just click through.\n\n------\npmoriarty\nHow long will it take our society to realize that democracy is threatened when\nmachines are involved in voting or vote counting?\n\nGoing back to voting exclusively by ink on paper and hand counting is\nimperative.\n\n~~~\njariel\nPaper ballots with scanned results in the booth. No scan means redo your vote.\nThat way you have a track record + instant results.\n\nFolks can take home the stub to ensure non-repudiation etc..\n\nThey can look up the serial number on the stub they take home to see for sure\nit was recorded.\n\nFYI we should also have basic ID requirements for voting. The arguments\nagainst it are kind of ridiculous, and federal or state ID should be free.\n\nThere should be no 'voter registration' required either: the state knows your\naddress and that's that.\n\nFor lighter elections like city alderman, you can use your ID + passcode to\nSMS or email your vote.\n\nMaybe make a law requiring that any tech used for legal voting has to get the\nthumbs up from the NSA or some super amazing agency that is also secular in\nnature. None of this 'quickie app for voting' rubbish.\n\nAt this point, I hate politics so much, I think every nation needs a\n'caretaker' Pres/PM from the bureaucracy - someone who can clean out the\ncobwebs, get rid of a bunch of old laws, clean up the tax code, take on the\npublic unions (I mean reform not destroy, I mean teachers probably need higher\nsalaries) and basically do a big, operational house cleaning that has nothing\nto do with politics.\n\n~~~\nnl\n_At this point, I hate politics so much, I think every nation needs a\n'caretaker' Pres/PM from the bureaucracy - someone who can clean out the\ncobwebs, get rid of a bunch of old laws, clean up the tax code, take on the\npublic unions (I mean reform not destroy, I mean teachers probably need higher\nsalaries) and basically do a big, operational house cleaning that has nothing\nto do with politics._\n\nYou realize that every single thing you said there is political, right?\n\n~~~\nBubRoss\nWhy would an operational house cleaning be political?\n\n~~~\nnl\nI'm going to assume good faith here, and answer it seriously.\n\n> \"clean out the cobwebs\"\n\nThis isn't specific enough to respond to.\n\n> \"get rid of a bunch of old laws\"\n\nWhich ones, and why? Sure there are probably some like where people can tie up\nhorses or something that aren't especially relevant, but having them there\ncauses no harm because they aren't used.\n\n> \"clean up the tax code\"\n\nThere is no way to do this without creating winners and losers. Choosing who\nwins and who loses is a political act.\n\n> \"take on the public unions\"\n\nTaking on unions is one of the most political acts you can do. Whether or not\nit is \"right\", unions are a powerbase of some political groups.\n\n> \"operational house cleaning that has nothing to do with politics\"\n\nWhat - specifically - do you mean? The two examples you give here are highly\npolitical.\n\n~~~\nBubRoss\nI only asked why operational house cleaning would be political\n\n------\nWheelsAtLarge\nThis app failed because no one did enough testing and enough training. What I\nsaw was a relatively simple app to input some data. The problem seems to have\nbeen that they never tested it at scale and they assumed that all the users\nwould be able to download it and use it.\n\nMy experience is that customers hate to pay for testing once they see the\nproduct running. They assume that it's done. I had a customer tell me that if\nI did the programming right it should always work and testing should be\nminimal. I had to explain to him that that's not the case with software and\ntesting is one of the most important parts of the software development cycle.\nHe felt it was a waste and that I was looking to add extra costs for no\nreason.\n\nI bet there was not enough money. People seem to feel that a few grand will\ncover the costs. They figure 10k is an outrageous amount. What they don't seem\nto understand is that it will barely cover the costs of planning the app.\n\nBoth the developers and the people that approved the app for use need to take\nresponsibility. Too bad since it could have saved a lot of money and time in\nthe long run.\n\nBTW, this could have been a Google Form with a spreadsheet as a back end. But\nuser training would have still been an issue. You can't get around that.\n\n------\ntmpz22\nThis should really be getting more attention, here is an alternative\nbreakdown:\n[https://imgur.com/gallery/ycOC0HX](https://imgur.com/gallery/ycOC0HX). The\njest of it is one of the most important institutions in the United States (the\nDemocratic National Committee) uses a highly nepotistic and incompetent system\nfor managing IT which leads to colossal failures in marketing, canvassing, and\nsecurity. Not to mention massive PII violations as millions of emails, phone\nnumbers and SSNs, are passed around in plain-text via CSV files.\n\nThe reason this happens is because hundreds of millions of dollars are lit on\nfire during election season and all the sharks, including former Google\nemployees, come out to swim. Even well intentioned projects get slammed by the\ncrunch of the election season (seriously try shipping a well scaled app in < 2\nmonths with terrible product direction) and ultimately fail - failing the\nneeds of the entire citizenship of the country.\n\nAfter the success of Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns even more money was\nfunneled into IT as a sort of perceived silver bullet. But in 2016 it wasn't,\nand yet no analysis was done to correct the problems for the 2020 cycle -\nbecause the decision makers (all these \"CTOs\") are clueless fucks who are just\nthere for the money and could care less about the integrity of our democratic\nsystem.\n\n\\- in 2016 I worked for one of the companies in this niche and saw the\nbidding/sales/engineering processes first hand. FWIW I am a life long\ndemocratic voter and this makes me sick to my stomach.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nThe DNC doesn't run the Iowa Caucuses.\n\n~~~\nsbierwagen\nTell that to Tom Perez\n[https://twitter.com/jeffzeleny/status/1225472426894647296](https://twitter.com/jeffzeleny/status/1225472426894647296)\n\n~~~\nsbierwagen\nNow it seems the DNC also needs to be told it as well:\n[https://news.yahoo.com/shadow-inc-idp-contract-dnc-\ndocuments...](https://news.yahoo.com/shadow-inc-idp-contract-dnc-\ndocuments-224407455.html)\n\n------\ncode4tee\nI don’t agree with the use of an app here for many reasons. That said, such an\napp would basically need secure authentication and a form to upload some pre-\ntemplated numbers.\n\nIt seems pretty hard to screw that up so badly but clearly it’s quite easy to\nmake a complete dumpster fire from those requirements.\n\n~~~\nstevenwoo\nFrom this article,\n\n[https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-\ndemocractic-...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-democractic-\ncaucus-voting-app-android-testfairy-screenshots-app-store)\n\nthey used the a free tier of TestFairy that limited the number of test users\nto 200 and on iOS used TestFlight and did not use either the app store for the\nfinal version or make an enterprise version, and possibly could not distribute\nthe app to the approximate 1700 users. They still would have needed to get the\napp through the app store approval process for general release to fix the app\nat least on the iOS side as far as I understand it. To fix it quickly would\nhave just required them to go back to calling in results by voice as in past\nyears. Don't know why they did not just do that.\n\n~~~\nSyneRyder\n_> To fix it quickly would have just required them to go back to calling in\nresults by voice as in past years. Don't know why they did not just do that._\n\nThey did that - but apparently the phone number for calling in the results was\nthe same as for \"help my app doesn't work\", so the phone line was flooded.\nUnfortunately I don't have the source link to hand, so feel free to treat that\nas hearsay.\n\nHowever, CNN had a live cross to someone trying to call in their results, and\nafter an hour on hold, when they finally got through, the other side hung up\non them while they were broadcasting live on air:\n\n[https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/04/iowa-\ncaucus...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-cnn-\nsebastian/)\n\n _\" It took an hour and a half for Shawn Sebastian to get hung up on in 10\nseconds. And it unfolded on national television Monday, making the moment, in\nthe words of some, “one of the most ridiculous things I’ve seen on cable\nTV.”\"_\n\n------\nmeristem\nA small drop in the sea of technical problems: did anyone design the app to\nwork for ages 20-90? People well in their 80's work caucuses.\n\nOk, did anyone actually _design_ the app?\n\n------\nfuqmachine\nAccording to multiple reports, the vote counts entered into app and sent were\nnot what was received by HQ. How do we know that the company wasn't paid to\nchange the numbers on the backend? How would the numbers change by themselves?\nI'll be called a tinfoil-hatter for assuming malice.\n\n------\nEGreg\nThis is why we need to start using Byzantine Fault Tolerant distributed\nsystems to vote via our mobile phones. No need for a voting holiday or\nstanding in line. Bigger turnout, too. If it's secure enough for banking apps,\nwhy not for opt-in voting via app.\n\nMaybe it's too hard to move to electronic voting nationwide. But every\norganization has governance and could use an electronic voting system based on\nBFT consensus of mutually distrusting parties. Vote using an app, it gets\nstored \"on-chain\", then you can check it on another app.\n\n------\ntrianglem\nI think the great problem of our age is that UAT is nothing like production.\n\n~~~\nulkesh\nThis makes a pretty big assumption that UAT was even done. Or rather, UAT ==\nproduction in Iowa.\n\n------\nsmoyer\nAre we irrigating our crops with Brawndo yet?\n\n------\nabetlen\nThis Motherboard article has more details on the app including screenshots\n[https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/y3m33x/heres-the-\nshadow-i...](https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/y3m33x/heres-the-shadow-inc-\napp-that-failed-in-iowa-last-night)\n\nMy favorite screenshot is the last one, it looks like a generic mobile Firefox\nerror for a misspecified URL.\n\n~~~\noblib\nWow! That provides some great info on this. Still leaves me wondering if the\nend result wasn't by design though. It's kind of hard to buy into the \"Opps\"\nexplanation.\n\n~~~\nabetlen\nIt certainly could've been done by design but I think more likely this was a\ndoomed project from the start. They rushed this app out with too little time\nfor testing.\n\nI don't want to speculate too much on that screenshot but it looks like they\nhave an error in their Auth0 integration. When you use a service like Auth0\nyou give it a redirect url to send authenticated users to. It looks like they\npassed in an invalid url for that redirect. Maybe they only tested this 2fa\nstep locally and something was different when they deployed to users' phones,\nI can't say for sure, but it doesn't look good.\n\n------\ntmpz22\nThis should really be getting more attention, here is an alternative\nbreakdown:\n[https://imgur.com/gallery/ycOC0HX](https://imgur.com/gallery/ycOC0HX).\n\nThe jest of it is one of the most important institutions in the United States\n(the Democratic National Committee) uses a highly nepotistic and incompetent\nsystem for managing IT which leads to colossal failures in marketing,\ncanvassing, and security. Not to mention massive PII violates as millions of\nemails, phone numbers and SSNs, are passed around in plain-text via CSV files.\n\nThe reason this happens is because hundreds of millions of dollars are lit on\nfire during election season and all the sharks, including former Google\nemployees, come out to swim. Even well intentioned projects get slammed by the\ncrunch of the election season (seriously trying shipping a well scaled app in\n< 2 months with terrible product direction) and ultimately fail - failing the\nneeds of the entire citizenship of the country.\n\nAfter the success of Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns even more money was\nfunneled into IT as a sort of perceived silver bullet. But in 2016 it wasn't,\nand yet no analysis was done to correct the problems for the 2020 cycle -\nbecause the decision makers (all these \"CTOs\") are clueless fucks who are just\nthere for the money and could care less about the integrity of our democratic\nsystem.\n\n\\- in 2016 I worked for one of the companies in this niche and saw the\nbidding/sales/engineering processes first hand. FWIW I am a life long\ndemocratic voter and this makes me sick to my stomach.\n\n~~~\ndang\nPlease don't post duplicate comments to HN. In addition to lowering the\nsignal/noise ratio of the site, it creates a big pain when we go to merge\nthreads (as happened here).\n\nIf you want to refer to something you said elsewhere, please use a link.\n\n~~~\ntmpz22\nMy bad, I got emotional over the content discussed and just copy-pasted the\ncontent because it seemed like the original thread would be eclipsed. I'll\nmake sure not to do it in the future and in general have a great appreciation\nfor the work you do moderating HN - I imagine it is quite stressful at times.\n\n~~~\ndang\nMuch appreciated! And no worries—similar things happen to everyone and we're\nall learning.\n\n------\neverdrive\n\"[topic] was supposed to [perform action on] X, instead, it may have\n[performed in inverse action].\"\n\n------\nallovernow\nThe owners and staffers at Shadow INC have a severe conflict of interest. The\ncompany is loaded with former Clinton staffers and the CEO sent a tweet in\nsupport of Buttigeig, who recently paid tens of thousands to the company.\n\nOther suspicious dealings are a premature victory announcement by Buttigeig's\ncampaign and a leak of a picture of paper tallies which included a PIN\nallegedly used to login to the tally app. Looking for the tweet now...\n\n>[https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/02/04/shado...](https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/02/04/shadow-\nhillary-staffers-n2560675)\n\nEdit: I'm not necessarily trying to suggest anything, but I'd like to point\nout that this post went from +10 to +2 in a matter of minutes.\n\n~~~\nsl1ck731\nShould a company's employees/CEO have to be apolitical? I'd be surprised if\nthere is such a company where none of its employees are involved in politics\nin any way. Especially if its a company whose sole purpose is developing\nsoftware for a political party.\n\n~~~\nallovernow\nNo, but until recently it was professional to keep your politics private and,\nmore importantly, when there are inconsistencies disproportionately favoring\nan otherwise less popular candidate, public support from employees and\nespecially the CEO, in conjunction with a money trail, these personal\nindicators of bias become relevant for justification of suspicion.\n\n~~~\njmull\nHow is this even helping Buttigieg?\n\nThere doesn’t seem to be any indication this was anything but a regular\nscrewup. Throwing around suggestions of a vague conspiracy looks unwarranted.\n\nYou’re suggesting that to avoid suspicion companies providing services to\npolitical campaigns must be apolitical and to have never previously provided\nservices to a candidate in the race or any previous opponent of a candidate in\nthe race. How could that even be possible?\n\n~~~\njessaustin\n_How is this even helping Buttigieg?_\n\nThe count has been frozen at \"62%\" for six hours now. That just happens to be\nthe first/only level at which \"Mayor Pete\" had a delegate lead over Bernie,\neven though Bernie still leads the popular vote. Several days from now, when\nthe count ticks up to 100%, Bernie will lead both measures by large margins.\nStill, in the meantime, the corporate media can pretend like the Mayor is\nahead. They know he's going to bomb in SC worse than Biden bombed in Iowa, but\nthey're hoping that somehow they can get him to \"Super Tuesday\" when the other\nMayor can take over for him due to his 9-figure ad spend.\n\nOf course, the idea that the perfect candidate to beat a vain old NY rich guy\nis another vain old NY rich guy _who also banned soft drinks the last time he\nheld elected office_ is risible, but they don't care about that. The point is\nto ratfuck any candidate who might plausibly do fewer stupid wars.\n\n~~~\njmull\nBut your scenario doesn’t actually help Buttigieg. Also the app people can’t\ncontrol the timing of the manual reporting, so there would somehow be a\ncompletely new element of the conspiracy. And you’re switching from a\nconspiracy orchestrated by Buttigieg to one orchestrated by the corporate\nmedia, Bloomberg, and/or the industrial military complex.\n\n~~~\njessaustin\nButtigieg is 38 years old. His previous jobs were with McKinsey and \"military\nintelligence\" and his previous election total was 8,000 votes. He isn't trying\nto _win_ the presidency. Iowa itself is a tiny state with a tiny number of\nconvention delegates. The whole point of Iowa is that the winner gets some\nmomentum. In this case, the winner won't get any momentum. That's the point.\n\nSome people like to bore us with the \"once is a coincidence\" maxim. Some of\nthem might like to pretend that this caucus is \"once\" and we'll have to wait a\nweek or two to get upset about the ratfucking. Normal voters can remember four\nyears ago, however, and this isn't even just the fourth time the national\n\"Democratic\" apparatus has ratfucked Bernie.\n\n------\ngeneralpass\nShould Google or Apple take the app off the app store? Seems like a scam...\n\n~~~\nbluGill\nAn app like this should not be on any app store ever. You want only pre-chosen\npeople to have access to the app. It does no good for anyone else to have\naccess to this and it can hurt.\n\n4 years ago I had the Republican app on my phone. I was the backup reporter\njust in case the main reporter had problems. Since the main reporter used the\napp correctly I didn't use it, but I had access to it.\n\n~~~\ncsours\nAccess to install the app MUST not constitute Access to the system behind the\napp.\n\n~~~\nbluGill\nI agree, and there was more security. However access to the app implies the\nability to DoS the remote with too many login attempts... Restricting access\nto the app was just one layer in the security scheme making it a little harder\nfor someone who wanted to mess with the system.\n\n------\nkilljoywashere\nIs it just me, or is the money just draining away from the economy right now?\nIt's like we were all splashing around in the ocean and suddenly everyone is\nnoticing that their toes are touching the bottom, and there's a few people\nstanding on the steps, floaties on, looking around at us in horror.\n\n------\nmindgam3\nLet me get this straight. A company deeply embedded in the Democratic\nestablishment (0) that has worked directly with Buttigieg — the candidate with\nclose ties to Facebook aka the company undermining democracy since 2016 —\nmanaged to totally screw up, potentially undermining the campaign of Sanders,\nthe anti-establishment candidate.\n\nYeah, democracy is fucked.\n\n0\\. [https://theintercept.com/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-\nshadow-a...](https://theintercept.com/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-shadow-\nacronym/)\n\n~~~\nhodgesrm\nIf you are arguing a conspiracy of some kind it is probably best to rule out\nincompetence before moving on to active malfeasance. This is after all the\nsame political party that managed rollout of the non-functioning Obamacare\nwebsite.\n\n~~~\nballark\nPlease provide a reason why incompetence is any likelier than malfeasance.\n\n~~~\nasdff\nBecause for malfeasance you need to be smart and clever and for incompetence\nyou need to be dumb or just tired that day and write a typo.\n\n~~~\nboring_twenties\nFor malfeasance to remain undiscovered you need to be smart and clever.\n\nFor the kind of malfeasance that concatenates an SQL query with user input and\nthen shows the whole thing to the user in an error message, you don't need\nthat.\n\n------\nnyounker\nThis is ridiculous. Paper. Use a Paper as the true vote. Cross check after\nthat. I have read so many comments on here up-selling the ability of\ntechnology but no one in this thread has the answer. It's apparent.\n\nDo the paper vote - as it was always done. Let our technology analyze it\nafterwords. Why are we all trying to put our technology in front of this\nsimple device. of paper.\n\nYou all know this rule = \"make a single application do one thing well.\"\n\nAgain, this is ridiculous from a Credibility sense. Paper + networks, Paper +\nmobile, forget the paper, Mobile only, Mobile + scale. Where are we at? No\nwhere and much less. Just take a paper vote and tally it. Is that so hard?\n\n------\noblib\nI think the author's take on this is a bit heavy with hyperbole, but there's\nno doubt Iowa was a mess last night.\n\nMy son was there working as volunteer, and so was his ex-girlfriend, who's\nstill a close family friend. I was chatting with them both throughout the\nevening and into the wee hours this morning.\n\nThey worked different locations in the Des Moines metro area and the results\nthey reported to me were pretty close to the same in both.\n\nI'll say this about it, it's hard to imagine that less than 4500 calls to a\nserver over the course of an hour or two would \"crash\" it, or even ten times\nthat number. And that I think an SQL db is a poor choice for an app like that.\n\nCouchDB, or most any open source \"nosql\" db, would've been a better choice\nand, really, so would a dead simple flat file db to store the data for each\nprecinct in and those are both very easy to build for something as simple as\nthis.\n\nAnd they didn't even need an \"app\" per se. All they needed was a password\nprotected web page with a dead simple form.\n\nWhat happened makes it a bit difficult to avoid pondering if the delays\nweren't deliberate. Whatever the case may be, the DNC is who ended up taking\nit on the chin.\n\n~~~\nmdavidn\nAny database should work just fine for this application. 1678 precincts. 11\ncandidates. 2 rounds. That's 37 thousand records to fully represent\neverything.\n\n~~~\noblib\nWith CouchDB you could have all that data in 1678 human readable files.\n\nOr 1678 password protected databases with one or more human readable files in\nthem and let CouchDB handle user auth, which CouchDB makes really easy.\n\nYou could do the same thing with a simple flat file database using directories\nand files and system level user access, and it'd be very fast too.\n\nThis is pretty much the kind of thing CouchDB is designed for though and has\ntools built-in to make it easy.\n\n~~~\nars\nI have a feeling you haven't used SQL databases very often.\n\nThis is exactly the kind of thing that SQL database is shine at and noSQL\ndatabases do poorly.\n\n~~~\noblib\n> I have a feeling you haven't used SQL databases very often.\n\nNo, I've not. I just never liked the way it worked so I have to honest and\nopen about my prejudice.\n\n> This is exactly the kind of thing that [...] noSQL databases do poorly.\n\nThat's really not true. I've built web apps that do pretty much exactly what\nthat voting apps does and I use CouchDB to do it because it was built\nspecifically for this kind of thing, and it makes it very easy.\n\nThat's not the same as saying SQL won't work. Or even that it's a bad choice\nby design if it's what you're familiar with and good at using it.\n\nHow much time have you spent with CouchDB?\n\nI do know that those coming from a long history of using SQL dbs often have a\nhard time using CouchDB. I had a hard time with SQL, so maybe it's a right\nbrain/left brain kind of thing. Or maybe it's just not really wanting to learn\na different way to do what you already know how to do with a different tool.\n\nI chose to use a hand rolled flat file database early on (around 2000) as a\nbackend for my web apps. When CouchDB hit v1.4 I switched to it because it\nworked very much the same as my db and offered a lot of advantages. It's\ngotten a lot better over the years since too.\n\nSo yeah, my view comes from a different perspective.\n\n~~~\nnl\n(Not the person you are replying to, but..)\n\nI've used CouchDB on and off for some years[1], although I've used SQL\ndatabases for longer. I've also used NoSQL databases ranging from MongoDB to\nCassandra, Hadoop, BDB (and variants), DynomoDB, etc.\n\nCouchDB (or any other NoSQL database) just isn't the best choice here. The\napplication is literally tables of relational data with multiple simultaneous\nusers which is pretty much the perfect use case for a SQL Database Server.\n\n[1] Since 2010! Wow that's a lot longer ago than it seems. [https://mail-\narchives.apache.org/mod_mbox/couchdb-user/20101...](https://mail-\narchives.apache.org/mod_mbox/couchdb-user/201011.mbox/browser)\n\n~~~\noblib\n\"The application is literally tables of relational data with multiple\nsimultaneous users\"\n\nHow is this data \"relational\"?\n\nEach precinct has 3 numbers to submit for each candidate, that's not a big\ntask for one person, and none of those precinct's candidates numbers are\nrelated to anything else in the db except the grand total of all precincts\nnumbers and that's a one way relationship. The grand totals never change any\nof the data they're derived from.\n\nIf you want to give each candidate's precinct representative access to the\nprecinct's db in CouchDB than you just limit their access to one file for\ntheir specific candidate in a db for their specific precinct, so by design\nit's purposely not related to any other candidate or precinct.\n\nThat's why CouchDB is a good choice for this kind of app.\n\n~~~\nnl\n> How is this data \"relational\"? Each precinct has 3 numbers to submit for\n> each candidate\n\nThe numbers relate to each candidate. It's that simple!\n\n~~~\noblib\nThat is just silly. Reminds me of the old saying; \"When all you have is a\nhammer everything looks like a nail.\"\n\n------\nmarcell\nMy coworker has an alternate theory that frankly makes a lot more sense than\n“the app broke.”\n\nThe Iowa caucus is not a paper ballot. People stand in groups in a large\nmultipurpose room and raise their hands for who they vote for. Depending on\nthe viability threshold, people move to new groups and are recounted.\n\nThe exact rules are complicated and the process is run by unpaid humans.\nMoreover, in 2020 everyone has smartphones to post embarrassing mistakes on\nsocial media. And this year is a very crowded primary for the democrats,\nraising the chance for error.\n\nUnder this theory, the app is a convenient scapegoat to hide the fact that the\nprocess is inaccurate and bad. For politicians this seems pretty convenient.\nWho would you rather blame, and decades old tradition or an app contractor?\n\n~~~\nneonate\nI don't think that's a better theory. The process may be 'bad' but it has been\nthat way, and worked, for a long time. As far as we know, the new ingredient\nwas the app.\n\n~~~\njandrese\nThere were some confounding factors, like an apparent day-of decision to\nrequire the caucuses to report the results of every vote cast, not just the\nlast one. This led to considerably higher data requirements in precincts where\nmultiple votes were necessary to reach consensus. The new requirements were\napparently not reported to the staff until around noon on the day of the\nelection.\n\nAs anybody can tell you, nothing sinks projects faster than changing\nrequirements late in the development cycle.\n\nThe app also sucked for another reason. Lots of Iowa is rural and cell\ncoverage can be spotty. The app was designed with the all too common\nassumption in this day and age that the Internet works everywhere.\n\n~~~\ncoredog64\nThe extra information has been known since 2016. Bernie (or his campaign)\nasked for it as a means of providing additional transparency into the process.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe James Golick Grant for Women in Computology - juliehache\nhttps://jamesgolick.bitmakerlabs.com/\n\n======\nlotp\nthis is great, donated\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Why doesn't HN open submitted links in a new tab? - anilm823\n\nA bit trivial, I know, but I've always found it slightly annoying to have to press the back button to return to HN or explicitly right click and open the link in a new tab myself.  Why doesn't HN automatically open external links in a new tab?\n======\ndangrossman\nHold control when you click to open a link in a new tab. You can also middle-\nclick if you have a mouse. Hold shift and click to open in a new window. Where\na link opens is in your control, as it should be.\n\n~~~\nanilm823\nI'm aware of the ways to force open a new tab, I was just curious as to why\nthis wasn't the default. IMO, it provides for a friendlier user experience.\n\n~~~\ndangrossman\nIf a website forces a new tab when you don't want to open a new tab (as I\ndon't), that's not friendly at all. There's no easy way to override that\nbehavior, while it's easy to get the behavior you want.\n\n------\nwmf\nBecause that's how it was done in Web 1.0. Also, I always thought sites\ncreated new tabs for \"stickiness\" which is not an issue on a non-pageview-\nwhoring site.\n\n------\njwillgoesfast\nI agree, In general I prefer a new tab, its what has become \"conventional\" for\nbetter or worse, but its also nice to be able to navigate a few pages deep on\nthe linked site, then just close the tab to get back to HN quickly.\n\n~~~\nanilm823\nMy thoughts exactly. Call it sheer laziness, but the fact that the linked site\nis not opened in a new tab prevents me from navigating too deep into the\nlinked site.\n\n------\nzoowar\nConfigure it in your browser and move on with your life.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApple Park's tree whisperer - steven\nhttps://backchannel.com/apple-parks-tree-whisperer-6badcef983e9\n======\nsapote\nThere have been so many articles about the trees planted in the new Apple\ncampus, and how this was somehow groundbreaking, but it's actually been pretty\ndisappointing. I've seen some lists of trees, especially fruit trees, that\nthey've planted, and it's pretty uninspired -- they didn't Think Different.\nLots of pomes (Apples, Pears, etc.) and stone fruit (Plums, Cherries, etc.) --\nconventional varieties too. And they talk about drought tolerance, but I\nhaven't seen a single mention of them planting White Sapote, a fruit perfectly\nadapted to the local climate, delicious, and very productive (not to mention,\nrare). Or various Guava relatives (Lemon / Strawberry Guava, Guabiju,\nPineapple Guava, etc.). And that's just scratching the surface...\n\nI wish they would have talked to the local chapter of California Rare Fruit\nGrowers to plan an orchard with a true diversity of interesting fruit. They\nhad an opportunity to include a huge diversity of fruits and cultivars with\nthe space they have, but it seems like they're not going to.\n\n~~~\nmatt4077\nI believe they were looking only at plants native to California, and from a\nquick search it appears at White Sapote's and Guava's closest native\npopulations are in eastern Mexico. I don't necessarily agree with being this\nstrict in the requirements, but I think it's within the realm of being\nlegitimate–although I'm not sure how \"native\" Apple, Pears etc. are to\nCalifornia.\n\nI've also read that to some degree they were recreating a specific landscape\nthat Steve Jobs grew fond of when growing up. That doesn't really help anybody\nalive today, but if I were involved in the decisions, I wouldn't interfere\nwith his wishes unless unavoidable.\n\n~~~\nsapote\nNone of the fruit trees they are planting are native to California.\n\nIf they wanted to plant native edibles they'd be stuck with a pretty limited\nselection of berries and nuts.\n\nEdited to add: White Sapote and Avocado are about as close to native fruit\ntrees as you can get in California. Apples, on the other hand, are native to\nKazakhstan.\n\n------\nGravityloss\nI've visited a park here that has living trees that were planted by a wealthy\nretired officer, to be sail ship masts. Now would be about harvesting time,\nsome 100 years later. It's a nice place though.\n\nI applaud their efforts. Seems it's just impossible to let the environment be.\nFirst everything absolutely just must be destroyed, and then, years later,\nsomebody must spend a lot of effort and time to actually try to make it \"nice\"\nagain, and they won't see the results in their lifetime anyway.\n\n~~~\nmatt4077\n\"A healthy society is one where old men plant trees they'll never eat from\".\n\n~~~\ngadders\nA similar (probably apocryphal) anecdote about an Oxford University college:\n[http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-\noxf...](http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-oxford)\n\n------\natourgates\nI can't believe that this is the first time anyone's ever brought up plating a\nmacintosh apple tree. I mean, if you have the opportunity to make a pun in\ntree form, how could you not?\n\n~~~\nnicky0\nMcIntosh, isn't it?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTim Cook Appears Alongside Trump in Re-Election Campaign Ad Shot - mrzool\nhttps://daringfireball.net/2019/11/cook_trump_campaign_ad\n======\nablomen\n\"A low moment in Apple’s proud history\"\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.#Criticism_and_contr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.#Criticism_and_controversies)\n\nI think Apple has done a lot worse in its \"proud history\" and is still doing\nit.\n\n~~~\nme_me_me\nIt's as if corporations were guided by only one principle make money, a lot of\nmoney.\n\n------\nnabla9\nThere has not been any change in how big tech companies deal with hard\ndecisions. It's just people who ate PR, brand management and empty corporate\nspeak about values getting getting deserved reality check.\n\nWithout a doubt Tim Cook is very strongly socially liberal and anti Trump as\nlong as it's does not hurt business opportunities or the future of Apple.\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\n> _Without a doubt Tim Cook is very strongly socially liberal and anti Trump\n> as long as it 's does not hurt business opportunities or the future of\n> Apple._\n\nSo in every way except those that don't suit him!\n\n------\nmicrotherion\nDisappointing. Even beyond the question of malfeasance, there should be at\nleast three _policy_ areas I can think of off the top of my head that Cook\nshould be opposed to:\n\n* Constant disruption of international manufacturing and trade relations with a chaotic assembly of policies (as Paul Krugman has pointed out, each individual policy you can, in principle, adjust to. But policies changing on a weekly level are impossible to plan for: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/opinion/trump-economy.htm...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/opinion/trump-economy.html))\n\n* Anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric making it harder to hire from abroad (one can debate whether this benefits US workers—I would argue not—but it's certainly not in Apple's self interest).\n\n* Anti-LGBT policies and rhetoric. It's admirable that Cook consistently avoid making things about himself, but I think you ought to draw the line at collaborating with politicians who question one's very right to exist.\n\n~~~\ndocdeek\n> It's admirable that Cook consistently avoid making things about himself, but\n> I think you ought to draw the line at collaborating with politicians who\n> question one's very right to exist.\n\nDoes Trump really question the right of gay men like Cook to exist?\n\n------\nH8crilA\nHoly shit, right after Trump said that \"Apple may be exempt from tariffs\".\n\n[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/trump-a...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/trump-\napple-tim-cook-exempt-from-china-tariffs-factory-tour-2019-11)\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\nCorrelation does not imply causation /s\n\n------\nGrue3\nThe main alternative seems to be Warren who openly proposes policies to\ndismantle Apple, among other companies. So it makes sense that he'd go all in\nto prevent her from being elected, it's his fiduciary duty after all.\n\n~~~\n333c\n> Warren who openly proposes policies to dismantle Apple\n\nI don't think this is true. Can you provide a source or quote from her?\n\n~~~\nGrue3\n[https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/9/18257965/elizabeth-\nwarren-...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/9/18257965/elizabeth-warren-break-\nup-apple-monopoly-antitrust)\n\n\"Apple, you’ve got to break it apart from their App Store. It’s got to be one\nor the other. Either they run the platform or they play in the store. They\ndon’t get to do both at the same time. So it’s the same notion. \"\n\n~~~\ndariusj18\nI wouldn't say that goes so far as to \"dismantle\" Apple, but it is definitely\na proposition to affect perceived anti-competitive practices. I am not sure\nwhere I come down on such question, can you describe the benefits and\ndrawbacks of Apple controlling the App Store?\n\n------\nSchoolmeister\nFrom the guidelines on what to submit to HN: \"If you had to reduce it to a\nsentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual\ncuriosity.\"\n\nThis does not fit that criterion.\n\n~~~\nhappytoexplain\nDon't you think it's insulting to tell a crowd of people that they are not\nintellectually stimulated by something? I don't find it intellectually\nstimulating either, but I wouldn't declare something so personal and\nsubjective as factual (\"it's not\" vs \"I don't think it is\" or \"it isn't for\nme\"). It's antagonistic for no reason.\n\n~~~\njbob2000\nThis is a blog post about a twitter post about a picture. The whole article\ncan be reduced to \"tim cook good, trump bad, why in picture together?\". HN\ncannot become reddit, we have to hold our bar higher than blogspam about\npolitics.\n\n------\nkresten\nA smart Silicon Valley leader plays The President well.\n\nThat is all.\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\nIf the President is re-elected partially thanks to that, then it's the\nPresident who played the \"smart Silicon Valley leader\".\n\nOr rather, it's two smart people making alliances of opportunity to get what\nthey want...\n\n------\nyabadabadoes\nIt sounds like fact checked news, but is it?\n\nI would hate to give anyone mentioned in this article an example of the time\nthey were falsely accused of something by an actual fake news source.\n\n[https://daringfireball.net/2019/10/correction_regarding_an_e...](https://daringfireball.net/2019/10/correction_regarding_an_erroneous_allegation)\n\n~~~\nmcphage\n> It sounds like fact checked news, but is it?\n\nUm... which bit do you think is wrong?\n\n~~~\nyabadabadoes\nSo this is the new fact checking, after the outrage machine is in full swing?\n\nI think everyone has seen how this works with alt-right social news blogging,\nand we've already seen this blogger feed the flames with false accusations\nretracted later.\n\nI don't agree with the likes of Zuckerberg (though I think even he is\nbacktracking) that fake news can be algorithmically detected precisely due to\nthis example blog. There is no proof of work in fact checking, so outraged\n\"left\"/\"right\" bloggers is worse than no information.\n\nIf there's something to feed to the media do so, if there's something to feed\nto special prosecutors or the SEC even better.\n\n~~~\nmcphage\n> So this is the new fact checking, after the outrage machine is in full\n> swing?\n\nNo, like I legit don't have any idea what you're talking about, or if you're\neven responding to the right article.\n\nThe claim:\n\nTim Cook Appears Alongside Trump in Re-Election Campaign Ad Shot in Mac Pro\nPlant in Austin\n\nThe fact check:\n\nThe first line of the linked article is to the video tweeted out by Trump:\n[https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/11973161062364815...](https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1197316106236481539)\n\nBeyond that, I have no idea where you're going with this.\n\n------\nbuboard\nThis topic will go down very well.\n\n------\nReason077\nPerhaps there's some \"quid pro quo\" going on here? Tim appears in Trump's\ncampaign ad, Trump rolls back trade tariffs that could affect Apple?\n\n~~~\nmc32\nThe kind of quid pro quo that happened when I gave apple money and I got a\nphone in return?\n\n------\nAlexTWithBeard\nBut why do we think the real Cook is \"left-wing\" and the hypocritical one is\n\"right-wing\", not the other way round?\n\n------\nzozbot234\ninb4 Tim Cook changes his name to Tim Apple\n\n------\nthathndude\nBut we all know Tim Cook didn’t like a second of it. He’s balancing his\npersonal feelings with his duties of loyalty and care (he owes to Apple Inc).\n\nTim Cook is doing the best he can in a garbage situation. He’s not rolling\nover for Trump, but he’s also not antagonizing Trump (which I know a lot of\npeople want to see).\n\nCook’s being savvy. Cook is crushing it. Gruber got this take wrong. Gruber is\nletting political feelings infect _his_ job as a journalist.\n\n~~~\nmcphage\n> Cook’s being savvy. Cook is crushing it.\n\nThis isn't being savvy. This is realizing you were on the receiving end of\nanother \"I'd like you to do a favor for us though\".\n\n------\nkgraves\nSo what?\n\nFlagged. This isn't very intellectually stimulating and a poor take to say the\nleast.\n\nI wish HN just sticks to tech instead of politics all the time.\n\n~~~\natypicality\n\"Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam\nor off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them\ninstead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.\"\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)\n\n~~~\nkgraves\nok sorry dad.\n\n------\nnextstep\nPeople constantly act so surprised when liberals in the business community are\ntolerant of fascists, but this is naive and just shows how unfamiliar someone\nlike Gruber is with historical events.\n\nThe New Yorker just published a great piece about exactly this:\n\n[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/11/liberalism-\nacc...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/11/liberalism-according-to-\nthe-economist)\n\n~~~\nDavidSJ\nCriticism does not imply surprise.\n\nFor if it did, we’d have to assume that you are surprised by behavior you\nyourself describe as constant. And I don’t believe you are.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHello darkness my old friend - mariorz\nhttp://diveintomark.org/archives/2008/08/12/year-of-what-now\n======\ndmpayton\nI completely sympathize with Mark. I was an Apple hater for years, and was\necstatic when I discovered Linux (Ubuntu 7.04) and could move away from\nWindows as well.\n\nThen a good friend of mine convinced me to get an iPhone. I was hesitant at\nfirst, but after trying one I decided to go for it.\n\nThen I got a job where my choices were a MacBook Pro or a Dell with Vista.\nThree guesses which one I took (the first two don't count).\n\nI must admit OS X is really nice, and full Unix compatibility is a huge plus.\nStill... _sigh_\n\n[Edit: missing period]\n\n~~~\nelai\nFull unix compatibility without easy, comprehensive & working BINARY package\nmanagement (like debian, or archlinux) is still a big pain in the ass. Setting\nup something like the mysqldb library, mod_python, apache, and django can be a\n1 hour production vs. the 5 minute production that it is on linux.\n\n~~~\ndmpayton\nAgreed, package managers are a godsend. That's why there's\n<http://www.macports.org/> and <http://www.finkproject.org/>\n\n------\ntptacek\nI can't modify the firmware image in my Bosch engine ECU, even though doing so\ncould significantly improve the performance of my car. Mark is right. Nobody\ngives a shit.\n\n------\nmariorz\niPhone owners who do care about Freedom 0 will just jailbreak the thing\nthough.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\n... and Apple will do whatever they can to brick those phones, and in the arms\nrace that follows, it's a coin flip as to whether Apple will win (like DirecTV\ndid) or lose (like Microsoft did with the first Xbox).\n\n~~~\nmariorz\nI don't think Apple is as pressed to fight this war as DirecTV was.\n\nAlso you can jailbreak the thing without additional hardware which wasn't\npossible in the DirecTV scenario. I doubt that we'll see jailbroken iphones\ngoing away anytime soon, the process is becoming effortless even for non-\nhacker types and the benefits are obvious (even if you've never heard of\nFreedom 0).\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nI don't know if Apple feels pressed. It's hard to say if, long term, you'll\nneed hardware to jailbreak an iPod. I'm just pointing out that there is a bit\nof hubris in the jailbreaker mentality --- it is not, from a CS perspective,\nan unsolveable problem to make jailbreaking more effort than it's worth.\nApple's got a lot of smart people.\n\n------\nburp\n....\n\n------\ntidra14\nHaha\n\nAwwwwww\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Prostate Cancer Test That Saved My Life - satysin\nhttps://medium.com/@RedHourBen/the-prostate-cancer-test-that-saved-my-life-613feb3f7c00#.w388qoi1s\n======\nbryanlarsen\nI am not a doctor, but a Gleason score of 7 is not considered a high-\ngrade/aggressive tumour according to cancer.org.\n\nIt's certainly possible that the intervention saved your life, but I'm highly\nskeptical. I think it just caused you unnecessary stress and trauma.\n\n\"Every old man dies with prostate cancer. Nobody dies from it.\" is the saying\nI've heard. Obviously it's hyperbole, but the core is valid.\n\n~~~\nsurfmike\nIANAD but from what I understand the PSA test has a high false positive rate.\n\n~~~\nCWuestefeld\nAfter the third year of steadily increasing PSA scores, my doctor was\nconcerned even though it was below the official \"get worried\" mark because of\nmy relatively young age and the trajectory.\n\nI went to a urologist, got a request for the MRI which the insurance company\ndenied, and so had to follow up with the very unpleasant biopsy mentioned in\nthe OP (including missed work, pain, peeing blood). All for the result to come\nback completely negative.\n\nThat was last year, and as luck would have it, this year's PSA score dropped\nsignificantly.\n\nI don't know whether I'd say that I'm not glad to have a definitive negative\nanswer, particularly since my father had prostate cancer. However, this false\nalarm did cost an appreciable amount of money, time, and suffering.\n\n~~~\nzwieback\nYou're the classic argument against heavy PSA screening at a young age.\nStatistically it's probably a net negative what we're doing right now. My PC\nwas actually caught with a digital (as in \"finger\") test, then followed up by\na PSA.\n\n------\nhadley\n> Prostate cancer screening did not significantly decrease prostate cancer-\n> specific mortality in a combined meta-analysis of five RCTs. Only one study\n> (ERSPC) reported a 21% significant reduction of prostate cancer-specific\n> mortality in a pre-specified subgroup of men aged 55 to 69 years. Pooled\n> data currently demonstrates no significant reduction in prostate cancer-\n> specific and overall mortality. Harms associated with PSA-based screening\n> and subsequent diagnostic evaluations are frequent, and moderate in\n> severity. Overdiagnosis and overtreatment are common and are associated with\n> treatment-related harms. Men should be informed of this and the demonstrated\n> adverse effects when they are deciding whether or not to undertake screening\n> for prostate cancer. Any reduction in prostate cancer-specific mortality may\n> take up to 10 years to accrue; therefore, men who have a life expectancy\n> less than 10 to 15 years should be informed that screening for prostate\n> cancer is unlikely to be beneficial. No studies examined the independent\n> role of screening by DRE.\n\n— [http://www.cochrane.org/CD004720/PROSTATE_screening-for-\npros...](http://www.cochrane.org/CD004720/PROSTATE_screening-for-prostate-\ncancer)\n\n------\nbill_from_tampa\nThis is a hot-button topic, which generates much heat. Most men (>80%) will\nhave prostate cancer by the time they reach age 80 (ie, would be detected if\ntheir entire prostate was examined histologically (which is, you may surmise,\nnot generally done). About 13% of men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer\nduring their lifetime. About 2.9% of men will die because of prostate cancer.\n\nDoes anybody see the problem? Most men who will have prostate cancer develop\nwill not die because of prostate cancer, but from something else -- and many\nof these men (most, actually) will have no idea they have or had prostate\ncancer ---> unless somebody goes looking for it.\n\nA randomized controlled trial of prostate cancer detection using PSA was done\nin the US (sponsored by the NIH). It did not find any difference in the\nsurvival curves in men who were randomly assigned to PSA screening compared to\nthose who were not so assigned. The trial has been criticised.\n\nObviously any man who had prostate cancer found through PSA testing and was\ntreated and does not die from prostate cancer will be very happy, and\nconvinced that the screening saved their life. But the actual RCT data is more\ncomplex, and PSA screening may simply be generating more \"business\" for\nurologists and radiation therapists, without providing real medical benefit.\n\nNote that there are similar questions about another hot-button cancer\nscreening topic, mammograms. But that is another chapter!\n\n------\nnathan_f77\nWow, I read this a few hours ago, and I didn't even notice that it was written\nby Ben Stiller.\n\nHere's a video where he talks about it:\n[https://www.howardstern.com/show/2016/10/4/ben-stiller-\ngoes-...](https://www.howardstern.com/show/2016/10/4/ben-stiller-goes-public-\nhow-he-fought-prostate-cancer-and-\nwon/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=sternshow)\n\n------\nzwieback\nI had a similar journey although my prostate cancer was detected at age 42 by\nmy family doctor during a routine finger-in-the-butt test at my annual\nphysical. He thought it was “diffusely enlarged”, then PSA test (high), then\nbiopsy (ouch!) revealed a 4+3 Gleason.\n\nLike the author I had a radical prostatectomy but not robotically assisted.\n\nLike everyone in our situation I was scared of the two I’s — incontinence and\nimpotence. Luckily no sign of either one, 8 years out the plumbing is working\nfine. The annual follow PSA screening is a bit scary, so far it’s always come\nback 0 but if there’s any PSA it’s going to be bad news.\n\nAll in all I’d recommend PC as a starter cancer — pretty treatable if detected\nearly on and if you have a skilled surgeon you can come out of it fully\nfunctional. Age is a big factor, if you’re in your seventies it’s probably\nbest to just watch it, for us young outliers it’s good to get it out.\n\n~~~\nfokinsean\n> All in all I’d recommend PC as a starter cancer\n\nThat is basically how it feels when I recommend Angular to people wanting to\ntry a JS framework.\n\nHappy to hear you are doing okay.\n\n------\ngthtjtkt\nWhat can we take away from this if we don't fit into the demographics of\ntypical PSA test subjects (40-70 years old or family history of prostate\ncancer)?\n\nDoes it make sense to request one out of the blue, or is this one of those\nthings that will make your doctor give you funny looks and assume you're a\nhypochondriac?\n\n~~~\ndeepwave\nI went, for example, because I felt a second or two hesitancy when needing to\nurinate. See my below comments, which, sadly, have been modded down for\nwhatever reason...\n\n------\ndeepwave\nGet the PSA test if your over 45. Just get it. I just went through it as well\nas a biopsy because the PSA looked fishy. I did the PSA as well as the Free\nPSA test. I then had a 12-needle core biopsy, which, while unpleasant, let me\nknow I was OK. I need to, as do all men my age (almost 50), get tested yearly.\nIt's not a joke. It's tough to get men into the doctor for anything unless\nthey feel they're dying. Guys, get tested, especially if you have a wife and\nchildren. You owe it to them, if not yourself.\n\nA PSA test takes 5 minutes. It's a simple blood draw and you learn the results\nin two days. Like ovarian cancer for women, prostate cancer is the \"whispering\ndeath\". It's often too late if it's metastasized after it's detected, then\nyour chances are even less. Get the test, doubly so if you are a family man.\n\n~~~\ndeepwave\nI have no idea why my comment is being modded down. Guys who disdain hearing\ngood advice and the truth are beyond me...\n\n~~~\nunclenoriega\nI didn't downvote you, and I can't speak for others, but for me, people giving\ngeneral, emphatic advice based solely on limited personal experience is really\nannoying and often counterproductive. Perhaps you have further evidence to\nback up your claims, but you didn't cite it.\n\n------\nlawless123\nDoes the PSA ever provide false negatives?\n\n~~~\nogsharkman\nFalse negatives are always possible, however in a quick search I couldn't find\nany papers on the rates.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMoritz Simon Geist’s robots make technical techno - Tomte\nhttps://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/you-call-that-edm-moritz-simon-geists-robots-make-the-most-technical-techno/\n======\nlsh\nEDM is not techno, tyvm.\n\nhurrumph. getting old.\n\nedit: the sound is good, definitely a Kraftwerk vibe.\n\nFor a heavier sound involving robots, try Author & Punisher:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrOTHl6Tldc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrOTHl6Tldc)\n\n~~~\ndopamean\nI'm really glad someone said it. It has nothing to do with age either. They're\ntwo different things.\n\n------\ntaxidump\nWould this be better described as music made from midi-controlled (mechanical)\ninstruments?\n\nVery neat, however the title lead me to believe the robots had the creative\ncontrol of the notes and construction of the song. Still very entertaining\nnone the less.\n\n~~~\nmarkbnj\nYes it seemed to me to be more about a human making music using unusual\ninstruments.\n\n------\nAndrewKemendo\nThe article makes it seem way more automated than it is. In that sense this is\none of a handful of folks doing this and a really exciting time for avant\ngarde music in my opinion. It's increasingly popular in the industrial music\ngenre.\n\nThere's a long history of this arguably starting with Kraftwerk and spanning\ngenres including some of the amazing things bjork has made.\n\nOn my constant playlist is author and punisher who is an engineer by day and\nmakes his instruments from scratch:\n\n[https://youtu.be/Sdx0vvHxrzQ](https://youtu.be/Sdx0vvHxrzQ)\n\n------\ncronix\nNo, I don't really call that EDM. I'd call that Industrial. Nice job!\n\n------\nrenholder\nRelated Nigel Stanford video.\n[https://youtu.be/bAdqazixuRY](https://youtu.be/bAdqazixuRY)\n\n~~~\nasciimo\nThat was a little over-the-top. But repurposing industrial robots to make\nmusic is genius. And expensive.\n\n~~~\nmirceal\nover the top? nah. it's beautiful\n\n------\nwazoox\nWell Pat Metheny has been doing similar things, building \"sonic machines\" for\nyears. He also brings them on stage at least since the \"Orchestrion\" album.\n\n~~~\nmrspeaker\nNot quite the same, but Squarepusher x Z-Machines came to my mind:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkUq4sO4LQM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkUq4sO4LQM)\n\n~~~\npacomerh\nThis is a good reference. I love that you guys mentioned Metheny and Tom\nJenkinson, these are two of my biggest influences and favorite musicians. Have\nyou seen what Lars Dietrich does with 'Lucy'?\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzW6IbggtY8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzW6IbggtY8)\n\n------\nMizza\nMy favorite example of this ever:\n[https://vimeo.com/93923609](https://vimeo.com/93923609)\n\n------\nbitwize\nSee also:\n\nThe Floppotron: Music played on old floppy drives, hard drives, and scanners.\n[https://youtu.be/oGfkPCZYfFw](https://youtu.be/oGfkPCZYfFw)\n\nAnimusic: CG animations of fantastic machines playing music. The animation is\nparameterized to the MIDI input. Attempts to build real-world working models\nof these machines or machines like them have been made, with varying levels of\nsuccess: [https://youtu.be/hyCIpKAIFyo](https://youtu.be/hyCIpKAIFyo)\n\nCompressorhead: An all-robot heavy metal band. Famous for Stickboy, the band's\nfour-armed, headbanging drummer, or at least Stickboy is what I remember most\nabout the band. [https://youtu.be/j4UZh2FjEQw](https://youtu.be/j4UZh2FjEQw)\n\n------\nsquarefoot\nAll hail the Compressorhead!\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkEjIiN0xyY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkEjIiN0xyY)\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSQYjlSuz8Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSQYjlSuz8Y)\n\n------\nsomuchtyler\nhow is this different from the techno jeep?\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFybwg4wadI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFybwg4wadI)\n\n~~~\nyboris\nCar alarm techno:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WFsIskJ05I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WFsIskJ05I)\n\n------\nstevehiehn\nWell that was awesome!\n\n------\nbillpg\nThere was me thinking the name was a typo for Simone Giertz.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTribe meets white man for the first time [video] - Toyentrepreneur\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aV_850nzv4\n======\ndigitaltribal9\nI've seen this before and recall allegations of being staged/faked. Anything\nconclusive to say about this? (Real/fake?)\n\n------\nintellix\n8 year olds dude - Wikipedia say they practise in paedophilic behaviour\ncommonly\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy the sun is a poor dumping ground for nuclear waste (2010) - gus_massa\nhttp://www.csicop.org/sb/show/shooting_for_the_sun/\n======\nleni536\n> To reach the Sun you need to subtract 100 percent of Earth’s orbital\n> velocity; to reach solar escape velocity you need only add 41 percent to it.\n\nYou could send the waste with near solar escape velocity to travel on a really\nlong ellipsis trajectory, at the furthest point you can get rid of the\nremaining kinetic energy with minimal fuel and let the waste fall back\nstraight into the Sun. Subtracting Earth's orbital velocity is by far not the\noptimal method to reach the Sun.\n\n~~~\nkllrnohj\nA straight Hohmann transfer requires ~0.5-1% more dV than a bi-elliptic\ntransfer. Calling this \"by far\" not optimal is by far not correct. So instead\nof 32 km/s you need 31.68 km/s. This changes nothing.\n\n~~~\nbenjoffe\nWhere did you get the \"0.5-1%\" figure from? That may be true in some cases,\nbut not in this extreme case, here it's closer to half the delta-v (which, due\nto the rocket equation is enormously less difficult to achieve).\n\nSolar escape velocity is about 16.5km/s* , and since ~99% of this manoeuvre's\ndelta-v budget is used at launch the entire delta-v cost is asymptotically\nthis value.\n\n*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#Launch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#Launch) (see paragraph 4)\n\n~~~\npdonis\n_> Solar escape velocity is about 16.5km/s_\n\nNo, it's about 42 km/s, i.e., sqrt(2) times the Earth's orbital velocity\naround the Sun, which is 30 km/s. New Horizons was launched to take as much\nadvantage of the Earth's orbital velocity as it could, so that the rocket\ndidn't need to provide all of the 42 km/s of delta-v needed for solar escape.\n\n(You could use the same trick for your scheme, of course. The main issue I see\nwith your scheme is that it greatly lengthens the time that the waste is out\nin space.)\n\n------\naqme28\nI always thought the biggest reason was that if a rocket carrying nuclear\nwaste exploded in our atmosphere, it would be catastrophic. It's a lot less\nrisky to just bury it underground and pray it never leaks.\n\n~~~\ncpeterso\nOr bury the nuclear waste in oceanic trenches. It is out of the way and future\ngenerations won't stumble upon it when humans forget where they buried all\nthis stuff.\n\n~~~\nsbov\nDo we know enough about our oceans to know that there would be no harm from\nthis?\n\n~~~\nmindcruzer\nNo\n\n~~~\nbcmit\nReally? Water is just about the best radiation shield in existence. It would\nonly affect the ~10 feet of ocean immediately around it.\n\n~~~\nmahranch\nIt's not about the actual radiation, that's easy to deal with. It's about the\ncontainers cracking or leaking and having that stuff floating around in the\nocean, contaminating our food and the environment. Even the strongest\ncontainer we can make is still susceptible to the corrosive effects of the\nocean.\n\nIf you're going to bury it in the ocean, your best bet would be to bury it\nnear a subduction zone. But then you have the earth itself possibly being the\ncause of the container cracks and leaks.\n\n------\ntbrownaw\n_Every time the question of nuclear waste disposal comes up, someone is sure\nto say, “Why not shoot it into the Sun?” It seems so obvious._\n\nOr we could get over our stupid fear of recycling. The stuff's only hazardous\nbecause we haven't taken all the energy out of it yet.\n\n _Nuclear fuel reprocessing is performed routinely in Europe, Russia and\nJapan._\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing)\n\n~~~\nbtilly\nOne of the downsides of reprocessing is that it makes plutonium easy to\nseparate out in a form that is good for making nuclear bombs. Therefore it\nrepresents a nuclear proliferation risk.\n\n~~~\nopo\nNone of the countries that have developed nuclear weapons have gotten their\nplutonium from nuclear waste because there are much easier ways to get weapons\ngrade plutonium.\n\nForm the wikipedia page: \"Ordinarily (in spent nuclear fuel), plutonium is\nreactor-grade plutonium. In addition to plutonium-239, which is highly\nsuitable for building nuclear weapons, it contains large amounts of\nundesirable contaminants: plutonium-240, plutonium-241, and plutonium-238.\nThese isotopes are extremely difficult to separate, and more cost-effective\nways of obtaining fissile material exist (e.g. uranium enrichment or dedicated\nplutonium production reactors)\"\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste)\n\nAs the wikipedia article points out a very good approach to deal with nuclear\nwaste would be burn the waste in pyrometallurgical fast reactors like the\nproposed Integral Fast Reactor. (For background on the Integral Fast Reactor:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor))\n\nTrying to throw the waste in the sun would be one of the worst possible\nimaginable ways of dealing with nuclear waste.\n\n~~~\nmahranch\n> None of the countries that have developed nuclear weapons have gotten their\n> plutonium from nuclear waste\n\nJust because someone hasn't done it before doesn't mean someone won't in the\nfuture.\n\nYou're also ignoring the larger threat to that plutonium; the issue that\nsomeone may not _want_ to separate the contaminants. If they're making a dirty\nbomb, they don't care if it has contaminants or not.\n\n~~~\ntbrownaw\n_You 're also ignoring the larger threat to that plutonium; the issue that\nsomeone may not want to separate the contaminants. If they're making a dirty\nbomb, they don't care if it has contaminants or not._\n\nSo which is worse for that, having a fuck-ton of seriously nasty stuff sitting\naround _forever_ , or concentrating the nasty stuff to a much more manageable\nvolume and then fairly quickly shipping it off to be _destroyed_ (in a way\nthat just happens to provide useful energy out of the deal).\n\n------\nkavalec\nUse the Jules Verne solution: a cannon.\n\nA solar powered mass-driver could sling a steady stream of pellets from Earth\norbit into Solar non-orbit using existing technology.\n\nThat being said, burying it deep near the the start of a plate subduction zone\nmakes at least as much sense.\n\n~~~\njoe_the_user\nWhat does \"Solar non-orbit\" mean?\n\nWhat would happen, if you managed to make sure all this stuff got escape\nvelocity, is you would wind-up with a bunch of junk (literally) in an orbit\naround the sun that would inherently pass through Earth's orbit - as long as\nit doesn't have solar escape velocity, once a thing is moving on pure\nmomentum, it is in orbit and since the orbit fairly closely an ellipse so the\nobject will return. As the article mentions, probably not when the earth\nreturn to the point. But if you keep throwing stuff \"out there\", the chances\nof a return are naturally going to increase.\n\n~~~\njheriko\ni think he just means any old trajectory that doesn't come back...\n\nits not a completely rubbish idea.\n\nif you shoot the right way you could end up cancelling enough orbital velocity\nto intersect the sun before any return to earth.\n\n------\nparineum\nEven if it were actually difficult to get to the sun, there are other options\nthat are nearly as effective.\n\nJupiter would be just as good of a dump or we could just launch on an extra\nsolar trajectory. Hell, we could just put it on a large, non-equatorial orbit\naround the Earth and it would be effectively gone with the added benefit of\nbeing able to recover it should we find a reason to. Space is a big enough\nplace to dump an Earth's worth of trash.\n\nThe only problems are cost and the risk of explosion during launch.\n\n~~~\nignostic\nEhhh, orbit's not a great idea, especially lower-earth orbit. There's already\nenough space junk in our orbit right now that we're running the risk of an\norbital chain-reaction. The chain reaction could take out most of our\nsatellites. I'm sure radioactive waste in our upper atmosphere wouldn't be a\ngood thing, either.\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome)\n\n~~~\njrlocke\nYou are vastly underestimating the space of possible orbits and vastly\noverestimating the size of debris and satellites.\n\n~~~\ntlb\nOr possibly you are overestimating the probability of impact beyond which this\nshould be considered too risky.\n\n------\niwwr\nIt could be much lower than that if you take roundabout trajectories with\ngravity assists from Earth, Venus and Mercury. Not having to establish orbit\nis definitely a plus.\n\nBesides, nuclear waste is still mostly unburned fuel which could be\nreprocessed and burned for power in special reactors.\n\n~~~\ntsotha\n>Besides, nuclear waste is still mostly unburned fuel which could be\nreprocessed and burned for power in special reactors.\n\nThat was my reaction. Future generations will want to use that stuff for fuel.\nThere's no reason to launch it into space.\n\n~~~\nhydrogen18\nWell yes, it could be fuel in the future.\n\nBut at current in the US it is stored in holding pools all over the country.\nNone of those are getting any larger, although they are frequently reworked to\nallow better use of the volume available.\n\nVery little of it is 'weapons grade' and not many people have access to the\nequipment to weaponize it into a nuclear weapon. But turning any of it into a\ndirty bomb is trivial if you can steal it.\n\nThere is also the problem of accidents, why by definition are unavoidable.\n\nSo, you really do want to get rid of the fuel. Launching it into space is\nimpractical. But it should be stored in a difficult to access facility where\nthe chance of it escaping is minimal. The US federal government collected\nbillions for the construction of such a facility, but it was never completed.\nSo as a result, we have fuel scattered all over the US.\n\n~~~\ntsotha\nOh, we definitely should open Yucca Mountain. Maybe with Reid out of the\nSenate it will happen. But we definitely don't want to \"get rid\" of it.\n\n~~~\nhydrogen18\nYes, but unfortunately logic and reason don't factor into the decision making\naround nuclear energy policy.\n\nPeople love to point scream and shout about the dangers of nuclear energy. In\nconversation I've noticed that people think of nuclear energy as\ninterchangeable with nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are incredibly difficult\nto build compared to a nuclear fission reactor. The experimental data you need\nto build one either requires numerous tests or stealing it from a government.\nNuclear reactors on the other hand, can be very simple. The simplest reactors\nare just lumps of radioactive material carefully bonded to thermoelectric\ndevices! The biggest risk from a conventional nuclear reactor is a steam\nexplosion and the dispersal of radioactive material. I reckon the second\nbiggest risk is having tons (quite literally) of spent fuel laying around the\ncountry for no good reason. The storage ponds aren't 100%, accidents will\nhappen. For most of the ponds if the cooling systems went offline the water\nwould boil away and then the fuel would self-heat till it started to oxidize.\nAt that point you've basically got hundreds of miniature fallout generators\ngoing. You better hope the structure above the pond is airtight because no one\nis going to be entering it again in this century.\n\nThe same group of people that scream and shout about nuclear energy being\nunsafe seem to actively ignore the dangers of conventional energy generation.\nFor example, steam explosions are still a risk to the employees operating the\nplant. But I guess their lives don't matter? The pollution from coal isn't\nexactly helping the environment. Then there is this matter of what to do with\nall of the coal dust after it is burnt. You know, the same coal ash that over\n1 billion gallons recently flooded an area of Tennessee. This contaminated a\nriver, people's land, and destroyed their homes.\n\nEven if we ceased 100% of nuclear energy generation today, we still need Yucca\nMountain to deal with the spent fuel we already have. It seems that some\ngroups in the US believe that if they scream loudly enough, the problems of\nthe world will simply go away.\n\nAlso there is this issue of the fact that the energy consumers and the\ntaxpayers already paid for the fucking thing but aren't getting any of the\nbenefits. At this point it is basically just a boondoggle.\n\n------\n_ak\nAnybody who's tried doing that in KSP knows how hard it is.\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nBack in high school I wrote a program that would let you pilot your ship in\norbit around the earth and try to dock with things. I discovered just how\nannoying the physics of spaceflight can be!\n\nGiven the magnetic field of the Sun, one wonders if you could use a terminator\ntether [1] to get the remaining delta-v.\n\n[1]\n[http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/2.3565](http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/2.3565)\n\n------\nrrss1122\nWe can make it to Mercury. In fact, putting a spacecraft in orbit around\nMercury is made more difficult because of the need to decelerate against the\nSun's gravity.\n\nIf you look at the Wikipedia page for the MESSENGER mission, you'll see they\ntackled that problem by using gravity assists from Earth, Venus, and Mercury\nto reduce MESSENGER's relative velocity with Mercury and allow it to go into\norbit. These gravity assists greatly reduced the propulsion requirements.\n\n~~~\nrosser\nI'm not sure how much I like the idea of using the Earth for a gravity assist\non a _nuclear waste_ payload. Getting that one wrong (anyone remember the\nmeters vs. feet debacle with a Mars probe?) wouldn't end well...\n\n~~~\nskrause\nWell, we have done at least one Earth gravity assist with a nuclear payload in\nthe past. There also was some criticism about it back then:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens#Plutoni...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens#Plutonium_power_source)\n\n------\nfleitz\nThis is why you'd use gravity braking to do the work for you...\n\nYou just have to change direction, not slow yourself down, as long as your\npath intersects the sun you're done... we have sent spacecraft to the sun...\nit's not beyond our technical capabilities.\n\nBasically, it's like flying into a banked curve... as long as you're pointed\nat the Sun when you exit the curve you're going to hit the sun with out\nneeding to bleed 30km/s.\n\nThe fundamental reason why it doesn't work is because it's really expensive\nget stuff into space...\n\nIf it was difficult to hit things with large gravitational forces we wouldn't\nsee very many comets in the night sky...\n\n~~~\nCrito\n> _\" If it was difficult to hit things with large gravitational forces we\n> wouldn't see very many comets in the night sky...\"_\n\nThe difficulty does not come from the mass of the Sun. It comes from Earth's\nvelocity around it. The waste starts out with that velocity as well. Basically\nthe waste is already in a stable orbit around the sun, and getting it out of\nthat is difficult.\n\n~~~\nfleitz\nIt's not in a stable orbit around the sun...\n\nIf it has velocity to escape earth's gravity then it does not match earth and\nwill eventually go somewhere else.\n\nIf it does not it will fall back.\n\nOnly at a Lagrange point will it not deviate from earth.\n\nGiven that it is not heading to earth we simply point it at an appropriate\ntrajectory to intercept the moon and/or another planet using that planet to\nperform aforementioned \"banked curve\" which directs it to the sun at increased\nor decreased velocity.\n\nThe primary cost of shipping stuff to the sun is escaping earth, once you do\nthat the additional fuel required to reach the sun is nowhere near the amount\nof fuel required to slow from 30 km/sec to zero.\n\nBasically all we need to do is reach the moon... from there gravity does the\nwork for us with the correct trajectory and a small amount of fuel to correct\nthe trajectory.\n\n------\njbert\nIs there any way to use drag to decay the orbit? We don't have to reach the\nsun _quickly_.\n\nThe solar wind is blowing past, is it possible to \"sail\" against that at an\nangle and - over time - dump orbital velocity and so end up in the sun?\n\n~~~\ngreen7ea\nFrom my understanding, solar wind can only push the payload further away from\nthe sun and there is no noticeable drag in space or the earth wouldn't orbit\nfor very long.\n\nYou are probably thinking that you can sail upwind on a sail boat but it isn't\nthe same in space. The boat's keel [1] and general shape keep it going\nstraight which is necessary to sail upwind. That doesn't work in space.\n\nAnother factor is that a sail works much like an airplane's wing and isn't\nreally 'pushed' by the wind. This allows the force to be perpendicular to the\nsail in some cases. To my knowledge (take this part with a grain of salt),\nsolar sails works by receiving momentum as the photons hit. This could only\npush it away from the sun.\n\n[http://www.real-world-physics-\nproblems.com/images/physics_sa...](http://www.real-world-physics-\nproblems.com/images/physics_sailing_2.png)\n\n~~~\nbtilly\nThe force will be perpendicular to the surface light reflects from, not\nperpendicular to the light arriving at the surface. Therefore if the sail was\nmounted at a 45 degree angle to the Sun, there would be a force that reduces\nangular momentum and puts the object in a spiral towards the Sun.\n\n------\njohngalt\nI'm not rocket scientist, but it seems like the author is calculating a\ndecreasing spiral into the sun rather than an impact. Why not slingshot around\na planet and barrel into the sun with all of the orbital velocity still\nintact.\n\n~~~\nkllrnohj\nBecause if the orbital velocity is intact you will perputally miss hitting the\nsun. The only way you can hit a thing you are orbiting is to remove all the\norbital velocity (well, remove enough of the orbital velocity such that your\norbit drops low enough to scrape the surface anyway).\n\n~~~\nTerr_\nThe sun's pretty big... And if you're worried about overshooting, you could\nprobably lose a lot of velocity just braking against the solar wind.\n\n~~~\ndalke\nWhile the solar wind gets stronger closer to the sun, it's an r-square law\nthat balances the r-squared force of gravity. Fun fact: If a solar sail could\nbe in a fixed position at Mercury orbit then it could also be in fixed\nposition a Neptune orbit.\n\nQuoting from\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail),\nthe \"total force exerted on an 800 by 800 meter solar sail, for example, is\nabout 5 newtons (1.1 lbf) at Earth's distance from the Sun\".\n\nThe Orion space capsule is ~25 sq meters. I'll round that up to 100 sq meters\n(I'm being generous), giving a breaking force of 5/64 N on the waste barge.\n\nThe capsule mass is 20 tons. Assuming the waste barge were the same mass (I'm\nbeing generous) gives a solar gravitational force in Earth orbit of 120\nnewtons. This far exceeds the push from solar wind, even with wildly\noptimistic numbers. (Note: there's some 50,000 tons of high-level nuclear\nwaste in the US.)\n\nSo no, you couldn't lose a lot of velocity just braking against the solar\nwind. Not unless you've also developed effective solar sail technology.\n\n~~~\nexDM69\nYour calculations seem sensible, but you're only talking about _radial_\nforces, ie. countering the \"downward\" force of gravity with \"upward\" thrust of\na solar sail.\n\nBut space flight maneuvers typically use _tangential_ or almost tangential\nthrust. Slowing down or accelerating the orbital motion will cause the\naltitude to vary, preserving the orbital energy and angular momentum. Placing\na solar sail in a 45 degree angle from the sun will change the orbit slowly\nbut surely, as there will be a little tangential and radial thrust.\n\nI still don't think it's viable for throwing anything into the sun, though.\n\n~~~\nlmm\nI think it's viable. There are no other forces acting on you. Set up the solar\nsail at 45 degrees \"against\" your orbit. You will slowly but inevitably spiral\ninto the sun without burning any fuel.\n\n~~~\ndalke\nIf you have effective solar sail technology then all my calculations are\nthrown out the window.\n\nIf you don't, then the time to spiral into the sun is large. Figuring 5/64 N\non 20 tons and an orbital velocity of 30km/s gives\n\n    \n    \n      t = v / a = 30 km/s / ((5/64) N / 20000 kg)\n        = 245 years to cut the orbital velocity\n    \n\nThis assumes all of the force could be used to slow the waste hauler. As\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail)\npoints out, the force is cos^2(theta) so the actual time at 45 degrees is\n\n    \n    \n      t = 245 * (sqrt(2)/2)^2 = 490 years.\n    \n\nThe actual time will be smaller because you only need to hit the sun, and\nsolar wind will get stronger. So, 350 years? As a wild-ass guess.\n\nThat same page points out that sails don't work much inside of 0.25 AU,\nbecause the temperature can exceed the material properties of the sail. Though\nI think if the apogee is inside of 0.20 AU it's good enough.\n\nTo make it worse, the solar wind fluctuates, so unless there's active control\non the rocket, its orbit will be unpredictable over the centuries. When it's\nstill near Earth orbit, or when it approaches Venus orbit, what are the\nchances of a gravitational assist leading to an Earth-return?\n\nWith 50,000 tons of high-level waste, and 15 tons per rocket => 3,333 rockets\nin uncertain orbits, the chances become much higher.\n\n------\neverettForth\nThis is all assuming that we don't have a space elevator.\n\ntldr; it costs a lot of money to launch mass into space.\n\nSending 1 pound of water into space costs $50,000. This is more than the price\nof gold on earth. A space elevator changes the economics dramatically.\n\n~~~\nnothrabannosir\nNo, this is about the speed of the earth relative to the sun. E.g. even if we\nwanted to shoot, say, the ISS into the sun, it'd be hard. As soon as you point\nit towards the sun it will go into an elliptical orbit.\n\n------\nbbcbasic\nI wonder.. would the spent rocket fuel generate more power in (an appropriate)\npower station than the original nuclear material?\n\n(Assuming gravity assist is used)\n\n------\nWaxProlix\nI've been curious about his last paragraph for a while - send trash out into\nnowhere - and unless I'm being an idiot, it looks like we'd still be paying\n(at the author's implied Saturn-V costs) ~48 million USD per short ton of\nwaste.\n\nCompare this to Yucca Mountain's current cost of $9b for ~77k short tons of\nstorage (~$117k/sh tn) and it's still pretty awful.\n\nWe do get the ongoing benefit of no upkeep and happy NIMBYs for spacebound\nwaste, but there are always the downsides of making a mess in our space-\nbackyard (what will the aliens think when they come to visit? How\nembarrassing. Almost as bad, what if it comes back a la Futurama or gets in\nthe way of future endeavors) and losing access to that waste if we figure out\na means of making use of waste in the future.\n\n~~~\nCrito\nI don't think he is seriously suggesting that we blast nuclear waste out into\nspace, only pointing out that it would be easier to do than throwing it into\nthe sun. This emphasizes why \"throw it into the sun\" isn't a very good idea.\n\n------\nHoushalter\nIt's not that I don't believe the author is correct, but I'm having a hard\ntime picturing why it is true. Imagine a rocket pointed in the exact opposite\ndirection the earth is orbiting. So the rocket starts to orbit the sun\nslightly slower than the Earth, and so the Sun's gravity would pull it closer\nand closer every year.\n\n~~~\nleni536\nThat's not how it works. It would just place the waste on an elliptical orbit\naround the Sun.\n\n~~~\nHoushalter\nBut aren't the vast majority of possible orbits unstable? If the Earth were\ntravelling just a bit slower wouldn't it slowly spiral into the sun?\n\n~~~\nlmm\nNo, just the opposite. Given any position and velocity relative to the Sun (or\nthe Earth), an object in that position at that velocity is in an \"orbit\" that\nwill be a conic section of some sort. Most of them are ellipses i.e. stable.\nThe only way to _not_ be in a stable orbit is to go fast enough that it\nbecomes a parabola or hyperbola - a flyby - or slow enough that the ellipse\nbecomes so narrow that it's just a straight line (or rather, narrow enough\nthat it hits the thing you're orbiting).\n\nWhen you throw a ball it flies in a parabola, right? But actually that\nparabola is just one end of a very long, narrow ellipse, with the Earth's\ncentre as one of the foci. If you could \"turn on noclip\"[1] and allow the ball\nto fall through the Earth, it would already be in a stable orbit.\n\n(If you want to get a better intuition for this kind of thing, play Kerbal\nSpace Program)\n\n[1] And if the Earth were a point mass located at its centre, which it isn't.\nAnd ignoring air resistance.\n\n------\nkenj0418\nSimple: Just invent a rocket that runs on nuclear waste. Then you have all the\nfuel you need to get the rocket there. (joking)\n\n~~~\nCHY872\nIf you were to not-quite-spend all the fuel, you could use\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket),\nwhich coincidentally would be your best chance at getting to the Sun.\n\n------\nWayneS\nOk, continuing the argument from the article and not discussing practical\nmethods of waste disposal...\n\nInstead of using chemical rockets for the entire dV how about using a rocket\nto get into orbit and then using an ion engine driven by solar energy to lose\nthe additional 20km/s? It seems the \"fuel\" weight required would be\nsignificantly less.\n\n------\ntim333\nYou could swing by Jupiter and use the pull from that to bend the trajectory\nback to the Sun. That's what they did in practice for the Ulysses probe:\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(spacecraft)#Jupiter_sw...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_\\(spacecraft\\)#Jupiter_swing-\nby)\n\n------\nmrfusion\nOffshoot topic but noting how things we launch from earth already have all the\nenergy they need to orbit the sun, why isn't it really easy to get to earth\nsun Lagrange points? It seems like we could kind of just float over there\nsince we don't need any additional speed to orbit the sun.\n\n~~~\nDrStalker\nYou can't just \"float over\" to another point along your orbit; to move the\nforward Legrange point you would have to slow down, causing you to drop into a\nlower orbit which moves around the sun quicker, then speed up to a larger\norbit that intersects with the desired Lagrange point and then finally speed\nup again when you reach that point to stabilize the orbit.\n\nTo try this in Kerbal space Program: place two craft into the same equatorial\norbit, but with one 1/6th of an orbit ahead of the other. Now make them dock.\n\nIt's both counter intuitive and easy once you know how.\n\n~~~\nmrfusion\nOk, that kind of makes sense. But as an extreme example let's say you moved\nout to earth sun L4 leaving from earth and moving at 1MPH*.\n\nOnce you got there, you're there besides station keeping. So in theory there's\nno deltaV required? That's what confused me.\n\nOf course moving at 1MPH you'd be expending energy fighting earth's gravity\nuntil you got there. But I think that's a separate issue.\n\n~~~\nDrStalker\nIf you accelerate by 1MPH you're not in the same orbit anymore. It's not like\ndriving on earth, where you can go faster along the same path by pushing the\naccelerator down; the speed you're moving at is a component of your orbit.\n\n------\nnitin_flanker\nCould anyone here please explain why every time the rocket will return to\nEarth’s orbit and,the Earth won’t be there.\n\nDoes our solar system is constantly moving? Isn't it stationary with sun at\ncenter bending space and time and making planets to revolve around it?\n\n------\ntomphoolery\nThis article just ruined every Star Trek episode for me where they fly a ship\ninto a star.\n\n~~~\nnothrabannosir\nTo be fair, the problem here is that the waste is already in orbit (by virtue\nof being part of earth). His point is that if you want to hit the sun: don't\norbit it. To stop an orbit around the sun is a hell of a job.\n\nBut if you're not orbiting in the first place: no problem.\n\n------\ngeophile\nWhy does it have to be the sun? Why not just perpendicular to the sun/earth\nplane?\n\n~~~\ntempestn\nYou'd still be in orbit, and would still cross the plane at regular intervals,\nso you wouldn't \"get rid of it\", as with flying out of the solar system or\ninto the sun.\n\n------\nyCloser\nJust leave earth SOI, and the vessel will be orbiting the sun. the orbit will\nnaturally decay in years/centuries/+\n\njust try not to hit mercury too much. but even if this happens, not that big\nof a problem\n\n------\nkolbe\nCreating all that force ourselves isn't the only option. We could use gravity\nassists from Venus and/or Mercury to alter velocity directly towards the sun,\ntoo.\n\n------\njheriko\nthe article claims that the sun is super inaccessible compared to escape\nvelocity, but they are extremely closely related. as an orbit gets more and\nmore ellipitcal, the delta-v required to get the orbit to cut through the sun\ndrops (for a well timed burn at aphelion), in the limit of escape velocity\nthis delta-v vanishes to zero... the implication is that they are comparable\nin cost, if you were to use such a method to drop something into the sun.\n\n------\na_c\nAnd I thought the 11km/sec escaped velocity was intended to shoot rocket\nwithout any further fuel supply nor any air-resistant? No?\n\n------\nWalterBright\nJust set it down at the south pole.\n\n------\nacadien\nIt draws some doubt that the author lists accelerations in units of km/sec,\nnot km/sec^2.\n\n~~~\ntesseract\nIf you read \"delta-v\" for \"acceleration\" throughout the article, the whole\nthing makes more sense.\n\n~~~\nmaxerickson\nThe author always says \"an acceleration\", which is the same thing as delta-v.\n\nI have no idea how particular it is to phrase it that way, but it isn't\nconfused.\n\n~~~\nacadien\nThe author says multiple times: \"an acceleration of [X] km/s is required\",\nmaybe they meant to imply that the magnitude of the change of the velocity?\n\n~~~\nmaxerickson\nAccelerating at some rate km/ss for a period of s results in km/s. So the net\nresult of \"an acceleration\" can be expressed as a velocity.\n\n(what it comes down to is that \"an\" is an indefinite article and always\nmodifies a noun and km/ss is described by the verb acceleration. Yay English.)\n\n------\nkghose\nSuperman can do it.\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nSo can Jebediah Kerman.\n\n------\nsabnffl\n\"Technology solves all problems!\" \\- every YC commenter\n\n~~~\nFroshKiller\nThis is a crappy comment. It would have been funnier, though, if you had\nposted something like, \"I could solve this with a Perl one-liner.\"\n\n------\nchucksmart\nWhy not just send it into deep space?\n\n------\nMichaelCrawford\nSometimes rockets fail. I mean like they blow up on launch.\n\nWhen the Shuttle was first commissioned, my concern at the time was that\nAmerica's most reliable rocket was the delta, which failed every thirty\nlaunches.\n\nWhen it's nuclear waste, it's not good enough just to have launch insurance.\n\n~~~\ncryptoz\n> When the Shuttle was first commissioned, my concern at the time was that\n> America's most reliable rocket was the delta, which failed every thirty\n> launches.\n\nYou were right to be concerned. The shuttle had \"a 40% vehicular failure rate\nand a flight failure rate of 1.5%\", killing more people than any other space\nvehicle. [1]\n\n[1]\n[http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2012/04/18/5-hor...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2012/04/18/5-horrifying-\nfacts-you-didnt-know-about-the-space-shuttle/)\n\n~~~\nwhoopdedo\nAnd the space shuttles carried many more people than other space vehicles\nexcept for the current generation of Soyuz.\n\nYou don't measure failure rate by number built divided by number crashed. You\nmeasure by how much it's used. The more often something is used the more\nlikely it it that it will fail one of those times.\n\n~~~\nwukerplank\nThe problem with nuclear waste is that you need a 0% failure rate or you might\ndetonate a dirty bomb in the atmosphere. It doesn't matter how often it worked\nif it fails once.\n\nAlso it's a great target for sabotage for radicals.\n\n~~~\nlmm\n> you might detonate a dirty bomb in the atmosphere\n\nWhich would put less radioactive material up there than coal power plants\nalready do as a matter of course.\n\n~~~\nwongarsu\nBut it's a bit hard to say at which altitude the failure would occur. Plenty\nof rockets have exploded on the launch pad.\n\n------\ncuriously\nomg....when I was 10 I wrote a story about how humanity takes nuclear waste to\nthe sun. tl;dr results in nuclear apocalypse destroying the entire solar\nsystem.\n\n------\napalmer\nIts generally not worth it to give smart answers to dumb questions. I guess\nits a pet peeve of the author though.\n\n~~~\nmynameishere\nI would argue it's a waste not because it's stupid, but because it's just\nextraordinarily trite:\n\n[http://www.reddit.com/search?q=nuclear+waste+sun&restrict_sr...](http://www.reddit.com/search?q=nuclear+waste+sun&restrict_sr=off&sort=relevance&t=all)\n\n...variations include \"why can't we put garbage in the sun\", \"why can we put\nnuclear waste in volcanoes\", etc. It's a great question coming from a 6-year-\nold, but if an adult asks it, he's simply not the kind of person who will\nspend one second in critical thought, or in researching anything himself. So,\nyeah, not worth it.\n\n~~~\nwashadjeffmad\nYou're right of course, we're free to determine how to spend our time. And you\nthought it worth yours to search for reddit discussions to post here to\nillustrate why you felt this topic not worth your time, perhaps as a lone\nbeacon to guide future generations who might be tempted towards the folly of\nexploring questions which have answers you already know.\n\nDiscussing good explanations for a topic, no matter how common, is not a waste\nfor anyone who is interested, especially any curious people who might\ncurrently be lacking the tools to solve it themselves. I don't believe any of\nus comes fully equipped.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGoing All-the-Way with the Client-Server App Concept - yannis\nhttp://peter.michaux.ca/articles/going-all-the-way-with-the-client-server-app-concept\n======\nJoeAltmaier\nI agree -splitting the app into client- and server-side pieces is like cutting\na banana long-ways. Also there's the performance problem. The web link has\nerratic latency resulting in: hesitant response to form entry, lack of hour-\nglass support, unpredictable page updates. When it works its fine; when it\nlags its dang irritating. Worse, its hard to even code the app to accomodate\nlag: the app lags when LOADING the next phase of the app, so \"nobodys home\"\nwhen it lags to even respond to the lag with a progress bar or hourglass or\nwhatever.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Why does Facebook put itself under EU Data Protection Law? - rmc\n\n<i>Just something I was wondering about, I'm (obviously) not looking for legal advice or insights into the inner workings of Facebook</i><p>When you're signing up to a Facebook account, the terms of use ( http://www.facebook.com/legal/terms ) state, in §18(1), that:<p>&#62; If you are a resident of or have your principal place of business in the US or Canada, this Statement is an agreement between you and Facebook, Inc.  Otherwise, this Statement is an agreement between you and Facebook Ireland Limited.  References to “us,” “we,” and “our” mean either Facebook, Inc. or Facebook Ireland Limited, as appropriate.<p>So if you're in the USA or Canada, you've a contract with a US company, else, you have a contract with an Irish company, that then has to work under EU Data Protection Laws.<p>But why would Facebook do this? Why not just tell everyone that they have a contract with the US company, and then you don't have to be audited by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (as they recently were). Why would they put themselves through that?<p><i>(And yes, the corporate tax rate in Ireland is 12½%, but that doesn't mean that end users need to have a contract with Facebook Ireland Ltd.)</i>\n======\njnorthrop\nFacebook has operations in Ireland. As such they are subject to the EU Data\nDirective[1] which gives much more control over the personal data Facebook\nholds to the data subject (the user). Two things have happened to Facebook\nrecently:\n\n1\\. They were sued by the FTC[2] 2\\. And a person, turned to a group, has been\nmaking data subject requests to Facebook causing them some trouble[3]\n\nAll of these things lead to Facebook protecting itself legally with statements\nin their terms of use. At the end of the day it is not that you are\ncontracting with an Irish company but globally Ireland's laws (EU Data\nDirective) gives you the most rights, so they are pointing that out to you.\n\n[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive>\n\n[2] [http://www.bgr.com/2011/11/29/facebook-settles-privacy-\nsuit-...](http://www.bgr.com/2011/11/29/facebook-settles-privacy-suit-with-\nftc-will-submit-independent-audits-for-20-years/)\n\n[3] <http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Objectives/objectives.html>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAR Lens Sessions Last 75 Seconds on Average - bolamike\nhttps://arinsider.co/2019/12/02/ar-lens-sessions-last-75-seconds-on-average/\n======\nThe_Founder\nYep, just enough time to open it, with for it to load, look around, see it is\nuseless and close it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nC++ vs. Lisp - fogus\nhttp://www.ebhakt.info/blog/?p=2291\n======\nzachbeane\nBlogspam. Copy of circa 2002 article, mirrored at:\n[http://antigreen.org/vadim/ProgLanguageComparison/lisp-\ncmp-w...](http://antigreen.org/vadim/ProgLanguageComparison/lisp-cmp-with-cpp-\njava-etc/C++-vs-Lisp.html) (via \"Daemerrung\" here:\n<http://funcall.blogspot.com/2010/05/c-vs-lisp.html>)\n\n~~~\ndasil003\nArgh, that's insidious!!! Editors should change out the actual link... can\nthey do that?\n\n------\nQz\nWhy do people feel compelled to make websites with microscopic font sizes?\n\nedit: apparently it's a splog so that answers that.\n\n~~~\nd0mine\nReadability bookmarklet might help\n<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>\n\n~~~\nQz\nI have it and use it, I just don't understand why people choose those tiny\nfonts to begin with.\n\n------\nbarrkel\nThe problem statement link seem dead. I believe this is it:\n\n[http://www.flownet.com/ron/papers/lisp-\njava/instructions.htm...](http://www.flownet.com/ron/papers/lisp-\njava/instructions.html)\n\nAlso, the article seems to be a duplicate of this one:\n\n[http://antigreen.org/vadim/ProgLanguageComparison/lisp-\ncmp-w...](http://antigreen.org/vadim/ProgLanguageComparison/lisp-cmp-with-cpp-\njava-etc/C++-vs-Lisp.html)\n\nIs it a splog? The date on the antigreen.org version is August 2002.\n\n~~~\nDaemmerung\nMost of the articles of any size on that site have been cut-and-pasted from\nelsewhere. Maybe it's a splog-in-training.\n\n------\njacquesm\nWhy the extreme focus on lines of code?\n\nThat's not the best metric to begin with (I used to think so too, but someone\nhere pointed out that gzipped source is already much better), and besides\nthat, there are other ways of looking at it besides 'size', such as\nreadability.\n\n~~~\ngruseom\nHold on there. Gzipped source is a terrible metric. It would undercount\nduplicate code, the worst kind of program bloat.\n\nNot that I'm defending LOC. If one has to count something, counting tokens\nseems less susceptible to noise.\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nThat's the whole point. Even if you program in a 'sloppy' way the gzip\nalgorithm will see that and reduce accordingly so you are comparing the\n_languages_ , not the programmers stylistic elements.\n\nBesides, the article talks about implementing the same algorithm twice in\ndifferent languages, if you went about that in a completely different way then\nthat would of course be problematic. But when comparing the expressiveness\nbetween two languages you'd assume the same major structures would be present.\n\n~~~\nnostrademons\nExcept that some languages encourage sloppy programming. Haven't you ever\nlooked at some Java code where two (or more!) functions do exactly the same\nthing except that the types are different? GZip would compress that down to\nalmost nothing, but you still have to deal with the complexity, maintenance\nburden, and API bloat of having multiple versions.\n\nIt also doesn't account for language misfeatures that introduce significant\nadditional cognitive burden for the programmer but don't appear much in source\ncode. For example, manual memory management in C++ results in a bunch of\n\"delete x\" calls in code, which would get GZipped down to very little, but\nimpose a very high cognitive cost on the programmer. PHP's inconsistency in\nargument order doesn't show up at all in code length, but also presents a big\ncognitive tax that sends you back to the reference manual all the time.\n\nPersonally, I think that the best metric of language productivity is \"The\namount of information you have to keep in your head in order to write code as\nfast as you can type.\" Unfortunately, that's nearly impossible to measure.\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nDoesn't that suggest that such code 'bloat' is actually less important than\npeople make it seem ?\n\nAfter all, there is not much to remembering that two functions exist for the\nsame type, it's not like you have to remember that there is something\n'completely' new, just a routing that is almost the same as another.\n\n~~~\ngruseom\nIf you're right, then there isn't much value in abstracting over repetitive\npatterns. I'd say that is pretty decisively contradicted by the history of\nsoftware. Why have functions at all then?\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nBecause it saves space and because it makes maintenance easier, and it allows\nyou to label a block of code with a meaningful name.\n\nCaching also means that if you execute less code you will have better\nperformance.\n\nThe actual instructions can be interpreted serially, in fact when you're 'desk\nchecking' that is exactly what you do, to unwind the way the code is written\nto the serial stream that the processor is executing.\n\n------\ndman\nInteresting article. Over time most of lisps features (generic functions,\ngarbage collection) have been ported over to other languages save two -\nsyntactic abstraction and metaobject protocols. On syntactic abstraction there\nseems to be genuine difference in opinion between lisp (scheme) and other\nlanguages. Lisp is on the side of allowing programmers to invent their own\nsyntactic abstractions hence making their programs shorter and at times more\nunderstandable. Other languages have largely been unwilling to make that leap\nof faith because syntactic abstractions dont scale up with the number of\nprogrammers. They also make it harder to reason about the correctness of\nprograms and make tools like profilers, debuggers, code steppers. So this\ncontinues to remain a genuine point of difference which means the lisp\nprograms will continue to have the whizbang sleek look which other languages\nwill find hard to emulate. On the other hands lisp programmers will continue\nto look in envy at the development tools of other \"less featureful\" languages.\n\n~~~\ngruseom\nI'm really tired of hearing this:\n\n _syntactic abstractions dont scale up with the number of programmers_\n\n... as an objection to Lisp macros. It has become the invariable staple of\nthese discussions and is accepted (by the people who accept it) without any\nquestion. Yet is there any evidence for it? I don't think I've ever even seen\nany evidence alleged for it.\n\nThe fact is, to justify this statement requires more than proving it's true.\nYou'd have to prove that this failure of syntactic abstraction to \"scale up\nwith the number of programmers\" is worse than the failure of _abstraction in\ngeneral_ to do so. Indeed, in my experience, it's _programming_ that fails to\nscale up with the number of programmers.\n\n~~~\ndman\nI dont know what you count as evidence but here are two eminent authorities\nspeaking about related topics - Turing award winner Barbara Liskov -\n[http://www.infoq.com/presentations/liskov-power-of-\nabstracti...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/liskov-power-of-abstraction)\n(Syntactic abstraction related talk starts at minute 17).\n\nHeres what Dijkstra has to say about something that is tangentially related\n(he is talking about the importance of read time comprehensibility of code).\n\"My second remark is that our intellectual powers are rather geared to master\nstatic relations and that our powers to visualize processes evolving in time\nare relatively poorly developed. For that reason we should do (as wise\nprogrammers aware of our limitations) our utmost to shorten the conceptual gap\nbetween the static program and the dynamic process, to make the correspondence\nbetween the program (spread out in text space) and the process (spread out in\ntime) as trivial as possible.\" This is from the influential GOTO considered\nharmful paper.\n\n~~~\nsilentbicycle\nDijkstra's quote sounds more like an argument for defaulting to immutability\nthan anything about syntactic abstractions. (I happen to agree with him,\nthere.)\n\n~~~\ndman\n\"to make the correspondence between the program (spread out in text space) and\nthe process (spread out in time) as trivial as possible\". Most programmers\nread programs as plain source most of the time, ie not as macroexpanded\nsource. If editors showed macroexpanded source code by default, things would\nbe different. Also macroexpansion does in practice affect the ability of the\ncompiler to highlight what line caused the error, or the ability to step\nthrough code intuitively (you are stepping through macroexpanded code and\nsometimes its tiresome to be able to intuitively understand how that relates\nto code that you wrote).\n\n------\nd0m\nI have to agree that even thought STL is extremely powerful, it makes program\nextremely verbose.\n\nBut, in my opinion, the real reason C++ code seems so verbose is because of\nthe lack of closures. In C++, when you need one, you have 2 choices: either\nmanually coding everything that would be in the closure or create a totally\nnew function.\n\nIn fact, in the new c++2k10, it could be interesting to have a STL-like but\nwith closures instead.. so one can do: some_sequence.sort_by(_1 > _2);\n\nor: foreach(sequence, cout << _1 << endl); that's, again in my opinion, way\nbetter than: for (int i = 0; i < sequence.size(); i++) { cout << sequence[i]\n<< endl; } and again still better than: for (list<int>::size_type i = 0; i <\nsequence.size(); i++) { etc..}\n\n~~~\nwuch\nActually his example can be written quite succinctly (but in general case\nclosures would be much more expressive):\n\ncopy(words.rbegin(), words.rend(), ostream_iterator<string>(cout));\n\n------\ntmsh\nIn case you're curious about 'EasySTL'\n\n[http://web.archive.org/web/20070515062100/http://userpages.u...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070515062100/http://userpages.umbc.edu/~bcorfm1/software.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nKevin Mitnick Now Selling Zero-Day Exploits - privong\nhttp://www.wired.com/2014/09/kevin-mitnick-selling-zero-day-exploits/\n======\nkauffj\nPeople will decry this, but I'd argue a free and open market for\nvulnerabilities would be a great thing. Here's why:\n\n1) It would result in more vulnerabilities found\n\nThis is fairly axiomatic. An open market increases the price of\nvulnerabilities which in turn increases the number of vulnerabilities found\n(unless you want to argue the ability to find vulnerabilities is inelastic for\nsome reason).\n\n2) It would result in more vulnerabilities being disclosed to the proper\nauthorities rather than malicious parties\n\nThis is more debatable, but since there should always be significantly more\nincentive on good actors to prevent the exploit (i.e. the software creators\nand/or community) than bad actors, the good actors should always win the bid.\nIndeed, one could argue that it is only the _prevention_ of free negotiation\nin the sale of vulnerabilities is the reason an exploit is ever sold to bad\nactors (e.g. if I found a Windows vulnerability and told Microsoft $10m or\nelse, I'm a criminal).\n\n3) It would ultimately increase the quality of software\n\nGiven more vulnerabilities are found and more vulnerabilities would be\ndisclosed to good actors, the quality of software increases.\n\nI believe that 2) is essentially the Coase theorem\n([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem)),\nbut I am only an arm-chair economist. Also, I'm not sure that what Mitnick is\ndoing actually is a free and open market for vulnerabilities.\n\n~~~\nhawkice\nI upvoted, not because I agree, but because I believe the people downvoting\nyou are downvoting because they disagree and not because your comment\nshouldn't be heard.\n\nImagine he had said: I believe a free and open market for weapons would be a\ngood thing, because it would reduce the number of defenseless people, would\nresult in a power imbalance that puts generally-okay actors at an advantage\n(say what you will, but the mob doesn't have 1% of the resources the US\ngovernment does), and would therefore reduce crime.\n\nI do not personally find that argument compelling (and it is of identical\nstructure to the above), but me disagreeing with it does not mean it isn't of\nsufficient quality for Hacker News.\n\n~~~\ntlrobinson\nI don't think the weapons analogy is a good one. For the developer of the\nsoftware the purchase of the \"weapon\" is also essentially makes all other\ninstances of that weapon useless forever (assuming customers patch promptly).\n\nPerhaps restricting the analogy to nuclear weapons would make sense. Only\nnation states (software companies) and terrorists (malicious hackers... and\nperhaps intelligence agencies) would be interested in purchasing such weapons.\n\n~~~\nhawkice\nI think that is one of many salient differences between the scenarios.\n\nMy thought is: if one argument is good and another is bad, clearly the reason\nfor the difference does not exist within the properties they share. It must\nexist where the arguments are different, or more likely in this case (as what\nthe poster said and what I said are so similar), in the outside world of facts\nand understanding.\n\nBut if the shape of the argument allows for things that may successfully\nconvince you, then clearly that information is not enough to dismiss it\noutright. It should be the start of a dialog with the parent comment.\n\nNow, for something completely different:\n\nIf, for some reason, you want to actually engage _me_ on this particular\npolicy issue, angle your thought at this: my understanding is that it's 2014,\nand if you want to regulate the information people share or sell over the\ninternet you've accepted a challenge I do not envy.\n\nI would be particularly skeptical you could do this without building a\ncomprehensive computer spying system and perhaps outlawing crypto (it's been\ntried), as you're trying to read communications of highly security-conscious\npeople.\n\nAs for if Mitnick is a good person (or similar things under discussion here),\nI have not met him.\n\n~~~\nrazster\nIf and when you do meet him, just take all he says with a grain of salt. Very\nfull of himself :)\n\n------\ndrzaiusapelord\nIt amuses me to hear how middle-class people are baffled by the fetishization\nof criminality in hip-hop culture, when we fetishize the same type of assholes\nin our culture. Mitnick is a criminal and all the pro-hacking sympathies have\nbeen wasted on a very, very undeserving person. Funny how easily you can\nmanipulate public opinion with the right PR and anti-government message.\nEveryone wants to be the rebel against \"the system.\" Everyone seems to think\nthey're the Ayn Rand hero amongst the idiots, when in reality, the rebels and\nthe intellectually vain are easily co-opted politically. The rise of\nlibertarianism in geekdom seems to fall under the same dynamic.\n\n~~~\nrickdale\nI was fooled into this when his first book was released, \"The Art of\nDeception\". I think I read the first three pages and heart sank because it\nwasn't a book about computer stuff really at all and I started thinking this\nguy is a fraud. but mostly I was fooled by marketing. (I was 12 at the time).\nI just remember being very let down by the book and not being a fan of Mitnik\nfor that reason.\n\nThe comment section of this post has an underlying anger towards the hi-\njacking of the word 'hacker' as it was and is applied to kevin mitnik and thus\nmisunderstood by the public waaaaay too often.\n\n~~~\nmalexw\nInteresting, I had the exact same reaction as you. Bought the book (along with\nMichal Zalewski's Silence on the Wire), got less than a chapter in, and put it\ndown in frustration. I've since wondered if I should go back and give it\nanother chance. Sounds like no?\n\nFor what it's worth, I really enjoyed Zalewski's book. He seems like a really\nsmart guy.\n\n~~~\nrobin_reala\nSilence On The Wire is an excellent book: both a good read and also\ntechnically informative. I’d highly recommend it.\n\n------\nmhurron\n\"Mitnick became a symbol of government oppression in the late 1990s, when he\nspent four and a half years in prison and eight months in solitary confinement\nbefore his trial on hacking charges. The outcry generated a miniature industry\nin “Free Kevin” T-shirts and bumper stickers.\"\n\nI wonder if money could be made selling 'Fuck Kevin' shirts and bumper\nstickers now.\n\nIncidentally, Fuck Kevin.\n\n~~~\nwesternmostcoy\nThere actually were \"Fuck Kevin\" stickers all over DEFCON a few years ago.\n\n~~~\nmhurron\nWell damn. I almost might have been motivated to do something.\n\n------\nchubot\n_\" My clients may use them to monitor your activities? How do you like them\napples, Chris?\"_ \\-- Mitnick to ACLU technologist, last line of article\n\nWow what a first class dick. He's implying that he will be glad to sell zero\ndays to the government to illegally monitor ACLU activities (e.g. free speech,\netc.)?\n\n~~~\ndennissmith\nLook at Mitnick's twitter feed. He clarified that the comment was just a \"fuck\nyou\" in response to Chris you are a felon comment. Mitnick said he wasn't\nserious.\n\n------\nsaosebastiao\nI've always thought it would be a just punishment for a neutral, but\ngovernment arbitrated, third party to hold a highest bid auction for zero-day\nexploits, where the breached company has the opportunity to buy back their bad\nsecurity at a market price. I feel as though making it public and legal would\nforce larger targets to make better security decisions, instead of the current\nstatus quo of letting them off with tiny fines if anything at all.\n\n~~~\nandrewljohnson\n+1 for the creative thinking. We need the market forces improving security,\nbut at the same time, brokering for profit seems imperfect.\n\n~~~\nopendais\nEh, just require all profits above $XX million to go to paying down the\nnational debt. Its a government sponsored monopoly that he is suggesting, its\nreasonable to cap its profits.\n\n------\nvtlynch\n“Researchers find them, they sell them to us for X, we sell them to clients\nfor Y and make the margin in between.”\n\nA glorified reseller and scumbag. Pathetic.\n\n~~~\ndepingus\nWorse than a reseller. If you read his website, it turns out he's just a\nbroker. He doesn't actually buy them from the researcher and then try to sell\nthem. He just brokers a deal between the researcher and the buyer (if he can\nfind one); taking an exorbitant fee in the process.\n\n~~~\ndobbsbob\nThat's exactly what thegrugq does too. Tomorrow if I find an iOS bug that's\nexploitable I don't have a rolodex of contacts to sell it to hence the need\nfor this service. As a middle man he can confirm the bug hasn't already been\ndiscovered and is generally trusted not to keep a copy himself and hack the\nplanet with it after sale. This arrangement protects the seller too from\nrevealing their exploit code to the buyer before payment. Anybody could create\na Tor market for auctioned exploits but somebody has to verify the goods first\nor you get swamped with junk offers.\n\n------\nraverbashing\nWell, this is what happens when researchers are snubbed by software vendors.\n\nI don't agree with the attitude and sale of vulnerabilities, but if someone\napproaches the vendor and get the responses \"this is not a vulnerability\" or\n\"why are you hacking our software, we're calling the authorities\" this is\nwhere it ends up...\n\n~~~\nVikingCoder\n...but then you end up with the question of \"what's a fair price?\"\n\nI don't know what to do about it, either.\n\nAbout the best I can come up with is to support software that I feel makes the\nbest effort they can to defend against exploits.\n\n~~~\nwdewind\nI'm not sure you do. White hat the price is free, the only request here is\nthat you don't sue me for pointing out a hole in your system.\n\n~~~\nVikingCoder\nNo dice.\n\n/smirk\n\n------\njosefresco\nFor those wanting to criticize Mitnick's actions, what I gather from the\nfollowing quote is that there is an existing \"industry\" around finding, and\nselling these exploits...\n\n\"Researchers find them, they sell them to us for X, we sell them to clients\nfor Y and make the margin in between.\"\n\nCan anyone shed light on these \"researchers\" and how they sell their exploits\nnow? Or is this just a friendly way of saying \"we pay hackers for exploits and\nthen blackmail vendors\"?\n\n~~~\ndanielweber\nThey generally don't blackmail the vendors. Someone paying $100,000 wants to\nget in someplace.\n\nI can't say I like the money-for-exploits thing, but one good thing is that\nit's made most companies be very nice to people to want to voluntarily report\nbugs. Silver lining and all that.\n\n------\nandrewljohnson\nMy initial thought was \"this should be illegal\" \\- but if there's no market\nfor exploits, security will remain poor. So, this sort of business is a bump\non the road to global security, which I have some hope we're heading towards.\n\nEither way, an exploit market is a grimy business, basically war profiteering.\nI wonder who is off-limits to sell to - certainly the Iranians, but who else,\nand who decides who is evil and who is good? People will _die_ from some of\nthese sales.\n\nI think we'll see pervasive encryption and P2P (blockchain-based) applications\nthat will push back tyranny a bit. There will be technological solutions to\nthings like secret legal proceedings and warrantless wiretaps. And by pushing\ncomputation back out to decentralized nodes, there won't be such juicy targets\nto attack.\n\n~~~\ndmethvin\n> \"this should be illegal\"\n\nGovernments define legality, and governments are likely to be some of\nMitnick's best clients. Funny thing is, if I were Iran's government I would be\nconcerned about buying exploits there because for all I know Mitnick has\ndouble-crossed me and given the US government info on the exploit and how to\nneutralize or detect it.\n\nPervasive encryption only helps if the endpoints doing the encryption aren't\ncompromised, and this type of service is aimed at those endpoints.\n\n~~~\napetresc\nThat's irrelevant. Governments are in the habit of doing lots of things that\nwould be illegal for me and you to do. For example, jail systems can exist\nwhile it's still illegal for me to keep people locked up in my basement.\n\n------\nascendantlogic\nI'm old enough to remember this guy's moment in the sun by getting himself\narrested. It was easy to fall into the \"Free Kevin\" mindset but now he's just\ntrading on the name to make money. It's hard to keep that same \"fuck the man\"\nvibe when you become the man.\n\nEDIT: I realize he's been trading on his name for a while now but I was cool\nwith it when he was a \"white hat\".\n\n~~~\nwavefunction\nHe wasn't ever a white hat, grey at best.\n\n~~~\nascendantlogic\nHence my quotes.\n\n------\nat-fates-hands\nSo the same people who support Silk Road and black markets suddenly say,\n\"Yeah, Fuck Kevin Mitnick!\" because he's a capitalist and using essentially\nthe same system to make some money??\n\n~~~\nJtsummers\n> So the same people who support Silk Road and black markets suddenly say,\n> \"Yeah, Fuck Kevin Mitnick!\" because he's a capitalist and using essentially\n> the same system to make some money??\n\nWho says it's the same people? Because it's people on the same site?\n\nIf you treat the commenters here as a single entity you'll really hurt your\nhead trying to make sense of the HN consensus. There often isn't one because\nso much of this boils down to opinions about and attitudes towards\ngovernments, economics, personal responsibility, corporate responsibility, and\nlaws.\n\n------\nPxtl\n... I think a lot of geeks might be burning their \"free kevin\" t-shirts.\n\n------\nsarciszewski\nSo, who did he buy the 0days from?\n\nI know he didn't find them himself. The boy can't code.\n\n[https://keenot.es/read/kevin-mitnick-is-celebrated-\nnobody](https://keenot.es/read/kevin-mitnick-is-celebrated-nobody)\n\n~~~\nsp332\n_Unlike Mitnick, Gonzalez is still in prison and doesn 't have speaking gigs\nthat cost (from a leaked email in Zero For 0wned 2) $18,500 USD plus business\nclass travel and expenses for one hour of speaking and 15 minutes of Q&A._\n\nSounds like Mitnick is well ahead of Gonzalez, there.\n\n~~~\nsarciszewski\nDepends what you mean by \"ahead\". They're both scumbags who deceive others for\npersonal gain.\n\n------\nboomskats\nIt's all very nice hoping that a free market for this kind of thing will\nimprove security, but I don't see how that's going to happen. Government\nagencies are probably going to be his top customers... let's face it, they\nobviously have more funding for this kind of thing than they know what to do\nwith, and it saves them having to do any hard work.\n\nIt's going to bring way way way more detriment than it is benefit, especially\nif his clients start looking at using semi-legal tactics to protect their\ninvestments.\n\n------\njoshfraser\nThe prevalence of 0-day exploits and the booming marketplaces for them are the\nbiggest challenge for our industry today. The economic incentives mean that\nthe worst vulnerabilities will increasingly be sold instead of responsibility\nreported. Why report it to the company in hopes of a 5k bounty, when the US\ngov will pay you 100X that for exclusive use? We're at a point now where\neverything has been compromised -- the network, every OS, every browser, every\npopular application. The software we all rely on can not be trusted to be\nsecure from governments or well-funded organizations. Having unbounded access\nto every computer in the world is a frightening amount of power for any\ngovernment or organization to hold. Until we find a way to change the economic\nincentives, I'm afraid the consolidation of power and the associated abuses\nare only going to continue. I have no idea how we fix this.\n\n------\nPxtl\nIsn't this blackmail?\n\n\"Pay us for all your secret vulnerabilities or we'll sell them to the highest\nbidder\".\n\n------\nmathetic\nBasically, he is doing arm trade in 21st century.\n\n------\nmindcrime\nIt's disappointing to see that Kevin would sell exploits to a government body,\nbut I don't otherwise see a problem with an exchange for exploits. I mean,\nthey're going to get developed and sold eitherway, whether it's here, on some\ndarknet forum, or whatever.\n\n------\nsauere\nNot another story about this overrated dude.\n\nDon't get me wrong, im sure hes a nice guy. But he hasn't demonstrated\nanything useful for 20+ years and it seems he is mainly making a living\nwriting vague non-technical h4ax0r books and giving interviews. Hell, i think\nhe cant even code.\n\n~~~\nrazster\nI wouldn't say nice, just full of himself. You're below him in a sense.\n\n------\n_archon_\nAs an off-topic note, I'd like to see if the font is showing up as poorly for\nanyone else as it is for me. The kerning is atrocious, and several rounded\nlower-case letters run into each other. This article is hard to read. ea, oa,\nce...\n\n------\nblake8086\nIf I were, say, some sort of Global Passive Adversary, I would try very hard\nto spy on Mitnick's communications. Then I could have all the vulnerabilities,\nand know who is buying and selling.\n\nI wonder if maybe that has occurred to anyone.\n\n------\nalasdair_\nI was surprised by the ACLU response given that sharing source code is very\nclearly free speech.\n\nIs the ACLU of all groups really interested in stopping/censoring people from\nsharing ideas?\n\n~~~\ndeclan\nChris, the ACLU staffer quoted in the article, is not an attorney. Chris has\nlikened selling 0-days to being an arms merchant -- not a bad comparison --\nbut I'm not aware of an ACLU policy calling for a ban on selling 0-day\nexploits.\n\nTo respond to your point more broadly, the ACLU has done excellent work on\nmany Internet issues, and has represented me in court on multiple occasions.\nBut it is not a monolithic entity, its board members do not always make the\ndecisions you and I might prefer, and it does not always come down on the free\nspeech side of an issue: [http://www.volokh.com/2011/04/27/harvey-silverglate-\non-the-a...](http://www.volokh.com/2011/04/27/harvey-silverglate-on-the-aclu-\nand-free-speech/)\n\n------\ncarsonreinke\nWhy does anyone need to legitimately buy a zero-day?\n\n~~~\neli\nA \"bug bounty\" is kinda like a vendor buying a zero-day about its own product.\n\n~~~\nkauffj\nAt below market rates.\n\n------\nhokkos\nHis website look like very \"Free Kevin\" era, with Flash replaced by CSS\ntricks.\n\n------\nElizer0x0309\nThis again, reminds me that money can buy you anything... apart from a free\nCONSCIENCE.\n\n~~~\nforgottenpass\nNo, but the money is a great catalyst for dreaming up a rationalization that\nlets you sleep at night.\n\nThere are plenty of things in business that can be seen as unconscionable from\nthe outside. I find more business practices disgusting than the general\nconsensus of Hacker News threads, I'm kind of amused that selling exploits is\none of the places where a line seems to be forming.\n\n~~~\nElizer0x0309\nI'm pretty sure the line is drawn here because it is pretty clear why this is\nwrong.\n\nThe relaxed ethics of the general consensus of the Hacker News threads is\nprobably due to the lack of information rather than people here having\nquestionable morals, or so I'd like to believe :).\n\n------\nolssy\nAt least this way large corporations will start paying more for their\nbounties.\n\n------\ntomelders\nt'would appear he cares about nothing and no-one, and has opted to use his\npowers for evil.\n\nWe shall have wait and see how that works out for him.\n\n------\nmisiti3780\nHis website needs some work\n\n------\nCanada\nLet me inturrupt this fascinating discussion for an important PSA:\n\nAll of you who don't produce 0 day: You don't get to have a say. Your opinion\ndoesn't matter and you don't get a seat at the table, not even as an observer.\n\nAnd now back to telling other people what to do with their work product...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSimple realtime CFD via Processing.js - starpilot\nhttp://bodytag.org/smoke2/\n\n======\nstarpilot\nAlso <http://bodytag.org/fluid3/>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCheat Sheets for Web Design and Development - tutorialfeed\nhttp://tutorialfeed.blogspot.com/2009/09/16-favorite-cheat-sheets-for-web-design.html\nIn this post I'm sharing some very excellent cheat sheets to help web designers and developers. These cheat sheets includes Photoshop, CSS, HTML, JQuery, PHP, MooTools, MySQL, Ruby on rails, Flash AS and much more.\n======\nmildweed\nA really comprehensive list of cheat sheets and tutorials: The Web Developer's\nField Guide: <http://360voltage.com/wdfg/>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGo version 1 is released - enneff\nhttp://blog.golang.org/2012/03/go-version-1-is-released.html\n======\nSpoonMeiser\n\"We're announcing Go version 1, or Go 1 for short\"\n\nI foresee the next version being considered harmful.\n\n~~~\nmasterponomo\nAhem. Beat you by a mile (or 173 days):\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3085082>\n\n~~~\nespeed\nIn case anyone is wondering: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful>\n\n------\nbgentry\nCongrats to the Go team! I've been looking forward to this release for a\nwhile. Go makes it easy to do some very complex things, and much of this can\nbe attributed to the wonderfully built standard library.\n\nFor those interested, you can run Go apps on Heroku using this buildpack:\n<https://github.com/kr/heroku-buildpack-go>\n\n_Note: you may need to use the #rc branch until its changes are merged in\nmaster_\n\n------\nexch\nI've been using Go for 2 years now. It's been a lot of fun. It certainly\nbrought fun back into programming for me. Very happy to see the 1.0 release\nhitting the public. Congratulations to the Go team and contributors for a job\nvery well done!\n\n~~~\nfmstephe\nMy god. Go is _so_ much fun to program. Apart from it's technical pedigree\nthis is its most remarkable feature.\n\n~~~\nolliesaunders\nEssential question: what makes it fun?\n\n~~~\nfmstephe\nFor me it is probably this.\n\nIt works - easy as pie. No problems building, linking or worrying about\ndependencies. (it should be noted that this is a common property of hobby\nprojects)\n\nIt's fast, which is nice for the small boy (or girl) in all of us. It is\ngratifying to make software that can run like blazes.\n\nI get the control over memory layout that I really want. By day I am a Java\ndev, by night I used to hack Erlang. Neither of these allows me to lay out an\narray of structs contiguously in memory. I did this for a quad-tree\nimplementation and got 2X speed up on read operations. This means that all the\nstuff I am reading about CPU architecture, cache-lines and latency etc. can be\nexperimented with in an easy to use environment. That's just pure fun and\ngratification.\n\nComprehension. In Java I recently wrote a SOAP server (I know, lame) and it\ntook me an hour of XML fiddling before a more informed person told me that we\ndo that with annotations now.\n\n\"Which annotations? These magical ones. Ah thanks\"\n\nThat is a server in Java. At the end I was as ignorant as when I began. But I\nhad the annotations and I had a server. This is bullshit. Programming without\nlearning is like eating without tasting anything. In Go I am learning as I\ncode - this is ecstasy. When I am confused I can jump straight into the\nlibrary source code, ever tried that in a JEE server? It is painful.\n\nWebsockets are fun. Go supports websockets in the easiest way I can imagine.\n\nErrors. Explicit errors in Go are just great. Verbose, yes. But, the clarity\nof this approach surprised me. All the networking code I have written in Java\nseemed mysterious. I would hack away and end up with a block of code that\nwould fail from 'somewhere' inside. Errors have taught me a great deal about\nthe different ways my networking code can fail. This is possibly my favourite\npart of Go (which makes me sound a bit boring).\n\nGreen threads are great. I'm sure plenty has been said about this. And message\npassing too. I won't say more about that.\n\nClosures are marvellous. I have to say that I had a lot of reservations about\nclosures in an imperative language. But if you are careful they are as safe as\nanything else (in that soup of mutable state). And so much fun.\n\nIt should be noted that a lot of my complaints about Java can be remedied. I\ncan read a book about the latest JEE annotations (I did start reading one). I\ncould study the Java networking code better and learn about things that way.\nBut the crucial point is that Go allows me to do all of this while I do what I\nlike best. Hacking. I can build systems and learn at the same time.\n\n~~~\nrejewski\nI too like Go. But I disagree with some of your analysis.\n\nJava annotations aren't magical; at least no more magical than\nfunctions/methods. They're part of packages/libraries and should be\ndocumented. You can even write your own annotations.\n\nI'm still not convinced that the lack of exceptions is a benefit of Go. The\nverbosity of error handling is problematic and seems indicative of a need for\na better abstraction. And with respect to your issue of Java exceptions -- I\ndon't know what you mean by \"somewhere inside\". Did you examine the stack\ntrace?\n\n[Edited: added \"of error handling\"]\n\n------\nmace\nAnyone care to share their experience writing something in go? I've toyed with\nit but not built anything in production.\n\nFWIW, the go dashboard (<https://godashboard.appspot.com/>) has a number of\ninteresting projects.\n\n~~~\nlolcraft\nI have written a bit of Go. It strikes me as sort of the Unix of programming\nlanguages. It's very opinionated, takes some overarching concepts, mostly\nchannels and interfaces, then proceeds to thoroughly not care what you think\nabout it: refuses to have generics, lambdas and tail-call recursion like a\npro. The polar opposite of design by committee. It even enforces a True Brace\nStyle to keep the parser simple!\n\nTechnically, it looks good to me. The toolchain is excellent. It looks ready\nfor production. Programming in it is fun. It fixes most issues of compiled\nlanguages. Go has mostly replaced Haskell, for me.\n\n~~~\nootachi\nWhy would you move from Haskell to Go? There's a night-and-day difference\nbetween them. I don't understand why you'd switch to a language because of the\nfeatures it's lacking, unless you think those features are a bad thing (and I\nhave yet to see a reason why generics and TCO are a bad thing).\n\n~~~\nlolcraft\nOf course they are not a bad thing. It's just that Go has character. It\ndoesn't have generics or C++-style classes just because every other language\nhas them. I respect that.\n\n~~~\nootachi\nGo has C++-style classes. Anonymous fields are just C++ multiple inheritance\nwith a different name (and without virtual functions or downcasts).\n\n------\nTylerE\nWell, they got (at least) one thing exactly right: Doing away with the\n\"toolchain\". Having one command that can figure out how to build your code,\nincluding downloading external dependencies, is really nice.\n\nPity about the whole \"not having generics\" thing though.\n\n~~~\njohnpmayer\nWith interfaces, it's pretty simple to replicate patterns like a\nContainer<Comparable> or Channel<Reader>, to borrow common Java syntax.\nPersonally, I like how it forces you to think about parametricity whenever you\nwant polymorphism, like most functional languages.\n\n~~~\nTylerE\nBut, unless I'm missing something, it's missing the supporting bits you get in\na nice functional language, like algebraic datatypes and pattern matching,\nwhich make that style much more pleasant.\n\nOf course, most of the functional language DO have generics, and full type\ninference to boot, also.\n\n~~~\nEdiX\nThe ML language family does, other functional languages (the LISP family,\nErlang) don't.\n\n~~~\nTylerE\nArguably lisp doesn't NEED generics since unless you go around setting lots of\ntype pragmas, the typing system generally doesn't intrude.\n\nSo, in other words, Lisp doesn't have generics in the same way Python doesn't\nhave generics.\n\n------\nperegrine\nBeen playing with the weekly versions of Go for a couple weeks now. Highly\nenjoying it, my biggest pet peeve was that every library had a master and\n\"weekly\" branch which required me to manually pull down the weekly. Shouldn't\nbe long and I can move to master!\n\n~~~\ndchest\nDoesn't go tool handles that automatically (i.e. checks out the most recent\ntag compatible with the current Go version)?\n\n~~~\nperegrine\nNot sure, I am very much new to the new \"go\" command and how it works.\nEverytime I did a go get on a repo it would get the wrong version. I'd just cd\ninto the 3rdparty dir and then pull/checkout the weekly branch and be ok.\n\nI figured their had to be a better way but I was pretty focused on getting\nprojects done.\n\nAnd to be specific this was on non-standard libraries the standard libraries\nprovided by go worked out of the box.\n\n~~~\nrsc\nThe go command will use the right version but only if the person writing the\nlibrary has bothered to tag the version to use. Many people don't. Part of the\npoint of Go 1 is to stabilize the language. We're committing to slowing down\nthe rate of churn and to not changing the APIs in backwards incompatible ways\nfor the lifetime of Go 1 (1.1, 1.2, and so on), so now there should be much\nless problem with just using tip/HEAD/whatever in the repositories without\ntags.\n\n------\nMeai\nI'm still wishing that we could embed Go into a multithreaded c application,\njust like we can with the JVM and Mono. I would like to use Go as a\n\"scripting\" language. I have seen a thread in the mailing list that someone\nwas working on it on a personal basis, but I can't find it anymore. It doesn't\nseem to be in high demand.\n\n~~~\ninsertnickname\nWhy not just write all of it in Go?\n\n~~~\nMeai\nI have working, tested, high performance software in C. Throwing all that away\nand taking the risk of having Go underperform or be buggier than my previous\nsolution is just not acceptable.\n\n------\njasonlotito\nIf anyone from the Go team reads this,\n<http://golang.org/doc/go_tutorial.html> linked to from the blog gives a file\nnot found error.\n\n~~~\nmace\nThe Go tour (<http://tour.golang.org/>) is a pretty good introduction to the\nlanguage.\n\nIt provides an interactive in-browser panel to try out the language while\npresenting its features.\n\n~~~\nslug\nThe \"install go\" link on the \"Go offline\" page gives \"file not found:\n/go/install\".\n\n~~~\nmdaniel\nYou do realize that telling HN is not an appropriate way to have that bug\nfixed, right?\n\nI know lots of Googlers hang out here, but your comment is buried pretty deep.\n\n~~~\nseunosewa\nThey responded.\n\n------\niamgopal\nHow good is go compare to c/c++ ? ( in terms of speed especially ? )\n\nCan we now say that Google Chrome can be written in Go and it will be faster\nand/or stable ? ( not saying it is not already. ).\n\nCongrats to the team, just started using go yesterday and loving it.\n\n~~~\nchmike\nThe day Androïd will be written in go, we will see a significant performance\nboost and battery lifetime extension. I don't program for Androïd just because\nI can't bare eclipse. An IDE as simple and efficient as QtCreator would\ngenerate a conversion tsunami.\n\n~~~\nootachi\nNonsense. You would hate Android written in Go, because of the GC pauses.\nDalvik has a concurrent garbage collector; Go has a stop-the-world one.\n\n~~~\ndrivebyacct2\nOnly because that's all that's been implemented. They're well aware of GC and\ncompiler optimizations being a target for future versions of Go.\n\n------\nmelling\nHitting 1.0 should convince more people to use it in production. However,\ngetting any new language in an organization is always a struggle. Is there a\nlist of organizations that currently use it in production?\n\n[Update]\n\nA few high-tech companies were listed. I was hoping more for big pharma or\nfinance? There are some super convervative firms out there. Even Google, for\nexample, will only allow a few languages in their firm.\n\n~~~\nenneff\nGoogle, Canonical, and Heroku to name a few.\n\n------\nfmstephe\nThis is great news. The best part of it for me is that now my more\nconservative colleagues might dip their toes in the water. Combine that with\nthe Vitess project and Go is not just a great language. It's viable.\n\n~~~\nenneff\nFor the curious, Vitess is an open source project to scale MySQL\ninstallations. It was written by the YouTube team in Go.\n\n<http://code.google.com/p/vitess/>\n\n------\nvibrunazo\nIs there any SEO trick for googling about \"go\"? It's really hard to look for\n\"go\" related material;\n\nFor example, I tried searching for how to use Go on Android. But \"go android\"\nreturns all kinds of unrelated stuff.\n\n~~~\nmhansen\nI use golang\n\n------\nMelyan\nSo is golang a semi-official name for this? I don't want it to be as hard to\nfind as the board game!\n\n~~~\nperegrine\nYep, if you are googling it use golang, much easier to find things this way.\n\n~~~\nluriel\nThere is also a custom search engine: <http://go-lang.cat-v.org/go-search>\n\n------\nBernardGui\n\"Initial reactions to Go 1 have been overwhelmingly positive, particularly\n(and not surprisingly) on community sites like Hacker News, a Y Combinator-run\nreddit clone populated by self-acknowledged hipster hackers.\" Hah:\n[http://webdev360.com/google-releases-go-1-to-rave-\nreviews-41...](http://webdev360.com/google-releases-go-1-to-rave-\nreviews-41730.html)\n\n------\nremogatto\nI used Go to write a concurrent ZX Spectrum emulator\n(<https://github.com/remogatto/gospeccy>). The language perfectly fits for\nthis kind of task too.\n\n------\nOsiris\nDoes Go support Win32 development?\n\n~~~\nkrakensden\nyes: <http://code.google.com/p/go/downloads/list>\n\n------\nfrou_dh\nThere's something intangibly nice about the main golang.org website. It feels\nmore like a consistent self-contained unit than a lot of such sites do.\n\nWell done to whoever does the design and content.\n\n~~~\ncanop_fr\nAnd it's self-contained in the sense that when you code you may simply launch\nit locally :\n\n    \n    \n        godoc -http=:6060\n    \n\nOf course this will be less needed now that the API are stable but that what\nreally useful those last months, when my go weekly was almost never exactly\nlike the one described at golang.org nor tip.golang.org. I'll still use it in\nplanes and trains though.\n\n------\npippy\nThey seem to have removed their page detailing ARM support. The debian ARM\nrepo still has an older version, I wonder if they've stopped support?\n\n------\nHeroNote\nFree Go Language eBook: <http://www.heronote.com/files/Go.htm>\n\n------\njustauser\nHas anyone had any experience with GO and Windows API/win32?\n\n~~~\nluriel\nI haven't tried it, but you might want to look into WALK(Windows Application\nLibrary Kit):\n\n<https://github.com/lxn/walk>\n\nIs designed to provide a Go-ish interface for win32.\n\n~~~\nComputerGuru\nActually, that's mainly a UI toolkit interface. Not Win32 core . (Though a\ntiny bit of core stuff is included)\n\n~~~\nluriel\nSorry, I'm not familiar with Windows stuff. This library might be more what\nyou have in mind then:\n\n<https://github.com/AllenDang/w32>\n\n------\nredbad\nCongratulations to everyone involved.\n\n------\nimpeachgod\nWhat happened to the ebnf package?\n\n~~~\ndsymonds\nIt's still around as \"exp/ebnf\"\n([http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse#hg%2Fsrc%2Fpkg%2Fe...](http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse#hg%2Fsrc%2Fpkg%2Fexp%2Febnf)),\nbut the exp/ tree is not considered part of the official Go 1 API, so it may\nchange in backward-incompatible ways.\n\n------\nericmoritz\nanyone know what the time complexity of the append function is?\n\n~~~\nrsc\nIt is amortized O(1). When the append needs to grow the slice, it does so by a\nmultiplicative factor.\n\n------\ngolango\nnext version will be named Go Laprofonda\n\n------\nhuhtenberg\nG#... any day now, any day.\n\n------\nelchief\ncountdown until:\n\nGO IS AWESOME\n\nGO IS A FUCKING WASTE OF TIME\n\nHOW DO I MAKE JAVASCRIPT TALK TO GO?\n\n------\nziggrat\nits nice\n\n------\nGorbaChavez\nGogrammers, unite!\n\n~~~\nzemo\n\"gopher\" is the preferred demonym.\n\n------\nrman666\nMad Props!\n\nPropsed Theme Song: I got my Go, Go, Go, Go (gadget flow) ... Lupe Fiasco\n(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCf-ffDzopc>)\n\n------\nmakecheck\nI'm disappointed that after starting from scratch they created a \"modern\"\nlanguage that requires a module import just to print (and corresponding extra\nsyntax for that namespace when making the call).\n\nHow could this not have seemed incredibly clunky after using it for just a\nlittle while? It's the same frustration one feels when simple print-outs fail\nin C++ because you forgot to \"#include <iostream>\". Sometimes you just want to\nprint stuff no matter what file you're in. Languages should make it almost\nimpossible to fail at _extremely common tasks_. It's these little things that\nmake Python and Perl enjoyable to program in, and these little things that\nevery new language should begin with!\n\n~~~\nenneff\nOne of the design goals of Go is that the language is small. There's nothing\nso special about string formatting that it should be part of the language\nproper, and it would add a lot of complexity to the spec if it were.\n\nWith that said, there are built-in print and println functions that write to\nstderr, which are useful for debugging. That would seem to address your\ncomplaint. The fmt package is a lot more fully-featured than the built-ins\nthough.\n\n<http://golang.org/pkg/fmt/>\n\n~~~\nmakecheck\nThanks for pointing it out. I wish they used that in their \"hello, world\"\nexample because 'println(\"hello, world\")' leaves a much better first\nimpression of simplicity.\n\nI generally like to see things kept simple. But formatting is a _common_ need\nand they've actually made things _less_ simple by providing both fmt.Println()\nand println(). It means the same program will inevitably contain both,\ndepending on who did the editing. There are times when a feature is so basic\nthat it really should have _exactly_ one way to do it, and I think printing is\nin that category.\n\n~~~\nenneff\nYour position is not very pragmatic, and taking such a hard line is rarely\nproductive.\n\nThe fmt package does a lot of stuff. Check out the link I provided above. To\nput all that stuff into the language spec - and then foist responsibility of\nwriting and maintaining that code onto every implementation of the language -\nwould be crazy. So it seems a good idea that the fmt package should exist and\nthat it should be written in Go.\n\nOn the other hand, it's nice to be able to print when working on low-level\nlibraries where fmt is not available (syscall, os, etc). The print and println\nfunctions service this need, and that's really all they're used for apart from\ntemporary debugging prints.\n\nIt would be a mistake to use the built-in println in the hello world example\nbecause it would demonstrate precisely the wrong use of the built-in\nfunctions. Hello world should print to standard output and it should use the\nstandard means of formatting strings. In Go, that is fmt.\n\nThere are a few of such compromises in Go (not many, though). Sometimes you\nneed to put your ideals to the side in the name of simplicity and pragmatism.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nForget Skittles, WeAllHateQuickbooks Is Brilliant - iseff\nhttp://www.iseff.com/post/83327071/forget-skittles-weallhatequickbooks-is-brilliant\n\n======\n3pt14159\nFreshBooks employee here:\n\nI think this is a totally stupid idea.\n\n\"We all hate Quickbooks?\" really? Grow up. Quickbooks has made millions of\nsmall business owners' lives easier. With out them they would have to spend\ncountless more hours figuring out which tax laws apply to them, how to account\nfor inventory, etc...\n\nLessAccounting should focus on their strengths (and they have a ton,\nseriously) rather than attack Quickbooks.\n\nI could never dream of the company I work for ever coming out with a \"We hate\n{insert competitor}\" campaign. We have friends everywhere, even at\nIntuit/Quickbooks. We might compete with them, but that doesn't mean we hate\nthem. We share many of the same goals and we are all just trying to give our\ncustomers the best solution to their needs. Hate is no way to grow a business.\n\n~~~\nauston\nIn my opinion - it's marketing. The point is to get you to talk about them &\nremember their brand. I would never have known about Freshbooks had I not met\nMike McDerment in Miami. I would never have known about zoho had I not read\nabout their HS student recruiting tactics. Companies have different marketing\ntactics - this is one of them.\n\nDisclosure: I am friends w/ the less everything dudes.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nI'm not going to remember Lessbooks (or whatever), just that Quickbooks is the\nmarket leader.\n\n~~~\nauston\nIt's LessAccounting - there, now you should be able to remember it.\n\n------\nwallflower\nQuickBooks is like the wizard behind the curtain at many small businesses and\naccountancy firms. Viral marketing isn't always for good.\n\n~~~\nredinger\nThat's too bad. Nearly every freelancer/small business I deal with dislikes\nQuickBooks if not hates it. I am much happier with LessAccounting personally.\n\n~~~\nskorgu\nAt my former employer we did some work integrating QuickBooks with several\nexisting systems.\n\nI wanted: Documentation; Intuit gave: Cut-and-paste C# examples.\n\nI wanted: an easily parse-able format; Intuit gave: almost-XML-but-not-quite\n(order of elements is important!)\n\nI wanted: a Linux server; Intuit gave: something that was almost but not\nentirely incapable of operating for six hours at a stretch without dying\nsilently.\n\nI wanted: descriptive error messages; Intuit gave: \"Yeah error $RANDOM? That\nmeans restart the server.\"\n\nTo be fair the client-server API was reasonably sane, it was the interchange\nformat itself that was bonkers.\n\nI'd love to calculate the number of developer hours it cost working around\nthose misfeatures just to get a reasonable facsimile of RPC working.\n\nAnyway, I hate QuickBooks.\n\n------\nzhyder\nI'm reaallly interested in a solid Quickbooks alternative given all the\nnegative feedback on it. But I'm having trouble trusting LessAccounting coz 3\nfavorable-to-them comments here so far have been made by brand new users\n(chrisyour, redinger, joshuastreet). Any others used them?\n\n------\nrbritton\nYeah, Quickbooks sucks, but a totally web-based option is not better. There is\nno substitute for locally-run software for many things and accounting software\nis one of them for me.\n\n------\nthinkcomp\nDoes anyone use LessAccounting? I signed up for it but it doesn't do very\nmuch. Disclaimer: I'm technically a competitor.\n\n~~~\nryanwaggoner\n_I signed up for it but it doesn't do very much._\n\nI think that's what they're going for :)\n\n~~~\njoshuastreet\nYeah I signed up. Love it!! Switched from Quickbooks. Free from the bulk of\noptions no one uses. I have enough to train people on. My assistant can\nactually use it without needing to attend a class! And to freshbooks\nemployee...their marketing worked for me :)\n\n~~~\npbrown\nConsidering you signed up to post this gushing post, you wouldn't happen to\nwork for them would you?\n\n~~~\nryanwaggoner\nJudging by the fact that he's hanging out on HN + a quick search for his name\nreveals that he's probably this guy:\n\n<http://joshuastreet.com/> <http://twitter.com/JoshuaStreet>\n\nDoesn't look like there's any connection to LessAccounting...\n\nI guess the moral is: don't let your first post on HN be laudatory towards a\nstartup. Damn vultures :)\n\n------\nrbxbxdev\nre: Freshbooks employee --\n\nIf this is such a stupid idea why did it show up in my RSS Reader? Why are\npeople blogging that it's brilliant? Obviously it must be working to some\ndegree.\n\nps: somewhat affiliated with Less, but that doesn't change my views... or the\nfact that I saw this thread.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMaxwell, A 64 FPGA Supercomputer (pdf) - 0x12\nhttp://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.116.5709&rep=rep1&type=pdf\n\n======\nmmorey\nIf you are into high performance reconfigurable computing you might be\ninterested in some of the work being done by the CHREC group. Here is a list\nof there recent papers: <http://www.chrec.org/chrecpapers.html>\n\n------\nhendler\nOnline previewing:\n\n[http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fciteseerx.ist...](http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fciteseerx.ist.psu.edu%2Fviewdoc%2Fdownload%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.116.5709%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf)\n\n------\nsophacles\nThis is pretty cool! It's nice to see some good work being done on this\ngeneral reconfigurable stuff.\n\nFor an interesting but only tangentially related product, I've been playing\nwith one of these <http://rtds.com/index/index.html> this week. It's an FPGA\ndriven simulator specialized for power grid stuff. It is fast and quite fun.\nIt allows general programming within the domain, but not true general purpose\nstuff. I'm sure similar technologies exist for other fields and I was thinking\n\"Someone has to be generalizing this right?\". It's nice to see that thought\nbeing done here.\n\nFun fact for startup people: the company is tiny headcount wise but has quite\na large market penetration -- it's a good testament to what a passionate,\ndedicated and highly skilled team can do when they get to it.\n\n------\njedbrown\nWall clock time alone isn't such a useful metric to compare CPU vs. FPGA. It\nwould be more meaningful to normalize by machine cost (initial investment and\noperating costs). (Software development/non-portability is a separate\ndiscussion.)\n\n~~~\nmodeless\nThey address software development cost at the end of the paper, and basically\nconclude that FPGAs are too hard to program to replace CPUs yet, even for\nhighly specialized HPC applications.\n\n~~~\njedbrown\nMy point is that they should demonstrate what the potential hardware advantage\nis before evaluating whether the software development costs are worthwhile.\nThere are a few HPC tasks that are very simple and possibly amenable to\nspecialized hardware. D.E. Shaw's Anton is an extreme example of pursuing\ndedicated hardware. But the metric needs to involve purchasing and power costs\nfor the hardware. FPGAs can come out looking very good in this metric, but\ncomparing raw run times for different systems without cost normalization is\nmeaningless.\n\n~~~\nmodeless\nI disagree that software development cost shouldn't be considered before\nhardware cost. The software development costs are so much higher for FPGAs\n(both money and time) that they probably outweigh the hardware costs for many\napplications. They are both important and equally worth investigation.\n\n~~~\njedbrown\nIf the hardware cost benefit is not large, there isn't any point discussing\nsoftware development cost. If the benefit is huge, then the software\ndiscussion is relevant. In other words, the decision table looks something\nlike\n\n    \n    \n                      HW efficient     HW inefficient\n      SW cheap        Yes              No\n      SW expensive    Maybe            No\n\n------\ndhjones\nYet another FPGA vs CPU paper that doesn't compare with GPU's as well.\n\n~~~\nsliverstorm\nAnd why should it? The CPU and the GPU are entirely different beasts.\n\n~~~\nmodeless\nThat was true 5 years ago, but not today; GPUs and CPUs are converging. GPUs\nare quite suitable for all of the applications described in the article, and\nprovide orders of magnitude speedup over CPUs while remaining relatively cheap\nand easy to program vs. FPGAs.\n\n~~~\ndhjones\nI couldn't agree with this more.\n\n------\nalain94040\nNot to rain on anyone's parade, but next to my desk is a machine about 10\ntimes more powerful than what this paper describes.\n\nThe main issues with the setup in the paper: latency between nodes. Gigabit\nEthernet is just not good for latency. To nitpick some more, Virtex-4 is\ngetting old.\n\n~~~\nneopallium\nGigabit Ethernet is mainly used as a control network. Each FPGA has 4 RocketIO\nlinks (2-3Gb/s) and they are directly connected in a 2-D torus of point-to-\npoint links. The RocketIO network is used for nearest-neighbor communication\npatterns. For reduction operations such as global sums, they call back to the\nhost CPUs for MPI reduction operations to be preformed over the GE network.\n\nAlso one of the main goals was to build the supercomputer from commodity parts\nand \"plug-in\" FPGA cards, so they most likely had to go with FPGA cards there\nwhere available and maybe cheaper then the latest/greatest.\n\nThe paper would have been more interesting if they had compared this machine\nto other types of supercomputers then just CPU clusters.\n\n~~~\nkristianp\ns/cheaper then the/cheaper than the/g s/then just/than just/g\n\n------\n4ad\nWarning, PDF link.\n\n~~~\n0x12\nTitle updated, thanks!\n\n~~~\ndavid927\nGreat paper -- thank you! When is the publish date? 2008/2009?\n\n~~~\nrbabich\nAugust 2007 - <http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4291933>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: The new Longform app, a reader for smart content - lammer\nhttp://longform.org/app/\n\n======\nlammer\nHey - I know Longform.org pops up from time to time in HN threads and I wanted\nto let people know that we have a new iOS app.\n\nThe app features the curated daily article recommendations you find on\nLongform.org plus features that let you customize your own information diet.\nWe filter out the short linkbait crap so you're left only with engaging, deep\narticles.\n\nYou can follow writers and get notified any time they publish any article\nanywhere. Or follow friends and see what they're loving.\n\nOur popular tab is a leaderboard for in-depth articles from across the\ninternet.\n\nAnyway, feedback is greatly appreciated (and yes, we do want to do Android):\naaron@longform.org\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n(Un)building Software – English Version - geyslan\nhttp://hackingbits.github.io/unbuilding-software-english-version/\n======\ngeyslan\nNew link: [http://hackingbits.github.io/blog/unbuilding-software-\nenglis...](http://hackingbits.github.io/blog/unbuilding-software-english-\nversion/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nOne entrepreneur's review of Seedcamp 2009 - c3o\nhttp://emigal.com/2009/09/28/how-to-put-your-startup-on-steroids/\n\n======\nc3o\nI thought this might help explain what kind of value teams can derive from the\nevents Seedcamp puts on _before even picking any winners to fund_ , which are\nan important part of its model and a distinction to other micro seed programs.\n\nFor more context, some confusion but definitely also some valid criticism see\nthe recent thread at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=844105>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMicrosoft Announces ARM-Powered Surface Pro X - aminecodes\nhttps://www.theverge.com/2019/10/2/20885572/microsoft-surface-pro-x-2-in-1-sq1-processor-specs-price-release-date\n======\ncorv\nThis would make for a beautiful Linux device\n\n------\nwhywhywhywhy\nSo no one going to talk about the removable hard drive?\n\n------\ncolejohnson66\nDidn’t Windows RT fail? I’m genuinely curious: what’s different here?\n\n~~~\nwilsonnb3\nWindows 10 now supports x86 emulation on ARM processors, so most programs will\nrun on this device without a problem.\n\nUnlike Windows RT, which could only run things from the windows app store.\n\n[https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/19/17027026/microsoft-\nwindow...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/19/17027026/microsoft-\nwindows-10-on-arm-apps-games-limitations-support)\n\n~~~\nMarsymars\nWindows RT was especially hamstrung because without jailbreaking it couldn't\nrun Win32 desktop software even if it was compiled for ARM.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSizeof(void) == 1 in gcc - mrb\nhttps://twitter.com/#!/bcantrill/status/61503550966087681\n\n======\napaprocki\nGCC just happens to not even print a warning about this (even with -Wall).\nThat is pretty bad. The warning can be enabled by specifying -Wpointer-arith\nor by using -pedantic, though. (Warning: \"invalid application of 'sizeof' to a\nvoid type\")\n\nIBM's xlc compiler produces a warning and compiles the code and it also\nreturns 1. (Warning: \"1506-043 (W) The operand of the sizeof operator is not\nvalid.\")\n\nOracle Studio compiler has the best approach and fails to compile. (Error:\n\"cannot take sizeof void\")\n\n------\nmooism2\nWhat does the standard say?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPython in Excel [video] - vj44\nhttp://vimeo.com/53094126\n\n======\nkrob\nWhat tool is that guy using? Anyone know?\n\n~~~\nBigKRex\nThrough careful squinting I determined he's using\n[https://datanitro.com/](https://datanitro.com/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy do a lot of developers dislike Agile? - gozzoo\nhttp://brianknapp.me/developers-dislike-agile/\n======\nchrisbennet\nI think developers dislike what I'll call \"commercial agile\" \\- a process\nimposed from above popularized by people or organizations with a commercial\ninterest in selling so called \"agile\" i.e. scrum certification, etc.\n\nPoorly implemented agile where you have some agile-like processes coupled with\nwaterfall processes [\"fragile\"] can also sour developers on agile. (\"If this\nis agile, I don't like it.\")\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow Shazam Works To Identify (Nearly) Every Song You Throw At It - yarapavan\nhttp://gizmodo.com/5647458/\n\n======\nstuaxo\nSeriously? It works for about 1/20 tunes I try with it... I don't want to\nsound like a hipster (\"Ooh my music is so obscure\") or anything but it's\nannoyingly useless for me.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nXCSSET Mac Malware infects Xcode projects, performs UXSS attack on browsers - wincent\nhttps://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/xcsset-mac-malware-infects-xcode-projects-performs-uxss-attack-on-safari-other-browsers-leverages-zero-day-exploits/\n======\npritambarhate\nDoes anyone know a good command line malware/antivirus checker for Mac? (Paid\nis fine.) I do not want the antivirus to run in the background continuously\n(which affects performance) yet want to have ability to run nightly scans to\nensure that the machine is not infected.\n\nAlmost all traditional antivirus products want to deeply integrate with the\nsystem and affect the performance a lot. Also some of these companies are know\nto make questionable decisions like trying to intercept HTTPS communication,\netc.\n\n~~~\nmindfulhack\nI use Objective-See's free and open-source BlockBlock:\n\n[https://objective-see.com/products/blockblock.html](https://objective-\nsee.com/products/blockblock.html)\n\nIt picks up background daemon tasks that suddenly are created and allows you\nto block them immediately. That's certainly one major way to pick up and block\nhidden malware on your computer.\n\nAll of the tools by this guy are incredible, they are also recommended, e.g.\ntools to pick up and allow you to block access to microphone or camera.\n\n~~~\ncgufus\n... and definitely read objective-see's blog post from time to time if you are\ninto security topics. The malware take-apart documentation is extremely\nenlightening.\n\n(Intereseting fact: A lot of malware quits immediately if Little Snitch is\ninstalled. So running Little Snitch alone prevents some malware from infecting\nyour system)\n\n------\nsam_goody\nIs there a good on-demand antivirus for Mac?\n\nThe only two I know of is Malwarebytes and Kaspersky.\n\nThe former installs with root privileges, runs on boot and cannot be ever\nclosed, despite the fact that it is only an on-demand scanner. I've written to\nthem to request an explanation, and did not get any response.\n\nKaspersky has had a fair share of rumors against it, and I am not in a\nposition to evaluate if they are trustworthy.\n\n~~~\nhjuutilainen\nThere’s [https://sqwarq.com/detectx/](https://sqwarq.com/detectx/) which would\nfit your needs nicely. They also recently tweeted about detecting this\nspecific malware in question.\n\n~~~\nsam_goody\nI never saw this program before.\n\nClosed source, no references, and free (so how do they support themselves?)\n\nVery nice, but why would I trust it?\n\n------\nGuB-42\nReminds me of the \"Induc\" virus.\n\nThis virus infected Delphi installations, injecting its code and compiling it\ninto a system library. All programs using the infected library contained the\nvirus, including some popular ones.\n\nBecause they came straight from the developer, and the virus didn't do\nanything unless you had Delphi installed they were often considered false\npositive when they weren't. Originally, it had no malicious payload beside its\nreplication mechanism.\n\n------\nbtown\n> Affected developers will unwittingly distribute the malicious trojan to\n> their users in the form of the compromised Xcode projects, and methods to\n> verify the distributed file (such as checking hashes) would not help as the\n> developers would be unaware that they are distributing malicious files.\n\nTo understand why this happens, it's important to know how massive a typical\n.pbxproj file looks:\n\n[https://opensource.apple.com/source/CommonCrypto/CommonCrypt...](https://opensource.apple.com/source/CommonCrypto/CommonCrypto-24911/CommonCrypto.xcode/project.pbxproj.auto.html)\n\nOstensibly it's human-readable, but because it's generated by Xcode and filled\nwith inscrutable UUIDs, people treat it like a binary file, and they're\ntrained to do so:\n\n[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2004135/how-to-merge-\ncon...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2004135/how-to-merge-conflicts-\nfile-project-pbxproj-in-xcode-use-svn/2007358)\n\nEven the React Native team apparently allowed the file to be treated as non-\ndiffable for some time: [https://github.com/facebook/react-\nnative/pull/11047](https://github.com/facebook/react-native/pull/11047)\n\nAnd note the large number of commits on all types of projects that essentially\nsay \"whoops forgot to update pbxproj\" \\- there are likely far more.\n[https://github.com/search?q=update+pbxproj&type=Commits](https://github.com/search?q=update+pbxproj&type=Commits)\n\nSo why does this matter? Because the brilliance of this attack is how it\n\"jumps the blood-brain barrier\" between a developer's machine and their\ncanonical codebase. Usually, code review and auditing of what goes into a\ncommit prevents this kind of attack from leaping to VCS. But Apple makes the\npbxproj so inscrutable, and does such a good job at hiding all its complexity\nbehind (usually well-designed) wizards and dropdown menus, that people take it\nfor granted. If code shows up there, people _believe Apple intended that to be\nthe case_ even if, say, your last commit was a small change in Interface\nBuilder (or whatever they call it nowadays). Your code reviewer might just\nskip the file entirely, because they've been trained to expect the same.\n\nAnd that's scary.\n\nAt the end of the day, this is just another way of exploiting the lack of a\nmature and centralized CI ecosystem in the modern package distribution world.\nThere's no organization running a security-minded linter on pbxproj files as a\ngeneral rule. But, then again, there doesn't need to be a linter on\npackage.json or project.clj or Makefiles because there was never a history of\nhiding complexity - if that file changes, you'd better darn well know what\nyou're doing. What we have here is a perfect storm of move-fast-break-things\npackage management, a file designed to slip through code reviews, and a pretty\ncreatively designed malware payload.\n\nEDIT: Perhaps another way to look at it is that having one file responsible\nfor both compilation _logic_ and non-compilation-related IDE-specific _file\nstatus_ can be problematic. It's like your Makefile also needs to be your\n.gitignore-but-only-top-level-is-allowed-and-all-files-need-to-be-whitelisted.\nOf course, this is very much an Apple thing to do.\n\n~~~\nliuliu\nXcode project (pbxproj) is simply ill-equipped for proper code reviews. Any\nmodest size team should remove their Xcode projects from their codebase and\nmove to either Bazel, Swift Package Manager or Xcodegen. It is really not that\ndifficult and the benefit is quite obvious: [https://liuliu.me/eyes/migrating-\nios-project-to-bazel-a-real...](https://liuliu.me/eyes/migrating-ios-project-\nto-bazel-a-real-world-experience/)\n\n~~~\nandy_ppp\nWould you even recommend it for smaller teams or one man teams in my case...?\n\n~~~\njmull\nFor a single developer I think it works OK to review pbxproj changes like\nother source.\n\nYou really should understand and recognize what each change is.\n\nIt’s when you have the additional dimension of multiple developers changing\nthe project that it really becomes unwieldy and you are pushed into treating\nit as binary.\n\n------\nThorrez\nWow, the way it spreads is fascinating, reminiscent of Reflections on Trusting\nTrust.\n\nI'm a bit confused about\n\n>two zero-day exploits: one is used to steal cookies via a flaw in the\nbehavior of Data Vaults, another is used to abuse the development version of\nSafari.\n\nMalware on the local machine can steal data from Safari on the local machine.\nIs that a surprise? Does Safari have a threat model that it intends to protect\nagainst locally running malware?\n\n~~~\nolliej\nData vaults on macOS are intended to prevent apps running under they same\nunprivileged user from accessing files that belong to another app.\n\nEg, if there is a file/directory that only safari is meant to have access to,\nno other app should be able to read it, without at least bringing up one of\nthe annoying “allow X to access your Y”. For example, the first time you, say,\nfeel your home directory you’ll get a bunch of TCC requests asking if the host\napp (Terminal.app say) should be allowed to access those files.\n\n~~~\nxnyhps\nTo add to this: there are two different types of Data Vaults. For locations\nsuch as ~/Pictures, ~/Documents, Calendars, Contacts, etc. a permission prompt\nis triggered if an app tries to access it. Other locations, such as where Mail\nand Safari keep their data, can not be allowed from a prompt. Those require\n\"Full Disk Access\" for third-party software to gain access, which you should\ngive only to applications that really need it, such as a backup tool.\n\nAnything not on those locations is not protected, so there's no Data Vault for\nChrome's cookie file, for example.\n\n~~~\nolliej\nIs there an API that allows apps to construct data vaults? I assumed that\nthere would be, but I also generally don't write code at that level in the\nstack\n\n------\njayyhu\nFor those curious, the two Xcode projects they found infected on Github were:\n\n    \n    \n      ragulSimpragma/twitterTask\n      yimao009/MVC-MVP-MVVM\n    \n\nFortunately they look like personal projects so the spread seems minimal so\nfar.\n\n~~~\nvanc_cefepime\nYou had links to those projects, now removed.\n\nStupid question. Was it bad that I clicked on the github.com links? This is\nnot something spread just with viewing the links, right?\n\n~~~\nExuma\nYou're safe. You have to compile the projects with Xcode\n\n~~~\nx86_64Ubuntu\nBut if I pull that code and compile it, my executable will have the malware in\nit? I've never done anything in the MacOS ecosystem at all, so I'm just\nasking.\n\n~~~\nayyy\nNo, if you pull that code and \"compile\" it with xcode, it will run scripts\nthat install malware on your machine. I assume once the malware is on your\nmachine, it can infect other xcode projects on your machine.\n\n------\nswiley\nBummer there’s pretty much one set of tools for the mac.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n10 profitable business opportunities for women in big cities - sophiamstg\nhttps://www.startupguys.net/10-best-small-business-ideas-for-women-in-big-cities/\n======\nanovikov\nThat sounds disgustingly sexist. 'Some innocent and unprofitable things these\nsub-humans can do while we make all the money'. Shame!\n\n------\ntwobyfour\nAnd why are the business opportunities for women any different from those for\nmen?\n\nThis article is disgustingly condescending.\n\n------\nFrogolocalypse\n? Engineer? Doctor? Lawyer? Scientist? Software development company? Building?\nSecurity? Transport? Restaurant? Produce delivery?\n\nNo? Sigh...\n\n------\nnewsbinator\n\"Though there’s no such difference between a woman and a man when it comes to\nentrepreneurial drive\"\n\n[citation needed]\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat If the Kindle Succeeds?  - makimaki\nhttp://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/kindle\n======\nsh1mmer\nI'm surprised (and pleased) that the author doesn't try to rail at the DRM in\nthe kindle, but does praise the benefits the kindle brings to the market as a\nwhole.\n\nHe happily accepts that DRM will inevitably fail in books, as it has in music.\nI absolutely agree that DRM is bad, but I also admire his ability to let the\nissue slide at this early stage in the market.\n\n~~~\ninklesspen\n\"Early stage\"?\n\ne-books are far older than mp3s and avis. Baen Books has been selling\nspeculative fiction in non-DRMed e-book formats for years and (disregarding\nthe fact that almost all of their stuff is shit) it's done very well for them.\nCory Doctorow gives away all his books for free, and it's increasingly a\ntactic adopted by others in the speculative fiction business; four of the five\nnominees for the Hugo Award this year were released in DRM-free format (for\nFREE, even) so Hugo voters could have a better chance of reading them.\n\nSo, if this is the early stage of e-books, I wonder what it'll look like when\nthe market is mature.\n\n~~~\nnetcan\n\"Early stage\" of the market. That does not necessarily equal in the\ntechnology.\n\n------\nkylec\nThe ease of readability is what will ultimately make or break ebook readers.\nIf the display is large enough and easy on the eyes and the interface simple\nand intuitive I can imagine a device capturing a certain following. Other\nthings like price of the unit, prices and restrictions on books, and\nportability will be addressed if the market is there.\n\nI remember reading ebooks on my Palm several years ago and finding it a less-\nthan-enjoyable experience. Though I've never actually used a Kindle it seems\nto be a large step in the right direction.\n\n~~~\nstcredzero\nInteractivity will become increasingly important as well. I think we'll\neventually see ways to interact with books that no one had thought of before.\nE-ink displays like the Kindle and the Sony Reader will therefore go the way\nof the dinosaur. They are great for daylight readability and low power use,\nbut they are too slow!\n\n~~~\nlacker\nIt would be cool if e-books made it easier to read in foreign languages. In a\nlanguage that I mostly but not entirely comprehend, I very often want a\ntranslation or explanation of a word or passage. Reading a real-world book\nwith a dictionary at hand is a huge pain.\n\n~~~\nstcredzero\nWhat about a \"translation mode\" where every time you pointed at a word, there\nwould be a pop-up definition. Probably also enable swipe-highlighting a\npassage and getting a translation as well.\n\n------\nzandorg\nOne interesting idea is that of printing every book you want, on demand. Using\n<http://www.lulu.com/> you can get prices of $8 per copy plus $8 postage, and\nyou provide a PDF (around 250 pages is ideal). It's $16 per item too - no need\nfor an order of say 30 books. Multiply that into $300 and that's quite a few\nbooks you can stack on the shelf.\n\n------\nmynameishere\nKiller feature: Make the kindle completely waterproof. It's so obvious.\n\n------\ngamble\nI don't think the Kindle is in any danger of shutting down the ink-and-paper\npresses yet. 10% of sales, on Amazon, of books available electronically is a\nvanishingly small percentage of the market.\n\nNow if you could rent books via the Kindle in the style of O'Reilly Safari,\nthat could be a game-changer.\n\n~~~\nstcredzero\nReference books would be great for something like Kindle but with a more\ninteractive interface. Being able to search and flip back and forth quickly\nbetween bookmarks would be great for reference. And the great thing about lots\nof kinds of reference? People will pay subscriptions for the kind that gets\nupdated often! People will pay just to have information at their fingertips\nand not have to carry 3 or 4 thick volumes around.\n\n------\nnetcan\nWhat seems odd is that Amazon seems to be trying to avoid a game change.\n\nThey want to make reading /book ownership & retail different with as little\neffect on what goes on further up the value chain as possible. Prices are more\nor less the same, for one.\n\nThat doesn't seem to make sense.\n\n~~~\nComputerGuru\nActually, it makes tons of sense.\n\nAmazon is the king of online book sales. They're connected to the world's\npublishers and authors and they're really enjoying their position above\neveryone else.\n\nIf the way we view eBooks were to change, if eBook prices were to reflect\ntheir true costs, the entire online book industry would be shaken.... it most\nlikely will happen, sooner or later, but Amazon (smartly) doesn't want to be\nthe one to instigate such an upheaval that would leave them in a risky\nsituation.\n\nIt's very likely that should such an event occur, they would adapt and remain\nthe kings of online media sales - but it's a risk that they don't _have_ to\ntake - they're already at the top so it's nothing to gain and everything to\nlose.\n\nThey're trying to shape the emerging market by their own hands in their own\nway, a step at a time, to ensure that they'll always be safe.\n\n~~~\nnetcan\nIf what collapses the current industry structure is apple's device, they'll\nprobably come out in a decent position.\n\nIf that's what's going to happen anyway, isn't it better to lead? Especially\nif there's a chance of locking users in to a device with DRM. And it seems\nimpossible that there won't be a change. The whole economics of printing is\nbuilt on the realities of.. printing. How long can they keep pretending that\nbooks are being printed?\n\nBut I guess you're right. It's not 'no sense' it's 'no cojones'.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: my weekend project, whatsnerdy.com - hanzenlim\nhttp://whatsnerdy.com/\n\n======\nmgurlitz\nVery cool site. Looks like you might have a Unicode problem: \"Show HN: My\nGithub résumé\"\n\n------\nbrianfryer\nIs there something that you can do about the floating social bar?\n\nOn iOS, it hovers over some of the content :-(\n\n<http://imgur.com/hwmWN>\n\nOther than that, though... YAY!\n\n~~~\nhanzenlim\nthnx for letting me know, ill fix it asap :)\n\n~~~\nautophil\nThe floating social bar is still there on my iOS, and it's disruptive. Please\nfix. Great site otherwise.\n\n~~~\nhanzenlim\nfixed it, should work now. sorry it took me a while :O\n\n------\neatitraw\nAdded to bookmarks! It may become my favourite website for procrastination. :)\n\nWhat I don't like is two-column layout: it makes title boxes have uneven\nheight. Even both columns have different weights. It would be nice to see\nnumbered list for sites with numbered postings - like HN(of course, if it's\nnot by design, for example, if your project uses custom ranking and selection\nsystems for publications).\n\n------\nmforsberg\nI really like the sources and amount of content you picked out. Good choice of\na domain as well.\n\nBut like sangupta and amirf I think you should improve the UI a bit; maybe\nhave a go with twitter's bootstrap?\n\nOne thing I really would like is that you skip the two columns and narrowed it\ndown do one column and worked a bit on the navigation so that it's on one line\nor grouped in some shape or form.\n\n~~~\nemp_\nWhen we see people complaining of the excess of Bootstrap sites around, they\ntend to forget what they would feel/look/be like before such frameworks\nexisted.\n\n------\nrailswarrior\nHey nice compilation mate , only thing that it misses is the discussion forum\n.Would love to see that :)\n\nWell that's why i keep coming to Hacker News or reddit and keeps you engaged .\n\nGuys at Hacker News discussion forums are one the best people to talk to\nregarding technical topics .\n\n~~~\nhanzenlim\nthnx for the input mate, ill try to add discussion forum in the future.\n\n------\nsrik\nNice work.\n\nIt would be nice to have sortable sources and comments, like popurls does.\n(Although popurls doesnt have hn comments, which is painful)\n\nAlso, have you considered eliminating links that have been duplicated over\ndifferent sources.\n\n------\nSharma\nCool site! My suggestion for more features/changes:\n\n1\\. Social share bar for each link. 2\\. Finding common links/stories in all\nthose tech sites. 3\\. Probably a tab view? 4\\. Search feature!\n\n------\nskizm\nThis reminds me of jimmyr.com which is how I came across\nreddit/digg/hackernews in the first place. Not sure how I came across\njimmyr.com in the first place though :\\\n\n~~~\njohnnymonster\nor popurls.com\n\n------\nsangupta\nCongrats - this is just so awesome! How about adding an RSS feed and tweaking\nthe UI a bit to make it more usable - for the specky ones like me :)\n\n------\njohnnymonster\nI've been thinking about doing something like this for a while now. Any\nthoughts on open sourcing it, putting it up on github?\n\n------\namirf\nGreat job! All you need now is a better UI for mobiles and I'm sold :)\n\nWhat web technology did you choose for this?\n\n~~~\nhanzenlim\nI used ruby on rails for backend, then xpath to parse through each sites for\nlinks\n\n------\nmadmax108\nLove the idea! :)\n\nWould be even cooler if I could add/remove sites and reorder them ...\n\n------\nawef\nFix the encoding, add a favicon and change the font from Times and I'd\nprobably use it :)\n\n------\nsnaveint\nA simple, yet extremely useful site. Love it; I can see myself regularly using\nthis.\n\n~~~\nhanzenlim\nthnx\n\n------\nthedudemabry\nHaha, that's awesome. I hope you keep it up because it's my new home page!\n\n------\nsktrdie\nIf you keep it ads free I'll use it. Please remove the left sidebar\n\n------\nJaco\nAwesome website! Thanks for sharing :-)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLeading Civil Rights Groups Just Sold Out on Net Neutrality - poolpool\nhttp://www.republicreport.org/2014/leading-civil-rights-groups-just-sold-out-on-net-neutrality/\n\n======\nsamtalks\nThese groups seem more and more out of touch with the public that they\npurportedly serve. Just look at the outcry over their attempt to manipulate\nthe objective merit-based criteria for NYC's Specialized high schools.\n[http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_3_nyc-specialized-\nhigh-s...](http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_3_nyc-specialized-high-\nschools.html)\n\nWhile there is a critical need for better racial diversity at the schools, to\ntry to 'fix' the problem at the 8th grade level (when it's usually too late)\nnot only seems like a pure PR play, but it also hurts the thousands of\nsacrificing low income students who are currently getting accepted into these\nschools.\n\nCivil rights in this country needs a disruptive reboot.\n\n------\njaekwon\nI'm not a member on any of these groups but I did find one on facebook &\nmessaged them.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGet Billions of Correct Digits of Pi from a Wrong Formula (1999) [pdf] - drusepth\nhttps://academics.rowan.edu/csm/departments/math/facultystaff/faculty/osler/Billions_pi_digits.pdf\n======\nman-and-laptop\nSketch of an alternative proof, more DSP:\n\nUse the fact that the approximation in the paper is equal to the inner product\nof e^{-x^2} with a Dirac comb [1]. The amazing thing about the Gaussian\nfunction and the Dirac comb is that they're _both_ preserved by the Fourier\ntransform. So apply the Fourier transform to both of them, observe that the\nFourier transform is unitary (essentially a rotation), and therefore doesn't\naffect the inner product; then expand the inner product of the Fourier\ntransforms.\n\nEssentially, it's the same proof, but not in the language of Theta functions.\nIn fact, I'd argue it's a better proof, because it generalises.\n\nGeneralisation: This technique applies to all Riemann sums, as long as you can\ncompute the Fourier transform of the function. The thinner the tails of the\nfunction's Fourier transform, the faster its Riemann sums will converge.\n\n[1] -\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_comb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_comb)\n\n~~~\nabenedic\nMyself, I would say this is 80% correct. The bigger deal is the spectral\nconvergence of the trapezoidal sum for periodic entire functions.\n\n~~~\nman-and-laptop\nI gave my generalisation in terms of frequency, and not in terms of \"number of\nrectangles\" in the Riemann sum, which I conveniently assumed to be infinite.\n\nA better generalisation: if a function is thin-tailed, and its Fourier\ntransform is thin-tailed, then it's Riemann sums converge to its integral at\nan exponential rate. In particular, this applies to the Gaussian function.\n\nI'll check out what you said.\n\n------\nxamuel\nThe formula involves a parameter c=10^10 and initially seems unbelievable\nbecause one's initial inclination is to assume that the 10^10 is particularly\nimportant, like it has to be that particular value in order for the formula to\nwork. The \"trick\" is that higher values of c, like c=10^19, give even more\naccuracy. Obviously c=10^10 was chosen to optimize the formula's aesthetic\nbeauty.\n\n~~~\nmadcaptenor\nEven c = 2 works.\n\n    \n    \n      > n = seq(-1000, 1000); #assume 1000 is big enough to be infinity\n      > sum(exp(-n^2/2))^2 / 2\n      [1] 3.141593\n\n~~~\nmiduil\nWhich programming language is that?\n\nEdit: Ah, it's \"R\".\n\n~~~\nmadcaptenor\nYes, it's R. Not necessarily the ideal language for this but I had an RStudio\nwindow open.\n\n------\nmadcaptenor\nThat \"wrong formula\" approximates pi by an integral: more precisely, exp(-x^2)\nintegrated over the real line integrates to sqrt(pi). So the question is, in\nsome sense, why is that such a good approximation? (My Fourier analysis is\nrusty, so I can't answer that question.)\n\n~~~\nhammock\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_integral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_integral)\n\n~~~\nmadcaptenor\nI'm familiar with the integral. But why is that sum a particularly good\napproximation to the integral? It seems better than one has a right to expect,\nalthough it's been a while since I did any numerical analysis.\n\n~~~\nmadcaptenor\nReplying to my own comment. See (4.4) in the article and the discussion after\nit. The error in this approximation is like exp(-pi^2 c). (4.10) in the\narticle translates this to that we should expect about 4.2c digits of\naccuracy, since log_10 exp(-pi^2) is about 4.2. This falls out of Poisson's\nsummation formula, according to the OP.\n\nGenerally I'd expect a numerical integration scheme to have an error like h^k\nfor some constant k - for example for Riemann sums the error goes like h^2 and\nfor Simpson's rule like h^5. h is the distance between the sampling points and\nso is analogous to 1/c. So this doesn't just follow from Riemann summation.\n\n~~~\ntanderson92\nTrapezoidal rule quadrature is better than you would expect (2nd order) for\nperiodic (even better for analytic and indeed entire, in this case)\nintegrands. See this paper:\n[http://eprints.maths.ox.ac.uk/1734/](http://eprints.maths.ox.ac.uk/1734/)\n\n------\nxyzzyz\nSeems like the formula is simply a fine enough Riemann sum for calculating\nGaussian integral int_-inf^inf e^(-x^2) dx = sqrt(pi). It makes it much less\nsurprising, though the exact estimation of error is still quite ingenious and\nworth following.\n\n------\nmesse\nSpoiler alert: It's just a Riemann sum. This is like being surprised that\n(1+10^-100)^(10^100) approximates e astonishingly accurately.\n\n~~~\nWhiteSage\nWhat is surprising is how small the error term is. For the sake of comparison,\n(1+10^-5)^(10^5) only gets five digits of e right.\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nAnd this one gets fewer than a hundred.\n\n------\nanonytrary\nInteresting article, but I found the title a bit funny. I'd like to see an\narticle about Newton's laws titled \"Getting to the Moon from a Wrong Formula\".\n\n------\ngesman\nThis formula is worthy to be printed on T-shirt :)\n\n------\npreparedzebra\nFor any pattern, constant, irrational, etc, in math, there exists a set of\nformulas that models it up until n. It still is a cool little Riemann sum in\nthis paper\n\n------\namelius\nThere's still the hypothesis that _any_ finite sequence of digits appears\n_somewhere_ in pi.\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nAh, the normality hypothesis. It seems like it should be true, but apparently\nthis is something that's really hard to prove.\n\n~~~\nmamon\nI might be ignorant here, but wouldn't it suffice to prove that digits of Pi\nare random? Just check whether the distribution is uniform, the same way you\nwould validate pseudorandom sequence generator for a programming language.\nOnce you proved that Pi digits are random the normality hypotesis becomes\ntrivial: as number of known Pi digits approaches infinity the probablity of\nany finite sequence to appear approaches 1.\n\n~~~\npitaj\nThe distribution wouldn't even need to be uniform, right? As long as one or\nmore digits never stopped appearing at any point, the infinite sequence would\ninclude every possible sequence of numerals.\n\n~~~\nv_lisivka\nI'm 100% sure that Pi doesn't include e.g. 0.(3) sequence, or e sequence, or\nmany many other sequences, or even just million of zeroes in the row.\n\n~~~\nbillforsternz\nWhy would you be sure it doesn't include a million zeroes in a row? If the\ndigits are random, as appears likely, it definitely will include a million\nzeroes in a row. The problem is even if you could turn every atom in the\nuniverse into a supercomputer, and somehow get them all cooperatively working\non calculating the digits, you'd still never get to the million zeroes\nsequence in a million universe lifetimes. But they're still out there\nsomewhere.\n\n~~~\nbillforsternz\nI cannot reply to the reply from v_lisivka (for some reason) but I don't know\nwhy you'd think a temporary run of decimal digits in pi would have any effect\non the geometry of a circle. It all comes down to whether pi is Normal or not.\nRepeating the quote above, it is thought likely but not proven at this stage;\n\nQuoting:\n\n> It is widely believed that the (computable) numbers √2, π, and e are normal,\n> but a proof remains elusive.\n\n~~~\nv_lisivka\nMy rough understanding is that Pi is representation of certain curve: circle.\nIf we skew sequence too far to one side or another, then curve will lost it\nshape.\n\n~~~\nbillforsternz\nI hope it is becoming apparent that you need more than a rough understanding\nof one of the properties of pi to contribute usefully to the discussion.\n\n------\ndajohnson89\nWouldn't a better title be, \"An accurate approximation of pi\"? Not as\nclickbaity though....\n\n~~~\njack6e\n> _\" Not as clickbaity though....\"_\n\nNot as accurate, either, given that the title of the paper is \"Get Billions\nand Billions of Correct Digits of pi from a Wrong Formula,\" and it was\npublished before \"click-bait\" was a thing.\n\n~~~\ndjmips\nClick-bait has long existed as headlines and movie and novel titles.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: What does Google pay? - realodb\nI am currently interviewing for a director (not senior) of software engineering position at Google. I&#x27;m wondering if anyone on HN has held such a position at Google before, or currently, and what it pays.  I realize all positions will have ranges based on experience, etc, but what ballpark can I expect for a base salary, bonus, and equity?  For a positon based in SF Bay Area, or possibly Seattle?\n======\nthrowaway1500\nMaybe ask that question over at teamblind? According to a somewhat recent\ndiscussion of Sep 2018 at teamblind the TC (total compensation in one year,\nusually not counting any perks) should be at least $750k+ TC, source:\nwww.teamblind.com/article/Engineering-director-at-Google-uaJEgaho\n\nAnother reference might be: www.levels.fyi/SE/Google/Facebook/Microsoft\n\nLevels does not have L8 estimates yet, but L7 is already beyond $600k+ TC.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy we are not satisfied with the personal work - iduuck\nhttp://write.visualcake.org/why-we-are-not-satisfied-with-the-personal-work/\n\n======\nscotth\n> “Hey! You can do this better than this faggot!”\n\nWow. Dominik, if you're reading this, you should know that this is\nunacceptable language.\n\n~~~\niduuck\nChanged it. Sorry for this!\n\n------\nspacemanaki\nThe more general phenomenon was analyzed and described far better (and without\ncalling some other designer a faggot) by This American Life's Ira Glass,\nsummarized as \"your taste is why your own work disappoints you\":\n\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY>\n\n------\ngte910h\niduuck you should be ashamed for your casual bigotry, and additionally your\npushing your casual bigotry out to the HN Community.\n\n> “Hey! You can do this better than this faggot!”\n\nI am sorry if beavis and butthead are still your role models for acting like a\ndecent human being to everyone. There is no acceptable \"fag means bad\" meaning\nanymore. It's all bigotry\n\n------\npeter_l_downs\nI'd say, staying unsatisfied is a trait of a great person. The smartest people\nI know don't settle for being however good they are at whatever they do.\nInstead, they're constantly striving to improve.\n\n------\nMaxGabriel\nDominik, when you zoom in on an iPhone the top-right mountains logo and text\ncovers the post.\n\n~~~\niduuck\nWill fix this tomorrow. Thanks for reporting!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe P programming language - msoad\nhttps://github.com/p-org/P\n======\nqznc\nFinally, a proper \"P\". I only had P'' and P# on my list.\n[http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/one_letter_proglangs.html](http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/one_letter_proglangs.html)\n\n~~~\nklibertp\nNice list! There's also F* under \"F\": [https://www.fstar-\nlang.org/](https://www.fstar-lang.org/)\n\n~~~\nqznc\nThanks! Added that as well.\n\n------\nacjohnson55\nThis sounds a lot like the actor model (e.g. Erlang, Elixir, Scala + Akka).\nIt's a great primitive for concurrency and distributed computing.\n\nIs there a big difference here, or is this basically just an alternative\nlanguage for that model?\n\n~~~\ntekacs\nWell at the top of the manual, the list of constraints[1] reads the same as\nthe actor model[2] (it explicitly uses local state ('store') to model\nbehaviour changes), with the word 'machine' substituted for 'actor'.\n\nIf anything it reads like the restricted form of the actor model produced by\nusing only Erlang's gen_fsm or Akka's FSM mixin.\n\n(to be clear, using a restricted form with more constraints is a great thing -\neven better here, where one of the domains they're serving seems to be fairly\nrestricted execution environments)\n\n[1]:\n\n    \n    \n        > Each operation either updates the local store, sends messages to other machines, or creates new machines.\n        > In P, a send operation is non-blocking; the message is simply enqueued into the input queue of the target machine.\n    \n\n[2]:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model#Fundamental_concep...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model#Fundamental_concepts)\n\n------\nnickpsecurity\nThis is really neat. The synchronous languages like Esterel have been doing\ngreat in real-time, safety-critical systems. As paper notes, the common\nproblems in distributed and operating systems are more asynchronous in nature.\nPlus, modeling/verification and programming usually use separate tools. They\ntackle both jobs with one tool for asynchronous programming that proved itself\nout finding hundreds of bugs in a USB3 stack that's shipping to a wide\naudience.\n\nProgramming languages rarely get better introductions and early results than\nthat. Props to the Microsoft Research team on this.\n\n~~~\npjmlp\nAs mentioned the other day, it is this kind of efforts why I consider\nMicrosoft and to certain extent Apple, the ones driving for innovation in\nsafety on mainstream OS stacks.\n\nMaybe Google as well due to their reluctance to improve NDK beyond being a way\nto implement Java _native_ methods and port code into Android.\n\n~~~\nnickpsecurity\nRight now they're focusing these efforts mostly on the drivers and hypervisor.\nI'm not sure how much the kernel gets in terms of stuff like VCC. Just wait\ntill the Midori stuff starts flowing into their stack. It will probably be at\nthe app level for .NET in safety or performance improvements.\n\n------\ntaneq\nThe manual is here (linked from github readme):\n[https://github.com/p-org/P/blob/master/Doc/Manual/pmanual.pd...](https://github.com/p-org/P/blob/master/Doc/Manual/pmanual.pdf)\n\nCalling a core language keyword \"goto\"? They're brave.\n\nAnd I'm not convinced of the utility of baking their own C-like imperative\nlanguage when they could have actually used real C. There are already too many\nC-like languages out there that are just different enough from C to be\nannoying.\n\n~~~\ntinco\nDid you read the manual? They use their own little language which is\nimperative, but unlike C side effect free. To execute side effects it offers a\nway to implement machines in regular C. This is for example how 'Timer' is\nimplemented in the manual.\n\n~~~\nbbcbasic\n> imperative, but unlike C side effect free\n\nSounds like a dream language :)\n\n------\nNullabillity\nWhat's with all the single-character name programming languages? It's almost\nas if they're trying to make it a pain to search for.\n\n~~~\nunsignedqword\nUsually you can just search for languages with weird unsearchable names as\n\"*lang\".\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_\\(programming_language\\))\n(Not really sure how you'd search for this language in particular, though...)\n\n~~~\ni_cant_speel\nIt's pretty easy to find with \"p programming language\".\n\n~~~\nCamillo\nWhat if you have a stutter?\n\n------\nmahyarm\nIs this used in the Windows 10 USB driver, like the windows 8 driver?\n\n~~~\njustanotheratom\nTo be clear, P is used for validating the asynchronous state machines used by\nthe Windows USB drivers, and not for implementing the drivers, which are\nwritten in C.\n\nAnd the USB driver stack implementation is same for both Windows 8 & and\nWindows 10, so the answer to your question is - yes.\n\n~~~\nCamillo\nThe README says: \"P has been used to implement and validate the USB device\ndriver stack that ships with Microsoft Windows 8 and Windows Phone\". It's not\nclear from your answer. Does Windows ship with a \"USB device driver stack\"\nwritten in P, yes or no?\n\n~~~\nnickpsecurity\nThe way these normally work is that they do the state machine in the domain-\nspecific language, verify it, auto-generate code in something like C, and\ncompile that. That's almost all of them since it's easy to go from models to\ncode automatically for state machines. The Github page says:\n\n\"Not only can a P program be compiled into executable code, but it can also be\nvalidated using systematic testing. P has been used to implement and validate\nthe USB device driver stack that ships with Microsoft Windows 8 and Windows\nPhone. \"\n\nThat indicates they modeled it in P with their tool compiling the P specs into\nsome executable. The individual functions the state machine calls would be\nother C or assembly functions. Microsoft as tools like VCC, Verifast, SLAM,\netc to verify C in drivers. I'm curious what combo of them they used on it if\nany.\n\n~~~\nMatthias247\nFor me it's a very interesting question whether they directly used the\ngenerated C code from the P toolchain in the driver or whether they only used\nP for verification of the state machines and reimplemented them in C.\n\nDirectly using the code would be a huge achievement and can help to avoid a\nlot of issues that will come with reimplementing it. However it has also quite\nhuge requirements for the code generation. E.g. the scheduler must fit the\ntarget system and must be performant for the use-case, the infinite-queue\nsemantics that the state machines seem to have are not ideal for a constrained\nenvironment and of course there's questions regarding memory allocation and\ngarbage collection (which should mostly be avoided in drivers).\n\n------\ndoublerebel\nThe event model is great. Forces inputs and outputs to be simple. I really\nlike that P reads like English. The use of goto, on, in, send all read well.\nThey use monitor but abbreviate function to fun, why not just write function?\n\nI think it would be nice to drop the braces entirely. They seem to only\nfunction as decoration. Also I would really miss ++, P has many convenience\nmethods including += but no ++.\n\n------\ncrudbug\nInteresting, is this used in production ?\n\nStates & Events provide a right model for async programs. SCXML [0] provides\nsome additional tools for creating abstract finite state machines.\n\n[0] [http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-\nscxml/](http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-scxml/)\n\n~~~\ntinco\nApparently it is used to implement the Windows 8 USB driver. I can't think of\na higher bar of 'in production' than that.\n\n------\nnickpsecurity\nI found out there's been a new language, P#, with even more benefits than this\none:\n\n[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-\ncontent/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2016/02/paper-6.pdf)\n\n~~~\nakashlal\nIts available alongside P:\n[https://github.com/p-org/PSharp](https://github.com/p-org/PSharp)\n\n~~~\nqznc\nHm, there is another P#:\n[http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/stg/research/Psharp/](http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/stg/research/Psharp/)\n\n------\nwybiral\nWhat is the support for streams like in P?\n\n~~~\ndarawk\nI can't tell if this question is intended to be a joke or not, but either way\ni'm in support of it.\n\n~~~\nwybiral\nWhere's the flush method?\n\n------\nnoselasd\nWhat does this implementation target ? Does it produce .NET assemblies ? Is it\nan interpreter ? Compiles to native ?\n\nEdit: [https://github.com/p-org/P/wiki/Creating-a-P-\nProgram](https://github.com/p-org/P/wiki/Creating-a-P-Program) indicates it\ncompiles to C code.\n\n------\ncosinetau\nInteresting. When I was studying Group algebra and machine organization, I\nfelt there was a strong intersection between these two schools, and I think P\nis addressing that.\n\n------\ngeon\nHow does it compare to Ceu?\n\n[http://www.ceu-lang.org](http://www.ceu-lang.org)\n\n------\nlewisj489\nIs there a CFG spec I could look at?\n\n------\nnephrite\nI hate languages with single letter names. They're impossible to google.\n\n~~~\nyoodenvranx\nYes, there should be some sort of RFC about programming language names. The\nmain requirement would be to choose some combination of letters which return\nless than 1000 results on Google.\n\n~~~\nDonaldFisk\nThe most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language\nwill not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good\nname and now I am looking for a suitable language. - Donald Knuth\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSpeech Recognition Is NSA’s Best-Kept Open Secret - etiam\nhttps://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/11/speech-recognition-nsa-best-kept-secret/\n\n======\nkordless\nI can't fathom why this didn't get bumped to the front page.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nVolatile is Evil - indy\nhttp://www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog/2010/12/04/SayonaraVolatile.aspx\n\n======\nalextingle\nIt is very annoying that 'volatile' means different things in different\nlanguages. Inexcusable that Microsoft should unilaterally change the meaning\nof 'volatile' in their C++ compiler, adding yet another #ifdef into everyone's\ncode.\n\n~~~\ndfox\nBoth C and C++ defines volatile as something like \"Access to volatile objects\nare evaluated strictly according to the rules of the abstract machine.\" (exact\nwording from some old draft of C++0x I have here) with C explicitly noting\nthat \"What constitutes an access to an object that has volatile-qualified type\nis implementation-defined.\" (ISO 9899 6.7.3.6). So there is not many to say\nabout what volatile means without knowing exact implementation (and\nimplementation should document what volatile exactly means).\n\nI don't see what Microsoft could do to unilaterally change meaning of\nsomething that is almost completely implementation-defined.\n\n~~~\nJoachimSchipper\nI'm not so sure that your reading of the standard is correct. From n1256.pdf,\nthe essentially unchanged and freely available draft of the C99 standard:\n\n(5.1.2.3.2): Accessing a volatile object, ..., or calling a function that does\nany of those operations are all side effects...\n\n(5.1.2.3.3): In the abstract machine, all expressions are evaluated as\nspecified by the semantics. An actual implementation need not evaluate part of\nan expression if it can deduce that its value is not used and that no needed\nside effects are produced (including any caused by calling a function or\n_accessing a volatile object_ ).\n\nIt does not look like this allows an implementation complete freedom in\ndeciding what constitutes an \"access\". In fact, I'm pretty certain that\n'volatile int i; i;' is required to access i _exactly_ once. (There are plenty\nof optimizer bugs in this area, but these are _bugs_.)\n\n(Note that the above has _nothing_ to do with threads and everything with\nmemory-mapped devices. Perhaps you were thinking of threads? These are not\npart of the C standard, though.)\n\n~~~\ndfox\n(6.7.3.6): What constitutes an access to an object that has volatile-qualified\ntype is implementation-defined.\n\nThat seems to me like giving 'complete freedom in deciding what constitutes an\n\"access\"'. Or almost.\n\nActually, chapter 4.10 of GCC 4.4 manual documents how is this defined by GCC\nand explicitly states, that discarding result of read of volatile object does\nnot always cause access to such object.\n\n------\nkikibobo69\nJava defines it in a very useful way. It's identical to an AtomicReference,\nbut without any test&set semantics. Anything other than that seems pretty\ndangerous.\n\nPersonally I find the issue with volatile is that it's quite subtle unless\nyou're looking at the declaration. I tend to use AtomicReference even if I\ndon't need test&set, unless it's extremely performance critical, but it almost\nnever is. The inner loop variables don't need to be volatile.\n\n------\nSymmetry\nFrom \"Nine ways to break your systems code using volatile\" at\n<http://blog.regehr.org/archives/28>\n\n\"You can find various rants, screeds, and diatribes against volatile on Linux\nmailing lists and web pages. These are largely correct, but you have to keep\nin mind that:\n\nLinux often runs on out-of-order multicores where volatile by itself is nearly\nuseless. The Linux kernel provides a rich collection of functions for\nsynchronization and hardware access that, properly used, eliminate almost all\nneed for volatile in regular kernel code. If you are writing code for an in-\norder embedded processor and have little or no infrastructure besides the C\ncompiler, you may need to lean more heavily on volatile.\"\n\n------\ndkersten\n\" _It used to have a very specific purpose - to enure memory operations with\nexternal side-effects did not get reordered_ \"\n\nPrevent reordering? I thought thats what memory fences are for.\n\n\\--\n\nI admit to having a (single) volatile varibale in my C++ codebase, used\nsimilarly to the pseudocode below:\n\n    \n    \n        volatile global bool flag = false; // [1]\n    \n        thread1 {\n            while (whatever) {\n                do stuff\n            }\n            flag = true;\n            thread2.wait();\n        }\n        \n        thread2 {\n            while (!flag) { // [2]\n                do stuff\n            }\n        }\n    \n\n[1] The variable itself is global, because I read someplace that the C/C++\nstandard does not allow local volatile variables to be passed to other\nthreads. Logically, this makes sense, if a local goes out of scope before the\nsecond thread is finished with it. In my code this cannot happen, but I still\nmake it global anyway.\n\n[2] The important part is that this read is very fast unless the flag has been\nset (at which point I no longer care about efficiency). I don't mind if this\nis unsynchronized - if the loop runs an extra few iterations, that is\nperfectly fine, as long as the flag change is seen eventually (realistically,\nwithin a few iterations of the loop). I know that volatile only makes sure the\ncompiler doesn't cache the value in registers and does not mean that the value\nwill be synced or flushed or otherwise ensure it is visible by the other\nthread. On x86 at least, it will be, eventually.\n\nMy logic for using it in this way is as follows:\n\nI do not care about synhronization - if the reader sees a stale value of flag,\nthat is fine, as long as it sees the real value _at some point in the future_.\nI use volatile, because otherwise the compiler could simply cache the flag in\na register completely isolated form the other thread. I also don't mind if the\nread is reordered, as long as it is within the loop and the value is used as\nthe loop temrination condition (from what I read on the Intel site[3], the\nabove code guarantees this - but the read may be reordered to appear elsewhere\nWITHIN the loop instead. This is perfectly fine in my case). I do need the\nwrite to appear AFTER the loop in thread1 and before the wait, however -\nagain, afaik I don't need to do anything here, or should I put an sfence\nbefore the flag=true to be safe? Since I don't care about performance in the\nflag is true case, I don't mind adding memory fences in this case.\n\nI wonder if somebody can let me know if my logic is off here (though it works\non x86 and x86-64 and, accoridng to something I read on the Intel site[3], is\na reasonable approach - however, I may port to ARM at some stage, in which\ncase I will need to re-evaluate this code). My aim here is that the reader\nalways reads the flag from the processor cache, so that its fast, but when the\nwriter sets the flag, the cache is synced over the core interconnect and the\nsecond thread will, at some stage, see the new value.\n\nIs this approach reasonable? Is it safe? I believe it is, but..\n\n[3] [http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2007/11/30/volatile-\nal...](http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2007/11/30/volatile-almost-\nuseless-for-multi-threaded-programming/) Tenth comment down, posted by \"spud\".\n\n~~~\ntedunangst\n[1] Neither the C nor C++ standards mention threads at all, so I don't think\nthey disallow doing anything with them.\n\n[2] volatile was never strictly about memory ordering, but that's definitely\nimplied. It was really originally for \"this variable is really a hardware\ndoodad. make sure you poke it in exactly the manner the code says to.\"\nreordering writes to a hardware device can be disastrous. The standard of\ncourse, came quite a bit later after the hardware.\n\n~~~\ndkersten\n[1] I can't for the life of me find where I saw that the standard considers\npassing local volatile variables to other threads (I suspect it didn't say\nthreads, but rather something else under which threads can be implied).\n\n[2] Implied by the original usage of volatile? It certainly isn't implied now\n(or at least, people think it is, even though, according to the standard, it\nreally isn't).\n\n------\nredpill27\nThis article describes how a volatile variable can be useful when dealing with\nexcess floating-point precision:\n\n[http://blog.jagpdf.org/2009/07/avoiding-excess-floating-\npoin...](http://blog.jagpdf.org/2009/07/avoiding-excess-floating-\npoint_17.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow to Deploy .NET Apps to Private PaaS - tophw47\nhttp://www.activestate.com/blog/2012/07/how-deploy-net-apps-stackato-20\n\n======\nPythondj\nStackato v2.0 now supports *nix and .Net applications - here are the release\nnotes for everything that V2.0 includes\n<http://docs.stackato.com/reference/release-notes.html>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "Ask HN: I'm a front end dev looking for a back end language. Which one? (No JS) - MarvelousWololo\n======\nkjksf\nI can tell you what I do: backend work for all my projects\n([https://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/](https://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/))\nis in Go.\n\nHighly recommended.\n\nI wrote a longer explanation at\n[https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/uvw2/thoughts-on-go-\nafte...](https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/uvw2/thoughts-on-go-after-\nwriting-3-websites.html)\n\n~~~\nMarvelousWololo\nJesus I can't believe I'm talking to the author of Sumatra PDF. I love that\nsoftware! Thanks for stopping by. I'll definitely read your blog post. If you\ndon't mind to answer another question, I'm also a bit interested in desktop\ndevelopment. Would you recommend learn C or C++ for that purpose in 2018? I'm\ntaking a look at Gtk3 too. Thank you very much!\n\n------\neindiran\nI think what you should try out depends on what you want to accomplish and\nwhat language you think is most likely to be useful to you again.\n\nWith that said, I would cast my vote with Python 3 and the latest Django. I've\nfound that if I go with a lighter framework, eventually I just end up writing\nout big chunks of the missing functionality myself and I end up with a poor-\nman's Django.\n\n~~~\nMarvelousWololo\nDjango is actually quite nice. I like Python 3. I only wish it could have auth\nand rest support built in. Having to install apps for that kind of turns me\noff. I guess Laravel shines here in this regard.\n\n------\nMarvelousWololo\nI've been looking into Java and Go. I don't I like Go very much, it looks too\n\"simplistic\" I guess (I don't have much experience with static typed languages\nthough) also its ecosystem seems too young and I didn't like the way it\nmanages dependencies and errors. I've heard good things about C# and it looks\ncool indeed but I'm afraid I'd have to resort to Windows somewhere down the\nline and, I'm sorry, I think Windows us unbearable. What else could I look\ninto? Is Java really that bad? I'd like to write Rest APIs, GraphQL servers\nand stuff with websockets mostly. Also does anyone here have tried that\nMicronaut Java web framework? It seems cool but everybody talks about Spring.\nThank you all.\n\n------\nnperez\nAny of them, unless you have specific goals that may be served best by one\nlanguage or another.\n\nFor general purpose, I'd suggest writing a hello world app in every backend\nlanguage you can think of. See what clicks with you.\n\n~~~\nMarvelousWololo\nThat's a cool idea, I'll try that. Thanks!\n\n------\nmindcrime\nI suggest that you give Groovy a look, especially with the Grails framework.\n\n~~~\nMarvelousWololo\nThanks! Does it still under active development? I thought it was kind of dead\nto be honest.\n\n~~~\nmindcrime\nHuh? The last new release was less than a month ago.\n[https://blogs.apache.org/groovy/entry/groovy-2-5-3-released](https://blogs.apache.org/groovy/entry/groovy-2-5-3-released)\n\n~~~\nMarvelousWololo\nThat's great news. Sorry, I didn't know. What about its adoption? Do you see\ncompanies using around your area?\n\n~~~\nmindcrime\nI don't really pay much attention to what other companies are doing, TBH. So I\nreally couldn't say. To the extent that the Tiobe index means anything, Groovy\nwas #28 last time around. [https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-\nindex/](https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/)\n\n~~~\nMarvelousWololo\nI see. That makes sense. What do you particularly like about Groovy?\n\n~~~\nzmmmmm\nI'll chime in as well: in general it's just the most versatile and practical\nlanguage I've ever come across. I can write it almost like Java if I want so I\ncan do solid engineering with it and it performs almost the same. Then I can\nwrite scripts at the command line that get interpreted and they are more\nconcise and powerful than shell scripts. Any time I need to play with or\nunderstand a Java API, I can fire up the Groovy REPL and just fool around with\nit.\n\nSo it's just an extremely useful language to have in my \"tool belt\", so to\nspeak.\n\n~~~\nMarvelousWololo\nShould I start with Grails or is there any other nice web framework I could\ntry?\n\n~~~\nvorg\nGrails is on version 3.x but not many people upgraded from version 2.x or are\nstarting new projects in it, and the Grails 2 plugin ecosystem is dead. I\ndon't know of any other web framework which uses Apache Groovy for its\nscripting. Groovy is mainly used in industry to script Gradle and write glue\ncode for Java. If you want static typing, best skip Groovy and use Java,\nKotlin, or Scala which were statically typed from the ground up, instead of\nhaving it bolted on in version 2 as did Groovy.\n\n~~~\nMarvelousWololo\nThanks for the info. I'm totally ignorant about Java so it might be a dumb\nquestion. But Digital Ocean's 1gb droplets are enough to run some Java Restful\nAPIs? I heard that Java is really heavy on memory consumption but I know\nnothing about it.\n\n------\n3KQgt0Cl\nGolang.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe FBI’s Massive Facial Recognition Database Raises Concern - ghosh\nhttp://singularityhub.com/2014/04/27/the-fbi-has-a-massive-facial-recognition-database-but-is-it-ready-for-primetime/\n======\nlifeisstillgood\nI feel this is the least worrying database around, because of a the simple\ncheck on its accuracy and the biometric used.\n\nFacial recognition is what we humans are all about - we have surprisingly\nstrong taboos about covering up this very useful and universal biometric\nalready and any flaws in the algorithm or software are much much easier to\nchallenge than DNA tests (I can stand up to a jury all day and say it was not\nme, and they will most likely believe a DNA expert. show them a picture of\nsomeone who just looked like me and they will all use millions of years of\nevolution to set me free)\n\nYes it is worrying that any mass databases are being compiled, and yes we must\ndebate as a civilisation how we are going to mitigate the downsides and\npromote the upsides, but this is not a disaster. not like PRISM.\n\n~~~\npessimizer\nIf the only thing you're worried about concerning mass surveillance is that it\ncould be inaccurate, I can see why you aren't worried.\n\n~~~\nlifeisstillgood\nThat's a little disingenuous no?\n\nThere are many things to be concerned about, but it is worth having a fuller\ndiscussion about the problem.\n\nI think we are all talking about passive surveillance - My views are that mass\npassive surveillance has always been with us. We are surveilled by our\nneighbours and strangers all day everyday. Until recently that was entirely\nbased on the facial biometric recogniser \"Human Eyeball v1.0\".\n\nGenerally our neighbours do/did nothing with their metadata collections -\nmaybe some salacious gossip, occassionally criminal behaviour.\n\nPrivacy has till now been the politeness of our neighbours.\n\nHowever on the Internet everyone is now a neighbour. A Good Thing mostly but\nit has implications for that metadata store. PRISM shows what a meta-metadata\nstore looks like, and history shows us what will be done with it.\n\nIt is worth noting that what in civilian circles is called \"private\" most\ngovernments see as \"secret\". They are going to freak when we really start\nhandling Big Data. Even now I would be surprised if the Chinese / Russian\nintelligence services have not hoovered up all Facebook and LinkedIn.\n\nThose PhD Students from MIT 10 years ago will be doing some interesting work\nfor the government now, and thier connections will map the halls of weapons\nresearchers and government quite well. OpenMapping, satellitte and UAVs, a\nflood of data will pierce everyone's privacy.\n\nAnyway, people now are able to monitor others not physically close to them.\nSome like NSA are going for total knowledge, others like Tesco or Walmart have\na more narrow focus but deeper focus (I am pretty sure the NSA will not know\nmy wife is pregnant before I do. Or that Gen. Alexander is really in for it!)\n\nBut we have no framework for dealing with this, no laws or even ideas of laws\nwe want. The idea of Big Data will give us such benefits that \"stop progress\"\nis not a viable response. But what is? Data cannot be labelled. So ...\n\n------\nforrestthewoods\n\"may include as many as 52 million face images by 2015\"\n\nHuh? If you've had a drivers license or passport photo taken then it's in a\nfederal database. Maybe they aren't shared well across all federal\norganizations yet but that's only a brief matter of time.\n\n------\nchrischen\nWhat about Facebook's massive facial recognition database? Any concern for\nthat, especially since we voluntarily contribute to it?\n\n~~~\npron\nOh, it's far worse, and there's nothing voluntary about it (just as there's\nnothing voluntary about GMail). And even if it were voluntary, Facebook (and\nGoogle, which is far, far worse, IMO) tries not at all to make it clear to the\npublic how they pay for Facebook's services. The massive spying and data\ncollection by Google and Facebook is probably the largest , and possibly most\ndangerous, surveillance campaign in history. Worst of all, unlike the FBI (or\nthe NSA), Facebook and Google constantly analyze and use any piece of personal\ndata they can get their hands on.\n\n~~~\nmeowface\nI don't necessarily disagree, but intent plays a role here too. Google's\nintentions and the FBI or NSA's intentions differ quite strongly when they\nhave your personal information in their system.\n\n~~~\npron\nWell, the FBI's intentions are to catch criminals with the information, while\nGoogle's and Facebook's are to sell it for profit.\n\n~~~\ngr3yh47\nAnd the FBI NEVER would abuse their power or use their access for other\npurposes. Same as the NSA.\n\n~~~\npron\n_Of course_ they might. But so would Google and Facebook. And in either case\nit doesn't even have to be an order from above, but an action by a single\nemployee. At least I'd like to hope that the FBI performs more thorough\nbackground checks on its employees than Google or Facebook.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nOur startup Body Boss getting street cred with the NFL's Carolina Panthers - D-Train\nhttp://blog.bodybossfitness.com/post/48697659311/hello-carolina-panthers-were-body-boss\n\n======\nchiph\nWhy no individual plan?\n\nCan I tell it what equipment I have available (and the exercises it lets me\ndo) and have the software suggest workouts?\n\n~~~\nD-Train\nRight now, we're focused on the B2B market. That is, our target market include\nsports teams and organizations. So we're working with several high schools,\ncolleges, and now an NFL team! We've also got good traction with training\ncamps and big box retail gyms.\n\nWe looked at the consumer-driven apps, and realized that we would rather work\nwith coaches and players or trainers and clients. So for individuals, we may\ngo there, but it's not in immediate strategy.\n\nWhat are your thoughts?\n\n~~~\nchiph\nI believe that most people quit going to the gym because they get bored.\n\nSo if there were an app that takes several factors into consideration¹ and\ngenerates workouts for them, and that would change it up, people would stay\ninterested and gain fitness.\n\nWhich works against the business model of many of the chain gyms -- they\nactually want people signed to yearly contracts that then don't show up.\n\n¹ Perhaps it would consider available equipment, desires of the person (some\nratio between speed/endurance/strength/stability), when they last did an\nexercise, what their feedback was from previously doing it, what muscle group\nit most effectively works, what the opposing muscles are and when they got\nworked, and so on.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Keeping track of support requests/emails/tickets - jason_tko\n\nThe last discussion on applications to keep track of support requests seems to be around 2 years ago.  I wonder if there have been any new companies or applications that have sprung up since then.<p>I'm looking for a clean application to keep track of issues and support requests with good reporting capabilities.<p>What are you using for this?\n======\nmegaduck\nMy startup is currently developing a new ticket tracking system named Tracker,\nand it might be exactly what you're looking for. Tracker's focus is helping\nyou do email support for external customers, but it also works well for\ninternal company support.\n\nTracker is lightweight, fast, and has exceptional search and email\nintegration. The web interface is quite quick and has some nice features, but\nyou can also perform most functions (replying to customers, creating tickets,\ncommenting) straight from your mail client.\n\nWe're currently in private beta, but if you're interested you can email me at\ndave AT madwombat DOT com, and I'll set you up with an account.\n\n------\njason_tko\nI've had <http://tenderapp.com/> recommended to me - anyone with experience\nwith this app?\n\n~~~\nshadow\nWe are on tender.app hooked up with lighthouse.app It works great. Your\nsupport tickets can be flagged to the lighthouse issue tracker.\n\n------\nsumeeta\nI’ve heard of people using a shared Gmail account for support tickets and\nhandling ownership with labels.\n\n~~~\nnikz\nWe do the same thing, with a simple label system (\"Follow Up\", \"Request for\nFeature X\", \"Request for Feature Y\") to give us a little more overview\nvisibility.\n\nI'd certainly recommend this approach, especially if your workflow is well\ndefined (we answer, then archive - Follow Up and start a ticket in Lighthouse\nif it needs to fixed. Unread == unanswered).\n\nHave looked at ZenDesk and Tender, but we feel like they force people to jump\nthrough too many hoops in order to ask a question. For a logged-in user, it\nshould really just be a \"what do you want to ask us?\" field, and for a logged\nout user just email/question. In my humble opinion, of course. ;)\n\n~~~\nimagetic\nThat's something we definitely need to market better in Tender then or talk\nwith user about. I hope that's not the under understand most people have. One\nof our main focuses was to allow for anonymous submissions of issues and\nimplement a straight forward email option so people do not have to register\nfor accounts. Implementing a Single Sign On system was our very first priority\nto avoid all need when coming from another web applications, so you can go\nstraight to the form and ask what you need to without any hassle.\n\n------\njohns\nI've been using Zendesk at the company I work at for about a month and at\nfirst I didn't like it, but after getting used to it, it's not that bad. We\ndon't use the public forums however, so I can't speak to that. But reply via\nemail, iPhone app, and the macros are all nice touches.\n\n~~~\nchrisbolt\nSwitched over to Zendesk a few months back. Our support people love it, and\ntheir API is a pleasure to work with. Best integration I've done in a long\ntime.\n\n~~~\nsachitgupta\nHaven't used it myself, but a company I interviewed with mentioned using\nZendesk too. It's gaining quiet a following!\n\n------\njrnkntl\n<http://getsatisfaction.com/> or <http://lighthouseapp.com/>\n\n~~~\njason_tko\nThanks for your comment.\n\nI'm talking more about when users register an issue about your\nstartup/site/service that you need to track and resolve. Lighthouse seems to\nbe more about internal project management, and I'm confused about how\nGetsatisfaction relates to this?\n\n~~~\nimagetic\nGetSat and Lighthouse are two totally different things. While Lighthouse has\nbeen used for support in the past, it's a privatized ticket tracker and not a\nsupport system.\n\nWe built Tender out of what we learned from dealing with Lighthouse support,\nwhich is why we added some pretty cool Lighthouse integration.\n\n------\nblados\nTrellis Helpdesk - <http://www.accord5.com/trellis> at the moment it does not\nhave a good reporting, but v2 is going to be released soon (aplha available\nnow at <http://www.accord5.com/trellis_desk_v2_alpha_1.zip>)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFun human computation games to produce high quality language translations. - amichail\n\nAlthough automated language translations are often sufficient to get a rough understanding, it would be better to use high quality translations to localize your site/app.<p>So the question is whether you can get high quality translations as the output of fun human computation games.<p>As an example, one can have a two-player ESP Game-like service where each player is shown a web page and a specific sentence to translate.  The game would check that all words used are indeed words from the target language.  The score obtained would be based on the similarity between the translations submitted by the two players.<p>A variant on this idea only requires players to know the target language.  The idea is to use Google Translate say as a first step to produce a rough translation.  The two players would be shown an automatically translated web page with a sentence whose translation is to be improved.  The game would check that each player submits a translation that is sufficiently different from what Google Translate produced.  Again, scoring would be based on the similarity of the translations submitted by the players.\n======\nwallflower\nThe game method sounds like a shady way. If you want to enlist the help of\nmulti-lingual users, why not reach out to them?\n\n\"But while MySpace plans and launches its international sites in a more\ntraditional way -- setting up local offices, getting entrenched in the culture\nand then launching, -- Facebook is building out its foreign language versions\nwith the help of its vast and committed user base. Instead of setting up an\noffice and a staff before launching in new countries, Facebook is putting its\naudience to work with an online Facebook application that allows translation\nby the Facebook community. To participate, Facebook users add a Translation\nApplication to their account that they can use to translate, review and vote\non translations in their language. Once the language translations are\ncompleted and quality has been verified by the community, the Facebook site in\nthe new language is launched for all Facebook users.\n\nFacebook is currently working on 22 more language translations, and many\nhundreds of users have left suggestions about other languages that they would\nlike to see translated -- and have volunteered to help with the work.\"\n\n[http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/04/16/facebook-vs-\nmyspa...](http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/04/16/facebook-vs-myspace-\nbattle-global-social-network-dominance)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy Geese Fly In A V Formation - zackattack\nhttp://www.myuniversalfacts.com/2005/11/why-do-geese-fly-in-v-formation.html\n======\njacquesm\nBecause it puts each bird in the most favorable position with regards to the\nslipstream of the bird in front of it.\n\nThat's also why geese will 'rotate the leader'. So everybody gets to rest a\nbit.\n\nOther birds (such as the Albatros) that fly long distance on their own use the\nground effect for much the same reason, to conserve as much energy on long\ndistance flights as possible.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\n300 million year old fossilized forest discovered under coal mine in China - yogrish\nhttp://www.zmescience.com/research/studies/300-million-year-old-fossil-forest-china-906854/\n\n======\nnhebb\nIt's too bad they just show a reconstructed image of what the forest looked\nlike. I would really like to see what the fossilized remains of an _\"almost\nperfectly preserved 298 million year-old forest\"_ looks like rather than an\nartist's rendering.\n\n~~~\njws\nThe journal article supporting information has pictures.\n\n[http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2012/02/15/1115076109.DCSu...](http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2012/02/15/1115076109.DCSupplemental/pnas.201115076SI.pdf)\n\n… don't despair at the little line chart, scroll down.\n\n~~~\nlibraryatnight\nWhen they described it as being like Pompeii my imagination might have gotten\nthe best of me and expected too much :) Very cool photos nonetheless\n\n------\nMithrandir\nHere's the direct link to the original article in case you're interested:\n<http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/14/1115076109>\n\n------\nitsmequinn\nI guess researchers dubbed it, \"the whole of the article from line 10, word 7\nthrough the end?\n\n~~~\nShanewho\nHa, I know.. I couldn't tell if it is \"Pompeii\" or \"Pompeii of the Permian\nperiod\". I hate that professional articles have so many typos in them these\ndays.\n\n------\nshingen\n300 million years...\n\nnow that's an impressive timeline\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMySpace replaces all server hard disks with flash drives - Flemlord\nhttp://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139280/MySpace_replaces_all_server_hard_disks_with_flash_drives\n======\nseiji\nThe article is a blatant advertisement. Let me counter-advertise with my\nexperiences here.\n\nWe did evaluations of a Fusion-io ioDrive card and a Texas Memory Systems\nRamSan card [1] recently. The ioDrive had strange performance characteristics\n(but nicely designed packaging). We ended up going with a few RamSan cards\n(though, they have much uglier packaging).\n\nWe have a few high throughput MySQL instances that needed to perform better.\nThe database in question is only a few hundred gigabytes in size, so it's a\nperfect fit for the current generation of server flash cards.\n\nOur path for improving improving performance went:\n\n    \n    \n      - Started off with 32GB RAM and RAID-10 on SAS disks.\n          - iowait sat between 10% and 15% constantly.\n      - Moved up to 64GB RAM.\n          - iowait cut in half.\n      - Installed RamSan card and moved mysql with all databases to it.\n          - iowait became negligible.\n    \n\nNow the server sits there with a few hundred gigabytes of flash, 64GB RAM, and\nit looks completely idle on usage graphs, but it's serving data faster than\never.\n\nThey are nice devices if you can afford them (and tolerate their quirks like\nneeding to be completely formatted during firmware upgrades).\n\n[1]: <http://www.ramsan.com/products/ramsan-20.htm>\n\n~~~\nangusdavis\nCurious, did you get these performance gains with off-the-shelf Mysql+myisam,\nor did you consider YC company rethinkdb (<http://www.rethinkdb.com/>)?\n\n~~~\nseiji\nIt's MySQL with the Percona patches using InnoDB (not XtraDB yet).\n\nI've looked into rethinkdb, but it's not quite yet ready for a bet-the-\ncompany-on-it install. We didn't order any extra $10k+ flash cards just to\nplay around with.\n\nThe RamSan flash cards took a while to get ahold of too (the government (NSA\nif I recall correctly) buys them by the thousands).\n\n~~~\npmorici\nIs this worth the cost premium? It seems like you could get similar\nperformance using 4 standard SATA SSD drives in a stripped RAID and the cost\nwould be a bit less than 2k.\n\n------\ntimdorr\nThis is the most interesting bit:\n\n    \n    \n      MySpace's new servers also replaced its high-performance \n      hosts that held data in large RAM cache modules, a costly \n      method MySpace had been using in order to achieve the \n      necessary throughput to serve its relational databases. \n      MySpace said its new servers using the NAND flash memory \n      modules give it the same performance as its older RAM \n      servers.\n    \n\nGiven Facebook's dependence on memcached (look at some of the work they've\ndone at optimizing the Linux network stack) I wonder if this is something\nthey're considering. This is a pretty big leap in terms of performance. I just\nwish the cost wasn't so insane.\n\nAnd the longevity of these drives is a concern. What happens when you run out\nof good bits in the drive?\n\n~~~\neru\nIt's there some kind S.M.A.R.T. check with those SSDs like their is with hard\ndrives, to give you a clue when the thing will fail?\n\n~~~\nHoff\nFWIW and per Google and CMU retrospectives, the vendor-published MTBF rates\nappear very optimistic, about 36% of large HDD populations failed with no\nSMART data logged, and only about half of impending HDD failures were\nreasonably predicted by SMART. I'd expect the predictive values of various of\nthe SMART data points to be (very) different with SSD, too.\n\nUntil we get a population of these SSDs in the field and better studied, then\nwe'll have a better idea of the failure rates, and whether SMART needs to be\nconsidered or reconsidered.\n\n------\neasp\nJames Hamilton referenced this in a blog post today. He was pretty skeptical.\nHe's been a proponent of SSDs in some applications, but he can't see how their\ncost can be justified yet on the basis of power efficiency alone.\n\nThe power efficiency + higher overall iops justify the up front cost in\napplications where there is a high ratio of iops/GB stored, but most data is\nnot accessed frequently, and Im sure that social nets are no exception. It\ntotally makes sense though to reduce the need for RAM caches, since it is both\ncheaper per GB than RAM, and draws less power.\n\n------\ngojomo\nI'm surprised no virtual hosters are yet offering SSDs (as far as I know).\n\nI suppose there's some risk one customer could burn out the SSD write-cycles\nthen discard the node. Solution: charge for writes.\n\n~~~\nsadiq\nSoftLayer have Intel SSDs.\n\n~~~\ngojomo\nI only see it as an option on their dedicated servers -- not the CloudLayer\ncomputing instances. Am I missing something?\n\n------\ndryicerx\nConventional Drives or Solid State Drives, it's still the Internet's ghetto.\n\n~~~\nmahmud\n_Conventional Drives or Solid State Drives, it's still the Internet's ghetto._\n\nHere is the racial implication of that statement :-)\n\n[http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/10/13/social.networking...](http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/10/13/social.networking.class/index.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThoughts on pushing for equality: Shoving Matches - Mz\nhttp://www.novemberwest.com/blog/2011/11/30/shoving-matches/\n\n======\nMz\nI happen to be the author. That may not be obvious but it is also not a\nsecret. I submitted a similarly themed piece a couple of days ago as my\ncontribution to the ongoing HN discussion of issues like gender equality. I\nthought a few folks might find this piece of interest as well.\n\nThanks.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHTC Facing Possible Ban In US For Apple Patent Infringement - techiediy\nhttp://www.techieinsider.com/news/13057\n======\nMediocrity\nThis is likely one of those articles I'm going to print out and show to\npeople/keep in my drawer.\n\nThe sheer amount of patent suits lobbied against android distributors is de\nfacto proof (In my opinion) that they are inherently frivolous.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEx-NSA Hacker Finds a Way to Hack Mac Users via Microsoft Office - SQL2219\nhttps://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxamy/hacker-finds-a-way-to-hack-mac-users-via-microsoft-office\n======\nkryogen1c\napple, microsoft, hacking, and the nsa all in the same headline. this editor\ndeserves a raise.\n\n------\nmikece\nI don't know about everyone else but it's the _first_ part of that title that\ncatches my interest. \"Executed a hack via MS Office -- yeah, great but tell me\nmore about the role of 'NSA Hacker'...\" Notwithstanding the \"What? No way...\"\nrevelations in Edward Snowden's book about the United States' SIGINT-via-\ninternet abilities I suspect Snowden didn't even know the half of it.\n\n~~~\nsave_ferris\n> I suspect Snowden didn't even know the half of it.\n\nObviously, we’ll never know exactly how much he knew relative to the entire\nscope of the intelligence community, but he pointed out multiple times that he\nhad pretty broad access to a range of tools and KBs based on his work\nintegrating various tools for the government.\n\nHe’s said himself that he doesn’t know everything, but given his ascent in the\ngovernment contracting world due to his technical skill prior to his\ndeparture, I think it’s fair to take him at his word when he said that there\nwasn’t a whole lot he didn’t have access to in terms of IT systems and\ndatabases.\n\n------\nhollander\nSo if I create an test.slk file on my desktop, then rightclick > open with,\nand select an app like Sublime (to be sure no other office apps like\nLibreOffice), to open all files like this in the future by default, will that\nsolve this problem?\n\n------\nchris_at_lum\nPatrick Wardle is a well-known security researcher focused on macOS, and\nfounder of Objective-See which provides free (as in beer)\"simple, yet\neffective OS X security tools.\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHappy 25th Birthday ThinkPad - cenanozen\nhttp://news.lenovo.com/news-releases/happy-25th-birthday-thinkpad.htm?ww:lenovosocial:nsmpz6\n======\nvkuruthers\nIs there any less expensive way to get the original Thinkpad style keyboard on\na more modern motherboard?\n\nI really like this retro machine they're releasing but it's just too costly\nfor me.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNo Exits. Liquidity Dries Up Even More For VC-Backed Startups In Third Quarter - jasonlbaptiste\nhttp://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/02/no-exits-liquidity-dries-up-even-more-for-vc-backed-startups-in-third-quarter/\n======\nspolsky\nWhine whine. I have an idea. Why not make a product to sell to consumers,\ninstead of making shares to sell to the public?\n\n~~~\nalecco\nWell said.\n\nHow about downscaling the size. Sites like Twitter could be done by one person\nand a bit for subcontracting. Sites like Facebook by a team of 10 to 15.\n\nToo much money and too much megabuck sponsored hype. Simple micro startups are\nstill left out even though they are more than viable.\n\n~~~\ncolinplamondon\nThere seems to be an almost pathological bias against profitability with a lot\nof startups.\n\n~~~\nsown\nSo I heard that some think that is because for a long while the R/D effort was\noutsourced to other companies, away from larger ones. I dunno if that is the\ncase but in the company I worked for got acquired and did some pretty serious\nR/D. It could have been profitable but acquisition was obviously the easier\nway out so the investors took it.\n\nI'm sure something like Twitter is useful but only to a large company,\nperhaps? I dunno.\n\n------\njamongkad\nGood! now startups will be forced to restructure their business and actually\nfind a way to make real revenue.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEmail Storm - polm23\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_storm\n======\nchatmasta\nWe had a few of these in college. My favorite was when someone replied \"you\nknow, you can just press M in gmail to mute the conversation.\" What followed\nwere hundreds of messages saying just, \"M\". College kids really are the\ngreatest trolls.\n\n------\nilkkao\nSaw these storms couple times at Nokia years ago. By far the funniest replies\nwere those that explained correctly what's going on and then concluded that\ntheir message should be the end of the thread.\n\nWhat they didn't realize was that the email server was overloaded and that\ntheir message would be delivered several hours later together with dozen\nsimilar messages from the other people.\n\nThe next round of people then complained why these people are not stopping.\n\n------\n_nalply\nI saw an email storm on a mailing list for lawyers. Due to a misconfiguration\nout of office notices weren't suppressed and forwarded to the mailing list.\nSoon several lawyers who were taking off were contributing to the storm. I\nimmediately saw the self-reinforcing avalanche and told the operator to shut\ndown the mailing list server.\n\n------\nstygiansonic\nI think almost everyone at a big company has experienced at least one of\nthese. Big email lists should typically have only a set of approved senders.\n\n~~~\nprotomyth\nIts actually fairly easy to setup a decent mailing list without having to have\napproved senders, but Exchange and its built in functionality is probably the\nroot cause of a lot of these.\n\nThe ones I have setup are pretty easy to stop since we do some basic checking\nof the e-mails sent anyway (e.g. attachment too large).\n\n------\nPowerofmene\nWhen I was with the government if you were on workgroups or had to attend\nmeetings, you could count on 30-40 reply all emails when just trying to\nschedule meetings or coordinate calendars. For me I received easily 175-225\nemails on any given week that should not have included me because of people\nreplying to everyone rather than the one person who needed their info. It\ndrove me crazy and was such a time waster.\n\n------\nangelofthe0dd\nI was hoping to see something in the Wiki article about \"Amazon Wallet\".\n\n~~~\nlorrin\nI had the same thought! Anyone recall the details well enough to add an entry?\nIIRC, it knocked out the Exchange servers entirely for a while.\n\n~~~\nangelofthe0dd\nI met the developer who was responsible when I was employed by Amazon. He was\ntrying to reply to an email, but I believe it was a \"reply all\" (if I recall\nthe details of the story correctly) and the list was massive. Meanwhile,\npeople on that same massive list were also doing a \"reply all\" to submit their\nfeedback or reply that the email didn't apply to them. Massive email storm\nresulted. He didn't give all the details but he was ear-to-ear grinning as he\ntold us the story.\n\n------\nasah\nEdited the wikipedia page to mention Gmail mute, which solves this in\npractice.\n\n------\nporjo\nWouldn't a simple mitigation be to limit the number of recipients allowed in\nthe 'to' and 'cc' fields? 'Bcc' can be used for the mega mailouts. That way, a\nuser hitting reply-all sends to a much more limited set of addresses.\n\n------\nmantalk\n\"The resulting storm of 'unsubscribe', 'me-too' requests, sarcastic facepalm\nimages and recipes for broccoli casserole resulted in (by the time the list\nwas closed) over 4 million emails and generating over 375GB of network\ntraffic.\"\n\n------\nDKnoll\nWhy couldn't the sysadmins just kill it with a Transport Rule (silently delete\nall messages containing the original subject) or temporarily reject messages\nto the DL? Takes a couple mins.\n\n~~~\neXpl0it3r\nThat's most likely what happens after the sysadmins get notified of the issue.\nTake the NHS incident as an example. Within 1h and 15min the generated emails\nwere around 500 million. A one hour response time is still relatively quick.\n\nThe more important question is, why email systems don't have default rules to\nprevent such an email storm?\n\nWhen emails go to tens of thousands of people, a system should probably only\nallow it with special credentials or at least ensure that it's a read-only\nmailing list.\n\nOther measurements would be to detect growing email chains and block emails\nwhen the chain has reached some threshold.\n\n~~~\nDKnoll\nTrue enough, but it is fairly easy to restrict use of distribution groups in\nExchange, which I would bet most of these orgs use.\n\nI'd argue 1hr response is pretty slow for the NHS, since they require 24/7\nsupport availability of even their vendors. I imagine they responded pretty\nquickly but nobody had a plan in place for situations like this and a large\npublic sector organisation isn't a place conducive to one person taking charge\nand fixing the problem immediately.\n\n------\nstarbuxman\nThis is similar to a group text in iOS/iPhone. It drives me crazy!\n\n~~~\nihuman\nIf everyone is using iMessage, you can leave the group [0]. Unfortunately, you\ncan't leave if someone is using SMS.\n\n[0] [http://osxdaily.com/2014/09/23/leave-group-message-chat-\nios/](http://osxdaily.com/2014/09/23/leave-group-message-chat-ios/)\n\n~~~\nprotomyth\nYep, its also a pain when you are waiting for a legitimate needed text and\ncannot leave the group. I guess you can mute a group but I think its named\nsomething funny like \"Hide Alerts\". It is a tad bit beyond the average user\nbecause of a poor UI.\n\nA friend of mine was in a business meeting on the same day UND announced its\nnew logo and his phone went crazy. The person he was meeting with asked if he\nshould answer it and he said \"no, its a lot of bitter, bitter people and UND\nhas no taste.\". He did get the contract though.\n\n------\nnancyp\nWatch out for those out of office notifications replying to group messages and\ncausing flood of out of office replies.\n\n------\ntomphoolery\nThose examples are definitely cringe-worthy. I wouldn't want to be any of\nthose people!\n\n------\n_Codemonkeyism\nRemember one in a company with 35k employees.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: What's with the C++17 Special Math? - cjhanks\nLooking through CPPreference I found the `special_math` targeted for C++17 [1].  Most of these functions look very specialized and I would expect there to be fairly non-generic optimized implementations.<p>What makes these functions generally useful enough for inclusion into the STL?<p>[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.cppreference.com&#x2F;w&#x2F;cpp&#x2F;numeric&#x2F;special_math\n======\ncratermoon\nMachine Learning\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDeepPCB: Pure AI-Powered, Cloud-Native Printed Circuit Board Routing - chakerb\nhttps://deeppcb.ai/\n======\ngorbachev\nI exhausted the 3 project limit trying to see how it would route open source\nmechanical keyboard PCBs.\n\nEvery single one failed with an error.\n\nThe first one failed with an error that didn't specify the reason, the second\none because it had more than 200 wires, though I wonder how that's possible on\na 3x3 macropad PCB, and the final one failed with \"Sorry, we do not support\nnon 45° rotation for this beta version\".\n\nThe errored projects count towards the limit of 3 projects you can create.\n\nDoesn't seem to be working all too well.\n\n~~~\nBubRoss\nYeah, but that failure was the result of advanced pure AI cloud native deep\nlearning neural networks. The future is now. In a few more years you won't\neven be able to tell if a person gave up and quit a trivial task or if it was\njust a sophisticated machine.\n\n~~~\npanpanna\n> In a few more years you won't even be able to tell if a person gave up and\n> quit a trivial task or if it was just a sophisticated machine.\n\nWe have that already, we call it GAN.\n\n------\nultrasounder\nDon’t mean to undermine the effort but “ what is the problem being solved\nhere”? I have used Altiums auto router and it’s like Tesla AP version 1. Also\nlike someone mentioned below, the hardest part of PCB routing is Placement.\nThere are Tons of variables that goes into consideration for getting placement\ncorrect. Routing follows placement and routing can’t fix placement problems.\nIf cost of routing is what the OP is after then they are mistaken as you could\nget a 12 layer PCB routed with analog, mixed and high speed DDR and RF within\na week by an army of PCB designers in Taiwan and PRC.checkout Palpilot if you\nneed references.\n\n~~~\nraxxorrax\n> within a week by an army of PCB designers in Taiwan and PRC.\n\nYou could also (ab)use electrical engineering students, might take a bit\nlonger though.\n\nBut routing has indeed become very cheap. I still could see this service as\nuseful, especially for the amateur prototype market. There are a lot of\nsoftware devs that immediately die if they come in contact with electricity in\nany form.\n\nBut they might still need some hardware. And maybe they could offer some\ntemplates where you can just add the chips you need right now.\n\n~~~\nunlinked_dll\n> You could also (ab)use electrical engineering students, might take a bit\n> longer though.\n\nIt would take longer to train them, PCB design isn't taught in much depth to\nundergrads at least in the US.\n\n------\nmetafex\nThat's human powered for sure. Routing isn't the hardest problem, everything\nis quick once all the components are placed where they belong. E.g. TopoR\nalready does quite a good job at the routing part.\n\nBut if you only take a schematic, and the design is sufficiently complex, it's\nalready difficult if you hand it to another engineer who's not too familiar\nwith what is being done, let alone a machine learning model.\n\n~~~\ngitgud\nIt also states \" _We harness the power of advanced AI and deliver results in\nless than 24 hours..._ \", which is a red flag...\n\n~~~\nFordec\nAgreed, Altium's autorouter takes, what, 10 seconds?\n\n24 hours? That's an East Asian subcontractor.\n\n------\nmsds\nI guess I don't spend enough time laying out tedious-but-straightforwards PCBs\nto appreciate this. Almost everything I do has some important layout\nconsiderations like \"this loop inductance should be tiny\" or \"this section\nneeds guard rings\" etc. Also, placing components is non-trivial, if you're\ndoing anything dense, fast, or sensitive. I find that's like 90% of layout\nwork: guess where the components should go, try to route the tricky bits, move\nthe components around a bit, route again, etc...\n\n~~~\nleoedin\nThis is the part that all the autorouters seem to miss. A board design may be\nrepresented in the computer by a schematic, but in reality it's a schematic +\na huge amount of engineer knowledge. The person laying out the PCB needs to be\nable to look at the schematic and know that the switching regulator has very\nprecise layout requirements, but that status LED can be at the end of a long\ntrace.\n\nThat information simply isn't captured in current schematic software. Until it\nis I can't see autorouters being effective.\n\nI can see a world where every schematic includes simulation models, and the\nautorouter uses simulation data to know exactly what frequencies are moving\ndown each net and in each location. That requires detailed spice models of\nevery component on your circuit though - so it probably wouldn't save the\ndesigner any time anyway as they're just doing different work. I'm not even\nsure how you'd simulate the signals coming out of a microcontroller - how does\nthe autorouter know that one PWM IO is producing a 500kHz clock into a high\ncurrent switch and the other PWM IO is producing a fixed 3.3V?\n\nSo then maybe you need to incorporate not only simulation models, but your\nactual CPU code. Which then means you need high quality microcontroller and\nFPGA emulators. There's a new problem!\n\nThere's probably a middle ground - a designer could annotate each net with a\nwaveform which would be fed into the spice simulation - but even then we're\ntalking significantly more work than just laying it out yourself.\n\n~~~\nsitkack\nWhat you have outlined is a combination of feedback directed optimization,\nsensitivity analysis, iteration to a fixed point, cosimulation and\nconfiguration spaces.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profile-\nguided_optimization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profile-\nguided_optimization)\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_analysis)\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-\npoint_iteration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_iteration)\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-\nsimulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-simulation)\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Configuration_space_(physics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Configuration_space_\\(physics\\))\n\n------\netaioinshrdlu\nIt looks like a mistake to target KiCad. Pros generally use Altium.\n\n2 layers is super limiting!\n\n24 hour turnaround is actually quite slow... I would bet they have a human in\nthe loop.\n\n~~~\nDivisionSol\nJust want to counter this sentiment and say I love the fact they are targeting\nKiCad. A good way to incentivize the free, open source tool. Most hobbyists\ndon't need more than 2 layers, and that seems like something that can be\neventually expanded in the future.\n\n24 hours, however, is a little bit long.\n\nIt would be nice to see exactly what they are offering before uploading a\nfile, right on the front page. Some components absolutely need to be in a\nfixed position, some can be moved around... Some have RF requirements... Does\nit minimize size? Does it brute-force the traces?\n\n~~~\nnew299\nFrom what I can tell, you need to position all the components and then it\nroutes between them...\n\n~~~\nDivisionSol\nThat's a shame... There is a bit of fun figuring out routing, but, I don't\nthink that is an opinion that applies to most.\n\n~~~\nComputerGuru\nIt’s not about whether or not there are people that enjoy it; it’s the fact\nthat the market they are serving doesn’t exist (people that don’t enjoy or\ndon’t want to route themselves but have already placed the components\ncorrectly).\n\n------\nhthtegr\nNot terribly positive comments here, but I think people are missing the point.\nThis is an unsolved problem, or at least a problem not solved well. Any\nefforts in this space should be encouraged. I'm not sure we can trust the main\nvendors to innovate, and starting off with Kicad makes 100% sense to me at\nthis stage.\n\nIf this is the first rung of the ladder and it's all up from here, good luck -\nI'm sure we all hope you nail it.\n\nA good comment here about placement - I hope that this approach can grow to\nadjust placement to some degree, even if not complete placement control.\n\n~~~\nwanderingjew\n> This is an unsolved problem...\n\nYes, this is the point. It's NP-Hard. If you solve this problem, you can make\nfar, far more money doing something besides routing mechanical keyboards and\nInternet of Things sensor cruft.\n\nAutorouters have been in development for the last fifty years, starting with\nwire-wrap machines at Digital, and going on to the work of very, very smart\npeople at Altium and Autodesk. The smartest people in their field have been\nworking on autorouters for decades, and this company wants to solve it with\n'the cloud' and 'AI'. Sure, buddy.\n\n150 pairs and 2 layers is abysmally limited for anything but the lowliest\nhobbyist (read: poorly designed) boards, and there are no examples whatsoever\nof what this product produces. Like, really, great job for producing a demo to\nshow to investors but you might also want to _demonstrate_ your demo.\n\nOh, and if you're using machine learning on PCB design, that means you need to\ntrain your models somehow. That means your training data is absolute crap,\nbecause most designs for Open Source hardware are objectively crap. You would\nbe better off paying someone in China $40 to lay out your board, which would\nalso have a 24-hour turnaround. Which brings me to my next point...\n\n~~~\ngaze\nI just don't understand how deep learning is amenable to this problem. It's\njust a straight up optimization problem. How is deep learning appropriate?\n\n~~~\nIshKebab\nI think it is probably appropriate. Chess and go are just \"straight up\noptimization problems\", but they're too difficult for traditional optimisation\nalgorithms to work. You need something to do some fast pattern recognition to\ncut down on the search space. This is similar.\n\nI expect if you search the literature you'll find a ton of work on this.\n\n------\nyitchelle\nIt is interesting that on the front page, they show a SMT pick and place\nmachine. It only has a small tangible connection to auto routing. It would\nhave been much better if there is a short video showing the routing in action.\n\n------\n_pmf_\nLayouters hate auto routers.\n\n------\nkbeguir\nHi everyone, Karim the Co-founder & CEO of InstaDeep here, first thank you for\nthe interest and comments we did not expect we would appear in HN so quickly\n:) We’ve reviewed carefully the different points made, comments below:\n\n“This is an unsolved problem… Yes, this is the point. It's NP-Hard”: \"We\nharness the power of advanced AI and deliver results in less than 24\nhours...\", which is a red flag” InstaDeep has built credibility in AI circles\nby innovating in Machine Learning and Reinforcement Learning (RL) specifically\non how to find good solutions to NP-Hard problems with AI. For example, you\ncan check our R2 paper\n([https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.01672](https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.01672)) about\nAI for combinatorial optimization which was accepted at the NeurIPS 2018 in\nthe Deep RL workshop. More recently we’ve just published joint AI-research in\nRL with Google DeepMind that earned a top 2% global ranking at NeurIPS 2019\n([https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.12941](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.12941)). We\nalso have specific domain expertise in Hardware: some of our team members have\nworked for more than 15 years in this field in companies such as STM, NXP,\nDialog, etc. We believe it’s an exciting time to be working on PCB Routing, an\nNP-Hard problem.\n\n“ I would bet they have a human in the loop”: No our system is fully automated\n(which is why it’s a first) so bear with us as we are in beta :) Automation is\npossible because we use RL, which is very useful for decision-making problems\nlike PCB Routing. At InstaDeep, we deploy RL systems in the real world and\nwork closely with hardware partners such as Nvidia (we’ve recently been\nupgraded to preferred partner) and Intel (we’re part of the AI Builder\nProgram). In our opinion, having no-human in the loop is critical to\naccelerate PCB development cycles, and that’s a key feature of DeepPCB.\n\n“Shitty auto routers have existed for 25 years, at least.”: that’s the whole\npoint, autorouters don’t get the job done properly, which is why many boards\nare still done manually. It makes sense that AI could improve things here.\n\n“the hardest part of PCB routing is Placement”: totally agree here, and our\ngoal once DeepPCB routing is out of beta, is to tackle placement. Routing is\nan important first step, but we don’t plan to stop there. In our livestream\n([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea5i-l8YKQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea5i-l8YKQo))\na few days ago we clearly mentioned that Placement is our key goal for next\nyear.\n\n“I exhausted the 3 project limit trying to see how it would route”: we hear\nyou and have decided to increase the limit to 4 credits per week. We’ve also\nregenerated the credits for everyone already registered! We will periodically\nreview credits based on demand to accommodate as many users as possible. If\nyou would like more credits please contact us!\n\nOn a final note, keep in mind we’re in early beta and our goal is to hear from\nyou to iterate and improve the product better. Things might break from time to\ntime and we’ll certainly make mistakes but what matters to us is to keep\nworking hard and make progress on this exciting problem. We believe it’s the\ncombination of Hardware domain expertise and advanced AI know-how that yields\nstrong results. If you agree, don’t hesitate to reach out at\nsupport@deeppcb.ai we’d love to hear from you!\n\n------\nmadengr\nIt will be interesting to see how this handles signal and power integrity.\nWhat design rules is it actually following? If it’s just tossing down routes,\nAI is not needed for that. Shitty auto routers have existed for 25 years, at\nleast.\n\n~~~\ndboreham\nI was reading comments here musing that it must be 30 years since I last\nrouted PCBs on a daily basis: auto routers were useless back then and it looks\nlike not much has changed. Not too surprising when you consider how hard a\nproblem it is. Anyone else have the experience of waking up in the middle of\nthe night with the solution for how to get \"that last trace\" through?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Guardian launches open API for all content - but they still control the ads - zen53\nhttp://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/03/10/the-guardian-launches-open-api-for-all-content-but-they-still-control-the-ads/\n======\nwillphipps\nI've been using webmynd recently, hopefully this means it can include guardian\ncontent now. Cool if it does.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWindows 10 S is crippleware - CrankyBear\nhttp://www.computerworld.com/article/3197446/microsoft-windows/windows-10-s-is-crippleware.html\n======\nungzd\nThey are dissatisfied by OS that can run only limited set of programs so they\nrecommend OS that can run only one program — Chrome browser. Where's logic in\nthat?\n\nAnother 'gadget press' article.\n\n~~~\nCrankyBear\nThey're also not happy that Windows 10 S is a subset of Windows 10.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPelorus Jack - asimjalis\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelorus_Jack\n======\nvore\nUnfortunately, as often is with these things, the truth might be less exciting\nthat the legend: [http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/10/pelorus-\njack...](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/10/pelorus-jack-hero-\ndolphin-guided-ships-dangerous-water-early-20th-century/) :(\n\nHowever, if you'd like to savor the magic, the truth and the legend can be one\nand the same: who knows what really happened in 1909, after all :)\n\n~~~\njszymborski\nIs it less wonderful that, in moments of great danger and fear, this dolphin\nwas a symbol of joy and good fortune for the sailors on the ship?\n\nIt's pretty magical to me to think that a dolphin, just doing dolphin things\nand playing in the wake of a giant wooden sea vessel, was enough to see those\nsailors through life-and-death situations.\n\nLittle reminders of good in the world, regardless of whether the reminders\nthemselves are aware of it, can really change things for the better for a\nwhole lot of people.\n\n------\nd_t_w\nPelorus Bridge is the most beautiful swimming spot if you're ever in that part\nof the world. The bridge runs over the river which runs into the sound that\nPelorus Jack was named after.\n\n[https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-\ngo/ma...](https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-\ngo/marlborough/places/pelorus-bridge-scenic-reserve/)\n\n~~~\nIntermernet\nNote to the unwary: If you ever find yourself in that part of the world, be\nprepared for everything you see to be accurately describable as \"the most\nbeautiful\".\n\nThe entire south island of New Zealand is \"the most beautiful\"!\n\n~~~\nmkl\nHeh. It looks like ordinary NZ bush to me! I'm not sure I'd say the entire\nSouth Island though, as quite a bit of it is boring farmland.\n\nHere are the places in the article:\n[https://www.google.com/maps/@-41.051886,173.738907,51935m/da...](https://www.google.com/maps/@-41.051886,173.738907,51935m/data=!3m1!1e3)\n\nPelorus Sound is in the middle and extends down to Havelock. French Pass is at\nthe top. There's not nearly as much regular boat traffic through either\nanymore, as most inter-island traffic takes the big Interislander ferry which\ncomes in to Picton (just south of map), and then there's a road to Nelson\n(over to the west).\n\n------\nshirak_untel\n>In 1904, someone aboard the SS Penguin tried to shoot Pelorus Jack with a\nrifle. Despite the attempt on his life, Pelorus Jack continued to help ships.\nAccording to folklore, however, he no longer helped the Penguin, which\nshipwrecked in Cook Strait in 1909.\n\nIf this is true, it's the most amazing thing. Imagine a dolphin having a\ngrudge with a ship\n\n~~~\ncoding_lobster\nIt seems too good to be true in my opinon.\n\n~~~\nSharlin\nNot _that_ far-fetched, though. Corvids, for example, are known to hold\ngrudges against specific humans who have done them wrong.\n\n~~~\neitland\nA friend of mine had a parrot that greeted me and some friends as we arrived.\nShortly after arriving on of my friends started making faces towards it and\nimmediately it tried to attack him, but left him alone for the rest of the\nnight.\n\nAs we left the parrot said bye to everyone but him.\n\nA week or two later we came back. My friend had forgotten. The parrot had not\nand immediately attacked as he came close :-)\n\n------\ngorgoiler\nOf interest: the first link in the article defines _fl. <date range>_ as a\nstandard syntax meaning the dates in which someone was know to be alive and\n_flourishing_.\n\nI did not know this until today.\n\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floruit](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floruit)\n\n~~~\nbdefore\nNo one wins a flds medal after 40.\n\n------\ngHosts\nAlmost more interesting than Pelorus Jack, and is currently observable is\nFrench Pass, the hazard he helped them navigate through...\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_Aumiti_/_French_Pass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_Aumiti_/_French_Pass)\n\n> The pass is 500 metres (1,600 ft) across, but the main navigation channel\n> (the \"throat\" or \"narrows\") contracts down to only 100 metres (330 ft) with\n> a 20-metre (66 ft) deep shoaling region. Most of the rest of the pass is\n> broken reef.[8]\n\n> On one side is Cook Strait with a tidal range up to 2 metres (6.6 ft), and\n> on the other side is Tasman Bay with a tidal range up to 4 metres (13\n> ft).[9] This can result in substantial pressure gradients across the pass,\n> complicated by a phase or time difference of about 25 minutes between the\n> high tides on either side. Peak flow in the throat of the pass is around 4\n> metres per second (13 ft/s).[10]\n\n> Near to the pass are deep holes where strong vertical flows can occur.[11]\n> In 2000, student divers taking part in a drift dive during the local ebb\n> flow were separated from their surface float and caught in a whirlpool. This\n> dragged them into \"Jacob's Hole\", a 68-metre (223 ft)[12] deep depression\n> south west of the pass. The depth of this descent resulted in multiple\n> fatalities. The group appears to have been drawn deep into the hole and then\n> returned to the surface again. A dive computer record of one of the\n> survivors show a depth of up to 89-metre (292 ft). According to the\n> coroner's report, the accident occurred on a falling tide, so the current\n> was flowing from the south west to the north east.[13][14]\n\n------\nyesenadam\nThank you. What an amazing story!\n\n------\npresiozo\nThe most brilliant part:\n\nOccupation - Dolphin\n\n------\nsaagarjha\nI find it quite sad that multiple people have tried to kill it :(\n\n------\nkrthr\nWhat a beautiful story!\n\nAnd as always the human being leaving his mark. One shot :(\n\n------\nlowdose\nMore about dolphins in this youtube video with dr. Laurance Doyle at 30\nminutes. In it languages are compared and apparently language dolphins follow\nZipf law.\n\n[https://youtu.be/H30NipTkA5s](https://youtu.be/H30NipTkA5s)\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law)\n\n------\nmaxmouchet\nThere is a similar, and fascinating, story of killer whales co-operating with\nhumans:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_Sou...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_South_Wales)\n\n~~~\nboudin\nThere is also this which is a bit similar:\n[https://www.livescience.com/20027-dolphins-work-\nfishermen.ht...](https://www.livescience.com/20027-dolphins-work-\nfishermen.html)\n\n------\nechelon\nI'm a little late to this thread, but the French Pass looks like no cake walk\nto navigate:\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2nCrjDRJb4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2nCrjDRJb4)\n\n------\naetherspawn\nI'm waiting for someone to come into this thread and say the dolphin was just\ndoing it for food.\n\nSome can not accept that dolphins are more sophisticated than some humans, on\nthe basis they are smart and maybe bored.\n\n~~~\nusrusr\nDolphin equivalent of a trainspotter. Doing it for food would be objectively\nintelligent.\n\n~~~\ndef8cefe\n>It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they\nseem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was\nmore intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much – the wheel,\nNew York, wars, and so on – whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck\nabout in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always\nbelieved that they were far more intelligent than man – for precisely the same\nreasons.\n\n-HG2G, Douglas Adams\n\n------\nquijoteuniv\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/dolphinconspiracy/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dolphinconspiracy/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Learning a foreign language - xaybey\n\nFor the past 6 months I&#x27;ve been learning Russian and am still struggling to break through.  While I&#x27;m making progress, it&#x27;s very slow going and I&#x27;m looking for a better way short of moving there (maybe in a few years).<p>Every piece of advice I&#x27;ve received has fallen into 1 of 2 categories - the traditional (grammar heavy lectures, canned dialogues, workbook exercises, flashcard drills...) or the pragmatic (talking with native speakers, local language groups, learning only the vocabulary for common situations, watching subtitled movies).  I&#x27;ve tried different cocktails of all these.  I do learn from the traditional methods, but only if I repeat them 10 times.  And while the practical methods are more authentic, I end up drowning in the uncharted waters of the language instead of absorbing it.<p>Is learning a language just miles of crawling through the shit, or is there a way to make non-linear progress?  I&#x27;m willing to try anything.\n======\nredsable\nI am a language teacher, so factor that into the advice that follows: 1\\. Find\na language teacher that excels at teaching beginners. Tell the teacher that\nyou only want to study 1 hour a week but that you promise to do 6-10 hours a\nweek of homework (for at least 3 months). Ask for a plan from the teacher\nbased on this schedule. A good teacher is much like a good doctor and should\nbe able to give you a good plan. The teacher should be able to fill those 6-10\nhours with productive work.\n\n2\\. Do not evaluate yourself based on what you can produce (say) but rather on\nwhat you can understand. Listening in particular is the royal road to language\nlearning. Also, if you can understand slow normal speech you will have\npersonal proof of progress which will reduce self-doubt. Remember\ncommunication is not possible without understanding.\n\n3\\. Make sure that you have mastered all the phonemes in the target language.\nBy doing this first you can avoid many problems later.\n\n~~~\nxaybey\nIYO, what is the best audio to listen to? Tapes for language learners? Radio?\nSubtitled movies?\n\n~~~\nseanccox\nWhen I was learning Turkish, I spent a summer listening to an hour-long talk\nradio show every morning. Three guys chatting about local issues and making\njokes, with callers phoning in to offer their opinions. It bumped my\ncomprehension to effectively fluent, and I learned a lot of colloquialisms\nthat make me sound more fluent than I actually feel when I speak.\n\n~~~\nlaaph\nCan you tell me the talk show you are referring to and if it's accessible in\nthe US? I'm trying to learn Turkish, and compared to when I was trying to\nlearn Spanish, it feels like there are very little accessible resources.\n\n~~~\nseanccox\nSure thing. It is \"Modern Sabahlar\". Here's a link to the podcast archive.\nThey are very good about keeping it current. You can also follow them on\nTwitter for updates.\n\n[http://podcast.modernsabahlar.org/](http://podcast.modernsabahlar.org/)\n[https://twitter.com/modernsabahlar](https://twitter.com/modernsabahlar)\n\n------\npanglott\nDon't think about it as \"language learning\" or \"language study\". That is not\nhow humans learn languages. Think about it as \"language acquisition\",\nsomething you will pick up over time. There is a bunch of research about this,\nmuch of it focused on classroom methods, however. Search for books on \"second\nlanguage acquisition\"; but the only popular science book I know of isn't\ncoming out until August:\n[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262029235/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262029235/)\n\nAll humans learn languages by interacting with other speakers, constantly\nattempting to communicate more successfully ourselves, and trying to\nunderstand the communication of other people.\n\nAs adults, we have a harder time perfecting the target language's phonology\n(or perhaps this just tends to fossilize), but we have a huge advantage in\nlearning the grammar/syntax of the target language, because we already know\nabout such things in our own language. We don't have to make the massive\ncognitive leaps that children do—we've already done that. This is what all the\nemphasis on grammar exercises is about: trying to supercharge our language\nlearning ability. But it has to be built on a foundation of interaction,\ncomprehensive input, and effective communication.\n\nLearning a language to near-native fluency levels is a years- or decades-long\nprocess, and most people will stop at a level that they find \"good enough\" and\nlet their second language fossilize. And there's nothing wrong with that, it\nprobably is indeed good enough!\n\nIt's a question of continually finding new motivations, and motivation over a\nlong period of time, of setting new goals, and especially establishing an\nidentity as a person who speaks that language. Just have fun, keep it\ninteresting, engage in it constantly (or intensively). You'll be more likely\nto keep at it if you enjoy it and don't look at it as \"miles of crawling\nthrough the shit\".\n\n~~~\nxaybey\nI don't know where I got the idea that one can reach fluency in a year\n(especially without living in the country). Perhaps the marketing weasels.\nThanks for the perspective.\n\n------\ndimitar\nIf there was a short-cut, wouldn't everyone take it?\n\nHere are some tips:\n\n* Finding a Russian-speaking buddy you could go out with shouldn't be too hard look. Look around for local ex-pats - at least Russian-speakers are everywhere. No need to actually go to Russia.\n\n* Drink a small amount of alcohol when practising speaking - its called a social lubricant for a reason. Or do things you enjoy - find a buddy you could talk with about your hobbies in Russian.\n\n* There is a false dichotomy between practical and formal learning - they complement each other. Unless you are 5, learning a language only from practising can form bad habits and learning only in a classroom means you cannot apply your knowledge.\n\nЖелаю Удачи!\n\n~~~\nxaybey\nI never thought about having a drink before speaking Russian - that probably\nwould help muffle my self consciousness.\n\n------\nBillFranklin\nI actually built a Russian app for my sister to keep up her Russian:\n[https://billfranklin.eu/russian](https://billfranklin.eu/russian)\n\nIt was a fork of my German app which was on HN fp a couple months ago. While\nthe app was just to scratch an itch and probably isn't as useful as the many\nothers available (Memrise, Duolingo, etc ad finitum), working on a project\nthat made me use German was great for learning (probably more effective than\nthe app itself).\n\nSo my ¢2 - work on something that forces you to use the language. This project\nwas basically an immersion course (of course a very short one).\n\n------\narien\nHow do we learn to talk when we are toddlers? You point at something and ask\nwhat is it, you learn its name, you repeat it out loud (use it in a few\nphrases, with more or less success). You generally ask something about it, too\n(what does it do, why is it so big, etc...). So when you are done, you know\nthe name, the use, how does it looks like, what does it do, etc.\n\nYou have to understand that just memorising words or phrases won't get you\nvery far. You need to associate these words with something that makes sense to\nyou, to fully understand and integrate them into your brain.\n\nI teach myself languages as a hobby, now and then. I've learnt some Japanese\nand Chinese, for example (using iKnow [1], great website and apps). I wanted\nto learn the Russian alphabet but was having a hard time reading the\ncharacters until I came across an article [2] which provides cheeky\nassociative method. It's brilliant, I can read any text in Russian now (I\ncan't understand it yet, but hey, it's a first step!).\n\n[1] [http://iknow.jp/](http://iknow.jp/) [2]\n[http://gadling.com/2009/03/30/gadling-teaches-you-to-read-\nth...](http://gadling.com/2009/03/30/gadling-teaches-you-to-read-the-cyrillic-\nalphabet-in-5-minutes/)\n\n------\nsimonblack\nImmersion seems to be the best way. Just use the foreign-language all the\ntime.\n\nThose of us who have gone along the foreign language route seem to find that\nit takes a short but definite time-lag within the brain when 'switching out'\nthe foreign-language and 'switching-in' the native-language. And then the same\nthing happens with the reverse, you have to 'switch-out' the native-language,\nand 'switch-in' the foreign-language. Consequently, by continuing to use the\nnative-language, you never get out of the habit of thinking in your native-\nlanguage.\n\nOn the other hand, when never having to 'switch-in' the native-language during\nimmersion, the brain gets much more acclimated to the foreign-language and\nafter a few days to a week, some thinking in the foreign-language occurs. The\ndown-side to this is that you feel a bit like you're living in a bubble,\nbecause you don't get to speak freely (easily) to anyone else while you're in\nimmersion, and it just feels so relieving when you finally get to speak to\nsomeone else in your native-language.\n\nGood Luck. And if you go travelling to places where that foreign-language is\nspoken, try not to go with a spouse or friend that only speaks your native-\nlanguage. They will prevent you from learning the other one.\n\n~~~\nxaybey\nThe time lag bit rings true. I think you're describing a longer term version\nof the peopleware phenonmenon, where a programmer needs 15 minutes without\ndistraction to \"get in the zone\".\n\n------\nleap_ahead\nNot quite giving you any tips, but a word of warning. Avoid learning Russian\nthrough Russian-language community sites based on user-submitted content such\nas comments, posts etc. For the last couple of decades we've been seeing a\ntrend of getting more and more people who are illiterate in writing, with the\nlast three years seeing an explosive epidemic on our hands. It is now very\nrare to see user-submitted content written with the quality ready for\npublication. Speaking of reasons, there are many. Young people don't like to\nstudy and become smart so they don't read books anymore. Basically they hang\nout online and learn illiterate language from each other, such that these\nincorrect forms of speech have now proliferated to every corner of the web,\npolluting everything and affecting the rest of the Internet users, gradually\nreplacing the correct forms with the wrong ones in their minds.\n\nIf I were to take HN community for example, this level of quality writing many\ndisplay while expressing their thoughts cannot be found on the Russian\ncommunity sites anymore.\n\nThere is also a staggering amount of hate speech and insults of all kinds.\nMost of it is not moderated as this style of interaction has become the\nstandard way for most users. If it were to be moderated, it would mean wiping\nout over 90% of the user-submitted content resulting in a substantial drop of\ntraffic, so nobody is doing it.\n\nMany people (myself included) are now ignoring Russian sites seeing them as\ndumping grounds, preferring to stick with the international community instead.\n\nRead books, not the modern ones, but those from at least 30-40 years ago.\nThat's where you find a rich beautiful language in all its colors and the\ndepth of thought.\n\n~~~\nxaybey\nI don't know exactly what you're referring to (I do read pikabu sometimes).\nI've always heard writing correctly is less important than writing at all. Do\nyou suggest that this isn't true, that sloppy grammar isn't something that can\nbe improved later?\n\n~~~\nleap_ahead\nI was trying to highlight the fact that if you intend on improving your\nRussian by hanging out on Russian community sites, you're going to be learning\nbroken language and will be doing yourself a disservice in that regard.\n\nI realize I talked about a local problem that the global community is unaware\nof. In short, people are becoming increasingly illiterate, as in they cannot\ncompose grammatically correct texts, coherently express their thoughts and\nsometimes cannot understand certain words from the imaginative literature from\njust 50 years ago. People used to have large bookshelves at homes during\nSoviet times, now the majority doesn't read anything except what they can find\non social networks. As it is, they unlearn correct language and learn broken\nlanguage from their own illiterate fellows. If you attempt to interact with\nthe community online, you will learn wrong things. And I cannot say if it\nwould be possible to relearn the corrected variants later. Better not go down\nthat road.\n\nBasically I'm talking about: wrong spelling of words, non-existent words,\nwrong expressions, wrong combinations of words, ways of constructing sentences\nthat are wrong and incomprehensible, not to mention a large amount of curse\nwords. You really don't want any of these.\n\nAs to the language itself, while it is massively different from English and\nrelated languages families, it is a natural language derived from the\nlifestyle of our ancestors. Words are sufficiently different from each other\nto be easily recognized and sometimes their sounding alone can give you an\nidea of what these could mean like something good or bad or whatever emotions\nthey might express. Way better than learning German words for instance.\n\nI'm struggling to give you some useful advice, not being a language teacher\nhowever I'm not quite sure where I can help. I'm dwelling on that though.\n\n------\nianpurton\nRead some of the research by Paul Nation into how people actually learn\nlanguages. [http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/paul-nation-\npubsd...](http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/paul-nation-pubsdate)\n\nIn particular this research on how much vocabulary you will need to read and\nconverse.\n[http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/publications/paul...](http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/publications/paul-\nnation/2006-How-large-a-vocab.pdf)\n\nFor vocabulary I did the following.\n\n1\\. Learn a few thousand words from scratchcards. (4000-9000 words is ideal,\nuse a memory technique such as linkwords.)\n\n2\\. Buy a kindle and install the foreign language dictionaries.\n\n3\\. Start reading simplified books. (Not children's books, they have a\nsurprisingly large vocabulary. i.e. a 6 year old has around 6000 words of his\nnative language.)\n\n4\\. After this start reading 'normal' books, i..e hunger games. You may have\nto fetch a few samples from amazon to find authors with a simple writing\nstyle.\n\nWhen you get to step 4, the vocabulary acquisition becomes fun.\n\nForget the Bennie Lewis guy, his stuff is pay for bollocks.\n\n~~~\nxaybey\nCan you talk more about how you learned thousands of words? I've been drilling\nwords with quizlet, and find that it takes ~10 drills to burn a given word\ninto my brain.\n\n~~~\nColinWright\nWhy do you think it will take less than that? Why are you assuming that there\nis a magic bullet?\n\nYes, some people seem to find it easier than others, but acquiring another\nlanguage takes time. For some people, a lot of time, and there is, to\nmisquote, no \"Royal Road to Language.\"[0]\n\nPeople are always asking for the easy way to do things. Pratchett wrote about\nthis[1][2] in the context of writing. Sometimes there is nothing better than\ntaking a mashup of techniques and just putting in the time.\n\nI've never mastered a second language, but I've got to the point of having\nconversations in acquired languages. I always use the same technique:\n\n* Memorise 100 phrases from a phrase book\n\n* Memorise 500 words\n\n* Substitute memorised words into memorised phrases\n\n* Read a book in the target language: preferrably an action novel aimed at 14 year old boys.\n\n* Lather, rinse, repeat.\n\n[0]\n[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Euclid#Attributed](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Euclid#Attributed)\n\n[1]\n[http://terrypratchettappreciation.tumblr.com/post/6680240757...](http://terrypratchettappreciation.tumblr.com/post/66802407570/terry-\npratchetts-advice-for-writers)\n\n[2] [http://jackscarab.tumblr.com/post/105468067469/i-get-\nasked-a...](http://jackscarab.tumblr.com/post/105468067469/i-get-asked-all-\nthe-time-in-letters-and-e-mails)\n\n~~~\nEliRivers\n_Why do you think it will take less than that? Why are you assuming that there\nis a magic bullet?_\n\nBecause surely by now someone has hack disrupted this space with a webapp\nusing DJango and swift across the whole stack with a leveraged angel investor\nbuyout round.\n\n~~~\npliny\nAre you having a stroke, or am I?\n\n~~~\niends\nHe's having a Series A.\n\n------\nimaok\nAn interesting thing I've noticed about language learning is that it is\ndifferent from most skills in that the vast majority of its practitioners are\nbasically expert level. Learning a new language is uncommon enough that I\nrarely met other people who had spent the same amount of time learning the\nsame language as me. So you end up judging yourself by an internal sense of\nprogress, by the things you can and can't do. This is sort of like if you were\nlearning to play the piano and everyone else but a few dabblers were playing\nat or near the level of Mozart. Also interesting is that language learners are\nalways a master of at least one other language, so you inevitably compare\nyourself in that way also. It can really skew your expectations.\n\nAlso a lot of times in language learning is sort of all our nothing.\nComprehension drops very fast or each additional thing you don't understand in\na sentence. So progress can feel very slow and then suddenly you have a big\njump in understanding.\n\n------\nT-R\nMy basic strategy is that component composition gives you more leverage than\nmemorizing individual words. Most languages have some degree of composition\nfor vocabulary, like root-words, prefixes/suffixes, or individual chinese\ncharacters (and the radicals they're built up from) for CJK languages.\nLearning those root-words/components and how to put them together into\ncompound words, or learning how to compose words into sentences by learning\ngrammar gives you the most leverage, once you have a small base vocabulary to\npractice with - it doesn't just let you build more words, it also gives you\nbits and pieces you can look for to help you parse out meaning of things you\ndon't know. For vocabulary, focus memorization on verbs and their conjugation\n- nouns and adjectives tend to be easier to look up (and not conjugated as\nmuch as verbs, and so easier to identify), and tend to be easier to infer from\ncontext if you don't know them - if you don't know a noun in conversation, you\nor they can usually point to it.\n\nI also listen to music in whatever language I'm learning - I used to use it to\nswitch my brain between languages on the way from one language class to\nanother. For memorization, the best way really is to just write it and repeat\nit a dozen times, so putting a song on repeat is really useful for refreshing\nyour memory on commonly used words, practicing pronunciation, and even\noccasionally picking up new words by looking up lyrics, etc. Nothing beats\nimmersion, though, just because, on top of practice (inherently prioritized by\ncommon usage), it gives you all the extra context to infer or reinforce\nmeaning - memorizing words or working from a textbook means you have no extra\ninformation to go off of but what's written there. If you want to get those\nbenefits of immersion without actual immersion, find things that mimic those\nqualities (extra context, prioritized by common usage, repetition), like\nmusic, kids TV shows, comic books, conversation, etc.\n\n------\nthefinalboss\nLearning a language requires constant effort and practise and finding a method\nthat works for YOU. For me what works ( I am learning Korean):\n\n* 1 lesson a week on cafetalk.com (not related to them, great/easy website). We sometimes do grammar/vocab or just free talking\n\n* 1 book. There is a great one for korean called: Magic Korean which has a very good learning style. I have tried another 3-4 books but they did not _click_\n\n* Podcasts while at the gym . I listen to \"talk to me in korean\" which has over 1000 lessons recorded and still going\n\n* 3 hours studying a week. I usually do it during commute. This includes homework for the online lesson and studying the book\n\n* Live group lessons every Saturday morning. I did these for 10 weeks and stopped due to no availability of lessons at the appropriate level\n\nSo in total:\n\n* 1.5 hours of podcasts at the gym\n\n* 1 hour lesson\n\n* 3 hours homework and learning\n\n* (I used to do 2 hour sessions with a group but stopped)\n\nTotal: 5.5 hours a week\n\nAlso, going to Korea yearly for 1-2 weeks has helped.\n\nGood luck!\n\n------\nwodenokoto\nFew people reach even simple conversation topics in six month.\n\nSpaced Repition is one of the most succesful systems for memorizing, but\nlearning vocabulary is not enough. Listening and talking is important too.\n\nPeople will tell you of all sorts of short cuts and immersive methods and\nlearning like a baby. There is no easy way. Children are better learners for 2\nreasons: they mind is geared toward language learning and secondly children\nlove repitition.\n\nMatter of fact is, that you need to do category 1 and 2. Yes the Repitition is\nboring, yes it's terrible to drown in uncharted waters.\n\nHumans have been teaching adults language for thousands and thousands of\nyears, and we still haven't found anything close to a silver bullet.\n\n------\ngyardley\nRussian's a fun one, that's for sure. Stupid noun declension.\n\nImmersion's still your best bet. If you've got the time and the money to put\ntowards this, I'd recommend a intensive summer program like Middlebury\nCollege's Language School - if you're in Silicon Valley, they've also got a\nsimilar one in Monterey. For two months they put you in a group of about a\ndozen with the same level of Russian you've got, make you vow to use Russian\nand only Russian with each other 24/7, and then put you through an intensive\nprogram of classes and cultural activities. It makes your head throb, but it\nworks.\n\n~~~\nxaybey\nUnfortunately they don't seem to teach Russian. Is there an advantage to this\ntype of immersion as opposed to just moving to russia for a month?\n\n~~~\ngyardley\nThey certainly do teach Russian. I went through the Russian summer program\nmyself in the early 2000s.\n\n[http://www.middlebury.edu/ls/](http://www.middlebury.edu/ls/)\n\n[http://www.miis.edu/academics/language/programs/summer](http://www.miis.edu/academics/language/programs/summer)\n\nAn immersion program like Middlebury has huge advantages over just moving to\nRussia for a month. Off the top of my head:\n\nIn Russia, everyone with any English will talk to you in English. People want\nto practice their English - or just communicate more efficiently - more than\nthey want to help you practice your Russian.\n\nIn Russia, the people you meet often have no interest in conversing with\nsomeone who speaks Russian poorly. (Russians make great friends, but they're\nnot the outwardly warmest people to strangers.)\n\nIn Russia, when you do find someone to speak with, that person won't be\nspeaking at your level - they'll be speaking fluent Russian, and quickly.\n\nThere's language schools in Russia, but it's unlikely that you'll find one\nwith as good teachers, and the curriculum won't be as intensive.\n\nLiving in an unfamiliar country where you don't speak the language can be\nstressful like you wouldn't believe - it's not the same thing as tourism.\nLanguage learning while dealing with all that crap is way harder than language\nlearning while living like a pampered college student in a pleasant little\nVermont town.\n\n------\nCepr0\nПопробуйте учить на память русские детские стихи. Аналогично тому как это\nделают дети в детстве, когда они учатся говорить.\n\nИз авторов рекомендую: Михалоква, Маршака, Чуковоского и Барто ([http://deti-\nonline.com/stihi/](http://deti-online.com/stihi/))\n\nTry to learn by heart Russian poems for children. In the same way as they do\nit in childhood, when they learn to talk.\n\nI recommend to start from the the authors: Mihalokv, Marshak, Chukovoskiy and\nBarto ([http://deti-online.com/stihi/](http://deti-online.com/stihi/))\n\n~~~\nxaybey\nотлично, большой спасибо!\n\n~~~\nurxvt\ns/большой/большое/\n\n------\nunimportant\nMemorize the 2000 or so most common words via spaced repetition with Anki or\nSuper Memo using pictures.\n\nLearn the grammar.\n\nStart reading simple books / websites about stuff that interests you,\naccompanied with a dictionary website, as you'll need to look up a shitload of\nwords.\n\nOnce you can read well enough, interact with people via forums or web chats in\nthe language, which will improve your skills further.\n\nIf you want to sound like a native you'll need lots of speaking practice until\nyour brain adapts.\n\nSome people will sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger for life though.\n\n------\nlaboo\nYou're at the foot of Mt. Everest asking if there's a shortcut to the top.\nLearning a second language is like having a child. It's a life long commitment\nthat will consume much of your time for 10 years or so, assuming you really\nwant to be fluent, and will require maintenance thereafter. Consider learning\nRussian history and culture instead if it sounds too daunting. That's almost\nalways a better choice for native English speakers, in my opinion.\n\n~~~\nxaybey\nWell, I was asking if I was wearing the right kind of boots. The conclusion\nseems to be that while there are many boots to choose from, none will make you\nwalk any faster.\n\nI think your suggestion about history and culture is wise. Sometimes when I\nget tired of learning the language I'll read Russian politics or recipes, just\nto remind myself why I'm trying to learn it in the first place.\n\n~~~\nlaboo\nYeah, boots is the better analogy.\n\n------\nkstenson\nI suspect you might have heard of him but I found Bennie Lewis' blog to be\nreally good in my own language learning:\n\n[http://www.fluentin3months.com/home/](http://www.fluentin3months.com/home/)\n\nMy wife who speaks a couple of languages says that to really ingrain it you\nmust think in the language, don't think in english and then translate.\n\n------\nlaurieg\nSome advice from someone who thought languages were impossible in school and\nthen learnt a second language in adulthood:\n\nInput is much better than output. Reading and listening actually give you new\nwords, new phrases, new connections and new ways of saying things. Speaking\nand writing only reinforces the things you already know. If you have never\nheard the word \"spatula\" once you won't be able to say it.\n\nAlso, in a real conversation you only have to be able to say something one\nway: \"Where is the station?\" or \"How do I get to the station?\" are just as\ngood, but you have to understand many different possible answers.\n\nWhen you are looking for learning materials try to only use things aimed at\nnative speakers. Lots of resources for adults over-simplify to fit their\npedagogical idea, whereas even books for very young will children give you a\nfull range of grammatical forms and vocabulary.\n\nNever learn vocabulary as single words. Doing a flashcard that says\n\"dog\"==\"hund\" is just not that useful. Instead, make flashcards of sentences,\nfragments and phrases. This way you learn which verbs combine together with\nwhich nouns and all the unwritten rules.\n\nDon't just blast through x000 flashcards. You will get bored and quit. As you\nhave noticed already, just dumbly repeating words takes a lot of effort to get\nthem to stick. When you are having fun with the language (whether that is\nwatching TV, reading books, playing games or speaking to people) words tend to\nstick much better. That said, you should still use spaced repetition for these\nwords you find \"in the wild\".\n\nBe realistic with the amount of time you put in. If you compare yourself to a\nnative speaker you're comparing yourself to someone who has had 24/7 practice\nin the language for many many years.\n\nDon't get tricked by the vague word 'fluency'. A 6 year old can hold a\nconversation and knows a great deal of words. He is also easily confused by\nsimple words like \"tax\" and has very little spelling ability.\n\n------\nrogeryu\nI've done a Spanish course in my early 30s. I went to Spain, did a two week\ncourse there, four hours a day, very basic. The afternoon was free, although\nwe had to prepare homework, which could be quite a lot if you wanted to commit\nto it.\n\nBefore going there I learnt some basic stuff: conjugations of being, having,\ndoing, most prepositions, basic counting (1-100), some emotions and words like\nwalking, seeing, right/left etc. The first morning they had a basic test and I\ncould skip the first course because of my preparation. The first week was\nquite boring, just like being in high school, with stupid stories etc.\n\nThe second week on wednesday night we had a Sangria-tour around town. After\nseveral beers and sangrias I started speaking Spanish. Up til then my Spanish\nwas mostly impaired by fear of failure, afraid to make mistakes. My teacher\nwas there and I spoke to her for a half hour, of course with lots of help,\nsearching for the right words, making many mistakes, but suddenly the fear was\ngone.\n\nRussia: do the vodka tour! ;-) Laugh a lot and don't care about what they\nthink. Listen to their English and compare that to your Russian.\n\nI stayed in an appartment with other foreign students. Among eachother we\ndidn't speak Spanish. You could stay with a Spanish family, and they don't\nspeak English in general, so then you have to find a way. That will help a\nlot.\n\nAfter these two weeks I've done two courses in my home town, and left it at\nthat. Now when I'm in Spain I can speak Spanish after several days. I can\nmanage in hotels and shops, have very basic conversations. My French has\nimproved incredibly since then as well.\n\nDisclaimer: in High School we had English, German, French, and even Latin and\nclassic Greek, so I had a good basic knowledge and knew how to learn a\nlanguage. It takes a lot of effort. After finishing high school my languages\nwere bad and clumsy. After going on holidays I suddenly got to enjoy it. Doing\na study where all books were English it all started to change.\n\nLong story short: it takes a lot of effort. Do it all - traditional and\npragmatic. Going to Russia is probably most effective.\n\n------\nwjgilmore\nAh I'm learning Russian too right now (about 30 days in). I'm bilingual,\nnative English, became fluent in Italian in my 20s after spending a few years\nliving in Italy (fluent to the point of thinking and dreaming in Italian). I'm\nfinding the process of learning a third language to be really interesting in\nthe sense that all sorts of \"patterns\" are bubbling up now that I have two\nunder the belt, akin to what one experiences after having learned a few\nprogramming languages.\n\nEven so, no doubt Russian is difficult for a native English speaker. :-) The\nState Department classifies it as a \"Category II\" in terms of difficulty,\nmeaning it is no walk in the park.\n\nBy far the most troublesome issue has been casing (nominative, dative,\ngenitive, accusative, instrumental, prepositional). So I've been spending some\nextra time learning how the vocabulary changes according to each case. On the\nbright side, word ordering really isn't an issue because of this, unless you\nwould like to stress a particular aspect of the phrase.\n\nI use the free Chegg Flashcards app for iOS, it's great and there are tons of\nRussian vocabulary flashcards. I also purchased a _paper_ Russian-English\ndictionary; it's far more convenient than constantly tabbing over and typing a\nword in, particularly since I don't have a Russian keyboard.\n\nAdditionally, I _write_ out vocabulary and phrases every day, basically\npretending like I'm taking a middle school quiz. It's tough and tedious, but\nthis is how I most effectively commit things to memory.\n\nFinally, every single evening I spend time \"reading\"\n[http://www.pravda.ru/](http://www.pravda.ru/) and\n[http://izvestia.ru/](http://izvestia.ru/), dictionary in hand, looking up\nword after word and then trying to find repeat occurrences of the word in the\npage. This has been hugely beneficial.\n\nFinding a Russian interested in learning English is on the TODO list, so we\ncan help each other out. Fortunately here in Ohio there is a large Russian\nspeaking population.\n\nBottom line: learning another language is tough, but also a lot of fun. It is\nhugely satisfying to actually start understanding a phrase here and there in\nthe newspapers, and over time, phrases will become sentences, and sentences,\nparagraphs.\n\nxaybey I'd love to talk to you further via email, my address is in profile.\n-Jason\n\n------\nmlent\nI can tell you the steps I used to learn German -- it took about 6-8 months\nuntil my only remaining hurtles were sheer vocabulary. Granted, I have a\nbackground in Ancient languages, so learning an inflected language like German\n(or Russian) is much easier for me than it would have been, already\nunderstanding gender and case and such. BUT, the methods I used to learn\nClassical languages did _not_ work for German. I was not a believer in the\n\"practical methods\", but they really do work if you do them right, in my\nopinion.\n\n1\\. Started with Duolingo. I did not find it useful whatsoever.\n\n2\\. Started reading Harry Potter in German. At first it took me like an hour\nto get through a page, I would just look at the English if a sentence was too\ncomplicated to figure out with the dictionary. I started to notice patterns,\nand would read grammar blogs and help sites for stuff that was reoccurring,\n(e.g. looking for \"relative pronouns\" on mydailygerman and german language\nstack exchange). After making it through about 20 pages in HP, the improvement\nwas dramatic. Reading is most important for thinking in a foreign word order.\nNow people tell me that I use some very sophisticated words and constructions,\nand it's definitely because I learned German from reading. I've read three\nbooks in german now, and can read HP-level stuff without a dictionary.\n\nBtw, I got a kindle for this purpose, but I think that part of the slowness of\nhaving to type the word out yourself in an online dictionary helps with\nmemorization. Also, translations are never 1:1, so often the kindle\ndictionaries are not very helpful. I would go to the park and use my phone to\nlook up words.\n\nAlso -- translated books are way easier to read than books originally written\nin a foreign language. Natively written stuff has too many idioms or strange\nconstructions for a beginner. So reading translations of books you already\nknow is much, much easier (you can also follow the story and not miss an\nimportant detail because you don't understand a sentence and have to skip it).\n\n3\\. Did Memrise for vocab, 1000 Elementary German words. This is huge for\nspeaking confidence (and therefore, speed) -- that you _know_ the gender of\nthe word you are using. They also have sets that teach you which cases and\nprepositions verbs take, etc. (e.g. In german, you say \"I am proud ON you <you\nin the accusative>\". These are hard to learn from just reading) The important\nthing is to say it out loud, just like the example. Eventually, you'll just\nuse the right gender without even thinking about it! (Something I thought was\nimpossible)\n\n4\\. Watched all the Harry Potter moves dubbed in German, with German\nsubtitles. Twice. First time, I paused when I didn't know a word, and used\ngoogle translate to translate the sentence. So it would take me like 5+ hours\nper movie. But, this was one of the most dramatic things that helped my\nlistening comprehension. In the two week period where I did nothing but vocab\nand watched these movies, I would say my german understanding at least\ndoubled. I also re-watched the movies without subtitles (understanding much\nless), because it forces comprehension speed and really listening. But the\nsubs are important at first so you know how to spell things ;)\n\nNow I watch movies in German, and always have German subtitles on if the\nchannel has them. If there is Russian Netflix, you can use a VPN and watch\nyour favorite movies subbed/dubbed. You just really have to get high-quality\nproductions, or the subs are too different to be helpful. The news is good\nnon-subbed because they enunciate very clearly. Nature documentaries are also\ngreat, because they speak slowly and clearly. Never be afraid to\npause/repeat/look up a word!\n\n5\\. Writing. If you can get someone to write to, it's great, because you have\ntime to carefully express stuff you would want to say every day. So you\neffectively learn to write phrases that you will later want to say in\nconversation, but you have the time to research some more about how to do it\ncorrectly (and get in good habits).\n\n6\\. Obviously, speaking. Though I have relatively little speaking experience\n(my job is in English), I am very capable of expressing myself. If you don't\nhave a native speaker to talk to every day, it also works to talk to yourself\nand try thinking in the language! Better if you live alone, so only you know\nthat you're crazy :)\n\nSo, in a summary: Watch movies and read books. If you see a pattern, research\nit. Look it up again and again until you memorize it (by seeing it in\ncontext). Tools like memrise are great for stuff that is hard to get from\nmovies/reading, like genders. And of course, you need to find someone to talk\nto! Above all, realize that you will never know what is going on with 100%\nconfidence :D\n\nTo give you some realistic expectations: I've lived in Germany since Jul.\n2013. It took me 6 months to be conversational, and 8 months to read HP/only\nreally need to improve vocabulary/expressions/comprehension speed. Interacting\nwith German every day cannot be understated as a motivating factor -- you\nshould visit Russia :)\n\n------\njfaucett\nI've learned several languages in my life, I'm trilingual now, and I've\nsucceeded on some and failed miserably on others. Here's my experience and\nadvice.\n\nFirst, I guess you could say I learned Spanish, but really I was so young it\nnever even felt like learning it, so I can't give you much advice from that\naccount, just that speaking it was hard for me, I could literally feel things\nget clogged on the way from my brain to the sounds coming out of my mouth - it\nwas wierd but went away quickly enough. The only advice here is that you\nshould probably be speaking the language a lot to train those brain to mouth\nmuscles :)\n\nThe language I really had to learn though was German, it was later in life at\naround 20 when I started learning it.\n\nFrom German I think the take away is dedication. You have to be motivated and\nseriously dedicated in order to learn a language. I literally spent hundreds\nof hours absorbed in German. I would listen to Deutsche Welle radio all the\ntime and lookup words I didn't know. I would always try to visualize\neverything in my head for new words and grammatical constructs and it seemed\nto help. When I saw people running it was \"die laufen\" not because I had to\nthink about running and then translate it, it was just thats what it was. One\nthing I didn't do much of was learn grammar I found it terribly boring and\njust learned whatever people on the radio said that I didn't understand.\n\nI also spoke a ton with native speakers my then girlfriend being one, but in\nthe very beginning I remember that talking with native speakers was very\ndifficult.\n\nWhat helped a lot in this regard was having a friend who also wasn't a native\nspeaker, we could both easily communicate with each other in German, we didn't\nuse slang and didn't speak very fast, but it helped us get used to it, we'd\ntalk about new words we learned and never spoke in anything besides German.\nAfter about 6 months of serious hardcore learning we were both able to carry\non fluent conversations with Germans to the point where we didn't annoy them\nby being too slow and dumb. It was also around this time that things started\ngetting enjoyable, before that it was all work and zero fun, just straining\nyour brain to internalize grammatical rules and meanings of word sounds. After\nthat most improvement just came through reading and learning written\nformulations since the everyday word-set was more or less mastered, which is\nanother benefit of just learning to speak/understand - the language itself\nbecomes a whole lot smaller.\n\nFinally, much later I tried to learn Polish and spent about a month on it\nbefore giving up because I couldn't motivate myself enough to go through those\ngrueling months again. One thing I remember thinking with Polish, which\nprobably applies to Russian as well is that it would take longer than German\ndid to get to that same level where you start enjoying things. The grammar was\nextremely difficult and its phonetical system and vocabulary much more\ndifferent than the western european languages I already spoke.\n\nSo in summary, my advice would be the following:\n\n1\\. Make sure you are really motivated and dedicated to learning it - it\nsounds like you are :). It will become fun and a really amazing thing that you\ncan read literature and enjoy movies and a completely different culture than\nyour own, but in the beginning its just a lot of hard work so make sure you\nhave the internal motivation to carry you through the rough waters at the\nbeginning.\n\n2\\. Once you can carry even a broken conversation find someone who's at or\nslightly above your level that you can talk with and don't fallback to some\nother language, make yourself use Russian.\n\n3\\. When you are comfortable communicating without long pauses to think about\nwhat word you want to say, find native speakers you can talk with.\n\n4\\. Listen, listen, listen - radio is the best. You have to concentrate on\nsounds and their meanings to know whats going on and your brain isn't dumbed\ninto just understanding the visuals like tv or movies do. Also music,\nespecially rap is good if you can find songs you can rap along to and you\nmemorize the words and their meanings as well.\n\n5\\. Learn any grammar you need to, but don't overdo it. You'll have time later\nto go into the nitty gritty and all the written language literary constructs.\n\nBest of luck\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMcCain says NSA chief Keith Alexander 'should resign or be fired' - 001sky\nhttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/10/john-mccain-nsa-keith-alexander-snowden\n======\nrurounijones\nNote he is not calling for Alexander to be fired for all the fun and games the\nNSA has been up to.\n\nHe is calling for Alexander to be fired _for letting it slip_ (specifically,\nfor letting a contractor get that information.)\n\nHe hedges his language very well when asked about NSA shenanigans.\n\n~~~\nd23\nI'm not so sure, and just as a note, I'm pretty liberal.\n\n> Asked if the US intelligence services were out of control, McCain said:\n> \"There's not been sufficient congressional oversight, and there has been an\n> absolutely disgraceful sharing of information that never should have taken\n> place. For many years, we had an absolute provision that any classified\n> information, which was going to be shared, is based on need-to-know\n> information.\"\n\nIt seems like he thinks the spying was egregious as well. Given his hawkish\nnature, I'd be surprised if he was actually that upset about it, but this\narticle makes it seem like he's equally upset that we were doing it and that\nit was being run in such a poor manner.\n\n~~~\newoodrich\nSenator McCain is almost certainly referring to compartmentalized intelligence\n[1].\n\nSo he's not saying the spying was egregious, but instead that allowing a\ncontractor like Snowden to have access to the classified info about the spying\nwas egregious.\n\n[1]\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmentalization_(informati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmentalization_\\(information_security\\))\n\n~~~\n001sky\nTo be fair, you compartmentalize intelligence so it does not get abused. If\nyou don't have a <need to know>, it is _presumed_ you are going to abuse it\nsomehow. That's the purpose of 'need to know' restrictions. Yes, it also is a\npolicy which increases OpSec. But note His interview reference seems to be\nwikileaks and Manning, which was a breech of opsec, in theatre. Snowden\nleaking on the NSA seems to be much more grounded in a principled position,\nand is in a civillian context. Its hard to infer a position on the latter\nbased upon coments from the former.\n\n------\nstephen_g\nI find this really interesting:\n\n\"And now we have a contractor employee, not a government employee, who has\naccess to information which is, _when revealed, most damaging to the standing\nprestige of the United States_ and our relations with some of our best\nfriends,\" McCain said\" (Emphasis mine)\n\nIf revealing the truth about what the Government is doing damages the standing\nprestige of the country, then is he implying that much of that prestige is\nbased on a lie?\n\n~~~\nmpyne\n> If revealing the truth about what the Government is doing damages the\n> standing prestige of the country, then is he implying that much of that\n> prestige is based on a lie?\n\nAre you trying to claim that 'if the government has done nothing wrong, it has\nnothing to fear'? I mean, I don't really care which way you believe on that\nidea but you should at least be logically consistent :P\n\n~~~\nsmokeyj\nI think logic would dictate that institutions claiming to be public should be\npublic, and those claiming to be private should be private.\n\n~~~\ndinkumthinkum\nWhy does logic dictate that? You make claims about logic but you are just\nfalsely equivocating words in a semantic game.\n\n------\njustinph\nSadly, old man McCain wants to see Alexander fired for all the wrong reasons.\nIt's not the crime, it's the cover-up. McCain is throwing his hat in with the\ncover-up.\n\n~~~\nSCAQTony\nInteresting! First Dianne Fienstein proposes a \"bait and Switch\" reform bill\nwhich is going nowhere and now you're suggesting Keith Alexander falls on his\nsword and takes full responsibility so the public thinks there is closure.\n\nSneaky! Will it fly with the common man or is the common man getting it?\n\n------\njobu\nLove the final statement from McCain: \"If you believe that Mr Snowden didn't\ngive the Russians information that he has, then you believe pigs fly.\"\n\nSnowden plans to give up all of the documents publicly, so I can see how this\nis even close to relevant.\n\n------\nrubbingalcohol\nKeith Alexander is already planning to retire in early 2014, so I don't see\nthe point of this. McCain is just cock-waving.\n\n------\nsteve19\nMcCain wants him fired because he did cover up the shenanigans (crimes) well\nenough. How fucked up is that?\n\n------\nx0054\nYes, because the problem isn't that American government is doing things which,\nwhen revealed, are \"most damaging to the standing prestige of the United\nStates and our relations with some of our best friends.\" No, the problem is\nthat one man had the courage to reveal information about the kind of shit\nAmerican government is doing to our \"best friends.\" Clearly!\n\n~~~\ndinkumthinkum\nAre you all so naive as to believe all our \"friends\" whether from France,\nGermany, Israel, or even Russia don't conduct operations on the US?\n\n~~~\niSnow\nI'd be much obliged if you provided any proof that one Western European\ncountry has been spying on a member of the US government. Because if you\ndon't, this is all hand waving and smearing.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nIf you count Russia there have been a number of recent stories about Russian\nspies.\n\nThey seem comically bad at getting any intel - much of what the captured spies\nwere caught with were publicly available documents. They had \"gained access\"\nto some organisation, but that org had open public access anyway.\n\nI'd be amazed if GCHQ was not listening in to US politicians. I suspect that's\nwhy Obama had so much work done to his mobile phone before he was allowed to\nuse it.\n\nReally, governments spying on other governments is not news. The spies get\nfound and expelled by one country, the other country expels a diplomat or two.\nEveryone expresses outrage. More spies get sent in.\n\n~~~\nx0054\nIs it possible that they are amazingly good at not getting caught and\ncontrolling leaks. Every now and then they allow them salves to be caught with\nsome crap documents, just to keep up appearances. Just a thought, neither you\nor I will ever know for sure, unless they develop some serious leaks.\n\n------\nsquozzer\nRecently on TV John Bolton said something in a similar vein -- that everybody\nspies on each other but no one talks about it and it's the people (such as\nSnowden) who leak that are the problem, not the program itself.\n\nBut it seems to me that if something is commonplace and accepted then why all\nthe sotto voce?\n\nBecause once again the government practices ethical double standards. Which\nmakes sense if you assume a class structure where bureaucrats occupy the\nsuperior class and those outside government occupy an inferior class.\n\n------\njoelrunyon\n> \"Asked if Alexander should resign, McCain said: \"Of course, he should\n> resign, or be fired. We no longer hold anybody accountable in Washington.\"\n\nThe irony here. It hurts.\n\n------\nlylebarrere\nI was encouraged by the headline, until I read why McCain wants him fired. Not\nfor ignoring the 4th amendment; not for repeatedly, knowing lying to congress\n—a felony— and destroying their ability to provide any oversight; not for his\ntact...See More\n\n------\nQantourisc\nI recommend jail instead ...\n\n------\nmcantelon\nIt will be unsurprising if some dirt on McCain mysteriously appears in the\nnear future.\n\n------\nFridayWithJohn\nWhen I read the title of this article I was _so_ pleasantly surprised. Who\nwould have thought that McCain (an old warmonger who is power hungry) would\nsay?\n\nAfter reading that I now see that he wanted him fired, not because the NSA\ntargeted _everyone_ and not because the NSA violated _everyone 's_ privacy but\nonly because the NSA boss should have had even more security protocols in\nplace.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n802.11 with Multiple Antennas for Dummies (2009) [pdf] - gballan\nhttps://djw.cs.washington.edu/papers/mimo_for_dummies.pdf\n======\nAndyMcConachie\nIs anyone else really bothered by the fact that academics don't put dates on\ntheir papers? This could have been written yesterday. It could have been\nwritten 10 years ago. How can I know?\n\nI get this is not yet peer reviewed, but put a date on it that represents the\nlast time it was touched. Like a last modified date or something. And it's not\nlike it will get a date on it once it is peer reviewed. Someone will find it 5\nyears from now and think it still represents the state of the art.\n\n~~~\nchatmasta\nYes, I also find it extremely annoying and it’s definitely a thing. I always\nend up googling the title to find the actual publication and hope that the\ndate is there.\n\nDoes anyone know _why_ academic papers do not include dates in the paper?\nSurely there must be a reason?\n\nEdit: StackExchange [0] cites uncertainty of the delay between writing and\npublication as the typical reason for omitting the date. This seems fair, but\nat least including the year would be nice. If you submit for review at the end\nof the year, probably safe to increment it by one. Even so, presumably there\nmight be later drafts after review, so those should include the date.\n\n[0] [https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3424/why-is-\nthe...](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3424/why-is-the-date-\nleft-out-of-some-academic-papers)\n\n~~~\nFnoord\nWhy not add a writing date, and once its published add the publication date?\n\n~~~\ntinktank\nNo reason not to, I just think most people don't do it out of habit. Academics\nare beginning to use arxiv more seriously and that provides versioned\ntimestamp functionality.\n\n------\nQuequau\nSince this paper is so old, it should have the date in the title (2009 I\nguess).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nComparing Standard ML and OCaml - rohshall\nhttp://adam.chlipala.net/mlcomp/\n\n======\nWilya\nRegarding build systems, ocamlbuild is included with the standard ocaml\ndistribution and gives a high-level interface that is much simpler to use than\nocamldep and friends. Especially when combined with findlib.\n\n~~~\nnrlucas\nYeah, this is really old. I remember seeing it six years ago when I started\nusing OCaml.\n\n------\nbeering\nNothing said about multithreading and parallel processing? Seems like a big\nomission if you're comparing languages.\n\n~~~\nrwmj\nThe user group explicitly rejected multithreading at the OCaml Users\nconference a couple of years back. (There was a working implementation called\noc4mc).\n\nThe reasons were that it will slow down single-threaded performance, and\nthreads as a programming model is not robust (compared to, eg. forking,\nmessage passing, MPI etc). Also actual graphs of 4- and 8-way SMP performance\nshowed pretty poor scaling for real problems, so the benefits aren't that\ngreat compared to going for full MPI, which you have to do for NUMA anyhow.\n\n~~~\nEvbn\nGHC has a compiler flag to enable multi threaded runtime. Why can't OCaml have\nthat? It is a bit rigid to have to build two versions of a binary, but for\nfolks who run their own code, no problem at all.\n\n~~~\nrwmj\nSure, you can run OCaml and oc4mc. You'll also end up with two different\nbinaries. oc4mc isn't as well tested, so I guess you'll hit more bugs. This\nstill doesn't solve the horrible programming model [I've been cursing a\nmultithreaded C program in the past few days. It's amazing how much stuff you\nhave to remember and how much simply doesn't work in C when you've got\nthreads]. Nor does it let your program scale past the limit of a single NUMA\nnode. Whereas message passing a la Erlang lets you scale over NUMA and across\nmachines and networks.\n\n------\nbatgaijin\nUrgh! I want to see Jocaml posts around here!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGovernment grabs $360 million from idle household bank accounts - markmassie\nhttp://news.com.au/finance/business/government-grabs-360-million-from-idle-household-bank-accounts/story-fnkjidjt-1226949101984\n======\nhga\nI've just read from a not terribly reliable source that the state of Georgia\nis going to be doing this for accounts idle for more than a year. Many if not\nmost if not all states do it for longer periods.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Salary cut for position change Front-end – Back end? - knoblauch\nLong story; I want to know if a salary cut is justified in my situation.<p>18 months ago, I started my first job as an android developer in a fintech startup, after graduating with my Masters in a top 20 university. When I joined, I was the only android developer and built 2 relatively complex apps from scratch (designing architecture,  app development, some security&#x2F;crypto&#x2F;api).  \nMy CTO, to whom I report directly, knows since the day he hired me that I don&#x27;t want to be doing front-end my whole life, and we agreed this summer that I&#x27;d be switching to the back-end.<p>At the time, I asked him if there would be any salary change with the switch, and he reassured me that there wouldn&#x27;t be, because he allows his engineers to move horizontally without any salary change.<p>Since 2 months, I&#x27;ve been learning about the back-end language, Functional Programming, and other frameworks they use. All on my personal time in the evening and on week-ends.<p>Last week, the CFO asked to speak with me and told me that we&#x27;d have to sign a new contract, and that they&#x27;re going to decrease my salary (by over 10%). His argument is that he wants to align my salary with the other back-end juniors.<p>This news came to me as a shock and I am very confused if this is a normal practice or not. I&#x27;ve explained the situation to some of my SE friends and older acquaintances and all of them without exception find it scandalous and have told me that I should not accept the offer and start looking for another job.<p>I feel like the company is not valuating my work and my experience at their place. During these 18 months, I have shown that I am able to learn and adapt fast, that I deliver good results, and they have seen that I am highly motivated and positive in a very consistent way.<p>(Continuing the text in comment)\n======\nknoblauch\n(Next part of the text):\n\nObviously, this career switch would be a great opportunity for me to move into\nthe back-end world, learn a lot of new stuff, broaden my SE skills, build a\nbetter CV and invest in my future.\n\nThere are many arguments that I can find on my side to find it disgraceful and\nwhy they shouldn't decrease my salary. I feel I shouldn't even have to defend\nmy salary in the first place in this situation, as decreasing my salary is a\nbit of a low blow.\n\nSome notes: \\- The startup has a lot of cash \\- We are ~20 software engineers\n\\- I am quite confident that I could earn more than my current salary with my\nexperience if I moved to a bigger city in my country \\- The other juniors\ndidn't have more professional experience when they were hired, and don't have\na better education \\- I absolutely love the the project, and the other\nemployees, our culture, and the office \\- Even if I do accept now, I don't\nknow why they'd want to do this to me when they know I am not happy with the\nsituation, as their are making me lose some of my loyalty to the company,\ntaking the risk that I'll leave when I get enough experience on back-end\n\nI feel like they are forcing the pay cut on me, after promising me a switch,\nthen promising there wouldn't be any salary change.\n\nHN, shed light on my situation and tell me what you think.\n\n------\n_ah\nSounds like this is a small shop. When you were off by yourself, your\ncompensation stood alone in its own category. If you join the other backend\ndevs, then your salary is compared against theirs and it \"looks bad\" on the\ninternal spreadsheet. This is an internal political game and your CTO is not\nwilling to spend his political capital on a junior developer. That may or may\nnot be a reasonable decision on his part. Your excellent work up to this point\n(and future potential) isn't being weighed as much as it should be and there's\nprobably very little you can do to change that.\n\nI wouldn't accept a pay cut. It's too early in your career for that.\n\nThe ideal option is to tell the CTO \"I can't take a pay cut. Keep me the same,\nand I promise I won't tell anyone.\" That might solve his political problem. If\nhe won't go for that, then your options are: (1) continue in your current role\n(unhappy, but better paid), (2) leave for a different position. You probably\nwill want to start planning for your eventual exit anyway, since this smells\nlike a place with limited growth prospects.\n\n------\nJamesVI\nI think it is reasonable for you to be compensated according to the skills you\nhave and the performance you demonstrate. I think it's reasonable for everyone\nwith similar skills and performance to be compensated the same.\n\nYou are moving from a role you have 18 months experience into one where you\nhave much less. Personally, I wouldn't cut your salary immediately, but I\nwould work with you to build a transition plan made up of SMART goals. At the\nend of the transition period (probably 3-6 months in this case), we would\ndiscuss your performance relative to the expectations of the role and level\nyou have transitioned into.\n\nIf, at that time, you were performing at a level more junior that you are\nbeing compensated, I would offer you the option of returning to your former\nrole (assuming we still had a need for someone in that role) or level you down\nand adjust your compensation accordingly.\n\nThe CTO was foolhardy in making a blanket promise that you could move\n\"horizontally\" without impact to compensation, but the CFO is also overly\nfocussed on what could be a small amount money (2.5-5% of your total salary).\n\nI'd suggest that you go back to the CFO and the CTO and propose a transition\nplan with an eval at the end to determine your level and compensation. You\nshould also ask what the promotion path forward would be like if you\ntransitioned and were leveled down. Will you be stuck there for a long time or\nwill you have a chance at being promoted back up once you have a year of\nexperience? Then you can decide if a possible (presumably short-term) decrease\nin compensation is a valid investment in your long-term career.\n\n\"my SE friends and older acquaintances and all of them without exception find\nit scandalous\"\n\nObviously, you need to balance an anonymous voice* on the internets against\nyour friends and acquaintances, but this really isn't that scandalous. Perhaps\nthey've just not experienced it themselves.\n\nActually, the biggest problems you have right now are that the CFO and CTO\naren't on the same page and that the CFO is making decisions about\ncompensation for engineers. The CTO (or whoever your direct supervisor is)\nshould be making your compensation decisions based off strategic decisions\ntaken in conjunction with the CFO (and others).\n\n*I'm actually the head of engineering at a growing startup, but maybe I'm lying :-D\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAny cool projects we could do on this state owned oil company database? - joshdance\nDatabase of state-owned oil companies. A project of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, pulls official data on nearly 100 metrics concerning 71 oil&#x2F;gas companies owned by 61 countries. https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nationaloilcompanydata.org&#x2F;\n======\nthedevindevops\nIt'd be great for anyone who does Infographics.\n\nMaybe a per country breakdown dashboard?\n\nPrediction/forecast engine?\n\nUse the National oil and gas reserves question and rank countries by estimate\nof when they'll be depleted?\n\nI'd love if someone linked this to a forestry or carbon capture by country\ndatabase to see the environmental deficit per country\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk YC: Where do you post ads for programmers? - Flemlord\n\nI've got ads posted on Monster and JoelOnSoftware for a .NET programmer at a Salt Lake startup. I'm getting spotty results. Where does everybody run ads?\n======\nspif\nGo to your (local) user groups where your flavour of developers like to hang\nout. You immediately get a feel of who you would like and what their\navailability is like.\n\n------\nbigtoga\nI would suggest joel Spolsky's book on hiring tech folks. He mentions several\nmethods and, although i\"m only on page 30, (1) I like Joel's style/approach to\nmost things, and (2) the first 30 pages made sense to me. it's called \"Smart\nand Gets Things Done\"\n\n------\ngscott\nI am having similiar results trying to replace myself so I can work full time\non my project and getting no serious bites. Next step is to try community\ncollege job boards...\n\n------\nthomasswift\nyou could try 37signals board or maybe krop(more designer related)\n\nor good ole craigslist, but i'd recommend asking their level of .net\nexperience and wait for WIDE range of people.\n\n------\nALee\nelance, odesk, craigslist, and the boards of frequented blogs.\n\n------\nentelarust\ncraigslist\n\n~~~\nbigtoga\nCraigslist is such a gamble. I've found that it's been mostly a waste of time.\nThe way, IMO, to successfully use CL is to use an RSS reader that allows you\nto define \"watches\"/\"alerts\" (like FeedDemon). Create watches for the popular\nterms you are looking for and then subscribe to CL's resumes board's RSS feed.\nThe more specific you are about the terms you want, the less clutter you'll go\nthrough. Putting a watch on \"Windows XP\" will get you nowhere; putting a watch\non \"Windows 2008\" will find you an early adopter, for example.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSocialteria - voidale\nhttps://socialteria.com\n======\nvoidale\nHello everyone,\n\nLooking to get some exposure about my app\n[https://socialteria.com](https://socialteria.com) it's a social media\nmanagement app you can queue up bunch of posts and have them shared in the\nfuture to your social media accounts. One cool feature is the content\nsuggestion you can find popular content from popular facebook pages we list\nthe best content on top you can one click share it.\n\nRight now it's just me one solo developer, but my goal is to make it one of\nthe best web apps for social media. I have some great features on the road\nmap.\n\nI would love to get your feedback let me know what you think or if you find\nsomething that is broken (probably it's still beta!)\n\nThanks! -Mark\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA $35 keyboard for children transformed me into a novelist - danso\nhttps://onezero.medium.com/this-35-keyboard-for-children-transformed-me-into-a-novelist-436a55370ee5\n======\nbenjohnson\nThe Japanese have modern devices like this - this one is about $250 and had a\nE-ink display and a folding keyboard. You can put the keyboard in English mode\n- a few keys are in odd places but bearable. It's increased my output by\nseveral orders of magnitude.\n\n[https://www.kingjim.co.jp/pomera/dm30/](https://www.kingjim.co.jp/pomera/dm30/)\n\n~~~\ninyorgroove\nThere is also the Freewrite, its a little expensive but is targeted to English\nspeakers: [https://getfreewrite.com/](https://getfreewrite.com/)\n\n~~~\nDigory\nBeautiful, but $400 is steep for a monotasker. I'd gladly let students use\nthese in a class, though, as an alternative to notepads.\n\nWhich probably says something about the rise of keyboards and the fall of\nhandwriting; I get that ASCII is more useful than paper, but $400 buys a lot\nof luxurious pens and paper.\n\n~~~\nBolexNOLA\nProduces a lot of lost pens and paper in waste bins though!\n\n~~~\nsplintercell\nCheck out the fountain pen thread from last week.\n\n~~~\ncarterschonwald\nLink please ? :)\n\nGranted I’m a huge user of fountain pens and note books already :)\n\n~~~\nsplintercell\nThere you go:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23497259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23497259)\n\n------\nJoblessWonder\nI have a very special place in my heart for the AlphaSmart brand. When I was a\nkid in the 90's I had atrocious handwriting. No one could figure out why or\nhow to fix it. In middle school, one of the counselors had been given an\nearlier model of the AlphaSmart as a demo unit and let me use it. It also\nturned me into a writer. Instead of my teachers glossing over my chicken\nscratch, they were able to read my typed assignments and offer me real\nfeedback. My confidence as a student and an intellectual returned. All because\nI had a little keyboard to type on. Pretty crazy.\n\n[Technical side note: Back in the day, to transfer what you typed you used to\nplug it into the PS/2 keyboard port on a computer and press \"send.\" It would\nthen recreate each keystroke for the computer, regardless of what program you\nhad open so if you hit send before opening up a word processor it would be\nchaos until it finished transferring.]\n\n~~~\nfrequentnapper\nLucky your teachers actually cared about you.\n\n~~~\ndividedbyzero\nAnd had the resources to act on that. I've had the impression a bunch of my\nteachers did care when kids were struggling, but didn't have a lot of options\nto help really.\n\n~~~\nJoblessWonder\nI agree. I think that teachers are relatively\npowerless/underpaid/underappreciated/overworked (during the school year) and\nthat makes it so hard for them to help kids that are struggling. Let alone\nhelp the kids who are struggling without interrupting the rest of the class.\nIt reminds me of the season of The Wire where it shows just how many systemic\nissues there are in the education system.\n\nMy teachers were frustrated and sent me to the counselor, who lucked into a\nsolution for me. Combined with the fact that I was lucky enough to have a\ncomputer at home to use, parents who supported me, and teachers who wanted me\nto succeed was what made it work. Most people aren't as fortunate.\n\n------\ndougmwne\nI think this is a worthy read because it looks a computing product from a\nuser's perspective instead of a engineer or an MBA. Multi-function everything\ndevices with the addictive potential of nicotine may be engineering marvels\nand business rockstars, but this person wanted to write without distraction\nand needed to reach into the past to find a product that met their needs.\n\nAnd it's a fun exercise to take this user's need and whiteboard out a new\nproduct for them. How are those ergonomics; could we hinge the display or\nproject it somehow in a way that will let them type longer without discomfort?\nHow's that LCD's readability; would eink be better? Should the device be doing\nincremental backups to the cloud? Should it offer dictation?\n\n~~~\ntonyedgecombe\n_Should the device be doing incremental backups to the cloud?_\n\nI think one of the key features would be no network connection.\n\n~~~\nnaikrovek\nSo a Linux machine (like an old laptop) booted into single-user mode seems\nlike a good approach here. Single shell, single application at a time, no GUI.\n\n~~~\nphone8675309\nI have an old Linux laptop (an old iBook G4) that boots into a non graphical\nenvironment and starts emacs in text mode on login with no network\nconnectivity by default.\n\nIt's my go-to for focus.\n\n~~~\nanythinggoesbay\nThis is so good. Can you please share how it can be done?\n\n------\nnate\nIt's wild what constraints can actually open up for your creativity. I love\nmaking videos but ran out of the time I used to have to spend on it. And so\nlargely gave up trying. But I decided instead of complaining about it or\ntrying to find more time to pile on some constraints:\n\n\\- only film AND edit on my phone \\- only create a movie as long as a single\nsong track. don't edit the song track besides muting clips of the song. \\-\nonly spend < 60 minutes on editing the video \\- publish daily\n\nSo now there's little workflow pauses waiting for files to transfer. It's now\nimpossible to spend too much time in a rat hole of an edit. Of course this\nlimits things I'd love to achieve with it, but on the other side, I get to\npublish so many more ideas and feel insanely more creative with it.\n\nFeeling stuck? Probably need a good dose of giving yourself what seems like\narbitrary and ridiculously limiting constraints.\n\n~~~\nmunificent\nI've been getting into making electronic music and figuring out a workflow\nthat balances these constraints is really challenging.\n\nThe most powerful, expressive, flexible, and affordable way to make music, by\nfar, is to do everything in a DAW inside a computer. Ableton + a few software\nsynth plug-ins is a _ridiculously_ powerful platform to make music in. You\ncould produce albums for the rest of your life and never run out of\ninspiration. And the user interface for Ableton is just an absolute delight.\n\nBut it's _so_ powerful that it takes me forever to get anything done. It's\neasy to spend three hours tweaking reverb settings and never finish anything.\n\nThe other approach is to do everything in dedicated hardware with real\nsynthesizers. It's expensive to buy gear and a hassle to wire everything up.\nDecide that you want delay on your bass instead of the lead? That's five\nminutes of futzing with cables versus a single drag-and-drop in Ableton. Want\ntwo different reverb settings for the pad and the clap? Better shell out\nanother $300 to buy a second reverb pedal. Undo? You're lucky if your\nsequencer supports it.\n\nBut because the set of options is so much narrower and the cost for rethinking\nchoices is higher, the hardware environment pushes you forward and makes you\nwant to finish things.\n\nThe tricky part is that, to a listener, the music made on hardware often just\nisn't as good in many ways as that made in a DAW. Listeners today are used to\nlots and lots of layers and very surgical production and mixing. That's easy\n(but time-consuming) in a DAW, but very difficult (and expensive) in hardware.\n\nFinding the right balance here is hard.\n\n~~~\nfb03\nThat is totally my experience with my hobbyist music making endeavour too!\n\nI thought owning more plugins and getting better gear would mean I'd make lots\nand lots of music.\n\nWhen I started out 9 years ago, I had Renoise, zero paid plugins (only free\nvsts like Synth1 and friends) and a cheap pair of earbuds. I didn't even\nunderstood basic things like translation, gain staging and etc, and I'd always\nwonder why my tracks wouldn't play correctly on other people's speakers\n(channels would clash frequencies, elements would downright disappear and\netc).\n\nYet, my most creative, layered and musical (data amount, transitions and\noverall creativity) time was at that period. And I typed it all in using the\ncomputer keyboard. In a computer in the middle of the living room.\n\nNow I have a huge desk with a pro usb audio dac, Yamaha Hs8 Monitors\n(excellent, btw), all plugged in with proper balanced xlr cables, 2 midi\nkeyboards, an ATH-m50 pair of cans for when I can't be noisy in the Study\n(small kids), lots of paid plugins like Sylenth1 and Serum, a plethora of\nsample libraries scavenged and assembled painstakingly through the years...\nonly the good stuff, categorized, ready to double click and peruse.\n\n....It's been two years since the last time I actually used all this stuff\n\nYou guys are right. I need to get back to the basics.\n\nWhat use is to be able to put 80+ tracks in your software because now you have\na good pc that can handle that many if you can't even write the first part\ndown because there are soooo many options and you're lost tweaking knobs.\n\n\"tweakititis\" is a thing in music making.\n\nOne of my tracks, btw, if any of you got curious at what kind of music I make:\n[https://soundcloud.com/flipbit03/ibu-\nkid](https://soundcloud.com/flipbit03/ibu-kid)\n\n~~~\nmunificent\nYes, I'm 100% with you. I've finished two tracks using Reason and Ableton with\ndozens of unfinished things laying around. And those two tracks took weeks.\n\nMeanwhile, with my little Electribe 2 and a couple of guitar pedals, I\nfinished three tracks in like a tenth of the time and _enjoyed_ it a hell of a\nlot more.\n\nBut, on the other hand, those two tracks I made on the computer are, I think,\nmuch better songs for someone to listen to.\n\nSo a big part of this dilemma is how much do I optimize for _my_ enjoyment of\nthe _process_ versus the _listener 's_ enjoyment of the _product_? The two are\nnot purely orthogonal. It's hard to make something people like if you're\nmiserable doing it. But they aren't entirely aligned either, as can be\nwitnessed by all of the many many ambient modular jams that I'm sure were fun\nfor the artist to make but are just pointless boring noodling to the listener.\n\n _> One of my tracks, btw, if any of you got curious at what kind of music I\nmake: [https://soundcloud.com/flipbit03/ibu-\nkid](https://soundcloud.com/flipbit03/ibu-kid) _\n\nI like it! The filter sweep on the drums is <chef's kiss>. The overall\nstructure is really cool. So much electronic music just has nothing\ninteresting going on in the arrangement.\n\nI first got into making music like, uh, 20 years ago using PlayerPro on a Mac.\nI was way more productive back then. Trackers are fun. But also my music was a\nlot shittier, so there's a trade-off. Have you talked yourself into getting a\nPolyend Tracker yet?\n\nHere's my stuff:\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSMJ0iRwAhIFYSpntOEtn2g?vie...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSMJ0iRwAhIFYSpntOEtn2g?view_as=subscriber)\n\nI like putting it on YouTube because that feels less formal and less like a\n\"release\" to me. Though the downside is having to make some kind of video for\neach thing.\n\n------\nglassdimly\nI use the Alphasmart, also. FYI, there's MacOs software for transferring the\ntext that works great. It needed a PR and Xcode, so I bundled it into a dmg\nand am distributing it here:\n[https://glassdimly.com/blog/tech/macos/alphasync-macos-\ncatal...](https://glassdimly.com/blog/tech/macos/alphasync-macos-catalina-\ndownload-and-install-appdmg)\n\n~~~\nDanielleMolloy\nThanks for the pointer. Do you use yours for prose or also for more technical\n(or even research) text?\n\n------\nvikingcaffiene\nMy partner is a novelist and owns two of these. She's been drafting with them\nfor a little over a year and swears by them. She says the appeal is that you\ncan't go back and read more than a few lines so you just kind of go and then\nedit later. I also think the appeal is the keys themselves. Similar in feel to\nan old Thinkpad.\n\n~~~\nmhd\nI wouldn't go as far, the typing feel isn't as good as old Thinkpads and the\nkeys are definitely more fragile. Can't replace them, either. A device of the\nsame form factor, even display, with an Arduino for tinkering and mechanical\nkeys would be a godsend.\n\n~~~\nretzkek\nI use an Atreus [1] as my daily keyboard, and Phil has been experimenting with\nvarious forms of \"cyberdeck\" based on that [2,3]. Something like that, with a\nminimalist emacs config like [4] would be an awesome portable writing device.\n\n1\\. [https://atreus.technomancy.us/](https://atreus.technomancy.us/)\n\n2\\.\n[https://atreus.technomancy.us/decklog](https://atreus.technomancy.us/decklog)\n\n3\\.\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/comments/d2rwp1/atreus_de...](https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/comments/d2rwp1/atreus_deck_mk4/)\n\n4\\. [https://github.com/rougier/elegant-\nemacs](https://github.com/rougier/elegant-emacs)\n\n------\narnado\nIt reminds me of the TRS-80 model 100. I seem to remember reading a story\nlinked here a while back regarding the 100 and how popular it was for\njournalists to write stories on, and maybe be uploaded via modem to the editor\nwhen completed? (I might be remembering this incorrectly)\n\n~~~\nfanf2\nYou are thinking of this\n[http://wayne.lorentz.me/This_TRS-80/](http://wayne.lorentz.me/This_TRS-80/)\n\n~~~\narnado\nyes, thank you. I'll have to read over it again and refresh my memory.\n\n------\nzelos\nMy dad used a Tandy Dreamwriter for many years to write on while working as a\ntravel journalist, well into the 2000's.\n\nSmall, Z80 based, with a few lines of text on the screen and powered by AA\nbatteries. Other journalists used to laugh at the 'old guy with the Fisher\nPrice computer', but the instant-on and distraction free typing was a definite\nadvantage. Pretty nice not having to worry about a fragile, expensive laptop\nwhile out in the jungle or whatever, too.\n\n~~~\nmprev\nOh cool. The Dreamwriter was based on the Amstrad NC100:\n\n    \n    \n      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_NC100\n    \n\nA very cool little device, at the time. I borrowed one as a kid and it seemed\nvery exciting to be able to type things wherever I was.\n\nI'm kinda nostalgic for that less connected era, where life moved at a\nslightly slower pace. Like all nostalgia, I'm leaving out the bad parts.\n\n~~~\nhombre_fatal\nYou make the link unclickable when you format it as code.\n\n------\ngeocrasher\nI am not a novelist. The problem isn't the device, it's my brain. But when I\nhave a creative block, I take a page from the novelists that just works.\n\nI close my eyes and start typing.\n\nIn fact, Iv'e closed my eyes just now as I write this. Touch typing obviously\nhelps! But it allows me to hyper-focus on my writing and not on anything else.\nIf I wanted to, I could turn off all notifications. or just turn my sound off\ncompletely with \"mute\". No big deal. Granted, this isn't very portable, but I\ncould do this with my laptop. The only thing I lack is the huge battery life.\n\nAs I open my eyes now, I re-emerge into the Real World where there exists more\nthan my writing. I fix the typos, make an observation, and click \"add\ncomment\".\n\nBut not before I add one more thing: You don't need a device to write. You\nneed a process, and you need to get out of your own head.\n\n------\nfooblat\nAlthough the author mentions using outdated and unsupported software to\ntransfer the text, it isn't actually required.\n\nThese also have a mode where it just \"types\" the text into the program of your\nchoice, via the usb cable. No drivers required and works with any OS that can\nrecognize a usb keyboard.\n\n------\nballenf\nI believe we'll see a return to more single use devices. They won't supplant\nsmartphones.\n\nFor one, I've thought a lot about having two separate computers: one for\nwriting code and a second for googling when I need help / slack / email / HN.\n\nAnd then keeping the two devices in physically separate places.\n\nI could accomplish this with software and accounts, but I know for myself it\nwould be less effective.\n\n~~~\ngonzo41\nI have that, I have a work laptop, that i dock into a displaylink set of\nscreens to run my work dev environment. And then sitting on the desk next to\nme is my personal laptop. Totally different uses and the seperation is really\nimportant because i never worry about typing the wrong thing into the wrong\ncontext because the full size keyboard is attached to the work computer.\n\nIt's worked really well for me for about 3 years now. And i hardly look at my\nphone.\n\n~~~\ndividedbyzero\nI do pretty much the same, but I have my phone sitting next to me with an\nexternal bluetooth keyboard. I'd use an iPad, but there's no Whatsapp for\nthose currently.\n\n------\nwillmacdonald\nSeems similar to this:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Z88](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Z88)\n\nThe Cambridge Computer Z88 is an A4-size, lightweight, portable Z80-based\ncomputer with a built-in combined word processing/spreadsheet/database\napplication called PipeDream (functionally equivalent to a 1987 BBC Micro ROM\ncalled Acornsoft View Professional),[1] along with several other applications\nand utilities, such as a Z80-version of the BBC BASIC programming language.\n\n~~~\njulesallen\nI bought one of these new when they came out and it was life changing. The\nBASIC was surprisingly good and I got almost as much out of the spreadsheet as\nI did the word processor.\n\nOne area that was a disappointment is _really_ doesn't like x-ray machines (or\nmaybe the other bits in the scanning process — magnets?). I asked for hand\ninspection at LHR, they refused, and putting it through the scanner corrupted\nwhat was stored in memory. Only upside is doing something again is usually\nquicker and better than the first time.\n\n------\narexxbifs\nSeems like any laptop booting a minimal Linux distro straight into a similarly\nsimplistic text editor should be able to provide the same experience. Could be\ncarried around on a USB stick, effectively turning any available computer into\nan AlphaSmart.\n\n~~~\nLeoPanthera\nI've always liked WordGrinder. It runs in the terminal/console!\n\n[http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/index.html](http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/index.html)\n\n~~~\narexxbifs\nThat's what I use! It's pretty minimal by modern standards but might still be\ntoo full-featured for AlphaSmart simulation.\n\n------\nmacspoofing\nMakes sense. Single-purposes devices are kind of cool. It's why eBook readers\nhave a place in a world where tablets exist.\n\nI don't know about AlphaSmart though - the screen is too cramped. I suspect\nafter the initial euphoria of finding another way to write wears off, the\nauthor will get tired of the limitations and go back to writing on a tablet or\nPC. Having said that, maybe there is a market for a writing-only device,\nsimilar to a read-only eBook reader.\n\n~~~\neropple\nI've been using one for long-form writing for about a decade now. Haven't\ngotten tired of it yet.\n\n~~~\nmacspoofing\nCool. I'm not a writer so I don't know what works and what doesn't. If it\nworks for you and the author - great!\n\n~~~\neropple\nSure.\n\nThe other device I often use is a Thinkpad A20m running Linux. The only web\nbrowser on it is lynx (which I mostly use or Wikipedia).\n\n------\nlarrywright\nFor people wanting something like this, there are still plenty of Apple’s\nEMate devices available on EBay:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMate_300](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMate_300)\n\n------\ntimurlenk\nThese people have a somewhat modern alternative with mechanical keyboard and\neink screen. It has wifi and that's it. From watching the reviews I understood\nthat a major drawback is that no editing is possible on the device itself and\nit is very expensive (600$)\n\n[https://getfreewrite.com/](https://getfreewrite.com/)\n\nI personally use occasionally an android based ebook reader with a bluetooth\nkeyboard (Onyx BOOX Poke 2 with logitech k380). Distraction free writing is a\nthing.\n\n~~~\nmprev\nThis feels like the sort of thing people buy to kid themselves that the\nproblem with their writing lies outside their own brains.\n\nDon't get me wrong, I love the idea of a dedicated writing device but, for me\nas someone who writes pretty much for the entire working day, inconvenience is\nthe biggest bar to writing other than lack of sleep. If I can't edit on the\ndevice, or find the text in my usual GSuite/Office 365 spaces, then maybe I'd\nbe better off with a $40 dictaphone and Rev.com.\n\n~~~\ntonyarkles\n> This feels like the sort of thing people buy to kid themselves that the\n> problem with their writing lies outside their own brains.\n\nI posted elsewhere in this thread about this, so to summarize: I've been at a\ncabin using LTE tethering, and am consciously turning my Internet connection\noff and on.\n\nI fully realize that the problem is in my brain, but putting up just _that\ntiny_ of a barrier is enough of an effective \"hack\" to change the way I work\nin a positive way. Because there's no connection most of the time I'm working,\nthere's no HN, there's no email popping up, there's no Slack notifications,\nand there's no \"falling down a rabbit hole searching for a solution\". I'm\nspending way more time writing down/rubber ducking the problem I'm trying to\nsolve and coming up with the solution myself (which generally results in a\nmuch better understanding of the problem)\n\n------\nminikites\nSometimes I wonder how often these \"productivity tips\" mask a deeper feeling\nof indifference or rejection of the task entirely. People spend hours finding\nthe right tools for a task thinking it will make them want to do it instead of\nexamining the task itself and their feelings around it.\n\n~~~\nreidjs\nTo a certain extent I agree. If you were really passionate about something\nlike this you would make it happen regardless of your circumstances. Think\nabout kids who grow up in impoverished island nations who make it to the MLB\nthrough sheer perseverance.\n\nThe difference is unless you're already wealthy or talented, you _need_ to\nwrite effectively to compete in the modern 'white collar' workforce.\n\nWriting something that people want to read is very hard. People don't read for\nthe sake of reading, they read to learn something or feel something. It can\ntake years of consistent practice to evoke anger, sadness, or laughter through\nwriting. Think about how many books, workshops, and college courses there are\non writing itself. It is sort of like programming, it is a skill that anyone\ncan learn given enough time and it has very little barrier to entry. This\nmakes it extremely competitive, so a lot of people need to exploit whatever\nedge they can get.\n\n------\nvorpalhex\nI still remember as a child playing on a 1980s word processor that my mom had.\nIt had maybe a 4 line display, with an ugly greenish backlighting and no\nbattery whatsoever. It did however have a hinge mechanism so that little text\nonly screen would fold over the keyboard.\n\n~~~\nTedDoesntTalk\nThese dedicated word processor devices were quite popular and cheap. Built-in\nprinter and floppy drive, shaped somewhat like a typewriter.\n\nWe had two in my house, even though we also had general purpose computers. I\nthink they were still in use into the early 90s for school reports.\n\n------\nlewisflude\nFor the mechanical keyboard lovers out there, there is a Cherry MX compatible\nAlphaSmart 3000 PCB:\n[https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=91504.0](https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=91504.0)\n\n------\nbaronblackmore\nOne of my writer friends accomplishes a similar workflow by just having a\nwriting account on his laptop, where everything is disabled except a text\neditor.\n\n------\nc22\nI was given a first generation Alphasmart in middle school and told to use it\nfor all my assignments since I had such terrible handwriting. At the time I\nthought it was incredibly cool, but in retrospect I wonder if I fell prey to\nsome ill-thought _technology in the classroom_ program. Perhaps it would have\nbeen better if they had just helped me fix my handwriting.\n\n------\nnanna\nAlphasmart HN thread from 2017 here, with comments by co-founder Ketan Kothari\nand Freewrite's founder too:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836866)\n\n------\ngolem14\nGiven the amount of work going into custom DIY mechanical keyboards, it's\nsurprising that there aren't DIY solutions out there. All you need is a $5 MCU\n(think ESP32) and a cheap display. Would make a fun side project :)\n\n~~~\ngolem14\nOne problem is that cheap LCD displays are not easy to source. E.g., the\nlargest old school lcds I find are 4x20 characters, which is a bit confining.\n\nThere seem to be tons of TFT options out there on the cheap, but they're\nprobably not great in terms of eye strain and power consumption.\n\nIf price is no object, then e-ink displays seem a great choice, e.g. $70 for a\n7.5'' display: [https://www.banggood.com/Waveshare-7_5-Inch-E-ink-Screen-\nMod...](https://www.banggood.com/Waveshare-7_5-Inch-E-ink-Screen-Module-e-\nPaper-Display-SPI-Interface-For-Raspberry-Pi-p-1365278.html)\n\n~~~\nfenwick67\nMany of these larger epaper displays are meant for very low refresh speeds -\nI'm talking 5 seconds plus. This one takes 6 seconds.\n\n------\nProZsolt\nOutline link: [https://outline.com/PzjuRt](https://outline.com/PzjuRt)\n\n------\nDanielleMolloy\nThe Psion series got some legendary status for its attention to detail. The\nPsion 5 had backlight, was running on batteries (25-35h battery life) and it\nhas a slot for Compact Flash Cards. The keyboard is foldable. If you find an\nadapter for the CF cards they can still be used today for writing similarly to\nwhat is described here with the AlphaSmart.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5)\n\n~~~\njulesallen\nLoved that thing! Batteries lasted forever and the LCD was perfect for the job\nof being focused. My hands are almost too big to touch type on it so notes\noften needed editing when transferred to a desktop. Typing on it is kind of\nlike writing with Graffiti on a Palm, it takes some practice and then all of a\nsudden you're pretty good at it.\n\nIf you liked the Psion you might like its successor the Gemini from Planet\nComputers ([https://store.planetcom.co.uk/products/gemini-\npda-1](https://store.planetcom.co.uk/products/gemini-pda-1)). Same awesome\nkeyboard.\n\n~~~\nDanielleMolloy\nOh, I really fancied the Gemini. A tiny Linux computer the size of a Psion 5\nsounded pretty awesome to me as a former Psion lover. I'm not unhappy that I\ndid not buy it in the end though - battery life, and it comes with all the\nsmart phone distractions - the Psion 5 used to be my distraction free writer,\nnot a terminal access device.\n\nIf you need to frequently do admin tasks (e.g. config file and script editing)\nit's still a pretty interesting choice.\n\n------\ngadders\nWho's tried coding on one? Own up :-) You could bang out 500 lines of JS\nwithout stopping and then upload it to your PC and see if it runs...\n\n------\nhugozap\nTo maximize focus I've used the \"One system user per project\" trick. It works\nwell because now everything in your desktop has to do with your project\n(files/notes/calendar/bookmarks/etc)\n\nI've been able to ship a few projects using this trick.\n\nNot sure who was (Maybe Seth Godin?) who recommended using a different\ncomputer, which may even work better.\n\n------\nhairofadog\nAlong these lines I've been thinking a nice device would be an e-ink reader\nthat _only_ loads Wikipedia. (You know, for kids!)\n\n~~~\nJaruzel\nSimilar idea: [https://youtu.be/R63x2TXm0s8](https://youtu.be/R63x2TXm0s8)\n\nIt's a raspberry Pi, with an e-ink screen, and battery to provide an 'offline'\nrepository of information, including Wikipedia.\n\n------\nnl\n[https://www.osnews.com/story/131180/the-alphasmart-dana-\nin-2...](https://www.osnews.com/story/131180/the-alphasmart-dana-in-2019/) has\na few more technical details of the device for those interested.\n\nIt runs PalmOS!\n\n~~~\nzelos\n> I found a free text editor specifically written for the dana’s wide screen\n> (SiEd, dana version) on SourceForge in alpha, and left abandoned 4 years\n> ago. That editor will sometimes crash the whole system...\n\nNice to know my crappy code is still causing problems all these years later.\n\n------\npaulcarroty\nI use Amazon Basics keyboard ($13), super comfortable for coding. Bought it\njust for fun after reading this thread:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20866319](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20866319)\n\n------\nfalcor84\nOn a related note, I've been imagining this product idea, as an educational\ntoy that would help kids practice typing and spelling: A small physical\nkeyboard with a small (but larger than the AlphaSmart's) attached color\ndisplay, which does nothing but present a single picture of the thing that\nyou've typed, and show nothing if the current input is misspelled or otherwise\nnot found. I'm thinking that it would have an internal (no internet\nconnection) visual dictionary similar to the one that comes with the\nScribblenauts game and would be rugged enough for 3 year old kids to play\nwith.\n\nDo you happen to know of any existing product like this, or the feasibility of\nbuilding one?\n\n~~~\nvidarh\nI don't know if they have something specifically like what you want, but VTech\nhas a whole range of educational toys with keyboards and assorted phonics and\nspelling tutorials.\n\nIf you do a search for \"vtech abc\" and variations you'll find a huge number of\ndifferent types of devices.\n\n~~~\nmprovost\nWow I didn't know they were still around. My first PC was a VTech XT clone!\n\n------\nrjack_\nI wonder if creating a different OS account on the same day-to-day work laptop\nwith limited access to app, games and no internet would trigger the same\n\"Pavlovian response\" the article talks about. Did anyone tried this approach?\n\n------\nmixmastamyk\nReminds me of the Radio Shack portable:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100)\n\nThere were also a few simple word processors by Brother I think.\n\n------\nericol\nThis is a very vintage & romantic way of going at it.\n\nIf you don't have a way to acquire one of these devices, a similar solution\ncan be implemented with a Bluetooth keyboard (Like the Logitech K480,U$D 35 @\nAmazon, and has a slot for tables or phones) and a tablet or your phone (Or\n_a_ phone).\n\nYou'll need an app for that, and my current choice for writing in my tablet is\nJoplin [1] that has apps for all the OSes and phones, and can be hooked with\ndifferent ways of cloud storing for your files (Like Dropbox or NextCloud)\n\n[1] [https://joplinapp.org/](https://joplinapp.org/)\n\n~~~\nfrank2\nYou missed the main point of the OP: the AlphaSmart lacks the distractions\n(temptations to procrastinate) of a smartphone or tablet.\n\nDo you never find yourself using your smartphone or tablet to procrastinate\nafter intending to use it for a productive purpose?\n\n~~~\nericol\nYes. That's actually why my tablet (That I use mainly for reading) doesn't\nhave my main Gmail account linked to it, plus I always use it on airplane\nmodel.\n\nMy take was that not that many people will have the choice to get their hand\non one of these devices (I, for one, can't).\n\n------\ni_am_proteus\nI use a Hermes Rocket (typewriter) for similar reasons: similar form factor,\ndoes not require electricity, saves your work to paper rather than electronic\nstorage. About $50 used.\n\nThe keyboard is mechanical, as is the rest of the device.\n\n------\nwalrus01\nThat thing looks kind of like a TRS-80 model 100\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100)\n\n------\nnanna\nRequisite HN comment but also a genuine one too: Is there any chance any of\nthese Freewrites, Alphasmarts or machines from Japan support, or could be\nhacked to support, emacs keybindings?\n\n~~~\nnumpad0\nThere’s a guy who reflashed Pomera DM200 to run XEmacs, though at that point\nit’s just an ARM laptop with no mouse\n\n------\nafandian\nI've recently bought a handful of these (the more basic Pro and 2000), with\nthe aim of replacing the insides with an ESP32, but otherwise do the same job.\nThere's a community of people, weirdly on Flickr, who provided enough\nmotivation to buy one.\n\n[https://www.flickr.com/groups/alphasmart/](https://www.flickr.com/groups/alphasmart/)\n\n------\nframebit\nThe Alphasmart! We did typing class with that back in the early 00's. The IR\nbeam to the printer felt like science fiction back in the day.\n\n------\nklodolph\nWe had these in school when I was young. I loved them. I could carry one\naround the playground and write a story. When you got back to the classroom,\nyou transferred it to the computer by hooking it up as a keyboard. I’ve been\ndreaming about getting one for a while. The passive matrix LCD works well in\nsunlight and the batteries last a long time.\n\n------\nWistar\nIn the very late 80s, a co-worker of mine, a corporate-productions\nscriptwriter, gave up his Mac and started using a Neo2-like device -- it\nlooked very similar and used AA batteries. I remember him crowing about how it\nwas a game-changer for him, and that it made him a much more productive, and\nbetter, writer.\n\nI also recall thinking he was nuts.\n\n------\n5-\ntangentially related, i've been playing a bit with a brother ep-44 (see, e.g.,\n[https://darrengoossens.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/serial-\ntermi...](https://darrengoossens.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/serial-terminal-\nwith-benefits-brother-ep-44/)).\n\ni've mostly been running it as a linux tty, but in spite of being designated a\n'personal electronic printer', it has some memory and editing features so\ncould pass as a portable word processor.\n\nunfortunately its keyboard is quite unsatisfactory, so i'm considering\nacquiring a\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_700](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_700)\nalso for use as a tty.\n\ni would be interested in further suggestions along these lines.\n\n------\nbrettermeier\nWhy use medium.com with this login-wall?\n\n~~~\npier25\nProbably because it's free and easy.\n\n------\nfortran77\nThis reminds me of the Tandy 100, which was widely used by news reporters even\ninto the early 80s.\n\n------\ngrayclhn\nThat device looks fantastic for what the author wants. Another approach if you\nneed a little more flexibility in the software might be using a deliberately\nlimited old laptop. (I'd rather type in emacs, for example.) Battery life\nwould be a lot worse, obviously.\n\n------\nkinghtown\nI own a neo2. They are nice for first drafts or noodling with words. There\nreally is something in the idea of dumbing down tech to get things done. I\nhave written quite a bit on it but three things have held me back from being a\npower user:\n\n1\\. It uses a dated, proprietary cable to transfer your writing to a computer.\nWorst part of this is that the AlphaSmart re-types your writing so if you’ve\nwritten the 50000 word max then it will take some time to save it. The process\nis just annoying enough to trigger procrastination.\n\n2\\. If the battery comes out then you’ve lost everything. This isn’t such a\ndealbreaker since I want a dumber word processor to get out of my way but I\nthink it makes the keyboard a little too dumb.\n\n3\\. Honestly, it’s not sexy. It’s huge, too. And people with no interest in\nwriting just don’t get it at all. The looks people give me when I’ve used it\nin the public are like “what insane Jesus cult stuff is this guy writing on\nthat??” Nothing crazy here, just hunting bugs on TempleOS.\n\nI see a market for a machine like this but done better. The just write or\nwhatever branding they are using checks a lot of boxes but the price is\ninsane.\n\nI think I’ll just rig up Atom to work a little bit more like Scrivener.\n\n~~~\nTaylor_OD\n[https://getfreewrite.com/](https://getfreewrite.com/)\n\nI remember something like this being announced a few years ago called The\nHemingway. This is what I found when I DDG'ed The Hemingway typing machine.\n\n~~~\nkinghtown\nYeah these are the guys I was referring to when I wrote Just Write. Their\nprices are still insane. Plus are they ever going to release the traveller?\nI’m pretty sure it’s been listed as presale for 2 years now. My neo2 was $40\nCDN with shipping. Paying like 20x that for something which is just a tad bit\nnicer is kind of wrong. You’ve either got to be a working novelist to justify\nthe cost or like someone whose been sitting on the same handful of story\npremises for 20 years but never finished anything you know like I’m gonna\nthrow down $700 on this thing because I’m actually really very serious this\ntime about writing a book. No thanks. Laptop will do here.\n\n------\ntartoran\nThis is interesting but I wonder whether no fewer and fewer folks remembers\nthe pleasure of writing by hand with a nice fountain pen in a nice notebook.\nNot being able to edit also forces one into a different writing mode.\n\n~~~\ngoda90\nI've never had good handwriting, and I find the process makes my hand tired\npretty quickly, so for me there is nothing to remember.\n\n~~~\ntartoran\nI hear you but this is true of typing on a keyboard for some:RSI. Last time I\nwas doing a lot of hand writing was in college and my writing has gotten way\nworse since because of lack of practice. But, I remember not having to think\nmuch about writing, my hand had a brain of its own.\n\n------\npier25\nGRR Martin still writes in DOS with WordStar:\n[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27407502](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27407502)\n\n------\nngcc_hk\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100)\n\n------\nJoeAltmaier\nA very similar productivity trick, to having a separate 'office space' when\nworking at home. Triggers the mind to enter work mode, and minimizes\ndistractions.\n\n~~~\ntartoran\nOf course it does but for many the problem is affordability so I'll take it as\na nice to have luxury.\n\n------\nmosselman\nHow safe is your text on this? What if this thing breaks or has some glitch?\nIs there some form of cloud backup? I'd be terrified of losing data to this\nthing.\n\n~~~\nTedDoesntTalk\nIf you read the article, you’ll learn the only method of getting data off the\ndevice is via usb connection to a host computer.\n\n~~~\nmosselman\nYou caught me, I didn't read the whole thing.\n\n------\ngohwell\nAre there any OS projects that would turn a computer into a word processor\nlike this? Seems like a nice way to bring an old laptop back to life.\n\n~~~\ngohwell\nAnswering my own question:\n[https://raymii.org/s/blog/Vim_as_PID_1_Boot_to_Vim.html](https://raymii.org/s/blog/Vim_as_PID_1_Boot_to_Vim.html)\n\n------\npkamb\nThinkPad X40 is the perfect machine for this. I’d love to see a dedicated\ndisro with only writing + simple local and/or network backup.\n\n------\nmoonbug\nfor similar reasons, I swear by my Remarkable tablet.\n\n------\nbeamatronic\nThe keyboard in question is a 1993 AlphaSmart device\n\n~~~\nadamiscool8\nThe author is using a 2007 model from eBay, but it is cool to see the\ntechnology from my childhood classroom almost 30 years ago persist. I\ndefinitely wrote a few elementary essays on these in my day.\n\n------\nceedan\nMy first thought when looking at this thing was neck pain.\n\nPersonally, I would be in rough shape if I used this thing for more than 15\nminutes.\n\n~~~\nkinghtown\nI actually don’t look at the screen when I’m typing on mine. I’m like zoning\nout when I use it.\n\nI write my first drafts on my MacBook in a similar way where I turn the screen\noff and type away.\n\n~~~\nceedan\nWow that's pretty cool insight to a writer's process. I'm not sure that ever\nwould have occurred to me\n\n~~~\nkinghtown\nIf you’re thinking of trying it, I recommend having soft targets for scenes or\nchapters. Some kind of direction. Also it takes a bit of time for the engine\nto start running. At first it’s kind of weird and you’ll be prompting yourself\nwith like “what’s next what’s next” anxiety but if you tough it out for about\n15 minutes then the dream logic kicks in. All these cool things float up from\nthe subconscious. Lots of typos,too.\n\n------\nhamilyon2\nSerious question: does anyone writing professionally or as a hobby use voice\ninput as main input device? Why?\n\n------\nkalium-xyz\nI wonder how you could modify one of these to be more suited for writing code.\n\n~~~\ntartoran\nUpgrade to a laptop, boot up into a stripped down verison of your OS\n\n~~~\nkalium-xyz\nNot what Im looking for, a laptop is both too overkill and to underkill on the\nbattery life\n\n------\ndzuc\nsimilar devices [https://www.are.na/laurel-schwulst/free-writing-\ndevices](https://www.are.na/laurel-schwulst/free-writing-devices)\n\n------\nbookmarkable\nTired of links to paid content, pay walls, Admiral anti-ad blocks.\n\n------\nbrudgers\nHardware is a useful abstraction.\n\n------\nelchin\nDigital minimalism!\n\n------\ndepaulagu\nPosting paywalled-articles in HN should be highly discouraged...\n\n~~~\nlukifer\n[https://outline.com/PzjuRt](https://outline.com/PzjuRt)\n\n------\njedimastert\nI think folks here might enjoy the idea of cyberdecks\n\nreddit.com/r/cyberdecks\n\n~~~\ndividedbyzero\nAm I doing something wrong, or is that subreddit essentially empty?\n\nAlso, aren't cyberdecks the complete opposite to these devices? They strike me\nas a multi-purpose device like any laptop, but in a different form factor and\nmaybe a bit more optimized for hardware hacking?\n\n~~~\njedimastert\nI linked to the wrong sub, there shouldn't be an s on the end\n\nI would say that cyberdecks can be whatever you want. I've seen some single-\npurpose form factors like network testing or radio telemetry before\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhere the White People Live - cobralibre\nhttp://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/where-the-white-people-live/390153/?single_page=true\n\n======\npaulhauggis\n\"Still, it's the poor areas, rather than the areas where whites have self-\nsegregated, that get the most attention from policymakers, who have sought to\nameliorate concentrated poverty in segregated areas by moving families from\nblack, urban areas to white suburbs. Beginning in 1989\"\n\nIt's not just whites that have 'self-segregated', it's anyone that wants to\nlive and raise their kids in an area that isn't full of illegal drugs,\ncriminals, gangs, and people that can't or won't take care of their own\nproperty.\n\nI refused to subject my family to these areas and I don't care if it looks\nlike I'm \"self-segregating\". I'm not going to allow someone's poor life\nchoices to dictate my life path.\n\nI lived in a neighborhood where this happened (government subsidy allowed the\npoor to move into a middle-class neighborhood at a fraction of the cost).\n\nSkin color didn't matter. 9 times out of 10, the house ended up trashed with\ngarbage or kids toys all over the lawn. It was un-kept and none of the rules\nof the neighborhood were almost ever followed.\n\nWe shouldn't be blaming anyone for actually having a nice home, following\nrules, being successful, and generally being a good citizen.\n\n~~~\nRawrshack\n>kids toys all over the lawn\n\nGood grief, what a dystopian nightmare you endured living with those savages!\nSounds like something straight out of Mad Max!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017) - andygcook\nhttps://thehustle.co/hot-cheetos-inventor/\n======\narkades\nThis article ends right before the actual interesting part begins.\n\nJanitor takes some food his company produces, adds spices, makes a shitty\npitch deck and profit? Cool, but... this could have easily happened in a dozen\ndifferent configurations and gone nowhere. This is more luck than anything\nelse.\n\nThe interesting story begins _after_ that. This guy didn't end his career\nthere - so, presumably, he was't a one-hit wonder. We have an illiterate\njanitor who suddenly got swept into the orbit of the CEO, without any business\nor operational acumen. He somehow -how??- managed to learn the ways of the new\ntribe, learn business, learn to read and write, learn how to lead a business\nunit, and do it well. This guy came out of nowhere, and had to zero-to-sixty\nfrom manual laborer to - what? executive? What position did they put him in?\nHow did he ramp up? What kind of support did he get, if any? What kind of\neducation did they provide him with, if any?\n\nThere's a long, interesting story between \"janitor\" and \"successful VP\", and\nthey neglected to tell almost any of it!\n\n~~~\nw8rbt\nThe point is that the CEO was open minded (he took a phone call from a\njanitor... and actually listened to him and then gave him a chance). He saw\npast this mans lack of education and experience and focused on his dedication\nand enthusiasm. There's value in everyone, everywhere (even the lowest\nemployees). We need leaders who can put ego aside and see that. IMO, that was\nthe point of the story. The subsequent success of this man is another story\nentirely (and a good one I bet). I'm just glad that someone recognized his\ntalent.\n\nEdit: Credit also goes to the secretary for putting the call through to the\nCEO and not acting as a gate-keeper. She could have ended the call.\nThankfully, she was open minded too.\n\n~~~\njackvalentine\nMy takeaway was that not only was a janitor directly employed by the company\n(as cleaning services are basically 100% outsourced in my experience now) but\nwas paid well and felt part of the company such that he was motivated to stay\ninterested and contribute.\n\n~~~\ntriangleman\nYes that is quite the anachronism these days.\n\n~~~\nddingus\nToo bad. Perhaps there is an opportunity cost argument for a better\nalternative.\n\n~~~\nSketchySeaBeast\nI imagine it's super hard to quantify the profit of \"ideas from janitor\", but\nsuper easy to quantify the savings of \"no longer paying for a janitor\".\n\nPlus, if every company has a gentleman's agreement to ignore the help then\nthere's no lost opportunity that the competition can jump on.\n\n~~~\nddingus\nSure there is, they all just agree to ignore it.\n\n------\nstarpilot\nMy takeaway: there are huge potential markets in people who are not like me.\nThe execs were probably completely unaware of this market, and it took an\noutsider to hold their hand and bring it to them. I love flaming hot cheetos\nand know tons of people who do, but there is no way I would have thought of\ntaking the hot pepper / other spices from a traditional Mexican food (elotes,\nwhich I had in LA) and adapting them in this way. The fact that everyone I\ninteract with forms an upper class monoculture (white/asian, college educated,\n20s-40s, mostly US-born) means that I have huge blindspots. I wonder what huge\nbusinesses could be created catering toward senior citizens, for middle aged\npeople working retail, recent Asian immigrants, working single fathers, and so\non.\n\n~~~\nnews_to_me\nThis is why diversity is so important! Not only in business, but in general —\neveryone has huge blind spots, no matter what background they have. Life is\nmuch larger and more diverse than people usually imagine. Interacting and\nlearning from people with different backgrounds than yours is a fundamentally\nrewarding experience, although it can be hard at times.\n\n~~~\nslimsag\nI 100% agree.\n\nBut it's important that diversity be considered in all forms, not just based\non race/sex.\n\nIf your \"diverse\" team is made up of different ethnicities and genders but\nonly consists of ivy league members who grew up in California... well, not\nreally diverse then, is it?\n\n~~~\nopportune\nClass diversity is pretty hard to achieve because you usually need some\nbaseline class to actually be able to succeed in a role, i.e. you can't show\nup to a meeting with customers or shareholders chewing dip and wearing camo\njorts. And social mobility from lower classes into corporate-ready roles is\nrather low in this country, so while there certainly are people who grew up\npoor and would be useful for companies to figure out what lower class\nconsumers might need, there aren't many of them; furthermore, for the people\nwho did grow up that way and into being a person able to function in the\ncorporate sphere, it's probably in part due to their rejection of their poor\nbackground.\n\nMaybe we just need more focus groups.\n\n~~~\nBurningFrog\nHere's the real divider: Viewpoint diversity.\n\nAre you ready to have some conservatives/Republicans on your team?\n\n~~~\nbzudo\nViewpoint diversity? Republican/conservative seems to be the default state in\nmost corporations.\n\n~~~\nBurningFrog\nYou clearly don't work in Silicon Valley :)\n\n~~~\nken\nYes, it's possible bzudo is one of the 99.9% of people who does not work in\nSV.\n\n~~~\nBurningFrog\nIf we're only 0.1% who work, I understand why I've been feeling tired...\n\n------\nrootedbox\nFrito Lay was a great place to work at because they did promote up, and they\nalso hired the best. I would often be in meetings where one logistics manager\nwent to MIT and the other logistics manager would be someone who started at a\nplant boxing chips.\n\n~~~\npolartx\nMy dad literally went from putting the chips in the boxes when he was 23 years\nold, to overseeing the construction of a brand new manufacturing plant (and\nrunning it), to managing scores of plants at HQ in his 40's.\n\nFrito-Lay however, is not immune from boneheaded decisions. After 20someodd\nyears of employment, and a trophy case full of awards, he and some of his\n[white male] colleagues were laid off in favor of creating a more 'diverse'\nmanagement roster.\n\nLacking the experience of those whose positions they took, performance tanked\nwith the new management team, and the person who set it all in motion was\nfired.\n\nAt the end of the day, revenue-per-share is pretty indifferent to age, race,\nor gender.\n\n~~~\ntylerhou\n> At the end of the day, revenue-per-share is pretty indifferent to age, race,\n> or gender.\n\nExcept, as the article shows, diversity _often does_ increase revenue share.\nFlamin' hot cheetos were invented by a Mexican immigrant who realized that\nFrito-Lay didn't have any products which appealed to Latino people.\n\nEDIT: Changed Latinx to Latino.\n\n~~~\nthrowawaycanuck\n>Latinx\n\nThere is no faster way to discredit your argument than using absurd language\nlike latinx. I've yet to meet a latino person who referred to themselves as\nanything else.\n\n~~~\ng_sch\nI'm interested (and somewhat taken aback) by the intensity of the reactions to\nthis term. Maybe it's a generational/political thing? For my part, I know\nsignificantly more people who refer to themselves as \"Latinx\" than \"Latino\".\n\n~~~\npram\nI don’t like being called Chicano, Latin, or Hispanic. It’s seemingly only a\nUS thing afaict. My family is from Mexico and “Mexican” suffices.\n\nIt seems like they’re just terms to lump a bunch of legitimately different\npeople and cultures into a single, convenient demographic. That’s how I feel\nabout it anyway. Not saying people shouldn’t identify with it, if that’s how\nthey feel. :V\n\n~~~\nthe_pwner224\n> It seems like they’re just terms to lump a bunch of legitimately different\n> people and cultures into a single, convenient demographic.\n\nI'm an Indian living in the US. If I see another brown skinned person who does\nnot look Indian, what should I call them? There are many Mexicans into the US,\nbut there are also people from other countries in South America etc. I have no\nidea what Hispanic actually means, but I've heard it (and Latino) commonly\nused to refer to that group of people in general, and those the words that I\nuse too.\n\nIf you were in Africa and saw a white skinned person, would you call them\nAmerican or White? Calling them White would \"lump a bunch of legitimately\ndifferent people and cultures into a single, convenient demographic,\" but that\nlumping is necessary since you can't know someone's culture just by looking at\nthem - or even after you have known them for a while.\n\n~~~\numanwizard\nTo be technically accurate, you should say they are Native American, or of\nmixed Native American and European ancestry (btw, the Spanish word for this is\n“mestizo” which means mixed).\n\nI’m aware that nobody actually says this in real life, but this is what people\nin the US usually mean when they think of “typical Latino-looking person”.\n\nIn reality though, “Latino” is not a very precise way to describe someone with\nthat phenotype, because just like Canada and the US and other countries with a\nmajor history of colonialism, there are people of all racial ancestries in\nLatin America. This is largely ignored in the Western US, I suspect because\nmost of the “Latino” people there are from Mexico and Central America, where\nmost of the population looks like what you describe.\n\nBut Latin America started out with all the same major groups that the US did:\nNative Americans, European settlers, African slaves, Asian immigrants, etc.,\nand so you would expect to find all the same ancestries there as you would in\nthe US, just in different proportions.\n\nAnd indeed, in places like Uruguay and Argentina, the majority of people would\nbe considered “white” according to US racial classification norms. In the\nCaribbean, many would be considered “black”. In Brazil there are a lot of\npeople of Japanese descent.\n\nBut even in Mexico there are people who look like this: [https://specials-\nimages.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5b147c3d4bb...](https://specials-\nimages.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5b147c3d4bbe6f74868b747c/416x416.jpg?background=000000&cropX1=1318&cropX2=3259&cropY1=77&cropY2=2020)\n\nThat guy is Mexican and Latino and Hispanic by any possible definition of\nthose terms, and also “white” (I.e., of primarily Western European ancestry).\n\nThe point is: “Latino” and “Hispanic” are not directly connected to phenotypes\nor biological ancestry in the way you are assuming.\n\nIn general I don’t understand why it is so important to describe people by\ntheir ancestry, as opposed to their actual culture. If you see a white person\nin India you can be 99.99% sure they are not culturally Indian, but you can’t\nreally conclude anything similar in the US.\n\n------\ncamjohnson26\nThis is a fantastic story. There are a few ethical problems including Montañez\nplagiarizing parts of his presentation and having friends and family buy out\nthe products in the test market, but overall he refused to accept imposed\nlimits and accomplished something phenomenal.\n\nOne interesting thing is that Frito-Lay had no products targeting Latinos, and\nno one on the highly paid marketing team did anything about it. The janitor\nsaw the problem immediately, but for some reason the entrenched interests were\nunable to see it. The CEO by contrast was humble enough to take Montañez’s\ncall, let him give a presentation, and overlook that presentation’s weaknesses\nto see the good idea at the core.\n\nAlso interesting is the backlash he faced from those same executives, jealous\nthat someone less qualified was being successful. As humans we hate to see\nothers doing better than us and try to push them down. No wonder social\nmobility is so difficult.\n\n~~~\nwutbrodo\n(Note that I reductively throw around cultural class labels like \"lower-middle\nclass\" in this comment for purposes of clarity: I don't mean to suggest that a\nperson's social class is fixed, or well-defined, but it's just a brief way to\nget at the concept of different subcultures and their mannerisms, as well as\nthe rough income bands that people tend to associate with them)\n\n> Also interesting is the backlash he faced from those same executives,\n> jealous that someone less qualified was being successful. As humans we hate\n> to see others doing better than us and try to push them down. No wonder\n> social mobility is so difficult.\n\nThis dynamic is far more dominant than most people realize. I grew up around\nlots of rich people, coming from a historically-wealthy family with little\nmoney[1] (yay scholarships!), so my default mannerisms signal upper-class\npretty strongly. I've always been pretty disgusted with the notion of treating\npeople differently based on their background, so I decided it wasn't a system\nI would personally participate in, and semi-consciously changed my diction and\nhabits to be more déclassé over the course of my teen and college years (to my\nparents' minor annoyance).\n\nOnce I entered the professional and adult dating world, I noticed the degree\nto which even otherwise-decent people could't resist pre-judging you based on\nthe class that your mannerisms signaled. Depressingly enough, I got by far the\nmost friction from my lower-middle class friends for the mannerisms that I had\nretained from my childhood[2]. Note that I'm not talking about things like\nfussing over which salad fork to use (habits that I'm happy to have jettisoned\nwhen young), but often-minor differences in diction, habits, and manners (eg,\nwhen and how often I choose to thank you to service employees, how comfortable\nI am expressing how a piece of art or music makes me feel, etc).\n\nAfter a certain amount of pushing against the tide, I eventually stopped\ntrying to casualize my mannerisms, and over a fairly short period of time\nended up reverting to communicating pretty much the way I used to when younger\n(adjusted for age, obviously). It's been simultaneously amusing and depressing\nto note the difference in how I've been treated, most notably with respect to\nfemale attention and my professional life. I won't even try to delve into the\nfemale attention side, but my best guess for the way the baseline of every\nprofessional conversation has shifted is that I went from \"scrappy & unusually\ntalented\" to \"bred for success\". Again, I find this pretty repulsive, but it's\nbeen pretty hard to argue with results. The differences are often hard to\narticulate, but it's almost like I start every professional conversation from\nan implicit position of power that I didn't have before.\n\nI'm not really sure what to do about this: my initial thought that trying to\nchange society to treat individuals like humans instead of branded cattle\nneeded first movers, and I was happy to be one of them. But discovering the\ndegree to which class distinctions are subtly maintained by _even those who\nsuffer the most from them_ was enormously dispiriting.\n\nPeople are weird.\n\n[1] by which I mean, I grew up in a historically-well-off family that had\nlittle money growing up due to some severe mental health issues in my\nimmediate family\n\n[2] oddly enough, it's been my experience that the most zealous enforcement of\nclass segregation in social contexts is from the bottom-up; I've never had\ntrouble bringing random lower-middle class friends to hang out with friends\nwho grew up with upper-class mannerisms. It's a rather dejecting thought that\nclass segregation in a social context has so many (implicit) enthusiastic\nsupporters among those being hurt by it the most\n\n~~~\nwhatshisface\n> _it 's been my experience that the most zealous enforcement of class\n> segregation in social contexts is from the bottom-up_\n\nYou perceive subtle rejection a lot more strongly than you perceive someone\nelse being subtly rejected. The effect you perceive could be explained by\npointing out that all of the negative interactions involving you were \"bottom-\nup,\" while the ones involving the \"random lower-middle class friends,\" were\ntop-down.\n\n~~~\nwutbrodo\nThat's a very insightful point, but I'm not comparing the way my friends\ninteract with me to the way I interact with them, but rather the way friends\nin a lower social class interacted with me vs the way those in a (sort of)\nhigher social class interacted with me. I feel like not having much money\nmeant that there were ways in which I was out of place among my childhood\nmilieu too. And yet somehow, I don't recall ever being made to feel out of my\nplace by anyone.\n\nThis is obviously partially attributable to the fact that everything about my\nparents' and my mannerisms fit in well, despite not actually having money. But\nI feel like the actual (significant) financial gap between me and my social\ncircles provided plenty of opportunity for social friction, and I literally\ndon't remember a single instance of it coming from that group.\n\nMore importantly, it would be predictable for people to enforce the advantages\nthat a rigid class system affords them, but it's unexpected to me for those\ngetting the short end of the stick to be enforcing the system more zealously\n(albeit in a limited context) than those benefiting from it.\n\n(It really bugs me that my comments keep referring to class as if it's a real,\nimportant thing about someone's character, but I guess that's sort of the\npoint of my comment: the perhaps-naive disillusionment that I felt upon\nrealizing how insistent most are on enforcing it)\n\n~~~\nwhatshisface\nClass comes from behavior, which is I guess what you are saying - but it's\nreal, as real as body language or your native language. This would also imply\nthat if you talked enough about how art made you feel around your people, you\nwould be exempt from getting rejected by your extended family. I'm not sure if\nthere is a class in America higher than rich (Zuckerberg class?) but if there\nwas, you would have to hang out around them to really test your theory.\n\n~~~\nwutbrodo\n> This would also imply that if you talked enough about how art made you feel\n> around your people, you would be exempt from getting rejected by your\n> extended family.\n\nFirst off, this is a pretty bizarre interpretation of what I said: no one\ncares if you _don't_ talk about how art makes you feel. It's the rule that you\n_can't_ talk about it that gets enforced, in certain circles. I should also\nnote that this isn't some esoteric desire: I've been on drugs with these\nfriends enough times to hear them talking about how art makes them feel, but\nthe difference is that, when sober, they not only feel too inhibited to do so\nbut they feel like they have to mock others who do as \"pretentious\".\n\nSecondly, I dont know what you mean by getting rejected by my extended family.\nThat's certainly not something that's ever happened, either with my family or\nother people of the same class. The positive treatment I noticed from class\nsignaling (unitentional or otherwise) was entirely from women or in a\nprofessional context.\n\n------\nbendbro\nVery impressed with the janitor's vision and the CEOs good leadership. A poor\nleader would have quashed the process when the janitor could not justify his\nidea. Being a good leader, the CEO came up with a solution to determine the\nviability of the janitor's idea.\n\nThe difference between seniors and juniors is experience, and that experience\ncan partially be defined by your \"moveset\". A janitor would not know it is\npossible to run a limited trial, but the CEO would. I have found that managers\nare often amenable to ideas from their workers. But, if a worker does not have\na full moveset, it will be difficult for the worker to pitch an idea in a way\nthat is actionable, and he will be turned down.\n\n~~~\nspaceflunky\nGreat comment. It takes a hell of a CEO to squash any ego they have and stop\nto listen to the janitor about what direction their business should take.\n\n------\ngreghatch\n> “It hit me that I had no idea what he was talking about, or what I was\n> doing,” Montañez recalled. “I was shaking, and I damn near wanted to pass\n> out…[but] I opened my arms and I said, ‘This much market share!’ I didn’t\n> even know how ridiculous that looked.”\n\n>The room went silent as the CEO stood up and smiled. “Ladies and gentlemen,\ndo you realize we have an opportunity to go after this much market share?” he\nsaid, stretching out his arms.\n\nHuge smiles from me here.\n\nThis really amplifies the willingness of this CEO to listen and promote good\nideas. I don't have a ton more context but I can relate to this janitor in\nmany ways and this reaction from the CEO would be incredible.\n\nI'm so glad it happened this way and that it came from the janitor's\nperspective.\n\n~~~\nelicash\nThat quote is missing some context that I think makes the story even more\nimpressive.\n\nSo, this was before the Hot Cheeto idea. Montañez was looking for ways of\nadvancing inside of the company and had asked a salesperson if he could trail\nhim as he did his routes. This was on Montañez's day off work, so it was\nunpaid. The advantage to the salesperson was an extra set of hands for\nunloading.\n\nHe saw the shelf or whatever the terminology is and how much FritoLay product\nthey were selling in the individual stores. That's what he had in mind when he\nused his arms to say how much market share. The question scared him\n(apparently he and his wife hadn't gotten to the \"market share\" chapter in the\nbook they got from the library) until he remembered that day following the\nsalesperson and so the punchline is that he thought he nailed the answer.\n\n------\nirrational\n“I do have a Ph.D.,” he responded. “I’ve been poor, hungry and determined.”\n\nLove that.\n\n~~~\npbhjpbhj\nI hate it. I think it belittles Ph.D's and denigrates the people who don't\nhave them suggesting that you need to deflect the question because you\n[sarcasm] couldn't possibly have a skill set that's of high worth unless you\nactually had done a Ph.D [/sarcasm].\n\nBleurgh.\n\nFWIW my highest level of qualification is a bachelor's degree and I work in a\nposition that doesn't require any formal training at all.\n\n~~~\nmartyvis\nHis Ph.D response was a retort to people questioning his qualifications to\nconduct lectures. Almost every real Ph.D certainly deserved them, recognising\ntheir knowledge or research in their field. However many of those with Ph.Ds\nwere not the best lecturers and teachers they could be when I was an\nundergraduate at university. They actually hadn't been taught to teach\neffectively and present their knowledge in way that others could absorb.\n(Thank God for good text books and helpful tutors in my case). It sounds like\nRichard Montañez' experience in the \"school of hard knocks\" may well have set\nhim above many regular Ph.Ds in capability to lecture and teach.\n\n~~~\npbhjpbhj\nWell, exactly. You don't have to have a Ph.D to be an expert, to be a good\nlecturer, etc..\n\nBut having a Ph.D is nonetheless a demonstration of a particular high-level of\nlearning, research, and technical ability.\n\n------\nWalterBright\nI love this story. It's not about how Montañez \"got lucky\" \\- it's about how\nhe, in several key spots, set himself up so luck would find him.\n\nIt's a great American success story.\n\n~~~\naxiom92\nAlso from the article:\n\n> Six months later, with Montañez’s help, Frito-Lay began testing Flamin’ Hot\n> Cheetos in small Latino markets in East Los Angeles.\n\n> If it performed well, the company would move forward with the product; if it\n> didn’t, they’d scratch it — and Montañez would likely return to janitorial\n> duties.\n\n> So Montañez assembled a small team of family members and friends, went to\n> the test markets, and bought every bag of Hot Cheetos he could find.\n\n> “I’d tell the owner, ‘Man, these are great,’” he recalled. “Next week, I’d\n> come back and there’d be a whole rack.”\n\n:-)\n\n~~~\nfma\nIf I remember correctly, Sid Meiers would call up computer stores and ask if\nthey had his games in stock because he wanted to buy it. He'd call several\ntimes and eventually the stores would reach out to him to buy it.\n\n~~~\nblarg1\nI wonder if he had to come up with different voice disguises.\n\n------\ncrankylinuxuser\nThe days when someone can start as a janitor or in the mailroom and climb to\nthe top is done.\n\nCompanies used to hire everyone in the company. Janitors were part of the\ncompany. So was mailroom staff. So were secretaries. Everybody was part of the\nwhole.\n\nNow, companies contract out everything but their core thing. Janitors come\nfrom a low-paid 3rd party service. Mailrooms are no longer a thing (there's no\nsuch thing as emailrooms, unless you count exchange admins). All those things\nthat allowed somebody to start at the bottom rung in a company and climb up\nhave been systematically destroyed and/or removed.\n\n~~~\ntrefn\nIt may just look different now.\n\nAt my company (Mixpanel), the modern equivalent is our support team, which is\nfilled with smart, hungry people who want to get their foot in the door in\ntech.\n\nNow, we have former support folks all over the company (sales, sales\nengineering, services, software engineering, product - just to name the\ndepartments I can think of offhand), who are often our top performers as ICs\nor who have grown into leadership roles. Some have left to start their own\ncompanies.\n\nIt's actually been one of our most effective hiring channels!\n\n~~~\nts4z\nAt your company, the modern equivalent is the janitor, who cleans your office\n-- but doesn't work directly for Mixpanel.\n\n------\ndanso\nGreat story. When I read the headline, I immediately thought of D'Angelo\nBarksdale's cynical speculation about the inventor of Chicken McNuggets being\na \"just some sad ass down in the basement of McDonalds, thinking up some shit\nto make some money for the real players\":\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyg_v7Vxo4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyg_v7Vxo4A)\n\n------\nbmmayer1\nThis is one of the best business stories I've ever read. It embodies the core\nprinciple of the American dream: that you can really make it if you are\ndedicated, work hard, and strike out on the right idea. It also highlights the\nimportance of good leadership, to recognize good ideas no matter where they\ncome from, and bottom-up management techniques that emphasize collective\nownership of a company's products and success.\n\n------\nripvanwinkle\nInspirational.\n\nI'd love to hear names of companies today where folks feel their work place\nculture might allow something like this to happen.\n\n~~~\njonathlee\nI work at Nucor and know of several people who have done exactly this in the\n20 years I've worked here. They started working in a entry level production\nposition and worked their way up to department manager, division manager/VP,\nsenior VP and even CEO in one case.\n\n~~~\nsimonrobb\nI've almost finished reading \"Good to Great\" (an excellent read, for whoever\nhasn't read it already) which analyzes Nucor's company culture. Nice to hear\nthe reality matches the analysis.\n\n------\ndarkpuma\nI just wish they'd make them hotter. Takis are kicking their ass in the spicy\nsnack aisle.\n\n~~~\nbluedino\nI have never found any flavor of takis to actually be “hot”\n\n~~~\ndarkpuma\nNot \"capsicum hot\" per se, but very flavorful. More salty and acidic I guess.\nBut it's a very bold and complex flavor, a top tier snack imho.\n\n~~~\ndomsnar\nI recently moved to Europe and can not find any vendor that supplies Takis.\nFor me they are basically crack and I can't get my fix. Maybe it's for the\nbetter, as I can go through two large bags in one sitting..\n\n------\nJimBrimble35\nThe real hero of this story is the CEO who decided to take this guy _and_ his\nidea. He could have easily taken the idea and ran with it on his own, with\nMontañez spending the rest of his life mopping floors.\n\nI wonder how likely this scenario would be in today's world. I have found\npersonally that many companies are unwilling to take risks on employees who\naren't formally qualified, even if they demonstrate the skills to operate at\nfar beyond their current pay grade.\n\nSecond real hero of the story is his wife. How important is it to have people\naround you who will enable you do things you aren't qualified to do because\nthey believe in you unconditionally? All of the importants.\n\n~~~\njakelazaroff\n_> The real hero of this story is the CEO who decided to take this guy _and_\nhis idea. He could have easily taken the idea and ran with it on his own, with\nMontañez spending the rest of his life mopping floors._\n\nA practical question, and a moral one:\n\nWould it be have worked out had the CEO tried to steal Montañez's idea, given\nMontañez came up with the spices himself?\n\nDoes someone merely not doing something unethical, at no cost to themselves,\nmake them a hero?\n\n~~~\ndanso\n\"real hero\" is definitely overstating it – I'd hope we as a society haven't\nreached the point where doing the decent thing is seen as going above and\nbeyond. Hopefully the CEO saw it not only as just the right thing to do, but\nalso the smart (and legal) thing to do – Montañez's story could in the long-\nrun inspire more innovative ideas and culture at the company.\n\n~~~\nJimBrimble35\nSorry, but we have _definitely_ reached that point. Granted I'm extremely\ncynical, but stories like this are outliers and not the norm. And not simply\nbecause of the scale of the success.\n\nRead my other comment on why I consider the CEO the hero of this story.\n\n------\ndom96\nThis is a great story. I'm surprised to not see Ketchup Cheetos[1] mentioned\nin the linked timeline[2], those are by far my favourites so I wonder what the\nstory behind them is.\n\n1 - [https://americanfizz.co.uk/image/cache/catalog/european-\nprod...](https://americanfizz.co.uk/image/cache/catalog/european-\nproducts/cheetos/cheetos-ketchup-85g-800x800.png)\n\n2 - [https://www.timelinemaker.com/blog/featured-\ntimeline/history...](https://www.timelinemaker.com/blog/featured-\ntimeline/history-of-cheetos-timeline/)\n\n~~~\nFreeKill\nI've always found it interesting that ketchup flavoring on frito lay products\nwere not a bigger thing. In canada, ketchup flavored chips etc. are a very\npopular flavor and have been around for decades. Just never seems to really\nhave caught on elsewhere until somewhate recently.\n\n~~~\ndom96\nOooh, another reason to visit Canada. My love for Ketchup Cheetos comes from\nPoland, where ketchup flavoured crisps are fairly popular as well.\n\n------\nz3t4\n> “How much market share do you think you can get?” \"I opened my arms and I\n> said, ‘This much market share!’\"\n\nBrilliant answer for a stupid question that was probably meant to put him\ndown.\n\n> Frito-Lay began testing Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in small Latino markets in East\n> Los Angeles. If it performed well, the company would move forward with the\n> product; if it didn’t, they’d scratch it\n\nSo Montañez assembled a small team of family members and friends, went to the\ntest markets, and bought every bag of Hot Cheetos he could find.\n\nAlso brilliant, as such a \"test\" would certainly fail due to no marketing,\nlikely intentional by the exec's and politics.\n\n~~~\n11thEarlOfMar\nThis was the same CEO who took a call from a janitor. It wasn't a put down.\nThis was an interview, and the question was open ended on purpose to see how\nhe responded.\n\n~~~\njackvalentine\nThe CEO wasn't the one asking the question.\n\n------\ndebatem1\nThat's an incredible story and props to the guy, but let's not tapdance around\nthe fact that this is incredible specifically because social mobility on this\nscale is extremely rare. It took both exceptional determination and\nunbelievable luck to make this happen. How many others have the doggedness and\nskill, but not the luck? How many of them are still mopping today?\n\n~~~\nMacross8299\n>because social mobility on this scale is extremely rare\n\nRare only works as a qualifier when comparing it to some other probability of\nsocial mobility, either in an ideal or real system. The US has higher social\nmobility than most actual countries in the world and is pretty much middle of\nthe pack in social mobility when it comes to developed (OECD) nations [0]\n\nIf I recall correctly, there was another case of a janitor working her way up\nto becoming a C-level executive at Microsoft and HP. Capitalism with a social\nsafety net is what affords this social mobility because it doesn't matter what\nyour credentials are if you can find a market for a novel product like\nMontañez did. You can argue about how much of a social safety net is required\nto prevent the poor from staying poor forever, but it's still capitalism that\nprovides the impetus that lifts people up to where they don't need the social\nsafety net anymore.\n\nCompare this to a society where you're hooped if you're born into the wrong\ncaste or without party connections and US social mobility doesn't seem that\nrare anymore.\n\n[0]: [https://www.oecd.org/inclusive-growth/inequality-and-\nopportu...](https://www.oecd.org/inclusive-growth/inequality-and-\nopportunity/The-Issues-Note-Social-Mobility-and-Equal-Opportunities-\nMay-4-2017.pdf) figure 2\n\n~~~\ndebatem1\nI'm left unsure what your point is.\n\nSaying that you have to look at social mobility as a relative thing is\ncertainly false, because we have an optimal yardstick: perfect fairness. If\nmeasured against that goal we don't do very well.\n\nThen you go into what the relative numbers are, and it turns out we don't do\nvery well there either, being behind China, Hungary, South Africa and perhaps\na dozen others on your preferred yardstick.\n\nYou then note that there are at least one or two more cases of this happening\n(which I believe), and that it requires capitalism with a social safety net to\ndo so. In current application the first part is right, but isn't broadly\ncorrect, and the second part just isn't true.\n\nRegarding the first part: for such a huge change in life circumstances to\nhappen you have to have both the extreme poverty and extreme wealth.\nCapitalism is very good at generating those huge disparities, and is by far\nthe most common system with that characteristic today, but monarchies like\nSaudi Arabia also experience it (extreme individual changes in SES in Saudi\nArabia are most downward, however). The presence of a social safety net\ndoesn't seem to play much of a role in these extreme cases, and certainly\ndidn't in this case. Examples of self-made millionaires going back to early\ncolonial history abound, and certainly there was no strong safety net in\nplace. Given the relative infrequency of such events, I would be skeptical of\nany attempt to compare between two historical periods or societies based on\nrelative count between those societies or periods as well.\n\nAfter all that the only thing I can think you were trying to say is that the\nUS is doing a-ok, which just isn't supported by the points you made.\n\n------\nrb808\n> “it’s not about who you know — it’s about who knows you.”\n\nI've never heard that before, its an awesome quote.\n\n------\nshripadk\nI loved this article but I loved their Newsletter conversion page the most! I\nnever thought I would feel warm and fuzzy after giving away my email address\nto subscribe to a newsletter of all things! Live to learn something new\neveryday!\n\n------\nmiguelmota\nWhat a great and inspiring story.\n\n> “Nobody had given any thought to the Latino market,” recalls Montañez. “But\n> everywhere I looked, I saw it ready to explode.”\n\nIt's incredible what a new set of eyes with different perspectives can bring\nto the table.\n\n------\nmxfh\nWhat about those 300k employees in the 80s? That just sounds way off-scale and\nhints to sloppy editing elsewhere. The only number close to this is what they\ncall their direct distibution system customers.\n\nThis article NYT from 1986 mentions 26.500 employees:\n[https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/02/business/frito-lay-s-\ngo-i...](https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/02/business/frito-lay-s-go-it-alone-\nploicy.html)\n\n------\ngdix\nWhat a nice feel-good story which is totally not a marketing/PR concoction,\nalbeit a brilliant one. The story is literally the Cheeto version of Good Will\nHunting.\n\nDo you all honestly believe none of the hundreds of food scientists working at\nFrito-Lay thought of making a spicy version their snacks?\n\n------\nl0c0b0x\nWhen he broke the news to his family, his grandfather imparted a piece of\nadvice that would always stick with him: “Make sure that floor shines,” the\nman told his grandson. “And let them know that a Montañez mopped it.”\n\nAs a Latino with humble beginnings, this brought tears to my eyes.\n\n------\nHillaryBriss\nThis is my favorite part of this story: _“It seemed there was a group of\n[executives] who wanted it to fail,” he later told the podcast, The Passionate\nFew. “They thought I got lucky. They were paid big bucks to come up with these\nideas… they didn’t want some janitor to do it.”_\n\n------\nsynchronos\nHere's an insightful interview with the man himself -\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADnYF7srPK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADnYF7srPK0)\n\n------\nthtthings\nBest thing i ever read on HN\n\n------\njayeshsalvi\nInspirational story, but let's not forget about the nutritional value of the\nCheetos (or lack thereof)\n\n------\ngumby\nman I love this story. And I wonder how many huge multinationals are smart\nenough to let something like this happen?\n\nAnd this is why VCs often say they prefer teams with just domain expertise to\nteams with just the technical expertise, if the team doesn't already have\nboth.\n\n------\nzaroth\n“How much market share do you think we can get?”\n\nArms spread wide, “This much!”\n\nThat is just too perfect. Who’s cutting onions in here?\n\n------\nmentos\nRead the whole article but did not see any mention of if he was compensated at\nall for his idea?\n\n~~~\nrconti\nIt didn't say anything about him being compensated directly for the idea.\nPresumably as he moved up the ranks he got compensated via profit-sharing. In\nthe same way the highly paid guys who were SUPPOSED to be inventing new things\nlike this (but didn't) were also compensated. And the same way they would have\nbeen compensated if they developed some hot new product (eg, at their same\nrate relative to the profit sharing of the whole org).\n\n------\nRickJWagner\nWhat an awesome story.\n\n....he was going to be the “best janitor Frito-Lay had ever seen”\n\nThat's the enabler, right there.\n\n------\nrocketraman\nWonderful story. Both the janitor and the CEO epitomize Ayn Rand's \"ideal\nman\":\n\n> \"The moral issue is: how do you approach the field of work given your\n> intellectual endowment and the existing possibilities? Are you going through\n> the motions of holding a job, without focus or ambition, waiting for\n> weekends, vacations, and retirement? Or are you doing the most and the best\n> that you can with your life? Have you committed yourself to a purpose, i.e.,\n> to a productive career? Have you picked a field that makes demands on you,\n> and are you striving to meet them, to do good work, and to build on it -- to\n> expand your knowledge, develop your ability, improve your efficiency?\n\n> If the answers to these last questions are yes, then you are totally\n> virtuous in regard to productiveness, whether you are a surgeon or a\n> steelworker, a house painter or a painter of landscapes, a janitor or a\n> company president.\"\n\n(HT: [http://gusvanhorn.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-janitors-multi-\nbill...](http://gusvanhorn.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-janitors-multi-billion-\ndollar-idea.html))\n\n------\nkitten_smuggler\nWow, its been a while since I've read something that inspirational!\n\n------\nphillco\nThis is very well written. They get in, they tell the story, they get out.\n\n------\ntest6554\nMy asshole would like to have some stern words with that guy\n\n------\nedisonjoao\nlove this\n\n------\nspacedog11\nVery interesting.\n\n~~~\nJimBrimble35\nindeed\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShame on you Microsoft, for buying a Promoted Tweet for \"Firefox\".  - rbanffy\nhttp://twitpic.com/4c6nth\n\n======\nrch\nActually, that's kinda awesome. Talk about effective use of marketing.\n\n------\nsamgro\nWhy is that shameful? Buying AdWords for competitor searches on Google is\nstandard practice, why should Twitter be any different?\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\nCompeting aggressively against a non-profit? Classy!\n\n~~~\nsamgro\nHow does Firefox's tax status have anything to do with Microsoft's business\nobjectives? I hate IE as much as the next guy, but I don't see how Microsoft\nmarketing their business is morally questionable just because their competitor\ngets tax breaks and doesn't pay dividends to shareholders.\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\nWhat would you think of a paid-but-cheap clinic with shady methods and far-\nfrom-best care practices (let's say they kill or mutilate 2% of their\npatients) that targets search-advertisements towards people in need of free\nhealthcare?\n\nOh, and according to Tom Warren, of Winrumors, \"The company was quick to trash\nthe marketing stunt after complaints started rolling-in on the social\nnetworking site.\" so, they probably realize it didn't get down well with the\npublic.\n\n~~~\nsamgro\nI agree that IE is a bad product, and that this marketing campaign may even\nhave been counter-effective. I still don't see how a bad product or a bad\nmarketing campaign are \"evil\". That being said, my life as a web developer\nwould be better if IE disappeared off the face of the earth, but I don't\nforecast that happening any time soon :(\n\n------\nrch\nHow much would a \"Try Fedora/Ubuntu/etc. Live CD for Free\" promoted tweet cost\nwhen the next version of Windows ships?\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\nI don't know. Kickstarter to the rescue?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nOpen Source Climate Data - grandalf\n\nEvidently the source data is still available from NOAA.  Would anyone on HN be interested in creating a fully open source set of tools for generating a climate data set?<p>The project should simply be a script that expects to find the raw NOAA measurement data in a directory and that outputs a single csv file.<p>The NOAA data availability is mentioned here:  http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/35233_Did_Climate_Scientists_Destroy_Data_A-_No<p>Anyone interested in collaborating?  I'm pretty handy with awk.  Over time this could turn into a great resource for climate change research.\n======\nfuruiman\nCheck the Alliance for Global Open Risk Analysis (AGORA)\n\nwww.risk-agora.org\n\nand post there. Maybe there will be people interested to help.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNew leaker disclosing U.S. secrets, government concludes [video] - sinak\nhttp://www.cnn.com/2014/08/05/politics/u-s-new-leaker/index.html\n\n======\ndeedubaya\nTheir choice of wording already sets this person up to not be a Whistle\nBlower.\n\nMole => Wrong Doer => Terrorist\n\n------\nsarciszewski\nA few of my more paranoid* friends already suggested this a while back, this\njust proves it. :D\n\n* Possibly s/paranoid/informed/\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy Snapchat Spectacles failed - alfozan\nhttps://techcrunch.com/2017/10/28/why-snapchat-spectacles-failed/\n======\ncocktailpeanuts\nIt's amazing how you can write a whole article on this, but the gist is they\nbuilt something with low utility value. period.\n\nIf you look at it from this point of view, everything else is just side\neffect.\n\n\\- It failed because it's not fashionable? => No. See bluetooth headset. Also\nsee Crocs. If it's useful, people will use it.\n\n\\- It failed because it waited 5 months to sell it? => No. See Apple.\n\n\\- It failed because the excitement died off by the time it shipped? => No.\nSee all kinds of films that succeeded WITHOUT any initial hype (such as the\nMatrix)\n\n\\- It failed because it couldn't get any influencers to endorse the product?\n=> No, see Snapchat. Yeah their original app itself.\n\n\\- It failed because the content couldn't be ported over to other platform\nwithout cropping? => No. In fact, if Spectacles would have succeeded,\nTechcrunch would probably be blabbering about how the key to success is how\nbrilliant its marketing strategy was, so that all the videos uploaded to\nyoutube and instagram had the \"signature snapchat crop\", which got everyone\nelse curious.\n\nThe only arguments I agree with in this article are related to its utility--\nhow it's considered rude to be video taping someone else, and how it was\nlimited to sunglasses format.\n\nThe rest is bullshit because they're one of those \"MBA case studies\" type\nafter-the-fact interpretation, which in most cases are bullshit.\n\nJust go build something useful and you will never have to worry about being\n\"fashionable\" or all the gimmicks. In fact as a tech company you should never\nsee yourself as a fashion company. It's a myth created by ignorant media\npundits who's never built a product in their life.\n\n~~~\nsaimiam\nI disagree with your entire comment and here’s why - in my view, saying that\nthe reason something failed because it relieved no itch or there was\ninsufficient utility is at par with suggesting that trading is simple because\nyou have to “Buy Low and Sell High, d’oh”. It teaches no one anything they\ndon’t instinctively know.\n\nEverything the article says - be it about influencers not picking up and\npromoting the Spectacles to difficulties with porting content without cropping\n- is extremely useful to anyone else looking to launch a Spectacles type\ndevice.\n\n~~~\njasode\n_> Everything the article says - [...] - is extremely useful to anyone else_\n\nThe post you replied to tried to explain why it's actually _not useful_. The\njournalist uses a style of seductive writing (some call it \"narrative\nfallacy\"[1]) which connects _plausible-sounding_ causes to its _supposedly\nlogical_ effects. That style of explanation can actually make readers _dumber_\nabout what happened because it leaves out _counterexamples_.\n\nThat \"narrative fallacy\" is common in writings from Harvard Business Review,\nhistories, biographies, newspapers & pundits trying to explain why the Dow\nJones Index went up/down, why startups/products failed/succeeded, etc. All of\nthose suffer the omission of counterexamples.\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_White](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_White)\n\n~~~\ndonmatito\n> That style of explanation can actually make readers dumber about what\n> happened because it leaves out counterexamples.\n\nThank you for writing this\n\n------\nsssparkkk\nSo how about this: the influencers on Snapchat are all recording _themselves_\nmost of the time. These glasses did nothing to help with that particular and\nmost popular use case.\n\nI feel really weird for being the first to bring this up, it seems pretty\nobvious to me the main reason these glasses weren't going to catch on.\n\n~~~\nlsc\nyeah, what they need are programmable drones that follow them around,\nrecording. Bruce Sterling suggested such a thing in \"The Artificial Kid\" \\-\nand I think we've got the tech to actually kinda do it now.\n\n~~~\nicebraining\nThat was the Lily: [https://www.wired.com/2015/05/lily-robotics-\ndrone/](https://www.wired.com/2015/05/lily-robotics-drone/)\n\nSpoiler: the video was misleading (California is suing them for false\nadvertising) and the company is dead.\n\n~~~\nsecabeen\nMayfield Robotics is making a non-flying version of this, called the Kuri:\n[https://www.heykuri.com/](https://www.heykuri.com/)\n\nIt is a real product, founded by a bunch of robotics people from Harvey Mudd.\n\n~~~\nlsc\nThe camera angle seems like it could be... problematic, though.\n\nAlso it doesn't look like it has the capability to follow me in even most\nsedate urban environments. I mean, I'm not asking for stairs, but that thing\nlooks like it'd have a hard time with a sidewalk crack.\n\nBoth those problems could probably be solved by making it bigger.\n\n------\nseambot1\nAm I the only one that thinks that a) it's obvious that these sorts of devices\n(face wearables) aren't led by people who have worn glasses their whole life\nand b) if you haven't lived that, you shouldn't try to build devices for\npeople's faces?\n\nI say it's obvious because neither Glass nor Spectacles were wearable by\npeople who need corrective lenses AS corrective eyewear.\n\nNone of the leadership had any idea what it meant to have a large piece of\nhardware on your face all day every day. Nor, importantly, how to convince\nsomeone to put a large piece of hardware in their face every day all day.\n\nIt's like they didn't even BOTHER to call the guys at warby Parker, or zenni,\nor even the anti-christ Luxotica\n\nGlasses are SO much more personal than a computer or a phone, or even a shirt\nor other clothing. They are your face. Your literal identity.\n\nIt's so tone deaf of both teams (and everyone in the AR/VR community that\nthinks some manner of out-in-public eyewear is \"close) to not deal with that\nneed for customization at minimum.\n\nSorry had to rant about that. M sure all those people are actually pretty\nsharp, and I'm just being grumpy.\n\n~~~\ngaius\n_I say it 's obvious because neither Glass nor Spectacles were wearable by\npeople who need corrective lenses AS corrective eyewear._\n\nThis reminds me of Canon vs Nikon. Fanboys on the Internet wank on about\nmegapixels and whatnot but the real differentiator is the eyepoint of the\nviewfinder, which is probably literally as simple as, the eyepoint guy at\nNikon wears glasses themselves and their counterpart at Canon doesn't.\n\n~~~\nfrankchn\nIs there a large difference in viewfinder design nowadays? I wear glasses and\nuse a Canon 1DX2 and have tried out a Nikon D5 — if anything the Canon is more\ncomfortable for me to look through.\n\nThe specifications bear me out: Nikon has a 0.71x magnification VF with a 17mm\neyepoint, while Canon has a 0.76x magnification VF wish 20mm eyepoint.\n\n~~~\ngaius\nMy experience of this is back in the day when it was a real eye opener if\nyou'll forgive the pun when I switched to a Nikon F5 from a Canon EOS 3. I\nexpect both companies have different viewfinder designers now, but it just\ngoes to show how a simple usability test can be overlooked.\n\n------\nuntog\nI was talking to a parent friend of mine a while back, and we both agreed (he\nowns a pair) that Snapchat Spectacles could be an amazing accessory for\nparents.\n\nKids are easily distracted, so if you point a phone at them it'll completely\nthrow them off whatever cute activity it was they were just doing - probably\nbecause they now want to play with your phone. No such problem with Spectacles\n- and not only that, it means you can keep two hands free (not a small issue\nwhen one arm might already have a child in it).\n\nThe problem is that Spectacles are so tied into Snapchat that it makes sharing\nthe output very difficult. Grandma and Grandpa are not going to use Snapchat,\nand I'm not sure Snapchat wants them to. You can, eventually, import into\nSnapchat then export single videos back out again, but they lose the cool\ndisplay method for circular videos and look awful. I think they could shift\nsome of these glasses with a little rebranding and a spin-off app just for\nimporting videos into whatever destination you want. They'll never do that,\nthough. Maybe if they finally declare it dead they'll open up the sync API,\nbut I'm not holding my breath.\n\n(this is a repost of an old comment I wrote a few days ago in case anyone is\nsuffering from deja-vu)\n\n~~~\nAnalemma_\n> Grandma and Grandpa are not going to use Snapchat, and I'm not sure Snapchat\n> wants them to.\n\nThere's no maybe about it: Snapchat definitely doesn't want them. Evan Spiegel\nhas been very upfront that he doesn't want the riff-raff. Snapchat has always\nbeen deliberately shitty on Android and Spiegel went out of his way to make\nclear how they definitely weren't going to make a Windows Phone application,\nback when WP was a potential player. If you're not a cool, hip teen with an\niPhone, you can piss off.\n\nHe reminds me a lot of that Abercrombie CEO who said that they didn't want\nfatties and uglies in their stores, which was a winning strategy until it\nsuddenly wasn't.\n\nThis is partially why, as much as I hate Facebook, I'm not particularly upset\nat Snapchat slowly getting steamrolled by them. Businesses that stick up their\nmiddle finger at potential customers out of snobbery deserve to fail.\n\n~~~\njseliger\n_He reminds me a lot of that Abercrombie CEO who said that they didn 't want\nfatties and uglies in their stores, which was a winning strategy until it\nsuddenly wasn't._\n\nTo be fair, my impression is that this aspect of their marketing wasn't the\nproblem; the Great Recession was the problem, because suddenly no one had 2 –\n4x the money to pay for a piece of clothing that only differed from the\ncompetition in that it told other teens you have 2 – 4x the money.\n\nGreat Recession + fast fashion seems to be the real culprit.\n\nThe market for elitism has never disappeared in that domain. Maybe any domain.\n\n~~~\nAnalemma_\nThere's a difference between being an upscale brand and actually turning away\ncustomers. Apple and BMW are elite brands, but if you're poorer but save up\nfor one because you want it that bad, they'll happily take your money.\nSnapchat and Abercrombie are looking at people who _want_ to give them money\nand telling them to go away.\n\n~~~\nkenshi\nIs Snap really telling anyone to go away? You can download and use the app for\nfree.\n\n------\njonahx\nIt's interesting to go back and re-read the overwhelmingly positive\npredictions HN users made when Spectacles were announced:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12569182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12569182)\n\nand compare those to the \"it was obviously going to fail\" responses here.\n\n~~~\nempath75\nThe only people I ever saw say anything positive about them were people that\nwere pumping the IPO or people they paid to hype them.\n\n~~~\njonahx\nLooking at the profiles of the two top-voted comments in that thread, that\ndoesn't seem to be the case. But just browse the replies: many HN posters\ngenuinely seemed to believe they'd nailed some key niche and important product\ndetails. They didn't strike me that way -- which is why I remembered the post.\n\nThe contrast struck me as an interesting example of hindsight bias.\n\n------\nFricken\nI was really curious about spectacles, and bought a pair as soon as I could. I\nlost them about 3 weeks later, and that was that.\n\nIn some ways they were really cool, but the article was bang-on about pretty\nmuch everything. It's really a case study about how to fuck up a product roll-\nout.\n\nPortability complications were a huge downer. The shaded lenses made them\ndifficult to use indoors, and what wasn't mentioned was that the mic was\nhypersensitive to distortion from the slightest breeze, which made them\nuseless outside as well.\n\nBut, as the article states:\n\n>To drive demand, Snap needed to demonstrate all the creative things you could\ndo with Spectacles, and the cool people who wore them.\n\nWhy the fuck didn't they do this?\n\n~~~\nDanBC\n> and what wasn't mentioned was that the mic was hypersensitive to distortion\n> from the slightest breeze,\n\nAnd you can't really stick a micromuff on your glasses.\n\n[http://www.micromuff.com/](http://www.micromuff.com/)\n\n------\nvm\nI was a Snap power user. Got spectacles very early. Hated the upload UX.\n\nBluetooth issues galore. Completely stopped using them. As standalone\nsunglasses, they are inferior to a good $10 pair from amazon - heavier, worse\nlens quality, and limited viewable area.\n\n------\nminimaxir\nA few months ago on Hacker News I asked about the low usage of the Spectacles\nand the response was generally that people who bought it liked it:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14562560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14562560)\n\nSpectacles are a case where appealing to a niche may not be the most\n_profitable_ endeavor. (and now that Snap is a public company, they have to\nactually care about profit at some point)\n\n------\nOvertonwindow\nJust curious, am I the only one who really, really wants the AR glasses from\nDaemon by Daniel Suarez? I would very much like a pair of glasses that records\ninformation, helps me to recognize faces, and bring information further into\nmy reality.\n\n~~~\njosephpmay\nI read Daemon in middle school and became so obsessed with augmented reality\nthat I essentially devoted the next seven years of my life to working towards\nmaking it happen: attending conferences, conducting research, and starting an\nAR hardware company.\n\nSo no, you're not the only one :)\n\nAlso, unrelated to my previous obsession with AR, I have prosopagnosia, so\nhaving glasses that could tell me who I'm looking at would make a major\nimprovement to my life.\n\n~~~\nLambdaComplex\n>devoted the next seven years of my life\n\nWas that a while ago? Or is that still what you're doing?\n\n~~~\njosephpmay\nI'm a senior in college now. This was something I worked on from the beginning\nof high school until this May.\n\n~~~\nfzzzy\nWhat happened in May?\n\n~~~\nbayonetz\nRight? Don't leave us hanging!\n\n~~~\ndbish\nI was curious as well. Looks like he worked on Mira, an AR company that is\nworking on shipping hardware that works with your phone. Reading the about\nsection\n([https://www.mirareality.com/about](https://www.mirareality.com/about)), it's\nkind of funny, lists only three founders, who are not him, in the copy, but\nthe photo at the top of the page has 4 founders. Looked like it could be an\ninteresting product, though I'm sure the right AR glasses that customers will\npurchase need to be far less bulky.\n\n~~~\njosephpmay\nThe fourth person in the picture is Evan, our CTO. He wasn't a founder.\n\n~~~\ndbish\nCool. Thanks for the clarification. I assumed it was you since you weren't in\nthe copy (\"founded by Ben Taft, Matt Stern, and Montana Reed\"). Any reason you\nleft the AR world when it seems to be heating up now?\n\n------\nsebringj\nIMO, (well based on actual data from my websites and apps) most people consume\nmedia, not produce it, where producers are < 1%. The phone is a device that\nboth consumes and produces doing a great job at it but for the majority of its\nuse, ~99% , consumes. A device only for producing is already at a disadvantage\nand its a novel one at that. When glasses or contact lenses both consume and\nproduce, we got something pretty great going on. For example, kind of related,\nwhen the iwatch becomes 100% an phone in its own right, no tethering, you\nalready sold me and I'll buy it as it just dramatically increased its utility\nand its novelty vanished turning into a new form factor.\n\n------\nkoiz\nBecause they were pointless.\n\nThe first time I saw them I thought to myself, well that's a cool idea but\nthat was it.\n\nIt truly felt like marketing or some attempt to trick people into believing\nSnap could make cool things... like a response to Facebook/Oculus.\n\n~~~\nbaby\nIf I can use them to shoot videos and make something cool like the japan tour\nthing[1] I would buy them.\n\n[1]:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3i5asc3qI4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3i5asc3qI4)\n\nEDIT: actually looking at the snapchat spectacle webpage, it looks neat and I\ncan see myself buying them. Just not at that price (130GBP) because I will\nprobably not be using them a lot. But if there is a promotion around Christmas\nwhy not.\n\n------\nHumFac2\nHere is detailed usability and feature function allocation analysis. This\nproduct was dead in the water from the beginning.\n[https://www.mauronewmedia.com/blog/snap-spectacles-failed-\npo...](https://www.mauronewmedia.com/blog/snap-spectacles-failed-poor-\nusability-featurefunction-allocation-errors-compromised-potentially-\nbreakthrough-product/)\n\nMauro Usability Science\n\n------\nTheodores\nThey took a gamble and it did not work out for them, their product was not the\nnext 'spinner' grade craze. But if you don't try you don't get.\n\nIt is only a matter of time before cameras in sunglasses becomes a common\nthing with people using them in place of action cameras, dashcams and regular\ncameras. The UX needs to be 'wink' to take a picture so these things can\noperate hands free with voice control - 'cheese' etc.\n\nSomehow these wonder sunglasses of the near future weigh no more than normal\nsunglasses, charge magically in their special case and stream 4K HDR+ 3D\nstereo over bluetooth 24/7 storing all content on a nano-SD card. But we are\nnot there yet and Snap took a punt at pitching a fun variant of the ideal\nproduct with low-res functionality seeing if people would go for it. They\ndidn't. People didn't go crazy for them like they did with 'spinners', an\nequally 'useless' product. But cameras in sunglasses are happening. People\nhave got over lenses in public. There is one in every car bumper.\n\n------\nswang\ni actually bought one.\n\n1: hard as hell to pair.\n\n2: circular video does not work since a lot of people want to port out the\nvideos away from snapchat.\n\n3: i wear glasses, the lens on these frames are not circular. couldn't find\nanyone in the bay area who did custom lenses (at the time).\n\n4: towards the end of the year (2016), a lot of people wanted them but were\nfrustrated that even if they got to the vending machine there was zero\nguarantee they would even get one. at most they had ~70ish in quantity per\nday. way too low. drove short term hype up though.\n\n5: no marketing at all for this thing.\n\n------\nlustyHogwash\nGod damn it. These fucking wearable pieces of shit need to stand on their own.\nThey can’t be unrepairable, expensive, tethered pieces of shit that die when\nthe battery refuses to charge.\n\nNo one wants garbage that only works with one website, and no one wants to pay\nfor an uncontrollable device with a mind of its own.\n\nIf you have a free service on the internet, millions or perhaps even billions\nmay clamour to use it. If you’re giving stuff out for free, people will\nhappily try it out, if they have the option to throw it in the trash without\nconsequence.\n\nMake people pay for something? It better do what they want, when they want it,\nor you might have some pissed off people on your hands.\n\n~~~\nchiefalchemist\nIn short:\n\nGetting people to spend their free time is relatively easy.\n\nGetting people to spend their hard earned cash is very (very) difficult.\n\nYou'd think this would be obvious already :)\n\n------\nIncRnd\nI can buy a pair of spy glasses for $100 to record at 30fps for an hour in\nfull color 1080, 60fps for half that time. There are no giant lenses on the\nsides with lights that show my glasses are even capable of recording.\n\nI can even order those glasses with a prescription. They will help me see, and\nnobody else will be the wiser about being recorded. I'm not saying that I go\nout of my way to discreetly record people - I don't. But that shows to me\nthese commodity glasses are a superior product to cartoonish looking Snapchat\nSpectacles.\n\nFor me, that is why Snapchat and all other similar recording spectacles will\nfail.\n\n~~~\nggg9990\nCan you post a link to those spy glasses you mention?\n\n~~~\nIncRnd\nThere are some similar ones here: [http://www.recordergear.com/camera-\nglasses/](http://www.recordergear.com/camera-glasses/). They aren't exactly\nthe ones I meant, no longer having the manufacturer's link.\n\nYou can also find a bunch here:\n[https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=1080p+spy+glasses](https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=1080p+spy+glasses),\nbut at ebay I'd rather spend $100 instead of $12 for these types of things.\n\n------\navip\nNotably missing from the list - nobody wants this product.\n\n~~~\ndawnerd\nI dunno, they are/were demoing them at Universal Orlando and plenty of people\nwere checking them out. Price tag probably scared most away (who's dumping\n100+ on glasses at a theme park?).\n\nI'd buy a pair if they were more like traditional action cam style glasses.\nThe technical limitations right now make them far too expensive for what they\nare.\n\n~~~\nimroot\nYou'd be surprised: when I worked in retail, I was told that the sunglass\nstands in the theme parks were 3 of the the top five grossing stores at the\ntime for the luxury sunglass brand that I was working for. Admittedly, this\nwas...almost 20ish years ago, but, I'd still think this would be true today.\n\n------\nAnimats\nThey had the application completely wrong. It's not for \"social influencers\".\nIt's for jocks. People doing extreme sports. Skateboarders. Surfers. They\nneeded to market this as a more convenient GoPro.\n\nThe trouble is, that's not Snapchat's target demographic. The device concept\nis fine; it's the seller that's wrong.\n\n~~~\nnradov\nThe device looks too fragile to use in extreme sports and would have to be\ncompletely redesigned, especially for compatibility with ski/snowboard\ngoggles. The shape also reduces peripheral vision which is an issue for some\nsports.\n\nI haven't heard many extreme sports athletes complaining that GoPros are\ninconvenient. The helmet mounts seem fine for most people.\n\n~~~\nAnimats\nFor helmet uses, the GoPro box is not a big problem. Not all sports use\nhelmets.\n\n~~~\nnradov\nI see a lot of athletes using chest mounts. For surfing it's common to mount\non the tip of the board pointing back at the surfer. I really can't imagine\nsurfers wearing any kind of spectacles; they'd fall off in the first big\nwipeout.\n\n------\nevervevdww221\nI thought it faced a certain and quick death when it was launched.\n\nThe thing is expensively useless. And the design is very cheesy.\n\nSurprisingly, at the time, I saw many articles praising it as \"the most\nbrilliant idea\", feeling like total flattery. I suspect those were from their\nmarketing team. Guess the market isn't so easy to fool.\n\n------\nGrue3\nWhen people were saying that Snapchat is toast after Facebook stole all their\nfunctionality, there was always that one person saying that Spectacles will\nsave Snapchat. Which made no sense even back then.\n\nAlso, before this article, I have never seen a single video shot by\nSpectacles. And now I understand why: they look _terrible_. It's not at all\nlike seeing the world from the glasses-wearer's point of view. It's more like\nlooking into a goddamn peephole.\n\n------\nFej\nSpectacles failed because they wouldn't sell us the damn things! There was all\nthis hype but it was practically impossible to buy a pair except for scalper\nprices on eBay.\n\n------\nnscalf\nThese failed because they built all of their hype around \"we have a truck\nselling them in random cities for a couple days\" and they weren't interesting\nenough to buy second market. To be honest, I didn't even realize I could buy\nthem now. Their whole thing was that you CAN'T just buy them online.\n\nThis is the same issue Pokemon Go had---they made a really cool product that\nwould go through a period of super high demand followed by an extreme dropoff,\nbut they didn't roll out their product in time---their release window didn't\nmatch the window for the traction they actually generated. Pokemon Go was\nmassive when it released for a couple weeks, and they touted a IoT thing to go\nwith the game that made it even more immersive, but that didn't come out until\npeople really stopped caring.\n\nThe moral of the story is to know that if you're going to have a huge release,\nbe ready THEN to sell things. Hype is useless if you aren't capitalizing on\nit.\n\n~~~\nnkristoffersen\nTo be fair, the IoT device wasn't sold by Niantic, it was sold by Nintendo.\nNintendo dropped the ball on selling the only thing that was really profitable\nfor them around the Pokemon Go fad since they only receive license fees for\nthe characters I believe.\n\n------\nmhomde\nI think the use case is brilliant, if albeit niche. I would never wear them in\neveryday life but when travelling I found myself wanting something like this\nto capture memories, moments or just \"atmosphere\". A mobile camera doesn't\nquite cut it because it's hard to get an authentic angle, especially if you're\nmoving. I'd rather not wear glasses when i don't have too but if it's sunny,\nwhy not instead of sunglasses?\n\nI'd prefer something with less conspicuous branding however, and something I\ncould export in a decent format. I predict this will be a somewhat mainstream\ngadget within 5 years (Well, for people who can afford it). Apple will make\niGlasses, or some shit like that, with Siri and camera.\n\nThen there's the whole thing about living in the moment, perhaps that's better\n:)\n\n------\ncoldtea\nBecause it was a BS idea designed to get some cheap press and PR, and doomed\nto fail from the start?\n\nGoogle Glass failed for all the technological and social reasons it did, why\nwould a BS subpar imitation from a, in the grand scheme of things,\ninsignificant service, fare better?\n\n------\npaul7986\nI think AR sunglasses could be big just needs the right execution.\n\nMaybe it only allows you to see things in the real world based on QR codes\nembedded in real world objects like objects in a museum and other places where\nbusinesses, organizations or governments embeds AR qr codes. The heavy\ncomputing lifting is done not in the glasses but in the displays. Possibly\nmaking the glasses cheap and barely bulkier then current sunglasses.\n\nAlso this way distribution of such glasses could be like 3D glasses ... pay\nticket for museum tour and get Their AR glasses for the tour.\n\nA good introduction to AR glasses in the market and other businesses could do\nthe same.\n\n------\nadamnemecek\nTLDR hw is hard, “fashion” hw is double hard\n\n~~~\nbaby\nIt's interesting how on the other side Apple has succeeded with the Apple\nwatch even though you need to recharge it every day. My guess is that it was\nhighly priced and so seen as a \"rich people\" jewelry. Hence the market being\ndriven by people who want to look rich.\n\nI'm sure that if snapchat spectacles had been priced lower, every middle\nschooler would have gotten them. Driving the market/trend by mass adoption.\n\n~~~\npgm8705\nIn terms of watch prices it is far from highly priced. I don't know anyone\nthat would considering it \"rich people\" jewelry. I've had my Apple Watch for\nseveral weeks now and its usefulness has made it worth every penny. I\nespecially love having cellular service and not having to take my phone with\nme everywhere I go.\n\n------\ndingo_bat\nThey should have supported iphone only. And adjusted the projected demand\naccordingly. It's much easier to make bluetooth peripherals work nicely only\nwith one specific device and specific os. The whole experience would have been\nmuch more polished. They could even have used something like airdrop. Iphone\nusers are also more likely to have $150 to spend on a joke pair of glasses.\nReally seems like the obvious thing to do.\n\n------\ncagataygurturk\nMaybe it‘s because they released sunglasses in November. I don‘t know\nCalifornia but here in developed Europe nobody buys sunglasses nowadays,\nbecause there is no sun.\n\n------\nrch\nThis was obviously a marketing-led disaster from day one. It's hard to accept\ncompany leadership that can be be persuaded to do go down a path like this so\neasily.\n\n------\ninthewoods\nI wonder if they ever tested the concept before the release. To me, they would\nhave seen the issues with any sort of actual market test prior to the\ninvestment.\n\n~~~\nImSkeptical\nTesting before release is too late. They need to create a dummy mock-up and\ntry it out while they are still brainstorming. If they did that, and were\nthinking clearly, I expect they would be able to think of a lot of the\nproblems in this thread.\n\n~~~\ninthewoods\nAgreed - concept testing.\n\n------\njVinc\nThis is the very first time I've heard about snapchat spectacles, and I\nfrequently use snapchat... Yea, they failed pretty horribly at doing PR.\n\n------\nmattbierner\nBesides their technical and marketing failings, spectacles are also a failure\nof imagination. They attempt to digitize moments rather than trying to use\ntechnology to enhance what you are doing or to create entirely new artificial\nexperiences. I wish this was why they failed but the reasons outlined in the\narticle are much more realistic\n\n------\nthinkloop\n> Google’s core mistake was allowing geeky developers to become the face of\n> Glass.\n\nThat's us! We're the mistake :-D\n\n~~~\nRedoubts\nWasn't this the same problem with Google+? Facebook started exclusively with\ncollege students, Google started a social network exclusively with\nprogrammers.\n\n~~~\nSapphireSun\nFUCK. I thought that when we attained wealth, power, and appeared on the\ncovers of magazines people would stop dunking our heads in toilets and finally\npay us SOME RESPECT. This just shows that our society isn't a meritocracy. It\ndoesn't even matter anymore what you do, we're still undesirables to the\ncheerleaders and jocks and the popular kids.\n\nWe'll get our revenge though. We control everything you mfers see, hear, buy,\nand think. If you look down on us, get ready for your phone to be the new\nheroin. If you like us, you can be free and dance with us and sample the\nearthly delights of the real world. We will be Neo, you can elect to be\nMorpheus or Trinity. Or we can be the machines in zero-one. Maybe that fits\nbetter.\n\nEnjoy your new paradise losers.\n\n/s\n\n------\neyeareque\nI wish they would sell these glasses for $50 USD. they would have no problem\nclearing out quite a few of them. I can’t see myself paying $100+ on\nCraigslist let alone the retail price of $129.99\n\nHere’s to hoping they get highly discounted and dumped on eBay/amazon.\n\n------\n_pmf_\nBecause people don't want to put stupid shit on their face that doen not even\nhave any trace of marginal value. There's no transcendental deeper reason.\n\n------\nlsh123\nHow about: because it was a bad product that nobody needed?\n\n------\nthinkloop\nI wonder if the ultimate answer is for them to be completely imperceptible and\nindifferentiatable from regular glasses - the glasshole thing is big.\n\n------\ndingo_bat\nLol! But guys! Snapchat is a camera company! Interesting how just saying\nabsurd things doesn't make it true.\n\n------\nmalloreon\nSnapchat is for selfies. you can't take selfies with your own glasses. That's\nwhy it failed.\n\n------\nmhh__\nHas _any_ wearable succeeded yet? Beyond the obvious ones like earbuds, the\nsmart watch?\n\n~~~\nmonk_e_boy\nI'd not heard of these glasses before, but for action sports they seem like\nthe perfect fit. I kitesurf so I can't hold a camera, I tend to clamp a GoPro\nbetween my teeth to film. Same with surfers.\n\nIf these glasses had waterproof headphones I know tons of people who would\nsnap them sup.\n\n~~~\nnradov\nGoPro and third-party vendors sell a bunch of mounting accessories to put on\nyour head or chest or wherever. Why don't you buy one of those instead of\nholding the camera in your teeth?\n\n------\ndjhworld\nIt's a hard sell in countries that don't get that much sun (e.g. UK)\n\n------\nendlessvoid94\nPeople didn't want them. That's why they failed. It's that simple.\n\n------\nHavoc\nBecause it's awkward as fk?\n\nSame as google glass. The tech wasn't the issue\n\n------\nyvsong\niGlass will probably be created by Apple or a hardware startup led by some\npeople like Steve Jobs and Woz. No software company has made a hugely\nsuccessful hardware product.\n\n~~~\ncbowal\nMicrosoft/Xbox?\n\n~~~\nmacspoofing\nThey came close with the 360, and then took 5 steps back with the One.\n\n~~~\nuser5994461\nMicrosoft is a hardware company. They've been shipping computers, keyboards,\nheadsets and all sort of electronics for a while.\n\n------\npix64\nNever even heard of this\n\n~~~\neddie_catflap\nI’d heard of them, didn’t even know they were out yet and today I find they’ve\nalready failed. Ho hum.\n\n------\nreturn0\nmoral of the story: quit hyping things that you know are stupid\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nJurassic Park: Trespasser CG Source Code Review - coderdude\nhttp://fabiensanglard.net/trespasser/index.php\n\n======\nBrandonMarc\nI couldn't help but chuckle at this part:\n\n\\----------------------------------------\n\nTrivia : The first things one should run on a new codebase are the following\ngreps :\n\n    \n    \n        find . -exec grep --with-filename --ignore-case fuck   {}   \\; 2>/dev/null\n        find . -exec grep --with-filename --ignore-case shit   {}   \\; 2>/dev/null\n        find . -exec grep --with-filename --ignore-case hack   {}   \\; 2>/dev/null\n        find . -exec grep --with-filename --ignore-case lame   {}   \\; 2>/dev/null\n        find . -exec grep --with-filename --ignore-case stupid {}   \\; 2>/dev/null\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDark social traffic in the mobile app era - prostoalex\nhttp://fusion.net/story/31450/dark-social-traffic-in-the-mobile-app-era/?curator=MediaREDEF\n======\nwodenokoto\nWhat I don't get is why facebook would keep this data secret to the\npublishers. Isn't it in Facebooks best interest to show how many eyeballs they\ncan send to publishers and start charging for increasing that number?\n\nAnd why aren't they selling meta data about this? What kind of demographics\nvisit your articles? What kind of people share them (how do they overlap?)\n\nSell CSV files or JSON with data about users who visit/shares your articles\nand makes those shares visible to you on facebook (public or the person has\nliked your page and made its posts visible to liked pages).\n\nSummarize and anonymize the discussions surrounding your articles that are not\nmade visible to you on facebook.\n\n------\nncw33\nSo basically, lots of big publishers are really upset that they don't know\nwhere their traffic is coming from. They were previously uncategorised because\nclicking on links from the Facebook app doesn't add a Referer.\n\nThen someone noticed that the Facebook app sets User-Agent to something very\nobviously Facebook-y, and this is the \"breakthrough\" in tracking Facebook\nclicks.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat it takes to build 18-Mpixel basic phones - Anon84\nhttp://www.embedded.com/underthehood/220600299?cid=RSSfeed_embedded_news\n======\njws\nGreat, 18M pixels, but how are you going to get enough photons per second\nthrough the tiny cell phone lens to keep the signal to noise ratio up?\n\nMaybe we will have to carry phone tripods and use 5 second shutter times, or\nwe could use giant pans of flash powder to make really bright flashes.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShopify's 2013 Year in Review - jimmiejo\nhttp://www.shopify.com/2013\n\n======\nJimmaDaRustla\nSlide is more dangerous than it looks, still haven't seen my gif though!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nEasy Password Hash Enhancement - philip1209\nhttp://philipithomas.com/2012/06/easy-password-hash-enhancement/\n\n======\ndllthomas\nIs it common practice to use one salt value across an entire site? I thought\nthe idea was to generate a random salt for each user, in which case adding the\nusername doesn't really buy us much extra. Applied Cryptography (from 1996!!!)\nseems to back me up on this, although it could be clearer about it. From the\nbottom of page 52, of the second edition:\n\n\"Salt is a random string that is concatenated with passwords before being\noperated on by the one-way function. Then, both the salt value and the result\nof the one-way function are stored in the database on the host.\"\n\nIf the salt wasn't re-generated for each password stored, there's not much\nreason to re-store it each time...\n\nEdited to add: Granted, it'd be better than what people are apparently doing!\n\n~~~\nphilip1209\nInteresting. Most of the open-source projects I follow do a per-system salt.\nIsn't this how Wordpress does it?\n\n[http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-\nconfig.php#Security_Ke...](http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-\nconfig.php#Security_Keys)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRandall's Theory Increases Number of Dimensions in Physical Universe (2009) - bootload\nhttp://www.thecrimson.com/article/2009/6/2/class-of-1984-lisa-randall-as/\n======\njerf\nTitle led me to expect a discussion of the mentioned theory; it turns out to\nbe a biographical piece in the \"Look how awesome our alumni are!\" portion of\nthe Harvard Crimson magazine. Nothing wrong with that per se, but not what I\nexpected from the title.\n\n~~~\nsilentplummet\nThis is exactly correct. I flagged the submission.\n\n~~~\nbootload\n@jerf, @silentplummet (all of 39 days) the article is posted on _\"\nthecrimson\"_, expect it to be a bit bio-ish. What title would you give the\narticle? For me I only change the title if it's too long. This is a fault of\nstory posters web wide. A bug bear of mine - there is no universal editor on\nthe web.\n\n~~~\njerf\nWell, since you ask, I wouldn't post it as it doesn't seem to have anything of\nHN interest (\"people exist who have done interesting things\" isn't all that\ngreat of an article to start with, it being in a marketing context cuts it\ndown even more), but apparently 47 people disagreed, so _shrug_. I do\nsometimes wonder if there's a substantial contingent of people who upvote\nthings based on the title alone, bolstered by the occasional appearance of\ncommenters who have clearly only read the title, but there's no way for me to\nprove it either way. (And that's an observation well beyond just this one\narticle, btw, not a targeted thing.)\n\n~~~\nbootload\n_\" I wouldn't post it as it doesn't seem to have anything of HN interest\"_\n\nI add anything I find interesting. You'd be surprised what the HN crowd read.\nA lot of the time I'll add two stories. The first a journal with an in-depth\ndescription of some topic. Followed by a general science article that points\nto the journal. Rarely does the source article get upvoted to the first page.\nNot always and it depends on the topic.\n\nThe article added here is further information on this article _\" What killed\nthe dinosaurs? Dark matter, says theoretical physicist Lisa Randall\"_,\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10714657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10714657)\nI was curious what kind of background Randall has to theorise an idea linking\nasteroid impacts, dinosaur extinction and dark matter.\n\n------\nz92\nDimensions in Physics are like indirections in C. One extra level of\nindirection fixes most problems in C. Same for Physics. The challenge is in\nexplaining with less dimensions.\n\n~~~\njjaredsimpson\nI don't see how that analogy works at all. Higher dimensions have completely\ndifferent physics than lower dimensions. Whereas pointers are just an\ninterpretation of an already existing data type.\n\n------\ngpvos\nArticle is from 2009.\n\n------\ncrystalclaw\nMy first thought was something XKCD related. I was dissapointed.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWho got interviewed by Highland? - ginn\n\n======\nginn\nNow that we know which Y combinator members were accepted into the Y\ncombinator program, LightSpeed, and TechStars. Let's see who got into\nHighland. Anyone get the interview call this week yet?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n2020 Cloud Report: AWS vs. GCP vs. Azure - dilloc\nhttps://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/2020-cloud-report/#\n======\nunreal37\nThey calculated the costs based on 3 years running at the hourly rate.\n\nThat's kinda weird. How about including multi-year discounts? These are\navailable to everyone.\n\n[1] [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/pricing/reserved-vm-\ninstan...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/pricing/reserved-vm-instances/)\n\n[2] [https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved-\ninstances/](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved-instances/)\n\n[3] [https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/signing-\nup-c...](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/signing-up-committed-\nuse-discounts)\n\n~~~\nderefr\nElastic rates _are_ really what you should be comparing when using cloud IaaS\nservices, though. That's where the price works out in favor of using cloud\nIaaS hosts in the first place, after all.\n\nIf you have a stable set of instances and a known lifetime for them, then,\nbefore trying to calculate whether AWS or GCP is cheaper, step back and plug\nthose same numbers into a regular non-cloud DC managed-hardware-leasing\npricing page.\n\n~~~\ndevy\n> a regular non-cloud DC managed-hardware-leasing pricing\n\nYou have to factor in the total cost of ownership (TCO) to make a fair\ncomparison, which in almost ALL the cases, you are more than likely to\noverspend on bare metal boxes on your own DC. Some of the TCO components are:\n\n\\- DC staff salaries\n\n\\- Electricity\n\n\\- Networking bandwidth\n\n\\- SLA guarantee (yes this a hidden cost, e.g. if your DC power is out, you\nowe your customers fees depending on your SLA).\n\n\\- etc.\n\n~~~\nderefr\nNote, I didn't say \"your own DC\", I said _managed hosting_. As in, leasing a\nphysical 2U server from a DC provider (just not a _cloud_ DC provider), that\nyou \"temporarily own\" (sort of like you \"temporarily own\" a condo you're\nleasing), but where the DC staff still has BMC access to the box, and will\nhandle hardware going bad, etc., so you never have to drive out to the DC.\n\nYou know, the primary offering of DC providers like Softlayer, Hetzner, etc.\n\nWith a managed service, \"utilities\" (salaries, electricity) are factored into\nthe lease. And bandwidth, as it turns out, is cheap-enough that many DCs will\ngive it to you unmetered, since you can't use enough through the limited links\nthey give you to dent their uplink.\n\n~~~\nzxcmx\nBit of an aside, but a lot of people in AWS or Azure can't run their workloads\nin Hetzner, OVH or what-have-you for compliance / paperwork related reasons.\n\nNow SoftLayer I'm not so sure about - interested to hear from anyone offering\nservices to say, gov or health from managed hosting and how that compares cost\nand experience-wise to AWS, Azure, GCP.\n\n~~~\nlatch\nI've never had to deal with this, but there are tens of thousands of managed\nproviders out there, so I figured some of them must have this type of\ncompliance.\n\nThe first two that I looked at, Hivelocity and ReliableSite both seem to have\na number of certifications, as does our current provider, LeaseWeb.\n\nIs there a specific certification that's really sets AWS/Azure/GCP apart?\n\n------\njsploit\nDirect PDF link:\n[https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/1753393/guides/Cloud_Report_2...](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/1753393/guides/Cloud_Report_2020-1.pdf)\n\n~~~\ndtrailin\nThese reports behind an email wall frustrate me to no end. I don't want to\nreceive your spam to read a single article!\n\n~~~\nkyrra\nIts rather expensive (and time consuming) to produce reports like this. They\nare doing it to generate leads.\n\n~~~\nfreehunter\nIf there is a cost associated with producing content and that cost can’t be\nrecouped by the presentation of that content (speaker fees at conferences,\nadvertisements, sponsorships, etc) then the content should be sold for a fair\nmarket rate.\n\nThat’s basically the entire point of GDPR. Stop making people trade personal\ninformation for “free” content.\n\n~~~\nmanigandham\nNo that's not the point of GDPR, it's about choice and control over data.\n\nYou're free to not share your email if you don't want to read the report. The\nrest of us can make our own decision.\n\n~~~\nfreehunter\nGDPR literally prohibits you from requiring personal information in exchange\nfor something that doesn’t require that personal information in order to\nfunction. You’re right it’s about choice and control over data and “you can\nonly have this thing if you give us unrelated personal data” is not choice nor\ncontrol.\n\n~~~\nmanigandham\nIt's not that simple. GDPR is purposely vague and regulated \"in principle\"\nrather than by the letter. Otherwise anyone operating a digital storefront,\nemail newsletter or even subscription paywall would be in violation.\n\nGDPR doesn't have much standing against gated content and many top law firms\nagree. There's also a combination of legitimate interest, business vs personal\nemails, and contract in effect to sign up for communications as workarounds.\nAnd to be extra clear, GDPR has no enforcement outside of the EU so it can't\ndo anything against a US-based database company anyway.\n\n------\nignoramous\n> _...in 2018, AWS outperformed GCP by 40%, which we attributed to AWS’s Nitro\n> System present in c5 and m5 series... In 2020, we see a return to similar\n> overall performance in each cloud._\n\nHow did GCP and Azure catch-up to AWS Nitro in one year which IIRC is a coming\ntogether of minimalistic micro-vms, hardware-accelerated network and IO cards,\nhardware offload for encryption and other maintenance tasks... a work that was\n5 years in the making [0]?\n\n[0] [https://www.youtube-\nnocookie.com/embed/rUY-00yFlE4?t=1m45s](https://www.youtube-\nnocookie.com/embed/rUY-00yFlE4?t=1m45s)\n\n~~~\ncdoxsey\nMeltdown and Spectre did a real number on the c5 and m5 instance types.\n\nAmazon's original fix reduced performance substantially, which lot's of people\nnoticed, but no one knew why till the vulnerabilities were announced.\n\nMeanwhile Google built a clever workaround which minimized the pain. It was\nreally a mic-drop moment from Google and I wish someone would dig in deep and\ntell the whole story.\n\nAt this point I'm sure AWS has merged Google's patches, but it showed how much\nGoogle was investing in their GCP offerings.\n\n~~~\nDDerTyp\nInteresting! Do you know of any resource where I can read more about this?\n\n~~~\ncampers\nThere was a few interesting bits in a post the other days about their new\ncompute VM class, #4 in particular\n[https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/understanding...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/understanding-\ndynamic-resource-management-in-e2-vms) Its pretty light on details but was\nnews to me.\n\n~~~\n9nGQluzmnq3M\nThis is not related to Spectre/Meltdown, which was over a year ago.\n\n------\naccount73466\nI remember that GCP claimed they will follow Moore's Law and drop the price\nfor the same instance type over time. It was just BS marketing, unfortunately\nI believed them.\n\n~~~\nuser5994461\nAWS also stopped to drop instance price periodically. Sadly Moore law has\nstopped some time ago affecting everyone.\n\n~~~\nsudosysgen\nAs we're starting to see, it was mostly Intel not keeping up, actually.\nMoore's law is mostly holding up till today, and probably for a couple more\nyears before we really have to switch paradigms.\n\n~~~\nuser5994461\nThe definition of doubling performance every few years stopped holding up a\nwhile ago. The formal definition of doubling the amount of transistors\nsomewhat holds up, see the huge increase in core counts in recent years, but\nthat doesn't benefit most applications much. Incidentally cloud providers are\nbilling by core count so adding more cores doesn't help the bill.\n\n~~~\nsudosysgen\nNope. It's just that GPUs carried the mantle. If you have a massively parallel\nnumber crunching application you should bite the bullet and port it to GPU,\nand you'll see a truly massive FLOP/$ increase. And unlike processors GPU\nperformance is still rising 35-45% per generation, although that will slow if\nNVidia gets too far ahead.\n\nAlso, if your goal is to get optimal cost/FLOP and you are computing pretty\nmuch constantly then you shouldn't be using the cloud, to be honest. If you\nare IO limited or if you have burst use then maybe, but for cost/FLOP the\nkings are still consumer GPUs and Threadrippers, by very far and large.\n\n------\nishjoh\nWell done Cockroach labs team. This data is very valuable and much\nappreciated.\n\nA small nitpick if you're reading. Fig 19: Sotrage: Azure Write Throughput the\ny axis has an incorrect label of \"1,00\" when it should be \"1,000\"\n\n~~~\norangechairs\nCockroach here: Thank you! We'll get this fixed.\n\n~~~\ntaspeotis\nA most minor point (and not to detract from the great effort you to went to\nproduce the report): it uses yellow for AWS (good, their logo is\nyellow/orange) but red for Azure (bad, Azure is ... azure.)\n\n------\nmobileexpert\nLooking at the Azure networking numbers I wonder if they got their configs\ncorrectly optimized. Azure networking was always tricky to get best\nperformance when I used it heavily at my last co.\n\n~~~\ndaxfohl\nNo, I contacted them directly after seeing this report and confirmed they did\nnot even use accelerated networking (which is a free, but opt-in service on\nAzure), much less things like placement proximity groups (which only recently\nwent public). So machines were communicating across availability zones\n(separated physically by miles and logically by additional networking layers)\nand a bunch of networking was happening in CPU rather than offloaded to FPGA.\n\nDisclosure: I work for Azure networking.\n\n~~~\njiggawatts\n(I'm sending this feedback here because Azure feedback via official channels\nis printed out and then fed directly into a shredder.)\n\nCan you answer why -- for the love of God -- why Azure IPv6 networking is\ndoled out in microscopically small /124 blocks (16 addresses)!?\n\nThe standard is a /64 _at a minimum_ for residential connections, and /48 is\nrecommended for most premises, particularly business connections. Azure could\neasily obtain a /32 for each of their regions, providing a very roomy 4\nbillion /64 scopes per data centre.\n\nRight now, if I want to \"embrace IPv6\" and all of its advantages, such as a\nflat address space and the elimination of NATs, I will have to either:\n\n1) Juggle a bunch of /124 prefixes and carefully allocate services to them.\nThis is a load of fiddly scripting or manual work.\n\n2) Probably be forced to NAT anyway!\n\n3) Pay for addresses that ought to be too cheap to meter.\n\n~~~\ndaxfohl\nSorry, I'm pretty far removed from low-level networking, on CDN team and\nfairly new at that. I'd have no idea who to ask.\n\n------\nm0zg\nI wonder why they stuck to the \"standard\" machine types on GCP. Unlike with\nAWS you get to vary the config there somewhat, so if your workload benefits\nfrom more CPU you can add jus the CPU. Same for RAM. That will affect the per-\ndollar figures because you can tailor your instance to your workload pretty\nexactly.\n\n------\nbrenden2\nI wish they had benchmarked the arm instances on AWS, I'd like to see a 3rd\nparty validate AWS's claims about performance.\n\n~~~\ntybit\nScylla DB did a write up on it [https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-\nready-for-server-...](https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-\nserver-dominance/)\n\n------\nAustinDizzy\nThis is a good report, but I'd also be interested to see focus on GPU\nperformance on both classic GPU intensive workloads and machine learning\nworkloads.\n\n------\ndzhiurgis\n> cloud\n\n> compares virtual machines\n\nI mean cloud is different for everyone, but for me a VM is far from cloud.\nIt's the least differentiable item in each of their suite.\n\n------\nphonon\nDid this use the latest 36% higher performance EBS systems on AWS?\n\n[https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/12/amazon-\nec...](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/12/amazon-ec2-nitro-\nsystem-based-instances-now-support-36-faster-amazon-ebs-optimized-instance-\nperformance/)\n\n~~~\nwmf\nI think they're using local storage not EBS.\n\n~~~\nphonon\nFive out of 12 AWS models they tested were EBS based.\n\n------\nsamuelfekete\nAfter clicking on this link, I now get ads about this report.\n\n------\nkilljoywashere\nGCP seems to have gotten the \"most improved\" award, but is Azure winning\nanything?\n\n~~~\nscarface74\nSupport and confidence of Big Enterprise....\n\n------\ncarlivar\nThey should add Alicloud.\n\n------\nQUFB\nSorry for the non-technical comment here, but why do I have to provide my\nemail address to read the full report PDF? I suppose the marketing department\nat Cockroach Labs proscribed this workflow.\n\nIs this a viable strategy? Might it be better to provide the report without\nthe annoying engineers with the email requirement? How many readers of the\nreport are interested in Cockroach Labs, rather than the benchmarks?\n\n~~~\nadambyrtek\nYou can always use a disposable email address like 10 Minute Mail:\n[https://10minutemail.com/](https://10minutemail.com/)\n\n~~~\nuniversenz\nNotice how the responses are honest ones, where people would rather skip the\nreport than supply their real email address? The target demographic are tech\nsavvy, so 90% of the leads are going to be 10MM email addresses.\n\nThe popularity of this thread illustrate that there is a need/use for this\ncontent - so Cockroach nailed the bait, but have massively overshot the type\nof trap required to convert these savvy mice.\n\n~~~\nchirau\nThat 10minutemail workaround is easy to block, just require a business domain\nand a use a verification link.\n\n~~~\nadambyrtek\nLike many similar problems, it's a cat and mouse game. For example, it's\nequally easy to detect adblockers, but they are still really effective.\n\n~~~\nchirau\nCockroach is a DB company. Customer acquisition cost is in the thousands if\nnot tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands.\n\nThe steps I mentioned above are what, maybe a few hundred dollars. Trust me,\ntheir lead generation pipeline most likely already subscribes to this and\nutilizes it with minimal concern.\n\nThere are plenty of CRM tools that can flag out BS domains and/or low value\nnot worth it domains.\n\nIf you are a person who gets by using 10minuteemail, you are not their target\nmarket. So will their target demographic.\n\nThe extra hop is very necessary for prevalidation. And they will be just fine\nwith it.\n\nYou on the other hand, being the cheapskate that you are, have to commit an\nextra 5 minutes every time you generate these BS emails. Obviously you don't\nvalue your time as much. And that is why, again, you are not the target market\nbecause you extract no business value from accessing the knowledge they spent\ntime and money aggregating for you. Your getting the PDF is inconsequential to\nboth them and yourself.\n\nSo go ahead, no one really cares.\n\nEDIT: Lol, you was not referring to you specifically, just the folks who think\nthey are being smart or outsmarting corps by using these services like\n10minutemail or whatever it's called\n\n~~~\nmaest\nYour comment is particularly vitriolic.\n\nI am squarely in their target demographic and yet refuse to provide my email.\nI like keeping noise low in my work inbox - if I will decide I'd like to buy\nsomething from cockroachDB, I'll approach them. It's purely negative value to\nhave them approach me - I have never received any useful messages by being on\na marketing list.\n\nIt takes way less than 5 minutes to generate a temporary email address.\n\nAlso, I fail to see how refusing to provide your email address correlates with\nfrugality. If anything, people who are cheapskates would be happy to pay with\nanything but money.\n\n------\notacketoc\nThey should also have included oracle which will soon surpass google (making\nit 5th most popular) cloud\n\n~~~\nBossingAround\nSurely, if we were including other clouds, we'd include IBM before Oracle...\n:))\n\n~~~\noutworlder\nI would add Alibaba Cloud before them too :)\n\n------\nCzarnyZiutek\ngoogle sponsored article.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMaximizing Iterations - konsl\nhttp://mike.posterous.com/maximizing-iterations\n\n======\nwccrawford\nAnd totally forgetting that more iterations isn't necessarily better. If you\npush that to its limit, you can have an iteration ever second... And you'll\nget absolutely nothing done in each one.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow HTML 5 link prefetching can make your site load faster with one line of code - ronnoch\nhttp://keyboardy.com/programming/html5-link-prefetching/\n\n======\nwillwagner\nGoogle already does this prefetch on some search results pages with the top\nresult. For instance, in firefox if you search for \"hacker news\":\n\n<http://www.google.com/search?q=hacker+news>\n\nthere is a link element added to prefetch news.ycombinator.com.\n\n    \n    \n      <link href=\"http://news.ycombinator.com/\" rel=\"prefetch\">\n    \n\nI assume if you aren't careful in your logs, you could be overestimating your\ntraffic.\n\n~~~\ndaleharvey\nwow I certainly didnt realise google were going this\n\nI guess some people with top search results can infer some pretty accurate\nstats from this.\n\n------\nWillyF\nHow will this affect web analytics? Let's say that Google chooses to prefetch\nthe #1 result for any given search term. Will the #1 ranking site's analytics\npackage report a unique visitor for every time that query is searched? If so,\nthat would be a serious problem for those who rely on analytics.\n\n~~~\njeff18\nIt shouldn't affect Google Analytics and other JavaScript based analytics, but\nfrom the article,\n\n* If this becomes popular it has the potential to skew logs and stats. Consider what happens when a bunch of prefetch requests are made to one of your pages, but the user never actually visits the page. The server (or stats package) doesn’t know the difference.\n\nTo clear this up, Firefox sends along an HTTP header, X-moz: prefetch, but you\nneed some logic on the server side to detect it.\n\n~~~\nrobgough\nDo you just count the prefetch for what it is... a \"maybe\" page view. Or when\nthe browser shows the prefetched page can it send a \"view\" (or load it again\nin the background - but that seems wasteful).\n\n~~~\nmseebach\nYou'll only get the \"maybe\" hit, and never the real hit, so you can't\naccurately detect this on the serverside.\n\nJavascript on the page isn't run until you actually visit the page, so that\nwill be unaffected.\n\nI don't think this is a big issue since JS-analytics are already superior to\nserver-side log-analysis (caching alone).\n\n------\ninvisible\nThis guy is deathly truthful: \"Link prefetching will probably pop up in Opera,\nChrome and Safari soon, and in Internet Explorer sometime around 2020.\"\n\nNeat little tidbit though, I'm interested in how this work with regard to the\ncache control/expiry headers (for dynamic pages).\n\n------\ndemocracy\nI would expect the browser-makers to allow more than 2-4 connections per host\n- that would speed things up. This links-prefetching thing feels a bit dodgy\nfor both performance and security reasons.\n\n~~~\nlanaer\nThat, and I thought link rel=\"next\" already existed… and had a more semantic\nmeaning than pre-fetching.\n\nIt (and its brother, rel=\"prev\") are meant to inform the browser (which then\nhopefully informs the user, but that never took off) of what the next or\nprevious page is (in contexts where that makes sense). Maybe it's the next\npage of an article (evil!), or the next blog post in line. Whatever.\n\nAnyway, this has been around for a while, even mentioned in this post from\n2008: <http://diveintomark.org/archives/2008/06/21/minimalism>\n\nSo it's more accurate to say that Firefox likes to prefetch pages, and will\nuse <link rel=\"next\"> tags to guide it. If you're going to be pre-fetching\npages anyway, that seems a reasonable enough way to decide what to fetch, but\nI agree that I'd prefer pre-fetching to be off.\n\n~~~\nspc476\nThe Firefox extension \"Link Widgets\" also uses those to generate a menu bar\nfor the site (it also uses the rel=\"top\", rel=\"up\", rel=\"first\" and\nrel=\"last\").\n\n------\nxeno42\nThis has been around for years - Load up mail-archive.com in Firefox 2 (for\nexample) and browse threads via Charles proxy or Fiddler so you can see what\nit's requesting and you'll see it pre-fetching the next message in the thread\nthanks to rel=\"next\".\n\nDoes make it feel super-snappy though\n\n------\nck2\nDefinitely block prefetch on your site, it completely screws up stats to save\nthe user 100ms of load time.\n\n _in .htaccess_\n\n    \n    \n      RewriteCond %{X-moz} ^prefetch\n      RewriteRule ^.* - [F]\n\n~~~\nmseebach\nWhen did we decide that getting accurate serverside log-analysis is definitely\nmore important than saving 100ms of load time?\n\n~~~\nsmiler\nFor people who want an accurate representation of the number of people\nvisiting their sites and the marketeers who would very much like correct data\ntoo?\n\n~~~\nwfarr\nJS Analytics\n\n~~~\nck2\nAll client side analytics can be blocked.\n\nCheck out Ghostery for Firefox.\n\nOnly server-side is reliable.\n\n~~~\nmseebach\nNot if someone caches your stuff.\n\n------\nwvenable\nI can think of ways to abuse this already.\n\n~~~\nrobryan\nAnything that you couldn't really do firing off an ajax request after the page\nloads?\n\n~~~\nblasdel\nNo same-origin-policy, since you can't access the data in the response, but\nyou could do that already with hidden iframes.\n\n~~~\nmseebach\nYou could stick hundreds of huge images forced to 1x1 px size.\n\nMaybe the \"annoy a minority of people with tight bandwidth-caps\"-attack isn't\nall that big of a threat.\n\n------\nnitrogen\nPrefetching could explain the occasional log entries I've seen where the page\nis retrieved by a modern, graphical browser (i.e. not lynx, links, elinks,\nw3m), but no images or stylesheets are downloaded.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIn Nomine Jobs, et Woz, et Spiritus Schiller - Hagelin\nhttp://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/177715198/confessional\n======\nblasdel\nI adore Merlin, but you'd have to be pretty epically stupid to upgrade _all 5\nof your computers_ on day zero of the release before realizing that your\nshit's broken. While you're supposed to be writing a productivity book. When\nyou knew that the release has no new features that affect you.\n\nI guess someone has to lead the troll brigade (deserved or not) for every\nmajor release of every major platform.\n\n~~~\nmerlinmann\n\"Epically stupid\" and \"leading the troll brigade?\"\n\nThank God you adore me, blasdel.\n\n~~~\nblasdel\nIt's better that you're the principal complainer at the moment than any of the\nusual suspects -- like the greybeards at macintouch (still pining for OS9) or\nthe denizens of any of the Mac rumor forums (oh no my themes and Haxies!) or\nany of the surviving BBEdit users. You're doing a pretty good job of playing\nthe goat on Twitter too.\n\nGiven your usual quality of effort and the normal tone of your writing, it\ntook me several readings to realize that you weren't taking the piss!\n\nDid you _really_ upgrade _every_ Mac you come in contact with? When you ran\ninto trouble why didn't you just revert to a backup?\n\n------\nscottjackson\nI guess Merlin's argument taken to the extreme is that Apple should wait until\nevery piece of software written for a Macintosh computer is SL-compatible\nbefore they release Snow Leopard? \"Well, I don't want to go that far -- I just\nwant the apps that I _use_ to be compatible\", you might say. That's not fair\nunless you consider all of the apps that _everyone_ uses and wait for those to\nbe compatible. Very quickly we get closer to needing every app to be working\nagain.\n\nUpgrades can be bumpy. I lost a Dashboard widget that I use a lot (and didn't\nget upgraded until today), a few Preference Panes are a bit buggy, and my\nSafari plugins are totally f'd (since Safari64 can't load 32-bit plugins, I\nbelieve. I could be wrong, though -- ask John Siracusa). Yes, Merlin probably\nshouldn't have had TextMate and Photoshop crash on him. But at the same time,\nthis _is_ point-oh software -- I guess that in 2009, that means we should take\nit with a grain of salt.\n\nBy the by: I can't imagine that Apple releasing Snow Leopard a month ahead of\nschedule was a good thing for developers ( == 1 less month to Snow Leopard-\nproof their applications). I wonder if that is a contributing factor to the\nmountain of problems that people are having.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow to Improve Security Awareness of Software Engineers - forty\nhttps://blog.dashlane.com/sstic-2019-improve-security-awareness-of-software-engineers/\n======\nyogesch\nPerhaps test teams could include a security sub-team as well..\n\nSo, for example, if a tester is working on whether the file upload feature is\ndone right, another tester could start uploading known malicious files to see\nhow they get handled.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhat the hell is the point of facebook? - annoyed\nhttp://hollywoodphony.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/what-the-hell-is-the-point-of-facebook/\n\n======\nannoyed\nit's a way to let a certain set of people express themselves, a translation of\na social process to the internet. while some of us have outgrown it, we\nhaven't forgotten what it was like for us: phones, chat rooms, geocities.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nJust a though - tjaldur\n\nWhat would happen with NSA`s internet surveillance system, if the trigger words or terms , where found in all Emails worldwide  ?\n======\nksatirli\nMy first thought would be that AWS' GovCloud would explode because of all the\nnew instances being started...\n\n~~~\ntjaldur\n:) would be nice :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe impact on middleware of expanding APIs with Go's interface smuggling - zdw\nhttps://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/programming/GoMiddlewareVsInterfaceSmuggling\n======\nnickcw\nI had a lot of problems with this in rclone.\n\nRclone has backends which connect to cloud providers. These all implement a\ncommon interface. So far so good.\n\nHowever some cloud providers can implement optional features, say a server\nside copy of an object.\n\nRclone used to use interface upgrades to discover these. Still so far so good.\n\nHowever rclone has backends which wrap other backends, for example the crypt\nbackend which encrypts file names and data.\n\nThis backend has to implement all the optional features - you want to be able\nto server side copy an encrypted file if possible.\n\nThe problem comes when the crypt backend wraps another backend which does not\nsupport server side copy.\n\nWhat rclone used to do here is return a special not implemented error. This\nworks, but isn't ideal because you have to call the method to find out if it\nis supported and often you'd like to know before that.\n\nI eventually gave up on interface upgrades and resorted to good old function\npointers which you can check against nil. When the crypt backend starts up it\nfinds out whether the backend it is wrapping supports server side copies and\nif not nils the pointer.\n\nA little bit of reflection removed the boiler plate for this and it turned out\nquite neatly.\n\nIf instead there was a way for crypt to remove methods from its method set\nthen that would be a better solution.\n\n------\n_old_dude_\nThe same problem was discovered 15 years ago in Java :)\n\nThe first attempt to fix it was to use dynamically generated proxies. The\nIAdaptable mechanism proposed by Ken Beck is an example of that for Eclipse\n[1].\n\nThis was ultimately fixed by introducing default methods which is as\nrestricted way of implementing Traits [2] in Java 8.\n\nI guess Go will have to follow a similar direction.\n\n[1]\n[https://wiki.eclipse.org/FAQ_How_do_I_use_IAdaptable_and_IAd...](https://wiki.eclipse.org/FAQ_How_do_I_use_IAdaptable_and_IAdapterFactory%3F)\n\n[2]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trait_(computer_programming)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trait_\\(computer_programming\\))\n\n~~~\nlmz\nWhy stop at Java? Isn't this solved by IUnknown's QueryInterface from COM?\n\n~~~\njmull\nRight... for people who don't know, QueryInterface was the fundamental method\nclient code would call on a COM object to get a particular interface.\n\nThe key here, is the object can implement this any way it wants.\n\nA typical \"static\" object would just return itself as the requested interface\nfor the interfaces it supported. But a proxy object, with a wrapped upstream\nobject, could pass through requests for interfaces it didn't know or need to\noverride to the upstream object.\n\nI don't know Go, but a quick google makes me think type assertion is the\nmechanism for getting an interface from an object at runtime. So if Go allowed\na type to override type assertion, I think that should enable middleware and\nother proxy objects to behave well.\n\n------\ni_have_to_speak\n> People can work around this for HTTP middleware because they can make files\n> build only on specific minimum versions of Go. Your package doesn't have\n> this magical power; it's something available only for new APIs in the Go\n> standard library.\n\nIt is indeed possible to add build constraints to .go files to have them\nincluded for compilation only on specified minimum versions of Go, see [1]\n\n[1] [https://golang.org/pkg/go/build/#hdr-\nBuild_Constraints](https://golang.org/pkg/go/build/#hdr-Build_Constraints)\n\n~~~\nrandomdata\nThat's what your quote says. However, what it also says is that functionality\nis only available for Go versions, and therefore Go standard library versions.\nIt is not functionality available around third-party libraries that are\ndeveloped independently of the Go release cycle.\n\n------\nDougBTX\nHopefully generics will help with this, if the middleware can deal with T then\nthe calling code can “smuggle” whatever types it wants because it controls T.\n\n------\nkstenerud\nThis is what happens when you design in a vacuum, ignoring the lessons learned\nby those who came before you.\n\nI know, every language suffers from this to some degree, but somehow it feels\nlike go gets bitten a lot more than the others (except maybe PHP).\n\n~~~\nthrowaway894345\nYou have to compare everything on balance. By not setting out to reinvent Java\nor C++ or whatever from data 0, Go doesn’t have a lot of features that chafe\ndevelopers on a daily basis. But yeah, it means it sometimes misses a feature\nfor some use case. But even then those use cases are often marginal, and\nomitting the feature is often a better design decision. I’m pretty happy with\nwhere Go landed—I’m glad it doesn’t look like C++ or Java or C# even if those\nlanguages have some cool features. I think _on balance_ Go is an incredibly\nproductive language that performs well on almost all criteria even if it isn’t\ntop of class in any (except simplicity and perhaps developer velocity).\n\n~~~\nBrian_K_White\nYou already said that.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy does Microsoft not have free food like Google and Facebook? - knowbody\nhttp://www.quora.com/Why-does-Microsoft-not-have-free-food-like-Google-and-Facebook/answer/Amin-Ariana?share=1\n\n======\ntired_man\nGiven a choice, I'd rather not have a company provided/subsidized meal. It's a\ntaxable benefit.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFines Remain Rare Even as Health Data Breaches Multiply - dthal\nhttp://www.propublica.org/article/fines-remain-rare-even-as-health-data-breaches-multiply\n\n======\nspecialist\nArticle doesn't explain why: All data is stored as plaintext. Including all\ndemographic data.\n\nBecause otherwise there is no way to match patient records across our (USA)\nheterogenous IT systems.\n\nThe two possible technical fixes are\n\n#1 Centralization, where every patient is issued an UUID (aka MRN, PID), their\ndemographic data is hidden, and UUID is used to retrieve medical data (ala\nTranslucent Databases).\n\n#2 Individualization, where every patient \"carries\" around their own medical\ndata.\n\nWe can discuss the social, cultural, bureaucratic, workflow hurdles to either\nof these solutions, if this thread gets traction.\n\nFWIW, I designed and implemented 5 regional health care exchanges 2007-08.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Should one avoid using niche technologies for a startup? - zaph0d\n\nI am doing a startup with a small tech. team. We would like to use cutting-edge technologies like Clojure, Erlang, node.js, etc. which are not really mainstream but help in rapid application development and iteration.\nThe problem here is that in case of a potential acquisition by another company, the deal might get canceled because the technology we used is non-mainstream, and the acquiring company might face a lot of problems in maintaining the code-base.\nSo the question here is how do you deal with such issues? Should one compromise speed of development now in favour of an easy acquisition path tomorrow? How do you convince the `elders' in your startup about this?\n======\ndavidw\nThis site would not exist and none of us would be here had pg not been\nsuccessful with Viaweb, which utilized Lisp. I think that PG and company were\nprobably bright enough that things would have worked out with other\ntechnologies too, but Lisp made them happy and more productive, I guess.\n\n~~~\npaulgb\n\"Did it alarm some potential acquirers that we used Lisp? Some, slightly, but\nif we hadn't used Lisp, we wouldn't have been able to write the software that\nmade them want to buy us. What seemed like an anomaly to them was in fact\ncause and effect.\"\n\n\\-- <http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html>\n\n------\nscottdrake\nI can't tell you how many startups I've run across who are deperately looking\nfor programmers who know [insert cutting edge/obscure technology here].\n\nBecause they can't find anyone they like, they are stuck making bad/deperate\nhires or with the prospect of rebuilding the codebase. The list of\ntechnologies that are tough to hire for vary by market. In my midwest market,\nRails still falls in that group and I know a ton of companies that can't find\nthe talent they need. Do your best to stick with the technology stack that has\nthe largest candidate pool in your market.\n\n~~~\nzaph0d\nTrue, but that means we will have to stick to Java even though we are Lisp,\nPython, Erlang guys here. That also means that we will have to muck around\nwith JavaEE crap even though we can build the same thing much faster using\nsomething else; all this to be future proof.\n\n~~~\nNickPollard\nI don't have any experience to back it up, but I'd say go for the technologies\nyou want to use: Good programmers can learn a new language pretty quickly,\nwhereas knowing whatever is language du jour doesn't make you a good\nprogrammer. Hiring someone just because they know a framework doesn't really\nstrike me as a sensible hiring strategy.\n\nThere might not be as many Clojure programmers as Java Programmers, but\nthere's probably a higher proportion of good programmers working in Clojure\nthan Java. Hire whoever you can find who is technically able, passionate about\ntech and your idea, and I'd wager they will pick it up pretty damn quick.\n\n------\nicey\nI don't think acquisition will be as much of an issue as recruiting employees\nwill.\n\nIf you think you can find people to work for your company who either know\nthose languages or can learn them quickly enough to not kill your productivity\nor your product, then go for it. Otherwise, you may want to think about making\nsome tradeoffs (i.e. node.js over Erlang because you're going to be far more\nlikely to find competent js devs than Erlang devs.)\n\nMost acquisitions end up with the founding team contracted to transition for a\nyear or three; during that time the acquiring company either rewrites the IP\nor ends up with enough qualified people to take it over.\n\n------\nprosa\nThe best path forward is the one that lets you iterate easily and bring a\nproduct to market as quickly as possible. Until you have validated your MVP\nwith customers you are burning cash with the risk of zero return.\n\nWhen and if (and it's a BIG if) companies are expressing interest in acquiring\nyour technology, you can sort out whether you'll need to rewrite portions as\npart of a deal. But far more likely is that the product will pivot at least to\nsome degree, and you'll be thankful that you're using technology that you can\ncomfortably and quickly modify.\n\n------\njswinghammer\nIt's probably wise to use a more common framework. Even if you are more\nproductive initially being able to hire people when you're off focusing on\nsome other aspect of the business is important too.\n\nI'm not sure there is a huge productivity difference between the modern\nframeworks unless you really know nothing about what you're getting into. I'd\nchoose something mainstream that you all know at least a little and can use\nand then get to work.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nOAuth of Fealty: Resignation beyond sorrow on the Facebook Platform and beyond - jlees\nhttp://m.bogost.com/blog/oauth_of_fealty.shtml\n\n======\nedwinnathaniel\nFacebook Platform isn't the only offender.\n\nOccasionally I found basic features on Facebook website just don't work. For\nexample: 2-3 days ago, I can't put description on my newly uploaded photo. I\nhave to complete the photo upload workflow, and then click the newly uploaded\nphoto on my album and edit the description.\n\nRegression on basic feature.\n\nI suppose Facebook is just like any other companies with sharp growth: you\ndon't want to know what's inside it (or how the sausage is made). That boils\ndown to ship features and ignore everything else (documentation, good design,\ngood habit, better architecture, better quality, etc).\n\nI'm not saying that's a very bad idea for them because I've seen this practice\na lot in our industry.\n\nHaving said that, this is one of the many reasons why young startups want to\nhire the brightest and smartest engineers out of college: they need warm\nbodies smart enough to move forward, to deal with legacy codebases and\nfiguring a clever (but may be dirty) hack to workaround the legacy design\ndecision, less on solving complex new problems. The latter may be reserved for\nthe infrastructure teams where people develop back-end infrastructure\ncomponent like Haystack or something along that line.\n\nThe recent \"rant\" stories/articles of the quality of Facebook Platform showed\nus the same repeated story we've read before in the past and to confirm that\nFacebook engineers were not way much better than Googlers or Yahoo or\nMicrosoft engineers.\n\n~~~\nrhizome\n_Having said that, this is one of the many reasons why young startups want to\nhire the brightest and smartest engineers out of college: they need warm\nbodies smart enough to move forward, to deal with legacy codebases and\nfiguring a clever (but may be dirty) hack to workaround the legacy design\ndecision, less on solving complex new problems._\n\nWasn't it the brightest and smartest engineers who created these problems?\n\n------\ntjmc\nWhat a great post. Given that Facebook's official motto is to \"move fast and\nbreak things\", I've always considered developing on their platform akin to\ncontracting for the Marquis de Sade.\n\n~~~\nmathattack\nI wouldn't have put it so eloquently, but relying on consistency in a rapidly\nmoving platform is risky.\n\n------\nMaxGabriel\nWhile working with the Facebook iOS SDK was a horrible experience, I don't get\nwhere this is coming from:\n\n\"Apple pushes new iOS releases...breaking software written relatively\nrecently\"\n\nCan this really be considered true? I can't remember anything deprecated that\ndidn't still function in iOS, with the exception of the UDID and mac address\nAPIs which were deprecated for privacy reasons (and developers have had ages\nto move away from UDID). iOS 3 era code I download from Github still runs\nfine. At worst, this summer Apple required apps to support the iPhone 5\nformat, but that's a pretty easy upgrade to support, and a major user facing\none.\n\n~~~\nibogost\nAdmittedly, it's mostly lots of little things over the course of iOS updates,\nsmall changes in the behavior of specific SDK packages rather than full-bore\nfailures. I may have overstated that point and it certainly pales in\ncomparison to FB. Still, you get the gist right?\n\n~~~\nMaxGabriel\nYeah I get the gist. Post definitely resonated for me and I've never written\nanything that's totally on Facebook's platform, like Cow Clicker was.\n\n------\nmixmastamyk\nQuote of the day:\n\n\"Facebook is like a kindergarten run by child molesters.\"\n\n~~~\ndamian2000\nI liked \"The Facebook Platform is a shit crayon.\".\n\n------\nthristian\nAnother reason to support federated social networking platforms like\n[http://pump.io/](http://pump.io/) and [https://tent.io/](https://tent.io/)\nthat are outside the control of any individual company.\n\n~~~\ncbhl\nI feel like these come and go every few years; look at StatusNet or Diaspora\nfor example.\n\nHell, I still remember when MSN tried to integrate with AIM and Y! messenger\nby reverse-engineering the protocols and putting them into the MSN client.\n\n~~~\nPavlovsCat\nstatus.net and diaspora are still here and working just fine... ?\n\n~~~\npercentcer\nCan you really say a social network is working if nobody uses it?\n\n~~~\nPavlovsCat\nYes, I can. The networks work fine. If people need more than \"this works fine,\nit's free, and you can use it instead of the other way around\" as a reason,\nthe people are broken.\n\n20 years ago we hardly had cell phones and that was just _fine_ , if you\nactually loved your Grandmother you'd always find a way to send her some baby\nphotos... and now we start to cry because Diaspora is kinda basic? Even though\nthat would change real quick if only 5% of the FB users would switch to it. I\nthink that's silly, so I for one am reachable by phone and email, and my\nfriends are always welcome to join me \"on the actual web\". Until then, I'm not\nsupporting them in their self-harm: for whatever reasons people use Facebook,\nI try to avoid being one of them (edit: one of the reasons, that is).\n\n------\nmgkimsal\nUnrelated\n\nDid a small oauth project a few weeks back trying to integrate with web mail\nproviders - gmail, ymail and outlook.\n\nGmail was a bit of a pain, but basically worked.\n\nYmail - a much huger pain, and extra hoops and far less usable documentation\nexplaining basic workflow - \"oauth\" libraries continually failed me, and\n_only_ using the crappy php4-style example code worked. At the end of the day,\nit didn't come close to being easy to use (and required my users to jump\nthrough extra hoops).\n\nOutlook/microsoft webmail? Just didn't work at all . Oauth connectivity\nworked, as easily as gmail, but they simply don't allow sending at all - no\naccess to the inbox at all. Oh sure I can 'download contacts!' but can't use\noutlook/livemail to actually handle the sending programmatically.\n\nIt really hit me that as bad or potentially bad that google might be in this\nspace, they're 'winning' hearts and minds just because they're less bad than\nthe alternatives. I used to wonder why so many services and add-ons were built\non Google properties vs Yahoo and MS, but I wonder no more; Yahoo/MS just\ndon't want to compete in that space (making stuff at least usable for\ndevelopers). Facebook also seems to fall in to that camp, but right now they\ndon't have any major competition (except from G+ it seems). But FB still has\nan upper hand with a full platform (however crappy). I suspect when G+ rolls\nout stronger API stuff, the game will change dramatically.\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nI wish I could write rants as poetically as this.\n\n------\nkmfrk\nWeird. The site has both a www- and non-www version:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6141702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6141702).\n\n------\nsidcool\nThis is a very poetic post. I like it for its literary value.\n\n------\ndohertyjf\nI laughed out loud at this:\n\nThe Facebook Platform is a shape-shifting, chimeric shadow of suffering and\ndespair, a cruel joke perpetrated upon honest men and women at the brutish\nwhim of bloodthirsty sociopaths sick with bilious greed and absent mercy or\ndecency. Developing for the Facebook Platform is picking out the wallpaper for\none's own death row holding cell, the cleaver for one's own blood sacrifice.\n\n------\nCamillo\nI was thinking of making a Facebook chat client as a fun project, but this\npost made me reconsider.\n\n~~~\neksith\nYou can do something with Twitter instead. No reason to completely drop a\nproject if the first place you look to host it doesn't seem appealing.\n\nTwitter has their share of warts, but they're markedly different when it comes\nto the _speed_ of \"breaking things\".\n\nSomething to keep in mind though: You're working with someone else's platform\nwhich means you participate at their pleasure. Any API provider can do\nwhatever they please with their product so try to decouple API handling from\nthe rest of your client as much as you can so you can reduce the likelihood of\nbeing pulled by the tides.\n\n~~~\nmjn\nThe OAuth bit in the title of this post reminds me that that change broke one\nof the author's previous projects on Twitter:\n[http://www.bogost.com/blog/it_soared_a_bird.shtml](http://www.bogost.com/blog/it_soared_a_bird.shtml)\n\nTwitter's responsibility does seem somewhat less, anyway, in that they've\nnever been as platformy as Facebook: Facebook actively claimed that this was a\nplace to deploy your games and other apps, but then broke stuff constantly.\n\n------\ngwern\nThe \"resignation beyond sorrow\" \\- what a phrase! It's such a Kierkegaardian\nphrase I was surprised to google it and find it was not an allusion but\noriginal.\n\n------\ncygnus\n\"OAuth of Fealty: Resignation beyond sorrow on the Facebook Platform and\nbeyond\" Would be a great metal song title.\n\n------\nMuzza\n> \"Here's a thing,\" young white dude founder blogs...\n\nIf he would've said black instead of white or dudette instead of dude, Hacker\nNews would have had this guy's header on a platter. Racists, the lot of you.\n\n~~~\nmoomin\nNope, he's asserting that the founders come from privileged groups. Punching\nup is acceptable, punching down is not.\n\n~~~\nspecialist\nGreat metaphor. Stealing it. Thanks.\n\n~~~\nmoomin\nThanks, but not mine. :) I think this may be the original:\n\n[http://reasonableconversation.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/punch...](http://reasonableconversation.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/punching-\nup/)\n\n------\nAsymetricCom\nI'm surprised this article doesn't touch upon the unending hell that is\n\"OAuth\" and \"federated identity\"\n\n------\ndpeterson\nThere is an excellent solution to the author's dilemma. He does not have to\nuse Facebook or its API. That's the great thing about capitalism and the free\nmarket. He has a choice. Also, because he is not motivated by money, he can\nmake his own, perfect platform, motivated by the plight of the proletariat and\nit will be noble and superior in every way. He can give away the games he\nmakes because who needs money in such a utopia... Give me a break. Shut up and\nmake a better API that cares about backward compatibility. Give the aloof\nmoral superiority a rest.\n\n~~~\nGigablah\nInteresting, I wasn't aware that capitalism and the free market absolves\neverything from criticism.\n\n~~~\ndpeterson\nCriticize Facebook. It sucks. However, arguing that it sucks because the\ndevelopers are privileged white dudes motivated by making money is not a valid\nargument. The author even points to an example of a good api from Microsoft.\nDo you really believe the developers at Microsoft back in the 90s weren't\nmotivated by making money? The Facebook API sucks for so many reasons.\nZuckerburg originally wrote Facebook in PHP, he was not a computer scientist\nscientist, their motto is \"move fast and break things\". It's an experiment and\nthey made some mistakes. To imply its flaws are rooted in capitalism is wrong.\nI realize profit and money are popular punching bags. It feels good to think\nyou are morally superior and have other people think you are a good person.\nHowever, the hate and bile being spewed at anyone trying to make a buck is\nirrational. No one is holding a gun to anyone's head telling them they have to\nuse Facebook. Go out and make something better.\n\n~~~\nmjn\nI think you're reading some kind of general anti-capitalism into the post that\nisn't there. Bogost's view seems to be that chasing _short-term_ profit is a\nsignificant problem in this sector, which is why he uses Microsoft as a\ncounterexample of something that _was_ a profit-oriented business but still\nmanaged to keep stable APIs, because they were oriented longer-term. If he\nwere trying to make a general anti-market or anti-capitalist point it would\nmake no sense for both his pro and con examples to be large for-profit tech\ncompanies.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLyrebird beta – Create your voice avatar - adbrebs\nhttps://lyrebird.ai/blog/lyrebird-is-back\n======\nangersock\nWhy is this being built? Have we not had enough trouble with veracity of audio\nand video already?\n\n~~~\nsotelo\nIt's important to make people realize that this technology is here. It's\nimpossible to stop the technological advances but at least we can reduce their\nimpact by making it well known.\n\n------\nbrebs\nThis is amazing... I wonder how Obama feels about it !\n\n------\nfedora_batman\nThis is awesome :o\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: PaletteList – Generate 10k color palettes after picking 2 colors - mattaus\nhttps://www.palettelist.com/\n======\nmattaus\nHello Matt here, a friend of mine and myself built this website to make it\neasy for developers and designers to find colors for your projects. It's built\nwith React and Ruby on Rails, hosted on Heroku. You can download palettes in\nCSS, Sass, and SVG.\n\nI was frustrated with current solutions so we built PaletteList.com. I also\nbuilt [https://materialpalette.com/](https://materialpalette.com/) for\nMaterial Design colors. I hope you like it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nScalable Work Queues with Beanstalk - igrigorik\nhttp://www.igvita.com/2010/05/20/scalable-work-queues-with-beanstalk/\n\n======\nmattrepl\nThere are some tasks, such as asynchronously-generated web content, where a\nmessage queue is the obvious solution. But there are a class of problems where\neither a message queue or batch processing system (e.g., Hadoop) could be\nused. Consider the summation of user mention counts from the Twitter streaming\nAPI for an example; either a job is put on a queue for each tweet containing a\nmention, or each of the mentioning tweets are thrown into a bucket that is\nused as the source for a batch job that recurrently executes.\n\nFrom what's mentioned in the article, it sounds like some of the tasks that\nBeanstalk is being used for at PostRank are the same type of tasks that other\ncompanies, such as FlightCaster, are doing with Hadoop/Cascading.\n\nThe trade-off seems to be that message queues are more flexible and can offer\nlower latency of job completion but batch processing systems provide better\nsupport for admin concerns like adding worker nodes, debugging, and reporting.\n\n~~~\nigrigorik\n\"From what's mentioned in the article, it sounds like some of the tasks that\nBeanstalk is being used for at PostRank are the same type of tasks that other\ncompanies, such as FlightCaster, are doing with Hadoop/Cascading.\"\n\nHmm, not at all. A message queue and a job queue are not necessarily one and\nthe same. What we need is real-time scheduling, with up to the second\nresolution for each job. We don't run a batch \"go fetch all of these pages\"\njobs, rather our system is always running, always fetching content. For that,\na heap/work queue is required.\n\n~~~\nmattrepl\nI've enjoyed reading your posts over the years, thanks for them.\n\nYou're correct that a message queue isn't necessarily a job queue, I was\nreferring to job queues.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLua: Good, bad, and ugly parts - adamansky\nhttp://notebook.kulchenko.com/programming/lua-good-different-bad-and-ugly-parts\n======\ngraue\nLua's great. I recently used it to rewrite a small audio effect framework[1]\nbased on an older project of mine in C[2]. To my astonishment, without any\noptimization efforts on my part, the LuaJIT version of one effect ran _faster_\nthan the C version, while another more complicated effect (a filter) only took\n2.01x as much time as C. And this was with simple, clean, mostly declarative\ncode (read it on GitHub and see what you think).\n\nOne of the goals of this project was to compile effects code to JavaScript\nwith Lua.js[3] and produce a demo that ran in the browser. There,\nunfortunately, I ran into a showstopper with a Lua.js bug[4] that breaks my\napproach to creating modules. Unlike LuaJIT and regular Lua, Lua.js is an\nexperimental project and far less mature - though totally awesome. I might\nmake another attempt to fix the problem myself at some point. With a more\nmature Lua.js, you could write fast Lua code and port it to nearly every\nenvironment.\n\n[1] <https://github.com/graue/luasynth>\n\n[2] <https://github.com/graue/synth>\n\n[3] <https://github.com/mherkender/lua.js>\n\n[4]\n[https://github.com/mherkender/lua.js/issues/13#issuecomment-...](https://github.com/mherkender/lua.js/issues/13#issuecomment-9220080)\n\n~~~\nazakai\nI'm curious to do some performance comparisons, can you perhaps say how one\nwould build and run your code to replicate those benchmark results?\n(Especially but not only the one you say was faster in LuaJIT?)\n\n~~~\ngraue\nI documented the tests on my project log:\n\n<https://scott.mn/projects/luasynth.html#filter_effect>\n\nIn short, I ran C and Lua implementations of the same command, 6 times each,\nusing the built-in \"time\" command in bash. Averaged the \"user\" time for each\nimplementation and compared the results. As input, I used a 2m:38.040s long\nsong, 44.1 KHz stereo, converted to a raw file with 32-bit float samples, and\nI redirected output to /dev/null.\n\nFor the first benchmark[1], which was faster for LuaJIT, I actually messed up:\nI compared the \"real\" time rather than the user CPU time. But as I recall, the\n\"user\" times bore the same relationship, and there was very little deviation\namong the six trials. If you don't trust me, feel free to do a more rigorous\ntest!\n\nIt's worth mentioning that the effect for which LuaJIT beat C was a simple\ngain, so what was really being tested was a loop that multiplied a bunch of\nnumbers by a (within the loop) constant. The second test in which Lua was a\nfactor of two slower may be more representative.\n\nTo build the code, clone the graue/synth and graue/luasynth repos on GitHub.\nsynth includes build instructions, while Luasynth merely requires you to\ninstall LuaJIT and run the script.\n\n[1]: <https://scott.mn/projects/luasynth.html#lua_beats_c>\n\n~~~\nazakai\nThanks!\n\n------\nethereal\nI've been using Lua in a project for quite some time, replacing Python as my\nembedded scripting language of choice.\n\nIt never ceases to amaze me, as a language and as an interpreter. Sure, the\nsyntax bites you occasionally, and sure, the lack of built-in functionality is\noccasionally annoying. But hey, I can add callbacks into a simulation engine\nthat execute 10 million times per second with almost no slowdown in the\nresult. Like the article mentions, the string matching library isn't as\npowerful as Perl's, but it's more than adequate for all of my uses.\n\nMy only wish is for an updated LNUM patch that works with Lua 5.2. I deal with\nintegers too much in my projects for its absence to not be annoying.\n\n~~~\njustincormack\nLooks like Lua 5.3 will have an integer type.\n\n~~~\nominous_prime\nOoh, that would be really nice. Is there a roadmap anywhere, or is this\nmailing list chatter?\n\n~~~\nfab13n\nRoberto did a keynote at the Lua workshop '12, where he detailled what keeps\nthe Lua team busy. A video of it exists somewhere on the web. Half of it was\nabout how to integrate IEEE doubles and 64 bits ints soundly in the language.\nThere are some challenges left, but they're really trying to overcome them.\n\n~~~\nbsg75\n<https://www.youtube.com/user/luaworkshop>\n\n------\nandrew-d\nI recently started programming in Lua too - it's a fantastic language if you\nwant to embed it in anything, and using the LuaJIT FFI [0] makes interfacing\nwith C code from pure Lua a pleasure. I've also started writing a set of\nextension libraries[1] that provide various \"missing\" features - mostly\ninspired by Ruby.\n\n[0]: <http://luajit.org/ext_ffi.html> [1]: <http://andrew-d.github.com/lua-\next/>\n\n------\npeterfschaadt\nIt's very easy to extend Nginx with Lua [1] to create a custom Nginx setup for\nfast API endpoint authentication, diverting beta users, or handling sockets.\nI'm hoping to see Lua continue to grow and solve some of its shortcomings like\nunicode support and pattern matching.\n\n[1] <https://github.com/chaoslawful/lua-nginx-module>\n\n------\nshaneeb\nHaven't used Lua much but the concept of _tables_ is really neat. Its simple,\northogonal and the fact it lies at the core of many features in Lua (composite\ndata types, metaprogramming, etc) means those features are neat too.\n\n~~~\nFreezerburnV\nI agree about the tables. Personally, I find Lua to just be a more honest\nlanguage, in a sense. Languages like Python or OCaml really just use tables\nunder the hood for objects and what not (from what I understand), but Lua\nshows you that outright.\n\n~~~\nsmosher\nI can see the case for Python, but how do you explain OCaml?\n\n------\nsaosebastiao\nI'm sitting here wishing lua was the de facto web language. Javascript makes\nme sad.\n\n~~~\nshaneeb\nI guess if we could replace it with Lua we would still be sad. How do you\nthink Lua makes for a better language for web?\n\n~~~\nphaedryx\nCompare\n\n<https://www.google.com/search?q=javascript+wtf>\n\nvs.\n\n<https://www.google.com/search?q=lua+wtf>\n\n~~~\nshaneeb\nIf that was the measure, maybe we could use a language nobody knows because it\nwill pass this test with flying colors :)\n\n~~~\nshaneeb\nNot implying that one language is better than the other, but how does Lua help\nsolve problems that web developers face? I say this because I have been\nworking on a \"killer\" web app (JS intensive) for the past few months and it\nhas been a real pain but I dont see how Lua could have helped either.\n\n~~~\ngruseom\nA lot of people find coroutines easier to work with than callbacks, so there's\nroom for a Lua alternative to Node.js.\n\nThe way things are going, it looks like that alternative will also take\nadvantage of Lua's embeddability to allow interop between web apps and web\nservers in a way that hasn't been widely practiced before.\n\n~~~\nJare\n> there's room for a Lua alternative to Node.js\n\nDo you know Luvit? <http://luvit.io/>\n\n~~~\ngruseom\nI've heard of it, but I'm unclear on the benefit. Can't you do async I/O in\nLua already? What's the value of adopting the Node.js model, which is mostly\nabout adding I/O to V8 and using callback functions for async, in Lua? (I hope\nthat doesn't sound trollish – I'm ignorant and would like to understand, and\nthe Luvit project page doesn't help.)\n\n------\nphaedryx\nI've been looking for a way to introduce my children to programming.\n\nI've been considering several different languages to start them on and Lua has\nturned out to be a great choice. My children both love minecraft and we've\nbeen writing programs in Lua for the computercraft mod:\n<http://www.computercraft.info/>\n\n~~~\nNateLipscomb\nI agree. I've been teaching my 7-year old son to code and Lua has been a great\nchoice for him so far. After having him play around with Scratch and learn\nsome javascript with Code Monster, we got him going with some game development\nin Lua with the Corona SDK. It's proven to be pretty intuitive for him and\nhe's having a lot of fun. He was super stoked when we first put his \"game\" on\nan iPad and play around with it. I'd definitely recommend it to other parents\nlooking for something to start their kids on.\n\n------\ngreggman\nHaving never used a language that indexes from 1 I'd expect that would make a\nton of common math used in programming either break or be more complicated.\n\nHow is it in practice?\n\n~~~\nominous_prime\nI never found it to be a big deal, unless you're trying to copy algorithms\nfrom another language nearly verbatim. There's not really any _math_ that\nrelies on 0 indexing,\n\n~~~\ngreggman\nI guess it depends on what you mean by \"relies\"\n\nUsing a single dimensional array as a 2 dimensional array relies on zero\nindexing.\n\n    \n    \n        index = y * width + x\n        array[index]\n    \n\nUsing modulo to covert an index back to 2 dimensions relies on 0 indexing\n\n    \n    \n        x = index % width\n        y = index / width\n    \n\nSkipping a prefix in a string.\n\n    \n    \n        prefix = \"ABC\"\n        string = \"ABCdef\"\n        unprefixed = string[prefix.length:]\n        \n\nI'm sure there are tons of others. Yes, you can add 1 or subtract 1 in the\nright places. That's the annoying part of it though.\n\n~~~\nrbehrends\nEh, for every use case where it's more convenient that arrays start at zero,\nthere's one where it's more convenient that arrays start at one, and vice\nversa.\n\nFor example, to get a prefix of length 'n', you need characters 0 through n-1\nwith zero-based indexing and 1 through n with one-based indexing. (That Python\nhides the -1 when using a [0:n] range is a convenience; the subtraction still\nhappens internally.)\n\nSimilarly, to get the last element of a one-based array with a[length(a)] and\nthe last element of a zero-based array with a[length(a)-1].\n\nWhat it comes down to is that sometimes you have to write +1 or -1 for zero-\nbased indexing where you can avoid it for one-based indexing and vice versa.\nWhat is not the case is that it only universally happens for one of those\nschemes.\n\n------\nvor_\nHere's an article I've submitted before that makes a case for considering\nSquirrel instead of Lua:\n\n[http://computerscomputing.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/lua-\nand-s...](http://computerscomputing.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/lua-and-squirrel-\nthe-case-for-squirrel/)\n\nThe best reason against using Lua in my mind is that undefined variables in\nLua return nil, which can lead to typo bugs and therefore unintentional sparse\narrays, which screws up the result returned by the length operator. It also\nhas inconsistent boolean expression evaluation:\n\n    \n    \n      while 0 do print(\"Loops forever\") end\n      while not 1 do print(\"Does nothing\") end\n      while 1 do print(\"Loops forever\") end\n      while not 0 do print(\"Does nothing\") end\n    \n\nIt's nice having real classes in Squirrel with type introspection and\ncorresponding C APIs. In Lua, I have to juggle metatables in the registry to\nconstruct a class system, and my system will differ slightly from someone\nelse's. Squirrel's other niceties like compile-time constants, 0-based arrays,\nand automatic reference counting for predictable memory management overhead\nmake it a quite nice alternative to Lua.\n\nIt sounds like I'm bashing Lua here, though I still find it fun to program\noccasionally. But I do wonder how long Lua can remain as popular as it is with\nan unconventional syntax, inconsistent behavior, and a minimal built-in\nlibrary in the face of richer alternatives like Squirrel, mruby, and even Tcl,\nwhich has improved much in recent years. There must have been a reason Valve\nSoftware chose to use Squirrel in L4D2 and Portal 2 instead of using Lua as\nmost apparently do.\n\n~~~\nvardump\nIt's not inconsistent at all. In Lua, only nil and false are not true.\nEverything else is true, including all integer values, strings \"0\", \"false\",\n\"\", etc.\n\nI'd rather say Lua is one of the most _consistent_ and logical languages when\nit comes to truth values. You don't ever have to worry about arbitrary value\nevaluating to false.\n\n<http://www.lua.org/pil/3.3.html>\n\n~~~\nvor_\nLua's treatment of boolean expression does lead to inconsistencies. For\nexample:\n\n    \n    \n      function Func1() return 1; end\n      function Func2() return true; end\n    \n      if(Func1() == Func2()) then\n        print \"They're both the same!\"\n      else\n        print \"They're different!\"\n      end\n    \n\nIn Lua, even though 1 and true evaluate to true, they're not the same thing\nand so comparisons between them evaluate to false!\n\n~~~\ngraue\n1 and 2 both evaluate to true, yet they're not the same thing, so the\ncomparison `1 == 2` is false. Is that equally problematic to you?\n\nThere's no way to avoid this problem in _any_ language that allows coercing a\nnumber to a boolean. There are two possible boolean values, and many more\npossible numeric values. Therefore, numbers that are different and compare\nunequal will still both evaluate to true. Pigeonhole principle.\n\nIt seems you were surprised by the fact that Lua doesn't consider 0 false.\nFair enough, that behavior's different from many other programming languages.\nBut there's nothing inconsistent about it.\n\n~~~\nvor_\nYou're explaining the implementation, which I understand. There are reasons\nbehind everything in the infamous \"Wat!\" video. The inconsistency is in\nconceptual expectations: (0) is true, (not 0) is false, yet (0 == true) is\nfalse. These are unexpected \"gotchas\" familiar to experienced Lua programmers.\n\nIt's not a dealbreaker. It's just a Lua quirk that often surprises newcomers.\nI was pointing out that Squirrel uses more conventional boolean evaluation\nthat script authors coming from other languages may be more comfortable with.\nIf you're exposing a scripting API, the language you use is essentially a part\nof your user interface.\n\n~~~\nPySlice\nAs long as (0) and (not 0) are opposites; and (1) and (not 1) are opposites,\nthere is nothing wrong, inconsistent or surprising.\n\nBut I think I see what you are trying to say. You want the == operator to\n_coerce_ its operands to the same type before comparing (like JavaScript's ==\noperator), but Lua's == operator _doesn't do that, it simply compares_. And\nthat's why other languages need an === operator and Lua does not.\n\n(JavaScript, by the way is the inconsistent one in this regard: the ==\noperator does coerce its operands, but if(something == true) doesn't do the\nsame thing as if(something). Try it with an empty array)\n\n------\njohnmo\n> The \"hash\" part doesn't have a defined length. Both parts can be iterated\n> over using the pairs method, which allows you to count the number of\n> elements in them\n\nWhile true, you should iterate integer-key tables using ipairs and hash tables\nusing pairs.\n\n> No continue statement\n\nContinue doesn't exist? I swear I've used it in Lua 5.1.\n\n~~~\nvor_\nThere's no continue. Instead, you must use goto.\n\n> While true, you should iterate integer-key tables using ipairs and hash\n> tables using pairs.\n\nIn my opinion, this makes Lua's combination of arrays and dictionaries\npointless since one must distinguish between them anyway for iteration.\n\n~~~\nHinrik\nDo you really consider that to be a drawback? How often do you find yourself\nwanting to iterate a datastructure without knowing whether it's an array or a\nhash?\n\n------\nyeureka\nI have been using Lua to script the audio sequencer on the game I am writing\nand it rocks. No performance problems at all, even on an second generation\niPod Touch. And it is very easy to call Lua from C++ and C++ from Lua.\n\n------\ngruseom\nIt's neat to see Lua building up to critical mass based on just plain how good\nit is. What will be the killer app?\n\n~~~\nchas\nIt is popular in video games already.\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lua-\nscripted_video_gam...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lua-\nscripted_video_games)\n\n------\nxtremejames183\nThere is now a serious alternative to lua: Jx9 which uses a syntax similar to\nC and JavaScript and is being used in many commercial games.\n<http://jx9.symisc.net/>\n\n~~~\nJare\nIt looks neat, although the use of $ turns me off about as much as the\n1-indexing in Lua. :) Do you have a list of released games that use it?\n\n~~~\nxtremejames183\n<http://cplus.about.com/b/2013/01/27/what-is-jx9.htm>\n\n~~~\nJare\nI don't see a reference to a single game (or any other product) made using it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nQuick and Dirty - Raspberry PI Carputer / CarPC - TapaJob\nhttp://moishtech.blogspot.co.uk/\n\n======\nantidoh\nI saw nothing useful in that video. It seemed to be a Raspberry Pi powered by\ncar voltage, and a trick display. Basically a computer that can be used in the\ncar, but I already have one in my pocket.\n\nSome text explaining why this is useful, and how this particular thing is\nbeing used, would be helpful.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe 3 Most Common Topics You Hear as a Lyft Driver - stervy\nhttps://medium.com/rideshare-journal/the-3-most-common-topics-you-hear-as-a-lyft-driver-14de5ba064dc\n======\nswframe2\nAs a lyft rider, I am surprised to have had 3 lyft drivers who moved to the\nbay area in the 80s, own several houses and have a net worth of several\nmillion.\n\nThe conversations I have had with lyft drivers have been very interesting.\nBesides the convenience of not having to drive myself, meeting the drivers has\nbeen a wonderful experience. I've learned a lot.\n\nJust today a driver told me: if you are sad, you are too focused in the past,\nstressed ... too focused on the present, anxious ... too focused on the\nfuture.\n\n~~~\nSOLAR_FIELDS\nI've had a few rides with such drivers. Generally they are older and want to\ncontinually experience the world, so they drive so they can talk to people\nabout their life experiences. It's one of the cooler and more positive\nbyproducts of this rapid change in the transport economy that has had much\nmedia coverage of negatives.\n\n------\njaclaz\n>Liked this article? Please subscribe to the newsletter above and recommend\nthe article below!\n\nWhich article?\n\nFor once the title is not click-baity and it is actually true and accurate, a\nlist of three most common topics heard (and nothing else).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMisconceptions About Forward Secrecy - xnyhps\nhttps://blog.thijsalkema.de/blog/2014/01/17/misconceptions-about-forward-secrecy/\n\n======\ncies\nIt seems that in post-2013 articles on encryption the phrase \"a malicious 3rd\nparty\" has been completely replaced by the 3-letter acronym: NSA.\n\n~~~\nMattJ100\nTo be fair, they're one of a small set (possibly of size 1) of organisations\nthat would be able to carry out most of the attacks discussed. Things that\nwere considered highly unlikely pre-2013 are now a real possibility, if not\nprobability.\n\n~~~\nithkuil\nwhy? is there any revelation that they have the compute power to do that? Or\nit's just because now it's know that they'd really like to do it?\n\n~~~\nschmichael\nThe NSA is somewhat open about the massive amounts of computing power they\nhave available: [http://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-\ncenter/](http://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/)\n\nLots of goodies on this public site like \"This [compute cluster] will give us\nthe capability to break the AES encryption key within an actionable time\nperiod and allow us to read and process stored encrypted domestic data as well\nas foreign diplomatic and military communications.\"\n\nObviously leaked documents and other media reports contain much scarier\nrevelations into what the NSA is capable of, but I thought I'd post what they\nacknowledge since it's safe to assume they're capable of much more.\n\n~~~\naneisf\nIn case someone doesn't pick up on it, gov1.info is a parody site.\n\n~~~\nschmichael\nWow I'm gullible.\n\n------\nwbl\nThis article is dead wrong on multiple points. First off, the impact of\nmultiple keys is different for the parallel Rho method: the time to the first\nkey to be cracked is the same. Secondly ECDH is commonly used to avoid the\nproblem mentioned in the second point. The worst part is people will make\ndecisions based on this wrong information.\n\n~~~\nxnyhps\nMy claim is: FS does not imply, by definition, that every attack scales\nlinearly in the amount of keys. Having a counter-example of an attack that\n_does_ scale linearly does not disprove that point.\n\nI indeed only cover DH at #2, as index-calculus does not apply to ECDH.\n\n------\nsp332\nLooks like the page is dead?\n\nEdit: oh it's back. In any case here's a better archive if it goes down again\n[https://archive.is/2rQfr](https://archive.is/2rQfr)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: What do you do when an homeless ask you money? - Buetol\n\nSimple question. I meet a lot of homeless people here in Paris. My rule is to never give money but food and friendlyness. But I feel like there have to be a better way to deal with it.\n======\njason_slack\nI made friends with one particular homeless man a few years ago. His name was\nRaymond, he had previously in life worked manual labor jobs, had a wife and\nkid. A proud husband and father. His wife left for someone who could provide\ngreener pastures. He never recovered from that.\n\nI would see him when I was out running errands in my neighborhood. He never\nhad shoes on. I stopped one day and asked him if he needed shoes and what\nsize. I bought them for him. I gave him some food. He refused it. I thought\nthat was odd.\n\nI saw him about a week later and offered him food and he said no again. I\nasked him why and he said it is because I didn't offer it to him in a bag to\ncarry it. Then it made sense. If he couldn't carry it, he couldn't keep it\nlong term. It was to much to carry around all day everyday.\n\nOver the years I gave him clothes, food, books, an old laptop (which, yes, he\nwas using months later, so he did not sell it), inviting him to holiday\ndinners and my friendship. We would chat for hours sometimes about whatever\nwas going on. He was very in tune with current affairs.\n\nThen I stopped seeing him. I drove around looking for him. I asked some others\nwhere he might be and nobody knew. I never saw him again.\n\n~~~\nsandebert\nThat story read like something from Adrian Tomine. Check out his graphic\nnovels if you are into that kind of thing. I recommend Sleepwalk and Summer\nBlonde, I enjoyed them a lot.\n\n~~~\njason_slack\nI haven't heard of this author before, thank you for mentioning him.\n\n------\nlsiunsuex\nI never carry cash and I very rarely see homeless people though I'm sure they\nexist here.\n\nA past job I held, we were a very large call center (I was in IT) we had\nhundreds of call center employees - every christmas, we would get in touch\nwith local shelters and hospitals and do a \"needy family fund\" where employees\nwould donate canned food, toys for kids, blankets, etc... anything you could\nimagine. We gathered so much we filled 2 21 foot vans and supported 30+\nfamilies.\n\nIt always infuriated me that we did this. Not that I hated giving - I gave as\nmuch as I could, but that we ran a call center. Onsite training for the call\ncenter was just 1 week and every week we'd have 10-20 new hires (badge access\nwas a nightmare) - we'd train anyone that could pass a drug test and pass a\nbasic math quiz and pay started at $16 / hour with monthly bonus.\n\nI often said - \"Why don't we give these people jobs? We hire almost anyone off\nthe street. The toys and food are great, but if you want to see someone smile,\ngive them a job and let them provide a real life for their family\"\n\nI never got a strait answer.\n\n~~~\nTheCoelacanth\nA very large portion of chronically homeless people have mental illnesses or\nsubstance abuse problems that prevent them from keeping a job long term.\n\n~~~\nmcv\nBut there are also a lot of people who simply slipped through the cracks of\nthe system and would appreciate any help to get back on their feet. A job\ncould really help them out. It can't hurt to try.\n\n------\nthrowaw4y\nThrow away account.\n\nI live in South Africa where we have homeless people on almost every street\ncorner. Because of this it is quite easy to be desensitized about the divide\nin wealth. It is also difficult knowing who to give money to as a lot of\nhomeless people don't want help and will buy cheap alcohol and drugs so giving\nmoney can often enable something you really do not want. I also find it\ndifficult to build any sort of relationship with someone homeless because they\nmove around a lot, I've also spent a lot of time and money cleaning some\npeople up, buying new clothes and organising job interviews for car guarding\nat shopping centres only to find out that I've been taken advantage of.\nInstead now days I give 5% of my salary to charities and NGO's who specialize\nin helping the needy.\n\n~~~\nBuetol\nFunding free shelters with free food and computers would be ideal for me. So I\nwould redirect the homeless to these places.\n\n------\njane_is_here\nI give them money if I have spare cash on me. They need it more than I do.\n\nAs to what they use it for, they are adults and can make their own choices,\nwhether it be using it to pay for a EduX course ( unlikely ) or buying heroin\n( unlikely ).\n\nIf you or I became homeless ( admittedly unlikely ) and begged for money (\nhopefully unlikely ), surely you would want to be given money rather than fake\nfriendliness or food.\n\n~~~\nmgrassotti\ntotally agreed\n\n------\njseeff\nI generally avoid giving money as I don't know where it ends up and don't want\nto support substance abuse in any way. I tend to give to charities helping the\nhomeless. When I used to live in London and worked for a huge organisation, I\nalso organised a \"buy a lunch\" campaign once every few months whereby anyone\nbuying in the staff canteen could either add a set amount of money or\nduplicate the cost of their meal and all the funds (matched by my\norganisation) then went towards providing meals and shelter for the\nhomeless....\n\n------\nTotoradio\nI almost never give money, but I usually give cigarettes or meal vouchers and\nchat a little. When I finish a book I give it too, it's often much appreciated\nbecause as one guy said \"you have no idea how boring it is to be on the\nstreet\".\n\n------\nrocky1138\nNothing. Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become\nindependent of it.\n\nInstead, I donate time and money to worthy causes which the homeless can take\nadvantage of.\n\nI think this is an effect of living in Canada, where we have a very good\nsocial system for homeless people. If someone is on the streets here, it's\nlikely because they have a mental illness which causes them to be unable to or\nsimply refuse help.\n\nI am not sure what to do for people like that since \"you can bring a horse to\nwater but you can't make it drink.\" How can you force someone to go get help?\nI don't know the correct answer, but I know enabling them by giving them money\nis not the correct answer.\n\n------\njrochkind1\nI give them $1, pretty much every time. I make enough money that this practice\nisn't really noticeable to my budget, so why not? It's not my business what\nthey use it for, I drink and do other things myself too.\n\nThe one guy who is always there on my usual daily lunch walking route, and is\nkind of creepy too, I now only give him $1 once a week instead of every day,\nbecause it was starting to annoy me and be noticeable in my wallet. The other\nolder guy who is always there on my usual daily lunch walking route, and who\nis clearly mentally ill but very friendly and I like him a lot -- he doesn't\nask me every day (but does say \"hey, how's it going?\" every day), so I still\ngive him $1 every time he asks.\n\n------\nsmt88\nIn the US, our system for elevating the homeless out of poverty is awful, but\nour system for taking care of their basic needs is good.\n\nOne of the results is that most homeless people who actually resort to begging\non the street are some combination of mentally ill and addicted to something.\nThe addiction is often self-medication for the illness.\n\nWhat can you do for those people? They need psychiatric care that's tailored\nto each of them.\n\nI think the most you can do as a non-wealthy individual is to support\npoliticians who understand that most homeless people are sick, that they're\nnot trash to be swept into a landfill, and that they can be lifted out of\nhomelessness with the right help.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\n> The result is that most homeless people on the street are some combination\n> of mentally ill and addicted to something. The addiction is often self-\n> medication for the illness.\n\nYou need to be a bit careful with this. You use the word \"most\", and you imply\nthere's a causal reaction: people have mental illness and addiction problems,\nwhich cause homelessness.\n\n[http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/Mental_Illness.pd...](http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/Mental_Illness.pdf)\n\n> According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration,\n> 20 to 25% of the homeless population in the United States suffers from some\n> form of severe mental illness. In comparison, only 6% of Americans are\n> severely mentally ill (National Institute of Mental Health, 2009). In a 2008\n> survey performed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, 25 cities were asked for\n> the three largest causes of homelessness in their communities. Mental\n> illness was the third largest cause of homelessness for single adults\n> (mentioned by 48% of cities). For homeless families, mental illness was\n> mentioned by 12% of cities as one of the top 3 causes of homelessness.\n\nMy worry is that people think better drug and alcohol treatment, and metter\nmental health treatment, would cure almost all homelessness. It would get rid\nof a lot of it, but not most of it.\n\nIt also doesn't recognise that being homeless probably causes some mental\nhealth and addiction problems.\n\n~~~\nsmt88\nSorry, I edited my comment after you had already copied it, so they don't\nmatch up.\n\nI meant to say that most of the people _begging for money_ are mentally ill,\naddicted, or both. I got that info from a psych professor in college who was\nresearching homelessness with the CDC (they do that apparently).\n\nIt was only one city, but my assumption was that her research was a model for\nmany American cities. I could certainly be wrong about that.\n\nI did imply that it was a causal relationship, and I certainly meant it. Part\nof the definition of mental illness is that someone doesn't function in the\nsociety in a prescribed way. That's also how people become homeless.\n\nThe point that people may also become mentally ill after becoming homeless is\nwell-taken, though, and I'd add that to my own comment if I could.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nI think we mostly agree! :-)\n\n------\nDorian-Marie\nI usually give all my little coins (< 1€).\n\nSometimes it's a lot, sometimes not. It's a lot to them but to me the coins\nare annoying, I have to waste time sorting them and carrying them around. They\nare difficult to spend for me.\n\n------\nMattBearman\nMaybe it's a UK/US thing, as I know card payments are much more ubiquitous\nover here, but I very rarely have any cash on me. I never need it, and I know\nits the same for a lot of other people in the UK.\n\n~~~\ncphoover\nIn baltimore I've had homeless people come up to me with card readers. :) so\nthat excuse is going out the window. Here random guy let me give you my CC#\n\n------\nmgrassotti\nI give $1 pretty much every time, which is a few times/day living in nyc.\nDidn't used to but a few years back I read a book that changed my mind. Author\nmade the point that the best way to turn $1 into happiness is by giving away\nin this situation. No matter what they use it for, the $1 clearly means more\nto them than it does to me. I'd blow it at starbucks or whatever and not think\ntwice. More I think about it the more that seems true.\n\nOnly exception is if someone asks comes into restaurant and goes to each table\nasking for money. That just drives me nuts.\n\n~~~\nBuetol\nOnly problem with this is that when you give to one, the others around are\ngonna ask you too and I don't like feeling forced to do things.\n\n~~~\nsmeyer\nI haven't seen this problem before. In my city, panhandlers tend not to be\nimmediately next to each other (because it's worse for panhandling) and if you\nwalk by one and give a dollar, you can still walk by the next and not give\nanything.\n\n~~~\nBuetol\nYep, in fact it's another kind of people. They want you to sign petition or\nthey want you to believe they are blind (they are looking for \"gullible\"\npeople)\n\n------\nmcv\nI rarely have cash on me any more, but when I meet one near a supermarket, I\nsometimes offer to buy something for them.\n\nYears ago, I used to buy street newspapers regularly. The sellers are drug\nfree and actively trying to get their life back on track. But I never got\naround to reading them, and it seemed like a waste of paper. I'd like to give\nmoney, but the organization behind the paper warns against that, because the\nentire point is that they earn their money, rather than begging for it. That\nputs me in a complicated bind.\n\n------\njtfairbank\nI give him/her a cig and a smile. Its nice to be friendly. I also leave\nbottles in an easily accessible cardboard box on days when I put the recycling\nout.\n\nI only give cash if they are contributing to the public space (playing music,\netc). For security reasons I avoid giving change or cash to someone who is\nengaging me directly.\n\nIf someone seems interesting I'll def buy them a meal (and eat with them) to\nhelp them out and continue the conversation.\n\n------\nlexandstuff\nAlways give money if I have it. If even a fraction of it goes toward food or\nshelter, then it's money well spent.\n\n------\nblueflow\nSimilar to you, i never give money because of the abuse potantial, and money\nitself is just a placeholder for what they actually need. Food does better.\nI've made experience that alot of poor people are ashamed of their situation\nand will even refuse when you offer something.\n\nIn German cities there is a trend to leave returnable bottles after\npicknicking or just place them next to trash cans, a lot of poor people\ncollect them and are able to feed themselves on the bottles return value. This\nseems to be the primary tactic here to keep those folks from starving, beside\nfrom governmental support.\n\n------\nfaithfone\nI don't judge. I don't even think about it. I just give whatever I can afford\nwhen asked. Sometimes it's $20+. Other times it is nothing.\n\n------\nbrickmort\nliving near NYC has taught me to ignore beggars. At a certain point, you lose\nsympathy because you can't distinguish who genuinely needs it and who's just\nlooking to make an easy buck.\n\n------\nairframeng\nIf one earns enough to the point that pocket change (coins) has become a\nburden to carry around and one has the \"opportunity\" to give it to the\nhomeless, then it's a win-win.\n\n------\ntmaly\nI use to not give money and just give food. However now, if I see the same\nperson out there in subzero temps, I usually give them a $20. I just think,\nhey maybe someday that will be me.\n\n------\nfleshshelf\nI don't want to give money to anyone unless I think it can really help to\nsolve a root cause of their poverty. I prefer redistribution of wealth to\nindividual contributions.\n\n~~~\nfwn\nIndividual contributions cause redistribution. Did you think charitable\norganisations or just government?\n\n------\ndanvesma\nI give a small amount of money – its more dignified and trustful than trying\nto buy them food.\n\n~~~\njseeff\nI think offering to buy someone a meal is pretty dignified, especially (but\nnot only) if you have time to eat with them.\n\n------\nradoslawc\nbum: sir you maybe got some spare change? me:funny I was just about to ask you\nthe same question\n\nAs a rule I never give anything to homeless, they are homeless because they\nlike to live like that. There are plenty places where they can seek help, many\nof them founded from my tax money. Only requirement is to be sober. Giving\nthem money, food, clothes etc it only makes worse since they can spend all day\nto get hammered.\n\n~~~\njseeff\nI agree that it is not always the best solution to give money (rather than say\nfood etc) but \"because they like to live like that\" is (as far as I am able to\nascertain) a huge over-simplification and in many cases probably an outright\nfalacy. It is well documented that (as with the prison population) there is a\nhigh occurrence of mental disorder in homeless people.\n\n~~~\nradoslawc\nRight, that was oversimplification from my side, and cost me 4 precious carma\npoints so far. Sure. But I live in city with loads of tourists, and most so\ncalled \"homeless\" people here are not people struggling to live trough another\nday, but rather making good living out of scared tourists.\n\n~~~\njseeff\nI'm still quite new around here so don't fully understand how all this Karma\nthing works - sorry if I somehow caused you to lose something! (Incidentally,\nI would love to understand it better, know how to search and track replies to\ncomments etc without having to re-read the whole thread, but I digress...)\n\nI think the point you make is different to \"choosing\".... and is the main\nreason I prefer to give something that a truly needy person will definitely\nappreciate (e.g. food, shelter) rather than something that could be spent on\nalcohol, drugs or be taken by someone who isn't really needy.\n\nIn sum though, I think as long as someone is trying to help, each can choose\nhis or her own preferred way to do that :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Social Network Wars Begin In Earnest: Facebook Bans Google Friend Connect - kyro\nhttp://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/15/the-social-network-wars-begin-in-earnest-facebook-bans-google-friend-connect/\n======\ndbreunig\nGiven that Google was tapping into Facebook as if they were an Open Social\npartner, I can see why FB was quick to react.\n\nIn other news: who is completely underwhelmed by G's Friend Connect? Since\nwhen is MySpace the innovator?\n\n~~~\nblogimus\nWell, I've not checked out Friend Connect, so I can't comment on that, but as\nfar as being the innovator, when you do enough stuff, it is highly unlikely\nyou'll get is all right. Look at Google Video versus YouTube. I (and most\neveryone else it seems) ignored Google Video after trying it out for a little\nbit and just went to YouTube by default.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Unbelievable Story of a Facebook Impostor - yugoja\nhttp://the-ken.com/the-unbelievable-story-of-a-facebook-impostor/?t=2317a310-7348-11e6-8807-3d27b63a55b2-db643261-252a-4e7e-95a6-f89a72c14fcc&utm_campaign=The%20Ken&utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Newsletter#\n======\ncelticninja\nIf I have to sign up just to read it, it's not worth it. Even bothering with a\nmailinator address is not worth it.\n\n------\nyugoja\nChilling account of how one Facebook impostor is wrecking havoc on lives of\none Mumbai couple.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFCC releases the full National Broadband Plan - anigbrowl\nhttp://www.broadband.gov/download-plan/\n\n======\nanigbrowl\nI know a lot of the details have already trickled out in recent weeks, and\nit's a lot of reading, but I really think that a 10-year, ~$7 billion\ninvestment (which has already been allocated and does not need further\ncongressional approval) in digital infrastructure is of major significance to\nHN readers.\n\nThe goals (from the executive summary):\n\nGoal No. 1: At least 100 million U.S. homes should have affordable access to\nactual download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and actual upload\nspeeds of at least 50 megabits per second.\n\nGoal No. 2: The United States should lead the world in mobile innovation, with\nthe fastest and most extensive wireless networks of any nation.\n\nGoal No. 3: Every American should have affordable access to robust broadband\nservice, and the means and skills to subscribe if they so choose.\n\nGoal No. 4: Every American community should have affordable access to at least\n1 gigabit per second broadband service to anchor institutions such as schools,\nhospitals and government buildings.\n\nGoal No. 5: To ensure the safety of the American people, every first responder\nshould have access to a nationwide, wireless, interoperable broadband public\nsafety network.\n\nGoal No. 6: To ensure that America leads in the clean energy economy, every\nAmerican should be able to use broadband to track and manage their real-time\nenergy consumption.\n\nGigabit internet, folks. Think about it. This is a very large infrastructure\nproject.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGoogle relents slightly on blocking ad-blockers – for paid-up enterprise Chrome - nachtigall\nhttps://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/29/google_webrequest_api/\n======\nlern_too_spel\nNow Chrome will have the crippled adblocking capabilities of Safari. This is\nthe browser equivalent of removing the headphone jack — removing a feature\nmany people use to get some security benefit for a few. The problem for Google\nis that unlike Apple's customers, you can't pee on a Chrome or Android user's\nback and tell them it's raining. No Android user was happy the headphone jack\nwent away just because there are wireless options.\n\nSince Google controls the extension distribution system, it could just as\neasily plastered extensions that use this API with scary warnings, so only\nusers who knew what they were getting into would install them. It's not like\nusers install so many extensions that use this API that they would start to\nignore the warnings.\n\n------\nohpls\nAt least whatever Google decides to do I'll still have my Pi-hole blocking ads\nand trackers\n\n~~~\ndanShumway\nDomain-based filtering isn't enough to block all ads and trackers -- unless\nPi-hole is doing more than just acting as a DNS server nowadays; I haven't\nchecked in a while.\n\nIn particular, using Pi-hole forces you to decide globally what domains you'll\nblock -- so you can't (for example) block Twitter/Facebook on 3rd-party\ndomains but allow it when you directly visit them. DNS blocking also can't\nhandle individual URLs within a domain -- so you won't be able to block ads on\nsites like Youtube or Facebook.\n\nAside from lacking granularity for when domains are allowed or disallowed, Pi-\nhole also won't protect you from the majority of first-party tracking. That's\nless of a concern though because (at least for now) the V3 manifest isn't\nstopping extensions from blocking tracking cookies or disabling features like\nCanvas, so you can still rely on them for that.\n\nTypically though, I advise people to prefer extensions like UMatrix and Ublock\nOrigin, and to fall back on Pi-hole as a backup strategy when nothing else is\navailable. It's useful (particularly to help with native apps and IOT\ndevices), but I don't think it's a substitute for a good browser-based ad\nblocker.\n\n------\niamthatiam\nDoes this impact chromium? Will Brave Browser continue to function?\n\n~~~\nrasz\nYes it does, and will put a burden on forks to maintain their own patch tree.\nVivaldi already semi declared unwillingness to do it.\n\n------\nanfilt\nThat does not really seem like a \"relent\"...\n\n------\nm-p-3\nIf that's not a good reason enough to switch back to Firefox, then I don't\nknow what will.\n\n------\nwinkeltripel\nStill looks like scummy behaviour to me.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIron Man-like Exosuit to Expand Ocean Exploration - ferrantim\nhttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article/iron-man-like-exosuit-to-expand-ocean-exploration-video/\n======\nchton\nWith this being a rigid suit with normal air gas mixture, are divers still\nsusceptible to decompression sickness? Is the pressure inside the suit the\nsame as sea-level ambient, or is it higher to reduce the strain on the suit?\n\nOn a different note: can we please, pretty please, stop calling every form of\nsuit 'Iron Man-like'? Aside from being made of metal, this bears almost no\nresemblance.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN:why do titles get changed? - thijser\n\nIt seems that the title of HN posts get changed to the website title after a post gets reasonably popular. This often loses the point the poster wants to make (for instance today with the Manchester website).\nWhy is this? If it's automatic, shouldn't it be turned off?\n======\nbrudgers\nTitles should not editorialize.\n\n~~~\nBoyWizard\nBut they should give context, which is often\n\na) purpose for posting (ie 'I like the design of this site', or whatever), or\n\nb) context that is inherent in the article but not obvious as a submission (ie\nthe topic of a blog).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Great links for arduino hackers? - ritonlajoie\n\nWhat are your favorite ressources for arduino related news ? Is there a HN-like website for arduino ?\n======\nritonlajoie\nHere is my small list:\n\n\\- <http://hackaday.com/> : general and also arduino based hardware hacking\n\n\\- <http://makeprojects.com/> : great books & resources\n\n\\- <http://www.instructables.com/> : projects (some based on arduino)\n\n\\- <http://arduino.cc/forum/> : the arduino official forum\n\n~~~\nSwisher\nI second www.instructables.com. Don't forget www.adafruit.com but where I have\nreally found what I need is simply google. If you know what you are looking\nfor just use proper search terms and typically there is someone who has\nalready done at least a portion of what I am working on.\n\n------\nleh\nI haven't found one yet. hackaday.com isn't Arduino only, but they cover a lot\nof interesting projects with Arduinos.\n\n~~~\nritonlajoie\nI really like hackaday, although it's not arduino based only.\n\n------\ntrafficlight\n<http://reddit.com/r/arduino>\n\n------\nnottwo\nI maintain an Planet aggregator for tracking Arduino-related blogs that pique\nmy interest: <http://planet.nottwo.org>\n\nKinda plain, but works well in my feed reader.\n\n------\nkatherinehague\n<http://makezine.com/>\n\n------\ndramaticus3\n/dev/null\n\nget off the internet and build things\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: DOM99 Simple HTML manipulation for the modern web - GroSacASacs\nhttps://github.com/GrosSacASac/DOM99\n======\nplugnburn\nSome questions:\n\n\\- Why ES6/ES2015?\n\n\\- What are the advantages over Knockout?\n\n\\- Why does it weigh so much if its only ability is two-way data binding?\n\nAnd probably the most interesting question:\n\n\\- Why the heck do I need to use Browserify for something that will NEVER EVER\nrun on a server side?!\n\nP.S. Nice monologue though. :)\n\n~~~\nGroSacASacs\n-Why ES6/ES2015? Because I got used to it before. You can use Babel to transpile to ES5.\n\n\\- What are the advantages over Knockout? I didn't use Knockout since a long\ntime, it was a source of inspiration, so I can't fully answer this question.\nDOM99 doesn't tell you to use the Model-View-View Model pattern, but lets you\norganize your application as you want. This can also be a disadvantage if you\nare doing it wrong for example.\n\n\\- Why does it weigh so much if its only ability is two-way data binding?\nBecause you looked at source files that are not minified.\n\n\\- Why the heck do I need to use Browserify for something that will NEVER EVER\nrun on a server side?! You don't need browserify at all. I wrote the readme a\nbit too fast and forgot to mention other methods. You can also load it like\nany normal js file.\n\nHope I helped, I will update the readme in a few minutes to show how to use it\nwithout browserify. If you have other questions just ask.\n\n------\nGroSacASacs\nHere's what is coming in the next few days:\n\n\\- More examples that you can look at\n\n\\- Templates with data population mechanism\n\n\\- Better Readme file (how to use babel etc.)\n\n\\- Other system improvements\n\n~~~\nplugnburn\nUnderstood everything about it, except this:\n\nCould you please calculate what does it weigh minified in ready-to use ES5\nstate? I'd like to compare it to some other ready libraries and my own\nsolution.\n\n~~~\nGroSacASacs\nI will make some system improvement before I calculate those kind of things,\nbut I guess it will be less than 2 KB.\n\n------\nGroSacASacs\nnew demo page for DOM99\n[http://rawgit.com/GrosSacASac/DOM99/master/index.html](http://rawgit.com/GrosSacASac/DOM99/master/index.html)\n(Works with Firefox)\n\nProper template engine API and more system improvement coming next.\n\n------\nherbst\nYour example is not working (for me) on Chrome.\n\n~~~\nGroSacASacs\nI will update the readme to show how to transpile DOM99 to ES5\n\n~~~\nGroSacASacs\nDone\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWho Really Benefits From Interest Deductions - 001sky\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/realestate/mortgages-who-really-benefits-from-interest-deductions.html\n\n======\nmooism2\nIt's only talking about mortgage interest.\n\nThat's a pity. I'd like to read a well-written piece about how interest\ndeduction for business works out. It seems designed to make it easier for\nbusinesses to invest, but I wonder how the costs of leveraged buyouts etc\ncompare.\n\n~~~\n001sky\nThe analysis is the same. The tax-deduction is a subsidy to the <equity>\nholders, of whatever asset class. So, for homes, the subsidy accrues to the\nequity holder. For business, the same thing. Policywise, housing is\nconsumption (luxury, in particular) and business capital structure is\ninvestment. Subsidizing the latter has a far stronger policy rationale per-se\nbut the capture technique (components of cost or net profit) is arbitrary.\nAnalytically, see:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modigliani%E2%80%93Miller_theor...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modigliani%E2%80%93Miller_theorem#With_taxes).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nValleywag: Why your snark is going to get us all killed - nikunjk\nhttps://medium.com/one-world/b2d719a52f3c\n\n======\ncalbear81\nNo one is denying that what Justin proposes is noble and good, it's that he\nframed his appeal in such an overwhelmingly positive happy-go-lucky manner\nthat it was almost farcical.\n\nI know he means well but I think it would have generated less snark if he had\nbalanced his talk with some discussion of the alternative. Yes, people in tech\nhave a lot of power but would be remiss not to think of the responsibility.\nBuild great things but understand the concerns people have around privacy,\nmorals, and ethics in this brave new world. That would have generated more\ncritical discussion and reception.\n\n------\nMaysonL\nI am reminded of Doris Lessing's saying: \"It is not a sin to be second-rate.\nIt is only a sin not to try to be first-rate.\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Can a liberal arts BA who can write code break into the tech industry? - avnit\nI have very limited experience in the industry, but I&#x27;m confident in the skills I have and my ability to learn. I&#x27;ve been programming since I was 12 or so, and have always planned to try to make a career out of it. I have been working as the &quot;webmaster&quot; (i.e. updating static content and sometimes coding new pages) for the health services provider at my university for over a year, so I do have some applicable work experience.<p>I want to break into the tech industry, but I&#x27;m not sure exactly how to go about it without the requisite degree or industry experience. I have a github and a website (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;avivnitsan.com), but what else can I do to make myself employable? More broadly, my question is: can a liberal arts degree combined with some technical skills and ambition lead to gainful employment in the tech industry?\n======\nSpoom\nI don't have a bachelor's degree at all (I have an associate's) and I am\nworking as a professional software developer for a startup, so yes.\n\nI recommend you do some freelancing as it's potentially the easiest way to\nbreak into the industry in your situation. Look at markets like\n[http://guru.com/](http://guru.com/) and see if you can find projects that\nmatch your skillset.\n\nBuild up a bunch of five star feedback, and then start applying for full time\npositions (if that's what you want) with your freelancing profile as your\nportfolio. Worked for me!\n\n(Note as some others have mentioned, however, that you will not be able to\nwork for a top software company like Google or Microsoft as you will be\ninstantly filtered out for lack of academic qualifications. Your only real\npath into one of them is through an acquisition.)\n\n~~~\nbitemix\nI disagree. I'm employed by Amazon, and have gotten interviews with Facebook,\nTwitter, and Microsoft without a degree of any kind. If you can prove you can\nkeep up and have a body of work behind you, credentials matter much less.\n\n~~~\nSpoom\nYou could be right. I've had internal recruiters at Amazon try to get me on a\nphone interview; I always assumed that I'd be filtered out once I did the\ninterview though. I've read a lot of anecdotal evidence that Google and the\nlike have high academic requirements but maybe they're more flexible than I\nthought.\n\n~~~\ntwunde\nI believe that Google is changing as I read somewhere that they found no\ncorrelation between a good degree and good gpa after a few years of work\nexperience. In general, most places have figured out that you don't need a\ncollege degree, but you will need to have work experience to show that you\nhave the skills needed.\n\n------\njoeclark77\nI graduated from college in 1999 with a BA in Communication but I had been\nmaking web pages with static HTML for four years and had done some small\nfreelance sites for companies in my home town during my summer breaks. I found\nmy first few jobs very quickly, trained myself in some new skills, and was\noffered a promotion into the \"engineering\" (aka \"real programming\") department\nvery early on. It is definitely possible!\n\nAt the time, I made a \"portfolio\" with color printouts of the web sites I had\ndesigned and built, and attached it to my resume. I believe that was the\nstrongest element in getting hired: I had already shown them that I could do\nthe job. Maybe your github account is the 2014 equivalent of my portfolio. It\ndepends what you have on there, and who's reading it. I would also consider\nproviding them with compiled, working applications, because the gatekeeper\nmight be an HR person who doesn't know how to evaluate source code.\n\n------\nEleopteryx\nI don't even have a college degree and I'm a software developer. It's been a\nstumbling point in a couple of interviews, but some interviewers have never\neven asked about my education level and are just concerned about what I can\ndo. My first gig only paid $20/hr (and I didn't haggle at all) but the\nexperience I got has allowed me to move on to higher rates/salaries.\n\nFor me the important thing was to network with people in the industry.\n\n------\nmixmastamyk\nI wouldn't worry so much about labels... rather start working on things like\npersonal and open source projects and let them do the talking.\n\n------\npc86\nI'm assuming for a moment that you don't want to do research at Google or be a\nSenior Software Architect at a Fortune 10 company (both of which are still\npossible, though). For the majority of rote day-to-day programming gigs, even\nhaving a Bachelor's doesn't get you much over those who don't. Experience\nalmost always trumps education in this field except for a few exceptions like\nthose mentioned above. But you've got a leg up on those who don't have a\ndegree - you've got one, it just doesn't happen to be in a relevant field. I\nwas in your boat several years ago. My Political Science degree made it\nextremely hard to find a hiring manager/owner who was willing to take a\nchance. I did not have a github profile at the time (it was not that long ago)\nbut I did have a website with some code on it (that my future employer did\nlook at).\n\nJust keep in mind that you will not command the same salary as someone with a\nrelevant degree, at least until you have a portfolio of work comparable to\ntheirs.\n\n------\nAdmiralAsshat\nI've got a liberal arts BA (Religious Studies) and was hired for an entry-\nlevel job at a software company based simply on my existing experience from\ndoing hardware repair/helpdesk support/webpage maintenance jobs part-time\nwhile I was in college. My initial position was strictly application support\nand did no coding outside of some shell scripts, but within a year or so they\nstarted giving me other responsibilities. My smaller company was then acquired\nby a larger company, which made the position and experience look much better\non my resume, and I was able to interview with other places much more easily.\n\nFor what it's worth, once your foot is in the door, in my experience most\nemployers don't seem to care that much about the degree. I'll still get the\n\"Religious Studies, huh?\" comment from the recruiters/headhunters, but once I\ntalk to someone who actually knows what they're doing and we get to the\ntechnical interviews, that stops being a concern.\n\n------\nJemaclus\nYes.\n\nThe trick is to frame your skill set in more generic terms. For instance,\nimagine an actor. Actors don't just play around on stage and quote Shakespeare\nall the time. More broadly, actors must:\n\n    \n    \n        * Learn vast amounts of material in a short period of time\n        * Work independently\n        * Work as a team\n        * Accept criticism\n        * Show up on time\n        * Meet deadlines (the show must go on)\n        * Adhere to a strict schedule\n        * Speak comfortably in public\n        * Have good communication skills\n        * Basic improvisational skills\n        * Empathy\n     \n\nHow many of those do you think would be useful in a tech job? (Hint: all of\nthem)\n\nTake what you know. Broaden the scope. Mix in some code and a basic portfolio.\nGet a junior position somewhere. It's possible.\n\nGood luck.\n\nSource: Bachelor of Arts in Theatre, Masters in Secondary Education, currently\nlead developer of large startup in SF\n\n------\nSomeone1234\nMake a portfolio of your work. Use that portfolio in your resume/CV and give\nlinks so perspective employers can access your sites and play with them.\n\nAlso doesn't hurt to publish on something like Github (open source software)\nsince that gives even more access to your work (and shows that you can get far\nenough to publish something useful).\n\nThere are definitely companies who will hire someone with a proven track\nrecord but no academic qualifications. You won't get hired by Google or\nMicrosoft Research since they're super academically obsessed, but a lot of\nmedium-small businesses would love to have you.\n\n------\nporter\nYes. According to my friends who hire and manage a lot of programmers in\nsilicon valley, it's not totally uncommon to see a self-taught dropout hired\nover an MIT grad. You can be self-taught and very successful on the software\nside of startups. And, as hard as it might be for you to believe now, not\neveryone with a CS degree knows what they are doing.\n\n------\nalttab\nAre you looking for Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook? A start-up? Are you\nwilling to relocate?\n\n~~~\navnit\nI'm mostly looking for a startup but I'm open to anything really; I wish I\ncould relocate, but I'm committed to living in Boulder, CO for the next year.\n\n~~~\nalttab\nIf that's the case, then you have pretty much a 30 mile radius of companies\nyou are looking at. Determine what the bar is to get an entry level position\nat those companies, and make your skills match them.\n\n------\nwarmfuzzykitten\nGo where the jobs are. Interview a lot. Study up. Interview more. Take any job\nthat gets you closer to your goal. E.g., QA can be a good place to start.\n\n------\nspacemanmatt\nPut your experience on your resume, try to get interviews. Same as someone who\ndoes have a degree.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: What do you do on the weekends? - mburney\nHey HNers,<p>I realized that I've been working too hard on my startup, so I decided to force myself to take weekends off.<p>I've found it to be a lot harder than I expected. Since I've lost touch with most of my friends and I am single, sometimes I'm at a loss what to do when I'm not working.<p>I'm 28, and not too excited these days about drinking or partying throughout the weekend. I have a side-hobby (jiu jitsu) but I usually do it on the weekdays just before I get started on my work.<p>I find myself wanting to read a book on compilers, or think about marketing or something startup-related, but I force myself not to do those things, since it seems too work/tech related.<p>So I'm wondering, what do you guys do on your time off? How do you achieve that work-life balance?\n======\nSukotto\nI have 2 kids and an infant. My wife works most weekends (fri noon through sun\nnight) so I spend my weekends as \"single dad\".\n\nLots of playing on the floor, going to the park, cooking, and that sort of\nthing.\n\nIt's a reasonably good life though I sometimes envy you single, childless guys\nfor the enormous number of hours you get for yourselves. You think you know.\nBut you really have _no idea_ just how much time you have right now. Enjoy it\n\nSo from that perspective here's my advice. Do all the stuff you can't do when\nyou have kids. Have lots of sex. Go on spur-of-the-moment day trips. Stay up\nlate and sleep all day. Take flying lessons, or dancing lessons,or whatever.\nSeriously work towards ticking off items on your bucket list. Don't just sit\naround though because as soon as you have kids your combined disposable\nincome, free time, and social flexibility shrink to a thousandth of a percent\nof what you have now (that's only a small exaggeration\n\n~~~\ncheald\n> Do all the stuff you can't do when you have kids. Have lots of sex.\n\nBoy, there's a self-defeating setup if I ever saw one. <g>\n\n------\nnostrademons\nLosing touch with your friends is your first mistake. If you rebuild those\nrelationships or forge new ones, almost everything else will take care of\nitself.\n\nAs for what I do - yesterday was Stir-Fry & Starcraft, a home-cooked meal at\nfriends' house followed by like 10 games of Starcraft. Tomorrow I'm seeing\nHarry Potter with a couple friends. Last week was dinner & Super 8, along with\nmore Starcraft. The weekend before was a party at the Rainbow Mansion and July\n4 fireworks. The weekend before that was some off-roading with a friend and\nhis Jeep and a lunch date with a girl off OKCupid. Somewhere in there was a\nkayaking trip as well. Various other first dates have also been had in the\nweekdays between them too.\n\nEdit: Okay, I just did a couple code reviews for work an hour ago. I swear,\nit's not my whole weekend!\n\n------\nsalsakran\nReconnect to old friends or make new friends. While there's a certain\nmasochism about sacrificing everything on your startup vibe on HN, if you want\nto do startups/entrepreneurship for more than a single deathmarch to burnout,\nyou need to keep things sustainable.\n\nKeep training jiu jitsu, maintain social relationships, chase girls (or boys\nor whatever) and make sure you allocate time to keeping yourself healthy -\nphysically, mentally and emotionally. For most people that means a social\nnetwork (not the facebook kind) to keep you grounded.\n\nOtherwise, pick a hobby, preferably one that is social but where you won't be\ntempted to spend escalating time on it. Sports league, dance, improv,\nwhatever.\n\n------\nmindcrime\n_what do you guys do on your time off?_\n\nTime off? What's that?\n\n _How do you achieve that work-life balance?_\n\nI'm working on a startup, I don't have time for work-life balance.\n\nWhat do I do on the weekend? Well, I get off of my dayjob around 5:00pm on\nFriday, I drive home, swinging by the grocery store to stock up on coffee,\nsugar, cream, sodas, etc., then settle into my favorite chair with my laptop\nand start coding... continuing until around 6:00am or so, on Sat. morning.\nSleep until 1 or so, get up, work another couple of hours, then take a brief\nbreak by going to Barnes & Noble for a latte or something and to browse books\nfor a while, maybe sit in the cafe and read for a while. Then I come back\nhome, and start working again. That goes on until 3-4 or so on Sun. morning.\nSunday I usually get up around noon, work another hour or two, then do\nlaundry, and the last few hours of the day before going back to bed, I either\nwork, or -when I'm feeling burned out and needing of a break- watch a movie or\nsomething.\n\n~~~\nHeyLaughingBoy\nYikes! Sure hope the end result is worth it!\n\n~~~\nmindcrime\nYou and me both. But really, I couldn't do this forever, obviously. It's\nbasically like what pg talks about... the goal is to make some serious\nsacrifices for a certain period of time, where the payoff - if things work out\n- is a lot of freedom later in return.\n\nYeah, it may not work out and - worst case - all this hard work goes for\nnaught. But I turned 38 today, I'm not getting any younger, and if I intend to\nlive out some of my dreams, it's time to make it happen.\n\n------\nzachcb\nSince I don't work for a startup, I spend most of my weekends wishing I was\nworking on/in a startup. I have few friends, so when I'm not doing anything\nproductive I feel mentally awful and occasionally get chest pain. So weekends\nare pretty tedious for me.\n\nThis isn't your standard answer, but I figure I'd give you a perspective from\nsomeone on the outside wanting to get on.\n\n------\nchmielewski\nToo easily, one can justify that their computer is both their work AND their\nentertainment. I've enjoyed trying my hand at some offline gaming. Feeling\nlike anything fantasy/sci-fi can be a waste of time, I turned to a WWII\ntabletop miniatures war game called Flames of War. It's a three in one: social\ninteraction with some older guys that I can shoot the bull with whose social\ncircles I wouldn't usually fall into, diorama construction and historically\naccurate miniatures painting (hone those artistic mind-muscles), World War Two\nhistory. I'm not trying to go for a shameless plug but I've found in it more\nthan a game, not imagining I would have learned so and become THIS much more\ninterested in history. ..and as some of the other comments have pointed to,\nexercise is ++. Hiking, biking and exploring the OFFLINE world around you can\nbe key to returning fresh (and inspired!) on Monday.\n\n------\ntsewlliw\nI have a small boat (starfish). I sail it in smug bliss over my graceful\nmastry of the winds. Im a complete sucker for things like codifying board game\nrules in prolog, but that doesnt cross your mind when you are lord of the\nlocal waterways.\n\n------\npingswept\nRecently, I've been moving really heavy things (like a slab of granite for a\nstoop and a cast iron sink in my basement) from one place to another using\nminimal force and simple machines (wedges, levers, etc). This kind of work is\nas far from programming as I can get, but still has an intellectual component.\n\nI've found Jaimie Mantzel's videos about roadbuilding to be a good explanation\nof what I mean: <http://jamius.com/Road.html>\n\n~~~\nGroxx\nThat video is oddly mesmerizing. The second one is better though :) It has\nbouldery excellence, Queen, bees, and you get to watch him _push a frickin'\ntree over_. Though in the 3rd, he discovers \"the world of BULK LEGO on eBay\".\n\nI think he _is_ going slowly crazy. Or more comfortable with the camera.\nThough are those all that different, really? Great entertainment, either way\n:)\n\n------\naspir\nRun, eat lunch with friends, and do as much creative/educational activities\nnot directly related to my day-to-day as I can. That also includes doing\n\"touchy-feely envisioning\" for some of the time. If partially relates to my\njob, of course, but it helps me get ready for the next week. Taking a step\nback from work while actually thinking a little bit about work itself helps me\ncharge back up.\n\n------\nmannicken\nWeekends have kind of stopped existing for me. I do not understand the\nnecessity of having certain time for work and certain time for leisure. I'm\ngoing off of fundamental principles of delivering basic value to whoever needs\nit in return for money. And who fucking gives a shit if I created that code on\nMonday from 9-5 or on Saturday at 3am.\n\n------\njh3\nI go to bars with friends, I go to concerts, I read, I sometimes just go to\nplaces like Barnes & Noble, buy a coffee, and either read a magazine or just\nsit around and watch people. Lately I've just been going out with a few close\nfriends, usually to a bar or two or three, to drink and laugh and talk and\nhave a good time. It never gets old if you're with the right people. Yeah,\nit's not hiking or biking or walking, unless you count walking to the next\nbar, but it's always great being able to unwind. Definitely not the healthiest\nweekend activity, though. If you can handle being alone and have some money to\nburn you should travel. I'm going to Europe for a couple of weeks just for\nfun. Being single has its perks.\n\nThere's nothing wrong with reading a book on compilers or thinking about your\nstartup's marketing campaign, but I think it starts to become wrong when\nthat's all you do. Being single isn't necessarily a bad thing either. I mean,\nit isn't the greatest thing all the time, but that all depends on how you're\nlooking at it.\n\nAnyway, if you think it's fun to just sit around and read then by all means do\nthat. Don't think you have to do something else. By the looks of it though,\nyou don't think it's fun. It seems like you're forcing yourself to think it's\nfun because everything else seems scary or too difficult to do. Don't just\nwork all day everyday. You'll just burnout and be worse off then you are now.\n\n------\najdecon\nThe key, for me, is forging and maintaining relationships with other people. I\nspend a lot of time with my girlfriend, which is the best thing ever. I hang\nout with a few close friends. When I can commit to decent blocks of free time,\nI fence epee and go kayaking, and socialize with others who take part in those\nactivities.\n\nWhen I can't manage that kind of commitment, or I need solitary time, I read a\nlot of fiction and play with the cats. I also have some hobbies with low time\ncommitments or at least a lot of flexibility: robotics, learning about science\noutside my own field, brewing beer. Occasionally I'll do something related to\nmy current field (HPC), but even then I have a strict no-real-work rule: the\nonly work that gets done on weekends, barring emergencies, is on side\nprojects.\n\nI learned to do this after grad school, during which I focused on my work\n100%... and then experienced a period of burnout so intense I could not\nimagine ever being happy again. I know a few of people who seem happy, or at\nleast satisfied, in a cycle of 100% for a year or two, followed by 4-6 months\nof burnout, then back to work. But my burnout was accompanied by depression,\ncontinuous feelings of failure and shame, and a deep lack of interest in\nanything in the world. No amount of productivity is worth my sanity: I _need_\nmy work-life balance.\n\n------\nKilimanjaro\nI work my ass off coding mon-fri for my corporate overlord, to spend the\nweekend on my most rewarding hobby: coding.\n\n~~~\nreduxredacted\nWork-life balance is when your _work_ is reasonably a _hobby_. In coding, a\nlot of the things we hate at work tend to be the bureaucracy associated with\nbeing part of a _traditional corporate_ \"team\".\n\nI always joke that I'd do 80% of my job for free (as long as the people I'm\njoking with don't work for the company that employs me).\n\nI liken it to architecture/building: The day job is designing and overseeing a\ngreat McMansion. In the end, it's pretty nice, but a lot of the time is tied\nup in passing inspections. On the weekend, my kids (...and me) have the most\namazing tree-house ever imagined.\n\n------\nmbenjaminsmith\nPack the trunk with (micro)brews and drive the family down to the gulf (of\nThailand). We sit on the beach, eat seafood and drool at (future) beach\nhouses. If you're trying to fight off burnout I don't think you can beat the\nbeach. On the other weekends we go restaurant hunting, go to movies or watch\nfriends' bands play. A big dinner and a movie is usually enough for a weekend\nrecharge.\n\n------\ngte910h\nDinner with friends every Sunday at our house, cooked by my wife and I, with\nsome settlers of catan type board games before/after. (6 years now, jeesh,\nthat's like 250-300 dinner parties come to add it up).\n\nSome time walking someplace on Saturday (usually a restaurant).\n\nWatch some stupid something or try a cheap steam game or play a wii dance\nthing.\n\nRead a novel/part of a novel.\n\nSleep in a lot.\n\nTake a trip with the wife to a cuban sandwich shop\n\nImprove some part of my condo.\n\n------\nstaunch\nPosting this on a Saturday might skew the results.\n\n------\nja27\nI usually have things with the kids - scouts, sports, church, First LEGO\nLeague, etc. but the summer is pretty quiet. There's also yard work. I get\nmost of the other housework done during the week. Since I have a \"day job\", I\nusually spend part of the weekend lining up scheduled blog posts, tweets, etc.\nfor my side things. I should spend more time coding for side projects but I\ndon't.\n\nBefore kids, I used to go hang out at a bookstore for a couple hours and read\nwhatever I found interesting, go for long off-road bike rides, volunteer for\nfund-raising walks/bike rides, volunteer with the Red Cross, hang out with\nfriends from a ham radio club or college, etc.\n\nIf you can't reconnect with friends, just make new ones. Try meetup.com, look\nfor tweetups or barcamps, go to user group meetings, join clubs (ham radio,\nmodel railroads / rockets, LEGO, cycling, etc.), take a class (cake\ndecorating, painting, etc.), volunteer somewhere, go check out events at local\nbookstores / libraries, etc.\n\n------\ngrigory\nLots of mountain biking and hiking. Heading out to local mountains tomorrow\nwith SO to hit the trails and hike around a bit. I have a long list of books\nthat I'd like to read, so I get to them in the evening usually.\n\nIf the weather is bad I play with things like Arduino and toy around with new\nlanguages.\n\nAlso, coffee shops with friends, sometimes dance clubs if a good DJ is in\ntown.\n\n------\nproxwell\nI set my own schedule, so I don't really distinguish between week and weekend.\nI'm often working on the weekend and you can find doing weekend-like\nactivities during the week: surfing, mountainbiking, snowboarding, etc. I\nespecially like having the flexibility to do these things during the week as\nthe crowds are usually much smaller on the mountain/trail/lineup.\n\nFor me, the weekend is different primarily in that I get less email from\nclients and partners. This can be an advantage in that it enables me to have\nmore uninterrupted work sessions. Of course, many of my friends do work\ntraditional work weeks, so I often make time on the weekend to do things with\nthem – dinners, dates, hikes, etc. The weekend is also a better time for me to\nmake my international flights, as it minimizes the impact to my availability\nduring the workweek.\n\n------\nbdickason\nI'm a product manager by day and I generally have a hobby that I throw myself\ninto on weekends that may/may not be work related. Currently, for example, I\nalternate between coding (something I don't get to do at work) and playing\nvideo games like TF2. Once my wife gets home, however, we do stuff like\nrooftop gardening, going out to dinner, etc.\n\nMy past 'obsessions' (as she calls them) have included DJing 3-4 nights per\nweek, producing Disco music, playing world of warcraft, and doing\nkickboxing/jujitsu.\n\nIn short, do what you feel passionate about whether it's work-related or not.\nIf you feel like you should be spending time with your friends, go for it! If\nyou feel like doing startup stuff, do that.\n\nAs long as it's what fuels you, work-related stuff is not a bad thing.\n\n------\ncalebmpeterson\nI can relate. After starting a job out of college, I had to spend 40+ a week\nat work, and then still had my own side project(s) to work on. It's been a\nprocess for me to learn to take time off and invest in other deeply important\naspects of life.\n\nI realize this isn't directly relevant since you're currently single, but... I\nspend time with my wife and son. In your case, try to reconnect with close\nfriends you've lost touch with, call your dad/mom/brother/sister etc...\n\nAnother idea is to get outside, do some walking/hiking/cycling/swimming...\nThis can be a bit of a beast during the hot summer months depending on your\nlocation; it's usually cool in the mornings pretty much anywhere though.\n\nIt's hard to re-learn relaxation but it's a worthwhile endeavor!\n\n------\nmehmeta\nDancing tango and jumping out of planes. Both are very rewarding and clear\nyour mind like nothing else. With skydiving you get to do exciting and\nchallenging stuff with your fellow jumpers, since it requires no less than\nabsolute concentration it's great for getting away from the stress of the\ndaily grind. It also makes me go outside and soak up the sun, which is great\nsince I'm not as attracted to most other outdoor activities.\n\nDancing provides the physical activity you terribly need as a knowledge\nworker, while doing something fun. I've also come to experience that it also\neffortlessly generates a social life for you which can expand to as much time\nas you'd prefer to allocate to it.\n\n------\nagentultra\nI'm not doing a startup, but I have had to defend my separation of work and\nlife rather strongly in my circles.\n\nHere's my take on it: we're all dying. You get a very limited amount of time\nto spend in the best amusement park ever. Once it's gone your done. So try and\nhave some fun along the way.\n\nWhen I'm not working I'm thinking about programming. Or I'm climbing a\nmountain. Camping. Running. Spending time with my wife. Painting. Playing my\nguitar. Climbing trees. Occasionally I'm out at the bar with friends.\n\nI prefer to be alone most of the time. It's where I get my energy from.\nUltimately you just have to discover what works for you.\n\n------\ndennmart\nI've spent a good chunk of the past ten years using almost every moment\nreading up and learning about all things tech. This year, I decided to hold\nback on the tech stuff and started to read up and learn a foreign language\ninstead (Japanese). It's been extremely refreshing to be able to do something\ncompletely new for a change. And it's had a bonus side-effect for me that I\nreally didn't anticipate: it's actually helped me to do more quality work\nduring the week because of these two-day sabbaticals. My mind works so much\nbetter on Monday mornings.\n\n------\nzwieback\nJam session. Get a guitar or other instruments and find out what open jams\nthere are where you live. It's easy to pick up enough skill to strum along and\nsoon enough you could lead some of your own.\n\n------\nshiftb\nI work, walk, and sleep. I'm consulting fulltime, working on my startup\nfulltime and have another part-time thing so I don't have a lot of free time.\nI usually spend weekends working on my startup. When my girlfriend is in town\nI relax more and take her out.\n\nLately I've found myself walking a lot around my neighborhood and riding my\nmotorcycle to help clear my mind.\n\nReading this back to myself... it sounds boring, but I love what I'm working\non and feel a pressure to get it out into the world so it doesn't feel boring.\n\n------\nlchengify\nWhatever you do, find a group. I make it a point to go out at least every\nother weekend with a group unrelated to work.\n\nI recommend finding a group for something unrelated to your work but that you\nare still passionate about or at least find interesting. For me it's geeking\nout about movies and eating morning Dim Sum.\n\nIt's also nice that it \"pops the bubble\" a bit and reminds you that other\npeople may not interact quite like you do at work. People still poke fun at me\nwhen I say I'll \"ping\" them about next sunday.\n\n~~~\nAndrewWorsnop\nabsolutely.\n\n------\nrluhar\nI tend to run, read and just chill out. Most weekdays start at 5 and end at\nmidnight (work about 12 hours a day, I don't work for a startup, but for\nMegaBank here in Japan). So the weekends are spend just forcing myself to slow\ndown, and try to devote myself to more leisurely pursuits. Recently I made an\ninventory of all the half read or unread books lying around in my flat and on\nmy kindle and am trying to finish as many of them as possible. I am failing!\n\n------\ndeniscales\nI have a family, so my weekends are filled with honey-do lists. Well worth it,\nthough.\n\nCan you cook? If not, learn. Cook new stuff and invite neighbors over for\ndinner and get to know them.\n\n------\nams6110\nI have kids, so a big chunk of my weekends tends to be doing stuff with/for\nthem. There's also shopping, laundry, housecleaning, yardwork... all the\nboring normal chores. If I have any energy left I try to read a bit or learn\nabout something new. I find it difficult to do anything really productive on\nthe computer over most weekends. Sometimes the stars align and I get a few\nquiet hours.\n\n------\nWesleyJohnson\nMany times I'll take in a movie at the local theater; go shopping for odds and\nends; go window shopping for some cool toys; play a round or two of disc golf;\nPS3 (Bad Company 2 mainly); toy around on the keyboard (I can't read music,\nbut it's fun); bowling once every few months; go for a drive just to clear my\nmind. None of them are overly adventurous or anything, but they get me by. :)\n\n------\ndstein\nAs part of my condo fees I have access to a community swimming pool. Last year\nI didn't use it even once. Big mistake, it's a wonderful way to spend an\nafternoon, either by yourself or with friends. I take my ipod, drinking water,\nmy comfy lawn chair, and sunscreen and hang out all day long. It's simply\namazing how good you feel after a whole day of sunshine and swimming.\n\n------\nmolbioguy\nOrigami! The modern stuff's amazing and so addicting.\n\nIf you're reading the compiler book because you love to do that, I don't see\nthe problem. Free time is for doing anything you want to, as opposed to things\nyou need to because of obligations. If you love thinking about startups, do\nthat. Work-life balance only needs to be considered when you _feel_ like all\nyou do is work.\n\n------\nderrida\nI live in Sydney, but i've heard there are some hills and beaches in the bay\narea. Trail-running in a national park (this weekend), Skiing (last weekend),\nSnorkeling off Sydney to see Grey Nurse Sharks (next), Go to a gig and say\n'hello' to people (last night).\n\nEDIT: If there are any HN'ers in Sydney that want to partake in these\nactivities, email me.\n\n------\ncsomar\nIf you don't have problems socializing with people, then get out and meet\npeople. I'm not probably the best one to talk about this. I'm also single, 20\nyears old, spend all of my time in front of the screen.\n\nI have tried a month ago dating, but that didn't work out and I gave up too\nquickly. I'd be interested to know if anyone has a solution for that.\n\n~~~\ntdfx\nIf you're not naturally social you should involve yourself in some activity\nthat forces interaction with other people. Consider a weekend job at a bar or\npopular night spot. If that's not your thing, try finding groups on Meetup\nthat involves interests you like/might be interested in. Maybe even pick a few\noutside your comfort zone.\n\nVery few people have the kind of personality that allows them to naturally\ndevelop friendships with the type of people they prefer to be around. Given\nthat, it's basically up to you to find activities/work/etc that puts you in\n\"social proximity\" with the kind of people you want to have in your life.\n\n------\nsliverstorm\nWhere do you live? If you are near open spaces / nature preserves, you can go\nhiking or camping every weekend. Perhaps go bicycling?\n\nPhysical activities are good, they keep you busy and your mind sharp. I have\npersonally tried to establish a resolve to work myself to pieces on weekends\nin some form of activity or another, and it's been paying off.\n\n------\nHeyLaughingBoy\nI wanted to go fishing, but I need to get my Xterra running again before I can\ntake my canoe anywhere and it was too hot & humid to work on the truck.\n\nInstead I spent the afternoon in the basement machining a piston and cylinder\nfor a steam engine I will finish... eventually.\n\nShould have worked on the Xterra instead!\n\n------\ntoddoh\nI usually go outside and taking some photos(I mean not a snap camera. DSLR).\nLooks so basic, but it's kinda helpful to achieve work-life balance to me :D I\nthink if you have to invest to you _a little bit_ for balance, that's\nmeaningful.\n\n------\nimpendia\nSwing dancing, improv comedy, Buddhist meditation.\n\nThe great thing is that they are all very social (and _very_ different from\nwork) but you don't need friends to do them with, you just show up and enjoy\nthem with whoever is there.\n\n------\njoshmlewis\nI design during the week and some for myself on the weekend. Almost always I\ngo to the mountains, stay with some friends at a small college, and play\nguitar. I love it.\n\n------\njoeybaker\nFwiw, today was my third hackathon. It's good fun flexing the brain in a way\nthat's like work and yet not at all related to what you're actually doing.\n\n------\nglimcat\nDamn. All the \"I work on my startup\" responses in here are depressing. We need\na startup that's a time-off matchmaker for the startup-obsessed.\n\n------\njrussbowman\nMost of my time is spent with my family, I have two small kids. I try to sneak\nin some time to work on my personal project unscatter.com\n\n------\nvasco\nDisregard normal life. Work on your startup.\n\n~~~\nHisoka\nI agree. You can work on normal life after your startup is successful. Not\nmany ppl in life have created a successful startup. Aim to be one of the few,\nordinary can wait..\n\n------\npoink\nI have a big list of stuff I want to do or learn. I try to use my leisure time\nto tackle that list.\n\n------\nabrashkin\nMeet like-minded people for brunch and have a meaningful conversation at a\ncoffee shop afterwards.\n\n------\najray\nI build flying robots [<http://diydrones.com/>]\n\n------\ndustingetz\ntry moving to downtown district of a big city, there's a ton more to do than\nin the suburbs.\n\n------\njerhewet\nSleep.\n\nSeriously. I sleep.\n\n~~~\nkbd\nThis. Sleep, and sometimes laundry.\n\n------\nmmccomb\n* Run * Cycle * Swim\n\nSometimes I combine all three in the reverse order.\n\n------\nhelwr\nreading a book on compilers, seriously, the dragon book, i'm on page 61, \"top-\ndown parsing\"\n\n------\njs2\n<http://www.bahiker.com/>\n\n------\nnolite\nare you single? Get a girlfriend. That will cure your problem of having too\nmuch free time (or money)\n\n~~~\nBCM43\nThis assumes that the poster is either a straight male or lesbian female.\n\n~~~\nnolite\nnotice I didn't ask about his/her/its preferences..\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSnapjoy (YC S11) unveils Flickraft, one-click migration for Flickr users - jpren\nhttp://www.flickraft.com\n======\nsriramk\n[disclaimer: see my profile for my involvement with Yahoo, I have no\nconnection with this particular incident/Flickr/etc]\n\nThis and the TC post annoy me because Snapjoy (or perhaps the tech press) is\ntrying to spin this into some underdog vs evil big company story when it\nisn't.\n\nFor example, when Snapjoy says \"We tried our best to stay within Flickr’s API\nlimits, but the overwhelmingly positive response has exceeded our\nexpectations.\", what they are really saying is that they didn't implement rate\nlimiting correctly.\n\nAnd when they say \"We’re a bit surprised that the key was disabled almost\nimmediately after we reached the limit.\", what they're saying is that Flickr\nactually did implement said limiting correctly (don't have personal knowledge,\nassume that's what happened).\n\nI also like the spin from the tech press on this somehow meaning that your\nphotos are locked into Flickr when Snapjoy has neither an API or any other\nmechanism to get photos out - all I see is a promise of a future feature to\nsync to Dropbox/S3.\n\nI completely understand the PR game being played here but I wish it needn't be\nthis way. Especially since Snapjoy seems to be a very slick product from a\nvery talented team.\n\nAnd all this ignoring the issues with the name - I'm not sure how it is ok to\nuse a derivative of your competitor's name to build something designed to take\nusers away from them.\n\n------\ncfinke\nWith Flickr, I get unlimited storage for $24/year. I'm probably nearing 100GB\nof photos there, so in order to store those same photos with Snapjoy, it would\ncost me $120/year. What's the extra value that I get for an additional\n$100/year?\n\nAnd does Snapjoy integrate with iPhoto? I use Flickrfriend for iPhoto now to\nsync Flickr and iPhoto, but if I don't have a way to sync Snapjoy and iPhoto,\nit's a non-starter.\n\n~~~\nsubpixel\nI don't think FlickrFriend is available or supported anymore:\n<http://unpaq.com/software/flickrfriend/>\n\n~~~\ncfinke\nThat's sad. At least the copy I have still works.\n\n------\nssharp\nThis is tacky on two levels:\n\n1) it just attacks flickr without really giving any reason. Flickr is a\nsinking ship. Great. Why? Why do we have any reason to believe Snapjoy is\ngoing to outlast Flickr?\n\n2) Using the image of a sinking cruise ship weeks after a cruise ship wreck\nkilled at least 17 people. I'm not easily offended, and this didn't personally\noffend me, but it's pretty much the first thing I thought of when I saw a\ndrawing of a sinking cruise ship. Why run the risk?\n\n~~~\nmvanveen\n> Flickr is a sinking ship. Great. Why? Why do we have any reason to believe\n> Snapjoy is going to outlast Flickr?\n    \n    \n      s/Flickr/del\\.icio\\.us/g\n      s/SnapJoy/pinboard/g\n    \n\nFor the regex-impaired, swap Flickr with delicious and Snapjoy with pinboard.\n\nWhen I found out that del.icio.us was falling apart, the discovery of pinboard\nwas a remarkable discovery! The founder posted a link to a migration tool that\nallowed me painlessly keep thousands of my old bookmarks. Just by itself that\nwas reason enough for me to support them.\n\nI can't speak to the long term viability of pinboard or SnapJoy, but that's\ntrue of a lot of web services, frankly. A few years ago you would've seemed\ncrazy for calling Flickr a \"sinking ship.\"\n\n------\nzalew\nI fail to see how Flickr is a 'sinking ship'.\n\nbtw to all the photo app creators out there: no API - no go.\n\n~~~\nmasukomi\nYeah, I have to agree on both points. I feel like I missed a memo about Flickr\ngoing down. AFAIK Flickr isn't even leaking, never-mind sinking... Am I wrong?\nHave I missed something?\n\nAnd API is one of the things that makes Flickr great, Snapjoy may have a sweet\nweb interface but that's not enough. I'm guessing from the fact that they have\na GitHub account that they'll release an API when the code has settled down a\nbit more internally, so that's probably just a short-term issue.\n\nThe pricing though... the pricing isn't even remotely comparable. You gotta\ngive me a damn good reason to spend that much more money on a competing tool\nthat basically just hosts my images and makes them easily viewable.\n\n~~~\nshashashasha\nHaving been around conversations with some of the old Flickr people, I have to\ndisagree. It's definitely sinking, and has been slowly gutted over the past\nfew years. This is only the most recent piece of news:\n<http://nolancaudill.com/2012/01/30/the-front-line/>\n\nAll of the core Flickr people have left, and some (like Aaron Straup Cope) are\nstarting to build their own: <http://straup.github.com/parallel-flickr/>\n[http://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2011/10/14/pixelspace/#para...](http://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2011/10/14/pixelspace/#parallel-\nflickr)\n\n~~~\nzalew\n> It's definitely sinking\n\nopinion != fact\n\nexisting alternatives != original sinking\n\nI'm not a fan of Yahoo either, but all I hear is that is sinking because\nsomebody got fired, or it's sinking because someone on a blog wrote that he\ndoesn't like it no more.\n\nSo what there's pararell or whatever other apps to backup or sync? I've\nstarted making sth similar for django <http://zalew.net/2012/01/11/django-\nflickr/> and what that has to do with Flickr failing?\n\nBTW remember 'dying blog platforms' by Posterous?\n\n~~~\nthere\nIt's like a bank run; rumor spreads that Flickr is dying, so everyone pulls\ntheir photos and stops paying for pro accounts because they think Flickr is\ndying, causing Flickr to die.\n\nFlickr is a huge site and they're not going to suddenly stop working one day.\nIf they do decide to shut down, they're going to give users plenty of notice\nand probably offer easy ways to export photos and metadata. Until that\nhappens, my photos are staying on Flickr and I'll continue to view my friends'\nphotos on Flickr.\n\n------\nunderwater\nThis seems petty and a bit desperate.\n\nThe site is also broken. I can't click on the logo to find out more about\nSnapjoy. Pass.\n\n------\nswalsh\nIt would be nice if I could also rescue some pictures from facebook too.\nDouble brownie points if your software can automatically remove duplicates in\nthe process.\n\n~~~\nbrlewis\nSnapjoy automatically organizes using metadata, which Facebook strips out.\nThat plus recompression make it difficult to detect duplicates from Facebook.\n\n------\nmasnick\nThis is great -- I've been looking for a way to get my photos off Flickr\nbefore my pro account expires this May. Snapjoy sucked in 2200 photos in just\na few minutes.\n\n(The only glitch was when I clicked \"Get Started Now\" on the flickraft site,\nit just redirected me to snapjoy.com. I had to manually go into my settings\nand connect my Flickr account, which triggered the import automagically.)\n\n------\njakequist\nSnapjoy is awesome. I've been using it for a few months and have never looked\nback.\n\n~~~\nsubpixel\nI agree - Snapjoy is fast, beautiful, and simple. They can win by doing less\nthan the competition. Personally, I can't take the bloat and feature-creep\nthat has turned Flickr into a giant hassle. Just getting your photos into\nFlickr has been a hurdle from day one, with no official app for iPhoto.\n\nThat's not to say there aren't Snapjoy features I want to see: the ability to\ncreate/share collections that span multiple dates/moments is at the top of the\nlist.\n\nBut as soon as I started using Snapjoy I knew it had massive potential. I\nespecially love the default timeline view, it puts just enough structure\naround your photos for discoverability, etc.\n\nEDIT: I would love to be able to pay annually and save, though. $15 month is a\nlot of coin for a non-business app.\n\n------\nmlapida\nOn the surface I love this idea. Flickr has been stagnant for years and\nstarting to worry me. I don't mind paying for a photo sharing service but the\nmarket sure is saturated. I'll be looking for a little more than a pretty,\noverpriced UI over Amazon's S3.\n\nWouldn't it be great if a company came around and offered front ends for S3.\nOne for photo sharing, one for docs. You could switch them out like skins.\nYour data is in one place and never moves. If a competitor comes along with a\nbetter front-end, you could change to them.\n\nThat would also be nice, because then you could have one monthly fee for all\nof you online storage needs. Let's be honest, they're all hosted by Amazon\nanyway.\n\n~~~\nsubpixel\nopenphoto.me is what you're describing\n\n~~~\nmlapida\ngiving it a whirl now. thanks!\n\n------\naresant\nSnapfish, DropBox, and several of the other large photo / filing sharing sites\nare essentially a UI for Amazon's S3 cloud.\n\nI pay for dropbox primarily to store family photos & videos.\n\nIn fact the stuff I need to back-up that fits outside that category would fit\nin a free, or lower priced dropbox plan.\n\nI would switch based on price alone since photos are fairly static, non-\nchanging, and the #1 concern is that they survive a hard disk crash.\n\nI wonder when Amazon just decides to go and own this market by offering a\nbetter photo UI, or buys somebody to do it for them.\n\nAmazon has already shown they have no fear of running over profitable customer\nsegments (eg they launched Prime Video while also counting NetFlix as a huge\nclient).\n\n~~~\njustincormack\nMore interested in something like open photo that is just forkable software\nand I pay for S3 <http://theopenphotoproject.org/>\n\n~~~\naaronpk\nAgreed! I really like the open photo project. I started making my own photo\nbackup site as well: <https://github.com/aaronpk/Flickr-Archiver> I suspect\nwe'll see many more attempts at building a solid photo archiving site before\nFlickr completely disappears.\n\n------\ncodenerdz\nAt least Flickr has an API if you want to pull your data out.\n\nSnapjoy doesnt :)\n\n------\nsnowmaker\nI love the infographic and the one-sentence pitch. It's funny, it's totally\nclear why I should use it, and I'll never forget it.\n\nPeople here are saying that they're jumping the gun and Flickr isn't sinking\nyet. Maybe that's true. But great marketing can become a self-fulfilling\nprophecy, and that's what this looks like to me.\n\n------\nalagu\nWe built UnifyPhotos - <http://export.goyaka.com> a month back, which moved\nphotos from Flickr to Facebook. We moved more than 850k photos.\n\nI can say that the API limiting here is an implementation issue. Instead of\nquerying information about each photo, if you could pass meta information\n(date_upload,geo,date_taken,icon_server,original_format,\nurl_sq,url_o,url_m,url_b,description) while doing photosets.getPhotos, you\ndon't have to query for each photo.\n\n------\ntlrobinson\nDoes Snapjoy work well with photo organization apps like Aperture?\n\nI've hit the 100GB limit on Dropbox, and I'd like to be able to view albums on\nthe web.\n\n------\ndy\nI guess I'm starting to get jaded... I remember when Flickr was the liferaft\nof Yahoo Photos and then even before that when Yahoo Photos was the liferaft\nof Kodak Galleries.\n\nI still don't have a photo storage solution that I'm happy with - but I'm\nhoping that in 10 years or so Google will have indexed the three or four hard\ndrives in my storage unit and placed them into Picasa X.\n\n------\nstuntmouse\n\"5GB's\" should be \"5GBs\".\n\n~~~\nantidaily\nHate those kind of copywriting error's.\n\n~~~\nnateberkopec\nTrolling is a art.\n\n------\nramanujam\nUnifyPhotos <http://export.goyaka.com> lets you move your Flickr photos to\nFacebook.\n\nInteresting note mentioned there - \"I love snapjoy's UI. But they don't allow\nimport from flickr. Also, social circle in Snapjoy is something I have to\nbuild. Facebook fits the bill.\"\n\n------\nmvanveen\nThis is not unprecedented. We did this years ago with Zooomr. There was a tech\ncrunch post about it: [http://techcrunch.com/2006/06/16/why-is-flickr-afraid-\nof-zoo...](http://techcrunch.com/2006/06/16/why-is-flickr-afraid-of-zoomr/)\n\nMany Flickr users were not happy when they discovered that the ability to\nmigrate their accounts was considered \"burn[ing] bandwidth and CPU cycles.\"\n\nMy co-founder, Kris, was quoted with the following:\n\n> Tate from Zooomr says that the exports are a cost of doing business, that\n> Web 2.0 is where “the roach motel stops” and that Zooomr will always make it\n> easy for their customers to take their data elsewhere\n\nProps to Snapjoy for creating an awesome product and giving people freedom. I\nhope that you guys get your license key back!\n\n~~~\nlurker17\nSnapjoy doesn't give people freedom, it just takes over from Flickr. Flickr\ngives people more freedom, by letting users download their files.\n\n------\nantidaily\nAnnnnnd Flickr just blocked their API key.\n<https://twitter.com/#!/garrytan/status/167030905821605888>\n\n~~~\nzalew\nbecause they hit their query per hour limits.\n\n------\nAznHisoka\nI think you might be violating some trademarks with that name...\n\n~~~\nartursapek\nI'm actually curious if this is a violation. Does anyone know? The font is\ndefinitely different and the F is even capitalized on the boat graphic, though\nthe colors are the same and the name \"flickr\" is in there. It makes me think\nof those cereal brands that try to make you think they're the popular brand by\ndancing as closely as trademark law lets them.\n\n~~~\narctangent\nBack in the day I was the first person to create a service using the Flickr\nAPI, so that the Flickr folks could show off their API when they launched. I\ncalled my demo app reviewr.com [1]\n\nMy original choice of colour scheme was (deliberately) very close to what\nFlickr was using at the time, and Stewart Butterfield (who ran the show back\nthen) asked me to change the colours a bit.\n\nI don't recall Stewart having a problem with me dropping a vowel in the domain\nname, even though at the time this was a novel domain hack on the part of\nFlickr.\n\n[1]\n[http://web.archive.org/web/20040406000559/http://reviewr.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/20040406000559/http://reviewr.com/faq.php)\n\n~~~\nartursapek\nJust saw this. Interesting. You were working as an ally though, unlike the\nsituation here :P\n\n------\nzeroboy\nSorry. I'm not leaving Flickr. It's one of my favorite spots on the Internet.\nI love the community aspect of the site and the countless quality (and not so\nquality) Creative Commons contributions.\n\nI have spent more hours than I'd care to admit sifting through photos,\nadmiring people's work, reading comments - all the while listening to trip hop\nor whatever is on SOMAFM.\n\nIt's one of the best parts of website design: finding the perfect image. I'm\nnot going anywhere.\n\n~~~\nbigiain\n\"I love the community aspect of the site … \"\n\nThis. 1000 times this. I _so_ often hear geeks saying \"It's easy to leave\nFlickr, just host your photos on S3/Dropbox/your-own-web-hosting! Done!\". That\nmisses out on a _lot_ of what keeps people on Flickr. The\nsocial/community/discoverability side of it.\n\nI suspect Flickr's successor will either:\n\n1) be a service which provides all that \"social/community/discoverability\"\nstuff while letting users choose which of many backends actually do their\nphoto storage (openphoto might be a first contender here),\n\nor 2) one of the existing social networks will steamroller over the entire\nphoto sharing space (Facebook seems to be gaining considerable momentum down\nthis path).\n\n------\nrokhayakebe\nDo you guys know of companies launching a side project which ended being\nbigger than their main business?\n\n------\nMattGrommes\nI'm getting an error saying Snapjoy's API key isn't valid. Guess Flickr didn't\nappreciate this marketing stunt.\n\n~~~\nbenatkin\nI got that too.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTSB's Response to Its Independent Review of IT Migration Disaster - mellosouls\nhttps://www.tsb.co.uk/news-releases/slaughter-and-may/\n======\nmellosouls\nPrevious threads on the crisis itself:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16939583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16939583)\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16910947](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16910947)\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21572216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21572216)\n\n------\nmellosouls\nAppears to distance itself from the review's findings all the way through.\n\nThe review itself:\n\n[https://www.tsb.co.uk/news-releases/slaughter-and-\nmay/slaugh...](https://www.tsb.co.uk/news-releases/slaughter-and-\nmay/slaughter-and-may-report.pdf)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLittle Girls Get Bigger Every Day - jseliger\nhttp://thesecondpass.com/?p=1591\n\n======\naj\nAnd the relation to HN is?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMinecraft Environmental Lighting Experiment - rutherfj\nhttp://blog.taptonics.com/post/44803397320/minecraft-environmental-lighting-experiment\nA demonstration of an iPad app that interfaces with the Phillips Hue LED lightbulbs to provide environmental lighting synced with the Minecraft day/night cycle.\n======\nqdot76367\nThis kind of idea is something philips has been working on for years, with Hue\nbeing the newest in a line of lighting control systems.\n\nYears ago, they were peddling the amBX line, which was a set of lights, desk\nvibrators, and fans (yes, as in like, desk fans that blow in your face) that\nwould create an immersive environment for games. Of course, very few games\npicked it up (we worked on it a bit for Second Life, and I did some silly\nthings with it, super mario bros, and alcohol:\n<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kiKE3lif8Q>). amBX ended up being mostly a\nfailure, despite having fuck off HUGE booths on the gdc expo floor for at\nleast 3 years running (Who else remembers the huge black blob? Great as a\n\"meet me near [large obvious thing]\" place. :) ).\n\nPhilips ended up either spinning or selling off amBX. It's still around as a\nset of crappy LED lights that burn out quickly (?!) and have crap for contrast\nand color depth. There's open source drivers out there if you look (including\nmy half-done-maybe-still-works libambx).\n\nHue seems to be working out a bit better from what I'm hearing thus far. Might\npick one up myself soon.\n\n~~~\nalirov\nI got a secondhand amBX system (just the lights) off of Craigslist a few\nmonths ago for cheap and it's been pretty cool. The Windows drivers were a\npain to deal with but I got everything up and running in Ubuntu and it works\nmuch better.\n\nInteresting issue is that when the power is plugged in for the first time (or\nthe power is reset), the drivers in Ubuntu don't properly link to the device.\nThe lights just flash continuously or don't turn on at all. I have to restart\ninto Windows with the amBX plugged in which I guess does some sort of\ninitialization to them. From there, if I restart back into Ubuntu, everything\nfunctions normally.\n\nNo issues with burn out so far. There's something pleasing about lighting up\nmy room at night in bright colors. And it gets even better when used as music\nvisualizations!\n\n~~~\nqdot76367\nHmm, ok, I was seeing the exact same rebooting issue. Didn't realize it was an\ninitialization issue on powerup. Just curious, what drivers/programs are you\nusing to control it on ubuntu?\n\n~~~\nalirov\nI haven't delved into the Windows drivers but clearly they're doing something\nthat the Ubuntu ones aren't for this issue to exist. I just noticed it's\nhappening after a \"cold boot\" of the amBX. I'm just calling it an\ninitialization issue because that's what it seems to me. Just wanted to clear\nthat up first just in case the way I was using \"initialization\" wasn't clear.\n\nI'm using a combination of boblight, ruby-usb and combustd to get it to work.\nThis isn't my blog but I used this as a guideline to get everything up and\nrunning:\n\n[http://slickeel.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/philips-ambx-\nstarte...](http://slickeel.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/philips-ambx-starter-kit-\nwith-xbmc-media-centre-in-ubuntu-linux-maverick-meerkat-10-10/)\n\nThe tricky thing was realizing I had to have it \"initialize\" in Windows before\nthis would work.\n\n------\nsp332\nI don't think there's an official SDK, but the Hue is easy to control with a\nJSON API. [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/in-living-color-\nars-r...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/in-living-color-ars-reviews-\nthe-hacker-approved-philips-hue-leds/) (under the section \"Taking Control\").\n\n~~~\nrutherfj\nCorrect - there is no official SDK, but a quick search at Github will give you\nquite a few projects using a variety of languages to choose from.\n\n------\nflakeskstyle\nWhat dads do with their kids... Love it!\n\n------\npostscapes1\nLIFX gets all the love these days but there are actually quite a few other\nprojects along the same lines.\n\nVisualight: <http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/leifp/visualight> is another\ncrowdfunded project and is Open Hardware.\n\nSpark Socket: <http://www.sparkdevices.com/> takes a slightly different\napproach and you probably can guess, puts the intelligence in the socket\nseparate from the bulb.\n\nBluetooth bulb: <http://www.blueclickhome.com>\n\nGreentech 6LoWPAN based system:\n[http://www.greenwavereality.com/solutions/connected-\nlighting...](http://www.greenwavereality.com/solutions/connected-lighting-\nsolution/)\n\nLight by Moore's Cloud: <http://moorescloud.com/> \\- A larger ambient display.\n\n------\nSymmetry\nOh man, I'm proud that these products are finally coming out. I was somewhat\ninvolved in the later parts of the standardization process, and this is\nactually the first time I've seen something I've worked on come to mass\nmarket. Looking forward to seeing devices with Ember chips come out.\n\n------\nbtipling\nThis will probably break any red stone repeater clocks you have set up. Any\nkind of messing with time in the game will break them and you have to replace\nthe repeater to fix them, which isn't fun if you've built anything more\ncomplex than a blinking light.\n\n~~~\nLordIllidan\nHe isn't messing with time in the game - he built a separate iPad app that\nallows the user to calibrate the time manually to that of the minecraft\nserver.\n\n~~~\nnwh\nCouldn't the iPad app also emulate a client connected to the server, and only\nask for the current time?\n\n~~~\nrutherfj\nThat is my next plan!\n\n~~~\nAndyKelley\nPossibly useful: <https://github.com/superjoe30/node-minecraft-protocol/>\n\nOr even <https://github.com/superjoe30/mineflayer/>\n\n------\nndejager\nThis is actually pretty impressive. There's lots of practical applications for\nthis as well.\n\n------\nprawn\nLIFX will be another option for these sorts of projects. It's a Kickstarter\nproject that exploded in popularity and is set to deliver in the next couple\nof months.\n\n<http://lifx.co/>\n\nI paid about $90-100 for two globes which makes it a bit cheaper than Hue. I\nthink LIFX also does away with a base station and has some sort of mesh\nnetworking between bulbs?\n\n------\nDraco6slayer\nWasn't there a Kickstarter project floating around earlier that was supposed\nto have the exact same functionality as this 'Phillips Hue'? Or are they the\nsame?\n\n~~~\nprawn\nDifferent to Hue. I'd just written a comment about LIFX when you posted:\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5341347>\n\nLIFX is led by an Australian guy. Their email updates have covered their\ndesign process, prototyping in China and so on and they're getting close to\ndelivering the first preorders.\n\nThere's a tech blog about how it will all work here:\n<http://lifxtech.blogspot.com.au/>\n\n~~~\nDraco6slayer\nSo the chief difference there is price and the WiFi interaction between the\nbulbs? Is everything else the same between the two products, then? Or does\nLIFX offer any additional advantage?\n\n~~~\nprawn\nHaven't looked into Hue much or used it and obviously haven't used LIFX so\nsomeone else might need to chime in.\n\nHue needing a base station seems a bit annoying to me so that is a pretty key\ndifference. Very keen for the LIFX bulbs to arrive so I can experiment and see\nwhat they do. It was a very popular Kickstarter foray, so I'm hoping that a\nstrong community forms from those customers to build all the fun stuff you'd\nhope to see like music- and game-related applications.\n\n------\nWhitespace\nMy eyes teared up reading this; what a great dad!\n\n~~~\nrutherfj\nBuilding up \"brownie points\" before he turns into a teenager!\n\n------\nbiolime\nThat is very cool! I hadn't yet heard about the Hue but you've got me\ninterested in it now. Great article!\n\n------\nandrewingram\nI like the idea, would work well for multiplayer where you can't freeze time\njust by hitting escape.\n\n------\nwhatupdave\nThis is really cool. It would definitely add to the immersion of the game.\n\n~~~\nrutherfj\nAnd really good if you like to go underground at night and mine. Then you know\nwhen the sun rises!\n\n------\nmcmire\nThis game. Who'd've thought that this game could be used to do so much?\n\n------\nzenogais\nPretty awesome.\n\n------\nnjharman\nwtf do hue bulbs have in them for $90 a bulb.\n\n~~~\nrutherfj\nThey are way too expensive IMHO. If I did not have the idea to hack this\ntogether with Minecraft, I never would have purchased them.\n\n~~~\nd23\nI always wanted to do something like this with an Arduino but never got around\nto it. When I saw the Hue I was pretty excited, until I saw the price tag.\n$200 for 3 bulbs? I'll pass for now. I'm assuming it's only a matter of time\nbefore they become reasonably priced.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTraining a Neural Network to Fall - rajnathani\nhttps://semiengineering.com/training-a-neural-network-to-fall\n======\nrajnathani\nThe article’s title, in the formal sense, is a bit misleading, as the neural\nnetwork's purpose is for the detection (and not simulation) of falls.\n\nIMO an interesting part in the article which is in regards to the training\ndata is: \"the client’s data science firm used stunts people to fall like\nelderly people while wearing the sensors and streaming the collected data..\".\n\n~~~\nTraubenfuchs\nIt's an eyecatcher. Clickbait.\n\nTraining a neural net to detect elderly people falling? Interesting for a\nniche.\n\nTraining a neural net to fall? What? Did I read that right? Better check it\nout! -> Interesting for many more people.\n\n------\nbriga\nSo this is pretty speculative, but I think Google already has similar models\nin production that they use for targeted advertisements.\n\nA few months ago I was riding my bike and fell down. A few hours later while\nlooking at my Google Pixel I saw an advertisement for a nearby medical clinic.\nThe ad was a guy on the ground holding his knee after a fall. It could be a\ncoincidence, but I have never seen any similar ads before or after. It\noccurred to me that it wouldn’t be too difficult to build a fall classifier\nbased on the phone’s accelerometer and gyroscope data.\n\n------\nagentofoblivion\nWho would have thought that choosing an LSTM on iteration 1 for embedded C\ncode would have been fraught with challenges.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Third Reich’s Electric Submarine Fail - smacktoward\nhttps://medium.com/war-is-boring/aba074f47363\n\n======\nstcredzero\n_“irrational faith in technology to prevail in operationally or strategically\ncomplex and desperate situations.”_\n\nTechnology does win wars, but it isn't magic. If Hitler had followed Karl\nDoernitz' recommendations and had 300 submarines on hand before going to war,\nBritain would have fallen to commerce losses to submarines. It was a series of\ntop level decisions to defer the development of revolutionary weapons on the\npart of the Germans combined with a concerted pursuit of advanced technology\nby the allies, like RADAR aboard anti submarine airplanes, that decided the\nwar.\n\nIf it weren't for such decisions, the V2 and Type 21 would have appeared\nsooner.\n\n~~~\ncstross\nYup. Like the decision to send the engineers and technicians working on jet\nengines to join the infantry in late 1940, because they'd be needed for the\nwar against the Soviet Union and jet engines wouldn't be required in the short\nterm anyway(!) -- a costly mistake which set them until the surviving skilled\ntechnicians could be hastily recalled. Or Hitler's demand for a jet bomber\nwhich forced Messerschmitt to hang bomb racks on the Me-262, delaying their\nfirst operational jet fighter for 18-24 months.\n\nAnd some of the stuff they _did_ pursue was absolutely barking. Like the\nLandkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte:\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte)\n\nTL:DR; the popular belief in the Nazi regime's inherent technological\nbrilliance is a little misplaced.\n\n~~~\nrdtsc\nI take some deal of comfort knowing that an evil and criminal regime was also\nstupid and irrational. It is kind of like that bank robber that hands in the\nnote to the clerk and the note is a his bank receipt with his address on the\nbank.\n\nIt is good that they sent rocket scientists to die in the infantry. Good that\nthey spent resources building that stupid tank. Good that they didn't take too\nmuch interest in the nuclear bomb.\n\n~~~\nstcredzero\n_I take some deal of comfort knowing that an evil and criminal regime was also\nstupid and irrational._\n\nApparently, the Nazi regime was into teutonic myth based occult woo, but I\nhave no idea if that's more a modern distortion than an accurate portrayal.\n\nI wonder if society in the US is any more rational. We gave up on Thorium so\nwe could build bombs faster. The authorities sell us wars with the exact ease\nand facility that Herman Goering spoke about. Supposedly, GM started building\ncars larger in the post-war decades just so engineering managers could feel\nmore prestigious. (Prestige came with volume of one's subsystem, apparently.)\n\n------\nqwerta\nCalling Type XXI failure is kind of (mo)ironic. Soviet submarines and to some\nextend western submarines are practically build on top of it. It is like\nsaying jet-engines are failure :-)\n\n~~~\nmpyne\nI agree, and almost pointed this out myself. But the article isn't really\ncalling the XXI itself a failure, but instead the whole strategy to design,\nbuild, and rely on the Type XXI to prosecute a commerce interdiction war that\nGermany couldn't actually win even with the Type XXI in service. The title\nwould have been better as \"The Failure of the Type XXI Strategy\" I think.\n\n~~~\nnkoren\nYes, this. The same can be said for the V2. Technologically, it was _wildly_\nsuccessful, and today most Russian rockets and many American rockets can be\nconsidered its direct descendants. However there's no question that it\nhastened the end of the war for the Germans.\n\nI've often wondered what the world would look like if Germany had had the same\nmilitaristic and expansionist policies, yet hadn't devoted so many of its\nresources towards genocide and wonder weapons. It may be that Hitler's\nobsession with these things actually spared the world from a far more\neffective Nazi Germany, and thus an even longer and bloodier war.\n\n~~~\nsimonh\nIt's one of the problems with the idea of using a time machine to kill Hitler.\nThe problem is the Nazi party and Germany might actually end up with a more\nsane, capable and effective leader and end up winning the war.\n\n~~~\nspacehome\nPerhaps the previous, competent, dictator was replaced by Hitler.\n\n~~~\nemiliobumachar\n[http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2920](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2920)\n\n------\nkapnobatairza\nSpend too much time keeping your weapons in development and you may find that\nby the time they are ready your strategy for implementing them is no longer\nrelevant or, worse, that you have already lost the war.\n\nA good analogy for the importance of getting to market with what works, not\nwhat is perfect.\n\n~~~\ngrecy\n> _A good analogy for the importance of getting to market with what works, not\n> what is perfect._\n\nI would argue they were already \"at market\" with what works - older subs,\nbullets, torpedoes and tanks, and while doing that, they were trying to\ninnovate something better. They obviously weren't aiming for perfect, because\nthey did get it finished - it would never have been done if the goal was\n\"perfect\".\n\nHad they not tried to innovate something better, we'd be criticizing them now\nsaying \"this is a good analogy for the importance of continual improvement of\nyour product that's in the market\"\n\n~~~\nkapnobatairza\nA fair counter-point, I acknowledge that there is a fine line between\ninvesting too much and too little in R&D (but I suppose we all knew that).\n\n------\nlnanek2\nReminds me of PG saying startups are largely about boring grunt work techies\noften don't want to do, like going out and interviewing clients about what\ntheir problems actually are, etc.. Germany made technological marvels, but\nlost because they distracted from basic, boring things like logistics.\n\n------\nHtsthbjig\nThe article is not very good.\n\nAt the time (1943) the war was already lost for Germany(not for Japan). The US\nhad entered the world fresh after watching people in Europe kill themselves\nfor more than 2 years, and US industry was just too powerful for a country\nthat was already weakened by two years of war.\n\nUS at the time was the biggest saver in the world, and one of the leaders in\nindustry production, while not in weaponry, change to weapon manufacturing is\neasy when you have industry.\n\nYou can compare it with China today, while the US products were not as good as\nthe Germans, they learned fast and they could simply outproduce them. For\nevery good quality German tank, they could manufacture 10 not as good but who\ncares, American tanks, same with planes.\n\nAnother important thing is that after two years of war and more planes on the\nair that today, supplies became scarce, specially for Germans, so they had to\nget by with less quality components out of necessity.\n\nAgain, this is very normal in any war, at the start uniforms, and vehicles are\nnew, morale is high, not so after years of seeing your country, your family,\nyour friends destroyed.\n\n~~~\nsillysaurus3\nHistory is littered with examples of superior forces failing to achieve\nvictory due to mismanagement or deception. Anyone who's tried to seriously\nplay competitive games will say the same thing: it's not over until it's\nliterally impossible to win.\n\nYou're correct that the Germans had a supply problem. But that might not have\nbeen as decisive as Hitler's decision to sacrifice the entirety of the 6th\nArmy at Stalingrad for mere prestige, for example.\n\nIt was a stroke of luck that Hitler was so stupid as to not listen to his\ncommanders and make so many blunders. Some have called Hitler our best ally in\nthe war, since his mismanagement was responsible for so many strategic\nmistakes.\n\nIf a different type of person had been in charge in 1943, there is a sizable\nchance the war could've been won. The production problems were hard, but not\ndecisive to the point of making victory vanishingly unlikely.\n\n~~~\nGustomaximus\n> It was a stroke of luck that Hitler was so stupid as to not listen to his\n> commanders and make so many blunders. Some have called Hitler our best ally\n> in the war, since his mismanagement was responsible for so many strategic\n> mistakes.\n\nThe British agreed with this:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Foxley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Foxley)\n\n\"The plan was submitted in November 1944, but was never carried out because\ncontroversy remained over whether it was actually a good idea to kill Hitler:\nhe was by then considered to be such a poor strategist that it was believed\nwhoever replaced him would probably do a better job of fighting the allies.\"\n\n------\n3327\nHistory does repeat itself, all this means is that US hight tech weapons and\nhardware will be useless against cheap Chinese missiles dime a dozen.\n\n------\ngrecy\nI disagree with the reasoning.\n\nThe article makes it clear these subs were very advanced, and after the\nexpected teething problems expected with any new design, they worked well. Of\ncourse they were expensive (time and resources) because they were new and\nadvanced. They were vastly superior to other subs at the time. Had the war\ncontinued for another few years, I think it's safe to say these subs would\nhave been extremely successful in their missions. You can't go into a project\nlike \"design the future of submarines\" under the limitation that your side\nmight lose the war any day.\n\nObviously when undertaking any task it's important to have a balance of \"do\nwhat we've always done\" and \"innovate to find better ways\". They would be\nequally criticized if they didn't try to advance anything and just kept\nbuilding old tanks and bullets. The headline would be \"The Third Reich's\nFailure to Innovate\"\n\nDid they aim for too much innovation with these subs? Maybe, but you can't\nblame the sub for that.\n\n~~~\nmpyne\nI'm not sure the analogy is so bad, to be honest.\n\nThe USN submarine force was extremely successful in the Pacific... eventually.\nBut they went to war with pre-war submarine designs, and used a strategy of\npumping out the same old submarine types, with only minor improvements as the\nwar went on. It wasn't until the end of WWII and the start of the Cold War\nthat the US started to integrate features from the Type XXI and really try to\npush the state of the art of submarine technology.\n\nBut the point is that the _Gato_ and _Balao_ -class submarines were good\nenough for what the USN was doing, the important thing was actually getting\nthe boats out to the theater of war. An advanced upgrade project would have\nrisked the ability to do that at the very time such risk was unaccepted.\n\nThat was Germany's problem as explained in the article: Even with the\nassuredly-better Type XXI submarine, Germany would still need many other\nthings to go right to prosecute an interdiction war. It would have needed\ncommand and control improvements to account for the submarines being submerged\nmore often (especially if they wanted to use the effective \"wolf pack\"\ntactics), better maritime reconnaissance to find convoys in the first place,\netc.\n\nIts sonar would have been useful, but the flipside to that is that Allied\nsonar and ASDIC would _also_ have been useful (defeating ASDIC was one of the\nreasons German U-boats operated on the surface in the first place). In short,\nthe Type XXI really did counter a lot of the Allied advancements in\nantisubmarine warfare, but it still would not have been enough. Those\nresources could have been profitably employed elsewhere, perhaps in other new\nweapons development projects.\n\nOn the other hand, aviation represented an area where new development was\ninstrumental (and cost-effective) throughout the war. The German jet fighters\nwould have been very dangerous if they could have worked them into their\nLuftflottes sooner.\n\n------\nnswanberg\nThis post cites a much better article by Marcus Jones on the boat and the\ncontext in which the boat was developed:\n[http://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/dd165021-2812-40ba-847f-d...](http://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/dd165021-2812-40ba-847f-d5b4c3e4ac4e/Innovation-\nfor-Its-Own-Sake--The-Type-XXI-U-boat.aspx)\n\nJones's article is better in the sense that it is more reasoned and without\nsingle-paragraph overstatements like \"But everything about the Type XXI was a\nmistake.\" It also, unfortunately, takes more effort to parse.\n\nJones's article also has different take: \"...this paper argues that the U-boat\nType XXI was nonetheless not nearly so unrealistic a solution as [Tooze's]\naccount suggests...\", and also suggests that while the Type XXI was an\nevolutionary solution, it's accelerated development was revolutionary.\n\n------\nmasswerk\nThere seems to be some inaccuracy involved regarding the engine: At least\nfollowing to the (quite extensive) German Wikipedia article, the Walter\npropulsion[1] never reached production state and the design was altered in\norder to fit a conventional Diesel-electric engine. For this the boats became\neven longer and bigger and the inner hull design was changed from an ideally\ncircular cross-section to the unique 8-form, which introduced some other\nproblems.\n\nAnyway, it was a significant fail by the Nazi industrial system. From 118\nboats produced, not a single one met the standards and all of these had to be\nreworked. (Most of these were only used for training missions, none of them\nsaw combat action.)\n\n[1] The Walter engine would have used in deed a hydrogen peroxide fueling\nsystem, and was the system that was deemed unworkable. The note at the end of\nthe article has this right.\n\n------\nfr0sty\nAside from the broader war strategy questions, this appears to be a good\nexample of the second-system effect.\n\n------\nlucio\n\"This mentality amounted to a “disease” in German war ... Germany built\nradical weapons that would fail to turn the tide against an inevitable defeat\nbrought about by larger economic, political and technological disadvantages.\"\n\nLuckily, dictatorial \"leader\"-based regimes aren't compatible with the freedom\nrequired for creative geniuses... but, have they stumbled upon some kind of\nprimitive nuclear weapon and strapped one on top of a V2... instead of a\n\"disease\" this \"radical weapons\" thing would have been the \"winning bet\" ?\n\n<joking>This seems written by Captain Hindsight</joking>\n\nedit:syntax\n\n------\npavel_lishin\nReminds me of the uboat in Cryptonomicon, the V-1,000,000.\n\n~~~\nmatthewmcg\nSpeaking of Cryptonomicon, haven't many historians concluded that the ULTRA\nprogram (Anglo-American breaking of Germany's Enigma cyphers) was also a\nsignificant factor in the decline in U-boat effectiveness?\n\nThis is not addressed or even mentioned in the article.\n\n------\njunto\nI've been through the one in Bremerhaven. You can walk through it. It costs\nabout €6 if memory serves me rightly:\n\n[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_Wilhelm_Baue...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_Wilhelm_Bauer)\n\n------\nwhitehat2k9\nThe author mentions \"Type XII\" U-boats several times...this should actually be\nType VII.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAmiato (YC W12) Launches To Bring Big Data A/B Testing With SQL To All - binkert\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/backed-with-2m-ycs-amiato-launches-to-bring-big-data-ab-testing-with-sql-to-all/\n======\ndude_abides\nGreat pitch, but the product and the news article seem to be low on details.\n\nThe \"how it works\" link says that they get read/write access to the data on\ns3, they massage/process the data, and allow queries on it. But I'm confused\nhow this helps in A/B testing.\n\n~~~\nmehulashah\nAB Testing involves (1) changing or deploying a new feature, (2) many times\nmeasuring new properties linked with the feature, and then (3) analyzing the\nresulting user behavior. We help in the analysis process because most tools\nfall short here.\n\nFor example, supposed you add more weapons to promote more battles in an\nonline game to keep players engaged. Say, in addition, you start collecting\nmeasurements about how long battles take. Suddenly, after introducing the\nfeature, the opposite happens: players leave.\n\nMost off-the-shelf AB tools will only tell you whether feature A or feature B\nworked (the \"what\"), but not the \"why.\" It could be that battles are taking\nlonger, so players lose interest without finishing. Or, more battles cause\nplayers to die/lose more, so they leave.\n\nWe let you ask questions in SQL that will resolve this and find out why. So,\nyou can fix the problem, rather than be left in the dark. You might introduce\na feature to shorten battles, or find a way so players don't die so often.\n\nSophisticated online gaming companies invest in complicated data\ninfrastructure and experts to let you ask those questions (Hadoop, data\nwarehouses, etc.). But, they end up spending days massaging the data --- e.g.\nto load the new property \"time spent in battle\" -- before you can ask deep\nquestions. In this case, you may get your answer, but its too late -- you've\nalready lost your players.\n\nWe give you direct access to all your event data (including new properties)\nimmediately through SQL. You can ask the deep questions and resolve \"why\"\nright away. You're not guessing in the dark as to what to do next.\n\nAB testing is about optimizing the user experience, and we help with the\nanalysis to make better improvements.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWebGL Meincraft - llambda\nhttp://dev.pocoo.org/~mitsuhiko/webglmc?hn\n======\nritonlajoie\nThat seems nice but it's taking, also, all my CPU time on my windows machine.\nI don't get it, yesterday there was another WebGL demo on HN and it did\nexactly the same thing. Is that something which we have to live with in the\nfuture ? Is WebGL going to be too much CPU intensive, so much that nobody is\ngoing to be able to run that ? Or is this 'demo' asking too much of WebGL ?\n\n~~~\nthe_mitsuhiko\nThe high CPU usage is expected because I spawn off four background workers\nthat peg all your CPU. It's not intended for public consumption yet, so don't\njump to conclusions.\n\nWhen I have finished this it will perform better.\n\n> Or is this 'demo' asking too much of WebGL?\n\nThe WebGL part is only half the story. It uses webworkers for the perlin noise\ngeneration and this is currently very slow in JavaScript.\n\n------\nquandrum\nThis page consumed all the resources on my Late 2010 MBA pretty quickly. Not\nthat the real minecraft runs well, but it's far more playable than this\nversion.\n\nWhether that's WebGL or the programming is something I don't know.\n\n~~~\nthe_mitsuhiko\n> This page consumed all the resources on my Late 2010 MBA pretty quickly. Not\n> that the real minecraft runs well, but it's far more playable than this\n> version.\n\nWell. There are a couple of reasons for this. First of all: yes, it should\nkeep 4 CPUs busy. I spawn of four background workers so it pretty much hogs\neverything.\n\nThat said, not only the world generation is slow right now, also the VBO\ngeneration is because I do some very conservative invalidation which causes\nsome VBOs to be generated multiple times.\n\nI have a lot of stuff that I can do to make this faster and my local version\nalready performs better but I caused some bugs in the coordinate system\nconversion and my frustum culling. I have to iron this out first before I\nupdate the live demo.\n\nThis version (rendering wise) on my Mac does actually render faster than\nMinecraft at equal rendering distances.\n\n~~~\nexDM69\nIf and when you write a blog post about this, I think it would me more\ninteresting if you'd write about how you generate your vertex buffers and\norganize your draw calls, etc than describing the world generation algorithm.\n\nEveryone, and their dog, have been writing Minecraft-style world rendering\ndemos for a few years now and there are also quite a few blog posts that\ndescribe the world generation algorithm. They're always an interesting read,\nbut I would be more interested in how you get that stuff to the GPU and how do\nyou render it.\n\nAlso some insights about WebGL limitations would be welcome. Would your task\nhave been easier if you could memory map your vertex buffers or use instanced\ndraw calls? This is the kind of stuff I'd love to hear about as a graphics\nprogrammer.\n\n~~~\nthe_mitsuhiko\nYeah, the world generation is not that interesting in my version anyways. The\ninteresting stuff is how it uses web workers to move that into the background\nand how the VBOs are updated (or will be once I have finished that).\n\n------\njebblue\nBoth my cores were pegged but if you can get this to perform as good as\nMinecraft and turn it into a game I might buy it. Especially since us Linux\nusers don't have as many good games to choose from.\n\n------\nritonlajoie\nI noticed something : when the viewpoint is lookint at a flying block wich is\nnot that big, it's lagging the same as looking at the entire world. Is is\nrendering something in the background which is out of the view ? I'm not\nsaying it's not a nice demo, actually I like the feeling very much. This\nperlin noise is pretty enjoyable. But I can't understand why it's that slow ;(\n\n~~~\nthe_mitsuhiko\n> I noticed something : when the viewpoint is lookint at a flying block wich\n> is not that big, it's lagging the same as looking at the entire world. Is is\n> rendering something in the background which is out of the view?\n\nYes it is. I have experimental frustum culling implemented but something with\nthe coordinates is wrong and it starts to cull things it should not.\n\n> But I can't understand why it's that slow ;(\n\nBecause it's work in progress and in many parts the implementation is just not\nfinished yet. I need to fix the frustum culling, I have to improve the front\nto back rendering, have to switch to transferred objects for the web workers\nwhere possible, speed up the critical code paths and fix the Chrome\nperformance bugs that come from too many VBO switches.\n\n------\nbazerka\nHello both my cpu cores pegged at 100%.\n\n~~~\nEwanG\nMay I suggest running this in a Virtual Machine such as VirtualBox. Then you\ncan control how many cores are pegged by how many you have assigned to the VM,\nand leave the rest of your machine responsive for other things.\n\n~~~\nFrankBooth\nThat's an awfully heavyweight approach to something that can be solved just as\nwell using the existing CPU affinity functionality of your OS.\n\n------\nmostly_harmless\nWas this done with 3D perlin noise?\n\nGive us some technical details of the project please.\n\n~~~\nthe_mitsuhiko\nIt's perlin simplex noise and there will be a longer blog post about how it\nworks. It's just work in progress :-)\n\n------\nGroxx\nHooray for floating islands! (seriously, I love that these exist in\nM(ine|ein)craft. It makes the world a lot more interesting)\n\nVery CPU heavy. For those wondering, it does work, it just takes a while for\nanything to appear.\n\n------\ntantalor\nYou should prevent propagation of up/down arrow key events in the game canvas,\nwhich (I believe) cause the browser window to scroll up/down.\n\n------\nCatDaaaady\nPretty sweet! Can't wait for the details\n\n------\njoe24pack\ncompletely non responsive, did not finish rendering first scene after waiting\nfor about 4 minutes.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow to protect yourself against the WebEx vulnerability - mikaelf\nhttps://blog.filippo.io/webex-extension-vulnerability/\n======\nindexerror\n\"There was a secret URL in WebEx that allowed any website to run arbitrary\ncode. ¯\\\\_(ツ)_/¯\"\n\nWhat are the chances of this being done arbitrarily, and not just something\nthat slipped out of code review...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDopamine Cells Influence Our Perception of Time - JabavuAdams\nhttps://www.simonsfoundation.org/features/foundation-news/scgb-news/dopamine-cells-influence-our-perception-of-time/\n======\nAnsemWise\nThere is another article trending right now about increased Dopamine in the\nshower causing your executive functions to diminish and allows for increased\ncreativity.\n\nSeems like you could extrapolate that dopamine has a direct inverse\ncorrelation to executive functions in the brain. I'd go so far as to use New\nYork and Silicon Valley as good examples of increased executive function and\nincreased creativity, respectively.\n\nI'd also relate this to the certain side-effects of Adderall, increased\nDopamine causing a loss of time awareness and higher creativity, but the\nincrease in your sympathetic nervous system causes the increased focus and\nawareness. Almost a best of both worlds, besides the likely strain on the body\nfrom overworking both systems.\n\n~~~\noxide\n>causing a loss of time awareness and higher creativity\n\nwhatever you're doing when you take adderall, you'll be doing for the next 12\nhours before you realize how much time has past.\n\n~~~\nClassyJacket\nI wish there was a legal way to try Adderall. It's not even legal in Australia\nby prescription, and since I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, there's\nbasically no chance I'll ever even get try the similar dextroamphetamine.\n\nI'd love to see what effect it had on my focus and productivity. I've had a\nfew amazing days before, but they're few and far between. Being able to switch\nthat on with a careful controlled dose would be fascinating and useful.\n\n~~~\noxide\nAdderall is basically mixed dextroamphetamine salts, there isn't a big\ndifference between generic dextroamphetmine salts and Adderall despite what\nthe drug manufacturer likes to say.\n\nthe new hotness is lisdexamfetamine, which is just dextroamphetamine bound to\nlysine, making it a prodrug as your liver needs to cleave the lysine off\nfirst. reduces abuse potential.\n\nI wouldn't lose hope, though. You might as well lose hope if you mean free and\nclear legal access to dextroamphetamine.\n\nbut, there are illegal options if you want to get an idea of what it's like.\n\nI'm not recommending you go buy street amphetamine, I'm not even sure what\nstreet amphetamine is like in Australia.\n\nyou might have access to methamphetamine instead of amphetamine sulfate which\ncan come as paste or powder as opposed to crystalline chunks/powder like\nmethamphetamine tends to be, it's a regional difference.\n\nThe point is you could, theoretically and hypothetically speaking, acquire\nstreet amphetamine + a 20 dollar milligram scale.\n\nweigh out and try a low dose (~20mg, orally) after breakfast first thing in\nthe morning to experience the similar effects to those that dextroamphetamine\nwould give you.\n\nWould it be legal? No. Theoretically though, people use the internet itself to\nacquire these things, cutting out a lot of the risk that comes with buying\ndrugs the more traditional way.\n\nThat's just a theory of mine, though. Hypothetically speaking. Allegedly\nbitcoin and secondary wallets are involved.\n\n------\nRangerScience\nI'm confused. Is this saying that you would expect to experience \"time flies\"\nwith high or low dopamine?\n\nOtherwise, holy shit. Confirmation bias is likely in play, but this sounds an\nawful lot like my experience of daily life. Slow time, difficultly with\ndelayed gratification, strong desire to repeat situations/actions that\nresulted in successes.\n\n~~~\ndcgoss\n\"When dopamine activity was high, the animal was more likely to judge an\ninterval as short, and vice versa.\"\n\n~~~\ndevoply\nAlso explains why we are miserable. When we are having a good time, time\nflies. When we are not time slows down. It's as if our brain is wired to fast-\nforward the good parts and play the bad parts in slow motion so I guess we\nhave time to deal with them. It wired to perform, not wired to enjoy.\n\n~~~\nshostack\nPut a different way, it would seem the brain might make the good times\nsomething you want to repeat and make you avoid bad times.\n\n------\nagnivade\nUmm .. there's no such thing as dopamine cells. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter\nand neurons which activate on dopamine are called dopamine receptors. You can\nargue that neurons are a type of cell, but thats how far you can stretch it.\n\n------\nthirstysusrando\nTime flies when you're having fun.\n\n~~~\niaw\n...or taking methamphetamines?\n\n~~~\n77pt77\nIsn't that the reverse?\n\n------\nrdmsr\nThere was an article earlier this week on HN about the effects of stimulants\non Chess Ability that was oddly consistent with this:\n[https://worldchess.com/2017/01/25/special-report-new-\nstudy-f...](https://worldchess.com/2017/01/25/special-report-new-study-finds-\nperformance-enhancing-drugs-for-chess/)\n\nIn particular, players would tend to lose on time more often when taking\nstimulants. When framed from the perspective of this article, that effect\nbecomes \"obvious\".\n\n------\nmikewhy\nThere's also the thought that depression causes people to experience time\ndilation.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#Depression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#Depression)\n\n------\ndatalus\nDid they take this cell image from Project Discovery in Eve Online? Or are\nthese actual cell photographs, since Project Discovery is based on identifying\nactual cells & uploading it to scientists.\n\n------\nmeowface\nLSD heavily interacts with many neurotransmitters, including dopamine\n(particularly the D2 receptor). Is it possible its unusual time distortion is\nrelated?\n\n------\nspraak\nSo this (finally?) explains the reason why (most) drugs affect perception of\ntime\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAn Epidemic of AI Misinformation - hughzhang\nhttps://thegradient.pub/an-epidemic-of-ai-misinformation/\n======\nggm\nVery hard to critique an article you overwhelmingly agree with!\n\nThe key point I kept picking up was the extent to which a press willing to\nlaud a discovery was reticent about owning the clinb-down.\n\nPeer review in ML journals should be tighter maybe? If you solve a limited\nsubset of the three body problem you can't claim to solve \"the three body\nproblem\" and if you apply a well known Rubik's cube model solution you didn't\nlearn it, you had it baked in.\n\n~~~\nbuboard\ndo most of the hyped papers have peer review even? the field moves too fast\nfor that, press releases are issued as soon as the first draft is on arxiv.\n\n~~~\neanzenberg\nApologies, but I see a lot of “trash” published in arxiv (also some real good\nstuff) Peer review could fix some things but would also show some other things\ndown\n\n~~~\nmadenine\nI like to think of arxiv as the holding area for anything that COULD be peer\nreviewed.\n\nAdvantage is we get to see stuff now, not after it gets accepted at by a\nconference or journal. Disadvantage, we have to filter on our own.\n\nTwitter and sites like arxiv sanity preserver are helpful for filtering.\n\n------\nperl4ever\nWhen I saw this item, I thought not of misinformation produced _about_ AI, but\nmisinformation produced _by_ AI.\n\nSome of the Google searches I have done recently turn up mostly automatically\nwritten articles that plug in numbers and facts but make no sense at all,\nbecause there is no real understanding. (Yes, this is probably not \"real\" AI,\nbut it's the sort of thing people are and will be trying to apply AI to)\n\nIt seems to me that there is no way to get to a serene, well-functioning\nsociety that utilizes intelligent machines, because in the process of\ndeveloping software that can digest and write intelligently about topics\nhumans are interested in, we will inevitably come up with less intelligent\nsoftware _first_ , that produces plausible misinformation far cheaper than\nhumans. And economics will drive out, is already driving out, real research\nand journalism. Human society would be drowned by automatically generated\nmisinformation by the time a machine is truly intelligent, whether that is in\na couple years or a decade or longer.\n\nI'm increasingly thinking that the people who are worried about artificial\nintelligence ending the world as we know it have slightly missed the mark -\nsuperhuman intelligence is a singularity that we are approaching, but we are\ngoing to be ripped apart by the tides beforehand and maybe that will prevent\nthe endpoint from ever happening.\n\n------\ntomxor\n> I see this as a version of the tragedy of the commons, in which (for\n> example) many people overfish a particular set of waters [...] if and when\n> the public, governments, and investment community recognize that they have\n> been sold an unrealistic picture of AI’s strengths and weaknesses that\n> doesn't match reality, a new AI winter may commence.\n\nI think this is not only inevitable, but necessary! This time around it has\nbeen a lot more useful, due in no small part to the advance in hardware since\n1970s.\n\nUnfortunately this has caused many important people to believe far too much of\nthe hype and not see it's current limitations. As a result they have started\nintegrating it into important part of our societies - i find this alarming -\nnot for the reason most people find it alarming i.e \"because it's too smart\",\nbut because it's far far too dumb in combination with people assuming it's\nvery smart. I think a lot of this problem stems from inappropriately\nanthropomorphising ML with terms like \"AI\" when we are no where near the stage\nthat we need to have the philosophical debate about where something is\nsentient or \"intelligent\". The ML we are doing with NNs is still at the \"tiny-\nchunk-of-very-specifically-engineered-piece-of-brain\" stage. It's important\npeople understand this before we start integrating what are essentially basic\nstatistical mechanisms into our societies.\n\nFor those in pursuit of better ML and things like real AI aka AGI, I also\nthink having the hype blow away will do more good in the form of clarity and\nlack of noise than it will harm in lack of funding.\n\n------\nilaksh\nOpenAI hype is definitely exaggerated. Seems like there might be a connection\nwith Elon Musk somehow because all of his projects seem to get a massive\namount of hype also.\n\nThe radiology thing, is it really the case that there are no startups in that\narea with useful AI software? Seems like he overstated that.\n\nPart of this is a worldview difference. Many people truly believe that AGI is\njust around the corner, and that even before then, the narrow AI applications\nwill significantly alter the world as they are deployed. And since no one can\nactually predict the future, it's an area where it's easy to have different\nworldviews.\n\nPersonally I think that it's true that there is a lot of poor reporting and\ncompanies that overhype results, but it also seems like people like Gary\nMarcus are really not keeping up to date with the true capabilities of DL\nsystems. If he was up to date, why would he be so pessimistic about\napplications like radiology? There seem to already be a lot of strong results.\n\n~~~\nunishark\nI think there are certainly issues with ML in radiology (i.e. lots of\npublications of low power studies or overfit models validated incorrectly),\nbut I agree with you that Marcus was being unfair. It is principle a\nstraightforward problem to solve with deep learning. The reason biggest\nreasons \"no actual radiologists have been replaced\" are probably just\npolitical/social. Hinton cannot be blamed for those hurdles.\n\n------\nscottlegrand2\nThe funny thing for me is that if The Economist had just hacked the input into\nGPT-2 so that it was an ongoing conversation they would have found that it's\nOK at holding a conversation, better than I expected when I did so.\n\nThe conversation that I posted at:\n\n[https://medium.com/@scottlegrand/my-interview-with-the-\nworld...](https://medium.com/@scottlegrand/my-interview-with-the-worlds-most-\ndangerous-ai-tm-473ebdde04b2)\n\nis performed in one shot. And I think it shows both the abilities and the\nlimitations of GPT-2 and similar models. I am 100% role playing with the\nlanguage model and prompting it to go in the directions it goes, but it\nsurprised me several times, and eventually it all fell apart because I didn't\nperform any transfer learning on the model I just used the raw GPT-2 XL model\nto measure whether further work would be worth the effort and I would conclude\nyes it would be.\n\nThe first thing I need to do is dramatically increase the length of its input\ncontext. It's pretty good at running with an ensuing script because I suspect\nmuch of its training data was formatted that way. But since I ran out of\ncontext symbols, it eventually suffers from several incidents of amnesia and\neventually effective multiple personality disorder. It also contradicts itself\nseveral times but then no more than the typical thought leader or politician\ndoes IMO.\n\nWhat The Economist did was effectively erase the thing's memory between\nquestions. So they were starting fresh with each question. And I think that's\nwhy they had to do the best of 5.\n\n------\neanzenberg\nInteresting that a few big examples of hype driven articles came from OpenAI.\nThis is dangerous and will lead to additional misinformation and public\nbacklash. Scientists should be unbiased and not market driven, but when OpenAI\nhas these releases I shook my head along with a couple others.\n\nHype lasts the next quarter but is replaced with distrust. Science is a long\ngame of incremental discoveries. Breakthroughs usually are an understanding of\nsome interesting outcome that needed more interpretation.\n\n~~~\nmiketery\nI think this is what happens when you have various stakeholders and some are\ndriven by KPIs such as reach / views. To that end those specific stakeholders\n(content writers / marketing) will bias towards sensationalism. That's not to\nexcuse the organizational culture which allows for this behavior / outcome.\nThere does need to be course correction.\n\n------\nspicyramen\nLet us remember that AI is at the center of the cloud wars. Google, Amazon and\nMicrosoft while they produce ton of research, their sales teams need to market\nthose R&D investment to get customers interested in their tech. We are at a\nstage that AI is still a buzz word for many companies, once we evolve and\ndeploy more and more of AI cases, we will see less and less articles promising\nthings that can't be implemented\n\n~~~\nthu2111\nThat's probably a part of it. Note how the Google TPUs aren't for sale. If you\nwant them you have to use the Google Cloud. The cloud is expensive and slow\n... I think everyone is shocked when they first see perf numbers coming off\nAzure.\n\nI don't know if GCE is better, but the temptation to overload the hardware is\nalways there: hardware rental is fundamentally a business with low barriers to\nentry. Anyone can buy some machines, bring up a Kubernetes or OpenShift\ncluster and start renting it out. So the big 3 are always looking for\nproprietary advantage and dedicated AI chips are something other firms can't\neasily do at the moment, making it a good source of lockin.\n\nDo many people need it though? Deep learning is pretty useless for most\nbusiness apps, unless you happen to need an image classifier or something else\npre-canned. Classical ML is often sufficient, or better, human written logic.\nThe latter can be explained, debugged, rapidly improved and in the best case\nrequires no training data at all!\n\n~~~\nTrinaryWorksToo\nTheir tpus are for sale:\n[https://coral.ai/products/](https://coral.ai/products/)\n\n~~~\nraverbashing\nThese are Edge TPUs, for inference, not for training\n\n~~~\nThe_rationalist\nI thought a single powerful gpu would be enough for any inference?\n\n------\nbuboard\nUgh. I dislike the author s permanent negativity, but he s right about a lot.\nI think it’s worth asking why people feel the need to lie about the future of\nAI? If they are confident about its future (and I don’t know of a fundamental\nreason why they would not be) then there is no reason to rush half assed\nresults out the door and overcompensate (like gpt2). There is plenty of\ntheoretical questions and answers to debate publicly instead. I don’t know if\nits the fear of some impending tech recession or fear of their own\nincompetence\n\n~~~\ngwern\nHe's also wrong about a lot. For all his insistence on accuracy, he himself is\nmisleading or ignorant. Like his slam of the Dartmouth project - even if you\nknew nothing about it, all you have to do is click through to see the claims\nof 'solving vision' are sheer projection and urban legend. And he's happy to\nmake up claims out of whole cloth: for example, when he says \"AlphaGo works\nfine on a 19x19 board, but would need to be retrained to play on a rectangular\nboard; the lack of transfer is telling.\", for which he provides precisely zero\nevidence, he ignores the fact that AG training works fine on a mixture of\nboard sizes and such progressive growing/curriculum training in fact seems to\naccelerate training\n([https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.10565](https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.10565)) and\nthat rectangular convolutions are a thing that exist, and there would be\nplenty of transfer if anyone tried. If no one has tried that _exact_ thing,\nit's because it would be pointless and it's obvious to everyone not named\n'Marcus' that it'd work fine, being rectangular doesn't mystically stop it\nfrom working anymore than using a 13x13 rather than 19x19 board makes AG-style\ntraining stop working. (This is not the first time Marcus has claimed that\nsomething didn't work; I first realized that he doesn't actually keep up with\nthe AI literature when I pointed out to him on Twitter that plenty of\nknowledge graphs were in use combined with DL, and Google Search was the\nbiggest example of this, and he had no idea what I was talking about.)\n\nNo matter what DL or DRL does, or how little his own preferred paradigm does,\nMarcus will never ever admit anything. AlphaGo beats humans? Well, it just\ncopied humans. AlphaZero learns from scratch? Well, he wrote a whole paper\nexplaining how akshully it still copies humans because the tree search encodes\nthe _rules_. MuZero throws out even the tree search's knowledge of rules?\nCrickets and essays about 'misinformation'.\n\n~~~\nYeGoblynQueenne\nRegarding MuZero- I confess to not have read the paper very carefully, but I\nam confused by its claim that the new system achieves superhuman performance\nwithout knowing the game rules.\n\nSpecifically, MuZero uses MCTS and MCTS needs to have at the very least a move\ngenerator in order to produce actions that can then be evaluated for their\nresults. The trained MuZero model learns the transition function and\nevaluation function but I don't see in the paper where it learns what actions\nare legal in the domain. And I don't understand how any architecture could\nmodel the possible moves in a game without observing examples of external play\n(i.e. not self-play).\n\nMuZero reuses the AlphaZero architecture so most likely the moves of the\npieces for Chess, Shoggi and Go are hard-coded in the architecture, as they\nare in AlphaZero. There's also probably some similar hard-coding of Atari\nactions, which I'm probably missing in the paper.\n\n~~~\nyazr\n> but I am confused by its claim ... without knowing the game rules.\n\n> probably some similar hard-coding of Atari actions\n\nNope, no hard coding.\n\nConsider trying to MCTS on an Atari game. You have to \"learn to predict\" the\n<next frame, action> pairs. Initially this guess is very bad, but eventually\nyour predictions are good enough that rolling out a tree of predictions\nimproves your action selection\n\nFor Go, and chess, we twist our self into NOT using the game rules in the\nsimulator e.g. for each move, just indicate if GAME LOSS WIN\n\nWhether this paper worthy of a new Nature hype cycle is a separate debate\n\n~~~\nYeGoblynQueenne\n>> You have to \"learn to predict\" the <next frame, action> pairs.\n\nBut where do the actions come from?\n\nFor example, if I play chess, I could pick up a piece and throw it at my\nopponent's head. Similarly, if I play Atari I could chuck the controller at\nthe monitor. These are actions I can perform that are available to me because\nof my basic human anatomy and because of the laws of physics (I can grab and\nthrow and a thrown object flies through the air untl it hits a target or\ngravity wins).\n\nIn the case of MuZero, what actions can the system perform and where do they\ncome from? I don't see where that is described in the paper.\n\n>> For Go, and chess, we twist our self into NOT using the game rules in the\nsimulator e.g. for each move, just indicate if GAME LOSS WIN\n\nSimilarly - what determines \"each move\"?\n\nEDIT: I can see in the MuZero paper that \"Final outcomes { _lose,draw,win_ }\nin board games are treated as rewards $u_t \\in {-1,0,+1}$ occurring at the\nfinal step of the episode\" but I also can't see where these come from, what\ntells the model that a loss, draw or win has occurred at the end of an\nepisode.\n\nI mean, if you're telling the model what actions can be performed and what\nend-states values are, then what game rules are you _not_ giving to the\nsystem?\n\n~~~\nyazr\nAs someone patiently explained to me 2 yrs ago...\n\nFor the ATARI, the \"real world\" is the present frame, and a fixed set of 4\nbuttons and 4 directions. This of course is the game pre-programmed into the\nALE ROM.\n\nYou can take any action, and get the next frame. but you cant \"undo\" an\naction, and you cant restart a game from a fixed state (see the Go-Explore\ncontroversy). And you cant explore 4 different actions in an interesting\nframe.\n\nSo now, if you learn a network which predicts the next frame, you can enter\nthe world of model-based learning, where we do a simulated move tree roll-out\n(i.e. not calling the ATARI), try a gazillions moves, and only then select an\naction and get the next sample.\n\nIn a formally defined synthetic domain such as chess or logic programming, it\nis not clear whether this is helpful. We are simply trading one cpu time\n(calling the environment) for other cpu time (running our own learned im-\nprecise model of the environment)\n\nOf course DM has a chess function which does codes the rules of the next move.\nIt can return a LOSS if you try an illegal move. But this function is NOT\ncalled for the tree roll out.\n\n~~~\nYeGoblynQueenne\n>> Of course DM has a chess function which does codes the rules of the next\nmove. It can return a LOSS if you try an illegal move. But this function is\nNOT called for the tree roll out.\n\nI see what you mean- the chess function computes the results of actions\nreturned by the system. But, if you do rollouts you need to have a set of\nactions from which to choose and an internal representation of states\nresulting from those actions. MuZero learns to predict those actions and\nstates- but that means it selects from sets of possible actions and states.\nThe paper does not explain where do these sets come from.\n\nFor ATARI I get it, there's the physical ish controls and video frames. For\nthe board games however, I remember very clearly from the AlphaZero paper that\nthere was an encoding of \"knight moves\" and \"queen moves\". I also remember\nless clearly that the structure of the network's layers mirrored the layout of\na chessboard. That's what I mean by hard-coding and in the MuZero paper there\nare many references to reusing the AlphaZero archietecture and no explanation\nof how the same components (board states, moves) are represented in MuZero.\n\n------\nandreyk\nIt's kind of funny just how much complaining about AI hype and bad coverage\nthere is (on Twitter, and on this very subreddit), it feels like there is more\nof that now than actually bad coverage. This article suggests some actions to\ntake at the very bottom, which amount to including some discussion of the\nlimitations of the work in the paper -- not a bad idea, but then again the\nmisleading coverage usually does not stem from claims in the papers themselves\nin the first place.\n\nShameless but relevant plug warning, I run this effort Skynet Today with the\naim to let AI researchers/experts present various advancements/topics to a\ngeneral audience without hype and with context. Everyone on the team is\nvolunteering their time for free and we can always use more people to help us\ntackle various subjects, so if you care about this issue feel free to take a\nlook here:\n[https://www.skynettoday.com/contribute](https://www.skynettoday.com/contribute)\n\n~~~\nYeGoblynQueenne\nSkynet Today is very good. I wish you had more original articles because the\nones you have, I enjoy a lot (your editorials and briefs). I see you are\ncalling for contributions, I hope you get some good ones.\n\nWriting good articles- there's no other way to combat bad coverage. Keep it up\nplease and all the best.\n\n------\nsystem2\nIt happened to VR a few years ago. The development slowed down when companies\nrealized the sales. Unlike VR, AI is not a physical good that users/customers\ncan purchase and test directly. It is just a buzzword. Companies will use it\nto death at every opportunity to market themselves. This is unstoppable. We\nwill hear more about it, maybe until people get sick of hearing \"another\ncrappy ai product\".\n\n~~~\nbuboard\nAI is more of a datacenter technology. People already use it\n(siri,alexa,google search) and they apparently like it already. It was easy to\nsee that any VR headset is bulky and agonizing, but those new services work\nfine. Sure, however the \"not hot dog\" apps are going to be disappointing\n\n------\n8bitsrule\nThe buzzword back in the 70s-80s (after AI over-promised in the 1960s) was\n'expert systems'.\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system)\n\n(To the extent that I have kept up with it) modern AI skips the 'knowledge\nbase' part of ES, in favor of pattern-recognition based on 'training'.\n\nToday's (Indeterministic, trained, n-net) AI has clearly saved a lot of\ntime/effort in creating 'knowledge bases'. I suspect it appeals more to\nsingular fantasies about 'more human than human' intelligence. (Sorry Ray)\n\nQuestion is: Is today's AI even a magnitude-better than (deterministic) ES\ninsofar as extensibility and verifiability? What if we had spent those decades\nrefining the ES approach instead?\n\n~~~\nJimmyRuska\nYou should use both. Download wikidata and use the manually curated\ninterconnected data available. You could argue it was compiled by the largest\npool of neural networks ever assembled. Wikipedia data was curated content\nthat was hierarchically and painstakingly interconnected by humans, the most\nadvanced NN we know of :).\n\nThere's now discussion about how neural networks can succumb to data poisoning\n/ adversarial attacks, because there are no immutable facts. Adding a mostly\nimmutable fact table can help keep things grounded in reason. Most of these\nengines support complex inference abilities that can lead to unexpected\nconnections.\n\nES is not really dead. It feels like many rules engines changed their names to\n\"AI Intelligent Agents\"-type wording to describe their product. Rete algorithm\nis similar rule based calculation, is still used to calculate FICO score,\nwhich you could say fits into the problems that may be better served by the\nlatest Neural network models. Allegro graph lets you query using prolog and is\noften used for governance and compliance tools. RDFox is one of the latest\ninference engines that made major advancements in turning first order logic in\ndatalog into parallel computation.\n\nI'd imagine if you can build a neural network that can successfully interact\nwith a ES knowledge base you could easily make a neural network as good as the\none that won in jeopardy\n\n------\nblazespin\nAn AI winter will not happen. We are past the point of no return. The vast\nmajority of research is net positive research.\n\nThe only risk is misappropriation of investment, but that has already been\nsmoothed over quickly.\n\nI’d get the complaint if AI was not doing anything useful as it wasn’t in ‘74,\nbut it simply is.\n\nFor example, plate recognition, drones and facial recognition. These are\nbrutally efficient technologies. To imagine any government under investing in\nthese is a total misunderstanding of the value that AI brings to military,\nsecurity, and economic dominance.\n\nIt’s a race between nations and the only danger is the computers taking over\n(not in a general AI way, but in a way that everything is run by algorithms no\nhuman can understand)\n\n~~~\nnot_a_moth\nYou sure?\n\nWithout a doubt, there's an investment bubble for AI companies in industry: a\nhuge amount of companies have added \"AI\" to their proposition, where the AI is\nonly marginally useful if not useful at all, for the purpose of marketing and\ninflating valuation.\n\nOn research side, it's now clear the current AI paradigm will not produce the\nkind of massive, society-shifting promises that were made to investors, which\nis the focus of the article.\n\nYes deep learning is here to stay for narrow tasks, but the investment\ncontraction for the rest could certainly feel like a Winter.\n\n~~~\nmarcosdumay\n> it's now clear the current AI paradigm will not produce the kind of massive,\n> society-shifting promises that were made to investors\n\nIt's correct in that it won't produce the society-shifting promises. But there\nis a huge amount of money on non-society-shifting innovation.\n\nBesides, I really doubt the media predictions are what actually was told to\ninvestors.\n\n------\nKKKKkkkk1\nThe term AI winter is IMHO misrepresenting the true state of affairs. Since\nday one, the field's modus operandi was one of overpromising and\nunderdelivering. That has not changed. We see how Alphabet plows billions of\ndollars into DeepMind [1] and all they get in return is a series of game-\nplaying bots. If unproductive activities are defunded, this creates an\nopportunity for productive ones to thrive. \"Winter\" is not a suitable word to\ndescribe this.\n\n[1] [https://www.wired.com/story/deepminds-losses-future-\nartifici...](https://www.wired.com/story/deepminds-losses-future-artificial-\nintelligence/)\n\n~~~\nandreyk\nThis is a ridiculously reductive take on DeepMind... they produce a TON of\ngreat research, and have helped advance the state of RL considerably (speaking\nas an AI researcher here, having read many of their papers). Google should be\ncommended for investing in largely basic AI research, even if once in a while\nthey make a PR splash out of it, IMO.\n\n------\neuske\nThe more I read articles like this (or pretty much ANY article recently), the\nmore I'm convinced that what we really need is: transparency.\n\nI don't mean just AI, but transparency on everything: Transparency from\nresearchers, news outlets, governments, retailers, and YouTubers. It's a great\nshame that a lot of IT has been used for bringing more confusion and\nobfuscation to the people, whereas it could be used to provide a more\ncoherent/honest view of the world. We should demand more transparency on every\nmatter.\n\n------\nummonk\nGood article, but it overstates its case.\n\n _> In 1966, the MIT AI lab famously assigned Gerald Sussman the problem of\nsolving vision in a summer; as we all know, machine vision still hasn't been\nsolved over five decades later._\n\nIt certainly took five extra decades, but it would be a massive shift of\ngoalposts to say the problem of vision hasn't been sufficiently solved today.\n\n _> In November 2016, in the pages of Harvard Business Review, Andrew Ng,\nanother well-known figure in deep learning, wrote that “If a typical person\ncan do a mental task with less than one second of thought, we can probably\nautomate it using AI either now or in the near future.” A more realistic\nappraisal is that whether or not something can be automated depends very much\non the nature of the problem, and the data that can be gathered, and the\nrelation between the two. For closed-end problems like board games, in which a\nmassive amount of data can be gathered through simulation, Ng’s claim has\nproven prophetic; in open-ended problems, like conversational understanding,\nwhich cannot be fully simulated, Ng’s claim thus far has proven incorrect.\nBusiness leaders and policy-makers would be well-served to understand the\ndifference between those problems that are amenable to current techniques and\nthose that are not; Ng’s words obscured this. (Rebooting AI gives some\ndiscussion.)_\n\nIt takes significantly longer than a second to actually understand spoken\nconversation (rather than provide a conditioned response or match against\nexpected statements, both of which computers are fully capable of doing).\n\n _> I just wish that were the norm rather than the exception. When it’s not,\npolicy-makers and the general public can easily find themselves confused;\nbecause the bias tends to be towards overreporting rather than underreporting\nresults, the public starts fearing a kind of AI (replacing many jobs) that\ndoes not and will not exist in the foreseeable future._\n\nRobotic manufacturing has already eliminated massive swaths of high paying\njobs. Likewise, software has eliminated massive swaths of data entry and\ncustomer service jobs (with software being a particularly poor replacement for\nthe latter, but still being put into widespread use to cut costs). And\ncontrary to beliefs that new jobs will be created in IT, software is able to\nmassively eliminate low skilled tech jobs as well, as e.g. automated testing\ndid to India's IT industry.\n\nAs with existing jobs that have been automated away, companies won't need\ngeneralized AI to eliminate many more jobs. Many jobs don't rely on\nunconstrained complex deduction and thinking, and will be ripe for replacement\nwith deep learning algorithms. And we can be reliably assured that\ncorporations will engage in such replacements even when the outcomes are not\nup to par.\n\n------\nminimaxir\nI dunno if the GPT-2 examples are _misinformation_ , more like exaggeration\nfor PR, which is admittingly a separate problem in AI. (marketing hype vs.\nactual falsity)\n\n~~~\nbrenden2\nHype and exaggeration is just another form of falsification.\n\n------\nVeedrac\nSigh.\n\n> The Economist [...] said that GPT-2’s answers were “unedited”, when in\n> reality each answer that was published was selected from five options\n\n> [Erik Bryjngjolffson] tweeted that the interview was “impressive” and that\n> “the answers are more coherent than those of many humans.” In fact the\n> apparent coherence of the interview stemmed from (a) the enormous corpus of\n> human writing that the system drew from and (b) the filtering for coherence\n> that was done by the human journalist.\n\nIf your success rate is ≥20%, the coherence is coming from the model, not the\nselection process. This is just basic statistics.\n\n> OpenAI created a pair of neural networks that allowed a robot to learn to\n> manipulate a custom-built Rubik's cube\n\nJeez, I've already corrected you here... well, why not have to do it again?\n\n> publicized it with a somewhat misleading video and blog that led many to\n> think that the system had learned the cognitive aspects of cube-solving\n\nThe side not stated: OpenAI said explicitly in the blog that they used an\nunlearned algorithm for this, and sent a correction to a publisher that got\nthis wrong.\n\n> the cube was instrumented with Bluetooth sensors\n\n __During training __, but they ended up with a fully vision-based system.\n\n> even in the best case only 20% of fully-scrambled cubes were solved\n\nNo, 60% of fully scrambled cubes were solved. 20% of _maximally difficult\nscrambles_ were solved.\n\n> one report claimed that “A neural net solves the three-body problem 100\n> million times faster” [...] but the network did no solving in the classical\n> sense, it did approximation\n\nAll solvers for this problem are approximators, and vice-versa. The article\nyou complain about states the accuracy (“error of just 10^(-5)”) in the body\nof text.\n\n> and it approximated only a highly simplified two degree-of-freedom problem\n\nAs reported: “Breen and co first simplify the problem by limiting it to those\ninvolving three equal-mass particles in a plane, each with zero velocity to\nstart with.”\n\n> MIT AI lab famously assigned Gerald Sussman the problem of solving vision in\n> a summer\n> [[https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6125](https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6125)]\n\nI... _sigh_\n\n“The original document outlined a plan to do some kind of basic\nforeground/background segmentation, followed by a subgoal of analysing scenes\nwith simple non-overlapping objects, with distinct uniform colour and texture\nand homogeneous backgrounds. A further subgoal was to extend the system to\nmore complex objects.\n\nSo it would seem that Computer Vision was never a summer project for a single\nstudent, nor did it aim to make a complete working vision system.”\n\n[http://www.lyndonhill.com/opinion-\ncvlegends.html](http://www.lyndonhill.com/opinion-cvlegends.html)\n\n> Geoff Hinton [said] that the company (again The Guardian’s paraphrase), “is\n> on the brink of developing algorithms with the capacity for logic, natural\n> conversation and even flirtation.” Four years later, we are still a long way\n> from machines that can hold natural conversations absent human intervention\n\n‘Four years later’ to natural conversation is not a reasonable point of\ncriticism when the only timeline given was ‘within a decade’ for a specified\nsubset of the problem.\n\n> [In 2016 Hinton said] “We should stop training radiologists now. It’s just\n> completely obvious that within five years, deep learning is going to do\n> better than radiologists.” [...] but thus far no actual radiologists have\n> been replaced\n\nSo Hinton actually said “People should stop training radiologists now. It’s\njust completely obvious that within five years, deep learning is going to do\nbetter than radiologists, because it's going to be able to get a lot more\nexperience. _It might be 10 years_ , but we've got plenty of radiologists\nalready.”\n\n2019 is not 2026. “thus far no actual radiologists have been replaced” is thus\nnot a counterargument.\n\n> Andrew Ng, another well-known figure in deep learning, wrote that “If a\n> typical person can do a mental task with less than one second of thought, we\n> can probably automate it using AI either now or in the near future.” [...]\n> _Ng’s claim thus far has proven incorrect._\n\nI agree. This quote captures the wrong nuance of the issue.\n\nWell, finally finding one point by Gary Marcus that isn't misleading, I think\nI'm going to call this a day.\n\n~~~\nVeedrac\nI published some minor corrections/clarifications to this on Reddit. HN won't\nlet me edit, so here's a link:\n\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/e453kl/d_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/e453kl/d_an_epidemic_of_ai_misinformation/f98e15s/)\n\n------\npizzaparty2\nI bet ai is going to become like coding where everyone thinks they're an\nexpert.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: How Edward Snowden Do His Computing? - sanosuke\n\n\tI recently read the &quot;How I do my Computing&quot; by RMS. And I wonder, is there any internet article which have information about which Software Mr. Edward Snowden uses? Operating System, EMail Service, Phone, Etc. I&#x27;m getting paranoic about all this privacy talk.\n======\nalansmitheebk\nI would imagine he uses Tails and TOR.\n\nHe used to use Lavabit for email. The founder of Lavabit chose to shut the\ncompany down rather than comply with subpoenas from the US government. There\nis probably pending litigation to this day. He's obviously not going to\ndisclose his current email provider as it would suffer the same fate.\n\nI'd be curious to know his choice of OS. It's probably a Linux distro, but it\ncould also be a BSD.\n\nIf he uses a cellphone at all, it's probably a blackphone:\n[https://blackphone.ch/phone/](https://blackphone.ch/phone/) I believe Glenn\nGreenwald has talked about the Blackphone and was a beta user.\n\nIt's unlikely that Snowden would reveal any details about his computing as\nthey could potentially be used compromise his comsec.\n\nHere are some resources for surveillance self-defense:\n[https://ssd.eff.org/](https://ssd.eff.org/).\n\n~~~\nTomte\nThe founder of Lavabit was perfectly willing to cooperate with the US\ngovernment, including giving up customers' data, until some point when he just\nreverted to childish behaviour.\n\n~~~\nalansmitheebk\nHe was forced to consent to having monitoring hardware installed. When the\ngovernment demanded that he hand over the encryption keys as well he refused.\nYou can read his side of the story here:\n[http://lavabit.com/](http://lavabit.com/)\n\nI don't see anything childish about upholding his fiduciary responsibilities\nto his users and standing up to the agents of a surveillance state which far\nexceeds even the wildest dreams of the East German Stasi.\n\n~~~\nTomte\nYou're wrong.\n\nHe was perfectly willing to hand over customer data before Snowden.\n\n~~~\njpetersonmn\nHanding over specific user data when requested is a lot different that handing\nover your encryption keys though.\n\n~~~\nTomte\nHe handed over specific user data for other users, refused to do that in the\nSnowden case. Only then (and after long stalling) did the US government demand\nthe keS, in order to get the data themselves.\n\nHad he handed over the requested data, just like all the data before, noone\nwould have demanded any keys.\n\n------\nBorisMelnik\nFor most of his work, he is probably using a PC without a video camera (webcam\n/ mic) operating under a fake identity. Good chance he is just using a normal\nOS / setup.\n\nPhone, I agree he probably has to have some sort of blackphone unless he is\naltering his voice.\n\nNow, when he goes to communicate with his family / reporters I'm sure he has a\nwhole setup with Tor / Tails and a whole lotta encryption.\n\nIf you watched the recent documentary you will see he did a lot of command\nline stuff and was a huge advocate of PGP.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nOne percent of Googlers get to visit a data center, but I did - zdw\nhttps://blog.google/inside-google/infrastructure/how-data-center-security-works/\n======\nmarssaxman\nI did not realize this was so rare; my whole team toured a Google data center\njust a couple of months after I began working there. Perhaps security has\ngrown more stringent in the last eight years. It was interesting, to be sure.\nI was particularly struck by the amount of engineering that went into the\ncooling system. I had never really thought about that before.\n\nThe tour left me with a powerful, pit-of-the-stomach feeling that I had made a\nbig mistake by going to work there. Wasn't the whole point of the PC\nrevolution that we were going to do away with these sorts of massive,\ncentrally-controlled institutions of computing, instead giving the power to\nthe people...? How did we end up back here?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe most successful people are just the luckiest, a new computer model confirms - yarapavan\nhttps://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/\n======\nDoreenMichele\nYears ago, a friend of the family said \"You're so smart. Everyone thought you\nwould be a millionaire by age thirty. What happened?\"\n\nI pointed at my kids and said \"They happened. And they take all my time.\"\n\nI was a full-time wife and mom. This is not a career known to lead to great\nwealth.\n\nSo, for starters, not all interests or career paths have equal potential to\nlead to wealth. Intelligence in no way guarantees that your interests will\nhappen to nicely line up with things that lead to wealth.\n\nEverything I've read suggests that being born into the right family plays a\nhuge role in wealth, a la the joke \"He made his money the old fashioned way:\nHe inherited it.\"\n\nHealth issues are another thing. Miracles of modern medicine can be very\nexpensive and come directly out of your pocket if you live in the wrong\ncountry. At the same time, you typically will be less productive and less\ncompetent while enduring serious health issues.\n\nPersonal relationships are another biggie. My mother used to work for an\nheiress whose husband ran through her money. After the divorce, she had to get\na job to support herself.\n\nDivorce, scandal, drug addiction and various other personal issues can all be\nfinancially ruinous.\n\nEven if you are good at earning it, that doesn't mean you are good at keeping\nit or growing it, a la some tagline from some magazine \"How money becomes\nwealth.\"\n\n~~~\numvi\nNext time just say: \"I am a millionaire, and more. My kids are worth more than\nI could have imagined\"\n\n~~~\nDoreenMichele\nThat's more literally true than you think.\n\nMy children nursed me back to health after doctor's wrote me off for dead.\nIt's supposed to cost about $100k-$250k annually to treat my condition\nconventionally.\n\nMy oldest has the same condition. Between the two of us, that's up to a half\nmillion dollars per year.\n\nWe were diagnosed over 18 years ago. You can conservatively guess that my kids\nhave been worth at least $1.5 million to me, and potentially more than $9\nmillion.\n\n(That's just the dollar value saved on treatment. You can put no price on the\nimprovement in quality of life that I got out of it.)\n\n~~~\ngowld\nRelated: [https://faithit.com/i-cant-afford-my-wife-steven-\nnelms/](https://faithit.com/i-cant-afford-my-wife-steven-nelms/) a stay-at-\nhome mom is worth $75K+/yr\n\n------\nmartinni\nRich people got \"lucky\" but they don't define what luck is to begin with. To\nquote Naval, there are 4 kinds of luck.\n\n1\\. Blind luck - Where I just got lucky because something completely out of my\ncontrol happened\n\n2\\. Luck from hustling - luck that comes through persistence, hard work,\nhustle, motion. Which is when you’re running around creating lots of\nopportunities, you’re generating a lot of energy, you’re doing a lot of\nthings, lots of things will get stirred up in the dust.\n\n3\\. Luck from preparation - If you are very skilled in a field, you will\nnotice when a lucky break happens in that field. When other people who aren’t\nattuned to it won’t notice.\n\n4\\. Luck from your unique character - You created your own luck. You put\nyourself in a position to be able to capitalize on that luck. Or to attract\nthat luck when nobody else has created that opportunity for themselves.\n\n~~~\nta1234567890\nHowever, 2, 3 and 4 can be reduced to 1.\n\nYou don't choose your genes or where you are born. Those factors, which are\nblind luck, determine all of the other lucks for your whole life.\n\nIn the end, everything is just blind luck, but our egos want to feel like they\nare in control somehow.\n\n~~~\ndsfyu404ed\nHustle and preparation are not luck, they're skills you have to hone for them\nto be useful. You have to actually do something. They aren't something you can\nbe born into (much to the dismay of rich parents with deadbeat kids). By\nreducing 2 and 3 to luck you're implying that people have no agency. Sure, the\nperson who develops those skills in rural Africa isn't going to go as far as\nsomeone who develops those skills in Chicago but they'll both go a hell of a\nlot farther than the average persona around them.\n\n~~~\nSolaceQuantum\nBeing prepared doesn't mean anything unless 1 happens. Hustling => success and\npreparation => success are dependent on lucky opportunities.\n\n~~~\ndsfyu404ed\nNo they are not. Yes, there is more opportunity in some settings than others\nbut the people with the skills are much less likely to be passed by by that\nopportunity than everyone else. There's a lot more opportunity that usable to\nthe people who are in a position to take advantage of it (preparation) and\nhave the drive to do so (hustle).\n\n~~~\nSolaceQuantum\nAgain, imagine 1 does not occur. You hustle and there is _never_ a lucky\nopportunity. Do you still achieve success? You prepare for a job interview and\nyou _never_ get the opportunity to interview. Do you still achieve success?\n\nNo one is saying that there aren’t factors to increase luck insofar as people\nare saying that success doesn’t necessarily have a linear relationship with\npreparation or hustle.\n\nIE. Person A who earns 100x more than person B did not necessarily prepare\n100x harder, or hustled for 100x as much. Person A may only have\nhustled/prepared 10x or 5x as much, or 0.5x as much and just got exposed to\nbetter opportunities.\n\n~~~\nativzzz\n> You hustle and there is never a lucky opportunity. Do you still achieve\n> success? You prepare for a job interview and you never get the opportunity\n> to interview. Do you still achieve success?\n\nYou don't achieve success, nor do you experience luck. In this case you\ndescribe, are you unlucky, or are you simply bad at \"hustling\" or whatever\nwork you are putting in?\n\nHustling on its own doesn't guarantee good luck. Nothing does; it just (if\ndone right, sometimes) increases your odds.\n\n------\nbuboard\nBut what did the reviewers say about the paper?\n([http://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068](http://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068))\n\nThey used a normal distribution for \"Talent\", but that's false. There is\nplenty of evidence that , like everything in life , it's power-law distributed\n\n[https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/02/19/the-\nmyth-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/02/19/the-myth-of-the-\nbell-curve-look-for-the-hyper-performers/#335142626bca)\n\n[http://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2018/11/16/power-laws-\nreve...](http://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2018/11/16/power-laws-reveal-\npattern-for-distribution-of-artistic-talent/)\n\nAnd the assumtions of the model are rather childish: each random event either\ndoubles or halves your capital (In real life, the multiplier can be much much\nhigher or lower). In fact that's the most flawed point of their tiny \"model\":\nby changing the factor 2 and the multiplier distribution they can come up with\nany result they want.\n\nAlso, everyone meets lucky/unlucky events in the same frequency - the\npresumumption that smart people make paths that provide equal opportunity as\nthe rest or take chances with equal frequency is just false.\n\nThey could at least have compared the lifetime wealth fluctuations with real\ndata for a sense of how wrong thir model is. This is a model of a very simple\ncasino game, not real life.\n\nThe paper has no discussion, no justification for its parameters, no critical\npresentation of its limitations , no sensitivity analysis.\n\nGood conversation piece, everyone has an opinion on the subject, but the\nexperiment is rubbish.\n\n~~~\nfingerlocks\nBoth of your links show a power-law distributions for the _returns on talent_\n, not the underlying distribution of raw talent in the population. We already\nknow this. Wealth begets wealth- a successful book author is more likely to\nsell another successful book than a new author. Likewise with artist paintings\nand salesmen.\n\nBut actual talent, like human height or average running speed, is probably\nnormally distributed.\n\n~~~\nbuboard\n> But actual talent, like human height or average running speed, is probably\n> normally distributed.\n\nTalent would be normally distributed if it was e.g. the sum of your partial\ntalents, as a result of Central limit. There are different kinds of talent\nthough, and gifted people are talented in one thing, but may even suck badly\nin others. If there are 5 talents, a person barely above average, with 0.6 in\neverything has total talent 3 and Mozart who has 1.0 only in music has total\ntalent 1. That's not how talent works though: extremely gifted people are\nalmost unstoppable. It would take extremely adverse circumstances for Mozart\nof Maria Callas or Michelangelo to not be successful. So, i don't think Talent\nworks at all like a bell curve. It's futile to make parallels with IQ (which\nIS a sum of variable representing partial skills).\n\nThat's why i think those studies find those power laws (and frankly, there are\nnot many ways to measure talent directly). Also: Note that they didn't measure\nthe wealth of the artist, but the price of their works since the time they\nlived , as a long-term testament to their talent.\n\n------\nttul\nI went to an elite engineering school. My colleagues are all really smart.\nAfter 20 years, some are wealthy, some are poor. There is no apparent link\nbetween how hard they worked and how rich they became. However you can\ndefinitely trace how a few good breaks led to one guy being rich and another\nnot.\n\nDid the guys who went to work for Google take any additional risk? Yet, they\nare now millionaires. How about the entrepreneurs? A few are super rich now.\nThe guy who went to work at McKinsey is now a pubco COO making millions.\n\nYes, by my direct observation, it’s mostly chance.\n\n~~~\nakhilcacharya\n> Did the guys who went to work for Google take any additional risk? Yet, they\n> are now millionaires.\n\nThey probably _are_ smarter though! If they weren't, they wouldn't get in.\n\n~~~\nttul\nHaha. They are all smart. Not everyone chooses to apply for a job at Google.\n\n------\nzornado\nThe race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread\nto the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of\nskill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. Ecc 9:11\n\n------\nomarhaneef\nUgh, I wish the author had made the point without the computer simulation.\n\nI think there might be merit to the argument people make more money than their\nintelligence, or effort, seems to indicate. And the author lays out some basic\narguments here:\n\n\"But there is a problem with this idea: while wealth distribution follows a\npower law, the distribution of human skills generally follows a normal\ndistribution that is symmetric about an average value. For example,\nintelligence, as measured by IQ tests, follows this pattern. Average IQ is\n100, but nobody has an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000.\n\nThe same is true of effort, as measured by hours worked. Some people work more\nhours than average and some work less, but nobody works a billion times more\nhours than anybody else.\"\n\nHowever, you don't need the simulation to add to this argument. If anything,\nthe simulation undercuts it because now you point out small errors and end up\ndoubting the whole argument.\n\n~~~\n__s\nIQ tests are also a bad example because they have a normal distribution by\ndesign. It's like saying grades fall into a normal distribution when you're\ngraded on a normal distribution curve\n\n~~~\nmywittyname\nIt's a good example because most human traits are normally distributed. There\naren't any 1000IQ humans, just like there are no 18ft tall humans, or ones\nthat could run a marathon in under an hour.\n\n~~~\n__s\nDid you read what I said?\n\nComparing IQ as a measurement to measuring height would require we create a\nnon linear unit of measurement so that humans fit into a normal distribution\nof \"Height Quotient\" where most humans are 100 units tall. Then every few\nyears we adjust these units so that most humans are always 100 units tall\n\n100 IQ fifty years ago wasn't the same as 100 IQ today\n\n------\nbjornsing\n> So some people are more talented than average and some are less so, but\n> nobody is orders of magnitude more talented than anybody else. This is the\n> same kind of distribution seen for various human skills, or even\n> characteristics like height or weight. Some people are taller or smaller\n> than average, but nobody is the size of an ant or a skyscraper. Indeed, we\n> are all quite similar.\n\nI realize this is the politically correct world view in many circles, but it’s\nsimply not true. The variation in cognitive ability is enormous. You can ask\nyourself for example how many randomly selected people would you need to\nproduce a score aver 200 on an IQ test, produce a proof of Fermat’s Last\nTheorem or build something like the SpaceX Falcon.\n\n(Now that fact is not a justification for the enormous economic inequality we\nsee on this planet. Neither is it proof that luck is not a major component in\nsuccess.)\n\n~~~\nwklauss\n> how many randomly selected people would you need to produce a score aver 200\n> on an IQ test, produce a proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem or build something\n> like the SpaceX Falcon.\n\nIt's been proven time and again that IQ numbers are more or less meaningless.\nSetting that aside, I think the point of the article is exactly that you might\nnot need a huge sample to find someone with the potential to do these things,\nkey word here being \"potential\", nor these things require a different order of\nmagnitude in talent or intelligence, just the right combination of drive,\nluck, inspiration, opportunity, etc...\n\n~~~\nbjornsing\nI agree IQ is largely meaningless, and I could have formulated my standpoint\nbetter, but...\n\n> I think the point of the article is exactly that you might not need a huge\n> sample to find someone with the potential to do these things\n\nIf it is then I'm quite sure this conclusion is in no way backed by the\nreferenced scientific article.\n\n> nor these things require a different order of magnitude in talent or\n> intelligence, just the right combination of drive, luck, inspiration,\n> opportunity, etc...\n\nIt would be great if this was true, but it's just not. For example, I see\nmyself as a few standard deviations out on the mathematical talent/ability\nscale, but I would not stand a chance against somebody like Andrew Wiles or\nTerence Tao. Why is it so important to pretend that it isn't so...?\n\n------\ngeorgeecollins\nI just went with my wife to an anniversary event at her graduate school, which\nis fairly prestigious. We are older, and one of the things we were thinking\nabout was how some people had really striking success in their twenties, some\nin their thirties and forties, and some later still. The point being that\ncoming out of the first few years of school you may feel like your cohort is\nsorting for success, but actually early bloomers sometimes revert to the mean\nand late bloomers happen all the time.\n\nI don't think people typically realize it as much because they don't benchmark\nthemselves against their classmates when they get older.\n\n------\nthrownaway954\nI chased the dollar and lost my wife and Pomeranian in a divorce :( I was\nrich, but never realized that love and companionship is worth more in the long\nterm than money. I would give a billion dollars to wake up with my wife in my\narms and that little dude licking my face.\n\n~~~\nmaerF0x0\n^^ Techlead spotted.\n\nYou can have both good things in your life again. Dust yourself off, learn\nwhat you need to learn and find someone who will uphold her commitments (I'm\nmaking some assumptions about your vows)...\n\n~~~\nthrownaway954\nwhile I appreciate it... i realized that it would never be the same. too much\ntime has pasted, we're both different people now. i'm just happy that they are\nboth happy and healthy. divorce doesn't mean you have to hate each other\nforever.\n\n~~~\nmaerF0x0\nI didnt mean have your ex back. I meant have someone you appreciate\napproximately as much, though maybe for different reasons.\n\n~~~\nthrownaway954\ndude... you find one true love in life. if you haven't been married, you won't\nknow what I mean... and if you are married, then you don't want to find out\nwhat I mean.\n\n~~~\nkoonsolo\nI used to think the same thing, but after my divorce I found a new love.\n\nNobody is perfect, and there are so many women out there. The chance that you\nhad the most \"optimal\" one is very small.\n\nYou have what my wife would call a \"limiting belief\". Believe that you can\nfind an even better match than before, and maybe you will. I'm sure the chance\nof that happening is higher than you think.\n\n------\nprogram_whiz\nWatch a survival documentary. 10 contestants, many battle-hardened. The\nconclusion after watching 5 seasons of \"Alone\" is -- its all luck. The fittest\ndidn't win, it was the person who happened to be dropped off in a relatively\nsafe area, with access to resources, and had some good luck day to day. The\npeople who randomly dropped into areas filled with predators or hazards, they\nwere forced out (despite many being hardened survivalists). People with random\nequipment failures, or where the fishing suddenly dries up, they have to quit\ntoo. No matter how hard your will, if the resources disappear you aren't going\nto win (one contestant stumbles on a moose and literally has hundreds of\npounds of food fall in his lap, only to have the fat stolen by a wolverine).\n\n~~~\nksdale\nI think I watched a few episodes of that with my father-in-law and all I\nremember is that several of the contestants spent the first 8 hours or so\nbuilding shelter (and if I recall correctly is was summer, so freezing was not\nan issue) and only then started to think about finding food. If they had any\ntrouble at all finding food (which basically everyone did), then pretty soon\nthey were too weak to continue searching for food because all of the physical\nactivity had caused them to burn far too many calories for their meager food\nintake.\n\nThe people who had a lot of experience hunting and fishing tended to know how\nlong it would take them to find food and went about it with much more urgency.\n\nI do remember bad luck striking as well for sure, but it seemed like strategy\nwas at least as big of a factor as luck for many of the contestants.\n\nI agree that no matter how hard your will, you can't make it past certain\nthings, but a lot of contestants hamstrung themselves right off the bat by\nbadly underestimating how many calories they would need or not accurately\npredicting which sorts of problems would instantly end their bid.\n\n------\nmoosey\nWhen I was young, it wasn't that I was necessarily smart, but I did enjoy\nreading. My typical fare from when I was very young included books on biology,\narcheology, anthropology, etc. Everyone took this to mean that I was smart,\nand I ended up in the classic 'smart trap'. I forgot what it was that made me\nknowledgable (practice), and instead believed it was innate.\n\nRegardless of this, now that I am an adult, I find that I would love to spend\nmy time learning. It's a primary value. I have children, and have to focus on\ntheir upbringing as well, which is a massive drain on the time that I can\nbring to bear on learning new things - and I mean taking classes to advance my\nunderstanding of mathematics, not learning a new programming language.\n\nWhen I think about being wealthy, I actually think about spending my time\ngoing to classes, doing research, and advancing human knowledge. I know others\nwho would use their time for leisure, and probably a dozen other\npossibilities.\n\nIn the end, I simply don't value money beyond giving me the basic necessities\nof life. I find my time outside of work is best used focusing on studies like\nwhat I described (I mean, they are all free now, for the most part). I find\nthat people who are focused on wealth, unless it is inherited, put most of\ntheir time in gaining new wealth. I just don't see anything revolutionary in\ngaining more power, which is what wealth is to me. True revolution comes from\ntechnological development, which is typically done by the public sector.\nSadly, work there is poorly rewarded by the private sector (companies making\nbillions on the internet don't donate money back to DARPA for more research,\nor for that matter GPS, chip technologies, etc.).\n\nI just think it's a difference in values. Getting to where I wish I could be\nat this point of my life would come at too much cost to my family, so now I\nfind myself working for profit for the rest of my life. Not so bad, of\ncourse... I have some time for the leisure that allows me to expand my\nknowledge, and maybe catch up enough to understand the incredible things that\nare happening in the space of scientific advancement.\n\n------\nkangnkodos\nThe experiment design was flawed in the following way. What if, in real life,\nthere are people who are much more likely to take big chances with their whole\ncareer trajectory? Also, what if there are people who are much more likely to\nperceive which products will change the world, and when. The combination of\nthese two qualities is the key.\n\nEven if these qualities are distributed on a normal curve, the result of\npossessing the right combination of qualities will have an extremely large\neffect in a winner take all world.\n\nSure, there will be some randomness involved. Start with two kids who both\nhave the same optimal qualities, and only one will end up a billionaire. But\nmy guess is that the second kid will also end up ahead of the average. If the\nsimulation did not end up with this result, then my guess is that something\nwas left out of the simulation.\n\n~~~\nJoeri\nThis presumes intent from those that “made it”. I’m not so sure the people\nthat reached the top knew that their actions would take them there. For\nexample, I doubt anyone in the early days of facebook understood why it was\ngoing to be as big as it was going to be. They wanted it, yes, but they didn’t\nknow. Facebook’s success is down to luck in making the right choices. And\nofcourse, once you reach a certain level of wealth you create your own luck,\nso one hit is enough to lay the seeds for a string of successes.\n\nMy point is, we praise captains for industry for their unique insights, but I\ndoubt they’re really that clever. Yes, they have skills, but not skills as\nrare as their wealth would suggest.\n\n------\nwinrid\nEven more luck is required with the way a lot of people on this site are\ntrying to get rich (startups).\n\nWant to require less luck? Open some kind of store/service yourself and it'll\npay off faster than investing in a startup most likely.\n\nA friend of mine runs a shipping office, single location. Not a giant or\ncomplicated business with 99.999% uptime. He always has much nicer race cars\ntoo.... :)\n\n~~~\nmichaelmrose\nWhat percentage of the population can do so financially?\n\n~~~\nwinrid\nThat's a good point. Have to risk debt at that point.\n\n~~~\nmichaelmrose\nNobody wants to lend a poor person a large sum of money the fact that you are\npresently poor is sufficient proof that you are a bad risk.\n\n~~~\nwinrid\nNobody said how poor we're talking.\n\nAnyway plenty of people are terrible with their money from a young age. When\nI'm a parent I hope I can instill better money management practices in my\nkids. :)\n\n------\nm3kw9\nYou can look at it two ways.\n\nFirst. You had an idea and went with that one that worked out, that’s luck.\nAlso luckily, you had the physical, mental and monetary capacity to follow\nthrough with it, is lucky to have these resources.\n\nSecond way to look at it. You were smart to reject many ideas because you had\nthe experience and smarts to say no to non-sense. Also you had the grit and\npersistence to grind it out despite all the challenges.\n\nOk which way was it?\n\n------\nrobmay\nIt's not entirely random chance. You can increase the probabilities of being\nrich by exposing yourself to convexity.\n[https://www.edge.org/conversation/nassim_nicholas_taleb-\nunde...](https://www.edge.org/conversation/nassim_nicholas_taleb-\nunderstanding-is-a-poor-substitute-for-convexity-antifragility)\n\n------\ngiardini\nPreviously discussed on ycombinator starting March 2018:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591908)\n\nincluding the Pluchino paper (scroll/search on the above page to find the\nreference).\n\n------\njkingsbery\nI'm sure the authors will not use this paper in their grant proposals or on\ntheir resumes: \"Oh, no, don't count that paper, we were just lucky on that\none.\"\n\nMore seriously: without reading the work more in depth, this seems to show\nthat luck is sufficient to have the current distribution, not that it's\nnecessary.\n\nAnecdotally, there sure seem to be people out there that are 10x or 100x as\nproductive, not by doing the same tasks faster but by identifying a different\nset of tasks that accomplish the same thing, or by imagining new possibilities\nthat others couldn't. Clearly, some luck is involved in that, but so is some\nskill, and this paper seems to exclude that as a possibility.\n\n------\nWh1skey\nI don’t understand this line of thinking. My father worked a minimum wage job\nmost of his life and was able to retire a multi-millionaire simply because he\nsaved and invested his disposable income. Most people can become wealthy but\nthey choose to drive fancy cars and go to the movie theaters instead then\ncomplain how unlucky they are. That’s simply not true. If people are lucky\nbecause they realized wealth was attainable then yes, the most successful\npeople are lucky.\n\n~~~\ndragonwriter\n> My father worked a minimum wage job most of his life and was able to retire\n> a multi-millionaire simply because he saved and invested his disposable\n> income.\n\nInflation-adjusted federal minimum wage is _lower_ today than it has been most\nof the time since the 1956, and if you measure against minimal needs it's even\nworse because CPI also includes hedonic adjustment. Sure, by historical\nstandards (both before and since) the “Lost\" Generation, the Boomers, and (to\na lesser extent) the leading edge of Gen X spent all or a substantial share of\ntheir adulthood in times where, especially if you were a White man at least,\nthere was unusually strong economic opportunity for the working class.\n\n------\nRenRav\nSuccess in life shouldn't be measured solely by someone's wealth. Not if you\nvalue happiness. Beyond a certain point wealth doesn't increase a person's\nhappiness.\n\nIt is pathological to even consider sacrificing your happiness and\ncompromising your life to chase higher and higher paying jobs.\n\nKnowing when to settle and how to be content in life with what you have is a\nform of intelligence rarely praised.\n\n------\nauiya\nPeople are quite misinformed about how wealth accumulation works. You don't\nbecome wealthy by working hard at any particular craft. You become wealthy by\nacquiring as much capital as possible and charging people a premium for\naccess. How then do you acquire wealth-building capital in the first place?\nBirth lotto most of the time. Turns out, life isn't a meritocracy at all.\n\n------\nsegmondy\nLooks like folks that believe they are smart and not rich love to side with\nsuch articles.\n\nSuccessful people might be LUCKIEST, but it's not mostly luck.\n\nIf you wish to be successful, you need more than luck, hard work,\ndetermination, grit, laser like focus, working on the right stuff, working\nsmart, proper time management, proper project organization, scheduling and\nprioritization of activities will make you successful.\n\nWe can't all be billionaires, but if your come from a family making an annual\nwage of $40k with a net worth of $0 to $10k and you one day are making $100k+\nand have a net worth of $500k or a million, you are successful. Success is\nrelative to where you start from.\n\nIt's true that some have a head start, but it is what it is. Anyone in the\nwestern hemisphere who is healthy and has their freedom can really move\nthemselves forward if they are willing to work and apply themselves.\n\nIt's the uncomfortable truth, but the sooner you embrace it the sooner you can\nget on the right path if you're not already on it.\n\n------\ngolemotron\nThere's also the fact that being rich isn't everyone's goal. It looks like it\nis a pain in the ass to be rich, actually.\n\n~~~\ndrukenemo\nWhy is that? I think there are many ways of being rich. For example, being\nrich but still living a relatively simple life.\n\n~~~\nrc_hadoken\nI was joking with my brother that this narrative of \"being rich must be\nmiserable\" is one of the greatest cons played on the middle class -- or just\nsour grapes. Taleb states: if you control your preferences you are way way way\nahead of the crowd--most people become rich to impress other rich people and\nlose their personal preferences in the process. The treadmill effect is wild.\n\nNote: we were born in Africa moved to NA and slept in a one bedroom apartment\nwith our parents like sardines. Fast foward to now and life is much better. I\nam not rich by any stretch.\n\nWhen people born here (western world) say being rich isnt worth it I laugh.\nYou're used to a certain level of safety net that we know is not sustainable\nand is soon to disappear (in my humble opinion). We are Zimbabwean (left 2001)\n\n------\nmichaelmior\nI was surprised to see this article have no mention of privilege that many\npeople experience. Certainly if you grow up in a rich family, you have\nopportunities available to you that others do not. There are also privileges\nassociated with race and gender among other things that certainly impact one's\nlikelihood of becoming rich.\n\n------\njstewartmobile\nHow many statisticians, psychologists, etc. does it take to re-create\nEcclesiastes?\n\n\" _I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor\nthe battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men\nof understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance\nhappeneth to them all._ \"\n\n------\nMR4D\nAn interesting couple of quotes in the article that make me wonder about their\nconclusion:\n\n _The maximum success never coincides with the maximum talent, and vice-versa,\n\nOur simulation clearly shows that such a factor is just pure luck_\n\nBy definition, this can't be completely true, as pure luck would mean pure\nrandomness, and apparently, both tails (the most and the least talented) are\n_never_ the richest. Such situation is at odds with a random distribution.\n\nSo there is a missing part of the model that may explain it, but it's not\nrandom.\n\nThat being said, I'm not trying to nit-pick the work they've done. Clearly\nthere is something at play here that has huge social significance for every\nperson on the planet.\n\nFascinating work - I'm looking forward to seeing how this research grows over\nthe coming years.\n\n------\ngitpusher\nThey seem to have a flawed core assumption – that everyone is hell-bent on\n_maximizing_ their personal wealth. In other words, every person will dedicate\ntheir entire intellect toward the goal of making money. This doesn't really\nmatch up with reality (thank goodness).\n\n~~~\nthedragonline\nIt’s a model. All models are wrong, some are useful. That the models’ wealth\ndistribution correlates well with the real world is an interesting _fact_ and\nstrongly suggests further investigation. Edit:grammar\n\n------\nwolco\nThe smarter you are the more you understand the risks and choose safer paths.\n\nGetting rich involves doing stupid things.. things that others would look at\nand think would fail but you do it anyways. So getting rich involves\nstubborness and fearlessness and the ability to detact from reality.\n\n~~~\nlazyjones\nYou can get rich without risking anything (well except a little time and\neffort). It's called VC... If you're good and want to play it safe, you will\nuse the money carefully and wisely and succeed. No need to be fearless or\ndetached from reality.\n\n------\ngumby\nI told my kid the benefits of good eduction and a willingness (but not fetish)\nfor hard work was 1 - a more interesting life and 2 - the opportunity to \"buy\"\nmore lottery tickets for the things you might ed up wanting (which aren't\nalways $).\n\n------\nagota\nOkay, so I quickly skimmed the paper in question, and I'm very skeptical of\nit.\n\nThey are using talent as a variable in their model, but what do they mean by\n\"talent\"?\n\n _\" talent Ti (intelligence, skills, ability, etc.)\"_\n\nThrowing \"intelligence, skills, ability, etc.\" together doesn't make much\nsense to me.\n\nOut of these three, only intelligence (assuming they meant IQ), is an\nestablished measure, at least from what I understand. What does \"skills,\nability, etc.\" even mean?\n\nIt's not surprising to me that their conclusion doesn't seem to correspond\nwith reality:\n\n _\" An important result of the simulations is that the most successful agents\nare almost never the most talented ones, but those around the average of the\nGaussian talent distribution - another stylised fact often reported in the\nliterature\"_ (what literature??).\n\nI can't comment on this \"talent\" variable as a whole since it doesn't make\nmuch sense but in terms of IQ it's certainly not the 100 IQ individuals that\ntend to be the most successful ones.\n\nI also question the \"luck\" variable, because:\n\n _\"...does not change this fundamental features of the model, which exposes\ndifferent individuals to different amount of lucky or unlucky events during\ntheir life, regardless of their own talent.\"_\n\nI find it unlikely that \"talent\" and \"luck\" are completely independent from\neach other.\n\nFor example, if I recall correctly, reaction time correlates with IQ, so\nwouldn't that make more intelligent people less prone to accidents?\n\nFinally, I'm dubious of their results that show that distributing funds\nequally among all scientists would lead to most scientific discoveries.\n\nFrom what I understand, people with a specific set of traits, aka geniuses,\nare over-represented in scientific discoveries.\n\nIf that's the case, wouldn't deliberately seeking out geniuses and throwing\nmoney at them lead to more discoveries than distributing funds equally?\n\nAgain, I only skimmed this paper, but it seems to me that the researchers\ndidn't look at the data we already have, and instead made up their own models\nthat don't appear to correspond with reality.\n\nAlso, given that this is a Hacker News comment, not a scientific paper, I\ncan't be bothered to cite anything :D\n\n------\npmoriarty\n_\" So if not talent, what other factor causes this skewed wealth distribution?\n\"Our simulation clearly shows that such a factor is just pure luck,\" say\nPluchino and co._\n\n _\" The team shows this by ranking individuals according to the number of\nlucky and unlucky events they experience throughout their 40-year careers. \"It\nis evident that the most successful individuals are also the luckiest ones,\"\nthey say. \"And the less successful individuals are also the unluckiest ones.\"_\n\nThis article kind of assumes everyone wants to be rich, or makes that a\nprimary goal in their life. That's not really the case.\n\nSome people are more career-driven, more ambitious, more interested in making\nmoney. Others have various psychological issues that prevent them from working\neffectively or sometimes getting or keeping a job at all. Is that just bad\nluck?\n\nI grew up despising money and looking down on people who chased after money. I\ndidn't want to be that guy. I did reluctantly get work, but I never tried to\nclimb the corporate ladder, refused offers of promotion to management, took\nmany years off work and lived off my savings instead, and I've burnt out many\ntimes, my career suffered as a result. Is that just bad luck?\n\nI had a chance to work at Google early on, pre-IPO, but I decided not to. I\nworked at a small financial company for a year, was offered a big promotion\nand turned it down and quit instead, because I was burnt out and just not\ninterested in that job. That company wound up becoming one of the largest\nfinancial companies in the world.\n\nBeing depressed much of my life, I didn't really care to plan for or save for\nmy long term future, because I thought I wouldn't have one. This has become a\nself-fulfiling prophecy in some sense, though not how I expected. I didn't\nthink I'd live, but I did live, just not with as much financial security had I\npursued money money more and saved for the long-term.\n\nIn many ways I've been lucky. I grew up mostly in safe suburbs when I was\nyoung. I went to some great schools, some of the best in the country, but also\ndropped out of those. I'm not ambitious. I get bored easily. I like to follow\nmy own interests rather do boring work other people tell me to do. I suffer\nfrom depression and just generally don't feel I fit well in this world, but\nalso consider that I'm not rich (actually close to becoming homeless at this\npoint) due in large measure to my own choices rather than pure luck.\n\nNow, you could argue that we really have no free will. If that's so, then yes,\nwhere you are could be said to be \"just chance\". But to the degree we could\nmake good or bad choices, we bear some responsibility for where we end up,\nthough clearly luck plays some role, and it's good to be in the right place at\nthe right time, doing the right thing.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway13372\nStill the comment about citing one unique sample to overthrow a general\nassessment from much larger sample size...\n\nYou seem to be blindly lucky and do not really appreciate that...\n\n~~~\npmoriarty\nMy entire point is that you can be lucky (and smart, if I can flatter myself\nso) but not rich.\n\nIt can take more than intelligence and luck, it could take a desire and a\nchoice to make money a big priority in your life, which it rarely was for me.\n\nIf Bill Gates had said \"Fuck Microsoft, I don't want to do this shit anymore\"\nand quit early on in his career, (which, if he had free will, he could have\ndone at any point) then he probably wouldn't have wound up the richest person\nin the world, no matter how lucky he was.\n\nHe chose to do what he did (didn't he?), and that (in large part) was what\nmade him unimaginably rich.\n\n------\nscarejunba\nI wonder if this is an artefact of the rules of the sim. There's weak evidence\nthat supports the sim in that it predicts the current wealth distribution\nsomewhat, but that doesn't mean the sim represents reality, of course.\n\nThe part that sticks out to me is the variation in the talent param. It's\nN(0.6, 0.01), so the mean person has a 60% chance of capitalizing on their\nluck. I wonder if perhaps that number is actually substantially lower.\n\nWell, just a thought. I found the paper's methods interesting (simulating the\nagents and events random-walking until they encountered each other, etc.).\n\n------\ntqi\n> The results are something of an eye-opener. Their simulations accurately\n> reproduce the wealth distribution in the real world... They then repeat the\n> simulation many times to check the robustness of the outcome.\n\nI'm not familiar with the process and rigor that goes into a study like this,\nbut it seems to me that for experiments like this it would be hard to prevent\nresearchers from adjusting parameters until they get the answer they are\nlooking for (which multiple runs doesn't really address).\n\n------\ngmuslera\nWhile the book is not perfect, reading Outliers from Malcolm Gladwell could\nhint on some not so obvious conditions that could make getting rich not so\nrandom.\n\n------\nRickJWagner\nUm, no.\n\nVisit Bogleheads.org, where many wealthy people hang out and discuss finances.\n\nYou'll find that for a great many wealthy people, the secret is simply living\nbelow your means, saving and investing for decades, and keeping costs low.\nThat's it. Not lucky. Not necessarily smarter. Just disciplined, and having\nthe basic knowledge of the simple steps described.\n\n------\njumbopapa\nI would say there is some lucky with becoming extremely wealthy, but in\ngeneral there is a pretty easy formula to becoming wealthy if you're smart.\nInvest a decent portion of your income into index funds and live below your\nmeans. On an engineer's salary it isn't hard to become a millionaire by the\nage of 40 even with modest savings.\n\n------\nExcel_Wizard\nIQ and income are correlated fairly strongly. It's obviously not a perfect\ncorrelation.\n\n[https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/02/06/correlation...](https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/02/06/correlations-\nof-iq-with-income-and-wealth/)\n\n~~~\npmoriarty\nIQ might be more accurately termed SQ (Success Quotient), as it might be\nmeasuring the traits that could make one more likely to succeed than\nintelligence per se.\n\n------\nanm89\nThis content of this article does not even come close to supporting the\nassertion in its title.\n\nThe claim it is making is that wealth and intelligence are not correlated\nlinearly.\n\nIts not even claiming they aren't positively correlated, and the surely are to\nsome degree, more or less getting into some type of causality as is implied by\nthe title.\n\n------\ntempsy\nI guess it depends on the definition of \"rich\".\n\nWe live in a frothy time when a relatively jr software engineer in SF can make\n$300k/year. It wouldn't take that much discipline to save 60%-70% as a single\nperson and have a million saved in a few years time with the right mix of\ndiscipline and investing.\n\n~~~\nviklove\n> We live in a frothy time when a relatively jr software engineer in SF can\n> make $300k/year.\n\nThis is just a lie.\n\n~~~\ntempsy\nWhat’s the lie?\n\n------\ndarawk\n> The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest\n\nHuh, interesting hypothesis. Certainly a strong claim. They must have done\nsome really impressive and thorough work to come to this conclusion.\n\n> a new computer model of wealth creation confirms.\n\n _Sigh_.\n\n------\ndanesparza\nBecause I'm smart _and lazy_. I'm 'rich enough' as it were.\n\n------\nklyrs\nI'm a mathematician because that's what interests me. My richness is not\nmeasured in dollars. As I age, I grow more concerned for my future, but I\nstill have no regrets.\n\n~~~\npmoriarty\nLots of financial firms love to hire mathematicians (see Renaissance\nTechnologies for a famous example). So you could probably secure your\nfinancial future relatively easily if you wanted to.\n\n~~~\nklyrs\n> ...if you wanted to.\n\nI'm well aware of the option. Sacrifice my happiness for _how many years_ in\nthe process?\n\nMaking money has never been a primary goal of mine. I'm lucky that my\ninterests are moderately lucrative. I know that \"very lucrative\" is just\naround the corner. But so is the liquor store, and I don't drink.\n\n------\ncitilife\nPerhaps \"talent\" is the wrong term. I can be talented at hammering nails, that\ndoesn't mean I'll be super wealthy.\n\nWhat you need is a talent that earns revenue and the foresight to retain the\nnet income and increase revenue. \"It's all about leverage\".\n\nAnother approach I have personally done is taking out a $30k loan, invested it\nand doubled my money paying back the loan. What does that mean, I started with\nzero, and ended up with $30k. I then took my newly made $30k and continued to\ninvest it (without a loan).\n\nMy point being, you aren't rich because you didn't take a \"chance\". You didn't\nincrease your net worth.\n\n~~~\ngdubs\nPlenty of smart people lose money through investments, even conservative ones.\nThere’s risk in anything, and wherever risk plays a part, so does luck.\n\n------\ndiminoten\nTrue, but you can't be lucky if you don't roll the dice, and some people roll\nthe dice more than others.\n\n~~~\nzornado\nAnd what guarantees that rolling the dice will always be profitable. Rolling\nthe dice can bring profits or losses.\n\n~~~\ndiminoten\nNothing guarantees it, but without risk there is no reward.\n\n------\nbiolurker1\nthe article assumes that nobody has orders of magnitude higher skills like\nnobody has iq orders of magnitude higher. that's extremely faulty because\nsomeone with an iq of 160 doesn't solve 60% more problems. He solves problems\nthat others find impossible. Paul Allen and Gates hit iq ceiling\n\n~~~\nfoogazi\nAny the compounding effect of a high IQ over time\n\nIt’s not about the problem at hand, but every day has been experienced\ndifferently\n\n------\ncryoshon\ni find the chance argument very compelling, but there's another factor which\nto my knowledge the OP researchers didn't investigate: ethics.\n\nthe richest people i know (with wealth in the 10M range) are the most amoral\nin their thoughts and actions, and it makes a big difference financially. note\nthat i said amoral, not immoral; they aren't malicious, they simply don't\ncare.\n\nthey don't refuse a business opportunity because the business would be\nexplicitly unethical; they do it, and profit from it. the same is true if the\nbusiness produces negative externalities. it simply doesn't matter to them\nbecause money is money as far as they care.\n\nthey don't craft their investing strategy with the goal of investing in\ncompanies that behave well; they chase the money regardless of the ethical\nproblems that they may be directly incentivizing.\n\noverall, this gives these people a much greater range of freedom when it comes\nto making large volumes of additional money. while i don't know for sure if\nbeing amoral helps people become rich in the first place, i assume that it\ndoes because having more options on the table is never a bad thing.\n\nso, maybe the answer to the question of \"if you're so smart, why aren't you\nrich\" is \"i refuse to act unethically to make money\".\n\nin my personal experience, i think this argument is pretty good. in 2010 or\nso, i realized that there was a then-latent market for TDCS / consumer\nnootropic brain stimulation systems, and considered making a company around\nproducing and selling them to consumers.\n\nhowever, at the time, i knew that brain stimulation hadn't been proven safe to\nuse in the long term, and selling it to consumers would require working around\nthe FDA's rules about medical devices to essentially evade their oversight. in\nshort, i refused to start a company whose time had come because i knew that\ni'd probably be harming people as part of the core business. i would have been\none of the first in the space, and while i don't think i would be rich today\nif i had done it, i know that it would have been a chance to get rich and\ncertainly that there were some people who did get rich. and of course, there\nhave been plenty of consumers who have been harmed by these products, often in\nunidentifiable or subtle ways.\n\nso what's the moral of this story? having morals is expensive, and it\nsometimes precludes you from becoming rich even if you're lucky enough to be\nat the right time to take action.\n\n~~~\ncryptica\nFrom my experience this is definitely true. Also our financial system is\nincredibly forgiving when it comes to unethical behavior.\n\nFor example, if you take a massive loan and then it doesn't work out, you can\njust declare bankrupcy, then you just wait a few years and you can start\nagain. You can change country, then you get a clean credit history and you can\ntry again.\n\nYou could borrow some money from the bank, bet it all on a coin toss; if you\nwin, you can retire, if you lose, you just need to wait a few years then try\nagain. If you do it enough times, it's very likely that you will win and\nretire within your lifetime.\n\nThe real losers of our society are all the honest, hard working people who are\nnot prepared to gamble with other people's money. This is what loans are;\nloans expand the money supply - So when someone makes a reckless bet and they\ngo bankrupt, it's as if everyone else was paying for that person.\n\nThen we're surprised why the greediest and most reckless people win...\n\nThe system is not fair. Rich people already know this but it doesn't matter\nbecause they are not the ones who keep the engines of capitalism turning. So\nlong as the majority of people believe that the system is fair, the engine\nwill keep on running and becoming progressively less fair.\n\nRich people don't care about what is fair or ethical, they will do anything\nand say anything to get more money. Regular people are different. For example,\nmost regular people would probably vote against a referendum to seize and\nnationalize all corporations with a market cap of above $1 billion... Even\nthough such nationalization would almost certainly benefit them personally.\nRich people, on the other hand, don't need any kind of justification or moral\nargument in order to take someone else's money; if they can do it, they will\ndo it; simple as that. If all regular people had the mindset of rich people,\nwe would be living in anarchy; there would be no government, only mafias and\nwe would be killing each other over resources (of which there would be very\nlittle since we'd be spending most of our time and energy scheming and killing\neach other instead of creating value).\n\nBut the reality is that the rich have managed to create a society in which\nmost people can be reared, prodded and milked like cattle under an obviously\nfalse pretext that they are the ones creating all the value.\n\n------\nfinishground\nThe 80:20 rule described here does _not_ hold in every society. Why would they\neven claim that?\n\n------\nnazgulnarsil\nTautological for some values of 'most'. Statistical innumerracy.\n\n------\ntomp\nI was just telling a friend how much I hated this article. So many flaws, of\nassumptions, reasoning and ethics.\n\n1\\. The article assumes that IQ is \"normally distributed\" and that there are\nno extreme outliers, but how true is this really? First of all, IQ is a\nconstructed metric that consists of multiple dimensions, and is normalized to\nmean 100, std 15. That's means it will be _approximately_ normal, but not\nactually. In particular, AFAIK IQ tests can't reliably distinguish between\nextremely high IQ scores (140+). So we don't really have reliable data about\nthe tail of the distribution... what we _do_ have is strong anecdotal evidence\nthat some people _are_ extreme outliers (in either intelligence or\nperformance) (Ramanujan, Elon Musk, John von Neumann, Steve Jobs). We also\nknow from other examples that extreme outliers _are_ possible, even though\nthey're rare - example is breeding (of plants like corn or animals like\nchicken [1]), where just (unnatural) selection can produce phenotypes (from\ncombinations of existing genes) that are multiple standard deviations above\nthe original average.\n\n2\\. Ok, so we have a model that produces some result. Does that make it a good\nmodel? Not necessarily! The point of Central Limit Theorem is that _all_\nmodels (within certain constraints) produce _the same_ outcome.\n\nHave we tried any alternative models? Basically their model is, Success =\npayoff * (a * luck + b * talent) and they argue that _a_ is much bigger than\n_b_. But what if _a_ was 0? In the present world, with companies like Google,\nFacebook, Amazon - i.e. a \"winner-takes-all\" scenario - I'd argue that even if\nsuccess was completely skill-based, as long as the winners get outsized gains,\nyou'd still expect 80-20 (or worse) wealth distribution.\n\n3\\. Can we improve on it? Does it really make sense for the society to\nallocate resources / rewards equally to everyone? Maybe in academia (I'm not\ntoo familiar with that area), but in general, I'd argue _not_. The problem is,\nwhat means _equally_? Ok, so we had Fleming who discovered penicillin _by\nchance_. So, we should equally reward _him_ , as well as the 9 _other_\nresearchers that were also doing research in X and could have also stumbled\nupon the same substance, but were unlucky and didn't. But the bigger picture\nhere is that we discovered _antibiotics_. I'm sure there were uncountable\nother lines of research that _didn 't_ yield _any_ useful products or results\nor discoveries! (I've no experience with research, but I've read on Gwern that\nmath discoveries are distributed with geometric (memoryless) distribution,\ni.e. more time spent on it _does not_ increase your chances of solving it...\nthat parallels my experience with math competitions, where you can be _the\nsmartestest_ of all but if you're approaching the problem along the wrong\ndirection, there's _no way_ for you to reach the goal.) Also, \"same reward for\nsame effort\" sounds like a metric that can be very easily gamed.\n\nSo, in general, while I'd argue for more _meritocracy_ and more equal rewards\n_for producing results_ (i.e. inventors / workers get more money, not just\ninvestors / owners), I'm fairly biased _against_ rewarding mere effort, and\nthis article (X) definitely doesn't tilt my bias otherwise.\n\n[1] [https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/10/big-\nchickens.html](https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/10/big-chickens.html)\n\n(X) I think it's definitely possible that the article is much worse than the\nstudy, and that the study actually addresses all of my concerns... Journalism\nis mostly sensationalism these days, especially science journalism.\n\n------\njothezero\nYou can increase your luck outcome simply by trying more.\n\n------\nlazyjones\nA simplistic \"computer model\", interesting. But not science.\n\n------\nnot_a_cop75\nIt's nice to say it's luck, sure, and make everyone feel like they have a fair\nchance. However, I'm pretty certain the ones that obsess and plan the most to\nget rich and squeeze every little bit out they can into their plans have the\nbest chance. Some lazy slob without the same attention to detail and effort\njust isn't going to make it.\n\n------\ntropo\n...and hard work, and social skills, and liking the challenge enough to not\nretire early\n\n------\nposterboy\nPerhaps it is stupid to want to be rich? Few people are stupid enough to take\nthe chance, so a few rich people are no thread to the mental health of society\nat large.\n\nWhowhat?\n\n~~~\njerf\nI'm being totally serious: The more I learn about riches & fame, the less I\nwant them.\n\nI'll be honest: I'm not quite to the point where if someone tried to thrust a\nmillion dollars into my hand, I'd say no. (That isn't even necessarily enough\nto take you out of \"middle class\" anymore as a one-off payment, honestly.) But\nI think I'd say no to 10 million and I'm fairly certain I'd say no to 100\nmillion. Or really wish I had about a year later. (In \"reality\" I might try to\ndo something where I take it but dump it into causes I approve of really\nquickly; for the sake of this argument I'm assuming that I'd have to actually\nstep into that level of wealth permanently.)\n\nThat level of wealth forcibly inserts you into a class of games that I don't\nwant to have to play.\n\n~~~\nkatmannthree\nIt really doesn't force you into anything. You could just throw it into a\nsavings account at your nearest national bank, lose a bit year over year to\ninflation being higher than the current interest rate, and have a whopper of\nan emergency fund. That would give you peace of mind if nothing else.\n\nIf you wanted to be smart you could invest it in any number of ways to not\nlose wealth to inflation, but that's by no means necessary.\n\n~~~\nolcor\nI guess what the OP is trying to say is that throwing a million or more into a\nsavings account, not having to worry, and peace of mind is in itself a class\ngame. Few people have that luxury; I got a chance to be a bit better off and\nimmediately felt much differently and more attuned to class differences than I\nwas before. I now have the luxury of time, choice and pecuniary freedom I did\nnot have, and a lot of my peers don’t have. If I had a billion dollars I can’t\neven imagine the effect it would have on how I think about things.\n\nI feel I have that mentality of valuing the security the money gives me\nbecause I read books like Millionaire Next Door, Intelligent Investor, FIRE\nsubreddits, etc and come from a family that has similar ideals.But I’m also\naware that a lot of people are very different from that, and are known to end\nup playing differently with their money (status symbols, lifestyle upgrades,\netc). Cultural aspects of many societies value the latter more than the\nformer.\n\n~~~\nisoskeles\nThat comment says \"class of games\", and you've started writing about \"class\ngames\" and then \"class differences\" in your interpretation of the comment. Not\nsaying you did something bad here, but it sounds more like the telephone game\nthan discussing what was written, all because of the omission of the\npreposition \"of.\"\n\n~~~\njerf\nThis is correct. I mean that having a certain level of wealth throws you into\na world where everyone wants a piece of you, friendships become very difficult\nbecause are they _friends_ or are they just after some money? Probably the\nlatter. It basically takes you out of the normal run of human affairs into a\nvery isolated environment. It solves a lot of problems that, frankly, I can\nsolve well enough now, in return for handing you a whole lot of problems that\nare basically unsolvable. And there are other levels that become very easy to\naccidentally blunder into, like blackmail, and you become the target of some\nfairly sophisticated actors, possibly even including state actors, looking to\ninfluence you, or drain your accounts.\n\nRich people tend not to talk about it as much from what I've seen, but you\ncan, if you look a bit, find a number of accounts of people who got very\nfamous talking about this, especially if they later fell from grace.\n\nWhen I was younger, I kinda thought this was sour grapes or rich/famous people\ntrying to feel bad for themselves, but the consistency of the stories, plus my\nincreasing understanding of human nature and group dynamics as I get older and\ngather more data and think more about the data leads me to believe this is the\nexpected outcome rather than some exceptional surprise. I also thought, eh,\nthat's no big deal, those are the soft problems and money solves the hard\nproblems, but now I rather significantly feel the other way around. (There is\na _class_ of money problems that is hard, especially in the medical area, but\nthey are not all that hard.)\n\nI'm sure there's some people who pull it off, but I'm not sure I'd be one of\nthem.\n\n(As a bonus observation, when you are born into and grow up in this\nenvironment, I think it produces certain characteristic pathologies that go a\nlong ways towards explaining why elites act so consistently in certain ways\nthroughout history. Same environment -> same result. It is not good to have\nleadership populated by people who have never really deeply connected with\nanother human being, yet, the very act of being in leadership inhibits those\nconnections, and being born into it effectively destroys them entirely.)\n\n~~~\nDoreenMichele\n_having a certain level of wealth throws you into a world where everyone wants\na piece of you, friendships become very difficult because are they friends or\nare they just after some money?_\n\nI've never been rich. Most so-called \"friends\" have wanted something from me\nwhile having little or nothing to offer me in return.\n\nThis became crystal clear while I was homeless for years. People continued to\nwant something for me, continued to act like I deserved nothing in return and\nused my poverty as justification for why the things they wanted from me\n\"weren't worth anything\" and shouldn't lead to money.\n\nWealth just makes it apparent you can't trust people. People tend to be\nassholes. It's not like poor people are all surrounded by wonderful, loving,\ncaring friends who would go to the ends of the Earth for them.\n\n~~~\n1000units\nThis is a good point. However, if you insert yourself among people who all\nhave a certain level of material comfort to lack material ambition, it is\nmuch, much easier to forge authentic relationships. The prevailing social aim\nbecomes to experience joy, learn interesting things, and grow as a person. Of\ncourse, this dynamic is still rare. Even when people aren't fighting for\nmoney, there's still an urge to fight for status, which only rarely perfectly\nmanifests itself in a competition to create beauty. This is partly why\nconspicuous consumption is frowned upon by certain factions of the upper\nclasses. It reveals you're playing the wrong game.\n\n~~~\nDoreenMichele\nMy mother's mother came from a low level German noble family. She was a full-\ntime military wife for a lot of years, as was I.\n\nMy life mostly worked when I was a military wife, but a lot of the values I\nwas raised with only really work if you are in a position that involves a.\nResponsibility for a larger community and b. Somehow provides for you so you\ncan look out for other people.\n\nLooking out for other people is a real skill, but it doesn't automatically\ncome back to you. Many people feel zero obligation to do anything in return\nfor you when you do something for them and this seems compounded by being a\nwoman. \"Social contract\" seems like an alien concept for far too many people.\n\nI think I could do good things in an urban planning or economic development\ntype role. That would sort of be the modern equivalent of what European\nnobility did.\n\nHistorically, merchants had a terrible reputation because they just wanted\nmoney and felt no obligation to the community. So it was socially problematic\nfor wealth to be controlled by rich merchants rather than nobility. The\nnobility were beholden to the lower classes and held responsible for using\ntheir privilege to serve society by filling roles that required a certain\nlevel of privilege and education.\n\nThis is why our legal system uses the term \"court,\" which is the same word\nused for audiences held by the nobility. Originally, nobility heard and\nsettled complaints amongst the townspeople \"at court.\"\n\n------\nminikites\n[https://twitter.com/MichaelJFoody/status/1022521010078273536](https://twitter.com/MichaelJFoody/status/1022521010078273536)\n\n>it says a lot that when confronted with an objectively dumb rich dude like\ntrump (no working memory, can't apply grammar consistently, childish\nvocabulary, shallow concepts) people will choose to believe he's secretly\nsmart rather than that wealth isn't a result of intellect\n\n~~~\nfoobar_\nAll that he is good at is psychological splitting which effectively looks like\ndivide and rule.\n\n------\naivisol\n> For example, intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, follows this pattern.\n> Average IQ is 100, but nobody has an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000.\n\nTrue, but can IQ be, say 210? If yes, then standard deviation cannot be\napplied here, right? Because for that you would need someone with opposite IQ,\ni.e. -10?\n\n> The same is true of effort, as measured by hours worked. Some people work\n> more hours than average and some work less, but nobody works a billion times\n> more hours than anybody else.\n\nSame here. If average work hours is 8 hours per day, and someone works 17\nhours, then again, standard deviation cannot be applied? Am I right or making\nsome error here?\n\nEdit: thanks for clarifications on IQ, I got it, my bad for not doing a\nresearch. The question of working hours stands, however.\n\n~~~\nharryh\nEvery 15 points of IQ is 1 standard deviation from the mean. So 210 is 7.3\nstandard deviations away from 100.\n\nJust 7 standard deviations away from the mean means that you would expect only\n1 in 780 billion from a population.\n\nGiven that this is far more than the number of people on Earth: No, no one has\nan IQ of 210.\n\n~~~\nLyndsySimon\nWell, to be fair, it’s only “highly unlikely” that anyone on Earth has an IQ\nof 210.\n\nGiven that seven sigma deviation should occur one time in 780 billion and that\nthere are ~7.8b people on Earth today, then there is a ~1% chance of a person\nwith an IQ of 210 being alive today :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCommunicate Acquires Y Combinator Startup Auctomatic, Unveils New Business Strategy - paulsb\nhttp://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/26/communicate-acquires-y-combinator-startup-auctomatic-unveils-new-business-strategy/\n\n======\ngruseom\nI am surprised by the disdain for profitable business in the techcrunch\narticle:\n\n _I’m not even sure I’ll remember to check in on them. The domain business is\na cash cow but isn’t exactly exciting stuff._\n\nI would have put it the other way around: the business isn't exactly exciting\nbut it's a cash cow. Except I wouldn't say that at all. A profitable online\nbusiness sounds more exciting to me than 90% of what I've seen on techcrunch.\n\n~~~\naxod\nI think domains like these were important in web1.0 era. But who has ever gone\nto business.com. Who cares about it? It sounds old and boring. I'd be\nsurprised if the number of people going to domains like perfume.com is\nincreasing... If you look at alexa rank over 5 years it seems to have hit it's\npeak a while ago. Same with business.com.\n\nI think techcrunch was simply meaning the domain business is likely a\nshrinking market, and not a new and exciting growing market.\n\nHaving said that, there's plenty of money to be made. Congrats on the sale :)\n\n~~~\npchristensen\nGoodness no! Internet usage is rising, and since browsers are helpful enough\nto add \"www.\" and \".com\" if you type a word in the address bar, common word\ndomains like perfume.com, candy.com, etc are extremely valuable because people\nfind them on their own. Most people aren't that savvy and they don't know the\ndifference between the search bar, the address bar, or the bajillion toolbars\nthey have installed.\n\nThe supply/demand equation you need to look at is: supply of common english\nwords is fixed while internet usage is increasing. People aren't looking for\nbusiness.com, they think they're _searching_ for business.\n\n~~~\naxod\nSo alexa is wrong?\n\nWouldn't there be an argument to say that in the past people used to put\n'perfume' in their browser address bar, and perfume.com etc,\n\nwhereas now most people seem to think google is where you 'put stuff', and so\naren't the google results for 'perfume' more important than the domain\nperfume.com?\n\n~~~\nrms\n>so aren't the google results for 'perfume' more important than the domain\nperfume.com?\n\nYes, but perfume.com is also #2 on google for perfume!\n\n------\npaulsb\nCongrats. Nice to see the brits doing well.\n\nFound a short interview as well:\n[http://venturebeat.com/2008/03/26/communicatecom-buys-e-\ncomm...](http://venturebeat.com/2008/03/26/communicatecom-buys-e-commerce-\nstartup-auctomatic-to-relaunch-top-domains/)\n\n~~~\ncollision\n/ Obligatory offence taken at us Irish being lumped in with the British :)\n\n~~~\nfalsestprophet\nReally though paulsb, don't do that.\n\n------\nXichekolas\nNot sure if you are allowed to disclose it, but I was curious what share of\nthe $5 million was cash and what share was stock, and how much (percentage-\nwise) did the founders themselves end up with?\n\n~~~\nbosshog\n2 million cash\n\n3 million stock\n\nNot sure about the founder split\n\n------\nandreyf\nCongrats :) Slick idea... I remember pg saying he considers EBay ready for a\nstartup competitor, but this seems a better strategy, even though it doesn't\nsolve all problems.\n\n~~~\nmarcus\nTrue, it doesn't solve all the problems, but taking on EBay one vertical at a\ntime using a great domain for each field might be a very powerful strategy.\n\nEBays greatest moat is the sheer number of sellers and buyers it has, instead\nof trying to fight the entire EBay network, you take them on one vertical at a\ntime. And maybe later after you've captured enough verticals try to\nconsolidate all the vertical sites into a single property.\n\n------\niamelgringo\nWoot! Congrats, guys.\n\nI had a hunch you'd do well. It's a field ripe for the picking. Ebay has a lot\nof customers, and their interface leaves a little to be desired, and their API\nreally looks pretty decent. Good job.\n\n------\nPrrometheus\nI like the new business plan – put shopping sites on great domain names. It\nisn’t exciting but it sounds profitable.\n\nCongrats on the buyout! I hope you all made a bundle.\n\n~~~\nwanorris\nI apologize if I'm putting a damper on the congratulations, but it sounds\nexactly backwards: it seems like the reason to start a shopping site in a\nvertical should be because you have insight or value-add _in that vertical_ ,\nnot because you own a domain name.\n\n~~~\npchristensen\nA good domain = lots of free traffic. No marketing, spending on adsense, etc\nrequired. It is a very valuable asset.\n\n~~~\nwanorris\nNo question. But ultimately the underlying value of the service is what\ndetermines whether it matters or not.\n\nIf you wanted to win a significant share of the search engine market, which\nwould help you more, owning search.com, or designing a search engine that was\nactually better than Google in a way that users can perceive?\n\n~~~\nsharpshoot\nNo - ecommerce is about connecting buyers with sellers. The domains capture\nthe intent, auctomatic provides the inventory to take advantage of that\nintent.\n\nPowersellers used to be tied to eBay, now they can connect to huge vertical\naudiences that are tied to their intent to purchase hence increasing their\nsales. Makes a LOT of sense this.\n\n------\nSwellJoe\nGonna miss seeing the guys at events here in the valley, but good for them.\nI'm surprised it took this long for someone to snap them up.\n\n~~~\nHarj\nwe'll still be around, we're going to be splitting our time betweeen the\nvalley and vacouver rather than moving there permanently.\n\nwe structured the deal in a way that keeps our US visas intact exactly for\nthat purpose.\n\n------\nbyrneseyeview\nHere's a rather poor writeup of communicate.com's stock:\n[http://blog.valueinvestingcongress.com/2008/01/04/a-diamond-...](http://blog.valueinvestingcongress.com/2008/01/04/a-diamond-\nin-the-rough/)\n\n------\nsimianstyle\nI met the founders at eBay live, congratulations on a job well done :)\n\n------\nwhacked_new\nI suppose this means the Auctomatics aren't aiming for eBay anymore?\nAcquisition is nice, but repositioning for domain trade isn't that slick of a\nscore for the hackers.\n\n~~~\nHarj\ni should think we'll spend more of our time building than trading\n\n~~~\nwumi\nso who does the hacking?\n\n------\nprakash\nMany congrats guys!!\n\n------\nabstractbill\nCongrats guys, that's awesome news!\n\n------\nhooande\nCongrats guys\n\n------\njamescoops\nbig props and well deserved\n\n------\npius\nNice exit!\n\n------\nbrianmckenzie\nWay to go!\n\n------\ntonyvt2005\ncongrats! great idea...\n\n------\nutnick\ncongrats guys\n\n------\nandr\nkudos!\n\n------\nideas101\ncongrats - another payday for pg & company.\n\n~~~\nPrrometheus\nIt’s small ($300,000 - $500,000 for YCombinator, pre-tax, I’m estimating), but\nit’s nice to see that YCombinator is self-funding.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nInvestigating a malware sample which sometimes fails to behave maliciously - Jerry2\nhttps://sentinelone.com/blogs/anti-vm-tricks/\n======\nnighthawk454\n> _evades detection simply by counting the number of documents – or the lack\n> thereof – that reside on a PC and not executing if a certain number are not\n> present._\n\nThis is so simple, it's a one line trick:\n\n    \n    \n        Public Function DKTxHE() As Boolean\n            DKTxHE = RecentFiles.Count < 3\n        End Function\n    \n\n> _the typical lack of documents in a ... test environment make it easy ...\n> for malware authors to fly under the radar_\n\nDev environment is dissimilar to prod --> works in dev but not prod. Surprise,\nsurprise.\n\nOriginal blog: [https://sentinelone.com/blogs/anti-vm-\ntricks/](https://sentinelone.com/blogs/anti-vm-tricks/)\n\n~~~\n13of40\nThe funny thing about these is that the obfuscator leaves a billion clues that\ncan tip you off that the macro is malicious, without even having to run it.\nAny human being can tell you that DKTxHE is a bogus name for a function, so\nthe only trick is to implement that detection in code...\n\n~~~\njstanley\n> the only trick is to implement that detection in code\n\nString entropy scoring works surprisingly well for problems like this: build a\ncorpus of function names (scrape it from github?), generate a markov model,\nsee how probable the candidate function name is according to the markov model.\n\n~~~\nSenji\nThen I'll just run a prettifyer with the same sample data and name functions\nin my malicious macros from that.\n\n~~~\njstanley\nLike a lot of things, it's an arms race. For the most part people aren't doing\nthat yet because it's easier, and almost as effective, to just generate them\nat random.\n\n------\nAnimats\nMalware which simply doesn't do anything for the first few weeks, or even\nhours, is hard to detect by running it in a VM box. Some \"advanced persistent\nthreats\" are like that.\n\n~~~\nmeowface\nThis has become really common. Most modern malware sandboxes attempt to\ngreatly accelerate the system clock to account for this, in addition to trying\nto detect and intercept long sleep (or equivalent) calls.\n\nLike most long cat-and-mouse games, modern malware families all use a\ncombination of many different tricks and anti-sandbox/analysis techniques. The\nsandboxes play whack-a-mole at the same rate as malware keeps adding more\nmoles.\n\n~~~\nTinyyy\nIf the malware attempts a CPU test that maxes out the host CPU, will it be\nobvious that the system clock is sped up?\n\n~~~\ncnvogel\nSo… only speedup the clock while the software under test is sleeping (waiting\non a muted, timer,…) . Stealthy software shouldnt have excessive cpu\nconsumption, otherwise people will investigate.\n\nIt's obviously a cat & mouse game.\n\n------\nuserbinator\nThis reminds me of some software which would refuse to run if it detected you\nhad a debugger like SoftICE installed, the irony being that those who do would\nalso be the most likely to know how to defeat those checks. (See also:\n[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-\nread.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html) )\n\n~~~\n0xcde4c3db\nSimilarly, there were a few PlayStation games that would refuse to run if the\nconsole had a modchip, which was a pretty big footbullet when you consider\nthat only licensed discs were likely to retain this check, meaning that it\nmostly stopped people who obtained the game legally.\n\n------\ndpitkin\nSounds exactly like what VW did for emission testing, score another one for\nthe bad guys.\n\n------\nlucb1e\n> If no [other, existing documents] are found [on the system], the [code]\n> terminates\n\nI almost missed it while scanning the article. This is what the headline\nmentions. Interesting yes, but \"novel\"? I'm not sure.\n\n~~~\njacobwcarlson\n> Interesting yes, but \"novel\"? I'm not sure.\n\nIt's not. And I don't know anything about SentinelOne so maybe they're\namazing, but being stymied by dynamic analysis of VBScript malware seems, um,\nodd.\n\n------\nhomero\nHow do the researchers detect anything when I assume every virus has Anti-VM\nor anti-sandbox checks\n\n~~~\nuserbinator\nBy taking anti-anti-VM and anti-anti-sandbox measures, obviously ;-)\n\nA stock VM is extremely easy to detect because most VM software today doesn't\neven try to make it look like a physical machine (e.g. would a physical\nmachine have hardware named \"VMware virtual SVGA\"?), but there are certainly\npatches you can do to change this, often at the cost of performance. (The\n80-20 rule applies: the majority of software won't notice the difference and\nmaking the VM \"perfect\" to cater to the rest becomes increasingly difficult.)\nAnd a sandbox lets you control to varying degress of precision the exact\nenvironment an application sees.\n\nBesides, these researchers presumably know reverse-engineering. They can just\ninspect the malware for such checks and force them to go the way they want.\n\n~~~\nago\nIt would be really nice to have physical hardware that identifies the same as\nthe VMware / VirtualBox hardware.\n\n~~~\naurelianito\nIt is even easier to just do your work on a VM. If malware actually does not\nwork on a VM you are instantaneously protected.\n\n------\ndzhiurgis\nThe solution is quite lovely - uninstall MS Office /s\n\n~~~\ntluyben2\nPeople will often say: yeah but business! I work with very large corps and\nnever needed MS office. I use Ubuntu mostly. The only occassios I need\nproprietary software is when working with some proprietary hardware but I\nusually can get it working under Linux with some effort.\n\n~~~\nVoidWhisperer\nWhat do you usually use for document editing then, out of curiosity? Google\ndocs? Libreoffice?\n\n~~~\ntluyben2\nGoogle docs, Libreoffice and, VIM. I usually type everything in vim first; I\nuse Ubuntu with I3 on second hand X220. With xterm + vim (and other terminal\napps), I have 18 hours battery life. When a browser or Libre kicks in, the\nbattery drops to < 7 immediately. But after that I copy it to docs or Libre\nand add images, styling etc. Then I usually export to PDF and send. But as doc\nworks fine. When I get documents from others, Libre office works fine. Never\nhad issues so far (and it's been quite a few years).\n\n------\nmbreedlove\nThis sounds like Luckystrike.\n\n[http://www.shellntel.com/blog/2016/9/13/luckystrike-a-\ndataba...](http://www.shellntel.com/blog/2016/9/13/luckystrike-a-database-\nbacked-evil-macro-generator)\n\n------\nchris_wot\nSeriously, the amount of malware that is missed by virus scanners is getting\nridiculous. If you run MalwareBytes it seems to catch a lot of stuff that\nSymantec and McAfee misses entirely.\n\n~~~\ndingo_bat\nConsidering McAfee goes berserk with the CPU and disk regularly, I'm surprised\nthat it is still unable to do the job properly.\n\n------\nC3Ne0\nWould anyone here be interested in a Q&A with the author of this article? I\nmay or may not be able to hook that up if there's enough interest.\n\n------\nanonymousDan\nWhy bother opening 3 word documents when you could modify the predicate to\nonly terminate the program if less than 0?\n\n~~~\noakwhiz\nMalware might be designed to run a kind of self-test to see if it's been\ntampered with, in order to A) prevent detection and reverse-engineering and B)\ndiscourage code reuse by other malware writers\n\n------\ntshtf\nOriginal link, rather than threatpost blogspam:\n[https://sentinelone.com/blogs/anti-vm-\ntricks/](https://sentinelone.com/blogs/anti-vm-tricks/)\n\n~~~\ndang\nThanks. We've changed the URL to that from [https://threatpost.com/malware-\nevades-detection-with-novel-t...](https://threatpost.com/malware-evades-\ndetection-with-novel-technique/120787/), and the title to a representative\nphrase from the article.\n\nSubmitters: HN prefers original sources. This is in the site guidelines\n([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)).\n\n------\nRetr0spectrum\nThis is such a clickbaity title, and it's absolutely nothing new.\n\nIt seems that the only new thing according to the article is that \"less\nsophisticated\" malware is using a \"more sophisticated\" technique.\n\n~~~\nipsin\nSeconded. The headline calls it a \"novel technique\" and then the article goes\non to explain how no part of it is actually novel.\n\n------\nnorthisup\nWe do clickbait now?\n\n------\nPeekPoke\nOld news. Lastline has been beating this evasion technique for a while now.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSylicon Valley's Criticism of Donald Trump - mastazi\nhttp://www.economist.com/news/business/21716020-tech-firms-are-last-departing-their-see-no-evil-stance-society-and-politics?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/schumpetersiliconvalleyscriticismofdonaldtrump\n======\npatja\nCan we get a spelling correction for the word silicon on the title?\n\n~~~\nmastazi\nYes, I'm very sorry for the spelling mistake. I don't seem to have the\nnecessary permission level to change the title.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nJohn Carmack's BAFTA Introduction, Speech and Interview [video] - nailer\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyjJrF2gJ34\n======\ndb1\nReally inspiring. I really loved his comment about how there are always new\nopportunities and new waves for people to ride. This is something I've always\npersonally struggled with, the feeling that everything has already been done\nand that I've missed the boat.\n\nI guess a lot of these things are only obvious in hindsight. People are\nexploring all sorts of ideas right now, but it won't be obvious which ones are\nthe winners and the losers until 10 years from now.\n\n~~~\njacobolus\nDepending how far down the ladder you go, some ideas take longer than that.\n\nFor example, geometric algebra, invented by Hermann Grassmann more than 150\nyears ago, is the biggest “new” idea in mathematical modeling of geometry, and\nit’ll probably take another 50 years more to percolate down throughout math\neducation and physics and engineering practice.\n\n~~~\n9erdelta\nDo you have any interesting reads about geometric algebra being the \"new\"\nthing?\n\n~~~\ntheoh\nNot the parent poster, but I have some experience of geometric algebra being\npromoted as a superior language for geometric computing. This started for me\nin the first year of university with a tutor who was keen to introduce\nbivectors (a GA concept) though officially they weren't on the syllabus.\n(Bivectors can represent 3D angular momentum in a slightly more useful way\nthan straight vectors.) David Hestenes was presented as a bit of a hero, the\npioneer of GA for physics. It didn't stick for me.\n\nAt Siggraph 2001 there were for the first time a couple of \"GA for computer\ngraphics\" presentations given by Leo Dorst and Steve Mann. They were promoting\nGA as \"the way\" for doing geometric computations on computer. Dorst is an\ninteresting and pleasant speaker and the apparent brashness of the \"one true\nframework for geometric computing\" claim didn't really colour his delivery of\nthe presentation. Again, for me it just didn't stick, though the idea of a\nbreakthrough in the design of geometric mathematics, with strong historical\nroots in the 19th C, was appealing.\n\nSince then the GA bandwagon has rolled gently on but I haven't seen any killer\napps produced so far.\n\n[http://www.geometricalgebra.net/](http://www.geometricalgebra.net/)\n[http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/smann/GABLE/SIGGRAPH01/](http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/smann/GABLE/SIGGRAPH01/)\n\n------\n9erdelta\n\"...I'm just getting started...\"\n\nWhat a hero! Very excited to see the innovations coming out of VR/AR over the\nnext few years.\n\n~~~\nhanief\nRight? His speech is really good. Not a lot of engineer (or people, as the\nmatter of fact) can give a speech that fluently.\n\n~~~\nanton_gogolev\nNot to diminish Carmack's significance and genius, but, from waht I can tell\nfrom the first minutes of the interview, he knew he was going to be awarded,\nso je had plenty of time to prepare and rehearse his -- very inspiring, I\nshould say -- speech.\n\n~~~\nmasklinn\nFor something like a decade (2004~2005 until 2013), Carmack gave a fluent\nhours-long speech/discussion/brain-dump at QuakeCon. I doubt a few minutes's\nspeech is something he needs \"plenty of time to prepare and rehearse\" for at\nthis point.\n\nRecent examples:\n\n2h50 2013 QuakeCon keynote\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uooh0Y9fC_M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uooh0Y9fC_M)\n\n2h20 2014 SMU talk\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_oTvUl88hs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_oTvUl88hs)\n\n1h30 2014 Oculus Connect keynote\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqzpAbK9qFk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqzpAbK9qFk)\n\n~~~\nbojo\nHis 2013 keynote where he touched on functional programming is what inspired\nme to attempt learning and writing a game server in Haskell.\n\n------\nnailer\nIntro is OK but most people on HN will be aware of its contents:\n\nSpeech starts at 4:10, interview at 7:20\n\n------\nlouthy\nJohn Carmack is such an inspiration. It was his early blog that taught me the\ntechniques for raycast engines. I was working at an educational software\ncompany in my home town, we were doing a 2D educational game for Famous Five\non a Treasure Island. I convinced my boss to allow me to make the bit where\nthey go into a dungeon to be 3D, and I wrote a raycast engine for it. Not long\nafter that, I used it to get my first job in the London games industry as a\nPlaystation 1 lead programmer!\n\nHis willingness to share what he's learned must have given many programmers a\nboost, as it did with me. Well deserved.\n\n------\nrusstrotter\nI'd encourage anyone in the twittersphere to follow @ID_AA_Carmack. His\nmusings there waste few words and he often tosses questions out there that\nwill get you thinking.\n\nCongrats to him on the BAFTA, but yes, he really is just getting started. I\nhope to see the fruits of his current labors but I'm not sure if I'm cut out\nfor the VR tech as I'll most likely just puke on my shoes :-(\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTechCrunch Author Colleen Taylor Joining YC as Editorial Director - minimaxir\nhttps://twitter.com/loyalelectron/status/609473968198660096\n======\nminimaxir\nThis follows fellow TC alum Susan Hobbs moving to YC:\n[http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/19/shining-like-the-\nbrightest-...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/19/shining-like-the-brightest-\nstars-a-transmission-on-the-midnight-radio/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBlack Swan Events - simonpure\nhttps://danco.substack.com/p/black-swan-events?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0MTM5Nzg1LCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMzY2MDgsIl8iOiI5R21UeiIsImlhdCI6MTU4NTQ5MjA2NCwiZXhwIjoxNTg1NDk1NjY0LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItODYyMyIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.RMd2JQv4ETeqg-LZ_LIppo6gfZY-NIpkSvukYVYbO_Q\n======\nzenlot\nN.N. Taleb repeated many times already that COVID-19 is not a Black Swan\nevent. Author of the article is just a con artist. This should be flagged.\n\n~~~\npixl97\nThe author of this article did not say that COVID-19 was a BSE. They stated\nthe jobless claims were.\n\n~~~\nzenlot\nYou're missing the point.\n\n------\nalpineidyll3\nThe only thing worse than Taleb is dollar store imitation Taleb.\n\nGet this armchair stats newsletter ad off the frontpage plz.\n\n~~~\nyawboakye\nDisclaimer: I didn't read the article because I had a sense it will be a\nrehash of Dr. Taleb's work. That said I'm interested in your criticism of the\nman (or his work instead?). I've read Taleb's volume and found them\nconvincing. They're well argued and pull from several sources (history being a\nbig part, which appeals to me a lot as a history buff). Antifragile is up\nthere with the best book I read and has merited a yearly re-read.\n\n~~~\nalpineidyll3\nTaleb has made a career out of popularizing common financial statistics with\nhistorical flavor. He usually presents himself as a polymath/oracle in this\nwriting although he has never developed any interesting ideas in the area. His\nwork is mostly a pop-sci rehash of non-gaussian wikipedia stats formatted in\nMathematica with a helping of cringey memes. For an especially embarrassing\nexample see\n[https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.10488](https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.10488). All of\nthis serves the purpose of juicing Universa, a fund which charges a generous\nincentive fee for holding a rolling SPX put, something which I think a dog\ncould do.\n\nSince people don't read books much anymore he picks fights with people on\ntwitter to raise his profile. He targets people who he thinks are likely to\nengage him (Nate Silver, Elon Musk etc), although most are too smart to take\nthe bait. He fancies himself a powerlifter although he has physique of Homer\nSimpson. The man is generally a sad caricature of someone who traded\nvolatility once. I personally mathematically model volatility for a living,\nand although I wouldn't pretend to have done as much as Bergomi I still feel I\nhave the right to find Taleb grotesque.\n\nI agree that a mathematical history of non-Gaussian mathematics would be a\nfascinating thing, especially the recent past. I also would agree that just\nfollowing links from \"alpha Levy-stable\" might not be as digestible as Taleb.\nBut his pretensions and self-importance, in the face of completely superficial\nunderstanding and achievement, is gross. If history records his name and not\nGatheral's it would be a crime.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat 1970s to 1980s home computers had their graphics chars added to Unicode 13? - JdeBP\nhttps://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/q/14099/1932\n======\nJdeBP\nSee also\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22544798](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22544798)\n.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBritain Pledges to Ban New Diesel and Gas Cars by 2040 - kimsk112\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/world/europe/uk-diesel-petrol-emissions.html\n======\nnthcolumn\nAll they have done is made an announcement. Convolutedly, this is more about:\nthe now lame-duck prime minister who asked the people for a stronger mandate\nto negotiate the best out of the Brexit disaster but went down like a bag of\nsick with the electorate thereby weakening the government's position even\nfurther to 'laughing-stock in Europe' status. Who then showed utter contempt\nand a complete lack of integrity by trying to delay the inevitable, cling to\npower and refusing to do the honorable thing and resign, in doing so creating\neven more uncertainty for a repulsive, back-stabbing cabinet member to jockey\nfor position during the recess and a gutless party desperately sucking up to\nthe Greens and their ilk for support in a minority government and trying to\ndivert attention from the stories of historical incompetence emanating daily\nfrom the press.\n\nIt also ironically falls in line with other EU states recent announcements. So\nold-, non-, fake- whatever you want to call it news.\n\n~~~\ndang\n> _All they have done is made an announcement._\n\nYes. We added \"pledges\" above.\n\n------\npiyush_soni\nRecently, Indian government led by PM Modi declared their plan to sell only\nelectric cars by 2030 as well [0]. Both are great examples of how technology\nis trying to fix technology's side effects.\n\n[0] : [http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/03/technology/future/india-\nelec...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/03/technology/future/india-electric-\ncars/index.html)\n\n~~~\niamshs\nAnd undoing with two horrible policies:-\n\n1\\. Creating a taxpayer funded Uber competitor, all to break up a monopoly.\nLooks like they don't know concept of a regulator.\n[https://qz.com/1037837/indias-uber-ola-cab-wars-could-\nhave-a...](https://qz.com/1037837/indias-uber-ola-cab-wars-could-have-a-new-\nplayer-the-modi-government/)\n\n2\\. Banning self driving cars, because India needs jobs.\n\n~~~\npiyush_soni\nWhile I find the ban on self driving cars absurd (and something I hope they'll\ntake back when self driving cars become more common), I don't find anything\nwrong with a government created competitor of Uber and Ola. Why not, if it\neventually benefits the consumers? Also, regulation doesn't increase\ngovernment's revenues. I don't think the idea is bad by itself, it all depends\non the implementation now.\n\n~~~\njsudhams\nSeriously? Like they run all the existing services. What we want less\ngovernment involvement not more.\n\n~~~\niamshs\nIndia has glorious public money burning corporations like Air India, BSNL,\nDoorDarshan, HMT why not add one more?\n\n~~~\ndingo_bat\nAir India is going to be sold off soon. HMT is still alive? Does it just exist\nas an accounting exercise, because I don't see any HMT products.\n\n------\nboyce\nIt's mad that we're in this situation, with a government so paralysed and\nimpotent that kicking the can down the road like this is being touted as an\nachievement.\n\n~~~\ntonylemesmer\nThe only justification I can think of for putting it off until 2040 is\nimprovements to the national grid. The grid would fail faster than enough\ncapacity could be brought online. Annoyingly the UK government cancelled solar\npanel installation subsidies which could have perhaps mitigated this somewhat\n(along with some energy storage solutions).\n\nIt is a tragedy that pollution levels will increase between now and then\nthrough a deliberate government policy. 23 years is a ridiculously long way\noff. The Dutch pushing for a ban by 2025 (8 years!).\n\n------\nmavhc\nToday my 14 solar panels generate enough electricity to make my car go 12000\nmiles per year. It's not really going to be an issue by 2030 at the latest\n\n~~~\nitchy_eyelids\nIt's all about the batteries and always has been. Hydrogen is ultimately the\nonly thing that makes sense in the super-long term as a complete and total\nsolution, providing the necessary energy density (given current knowledge),\nbut something like lithium batteries might very well be a long-term stepping\nstone until then. We are pretty much already there. We just need a few\nmegafactories to pump out those batteries on the cheap.\n\n~~~\nmtgx\nAnd we'll have them. By 2025 global Li-Ion battery capacity should increase by\nabout 10x. That should lower prices by at least 4x, which should make EVs very\ncompetitive on an _upfront_ cost with gas-powered cars, and a no-brainer when\nyou take into account maintenance and gas costs, too.\n\nEDIT: I'm also hoping that by 2025, the 100kWh battery capacity will be\nstandard in pretty much all $15,000+ EVs. The reason I'm hoping and I'm not so\nsure it will happen is because Tesla itself has signaled that it's not in a\nhurry to pass the 100kWh battery capacity mark even with the more expensive\nModel S for now.\n\nMy guess is it said that because it wants to put that extra money into buying\nmore expensive self-driving equipment. Similarly, on the Model 3 it has\nalready installed the self-driving hardware, even if the customer doesn't want\nto use it, so Tesla probably doesn't want to further expand those costs with\nlarger capacity batteries for now.\n\nI'm not a fan of this plan because for one, I think self-driving cars will be\nin \"beta\" for a lot longer than expected anyway, and two, it will\nunnecessarily slow down the EV revolution by compromising on battery capacity\nto include expensive self-driving equipment.\n\nThis wouldn't be a problem if it merely affected Tesla. Unfortunately, so far\nmost of the other car makers have tended to \"wait for permission\" from Tesla\nbefore pushing the limits of their own EVs.\n\nThey kept \"one-upping\" (laughably so) each other for years with an extra 5\nmile range from a bottom of 70 mile range on their EVs, until Tesla said Model\n3 would have over 200 miles. Even now there are a bunch of cars planned for\n2018 with only 30-40 kWh batteries and about 120 mile real world range.\n\nI'm still optimistic for now, and I hope that now that most car maker have\nactually started taking EVs more seriously (we won't see the effects of that\nuntil 2021+ though), there will be a \"megapixel-race\" of sorts, but for\nbattery capacity in the not too distant future. I want the EV makers to \"go\ncrazy\" with 200kWh batteries, 300kWh, 400kWh, etc. Let the _market_ decide\nwhat is the optimum battery size for passenger cars, for trucks, for semis,\nand so on.\n\n------\nSamReidHughes\nI'm real confused how an elected government in 2017 can deign to make policy\npromises on behalf of one in 2040.\n\n~~~\ntimthorn\nA UK parliament can't bind future parliaments. However, long term policies can\nbe set - it's then up to governments in future to change the policy if they\nsee fit.\n\nI can certainly see the deadline slipping if pragmatic concerns dictate, but I\ndoubt the policy will change in substance.\n\n~~~\nandygates\nThe \"bad example\" in this case would be the Fuel Duty Escalator, a policy to\nratchet up fuel tax year-by-year in order to fund sustainable transport and\nsimultaneously make inefficient vehicles unattractive. The government bottled\njust as it was starting to bite.\n\nArguably, it was ahead of its time - as opposed to this announcement, which is\nalmost tardy - but it's a sad truth that one of the \"pragmatic concerns\" is\nwhether or not it'll annoy the sitting party's voting base.\n\n------\n3pt14159\nEfforts like these just confuse me. At first I thought It would be _any_ cars\non the road by 2040, in which case this is enough notice, since the warning\ngives consumers enough time to plan (22 years). But outside of a few strange\nedge cases like specialised cars, what's the point of banning them by 2040?\n\nElectric cars are going to dominate sales within 10 years. At scale, they are\ncheaper to fuel, cheaper to maintain, have an acceptably high top speed\n(anything over 160km/h isn't really needed and Telsas can go 250km/h), a\nbetter acceleration curve, they are better for human health (no particulates),\nthey are better for the natural environment (no oil spills), they are better\nto fight global warming.\n\nThe only thing that they are worse at is fuel up time and range. And if either\nof those problems are solved, both of them effectively are, since fast fuel up\ngets us a longer effective range and extremely long range (say 2000km) makes\nfill up time irrelevant.\n\nThe writing is on the wall. Fossil fuels are going to be completely replaced\nvery quickly. By taking aggressive steps to ban non-electric vehicles sooner\nboth the environment AND our economy will be better off since we'll gain an\nadvantage in the new industries.\n\nIn Canada we're still building oil pipelines, it's madness. It's like building\na whale blubber processing plant after the early commercialisation of crude\noil.\n\n~~~\ndjhworld\n> what's the point of banning them by 2040?\n\nIt sets a deadline. Future parliaments can change it as they see fit, but I\nthink the UK government had to say something otherwise they'd be contravening\nagreements made in the past.\n\nLike you said, within 10 years electric cars sales will probably become the\nnorm anyway, but I guess from a policy perspective it's signalling to\nmanufacturers and the general public that they have 22 years to make the\nshift.\n\n~~~\nSideburnsOfDoom\n> Future parliaments can change it as they see fit,\n\nAnd that's exactly why this is a dodge: It doesn't affect the current\nadministration, and if a future administration doesn't like it, they can just\nchange it. it's a classic maneuver of the \"kick the can down the road while\npretending to make policy\" kind.\n\n------\npatrickg_zill\nIt's good I guess, to state a goal and start working on it.\n\nHowever, up until 2039, any legislative session can modify, change, even\nrepeal such a goal, is that correct?\n\n~~~\nk-mcgrady\nYes but there's no legitimate party in the UK against environmental policies\nlike this (some other parties might make the deadline sooner but that's as\nmuch change as there would be).\n\n------\nyitchelle\nThe resource industry will experience a big change if this becomes reality.\nThe oil industry will have to shift some of their focus on other non-\nautomotive markets. The electrical energy suppliers will have to step up and\ntake up the gap and reap the profits.\n\n~~~\nrtpg\nlegit Q: is there a place in the world where we could go and basically burn as\nmuch oil as we want? A place where the effects of greenhouse gases wouldn't be\nmuch of an issue?\n\nOr would it just spread everywhere?\n\n~~~\ndp-tyvek\nThe moon\n\nAny gas released into Earth's atmosphere would diffuse quite quickly.\n\n~~~\nyitchelle\nYou mean the Moon's atmosphere, right?\n\n~~~\ndp-tyvek\nThe moon has ~no atmosphere, so any gas released there would diffuse into\nspace.\n\nWhat I was trying to say is, because any gas will diffuse from an area of high\nconcentration to one with a lower concentration, there is no place in Earth's\natmosphere one can release gas without it diffusing throughout it. The best\nyou can do is slow the process down.\n\n------\nitchy_eyelids\nEveryone remember when Japan and Germany said they were done with nuclear\npower and gave \"hard\" dates for retirements?\n\nIt's easy to make declarations for things way out in the future.\n\nThe hard work of paving that road head awaits. Politicians don't like hard\nwork. They will be absent during the process, nowhere to be found, should it\never be paved, until the very end, golden shovel and oversized scissors in\nhand.\n\n------\ntempodox\nThis is nothing more than a desperate headline grab. Who would even want to\nbuild gasoline or diesel cars in 2040?\n\n------\nmFixman\nI am sceptical. Are there any examples of successful government policy planned\n23 years in advance?\n\n~~~\ngrecy\nOh yeah, have a look at Japan.\n\nTheir world-class airport built on an island? they planned and \"built\" that\nisland for decades.\n\nBullet trains? They planned and designed and built those things for decades.\n\nThere are a ton more examples.\n\n------\nbcoates\nBritain commits to power cars with its overwhelmingly fossil fuel based\nelectrical grid and/or its even more fossil fuel heavy electricity imports by\n2040.\n\n(kidding, they'll just keep using petroleum.)\n\nedit: apparently I can't read graphs, it's mostly natural gas not mostly coal.\nThe \"renewables\" slice seems to be a bit heavy on not-exactly-green \"biofuel\"\nthough...\n\n~~~\ntimthorn\n> mostly coal\n\nCoal hasn't been in the majority for some years, and indeed there have been\ndays this year where no coal powered generation powered the grid.\n\n[https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications-and-\nupdates/infographi...](https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications-and-\nupdates/infographic-promoting-sustainable-energy-future)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIs Facebook killing your iPhone’s battery or are you? - daniper\nhttp://blog.gotenna.com/post/131775543810/is-facebook-killing-your-iphones-battery-or-are\n======\nCodeWriter23\nFrom yesterday:\n\n\"We recently heard reports of some people experiencing battery issues with the\nFacebook iOS app and have been looking into the causes of these problems. We\nfound a few key issues and have identified additional improvements, some of\nwhich are in the version of the app that was released today.\"\n\n[https://www.facebook.com/arig/posts/10105815276466163](https://www.facebook.com/arig/posts/10105815276466163)\n\n~~~\ndaniper\nYes, apps (like Facebook's) which are drawing lots of current in the\nbackground is part of it -- but the point of our team's hacking into the\niPhone was to find out what else really affects your phone's battery. It's not\njust background apps updating.\n\nNothing we discovered in the lab is 'revolutionary' \\-- everyone knows your\nbattery gets used up more when the screen is brighter, and when your phone is\ntrying to find a tower or router to connect to, but we just wanted to put some\nnumbers behind it.\n\nHope it was useful; we had fun breaking open an iPhone regardless ;-)\n\n------\nrtkwe\nThe article doesn't seem to address the actual cause that the articles linked\nat the top highlighted, background updating. The Verge article especially was\nall about background processing issues which the tests and power saving advice\ndon't seem to address at all.\n\n~~~\ntommoor\nYou're right, it's almost as if the piece was written purely as content\nmarketing to promote the gotenna ;) Interesting nonetheless!\n\n~~~\ndaniper\nLol, we did these lab tests before we thought of turning what we learned into\na post (if we had really been strategically content marketing, we wouldn't\nhave posted this at 8 pm on a Friday night haha). Mostly, we wanted to break\nopen an iPhone — that's what happens when a hardware team is in TGIF mode ;-)\n\nIn any case, it's not just background apps updating. Although yes, that's part\nof it. We wanted to learn more beyond what the iOS battery-monitoring feature\nwill give you -- which is which apps are consuming which % of your iPhone's\nbattery, both when you're actively using them and when they're running in the\nbackground.\n\nFor our own purposes, we were particularly interested in the interaction of\nlocation services and Bluetooth-LE which are required for own product to be\nuseful. We threw in general \"futzing\" and screen brightness as well out of\ncuriosity. And while our team knew that trying to connect to towers & routers\nate your battery a lot (easily observed by just turning your phone into\nAirplane Mode -- can last for weeks!), we had no idea it could be as much as\n250 mA every few seconds!\n\n------\nquaz3l\nThis isn't exactly related to the article, but I think this post is an amazing\nexample of how to write an interesting blog post yet, at the same time tie it\nto what you are selling and make people want to know more about your product\nwithout directly telling them to.\n\n~~~\ntwothamendment\nI was thinking it was an amazing way to avoid telling people why the product\nhasn't shipped yet. They've been doing pre-orders for more than a year.\nSometime in there it went from $149 a pair to $199 a pair. I admire the desire\nto make something \"absolutely perfect\", but perfect products don't ship.\n\n~~~\ndaniper\nWe started shipping earlier this month, which is why the price went up from\nthe prior pre-order discounted number.\n\nStay tuned for a novel-length blog themed around something like, \"Why\nManufacturing & Supply Chain Are 100X Harder (& Take 100X Longer) Than\nEveryone Tells You\". But I'm sort of still in PTSD mode. ;-)\n\n~~~\n7Z7\nWell done for shipping!\n\n~~~\ndaniper\nThanks! :-D\n\nOur hardware team has been working on our next product for a few months --\nthat's why they found time to hack into iPhone batteries, lol, as work on the\nfirst product has been handed off to supply chain & manufacturing for the most\npart. ;-)\n\nMeanwhile, the rest of the engineering team is working on firmware & software\nupdates to make the hardware we're already shipping even better/more\ninteresting (and of course, responding to first consumers' feedback).\n\nBut... you know what? Sorry for going on a tangent. All I really want to say\nis thanks, means a lot. Sometimes it's hard to enjoy these victories because\nyou get so focused on the next uphill battle. ;-)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: “Escape from Montegrande”, Procedural Ski Game for iOS and Android - phaser\nhttp://mego.cl/montegrande\n\n======\nzimpenfish\nOne of the achievements says \"Slide trough N ice surfaces\" \\- is that supposed\nto be \"Slide through\"? Apart from that, good work, it's like a proper modern\nHorace Goes Skiing.\n\n~~~\nchulini\nWe'll fix that on the next update. Thanks! : _\n\n------\nthrowaway1979\nNice. What framework are you using?\n\n~~~\nphaser\nWe created the game using Unity3d. In order to generate levels we used a\ncombination of random \"chunks\" and perlin noise (very good for generating the\n'paths' across the trees)\n\n------\nchrisbennet\nGreat imagination! Good work!\n\n------\njstnn\nnostalgia\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLooseStitch - Free Online Outliner - absconditus\nhttp://loosestitch.com/\n\n======\nmarkbao\nHmm. It's a very beautiful app, but its user experience is iffy. Case in\npoint:\n[http://screenshots.markbao.com/43208b3dcc19bd9cf1a8e8864459e...](http://screenshots.markbao.com/43208b3dcc19bd9cf1a8e8864459e749.png)\n\nPerhaps it's just my tendency as a developer, but I hate having this \"view\"\npart and an \"edit\" part in different places. Why should I have this part where\nI can see my outline, but then I have to click, move my mouse over to the\nside, edit, and then click save on the box? Most of the time during outlining,\nI want to use _zero_ mouse. I don't want to use it to add new rows, to delete\nrows, etc. It would be awesome if it acted like a text editor with outlining\nhelpers.\n\nMuch of the time that I use outlining is during notetaking, where speed is a\npretty big factor. Maybe this is a different use of outlining that I'm not\nfamiliar with?\n\nAn example of an app (that, I should add, I love) that this app should emulate\nwith view+edit on the same place is OmniOutliner:\n[http://screenshots.markbao.com/7e2b04d5fb6f2721287848166a108...](http://screenshots.markbao.com/7e2b04d5fb6f2721287848166a108215.png)\n\nSo here's one way you can refactor it:\n[http://screenshots.markbao.com/ebef2709d6f0ddde877da8339bac7...](http://screenshots.markbao.com/ebef2709d6f0ddde877da8339bac7345.png)\n\n _(Side note: why the hell are they using Dreamhost to host their app? I use\nthem for personal sites. Outages every week.)_\n\n~~~\njerf\nMy personal project is an outliner. My personal project has been an outliner\nfor about eight years now, on and off, and the primary reason that it has been\nso long is not that I've failed to carry through; it is that my entire goal is\nto make a \"no compromises\" outliner, and the open source text widgets just\nhaven't been good enough to support it. (I could come close in some ways, but\nnever close enough that it would ever be a _joy_ to use; always terribly and\nunfixable quirks that people would have found in the first hour or even the\nfirst minute.)\n\nI _think_ QT is good enough now, but I haven't gotten far enough in my current\niteration to be sure. But certainly the web is very likely not good enough to\ngive a really good experience. It might be, but I doubt it. Outliners really,\nreally, _really_ push the text widgets, way more than you might think just\nlooking at them. (Especially if you want to take full advantage of them.)\n\nNumerous open source outliners exist with the \"click to edit this node\" model,\nbut it's just uselessly klunky, in my opinion.\n\nIf you don't find this uselessly klunky, pop \"open source outliner\" into\nGoogle and you can find several others that will be quite a bit better and run\nlocally. (I haven't got any recommendations, as I don't like any of them or\nI'd simply use them.)\n\n~~~\njaxn\nI really like Omni Outliner for the Mac (wish there was an iPhone version).\n\nI like having my outliner local since I often use it for meeting notes and\ntend to jump around quite a bit at a fast pace. Maybe a web version can be\nfast enough with lots of client side scripting.\n\n------\nsidsavara\nTried it out, biggest complaint is that I can't do \"in place\" editing -\n\nExample: As Mark Bao mentioned, have to edit to the side, rather than in\nplace. Pressing enter to head to the box, and then hitting enter (or escape)\nto go back isn't bad, but it is not as ideal as if I could double click and\nedit in place.\n\nSecond (more irritating for me) I can't grab something and drag and drop it.\n\nI know these are challenging technical problems (with solutions) but they do\nmake the experience a little difficult for me.\n\nAlso, in Chrome Alt+up and alt+down shortcuts are not working for me. No idea\nif this is something I've changed as a setting or not. Other shortcuts appear\nto work fine - but why is it one button (?) to open the help and another\n(space) to close? I don't see space used elsewhere, perhaps just use space for\nboth?\n\nFor exporting, I was not too pleased with how it exported to HTML. I was\nactually expecting a bunch of nested lists, but it gave me lots of divs and\nstyled it as an outline via CSS. I don't know how other people feel about it,\nI was looking to use it to outline blog posts: so for me being able to export\nand then import a list of lists would have been dynamite.\n\n------\nbayareaguy\nI love outlining but I hate outliners. They all make some mistake that limits\ntheir usefulness to me. This one makes the mistake of wanting me to register\nbefore trying it out. Haven't we learned from applications like\n<http://jottit.com> that this is the wrong way to do things? Let me build my\noutline and then make me register if I want to keep it\n\n~~~\nmisuba\nOutliner users seem even more finicky than other users. (I say this as one of\nthem.)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMicrosoft Windows 8 - atmosx\nhttp://www.convalesco.org/blog/2014/03/24/microsoft-windows-8/\n\n======\nnandhp\nThe Microsoft Store offers PCs with the Microsoft Signature Experience, which\nis basically exactly what the author is looking for.\n\n[http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/html/pbpage.Micros...](http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/html/pbpage.MicrosoftSignature)\n\n~~~\natmosx\nA good to know for further purchases! Thanks!\n\n------\nscholia\nPointless because written by someone who doesn't understand that Microsoft has\nno control over what OEMs ship on Windows PCs (though Microsoft did try\noffering crapware-free PCs in Signature editions).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy designers can’t stop reinventing the subway map - ingve\nhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/09/why-designers-cant-stop-reinventing-the-subway-map/\n======\ntikhonj\nMy favorite subway map redesign is Art Lebedev's take on the Mosco Metro[1].\nIt's both better-looking _and_ more usable than the current map, and the\ncurrent map isn't bad. (It's certainly better than the official New York\nsubway map linked in the article.)\n\nThey wrote a fascinating article about how they designed the map[2] and how\nthey came to many of their design decisions. It's a great look on how much\nattention to detail goes into a design like this. And it's just cool to see\nall the different approaches they tried.\n\nThe second version of their map, and its accompanying explanation, are also\nworth a look[3].\n\n[1]:\n[http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/metro/map/](http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/metro/map/)\n\n[2]:\n[http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/metro/map/process/](http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/metro/map/process/)\n\n[3]:\n[http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/metro/map2/](http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/metro/map2/)\n\n------\nonion2k\nSubway maps improved _hugely_ when designers realised that they're not\nactually geographic maps - (generally speaking) users don't really care where\nthings are when they're using a subway but rather they're interested in which\npoints connect to which other points. A subway map is actually a graph.\n\nEDIT: Fixed topological mistake.\n\n~~~\nJonnieCache\nSurely that means they _are_ topological maps?\n\n~~~\nonion2k\nYes, you're right. Commenting before coffee is a bad idea.\n\n------\nAtheros\nThis is why graphic designers should be kept as far away from projects that\ncreate things that must be _used_ by other people and not just admired for\ntheir beauty. The current subway map is a good map because it was basically\ndesigned by sociologists. Sociologists should be doing much more designing\nthan what we ask of them today. This is one of the reasons the current map\nshows some but not all curves along a train line- the sociologists figured out\nthat if a curve can be felt onboard a train then it is best to try to reflect\nthe curve on the map. To not do so makes people feel uneasy. If I need\nbeautiful or creative content for my art gallery, graphic designers are\ninvited. If I need to create something useful then they are not.\n\n~~~\npaulojreis\n> This is why graphic designers should be kept as far away from projects that\n> create things that must be used by other people and not just admired for\n> their beauty.\n\n> If I need beautiful or creative content for my art gallery, graphic\n> designers are invited.\n\nYou're confusing design with art or decoration.\n\nIt doesn't make sense, at all, to say that designers should be _kept away_ if\nyou don't even have a correct working definition of design. I'd suggest you do\na little bit of research before establishing such a position. You wouldn't\ndismiss, e.g., an economical model without at least some knowledge about it,\nright?\n\n~~~\nthwarted\nMany designers confuse design with art and decoration.\n\n~~~\npaulojreis\nYeah, the same way many \"software developers\" confuse software development\nwith mashing up copy & pasted code without a clear picture of how it works.\nI'd argue that those aren't software developers, just like the designers\" you\nrefer to aren't designers.\n\n------\nrtslgrmpf\nMixed Integer Programming has been used to automatically create metro maps:\n\n[http://i11www.iti.uni-karlsruhe.de/extra/publications/nw-\ndlh...](http://i11www.iti.uni-karlsruhe.de/extra/publications/nw-dlhqm-10.pdf)\n\n------\nwwwdonohue\n\"And I think that’s the great thing about trains. We are all using this common\nsystem together, and it’s very kind of leveling. We all want it to be better.\nAnd we want it to run more frequently, more smoothly, with less problems. We\nhave a love-hate relationship, and an enormous desire for it to work better.\"\n\nI respect what designers do but the NYC MTA, at least, has way, way bigger\nproblems than the way its system is visualized.\n\n------\ndigi_owl\nThe moment you have anything other than utility in mind, you are off into lala\nland...\n\n~~~\nPMan74\nYou can't consider utility _and_ aesthetic?\n\nIt'd be a pretty boring world if every problem was approached like this.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nToward UI and UX Guidelines for Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Realities - mkempe\nhttps://medium.com/usable-or-not/toward-user-interface-and-experience-guidelines-for-virtual-augmented-and-mixed-realities-939eec8394e4\n======\nmkempe\nI found this while looking for a deeper discussion than \"Apple Augmented\nReality Human Interface Guidelines\" [1].\n\n[1] [https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-\nguidelines/t...](https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-\nguidelines/technologies/augmented-reality/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nRihanna falls prey to hackers. A nude photo of her was posted - raul001\nhttp://hackingnews.com/vulnerability/rihanna-falls-prey-hackers-nude-photo-posted/\n\n======\ndozzie\nYeah, another idiot with fame who takes nude photos, fails to secure them\nproperly and then complains somebody stole them.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCommanderSong: Song videos with hidden commands your phone recognizes - ColinWright\nhttps://twitter.com/dragosr/status/1192246019926315009\n======\nqnsi\nHe was so focused on whether he could, that he didn't ask himself if he should\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWe Need Young People To Take Risks And Build Inspiring Things - henryaj\nhttp://www.fastcoexist.com/3026586/skip-the-hedge-fund-we-need-young-people-to-take-risks-and-build-inspiring-things\n======\nFD3SA\nThough the author has good intentions, I fear he has very little understanding\nof the reality for today's young graduates.\n\nLet's look at a smart young grad's options:\n\n1) Academia - Potentially interesting work. However, grad students are\nunderpaid, overworked indentured servants in a vicious dictatorial status\nhierarchy (do what the PI says or you're out). Very poor career prospects,\nguaranteed negative return on time invested. The road to PI is sure to destroy\nyour love of research.\n\n2) Industry - Decent pay but work is extremely mundane. Very few \"unicorn\"\npositions which allow freedom for creative roles. No control of hours.\nPromotion becomes a very serious game of office politics, which can get very\nnasty.\n\n3) Professions (Law, Med) - Enter at your own risk. Savagely competitive and\ndraconian entrance requirements, incredibly expensive education, inhuman\nhours, constant stress at every milestone, and a never-ending barrage of\nstandardized tests. However, if you endure, you can start your own practice\nand potentially have a comfortable life.\n\n4) Entrepreneur - By far the riskiest option. Due to the get rich quick mantra\nof current investors, social/web/photo apps are the name of the game. Have an\nidea for a radical new research project with a long term focus? Forget about\nit. Build and flip is the only game in town. Build an app, get acquired or go\ngo public, make your billions and get out. If it fails, try again, and again,\nand again....\n\nSo, now that we have looked at our options, can we really blame someone for\ngoing to work at a hedge fund? I can't. Especially if one is burdened with\nmassive student debt. Ironically, hedge funds and investment banks pay\nemployees much more fairly than any other industry, due to their profit\nsharing systems (bonuses). Meanwhile, tech industry execs are screaming over\nhow high (!!) engineer salaries are, and are going across the globe to find\nH1-Bs and changing legislation to push those salaries back down.\n\nIf we want everyone to work on world changing projects, we have to set proper\nincentives. That requires a radically different setup than we have now.\n\nTL;DR: Go to the hedge funds young man. Don't look back. Nothing else makes\nsense.\n\n~~~\nFomite\nThese two particularly resonate:\n\n> 1) Academia - Potentially interesting work. However, grad students are\n> underpaid, overworked indentured servant in a vicious dictatorial status\n> hierarchy (do what the PI says or you're out). Very poor career prospects,\n> guaranteed negative return on time invested. The road to PI is guaranteed to\n> destroy your love of research.\n\nPotentially interesting work, massive opportunity cost, and starting at the\nbottom of a ruthlessly competitive advancement pyramid. I love academia, and\nvery much intend to stay in it, but it's not exactly a rational choice.\n\n> 3) Professions (Law, Med) - Enter at your own risk. Savagely competitive and\n> draconian entrance requirements, incredibly expensive education, inhuman\n> hours, constant stress at every milestone, and a never-ending barrage of\n> standardized tests. However, if you endure, you can start your own practice\n> and potentially have a comfortable life.\n\nBimodal incomes that mean mainly these jobs come with a huge amount of debt\nfor what is, for many people, a comfortable upper middle class lifestyle, but\nno more than that. You're not going to get rich doing either of these, because\nyour income is capped by the hours you can work. A hedge fund on the other\nhand, if you're doing your job, is making money all the time.\n\n~~~\nmjn\nAlthough I'm not sure whether I'll stay in it, I haven't found CS academia as\nbad as the stories about Big Science academia. At least, if you look for a job\noutside the top-20 \"R1\" schools, which are more focused on big labs and big\ngrants to support those labs. Industry hires away a lot of PhDs, and there are\na _lot_ of small to medium-sized CS departments, both of which improve the\nsupply/demand situation and working conditions compared to areas like biology\nand physics. Things in parts of Europe are even better (which is why I took a\nprofessorship in Denmark out of grad school, rather than in the US), but there\nare a lot of small CS departments in the US where you can work on your\nresearch without having an insane life. It does require that you have the kind\nof research that doesn't need huge funding and huge labs (if you need >$1m/yr\nbudgets, you more or less have to be at an R1 and play that game). And you\nshould at least somewhat like teaching. But if those things are true it can be\nan ok job with some freedom to decide what to work on. And the odds of getting\na tenured position at a smaller school aren't 1000:1 like trying to get to be\na tenured prof at MIT.\n\n~~~\nFomite\nOne of the suggestions I've seen for how happy people are in their field is\nhow readily available the \"Eject\" button is for leaving your field if things\ndon't work out.\n\nFor CS, and some parts of math and physics, it's fairly close. For many other\nfields, even STEM fields, being able to bail out is a much more distant\nprospect.\n\n------\nHowDroll\nIt's hard for educated young people to feel like they can take risks when many\nof them are shackled by five or six figures of student loan debt. When you\nknow you have a $500-$1000 minimum loan payment ahead of you every month for\nthe next 10-25 years, it's hard to feel like you can fight a dragon when\nselling a sword is a sure thing.\n\n~~~\nnormloman\nThis goes to the root of the problem, which the linked article ignores.\n\n------\nQworg\nThe core idea in this article is that it is possible to convince Cole, a 24\nyear old making mid 6 figures in finance, that he should have instead taken a\njob making mid 5 figures (maybe) at an energy startup.\n\nI don't see how you can make that happen. His entire trajectory was \"making\nthe correct choice\" \\- in which that correct choice was future potential\nmaximizing. Why would he suddenly abandon that track?\n\nIn many ways, people in high finance have already \"won\" in real terms. If he\nreally wants to try his hand at startups, why can't he just jump in as a VC?\n\n~~~\na3voices\nI don't think people in high finance have \"won\". I view winning on a\nlogarithmic scale, and they're somewhere in the middle. At the top would be\nsomeone like Augustus Caesar. Below that is Bill Gates, Elon Musk, etc. At the\nthird rung maybe you have multi-millionaires, and below that maybe typical\nhigh finance types. So they are at least 4 rungs down.\n\n~~~\nQworg\nExcept by dint of cash, they can participate in the potential of startups\nwithout the risks of actually participating in the startup.\n\nAlso, consumption as a portion of income decreases as income increases. Their\nchoice is not $150k/year or \"never work again\". Their choice is close to\n$Xmil/year or \"never work again\". $Xmil is far closer to never work again than\n$150k.\n\n------\nmgkimsal\nI'm not sure why it has to be 'young people'. Don't we need people in general\nto build inspiring things?\n\n~~~\ntachyonbeam\nOlder people tend to be more conservative. They tend to have less\nenergy/motivation and more to lose (partner, children, career, friends,\nhouse). Younger people are more likely to take risks such as relocating or\ninvest money and time in something that might well fail. This of course\ndoesn't mean that you _have to be_ conservative and unmotivated when you're\nolder, but it's the trajectory the large majority take.\n\n~~~\nmgkimsal\nThat's describing what is, not what the title claimed is needed. We need\npeople to build inspiring things and take risks. The fact that many older\npeople aren't in positions where's comfortable or easy to do doesn't mean that\nit's not needed.\n\nOne could also make the argument that many 'older' people also tend have have\nmore disposable income and savings to bootstrap their own ideas, have larger\nnetworks of people reach out to for connections, etc, and often may have many\nof their life stuff behind them (kids, house, etc). Therefore there's many\nolder people who are in a better position to be risky than a young person. The\n'risk' factor is all relative, of course, with people at different stages of\nlife.\n\n~~~\na3voices\nMaybe older people don't fit into the rockstar image as well.\n\n------\ngdne\nWhy \"young\" people specifically? Seems extremely limiting. There are a lot of\ntalented people out there of every age and we should be encouraging of anyone\nbuilding the next innovation.\n\n~~~\nmatteotom\nWhy \"young\" people? They don't have families, mortgages, car loans, etc that\nrequire consistent income, giving them the freedom to make low-mid 5 figures\nnow, with the possibility of making more later.\n\nUnfortunately, the problem with this is that many young people now are stuck\nwith large amounts of student debt, so they have to take the highest paying\njob they can find right out of college.\n\nSo the theory is in my first paragraph, while the reality is much different,\nin my second paragraph.\n\n~~~\nthrush\nYou're treating the effect as the cause. Many young people don't have these\nobligations because they don't know what they are going to do with their lives\nand families, mortgages, car loans, etc. are the real risk.\n\nIt seems to me that you're implying that young people shouldn't have the right\nto these things until they contribute to society. I would argue that a real\nproblem we have right now is that people can't figure out how to have\nfamilies, mortgages, car loans, etc. and contribute to society at the same\ntime. Once we figure that out, then we'll see people taking on more\nobligations at an earlier age.\n\n~~~\nmatteotom\nThey also don't have these obligations because they are young. They haven't\nhad time to start a family or buy a house. It's true that some people may want\nto go into a startup to avoid the \"real risk\". However, the \"real risk\" is the\ntried and true path, making it easier to fall into. And once a young person\ndoes, they have much more to lose by taking a job that may not work out in the\nlong run.\n\nI really don't see where I implied young people don't have the right to these\nthings until they contribute to society. While it's fine if the majority\ncontinue on a \"normal\" path through life (college, job, family + house, 401k,\netc), we need some young people who are willing to take the risk of not\nfollowing that path.\n\n------\nzxcvvcxz\nIt's a very idealistic message, but I think it's worth thinking about from\ntime to time. I used to (still sorta do) think that entrepreneurship for\npeople in my age range (20s) was a potential answer. But oftentimes the urge\nto _run a startup_ outweights the urge to create something of greater value.\nI'm not saying a lot of startups shouldn't exist, but I find it kind of\nridiculous that I know aerospace engineers making shopping apps. A bit of this\nis fine, if you have some special domain knowledge / experience / insight that\ncan really change this space. Oftentimes though, people just do what's\nfashionable or safe.\n\n------\nowenjones\nDon't worry about the \"real-world consequences [of] fail[ure]\" because the\nauthor sure doesn't seem to either. For the risk-averse out there, don't you\nhave some family to \"fall back on so [you] will be unlikely to starve\"?\n\nI think the headline should be: We Need To Lower The Consequences of Failure\n\n------\nbishopknight\nI was just reading the other day how a kid build a brail writing machine out\nof Legos. Google it. Afterwards, tons of people are contacting him with\nopportunities. He smartly found a niche where brail machines were highly\nexpensive and produced a low cost alternative with free plans distributed. On\nthe flip side is he undercutting the makers of the brail machines? Perhaps,\nbut hes helping the \"greater good\".\n\nSo what are the projects and ideas we can tackle? I myself am in a unique\nposition where I have the time to develop such a project. I'm an experienced\nJ2EE developer with Web Design skills. I'd even be willing to work with others\non a worthy project.\n\n~~~\nhershel\nYou could find a few ideas here:\n\n[http://www.reddit.com/r/realproblemsolvers](http://www.reddit.com/r/realproblemsolvers)\n\n------\nhenryaj\nGlad this article made the front page. I like the author's message, and while\nthere are a lot of comments here about how US college students graduate with\ncolossal amounts of debt, that isn't true everywhere -- like over here in the\nUK, where student debt are fairly reasonable and paid back in proportion to\nyour income.\n\nI found the article hauntingly accurate, at least for me: a child of well-off\nparents, not left wanting for anything and with every possibility open to me,\nbut fundamentally risk-averse because of some misplaced sense of\nresponsibility and duty.\n\n------\nmkaziz\n> What’s interesting is that many of the people I meet who are young, highly\n> educated, and from good families are among the most risk-averse\n\nI would think that because these people are risk-averse, is why they have the\nstability that can help form a bedrock for \"success\". (Disclaimer- I'm biased\nbecause I'm risk-averse)\n\n------\nBeasting247\nFinance and consulting are the biggest brain drains and it's a huge impediment\nto society. But until someone starts leveling the playing field compensation-\nwise, our brightest graduates will continue to flock to finance/consulting.\n\n------\nrottyguy\nYoung people are one segment. Those hitting a wall in their late 30's/40's are\nanother. Just need folks with an itch to scratch young or old(er)\n\n------\nnamelezz\nI wonder if the writer is going to inspire his own children.\n\n------\nFomite\nI have a really hard time taking this seriously from Fast Company of all\nplaces.\n\n------\nhiphopyo\nTLDR -- People need to build things. Also, here's a story about some kid who\ngot rich.\n\n------\nmichaelochurch\nFirst of all, the VC-funded startup scene is not an antidote. I heard people,\nin 2008, expressing hope that the financial meltdown (at the time, it was not\nclear that the financial industry wouldn't contract to 1/20 of its pre-2008\nsize) would push smart people into Silicon Valley. That wouldn't do much good.\nThe VC-funded world has a corporate ladder that is even more dysfunctional,\npacking more downside and less upside.\n\nSecond, this person (\"Cole\") is right to take the hedge fund job because it\nhas a far higher chance of making him a founder or VC, in the future, than an\nengineer position at a startup ever will. When finance people (after a few\nyears) enter the VC-funded tech world, they come in at the top. Seems like a\ngood deal to me.\n\nSilicon Valley doesn't respect its own people. It doesn't respect the people\nmaking things. Because of that, it's dead as far as innovation goes, and the\ndeath of Silicon Valley has done a lot more damage to society than the mere\nexistence of finance.\n\n------\na3voices\n_> > What would the ideal be? There’s a renewable energy startup in\nProvidence, Rhode Island, called VCharge that probably could have used Cole\ntoo. Its chief science officer, Jessica Millar, has a PhD in math from MIT.\nVCharge is trying to make our energy grid more efficient using energy storage\nand transmission algorithms. It’s not a sure thing, but if it succeeds we’ll\nall be better off for it._\n\nHow is a more efficient energy grid the ideal? It sounds very status quo to\nme.\n\nThe ideal would be doubling human life expectancy, building massive Elysium-\nlike space stations that orbit the Earth, a guaranteed minimum income for\neveryone, and stuff like that. It seems like everyone lacks an imagination\nnowadays. Where are the people who used to invent things like airplanes and\nsuch?\n\n~~~\nmoron4hire\nThey work as quantitative trading engineers at giganto investment banks. Or\nthey are underprivileged people who have the potential to do more, but are\nplacated by the soma of social media. Or they're somewhere in the middle,\naspiring to develop better soma.\n\nIt is a rare combination to find the ability and the ambition (for something\nother than just economic gain) to make new, exciting things of real value. You\nhave to have all three. Drive, intellectual and economic means, and vision.\nWith the growing gap between rich and poor (or, in other words, the\nevaporation of the middle class), it's probably not getting better anytime\nsoon, either.\n\n~~~\nmkaziz\nIntellectual and economic means aren't hard to come across - it's mostly a\ngenetic lottery.\n\nDrive? Vision? They're far harder to have.\n\n------\nDewie\nThe author complains that the success story does not make for a good story.\nBut this is a person's life, not a novel. That people can take predictable and\nincremental steps towards leading a good life is a good thing. But maybe that\nis exactly why we tend to glamorize struggle, risk and unpredictable\nadventures - because our lives in these relatively streamlined, modern\nsocieties are so boring?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Advice in collecting dues from a membership organization/club? - middlegeek\n\nI help out with a 500 member organization, an alumni-type of group. Everyone in this organization is a volunteer. We don't have a lot of funds at the moment, we are just now moving from a loose unorganized collection of people with a similar background to an actual orgnization.<p>* Can you please recommend a service to automate the collection of dues from members of an organization? We'd like to offer them the option of having a $5 - $20 per month taken out of their checking account. Obviously participation is voluntary and opt in.<p>I have seen what PayPal and BlackBaud have to offer. Other options? Can we get a better rate than having the provider take 4.9% and $.30 per transaction?<p>I'd love to hear your recommendations and experience if you have had it in this area.<p>Thanks!\n======\njohnny22\njust depends on if you want to build it, or let somebody else run it. Off the\ntop of my head.\n\n1\\. \"web 2.0\" SaaS like recur.ly\n\n2\\. wepay.com\n\n3\\. whatever your merchant account offers \\- they are all starting to offer\nrecurring subscription as part of their API. (perhaps for an extra fee)\n\n~~~\nmiddlegeek\nWe are definitely looking for something pre-built and do not have a merchant\naccount.\n\nRecur.ly looks a little pricey. Wepay does recurring billing, but not\nrecurring payments.\n\nThanks, though!\n\n------\nmotvbi\nwepay.com is one option, their fees are listed here wepay.com/about/fees\n\n~~~\nmiddlegeek\nThey do recurring billing, but not recurring payments. We want a \"set it and\nforget it\" option for people to choose.\n\nThanks, though!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShip It Now Is The Best Time Ever To Start An Internet Company - jpirkola\nhttp://blog.socialmedian.com/2009/05/ship_it_now_is_the_best_time_e.html\n\n======\nJakob\n\"Think small. Think cheap. Think fast.\"\n\nI’d like to add \"Fail fast.\" because that’s what you likely will do thinking\n\"cheap\" and \"small\". Enough of this \"it’s so easy\"-posts already.\n\nHe seems to be an intelligent guy but this post has just no content. (Except\nthose 25 occurrences of \"ship it\").\n\n~~~\nsocialmedian\nFail fast, for sure. Give yourself one year to prove it. If you can't prove it\nin a year, move on. There are plenty of other interesting problems to solve.\n\n------\ntybris\nAlso, you might want to offer a compelling product...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThings Worth Knowing About Coffee - pegobry\nhttp://theoatmeal.com/comics/coffee\n======\nstcredzero\nThe most important thing I know about coffee: most of what you buy in stores\nis _stale_. Even vacuum-sealed roasted whole beans are a compromise,\nexpiration date notwithstanding. Buy roasted whole beans at a place that\nroasts every week, and posts the roast date on the bin. Never mind stuff being\nfrom Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Kona, &c. It's most important to get the degree of\nroast you like, as recently as possible.\n\nI go to the Allegro Roasters counter at Whole Foods each week and buy a medium\nroast from that day, or the day before. I have a cheap grinder at home, and I\njust use cheap #2 cone filters in a cheap single-cup cone brewer. I emphasize\nthat those last 3 items are _cheap_. You don't need a fancy-schmancy grinder.\nYou get a _huge_ bang for the buck just by using beans roasted in the past 2\nweeks. The other thing: make sure your water is the right temperature. (190 to\n195 degrees seems to work for me.) Just borrow a candy thermometer, always use\nthe same amount of water, the same pot, and figure out how long to wait to let\nthe water cool to the right temp.\n\nI have wowed friends with my coffee. Not rocket science. It's just brewed at\nthe right temp, and it's fresh!\n\nCheap cone brewer: <http://amzn.com/B001S353EQ>\n\nCone filters (hate the eco-guilt marketing, though):\n<http://amzn.com/B000U5ACLW>\n\nMy cheap grinder. Has nice design features. Still a mediocre grinder. Doesn't\nmatter so much. <http://amzn.com/B00006IUX5>\n\nAeropress for cheap DIY \"Espresso\" <http://amzn.com/B000GXZ2GS> (Don't have\none, but people seem to like it.)\n\nEDIT: I grind for 20-25 seconds with my blade grinder. Again, this works for\nme. YMMV.\n\n~~~\nmseebach\n100% agree on freshly roasted bean. I see people put week-old store-brand\ncoffee beans in a $500 Kitchen Aid grinder and serve a cup of absolutely vile\ntasting coffee. Some people simply don't deserve nice things.\n\nHowever, a Burr grinder is good investment, especially if you need the finer\ngrinds. The cheapest one you can find will do fine, however.\n\nThe blade-grinder will beat randomly around all your beans for the entire\ngrind-time. This will kick the crap out of the aromatic oils, and you lose\nsome flavour. The Burr grinder \"crunches\" each bean once and never touches it\nagain, leaving the oils alone.\n\n~~~\nstephencelis\nMost coffee is still good when it was roasted a week ago (whole-bean, of\ncourse, and true, a week is starting to push it). The problem is that plenty\nof places—Starbucks, etc.—sell several-month-old beans.\n\n~~~\nstcredzero\nTwo weeks is the outside for me. A big problem is that even sitting in an\nairtight container, the stuff _still_ ages.\n\n------\ntel\nThe roasting section actually has a few hidden gems. The first \"pop\" (called\nthe first crack in roasting lingo) occurs slightly after the green bean begins\nto brown from carmelization and the moisture trapped inside rapidly expands\nvia evaporation cracking the bean. After the first crack is known as a City\nRoast and is lighter, more woody and fruity tasting than the darker roasts.\n\nThe second crack occurs shortly after the first one at the end of the City\nRoast range as the cellulose matrices that form the coffee bean themselves\nbegin to break down from the heat damage. At exactly the start of the second\ncrack the beans are called Vienna roasted and begin to have darker, richer\nflavors. These coffees are where you hear about honey and chocolate flavors.\n\nAs you keep going the beans will continue to crack as they begin to literally\ndegrade to ash. Further carbonization begins to take over the flavor alongside\nthe aromatic oils which seep out of the now lipid-hostile inner bean\nenvironment. These form the oily-looking French roasts which are known for\nstrong flavors, intense bodies, and bitterness.\n\nIf you do start to buy fresh coffee, play with the roasts. A single bean from\na single place in the world has a _wide_ spectrum of flavors depending on how\nlong it's been roasted.\n\nNotes: <http://www.sweetmarias.com/roasting-VisualGuideV2.php>\n\n~~~\nlssndrdn\nReally nice explaination! Now I'm trying to resist shopping for a home coffee\nroaster, _right this second_...\n\n~~~\nkhafra\nIf you do shop, bear in mind that you can get great results inexpensively with\na modified popcorn maker; there's DIY guides and instructables all over the\nplace for all different brands.\n\n------\nimok20\nI've had some of the best homemade coffee by using (1) fresh beans (2) a\nFrench press.\n\nMy secret to a good roast is <http://www.stumptowncoffee.com/> \\- you can't go\nwrong with a good roast there. Not only that, but you can order the specific\ncoarseness you'd like the coffee ground at, and they roast it and grind it\nafter you order and send it to you with priority mail. It's nearly as fresh as\nit gets, anywhere in the US.\n\n------\ndylanz\nI have a friend who meticulously puts a small pinch of salt in her coffee\nbefore brewing. She says the salt slightly cuts down the acidity, and the\nflavor comes out a bit more. I'm not sure of the science behind it, but, she\nmakes a damn good cup of coffee.\n\n------\nmichael_h\nAnother fun fact: a shot of espresso generally has slightly less caffeine than\na regular cup of coffee.\n\nNot sure why, but I'd always assumed a shot of espresso was like a\nconcentrated giant cup of regular roast. However, a regular sized cup of\nespresso is a different story...\n\n~~~\nrdtsc\nI could be just a matter of volume. The volume ratio is greater than the\nconcentration ratio. You can say the same thing about espresso vs. soda --\ndrinking a shot of espresso will probably result in less caffeine than downing\na large soda bottle. For example 1oz a espresso would have about 70mg of\ncaffeine, which is less than 20oz of Diet Coke (80mg of caffeine).\n\n------\ngcheong\n\"Coffee was originally eaten\". When I worked in the Alaskan fish canneries\nduring summer break from college, one of the things we used to do to help stay\nawake and alert during peak times was eat chocolate covered coffee beans.\n\n------\nchrischen\nYou guys should also know there's a coffee called Kopi Luwak, where the beans\nare ingested, shit out, and then people make coffee out of that.\n\n------\njcapote\nDoes anyone know of a brand of coffee thats 100% robusta?\n\n~~~\njrockway\nThe cheap grocery store brands.\n\n------\nsleepingbot\nJared Diamond explains in \"Guns, Germs & Steel\" that coffee beans were first\ndomesticated in what's currently Ethiopia, yes, and from there it spreaded\nthrough Eurasia via de Fertile Crescent.\n\nDoes that fact have anything to do with the battle between Starbucks and\nEthiopian local coffee producers around the right of using the names of the\ndifferent local coffee beans?\n\n~~~\npegobry\nNot that I can tell.\n\nThe Economist had a very good article on this dispute a while back, don't know\nif it's been paywalled yet.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nJQuery Super Labels Plugin - remybach\nhttps://github.com/remybach/jQuery.superLabels\nThis plugin positions your labels on top of your form fields (similiar visually to placeholder) and makes the label slide across the field when gaining focus and fade out when a value is entered.\n======\nphzbOx\nIt's cute but too much distracting IMO. I prefer to have it fade a little bit\non focus and disappear on writing.\n\n~~~\nremybach\nThere's an option to do that:\n\n$('form').superLabels({ slide:false });\n\n------\n5h\nSeems OTT to me,\n\nI generally use normal boring labels, then modernizer to detect if the browser\nsupports placeholders, if so hide the labels and add placeholders to the\nattributes\n\n~~~\nremybach\nOh, also... once you're in the field, the placeholder disappears and you have\nno idea what you were meant to type (which is why the plugin slides to the\nside by default).\n\n~~~\nflixic\nNo. Placeholders stay visible until user starts typing. That is, empty focused\nfield still has visible placeholder.\n\n~~~\nSkalman\nOnly in Chrome. Not in Firefox, at least.\n\n~~~\nremybach\nTrue! It wasn't like this when I wrote the plugin though, plus I needed the\neffect to work cross-browser.\n\n------\njonknee\nFWIW, Safari and Chrome both keep placeholder text there like this plug-in\ndoes (without the animation). It'd be nice to get FireFox on board.\n\n~~~\nKeithamus\nYes, in -webkit- browsers you can achieve the same effect with this CSS:\n\n    \n    \n            &::-webkit-input-placeholder {\n                -webkit-transition: text-indent 200ms ease-in-out;\n                visibility: visible !important;\n            }\n    \n            &:focus::-webkit-input-placeholder {\n                text-indent: 115px; /* Change to width of input */\n            }\n    \n\nIf only you could do the same for Firefox...\n\n~~~\nbtucker\n<https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/:-moz-placeholder>\n\n------\negze\nShould probably use stop() before animating or else there's a funny effect if\nI click the fields back and forth really fast.\n\n~~~\nremybach\nHmmm... not quite a real-world scenario though. I like to consider it a quirky\neaster-egg :)\n\n------\ndavid_a_r_kemp\nhow do you get the labels back again? sometimes my browser or password manager\nfills in the wrong fields, and, once there's something in the fields, there's\nno labels.\n\n~~~\nremybach\nYeah, I've got an issue open on github for this. I'll fix it when I get the\nchance. Thanks :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: How do BitTorent Bundles work - steren\nhttp://bundle-help.bittorrent.com/customer/portal/articles/1697610-what-is-a-protected-torrent-?b_id=3886\n\n======\nhnha\nI would guess that they do it similarly to private trackers. Each user gets a\nunique and secret ID which is transmitted when announcing. The tracker then\ndecides if the user is allowed to get the swarm details.\n\n~~~\naidos\nDoes that have the same benefits in terms of distributing the sources?\n\nI just purchased the new Thom Yorke album [0] via a bundle and it felt like a\nregular torrent. Very quick to download etc.\n\n[0]\n[https://bundles.bittorrent.com/bundles/d0b4beba8efc4b46f6dba...](https://bundles.bittorrent.com/bundles/d0b4beba8efc4b46f6dba119b511a5b2d5cabc96168c0dc097ee9d514059ab63)\n\n~~~\nspindritf\nSee what kind of announce URL is included in the .torrent. Is it just\n\n    \n    \n        udp://tracker.publicbt.com:80/announce\n    \n\nor does it include information that could be used to identify you, like\n\n    \n    \n        http://tracker.bittorrentbundle.net:3000/3pr4s5y7l9nh0mdwcqyh3a9k6n7d0kta/announce\n    \n\nOther than tracker identifying you, seeding and downloading works the same in\nboth cases.\n\n~~~\njc4p\nJust anyone else is wondering, it's:\n\n    \n    \n        http://tracker.bundles.bittorrent.com/tracker/{a whole lot of hex}\n\n------\ngcb0\nlawyers.\n\nregardless of how they configure their trackers, this only works if people\ndont use clients that use others trackers\n\n~~~\nlawl\nI'm not sure why you're downvoted, technically you are (probably?) correct.\n\nIf they use technology similar to private trackers, that won't help against\npeer exchange.\n\nAnd yes I think other trackers could announce the same torrent and have people\njoin the same swarm.\n\nI could not imagine what else they'd do.\n\n------\ndmerrick\nIt appears that Thom Yorke's new album has been released using this feature:\n\n[https://bundles.bittorrent.com/bundles/d0b4beba8efc4b46f6dba...](https://bundles.bittorrent.com/bundles/d0b4beba8efc4b46f6dba119b511a5b2d5cabc96168c0dc097ee9d514059ab63)\n\n~~~\nsteren\nYes that was why I asked. I did not know about Bundles or private tracker\nbefore downloading this album.\n\n------\nsteren\nStrangely enough, I downloaded Thom York's album yesterday from Bittorrent\nBundle, and this morning my torrent is displaying an error: \"Tracker gave HTTP\nresponse code 402 (Payment required)\".\n\nSo I guess it's not very torrent friendly, as I cannot seed any more.\n\n~~~\nkzahel\nYeah I am getting also a 402 response from the tracker. I wish they would have\nput up a BEP or something with an explanation of how they're extending the\ntracker protocol...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow I Turned an Idea into $7K by Teaching Online - leerob\nhttps://leerob.io/blog/teach-online\n======\ngenofon\nIt's a great project, I would only make a small correction... What the author*\ncalls profit still includes all the time and effort you put in: building an\naudience, creating the course, building a reputation, marketing, etc.. Just to\nmake people understand that it's a lot of hard work and taking that not\nconsideration the ROI is much lower.\n\n*small correction: you->the author\n\n~~~\nleerob\nThat's a good point to call out. Building an audience and establishing\ncredibility takes time and effort. You pay an upfront cost, but having an\naudience will pay dividends in the future.\n\n------\nBossingAround\nTo me, it's counter-intuitive that people would pay $100 for a course on such\na niche topic such as NextJS. My experience with these courses is that they\nprovide all that's available for free (typically docs), but nicely packaged\nand with videos. And, especially if it is on a custom platform like this one,\nI'd be worried about them being kept up to date.\n\n~~~\nleerob\nHere's how I look at it. You're absolutely right you can learn everything on\nyour own––but how long would it take? How much is your time worth?\n\nIs $100 for five hours of video worth the years of experience the author might\nhave? For me, it is.\n\n~~~\nansq\n+1. You can easily turn 10 hours of connecting the dots into 2 hours with the\nright materials.\n\nThough in my experience, the courses on Udemy/Udacity and the like have been\ndisappointing. I always get the feeling that they're trying to fill up time,\nand they tend to move really slowly.\n\nI've had more luck with books being very useful.\n\n~~~\nBossingAround\nI often go through these \"amazing courses\", everything makes sense, everything\nworks, and then I'm unable to do anything other than what the course showed.\nSo, I'm still forced to spend some hours outside of the course to really\nlearn.\n\nThis 2-hour-course vs 10-hour-learning is a false dichotomy to me.\n\n~~~\nansq\nYMMV. I chose 'materials' instead of courses specifically since I've found\nbooks to be more useful.\n\nA course, or any kind of structured learning, is just a foundation. I would\nstill expect to spend hours outside of the course, but with a good background\nI can now search for more specific things than if I had started w/ a blank\nslate.\n\n------\ndagmx\nI had a similar experience with putting a course on udemy. Made about $4k in\nthe first month and $400-500 per month after. Completely passive income with\nno advertising and just word of mouth\n\n~~~\nleerob\nVery impressive, nice work. What was the course and would you recommend Udemy?\n\n~~~\nbdcravens\nWhat made you choose your own site vs Udemy? I'm interested in my own courses,\nbut I know that Udemy comes with a built in audience (with the understanding\nthat the prices they charge are pretty much highway robbery for course\ncreators)\n\n~~~\nleerob\nYou can't contact your customers via email through Udemy. My customers are my\naudience and having an email list is crucial. After I found Gumroad, it was a\nno-brainer to use their platform.\n\nThe course site is basically just a marketing page. There's information about\nthe course, some blog posts, and the ability to pay. That's it.\n\nThe biggest advantage of Udemy is its audience. How much are you willing to\nsacrifice for using Udemy to gain an audience? I'd argue you should build the\naudience first, then sell the product.\n\n------\namelius\nFor those wondering: this is about a video course on Next.js and React.\n\n------\nbdcravens\nYou say it took about 6 months, but what would you say that actual time outlay\nfor the course creation itself was?\n\n~~~\nleerob\nI had the idea in October and started creating in November. Made the first\nvideo, launched a pre-order, and worked on the content until January. The\ncourse went live in February.\n\n------\nsaadalem\nIt's me that shared your post about stripe, I discovered your blog by\nsearching something about dashboards, keep going !\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFacebook Home destroys any notion of privacy - shawndumas\nhttp://gigaom.com/2013/04/04/why-facebook-home-bothers-me-it-destroys-any-notion-of-privacy/\n======\nmattmaroon\nThis is idiotic. For one, it's no secret which apps are popular. Facebook\ndoesn't need a trojan horse to figure that out, they just need to look at App\nAnnie.\n\nFor another, any app with location services permissions can do exactly what\nhe's describing.\n\nAlso what does \"Android allows Facebook to do whatever it wants on the\nplatform, and that means accessing the hardware as well,\" mean? Unless you're\nrolling your own version of Android (is that what's on the HTC First?) that's\nsimply not true. You have access to a few things you don't on iOS but it's not\n\"whatever you want\" if you're putting it in the Play app store.\n\nAs far as I can tell this is just another third party launcher with the same\nprivacy implications as any app that has GPS permissions.\n\n~~~\ndanilocampos\n> As far as I can tell this is just another third party launcher with the same\n> privacy implications as any app that has GPS permissions.\n\nExcept for the part where no other app collects or maintains anywhere near as\nmuch data about your personal history, your friends, what you look like, what\nyour friends look like, what you like, what your friends like, who you talk\nto, what you talk about, what your friends talk about, which services you\nsubscribe to, where you went to school, where you worked, when you worked,\nwhen you graduated, when you began a relationship, when you ended a\nrelationship, your sexual preferences...\n\nI could keep going.\n\n~~~\nmattmaroon\nFacebook already has that data and gives most of it away via connect to third\nparties with a click. If you're already using Facebook, and using location-\nbased apps, then getting upset over this is silly.\n\n~~~\ndanilocampos\nYou're free to feel any way you'd like. I don't have a strong opinion.\n\nThat said – Facebook's long record of privacy over-reaches is well\nestablished. My hunch is that given the high value a smartphone, and its data,\nhas in people's lives, a position of caution is probably a lot more reasonable\nthan plugging one's ears and saying \"Everything is going to be just _fine_.\"\n\nSoftware is changeable. Who knows what they'll do once they're entrenched.\n\nWho knows what will become possible.\n\n------\nNursie\nI'm not sure why I would allow Facebook on to my phone in the first place, let\nalone to run the whole show. Their privacy record isn't exactly great and runs\ncontrary to their business model.\n\nI don't trust their app (look at the email address change nonsense), let alone\na bigger one, and the page renders just fine in a mobile browser. I also find\nthe whole \"ping me when a close friend does or says anything\" aspect of the\napp as I've seen others use it to be a little obsessive and possibly even\ncreepy.\n\n~~~\nunreal37\nIf you don't trust them, you wouldn't install this app. So... whats the issue?\nNobody will be harmed by this.\n\n~~~\nNursie\n_\"If you don't trust them, you wouldn't install this app. So... whats the\nissue?\"_\n\nOther people will install it without thinking about the implications.\n\n _\"Nobody will be harmed by this.\"_\n\nWhat definition of 'harm' are we using? Because they've already shown that\ngiven access to people's address books they cause trouble.\n\n~~~\nscott_meade\nIt's interesting to consider if it's really your or my job to call on the\ngovernment to \"protect\" other people that don't think about the implications.\nMy answer would be sorry, but no.\n\n~~~\nNursie\nWho said anything about the government??\n\n~~~\ndmlorenzetti\nThe original post ends with this: \"We need to ask our legislative\nrepresentatives to understand that Facebook wants to go from our desktops and\nbrowsers right into our home-- the place where we need to be private.\"\n\n~~~\nNursie\nLOL. I guess the 7 people who upvoted me didn't read to the end of the article\neither :)\n\n------\narindone\nSome thoughts:\n\n1) this article is based upon hypothetical notions about what Home \"may\" do,\ndespite it being not even released yet\n\n2) Google has collected user data for ages via Android for Google Now and few\ncomplained about privacy issues -- all data from its various accounts are\naggregated into one centralized location to target ads more effectively for\nusers. If you're really going to cry about privacy issues you need to be fair\nhere and hold everyone accountable, and not just sites you may not like.\n\n3) The majority of people may not care, frankly -- people optimizes their\nutility differently.\n\n~~~\nrayiner\n> few complained about privacy issues\n\nEveryone complains about Google's privacy issues. I remember having a class\ndiscussion on it a couple of years ago.\n\n~~~\nunreal37\nA couple of years ago... and that Google Privacy discussion ended within days\nof starting.\n\n------\nzmmmmm\nI find this line extremely cynical:\n\n> Facebook is going to use all this data — not to improve our lives — but to\n> target better marketing and advertising messages at us\n\nIt's entirely possible that better targeted marketing and advertising can\n\"improve\" our lives. To state this outcome as a dire dystopian end point is\nmaking a huge cynical assumption about the motives of companies and commerce\nin general. I honestly believe that Facebook (and Google for that matter)\nactually want to improve our lives. I honestly believe that they think that\nthey can introduce advertising in such a way that it's a win win for both\nparties, at least for a significant number of people.\n\nThat doesn't mean I'm naive about things, or even agree. But to see this\nassumption - that these companies are out to intentionally make our lives\nworse - written into editorial reporting as if it's a foregone conclusion, is\ndisappointing.\n\n~~~\neplanit\nI believe you mis-characterized the statement you're objecting to: \"...not to\nimprove our lives — but to target better marketing and advertising messages at\nus.\"\n\n\"but to target better marketing and advertising messages at us\" does not equal\n\"are out to intentionally make our lives worse\". His point is that is clear\nthat FB _will_ benefit from the newly acquired data. You have confidence we\nall _might_ benefit. The OP points out FB's history, which is undeniably\nhistoric in how it has challenged social norms for privacy. It is also no\nsecret that FB (and Google, and ...) make money from advertising, and that\nrich datasets of details about people make for financially richer advertisers.\nSkepticism (maybe a little cynicism, even) is not unhealthy or \"mean\", in this\ncontext.\n\n------\nyalogin\nThe article brings up a very good point about FB getting access to a lot more\nuser data on the phone outside of their app since they essentially are\nreplacing the app launcher as well. Google gets access to all this data by\nowning the OS. FB in that sense made a brilliant play. It kind of corrupts\ngoogle's data collection as well since all user interaction will be going\nthrough the FB Home app now.\n\nAlso its kind of naive to expect facebook to respect privacy when all they do\nis deal with data.\n\n~~~\norangethirty\nYou think Google will let that happen? They are enemies competing for the same\nmarket. What I think will happen is that Facebook will fork Android, offer\nfacebook edition phones, and simply one up google. How come? Google is awfully\nbad at marketing, and Facebook is not.\n\n~~~\nwting\nNot too long ago when iOS was released users jumped ship to Android due to the\nmaps fiasco.\n\nIf Facebook forks Android, do you think people are willing to give up Google's\necosystem in exchange for Facebook's?\n\nEven if you find Facebook chat / messages a viable replacement for Gtalk /\nGmail, this still means no access to Google Play Store.\n\nAmazon was willing to create a second competing marketplace and sell its\ndevices as media players, but Facebook will not have those in place if they\nfork Android. Do you think Facebook has enough leverage to pull this off?\n\nI don't think so, but since the phone is already in the works time will tell.\n\n~~~\nmyko\n> Not too long ago when iOS was released users jumped ship to Android due to\n> the maps fiasco.\n\nI don't think this really happened very much, but I'd love to see some\nnumbers. Maybe a lot of tech enthusiasts waited on upgrading to stick with\nGoogle Maps until the new Google Maps came out.\n\n> Amazon was willing to create a second competing marketplace and sell its\n> devices as media players, but Facebook will not have those in place if they\n> fork Android. Do you think Facebook has enough leverage to pull this off?\n\nI would be surprised if Facebook went this way and didn't stay within the\nbounds other phone makers do and get Google certification. There is no reason\nwhy Google wouldn't allow Facebook to sell a phone with Google Play on it.\n\n------\njfernandez\n\"This future is going to happen – and it is too late to debate. However, the\nproblem is that Facebook is going to use all this data — not to improve our\nlives — but to target better marketing and advertising messages at us.\"\n\nA little sensationalized? It's most definitely a strong mix of both sides, not\neveryone at Facebook is \"evil\". Honestly I think most of us can agree Facebook\non average is useful service that has improved our lives. So yes it will\nprobably help target us, the product, better to marketing/advertising.\n\nAs more and more promising services get absorbed or shutdown maybe it'll get\nclearer and clearer that if you dont want your data to be the product itself\nthen we should start paying for the services we care about.\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nI don't use the word \"evil\" pretty much for anybody, but I think the business\nmodel is at the very least screwed up. If it's a valuable service, why do they\nhave to be so shady? I'd happily pay facebook $10/month or whatever (I can't\nimagine they make more than that on ads on me) to use their service. The\nproblem is that they make it seem free, and people just don't understand the\nextent to which it tracks you. It's the same business model car dealerships\nuse when they try to steer you towards negotiating in terms of monthly\npayments to avoid your focusing on the bottom line cost--you can get more out\nof people when you hide the ball about how much your service actually costs\nthem.\n\nIndeed, my non-technical friends have only the vaguest idea that their usage\nhas a correlation with the ads (Facebook isn't exactly full-disclosure about\nhow their targeted ad model works). This is especially true with kids. You\nthink my 13 year old nephew understands the privacy implications of using\nFacebook?\n\nThere is also the worry of what happens when Facebook stops being \"the good\nguys\" (which is a possibility for any corporation). What happens when the\nconstant push to meet analyst expectations causes them to monetize user data\nin more and more insidious ways? I don't think anyone thought at first that\nthe credit card companies were \"evil\", but the whole credit card/credit score\nmafia is doing legitimately devestating things to many peoples' lives now.\nSome people can't get jobs because of their credit scores. What happens when\nFacebook starts selling user data to employers doing background checks? Do we\njust assume that Facebook is full of \"people like us\" so they would never do\nthat?\n\n~~~\nonedev\nIs Google's business model screwed up as well?\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nWell, to the extent that Google+ is a wannabe Facebook, it can't be any\nbetter, right?\n\nWithout getting into an argument of which is worse, I think ultimately\nFacebook is more dangerous. Facebook has tremendous network effects and lock-\ndown effects. I can switch from Google to DDG easily, but as long as my family\nin Bangladesh uses Facebook to post pictures of my nieces and nephews, my\nability to switch away from Facebook is limited.\n\nAnd I don't personally care--I'm not a private person and anything you want to\nknow about me is probably on the internet. But I'm making an informed decision\n(within the constraints of the fact that Google and Facebook don't disclose\nexactly how they use your information, but I assume the worst). In my\nexperience, most people who use Google and Facebook aren't.\n\nDon't get me wrong. I think this stuff is useful. But there needs to be more\ntransparency and more restraint than there is. A ban on collecting data on\nminors would be a start.\n\n~~~\nonedev\nYou know advertisers collect data about what you watch on TV? Certain channels\ncater to certain type of people so ad buyers would buy ads based on\ndemographics of a certain show (for example, Shark Tank has one of the highest\navg income audiences in the country, so it would make sense for Mercedes to\nadvertise when the show airs) .\n\nPeople seem to forget that it was the original targeted advertising. You\nsubliminally got targeted by demographic specific ads based on the type of\nshows you were interested in. It just so happens that the way Google and\nFacebook do it is way more high tech.\n\nThe data goes into their platform, they dont' sell it. I think maintaining a\nhealthy paranoia is good and we should pressure the companies to be better\nwith our data. However, as long as they maintain security as a strong value, I\nthink it'll be ok. At least I myself personally don't mind them holding my\ndata as long as it is secure and private to me.\n\n~~~\nrayiner\n> You know advertisers collect data about what you watch on TV?\n\nNot unless you have a Nielsen box.\n\n------\nalanctgardner2\nEverything he's complaining about is a feature in Google Now. Google Now does\nknow where my house is based on where I stay during the night. It figured out\nwhere my girlfriend lives, and tries to route me there sometimes. It knows\nwhere I work. It knows when I'm expecting a package from eBay, where I shop,\nwhere I go to eat out. Based on those signals, it probably knows how much\ndisposable income I have. This is just Facebook getting jealous over how well\nGoogle has sucked all of this data out of it's userbase.\n\nAs an aside, Google Now is pretty awesome, and I trust our Google Overlords to\nnot use my personal information for evil.\n\n~~~\nleephillips\n\"I trust our Google Overlords to not use my personal information for evil.\"\n\nWhat do you consider \"evil\"? You must already accept that they are, or plan\nto, sell your personal information to advertisers - because why else would\nthey bother setting this service up? Purely for your convenience? So you've\nmade your peace with that, and don't consider it evil, which is entirely up to\nyou. But someone else may feel very differently about this.\n\n------\nSkittlesNTwix\nI know this doesn't ring true for most people, but I'm actively looking to\ndistance myself from facebook. It doesn't make me \"happy\" for the most part.\nIt doesn't add to my overall level of fulfillment. Most of my \"friends\" on fb\naren't real friends and often I'm not truly interested in what they're doing.\nThese are all common complaints - nothing new here, but they're all the reason\nwhy I'm not interested in incorporating what fb already does, more deeply into\nmy life.\n\n~~~\nmsutherl\nIt's a great idea! I've removed everybody from my news feed and use it for\nevents, email, and finding keeping track of people I meet (Rolodex).\n\n------\nferongr\nInstead of bloggers and \"journalists\" complaining about a service they do not\npay for, they should do the only thing they can. Delete their accounts. I saw\nthe writing on the wall 3 years ago and did it. I was not worse off\nafterwards.\n\nPassively complaining (while at the same time, ironically, including FB\nbuttons) without taking actual actions does nothing.\n\n------\nVeejayRampay\nRight, cause pre-Home Facebook was so respectful of people's private lives...\n\n~~~\nkmfrk\nThere's an Apple-tastic motto for you:\n\n    \n    \n       All your privacy is gone. Again.\n\n~~~\nSystemic33\n_Giving up privacy has never been this much fun_\n\n~~~\nnewman314\nIt is a magical experience!\n\n------\nanigbrowl\nGet rid of the sharing buttons and tracking cookies on your page and maybe\nI'll take your argument seriously.\n\n------\nu2328\nIt's concerning to me, because I'm worried about this social network creep\nover our phones. Of course, I'm not going to install this crap, but if\nFacebook Home proves successful for Facebook, will Google move in the same\ndirection? (Yes.) We've already seen Google kill off Google Reader in hopes of\ndriving more traffic to Google Plus.\n\nThis is what prevents me from getting too invested in a mobile ecosystem like\nAndroid or iOS. I like smartphones, but I want the device to serve me, not\nGoogle or Facebook's advertisers.\n\n~~~\nuntog\n_will Google move in the same direction?_\n\nThey could already have if they wanted to- they own the code for the stock\nlauncher, after all.\n\n~~~\nu2328\nRight, but it's all about the incentives. If they did that now, there would be\na big backlash against Google and Android. However, with Facebook leading the\nway, it could become a plausible scenario to see some similar behavior from\nGoogle.\n\nHopefully not, though. I hope this whole thing is a disaster for Facebook.\n\n------\nrecloop\nThis is one of those posts with a scandalous headline to draw you in, but\nwithout anything substantial to back it up. I am quite disappointed that this\ncame from a stalwart of a tech blogger like Om Malik. I can understand this\ncoming from an MG Siegler or an Arrington or from the joke of a blog, Gizmodo.\n\nIt hinges on the GPS location, which Apple does, quite publicly with theing\nlike Find my iPhone. Google does that already, and so do every other GPS\ndevice on earth. I don't even need to know if you are stationary at one\nlocation every night. I can just connect the dots on your end points of your\ntrips and figure it out.\n\nHeck even an app like Yelp can figure my home address, based on my restaurant\nsearches. Facebook already knows much more about us, with or without our\npermission; just by using the website.\n\n------\nHavoc\nNever trusted FB to begin with. I've got a profile that forwards notifications\nto my email in case someone needs to contact me. Good luck extracting data\nfrom that.\n\n------\ncbeach\n\"the problem is that Facebook is going to use all this data — not to improve\nour lives — but to target better marketing and advertising messages at us\"\n\nIf \"the problem\" is more relevant advertising, I for one, welcome Facebook\nHome. When advertising becomes useful to me I might stop blocking it.\n\n~~~\nfreehunter\nIt's a controversial topic, but I agree. If the privacy issue is handled\nproperly (advertisers are not allowed to access any data about you) and the\nads are not terribly intrusive, advertising based on what I'm actually\ninterested in and looking for is useful. I'm not the kind of person who gets\nirrationally angry about any advertising at all, only if it gets in the way of\nwhat I'm trying to do at the moment.\n\n------\nleeoniya\ni will just say that Firefox OS cannot arrive quickly enough.\n\n~~~\nZikes\nI'm not sure how Firefox OS vs Android OS really factors into the discussion.\nIf Firefox OS is fully-featured and open enough to become an alternative to\nAndroid, FB Home could conceivably be built to run just as well on Firefox OS\nas on Android.\n\n~~~\nleeoniya\nyes, but i'm expecting mozilla will have vastly more granular and privacy-\nfirst oriented permissions than android. since google wants your data, and\nmozilla does not.\n\nideally, i would like to hook and script a conditional firewall of sorts\nbetween any apps and my hardware or data. for example, i dont want any app\nquerying my location when i am at home or at work. how awesome would it be to\nset rules like this?\n\nsome invasive permissions are ok when i choose to allow them, but not\nindefinitely so long as the app lives on my phone, which is the situation\nright now. i can do a lot of quasi-scripting with Tasker for android, but not\nnearly enough.\n\n~~~\ntrhtrsh\nYou know how Mozilla makes their money, right?\n\n[https://www.google.com/search?q=ok&rls=org.mozilla:en-\nUS...](https://www.google.com/search?q=ok&rls=org.mozilla:en-\nUS:official&client=firefox-a)\n\n~~~\nleeoniya\nand? are you suggesting that google, by some logical extension, is influencing\nmozilla's privacy decisions in their OS?\n\n18% of internet users use firefox. thats a lot of eyeballs google would be\nmissing out on without the search deal in place. they gets _much_ more out of\nthat arrangement than mozilla does to have any leverage. MS would be equally\nhappy to pay mozilla for that 18%. moz can easily find many other avenues to\nmake money while goog cannot find an extra 18% user base elsewhere.\n\n------\nivankirigin\n\n      The phone’s GPS can send constant information back to the Facebook servers, \n      telling it your whereabouts at any time.\n      \n\nI really hope someone can finally make something like Loopt work on\nsmartphones. I can't believe we need to manually check in to see where friends\nare right now. FindMyFriends on iOS requires your apple password, and much\nlike GameCenter, the social design is horrendous.\n\nFocusing just on the privacy side ignores all the benefits from giving a\nservice more information. Facebook isn't tricking users into this. Users want\nit.\n\n~~~\ntlrobinson\nHighlight?\n\n~~~\nivankirigin\nI get that they needed to drive engagement before they had ubiquity, but the\ninteraction became about seeing people I didn't know. Like most social\nproducts, the experience changes when more people are on it. In my opinion,\nFacebook, Apple, Google, and device makers are the only companies that can\nsolve this problem.\n\n------\ngavinlynch\nIf this is a problem for you, then don't use it.\n\n~~~\nsmiddereens\nYou don't get it man, there won't be a choice. You will be forced to use\nFacebook Home.\n\n~~~\nKarunamon\nOn one phone by one manufacturer. If you don't like the OS, don't buy the\nphone.\n\n------\nnonamegiven\nAds suck, but the bigger danger is that the uber-profile will be available for\nsubpoena, or the govt might just flip the fuckit bit and take it because they\ncan. Being allowed to run a billion dollar business unmolested by the govt\nwould be a strong incentive, especially for a company not known for privacy\nadvocacy.\n\n------\narthulia\nGoogle Now already does all of this. It deduced my address by scraping my\nemails, and somehow it knows where I work, too. When my airline tickets were\nemailed to me, it brought up flight tracker information and weather for both\narrival and destination cities. Creepy.\n\n~~~\ntrhtrsh\nYeah, and they make like 6 copies of every email you send or receive also.\nCreepy.\n\n------\nmalloreon\nI have an iphone and even if I had an android, I'd never install this app or\nget an HTC First. I cannot say the same for everyone I'm fb friends with.\n\nQuestion: if one of my fb friends installs this or buys that phone, will fb\nhave any additional access to MY personal data?\n\n~~~\ntrhtrsh\nObviously not, as Facebook already has ALL your data.\n\n------\nVinnix\nFacebook has a lot to offer and its design is showing to be top notch. I think\nbased on numbers they are a 'mobile' company, but all this fluff and desire to\nsandbox them from the others just proves that they aren't competing, but just\nbeing thrifty.\n\n------\njcomis\nI want to know how permissions will be handled on Facebook Home when\npreinstalled. Going through the play store, you will more or less see what you\nare agreeing to (likely, a huge list of everything possible). But\npreinstalled?\n\n~~~\ndesas\nI doubt it would prompt you for the permissions in a similar way to the play\nstore, I imagine that everything they need legally is probably covered by the\nfacebook ToS, or will be in an extra ToS clicked through on first use.\n\n------\nvoxmatt\nI think the more obvious and immediate threat to privacy is that anyone can\nsee the contents of your facebook stream right on the lock screen; and they\ncan even interact with the contents without unlocking the phone.\n\n~~~\nCrazedGeek\nDo we know if that's true if the phone is password protected? (Honest\nquestion, I haven't been able to watch the video.)\n\n~~~\nZikes\nAndroid already offers lock screen widgets, so it's possible FB Home will\ninclude something to that effect that would show even while the phone is\nlocked.\n\nIt would be entirely optional to use that widget, however, unless FB Home is\nable to replace the lock screen itself. As far as I know, that can't be done\nwithout rooting the device.\n\n~~~\nvoxmatt\nIt's pretty clear from the website and the coverage that it does replace the\nlock screen itself: <https://www.facebook.com/home>\n\nNow, whether or not it replaces the lock screen when it has a\npasscode/security, is a different story.\n\nBut, by default, your FB info is available just by tapping the unlock\nbutton/home button BUT BEFORE you unlock.\n\n------\njoshguthrie\nTL;DR: \"I already tell Facebook all it needs to know, but this new thing is\ngonna destroy all my privacy (like the Timeline did, like the Graph API did,\nlike FBConnect did,...)\"\n\n------\nkillion\nSo previously your private information went to Google/Samsung or HTC or\nMotorola/Your carrier, now it will go to Facebook/Google/Samsung or HTC or\nMotorola/Your carrier?\n\n~~~\nbhaile\nRight. Between Google Now and other location services by Google (Latitude),\nGoogle knows when I'm home, work, traveling, etc. Now Facebook will want to\nget into that information via their \"Home\" app/launcher. Many services want\nlocation data. Context based location data is getting more popular.\n\n------\ndreamdu5t\nI am so... so... fucking sick of Facebook privacy articles. Don't want\nFacebook? Don't install their app and use their service. End of discussion -\nyears ago.\n\n------\ntlrobinson\nSo Facebook can now do everything Apple and Google has been able to do for\nyears.\n\n~~~\ndamoncali\nApple and Google have a don't have a long track record of intentionally\nexposing information that was entrusted to them as private.\n\n------\naet\nI just noticed that gigaom.com has at least 9 tracking services on their site.\n\n------\nIdeka\nWow. It's like the, what, fifth time Facebook destroys any notion of privacy?\n\n------\nsaintx\nThe problem with online privacy, is that people believe it exists.\n\n~~~\nExecutor\nThat's why you need people to fight for it. Consider movements such as silent\ncircle and megabox. At the very least, people should worry about blocking\ncompanies from abusing user data, removing Patriot Act, so on. Truth is,\npeople have to give a shit.\n\n------\nedouard1234567\nFacebook \"open house\"\n\n------\nbadgar\nI don't think we should be too surprised with how FB will use the new data.\nI'm just wondering who Facebook is going to share this data with.\n\nI know a guy who works at one of Facebook's \"partner companies\" that pays gobs\nfor FB user data. This partner company gets (as far as they can tell) fully-\npopulated user data in Facebook's user dumps - way, way more information than\nthey need or ask for. So the partner company puts this data through arduous\npreprocessing steps to filter out most of the details before any user data\nhits real systems. They're scared of the legal liability of holding onto all\nthe personal details they receive don't need but Facebook shares anyway\nbecause Facebook genuinely doesn't care as long as they're monetizing.\n\nSo yeah, I'm scared of where this new data is going to go. Not what FB uses it\nfor themselves.\n\n~~~\nmonkeynotes\nI deleted my FB account when they IPO'd as I could then plainly see that the\nonly worth in the company was user data and it would certainly be monetised as\nmuch as possible.\n\nBut 'deleting' an account probably doesn't do much more than remove the data\nfrom the immediate web services. My data has probably been sold to multiple\n3rd parties by now.\n\n~~~\nHarrisonFisk\nWhen you delete your account, the data is actually removed. As part of the\nrecent privacy audit, the Irish DPC reviewed the account deletion framework\nand verified that it does indeed work:\n\n[http://www.dataprotection.ie/docs/21-09-12--Facebook-\nIreland...](http://www.dataprotection.ie/docs/21-09-12--Facebook-Ireland-\nAudit-Review-Report/1232.htm) (section 2.10 - page 41)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: What is happening on Mt. Gox right now? - ljd\n\nhttp:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bitcoin.clarkmoody.com&#x2F;\nI&#x27;m not sure if anyone has been watching but someone is buying 729.2489 BTC at 850. Which wouldn&#x27;t be unusual if it wasn&#x27;t following by an exact buy of 135 of 775 right after. This cycle has happened, with the exact same amounts for the past 30 minutes and I don&#x27;t know what to make of it. It&#x27;s just in a loop. The market won&#x27;t move either way.<p>I know there is some kind of gaming going on, I just don&#x27;t know what it is, yet. Any ideas?\n======\nwashedup\nI can confirm this. I have watched the cycle happen from ~877 to ~829 ten\ntimes now, with a bid size of 729 at 850 every single time. As soon as a price\naround 829 is filled, it shoots back up to 877. Each time the cycle lasts\nroughly 5 minutes.\n\n------\nChrisClark\nIt's a bug. Mt. Gox had the same repeating bug before.\n\nBasically, don't trade on Mt. Gox. It's not a good idea.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAre symbols, myths and metaphors sort of like file compression for culture? - eli_oat\nhttp://elioat.tumblr.com/post/86402521425/are-symbols-myths-and-metaphors-sort-of-like-file\n\n======\ncoldtea\nWell, symbols, myth etc are a summary of complex events and notions.\n\nIn that sense, they are sort of file compression.\n\nBut in other senses the metaphor breaks, because it cannot convey the\nsimilarities.\n\nOne can enjoy a myth or symbol in itself -- but a compressed file is useless\nunless it can be opened.\n\nSecond, the uncompressed file can be comprehended at once (e.g a movie can be\nviewed, a compressed doc can be read, etc). The cultural notions that are\n\"compressed\" into myths, though, cannot be understood by anyone in their\nentirety -- so the \"compression\" of the myth is somehow necessary.\n\nThird, a compressed file is usually the work of a single person. Whereas\nculture (and myths, symbols etc) are a shared work of a people.\n\n~~~\neli_oat\nNoting that a myth can be enjoyed in and of itself, while a compressed file is\nreally rather boring until it is uncompressed, I think you've hit on something\nI didn't think of at all. Thank you.\n\nI'm wondering now if a more apt word would have been \"encoding,\" rather than\ncompression?\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\nYes, encoding sounds more apt on this regard. Perhaps \"lossy crowd-sourced\nencoding\" would convey all aspects!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nRate my startup: Holono, showcase your projects and build a portfolio - ozziegooen\n\nhttp://holono.com/<p>I'm a EE college student and realized that I needed a website to show off all my projects.  After talking with some of my friends I realized that it was an issue a bunch of people had.<p>The site is quite simple; you make pages to showcase all of the projects you have done or are doing.  A \"project\" could be electrical research, a startup, an adventure, or anything else you are proud of.  As you add things you'll make a pretty portfolio of your accomplishments.<p>I've been working with two other Harvey Mudd students to build the site.  None of us knew rails until we decided to give it a go about 4 months ago.  So far we've debuted it to our college, but are now opening it up outside of that.<p>We'd really, really appreciate some feedback.  The website has taken quite a bit of work but I think could be very useful.\n======\ncodeslush\nI like this - good job on your first Rails project. Similar to about.me, but\nactually much more useful (in my opinion).\n\nVery well done!\n\n------\nsagacity\nClickable: :)\n\n<http://holono.com/>\n\n------\njsavimbi\nThis is good, I like it.\n\nFeedback:\n\n\\- Lose the hippie on the front page. \\- Even-off the weight of the login\noptions. Consider making the Fb login less prominent and equal in stature to\nthe \"normal\" login and also consider enabling Google and/or Twitter auth as\nwell. \\- The registration form needs to be a little bit more preemptive like\nthe facebook link being facebook.com/(html input follows text) \\- get thee to\ngravatar \\- you need some visual design help, but that can come later (tone\ndown the reds, bigger fonts in forms, etc.) consider a theme. \\- I love the\nrandom button\n\nGood work, I hope you get a lot of users.\n\n~~~\nozziegooen\nThanks!\n\nI've gotten a fair bit of negative feedback on the homepage and am looking to\nre-do that completely soon. We'll work to add Twitter auth soon, and maybe\nGoogle soon after.\n\nI would have changed it before submitting to HackerNews, but was afraid of\nnever submitting. This is great encouragement, thanks.\n\n~~~\njsavimbi\nDon't worry about it, you guys are fine. The app works as expected and also\nhas the added benefit of the random button, and if you're using any type of\nmetrics (hint) it would probably be a well-used feature. The UX is probably\nsomething you guys don't have a lot of experience with but as long as you can\nconsistently provide the functionality you have and scale it accordingly, I\nthink people will like it and find it a lot more interesting than waiting for\nothers to bubble the content up.\n\nSomething I forgot: GitHub. it' a great resource and you can add value by\nlisting the user's projects from there. That will give you an easy-import\noption to seed the app in its early stage. Seeding is important.\n\n~~~\nozziegooen\nThat's a good idea.\n\nWe were trying to decide between importing content from Github, scraping\nPDFs/word Docs, or importing from another site. Right now we were going to try\nto figure out who the first users were going to be (and what they want), but I\ndefinitely would like to add the functionality sometime, especially if coders\nstart taking a liking to it.\n\nYou are very right about us not having a lot of experience. None of us have\never had any design or UX experience, and are kind of making it up as we go\nalong while making numerous revisions.\n\nAs for metrics, do you mean us using Google Analytics and such, or us giving\nthe users metrics about how many views they are getting to their user &\nproject pages?\n\n~~~\njsavimbi\nMy reasoning around Github is that you guys are engineers and are obviously\ngoing to gravitate easier to your brethren and make it easier to\ndevelop/refine your featureset. Making it for everyone is hard as we all have\ncompeting interests. The thing about having immediate content available from\nmy past makes it easier for me to contribute without having to come up with\nsomething to make the app immediately useful for me. The first engagement is\nthe most important and will help the user decide if the app is worth it or\nnot. That's why I always use gravatar yet allow the users to add/edit their\nphoto in my apps. It's a personalized welcome, like they do at nice hotels.\n\nDon't worry about the UI too much. A good one requires a professional to focus\non that alone for awhile to get it right. A good one costs money. That can all\ncome in time.\n\nGoogle analytics are fine, there are some other packages out there that you\ncan slip on, but when I do usability tests, I measure exactly how many clicks\neach button/action receives and valuate their purpose to the app based on\nthose metrics, so yes, some internal metrics will be very valuable to you in\norder to dole out resources to the app, and if you're so inclined, give some\nlight metrics to the user to show them how many times their particular project\nwas visited. It's a cheap trick (like karma) but people are people and they\nenjoy validation.\n\nAlso, if you think of it, listing the number of active projects in your app on\nthe homepage is another easy come-on and helps conversion, just like\nMcDonald's has been doing for decades now.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBoeing 737 Max Aircraft: Preliminary Investigative Findings [pdf] - ddulaney\nhttps://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/TI%20Preliminary%20Investigative%20Findings%20Boeing%20737%20MAX%20March%202020.pdf\n======\nV_Terranova_Jr\nHaving worked with Boeing on other aerospace programs (not commercial though)\nand having been on the Gov side, the basic findings ring true. Boeing's\nculture really is as flawed as the report reads. The idea that Dennis\nMuilenburg, however, originated or did more than prior company management to\nfoster this culture, is nonsense. They remain, even today, operating with this\nculture. The real problem that stands in the way of \"fundamental structural\nreform\" is that regardless of specific aerospace market, few alternatives to\nBoeing exist. And don't think the corporate cultures at other traditional US\naerospace primes is consistently better.\n\nThe points about Government acquiescence to Boeing pressure in performing\nregulation also resonate. Beware the tendency to make this a single-axis \"more\nvs. less\" regulation issue. The solution isn't \"more regulation\". The central\nconcern should about regulatory culture. Ultimately, responsibility lines must\nbe drawn, standards established, adjudication performed, and unique or\nspecific situations accommodated. Inevitably, the \"less regulation\" crowd\ncorrodes the kind of regulatory culture that serves the best interests of the\npopulace in these processes. Good regulation depends on having highly-\ncompetent, wise, empowered, and apolitical persons on the Government side.\nWhile providing regulatory organizations lots of funding doesn't ensure that\nthey hire, empower, and maintain such a cadre, starving them of resources and\nimplying the Government can never be competent, so it should reflect the role\nback to Industry, is pathological and will produce outcomes like the 737 Max.\n\nWe need to not just empower and provide adequate resources to regulators, but\nalso demand and foster a culture of competence and good judgment^. Making that\nhappen is a lot harder than arguing about \"more or less\", but necessary for\nproper outcomes.\n\n^\"good judgment\" here explicitly excludes decision-making with regard to\npolitical implications\n\n~~~\nakira2501\n> and foster a culture of competence and good judgment\n\nI agree.. but I don't think you can do that organically. I think part of the\nissue is the size of the corporations, the concentration of that corporate\npower, and the inability of the market or regulatory agencies to function\ncorrectly when this is the case.\n\nYou get cultures of competence and good judgement when there is a real\ncompetitive market with multiple strong players each vying to have the best\nproducts.\n\n~~~\nV_Terranova_Jr\nI should have been more clear and said \"foster a culture of regulatory\ncompetence and good judgment\".\n\nThis is certainly achievable with the right leadership, wide-basis political\nprotection (cannot be achieved when an agency's leadership is subject to\nunprincipled undercutting by the President), and sufficient resources.\n\n------\nnrki\nThis is huge.\n\nIt confirms basically everything I've read over the past year on the topic\n(mainly on hn). Culture of concealment, production pressure, self-oversight,\nconflicts of interest, faulty assumptions.\n\nLike many other lessons borrowed from commercial aviation, these are supremely\nrelevant to tech companies.\n\nEdit: BA stock down 1.27% in after-hours trade. I guess the market has decided\nthat this behaviour is fine.\n\n~~~\npjc50\nBoeing is too nationalist to fail; there is no way the US government will\nallow itself to be without a civilian airliner builder and have to buy planes\nfrom Airbus or Embraer. Plus they'd take with them the absorbed remains of\nMcDonnell Douglas.\n\n~~~\njammmety\nBoeing are poised to acquire Embraer: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-\nembraer-m-a-boeing/boeing...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-embraer-m-a-\nboeing/boeing-to-take-over-4-75-billion-embraer-unit-targeting-airbus-\nbombardier-idUSKBN1JV1D2)\n\n~~~\ncmurf\nIt should be disallowed. It's more anti-competitive conglomeration, and risks\nthe contagion of corruption.\n\n~~~\nAnarch157a\nDon't expect it to blocked under our current president. Bolsonaro is basically\na Bazilian Trump.\n\n------\nunlinked_dll\nMost troubling to me is this:\n\n> AA technical and safety experts determined that certain Boeing design\n> approaches on its transport category aircraft were potentially unsafe and\n> failed to comply with FAA regulation, only to have FAA management overrule\n> them and side with Boeing instead\n\nfrom the linked citation [0]:\n\n> In 2015, the FAA drafted an issue paper, finalized in 2016, that offered\n> Boeing a chance to establish compliance without implementing a design\n> change.4 At least six FAA specialists refused to concur\n\n>It is our understanding that non-concurrence by FAA technical specialists is\nfairly infrequent and not to be taken lightly. In addition, my staff has been\ntold that it was virtually unprecedented for six or more FAA specialists to\njointly non-concur on a single issue, highlighting the gravity of their\nconcerns regarding the rudder cable issue. Despite all of this, in June 2017,\nthe F AA's Transport Airplane Directorate upheld the controversial issue paper\n\nSomeone needs to name names, and those people should be investigated for\ncorruption.\n\n[0] [https://transportation.house.gov/news/press-releases/amid-\nco...](https://transportation.house.gov/news/press-releases/amid-committees-\nongoing-investigation-into-the-certification-of-the-737-max-chairs-defazio-\nand-larsen-raise-new-and-serious-concerns-to-faa-about-other-safety-related-\nissues-)\n\n~~~\ncptskippy\nSounds like the FAA needs to do some house cleaning in there upper management\nbecause they're in bed with Boeing.\n\n~~~\nunlinked_dll\nIt's the White House that is responsible for doing that \"house cleaning\" of\nthe FAA's upper management, since those folks are political appointees that\nserve at the pleasure of the President.\n\nI don't know about you, but I don't see the current admin prioritizing the\nflushing out of regulators in bed with industry.\n\nThat's why I say name some names.\n\n~~~\ndrevil-v2\nI'd like to point out that vast majority of this lax enforcement of FAA\noversight of the Boeing 737 Max certification happened during the Obama\nAdministration by political appointees of Barrack Obama and the Democratic\nParty.\n\nI am centre-left political (socially liberal, fiscally conservative) and It\nreally really bothers me to see the double standards. Once you start to notice\nthe pattern of one-sided appropriation of blame in pretty much every f __king\nscenario, you end up discounting any criticism of republicans as bias.\n\n~~~\nstevehawk\nIt's really disappointing to see this comment downvoted. Apparently we're all\nfine with blaming the current administration for not firing them but we're not\nok with blaming a previous administration for hiring them?\n\nWe've also had countless posts talking negatively on the very merger that lead\nthis iteration of Boeing (McDonnel-Douglas) with no regard for the\nadministration that basically encouraged the merger.\n\nIt's okay to admit it guys: both parties suck and are corporate shills.\n\n~~~\nunlinked_dll\n> Apparently we're all fine with blaming the current administration for not\n> firing them but we're not ok with blaming a previous administration for\n> hiring them\n\nOne of these two parties has the ability to affect change. It's not the\nlatter.\n\n~~~\nkovac\nThe official report just came out. On what grounds would the existing\nadministration just fire upper level management at an early stage?\n\nThe appropriate response would be to force FAA to ground the planes (if and\nwhich FAA did not do themselves), and wait for the official report and then\nopen an investigation in to Boeing and FAA. Time is a factor to take into\naccount.\n\n------\nleeoniya\n> These five recurring themes paint a disturbing picture of Boeing’s\n> development and production of the 737 MAX and the FAA’s ability to provide\n> appropriate oversight of Boeing’s 737 MAX program.\n\nNo, these five recurring themes paint a disturbing picture of Boeing’s\ndevelopment and production of ALL its aircraft.\n\n~~~\ngpm\nI don't think the statement even needs to be limited to aircraft. We can see\nthe same themes in the development of the CST-100 starliner capsule\n(spacecraft).\n\n~~~\nImaCake\nI think this explains a bit of the fanboy love for SpaceX. It's the energetic\nlittle guy versus the corrupt lethargic vampires.\n\n~~~\nHarryHirsch\nThey want to deliver man-rated rockets but can't even construct a fuel tank\nthat won't blow up. SpaceX has got its own set of problems.\n\n~~~\nzlsa\nYou're leaving out their 83 completely successful launches of Falcon 9 and\nFalcon Heavy[0] in favor of their R&D efforts.\n\n[0]:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches)\n\n------\nmrtksn\nThere was an interview with the new Boing CEO quite recently:\n[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/business/boeing-david-\ncal...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/business/boeing-david-calhoun.html)\n\nHe pretty much blamed it all on the previous CEO.\n\nAsked whether he believed American pilots would have been able to handle a\nmalfunction of the software, Mr. Calhoun asked to speak off the record. The\nNew York Times declined to do so.\n\n“Forget it,” Mr. Calhoun then said. “You can guess the answer.”\n\nDoes it mean that Boeing maintains its position that the MCAS was not \"that\nbad\" and it's on the pilots for not handling the Boeing's mistake? Is he\nsuggesting that we should avoid Boeing Aircraft unless the pilots are\nAmerican?\n\n~~~\nbumby\nThis seems like a rationalization in the CEO’s part.\n\nBoeing’s system safety analysis categorized MCAS as ‘hazardous’. Even with the\nwrong categorization (there’s a strong argument it should’ve been labeled\n‘catastrophic’) if they followed their own design procedures hazardous systems\nshould have redundant sensors. Besides the fact his reply defies a good\nunderstanding of human factors in engineering, when management deflects\nresponsibility to their customers it is extremely troubling.\n\nCognitive dissonance is dangerous in leadership.\n\n~~~\ntemac\nIt's even worse than that. If it is believed that the plane is only suitable\nfor American pilots, it should not even be sold outside of the USA...\n\n------\neverybodyknows\nOther reporting has called MCAS the product of a systemic failure, and asserts\nunderfunding of the FAA to be among the ultimate causes. Underfunding being\n\"worked-around\" by delegating the work to Boeing:\n\n>(ARs)—Boeing employees who are granted special permission to represent the\ninterests of the FAA and to act on the agency’s behalf in validating aircraft\nsystems and designs’ compliance with FAA requirements\n\nOthers have pointed out that the conflict of interest inherent in this must\npervade AR's daily work environment, and indeed the report pays brief lip\nservice to the contradiction:\n\n>4) Conflicted Representation. The Committee has found that the FAA’s current\noversight structure with respect to Boeing creates inherent conflicts of\ninterest ...\n\nSo why do it that way, and why do my searches of the investigation's PDF for\n\"funding\", \"budget\", and \"staffing\" come up empty?\n\nConsider, then, that responsibility for setting the operating budget of the\nFAA belongs to the House -- the very same running this investigation.\n\n[https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/miss...](https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/mission/budget/304496/faa-\nfy2019cj-budgetfinal508compliant.pdf)\n\n------\naschatten\nAn excellent write up of the crashed by a pilot:\n[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-\ncrashes.html) I highly recommend you read it. It‘s not to exonerate Boeing,\nbut it does bring up issues that none else talked about.\n\n------\nps747\nWow, this is incredibly damning and all but blames the Boeing and ineffective\nFAA oversight for the tragic crashes.\n\nI hope this leads to significant fines for Boeing and jailtime for the more\negregious actors involved; according to the report, their negligence directly\nled to the loss of lives. Knowing how important Boeing is to national\nsecurity/the economy, I'm skeptical that enough will be done...\n\n------\nhaltingproblem\n(edits: formatting).\n\nCue the obligatory comment of Boeing is a company with an insanely great\nengineering culture and their engineers lived in an idyllic culture of\nbuilding great and _safe_ products. This great culture was all lost as a\nresult of the merger with McDonnell Douglas [1], [2], [3].\n\nSomehow the Boeing apologists want you to think that the unholy trinity of the\nghost of McDonnell Douglas through the CEO at the time of the merger Harry C.\nStonecipher (the father) and Dennis Muilenburg (the Son) who greenlighted the\n737 MAX are responsible for this abomination. So much so that of the thousands\nof engineers who worked on the 737 Max not a single one raised issues with the\nengineering of the aircraft or wrote a blistering memo calling out its failing\nor quit in protest. They were all held in thrall by the power of this unholy\ntrinity!\n\nIn the theory of causation, we distinguish between proximate vs. ultimate\ncausality. Every proximate event can plausibly be claimed to be the cause for\na subsequent event. As they say for want of a nail the war was lost. What is\nplausibly the cause for the engineering fiasco of the 737 Max? Why go back to\nthe merger and why not blame the 9/11 or the election of G.W Bush or even\nBarack Obama's for this disaster? Why go back to the 1997 merger with\nMcDonnell Douglas? Because it allows Boeing engineers to deflect blame for the\nterrible product they built and foisted on the flying public by coasting on\ntheir past reputations.\n\nEventually, all stellar organizations, public or private, become complacent\n(e.g. Israeli Intelligence Failure, 1973). Boeing made an unstable plane with\na dangerous MCAS to get it to market fast. They then topped it off by making\nit rely on a single sensor and made the dual-sensor an _upgrade_. A sophomore\nengineering student with a 101 course on probability can see that this is\ntailor-made for diaster. They made an essential safety feature an upgrade!!\nThey then proceeded to hide this monstrosity from every regulator and airline\non the planet and insist that the plane was no different in every aspect of\nits flight behavior than its predecessor which was over 30 years old.\n\nBoeing had become so criminally blatant that the head of airline training at\nLion Air inquired about extra training for the 737 Max and they rebuffed him.\nAfter the Lion Air crash, Boeing proceeded to cast aspersion on the safety\npractices of Lion Air. Lion Air _does_ have a spotty safety record but in this\ncase, Boeing rebuffed their requests for additional training because it would\nset a precedent for other airlines in SE Asia. When that lack of training was\na factor in the crash, Boeing proceeded to blame Lion Air. The mind boggles at\nthe sheer chutzpah!\n\nThe recently released messages show how Boeing employees worked in unison to\nensure no extra simulator training was required. Great engineering culture\nobsessed with safety, this aint!\n\nGo ahead and blame the McDonnel Douglas merger for this. Or accept that\nwhatever stellar engineering culture existed at Boeing is dead. We as a\nsociety need to stop scapegoating imaginary forces in the past and giving\nBoeing's engineers a pass. We need to start agreeing that strong regulation is\nnecessary to ensure the safety of the products Boeing puts out.\n\n[1] [https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-\nmerg...](https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-\nto-the-737-max-crisis/)\n\n[2] [https://fortune.com/longform/boeing-737-max-crisis-\nsharehold...](https://fortune.com/longform/boeing-737-max-crisis-shareholder-\nfirst-culture/)\n\n[3]\n[https://www.perell.com/blog/boeing-737-max](https://www.perell.com/blog/boeing-737-max)\n\n~~~\nlarsga\n> This great culture was all lost as a result of the merger with McDonnell\n> Douglas\n\nNot because of the merger, but because management deliberately set out to\nchange the entire company culture from being engineering-driven to being\nbusiness-driven. Business-driven as in: cut corners to save money.\n\n[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-\nboeing...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-\nits-bearings/602188/)\n\n~~~\nhaltingproblem\nThat is exactly the point I am refuting. That is non-falsifiable. The claim\nyou are making that the merger changed culture which changed their safety\noutcomes is as non-falsifiable as the dot-com crash killed their morale which\nchanged safety culture.\n\nOf course the merger argument sounds more plausible i.e. it is a better\nrationalization but again non-falsifiable.\n\nWhatever killed Boeing's engineering culture is irrelevant. Arguing over that\nis a distraction from the fact that Boeing's _current_ engineering culture\npushed this product to market.\n\n~~~\njcadam\n> Whatever killed Boeing's engineering culture is irrelevant.\n\nOh I'd disagree. To fix the problem and prevent it from happening again at\nBoeing or elsewhere, it would be good to figure out how the culture at Boeing\nbecame so broken in the first place.\n\nI worked for Boeing back when the corporate HQ was moved from Seattle to\nChicago. At the time I remember thinking how bizarre that seemed. Why would\nsomeone in a leadership position want to separate themselves from the rank and\nfile and lose that valuable insight and visibility into operations?\n\nEh. My problem was likely in assuming that most corporate leadership positions\nare filled with actual leaders.\n\n~~~\nkevin_thibedeau\nCondit needed an excuse to hide from his wife: Move girlfriend to Chicago and\nconstruct a reason to spend time there.\n\n------\nmazsa\nThe key technical reason is this one: \"While multiple factors led to these\naccidents, both crashes shared a key contributing factor: a new software\nsystem called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS),\nwhich Boeing developed to address stability issues in certain flight\nconditions induced by the plane’s new, larger engines, and their relative\nplacement on the 737 MAX aircraft compared to the engines’ placement on the\n737 NG.\"\n\n~~~\nmazsa\nCf. \"How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software Developer / Design\nshortcuts meant to make a new plane seem like an old, familiar one are to\nblame\" [https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-\nboeing-...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-\nboeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer)\n\n------\nthrwaway8347346\n> In March 2016,Boeing sought,and the FAA approved,removal of references to\n> MCAS from Boeing’s Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM),ensuring 737 MAX\n> pilots were unaware of this new software and its potential effect on the\n> aircraft’s handling without pilot command.\n\nAre the execs in jail?\n\n~~~\nsalawat\nNo, but the Chief Technical Pilot who requested it has lawyered up with an\nindependent lawyer from Boeing's general counsel.\n\nOdds are his conscience is weighing heavily on him, and he doesn't trust that\nBoeing's council won't attempt to pin it on him acting alone. Corporate\nculture is rife with leaving subordinates to act on implied mandates in order\nto insulate executives from the potential for criminal liability. The idea is\nif the criminal thing works and no one finds out, the exec gets their bonus;\nif it blows up, the exec never _told_ them to do it.\n\n------\nsn41\nI am concerned that the Dreamliner is also a potentially unsafe aircraft, as\nhas been suggested often. Please see the last bullet point on page 5. Is\nanyone aware of this exact issue?\n\n------\nkuon\nKnowing this, how fixable is the 737 MAX technically and politically?\n\n~~~\nReptileMan\nTechnically - easier. They have to remove MCAS and retrain the pilots as a new\ntype.\n\nBut rebuilding the trust will be harder.\n\n~~~\nZak\nThe aircraft could probably be safe and pass certification with MCAS in place,\nbut the following issues made it dangerous:\n\n* It was undocumented.\n\n* It had too much control authority. It was able to adjust the trim such that the elevator could not overcome the trim's pitch-down force, and such that the average pilot did not have enough strength to use the manual trim wheel to neutralize the trim in a dive.\n\n* They removed the switch to turn it off. On older 737s, there's one switch to turn off automated control of stabilizer trim, and another to disconnect power to the motor, completely disabling electric trim. On the Max, both switches perform the latter function.\n\n* They made it rely on only one sensor. I can't imagine the logic for that since two sensors are physically present, and damage to AOA sensors is not rare.\n\n* The AOA disagree warning light, which would have clued pilots in to the presence of a faulty sensor was not present in most aircraft, despite documentation to the contrary.\n\n~~~\ncesarb\n> They made it rely on only one sensor. I can't imagine the logic for that\n> since two sensors are physically present, and damage to AOA sensors is not\n> rare.\n\nThe logic for that is really simple: each sensor is wired to one of the two\ncomputers. Each computer uses its own sensor. This was an already existing\ndesign, MCAS is just a new function added to these computers.\n\n(AFAIK, other aircraft like Airbus have multiple sensors wired to each\ncomputer, so for them it would be natural to use more than one sensor.)\n\n~~~\nphire\nBoth computers have access to both sensor's data. The computers are networked\ntogether.\n\nThis is how they implement the AoA disagree function (the one which was broken\nin 90% of MAXes for unrelated reasons). It's also how they managed to\nimplement a software update which makes MCAS take data from both sensors.\n\nThe logic for not implementing both sensors is much more insidious.\n\nIf you implement both sensors, then you have to deal with the case that\ninfomation from sensors might disagree. The computer has no idea sensor is\nproviding correct data, so the only thing it can really do is disable itself\nwhen the sensors disagree.\n\nIf MCAS has the ability to disable itself, then it must provide feedback to\npilots it has done so, and have pilots follow some procedures. If there were\nprocedures, then Boeing would have to add pilot training about what MCAS was\nand how things would be different when it disabled itself.\n\nBoeing made it rely on only a single sensor to bypass training requirements.\n\n------\nWalterBright\n> Boeing also withheld knowledge that a pilot would need to diagnose and\n> respond to a “stabilizer runaway” condition caused by an erroneous MCAS\n> activation in 10 seconds or less, or risk catastrophic consequences.1\n\nBoth the LA and EA crews did respond withing 10 seconds and restore normal\ntrim using the electric trim switches. LA worked on the issue for 5 minutes,\nEA for a couple minutes.\n\nThe findings did not mention that Boeing issued an Emergency Airworthiness\nDirective to all MAX crews after the LA crash that contained correct\ninstructions on how to recover from it - restore normal trim with the electric\ntrim switches, then cut off the stab trim with the console switch.\n\nBoth crews were able to restore normal trim repeatedly with the electric trim\nswitches. But LA never cut off the trim, and EA cut off the trim when it was\nin a dive, not after restoring the normal trim.\n\n~~~\nacqq\nI was not the pilot error, neither the first nor the second time. The planes\nbehaved exactly how no plane should be allowed to behave, effectively turning\non the “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that Dave” reaction many times. And\nthere are no reasonable excuses to that.\n\n~~~\nWalterBright\nI'm not arguing that Boeing didn't make mistakes with the design, they did.\nI'm pointing out that the \"10 seconds\" thing is not the cause of the crashes,\nand that both crews (especially the EA one) did have the information they\nneeded to recover.\n\nRunaway stab trim should never happen, but the reason the cutoff switches are\nthere are so it can be recovered from. It's the same with fire extinguishers\non airplanes. Fire should never happen on an airplane, but we expect the\npilots to know how to use the fire extinguishing systems when it does.\n\n~~~\nacqq\nSome important points from the PDF that show that it was not the problem with\nthe pilots:\n\n\\- In 2015, a Boeing AR raised the question of whether MCAS was “vulnerable to\nsingle AOA sensor failures….” Despite this, the aircraft was delivered with\nMCAS dependent on a single AOA sensor.\n\n\\- After Boeing redesigned MCAS in 2016 to increase its power to move the\naircraft’s stabilizer at low speed, Boeing never reevaluated a single- and\nmultiple-failure analysis of MCAS.\n\n\\- In March 2016, Boeing sought, and the FAA approved, removal of references\nto MCAS from Boeing’s Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM), ensuring 737 MAX\npilots were unaware of this new software and its potential effect on the\naircraft’s handling without pilot command.\n\n\\- Boeing’s design of MCAS violated its own internal requirements which\ndemanded that the system “not have any objectionable interaction with the\npiloting of the airplane” and “not interfere with dive recovery,” which\noccurred in both 737 MAX crashes.\n\n\\- In August 2017, five months after the 737 MAX was certified by the FAA and\nthree months after it entered revenue service, Boeing issued a problem report\nto its supplier complaining that the 737 MAX’s AOA Disagree alert was tied to\nan optional AOA Indicator display and therefore was not functioning on the\nvast majority of the 737 MAX fleet worldwide.\n\n\\- Rather than immediately informing the FAA and Boeing customers about this\nissue, and advising Boeing to fix the problem via a software update as soon as\npossible, a Boeing AR consented to Boeing’s plan to postpone the software\nupdate until 2020 (...)\n\n\\- Although Boeing prepared a “Fleet Team Digest” to inform its customers\nabout the inoperable AOA Disagree alert, the company never sent it, keeping\nits customers in the dark about the inoperable alert.\n\n\\- Boeing provided Lion Air a Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM) on August\n16, 2018, one year after learning that the AOA Disagree alert was not\nfunctioning on most 737 MAX aircraft, highlighting the operation of the AOA\nDisagree alert. Boeing failed to indicate that it knew the AOA Disagree alert\non the Lion Air 737 MAX aircraft was not operational.\n\n\\- Boeing did not acknowledge that the AOA Disagree alerts on an estimated 80\npercent of the 737 MAX fleet were inoperative until after the Lion Air crash\nin October 2018.\n\n\\- Boeing’s own analysis showed that _if pilots took more than 10 seconds to\nidentify and respond to a “stabilizer runaway” condition caused by uncommanded\nMCAS activation the result could be catastrophic._ The Committee has found no\nevidence that Boeing shared this information with the FAA, customers, or 737\nMAX pilots.\n\n\\- Boeing had tremendous financial incentive to ensure that no regulatory\ndetermination requiring pilot simulator training for the 737 MAX was made.\nThis incentive included a Boeing contract with Southwest Airlines, its U.S.\nlaunch customer, that would have cost Boeing more than $1 million per aircraft\nit delivered to Southwest if pilot simulator training was required for\nSouthwest pilots transitioning to the 737 MAX from the 737 NG. At the time of\nthe Lion Air crash, Southwest had ordered or pre-ordered an estimated 280 737\nMAX aircraft from Boeing.\n\n\\- In March 2017, the month the 737 MAX was certified by the FAA, Boeing’s 737\nChief Technical Pilot responded to colleagues about the prospects of 737 MAX\nsimulator training, saying: “Boeing will not allow that to happen. We’ll go\nface to face with any regulator who tries to make that a requirement.”\n\n~~~\nWalterBright\nThere's no excuse for not reading, comprehending, and remembering the\nEmergency Airworthiness Directive. Put another way, would you be comfortable\nflying with a pilot who did not pay attention to EADs? I wouldn't.\n\nFurthermore, the LA crew on the flight immediately preceding the LA crash\nexperienced the same problem, and simply restored trim and turned off the stab\ntrim system, and landed safely. They had no knowledge of MCAS. No\nextraordinary feat of airmanship was required. No lightning reactions were\nnecessary. They simply remembered what the cutoff switches were for, as they\nwere supposed to.\n\n~~~\nacqq\n> experienced the same problem, and simply restored trim and turned off the\n> stab trim system, and landed safely\n\nAs far as I remember it was far from \"simply.\" Apparently they had luck of\nhaving a third pilot in the cabin present, who didn't have to maintain\nanything else in the cabin and had the luxury and time to observe and think\nabout what is going on. The pilots in charge were overwhelmed by the killer\nplane then too, which is completely expected -- note the \"10 seconds\" admitted\nin my quotations.\n\nSo, no, as far as I remember, the previous LA flight actually doesn't support\nyour claims.\n\n~~~\nWalterBright\n> they had luck of having a third pilot in the cabin present\n\nThey did indeed, one who remembered that the solution to runaway trim is to\nturn off the trim system. This is something that is supposed to be a \"memory\nitem\".\n\nNote that all three sets of flight crews successfully countered the runaway\ntrim using the electric trim switches. They were not overwhelmed to the point\nof not understanding that the trim system was the problem, as they were\ncountering it.\n\nThis was so underwhelming to the first LA crew that they didn't even bother to\ninform the next crew about it, or even have the plane taken out of service and\nfixed.\n\n~~~\nacqq\n> This was so underwhelming to the first LA crew that they didn't even bother\n> to inform the next crew about it, or even have the plane taken out of\n> service and fixed.\n\nThe pilots were from the cultures where deference to authority, specifically,\nfailure to even talk about the problem to those \"above in the hierarchy\"\nprovably previously caused other airplane accidents. The crews since learned\nto function in the cockpit. But this required such an attitude outside of the\ncockpit for those who managed respond, \"sticking their necks out\" from their\npoint of view, so they avoided it. Again, nothing to use as the proof that the\nplane was not utterly dangerous.\n\n~~~\nWalterBright\n> Again, nothing to use as the proof that the plane was not utterly dangerous.\n\nI don't believe that a crew that thought they had narrowly escaped death from\na \"killer plane\" with some horrific defect would fail to notify the next\nflight crew, and not have the plane grounded until it was fixed.\n\nIt's their _job_ to do that, and not doing it should bring them up on charges\nof dereliction.\n\nIt's much more credible that they didn't think it was a big deal.\n\nI don't have any more facts about that flight - nothing is ever reported about\nit. I sure hope the NTSB includes it in their investigation, as finding out\nwhat went on in that flight and what the crew did afterwards is crucial.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nZoitz       Horror story - ilikethecheese\nhttp://www.zoitz.com/archives/36\n\n======\nholdenk\nI blame scheme :P but maybe I'm a little too optimistic about the kids :P\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDo Not use namecheap.com for any large site or important domain - highclass\nNamecheap.com seems popular for a lot of tech companies. However, they seem to be not only cheap in price but in management.<p>I run a forum site with MILLIONS of visitors and about 5,000 TB of traffic per month.\nNamecheap.com suddenly sent me a link warning that they will suspend my domain completely within 24 hours, if I did not delete two problem images (which were inappropriate&#x2F;troublesome images but in the context of the forum posts, &quot;a very poor attempt at humor&quot;).\nI deleted the images and avoided being suspended, but the way they threatened to suspend my domain due to two images was ridiculous. If I missed the warning email or checked my email after 24 hours they would have completely suspended my domain.\nI&#x27;m talking about a site with MILLIONS of visitors per month and ten thousands of posts per day, not some small blog.<p>They may be suitable for some blog, but I can now say to NEVER use them for any enterprise site.\n======\nLorenzoLlamas\nMaybe I missed it, but did someone point to the actual site with \"millions of\nvisitors and 5 PETABYTES of traffic per month\"? Is that right?\n\nDon't want to seem harsh, but I don't care for unqualified rants against a\nnamed entity, when the \"accuser\" doesn't name his own source.\n\nAnd using vague words like \"inappropriate/troublesome\" seems a bit mysterious.\nWere they ISIS propaganda posters, nudity of celebs, or penguins making out?\nMight make a difference.\n\nAnd as others have already stated, it's pretty SOP for hosting and domain\ncompanies to have this standard in place. Hate to say it, but it's in the User\nAgreement. Else, run your own servers and domain name registrar (oh, and also\nbe liable for those same posts possibly).\n\nWhy we insist on not understanding that DNRs and hosts are, basically,\npublishers, who have some rights, is beyond me.\n\nLet me guess... this guy is upset because he might have not gotten the email\nwithin 24 hours (in 2017... yeah, right). Is he off-the-grid hunting sea lions\nin the north sea? And if his site is so big, he has no one to help him and no\nbackup staff except... only him?\n\nThis same crowd will balk that FB didn't remove that last murder video in 12.3\nseconds, but demand that THEIR host or registrar give them 30 days.\n\nSheesh... internet shenanigans never stop, do they?\n\n~~~\nhighclass\nI have actually run a domain registration/reseller business in the past, with\n20,000 domains registered (which is a lot).\n\nI did not \"police\" a single one of those domains.\n\nLike I said below, I was NOT using namecheap DNS or hosting.\n\n> And using vague words like \"inappropriate/troublesome\" seems a bit\n> mysterious. Were they ISIS propaganda posters, nudity of celebs, or penguins\n> making out? Might make a difference.\n\nI don't care how much problematic the images were. 24 hours warning for\nthreatening to suspend a domain is ridiculous.\n\n> Let me guess... this guy is upset because he might have not gotten the email\n> within 24 hours (in 2017... yeah, right).\n\nYes that is reasonable reason to be upset. I thought the email was\nspam/phishing at first. The email also could have easily have been deleted by\nspam filters.\n\n------\nploggingdev\nSend them an email asking for an explanation and also let them know why this\nis not a good way of dealing with inappropriate content. Also reach out to\ntheir customer support asking for an explanation. Let us know when you hear\nback from their support team.\n\n~~~\nhighclass\nI agree the two images were problematic, but they were mixed into millions of\nforum posts...\n\nAnyways, if your domain sites contents break the AUP at\n[https://www.namecheap.com/legal/universal/universal-\ntos.aspx](https://www.namecheap.com/legal/universal/universal-tos.aspx) , it\nseems they will suspend your domain that fast...\n\nAgain ridiculous. They even replied \"Yes, we have checked the content of the\nweb-site and based on its not deliberate nature we have provided a reasonable\ntime-frame for removing the illicit content.\"\n\nReasonable time-frame being 24 hours. More ridiculous.\n\n------\ncoreyp_1\nWere they hosting the site, or are they just the domain registrar (and your\nsite is on servers from another company)?\n\n~~~\nhighclass\nI was using a third party DNS AND my own hosting/network. They threatened me\non a Registrar level, which is nearly unheard of.\n\n~~~\ncoreyp_1\nIndeed. I would suggest that you leave them immediately.\n\n------\nSlaul\nInteresting, I hadn't heard of any problems like this when I decided to use\nthem for my last few domain name purchases. Maybe I should look into\nswitching. Do you have any recommendations by any chance?\n\n~~~\nhighclass\nI'm looking around right now. The registrar for reddit.com and ycombinator.com\nboth are [https://www.gandi.net/](https://www.gandi.net/)\n\nI am considering them and a few foreign registrars right now.\n\nI still am in shock how namecheap might have suspended my domain.\n\n~~~\nfinid\nI think they were just been paranoid about potential legal penalties, so take\nit easy.\n\n~~~\nhighclass\nThat is ridiculous. They threatened to suspend my domain within 24 hours if I\ndid not delete two images.\n\nI don't even use their nameservers... They threatened to yank my domain in a\nregistrar level which is so amateurish it shocked me.\n\n------\nidoh\nWhere are you planning on moving your domain to?\n\n~~~\ntinalumfoil\nI've heard good things about Gandi. Since they host reddit I'm sure it would\ntake a lot for them to shut down a site.\n\n------\ntarikozket\nAmazon has the same procedure with hosting.\n\n~~~\nhighclass\nI don't have anything hosted on namecheap. Not even the sites DNS uses\nnamecheap.\n\nb.t.w. hosting and DNS registration are totally different, legally and\ntechnically.\n\n------\nmagma17\n4chan\n\n~~~\ngt2\nI would think a site like 4chan would get these kinds of issues daily.\n\n------\nandrewmcwatters\n> They may be suitable for some blog, but I can now say to NEVER use them for\n> any enterprise site.\n\nIf this is action they take at scale with millions of visitors I wouldn't even\nrisk it with something so intimate as a blog.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFarewell, USS Enterprise (the aircraft carrier) - dctoedt\nhttp://www.npr.org/2012/12/01/166242595/farewell-uss-enterprise\n\n======\nguylhem\nThat feels so wrong. It is still floating and could be useful.\n\nDestructing it is just destruction for the sake of it.\n\nWhy not at least sell it to a friendly country, who could use such power to\ndefend itself from neighbouring enemies?\n\nI'm sure Israel or Japan would welcome the gift - they sure could supply their\nown planes and weapons.\n\nIt's a real shame to destroy so much investment - especially since, as noted\nin the article, its speed is still competitive.\n\n~~~\nmasklinn\n> That feels so wrong. It is still floating and could be useful.\n\nIt's also an extremely old ship, maintaining it can't be cheap.\n\n> Why not at least sell it to a friendly country, who could use such power to\n> defend itself from neighbouring enemies?\n\nA carrier is a force projection tool, it's for attacking stuff (or make clear\nthat you can attack stuff), to defend a country an airbase is cheaper, simpler\nand more versatile.\n\n> I'm sure Israel or Japan would welcome the gift - they sure could supply\n> their own planes and weapons.\n\nAnd fuel supply and crew and maintenance? For a _unique_ ship? No other\ncountry on earth comes close to having an Enterprise-class carrier (let alone\nNimitz-class), I'm really not sure they'd have any use for it. Not to mention\na carrier on its own is basically dead (or a floating museum), you need a\ncarrier group around it which costs the same as the carrier itself.\n\nAlso Japan is definitely out, they are not allowed to get weaponry for any\nother purpose than defense (Article 9 of the 1947 Constitution), and as noted\nabove an aircraft carriers is anything but a defensive platform.\n\n> It's a real shame to destroy so much investment\n\nYou do realize the Enterprise has been in active use for more than 50 years\nright? It's the very first nuclear-powered carrier in human history, and the\none and only ship of its class (so replacement parts have to be custom-built,\nwhere there are 10 bigger, better, more modern Nimitz-class carriers)\n\n~~~\nChuckMcM\nI was going to say pretty much the same thing. I got to tour the USS Carl\nVinson (CVN-70) when it stopped by Alameda and was moored next to the USS\nHornet (CV-12). Since our tour guide was caught up traffic we went over to the\nHornet and visited, and talked to them about the challenges of that\nrestoration/preservation as well.\n\nBasically there were three things that stood out, first was that there was a\nlot of 'toxic waste' in the form of stuff we know now to be carcinogenic used\nin the construction of these things, and re-fitting them, or restoring them,\noften involved complex programs of setting up barriers to prevent material\nfrom escaping during refit, and then disposing of it. That is slow and\nexpensive work. The Hornet is like 1/3 the displacement of the Enterprise\n(30,000 tons vs 90,000 tons) so there is a lot more space.\n\nI was reminded of how sad it was to see perfectly functional 2U servers being\nbroken down for scrap, they can't justify the power it costs to keep them\nrunning.\n\nThat said, I also thought \"Ok, here is something the sea steaders could start\nwith. Make this the 'core' of their first floating island and build around it.\nIt solves two very real bootstrap problems, one it has a power plant that\ngenerates useful electricity and comes with a helicopter 'airport' built in\nfor rapid transportation. Of course the chance of the US Navy handing over a\ncarrier to civilian hands with an intact nuclear power source is about the\nsame as a me winning the PowerBall lottery.\n\n~~~\nguylhem\nA bootstrap platform for sea steader ?\n\nThat's a great idea - it would be put to a good use, and be an interesting\nexperiment in creating a community on an artifical island!\n\nHell, _anything_ would be better than just destroying it.\n\n~~~\nmasklinn\nYou do realize there's a 50 years old nuclear plant inside the Enterprise\nright?\n\n~~~\nChuckMcM\nThis is true of course, but the power plant is very very simple. Its a fission\npowered tea kettle. All the 'complicated' bits, the steam turbines the\nengines, operate outside the tea-kettle part and have been maintained and kept\nup to date. I don't know if they have done any long term radiological studies\non metal fatigue but there aren't a lot of moving parts to go wrong. No reason\nto think you couldn't continue to use it for another 100 years. And since it\ngoes about 20 years on a single fill up, you'd probably get 50 years out of a\nrefueling if it basically stayed in one place.\n\n------\nshowerst\nHopefully they bring back the name for the 3rd Gerald Ford class carrier\n(CVN-80). It's scheduled for service in 2025 so presumably they'll name it in\nthe next 5-7 years.\n\n~~~\ntrothamel\nThey announced today that CVN-80 will be the next USS Enterprise.\n\n------\nHoff\nA comparison of carriers in various fleets; the sizes, numbers, and countries:\n\n<http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/carriers.htm>\n\nscroll down for the image.\n\n------\nharshaw\nMy father served on the Enterprise in the 60's as part of the around the world\ntour. At that time the island was completely different as well as the air wing\ncomplement. We have this giant photo in our house of the old square island and\nan A-5 vigilante taking off. It's amazing to consider the the Enterprise has\nbeen reworked and refitted so many times over a long career.\n\n------\nMillennium\nHonestly, I'd repurpose it for use in coastal disaster relief. The reactors\nand desalination facilities could provide emergency power and water, and if it\nwere set up to carry helicopters instead of airplanes it could serve as a base\nof rescue operations.\n\n~~~\nphilwelch\nThe Navy has maybe half a dozen ships that are specialized for that role\nalready.\n\n------\ndctoedt\nAt the inactivation ceremony a couple hours ago, the Secretary of the Navy\nannounced (via video) that the next nuclear carrier after the Gerald R. Ford\nwill be named Enterprise. Cheers went up.\n\n(I was a nuclear-engineering officer on this Enterprise.)\n\n------\nbuster\nI must say i don't understand why so many people here are so sad that a weapon\nis destroyed. In my book that's fucking great! I'm even somewhat disgusted.\n\nBut when i read the title i was sad as well... until i came across \"The\naircraft carrier\".\n\n~~~\nantidoh\nI agree entirely with the idea of rejoicing at a weapon destroyed.\n\nHowever, something like this represents world history, as well as personal\nhistory. Life is more complex and nuanced than \"weapons bad,\" because we live\nin that world as it is.\n\nI served on the Enterprise in the late seventies, and while I can't say I'm\n_sad_ , I'm definitely experiencing a nostalgic episode. (I never went to sea\non the Enterprise, overhaul in the shipyard only, so I can't tell you anything\nmore interesting than how to lay tile on a metal deck or how to use a needle\ngun to strip paint.)\n\n~~~\nbuster\nThat would explain it for you, but i doubt all those commenters are your ex\ncolleagues ;) I'm aware that life is complex. But comments like \"hey, let's\ngive it to Israel they can re-arm it and have a nice weapon there\" make me\nsick, sorry.\n\n~~~\nantidoh\nYou don't have to have been somewhere to have nostalgia for it and its\nassociations.\n\nEdit: I agree, better not to give it to anyone.\n\n~~~\nbuster\nAh well, they should put it in a museum i guess, not scraping it.\n\nedit: Or make a museum out of it, with the size of the ship :P edit2: I see,\nand according to another link, the ship basically will be destroyed by\nremoving the reactor, so there is no way around it...\n\n------\ntrothamel\nA livestream of the inactivation ceremony is here:\n<http://www.livestream.com/usnavy>\n\n------\nzrail\nThey're scrapping it?! That's a damn shame.\n\n~~~\nUnoriginalGuy\nWith respect I disagree.\n\nWhile I understand entirely why the Enterprise as is was originally\ncommissioned (dick waving with the USSR) the kind of missions the US Navy\nperforms today require more flexibility and less brute force.\n\nNow the Enterprise's speed is, even today, still damn competitive. But to get\nher ready to sail with her crew complement, supplies, and other logistical\nissues would likely mean she couldn't be used as part of a fast reactionary\nforce.\n\nShe would be wonderful at long drawn out conflicts but how many of those does\nthe US intend to take part in in the next fifty years? Any?\n\n~~~\nmasklinn\n> While I understand entirely why the Enterprise as is was originally\n> commissioned (dick waving with the USSR) the kind of missions the US Navy\n> performs today require more flexibility and less brute force.\n\nMeh. It's not like the Navy is decommissioning the Nimitz-class or scaling\nback the Gerald Ford class. The Enterprise is at life's end (it was originally\nplanned for scrapping ~2015), and it's a pain as it's the only ship of its\nclass.\n\n------\nkmfrk\nDisengage. :(\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Programmer/Producer Happiness - dzonga\nIn what regard is programmer happiness important to you guys ? E.g in my case I drag my feet when I have to do assignments in Java, but I can work with Swift anytime of the day with quickness.\n======\njoe_coder\nStay with Swift, grasshopper I keep dragging my feet with Java all days... May\nI become happier in a year or two if I get rid of it\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: SuperMoney - mrmirz\nhttp://www.supermoney.com/reviews/credit-reporting/credit-karma\n\n======\nmrmirz\nWith SuperMoney, I am trying to build the Yelp of the personal finance niche.\n\nLooking for some good feedback on UX and general thoughts on the value\nproposition, site, branding, or anything else useful.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTwitter Account of NBC News Hacked - server102\nhttp://prohackingtricks.blogspot.com/2011/09/twitter-account-of-nbc-news-hacked.html\n======\njontsai\nReally, is that hacking? That's more like someone chose a bad password or\ndidn't practice good password policy.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: What are good resources to learn dynamic programming? - gautamnarula\nI understand the basic ideas behind dynamic programming (and I think it&#x27;s really cool and very useful tool to understand), but I struggle with DP programming on Leetcode and in interviews.<p>Are there any good resources out there for DP? Multiple sources have said that DP feels like &quot;magic&quot; when you don&#x27;t get it, but once it &quot;clicks&quot; DP problems become very easy. I&#x27;m still waiting for it to click.\n======\nLTailor\nWhat is dynamic programming. First, you need know what's recursion for better\nunderstanding. If yes, you can make step #2 :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBloom Filter (Python recipe) - jcsalterego\nhttp://code.activestate.com/recipes/577684-bloom-filter/\n\n======\nhaberman\nOne thing that takes a minute to sink with Bloom Filters is that the size\nrequirements are independent of the size of the individual elements! Storing N\nelements with a given false positive probability has a fixed cost, whether\nyou're storing integers or 100MB strings.\n\nIf you are concerned with speed, a bloom filter is exactly the kind of thing\nI'd never implement in Python. Twiddling bits is orders of magnitude more\nexpensive than in C.\n\n~~~\nraymondh\nPython is written in C and the time consuming parts of this algorithm are\ndelegated to C modules (random, sha256, long int bitshifts, etc). Also, the\nspace efficiency (which directly related to effective use of high-speed cache)\nis language independent.\n\nIf you care about the cost of the Python glue code, the PyPy project nicely\noptimizes that away. Unless you're writing for a Google production server, the\nprogrammer time writing this in C will likely never be paid back in saved CPU\ncycles.\n\n~~~\nhaberman\nWhat you have said is theory. Here is practice.\n\nI wrote a simple bloom filter in C. It took about an hour, including\ndebugging. Here is my bloom filter vs. CPython and PyPy doing 1M lookups:\n\n    \n    \n        $ time ./bloom\n        real    0m0.027s\n        user    0m0.022s\n        sys     0m0.002s\n        $ time python bloom.py\n        real    0m32.876s\n        user    0m32.693s\n        sys     0m0.119s\n        $ time pypy bloom.py\n        real    0m42.280s\n        user    0m42.054s\n        sys     0m0.178s\n    \n\nIn other words, C was 1216x (or 121,600%) faster than CPython, and 1564x (or\n156,400%) faster than PyPy. If it took 1 second in C, it would take 20 minutes\nin Python. Put another way, Python runs this algorithm about as fast as a the\nC algorithm would run on an 8086 from 1978.\n\nHere is my C implementation: <http://pastebin.com/TexbJjbB>\n\nHere is the Python program I compared against (using code from the article):\n<http://pastebin.com/gqw7C68e>\n\n~~~\nraymondh\nNot an apples-to-apples comparison. The Python version is fully general, using\nRandom() to create probes (as many as needed). Instead use the optimized, 4Kb\nfixed size version shown later in the recipe. Also, improve your timing by\nmaking the loop in a function and using something other than range(1000000) to\nfill-up memory (like timeit does). The C version should also use sha224 for\ncomparability (otherwise, you're basically comparing two different hash\nfunctions in two different languages meaning that some of the difference can\nbe ascribed to the choice of hash algorithm).\n\nThat being said, you've done a great job showing that it doesn't take long to\ncorrectly implement this algorithm in C. That is a nice win.\n\n~~~\nhaberman\n> Not an apples-to-apples comparison.\n\nThese kinds of arguments make sense if you're 20% different, or 2x different,\nor even 10x different. When you're 1000x different, no amount of minor\ntweaking is going to bridge the gap.\n\nUsing the 4k version and using timeit() instead of range(), the speed is 21\nseconds instead of 32 seconds, so it did speed up, but it's still 800x slower.\nI'm pretty sure that only a tiny fraction of Python's time is calculating\nsha224, so I don't think that making them use the same hash function is\nnecessary.\n\nLook, Python is cool and has it's place. But it's annoying to get downvoted\nfor stating the obvious: algorithms like this will be much, much faster in C.\nIt's annoying to hear people insist that dropping to C is a waste of time when\nmy personal experience shows time and time again that it can lead to drastic\nimprovements.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIntroducing SkyDrive for the modern web, built using HTML5 - varunsrin\nhttp://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/06/20/introducing-skydrive-for-the-modern-web-built-using-html5.aspx\n\n======\neiji\nThe problem with most of these cloud initiatives from Microsoft is the missing\nintegration with WinXP. LiveMesh and Skydrive desktop integrations are fine on\nWin7, but there are still lots of XP users out there, and most of this stuff\ndoes not work on XP.\n\n~~~\nvarunsrin\nSkyDrive is a browser-based cloud store, not a desktop application. So you\nshould be able to use it just fine on XP, provided you are running a modern\nbrowser.\n\n------\nKarhan\nWow, this is excellent web software.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBats use private and social information as they hunt - dnetesn\nhttps://phys.org/news/2019-09-private-social.html\n======\ngerbilly\nWhile this is almost lost knowledge these days, humans and other animals have\nalways paid attention to each other to find out what is going in on around\nthem.\n\nThe nature (or absence of) bird or animal calls or activity can tell you that\nthere is a large predator in the area.¹\n\nSome animal calls are even specific to the type of threat as well.\n\nIt has even been proposed by some linguists that prairie dog calls satisfy\nenough of the requirements to be considered language.²\n\n1: [https://birdlanguage.com/products/what-the-robin-\nknows/](https://birdlanguage.com/products/what-the-robin-knows/)\n\n2: [https://medium.com/health-and-biological-research-\nnews/prair...](https://medium.com/health-and-biological-research-news/prairie-\ndog-chatter-the-science-behind-a-new-language-9144ace4114f)\n\n------\nLinuxBender\nSomewhat off topic, semi-related, I have a bat that thinks I control the\nweather. If it gets too hot or cold, it will go just outside my window and\nsqueak at me. There are patterns to it's communication, though I have no idea\nwhat exactly it is saying. I can talk to it and it talks back. Obviously we\ndon't understand each other. I can tell it \"get back to work\" (taking out\nmosquito's) and it will leave. I think it understands tone of human voice.\n\n------\ngrawprog\nWhen we were doing bat surveys most nights, after we caught the first few\nbats, we would watch later ones actively avoiding the mist nets we'd set up as\nthe ones we caught called both from the nets and from the bags we had them in.\nIt was also known at the time we were doing our work bats communicate feeding\nareas to each other and are extremely vocal in their hibernacula and roosting\nsites.\n\n------\nwill_hoskings\nThe bats should carry around a big banner with a warning: Are we allowed to\ncollect information about you? :D\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDon’t buy the MacBook Pros even on sale, in my opinion - tomduncalf\nhttps://theoutline.com/post/4277/dont-buy-the-new-macbook-pros-even-on-sale-in-my-opinion\n======\ntomduncalf\nPosting this from my six month old Macbook Pro 15\" on which the spacebar has\njust started doing double spaces. Going to try and clean it with compressed\nair, but even if that works, it's unacceptable in my opinion that such a key\npiece of hardware on such an expensive machine should be so fragile.\n\nThe fact that at some point I'll have to take it back to Apple and probably be\nwithout it for several days due to the complexity of the repair makes this 10x\nworse - I am freelance so need this machine for work, so being without it\n(especially for such a seemingly trivial reason) is unacceptable and\nabsolutely not what I expect when I buy Apple (previous Macbooks have worked\nfor years without a single issue).\n\nIf they release a redesign, I'd swap it in a flash (I do actually quite like\nthe keyboard to type on otherwise, but seems like the quest for thinness has\ngone too far this time!), but if this problem is as widespread as it seems who\nknows what it will do to resale values.\n\nWould be great to get talk of this spreading as far and wide as possible, as\njudging by anecdata on Twitter and elsewhere, I am far from the only one with\nthese kind of issues, and to me that implies a fairly major design flaw.\n\n~~~\nNetOpWibby\nI’m experiencing this issue with my B key and it’s annoying af. I use my MBP\nin clamshell mode with an external keyboard and I dread going mobile.\n\n~~~\nwilwade\nI had the issue with the doubling with the b key as well.\n\nMine was out of warranty, so I fixed it myself.\n\nFailed: compressed air Failed: cleaning under the key.\n\nSuccess (but not recommended) I removed the key, then pulled off the glued\nmembrane. Cleaned all with 90% alcohol. Took a new membrane (but you might be\nable to use old) and used E6000 and a toothpick to glue it back. Replaced\nbutterfly and key.\n\nNot a good solution, but it worked.\n\nIt looked like the contacts were getting coated and not making good contact?\nPerhaps heat?\n\nBest of luck.\n\n~~~\nNetOpWibby\nI am not confident in my ability to do that but it's good to know there is a\nsolution if I get desperate enough. My mechanical keyboard is saving my life\nright now.\n\n------\nmortenjorck\nIt's just incomprehensible (and an unfortunate indictment of Jony Ive's design\nleadership) that the 2016 MacBook Pro has continued to prove such a regression\nfrom the 2012 design.\n\nProfessionals demand good design: tools that meet our needs in efficient,\nreliable, and even elegant ways. Apple's line of professional laptops has\ntraditionally delivered this by and large, but the problem with the 2016\nplatform is that _vanity_ finally overtook good design.\n\nGood design weighs the trade-offs inherent in any design decision and decides\nbased on the greatest benefit to the user. Vanity design decides based on the\ngreatest benefit to the designer. And based on the dongles I've seen co-\nworkers cart all over the office because Apple abandoned HDMI, based on the\nkeyboard reliability issues that have affected the same co-workers, and based\non the dearth of compelling Touch Bar applications that have sprung up in the\npast year and a half, I don't think there's any question that vanity has taken\nover.\n\nHonestly, I think it's time for Ive to take more of an advisory role at Apple\nand let some of the many talented industrial designers in his org take Apple's\nhardware design back to fundamentals.\n\n~~~\nmadeofpalk\n> (and an unfortunate indictment of Jony Ive's design leadership)\n\nIve has been leading design at Apple for 26 years. I think the failure lies\nelsewhere.\n\n~~~\nentee\nCounterargument: for a long time Ive had Jobs to push back on Design excesses.\nNow there's nobody that has the same kind of design sense at the top to push\nthe product in practical directions.\n\nIt's like Lennon and McCartney, they wrote better songs when they were\ntogether than apart (I'd argue).\n\n~~~\nmadeofpalk\nI actually don't think that's a counterargument at all. If someone like Ive is\nable to run unchecked and produce the failure that is the MBP keyboard, then\nthat's a problem outside of Ive.\n\n~~~\nmortenjorck\nBased on the folklore, I don't think it's a stretch to imagine Jobs holding up\nan iPhone USB cable at a meeting and yelling \"why the hell can't I plug this\ninto my MacBook Pro?\" I can't imagine Cook doing the same.\n\n------\ntlrobinson\nTangential rant ahead:\n\nI've been pretty disappointed in the latest MacBooks as well (mostly just the\nkeyboard and mediocre performance improvements over previous generations), so\nas a hedge I thought I should give Linux another try, hoping in the ~5 years\nsince I last attempted it one of the more user-friendly distributions would\nhave figured out how to make installation painless.\n\nNope. It's easy enough to get a basic installation of Ubuntu or elementary OS\nworking, but you still have to muck around with things like wireless drivers,\ngraphics drivers, multitouch support, etc to get everything working as well as\nmacOS. After half a day of trying to tweak kernel parameters and other things\nI gave up. Sometimes I enjoy that sort of challenge, but not right now.\n\nI understand it's difficult to support a wide variety of hardware without the\nsupport of a company like Apple/Microsoft/Google, and supporting proprietary\ndrivers is controversial and not the community's top priority. It's just a bit\ndisappointing desktop Linux still isn't ready for the mainstream, despite\nmultiple commercial companies working on it.\n\n~~~\nsecstate\nI grew up messing with GNU/Linux, so I know what it means to tweak kernel\nparameters and not have working wifi. But in the past five years of using\nUbuntu full-time I haven't had a single issue with out of the box stuff\nworking on any of a number of Lenovo machines.\n\nHell, I even have 16.10 running on a Macbook Pro from 2013. Curiously, the\nbaked on RAM chip has a bad patch on it somewhere and macOS chokes when doing\na full re-install, yet Ubuntu seems more fault-tolerant about memory and runs\nmostly fine (there are display corruptions when first booting, but putting it\nto sleep and waking it up causes them to go away until the next reboot).\n\nMeanwhile I would argue macOS has become much worse given the closed-nature of\nthe software and the price premium to use it. It's hard to complain about\nhaving to tweak things when the OS is free/libre.\n\n~~~\ntlrobinson\n> But in the past five years of using Ubuntu full-time I haven't had a single\n> issue with out of the box stuff working on any of a number of Lenovo\n> machines.\n\nYeah, my only experience is with Apple hardware. Obviously Apple doesn't work\nwith Ubuntu to certify their hardware like Lenovo does\n([https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/](https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/)),\nnor would I expect them to, but MacBooks are one of the most popular laptops\nso I sort of expected it to just work.\n\n> It's hard to complain about having to tweak things when the OS is\n> free/libre.\n\nI agree, and I'm definitely willing to tweak things here and there, but it's a\nnon-starter for most people. I guess they can still buy Ubuntu certified\nhardware or whatever, though.\n\n------\nfains_rains_00\nAh, a MBP complaint thread. Here are mine (Maxed out 15):\n\n1\\. New keyboard is _painful_ to type on. I use it 99% of the time with\nexternal trackpad / keyboard / monitors but that other 1% pisses me off.\n\n2\\. Battery life is mediocre. I don't keep track but I'm always surprised how\nquickly it goes when I'm unplugged. How about stop trying to make them\nthinner?\n\n3\\. The touchbar is f*cking horrible. It's a bad solution to a nonexistent\nproblem. My fingers touch it by mistake often, finding ESC is awful, and worst\nof all, it sleeps! Give me back my ESC and media keys.\n\n4\\. A computer with two GPUs SHOULD NOT CRASH when plugging in external\nmonitors. It should also wake from sleep properly in clamshell mode. A lot of\nthe time I actually have to unplug one monitor to get either to turn on.\n\n5\\. Support for external retina monitors is terrible. I spent the better part\nof a day getting two Dells to be readable / look good.\n\n6\\. Xcode. A medium sized project compiling now hits all 8 cores so hard music\nwill actually stop playing (I use Roon with a pretty heavy CPU load).\n\nUnless things turn around, this will definitely be my last MBP, maybe leaving\nthe dev ecosystem altogether.\n\n~~~\nspronkey\nUgh Xcode. What an awfully heavy piece of software. Makes Eclipse feel\nlightweight.\n\n------\nballenf\nLouis Rossmann has examined these issues in detail on his electronics repair\nYouTube channel:\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KuVvb9DTaU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KuVvb9DTaU)\n\n(I disagree with the level of his vitriol against Apple, but I appreciate his\ndeep teardowns and clear explanations. He just doesn't seem to understand how\nvaluable the Apple software is vs. Windows to those who need or appreciate\nosx.)\n\n~~~\nmarcus_holmes\nIt's not Apple's great software. Most of Apple's software is shit (as opposed\nto 3rd parties who write OSX apps).\n\nIt's the fact that it's mostly-decent hardware running a mostly-compliant\nPOSIX OS that looks enough like GNU to make it usable (and compatible with web\nservers).\n\nIf someone, ffs anyone, made a decent, reliable Linux laptop, Apple would lose\nthe dev market in a month.\n\n~~~\nkakwa_\nThis is called a Thinkpad.\n\nI'm running Debian on a Thinkpad at work, this work great... except for a few\npoints.\n\nIt's always a bit harder to integrate with the rest of the internal\ninfrastructure: * AD integration in your favorite email client to have auto-\ncompletion on emails is a bit tedious * Exchange calendars are also annoying *\nMounting (and, first, finding) the windows shares can a bit tedious * Password\nrenewal is not integrated that well\n\nIt works, but it takes a few hours to figure out and configure.\n\nAnd sometimes you are just stuck with Windows/OS X because of a specific piece\nof software (for example in my case, the video conferencing tool we are\nusing). I never used a truly Linux only environment in professional context, I\nalways had a Windows VM also.\n\n~~~\nnvarsj\n> This is called a Thinkpad.\n\nIndeed! The keyboard is amazing. The latest thinkpad x1 carbon is pure bliss,\nand Linux works out of the box for everything without any problems.\n\n------\njulian37\nJust in case anybody thinks this thing is overblown:\n\n\\- On my 2016 MBP the left alt key only registers about 30% of the time now.\nIt seriously hampers my workflow.\n\n\\- On my SO's MBP (slightly newer make but same keyboard type) the \"H\" key\nstopped working, now it's registering double (she's happy: \"At least I can\ntype, I just need to use the backspace key.\")\n\n\\- At work two people have the same type of machine and both have had keyboard\nissues.\n\nIn short, I know four people who own this machine (including myhself) and _all\nfour_ have had issues.\n\nNeedless to say, this is a serious let-down and makes me think my next machine\nwill be the first non-Apple in 15 years. Sad, really.\n\n------\nlkrubner\nThe Board Of Directors has structured Tim Cook's pay so his pay is dependent\non shipping specific amounts of iPhones. This would be a good plan if the goal\nwas to boost the stock price for the few years that iPhone seems innovative,\ncompared to anything that Samsung can come up with. This strategy did work for\nseveral years, look at 2013 and 2014 and 2015 and 2016. But the same strategy\namounts to a plan for allowing the company to collapse in the long-term. Where\nare the new products? Where are the new ideas? Some people point to the vast\ncash reserve that Apple has and they view this as a source of strength: \"Apple\nmust be doing something right to have that much cash on hand!\" But a large\npile of cash can also be read as a weakness; in particular, it can be seen as\na lack of ideas. For comparison, consider the last time Apple had super fat\nmargins and a product that was light-years ahead of the competition: the\n1980s. Apple did not pile up cash at that time, because it was still investing\nin the future. Profits were reinvested in new products. The leadership could\nsee where the future was going, and they chased after it aggressively. The\ndifference between then and now is obvious. Apple has a huge amount of cash,\nbut they have no ideas about how to invest it. Tim Cook is a good operations\nguy, he has some talent for optimizing the supply lines between China and the\nWest. But he has no ideas. And nowadays, given the growing number of problems,\nI think we have to wonder if he fully deserves his reputation for being a good\noperations guy.\n\n~~~\nlkrubner\nWhy is this downvoted?\n\n------\ntomxor\n> neither Apple nor its Geniuses would acknowledge that this was actually a\n> problem [...] Apple Geniuses installed, with its pristine keyboard and\n> maybe-different key switches. The answer is that after a couple of months, I\n> started to get temporarily dead keys for seemingly no reason. Again.\n\nThis is the exact same behaviour that drove me away from Apple 10 years ago:\nFirst deny existance of issue, second place blame on customer, third force\ncustomer into a generic replacement script of parts in accending order of\nprice. Repeat until customer does not return out of frustration, accepts the\nbroken product or is pushed out of warrantee.\n\nI think this strategy worked for them on average when hardware design flaws\nwere less frequent, it maintained their facade of absolute perfection at the\ncost of a few lucid customers... but it leaves a particularly sour taste for\nthose whom it does affect, and I think they are fast approaching the threshold\nwhere it will backfire and destroy their image.\n\nAt this stage denying the existence of these types of problems is an insult to\nanyones intelligence, deep technical literacy is not required - Anyone who\nbuys Apple products for more than beholding their aesthetic beauty can see the\nsimple truth in this case: that it is broken.\n\n------\ntptacek\nConcur. I liked the new keyboard when it worked. But after two week-long\nservice appointments to deal with dead keys, I've given up on it. Those\nlaptops are defective. I'm using a 2015 15\" for now.\n\n~~~\nmadeofpalk\nThis is the hard part - it’s supposedly a pro machine, yet they expect you to\nnot work for a week while they repair the keyboard that fails by a single\nspeck of dust.\n\n~~~\ntomduncalf\nExactly this\n\n------\ntomxor\nThis appears to have been aggressively flagged since it's suddenly dropped\nfrom the front page to the 6th page in a matter of minutes and has a better\npoint to age ratio than most all above it...\n\nCould anyone explain why? it looks highly suspicious to me. I understand that\nmany are protective over Apple products but putting that asside, this an\nobjective and valid warning to people looking to buy this otherwise popular\ncomputer.\n\n~~~\nmadeofpalk\nApple (among others) posts are automatically “downmodded”. They require a much\nhigher score to remain on the front page\n\n~~~\ntomxor\nAre you suggesting that Apple have automated bots attempt to censor hacker\nnews? or is this more of an official thing where any posts regarding Apple are\nweighted down due to being considered too mainstream? or is it just a\nsensitive topic to many people?\n\nI can easily imagine any but I don't know which is more likely.\n\n~~~\nmadeofpalk\nNo, it’s a Hacker News ‘feautre’. There are a number of topics/keywords that\nanalysis found were being automatically weighted down for, I guess, generally\nbeing low quality and spammy, or rarely leading to useful discussions. I guess\nthe intent is that the proper and good posts should “work harder” to push up\nthrough the weight.\n\nI tried searching for some links to cooborate it, but I wasn’t able to find\nanything quickly on my phone.\n\n------\nkalleboo\nMy plan is to wait until there's a new model out, and then take it in for\nAppleCare warranty repairs once a month until I hit their lemon limit and they\ngive me a new machine.\n\nThe durability of this keyboard is a joke. I even bought one of those rubber\nkeyboard condoms that makes the keyboard suck to type on and the H key still\ngot dust under it somehow and started typing hh.\n\n~~~\nhocheung20\nApple doesn't seem to have an official lemon limit but they replaced the top-\ncase 5 times on my 2016 and then gave me a 2017 with the same specs (slightly\nfaster processor), and it's already crapped out already although this time\nthey managed to replace the key and fix it.\n\n~~~\nmadeofpalk\nYou’re right that there’s no official “lemon limit”, but hey do have a process\nfor it - it’s called ‘CRU’ (Customer Replacement Unit). It’s unlikely that\nthey’ll offer it unprompted, but really after three repairs I find it\ndifficult they would deny your request to have the laptop replaced.\n\nIt does require approval by a manager/“Lead Genius”, but you can get there by\nbeing reasonable.\n\n------\nneonscribe\nThis isn't a \"build quality\" problem, it's a design quality problem. The quest\nfor thinness has taken precedence over reliable functioning. If they added a\nmillimeter or two they could put in a proper keyboard, but I fear they never\nwill. We see a similar problem with the \"trashcan\" Mac Pro, where they backed\nthemselves into a corner with a design that could not be upgraded. This is\njust bad engineering. Form follows function, not vice versa.\n\n------\nesdott\nAs an owner of a small company who buys a few macs a year and uses one almost\nsolely, I fully agree with this. I’ve had to replace my latest mbp computer\ntwo times now based on keyboard issues (the second time was power and keyboard\nissues). The keyboard is a disaster. If you have kids, forget about it.\n\n------\nwhywhywhywhy\nWas given one of these at work, the keyboard started failing within a week of\ntaking it out of the box, some of my keys click much louder than others. My -\nkey has been stuck twice while editing this comment, my ISO enter key has a\ndead zone and has failed to click once while typing this comment.\n\nThis machine isn't even 6 months old and it feels rickety and unreliable\nbecause of this design disaster of a keyboard, I wish I was over-reacting.\n\nI will not be buying another Apple machine until this keyboard is reverted, I\ncan't imagine dropping thousands of my own money and having such an unreliable\njanky input device.\n\n------\nvinceguidry\nI can't recommend Apple anymore. With the recent trend of tech companies\ntowards walled gardens, the things that made Apple's walled garden great are\ngetting eroded by other companies. Their hardware really is subpar, they're\nspending all this money on design and virtually none on maintenance, because\nrepair is a profit center for them rather than a cost center.\n\nApple software looks and feels great, and I used to believe their hardware was\njust as good, but it turns out that their manufacturing processes are really\ncrappy. Remember the first unibody aluminum Mac? Wasn't a unibody. They glued\ntwo pieces of aluminum together instead.\n\nLook, I get it, you have to deal with the manufacturers you have. But Apple's\namassed a gigantic pile of cash, and they really should be using it to improve\ntheir hardware. But they haven't been. And now, there's never been a better\ntime to switch platforms.\n\nI was singing their praises 2 years ago. But the beauty was only skin-deep.\n\n~~~\nspronkey\nThe first Unibody Mac was still a very nice machine, even if the display\nwasn't actually a unibody. The chassis felt like nothing before it, and it was\nso nicely machined with a super rigid keyboard. MagSafe with separate board.\nExtremely easy to access battery and HDD (with a really nicely designed little\nlever system). Unscrew the bottom cover and easy access to RAM. Rigidity of\nthe chassis helped keep ports in good condition.\n\nIt's only real flaw IMO was the superglossy glass screen. Fragile and\nextremely annoying under fluorescent lights. Plenty of the machines lasted a\nlong time despite the glue deteriorating from heat.\n\nYou're right about them spending no money on maintenance because repair is a\nprofit centre for them. Rossman is right about Apple's durability issues, too\n- almost every generation of MacBook has had at least one significant design\nflaw (from the 8600GT to delaminating screen coatings).\n\nThey're only getting worse as they go over the top with proprietary connectors\nand interfaces, and iDevice levels of integration. I mean, Apple have\nreimplemented M.2 and NVMe in their stupid proprietary SSDs at least 4 times\nnow. It's utterly ridiculous. If your custom blade SSD dies, which it\ninevitably will at some stage, your only options are Apple support or OWC (or\ngamble with second hand parts).\n\nAt least in the past they used to get the human stuff right (mostly). No Apple\nMacBook has ever shipped with a low quality LCD panel, for example. I've never\nheard significant coil whine from any Mac. I've never heard any Mac that has\nloud fans at idle (except under an error condition). I've never had a Mac that\nburnt me. I've never had a Mac with poor speakers. The trackpads have always\nbeen best-in-class. The keyboards have always been very good.\n\nUntil 2016.\n\n------\nconorh\nThis happened to my wife's macbook pro spacebar, $600 fix. It happens with\nmine every so often too, but fingers crossed it has 'fixed' itself each time.\n\n~~~\nsenorjazz\n$600! ouch.\n\nHad a similar problem (faulty key) with my dell precision laptop. $30 new\nkeyboard, few screws out, replace and back up and running.\n\nThe laptop is big, heavy and ugly. But I cannot have it out of action so every\npart being replaceable was a huge plus. In fact it is so big heavy and ugly\nthat when I drop it on the floor, the floor dents :)\n\n~~~\nsoperj\nYou can easy switch out any thinkpad keyboard, and they're not big or heavy.\nUgly is in the eye of the beholder, that being said, it's a laptop, not a\npurse.\n\n------\nvirtuexru\nThe last great Macbook Pro was:\n\n> MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)\n\nThe new models are subpar in build quality imho and the touch bar is\ncompletely useless tech.\n\n~~~\nOcerge\nYep, those are the holy grail machines at my shop. Everybody that has one is\nskipping their turn when they are due for an upgrade. Unfortunately I got\nhired too late and have a 2017 15-inch.\n\n~~~\npost_break\nWhy? They still sell that model: [https://www.apple.com/macbook-\npro/specs-2015/](https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-2015/)\n\n~~~\nOcerge\nNot our choice, IT only lets us choose the newer models.\n\n------\ntjpnz\nMy spacebar locked up on me briefly a week after purchase - calling it dust\nwould be BS. Doesn't bode well for the future.\n\n~~~\nwhywhywhywhy\nThing is, this is actually dust. It's just a single speck of dust is enough to\nmess up these mechanisms because they're so delicate.\n\nThis would be less of an issue if you could pop the keys off, but again the\nmechanism is so delicate popping a key off is enough to irreparably destroy\nthe mechanism in most cases.\n\n------\nhedora\nEven when brand-new, and working properly, these keyboards are a disaster. IT\nhas been rolling upgrading people to them at work, and the number of external\nkeyboards has skyrocketed.\n\nSo has the number of new lenovos.\n\n------\nj32fun\nI can relate to what the article says, and yet find it hard to break away from\nthe ecosystem given the tools I've come to use every day runs so well on the\nMac. Muscle memory with shortcuts and all.\n\nI've found a quick workaround to simply let the machine cool down. Eg. When\nrunning Docker previously and when the machine got heated, I found keyboard\nproblems keep cropping up consistently. Letting it cool for about 20 minutes\nwith a laptop cooler seemed to help.\n\n~~~\ntomduncalf\nI'm an iOS dev so have no other choice - but even if I did, I like pretty much\nevery other aspect of the Mac (both this specific laptop, and the ecosystem)\nand am happy to give Apple my money, but expect a certain level of quality in\nreturn, which this generation of keyboards seems to lack.\n\n~~~\nj32fun\nDefinitely agree with you. I feel underwhelmed with the 2017 MBPs (typing on\none right now). And you're absolutely correct: if you're developing for\ncertain app systems, you have no choice. I'm a Ruby developer and I remember\nyears ago people switched to Mac simply so they could use Textmate. Some tools\njust work better on the system (for better or for worse).\n\n~~~\ntomduncalf\nI actually quite like the laptop otherwise - I walk to and from work with it\nevery day so the reduced weight and size is great - although the touchbar is\nmeh and the USB-C/dongle situation is still a pain!\n\n------\nmarcosscriven\nI have one of these provided by my employer - spacebar broke within a couple\nof months.\n\nAlso, I kid you not, the 'H' key was not functioning on one in the Regent\nStreet Apple store I was using while waiting for an iPhone battery\nreplacement.\n\nEssentially, you have to avoid getting any detritus on the keyboard of any\nkind. I no longer eat any snacks or sandwiches at the computer, which is\nprobably a good thing anyway.\n\n------\nentee\nDoesn't Apple have a ton of in-house engineers that use their hardware every\nday and therefore must have these problems as well? Shouldn't they fix them if\nonly to keep their engineers from the pain?\n\n~~~\ntimgilbert\nPresumably they attribute any failures in typing to the chronic headaches they\nhave from walking into Apple's invisible walls too often.\n\n------\noldcynic\nFits with my experience.\n\nAside from hating the feel of the new keyboard in my 6 months ownership of the\nnew Macbook Pro it went back for warranty keyboard repair twice.\n\nI sold it and bought a second hand 2015\n\n------\ndoc_holliday\nDamn, my Macbook Air 2013 logic board just gave out, and was considering the\nupgrade to Macbook Pro 2017 as logic board is running at £450 replacement\ncost.\n\nAfter reading other's thoughts here, I think I have to avoid Macbook Pro for\nnow, I hope they change this in the next release.\n\nAnnoying as I need a machine with Xcode.\n\n~~~\nvinceguidry\nI was considering getting a Mac Mini for Xcode and developing remotely on it\nusing my Linux desktop. I figure I can just edit the code on the desktop and\npush it to the Mac when I need to build. If I get a good workflow going I'll\nshare it.\n\n~~~\ndoc_holliday\nYeah, I was thinking of similar, would be good to see how it works out for\nyou. There's obviously the command line tools for building, but I would miss\nthe integration of Xcode as an IDE for iOS storyboards etc.\n\nOtherwise I've been looking at using remote servers from macincloud.com /\nxcodeclub.com, but haven't tried that yet.\n\n------\ncpncrunch\nI use a keyboard cover and it helps reduce this issue. When you do get a crumb\nunder a key and it stops working, the solution is to keep hitting the key hard\nuntil you dislodge/break the crumb. Low tech, but it works.\n\n~~~\nhocheung20\nThis will eventually break the tiny legs in the keycaps rendering your key\npermanently inoperatable.\n\n~~~\ncpncrunch\nI've only done this about twice in the lifetime of the keyboard. I'm not doing\nit every day.\n\n------\nsilman\nBeen using a 2010 15\" Macbook Pro since i found it in the dumpster in 2014\n(yup...), it was my first ever time owning a macbook and using OSX (outside of\nsome time on friends computers, etc) and i love that thing. I used linux\nbefore but wasn't so hot on the grueling labor of repairing simple stuff, and\nso i was stuck on windows coming from a windows-fanboy past - now i am a huge\nOSX fan for its combination of ease of use and POSIX compliance; but i refuse\nto buy any new macbook pro.\n\nI want my magsafe charger, i want my displayport and ethernet port, i want my\nCD drive, i want to be able to replace the battery myself (done it twice), and\nto swap hard drives (done it four times) and RAM (once) easily, I want\nphysical keys for escape and media buttons.\n\nI have gone so far as to personally take out the motherboard and replace a\nsingle tanatalum capacitor with an aluminum-polymer capacitor (requiring me to\nscrape off some of the soldermask off so i could solder to the ground plane\neasier since the Al-Poly cap is much larger) because the tantalum one was\ncausing GPU kernel panic crashes. (Big thanks to Louie Rossman for the\ntutorial video!)\n\nI've brought this thing back from the brink of death many times and i will\ncontinue to do so until Apple cleans up their act and makes a true developers\nlaptop again.\n\n~~~\nFullyFunctional\nFunny I have an identical situation with my 17\" 2006 MBP which has been\nrepaired, and upgraded countless time. It has passed to many family members\nbut it's back with me and I love it everytime I use it. Unfortunately, High\nSierra doesn't support it so I don't know what it's future holds. My MBP 2016\nis a disappointment; TB 3 is cool but I hate the touchbar and keyboard.\n\n------\nemersonrsantos\nMacBook Pro from late 2013 is just as difficult to repair, only cheaper\nbecause they don’t have touch bar. I can’t replace the keys at home (expensive\nparts, so many things can go wrong), so it’s waiting for pickup to go to a\ncompany to stay there.\n\nI’ll probably sell it and replace with another Lenovo, which is one of my\nmachines since 2011 and it’s only two philips screws away to receive\nmaintenance and upgrades.\n\n~~~\nwhywhywhywhy\n> MacBook Pro from late 2013 is just as difficult to repair, only cheaper\n> because they don’t have touch bar\n\nNope not true at all, the 2013 has a user serviceable keyboard, removing a\nkeycap wont destroy the mechanism like it does on the USB-C MBP.\n\n------\nmychael\nThis tells me theres a worse problem at Apple: Groupthink.\n\nNo one was bold enough to call BS on this poorly designed keyboard. Everyone\njust went along with it.\n\n------\nMertsA\nAnd the worst part about it is that it's incredibly hard to replace the\nkeyboard on the MBP. For most other laptops it's just a screw or two, a few\nplastic clips, and a ribbon cable to replace it. They're also super cheap for\njust about every manufacturer out there other than Apple and you can get a new\nkeyboard delivery included for ~$15-$25. For the MBP you pretty much need to\nget the whole top case as one assembly because instead of just a few clips\nApple rivets the keyboard to the case! And it's not just a couple of rivets\neither, try a couple dozen.\n\nAbsolutely insane how not only does Apple make the keyboard just about\nimpossible to replace, but they also make a keyboard that's simultaneously\nmuch much more failure prone than any other keyboard that I know of. Here's a\ngreat video of a madman actually replacing the keyboard instead of just\nreplacing the whole assembly.\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMueATtTcQg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMueATtTcQg)\n\n------\nakoster\nI hope that issues like this further open a two-way channel of communication\napple has with \"pro\"-oriented users. For most of us, computers are tools,\nwhich must meet our connectivity and performance needs (encompassing raw\ncompute power and hardware endurance requirements). To continue serving this\nmarket well and staying relevant to professionals and power users, Apple needs\nto take into account our needs and use cases when designing and releasing\nfuture products, which was quite evidently an afterthought for the 2016\nMacBook models.\n\nIf apple tomorrow released an updated 2015 rMBP with a Coffee Lake or Ryzen2\nCPU, an optional dGPU, 2 (or better yet 3) full-sized USB type A ports, and\n(only in my dreams) a full-sized number pad, I would more strongly consider a\npurchase than migrating back to the PC world for my main PC.\n\nI am hopeful Apple recognizes their shortcomings, learns from them and\nproduces more innovative and powerful hardware that meets the needs of the\nprofessional and power-user groups.\n\n------\njayp\nI just switched back to Thinkpad X1 w/ Windows. With Linux Subsystem for\nWindows, it's been roughly working out. though I am currently maintaining two\ncopies of things - one for Linux and one for Windows for lots of tooling. Not\nsure how to optimize here. Only been a few days. Re-learning keyboard\nshortcuts.\n\nOnly pain: not having iMessage on laptop.\n\n------\nnodesocket\nI am a Apple supporter and shareholder, but will admit that I loathe the\nbutterfly keyboard on my MPB with Touchbar. The amount of typos I make (mostly\nmissed key strokes) rivals my iPhone which is impressive. I have also\nexperienced the \"dead\" key issue when dust or hair get's under a key.\n\n------\nehvatum\nThe technological anorexia plaguing Apple is progressing. Disorientation,\nlethargy, inability to complete simple tasks such as arithmetic, and fragility\nare all pathological symptoms. Apple employee injuries sustained by walking\ninto walls, slowdowns caused by lack of energy reserves, irreversible damage\ninflicted by the lightest touch, degradation of capabilities once taken for\ngranted, such as rapidly adding 1+1+1+1, coupled with staunch denials that any\nproblem exists - these are not just warning signs. They are symptoms\nimmediately recognizable to any trained practitioner denoting the sorry fact\nthat, without intervention, Apple will not be getting better. No recovery may\nbe reasonably expected.\n\n------\nsnakeboy\nLast May I bought a 2015 Macbook Pro 13\" on sale for $1100 from Best Buy.\nHumorously it had a higher user review score on their website than the 2016\nmodel (4.6/5 vs 4.5/5) and was ~$1300 cheaper.\n\nFrom everything I've heard, I lucked out on that one!\n\n------\nrasz\nAll you need to know about Apple Engineering by Louis Rossmann\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8)\n\n------\nkahlonel\nI'm honestly thinking of switching to Thinkpad X1 Carbon now, but I HATE\nwindows. And from what I've heard, Linux doesn't bode well with it. Anybody\nhere Linux running on X1 Carbon?\n\n~~~\nsofaofthedamned\nI am, it's awesome with Fedora 28. There a couple of things to twiddle, mainly\nregarding sleep, but after that it's flawless. I can detail it a bit more if\nyou like once I'm not on a phone.\n\n~~~\nkahlonel\nWould love to hear it. I'm mainly concerned about the trackpad, wifi\nperformance and power consumption.\n\n~~~\nsofaofthedamned\nApologies for the delay:\n\nPower consumption - pretty much the same as Windows. I did enable tlp and put\n`powertop --auto-tune` in the startup.\n\nTrackpad is fine but it suffers from the same issue my XPS 13 (2016) has under\nLinux - occasionally tap-to-click stops working. A couple of clicks and it\ncomes back but it is annoying.\n\nWifi performance is awesome, i'll max out my 300mbit internet on it, it's a\nleague above the 'killer wifi' that Dell persist with.\n\nThe biggest issue and one that's apparently shared with the new XPS models is\nthat Microsoft decreed their 'connected standby' sleep modes can't coincide\nwith s3 (normal sleep). As Linux doesn't seem to support the new mode you have\nto patch the initrd line to insert a new ACPI table. It's a pain in the arse\nbut you only need to run it once on each BIOS update. It's detailed here\n[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carb...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carbon_\\(Gen_6\\)#S0i3_support)\n\nOnce that's done Fedora 28 is awesome on this, and the keyboard is leagues\nabove the XPS or the latest Macbooks. Highly recommended.\n\n------\nbogomipz\nI recently had one of the new Macbook Pros for work and experienced exactly\nwhat the author describes. It happened regularly enough that is was a real\nissue. I finally got rid of it.\n\nThe can of air never resolved the issue either. I had to tap the side of the\nlaptop and press down on the keys.\n\nI honestly wouldn't recommend someone buy one either. They took forever to\nrefresh the MBP and that fact that they released something after all that time\nwith this issue is a joke. I won't be looking at Apple again for my hardware\nneeds.\n\n------\ndogdutyascetic\nI haven’t had any issues with the 2016 tb version. But then that’s only 1 data\npoint! Actually it’s the best Mac I’ve owned by far. The keyboard has been a\nbig improvement as has the trackpad, screen, speakers, build quality and\nswitch to USB c, reduced weight and size, etc. I upgraded from the redesigned\n2012 which had a lot of glitches. New designs always take a while to work out\nall of the glitches. But generally I don’t see a lot of threads on bad\nkeyboards. So I suspect this is fairly isolated.\n\n------\njiripospisil\nI'm not a huge fan of the keyboard on my late 2016 MBP 15\" myself (I would\nprefer the previous version, the buttons don't have the nice \"clicky\" sound\nanymore) but it has been rock solid ever since I got the laptop (November\n2016) and has been in constant use since then (8+ hours every day).\n\n------\njonkiddy\nI have my MacBook Pro on a stand then use a bluetooth keyboard and external\nmonitor. Rarely do I use the actual keyboard.\n\nIf Apple created something similar to a Mac mini with a laptop battery I would\nbuy it immediately. I know it wouldn't work for everyone, but it would suit my\nneeds.\n\n~~~\nkalleboo\nWhat do you need the battery for? No power at your desk, or just something a\nbasic UPS could handle?\n\n~~~\njonkiddy\nYou're absolutely right, a simple UPS would be sufficient for my needs. I'm\nbeginning to wonder if that is all I'm missing from my setup.\n\n------\nkevin_b_er\nForm exceeded function. This isn't much different from stories of Apple power\nadapters with strain relief that always broke because the designers/marketers\nprohibited the engineers from making a proper strain relief.\n\n------\npost_break\nJust an FYI, Apple still sells the older 2015 model:\n[https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-2015/](https://www.apple.com/macbook-\npro/specs-2015/)\n\n~~~\nakoster\nI hope they keep doing so until a newer model with a descent keyboard comes\nout.\n\n------\naklemm\nI moved on to an HP Spectre and Windows 10 from my 2009 MBP...I'm mostly happy\nwith it, but VERY SAD that the MBP era seems to have ended rather than getting\nbetter and better. It's a damn shame.\n\n------\nOvertonwindow\nI use a 2012 MBP that’s still going strong. The newer models with\nirreplaceable (at least by us mere mortals) hard drives, batteries and memory,\nand permanently pushed me away from buying a Mac again.\n\n------\narthurjj\nAny suggestions for good non-Windows laptops in the $1000 price range? I'm\nseriously considering just buying a refurbished MacBook Pro from 2013 at this\npoint.\n\n~~~\nbennycwong\nI think the dell XPS 13/15 or precision 5510 line is the successor to the\nMacBook Pro. I recently picked up an XPS 13 and installed Linux. I really\nprefer it to the MacBook Pro 2016 I have at work. The only thing missing is\niMessage, which unfortunately is why I haven’t gone full Linux.\n\n------\nkahnpro\nSo far I haven't had any problems with mine, purchased 4 months ago... _knocks\non wood_\n\n------\ncmclaughlin\nNnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnot sure what you're talking about. It's best keyboard ever.\n\n/sarcasm\n\n------\njacksmith21006\nWhat is up with Apple lately. The Homepod is a total train wreck. No mic mute\nbutton. No input jack so can not use as a speaker. No stereo. Siri still\nterrible.\n\n------\npeterbraden\nI had an employee provided macbook air which had constant issues with driving\nan external display. (I think it was firmware problems). When the keyboard\nbroke after 10 months, I was pretty happy to have a solid reason for a\nreplacement.\n\nNew macbooks are junk.\n\n------\njiveturkey\n> _This old MacBook Pro is still fine_\n\nThen why did you buy a new one?!? Excess consumerism drives the tech ahead,\nsure, but I can only have so much sympathy for your buyer’s remorse.\n\nThe problem must be environmental or physiological (he presses the keys harder\nthan average, or something) because keyboard malfunction isn’t some recall-\nlevel dysfunction as he wants to make it out to be.\n\nThat said, the new keyboard is indeed a travesty.\n\n------\nheavymark\nKeyboard working here without issue. Noticed a couple issues earlier on, but\ndiscovered was from a couple crumbs. If there were a major issue affecting\nnearly everyone there would have been a recall or constantly news cycle about\nit. So I don't think the answer is for others to not buy a MBP because 'you'\nand some others are experiencing issues. Instead, I'd recommend you and others\naffected bring it into get fixed.\n\nThat being said, I'm sure the keyboards will continue to improve with each\ngeneration, albeit with compromises such as to get thinner they change the key\nstyling and eventually will be touch only with haptic feedback (which I'm not\nexcited for) but will be inevitable.\n\n~~~\nnathanaldensr\nI think you need to reconsider the things you're saying. \"A couple crumbs\"\nrendering a key useless is a problem, not something to hand-wave. And yes, the\nissue is widespread enough that I've read several blog articles, stories, and\ncomments on several websites about how terrible the keyboard is. This isn't\nsome cheap $20 keyboard part that is expected to fail; this is Apple hardware,\nfrequently claimed to be the best in the business.\n\nWhy \"you\" in scare quotes? Do you think people are lying about their problems\nwith the keyboard? People don't want to bring in their workhorse machines\n(MacBook _Pro_ ) for repair because of a couple of crumbs. They don't want to\nbe faced with repairs into the hundreds of dollars. They expect the newer\nMacBook Pros to be as reliable as the old ones, and this isn't happening.\n\nWhy are you so sure the keyboards will \"continue to improve\" with each\ngeneration? They _haven 't_. The current trend is that they're getting\n_worse_. Have you tried typing on a hard, flat surface for a lengthy period of\ntime? It _hurts_. Fingers were not designed to bang against unyielding\nsurfaces for hours on end.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFacebook’s open-sourcing of AI hardware is the start of a revolution - stevep2007\nhttp://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2015/12/facebooks-open-sourcing-of-ai-hardware-is-the-start-of-the-deep-learning-revolution/\n======\nstevep2007\nOpen-sourcing Facebook’s AI hardware means that deep learning has graduated\nfrom the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) lab into Facebook’s\nmainstream production systems intended to run apps created by its product\ndevelopment teams. centre.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWootoff today - drm237\n\nFYI: Woot.com is having a woot off today.<p>http://www.woot.com\n======\nadamdoupe\nHey, I dunno if anyone is interested, but a year or so ago I create a site to\nget woot updates via Email or Text message.\n\nCheck it out at <http://wootwatchers.com> and let me know what you think.\n\n------\nmynameishere\nA good example of the s3 chaos today, if I'm not mistaken\n\n<http://s3.amazonaws.com/wootimages/wootoffdetour4.gif>\n\n------\nalaskamiller\nmaybe you should just point to it instead\n\n~~~\ndrm237\nWoot has been submitted before so submitting it again wont create a new\narticle...\n\n~~~\nTichy\nMaybe once is enough...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWant brand loyalty and better leads? Go against the grain - kiraleighleigh\nhttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/want-brand-loyalty-better-leads-go-against-grain-kira-leigh/\n======\nquark33\nThis was so refreshing to read\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCrew Builds a Flying House Modeled After UP - ubasu\nhttp://gizmodo.com/#!5778006/the-house-from-up-has-been-built-in-real-lifeand-it-flies/\n\n======\npvsnp\nThere's a more comprehensive coverage by ABC on this. With Video. (Warning:\nAnnoying ads) [http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/recreating-scene-disneys-\nup-...](http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/recreating-scene-disneys-up-movie-\nmagic-engineers-kids-cartoon-computer-animation-entertainment-13068921)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGlyphosate (Roundup) Is (Still) Not a Carcinogen - rmason\nhttps://www.croplife.com/crop-inputs/epa-glyphosate-is-not-a-carcinogen/\n======\nnabla9\nMore accurately: EPA says that the main ingredient in Roundup is not a\ncarcinogen. At least the recent court case in Britain against Roundup was not\nrelying on glyphosate being a carcinogen. There are multiple ingredients. For\nexample POEA (polyethoxylated tallow amine) that works as surfactant.\n\nEven if there was an effect, it can't be very high, so I'm not very worried.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHomeland Security Detains Stockton Mayor, Forces Him to Hand Over His Passwords - pm24601\nhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151002/15583732429/homeland-security-detains-stockton-mayor-forces-him-to-hand-over-his-passwords.shtml\n======\njlgaddis\nI hope this starts happening to more, even \"higher-level\" politicians and\ngovernment officials. Only then, when they experience it firsthand, will they\nrealize just how crazy they've allowed things to become. Then -- maybe --\nwe'll start to see changes being made.\n\n------\npm24601\nAgents told him that it was \"routine and not unusual\" to be forced to hand\nover your laptop and phone.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nImpossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA - rbanffy\nhttps://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/ingredient-that-makes-meatless-impossible-burgers-meaty-finally-accepted-by-fda/\n======\nmelq\nI know this is a stupid thing to get upset about, but it annoys me SO MUCH\nthat they refer to it as something that 'bleeds'. Real burgers don't bleed!\nNor do steaks, or any other cut of beef you might purchase at the grocery. The\nred, translucent juices that come out of a burger or steak are red for the\nsame reason the meat itself is red: myoglobin. Not blood.\n\n~~~\nsmnrchrds\nEnglish is not my first language, so I always assumed blood and bleeding refer\nto any red liquid. I mean, we talk about blood oranges [0] and bleeding trees\n[1] and no one assumes there is any real blood involved.\n\n[0]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_orange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_orange)\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corymbia_opaca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corymbia_opaca)\n\n~~~\nspuz\nThat's true, but when you are talking about meat, it's usually safe to assume\n'bleed' means to 'bleed blood'.\n\n~~~\ndrb91\nWhen people refer to a “bloody steak”, they aren’t implying the red liquid is\nactually blood.\n\n~~~\nthaumasiotes\nI would guess that most people are, just as most people who refer to menstrual\nblood intend to imply that it is actually blood.\n\nIs menstrual blood actually blood? That's not a question with a definitive\nanswer; it is obviously different from the normal kind of blood you'd find in\nblood vessels, but it's also fundamentally similar. \"Blood\" is not an\nelemental or even homogeneous substance, so it can be hard to say that\nsomething isn't blood.\n\nBut most people who refer to something as \"blood\" have never given it a\nminute's thought. If you cut meat and get a thick red liquid, of course that's\nblood. Where else would blood come from?\n\n------\nrcdmd\nThey're baking up soy hemoglobin in yeast and purifying it to add to non-meat\nburgers. This is particularly neat considering how complex the human heme\nsynthetic pathway is. I suspect even in soy, it's more than just producing a\n\"pre-(a-)\"protein-- you'd have to make a few other enzymes along the heme\nsynthetic pathway and provide an environment conducive to them working.\n\nIt does make me wonder, why soy? Corn and rice hemoglobins, unlike soy\nhemoglobin, are basically ubiquitous in our diet as far as I know. I suppose\nsoy hemoglobin may be more meat-like or easier to produce.\n\n~~~\nbluejekyll\nI’m not an expert, but I know that soy is used as a nitrogen replacing plant\nduring crop rotation. So it’s possible that the cost of soy is lower than rice\nor corn, as it’s an off cycle replenishing plant.\n\nJan 2018 cost per ton: Soy: 405 Corn: 155 Rice: 442\n\nWell! There goes that idea! Is the US corn subsidy the reason it’s so much\ncheaper?\n\n~~~\ncredit_guy\nMaybe a part of the price difference can be explained by the fact that corn\n(maize) uses the C4 photosynthesis vs the less efficient C3 used by soy and\nrice.\n\n[1]\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C4_carbon_fixation#Plants_th...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C4_carbon_fixation#Plants_that_use_C4_carbon_fixation)\n\n------\nclankfan\nI've had several impossible burgers and they completely live up to the hype.\nThey taste very good indeed. But I have noticed a slight uptick in anxiety\nafter eating them, maybe 30 mins after or so. This anxiety comes out of the\nblue, the first few burgers I had, I had zero health or safety thoughts in my\nmind that might have precipitated the anxiety. Interested if anyone else has\nhad a similar experience.\n\n~~~\naskaboutit\nThe problem with trying to replace meat. Is the unknowns about why we survived\nas carnivores for thousands upon thousands of years and our current obsession\nto suddenly play god with a food supply.\n\nWe don’t know what we don’t know. And impossible doesn’t know why there would\nbe side effects. Or they do and you’ll not know.\n\nBuy grass fed organic meat and eat less of it. We already eat too much.\n\n~~~\nfcarraldo\nI think Buddhists would disagree that humanity has survived solely as\ncarnivores for thousands of years. Plenty of other cultures have existed on\nsolely vegetarian/vegan diets as well, throughout history. Peasants within\nmeat-eating cultures also did not always have frequent access to meat, and\nthus ate primarily vegetarian, or perhaps pescatarian. The idea that humans\nhave always eaten meat and that it’s an essential part of the human diet is a\nmyth.\n\n~~~\ngorilla_fight\nWhat are these cultures which existed solely on vegan diets? Honest question,\nI searched but couldn't find the answer, there was a response on Quora which\nmentioned some Buddhists are vegan by default, and some Hindus and Essene\nChristians are vegetarian, but she \"wasn't aware of any 100% vegan cultures.\"\n\nI can understand vegetarian cultures surviving, since they can acquire\nessential nutrients through the animal products found in diary, but would be\nintrigued to find a vegan (plant-based only) culture. Was there perhaps one in\nthe distant past or ?\n\n~~~\nppseafield\nYou used to be able to acquire B12 from crops because some of the natural\nbacteria flora contained the cyanobacteria that make it. Modern farming's use\nof industrial pesticides means we can't use that as a source anymore.\n\nThe Jain's diet is largely plant-based. It allows for dairy, but only in the\ncase that the cows aren't hurt as part of the process.\n\n[http://www.jainfoodie.com/jain-food-\nrestrictions/](http://www.jainfoodie.com/jain-food-restrictions/)\n\n------\nrzimmerman\nInterestingly the concern from the FDA was not whether or not soy\nleghemoglobin is safe generally, but whether or not it’s a potential allergen.\nGiven that chemically equivalent ingredients are found in all kinds of food\nalready, it’s a shame this got held up so long in a process that a lot of food\nadditives skip entirely. But I’m happy that really solid beef alternatives are\nstarting to become available.\n\n------\nteaneedz\nIt is delicious. If it gets more folks to give up a regular burger, all the\nbetter.\n\nThe place I eat mine from cooks it just right. Yum.\n\n------\nmaxxxxx\nI don't get the point of having a veggie burger bleed. I tried an Impossible\nBurger a while ago and didn't find it that great. It doesn't taste like real\nmeat and is just an average veggie burger. I think it's more of a gimmick.\n\n~~~\njlawson\nThe goal isn't just to have a \"veggie burger bleed\", it's to replicate the\nexperience of eating meat.\n\nPerhaps they have failed so far (according to your taste test), but the goal\nis valid. If someone can find a way to make a product near-indistinguishable\nfrom meat without raising and killing animals, it would be a _massive_ victory\nfor the environment (meat production is CO2-intensive), for the cause of\nbringing decent food to poor people, and for reducing animal suffering.\n\nIt may be one of the most underrated technological efforts happening right now\nIMO.\n\n~~~\nmaxxxxx\nI think for that purpose it's better to work on lab-grown meat. Making veggies\ntaste like meat seems misguided to me. Either eat real veggies or eat real\nmeat.\n\n~~~\nastura\nWhat about the people who gave up meat for health reasons?\n\nThere is a market for this, just because you aren't in the target market\ndoesn't mean it doesn't exist.\n\n~~~\nwolco\nProcessed foods generally are not healthy for you. Marketing is making this\nproduct appear healthy. There is a large market for processed foods and this\nproduct seems novel and has a decent taste so I could understand it's\npopularity.\n\n------\nbodhibyte\nI ate a couple of the Impossible Sliders from White Castle a couple of months\nago. They definitely smell and taste more beef-like than any other plant-based\nburger.\n\nI had read about their effort to produce heme in the lab. This article [1] is\ninteresting as it identifies that Impossible Foods has engineered the\nmethylotrophic yeast, Pichia Pastoris [2], to produce Soy Leghemoglobin\nProtein.\n\n1\\.\n[http://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/3FNzWrRdPanXheUdTigx/full](http://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/3FNzWrRdPanXheUdTigx/full)\n\n2\\.\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pichia_pastoris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pichia_pastoris)\n\n------\nvagab0nd\nIf I don't eat meat for a couple days, I start feeling tired and hungry all\nthe time. So for me the problem is not the taste of the meat, but rather how\nit makes my body functional.\n\nI haven't tried the Impossible Burger. Does it solve this problem?\n\n------\npmoriarty\nIt'll be interesting to see what effect this stuff has on people after 20\nyears of use.\n\nUntil then, I'm not touching it. There are plenty of other tasty meat\nsubstitutes out there with more tried-and-true ingredients.\n\n~~~\ncosmojg\nIt's an analog of hemoglobin. What kinds of dangers can it possibly pose?\n\n~~~\npeterlk\nI can't tell if you're joking or not. Smoking used to be considered healthy,\nleeches were healthy, letting blood was how you got over sickness, drinking a\nmercury-based concoction was once thought to be an elixir of immortality.\nMaybe coffee is good, maybe it's bad. Maybe wine is good, maybe it's bad. How\noften are diets shown to not do the things they are supposed to? Humans are\nwrong about nutrition (and health) a lot. Saying that this is definitely not\ndangerous seems rather arrogant. With that said, we do the things that seem\nlike the best idea at the time with the knowledge we have, and this does seem\npretty safe.\n\nPersonally, I'm going to keep eating meat, but I'm kind of old-fashioned\n\n~~~\ntjr225\nAre you seriously comparing smoking and bloodletting to a veggie burger? What\nsort of insanity is this\n\nMaybe HN has jumped ship and I need to simply move on.\n\n~~~\nglenneroo\nGeneralizing the sanity of an entire platform based on one post that you\npersonally find shocking seems a bit extreme, don't you think?\n\n~~~\ntjr225\nOn the contrary! These sort of absurd reductions of logic from people with no\nbusiness pretending to be experts(e.g. comparing a veggie burger to smoking or\nblood letting) appear to be very much par for the course here.\n\n------\nMilnerRoute\nIf you're in the East Bay, they serve Impossible Burger at the Oakland\nColiseum's in-stadium restaurant, the East Side Club.\n\n------\njameslk\nMeat substitutes seem symptomatic of overpopulation (i.e. animal agriculture\nwasn't much of a problem in the past millennia). With potential food and water\nshortages or regulatory pressures in the future, perhaps the outcome will be\nmeat substitutes feeding the masses while only the wealthy will be able to\nafford real meat.\n\n------\nwhatsstolat\nNow we need to make quinoa that tastes like the real thing, using beef.\n\n------\nebbv\nA restaurant near me started serving impossible burgers a couple weeks ago.\nSince I have gout I am always trying beef and pork replacements.\n\nImpossible burger’s patty is on par with a McDonald’s quarter pounder. Which\nis a reasonable accomplishment. It’s acceptable and enjoyable as a cheap\nburger. But it is not gonna fool anyone who really enjoys a good burger.\n\nWhich would be fine if people would stop overhyping it.\n\n------\nalrs\nMake a zero-carbohydrate meat substitute, and I'm interested. Otherwise, no.\n\n~~~\ngorilla_fight\n> Make a zero-carbohydrate meat substitute, and I'm interested. Otherwise, no.\n\nThis is a good point, one reason many people (including me) have been eating\nmore meat lately is to reduce their carbohydrate consumption after research\nhas found many of the negative effects of a high-carbohydrate diet.\n\nThe Impossible Burger's complete ingredient list, from their website:\n\nWater, Textured Wheat Protein, Coconut Oil, Potato Protein, Natural Flavors,\n2% or less of: Leghemoglobin (Soy), Yeast Extract, Salt, Konjac Gum, Xanthan\nGum, Soy Protein Isolate, Vitamin E, Vitamin C, Thiamin (Vitamin B1), Zinc,\nNiacin, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin B12 Contains: Soy, Wheat\n\nThe very first ingredient besides water is \"wheat\", a grain known for numerous\nside effects, one of the only foods with its own disease (celic disease,\ngluten sensitivity), high levels of anti-nutrients (phytic acid, inhibiting\nmineral absorption). Granted, it is the \"protein\" part of wheat, but from the\nnutritional facts on the Impossible Burger's zendesk support site we can see\nit has 5 grams total carbohydrate, total sugars <1g, including added sugars <1\ng.\n\nFive grams may not sound like much, but it all adds up. The general\nrecommendation for inducing ketosis if you're into that is less than 20 grams\n(ignoring the recent \"Dietary carbohydrate intake and mortality: a prospective\ncohort study\" study which scandalously considered 200 grams \"low carb\"). A\nhamburger bun has about 23 grams, so eating one of these burger patties in a\nhamburger with a bun and/or other condiments will easily kick one out of the\nlow-carbohydrate diet classification, if that's one's goal.\n\nFor comparison, on a personal note, today I've eaten zero carbs at least by my\nmeasurements (supposedly real meat has \"some\" carbs, but I haven't found any\nmeasurable quantity anywhere, data sources commonly list it as 0g - but would\nbe interested in more precise data if anyone has it). Not an untypical day for\nme. 0% carbs, 60% fat, 40% protein (this high protein:fat ratio is unusual for\nme, due to the lean meat I unfortunately was stuck with this time, but I\nusually strive to eat much higher fat content. Always lowering the\ncarbohydrates.) As primarily a meat-eater, or at least an eater of animal\nproducts, it is much easier to strive for the low-carbohydrate way of eating.\n\n------\ntwblalock\nI'm not a vegetarian, but if I was one, I would hope to have the good taste\nnot to pretend I am eating meat when I am not.\n\nThere are excellent vegetarian culinary traditions in the world. India stands\nout as a country with amazing regional vegetarian cuisines that celebrate\ntheir ingredients and don't pretend to be something they are not. In the\nUnited States, vegetarians eat fake meat.\n\n~~~\nmc32\nI wouldn't be too upset. There are a few traditions of Buddhism that attempt\nto make plant derived substances approach the texture and taste of a few\nanimal proteins[1, 2]. They do a pretty good job of it.\n\n[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cuisine#Ingredients](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cuisine#Ingredients)\n\n[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_analogue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_analogue)\n\n~~~\ntekromancr\nAnd they tend to do a damn good job. There is a brand called May Wah that\nmakes incredible fake meats. I have no issues eating meat, but some times I\ncrave May Wah nuggets.\n\n------\naskaboutit\nI wouldn’t trust anything the FDA approves after watching the Netflix series\non how it is simply a big Pharma publishing house now.\n\nIt’s so reliant on company money that it can’t do its duty to protect the\npeople it is supposed to protect.\n\n~~~\nNasrudith\nThat doesn't make any sense as a reason to distrust at all. They /have/ to go\nto the FDA to get it approved if they plan on being legitimate medicine. That\nwould be like saying that you can't trust drug testing labs to report honestly\nbecause they depend on the patients for blood and urine samples.\n\n~~~\naskaboutit\nHave you watched the documentary or read about the pivot to profit from\ncompanies over profit from government spending?\n\nThe problem isn’t the FDA it’s the government cutting its budget. In such an\nobvious way that they want business to be able to do what they want. It’s\ngotten worse under Trump.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nJQuery » jQuery UI v1.5 Released, Focus on Consistent API and Effects - bomberstudios\nhttp://jquery.com/blog/2008/06/09/jquery-ui-v15-released-focus-on-consistent-api-and-effects/\n======\naxod\n# $(”div”).draggable() creates a draggable\n\n# $(”div”).draggable(”destroy”) destroys it\n\nAm I missing something here, or is that an extremely ugly design choice?\nPassing strings into functions to specify what function you want? eugh\n\n~~~\nsimonw\nI think they ended up having to do that because of jQuery's chaining support.\nMost of jQuery's functionality lives in a single namespace (jQuery.fn) which\nmeans you can chain method calls together like this:\n\njQuery('div:first').addClass('hello').text('Hello\nWorld').draggable().css('color', 'red');\n\nIf a plugin needs three or four methods, that's three or four extra functions\non the one object - which ends up looking quite ugly:\n\njQuery('blah').draggable({options}).destroyDraggable()\n\nThe message passing idiom lets them add just one method to the jQuery.fn\nnamespace that can cover a full range of different actions. I think it's a\npretty clever pragmatic solution.\n\n~~~\naxod\nI still don't like it in terms of taste. I guess one question would be how\ndoes it handle a typo in the string.\n\nIf you call a.destroooooy() then you'll get a js error, but if you call\na.execute(\"destroooooy\")...\n\n~~~\nDougBTX\nThey'll both be run-time errors, hopefully they throw an exception.\n\n------\nJimEngland\nI haven't had the chance to use jQuery, how does it compare to other\nJavaScript libraries such as MooTools or Prototype?\n\n~~~\nsimonw\nOne big difference is that both Prototype and mooTools make modifications to\nthe built-in types (extra Array methods etc). jQuery (and Dojo and YUI)\nexplicitly avoids doing this for compatibility reasons. It's no coincidence\nthat mooTools and Prototype are the only two big libraries that can't co-exist\non a single page.\n\nThe interesting thing about jQuery is its focus - it almost exclusively works\nto improve the interaction between JavaScript and HTML. DOM manipulation is\nmore convenient in jQuery than any other library, and the other library\nfeatures build on top of that core ideal.\n\nmooTools and Prototype attempt to make improvements to the JavaScript\nlanguage. jQuery tends to play along with the language - it supports a\nfunctional style of programming using lots of closures (while you can avoid\nthem if you really want to I find jQuery code with closures flows really\nwell).\n\n~~~\njamongkad\nIt's the abundant use of Closures is what brought me to jQuery in the first\nplace. Like you I favor this approach\n\n$('div').draggable().create({Object hash}).draggableDestroy();\n\nIt may look awkward at first but I think it will a result into a new win in\nthe long run. I'm having alot of trouble downloading the new library for some\nreason but can you do something like this?\n\n$('div').draggable().create({Object hash},function(){ alert(Object Creation\nconfirmed}; ).draggableDestroy();\n\nI think the ability to launch a callback function on the creation of a object\ncould open oppurtunities for better UI feel and responsiveness.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nZenbar: The Fastest Smartphone App Switcher Concept on the Planet. - shawndumas\nhttp://www.theverge.com/2012/12/2/3719600/zenbar-the-fastest-smartphone-app-switcher-concept-on-the-planet\n======\nmustafakidd\nI really like this - swiping up from the bottom on either side would also be\nnice. Maybe sort them in reverse when pulling the bar up from the bottom vs.\nfrom the top. LRU vs MRU...?\n\nAnyway, love the concept overall.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFBI overstated forensic hair matches in nearly all trials before 2000 - protomyth\nhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-forensic-hair-matches-in-nearly-all-criminal-trials-for-decades/2015/04/18/39c8d8c6-e515-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html\n======\nMCRed\nA few years ago I remember reading reports of the FBI forensic labs doing much\nworse-- taking evidence from the crime scene and contaminating evidence taken\nfrom the accused with it so that it would produce a \"match\" and the like. It\nwas a big scandal.\n\nIn fact over the past 20 years I've heard this story at least a dozen times--\nwhere crime \"labs\" at different levels of government and in different states\n(eg: state labs, federal lagbs, etc) were caught doing this.\n\nAnd when it happens, that isn't enough to get people to be able to appeal\nunless they have evidence the lab did it in their specific case.\n\nOne of the problems of our system is that the criminal system is lacks checks\nand balances. The judges, prosecutors, police all work for the government.\nThey all have the same interests-- they all report to people who want to look\n\"tough on crime\".\n\nSince the police immediately take over crime scenes and collect the evidence\nand then get the evidence analyzed, they have a lot of power to be corrupt in\nthe interest of more convictions-- and the consequences are negligible for\nbeing caught.\n\nWhose going to try a dirty cop? You can shoot a guy in the back on video and\nnever get put on trial for it in this country. (I left Texas when a cop gunned\ndown an unarmed black kid who was on his knees crawling away from him...\nshooting him multiple times in the back... on my college campus. The cop lost\nhis job and then joined the police force in a suburb. No charges were filed.\nApparently a black kid crawling away was \"threatening\" to the white cop. Alas,\nI moved to a liberal state and was then myself the victim state corruption-\nthough fortunately, the damage was only $3k to a lawyer.)\n\nThis is why I think any evidence submitted in court needs to come from an\nindependant lab, done in a double blind way, and with several audit cases sent\nto that lab regularly (eg: taking dna from people not involved in crimes and\nsend it in as if it was part of an investigation and see if they are\nfabricating evidence.)\n\nThe idea that the government is independant and objective is to me, now that\nI'm older and have seen these scandals over the years, laughable.\n\nEvery time it happens everyone acts like its' a rare thing.\n\nIt's not.\n\n~~~\nPythonicAlpha\nI think, the problem is similar to the trouble we have with judges in our\ncountry. One judge recently said something that really put a very shady light\non many of his colleagues. I regret, that I don't remember it exactly, what he\nsaid.\n\nThe trouble in my opinion with some judges in my country and with the police\nin some countries is, that everybody just assumes, that because they work for\nlaw enforcement, they have a high level of integrity. But when you look how\nthey are educated, the subject \"integrity\" is not even touched (I even don't\nthink, that it is taught in law schools).\n\nIn my country, when somebody is already a judge, there is nearly no chance at\nall, that this person will be held accountable for misjudging. I think, not\neven the highest courts can replace a judge that repeatedly and knowingly is\nbending the law. At least I don't know of any case at all where a judge was\npunished or even replaced. And don't think, that all judgments are correct in\nmy country.\n\nIn my opinion, when there is one thing to be learned from history, it is that\nany person can err and even the best meaning persons can change into dictators\nover time depending on situations.\n\n~~~\nMCRed\nYes, and having travelled extensively and lived in Mexico and Chile, my\nexperience tells me that while the USA has failed to have adequate checks and\nbalances, other countries often have even less. I loved both of those\ncountries, but I wouldn't really feel safe in Mexico, and I didn't feel fully\nsafe in Chile. I think the Carabineros of chile are taught integrity and are\nmostly above reproach, however, and so I hold Chile out as a good example of\ndoing it right. But even still, none of these countries have enough checks and\nbalances.\n\nI think the problem is there's a magical thing that happens to people when\nthey think about government.\n\nThey somehow think it's ok for government to do things that individuals\ncannot. And once you give a group of people that magical power, it's easy to\nforget that they are people.\n\n~~~\nPythonicAlpha\nWhen I was younger, I thought that the western countries (US and Western\nEurope) are better (off) than other countries like South America or Asia,\nbecause they have much less corruption than those countries.\n\nToday I am differentiating much more and I must admit that I am not knowing,\nwhy we are better of as for example South American countries. Of course, they\nhave a high level of corruption, but when you look deeper, you will see, that\nwe in Europe have also much corruption. The main difference: While in many\nSouth America countries everybody knows about the corruption, for example in\nGermany corruption is much much more covered -- but it exists, maybe even in\nthe same degree as in South American countries. It is just covered much more.\nWhat makes me worry is, that while the normal police-men in Germany may have\nintegrity, the normal top-politician seems to have none left. I can give no\nname of a top politician today, where I would assume, that he is not\ninfluenced or even bribed by some groups.\n\nI think, that this gives a really bad signal to all the people in this nation.\nMany say: \"Why should I pay taxes, for those crooked people?\" And I must\nadmit, that this is a strong argument in these times.\n\n~~~\ndroopyEyelids\nI think there is a big slice of perspective you're missing here.\n\nYes, at the higher levels of power everything is dirty.\n\nHowever, you have to look at what the consequences of that are, how it\nmanifests in a society, and how far it spreads.\n\nAnd in Germany, it works pretty well. Yes, enormous government projects don't\nalways go to the most capable or efficient. Yes, big business owners\ncontribute to politicians, avoid taxes, and erect legal obstacles to\ncompetition that would benefit society. However, the society basically works.\nThe corruption is not interfering with basic services to the people. A\njournalist can write what she wants without fear of physical reprisal.\nIndividual property rights are by-and-large respected. School teachers\nactually benefit the children. Police officers don't operate as a tax force on\ntheir own behalf. Thats not the case in every country.\n\nSo while I agree with you that even the 'best' countries still have a very\nreal battle to maintain integrity, there is absolutely a spectrum and largely,\nNorth America and Western Europe are near the top of it.\n\n~~~\ntmp123459\nI think North America is corrupt beyond any help. Look at the deep state they\ndo horrible things and no one cares. And there is no freedom of expression,\neven as i write this im afraid. The cia infects people with sifilis has\ntorture concentration camps all over the world where they imprision people\nwithout a trial and inflict upon them all kinds of sick and perverted\ntortures. They traffic drugs and control criminal organizations in sveral\ncountries, they are the top dogs in the underworld. They persecute journalists\nthey hire some to decieve the public. They are really toxic and deceithfull.\nNot to mention the wars they go in foreign countries and kill thousands if not\nmillions and destroy any trace of civilization. They a destructive force. =(\n\n------\ndmurray\nHow does this not get all FBI testimony thrown out by judges? If there is an\norganisation who pays its employees to lie in court, and they are known to\nsuffer no ill consequences for lying, all of those employees' testimony should\nbe considered worthless.\n\n~~~\nthemartorana\nI fear that even with this gross miscarriage of justice over decades, people\nmay not be granted a retrial. It's the entire reason the Innocence Project\nexists.\n\n[http://www.innocenceproject.org/free-innocent/improve-the-\nla...](http://www.innocenceproject.org/free-innocent/improve-the-law/fact-\nsheets/access-to-post-conviction-dna-testing)\n\nI've never understood how the possibility of new evidence doesn't immediately\nreopen a case (in general). I thought we wanted real, actual, blind justice\nbased only on facts and absolutely nothing else. It turns out it is rarely\nthat simple.\n\n~~~\nMCRed\nAll people have an agenda. Their agenda generally favors themselves in some\nway or another.\n\nWe, as the potential victims of injustice want a real, actual, scientific,\nblind justice system that presumes innocence and requires proof beyond a\nreasonable doubt, checked by a jury that can nullify laws, and the like.\n\nPoliticians want to be \"tough on crime\" so they appoint judges and prosecutors\nwho get convictions. Judges want to be re-elected because they are \"tough on\ncrime\" (in places where judges are elected) Prosecutors want to have a\nsuccessful career so they will do anything they can get away with to get a\nconviction. The police want to have the case be off their hands and to be\n\"closed\" so that their stats look good because it's good for their career\nbecause the Mayor wants to be \"tough on crime\" and so the police find the\nfirst plausible suspect and try to build a case.\n\nAll these organizations are in cahoots, literally, and so no prosecutor is\ngoing to indict a judge or cop unless they absolutely have to.\n\nSo long as the public can be lead to believe they live in a society with the\n\"rule of law\" not the \"rule of man\" then nothing more needs to be done. And\nthe public is very gullible! (Especially when you control the schools and you\nraise them to be gullible.)\n\nIT's not that these people are evil. ITs that they are self interested.\n\nThe founding fathers attempted to put in checks and balances and they did a\ndamn good job.\n\nBut over the past 200 years, they have been systematically eroded.\n\n~~~\nwongarsu\nBut there are far more potential victims of injustice than politicians, judges\netc. Since we're talking about a democracy here, it should be possible for\nthis majority to create an environment where the selfish interests of\npoliticians and judges align with the need to protect innocents. Yet this same\ndemocracy creates an environment where protecting innocents puts officials at\na disadvantage.\n\nThings are clearly very backwards.\n\n------\nmikeash\nI'm constantly amazed at how terrible criminal forensic science seems to be.\nEverything except DNA matching appears to be no better than voodoo, and even\nthe DNA stuff is tricky. Is there something about this particular field that\nattracts charlatans and incompetents? Is it purely a motivational problem,\nwherein the people who pay for these results are more interested in a\nconviction and don't care if it's right?\n\n~~~\nrealusername\nI've worked a bit on fingerprint recognition devices (using various vendor\nSDKs) and people clearly overestimate the accuracy of these kind of devices.\nThe majority can be fooled with a fingerprint made by melting gummy bear with\nsome tape to gather the fingerprint. Creating fake fingerprints is really easy\nand cheap. I'm also not mentioning the crappy firmware these devices are\ngenerally equipped with, everything close to metal seems to have really low\nquality firmwares, most of the time, you need to compensate on your side for\nsome unfixable problems in the firmware.\n\nThe main problem is TV I guess, for the average guy, these kind of\ntechnologies are completely infallible and people tend to forget that just\nlike anything else, it's just an indicator that can be fooled / misinterpreted\n/ badly gathered.\n\n~~~\ngaius\nYes it's a bit tinfoil-hat but when you look at shows like CSI and 24, you\ncouldn't imagine a better propaganda campaign that \"evidence is infallible and\ntorture is OK\".\n\n~~~\nmml\nI've been of the opinion that shows of that nature are a pretty transparent\nattempt at gas lighting the populous into feeling as though such behaviors and\npractices are acceptable, desirable & necessary.\n\nI'll go polish my tinfoil hat now.\n\n------\nfiatmoney\nThe fact that the matching process is not double-blind indicates that it is\n_designed_ to be corrupt.\n\n~~~\npolymatter\nNot being double-blind makes it cheaper. Hence takes less budget, lower taxes,\neverybody cheers.\n\nAnybody proposing to make it double-blind is going to need to find the money,\neither from other departments or by raising taxes. Without a chorus of public\nsupport behind them, this is a very hard sell. And easily reversed after the\nnext election.\n\n------\nmalandrew\nThey really oughta have a \"blind\" approach to testing forensic evidence where\nsamples are prepared by other forensic professionals to be sufficiently\nsimilar but not matches and real matches, neither of which are from a real\ntrial. The forensic examiners should never know when they have evidence from a\nreal trial.\n\n~~~\npdkl95\nJust call it a variation of the well-known \"line up\" that everybody already\nunderstands.\n\n------\nmwsherman\nLegal arguments, like most things in life, reward narrative over truth.\n“Truth” is an unbelievably high bar to pass – even basic ideas like confidence\nlevel are beyond the understanding of the legal system.\n\n“Beyond a reasonable doubt” is actually a decent epistemic standard. The\nproblem is that juries and judges are not exposed to the information that\nwould lead to reasonable doubt in these cases.\n\nSo basic epistemology already makes bad outcomes likely. Add the incentives\n(political, organizational) in cases like these, and terrible things happen.\n\n~~~\nsmsm42\nThe problem is the incentives go to one side (winning the case) without a\ncounterbalance incentive (being not punished for misconduct). If police\nmisconduct such as perjury and fraud routinely led to grave consequences for\nthe person doing it, the balance of the incentives would be closer to what it\nneeds to be. But the Blue Wall[1] and general reluctance of the justice system\nto punish their own, prevents it from happening. Even when the fraud is\ndiscovered, the perpetrators frequently are not sanctioned in any way, the\nworst that happens is that convictions get thrown out, but that does not\ncreate counter-incentive. Thus, no balance.\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_wall_of_silence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_wall_of_silence)\n\n------\nlate2part\nAgain we see that our law enforcement branch is overreaching, acting in error,\nand effectively breaking the law. What penalty is appropriate for this? How do\nwe rebuild our country to stop this? I believe the answer is to hold the\nperpetrators responsible. Easy to say, but we need financial and jail times\nfar beyond the pain these people cause. We need to root out this corruption,\nwhether it's intentional or negligent.\n\n~~~\no0-0o\nI posit white collar crime should carry more severe penalties than blue collar\ncrime.\n\n~~~\nnitrogen\nThis is an interesting perspective with which I am currently inclined to\ndisagree. Could you provide more rationale to justify the idea that nonviolent\ncrimes should be punished more severely than violent crimes?\n\n~~~\neropple\nI'm not that poster, but people with more power should be held to account more\nstrictly for abusing it. While there are noteworthy exceptions, violent crimes\nare (generally speaking) low-leverage crimes that rarely impact more than a\nhandful of people, whereas the ramifications of even something as \"non-\nviolent\" as this sort of fraud can be significantly more harmful to much\nbigger groups of people.\n\n(I am also of the opinion that corporate protections are largely bullshit and\nthat executives and boards should be civilly and criminally liable for\nwrongdoings perpetuated by their companies. Probably the only way to make them\nact decently.)\n\n~~~\nsmsm42\nThese things are very hard to compare. If one steals $10 from every person in\nthe US, he stole 3 bln. dollars. That's huge. However, mostly nobody's life\nhas been seriously, permanently and unrecoverably affected - at least\nexcepting some really untypical random occurrences. If one robs one family of\nall their possessions, or causes one person be permanently disabled, or dead,\nthat is very grave permanent and unreparable consequences, even though it is\nfor one or few persons only. Humanist morals dictates the latter is worse than\nthe former, so should be punished harder. Of course, in real cases it all gets\nmixed and unclear, especially when also question of intent comes into\ndiscussion.\n\n~~~\nebrenes\nYou're really sweeping under the rug a lot of people who would be impacted by\nhaving $10 taken away.\n\nI am certain >0 people would have checks bounce, payments declined, fees\nimposed on them. For many people $10 can be the difference between being able\nto afford rent, payment of utilities or other items that could cascade into\naffecting their life significantly. The poor are really susceptible to these\ntype of accidents\n\nAlso, about 60 million of the US population are below the age of 14 (which\ngiven you got 3 bln dollars from $10, I'm assuming you're taking the whole\n~318 million population), that means many minors just lost $10 that to them\nwould likely be more money than they ever had or be a significant amount of\nmoney.\n\nAnd that doesn't even go into other aspects of the theft, like the effects\nnationwide on everyone having money taken away from them. The erosion of\nconfidence in the safety of their money.\n\nI posit to you a likely scenario of what you described. Imagine if everyone\ncitizen in the US were issued a government mandated ID with an associated\nfederally insured bank account. Now, the whole scenario becomes viable, where\na hacker could steal $10 from every citizen in the U.S.\n\nNow, that would first create a huge debacle. It would most likely cause an\nimmediate loss of trust in the online marketplace, cost probably billions of\ndollars in getting it fixed. It would end many people's careers, most likely\nlead to companies getting fined, economic stagnation depending on a cascade\neffect from a loss of confidence in markets. It's hardly a victimless crime.\n\nSure, we could keep diminishing the amount to something ridiculous till we're\nmaybe talking about stealing 1 cent. Which would still be a fairly juicy pay\noff of 3 million, and that would erase away many of my points or at least\nreduce their incidence significantly. I'm sure some people would miss payments\nor have other inconveniences affect them. Likewise, the theft would have\nrepercussions on many people's lives.\n\nEven if I were to take the magical scenario of someone who magically made 1\ncent disappear from everyone's wallet/bank account. That would still cause\ngreat impact and damage. \"Are there more people like him with such magical\npowers?\"\n\nI guess what I'm trying to say is that you have to look at the final magnitude\nnot just the token value of the damage done per capita. And also look at the\ndamage done by having affected so many people simultaneously.\n\n~~~\nsmsm42\nI think you overestimating it - there are not a lot of people that have bank\naccounts with payments coming out of them that keep balances below $10. Most\nof people that are poor enough so that $10 is a real issue for them would not\neven have a bank account.\n\n> $10 that to them would likely be more money than they ever had\n\nI have hard time to believe for most 14-year-olds $10 would be \"more money\nthat they ever had\", in this day and age. For 5 year old, sure. But typical 14\nyear old not ever having a price of two sandwiches in Subway (or one in a\nfancier place, or a meal in a relatively cheap restaurant)? I don't believe\nit.\n\n> I'm sure some people would miss payments or have other inconveniences affect\n> them.\n\nLike lots of people that had the balance of exactly 1 cent and had their rent\npayment of exactly 1 cent coming in. That doesn't sound ridiculous at all :)\n\nI think you're reaching here. That's not the point anyway - the point is that\nthese things are not just numbers, and are not directly comparable and\nworkable using simple arithmetics.\n\n------\nresearcher88\nReminded me of George Carlin's last standup special, where he said \"it's part\nof their [cops'] job to commit perjury whenever it helps the state's case\":\n\n[https://youtu.be/jgxyCudDiM4](https://youtu.be/jgxyCudDiM4)\n\n------\ndatashovel\nThis only reinforces my perspective that even highest levels of law\nenforcement need to be operating in a fully transparent way.\n\n------\nasveikau\nThe headline is inaccurate. The article says more than 20 years preceding the\nyear 2000. They are not precise about what more than 20 years means, but I\nread that as late 1970s to 2000. From the headline and HN title it would seem\nlike it starts from the beginning of time.\n\nEdit: I see now that the hn title matches the wapo headline, changing to\nreflect that. Still a bad headline.\n\n------\nendymi0n\nI'm thinking about how much their incentivization might have influenced them.\nOne fundamental difference between German and Anglo-American law is the\nprosecuter's task, as mandated by law. In the US it is to get as many\nconvictions as possible (guilty or not). In Germany, the law wants a\nprosecutor to \"find out the truth and use all evidence against AND also for a\ndefendant\".\n\nMethinks the former case is one of the driving forces behind the \"Bazaar\"\nmentality.\n\n------\nsmegel\nI wonder if partial DNA \"matching\" will one day be the hair strand analysis of\nour time.\n\n------\nIllniyar\nI did not understand from the article what \"overstated\" means.\n\nWas it a partial match that they described as 100% accurate? did they hide the\nstatistical probabilities? was the evidence faked?\n\n------\naugustocallejas\nThis is a great short documentary on the history of hair analysis at the FBI:\n\n[http://www.retroreport.org/video/how-dna-changed-the-\nworld-o...](http://www.retroreport.org/video/how-dna-changed-the-world-of-\nforensics/)\n\n------\nr00fus\nJustice needs a meta-moderation function.\n\n~~~\nsmtucker\nIt does have one. But the situation has to be very bad for enough people to be\nwilling invoke it.\n\n~~~\nChristianBundy\nAm I missing something, or are you talking about a violent revolution?\n\n~~~\nsmtddr\nI don't know about a _\" violent revolution\"_, but I'm very skeptical of fixing\na broken system while working within the rules of said system.\n\n~~~\nAnkhMorporkian\nIt's been done successfully many times in many countries. Look at Britain for\nexample. Say what you will of the problems they have now, but they're\nundoubtedly better off than when they were under the thumb of the monarchy and\nthe aristocracy. Gradual changes in the law punctuated by occasional serious\nstrides forward led to a near complete abandonment of the previous system.\n\n------\nbrohoolio\nAm I the only one who wonders what this costs each time something like this\nhappens?\n\n~~~\ndatashovel\nIf you mean the cost in terms of trust citizens have in these institutions,\nthen certainly I think the answer is no.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "Ask HN: What do you think about Alibaba Cloud? How does it compare to the big 3? - mike_aarons\n======\ndizzydiz\nI’d be surprised if it ever has meaningful impact in the Western world because\nof company policies/ban lists. You can bet with 100% certainty that the CCP\ncalls the shots.\n\nBut on the flip side, for the most part the big 3 can’t sell into China so it\ncan have a commanding lead.\n\nIts growing at over 60% per year in a far less competitive environment than\nthe big 3. Tencent (mostly focused on gaming) is also competing there.\n\nFull disclosure: I invested in BABA today because of the above.\n\n~~~\nmike_aarons\nVery interesting, thanks!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Why has Google kept Android and Chrome OS separate? - panabee\n\nthe separation of chrome os and android puzzled me for a long time. why not merge the two and concentrate resources on a single os? now i suspect they kept the two apart because they serve different purposes. chrome os is designed to reduce the cash microsoft generates from windows -- specifically from desktops and laptops -- much as google apps reduces the cash from office. android is meant to ensure no proprietary operating system dominates on mobile devices. keeping the two divided allows them to focus on their respective objectives more effectively.<p>anyone have different theories?\n======\ndragonwriter\nAndroid is (and was when ChromeOS was first released) a fairly mature (though\nstill rapidly evolving, because the mobile OS space isn't a stationary target)\nmobile OS with well-established marketshare.\n\nChromeOS is a longer-term, higher-risk, more ambitious OS effort (the all-web\nOS Google has always wanted) with a fairly niche (by comparison to Android)\ncurrent market. There's no real compelling reason to tie them together yet. A\ngradual, eventual convergence makes sense, but that's over a fairly long term.\n\n------\nwmf\nThe actual reason is just that they're separate on the org chart.\n\n~~~\npanabee\nnot according to this breakdown of the google management team:\n[http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/](http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/).\neven if true, they could combine them on the org chart as well.\n\n~~~\nmcintyre1994\nThat changed very recently - I think Sundar Pichai was announced as taking\nover Android (from Andy Rubin) at I/O this year.\n\n~~~\npanabee\ntrue, but an org chart is a reflection of strategic priorities -- not the\nsource.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Lotus Eaters (2013) - benbreen\nhttp://mikejay.net/the-lotus-eaters/\n======\nharry8\nPretty sure Odysseus did listen to the Sirens, lashed to the mast while his\ncrew stopped their ears with beeswax. Contrary to what is reported in this\narticle.\n\nGetting something as basic as a detail from literature wrong when you're using\nit to make your point puts everything else in the article in a shadow of doubt\nfor me. Can I believe what he's saying about kava when he hasn't got basic\nreading comprehension down? I'm probably being harsh, the detail probably\ndoesn't matter. Or is it a \"No yellow m&m's\" in the rock band rider as a\ntelltale for \"do these guys take care about detail?\"\n\n~~~\nmannykannot\nAre you referring to Van Halen's _brown_ M&M rider?\n\n~~~\nharry8\nMaybe, I've heard the story with just about every 80s glam metal band and\nevery m&m color. Maybe one or more of such stories is true?\n\n------\nslowmovintarget\n>> The lotos is a drug, but it stands for something more: the refusal to\nengage with the world of progress and economic productivity, and [the refusal]\nto maintain a society in readiness for war.\n\nThe short version: Hippies gonna hip'.\n\nThe Lotus Eaters in their various emergent forms throughout history are the\nother side of the pendulum from hard work and endeavor taken to extreme.\n\nThere should be a balance that doesn't require completely giving up.\n\n~~~\nnews_to_me\n> There should be a balance that doesn't require completely giving up.\n\nI think beyond this, there should be a spectrum of engagement that anyone can\nchoose from - maybe working crazy salaryman hours, maybe living on a\nsubsistence reservation, but more likely something in-between, at various\nlevels. It's important for a person to be able to choose how ambitious they\nwant to be, and I find that the options are lacking in my society.\n\nI guess my take-away is, I wish I could more easily opt to work, say, 30\nhr/week for 75% of my salary and benefits. It seems like my only choice is to\nwork 40 hrs, take a lesser hourly job, or go freelance/startup which entails a\nlot of personal overhead.\n\n~~~\nchris_st\nYou might try looking around, for another company which does what you do now.\nI did 32-hour weeks for about nine years, both at a small company (~ 850\npeople) and the comparative behemoth I work for now (~ 90,000 people).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nReliance Jio is world’s largest startup with USD22.65B investment - govind201\nhttp://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/reliance-jio-is-worlds-largest-startup-with-rs-150000-crore-investment-mukesh-ambani/articleshow/51613248.cms\n======\nnamratapatil\nWouldn't we rather discuss real startups that are not funded by conglomerates.\n\nI came across this startup called Agatsa and here's their story.\n\nIt started off as a search for an easy to use ECG device, that required no\nhelp from a medical technician, led these two engineers to develop one\nthemselves.\n\nThis led to the launch of a pocket-able heart monitoring device that is able\nto compute and provide an in depth analysis of ECG reports when a person\nplaces his/her thumbs on the device. All it takes is 15 seconds! This device\nis validated by more than 500 doctors and is known to be 98% accurate.\n\nPretty fascinating right? Watch the video to learn more!\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIXFQaKL_F0?=hn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIXFQaKL_F0?=hn)\n\nIn case you would like to they have a fund raising link as well.\n\n------\nvr3690\nMukesh Ambani really needs to go look at a dictionary and figure out the\ndefinition of a startup. You really cannot call one side project of a huge\ncorporation like Reliance a startup.\n\n------\n0x006A\nReliance Industries, one of the largest holding companies in India, starts a\nnew venture to launch a new LTE mobile network. What makes this a startup?\n\n------\namalantony06\nThis is clickbait title. In what sense of the word is Reliance Jio a startup?\nIt's a division of a big co.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFreshplayerplugin – Powered by Chromium's Pepper Flash Player - forlorn\nhttps://github.com/i-rinat/freshplayerplugin\n======\nsandGorgon\nThis does NOT support DRM content (like Hbo Go,etc). However the version in\nChromeOS does. Google and Adobe have refused to include DRM support in general\nLinux.\n\n[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=245999#c...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=245999#c4)\n\n~~~\ni-rinat\n\"This\" does; browser part is supported. To make it work, you'll need to get\nlibpepflashplayer.so file from Chromebook, as only version from ChromeOS have\nDRM code compiled in.\n\n------\nsuprjami\nCan we please just let Flash die already?\n\n~~~\nJohnTHaller\nHaving flash die for video has mostly already happened and is a good thing.\n\nHaving flash die for websites (like small restaurant sites) has mostly already\nhappened and is a good thing.\n\nHaving flash die for games would be a bad thing. There are hundreds of\nthousands of games on the web that are written in Flash that are a lot of fun\nfor millions of folks to play. Just because you can't play them on your mobile\ndevice is no reason for the rest of us to lose access to them on our PCs. And,\nno, most of them will not be converted to HTML5 because they were written\nyears ago and the author has long since moved on.\n\n~~~\ndavid-given\n<cough> HomestarRunner </cough>\n\n~~~\nJohnTHaller\nTeen Girl Squad (and the intro for non-flash devices):\n[http://imgur.com/gallery/jXnYLQB](http://imgur.com/gallery/jXnYLQB)\n\n~~~\nsp332\nWow, that really isn't as funny without audio.\n\n~~~\nJohnTHaller\nIt is if you've watched it already, since you can't look at it without hearing\nthe Strongbad-being-a-female-teenager voice in your head.\n\n------\ndigi_owl\nGiven that npapi flash clearly works on Linux, i really do wonder why Adobe is\nnot providing a straight download of it anywhere.\n\n------\njosteink\nLooks interesting. Have anyone here tried it and seen how well it works?\n\nIMO in any state it can't be much worse than the current NPAPI does in X11, so\nI'm interested in anything which can be used to get better FF Video\nperformance.\n\n~~~\nElhana\nCrashes occasionally, but npapi crashed for me as well. Main advantage is that\nyou get new flash version, that some games require to run.\n\n~~~\ni-rinat\n> Crashes occasionally\n\nLooks like Mozilla decided to ditch Flash, and now Firefox 40 sometimes hangs\ncompletely due to some odd interlocking with plugin-container process.\n\n> Main advantage\n\n... is that accelerated rendering is used where NPAPI Flash was afraid to use\nit. For example, for transparent plugin instances.\n\nIt comes with a price, though. There are more rendering issues, because\nunusual graphics paths are used.\n\n------\nAardwolf\nI tried Flash with pipelight (iirc) in Firefox once. It worked mostly well,\nbut I noticed two bugs:\n\n-full screen simply plain didn't work, required restarting X to make computer usable again. This was my reason for uninstalling it again.\n\n-opening a file dialog didn't work. E.g. try the export function of \"ClickerHeroes\".\n\nDo these things work with this implementation? Or is it similar to pipelight?\n\nThanks!\n\n~~~\ni-rinat\nHanging on going to full screen is surely not an application fault, it's\nsomething with either X server or a video driver.\n\nFile dialogs should work, for both loading and saving files.\n\n------\nnly\nAlways irked me how Adobe are supporting NPAPI on Windows but not Linux. They\nsupport Linux. They support NPAPI. They support x86 and x64. All 3 together?\nNope.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSecure Strings in Javascript - juanpablo\nhttp://google-caja.googlecode.com/svn/changes/mikesamuel/string-interpolation-29-Jan-2008/trunk/src/js/com/google/caja/interp/index.html\n\n======\nbartman\nDoes anybody know a library like this for PHP or do I need to start coding?\n\nAt the moment my best practice is to use a printf-like function to do escaping\nfor me, it suffers the problems described in the article though.\n\n------\njuanpablo\nVery specific but a must-read for advanced javascript coders\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTrump Will Get Power to Send Unblockable Mass Text Messages to All Americans - wslh\nhttp://m.slashdot.org/story/319427\n======\nNeliquat\nDid we not already have that ability? This just feels like another 'here is\nanother thing trump, like every other president, has access to'. I get it. His\ntweets are often in bad taste, and now it might be 'unblockable'! But a timely\npublic communication medium might be a great idea used in the correct\ncircumstances. This all just comes off as alarmist to me.\n\n------\nMrZongle2\n#MoreTrumpHysteria\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIf you gaze into nil, nil gazes also into you - colin_jack\nhttp://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/8181879506/if-you-gaze-into-nil-nil-gazes-also-into-you?\n\n======\nColinWright\nHere's the discussion from when this was submitted a week ago:\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2818723>\n\n~~~\ncolin_jack\nAhhh thanks, I've got used to just submitting as I knew it usually handles the\nfact something has already been submitted gracefully. Will start double\nchecking.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nUber meltdown shows its time for Silicon Valley to stop worshipping founders - champagnepapi\nhttp://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/14/uber-meltdown-silicon-valley-founder-worship-must-end.html\n======\nredm\n\"Silicon Valley worships founders. The conventional wisdom is that companies\nlose their spirit and competitive edge when they sideline founders and bring\nin adult supervision.\"\n\nI don't think this is fair. Silicon Valley worships founders who build\ninsanely useful, helpful, or amazing products. No one is standing up for, now\nor in the past when Uber has been caught doing sketchy things.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow to Be a Better Entrepreneur in the Next 30 Minutes - jasonlbaptiste\nhttp://www.quicksprout.com/2009/05/25/how-to-be-a-better-entrepreneur-in-the-next-30-minutes/\n======\nmjnaus\nHere is how to Be a Better Entrepreneur RIGHT NOW... don't read link bait\nfluff like this and get to WORK!\n\n~~~\nwebtickle\nWhen I think of link bait, I think of sites that go after Digg and not really\nHacker News. Hacker News is an awesome resource (better than digg imho), but\nif you get to the top I don't think you get too many links out of it.\n\n------\nfuzzmeister\n\"putting up motivational posters\"\n\nSeriously?\n\n~~~\ndcurtis\nAs stupid and cliche as this sounds, it's kind of right. I have this quote up,\nand every time I look at it, I get a boost:\n\n\"Get action. Do things; be sane, don't fritter away your time; create, act,\ntake a place wherever you are and be somebody; get action.\"\n\n-theodore roosevelt\n\n~~~\nDobbs\nI have:\n\n\"Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We _keep moving\nforward_ , opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and\ncuriosity keeps leading us down new paths.\"\n\n-Walt Disney\n\n~~~\ndcurtis\nI have a Disney quote too:\n\n\"I can never stand still. I must explore and experiment. I am never satisfied\nwith my work. I resent the limitations of my own imagination.\"\n\nWALT DISNEY\n\n------\nnreece\n_It doesn’t have to be an innovative business that solves a pain in the market\nplace; it just has to be a business that can turn a healthy profit every\nyear._\n\nOn the contrary, a business must solve a pain the market place, to become\nprofitable and healthy.\n\n~~~\nispivey\nBut his example, a plumbing business, both solves a pain in the marketplace\n(people need their pipes fixed and plumbing installed) and is not at all\ninnovative.\n\n------\nzackattack\nSmart guy and he gets to the point - great article and thanks for posting.\n\n~~~\nzackattack\nOkay, so I decided my short term goal is to be making $35/day.\n\nExplained: $500/mo apt + $350/mo food + $200/mo entertainment = $12,600/yr =\n$35/day\n\nI also have a long term goal to be making $835/day. :)\n\nI want to come up with an idea for a business that could be making $35/day\nreasonably quickly, but also have the potential to eventually scale up to\n$835/day.\n\nI order to make $35/day, I need to create something that can do 7 sales of a\n$5/(month)/profit product every day.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nConcurrent JavaScript – Introduction - andreicon\nhttps://medium.com/@voodooattack/multi-threaded-javascript-introduction-faba95d3bd06#.uhnr579hm\n======\nbsou\nPotentially similar discussion\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11477314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11477314)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Good Resources for Data Engineering - fargo\nI am looking for some example case studies&#x2F;exercises in order to learn play with some libraries, is there a book or website you can recommend?\n======\niso1337\nkleppmann’s book: designing data-intensive applications.\n\nIt’s very well written, but maybe doesn’t have as much in the way of\nexercises.\n\n~~~\nfargo\nThanks for the excellent recommendation, I have been through kleppmann's book\nand it's a must for anyone who wants to be serious about data engineering (or\nwhatever it's called these days). I am looking however for something more\npractical and less technical, maybe something like projecteuler or cracking\nthe cracking the coding interview but for data\n\n~~~\niso1337\nIMHO data eng is too niche and new for that kind of content. But I would love\nto see if there is anything out there like that.\n\nIs the goal here to get through system design interviews or something like\nthat? You can check out pramp.com if so.\n\nIf it’s for learning, then reading some of the original Google papers behind a\nlot of the big data technologies has been very rewarding for me. You could try\nreimplementing the paxos algorithm for example.\n\n~~~\nfargo\nI am a bit rusty with spark and I have a practical interview where I will be\ngiven various datasets to extract insights from them.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTech Community Group Hacker Hideout names costume party \"Hackers & Hookers\" - phwd\nhttps://www.eventbrite.com/event/8938393977/\n\n======\nlbarrow\nValleyWag pretty much nailed it:\n\n\"Beer. Dance floor. Shot bar. Food truck. Girls.\" Nerds. Obliviousness. Poor\njudgment. Skewed cultural views. Social regression. Bros. MySQL. Crushing it.\nA party atmosphere combined with everything that makes the rest of the world\nhate you, Silicon Valley: this party is not smart.\"\n\n[http://valleywag.gawker.com/hackers-and-hookers-startup-\npart...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/hackers-and-hookers-startup-party-is-\ntechs-new-worst-1450909234/@sambiddle)\n\n------\njordo37\nMan, what the hell. This is despicable but also just dumb - someone already\ngot in trouble for this exact same stuff last year and there was media\ncoverage.\n\nAt least when lame-o's come up with new forms of misogyny it advances the\nconversation forward, this is just a rehash.\n\n------\ngenevievemp\nCan I debut my 'uber for sex' startup there? #whoresmakeitwork\n\n------\nogghead\nBuncha pathetic bros. I think they believe this pitch will actually entice\nfemale humanoids to attend.\n\nIf this mysogynist debacle comes to pass, I would love to see pictures. Bro-\ndudes are always funny.\n\n------\ncalibraxis\nAt least they're honest about misogyny. Some people see no significant\ndifference between renting machines and females, to carry out commands.\n\n------\ngeetee\nso what.\n\nedit: seriously. that's the response this commands. no capitalization\nincluded.\n\n------\nnoname123\nAwesome. This is like the \"Pimps & Hoes\" party back in college. But you know\nthe reality of these parties, the golden rule of engineering applies here,\n80/20 rule - meaning the gender ratio and probability of odds/goods are good.\n\nOh and before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, let's not get worked up\nabout stupid names in tech events and work on real gender equality in concrete\nsubstantive programs.\n\n~~~\nogghead\n\"Oh and before anyone gets their panties in a bunch...\"\n\nI assume that was meant to be ironic, because otherwise, um...\n\n~~~\nnoname123\nIt's alright haha. Irony intended. I knew the response which is just people\nbeing PC without actually offering any substantive change. Tbh, I'd rather be\nopenly sexist than to be socially liberal and closet sexist.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nICE switches from RIM to Apple - DigitalBoB12\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2012/10/22/iphone-becomes-mobile-device-of-choice-for-u-s-immigration-and-customs-enforcement/\n\n======\nsheikhimran1\nRIM is so going down!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFooling the masses with performance results on parallel computers (2010) - jsnell\nhttps://blogs.fau.de/hager/archives/5260\n======\nmpweiher\nOne of my favorites of these is only showing the speedup...\"scales linearly\",\nwithout comparing to a non-parallel baseline. First time I saw this was with\nClik, which reported linear scaling. I was impressed, until I found out that\nthe parallel version was 6x slower on a single CPU than the sequential\nversion.\n\nSimilar with a SPJ talk on parallel Haskell (can't find it right now). Big\nclaims about this being the One True Way, and then required four cores to\nmatch C sequential case. Hmmm.\n\nUPDATE:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWSZ4c9yqW8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWSZ4c9yqW8)\naround the 1h 10min mark. Four cores to match sequential C (previously had\nwritten six, was wrong)\n\n~~~\nadrianN\nSee also \"Scalability! But at What COST?\"\n[https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotos15/hotos...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotos15/hotos15-paper-\nmcsherry.pdf)\n\n~~~\nmpweiher\nAhh, yes, the Configuration that Outperforms a Single Thread. I think this\nshould be a standard + required measurement.\n\n------\nAthas\nHow come reviewers let this stuff pass in papers? While some of the issues are\nsubtle (inventing more work or mangling the algorithm), some of the graph-\nbased tricks are pretty obvious.\n\n------\nwcrichton\nThis reminds me of my favorite paper: \"Scalability! But at what COST?\"\n\n[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6753/959eed800e9fad9e330daa...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6753/959eed800e9fad9e330daae43f81b7a48017.pdf)\n\n------\namelius\nIt should mention: ignoring Amdahl's law, [1].\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law)\n\n~~~\nAthas\nAmdahl's Law is easy to misapply on both sides of the fence. If what you care\nabout is mostly weak scaling (using larger machines to solve larger problems),\nthe Law is not as harsh as it appears at first glance, as in many cases the\nparallel fraction increases as the workload does.\n\n------\npaulmd\n> Stunt 9: Boast massive speedups with accelerators!\n\n> Always compare the fully parallel accelerator code with a sequential\n> (single-core) CPU version.\n\n> Be sure to rush ahead to the next slide before anyone dares to ask why you\n> don’t use a single GPGPU “core” to make the comparison even more “well-\n> defined.”\n\n> Accelerate only the kernels that are easily portable and report only their\n> performance. Amdahl’s Law and communication overhead will be nothing but\n> smoke and mirrors!\n\nI disagree with this one. The baseline for a parallel program is always the\nbest single-threaded program you can write (which usually means with\nOpenMP/threading removed to reduce overhead).\n\nThe goal of writing parallel programs is to increase the degree of parallelism\nthat a program exposes, _even if the total running time of the program\nincreases_ (i.e. time spent over all cores, not time-per-core). You know going\ninto it that adding synchronization is going to slow you down - even in\nstandard parallel-CPU programs (OpenMP).\n\nEffective GPU parallelization works the same way. For example, you might use\ncounter-based RNGs that are really too slow to be used on CPUs (at least, in\nthe days before AES-NI), but on GPUs math is often \"free\" because the program\nis bandwidth limited. Or you might choose to re-compute data in memory rather\nif possible rather than storing it in memory and costing RAM and bandwidth.\nYou are \"wasting cycles\" deliberately, to expose a greater degree of\nparallelism/reduce contention to increase overall program performance.\n\nSo running the program on a single GPU core is just as stupid as benchmarking\nan OpenMP program on a single core - again, we literally know going into it\nthat the single-threaded programs are usually most efficient in terms of total\ncycles expended, that's not really what we're trying to measure here.\n\nIn the text, the author then pivots to \"well GPUs have more cores/memory\nbandwidth!\", which is also rather myopic and dismissive of the actual\nchallenges of GPGPU programming. Exploiting that bandwidth is not easy on a\nprocessor with massive latency and <100 bytes of SRAM per core to spread\nbetween cache, shared memory, and constant pointers across many threads, not\nto mention the problems of thread divergence, etc.\n\nI do agree that communication overhead needs to be taken into account and\ntotal program time is what really counts. This is (IMO) a strong argument for\neither porting your entire program to run on the GPU, or an absolutely minimal\nset, so that you minimize communication overhead. The distinction I'm drawing\nhere is the latter is something like GPU-accelerated database searching, where\nyou are not going to store actual rows on the GPU, but just DB indexes that\nyou search and copy target IDs back to the host system.\n\nEither way you approach it, _your data set needs to live on the GPU as much as\npossible_ , which means minimizing the number of times and amount that it gets\ncopied to-and-fro and incurs communication bottlenecks/latency. In turn - this\nmeans absolutely brutal minimization of the program state to reduce memory\nconsumption, because fitting a larger problem into the GPU will usually\nincrease total speedups (for a well-written program).\n\n~~~\nscott_s\nI'm with you, and I had a similar reaction. But on thinking about it, I think\nhe was mostly arguing about how to frame the performance improvement. See my\ncomment elsewhere in the thread:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13696514](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13696514)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMaemo 6 looks even more interesting - kasunh\nhttp://www.slashgear.com/maemo-6-to-get-multitouch-gestures-with-qt-4-6-0955593/\n\n======\nmildweed\nGood that more devices are getting multi-touch.\n\nThat being said, this device is not a game changer. Its a mee-too. Which is\ngreat. It'll force the innovators to innovate more.\n\n~~~\nzokier\nMaemo 6 isn't a device, its a platform or operating system. And my estimate is\nthat first devices for M6 are announced in 2010Q4, so lot of things can happen\nbefore that.\n\n~~~\nkasunh\nI think Maemo 6 would be announced much sooner than that. It is very like that\nit would be announced in the maemo summit scheduled on october this year in\nAmsterdam.\n\n------\nrunwicked\nFinally, a worthy competitor to the iphone OS.\n\n~~~\nkasunh\nA very good competitor I must add. Full linux experience, Multiple\ncustomizable desktops, Multitasking.\n\n~~~\nrimantas\n_Full linux experience_\n\nSounds scary.\n\n~~~\nwmf\nIt even includes anonymous troll developers (look at the video).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHeroku down for production and staging apps - julioademar\nhttps://status.heroku.com/incidents/554\n\n======\njulioademar\nI still dream of the day they'll let us set up different availability zones.\nNot that I'm sure this wouldn't occur, mind you.\n\n~~~\nsync\nDynos already run in different availability zones:\n[https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/production-\ncheck](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/production-check)\n\nYou can take that a step further by running dynos in the European (eu-west-1)\nregion:\n[https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/regions](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/regions)\n\n~~~\njulioademar\nThat's still in Beta though.\n\n~~~\nkxu\nI'm running a production webapp since May on the Heroku EU region, not a\nscratch since then. It's a Beta suited for production apps since February:\n\n\"Beta Testers,\n\nHeroku Europe is ready to begin running your production apps!\n\nCreate an app in the region:\n\n    \n    \n        $ heroku create --region eu\n    \n\nThen add add-ons, deploy, and scale as usual. Please note we're still adding\ncapacity in this area, so contact us if you expect to run more than 30 dynos\nor do more than 500 reqs/second on any app in Europe.\n\nAs always, private betas should be considered confidential. Please don’t\ntweet, blog, or talk about this feature publicly until we announce it\nourselves.\n\nDocumentation:\n[https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/regions](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/regions)\nQuestions & feedback: eu-beta@heroku.com\n\nBest,\n\nThe Heroku Team\"\n\n~~~\nrichardwhiuk\n\"Please don’t tweet, blog, or talk about this feature publicly until we\nannounce it ourselves.\" \\- but commenting on Hacker News is fine :p\n\n~~~\nbjeanes\nIt's no longer a private beta...\n\n[https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2013/4/24/europe-\nregion](https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2013/4/24/europe-region)\n\n------\ncrashoverdrive\nI'd be curious to see the numbers of how often Heroku pushes code to\nproduction, and also how often those pushes break the build.\n\n~~~\njulioademar\nWell, it may not be their fault:\n[http://status.aws.amazon.com/](http://status.aws.amazon.com/)\n\n~~~\ncrashoverdrive\nSorry, what I meant was that I wasn't suggesting it was their fault, I was\nmerely reminded of my own curiosity of wanting to build a better product but\nnot wanting to break what a ton of customers are using and paying a lot of\nmoney for\n\n------\nwebbruce\nYeah, seems to be Amazon, not Heroku this time.\n\n~~~\nchubot\nNote from last time:\n[https://status.heroku.com/incidents/151](https://status.heroku.com/incidents/151)\n\n\"This post will reference the AWS services that we use behind the scenes so\nthat we can be very specific. Note that although we will be discussing various\nAWS service failures, we don't blame them for what our customers experienced\nin any way. _Heroku takes 100% of the responsibility for the downtime\naffecting our customers last week._ \"\n\nIn other words, they shouldn't be exposing AWS outages to users (although as\nas long as they use a single cloud provider that's impossible to avoid in\ngeneral.)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat's Inside Red Bull - fogus\nhttp://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/15-07/st_redbull\n======\nwoodall\nThe official RedBull site has a list of ingredients for all product lines[1].\nI am fond of the sugar-free version myself, although it can't be any better\nfor you.\n\n[1] [http://www.redbull.com/cs/Satellite/en_INT/Products/Red-\nBull...](http://www.redbull.com/cs/Satellite/en_INT/Products/Red-Bull-Energy-\nDrink-021242751115866)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: JsonTree, a 3.53kb JavaScript tool for generating html trees from JSON - MaxLeiter\nhttps://maxleiter.github.io/jsonTree/\n======\nbrockwhittaker\nYou should consider removing all the other functions from the global scope,\nespecially because they have relatively generic names like \"generateTree\",\n\"toArray\", \"depth\", and \"toggleClass\".\n\nConsider using an actual class or a closure perhaps?\n\n~~~\nMaxLeiter\nWrapped in a closure, thanks!\n\n------\nCheezmeister\nThanks for sharing! I see your 3.5k and raise (lower?) you 1.6k\n\n[https://github.com/cheezmeister/kapok](https://github.com/cheezmeister/kapok)\n\n[I think it does most of what yours\ndoes]([https://github.com/Cheezmeister/kapok/blob/master/tst/kapok....](https://github.com/Cheezmeister/kapok/blob/master/tst/kapok.spec.coffee))\n(EDIT: Nope, missing URL loading and XSS cleaning!)\n\n~~~\nMaxLeiter\nYours is much cleaner code though; this was my first venture in javascript\n(and really programming) when I wrote it and am planning on refactoring it\nsoon(tm). Great work with Kapok, the demo page is well done.\n\n------\nkc10\nI didn't realize it's a tree until I clicked it. Changing the buttons to + and\n- signs might help.\n\n~~~\ntomatsu\nI'm using ⊞ and ⊟ for that.\n\n~~~\ntimfletcher\nI was confused too. It looks like an bulleted list in Chrome.\n\n~~~\nibgib\nI think its cool, but def the bullets threw me. Maybe an example of the\ncustomized styling would be good.\n\n------\nedko\nI noticed that your json2html function assigns the same id (top) to all non-\nleaf tree nodes. You might want to fix that.\n\n------\nComputerGuru\nThis doesn't work in Safari on iOS. Values don't show up, no tree.\n\n------\nfoota\nI definitely expected this to be like a JSON serialization format for HTMl.\n\n------\nLorin\nNeat, but generated tree isn't keyboard accessible.\n\n~~~\nMaxLeiter\nkeyboard accessible? are most html trees?\n\n~~~\nsimonw\nThey definitely should be, for accessibility reasons and because it's not that\ndifficult to support.\n\nHere's an example of a tree widget that can be navigated by keyboard:\n[https://www.jstree.com/docs/html/](https://www.jstree.com/docs/html/)\n\n~~~\nEdSharkey\nI'm not a fan of javascript being used for the clicky handlers, even if the\nelement being clicked is a natural clicky element like an anchor tag.\n\nIt's much better to rely on a toggle like input type=checkbox and CSS to\nvisualize tree expand and collapse based on checkbox states than to install\nclick handlers in javascript. I suspect you could make such an arrangement\nmore accessible and keyboard navigable as well (via grouping.)\n\nJavascript should only be used to dynamically load/unload subtrees on click in\nthe case of especially huge or costly trees.\n\n------\nkyriakos\nThe menu on the linked page does not work on mobile because the fork me banner\nis overlayed on top on it.\n\n~~~\nMaxLeiter\nRemoved the banner - thanks\n\n------\nfrik\nDoesn't work on mobile browser.\n\n------\nWhitneyLand\nDoesn't work on mobile? (iOS)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNetflix Makes Amends For Outage - jameshicks\nhttp://www.infotainmentnews.net/2011/03/23/netflix-makes-amends-for-outage/#axzz1HMGY73Gm\n======\nlorax\nWow, 3%. At $7.99 a month, your credit will be 24 cents.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSo you've Upgrade to Snow Leopard? Post Dev Feedback Here - whalesalad\n\nThose developing on the mac generally have lots of added libraries and tools... like Fink or MacPorts, different Python or Ruby versions, etc..<p>In my case, I don't use the base install of Apache and run my own, with mod_wsgi. I also run my own build of MySQL. Because of things like this, I tend to shy away from all of the automated crap (such as the migration tools, and upgrading a point release rather than a fresh install) and I don't think i'm alone. I upgraded my older Macbook Pro to Leopard by formatting and installing fresh, then manually moving data.<p>Because Snow Leopard is a smaller release and more of a glorified patch or service-pack if you will, I am wondering if I really need to do this. I'd love to get feedback from all the Mac hackers out there who have upgrade to Snow Leopard. What kind of problems have you noticed, if any?\n======\nGreggW\nI just told my wife, \"The next time I want to be an early adopter, just hit me\nuntil I fall to the ground and stay there.\"\n\nI have a bilateral hand disability, and the program I DEPEND on, MacSpeech\nDictate, doesn't work under Snow Leopard. I had refused to pay an extra $55\nfor features that should have been there in the first place, but now I have\nto. Furthermore, the UPDATE ISN'T DOWNLOADABLE (they mail it to you, for $10\nto $90 extra, based on how fast you want it). And the final insult is that\nit's not clear the new version will even work until they (not an especially\nresponsive company, of course) release a Snow Leopard update that may be\ndelayed by \"several minor functional and cosmetic issues\" they want to add!\n\nI'm hosed for at least a week, maybe longer. I'm 55 years old, the very\ndefinition of a gentle, responsible person, and this is the first time I've\nflamed IN MY LIFE. But I've got to say this:\n\nI HATE MACSPEECH, THEIR BUSINESS PRACTICES, THEIR INSANELY BRAIN-DEAD DESIGN\nAND USABILITY DECISIONS, AND THEIR TOTAL DISREGARD OF INFORMED (former 10-year\ntechnical Apple employee) FEEDBACK BY SOMEONE WHO ACTUALLY USES AND DEPENDS ON\nTHEIR PRODUCT EVERY DAY.\n\nEven though it hurts my hands to type this, it was WORTH IT.\n\nI could go on...but that's it, basically. And not a single exclamation mark or\n#$@%&* expletive, either.\n\n------\nmakecheck\nI've noticed no real compatibility problems so far, and I just upgraded my\nLeopard machine. (Still took an hour, and I didn't even opt to install Xcode\n3.2 yet.)\n\nA somewhat odd and annoying change is that /usr/bin no longer contains a\nnumber of common tools that are technically developer tools. For instance,\nthere is no /usr/bin/make or /usr/bin/xcodebuild; one must instead look in\n/Developer/usr/bin.\n\nBoth Python 2.5.4 and 2.6.1 are in /usr/bin, and it's handy to have both.\n\n~~~\nduskwuff\n/usr/bin/make _et. al._ will probably reappear once you install XCode 3.2.\n\n~~~\nmakecheck\nAh, that's good to know. Though I (still) have Xcode 3.1 installed, I was\nsurprised it would just delete the /usr/bin stuff.\n\n------\nshabble\nHas anyone tested SIMBL plugins such as Visor (\n<http://github.com/darwin/visor/tree/master> ) with it? I ended up twiddling\nmy thumbs for a while when some security updates broke it previously (10.5.3,\nI think?) and would like to check the same doesn't happen.\n\n------\nscribesa\nMyTV/x does not work with Snow Leopard because Eskape Labs is not issuing any\nupdate after 10.4 VMware version 1 is not compatible with Snow Leopard. I lost\ndata. I reinstalled Tiger and I lost everything on iTunes. For me, Snow\nLeopard is a sad experience.\n\n------\nryanmcgrath\nBiggest thing that annoys me is that, yet again, like when Leopard first went\nout, there's no way to modify the colors in the OS X terminal.\n\nSeriously, why on earth does Apple have such a problem with this small\nfeature? It boggles the mind.\n\n~~~\nmakecheck\nWhich colors do you mean? The Preferences window is used to modify background\nand text, etc.\n\nAlthough I admit, the requirement to create preference sets (or modify the\ndefault) in order to change a single window, is irritating. That's why I use\nMacTelnet instead. :)\n\n~~~\nryanmcgrath\nFont colors, syntax highlighting.\n\n~~~\nmakecheck\nThe syntax highlighting feature might be relying on the 16/256 basic colors\n(a.k.a. ANSI colors).\n\nI have not tried this, but I dug up a hack that someone has done to add an\nANSI colors editor to Terminal:\n\n[http://ciaranwal.sh/2007/11/01/customising-colours-in-\nleopar...](http://ciaranwal.sh/2007/11/01/customising-colours-in-leopard-\nterminal)\n\nMacTelnet has an ANSI colors editor built-in.\n\n~~~\nandreyf\n_I dug up a hack that someone has done to add an ANSI colors editor to\nTerminal_\n\nRight. That doesn't work in Snow Leopard. That's what OP meant.\n\n------\nkevinherron\nEclipse and Wireshark (X11) both seem to be working fine for me.\n\nXcode+iPhone SDK works still, unsurprisingly...\n\nXcode uses a new font called Menlo by default now. It's anti-aliased and looks\nnice.\n\n------\nrandrews\nCarbon Emacs works fine. Ruby works fine, although some gems that have native\nextensions needed reinstalling.\n\nX11 seems to be totally broken though. The Gimp and Crossover both don't work\nat all.\n\n------\nandreyf\nUpgrading broke my apache/mod_wsgi setup (says Premature end of script\nheaders: django.wsgi), still debugging, although I'm not the best at fixing\nthese things :-/\n\n------\nxfi155\nSafari Flash-Plugin using 15%+ CPU continuous, unexpectedly crashed during\nsession.\n\nFirefox behaving well\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFacebook accused of gagging debate - chris_wot\nhttp://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/facebook-accused-of-gagging-samesex-debate/news-story/d6278508f67d8cfc5ee5efe5147ff378\n======\nchris_wot\nMy main concern here is that someone was monitoring John Dickson's wall. It\nmay have been accidentally deleted, but did it get flagged? How did it come to\nthe attention of Facebook admins?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow to See a Supernova This Weekend From Your Backyard - wicknicks\nhttp://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/how-to-spot-a-supernova/\n======\njapaget\nThis supernova has been hyped lately but is not something a casual observer\nwill find to be particularly exciting. It is best seen with a telescope and\nwill appear as a faint dot of light. The brightness will be magnitude 10 or\n11, or about 100 times fainter than what the unaided eye can see in dark skies\nfar from city lights. For more information, see\n\n[http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/observingbl...](http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/observingblog/128430288.html)\n\nor\n\n[http://washedoutastronomy.com/content/another-urban-\nsupernov...](http://washedoutastronomy.com/content/another-urban-\nsupernova?page=1)\n\nor\n\n[http://www.dailycalifornian.org/how-to-spot-new-supernova-\nin...](http://www.dailycalifornian.org/how-to-spot-new-supernova-in-nearby-\ngalaxy-space-com/)\n\n------\nmturmon\nPeople might be interested to know that this story is indicative of a sea\nchange in astronomy. It has become apparent that there is a lot of variability\nin the nighttime sky, and we now have the technical means to discover lots of\nnew things.\n\nOne major factor in this change has been the advent of wide-angle surveys,\nthat repeat often enough to find variable sources like SN's, blazars,\nasteroids, lensing events, etc., while they're still interesting. The Palomar\nTransient Factory (<http://www.astro.caltech.edu/ptf/>) is the one mentioned\nin the article, but there are many others. They _automatically_ detect and\npost events in a standard XML format for anyone (including robotic telescopes)\nto scoop up (e.g., <http://www.skyalert.org/events/all/2/>).\n\nOne of the largest, LSST, is now being designed, and its data volume will\nprove to be a huge engineering/computer science challenge\n(<http://www.lsst.org/lsst/science/petascale>).\n\nThere's a sophisticated and multifaceted image processing pipeline to detect\nthe changes in sources, to automatically extract photometric parameters, and\nto pass these parameters on to a classifier to separate the events into types\nof interest to various communities (the SN folks could care less about\nasteroids).\n\n~~~\nRetric\nIn a funny way it seems like Astronomy is catching up to particle physics.\nOnce you add automation there becomes far to many data points to do anything\nbut compare a model with outside events and look for discrepancy's that\nsuggest either all models are wrong or one model is more accurate than other\nrelated models.\n\n~~~\nmturmon\nThere's definitely a parallel in the data demands of, say, LHC and LSST.\n\nBesides automation, another key thing is the element of time. It means there's\nscientific value in re-surveying the sky. Ever since gamma ray bursts, the\ntime scale has been shrinking.\n\n------\nJacobAldridge\nHours, and 21 million years, after it happened.\n\n~~~\nmainguy\nYeah, I thought that was a little misleading also.\n\n~~~\nNatsu\nWhy would you find it misleading to use our reference frame instead of the\nstar's? There is no absolute \"when\" but a different time for each observer.\n\n------\ncletus\nReading things like this always brings me back to the Fermi Paradox [1]. There\nare _lots_ of stars in our galaxy. Our observation of many nearby planetary\nsystems and our understanding of the chemistry of life suggests life should be\n_relatively_ common but we've seen no evidence of it.\n\nWhile life (on Earth) is at times incredibly resilient it's also really\nfragile. A supernova such as this must essentially sterilize space for light\nyears around it and it bathes its neighbourhood in gamma radiation. Did this\nkill off some nascent civilization? Supernovas seem to be relatively rare\n(compared to the number of stars) but think: over _billions_ of years what are\nthe odds that such a thing--or something equally as deadly such as an asteroid\nor comet impact-- _won't_ happen?\n\nSpace in incomprehensibly vast. The energy required to travel to even the\nnearest star systems seems... prohibitive.\n\nI'm inclined to think that there are also simply too many of us on this\nplanet, a problem that we'll either correct or will be corrected for us as\nresources start to run out in the next century or two [2].\n\n[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox>\n\n[2]: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY>\n\n------\njacques_chester\nStep 1: Move your backyard to the Northern Hemisphere.\n\n------\nthedjpetersen\nVisually will the explosion appear any different than looking at a star with\nthe naked eye?\n\n~~~\nhvasishth\nAt the moment, not really. In several hundred years it might become a nebula\nwhen it will look very different with a telescope. For example look up crab\nnebula.\n\n------\nartursapek\nNow I wish even more that I were back at school in Providence, the Brown\nobservatory is open to the public. This would be a good humbling beginning to\nthe school year.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy It’s a Good Thing People Are Shallow (and 13 Ways to Exploit It) - epi0Bauqu\nhttp://blog.kissmetrics.com/shallow-people/\n======\nquanticle\nI disagree with a lot of the points made in the article. For example, the\n\"raise your rates\", and \"put yourself out of reach\" suggestions would be\nsuicide for anyone targeting the mobile application space. There, the majority\nof users are only willing to pay a nominal cost to get their app. Raise your\nprice above a dollar or two, and you're sunk.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy there are no viruses for OS X - crocus\nhttp://www.silvermac.com/2008/why-there-are-no-viruses-for-osx/\n======\ngaius\nThis article is complete nonsense. NT was designed from the ground up as a\n\"real\" operating system by Dave Cutler, the man responsible for VMS, a which\nhas a well-deserved reputation as a rock-solid OS. Unix having networking\nbuilt in from the start (even tho', umm, it actually didn't) didn't stop many\nexploits against Sendmail for example. Windows has a registry doesn't mean\nanything either; so does AIX to all intents and purposes...\n\nThe vulnerability of Windows is more cultural than technological. The reason\nit's easy to attack Outlook is that MS _intended_ it to be easily scriptable\nso you could build workflow applications on top of Exchange/Outlook (to\ncompete with Lotus Notes). It didn't occur to them that anyone would abuse\nthis.\n\nWas that naive of them? Perhaps. But then again, no more naive than the Unix\napproach of root being the absolute superuser; in NT you can create files that\nthe superuser can backup to tape but not read themselves, which is very\nnecessary in many scenarios. It's interesting to note that many Unixen have\nadopted ACLs and privilege separation; NT certain didn't invent these, but it\ndid bring them into the mainstream.\n\n~~~\nallenbrunson\nwindows NT may have been \"designed from the ground up as a 'real' operating\nsystem,\" but then Microsoft went and added a bunch of stuff to it that's\nnecessary to run old Windows 3.0 apps. So all that hardening doesn't count for\nmuch.\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\nNT could be made really solid and really secure.\n\nThe main problems here are the deep hooks into the OS that Windows Explorer\nand Internet Explorer (and all software that requires parts of both to\nfunction) had built into them.\n\nThe other problem is that far too much of the system runs as \"system\". I read\nthis has improved a lot in the 2003 and 2008 server editions. But most of it\nwas improved by having additional software bolted on top of the holes instead\nof just getting rid of them.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nWhat absolute nonsense. Microsoft has spent more money on source code audit,\nsoftware pentesting, and SDLC than any other four of the top 10 ISVs combined.\nAll they _do_ is find and remove holes.\n\nFind one credible professional security person --- almost all of whom run OSX\nand Linux, by the way --- that thinks you're right, and MSFT is just bolting\nsecurity on.\n\n~~~\nthwarted\nA \"professional security person\" running OSX or Linux would seem to say\nsomething about the security of Windows and how Microsoft practices security,\nor at least the perception of it.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nHow is that anything other than a superficial cheap shot? I don't like to\n_use_ Windows, but I respect the work that goes into securing it.\n\n~~~\nthwarted\nI'm just pointing out an oddity in your choice to point out what security\nprofessionals use. There would have been nothing odd if you had decided not to\nlist their OS choices.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nIt's definitely a lot more fun to code security tools on Unix than on Windows\n--- though I'm having a lot of luck with Ruby on Windows for debugging and\nanti-reversing work.\n\nYou're right, it is odd. But it's not a testament to Windows security. If\nsecurity is what counted, we'd be using Linux or FreeBSD. We're not; we're\nusing an OS that ships with SUIDs that run commands as root for you. We use it\nbecause we like it.\n\n~~~\nTamerlin\nNo, we'd be using MVS, VMS, Nonstop, and their competition, not UNIX or Linux\nif security were important enough to us... or at least those of us who are\nwell-informed enough to know the difference.\n\n------\npmjordan\nHow about:\n\n(osx market share) * (percentage of clueless osx users)\n\nis much, much smaller than\n\n(windows market share) * (percentage of clueless windows users)\n\nEach of those factors individually might not make OSX sufficiently\nuninteresting, but in combination it's probably just not worth it.\n\nOnce that ratio drops below ~1:10 we might start seeing more OSX malware.\n\nI don't know enough about OSX internals to judge on its technical security\nprecautions, but beyond a certain point, the user becomes the weakest link. I\nthink that even Windows has crossed that stage by now. Remote exploits are\nbecoming rare, and even browser exploits increasingly require _some_ user\ninteraction.\n\n~~~\nashleyw\nI did some tests on XP a few years ago, to see how bad it was. I ran no anti-\nvirus, no firewall, no anti-spyware, nothing. Used the system carefully for\nover 4 months with no problems. Web browsing, web development and bittorrent.\nNormal stuff.\n\nSo I can safely say, while windows has its downfalls, I think 90% of the time\nthe problem is down to the end user.\n\n(though obviously its a nice extra layer of protection)\n\n------\nst3fan\nIt is complete nonsense indeed. There is not technical reason for virussen not\nto exist.\n\n1\\. Most if not all Mac users are in the admin group. Meaning they (or a virus\nor trojan running under their account) can modify for example\n/Applications/Mail.app without _any_ warnings.\n\n2\\. Mac users, like Windows users, download and run both legal and illegal\nsoftware. They also love to share software.\n\n3\\. Infecting UNIX binaries is extremely simple. Proof of concept virus can\nprobably be written in two pages of C.\n\nThis cocktail of user behaviour and a easily exploitable system makes it\nextremely easy to spread virusses or trojans.\n\nWhy it is not happening? No idea. It could very well be market share.\n\n------\ntptacek\nWrong.\n\n1\\. OS X is a single-user operating environment. More importantly, anything\nyou or a virus cares about bears your UID.\n\n2\\. The clock on software security started with 8LGM in 1994, not with the\nadvent of networking.\n\n3\\. IE bears approximately the same relationship to Win32 as WebKit bears to\nOS X.\n\n4\\. Almost every OS X user runs in group \"Admin\". See reason 1.\n\n5\\. Microsoft's \"backwards compatibility mantra\" bears the same relationship\nto Win32 security as the Carbon libraries do with Apple security, and many\nApple developers came to Unix directly from OS9. Google \"chargen ARDAgent\".\n\n6\\. What Windows calls a \"registry\" Apple calls \"Library/Application Support\"\n\"Library/Preferences\". Both are tree structured opaque configuration\nrepositories. Google \"chargen input managers\".\n\n7\\. Google \"Vista UAC\". People hate this feature, and it doesn't work.\n\nThe reason there are _fewer_ viruses on OS X than there are on Windows is that\nyou will make far more money targeting the large market than the big one. What\nrational malware author would ever target OS X?\n\nSigned,\n\nA Linux convert to OS X.\n\n~~~\nZev\nWhile users might be able to authenticate as root, the accounts dont run as\nroot.\n\n    \n    \n      zs-macbook-pro:~ Zach$ touch foo.bar\n      zs-macbook-pro:~ Zach$ ls -la foo.bar \n      -rw-r--r--  1 Zee  staff  0 Jul 20 18:32 foo.bar\n\nvs\n\n    \n    \n      zs-macbook-pro:~ Zach$ sudo touch bar.foo\n      # normally it asks for password here. I used sudo earlier to rm -rf \n      # something in /usr/local so it didn't ask this time.>\n      zs-macbook-pro:~ Zach$ ls -la bar.foo \n      -rw-r--r--  1 root  staff  0 Jul 20 18:36 bar.foo\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nNo, they're just in ALL=(ALL) sudoers. You're right; it's not NOPASSWD by\ndefault. Until very recently, that was trivially evadable with InputManagers.\n\nNot that it matters. I don't want to perpetuate the myth that root really\nhelps you against malware. If you can bind a socket, you can propagate. If you\ncan read a file I own, you can get my bank account and mail. Game over.\n\nIt is just very hard to secure a desktop OS against its own users.\n\n------\nhs\nI seriously don't think market share has anything to do with security\n\nif popularity is the main reason, then how come the more popular unix servers,\nare more secure than their windows-based counterparts?\n\nwhy unix better? by obscurity? absolutely not (i reiterate unix are more\npopular, powering huge sites) better knowledge/use strong passwords? nope\ndon't think so better admin? maybe better product? absolutely ... ssh,\nencription, randomization (swap, memory, etc)\n\nmy conclusion: unix is more secure due to its bottom-up iterate-often\ndevelopment model yielding better product (more secure, more powerful, etc)\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nRemote login to Windows is encrypted.\n\nSSL and generic encryption primitives are built in to Windows, and the\nlibraries that implement them (schannel, etc) have been audited by people who\nhave, among other things, published RSA breaks.\n\nMicrosoft pioneered randomization. OS X just recently attempted to introduce\nASLR, as a catch-up measure to Microsoft, and failed badly.\n\nThe evidence you've presented is easily refuted, and so your arguments won't\ncarry.\n\n~~~\nhs\nWell the fact they're easily refuted shows how much i use windows in daily\nbases (almost 0%)\n\nmy guess (based on rumors) is that even though ms implements those security\nmeasures, she leaves some weaknesses open intentionally (sony rootkit came to\nmind)\n\nactually i was thinking more about OpenBSD instead of OSX and clump them\ntogether as unix\n\nbut you haven't refuted my main point: if popularity plays a role THAT much,\nthen why unix servers (more popular, more secure, more powerful, more\ndamaging) are less compromised?\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nThanks for being candid.\n\nWell, let's turn that around. In the years from 1995 through 1998, Windows\nsecurity was black magic both to defenders _and_ attackers --- Win32 attacks\ndidn't really mainstream until Solar Designer and Matt Conover broke the story\non how to exploit overflows in the heap.\n\nDuring the same time period, Unix systems --- and particularly SunOS/Solaris\n--- were _positively riddled_ with trivially exploitable stack overflows.\nNumber of Solaris worms and viruses during that time period? _Zero_.\n\nI'm sort of digressing, but, can you come up with a logic that explains why OS\nX virus scarcity is about the intrinsic security of OS X and still describes\nthe '90s?\n\nI don't think malware prevalance has much to do with intrinsic OS security at\nall.\n\nAlso: smart not to lump OS X in with other Unixes. OS X has a very different,\nmuch more difficult challenge to deal with than server Linux.\n\n------\nTamerlin\nUNIX was designed for collaboration rather than security. The permissions, the\n(originally) open password file, sticky bits... it was full of security holes.\nBig ones. The engineers closed those holes after the fact when the internet\nstarted opening UNIX machines to the outside world.\n\nNT actually has an enormous edge on security because of its roots in VMS\nrather than in UNIX, since as gaius pointed out, VMS places far more of an\nemphasis on security than UNIX did until the internet made it necessary.\n\n------\nsdurkin\nVirus's require critical density in order to spread.\n\nThe same way the flu runs rampant through crowded urban areas today, viruses\nonly spread quickly when there's enough computers for them to infect.\n\nThe lack of standard issue malware is probably due to better (although not\nperfect) security, and lack of economic incentives due to lower market share.\n\n------\npmorici\nIt's just a function of OSX market share. I'm sure they same crap will appear\nfor OSX at the point where it becomes criminally profitable to do so.\n\n~~~\nallenbrunson\npersonally, i don't think so.\n\n<http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/broken_windows>\n\n~~~\npmorici\nI think that article only goes so support my assertion. He is basically saying\nthat the reason there is none is because people that use MACs don't put up\nwith it. Well eventually when MAC starts making in-roads in the lower end of\nthe market it's like a bunch of criminals moving into the neighborhood.\n\nMaybe it's a little harder to write malware for the MAC maybe not but there\nwill be a point when the additional difficulty doesn't out weigh the profit\nthat could be gained and at that point people will focus more effort on it.\nIt's just like the energy problem people didn't get really serious about it\nuntil oil got really expensive.\n\nNot to mention that there is all sorts of stuff in the /Library folder and it\nmight as well be as good a place to hide as the registry.\n\n~~~\nallenbrunson\nyou might be onto something there.\n\ngruber wrote that essay in 2004. in those days, it seemed like the mac would\nalways be the niche computer for special snowflakes. now it's more popular\nthan anyone could have imagined. so it seems entirely likely that the platform\nwill eventually get its share of uninformed, indifferent users.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRosetta's big day in the Sun - ColinWright\nhttp://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_s_big_day_in_the_Sun\n======\nPhantomGremlin\nI'm glad the ESA is getting its day in the sun (pun intended).\n\nTo steal from Joe Biden: 'this is a big fucking deal'. Why? Because, first,\nwe've never gotten this amount of detail from a comet before, and second,\nbecause it's _different_.\n\nBeing different is good. To a large extent ESA's Galileo is a ripoff/copy of\nthe USA's GPS. But not this. It's not a Mars lander or a flyby of the outer\nplanets, both of which NASA has already done. It's something else. It's new\nscientific research, which will lead to new discoveries and new theories.\n\n------\njessriedel\nSince the sun exposure is going to be decreasing from here on out, does this\nmean the Philae lander is a fully lost cause?\n\n(I know that the Rosetta team would emphasize that the Philae lander is\nresponsible for only a pretty small part of the overall set of scientific\nobjective)\n\n~~~\ngamekathu\nno it is never a \"lost cause\"!\n\nPhilae lander has upto several months before the comet goes out of perceptible\nsolar exposure. During this time, Philae will conduct numerous experiments and\nrelay those data to Rosetta, which in turn to us. Already lots of data has\nbeen generated, and upto Philae's operational timeline more will be available.\nFrom that data, hopefully in the coming years, scientists will be able to gain\nsignificant knowledge of the birth of universe, and most importantly about the\norigins of life and water.\n\n~~~\nrobin_reala\nRight, but it hasn’t spoken to Rosetta in over 3 weeks:\n[http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/07/20/rosetta-and-\nphilae-s...](http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/07/20/rosetta-and-philae-\nstatus-update/)\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nWow, 300kg per second of water ejection. Seems like a pretty decent delta V\nfor the comet, which makes me wonder how orbital calculations work at all on\nthese things if they start randomly thrusting in various directions like that.\n\n~~~\nmikeash\nThe mass rate doesn't tell you anything without a speed to go with it. I don't\nknow what speeds you'd see here, but at a random guess I'd say it's probably\nunder 10m/s. That gives you a thrust of 3000N if it's all in the same\ndirection, which it surely isn't.\n\n67P is estimated to have a mass of about 1e13kg, so 3000N will accelerate it\nat 0.3 nanometers/s^2. If it spent a year at this acceleration, the total\ndelta v would be about 1cm/s.\n\nI'm sure some of these numbers are pretty inaccurate, but that would seem to\nindicate that it's not much of an effect.\n\n------\nGravityloss\nMankind will go to space and stay there, and a vital part of it is to utilize\nthe comets and asteroids there.\n\nIn many ways they are much easier to get to and from than moons and planets.\n\n~~~\ngamekathu\nIMO it is not because they are easily accessible thats why scientists are\ninterested in them, it is because these comets and asteroids are formed from\nthe very inception of the universe (big bang!) and thus contain critical data\nrelated to the origins of complex matter, which leads to life!\n\n~~~\nandyjohnson0\nA minor nitpick. The comets and asteroids are worthy of study, but they\nweren't formed at the big bang (except in the trivial sense that all matter in\nthe universe came into existence then).\n\nThe comets and asteroids in our solar system were created at some point after\nthe solar system accreted out of a molecular gas cloud 4.5 billion years ago.\nAt such they contain lots of evidence about conditions in the primordial solar\nsystem. But the universe itself is about 13.5 billion years old and none of\nthe structures in the solar system (including the comets and asteroids\nthemselves) existed at the big bang.\n\n~~~\ngamekathu\nright, my bad! my point is that they are the oldest accessible source of\ninformation\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCommencement address by Bill and Melinda Gates - ashbrahma\nhttp://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/june/gates-commencement-remarks-061514.html\n======\nsz4kerto\n\"Bill and I talk about this with our kids at the dinner table. Bill worked\nincredibly hard and took risks and made sacrifices for success. But there is\nanother essential ingredient of success, and that ingredient is luck –\nabsolute and total luck.\n\nWhen were you born? Who were your parents? Where did you grow up? None of us\nearned these things. They were given to us.\"\n\nTotally true, and very important to remember, especially for the HN crowd.\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nMelinda's comments are truly amazing:\n\n> Melinda: Let your heart break. It will change what you do with your\n> optimism. On a trip to South Asia, I met a desperately poor mother who\n> brought me her two small children and implored me: \"Please take them home\n> with you.\" When I begged her forgiveness and said I could not, she said:\n> \"Then please take one.\" . . . When I talk with the mothers I meet during my\n> travels, I see that there is no difference at all in what we want for our\n> children. The only difference is our ability to give it to them.\n\nThis is such a tremendously important message that I don't think you can even\nhope to accurately perceive the world without really internalizing it.\n\nThe other day, someone told me a story. He was working maintenance in an\napartment building, and went into a unit one day. Inside the unit, he saw a\ncouple passed out on the couch, and a baby screaming in his crib. He went over\nto the baby, and saw a cockroach crawl out of his diaper. The diaper was stuck\nto the baby's skin. He called 9/11 immediately, the police came, and the\nbuilding fired his maintenance company for not going to the building\nmanagement first. This wasn't South Asia, it was here in the U.S.\n\nI heard that story, and then thought about how our daycare e-mails me daily an\nitemized list of the time of every diaper change and whether it was wet and/or\nBM. I thought about how unfair it is that she started life with a leg-up, from\nthe hospital where she took her first breath, and yet how I'm totally driven\nto give her every unfair benefit I can (\"you know honey, we _could_ afford\nprivate school from pre-K if we budget carefully\"). Intellectually, we want\nlife to be fair for everyone, but being a parent means having this\noverwhelming urge to clear the path ahead for your offspring, burning down the\nforest if you have to.\n\nI'm certainly not going to send my daughter to an inner-city public school to\nmake a point. What gets to me is our inability as a society to acknowledge the\ncognitive dissonance, and speak about this issue honestly outside of\ngraduation speeches. To talk about traits like intelligence and patience in\nterms of what they are: winnings in the genetic lottery, rather than as the\nresult of moral virtue. To acknowledge that \"equality of opportunity\" is a\nvicious fiction and understand that not as a call to any particular political\nideology, but as a fact of the universe that we must reconcile with any\npolitical ideology.\n\n~~~\nhkmurakami\nThis is why I have some trouble with the term \"winning the birth lottery\". On\none hand I did nothing to earn my good circumstances, but on the other hand,\nmy immigrant parents worked extremely hard to afford me the huge advantages I\nhave today. To me, labeling this as just \"luck\" seems disrespectful to my\nparents.\n\nSo while I do not necessarily buy in completely to the idea of the birth\nlottery, I do believe that I do have a elevated level of responsibility to do\ngood with the advantages and resources at my disposal.\n\n~~~\ncrassus\nMoreover, calling it \"luck\" discourages others from adopting these repeatably\nbeneficial habits and ideas for pulling a family out of poverty.\n\nHow could I make sure my offspring have a better life than I did? If my only\noption is \"luck\", then why bother trying?\n\n~~~\nFomite\nWorking hard is making sure you don't toss your winning ticket away. More\npeople, working to keep their families out of poverty, changes the odds of the\nlottery.\n\nBut that doesn't change that it _is_ a profound fortune to be born into such a\nfamily.\n\n------\nqeorge\nReminder: you aren't Bill or Melinda Gates, but you are still rich from\nsoftware. Maybe you could spend some of your funny money on someone else's\nhealthcare?\n\nI just sponsored a hysterectomy for $180 (1 year of Netflix) in 3 clicks on\nWatsi. That's _crazy_.\n\nMaybe you can sponsor someone too: [https://watsi.org/fund-\ntreatments](https://watsi.org/fund-treatments)\n\n~~~\nISL\nWe made a donation to watsi today too, as part of our in-house flossing\ncontest. A dry-erase marker and a bathroom mirror keeps the tally, and about\nonce a month, someone wins. When the tally gets reset, the total number of\nflosses is donated, in dollar form, to a charity.\n\nYou win, because $1/floss is worth it in aggregate to prevent future dental\nbills. Someone else wins, because they get the treatment they need to live a\nbetter life.\n\n~~~\ncarlsednaoui\nI love this idea!\n\n------\ngraycat\nI've long guessed, and this OP reinforces that, that much of what Bill and\nMelinda are doing now was driven by Melinda 'selling' Bill on some values that\nMelinda deeply held and got from her nuns and the Catholic church. But, yes,\nthe story of Bill's visit to Soweto showed that some of Bill's own experiences\nmade him fertile ground for Melinda's values and goals.\n\nI may be underestimating Bill's initial drive for their work now, but\ngenerally I have to guess that Melinda is the main hero here. Oh, not to\nforget, one little thing Melinda did: She talked both Bill and Warren into\nhanding over, what, ballpark $100 billion? Then for her second day, the set up\na value that all wealthy people should give about 50% of their wealth to\nphilanthropy and got, apparently, quite a list of wealthy people to do just\nthat.\n\nAnother good thing to respect about them clearly seems to be their marriage;\nit looks like on of their beet examples. Perhaps not just coincidentally,\ntheir love and relationship, if more widely followed, would have helped those\nwoman and children abandoned in South Asia. My view is that their example of a\ngood marriage is huge not just for themselves but for their goals of curing\npoverty, that is, it is easy to see that letting marriage break is one of the\nbiggest wastes in civilization, in particular, leading to poverty and the\nproblems they are now trying to solve.\n\nWhy so many people are so eager to bust up their marriages, or just not be\nvery devoted to each other at all, seems to be a grand determination to\nextract miserable defeat from the voracious jaws of magnificent victory and\njust inexplicable.\n\nCongratulations to them both.\n\n------\njenius\nThis is so, so good. An upvote alone is not enough to get across how much I\nappreciate this. These are the principles I've built the plans for my entire\nlife around, these principles are at the core of who I am as a person. Seeing\nsuch an eloquently put and important message like this appreciated by so many\npeople is absolutely incredible. Huge, huge respect for bill and melinda gates\nfor the work that they have done and the good message they are spreading.\n\n------\npurephase\nHere's the video:\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c)\n\n------\ntubbs\nI know it's cliche to have the founder of Microsoft be your idol person when\ngoing into software development, but Bill Gates is certainly worthy of that\nposition. We at HN (an overwhelming portion, anyway) are so comfortable in our\nlives. Even little sacrifices could change the world for some of those less\nfortunate. Imagine what big sacrifices could do - they could change entire\nvillages, countries, even continents. Think big. Even if you aim to help\nmillions and only affect a few, your work was not in vain.\n\nThis was a really inspiring read, thanks OP.\n\n------\npcunite\nIncredibly introspective and appropriate coming from one of the most\nsuccessful people on earth.\n\n[http://youtu.be/wug9n5Atk8c?t=22m00s](http://youtu.be/wug9n5Atk8c?t=22m00s)\n\n------\nxophe\n\"Optimism is often dismissed as false hope. But there is also false\nhopelessness.\"\n\nA poetic touch from a tech genius of our generation.\n\n------\neshvk\nThis was truly phenomenal. I grew up in some of the poorest places, went\nthrough a lot of shit before things got better. It is really really hard to go\nthrough all that and come out with optimism and hope for the world, or even\nthink you can make a difference as one human. Good on the Gates for believing\nthat and having the resources to push this forward.\n\n------\nillini123\n> Let your heart break. It will change what you do with your optimism.\n\n~~~\ngd2\nLet your heart break.\n\nThat was the headline summary.\n\n------\nleaveyou\nPowerful. So much money and still big souls. There is hope.\n\n------\nrpandey1234\nHere are some of the highlights of the speech on Youtube tagged by time:\n[http://www.deebrief.com/#!/consume/53a37a3ba109a8020091e663](http://www.deebrief.com/#!/consume/53a37a3ba109a8020091e663)\n\n------\naik\nCommencement address video:\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c)\n\n------\npitchups\n> \"If we have optimism, but we don't have empathy – then it doesn't matter how\n> much we master the secrets of science, we're not really solving problems;\n> we're just working on puzzles.\" Brilliant and moving!\n\n~~~\njejones3141\nI wonder how much empathy was involved in writing the AARD code.\n([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code))\n\n~~~\npcunite\nI'll take a sinner turned saint over continued arrogance any day.\n\n~~~\nCamperBob2\n(Shrug) It's easier to trust people who don't do things like that in the\nnormal course of business. Can a leopard change its spots?\n\n~~~\ncsallen\nThis leopard-changing-its-spots analogy is the wrong way to look at things. It\nassumes that ethics and morality are permanently writ onto our cores, and that\nto change those values, one would have to become another person entirely. This\nis a false belief.\n\nAs I mentioned in a comment below, numerous studies have shown that a person's\nethics are heavily influenced by their present circumstances and environment,\nnot some unchangeable inner nature.\n\n~~~\ndavidp\n> a person's ethics are primarily dictated by their present circumstances and\n> environment\n\nCitation needed. I can accept \"influenced by\" or even \"heavily influenced by\"\nwithout too much argument, but \"primarily dictated by\" is an extraordinary\nclaim, requiring extraordinary proof.\n\n~~~\nThomPete\nIt is rather normal for people to change their political stance over the years\nas they go from young people who think they live forever to people with kids\nand responsibilities.\n\nIts probably not as obvious here in the US with a two party system but other\nplaces like Denmark and Sweden you see this change more clearly.\n\n------\nbby\nbill go hard\n\n------\nindianheart\nI wonder why these scumbags choose my country ( India ) for painting poor life\nconditions always ? Agreed, there are cases of extreme poverty, but so in US,\nAfrica, Brazil ( yeah, hosting world cup !) , Eastern Europe etc. Why pick\nIndia for prostitution ? As if in US there is no prostitution. Why not pick on\nown country. Just look at backpage.com thousands and thousands of girls doing\nopen prostitution. How is that good thing ? or not a poor thing ? I wonder if\nthere was political agenda for picking India ( since we are good friends with\nRussia ). Bill Gates is not a hero. Did you read stories from Paul Allen (\nanother co-founder those who don't know )?\n\nhere is the link :\n[http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2011/04/15/microsof...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2011/04/15/microsoft-\nbillionaire-paul-allen-talks-bill-gates-revenge-and-cancer-video/)\n\nWhy Stanford , a prestigious university, would invite such scumbags ?\n\nIf Gates favors so much of charity why not donate everything except $1 Billion\n? Are $1 billion not sufficient to live for rest of the life ?\n\nIs his charity ( which comes to around 30 %) a simply proxy for tax saving ??\n\nWhatever may be reason , please stop painting India a bad country.\n\nI am from India , lived in America for 10 yrs before returning , travelled all\nover US and I can tell you there are classes, hungry people, children / women\nrelated crimes all over the place. So first look at your own country, how they\nare killing people in other countries and then lecture others.\n\nWorst commencement speech in history of Stanford I would say.\n\n------\nimranq\nhmm, that's interesting. I posted this last week, but no bites...maybe because\nI'm a newbie.\n\nAnyway, a great duo-commencement speech, which inspires and provides some\nreal-world advice\n\n~~~\nimranq\nSomehow I have negative karma, why downvote this?\n\n~~~\nprawn\nThey're just internet points. Sometimes one submission will go somewhere while\nyours won't. It happens and those who seem to gripe about it will often get\ndown voted.\n\n------\nroadnottaken\n\"a college in the suburbs of Boston\"\n\nlove this\n\n------\nonmydesk\nIm going to be down voted for this.\n\nTo me, the speech was fairly embarrassing. Its as though some rich people saw\nsome poor people on a poor person safari. Now they come back to tell of what\nthey saw, as if everyone in their audience would be just as amazed at such\nthings as they were.\n\nPerhaps for a stanford graduate audience that is true?\n\nTheres suffering in the world!? :O\n\nThats what I was left with. No-one rational could disagree with their points,\nthe validity of the foundations purpose, etc etc and all of that.\n\nBut the speech made me cringe a little.\n\n~~~\njavert\nCame hear to find out if Bill and Melinda were saying the same old things they\nusually say over and over. Yep.\n\nThere is one social model that has been truly successful in human history and\nhas truly brought unlimited masses out of the darkness and into the light, and\nit is not based on altruism. It is based on (a) rule of law, not of men and\n(b) individual rights, especially property rights.\n\nThe Gates would do well to start preaching this model instead of the one that\nhas failed over and over and over all throughout history, which is: you have a\nduty to be your brother's keeper (altruism).\n\n~~~\ncrapshoot101\nI'd bet a 100 bucks there's an objectivist / Randian here; we all read the\nbook as kids, but we recognized that the Randian model couldn't particularly\ndeal with children, or family for example. Wealth creation is a laudable goal,\nbut not the only one.\n\n~~~\njavert\nYes, I'm an Objectivist.\n\nYou have some common misconceptions, allow me to teach you something new.\n\n\\- I know a great many PhDs who are Objectivists (hopefully myself soon, too).\nIt's really not a philosophy for teenagers and that is just something people\nspread to put it down without using a real argument.\n\n\\- Objectivism can deal with children and family just fine. Lots of\nObjectivists have children and families, including Ayn Rand's closest\nphilosophical associate, Leonard Peikoff.\n\n\\- Objectivism does not say that wealth creation is the only goal. It says\n(summarizing) that self-preservation is the root of all values, and\nexperiencing your values (in myriad ways) produces enjoyment. Wealth creation\nis just one way to experience your values, not the only way. Another way is,\nfor example, through family. There are lots of Objectivists who choose non-\nlucrative career paths.\n\n~~~\ntripzilch\nHow does it deal with the elderly and the disabled?\n\nA society is to be judged by how well it treats those who are worst off.\nOptimize for that. Not the average, the median or the mode.\n\n------\ncaruana\nThat was very moving, I'm not sure how it hasn't been voted onto the front\npage.\n\n------\nbayesianhorse\nRemind me, which university did Bill Gates graduate from, again? ;-)\n\n------\ntnuc\nBill Gates has good intentions and in some cases is doing well.\n\nIf only he wasn't so swayed by the likes of Geoffrey Sachs and Bono. There is\na great book written by Nina Munk about Sachs, if only Gates could try and\nchange his mind and look at it a little differently.\n\n[http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Idealist-A-Cautionary-\nTa...](http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Idealist-A-Cautionary-Tale-From-\nAfrica)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEvolving Beta - gibsonf1\nhttp://blog.streamfocus.com/2008/04/18/evolving-beta/\n======\npchristensen\nGood response - I'm curious what other feedback people have given, especially\nabout using it (not just the superficial UI issues)?\n\n~~~\nmike_organon\nSome features we expected. We added task deadlines (and its effect on\nprioritization) based on feedback, and assigning resources is coming very\nsoon. Plus, someone wanted to understand how to migrate into StreamFocus\nslowly, continuing to use their existing tools. Our tool isn't a full\ndesktop/office suite that needs to manage everything; rather it can be adopted\nincrementally. And we were asked about import from Outlook, integration with\nemail, etc., which we'll look into.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPullRequestRoulette how not handle a community pull request - shakaran\nhttps://github.com/gothfox/Tiny-Tiny-RSS/pull/142\nShould each source forge have a code conduct? Is more important code than people? Not every project manager has the same moral\n======\nomegote\nIt's sad, but I'm afraid the way the repository owner behaves is not uncommon.\nFrequently people tend to overprotect their repositories and projects as if\nthey were their own children.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBirds found using human musical scales for the first time - mhb\nhttp://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/11/birds-found-using-human-musical-scales-first-time?utm_content=bufferc81d2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer\n\n======\nbradleysmith\nvery cool!\n\noriginal source doc:\n[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/10/29/1406023111](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/10/29/1406023111)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTwitter works just fine – but for investors - DrNuke\nhttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/30/twitter-works-just-fine-but-for-investors-anything-except-total-market-domination-is-a-disaster\n\n======\nairnomad\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10144549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10144549)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Audit your ISP with a speedtest cronjob - igomeza\nhttps://github.com/igomez10/speedInspectorRPI\n======\nbrianjking\nThanks for sharing. I'm not sure I'd run this in a Docker instance on it's\nown. Also, I submitted a pull request here\n[https://github.com/igomez10/speedInspectorRPI/pull/1](https://github.com/igomez10/speedInspectorRPI/pull/1)\nas it should be noted that on a Raspberry Pi outside of the Raspberry Pi 3 B+\nyou will max out at 100mbps. On the 3 B+ despite the gigabit adapter you'll\nmax out at 300mbps.\n\nI use a Speedtest monitor via Home Assistant which I run on a Raspberry Pi\nModel 3 along with the rest of my home automation setup. Check out Home\nAssistant at [https://home-assistant.io](https://home-assistant.io).\n\n~~~\nigomeza\nThannks for taking the time of reading it and submitting improvements, I\nchecked Home Assistant and it looks amazing. Also, thanks for noting on the\nspeed limits, I totatlly forgot about RPI adapter limitations. I was having\nslow speeds (~2-4mbps) so +100mbps didnt seemed that bad in the beginning.\n\n------\nwattengard\nI have integrated this into my Home-Assistant setup. The speedtest runs every\n30 minutes and logs to an influx-database. I also run a pingtest every minute,\nlogging to the same database. Helped me identify some strage behaviour from my\nrouter in one case.\n\n------\nsilvether\nWould a USB Ethernet adapter on a PI allow me to test a full Gigabit\nconnection? I want to try this with speedtest-cli and iperf3.\n\n~~~\nwattengard\nI believe the USB on rpi is limited to USB2, so that's a 480Mb/s theoretical\nlimit.\n\n------\ncaptn3m0\nI run a similar setup, except with the Prometheus speed test exporter, so\nprometheus takes care of the cron part.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe plight of Japan's hikikomori - pseudolus\nhttp://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190129-the-plight-of-japans-modern-hermits\n======\nLegogris\nI knew before seeing the source that it was BBC. They've had some strange\nfixation with dystopian Japan and perceived issues in contemporary Japanese\nculture for years now. Very rarely reporting about similar classes of stories\nfrom other foreign countries like that.\n\nThe same stories get recycled again and again.\n\n[https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47033704?intlink_from_url=&...](https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47033704?intlink_from_url=&link_location=live-\nreporting-story)\n\n[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01knsnp](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01knsnp)\n\n[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04rxggk](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04rxggk)\n\n[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39981997](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39981997)\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9IRmUEsz6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9IRmUEsz6g)\n\n[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-12347219](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-12347219)\n\n[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03fh0bg](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03fh0bg)\n\n[https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23182523](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23182523)\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr5y1iP9TfU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr5y1iP9TfU)\n\n(This one is ironic:\n[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b064ww32?ns_mchannel=social...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b064ww32?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_radio_4&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=radio_and_music))\n\n~~~\nthirdsun\nThe banner at the top of this story seems to indicate that it's part of a BBC\nseries called \"Japan: Untold stories\", which could explain the frequency of\nsimilar stories: [http://www.bbc.com/future/columns/japan-untold-\nstories](http://www.bbc.com/future/columns/japan-untold-stories)\n\n------\nJoeDaDude\nTom Cahill, in his book \"Mysteries of the Middle Ages\" [1] explains explains\nhow in ancient times, people had very different attitudes towards hermits,\nshut-ins, and the like:\n\n\"Though often represented as a period of repression... the Middle Ages offered\n- at least in religious roles - more options than now allowed. ...in the\nMiddle Ages such social oddities were welcomed and assigned a place of honor.\nWhile the rest of us went about our worried lives, they prayed for us\ncontinually, speaking to God on our behalf.\"\n\n[1]\n[https://books.google.com/books?id=_vikHFhqIwIC&source=gbs_na...](https://books.google.com/books?id=_vikHFhqIwIC&source=gbs_navlinks_s)\n\n------\nbjourne\nIt seems to me that being a young man has become harder. More pressure to\nachieve and more status trinkets to get. Not like fancy cars, but having a\ncool job, work out and travel a lot and so on. My dad had it easier than me,\nand I in turn have had it easier than what my sons will have it.\n\n~~~\nWickedFlick\nIn the documentary 'Flight from Death', Prof. Sheldon Soloman touches on the\nidea that there are serious psychological consequences of the rising\nexpectations we as a society put on people in a world of diminishing\nopportunity, which I found rather profound. Here's the relevant clip, if\nyou're interested:\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXZB9t_ypO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXZB9t_ypO4)\n\n~~~\nmaroonblazer\nAt about the 3:00 minute mark in that clip he claims that we don't have a set\nof values in place that makes it acceptable for a person to simply be someone\nof integrity. I.e. our culture demands that you be rich, famous, thin and\ngood-looking.\n\nThis is a ridiculous claim. While our culture certainly places an outsized\n(IMO) emphasis on celebrity and wealth most people, most of the time, aren't\nfixated on becoming the next Musk or Kardashian and are able to lead\nexceedingly satisfying lives.\n\nIf the the conditions of the hikikomori - or the West's version of them - are\nrooted in their anxiety about living up to what they see on TV and in\ncelebrity media then a healthy dose of Buddhism or Stoicism is probably called\nfor.\n\n~~~\nbjourne\nMy view isn't that the kids these days are asking for more than their fair\nshare. What they want is what their parents had; a wife and family, a home and\na decent job. But the hoops they have to jump through to get there are much\nhigher than there were for us in the old generation. So they give up and spend\ntheir time on video games and porn. They aren't chasing the billionaires of\nthe world - they are chasing Al Bundy!\n\n------\nNKosmatos\nHow do these people live/survive? Do they have income coming in from somewhere\nor do their families support them? I know a few people that would like to stay\ninside and do stuff they really like (play games, read books, draw, write...)\nbut they don’t have the means to do it. Another issue has to do with the\nactual physical/materialistic reality. Don’t they need to buy food, put the\ngarbage out, visit the doctor, buy stuff...how is it possible for someone to\nstay months or years inside the house?\n\n~~~\nwelder\n\"Japanese parents feel a strong obligation to support children no matter what\nand shame often prevents them from seeking help, says Kato.\"\n\n------\nmrhappyunhappy\nMy wife’s uncle became a social recluse after his wife passed away. Everyone\nin the family sees him as just this odd person, but I’m pretty sure he is\neither depressed, mentally ill or both. After his wife passed he would not go\nout of the house for long stretches. He is retired and collects a good pension\nso money is not an issue. Despite living maybe 20 feet across the street from\nus, we hardly ever see him. He goes to his mother’s for dinner every day but\nto catch a glimpse of him is a rare sight. I’d say I’ve seen him maybe twice a\nyear these past few years. It’s unknown what he does at home and how much\ntechnology plays a role in his behavior, but I suspect he is a gamer or has\nsome sort of addiction.\n\nI have personally struggled with gaming addiction for years, leaving at times\nand then getting sucked right back in without any self-control. Just recently\nI got hooked on Elder scrolls online and it took some struggling to let go. I\ncan say for certain that gaming deepens whatever emotional state of isolation\none can experience. Despite having fun, the feeling of loneliness gets\nstronger. I think if I didn’t have my wife and kid I would probably spend my\nlife hunched over a screen dying while I play an mmo. I would get so depressed\nI’d probably let go of any form of self-care and fade into a blob of flesh and\nbodily fluids.\n\nFor all the bringing together that technology is supposed to do, I feel like\nit had a complete opposite effect. Sure, for some it’s awesome to stay in\ntouch with people you wouldn’t have stayed in touch with otherwise, but in\ngeneral it has made society more closed and people isolated from one another.\n\n~~~\ntcbawo\nYour story reminds me of a story about heroin addicts in Russia who started\ntaking krokodil (a homemade version that causes slow body death and decay).\nAddicts retreat into their addictions to hide from their problems. It gets\nharder and harder to break the cycle, because they don't address the core\nissue and they are creating more problems from themselves (physical, legal,\nsocial isolation). In the case of krokodil, stopping the drug meant dealing\nwith the pain/shame of open sores and rotting flesh. Many people think of\naddiction in terms of physical symptoms and mental toughness. In many cases,\nhuman addiction is a tragedy on a mass scale. The people that work with\naddicts are truly doing God's work.\n\n~~~\nyowlingcat\nIt's different in Russia than in America, but this makes me think about the\nMcKinsey news item that came up the other day, and how they essentially guided\nPurdue to juice opioid sales. Of course, once prices go up and addicts cannot\nafford their prescription that was likely not issued in the best faith, it is\nno wonder that they turn to cheaper, but frequently impure and lethal\nfentanyl. I agree with you that people who work with addicts are truly doing\nGod's work; no matter how secularly I want to phrase it, when I see large\nscale addiction it is very difficult not to see the abstract idea of the\ndevil. People physiologically enslaved to a chemical, slowly dying, facing an\nuphill battle against tolerance and death -- it's all so very bleak, even more\nso because it is in the present moment and was fully supported by the public\nhealth care system. One wonders where the oversight was; and who is\nresponsible? Maybe we all are responsible.\n\n~~~\nHenk0\nAgree fully on the points about people working with addicts, and Purdue seem\nto have no moral compass to counteract the profit motive. About the\nenslavememt to the chemical itself, it’s more complicated. The drugs primarily\ntend to serve as substitutes for the natural positive reinforcers the addicted\nperson is missing, and there’s often a history of trauma and psychological\nunhealth prior to the drugs entering the picture. Like for the Krokodil users\nin the parent post, the natural and externally imposed consequences of\nmaintaining the habit lead to a negative spiral where there’s more pain,\nsuffering and hopelessness to face when trying to quit. I highly recommend\nJohann Hari’s book ”Chasing the Scream”, and Gabor Mate’s ”In The Realm of\nHungry Ghosts”. Truly enlightening reads if one wants to better understand\naddiction\n\n~~~\nkmate\nThanks you for the suggestions and for pointing to a more realistic point\nabout addiction. As I see - and I've been living in this for many years -\naddiction has nothing to do with the chemical. Johann Hari has some very good\nthoughts on the topic. The first time I heard about him was this talk:\n[https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_y...](https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong?utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_content=talk&utm_term=social-\nscience)\n\nHis books worth checking out too. As someone who struggled with addiction\nsince childhood it is something I can very much relate to.\n\n------\nsandworm101\nIm not sure these people are mentaly ill. In the past such people were lauded\nas important thinkers. A monk living a minimalist life was not sick. Hermits\nliving alone, most always in pathetic circumstances, were consulted for thier\nwisdom. How many of our great religeous leaders spent some years huddled in a\ncave alone? These people may not be normal, but i dont think this is a new\nproblem... if it even is one.\n\nNot everyone gets to have a good job, a wife, kids and a house. Our society is\nvery competative. There are worse reactions than becoming withdrawn. These\npeople are not violent. They are not addicted to drugs. They are not in\nprison. There are far worse social ills.\n\nAnd lighthouse keepers. That used to be a thing.\n\n~~~\nmruts\nBeing addicted to drugs is probably not as big of a problem as the hikkomori.\nWhile doing drugs you can productively contribute to society and most\naddictions naturally pass as people get older. I’m not sure the same is true\nwith the hikkomori. Also many hikkomori do become violent or engage in self-\nharm: lashing out at themselves or their family.\n\nAfter spending 8 years in your room and only talking to your parents through a\ndoor, it probably takes a huge toll on your mental health. And since Japan is\na shame/honor-society, the effects compound very quickly. To make matters\nworse, once you fall out of the “right” track in Japan, you are categorically\nexcluded from certain forms of work and social status.\n\nThis means that if, say, you stay in your room a year after high school\ninstead of going to college, you will never be accepted into college for the\nrest of your life. You will never be able to get a high status salaryman job.\nThis leads to a mindset that there’s no going back and that the rest of their\nlives are ruined.\n\nThe hikkimori are a class of people that suffer from a culturally specific\nsyndrome that would manifest itself in other ways outside Japan/Asia.\nDepression or anxiety probably.\n\nI think a large part of the problem is that it is very common in Japan for\nchildren to live with their parents for a relatively long time compared to\nWestern (or at least American) society. And since Japanese culture is built on\nthe honor/shame duality, everytime the child disappoints their parents, the\neffects compound. This eventually leads to a point where the child is so\nashamed, they just lock themselves in their room to escape.\n\nIf children just left the house earlier, I think this would solve a lot of\nproblems. They would leave their rooms because no one would be there to judge\nthem.\n\nAs an aside, it’s interesting that the problem is only with men. Women are\nheld to a lower standard and don’t feel the type of pressure as men to become\nsuccessful and honor their parents.\n\n~~~\ndqpb\n> _most addictions naturally pass as people get older_\n\nIs this true?\n\n~~~\ngaius\nApparently yes [https://www.drugfoundation.org.nz/matters-of-\nsubstance/novem...](https://www.drugfoundation.org.nz/matters-of-\nsubstance/november-2014/ageing-out-of-addiction/)\n\n~~~\nrtkwe\nI don't see it mentioned so I wonder if that 'aging out' effect takes into\naccount people just dying. I.E: On average these addictions are either dealt\nwith by 4/10/15 years or it's deteriorated bad enough for the person do die.\n\n------\nmc32\n>A government survey found roughly 541,000 (1.57% of the population)\n\nSomething's not right about that figger. 1.57% out of a pop of 126MM is\nroughly 2MM.\n\n~~~\nchmod775\nPresumably only counting people of a certain age, i.e. excluding retirees or\npeople above a certain age and children.\n\n------\nknown\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-the-\nworld_ticket](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-the-world_ticket) can help\nthem\n\n------\nVLM\nIts fairly typical during the early stages of societal collapse to blame the\nfirst victims. Obviously the cultural-wide problem of declining standards of\nliving must be solely the fault of the first victims or their families not\ntrying hard enough. The whole point of the situation is \"have a live\" was\nquite achievable to everyone just a generation or two ago. As the decline\ncontinues, societal expectations will eventually change to match and the\nproblem and bullying of the victims will disappear naturally, so in a sense\nits not really a problem.\n\nThe victims are likely to get blamed for economic problems such as demand\ndestruction. If an economy for 100M people requires 100M \"great jobs\" spenders\nbut only has 95M \"great jobs\" available, those 5M kicked out of society are\ngoing to have trouble keeping the consumer economy running. Resulting in\neconomic contraction to a 95M person-sized economy for a 100M nation only\nhaving maybe 90M \"good jobs\" rinse and repeat until collapse.\n\n~~~\nThrowawayR2\n> _Its fairly typical during the early stages of societal collapse to blame\n> the first victims._\n\nInteresting statement. What previous societal collapses can you cite to back\nup that claim?\n\n~~~\nVLM\nSeriously? You first. Find me a counterexample in history, of the decline of a\ncivilization, which resulted in BETTER treatment of minorities, outgroups, or\nweak sub populations.\n\nI hate to Godwin the discussion but as a trivial example I don't think the\nJews got gassed in Germany because the economy was too strong and Weimar was\ntoo politically stable. Generally you don't want to be part of a small\noutgroup during a societal collapse, the masses will demand somebody gotta be\nburned at the stake and its not going to be the popular group.\n\n~~~\nb_tterc_p\ni don’t think he was doubting you, he was asking for evidence of your\nseemingly insightful claim.\n\nYour points don’t seem to be aligned though. Minorities suffering is not the\nsame as blaming the first coincidental victims of economic downturn.\n\n~~~\nmaxxxxx\nI think it's more that during a downturn the powerful find ways to make some\nvictims blame other victims but not the powerful who are doing quite well.\nJust look at the latest political developments. Workers think that immigrants\nare the source of their declining job prospects instead of questioning why the\nupper x percent take an increasing share of economic output for themselves and\neven give themselves tax cuts.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Hashdog – MD5 breaker in Io.js/ES6 - logotype\nhttps://github.com/logotype/hashdog\n\n======\nbeernutz\nInteresting project.\n\nI see in some classes you set the object \"self\" to \"this\" and use it later in\nanonymous functions. That seems to be a common pattern in a lot of peoples\ncode.\n\nIt seems like naming the \"self\" object something more descriptive and specific\nwould make sense in general, but I can't help wondering if there is a more\nfundamental reason for using \"self\".\n\nIs this common in OO parlance for a reason?\n\n~~~\nmdaniel\nThat is a common JS idiom because the binding of \"this\" changes inside\nfunction calls, so one must capture the outer binding of \"this\" which when\nused in an object scenario does behave like the same keyword used in\ntraditional OO. The naming of \"self\" could just be a synonym or a nod to\nPython (I'd have to do research to know definitively)\n\n~~~\nbeernutz\nThat makes sense. I wonder though if there is a better convention than \"self\".\nThat by itself (to me at least) does not say much about which \"self\" we are\ndescribing. Maybe it is just a matter of personal preference, but I like to be\nmore specific and descriptive.\n\nIt reminds me of the practice of using \"throw-away\" variables in for loops.\nPersonally I would still rather name the variable \"loop\" instead of \"i\".\n\n~~~\nmdaniel\nOk, you are free to propose an alternative - either here or to your team - but\nbe sure you and your team are prepared to have to adjust if and when you join\nanother JS team.\n\nAnd if I had to name loop variables \"loop\" I would lose my mind. But I'm glad\nit works for you and your team, so long as you never have nested for loops.\n\n------\nlogotype\nI don't claim this to be fast, as it isn't really optimized for performance at\nall. I created this mainly as a learning experience using ECMAScript 6, as\nwell as multiple processes in node/io. The plan is to add more options later,\nor perhaps another interesting way could be to see how fast this thing can be.\n\n------\nlogotype\na few updates, now includes a CLI. other stuff will be updated soon!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nJustifying 1 Billion Dollars for Instagram - melissamiranda\nhttp://dickbrouwer.com/post/20911933152/justifying-1-billion-dollars-for-instagram\n\n======\nmelissamiranda\nThis is a highly plausible scenario for how the price could have gone from a\nmore sensible $300M to $1B if Instagram said no to a sale and raised a round\ninstead.\n\n~~~\njeebus\nIt's a case of put your money where your mouth is\n\n------\nnextstep\nThis seems plausible, but this tiny article is mostly speculation.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "Ask HN: What API do you wish you had while building your product? - afinemonkey\n======\nonli\nProduct information. Things like \"The mainboard named XY from producer ABC has\nthe manufacturer sku 1234567, the EAN-13 00123... and the UPC 01234...\".\nIdeally add to that the custom specs, like \"it has that many usb slots and\nthis socket\" etc.\n\nBut I think I miss part of the picture here, there is probably a channel\ntransmitting structured information like this from manufacturers to vendors, I\njust never found it.\n\n~~~\nnetvarun\nMy startup Semantics3 works on this problem -\n[https://semantics3.com/](https://semantics3.com/)\n\nWe have a standardized taxonomy and ontology to which we map all our products\nto. It's a garbage in garbage out problem but as long as the product has the\ninformation in some sort of semi-structured or unstructured form, we typically\ncan infer attributes and standardize them based on their ontology (i.e. They\nhave 4 USB ports)\n\n~~~\nonli\nHey, that did not work out at all. So, like said in the other comment, there\nare no pricing information I could find. Then you say \"14 day free demo\", but\nI got an email saying the free trial ended two days after registering. The UI\nsays \"add a credit card and let us know\" when checking on how to pay/prolongue\nthe trial, but does not actually show the price. I asked for pricing via your\nchat window thing, and got no response.\n\nI certainly won't add a credit card to a service that does nor show me pricing\ninformation.\n\nGuys, I get that the enterprise market is comfortable and the usual target for\nthis kind of thing, but if you don't want to bother with startups/developers,\nwhy do you market to them on your website and by answering here? You are\ncompletely unuseable like that. Hiding pricing information to sell overpriced\nservices to big enterprices that just don't care is completely unacceptable\nfor everyone else.\n\n~~~\nnetvarun\nShoot. My apologies about any confusion on the sign up process. I have reached\nout to you on email.\n\n------\nForrestN\nAn API for handling image processing/uploading to S3:\n\nUse 1: Send a high-res image in any format (like, say, tiff), the original, a\nweb-optimal jpg at full resolution, and any sizes that might be needed in\nvarious contexts (thumbnail, inline display at any screen density) are put\ninto the right place in my S3 bucket.\n\nUse 2: Using ids or original file names, point the API to an image or array of\nimages, uploaded via Use 1, and give it a set of dimensions/conditions, and\nhave it return links to the correct images for me.\n\n~~~\nkevinflo\nWe've had an excellent experience with\n[http://cloudinary.com/](http://cloudinary.com/) for pretty much what you\ndescribe.\n\n~~~\nnetdur\nas a consultant, I picked up cloudinary for a client, promised \"75,000 Total\nImages & Videos\" then a team of four people used the free data shortly, they\ncontact us saying to either pay $44 per month or shutdown, why? we are over\nfree bandwidth...\n\nrelocated a developer to spent some hours writing a restful services, now\npaying ~$0.030 per GB\n\n~~~\nthirdsun\n> why? we are over free bandwidth...\n\nI don't have any experience with cloudinary, but to be fair, their pricing\ntable mentions each plan's limitations pretty clearly. Is it really their\nfault that you underestimated the customer's requirements?\n\n------\ntatsuhirosatou\nReddit/HN like forum as an API. I want a forum for my site, using my own\ntemplates and integrated into my app, but without having to code the forum\nmyself. What buttercms does for blogs, but for forums.\n\n~~~\ngwintrob\nDiscourse has an API: [http://docs.discourse.org/](http://docs.discourse.org/)\n\n~~~\nOJFord\nWould you really describe Discourse as \"Reddit/HN like\" though?\n\n------\nreitanqild\nA webhook or something that would tell me when a phone number changes owner.\n\nI.e.: when we bill someone weekly for something and then the phone number\nchanges owner we want to stop immediately.\n\nSame if you send sms-es that you don’t want delivered to anyone but the\nintended recipient.\n\n~~~\namiller2571\nI can understand the positive uses for such an API. For the uses you mentioned\nit would be great.\n\nHowever, I hope nothing like that is ever made! It would get abused to no end.\nI've personally changed number multiple times for privacy reasons.\n\n~~~\nreitanqild\nI see your point but as long as the\n\n1\\. You only get notifications for numbers you sign up to watch\n\n2\\. The webhook only notifies me that <number> will be transferred <at> (using\nsome data format)\n\nthen it shouldn't be a problem, should it?\n\n~~~\namiller2571\nI think it would be ok as long as it didn't tell you what the person's new\nnumber is or who now owns <number> if it gets reassigned.\n\n~~~\nreitanqild\nOk, then we agree :-)\n\nWe just wanted to know so that we wouldn't charge the new owner for things the\nold owner ordered etc.\n\n------\nandrewfong\nLet me programmatically schedule a task to run at a specific time, just once.\nE.g. if my user tells me to remind them about something in a day, I want to\nschedule a task to do that exactly 24 hours from now.\n\nI'm sure this exists already but it's hard to find because searching usually\npoints me to a cronjob service. But what I'm looking for is distinct from a\nthat. I don't want to run something every minute or hour or checking if\nthere's any work to do. I just want a given task to run as a pre-determined\ntime, scaled to any arbitrary number of tasks.\n\n~~~\nPhenomabomb\nI've heard good things about Autohotkey, but every time I try to do even the\nsimplest of tasks it becomes a hassle. Like even just clicking on a specific\npoint on your screen you have to know the exact coordinates of the place you\nwant clicked. It seems like it'd be very easy just to record where you want to\nclick.\n\n~~~\ntahw\nWhen I'm working on tasks like that I like to add a hotkey that just puts the\nmouse's location on a tooltip for me. Sometimes you can just Tab to whatever\nyou're trying to click, too, which is robust to window position.\n\n------\nmtrimpe\nAn API where I could point _end user_ video uploads to and have them\nprocessed, transcoded and playable on all platforms. One that also works at\nthe RTMP/WebRTC layer (i.e. not just an all-in-one JS library with it's own\nidea of a 'good UI') and doesn't require me to do an API call first to set up\nthe stream for the user (i.e. encode 'upload rights' using expiring HMAC-\nsigned blobs including restrictions such as maximum length and/or file-size to\nprevent people having me transcode movies for them for free.)\n\n~~~\nboredprogrammer\nNot sure if it quite fits the bill, but if your end user video uploads are\nstored on S3 or similar then zencoder does most of what you are looking for.\n\n~~~\nmtrimpe\nThe hard part is the ingestion services; which aren't as easy to set up as\nthey seem since a proper one is essentially a reverse CDN (content ingestion\nnetwork if you'd like ;-)\n\n------\norasis\nI wanted machine learning-based app configuration. So I built it and spun it\nout as a separate product: [https://improve.ai/](https://improve.ai/)\n\n~~~\ndanenania\nI think this is a really cool idea, but I feel like it could be described in a\nbetter way.\n\n'Machine learning-based app configuration' is very techie and vague and could\nmean a LOT of different things in a number of realms. What about something\nmore specific and benefit-focused, like: 'AI that automatically improves your\nsite's design'? To me something like that communicates what the product is\nmore clearly, assuming I understand it correctly of course.\n\n~~~\norasis\nThanks for the feedback. Working to find the best language has been a hard\nslog. It's actually not for improving a web site's design but is targeted\nspecifically at mobile apps. I'm using the \"configuration\" language now so\nthat developers maybe get an idea of how it integrates.\n\n------\nnathanken\nSometime back I wished I had a light weight CMS that can serve your content\nand allow you to program sections of your content so that you can make it more\ndynamic. For example, I can have something like this as the content:\n\nThe sum of @Var1 and @Var2 is #Sum\n\nand then we can program #Sum (we call this an expression) to return the sum of\n@Var1 and @Var2. Once I pass the values for the variables @Var1 and @Var2 to\nAPI, let's say 1 and 2 correspondingly. Then the api would return you the\ncontent as:\n\nThe sum of 1 and 2 is 3\n\nI couldn't find something that could help me with this so I build one. You can\nvisit [https://www.dialoguewise.com/](https://www.dialoguewise.com/) in case\nyou have a similar requirement. More on expressions here:\n[https://docs.dialoguewise.com/expressions/](https://docs.dialoguewise.com/expressions/)\n\n~~~\nmichaeloblak\nNot exactly this, but [https://sheetsu.com](https://sheetsu.com) is a\nlightweight CMS from Google Spreadsheets.\n\n------\nmclifton\nA generic communication API (this might exist). When I want to communicate\nwith my customer, it handles how they receive the message - whether that's\nSMS, Email, IM, slack, etc.\n\n~~~\nfreyfogle\nNot quite what you're asking for, but here is a service that provides the\nopposite side of that - all customer messages come into a single queue on your\nside and can then be processed by customer service and/or answered by a bot\n[https://hubtype.com/](https://hubtype.com/)\n\n------\nsuperasn\nAn API that returns top 100 relevant web results via Javascript (aka the\ngoogle ajax api which sadly they discontinued).\n\n~~~\nedoceo\nDuckDuckGo and Yandex have one\n\n------\nerikrothoff\nSubscription billing API that deals with reminders, renewals,\ne-mails/cancellations, etc. Everything related to that. All existing solutions\ndon't work well if revenue per user is a \"measley\" 2 USD per month.\n\n~~~\nBatFastard\nSo a \"Low cost\" billing API, everyone's dream!\n\n~~~\nfrenchie4111\n\"Low cost\" could be 5% of charges. Use stripe under the hood, so you make\n2.1%. Not too bad for a stripe wrapper.\n\n~~~\ndesdiv\nStripe's pricing is 2.9% + 30¢, so the fee for a $2 payment would be 36¢,\neffectively 18%.\n\n~~~\nerikrothoff\nWe're paying the 18% already for our $2 transaction... Another 5% on that\nsounds doable.\n\n~~~\nfrenchie4111\nThis is definitely one of those problems that while I was implementing it\nevery day I would think \"Why the hell do I have to do this myself\"\n\n------\nakcreek\nI need an accurate way to count words on a variety of documents, with and\nwithout renderable text. Could be an image, pdf, docx, etc. The renderable\ntext isn't an issue, but the non has been for me. I've tried several OCR\nproducts and none have worked well as we often have something like an image of\na hand written document or a low quality scan of an old document. Maybe\nsomething with computer vision instead of OCR is the right solution though as\nI don't need to know what the text says, I just need a count of the words or\ncharacters for languages that use symbols.\n\n------\nthangalin\nBret Victor's The Future of Programming has intriguing ideas on APIs that are\ntangentially related to this topic.\n\n[https://vimeo.com/71278954#t=14m](https://vimeo.com/71278954#t=14m)\n\n------\nb3b0p\nVideo Games.\n\nThere are a few, but none provide some important information or have a\nreliable, complete data set. In particular, box art, UPC codes. From my\nresearch the Giant Bomb and Moby Games API's seem to be the most complete, but\nneither have the UPC. The only place I can find that is another API which is\nrather lacking in completeness and data.\n\n------\nransom1538\nEasy way to get geo from ip. I hate a lot of the options: downloading binarys\nor using google's that just regulates you.\n\n~~~\nnolite\nThere was a solution for this on HN not a week ago..\n\n~~~\nypys\nHere it is: [https://ipinfo.io](https://ipinfo.io)\n\n~~~\navar\nThese free databases are really inaccurate in many cases compared to e.g.\nMaxmind. E.g. this thinks my IP address is 100 km away near the German border,\nbut Maxmind's commercial DB puts me a 7 minute walk away in the center of\nAmsterdam.\n\nThey're better than nothing, but be careful when relying on them for anything\nyou need accurate Geo-IP info for.\n\n~~~\nromanovcode\nI also don't recommend free solution for serious business. This can be\ncritical for E-Commerce which uses GEO-Locking.\n\nFor customers that live on the borders it is very important that correct\ncountry is selected.\n\n------\njtolj\nA cost effective API into whois data that doesn't come across as sketchy or\nfragile.\n\n~~~\ncjonas\nI worked on a project for one of the big registars and even they didn't have a\nproper whois api!\n\n------\nfrenchie4111\nPoint of Sale integration API. This exists for Restaurant POS systems:\n[http://omnivore.io/](http://omnivore.io/) but I want one for all POS systems.\n\n------\nseancoleman\nA real estate API for active/sold residential and commercial listings.\n\n~~~\nrgbrgb\nThis one would be pretty amazing and we'd pay a lot for it. Unfortunately,\nbeyond the mapping/sanitization, it's an extremely difficult data licensing\nproblem and so we still pay a lot to make an internal residential version we\ncan't vend.\n\n------\nmkilling\n1\\. A process engine that can execute a process given as an EPC (ideally with\nan embeddable gui editor). The app notifies the API of event completions and\nthe API allows you to query the current state of the process.\n\n2\\. An embeddable survey tool like SurveyGizmo, but completely whitelabelable,\nincluding the survey editor\n\n3\\. An API for benchmark scores for iOS and Android devices (give me all\ndevices that are as fast or faster than a Samsung Galaxy S6)\n\n4\\. An embeddable private commenting tool (like Disqus, but for the back-\noffice parts of the website)\n\n~~~\nwolfgang42\nWhat does EPC stand for?\n\n~~~\nmkilling\nEvent-driven process chain[1]. In fact, any executable process modelling\nlanguage would do.\n\n[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event-\ndriven_process_chain](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event-\ndriven_process_chain)\n\n------\nmistercow\nA postgres API to specify query plans directly, bypassing the planner. I\nusually know exactly what algorithm makes the most sense, and it's not\nuncommon for the planner to choose something considerably worse, forcing me to\nbreak queries up, write them in strange ways, or disable strategies.\n\n------\nAlphaWeaver\nAn API providing access to coupons from major retailers in a machine readable\nformat.\n\nEdit: Great question by the way!\n\n~~~\nkapuru\nCan you tell me more about how you would've integrated the API? I think I\ncould've helped out.\n\n~~~\nAlphaWeaver\nThe issue wouldn't have been implementation - it was sourcing the coupons\nthemselves. You'd have to sign agreements with multiple vendors and force them\nto use your system instead of their own.\n\n------\ntarr11\nNatural Language API with a well-defined ontology\n\n~~~\nmatthewayne\nHave you checked out Google's Natural Language API?\n\n[https://cloud.google.com/natural-\nlanguage/docs/reference/res...](https://cloud.google.com/natural-\nlanguage/docs/reference/rest/)\n\n------\nkoala_man\nA reverse pastebin, where you give it a pastebin URL and it returns the\nplaintext.\n\n~~~\nedaemon\nCan't you use the /raw/ URL for that? E.g.\n[https://pastebin.com/raw/AC3FGHBX](https://pastebin.com/raw/AC3FGHBX)\n\n~~~\nkoala_man\nWorks for pastebin.com, but not dpaste.com, sprunge.us, ix.io, fpaste.org,\nideone.com, paste.fedoraproject.org, hastebin.com, termbin.com,\npaste.debian.net, gist.github.com, bpaste.net, lpaste.net, pastee.com,\nirccloud.com, codepad.org or susepaste.org.\n\nI currently have ~40 lines of regex for this, plus some custom logic for a few\nthat don't have raw URLs at all. A service would be very convenient.\n\n~~~\navh02\nSome would say you're half way to building what you want... Launch and sell!\n\n------\nBoxxed\nI wish AWS autoscaling groups had a \"recycle every machine\" operation.\n\n~~~\nfrenchie4111\nI agree with this. Currently it is super annoying to upgrade a group to a new\nlaunch config\n\n~~~\nfrenchie4111\nJust found this: [https://github.com/colinbjohnson/aws-missing-\ntools](https://github.com/colinbjohnson/aws-missing-tools)\n\n------\nben_jones\nAn asynchronous API that returns a full review of my codebase by dozens of\nindustry specialists with special attention paid to best practices and\nidiomatic implementation details.\n\n~~~\nkagx\nThis one is a really interesting idea. Although It would be quite pricey I\nguess. It takes time to review properly code base which is new to you and\nindustry specialists know their price.\n\n------\nseanwilson\nInstagram API that didn't require approval for basic things like downloading\nthe image for a given Instagram URL. :P They've made it incredibly restrictive\nnow.\n\n~~~\nmotyar\nJust add ?__a=1 with any instagram URL read ->\n[https://medium.com/@motyar/instagrams-public-json-\napis-330e4...](https://medium.com/@motyar/instagrams-public-json-\napis-330e4e3f5307)\n\n~~~\nseanwilson\nIs that a sanctioned way of doing it though? I don't want this to break later.\nTheir\n[https://api.instagram.com/oembed/?url=](https://api.instagram.com/oembed/?url=)\nendpoint is at least documented but doesn't give full resolution photos and\nonly limited metadata.\n\n------\ntmaly\na really good directory / search for APIs. There is so much out there, it's\nlike a needle in a haystack literally\n\n~~~\npdimitar\nThat would be the best thing happening to programming in a while... if it\nhappened. I'd pay for such a service.\n\n------\nkidproquo\nAn easy way to get a webpage's image/thumbnail. For e.g. get the the main\nproduct image from an Amazon URL.\n\n------\nvyrotek\nAn affordable API or platform to build live streaming communities such as\ntwitch.tv\n\n------\nurlbox\nMultiple choice question and answer API for an e-learning site, for mini-tests\nand full exams. Ended up using classmarker, but wasn't able to customise it to\nthe look and feel of the rest of the site.\n\n------\ndiehell\nAPI for musical instruments, gear, equipment and its info? If anyone know a\ngood one, please do share.\n\n~~~\nkidproquo\nCan you expand on this? What's use case?\n\n~~~\ndiehell\nSo that user(studio owner,musician,etc) select the instruments or equipment\nthat they have, maybe as autocomplete.\n\n------\nieb\nAn API that had close to real time feed of all closed captioning for news\nsites and those who were speaking.\n\n------\nOld_Thrashbarg\nA good affordable https API to determine location from IP address.\n\n------\nflylib\n1) an API around freight shipping\n\n2) an API to connect with insurance carriers as a broker\n\n~~~\nfancy_pantser\nShipRush does freight and LTL via API. On the downside, it's not as clean/easy\nto use as EasyPost.\n\n[https://shiprush.com/developer](https://shiprush.com/developer)\n\n------\n5_minutes\nA dead-easy scraper API\n\n~~~\ngwintrob\nHave you seen Nightmare?\n[https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare](https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare)\n\n~~~\nbgdkbtv\nThanks for this! Exactly what I needed for a project\n\n------\ntaysic\nA language API- finding synonyms or categories to words\n\n~~~\nartpar\nYou can use nltk/wordnet bindings ? checkout hypernymn and holonym.\n\n------\nRingoBear\nA LinkedIn API that allows you to get a list of a user's contacts. This used\nto exist until they made it available only to \"approved partners\" a couple\nyears ago.\n\n------\nozzmotik\none that did all the hard work of coming up with a product to build, as that's\ngenerally the part I fail at :c\n\n------\nsharemywin\nvar MarketingCost = 0;\n\nvar customer = api.getNewCustomer(MarketingCost);\n\nvar BankAccount = api.Sell(customer);\n\n------\nabootstrapper\nA simple AB testing API.\n\n~~~\narmis\nYears ago I've created embeddable A/B testing platform (but only for PHP\nprojects). It's super simple to implement and relevant to your wish\n[http://www.binpress.com/app/multivariate-ab-testing-for-\nphp/...](http://www.binpress.com/app/multivariate-ab-testing-for-php/1897)\n\n------\nSirLJ\nunlimited stock market API\n\n------\njamespitts\nThis is probably too general of a question.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Expression Problem and Tables - qubitcoder\nhttp://joelburget.com/the-expression-problem-and-tables/\n======\najuc\nClojure has the best solution to expression problem I've seen in a real\nprogramming language\n\n[http://clojure.org/multimethods](http://clojure.org/multimethods)\n\n    \n    \n        (defmulti sound class)\n        (defmulti eat class)\n        (defmulti attack class)\n    \n        (defmethod sound ::cow [c] \"Moo!\")\n        (defmethod sound ::dog [c] \"Roof!\")\n        (defmethod sound ::cat [c] \"Miau!\")\n    \n        (defmethod attack ::dog [c] (bite c))\n        (defmethod attack ::cat [c] (scratch c))\n    \n        (defmethod eat ::cow [c] ...)\n        (defmethod eat ::dog [c] ...)\n        (defmethod eat ::cat [c] ...)\n    \n        ...\n    \n        (derive ::mad-cow ::cow)\n        (defmethod sound ::mad-cow [c] \"MooOOOooooOOOOoooo!\")\n        (defmethod attack ::mad-cow [c] (stampede c))\n    \n\nThe layout problem remains, and I would like to be able to do sql- or prolog-\nlike queries on code, but IMHO it's IDE and tooling problem more than missing\nlanguage feature.\n\nAlso in clojure you can add arbitrary\n[http://clojure.org/metadata](http://clojure.org/metadata) to each value, so\nmarking your function as deprecated/in-progress/whatever is easy (but it seems\nyou can't easily add metadata to separate implementations of multimethod right\nnow).\n\n    \n    \n        ...\n        (defmulti \"Attacks.\"\n                  {:deprecated \"Use eat instead.\",\n                   :author \"me\"}\n                  attack class)\n        ...\n    \n    \n\nAlso - to confirm that people want to specify rules in tables - I've been\nworking at 2 different companies where we had code generators with .xlsx files\nas input and .java as output.\n\n~~~\nlispm\nHow so? You ignore that the expression problem is about using static types.\nSee the original problem statement.\n\nIn languages like Smalltalk or Lisp, the Expression Problem has easy solutions\n- but they are not statically typed.\n\n~~~\nfnordsensei\nThe point is to not violate the type safety of the language used. There are\nplenty of dynamic languages that don't offer a solution to the expression\nproblem.\n\nWith that said, you can add gradual typing to Clojure with Core.Typed and\nstill solve the expression problem using multimethods without violating type\nsafety.\n\n------\njerf\nEverything looks like a good idea in a blog post. Your homework, if you are\nserious about this, is to crack open a non-trivial, but not huge, program and\napply this idea to it. See how the table looks when you're trying to fit a few\ndozen elements into it in each direction, where the contours of some real\nproblem created the structure (very important!). You can tweak the\norganization of the program a bit, because changing paradigms often requires\ntweaks to the best solution, but it's important that whatever the problem was\nis still solved at the end of the tweaking (i.e., no fair \"simplifying\" until\nyou've simplified the entire problem away).\n\nI say this not because it will prove impossible or useless, but because you\nwill learn things in the process that will help you refine the idea.\nRefinement into \"what I want is not really possible at scale\" is certainly one\npossible outcome, but there are many other possibilities.\n\n(Certainly one problem you'll encounter is that real code is horrifyingly\nnon-\"normal\", in the statistical distribution sense. A program of 100 classes\nis very likely to have 90 of them part of one hierarchy, with the remaining 10\neach doing isolated things. Understanding the table representation of such\nthings may have the MEGO (\"my eyes glaze over\") problem, but then, perhaps you\ncan find something for that.)\n\n------\nkthielen\nAs others have said, the key is to solve the expression problem without\ndiscarding type safety. :)\n\nI think that this problem is basically a simple structural relation on sum\ntypes in disguise. That's how I interpret the \"Data Types a la Carte\" paper\nanyway.\n\nSo if you have:\n\n    \n    \n      class Foo a where\n        foo :: a -> String\n    \n\nAnd say:\n\n    \n    \n      instance Foo A+B where\n        foo A = \"a\"\n        foo B = \"b\"\n    \n\nAnd:\n\n    \n    \n      instance Foo C+D where\n        foo C = \"c\"\n        foo D = \"d\"\n    \n\nThen if you extend your data type to A+B+C+D, then a simple instance generator\nshould be enough to tie it all together:\n\n    \n    \n      instance (Foo v, Foo w) => Foo v+w where\n        foo (inl v') = foo v'\n        foo (inr w') = foo w'\n    \n\nI have a (currently internal to my company) Haskell-like language with\nstructural sum/product/variant/record types where we can do this kind of\nthing. Otherwise \"Data Types a la Carte\" has the solution in the typed setting\nof vanilla Haskell (even if it's a little wordy).\n\n------\nsgreben\nSum types + exhaustiveness checking already do this, right? For this example:\n\n    \n    \n      type animal = Cat | Dog\n      type action = Sound | Eat | Attack\n    \n      let cat_sound () = printf \"meow\"\n      let cat_attack () = printf \"scratch\"\n      let dog_sound () = printf \"woof\"\n    \n      let act animal action = match animal,action with\n      | Cat, Sound  -> cat_sound ()\n      | Cat, Attack -> cat_attack ()\n      | Dog, Sound  -> dog_sound ()\n    \n\nCompiling this yields:\n\n    \n    \n      Warning 8: this pattern-matching is not exhaustive.\n      Here is an example of a value that is not matched:\n      (Dog, (Eat|Attack))\n    \n\njust as we'd like.\n\n~~~\nOno-Sendai\nThe problem is not so much if the compiler will catch it, but how to lay out\nthe new code/types in an editor, hopefully all in one place or accessible from\none place.\n\nC++ will catch a missing combination at compile time as well.\n\n~~~\nICWiener\nNote that the given example has only one place where all combinations are\ndefined. Not sure if this could be done in C++.\n\n------\nplatz\nA staticly-typed solution:\n\n[https://oleksandrmanzyuk.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/from-\nobjec...](https://oleksandrmanzyuk.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/from-object-\nalgebras-to-finally-tagless-interpreters-2/)\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8904182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8904182)\n\n------\nSomeone\nMultimethods, introspection and a good IDE can get you very far in this\ndirection. For an example, see [https://opendylan.org/history/apple-\ndylan/screenshots/browse...](https://opendylan.org/history/apple-\ndylan/screenshots/browsers.html) [There likely are older Lisp or Smalltalk\nimplementations of this idea]\n\n------\nflipp3r\n\"we gain the power to query: implementations calling a deprecated function,\nimplementations marked TODO, unimplemented cases, animals which eat, functions\nwritten by me, with no tests\"\n\nI think what you're looking for is a good IDE and Scala or Java\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nNo IDE needed with Common Lisp, you can get most of this data via standard\nlanguage features and Metaobject Protocol, and for whatever else you need to\nkeep track of, just write a few macros and you're done.\n\n------\nzamalek\nGo's implicit interfaces are one possible solution to this problem.\n\n> animals which eat\n    \n    \n        type eater interface { eat() }\n        somEater, isEater := value.(eater)\n    \n\nOr something, my Go isn't very good.\n\n------\nhepek\nThis text reminds me of row polymorphism in OCaml object system. Or maybe I\ngot it all wrong.\n\n------\ninnguest\nReminds me of TOP - Table Oriented Programming - as discussed in the c2 wiki.\nI use those simple but helpful ideas to this day.\n\n~~~\nsmrtinsert\nI thought of this too. I remember reading it years ago and wondering why this\nidea had no traction. I honestly think some sort of tuple oriented programming\nparadigm will eventually emerge at the forefront. Look at R datatables for\nexample.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIf a tweet declares war, is it treason to take it down? - awinter-py\nhttps://abe-winter.github.io/2019/10/18/tweason.html\n======\ntptacek\nNo, for assistance to an enemy to be treasonable, war must actually have been\ndeclared, and only Congress can declare war. Actually _waging war_ on the US\nis treasonable without a Congressional declaration, but the definition depends\non a state of \"open war\" in which you're part of a recognized assembled group\nof people engaged in open armed hostilities.\n\nThe short answer to almost all these kinds of questions is \"it's never\ntreason\".\n\n~~~\ndiego\n1) You're assuming this ONLY discusses the possibility of the US declaring war\nvia tweet. The article clearly talks about ANY country that could declare war\nvia tweet.\n\n2) It specifically addresses the question of the US and Congress.\n[https://abe-winter.github.io/2019/10/18/tweason.html#can-a-t...](https://abe-\nwinter.github.io/2019/10/18/tweason.html#can-a-tweet-declare-war)\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nYes, its analysis of the US and Congress is, I believe, simply wrong. The\nPresident can effectively levy war in the 21st century without Congress, but\nsuch \"wars\" do not create the conditions required for treason. Treason is\nincumbent on war being properly declared.\n\nEven John Walker Lindh couldn't be charged with treason, and he had the weight\nof an actual AUMF against him.\n\n~~~\nRetric\nYou can be convicted of treason without a war being declared. Walter Allen\nbeing the most obvious case.\n[https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/205](https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/205)\n\nWhat makes this case so interesting is it was treason vs a specific state not\nthe entire USA.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nSee my original comment on this thread. The definition of \"declared or open\nwar\", the conditions required in the US, go back into English Common Law.\n\n~~~\nRetric\nWe can quibble about the open war vs the entire US on that one, but here\nconspiracy is also considered sufficient grounds.\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr_conspiracy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr_conspiracy)\nThough not convicted, that was a question of evidence rather than if\nconspiracy was sufficient grounds for a conviction.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nThe Supreme Court cases that clarified this matter occurred after the Burr\naffair.\n\n~~~\nRetric\nSo you have some specifics in mind? I assume you’re referring to Ex parte\nBollman\n\n“That levying an army may or may not be treason, and that this depends on the\nintention with which it is levied, and on the point to which the parties have\nadvanced, has been also stated. The mere enlisting of men, without assembling\nthem, is not levying war. The question then is, whether this evidence proves\nCol. Burr to have advanced so far in levying an army as actually to have\nassembled them.”\n\nIn the Burr case no men where actually assembled. “No evidence existed that\neither Bollman or Swartwout engaged in any military activity or violent acts.”\nI could be misreading this but I believe the military acts of a non violent\nnature could still qualify under this definition. Though, it’s stretching the\ndefinition of war to call such non violent acts war, such is the way of such\nthings.\n\nIn any case I believe the line for treason is close to but before what could\nbe called “open war.”\n\n------\nakersten\nSorry, I'm really not seeing the jump to \"treason\" here. I also think the\nauthor has a personal vendetta against Twitter based on the final sentence of\nthe post, but regardless - they acknowledge that declaration of war is a\ncongressional power, and that contempt of Congress is a possibility - but\nsomehow this means that removal of a post from a member of the executive\nbranch is treason?\n\nWould the New York Times refusing to run a story about how war was declared be\ntreason? What about CSPAN cutting away the broadcast in the middle of a war\nannouncement?\n\nI don't think so, in either case, and I don't think it's the case for Twitter\neither - because them not carrying the information doesn't change the material\nfacts of the declaration. They're not interfering in an official congressional\nprocess in any capacity, because they're _not part_ of an official\ncongressional process.\n\n~~~\ncaiocaiocaio\nYou and me have an extremely different definition of personal vendetta!\n\n~~~\nakersten\nThat's fair, \"vendetta\" is too strong of a word. \"Personal bias\" is better-\nsuited. It's just hard to read a post calling them \"internet vampires\" and\nstill assume a neutral author.\n\n~~~\nt0mbstone\nBut Twitter _has_ objectively proven themselves to be \"celebrity vampires\" by\nselectively applying different sets of rules to celebrities than to common\npeople.\n\nFor example, it is against Twitter's official rules\n([https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-\nrules](https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules)) for a\nuser to use their platform to say hateful or racist things, and they regularly\nban people for violating those conditions, but they they regularly allow\nfamous people (like the President of the USA) to get away with violating many\nof those rules.\n\nWhy does Twitter let Trump (and many other famous people) get away with\nbreaking the rules? Because Twitter directly benefits from the viewers and the\noutrage.\n\nAcknowledging that fact (and yes, it is a provable fact) hardly means someone\nhas a personal vendetta against Twitter.\n\n~~~\nmanicdee\nIt’s especially common for Twitter, upon receiving complaints from a POC about\nracial harassment, to ban the victim.\n\n------\njjk166\nAccording to the Hague Convention's relevant sections,\n\narticle 1:\n\nThe Contracting Powers recognize that hostilities between themselves must not\ncommence without previous and explicit warning, in the form either of a\nreasoned declaration of war or of an ultimatum with conditional declaration of\nwar.\n\narticle 2:\n\nThe existence of a state of war must be notified to the neutral Powers without\ndelay, and shall not take effect in regard to them until after the receipt of\na notification, which may, however, be given by telegraph. Neutral Powers,\nnevertheless, cannot rely on the absence of notification if it is clearly\nestablished that they were in fact aware of the existence of a state of war.\n\nThere is nothing saying that a declaration of war must be preserved. Indeed\nthe only mentioned method of transmitting a declaration of war is by\ntelegraph, which does not preserve the information at all and would mean the\nmessage might be completely missed if the receiver was unmanned at the time.\n\nIgnoring the absurdity of declaring war exclusively via twitter, or the\nimprobability that a declaration of war on twitter by a nation state would go\nunnoticed, it seems even an extremely rapid deletion of the tweet would not\nhinder the tweeter's ability to formally declare war, and thus the deletion\ncould never be treason to begin with.\n\nThere might be an issue with the Federal Recordkeeping Act, but this would be\non the part of the entity tweeting, not Twitter, and would certainly not be\ngrounds for treason in any capacity.\n\n------\ntomatotomato37\nThe early conversation here seems to focus more on US procedures and\ngovernment branches than Twitter's responsibilities but Twitter is not just\naccessible to US world leaders. What would happen if some Middle Eastern\nmonarch used the service to declare war on a neighboring country. I think even\nthe UK still does war declaration from only the Queen, how should Twitter\nrespond to it then?\n\n~~~\ncatalogia\nHow could an American company commit treason in a foreign country? Treason in\na country you aren't a citizen of, in a country you have no moral, ethical or\nlogical obligation to be loyal to, seems nonsensical. If country A invades\ncountry B, country A isn't committing treason against country B. Treason isn't\njust some word meant to describe \"anything a country dislikes\".\n\n------\nTorwald\n> If twitter wanted heads of state off their platform, they would have asked\n> them long ago. They put up with everything because like me and the rest of\n> the internet they’re celebrity vampires.\n\nMaybe they don't put up with anything. I couldn't find any official complaint\nof a Twitter inc. spokesperson about having to \"put up\" with what any head of\nstate is doing on their platform.\n\n------\nQuarrel\n\"Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer\"\n\nThey should have stopped the article there. They're way off base on almost\nevery point, with no idea about some of the basics of law at all.\n\nThe whole thing is absolutely ridiculous.\n\n------\ndanso\nIn tech communities, we often have discussions/debates about the value and/or\nnecessity of hosting content and data on servers we own, because we fear\nlosing everything stored on cloud servers beyond our control. The current\nWhite House seems to be the very opposite in its lack of qualm or reflection.\nWhich is ironic because the WH has long had a decent software stack (made even\nbetter by federal budgets and staffing) to publish, host disseminate, and\nsecure content on servers completely under their control – arguably as close\nto reliability and digital permanence as the Library of Congress or Internet\nArchive.\n\nI know the federal archivists have logistics and software in place to\nautomatically collect and archive digital content [0]. But that doesn't do\nmuch for real-time current announcements made on Twitter or Facebook. In the\nhypothetical event in which the President posts something that could\nirrevocably lead to diplomatic disaster and war, it's not impossible to\nimagine a tech executive, or even low-level employee, having a Vasily Arkhipov\nmoment and making the unilateral decision to censor/ban the president.\n\nFrom the perspective of the White House and the President, of course, it's\ndeeply undesirable to have a main communication channel cut off, especially\nduring an emergency. And yet President Trump has stoked a mindset among the\npublic and media to see his Twitter as the direct feed of executive-level news\nand decision making, without any concern that Twitter's execs have ultimate\nveto power over his channel.\n\n[0]\n[https://archivesocial.com/whitehouse/](https://archivesocial.com/whitehouse/)\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_(vice_admiral)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_\\(vice_admiral\\))\n\n------\ncelticmusic\nwhat a stupid thing to waste time thinking about. One would think the actual\ndeclaration of war would be the interesting event here.\n\n~~~\nbenj111\nOk.\n\nX declares war on Y. Twitter takes it down so Y never sees it. Are they at\nwar?\n\n~~~\ndragonwriter\n> X declares war on Y. [...]\n\n> Are they at war?\n\nYes. Moreover, it doesn't matter, as no one declares war before initiating\nhostilities anymore; since aggression has been uniformly understood to be a\ncrime, the only legitimate reason for waging war is is immediate, including\nimminent, national or collective self-defense (including, in the latter,\nimplementation of UNSC resolutions pertaining to maintenance of peace and\nsecurity), which requires claiming that the other side has already initiated\nwar, which makes declarations superfluous. For domestic purposes, in the US,\nCongress will sometimes issue what is legally, though not formally labelled, a\nconditional declaration of war conditioned on executive determinations, but\nthose conditions tend to be an executive determination that conditions which\ninclude (among more specific findings) a violation of UNSC conditions or acts\nof aggression against the US.\n\n~~~\nbenj111\nI was thinking of a World War 2 scenario where the declarers didn't actually\nstart hostilities.\n\nNow in an alternate universe where Germany didn't realise it was at war if it\ninvaded Poland, so it never invaded France. Fast forward X years on, and\nFrance wants to sign a peace treaty (because it's embarrassing being in the EU\nbut at war with a fellow member, and makes Schengen complicated), but Germany\ndoesn't see the need because they aren't at war. Can France unilaterally\ndeclare peace? Is Germany at war? (I suppose theres a legal and real world\nanswer to this)\n\nI'm reminded of an urban legend, where Berwick on Tweed wasn't included in the\npeace treaty concluding the Crimean war, therefore still technically at war\nwith Russia [1]. In all the tellings, a second treaty has had to be signed to\nend the war, which suggests both parties need to agree.\n\n[1] [http://www.berwickfriends.org.uk/history/berwicks-war-\nwith-r...](http://www.berwickfriends.org.uk/history/berwicks-war-with-russia/)\n\n------\nrabuse\nObviously not, since the account can be compromised. (Especially when it comes\nto Twitter and how they handle 2-Factor)\n\n------\ncft\nThe quarter when Trump abandons Twitter I am going to short it. The reversal\nof Twitter stock was due to Trump popularizing it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIron Man Movie Review - Did it Suck? - xeroteam\nhttp://www.jaguarmarketingrevealed.com/2008/05/01/iron-man-movie-review/\nGet a non-spoiler review of Iron Man. Pre-screening was in theaters on Thursday evening before the official May 2, release.\n======\nxirium\nThe Iron Man film is astounding; better than expected. It is bursting with\ncomedy. The visual style of the film is similar to The Dark Knight. The\ngadgetry is amazing. For example, you'll love Tony Stark's multi-monitor\ndesktop. And I've never seen Gwyneth Paltrow looking better. I'm expecting a\nsequel.\n\n------\nTichy\nHard to believe. I don't know anything about this movie except for the poster\nads, and every time I see one of them I feel amazed at how ridiculous the\nmovie industry has become.\n\nOK, a recommendation on Hacker News, that is quite something. But nah - I\nthink I'll still pass for the time being. Maybe if I had a 12 year old son, it\nwould be a different matter...\n\n------\niamelgringo\nI heard, \"That was sick!\" 3 times on the way out of the theater tonight.\n\nIt really was... sick.\n\n------\nwumi\nwas surprised at the quality of the film. very entertaining.\n\n------\nxeroteam\nYes I agree, much laughs. I've never been a fan of Paltrow, but I must say\nshe's lookin excellent in this movie.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n2048, Wolfram Style - lelf\nhttp://blog.wolfram.com/2014/05/09/2048/\n======\nb0sk\nI opened this page in Chrome and a file 2048.cdf got automatically downloaded.\nHardly the best practice.\n\n~~~\nNeff\nIt looks like they embed the CDF at the end of the post (line 549), and Chrome\ninterpreted that as \"let's download this file without any warning\". Both\nFirefox and Safari just display a \"missing plugin\" box.\n\nThis is most likely a chrome issue, not a Wolfram issue.\n\n------\nChromozon\nI downloaded the plugin for Firefox. The game is not registering key presses.\n\n------\ndavidgerard\nWhat's the plugin it's asking for?\n\n~~~\ndaureg\nOn Linux it's a 577 MB download[0], which IMHO is kind of heavy to play a\nHTML5 game.\n\n[0]: [http://www.wolfram.com/cdf-player/](http://www.wolfram.com/cdf-player/)\n\n~~~\ndavidgerard\nYeah ... no, I think.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Pirate Bay Mystery - Absentinsomniac\nhttp://thepiratebay.se/\n\n======\nAbsentinsomniac\nSo, there's a bit of a mystery going on with thepiratebay's site. In the\nsource there's been various clues that have been changing over time. A couple\nof folks over at reddit were working on it, but I don't think anyone has come\nup with anything.\n\nBasically, in the source, they have stuff named like:\n\n\"key lowercase\" and \"WeAreTPB\" \"aes.png\" and class=\"pipe vi Makefile\"\n\nThere also appears to be an image of an AES key on the page. And before they\nallegedly had \"thecluesareallthere\" as one of the classes. I'd imagine there's\nsome kind of encrypted thing in the image or video. Maybe somebody here will\nfind it interesting.\n\n~~~\ntabrischen\nWhat is the reddit link?\n\n~~~\nAbsentinsomniac\nNew one:\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/thepiratebay/comments/2rml8a/update...](https://www.reddit.com/r/thepiratebay/comments/2rml8a/updated_again/)\n\nOlder one:\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/thepiratebay/comments/2q23mm/the_ke...](https://www.reddit.com/r/thepiratebay/comments/2q23mm/the_key_is_an_aes_key/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAttention loss feared as high-tech rewires brain - fogus\nhttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/15/BUNI1AB1G2.DTL&feed=rss.technology\n======\njswinghammer\nI think people have longer attention spans now. Watch \"The Wire\" which is by\nany definition complicated and requiring a huge attention span. Now compare it\nto \"Dallas\" which at the time was considered to be too complicated for many\npeople to follow. \"The Wire\" is certainly far more complicated and hard to\nfollow. I recall watching a whole season and not knowing the names of some\nmajor characters because I just didn't have the space to store that\ninformation.\n\nThese sort of articles get written all the time too. It just seems like it's\ntrying to appeal to an older audience who doesn't understand new technology.\nI'd imagine more and more newspaper readers are falling into this category.\n\n~~~\ngojomo\nI think you're confusing two different (albeit related) axes.\n\nTV is more complex _because_ attention spans are shorter: they need to pack\nmore twists (and more, shorter scenes) into the same amount of time to keep\nthe attention-addled from switching channels.\n\n~~~\njswinghammer\nI don't see more twists these days in the shows I'm talking about. I see shows\ndumping tons of information on you and making you deal with it and store it in\norder to keep up. Have you watched \"Lost\" or \"The Wire\" or \"The Sopranos\"?\n\n~~~\ngojomo\nYes \"Lost\", a little \"The Wire\", yes \"The Sopranos\".\n\nIf the info is essential to \"keep up\" -- that is, it wasn't completely\npredicted by the earlier trajectory of the show, and it's not easily ignorable\nas subsidiary to the main plot -- then it is a \"twist\", in my meaning.\n\nThe shows you mention use multiple overlapping story arcs -- some for just the\ncurrent show, some for several episodes, some for the season, some for the\nentire run -- in order to _fight_ short attention spans. There's something for\neveryone, including lots of short cuts between simultaneous (or flashback)\nstory lines, to keep the pace of \"reveals\" sufficient for even fidgety,\nclicker-happy viewers.\n\n------\nmattyfo\nI stopped reading after the quote: \"If our attention span constricts to the\npoint where we can only take information in 140-character sentences, then that\ndoesn't bode too well for our future,\"\n\nThis seems like a predictable 'woe is technology & future' article.\n\nYes we use shorter messages and the way we write is different but if that's a\nproblem for you then take a day off and go hike in the woods; it will do your\nmind wonders.\n\n~~~\nnazgulnarsil\nbut even if any specific alarm is overblown, there is a legitimacy to the fear\nthat the ways we're hacking our brains will ultimately result in a net loss.\n\n\"what are you doing? you haven't answered your phone for 2 days!\"\n\n\"playing this game where I have to collect waddels\"\n\n\"what's a waddel?\"\n\n\"I don't know but I'm ranked #3 on the server\"\n\n~~~\nmattyfo\nI agree, we may be doing things to our brains that are irreversible but I also\nbelieve that it's something that we can control and manage.\n\nI used to be an obsessive everquest player but am not anymore because I\nrealized how unhealthy it is. Albeit, that's one small anecdote.\n\nI think the real takeaway here, and I can't say if this article addressed it\n(because I refuse to read this) is that we as conscious beings have to take\ntime to be self-aware and regulate our activities in a healthy way.\n\nIE Eat your fruits and veggies, exercise, don't smoke, wear seatbelts, don't\nwatch too much TV, spend a limited amount of time on computers, get outside,\nmeditate, play music or draw, explore, expand and be creative and don't read\ntoo many alarmist articles.\n\n~~~\nazm\n\" (because I refuse to read this) \"\n\nAt the risk of getting down-voted on my first comment:\n\nI am sorry, how can you comment on an article about the possibility of\nacquiring some form of ADD and attempt to provide a potential solution without\nactually reading the article. Perhaps the author is actually correct,\nespecially considering the size of your response and the actual content.\n\nJust because something does not agree with your outlook does not necessarily\nmean that it is incorrect or invalid. Try reading some of those types of\nthings. You would be surprised how refreshing, entertaining or enlightening\nthey are.\n\nA\n\n------\nFreebytes\nI have known this is the case for a long time; however, it stems back much\nfarther than simply during the age of the Internet. Ever since the ability to\nwrite, mankind has been changing the way thought it processed, memories are\nstored, and information is ignored.\n\n------\neli\nOur brains are constantly being \"rewired\" by everything we do... So?\n\nThis is just like the silly, \"Is google making us stupid?\" article in The\nAtlantic over the summer. (Hint: if a news magazine has a question headline,\nthe answer is usually \"no.\")\n\n------\ngabeybaby\nThe article itself actually makes a decent example. With four headers (the\ntitle header and the three sub-headers) the article is more digestible and\nrewarding to read since you finished four sections instead of one article. The\narticle and this <http://xkcd.com/597/> comic make a good point. I feel myself\nconstantly distracted by news feeds and automatic updates to the point where\nstarting and sticking with project becomes difficult. Compare this to society\nbefore radio where people had ample amount of time to create personal works\nsimply because they had a lack of things to do. So in a way we're culling some\nof our deeper culture and ability to ruminate deeply. Yet at the same modern\nsociety is creating a whole new information architecture. With all these\nefficiencies we've created, society has been able to create a vast amount of\nwealth that wasn't possible before. That wealth can be used to create that\ndeeper culture or those more sophisticate inventions; however, when bits of\ninformation can only exist in small containers will we be able to continue the\nprogression. After all, the recently posted Eco article demands that \"Culture\nisn't knowing when Napoleon died. Culture means knowing how I can find out in\ntwo minutes.\"\n\nWe'll have all the pieces, but will we still have the conceptual framework to\nmold new ideas. Will capitalism be enough to stave off these ill effects? With\nincreased filtering and data relationship tools capitalism may be enough to\npush over the plateau of stupidity this article is foretelling.\n\n~~~\ngabeybaby\nAfter reading Atwood's \"Parsing Html The Cthulhu Way\" article\n(<http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001311.html>), I'd like to add one\nmore thought after reading the following section. \"What we have here is an\nongoing education problem. The real enemy isn't regular expressions (or, for\nthat matter, goto), but ignorance. The only crime being perpetrated is not\nknowing what the alternatives are. \"\n\nThe article is lamenting a possible loss of knowledge over the accumulation of\ninformation where knowledge is the obvious preference. And I think that's the\npoint I was originally trying to make with the \"before radio\" comment. People\nhad less information to work with and yet possibly KNEW more with respect to\nthe amount of information they had available to them.\n\n------\nBigZaphod\nI wish I was joking, but I seriously read to the word \"high-tech\" in the title\nand my mind started drifting.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBigger does not mean faster - raganwald\nhttp://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/08/13/snell\n======\ncconstantine\nI've worked in one growing small company, and one internet giant. From my\nlimited experience I've noticed that as companies get bigger:\n\n\\- they gain engineering throughput. Given enough time more stuff gets done in\nthe larger company.\n\n\\- they gain latency. It takes longer to get a single feature out.\n\n\\- they lose creativity. Solutions tend to get more boring, and exciting new\nthings get swept under the rug. Powerful levers that allow single developers\nto be highly effective become frowned upon.\n\nThe key things appears to be the way a simple question is answered: \"We need\nto implement X and there are two ways; the risky design that requires a small\nnumber of developers, and the safe way that requires a large number of\ndevelopers. Which design should we chose?\"\n\nEvery manager I've ever worked with wants to chose the safe route because it's\nsafe, but only those in large companies can afford the number of engineers.\n\n------\npongle\nI had two thoughts when reading this: 1) Mythical Man Month... 2) If I was\nApple would I have released the SDK with iPhone 1.0? Probably not. iPods\nbecame a market leader without a killer (externally developed) app. Why spend\nthe effort to package-up the SDK, when it's not going to be key to your\noffering?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSQL Pie Chart - fuzzix\nhttp://code.openark.org/blog/mysql/sql-pie-chart\n\n======\ncrazygringo\n\"...conclude with what, I hope you'll agree, are real-world, useful usage\nsamples.\"\n\nI can't tell if the author just has incredibly dry humor and this whole thing\nis a joke... or actually believes this is useful?\n\nIt's probably the most convoluted use of SQL I've ever seen, but I guess it's\nkind of impressive that it's possible...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTrust No One: Kim Philby and the Hazards of Mistrust (2014) - lermontov\nhttp://gladwell.com/trust-no-one/\n======\nwillvarfar\nI enjoy Gladwell's writing style and annecdotes, but have become wary of\nactually believing any argument he makes with them. The more I know about a\nsubject the less convincing and more cherry-picked the annecdotes seem to\nbecome.\n\nI think his books are made the same way the evening TV news is:- an editorial\nnarrative is decided upon, and then people are interviewed until someone says\nwhat the editor wants and that's the clip that gets used.\n\nBuy his books, by all means, just be wary and do your own research :)\n\n~~~\ninternaut\nHe spreads anti-information. I wonder if we would be better off without him.\n\nI know sometimes lies-to-children are necessarily part of an education but\nsometimes they are just lies that get in the way of understanding.\n\nSo far as I can tell he deciphers what most people want to believe is true and\nthen gives it to them.\n\nJared Diamond is in a very similar position.\n\n~~~\njessaustin\nHaha this seems like the start of a fun game. You see Gladwell and raise\nDiamond. I'll see your Diamond and raise Pinker.\n\nEventually we'll upset someone, who will then have to draw a reasonable line\nsomewhere between Gladwell and their favored popular author.\n\n~~~\ninternaut\nNot at all, upset away!\n\nI do think Pinker is of a higher calibre than Gladwell but ever since reading\nDawkin's (in the God Delusion) vague idea of some eternal progress towards\n'Progress' (which he called the Zeitgeist) I haven't seen much substantiating\nwhy outbreaks of violence should decline asymptotically. A handful of modern\nbombs would disturb that nice little chart. Seems like cycles are more likely,\nperhaps contingent on solar cycles. If we don't understand why we go to war (I\nfind most explanations too high level and utterly unconvincing) we should not\npredict peace. Things can and do turn on a dime.\n\n~~~\nktRolster\n_If we don 't understand why we go to war (I find most explanations too high\nlevel and utterly unconvincing)_\n\nFear, greed, or ideology. Those were the three reasons the Greeks came up\nwith.\n\n~~~\njessaustin\nFear and ideology are usually smokescreens for that other reason, at least on\nthe aggressor's side.\n\n~~~\nCocaKoala\nWell, you can break \"why does a country go to war\" into two separate\nquestions: first, why has war been declared? And second, why do the soldiers\nenlist and willingly go?\n\nYou can probably put together a decent argument saying \"The second War in Iraq\nwas because of oil\", but I haven't heard any stories of soldiers who signed up\nand came out of their deployment with the rights to an oil well. If you want\nto have a discussion about the motivations for war, it seems foolish to ignore\nthe motivations of the boots on the ground that are actually making shit\nhappen out there.\n\n------\nbrownbat\nMy favorite part was the story about wine at the end, which had little or\nnothing to do with the rest of the piece.\n\n> [Regarding] a don at Trinity College in the mid-nineteenth century:\n\n> In 1848 he published a thesis entitled Horae Apocalypticae, purporting to\n> prove beyond doubt that the world would come to an end in 1868 because the\n> Euphrates would have dried up the previous year. Harmless enough, you would\n> think. But since he was a man of dominating though eccentric personality he\n> succeeded in persuading the wine committee of Trinity that it would be\n> pointless to lay down any 1853 port because it would not be fit to drink\n> before Judgment Day. As 1853 proved to be one of the best vintages of the\n> century and as Trinity was the only college without any, his name was not\n> remembered with overmuch affection.\n\nIt reminded me of an old Jewish saying, \"If you are planting a tree and you\nhear that Messiah has come, finish planting the tree, then go and inquire.\"\n\n~~~\nyitchelle\nCan you explain that old Jewish saying a little bit? It sounds quite though\nprovoking. TIA.\n\n~~~\nbdr\nIf you are catching a Pokemon and you hear that Halo 3 has been confirmed,\nfinish catching the Pokemon, then go and inquire.\n\n~~~\nmhurron\nHalo 3 was released almost 10 years ago. Now, I'm pretty sure you meant Half-\nLife 3, I just wanted to be an ass Even then the saying doesn't fit because\nthe Jewish Messiah is far more likely than Half-Life 3.\n\n~~~\nbdr\nOops! Thanks.\n\n------\nerdevs\nI'm so happy to see the a good deal of skepticism of Gladwell here. What a\nchange from ~10 years ago when he was near-universally lauded.\n\nGladwell is an amazinglh eloquent and convincing writer. I only wish I had his\ntalents there. But oh how I wish he were more intellectually honest with his\nsubject matter.\n\nDo others have examples of writers with similar prowess of the pen, but\ngreater merit in seeking truth? Always on the hunt for more good thinkers to\nread and all the better when their writing is entertaining and of admirable\nskill to boot.\n\n------\nmcguire\n\"Hester Harriet Marsden-Smedley\" Wow. Just wow. And apparently it isn't never\nlupus.\n\nGladwell has a knack for making me want to know more about his topics. Not by\nreading Gladwell, of course; that would be pointless.\n\nHe makes the assertion in this article that intelligence services in general,\nand British intelligence in the early decades of the cold war specifically,\nare useless. Based on a few examples, he thinks that having MI5 and 6 riddled\nwith spies had no consequences---either the intelligence wasn't believed or it\nwas, it was acted on, and people died, but that didn't change the outcome.\nFurther, he says the later, paranoid period was bad, although other than a\ncouple quotes from politicians, he gives no evidence.\n\nAnd yet, the period between 1945 and 1965 was the high point of the Soviet\nUnion. Taking over neighbors. Stealing secrets. Influence. Striking terror in\nthe hearts of free world politicos. And then, after the golden age of Philby,\nnot so much, realistically.\n\n~~~\natemerev\nBack in Russia, we considered our golden age to be 1966 to 1982. Soviet spy\nstories of this time are no less dramatic.\n\n~~~\neps\nThat's a very debatable assertion, comrade. If true, the 70s-80s period\nwould've not commonly referred to as The Stagnation Period. Plenty of spy\nactivity, granted, but calling it a golden era is an overstatement.\n\n~~~\nktRolster\nLack of purges, lack of famine, lack of war, maybe could find something better\nthan a Khrushchyovka.......the struggle continued, but there was less\nstruggling.\n\n------\npjc50\nSee also [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v10/n16/paul-foot/the-great-times-\nthey-...](http://www.lrb.co.uk/v10/n16/paul-foot/the-great-times-they-could-\nhave-had) on Wallis Simpson and spying for Fascism. Anthony Blunt is mentioned\nin both articles.\n\n------\neternalban\nC-Span Booknotes interview with Anthony Cave Brown, author of \"Treason in the\nblood\"[1] starts off with an recap of his father's life and so far (8 mins in)\nit has been pretty interesting.\n\n[1]: [https://youtu.be/ShwR-TsnW0U](https://youtu.be/ShwR-TsnW0U)\n\n------\nAelinsaar\nAnother Gladwell special, devoid of real substance.\n\n------\nswehner\nNot trusting Gladwell\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGoogle: What do you love? - brodd\nhttp://www.wdyl.com/\n======\nburo9\nSo this is just a mashup page using most of their API's, but without any real\nsmartness to what is shown... so it ends up looking and feeling like a mashup\nfrom 5 years ago.\n\nPoor execution unfortunately. A better thing to do from the outset would be:\nIf nothing is found close that box and put it at the bottom. That would be\nsomething fractionally better than pretending it's meaningful to search for\npatents or use SketchUp on meaningless things.\n\n~~~\npraptak\nIf you view it as a way to expose the less popular Google services then it's\nprobably great performance-vs-effort-wise. As a useful service probably not\nbut who said Google won't improve it?\n\n------\nhammock\nFirst thing I typed in, reflexively, was \"shit.\" To great unexpected effect.\n\nMeasure popularity of shit on the web. Explore shit in 3d. Buy all kinds of\nshit stuff. Make a photo album about shit. Watch videos of shit. Plan your\nshit events. Start a shit discussion group. Find shit nearby.\n\n------\npavpanchekha\n\"Schedule a date with Emacs\" --- algorithms say the darndest things.\n\nBut more seriously, the execution isn't that great. They could at least filter\nthe products that don't produce useful results. At the moment, product search\nis only advertising its incompetence by telling me it found nothing. Also,\ngiven the built-in obviously-fill-in-the-blank screenshots and text, I'm not\nactually inclined to use their products.\n\nPlus, for what \"X\" are both \"Patents about X\" and \"Date with X\" meaningful\nstatements?\n\n~~~\ngosub\n> Plus, for what \"X\" are both \"Patents about X\" and \"Date with X\" meaningful\n> statements?\n\nrobot girlfriend?\n\n~~~\nmvzink\nAlso, <http://d.pr/wiHc>\n\n------\nSkywing\nIs this anything more than one giant advertisement for all of their products?\nIt didn't seem to actually do anything.\n\n~~~\nyogsototh\nExactly what I believe. I tried \"haskell\" and \"epistemology\". See epistemology\nin 3D with sketch?\n\n~~~\nmattdeboard\nI tried a vulgar word for a certain part of the female body that I\nlegitimately love. The results were... humorous.\n\n------\nuprightnetizen\nFor me, the obvious choice was \"japanese women\"...\n\n<http://www.wdyl.com/#japanese%20women>\n\n~~~\nthristian\n\"Explore Japanese women in 3D\". Well, that's an unfortunate template-\ninstantiation.\n\n~~~\ndrivebyacct2\nI got the same templates; I typed \"gay sex\".\n\n... it asked what I loved...\n\n------\nhanibash\nI was hoping I would see a beautiful visualization of what people across the\nworld love. Instead it poured out a bunch of information. Why does this seem\ntypically Google?\n\n------\nez77\nIt is interesting: the hosting is indeed by an IP address that points to\nGoogle's 1e100.net, but the domain's registrant is not Google, rather an\nindividual. Moreover, the name servers are hosted by fabulous.com. Go\nfigure...\n\n~~~\ntmgrhm\nI'd hazard a guess at saying this was a 20% project and the individual is the\nengineer who led (or was sole member of) the project.\n\n------\nThasc\nThis is an extraordinarily entertaining thing to put rude words into.\n\n~~~\nchug2k\ni kind of wanted to share my favorites, but probably best not to.\n\n~~~\nThasc\nTry 'fun'. Why? Because Google just invited me to 'scour the Earth for fun'.\n\nNo-one give Google nukes, clear?\n\n------\nlovskogen\nI did really love the hit on 'something'; <http://cl.ly/7z3B> (jpg)\n\n~~~\nzeddez\ni get the same type of result for 'gmail'. Most of the queries result in\npictures of women showing panties or in thongs.\n\n------\nanigbrowl\n<http://www.wdyl.com/#half-baked> ideas\n\n^ Way to not make your 3+ word searches linkable. Hmmm.\n\n------\nZackOfAllTrades\n<http://www.wdyl.com/#lolcats> reveals that there is a patent with the word\nlolcats in it (<http://www.google.com/patents?q=lolcats>)\n\nBut besides that and \"Scour the earth for lolcats\", this isn't really doing\nmuch for me. Nice try google interns.\n\n------\nredthrowaway\nCool idea, but: <http://www.wdyl.com/#The%20Internet>\n\nExecution's a bit off.\n\n------\nForrestN\nI think most people are projecting a bigger ambition onto this than is\naccurate. This is not Google's revolutionary attempt at visualized search,\nit's a cute way to showcase all the diverse products in Google's portfolio.\n\"What do you love? Here's what we can do for you regarding that.\" It's just a\nmarketing micro-site.\n\n------\npaulnelligan\nDespite the criticisms, I actually think that this is the best thing that\nGoogle has turned out in the past 5 years ...\n\n~~~\nhammerdr\nExecution may be poor, but this is definitely something Google has needed to\ndo for some time. They have many services which serve niches but the\npopularity of those services is, in part, bounded because no-one knows about\nthem!\n\n~~~\npaulnelligan\nI think they could have done much more with wave - I would have got far more\nbenefit from it if they linked it to my gmail in some inventive and\nunintrusive way ... I'd like to see them rework it because I think it's a\nreally great product ...\n\nI also think they could do something more with search by customizing results\nbased on browsing history ... Maybe this +1 button should be contained within\nthe browser and marketed more as something which stores previous results which\ncan be called up by search (as well as sharing with 'friends') - could be a\nback door into social searching which they so badly need ... They could take\nup the mantle of delicious, and make it more social ...\n\n------\njgmmo\nI typed in 'my wife' and Google gave me naked lady pictures. I am disappoint.\n\n------\nphatbyte\nWho created this ? Some google internship ? Sorry Google, not this time\n\n------\npaganel\nWhy would I need to \"Find patents about\" my favorite soccer team?\n\n------\nAJ007\nI think I found an easter egg here -- try searching \"my wife\"\n\n------\nzmonkeyz\nThis looks like the future of domain squatter landing pages.\n\n------\nkeke_ta\nI want to use this with iPad like turning the page.\n\n------\nfranze\nlooks like www.123people.com (the box sections) design wise - maybe google\nwill start to be his own landing page aggregator soon.\n\n------\nashishb4u\nlove the little scroll-widget on the left, beautifully done.\n\n------\njpr\n\"Explore boobs in 3D\" disappointed me.\n\n------\ndrivebyacct2\nIf you didn't notice, they're actually rendering mocked images of the\nsearches. Which is funny considering the search term I started out with.\n\n------\nrishi\nlooks like pintrest\n\n------\nkeke_ta\nlooks like sweet.\n\n------\nzobzu\nrather bad lol most of it is a Chrome and Android advertisement also.\n\n------\nsneak\nMan Google, you really nailed it: <http://i.imgur.com/TNSKN.png>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDoes Spotify Live Up to the Hype? - earbitscom\nhttp://blog.earbits.com/online_radio/does-spotify-live-up-to-the-hype-oh-and-one-more-thing/\n\n======\nzoowar\nNope. Grooveshark.com is a similar service and the free version doesn't have\nin-stream advertising. Spotify does have a more refined interface.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Redesign after HN critique (instant \"coming soon\" pages app) - weirdcat\n\nHi everyone,<p>Last Thursday I asked HN for a review of my web app for creating instant \"coming soon\" pages. The response was great -- you guys really, really didn't like it (and deservedly so). :)<p>* Here's the original thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2123228<p>* This is how it looked before: http://soonhere.com/original.html<p>* Here's how it looks now: http://soonhere.com<p>It's obviously still a work in progress (there are still some issues, especially with IE, the interface needs polishing, there's no help etc.) but the main functionality is there.<p>Some stats:<p>* The original thread got 5 upvotes and 5 comments (not counting mine);<p>* The site got 150 visitors on Thursday and 30 on Friday (40% from the US, 20% from the UK -- half of that from London -- and 4% from Canada);<p>* Of those, 5 visitors created an account (1 or 2 with email addresses that looked real).<p>I'd like to thank nudge, komlenic, SHOwnsYou (I used your <i>first instinct</i> idea after all), pacifika and dlsay for their comments in the original thread.<p>Now -- before I spend more time on this instead of other projects I have lined up, I'd like to find out if the concept actually is viable. Since a considerable part of its target market hangs out on HN, I'd expect at least a few signups (the first attempt failed miserably here). If anyone signs up and activates any of the paid plans by the end of January, I'll upgrade them to a higher plan for free [1]. Plus, I pledge to describe in detail how it went if the thing actually goes off. :)<p>[1] (the upgrade from the 'pro' plan is a yet-to-be-named uberplan with image backgrounds, css override and other stuff -- if there's any interest in the site, it will be introduced in February; the pro plan itself is going to get updated as well)<p>So, what do you think about it after the makeover?\n======\nguynamedloren\nWow, this is one of the coolest projects I've seen recently on HN. I'm not\nsure why it didn't garner much attention, but I think the concept is clever\nand the implementation is great. Here are some random thoughts:\n\n\\- I knew the purpose immediately upon page load\n\n\\- extremely easy to use\n\n\\- controls are very intuitive and fun to play with\n\n\\- preset colors are appealing and easy to adjust\n\n\\- email field and message field are ridiculously simple to add/remove and\nlook fantastic\n\n\\- only usability issue: text does not center properly and I'm not sure why\nthe text fields for the welcome message are re-sizeable (running Chrome\nbrowser)\n\nFrom a developer's perspective, it really seems like you put a lot of thought\ninto the user interface. A user who is not tech savvy would probably have a\npainless time maneuvering about your site and understanding the product, which\nis definitely one of the most difficult things to accomplish when building a\nweb app for non-technical demographic. That being said, I just re-read your\ndescription and it looks like you may be targeting the hacker crowd, which I\nthink is a mistake. Any decent developer (or designer) can hack together a\n\"coming soon\" page without very much effort. Also, I don't think this warrants\na $9/mo pricetag, regardless of the target demographic. Perhaps you should toy\nwith the freemium model and see how that works out.\n\nKeep up the good work!\n\n~~~\nweirdcat\nThanks! I noticed the resizable textareas in Chrome as well; it's on my bug\nlist. I'll look into the centering thing -- I wasn't able to replicate it so\nfar (Chrome on a mac).\n\nAbout me targeting hackers -- I simply assumed, that a lot of people in need\nof hosted coming soon pages peruse HN. I know I do. :)\n\nRe. freemium -- there is a free version (no emails, one page) tucked below the\npaid plans, 37 Signals style. I'll think about exposing it more -- I wouldn't\nwant to add email to the free plan, because it involves more user support and\nis used only by serious users, which should afford $9 anyway.\n\n------\nmaguay\nYou've got a much nicer design now, and the live editor is rather nifty.\nHowever, I really can't see many people using it, especially not at $9. It\ndoesn't take much HTML skill at all to make a single page like that, and then\nthere's tons of CMS based solutions like that such as WooThemes' new free\nPlaceholder theme and the dozens of similar free \"Coming Soon\" themes and\nplugins for WordPress sites.\n\n------\njawns\n$9/mo. for a handful of \"coming soon\" pages?\n\nI'm sorry, but anyone who knows the actual value of such a service is going to\nroll their eyes ... and anyone who doesn't know that they're being ripped off\nwill one day get tipped off, and they'll likely warn everyone they know not to\npatronize you. I can't see this being a sustainable business.\n\n~~~\nrevorad\nIf you look at the plan details, $9 per month is for up to 10 pages. For\npeople who have a lot of domains, $9 might be well worth it.\n\n------\nkomlenic\nExcellent redesign! You really incorporated the feedback well and I definitely\nfound this much more intuitive. Pretty great UI.\n\nPersonally, I'd consider moving the text about the free option (that comes up\nwhen you click see plans/pricing) to be a _little_ more prominent, but this\nkind of thing really comes down to how you want to approach monetizing. If it\nwere me I'd be doing everything I could to encourage people to be aware of and\nuse the free service - I think as it sits you're going to get a lot of \"ok\nneat\" reactions, but perhaps not a lot of people actually using the service\n(even the free version). I'd hate to see your work languish... why not do\n_everything_ you can to just get people using it?\n\nI think the idea of paying for the email form etc is sound, but as other have\nnoted, the price may or may not be right. That's something you'll have to\ndetermine.\n\n------\nsga\nThe redesign is much better than the original! The proposition is clear and I\nlike being able to interact with it.\n\nThat said I don't think there is sufficient value yet to compel people to fork\nover cash, given that your target audience is likely able to throw up a static\npage with an email form rather quickly. Or perhaps the value prop. does exist\nand I just don't see it, in which case I'd suggest that you focus on making\nthe value prop. more clear.\n\nI would find the service more compelling if you provided some analytics re.\nvisitor information (where/when they came from, bounce rate, etc.). And/or if\nyou were able to aid in the promotion of the \"coming soon\" page (not sure how\n... maybe advertise coming soon pages within the network of coming soon pages\n.... or profile the coming soon pages and then the launched service i.e. early\nseo help).\n\n~~~\nweirdcat\nYeah, I thought of that. Nice thing is that \"soon here\" is a brand easily\nexpandable into anything startup related.\n\n------\ndamoncali\nNot having seen it before, I was confused when I landed on the page. I wasn't\nexpecting an editor, just an intro page. I would put a traditional landing\npage up with a heavily emphasized \"try it live\" section.\n\nedit: corrected ipad autocorrects. I don't thing a panting page is appropriate\nat all.\n\n~~~\nmaushu\nI think this works better, I don't think a traditional landing page would work\nhere.\n\n------\nSHOwnsYou\nNow that you've built in the live editor, there are just a few more steps that\nI would do.\n\n1: Create a free option. 1 page, include email optin, limited to 2-500\nviews/month 2: If you're not hosting these pages and allowing them to be\ncalled from your server via js, start doing that 3: Advertise the free option\nalong with the other two. Tons of research has shown that given 3 options,\nusers will tend toward the middle option, even if it paid and there is a free\noption available 4: Include more info. Build a new page for the \"Plans and\nPricing\" include the \"Go Back\" link, but also include more info on how it's\nhosted, _how easy it is to use the service_ , and any other relevant details\n\n~~~\nweirdcat\nThanks everyone! Looks like this time I did a bit better. :)\n\nTo address some issues raised:\n\n1\\. Hosting is included; the user has to set the domain's CNAME to\nsites.soonhere.com. The page is also accessible via\n<http://soonhere.com/site/whatever.com>, so it's easy to set up a framed\nredirect if needed. I'll create a downloadable index.html for this purpose if\nit's an option people would use.\n\n2\\. There are some additional data collected with visitors' emails (referrer,\nsearch engine keywords, country). You can export it to csv (everything) or\nplain txt (emails only).\n\nI added this info to the plans page; will add more details and polish it\nlater.\n\nOne question -- did those of you that said it's too expensive thought it was\nhosted or not hosted?\n\n------\nweirdcat\nClickables:\n\n<http://soonhere.com>\n\nOriginal thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2123228>\n\nPrevious look: <http://soonhere.com/original.html>\n\n------\nmaushu\nTry using a\n\n    \n    \n       text-shadow: 0 0 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.01);\n    \n\nfor the text. It makes the text prettier in some browsers, like chrome, by\nfaking anti-aliasing.\n\nExample: <http://www.graphnode.com/stuff/text-shadow.png>\n\n~~~\nweirdcat\nHa, looks neat! And with a little hacking it might work in other browsers as\nwell. Isn't the shadow black though? It would mean that in my case it needs to\nbe dynamically adjusted to the font color chosen by the user (probably by\ngenerating a fresh css snippet and applying it to the page). I'll definitely\ngive it a try later -- these jagged edges in Windows made me cringe. :) Thanks\na lot!\n\n~~~\nmaushu\nChanging the color should not be needed (since the alpha is 0.01). Feel free\nto use other colors though.\n\n------\nmootothemax\nGreat design, but too pricey for the target audience: I can buy a \"coming\nsoon\" design from ThemeForest for $5. If you could compete at that price and\ninclude hosting, it'd be a no-brainer to go with you :)\n\n~~~\nweirdcat\nI actually _do_ include hosting; if possible, I'd rather not walmartize the\nthing and be a \"cheap no-brainer\" though.\n\n------\nashraful\nHey, great site. I was planning on working on a similar product, and I was\nwondering if you would consider partnering up.\n\nPlease email me if you are interested. My email address is in my profile.\n\n------\nsandipagr\nOur ideas seems to have some similarity.\n\n<http://shapea.com>\n\nLet me know if you would like to chat. Email on my profile.\n\n------\nrevorad\nThe homepage looks great, but you need to provide a lot more details on the\npricing page. An FAQ list might be a good idea.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFukushima: Radiation Detection Using Artifacts in CCCD Image? - brudgers\nhttp://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/427-Radiation-Detection.html\n======\nnoonespecial\nI'd just punt this one. Cover the lens so that the image is otherwise black,\nget a good calibrated Geiger counter and wander around taking pictures of your\nlens cover and noting the counter's readings.\n\nGo back and count the light dots in your black photos and see if they\ncorrelate with the counter readings. Use your fancy exposure-time/fstop/ccd-\nsize math after you're sure there's something going on.\n\nFor that matter, bring along a crummy cmos sensor camera as well. More\nsensors, more fun.\n\n~~~\nars\nThat's not punting, that's calibrating.\n\n~~~\ntomsaffell\nAs a Brit living in the US it took me over a year (and several\nmisunderstanding) to realize that there is a difference in the use of the word\n'punt' between US and UK. The main confusion was between:\n\n    \n    \n      1. (Informal) To cease doing something; give up [1]\n      2. (Chiefly British Slang) To gamble [1]\n    \n\nOften the context allows for either of those to make sense. Off topic, I know,\nbut maybe it will help others avoid the confusion.\n\n1\\. <http://www.thefreedictionary.com/punt>\n\n~~~\nnoonespecial\nYes, thanks for that. I should know better by now. Once while living in\nGermany I asked someone in my German-peppered-with-english-words-for-german-\nwords-I-didn't-know if they were concerned about the amount of preservatives\nin some sort of shelf stable cheese food.\n\nThey heard Präservativ when I probably meant Konservierungsmittel. Hilarity\nensued.\n\n~~~\nkyleslattery\nIf anyone's wondering, Präservativ means \"condom\" in German. My favorite false\ncognate in German is \"das Gift\", which in English is in fact \"poison\".\n\n~~~\neru\nIt also bugs me that there's no clear and simple equivalent of \"schenken\".\n(There are words like `bestow', but they don't quite cut it.)\n\n------\nRK\nI think the problem with trying to determine radiation fluence is that a lot\nof the dots appearing are likely due to damage to the detector elements,\nrather than instantaneous detections.\n\nI've seen CCTV used to monitor high radiation areas and the images are always\nriddled with artifacts from damaged sensor elements, even when no radiation is\npresent. They have to replace the cameras on a regular basis.\n\n~~~\njmhobbs\nI tried using a cheap webcam CCD to make a true RNG a while back, but I had\nthe same problem. After a while I got permanent damaged elements and it ruined\nthe randomness.\n\n<http://pics.brizzly.com/1P3J.jpg>\n\n------\nlutorm\nYou can see this in photos and movies from Chernobyl. In some pictures, like\nthose taken from the roof, there's a noticeable tint to the bottom of the film\nas the radiation comes up from below. There's also a lot of noise like in the\npicture shown here but much worse, in some movies from inside the reactor.\nPretty creepy. You can see some of the noise in this video, but the bad\nyoutube quality makes it difficult:\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKnFurg5-Ag>\n\n~~~\njberryman\nDo you have a link for those photographs? I would think the film would be\nsaturated generally rather than from below. Also in an SLR the top of the\nresulting image would be towards the ground while the film was in the camera,\nno?\n\n~~~\nlutorm\nYour image reversal point is a good one. It might be that it was reversed in\nthe images, I don't really remember.\n\nI couldn't find the photographs, but they are mentioned at some pointsin the\n\"Battle for Chernobyl\" movie: <http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-battle-of-\nchernobyl/> (Highly recommended movie, btw. Very freaky.)\n\n(Also noticed that it's at Google video. Watch it while you can!)\n\n------\nars\nYou _may_ be able to determine the number of radioactivity events\n(becquerels). But you will not be able to determine the type, or the strength\nof the radiation. So you will not be able to measure rem.\n\nAnd rem is what matters for most purposes.\n\n~~~\nlutorm\nOn the contrary, like one of the comments on that page says, you are likely to\nonly detect gamma. Alpha and beta will be stopped long before getting to the\nsensor.\n\n~~~\nars\nNot all gamma is the same, the energy matters a lot in terms of how it affects\nthe body. And of course when calculating the dose you need to know the energy\n- you add the total energy, not the total number of photons.\n\nAlpha and beta from distant sources will be blocked of course, but if there\nare radioactive isotopes in the environment they may decay right near the\nsensor, and you won't be able to tell.\n\nDistant gamma is a much smaller concern than radioactive isotopes in the\nimmediate environment.\n\n~~~\nlutorm\nTrue about the gamma energy dependence, of course, but alpha and beta won't\nreally get to the sensor unless the decay is inside the camera. And even gamma\ndoesn't have _that_ long range, even in air. You pretty much have to have\ncontamination nearby.\n\n~~~\ndefrost\nFor reference, you can comfortably detect, measure and map ground produced\ngamma radiation from natural elements from a distance of 50 - 80 metres in the\nair above.\n\nThere's also a respectable number of cosmic ray events in the atmosphere all\nthe way down to ground level leading to high energy gamma counts as a matter\nof course.\n\nRadioactive Iodine and Ceasium particles (in small numbers admittedly) made\ntheir way across the Pacific and became gamma emitters caught up in the air\nscrubbers of the University of Washington in Seattle.\n\n~~~\nlutorm\nWell, cosmic rays can have energies far, far higher than you get from typical\nradioactive decay, so they (or gammas produced by them when they hit the\natmosphere) have a lot more penetration.\n\n------\njensnockert\nYes it is possible, and I know people are doing it.\n\nBut it is a too short time to get an accurate reading on the level, a single\nphotograph is exposed under a very short time.\n\nAnd a camera is probably not shielded against radiation, so it might be\nimpossible to predict how long the actual time of exposure is.\n\n~~~\nniels_olson\nI'm a Navy physician, with an undergrad degree in physics, working at one of\nthe Joint Task Forces assigned to the whole Fukushima mess.\n\nIf this had been taken in Tokyo, which is at background, I would have said\nit's something else. But right there, at the reactors, they are still very\nmuch in the several mrem/hr regime. Someone could probably calculate this. I\ndon't think the \"speed value\" from the EV system is going to be of much use\nfor this calculation, though the \"aperture value\" will. Nor does the color of\nthe pixel tell you anything other than the color of the pixel that was hit by\na gamma ray.\n\nNever the less, a simple count could give you a pretty good first order\nestimate. Assume the radiation here is around 10 mrem/hr on 15 March (there\nmay be a more accurate published estimate out there, I'm just going on trends\n. . . I'll reboot into Windows and see if I can get you more accurate info off\nour share drive).\n\n[Edit]: Okay, so the 15th was the day of the biggest releases, ranging up to\n12000 μsV/hr. Reactor 2 had an explosion at 0610 local, the reactor 4 fire was\nfrom 0600 to 1116 and there was a second explosion at reactor 2 at 1006. The\n12000 μSv/hr peak is around 0930 with a second peak of 8800 at about 1000. I'm\njust looking at a graph, but it appear to decay down to around 300 μSv/hr over\nthe rest of the day, then there's another, unlabeled event at about midnight.\nThe metadata says the image was taken at 0858. This is in the middle of the\nupsurge. The area could be anywhere between 1000 μSv/hr and 12000 μSv/hr.\n\nAre there other pictures available from different times?\n\n~~~\nNatsu\nThere are a ton of other photos here:\n\n<http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/>\n\nI'm not quite sure which are camera original or which have single pixel\nartifacts like that, though. Dr. Neal Krawetz, who runs that blog, would know\nthough. He's an expert in digital image forensics.\n\nI suppose you could just zoom in, count pixels, then try to get timestamps &\nlocations out of the images via JPEGsnoop or similar tools for reading the\nmetadata, but you'd have to contend with however many different cameras they\nuse, etc.\n\n~~~\nniels_olson\nThe first of the packbot pictures from today also has a small number of blown\npictures.\n\n[http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110417_1f_1_1.j...](http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110417_1f_1_1.jpg)\n\ntaken at 1138 on 4/17.\n\nIn thinking a bit more, I guess without knowing how that Sony camera clears\nits registers, we don't know how long it took for the wells to collect those\ngamma rays (eg: are the registered \"cleansed\" just before each shot? And then\ncleared again after the information is transferred off the sensor?). However,\nthe \"ISO\" setting probably doesn't matter. The aperture will matter\nessentially as much as the lens matters, and considering the lens is gathering\nin light from that entire area, that may be significant, I just don't know.\n\n~~~\nlutorm\nAperture doesn't matter. The gammas that make those bright pixels will\ncomfortably penetrate the shutter, lens, and the entire camera body. It's the\ntime between erase and readout that matters, as you say, and it will act as a\n4pi dipole detector.\n\n------\ngtank\nKeep in mind that CCDs can be sensitive enough to background that they're\nusable as chaos for random number generation[1]. I am not a physicist or\nphotographer, but it may be that some of those spots are the result of\nsettings, damage, camera quality (an old Sony?), or just responding to lower\nlevel radiation than you'd expect.\n\n[1] <http://www.lavarnd.org/what/process.html>\n\n------\nkristopher\nSome HD Video flyovers done by the Japanese Self Defense Force show various\nabnormalities in quality once they fly over the damaged reactors. See this\nvideo[0] from the 2m40s mark.\n\n[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M22Gt4sswEA#t=2m40s>\n\n~~~\nlutorm\nI only see weird distortions which I would interpret as aliasing between the\nreadout rate of the camera and the vibrations from the helicopter. Any\nradiation should show up as noise.\n\n------\njuiceandjuice\nI'm pretty sure you'd only be detecting alpha and/or beta particles, depending\non the materials in the camera. Gamma detection would really require either a\nGeiger counter or a pair production type of detector, or a APD/PMT detector.\n\n------\nmdonahoe\nCameras are the universal sensor.\n\n~~~\neru\nThey mostly work for electromagnetic radiation.\n\n~~~\nharshpotatoes\nIt's funny, but there are very few things in modern physics which aren't\nmeasured via electromagnetic radiation.\n\n~~~\neru\nIndeed. And cameras probably also pick up some ionizing radiation of different\nkinds.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Are there any successors to Anonymouth on the horizon? - x1798DE\nI&#x27;m often worried that I&#x27;m extremely identifiable by stylometric analysis. A few years back, I remember hearing about Anonymouth (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;psal.cs.drexel.edu&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;JStylo-Anonymouth) for defeating stylometry, but last I looked, it wasn&#x27;t super easy to use and it doesn&#x27;t seem to be maintained (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;psal&#x2F;anonymouth last commit in October 2013). Anyone know of anything that&#x27;s looking to take up the torch? A browser extension would be amazing.\n======\nschoen\nIt would probably be good to ask Rachel Greenstadt, the head of the lab that\nproduced this project and does lots of stylometry research. She'll know about\neverything going on in the field; you can find her e-mail address on the page\nyou linked to!\n\n------\nBuuQu9hu\nI think it would be a good idea for you to start using it and send pull\nrequests for any issues you find.\n\n~~~\nx1798DE\nI don't really know anything about stylometry or about writing chrome\nextensions, nor am I super comfortable in Java (plus I have many other things\nto do on my plate before this). If I were to do anything, I'd probably have to\nfully re-implement it, so I was hoping that someone interested, motivated and\nable had already taken up the cause.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWikiRebels- The Wikileaks Documentary - emilepetrone\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhTfOL9_HBE\n\n======\nDupDetector\nA couple of comments from the last two times this was submitted:\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2010805>\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1997239>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Why can't I buy bitcoins with a credit card? - ritonlajoie\n\n As far as I understand, paying with Paypal or credit card is nearly impossible over the bitcoins exchange currently. Why is it so ?\nFor Paypal, I read somewhere that it is because of the chargebacks that paypal allows to the clients. This would make possible for anyone to buy bitcoins, and ask for a chargeback to get their money back, while they still received the bitcoins. Why do Paypal don’t check the blockchain in any way to check that a bitcoin transaction between a merchant and the client has taken place ?<p>Do Paypal plan to make such a service soon in the future ? Maybe by recording the merchant wallet address as well as the client’s address? This way, Paypal would be able to check for the bitcoins transactions (using said blockchain, as in http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.blockchain.info ) and then allow or disallow the chargeback to happen.<p>Do you know why the credit card payments such as Visa, Mastercard, are not used by merchant to sell bitcoins ? Is that because this chargeback issue is in the way, same as Paypal ? Also, do you know if any bank, in the future, has some offering in the works regarding bitcoin payments with credit cards over the internet?\n======\nsp332\nIt's simple. If you buy bitcoins with a credit card, you could then issue a\nchargeback. So the person who sold them would have the money taken away, and\nyou would just keep the bitcoins.\n\n~~~\nritonlajoie\nYes, but why do no-one makes a company that will make friend with a bank and\ntell them : hey guys, let's do that but check the blockchain before accepting\nchargebacks..\n\n~~~\nsp332\nA credit card is just not the right way to do this. Non-refundable money\ntransfers (wire transfers, Western Union etc) already exist and work fine.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTX Highway: Bitcoin Cash vs. Bitcoin Core Live Transaction Visualizer - joeblau\nhttp://txhighway.com/\n======\njstanley\nPretty obvious what agenda this is trying to push, but I found it entertaining\nnonetheless.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Should I focus on getting API customers or direct customers? - paulsingh\n\nI started SnailPad (www.snailpad.com) sort of as a joke about 3 months ago. Now I've got a decent number of direct customers and a few API customers using the service. The volume has helped me justify (and pay for) some pretty badass hardware that I've hacked together to automate most of the process.<p>I've learned that API customers tend to give me more volume with less margins but require a pretty long sales cycle (it takes time to convince them, have them try the API, receive a few samples, bite the bullet, etc).<p>I've learned that direct customers are lower volume with (much, much) higher margins and, generally speaking, are pretty quick to get onboarded.<p>At this point, it's still just me doing the coding, bizdev, mailing, etc (read: everything) and I'm having a hard time trying to figure which of those customer types is \"better\" way for me to continue <i>organically</i> growing the business.<p>What would you do?\n======\npatio11\nYou have far, far more intestinal fortitude than I do to go into that\nbusiness. (It involves marginal work and low margins. Yikes -- software sounds\nso much better.)\n\nI'd say \"both\". My reasoning is that you can use the B2C customers as the\nkindling to light the B2B fire -- they're cheap, easy to service, and\nnumerous. Get them to do your marketing for you. (You can use your existing\ntechnology to quickly roll out linkbait mini-projects: web form + visual\ndesign + PDFification + a letter physically delivered to grandma = instant\nremarkable content. You can launch one of these a week: Send A Solider A\nValentine, for example. That is probably a little late but you get the general\ntenor of the sort of emotional buttons I'd suggest you push.)\n\nThis gives you something to do while waiting for the phone to ring on the B2B\ndeals, and will help you with SEO. Why focus on B2B over the long term? Well,\nit allows you to have much more predictable revenue, and having a lifetime\ncustomer value which could buy a pizza is very helpful once you start think of\nincremental-cost marketing options like, say, AdWords.\n\nMind if I give you the same advice I gave cperciva? Thirty minutes on that\nhome page will double your sales. Heck, if you're in a hurry, you can do it in\ntwo: put a BIG OBVIOUS BUTTON on it. I don't know, 10 kilopixels of big. Maybe\nbigger.\n\nIf you have graphical talent, something I lack, I'd collapse the entire sales\npitch into an illustrated:\n\n1) Put in address 2) Type letter (We take PDFs, too!) 3) Pay money and it gets\nmailed\n\nI'd put the API & login links in the top corner and the bottom of your textual\ndescription, or somewhere similarly discrete. (The audience for those is very\ndifferent than the audience who you want converting within 90 seconds of\nlanding on your site.)\n\n~~~\npaulsingh\nAwesome, awesome advice -- I'll start messing around with the external pages\nand see what I can do. I've been meaning to do this for a while and have\nalways found excuses to work on other stuff. :)\n\nI should also mention that my target market is no longer the person that wants\nto send a letter to grandma every few months -- I haven't found a real demand\nfor that service.\n\nThat being said, I have found that my ideal direct customer is a real estate\nagent, car salesman, insurance salesman or anyone else that does face-to-face\nselling to their local geographic market. These guys already mail out ~1K\npieces of mail every month and they have to manually do it all because the\nbigger print shops really can't afford to help them unless they were doing\ntens of thousands each month.\n\nI think that's where the sweet spot is for SnailPad -- we're making direct\nmail painless for small businesses, freelancers and \"high touch\" sales people.\nThe margins are so \"good\" on this side of the business because these customers\nwant good paper and nice envelopes -- they can't get that anywhere else unless\nthey go to large print houses, commit to yearly contracts and prepay tens of\nthousands of dollars each month.\n\nOn the API side, the \"ideal\" customer is primarily some company that sends a\nton of invoices or other automated documents to their user base (or to their\nuser's user base). These guys still want the high quality that I described\nearlier but they also can't justify the expenses associated with talking to\nthe bigger mail shops.\n\nIn general, I'm really excited about the space I've stumbled into. There\nreally hasn't been any innovation in a decade or more -- there could be a\nreason why people stay away from it but I'm taking a more naive approach to\nsee what I can do. So far, so good. :)\n\n------\nbensummers\nHave you done the sums? Factoring in sales volume, your time (dev + support),\nmarketing costs, growth curve, etc?\n\nNumbers always beat guesses. See anything patio11 writes. :-)\n\n~~~\npaulsingh\nYep, I spent an hour or two creating a nice little spreadsheet that helped me\njustify the additional hardware expenses, etc. I make it a point to revisit it\nat the beginning of every month to make sure I know how I'm doing.\n\n------\nwakeupthedawn\nYou're charging $3 per stamp w/o a plan and at best $1 per stamp with the\nintro plan?! Wow! It's cool that you're able to attract customers at those\nmargins.\n\nI'm a bit confused as to why your API customers are given better rates (I\nassume this is why you have lower margins with them). Why not use the regular\nrates and give an API key to every customer who wants one?\n\n~~~\npaulsingh\nWell, everyone does actually get the API key and is able to use it anytime\nthey like -- I _really_ need to do a better job of explaining the product,\nfeatures, etc on the site. :)\n\nFor the API customers, I've ended up haggling deals with them to get them on\nboard. In general, I give those guys the ability to prepay in larger amounts\nto get a better per-piece rate or postpay for \"higher\" rates (believe it or\nnot, most of the higher volume API-only users prefer to postpay because it\nimproves their cash flow situation).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nInside the food industry - chestnut-tree\nhttp://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/21/a-feast-of-engineering-whats-really-in-your-food\n======\nxkcd-sucks\nSo, this article highlights important issues with convenience foods, with a\nminimum of fearmongering relative to the standard of this topic.\n\nThe article claims that rosemary extract is Bad because it substitutes for\nBHA/BHT, a preservative. At this point I stopped reading due to an\noverwhelming urge to bang my head into the table. Preservation is in fact a\nmajor reason for seasoning-- in a preserved meat, no less! (And BHA/BHT are\nantioxidants-- which makes them Good...)\n\nSimilarly, it's not surprising that yeast extract (nutritional yeast Good)\ncontains the Bad MSG. Glutamate is a fundamental building block of life. If\nyou've ever tasted yeast extract, you will immediately notice that it's very\nsalty. The only reason to eat it is as a flavor enhancer, because as a major\nconstituent it's too salty-- except for various Commonwealth countries that\nlike to put it on toast.\n\nEtc...\n\nShit, I bet the egg yolks in my cake batter are Bad because they substitute\nfor cholesterol, an emulsifier and flavor enhancer which is linked to diseases\n(it also tastes nasty on its own)\n\nCrappy food optimized for convenience, scale and profit is a huge problem. I\nhate-- the actual, painful, comsuming hate-- convenience foods and I double\nhate franchise restaurants etc. because they reduce the amount of \"real,\"\nfreshly prepared, flavorful food immediately available to me. But that doesn't\nobviate the need for critical thinking.\n\nFinally, as a practicing biochemist and excellent cooker/eater I'm Offended by\nthe insinuation that one cannot be equally comfortable in a kitchen or in a\nlab.\n\nDerek Lowe's several article[0]s should be boilerplate at the end of any\nchemicals vs food piece.\n\n[0]\n[http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/04/30/is_that_food...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/04/30/is_that_food_or_not.php)\n\nEdit: after skimming the remainder of the article, it becomes clear that its\nauthor has never cooked anything\n\n~~~\nlegulere\n> Similarly, it's not surprising that yeast extract (nutritional yeast Good)\n> contains the Bad MSG.\n\nThis is not so much an issue of bad or good chemicals, it's an issue of\nhonesty. There are tons of products out there with \"no added glutamate\" that\nhave yeast extract on their ingredient list. I don't even mind when food\nproducers hide that they add glutamate by using yeast extract as long as they\ndeclare it as a flavor enhancer.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nLabeling glutamate content is a silly idea. The issue is that anyone would\nmake a \"no added glutamate\" claim, thus perpetuating the myth that glutamate\nmatters.\n\n------\nCuriouslyC\nPeople who are hung up on ingredients being \"natural\" drive me nuts. I'm 100%\nfor rigorous product testing to ensure safety, but if an ingredient is safe\nand allows the creation of higher quality food, it shouldn't matter it is\nnatural or not. Cars, the internet and modern medicine aren't \"natural\"\neither...\n\nThere are literally tons of people who will ridicule anti-vaccination nuts,\nthen turn around and insist all food be \"natural\", completely oblivious to the\nhypocrisy.\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nThe desire for things that are \"natural\" arises from the wariness of ingesting\nsomething that hasn't been tested by time and human history. There's a long\nhistory of commercially-common chemicals that turned out to have tremendously\nbad impacts on human health (e.g. trans-fats, lead in gasoline).\n\nVaccines raise the same concern, of course, but have dramatic and immediately\nobvious countervailing benefits that justify their use. In comparison, the\nonly benefit from chemical food additives is usually saving a few bucks.\n\n~~~\nbsder\n> Vaccines raise the same concern, of course, but have dramatic and\n> immediately obvious countervailing benefits that justify their use.\n\nVaccines have an enormous amount of data logged, an actual trust fund\ndedicated to paying out if there is even a _whiff_ of an issue, and regulators\nwho oversee them.\n\nAt _no point_ has anyone shown a modern vaccine (last 20+ years) to be unsafe.\nPeriod. Quit spewing your uninformed opinions.\n\nThis is in stark contrast to the food chain where quite a bit of it is\nuninspected.\n\n~~~\nars\n> At no point has anyone shown a modern vaccine (last 20+ years) to be unsafe.\n> Period.\n\nThat is simply not true. I am pro-vaccines, but your sentence is false.\n\nSimply google: rotavirus intussusception and you will see.\n\nHis point about vaccines is 100% correct: Until the vaccine has been on the\nmarket for 10-30 years we do NOT know that it is safe. We might consider the\nrisk worth it, but do not confuse that for \"safe\".\n\nThis is equally true for all the non-natural food additives. The natural ones\nhave the benefit of decades, centuries, or millennia of testing. (The only\nexception would be things like vanillin that are exact copies of known natural\nadditives. I consider them just fine even if they are classed as artificial.)\n\n~~~\nbsder\nYes, let's (even though 1999 is almost 26 years ago, but okay, I consider\nanything after about 1990 to be \"modern\"):\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotavirus_vaccine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotavirus_vaccine)\n\"In 1998, a rotavirus vaccine (RotaShield, by Wyeth) was licensed for use in\nthe United States. Clinical trials in the United States, Finland, and\nVenezuela had found it to be 80 to 100% effective at preventing severe\ndiarrhea caused by rotavirus A, and researchers had detected no statistically\nsignificant serious adverse effects. The manufacturer of the vaccine, however,\nwithdrew it from the market in 1999, after it was discovered that the vaccine\nmay have contributed to an increased risk for intussusception, or bowel\nobstruction, in one of every 12,000 vaccinated infants.\"\n\nNote the _may_. The number is so low as to make it difficult to correlate.\nThat's 40-50 cases in a _year_. Aspirin kills that many in a year and we don't\nconsider it unsafe and we take it for things which are _lots_ less pressing.\n\nHowever, they pulled the vaccine because the perception in the United States\nis that we have adequate treatment for Rotavirus without the vaccine and it\nsimply wasn't worth trying to correlate.\n\n\"Meanwhile, other countries such as Brazil and Mexico undertook their own\nindependent epidemiological studies which demonstrated that 4 deaths were\nattributable to vaccine, while it had prevented approximately 80,000\nhospitalization and 1300 deaths from diarrhea each year in their countries.\"\n\n4\\. You will get that many people dying of an allergic reaction to _anything_\nif you give it to several million people.\n\nMore people die of peanuts in a year. Is that \"unsafe\"?\n\n~~~\nmakomk\nThe official CDC website says that they found it definitely _did_ cause\nintussusception:\n\n\"The results of the investigations showed that RotaShield® vaccine caused\nintussusception in some healthy infants younger than 12 months of age who\nnormally would be at low risk for this condition. The risk of intussusception\nincreased 20 to 30 times over the expected risk for children of this age group\nwithin 2 weeks following the first dose of RotaShield® vaccine.\"\n\nSee [http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/rotavirus/vac-\nrotashield...](http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/rotavirus/vac-rotashield-\nhistorical.htm). Now, that's not much of an increase in absolute terms because\nintussusception is relatively rare, but so is infants dying due to rotavirus\ninfection in the US - the estimates I'm seeing are 20-60 deaths a year without\nvaccination. Even a relatively rare adverse reaction is enough to outweigh the\nbenefits of the vaccine in the US.\n\nNow, you're right that the clinical trials \"detected no statistically\nsignificant serious adverse effects\". That's because they were so small that,\neven though the adverse reactions were common enough to outweigh the benefits,\nthey couldn't actually detect them as being statistically significant. Hell,\neven if the vaccine was somehow hypothetically killing ten times as many\nbabies as would've died from rotavirus, I don't think the trials used to\napprove the vaccine could have detected that. That's kind of worrying.\n\n------\nPuts\nI can see a lot of positive comments here, but say that even IF these\nadditives don't impose any risks to the consumers, apparently this is still\nsomething the consumers don't want. For the industry to then whitelabel these\ningredients is just like Lenovo secretly puts adware on their laptops with the\narguments that they are helping their customers find new products.\n\nI don't want you to help me in secret. I want you to be transparent so I can\nmake my own decisions!\n\n------\nnazgulnarsil\nStarting a food startup revealed a lot of this stuff to me. There's something\ncalled \"clean labeling\" which refers to the ability to put various synthetic\nshelf life or flavor enhancing compounds in your foods and label it as\nsomething innocuous sounding due to skirting the labeling laws. The companies\nthat generate these compounds advertise them as such. This intersects with the\nfact that the FDA operates essentially on a complaint basis. That is, if they\ndon't receive any complaints about something it is very unlikely to ever be\nlooked in to. And how would you know to complain if the package just says\n\"modified starch\"? So it's hard to credibly differentiate yourself along this\ndimension since in some cases there is literally no way that the customer\ncould tell that one company is using less crap in their food.\n\n~~~\nxkcd-sucks\nYou could ask how the starch is \"modified,\" for starters...\n\n------\nrickdale\nI live out in the country. My favorite part of the summer is that most of the\nfood I consume is coming from farms/homes that are within 2 miles of where I\nlive. Vegetables from one guy, chicken, eggs, meat from another. It's hard to\nkeep up with it in the winter, but it really opened my eyes as to what I am\neating. I started out just thinking, \"I wonder if I could eat without going to\nthe grocery store.\" It was surprisingly easier than I thought and then I\nrealized all the health stuff after. Its nice knowing where my food comes\nfrom.\n\n------\nschackbrian\nI would be surprised if how easy ingredients are to pronounce is correlated\nwith their health. Since half of all food is wasted, preservatives could even\nbe good for the environment.\n\nIngredients of an All-Natural Banana:\n[https://jameskennedymonash.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/ingredie...](https://jameskennedymonash.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/ingredients-\nof-an-all-natural-banana/)\n\n------\ntzs\n> NatureSeal is classed as a processing aid, not an ingredient, so there’s no\n> need to declare it on the label, no obligation to tell consumers that their\n> “fresh” fruit salad is weeks old.\n\nHere's how the FDA defines processing aids [1]:\n\n    \n    \n        (ii) Processing aids, which are as follows:\n    \n            (a) Substances that are added to a food during the\n            processing of such food but are removed in some\n            manner from the food before it is packaged in its\n            finished form.\n    \n            (b) Substances that are added to a food during\n            processing, are converted into constituents normally\n            present in the food, and do not significantly\n            increase the amount of the constitutents naturally\n            found in the food.\n    \n            (c) Substances that are added to a food for their\n            technical or functional effect in the processing but\n            are present in the finished food at insignificant\n            levels and do not have any technical or functional\n            effect in that food.\n    \n\nI have not seen anything that says that it means to have a \"technical or\nfunctional effect\".\n\nSpeaking of food labeling, I just last night noticed something odd at\nDomino's. Here is what they list on their site as the ingredients in their\ngarlic dipping sauce:\n\n    \n    \n        Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Salt, Natural Flavor,\n        Soy Lecithin, Artificial Flavor, Beta Carotene (Color).\n    \n\nI can't help but notice that their \"garlic\" dipping sauce has no listed\ningredient that has any obvious connection to garlic.\n\n[1]\n[http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRS...](http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=101.100)\n\n~~~\n542458\nCould \"Natural Flavor\" not include garlic? I can't see why not, but IANAL. I'm\nactually a little hazy on what the limits on declaring ingredients as \"Natural\nFlavour\" are - they seem very broad.\n\nThe definition of natural flavor under the Code of Federal Regulations is:\n“the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate,\ndistillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains\nthe flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice,\nvegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or\nsimilar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or\nfermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring\nrather than nutritional” (21CFR101.22).\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor#Regulations_on_natural_f...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor#Regulations_on_natural_flavoring)\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nYes, that's where the garlic is.\n\n[http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrs...](http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=501.22)\n\n------\nholri\nThe problem lies deeper. The main problem is the alienation between the\nproducer and consumer. Industrialization does not fit well with food\nproduction. Because price optimization through division of fixed costs leads\nto standardized high volume products. But it is diversity that is healthy,\ntastes good and is natural.\n\nThe Community-supported agriculture (CSA) model or Food cooperatives\n(foodcoop) directly addresses those fundamental problems.\n\n------\nbuttproblem\nThe author of this article and the food industry seem to know what the people\nwant:\n\n> Ingredients that give the impression that they originated in a grandmother’s\n> kitchen and have not been processed too harshly are of great appeal to\n> consumers.\n\nThe common convenience food route minimize price and maximize flavour but\nignores nutrition. They are so optimized flavor-wise that they are literally\naddicting. On the other hand, \"natural\" foods maximize \"healthy sounding\"\ningredients. What if advancements in the food industry were used in healthy\nfood too? For example, what if we could create a spinach salad that is as\naddictive as dorritos?\n\nAs an example from the article, the scientists were able to transform potato\nprotein into something that tastes like \"butter, cream, and eggs.\" There's no\nmention of the nutritional value of this stuff but imagine if it was a powder\nwith no nutritional value (like Splenda) which you could sprinkle over your\npreviously bland and healthy food to make it taste buttery?\n\nIndustrial processes are slowly making their way into the mainstream with\nbooks like Modernist Cuisine. As an example from the book, the common\n\"grandmother\" way to thicken gravies and other sauces is to use flour or corn\nstarch. However, these thickeners require (1) a large amount of starch, and\n(2) have a large particle size. The result is that the flavour in the food\ndecreases (perhaps now you need to add more salt), and the mouthfeel becomes\ngritty. Scary commercial chemicals such as N-Zorbit (Tapioca Maltodextrin)\ndon't have this problem.\n\n------\nAnimats\nThere's no big secret about this. See\n\"[http://www.foodprocessing.com\"](http://www.foodprocessing.com\"). Typical\narticle: \"Understanding Polydextrose and How It Works\".\n\nFood stopped being \"natural\" when cooking was invented.\n\nThen there's the darling of the startup community, \"Soylent\". Not only is it\nincredibly overpriced ($85/week) for a soy product, they require pre-ordering\nmonths in advance.\n\n------\nfauigerzigerk\nOK, so for me, the only takeaway from this article is that we need radically\nmore transparency and we will not get it from food manufacturers voluntarily.\n\nI'm not sure it will make us any healthier, but at least it may help\njournalists do something a little more helpful than dumping long lists of\nsuspicious sounding names of chemicals on us.\n\nIdeally, more transparency would enable scientists to identify the few really\nbad stuffs among artificial AND natural ingredients more quickly.\n\nI doubt it will have any big effect on public health though, as it takes very\nlong term studies to answer even the most basic questions about the main\ncomponents of our food.\n\n------\nhouseofshards\nRelevant here:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food,_Inc](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food,_Inc).\n(the last time I checked this was available on Netflix)\n\n------\ndzhiurgis\nThis kinda again confirms you should stick to fruit and vegetable based diet.\nAlthough sensationalist title would make you want to think different.\n\n~~~\nbrandon73\nCome again? Could you expand on this?\n\nI'm all for eating fresh fruit, vegetables, roots, etc, but I don't see how\nthis article supports only a plants based diet? Really I think what it's\nsaying is avoid mass produced food, no?\n\nFor example, the locally sourced fresh beef I buy from my local farmer?\n\n~~~\ndzhiurgis\nIt's saying to avoid processed foods. Most of the processed foods are animal\nrelated. Even the bread has milk inside.\n\nEliminate the animals and what you are left is plants. Simple.\n\n~~~\nWillPostForFood\nMilk is not a typical ingredient in bread. In this analysis of 2000 bread\ningredient lists, it doesn't show up in the top 20.\n\n[http://blog.fooducate.com/2010/11/04/the-\ntop-20-ingredients-...](http://blog.fooducate.com/2010/11/04/the-\ntop-20-ingredients-used-in-bread-miniseries-part-3/)\n\nAs a home bread maker, I've never used milk. Occasionally eggs, or butter, but\nmostly just flour, water, yeast, and salt.\n\n~~~\ndzhiurgis\nBread itself is a processed grain.\n\n------\njasonisalive\nPeople should focus instead on something that has worsened, not improved, with\nscientific intervention and technological development - the enslavement,\nbrutalisation, and mass slaughter of billions of land animals (not to mention\nthe treatment of sea animals and ecosystems) due to the continued maladjusted\ncultural preference for animal products. How can people winge and moan about\ntheir wounded sense of aesthetic purity (the same people driving this trend by\npicking the brand 10 cents cheaper on the supermarket shelves) when countless\nnumbers of living, sentient creatures are brought into being by us, for the\nsole purpose of living miserable, dreary lives, punctuated by sickness and\nepisodes of violence, capped off by a final often-horrific experience of\nslaughter, simply so that we can treat them like small factories, extracting\nproducts from them, then eating their body parts or furnishing our cars and\nbodies with their skin?\n\nWhy not be simply thankful that you have freedom from pain, sickness,\nconfinement and slaughter. To complain of the food we eat, as if _we_ are the\nvictims of our own preferences for convenience and low cost, while billions of\nanimals are subjected to treatment tantamount of instituionalised torture, is\nthe height of entitlement.\n\n~~~\nkefka\nSo, plants are less than animals, which are less than humans? Do I understand\nthat correctly?\n\nAll life is sacred. The human over there, or the dog there, or the orchid over\nthat shouldn't matter: they all have an innate right to life.\n\nWe humans have this sense that we are the master of who lives and dies.\nSomehow, dogs and cats are pets, yet pigs and cows and chickens are food. And\nplants and trees can be strip mined for their resources. But this human master\nis based solely on might-makes-right principle.\n\nIn the end, for us to live, others must die. That is the cycle we live in. One\ncan renounce eating meat. Yet, what we need is a conscience and ethic of food.\nOr better said: make your life worthy of the beings who died for you.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n(1) Design  Quora (Web2.0 Expo Presentat... by Rebekah Cox - Quora - woan\nhttp://www.quora.com/Rebekah-Cox/Design-Quora-Web2-0-Expo-Presentation\n======\nphlux\nSo, I'm going to go against the grain here...\n\nI think there is a lot of great stuff about Quora. Design isn't one of them,\nhere is why:\n\nThe site and its team have shown a specific arrogance over voices of\ndissension about their design. Visually there are aspects of the design that\nmake it difficult for people to use - the choice of colors for the text, the\nsize of the fonts, and the contrast make it tough to quickly sort the\ninformation provided.\n\nTheir topic management system is difficult to use. The search box hijacks what\nyou're typing and provides no easy way to get the cursor back.\n\nThe topics and threading of comments has issues as well. Topics lump a large\nnumber of content into a singular bucket, and though you can apply multiple\ntopics to a question, you cannot filter responses in a given topic.\n\nCommenting is limited to singular responses, non threaded conversations and\nare far too easily buried.\n\nArchitecturally the site suffers from sever performance problems when there\nare a large number of answers to a give question. See this post on companies\nhiring in the SF Bay, which on many machines will crash the browser.\n\n[http://www.quora.com/Which-startups-are-hiring-in-the-San-\nFr...](http://www.quora.com/Which-startups-are-hiring-in-the-San-Francisco-\nBay-Area)?\n\nTypical browser behavior gets hijacked/broken as well - HOME and END keys no\nlonger work, and at times, scrolling seems to break.\n\nThe Quora Search Bar, though, does provide good snappy returns of questions\nthat have been asked from all topics that contain the words you enter. So I\nlike that feature.\n\nOverall though, I don't know what gasses fill the echo-chamber these folks\ndesign in, but I surely think they are high if thy think the site is stellar.\n\nFurther, why do the facebook alum feel like facebook blue is the best color to\nuse? I hate it - and simply adopting design elements from your previous\nemployer doesn't show me that you're a great designer.\n\nAlso, in this presentation she says \"Concentrate on what matters most: purpose\nand goals\" yet they seem to shoot down any criticism of their design decisions\nas quickly as possible, as opposed to hearing what others think. So, if the\npurpose and goal is to make a site that is instantly useful, responsive and\nnavigable - isn't it a good idea to see what users are saying about it and\ntake criticism?\n\nI really like Quora, but it is in its infancy - I refuse to jump on the\nbandwagon that believes this thing came out of the gate mature and tested over\nthe years.\n\nYou want to see a site that has an unbelievably good user experience? Spend\nsome time on Reddit. Damn good design -- oh and guess what, they implement\npretty much every great UI/UX idea that users submit -- for example, submitter\nhighlighting in the comments thread is just one.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Fotōko – Your perfectly-ish organized photo library  - maham_tayyab\nhttp://www.fotoko.com/\n\n======\nmaham_tayyab\nHi, I am one of the members of Fotōko's development team. I would love to hear\nfeedback from you on our product.\n\nFotōko automatically organises and safeguards your entire photo and video\nlibrary in the cloud making it easy to search, browse, and share from any\ndevice. Fotōko uses your Google Drive (One Drive and Dropbox coming soon) for\ncloud storage so you have ownership of your photos.\n\nMoving forward we wish to integrate more cloud storage options such as One\nDrive and Drop Box so that users can fully exploit the free storage tier on\nvarious storage platforms while being able to browse, share or search their\nphotos from any device irrespective of where they are stored. We are also\nworking on OCR and face recognition features to allow better organisation and\nsearch. We would love to hear what you think about the product and what you\nwould like to see in a product like this.\n\n------\nrohaan\nHow Fotōko is different from Picasa?\n\n------\nbabarRehman\nHow many devices I can sync at once?\n\n~~~\nmaham_tayyab\nYou can sync as many devices as you like. Simply connect your Google Drive\nwith Fotōko app on your iPhone. All the photos in your Camera Roll will be\nuploaded to your Google Drive. The photos that are present in your Google\nDrive will be synced with the photo library as well. Moreover, you can also\nupload large folders of photos and videos in your Mac book with our OS X app.\n\n------\nrohaan\ncomment from rohaan ishfaq\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe IBMer Who Decoded Bernie Madoff's RPG - nissimk\nhttp://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh091216-story01.html\n======\nKevanM\nIf you are doing something illegal, never comment your code.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy did everything take so long? - jseliger\nhttps://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/2017/12/28/why-did-everything-take-so-long/\n======\neesmith\nConcerning the wheel, it might be useful to look at ancient Mesoamerica. They\nhad children's pull toys with wheels, and other things which were wheel-like,\nbut no wheels used in transport.\n\nThe common explanation, for example at [http://www.zoesaadia.com/real-smart-\nfolks-but-no-wheel/](http://www.zoesaadia.com/real-smart-folks-but-no-wheel/)\n, is that wheels aren't very useful without draft animals, and without land\nwhich is conducive to road-building (vs, say, water transport).\n\n~~~\nbryanlarsen\nThe counter example is the Chinese wheelbarrow, which is useful without draft\nanimals and without roads, but that also makes your point. It's sophisticated\nenough that it's not hard to understand why it took so long to be invented\nwithout anything simpler and useful to evolve from.\n\n~~~\neesmith\nThanks for pointing that out. I didn't know about that history.\n[http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese-\nwheelbarr...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese-\nwheelbarrow.html/) gives more details, like:\n\n> The one-wheeled vehicle appeared around the time the extensive Ancient\n> Chinese road infrastructure began to disintegrate. Instead of holding on to\n> carts, wagons and wide paved roads, the Chinese turned their focus to a much\n> more easily maintainable network of narrow paths designed for wheelbarrows.\n> The Europeans, faced with similar problems at the time, did not adapt and\n> subsequently lost the option of smooth land transportation for almost one\n> thousand years.\n\n> ... It is interesting to note that the wheelbarrow appeared at least 2,000\n> years later than two-wheeled carts and four-wheeled wagons.\n\n------\naaronchall\nJust because we haven't found evidence of progress in early civilizations\ndoesn't mean it wasn't there. Any small marginal gains were probably\nimmediately lost to time, though.\n\nWe needed civilization to spread out enough for commerce to protect new\ninventions from luddite regime changes to avoid losing progress (think Mao's\nbook burning and communist regimes like Pol Pot's slaughtering\nacademics/people who look smart - probably based on what Qin Shi Huang did\n2000 years ago.)\n\n------\nsmoll\nWhy is a wheel even useful? Sounds like a solution in search of a problem. I\nremember the good old days when we didn't even think about needing wheels for\nall the made up problems we've created for ourselves.\n\nHonestly though, just replace wheel with AI and that's exactly what most non-\ntechie people I know think about AI. Humans probably haven't changed that much\nsince 4000 BC.\n\n------\nhago1234\nWe hate creatve people who want to take our nice things and change them into\nsonething weird. We make an effort to kill that behaviour in people.\n\nThere probably is some good excuse for the instinct, some experience long long\nago.\n\nI'm coining the graffiti fish phenomenon to illustrate the concept. Tell me\nyou didnt like it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCan Repelling Magnets Replace the Spring in a Pogo Stick? - mhb\nhttps://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?p=pogo-stick-spring\n======\numvi\nSeems like electromagnets could help compensate for distance by drawing more\ncurrent when far apart, and less when close together. A microcontroller could\nessentially make the force linear like a spring. Of course, then you need\nwires hooked up to your pogo, and that might be scary if the microcontroller\nhas a bug (or somehow fails) since you are now essentially hopping onto a\nrailgun.\n\n~~~\nazhenley\nAbout as scary as my Tesla on autopilot going around a curve at 75mph. Every\ntime I ask myself, what if there is a bug or if it turns off...\n\n~~~\ngumby\nConsider not going on a modern airliner. Every commercial passenger jet since\nthe A340 has been fly-by-wire.\n\n(military jets have been so longer).\n\n~~~\njolmg\nBut you have more time to react on a plane and switch to manual override. It's\nnot like people fly with just a few meters distance to other airplanes.\nThere's also a good distance to the only other thing you can crash into, the\nground, as opposed to driving between walls or with a cliff to one side.\n\n~~~\nhexane360\nOP said \"fly by wire\", meaning there's no non electronic systems to fall back\non. If the electronics fail there's no \"manual override\".\n\n~~~\nvvillena\nOf course there's a fallback. If the fly-by-wire system fails, there's another\nwhole fly-by-wire system ready to take over. Usually this is safer than the\nold redundant hydraulics systems where all the lines ran close together,\nmaking them vulnerable to localized impact damage and fire.\n\n~~~\nhexane360\nI specifically said \"non-electronic\" fallback.\n\n------\nSharlin\n> _For the 4, 5 and 6 magnet stacks, the outermost gaps tended to be a bit\n> larger than the inner gaps. Why?_\n\n> _As we add more magnets to the stack, the maximum pull force alternates up\n> and down. If 2 magnets repel with some force, 3 is a little less, but 4 is a\n> little more 3, but 5 is a little less than 4, etc. Why is this so?_\n\nShouldn't these guys have figured it out pretty easily? Both seem to be\nreadily explained by the fact that it's not just the adjacent pairs of magnets\nthat interact. Given magnets ABCD, the A magnet is repelled by B and D but\nattracted by C. B is equally repelled by A and C, but attracted by D. And so\non.\n\n~~~\nhinkley\nSeems like they missed a trick by arranging the magnets above three so that\nsome of them are paired. You’d probably get more travel but not sure how the\nforce would be affected and neither did they.\n\nYou could try A BC D, AB CD, AB C DE and A BCD E.\n\n------\nemilfihlman\nThe core issue that's not mentioned is that we want a certain kind of a curve\nfor deceleration because that what determines how the spring works. Little\nresistance first and lots at the end means it's not much different from just\nfalling down!\n\n------\ndchichkov\nSeem like an attempt of replacing a large, fine-tuned, atomic scale\nelectromagnetically interacting system with a much simpler, less fine-tuned\none.\n\n~~~\nsitkack\nThe Universe is already running the best code for the job.\n\n------\nrrggrr\nFully compressed I believe the opposite poles fields begin to attract each\nother, counteracting the matching poles repelling one another, and explaining\nthe alternating pull force.\n\n~~~\njaytaylor\nThis is easily solved by including a minimal height spacer between the two\nmagnets to prevent them from getting too close.\n\n~~~\nguntars\nThey spacer could even be a spring to add a bit of springiness.. Oh, wait.\n\n------\naxaxs\nLoved the video. Didn't love the loud beep near the end, that's at about 3x\nthe volume of the speaker the whole video...\n\n~~~\nCamperBob2\nYouTube desperately needs an audio compressor feature. Can't imagine why they\nhaven't implemented that yet, it's more or less trivial.\n\n~~~\ncallalex\nI agree that they should, but it’s pretty reductionist and arrogant to call it\n“trivial”. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all dynamic compressor.\nYou would also need a fairly sophisticated content detection system (don’t\ndistort anything that is music, which is a huge use case on YouTube for\nexample). Not to mention adding _any_ steps to their intake pipeline requires\nmore processing power and data moving than you and I will ever touch in our\nlifetimes.\n\n~~~\nCamperBob2\nSpeaking as a reasonably-experienced audio and DSP programmer -- and\nconsidering that the feature has existed in just about every home theater\nreceiver for the past 20 years -- yes, it's trivial.\n\nYouTube has the advantage of being able to preprocess the audio track in its\nentirety, although most implementations work on a block basis and don't need\nthat. A 'night mode' feature would take about one weekend's worth of work from\nstart to finish.\n\n _You would also need a fairly sophisticated content detection system (don’t\ndistort anything that is music, which is a huge use case on YouTube for\nexample)._\n\nNo, you need a button that the user can press to turn the feature on and off.\nIt should default to 'off.' For extra points, make it a slider.\n\n _Not to mention adding _any_ steps to their intake pipeline requires more\nprocessing power and data moving than you and I will ever touch in our\nlifetimes._\n\nCompared to the work needed to process the video itself, it would be a total\nnon-issue.\n\n~~~\ndcwca\nThe audio compression / limiting can be done client-side, at playback time,\noffloading the cost of the operation\n\n~~~\nCamperBob2\nTrue, but that would involve modifications to the decode side of the audio\ncodec. That's where the feature should be implemented (if not in the OS\nitself) but it's apparently not there. It needs to be supported on every\nplatform, and deploying it wouldn't be anyone's idea of trivial.\n\nOn the server side, they could maintain a separate compressed audio track and\nswitch to it when requested. They should have the ability to do that anyway\nfor alternate languages and commentaries and such. Whether it would be more\ncost-effective to maintain a separate set of compressed tracks or to\ndecode/compress/re-encode on the fly, I don't know.\n\nIt might be tempting to maintain caches of compressed tracks created on\ndemand. That way they'd almost never incur a runtime penalty on the server,\nand also wouldn't have to pay a lot for storage. More than a weekend's worth\nof work at that point, though.\n\n------\ntedunangst\nThe response could be a closer approximation of linear by using six tubes, two\nmagnets each, with varying initial distances. As the stick compresses,\nadditional magnets contribute force, but not all at once.\n\n~~~\nscythe\nJust have two fixed magnets and two moving ones:\n\n[+- +-> ===== <-+ -+]\n\nAs long as the open-wide distance is capped you should have a smoother\ndistance-energy diagram.\n\n------\nCapacitorSet\nUnsurprisingly, an inverse-square mechanism can't replace a linear one over a\nwide working range.\n\n~~~\nbigiain\nI wonder if there’s a Fourier transform equivalent that’d let you stack up\nvarious inverse square curves to appropriate a linear curve?\n\n~~~\nta_egdhs\nyes. any set of complete functions form a vector space and can be used in a\nlinear sum to appropriate other functions in the same space. the dot product\ntells you the value of the coefficients. The fourier transform is just a\nspecial case of this.\n\n------\nrootusrootus\nCould you use a lever to multiply travel distance while working with very\nstrong magnets close together to make the force curve a bit more linear?\n\n------\nmadengr\nWhere does the heat go? The spring will have a much larger surface area to\ndissipate the heat. Maybe surrounding the magnets with a copper tube will\nconduct some eddy currents.\n\n~~~\nnotacoward\nA lot of science museums have a display showing how magnets and copper pipes\ninteract. In short, because of Lenz's Law, the magnet's motion induces an\nopposing magnetic field in the pipe ... which suggests another possible way to\nmake a pogo stick with the right kind of resistance curve as well as\naddressing the heat issue.\n\n~~~\ncontravariant\nA mechanism that absorbs any kinetic energy would make for a very\ndisappointing Pogo stick.\n\n~~~\nnotacoward\nIf it absorbed _all_ of the energy that would be a problem, but any child who\nhas seen one of those science-museum displays I mentioned can tell that's not\nthe case.\n\n~~~\ncontravariant\nYou don't really want a pogo stick to absorb any energy, it'd be like trying\nto make a pogo stick out of mud.\n\n------\namelius\nThey should try this with electromagnets, and make the curve linear using\nelectronics (and perhaps find the optimum curve in terms of fun when jumping\naround).\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nWouldn't that consume a lot of electricity?\n\n~~~\namelius\nProbably yes, but it would be an interesting experiment. By the way, they\ncould use superconductor magnets :)\n\n------\njcoffland\nI would still like to see someone build a pogo stick with many magnets with\nalternating polarity. This article indicates that it would work. Seven strong\nmagnets with a 1\" initial gap between each of them should work.\n\n------\ndTal\nIf you really wanted to do this, I reckon the way would be to have one set of\nmagnets on the moving shaft and another set surrounding it, so the the\nrepulsion tends to keep the shaft centered. Then you make the shaft surround\ntaper towards the top, so that the further the pole is pushed in, the closer\ntogether the magnets are forced. You should be able to achieve any force curve\ndesired with this setup by making the taper non-linear.\n\n~~~\nharshreality\nJust use current designs which, I would think, mechanically constrain the pogo\nstick except in one direction. Replace spring with powerful magnet (pair), and\nmake sure there's a stop pin or something similar to keep the magnetic pogo\nstick from disassembling itself.\n\nI think you're making things too difficult and expensive if you're trying to\nmagnetically suspend and stabilize the pogo stick in multiple/all directions.\n\nAlso, magnetic radial stabilization would be stable only in a rough sense. The\npogo stick handle would still wobble and be disturbingly/unexpectedly\nunsteady. I think for pogo sticks you'd really want a mechanically confined,\npiston-like design. You could still have magnetic stops on both extremes.\n\n~~~\ndTal\nAlthough it's an interesting idea, I didn't mean to suggest _only_ using the\nmagnets to center it - I was merely clarifying the geometry.\n\nAnother advantage of my design is that it allows (requires, in fact) one to\nuse many small magnets in place of a few large ones, which is safer and easier\nto engineer. But as for expense - I think that once you decide to replace\nsprings with magnets in a pogo stick, you have left the path of economy anyway\nand might as well go for broke.\n\n------\nbriantakita\nMaybe a series of magnet pairs, spaced at different heights, could approximate\nthe spring effect. Each pair would be bound together (e.g. with strapping)\nwith the negative charge being on the outside, since Earth has a negative\ncharge. The bottom of the stick would have the strongest magnet, negative\ncharge facing up.\n\n-\n\n+\n\n+\n\n-\n\nThe pairs could then repulse each other at a closer distance, approximating\nthe spring function. I accept royalty donations :-)...but it's probably\npatented by now.\n\n------\njcriddle4\nWhat about a hybrid system with springs for the longer travel but magnets for\nwhen you are about to bottom out?\n\n------\nXcelerate\nI’ve often thought it might be interesting to replace the springs in a piano’s\naction with electromagnets so you could have control over the exact touch\nprofile.\n\n~~~\ncallalex\nI don’t think pianos typically have any springs, everything is gravity powered\nwith counterweights. The only springiness comes from striking the strings as\nfar as I know. Only the really cheap electronic keyboards use springs. Even\nhalfway decent electronic pianos still rely on counterweights.\n\n~~~\nordu\nI cannot speak about any piano, because I had chance to tinker with only one,\nbut that piano had springs.\n\nKeys itself return into their normal position because of gravity, but part of\nkey action mechanism was powered by a spring. I discovered it while trying to\nfix some keys which was too slow to \"recharge\", to return to a normal position\nafter a soft note, so I was unable to make a sequence of a short duration soft\nnotes from the same key. I fixed it by stretching springs long enough for a\nplastic deformation to occur. Loud notes worked ok, because their \"recharge\"\nwas driven fully by springness of the strings.\n\nThough it was just one piano, I do not know how different the mechanics can be\nbetween different pianos.\n\n------\nxvedejas\nWould it be possible to put the magnets in some kind of tube which blocks\nmagnetic flux, in order to get a linear relationship instead of the square\nlaw?\n\n------\ntruethrowa\nHow can they stack three magnets with the repelling side facing each other on\nall three magnets? Isn't one side repelling and the other attracting?\n\n~~~\nshagie\nYou can do some interesting things with magnets. Consider the Halbach array (\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbach_array](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbach_array)\n) often used for refrigerator magnets.\n\nThat said, the 3 magnet configuration would be:\n\nNS - SN - NS\n\nFrom the article:\n\n> We added a third magnet, alternating which way the polarity faces with each\n> magnet. Each magnet repels any adjacent magnets.\n\n------\nhammock\nCan we make an electronagnetic-sprung mattress?\n\n~~~\nJ5892\nThat would really suck in a power outage.\n\n~~~\nmhh__\nOr if you wet yourself\n\n------\nEADGBE\nI literally can't wait for N-Gate's distillation of this thread.\n\n------\n8note\npermanent magnets tend to demagnetize when you beat them around, too\n\n------\ncagenut\ncould some kind of conical shape offset the different power curve?\n\n------\nbaroffoos\nDon't magnets lose their magnetism with repeated drops?\n\n------\ndsfyu404ed\nTL;DR Yes but not very well. A spring made from magnets doesn't have a close\nto linear spring rate like a traditional coil spring does.\n\n~~~\njldugger\nBut is it linear, from the data? They had two datapoints and projected from\nthat sparse data a regression line.\n\n~~~\ntwtw\nThere are far more than two data points on all of the charts in the article.\nWhat chart are you looking at?\n\n~~~\njldugger\nThe youtube video mostly.\n\n------\ndebt\nIn the similar vein I wonder if exploding lithium ion batteries can be used as\nsmall rocket fuel\n\n------\n0ld\nthey did freedom units math! quite a feat\n\n~~~\nv768\nYep, still quite hard to read.\n\n------\nstevespang\nThe ability of permanent ferromagnets to resist (or survive) attacks on their\npermanent field orientations is related to their intrinsic coercivity Hci. In\ngeneral, rare earth magnets are much more resistant, however, radiation,\nexcessive heat, serious EM pulses, extreme magnetic field pressure as in this\ncase, will degrade magnets. The degree of symmetry is relevant, as highly\nasymmetrical designs are much less resistant to magnetic field pressure such\nas in the case of Halbach arrays. I have constructed several Halbach arrays\nfrom N35 Neo magnets purchased from K&J magnetics 10 years ago that have lost\napprox 50% of their force compared to when newly built. Magnet manufacturers\ncan produce a custom run of a high, extremely high, or even ultra high Hci\nmagnets for a price. In past times this was done by increasing expensive\ndysprosium content, but now there are multiple ways, and I would suggest the\nJapanese lead in these efforts. I believe Ames Labs patented a form of\nnitrogen doped carbon which has an Hci that is rather astounding, but to date\nit is not a stable product.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nEmpire Interactive to Produce Mensa-Licensed Video Games - gnoupi\nhttp://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22264\n\n======\ngnoupi\n\"Mensa approved\", or how to advertise more on the \"2% of intelligent people\"\nsectarism. \"Buy this game, it's dedicated to smart people only!\" ... I predict\nnice success, you know \"Mensa level\", how to prove yourself smart, playing\nsame games as \"the elite\"...\n\nNot much more comment needed.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nUpdate on Multi-Process Firefox - AndrewDucker\nhttps://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/12/21/update-on-multi-process-firefox/\n======\nsaberworks\nIt would be really nice if the addons/extensions page showed which addons were\nlisted as compatible and which weren't. I might thus make a decision to\ndisable/delete an addon or two that were blocking me from using multiprocess\nfirefox. As it is, I have no idea if my firefox is using multiprocess at all.\nAll I know is that I use a lot of addons and I'm probably not, then, using\nmultiprocess.\n\n~~~\npipeep\nYou can figure out what add-ons are compatible by cross-referencing\n[http://www.arewee10syet.com/](http://www.arewee10syet.com/)\n\n~~~\nFreeFull\nSeems the only addon I use that isn't compatible is \"Disable Ctrl-Q Shortcut\".\nIt's an addon I really don't want to get rid of, there have been many cases in\nthe past where I've accidentally pressed ctrl+q instead of ctrl+w, and had\nFirefox quit on me..\n\nEdit: The page for the addon has a comment saying it does work with\nmultiprocess, so I just forced it on. I'm on Linux, and I don't know of an\nabout:config key to disable ctrl+q\n\n~~~\ndjsumdog\nI think you can set that in `about:config` without a plugin\n\n~~~\n0942v8653\nIf you set browser.showQuitWarning to true (also make sure browser.warnOnQuit\nis true; that should be default) it will show a dialog to confirm if you want\nto quit. But if you check the box \"do not show next time\" it will set\nbrowser.showQuitWarning to false.\n\n------\nnewscracker\nI like how Firefox multiprocess has evolved and continues to evolve taking\nmeasurements into account.\n\nWhen multiprocess was announced several years ago, my main worry was that it\nwould be a Chrome clone with one process per tab and become sluggish like\nChrome (my general use of browsers is a minimum of 10 tabs and on certain\nmachines a lot, lot more). Finding a balance between responsiveness, security\nand stability is what I'd prefer. I personally don't see many stability issues\nin Firefox even without multiprocess. So I'm happy with this progress even\nthough it may seem slow to dime people or that Firefox isn't keeping up with\nChrome (the latter is meaningless for my use since Firefox and it's extensions\nprovide a lot more).\n\n~~~\nnewscracker\nI hate typos, and can't edit the comment anymore. The last sentence should\nread:\n\nSo I'm happy with this progress even though it may seem slow to some people or\nthat Firefox isn't keeping up with Chrome (the latter is meaningless for my\nuse since Firefox and its extensions provide a lot more).\n\n------\nmmastrac\nI force-enabled multi-process FF a while ago and haven't had any issues. In\nthe 49.x series there were one or two tab crashes, but I can't think of any\nrecently. All of my extensions have worked just fine too.\n\n~~~\nbinaryanomaly\n1Password unfortunately is still incompatible so force needs to be applied.\n\nBut in general I share your observation - runs very smooth.\n\n~~~\nJoshTriplett\nWhy use 1Password, rather than Firefox Sync/Accounts?\n\n~~~\nmcpherrinm\nI have a few reasons to prefer 1P over a browser based option:\n\n1Password doesn't require a cloud sync. I just use the local wifi sync. I'm\nless worried about data breaches as a result.\n\n1Password lets me save more than browser passwords: especially on mobile where\nI have lots of apps to log into, which shares a password with a desktop\nwebsite.\n\nAlso, I store additional data (like bank info, account numbers, etc) in 1P,\nand browsers don't have UX for that, even if the back end could be useful for\nthat.\n\nIt also doesn't lock me into a browser.\n\n~~~\nJoshTriplett\n> 1Password doesn't require a cloud sync. I just use the local wifi sync. I'm\n> less worried about data breaches as a result.\n\nFirefox Sync encrypts all of its data; a data breach on the server would only\nresult in a pile of email addresses and encrypted blobs.\n\n> 1Password lets me save more than browser passwords: especially on mobile\n> where I have lots of apps to log into, which shares a password with a\n> desktop website.\n\nFair enough. All the mobile apps I use just stay logged in once you log in\nonce.\n\n> Also, I store additional data (like bank info, account numbers, etc) in 1P,\n> and browsers don't have UX for that, even if the back end could be useful\n> for that.\n\nHadn't occurred to me to store non-passwords in a password manager. That seems\nlike something a Firefox extension could provide on top of the Firefox\npassword manager, which would make a nice substitute for a locally encrypted\nfile. I wouldn't mind using that to store things like security\nquestions/answers.\n\n~~~\nmook\nThe old Firefox sync used a local-only passphrase to encrypt things. The new\none, as far as I can tell, just tires everything to your Firefox Account (i.e.\nnothing local is required). That's not really better than what 1Password does,\nI think.\n\n~~~\nJoshTriplett\nThe current Firefox Sync (based on Firefox Accounts) still keeps everything\nclient-side encrypted, rooted in password-derived keys and locally generated\nkeys. It never sends the password to the server.\n\n~~~\nzeveb\n> It never sends the password to the server.\n\nIt does, however, download JavaScript served by Mozilla when you log into your\nFirefox Account, which means that Mozilla can cause your password to be sent\nto them unencrypted, if they so choose. This in turns means that a disgruntled\nemployee, Mozilla the organization and any government which is able to compel\nMozilla the organization or key employees can get access to your password at\nany time, rendering Firefox Sync completely untrustworthy.\n\n~~~\nJoshTriplett\nThat only occurs when you log into your Firefox Account via the web-based\nsystem, which necessarily has to use JavaScript to provide a client. If you\nlog in via your browser, all the code lives in the browser.\n\nOr, if you prefer, you could run a self-hosted version of Firefox Accounts on\nyour own server.\n\n------\ndavidgerard\nFWIW, I've been running FF multiprocess with a pile of extensions since it was\nfirst introduced (there's a preference you can set to say \"yes really I want\nto do this and I realise I get to keep both pieces\"). A few extensions failed,\nbut mostly it's been wonderful and I would recommend it to any techie user.\n\nHow to force it on:\n[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Force_Enable](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Force_Enable)\n\n------\nmandelbulb\nMake Vimperator great again - still no support. :'(\n\nTwo year old github issue but yet any development to be seen or reported :/\n\n~~~\nwsha\nSadly it's not realistic. Even if someone were to put in the time to make it\nwork, Vimperator would just break again within the next year when XUL addons\nare deprecated in favor of WebExtensions, and unfortunately WebExtensions do\nnot support all the features of Vimperator. You can use VimFx for now, but\nagain it is a XUL addon and would take a massive amount of work to port to a\nWebExtension. Hopefully someone can get Vimium or cVim ported over as a\nWebExtension. I have played around some with this but haven't got it to work.\nIt seems some of the needed API's are missing from WebExtensions at the\nmoment.\n\n~~~\npmoriarty\nPentadactyl is also going to break then, for the same reason. That's why I've\nbeen moving from Firefox to Pale Moon, where Pentadactyl continues to work. I\nexpect Vimperator will continue to work on Pale Moon too.\n\n------\nmwcampbell\nLooks like accessibility tools (e.g. screen readers) also disable multi-\nprocess support as of Firefox 50. I know enough about accessibility APIs and\ntheir implementations to guess that it's going to be difficult to modify that\ncode to work efficiently in a multi-process configuration.`\n\nEdit: I'm talking about Windows. Don't know about other platforms.\n\n~~~\ndblohm7\nI'm the dev who is responsible for the Windows implementation. It has been\nquite the... gnarly experience to say the least. We were shooting for 52 for\nenabling a11y+e10s, but it is increasingly looking like we're going to need to\nslip to 53.\n\n~~~\nhashhar\nI would like to help out in any way I can. Where should I look to get an idea\nof the project and what do I need to know to be able to work on it?\n\n~~~\ndblohm7\nHere are a couple of links that outline the design and contain some notes:\n\n[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Accessibility#Windows](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Accessibility#Windows)\n[http://dblohm7.ca/blog/2016/04/06/new-team-new-\nproject/](http://dblohm7.ca/blog/2016/04/06/new-team-new-project/)\n\nNote that the approach we are taking on Windows is different from the way that\nChrome works. They cache the entire a11y tree in the parent process so that\nthe DLLs injected by assistive technologies may quickly enumerate the a11y\ntree via virtual function calls.\n\nIn 2017 we want to start moving away from injected DLLs in Firefox. As part of\nthat initiative I decided not to take the caching route in a11y as that would\nrequire continuing to allow injected DLLs for a11y purposes. Instead I am\nimplementing a COM handler that should allow us to significantly reduce the\nnumber of round trips required to enumerate the tree. I am hoping that this\nwill offer AT vendors a migration path that eventually moves them out of our\nprocess.\n\nFeel free to join us in the #accessibility channel on Mozilla's IRC server to\nchat further. I am aklotz on that server.\n\n~~~\nhashhar\nSure. I'll start reading up. I'll join after the new year. Thanks for\nreplying.\n\n------\nrocky1138\nThank you to the Mozilla team who have given my old laptop life again.\n\n------\nneves\nHow do I know if my extensions are multiprocess compatible?\n\n~~~\nTwirrim\nInstall [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-\ncompat...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-\ncompatibility-reporter/) and go to your add-on page and it'll tell you.\n\n~~~\nJamesSwift\nIt should be noted that 'compatible' is not actually the tested compatibility,\nit's whether or not the add-on author has declared that it is compatible\nwithin their manifest.\n\n------\npwg\nHas anyone noticed bookmarklets not working when multi-process is turned on?\n\nI installed a V 51 developer edition to test out multi-process, and when\nmulti-process was on, my bookmarks that modify the dom did not work. Any one\nelse noticed anything similar?\n\n~~~\ncpeterso\nThat's sounds like a bug, as if the bookmarklet is executed in the main\nbrowser process and can't see the page's DOM. What DOM bookmarklet water you\nusing? The Pinboard bookmarklet works for me but it is not agreeing the DOM.\n\n~~~\ncpeterso\nI tried the \"WhatFont\" bookmarklet, which inspect DOM elements and reports the\nfonts used. It works for me in Firefox Nightly 53 with e10s enabled.\n\n[http://www.chengyinliu.com/whatfont.html](http://www.chengyinliu.com/whatfont.html)\n\n~~~\npwg\nJust tested Firefox Nightly 53 with the three bookmarklets I use most often,\nthey all work in 53. Therefore it must have been a bug with the 51 version.\n\n~~~\ncpeterso\nWhat are some of the bookmarklets and sites you are testing? I'm not able to\nreproduce the failure with the \"WhatFont\" bookmarklet in Firefox 50-53.\n\n------\nshmerl\n_> Our measurements and user feedback were all positive and so with Firefox 50\nwe deployed multi-process Firefox to users with a broader set of extensions,\nthose whose authors have marked them as multi-process compatible._\n\nHow can one check if some extension is marked as such?\n\nI'm using Firefox beta (which is now 51.0b9) and I noticed that Firefox now\nsplits a separate \"Web\" process. Is that the indication that multiprocess is\nenabled?\n\nI also set in the past in about:config\n\n    \n    \n        browser.tabs.remote.autostart = true\n\n~~~\nhashhar\nYes. I do think you it enabled. To confirm, go to about:support, and look for\nthe field that says, \"Multiprocess Windows\". If it is a value > 0, you do have\nmultiprocess.\n\nIf you are on an old version, check for the string \"Multiprocess staged\nrollout\". If it is true, you do have e10s enabled.\n\nAnd for checking extension compatibility install this extension,\n[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-\ncompat...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-\ncompatibility-reporter/)\n\n------\nsatysin\nEven on a clean Firefox 50.1.0 x64 install with just uBlock Origin and multi-\nprocess enabled Firefox _feels_ quite a bit slower than Chrome. This really\nshouldn't still be a thing especially with Chrome also having to deal with a\nbunch of Flash based content on some sites (looking at you BBC News).\n\n~~~\ncdevs\nI've noticed most people at my office seem to use chrome because of that seems\nfaster feeling and it's always chromes obsessive page caching which a lot of\nthe time is a pain to deal with. Our site added some cache busting params in\nthe Javascript request based around our git pulls but there's so many times I\nhave to figure a situation because a chrome user is seeing something to old.\n\n------\nbaby\nAnyone knows if Tree Style Tab is supported?\n\n~~~\nswenn\nAn alternative vertical tab bar I discovered some time ago is Tab Center\n([https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-\ncenter](https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center)). Although still\na little buggy, I switched over from Tree Style Tab. It feels better IMO and I\nreally didn't care about the \"tree style\" of TST, I just felt the need for a\nvertical tab bar.\n\n~~~\nKingMob\nWow, I just tried it, and it's the tab interface I always wanted. More\nvertical space for reading web pages, and wider tabs to read the tab titles\nmore easily. Why isn't this the default yet?\n\n~~~\nbaby\nA lot of people are wondering why this is not the default. If you like this\nyou should try Tree Style Tab ;)\n\n------\njayweb1\nCool stuff\n\n------\nnikolay\nI've been gradually disappointed by Firefox - more and more websites no longer\nwork. Okay, I'm using Firefox Developer Edition, but nonetheless, it's been\ndisappointing compared to, let's say, Google Chrom Canary. Memory and CPU\nfootprint is worse than latest Canary, too!\n\n~~~\nngokevin\nThe compatibility issue isn't to blame on web developers increasingly testing\nonly on or making their apps exclusive Chrome?\n\n~~~\nnikolay\nI think it's the privacy and other \"features\" that make Facebook and Google\nlogin not work, for example.\n\n~~~\noblio\nWhat \"privacy\"?\n\n------\ndirkg\nSo now Firefox will become much slower due to per tab process overhead, just\nlike Chrome, will pollute the task list with processes, and lose the enormous\nbenefits of it's fantastic extension model, all for some intangible security\nbenefits?\n\nI've almost never had a security issue or crash on Firefox with a hundred tabs\nand maybe fifty extensions, it's still faster than chrome with 10 tabs.\n\n~~~\nruneks\nI hope they chose a model of mapping a lot of virtual tab threads to a single\nOS thread, rather than one OS thread per tab, but I don't know.\n\n------\ndilly_li\nIs this done in Chrome as early as 8 years ago?\n[https://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/multi-process-\narchitecture...](https://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/multi-process-\narchitecture.html)\n\n~~~\ngsnedders\nYou mean what was done in IE8 six months before Chrome?\n[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2008/03/11/ie8-and-\nloose...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2008/03/11/ie8-and-loosely-\ncoupled-ie-lcie/)\n\nMore seriously—it's somewhat sad to see Chrome get all the credit for this,\nwhen it's undoubtedly the case that both IE and Chrome were working on this at\nthe same time.\n\n~~~\nflukus\nIf anything we should give the IE guys extra credit, I doubt the code base was\npleasant to work with.\n\n------\nnxc18\nDoes anyone have insight on why we're getting this for Firefox in (very late)\n2016 while Chrome has had this since 2008 and IE since 2009?\n\nSeriously, I understand the need for competition in the browser, and wish\nthere was a viable alternative to chrome on things that aren't Windows, but\nthe failure of Firefox to keep pace is really disappointing.\n\nSlow and lacking basic features for years almost makes Firefox feel like the\nnew IE, but at least we can be thankful that not many people are stuck with\nit.\n\nTo put this in perspective, Firefox has lagged on multi-process for 8 years.\nEveryone's beloved IE6 only had 5 years of ruining the internet before it was\nreplaced.\n\n~~~\nnnethercote\nAdding multi-process support is the biggest single architectural change ever\nmade to Firefox.\n\nIt was started, then put on hold for a couple of years because it seemed\ninsurmountable, and then started again. It's taken a huge amount of work, and\nthus a huge amount of time. But it's mostly done now and the benefits are\nreaching users.\n\n~~~\nsp332\nAnd during the same time, they changed the JS engine to use a generational\ncompacting garbage collector, which was also a bizarrely large amount of work\nfor a more flexible future.\n\n------\nchrisper\nDoes anyone know what the incentive behind the development of Firefox is at\nthis point? Like, Chrome has such a huge browser market share, so why do they\nstill develop Firefox? I assume it is not that feasible to invest time and\nmoney if the share is only 4%.\n\nI am just curious, and not trying to hate on Firefox. But I think most (?)\nnon-tech people use Chrome. So maybe I am asking, what is the point of Firefox\nif the shares are so low?\n\nAgain, not trying to hate on it, but I am just curious for the reasons, which\nI am sure are valid.\n\n~~~\nsergiotapia\nThere was a time where Chrome was the up and comer with very low market-share.\n\nWe need competition or we will suffer as end users.\n\nChrome's time will also come eventually. It's not a matter of if, but when.\nVivaldi and Brave are growing and coming along very nicely. Brave is actually\nspearheaded by the ex CEO of Mozilla before he was fired for some nonsense.\n\n[https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/)\n\n~~~\ngeofft\nI feel like there are a ton more flattering ways to refer to Brave's CEO -\n\"inventor of JavaScript,\" \"co-founder of Mozilla,\" or \"CTO of Mozilla for 9\nyears\" are all way better and way more relevant than \"CEO for not even two\nweeks,\" and much less likely to cause an argument.\n\n~~~\nsergiotapia\nTrue! He's the father of Javascript - much respect.\n\n------\nDanBlake\nDoes firefox run each tab in its own process yet? Or live inside a sandbox? I\nswitched from firefox + noscript to chrome after accepting that firefox's\nsecurity (even with noscript enabled) was just so far behind that of chrome.\n\n~~~\nrockdoe\nIsn't this exactly what the article explains and clarifies?\n\n~~~\nnindalf\nYes but why bother actually reading the article when you can shoot off in the\ncomments with minimal effort? If you're wrong, someone will correct you.\nAmirite?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPaul Buchheit: Chrome OS Will Perish Or “Merge” With Android - harscoat\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2010/12/14/gmail-creator-paul-buchheit-chrome-os-will-perish-or-merge-with-android/\n\n======\npaul\nI like that the screenshot says \"11 seconds ago\". An idle thought while\nsetting up my new MacBook Air became a TC post in record time!\n\n~~~\ni386\nWhen Google started to make noise about Chrome OS I had a similar thought -\nwhat company in their right mind would want two mobile operating systems?\n\n~~~\npaul\nIt was a more plausible sounding strategy before the iPad came out. Now that\nit's clear that tablets are huge, and that Android will be Google's tablet OS,\nthen you start to wonder why adding a keyboard sudden switches you to a\ndifferent OS (losing all of the Android apps in the process).\n\n~~~\nAlexMuir\n\"it's clear that tablets are huge\". I agree but I'd say it's clear that the\niPad _is_ huge, and that tablets _will be_ huge. So far there's no competitor\nto the iPad. I'm not sure why Google are arsing around with the Cr-48 (a\nnetbook/laptop) - they need to get their resources behind a tablet.\n\n~~~\naxod\nAre tablets huge, or are touchscreens huge?\n\nTo know, we need some decent laptops with touchscreens.\n\nIt seems like the best of both worlds will clearly be a tablet that docks to\nthe bottom half of a laptop - so we get a laptop with a tablet that can be\ncarried around.\n\nI also think it's a fairly good long term bet. At the moment we're in this\nstrange 'appstore' download applications era which is like being back in the\n1990s. This current era will end once wifi etc is _everywhere_ and the novelty\nvalue of downloading an application has worn off.\n\nObviously for a hardware heavy device such as a mobile phone, you need some\nspecific OS to be able to interface with all the hardware, take calls, etc.\nBut for a laptop, where the user is mainly just surfing the web, things don't\nneed to be so involved. That's why I think both are necessary.\n\n~~~\nAlexMuir\nI think Bluetooth keyboards might take off. What you're describing sounds\nexactly like the iPad docked with a keyboard.\n\nEdit: And to test it out I've just paired a keyboard to the iPad and edited\nthis. It works a treat - I might stop rolling with a laptop when I travel now.\nI keep reaching for a mouse though!\n\n~~~\naxod\nThe hinge is kinda useful to angle the display.\n\n------\nrms\nPaul, I will bet 1000 HN karma at even odds on the following prediction:\n\nChrome OS will not be killed or merge with Android in the next year.\n\n _(if it was in the next two years, I would give 80% odds on the existence of\na Google operating system not called Android that was the successor of\nAndroid+Chrome)_\n\n~~~\nJ3L2404\nHow exactly would you \"settle up\"?\n\n~~~\nrms\nIOU's\n\nor something not very likely like myself founding a Y Combinator company\nmaking prediction markets using HN karma. It would take a lot to convince pg\nto allow for direct HN karma transfers. It doesn't mean we can't create a\nshadow market with words.\n\nI created a similar fake prediction market on Less Wrong.\n\n[http://lesswrong.com/lw/1tr/creating_a_less_wrong_prediction...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/1tr/creating_a_less_wrong_prediction_market/)\n\n~~~\njimfl\n\"Good morning. In WallNet news, the Karma continues its rise against the\nBitCoin in heavy wagering over whether cloud computing giant Facebook will\nkill the popular Java language following an acquisition of foundering Internet\nretailer Oracle corporation.\"\n\n------\njrockway\nPrediction: Windows Phone 7 will merge with Windows 7 or perish. iOS will\nmerge with OS X or perish.\n\nOh wait, I don't predict either of those things. In each case, one is a\ndesktop OS and one is a mobile OS. Sure, they all include web browsers that\nuse the same rendering engine, but that doesn't mean they need to merge.\nMobile and Desktop are two separate problems.\n\nThere's a reason why Windows CE laptops were never successful; people don't\nwant a phone OS on their computer.\n\n~~~\njokermatt999\nI don't know if that comparison is completely apt. Chrome OS is very different\nfrom most \"desktop\" OSes. I can actually do _more_ with Android instead of\nless. I agree that the UI and interactions would be odd running off of stock\nAndroid, especially if the device (laptop/tablet/hybrid) isn't specifically\ndesigned for it, but I don't think it's as insane of an idea as you seem to be\nimplying.\n\nIn all the other instances, a phone OS loses functionality and flexibility\nfrom the desktop, while it would gain it in this case.\n\n------\nsomeperson\nDec 13 2010: > Google co-founder Sergey Brin, however, has _very recently\nstated_ that Google will likely “produce a single OS down the road”.\n\nLinked article: \"November 20, 2009 12:00 PM PST \"\n\nNot said ~1 month ago. Actually said ~13 months ago.\n\n------\nJarekS2\nGoogle ChromeOS and Google Wave share some similarities in terms of marketing\nmessaging behind those products. In both cases biggest value of both products\nis in business - they should never be marketed as a consumer products.\n\nI agree with Paul that ChromeOS with its current market target will fail -\njust like Wave did.\n\nBut there is still hope for ChromeOS. Google should target bigger companies\nwith it. Make it a hardware extension of their Google Apps offering. IT\ndepartments and CFOs will love them.\n\nAnd you know what? I think that they are thinking about this already - that is\nwhy we've seen Citrix client there.\n\n------\nhtsh\nIt makes sense from a marketing perspective considering how well the Android\nbrand has caught on.\n\nAlso, Android is a more fully-featured OS considering it has local apps and\nstorage as compared with the cloud-dependent ChromeOS. It's likely a consumer\nwould prefer Web+apps to just web, especially if it means they can do things\nlike play games while offline.\n\nAnd whatever happens, this is good for Linux. At the very least, we should see\nmuch better drivers...\n\n------\nddfall\nTo quote a friend about this story, \"Man no longer at Google makes\nassumption\"...\n\n~~~\npaul\nActually, the word I used was \"prediction\":\n[http://friendfeed.com/paul/1af77944/prediction-chromeos-\nwill...](http://friendfeed.com/paul/1af77944/prediction-chromeos-will-be-\nkilled-next-year-or)\n\nThat I don't work at Google is not relevant. (though perhaps you are working\non ChromeOS?)\n\n~~~\ngreyman\nPaul and why do you actually think so?\n\n------\nrwhitman\nIsn't Chrome just an OS layer optimized to run Google Apps and logically\nintended more for enterprise use? Who really needs to deal with Windows and IT\nissues for sales reps? If they can use Salesforce & Google Apps all they need\nis a browser. No IT dept, no expensive licenses, viruses etc.\n\nA free or dirt cheap OS with little to no IT configuration and that can run on\ncheap legacy hardware is probably a big win for many businesses.\n\nFor a certain segment of business use, it would render Windows obsolete and I\nthink thats the point.\n\n~~~\ngaiusparx\nCentrally managed enterprise computing exists since the beginning with\nmainframe with dumb terminals. And you have Citrix thin client or vmware\nvirtual client infrastructure for such purpose. ChromeOS is trying to solve\nthe same problem, the problem of IT management rather than users need,\nexperience and the advance of end user computing. ChromeOS if successful is\nnot a good idea for the future of computing, where I believe an intelligent\nand powerful client is needed for the advancement of user-computing\ninteraction design. ChromsOS reenforce the idea that computing is about the\nweb with a screen and a keyboard. Cloud computing is more than just http\nright?\n\n------\njallmann\nThis whole state of affairs is making me very, very sad.\n\nI hope ChromeOS wins, only because it has a sane development model -- sans the\nwhole being-stuck-in-the-cloud thing. If ChromeOS ever allows running local\napps, that'd be tops. I'm not talking about offline HTML5 either, but exposing\nhardware/OS capabilities via JS or an FFI.\n\nThe iPhone/Android approach to app dev is antiquated and absolutely painful in\ncomparison.\n\nI really should be rooting for WebOS. Go HP!\n\n------\nrussellperry\nThe problem I have with this theory is that Android just wasn't written as a\ngeneral-purpose GUI framework/OS. It's very mobile and memory-constraint\ncentric, and IMO would need a whole new UI layer, if not a major re-write at\nthe OS level. Who would want to write tablet or netbook apps with the whole\nActivity/Intent structures, and listviews that populate dynamically when\nscrolling, or apps that the OS may kill at certain thresholds of memory\npressure?\n\n~~~\nvetinari\nActually, I think that th Activity/Intent structuring of applications is a\nvery good idea, one that could be brought into the world of desktop\napplications too.\n\nIt allows to use parts of applications in a way that OLE/COM promised, but\nnever delivered.\n\n------\nalbertzeyer\nI wonder why this the prediction goes this way.\n\nWouldn't the other way around make more sense? Chrome OS seems much more\nmodern. But maybe too far ahead.\n\n~~~\nal_james\nWhy is it more modern? Its just a thin layer of Linux with chrom(ium) over the\ntop. True, chrome is modern, but I am not sure the Linus layer is.\n\n~~~\nalbertzeyer\nEverything works in the cloud. It works from every client. You have all your\ndata everywhere. You have a well defined, powerful, standardized and cross-\nplatform interface to it. All such applications will probably work on every\ncomputer also in the next 10 or 20 years.\n\nYou don't have those properties for most Android applications (they don't\nreally work that well on your desktop PC even right now).\n\n------\nal_james\nIn many ways, the most difficult decision would be how to merge the two\ndifferent app development environments. Andriod is getting traction (in part)\ndue to some excellent apps. These apps are developed in java that compiles to\nAndroid specific bytecode. So, from that, any merged OS would need to maintain\nthe Android VM layer, otherwise backward compatibility would be hard.\n\nOn the other hand, chrome could be ported to Android quite easily.\n\nSo I see a Android like OS where Android Apps and Chrome web apps exist side\nby side (on the same desktop).\n\n------\njasongullickson\nAndroid is a platform for native applications and runs web apps out of\nnecessity. Chrome OS runs nothing but web apps and has no support (in fact, it\nhas anti-support) for native, non web-based apps.\n\nThe fact that these two systems come from Google is about the only thing they\nhave in common. Why would they \"need\" to be merged, when doing so would do\nnothing but dilute each in turn?\n\nI think Google has enough smart people on board to effectively support two\nplatforms...\n\n------\nSupermighty\nBut having one OS doesn't necessarily mean one recognizable product. I think\nit could just be the convergence of low level systems, drivers and creating a\nunified build system. Then on top of that they could plop a unique shell\ndepending on the deployed platform.\n\nUnify the developer tools, unify the build and deployment system, and merge\nthe dev teams. You reduce duplication of work and streamline the whole\nprocess.\n\n------\nva_coder\nI wonder why a Python/C/Linux mobile environment isn't here that could replace\nboth Android and ChromeOS?\n\nI'm going to assume if there's silence it's already being done in stealth\nmode.\n\n------\ntrezor\nMy favourite quote from that article is the following one:\n\n    \n    \n        Update: more from Buchheit in the FriendFeed thread:\n    \n        ChromeOS has no purpose that isn’t better served by Android (perhaps with a few\n        mods to support a non-touch display).\n        \n        I was thinking, “is this too obvious to even state?”, but then I see people\n        taking ChromeOS seriously, and Google is even shipping devices for some\n        reason.\n    \n\nI fully agree with this one, and honestly don't understand the rage around\nChrome OS. OK, so it's from Google, but it's still merely a crippled Linux-\ndistro where you don't get to touch the local filesystem.\n\nI doubt it will stay around for long.\n\n~~~\naxod\nIt still makes an absolute ton of sense for people who _only_ use the web.\n\nThe browser on android is OK, but it's nowhere near Chrome afaics.\n\nI believe ChromeOS is going after the non-techy market of people who don't\ncare about all the bells and whistles of android. I think both could still be\nsuccessful.\n\n~~~\nstatictype\n_It still makes an absolute ton of sense for people who only use the web._\n\nHow many people do you know who _only_ use the web?\n\n~~~\nbockris\nMy parents, my in-laws, and to some degree my wife and kids. I was lucky\nenough to receive a Cr-48 and it's been in constant use for the small time\nwe've had it. Some of that is the 'new' factor but my wife has a regular\nlaptop that she uses on the couch occasionally. Now she asks \"Where is the\nGoogle laptop?\" It is partially form factor but the boot/wakeup speed is\naddicting. Also the fast user switching makes it very easy to trade around.\nLast night I was using it for Google reader and my wife asked when she could\nuse it. I was just messing around so I closed the lid and handed it to her.\nShe lifted the lid, it was on instantly, she signed me out and signed herself\nin and was reading her mail in probably about 10 seconds.\n\nEven with the problems with the trackpad and the stuttering flash I can see\nthe potential. I would buy at least 2 Cr-48's today if they were for sale.\nAnother one for my family to share and the other for my parents. I would set\nup a gmail account for my parents and ship it to them and be safe in the\nknowledge that I would only be doing application support for them, not system\nsupport.\n\n~~~\ntrezor\n> My parents, my in-laws, and to some degree my wife and kids.\n\nUntil they want to play some music not on youtube, dig up some pictures they\ndidn't upload to facebook etc etc. Or just actually do a slideshow of\npictures, since most web-pages don't really allow you to do slideshows.\n\nThere's a ton of use-cases I see most people do all the time which a no-local-\nstorage platform will simply not support.\n\n> She lifted the lid, it was on instantly, she signed me out and signed\n> herself in and was reading her mail in probably about 10 seconds.\n\nI fail to see how this is different from any other laptop on the planet. I\nhave a regular Windows laptop and this has _always_ been my experience. Heck,\nswitching from my GFs account to mine I can be on in about 5 seconds. A _cold\nboot_ however will take me 10. SSDs are pretty cool that way.\n\nRegardless. Back to the topic: I also fail to see how any of this relates to a\nplatform being locked down to not allow local applications. Just where does\nthe Linux-lockdown start providing real, actual benefits you don't get\nelsewhere?\n\nI'm not saying you must be _wrong_ or mistaken, but what I do suggest is that\nthere are normal use-cases which will benefit from having local-storage and\napplications and that I see absolutely no use-cases where having the local\noption completely blocked and removed provides any benefits.\n\nYour \"google laptop\" is my Windows-laptop. Amputated. Without any benefits\nadded what so ever.\n\n~~~\nbockris\nWe agree to disagree. I don't see any of these things as issues for my use\ncase. My parents don't have a computer now. They don't want to listen to music\nand they mostly want to consume pictures of their grandkids which we would\nemail to them or post to Picasa. The video chat through google talk is icing\non the cake.\n\nI can't get rid of my 'real' laptop because I need to interface with other\nhardware like my Arduino, etc. But for emailing and reading my news feed I\nlike the Cr-48. Would the same purpose be served by a different netbook?\nProbably but I don't have one of those to compare to.\n\nAnd my experience with fast user switching on windows is totally different\nfrom yours. Maybe it's the age of the laptop and not having an SSD but it's\nnot even something I consider doing it's so slow. When my kids want to check\ntheir email, we fire up an incognito session on chrome on the existing windows\nsession. Again, probably to do with my hardware.\n\n~~~\nflogic\nI think it's important to not compare this to Windows. Windows is such a\ncomplete disaster on so many fronts of course ChromeOS seems like a better\nidea. The problem I and other have with it is \"ChromeOS isn't really a better\nidea when compared to other operating systems.\" It's more crippled then iOS\nand Android for gains that aren't significantly better. Sure Chrome maybe a\nbetter browser but that's just a matter of porting Chrome not a new OS.\n\n------\nshareme\nunfortunately TC is both wrong and late as usual..let me explain..\n\nLets start with what android OS and Chrome OS share..lets see that would be\nthat Chrome Browser..ever wonder why the browser in android is behind in build\nnumbers compared to the iOS safari trunk as far as HTML5 etc?\n\nThere is a reason..its use new functionalities are added to me it a chrome\nbrowser..the same feature set that persuaded Google to start Chrome OS in the\nfirst place..\n\nThus, in-fact android OS and Chrome OS have already 'merged'..\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nInstagram Limits Photo Integration as Facebook Challenges Twitter - obeone\nhttp://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-12-05/facebook-s-instagram-limits-twitter-photo-integration\n\n======\nJeremyMorgan\nNo surprise here, Facebook didn't buy Instagram for their crappy image\nfilters.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: For help: Gmail is filtering our URLs - e79\n\nThe gmail.com client normally renders the hyperlinks in our outgoing email just fine. Yesterday morning, this suddenly stopped happening and users were sent links that could not be clicked in their transactional emails from us. I was able to reproduce it by simply including our domain name in an e-mail, which leads me to believe e-mails are being filtered for our domain name specifically. I&#x27;ve reproduced this across multiple Gmail accounts of ours, and all hyperlinking is always fine right  until I include our domain name anywhere in an e-mail. Viewing page source shows that gmail.com is employing some HTML to break our URL up so it doesn&#x27;t turn into a valid hyperlink.<p>I suspect this is some sort of anti-spam measure. Has anybody else experienced this? I am asking Hacker News for help because there doesn&#x27;t appear to be any way to get in contact with Google regarding gmail problems. We&#x27;ve already employed everything in their FAQs about avoiding their spam filters. We use DKIM and have a healthy standing with all email blacklists. I&#x27;m really not sure what other options we have left.\n======\ntherealmarv\nI've found out what is reason for this! It only affects text mails: Gmail is\nanalyzing the links in text mails and when it is adult content it refuses to\nmake them clickable! For me this is censorship. I'm an adult and I can decide\nmyself what I want to see and what not. I do not want Google to filter out\nadult links (categorize them!) and make them not clickable!\n\nSolution: Make HTML Emails\n\n~~~\ne79\nFrom something I posted on our site:\n\nFrom my experience, unless a change in a Google product degrades functionality\nfor a large portion of end users they aren't going to publicly acknowledge it.\nThey don't seem to have the same policies regarding transparency that other\ncompanies like FetLife do (we acknowledge when we mess up and break stuff!).\n\nWhen ReCAPTCHA went down last year I looked and could not find any\nacknowledgement of the issue from a Google employee. This was while FetLife\nand other large websites tweeted about it and posted in Google's product\nforum. All we had to go with was speculation and helping each other out with\nrecommendations for temporary solutions.\n\nLikewise, this change in Gmail may never be officially acknowledged. It may be\nrelated to the arrival of Google's new Inbox product or it may be related to\nsome sort of spam filtering they deployed into production. It doesn't appear\nto be specific to adult websites. Other large community websites are affected\ntoo. The result is that affected websites using plain text emails are now\nforced to switch over to HTML-based email. I could see a conspiracy theory in\nthere about Google pushing HTML-based email for a nicer looking Gmail/Inbox\nexperience. No matter what, I think it's very unlikely we'll ever know what\nchange caused this or why.\n\n------\ne79\nSomeone e-mailed me to let me know that a discussion forum they post on has\nrun into the same issue. Seems like we are not the only one...\n\n------\ndangrossman\nUse a link shortener (perhaps buy a domain of your own for it) to avoid\nlinking to your domain?\n\n~~~\nSomeone1234\nLink shorteners are pretty heavily penalised in email since spammers use the\nsame trick to bypass the same filters.\n\n------\nChristianBundy\nIs your domain name fetlife.com?\n\n~~~\ne79\nYes. (Site is NSFW, by the way)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBeyond Intelligent Machines: Just Do It (1993) - mr_golyadkin\nhttp://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/trs/93-03/93-03.html\n======\nbenbendc\nThanks Don for that mention of the old paper, which is still on the right\ntrack. My new paper appeared on line Friday and will be temporarily freely\naccessible:\n\n> Shneiderman, Ben (2020). Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence: Reliable,\n> Safe & Trustworthy, International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction,36,\n> 6 (Published Online March 27, 2020).\n> [https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2020.1741118](https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2020.1741118)\n\nI have spent a year developing these ideas, but the evolution was dramatic,\nbased on thoughtful feedback from the 25+ people mentioned in the\nAcknowledgements. Speaking at U-W, Stanford, UBC, NSF & ONR and elsewhere\nhelped repeatedly reshape my arguments. All that commentary added to the\njournal editors’ confidence that this was an important paper, so they fast\ntracked reviews & production and gave it priority in the publication queue.\nPlease send this link around to your colleagues, where appropriate.\n\nFeedback welcome... Stay healthy... Ben\n\n~~~\nDonHopkins\nWoops, due to obscure formatting syntax issues, the link you included didn't\nget hypertextified, because the line was indented, so it formatted it as code\nwithout links. (Principle of Least Astonishment Violation!)\n\nWhat a great coincidence that you just happened to publish a new version of\nthis paper, and thank you for dropping by and sharing it!\n\nHere's a clickable version of that link:\n\nShneiderman, Ben (2020). Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence: Reliable,\nSafe & Trustworthy, International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction,36, 6\n(Published Online March 27, 2020).\n\n[https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2020.1741118](https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2020.1741118)\n\n~~~\ndang\n(I've fixed the formatting in the GP now.)\n\n------\nDonHopkins\nI love this article! I worked with Ben Shneiderman at HCIL, and when he sent\nme a copy of this article to review, I was inspired by the \"Dynamic Queries\"\nof his \"Dynamic Home Finder\" demo, to implement something like that for\nSimCity (the Frob-O-Matic window). [Video and transcript below.]\n\nHere are some of the main points of his article:\n\nDon't label machines as \"intelligent\".\n\nIt limits the imagination. We should have greater ambitions.\n\nEnable humans to accomplish tasks that weren't before possible, instead of\ntrying to enable machines to accomplish tasks people can already do.\n\nPredictability and control are desirable qualities. Give users the feeling of\nmastery, competence, and understanding, sense of accomplishment.\n\nThe \"intelligent machine\" label limits or even eliminates human\nresponsibility.\n\nIf you treat machines like people, you're likely to end up treating people\nlike machines.\n\nBen Shneiderman called his lab HCIL instead of CHIL, to explicitly put Humans\nbefore Computers.\n\nHere's his description of \"Dynamic Queries\" and the \"Dynamic Home Finder\":\n\n>Dynamic Queries. These animations let you rapidly adjust query parameters and\nimmediately display updated result sets, which makes them very effective when\na visual environment like a map, calendar, or schematic diagram is available.\nThe immediate display of results lets users more easily develop intuitions,\ndiscover patterns, spot trends, find exceptions, and see anomalies.\n\n>Figure 2 shows a screen from Dynamic HomeFinder, a prototype interface for\nreal-estate agents that uses dynamic queries, written by Christopher\nWilliamson of UM. Users can adjust the cost, number of bedrooms, and location\nof the A and B markers, among other characteristics, and points of light\nappear on a map to indicate a home that matches their specifications. Clicking\non a point of light brings up a home description or image.\n\n>Users of Dynamic HomeFinder can execute up to 100 queries per second (rather\nthan one query per 100 seconds as is typical in a database query language),\nproducing a revealing animated view of where high- or low-price homes are\nfound-and there are no syntax errors.\n\n>Our empirical study of 18 users showed Dynamic HomeFinder to be more\neffective than a natural-language interface using Q&A from Symantec (C.\nWIlliamson and B. Shneiderman, The Dynamic HomeFinder: Evaluating Dynamic\nQueries in a Real-Estate Information Exploration System,\" Proc. SIG\nInformation Retrieval, ACM Press, 1992, pp. 338-346).\n\n[https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/ben/papers/Williamson1992dynami...](https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/ben/papers/Williamson1992dynamic.pdf)\n\nThat inspired me to implement a version of the \"Dynamic Home Finder\" in\nSimCity:\n\nMulti Player SimCityNet for X11 on Linux (Dynamic Home Finder / Frob-O-Matic\ndemo at 3:35).\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fVl4dGwUrA&t=3m35s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fVl4dGwUrA&t=3m35s)\n\nTranscript:\n\nHere's an interesting thing inspired by Ben Shneiderman.\n\nWe can look at the ... This is the \"Dynamic Zone Filter\".\n\nSo we are going to set this to be dynamic.\n\nNow it's going to show all the zones, but it's not going to show the ones that\ndon't pass this filter.\n\nSo this filter is currently all the way open.\n\nNow we're going to change population density.\n\nThis is a two-ended slider.\n\nThis is the segment of the population density, from zero to 81.\n\nSo everything else will disappear.\n\nSay I'm looking for a home. I want low population density. But I want high\nrate of growth.\n\nAnd now, these are the places that have low population density and high rate\nof growth.\n\nAnd then you can just interactivally ... So each of these filters out some of\nthe places.\n\nSo you can look at ... I don't want high traffic density. I don't want any\npollution. I don't want any crime. I want land value to be high.\n\nI'm getting pretty picky. So maybe I'll deal with more people. Lower rate of\ngrowth. I'm too picky about pollution. I'm too picky about land value. That's\nit.\n\nSo basically, Ben Shneiderman demonstrated this as the \"Dynamic Home Finder\",\nand I realized that SimCity has all these layers of information that it can\ndraw on, as fictitious as they are, to do that kind of real time, interactive,\nsmooth database query.\n\nIt's just a much higher bandwidth way to query a database than is\nconventionally used.\n\nAnyway, that was the dynamic zone finder.\n\nAlso: Here's some email I wrote to Ben about this article, after re-reading\nthe article again in 2009:\n\nDate: 28/02/2009 18:51 Subject: Re-reading \"Beyond Intelligent Machines\"\n\nA long time ago, you sent us (me, Brad Myers, Jack Callahan and Mark Weiser) a\npreview of your IEEE Software article \"Beyond Intelligent Machines\", which I\nran across and have re-read.\n\nIt's still delightful, inspiring and relevant today.\n\nSpeech synthesis and recognition has come a long way, to the point where the\n\"talking car\" scenario is quite common (TomToms that speak and recognize\nstreet names and addresses).\n\nBut I think the development of user-customizable user interfaces has been\ndreadfully stalled since HyperCard died.\n\nAn \"Interactive Learning Environment\" is a great description of what I'm\ndeveloping SimCity into.\n\nRemember when you visited CMU and I showed you the version of SimCity with the\ndynamic query feature, an \"homage\" to your Dynamic Home Finder? You could dial\na series of filters on spatial properties like population density, pollution,\ntraffic, land value, police coverage, etc. That code is now open source, and\nI'm redeveloping it!\n\nIt's now very easy to write Python code to dynamically query and filter the\nmap and data layers, and visualize with transparent colored tiles and pixel\noverlays, depending on arbitrary Python functions over the state of the map\nand its data layers.\n\nAnd it's also possible to script agents in Python!\n\nHere's a picture of SimCity with the traffic overlay enabled (showing\nyellow/orange/red haze over high traffic areas), with some PacMan agents,\nwhich are programmed to follow roads, go towards high traffic and eat the\ncars! Notice the clear road behind each PacMan!\n\n[http://www.donhopkins.com/home/images/SimCityPacMan.png](http://www.donhopkins.com/home/images/SimCityPacMan.png)\n\n    \n    \n        -Don\n    \n\nMicropolis Online (SimCity) Web Demo\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8snnqQSI0GE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8snnqQSI0GE)\n\nA demo of the open source Micropolis Online game (based on the original\nSimCity Classic source code from Maxis), running on a web server, written in\nC++ and Python, and displaying in a web browser, written in OpenLaszlo and\nJavaScript, running in the Flash player. Developed by Don Hopkins.\n\nSource Code:\n[https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis](https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis)\n\nHAR 2009 talk: Constructionist Educational Open Source\n\n[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/har-2009-lightning-talk-\ntrans...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/har-2009-lightning-talk-transcript-\nconstructionist-educational-open-source-simcity-by-don-3a9e010bf305)\n\n------\nmr_golyadkin\npdf of the original magazine article:\n[https://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben/papers/Shneiderman1993Beyond.pdf](https://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben/papers/Shneiderman1993Beyond.pdf)\n\n------\nhardmaru\nThanks for sharing. This is awesome-\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: What do you do when your DNS fails? - hayksaakian\n\nZerigo is having an outage right now on all name servers. This means all heroku apps using zerigo (the only DNS addon) probably don&#x27;t resolve at their usual domain.<p>What do you smart people who have a plan B do when SHTF with your DNS?\n======\nmike-cardwell\nI use three separate and unrelated providers. The first being myself (a single\nLinode VM), and the other two:\n\n[http://rollernet.us/](http://rollernet.us/)\n[https://puck.nether.net/dns](https://puck.nether.net/dns)\n\nThey both offer free backup DNS.\n\n------\nstaunch\nYou use a major provider. Providers that have the resources to defend against\nalmost any attack. I trust Route53, Dyn, and Cloudflare. You can also use your\nregistrar (but that often has limitations).\n\n------\ndanypell\nI just use CloudFlare. They just can't really afford going down, and if they\ndo, they're big enough to fix it quickly enough I guess.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: How do you plan for your vacation? - tixocloud\nHi guys,<p>We&#x27;re looking to understand more about how people plan for their vacations (i.e. well thought out? last minute? etc.) and thought HN-ers might have great insight.\n======\nReefAftershock\nMy general sequence for an overseas trip is to use a slew of tools:\n\n1\\. Choose the dates based on compatibility with my work schedule or\nparticular events I want to visit (e.g. festivals)\n\n2\\. Use Google Flights and matrix.itasoftware.com to get a idea of prices\n\n3\\. i. Use a shared Google Sheet to list out options and my schedule (e.g.\nplotting out a row for each day of the trip, to allocate out days to each\ndestination)\n\n3\\. ii. Check Google / Wikipedia / TripAdvisor to see the top attractions -\nadd these to the Sheet for reference while I'm on the trip, and also use this\nto make sure I've allocated the right amount of time to each place.\n\n4\\. Use booking.com or Expedia to find the best deals for accommodation\n(usually I use hotels)\n\n5\\. Book directly on the airline's website, since that often has the best\nprice.\n\n~~~\ntixocloud\nThanks. For any of these destinations, do have to do a lot of pre-planning\naround how to get the top attractions? Print maps, etc.?\n\n------\ndirktheman\nOh brother... For our summer holidays we always pack up our caravan. A couple\nof years ago I started to make a list of campsites that friends/family\nrecommend or that I stumbled upon on the internet. They’re all on a Google\nMap, and the list is sortable by country, region, stars and amenities.\n\nAlso a couple of years ago I made another document with possible routes (we\nalways make it a road trip, with anywhere between 3 to 6 stops in 3 weeks). I\ncurrently have a list of about 80 destinations, so we have a couple of\nhundreds possible routes to choose from. I make a general plan before we go\n(for instance this route from our last holiday to France):\n\nRoute Kilometers Nachten Datum\n\nEde – Le Crotoy 463 km 5 do 16/7 – di 21/7\n\nLe Crotoy – Seillac 372 km 2 di 21/7 – do 23/7\n\nSeillac – Brantome 319 km 6 do 23/7 – wo 29/7\n\nBrantome – Aydat 267 km 6 wo 29/7 – di 4/8\n\nAydat – Melun 403 km 3 di 4/8 – vr 7/8\n\nMelun – Ede 544 km\n\nThe beauty of this seemingly rigid planning is that I can adjust it on the\nfly. The weather sucks? We move on to our next stop. Campsite isn’t what we\nexpected? I can find another campsite close by that we’ll probably like in\nseconds. And because my route file I have a myriad of options to choose from.\n\nYou might think that a planning like this takes away the adventure, but it\ndoesn’t. A couple of years ago we liked our first campsite so much that we\nstayed the full 3 weeks there. I’m not bound by my planning, but it’s more\nlike a guideline that we can divert from.\n\nFor citytrips I book months in advance. I make a list of all the things I want\nto see and do, and plan them in advance. So our citytrips tend to be more\nrigid, but we like that. I would hate to waste time on finding out what's cool\nwhen you're at your destination, only to find out smart people booked in\nadvance and you're too late. (This got us in the crown of the Statue of\nLiberty, for instance. And I prepared a bicycle trip around the island of\nManhattan on forehand, since it wasn't a marked route there would have been no\nway to do it without preparation).\n\nI get that some people book last minute, but for me the preparation is just as\nmuch fun as the vacation itself.\n\n~~~\ntixocloud\nI love this. I'd love to somehow find the balance between planning and\nspontaneity. Thanks for the insight especially for the value of booking way in\nadvance.\n\nMay I ask how did you start gathering the list of all the things you want to\nsee and do? Or even how did you decide on the destination in the first place?\n\n~~~\ndirktheman\nSometimes I stumble upon things on the internet, sometimes I search specific\nthings in the surroundings. I'm a history buff and I love exploring old\nbunkers, so I search online for bunkers in the vincinity of, let's say,\nAvranches.\n\nSome destinations are chosen because of their convenient location. I can't\ntravel to the south of France in one long drive, so I need two stops that are\napproximately 1/3 and 2/3 on the way. I check Google Maps for interesting\ngeography, and do some research about towns/cities in the vincinity. This\napplies to other road trips as well: I found one of my favorite hotels ever\nthis way (Kasbah Tebi in Aït Behaddou, Morocco: a UNESCO-protected kasbah\nwithout electricity or running water.)\n\nFor the city trips I browse forums (TripAdvisor, Zoover) and 'things to do\nin...'-lists.\n\n------\nsiegel\nDo you mean in terms of actually planning the vacation? Or in terms of dealing\nwith being out of work?\n\n~~~\ntixocloud\nGood one. I mean actually planning a vacation.\n\n~~~\nsiegel\nI'm an obsessive planner. But I mix some spontaneity in, as well. Basically, I\nplan out the trip (including places to stay, etc...). But any particular day,\nif something strikes me, I allow myself to do something completely different.\nHowever, I always have a framework in place.\n\nIn terms of picking places to go, what are you interested in? I like food. So,\nI do Google searches for best food destinations. I read chowhound to get ideas\non where foodie travelers like to go.\n\nIf you have an interest, just do targeted searches for places to go for people\nwith those interests. Might sound too simple, but it works quite well for me.\n\n~~~\ntixocloud\nThanks. I'm building a mobile travel assistant but also wanted to learn how\ndifferent people plan their trips.\n\nI was planning a massive trip for my family and it took a lot of great effort\nbut also left me feeling that I needed to have the Internet with me in case of\nan emergency.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nExperiment: Unit testing isn't enough; You need static types, too  - fpgeek\nhttp://evanfarrer.blogspot.ca/2012/06/unit-testing-isnt-enough-you-need.html\n\n======\ndavesims\nThe sample size of this study is statistically too insignificant to draw the\nconclusions given. The counterfactuals to the claims of dynamic type advocates\nwere already true and provable, so even if the sample size of the codebases\nstudied were statistically significant (not to mention vetted for _quality_ of\nunit test as well as _coverage_ ) the conclusions are nevertheless trivial.\n\nIn addition, the hidden assumption is that all static and dynamic typing are\ncreated equal, i.e., since Haskell is statically typed and Haskell appears to\nhave caught Python bugs that unit tests did not, therefore Java will catch\nbugs in a Ruby codebase, C++ will catch bugs in a JavaScript codebase, etc. Of\ncourse this assumption is gratuitous. Haskell in particular has a specific\nsort of type checking that is far different from Java's or C++'s, for\ninstance.\n\nFurther, not all _dynamic_ systems are created equal. Ruby, for instance, I\nthink can be shown to require fewer lines of code to achieve similar\nfunctionality to, for instance, Java. Fewer lines of code, should in principle\nmean fewer opportunities for defects. Dynamic languages with metaprogramming\nfeatures like Ruby's or Smalltalk's should in principle be able to eliminate\nmore code duplication than an environment like C++. This aspect of dynamic\nlanguages should be taken into account, again with a statistically significant\nsample size, and weighed against bugs caught by static typing.\n\nThe study is interesting as a preliminary investigation, but the conclusions\nshould have been much more modest, proportionate to both the sample size, in\nterms of % of production codebases and the extremely important idiosyncratic\nnature of Haskell vs. other static typed environments. Something like: \"The\nstudy has shown Haskell's type system will catch some bugs not caught in an\notherwise well-covered Python codebase. These bugs could _in theory_ have been\ncaught by unit tests, therefore it is recommended that when using a dynamic\nlanguage, more care must be taken to cover these types of bugs.\"\n\nThat would have been a more appropriate and modest conclusion, consistent with\nthe data, than the sweeping generalization \"You need Static Typing.\"\n\n~~~\nefarrer\nI (the author) appreciate the feedback. I believe that many of your criticisms\nare addressed in the actual paper. First of all I completely agree that my\nsample size is too small for a conclusive proof. I mention in the paper that I\nhope that others will try and replicate this experiment on other pieces of\nsoftware. I do think it's appropriate when conducting an experiment to publish\na conclusion, not that the experiment will constitute proof (or an established\nscientific theory), but as a conclusion to the study that others can try to\nconfirm or refute.\n\nI also mention in the paper that it would be beneficial to conduct this\nexperiment using different type systems for the reasons that you stated above.\n\nThe argument against static typing that I was testing didn't mention any\nparticular type system nor any particular dynamically typed language, it was a\ngeneral argument that stated that unit testing obviated static typing. Because\nthe argument was so general and absolute I felt that any static type system\nthat could be shown to expose bugs that were not caught by unit testing would\nbe enough to refute the argument. I was not trying to prove that _any_ type\nsystem would catch bugs not found by _any_ unit tested software. The paper\nalso points out that I'm trying to see whether unit testing obviates static\ntyping in practice, in theory you could implement a poor mans type checker as\nunit tests, but my experiment was focused on whether in practice unit testing\nobviates static typing.\n\nFinally I believe that my conclusion in the paper was at least a bit more\nmodest than that of the blog post. The lack of apparent modesty in the blog\npost was caused more by a lack of ability on my part to accurately summarize\nthan an inflated sense of accomplishment and self importance.\n\n~~~\ndavesims\nThanks for the response! I appreciate the effort you went to here, this was no\nsmall task you set yourself to.\n\nI appreciate the clarification. I think now I see better where your emphasis\nwas: the purpose of the paper was to refute an argument, and of course the\nlevel of burden of proof is different and far less in that case. I think this\nmisunderstanding on my part is what caused me to call the conclusions\n'trivial' -- too strong and dismissive language on my part anyway.\n\nThe irony is, you were attempting to do to the unit-testing-is-sufficient\nargument what I was attempting to do to what I _assumed_ yours was: provide\none counter-example to falsify a broad and generalized thesis.\n\nThat said, I think I would have liked to have seen your original unit-testing-\nis-sufficient argument punched up and qualified into something a little more\nreasonable and real-world. As you stated the argument, it seems like a straw\nman to me. It seems one could reduce your version of the argument to something\nlike: \"Dynamic languages with unit test coverage will always catch errors that\nstatically-typed environments will.\" And of course this is far too broad and\nunqualified a statement, and that is precisely why all you needed was one\ncounter-factual to refute it. You didn't even need a handful of Python\nprograms, or 9 or 20 or 100 errors to prove your point. You only needed one,\nas you stated above. This is why the burden of proof for your thesis was so\nsmall, but also why, in my opinion, even with that reduced scope and more\nmodest conclusion, we haven't really learned much.\n\nAs someone who has spent most of my career in statically-typed environments\nand the last 6 years or so mostly in dynamic environments, and also as someone\nwho has made _something like_ the argument you were attempting to refute, I\nhave to say I would definitely never have made such a brittle and unqualified\nstatement as the one you refuted in your paper. To put it more directly, I\nthink I'm probably a poster-child for the kind of developer you were aiming\nyour thesis at, and I don't feel that my perspective was adequately or\nreasonably represented. More importantly, having looked at the examples given\nin your paper, I may have learned a bit about the kinds of errors that Haskell\ncan catch automatically that some coders might miss in a dynamic environment,\nbut not much useful to me in my everyday work context.\n\nI think a more reasonable version of the argument, but more qualified and\ntherefore requiring a far larger sampling of code to prove or refute, would be\nsomething like: \"Programs written in a dynamic language with adequate or\nnear-100 percent unit test coverage, are no more prone to defects than\nprograms written in a statically-typed language with a comparable level of\nunit test coverage.\"\n\nI agree this is a very important conversation to have, and again kudos to the\nwork you put in here. Obviously people have strong opinions both directions,\nand the discussion, however heated at various moments, is an important one, so\nthanks for this!\n\n------\ncageface\nI'm convinced that dynamically typed languages are a transitional technology\nthat will be superseded once we develop type systems that are both usefully\nstrict but also flexible.\n\nAfter over ten years working in dynamic languages I'm very happy to have a\ncompiler on my side again.\n\n~~~\ndochtman\nSeems to me that that's what static typing proponents have been saying for\nyears (if not decades), and it still isn't true.\n\nThat said, I'm currently hacking on a compiler to see if I can come up with a\ndesign for a static language that's almost as pleasant to use as a dynamic\none, so I'm not completely hopeless. But it certainly seems like the data\npoint that until now no such superior type system (strict but flexible) has\nbecome widely popular should not be underestimated.\n\n~~~\ncageface\nThat's because it takes years or even decades to really get this right, like a\nlot of other sophisticated technology. Look how long it took to get the JVM to\nwhere it us today. This is fundamental research and hard stuff.\n\n------\nglenjamin\nI applaud the effort to try and dissect the problem scientifically.\n\nIf a whole program has 1 bug due to being implemented with dynamic types over\nstatic types, and that bug has gone unnoticed, then it can't be particularly\nimportant.\n\nThe other common proposition is that dynamically typed languages are faster to\nwrite in than statically typed languages. If this is true then we need to\ncompare the saving in development time with the cost of the bugs which go\nundetected.\n\nMy gut feeling says that this line of analysis is never going to prove that\nstatic typing in inherently \"better\".\n\n~~~\njohnkchow\nFrom my personal experience, the saving in development time is very much real.\n\nI used to work on .NET, and you'd have to program against crazy, non-intuitive\npatterns in order to have your code \"clean\" (I hated IoC containers as well as\nwriting all that boilerplate code for Attributes. And for Java, remember that\nhilarious post about Factory-Factory-Factory patterns\n<http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.219431?>)\n\nI'm not saying statically typed languages are bad. Type errors always bite me\nthe ass in Ruby, but it's a small price to pay (IMO) for better\nmaintainability.\n\nEDIT: By the way, it sounds like I'm an ignorant dynamically-typed lover. I'm\nnot, I still yearn for those type safety net, but I'm just speaking from a\npragmatic perspective.\n\n~~~\ncageface\nThe kinds of static type systems you find in C# & Java are too primitive.\nSomething like Haskell with perhaps a little less religion about mutability is\na whole different story.\n\n~~~\nmichaels0620\nDoes Scala fit your idea of something in between? It has nice type inference\nfeatures and does not require pure immutability.\n\n~~~\ncageface\nPersonally I like Scala but I think it's too complex and a little too clever\nto escape the FP niche. I'd be happy to be wrong about this.\n\n~~~\nsoc88\nInteresting. I never perceived Scala to be in a functional niche. As far as I\nknow most people consider it to be an object-oriented language first and\nforemost, with functional features.\n\nRemoving inheritance would have made the language (and every other language,\ntoo) a lot easier, but seeing that people cope with C# or Java quite well I'm\nnot sure about the merit of the \"complex\" claim.\n\nComparing the C# and the Scala spec is very enlightening, even though they\nhave different writing styles of course (so I won't bother bringing up page\nnumbers).\n\nChecking and realizing which \"features\" are in one language, but not in the\nother, is very helpful to gain some insight into this topic.\n\nWhat do you think?\n\n~~~\ncageface\nI don't think page counts of specs or feature lists really tell you that much.\nI didn't find it that hard too get up to speed in Scala but it seems to scare\naway too many Java people.\n\nMy main criticism is that it allows too much syntactic flexibility.\n\n~~~\nbad_user\nI'm a programmer that in general prefers dynamic languages. Recently I've\nstarted writing production code in Scala for a couple of web services for\nwhich I really needed the performance and flexibility of the JVM.\n\nScala does have problems. But NOT the language. I find the language to be\nextremely elegant and well designed.\n\nThe problem lies with the community. I find Scala libraries to be an\nabomination of taste and common-sense. I don't know why that is, but in\ngeneral I stay away from libraries commonly used by Scala developers.\n\nFor instance I prefer JUnit over ScalaTest, I prefer JAX-RS (DropWizard) over\nScalatra or Play. I prefer Maven over SBT.\n\nOf course, you could say that the language itself invites this nasty style of\nprogramming, because the syntax is too flexible and the features too powerful.\nHowever I strongly disagree.\n\nFor instance I've worked with a lot of Ruby and Python libraries over the\nyears and most popular Ruby/Python libraries are extremely well designed, easy\nto use and easy to look under the hood. Ruby on Rails for instance was not\npretty, however starting with version 3 it went through a major refactoring\neffort and now the codebase is clean and easy to follow; while being one of\nthe easiest to use and full-featured web frameworks ever built.\n\nUnfortunately when picking a language, you do have to rely on a community and\nan ecosystem of libraries. However in the case of Scala, if you don't like the\nstyle of the current community, you can just pick from the thousands of\nalready available and mature Java libraries.\n\n~~~\ncageface\nDavid Pollak has long been one of Scala's greatest champions but his grudging\nacceptance that Scala is hard, from a lot of experience in the field, is worth\na read:\n\n<http://blog.goodstuff.im/yes-virginia-scala-is-hard/>\n\n~~~\nbad_user\nYeah, but Scala is hard in the same way that Ruby is hard.\n\nYou can use a subset that's easier, however the usage of the more advanced\nlanguage features need a level of understanding that's beyond the capabilities\nof many developers.\n\nAnd this is in fact true of most mainstream languages. Java may be an easy\nlanguage to learn, but Java isn't just a language, but a platform - and as\nsoon as beginners start messing around with multi-threading (since multi-\nthreading capabilities in Java are in your face), then all hell breaks loose\n... from this point of view, Scala may in fact be easier to deal with than\nJava is for beginners.\n\nAnd for instance I see people complaining about the method signatures exposed\nby the collections API. I can't read those signatures very well myself,\nhowever in the case of a dynamic language, such as Ruby, you'd have to look at\nthe source-code to see what the method actually returns. So IMHO, even if\nthose signatures are complicated, at least you've got signatures to look at.\n\n~~~\ncageface\nI really don't think so.\n\nScala requires a more disciplined mindset. David Pollak actually developed\nLift in response to problems he had managing big Rails projects so I don't\nthink he would be advancing this analysis if he didn't think Scala was harder\nthan Python/Ruby.\n\n------\nAngryParsley\nI think most people would agree that these two circles overlap on a Venn\ndiagram:\n\n    \n    \n        (    Bugs found by unit tests (     ) Bugs found by type-checking    )\n    \n\nThe disagreement is how much. Also, type-checking is free[1], while unit tests\nhave to be manually written.\n\nI'm glad someone spent a lot of time trying to answer this question, but I\ndon't think it will affect my choice of language in any new project. I like to\nwrite code in the languages I like, and bugs be damned.\n\n1\\. A common argument is that static-typed languages slow development. I'm not\ntouching that land-mine.\n\n~~~\nGoladus\n> 1\\. A common argument is that static-typed languages slow development. I'm\n> not touching that land-mine.\n\nIf you claim type-checking is _free_ , the counter-argument is not that it\n\"slows development.\" The counter is that type-checking is _not_ free because\nit incurs measurable costs. You may sacrifice dynamic features, you may have\nto add declarations and type casts-- these are all costs whether they \"slow\ndevelopment\" or not.\n\n(Simple solution: don't waste time trying to claim type-checking is free and\njust focus on the benefits.)\n\n~~~\nPeaker\nI am not claiming static typing is free.\n\nBut it is also untrue that you have to \"add declarations and type casts\". With\ntype inference, you don't actually have to.\n\n~~~\nGoladus\nBut you have to use a language with type inference. That's still a cost. Maybe\nnot a big one, but that was my point (and I'm definitely nitpicking a bit, I\nrealize that.)\n\n~~~\ndllthomas\nA constraint is only _possibly_ a cost - if it forces behavior you wouldn't\nhave chosen otherwise.\n\n~~~\nGoladus\nTrue, but free usually means freedom from both cost and restraint, so the\npoint doesn't change much. I should have said \"constraint\" rather than \"cost\".\n\nThough the original commenter did follow-up, clarifying that the common\ninterpretation of \"free\" doesn't closely match the point he'd intended to make\n\n~~~\ndllthomas\nFair.\n\n------\nafrozenator\nThe author really needs to be complemented on rewriting swathes of code from\nPython to Haskell.\n\nIn Google, in my project, we've had runtime errors in Python code, due to\nwrongly spelled variables(although that is a different problem), and type\nerror, something a compiler would have caught.\n\nStrong type checking is something that I truly like about Haskell and OCaml,\nI'm reasonably convinced that once my program has passed the typechecker, it\nis logically correct. Though debugging in Haskell is truly a different\nballgame altogether (I'm a Haskell noob).\n\nI'll stop here lest this turns into a flame war.\n\n~~~\nkingkilr\n\n        I'm reasonably convinced that once my program has passed the typechecker, it is logically correct\n    \n\nYup, this is one of my favorite things about Haskell, that's how I know that\n<http://bpaste.net/show/32033/> is a totally correct program.\n\n~~~\ndons\nIf you're hoping to catch a specification error, don't use a type like\n`Integer -> Integer`, which doesn't capture the specification except in a most\ngeneral sense.\n\nJust as you should write good tests, that actually test for useful properties,\nso you should write good types -- and get useful proofs back from the compiler\nas a result.\n\n~~~\nkingkilr\nI wasn't trying to catch the error of \"program author is a moron who doesn't\nknow the difference between Fibonacci and factorial\". Were I trying to catch\nthat error I would have been aware of it, and then much less likely to write\nthe bug in the first place. This is a truism that is well accepted by testing\nproponents: which tests you write are incredibly important, and you need to\nwrite your tests first in order to avoid a curve fitting problem (so to\nspeak). Any non-trivial test would have shown my function to be very broken,\nwhat type would you have used to represent that so it wouldn't compile?\n\n~~~\ndons\nNumerical algorithms suffer from a paucity of types. So either you enrich your\nnumerical type hierarchy, or you prove an implementation matches a model, e.g.\nfor fibonacci <http://stackoverflow.com/a/8434107/83805>\n\n~~~\nkingkilr\nI don't have a response to that, other than to say, now you know why I decided\nto write compilers instead of pursue a graduate degree in computer science.\n\n~~~\nPeaker\nIf you write compilers, it would be really beneficial if you had a curiosity\nabout the state of the art in programming languages.\n\n------\nkingkilr\nIf you can convert a program from one language to another (which is non-\ntrivially different), in the time it takes to complete your masters, I'm\npretty sure it wasn't a very interesting program. Further, the quality of the\ndevelopers is going to play a large role in how effective any tool (and make\nno mistake, static typing is a tool) is. This is not intended as a disparaging\nremark to the authors, but in the 30 seconds I spent reviewing each of these\ncode bases, I was totally unimpressed: none of them seemed to follow PEP8, and\nseveral of their test files weren't even unit tests, they were just a random\nscrip that appeared to exercise a tiny part of the codebase. I therefore\nconclude that the methodology used in operating this experiment was flawed\nand, consequently the conclusion cannot be taken as scientifically valid.\n\n~~~\nscott_s\nI have not looked at the programs, but programs don't have to be long to be\ninteresting. There are many \"interesting\" programs under 100 lines of code -\nand they can be important if they form the kernel of a larger program.\n\nAlso, the author responds to a similar point in his comments:\n[http://evanfarrer.blogspot.com/2012/06/unit-testing-isnt-\neno...](http://evanfarrer.blogspot.com/2012/06/unit-testing-isnt-enough-you-\nneed.html?showComment=1340076330696#c8509818811145591834)\n\n~~~\nkingkilr\nThe author doesn't really respond to the point, he simply says they were non-\ntrivial in complexity, which may be true, but that doesn't mean they're non-\ntrivial in their dynamacism (is that a word?). Moreover it in no way responds\nto the claim that these codebases aren't very good.\n\n~~~\nevincarofautumn\n_Dynamicity_ or _dynamicness_.\n\n~~~\ndllthomas\nWhat's wrong with \"dynamism\"?\n\n~~~\nevincarofautumn\nI considered it, but _dynamism_ refers to personality and philosophy, while\n_dynamicity_ is just the condition of being dynamic.\n\n~~~\ndllthomas\nThe Wikipedia disambiguation for Dynamism (last edited in March) includes:\n\n\"Dynamism (computing), When any process in computer is using Dynamic\nmanagement methods for its processing/computing/memory management/parallelism\nhandling for being able to give more user friendly work that are more easy to\ninteract and modify.\"\n\n... for whatever that's worth.\n\n------\ndmethvin\nThe lack of static types really comes into play not _inside_ a library, but in\nthe interface between the external code and a library. Note that at least a\nfew of the bugs that were found involved invalid API inputs. From the library\nwriter's view it's not a bug because those values are not in the domain of\ndefined behavior. From the caller's view it's a PITA that the library doesn't\nyell at them when they pass it garbage. Of course, _they_ could find the\nproblem with unit tests but the further up the food chain you get the more\nscarce unit tests tend to be.\n\n------\nswannodette\nStatic types or static analysis?\n\n    \n    \n      * KLEE: Unassisted and Automatic Generation of \n        High-Coverage Tests for Complex Systems Programs  \n        http://llvm.org/pubs/2008-12-OSDI-KLEE.html\n      * Erlang Dialyzer \n        http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/dialyzer.html\n      * Datalog based systems \n        http://www.cse.msu.edu/~cse914/Overheads/mmcgill-java-static-race-detector.pdf\n    \n\nIf you want static analysis hard coded into your language - what feature set\ndo you want to support? The following support different styles of programming\nthus have _very different_ static type systems.\n\n    \n    \n      * Standard ML / OCaml\n      * Haskell\n      * Scala\n      * Typed Racket\n      * Qi\n    \n\nAnd there's still the question that some kinds of extremely useful programs\nare very difficult to write in popular languages with strong static typing.\nminiKanren, a flexible embedding of Prolog and Constraint Logic Programming\ninto Lisp, comes to mind here. I've seen versions of miniKanren written in\nHaskell and it abandons the most powerful feature of miniKanren - it can be\ntrivially applied back on the language it is written in!\n\n~~~\nIsTom\nDialyzer is not very good. We've been using it, but it rarely catches anything\nnon-trivial. On the other hand Haskell has a better support for unit tests\nthan many of dynamic languages.\n\n------\ntimclark\nInteresting, but worth remembering, as Rich Hickey says, every bug has got\npast both your unit tests and your type checking.\n\n~~~\nbarrkel\nThat statement, though, is almost content-free. It's a truism. If you don't\nhave type checking, then every bug has gotten past your unit tests; but some\nproportion may have been prevented with type checking. And vice versa. The\nstatement doesn't say anything about the value or non-value of unit tests or\ntype checking.\n\n~~~\nmike_ivanov\nNo, it's not content-free, at least when put back into context.\n\nIt's like coffee. If your coffee is shitty (complect), then no amount of sugar\n(unit tests) or cream (type checking) will make it any better.\n\n~~~\nbarrkel\nYour coffee analogy also says nothing about whether sugar or cream are better\nthan one another, or if either is necessary.\n\nThough I can guarantee you that either sugar or cream with only 0.1% coffee\ncontent will still be usable as sugar or cream for other purposes, so I can't\neven agree with your analogy taken to its limit: that no amount will make the\ncoffee better, because enough will make it usable for other things.\n\nIn fact, unit testing and static type checking are largely orthogonal to the\ncomplecting issue that Rich was getting act. Unit testing and static typing\nwill both increase complexity; they are both ways of making assertions about\nthe behaviour of the code, and for working code, they should both actually be\nredundant. But that doesn't mean, as a practical issue, that we should do away\nwith either or both. We're fallible. Saying the same thing twice or three\ntimes increases the probability of finding something inconsistent if our\nstatements are not representative of the Platonic ideal we're trying to\nexpress.\n\n------\ntimruffles\nI wish more of these open questions in coding (and everything) had people\nmaking such a good effort to research them! There never is a simple answer, or\nthey'd not be an open question.\n\nReally inspiring, painstaking piece of work.\n\n~~~\nefarrer\nThanks for the compliment, one of my goals is to put the science back in\ncomputer science.\n\n------\ndrharris\nIt is definitely refreshing to see some actual evidence in something where\narguments tend to be based on speculation, experience, or opinion. Now, we\njust need someone to research Emacs v. Vim, Tabs v. Spaces, etc.\n\n~~~\ncrazygringo\nDon't forget about braces versus indents, and above all, semicolons or not! :)\n\nOn second thought, let's forget about them after all...\n\n~~~\nDeestan\nAny development environment where there exists a _rule_ on Braces versus\nIndents is a place I'd stay well away from.\n\nPut braces where they make the code readable. Use indents instead where they\nmake the code more readable.\n\nAnd if you _do_ need a rule, make sure it's based on actual need. I.e. start\nthe discussion with \"the past two months we've had 4 non-trivial bugs which\ncould have been avoided if we enforced braces.\", _not_ have a bunch of people\nbicker about their Personal Preferences (usually goes by the name \"Best\nPractices\").\n\n~~~\nsimias\nI disagree. I prefer a development environment that settles on a coding style,\neven if I don't like it, rather than chaos. I find reading code using multiple\ncoding style painful.\n\nIt also ends the bikeshedding, \"that's how we do it there, deal with it\".\n\n~~~\nDeestan\nSuch binary arguments bother me - Things won't degenerate to complete and\nutter chaos unless you go and add strict rules for everything. Good developers\ntend to follow the style of code they're in, and over time converge on a\nconsistent style within projects or at least modules.\n\nIf they _don't_ respect existing style, you don't have a \"lack of rules\"\nproblem. You have a lack of education problem. Do code reviews. Point out to\nBob that he's making the code less by letting the style alternate.\n\nBut you're sort of touching on what I meant when you say you don't want\n\"chaos\". If you can point at a code file and say \"this is chaotic and hard to\nread - we could improve that by converging on style X or Y.\", then we could\ncome to some agreement.\n\nPersonally, I'd rather deal with slight aberrations in style than having a\nflaming row and angering half my team.\n\n------\npimentel\nHow can you translate from python to a static language, when the code is\nwritten for the interfaces, and not types? How willl you translate a function\nreceiving a (possibly custom) iterable, when the function doesn't care about\nthe type, but just whether it implements a next() method?\n\n~~~\npja\nHindley-Milner type systems to the rescue! (With a sprinkling of Haskell style\ntype classes.)\n\n    \n    \n      f :: Iterable a => a -> b\n      f x = (do stuff with x...)\n    \n\nf is defined to be constrained to accept only on types which implement the\nIterable interface (however that's defined) as it's first argument and the\ncompiler (or interpreter) will enforce that constraint.\n\n~~~\nemillon\n> Hindley-Milner type systems to the rescue!\n\nYou're implying that all type-systems derived from HM have a form of bounded\npolymorphism. They're not, for example OCaml does not have type classes (you\ncould probably encode a lot into objects, though).\n\n~~~\ncarterschonwald\nFalse, ocaml has type classes now! (or maybe I'm thinking of coq)\n\n~~~\npja\nI don't think so: If you want the equivalent of Haskell type classes in OCaml\nthen you have to either use a functors or some sort of class IIRC. I'm sure\nOleg will have done something though.\n\nI believe they're experimental in Coq.\n\n~~~\ncarterschonwald\nyup, you're right, you got to use functors or go home.\n\nYeup, some folks did show the functors + modules \\equiv type classes in some\nsense, for system F or a variant thereof. Theres also an oleg approach too I\nthink.\n\n------\neta_carinae\nThe advantage of statically typed languages has a lot less to do with tests\nand everything to do with tools. IDE's can do very little when no type\ninformation is available, and most automatic refactorings require human\nsupervision when performed on dynamically typed languages (read this for\ndetails: [http://beust.com/weblog/2006/10/01/dynamic-language-\nrefactor...](http://beust.com/weblog/2006/10/01/dynamic-language-refactoring-\nide-pick-one/) ).\n\n~~~\nthebluesky\nTooling and performance are two largest advantages. Disadvantage is more\nverbosity, but it's a trade-off.\n\nWith dynamically typed languages I find that you still need to worry about\ntypes, but you have to trace through the code to figure out what type a\nparticular variable is (esp. if you're not the only one working on a project).\nIn a statically typed language that information is readily available.\n\n~~~\ngnuvince\n> Disadvantage is more verbosity, but it's a trade-off.\n\nWhen I was learning Haskell, I wrote a program to count the value of a\ncribbage hand. The code was half the length of an equivalent JavaScript\nprogram.\n\nThe expressiveness of a language has more to do with the length of a resulting\nprogram than static or dynamic typing.\n\n------\ndspeyer\nFor the cases I was easily able to count, this is one bug per thousand lines\nof code. I realize that's a handwavy metric, but it's enough to say we're not\ntalking about a ton of bugs.\n\nOn the other hand, successful conversion of these codebases is a very\ninteresting result. Apparently static, at least static as sophisticated as\nHaskell, actually can express most of the idioms in standard python. This\nsurprises me, as I've never seen a C++ program of significant complexity that\ndidn't resort to void*s somewhere.\n\n------\nnjharman\n> \"frequently cited claim by proponents of dynamically typed programming\n> languages that static typing was not needed for detecting bugs in programs\"\n\nWho says that? There's trade offs, multitudes, in choosing paradigm /\nlanguage. It's never so black and white (except for academics, and twits who\nlike to argue more than code)\n\nI did not read paper, don't have time for 60 pages of pointlessness.\n\n~~~\nzopa\n> \"Who says that?\"\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4137283> comes pretty close to making\nthat claim, and that's just on this page.\n\n> \"There's trade offs, multitudes, in choosing paradigm / language. It's never\n> so black and white\"\n\nSometimes, it is. Most people don't use COBOL anymore, with reason; better\nlanguages came along. Programming is still a new field in the scheme of\nthings. It would be strange if our languages were perfectly optimized, with no\nroom for improvement without offsetting costs.\n\n> \"twits who like to argue more than code\"\n\nSome of us like to do both :) But go program; we won't stop you...\n\n------\ngtani\nrelated:\n\n[http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=106&thread=3...](http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=106&thread=335110)\n\n[http://tratt.net/laurie/tech_articles/articles/a_modest_atte...](http://tratt.net/laurie/tech_articles/articles/a_modest_attempt_to_help_prevent_unnecessary_static_dynamic_typing_debates)\n\n[http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2011/12/27/Type-\nSyste...](http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2011/12/27/Type-Systems)\n\n<http://blog.jcoglan.com/2011/12/29/black-box-criteria/>\n\n<http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/slides/Types.ppt>\n\n------\ngouranga\nSlightly different view here.\n\nI think the nirvana of typing is hybrid static/dynamic and it hit us with\nvisual basic 6. I don't think anyone really noticed it though.\n\nIt supports traditional type checking by the compiler, runtime type inference\nand dynamic typing without boxing. Each case can be chosen at will. It\nsupports all theoretical programs, supports unit testing and runtime\nassertions.\n\nThe least buggy software I've seen over the years was written in vb6 (by\nprofessionals, not the crap that haunts the web).\n\nNow I'm not saying we should all switch to vb6 but some of the ideas may be\nworth investigating.\n\n------\njknupp\nThe author's interpretation of the argument in favor of dynamic languages\nseems purposefully naive. I don't think that any proponent of dynamic\nlanguages or unit testing claimed that the mere presence of unit tests\nguaranteed bug free code or that it was impossible to have type related errors\nat run time if you have unit tests. It's a more nuanced argument asserting\nthat the benefit to programmer productivity when using dynamic languages\noutweighs the cost of potential type related errors not possible in a\nstatically typed language. Whether it has merit or not is the question I hoped\nthis paper would answer.\n\n------\npetercooper\nOn a related topic, another interesting paper:\n[http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse590n/10au/...](http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse590n/10au/hanenberg-\noopsla2010.pdf)\n\n------\n6ren\nRegarding bugs, I think it's clear that static typing does detect more errors\n- the issue is whether it's worth the trouble.\n\nI think a more significant difference is the inertia of the codebase, how\ndifficult it is to change. Static types make it harder to evolve interfaces;\nbut unit tests make it even harder.\n\nBut both the above are just fiddling: the real advantage of static typing is\nruntime speed; the advantage of dynamic types is development productivity. In\nthe history of programming, the latter always wins.\n\n~~~\nPeaker\n> But both the above are just fiddling: the real advantage of static typing is\n> runtime speed; the advantage of dynamic types is development productivity.\n> In the history of programming, the latter always wins\n\nHave you used Haskell? Speed is just a (nice) bonus. Type safety is not about\nspeed at all.\n\nAnd I am much more productive in Haskell than I could be in a dynamically\ntyped language. I can turn the code base inside out, and trust the type system\nto guide me to everywhere that needs to be fixed. When I compile it, it\n_almost always_ works. I barely have to test anything.\n\n------\njhrobert\nThere is a case for \"optional typing\". It's speed. I guess everyone agree on\nthis one.\n\nBetter than \"strict\" typing, sometimes \"hints\" about the type would be enough.\n\nie: \"ii often integer\" versus \"ii\" or \"ii integer\"\n\nFrom then on, those who favor strict typing would be happy, those who favor\ndynamic typing would be happy and those who favor \"efficiency\" (whatever this\nmeans) would be happy.\n\nLet's close this silly debate.\n\n------\nanamax\nIt's almost always the case that applying a new set of tests finds more bugs\nso this experiment doesn't actually prove its conclusion.\n\n------\ndebacle\nThe better programmer you are, the less you need static types.\n\nBut a group of ten programmers create a codebase that is only as good as the\nworst programmer's code.\n\n~~~\nsimias\nNo true scotsman much?\n\n~~~\ndebacle\nI don't know how you could contrive what I said to be cognitive dissonance.\n\nIf you have a team of N good programmers, you can probably write without\nstatic typing. If you have a team of N-1 good programmers and 1 bad\nprogrammer, you should really use a language static typing.\n\n~~~\nsimias\nI just read the first part of your comment as \"no true programmer would need\nno filthy static type checking\". Sorry if I misunderstood.\n\nI find it hard to correlate use of static typing with development experience,\nthat's all.\n\n~~~\ndebacle\nIf you are a good programmer, you don't need typing, you don't need\ninterfaces, you don't need many things that make bad programmers better\nprogrammers.\n\nYou might still use them, and there's nothing entirely wrong with that, but\nyou probably don't need them.\n\nThis is why so many people have problems writing JavaScript.\n\n~~~\ndllthomas\nEven if you're a good programmer, typing and interfaces make refactoring\nquicker and typos easier to find.\n\nThis is why so many people have problems writing in JavaScript.\n\n~~~\ndebacle\nTyping makes refactoring quicker only if you're relying on it. If you're not,\nthen it will actually make refactoring slower.\n\nInterfaces will not make refactoring faster, just easier.\n\n~~~\ndllthomas\n> Typing makes refactoring quicker only if you're relying on it.\n\nAs opposed to?\n\n------\nsoc88\nI wonder how long it takes until the first one picks Java to argue against\ntyped languages.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow Projections for Linux Smart Phones Mislead - unwiredben\nhttp://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bruce-Byfield-s-Blog/How-Projections-for-Linux-Smart-Phones-Mislead?utm_source=Linux+Update&utm_campaign=Linux_Update_100_Pi-Top_2015-12-16\n======\nprofeta\nwell, there is still none. So even the most conservative projection of \"one\"\nwould have missed.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: How you promote your crowdfunding campaign? - scoptimal\n\nHi all,<p>We&#x27;re running our crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo, and got wonder how to drive traffic to our campaign ?\nWe had great traffic in the first 3 days, but after that we went down drastically.\nWe are advertising non-stop on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit &amp; everyplace we can find, but still not getting the traffic we looking for.<p>Any suggestions ?\n======\nscoptimal\nAnyone ?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBuilding a Home Lab Beginners Guide - ashitlerferad\nhttps://haydenjames.io/home-lab-beginners-guide-hardware/\n======\nm0xte\nI had a fairly large home lab once. I had a fully topped out SPARCserver 1000E\nand a disk enclosure in my bedroom. I also once lived with an E450 on the\nkitchen table for a month. But they’re noisy as hell, inconvenient, expensive\nto keep running and expensive to feed with power and take up a lot of room and\nthus are not compatible with family and general sanity over time. They become\nneedy balls and chains.\n\nSo roll on to now I’m using a silent build Ryzen windows desktop with 64Gb of\nRAM and a couple of mundane SSDs that I fire up VMs in virtualbox as required.\nAt night it gets turned off. I’ve got a $5 digitalocean box that runs all my\npersistent linux stuff. If I want to play with networks it’s done with GNS3.\nOffice 365 runs my email and all my stuff is sync’ed with onedrive and a\ncouple of offline SSDs occasionally when I get nervous. My network is the\nfritzbox my ISP gave me plugged into the back of the desktop via Ethernet.\nThat’s it!\n\nMy life is better for this. I hope people grow to realise this is much less of\na mental burden over time which gives you more head space and a clean context\nswitch away if you need it.\n\n~~~\nzouhair\nYour conclusion is wrong, you just found out homelabs is not a hobby for you.\nPeople have way more expensive and time consuming hobbies.\n\n~~~\nm0xte\nMy conclusion is that my home lab was a learning exercise that comes to an end\nand that having physical hardware was actually detrimental to it.\n\nI still have a home lab. It's just virtualized.\n\n~~~\nzouhair\nWhatever works for you, just don't generalize it.\n\n------\nneilv\nOne of the reasons I still run some servers and play with networking gear at\nhome, even when SaaSes, Linode, and EC2 are so affordable, is as an exercise\nin being somewhat more self-sufficient, than depending on \"other people's\ncomputers\" for everything.\n\nEspecially since my entire industry seems determined to see how far it can\npush spying on its users, leveraging power over them, etc. (All evidence is:\nno real limit yet.)\n\nAlso, it's just fun to play with gear.\n\nCurrently, I want to engineer for reliability, audible noise, power\nconsumption, and price. (Will a RasPi with its SD card and wallwart be\nreliable enough? What about an Atom box, with Noctua fans, and mirrored 2.5\"\ndrives? Do I really want a pfSense box and some external WiFi APs, or can I\nmake OpenWrt on plastic home routers do everything, and isn't Ubiquiti gear\npretty but closed? Remember the price doubles if I want to have cold spares.\nHas the novelty of the big blue Palo Alto Networks box worn off yet? Can I\ndiscreetly mount my rack console in my living room IKEA, without a deep 4-post\ncabinet, nor the official rails kit?)\n\nToys get traded on /r/homelabsales, craigslist, and eBay.\n\n~~~\nmaxioatic\n> Also, it's just fun to play with gear.\n\nExactly my reason as well. RaspberryPi k8s cluster of some old Pi 3's I had\nlying around - why not? Hardware seems to generally last longer than you\nexpect, and can be repurposed for, at the very least, a fun Sunday morning.\n\n> Do I really want a pfSense box and some external WiFi APs, or can I make\n> OpenWrt on plastic home routers do everything, and isn't Ubiquiti gear\n> pretty but closed?\n\nJust went through this too. The research and rabbit-holing down different\nhardware paths is so much fun. I ended up with Ubiquiti over pfSense; it is\npretty, hot dang.\n\n------\nnum\nDon't forget the amazing content on:\n\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab](https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab)\n\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeLabPorn](https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeLabPorn)\n(SFW)\n\nAnd the more fringe but OCD-pleasing\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/cableporn](https://www.reddit.com/r/cableporn) (SFW)\n\nr/homelab has been a source of great inspiration since 2012.\n\n~~~\nbostonvaulter2\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/)\nis an adjacent interesting subreddit\n\n------\nocdtrekkie\nMostly skimmed over here, but a key point is that you should be trying to\nbuild a cheap version of what you'd use at work. The closer you are to your\nwork environment, the more you can applicably \"try things\" at home, and bring\nthem to work with you. And since most of us are pretty busy, it's nice to not\nhave to learn a whole new skill set just for maintaining our home networks.\n\n~~~\nlallysingh\nI don't get why we'd pay for and maintain the test environment the employer\nshould have. Should I bring my own printer and laptop to the office too?\n\n~~~\nmynameisvlad\nI think this misunderstands the point of the parent comment. They're not\nsaying \"replicate your work environment so that you can test your things at\nhome\", they're saying \"replicate your work environment so you can learn best\npractices and apply your learnings at home when you're at work\".\n\nThere's a stark difference in that the things you host and do with your home\nsetup are your own, but the learnings and technologies can be applied more\nbroadly.\n\n~~~\nbregma\nYes, you should subsidize your employer by investing in your own specialized\ntraining and your own specialized equipment. With all the cutbacks the\ngovernment isn't doing that for them any more so it's up to you to deliver\nsolid value to the shareholders and quarter-over-quarter growth.\n\n~~~\nmynameisvlad\nEither you're exceptionally dense or you're purposefully ignoring the point.\n\nIf you're setting up a homelab, you might as well use industry best practices\nfor it.\n\n------\nHavoc\n>Think of a home lab as a place where you can fail in the privacy of your own\nhome.\n\nThis is the exact opposite of my thinking.\n\nI want my experiments to happen on a remote server I don't care about...not on\nmy home network that I really don't want to compromise/open up by accidentally\nmisconfiguring something.\n\nVPS are cheap - I'm paying like 7 bucks for a 16 gig / 4vcore. (Admittedly a\nonce off deal). 7 bucks to have the blast radius of my networking noobness\nsomewhere else seems like a bargain.\n\n~~~\n2OEH8eoCRo0\nThere's been a lot of failure over here. I'd break my home server almost daily\nwhile tinkering. Now that it's been rock solid for about a year I kind of wish\nit would break and give me a problem to solve.\n\n~~~\nashitlerferad\nHahaha I know that feeling!\n\n------\nharha\nAny recommendations on home networking?\n\nI couldn't figure out what the established approach would be to having access\nto the infrastructure over a consumer internet connection and without exposing\nthe rest of the network. All resources I've seen so far don't give enough\nbackground to seem reliable.\n\n~~~\nreincarnate0x14\nSeconding that Ubiquiti Edgerouter if you want a mostly GUI guided config.\nThey're solid enough for gigabit internet in the better models and the builtin\nfirewall and tunneling options are good enough for most purposes -- the recent\nreleases also let you install Wireguard, which is getting to be the preferred\nlow-effort VPN solution for most platforms if you have a limited set of remote\nclients.\n\nPFSense or OPNSense, which are based on FreeBSD, are also great if you have\nany remotely modern spare x64 computer lying around with two network ports.\n\nIPv4 is purely outbound NAT, IPv6 I have several subnets carved off that will\nallow IPSEC traffic to certain local hosts for some of my remote office setup\nbut I've mostly switched to using Wireguard from basically everything that\nhits the Edgerouter and drops me onto a private v4 and real V6 space.\n\nWorks great for my phone and laptops from basically anywhere and tunnels all\nmy traffic back to my homelab and then out to the internet again. I have\nWireguard uses UDP port 443 on v4/v6, which now that QUIC is common enough can\ntunnel out of every network I've tried, even normally hyper-anal corporate\nones.\n\nLocally I have a Microtik switch with 10G fiber between my work machines and\ngigabit ethernet to the rest of the house, then a few Ubiquiti Unifi \"semi-\npro\" APs for the house and back yard.\n\nPrimary storage host is running FreeBSD serving iSCSI from local zfs raid with\nconsumer NVME SSDs as cache on top of generic and easily replaceable SATA\ndrives. I still have this IPV6 accessible with IPSEC so I can basically treat\nit like local storage from all over the world, but I'll probably turn that off\nnow that I'm using wireguard nearly all the time (IPSEC is faster since the\ntiny EdgeRouter processor isn't having to handle it).\n\nIt's pretty neat being basically \"in your home office\" from almost anywhere\nwith decent internet.\n\n~~~\nreilly3000\nGreat write up and nice setup! I’ve been running Unraid on a fast box for my\nlocal storage host and using NFS and SMB with dismal performance. I’m looking\nat 10gbe and building up my cache pool, but as it stands it takes 40+ seconds\nfor my laptop to mount and browse even a small share. I’m intrigued by zfs +\niSCSI- do you think it would give me some improvements over SMB?\n\n~~~\nreincarnate0x14\nProbably highly dependent on what you're doing with it and whether or not your\nSMB implementation supports the direct RDMA extensions.\n\nIn my case its mostly because I tend to run VMs on various older semi-retired\nmachines with limited or slow local storage that I only turn on when I need\nthem, and VMware's VMFS is cluster-aware, so it really doesn't matter which\nhypervisor is the one I end up spinning it up on.\n\nI haven't dealt with Unraid specifically but there are a lot of caching and\nnetwork parameters that can wildly affect performance -- VMware for example\nwants to do synchronous writes on network storage for obvious reasons, and\nhaving a safe write-cache and large transfers with enough in-flight commands\ncan make a night and day difference.\n\nIf you're primarily just using NFS/SMB as file shares then getting iSCSI\nworking probably isn't going to be a good use of your time versus figuring out\nwhy the existing setup behaves that way -- Samba and SMB performance tuning\ncan be a frustrating experience but iSCSI is far more opaque and inscrutable\non Windows particularly.\n\n------\nt0astbread\nMaybe a bit off-topic but what do people actually use for monitoring/intrusion\ndetection on small-scale to hobby projects that are internet-connected? I feel\nlike the \"established\" monitoring frameworks require too much maintenance work\nand care to really be effective but the operating systems generally used for\nthis kinda work have a way too large surface area to just leave running on\ntheir own. (Hello Unikernels?)\n\n~~~\nsystem2\nI am using Sonicwall NSA2600. Works well, has 300mbit SSL filtering, very\nrobust rules and nat configuration. Most small/medium size companies can use\nthe model I am using. Has a very nice web interface too. Comes with SSL VPN\nand Global VPN.\n\n~~~\nbrendawalsh\nWhat do you pay for licensing the services?\n\n------\nbregma\nThe author of the article can afford all this stuff because he keeps a 'little\nwoman' locked in his basement ironing his shorts.\n\nSure, the article if full of techporn but I haven't read anything so\nunabashedly sexist in nature since the late 1970s. It was truly cringeworthy.\nReminded me of reading Popular Mechanics from the 1950s or a pulp SciFi novel\nby Murray Leinster or something.\n\n~~~\nstryan\nSource? The only time the author mentions his wife in the article is that\nshe's working full-time and would dislike some server placements.\n\n------\narthurcolle\nPLEASE BACKUP YOUR STUFF NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO!\n\nI lost 50GB of options data going back 4 months yesterday + 2.5TB of currency\ndata going back 20 years because I never checked that my backups were running.\n\nPlease don't let this happen to you.\n\nEDIT: Literally just write a script that backs up flat files or binaries to S3\nevery N intervals.\n\n~~~\ndang\n_Please don 't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or\nphrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized._\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).\n\n(Sorry about your stuff.)\n\n~~~\narthurcolle\nWhats the markup format? I've tried the common MD shortcuts but they never\nwork, maybe I'm just a trog\n\n~~~\ndang\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)\n\n------\nAnimats\nFor people who are _really_ into system administration.\n\n~~~\nj45\nThe work has come much down by many orders of magnitude. It's possible to have\ndigital ocean/cloud type experiences locally.. pretty reasonably.\n\n~~~\nfermienrico\nHow can you do that? Don't you need a proper static IP from the ISP unless you\nhave some sort of a mega business connection?\n\nEdit: thanks for the responses, I didn't know this was even possible.\n\n~~~\nhenryfjordan\nIn my experience, your ISP will only give you a new IP address if your modem\ndisconnects for a while. You can easily use the same IP address for over a\nyear.\n\nYou can also use something like DuckDNS to have a backup in case you are away\nfrom home and your IP changes, you can still find your server. You could even\ntheoretically write a script that then checks DuckDNS for your IP and updates\nthe record with your Domain Registrar automatically (assuming they have an\nAPI)\n\n~~~\nsyshum\nThere are also prebuilt Docker images that will update duckdns for you if you\nare using docker in your lab\n\n------\ntjbiddle\nWhat I'm most fascinated by is that this is a solo blog that has sponsors and\nplenty of affiliate links, and has over 4 million readers. Very curious what\nkind of revenue it's pulling in. Can't seem to find a search function to see\nif the topic was already covered.\n\n~~~\nxupybd\ni'd be interested if it comes close to covering the cost of the setup. It\nlooks beautiful but I bet it comes at a price.\n\n------\nabfan1127\nas a hardware engineer, I got all excited it would talk about budget friendly\noscilloscopes, dmms, and power supplies. Still a fun read.\n\n------\nheisenzombie\nI currently have a home server with a bunch of USB hard drives hanging off it,\nwhich I pool using ZFS.\n\nThat was fine when I only had 2 drives, but now my \"USB Octopus\" is getting\nsilly.\n\nWhat's the next step in hardware if I want my server to access a bunch of\ndisks?\n\n~~~\nSteveNuts\nSynology is really high quality stuff and will pay for itself in reduced power\nusage. Any ancient rackmount gear you buy will guzzle electricity\n\n~~~\nj_walter\nTheir hardware is great, but pricey. Used server can be had for a lot cheaper\nand you can get the same functionality with Xpenology. Not sure the\nelectricity savings outweighs the upfront hardware costs.\n\n~~~\nTijdreiziger\n> Is Xpenology Stable?\n\n> As a person interested using Xpenology you should keep in mind, that this is\n> not an official Synology release. Although it’s based on the official\n> Synology DSM which is the same as whats found on the actual Synology\n> devices, it’s not officially supported by Synology. You could get support\n> from the community for this software, but not from the company itself.\n> Typically once you’re up and running things are very stable without any\n> issues but just know that calling support is not an option when you’re not\n> running on an official Synology device.\n\n~~~\nj_walter\nI'm sure everyone has different experiences, but it's been super stable for\nme. The biggest issues come with the software upgrades and certain\nconfigurations may have issues, however the Xpenology forums have massive\nsupport and everyone lists how their upgrade experience went across multiple\nplatforms (VM and bare metal). It was worth it for me.\n\n------\nsystem2\nRouter =/= Firewall.\n\nIf you are planning to host stuff, or even just to protect your own things,\nyou better get something like Sonicwall or similar.\n\nAt my home I have a sonicwall, synology nas, 2 dell servers, power supplies.\nNot in a single closet though. To me, the server security is far more\nimportant than the looks. Spend the most money on firewall, rest is just for\nlooks. Patch panel for home setup sounds excessive because I am not going to\nrun all my cables thru my garage. Have individual switches in every room if\nyou want. Most living spaces need only one or two ethernet cables, rest of the\ndevices can be wifi easily.\n\n~~~\ntwicetwice\nMaybe a noob question, but why do you need a dedicated firewall appliance?\nWhat is it doing for you that just closing all ports and then selectively\nreopening as needed (my current solution) won't do? What kinds of threats is\nit protection your network from?\n\n~~~\nreilly3000\nAlso mostly a noob, but my understanding is that most of the value comes from\nhaving a subscription to the firewall vendors threat database, and using the\nbox’s deep packet inspection to verify gnarly stuff isn’t coming over port 80\nor other common protocols. You want it in an appliance so that you can be\nassured of isolation from the rest of your network. You can run firewall\nsoftware in a VM, but you would still want that VM’s host physically isolated\nor with dedicated NICs for the VM.\n\n------\ntuananh\ni'm temped to buy the used enterprise equipment but in the end, i ended up\nbuying small Intel NUC machines for my homelab.\n\npower consumption of these NUCs is almost negligible while one Dell R620 with\ndual CPU takes 150-200W at idle.\n\n~~~\nflipbrad\nI looked at NUCs and settled for a used ThinkPad. Integrated keyboard,\nmonitor, mouse and battery, and potentially even more judicious with power\nconsumption, but oomphy enough to run image recognition on my photo collection\nwhile hosting lots of dockers. Backup to a local NAS that I only switch on\nduring the backup window, and backup remotely to backblaze B2.\n\n~~~\ntuananh\ni bought used NUCs too. new one cost way too much :D\n\n------\nMivLives\nKinda curious what the noise level is with those fans. I know there's no\nproper rack mount servers there that need the fans running full blast, but I\nimagine 4x120mm fans is still loud.\n\n~~~\nCieplak\nAny rackmount server will be a nuisance. I ran rack servers at home for years\nbut recently replaced my servers with ATX form factor machines, which are\nsuper quiet, ventilate much better and still stack nicely. There are plenty of\nATX Xeon motherboards that support ECC ram.\n\n~~~\nj_walter\nDepends on your storage needs. More than 6-8 hard drives and getting an ATX\nform factor machine is near impossible, while many brands/generations of rack\nmount servers fit the bill for cheap.\n\n~~~\nfomine3\nNow it's possible thanks to Fractal Design's Define 7 XL.\n\n~~~\nj_walter\nSo for the just under the price of a used 4-5 year old server you can get that\ncase...not really practical for someone on a budget.\n\n------\ngog\nAnybody knows if those kinds of power strips mentioned in the article are\navailable for the Europian market\n([https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KFZ98YO/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KFZ98YO/))?\n\nI've been searching for something like that a few months ago but couldn't find\nanything that has schuko sockets on the other side.\n\n~~~\nj45\nYou can search for PDUs (Power distribution units) in North America to get you\npointed in the right direction.\n\n[https://www.amazon.com/s?k=pdu](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=pdu)\n\n------\na_imho\nI was expecting how to genetically modify yeast in the kitchen or something.\n\n------\ntilolebo\nI'm trying to remember the name of these really small, nearly portable homelab\nservers.\n\nThey're quite expensive but looked like a good homelab alternative for people\nlacking space for a proper rack.\n\nSomeone knows it?\n\n~~~\ncommotionfever\nI am very happy with my proliant microserver gen10 plus. holds 4x 3.5\" drives,\nis absolutely tiny, good at virtualisation, quiet-ish, upgradeable\n\n~~~\ntilolebo\nVery nice! I configured my NAS a few weeks ago, went for a fractal design core\n500.\n\nNow I'm looking for a smaller, more beefy machine with less storage capacity,\nfor some @home experiments.\n\n------\nbradly\nOne note... the modem recommended is only DOCSIS 3.0, not 3.1, so it will not\nsupport gigabit networking.\n\n------\ntomc1985\nGreat, now the time-honored nerd practice of running shit out of your\ncloset/garage has been picked up by hucksters as \"homelab\"ing. If it's\nanything like the damage that YouTube did to computer building, next thing you\nknow this practice is going to suddenly turn into aesthetics and bragging\nrights.\n\nI am SOOO SICK of watching this highly technical and aesthetically\ninconsiderate hobby turn into an issue of neckbeard Modern Living. A new\ngeneration of boutique providers selling storage racks at silly markups.\n\nPretty soon you're going to have the worst kind of hipsters -- keyboard nerds\n-- obsessing over the material used in rack standoffs or something. Because\nyou know that aged Persian rubber dampens vibrations +.03db better...\n\nYay.....\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: How do you find a mentor? - aryamaan\nI think, the role of a mentor in our life is understated and another issue is finding a suitable mentor.<p>One can learn things on their own (after job&#x2F;school) but a mentor can help you narrow down the things you want to learn and supervise your journey.<p>Please note I am not talking about spoon feeding but someone who helps accelerate your learning.\n======\ndozzie\nWhenever I hear about searching for a mentor, I imagine some guy that simply\nwaits for illumination to happen, by osmosis, I suppose. I see searching\nspecifically for a mentor as a kind of fashion or supersitition of these days.\n(Mind you, this is merely an association, a first impression that I have when\nI see such questions.)\n\nDo you have a plan how to use this \"mentoring\" thing? A concrete idea what you\nwant from a mentor and how your work would look like? Do you have anything to\nshow him/her, so the mentor has any foothold for comments?\n\nThis is a good piece of article about exactly that:\n[http://pindancing.blogspot.com/2010/12/answer-to-will-you-\nme...](http://pindancing.blogspot.com/2010/12/answer-to-will-you-mentor-me-\nis.html)\n\n------\nonion2k\nFind someone who you think you'd like to be mentored by and ask. Obviously you\nneed a bit of realism (Mark Zuckerberg isn't going to mentor you), and it\nhelps to have an existing relationship on _some_ level, but seriously, you\njust have to make the first move.\n\n------\nexolymph\nYup, what onion2k said. Email people you admire and ask if you can help them\nout.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPerils Of Credentialism - MIT Example - helwr\nhttp://blogs.adventnet.com/svembu/2007/04/26/perils-of-credentialism-mit-example/\n\n======\npgbovine\nFrom the end of TFA: _Bill Gates could never have been the Dean of Admissions\nat Stanford, but the Computer Science building at Stanford carries his name._\n\nsigh, i wish people would stop using Gates, Zuckerberg, and other drop-outs\nfrom elite colleges to rally up salt-of-the-earth populist propaganda like \"oh\nyou can come from humble down-to-earth roots and be a college drop-out and\nstill be a billionaire!\" many of these guys came from highly-educated, upper-\nmiddle-class families and went to elite private high schools and colleges. the\ntrue populist heroes are lurking here amongst the HN readership ... people who\nhave successful autonomous small businesses that are making a good living.\n\n~~~\ndabent\nI think that's a really good point.\n\n\\- Gates, Allen: Harvard\n\n\\- Bezos: Princeton\n\n\\- Page, Brin, Yang, Filo: Stanford\n\n\\- Zuckerberg: Harvard\n\nAll these had the brains, drive and position to at least get accepted by a\ntop-notch school. But that got me thinking, what exceptions are there? I\nthought of Jobs/Wozniack, but what other big hitters out there went somewhere\nbesides and A-list school? I know they are out there, especially the multi-\nmillion dollar hits, but naturally, the press doesn't mention someone's\nschool, unless it's a big name.\n\n~~~\nmwerty\nPaul Allen went to Washington State University.\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen>\n\n------\nmkrieg\n\"To maintain intellectual honesty and consistency, MIT should announce that it\nwould henceforth stop requiring formal credentials in evaluating candidates\nfor this and other similar jobs. In other words, future candidates like her,\nwho feel confident in their ability to perform the job, shouldn’t feel the\nneed to invent degrees on their resumes. Come on, you may say, how are they\nsupposed to find out who is a good candidate and who is bad. Well, they hired\nher based on an invented degree, didn’t they? Didn’t she work out OK for 28\nyears?\"\n\nI'm not following the line of thinking here. A single instance of a high\nperformer with fake credentials does not negate the fact that credentials tend\nto be a rough indicator of performance in many jobs.\n\n~~~\nmistermann\nThe same point that jumped out at me from the article. Which one of the\ndocumented logical fallacies is this?\n\n------\nhacer\nI entirely disagree with this article.\n\n[First a factual correction: the original job she applied for (some\nadministrative job) did not require the high-level credentials she faked.] Now\nmy opinion: Whether or not somebody is fit for the job is not for the\napplicant to judge but for the employer. You cannot fake something in order to\nseem well-fit. For the same reason that a student, who feels she is capable of\ndoing PhD level work, can't inflate her GPA. For the same reason that a\nstudent who feels she can make it through MIT can't add additional honors and\nawards to her MIT application. It is not about who can make it and do an OK\njob. For many positions, there are many more qualified applicants than slots.\nThe faking of the credentials is extremely immoral and pretty much nullifies\nher worth to me. Human frailty, you say? More like human greed? It's not like\nshe got caught faking credentials during her first year of employment. She was\nat MIT for 20 years. At some point she must have realized what she did was\nimmoral. 20 years is more than enough time to quit the job, without a public\nspectacle, just giving a personal reason, and going into some other business\nwithout faked credentials (maybe her own business, like she does now). Money\nmust have been too good to take the right path. PS: I am not bitter against\nMIT or MJ in particular; I actually was an MIT student admitted under MJ's\nleadership.\n\n------\ntrun\nFirst of all, this article is three years old. Second of all, Marilee Jones\nblatantly lied about her credentials for 28 years. Yes, she did a fantastic\njob while she was at MIT, but that doesn't change the fact that she lied. This\nis not an issue of credentialism, it's an issue of trust and integrity. As far\nas I'm concerned, what she did is on par with the kid from Harvard who was\nrecently charged with fabricating his life story...\n\n[http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/05/by_gl...](http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/05/by_globe_staff_60.html)\n\n~~~\nflatline\nEveryone makes mistakes - this was certainly worse than some but really, I\ndon't see how she would ever have had an opportunity to honestly correct the\nmistake after getting hired without this happening, so she had little choice\nbut to live with it. It does raise the issue of why she had to fake her\ncredentials - or even feel pressured to - to be considered for the job if she\nwas a good candidate without them.\n\n~~~\nJoeAltmaier\nShe could have honestly corrected her \"mistake\" by saying \"I don't have a\ndegree; I lied on my resume.\"\n\n~~~\nSapphireSun\nMany organizations have a policy that you can and will be terminated at any\ntime for lying on your application. If she admitted it, bam.\n\n~~~\nJoeAltmaier\nWhich has precisely Zip to do with being honest. Honesty isn't a sliding\nscale, where you say one thing if its good for you, and another if it harms\nyou.\n\n------\ngjcourt\nMIT is a beacon of intellectual integrity. As such, it is the duty of the\ninstitute to let her go. Condoning her actions would be condoning fabricated\ninformation, and thereby undermining the entire scientific research community.\nThey punish students with the same sort of rigor, why not the faculty?\n\n~~~\niamdave\nThis comment has said more than all others so far in this thread, and I agree\nwith it. While I'm of the camp of individuals that think the job market, and\nsociety as a whole should be more performance and output oriented versus what\na degree says (because for what it's worth, I should never have so much as\ngraduated high school yet here I am working for Samsung USA), allowing her to\nstay would have compromised the ethos of what MIT represents. Well stated\ngjcourt.\n\n------\njrp\nThe point of firing her isn't to get rid of a bad worker; it is based on game\ntheory. The firing hurts both MIT and the dean, but it should dissuade people\nfrom lying in these kinds of situations.\n\n~~~\nhouseabsolute\nDunno if they sent the right message. \"You will be able to get away with it\nfor half a lifetime but will have to pretend to be sorry when we find out.\"\n\n~~~\nendtime\n>but will have to pretend to be sorry when we find out.\"\n\nUh, they fired her. So the message is \"you'll get fired when we find out\".\nWhich seems like exactly the right message, given their goals.\n\n------\nrhettinger\nToo often, I see bloggers willing to give executives and public officials a\npass when they are caught in a lie. The rationale is that the people are\notherwise doing a good job, but the bloggers ignore the irony that part of the\njob was enforcing the rules and imposing judgments on others.\n\nIf you're a Dean who has ever kicked a student out of school for an honor\nviolation, I have no sympathy when you get called-out for lying. Too many\nstudents get kicked out of school and have permanent black mark on their\nrecord for similar offenses; why should the Dean get a pass.\n\nIf you're a former President whose job as chief executive is enforce the laws\nof the country, then I have a hard time having sympathy when people find-out\nyou've lied under oath. Too many people go to jail for perjury; why should the\nPresident get a pass.\n\nIf you're a former New York prosecutor famous for corruption cases, then I\nhave little sympathy when you've been caught hiding funds to pay a prostitute.\nToo many people are vilified for this; why should an Attorney General get a\npass.\n\nAll that being said, I don't judge this Dean, the former President, or the NY\nAttorney General. Instead, I judge the bloggers who have a double standard for\npeople they like.\n\n------\nDanielBMarkham\nThe reason she was let go had nothing to do with her lying, it had to do with\nher doing a good job for so many years.\n\nSome first-year employee with little visibility might be forgiven for lying\nabout academic credentials on her resume. Sweep it all under the rug. No harm,\nno foul. The Dean of Admissions with a wonderfully effective career and lots\nof praise could not.\n\n(Actually, after I wrote that I had second thoughts. The fact is that _any_\nchallenge to the idea that college credentials are critical to job performance\nin an academic setting must receive the most severe punishment.)\n\nI think there is a bit of populist rabble-rousing going on, but that doesn't\ndetract from the fact that there is a serious point here as well. In my\nopinion, after that much service to the university, somebody should have cut\nher some slack. Surely MIT is big enough to let in the occasional person of\ncompetence sans degree.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHustle 101: How to Make Any Startup Want to Hire You - seanjohnson\nhttp://www.onedayonejob.com/blog/hustle-101-how-to-make-any-startup-hire-you/\n\n======\npekk\nApparently (per the article) startups only employ people for customer\ndevelopment, copywriting, analytics and growth hacking. I wonder what happens\nwhen they decide to build a product or a piece of software. Or is it too old-\nschool to actually build something now?\n\n~~~\npavel_lishin\nI think the point was that these are positions that are easier to \"hustle\"\nyour way into with a minimal investment. (\"Read the books above for 30 minutes\na day, and you'll be an expert in 90 days!\") Compare this to becoming an\nexpert in C - 30 minutes a day for 90 days is not going to give you enough\nexperience to waltz into a startup and demand a job.\n\n(Also, in my mind, the word \"hustle\" occupies the same bucket as \"scam\", and\n\"30 minutes a day for 90 days\" sounds like a late-night informercial for\nweight loss.)\n\n------\nmobweb\nDoes anybody have another reading suggestion about growth hacking?\n\n------\nmalachismith\nPartial Cliff Notes for the works of Eric Ries.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSourceTree for Windows beta - bencevans\nhttp://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2013/02/14/sourcetree-for-windows-beta-signup/\n======\nhomosaur\nThat's good news for Windows users, their development tools really seem to be\ngetting simpler and better lately. I'm a huge fan of SourceTree in general.\n\nI formerly thought, \"why would anyone want to use a GUI for Git? It's just a\ncrutch so you don't have to use the CLI.\"\n\nThen I started actually using SourceTree a bit. I've changed my tune\nconsiderably. I think there's great benefit to using a quality GUI for Git now\neven though you still need to use the CLI.\n\nFirst, I became stuck in this intermediate user hell where I could do all the\nbasic stuff but didn't know the commands or quite how to get it done.\nSourceTree allows a very good way to get that done right now with the\nunderstanding that you just executed a command under the surface. It allows to\nexplore the capabilities of Git a little more than the CLI would and lets you\npunch over your weight in the meantime.\n\nSecond, I think having a high quality graphical representation of your Git\ntree in front of you helps you understand the structure of your tree and\nenables you to make more informed, better choices on the structure it takes.\n\nThird, I like using it for pushes, pulls, and merges simply because this is\nthe one place in Git I tend to make a typo and screw up data. Generally that's\nno big deal but once in a while you push something really dumb onto the origin\nremote and then feel really stupid about it. If it's yours one forced push and\nyou're good but if it's collaborative, you can cause someone a major headache.\n\nI do wish it were open source so I could rely on it going forward a little\nmore but clearly Atalassian has a decent business model and they view this app\nas a great tool into it. It even has a nice cataloguing feature where you can\nthrow in your Github and Bitbucket usernames and see all your online repos in\na list. I find this nice when needing all my git stuff on a different computer\nthan my primary.\n\n~~~\nvor_\n> I formerly thought, \"why would anyone want to use a GUI for Git? It's just a\n> crutch so you don't have to use the CLI.\"\n\nHonestly, I can't stand Git on the command line and always interact with it\nthrough a GUI. I feel like source control in general is unnecessarily\ncomplicated, but Git even more so.\n\n~~~\nbhauer\nAgreed. I've often made a point among colleagues that source control, because\nit's built by programmers for use nearly exclusively by programmers, has\nenjoyed very little user interface attention through its lifespan. Unlike\nother applications that have experimented and evolved their user interface\nrelatively rapidly, source control like build tools, is an area where there is\nlittle demand for UI improvement (and hence, little value in doing so).\nPutting aside proprietary and very expensive source control systems, the open\nsource options seem to align to the way we used computers generally in the\nfollowing decades.\n\n1970s: CVS\n\n1980s: Subversion\n\n1990s: Git (shifting Git to the 1990s even aligns it with the batch of\ndistributed OS research from that era).\n\nThis is especially reductive and somewhat mean-spirited, but my point is that\nusing Git gives me the feeling of using other types of applications from the\n1990s. Source control remains stuck in an era where computer programs appeared\nto be designed in part to appeal to the curiosity of developers who take pride\nin mastering complex systems, not for being eminently usable.\n\nWhen I say Git \"feels 1990s\" a retort is that I am a Git hater and should just\nuse Perforce or some other crummy commercial product. That misses the point.\nIt just feels like a tool from the 1990s, which to be clear, feels a heck of a\nlot better than a tool from the 1980s. But I live in the 2010s. I want a\nsource control system that does its job and gets out of my way. Again, to be\nreductive and mean, just like build tools, source control systems are a time-\nsink that captivate the attention of people who enjoy fussing with tools. It's\nnot that I don't like Git versus its real-world contemporaries, but I want Git\n+ 20 years.\n\n~~~\nMatthewPhillips\nBefore git (and DVCS in general) every company had a source control manager.\nYou could get a degree (and presumably still can) in revision control theory.\nThis was necessary then because a developer couldn't completely grock it _and_\nget real development done at the same time. Today I don't know if any git\nshops that have a full-time source control manager.\n\nSo, if the worst thing about this generation of source control systems is an\nunflattering UI... I think we have awhile until the next generation takes\nover.\n\n~~~\njules\nThe UI is an important problem, but also the needless complexity and leaky\nabstractions. This isn't limited to version control either, but is pervasive\nin all programming tools (IDEs/editors, build systems, programming languages,\nplatforms, etc.)\n\nThis is caused by extreme conservatism and dogma.\n\n\"GUIs are for noobs, CLI is better\"\n\n\"Everything should be text like the Unix gods intended\" (code in particular)\n\n\"Keyboard is faster than mouse\"\n\n\"Autocomplete? That just causes you not to learn anything\"\n\n\"Who needs semantic code navigation when you have grep?\"\n\n\"WYSIWYG? Use markdown or latex.\"\n\n\"What's wrong with the web? This canvas API is so cool.\"\n\netc.\n\n------\nstickydink\nDespite some people in my office proclaiming themself \"too hardcore\" to use a\ngit interface, I believe SourceTree is fantastic. When I used to work with\nwindows, I used TortoiseGit -- which is decent, but lacks some of the more\nadvanced niceties.\n\nCommitting portions or single lines of a file, remembering to push that pesky\nsubmodule, all becomes an order of magnitude easier and quicker with a decent\nGUI. The response to \"but it can't do everything, so I'll stick to CLI\", is\nsimple. The 5% of the time the GUI doesn't cover exactly what you need, the\nterminal is sitting right there for you... it doesn't disable it.\n\n~~~\ntiziano88\ngit gui allows you to do most of the advanced operations you mentioned\n(partial commits), and it has the advantage of coming preinstalled with git\nitself, which means that if you master that tool, you can find your way in\npretty much every other situation (new machine, deployment server, etc..)\n\n------\nimjared\nThis is great news.\n\nI was introduced to SourceTree for Mac when I started at my new shop and I've\ngotta say that I love it. I don't consider it a crutch so much as a part of a\nfaster workflow. I enjoy the ability to quickly see diffs, to pick and choose\nwhat files I want to commit with just a click+drag, and generally moving\nthrough simple git things (push, pull, commit, merge, rebase, resolve merge\nconflicts) with the click of a button or a keyboard shortcut.\n\nIt's not as powerful as using CLI (you can't perform an interactive rebase,\nfor example) but for the most part it fits my workflow of branching, merging,\nand pull requesting pretty nicely.\n\n~~~\njstepka\nAn interactive rebase is coming in the next version of SourceTree for Mac (~1m\nout)... the Windows version will have the functionality a few months later.\n\nCheers, Justen -- Bitbucket and SourceTree product manager\n\n------\njiggy2011\nSo git was developed specifically for development of the Linux kernel, but\nLinux users are the only people who only get GUI clients that look like warmed\nfeaces?\n\n~~~\nIronlink\nSmartGitHg is free for non-commercial use. I've only used it from Windows, but\nit supports Linux and Mac as well. I've been enjoying it, but I am by no means\nan advanced user. I just started working with branches, and as far as I can\ntell, the branch management SmartGitHg offers seems excellent. I'd love to\nhear what someone more experienced thinks about it, though.\n\n<http://www.syntevo.com/smartgithg/index.html>\n\n------\ncity41\nOur main git repo at work is huge (in just about every aspect: size in\nmegabytes, number of commits, number of branches, number of tags, etc) and\nSourceTree is incredibly slow. 20 minutes later I'm still waiting for\nSourceTree to load the main view for the repo. So is gitk on OSX (which\nlaunches Wish). Somehow IntelliJ has no problem with our repo and its git\nrelated functionality is snappy as can be.\n\n------\nmgkimsal\nSourcetree having the git-flow model built-in now is great - I'd really hoped\ntower would have added this, but they seem to have stopped any major feature\nadditions. I've moved to sourcetree for most day to day work and will be happy\nto point Windows-using colleagues to it soon.\n\n------\nhydrozen\nI am not the biggest fan of SourceTree's UI, but the killer feature that makes\nit really useful for me is that it makes it pretty easy to stage specific\nlines of a file or to discard some lines. They've done a pretty good job with\nthat and I use those features all the time now.\n\n------\ncontingencies\nI have been a SourceTree customer since before the Atlassian acquisition. I\nmade some feature requests and they were completed quite promptly and with no\nhassles. Since then I had the good luck to meet some of the Atlassian security\nteam in Sydney, who also put my faith in their suite.\n\nThe biggest thing I use SourceTree for over command-line git is cherry-picking\nbits of different versions of a file to merge. Also, if you have loads of\nrepos it can auto-announce changes on the remotes when you open it, which\nsaves a lot of command line hunting to stay on top of things.\n\nGreat tool, good team. Glad you're expanding.\n\n------\nDenisM\nI use SourceTree as a Mercurial GUI on a Mac and it's been awesome. I bought\nit back then when you had to pay for it, and it was worth every penny.\nDeveloper behind the app is also super-responsive.\n\n~~~\ndgesang\nAre there any features in SourceTree that TortoiseHg does not provide?\n\n~~~\nDenisM\nIn my experience tortoise does not refresh its view as changes are made, so if\nyou forget to push the refresh button, you may checkin too few files.\nSubjectively, tortoise also feels clunky compared to ST.\n\nI would also much prefer to use the same client on Windows and Mac, as I'm\nusing both.\n\n~~~\ndgesang\nThanks.\n\n------\nkamilafsar\nSourceTree is the best Git client out there. The best thing is: it's free!\nDon't know how long they'll keep it free though.\n\nNo more git hassle on Windows :-)\n\n~~~\nDenisM\nIt started as paid app, then was bought out by attlassian and made free to\npromote their hosting services.\n\n~~~\njack12\nInteresting the way it has circled back around. ISTR it was deliberately\nstarted as a paid mac-only app by Steve Streeting / sinbad after he switched\nto macos and decided trying to do the added services thing wasn't his\nfavourite, after years of running a consultancy service for the (primarily\nwin32) open-source project he had started, ogre3d.org.\n\n------\nMichaelGG\nI expect we'll see more of this kind of stuff, especially something from\nGitHub at somepoint. Now that Microsoft is going full-out with Git support in\nVS, you can bet there is going to be some top-notch support. I love Git\nExtensions, and SourceTree looks great, but the appeal of being able to have\nVS with work item, build, and Git all together is pretty strong.\n\n~~~\nConstantineXVI\nGitHub for Windows has been out for a few months now.\n\n<http://windows.github.com/>\n\n~~~\nMichaelGG\nGitHub for Windows is not really comparable to Git Extensions or other full\nGit tools. It seems like it's point is just to help nudge Windows users onto\nGitHub. I imagine GitHub will revamp this position, especially with respect to\ntheir bug tracking integration and so on.\n\n------\nbhauer\nExcellent. This looks especially well suited to my use-case.\n\nHowever, I'm already on board with Github for Windows and unless that causes\nme some unusual pain at some point, I'm loathe to bother changing just for the\nsake of changing.\n\nA big thank-you to both firms for investing the time to make Git more\n\"functional\" and less \"technical entertainment.\"\n\n~~~\nMattRix\nIn my experience, GitHub for Windows is great for basic commits, and that's\nabout it... Good luck doing a merge (or god forbid you actually have a\nconflict). It's fine if you're a single user, but the moment you're working\nwith other people you need to drop down into the CLI a lot (which is fine, but\nnot ideal). I do like using it as an easy way to get an overview of all my\nrepos and a quick way to link into the CLI for each repo, and to quickly check\nover commits.\n\n------\ndarklajid\nSo far we're using Git Extensions in our deployment here, but this looks\npromising.\n\nSigned up for the beta. Most of our users unfortunately have a dislike for\neverything CLI (.. =( ..), so in this environment it's either Git Extensions,\nthe upcoming VS 2012 native client or .. maybe this project.\n\n------\nprogramminggeek\nI love SourceTree for the easy visualization of progress of branches as they\nprogress. Using git flow at work, SourceTree makes the whole git experience\nbetter and more visual.\n\nNow my co-workers will finally have a decent Windows git app.\n\n------\nmountaineer\nWonderful news. For the occasional contributors on my team, I can't tell you\nwhat a pain it is for them to remember CLI switches and for me to have to\nconstantly remind them. I love SourceTree on the Mac.\n\n------\nbybjorn\nHaven't used SourceTree but TortoiseGit is excellent, escpecially if you\nmigrated from SVN and were used to TortoiseSVN :-)\n\n------\nmariusmg\nIt's Git AND Mercurial. Looks nice but i kind of doubt it will be better than\nTortoiseHg honestly.\n\n------\njmtucu\nIt's better than GIT Extensions?\n\n------\nfidz\nAnyone get the binary? Review perhaps?\n\n------\ngte910h\nI love sourcetree on mac.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: How to be more confident and people person? - codesternews\nIn the pressurized situation, I lose my confidence. I am not good people person but I think it is affecting me so much.<p>I am good in technology but could not explainand present ideas.<p>How to improve myself? Any books and suggestions are welcome.\n======\nkodz4\nPractice. Practice. Practice. My prof set up a small reading group when I was\nin college. 5-6 students would get together every week and discuss a\npreassigned paper. I was like you, lacking in confidence, hesitant to\ndisagree, handling confrontation badly etc. But the group created an\nenvironment where I could learn how to deal with these things. I could see\nothers fumbling about and realized it was not just me struggling. When I got\nthings right others encouraged me. All this slowly translated into increased\nconfidence.\n\nSo try and set something up like that with friends/people who want to see you\nimprove. Every week meet up and practice.\n\nAlso recommend Marshall Rosenburg's Non-violent communication. It really\nhelped me see certain things I was doing wrong and showed me ways to avoid\nthem.\n\n------\nsteve_g\nI think this book could be helpful. I've only skimmed it; I gave it as a gift\nto someone. All the parts I read seemed realistic, affirming, and practical.\n\n[https://www.amazon.com/Social-Skills-Guidebook-Shyness-\nConve...](https://www.amazon.com/Social-Skills-Guidebook-Shyness-\nConversations/dp/0994980701/)\n\n------\nguest__user\nI think you can start by avoiding saying things like \"I am not a good people\nperson\" You can try to understand what your benchmarks are for performance.\nMaybe you can say \"Sometimes i feel shy\" instead of \"I am shy\" . Do you see\nthe difference between the two?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Are we overcomplicating software development? - ian0\nI have recently been involved in the overhaul of an established business with poor output into a functioning early&#x2F;mid stage startup (long story). We are back on track but, honestly, my lessons learned fly in the face of a lot of currently accepted wisdom:<p>1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool for the job<p>2) Avoid microservices where possible, the operational cost considering devops is just immense<p>3) Advanced reliability &#x2F; redundancy even in critical systems ironically seems to causes more downtime than it prevents due to the introduction of complexity to dev &amp; devops.<p>4) Continuous integration seems to be a plaster on the problem of complex devops introduced by microservices.<p>5) Agile &quot;methodology&quot; when used as anything but a tool to solve specific, discrete, communications issues is really problematic<p>I think overall we seem to be over-complicating software development. We look to architecture and process for flexibility when in reality its acting as a crutch for lack of communication and proper analysis of how we should be architecting the actual software.<p>Is it just me?\n======\nSatvikBeri\nMany of these practices are popularized by Google/Facebook/Amazon but don't\nmake sense for a company with 100 or even 1,000 people. I try to focus on\nwhether a practice will solve a concrete problem we're facing.\n\nSwitching from Hadoop to Spark was clearly a good idea for our team, even\nthough it required learning a new stack, but there isn't a strong reason to\nswitch to Flink or start using Haskell.\n\nAgile makes sense when your main risk is fine-grained details of user\nrequirements, but not when you have other substantial risks, such as making\nsure a statistical algorithm is accurate enough.\n\nMicroservices probably reduces the asymptotic cost of scaling but add a huge\nconstant factor.\n\nRelational databases are the right choice 95% of the time, non-relational\nstores require a really specific use case.\n\nTDD is good for fast feedback in some domains, but for others, manually\ninvestigating the output or putting your logic into types is better. E.g. a\nlot of my time comes from scaling jobs that work on 10gb of data but crash on\n1tb, TDD is not that helpful here.\n\nContinuous integration mostly makes sense when you're making a lot of small\nchanges and can reliably expect a test suite to catch issues.\n\nIn short, ask the question \"when is practice X useful?\" instead of \"is\npractice X a good idea?\"\n\n~~~\nkosinus\nOne thing that bothers me is the 'relational databases are good enough'\nstatement, that is repeated in other contexts as well.\n\nBut especially here, where we're talking about reducing complexity, it feels\noff to me. PostgreSQL and MySQL seem to me like incredibly complex packages.\nSQL, the language, is not easy to master either; most programmers I meet know\nmostly basics. On top of that, there's a long ongoing history of security\nmalpractice.\n\nWhen talking about reducing complexity, CouchDB and Redis are far easier\nalternatives, in my humble opinion, though they go slightly against 'use the\ntools developers know'.\n\n~~~\npg314\nThe implementation of PostgreSQL is complex, no doubt about that. But if you\nneed strong data consistency and durability guarantees, it provides a rock-\nsolid foundation.\n\nSQL might take some getting used, but it is also not rocket science. It\nshouldn't take more than a week's study to master the basics. There is of\ncourse a lot of awful SQL code out there, exactly because most programmers\ndon't even know the basics. You can do incredibly powerful things in it that\nwould take 10x the code in an OO/procedural language. In my opinion dumping an\nORM on top is also not the best way to leverage the strengths of an RDBM.\n\nIt is slightly ironic that you bring up security malpractice in the context of\nPostgreSQL, when in the next sentence you advocate Redis as a far easier\nalternative. As was recently in the news the Redis defaults were for a long\ntime insecure (google for Fairware ransomware).\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\n> _In my opinion dumping an ORM on top is also not the best way to leverage\n> the strengths of an RDBM._\n\nI agree. Unfortunately, the way I see people usually using them is pretty bad\n- you should not let ORM-generated stuff dictate your business model. Database\nis a database. A storage layer. Business objects will _not_ map 1:1 to ORM\nobjects. Approaches like \"let's inherit from ORM class and add business-\nrelated methods\", in my experience, lead to total disaster. One has to respect\nthe boundary between storage layer and business model layer.\n\n~~~\nicebraining\nI'm aware of the different approaches (mostly from reading Fowler's PoEAA),\nbut currently we use an Active Record-style ORM with a few extra features\n(like Class Table Inheritance) and we haven't found any major issues with this\napproach. What was the worst case scenario you experienced with the 1:1\napproach?\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nOver the past 5 years I've been in two projects using 1:1 ORM Active Record ==\nbusiness model base approach. One completely failed in part because of this,\nsecond is barely manageable, but I managed to save it by moving business code\nmostly to the outside of Active Record classes.\n\nThe problem I encountered in those projects is the mismatch between storage\nmental model and business mental model, which lead to explosion of crappy code\n(AKA technical debt). In particular:\n\n1\\. the classes I need for business model _may_ have initially mapped well to\ndatabase tables, but over time they stop; business logic and model changes\nmuch faster than you'd like your DB schema to\n\n2\\. since many things in AR can fire SQL queries, you have to keep in mind the\nworkings of your database when doing almost every operation on your model;\nit's an abstraction leak\n\n3\\. code shooting off SQL queries is randomly called from all over your\ncodebase; it's harder to keep track of it and, if needed, optimize those\nqueries\n\nI like AR as a convenient API to get data from/to database, but given the\npoint 1., I eventually learned to isolate AR layer as something _below_\nbusiness model layer, so that the pattern is that business model is explicitly\nserialized and deserialized from database, instead of the database being\ncoupled with the logic of your program.\n\nNow I vaguely recall complaining about this before on HN and getting my ass\nhanded back to me by someone who pointed out that these are all ORM n00b\nmistakes. I wish I could find that comment (pretty sure I noted the link down\nsomewhere). Yeah, I admit - in those two projects I mentioned, we were all ORM\nnoobs. So we've learned those lessons the hard way.\n\n------\nPaulHoule\nContinuous integration is a good thing. Back in the bad old days you'd have\nthree people working on parts of the system for 6 months and plan to snap them\ntogether in 2 weeks and it would take more like another 6 months.\n\nAgile methods are also useful. If you can't plan 2 weeks of work you can\nprobably not plan 6 months.\n\nWhen agile methods harden into branded processes and where there is no\nconsensus on the ground rules by the team it gets painful. The underlying\nproblem is often a lack of trust and respect. In an agile situation people\nwill stick to rigid rules (never extend the sprint, we do all our planning in\n4 hours, etc.) because they feel they'll lose what little control they have\notherwise. In a non-agile situation people can often avoid each other for\nmonths and have the situation go south suddenly. In agile you wind up with\nlots of painful meetings instead.\n\nAlso I think it is rare for one language to really be \"best for a job\". If you\nwant to write the back end of a run of the mill webapp, you can do a great job\nof that in any mainstream language you are comfortable in.\n\n~~~\nreacharavindh\n> Agile methods are also useful. If you can't plan 2 weeks of work you can\n> probably not plan 6 months.\n\nHmmm. I was just thinking the opposite yesterday. I'm a performance engineer\nworking closely with two teams. One doing Agile and the other basing on wikis\nand Adhoc in-person whiteboard discussions. I find the non agile team more\nproductive, efficient and dare I say happy. The Agile based team makes me sit\nin on their daily scrum meetings. Although every one uses it to sync up on\ntheir dependancies, it just drags for an hour almost every day. I can visibly\ntell the devs walking out of the room spend more time worrying about\n\"velocity\" and \"organisation of work\" than the money making work that needs to\nbe done. It almost feels like the agile process gives them \"one more job\" of\npicking the doable things from the list of stuff that needs to be done so they\nlook better than their peers with better velocity.\n\nSimply put, I was thinking if Agile is just not a good method when you can\nstrive for good leadership and a healthy collaboration among individuals of\nthe team?\n\n~~~\niainmerrick\n_One doing Agile and the other basing on wikis and Adhoc in-person whiteboard\ndiscussions._\n\nThe ad-hoc approach also sounds quite agile (at least with a small 'a'). It's\ncertainly closer to Agile than to Waterfall, assuming they didn't do a big\ndesign up front before writing any code.\n\nI think the ad-hoc agile approach can work very well with a good team. But\nScrum fans always seem to warn against cherry-picking just the bits of Scrum\nyou like and not using the whole process.\n\n~~~\nbtilly\n_But Scrum fans always seem to warn against cherry-picking just the bits of\nScrum you like and not using the whole process._\n\nBut of course. If you just cherry-pick and experiment, then you won't have any\nreason to pay an expensive expert to tell you how to do it right!\n\n------\nBjoernKW\nNo, it's not just you and yes, we often do overcomplicate software\ndevelopment.\n\nIt's been that way long before agile methodology or microservices though.\nComplexity-for-the-sake-of-complexity EverthingHasToBeAnAbstractClass\nframeworks have been plaguing the software development business since at least\nthe 1990s and I'm sure there are similar stories from the 80s and 70s.\n\nIt's hard to find a one-size-fits-all easy method for not falling into that\nover-engineering / over-management trap. I try to focus on simple principles\nto identify needless complexity:\n\n\\- There is no silver bullet (see \"microservices\"): If the same design pattern\nis used to solve each and every problem there probably is something amiss.\n\n\\- Less code is better.\n\n\\- Favour disposable code over reusable code: Avoid the trap of premature\noptimisation, both in terms of performance and in terms of software\narchitecture. Also known as \"You aren't gonna need it\".\n\n\\- Code means communication: By writing code you’re entering a conversation\nwith other developers, including your future self. If code isn't easily\ncomprehensible again there's likely something wrong.\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\nI think the tendency to over-engineer is a symptom of retrofitting an\nassembly-line 9-5 shift onto the creative process of writing code.\n\nYou sit a guy there 5 days a week for many years. He has to look busy, he has\nto do something with all of that time. He's not going to get paid if he writes\nthe code in the most simple, concise, and straightforward way possible and\nthen goes home until they're ready to make a new feature two weeks later. He\nhas to sit around and make up something for himself to do.\n\nContrast with side projects. I have many simple weekend projects that continue\nto work well and provide their promised utility years later. Because you just\nwrite what you need and stop, you don't get sucked into the disastrous\ncomplexity spiral that every company-internal software project ends up as.\n\nThe other factor here is that people need some signal to say \"I'm good at my\njob\" (because no one can actually tell). That signal has to go to colleagues,\nsuperiors, and peers outside the workplace. People therefore invent artificial\ncomplexity or take intentionally convoluted approaches so they can sound\nfancy. In the most extreme cases, this is a conscious decision designed to\nblock out \"competitors\" (colleagues). In many cases, it's a subconscious way\nto ego-stroke (and to mix in a little bit of variety per point one above).\n\nThis is especially true when a household brand like Google or Facebook pushes\nout some new esoteric thing; everyone wants to see themselves as a Google-or-\nFacebook-in-waiting and it makes it easy to pitch these things to the bosses,\nwhen the fact is that the kinds of things that work at large public companies\nlike Google are probably not going to work in small companies.\n\n~~~\nnathanaldensr\nThank you for shining a light on the psychological side of this discussion. I\nlike to highlight psychology when I have these discussions with peers because\ntoo often technical folks view the world through technology lenses instead of\nhuman ones.\n\n------\ncorysama\nOne of my fav tech talks ever (and I watch a lot of tech talks) is Alan Kay's\n\"Is it really 'complex'? Or, did we just make it 'complicated'?\" It addresses\nyour question directly, but at a very, very high level.\n\n[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY)\n\nNote that the laptop he is presenting on is not running Linux/Windows/OSX and\nthat the presentation software he is using is not OoO/PowerPoint/Keynote.\nInstead, it is a custom productivity suite called \"Frank\" developed entirely\nby his team, running on a custom OS, all compiled using custom languages and\ncompilers. And, the total lines of code for everything, including the OS and\ncompilers, is under 100k LOC.\n\n~~~\nGnarfGnarf\nThat is absurd. You can't write an OS in 100KLOC.\n\n~~~\nsrpeck\nCheck out stats on the kOS/kparc project:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9316091](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9316091)\n\nThere is also a more recent example of Arthur Whitney writing a C compiler in\n<250 lines of C. Remarkable how productive a programmer can be when he chooses\nnot to overcomplicate.\n\n~~~\nnickpsecurity\nEverything I saw in the link looks like K, not C. Do you have a link to the C\ncompiler done _in C language?_\n\n------\nmajewsky\n1) False dichotomy. Developer familiarity is one of the most important metrics\nfor choosing \"the best tool for the job\".\n\n2) Conway's Law applies in reverse here: If your organization consists of a\nlot of rather disjoint teams, then microservices can be quite beneficial\nbecause each team can deploy independently. If you're one cohesive team, there\nis not much benefit, only cost.\n\n3) Depends. If you have a well-designed distributed system, it can be\namazingly resilient and reliable without introducing much administrative\noverhead. (From my experience, OpenStack Swift is such a system. Parts may\nfail, but the system never fails.) There are two main problems with\ndistributed systems: a) Designing and implementing them correctly is really\nhard. b) Many people use distributed systems when a single VM would do just\nfine, and get all the pain without cashing out on the benefits. See also\n[http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm#heavyclouds](http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm#heavyclouds)\n\n4) Continuous integration was not meant to help with complexity. Its purpose\nis to reduce turn-around time for bugfixes and new features. If your release\nprocess is long and complicated, the increased number of releases will indeed\nbe painful for you. Our team sees value in \"bringing the pain forward\" in this\nway. Your team obviously puts emphasis on different issues, and that's okay.\n\n~~~\nUK-AL\nI find microservices can help in just keep everything small and focused. I\nknow you can do this with a monolith. But having a process boundary really\nenforces it.\n\n~~~\ncrdoconnor\nI find that the boundary creates operational headaches. A function call won't\ntime out, deliver a 502 error, have authentication/authorization issues,\nrequire load balancing, etc. etc.\n\nA REST API will.\n\nPlus, once you've debugged a problem that involves crossing 5 microservice\nboundaries you'll start to wonder if it was all worth it.\n\nMonolith is also a wrong (and somewhat derogatory) word to describe a non-\nmicroservice architecture. There's nothing monolithic about loosely coupled\ncode running on the same machine.\n\nI really think that microservices are a hack to deal with conway's law in\nlarge corporations. Operationally it's inefficient but it fixes a nexus of\ntechnical and political problems when the correct boundary is picked.\n\n~~~\nUK-AL\nExcept most applications are monolith. Monolith code can still be loosely\ncoupled. However it is harder.\n\n~~~\ncrdoconnor\nNo, not at all.\n\nThe only difference I noticed with respect to rube goldberg (what you call\n\"microservices\") systems and coupling is that tight coupling between\ncomponents of rube goldberg systems was much more painful: particularly\ndebugging across multiple service boundaries.\n\n------\nmhotchen\nMany of the programmers I have worked with actually love complexity, despite\ntrying to convince others (and most likely themselves) that they hate it.\n\nAdvice tends to be cherrypicked to suit an agenda they already have (with your\nexample on microservices, the vast amount of resources saying they're very\ndifficult, should be driven by a monolith first approach, and solve a specific\nset of problems is largely brushed under the rug).\n\nI think because our industry moves so fast there's a fear of becoming\nirrelevant. Ironically companies are so scared of not being able to employ\ndevelopers that they're also onboard with complicating their platform in the\nname of hiring and retention. I think this is down to the sad truth that most\ndeveloper roles offer very little challenge outside of learning a new stack.\n\n~~~\njamesmccann\n> I think this is down to the sad truth that most developer roles offer very\n> little challenge outside of learning a new stack.\n\nThis is a gem observation from this thread. In my own tech sphere the first\nthing developers are talking about with each other is the new x,y,z lib or\nframework they're using to accomplish something relatively banal. There's\nstill a lot of work out there that really boils down to basic CRUD and\nreporting at the end of the day, and developers naturally begin to invent\ncomplexities on top of that CRUD to make the work interesting and challenging.\nI'm absolutely guilty of this first hand.\n\nI've found personally it also doesn't help that past work on projects e.g.\nlarge Rails apps that were never architected well turn out to be such\nnightmares to work on. The memory of the end state of these projects lingers\nwith developers as they move onto the next piece of work, and they're inclined\nto say \"no that doesn't work\" and pick up shiny new-tech to do the old job\ninstead.\n\nAs a side analogy: most small business construction jobs, e.g. building a\ntimber frame house, don't involve the builders arriving on site and are\nstumped by the challenge of how to put up the framing for the bedroom walls -\nthere's also very little challenge in these projects, yet the reward is in the\ncompletion.\n\n~~~\nbrwr\n> There's still a lot of work out there that really boils down to basic CRUD\n> and reporting at the end of the day, and developers naturally begin to\n> invent complexities on top of that CRUD to make the work interesting and\n> challenging.\n\nI'd go so far as to say that _most_ work today (at least in startups) is\nbuilding CRUD apps. The technology has changed, but the work hasn't. Inside of\nbuilding CRUD apps in Rails, we now build them in React.\n\n------\nDanielBMarkham\nYou've thrown together a bunch of buzzwords and asked if we are over\ncomplicating things.\n\nBuzzwords can mean freaking anything. I've seen great Agile teams that don't\nlook anything like textbook Agile teams. Microservices can be a total\nclusterfuck unless you know what the hell you're doing -- and manage\ncomplexity. (Sound familiar?) CI/CD/DevOps can be anything from a lifesaver to\nthe end of all life in the known universe.\n\nSo yes, we are over complicating software development, but the way we do it\nisn't through slapping around a few marketing terms. The way we do it is not\nunderstanding what our jobs are. Instead, we pick up some term that somebody,\nsomewhere used and run with it.\n\nThen we confuse effort with value. Hey, if DevOps is good, the more we do\nDevOps, the better we'll be, right? Well -- no. If Agile is good, the more\nAgile stuff we do the better we'll be, right? Hell no. We love to deep dive in\nthe technical details. If there aren't any technical details, we'll add some!\n\nSoftware development is too complicated because individual developers veer off\nthe rails and make it too complicated. That's it. That's all there is to it.\nThrow a complex library at a good dev and they'll ask if we need the entire\nthing to only use 2 methods. Throw a complex library at a mediocre Dev and\nthey'll spend the next three weeks writing 15 KLOC creating the ultimate\nsystem for X, _which we don 't need right now and may never need_.\n\nIt has nothing to do with the buzzwords, the tech, or software development in\ngeneral. It's us.\n\n------\nsebringj\nIt never seems complicated when I am doing my own side work for some reason.\nThere are no design meetings, no hours tracking, no arguments on best\npractices, no scrum, no testing frameworks, dev ops, etc. I do use git and\nminimally create bash scripts to simplify repetitive tasks for deployment but\nits just a huge contrast to working in teams where something simple takes\nabout 50 times longer.\n\nI think keeping things as simple as possible and always going for that goal\nwill increase velocity overall. Everything should be subject to scrutiny for\npromoting productivity and open to modification or removal. I know there is a\nbalance where you have to increase complexity in a team environment but\nkeeping friction as low as possible in terms of process and intellectual\nweight couldn't hurt.\n\nThe most productive place I've seen so far is a huge athletic brand I worked\nfor where they kept teams at max 5 people in mini projects. This forced the\nidea of low overhead and kept the scale of management needed small. The worst\nplace I worked for in terms of unnecessary complexity is a well known host,\nalthough it is the best place to work in terms of people, hired offshore that\nhas a one-size fits all mentality and layered in as much shit as possible to\nslow down development to a mud crawl. I don't buy into process over\nproductivity.\n\n~~~\nashark\nOne of the things that helps when you're developing your own projects is that\nyou can single-handedly decide to ruthlessly cull parts of the project that\ntake lots of time but provide little value, and you (probably) have decent\ninsight into what those are. You're also probably not at a scale where doing\ncertain really crappy, slow parts of the job can pay off, so you can skip\nthose.\n\nDefault form elements with some basic, nice styling to fit your theme? Form\ndone in one hour. Special snowflake version of the same thing from the design\nteam, which has no idea what the platform can and cannot easily be made to do,\nbut the client is absolutely in love with? Two _days_ , a third party\ndependency or two, some extra environment-specific bugs to track down later,\nand generally increased fragility (so more time lost in the future). This has\nslowed you down now and increased the resources required for the project\nindefinitely. But the client looooooves it.\n\nSupport Android pre-5.0, at the cost of 20% more development time, a pile of\nextra bug reports, an uglier, harder-to-maintain codebase, and a much much\nlonger testing cycle, for a side project? _Hell_ no. Client says that will\ncost them $4 million/yr not to support those? Ugh. FINE.\n\nAnd so on, and so on.\n\n------\nmschaef\nContinuous Integration is (with a reasonable test suite) one of few elements\nof software development that I would consider almost essential for any long\nrunning project. It's just too useful to have continual feedback on the\nquality of the system under construction. (And this is before bringing in\nmicro-services or any other complicating architectural pattern.)\n\nWhere I might agree with you more are on points 3 and 4: 'Advanced\nreliability' and 'Microservices'. While I have no doubt that these are useful\nto solve specific problems, I think as a profession we tend to over-estimate\nthe need for these things and under-estimate the costs for having them. To me\nthis implies that there needs to be a very clear empirical case that they\nsupport a requirement that actually exists. I'd also make the argument that\nthe drive for microservices within an organization has to come from a person\nor team that has the wherewithal to commit resources over the long-term to\nactually make it happen and keep it maintained. (ie: probably not an\nindividual development team.)\n\n------\nrolodato\nI think the \"learn to code\" movement as well as overly-technical interviews\nfor developers are partly to blame for this. It's well-known that developers\nare tested on how to do something that's considered technically difficult,\nsuch as abstract CS problems or a complicated architecture, but they are\nrarely asked why certain tools, practices or architectures should or should\nnot be used. Comparative analyses to make objective recommendations between\ndifferent solution alternatives are also rare in my interviewing experience,\nbut they are one of the most valuable skill a competent software engineer\nshould have.\n\nI don't agree on point 4 though - CI can be something as basic as running a\nmonolith's tests on each commit, which makes sure that builds are reproducible\n(no more \"works on my machine\").\n\n------\nbluejekyll\nNo. You are correct. Honestly I think you can solve a lot of that by following\non from one of Deijkstra's core priniciples: Seperation of Concerns.\n\nWhen you practice good seperationof concerns, specific choice in different\nareas can be more easily fixed later. It requires having decent APIs and being\nthoughtful on the interaction of different components, but it helps immensely\nin the long run.\n\nMicroservices are one way to practice seperation of concerns, but it can also\nbe practiced in monolithic software as well, by having strong modular systems\n(different languages are stronger at this than others).\n\n------\nmarcosdumay\nWell, yes, we are overcomplicating it. Except on the parts we are\nundercomplicating... And I still couldn't find anybody that can reliably tell\nthose apart, but the first set is indeed much larger.\n\n1 - Do not pick a new language for an urgent project. Do look at them when you\nhave some leeway.\n\n2 - Yep.\n\n3 - There's something wrong with your ops. That happens often, and it is a\nbug, fix it.\n\n4 - If CI is making your ops more complex, ditch it. If less complex, keep it.\nIn doubt, choose the safest possible way to try the other approach, and look\nat the results.\n\n5 - Do not listen to consulting experts, only to technical experts. The agile\nmanifesto is a nice reading, read it, think about it, try to follow, but don't\ntry too hard. Ignore any of the more detailed methodologies.\n\n------\ndwc\nMuch of the problem in the things you mention is that those things are\nspecific solutions that have been confused with goals. I.e., \"we're supposed\nto build microservices\" is a horrible idea, as opposed to \"given this\nparticular situation a microservice is a great fit\".\n\nUnderstanding the _possible_ benefits and drawbacks of any solution is\nimportant. It's important in whether or not that solution is selected, but\nalso to make sure that the implementation actually delivers those benefits.\n\nIt's very common in our industry to use \"best practices\" without understanding\nthem, and therefore misapplying the solutions.\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\nAs you've intimated, most people have a very superficial mental model.\n\nFacebook == respected tech brand == someone I should copy. The end.\n\nGuy I know uses Cassandra == developed by hot tech brand Facebook == cool by\nmental association with Facebook.\n\nGuy I know uses MSSQL or Oracle == developed by crusty old Evil Empire Company\nthat cool people don't want to work for == bad.\n\nConclusion: We must use \"big data\" so we can be like the cool people -- err,\nbecause we really have some big data.\n\nThis doesn't sound like the outcome we'd expect from technical people making\nthese decisions, but we can obviously see that it's what we're getting.\n\n------\nkekub\nI am working in huge non-IT company as a software developer. I guess that is\nwhat gives me a totally different point of view on your lessons:\n\n1) Without a unified technology stack and a common framework we would not be\nable to build and maintain our applications. We decided on C# as it works best\nfor us. Currently we are 5 developers. Not a single one of us has ever written\na line of C# code before entering the company - learning the language from\nground up enables us to pick up patterns that our colleagues who joined the\ncompany earlier found to be best practices.\n\n2) If you are not introducing a whole new stack with every micro service that\nyou develop the devops costs are quite low.\n\n3) I agree with you on that - I think redundancy always introduces more\ncomplexity. However there are systems that handle that job quite well (e.g.\nSQL Server). For application servers we use hot-spares and a load balancer\nthat only routes traffic to them, when the main servers are not reachable.\nThis works for us, as all our applications are low traffic applications.\n\n4) Continuous integration works brilliant for our unified stack. In the last\ntwo years we went down from 1d setup + 20min deploy to 10min setup + 20s\ndeploy.\n\n5) We use agile methodology whenever possible and it works like a charm.\nHowever we had a lot of learnings. Most recent example: Always have at least\none person from all your target groups in any meeting where you try to create\nuser-stories.\n\nPlanning our software architecture has been a key element in my teams success\nand I do not see a point where we are going to cut it.\n\n------\nbeat\n1\\. What problem are you optimizing for? \"The job\" encompasses code, but it\nalso encompasses staffing. It's a lot easier to hire Java developers than\nScala developers. In a leadership role, your responsibility isn't just the\nday-to-day code - it's the whole project.\n\n2\\. Microservices vs monoliths is a see-saw. You build a monolith, find it's a\nbrittle, incomprehensible hairball, and you break out microservices. You build\nmicroservices, find that operational headaches are killing you, and start\nconsolidating them into monoliths. Which kneecap do you want the bullet in?\n\n3\\. Fix what breaks.\n\n4\\. Continuous integration is _vital_. But it needs to be evolved along with\nthe system. There's this thing I say... \"Have computers do what computers do\nwell, have humans do what humans do well\". Handling complex and _repeatable_\nbehavior (i.e. builds and test suites) should absolutely be automated as much\nas possible. Think continuous integration sucks? Try handing it off to humans\nfor a while! You'll learn whole new levels of pain.\n\n5\\. All process is about (or should be about) specific, discrete\ncommunications issues.\n\n~~~\nmisha67\n> Which kneecap do you want the bullet in?\n\nFunniest thing I've heard all day!\n\n~~~\nbeat\nThat's the fun of working with me. I say funny shit!\n\nI occasionally refer to the final steps of a project as \"bayoneting the\nwounded\" too.\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nYes we are over complicating it, but that it primarily about trying to take\nwhat is essentially an artistic process and turning it into a regimented\nprocess (a known hard problem).\n\nRob Gingell at Sun stated it as a form of uncertainty principal. He said, \"You\ncan know what features are in a release or when the release will ship, but not\nboth.\" It captured the challenge of aspirational feature development where\nsomeone says \"we have to have feature X\" and so you send a bunch of smart\nengineers off to build it but there is no process by which you can start with\nan empty main function and build it step by step into feature X.\n\nThat said, it got worse when we separated the user interface from the product\n(browser / webserver). And you're rants about microservices and continuous\nintegration are really about releases, delivery, and QA. (the 'delivery time'\nof Gingell's law above).\n\nThese are complexities introduced by delivery capabilities that enable\ndifferent constructions. The story on HN a few days about about the JS\ngraphics library is a good example of that. Instead of linking against a\nlibrary on your computer to deliver your application with graphics, we have\nthe capability of attaching to a web service with a browser and assembling _on\ndemand_ the set of APIs and functions needed for that combination of client\nbrowser / OS. Its a great capability but to pull it off requires more moving\nparts.\n\n~~~\nakamaozu\nLink to the post about the graphics library please?\n\n~~~\nChuckMcM\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13419665](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13419665)\n\n------\nemeraldd\n\\- 1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool\nfor the job\n\n95% of the time, a language that your developers are familiar with is the\ncorrect tool for the job simply for that reason! There are cases where it is\nnot the case but those involve special case languages and special case\nsystems. If you don't know what special case means then you're situation is\nalmost certainly on that list.\n\n\\- 2) Avoid microservices where possible, the operational cost considering\ndevops is just immense\n\n\"If your data fits on one machine then you don't need hadoop ...\" Same thing\napplies here. Microservices have place and putting them in the wrong one will\nbite you bad.\n\n\\- 3) Advanced reliability / redundancy even in critical systems ironically\nseems to causes more downtime than it prevents due to the introduction of\ncomplexity to dev & devops.\n\nThen there's probably something wrong or limited with the deployment that\nneeds to be reviewed (2 node when you need a 3 node cluster, bad networking\nenvironments, etc.) If you have a reasonable setup with solid tech under it,\n_deployed per specs_ then this should not be true. If, on the other hand,\nsomething is out of whack (say running a 2 node cluster with Linux HA and only\na single communication path between them) you're going to have problems and\nthe only way to fix them is to get it done right.\n\n\\- 4) Continuous integration seems to be a plaster on the problem of complex\ndevops introduced by microservices.\n\nI'm not sure about this but, if your deployment system requires CI you have a\nproblem. An individual, given hardware and assets/code, should be able to spin\nup a complete system on a fresh box cleanly and in a reasonable timeframe.\n(Fresh data restores can take longer of course but the system should be\nrunnable barring that.) If this _requires_ (i.e. it can't reasonably be done\nmanually) something like an CI script or ansible/chef/etc. script then you're\ndeployment process is probably too complex and needs to be re-evaluated.\n\n\\- 5) Agile \"methodology\" when used as anything but a tool to solve specific,\ndiscrete, communications issues is really problematic\n\nAgile is commonly used to gloss over a complete lack of structured process or\na broken. Even with Agile there should be some clean process and design work\nthat goes into things or you're hosed.\n\n~~~\njondumbau\n4: if my stack requires a message broker to run, how is setting one up\nmanually supposed to be better to using the ansible scripts.\n\n------\nhd4\nFor me, the trinity of development as a solo developer seems to be:\n\n1\\. Writing code while using as many useful libraries and tools as possible to\navoid recreating wheels\n\n2\\. Continuous integration set up early on to handle the menial work and to\nlet me concentrate on 1.\n\n3\\. Constantly evaluating and researching what technology is available and\nnewly appearing to give me an edge, because having an edge is never a bad\nthing in this field.\n\nAgree with some of what OP said, especially with methodologies become\nhindrances and HA tools becoming points of failure.\n\n------\nrb808\nI've seen the addition of unit testing is a big cause of complexity.\nPreviously simple classes now have to be more abstracted in order to unit\ntest. Add mocks, testing classes & test frameworks. Some unit tests are handy,\nbut I dont think it justifies the additional complexity. For the apps I write\nI'd like to see more emphasis on automated integration testing and fewer unit\ntests - so we can write simple classes again.\n\n~~~\njulsonl\nIn my experience, it's usually not the existence of unit tests themselves\nthat's causing an issue, but that most of them are badly written. One telltale\nsign is when writing the unit test becomes overly painful (like too much code\nsetting up mocks), it usually means that your class is not simple enough or\nhas too many dependencies.\n\nProper unit testing also complements integration testing in that corner cases\ncan be handled at the unit test level, therefore reducing the amount of\nintegration test code which arguably is much more brittle, runs slower and\nmore complicated to write.\n\n~~~\njononor\nMany unit tests are just written to test code, which is at best irrelevant. At\nworst your codebase is 2-3x bigger and more abstract than it needs to, where\nuseless tests keep code alive and useless code keeps tests alive. Test\nfunctionality, as close to the promises given to outside consumers as is\nfeasible. Be it API or UI for other people/projects/services. This is the\nstuff that needs to work (and thus often need to be stable). No-one cares\nwhether a function deep down inside the code, used a part of the\nimplementation of promised functionality works. Delete it if you can.\n\nOnly case where I'd support \"unit tests\" as typically practiced (small units,\nisolated functions/classes) is around _core_ competence (defined as narrowly\nas possible). But then I'd argue that this functionality should be put into a\nlibrary anyways, which is used by products codebases. And then the tests are\ntests for the functionality promised to the products.\n\n~~~\njulsonl\nI'm not arguing against writing integration tests, they are as important if\nnot more important, as you've said. Maybe I've only seen badly written ones,\nbut my issue was against integration tests that check for example if this ever\nso important, but hidden, flag is being set properly after an API call when\nthat can be checked at the service level. Someone eventually decides that flag\nis unneeded, and a whole host of tests fail and someone has to dig several\nlevels deep to figure it out.\n\nI guess I shouldn't have used the word 'brittle', but this is what I was\nthinking of.\n\nAnd of course, I think unit testing anything and everything is absurd and not\na good use of developer time.\n\n~~~\nNomentatus\nI don't think you can avoid meta-debugging. That is, debugging your asserts or\ntests that you hoped would detect bugs instead of being the bug. Sometimes\nbecause more realistic tests unveil a bug, sometimes (as in your example)\nbecause underlying code functionality has changed. This is unavoidable but\nalso often enlightening. To my mind, it's even okay if most of your bugs are\nmeta - because these are usually very fast fixes, and it probably means you\nhave a lot of checks. But by the same token, I would agree with you that all\nsuch tests have to be well-written, not mailed in, for just the reasons you\ngive. It's too easy to assume that writing tests is somehow a fairly trivial\ntask. Until you end up debugging the test.\n\n------\njMyles\nMy first reaction to your (very thoughtful) review is that #4 seems out of\nplace.\n\nCI _can be_ a way of enforcing the simplicity of the others - it can be a way\nof tunneling the build process into assuredly straightforward steps and\npreventing individual team members from arbitrarily (or even accidentally)\nadding their own complications into build requirements.\n\nOther than that, I think you are definitely on to something here.\n\n------\nadamnemecek\nThere's this book that I've been mentioning around here called Elements of\nProgramming [https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Programming-Alexander-\nStepan...](https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Programming-Alexander-\nStepanov/dp/032163537X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&sa-no-\nredirect=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=akgg-20&linkId=66e61085fdce329bbcf6f12f2d180b57)\nthat makes exactly this claim, that we are writing too much code.\n\nIt proposes how to write C++-ish (it's an extremely minimal subset of C++\nproper) code in a mathematical way that makes all your code terse. In this\ntalk, Sean Parent, at that time working on Adobe Photoshop, estimated that the\nPS codebase could be reduced from 3,000,000 LOC to 30,000 LOC (=100x!!) if\nthey followed ideas from the book\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4moyKUHApq4&t=39m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4moyKUHApq4&t=39m30s)\nAnother point of his is that the explosion of written code we are seeing isn't\nsustainable and that so much of this code is algorithms or data structures\nwith overlapping functionalities. As the codebases grow, and these\nfunctionalities diverge even further, pulling the reigns in on the chaos\nbecomes gradually impossible. Bjarne Stroustrup (aka the C++ OG) gave this\nbook five stars on Amazon (in what is his one and only Amazon product review\nlol).\n[https://smile.amazon.com/review/R1MG7U1LR7FK6/](https://smile.amazon.com/review/R1MG7U1LR7FK6/)\n\nThis style might become dominant because it's only really possible in modern\nsuccessors of C++ such as Swift or Rust that have both \"direct\" access to\nmemory and type classes/traits/protocols, not so much in C++ itself (unless\ndebugging C++ template errors is your thing).\n\n~~~\nGregBuchholz\nHave you looked in the STEPS program by Alan Kay? Trying to recreate modern\ncomputing setup from the OS up in 20k lines of code...\n\n[http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf)\n\n\"If computing is important -- for daily life, learning, business, national\ndefense, jobs, and more -- then qualitatively advancing computing is extremely\nimportant. Fro example, many software systems today are made from millions to\nhundreds of millions of lines of program code that is too large, complex and\nfragile to be improved, fixed, or integrated. (One hundred million lines of\ncode at 50 lines per page is 5000 books of 400 pages each! This is beyond\nhumane scale.)\n\nWhat if this could be made literally 1000 times smaller -- or more? And made\nmore powerful, clear, simple, and robust? This would bring one of the most\nimportant technologies of our time from a state that is almost out of human\nreach -- and dangerously close to being out of control -- back into human\nscale.\"\n\n...and of course if you haven't seen it, you'll want to check out the Forth\nguys who want to do everything with 1000 times less code:\n\n[http://www.ultratechnology.com/forth.htm](http://www.ultratechnology.com/forth.htm)\n\n~~~\nadamnemecek\nI'm aware of this but Alan Kay's work and this seem to be orthogonal. Alan Kay\ntalks about reducing real systems that have compilers, inputs etc whereas\nElements talks about like the day to day ways of writing code. Alan Kay might\ncome up with a new keyword whose semantics magically lets you cut out 30% but\nElements shows you that if you make your types behave certain way, generics\nwill let you cut out a lot of code.\n\n~~~\nbuzzybee\nI would counter that this appears to be a repeatedly emerging consensus,\nincluding Stepanov, Kay, Simonyi, and a number of other \"greats\", that an\napproach that involves some degree of metaprogramming, guided by domain\nproblem, is the way forward. They differ on terms - cooperating systems,\nmodel-driven, intentional, generic - and focus - whether to create new syntax,\nor to guide the creation of specific algorithms or data structures - but they\naren't debating the power of the approach.\n\n------\njosephv\nThe only way to have any sense of a good or solid development platform or\nlifecycle is, to me, to look at your specific situation and tailor everything\nto your deliverables and needs. Doing anything because of industry trends or\nacademic pontificating will lead you towards the solution someone else had\nsuccess with in a different circumstance.\n\nMicroservices work fine in some situations, agile works fine in some\nsituations, but until you find that you are in one of those situations trying\nto bend your deliverables to meet a sprint-cycle or some other nauseating\njargon will cause, as you put it, over-complication or just poorly targeted\neffort. (It can also cause enough stress to dramatically affect your health, I\nknow better than most)\n\nThose moments of solidarity between product and effort are real gems that I've\nonly recognized in hindsight.\n\n------\nsolarhess\nYou are right. Agile, languages, CI, devops are all tools not solutions to\nproblems. Blindly applied, they will not get the results promised.\n\nFirst focus on identifying the primary job to be done: build a valuable piece\nof software with as little effort as possible given your current team and\nexisting technology.\n\nSecond, consider how valuable the existing software is and whether it really\nneeds to be rewritten at all. Prefer a course that retains the most existing\nvalue. It is work you won't have to repeat.\n\nThird, choose tools that maximize the value produced per hour of your team.\nCI, Devops, Microservices, Languages all promise productivity and reliability\nbenefits but will incur complexity and time costs. Choosing the right mix is\npart of the art of software management.\n\n------\nmhluongo\nYou're right, though you should end most of your comments with \"for us\".\n\nWe've been burned by the microservice hype, and it took a while for us to\nrealize that most of the touted benefits are for larger organizations. These\n\"best practices\"\" rarely include organizational context.\n\n------\nharwoodleon\nFatal problems that hit start ups seem left-field, but they are baked into the\ndesign choices we make, often without discussion - because they seem part of\n\"current accepted wisdom\".\n\nMy major issue for startup software development is that often software is\ndeveloped too discretely - with a utopian 'final version' in mind. Developers\ndon't think holistically enough - they focus on details at the expense of\ndesign. \"current accepted wisdom\" is intangible, ever shifting, whereas the\nfailure of a system is very real and can lead to loss of income etc...\n\nLots of start up companies don't design systems with humans in them, they\nwrite code as if it was a standalone thing - they often leave out the human\nbits because they are hard to evaluate, measure and control - variety of\nskill, ideas, approaches, mistakes, quality of life etc.\n\nIn my experience, this variety (life) often comes back to bite companies that\ncan't handle eventual variance because of poor system design - not because of\na choice of platform / provider / software etc.\n\nI have been reading a lot around the viable system model (VSM) for organising\nprojects. It seems to fit with what my view on this is. I am trying to\nimplement a project using this model currently.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model)\n\n------\nnojvek\nAs everyone is saying: do what is reasonable and useful.\n\nE.g let's make an online shop.\n\nIt has browsing, purchasing and admin sections.\n\nBrowsing is simple. Query dB and show html. It's probably the most used as\nwell and needs to be reliable. Having as different service means admin section\ncould break while users are still able to browse. Same for payments. Sometimes\nit's crazy complicated. I think of microservices as big product feature\nboundaries that can work independently. A failure in one doesn't affect the\nother.\n\nContinuous integration: once you have your tests, and some auto deploy\nscripts, you have an engine. You push code, tests auto run, a live staging is\ncreated for latest code, you play with it. Looks good? Merge with Master. It's\ndeployed to production. The idea is deployment is effortless and you can do it\nmultiple times a day just like git push. Tests just don't only have to be\nunit. We run integration testing features on dummy accounts periodically from\ndifferent regions in the world on production. This means you are alerted as\nsoon as something breaks. Fast deployment and great telemetry mean you can\nalways revert to last known good state easily.\n\nInvesting in tests is a pain but it pays off in the long run. Especially if\nyou have other developers working on same code base.\n\nJust don't over do it. I believe these ideas came from pain developers\nactually faced and they used then to solve it. If you're not feeling the pain\nor won't feel it then you don't need the remedy.\n\n------\nTheAceOfHearts\nI think in many cases complexity just comes from lack of experience and poorly\nunderstood requirements.\n\nI've had my fair share of cases where I ended up implementing something\nneedlessly complicated, only to later realize my approach was terribly\nmisguided. I'd like to think I'm slowly improving on this as time goes on.\n\nThe software world has a big discoverability problem. Even though I know\nthere's probably prior art of what I'm working on, I don't always know where\nto look for it.\n\n~~~\nmisha67\nHonesty.\n\n------\nQuantumRoar\nI think you wanted to say: \"Are we simplifying things in software\ndevelopment?\" All of the points you have made are actually simplifications of\nwhat might be the optimal solution.\n\nImagine the solution space as some multidimensional space where there is\nsomewhere an optimal solution. The dimensions include the habits of your\nprogrammers, the problem you are trying to solve, and the phase of the moon.\nMicroservices, a special form of redundancy, continuous integration, agile\ndevelopment are all extreme solutions to specific problems. Solutions which\nare extreme in that they are somewhere in the corner of your multidimensional\nsolution space.\n\nThey are popular because they are radical in the way they conceptualize the\nshape of the problem and attempt to solve it. Therefore they seem like optimal\nsolutions at first glance when really they only apply really well to specific\ntoy models.\n\nTake e.g. microservices. Yes, it's really nice if you can split up your big\nproblem into small problems and define nice and clean interfaces. But it\nbecomes a liability if you need too much communication between the services,\nup until the point where you merge your microservices back together in order\nto take advantage of using shared memory.\n\nDon't believe any claims that there is a categorically better way to do\neverything. Most often, when you see an article about something like that, it\nis \"proved\" by showing it solves a toy model very well. But actual problems\nare rarely like toy models. Therefore the optimal solution to an actual\nproblem is never a definite answer from one of the \"simplified corner case\nscenarios\" but it is actually just as complex as the problem you are trying to\nsolve.\n\n------\nsolipsism\n1) No way. Absolutely not. Not if what you're building is intended to last.\nAny language/ecosystem you choose has costs and benefits. You will continue to\npay the costs (and reap the benefits) long after your developers could have\nbecome fluent in a language.\n\nCertainly the language your developers already know is better than one they\ndon't, all things being equal. But your rule is way too simplistic.\n\n2) Of course. Avoid every complex thing where possible.\n\n3) This means the cost/benefit ratio was not considered closely enough when\nplanning these features. Again, avoid every complex thing where possible.\n\n4) this is a strange one. Most people doing CI are not building microservices.\nCI is really more about whether you have different, independently moving\npieces that need to by integrated. Could be microservices, could be libraries,\ncould be hardware vs software. If you only have a single active branch\neveryone's merging into regularly, you're doing CI implicitly. You just might\nnot need it automated.\n\n5) take what you can from the wisdom of agile, and then use your own brain to\nthink. And don't confuse agile with scrum.\n\n------\nbiztos\n1) Sounds like there's a lot more to the story.\n\n    \n    \n        * Was the \"best tool\" what the devs thought it was?\n        \n        * Was it something they would hate using? Say, Java for Perl devs?\n        \n        * Was there a steep learning curve? An obscure language?\n    \n\n2) How big is the system? How complex is the business? How ops-friendly are\nthe devs to start with?\n\n3) You (or someone) must know how much system failure would cost.\n\n4) CI can help with your devops, but its main point is to help with your\nsoftware quality. See #2.\n\n5) Totally agree, though you can also try being agile about \"Agile\" and taking\njust whatever parts work for you.\n\nMy $0.02 anyway.\n\n(Aside: years ago I worked on a team doing ad-hoc semi-agile, which worked\npretty well. I'm 99% sure I could have double our output and launched a\nmanagement-consulting career if I could have credibly held the threat of Real\nCorporate Agile Scrum over their heads. But that was before the flood. One of\nthem works for Atlassian now, ironically enough.)\n\n------\nmsluyter\nThough perhaps it's considered a component of 2), one could add\nDocker/containerization. I've watched folks spend weeks and weeks getting\nDocker setup for a service that probably didn't need to be containerized at\nall. And then once it's Dockerized, introspection/debugging/etc... seem to\nbecome much more difficult.\n\n~~~\nadictator\nAnd what sort of services were those that didn't need to be containerized?\n\n------\nsydd\nI agree with you, but not fully.\n\n1) Well, this is only a case if the project is short enough that its not worth\nswitching. Learning a new tech for a team takes months, only switch if the\nproject is taking years.\n\n2) Again, only use them for bigger (>2 years lifecycle) projects\n\n3) Depends on what you need. We build a full stack apps with around 99.95%\nuptime (a few hours of downtime/year) in around 3 months of architecture dev\ntime, this was good enough for us. Getting more would have hugely increased\ndev time, but this number was good enough for us.\n\n4) Disagree. You can build simple CI pipelines in a matter of weeks, which\nwill pay for themselves in a few months thanks to better uptimes, happier\nemployees, shorter release times. Again its only needed if your project lasts\nfor more than a year.\n\n5) Disagree. Agile is very good, if someone knows it well (takes a few days to\nlearn). Its not needed for very small teams (<6 people), they can self-manage.\n\nBut I think there are problems:\n\n\\- People getting hyped about the latest trendy stuff. Use bleeding edge/new\ntech for hobby projects not for money making.\n\n\\- Do not switch technologies unless really needed, dont fall for the hyped\nlibrary of the week.\n\n\\- Do not use a dynamic language for any project that will have more than 5K\nLOC in its lifetime.\n\n\\- Do not overengineer. For example if the code is clean, works, but has that\nugly singleton pattern its OK. Dont introduce the latest fancy IOC framework,\njust because you read it in the clean code book that its better.\n\n\\- Unit test are overhyped. Use them for critical components on the server,\nand thats it. IMO the hype about them is because dynamic languages scale so\nbadly that you need test otherwise you're fucked. Rather choose a well proven\nstatically typed language, a good IDE, and take code reviews seriously.\n\n------\nyawz\n\"Perfection is Achieved Not When There Is Nothing More to Add, But When There\nIs Nothing Left to Take Away\" \\- Antoine de Saint-Exupery\n\nIMHO, it takes technical and personal maturity to come to the conclusion\nabove. Good architecture (or software or dev process or anything) should only\nhave/contain the simplest things that are necessary.\n\n------\noutworlder\n> Avoid microservices where possible, the operational cost considering devops\n> is just immense\n\nIs it, though? There's more complexity due to more moving parts, sure. But\nbeing able to solve issues by just issuing a \"scale\" kubernetes command in the\nCLI is priceless. As is killing pods with no drama.\n\nHowever, what are we talking about here? Small business ecommerce? Your\nmonolithic app is probably going to work just fine.\n\n> Advanced reliability / redundancy even in critical systems ironically seems\n> to causes more downtime than it prevents due to the introduction of\n> complexity to dev & devops.\n\nSystems can and will fail. If you can eat the downtime, by all means forget\nabout that.\n\n> Continuous integration seems to be a plaster on the problem of complex\n> devops introduced by microservices.\n\nCould you stop singling-out microservices? We have deployed continuous\nintegration with old school rails apps before and it was extremely valuable.\n\nAgree about agile.\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\n>Is it, though? There's more complexity due to more moving parts, sure. But\nbeing able to solve issues by just issuing a \"scale\" kubernetes command in the\nCLI is priceless. As is killing pods with no drama.\n\nOn the contrary, getting to the place where you can issue commands over k8s on\na project not specifically designed for it has a very real and very\nsignificant cost. Companies are killing themselves trying to do this for no\ngood reason.\n\nNeed a new node? Fire up whatever it is that you fire up: Ansible, Chef, AMI,\nbundle of custom bash scripts, whatever. No need for the _massive_ complexity\nof k8s.\n\nSpecifically, what benefits are you seeing from k8s (i.e., what unique utility\ndoes the \"scale\" or \"delete pod\" command bring that is not reasonably resolved\nby less complex solutions)? It's just causing me a lot of frustration right\nnow. I can see Google's need for it. Not having much luck seeing its use in\nnon-Google-scale businesses.\n\nIf you're doing a from-scratch thing that you can architect around k8s and\nthink that's more convenient than more traditional approaches and can accept\nits currently-quite-serious limitations, that's whatever. If you're talking\nabout some tangible objective benefit that most companies need to be able to\nenjoy here, please do elaborate.\n\n------\napeace\nI think #5 is the most problematic here, and was stated perfectly.\n\nOne method I have used successfully is sending surveys to people outside\nengineering. Send it to department heads and anyone else who seems interested\nin what engineering does. Ask them if they feel engineering is transparent,\nand whether they feel important bugs/features get followed up on. Let the\nresponses guide you, and make the minimal process changes you need to in order\nto satisfy people's real concerns.\n\nOne other piece of advice: if certain people seem obsessed with process, it's\npossible they are poisonous to your whole organization and should be let go.\nSome people want process to be there to give them work (e.g. \"managing the\nbacklog\" or \"writing stories\"), instead of doing actual work like programming\nor product research.\n\n------\nconradfr\nAs someone working at a Scrum company transitioning from PHP \"monoliths\" to\nDDD microservices shielded by nodejs gateways and apis and even CQRS/ES on the\nhorizon I will answer yes.\n\nBut I guess that'll look cool in our resumes.\n\nI must say sometimes I envy our mobile developers that are a bit immune from\nall that.\n\n------\nfeyn\nToo much to say, so I did a blog post:\n[https://neilonsoftware.com/2017/01/18/my-response-to-are-\nwe-...](https://neilonsoftware.com/2017/01/18/my-response-to-are-we-over-\ncomplicating-software-development/)\n\n------\nalex_hitchins\nI agree with most of your comments. I think as a fairly new profession we are\nstill finding our feet when it comes to best practices. I don't think there is\none system that will work across the board for all trades. I mean I would\nthink it took longer than 30-40 years to work out the best way to plumb, wire\na house etc.\n\nSometimes when estimating work, I think how long would the same project take\nto build 5, 10, 15 years ago. It's not often that time spent coding today is\nany quicker than before.\n\nArguably we get better quality software now with unit tests, better compilers\nand better tooling. Perhaps I've just got some massive rose tinted glasses\non!.\n\n------\nhacker_9\nAll problems revolve around structure, and as customers want more features,\nand capital builds, the structures get more complex. So we build even more\ncomplex structures to offset the complexity, but now things that were once\nsimple get brought along and become more complex. Eventually the company hits\na breaking point and re-invents it's structures to better suit their needs,\nbut these grow in complexity once again given time. It is a never ending\nbattle, and every business is at a different point in their complexity cycle.\n\n------\ncontingencies\nChoose languages _and_ frameworks that developers are familiar with.\n\nMicroservices are fine if you can rely on shared CI/CD infrastructure and\nautomate execution properly, maintaining rapid build/test cycle times. They\nstart to suck if people aren't familiar and everyone's laptop has to hold\ntheir own parallel multi-topology service prom regression test (^releases)\nevery time you change a line of code... developer focus, flow and efficacy\nwill be reduced.\n\nI agree that redundant HA systems are usually not required. In the past it was\nexpensive to get. However, tooling is now so good that with reasonable\ndevelopers and reasonable infrastructure design, you can get it very, very\ncheaply if your services are packaged reasonably (CD-capable) with basically\nsane architecture and your infrastructure is halfway modern. This truly is\nexcellent, because gone are the 1990s of everyone-relies-on-grizzled-sysadmin-\nand-two-overpriced-boxes-with-failover.\n\nI don't think CI is a plaster, it is a great way to work, but like any tool or\nworkflow is not appropriate in all situations.\n\nWe do over-complicate. Methodologies are too meta: programmers are already\noperating at max concurrent levels of abstraction. Better to incrementally\nadjust workflow (CI/CD on the workflow for the CI/CD of the workflow!). That's\nnot to say that there's no value to some people thinking at this level some of\nthe time, but Yoda told me \"desk with agile literature much, sign of untidy\nmind be\". I think he was right.\n\n------\nAzkar\nI feel like all of this just comes back to judgement calls. You can't pick\ntechnologies in a vacuum, and you can't generalize technology choices.\n\nIt's not very fair to make these claims without knowing all of the details\naround the situation. Microservices CAN be a pain, but it might offset a\ngreater pain of trying to coordinate a monolithic deployment. It depends on\nthings like team size, budget, and technology available to you.\n\nThis is where I see the disconnect between employers and most developers.\n\"Programming\" isn't a job. Your employer doesn't pay you to write code. They\npay you to solve problems. The good employers don't care what tools you use to\nsolve the problem, just that you solved it. The bad employers will force you\nto use technologies and buzzwords that probably don't apply to your situation.\nYou should be able to defend all of your decisions and have good reasons for\nthem.\n\nOn the flip side, not everything you try will work - that doesn't mean that\nit's a bad option, just that it didn't work for your situation. You don't need\nto have a redundant low-priority memo system because you don't get enough\nvalue out of it to justify the overhead of maintaining it.\n\n------\npeterwwillis\nI think you confused trends for wisdom.\n\nIt used to be wise to wear bell bottom jeans and perm your hair. It also used\nto be wise to wear colored suspenders, or pocket protectors. And shoes with\nlights in them, and color changing shirts.\n\nGranted, those same weird misguided trends were probably followed by the same\npeople who accomplished everything we have today. I think it's the effort you\nput into the work that determines its output, not the details of its\ndevelopment.\n\n------\nlolive\nPoint 5 is really insightful. When you read it carefully, it implies that\nagile \"methodology\" will soon become the prevalent methodology. Because a\nsuccessful project is all about managing a massive amount of \"specific,\ndiscrete, communications issues\". And doing so on a daily basis is the best\noption.\n\nOff-topic note: point 5 is also the way to go with your\nwife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend, your kids, your friends, etc.\n\n~~~\njs8\nInteresting idea. I think dinner is the best place for an evening family SCRUM\nmeeting.\n\n~~~\nlolive\nSCRUM meetings with cheese and wine. THIS - IS - BRI-LLI-ANT !!!\n\n------\ncthulhuology\nHonestly, it is probably just you (and your peers).\n\nQuite frankly chances are the team you have sucks at operations, lacks the\nnecessary experience to design complex systems, and probably doesn't do the\nfundamental engineering to make a reliable software product.\n\n1 - false dichotomy, the best tool is one you have mastered, your team has\nindividuals with 20+ years of development experience on it right? (Probably\nnot)\n\n2 - micro services are supposed to have small areas of concern and small\nfunctional domains to minimize operational complexity. Your services are\nprograms that fit on a couple screens right? (Doesn't sound like it)\n\n3 - redundancy's goal is to remove single points of failure, you should be\nable to kill any process and the system keeps working. (The word critical\nsuggests you have spfs)\n\n4 - CI is a dev tool to avoid merge hell by always be merging. CI is often\nused by orgs with massive monoliths because of the cost of testing small\nchanges, and too many cook trying to share a pot. Ultimately if you don't have\nwell defined interfaces ci won't save you. (You had well defined published\ninterfaces with versions right?)\n\n5 - agile is a marketing term for consulting services to teach large orgs how\nto act like small effective teams of experts. (Hint you need a team of self-\ndirected experts with a common vision and freedom to execute it, you got that\nright?)\n\nMost problems in tech are related to pop culture. Because we discount\nexperience (because experienced developers are \"expensive\") we get to watch\npeople reinvent existing things poorly. Microservices, soa, agile, ci, these\nthings are older than many devs working today. The industry fads are largely\njust rebranding of old concepts to sell them to another clueless generation.\n\nComputers are complex systems, networks of computers are complex systems.\nComplex systems are complex. Some complexity is irreducible, and complex\nsystem behavior is more than just a mere aggregation of the parts. People tend\nto over complicate their solutions when they don't understand their actual\nproblem. They see things they are unfamiliar with as costly and overly\ncomplicated (as in your examples above).\n\nYour problem is a culture that doesn't value experience and deep\nunderstanding. You and your team will over complicate things because you don't\nknow better yet.\n\n------\nvirgilp\n1) Yes, except that you should try some languages sometimes. E.g. if you use\nSpark in production as a critical part of your system... take the time to\nlearn scala.\n\n2) Is a pet peeve of mine. Theoretically microservices are good, but we don't\nhave a way to orchestrate them. What's lacking (in programming languages\nterms) is a \"runtime\" and \"debugger\" and of course a widely-tested & reliable\nset of \"libraries\" for most common tasks. I think it's possible to do\nsomething like that, as long as you start imposing some restrictions on what a\n\"microservice\" is and how it talks to the outside world. Also, in this frame\nof thinking, it becomes apparent that \"deployment\" is actually \"programming\nthe system, at a high level\". It's not \"just configuration\", configuration is\ncode - if you moved the complexity from your \"code\" to your configuration, you\njust moved the complexity into a language that has very poor tools to work\nwith.\n\n3) My rule of thumb for most systems is \"avoid redundancy in the control\nplane; you can and should have redundancy in the data/data processing plane;\ndon't plan for 100% uptime in the control plane, plan for very short\ndowntimes/ for fast recovery when something goes wrong\"\n\n4) My experience is that continuous integration is good for all but the very\nsmall teams. For multiple reasons, not just \"microservices\"\n\n5) \"Agile\" is horrendously misused, the cargo cult is in full force. It should\nbe about prioritising & doing the important things, reducing overhead to the\nminimum necessary. It has become an overhead in itself, with \"sprints\" reduced\nto ridiculously low periods, meeting over meeting at each sprint, etc.\n\n------\n6DM\nI think micro-services was your big issue. But yes, getting into the politics\nof pure scrum, kanban, whatever is a big drag.\n\nDevOps has it's merits and will work well if you're team can stop trying to\ndevelop newer better scripts and learn when to say it's good enough. I saw one\nteam revise their scripts over and over for a whole year when they could have\nbeen using that guy for new features/bug fixes.\n\n------\nhalis\n1) Choosing JavaScript for a Math heavy project would likely be a mistake.\nThere are plenty of other examples of picking the wrong language for the wrong\njob. That's where this statement falls apart.\n\n2) Depending on how you bring them all together, yes this can be true. If you\nhave something like AWS API Gateway, then microservices may be manageable. If\nyou're rolling your own custom solution with something like nginx or haproxy,\nyou're probably wasting a ton of cycles.\n\n3) Again, I tend to agree with this. Premature optimization seems to be the\nnorm these days. Especially when you get devops people involved. Do we need\nevery single layer in our stack to be \"highly available\" if we have zero\nusers? The answer is NO.\n\n4) Well, this sounds clever, but I'm not sure it really means anything.\nSetting up something like Jenkins to watch your GitHub repos and build the\nbranch and run the tests can alert you to issues early and really isn't that\ndifficult to setup.\n\n5) Nothing wrong with TDD as long as you don't go overboard. Nothing wrong\nwith standups, planning or retros. Nothing wrong with short sprints.\n\n------\nYZF\nThe rule is there are no rules. The answer is \"it depends\".\n\nIf the only language your developers are familiar with is Ruby and you're\ndeveloping a real-time, high-performance, system, then you shouldn't write it\nin Ruby.\n\nIf you need the kind of availability/scalability/encapsulation that\nmicroservices provide in your application/use-case then you should use them.\nDon't break you application into micro-services just because everyone says\nit's a good idea. An Angry Birds app on an iPhone doesn't need to be split up\ninto micro-services running on said iPhone.\n\nIf you don't have redundancy and you lose your server then you're hard down.\nIf you're OK with that fine. If you want to continue operation with one server\ndown then you need redundancy. Redundancy doesn't necessarily add as much\ncomplexity as you seem to imply.\n\nContinuous Integration is usually a good idea regardless of all other\nvariables. If you have more than a single developer working on a system it's a\ngood idea to keep building/testing this system with every change so you can\ncatch issues earlier. You start very light-weight though with a small team.\nEven a single dev can do CI, it's not that hard.\n\nAgile is just a buzzword but it doesn't hurt to familiarize yourself with the\nAgile Manifesto while making sure you're aware of the context in which it\narose. It's really mostly about understanding that requirements often change\nand that we're dealing with humans. Again different projects, team sizes,\nsituations will require somewhat different approaches. Sometimes the\nrequirements are well understood and will change very little. Sometimes you\nknow nothing about what the software will do when you're done.\n\n------\nMaulingMonkey\nA certain amount of complexity or complication is required to solve problems.\nSometimes, you will undershoot the mark, and not fully solve the problem.\nOther times, you will overshoot the mark, and create problems in the form of\novercomplicated answers.\n\n> 1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool for\n> the job\n\nIt's a tradeoff - rampup time vs efficacy once ramped up. It's probably okay\nto let your devs rock it old school with vanilla Javascript for your website\nfrontend - it's probably _not_ okay for them to try and write your website\nfrontend in COBOL, even if CobolScript is apparently a thing, just because\nthey don't know Javascript.\n\n> 4) Continuous integration seems to be a plaster on the problem of complex\n> devops introduced by microservices.\n\nCI is great plaster for all kinds of problems, not all of which you'll be able\nto solve in a reasonable fashion. Of course, you may have problems which would\nbe better to solve that you're using CI as a crutch to avoid solving - or to\nsimply deal with the fact that you haven't gotten around to solving those\nproblems _yet_.\n\nIn game development, I use CI to help 'solve' the problem of my coworkers not\nthoroughly testing all combinations of build configurations and platforms for\neach change. 5 configs and 6 platforms? That's already 30 combinations to\ntest, so it's no wonder...\n\n> 5) Agile \"methodology\" when used as anything but a tool to solve specific,\n> discrete, communications issues is really problematic\n\nOn the other hand, other companies rock \"flat\" management well past the point\nit's effective, and may lack any kind of methodology to keep progress on track\n- which is also problematic.\n\n------\nkingsawlamoo34\nWhy not all peoples are searching actual software?Its so difficult how many\nyears in making system anyone cannot knowing of all of app or platform or app\nor plug in or device or codechar all things are supporting each other if one\napp is not update directdownload from google play store,windos for microsoft\nstore how to give the part way of moving simple all App or Apk have in their\nbasic code ID company .how about they making of you will be use one app or apk\nand then you sign out App and delete software but your using activity remain\nin more sure you can next time you reuse same app you will be seen or not your\nhistory this is one things but alittle difference in fre game app how about\nyou play inside but you will be exit and then you replay this you can see or\nnot your recent play section if you make log in account connect sure you can\nmaking or not resume game section game.all of game have in prevent and resume\nsection already contain but you are not own create you cannot open this\nbackground codechar or security for example...\n\n------\nsteven777400\nKeep in mind, as others have said, the \"accepted wisdom\" is coming out of\nhigh-income, high-velocity, technology companies. However, a lot of\ndevelopment is done at companies whose primary business is not software (or\nnot technology). Additionally, many established businesses care less about\nvelocity than hungry startups.\n\nIn that case, I think a different set of wisdom applies: 1\\. Choose languages\nthat are easy to hire for, easy to train for, have lots of 3rd party support,\nand easy for junior developers to use (and that your developers already know).\nThis generally means Java, C#, or Python (on the backend)\n\n5\\. First it's important to define \"agile\" in your context. Agile, in terms of\nthe agile manifesto, is almost always beneficial to the project, although it\nwon't speed it up. Agile, in terms of cargo culting specific artifacts, is\noften just a waste of time and source of confusion. If your organizational\ndefinition of agile is \"no project manager needed\", then you're in trouble.\nGood project managers are essential.\n\n------\nbuzzybee\nThere's a great discussion to be had in scaling your practices to the human\nfactors.\n\nFor a solo developer, just breaking things out into modules and massaging the\nformatting is likely to be a net negative - something you might do once you've\naccumulated months of cruft and are ready to start handing it off to others or\nrepurposing it for a new project, but also a chore that will get in the way of\nthinking about the job in front of you _right now_ , a temptation to think\ntop-down planning will come to your rescue. Your advantage is in being able to\nchange direction immediately, and there are a lot of ways to give that up by\naccidentally following a practice for a larger team.\n\nAs a team gets bigger, it's more important to be cautious because of momentum;\nany direction you pick for development will be hard to stop once it gets\ngoing.\n\nAt the same time, there are processes and automations that help at every\nscale, and at the small scale they're just more likely to be little scripts\nand workflow conventions, not ironclad enforcements.\n\n------\nStreamBright\nWell, I think there are 6 points to answer here:\n\n>> 0, Are we over complicating software development?\n\nYes, in many cases we are over complicating software development. I think a\nlarge part of OOP too complex to produce reliable services easily, still\npossible though. Simplicity is not as popular among developers as it should\nbe. I often run into complex code that can be replaced by 10x smaller code\nbase that is much clearer than the original.\n\n1, Sure\n\n2, I am not sure why you think that, you need services that can few things\nwell and individually scalable units. This used to be SOA (service oriented\narchitecture), and micro-services lately. There are cloud vendors out there\nwho make it super easy for you to run such services for reasonable price on\ntheir platforms without a devops team.\n\n3, See point 0. Complex systems fail more than simple ones. Failure isolation\nand graceful degradation should be properties at design time. The best is to\nhave stateless (no master slave service or registry that is required for\ncorrect operations) clusters where you can scale the capacity with the number\nof nodes.\n\n4, Continuous integration is way older than the term microservices. It\ncontains patterns that a company figured out by shipping code that had to be\nreliable and it is optimised for frequent changes aka when you developing a\nnew service or product. It is just a way of giving instant feedback to\ndevelopers.\n\n5, There are so many talks and videos about agile used bluntly is harmful on\nthe web that I think this is a well understood question. Use a method that\nworks for the team, it provides the insight to the business what they are\ndoing and you are good. I use Kanban for almost 10 years with distributed\nteams (software and systems engineering) and it works perfectly for us.\n\n+1 for simpler code and simpler software\n\n~~~\ndceddia\nRe: #2, what are some such services?\n\nAWS seems to be the go-to standard but it's amazingly complicated.\n\n------\nSammi\nYou are basically say much of the same as Dan North is saying in his newest\ntake on Agile:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFLBG_bilrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFLBG_bilrg)\n\nAgile is dead, long live Agile. The difference now, is that we understand\ntrade-offs. There's no silver bullet and there are no absolutes.\n\n~~~\nYhippa\nDid people honestly think that Agile was going to be a silver bullet? If so\nthe consultants won.\n\n------\nrymohr\nCan't agree enough!\n\nI actually wrote an article [1] last week exploring single-tenant SAAS\narchitectures because I was annoyed with how complicated our multi-tenant\nplans were. Was bummed the HN post [2] didn't get any traction because I was\nreally hoping for some critical feedback.\n\nFor me, the holy grail is a cost-effective system that doesn't back you into\nscaling issues down the road and is simple enough to be run by a single\ndeveloper (on the side) rather than a dedicated team of sysadmins. Pipe dream?\nMaybe. But it's worth a shot.\n\n[1]: [https://hackernoon.com/exploring-single-tenant-\narchitectures...](https://hackernoon.com/exploring-single-tenant-\narchitectures-57c64e99eece)\n\n[2]:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13385474](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13385474)\n\n------\ngrok2\nFrom what you are describing, it seems like there is more a problem associated\nwith your team than with anything else. Maybe you don't have the right set of\nexpertise in the team and people tend to work better with what they are\ncomfortable with. Microservices/redundancy support/CI at a fundamental level\nincrease the complexity of how you go about things, but they do have benefits.\nThey require a way of thinking and developing that should be a cultural fit\nfor the team for it not to feel like you are constantly fighting the system.\nOne way to get there is to incrementally add these after the primary project\nis done. When tackling one thing at a time, things end up being simpler and\nand the need for these things gets into the working habits of everyone better\nand they are no longer fighting the system.\n\n------\nburo9\ndevops is good stuff. Just apply to the developers the same standards (and\ntypically answers) as you would to your deployment world. You should be able\nto answer questions like: \"How does a new developer get going within 5\nminutes?\" in the same way that you answer \"How do we build and deploy a new\napp?\" and both the local developer and remote system should be debugged and\nmonitored in the same way.\n\ndevops isn't bad, and will speed up onboarding new staff, growing, and helps\nyour devs and ops people immensely.\n\nOn the rest I'd largely agree with you... other answers may only apply at a\ncertain scale, or complexity, or some other set of parameters that may not\napply to you now.\n\nSolve the problem you have now, and the problem you'll definitely have in the\nnext 6 months.\n\nThe rest is for the future.\n\n------\nvcool07\nYou need to work in an environment devoid of any practices like agile / CI etc\nand then you would know the difference. It might slow down your progress, but\nmakes up for it with consistency, discipline eventually leading to development\nof better(reliable) software !\n\n------\nzitterbewegung\nIf you keep on following every hype-train yea you will get over complicated\nsoftware development.\n\n------\nseangrogg\nFrom my perspective, the problem is that others _believe_ everyone else is\ncaught up in the same trends they are. If someone starts to prosthelytize\nsomething - whether that's build management, microservices, or even pairing\nReact with Redux by default - individuals start to think it's the \"new thing\"\nand adopt rather than critically think about it.\n\nPersonally, I tend to shy away from tools unless they seem to do something of\nsignificant value for me that outweighs their cost on my development process.\nThe \"best tool for the job\" is the one that allows me to finish a project in a\ntimely manner, not one whose memory footprint is 10% lower.\n\n------\nEricson2314\nIt's all about long-term vs short-term. _Everyone_ architects software for the\nshort term, I'd say the industry at large has collectively lost/never had the\nvision and wisdom to do anything else.\n\nNow maybe if you are a tiny-ass start-up, sure, but for a big established\ncompany, this is just bad economics.\n\nWhy do we talk about \"disrupting\" the \"behemoths\"? Why is everything done in\ntiny-ass largely-parallel teams? Very few companies have had serious thoughts\nabout programming at scale.\n\nI don't dispute that doing things the right way is often a huge up-front\ninitial investment, but you do eventually get over the hump.\n\n~~~\nflukus\n> Everyone architects software for the short term, I'd say the industry at\n> large has collectively lost/never had the vision and wisdom to do anything\n> else.\n\nI think everyone architects for the long term, they just do so poorly. The\nproblem is that architecture has become synonymous with \"more layers\".\n\n~~~\nEricson2314\nOK, so in the beginning there were no layers. People occasionally wrote a\nlayer but it was common to just say \"fuck it\", and through it away. As late as\nthe 90s, you read about C programmers writing hash tables all the time, wtf.\n\nThen, somewhere along the way I don't know exactly when, we hit an inflection\npoint where there were some layers that didn't work quite right, but were hard\nto do without, so we'd try to shim it.\n\nReally good long-term engineering means also ripping up the under-performing\nlayers, attacking the unneeded complexity. This does not mean giving up on\nabstractions altogether.\n\n------\noblio\nContinuous Integration on any project which will be developed for more than 1\nyear by more than 1 person should provide a positive return of investment.\n\nThe rest are debatable, but I feel that the point above is close to an axiom\nthese days.\n\n------\nAnimats\nI've used microservices, but on QNX, where you have MsgSend and MsgReceive,\nwhich make message passing not much harder than a subroutine call, and not\nmuch slower. UNIX/Linux was never designed for interprocess communication. You\nhave to build several more layers before you can talk, and the result is\nclunky.\n\nIf you're crossing a language boundary, it's often better to use interprocess\ncommunication than to try to get two languages to play together in the same\naddress space. That tends to create technical debt, because now two disparate\nsystems have to be kept in sync.\n\n------\nzzzcpan\nI think these problems are not about software development, but are\ninfrastructural and architectural. Lack of good people to handle those things\nis certainly a problem. But you do need quite a bit of infrastructure for\nmicroservices, for resilience, for continuous integration and all of that\npaired with some good architectural decisions. Resilience is probably the\nhardest thing among them, as it requires some expertise in distributed\nsystems, operations, infrastructure, so you wouldn't do something, that has\nalmost no impact, but requires a lot of engineering effort.\n\n------\nprotomyth\nAt this point, I think a lot of software development problems are complicated\nbecause we are building on a platform that really isn't designed for the apps\nwe want. The web makes everything a lot more frustrating and hard. It\ncomplicates testing and requires a lot more process than is justified by the\napps. At some point the era of the web will come to and end then maybe we will\nget a net gui (probably based on messaging) that will hopefully take the\nlessons of the web to heart.\n\n------\nmakmanalp\nI think this is where a lot of varied work experience (small / large / old /\nnew companies) is key, because it gives you perspective. You can then ask\nyourself, \"why does this process suck so much, and why didn't it when I worked\nat X? In my experience, people who come from a monoculture background usually\nseem to not question dubious software, architecture and methodology choices\nthat end up killing productivity and sanity.\n\n~~~\nAnimalMuppet\nYeah. If you're going to use languages, methodologies, and architectures\nwithout understanding, and without evaluating them for how well they fit your\nsituation, many things will be painful. Don't follow the fads, whether\nmethodologies (Agile), architecture (microservices), languages, or frameworks.\n_Use what 's appropriate for what you need to do._\n\n------\nraverbashing\n1) The best tool is useless if people can't avail of its power\n\n2) True. Microservices are usually premature optimization\n\n3) True\n\n4) CI is a good idea regardless of using microservices or not\n\n5) You might elaborate this item\n\n------\nchetanahuja\nNo it's not just you. In general, \"follow latest trends blindly\" has never\nbeen a winning strategy in software development at any point in computing\nhistory. Now, that is not to say that you never change your tools or\nmethodologies once you've mastered your existing tools. But the new\ntools/techs need to pass a very high bar before you subject your team to\nthese.\n\n------\nwickedlogic\nYes, we are over complicating software development.\n\n------\nmybrid\nAnother way of saying this is it is not science.\n\nUsability needs to be applied to more than just the end user experience: but\nthe entire SDLC experience.\n\n------\nrb808\nThe biggest issue I have is the current fashion for functional languages\nresulting in mixed style code bases. I've been working on established\napplications written in Java/C#/Python that have OO, imperative and now\nfunctional code all mixed together.\n\nIf I had it my way we'd choose one or the other but no one can agree which is\nthe best way to write code.\n\n~~~\nnathanaldensr\nThe style takes a backseat to readability and maintainability. Try creating\ncomplex object queries in .NET without LINQ; good luck at reading and\nmaintaining that code. I'll take my lambda expressions any day over that,\nthank you. I remember \"the good old days\" of C# 1.0 and you'd be crazy to want\nto go back there.\n\n------\nbluestreak\nIt isn't new when I say that it is hard to come up with simple solution.\n\nIn most cases people tend to work under pressure, which ends up with problem\nnicely fitted to tool at hand. You can hardly blame anybody for that. What we\nare not doing enough is going over \"solution\" again and again. Solving a\nproblem second time around is always easier.\n\n------\nbjourne\nYes. What you have discovered is the same epiphany most developers have as\nthey get more experienced and better at their jobs.\n\n------\nswift\nI'd like to push back on continuous integration being over-complicated. It's\neasy to do using off-the-shelf software and it makes life a _lot_ less\nstressful when you have confidence that your changes are good before landing\nthem in production. It's such a win that I'd set it up even with a 10 person\nteam.\n\n~~~\nnathanaldensr\nI use TeamCity to automate running my unit tests and generating/publishing\nNuGet packages to my private NuGet server... and I work alone. It has value\neven there. :)\n\n------\nkoolba\n> 1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool for\n> the job\n\nThe language that you're familiar with generally is the best tool for the job.\nMost software work can be equally done well (or at least greater than\nacceptably well) in a number of languages. Not having to learn a new one (or a\nnew framework) is a plus.\n\n------\nGurrewe\nAll development teams or products are not the same. Sometimes microservices\ncan improve the quality, and sometimes the opposite.\n\nIt is important to know why you do some things, instead of applying Hype-\nDriven-Development.\n\nDo what is best for _you and your team_ , instead of what is best for _someone\nelse_ (with a different product, problem, and team).\n\n------\nlukaszkups\nAre You a front-end developer? :D\n\nYes, I think very often we over complicate even simple things. But sometimes\nit pays in the long run.\n\n------\npmontra\nMost of the time we're creating complexity when we can avoid it and we're\noften proud of it.\n\nThe problem is that's very difficult to find the right compromise between\ntime, cost, an architecture that can support the growth of the service so\neither we build something too thin or something too complicated.\n\n------\ngreyman\nContinuous integration is also necessary for bigger projects with many inter-\ndependent parts. I worked in such a project, we had about 100 developers on it\nand I just can't imagine how it could be efficiently developed without CI. But\nfor small projects it maybe isn't that critical.\n\n------\nagentultra\nJust linking my comment to the other thread in response to this post:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13429618](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13429618)\n\ntldr; simplicity is a great virtue and difficult to achieve in practice.\n\n------\nbassman9000\nCould also be interpreted as: \"devops is not yet mature/lacking tooling\".\n\nDon't get me wrong, complexity has grown. Agile is a joke. But, e.g., build\nsystems have been maturing for 30+ years. Their cousins, deploy systems, have\na long way to go.\n\n------\ncorecoder\nAlways worth mentioning: [http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Programming-\nSucks!-Or-At-Lea...](http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Programming-Sucks!-Or-At-\nLeast,-It-Ought-To-)\n\n------\neikenberry\n> 1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool for\n> the job\n\n+1\n\nProgrammers have affinities for languages. They will work better with some\nlanguages than others and they know which languages fit them well. Those are\nthe best ones to use.\n\n------\nmbrodersen\nNo you are absolutely right. 95% of problems in software development are\ncreated by the software developers themselves. At least that is my experience\nhaving worked in software for 20+ years in companies all over the world.\n\n------\njoelthelion\nI think one cause of the problems is that what is good at Google scale is not\nnecessarily relevant for a team of ten people.\n\nI think the lesson here is be critical of \"best practices\" and think about\nwhat will work in YOUR context.\n\n------\ntboyd47\nYou are correct. We cargo-cult Google and Facebook so much that we forget to\napply lessons learned decades ago. People and interactions over processes and\ntools. There is no silver bullet. You Ain't Gonna Need It.\n\n------\nusgroup\n... I'd agree. Put briefly, if you're trying to save the day, people first.\n\nBut when you stop needing to save the day and want to build something will\nparticular properties , you may find that process has to come first.\n\n------\nuser5994461\nSo... that big list is the lessons learnt at the startup IR the big company?\nIts really not clear to me.\n\nSame problem with all the comments that begin with \"at my last company\". Which\nkind was it?\n\n------\njasonlotito\n> lack of communication\n\nYou can't talk about lack of communication and blame \"devops\" at the same\ntime. If there was a lack of communication, you aren't \"doing devops.\"\n\n------\ncamus2\n1/ What language did they choose? why? what made them think language X or\nframework Z would give them a competitive advantage at first place and what\nwas the result of that choice?\n\n------\ndood\nThe issue is that solving real problems is hard, but making things complicated\nis easy, fun, and looks a lot like solving real problems if you aren't paying\ncareful attention.\n\n------\nsapeien\n1) Doesn't always work if you want to target embedded systems or need\nperformance, and all you know are scripting languages with huge overhead like\nRuby, JS, Python, etc. Some languages really are better than others.\n\n2) Could say avoid distributed computing if your problem is not distributed.\nThis is more about being a blind follower of the latest hype.\n\n3 & 4) Complicated DevOps are a bad idea in general. Stuff that seems to\nsimplify things on the surface like Docker are actually hiding tons of\ncomplexity underneath.\n\n5) To most people, Agile = JIRA = Sprints = Scrum. It's corporate mentality\ncodified, so it's no surprise that a lot of startups avoid it.\n\n------\nGnarfGnarf\nSoftware development goes off the rails because there are no physical\nmaterials involved, so there is no built-in limitation to prevent costs from\ngoing out of control.\n\n------\nd--b\ntruth is: you're young and you're becoming an experienced developer... You\nsomehow have to go through these stages. In the end, you'll be all right.\n\n------\npknerd\nSome people have got so used to of complicated architecture and workflow that\nthey are finding your questions odd. Just check comments.\n\n------\nTurboHaskal\nHey, we gotta eat. If people won't pay for software licenses then we'll make\nthem pay for training and consulting services.\n\n------\ndevdad\nHi, I'm happy to be posting anon right now. Can someone ELI5 the difference\nbetween libraries and packages and a microservice?\n\n------\ngraphememes\nI have seen Microservices be the death of a lot of startups / corporations.\nProceed with caution.\n\n------\nz3t4\ni think the best way is to start backwards in the future. what are the\nrequirements. then plan towards today. what do you need and when ... thats how\ni did plan my training program as an athlete. the most important question is\nwhat do i need (to do) right now\n\n------\nr4ltman\nas a guy whose idea was successfully pitched to a successful tech company of\nwhich i am still connected, i'm going to say yes. the classification aspects\nof specialty training keeps the process from being as fluid as it needs to be\nin order to be truly game changing rather than merely, whatever expectation is\nexpected.\n\ni know this sounds different to everyone, here's the point,\n\nThe User Needs to Use It. The focus is always on everything else. Only when\ntheres' been 'some' success does the user and by user, I mean, the entire\nfield the program is for, is an influence, this lack of empathy keeps any\nleadership from ever happening when everything is based on 'past successes of\nother companies' rather than trying to lead effectively.\n\n------\njbverschoor\nYES!\n\n------\nmadhadron\nFiguring out how to do things simply is remarkably hard. After twenty years of\nthis, I feel like I'm beginning to be able to design simple systems some of\nthe time.\n\nThe problem with much \"currently accepted wisdom\" is that it doesn't explain\nexactly what is being balanced. \"Works for my organization\" is the equivalent\nof \"works on my machine.\" For example,\n\n1) \"Best tool for the job\" when applied to languages nearly never is a\nquestion of the intrinsic merits of a language design. There have been quite a\nfew discussions recently on Hacker News on the virtues of a boring stack, that\nis, one that everyone else has already beaten on so much that you can expect\nto hit fewer issues.\n\n2) Microservices are a tradeoff. If you have an engineering team of five\nhundred shipping a single software as a service product, one of your biggest\nissues is coordinating releases among all those people without having your\nservices ping-ponging up and down all the time. Microservices are an answer to\nthat. At that scale you've already had to automate your operational troubles,\nso it doesn't impose that much additional operational cost. If you have an\nengineering team of ten, then none of this applies to you.\n\n3) High availability, like all concurrency, is hard. Try to write your own\ncode so that it scales horizontally by simple replication and depends on stock\ncomponents such as Kafka, Zookeeper, etcd, or Cassandra to handle\norchestration. In many cases your reliability budget may be such that you can\nrun a single system, automate some operations around it, and be just fine.\nIt's only when your reliability budget doesn't allow that, or your workload\nforces you to orchestrate parallel work, that you have to go this route.\n\n4) Yes. Nearly all discussion of agile software development that I've seen\nfocuses on rituals without the applied behavior analysis underlying them. For\nexample, a standup meeting has a small set of goals: establish a human\nconnection between everyone on the team on a regular basis; air things that\nare blocking individuals in a forum where they are likely to find someone who\ncan unblock them quickly; have everyone stand up and take responsibility for\nwhat they are doing in front of their team; and serve as a high bandwidth\nchannel of communication of important information (the build is going to break\nthis afternoon for an hour, etc.). If those outcomes are being achieved in\nother ways by your group, then there's no reason to have a standup. If you're\ndoing a standup and it's not accomplishing one or more, you need to revise how\nyou do it. Human behavior and interaction is something to be designed and\nshaped in an organization. What works in a team of three with excellent\ncommunication may not work in a team of ten or fifty or five hundred.\n\n------\nlngnmn\n_looking at some react-todo-demo and its dependencies_ \\- complicating? not at\nall!\n\nJ2EE will soon look like a reasonable thing.\n\n------\nsiphr\nYES WE ARE-\n\n------\nshitgoose\nit is not just you, but we are hopelessly outnumbered.\n\n------\nbtilly\nThere is a lot of BS in software development. Always has been, probably always\nwill. Everything is a tradeoff. Understand the tradeoffs that you are taking,\nlisten for the principles, and you can ignore most of the noise.\n\nOn to your questions.\n\n _1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool for\nthe job_\n\nHow familiar developers are with the language is part of what determines what\nis best for the job at hand in a real organization.\n\nIt isn't the only factor. For example if you're doing something new (to you),\ndoing it in the language that you find wherever you are learning it from makes\nsense because you'll be more likely to get help through complex issues.\n\nThat said, do not underestimate the support advantage of using a consistent\ntoolset that everyone understands.\n\n _2) Avoid microservices where possible, the operational cost considering\ndevops is just immense_\n\nSee\n[https://martinfowler.com/bliki/MonolithFirst.html](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/MonolithFirst.html)\nfor emphatic support.\n\nIf you go the microservices route, think ahead about predictable challenges\nwith debugging failures 3 calls deep, and plan in advance for monitoring etc\ntooling to solve it.\n\n _3) Advanced reliability / redundancy even in critical systems ironically\nseems to causes more downtime than it prevents due to the introduction of\ncomplexity to dev & devops._\n\nAs the old saying goes, DBAs are the primary cause of databases going down.\nReliability is not something that you just plaster on top blindly. An systems\nare good at finding failure modes that you never thought of.\n\n _4) Continuous integration seems to be a plaster on the problem of complex\ndevops introduced by microservices._\n\nNo. Continuous integration is actually a fix for developers checking in\nclearly broken code and then nobody discovering it later. That said, it does\nlittle good without a number of other good practices that are easy to ignore.\n\n _5) Agile \"methodology\" when used as anything but a tool to solve specific,\ndiscrete, communications issues is really problematic_\n\nThis one generated the most discussion. I would say sort of, but you went too\nfar.\n\nAny set of poorly understood principles, dogmatically applied, is going to\nwork out badly. Agile is actually a set of good principles that addressed a\nmajor problem in the common wisdom back in the day. But the pendulum has swung\nand it is often applied poorly.\n\nThat said, there are other problems in organizations which are prone to,\n\"poorly understood principles, dogmatically applied\"...\n\n------\ncrispytx\nYes\n\n------\nbrilliantcode\n1997: I created my first website on Netscape Navigator. I was 10.\n\n2007: I created a textbook trading RoR web app. I was 20.\n\n2017: I'm struggling to create my first front-end website on Chrome and I\nhaven't decided on the back-end. I'm 30.\n\nThe barrier to entry is indeed very high and no signs of slowing. I blame the\nexplosion of low-interest capital from VC's fueling this fracturing.\n\n~~~\nbrwr\nBuilding a website doesn't have to be complicated. You build a Rails site 10\nyears ago. You probably used jQuery, if you used JavaScript at all. Why can't\nyou do the same today?\n\nThe real problem here is that not enough developers understand that \"just\nbecause you can, doesn't mean you should.\" Once more of us get a handle on\nthat, life will be better.\n\n~~~\nbrilliantcode\n> You build a Rails site 10 years ago. You probably used jQuery, if you used\n> JavaScript at all. Why can't you do the same today?\n\nYou can and I do. However, I am thinking of using polymer or vue.js as I think\nthey are a much lighter candidate than react.js & angular.\n\nThe power of marketing is underrated in the developer circles.\n\n~~~\nbrwr\nIf you still use Rails and jQuery, why both with Polymer or Vue? What is the\nbenefit they give you?\n\nPromise I'm not giving you a hard time. I'm honestly curious if there's\nsomething I'm overlooking.\n\n~~~\nbrilliantcode\nI asked the same question last year and to be honest, building a SPA is tough\nwith just jQuery. It's more of my needs changing, I don't think SPA can be\nignored in 2017, the progressive web app and AMP will put a huge dent in the\nnative apps space.\n\nI just like to think that I'm developing a mobile app with front-end\njavascript framework....it's just the tooling and prerequisite knowledge is\nquite chaotic. Finding the right articles (up to date) is half the battle, as\nit's scattered in endless git repo pages.\n\n~~~\ncodingdave\nI'm not sure why an SPA with jQuery is tough. $.ajax. Send data. Do stuff in a\nback-end. Return data. Update divs. If it is tough, you might be trying too\nhard. I'm not trying to be glib... it just sounds like you might be buying\ninto the over-complexity that the original question was talking about.\n\n~~~\nflukus\nThe problem with jquery is that the state is stored in html elements. It makes\nit hard to debug, maintain and learn bigger applications. Things like\naccessing a hidden variable become DOM traversals rather than property\naccessors.\n\n~~~\ncodingdave\njQuery is just a framework, if even that. If you choose to use it to store\nstate in html elements, that is your choice. And yes, a common one. But the\nframework does not force it. If you make an AJAX call in jQuery, you get JSON\nback. (Or, I use it to get JSON back... you can send whatever you want back.)\nYou can do whatever you want with that JSON.\n\nFrequently, I do store metadata in a DOM element because the next event I will\nreact to is a click on that DOM element, so I already have a handle on it from\nthe ui element jQuery gives me... I do not have to traverse the DOM. But if\nthe future use of the data is NOT going to be a response to a click on a\nspecific DOM element, then no, I will do something else with the data.\n\nAgain, just because everyone else does it doesn't mean you have to, and\ndoesn't mean it is inherent in the tools. I'm not saying jQuery is the best\ntool out there... I'm saying that complexity in an SPA doesn't come from\njQuery itself, but from design choices made with it.\n\n~~~\nflukus\nTrue, it would be better to say that it's not great to build an SPA with just\njquery. It compliments a number of other frameworks that are good for SPA's.\n\n------\njustinlaster\n1\\. I think this is rather obvious, work with what you have. Maybe think about\nhiring specifically for areas your team is in lacking in, as long as the team\nas a whole will see decent benefit from it.\n\n2\\. I hate to say you're doing microservices \"wrong\" but I'd really question\nproject structure and practices being the culprit behind the cost of doing\ndevops with microservices.\n\n3\\. This seems like an engineering fault, rather than some implicit principle\nbehind those concepts causing more downtime.\n\n4\\. How is CI a plaster on the problem of microservices? CI is useful with or\nwithout microservices.\n\n5\\. Agile was always meant to be a _guideline_ , not an end all and be all.\nIt's meant to get your team to figure out how it wants to work, and write code\nbefore process. See: [http://agilemanifesto.org/](http://agilemanifesto.org/)\n\nThe problems you are describing seem like big problems with your team,\nengineering and management. No amount of process and technology is ever going\nto fix a dysfunctional (sorry if that's too blunt) team. What I get from this,\ninstead of having processes in place that make it easy to move code out,\nyou're removing tooling to slow things down intentionally with the superficial\nresult of \"stabilizing\" the entire development effort. The solution appears to\nbe to get your team to write less code, and force management to bow down to\nthe new reality of these \"stabilizing\" changes. Both of which can and\nsometimes should be done regardless of processes and tooling in place.\n\nThe best code is the code you don't write. But don't blame the tooling on\nmaking it easy for a team to be lazy and remove the all important\ncharacteristic of a team self-critiquing (i.e, \"Do we really need this\nfeature\", \"That'd be nice to have but right now we're managing to get things\ndone.\", \"Did I actually test my code, was it reviewed, or am I just counting\non the fact that I can shove something else out later while our redundancy\nsystems pick up the slack?\")\n\n~~~\nmhluongo\nQuite a few of these issues are common in other orgs. \"You're doing it wrong\"\nisn't great advice :/\n\n~~~\njustinlaster\nI would say in a lot of cases understanding that there are some basic failures\nis probably a great starting point to cleaning up the development effort.\nThere's not much else I can say other than that, considering how vague OP's\npost is.\n\n\"Good\" engineers will get things done and use common tooling to their\nadvantage. This requires actually understanding the principle behind the\ntools, not just shoving things in and hoping it all magically works.\n\nIf you have a lot of \"good\" practices that are supposed to make it easy to\nmove code around and you find that things just keep breaking, one could\nreasonably assume that it's simply highlighting an underlying issue. I'd start\nfiguring out which engineers (and management) is causing more work for our\norganization than they're putting out.\n\nWhat I think we're seeing from OP is lot of \"in name only\" practices.\n\n~~~\nmhluongo\nSome good practices aren't a good fit for a particular organization. Moving\nthe discussion to whether your engineers are \"good\", rather than whether they\nunderstand the organization's needs, is reductive.\n\nIf you want to develop better practices in an industry, saying the\npractitioner should be \"good\" isn't very helpful. Of course they should be\ngood! But unfortunately, despite the trope, we can't all hire the best, and\npart of the reason we have best practices is to work well without only hiring\nthe top 1% of engineers.\n\nAn example from my experience (mentioned in another comment)- microservices\nare a good practice in many larger orgs, because a big piece of what they\nsolve is political- but the overhead of running a distributed system at a\nsmall org often isn't worth it.\n\n~~~\njustinlaster\nI put \"good\" in quotes for a reason. I never said \"hire the best\"; that isn't\na requirement for anything that was stated.\n\nThere shouldn't really be a measurable overhead of running a distributed\nsystem, at least in the context of microservices. I strongly disagree with the\nsentiment that a distributed system isn't \"worth it\" at smaller organizations.\nI'm part of one, and it helps keep things flexible while increasing\nreliability of the \"overall\" system(s).\n\nBut that's neither here nor there. One shoe size won't fit everyone, but OP\nran down a gambit of things and seemed to have issue with each one. It is\nexceedingly unlikely they are doing anything eccentric enough to the point of\nproclaiming CI is just a bandaid on the broken concept of microservices. I\nwill contend that the source of OP's insights are... misappointed, and by\nbreaking down efficiencies and flexibility they're merely masking certain\nunderlying problems.\n\nWhat's more probable? An organization hired some wrong people, or a generic\nlist of strongly supported practices over the course of two to three decades\nare to blame for an organization's failings? I guess that's my take on it.\n\n------\nEdHominem\nNo, but your rules don't resonate with me even though I feel the same overall.\n\n1) Not the best language, but not the worst either. There's no excuse except\nmicrocontrollers for C these days (even though I still like it) and the fairly\ndecent JVM can't excuse Java. I think people can come up to speed in a new\nlanguage pretty easily. It's paradigms that are hard to learn, not syntax.\n\n2) Sounds like you don't have devops. That's a solve-it-once sort of problem.\nAnd you have to solve it soon enough for some pieces so it shouldn't be put\noff. You need to be good at it.\n\n3) It certainly can. It is increasing the size of your system considerably -\nnot just the original system, but also the debugging rules for that system\nplus (as noted) the debugging rules for the debugging rules ad-infinitum. But\nwhat do you propose as a solution? Perfectly trained humans on-call? A\nprocedures manual as detailed as the hypothetical code?\n\n4) Well, lack of CI seems insane regardless of what sort of architecture you\nhave. It's a symptom of not understanding the tools.\n\n5) Capitalized anything is always bunk. But if I hear agile as meaning \"short-\nterm goals inside long-term goals, and continuous re-evaluation\" then it makes\nperfect sense and has helped as a consultant and in industry.\n\n------\nGFK_of_xmaspast\nI don't do anything approaching microservices but a good CI setup combined\nwith a good test suite is an absolute blessing that verges on a 'must have'.\n\n------\nkmicklas\n> 1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool for\n> the job\n\nThis is probably true but also the root cause I think. Enough developers\naren't familiar with the right tools and abstractions (modularity,\nabstraction, purity, reproducability, etc.) that we just keep rehashing the\nsame bad ideas in a never ending stream of new languages and frameworks that\npush the same decades old ideas.\n\n------\ndraw_down\nUltimately, though complexity is a real thing, the word is mostly used to mean\n\"what I personally don't like\".\n\n------\ndiminoten\nJust to add to this a bit, what do you all think of the idea that \"code is a\ncode smell\"?\n\nIn other words, if you're writing code, make sure you actually need to write\nit, and can't otherwise find someone else who's written/released/maintains it.\n\n------\nhmans\nYes, we are; no, it's not just you. Next question.\n\n------\nbbcbasic\nHorses for courses.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLily is a hybrid OO+function language I've been building for nearly five years - jesserayadkins2\nhttp://github.com/jesserayadkins/lily\n======\ndozzie\n...and which is better/different than OCaml, because...?\n\n~~~\njesserayadkins2\nLily's made entirely in plain C, and thus it's easier to include as part of\nyour program. Maybe you'd like to run some script from your program and\nprovide some program variables/functions to Lily. You can do that. Now, Lily\nisn't currently totally ready for embedding, but the important parts are\nthere: It doesn't read global variables, and it has a single entry/exit point\nwhen you call it.\n\nYou can also use Lily as a templating language. The support for tagging is\nbuilt into the language, instead of being added to it.\n\nOne of Lily's strengths is that, unlike other scripting languages, it takes a\nvery, very low amount of memory to boot (10K). That makes it idea for,\neventually, truly embedding and being actually useful as a scripting language\nfor whatever you might be making.\n\nI don't know too much about OCaml, so I can't give a good, complete\ncomparison. But Lily's syntax and feel is more inspired by OO languages, with\nthe functional part being more about collections and chainability.\n\n~~~\ndozzie\nI'm not buying the part about Lily being functional only because it has map()\nand filter() equivalents (which is what I suspect at this point Lily\npresents), but the rest of the points sound solid.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow To Identify Talent - dorkitude\nhttp://dorkitude.com/post/22729437287/how-to-identify-talent\n\n======\ncwollak\nAwesome!!!\n\n~~~\ndorkitude\nThanks :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIs Clojure the \"New Lisp\"? - raju\nhttp://www.lunaticprogrammer.com/2009/02/is-clojure-lisp.html\n======\njwilliams\nShrug - call me a critic, but this is another \"Why I think Clojure will be\ngood\" article, rather than one with some (new) substance.\n\nI'd like to see some more articles on Clojure in actual practice.\n\n(p.s. It's because it's built on the JVM).\n\n~~~\nmaryrosecook\nClojure in practice: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=494147>\n\n------\nkrschultz\nI sure hope so More acceptance of functional programming is always a good\nthing. I love coding for in Lisp but I haven't really made the leap to\nproduction code since I have to support 4 platforms with all code I write for\nwork (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux on x86, Linux on ARM), and deploying Lisp code\nacross all those platforms auto-magically reliably SUCKS. We write all our\nstuff on the JVM so this would be easy to bolt on and expose to new people.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nResponsive Web Design: A Free Email Course - hv23\nhttp://trydesignlab.com/responsive-web-design/\n\n======\nmbrody\nHow long does each lesson take?\n\n~~~\nhv23\nHey! Each lesson is intended to be a bite-sized 10-15 minutes, with related\nlinks and a hands-on exercise you can do after. The goal is to equip you with\nthe basics and give you a strong foundation that you can use to dive in to\nmore details later, if you'd like.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNew cable cut compounds net woes - justinwhitefoot\nhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7222536.stm\n\n======\nsspencer\nThree in three days?\n[http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/01/internet.outage/in...](http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/01/internet.outage/index.html)\n\nWhat are the odds on THAT? Looks less like an accident all the time.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: jhackers.net - Conversations with Japan's Hackers - hkmurakami\nhttp://jhackers.net/\n\n======\nhkmurakami\nOP here :)\n\nWould really love to hear the kind of things HN'ers would like to hear in\nthese interviews, as I'll be reaching out to the hackers named as \"next up\" by\nthe first three guys I initially interviewed.\n\nI never would have created this site without HN and my small contributions to\nFOSS, so any feedback to make it better for you guys would be awesome!\n\n~~~\nKenzo99\nAll three are described as \"hackers\" on the site, yet none of them seem to be\nhackers. Engineers, developers, computer scientists - I could see those terms\nbeing used to describe them, but not \"hackers.\"\n\n~~~\nhkmurakami\nThanks for the feedback :)\n\nPerhaps I didn't do them justice through my efforts, but all three of them are\nopen source hackers to the bone. Could you expand on what you see as \"hackers\"\nand what sorts of people you'd be interested in reading about and expected to\nfind?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nOur Approach to Privacy - fjk\nhttps://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/\n======\nwyc\nApple sells hardware differentiated by integrated software for premium\npricing. They want to build better and more expensive products through\nsuperior design and quality control. Collecting and analyzing personal data\nisn't the most important thing for their business. They might see more benefit\nby eschewing personal data collection and marketing a privacy-focused message,\nwhich they seem to be doing.\n\nIn contrast, Google and Facebook are companies that sell advertising. The\nvalue they can offer to publishers and advertisers completely relies on how\nwell they know their users. Their competitive moat involves collection of\nproprietary data to continuously improve their products. These are clear\nincentives to be sticky and greedy with your information, but also to keep it\nprivate and proprietary for their own sake.\n\nWith these incentives in mind, I more readily trust Apple when it says that it\nwill not collect my data compared to data conglomerates, and Apple hasn't done\nanything to aggressively betray that idea in its history (to my knowledge).\nCombined with the technical security advantages of iOS, I'm inclined to\nbelieve Apple products to be the least-bad option for the security-minded\ntoday.\n\n~~~\nmirimir\nI do like Apple's approach to privacy. A lot. And I love their phones. While\ntheir PC hardware is still pretty, it's getting more-and-more outdated and\noverpriced. But that's no longer their focus, so hey.\n\nAnd indeed, Apple seems to handle privacy well, in practice. I've managed to\ncreate pseudonymous accounts at Apple's online store, and fund them with\nanonymized Bitcoin. And I've managed to make digital purchases.\n\nHowever, I haven't tested buying physical devices, for pickup in meatspace. I\nwonder if they'd require official ID, or just proof of purchase. Anyone know?\n\n~~~\nlxmcneill\nThe last time I went to pick up a product (AirPods) it required government\nissued photo ID (Australian driver's license), even though I had the Apple\nStore app which made the purchase installed on my phone.\n\n~~~\nmovedx\nThat's an issue with Australian law, not Apple. You can also buy such devices\noverseas.\n\n~~~\nmirimir\nAh, thanks. What sorts of purchases in Australia require ID?\n\n~~~\nadambrenecki\nAnything over 10,000 AUD (about 8,000 USD) purchased with cash. AirPods are\nexpensive but not _that_ expensive.\n\nMy guess is that they paid online for in-store pickup, and Apple asked for ID\nto confirm they're the one that made the purchase. In which case that's an\nApple thing, not a government thing.\n\n~~~\nmovedx\nBought my AirPods from Apple in the UK: no ID required.\n\nBought my iPhone 6S from Apple in Ausralia: ID required under Australian law.\n\nVery likely the person also bought a phone with a sim/service, hence being\nasked for ID (under Australian law.)\n\n------\ngreggman\nI'm happy Apple is at least trying hard to deal with privacy but honestly I\ndon't think they are doing enough, at least for me.\n\nFor example, I don't really want to give most apps constant access to my\nphotos, my camera, or my mic but I really don't have a whole lot of choice if\nI still want to use popular apps and services like Facebook, Instagram,\nMessenger, Hangouts, Line, WhatsApp etc..\n\nI really wish that every time they wanted a photo they had to get it through\nsome OS level UX and they only got to see the photos I selected. As it is they\nget to see all my photos the moment I want to give them a single photo.\nSimilarly if I take a photo in one of them they require permission to read all\nmy photos when all I want them to be able to do is save the photo.\n\nAs for the Camera I don't give any of those apps access to the camera because\nI don't trust them not to spy on me in some way (I assume camera = mic access\nso they could be doing the subsonic listening for ads things etc...). Instead\nI take the picture with the built in app then access that picture from the app\nI want to use the picture in. Of course that leads to the problem above.\n\nMic access is more problematic. I don't want any of them to have mic access\nwhen I'm not using the mic function directly but I can't talk to my friends\nwho use all those services to call me if I don't give the apps mic access.\n\nI feel like if Apple was more serious about privacy they'd handle these issues\nin some way. The photo one seems mostly straight forward for most use cases.\nDon't let the app access them at all, only the OS. The camera one is less\nstraight forward. I get that there are innovative things apps can do with the\ncameras by using them directly. On the other hand most of the current use\ncases could be handled by letting the OS access the camera only, not the app,\nand then just giving the result to the app.\n\n~~~\nguyfawkes303\nI think you mis-understand how iOS privacy controls work. An app doesn't get\nto 'see all your photos' just because you grant photo access, you still have\nto select which photos to put in the app. Same goes for camera, that just\nlet's the app pull up the camera interface, not be able to access it 24/7 for\nwhatever purpose they want. Same with the mic.\n\n~~~\nLeoPanthera\nI don't think this is correct. The Facebook app regularly shows me all the\nphotos I have taken today and asks if I want to post any of them.\n\n~~~\nodammit\nI can't tell you how many times I've definitely had a photo show up in the \"do\nyou want to post this\" preview that I most certainly would never want to post.\n\nI feel like I'm having a heart attack every time thinking I posted it already.\nThat feature sucks.\n\n~~~\nmixmastamyk\n_uninstalls app and uses website_\n\n------\njacksmith21006\nApple chose to let the China government into their China data center and\nGoogle chose to leave the country instead. So not so simple on who you trust.\nPersonally I trust Google more as they are just a lot better at keeping things\nsecure, imo. Plus governments getting into data is a bigger deal to me than a\ntargeted ad. But it is a personal decision.\n\n\"A Local Chinese Government Will Oversee Apple’s New iCloud Data Center\"\n\n[http://fortune.com/2017/08/14/apple-china-icloud-data-\ncenter...](http://fortune.com/2017/08/14/apple-china-icloud-data-center/)\n\n~~~\net-al\nWhy was this downvoted? It's a relevant point to the discussion.\n\n------\nmaxpert\nAt least one company is \"trying\" keep my photos private. The other day Google\nPhoto told my wife it had prepared an album for our trip to SFO. We were\nsurprised because she already disabled Geo-tagging but whataya know... Google\nstill figured it out!\n\n~~~\npetepete\nIf you have location enabled on your phone, Google appears to cross reference\nyour location with your photo timestamps to work out where you were. I know\nthis because when I import my DSLR images to Google Photos it estimates the\nlocation, usually _very_ accurately.\n\n~~~\nben1040\nI've also seen it geotag things based upon the content of the image alone.\n\nI went to the photo store not long ago and had dozens of rolls of negatives\nscanned, from a vacation to Europe 20 years ago. I uploaded them into Google\nPhotos and it geotagged many of them automatically.\n\nThey have a public API that does the same, it detects landmarks in images and\ncan give you a lat/long position for it as well as a confidence score.\n\n[https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/detecting-\nlandmarks](https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/detecting-landmarks)\n\n~~~\nmit65\napple cloud did release a lot of celeb pics over the internet...let's not\nforget that\n\n~~~\ngbear605\nThat was a phishing attack, nothing to do with Apple other than that the\npeople attacked by it were iPhone users.\n\n------\ngallerdude\nPrivacy is one of those things I can't tangibly describe why I like it, but it\njust feels good to know that nothing is being saved, even in contrast to just\ntargeting you for ads and nothing else.\n\n~~~\nJumpCrisscross\nWe have a track record of things going south, fast, for societies that\nsacrifice privacy. It makes sense to tread warily with it.\n\n~~~\nzachlatta\nCan you give a few examples?\n\n~~~\nJumpCrisscross\nPretty much every authoritarian overthrow that became genocidal relied on a\nprevious bureaucracy's meticulous record keeping.\n\n~~~\nzachlatta\nCan you please give a few examples?\n\n~~~\nJumpCrisscross\nThe classic ones are Pol Pot and Hitler. With the latter, the Danish example\nis useful.\n\n~~~\nzachlatta\nIn your original comment, you were implying that societies that lose privacy\ngo south very quickly. As in that loss of privacy is causal.\n\nI can't speak for Pol Pot, since I'm not very familiar with his regime, but\nwith Hitler and the Danish, my understanding is that record keeping aided in\nthe German occupation. Not that the Denmark went downhill after it started\ndoing meticulous data gathering.\n\nCan you give causal examples?\n\n------\nnewscracker\nA few things have struck me really strong on Apple's stand and implementation\non protecting users' privacy:\n\n1\\. Though it's understandable that Apple earns money primarily by selling\nhardware, it's sort of amusing and alarming at the same time that a\nproprietary almost-closed-source software company is focusing on protecting\nand preserving privacy whereas partially open source platforms competing with\nApple seem to be nowhere close on this aspect. Do any of the Android forks try\nto do as much as Apple does for privacy right out of the box (something a non-\ntechnical lay person could get)?\n\n2\\. It's abundantly clear that a lot of thought has gone into the foundations\nof a design focused on protecting privacy and in creating silos of information\nin/with different SDKs and features.\n\n3\\. It's a bit unclear to me as to why Health data is stored encrypted in\niCloud whereas messages aren't. Is there a distinction here between iCloud\nsync and iCloud backups? The documentation on messages suggests turning off\niCloud backup as a protective measure.\n\n4\\. To me, the weakest link in the ecosystem seems to be third party apps,\nwhere Apple relies more on them adhering to the developer guidelines and on\npublishing a privacy policy.\n\n~~~\nwyc\nRegarding your first point, it's difficult to implement some security schemes\nat the operating system level alone. With full vertical control of the\nproduct, you can have nice things like secure enclaves and de-facto hardware\ncryptography acceleration.\n\nSee here for details:\n[https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)\n\nA lot of the features would be very difficult to implement in Android without\ncooperating hardware, and hardware is notoriously expensive to get right and\nscale up. Projects like neo900 and Purism regularly encounter delays,\nunexpected costs, and pricing issues. It's really tough.\n\nOn a broader note, people are spending more and more time in data-hungry apps\nanyway, which can send almost anything they want to the network. This is sure\nto chip at any device-level security, pushing it towards irrelevance. I wish I\nhad a log entry every time an app used the location service on my phone along\nwith a database containing a history of Internet-transacted data.\n\n~~~\nnewscracker\nThanks for the explanation on the Android side. It still seems weird that\nnobody wants to take this up as a USP for their devices (referring to non-\nGoogle entities).\n\n> On a broader note, people are spending more and more time in data-hungry\n> apps anyway, which can send almost anything they want to the network. This\n> is sure to chip at any device-level security, pushing it towards\n> irrelevance. I wish I had a log entry every time an app used the location\n> service on my phone along with a database containing a history of Internet-\n> transacted data.\n\nI've long wished for network access permission on iOS, allowing the user to\ndecide which apps can never connect to any networks. To reduce the total\nattack surface, I'd want to keep many apps (especially games) running only\nwithin their sandboxes and having access to only the data they create/generate\non-device and no other external resource/server.\n\nAFAIK, Android has had this even in the days of permission requests at app\ninstall time. I don't know if granular control is available on this from\nAndroid 6 onwards.\n\n~~~\nwyc\nI know that Samsung is trying to push its Knox product to enterprises. I'm\nunsure about their technical or financial success. I don't know of anyone\ntrying this in the consumer space either, but I'd definitely love to see more\nactivity in this long-neglected sector.\n\nKnox: [https://www.samsungknox.com/en](https://www.samsungknox.com/en)\n\n------\nwhathaschanged\nApple's approach to privacy also includes being a partner in PRISM, a fact\nwhich they chose to vigorously deny as false allegations until it was proven\nto be true.\n\nEvery story about Apple and privacy chooses to omit thus huge piece of info.\n\nWhy should anybody trust them now? What has changed to make anybody believe\nthey aren't still lying about privacy?\n\n~~~\ndclowd9901\nIf their technology is built such that even they themselves cannot peer into\nthe inner workings of your content, what good is their association with PRISM?\n\n~~~\nuserbinator\nHow do you know Apple is telling the truth?\n\nOne thing we're certain of, however, is that Apple has the signing keys. They\nalso encrypt their firmware and even other apps to hide how they work.\n\n~~~\ndclowd9901\nI believe if they weren't telling the truth, _somebody_ would've caught on by\nnow. We have lots of people in sec watching court cases involving police\ntrying to break into iPhones. If somehow a department was able to access a\nphone without a user complying and no known backdoor was exposed, I'm sure we\nwould've heard of it by now.\n\nI hope you're not expecting them to open source the secure enclave.\n\n------\nspsful\nI wish the EFF still made those \"Who has your back\" infographics, they were\nreally helpful if you wanted to find out which companies respected your data\nboth online and in the courts. But IMO Apple is the only large multinational\ncorporation that is actually taking steps to protect my privacy so I'm way\nmore inclined to trust them with my personal information. Can't say the same\nfor Google or others.\n\n------\ntitanomachy\nHow much of this can be independently verified? I suppose we just need to take\ntheir word for it?\n\n~~~\nShank\nIt all boils down to what you see in the public. The FBI was trying to get\nApple to create an iOS variant to extract data from a device, to the point\nwhere Tim Cook wrote a letter refusing to do so and was willing to fight it in\ncourt. In a similar fashion, Apple has given talks and white papers on iOS\nsecurity. In tandem with these well documented white papers and talks\ndiscussing the internal functions of iOS, we haven't seen any well known or\ntrivial exploits appear to surface that demonstrate flaws in them.\n\nIn the case of the FBI fiasco, for example, we know that the FBI later paid\nCellebrite for an exploit that allowed them to unlock the device. We don't\nknow the details of how that happened, but the FBI had to reach out to an\nindependent company and exploit an older device to do it.\n\nTo be clear: if they were lying about the lengths they go to with encryption,\non device security, and user trust, this story would have been different. The\nFBI would have already had a backdoor or been able to trivially break the\ndevice, or they would have complied and created an iOS variant to break in.\nAll we know is what they stood their ground on, and the effort that was\nrequired for the FBI to get in.\n\niOS 10 security white paper:\n[https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)\n\nTalk about iOS security at Black Hat:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGFriOKz6U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGFriOKz6U)\n\n~~~\nlern_too_spel\nWe know that they lied to customers claiming they couldn't help law\nenforcement get data off customers' devices.\n\n\"Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore\ncannot access this data. So it's not technically feasible for us to respond to\ngovernment warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their\npossession running iOS 8.\"[1]\n\nAfter it became clear that it _is_ technically feasible for Apple to assist\nwith those data requests, they quietly removed that claim from their\nwebsite.[2]\n\n[1] [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/apple-expands-\ndata-e...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/apple-expands-data-\nencryption-under-ios-8-making-handover-to-cops-moot/)\n\n[2] [https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-\nrequest...](https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-requests/)\n\n~~~\nmillstone\nBy \"technically feasible\" are you referring to Apple's ability to build a\nsoftware update that allows for quicker brute-forcing of the passcode?\n\n~~~\nlern_too_spel\nYes. Brute forcing pin codes can be done very quickly. Apple realized it was\ntechnically feasible too, which is why they no longer make that claim. That\nthey didn't apologize to their users and offer refunds demonstrates the\ndisdain they have for their customers.\n\n------\njvican\nAfter reading this, I have two questions:\n\n1\\. Are there any statistics showing the ratio of security issues between\nAndroid and iOS?\n\n2\\. What's the most common phone among security researchers?\n\nTo be honest, I'm wary of believing this, but I own a Nexus and if I had to\ngive the benefit of the doubt to either Google or Apple, it would most\ncertainly be Apple because they don't make business out of my data (or, not as\nmuch as Google, at least).\n\n~~~\npcurve\nI'm an Android user, but I feel the same way.\n\nI sometimes wonder what would happen if I were to create a new Google identity\nand start fresh. Would they try to re-establish my old email's profile and\ndata to the new one without my consent?\n\n~~~\narunmib\nI tried this as an exercise when they were pushing Google+. Created a new\naccount, was very cognizant to read through all settings and ensured that\nnothing from my old account can be traced back to this new one. I'm not joking\nwhen I say nothing from my old account and tracking: 1\\. I timed my move (to\ndifferent city inside bayarea) 2\\. Changing ISP to wave from comcast 3\\.\nBought new computer 4\\. Closed my old phone account and only started using\nwork phone. Never used hotspot in my work phone 5\\. Even changed my coffee\ndrinking habit + free wifi access locations from Starbucks to Peets. Only\nthing I couldn't change was my name + SSN. Serious paranoid level of things\nfor my online life, but they still populated my digital life with same info\nand recommendations. After about 10-15 days of doing all this, I enabled\nGoogle+ (because at that time to use youtube account, I had to enable it). You\nknow who the first contact recommendation that was there for me under my\nfamily - my brother who is living in a different country. I just gave up at\nthat point. Probably I did something wrong during the setup (or) slipped and\nused the accounts for some period of time on same computer or browser (or) the\ndata companies which sell my offline data have really rich data about me.\nWhatever the goof-up was, it was just disheartening to learn that after all\nthat work my online privacy just lasted at the max 15days. I really wish there\nwere better ways. Considering the number of security/data breaches (e.g.\nrecent equifax one) I feel like, I have little to no control on things.\n\n~~~\npcurve\nThat is pretty frightening.... thanks for sharing your story.\n\n------\nmtgx\n> While we do back up iMessage and SMS messages for your convenience using\n> iCloud Backup, you can turn it off whenever you want.\n\nWouldn't they be able to hold that privacy promise much better if they\nactually allowed people to keep iCloud backup on let's say for pictures, but\nstill be able to disable iMessage messages? I think many people would like to\nuse iCloud but without it backing up personal conversations, too.\n\nAlso, iMessage's end-to-end encryption was rather flawed last Matthew Green\nchecked, compared to other end-to-end messaging apps.\n\n[https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2016/03/21/attack-o...](https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2016/03/21/attack-\nof-week-apple-imessage/)\n\nAs for their use of differential privacy, when they introduced that it was\nessentially a hidden way of gather _more_ of your data than before, not less,\nbut while still being able to say \"hey, we may gather more data than ever on\nyou starting with the new iOS, but it's _pretty_ private, so it's cool, don't\nworry about it\".\n\nAll of that said, I know Apple is still miles ahead of Google on privacy. If\nanything, over the last 1-2 years, Google has become increasingly bolder and\nmore shameless about tracking users without them realizing (except in the EU,\nwhere they are _forced_ to make it a little easier for users to understand how\nthey are being tracked, and even that happened because of the anti-trust\nlawsuit).\n\nHere's just one example of Google's increasingly privacy-hostile behavior:\n\n[https://www.extremetech.com/internet/238093-google-\nquietly-c...](https://www.extremetech.com/internet/238093-google-quietly-\nchanged-its-privacy-policy-no-longer-promises-to-anonymize-your-personal-\ninformation-when-selling-ads)\n\n~~~\nAccacin\nI agree it's not perfect. I kind of get around it by disabling iCloud backup\n(which includes iMessage, etc.). I just use iCloud to back up photos, and I\nback up my phone locally.\n\n------\nimron\n> Apple has no way to decrypt iMessage and FaceTime data _when it’s in transit\n> between devices_\n\nWhat about when it's _not_ in transit between devices?\n\n~~~\nalex_g\nWell they decrypt it on your behalf when it's on your device. The point is\nthat couldn't do that without your device/account.\n\n~~~\njw1224\nThey then go on to say:\n\n> While we do back up iMessage and SMS messages for your convenience using\n> iCloud Backup, you can turn it off whenever you want.\n\nSure, I can stop backing my data up - but presuming I don't (like the vast\nmajority of people), does that mean if they got a wiretap order they could\njust read the data straight from their backup servers?\n\nI'm not sure if this was just phrased poorly, or if backing up your iMessages\neffectively undoes any protection your messages once had.\n\n~~~\nDavideNL\n\"The iCloud Loophole\" (article from March-2016):\n[https://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/02/icloud-backups-less-\nsec...](https://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/02/icloud-backups-less-secure-for-\nrestoring-data/)\n\nAlthough in a link in this HN article Apple says backups _are_ encrypted:\n[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303](https://support.apple.com/en-\nus/HT202303)\n\nSo, a little confusing...\n\nEDIT\n\nbah, found this:\n\n\"Right now, although iCloud backups are encrypted, the keys for the encryption\nare also stored with Apple. \"\n\n[https://9to5mac.com/2016/02/25/apple-working-on-stronger-\nicl...](https://9to5mac.com/2016/02/25/apple-working-on-stronger-icloud-\nbackup-encryption-and-iphone-security-to-counter-fbi-unlock-requests/)\n\n------\nbgrohman\nOn the subject of privacy, I'm interested in migrating away from Google\nservices, but I have years' worth of data tied up there (email, photos, music,\nmovies, etc). I know Google offers ways to download your data, so it's\ntechnically possible to migrate, but it would be tedious and time consuming,\nto say the least.\n\nDoes anyone have suggestions for making that process easier?\n\n------\nquadrangle\nApple does so many things well, actually. I would return to them for some\nthings and even recommend them (versus exclusively GNU/Linux and LineageOS) if\nthey'd only change the stupid iOS terms that prohibit GPL software.\n\n~~~\nnnutter\nIsn't the issue that the App Store doesn't have a mechanism to redistribute\nthe source in a way that is compliant with the GPL? Is it fair to say Apple\nprohibits the GPL? Anyway that tried to sell GPL licensed software on the App\nStore is \"breaking the law\" so Apple prohibits it? Or is there more to it?\n\n~~~\nsheetjs\n[http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-\nstore-...](http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-\nenforcement) goes into more detail, but the summary is:\n\n> Apple's Terms of Service impose restrictive limits on use and distribution\n> for any software distributed through the App Store, and the GPL doesn't\n> allow that.\n\n------\ncyphunk\nWake me up when they let one sync contacts without giving icloud cleartext\naccess in the process\n\n~~~\nmercutio2\nCan you say more about why this is important to you?\n\nI mean, more stuff encrypted without provider escrow keys is a generally good\nthing, but are your contacts specifically more important than, say, you\ncalendar events?\n\nWhat threat model are you worried about with your personal, curated contacts?\n\n~~~\ncyphunk\nall data is important, indeed. contacts are just an easy to access example.\nI'm worried about countries creating laws, secret and public, that force Apple\nto hand over my data. Specifically those governments that I spend time in and\nthat I also spend time criticising or protesting within as an activist. I'm\nworried about regime changes. I'm worried about 3rd party data breaches. I'm\nnot worried about how my data exposure would effect me now but how it would\neffect me in the future when mining and correlating data to use against\nactivists will be much easier.\n\n------\naub3bhat\nOn Android you can Sideload VPN apps, iOS on the otherhand banned them in\nChina. Apple mounted the most successful attack on General Computing with it's\nwalled garden. The whole Apple is good for privacy is marketing.\n\n~~~\ndisconnected\nAndroid and its community are sorta schizophrenic towards security.\n\nOn one hand, users are told that they should never ever, ever install\napplications from untrusted sources. They should always use the play store\nbecause applications are scanned for vulnerabilities and whatnot.\n\nOn the other hand, we have people telling us that one of the great advantages\nof Android is that you can sideload apps - bypassing the store security model\ncompletely.\n\nOn one hand, a VPN needs root access for transparent proxying (or at least TOR\ndoes). Changing the hosts file needs root access. Changing gps.conf requires\nroot. Lots of useful operations need root access, so if you are concerned\nabout privacy and security, or just want more control, you probably want root.\n\nOn the other hand, root is stupidly hard to obtain, and users are strongly\ndiscouraged from doing it anyway because it opens all sorts of attack vectors.\nUnless the manufacturer provides a legitimate method to do it, the operation\nof obtaining root itself, like on iOS, often relies on an unpatched local\nprivilege escalation vulnerability. Note that any application can exploit\nthis, not just the rooting app.\n\nI don't support Apple's walled garden approach, but we can't argue that they\nhave a much clearer picture with regards to security, and the results speak\nfor themselves. Malware in the Apple devices is rare, whereas in Android it is\nrapidly becoming routine. Unfortunately, you sacrifice flexibility for\nenhanced security.\n\n~~~\nnnutter\nMy perception is also that malware ends up in the Google Play Store with much\nhigher frequency than the App Store. Just do a news search for \"Google Play\nStore malware\" and \"App Store malware\" and compare.\n\nAlso, one can sideload apps, if you have a Mac, onto iOS. Obviously, that's\nnot anywhere as integrated but maybe that's a good thing. Heck, maybe Apple\neven added that so people in China could sideload VPNs. Maybe iOS VPNs are\ngood enough (no root, no TOR?)?\n\n~~~\nlern_too_spel\nAdd up all the malicious app installs on Google Play Store, and it doesn't\neven come close to the 500 million[1] (conservative estimate) users affected\nby XCodeGhost. It looks worse when you consider that the 500 million is on an\norder of magnitude smaller total iOS userbase vs. Play Store userbase and when\nyou consider that Google allows third party security researchers to\ninvestigate and publish research on the Play Store while Apple does not, so\nXCodeGhost is likely to be the tip of the iceberg.[2]\n\n[1]\n[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.macrumors.com/2015/09/20/xc...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.macrumors.com/2015/09/20/xcodeghost-\nchinese-malware-faq/amp/)\n\n[2]\n[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cultofmac.com/128577/apple-...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cultofmac.com/128577/apple-\nkicks-security-researcher-out-of-app-store-and-developer-program-after-ios-\nvulnerability-demonstration/amp/)\n\n~~~\nevgen\nLOL, let's start with StageFright (1 billion+ pwned with just a text message),\nmove on to StageFright2 (because patching is hard...), and then just keep\nrunning down the list of malware in the Play store that is still there months\nafter being discovered. XCodeGhost OTOH, seemed to have hit around 40 apps so\nthat would probably not even get it into the top-100 list of Google Play\nmalware families. Malware families. The Play store is such a shitshow that you\ncan actually have different strains of malware running around in fake apps,\nlike some sort of digital syphillus spreading through the brothel that Google\nforces everyone to visit if they want the shiny apps...\n\n~~~\nlern_too_spel\nThe number of people actually affected by StageFright malware from Google Play\nStore (which is what we were discussing) is very likely to be zero. It simply\nblocks the payload. We know for a fact that 500 million+ were actually\naffected by XCodeGhost, an order of magnitude more than the sum total from all\nmalware seen in the Play Store.\n\nDon't conflate unpatched Linux systems with the Play Store. Anybody who uses\nAndroid and cares about the security of their device (like anybody who uses a\nLinux-based router and cares about the security of their network) uses vendors\nwho deploy timely security updates.\n\n------\nicomefromreddit\nI don't trust Apple. It's a matter of trust, so I have nothing else to say,\njust I can't trust Apple.\n\n------\nshmerl\nI wouldn't trust on issues of privacy to the likes of Apple. Who can audit\ntheir software? It's not FOSS.\n\n~~~\nachamayou\nYou can still contemplate their incentives, their business model, and their\nreputation/track record.\n\nIt's not as good as auditing the code (and making sure the code you see is\nwhat actually runs), but it's a lot less effort, and depending on the extent\nto which you are ready to dedicate resources to improving your privacy, may be\nan acceptable tradeoff.\n\n------\nphoe-krk\nSo a cop can put your phone in front of your face while you're tied up and\nunable to do a thing. Boom, phone unlocked.\n\nMarvelous.\n\n~~~\nR4nger\nAFAIK if you keep your eyes closed, it doesn't unlock.\n\nAlso, its still an improvement from when cops borrow your thumb. At least this\nway, you have less chance of getting hurt.\n\n~~~\nmegous\nI'd rather lose my finger than my head, thank you.\n\n------\nwilliamle8300\nAll the anti-constitutionalist people at the NSA are getting heartburn as we\nspeak.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAndroid as we know it will die in the next two years and what it means for you - venturefizz\nhttp://venturefizz.com/blog/android-we-know-it-will-die-next-two-years-and-what-it-means-you\n\n======\nsidcool\nDoesn't make much sense. Another doomsday monger.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBe Careful with Python's New-Style String Format - ingve\nhttp://lucumr.pocoo.org/2016/12/29/careful-with-str-format/\n======\nraymondh\nFor user defined templates, using string.Template() is a good alternative\nbecause it does not do multi-level attribute lookups. The single mapping\nlookup is safer. Also, the syntax is simpler, making it more suitable for\nexposure to end users and making it less hackable.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNo Smoking Outside Starbucks Shops Starting Saturday - codegeek\nhttp://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/31/187532646/no-smoking-outside-starbucks-shops-starting-saturday\n\n======\nDanBlake\nMight be the case for locations in more suburban areas, but at least in SF\nstarbucks does not own/control anything outside its doors.\n\nIts usually just the sidewalk out front, with some chairs/tables. I still\nthink the city 'owns' the sidewalk though, even though the tables are there.\n\n------\ncodegeek\nWill be interesting to know what percentage of smokers love starbucks ?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTiSpark sits Spark SQL on top of a storage engine to answer complex OLAP queries - jinqueeny\nhttps://github.com/pingcap/tispark\n======\nelvinyung\nYes! I've been thinking of something like this for a while.\n\nFor the sake of simple data integration, I think this sort of architecture is\noptimal. As it stands, Spark is basically already a distributed database\nwithout its own storage engine; tighter integration with a transactional\nstorage engine means that you could get the full power of OLTP and OLAP (HTAP)\nunder the same interface.\n\nImagine that you could process transactions in Spark (pushing them down to the\ndistributed storage engine), and then Spark could automatically use the\nchanges to update a materialized view, and you could serve the updated\nmaterialized view directly from Spark for real-time decision support, using\nSQL plus richer analytics like machine learning, graph processing, etc. It's\nnot _quite_ a one-size-fits-all [1] database, but it's close.\n\nPut a PostgreSQL or MySQL wire protocol server in front of it, and application\ndevelopers won't even have to know that they're using Spark.\n\n(I'm glossing over the fact that Spark currently isn't very good at\ntransaction processing in the sense that it literally doesn't have much of a\nwrite API right now -- i.e. support for equivalents of SQL `begin`, `commit`,\nand rollback`, and updates/upserts in general -- but I think that's reasonably\neasy to add by pushing down this functionality to capable storage engines.)\n\n[1]\n[https://cs.brown.edu/~ugur/fits_all.pdf](https://cs.brown.edu/~ugur/fits_all.pdf)\n\n~~~\nilovesoup\nI'm the main dev of TiSpark. I totally agree. For now we allow trx only in\nTiDB. I believe one day those big-data stuff will be unified onto one\nplatform. With a full-featured distributed db storage layer underneath, there\nmight be tons of tricks to play comparing to data on hdfs. Ultimately, we plan\nto put a mysql layer on top of Spark SQL (maybe or something else as mpp\nengine), as you said, to make user not aware of existence of Spark SQL\nunderneath.\n\n~~~\nelvinyung\nJust curious -- what other MPP engines are you currently considering, and what\nare the criteria?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nOnline Courses Aren’t Actually Democratizing Education - footpath\nhttp://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/11/online-courses-arent-actually-democratizing-education\n\n======\notoburb\n>>[...] 80 percent of MOOC students come from the wealthiest and most well\neducated 6 percent of the population,” the authors of the paper write.\n\nWhat about the 20% that didn't have undergraduate degrees? No doubt there's a\nlot of skew here, but the focus should be on this 20% that (now) have the\nopportunity to take a variety of free online courses. Perhaps this 20%\nwouldn't have had a chance otherwise.\n\nOtherwise, the article is right that MOOCs could expand their reach further,\nbut I think this is a great start and optimistic news. If people thought that\nearly-adopter MOOC audiences would be primarily comprised of non-degree\nholders then now would be a great time to re-examine assumptions.\n\n~~~\nctdonath\nQuite. Big-ticket schools have a lot of incentive & budget & momentum to\npromote big-ticket degrees. MOOCs just don't have the visibility, so those who\ntend to participate are already plugged in enough for awareness of such\nobscure options. 20% being \"new students\" is pretty good.\n\nMOOCs also don't yet provide confidence for all-in degree-scale participation,\nso they appeal more to those looking to fill educational gaps instead of\nbuilding their academic career thereon. High-school graduates just aren't\nready to pursue MOOC degrees en masse; they will as momentum & reputation\nbuilds, but not yet.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTim Gowers replies to Elsevier's open letter - ColinWright\nhttp://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/elseviers-open-letter-point-by-point-and-some-further-arguments\n======\nVivtek\nI like the way the open letter says that Elsevier supports open access to\npublic research when Elsevier is actually lobbying against open access to\npublic research. (e.g. <http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=807>)\n\n------\nrevelation\nAll that needs to happen is that public research grants have to require you to\nmake your paper available free of charge through a suitable system. Such a\nsystem is obviously trivial to provide on the internet.\n\nThen we can save the time having to deal with retarded \"open letters\" or\ncreating petitions like servants.\n\n~~~\ntylerneylon\nThere's a bill that could do this - FRPAA = Federal Research Public Access\nAct:\n\n<http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/issues/frpaa/index.shtml>\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nThe solution to this is sadly to revolt, en masse. Which is to say the\njournals cannot exist without papers, and so institutions which are providing\nfree access to their academics papers are effectively revolting. Elsevier will\nnot survive the transition but I do not believe it will be missed either.\n\nAt this moment in time, this instant, there is an opportunity to create an\nalternative to Elsevier and its journals. New journals with a reasonable\npolicy and non-extortionate pricing. If the idea of an organizing identity\nmakes sense then its an opportunity that won't come around again for a while.\n\n~~~\npmb\nThe senior faculty need to revolt first. The junior faculty need to jump\nthrough hoops and be judged by that cohort in order to keep their jobs (i.e.\nget tenure). If the senior faculty really want a change to occur, all they\nhave to do is change how they evaluate which publications \"count\".\n\n------\njmmcd\n_I haven’t tried recently, but maybe if I tried to open an Elsevier article\nfrom the computer in my departmental office I would have no trouble. But all\nthat would say is that Elsevier didn’t have a completely stupid system for\nopening articles. [Edit: Since writing that paragraph I have discovered that I\ncan open Elsevier papers with no trouble at all from my office, and with only\na small amount of effort from home. But others may not be so fortunate.]_\n\nThis leader of the boycott seems to know less about the details than I would\nexpect. Maybe it doesn't change the principle of the thing.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nI Hate Pull Requests - henrik_w\nhttps://medium.com/@pia.fak.sunnanbo/i-hate-pull-requests-17836dd3cc38\n======\njordhy\nWe all do.\n\n~~~\nyjftsjthsd-h\nI like PRs; they let me easily solicit feedback without risking impacting\nmaster (or other \"shared\" branches). I could tay, \"how do you feel about this\nchange?\", but it's so much easier to say, \"I propose this exact diff, what do\nyou think?\". Now, caveat: I'm in a distributed team that's already async and\noperates nearly like a FOSS project, so even OP seems to accept that PRs might\nsuit us.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBSD Unix: Power to the people, from the code (2000) - vezzy-fnord\nhttp://www.salon.com/2000/05/16/chapter_2_part_one/\n======\nnickpsecurity\nGreat read. I think the biggest takeaway is how they organize and run their\noperation. There's a tiny amount of high talent and dedication people that\nreally control the process. They're open for contributions by whoever wants to\ntry. They internally filter the wheat from the chaff to find those who\ncontributions are truly useful. They give them extra power in both what ends\nup in the distro and helping the filtering/discovery process. The rest are\nstill allowed to attempt whatever contributions they can. The model seems to\nhit an optimal point to bring in more good than bad.\n\nMight be worth copying in other projects. Supporting this is the other,\nhighly-successful organizations that use a similar model. Far as Linux,\nthere's always exceptions to the rule and lets not forget it depends on GNU\nwork done differently. That hybrid, immensely popular development doesn't\ncompare apples to apples with about anything. I treat it like its own\ncategory.\n\n------\njustincormack\nKirk McKusick is still an important person in BSD.\n\nThis story omits the role of NetBSD in opening up development in the BSDs\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBSD#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBSD#History)\n\n~~~\nbrynet\nIn that sense, it also omits the part where OpenBSD truly opened development\nby enabling read access to the CVS repo (log/diff/annotate) to everyone.\n\n[http://www.openbsd.org/papers/anoncvs-\npaper.pdf](http://www.openbsd.org/papers/anoncvs-paper.pdf)\n\n[http://www.openbsd.org/papers/anoncvs-\nslides.pdf](http://www.openbsd.org/papers/anoncvs-slides.pdf)\n\nBefore that, they could arbitrary cut off your access:\n[http://www.theos.com/deraadt/coremail.html](http://www.theos.com/deraadt/coremail.html)\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=NetBSD&type=revis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=NetBSD&type=revision&diff=665541892&oldid=656673576&diffonly=1)\n\n------\nTimSchumann\nInteresting read, thanks for posting. Brings a bit of relevant historical\nperspective given that I recently switched to OpenBSD for a project I'm\nworking on.\n\n------\nyuhong\nIt is funny how USL vs BSDi hurt BSD at first, but then SCO targeted Linux not\nBSD for a reason. Terry Lambert has a lot of posts on the backstory behind the\nsettlement BTW (clue: you can thank Ray Noorda).\n\n~~~\ncbd1984\nIn case you like obscure references, USL vs BSDi was tragedy, SCO vs Linux and\nRationality was farce.\n\nIt really is interesting how little the SCO cases actually amounted to.\n\n~~~\nstox\nIf it wasn't for USL vs BSDi, we probably wouldn't have Linux today, and BSD\nwould be ruling the world.\n\n~~~\npjmlp\nWho knows.\n\nMaybe BSD would just be yet another UNIX, and everyone would still be\ndeploying Aix, HP-UX, Solaris, Tru64, DG/UX, among many other UNIX variants.\n\n~~~\nbahamat\nWe know. The culture in Unix was always sharing source and user collaboration.\nWhen AT&T finally tried to exert control there was a large movement within the\ncommunity to go free of AT&T code. GNU and BSD were both a reaction to that.\n\nThe rise of x86 and the availability of free Unix (in the form of BSD or GNU)\nwas destined to destroy the proprietary Unix market. In 1991 neither BSD nor\nGNU had kernels booting on x86, leading Linus to eventually release Linux in\nAugust.\n\nLinux had the luxury of being the only readily available Unix-like kernel on\nx86 for several years.\n\nThe USL v BSDi lawsuit slowed BSD efforts for nearly two years while Linux\ngained mindshare and features (specifically x86 features & drivers). Once the\nsuit was settled out of court development took a long time to regain momentum.\n\nNet/2 was released in June of 1991 (before Linux!), so if the USL lawsuit\nhadn't happened, we might all be running that instead.\n\n~~~\npjmlp\nThat is just playing futurology. We will never know.\n\nJust like some of us would have liked that Apple would be just as successful\nwith BeOS instead of NeXT, but we will also never know.\n\nIn 1993, I learned UNIX on Xenix system. Coherent being the other option.\n\nLinux only became production quality when the likes of Intel, IBM and others\nstarted supporting its development. As far as I am aware they never supported\nBSD like that.\n\n------\nsudioStudio64\nI'm a huge fan of BSD. This was a good read.\n\n------\nPhantomGremlin\nVery perceptive observation by Bill Joy:\n\n    \n    \n       The really nasty bugs are found by a couple\n       of really smart people who just kill themselves.\n       Most people looking at the code won’t see anything\n    \n\nHow many people looked at heartbleed and didn't see anything? How many people\nlooked at goto fail; goto fail; and didn't see anything? And those were\nrelatively simple. I wonder how many \"really nasty\" security bugs are still\nout there?\n\n~~~\nsebcat\n> Most people looking at the code won’t see anything\n\nSadly, most people don't look at the code at all. They buy products marketed\nas making them safer, or trust central authority figures.\n\n------\nswills\nGreat story, thanks for posting it. Really well written. The section on Gage\nat the end reminds me of All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace:\n\n[https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799353](https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799353)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLuis von Ahn: Outsourcing My Research Group - Rod\nhttp://vonahn.blogspot.com/2010/06/outsourcing-my-research-group.html\n\n======\nthisisnotmyname\nThere probably ought to be fewer phd students around, and more research tech\njobs. But, I was under the impression that the current glut of grad students\nwas because they were so much cheaper than techs?\n\n~~~\nRod\nIt depends on the schools. A graduate student at a UC school is way cheaper\nthan a graduate student at Stanford or Caltech. It also depends on the PhD\nprogram, or more to the point, on the course requirements. If a PhD student\nalready has a MSc when he enters the program, he can start doing research\nright away, and his advisor get a return on his grant money way faster.\n\n------\npvdm\nI suppose I am too naive to think Ph.D advisors would not treat advisees like\na piece of meat.\n\n~~~\nRod\nThere's a reason I used to love reading _PhD Comics_... until I started my own\nPhD. It used to be fiction, now it's non-fiction (sigh)\n\n------\nkunjaan\nThe next advisor meeting with him is going to be pretty awkward.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWeb developers, what SaaS tools would you like to see created? - krogers\n\nThere are a lot of SaaS tools popping up nowadays. In the midst of all of these tools. What are some that don&#x27;t yet exist that you would like to see created to make your life easier?\n======\nMrDHat\nThere's one tool I've always wanted - An analysis tool for my database\nqueries. Something which directly injects into my framework (Django/RoR etc)\nand gives me detailed analysis of the time and memory used by the queries.\n\nAFAIK, New Relic provides one such tool but I think there's still a long way\nto go.\n\n------\nOceanPowers\nserious, modern, WYSIWYG HTML / CSS / JS editor.\n\n~~~\nmc_hammer\nmacaw looks good\n\n------\nConcours\nBaremetrics for PayPal would be great.\n\n~~~\niqonik\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8783103](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8783103)\n\nAny good?\n\n~~~\nConcours\nYep, looks interesting. Will give it a try (added myself for the beta test),\nare you affiliate with them ? Thanks for the head up.\n\n~~~\niqonik\nNot affiliated, just remembered the \"Shown HN\" post when I saw your comment :)\n\n------\nmc_hammer\ndraw with my voice - to make vector graphics.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA study on human behavior has identified four basic personality types - T-A\nhttp://www.uc3m.es/ss/Satellite/UC3MInstitucional/en/Detalle/Comunicacion_C/1371223155576/1371215537949/A_study_on_human_behavior_has_identified_four_basic_personality_types\n======\nbrhsiao\nA friend of mine who's quite into philosophy once told me that a good number\nof philosophers did little but try to categorize things. Rather than draw\nmeaningful insights, say, or squeeze every drop out of some experience, they'd\nsimply say, here's nature, here's a grid I've drawn, let's see what falls into\nwhat square. Ok, good job; but what have you actually accomplished? (So my\nfriend said.)\n\nI don't know if this is true of the history of philosophy (or if it's a\nmeaningful indictment of these philosophers), but I can't help but be reminded\nof it when I see strenuous efforts being made to bucket various phenomena, and\nhuman ones at that. What are we going to do with these categories? Not to put\ntoo fine a point on it, these things are complex. Any differentiating scheme\nsimple enough will be insufficient to be the basis of any important decision,\nand any sophisticated enough won't be neat enough for us to be talking about\nit like this.\n\nI say this as someone who spent more years than I'd care to admit obsessed\nwith MBTI. Wow, look, there are all these different people with their\nstrengths and weaknesses. I even get a cool framework—a _stack_ —to aid me in\npsychoanalysis. And then of course you have Socionics, which shamelessly\ntries, using just sixteen categories, to produce a catalog of human\ninteraction. I am not saying it isn't _fun._\n\nActually, MBTI did help me in one way: by showing me how diverse humans are.\nIn my most advanced, intelligent state, I'm still not going to get along with\nor be compelling to all of them. That was an important idea for me growing up,\nand still is.\n\nBut beyond that, and running the risk of sounding unsophisticated: who cares?\n\n~~~\nNaomarik\nEleven years ago Kaiser Permanente hired me to help roll out new software to\nall their hospitals in Northern California. We had like 3 months of training\nbefore going in and one of the things they had us do was some personality type\nthing with some psychologist.\n\nIt felt like this lady was trying to shoe horn me into some category, telling\nme I am some 4 letter acronym and here are my strengths and weaknesses. I just\nkept arguing with her pointing out events and situations in my life that\nrefuted everything she was trying to say I was.\n\nIt seems like an overly complicated horoscope thing where people love to read\ndescriptions of themselves and others to make sense of the world, even though\nby looking at someone's face for a few seconds you can make way more\njudgements about the character of someone.\n\n~~~\n9erdelta\nThe \"horoscopieness\" of almost anything related to personality labeling causes\nme to feel deeply rebellious. You can't pigeon hole me! Irrational or not, I\nreject that my personality is fixed.\n\n~~~\nMrFantastic\nSounds like you fit into the \"Rebellious\" personality type.\n\n------\njordanlev\nI look at these things more like \"check out our classification scheme which is\nbroken down into 4 categories\", as opposed to \"there are 4 different kinds of\npeople\" (which the headline kinda sorta implies).\n\n~~~\nsaulrh\nDepends on what your methods are for finding your classifications. For\nexample, if all you're doing is recording a bunch of data over some feature\nset and then throwing it at an unsupervised clustering algorithm like DBSCAN\nor single-linkage clustering, It's not unlikely that you can say that your\ndata can be partitioned into N distinct clusters.\n\nGranted, that depends heavily on your features and your data set. It's just as\neasy to end up with one big undifferentiated blob, even after running PCA.\n\n~~~\nStillHocus\nI mean, that's still \"who cares\"? It just sounds fancier.\n\n\"It's not unlikely that you can say that your data can be partitioned into N\ndistinct clusters.\"\n\nOf course not...that's tautological. You can say it because that's what it\nmeans. DBSCAN isn't some wizardry that peers into the nature of the\nuniverse...its just a clump finder. Whether those clumps have any connection\nto anything interesting is a coincidence. You could roll a six sided die six\ntimes and run dbscan on the results and be like \"holy shit! I've discovered\nhow to partition the natural numbers 1 2 3 4 5 and 6!!\"\n\n~~~\nnerdponx\nThis is an unfair and anti-scientific characterization of descriptive\nresearch.\n\nCorrelation does not imply causation, but you (generally) can't have causation\nwithout correlation. Finding natural patterns of associations in data is our\nonly reasonable starting point for finding patterns of causation.\n\nAlso, developing reliable and well-researched ontologies can help other\nresearchers when building models, making sense of other data, etc.\n\n~~~\nStillHocus\nIt's not anti-scientific at all. Looking for correlations to uncover\ncausations in data is important, and it can certainly be the beginning in a\nscientific effort to build a model of the world (especially, I would argue but\nI guess this gets rather philosophical, when it's motivated by a belief in an\nunderlying mechanic that drives the correlated observations, perhaps developed\nso fully as to be considered a 'hypothesis'). Finding natural patterns of\nassociations in data is a totally reasonable starting point for finding a\ncausation _when a causation exists_.\n\nFeeding arbitrary sequences of samples into dbscan and deciding that because\ndbscan produces output, there _is_ causation (or, that there is an underlying\nphenomena that can be captured in some type of model), is ridiculous. And\nthere are tons and tons and tons of natural phenomena that will be happy to\nproduce clumpable inputs all the time, with no underlying behavior (including\nnoise).\n\nI'm sure there are also tons of interesting models of human behavior that you\ncan make out of some set of observations of human behavior via clustering. But\njust because you feed some data to an unsupervised learning algorithm and it\ndiscovers features doesn't imply that those features have any useful\ndescriptive power to help us make sense of the natural world. THAT's anti-\nscientific thinking.\n\n~~~\nSingletoned\n> Finding natural patterns of associations in data is a totally reasonable\n> starting point for finding a causation _when a causation exists_.\n\nSo if a causation turns out not to exist then finding natural patterns was an\nunreasonable starting point? What would have been a reasonable starting point\nin that circumstance?\n\n------\nwatermoose\nAs a correction to the title, they said four, but then said, \"There is a\nfifth, undefined group, representing 10%, which the algorithm is unable to\nclassify in relation to a clear type of behavior. The researchers argue that\nthis allows them to infer the existence of a wide range of subgroups made up\nof individuals who do not respond in a determined way to any of the outlined\nmodels.\"\n\nSo based on the study:\n[http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451.full](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451.full)\n\nand looking at the results in:\n[http://d3a5ak6v9sb99l.cloudfront.net/content/advances/2/8/e1...](http://d3a5ak6v9sb99l.cloudfront.net/content/advances/2/8/e1600451/F2.large.jpg)\n\nthe summarization of \"Undefined\" as \"Decides randomly\" seems a little wrong-\nthere's an obvious tendency in PD (Prisoner's Dilemma) for some results:\n[http://d3a5ak6v9sb99l.cloudfront.net/content/advances/2/8/e1...](http://d3a5ak6v9sb99l.cloudfront.net/content/advances/2/8/e1600451/F3.large.jpg)\n\nAlso, I can't help but wonder whether there is bias effect, as humans seem to\ntend to use a small number of groups or factors for personalities. For\nexample, in literature, J.K. Rowling's sorting hat chose between Gryffindor,\nHufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, and Veronica Roth had citizens of\nChicago choose between Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite. Even\nthough there is a mix between races in humans, we tend to categorize- like in\nthe U.S., typically you must choose from Caucausian, Asian-american, African-\namerican, Pacific-islander, or Hispanic, even though color and genetic makeup\nvary. Then MBTI has four factors (E/I, S/N, T/F, J/P). Friedman and Rosenman\ncame up with A and B types then later Denollet added the D type. We tend to\ncategorize like this.\n\nAlso, they chose just four games for the study. That could have affected the\noutcome.\n\n~~~\ngohrt\n> Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite.\n\nShe tried so hard for ABCDE, but couldn't find the word \"Benevolence\" ?\n\n------\ndash2\nThe article's description of the research is unhelpful, and almost certainly\nwrong. This doesn't sound like an attempt to identify four basic personality\ntypes. It's an attempt to categorise behaviour in a single, very precisely\ndefined economic experiment. We already know the five basic dimensions of\npersonality: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and\nneuroticism (OCEAN).\n\nIt's sad that there is so much good social/psychological science out there,\nbut people know so little about it and fall for this kind of ignorant\nreporting.\n\n~~~\nfsloth\n\" We already know the five basic dimensions of personality\"\n\nThat model present five dimensions, to which the personality traits are\nmapped. It does not mean they are the basic dimensions of personality.\nSimilarly I can map the world into 2 dimensions as in a photograph.\n\nBut I cannot say I've mapped the world to it's basic dimensions. I've lost\nquite a lot of data already - I'm missing 4 dimensions of data. The 3.rd\ncoordinate, and 3 for momentum.\n\n~~~\ndash2\nIt's a fair point. People can't be reduced to a 5-D vector of traits.\n(Otherwise novelists would be out of a job.) But OCEAN does capture a lot of\nhuman variability.\n\n~~~\ndisgruntledphd2\nCan you provide citations please? All the correlations I've seen have been in\nthe 0.3 range, which doesn't equate to a lot of human variability.\n\nI actually think this study is pretty interesting. Full text here:\n[http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451.full](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451.full)\n\nI don't believe in their clustering, but then I rarely believe the output of\nany unsupervised learning methods.\n\nIts an interesting approach, the real question is whether or not it captures\nincremental variance relative to an OCEAN (or the six factor one they like in\nmedicine) baseline.\n\n~~~\ndash2\nHeh, so now I had to read the actual study.\n\nI agree it's interesting, but my original impression was also true: this isn't\nabout discovering basic personality types. It's about correlating play across\nfour 2 x 2 experimental games. This is a very, very narrow domain of social\nbehaviour. Standard personality psychology, by contrast, aims to predict\nbehaviour across a much wider range of situations. (I still think that is\ntrue, even if individual correlations are low in any one situation. But, if\nyou know better and personality measures actually a crock of crap, feel free\nto correct me!)\n\nOf course, it's possible that there really are four deep types of human\npersonality, that you can capture them in these four games, and that they\npredict behaviour in lots and lots of domains. But I doubt it, and this\narticle provides no evidence for it.\n\nWhat's more interesting is the comparison between this unsupervised clustering\nmethod, and more theory-driven ways of categorising play in games, like\ninequality aversion models. I think there is an interesting race between\npsychologists, who pay greater attention to internal validity, and\nexperimental economists who focus on theory consistency. I'd like to know\nwhich kind of models does better at predicting out of sample.\n\n------\nYeGoblynQueenne\nOh, come off it. Of course the study \"identified four basic personality\ntypes\". They set out to identify four personality types to begin with:\n\n _After carrying out this kind of social experiment, the researchers developed\na computer algorithm which set out to classify people according to their\nbehavior. The computer algorith organized 90% of people into four groups:_\n\nIt's not magic, innit. If you choose a bunch of features and run some\nclassifier on them you'll get some grouping accoring to the distribution of\nvalues of those features in your sample. If you choose a different bunch of\nfeatures, you'll get a different grouping. What did you learn? That your\nfeatures have a distribution- well done.\n\nTrying to clasisfy peoples' personalities is futile: what constitutes\n\"behaviour\" or \"personality attributes\" is very, very arbitrary and there's\nnothing to say it's not all in the eye of the beholder to begin with.\n\n------\nChuckMcM\n_\" There is a fifth, undefined group, representing 10%, which the algorithm is\nunable to classify in relation to a clear type of behavior.\"_\n\nThey are _divergent_ :-). I found the characterization of \"Envious\" as people\nwho always want to win a bit more charged than \"Competitive\" would have been.\n\n------\nd--b\nBased on 541 interviews of Spanish people living in Barcelona, a study is able\nto classify 7bn human beings into 4 very distinct categories, and guess what,\nmost of them fall in the 'bastards' category.\n\n------\nBIair\n\"Optimistic, Pessimistic, Trusting and Envious\" in case you missed the obvious\nlike myself.\n\n------\ndesireco42\nI am checking to see if this is a joke :) This is not the first time for\npsychologists to come up with divisions like this. Not really sure how\nrelevant this is, thoughts?\n\n~~~\nsridca\nIt is not the categorization itself that particularly caught my attention so\nmuch as the observation that many people would rather be envious than, say,\noptimistic:\n\n> _the latter of the four types, Envious, is the most common, with 30%\n> compared to 20% for each of the other groups._\n\nSee also: Why are Adults so busy?\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12494999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12494999)\n\n------\ntriplesec\nThis looks about as useful and sophsticated as the MBTI (ie, not very): 'A\nstudy on human behavior has revealed that 90% of the population can be\nclassified into four basic personality types: Optimistic, Pessimistic,\nTrusting and Envious.' I can't see how this contingent typing, apparently done\nfor the purposes of being able to group people to do game theory experiments,\ncan have much external validity, especially as there will be so many edge\ncases and double- or even triple-class members. This just doesn't look\nworthwhile, from this article.\n\n~~~\npsyc\nWhen I read about my MBTI type, I can reasonably say \"Yes, I am exactly like\nthat, and no, I'm nothing like the others.\" When I read about these\ncategories, my reaction was \"I'm all of these.\"\n\n~~~\nwtbob\nThat's because MBTI is about as scientific as astrology. Frankly, when I\nstudied psychology in college ( _real_ psychology, not e.g. some Scientology\n'psychologists are evil space aliens' claptrap), I came to the conclusion that\nmost of it is equally unscientific. It has the form but not the substance.\n\n------\nreduxive\n\n      1. The Envious (anything to get ahead of everyone)\n    \n      2. The Optimists (everyone else is basically good, have faith)\n    \n      3. The Pessimists (most others are evil, favor the lesser of evils)\n    \n      4. Trusting Collaborators (will go along with anything to just be included)\n    \n      5. Unclassifiable (no common archtype correlating decisions, strategic decision making demonstrates conflicting tendencies)\n\n~~~\ngohrt\n4 simplistic patterns, and one group of creative thoughtful people. I wonder\nhow well \"Unclassifiables\" are represented among the most accomplished and\npowerful people in society.\n\n------\nreacweb\nI have found another one with 6 which seems far less crude and has also\nstatistic \"proofs\":\n[http://www.comcolors.com/en/](http://www.comcolors.com/en/)\n\n------\ntokenadult\nWrong. My hand is in a splint after arthritis surgery, so I can't type much\nhere, but see any reliable online source about the \"Big Five\" theory of human\npersonality to find out better information.\n\n------\nQantourisc\nSounds like 5 personality types IN game theory. Not in personality ? It mean\nit doesn't include how nervous / relaxed the person is. Which impacts a lot.\n\n------\nkazinator\nSounds like bunk. Optimistic<\\--->pessimistic is obviously a complete axis,\nwhich can have envious and trusting people on it all over the place.\n\n~~~\nHoasi\nNot to mention these may change upon circumstances.\n\n------\nsunstone\nMeyers-Briggs are gonna be suing these guys for sure.\n\n------\nmacawfish\nI remember looking at the distributions for Meyers-Briggs quizzes on\nOKCupid...\n\nThey were not Gaussian distributions :)\n\n------\nSnacksOnAPlane\nOooh, I can break it down to just 2 personality types: men and women!\n\n------\nmax_\nHow is the image related to the article?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Generate a mindmap from an org-mode file, with annotations - porphyry3\nhttps://github.com/vzaccaria/pandoc-mm\n======\npoirier\nThat's supremely cool.\n\nNice work!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Ion Browser – Lightweight and Fast Android Browser - bauripalash\nhttps://github.com/xedtech/ionbrowser\n======\ndarkmuck\nIs this just another WebView based browser?\n\n~~~\nbauripalash\nYes. Actually I was Learning How These Things actually work.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Best documentation for a command-line program? - tomcam\nI&#x27;m documenting an app that runs on the command line. I&#x27;d like to make it as easy to understand as possible for intermediate-level users. What&#x27;s the best page&#x2F;site you&#x27;ve seen for such a program?\n======\narkanciscan\nThe typical documentation for a CLI app is a man page or --help arg, but you\nseem to be asking about websites? Is that correct?\n\n~~~\ntomcam\nI’m thinking of something like the example below, where it takes the user\nthrough an example:\n\n[https://www.stanleyulili.com/django/how-to-install-django-\non...](https://www.stanleyulili.com/django/how-to-install-django-on-windows/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nImage Background Removal - Peroni\nhttp://developers.lyst.com/data/images/2014/02/13/background-removal/\n======\nsusi22\nFrankly, I'm not very impressed. This problem is a very very well known\nproblem in Image Processing. Usually people call it background subtraction or\nthe more general form is image segmentation.\n\nThere is many really well working algorithms in this field. A google search\nwith the major research conferences (ICCV, ICIP, SIGGRAPH etc) will give you\nthe latest and the greates of these algorithms. You'll also find good (image\nsegmentation) work if you limit the search for csail.mit.edu.\n\nIf you want your uploader to help you, you can also go for one of the\nsupervised image segmentation algorithms. Otherwise you'll need an\nunsupervised algorithm.\n\nGiven that the authors also want to detect what is in the image, this might be\nhelpful for them:\n\n[http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/papers/ObjectDiscovery-\ncvpr...](http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/papers/ObjectDiscovery-cvpr13.pdf)\n\nThis guy is also doing some great work in that field:\n\n[http://www.engr.uconn.edu/~cmli/](http://www.engr.uconn.edu/~cmli/)\n\n~~~\nmistercow\nMy thinking exactly.\n\nThe really crazy thing is that they seem to be reinventing the wheel so that\nthey can lean on the optimized code a graphics library provides. I think\nthat's flawed thinking to begin with. In my experience with graphics\nprogramming, a reasonably optimized direct implementation tends to beat the\nhell out of a nine-step filter chain, no matter how good your graphics\nlibrary. Even if they used the same algorithm, a direct implementation could\ncondense steps 2, 3, and 4 into a single convolution [edit: whoops, no you\ncant; Sobel has a non-convolution step].\n\nBut more importantly, they've tied their hands by limiting themselves to a\ntiny set of operations. Combing the computer vision literature would have been\na better use of time than trying to chain filters together.\n\nIn fact, some background subtraction algorithms effectively do as an\n_intermediate step_ what Lyst wanted as an end result.\n\n~~~\nzackmorris\n> The really crazy thing is that they seem to be reinventing the wheel so that\n> they can lean on the optimized code a graphics library provides. I think\n> that's flawed thinking to begin with.\n\nActually I disagree with you, even though what you say is correct in\nprinciple. On any given day, the vast majority of my workload revolves around\nworking with other people’s code. So I may spend 7 hours trying to get a new\nlibrary to compile or figure out why I’m getting an exception or how to get\nout of dependency hell and only 1 hour getting “real work done”.\n\nFor me, it’s exhausting to find a new library or API that loosely does what I\nneed, only to find that I have to install a new language, new framework, new\ncompiler, or even new package manager to use it. Developers have a tendency to\ncopy other developers (even when the “normal” way of doing things is not\nideal), so many libraries have no binary that I can test, and in fact no\nexample of usage or up to date documentation.\n\nThen there are subtleties with new libraries such as speed or memory usage. So\nperhaps a library that does exactly what you want runs at 1 frame every N\nseconds while the highly optimized function in a mainstream graphics library\nruns at many hundreds or even thousands of frames per second by utilizing\nconcurrency or the graphics card.\n\nSo in fact when it’s all said and done, I tend to think more in\ntransformations. I ask myself if I can express a solution slightly differently\nif it allows me to use an existing tool, then encapsulate it in a black box\nthat has the same inputs and outputs as my ideal solution. Then my frustration\nis that other developers don’t seem to think this way. “Make one tool that\ndoes one thing well” has become the mantra and driven us into this fragmented\necosystem.\n\nThis is just an aside, but: The only truly general purpose language that has a\nsyntax that doesn’t make me want to club myself over the head is probably\nMATLAB, but unfortunately their licenses are too expensive for me. So I have\nhigh hopes for Octave, and after that, maybe NumPy. So maybe one point we\ncould agree on is that we shouldn’t need a graphics “library” in the first\nplace. If we had a good mainstream concurrent language, then many of these\nalgorithms become one paragraph code snippets and run with speed comparable to\nC or Java.\n\nEdit: I wanted to give a concrete example. Low level languages like C are\noverly verbose in their implementations, by 10 or 100 times usually, because\nthey try to leverage the wrong metaphors. Notice how compactly concepts like\nimage compression can be expressed with the right ones:\n\n[http://www.mathworks.com/help/images/discrete-cosine-\ntransfo...](http://www.mathworks.com/help/images/discrete-cosine-\ntransform.html)\n\n~~~\nmistercow\nI agree that using optimized libraries is the better choice when those\nlibraries do something _close_ to what you are trying to do, but this\nalgorithm is Rube Goldberg-esque.\n\nAlso, OpenCV includes functions for image segmentation. If they couldn't use\nthat, it would have been nice for the article to at least touch on _why_.\n\n~~~\njbondeson\n_but this algorithm is Rube Goldberg-esque_\n\nI think that's being a bit unkind, it's simply clear that the people are not\nexperienced with computer vision and/or image processing in general. They\napproached the problem from their domain and found the solution that worked\nfor them. If I had gotten to the point that I wanted to do a domain-specific\nimage segmentation heuristic I would certainly build it up from a series of\nfilters and image morphology steps. If the performance (both accuracy and\nspeed) was satisfactory, I don't know why you would invest in optimization at\nthat point. Also, from experience I know that implementing algorithms from\npapers is a slow and many times painful process as the original authors\ngenerally don't publish reference code, and if they do it's probably in\nMatlab. And if they don't have someone adept at image processing their\npotential for success would likely be low.\n\n _Also, OpenCV includes functions for image segmentation. If they couldn 't\nuse that, it would have been nice for the article to at least touch on why._\n\nI agree that a quick \"Here's what we tried that's readily available\" would\nhave been good for others to learn from, because for many the general\nsolutions would be sufficient.\n\n------\nSynergyse\nThis was posted on HN a while back, really impressive:\n[http://clippingmagic.com/](http://clippingmagic.com/)\n\n~~~\nbabo\nI've tried it with the sneakers sample but the results are disappointing. It\nhad a hard time differentiate the brown of the background and the welt.\n\n~~~\njacobn\nI thought it worked ok?\n[http://clippingmagic.com/images/4953782/public/86ede827aa2fa...](http://clippingmagic.com/images/4953782/public/86ede827aa2fa9d9104776f68737dc43226554c5)\n\nYou need a couple of extra markings, but that's life on images with background\ncolors close to the foreground colors.\n\n(I'm one of the creators of clippingmagic.com)\n\n------\nzk00006\nImage segmentation is one of the most studied problems in computer vision. A\nreally good lectures about this topic is by Prof. Daniel Cremers:\n[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpw26tpHGr8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpw26tpHGr8).\nIn one of the talks, he describes methods that were popular in 80' and that\nare pretty much what the author developed.\n\n------\njallmann\nSounds like a saliency detection algorithm would be appropriate as a pre-\nprocessing step prior to edge detection or thresholding. The choice of\nalgorithm may depend on the image characteristics; eg, [1] utilizes a global\ncenter-surround, works well for large and distinct foregrounds, while [2] uses\na FFT, works better for noisier backgrounds. There is a lot of literature on\nsaliency detection, segmentation, etc.\n\n[1]\n[http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/135217/files/1708.pdf](http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/135217/files/1708.pdf)\n\n[2]\n[http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~xhou/papers/cvpr07.pdf](http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~xhou/papers/cvpr07.pdf)\n\n------\njcampbell1\nThis might be of interest, to people looking for a more human guided approach,\nwhere rough edges are defined by a human:\n\n[http://www.alphamatting.com/](http://www.alphamatting.com/)\n\n~~~\nsjtrny\nCame here to post the same thing (current researcher in this field). Although\nyou could actually automate the labelling by building a classifier for the\ntype of object you wish to extract.\n\n------\ntan\nAnother automated background removal method that worked best for me on complex\nbackgrounds was Graphcut Algorithm, by Microsoft research. Gives the best\nresults and has a implementation in OpenCV.\n\n~~~\nzenbowman\nYep, that works remarkably well.\n\nI think it is called GrabCut - [http://research.microsoft.com/en-\nus/um/cambridge/projects/vi...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-\nus/um/cambridge/projects/visionimagevideoediting/segmentation/grabcut.htm)\n\n~~~\ngpcz\nThe advantage of GrabCut compared to the parent article is that it takes both\ncolor difference and similarity into account rather than just difference. This\nis done by combining all that information into a very cleverly-laid-out Markov\nRandom Field where making an energy-minimizing graph cut roughly corresponds\nto finding a better pixel classification.\n\nThe disadvantage compared to the parent is that it's a semi-supervised\nalgorithm: it requires a bounding box to be drawn around the desired image. If\nyou had a bunch of very similar images you could pre-generate the Gaussian\nMixture Model that GrabCut expects and turn it into a supervised learning\nalgorithm, but then you'd lose the major innovation of GrabCut compared to the\ngraph cut methods discovered before it: you would not be able to re-run with\nthe newest \"best-guess\" and be guaranteed that the energy would monotonically\ndecrease. It would also fail spectacularly if it encountered something it\nhadn't seen before.\n\n~~~\ngpcz\nAnother thing to consider is that GrabCut is patent-encumbered for commercial\nuse -- it relies on the mechanism described in Zabih, Boykov, and Veksler's\n\"Fast Approximate Energy Minimization via Graph Cuts,\" which is patented in\nthe US since 2004 (Patent No. 6,744,923).\n\n------\nmxfh\nI'm still looking for a white to transparent filter. This program fails to do\nthat properly, if i look at shadow in the transparent examples with the boot.\n\nAny recommendations other than keeping Photoshop CS5 around just to use\n_KillWhite_ [1]? (Why _Adobe_ axed _Pixel Bender_ [2] is still just beyond\nme.)\n\n _MathMap_ for _gimp_ looks promising to create pixel-filters, yet I haven't\ntried it yet. Being able to to this on commandline would be nice, but isn't a\nrequirement.\n\n[1][http://mikes3d.com/extra/scripting-\nplugins/killwhite/](http://mikes3d.com/extra/scripting-plugins/killwhite/)\n\n[2][http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pixelbender.html](http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pixelbender.html)\n\n[3][http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/schani/mathmap/](http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/schani/mathmap/)\n\n~~~\nmorsch\nIn standard gimp this functionality is available in Colors - Color to Alpha.\nMaybe I'm misunderstanding what you're looking for.\n\n~~~\nmxfh\nThanks for the hint, just tried it and it not behaving as I need to.\n\nExpected behavior in HSL color space would be anything with the same Hue and\nSaturation value (with optional adjustable thresholds) of a selected color\ngets assigned an alpha value of 1 - lightness. Where lightness of 1 being\nwhite and alpha of 1 being opaque.\n\nKillWhite seems to do exactly this: [http://mikes3d.com/extra/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2010/07/apple.pn...](http://mikes3d.com/extra/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2010/07/apple.png)\n\nI guess by now, it's easiest for me to re-implement this as a filter for HTML5\n2DCanvas.\n\n------\npj_mukh\nI am working on a similar problem and came up with similar methodologies. I\nalso used the Canny filter which worked quite well\n([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canny_edge_detector](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canny_edge_detector)).\nHowever, it all broke down with complex patterns in the foreground/background.\nI'm currently trying to incorporate more structural information about the\nforeground objects. Learning algorithms is probably another option here? Just\nnot sure how to frame the problem for a learning algorithm.\n\n------\nswframe\nI've worked on this problem quite a bit. The hard thing to accept is that\nthere can be large areas in an image where there isn't a significant\ndifference between the foreground and background. In other words, the raw data\ndoesn't contain enough information to detect an edge there and no segmentation\nalgorithm will find what is not there in the data. Humans see edges\n\"semantically\". We know there should be one there and so we \"imagine\" one. I\nwork on image segmentation and recognition and my code cycles between those\ntwo goals. I segment and look for noisy and smooth edges, then I postulate\nwhere there should be a smooth edge (for example, if you recognize a smooth\nedge \"parallel\" to a noisy edge, check if the noisy one could be smoothed\n\"similar\" to the other one). The end result is that I can separate the\nforeground from the background but I don't try or hope to recover the edge\nthat a human would find. My segmented images have the uncanny valley problem.\nThe edges are correct in some areas and slightly off in other areas. The image\nlooks real and fake :)\n\n------\npaulcaponetti\nI had this issue for a site a few months ago and did the flood fill approach,\nalso making available a simpler mode. This algorithm could use a few tweaks,\nbut it worked quite well for images with only white backgrounds, but can\neasily be tweaked to deduce background colors.\n\n[https://github.com/PCaponetti/image-background-\nremoval](https://github.com/PCaponetti/image-background-removal)\n\n------\nplicense\nThere is nothing innovative here. And with the kind of images that they are\nconsidering, you could simply use a Canny edge detector and take the outer-\nmost contour to be the region of interest. As the previous comments have said,\nthis is a well tackled problem. They must have done some literature survey.\n\n------\ngraeham\nUsually automated image processing is tough without a priori info about the\nimage, or some human input.\n\nAdding to these methods, a 'holes' fill algorithm can be very helpful. This\nwould proably be used in place of your Alpha Mask.\n\nThe process can be run multiple times with different parameters for better\nresults. For example, doing edge detect->threshold->edge detect (with\ndifferent parameters) can help remove some of the smaller artifacts you see in\nthe images.\n\nIf you're able to have some manual input, simply clicking the object of\ninterest or doing a rough outline can be a great addition to an algorithm,\nespecially in avoiding the problem seen in Global Threshold with Complex\nBackground.\n\n------\nW0lf\nThere's a really good paper from 2011 which does quite a good job in image\nsegmentation with very noisy background[1]. Their algorithm is biologically\nmotivated and analyses contrast changes in different parts of the image as\nthis is exactly how we separate interesting parts in images from uninteresting\nparts.\n\n[1]\n[http://vecg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/Projects/SmartGeometry/contrast_sal...](http://vecg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/Projects/SmartGeometry/contrast_saliency/contrast_saliency_cvpr11.html)\n\n------\ntlarkworthy\nyou need to really model what is going on at the edge boundary. For an\nindividual pixel, how much of the contribution is from the background, and how\nmuch is from the object? Pixels values are the result of a smoothing operation\nover each pixels field of view (which is actually probably a little bit bigger\nthan the image dimensions suggest).\n\nWhen you zoom into an image its clear that the edges of objects can affect\npixel intensities a few pixels away (blur). So you have to reverse that which\ncan be tricky. Image people like Matlab so thats where the premade solution\nwill be found\n\n------\ntaliesinb\nRemoveBackground in the Wolfram Language...\n\n[http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/RemoveBackground.h...](http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/RemoveBackground.html)\n\n------\nJanSt\nFor anyone interested in CV:\n\n[http://szeliski.org/Book/drafts/SzeliskiBook_20100903_draft....](http://szeliski.org/Book/drafts/SzeliskiBook_20100903_draft.pdf)\n\n------\njosephpmay\nI have conducted research in exactly this. Their results would likely be much\nmore accurate by applying Canny edge detection instead of the simpler Sobel\nedge detection\n\n~~~\nJanSt\nCanny edge detection uses Sobel in most cases as a first or second step (after\nblurring) and adds a non-maximum suppression + hysteresis thresholding - You\ndo most probably know that, just wanted to clarify that it's not really\n\"instead\".\n\n------\nkirkbackus\nThis is awesome, love to see a well thought out image processing algorithm\nused for such a useful application.\n\n~~~\nmistercow\nI would agree with you if the image processing algorithm were actually well\nthought out. As it is, I fear that this article is encouraging some very bad\nways of thinking about problems.\n\nFirst off, they don't mention searching for an off the shelf solution to the\nproblem. If OpenCV's built-in GrabCut or Watershed filter wouldn't work for\nthem, they should explain why.\n\nSecondly, they don't examine the literature for existing approaches to the\nproblem. Sometimes you won't find what you're looking for in those approaches,\nbut in that case, the _problem_ with existing approaches will inform how you\ndecide to tackle the problem.\n\nFinally, they solve the problem by building a filter chain, but they don't\nseem to actually understand what the filters are doing. They say that the\nSobel operator \"looks for light to dark transitions\". This is completely\nincorrect. The Sobel operator does nothing more than estimate the magnitude of\nthe gradient of the image. Furthermore, based on this misunderstanding, they\ninvert the image before applying the Sobel filter - a step which does\nliterally nothing.\n\n------\nnailer\nSmall suggested edit:\n\n> it normally has moved more background than product\n\nShould probably be:\n\n> it normally has removed more background than product\n\n------\nsjtgraham\nThis seems like a great problem to tackle with deep learning.\n\n~~~\ndeutronium\nI'm curious what you mean by this, could you elaborate\n\n~~~\nboomzilla\nIt's a new game in town: whenever someone says \"big data\", you reply \"deep\nlearning\", someone says \"mobile\", you say \"real time\", someone says \"sharing\",\nyou say \"social\", etc ...\n\n~~~\nSimHacker\nHello. Greetings. Brrrrrrring!!!\n[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTc3PsW5ghQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTc3PsW5ghQ)\n\n------\nbagosm\nInteresting... Thanks for the disclosure of the code. Now if only NSA was\nwilling to open source their image/video manipulation software...\n\nWhen researching for this you didn't find any good premade solution or were\nthey simply too highly priced?\n\n~~~\nPeroni\nWe didn't find any pre-made solutions which fit with our requirements, which\nwere: reasonable results in the general case and speed.\n\nWe used GraphicsMagick and the pgmagick package to integrate into our code\nbase and because GraphicsMagick is crazy fast.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNorwegian Air to cancel 85% of flights and temporarily lay off 90% of staff - spking\nhttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-norwegianair/norwegian-air-to-cancel-85-of-flights-and-lay-off-90-of-staff-idUSKBN2132F7\n======\njohnnymonster\nIt's a temporary layoff and it's exactly what they should be doing. When they\nlay off the employees, they are able to collect unemployment benefits from the\ngovernment. It's a perfect strategy so that the employees will be ok instead\nof not receiving wages. once things rebound, they can hire them back again and\nall is good.\n\n~~~\nmarvin\nWhile I agree with your point in general, Norwegian is done. They've got a\nheavy debt burden that's due soon. They will either go bankrupt and be\nrestructured, or have to do a wipeout-level stock offering (unlikely in the\ncurrent risk climate).\n\n~~~\naxlee\nCan't Norway bail them out? It's not like they lack the capital, and they're\nthe country largest airline.\n\n~~~\nucarion\nThis is not to contradict what you're saying, but it should be clarified that\nNorway's flag carrier is Scandinavian Airlines, not Norwegian Air:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Airlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Airlines)\n\nAgain: I'm aware that you haven't said anything to the contrary. But it's\nuseful context.\n\n~~~\nmichaeljohansen\nWell. We Norwegians joke that SAS stands for \"svensk alt sammen\" (Swedish all\ntogether). Some of us consider Norwegian Air Shuttle to be more of a Norwegian\nairline.\n\nAnd yes, a bailout is likely. The govt will likely help keep Norwegian Air's\nplanes flying during the Coronavirus period. Additional help is possible.\n\n~~~\nhnarn\nLooking only at state ownership, the Swedish and Danish governments own about\nthe same share of SAS (~14%) and 1/3rd of the company stock is privately\nowned.[1]\n\n[1]:\n[https://www.sasgroup.net/annualreports/2018/assets/pdf/eng/S...](https://www.sasgroup.net/annualreports/2018/assets/pdf/eng/SAS_AR17-18_ENG.pdf)\n\n~~~\nJhsto\nMeanwhile, the Finnish government owns 55.8% of Finnair.\n\n------\nInTheArena\nNorwegian was near death many many times before this hit. Coronavirus just\nmakes the death inevitable. This is too bad, I really did love their product.\nTheir premium economy seats were well priced, and only on 787, which really\nhelped with jetlag due to the higher humidity and lower pressurization of the\nCFRP frame.\n\nThat said, it's going to be hard to see who doesn't go bankrupt with the\nvirus. Airlines are on limited margins at the best of time, and parking half\nthe fleet makes their business model untenable very quickly.\n\nThe other thing is that unlike almost all of the rest of the world, airports\nin the US are still publicly owned, and funded by per-passenger fees. A lot of\ncities are going to have a massive gaping hole in their budgets because of\nthat.\n\n~~~\nrefurb\nNorwegian has been near death for a couple years.[1]\n\nWhich is a shame as I had a great experience when I flew and the cost can't be\nbeat ($500 return from SFO to Barcelona).\n\n[1][https://www.cntraveler.com/story/norwegian-air-is-taking-\nlas...](https://www.cntraveler.com/story/norwegian-air-is-taking-last-ditch-\nmeasures-to-avoid-bankruptcy)\n\n~~~\nlondons_explore\n$500 from you, but another $XXXX from the government subsidising the airports,\nthe fuel (through zero rated tax), the air traffic controllers, the planes\n(through big military contracts to keep Boeing afloat), and not billing for\nenvironmental damage (CO2, noise pollution, etc.)\n\n~~~\nrefurb\nI'm not sure what your point is.\n\n$500 on Norwegian is better than $1000 on United. They're both getting the\nsame set of subsidies.\n\n------\nunixhero\nNot firing, temporary full time leave without pay. Important to note that the\nNorwegian government will pay full salary for 20 days of the first. At least\nwe're talking about Norwegian employees on a Norwegian contract.\n\nThe same thing goes from SAS.\n\n~~~\ninferiorhuman\n_Important to note that the Norwegian government will pay full salary for 20\ndays of the first._\n\nDoes that include the crews who are typically based in foreign countries to\nskirt Norwegian labor laws?\n\n~~~\nangry_octet\nI doubt it. American staff in particular are probably screwed.\n\n~~~\nfoogazi\nDon’t they get unemployment checks?\n\n~~~\nangry_octet\nFor a far smaller amount than their normal incomes, only for 26 weeks at most,\nceasing as soon as they get any job, and requiring them to undertake job\nseeking activities. And provided they have worked for at least a quarter.\n\nOnly as long as their\n\n------\ndwheeler\nI expect all Airlines to cancel many of their flights and have to temporarily\nlay off a lot of their people. It is unlikely a lot of people will be doing\ntravel for mamy weeks, and I suspect the ramp back up to normal will be slow.\n\n------\nnoncoml\nThe problem with the airlines is that pretty much everyone has been bitten by\nthem one way or another(unexpected fees, unreasonable policies, etc..) so it\nwill be difficult to get any sympathy from the public.\n\n~~~\ninferiorhuman\nYep. The NY Times is running an op-ed calling for a pound of flesh from the\nairlines before any bailout (due to customer treatment).\n\n~~~\nzadkey\nCould you share the link to the article?\n\n~~~\ninferiorhuman\n[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/opinion/airlines-\nbailout....](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/opinion/airlines-bailout.html)\n\n _We cannot permit American and other airlines to use federal assistance,\nwhether labeled a bailout or not, to weather the coronavirus crisis and then\nreturn to business as usual. Before providing any loan relief, tax breaks or\ncash transfers, we must demand that the airlines change how they treat their\ncustomers and employees and make basic changes in industry ownership\nstructure._\n\n------\nvsareto\nUS Airlines are now looking directly for assistance as well:\n\n[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/16/us-airlines-seek-more-\nthan-5...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/16/us-airlines-seek-more-\nthan-50-billion-in-aid-as-coronavirus-roils-business.html)\n\n~~~\ncoldcode\nGov is handing out money like the printing presses are fired up, everyone will\nbe asking. The major US carriers are not in terrible shape unlike Norwegian.\n\n------\natlasunshrugged\nI'll be fascinated to see which airlines make it out of this alive (with and\nwithout a bailout) and the long term repercussions. Seems like the cheapo\nairlines will probably go under relatively quickly because they're on razor\nthin margins but even United and anyone with global route exposure is going to\nget hurt really badly by this.\n\n~~~\nSvip\nI am starting to think that only the partly/fully state-owned airlines will\nmake it out alive.\n\n~~~\nwp381640\nAirlines are too important to the economy - plenty of them will get gov\nguarantees / bailouts\n\n------\nfulafel\nI really hope governments will realize what a bad investment bailout money to\nairlines would be, given their doomed future as one of the main CO2 villain\nindustries. (Not to mention casual air travel's role in spreading epidemics)\n\n------\nmlthoughts2018\nThere should probably be a sense in which it is criminally negligent to run a\nbusiness of this size in such a way that a ~6 week period of market crash\nbehavior can imply a need to to layoff 90% of staff.\n\nI understand businesses have to make tough choices, but this seems like\negregiously irresponsible planning, akin to using every paycheck for\nexorbitant luxury while figuring you can use a credit card for necessities and\ncoast on some equilibrium of credit card payments.\n\nIt’s ridiculous for large corporations like this to not have sufficient\nreserves to ride it out for lengthy periods of time while disallowing “lay\neveryone off” from being a side effect.\n\n~~~\ndigitaltrees\nThat is impossible. No business can see a 50% drop in revenue over an extended\nperiod of time and survive. That is, unless we assume that the price setting\nfunction of markets is suspended. Supply and demand will result in razor thin\nmargins unless we get rid of competition and allow monopolies.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway2048\nIs 6 weeks really an \"extended period of time\" ?, we are barely a few weeks\ninto a global crisis and already companies are collapsing, that's an indicator\nof just how insanely fragile things are.\n\n~~~\nNikolaeVarius\n6 weeks is a damn eternity. Modern supply chains are stupid highly optimized.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway2048\nhighly optimized means insanely fragile in terms of disruption.\n\n------\ntotetsu\nAir New Zealand is also cutting 85%[1] of international flights and looking to\ncut 30 percent[2] of its workforce. [1][https://simpleflying.com/air-new-\nzealand-flight-cuts/](https://simpleflying.com/air-new-zealand-flight-cuts/)\n[2][https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/411892/union-seeks-a-\nvoi...](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/411892/union-seeks-a-voice-as-air-\nnz-prepares-to-axe-3500-jobs)\n\n------\nfasteo\nSlightly off topic.\n\nTo any Norwegians around HN: Were they in trouble before the corona crisis ?\nStock value[1] started a heavy downward trend around Feb 2018, from 171 down\nto 41 before corona crisis, down to 7 as of today.\n\nI am based in Spain, and I am seeing this same trend in some local companies.\nIt seems that coronavirus is the trigger for an existing, latent problem.\n\n[1]\n[https://www.reuters.com/companies/NWC.OL/charts](https://www.reuters.com/companies/NWC.OL/charts)\n\n~~~\nvegardx\nThey have been struggling for quite some time.\n\nThey got hit quite bad with the grounding of 737 MAX (10% of fleet), and\nbefore that they a lot of issues with the 787 Dreamliner (20% of fleet).\n\n~~~\nhjnilsson\nThey also signed a contract pegging fuel prices for the foreseeable future\nwhen oil price was $70. Several unlucky breaks in a row, I don’t really think\nit will be saved. SAS might though.\n\n------\nnbclark\nI feel bad for the employees...not so much for the airline. Norwegian was the\nworst nickel&diming airline I've ever been on.\n\n~~~\ncplanas\nReally? In my experience, they were the best \"cheap\" airline, by far. Their\nairplanes were pretty comfortable, compared to United, Alaska, or Spirit, to\nname a few.\n\n~~~\ncapableweb\nTo be fair, comparing most european airlines seems good when you compare them\nto US airlines. Would be more fair to compare them to other european airlines.\n\n~~~\ncplanas\nThe most famous \"cheap\" European airline, RyanAir, is substantially worse than\nNorwegian. And personally I find Norwegian better than WizzAir, easyJet or\nVueling.\n\n------\nfxtentacle\nI am surprised that they are allowed to do that, since this is the EU and we\ndo have employee protections.\n\nOh, it's a click-bait title.\n\nThe text itself says \"will [..] temporarily lay off 7,300 employees\", so this\nis still in the planning stage and not meant to be permanent.\n\n~~~\nailideex\nNorway is not EU. And many places that is not EU have employee protections.\nYou don't need EU for that.\n\n~~~\nvidarh\nMost of Norwegian's employees are not in Norway. Their staff in Norway will\nhave extensive employee protections. Their staff at their UK and US hubs are\nin far weaker positions.\n\n------\nthrowaway693659\nThrowaway for obvious reasons. It's not only about the pilots, crew,\nadministration, etc. A major airline I am working for will lay off pretty much\n~90% of its IT departement within 1 month as well.\n\n~~~\nbrnt\nSince it's a throwaway, which airline is that? Asking for a friend...\n\n------\nKitDuncan\nMy fiancé is currently in Orlando and booked her flight back to Germany with\nNorwegian for March 24. Does that mean the flight is cancelled? She hasn't\nreceived any notification from them.\n\n~~~\nmopsi\nYes, the flight isn't going to happen. The EU will close all external borders\nfor 30 days tomorrow at noon. If she is a citizen of Germany and doesn't have\nany symptoms, she can expect a seat on a repatriation flight. Contact\nappropriate embassies.\n\n------\npaulmd\nairlines are expecting a full travel ban soon (including domestic).\nProjections have United revenue down 9% this quarter and 95% next quarter (not\na typo).\n\n[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/16/coronavirus-makes-\nairlines-c...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/16/coronavirus-makes-airlines-\nconsider-chances-for-a-halt-to-us-flights.html)\n\n------\nthe8472\nThat is one way to get CO2 emissions down, perhaps more will follow their\nlead.\n\n~~~\nyouareostriches\nWhether people like it or not, shrinking global economic activity in fuel-\nheavy and extractive industries (by extension, via demand destruction) is\ninevitably linked to reducing carbon emissions. We must be prepared to give up\ncertain things for the sake of our ecosystem.\n\n~~~\nFDSGSG\nHow many people are you willing to kill in order to reduce carbon emissions?\n[https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/economic-\ndo...](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/economic-downturn-\nexcess-cancer-deaths-atun/)\n\n~~~\ntonyedgecombe\nHow many people are you willing to kill in order to continue polluting the\nplanet: [https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-\npollution](https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution)\n\n------\ndcftoapv\nNorwegian was struggling financially before COVID 19. This isn't surprising.\nNorway has one of the world's most robust social support systems. I'm\nconfident that they will deploy it well here.\n\n------\n_bxg1\n*temporarily lay off\n\n------\nallovernow\nI just don't see how these closures aren't going to ripple through the global\neconomy. The market is down 25% YTD after two desperate stimulus measures -\n$1.5T injection and interest rates cut to zero.\n\nWhat are you going to prop up when world travel and trade is shut down? And\ndomestic regions are locked down too?\n\nThe kicker is that we had been seeing negative long term indicators for a\nwhile before this - inverted yield curve, and long overdue for the\napproximately 7 year recession cycle, among other indicators.\n\nI would love to be convinced otherwise but, regardless of the outcome of the\n2019ncov situation, this is shaping up to be a trigger for a global recession,\npossibly a depression. Modern society cannot sustain itself indoors without\nradical measures. The vast majority of people probably work at jobs that\ncannot be performed remotely.\n\n~~~\nmehrdadn\n> I just don't see how these closures aren't going to ripple through the\n> global economy.\n\nI can see it not rippling if (a) a vaccine comes out in time, or (b) people\njust give up and work anyway, accepting coronavirus as a risk of life. Unlike\nsacrificing everything for the sake of not getting coronavirus, that can\nactually go on indefinitely.\n\n~~~\nstandardUser\n\"Unlike sacrificing everything for the sake of not getting coronavirus, that\ncan actually go on indefinitely.\"\n\nNot even remotely true.\n\nIf people go back to normal (against the advice from every agency with\nexperience handling communicable diseases) the disease will spread at an\nexponential rate. Healthcare systems across the globe will be overwhelmed\n(like Italy and China but vastly worse) and people start suffering and dying\nfrom curable illnesses due to lack of capacity.\n\nThen, once people start dying by thousands, everyone will quarantine\nthemselves anyway.\n\nThere is no scenario where this doesn't ripple.\n\n~~~\nmehrdadn\n> There is no scenario where this doesn't ripple.\n\nWe can argue (b), but did you just ignore my (a)? How would that ripple like\nthis?\n\n~~~\ngus_massa\nThe vaccine will take like 1 year to test and be sure that it is effective and\nthat it is safe and cause no nasty side effects. So for 2020, let's ignore\n(a).\n\n~~~\njeremyjh\nI don't know why this is being downvoted. A year is actually a fairly\naggressive schedule. Of course there may be certain elected officials who will\npush to certify anything at all before November but nothing will be _proven_\nsafe in that little time.\n\n------\nklhugo\nMisleading title, change it, it just spreads panic.\n\n------\ndrfuchs\nSo one third of the remaining flights won’t have a pilot?\n\n~~~\njrockway\nAirlines are companies like any other, and they have a lot of employees that\naren't flight crew. Someone has to negotiate benefits, write HR handbooks,\nforecast the weather, dispatch flights, update their website, \"reimagine cabin\ninteriors\", etc. I am sure you can end up with a very large organization\noutside of people that show up at the airport to deal with customers.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhere Ruby/Sinatra falls short - onli\nhttps://www.pc-kombo.com/blog/68/Where%20Ruby/Sinatra%20falls%20short\n======\nbeat\nI find it really interesting that the Ruby language led to two such wildly\ndifferent, yet equally valid approaches to web apps - Sinatra and Rails.\n\nSinatra is the most minimal web framework I've ever used. It's fantastic for\ndoing quick mockups and small apps. Yes, you will hit limitations. Bicycles\nare not good dump trucks. And even before you hit hard limits, you're going to\nfind yourself inventing a lot of structure/convention to keep it from\ndevolving into pretty PHP.\n\nRails, on the other hand, is fantastically complete. It does _everything_ for\nyou. Convention over configuration is a brilliant concept, and the self-\ndiscovery nature of the ActiveRecord ORM is something that is totally natural\nin Ruby and quite awkward in other languages. For writing basic CRUD apps\n(which is much of the software world), it's really hard to beat the efficiency\nof Rails.\n\nAnd when people whinge about performance... well, so what? Horizontal scaling,\nfriends. Developer performance is _much_ more important than software\nperformance in most cases (especially since networks and databases form the\nbulk of your performance cost out in the real world). But efficient\ndevelopers, that's magical.\n\n~~~\nwhalesalad\nSinatra is not an \"approach to web apps\" \\-- it's a single purpose tool that\nmaps HTTP requests to Ruby. Like Flask or Web.py (Python) and Express (JS).\n\nYou are comparing apples to oranges.\n\n~~~\nmenacingly\nAnd you're saying oranges aren't fruit because they aren't like apples.\n\nIt's actually a not-insignificant amount of code that creates an approach so\ncleverly transparent that you are able to interpret it as no approach at all.\n\n~~~\nTomK32\n\"oranges\" is a very narrow range of colours between 585 and 620 nm wavelength.\nI'm not surprised wikipedia has a page on that\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_orange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_orange)\n\n------\nwhalesalad\nThis post would be more appropriately named \"Where my knowledge of building\nweb applications falls short\" \\- the title is kinda inflammatory and a lot of\nthe commenters here likely haven't bothered to read it and are just throwing\nin their two cents on the technologies mentioned in the title.\n\nNone of the complaints here are the fault of Ruby or Sinatra. One exception\ncould be the trailing slashes complaint. The issue exists in really any web\nframework, though. Flask, for example, will give you the same hiccup.\n\nI tend to defeat it in Flask with `app.url_map.strict_slashes = False`\n\n> There are too many ways to access parameters\n\nThis is a bad thing? The framework gives you flexibility to build your program\nthe way you want, and the way your specific problems might require.\n\n> You will need much more than included\n\nWell... yeah. This is not a batteries included tool for building websites end-\nto-end ... it's a simple way to map an HTTP request to Ruby.\n\n> Rewriting www.yourpage.com to yourpage.com, or the other way around\n\n> Serving your site over https\n\n> Redirecting all [http://](http://) pages to [https://](https://)\n\n> Running tasks in the background\n\n> Saving data in a database, and reading from it\n\nThese are definitely not responsibilities for an HTTP -> Ruby library and the\nfirst 3 are certainly responsibilities for your public-facing HTTP server\n(Nginx, etc...)\n\n~~~\nskedaddle\nIt's supposed to be more than that. Sinatra is described as \"a DSL for quickly\ncreating web applications in Ruby with minimal effort\".\n\nEntire web applications, with minimal effort. I have not found this to be the\ncase with Sinatra.\n\n~~~\ndreix\nThe application is not the server.\n\n~~~\nskedaddle\nOf course, I agree. But though in practice Sinatra may be just a library for\nrouting HTTP requests to a Ruby application, it is marketed as a relatively\ncomplete environment for building web applications, making a bunch of these\ncriticisms valid.\n\n------\ncoderobe\n>And besides: If Sinatra starts a server listening for incoming traffic, why\ndoes it still seem common to run a regular webserver like nginx in front of\nthat server?\n\nThis is a common technique used for tls-termination and management of 'virtual\nhosts', among other things.\n\nThe mentioned \"issues\" don't seem to be Sinatra-specific, but rather about the\nauthors shallow understanding of the topic as a whole\n\n~~~\nadambyrtek\nOne of these \"other things\" is buffering of slow HTTP requests. Application\nservers are usually not designed to deal with that and are meant to be run\nbehind a proper load balancer/reverse proxy. This is usually very explicitly\nmentioned in their documentation, for example in\n[https://bogomips.org/unicorn/PHILOSOPHY.html](https://bogomips.org/unicorn/PHILOSOPHY.html)\n\n~~~\njrochkind1\npuma does pretty good at buffering slow HTTP requests though.\n\nI honestly _don't know_ why we usually put apache or nginx in front of our\nruby 'web servers'. But I keep doing it anyway, cause 'everyone else' does,\nand I don't want to take the time to be sure I don't need to, it works.\n\nHowever, I believe rails deployments to Heroku generally _don't_ put another\nweb server in front. Which, per your point, slow clients is quite exactly why\nthey explained the switch from unicorn to puma as a default web server.\n[https://devcenter.heroku.com/changelog-\nitems/594](https://devcenter.heroku.com/changelog-items/594)\n\nIt is true that in 2018 web dev has gotten complicated (in a variety of\ndifferent axes), and if there's a framework/platform that will allow you to\nnot know it is, I don't know what it is! It would probably be one that made a\nlot more choices for you though (like, say, ruby web server, so you don't need\nto think about 'oh, unicorn can't handle slow clients but puma can') -- which\nis the opposite of Sinatra's philosophy -- but then again Rails approach to\ntry to do that has not resulted in something people find easy either. shrug.\n\n~~~\nnathan_f77\nI've stopped using Nginx in my Docker containers, and I just run puma\ndirectly. It's still behind a load balancer that also handles TLS termination.\nI also serve all the assets from the Rails server, but they're cached with a\nCDN, so it only needs to serve each file once.\n\nIf you're using Docker with Kubernetes, Convox, Docker Swarm, Rancher, etc.,\nthen I don't think you need to run Nginx or Apache. I ran some load tests on\nmy staging environment with and without Nginx, and it didn't make any\ndifference.\n\nThis was a really good article that helped me understand request routing a bit\nbetter: [https://www.speedshop.co/2015/07/29/scaling-ruby-apps-\nto-100...](https://www.speedshop.co/2015/07/29/scaling-ruby-apps-\nto-1000-rpm.html#how-requests-get-routed-to-app-servers)\n\n~~~\njrochkind1\nIf you weren't caching with CDN, would serving those static assets as\nefficiently as possible be a good reason to keep using (eg) nginx, do you\nthink?\n\nOh, I guess load balancing (with a multiple-host scale) is another good\nreason, if you don't have heroku doing it for you, nginx is a convenient way\nto do it just fine.\n\n~~~\nnathan_f77\nI don't know if there's any middle ground where you'd want to use Nginx\ninstead of a CDN. If it's an internal app then it doesn't really matter. But\nif you have any reason to worry about the performance of serving static\nassets, then you should always be using a CDN like CloudFront or CloudFlare,\netc.\n\nBut yeah, Nginx can be a great solution for load balancing and TLS\ntermination.\n\n------\nlucisferre\nIf people are looking for a lightweight Ruby webserver, I'd highly recommend\nchecking out Roda\n[https://github.com/jeremyevans/roda](https://github.com/jeremyevans/roda)\n\nMore related to the article, the author mentions that routing order is a\nproblem with Sinatra. Is this not common to all route matchers?\n\nWhat different behaviour would make sense? Obviously once a route is matched\nit should be executed, so is the issue here the way route ordering is done?\nWhat order would make more sense than ordering in the way the routes are\ndefined?\n\n~~~\n33degrees\nThe author is claiming that the order ends up NOT being the order they're\ndefined, but without examples it's hard to tell if the problem is that or that\nthe regular expressions being defined are not working as intended\n\n~~~\nbhaak\n\"Now imagine not having a classical style Sinatra app, but a modular one.\"\n\nI think the author ran into an issue where files were loaded differently in\ndevelopment mode than in production mode. Likely in development mode only the\nrequired files were loaded and the file with the more important routes wasn't.\nI wonder why that didn't show up in their tests.\n\nBut I also wonder if they aren't using Sinatra for too large projects. If you\nhave routes defined over several files, it's likely to get problematic. Maybe\nthey should be using a more complete web framework like Padrino or go all the\nway with Rails.\n\n~~~\nonli\nIt wasn't that setup related. pc-kombo does not need that many routes that I\ndid spread it over multiple files. I generally do avoid that. I wanted to give\nthe specific example at first, but did not find the related commits anymore\nwhen writing the article, and in the end if it was really related to some\nbehavior change linked to a version change (or x86 vs ARM) it would not be too\nuseful now. It's meant as an example for the rough edges one can encounter.\n\nBut the essence is that I had some routes defined using regexpressions,\nprobably like the URL definition for a page in the blog (not saying it was\nexactly this one):\n\n    \n    \n        get  %r{/([0-9]+)/([\\w]+)} do |id, title|\n    \n\nAnd I ran into a situation where on my local dev platform this did not trigger\nwhen calling a similar looking route, but on the production server it did. I\njust remember being surprised that the specificity of the regex-evaluation\nseemed to change.\n\n------\nbadosu\nWith micro web frameworks you're doomed to implement a subset of Rails, or\nhave to dig around to find and configure one of the gems usually associated to\nit.\n\nFor those that are ok with this, or already have an understanding of the\nlimited scope of your app, I strongly recommend Roda [0], it's a much more\nstraightforward routing system with better memory/cpu usage.\n\nI can't find a single instance for which Sinatra can be used where Roda is not\na better choice.\n\n[0] - [http://github.com/jeremyevans/roda](http://github.com/jeremyevans/roda)\n\n~~~\neropple\nAgreed. Until I wrote Modern[0] - and that was in many ways more of an\nexercise in OpenAPI/Swagger than anything else - there were few reasons I\ncould find to not use Roda over Sinatra.\n\nGrape's also pretty good, but I prefer Roda over it too. Something about\nwriting it feels better.\n\n[0] - [https://github.com/modern-project/modern-\nruby](https://github.com/modern-project/modern-ruby)\n\n------\nmirceal\nFor me Sinatra is great. It’s the minimum you can get away with in a lot of\nsituations. The whole thing is like 1-2000 lines of code (so totally feasible\nto actually read all of the code). The limits the author has run into are not\nnecessarily Sinatra limits. The author also wants to do 120mph on a bike which\nmost people will recognize it’s a bad idea. Use the right tool for the job.\n\n------\nesilverberg2\nMy company runs its entire backend on Sinatra, and has since 2011. We do ~200K\nrequests/min on AWS c5.4xlarges and r5.2xlarges, so we are a fairly\nsignificant deployment of Sinatra/ruby.\n\nAs the sole and still primary maintainer of our production infrastructure,\nI've been very happy with this choice of tech. I think our problem was made\nmuch simpler because, as a mobile app, we basically were building an API. We\ndid integrate ActiveRecord/Support, and today have a massive suite of tests we\nrun in rspec (it's pretty cool, Jenkins will spin up ~50 concurrent EC2\ninstances running docker, run the tests, and report back in about 15 min).\n\nTo this authors complaints, I suppose I feel that every framework has\nidiosyncrasies that you just accept and figure out, and many of the issues\ncited are felt only once and then not again. Today, running at scale, the main\nchallenges have to do with building and supporting new tests, which rspec is\namazing for, and handling application complexity, which we have been\naddressing using Service Objects.\n\n------\njillesvangurp\nPart of the issues are with the separation of responsibilities between rack,\nsinatra, and whatever you use to run rack (e.g. puma is just one of many\noptions here). We had similar issues a few years ago when we still used\nsinatra (on top of jruby).\n\nOne of the assumptions baked into rack is that parameters can only occur once.\nIt returns a dictionary of values instead of a dictionary of lists of values\n(like e.g. the servlet API does in java). So we had some issues with request\nparameters that could occur more than once because of that. Ultimately we had\nto grab the raw request and do our own parsing to get that working. Likewise\nheaders are treated the same way.\n\nAnother issue that was annoying was that rack, sinatra, AND the rack server we\nused (something on top of jetty that I forgot the name of) each had their own\nwonky logging primitives and configuration that interfered with each other. So\nwe were getting duplicate log messages with very inconsistent formatting from\ndifferent frameworks that each assumed to be in control of stdout. In the end\nsome monkey patching (mainly to make rack log calls do nothing) allowed us to\nlog via jruby/java via a proper logging framework on Java so that we could\nsend properly formatted json messages to our logging cluster instead of\ndealing with unparsable garbage emitted via puts. We even managed to use the\nMDC, which is a good reason to use Java logging frameworks if you are running\non top of jruby anyway. I don't think MDC is a thing in the ruby world.\n\nThen there were loads of fun issues with cross site scripting protection in\nsinatra breaking stuff in subtle ways, double session initialization (i.e. two\nframeworks trying to set the session cookie), and a few more such issues.\n\nI'm assuming some of these things may have improved over the years.\n\n~~~\nonli\n> _So we had some issues with request parameters that could occur more than\n> once because of that. Ultimately we had to grab the raw request and do our\n> own parsing to get that working._\n\nI had to do the same multiple times. Not for this project, but for different\nones. Thanks for mentioning it. I should've mentioned it in the article!\n\n------\nabhchand\nSomeone on HN previously mentioned that every project they've started with\nSinatra, they've regretted down the road that they didn't use Rails.\n\nI think the complaints about Sinatra are vaild, in that it needs to limit how\nparams are accessed, better startup documentation, etc... But ultimately\nSinatra is for building super simple crud apps. I don't even use it for\nanything that accesses something more than a SQLlite DB. I often use it for\nserving up basic front end assets and running single page applications that\nhave some small server side component to them.\n\nIt's footprint is lighter than rails, but so is it's intended functionality.\n\n~~~\nnine_k\nI suppose it's a selection bias. You likely heard about projects that achieved\nsome significance, which requires some sophistication which Rails provides.\n\nI suppose there's a number of very small, non-public projects that have, say,\n10-20 users doing a relatively trivial thing, and are just fine on Sinatra (or\nweb.py, or maybe even a plain CGI script). But they never catch much\nattention.\n\n------\njimbokun\nHow does Elixir's Phoenix framework compare for the shortcomings of Sinatra\nnoted here?\n\nGive Elixir's commitment to immutability and functional programming, I'm\nthinking it might be more explicit in some of the places Sinatra has implicit\nor inconsistent behavior.\n\n------\nkposehn\nI've been a long-time user of Sinatra as well as Rails. About 8 years ago or\nso I decided to move all of my sites onto Sinatra and made a simple file-\nbacked CMS that has scaled quite well over the years.\n\nThe drawbacks of the approach have been having to write a lot of methods and\nclasses from scratch to handle certain processing data (there is no actual\ndatabase) but the end result has been something quite bulletproof and scalable\nto a point, and the experience implementing those features (like TLS,\nsessions, helpers, etc) has been quite valuable.\n\nHowever, my needs are starting to grow and I think soon we will have to move\noff of the old framework onto something new as our business requirements grow\nmore complex.\n\n------\nkgilpin\nSinatra is a great way to build test programs and demos. Once scaling up to a\nreal application I have found that Rails is a better choice because it has a\nlot of the things built in that feel missing from Sinatra.\n\nFor example if you are trying to figure out how to add things like flexible\ninitialization logic, security protections, clever MIME type handling,\nCucumber testing, and better routing, you’ll find that Rails has these things\nbuilt in.\n\nWhat you can’t get from Rails is the “one file application” that’s the killer\nfeature of Sinatra. But all those files and directories in Rails are doing\nstuff that you’ll eventually want.\n\n------\nravenstine\nThe answer to points 5 - 8 is basically to use Rails/ActiveSupport. If you're\nwriting an API for a SPA, then Sinatra hardly falls short.\n\n------\nhartator\nBiggest thing is something else. Performance of Ruby/Sinatra plus gems needed\nto make it workable is worse than actual Rails. Might as well directy work\nwith Rails. Better support and more features on top of better performance.\n\n------\njdlyga\nRuby/Sinatra is really nice. I wrote a little webapp 10 years ago using it.\nFaced with the alternative of doing everything in C++, it really made things\neasier.\n\n------\nalways_good\n> And a small issue on top of that: If you define /route, /route/ will still\n> throw a 404. The right solution would be to serve the page on the two routes\n> but set one as canonical source. But you have to do that manually.\n\nIn most cases you can get away with wholesale removing and redirecting all\ntrailing slashes in middleware.\n\n~~~\nastrodust\nRack gets you out of a lot of jams if you know how to use it effectively.\n\n~~~\ntcopeland\nThat's the truth. I had a thing come up the other day where a client wasn't\nincluding a content type header and thus the body was being interpreted as\napplication/x-www-form-urlencoded. Rack middleware to the rescue on that one.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEmergency stop signs projected onto waterfalls at road tunnel entrances - sgrytoyr\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoTMC-uxJoo\n======\nkalleboo\nThis is probably the only thing that could work at the 11foot8 bridge\n[https://www.youtube.com/user/yovo68/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/yovo68/videos)\n\n~~~\nkomodo\nI was just thinking, why don't they install a steel beam at the same height as\nthe maximum allowed, like 11foot8?\n\nObviously it would be set much farther back than theirs.\n\n~~~\n6eek\nbecause it might get knocked off into neighboring traffic.\n\n~~~\nloco5niner\nSeems like a simple solution. Split the beam in the middle with hinges on left\nand right. Allow left and right beams to travel a bit but not too far.\n\n------\nbeart\nIt's interesting comparing this to the airline safety issues in the news\nlately. Every single thing on an airplane is designed with safety in mind but\nfor road traffic, they just put up a stop sign and call it a day. These aren't\ndirectly comparable issues but it does seem like they don't really think about\nsafety in the same way at all when designing roads. Why are trucks that can't\nfit into the tunnel even physically allowed to make it that far?\n\n------\nIceyEC\nSeems like the liability for damages caused needs to be replicated between the\ndrivers and their hiring company, making it not worth ignoring signage like\nthis\n\n~~~\naggie\nNot everything can be solved with economic incentives. Do you really think\npeople are making a conscious decision, \"I'm not paying for it, might as well\npeel the top off my truck and grind my day/week to a halt because my employer\nis liable for damages\"? If that was the case, they can just drive through the\nwater wall too. This is an attention management issue -- does the driver\nrealize they are too tall for the tunnel. Most will be caught with the initial\nflashing signs, but even those high-salience signs are somewhat 'normal' and\nthus possible to subconsciously ignore. The water wall is very out of the\nordinary so it has a maximum likelihood of capturing attention.\n\n------\nAFascistWorld\nSeems quite complicated.\n\n------\nsunstone\nPretty sure Musk's self driving system would have no problem with this. :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nJapan PM Abe: See no need to raise sales tax beyond 10% for decade - hhs\nhttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-abe/japan-pm-abe-see-no-need-to-raise-sales-tax-beyond-10-for-decade-idUSKCN1TY0M3\n======\nlclarkmichalek\nSales taxes are regressive - people who don't have a lot of money have to\nspend more of it to stay alive, and therefore pay more sales tax :/ I'd rather\nhave a higher income tax and no sales tax. Income taxes are much more visible,\nbut don't suffer from penalizing people who can't save.\n\n~~~\nandrenth\nWhat's your opinion on a sales tax but simultaneously making food and medicine\ntax-free?\n\n------\nskrebbel\nI don't understand why this is on HN. It looks to be a generic \"politician\nmakes non-promise\" story.\n\n~~~\nMacroAffairs\nIt is not a \"politician makes non-promise\" story. It is actually a very\ncredible claim because the Japanese government doesn't even need more tax\nincome as they can lend freely.\n\nThe government can lend as much Yen as they want. The tax hike is something\nthat can help them get inflation, which has been too low for very long.\n\n~~~\nLIV2\nEven if it is not an empty promise I still don't understand how this is on\ntopic for HN\n\n------\nbaybal2\nJapanese economy is a mystery to me.\n\nI think the state tried just every possible thing to reverse currency trends\nand ease fiscal restraints, but just all failed including an enormous\nquantitative easing (money printing basically)\n\n------\nCausality1\n>earlier this year suggested Japan’s sales tax needed to rise to as much as\n26% to pay for bulging social security costs\n\nWouldn't that absolutely crater consumer spending? I know if I had to pay 26%\nsales tax suddenly everything I buy would be from China and ship labeled\n\"personal gift\".\n\n~~~\nthe-dude\nNL is at 21% and there are other countries in the EU which are around 25%.\nPersonally I think it is crazy.\n\n~~~\nRA_Fisher\nYikes! Talk about theft of labor. A 25% sales tax means one in four\nconsumptive dollars is taken away. Ouch.\n\n~~~\nrakoo\nTaxes go to the State, which ultimately goes back to you and to those in\nneeds. It's not a theft, it's a shared account for the common good. Moreover\nit's a tax on consumption, not on production.\n\nHigh taxation is what makes something like Healthcare so good and eventually\ncheap for everyone, contrary to the disastrous situation in the US. As a\nFrench I'm more than happy to pay 20% VAT if I know it's going to benefit\neveryone.\n\n~~~\nekianjo\nOf course it is theft since it is taking away from you the outcome of your\nlabor with the usage of force. If you go by that logic then you might as well\nabolish private property for the common good.\n\n~~~\nhjanssen\nBy your logic every tax is theft, which is obviously ridiculous.\n\n~~~\nekianjo\nSo what is tax if it is not theft? Genuine question to see what is your\ndefinition of theft and how taxes do not fit such definition. If you have no\nsay in paying for something, how is it not theft?\n\n~~~\nrakoo\nYou do have a saying. Speak to your representative if you want to adjust the\npercentage. Taxation is a commonly agreed sharing of goods. Theft is not\nagreed upon.\n\nIf you live with your significant other and you agreed on a 50/50 rule for\npaying rent, would you say they/this relationship is stealing money from you ?\nThat doesn't make any sense.\n\nIf you don't want to be taxed then don't live in the society and don't use\n_any_ of the things it provide: no roads, no healthcare, no police (so if\nsomeone actually steals from you you're not entitled to complain because\nyou're not part of the society), no food or water coming from a store... If\nyou don't want to participate to the society, then you _don 't_ participate to\nthe society.\n\n~~~\nekianjo\n> You do have a saying\n\nTypically no, since you are tribute to:\n\n\\- your government being able to manage its funds well. Well too bad, they do\na piss poor job at it and keep increasing taxes year after year.\n\n\\- the majority during elections not voting for more government intervention,\nwhich would lead to more taxes as well.\n\nPlus, your example with your significant other does not make sense since you\ndo have a contract/agreement. As a citizen no such agreement/contract is ever\nsigned with you: the conditions are imposed and force is used upon you if you\nrefuse to pay taxes.\n\n> If you don't want to participate to the society, then you don't participate\n> to the society.\n\nThat still does not make taxation not theft, since you are never asked how\nmuch you want to contribute voluntarily for example: you never enter a\ncontract as a willing party. Plus, let's say you don't want to \"participate in\nsociety\", the state will still find you and jail you for not paying taxes even\nif you decide to live on your own.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow We Got Our First 5,000 Users - smalter\nhttp://blog.idonethis.com/post/4779807862/how-we-got-our-first-5-000-users\n\n======\npetercooper\nShame it got a better title over at Reddit: \"Getting to 5,000 Users after\nLaunching on HN and Reddit.\"\n\n~~~\nsmalter\nI'm an idiot. I had this conversation after realizing that I posted the\narticle with a bad subject.\n\nme: i sux, i shoulda tailored the HN submission to HN. in fact, that’s what\nthe article is about!\n\nBrian: lulz. meta-fail\n\n~~~\npetercooper\nIt happens. It's just become particularly important nowadays due to the crazy\namount of stories that come by here now. This is both a good and bad thing..\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRhymes for Orange, Purple, and Silver – New Words Capture Universal Concepts - jawns\nhttps://rhymes.pressbin.com/\n======\njansan\nParking offsense, Schmarking offense!\n\nWouldn't the natural rhymes for Orange, Purple, and Silver be Schmorange,\nSchmurple and Schmilver?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nVitalik Buterin Says Ethereum's 1000x Capacity Upgrade Is Coming Soon - tim333\nhttps://breakermag.com/vitalik-buterin-says-ethereums-1000x-capacity-upgrade-is-coming/\n======\ntim333\nThis is kind of a summary of\n\n>In a highly technical talk at Devcon, the annual Ethereum developer\nconference, Buterin recounted the tortuous path that efforts to upgrade the\nnetwork have taken.\n\nKeynote talk as on 31 oct 18, on youtube here\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km9BaxRm1wA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km9BaxRm1wA)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTesting Distributed Systems with Deterministic Simulation (2014) [video] - sensible123\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fFDFbi3toc\n======\njacques_chester\nMy experience is that this is difficult without the system under test being\ndesigned to operate deterministically.\n\nSo for example: the system clock needs to be replaceable with a fake, or the\ncurrent time needs to be injected, or perhaps both.\n\nAnother example: Go channels. These are a real PITA to surface in a way that\nallows a test harness to drive them deterministically.\n\nA while ago I built a simulator testing harness for an early version of the\nKnative autoscaler[0]. I eventually ran aground on the difficulty of keeping\nup with changes, but it may be rearchitected and repurposed to assist\nKubernetes HPA development instead.\n\nFoundationDB's approach is to pretty much bake optional determinism into the\nlanguage with some macro magic. It makes me wish that were easier to do in\nother languages.\n\n[0] [https://github.com/pivotal/skenario](https://github.com/pivotal/skenario)\n\n~~~\nryanworl\nIn the FDB simulator case, every event has a future time at which it will\nfire, and the clock advances to that time when the event is dequeued.\n\nThis also has the side benefit of artificially “speeding up time”, which is\nuseful when many actions happen based on long timeouts.\n\n~~~\njacques_chester\nI used the same approach, which I learned from DES textbooks. I wrote up the\ndesign here:\n[https://github.com/pivotal/skenario/blob/master/docs/concept...](https://github.com/pivotal/skenario/blob/master/docs/concepts.md)\n\n------\njFriedensreich\nafter the jepsen/mongodb post that hit front page nearly at the same time, it\nseems like the foundationdb team has the exact opposite values regarding\nresilience and data safety guarantees. I cant wait for the first results of\nthe couchDb rewrite on foundationDb\n\n------\ndang\nDiscussed a bit at the time:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8345030](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8345030)\n\n------\ncjlovett\nThis is similar to\n[https://github.com/microsoft/coyote/](https://github.com/microsoft/coyote/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nZMorph’s Hybrid 3D Printer Is an All-in-One Manufacturing Tool - twiceuponatime\nhttp://www.engineering.com/3DPrinting/3DPrintingArticles/ArticleID/11703/ZMorphs-Hybrid-3D-Printer-Is-an-All-in-One-Manufacturing-Tool.aspx\n======\ncolordrops\nWe need something like the x-prize for automated micro-manufacturing. A goal\ncould be to build a calculator from raw materials without human intervention.\n\n------\ndeelowe\nGetting closer. Can't wait until someone invents an all in one circuit\nprinter, mill, pick & place and printer combo.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Top Smart Cities On The Planet - sdoering\nhttp://www.fastcoexist.com/1679127/the-top-10-smart-cities-on-the-planet\n======\ncasca\nJust what we need - another bogus ranking based on press releases for cities\nthat the \"author\" has never been to. Cue hand-wringing from politicians aiming\ntrying to boost their \"ranking\" as a justification for spending/SOPA/plow\nchops.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWpcom – A curated directory of resources and tools for WordPress - atknoz\nhttps://www.wpcom.org\n======\nAyesh\nThis is a shameless self-plug. I have written a few WP plugins because it is\nnot as secure I wanted it to be:\n\n\\- WordPress does not come with proper password hashing, and uses the phpass\nlibrary. [https://wordpress.org/plugins/password-\nhash/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/password-hash/) will change this to use\nbcrypt/Argon2ID\n\n\\- Comment forms do not have CSRF tokens, and hackerone/tickets for them have\nbeen neglected as trivial. [https://wordpress.org/plugins/comment-form-csrf-\nprotection/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/comment-form-csrf-protection/) This\nplugin adds a CSRF token to comment forms.\n\n------\ntyingq\nProceed with caution. A fair amount of wordpress's reputation for bad security\ncomes from 3rd party plugins. There aren't many (any?) restrictions on what\nthey can do.\n\n~~~\nmattigames\nWell, is exactly the same for any npm package or any python package as do many\nother languages, a lot -if not all- bad security comes from 3rd party plugins.\n\n~~~\ntyingq\nTechnically the same perhaps. But the actual history is pretty different.\nWordPress plugins are notorious for RCE type vulnerabilities.\n\n~~~\njermaustin1\nI wrote one during my early years, in fact [1]!\n\n1: [https://jeremyaboyd.micro.blog/2016/11/20/that-\ntime-i.html](https://jeremyaboyd.micro.blog/2016/11/20/that-time-i.html)\n\n------\nsocial_quotient\nKinda surprised not to see WPengine on the list.\n\n~~~\natknoz\nThere is actually:\n[https://www.wpcom.org/resource/wpengine/](https://www.wpcom.org/resource/wpengine/)\n\nThough we don't recommend it due to bad pricing policy, bad reputation on\nTrustPilot and from other testers, and personal experiences. There are way\nbetter hosting alternatives that is currently listed and marked with yellow\nbackground on our platform.\n\n------\nllarsson\nHow slow does WP get if you load all of these onto it at the same time? How\nmuch would it resemble a Swiss cheese, security-wise?\n\n~~~\natknoz\nLoad all of these? Why would you do that?\n\n------\ntednash\nIs the Wpcom site itself a theme?\n\n~~~\natknoz\nIt's a custom built theme by us.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: the first HTML5 avatar creator - duplikey\nhttp://www.mangatar.net/create-your-avatar.php\n\n======\nduplikey\nHello HN!\n\nWe are an italian startup and we are working on a social game in the manga\nuniverse. It will be ready in a couple of month, meantime on our website you\ncan take a look to our avatar generator and the community.\n\nThe avatar generator is the first one completely HTML5! No flash...just canvas\n& javascript!\n\nTell me what you think about it from the technical and graphical point of\nview.\n\nAny feedback will be appreciated...also about the community features.\n\nThanks ;)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThat man who ‘deleted his entire company’ with a line of code? It was a hoax - empressplay\nhttp://www.pcworld.com/article/3057235/data-center-cloud/that-man-who-deleted-his-entire-company-with-a-line-of-code-it-was-a-hoax.html\n======\ntamana\nCan someone explain how this would win him customers? \"Oh yeah, let's get\nWebHosting with that idiot who trolled ServerFault. He seems like a reliable\nand professional fellow.\"\n\n~~~\ncmurf\nWhat about the $700 juicer that doesn't juice, it uses juice packs, which are\nso bad at preservation the juice can expire, so the whole point of the juicer\nis to scan a QR code to know if the juice is expired because presumably the\nuser can't read an expiration date, and then denies using the expired pack?\nPeople will still buy that ridiculous thing. Same thing here.\n\n~~~\npkroll\nI was so hoping you were joking. A quick search and yep, that's a real thing.\nHopefully not a well selling thing, but that it exists at all is depressing.\n\n------\noconnor663\nThe comments on the original StackOverflow post said the same thing. Sounds\nlike a lot of articles got written without reading the whole thread.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFuture apps won't be designed for smartphone or tablet - jimiasty\nhttp://blog.estimote.com/post/137340094650/the-future-of-apps-for-the-physical-world\n======\njimiasty\nHi Hacker News, this is Jakub, founder of Estimote (YC S13). To kick-off 2016\nwe have shared our vision for the future of contextual mobile computing,\nbeacons, proximity and beyond.\n\nHope you will enjoy it since this post is also a little celebration for us and\na nice start of New Year! : )\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIn defense of webfonts - sdabdoub\nhttps://robinrendle.com/notes/in-defense-of-webfonts/\n======\nJaruzel\nI recently discovered that the 'src' attribute of the @fontface directive\nsupports the inline 'data:' syntax (like you can do with images etc.).\n\nSo you can basically do this:\n\n    \n    \n      @fontface {\n        ...\n        src: url(\"data:font/opentype;base64,<base64-encoded-otf/ttf-file>\");\n      }\n    \n\nAlthough this expands the payload size slightly, it does remove the need for\nanother round trip to a server (so renders potentially faster), and also gives\nyou full control over your embedded fonts.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBlue Apron Tumbles After Losing Customers in Second Quarter - robertgk\nhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-10/blue-apron-beats-revenue-estimates-as-marketing-costs-decline\n======\nIgorPartola\nI dropped them for two reasons after using them for nearly a year. First,\nthese meals actually take longer to prepare and way longer to clean up after\nthan what I normally make. The food is very good, but the instructions are\nwritten by someone who (a) seems to have a gourmet kitchen at their disposal\nand (b) doesn't do dishes after. No, I am not going to chop all six veggie\ningredients into six separate bowls, just to combine them in the next step.\nAlso, I'm not going to chop everything up front just to realize that the\ngarlic goes in at the last step for 30 seconds before the dish is ready.\n\nThe second was an issue I had repeatedly with the meat and fish ingredients: I\nhad several weeks where meat/fish packaging was open when I got the shipment\nand the contents went bad. I emailed them every time, but at some point I got\ntired of having to immediately go to the grocery store to find the right\nquantity of pork or cod or whatever to complete the meal.\n\nRealistically, their 35 minute meals always took me closer to an hour once all\nwas said and done. There almost never were any leftovers (yeah two medium\nsized sweet potatoes don't go too far for four people). Finally, the price was\njust a little too high.\n\nI keep a few of the recipe cards and try to make those once in a while, but\nmostly I am just back to regular grocery shopping now.\n\n~~~\nDLay\nI liked Matt Levine's opinion on Blue Apron yesterday:\n\n>Here is my theory, though: Blue Apron is a tech company in the sense that its\nproduct is not meals, or ingredients, but simulacrum. What it delivers is the\nidea of creating a home-cooked meal from fresh ingredients, without the\ntedious shopping and chopping work that that would otherwise require. What\nBlue Apron delivers is not exactly convenience -- ordering takeout is a lot\nmore convenient -- but the perception that you are doing something complicated\nand real and primal while you are actually, through the miracle of technology,\ndoing something much easier. Blue Apron is a virtual-reality company.\n\n[https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/view/articles/2017-08-09/yogur...](https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/view/articles/2017-08-09/yogurt-\nliquidity-and-listings)\n\n~~~\nantisthenes\nThese quotes make for a nice dramatic effect, but the reality is much simpler:\n\nCooking & cleaning is a much bigger time investment than shopping for\ningredients. In 10 minutes in a grocery store I can buy enough food for 10-15\nmeals, which would take hours to cook (in aggregate). The comparison stands\neven when you include driving to the store (before any pedants try to be\n_contrarian_ )\n\nBlue Apron is optimizing the smaller part of the time pie required for eating,\nbut at a higher cost than delivery (that optimizes the larger part of the pie\nfor less money, usually)\n\nThat's why takeout is a decades-proved business model and Blue Apron is a VC-\nsubsidized non-business.\n\n__________________________________________________________________\n\nThat being said, I do agree with it being a virtual reality company. And by\nthat I mean a company that can't really exist in actual reality.\n\n~~~\njamesrcole\nThat analysis assumes that the service is only about time-saving.\n\nI've never used it but I've heard people say how they like it because\n\n\\- they get to learn new recipes using less-common ingredients\n\n\\- have good quality meals (which take out often doesn't provide, if we are\nconsidering time saving)\n\n\\- they, sometimes at least, prefer eating at home.\n\n~~~\nantisthenes\nWell, yes, of course it assumes that, because providing value to the customer\nshould be somewhere in the business model.\n\nIf it's not, it'll eventually become a non-business.\n\n1\\. There's nothing that suggests the ingredients are less common. But if\nyou're a Blue Apron user, feel free to list some of the ingredients you were\nnot able to find at a grocery store.\n\n1.5: you can learn new recipes 10 different ways already, without having to\nsubscribe to any \"X as a service\".\n\n2\\. Nothing that suggests an average person can cook better or faster than\ntakeout, which suggests the takeout provides value to the customer.\n\n3\\. Completely irrelevant to the points at hand.\n\n~~~\njamesrcole\nMy comment was saying that you're assuming time-saving is the only value, and\nwas pointing out that's not true. I'm even willing to believe it might be the\nmost important source of value by a long shot -- I wasn't arguing against your\nconclusion; I was pointing out an assumption made by the argument you stated.\n\nRegarding 1. It's not that the ingredients are less common per se. It's that\nusing BA means that people ended up using some less commonly _used_\ningredients. They were introduced to new things that they hadn't used before\nand wouldn't have sought out on their own. They liked that.\n\nRegarding 1.5 - obviously, but the thing is there is greater convenience (that\n_some_ ppl prefer) with not having to select the recipes, get the ingredients,\nportion them out. For some people that different in convenience makes the\ndifference between whether they do it or not. So treating this issue as if it\nwas purely a matter of whether it was possible or not doesn't make sense.\n\nRegarding 2, I have heard people say they have been able to make high quality\nmeals that they wouldn't usually have made that are better than most takeaway.\n\n3 is most definitely relevant, because it's an example of a non-speed-based\nkind of value it provides to some people - getting the kind of meal _they_\nwould only otherwise get at a restaurant but at home. Most takeaway can't do\nthat.\n\n~~~\nNoGravitas\nThere was previously a free website called notakeout.com, which has since gone\nunder (there's currently something else on the domain that's completely\nunrelated).\n\nWhat they did was provide daily dinner recipes for fancy-restaurant type\nmeals, with instructions, wine pairing, and shopping list. If you're an\nomnivore, you could simply print the day's page, stop at the grocery store on\nthe way home, and cook whatever it was.\n\nIt seems to me that this represents about 80% of the value of Blue Apron at no\ncost (I think they had a for-pay email service, or something?).\n\n------\nWaterluvian\nBlue Apron needs to be a service offered by local grocery stores. You pick up\n(or sure, are delivered) one of many boxes that grocery stores assemble from\ntheir local inventory. There's 10 or so different options, always readily\navailable, with a full meal of supplies and instructions inside.\n\nThe objective is to show you that, \"hey, cooking great stuff is within your\nrealm of capability! It's fun and empowering. You don't have to be like\nWaterluvian over there who walks past all the produce and butcher every time\nbecause he has no clue how to make something of it all.\" After meal 10 or\nwhatever, that's it, there's no more, you've graduated the \"Get a Taste of\nCooking\" program. Now you move on to more traditional grocery shopping with\nyour new added confidence and practice that will ideally see you buying more\nproduce and fewer frozen dishes.\n\n~~~\nBalgair\nWait, does your local Safeway/King-Soopers/Albertsons/Publix not already do\nthat? It's right next to the 'deli' section of mine, styrofoam packs (like\nwhat meats come in) and plastic wrapped, all the stuff inside. Yeah, they\ndon't have the instructions, but it's not too hard to figure out what to do.\n\n~~~\nWaterluvian\nNone of those companies exist in my country. But no, I haven't seen it done\nhere. Though 80% of a product is 0% of a product, so just a box of ingredients\nisn't quite what I'm getting it. What I'm talking about is the whole shebang\nand the design to drive you towards being able to wield the full power of your\ngrocery store.\n\nThat being said, I wish we _at least_ had what you describe :)\n\n~~~\nBalgair\nOh, my bad, I didn't know. Hmm, maybe you could talk to the manager of your\nstore and suggest it. It's not too hard for the folks there to just pack it\nall up like BlueApron or how we do it here. Plus, they could charge +10% or so\nto do that, essentially free money for them. I'd bet the manager would be\npretty happy to do it. Then again, this a US perspective, so YMMV.\n\n------\ndbot\nI joined for about six months and dropped them last week. Third shipment in a\nrow with missing ingredients.\n\nOn the plus side, it put me in the regular habit of cooking together with my\nwife. We love many of the recipes, which are freely available on their\nwebsite...we've already started \"re-doing\" many meals by picking up the\ningredients on regular shopping trips.\n\nEDIT: One other thought - the whole market seems a lot like the GroupOn craze\nin some ways. It's an idea that consumers are attracted to, but the economics\nand excess competition make the whole concept fragile.\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\n> One other thought - the whole market seems a lot like the GroupOn craze in\n> some ways.\n\nYeah, Groupon is a great comparison IMO. Huge initial growth, but spending a\nbunch of money to acquire each customer doesn't work once a bunch of copy-cat\ncompetitors enter the market.\n\nI also wonder how many folks drop off once they've learned some basic cooking\nskills from the recipes - chopping, searing, getting the right proportions,\netc.\n\n------\njerkstate\nI live in the Bay Area and Blue Apron is on thin ice with us right now. Their\nquality control got really bad right around the time of their IPO. Now nearly\nevery week we have missing ingredients and/or leaking containers. We had no\nproblems for 2 years and now it's pretty much constant! They are always pretty\nresponsive with a credit commensurate to what the damage to the meal is, but\nthis is basically the worst possible time for them to be screwing up like\nthis.\n\n~~~\npaulgb\nI've noticed the same in the NYC area: the last few weeks I've had ingredients\ncrushed which has never happened before.\n\nThey've also been spamming me with discounts to the wine club only to tell me\nthat they can't legally deliver in NY when I tried to sign up. Don't they know\nwhere I live?\n\nI hope they can recover because I do truly like the product and I think\nthey're the best right now (a margin better than Hello Fresh, leagues better\nthan Plated)\n\n~~~\ncodq\nI live in New York City, and we are entirely satisfied and impressed nightly\nwith Sun Basket. It doesn't have nearly the reach or brand awareness as some\nof the bigger players, but it's everything I've ever wanted in one of these\nservices. Worth checking out.\n\n~~~\npaulgb\nThanks, just signed up to try it out.\n\n------\njasallen\nMy wife and I are currently back to using _none_ of these services for much\nthe same reasons as everyone else (prep time, dirty dishes, small portion\nsizes) but I will say Blue Apron is by far the best of the lot. Their\ninstructions made the most sense, didn't require us to scale them ourselves,\nthe food tasted wonderful, and I learned new techniques. The rest of the\nservices have a lot of catching up to do, so if even Blue Apron is in trouble,\nmaybe this model isn't so sustainable at all.\n\n------\nkrimmer\nThis company is not a tech company, so it shouldn't be valued as one. It's on\npar with a local restaurant.\n\nSecond, the company produces enormous amounts of plastic pollution from\npackaging. Why should we pollute our planet so the CEO can make $1 more on the\nstock market?\n\n~~~\nbrndn\nMore plastic than a super market does? And can you not just recycle the\nplastic containers?\n\nIf the world switched to services like Blue Apron/Hello Fresh/etc. rather than\nshopping in super markets, I wonder if we would overall produce more or less\npollution? Super markets use a lot of energy and have a lot of waste.\n\n~~~\njly\nSuper markets certainly have their problems, for reasons you've said. However,\nyou can choose not to put your groceries in any plastic from the supermarket,\nif you wish. I have done exactly that for a while now and it's easily doable,\nyou just have to be a little choosy about what you buy.\n\nIf people switched to shopping at local farmer's markets - so food wouldn't be\nshipped around at all - we would produce much less pollution and have much\nsustainable agriculture than either of those options.\n\n~~~\njules\nLocal agriculture usually costs a lot more energy and land than large scale\nagriculture or agriculture in a climate that is best suited for the plant. The\ntransportation costs are a rounding error for many products. Organic products\nare particularly terrible in this respect.\n\n------\nenobrev\nI've only tried Blue Apron once. I was watching a friend's cat while he was\nout of town, and I grabbed his most recent order so it wouldn't go to waste.\n\nI don't remember which recipe it was, except to say it was a chicken recipe -\nprobably with quinoa. Six of the eight steps included \"Salt and Pepper to\ntaste\". Fortunately, my wife and I both cook regularly, so we knew that would\nhave been a terrible idea.\n\nI only seasoned the chicken once, and nothing else, and the dinner came out\ngreat. My friend cooks often as well, so I assume he just skips the\nunnecessary steps if they show up as well. His wife is just learning, though,\nwhich is why they were using Blue Apron. I'd have to assume she may end up\nover-seasoning from time to time if that's how the recipes normally go.\n\nAs someone who already eats home-cooked meals almost daily, I couldn't imagine\npaying that price. But overall the idea makes a lot of sense, provided\nexecution is perfect. It seems, reading the rest of this thread, that hasn't\nbeen the case of late.\n\n~~~\nspollo\nThat's actually a very normal technique and one of the reasons professionally\ncooked food tastes so much better than most home cooked food. Frequent salting\nat different points of cooking improves the overall flavour of the dish, and\nseasoning ingredients separately can help with coverage.\n\nAdditionally something seasoned at the start of cooking won't be \"salty\" like\nif you were to add salt directly on the food after its plated.\n\nYou don't add a crap ton of salt 5 times, just a pinch here and there and the\noutcome is great.\n\n~~~\ngraphitezepp\nThis is like the one cooking tip I don't stop blathering about in fact. Always\nseason each ingredient individually. Both ensures that the salt is distributed\nwell and makes it easier to get the desired amount in the end product.\n\n------\nJoshMnem\nBetter than these services would be a site that tells you how to shop for\nmeals and prepare them in bulk -- sort of \"make your own meal kits\". It would\nbe more efficient, healthier, and more educational.\n\n~~~\njoeskyyy\nPlatejoy[1] does this. I did their trial a while back and they've got some\ngreat meal ideas. One thing I like about this, is that there's no potential\nwaste compared to Blue Apron and the like. Also being able to specify dietary\nrestrictions and stuff while getting a nice grocery list was pretty great (:\n\nWhile yes, I can spend time researching things, picking things out, etc. all\nfor free, sometimes I do just want the experience to be catered. Add on top of\nthat an automated, weekly/bi-weekly grocery list was pretty damn cool.\nOtherwise, I typically end up making the same boring meals I already know.\n\nI didn't continue with them because my boyfriend is a pretty amazing cook, so\nI just leave cooking to him instead haha\n\n[1] [https://www.platejoy.com/](https://www.platejoy.com/)\n\n~~~\nacomjean\nWe use it to try and burn through CSA veggies. Works well.\n\nThough it needs a CSA mode so you can tell it I got way too much swiss chard\nand it needs to be cooked..\n\n------\naembleton\nThe UK equivalent of this is Hello Fresh [1]. I've never tried them, but they\nwere clearly spending a lot on marketing and sending people door to door. The\nthing is, for the price I could just buy the necessary ingredients at my local\nsupermarket.\n\nI was tempted just so I didn't have to think about what to cook, but I find\nYummly [2] to be a great inspiration and helps me to try new dishes.\n\n1\\. [https://www.hellofresh.co.uk/](https://www.hellofresh.co.uk/) 2\\.\n[https://www.yummly.co.uk/](https://www.yummly.co.uk/)\n\n~~~\nthis_user\nThe real issue with these services is that it is unclear what value they\nactually provide. If you want to cook yourself and save money, you could just\nget the ingredients yourself (or have them delivered by a service like Amazon\nFresh). If you want to save time, you either go out to eat or order take-out.\nIn contrast, Blue Apron and their like combine the worst of both worlds: high\nprices and no time savings.\n\nBTW, Hello Fresh is actually one of the companies funded by the infamous\nSamwer brothers and their Rocket Internet. They operate in several European\ncountries, and they have been offering large discounts. I don't imagine\nthey're not burning through a lot of cash because of that.\n\n~~~\njo909\nFor me personally, the value proposition is not having to think about cooking\n_until I start cooking_.\n\nI just come home to matching ingredients and can start cooking at any time\n(which I mostly enjoy doing and is relaxing). It also saves time that I would\nneed to decide on recipes and make lists and go shopping (all of which I don't\nlike and stresses me out).\n\nIts not about saving the maximum amount of time, but getting rid of the\nunpleasant parts around cooking at home. And eating out is much more expensive\n(where I live, maybe except the junkiest of junkfood), so this is an\nacceptable compromise.\n\n------\nplg\nHow much would it cost to have a chef supply and prepare dinner 5 nights a\nweek for a family of 4? I don't mean takeout from a restaurant. I mean \"home\ncooked meals\".\n\n------\nryanmarsh\nI suspect that the unit economics of this business aren't profitable at the\nmoment.\n\nIt's possible that the pro forma looked nice based on quotes from suppliers.\nI've tried several of these meal kit companies and they all suffer from basic\nlogistics and quality problems. I suspect it's a hard business with hidden\ncosts and lots of unknown unknowns.\n\nThis is why I and others[0] believe Amazon will use its purchase of Whole\nFoods to change the fundamentals of this business and provide the\ninfrastructure companies like Blue Apron need to do this profitably. Before\nAmazon fulfillment existed ecommerce was a logistical mother fucker. I worked\nat a number of startups in the late 90's and early 00's that struggled with\nthis. I think there are a lot of similarities here.\n\n0: [https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-new-\ncustomer/](https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-new-customer/)\n\n~~~\nantisthenes\nYou might be right.\n\nIf there's one thing Amazon has going for them, it's figured out logistics at\nscale. The economics of a service like this start to look a lot better when\nyour delivery rates are dirt cheap _and_ you can selectively serve zip codes\nwith highest demand.\n\nServing sparse suburban or rural areas doesn't make sense with ingredient\ndelivery.\n\n------\nwaivej\nI've been with them for 2+ years and am hooked. We use Green Chef as well for\n6 meaks per week.\n\nEveryone complains about the lack of convenience but it saves me mind capacity\nmore than anything and I never have to go to the store. We also like variety\nin food. Recipes show up, I cook for 30 minutes and we have family meals.\n\n$20/meal to feed three adults and a toddler is a bargain to me as well.\n\nI prefer Blue Apron to others and cringe to think they might make it easier.\nNote, I could barely cook before and took twice as long. I just use a giant\ncutting board and a favorite spatula and knife and occasionally use more than\none pan. I also overlap things like preheating the pans and chopping while\nthings cook.\n\nWe recreate some of the meals but have a hard time getting the quantities to\nmatch up. It usually means I have to make a double batch for guests or have\nleftovers and need to stock the pantry with various sauces and vinegars.\n\n------\ncode4tee\nIt's not clear they have a long term sustainable business model. They clearly\nhave a problem with the cost of customer acquisition running up against the\nlifetime value of a customer. If they can't fix that then the model is dead.\n\nExecution issues are just adding fuel to the fire.\n\n------\nqq66\n\"Stop trying to make the meal-kit-by-mail business happen. It's not going to\nhappen.\"\n\nMeal kits are going to be a big business. But they're going to come from your\ngrocery store, your office cafeteria, or Amazon. That's it.\n\n------\noso2k\nOne other thing I forgot to mention, last week, Blue Apron offered me $30 to\nrejoin (I already had a $10 credit I threw away). I thought it was interesting\nand then I saw this HN post. Probably not a coincidence. :/\n\n------\nnemo44x\nThe really negative news was the issues they are having bringing the new\nfacility in Lindon online and at peak efficiency. This is causing issues with\nrolling out new products they see vital to their business. Because of this\nthey will likely post a decline in revenues y/y for Q3.\n\nIn light of that news I can see why Matt Wadiak, their previous COO, recently\n\"stepped down\".\n\n------\nmarinman\nIt's been great to read this thread. I never understood the value. As someone\nwho can cook and grocery shop decently, it's not cheaper and only marginally\nbetter than what I normally whip up. And there's no question about convenience\nwhen it's compared to delivery (although, I live in SF, so my delivery options\nare more than most).\n\n------\nlightedman\nI tried it once. Having half of my ingredients arrive either opened or spoiled\n(and I started my entry into the world of jobs as an apprenticed oriental\nchef) immediately turned me off.\n\nIf I still worked as an AIB inspector I'd be going straight to their\nwarehouses right now and running a top-to-bottom run-through.\n\n------\nbaking\nSo why is Wayfair on that bar graph? Their stock has been doing just fine\nsince the IPO.\n\n~~~\nmholmes680\nThat's a good point. looks like they took the lowest historical price vs the\nIPO, without regard for current situation. Far from \"total return\". Good\ncatch.\n\n------\nhitgeek\ni was one of the customers who dropped in q2 after using the service for about\n6 months.\n\nI really enjoyed the product, and never had an issue with quality.\n\nfor me cost was primary reason for cancelling. Buying ingredients saves me\nabout $100 a month. Even with Blue Apron I had to go to the grocery store\nweekly for lunch and breakfast food, so it was a \"nice to have luxury\", not\nsomething that saved time or money.\n\nI worry that Blue Apron is going to have a hard time making the economics of\ncustom acquisition vs. life time value work if high churn is a permanent\nthing.\n\n------\nrandomerr\nIt never seemed like a sustainable business model. After a year you build up\nenough skills that you no long need them. Also I can source ingredients\nlocally more inexpensively and fresher.\n\n------\njayess\nI subscribed to Green Chef for about a year but the hassle and time it took to\nmake the meals wore me down.\n\nThen I found freshly, which sends pre-made meals, and I love it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Mathematical Con of Hedge Funds and Financial Advisers (2014) - jimsojim\nhttp://www.psmag.com/business-economics/dangerous-mathematical-con-hedge-funds-financial-advisers-79212\n======\npzone\n\"When it comes to publishing in the Journal of Finance or the Journal of\nFinancial Markets, the editors simply don’t have the mathematical knowledge\nnecessary to vet some of the more complex and nuanced assertions.\"\n\nPersonally, I think everyone should stop reading at this point. Of course I\nwent through to the paper itself.\n\nWhat is the paper? Mathematicians citing Leontief from 1982 about the woes of\neconomics as a science, running some simulations (no data for me, thanks!) and\nreally getting quite angry, for what, to remind us that backtesting is a\nflawed methodology? If you invest based on some random back-tested wavelet\nbullshit you're doing it wrong, this is not news to anyone. Harvey, Liu and\nZhu made their point already (note - not the Zhu who authored this paper) and\nnobody cares about your filling in some dull derivations in a mathematical\nappendix and calling them \"proofs.\" Everyone complains about economists doing\ntoo much of that already.\n\n~~~\nyummyfajitas\nI find it entertaining that you simultaneously critique the lack of rigor and\nalso complain about economists making the math rigorous.\n\nThe point of proofs, simulations, and the like, is to make sure that your\nmodel is at least internally consistent and your assumptions actually yield\nthe results you think. A lot of times models specified with vague verbiage\ndon't even do that.\n\n------\nricksplat\nThe point put forth in this article is that a certain degree of scientific\nrigour is important in running a business and it's a principle that is broadly\ngeneralisable. In particular in software development one encounters the\nphilosophy of \"get it out the door quick\" regardless of the cost to quality.\nEngineers are often viewed as a cost-centre rather than the actual producers\nof value in a business when the bottom line is evaluated. It should be clear\nto us that businesses that actively capture and nurture engineering talent\n(google, apple, facebook etc.) are the businesses that are doing better at the\nmoment than those that focus on \"unit cost\" of \"resources\" (e.g. IBM, HP) and\nmany are now trying to make that transition as we can see from the trend\ntowards more engineer-friendly processes such as Scrum (away from the more\npunishing \"waterfall\" style approaches).\n\n~~~\np4wnc6\nI'm with you except that I think the \"unit cost\" thinkers are only shifting\ntowards Agile/Scrum because the cool kids are doing it. In the brand of\nAgile/Scrum that those shops create, it is anything but engineer-friendly, and\nthey absolutely still view engineering and software development as cost\ncenters instead of value centers. In fact, in a lot of cases, Agile is used\nexplicitly because it enforces an aggressive deadline culture in which the\nsacrifice of quality in favor of short release cycles is explicitly codified\ninto the work culture, and reinforced every day in every team interaction.\nThese situations also foster extreme degrees of \"surveillance culture\" \\--\nbasically since the middle management over top of the so-called cost center of\nengineering can't do much, technologically, to mitigate the realities of\ncreating software value, they opt instead for draconian surveillance and\nprogress tracking environments, like stodgy Jira, and they take things like\nteam burndown literally and draw sweeping conclusions from an extremely small\nset of burndown data. This all typically goes hand-in-hand with open-plan\noffices too, where everyone can be literally seen during their work and there\nis an implicit mandate from the company that your status is partially related\nto how much you 'look the part' while in the office. Even if you're a\ndeveloper needing quiet time to creatively solve a problem, and you're seated\nsmack in the middle of a loud group of sales associates whose job requires\nthem to be on the phone all day, the business doesn't care. Your actual\nproductivity as a developer isn't as meaningful to them as your ability to\nlook like a good piece of office furniture most of the time by fitting into\ntheir surveillance and micromanagement culture. Typically, promotions and\nadvancement are won in the environments not through technical skill or hard\nwork, but through one's ability to sublimate your natural desires for\nreasonable working conditions and \"endure it with a smile\" better than peers\ncan, a phenomenon which Michael O. Church referred to as \"macho\nsubordination.\" In my working experience, at least, this has been precisely\nhow Agile/Scrum are used, whether in a start-up, a finance firm, or a long-\nstanding education tech company.\n\n~~~\nricksplat\nTo borrow and misuse a phrase, \"guns don't kill people\". If you're working in\nthis kind of environment you're on to a loser no matter what.\n\n------\nchillydawg\nAnything anyone is trying to sell you in this space is a con. If it were\nprofitable, they'd be doing it themselves. Exactly the same as gambling\nsystems.\n\n~~~\ngavazzy\nInvesting other people's money is always more profitable than your own. If you\nfound a way to get a risk free 30% IRR year on year, wouldn't you rather take\n5% of the profit from $1,000,000 invested than 100% of the profit from\n$10,000?\n\n~~~\nyummyfajitas\nIt's only more profitable if you don't have capital. Most of the very\nsuccessful hedge funds stop taking other people's money and just invest their\nown once they have enough.\n\n~~~\nMR4D\nYou're confusing the math with the reason they stop taking external funds.\nThey always make more money if they add external funds just like 20% of $101\nis greater than 20% of $100.\n\nThey stop taking external money because managing clients can be a pain. At\nsome point, depending on the fund (e.g. a niche fund that can never grow\nbeyond a certain size), a shrewd money manager can grow to dominate the niche.\nIn that space, they might as well just kick everyone else out and save the\nheadache because the reward of the bigger pie just isn't worth it.\n\nFrankly, even though I manage money for a living, and I really like my\nclients, it's still difficult. If it were my 1 beeellion dollars (touch pinky\nfinger to the lips), then I wouldn't manage other people's money either - the\nmarginal profit to me personally just wouldn't be worth it (for me, after the\nfirst billion, it's pretty darn trivial).\n\n~~~\nyummyfajitas\nMost strategies can't take unlimited capital. I've got $100k in one strategy\nright now, but if I put $200k in it I wouldn't make any more money.\n\n------\nlordnacho\nI've worked in quant funds for over a decade. The article is right that\nthere's a lack of rigour, and it's true the number of trials is an issue.\nHowever it doesn't go into why it happens:\n\n\\- People with phds often have an authority that is unwarranted. People with\nadvanced degrees in similar sounding fields may have spent their time doing\nvery different things. Phds are also coming from an environment where getting\ncredit matters a lot, so you get political struggles that appear to be\nmathematical in nature to the uninformed manager.\n\n\\- Programming skills tended to be crap in the places where I worked. Most of\nthe researchers think of coding as a necessary evil, and their code looks like\nthe kind of code you write when you're trying to take shortcuts. What effect\ndoes this have on overfit? Well, it's simply impossible to know how many tests\nare actually being performed. There's a lot of informative errors, too:\nsomething gets coded up, you see a backtest, you realise there was an error\nafter. Now you have information that you can use to get a better result,\nhaving not incremented your number of tests.\n\n\\- There's a lot of pressure to come up with something new. Pretty hard when\nthere's loads of people attempting the same. The most natural way to try to\nmake something \"new\" is to take something old, add a twist to it, and see how\nit goes. Of course when you add a twist, there's more parameters to fit. And\nbecause it's supposed to be complex, you can get away with an elaborate\nfitting mechanism. Often something that hides the fact you're doing more\ntests.\n\n\\- Backtest fetish: it's natural to think about how a system would have done\nin the past. But unfortunately we all know about the past. Anyone coming up\nwith a strategy is going to know volatility spiked in 2008, so he'll avoid\nanything that would have lost money then, or worse, just restrict the\nparameters so they are in a safe zone. Basically, there's a bunch of tests\nthat aren't done, but should have been counted anyway.\n\n\\- How to fix this: well, there's no magic bullet. You should start by being\nwary of adding parameters. If you add one, it should work with a number of\nreaction functions. If it works with a step func, does it work with an s-shape\nor a ramp? Does it work when the parameters are perturbed? Does it work when\nthe input data itself is perturbed? If you've built a model, does it work on\nsimulated data? Something I rarely see is when someone says \"model is an\nARMA(2,2)\" that they've generated an ARMA22 with the same parameters.\n\n------\nKasianFranks\nI develop a number of backtesting systems and algortihms and the article is\nspot on but lacks to address far more sophisticated backtesting systems that\ninclude running once on sample data. These are the best algos.\n\n------\niamsalman\nTL;DR Over-fitting investment models is pseudo math.\n\n~~~\nlintiness\nthe greatest overfitting of an investment scheme the world has ever known:\nmarkets must go up.\n\n~~~\npzone\nEr, no, that's basic economics. If you make an investment, you are going to\nexpect some sort of profit, on average.\n\n~~~\nMR4D\nThat's a different issue. I think what @lintiness is trying to say is that\njust because a market went up in the past does not mean it will in the future.\nSurvivorship bias is absolutely huge here.\n\nMost people forget this, but if you look at global markets since the early\n1900's, there were several that went down and never came back up. Germany's\nmarkets failed on at least one occasion and never came back. A good paper that\naddresses part of this is here:\n[http://www.researchgate.net/publication/4913017_Global_Stock...](http://www.researchgate.net/publication/4913017_Global_Stock_Markets_in_the_Twentieth_Century)\n\nDepression and war do many things that create discontinuities. Most people\ndon't come close to thinking about those because they aren't knowledgeable\nenough to even understand how strong the survivorship bias in their current\nlocal market like the US.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFormer eBay CEO confirmed to be involved in cyberstalking campaign - abhi3\nhttps://twitter.com/wired/status/1273310537720434688\n======\nNicksil\nThis post links to a Twitter.com page which then links to the page with the\nstory.\n\nLink to the story: [https://www.wired.com/story/ebay-employees-charged-\ncyberstal...](https://www.wired.com/story/ebay-employees-charged-\ncyberstalking-harassment-campaign/)\n\n------\nsct202\nI've wasted entirely too much time today reading the FBI's charging documents\non this case. The details are just so ridiculous. The CEO seems to have gotten\noffended that the bloggers wrote about how he built replica of a NYC bar in\nthe ebay HQ. I'm not surprised he has bad judgement considering it sounds like\nhe ordered this krazy campaign. Ars is hosting a copy here:\n[https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2020/06/ebay-...](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2020/06/ebay-Charging-Docs.pdf)\n\n~~~\nvaluearb\nI have a friend that worked with him at EBay. He finds none of this a\nsurprise.\n\n------\nDomenic_S\nI worked for eBay/Paypal.\n\nHonestly I'm so disappointed in how far eBay's fallen. I opened my eBay\naccount in 1999 - finding great deals, good sellers, sending money orders in\nthe mail... those were the good times. And it was like a dream come true when\nI got a job there.\n\nBut eBay's lost its heart. Like all enormous and old businesses it got taken\nover by the suits, and the suits decided that a Marketplace was eBay's best\nfuture. Over the last decade they've been trying and failing, while being\noccasionally mired in scandal: GSI Commerce/eBay Enterprise (SEC violations,\neventual divestiture), Skype (onerous terms for employees during sale to MS),\nMagento...\n\nPolicies are broken. Did you know \"no returns\" means a buyer can still make a\nreturn? Sellers take a HUGE risk selling on eBay these days, to the point\nwhere I don't list on eBay anymore.\n\nAnd then this? If it were an episode of Silicon Valley we wouldn't believe it\nwas possible. How the mighty have fallen.\n\n~~~\ngodzillabrennus\nI’m not sure what’s more disappointing, eBay or PayPal.\n\nPayPal should be stripe and coinbase combined with their early lead but they\nhaven’t bothered to even try and compete.\n\n~~~\njjeaff\nThey waited until it was too late to try to innovate. So they bought Braintree\nand Venmo.\n\n------\nnknealk\nI put this in another thread but it bares repeating here:\n\nThere are several SEC filings around the departure of the CEO in Sept\n2019[1][2] that line up with with the timeline mentioned in this article.\nHere's the relevant snippet from the 8-K: \"On September 24, 2019, the Company\nand Mr. Wenig entered into a letter agreement regarding his departure (the\n“Wenig Letter”). Pursuant to the terms of the Wenig Letter, in exchange for\nhis execution and non-revocation of a release of claims against the Company,\nthe Company agreed to provide Mr. Wenig with (1) the payments required to be\nmade to him under his letter agreement with the Company dated September 29,\n2014 upon a termination without cause, which letter agreement was originally\nfiled with...\"\n\nThe key bit is that the CEO stepping down triggered a severance agreement for\ntermination without cause. This lines up with the reporting that he engaged in\nunethical behavior and had to be forced out.\n\nHere's the cash portion of his severance (there's a stock portion too):\n\n\"Non-Equity Related Payments. The Company will make the following payments to\nyou in accordance with the terms of the Letter Agreement in the form of a lump\nsum payment within 30 days after the Effective Date (as such term is defined\nin section 17 of this Agreement):\n\n(i) Two times your Annual Base Salary (as such term is defined in the Letter\nAgreement), which equals $2,000,000; and (ii) Two times your Bonus Amount (as\nsuch term is defined in the Letter Agreement), which equals S4,000,000.\"\n\n[1]\n[https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/0001...](https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/000119312519254832/d806459d8k.htm)\n\n[2]\n[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/000119312519...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/000119312519254832/d806459dex101.htm)\n\n~~~\ndownerending\n> it bares repeating\n\nit bears repeating\n\n( _Sometimes you get the bare, and sometimes the bare gets you._ )\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nKanban – The Secret Engineer Killer - bdehaaff\nhttp://blog.aha.io/index.php/kanban-the-secret-engineer-killer/\n======\nraisinbread\nIf you just read the subtitles, I'd almost think your article was a piece in\n_favor_ of Kanban.\n\nEngineers aren't assembly workers: so why do other methodologies seem to be so\nprescriptive on what can be accomplished in a given time frame? New problems\narise, priorities shift, and unexpected news arrives. I appreciate the\nflexibility of a pull-type system because it lets me transparently show what\nI'm working on.\n\nI've really hated telling people no or watching a manager struggle to change\nup something we really need just because it doesn't fit in the right shape\ntime box or might affect the current sprint's plans.\n\nYou can't trust yourself: I always ended up hating sprint planning meetings\nwhere \"points\" are a constant source of conflict between stakeholders and\nestimates are fantastical. These sort of meetings just allow the quality knob\nto turn down while scope and schedule remain fixed. Having an entire team\nminimizes estimates problems, but for the effort involved I'm not sure the\ngains are worth it.\n\nAlso, I think you may have inadvertently taken Anderson's quote out of context\nas well—Kanban isn't a way to run software. It's merely a way to expose your\ncurrent process so you can improve it. Kanban is something that sits on top\nand allows you to identify bottlenecks, be realistic about results (instead of\nestimates) and provide immediate transparency into what you're working on. It\ndoesn't specifically prescribe what the steps are.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nThanks for the quality comments. I want to pick up the last one in particular\nand respond. I think that while you appreciate that Kanban is not a \"way to\nrun software\" the folks who I have spoken with do not understand that. They\nconsider it to be a leaner and more pure form of \"agile.\" So, they do not use\nit to improve an existing dev methodology, rather they think it is one -- and\nthere is the crux of the problem.\n\n~~~\nraisinbread\nI should say I totally agree with one sentiment from the original post: _don\n't blindly pick up Kanban as a magical solution for your problems!_\n\nIf your underlying process (or lack of process) sucks, then you'll still be in\ntrouble. Fix your process first.\n\n------\nbhattisatish\nI am a fan of Kanban, so whatever I say will be through the rose tinted\nglasses of a fan. There maybe various reasons why Kanban has failed for many\ncompanies. I haven't worked in those teams so I have no way to say is it\nbecause of Kanban or is it because of management misunderstanding kanban.\n\nFrom your article, the main reason touted is that the Marketing loses it's\nway. Which to me sounds strange! In fact I have seen it the otherways. We\neffectively delink marketing cadence from engineering cadence! Thus resulting\nin derisking the whole big bang releases.\n\nFor e.g. Marketing decides that they are going to make a big marketing push on\na conference or a tradeshow. So the PM come up with a list of features they\nwill showcase for the given event. (say 10 features are decided upon). The\nengineering team works on these features as a que. Releasing each of these as\nand when they are done. But do note an engineering release to production does\nnot mean a marketing release. This allows the PM to experiment on features,\nbuild up case studies, etc ... for these features.\n\nAnd as the marketing releases dates come closer, everybody knows that we\nalways have a working copy with only the pending items in the que. This\nresults in a high confidence level within the marketing / engineering on what\nis being touted about. There are no last minute scramble to get a working\nsystem. etc ... The most valuable feature was heavily tested and used by\neveryone before the big bang marketing release.\n\nIt also allows the PM to make A/B experiments before the actual marketing\npush. Thus adding another confidence layer to the whole process.\n\nIn a worst case scenario the least valuable features never get released for\nthe marketing push.\n\nI see this as an effective way to derisk the whole marketing push and reduce\ntheir dependency on the engineering team to deliver stuff when they said they\nwould.\n\n~~~\nsnorkel\nUnfortunately not all of us are blessed to work with well organized\nstakeholders who are able to plan ahead rather than wait until the last minute\nto request whatever they need from engineering. Agile only works when the\nentire organization abides by its rules, sure engineering teams can train\ntheir stakeholders to some degree but upper management can just overule the\nprocess and insist engineering should be like a service desk that responds to\nwhatever is needed today. Sucks, but it's a reality in many workplaces.\n\n~~~\nbhattisatish\nI agree. That's the reason I love Kanban. It allows us to capture metrics on\nwhat is being done, how long it took and where are we spending most of our\ntime. This numbers in turn allow us to push the story to management on what\nthey are doing wrong.\n\nFor e.g. We worked on a team where Sales made a feature request (1 day, PM and\ndesign team worked on it and released it to engineering (5 weeks) and\nengineering released it to sandbox (2 weeks), qa tested it and released it to\nproduction (1 week).\n\nGuess where the bottleneck is? The whole cadence for the feature was 8 weeks.\nObviously Sales where jumping on us for not getting it done on time. This way\nof looking at the whole board, allowed us to identify a bottleneck and push\nfor changes on how the whole company operates. If you kanban a board only for\nengineering then you lose the big picture, How is the system as a whole\noperating.\n\n------\njacques_chester\nThe 95%-of-diets-fail number comes from a single study in an obesity clinic\nperformed in 1959. Followup studies, also at obesity clinics, found comparably\nhigh rates of recidivism.\n\nBut when you take the most pathological cases of obesity in a time before\nobesity was the norm, unsurprisingly those cases are ... _pathological_. There\nis a _pathology_.\n\nThese aren't normal people who grew overweight under conditions of stunning\ncaloric abundance.\n\nSo let's stop quoting this statistic because the sample bias is kindly\n_stupidly important_ to its interpretation.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nThanks for the comment. I actually spent a considerably amount of time looking\nfor a meaningful reference. I found the Popkess-Vawter 1998 reference, but\ncould not find the original text. Do you have a better number for \"failure\" or\nreference that I could use? I would be happy to update the post.\n\n~~~\njacques_chester\nHard to say. Either you rely on clinical studies, which give you\npathologically-skewed sample bias, or you use the National Weight Control\nRegistry, which will be skewed to people wanting to report successful weight\ncontrol.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nThanks. I am not an expert in this area (diet success data) and was simply\ntrying to use an analogy. I guess I will leave it as is. I am not sure what\nelse to do -- it seems that leaving it with no reference would be worse.\n\n~~~\njacques_chester\nWell at least you can join the noble ranks of folk whose writing was\ntangentially nitpicked in the very first HN comment.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nHappens every time. I have learned to expect it. It does make me spend a\nlittle more time though thinking through the counter arguments that are likely\nto be fired like spears.\n\n~~~\njacques_chester\nComments like mine are why I always answer \"please no\" in those hypotheticals\nabout meeting yourself.\n\n------\nbernardom\nAs an industrial engineer, this is the equivalent of a developer walking into\na factory and hearing about how \"the mythical man-month\" is a terrible\nbook/idea because it allows for waste.\n\nRight. The Mythical Man-Month is a great book/concept for creative/engineering\nprojects. Kanban is a wonderful way of implementing a Just-In-Time\nmanufacturing system.\n\nProps to the OP for explaining the origin of kanban. May this post help fix\nthe co-opting of an IE term for something totally different.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nI appreciate that. I really do. It's rare to receive an ounce of props on HN.\nI must admit that I was totally surprised to learn that it was not designed\nfor software development and that the author of the Lean Methodology has been\ntrying to convince folks to stop using it.\n\n~~~\nagileramblings\nWhat do you mean the author of the Lean Methodology has been trying to stop\nfolks from using it? Are you suggesting David Anderson wants us to stop using\nKanban for Knowledge Work?\n\n~~~\nbernardom\nFrom TFA:\n\n    \n    \n      David Anderson, the creator of The Kanban Method   (discussed above) wrote the following in late 2010.\n    \n      “Kanban is NOT a software development life cycle or project management\n      methodology! It is not a way of making software or  running projects that make software!”\n\n~~~\nagileramblings\nUnfortunately, the tendency to overload terms with multiple meanings is\nconfusing the situation. It is very common for the word kanban to be used\nincorrectly because there are three commonly confused meanings for the word.\n\nkanban - visual signal, signboard kanban system - pull-based, wip limited flow\nmanagement system Kanban Method - an approach to incremental, evolutionary\nprocess and systems change for organizations\n\nSo yes, the Kanban Method is not an SDLC method. It is a meta-method that will\nallow for the emergence of an appropriate SDLC within an organization. That\nSDLC may be Agile (very good things in Agile mindset), may be waterfall, may\nbe Scrum or Scrumban-ish, but it should be appropriate for then context.\n\nPlease refer to this wikipedia entry:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_\\(development\\))\n\nYou don't see any SDLC specific tactics or guidance in there. That is true.\nYou don't see any Agile language in there. It doesn't provide any specific\nAgile guidance.\n\nDoes the Agile Manifesto have any specific SDLC tactics? Please refer to\n[http://www.agilemanifesto.org](http://www.agilemanifesto.org)\n\nYou won't find any specific tactics for software development in the Agile\nManifesto either. But out of the mindset comes specific SDLCs that are aligned\nto the manifesto like Scrum or XP or any of the million \"custom\" Agile\nmethodologies that have no name but are used by IT organizations everywhere.\n\nDavid Anderson absolutely wants the Kanban Method to be used (as appropriate)\nin organizations that do knowledge work (software development is knowledge\nwork) to help those organizations develop the best workflow and capability for\na given context and to create a culture of learning, growth, and continuous\nimprovement. I've talked to him many times about these very topics! Many of\nthe case studies that we quote in our work are from software development\norganizations.\n\nThe quote used above has been taken out of context, isolated, and used to\ncreate fear, uncertainty and doubt about The Kanban Method and I find that\nkind of behaviour negligent at best.\n\n------\narkades\nWhat the heck do kanban have to do with project management? Speaking -as- a\nLean Six Sigma Black Belt (still can't type that with a straight face) in the\nhealthcare sector, I can't even imagine how someone would set out using a\nkanban to run a company.\n\nThat's just so wildly divorced from what it is or what it's for that that\narticle made no sense to me.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nThis is somewhat the point. Engineering managers have started to reach for\nKanban -- and it does not fit.\n\n------\nthrowawaykf02\nI'm loath to take this on faith without better description of the dataset. 150\ncompanies sounds impressive, but, where are they based? What areas do they\nwork in? How long have they been doing it? Have other factors, such as the\nhealth of these companies, been considered?\n\nStill, many of these points resonated with me.\n\nI started recently on a team that follows kanban-ish practices. Fortunately\nnobody here is that process-focused that we follow it exactly. Also, there is\nnothing that says you have to work on only one thing at a time, and we\ntypically don't. In fact, I work part-time on _another_ team, and the other\none does not do kanban.\n\nBut I don't much like the kanban system: Give me a satisfyingly large\ncomponent, and let me work on it entirely.\n\nSo for kanban in general, here's another facet to consider, and one that\nprobably explains why engineers are \"leaving in droves\": As TFA says, you end\nup working on many small pieces of a larger whole. The good part is, you could\nend up becoming aware of all parts of the system that you touch.\n\nBut! When you interview elsewhere, or heck, even when you're updating your\nresume, and it comes to answering the inevitable question, \"What did you work\non in this project\", the honest answer is, \"Uhh, many parts but nothing\n_overarching_ as such...\"\n\nAnd right then, even to yourself, that sounds like such a weasel-wordy answer.\nYou could go on and explain, \"Well, I wrote method A of component X, and\nfeature B of webpage Y and an implementation C of interface Z for cases where\nQ is R.\" But to an interviewer, I'd guess it all sounds like \"I worked on\nnothing worthwhile.\"\n\nOn the other hand, since you have better awareness of the project as a whole,\nyou could say you worked on _all of it_ , and make up more impressive-sounding\nresponsibilities as you go along.\n\nBut I find it much easier if I just do something impressive and be\nstraightforward during interviews.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nThanks for the comments. The companies have been distributed across the\ncountry (with a few outside of the US as well). They have been of different\nshapes and sizes, but I did not do a good job tracking all of their\ncharacteristics. The purpose of the calls was to discuss Aha! -- not different\nengineering methodologies. A few trends jumped out at me and this was one of\nthem, so I decided to write about it and try to be fair that the ideas are\nbased on qualitative research (discussions). I appreciate your thoughts and\nthe idea that engineers should own large components of a project or entire\nprojects resonates with us. We think it creates real pride of ownership and\ninterest in customer success and it has been how we have organized our\nengineering teams at three different companies now. It's clearly better for\nindividuals (as you mentioned) and the companies they work for.\n\n------\nmdehaaff\nReally interesting piece. It is amazing that a technique used to optimize shop\nfloors has been applied to the engineering field which I believe to be so\ncreative versus \"industrial.\"\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nThat surprised me as well. I think engineering managers are willing to try\njust about anything to regain some control and deliver software more\npredictably. My sense from talking to many companies is that it is\nunfortunately having the opposite effect.\n\n------\nparasubvert\nThis is a confusing argument.\n\nKanban/lean is a pretty simple idea (not always easy to execute): eliminate\nwaste in your work by smoothing the flow of requirements/changes. This treats\nyour end-to-end delivery capability as a syatem and one that should not be\noverburdened.\n\nThe clearest sign of being overburdened is when you have a lot of work in\nprogress but nothing to show for it. So instead of a genius PM/business\nanalyst/product owner handling out a tome of requirwments from on high with a\nthud, you break the work down into a minimally useful / marketable chunks,\nminimize work in progress, deliver according to some priority, and iterate and\nlearn from the results.\n\nThis is the philsophical foundation of lean Startups (customer development),\nlean development, and much of the work on Devops.\n\nSo the article rails against Kanban ... And almost seems like its advocating\nfor the same thing with its goal-driven approach to delivery (?).\n\nAny methodology or process framework is subject to misinterpretation or abuse.\nThis is why \"agile\" and \"scrum\" are dirty words to many - it's hard to tell\nwhat you're getting, as the term has been twisted to suit vested interests. It\nlooks like it is Lean and Kanban's turn to be trashed due to ersatz versions\nbeing forced on teams.\n\nBut articles like this aren't helpful unless they explain what they mean\nKanban, and what aspects are ineffective - clichés like \"software is\ndifferent\" don't illuminate.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nI tried to clearly define Kanban as a \"Kanban (meaning signboard or billboard)\nis a scheduling system for lean and just-in-time production. It’s a system to\ncontrol the logistical chain from a production point of view. Kanban was\ndeveloped by Taiichi Ohno, at Toyota, to find a system to improve and maintain\na high level of production. The Kanban Method was later added to as an\napproach to incremental, evolutionary process improvement for organizations.\"\n\nThe point is that it is a mistake to take a methodology that was created for\nincremental process enhancement along a manufacturing line and apply it to\nsoftware development.\n\n~~~\nparasubvert\nSo, I've had the opposite experience: lean-type incremental process\nenhancement has had dramatic improvements on the end-to-end results of more\nthan one company I've been involved with.\n\nI look at a book like The Phoenix Project, written by some fairly respected\nsoftware industry folks like Gene Kim, and they also recommend the opposite:\nthat software development and IT operations actually are a lot like an\nindustrial shop floor and benefit from being organized in an end-to-end pull\nflow like Kanban.\n\nI look at Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank, or Lean Startup by Eric\nRies, while they aren't specifically dictating a Kanban board in their work,\nthey're clearly philosophically in the camp of a pull-based approach to\norganizing work and limiting work-in-progress.\n\nSo, what I haven't determined from your article is, what specifically is\nflawed with these authors views and my experiences? Am I being over-broad in\ntheir inclusion? My interprtation of your article this far is a well-meaning\nbut under-argued philosophical aversion to being lumped in with other\nindustrial engineering practices.\n\nEdit: clarity\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nFrom my experience and from what I am hearing it (meaning Kanban) does not\nwork for most folks or companies. That's it. It might work well for you and\nthat's great too. I don't think Kanban and Agile philosophies are the same\nthough - but that's at least another long blog post.\n\n~~~\nparasubvert\nFair ball. I'd say if its being latched onto as a panacea, almost all\napproaches to process will fail if you lack the basics: a good market, an\ninsightful product owner/manager, good engineers, and at least an adequate\nmorale in the company.\n\nI've seen companies/projects with all of those things still fail because of a\npoor process. This is where something like Kanban can help, IMO. Not trivial\nto implement though.\n\n------\nmczepiel_\nAs others have noted the definition of kanban comes too late in your article.\nAlso, I think a citation to wikipedia is in order if you're going to copy it\nand simply expand the initialisms.\n\nRegardless, it's not a particularly helpful definition for anybody that's\nnever heard of kanban, and certainly doesn't help anybody familiar with kanban\nto know what specifically you're evaluating; you need to get everybody on the\nsame page from the outset.\n\nGiven lack of concrete examples and your previous posting history I would\nconsider this more of an advertisement for your product, to which I've now\napplied for an invitation, but you seem to be genuinely responding to comments\nhere and nobody else has complained. I suppose either way, well played.\n\nI have other comments but I'll hold them until I find out exactly what you\nmean by kanban, because I've been admittedly self-identifying the process I'm\nusing as kanban and maybe it's not.\n\nI will say this much though, the practices of kanban (visualization, limited\nwork-in-progress, managed flow, feedback loops, etc.) are all valuable in my\nopinion and I wonder which of these you see leading to, or how you see them\nleading to, the problems you've cited. Also, I wouldn't mind some more\nconcrete metrics to back up such an inflammatory title.\n\n------\nforloop5150\nPick the right tool for the right job. For a product team Kanban does not make\nmuch sense. I agree with your comments in general. But for a PS or Custom\nDevelopment team, where most projects are integration type projects or custom\nreports and tend to take 2-3 days to complete, it is a good way to go.\n\n------\njasonlittle\nSummary of this article: Kanban sucks, use our tool to make roadmaps! To me,\nthis is clearly a case of trying to stir up controversy to get people to sign-\nup for his tool.\n\n------\ntantalor\nWhy wait until the sixth paragraph to define the term?\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nFair point. I was not certain where to add it. My belief, based on my\nconversations was that many have heard about it -- so I did not want to bore\nthose in the know.\n\n------\nrparet\ntl;dr: author of the article is laboring under many false assumptions about\nKanban (and lean software development in general) likely due to a combination\nof inexperience using such methods personally and unfamiliarity with the\navailable literature. The following is a rather long attempt to correct the\nbase misunderstandings in the article, with pointers to relevant source\nmaterial. Enjoy!\n\nFirst, an operational definition: Kanban as it's used in lean software\ndevelopment is 1. visual representation of the work that's in the system and\nwhat state it is in and 2. an opportunity to limit the amount of work that can\nbe in each state.\n\nThat's it.\n\nAlmost every organization that writes software uses something to keep track of\nthe work, and what state it is in - by this logic the title of the article\ncould be \"spreadsheets - the secret engineer killer\", or \"JIRA - the secret\nengineer killer\".\n\nAccording to the article though, Kanban is ruining engineering teams in\n\"nearly every company\" that has adopted Kanban out of the 150 companies the\nauthor talked to in the last 60 days. (Some numbers on how many of them are\nusing Kanban, and for how long, would have been nice facts to include, btw.)\n\nSo, let's unpack some reasons why this is:\n\n\"Engineers are not assembly line workers\" \\- Implying Kanban and pull-based\nsystems only work for \"widget producers\" and forces engineers to focus on the\nindividual trees, not the forest. I think this sort of highlights the author's\nmisunderstanding of Kanban (and to an extent any pull-based system) and what\nrole it serves in an organization. Kanban isn't magic - it not an\norganizational design, it's not a product development strategy, and it's\ndefinitely not a substitute for leadership. It's a chart on a wall that shows\nwhat the work of the product development organization looks like, right now.\n\nFor an example of an overall software product development strategy that\nincorporates pull-based systems as one component, I recommend checking out\n\"Principles of Product Development Flow\" by Don Reinertsen.\n\n\"It teaches you that you and your engineers cannot be trusted to estimate work\nor handle complex multi-faceted projects.\" \\- How does it do this? Nothing\nabout Kanban implies no estimates. In fact if you use Kanban and measure cycle\ntime, you will be doing evidence-based scheduling which will allow you to make\n_better_ estimates. As for \"complex multi-faceted projects\" \\- I don't know\nwhat the author is talking about. Please read \"Scaling Lean & Agile\nDevelopment\" by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde for some actual evidence and\nlessons learned on lean / agile approaches being used on huge software\nprojects. Also \"Scaling Agile at Spotify\" by Henrik Kniberg is worth a read,\nas Kanban features there (by team choice!) as one small component in a lean\nsoftware development org design / product development strategy.\n\n\"Kanban forces a 'one work item at a time' mentality and resists milestones.\"\nThis is simply not true and such a basic misunderstanding I have to wonder if\nthe author of the article has taken the time to read any of the introductory\nliterature. If not, I suggest the aptly titled \"Kanban\" by David J. Anderson.\nKanban wants you to limit work in progress, which is one of the basic goals of\nany product development system. It doesn't say how much it should be limited,\nor where it should be limited. Every system, everywhere, already has limited-\nWIP in the form of bottlenecks. The hopeful goal of pull-based systems in\ngeneral and lean software development specifically is that you'll use these\nsimple tools to look at your process and eliminate wasteful activities and\nstreamline those bottlenecks that must exist to deliver maximum value to your\ncustomers. In this sense, you can use Kanban as a tool to maximize the whole\nof the product development process which is certainly a macro (org level) goal\nand outcome that stands in stark contrast to the claims in the article that\nKanban in general promotes micro optimizations and misses the big picture.\n\nFor more general reading on why limiting work in progress is a good idea, I\nsuggest \"The Goal\" by Eli Goldratt or more recently \"The Phoenix Project\" by\nGene Kim. As far as milestones go, nothing in a pull-based system is\nincompatible with milestones of fixed date or fixed scope. If your idea of\nmilestones is chucking arbitrary dates on a calendar based on an estimate\nbefore work begins and then stubbornly refusing to adapt those milestones when\nthe situation on the ground changes (i.e. milestones of fixed date and fixed\nscope), then I could see the potential nature for conflict, but surely you're\nnot out there doing that in real life, right? (Right???) If you are, and\nthat's the issue - Kanban isn't the problem, the problem is the assumptions\nyou are operating on are faulty - nothing will work for you. Smarter folks\nthan me have written about the perils of fixed date and fixed scope\ndevelopment, I suggest googling for Neil Killick's thoughts on the matter.\n\n\"High performance individuals and companies are goal and date driven.\"\nCitation needed. I know many people really, really believe this but you should\nreally verify. Also, see Fred Brooks \"Mythical Man Month\".\n\n\"Kanban was never intended for software development\" \\- What? Again, the guy\nyou quote actually wrote a book on using Kanban with software development\nteams. You should read it, as it would probably correct 90% of the\nmisunderstandings in your article.\n\nThose are the key arguments in the article about why Kanban is \"the secret\nengineer killer\". Hopefully by now it's clear that these arguments aren't very\ngood and it certainly wasn't any trouble for me to refute them along with a\nbibliography for further reading. That doesn't mean Kanban or lean are perfect\nthough - there still is no silver bullet. Hopefully this inspires some folks\nto launch a more throughly-researched critique of lean, kanban, or pull-based\nsystems in the future as I think that kind of discussion can be really\nbeneficial.\n\n~~~\ncuriouscats\nWell said. I find it is very common to use the straw-man criticism technique\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)\nabout bad management practices. The quality of management is often bad. The\nquality of management, even of good practices, is often bad.\n\nCriticizing those implementation of the practice is perfectly fine. But\nclaiming that the practice is suppose to be something different than it is, is\nnot fine. I agree with you here, that is the biggest problem. If you\nunderstand how kanban for software is suppose to be done, the criticisms don't\nmake sense.\n\n------\nkneu\nI agree. It doesn't allow the engineer to really own a project from start to\nfinish. Thanks for a great post.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nThanks. I appreciate the thought. It's rare on HN to have someone write\nsomething nice.\n\n------\nfleitz\nLike 'fad diets' most of the reasons that kanban fails is because the\norganization was sick to begin with and kanban would have helped if not for\nthe structure of the organization in the first place.\n\nFad diets mostly fail because people go back to eating the same shitty way\nthey did before, just as when a team adopts kanban marketing and product go\nback to the same stupid way of doing things they did before.\n\nThe sad part is that in the vast majority of organization engineering actually\nknows more about the product than product or marketing.\n\nThe core of it is that most engineers don't want to work on the stupid fucking\nideas that product and marketing come up with instead preferring to make the\nproduct 'good' instead of creating feature parity with some competitor.\n\nIf product and marketing were actually good at their jobs they should at least\nbe able to convince the engineers in their own fucking company that what they\nare thinking is a good idea. Right now I'm picturing the eye-rolls at Porsche\nwhen product and marketing announced the idea for the Panamara.\n\n[http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2012/09/of-course-we-\nneed...](http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2012/09/of-course-we-need-a-\nporsche-station-wagon.html)\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nI agree with your thoughts around dysfunction as it relates to fad diets and\npoor habits. I also think that many engineers think they know best, but in a\nwell functioning org PM actually knows the customers and market and has a\ncollaborative relationship with engineering. Do you think that PM has no role\nor that in most cases they just don't do it well?\n\n~~~\nbhattisatish\nOn the contrary in the Kanban process, PM is the pivotal role. They control\nthe que, the cadence of feature releases, etc ... Without an effective PM, the\nwhole thing will fall as a pack of cards.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nTrue. But PM needs to pick its head up and think more broadly. A \"one in one\nout\" queue is contrary to delivering winning product.\n\n~~~\nbhattisatish\nAs I have said below\n([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6119175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6119175))\nYou need to delink engineering releases from marketing releases. Where is it\nwritten that when the engineering releases a feature you need to make a\nmarketing push? When you have a collection of features ready which as a whole\nmakes sense for marketing, then you make a marketing release with all the\nrelated PR, hype cycle, etc ...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: ChatPage.io – Private chat for sales and client communication - going_to_800\nhttp://chatpage.io\n======\niqonik\nLooks good, the only thing I hate is the 'Free during BETA'. It makes me\nwonder how you're going to keep going, I'm worried you'll become a key part of\nmy sales process but then one day, disappear.\n\nTake my money straight away, seriously, I don't care that it's BETA, take my\nmoney! Don't be scared, you're creating value for me.\n\n~~~\ngoing_to_800\nAwesome feedback. Thanks a lot. You are right, the free beta looks un-pro. I\nconsider charging but let the beta badge somewhere.\n\n------\njjoe\nSomething about chatting with clients or prospects on someone else's\npage/domain bothers me. I think your pro plan should have an option to brand\nthe chat page with your client's own sub/domain.\n\n~~~\ngoing_to_800\nThanks for checking it out. Yes, it has the option to use your own url.\nCurrently we're using full page iframe. We'll also add subdomain support soon.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHuman-Powered Helicopter Team May Have Won Sikorsky Prize - grannyg00se\nhttp://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/06/human-powered-helicopter-won/\n\n======\nbertm\nThere is not a video included in the article, but one can be found here:\n[http://vimeo.com/51320244](http://vimeo.com/51320244)\n\n------\njared314\nFrom the latest pic[0], it looks like the AeroVelo Atlas[1]. Some details on\ntheir design can be found on their site[2], although the info looks to be from\n2012.\n\n[0]\n[https://twitter.com/AeroVelo/status/345219802262036481/photo...](https://twitter.com/AeroVelo/status/345219802262036481/photo/1)\n\n[1]\n[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcFyor9Gl0Q](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcFyor9Gl0Q)\n\n[2] [http://www.aerovelo.com/projects/helicopter/tech-\ninfo/](http://www.aerovelo.com/projects/helicopter/tech-info/)\n\n------\nulrikrasmussen\nSo there doesn't seem to be a video of the helicopter, but I found this,\napparently by the same team:\n[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eW9Xs...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eW9XsjllM6A)\n\nI didn't know what an \"Ornithopter\" was, so at first I thought it was just\nsome form of glider. That is, until it started flapping its wings - pretty\ncool! :)\n\n------\nkristianp\nHeres a short post from them: [http://www.aerovelo.com/2013/06/14/take-a-deep-\nbreath-and-ho...](http://www.aerovelo.com/2013/06/14/take-a-deep-breath-and-\nhold-on-2/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDoes Fatherhood Make You Happy? - raju\nhttp://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1202940,00.html\n======\ndavid927\nFatherhood makes -me- happy. I don't care about how others feel about it.\n\nUnfortunately, this is a horrible article on a fascinating subject: hedonistic\npsychology. If you haven't read Dan Gilbert's \"Stumbling on Happiness\", you're\nmissing out. A better introduction to what he has to say can be found here:\n<http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/97>\n\n------\nElectro\nThis has to be in the top 10 dumbest things I've read online, written by a\nprofessional of course. I studied psychology, sociology and I carried on\nreading on them both well past finishing my college courses on them. This\narticle is flawed and the reasons are three-fold:\n\nFirstly, they discuss hedonistic pleasure. This is essentially the pleasure of\ngetting fat, lazy and dying of hardened arteries. It isn't happiness, it's a\nbase instinct well below our consciousness that is designed to enjoy sugars,\nsex and laziness programmed into us as a survival mechanism. Essentially the\nmore you eat, have sex and do nothing, the better chance you -had- of\nsurviving; now not so much.\n\nSecondly, they poorly evaluate the pleasure of accomplishment. Your higher\nbrain is designed to dump a load of endorphins into your system, because some\nminor pain/discomfort has been rewarded. Breaking down into tears at your kids\ngraduation ceremony is artificial, it isn't programmed into people like\nfeeling happy when they see their kid. You get so overly joyed when your\nchildren accomplish something because it is something that is a hell of a lot\nbetter for you than all the hedonistic pleasures combined, hence why they -do-\nwipe out all the minor feelings that led up to the accomplishment, essentially\nbecause it was worth it!\n\nThirdly, heroin blocks endorphin (the happy chemical, as well as 3 other\nchemicals') production. This is completely the opposite of kids, who can\namplify the production. Heroin is a drug that literally disables your ability\nto be happy, I somehow don't see the similarity to kids here. He's comparing\ndelayed gratification with instant gratification and immense delayed\nsuffering/death...\n\nI believe my three points are sufficient, however I must add that hedonistic\npsychology is an amazing subject. Although that being said, it is fascinating\nin a way that should educate you to do everything -BUT- the hedonistic\npleasures.\n\n~~~\ndavid927\nRead his book \"Stumbling on Happiness\". He addresses the first two of your\nconcerns, and it's a fascinating book. (As for your third point, I think you\nmissed what he was trying to say: that if you create a myopia around any one\nthing, it tends to exaggerate its effects.)\n\nAnd you're right that there's more to life than happiness, such as fulfillment\nand love. Being a Dad is, like the Marines, the hardest job you'll ever love.\nI wouldn't change it for the world.\n\n------\nMistone\nyes parenting is hard and quite different from self indulgent activities such\nas shopping and taking heroin - but does it make you less happy? duh\n\nthe smile and sound of little feet running to the door when you walk in the\ndoor is better than any thing you can buy or inject.\n\n~~~\nsoftwarejim\ncould not have said it better myself\n\n------\nckuehne\nIt's funny how every response in this thread confirms the three reasons\nmentioned in the article - in particular reason one: cognitive dissonance.\n\n------\ngoodgoblin\nI am really looking forward to going sledding tomorrow morning.\n\n------\ndgabriel\nI don't think anyone should take this article as a personal affront to their\nlife choices. It's an interesting tangent in the broader field of psychology,\njust as Freakonomics is interesting the context of the broader field of\neconomics.\n\nOf course the greater part of caring for young children is unpleasant; it is\nnot news that changing diapers sucks, that trying to get a 4 year-old to put\non his shoes when you're running 10 minutes late is infuriating, etc. But the\nshining moments of bliss are so profound, so stunning.\n\nI hear running marathons can be largely unpleasant, as well, but the feeling\nof crossing the finish line is unparalleled.\n\n------\nekanes\nVery tired. Very happy.\n\n------\nnoonespecial\nWorthwhile en devours have hard parts that might not be as enjoyable as\nwatching a movie or a trip to Cancun!? Holy cow, give that guy a Pulitzer!\n\nNext week he's got an article planned about how people often don't find their\njobs as much fun as DisneyLand!\n\n------\ngreendestiny\nMeasures of happiness studys seem to be one of the key areas for nonsense\nresearch and journalism. I think the thing to take from this is that small\nincreases in long-term average happiness aren't something we desire. Which\nisn't very surprising because the way to maximise that kind of happiness is to\nremove all struggle and conflict.\n\n------\nmercurio\nI think this says something about the issue (it's the top link on Reddit right\nnow): <http://www.paralleldesign.com/mckinney/kevin-01.htm>\n\n------\nmynameishere\nAnd the punch-line of what appeared to be the phoned-in disjointed ramblings\nof a hungover journalist trying to hit his deadline:\n\n _Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert._\n\n------\npaulhart\nIt was my daughter's first birthday today. Yes.\n\n------\nmathogre\nYes it does make me happy. With any luck, those who wouldn't find parenthood a\nsource of happiness and joy won't breed.\n\n------\nundees\nHell yeah!\n\n------\nsanj\nYES!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTips for Difficult Conversations - alrex021\nhttp://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/dowling/2009/03/7-tips-for-difficult-conversat.html?cm_re=homepage-031909-_-body-left-r1-_-recession\n\n======\nyummyfajitas\nMost important: actually have the conversation.\n\nDifficult conversation: \"You are highly unlikely to ever finish your Ph.D.\"\n\nNet result of postponing: student spends 8-12 years in grad school, 5-9 years\nmore than necessary. 3-5 years of support (approx $60k) are wasted. Multiple\nstudents who might succeed are rejected from grad school.\n\nYou are not doing anyone any favors by avoiding difficult conversations.\n\n------\ntezza\nMaybe worth mentioning again:\n\n* Try using the personal pronoun \"I\" as much as possible.\n\nThis is used in the 7 rules itself \"I... and I... and I...\"\n\n* Try to have the difficult conversation 1 on 1 and face-to-face\n\nAvoid situations where there is more at stake for the person you are having\nthe difficult conversation with.\n\n~~~\nfirebug\nTrue. Helping someone to save face should never be underestimated.\n\n------\nvillageidiot\n->\"Adopt the \"And Stance\". Take control of the conversation by pre-empting distractions, objections and blame by using \"and\". \"I know you worked all night, and I know you want to do well, and I know you just joined the company, and I know the graphics people sometimes get the data wrong, and I know I could have been clearer in my directions to you....\" And, and, and.\"\n\nInteresting strategy but (1) because I'm a stickler for sentence construction\neven when I'm speaking I would not find this natural to do and (2) if you make\na list of points that are part of that \"And Stance\" and just firmly plough\nthrough them, blocking any interruptions, you can achieve the same effect. A\nbetter approach might simply be to say something like: \"Let me make a couple\nof points first\".\n\n->\"Paraphrase. To create clarity and to let people know you're genuinely listening, summarize what they're telling you -- and ask them to do the same.\"\n\nParaphrasing is a technique that's used extensively in counseling psychology\nbut its uses are unlimited. By simply mirroring something that someone says\nyou can improve communication in a whole range of situations. It increases the\nperception that the speaker is being listened to and neutralizes emotions in\ndifficult situations by making people who are upset feel empathized with. It\nactually increases the feeling of connection on both sides.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nXkcd - A Bunch of Rocks - nickb\nhttp://www.xkcd.com/505/\n======\nsammyo\nThis crowd should be familar with rule 34: <http://xkcd.com/305/>\n\n~~~\nMaysonL\n<http://wetriffs.com/>\n\n------\njeroen\nThat guy should pay more attention when I'm coding!\n\n------\nOompa\nI hope this isn't the start of a new trend…\n\n------\npchristensen\nWolfram's rule 34?\n\n~~~\njcl\nWolfram's Rules are, as I understand it, a sequential enumeration of cellular\nautomata. Rule 110 was found to be universal -- i.e. it could be used to\nimplement a Turing-equivalent machine as the narrator of the comic does. \"Rule\n34\" is a 4chan meme.\n\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110>\n\n<http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_rule_34>\n\n~~~\ntocomment\nHow do I program rule 110 in Python? It shouldn't be too hard, right?\n\n~~~\nzitterbewegung\nSee <http://code.activestate.com/recipes/343386/>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "Ask HN: Should Apple Buy Duck Duck Go? - mack1001\n======\ngaspoweredcat\nsomeone should if only to rename it. why they chose that clumsy name and why\nthey continue to hang on to it is beyond me, i can only imagine its like the\nfirst season of silicon valley where the guy who makes the decisions loves it\nwhile everyone else rolls their eyes on hearing it\n\n------\nmack1001\nConsidering the privacy focus that Apple brings, Duck Duck Go could be an\ninteresting play to reduce Google’s presence from the Apple ecosystem.\n\n~~~\ngreenyoda\nWhy would Apple need to _buy_ DDG to do this? Why not just make DDG their\ndefault search engine?\n\n------\nbradknowles\nHell no. That would be about the worst thing they could do to DDG.\n\nPlease, let it continue to fly under the radar for a lot longer.\n\n------\nemayljames\nNo.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Machine learning risk and control framework - ryeguy_24\nI&#x27;m working on building a risk framework for machine learning models to mitigate the risks of machine learning going wrong.<p>What are the risks of machine learning and what are the corresponding controls that can be used to mitigate those risks?\n======\nryeguy_24\nPoster comment here. I spent time in the banking/finance world where \"Model\nRisk Management\" is a huge thing. I think some of that can be used to think\nabout the risks/controls. It focuses on all the things that can go wrong - a)\nmodel doesn't produce an expected result and b) model is used inappropriately.\n\nSo, they do things like, performing a model validation which includes rigorous\nqualitative and quantitative tests, setting limitations on use, testing the\nsensitivity to inputs and boundary conditions, among many others.\n\nIn the traditional sense, a machine learning model is a new beast. In most\ncases, these models don't have an agreed upon \"methodology\" (i.e. neural\nnetworks) and therefore don't have an \"expected\" result that can be tested\n(especially for unsupervised learning models). So, curious to know what others\nare thinking?\n\n------\nmindcrime\n_Superintelligence_ by Bostrom is a decent treatment of some ideas related to\nthis.\n\nBeyond that, there have been a number of stories in the news over the past few\nyears that touch on various risks related to ML.\n\nThings like: automated trading systems causing economic problems. Facial\nrecognition systems not recognizing the faces of black employees. \"Predictive\npolicing\" creating a \"Minority Report\" type environment. Etc.\n\nI doubt there's any comprehensive list of \"risks of machine learning\" though,\nsince there's not really a corresponding comprehensive catalog of\n\"capabilities of machine learning\".\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nVideo analyzing demo - anfroid555\nhttps://developer.ibm.com/openwhisk/2016/03/07/openwhisk-and-watson-video-app/\n======\notoburb\nNow if they can combine this object tagging capability with audio-track tag\nextraction (speech-to-text), mash the two meta-index-tracks together and\nexpose this as another Watson API they'll be able to tap into a more media-\nsavvy and less technical audience.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nZenify meditation and mindfulness app is on Product Hunt - onvel\nhttp://www.producthunt.com/tech/zenify\n\n======\nonvel\nZenify mobile app has been launched on Product Hunt. Zenify is aimed to take\nmeditation and mindfulness globally to everyone with a smartphone. It's\navailable in 10 languages and trains mindfulness through very simple\nmeditation assignments delivered to the phone. It takes only several minutes\nto complete those assignments which can be done anywhere anytime. No need to\nremember about the meditation practice - Zenify will remind you several times\nper day to take a few minutes for yourself and become aware of the present\nmoment. There are numerous benefits of meditation but in general it changes\nthe lives and the world to the better. So why not make this happen together?\nTune in to your senses, and help us spread the word :) Check out web-site and\nfind us on top of Product Hunt today. Much love, Zenify.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Good forum for hobbyish ARM(industrial) design discussions and advice? - trotsky\n\nHave some embedded, board level integration experience, nothing really - getting simple boards masked for low density shit. Broadly interested in learning about the next level in ARM board level design (call it cubbie board esque). But I've zero luck finding such a place - it's either raspi/arduino folks (not a diss), folks mostly repurposing android mobile or net tops for software, or the people who are really on the supply side - either they are talking about building the newest open mobile designs with the cheapest bom in chinese i can only half follow, or they are the real deal talking about modular soc components and electronic interface issues with off soc component count vs oem ability to implement. And high cost IP.<p>I am hoping to for something in english (ha! I'll survive) or just anything that might be suitable.  An HN sorta thing where people often have a clue would rock, but the big missing piece is picking soc-&#62;minimal reference board revisions-&#62;build or source some custom stuff to give the arm some supervoisor like qualities on the x86.<p>To balance a zero content post, I provide my rough plan to amuse to reader. Basicially I want to combine a SFF server (think HP microserver or so slash less for mini. Most are essentially low end x76 roll your own nas that make do with 150w and 4 sata bays, 2 dimms and 1 eth.<p>I want to see what I can do if I meld that kind of platform together with a few low poer arm linux servers all in one case. I imagine the arm sections being able to utilize some kind of pci/pci or similar bridge as well as monitoring, reset, ipkvm etc that could leave them as super programmable debuggers more or less, that could always easily act as low power satndins for much of the traffic that wakes up your typical low use server - ntp, ping, mild file serving, ldap, etc. Anything harder and they could provide a superior holding pattern as the main box woke up from deep sleep.\n======\nmschuster91\nActually, the idea of coupling together a ARM SoC, a Ethernet switch, a USB\naudio interface and a bit of power-monitoring circuitry (and some relais) to\nmake a dead-cheap desktop remote management solution has hit me too. Maybe\neven add a battery to provide a buffer against +5VSB outages (due to \"real\"\npower out); after all, a tiny ARM doesn't suck really much power.\n\nBut I'm a software guy, not a hardware developer - I can get a basic circuit\nboard done, but no BGA or SMD mounted stuff...\n\nI think the market for such a card - especially if built in half-height to fit\ninto existing servers - is very very great. Wake on LAN just isn't enough for\nmanaging thousands of desktop computers, and \"true\" IPKVM systems come at a\nhundreds-of-$ price tag, and they're an external box nonetheless.\n\n~~~\ntrotsky\nHey, glad to hear from a like minded soul. It's true they'd likely make quite\ngood ipkvms as long as you're OK with having CVE's pop on your ipkvm gear. I\nguess they probably already do.\n\nI think even just embracing it as an ipkvm++ opens up a lot of potential\nadditions to the current approach. There's no reason why you wouldn't want to\nbuild in remote power and triggers to go into S3/S4 powersave. There are still\nplenty of shops that prevent sleep to make maintenance easier. And It'd be\nsuper easy to hook a usb port up as a usb client and software fake whatever\ndvdrom you happened to want to boot.\n\nIf you ever feel like shooting the shit, i'd be down to hear what parts of it\ndoes it for you or whatever else was on your mind. I have the same nick on\ngithub.\n\n~~~\nmschuster91\nActually all of the bigger SoC families bring USB gadget support with them...\nthe Linux kernel has at least support for USB mass storage and networking (of\ncourse, networking is useless, because of low speed) - so it should be\npossible indeed to internally connect the USB jumpers to the ipkvm board to\nprovide HID and storage.\n\nThe only thing is now to get a cheap way to adapt VGA (or better yet, DVI) to\nan SoC. Video encode is supplied with the chips, the real difficulty will be\ngetting the signals to the CPU, though.\n\n------\nippisl\nMaybe there are some guys at reddir: /r/electronics or /r/ece that do high\ndensity pcb's and arm.\n\n~~~\ntrotsky\nThanks for the tip! I really appreciate the response. While they're probably\nnot the spot, I'm pretty sure it's a way batter place to ask the same\nquestion. Cheers,\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: ReadRatio – Real time web analytics for blogs - tsileo\nhttps://readratio.com/?showhn\n\n======\nerikbigelow\nCongrats and good luck. I thought about building something similar about a\nyear ago. It's an interesting and petty simple test for a bit more accurate\ntracking of reading. Never thought about trying to monetize it like this,\nhowever, so I'll be paying attention to how you do.\n\n~~~\ntsileo\nThanks!\n\n------\nAdams472\nNice job on this. This is a feature that expensive enterprise products have,\nbut almost everyone should use something like this. Keep going!\n\n~~~\ntsileo\nThanks!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMicrosoft Support for Windows 7 Is Ending Next Month - eXpd8\nhttps://expd8.com/microsoft-support-for-windows-7-is-ended-soon/\n======\naphextim\nFrom the article:\n\n>The first option is to buy the Windows 10 upgrade. The second option is to\npurchase an Office 365 subscription, which comes with a Windows 10 upgrade\nincluded.\n\nI am not sure if this still works so I would not use this in a business\nenvironment without consulting a Windows licensing expert. Also someone who\ndeals with licensing on Windows devices could probably clarify why this option\nshouldn't be done.\n\nWith all that said, as of 2 months ago I ran the windows 10 media creation\ntool on a personal computer with Windows 7 Pro installed. This allowed me to\nupgraded the PC to windows 10 and retain all apps/personal files for free. Now\nthe computer has Windows 10 Pro, and the license activated and appears valid.\n\nI do not want to advocate doing something illegal or get someone in licensing\nproblems, I just wanted to make people aware that running the Media Creation\ntool on a PC with a valid Win 7 install will upgrade it to Windows 10 and\nappear valid/activated when finished.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nI Use GitHub.app and You Should Too - bbaumgar\nhttp://bbaumgar.svbtle.com/githubapp\n\n======\nbradleyland\nI too find Git to be the kind of tool that works well through a GUI. However,\nI went one step further and bought Tower [1]. In addition to the many things\nthat GitHub.app does, Tower takes things one step further. If you tried using\nGitHub.app, but ran up against a Git activity that isn't exposed through the\napp, then you should take a serious look at Tower.\n\nOne specific example is partial commits within a single file. Tower shows a\ndiff view of edited files that breaks edits from different regions of a single\nfile in to chunks. You can stage/un-stage these chunks right through the GUI.\nThis is very similar to `git add -p filename.ext`, but with a very nice GUI.\n\n1: [http://www.git-tower.com](http://www.git-tower.com)\n\n------\ntiquorsj\nIt still has major issues. But, for many things it is absolutely better to\nhave a GUI.\n\n------\nmcmillion\nI use SourceTree for most of these same reasons.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy CloudFlare can never satisfy Tor die-hards, and shouldn't try - jgrahamc\nhttp://www.zdnet.com/article/cloudflare-can-never-satisfy-tor-core-and-shouldnt-try/\n======\njgrahamc\nI posted this just so I could comment that the analysis there is wrong headed\nand I disagree with this article.\n\n~~~\nmtmail\nCan you elaborate your disagreement?\n\n~~~\njgrahamc\nThe article implies that we should just not bother trying to handle traffic\ncoming from Tor. I believe this is a mistake because we become stronger by\ndealing with difficult situations.\n\nFor example, we've build a tremendous chunk of technology for handling massive\nDDoS attacks because we invested in dealing with them.\n\nTor is difficult because the users want anonymity and are aggregated across a\nsmall number (~1,500) IP addresses. But CloudFlare will be much stronger if we\nare able to reliably detect malicious use of Tor and allow through normal use.\nIt's worth solving these problems precisely because Tor is so challenging. We\nhave a whole bunch of technology for detecting and blocking attacks, making\nthem work really, really well for Tor is something I'm investing in.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBruce Schneier: The US government is coming for Your code, techies - jupp0r\nhttps://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/14/the_government_is_coming_for_your_code/?mt=1487190219159\n======\nmajorarcher\nimagine if they patented the loop for example.\n\n~~~\nbenchaney\nA bunch of stupid interview questions would suddenly become very relevant.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nReading iOS app binary files - msbenighted\nhttps://blog.smartdec.net/reading-ios-app-binary-files-2c9e63a381ad\n======\nfavorited\nObjective-C was the first language I used where I looked under the covers and\ntried to understand the machinery of the language, and its extremely dynamic\nnature makes it a great place to start to understand language runtimes.\n\nIt's so conceptually simple, and (aside from objc_msgSend) you can implement\nthe whole thing in C. libobjc2 has (if I'm counting correctly) 23 .c files,\nand it includes things you can totally ignore as you're learning, like an ObjC\ngarbage collection implementation that no one uses anymore.\n\nThe only tricky part is the message-sending routines, since they have to be\nwritten in assembly. But as long as you understand _what_ they're doing\n(rather than _how_ they're doing it), you don't even need to look at those if\nyou don't want to.\n\n~~~\nhypervis0r\n> The only tricky part is the message-sending routines, since they have to be\n> written in assembly\n\nWhy? (context: never touched Objective-C)\n\n~~~\n_red\nDisclaimer: I may be completely wrong, but I don't think OP is saying that\nwhile writing normal ObjC that you need to write the message passing in\nassembly. Instead, that you could recreate ObjC in regular C but you would\nhave to use assembly to construct the message passing portion of the language.\n\n~~~\nslrz\nSure, but what's the property of ObjC-style message passing that makes it hard\nto implement in C?\n\nLike when you implement coroutines/threads in your language runtime, you're\ngoing to implement the context switching part in assembly because you just\ndon't have access to the relevant information (registers/stack/...) from\nportable C (aside from using setjmp/longjmp maybe).\n\n~~~\nexikyut\nA parent comment says it's due to variable number of arguments.\n\nI thought it was about speed, heh.\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nTo be honest, it's probably both. The runtime gurus at Apple do a great job\nhand-optimizing objc_msgSend for each platform since it's such an important\nfactor in the overall speed of an Objective-C program.\n\n------\nericand\n\"Therefore, except for the lost data on exact types of Objective-C objects in\narguments, it’s possible to get the complete reconstruction of an interface.\"\n\nThat's more than I expected. Great work!\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nWell, you lose the return type as well. Generally in these cases the app is\nfired up in the debugger and stopped on one of these methods, then dynamically\nintrospected to figure out what it is. Since all Objective-C objects carry\naround a representation of their class, it's possible for the runtime to\nprovide this to us.\n\n------\nsaagarjha\nAnother interesting resource is class-dump, which will do much of this work\nfor you and give you a \"header\" from an Objective-C binary:\n[http://stevenygard.com/projects/class-\ndump/](http://stevenygard.com/projects/class-dump/)\n\n------\nswolchok\nsee also\n[https://swolchok.github.io/objcperf/](https://swolchok.github.io/objcperf/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Anybody know if supermarkets collect and sell your receipts? - williamle8300\nI&#x27;m a huge fan of buying top shelf bourbons and started seeing ads for Knob Creek bourbon on Instagram recently. It&#x27;s led me to think that Von&#x27;s (my local grocer) sells my purchase history to ad networks.<p>Anybody ever have this experience?\n======\nbobwaycott\nBased on what limited experience I have with FB ad targeting[0], there is\nquite a lot of data purchased from credit card companies. There may be\naggregated receipts funneled into one of their sources, though I haven't yet\nseen a specific grocery source called out anywhere. Nonetheless, it's pretty\ntrivial to identify purchase behavior via CC data and target people who are\nknown to buy/consume alcohol—e.g., bars, liquor stores, etc.—and push my\nproduct.\n\n0: FB ads run on instagram by default\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Bitcoin Wallet-as-a-Service - nvk\nhttp://blog.coinkite.com/post/91848147526/bitcoin-wallet-as-a-service-coinkite-api\n\n======\nnvk\nPing us here connect @ coinite . com if you need help with integration.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPartial password usability sucks - gaevoy\nhttps://gaevoy.com/2019/03/06/partial-password-sucks.html\n======\ninetknght\n> _The idea is good it gives you an extra layer of protection against password\n> theft (link 1, link 2, link 3)._\n\nThat sounds obnoxiously insecure on the back-end. Notoriously, the most broken\nauthentication mechanisms used plaintext (or reversibly encrypted) storage.\nThe answers to the three security questions that the article links to also\npoint this out.\n\nSounds like ING Poland needs to be called out by some security researchers.\n\n[0]\n[https://security.stackexchange.com/a/194818/47800](https://security.stackexchange.com/a/194818/47800)\n\n[1]\n[https://security.stackexchange.com/a/7479/47800](https://security.stackexchange.com/a/7479/47800)\n\n[2]\n[https://security.stackexchange.com/a/196430/47800](https://security.stackexchange.com/a/196430/47800)\n\n~~~\najuc\nWhat's more likely - that the bank gets hacked, or that you install a\nkeylogger?\n\nAlso there are ways to implement this without keeping the whole password in\nplaintext/reversibly encrypted. One example I just thought of:\n\nAsk for 75% of the password each time, remember random 1/3rd of that (25% of\nfull password) till the next login together with the hash, and on the next\nlogin ask for all the letters you haven't remembered (and fill the ones you\nremembered, then hash everything and compare).\n\nYou can adjust the percentages as needed if having 25% of the password in\nclear text is too insecure.\n\n~~~\ninetknght\n> _What 's more likely - that the bank gets hacked, or that you install a\n> keylogger?_\n\nGiven the (apparent) lack of security for the bank, I'd say the former. IF the\nbank was actually secure, then sure it'd be more likely for me to have a\nkeylogger.\n\n> _Also there are ways to implement this without keeping the whole password in\n> plaintext /reversibly encrypted_\n\nMaybe.\n\n> _One example I just thought of: Ask for 75% of the password each time,\n> remember random 1 /3rd of that (25% of full password) till the next login\n> together with the hash, and on the next login ask for all the letters you\n> haven't remembered (and fill the ones you remembered, then hash everything\n> and compare)._\n\nI challenge you to really think about what you're proposing to do. I think\nit's far more convoluted: it does _not_ solve the keylogger problem and adds\ncomplexity to both the client and the server. If you think I'm wrong, then\nwrite it up in a spec and show us.\n\n~~~\najuc\n> If you think I'm wrong, then write it up in a spec and show us.\n\nSure. It's fun.\n\nOn password creation:\n\n0.0. demand 25% longer passwords from users than considered safe\n\n0.1. along with the hash of the whole password remember a randomly choosen 25%\nof the characters of the password and their positions (in clear text or\nreversibly encrypted)\n\nOn each login:\n\n1.0. ask only for the characters in positions you haven't remembered\n\n1.1. server-side fill the positions you remembered\n\n1.2. hash the result and see if it matches\n\nIf hash matches:\n\n2.0. randomly choose 1/3rd of the freshly provided positions and remember them\nin clear text on server replacing the previous ones\n\n2.1. give access\n\nIf hash doesn't match:\n\n3.0. deny access, don't change anything on server\n\nIf I understand correctly - to get the whole password keylogger must be\nspecific to this bank site (to understand which characters are provided), and\nmust be active on at least 4 logins. In my book that's a big improvement.\n\nAnd I can imagine writing the login page in a way that makes parsing it in\nkeylogger to understand which characters are masked.\n\n~~~\nvkou\n> If I understand correctly - to get the whole password keylogger must be\n> specific to this bank site (to understand which characters are provided),\n> and must be active on at least 4 logins. In my book that's a big\n> improvement.\n\nThe difference in difficulty of keylogging 4 logins, and 1 login is, in\npractice, small. Once your computer is pwned, all bets are off.\n\n~~~\ndTal\nI think there's a big difference between capturing the whole password at once,\nand having to reconstruct it contextually - it may be difficult to recover the\ntyping context. Even if the context is known 100% reliably, it will take far\nmore than 4 logins to scrape enough information to reconstruct the password -\nyou need overlap to match the fragments. It the user visits any other site\nthat uses a similar scheme, it gets harder. If a a site chooses to 'salt' the\npassword by making the user retype random characters, it gets much harder -\nnow you need enough logins to apply statistical analysis. If the site makes\nthe user type the characters in the wrong order, you can't reassemble the\npassword at all - all you can do is guess the order.\n\nTo gather enough contextual information to defeat all this reliably, the\nkeylogger would also need to be a screen scraper, internet monitor, etc.\nStraight away, this defeats the not-uncommon case of the inline USB keylogger.\n\n~~~\nvkou\nSomeone breaking into my apartment, and putting an inline USB keylogger on my\ncomputer, that is incapable of doing anything but recording keystrokes, to\nsteal my banking login, is both seriously overthinking their crimes, and, at\nthe same time, seriously underachieving.\n\n------\nMatterrr\n> Open partial-password.github.io & copy-paste your password there.\n\nSounds like a great idea, let's all paste our bank passwords in this website!\n\nBanks have peculiar ideas about security sometimes, I don't think this partial\npassword business will have a net positive effect (especially if people use\n\"solutions\" like these and potentially send their password to a third party)\n\n~~~\ndeepspace\nExactly this. I have the misfortune of occasionally needing to deal with an\nonline banking portal (located in South Africa) that uses this stupid scheme.\nEvery time I log in, I wish an eternity of torture on the idiots who came up\nwith it.\n\nI just cannot imagine the thought process of the people who though that\npartial passwords could be better in any way than classic passwords.\n\n~~~\nWorldMaker\nBanks especially seem heavily \"invested\" in finding the biggest/laziest\nloopholes in security laws that they can and driving forklifts through them\nfor as long as possible.\n\nIn the 90s, laws in multiple countries asked banks to research and implement\nTwo-Factor security. They invented all of these stupid, stupid Wish-It-Were-\nTwo-Factor things that _are not_ Two-Factor but \"feel Two-Factor enough\" to\navoid actually deploying proper 2FA, but avoid security fines: \"Security\nQuestions\" (bonus passwords, still 1FA), multi-step login with \"user selected\npictures\" (not an extra factor, just a silly memory game to potentially cut\ndown on phishing), \"partial passwords\" (still 1FA).\n\n(Then other idiot sites copy these \"security best practices\" because Banks use\nthem, rather than actual security best practices.)\n\nIt is starting to seem like a lot of the money spent on the development effort\nof these \"not 2FA\" workarounds and portal workflows could easily have just\npaid for sending every bank customer a YubiKey or three by now.\n\n------\ntedunangst\nMake your security policy difficult enough to comply with, and people will\nfind workarounds like pasting their passwords into strangers' websites.\n\n~~~\nfjeuplos\nOr people will just pick short passwords so its easier to count along the\nchars in their head. Again, not a thing we really want to encourage.\n\n------\n_asummers\nPerhaps I'm misunderstanding the security model behind this, but why should\nthe site be storing my password's length at all? Why does it know I have a\n10th character at all? The site should just have a hash of my password\n(normalizing the length).\n\n~~~\njohn-radio\nI guess (hope) they just have a collection of patterns that they apply (like\n(3, 9, 11, 12, 15) from the OP), and when they store your password's hash,\nthey also store the hash of those several characters so that they can present\nthe pattern to you later and check whether you matched the pattern correctly.\n\n~~~\nVendan\n5 characters is \"pretty simple to bruteforce\" area, and now you've got 5\ncharacters, replicate that for the other patterns, and you can probably crack\nthe whole password pretty easy\n\n------\njdashg\n\"Please enter your password in this mutable github pages page.\" Eek.\n\nI have a real desire for a document firewall mode where nothing can enter or\nleave.\n\n~~~\nfranky47\nNor be stored for later retrieval.\n\nSuch a firewall, when disabled, would essentially have to restore the whole\npage memory to how it was when it was enabled, and block access to\nlocalStorage / IndexedDB / Cookies / Cache.\n\n------\nmunk-a\nPartial passwords are a terrible idea for a multitude of reasons but one in\nparticular stands out to me. We have come to the general conclusion that\nhumans shouldn't remember their passwords, they should remember one\ncomplicated pass key that is linked to a number of otherwise inaccessible\nsecret keys used to interact with servers but, let's step back for a moment\nand assume people are remembering their passwords (which most people not on HN\nstill do)...\n\nA password has an entropy n, a higher n yields more security but comes at a\ncost in terms of memory power, I think it's reasonable to state that very high\nentropy passwords exhaust our memory quite quickly which is why password reuse\nis so common, this particular authentication is requiring the user to have a\nhigh entropy password n, and then is reducing it to an entropy m where m is at\nmost as large as n (usually much smaller) and using that for authentication.\n\nWe, users and tech people, don't care about the cost to transmit bits over the\nwire or the cost to verify those bits on the far end (in this scenario) we\ncare about the cost on the user's memory more than anything so why are we\noptimizing this puzzle to be least efficient for our most valuable resource.\n\nWhen I first read this article I thought this practice was silly, now it\nstrikes me as stupid... it is a transformation that simply discards some of\nthe potential security of the system for no reason.\n\n(Also, banks love ease of use, which is why up here in Canada they love to\nsend out password dongles to customers that make it even easier to log in to a\nsite than this while still requiring possession of a physical thing - and many\nof those dongles require additional authentication to activate whenever using,\nthough not all)\n\n~~~\nNotAnEconomist\nAdvice and tactics for passwords have been bad for a long time, perhaps even\ncomically so:\n\n[https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/password_strength.png](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/password_strength.png)\n\n~~~\nmunk-a\nI agree, and a concise response to this article can pretty much be summed up\nas \"Don't roll your own security\" for... the fun of it I suppose, I wanted to\ntake a swing at one particularly (IMO) good tear down of why it's stupid for\ntechnical reasons, but simply rubber stamping \"Don't roll your own security\"\nis pretty acceptable on any of these proposals.\n\nThis stuff is complicated, if you're a professional at it good on you, it's a\ntough job, otherwise... just listen to the professionals/best practices and\ndon't feel the urge to be creative, you'll probably break something. It is\npossible that everyone is wrong, but it's unlikely... and when everyone is\nwrong (for example Dual_EC_DRBG) if you're using that system it'll be hard not\nto be aware of the issue when it comes to light.\n\n------\nwaltbosz\nThat's such a strange UI. I couldn't tell you the fifth letter of most words\nwithout writing them down, let alone that of my 20 character passwords.\n\n~~~\najuc\nYou just spell it in your mind going through all the letters and only press\nkeys where asked.\n\nI'm recently switched from a bank that uses regular passwords to a bank that\nuses partial passwords, and it took me a week or so to get used to this, and\nit is a little slower (takes me like 10 seconds instead of 1), but it's\nnothing significant.\n\n~~~\nfjeuplos\nYou have made the assumption that everyone who uses strong passwords can\nremember them in their head :-)\n\n------\nkazinator\nComing soon to a Poland near you: partial fingerprint authentication at ATMs:\n\n\"Please put these tiny stickers in the correct locations on your thumb, and\nthen press it against the sensor ...\"\n\n~~~\ndiminoten\nHow about \"Spit on this sensor to see your checking account balance\"?\n\n~~~\nkazinator\nWith a collection gutter at the bottom, from which your yearly interest will\nbe derived.\n\n------\nggggtez\nI'd love to run some math on the entropy this actually gives you... If you\nassume people are using common dictionary word passwords, you could even\ndevelop special tables based on common letter positions or substrings.\n\nAssuming a character is 5 bits of entropy...\n\nAn 8 character password gives you 8 choose 4 = 70 possible variations it could\nask. Each variation is 4 characters (20 bits of entropy). So, that brings it\nup to 20+log2(70)=26.1 bits of entropy for an 8 character password... Compared\nto 40 bits of entropy normally...\n\nAnd that's not even accounting for using common words/phrases. This scheme\nseems to lose about 1/3 the entropy.\n\n12 character password gives only... 28.9 bits of entropy instead of the\nexpected 60 bits.\n\nAnd that's not even including more obvious attacks like stealing the plaintext\nfrom the server, since it obviously isn't salted on the server side (and it\nreveals the length of your password on the front end too??)\n\nEdit: I noticed I used \"choose 4\" instead of \"choose 5\" but the math is\nsimilarly bad. I leave it as an exercise for the reader.\n\n~~~\nggggtez\nAnd an 12 character password only giving you ~500 possible subselections means\nif the 4 character string was stolen, you could brute force in within a few\nminutes. This is hardly better than than just leaking the entire password.\n\n------\nspringogeek\nThis sort of thing needs to be built into password managers.\n\n~~~\nLeace\nAgreed but I'd rather they allow normal passwords where you can use the\n\"password you can't remember\" and U2F token like civilized people.\n\n------\nkazinator\nJawdrop ... that is the most idiotic thing I've been made aware of in quite\nsome time.\n\nFirst of all, never mind all the gaping usability problems and obvious\ndecrement in security.\n\nThe system must be storing passwords in plain text in order to make this work.\n\nI can think of ways that don't require plain text storage (like pre-computing\nvarious partial passwords and hashing them separately), but (1) people who\ncame up with this idea would be too stupid to have implemented that, and, (2)\nin practical terms, it significantly reduces the possible number of partial\npasswords: we can't hash all of the subsequences of the string, because there\nare vastly many, so we have to rather generate some reasonable number of\ncanned subsequence positions. Such a reduction in itself is a security\ncompromise.\n\n------\nsnorremd\nThe solution to keyloggers is not partial passwords. The solution is requiring\ntwo factors! In Norway there is a shared authentication infrastructure used by\nbanks and other services called BankID:\n[https://www.bankid.no/en/private/](https://www.bankid.no/en/private/) They\nfacilitate second factor auth either with an OTP device or via your cell\nphone's sim card. It just works.\n\nAll Norwegian banks use a password + second factor. And these days I think\nmost of them have liberal password rules, in that you are allowed quite long\npasswords. Schemes like the one described in the post seems like a poor\nattempt at improving security.\n\n------\ndiegorbaquero\nSo they are storing length and hashes of subsets of the password?\n\nYou could brute force a subset of 4-5 characters way easier than a 20\ncharacters password.\n\nHow is this secure? Anyone care to explain how this adds security?\n\n~~~\nmunchbunny\nIt doesn't. It's theater.\n\n------\njakub_g\nFor the context: partial passwords have been the default and a de facto\nstandard for Polish banks since early 2000s. They are not \"cutting edge novel\nidea\" but more a common legacy.\n\nI think people got used to them, so changing this now for everyone would feel\nweird (and would probably annoy many).\n\nIn some banks you can opt-out in settings and have regular password instead.\n\nI guess it's an equivalent of swipe cards in USA.\n\n------\njotaen\n> If you don’t trust partial-password.github.io consider to save the page\n> locally and run it from there\n\nThis doesn’t really make it safe per se, there still can be a script running\nthat triggers an AJAX call in the background, sending the password to some web\nURL.\n\n~~~\nithinkthimgs\nI think the assumption is that you would check the source code before\nexecuting it.\n\n------\ndzek69\nMy solution to this:\n\ni use password that contains only 5-letters words\n\nso each new word starts at 1, 6, 11, 16, 21 etc\n\nit's easy to scan the password for specific letter in memory this way\n\nfunny thing: i didn't do that on purpose. I just came up with a password that\nhappend to have such words only.\n\n~~~\ndzek69\nPS. If author reads that maybe:\n\nsaving a webpage on disk can still be considered unsafe. you can send a\npassword to the internet via various way, like insering an image with url:\nevil.com/pass.jpg?pass=enteredpassword\n\n------\nbuboard\ni m sure someone was promoted for this 'security innovation'\n\n------\ndeanalevitt\nConvenient 2FA is the answer, not weird UX.\n\n------\nrad_gruchalski\nLloyds TSB used to do the same. No idea if that’s still the case.\n\n~~~\nfjeuplos\nHalifax does it still. All the same bank really ;)\n\n------\nscarejunba\nThis is a retarded feature and I hated it when I had to use it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSet Theory and Foundations of Mathematics - bschne\nhttp://settheory.net/\n======\nbubble-07\nWhat is the first diagram on this page supposed to depict? Seems like a bunch\nof unrelated topics with random arrows drawn between them.\n\nAlso, the author seems more than a bit arrogant and deluded:\n[http://settheory.net/life](http://settheory.net/life) \\-- I would _not_ touch\nany of this stuff with a 40 foot pole.\n\n~~~\nDyslexicAtheist\nthe whole thing you linked reads like he is going through some existential\ncrisis triggered by spending too much time in his own head, or he is\nstruggling to find himself. he calls others stupid but that might just be due\nto feeling misunderstood and a symptom of his alienation.\n\none thing I learned is that knowing more doesn't make us happy. knowledge can\nbe the key that opens a door to insanity.\n\nwhether he is a lunatic or genius is hard to say without evaluating the\nquality of his work.\n\n~~~\nonemoresoop\n> But there are still many well-placed people who will never listen, cannot\n> grasp this and that keep denying the right for young geniuses to decide for\n> their own life.\n\nThis obsession with I am a genius is bordering on pathological narcissism,\nexcluding oneself from the society because one's too smart to be understood by\nthe world is a very dangerous slippery slope. On the other hand, while in a\nhealthy way, I applaud when one sticks to their own ways. I just wish humility\nwas mode widely practiced. We are not gods, we're just some creatures that\nhave varying degrees of intelligence, but nothing special.\n\nGood luck to you young thinker but remember we are to enjoy this life and the\npeople around us. Don't be lonely and miserable trying to prove everybody\nwrong, it's pointless.\n\n~~~\nDyslexicAtheist\nyeah it goes on and on. the Dunning-Kruger seems strong. I got the impression\nhe is extremely isolated. sad really.\n\n------\nLeanderK\nI had a seminar on set theory and the foundations of mathmatics. It was very\nfun! But, coming from a computer science background, i found the foundations\nvia set-theory unintuitive and a bit ackward to work with.\n\nI know there are some type-system based approaches, how do they turn out in\npractice? How nice are they to work with \"on a low level\"?\n\n~~~\ngylterud\nType theories, especially dependent type theories a la Martin-Löf, are quite\nnatural to work with. They are easier to implement on a computer, and there\nare active communities around several such implementations (Agda, Coq,\nLean,⋯).\n\nMost computer verified proofs are implemented in systems based on type theory,\nnot set theory. Most of the time you do not need sets of sets of sets… You\nwant types whose elements are the mathematical objects you care about.\n\nIn fact, if you want to do set theory, you can do that inside type theory as\nwell. You can define the type of iterative sets and define a membership\nrelation on this. The resulting stucture will satisfy set theoretical axioms.\nThis was first done by Aczel in the 70s.\n\n~~~\n0815test\n\"Set theory\" itself is a bit of an overloaded term; most practical uses of\nnaïve set theory in math do _not_ make use of properties like extensionality\nor the global membership relation, that characterize axiomatic set theory over\nTT. Thus, one could also describe the sort of \"more natural\" systems you\nreference in your comment as 'structural set theory'\n[https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/structural+set+theory](https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/structural+set+theory)\n\nIt's true however that one can do material-set theory _inside_ structural-set\ntheory or type theory, by defining a type of material sets (not necessarily\n\"iterative\" however, that's a matter of whether you want to model the axiom of\nfoundation!) and a membership relation on them.\n\n~~~\ngylterud\nStructural set theory, which as you say throws out the iterative structure, is\nmore like type theory than set theory (this is pointed out in the nlab page\nyou linked).\n\nNaïve set theory as practised in say a course in discrete mathematics\ncertainly uses the iterative structure to construct say a pair. You will\ntypically find the definition 〈x,y〉 ≔ {{a},{a,b}} instead of defining it\nthrough a universal property.\n\nAll the axioms of material set theory take this iterative approach, not just\nfoundation. In fact foundation is not very critical (The Axiom of Anti-\nfoundation is just as workable), as you can always just use the class of well-\nfounded sets and work with those.\n\n------\nmarkkm\n\"The set theory formalism presented here differs from the traditional ZF\nsystem\"\n\nDo not, I repeat, DO NOT study nonstandard theories before familiarizing\nyourself with the standard theory. The standard set theory (ZFC) survived for\nover a century for very, very good reasons. Without an exposure to the\naccepted standards, you will not be able to tell what is reasonable and what\nis not in this set of notes.\n\nIt should also be noted that the author's field of concentration (geometric\nanalysis) has nothing to do with set theory. A typical mathematician knows\nvery little about axiomatic set theory and is prone to making imprecise\nstatements about it.\n\n~~~\ngylterud\nWhile I agree that one could take caution when studying proposed alternative\nfoundations of mathematics (there are a lot of dysfunctional theories out\nthere, and the link may be one of them for all I know), I think it is unfair\nto presume incompetence based on the fact that the author has another field as\nhis specialisation. ZFC is also not the one true way, there are many sensible\nways to formulate set theory, and even valid criticisms of ZFC.\n\n------\nsridca\nRelated: Category Theory for Programmers\n\n[https://github.com/hmemcpy/milewski-ctfp-\npdf](https://github.com/hmemcpy/milewski-ctfp-pdf)\n\n------\nkorpiq\nTo me this looks like an interesting attempt to holistically give some\noverview of mathematics to lay people and could be improved if eg. those with\ncorrection proposals here would have some way to contribute back.\n\nI might immensely enjoy such a wikipedia of mathematics.\n\n~~~\njoe_the_user\nHonestly, I would suggest looking at Wikipedia proper. It's coverage of\nmathematical topics seems to be currently quite good. You can generally easily\ngoogle the proofs and the details for topics presented without these. The web\naltogether is goldmine of mathematical knowledge today imo.\n\nMost things aren't explained \"down to the elementary level\" but anyone who\nspends significant time on this stuff will reach a higher level and appreciate\nnot having the same elementary explanations repeated over and over.\n\n------\nThe_rationalist\nOne should read about standard logic, propositional logic, term logic and nth\norder logics before, because set theory is founded by them.\n\n~~~\nfnrslvr\nSet theory and logic are too interdependent to venture far in one whilst\nsteering clear of the other. For instance, you'll only really skim the surface\nof model theory without a basic understanding of infinite cardinals.\n\n~~~\nThe_rationalist\nThey can indeed be used together and are interdépendant in practice at \"high\nlevel mathematics\" But set theory is made of a lower level primitive (first\norder logic) itself being an extension of zeroth order logic. I was saying\nthat in the context of learning the foundation of mathematics where set theory\nis not the first place to begin.\n\n------\ntempodox\nThis contains some falsehoods, e.g.\n\n    \n    \n      (A⇔B⇔C)\n    \n\nis not the same as\n\n    \n    \n      ((A⇔B)∧(B⇔C))\n    \n\nand the former doesn't imply\n\n    \n    \n      (A⇔C)\n    \n\neither, but the latter does.\n\n~~~\ngylterud\nInterpreting A⇔B⇔C as (A⇔B)⇔C is utterly non-standard, but admittedly\ninteresting.\n\nA⇔B⇔C is usually not a valid expression in any mathematical formalism. But if\nused informally, A⇔B⇔C is usually meant to mean (A⇔B)∧(B⇔C), just as when you\nsay A=B=C when you actually mean (A=B)∧(B=C).\n\n~~~\nrrobukef\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_biconditional](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_biconditional)\n\n(A⇔B)⇔C has more in common with the other logical operators: due to it's\nassociativity an interpretation that is, in my opinion, closer than A=B=C.\n\nEdit, removed: Note that (A⇔B)∧(B⇔C)) is not one of the two ambiguous options:\neither (A⇔B)⇔C or (A∧B∧C)∨(¬A∧¬B∧¬C) this is wrong.\n\n~~~\nDiggsey\nWhat? `(A⇔B)∧(B⇔C)` is exactly equivalent to `(A∧B∧C)∨(¬A∧¬B∧¬C)` which is\nequivalent to `A = B = C`\n\n~~~\nrrobukef\nSo it is.\n\n------\nfesoliveira\nI wish someone could give this a beauty treatment to make it look like\nImmersive Math, for instance\n([http://immersivemath.com/ila/index.html](http://immersivemath.com/ila/index.html)).\nThis typography and formatting makes it very hard to read these notes,\nalthough the content seems to be very interesting.\n\n~~~\nmeuk\nThere are links to pdf files near the headers of the chapters, although the\npdfs are called \"obsolete\", so I guess they are not the latest version or miss\ncontent.\n\n------\nformalsystem\nSeems like it's hit by the HN hug of death. Am wondering is there any way for\nme to help out random people who I think have good content by mirroring their\ncontent and increase scale on their behalf?\n\n------\ncrimsonalucard\nCategory theory is an alternative view on the foundations of mathematics that\nliterally gets rid of sets.\n\n~~~\nrocqua\nWell, there is the rather prototypical category Set. So I would not say it\ngets rid of sets.\n\n~~~\nIngoBlechschmid\nIt's more subtle than that.\n\nTrue, given any reasonable well-behaved notion of \"set\", there is a category\nSet of all sets. (Its properties will depend on the specific notion of \"set\"\nchosen.)\n\nBut this observation isn't really relevant to issues of formalization.\nMathematics can be formalized in lots of systems, set theory being one, type\ntheory being another, and category theory (more specifically ETCS) providing\nyet another alternative.\n\nAll of these foundations are interesting, enjoy unique features, and are\ninterrelated. In particular, ETCS and set theory are very similar from the\npoint of view of foundations: Basically, ordinary set theory and ETCS are two\ndifferent flavors of set theory: ordinary set theory rests upon a global\nmembership predicate ∈, while ETCS rests upon the notion of a morphism.\n\nClosest to mathematical practice is probably type theory. (But keep in mind\nthat the points above still stand, and that most mathematicians work\ninformally, not knowing any details about set theory, type theory or ETCS.)\n\n------\nthomk\nQuestion: Would you use 'set theory' to find patterns of sets in a hierarchy?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nChase Adam at Startup School 2013 - floetic\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlT3UhC7NwQ\n\n======\nfloetic\nThis is by far the best presentation at StartupSchool 2013. I was in awe when\nI saw it from the 9th row.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCreating a low-latency high-availability network for voice calls - moxie\nhttp://www.whispersystems.org/blog/low-latency-switching/\n======\nScramblejams\nNot enough detail here, but I'm surprised when I see the terms \"voice\" and\n\"TCP\" together. Do they use TCP to set up the call, then UDP to handle the\naudio?\n\nEdit: Yep, they use UDP for the audio:\n[https://github.com/WhisperSystems/RedPhone/wiki/Signaling-\nPr...](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/RedPhone/wiki/Signaling-Protocol)\n\n~~~\nbradleyland\nWith the traditional VoIP stacks, yes. There are two components to making\nphone calls: messaging and media. The messaging part sets up and tears down\ncalls. The media part passes the audio.\n\nI'd imagine they're doing the same.\n\n~~~\ndkhenry\nbut typically you use something that can have at least some intelegent\nbehaviour like RTP not UDP. Why did they choose that when literally every\nother pure VoIP service uses RTP ?\n\n~~~\nmoxie\nWe use RTP (actually SRTP and ZRTP), but the transport is still UDP.\n\n------\njpollock\nThe next problem will be when they get to having large numbers of servers in a\nregion.\n\nThen two problems will manifest themselves.\n\n1) The client will take long enough to work through the list of servers that\nthe wrong server is chosen simply because the connection is initiated first.\n\n2) This design has all servers seeing all calls. The load represented by all\nthe TCP connections hitting all of the servers will consume more and more of a\nserver.\n\nNeither is a problem you can solve by adding more servers. In fact, they are\nmade worse by adding servers!\n\nHowever, if you're charging per call, that's what they call a \"good problem to\nhave\".\n\nNifty solution to the problem though.\n\n~~~\nmoxie\nAgreed. We haven't run into this yet (and aren't charging at all, this is an\nOSS project), but I think that would be the point where you have to do one of\ntwo things:\n\n1) Architect your DNS response to include a small sample of the total result\nset for the region, where the sample includes at least one switch from each\nmicro-region.\n\n2) Break down and introduce load balancers, so that there's on load balancer\nper micro-region, which fronts all of the switches within that micro-region.\n\nFortunately an individual switch doesn't really do much (just shovel packets\naround), so the number of simultaneous calls a switch can handle is high\nenough that redundancy is more about availability than load.\n\n~~~\nJshWright\nI don't see how the license the software is released under is related to how\nmuch you charge to use the service...?\n\n~~~\nmoxie\nFair enough, I should have been more specific.\n\nI was trying to imply that this is not a for-profit project, but you're\ncorrect, that's not what a software license communicates.\n\n------\ngz5\nThe server architecture is nice but my favorite part is the simple signaling\nprotocol, as opposed to SIP or any other overly complex (for this use case)\ntelephony signaling protocol. Nice work.\n\n------\nandrewcooke\ni'm confused (which is not too surprising as i am no expert on this). why\ncan't they hole-punch through nats? then they would avoid the extra bounce-\nthrough-server latency and would hugely reduce the load on servers. i thought\nthat was how skype worked, for example.\n\n(i realise this doesn't stop their \"fastest first\" idea being useful - i got\nkind of sidetracked by the explanation of how servers are used near the start\nof the post).\n\n[ah, ok. thanks for the explanation.]\n\n~~~\nmoxie\nYour NAT traversal strategy is limited by the type of NAT being employed.\nTraditionally, the worst case scenario for NAT traversal is \"symmetric NAT.\"\n\nSymmetric NAT means that each tuple of (source_ip, source_port,\ndestination_ip, _destination_port) gets its own unique (external_ip,\nexternal_port) tuple. This is bad because it means that STUN is ineffective:\nyour STUN server will see a different external port than what your actual\ndestination would see.\n\nMobile data networks are actually _worse_ than symmetric NAT. Not only will\nyour external port change based on your target, but your external IP likely\nwill as well.\n\nThis makes NAT traversal, AFAIK, basically impossible.\n\n~~~\nvy8vWJlco\nAnd there's no real reason to do it either given the availability of global\nIPv6 addresses and any of the free tunnel brokers/teredo/etc, other than the\nsimple lack of adoption/momentum. Most ISPs will need a push, but from an\ninfrastructure perspective it just boils down to a new gateway router or a\nfirmware upgrade. It doesn't even need replacing the end-user equipment if\nISPs simply set up a tunnel server for their own customers as a transitional\nmeasure.\n\n------\nmtrimpe\nSo it's basically a very pragmatic tradeoff for getting 80% of the value of\ngeo-based DNS with only 20% of the effort.\n\nNice work ...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNVIDIA to Acquire AGEIA - pmattos\nhttp://www.dailytech.com/Update+NVIDIA+to+Acquire+AGEIA/article10573.htm\n\n======\nivankirigin\nTwo cheers for dedicated hardware pushing progress while Moore's law for\nsilicone circuits approaches a wall!\n\nAfter a graphics processor, you'll buy a physics engine, and then vector math,\nAI, and Vision engines.\n\nGraphics card makers know this, and will just put all those chips on a single\ncard.\n\n~~~\nwmf\nI think most people will skip the step of buying the physics card and just\nwait for it to be integrated into the GPU. It will be an interesting marriage,\nthough, since the Nvidia and Ageia architectures have some significant\ndifferences.\n\n~~~\npmjordan\nThey are somewhat different, and I suspect the Ageia PhysX line as it is now\nwill be discontinued. It's not exactly been selling like crazy, and I suspect\nnVidia are buying them out for the software, not the hardware side.\n\nIf you look at benchmarks, SLI isn't exactly what they make it out to be: it\nscales very badly in many games, presumably because of render-to-texture and\nvertex feedback rendering, which either have to be duplicated or copied\nbetween the cards.\n\nThose types of effects are getting more common not less, so I suspect it'll\nbecome commonplace for games to do physics calculations on one GPU and the\nactual rendering on the other. Right now, driver support for this kind of\nthing isn't great, and nVidia don't have their own physics engine.\n\n------\ndawnerd\nI just can't wait until our video cards match the speed out our cpu. That will\nbe the day...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: port-to-process, a sysop script to show what's running on a given port - jph\nhttps://github.com/sixarm/port-to-process\n======\njph\nI'm seeking hacker advice for this sysop script, to make it more useful on\nmore systems. Currently handles ss, lsof, netstat, fuser, on macOS and Linux.\nThanks!\n\n~~~\nzzzcpan\nWhy is this a shell script? Shouldn't it be just a few documented ways to get\nsuch information with mentioned tools? Script is just too much for this, you\nhave to trust the author, trust the source, install it, learn it, run it.\nWhile you could've just read few lines of text and run appropriate commands in\nthe terminal.\n\n~~~\njph\n> Why is this a shell script?\n\nSo this can run.\n\nAlso, so I can run one command that works on a range of systems.\n\n> Shouldn't it be just a few documented ways to get such information with\n> mentioned tools?\n\nYou're welcome to do that. The README.md file is documentation. I welcome\nconstructive feedback.\n\n> you have to trust the author\n\nI am the author, so that's covered. :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nObama's Trauma Team: Inside the Nightmare Launch of HealthCare.Gov - Realskeptic\nhttp://content.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2166770,00.html\n======\nbrandonb\nI've been working on healthcare.gov for the last few months alongside a bunch\nof other Google, Facebook, and Y Combinator alums.\n\nI'll always remember what Mikey told us in December, after the site was back\nup, could handle a non-trivial amount of traffic, and people who wanted health\ninsurance could finally get it:\n\n\"1 in 1000 uninsured people die each year. It's not an exaggeration to say\nthat due to the work we're doing here, 5,000-10,000 people will live to see\nthe end of 2014. You should be proud of what you've done, but we should also\nall be grateful to have this opportunity.\"\n\nWe're all grateful to be here, but there's a hell of a lot more work to be\ndone.\n\nIf any of you out there are an amazing software engineer or SRE, and want to\nhelp make our government work better, please shoot me an email:\nbrandon@hcgov.us!\n\n~~~\nwooter\n\"1 in 1000 uninsured people die each year. It's not an exaggeration to say\nthat due to the work we're doing here, 5,000-10,000 people will live to see\nthe end of 2014. You should be proud of what you've done, but we should also\nall be grateful to have this opportunity.\"\n\nHospitals don't let uninsured people die and insuring people doesn't magically\nsave their lives.\n\n~~~\nCrito\nHospitals do \"let\" uninsured people die because they are not obligated to\nprovide the full extent of their care capabilities to people who cannot afford\nit. Come in with a hole in your abdomen, and for sure they'll patch you up\neven if you don't have insurance. Come in riddled with cancer? Don't expect\nthe same as they would give somebody who could pay themselves or had\ninsurance.\n\nThis said, it is still a shoddy use of statistics. _\" 1 in 1000 uninsured\npeople die each year\"_ by itself tells us pretty much nothing. What is the\nrate of death for insured people?\n\nWikipedia tells me that _8.39_ in 1000 people die in America every year, so if\nuninsured people are only dying at a rate of _1_ in 1000 every year, it seems\nto me that either it is beneficial to be uninsured, or uninsured people are\nnot representative of the population (perhaps because many of them are young\nand healthy?).\n\nI _suspect_ that what is going on is this person actually meant to say\nsomething along the lines of _\" 1 in 1000 people die every year in ways that\ncould have been prevented if they had insurance\"_ A subtle but important\ndifference. The actual mortality rate of uninsured people is most likely much\nhigher than 1 in 1000, but the deaths of uninsured people in motorcycle\naccidents would not be counted in that _\" 1 in 1000\"_ figure.\n\nEither way, it is shoddy.\n\n~~~\ntwistedpair\n> Come in riddled with cancer? Don't expect the same as they would give\n> somebody who could pay themselves or had insurance.\n\nAh, yes, the classic American healthcare problem. The poor person just gets to\ngo to hospice and keel over. The rich person gets to limp along, endure 3\nrounds of chemo, and spend the few remaining months of her life hooked up to\nmachines in what is arguably a Pyrrhic victory and even lower quality of life.\n\n~~~\nCrito\nYou know that many people actually survive cancer and go on to live otherwise\nregular lives, right?\n\n------\npella\nDickerson rules:\n\n _\" Rule 1: \"The war room and the meetings are for solving problems. There are\nplenty of other venues where people devote their creative energies to shifting\nblame.\"\n\nRule 2: \"The ones who should be doing the talking are the people who know the\nmost about an issue, not the ones with the highest rank. If anyone finds\nthemselves sitting passively while managers and executives talk over them with\nless accurate information, we have gone off the rails, and I would like to\nknow about it.\" (Explained Dickerson later: \"If you can get the managers out\nof the way, the engineers will want to solve things.\")\n\nRule 3: \"We need to stay focused on the most urgent issues, like things that\nwill hurt us in the next 24--48 hours.\" \"_\n\n~~~\nbaseten\nRule #1: Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!\n\n~~~\nlutusp\nI wonder how many readers will recognize this famous quotation and its source.\n\n(long pause ...)\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove)\n\n~~~\nsehr\nA lot, I hope! Strangelove is pretty well known for the most part across the\ninternet. Fantastic movie\n\n~~~\nsaraid216\nI watched it. I wasn't blown away. I don't remember it with enough detail to\nrecognize random quotations.\n\n~~~\nlutusp\n> I watched it. I wasn't blown away.\n\nLike many films, it hasn't aged very well. It relies on the atmosphere that\nexisted at the height of the Cold War, and a certain atmosphere of darkness\nand paranoia that's less popular as a plot device in modern times. Also, for a\nmodern audience it would have required better special effects, using methods\nthat didn't exist at the time.\n\n------\npdeuchler\n>> \"It is also a story of an Obama Administration obsessed with health care\nreform policy but above the nitty-gritty of implementing it. No one in the\nWhite House meetings leading up to the launch had any idea whether the\ntechnology worked.\"\n\nI used to be this guy. The guy with the lofty ideas, but who thought the\nimplementation was \"beneath me\". The guy who would sit around, waxing poetic\nabout various features, user acquisition, header alignment, etc. Don't get me\nwrong I had serious technical chops, but fixing that annoying localization\nbug? Blegh. Form encoding off? Don't wanna get my hands dirty. I had \"big\nideas\"! I was going to change the world! People who change the world don't do\nthe dirty work! So I'm very empathetic to the Obama Administration.\n\nLike them, I needed a real wake up call. In my case, a friend who had\nimplemented an idea I had sold the software for a lot of money. When I\nconfronted him about sharing the profits he started running git blame on files\nacross the project. My name came up maybe once or twice, across a multi-k LOC\nproject, and even then on nearly inconsequential lines. It hit me then that\nwhile ideas may have value, the implementation usurps all of it. An idea alone\nis powerful, but once it's implemented the idea becomes worthless. At that\npoint it's all about rolling up your sleeves and _getting shit done_. When you\nfocus on that problems like an \"ID generator\" becoming a bottleneck (I had to\nread that bit several times over... apparently I need to start raising my\nrates to the hundreds of millions) disappear. It's a hard lesson I had to\nlearn, and it's one the Obama administration has hopefully learned as well. Of\ncourse, I had just turned 17 when I learned my lesson, and Obama is now a lame\nduck with less than 2 years left on his final term. I guess this exemplifies\nmy greatest struggle with the Obama legacy, in that it has become one defined\nby squandered potential.\n\n~~~\nJonFish85\n>It hit me then that while ideas may have value, the implementation usurps all\nof it. An idea alone is powerful, but once it's implemented the idea becomes\nworthless.\n\nYou need both. Implementation people aren't all that useful without a vision.\nA vision isn't all that useful without implementation. It's a symbiotic\nrelationship.\n\nSteve Jobs without a Steve Wozniak probably wouldn't have been as successful.\nSteve Wozniak, without Steve Jobs, probably wouldn't have been as successful.\nBut the two put together made some great things happen.\n\nSame with the moon landing. As much as it took a tremendous engineering effort\nto put a man on the moon, it took someone with the vision and power to make it\nall work. JFK didn't get involved in the details, I'm sure, but he really\nhelped to set the tone of the whole effort.\n\nThere's a fine line between looking at implementation as \"beneath\" your\nposition and knowing when you're being more of a hindrance than a help. In my\nexperience, nothing has driven me more crazy than a person above me who, while\nbeing a great project manager or whatever, tries to get involved with things\nthat end up hindering the effort. If you take a weekend course on programming\nin Java, that's great! But don't start giving out \"helpful\" tips in something\nthat is not your domain.\n\n~~~\nsaraid216\n> You need both. Implementation people aren't all that useful without a\n> vision. A vision isn't all that useful without implementation. It's a\n> symbiotic relationship.\n\n37signals' take on this was the best one I've seen (paraphrased):\n\nIdeas are a multiplier. If your execution is good, a good idea will multiply\nthat. If your execution is minimal, a good idea will scrape by. If your\nexecution is abyssal, a good idea will make it _worse_.\n\nI'd link the actual page in the book, but I have always had trouble finding\nit.\n\n~~~\nalexhaar\nDerek Sivers talks about this idea as well:\n[http://sivers.org/multiply](http://sivers.org/multiply)\n\n~~~\nsaraid216\nActually, that's _exactly_ what I remember. I think I have been misattributing\nit this entire time.\n\nDamn it. Thanks. :P\n\n------\nnimz\nHealthCare.gov is definitely NOT fixed or \"revived\" yet. I was trying to\nregister for healthcare for the Feb 15th deadline and there were errors after\nerrors. At the end, after hours of trying and waiting on hold for the tech\nhelp-line, I was not able to register at all and missed the deadline. The\nhelp-line's answer was, we are still working out the kinks, please print out\nthe PDF and fill it out manually. It's still a disaster-show.\n\n~~~\nbrandonb\nYep, in spite of the progress made since October (when the site was entirely\ndown for days at a time), there are absolutely still problems.\n\nI also see you're a YC alum! If you're interested in helping out, or just to\nprovide an error report on the problem you encountered, email me at\nbrandon@hcgov.us.\n\n~~~\nargumentum\nDo you have any involvement with the individual State websites? I've had _so\nmany_ technical problems registering in California.\n\n~~~\nbrandonb\nUnfortunately not. :( I'm a California resident -- although living temporarily\nin Maryland for the project -- and have gotten the same reports of technical\nproblems.\n\nTo give some background, 36 states use the federal marketplace, and 14 built\ntheir own. Covered California is run by the state of California, with an\nindependent contracting company, codebase, set of servers, etc.\n\nWe do have some ideas about how to improve that situation over the long term,\nbut those will take time to bear fruit.\n\n------\njobu\nWow! They weren't even caching database calls:\n\n _HealthCare.gov had been constructed so that every time a user had to get\ninformation from the website 's vast database, the website had to make what's\ncalled a query into that database. Well-constructed, high-volume sites,\nespecially e-commerce sites, will instead store or assemble the most\nfrequently accessed information in a layer above the entire database, called a\ncache._\n\nIt also struck me as a little funny that Time had to define the term 'cache'.\nEven my mom (74 years old) has some idea what a cache is (browser cache).\n\n~~~\ndragontamer\n[http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue/2009/05/07/115945-mexico-\ns-w...](http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue/2009/05/07/115945-mexico-s-weapons-\ncache-stymies-tracing/)\n\nDepends on what industry you work in. A Cache may look more like a giant pile\nof weapons as opposed to some memory in a computer.\n\n~~~\nsaraid216\nEh, it's not industry-dependent so much as industries have specific\nreductions. A cache is long-term storage. The weapons industry would expect it\nto be filled with weapons, and maybe some body armor. A scouting party would\nexpect tools for equipment repair, rations, and maybe some minor comfort gear.\nA computer scientist would expect it to be full of bytes.\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache)\n\n[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cache&allowed_in_fr...](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cache&allowed_in_frame=0)\n\n------\nedabobojr\nOne question I have - were the high-tech wizards paid standard gsa rates?\n\n[https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS35F5457H/0LUS2P.2NVK...](https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS35F5457H/0LUS2P.2NVKCH_GS-35F-5457H_GS35F5457HGPLOY.PDF)\n\nPage 25. Top developer rate for 2014 is $99/hr which requires 10 years of\nexperience.\n\n~~~\nmikeash\nWould explain a lot if so. Any developer you can get for that rate who has\nbeen working for 10 years likely does not have 10 years of experience, but 1\nyear of experience repeated 10 times.\n\n~~~\nqdog\n40x99x50=~$200k/year. That doesn't seem unreasonable compensation, what am I\nmissing?\n\n~~~\ndiminoten\nThat $99 goes to the contractor, not the employee. There's a _ton_ of overhead\nand profiting that comes out of that $99. I won't even hazard a guess at how\nmuch of that $99 actually makes it to the guy or gal's pocket.\n\nThat said, it's not a bad living wage. I suspect below industry standard\nthough, is what these folks are saying.\n\n~~~\nqdog\nAh, I thought it was a direct contract with the government, not a contracted\nperson from an agency, my mistake.\n\nOf course, I guess I should have assumed that, there aren't many direct\ngovernment jobs for this type of thing anymore, it seems.\n\n~~~\nmikeash\nYep, the government contracts out to a gigantic company who then \"hires\" you\nand has you work on the thing, and takes half the money in exchange for doing\nnot a whole lot. It's a sad system.\n\n------\nGlide\n_But one lesson of the fall and rise of HealthCare.gov has to be that the\npractice of awarding high-tech, high-stakes contracts to companies whose\nprimary skill seems to be getting those contracts rather than delivering on\nthem has to change._\n\nIf this happens the entire contracting landscape of DC would change\ndramatically.\n\n------\njfc\n> _the people running HealthCare.gov had no \"dashboard,\" no quick way for\n> engineers to measure what was going on at the website_\n\nSomeone needs to disrupt the government contracts business pronto.\n\n~~~\nsmacktoward\nThese folks are trying: [http://www.dobt.co/](http://www.dobt.co/)\n\nIt's an incredibly difficult thing to do, though. Procurement practices that\nare _enshrined in law_ are much harder to disrupt than those that are just bad\nhabits that ossified over time.\n\n~~~\nsaraid216\nThere are ways to deal with things that are enshrined in law. Building a\ncorporation is unlikely to be the right way to do it.\n\n------\nMrZongle2\n\"Revived\" is probably the right term to use.\n\nA clinically-dead patient can be revived, but the condition they're in is\n_far_ from OK.\n\n------\ndannyr\nI heard that several people from YC startups and Google are helping out. This\nis one of the reasons why we're seeing a lot of improvements to the Federal\nExchange site.\n\n~~~\naristus\nA friend of mine, from Facebook's networking team, also spent a month there.\nHe came back with a thousand-yard stare.\n\n~~~\nlaz\nThe environment takes a toll on everyone, some more than others. The things\nI've seen ... you cannot un-see ;)\n\n------\nrjzzleep\nthink about it this way. you have a bunch of technically unsavvy people,\nbecause they have been working in government contracts forever. now you come\nalong, and say hey i could build this for you for much less money, and much\nbetter.\n\nhow in the heavens would he know that you can deliver? you'll choose the one\nyou'll know at least. and since he has documents to back him up(mcse, mcsa, he\nmight have worked for microsoft for a while). he's the obvious choice.\n\ni worked for the government in healthcare for a while. these are not\nintentionally malicious people. hell, they even want to make it better, but\nit's a combination of regulation(bidding system that favors friends), lack of\nknowledge, and a little bit of ignorance.\n\nbut if you want more details feel free to ask. it was kind of fun to see a\ncorruption case close up.\n\n------\ngopi\nReading this strengthened my belief in the limited government\n\n~~~\npjscott\nAnything too big to fail is scary. What if it fails?\n\n------\npikewood\n\"...government regulations did not allow them, even though they offered, to be\nvolunteers if they worked for any sustained period. So they were put on the\npayroll of contractor QSSI as hourly workers, making what Dickerson says was\n\"a fraction\" of his Google pay\"\n\nThis information troubles me, because QSSI was just hired to fix Maryland's\nbroken Health Exchange site. It sounds like the company is cashing in on the\ndonation of brandonb and others experts' time?\n\nbrandonb, is your team involved with the Maryland efforts, or is that a\ncompletely separate team?\n\n~~~\nbrandonb\nUnfortunately, each of the 14 states that made their own exchange used a\nseparate team with a separate codebase.\n\nTo be clear, it's not like QSSI or anybody else is ripping us off. We're all\ngetting paid the standard contracting rate. But many of us probably would've\nworked for free if they had let us.\n\n------\nmgkimsal\nI have a hard time believing that no one anywhere on the original teams\nunderstood that caching database calls was good/standard practice. I think\neven basic examples like that point out the lack of management problem. I can\neasily envision someone on the team bringing up basic data caching and getting\noverruled by other people on the team for trivial/stupid/political reasons.\nWith no proper or clear management in place, there's no one to take this stuff\nto.\n\n~~~\nshpiel\nWhat type of database did they use? What type of caching would be desirable?\nMost modern RDBSes, like Postgre, Oracle, or Microsoft SQL server, have\ninternal LRU caching already implemented. InnoDB tries to store everything in\nmemory.\n\nI wonder if they meant that the default caching was turned off, or that all\nthe queries had \"no cache\" clauses, or that an additional caching layer\n(Redis, Memcached) was not implemented?\n\n~~~\nwatwut\nThey used markLogic NoSQL store\n[http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/12/03/healthcare-govs-heart-\nbe...](http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/12/03/healthcare-govs-heart-beats-for-\nnosql/)\n\nJust for the record, contractor did not wanted to use it and argued the team\nhave no experience with it. Someone in government decided it must be done that\nway (in spring or summer).\n\n~~~\nhga\nYeah, a database with an unfamiliar paradigm in a project with late and\nconstantly changing requirements, a major one of \"no window shopping\" in\nAugust, and others _through the week before launch_ , is an obvious recipe for\nan extra big disaster.\n\nSome people have theorized that Accenture's new role is to quietly replace\nmuch of the current code base with their not quite so horrible California\nexchange code.\n\n------\npuppetmaster3\nHmm. OK, here:\n\n#1: Understand the customer!\n\nIn this case it's\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Ignagni](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Ignagni)\n(They lobbied a congressman from Chicago w/ donations to elect, and Republican\nside is pissed their side did not get more.) In EU, it tends to be written for\nthe people, but in USA, it's the lobbyists as customers.\n\n#2: You can't fix political problems with software!\n\nFor example we can make the problem 10 times less by allowing each state to\nmanager Healthcare and compete for residents. Like Massachusetts. It's a fools\nerrand. But you can milk the feds if you bribe the right official.\n\n#3. You won't find good and un-employed engineers!\n\nNot in SV anyway. _A_ \\- type engineers are ~ $240K and up. Y-combinator is\nmostly n00b growth hackers, not expereinced coders. Plus the rumor is that you\nhave to be loyal to the party of New Democrats as the main req, not software\nsystems.\n\n#4. I heard it's written in .NET and Oracle Access Manager.\n\nA requirement? That's not what google plus, facebook or iTunes use or such\nuse. I don't want to code w/ those people that use that stack ( but I would\nhave a great time w/ them after 5pm, they tend to be nice people ).\n\nKalvin and Brandon: The most patriotic thing to do is to not try and catch a\nfalling knife so that each state can have a system they own - and we can move\nto a state that has a good one. Party greetings to you.\n\n------\nakoumjian\nI am still frequently getting errors when trying to sign up. Every few days I\nget a little further in the process, only to get a random 500 when performing\nsome next operation.\n\n------\nPhasmaFelis\nI'd really like to see a proper postmortem of the launch problems. Read about\nhow it got fixed is nice, but I want a detailed account of how such an\nimportant project with the direct attention of the U.S. President managed to\nget fucked so absolutely.\n\n------\ntunesmith\nIt's a great article, but this last line drives me crazy: \"But in the end [the\nPresident] was as aloof from the people and facts he needed to avoid this\ncatastrophe as he was from the people who ended up fixing it.\" It sounded to\nme more like he was trusting people whose job it was to deliver. So his\nfailure to micromanage is somehow being \"aloof\". Never pass up an opportunity\nto reinforce a media meme, I guess.\n\n~~~\ntwoodfin\nThis was the signature accomplishment of his first term and a substantial part\nof his legacy as President. He was out on the hustings making speech after\nspeech about how buying health insurance on the exchange was going to be as\neasy as shopping for a plane ticket on Expedia.\n\nIt would not have been \"micromanaging\" for him to have done what was necessary\nto be sure that what he was saying matched up with reality. Yes, it was a\ngiant IT project of the sort governments usually suck at. But that was the\nbill he got passed and signed. If his administration wasn't capable of leading\nthat project to successful, timely completion, he has to shoulder much of the\nblame.\n\n------\nn0rb3rt\n[http://www.civisanalytics.com/pages/civis-\nuninsured](http://www.civisanalytics.com/pages/civis-uninsured)\n\n------\nmephi5t0\nQuestion: did anyone got fired in Washington for blowing through 300 mln and\ndelivering jack shit? Why if you get hired in a company and preform poorly or\njust because of the budget cuts - you get laid off and end of story. If they\nhave budget problem in DC and politicians doesn't do what they were supposed\nto, they get to keep a job and tell more lies...\n\n------\nchocosoes\nthis may sound stupid but i'm just wondering why the article is dated in the\nfuture (Mar 10, 2014)? we're on even on March 3 yet, and yet its there\n[http://search.time.com/results.html?N=46&Ns=p_date_range|1](http://search.time.com/results.html?N=46&Ns=p_date_range|1)\n\nI'm not a regular time magazine reader, am I missing something here?\n\n~~~\nMvandenbergh\nMagazine articles are usually dated to the print edition they appear in.\n\n------\nwarrenmiller\nDoes that article say 'Monday, Mar. 10, 2014' for anyone else?\n\n------\ngrumps\nWhat's up with the date on this article `Monday, Mar. 10, 2014`\n\n~~~\nNSAID\nThat's most likely the date of the print edition this article will appear in.\n\n~~~\ngrumps\nAhh I started thinking that...but at first I was just wondering if I was\nreally confused on the current date.\n\n------\nuncre4tive\nHow come the headline is dated in the future, March 10th 2014?\n\n~~~\nPhlarp\nThis article is likely set to \"officially\" release in the March edition of\nTime.\n\nJust a fragment of old media leaking onto the internet.\n\n~~~\nSilasX\nFalsehoods programmers believe about time #80: \"Created\" dates will all be in\nthe past.\n\n[http://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-\npro...](http://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-programmers-\nbelieve-about-time-wisdom)\n\n------\nfuturist\nCorrelation, causation, blah blah blah. There are people who pocketed a lot of\ntaxpayer money creating the healthcare.gov failboat, and no one is being held\naccountable. That's my takeaway from the article.\n\n------\nprobablyfiction\nThis link takes you to page 10. Annoying.\n\n~~~\nj_s\n[http://content.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2166770,00.html](http://content.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2166770,00.html)\n\n------\napi\nWizards? It's an e-commerce web site. This is baby stuff, even at scale.\n\n~~~\nsmokinjoe\nPCI Compliance can be a nightmare.\n\nI don't even want to imagine HIPAA compliance for something of this magnitude.\n\n~~~\nerichocean\nIt's not HIPPA compliant. Really, did you think the government follows its own\nrules? Get real.\n\n~~~\nsmokinjoe\nI guess you can call me naive.\n\n..and slightly ignorant regarding this HIPAA kerfuffle that popped up. I did\nsome quick [hilarious] research that resulted in an issue where commented copy\nwas being used as an indicator that there was to be no sense of privacy on the\nwebsite.\n\nsource: [http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-\nmeter/statements/2013/oct/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-\nmeter/statements/2013/oct/29/joe-barton/healthcaregov-users-waive-any-\nreasonable-right-pri/)\n\nI'm not entirely sure that's what you're referencing or whether you're just\nbein' a smart aleck, but I had some fun reading up on the story. I also\nlearned that the website healthcare.gov doesn't necessarily need as much HIPAA\ncompliance as I had initially anticipated. To enroll, the only 'medical' type\ndata you need to include is whether you are a smoker or not - I thought there\nwould be much more sensitive information right off the bat.\n\n------\ngoggles99\n> _How an unlikely group of high-tech wizards revived Obama 's troubled\n> HealthCare.gov website_\n\nHow? With another 14 million dollars... that is how. You can do a lot of\nthings with 14 million dollars, this is not especially true when you are\ntalking about the govt spending this kind of money, but still - it is not\npocket change to the average company.\n\n[http://www.nextgov.com/cloud-computing/2014/02/cost-\nobamacar...](http://www.nextgov.com/cloud-computing/2014/02/cost-obamacare-\ncontract-has-least-quintupled/79202/?oref=ng-HPtopstory)\n\n------\nSpikeDad\nTitle = No view. It's not \"Obama's\" website. It's the Federal Government's\nwebsite. Or the Dept of Health's Website or, etc, etc, etc.\n\nUsing Obama for link bait means your article gets no reads from me.\n\n~~~\nGhostHardware\nThat's how the article is titled on Time's website \"Obama's Trauma Team\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: What are some gift ideas from an alumni to a professor? - neoplatonian\nHaving graduated from university a few years ago, I feel like visiting all my professors who influenced me for the better, and I&#x27;d feel awkward if I go empty-handed.\n======\nxnyan\nJust the fact that you are coming back is very nice and uncommon.\n\nUnless you are trying to influence/bribe someone or you are from a culture of\nexpensive gifts, gifts between professional friends are tokens of goodwill. A\ncard or letter are both good, maybe some other small trinket but honestly a\ncard is worth far more to me than some $20 pen in a gift box.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTraditional C \"Hello World\" working in NaCl - ginsweater\nhttps://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/native-client-discuss/lT5bsW1ZlKQ/WsXJ5y_2s54J\n\n======\ncalpaterson\nAs a side note, why is it that I have to sign in to Google in order to be able\nto see this? Is registration /really/ necessary for Google Groups?\n\n~~~\nrnadna\nYou are right. It's very annoying. It's even worse than having links that are\nbehind a paywall, because at least a paywall usually indicates that funds are\nflowing to the person (reporter, etc.) who created the content. The google\ngroups situation is quite different, and quite annoying. I _never_ login to\ngoogle groups to see something listed on HN. I wonder whether HN could provide\nan option to let readers avoid such items, by removing them from the listing\nor flagging them?\n\n~~~\ndangrossman\nYou are only being asked for a password because you're (partially) logged in\nto a Google Account already. Either log out, or open Google Groups links with\n\"open in incognito window\" if you use Chrome.\n\n------\nraverbashing\nCan someone please explain to me why running native code coming from a web\nsite is a good idea?\n\nBecause I see this as \"Google's ActiveX\"\n\n~~~\ncantankerous\nRead the paper. It's a subset of x86 that retains better security properties\nfor distribution.\n\n[http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/native_client/data/docs_tarba...](http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/native_client/data/docs_tarball/nacl/googleclient/native_client/documentation/nacl_paper.pdf)\n\n~~~\nraverbashing\nVery interesting. The security features are very thorough.\n\nOf course, until someone finds a vulnerability, or a way through the\nvalidator, or an exploit on an abstracted function.\n\nStill, it's a good security model\n\n~~~\nwillvarfar\nThe good news is its being very actively pro-actively fuzzed and fixed.\n\nWorth looking at too: zeroVM <http://zerovm.org/>\n\n------\ntoemetoch\nI'm a fan of fast native code, but I worry that this promotes sneaky code in\nthe background once it gets widely adopted.\n\nWith javascript we basically have open-source web apps. I often skim through\njs source to learn new tricks - and obfuscation doesn't really stop me (apart\nfrom google's java-translated js) . With compiled NaCl I probably wouldn't be\nable to find out a lot.\n\nI'm not talking about \"stealing user data\" when I say sneaky code. No, with\ncompiled native code a whole new game is started: computational-intensive\ncode. It wouldn't be that difficult to include code that gets a job to work on\nfor a few minutes: breaking captchas, brute-forcing passwords, anything that\nshift computational effort from a server to a client.\n\n~~~\nDrakim\nI would assume the NaCl apps won't run by default. Maybe you get that \"click\nto activate\" thing that firefox is implementing for Flash and Java\n\n~~~\ntoemetoch\nIt doesn't run by default. But remember it's Google who's pushing this, and\ntheir browser has momentum. I'd guess it's just a matter of time before they\nrun it by default. They already cashed out for security bounties for NaCl in\nthe past[1] and seem to have increased resources recently[2] since it's quite\na lucrative market for gaming.\n\n[1] [https://developers.google.com/native-\nclient/community/securi...](https://developers.google.com/native-\nclient/community/security-contest/faq) [2]\nm.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/google-bringing-high-end-gaming-chrome-via-\nnative-054102268.html\n\n------\narkitaip\nI wonder when we will see the first obfuscated C for NaCI code contest.\n\n~~~\nspicyj\nJust a note, it's NaCl, spelled NACL, as in the molecule \"sodium chloride\"\n(and the abbreviation of the name \"Native Client\").\n\n------\nrollypolly\nI wonder how it handles a bogus printf format string.\n\n~~~\nloeg\nThe same way the underlying printf implementation does? This isn't wrapping\nprintf(3), just the underlying write(2).\n\nAre you trying to ask if it catches, e.g., format string vulnerabilities? I\nthink the answer to that is: Native Client's aim is to be a safe x86 VM, so —\nhopefully. But to me personally, it seems unlikely that they've thought of\neverything.\n\n~~~\ncaf\nThe important part of the design - the bit that makes it achievable - is that\nit's _not_ a general x86 VM. It only accepts a limited subset of valid x86\nobject code, a subset chosen to make validation a tractable problem. This\nrequires a modified compiler be used.\n\nThe unlikelihood that the original design was perfect is probably why they had\nthe \"Native Client Security Contest\" a few years ago - and indeed independent\nresearchers found several flaws. Personally, I'm a lot happier with it now\nthat they've fixed everything that Mark Dowd could find wrong with it ;)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nUnited will offer up to $10,000 to bumped passengers - smaili\nhttp://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-united-airlines-dragged-passenger-bumping-changes-0427-biz-20170426-story.html\n======\nmariuolo\nKeyword being \"up to\".\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAfter 7 years of blogging in German, I am switching to English. Here is why - imartin2k\nhttp://meshedsociety.com/fighting-the-language-fragmentation/\n======\na_bonobo\nI used to blog in German for a relatively large German portal and stopped\nbecause I couldn't stand the commenting behaviour by Germans - where in\nUS/English sites you get 50% joking, 49% niceness, and 1% insight in German\nyou get > 80% nitpicking and complaining, especially hard when we played\naround and experimented with (un)gendered nouns in German. Killed all the fun\nfor me, Germans are strange.\n\n~~~\nSvip\n> where in US/English sites you get 50% joking, 49% niceness, and 1% insight\n\nPlease show me this alternate internet!\n\n~~~\nstdbrouw\nI think we're talking about professional blogs and niche content in\nparticular, not news sites or Reddit.\n\nI've also noticed that Americans are generally more encouraging of new ideas,\neven if they're not fully thought out and a bit wacky, whereas when I used to\nwrite similar stuff in Dutch, I always got a collective \"meh\". Part of it is\njust the fact that more readers almost automatically equals more encouragement\nand sharing, but I can't help but think culture has something to do with it\ntoo.\n\nOf course, Germanic nitpicking can have its benefits too: there's not as much\nirrational exuberance about everything that's new.\n\n~~~\nmercer\nA _very_ common cause of conflict in multi-cultural groups that I've been part\nof, professional or otherwise, has been the German and Dutch tendency to nit-\npick and the particularly Dutch tendency to give advice and criticism whether\nit's asked for or not. I think there's definitely a cultural component to it.\n\n~~~\nMithaldu\nAs a german and a programmer, i have to say: You call us nitpicky. We see\npeople as inattentive and lacking courtesy to the world around them due to all\nthe mistakes they let themselves make. It's absolutely cultural. Americans\nneed praise or they won't be able to feel good about what they're doing, but\nthey fear criticism because they feel it devalues them. Germans of a certain\neducation level are mostly neutral to praise, because it just confirms that\nthey did the work right; and value criticism because it helps them.\n\nWhen you see a german being nitpicky, chances are they're either genuinely\ntrying to help, or think the person they're sending the message to was\nimpolite to the rest of humanity in their lack of care.\n\n\\----\n\nEdit: Thanks for the downvote. Really setting an example of the cultural\ndifferences here.* :)\n\n* And yes, this is me being truly grateful. I'm not being sarcastic. (This is me being sarcastic: I love how i need to point this out when talking to english people.)\n\n~~~\nmercer\nJust to be clear, I did not mean 'nitpicky' as an insult, in the same way I\ndon't (always) consider the Dutch tendency to speak our minds even when not\nasked a bad thing. One of the reasons I like living in different cultures is\nthat they show me different ways to do thing, and I've come to greatly\nappreciate many of the more 'typical' German things.\n\n------\nimartin2k\nThe fact that the site immediately goes down after it hits HN frontpage of\ncourse is a bit embarrassing. Sorry, and thanks checking it out. (here is the\nfeed URL in case you wanna subscribe\n[http://www.meshedsociety.com/feed](http://www.meshedsociety.com/feed)).\n\n~~~\nmarcelweiss\nYou should install a cache plugin. :)\n\n~~~\nimartin2k\nYep thanks I did that yesterday after my hoster recommended that.\n\n------\ndaliusd\nCached version:\n[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:j74EbmG...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:j74EbmG9pCIJ:meshedsociety.com/fighting-\nthe-language-fragmentation/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=lt)\n\n------\nmantis369\nDespite English being my native language, I am sorry that it won. There is a\nlot of ambiguity in it, whether you are writing on technical matters or not.\n\nAnd what is with this scourge of position:fixed headers lately? I like to\nscroll with the space bar or page-down button, and the header always slightly\noverlaps the top of the new page, preventing me from reading a couple of\nlines.\n\n~~~\nphilh\nAre other human languages significantly less ambiguous than English? (Conlangs\nlike lojban, sure, but anything used by more than a handful of people?)\nGenuine question, I haven't studied any other languages since I was sixteen.\n\nFully agree about position:fixed. For long articles I often remove them in the\nDOM editor. I wish browsers would change page-down distance when there's a\nfixed header, but I recognize that this is a tricky problem that would have\nhorrible edge cases.\n\n~~~\nscrollaway\nI speak seven languages. It's easy to see why English got so popular so fast.\nIt is an extremely simple language compared to others and even though it is\nambiguous in certain cases, most languages have ambiguity here and there.\n\nTalented English speakers can at least get rid of most ambiguity by\nthemselves, which is something a lot of other languages don't have.\n\nMy actual favourite language so far is Swedish. Is it much more raw than\nEnglish, has less overall ambiguity and has a beautiful ring to it. It is also\nvery easy for a skilled English speaker to pick up and I would recommend it if\nyou are interested in languages. (It also gives you German for free)\n\n~~~\ntormeh\n>(It also gives you German for free)\n\nThat's like saying that learning English gives you French for free. It really\nhelps, but it hardly gives you the entire language for free, just a\nsignificant chunk of it.\n\n~~~\nscrollaway\nEnglish does not even sort of give you French for free. It does give you\nSpanish (and Italian, to an extent) for free though. And I speak of all this\nfrom experience.\n\n~~~\nscrollaway\nOops, I meant _French_ gives you Spanish for free, of course.\n\n------\nblfr\nEven when your posts are minor, and strictly technical, like tips on doing\nthis or that with Linux, they will be often searched for with English keywords\nand publishing them in English increases your potential audience tenfold. From\n~50M people in a large European country to 500M English speakers worldwide.\n\n~~~\nicebraining\n_From ~50M people in a large European country_\n\nYou're forgetting to count everywhere outside of Europe that speaks an\nEuropean language (besides English, of course).\n\nPortugal has only ~11M citizens, but Portuguese is spoken by 220M people\naround the world as their first language. Same with Spanish (470M) and French\n(74M).\n\n~~~\ninformatimago\nYou are missing a quite significant '2' on the number of francophones, it's\n274 millions, not 74M.\n\n[http://www.francophonie.org/Denombrement-des-\nfrancophones.ht...](http://www.francophonie.org/Denombrement-des-\nfrancophones.html)\n\n~~~\nicebraining\nSorry, I took the number from Wikipedia. That said, does that include all\nFrench speakers? The number I mentioned was specifically about people for whom\nFrench was their first language.\n\n------\nvegabook\nI always find it refreshing to read blogs in languages other than English (in\nmy case, French), because my sense is that points are expressed in often\nsubtly different ways, thoughts where a different emphasis is possible only in\nthe medium of the language used. It would be better if the english speaking\nworld were to speak more languages (wishful thinking I know but the point is\nthat something is being lost in this unification of language).\n\n~~~\nimartin2k\nThat is a fair point. Different languages allow for different thinking and\nexpression of contexts. But I think in the end the language fragmentation is\nstill a luxury with a huge down-side. Especially nowadays, when most problems\nare global ones that need to be solved jointly, not isolated.\n\nI could be wrong of course. Maybe a world with fewer or even only one language\nwould be a horrible place. But maybe it would be better. I think it is worth\ntaking the risk.\n\n~~~\nvegabook\nAgreed. Also one can argue that the fact that English may not be the first\nlanguage will in itself have an effect on the thought process, even if English\nis the medium used. So in that way we still have some diversity, if only\nobliquely.\n\n------\nk__\nGood thing.\n\nI sometimes got the feeling, that the german language culture is a blessing\nand a curse.\n\nI like how everything gets translated and dubbed for us.\n\nBut it feels like most Germans simply ignore most of the stuff, happening\noutside of Germany.\n\nI even know many IT people who claim they don't need to know english. But I\ngot the feeling that not knowing how to read and write english just keeps you\nfar away from the bleeding edge. You can see this when looking at german\ncompanies, most of them feel like 1999.\n\n~~~\nnyir\nThe downside of all the dubbing is that the translations (and arguably\nspeakers) are horrible and also the benefit of free lessons in language\ncomprehension disappears unlike for countries were it's not feasible to dub\nlots of movies.\n\n~~~\nkossmoboleat\nYeah, I'm so happy about the German Netflix, where you can easily switch to\nthe original audio. No other VOD site in Germany has that AFAIK.\n\n------\nbaldfat\nEnglish is easily the lingua franca of the new age due to SECOND language.\nSome refer to English as an international language (EIL)\n\nFirst language speakers rankings: 1) it is zho (Chinesse) 1.19 billion, 2)\nSpanish 441 million, 3) English 335 million, 4) Hindi 260 million and 5)\nArabic 235 million\n[http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size](http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size)\n\nSecondary Language Speakers: Only 1 out of 4 English speakers are first person\nspeakers. That makes English the most known language in the world.\n[http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/content](http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/content)\n\n~~~\nadambard\nThe other relevant metric is the distribution of speakers. Most of the\nspeakers of Chinese live in China, but English is a significantly common\nlanguage in 67 countries by Wikipedia's admittedly questionable estimation:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_widely_spoken_lang...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_widely_spoken_languages_\\(by_number_of_countries%29)\n\nI don't think the data is entirely trustworthy -- it seems unlikely that\n\"Turkic\" is spoken substantially in Lithuania -- but I did some analysis based\non this data anyhow: [http://adambard.com/blog/what-language-should-you-\nlearn/](http://adambard.com/blog/what-language-should-you-learn/)\n\n------\njunto\nInteresting timing choice; Just as the CSU in Bayern decide that all people\nliving in Germany should be forced to speak German at home:\n\n[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/112...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11278764/All-\nimmigrants-should-speak-German-at-home-say-Merkels-allies.html)\n\nMost German people I meet seem to think that my children growing up in a\nbilingual German-English household is _great_ , \"your children are so lucky\",\n\"they have such an advantage\" is a phrase I hear a lot. It just seems that\nGerman-Turkish isn't thought of in the same way, but is it really so\ndifferent?\n\nSurely the underlying benefit of a bilingual upbringing is about future\nopportunity and earnings potential. Whether that be that you can earn money\nfrom business opportunities inside a sizable Turkish population (both internal\nin Germany or in Turkey) or a very large external English speaking population,\nare both valid.\n\nOn top of that, bilingualism has many other benefits, namely cognitive:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_advantages_of_bilingu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_advantages_of_bilingualism)\n\nAs well as a few (minor) downsides:\n[http://www.multilingualchildren.org/getting_started/pro_con....](http://www.multilingualchildren.org/getting_started/pro_con.html)\n\nOverall, most people think that being bilingual is a good thing.\n\nThe bottom line is that whether the author wants to blog in German, or English\n(or both) or Klingon, is entirely his choice. Hopefully that choice should be\nthe authors for the foreseeable future!\n\n------\nspacecowboy_lon\nOf course not that long ago (within living memory) in certain fields you had\nto learn German and publish in that language.\n\nI am thinking of chemistry in particular\n\n~~~\nmaaaats\nI live in Norway, and was almost forced to learn German at school: \"It's the\nlanguage of engineers!\". That was maybe true when their generation grew up,\nbut I haven't had use for it in a professional setting so far. So yeah, you're\nright.\n\n------\nedoloughlin\nIt's returning a 508 at the moment. I guess that's the ultimate tl;dr\n\n~~~\nimartin2k\nSorry for that.\n\n~~~\nedoloughlin\nNo need to apologise. I was indirectly making a point about the popularity of\nEnglish vs German.\n\n------\nduggan\nObligatory Google cache version:\n[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:j74EbmG...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:j74EbmG9pCIJ:meshedsociety.com/fighting-\nthe-language-fragmentation/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ie)\n\n~~~\nimartin2k\nthx of posting\n\n~~~\nMax_Mustermann\nThanks for* posting (it).\n\n(I normally never correct anyone on HN but it seemed appropiate on this\nthread.)\n\n~~~\nimartin2k\nYou must be German ;) Thx, it was actually just a typo.\n\n~~~\nMax_Mustermann\nI'm actually latinoamerican :)\n\n------\nprogrammer_dude\nI think this is a step in the right direction. Germany has a lot to offer to\nthe world at large. I hope others take a cue from it and understand that a\nsmall thing such as language must not be allowed to come in the way of\nuniversal co-operation and brotherhood.\n\n~~~\nMax_Mustermann\nI think is only a \"very small thing\" if you're the one not learning a foreign\nlanguage.\n\n~~~\nprogrammer_dude\nI am not a native English speaker. I understand it may not be the best natural\nlanguage out there but I hope you agree that if any language is close to being\nthe universal language on this planet then it is English.\n\n~~~\nnyir\nAt least it is at this point in time. German is also so close to English that\nI'd say it's one of the easiest switches, at least for reading/writing.\n\n~~~\nimartin2k\nBut German is highly complicated, and there is the common convention that if\nyou do not speak perfect German, you cannot really be successful in whatever\ncareer you chose.\n\nFrom my observations that really is not the case in the English-speaking world\n(correct me if I am wrong).\n\n~~~\nnyir\nOh sorry, I meant as a native German speaker instead writing/reading in\nEnglish.\n\nAnd agreed. At the same time, if more people were to use German and therefore\nalso the percentage of imperfection went up, I guess that effect would then\ndisappear in the long term.\n\n------\nimartin2k\nI just published a blog post describing my experience with this HN frontpage\nentry [http://meshedsociety.com/how-a-perfect-launch-day-looks-\nlike...](http://meshedsociety.com/how-a-perfect-launch-day-looks-like/)\n\n------\npetercooper\nRelated question: are there any luminaries in the HN-oriented fields of\nprogramming, open source, startups, or general tech who are well known in the\nWest and do/can not speak English at all?\n\n~~~\nmhd\n\"at all\" is probably not that likely, at least in the programming sector, but\n\"not well enough to blog\" is pretty common. Heck, it's common enough amongst\nnative speaking bloggers...\n\n------\nq_no\nYou should write a follow up: How HN brought my site down ;)\n\nHope you can fix this soon.\n\n~~~\nimartin2k\nI should have seen this coming. But to be honest, I really did not expect the\npost to hit the front page. :D\n\n~~~\nq_no\nWould you mind to tell your readers what happened? Perhaps others can learn\nfrom it.\n\n~~~\neasytiger\nWell his VPS account exceeded his daily/monthly bandwidth limit most likely\n\n------\nimartin2k\nMy hoster recommended me to install WP super cache to avoid situations when\ntoo much traffic kills the site. Gotta do that now.\n\n------\ninformatimago\nI guess this only proves Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk wrong. At least for\nnow. AI is so lame, that it cannot translate satisfactorily simple blog posts.\nAnd this after 55 years working on the problem of automatic translation...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n[ASK] HowTo catch some Fraud Scenarios in ecommerce – INTERVIEW Q - hnfoobar\nHello Dear friends,<p>this is interview question and I will like to brainstrom with you guys. Lets say you are interviewing for ecommerce company, what are the things you will look to catch fraud scenarios.<p>Lets assume there are following things in this system:\n1) Buyer\n2) Seller\n3) Recommendations for Buyer and Seller (buyer rate Seller and Seller rates buyer)\n4) Order Processing\n5) Payment \n6) Purchase<p>Again this is just open ended question and skys the limit for the solution. So, wanted to see how many ways we can catch fraud scenarios. This may&#x2F;may not involve any machine learning algorithms.<p>Cheers!\n======\nhnfoobar\nHere are some which I thought... I am wondering if there are other classes or\ncategories we should watch for Fraud/Risk\n\n1) Unusually large orders or high-priced orders 2) Expedited shipping on large\nquantities or high-priced orders 3) Expedited shipping when billing and\nshipping addresses differ 4) Make sure the billing address matches the IP\nlocation. 5) Limit the number of declined transactions. 6) Customers who make\nmultiple orders from different credit cards 7) Machine Learning - supervised\nclassification - the system is told in advance which already-reviewed orders\nare fraud, and then asked to predict whether another order is fraud based on\nwhat it’s seen so far 8) Anomaly detection\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAre Posterous Fudging Visitor Statistics? - ig1\nhttp://blog.awesomezombie.com/2010/12/are-posterous-fudging-visitor-statics.html\n\n======\nrantfoil\nOur focus is on building the best product. It so happens to be that we are\naware of the issue and recommend that you use Google Analytics for deeper\ninsight into visitors and views.\n\nHere is a bit of how-the-sausage is made, but you wouldn't believe how much of\na negative response we got from existing users once we went to a fully\nJavaScript analytics system. So by sheer volume of user input we made the\ndecision to return to the original http request method of counting views.\n\nWe are continuing to look at ways to improve this system, possibly with\nMixpanel.\n\n~~~\nig1\nDo you not think the page view stats are completely misleading your users ?\n\nThere's absolutely no indication on Posterous that bots are likely responsible\nfor thousands of the page views shown (which given the long tail nature of\nPosterous I imagine we're talking about the majority of the page views here\nfor a lot of users).\n\nOne user even reported that GA was showing 14 visitors while Posterous was\nshowing 9316:\n\n[http://adamriggins.com/posterous-post-views-and-google-\nanaly...](http://adamriggins.com/posterous-post-views-and-google-analytics-\ndis)\n\nWhenever Posterous has given a response the focus has been on disabled\njavascript, etc. rather than the fact most of these views are likely generated\nby bots. For example the email you sent to the user here:\n\n<http://www.creativenotice.com/how-posterous-stats-work>\n\nGiven the values are essentially meaningless why show them to your users at\nall ?\n\n~~~\nrantfoil\nA few weeks ago we had some bugs in new batch processing code that caused some\nmajor errors there. These bugs have since been fixed. We are _definitely_ not\nas far off as 9316 vs 14 in normal operation.\n\nThese numbers are far from meaningless. At the end of the day the numbers\nreflect what our servers see -- they track something different from Google\nAnalytics but they are useful as a simple ballpark for how interesting or\nvisited your blog post was. Also, they're realtime, which GA does not provide.\n\n~~~\nig1\nYou're avoiding the question about misleading your users.\n\nIf the majority of page views are generates by bots then the number of page\nviews you show isn't even a ballpark figure indicating how interesting/visited\nthe blog post is. It's simply a semi-random number depending on crawlers/bot\nactivity and nothing to do with real human visitors.\n\nIf you were simply off by 10% I could accept your answer, but you seem to be\nregularly off by a factor 200-300%.\n\n~~~\nig1\nJust in case there was any doubt about Posterous not filtering out bots given\nthat Garry hasn't specifically admitted it:\n\n<http://twitter.com/#!/richiepear/status/13809170130149376>\n\n    \n    \n      Rich Pearson (VP Marketing - Posterous)\n      @imranghory No - we just don't filter out your own views \n      and search engine visits\n\n------\nbenologist\nThey're just counting views in a particularly unrealistic but technically not\nincorrect way.\n\nSeems to be pretty much par for the course, like when twitter announces a\nbillion new users, most of which are probably bots and/or quora.\n\n~~~\nig1\nThe test has to be what your users understand that value to mean. I'm betting\nalmost all Posterous users think they're being read by significantly more\npeople than they actually are.\n\nIf Posterous can't provide meaningful stats (and I appreciate that filtering\nout bots may be non-trivial) then they should just avoid providing stats\naltogether. Bad data is worse than no data as it's much more misleading.\n\n~~~\nbenologist\nI agree with you, but no company's going to leap forward and be honest about\nnumbers, they're going to use whichever makes them look biggest/growing\nstrongest to their users, investors and competitors, and all the numbers are\n\"right\" in _some_ context.\n\n~~~\nig1\n\"Our goal is to be 100% transparent with everything we do at Posterous,\nespecially when it affects your blog and content\" -Sachin cofounder,\nposterous.com\n\nFrom: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1309849>\n\n------\nj2d2j2d2\nThey indeed fibbed during their campaign about how posterous is better than\nblog brand x.\n\nSpecifically, about tumblr not supporting an email posting option.\n\n------\nradicaldreamer\nThere are many things that trigger a \"view\" for a post and a site: viewing the\nblog triggers a view for all posts visible on that page. In addition, a view\nwill be triggered by the blog post page itself, bots and crawlers, and\n<http://posterous.com/explore>.\n\nView counts are updated every five minutes.\n\nGoogle Analytics is better at measuring visitors and filtering out impressions\ntriggered by search engine bots, crawlers, or indexers.\n\nSee this page for how to set up Google Analytics on your Posterous site:\n[http://help.posterous.com/how-to-add-google-analytics-to-\nyou...](http://help.posterous.com/how-to-add-google-analytics-to-your-site)\n\n------\naufreak3\nI've noticed that as soon as I submit a new post to posterous, it gets about\n24 views. I'm quite sure those aren't people.\n\n------\ntwoism\n[http://help.posterous.com/how-are-site-and-post-views-\ncalcul...](http://help.posterous.com/how-are-site-and-post-views-calculated)\n\n------\nXuzz\n(Unrelated/offtopic: is \"are\" or \"is\" correct in the title?)\n\n~~~\nicey\nIt's a cultural difference.\n\nIn the US, people refer to the named entity (is). In the UK, they refer to the\ncollection of people that make up the entity (are).\n\n~~~\newjordan\nInteresting, good to know.\n\nHow do UK speakers deal with non-named entities? For example:\n\nMy family is/are going out to the movie. The class was/were getting restless.\n\nThese are common gotchas on the SAT in the US; one of their favorite tricks is\nusing plural country names, like \"The United States of America (is/are) ...\",\nwhere in US English \"is\" is the correct version. Cheap trick that really only\ntests whether you've memorized ETS's stance on that particular grammar point,\nIMO, but that's the SAT for you...\n\n~~~\nbodhi\n> My family is/are going out to the movie. The class was/were getting\n> restless.\n\nIn Australian English (derived from but not identical to the UK):\n\nMy family is going to the movie. The class was getting restless.\n\nAnd the programmer's favourite: The data is corrupt.\n\n~~~\nbodhi\nSorry to reply to myself, but I actually forgot to put my main point in, which\nwas that British English generally refers to the group itself as the entity,\nwhereas it seems that American English refers to the group elements\nindividually.\n\n------\ngreattypo\nTerrible title. \"Fudging statistics\" and \"not actively excluding bots\" are\ntotally different.\n\n~~~\nig1\nI did actually check a dictionary before I used that term and the definition\nof \"Present or deal with (something) in a vague, noncommittal, or inadequate\nway\" seemed suitable.\n\n------\ninvisiblefunnel\nPosterous is/are in touch with what users want from a blogging platform, but\nthey seem to be out of touch with how users expect to be treated.[edit:\ngrammar]\n\n------\nwebuiarchitect\nThose counts actually includes hits by the spiders, too.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Please review my startup crowdmind.com - richesh\nhttp://alpha.crowdmind.com\n\n======\nanigbrowl\nAt first I thought it was just another of those 'ask the intarwebs!' sites\nwhere people just twitter or post to each other, but on further inspection I\nwas very taken with the scoring system and the ability to rate the poster's\ngood and bad reasons.\n\nIt looks like quite a bit more work to create the question than is usually the\ncase, which might be a disincentive for some - although it will also help them\nto focus on the issue at hand. The layout is a little confusing at first and\ngod only knows why you made the search box background color to dark grey\nagainst a black background - I found myself wondering why there was a search\nbutton with no search box until I looked more closely. I think you could use a\none line explanation like 'Our members help you rate and discover your\noptions' on the landing page, because it took me a couple of minutes to\nrealize that the stars and ratings were functional rather than mere window-\ndressing. your 'about' page does this very well, why not use the top two\nelements from that (title and icons)?\n\nIt also wasn't obvious to me that the 'good/bad because...boxes were text\nfields at first. Stick a flashing cursor in them or something, because they\nlook like headers.\n\nFor a site with so few questions and needing a network effect to take off, I'm\nalready impressed and think you're onto a winner here. I would even suggest\nspinning off a 'pro' version aimed at business or other markets so that\nprofessional users who could really gain from this won't have to encounter\nquestions of the 'how does I shot web' variety. Also, find some way to embed\nit besides the x-posting to twitter, FB and LI. And why aren't you posting\n'How can we make CrowdMind better?' as one of your featured questions, you\nsilly-billies!?\n\nOverall, excellent: simple but not shallow.\n\n~~~\nrichesh\nThanks for your review, it is very helpful and I really appreciate it. Looks\nlike the UI needs considerably overhaul given other reviews, so we'll\ndefinitely implement your suggestions as well.\n\n------\nmaryrosecook\nAs I'm sure you're aware, <http://ask.metafilter.com> does the same thing. I\nuse it because of the MetaFilter community: I have a general understanding of\nthe demographic, morals, values and politics of the people I'm asking\nquestions of. I also know that people's answers must be posted with an account\nthey probably value because they have paid $5 to create it.\n\nDo you plan to foster a community with certain features? Or are you looking\nfor a broader range of people?\n\n~~~\nrichesh\nHi, thanks a lot for your review. We are currently working on a credibility\nscore for the users based on how much others value their input. This should\ncreate an experts community in each category. Currently you can invite trusted\nadvisors to your own decision pages with special invite code (the UI is only\nvisible to decision creators). The trusted advisors are people who's opinion\nmatter the most. The page will let you toggle between \"the crowd\" and the\nadvisors via the link on the right of option area.\n\nIf you look at this page\n([http://alpha.crowdmind.com/decision/17_What_Is_The_Best_Java...](http://alpha.crowdmind.com/decision/17_What_Is_The_Best_Java_Code_Test_Coverage_Tool))\nI'm the trusted advisor to the decision maker. So our ratings and scores are\nmaintained separately and displayed in the box above.\n\nRight now the site is open to a broad range of people. We are also considering\nallowing people to import their credibility from their blog, forums they are\nactive in, etc.\n\n------\nantiismist\nThe UI needs some work. The Viget Labs page looks really slick, so whoever did\nthat should take a crack at crowdmind. I won't sign in to sketchy looking\nwebsites, even if it is with OpenID.\n\n~~~\nrichesh\nThanks for your review. Anything in particular you can point out that we can\nfix, or is it just the overall design? We initially had Viget Labs to do the\ndesign but our direction changed after they delivered. So we had to make the\nchanges ourselves since funding is limited.\n\n------\ngreengirl512\nI like the concept-I think assigning attributes and making people think about\nrating them will help weed out the idiots you get on places like Yahoo\nAnswers. I do think you need to focus on building a strong, intelligent\ncommunity for this to work. Also, the layout of the attributes rating box\nneeds to be cleaned up-it's kind of confusing right now.\n\nBy the way, I'd be happy to feature Crowdmind on our website,\nwww.usefultools.com, either now or in the future (since you're still working\non it).\n\n~~~\nrichesh\nThanks a lot for your review and support. I will definitely get in touch with\nyou once I've fixed some of the issues pointed out here. Seems like we need to\ndo some UI tweaking to the decisions page.\n\nAny suggestions on how we can build the community? Its definitely been a\nstruggling point for us at the moment.\n\n~~~\ngreengirl512\nWell, step one is just to make people aware that you exist-I think the \"get a\nbigger crowd\" option is a great way to do that. Increasing your Twitter\nfollowing would probably also help, though. Tweetspinner is a good app for\nthis-if you get their premium service, you can follow people automatically\nwhen they mention certain keywords, automatically follow all of your\ncompetitors followers, then purge the followers that don't follow you back.\n\nYou can also submit your site to social media sites like Digg and Reddit.\nGetting other websites to write about you will also help point people in your\ndirection.\n\nOnce you start attracting people, I think having a credibility rating system\nwill become increasingly important in helping to keep the community healthy,\nintelligent and civil.\n\n------\npushingbits\nThe main page is pretty slick, though you might want to think about using at\nleast slightly different styles for the \"Considering\" and \"Looking for\"\nsections.\n\nThe \"get a bigger crowd\" options are a really good idea.\n\nHowever, the question/answer pages are rather crowded. A clearer seperation of\nelements would probably make it easier to see what's going on where. Also, the\n\"Reason (intellect)\" section has good functional elements for rating/feedback,\nbut the \"Attribute Ratings (feelings)\" part doesn't. Why a drop down menu?\nThat's an extra two clicks for every rating I want to give.\n\nEDIT: And the \"0\" button for a 0 star rating doesn't feel intuitive and I\ndon't see why it's even needed.\n\n~~~\nrichesh\nThanks for the review. We are definitely looking to changing the consideration\nand looking for to be more aligned with terms being used on the site (Options\nand Attributes), and will try to make it more prominent.\n\nWe will look into re-working the UI for Attribute rating, I do agree that its\nextra clicks for something simple.\n\nThe reason for the \"0\" is to give something 0 stars, because in the system 0\nhas a negative value vs. not entering anything. Not entering a rating means\nyou may not know about it to rate it. a \"0\" star means its bad. But, I see\nyour point about how that can be confusing.\n\n------\nmutoxen\nPlease advise that I need to be logged to have an aswer, because with the Back\nbutton I need to rewrite the question.\n\n~~~\nrichesh\nHi, Thanks for helping with this review. Yes, you need to be logged in to\ninteract with the site.\n\n------\nTichy\nLike it, but the interface is a bit confusing. At first I did not even see the\noptions in the side bar, which are actually the main thing to decide upon? It\nwasn't clear to me where to enter stuff either.\n\nI guess the actual options should be more prominent than the \"feeling aspects\"\nof said options.\n\n~~~\nrichesh\nThanks for the review, its very helpful. We've definitely heard about options\nnot being prominent and will be working on making them visible.\n\n------\nchanux\nThink of a way integrating a Twitter conversation. Question & related replies.\nThat'll add some more value to the service I guess.\n\n~~~\nrichesh\nThanks for the review. We have been investigating adding twitter integration,\nbut the character limitation seems to be a bit of a problem. We are trying to\nuse both status update and a direct message approach to make this work.\n\n------\nrichesh\nDoes anyone feel that they wouldn't sign-up to this site because of the bad\ndesign? (Anyone share antiismist) view below?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPlaying with Wolfram Playing Cards - Adrock\nhttp://adereth.github.io/blog/2017/11/02/playing-with-wolfram-playing-cards/\n======\ngodelski\nIf the OP is here, I found the cup on their site. It lets me put it in my cart\n\n[http://store.wolfram.com/view/misc/index.str#heart-spikey-\nmu...](http://store.wolfram.com/view/misc/index.str#heart-spikey-mug)\n\n~~~\nAdrock\nThey put it back in the store after they saw my tweet :p\n\n~~~\ngodelski\nThat's a lot of power. Use it wisely.\n\n------\ntsomctl\nI'm always amazed by how expressive Mathematica is. Writing some of these\nexpressions imperatively would be significantly more than one line.\n\n~~~\nfjsolwmv\nThese are mostly just API calls with arguments, with some simple lambdas. You\ncan implement that in any language.\n\n~~~\nmaliker\nI think the magic of Mathematica is the combination of (1) a huge collection\nof well-maintained CAS and math functions (2) great graphics and animation\nsupport (3) the notebook interface (which jupyter is catching up on fast) and\n(4) some of the best documentation in the industry.\n\nModifying the Mathematica code after its written, however, is very tricky.\n\n~~~\nblt\nEven if some of the components in Mathematica are not state-of-the-art,\nthere's a huge synergy benefit from having everything together in one\nenvironment, using the same datatypes. I think that's the big benefit of\nMathematica and Matlab. Python can match (or exceed) a lot of their\ncapabilities but you spend all this time with package managers, converting\ndata types, etc.\n\n~~~\nbrianwawok\nWhat is this time with package managers? Takes an hour one time to learn pip\nand virtualenv. Then its 1 pip command to install a package.\n\n~~~\naisofteng\nAn hour? I'd say about five minutes.\n\n------\nsushisource\nThose are really neat. I did say \"of course\" sarcastically out loud when I got\nto the King.\n\n~~~\nAdrock\nYeah, I lost it at that one. I'm not sure if that's his doing or just an\ninternal troll.\n\n------\nninju\nThey should provide a QR code on each card that sends you to the Wolfram site\nwith the expression being executed, that way when you are waiting your turn on\nHold-em you can watch the animation from your phone\n\n(it must have been a pain to hand type those expressions...great job!)\n\n------\nukoki\nPrice: £4 — great! Shipping: £12 — nope!\n\n~~~\ndisconcision\nshipping to canada is an utterly inexplicable 47 dollars, apparently not\nincluding taxes and duty\n\n~~~\ncal5k\nBasically they ship the deck all by itself in a 747.\n\n------\nhackpert\nIndeed, of all the tech company swag I've seen and collected, from a pure\nnerdiness metric, I'd wager Wolfram's remains one of the coolest by far.\n\n~~~\nzitterbewegung\nA CAS with beautiful graphing is a big feature that is required in most\nsituations and their swag wants to sell that point .\n\n------\ntehsauce\nThe code for these is really short and elegant! Keep in mind when you want to\nmake some graphics that aren't owned by the \"king\", the much more powerful\n(though some boilerplate is required) open source libraries like p5.js and\nthree.js are capable of rendering these real-time in the browser!\n\n~~~\ncprecioso\nDid you mean D3 instead of three.js?\n\n------\npavel_lishin\nHow plausible are animated versions of these in real life? What's the thinnest\nwe can make a display+processor combo that can be powered by, say, the heat\nfrom my hands?\n\n~~~\ngh02t\nI don't think you could practically power a display + processor combo with the\nheat from your hands. The best I can find on the power radiated by your hands\nis this article\n\n[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-flashlight-\nis...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-flashlight-is-powered-\nby-the-touch-of-your-hand-180950226/)\n\nThat article says you can get about 5 milliwatts using a Peltier converter, so\nworking backwards based on Peltier converters being ~10% efficient that's only\n50 milliwatts radiated by your hands. Even with an ideal 100% efficient\nconverter that turns 100% of that energy into electricity, combined with a\n100% efficient step up converter to raise the voltage that's not a lot to work\nwith, that's barely enough power to light a couple of blue LEDs, much less a\ndisplay and a microcontroller capable of rendering 3D graphics.\n\n------\nmsangi\nThis reminds me of pixel spirit: a tarot cards deck with beautiful pictures\nmade from shaders.\n\n[https://github.com/patriciogonzalezvivo/PixelSpiritDeck/blob...](https://github.com/patriciogonzalezvivo/PixelSpiritDeck/blob/master/README.md)\n\n------\ntunesmith\nThe seven of clubs actually vaguely frightened me. What an appetite.\n\n------\nm00s3\nCool cards. What's not cool is $50 shipping on $5 cards. To Canada...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSearX: Privacy-respecting metasearch engine - tvvocold\nhttps://github.com/asciimoo/searx\n======\nhalflings\nEven with a pool of proxies, I would expect an instance of this \"metasearch\nengine\" to quickly get banned by the other search engines. The same IP running\nthousands of queries and scraping its content (which is against their ToS)\nshould be easily detectable.\n\n~~~\nsnowpanda\nBuilding on that issue, I'd like to add that it would be nice to have a\nfeature that alerts a user that certain a search engine is denying requests.\nIt's visible in the logs or settings somewhere, but usually I find myself\nwondering for a while why my search queries aren't accurate before heading off\nto figure out why.\n\nStill a great project though, I use it every day.\n\n~~~\njbg_\nAt least for me, next to each result is a list of the engines that returned\nthat result. I run searx through Tor, so I occasionally find that Google stops\nreturning results for a few minutes.\n\nIt doesn't happen often, but it's easy to tell when it does because none of\nthe first page results have \"google\" next to them, while of course normally\nmost of them would.\n\n------\nsnowpanda\nOn a related note, have any of you tried FindX?\n\n[https://www.findx.com/](https://www.findx.com/)\n\n[https://github.com/privacore/open-source-search-\nengine](https://github.com/privacore/open-source-search-engine)\n\nLooks promising but haven't used it much yet.\n\n~~~\nO1111OOO\nI like this part \"it draws its results from its own bot that crawls the web\".\nThere aren't too many that use their own bot.\n\nTsignal ([https://deepsearch.tsignal.io/](https://deepsearch.tsignal.io/)) is\nanother that uses it's own bot with a little AI tossed into the mix. And...\nit's currently not accessible:(\n\nWanted to add that I'm currently on Opera and using an extension named _Search\nAll_ [0]. After conducting a search via your default search engine, this\nextension places a bar with a list of user configurable search engines. This\nallows you to search alternatives easily using the same keywords.\n\nOne great feature is that if you go directly to a search engine, click on the\n_Search All_ icon, it almost always identifies it with correct parameters and\ncan be easily added. Just added findX to my bar (for testing).\n\nI plan on going back to Firefox and wish FF had something like this (part of\nthe reason I'm posting this).\n\n[0] [https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/search-\nall/?d...](https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/search-\nall/?display=en)\n\n------\nfghtr\nThere is also [http://yacy.net](http://yacy.net), peer-to-peer distributed\nfree search engine.\n\n------\nfinnn\nI wonder what the rationale behind listing the site's CA in the public\ninstance list ([https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/wiki/Searx-\ninstances](https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/wiki/Searx-instances)).\n\n------\nbussie\nDoes this have any advantages over StartPage?\n\n~~~\ntonysdg\nOr DuckDuckGo, for that matter?\n\n------\nsaas_co_de\nThis is awesome. I have been wanting to build something like this for a while\nbut never had the time.\n\n~~~\nReverseCold\nThere's also pears search, which died sometime after being funded by Mozilla.\nI don't think it was malicious intent, but no one can explain why the project\nis inactive.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCo-founder or no co-founder? - sum_itsin\nhttp://www.roundbreak.com/2012/06/05/co-founder-or-no-co-founder/\n\n======\npedalpete\nCompletely agree, but I think PG assumes that anybody who is smart/good enough\nto get into YC is going to have a solid co-founder.\n\nI wonder how many YC companies have failed due to a co-founder break-up.\n\nOutside of YC, I hear a co-founder break up is one of the top reasons a\ncompany fails.\n\n~~~\nsum_itsin\nThat's true. But I am somewhat skeptical about the fact that a smart person\nnecessarily is the one with good networking skills or the one capable of\nforging sound relationships. There are times when a truly smart person, either\ndue to his own eccentricity or the environment, doesn't get to have a chance\nof having a good co-founder unless he relocates himself which is hardly\npossible in many cases.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Power of Collaborative Debugging - modeless\nhttps://robert.ocallahan.org/2019/11/the-power-of-collaborative-debugging.html\n======\ndb48x\nThe more I read about Pernosco the more I want to use it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nOpenID Sucks. - veritas\nhttp://irei.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/openid-sucks/\n\n======\njoeguilmette\nI wish people could articulate valid points without writing like 14 year olds.\n\n~~~\nveritas\nI'll own up to it :)\n\nIt was a 5 minute rant to be honest, not a well thought out exposition on\nOpenID's various shortcomings.\n\nSo, apologies if it was inarticulate/verbose. I really should clean it up and\nedit before I submit to YC.\n\nI modded you up BTW :D\n\n~~~\njoeguilmette\noh haha i had no idea you actually wrote it. i mean, you make really valid\npoints, there's a reason nobody likes openid.\n\n~~~\nveritas\nHaha, no worries dude. Your criticism was spot on and appreciated.\n\nI don't usually submit my own writings to YC (first time I believe).\n\n------\nblader\nI agree, but I liked flow|state's concrete critiques by example better:\n[http://miksovsky.blogs.com/flowstate/2007/08/openid-great-\nid...](http://miksovsky.blogs.com/flowstate/2007/08/openid-great-id.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAaron Swartz, American hero - binarybits\nhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-american-hero/\n======\njacoblyles\n>\"As I said at the time of Swartz’s arrest, his actions were foolish and some\npunishment was probably appropriate. \"\n\nBullshit. No punishment is appropriate. A system that punishes someone for\nstanding up for justice does not deserve to continue its existence. Aaron\ndeserved a medal, not a fine or a prison sentence. Here is my take on it:\n\n[http://jacobexmachina.blogspot.com/2013/01/aaron-swartz-\nfree...](http://jacobexmachina.blogspot.com/2013/01/aaron-swartz-freedom-\nfighters-death.html)\n\n~~~\ndevcpp\nI find it singificant that you used the word \"justice\" against the judicial\nsystem.\n\nThe very concept of law started as a need for order and justice, preventing\ngrave crimes. Now, controlled by the powerful, it stands as a way to reduce\njustice, and to increase injustice.\n\n~~~\ntripzilch\nYes and in particular, it's not the other way around: \"justice\" is not defined\nas \"that which a judicial system purports to implement\". Just like \"good\" is\nnot synonymous with \"legal\".\n\n------\nholri\nAs always, nationalism is wrong. Beeing a hacker, activist or unconventional\nthinker has nothing to do with beeing american.\n\nThere are enough counter examples, just study history. (for example that of\nthe CCC and his members and fellows)\n\n~~~\nollysb\nThat may be so but this is the first article I've seen in the mainstream that\npainted him in such a positive light. Using nationalism is probably the\nfastest way to get a broad audience in America to support what he was making a\nstand for.\n\n~~~\ntripzilch\nAbsolutely, I understand and maybe even somewhat support that. The problem is\nwhen this proud nationalism comes at the cost of taking a dig at other\nnations/countries or cultures.\n\nYet that's exactly what this article did.\n\nAnd they really did not have to do that, in order for them to make their point\n(and nor did Graham, for that matter--but perhaps that was an old essay and\nquoted out of context).\n\nIt's a particular stumper when you consider that Swartz has loads of fans\noutside the US as well, and they are following this news with just as much\ninterest, reading also US mainstream articles like these.\n\n------\nrhizome31\n_“It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not France, or\nGermany, or England, or Japan,” Graham wrote. “In those countries, people\ncolor inside the lines.”_\n\nIt's all right to be proud of your country, although of course it's neither\nvery original nor very elaborate thinking. But why denigrate others? For your\ninformation, there are a lot of activists who fight for freedom of\ninformation, human rights and net neutrality in those countries as well.\n\n~~~\nEuroCoder\n“It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not France, or\nGermany, or England, or Japan,” Graham wrote. “In those countries, people\ncolor inside the lines.”\n\nThat may be true. But those countries also don't torture people, inprison\npeople without charge, or start senseless wars. The US may make people richer,\nbut it also has the highest proportion of its population in jail, compared to\nall other countries in the world. The US has a lot to learn from Europe.\n\n~~~\nGiraffeNecktie\nSeriously? Do you actually believe that France, Germany, England and Japan\nhave not tortured people, imprisoned people without charge, or (gasp) started\nsenseless wars?\n\nROTFL\n\n~~~\nEuroCoder\nGood point, but what I meant is in the current era, after WWII. Since WWII the\nUS has been the leader among western countries in torture and senseless wars.\n\n~~~\nGiraffeNecktie\nI think you'd have to narrow it further than WWII. France was involved in\ncolonial wars in Indochina and Algeria (the latter involved lots and lots of\ntorture). England has participated in most of the US adventures and a few of\ntheir own (Suez, Northern Ireland, Falklands). Japan and Germany have kept\ntheir noses clean since WWII but that's partly a side effect of the complete\nasskicking they received in the war, rather than some innate cultural\nappreciation of peace and human rights. Up until recently France was\nconducting nuclear tests in the Pacific and their agents were apparently\ninvolved in the sinking of a protest ship in New Zealand.\n\nEngland and Germany have much greater limitations on free speech than does the\nUnited States.\n\n------\nnoonespecial\nHero. Almost super. An interesting idea. He definitely had some Batman-ish\ntendencies as far as stepping just over the line to accomplish what he thought\nwas right.\n\nSo far, everyone has talked about the losses of not having Aaron's (and those\nlike him) extraordinary contributions.\n\nI wonder if a better way to count the cost is by how many bitter, cynical\nsuper-villains we're creating. What happens when all of the people with\nAaron's talents decide that good is for suckers and become \"investment\"\nbankers instead. A culture that loudly and openly demonstrates that it cares\nnothing for truth or justice and reduces the law to politics is going to\ncreate a lot more Madoffs than Swartzes.\n\n~~~\nHario\nExactly.\n\n------\neykanal\nI like the perspective of comparing Aaron to older \"hacker/visionaries\" of\ndecades gone by. I wasn't aware of some of those brushes with the law.\n\n~~~\nedlinfan\nNot to mention the comparison of the Pentagon Papers to the Manning cables\nleak.\n\n------\npajju\nThings he made:\n\n<https://www.jottit.com/>\n\n<http://openlibrary.org/>\n\n<http://watchdog.net/>\n\n<http://reddit.com/>\n\n<http://webpy.org/>\n\nHN will miss your contributions. Rest in Peace. #Love.\n\n~~~\nrdtsc\nI would hate to see webpy die. It is really an elegant framework. You can see\nAaron's intense desire for perfectionism, simplicity and clarity in it. I\nrespect those qualities.\n\n------\ntripzilch\n> “It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not France, or\n> Germany, or England, or Japan,” Graham wrote. “In those countries, people\n> color inside the lines.”\n\nWhaaaat, you have got to be kidding me.\n\nColouring inside the lines? Let's see, the Demoscene is almost exclusively a\nEuropean phenomenon. There's the CCC. Fravia did not exactly colour inside the\nlines. There's the Pirate Bay. Wikileaks. Just a colourful few from the top of\nmy head, there's more if you dig further.\n\nIf you really have to look for a difference with Silicon Valley, I'd say it's\nabout making money, startups, entrepreneurship, chasing _that_ \"American\nDream\", contrast with the above examples which are all people that did it for\nidealism, art or just for the heck of it, instead of for profit. In that\ncontext, Aaron Swartz falls squarely in the latter category.\n\nBefore you throw a fit about my stereotyping, stop. The distinction I sketched\nin the previous paragraph is just as stupid as the one Graham tried to make. I\nthink it's stupid to draw a distinction between US and EU like this[0], after\nall, that's what this global communication information age is about. There's\n\"startup-hackers\" in the EU just as much as there are \"tinkerer-hackers\" in\nthe US.\n\nHaving said that, the first thing I thought when reading that headline was\n\"wow, if a big media outlet like the Washington Post names you 'American\nHero', you really did something very right\", and I felt happy. Which turned to\ndisappointment when I found that the \"American\" part of that title was wrought\nwith such bitter nationalism.\n\n[0] I'm leaving Japan out of this because I really hardly know anything about\nthat country and don't want to be caught with my foot in my mouth, somebody\nmore knowledgeable than me can make that part of the argument.\n\n------\nedouard1234567\nHacking systems to their advantage is a pretty strong trait in the best\nentrepreneurs and PG recognized this pattern earlier than most and built a\nbusiness out of it, it's called YC :).\n\nWhat saddens me the most is not so much that he died but more that he didn't\nlive to accomplish all the great things a fearless visionary like him could\nhave done for all of us...\n\n------\nxtracto\nEvery time stuff like this happens reminds me of The Conscience of a Hacker (\n[http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?issue=7&id=3&mode=...](http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?issue=7&id=3&mode=txt)\n), a timeless piece.\n\n> You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're\n> all alike.\n\n------\nsever\nThis reminded me of Arnold Schwarznegger's rules for success in life:\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuJ4hbkLiY0> about 50 seconds in. Rule 2 --\nbreak the rules.\n\n------\nanoncow\nAaron Swartz, hero.\n\n------\nsidcool\nIt's sad we are doing all this now.\n\n------\ngeneral_failure\nWhat crap.\n\nThe idea of dissent is practically everywhere and there is nothing inherently\namerican about it. Neither is 'dissent' the first thing or the top 10 thing\nthat comes to mind when you talk about americanism.\n\nBreaking the law is breaking the law. How can one have humor about it? I would\nlove to see the author share this 'humor' when someone plugs into _his_\nnetwork and steal his digital stuff.\n\n~~~\nenraged_camel\n>>Breaking the law is breaking the law.\n\nExcept he didn't break the law.\n\n~~~\nemkemp\nThe US Attorney's Office disagrees with you. So did a Grand Jury.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow to Sell a Subreddit - nols\nhttp://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-to-sell-a-subreddit\n======\narama471\nI'm dissapointed they didn't mention previous incidents like this:\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3shr29/mods...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3shr29/mods_in_rstarwarsbattlefront_accept_bribes_from/)\n\nAnd subreddits like /r/rickandmorty or /r/TagPro or /r/theexpanse where the\ncreators actively participate in discussion and in some cases modertation\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAt $1.1 Billion, Bloomberg Is Top University Donor in U.S. - wallflower\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/nyregion/at-1-1-billion-bloomberg-is-top-university-donor-in-us.html?hp\n\n======\nSnoptic\nA bit weird how the article emphasizes how his gifts were spent on decorative\narchitecture, and doesn't say much about education, which Bloomberg says was\nthe intent of the gift. A billion dollars invested at 5percent per annum can\nfinance full 4-year scholarships for over 250 entering students each year.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAccelerated Wound Healing from Wearable Electric Field Generator - jhloa2\nhttps://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/acsnano.8b07038\n======\nA2017U1\nSurprised this has no comments.\n\nAmazing stuff, hope they can make it production worthy. The gold usage in most\nnano applications is negligible, the copper film might add up though.\n\n------\nCodinM\nSomehow I feel sorry for the little rat.\n\n~~~\njhloa2\nI really wish there was an alternative to testing on rats. They're so\nregularly put through so many terrible experiments. Hopefully we'll have more\nsophisticated computer models in the next few decades to reduce the need for\nanimal trials.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow to get hired as mature self-taught ex-freelancer? - iainduncan\n\nHi, I&#x27;m a self-taught, 39 year old Python web&#x2F;database coder, now looking to get into a full time position after 8 years of freelancing. My problem (I think?) is that I&#x27;m not what is considered a catch to the stereotypical founder: no CS degree, been working on regular Python+SQL projects, not young. I know I&#x27;m competent, I&#x27;ve been inhaling CS and coding books for years and have taught myself some tricky stuff like microcontroller assembly and real-time audio&#x2F;midi app development in C.  But maybe I don&#x27;t know how to properly present myself to people who might be interested in someone like me, or know who those people might be. Surely there are some companies who are actually impressed that someone has had to do all the running-a-business stuff in addition to coding, and has experience being completely responsible for the clients and the bottom line?<p>If anyone has thoughts on how to better position myself, or to whom I should be looking, or just wants to (constructively) trash my CV, that would be appreciated.  Or if the correct answer is that I&#x27;m barking up the wrong tree, I&#x27;d like to hear that too! I&#x27;m not here to whine and vent, I honestly want productive critiques.<p>Thanks hackers\nIain\nhttp:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.xornot.com&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;Iain_Duncan_CV.pdf\n======\niainduncan\nIf you want to send private comments, iduncan@xornot.com\n\n------\ndanso\nDo you have a link to web projects? I know this sounds superficial, but a PDF\nresume only reinforces the perception, unfair as it may be, that you're \"not\nnimble\"enough. You seem to maintain your own website with projects...you\nshould at least link to it from the PDF\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAmazon Has Tried Everything to Make Shopping Easier. Except This. - coolrhymes\nhttp://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/amazon-has-tried-everything-to-make-shopping-easier-except-this/\n\n======\nportmanteaufu\nThis article made my head spin. \"Hey, maybe Amazon could open their own brick-\nand-mortar stores. It seems like a bad idea, but Apple did it when it seemed\nlike a bad idea and it turned out to be a good idea. And Amazon wouldn't have\nto have things for sale in their stores, you'd just go there to order things\nonline. But it probably wouldn't work and I'm not sure why I brought it up to\nbegin with.\"\n\n------\nWalterSear\nand they won't, either.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShould infractions be seen as an opportunity for profit? - cangrande\nhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704293604575343153590024146.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEThirdNews\n\n======\nnemoel\nMaybe the policemen work on a commission basis...infraction brokers?\n\n~~~\ncangrande\nI don't think so... but it's an interesting question. As you can see from the\nrecent experience of SF in the article, it's clear that they city is using\nfines to fill it's coffers.\n\nWould a progressive tax on speeding fines be a good idea?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Crazy World of Code - hobonumber1\nhttp://tilomitra.com/the-crazy-world-of-code/\n\n======\nSu-Shee\nWell, this kind of insanity made me step back 10 steps and invest some time\n(almost a year by now) into the \"classics\" so to speak.\n\nInspired by Crockford's talks in which he mentioned a couple of times the lack\nof history and historical knowledge among developers, I suddenly remembered\nthat I got an education in humanities before I even went into programming and\nreally did start with the classics - Greeks and Romans and Philosophy - and I\nasked myself why on earth I never really considered doing something similar in\ncomputing. (Someone called it in some article I've sadly forgotten the Oxford\nway - you learn Latin and Math and from there you can learn anything anyways\n;)\n\nSo I decided to ignore all fashions, new things, upcoming frameworks and such\nfor some time until I got what I would consider (totally subjectively) a solid\nfoundation (not there yet, will probably take another year at least) of\nknowledge.\n\nI personally decided to define \"classics\" along the lines of \"knowing Unix and\nits history and concepts well\" (re-learning shell and commandline wizardry on\ntop), \"understand decent C and Assembler\", \"becoming familar with the\ninfluential languages of important concepts like functional and OO programming\n(Scheme/Lisp and Smalltalk). This includes really understanding SQL (which I\nsuddenly started to really like to my own surprise). Maybe I add some\nPostScript and TeX along the way. I also found a new appreciation for Perl's\ntext processing capabilities and its influence from the 1990ies on.\n\nSet aside that I constantly have to fight kind-of a \"bad conscience\" exactly\nBECAUSE I'm not hurrying along to try out the latest and greatest new fashion,\nI'm starting to feel a deep change in my programming skills, in my thinking\nabout design and I'm constantly marveling where computing already has been and\nhow much there is to learn from the classics. I also started to get a distinct\nfeeling of \"Man, I just don't NEED all this clutter and stuff\" and a newly\nfound appreciation of \"simplicity\" (Watch Rich Hickey's talk about \"simple\nversus easy\"..).\n\nI started to slow down, to think more carefully, to read a lot more on\nconcepts and ideas. I've finished recently Christopher Alexander's Pattern\nLanguage book for example to get a better feel for the \"orginal\" idea or read\nup on the history of \"lean production\" and Toyota's influence or looked again\nat Dieter Rams' design principles (I'm German and I basically grew up with\nBraun appliances, I didn't even realize how influential his designs have been\nto me..)\n\nAll this changed me and my thinking about programming deeply and made me find\nkind of a \"central theme\" or \"essence\" in programming and design I like and\nI'm starting to strive for.\n\nIn the long run, this also gives me a foundation of how I'm judging new tools,\nideas, frameworks and programming languages.\n\nOn top of that, I'm better able to place myself into a certain \"style\" or\n\"culture\" of programming I'm not going to give upon as long as I can afford\nit.\n\nAnyways - I personally think there actually is a choice whether one tries to\ncatch up with everything new or peek into new things selectively or just steps\nback a little and watches how all this will unfold in the long run.\n\n(I also have a long-held, un-proven personal theory that people simply like\n_writing_ frameworks a lot more than _using_ them - some are just faster to\nrelease theirs into the public.. :)\n\n~~~\ngaius\nWe need to rewind computing to 1990 and start again from there.\n\n~~~\ngerad\nThe dream of the 90s is alive in Portland:\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZt-pOc3moc>\n\n------\nmoocow01\nI myself have reverted back to doing \"everything\" myself... I don't use\nframeworks besides my own crap.\n\nThe downfalls... 1) stuff can take a LOT longer to develop, 2) sometimes I\nfeel like I'm stuck implementing middleware when I should be developing\nfeatures, 3) there is more room for bugs to sneak in 4) scaling could be\ntougher when/if the need arises\n\nThe positive... 1) I for once feel like I actually know the full flow of\nexecution and this at times makes certain solutions much easier 2) I don't\nfeel that Im on the treadmill of hopping from learning one framework to the\nother 3) it grows my skill 4) I feel more like Im chiseling something from one\nstone rather than tying together rocks\n\nIm not entirely sure Id recommend what Im doing - in someways its really\nstupid but I personally get gratification from it and oddly feel more\nproductive than when Im fusing together multiple frameworks.\n\n~~~\namix\nI do this as well - - everything from the JavaScript framework, to the ORM, to\nthe web-framework is built or assembled by me. I even use my own special\ndatabases built on top of Tokyo Tyrant and Redis. It's basically my world\nwhere I know every part of the system. This makes me super productive and I\ncan change anything. It's also a great learning experience. This said there is\na huge problem with this approach and it's scaling your development team...\nIt's hard for people to figure out how stuff works in an environment where\nnothing is standard.\n\nMy plan to solve this is to open-source my tools/libraries and switch to\nFlask, so at least some of the stack is familiar. Open-sourcing these tools\nwill force me to isolate them, clean them up and write some documentation - -\nit can benefit other people and maybe open a pool of developers that know the\ntools better.\n\n~~~\njasonkester\n\" _My plan to solve this is to open-source my tools/libraries_ \"\n\nQuick advice: Don't. You'll make it worse.\n\nYou're already undermining your thing in that first sentence (\"switch it to X\nso that other people will understand it\"). Turning an in-house framework into\na \"ready for the real world\" framework is a ton of work and will invariably\nneed to dull down the sharp edges and general case a bunch of things.\n\nThe thing is, those sharp edges are what make it such a good tool. You _want_\nsharp edges on your tools. Dull tools might not hurt anybody else but they\nwon't be as good at doing what they do.\n\nYou've got something that works _really well for you_. Chances are it's so\nfocused towards your workflow and way of thinking about the world that it just\nwon't be all that useful to anybody but you. That's just fine.\n\nTrying to make it useful for everybody else will only succeed in making it\nless useful for you.\n\n~~~\namix\nHey Jason. The general problem is hiring people when you use a lot of internal\ntools - - as some of them are made in a haste and are hackish, and most of\nthem don't really have good documentation. But maybe you have a point and the\nfirst step could be to clean the tools up and write some internal\ndocumentation for them.\n\n------\nmnutt\nI understand where the author is coming from, and it can be hard to figure out\nwhere to even get started on new projects. On the other hand, I am thankful\nfrom the _obscene_ amount of great software coming out of the open source\ncommunity every day.\n\nWhile things like paradox of choice and project abandonment are worth\ndiscussing, let's not forget that thousands of developers have found something\nthat they think is lacking, fixed it, and taken the time to give it to us\ngratis so that we can use and learn from it. I, for one, am excited.\n\n------\nconnor\nExcellent critique. I feel that HN often blows by rational ignorance with some\nof it's advice (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ignorance>). Sometimes\nit's best to do it wrong and actually do something, rather than hopping around\nper someone else's dogma and never actually making anything.\n\nBut I think it's also possible that the HN frontpage simply doesn't give a\ngood impression of the average hacker. The average hacker is not welding\ntogether the latest js frameworks while tying it all together with node.js and\nhadoop. Perhaps more articles on \"common man\" hackers could be beneficial, or\nat least give some perspective.\n\n~~~\nhobonumber1\nCompletely agree with this. HN is great for technical discussions, but at the\nend of the day, arguing over technical details doesn't solve any real problem\nfor 99% of the users out there.\n\n------\nalttab\nLove it. Sometimes I feel like we nerds get caught in the weeds and forget to\nsolve real world problems. We have enough JS frameworks by now... Funny thing\nis most of them are the same given a few differences.\n\nFor JS specifically, it's starting to look like there is no \"right\" clientside\nmodel, at least yet. Web apps behave so differently and have different\nrequirements that no one framework will fix it, sort of like rails, or game\nengines that solve a large class of problems pretty well.\n\nFor side projects or \"helper apps\" (I make a lot of them), I still use rails\n238 and prototype because I'm productive with it. Think of all the things you\ncould accomplish if you didn't spend all that time fiddling with 0.0.1 version\nsoftware.\n\n~~~\nhobonumber1\nI would somewhat agree with this. I recently wrote a completely client-side\napp using a variety of different micro-frameworks. I used Parse's JS API for\nmy backend. At the end of the day, I felt that a traditional CRUD system on a\nLAMP stack would have probably been easier to implement and would have fit the\nclient's requirements just as well\n\n~~~\nswah\nI'm in exactly the same situation - will try to finish it anyway though, but\nin general I regret that I didn't go with Flask and instead went with a\nclient-side + REST framework.\n\nEven if you're doing a client side app, some views are easier to implement in\nthe server-side \"full-page reload\" style, and you want to have the option to\ndo that.\n\n~~~\nswah\nAlso, its very funny how sometimes I think I don't need the four CRUD\noperations for some object (\"oh no, this one works differently\") but in the\nend always notice I do need them...\n\n------\npowerslave12r\nThis has become a serious problem for me in my search for a better job.\n\nInterviews are nothing short of awkward.\n\nInterviewer: So what do you like to do?\n\nMe: I'm a Python/Ruby guy. I also have worked in Java/C. Currently playing\naround with node.js, machine learning algorithms, some functional programming\nand pet project with my Arduino Duemilanove.\n\nInterviewer: Sounds good, you'll hear from us in the next few days.\n\n:(\n\n~~~\nPlanetFunk\nSounds like you're not applying to the right companies. Any developer that\ncomes to me with an obvious love for code moves to the top of the list. If\nyou're coding in your own time for fun, it's not a job, and I'd want to hire\nyou - in some capacity :)\n\n~~~\nnick89\nThe growing trend that I've seen now days is companies requiring extensive\nknowledge in \"this\" framework. It doesn't help that every company requires a\ndifferent framework.\n\nInterviews are a drag, and none of them like hearing that it will take one\nmonth to become fully accustomed (in-depth knowledge) with their framework.\nThey'd prefer someone with limited knowledge who knows their framework rather\nthan one who's well versed in multiple frameworks/languages.\n\n~~~\neinhverfr\nIt's a pretty stupid trend too. Let's face it, the best programmers will learn\n\"this\" framework quickly, get up to speed etc. Not only that but the\nprogrammers you really want to hire are going to be those who love learning,\nthinking, and critiquing their own code, not specialists in Framework X NG.\n\nIt seems to me that a better approach would be to put new hires into code\nmaintenance first with a mentor who can help them get up to speed.....\n\nBut most of us know that HR departments are not always the best judges of\ntalent.\n\n~~~\nalttab\nThis is exactly what we do where I work - a lot of our programmers don't know\nRuby when they walk in the door but that shouldn't matter if you choose the\nright people. I'm scared of choosing language or framework 'specialists'\nbecause they have a limited view on what programming is, and a cemented view\non what it should be. The only exceptions I can see are when the\nspecialization is language specific to the problem domain, IE C for high\nperformance server or system code.\n\nProgrammers who advertise themselves as \"Ruby programmers\" or \"Python hackers\"\nor what-have-you come off as inexperienced and one dimensional. The best\nhackers have used the right tool for the task at and, and the best hackers\nhave solved a wide variety of problems to require different tools.\n\n------\nwellpast\nAs frustrated as I am with what seems like an unnecessarily immature software\nindustry, I am grateful for the plethora of wonderfully crafted free\nframeworks that I have at my disposal ([http://www.jmolly.com/2012/07/01/the-\nwide-landscape-of-java....](http://www.jmolly.com/2012/07/01/the-wide-\nlandscape-of-java.html)).\n\nI want to solve problems that need solving. I don't want to reinvent wheels.\nAs you grow in expertise, you get better at picking the right framework for\nthe right job. If you're not there yet, just make your best pick and move\nforward. In the end you can make anything work, you can refactor, you can\nreplace. Software is malleable.\n\n~~~\nunimpressive\n> As frustrated as I am with what seems like an unnecessarily immature\n> software industry,\n\nCould you expand on this?\n\n~~~\nwellpast\nI didn't really phrase that right.\n\nI often feel that the software industry should be much 'further along' than it\nis. It's 2012 and most software interactions are through kludgy, blocky web\ninterfaces, its not uncommon for rather basically behaving systems to be\nbacked by millions of lines of code.\n\nI know this is rather a soft lament, but it doesn't feel right. It feels that\nwith all the years we've been at this practice we should have progressed\nfurther than we have.\n\n~~~\ngaius\nWe spent the 90s and 00s rewriting the 80s again and again. The 10s look like\nthey're going the same way. Same concepts, same functionality, different\nsyntax only, no progress.\n\nI'm having a lot of fun right now doing 68000 ASM for my personal projects.\nGoing to try to figure out where we _could_ have been if we didn't get stuck\nin a rut in the late 80s.\n\n~~~\nunimpressive\nAs someone with an interest in this subject, where did we go wrong? Plenty of\npeople say *nix. But I'm not old enough to have witnessed any of that\nfirsthand.\n\n~~~\ngaius\nThe issue is as much psychological and cultural as it is technological.\n\nThe 80s were a period of great diversity and hence progress. In that decade I\nused 6502 (BBC Micro), 68000 (ST), ARM (Archimedes), there were also Z80 and\nearly x86s. There were many approaches to systems design, many competing\nideas, what you might call a Cambrian Era\n(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion>).\n\nBy the 90s, things settled down. People (as in, \"end users\", the people who\nultimately pay for software) had figured out what they wanted to do, which is\nforms (screens for entering data into a database) and reports (screens for\ngetting it out again, nicely formatted). Messaging, as in email/IM, is just a\nspecial case of this (and today, FB et al are just forms and reports). What\nwas \"good enough\" for this was an x86 (which happened to be running Windows,\nbut that's irrelevant IMHO) and that became the lowest common denominator. The\ndiversity was still there in the form of the Unix workstation market but they\nspent all their strength competing with one hand and trying to standardize\nwith the other. Meanwhile the relentless march of hardware continued on, Intel\nwas swimming in cash and none of the Unix vendors noticed, they were all\npreoccupied. Now there is one architecture to rule them all (tho' ARM still\nclings on).\n\nAnd we the developers are to blame. We fell into a comfort zone. The users\nwanted forms and reports, and that's what we gave them. Then the hardware gave\nus more power and we gave them bells and whistles too. But really, that is\nsolved, has been solved for 2 decades now. Nearly everything we do with\ncomputers now, could have been done in 1990, and what they did then, we do the\nsame now, except arguing over syntax, which of a dozen functionally equivalent\n\"frameworks\" to use, which ALGOL-derived language to use, which desktop to use\nwith slightly different-looking widgets that do the same thing, etc etc etc.\nAll this is just procrastination. None of these things matter. But comfort\nzones are, well, comfortable. It's like we climbed a small hill and stopped to\nenjoy the view because we are afraid of the mountain we have to climb still.\n\nThere are a few tantalizing glimmers now, of the \"next level\". But we wasted\n20 years dicking about.\n\n------\nKaali\nIf you start your day by reading your favorite software development news\naggregation sites, containing news about interesting libraries, frameworks and\nhow different people have succeeded with them; you can get disillusioned about\nthe importance of technology choices.\n\nYour project is not the framework you use, nor does it matter which language\nyou chose. It is a non-issue if Facebook or Google uses the same stuff you do.\nYour projects value is not a combination of buzz-words.\n\nChoose technology based on what gets the job done, and all the better if it\nmakes the project fun to do. Don't be paralyzed by the choice, focus on\nsolving the problems of your project instead.\n\nOff to write a Clojure compiler in Haskell which can run natively on iOS and\ntranslate itself to HTML5 for live development with SocketIO backing the\nClosure optimized Javascript using node.js for the concurrency model.\n\nPS. The last bit is a joke\n\n~~~\ngtrak\nNo doubt you've heard of this? <https://github.com/jspahrsummers/cocoa-\nclojure>\n\n------\nwizard_2\nJust make little things. Backbone is fun, make some little backbone\nviews/models, they'll work perfectly with any other JS you have. Want to try\nrails? Do another little project in rails. Is it too much? try the next one\nbut only use sinatra. Like javascript? Do your next project in Node.js. (and\nremember jifasnif!) Felt like you're in callback hell? (remember use flow\ncontrol and streams!) Try out gevent in python on the next project.\n\nSee my point? It doesn't mater what you use as long as you're making things.\nPick something and do something. Iteration can only come after you've\ncompleted projects. Eventually you'll figure out what you prefer, and even\nthen it wont hold a candle to what you've made.\n\n~~~\nhobonumber1\nCompletely agree with this. However, when I talk to developers who aren't\nbased in tech hotspots, they often tell me they are lost because they dont\nknow what they should learn, because there's so much out there. The side\neffect of this (which I have seen) is that people write off every new OS\nproject that comes out, because they feel by the time they learn it, something\nnew will be out there. I don't agree with this philosophy but it's something\nthat I have seen with my own eyes.\n\n~~~\neinhverfr\nOne of my views is that you should figure out what you want to make before you\nfigure out what you want to learn. Once you have a functional idea of what you\nare doing, then it is easier to pick something similar, or look to library\nrepositories (CPAN, gems, etc) and decide what you want to do.\n\nIf you aren't in a tech hotspot and you aren't chasing jobs, it doesn't matter\nwhat you learn. It matters what you make and how you can sell yourself.\n\n------\ngizmo686\nI agree that no single person should be jumping around between all of the\nlanguages and frameworks out there, but the diversity is a sign that there is\nan active community that is experimenting with new ways of doing things. If\none of them is especially useful for your problem, then you should learn it as\na matter of practicality (mind the cost of transition though). If you enjoy\nlanguage development, then you should definitely switch to a .01 language\nframework, that is where the interesting research is being done. If you come\nup with something good, and work out the kinks, then mainstream languages will\nstart to use it.\n\n------\nfelipemnoa\nThis article is probably appropriate:\n<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html>\n\nAnd a quote from the same article:\n\n>>Think of the history of data access strategies to come out of Microsoft.\nODBC, RDO, DAO, ADO, OLEDB, now ADO.NET - All New! Are these technological\nimperatives? The result of an incompetent design group that needs to reinvent\ndata access every goddamn year? (That's probably it, actually.) But the end\nresult is just cover fire. The competition has no choice but to spend all\ntheir time porting and keeping up, time that they can't spend writing new\nfeatures. Look closely at the software landscape. The companies that do well\nare the ones who rely least on big companies and don't have to spend all their\ncycles catching up and reimplementing and fixing bugs that crop up only on\nWindows XP. The companies who stumble are the ones who spend too much time\nreading tea leaves to figure out the future direction of Microsoft. People get\nworried about .NET and decide to rewrite their whole architecture for .NET\nbecause they think they have to. Microsoft is shooting at you, and it's just\ncover fire so that they can move forward and you can't, because this is how\nthe game is played, Bubby.<<\n\nExcept that in this case the wounds are self inflicted.\n\n------\nmalbs\nJust use what you enjoy.\n\nI recently had a similar experience - on a whim I decided I would learn python\nby taking a asp.net mvc app I built and have maintained for the last 3 years\nand port it. So I just needed to choose a python web framework right? omg. So\nmany, micro, mini, full stack, no stack, template engines, wsgi, uwsgi, whoa!\nMy head was spinning\n\nYou can be completely overwhelmed just trying to make a decision, I haven't\neven looked at storage yet but I'll probably just use sqlite (the old .net one\nused db4o, which ended up being a huge mistake, great tool, pitfa to do maint\non)\n\non a side note, loving python, and I settled on bottle, but I wrote my own\ntemplate framework called canvas, inspired by the seaside component/tag/canvas\nclasses.. essentially it's all just python code, no html.. example usage is\n<https://gist.github.com/3087622> (i'll push it to github once I'm happy with\nit, hah!)\n\n~~~\ndbaupp\nThat looks pretty neat: the use of context managers seems very nice.\n\nBut is \"canvas\" (and \"HtmlCanvas\") meant to refer to the HTML5 <canvas>\nelement? If not, I can see that being a point of huge confusion.\n\n~~~\nmalbs\nno it isn't, and you raise a good point, I'll change it\n\ncanvas.canvas() would definitely look weird\n\n------\npnathan\nQuite a few years ago, I decided I would simply not invest my learning efforts\ninto MS tech due to their acronym/framework spinning. It was a waste of my\ntime. Of course, this limits me in some ways, but frees me to study more\ndeeply into other areas.\n\nIt also happens with other tech areas. So I simply take the road around them\nunless it looks like I need to use one.\n\nMy personal work is done with Common Lisp, and I would prefer to keep it that\nway, by and large. It's a sufficiently extensible language that I can feel\ncomfortable that (1) needed features will be programmed in, using CL, and (2)\nit will be stable for a _long_ time.\n\nBut I guess that's a bit eccentric of me. :-)\n\n------\nexDM69\nI think this post is missing the point a little. Being a good programmer,\ndespite what recruitment ads like to portray, is not about being proficient in\ndozens of frameworks and languages. No, it's about learning the skill of\nlearning new frameworks and languages.\n\nGetting into a new platform or familiarizing with a new tool is something you\nget better at the more you do it. Learning your eleventh programming language\nwill be easier than learning the third. Getting familiar with yet another\nframework is easier if you know a few already and can compare the similarities\nand differences.\n\nAnd let's not forget about the fundamentals. Having a strong background in web\nplumbing, understanding http and html, etc well is the key to being a good web\nprogrammer, not which frameworks you know by heart. Knowing a little theory\nabout programming will make it easier to grok new languages faster.\n\nIf you're tired of constantly learning new frameworks and languages, go learn\nC and systems programming. That stuff is going to stick around for a long time\nand will provide secure jobs for the foreseeable future.\n\n------\nterryk88a\nPretty awesome distillation of the history of software tools since, oh, no\nlater than 1980.\n\nBack in the dino days, the rate of change was tiny compared to today's daily\ndelta V. We mostly had monthly and a few weekly rags to tell us about the next\nbig thing; there weren't that many next big things, anyway. Hey, it was a\nreally big deal when cartridge tapes came out and we didn't have to thread a\n1/2 inch magtape by hand anymore... Geez, who could forget 1-base-T\nnetworking? or 9600 baud modems? Whew.\n\nDon't get me started on software innovations like Oracle SQL\\Forms! ManOhMan!\nFergit CICS!\n\n _Seriously - the barrier of entry is so low now, that the least of us can\nthrow something up on the wall and if it sticks or even just leaves a little\nresidue, the flies are all over it, preaching it up, \"This is the best shit\never.\"_\n\nThere _really_ isn't much new out there, mostly it's just lots of new flavor\nwheels. Think \"Hudsucker Proxy\" at times like this...\n\n------\nitomek\noh, JavaScript you say? I stopped on jQuery! Everything else sort of flutters\nby... too much! Especially since .NET is going insane right now with kick-ass\nmagic! So I'm still trying to catch up on .NET stuff and the JavaScript is\nsort of passing in another lane, but I'm like the old lady who won't take my\neyes off of my lane beacuse I'm too scared to let go of the wheel that I'm\nbarely hanging on to.\n\nExhausting as it may seem, its far cooler than 10 years ago! As another reason\npointed out, use what you like.\n\nASP.NET MVC - check LINQ - check EntityFramework - check\n\nnext step, SignalIR!\n\nnext next step: Metro! :)\n\n~~~\nwooUK\nI've used .NET from the start and since 3.5/4.0 its just ramped up. Feels like\nevery day there is a new acronym to master!\n\nASP.NET MVC 4.0 projects now include knockout.js by default. So that may be\naround for a while if only to support .NET devs who are just using out-of-the-\nbox technologies.\n\n------\ngaius\nThis is a phenomenon limited to the frothy world of webdev. See\n<http://prog21.dadgum.com/140.html>\n\n------\npjmlp\nCould not agree more.\n\nAt the end of the day, what is important is to deliver a piece of software\nthat works according to the customer requirements.\n\nIf the customer dictates the operating system, language, etc. Then it is\nalready decided what to use.\n\nIf some technology liberty is given, then it should be something that is\nworking as desired at the given deadline, regardless of the technology.\n\n------\nhluska\nIn marketing, there's something called 'the paradox of choice.' The theory\ngoes (and there's some decent research to back this up) that if you give\npeople too much choice, it decreases the probability that they will make any\ndecision.\n\n~~~\nhobonumber1\nActually, there's a theory very similar to that in UI/UX design. Menus that\nare too large often intimidate the user and cause them to bounce out of the\nsite.\n\n~~~\nhluska\nAnd here I thought I was creative for applying it to UX...thanks for this! :)\n\n------\nmadrona\nGetting blown from one framework to another so easily means you're not doing a\ngood job of getting traction on your project. Build some positive momentum and\nthen staying the course will become natural.\n\n------\nlifthrasiir\nIt's an abstraction all the way down. Somewhat related: <http://xkcd.com/676/>\n\n------\nkracekumar\nThe article had all Buzz words(Positive sense) except Python.\n\n------\nnlz1\nJust use mod_perl. Duh!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPandoc Markdown and ReST Compared (2013) - hidden-markov\nhttp://www.unexpected-vortices.com/doc-notes/markdown-and-rest-compared.html\n======\negh\nThe really nice thing about ReST is that it has provided generic syntax for\nextensions, one for inline text: :foo:`hello world` and for blocks:\n\n.. extension:: hello world\n\nIn markdown, on the other hand, you have multiple, incompatible versions which\nhave entirely different syntax because there is no generic extension\nmechanism.\n\nReST feels more well thought-out, generally.\n\nThat said, I've pretty much given up advocating it, because markdown seems to\nhave won and has so much more tool support.\n\n~~~\nBruceM\nI like ReST as well. With Sphinx, it is great for producing documentation. A\nproject that I work with has converted hundreds of pages of books of technical\ndocumentation over to Sphinx and a custom Sphinx extension.\n\n~~~\nfprintf\nI like ReST as well.\n\nIt's more powerful and looks much cleaner\n\n// e.g. how do you write footnotes in markdown? And how do you do this in\nmarkdown?\n\n    \n    \n      +------------+------------+-----------+\n      | Header 1   | Header 2   | Header 3  |\n      +============+============+===========+\n      | body row 1 | column 2   | column 3  |\n      +------------+------------+-----------+\n      | body row 2 | Cells may span columns.|\n      +------------+------------+-----------+\n      | body row 3 | Cells may  | - Cells   |\n      +------------+ span rows. | - contain |\n      | body row 4 |            | - blocks. |\n      +------------+------------+-----------+\n\n~~~\nmercurial\nSince basic Markdown is so basic, multiple incompatible flavours of Markdown\nhave cropped up, including Pandoc-Markdown, which can do footnotes.\n\n------\nbiscarch\nPandoc is actually a really powerful tool for converting between different\nformats. As an example, I recently wrote a book using Markdown (Pandoc's\nversion) and was easily able to export .html, .pdf and .epub from my markdown\nfiles. The addition of footnotes and built-in syntax highlighting (with\noptional line numbers, etc) was also very useful.\n\nPandoc can be as simple as `pandoc input.md output.pdf` but can also handle\nthings like a Table of Contents, different highlighting styles, latex engines\nand fonts:\n\n    \n    \n        pandoc --toc --variable version=0.0.1 -N --highlight-style=tango --latex-engine=xelatex --variable mainfont=Helvetica --variable monofont=\"Meslo LG L DZ\" --chapters $(ls -d -1 `pwd`/_input/*.*) -o _output/book.pdf\n    \n\nI tend to set the more complicated command as a build file or alias and I've\nbeen considering using local markdown files and then using pandoc to convert\nthem to .html for my WordPress-based blog.\n\n------\nfrou_dh\nThe Markdown ecosystem reminds me of shell scripts in a bad way. There are a\nbunch of subtly and not so subtly different dialects and environments out\nthere, and not many people have a strong awareness of these while writing, so\nif something seems okay \"on my computer\" or in Markdown's case \"on my preview\"\nthen off it goes.\n\n------\nteleclimber\nAm I the only one who feels like they were teleported back to the early 1990s\nupon seeing these text files with code intermingled everywhere?\n\nI am not bashing markdown and friends, as I understand there is a use for\nthese tools in some cases, but I am surprised they are so widely embraced and\nloved.\n\nTo me they just evoke the days of typing an essay on dad's 386 with Word\nPerfect 5.1 installed, and having to hit \"reveal codes\" to figure out what is\ngoing on. MS Word won against WP when they completely did away with these\ncodes.[1]\n\nNow it's 2014 and we're loving building tables by hand-crafting ASCII art.\n\nAm I the only who thinks we can do better?\n\n[1]\n[http://www.theoligarch.com/microsoft_vs_apple_history.htm](http://www.theoligarch.com/microsoft_vs_apple_history.htm)\n\n~~~\ngkya\nMost the tools we have for WYSIWYG document creation lacks _determinism_ and\n_portability_. For the latter, one could argue that there are open formats,\nbut still, there should be a program that can interpret the format; whereas\nwith plain text, such a need is void, as it is possible to view the document\non any decent system. For the former, the argument might be that the modern\nword processors provide the facilities to deterministically lay out a document\nthrough the user interfaces they sport, but then because the formats they save\nare either are endemic to themselves or badly supported in other software*\nthis feature is not of much use.\n\nI can open a Markdown/ReST/Textile/... file with any text editor, including\nNotepad, Vim, Emacs etc., and also view it through _more_ or _less_ programs,\nor just _cat_ them. I can pass them through _head_ or _tail_ ; search them\nwith common utilities and even edit them with some others. I am not bound to\nany programs in order to edit my program. If, on a computer I have to use,\nthere is no Word, or Writer or Pages, I can still edit/read the document. I\ncan read it online, via a browser. I can use programs that are decades old,\nand I also will be able to read the file decades later. When I send the file\nto someone else, I can be sure that they will be able to read it. Any usable\noperating system has a text editor bundled. This level of portability is just\na dream for WYSIWYG editors. For these advantaged, I happily trade editing\nconvenience off.\n\n* Last summer, my cousins needed to use my computer for editing a _docx_ document that was important for their undergraduate education. I was running Ubuntu OS at the time, so I told them to use the LibreOffice's word processor. The experience was bad; the document did not render properly, editing was problematic. This is the only case I can provide as an example to support my argument, as it has been multiple years since I used a word processor program.\n\n~~~\nteleclimber\nI agree with what you said. I understand the advantages of markdown and why it\nis adopted (particularly in dev environments).\n\nBut you seem to agree with me that the markdown editing experience leaves a\nlittle to be desired (\"...I happily trade editing convenience off\").\n\nWhat I don't get is why that editing experience doesn't annoy people more.\nThere are tons of markdown-powered blogging platforms, editors, commenting\nforms coming out every day, but you almost never see projects that try to\nsolve the original problem.\n\n~~~\ngkya\nDesirability of the editing experience is a function of the kind of editing\none does: I mostly write text-heavy stuff, blog posts, README's and similar\nstuff. For these stuff, I am quite happy with markdown, vim and the general\nworkflow of mine around these tools; and I like that workflow. I do not need a\npiece of text to be red, or be centred, or wrapped around an image. Still, me\nand alike are the minority; _normal_ people want these kinds of stuff.\n\nFor instance, I've deployed (!) a couple WordPress blogs and a PhpBB forum for\na friend (yes, I'd touch none of these for my projects). When it was time to\ntest-post in the forum, I started explaining him the markup for PhpBB. His\nreaction was this: \"But in vBulletin, there is a text editor. I think I'll pay\nthem $400 for that.\" He wants to centre the text, and emphasise phrases via\ncolouring them red. Because he can. He is a normal person.\n\nWhile I like my workflow, with markdown, vim, and a static site generator; I\ndo not find markdown and alike useful for any major inscription, e.g. papers\nand books and alike. I'd rather use a suitable tool that takes away the burden\nof manually writing the markup, and allow me to focus on content for such\nwork. iA Writer makes me _horny_ , but unfortunately I do not own a Mac. I\nadmit that I'd go nuts should I need to write a book in, say, LaTeX (or\nhowever it is spelled). Yet, the problem of portability of files is a superior\nproblem than lack of convenience while editing. If I write my book with iA,\nand if it goes next year, what'll I do?\n\n~~~\nteleclimber\nThank-you for the thoughtful response.\n\nYes, clearly the markdown thing is natural for developers. After all devs\nspend all their time in cryptic text files that get transformed into something\nmore useful and beautiful That's their (our) thing.\n\nAnd since developers are the ones who create forum software, blogging\nplatforms, one can only expect that their personal preferences would bleed\nover into these projects.\n\nBut it's unfortunate because in the meantime we're not really advancing the\nart of editing content, which is something the \"normals\" would appreciate.\n(And I think even a number of developer-types would appreciate writing content\nwithout markdown if you gave them something that actually worked and worked\nwith static site generators.)\n\nRegarding IA, I don't have it but it says that it saves files as plain text?\n\n~~~\nbowerbird\nlet me try again.\n\nif you have _specifics_ on \"the art of editing content\", and the interface you\nwant, i would like to hear them...\n\n-bowerbird\n\n------\nspecialist\nThose ReST examples reminds me of the ASCII docs I'd write for my shareware\nsoftware. Fairly typical for the time.\n\nNot so different from the IEFT Document Conventions. [http://www.rfc-\neditor.org/rfc/rfc3.txt](http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3.txt)\n\nOr the RFC guidelines. [https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc-style-guide/rfc-\nstyle](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc-style-guide/rfc-style)\n\nI wrote a markdown renderer for my web dev stack. And I've been \"cross\ncompiling\" to markdown, screen scrapping docs and persisting it to markdown.\n\nNow I realize choosing markdown was rather arbitrary (personal preference,\nfamiliarity). Any document structure would suffice.\n\nNice comparison, thanks.\n\n------\nbeagle3\nMarkdown has always looked limited and incomplete to me.\n\nBut I can't decide between ReST(+Sphinx) and AsciiDoc(+?) - ReST seems to me\nlike it was better thought out, but somehow my AsciiDoc documents turn out\nlooking better, even though I like ReST more.\n\n~~~\nlambda\nNote that this article compares Pandoc Markdown to ReST; Pandoc adds a lot of\nfeatures that vanilla Markdown lacks.\n\nOf course, this is one of the big problems with Markdown; there are a bunch of\ndifferent implementations, each of which adds its own extensions. Actually, if\nyou take a look at the Pandoc homepage, you'll see that it implements 5\ndifferent Markdown flavors:\n[http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/)\n\n------\njoaomsa\nFor me Markdown wins just because I'm used to dealing with it daily on GitHub.\n\nSidenote: Wish Github Flavored Markdown would adopt some nice things from\nPandoc, like multiline tables.\n\n------\nballadeer\nPandoc and ReST are extensive, flexible, and simply complete. They are great.\nI have never understood the fetish behind Markdown and the cult-like fan-\nboyish approach to it. It was not needed. It would have been rather good to\nstandardised an existing markup (or a combination of them) than copy the\nexisting one and pretty much release it with a different name.\n\n~~~\nTuring_Machine\n\" I have never understood the fetish behind Markdown\"\n\nFor one, there are multiple (and good) implementations of Markdown in\nJavascript, so it's trivial to embed Markdown in web pages and do all the\nprocessing client-side -> faster and better user experience + much lower\nserver load.\n\nPandoc a) only runs locally/server-side and b) requires a 200 MB Haskell\ninstall before it will work.\n\n------\nnsomaru\nAlways wondered how Pandoc MD, ReST compare when my document type is slightly\nmore complex, for example: a question and answer session?\n\nI ended up entering notes from such sessions into handwritten XML, which I am\nreconsidering. What is a good format to store one's notes? I am transcribing\nfrom handwritten text.\n\n------\nbowerbird\ni am in the process of releasing \"zen markup language\".\n\nit's \"lighter\" than all the other light-markup languages.\n\nit's more _powerful_ than the others, including asciidoc.\n\nit's also far more agile, and much easier to understand.\n\nand i won't allow it to be fragmented, like markdown is.\n\ni've coded converters in javascript and other languages.\n\nthe javascript minimizes well for inclusion in web-pages.\n\ni have cross-plat apps, and a web-app converter with a.p.i.\n\noutput formats include .html, .epub, .mobi, .pdf, and more.\n\nif there's anything i haven't thought of, do please tell me.\n\nyou can reach me at my e-mail address given in my profile.\n\n-bowerbird\n\n~~~\nprairiedock\nI Looked at the site for z.m.l\n([http://www.z-m-l.com/](http://www.z-m-l.com/)). It doesn't seem to do math,\nso it's a nonstarter.\n\nBTW, Pandoc (which does do LaTeX math) really needs no improvement, only more\nwidespread implementation (e.g., an online site, and/or a chrome extension\ncoded in javascript.) I suppose its being written in Haskell has been an\nimpediment.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPoop Is Raining from the Sky in Canada, and the Government Says It's Not Planes - pseudolus\nhttps://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wjbm3w/poo-raining-from-the-sky-in-canada-government-says-not-planes\n======\nNerdfest\nI'm assuming it's the spinning up of \"Space Force\".\n\n------\ngregoriol\nIn 2018, none of the people impacted took pictures?..\n\n------\nh_r\nNobody managed to get a sample? This has to be easy to prove it's bird waste\nor not, right? Or that it has plane system chemicals in it.\n\n------\ntqkxzugoaupvwqr\nIf it’s not coming from a plane then maybe someone has fun freezing poop and\nlunching it into the air.\n\n------\nENTP\nSounds like a shitstorm\n\n------\nmchahn\nBig blue birds?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDid Iran Just Rocket Creatures Into Space? Sure Seems So - alexandros\nhttp://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/rockets-iran-kavoshgar-3-space-race-organisms-missiles?partner=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company+Headlines%29&utm_content=Google+Reader\n======\nmixmax\nGuess Denmark won't be the third spacefaring nation then.\n\n<http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/>\n\n~~~\nInclinedPlane\nI guess the Chinese aren't people? Or maybe you're counting from index 0?\n\n~~~\ngcb\nOr he was excluding the US. since everyone knows by now that their space\nprogram was done in a hollywood basement.\n\n------\nstreety\nI can understand the use of a rat and worms as they're traditional\nexperimental models but why use turtles?\n\n~~~\nmhb\nGamera, FTW:\n\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamera>\n\n~~~\nGiraffeNecktie\nIt was a turtle AND a rat. Must be Donatello and Master Splinter\n\n------\nMikeCapone\nCould this be a disguised ICBM test?\n\n~~~\nfelixc\nAs the article points out, it's not even disguised -- a space-capable rocket\n_is_ an ICBM, if you swap out the payload.\n\n~~~\npatio11\nBut I thought the United States and Russia spent billions of dollars on their\nspace programs for the Tang and cutting-edge science!\n\n------\njoubert\nWhat does it say on the side of the rocket (besides probably the name)?\n\n~~~\nriahi\nماهواره بر سیمرغ\n\nTo echo the sibling post, \"Satellite-Bearing Phoenix\" is an acceptable\ntranslation.\n\nLiterally, it is \"Satellite upon Phoenix\", where Simorgh is a Persian mythical\nbird roughly equivalent to a phoenix of western literature (See:\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simurgh>).\n\n~~~\nazadi\nNo, this is not a correct translation. The correct one is \"Phoenix Satellite\nLaunch Vehicle\" or \"Phoenix Satellite Carrier\". It's just a mockup at this\npoint.\n\nThis was just a sounding rocket, nothing more. No ICBM test, nothing like\nthat. Third in a series of simple sounding rockets to test telemetry and\ncommand. First launch of such a rocket since Iran put a small satellite into\nLEO last year.\n\n~~~\nPerceval\nThere's very little practical difference between a space rocket program and an\nICBM program. Fore example, during the Cold War, the Japanese Space Agency's\nmost advanced rocket was basically a direct copy of the United States' MX\nmissile.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy is Machine Learning the Most Popular Course at Stanford? - aficionado\nhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/12/29/why-is-machine-learning-cs-229-the-most-popular-course-at-stanford/\n======\nporlw\nHumanities undergrads all sign up for Intro to Psych, because they want to\nunderstand, like, how people think 'n' stuff.\n\nThen most discover it's 90% history and statistics, with lots of debate about\nwhat's actually true, and don't take it any further.\n\nMachine Learning is the CS equivalent - broad appeal, but to take it any\nfurther it's mostly maths and stats, which turns a lot of people off.\n\n~~~\nnormloman\nNo they don't. They sign up for Intro to Psych because it's a required course.\n\n~~~\nporlw\nNot where I live - unless you're studying for a Psych degree of course. Other\nBA students could take it as an elective. It was by far the most popular first\nyear course in the Humanities department.\n\n------\nZarathust\nI don't know if it is a generalized feeling, but I sometimes tend to idolize\nmy University years, where I was restlessly spending my time for pure pursuit\nof knowledge and truth (yeah, yeah :p). Really, those years were more about\nsweat and tears and curses about the bad teachers and the poorly worded manual\nand the absence of any documentation for the API provided to us (which was\nappropriate to face real life, I confess).\n\nWhen I say I miss University, I miss the opportunity to choose classes at\nrandom and learn stuff I didn't know. I don't really miss the 8:30 classes and\nthe long hours to produce lab assignments. I don't miss the effort, I miss the\nreward.\n\nOn a side note, maybe it is only their metrics about a class success and what\n\"popular\" is that are bad.\n\n~~~\nGuiA\nMaybe you should go get a PhD :) HN can be a bit anti-academia at times, but\nit's actually a pretty nice place to be.\n\n~~~\nyodsanklai\nIt's only after you complete it that the troubles start :)\n\n~~~\ntostitos1979\nI was discussing this very issue with some friends of mine last night. The\nnon-PhDs in the room could not believe what we were saying (core issues seems\nto be very limited opportunities in academia and research labs, a very strong\njob market for fresh graduates, and a general disdain for PhDs by startups).\n\n------\nruttiger\nAnyone else here also signs up for these courses, then never logs in?\n\n~~~\nkashif\nI just finished the ML course.\n\n~~~\ntudorconstantin\nyeah, me too\n\n------\ntudorconstantin\nThe article is not saying why it is the most popular course. It only says that\nNg is a personality and that ML is a hot topic these days. What is this\ndifferent from other hot topics like trading, big data, or social networks\nanalysis?\n\n~~~\nsaraid216\nIn other words, it's the most popular course because it was offered near the\nbeginning of the MOOC craze.\n\n~~~\nyen223\nBingo. If I remember correctly, Udacity also started with the excellent AI\ncourse by Sebastian Thrun.\n\n------\nbayesianhorse\nBecause it turns out Ng is doing a good job.\n\n(Insider joke, \"it turns out\" is one of Ng's favourite phrases...)\n\n~~~\nHaul4ss\nConcretely, you're saying Ng runs a good course. :)\n\n~~~\nsmoyer\nI just finished the \"Thank You\" video yesterday and, while I appreciate your\nhumor (he does say both phrases a lot), I also want to point out what makes\nhim so effective. It's a given that you have to be able to communicate your\nsubject matter, but he's got an obvious enthusiasm for machine learning. And\nit's contagious - I'm a long way from Linear Algebra and Partial Derivatives\n(early '80s) but his easy-going style combined with how he presents the\nmaterial makes it easy to follow along.\n\nNow I just need a project where machine-learning would be an appropriate way\nof processing data!\n\n~~~\nHaul4ss\nI also finished the last of the videos over the weekend. I thought the course\nwas excellent -- just the right amount of detail to get you started, and yes,\nhis enthusiasm for the material is contagious.\n\nNg's machine learning is the first class on Coursera I actually saw through to\ncompletion, and I'm a little sad now that it's over. It reminded me of all of\nthe best classes I took in college, how excited I was about the material and\nthe inevitable letdown when the class ended.\n\n~~~\nsmoyer\nStrange ... I felt the same feeling of sadness and it was only amplified by\nthe last video where he spends half the time _thanking us_ for taking the\nclass.\n\nHow do I even express my gratitude?\n\nThis was my second Coursera class - I started with Martin Odersky's\nIntroduction to Functional Programming in Scala (which I also highly\nrecommend).\n\n------\nsriyansa\nApart from Prof. Ng's style and enthusiasm one of the things that makes\nspecifically his ML class work is that he focuses a lot more on how to think\nabout ML problems rather than the details of solving them.\n\nI took the course without any CS background, but with some background in\noptimization techniques. And what i really took away was to model problems,\nhow to optimize models, how to figure out if they are working at all, and most\nimportantly the need to have different cross validation and test sets.\n\nThe last one is something that can be used for any statistical algorithm but\noften missed by new engineers.\n\n------\ngrondilu\nWasn't it one of the first course of this kind? (I'm talking about the first\nedition, since it was renewed recently) If so, that would explain a lot, as\npeople were attracted to novelty.\n\n~~~\nhenrik_w\nYes, it was one of the original three. The others were AI and Databases. I\ntook the databases course, and wrote about the experience here:\n[http://henrikwarne.com/2011/12/18/introduction-to-\ndatabases-...](http://henrikwarne.com/2011/12/18/introduction-to-databases-on-\nline-learning-done-well/)\n\n------\nJJ216\nI would assume it's because ML is just in the public's mind right now,\nparticularly with the advancement in technology that is occurring\n(sensationalized by Kurzweil & other futurists of course)... Also, debate\nalways seems to pop up regarding the Turing test and whether it is an accurate\nassessment of intelligence - with technology like voice recognition & siri (&\nsiri-like) software approaching (broaching) Turing's declarations & theory of\nAI, I can understand a general curiosity from the masses from a philosophical\nPOV. It does seem that the Turing test could soon be passed by a computer, but\nwhat that means (if AI is realized, or if Searle really defeated the logic of\nTuring...IMO, he did not) is something people will want to understand.... if\nthey get bogged down by stats & CS, it seems apt; but the sign up rates & drop\nrates would merely indicate a demand for the philosophy regarding ML, AI, &\ncurrent state of CS...if the courses offered are limited & people want to\nlearn, they are going to get attention...\n\n------\ndarkhorn\nStatistician here. This Machine Learning is nothing but Statistics for me.\n\nAlso as a side note, if you are going to make something based on statistics\nyou should consider to make it checked out by a statistician because it is\nsuch a big field that for example it takes 4 years to become a statistician.\n\n------\npentacore\nPop culture has a part to play, HAL and The Terminator series of movies come\nto mind immediately.\n\n------\nmichaelochurch\nData science in 2013 has the feel of what software engineering _should_ be,\nand possibly what it was before the MBAs got involved and attempted to\ncommoditize development. It involves high autonomy and few non-technical\npeople meddle in your work or hold strong opinions of how you \"should\" be\ndoing the work. You generally get to pick your tools and set priorities.\n\nThe other major appeal of machine learning is that it touches all parts of\ncomputer science. You might have to go to a very low level (C, assembly, Cuda)\nfor performance; but there's also tons of high-level work around expressing\ncomplexity elegantly-- hence the interest in using VHLLs like Python and\nClojure for machine learning. Most professional software engineers are just\nmunching tickets, but if you're in data science, you get to learn about\ndatabases, compilers, AI, information retrieval, and statistics at a more-\nthan-superficial level.\n\nWhen you have machine learning cred, you have a much better chance of being\nable to be an actual computer scientist instead of a cog in some dysfunctional\nCodeFactory.\n\n~~~\nmrfusion\nAny tips for a software engineer looking to make a switch to data science?\n\n~~~\nmichaelochurch\n1\\. Learn some ML. Either use Andrew Ng's course or Hastie's book or Bishop's.\nIf you complete Hastie or Bishop you will be ahead (in theoretical knowledge)\nof 99% of professional data scientists.\n\n2\\. Do some data science/machine learning work at your current job. It's not\nan either/or between SWE and DS. Software engineering is a huge part of real-\nworld data science.\n\n3A. Ask for a huge raise you won't get. When declined, say you'll take a\nregular cost-of-living raise if it comes with the title \"machine learning\nengineer\" (which, IMO, is more impressive than \"data scientist\").\n\n-OR-\n\n3B. Change jobs. After (1) and (2) you're more than qualified for a data\nscientist role.\n\n~~~\nmrfusion\nThanks. Anything special to do when looking for jobs? What keywords do you\nlook for?\n\n~~~\nmichaelochurch\nIt's best to do all of this when you're employed and have been at a job for at\nleast 2 years.\n\nFocus on quality rather than quantity. Be selective. You can send out hundreds\nof CVs in a night, but you have a finite amount of emotional energy.\n\nNetwork, but the most useful thing you'll get out of connections is\ninformation, not good-ole-boy introductions. Go to as many Meetups related to\nyour interests as you can. (Most cities have data science meetups, Scala and\nClojure and Python meetups, et al).\n\nLimit yourself to one coding test per week. They're not hard or time-consuming\nbut they're emotionally draining.\n\nGet a good night's sleep before the interview. If you're unemployed, resist\ntemptations to drink or keep an unusual schedule. You need to be \"on\" at 9:00\nam.\n\nKeywords in job specs don't mean a whole lot. A great HR team doesn't mean a\ngreat company, and vice versa. People on HN say, \"I wouldn't want to work for\na company that wrote job specs like that\". Well, in reality, there are a lot\nof good companies out there with crummy HR. So don't get too obsessed over\nkeywords because most of what's in a job-specs (\"looking for candidate with a\ntrack record\") is non-information.\n\n~~~\nmrfusion\nThanks again! By the way, I wish I could find breakfast or lunch meetups. The\nlast thing I want to do after work is head out to the city, deal with parking,\netc.\n\n------\nlawzorick\nBecause it's the future of programming...\n\n~~~\n3rd3\nAt some point along the development you intuit, the question will be whether\ntelling a machine what to do can be still considered as programming.\n\n------\nkimchicab\nmachine learning is the key to future\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow to Start Learning Computer Programming - Gennavfo\nhttp://www.jeremymorgan.com/blog/programming/how-to-start-programming-for-free/\n======\npubby\nThis article sounds like something a non-programmer would write for a research\nproject.\n\nThere's lots of little mistakes throughout, such as imprecise definitions for\ncompiled/interpreted/VMs and calling DevC++ a compiler, but beginners wouldn't\nknow the difference anyway.\n\nThe real problem is that there's just flat-out bad advice! Many of the links\nhe posts are just the first search result you'll find on Google, yet are\nterrible resources. In particular, cplusplus.com, w3schools, DevC++, and\ncprogramming.com are things you'll hear experts warn about for being outdated,\nhaving misinformation, or just poor explanation.\n\n------\ncraftman\nThis is not about starting to learn computer programming, this is about\nstarting to learn to get a \"middle\" job of programmer as proposed by persons\nwho do not program themselves.\n\nIf you REALLY want to start learn computer programming look at Lisp or\nSmalltalk.\n\n------\nmarklit\nThe author of this probably grew up in an environment simular to mine in the\n1990s. Among my peers and teachers, everything revolved around Microsoft.\nC$650 for Visual Basic Pro, Windows NT was the special platform that business\nused, 'real' databases cost a lot of money.\n\nI really wish I could go back to those times and give the open source world\nmore thought and attention. Free compilers, free databases and looking back at\nit, PERL would have been a lot more useful than Visual Basic.\n\nI spent years developing OpenGL applications on WindowsNT. I wasn't very good\nat what I did and the market for my skills wasn't very broad.\n\nHad I built a basic web app using HTML, Postgres and PERL I could have avoided\na lot of time spent in jobs I did not enjoy very much.\n\nIn the summer of 2002 I was trying to focus on building my skills in C++ and\nOpenGL to a commercial-ready level. As a fun side project I built a mock\nairline ticket booking system in PHP. The side project got my a job in Germany\nand the rest is history.\n\nSome languages and tools are more marketable than others.\n\n------\ntweiss\nIt's amazing to see how little has changed over the last five years - the blog\npost is from 2008. I mean you would obviously pick Python or Ruby now, and use\nwebsites like Codecademy or Udacity. But the core message still applies: it's\nhard to learn to program and you will have to spend a lot of time on it. There\nare still no free rides. Makes be feel better about the long hours I've spent\nto learn to code.\n\n------\ntragomaskhalos\nHmmm - advice for beginners that does not mention Python or Ruby but rather\nheadlines with C++ (admittedly caveated)? Sorry, cannot endorse.\n\n~~~\nwyclif\nIt was written in 2008, so it's dated. But in point of fact, it does mention\nPython as an interpreted language.\n\nOf far more concern than the datedness of it are the grammatical errors; this\nis a 5 year old blog post, so you'd think he'd have either noticed by now or a\nreader would have pointed them out (please, programmers— is it really so hard\nto learn the \"its-it's\" rule?). Now _that's_ something that could have been\ndone better.\n\n------\nrahulroy\nIf you are going to use W3Schools, you're gonna have a bad time.\n<http://w3fools.com/>\n\n~~~\nKiro\nThe author mentions W3Schools in a footnote and you feel you have to refer to\nW3Fools. Give him a break.\n\nFWIW I think the W3Schools PHP tutorial is one of the best out there. Straight\nto the point.\n\n~~~\ngreyfade\nIf it's one of the best, that doesn't say much about what's out there.\n\nGiving students the wrong information (as w3schools frequently does) is worse\nthan giving them no information at all. To say it's \"one of the best\" implies\nthat the bar is set pretty damn low.\n\n~~~\nKiro\nI just read through the list at W3Fools and the things they bring up are\neither already changed at W3Scools or something really minor they're\nnitpicking about. No information is not better than information with minor\nflaws.\n\nI still believe it's a good resource which goes straight to the point. When I\ngoogle something I want a straight-foward answer and not a complicated\nspecification like the one at MDN or W3.org.\n\n~~~\ngreyfade\nWhen I google something, I want information that won't leave me running in\ncircles while I figure out why it's not doing what the docs say it's supposed\nto do. I've had that happen with w3schools more often than any other resource.\nIt's a waste of my time, and I get better, clearer, and more accurate\ninformation from MDN and the W3C, so I've stopped googling such things and\njust go to the horse's mouth.\n\n------\nkunai\nI stopped taking this article seriously at \"If you want to do serious\ncommercial development, you’ll have to spend a considerable amount of money on\na really good suite of tools to do so\".\n\nThe author must be still stuck in the 90s. With mobile app development rapidly\nreaching its peak, software is a gold mine, and it costs very little to be\nable to earn some extra cash off of app development.\n\nAlso, I didn't like how the author recommended Visual Studio. Visual Studio is\na closed-source, slow, resource-heavy piece of software that ONLY works on\nWindows. Windows is not a very good development platform, and I'm surprised\nthat the article didn't mention any software for BSD or GNU/Linux (Geany?), or\nany mention about standalone compilers like gcc. He just jumps straight into\nthe IDE portion without properly explaining how to use a compiler.\n\nThis is a decent article for anyone wishing to dip their toes into the world\nof programming, but for beginners, I'd recommend a good Sams Teach Yourself\nbook instead.\n\n------\ntluyben2\nI think he is mixing 'valuable/marketable skill' and 'programming' with his\n90s comparison; it wasn't hard to learn programming in the 90s. It wasn't even\nhard in (most of) the 80s. There were BBSs which contained a wealth of\ninformation, there were tons of (disk based) magazines and there were free\ntools.\n\nMost likely you wouldn't be learning something marketable perse, however you\nwould learn programming in the same time as you do now. Actually I think maybe\neven more efficient as there weren't the HN post distractions :) Your computer\nwould most likely not be connected (all the time) and multitasking wasn't very\nnicely implemented or even possible, so your computer meant either running\ngames/software made by others or full focus on tinkering with Basic, assembly\nor some of the other languages out there at the time.\n\n------\nneumann_alfred\nSurely there's something here for everyone: <http://programming-\nmotherfucker.com/become.html>\n\n~~~\ndkd\nis that site owned by zed shaw?\n\n------\njamin\nTo me this doesn't focus enough on why you should choose one language over the\nother. They all have their place depending on the type of applications you are\ngoing to be building.\n\n------\nvenomsnake\nFind something cool you want to do with computer. Find a way to do it. At the\nend you have learned a great deal of IT skills and the universe is a better\nplace :)\n\n------\nmichaelochurch\n_If you want to do serious commercial development, you’ll have to spend a\nconsiderable amount of money on a really good suite of tools to do so, that\nmuch hasn’t changed._\n\nLolwut?\n\nAm I about to go to jail for failing to pay my emacs fee?\n\n~~~\nudp\nThis is very Microsoft-orientated. Even the open source software he recommends\nis Windows-only (Dev-C++, Notepad++).\n\n~~~\ngreyfade\n... And obsolete. Bloodshed Dev-C++ hasn't seen one whit of activity in nearly\n8 years (4 years at the time of the article's writing). I can't comprehend why\npeople keep recommending it to anyone.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCommercial CAPTCHA breakers for sale - bct\nhttp://www.lafdc.com/captcha/\n\n======\nhenning\nMany CAPTCHAs are positively pathetic.\n\nAdding little bits of salt-and-pepper noise, light-colored lines, and other\ncutesy antics do nothing.\n\nThe simple fact is that machines are better at recognizing individual letters\nand characters than humans are.\n\n------\nmynameishere\nIt might (obviously) tend to weed out the color blind, but I think these would\nbe hard to crack:\n\n<http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/Ishihara.html>\n\n------\nfar33d\nIsn't the best way to break captchas to offer \"free porn\"? Offer free porn,\nask them to send you their email, respond to a captcha... send out spam about\nthis free porn and bam...\n\nmillions of example images solved.\n\n------\nbct\nI'd love to know what's written below.\n\n~~~\nROFISH\nI can't read Chinese, but I've read some English discussion about how that's\ndone. You know how spam filters 'learn' what is spam and what isn't, this is\nthe same idea. It first splits each letter from the image. Then you create an\nalgorithm that compares the current letter it has to process versus what it\nhas learned. The hard part is that algorithm. You can technically do it with\njust image matching, but it's far better to programmically teach it rules like\n\"B\" has two holes, \"7\" has two lines, etc. And then you feed the program the\nfirst 1000 with proper answers and then you check and see if it's guessing\ncorrectly.\n\nNotice how images without proper 'rectangle-size letters' like the Google ones\nare hard to crack because it's hard for a simple line searching algorithm to\nfind a rectangle box to split the letter. Random lines through the letters,\nlike in Yahoo's also mess with it.\n\nThe key is to make letters human readable, but not completely obvious to a\ncaptcha reader where one letter ends and one letter begins.\n\n------\nrms\nIs that price in Yuan?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe new branding of Ubuntu - mapleoin\nhttps://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand\n======\naw3c2\nThe GTK themes seem terrible to me. Not only did they move the top buttons to\nthe left (good luck explaining to mom why she won't find the X where she's\nused to) but also it looks very inconsistent. Also the colours... It looks\nlike one of those old themes why your friends still make fun of your Linux.\n\nThe web theme looks like a generic hosting company' website. Or like a\nhardware manufacturer.\n\nI love the mission though, \"Light\" is a very good selling point for Linux. You\nmight not agree about that for Ubuntu but more Ubuntu = more Linux = yay.\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\nNobody seems to be able to explain the window controls, so hopefully we can be\nloud enough to get them to switch them back. Everyone should write/harass\nimportant people at Canonical regarding this.\n\nI really seriously doubt they have anything approaching sufficient data for\nthe change. It breaks every convention a user would be familiar with (though\nthe controls are on the left like in OS X, the functionality of the buttons is\nreversed; in OS X, leftmost closes, here, rightmost closes), including\nexisting Ubuntu users.\n\nCommence pressure on Canonical promptly.\n\n~~~\nerlanger\nI disagree. Apple has a quality OS that forces users to use the left-hand\nbuttons, and Ubuntu's perfectly free to try the same thing. In my opinion,\nbuttons should be placed on the left of the menu bar. I've seen that users\ntend to keep their windows to the left of the screen, and left-side controls\nmay require less mouse movement on average to reach, whereas the right side's\nedge is dependent on the window size.\n\nI also sort of like the close button on the right with the buttons on the left\nedge (reverse of OSX as you noted). I think that makes it slightly more\ndifficult to accidentally close the window.\n\n~~~\nj23tom\nthey are perfectly free to use it ....as long as they will be not sued due to\n'innovative apple idea' of three buttons on the left side\n\n------\nthesethings\nI am lukewarm on this specific design, but am totally happy and excited by how\nambitious this all is (not just the theme, but the logos, collateral, etc.)\n\nI _want_ Canonical and Ubuntu to kick butt. Mark seems like he's really making\nan effort to be a \"product\" person, which open source could use more of.\nBravo! (And this has always been reflected in Ubuntu, which I really\nappreciate.)\n\nSome nits: The new font is a step backward. The softness of the old font was\nboth distinct, unique, AND comfortable. The new one is not as unique. And I\ndon't think will age so well. (Plus, fonts and logos are not something that\nneed an overhaul as often as themes and campaigns. I just think it was maybe\ntoo soon to overhaul the font. It was a strong brand.)\n\nI LOVE the new colors. Yeah, there's an Apple overlap, but I don't think\n\"APPLE!\" as soon as I see it.\n\nWindow controls on the left: I don't like it. I have desktops on all three\nmajor OS's, so it's not because I'm trained for one way or the other. There's\njust something that feels better about them being on the right.\n\nOverall: I'm giving it all a chance, and will jump in with both feet when it's\nreleased, without undoing the major changes. The main point here is: They\nreally care and have a vision. Whenever somebody makes a tool/OS/webapp/meal\nwith a really specific vision, i always give it the benefit of the doubt, and\ntry it THEIR way, not bending to my preferences or instinct to add salt/take\noff the tomato/go to my favorite theme/etc. When I don't try stuff with that\ntrust, i often miss out. I hope Linux users give it a fair shot, even if stuff\nfeels funny at first.\n\n------\njsz0\nThey need to seriously reconsider this GTK theme. I feel like maybe they're\ntrying too hard to look different. Does anyone actually like it? Besides bad\ncolor selection it's inconsistent. The menubar doesn't even match the rest of\nthe UI which seems like the most obvious bit of consistency you'd expect. Even\nbetween the two variants it's lacking consistently. The dark version has menus\nthat match the menubar color, the light variant does not. At least the old\nTaco Bell bathroom theme was consistent. I may not have liked the colors but\nyou could ignore that easily enough. This theme just screams at my eyes and\nnot in a good way.\n\n------\nthejake\nThis is a gigantic step... sideways.\n\nBig clunky fonts and an excessive amount of blank space. It's like the\nAmerican car of UIs.\n\n~~~\npotatolicious\nI like it - Ubuntu is supposed to be the \"consumer\" flavor of Linux, so why\nshould it concentrate on information density over usability?\n\nMy mother is the type that would start panicking if her computer looked like\nMission Control in Houston, so I think it's great that Ubuntu is freeing up\nsome space and paying real attention to layout, and this includes proper use\nof whitespace.\n\n~~~\nprog\nWhile we are on the topic of mothers :-) I recently moved my moms PC from\nWindows to Ubuntu. I stay in a different city and it was too much of a pain to\nsupport Windows. Its been a real relief.\n\nShe is 66 years of age and doesn't know know much about computers. She started\nlearning to use it a few years back to keep in touch with me over email. Her\nuse case is primarily email, google, bank accounts and sometimes facebook.\n\nI think Ubuntu UI is nice and clean. It doesn't confuses someone like her.\nUpdates also work very well. It also work quite well for a command line user\nlike me :-)\n\n~~~\nrdtsc\nMy mom is over 2000 miles away and she's had Ubuntu for over 3 years now. It\nhas been really easy to administer and help her use it. Every time I visit I\nupgrade the version of Ubuntu and make sure that networking works reliably,\nafter that anything can be done remotely.\n\nShe is quite comfortable with it. What was interesting is that this is the\nfirst computer she has really used. Most people I know started on Mac or\nWindows then saw Linux. She is the only person I know that started on Ubuntu.\n\nFor emergencies I keep extra boot-able OS partitions including the original\nWindows XP that came with the machine. When I show it to her she thinks\nWindows is not very easy to use and looks clunky. That always make me laugh.\n\n~~~\nzaphar\nMy kids have all grown up with linux and we homeschool. Their only windows\nexperience has been seeing me run a VM occasionally. My wife is a converted\nlinux user as well. She can't stand windows the few times she's had it on a\nlaptop. I always got pestered until I installed ubuntu on it.\n\nI sometimes wonder about all the Geeks and hackers out there running Linux/BSD\nwhatever and their kids/wives. Is there a waiting boom of non-windows educated\nkids about to break on the scene?\n\n~~~\nwyclif\nRecently I took my Debian/Ubuntu Linux-only laptop to the Philippines to see\nin-laws on a vacation with my wife; she had never used Linux before. In SE\nAsia it's a WinXP world, almost everyone runs pirated copies so there's not\nmuch interest in FOSS or knowledge of Linux, OS X, or any alternate OS.\n\nThe first thing she said upon logging in to the guest acct was, \"Linux is\nFUGLY!\", but I think she's started liking the fact that it boots quickly and\ncan do everything she needs with OpenOffice, evince, Skype, &c. While she is\nnot particularly committed to FOSS, after this trip away from home without Win\nshe has come to see the light. To ease the transition I installed Chrome,\nadded all her contacts to Pidgin/Jabber (all her old friends from the\nPhilippines use Yahoo! products) and I don't think she misses WinXPProSP3 at\nall.\n\n------\nbugs\nI really do hope this pans out so long as ubuntu stays free and for the most\npart[1] open I'll support what they are doing for linux and operating systems.\n\n[1]: So long as the base for ubuntu is free and open I'm happy and if they\ncreate software that costs money but it is not required to have a non-hindered\nuser experience I'll consider them open\n\nedit: I really hope that the orange starts getting toned down\n\n~~~\njules\nCommercial software for Ubuntu could really help its adoption. Currently\ncommercial software is pretty much limited to things like Maple.\n\n~~~\nbugs\nAgreed, but the thing is it really is going to have to be good software.\n\nIn example it would take a very good software package to move ubuntu users\nfrom openoffice to another alternative.\n\nBut there are some places where ubuntu is somewhat lacking that might not need\namazing software: something like itunes with a store and device support\netcetera but I can't really think of more examples.\n\n~~~\njules\nE.g. Dreamweaver, Photoshop, games. The same thing that Windows people pay\nfor, really.\n\n------\nhtsh\nThe thing that immediately sticks out to me is that the bottom gnome panel is\nno longer there. Up until now, default ubuntu (and gnome) setups have had one\npanel at the top and another at the bottom, and the first thing I'd do on a\nsystem is to get rid of one of the two.\n\nThis made more sense with 4x3 screens but now with many laptops at 16x9, it\nseems silly to waste that much screen real estate. The mac has a menu bar up\ntop and a dock, but they also move application menu commands to the top,\nsaving some space there.\n\n~~~\npyre\nThat does raise one question, though: Where will minimized windows go? Those\nscreenshots don't show that. They've removed the bottom bar, but there isn't\nany place (that's visible at least) to select minimized windows, unless they\nare planning on just using the Compiz window selector entirely for that\npurpose (i.e. minimized windows just 'disappear' except from the window\nselector).\n\n~~~\nhtsh\nI've always put those in the same bar, reducing the ubuntu menu to just an\nicon (instead of the separate applications, places, & system) in a setup\nsimilar to Windows, with open windows in between the application launcher\nbutton (start or whatever) and the notification area on the right side.\n\n~~~\npyre\nI realize that one _can_ do that, I'm just wondering what the default setup\nwill be. Based on those screenshots, there will be nothing to show you a\nwindow list (other than the Compiz window switcher). They have to have some\nsort of solution or reasoning, they wouldn't leave the default setup broken\nuntil someone configured it.\n\n~~~\nhtsh\nYeah, it definitely can't be broken by default like that. And I don't really\nsee a need for the \"applications, places, & system\" menu if they can be\nreduced to one button to make room.\n\nMakes me wonder if there may be an auto-hide dock or panel at the bottom? I'm\ncurious to see how this shakes out.\n\n------\njrockway\nI like this a lot. I am not one to care much about looks (I use xmonad at home\nand Windows XP with the blue background at work), but I think this is a really\nappealing theme that doesn't get in the way; very much like OS X's plastic\ntheme. (Aqua got in the way, which is why Apple phased it out.) They describe\nit as light, and I think that's exactly right -- it's simple, not bulky, and\ncolorful enough to be visually pleasing. I think people trying Linux for the\nfirst time with this theme will enjoy it. (GNOME itself has a nice MacOS 7\nfeeling that I also like. I think new users will also like it.)\n\nI am just speculating, because I just do everything in Emacs. I'm only have\nGNOME around for evince.\n\n------\njamesbritt\nDoes this mean that suspend and hibernation will work reliably out of the box?\nBecause that means way more to me than a desktop theme I always end up\nchanging anyway.\n\n~~~\nFlorinAndrei\nEven with 9.10, booting up takes very little time. It's very impressive. I\ndon't even think of using suspend now.\n\nAnd v10 is supposed to boot even faster. Yay! :)\n\n~~~\nbugs\nUnless you are using something like a laptop and close the lid.\n\n------\ngurraman\nI'm not particularly fond of the GTK-themes. It's always hard to accept new\nand all, but they lack that unique touch of the earlier interface. The web\nsite mockups feel like a mix of apple.com and a cheap hosting solution. Now, I\nget that they're merely mockups, but it tells a little about the team behind\nthe redesign. The logo is not bad (better in the smaller variants). I like the\nuse of purple. It's pretty unique (if you do not contrast their wallpaper to\ncertain polar aurora wallpapers) and they can totally work that color.\n\nI would have expected something more unique -- something much more refined --\nof an Ubuntu redesign than this.\n\n------\nDannoHung\nDear God, it's an unholy union of Windows and OS X.\n\n~~~\narohner\nThat's been a good description of Linux UI since OSX first appeared. Before\nthat, it was an unholy bastardization of Windows.\n\n------\nRoridge\nI love it.. change with the times, dare to be modern and move along. All\ncompanies could learn from this.\n\n------\ntimmorgan\nFeels a bit too \"precise\" for me. Ubuntu is supposed to stand for togetherness\n-- this feels a little colder than I'm used to.\n\n~~~\nmapleoin\nI'm getting the same impression. This feels like it's trying to be more\ncorporate.\n\n~~~\njasonlotito\nIt's already accomplished the community aspect. Why not try to branch out into\nnew areas with a fresh new look?\n\nIt's the same Ubuntu. They just need to start wearing a suit once in a while.\n\n~~~\ntimmorgan\nIf the grassroots community feels Ubuntu has sold out to the corporate world,\nthings will change (edit: and not for the better). I'm not sure one distro can\nbe everything to everyone -- that's why we have so many.\n\n~~~\njasonlotito\nBut remember that even Ubuntu has many different official flavors already. I\nreally don't think they are selling out, they are just putting on a new face,\nand frankly, it's just a cleaner face.\n\n------\njoris\nOk, the logo's definitely quite a deviation from the super-\"friendly\" previous\nversion. It feels a lot more \"corporate\" to me. I really liked the friendly\nfeel of the previous logo, but it does tell me something interesting...\n\nThe fact that it looks more \"corporate\"/\"professional\", may indicate that\nCanonical is going to pursue corporate deploys more aggressively than before.\nThey're still not making a profit as a company. If we want Ubuntu to continue\nits prosper for a long time, it's good to keep having Canonical as its backer.\n\nOf course you can argue whether making a logo more \"corporate\" will help in\nselling it as a \"serious\" product, but that's not the point here. If Canonical\nfeels this will help them, it will.\n\n------\ntoothcomb\nIt takes a bit of time to get used to a change like this.\n\nIt has been haphazard up till now version to version. And the themes never\nfeel totally cohesive.\n\nWhy have different logos for xubuntu and edubuntu etc, why the different\nnames? Why not have Ubuntu education edition. Or Ubuntu light instead?\n\nPerhaps they should have poured money into gnome instead. And concentrated on\nthe logo.\n\nInstead it looks, as other people have commented, like a bastard child of OSX\nand windows.\n\nJust pay a good designer. And keep it simple.\n\n------\nzoomzoom83\nI rather dislike pretty much all of it, but I'll wait and see if it grows on\nme.\n\nIn particular the GTK Themes seem really ugly. I don't like Dark themes at\nall, and the light one looks too much like Plastik from KDE.\n\nPersonally I'm a big fan of the old \"Human Clearlooks\" theme, which I'll\nprobably be sticking to for some time - but I'll definitely give the new one a\ngo and see if it grows on me.\n\n------\nxenonite\nthe older gtk-theme was better, more well rounded. Too much different colors\nhere. Dirty - not clean. But, hey, I hope it's not final. Also too much\nspacings everywhere. The fonts are still okay, even though fedora has a more\nunique appearance. And why change the current font face? It's good!\n\n------\njodrellblank\nA month or so ago I linked to a Ubuntu \"fix 100 trivial bugs\" project,\npointing to a bug which was open for several years.\n\nI just checked it again, it hasn't progressed. But at least there's a new\ntheme out.\n\nThemes. The worst idea in computing since license keys.\n\n------\najross\nSite down and google doesn't have a cache link up. Can someone post a summary?\n\n~~~\nsadiq\nWhile the images don't seem to want to load there's a good writeup at:\n\n[http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/03/03/refreshing-the-ubuntu-\nbr...](http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/03/03/refreshing-the-ubuntu-brand/)\n\n------\njmcejuela\nI love the new look. At first sight, they just achieved what they wanted to\nexpress: lightness, reliability, precision.\n\n------\nrsheridan6\nI am somehow reminded of those cars from the nineties with the now outlawed\npurple ground effects lights.\n\n------\nbadsectoracula\nAre they ever going to get away from the brown color?\n\n------\njackowayed\nWonder how much Asus paid to be the computer pictured for \"10.04 has arrived\"\n(which I assume will be the homepage for awhile after launch?)\n\n------\nswah\nI don't like it. They should just try to mimic OSX...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nECMAScript 2018: final feature set - Garbage\nhttp://2ality.com/2017/02/ecmascript-2018.html\n======\nridiculous_fish\nI'm not sure about this named capture group proposal. The idea behind the\nproposal is that regexp engines parse using the old grammar, but if a\nGroupName is found, re-parse using a different grammar:\n\n _If the result of parsing contains a GroupName, reparse with the goal symbol\nPattern[~U, +N] and use this result instead._\n\nBut \"the result of parsing\" by definition cannot contain a GroupName because\nGroupName is not part of the initial grammar.\n\nFurthermore it appears that the named capture group backreference syntax\n`\\k<groupname>` is in fact valid under the \"old\" (no-named-capture-group)\nsyntax. Thus the interpretation of `\\k<groupname>` depends on the future parts\nof the expression, similarly to how `\\3` can be an octal escape or a\nbackreference depending on the rest of the expression.\n\nJS regexp parsing is already underspecified [1] and requires two passes to\ndisambiguate backreferences from octal escapes. Now it appears we potentially\nneed a third pass to disambiguate named capture groups.\n\n[1]: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/08/25/chakra-\nintero...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/08/25/chakra-\ninteroperability-means-more-than-just-standards/)\n\n------\nnamanyayg\nA quick summary of what's new:\n\n* Asnyc Iteration: Looping over async lists, e.g, reading lines from file or an async generator.\n\nAllows code like:\n\n    \n    \n      for await (const x of asyncIterable) { foo(x) }\n    \n\n* Spread/Rest (`...`): Makes FP easier.\n    \n    \n      const a = { foo: 1 }\n      const b = { bar: false, ...a }\n      // b is { bar: false, foo: 1 }\n    \n\nWorks on arrays (spread operator for literals) or objects (rest operator for\ndestructuring)\n\n* RegEx features like named capture groups\n\n* `Promise.prototype.finally()` - Callback function is always executed, regardless of what promise returns.\n\n~~~\nryanmarsh\nI honestly thought object/array spread/rest were already in ES2017. Maybe it's\nbecause I'm in my own little Babel/React world. I literally just had to stop\nand go create-react-app and see if that specific use of rest/spread works and\nit does. Then I went to babel's docs and found it's part of TC-39.\n\nMaybe this is meta, but I wonder what it means for us in this ecosystem. Some\nof us have totally lost touch with whether the language features we use are\nsupported by the runtime, or are even \"canon\". Right now I'm probably using a\nbunch of language features in different projects that are still proposals. I\nhave a few handwoven .babelrc's in different projects that use all manner of\nthings.\n\nI'm almost 40 now and looking back on my programming career, what we do with\nJS and language features is truly bizarre.\n\n~~~\nsjellis\n\"Right now I'm probably using a bunch of language features in different\nprojects that are still proposals. I have a few handwoven .babelrc's in\ndifferent projects that use all manner of things.\"\n\nThis is one of the main reasons why I am increasingly interested in\nTypeScript: it gives you more features than JS, but in a way that is\nconsistent and manageable between projects.\n\nIt seems inevitable at this point that any large project is effectively going\nto be using a particular flavour of JS, with language or library extensions.\n\n~~~\nWorldMaker\nTypescript has been very good at sticking to Stage 3 proposals likely to be\nadopted by browsers, and providing \"off ramps\" if the specs change between\nTypescript implementation and browser adoption. (For instance, Typescript\nmodule syntax still recognizes a predecessor to ES Module import/export\nsyntax, but it provides good warnings for the out-of-date syntax and between\nTypescript strict modes and tslint warnings as errors you can very quickly\nmigrate a project over to the standard syntax.)\n\n------\nskrebbel\nThe async iterators look very powerful to me. That's essentially Streams/Rx\nObservables right in the language, amirite? Pretty cool, and feels very\nlightweight. Like, an async generator is how you can write a map/filter/etc\nover existing streams (eh, async iterators), seems quite nice.\n\nBut I bet I'm missing something important. Rx is pretty huge and it looks like\nthis feature isn't really. Does anyone know more, from the trenches? What are\nthe downsides? Does Babel compile it well? Are all important use cases\ncovered?\n\n~~~\nWorldMaker\nAsync Iterators are orthogonal to Streams/Rx Observables. Async Iterators are\nasync \"pull\" operations (think disc I/O; pulling data record at a time from\ndisc) and Streams/Observables are async \"push\" (think events like mouse\nclicks).\n\nThey work great together, using each's strengths to specific needs in an\napplication.\n\nAdditionally, a lot of the weight of Rx is its large set of \"higher order\nfunctions\" beyond the basics of map/filter/reduce. Similar higher order\nfunctions are possible for async iterators. One such library for that is Ix,\nmaintained by some overlap with the Rx team, and maintaining some consistency\nin operator names and APIs.\n\nI've been using Async Iterables fairly heavily lately in an application in\ncombination with Rx-like Observables (using the xstream library, rather than\nRx) and Ix operators. I've been letting Typescript do all the downlevel\ncompilation, and have been pretty happy with it in the use cases where I've\nbeen using it.\n\n~~~\nskrebbel\nHmm I don't follow. Wouldn't a generator function producing async iterators be\n\"push\"? Without any Rx involved?\n\nI mean, ever since JS got generators, it has support for unlimited length\niterables. Isn't an unlimited iterable of promises precisely what you describe\nas a push stream?\n\nI didn't dive deep, but I do believe I was able to cook up a generator\nfunction that produces an async iterable of mouse events. It was able to `for\nawait` it and console log the event data.\n\n~~~\nWorldMaker\nCertainly there are overlaps in what you accomplish with both technologies,\nand the push/pull analogy isn't necessarily the best analogy to explain the\ndistinction, but it's the best one I currently have.\n\nAsync Iterators/Generators are seen as \"pull\" because your \"main thread\" has\nto actively consume it (you `for await` results), whereas with Rx\nStream/Observables your \"main thread\" passively subscribes to updates.\n\nIt probably still seems like a semantic distinction at that, especially as you\ncan relatively easily convert between them. However, a lot of the big\ndifferences come down to how each technology deals with A) pressure (lots of\nitems/events), and B) scheduling \"intermediate\" work (iterables do more work\non the \"main thread\"; streams/observables are better at/have more tools for\nchunking work on a scheduler/thread pool outside of the \"main thread\").\n\nWhich is also why JS isn't exactly the best language to discuss the\ndifferences between async iterators and streams/iterables, because a lot of\nthose biggest differences/distinctions aren't very important in mostly-single-\nthreaded browser JS, which is its most common problem domain.\n\n------\na13n\nHave been using the spread operator via Babel for several months now. It's\ndefinitely convenient - saving me from writing several extra lines of code.\n\nI worry that spread operators make code less readable. You really have to\nsquint and think more when confronted with one.\n\nThey also make your code less understandable to a beginner, or people coming\nfrom other languages.\n\nOne of my favorite ways to use them:\n\n    \n    \n      const foo = {};\n      if (bar) {\n        foo.bar = bar;\n      }\n    \n\nTurns into:\n\n    \n    \n      const foo = {\n        ...bar && {bar},\n      };\n\n~~~\nmasklinn\n… Wouldn't\n\n    \n    \n        const foo = bar ? {bar} : {};\n    \n\nbe both more efficient and more readable?\n\n~~~\na13n\nWell typically there are more parameters being set than just the one.\n\n------\nrbobby\nAll I want is a datetime literal: #2018/01/31 17:00:21.2234233#.\n\nI don't even care that it isn't backwards compatible. Eventually platforms\nwill catch up... so the sooner it's added the sooner everything will catch up.\n\n~~~\ngmac\nIs that because you want date/times in JSON? Shouldn't it include a timezone,\nand maybe implement ISO8601?\n\n~~~\nrbobby\n2 things I want in JSON:\n\n1\\. Datetime\n\n2\\. Expand the encoding to escape '<' and '>'\n\nBeing able to specify a datetime as local vs utc would also be nice... so\n\"2018/01/31 17:35:21.2222Z\" for UTC and \"2018/01/31 17:35:21.2222\" for local.\n\nAs to the actual format used... that it's just a bikeshed argument waiting to\nhappen. I picked y/m/d for no particular reason (well... other than my ancient\npreference for a simple sort key). I also picked 24 hour time for no\nparticular reason (well... other than my ancient preference for a simple sort\nkey).\n\nNo one would really care too much one way or another what the format was (so\nlong as it was easy to generate using common server side technologies... node,\nphp, java, .net).\n\n~~~\nthrowbsyxgsbend\nYou can use Unicode escapes for < and > if you need them to be escaped. (Which\nis unfortunate, but defense in depth I guess.)\n\n------\ngtirloni\nI understand JS was an experiment and that there was much to add to make it a\nproper language, but isn't it good enough now? Can we expect the pace of\nchanges to slow down (specially in light of WebAssembly)? I'm not a JS\ndeveloper and/or language developer, honestly just curious.\n\n~~~\nchatmasta\nIf it’s not breaking backwards compatibility then what’s the problem with\nimprovements?\n\n~~~\nakvadrako\nIt obsoletes older browsers. For a while it used to be you could browse the\nweb with almost anything, even a 10-year old Netscape. Now it's the norm that\na 4 year old browser isn't supported, because of new APIs and JS syntax.\n\n~~~\ntcd\nWhy do people like you feel that's acceptable? Software can work from anywhere\nbetween a few hours to a decade before an update is required, and it entirely\ndepends on what you're doing.\n\nWebsites evolve, and that's the choice of developers around the world. You\nhave no right to complain if you don't keep your software up to date to a\nreasonable level.\n\nIf you want to use 4 years old software, you MUST accept things are broken and\nthat it's your fault. Try downloading Firefox 1-10 and see if they work today\n;)\n\n~~~\nakvadrako\nI'm not necessarily against forcing upgrades because it comes with advantages,\nbut I was explaining the tradeoff. It's one good thing about Apple and if say,\ndomestic power outlets could change every few years, we could get higher\nvoltages, DC, built in networking, more compact connectors, metering features,\netc...\n\nBut if everything operated like the web ecosystem, we might consume 100% of\nour time and money just on upgrades.\n\nAnd it pretty much guarantees there will only be a handful of vendors, because\nit's very expensive to stay current.\n\n------\ntomxor\n\n        RegExp Lookbehind Assertions\n    \n\nFinally... I've had to lookaround it's absence too many times.\n\n~~~\nSchaulustiger\nI've always been baffled by the absence of lookbehinds. Made a lot of regex\nsearching unwieldy, so I'm glad they finally added it together with named\ncapture groups.\n\n------\nMyrmornis\nI couldn’t immediately see any proposals for list/set/object comprehensions at\n[https://github.com/tc39/proposals](https://github.com/tc39/proposals), are\nthere any?\n\n~~~\nturdnagel\nI don't think those are happening, but how about basic set arithmetic? The\nfact that you can't do difference / union / intersection using the standard\nlibrary is frustrating.\n\n~~~\npitaj\nThere's a proposal for that.\n\n~~~\nepmatsw\nTwo of them now. One to add Set-specific methods, and another to port the\nusual Array.prototype methods over to Set and Maps. Can't wait!\n\n[https://github.com/tc39/set-methods](https://github.com/tc39/set-methods)\n[https://github.com/tc39/collection-\nmethods](https://github.com/tc39/collection-methods)\n\n------\nEugeneOZ\nThank you so much for \"finally\"!\n\n------\nbehindmyscreen\nWASM will eventually completely replace the need to use JS for any web\ndevelopment. That will be a good day.\n\n------\nmproud\nAre there polyfills available for any of this?\n\n~~~\npaxunix\nYou generally can't polyfill an operator or things that require changes to\nlanguage parsing, but you can run it through a transpiler like Babel so it\nconverts everything to an earlier version like ES5 with more widespread and\nstable feature support.\n\n------\nAlreadyobsolete\nThe Rest and Spread operators are interesting, I think they're cool syntactic\nsugar and they've got reasonable use for some types of functional programming,\nbut they feel like a ticking time bomb. It doesn't exactly promote resilience\nif objects are being passed around many different contexts. It seems like it\npromotes clunky boilerplate checks over more explicit logic\n\n------\nqualitytime\nFunny how the \"final feature set for 2018\" is nailed near enough Feb 2018.\n\nCall me stupid, when I'll get whiteboard tested on these shiny new concepts,\nbut I really don't (and you shouldn't also) give a rats ass about all of this.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHaskell.org is down - klrr\nhttp://www.haskell.org/\n\n======\ncduser\nSo?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n‘Downloadable Gun’ Clears a Legal Obstacle, and Activists Are Alarmed - Anon1096\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/business/downloadable-gun-allowed-alarming-activists.html\n======\ncolemannugent\nThe worry about this being a new avenue for \"ghost-guns\" is absurd. All you\nneed for a gun is some metal pipe from a hardware store. These \"downloadable\nguns\" would be about as effective. Plus it's perfectly legal to make your own\nfirearm from readily available parts. And it's not like the fed tracks guns\nanyway, so what's new?\n\nThe debate on this issue seems to be centered around the fact that these plans\nare downloadable online, which I think is silly since Google happily provides\nyou with most of what you need already:\n\n[https://patents.google.com/patent/US984519A](https://patents.google.com/patent/US984519A)\n\n[https://patents.google.com/patent/US6279258](https://patents.google.com/patent/US6279258)\n\n[https://patents.google.com/patent/US4539889A](https://patents.google.com/patent/US4539889A)\n\n[https://patents.google.com/patent/US5827992A](https://patents.google.com/patent/US5827992A)\n\n~~~\nkozikow\n> make your own firearm from readily available parts\n\nI am not a legal expert and it's not a legal advice, but in case of a bolt-\naction rifle, I think the action is still legally treated as a firearm. So you\ncan buy most parts without hassle (barrel, trigger, stock), but you need to go\nthrough the FFL to buy the action.\n\nReference:\n[https://www.brownells.com/aspx/general/faqdetail.aspx?fid=10...](https://www.brownells.com/aspx/general/faqdetail.aspx?fid=1083)\n\n~~~\nasdsa5325\nYes- but if you make the part that is legally the gun yourself, it's fine.\n\nAnyone is allowed to manufacture a gun, as long as they don't sell it. If you\nwant to sell it, you'd need a license.\n\n~~~\nkozikow\nSo it seems it was already fairly easy and legal to build and own a very high-\nquality firearm with general attention-grabbing features mentioned in the\narticle? Not a legal advice or suggesting you should do so:\n\n1\\. CNC the Remington 700 action:\n[https://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/gunsmithing/making-\nrem...](https://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/gunsmithing/making-\nremington-700-action-179971/) . This is the hard part and would probably need\na week of dedicated work...\n\n2\\. Buy barrel, trigger and stock.\n\n3\\. Everything mostly just fits into the action, so assembly is just like\nputting lego pieces together.\n\n~~~\nheypete\nI've purchased unregulated 80% lower receivers (they're only legally \"a gun\"\nif more than 80% of the machining work is complete. At or below 80%, they're\njust considered a chunk of metal.) and machined them using nothing more than a\nwoodworking router, a hand drill, a jig, and a vise in about 30-45 minutes.\n\nThe jig is the most expensive part, costing about $160 or so, but once you\nhave it there's no wear parts and you can use the jig to build as many as you\nwant.\n\n------\nAngryData\nWhy be alarmed? You can do the same thing with a mill or CNC machine except\nits made of metal and not shitty plastic and it has been available for like 60\nyears. Gun technology is not secret nor are the mechanics unreasonably\ncomplicated, plans are easily available both in books and online and have been\nsince before near everyone here was born.\n\n~~~\n_bxg1\nYou have to be an experienced metalworker to make one that way. A computer\ndoesn't do it for you (at least not yet). Whereas any idiot can download a\nfile and send it to a 3D printer.\n\n~~~\ntoomuchtodo\nAnd plastic isn't detected by a metal detector (there's a movie plot about\nthis! [+]).\n\n[+]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Line_of_Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Line_of_Fire)\n\n~~~\nesaym\nMost guns are already 50%+ plastic today so not really seeing your point.\n\n~~~\ntoomuchtodo\nAre they of sufficient plastic or composite composition that they don't\ntrigger a metal detector? I don't believe so.\n\nDisclaimer: I’m familiar with this only because I have to check my firearms\nwhen I’m flying.\n\n~~~\nesaym\nHard to say as all detectors are different. I only know that while as a\nteenager I got kicked out of public school for skipping class too much and was\nsent to an \"alternative placement center\".\n\nEveryone there had to wear a white shirt and pants. There was only one\nentrance and there was a metal detector right in front of it. But what all the\n\"cool\" kids were doing was seeing how big of a knife they could sneak through\nit. And there was a couple of 3 inchers that got through. It mattered were the\nknife was and how you held your hands as you went through, but can't remember\nthe details (this was back in 2001).\n\n------\nioquatix\nThis is a very tricky situation.\n\nI generally abhor guns in society.\n\nHowever, I'd be more concerned about living in a society where creating and\ndisseminating information, such that no crime is committed, is a crime in and\nof itself.\n\nOn a more practical note, I'd be surprised if any 3D printed gun was actually\nstrong enough without metal components/reinforcing. I'm reasonable experienced\nwith 3D printing... and I'd personally expect such a device to at least blow a\nfew fingers off.\n\n~~~\nmushufasa\nSociety already criminalizes disseminating information, such as national\nsecurity secrets, and nuclear weapons technology.\n\nThough information itself wants to be free, I am very much in favor of\nincreasing friction for world-ending technologies like nuclear weapons.\n\nThere was a good documentary on 3D printing guns a few years ago where the\nplastics were essentially good for a few rounds and then wear out. They've\nimproved since then, and will keep improving.\n\nPlastics don't need to compete directly with metal to be formidable.\n\n~~~\nDuskStar\n>Society already criminalizes disseminating information, such as ... nuclear\nweapons technology\n\nHave you ever heard of the Nth Country Experiment? Keep in mind that this was\nconducted in the 1960s. Suffice to say, _designing_ a nuclear weapon is not a\nproblem. Neither is manufacturing one. The difficulty lies in obtaining\nsufficient nuclear material.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment)\n\n~~~\nGW150914\nIf all you care about is a low-yield, wasteful, heavy bomb? Yes. If you want\nan advanced dial-a-yield thermonuclear device capable of leveling a city, and\nfitting on a missile? Not so much.\n\n------\nhirundo\nSay there's a class of objects that we want to prohibit to 3D printers. If not\nguns, then some WMD that meets whatever your risk threshold is. How,\ntechnically, do we accomplish that?\n\nThere wouldn't seem to be any algorithm that could recognize any part that\ncould be assembled into a device. A gun for instance can take on almost\ninfinite forms and be divided into arbitrary unrecognizable modules.\n\nWe could enforce pre-approval by a government engineer of any part that may\npossibly become such a device. But such an engineer would have to generate a\nlarge amount of false positives to be at all effective. And the requirement\nfor skilled human intervention would make it slow and expensive.\n\nBottom line, if there exists a device that you insist must be prohibited, then\nyou will want to ban the free use of 3D printers that can make it.\n\nSo what's that threshold for you? Keep in mind that a box cutter was used as a\nWMD, killing thousands. Do we ban 3D printers that can make a box cutter?\nLet's posit a lower limit of a box cutter and an upper limit of a fusion bomb.\nAre gunpowder projectile devices the right compromise?\n\nHow dangerous does a printable device have to be before we must stand athwart\ntechnology, yelling Stop?\n\n~~~\nReverseCold\n2D Printers have a feature like this.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation)\n\n~~~\nelectrograv\nThat only works for a fixed set of items you specifically design. There is an\ninfinite design variety of 3D-printable weapons or other dangerous items, so\nto prevent them all from being printed, you’d need to outright ban 3D\nprinting.\n\nThere’s really no other way — even if we had a hypothetical omniscient AI —\nbecause you can already construct weapons from a number of harmless existing\nparts with nonviolent uses, there’s no way of banning ALL possible weapon\nparts from being printed without also banning everything.\n\nAnd this isn’t even getting into inevitable circumvention of any such\nlimitations placed on 3D printers.\n\nThe only way to entirely prevent the construction of weapons is to build\neverything around us out of jello or styrofoam, and box everyone inside this\nsoft padded universe permanently. But then I bet you even then someone will\nfigure out how to terrorize others with the tools at hand; even if all they\ncan do is hold you down and smother you in jello, someone, somewhere will do\nit, and copycats will appear everywhere thereafter.\n\n------\ncellularmitosis\nThe article says the alarm is over a perceived increase in the ease of\nobtaining an unregistered and untraceable gun. If that’s your goal, isn’t it\nstill lucky easier to obtain a manufactured firearm, grind off the serial\nnumber, and then (somehow) modifying or distort the refiling? Even excluding\nthat option, I’d imagine it’s essier for these types to find a buddy who owns\na mill and lathe and make a gun the old fashioned way than it is to build or\nobtain a working metal-capable 3D printer (and the result will still need\nfinish machining on a mill and large anyway, right?)\n\n~~~\nAngryData\nYes, it is done very commonly although filing the number isn't 100% effective.\nAs for changing other parts of the gun, matching the rifling on bullets or\nmarks on the shell or primer is 99% of the time impossible unless you got some\nsignificant manufacturing defects or wear marks. They could possibly tell it\ncame from a certain certain manufacturer's model, but mostly they just know\nwhat caliber it was, and there are tens of thousands of identical guns of that\nmodel all over too, it's like having the fingerprint of 1 of 20,000 clones.\nSome of them you can rule out due to unique defects or scars, but at least\nhalf of them are going to be too closely indistinguishable from another to\ntell.\n\n~~~\njimmywanger\nFor a semi, once you want to get rid of it, ram a file down the barrel, take a\nhammer to the extractor, file the surface of the fireing pin, field strip the\ngun and toss it in different places (preferably in salt water). That sounds\nlike a lot of work, but without disposal it takes like 10 minutes.\n\nFor a revolver, you slam a file down the barrel, forcing cone, file the\nstriking surface and the chamber, take that apart and ditch it separately\n(again in salty water).\n\nEven if they manage the find all the parts, they will never be able to match\nup ballistics. And hey, somebody stole your gun, you have no idea why they\nwould do all that.\n\n------\nbb88\nIt's still vastly easier and cheaper to go to a gun show and buy a gun with\ncash. Also the gun you will get will be more reliable than the plastic PLA\nthat you print out.\n\n~~~\nsomebodynew\nYou can pay in cash, but you're still going to get the same background check\nyou would get at a retail location. If you're trying to do something shady you\nwould be buying from a private individual in a parking lot somewhere.\n\n~~~\nbb88\nSellers in gun shows in most states aren't required to do background checks.\nHence the name, \"Gun Show Loophole.\"\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_loophole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_loophole)\n\n~~~\nConsultant32452\nThe gun show loophole has nothing to do with gun shows and everything to do\nwith private sales. The vast majority of gun sales at gun shows are from\nlicensed arms dealers and they are required to do a background check.\n\nRequiring background checks for private gun sales sounds like a good idea\nuntil you do the research on the effort vs benefit. The effort to enforce this\nwould be massive and virtually no gun crimes are committed with these guns\nanyways. In practical terms you'd have to track every firearm and figure out\nwhat to do when Grandpa does and leaves his gun to his children. A parent\nwould have to run a background check on their own child of they buy a gun for\nthem as a gift. Realistically, the only time it could be determined that a gun\nwas sold in private without a background check is if the gun is eventually\nused in a crime and recovered. The vast, vast majority of guns that wind up in\nthe hands of criminals are through corrupt licensed dealers and straw\npurchases.\n\nIf the purpose of gun control laws is to prevent violent crime, then there's\nno loophole here since this is not a significant source of weapons used in\nviolent crimes.\n\n~~~\nmaxerickson\nRequiring parents to do background checks on their children would create\nliability for a parent that gave a gun to a child that shouldn't have one.\n\nYour argument that it is silly hinges on the idea that parents wouldn't ever\ndo that. But they would.\n\nThose background checks in total would have little impact, but it's not a good\nargument against requiring background checks.\n\n~~~\nConsultant32452\nCan you provide any evidence that suggests these private sales are a\nsignificant source of weapons used in violent crimes? If they're not a\nsignificant source of guns used in violent crime, how would you justify such a\nlaw?\n\n------\ndelbel\nTitle saids Activists Are Alarmed, but it doesn't quote or say a single\nactivist. Also, this happened during the Obama administration (who didn't have\nanything to do with it) and the article trys to slam it as a Trump\nadministration with totally separate subject.\n\nNew York Times is NOT a reputable news organization. Yes, they once were, but\never since the whole WMD 2002 Iraq war, to me, they've been horrible. Yes\noccasionally they might have something good, that's how propagation works: you\nhide your agenda with things that make it neutral so that you can't\ndistinguish between facts and agenda narratives, it also gives plausible\ndeniability against critics. So whatever.\n\n~~~\nbittercynic\nI also thought this article was trash, but they also have plenty of articles\nthat seem pretty well researched and informative.\n\nIf you know of a news organization where every article is high quality, I'd\nlove to hear about it!\n\n------\nReverseCold\nJust curious, what if you wanted to register a gun that you made (put a serial\nnumber on it, etc)? Is there even a legal pathway to do that?\n\n~~~\ndjsumdog\nUS laws doesn't allow any way to register a firearm. Stores have to keep\nrecords, and tracing requests have to be forward to the store of purchase.\nThere's a great documentary on this:\n\n[https://vimeo.com/180763356](https://vimeo.com/180763356)\n\n~~~\nannerajb\nNot quite correct federal law provides a method to serialize a gun if you are\napplying a tax stamp for registering with the federal government if you are\nadding a NFA regulated modification.\n\nstates law as usual vary but only a few states have serial number database of\nguns. Ymmv if they will allow it or not.\n\n------\nkozikow\nIn my opinion, the effects of this are overblown by both pro and anti-gun\ncrowds. The gun at the core is a relatively simple mechanical device,\nespecially manual action. Barebones essentials include just a rifled tube and\na little hammer to strike the primer. Ammo is much harder to \"DYI\".\n\n------\nghaff\nI'm not sure why this case even made it to the point it did. This seems in The\nAnarchist Cookbook or even MIT Guide to Lock Picking territory. There are\nprobably folks on here who feel differently but in the US this wouldn't even\nseem to be an edge case regardless of political leanings.\n\n~~~\nj16sdiz\nI think those books are restricted by export law too. Doesn't it?\n\n~~~\nghaff\nGiven that they're all over the web that would be kind of amusing.\n\n------\nbnolsen\nso criminals steal guns and buy them black market already and (here's the key)\nUSE them to do something illegal. Just leave us normal citizens alone please\nand don't punish us for people who have ill intent regardless of the tools at\nhand.\n\n------\nChrisSD\nSo how well can a printed gun really work?\n\nThe plastic in a 3D printer is surely, by design, very malleable. That's the\nopposite of the material needed for an effective gun.\n\n~~~\nem3rgent0rdr\nThe articles fails to mention that the Ghost Gunner machine which makes the\nnew guns is a CNC mill and uses 7075 billet aluminum, which is strong enough\nfor multiple shots.\n\n------\nking_nothing\nI already have AR and Glock lower CAD files. What’s new?\n\n------\ncodedokode\nDoesn't it make sense to restrict selling of bullets? This plastic gun is\npretty useless without them.\n\n~~~\ndrtyolmck\nbullets are way easier to make than guns.\n\n~~~\ncodedokode\nCan you print them too?\n\n------\nwdn\nGun don’t kill people, people kill people. Taking guns from law abriding\ncitizen will not reduce gun violence. Criminals don’t care what your laws say.\n\nBeside, most killing happened in schools. Still puzzled me today why don’t\nthey remove school from gun free zone. It is a killzone.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow do I find the memory usage of an application on Android? - badhairday\nhttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/2298208/how-to-discover-memory-usage-of-my-application-in-android\n\n======\nZigurd\nThis is a relatively old question on Stackoverflow, and Dianne Hackborn's\nanswer is authoritative as usual.\n\nTo sum it up: Don't worry about global free memory. Your app can use up only a\nrelatively small part. More accurately, each component (Activity, Service,\netc.) of your app with the <process> attribute can only use up to 48MB.\nUsually, all your components are in one process.\n\nWithin your process, Android will \"destroy\" (null all references) to\ncomponents in your process and recreate them to optimize memory use. At times,\nAndroid will destroy every component in a process and delete ane re-create\nwhole processes from the saved state of each component. This explains why PIDs\nare not reliable for tracking android app resource use. Your tasks (the\ncomponents on the back stack starting with the task root, which is the\ncomponent that was launched by the Launcher) are not tied to one process, nor\none PID, throughout their lifespan.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: JsonBatch Playground – A site to play with JsonBatch Engine - rey5137\nhttps://jsonbatch-playground.herokuapp.com/sample1\n======\nrey5137\nHi. I'm the author of JsonBatch library - an Engine to run batch request with\nJSON based REST APIs. I have setup a small site so you can test out\nJsonBatch's feature.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRuby, Ruby on Rails, and _why (2012) - aaronbrethorst\nhttp://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/03/ruby_ruby_on_rails_and__why_the_disappearance_of_one_of_the_world_s_most_beloved_computer_programmers_.single.html\n======\nrurban\nSeveral people are cited with _why's code being \"sloppy\". I have to object\nstrongly. I'm not a ruby programmer, so I cannot comment on that, but I can\nconfirm that syck and potion, two of his most important and best engineered\nworks are the opposite of sloppy. They are genius. Extremely well engineered,\nfast, slimmed down to be extremely functional, you won't find better code for\nthese tasks. And there are multiples of comparable code bases to compare\nagainst. Potion, which I took over to maintain after his disappearence, shines\nover Lua and Io, which were the influences. It still would make a better ruby\nengine than cruby, jruby, or any other. But it uses a better language, so on\nthe surface it is incompatible.\n\nSyck is still miles better than the official libyaml. I do work with both and\nextended both.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEmulating Linux MIPS in Perl – Part 1: ELF loader - draegtun\nhttp://schplog.schmorp.de/2015-06-08-emulating-linux-mips-in-perl-1.html\n======\nandrewchambers\nA tiny mips emulator I wrote which can boot a linux kernel:\n\n[https://github.com/andrewchambers/cmips](https://github.com/andrewchambers/cmips)\n\n------\njoosters\nThis series of posts is amazingly well-written, it explains the steps involved\nreally well IMO, thoughtfully ordering the code snippets to make understanding\neach step simple.\n\nAs a perl user, I'm also highly biased as it's nice to see a perl article on\nHN once in a while :)\n\n------\nuserbinator\nThe next step along this path would be to run Perl inside this VM, and then\nrun the emulator in it...\n\nMIPS is certainly one of the simplest instruction sets. A while ago I decided\nto write one too, for fun, after having done ones for a few other CPUs (Z80,\n6502, 8086), and MIPS was by far the simplest, almost to the point of being\nboring. Getting the branch delay slots right (see\n[http://www.pagetable.com/?p=313](http://www.pagetable.com/?p=313) for some\ndetails) was the hardest part.\n\n~~~\nTheLoneWolfling\nW.r.t. branch delay slots.\n\nAn interesting idea: instead of fixing a number of branch delay slots (or\nnone), what about splitting branches? That is - you have a branch_commit\ninstruction, and anything between the branch and the branch_commit is treated\nas (a) branch delay slot(s), with the processor either filling in pipeline\nbubbles or stalling the branch as necessary. If you want to get fancy about it\nyou can start doing matched branch / commit pairs (like nesting brackets), or\npotentially even start dealing with general matching.\n\nAlthough the decreased instruction density may kill the benefits.\n\n------\nchriswarbo\nI came across the phrase \"XY problem\" the other day\n[http://www.perlmonks.org/?node=XY+Problem](http://www.perlmonks.org/?node=XY+Problem)\n\n> You want to do X, and you think Y is the best way of doing so. Instead of\n> asking about X, you ask about Y.\n\nIf we allow \"ask\" to include asking oneself, then this seems like a great\nexample :)\n\n------\nkazinator\nIronic; I put together a MIPS based Linux distro about eight years ago, and\nPerl was one of the items that wouldn't cross-compile to it.\n\nHow you get Perl on MIPS is by compiling on a MIPS machine, or in an emulated\nchroot environment (QEMU on x86, say). Now Perl can maybe supply that\nenvironment.\n\n------\nl1n\nSpeaking of MIPS, has anyone had success emulating IRIX?\n\n------\nTickleSteve\nAm I reading this correctly??\n\nEmulating a whole processor to run a shell script on Windows.... Seriously??\n\nStrikes me that someone didn't research the options correctly or just wants an\nexcuse to play...\n\n~~~\nUltimatt\nPlaying aka learning in this profession. Some still care to work towards being\nable to contribute to the \"options\" that are in play. This is how those\ndevelopers and new options are born.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nKickStarting a Revolution - dajbelshaw\nhttp://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/08/16/kickstarting-a-revolution/\n\n======\ncomputer\nI know that it's superficial, but I have an extremely hard time taking a blog\npost interspersed with large meme pictures seriously. I think you should only\nuse them if your target audience is teens, and when you're near their age as\nwell, trying to write something \"popular\". Definitely not when attempting to\nwrite a serious post.\n\nNote that this is the same blog that recently started a post[0] with:\n\n    \n    \n      TL;DR? Why not just go watch another five second video of a kitten \n      with its head in a toilet roll, or a 140 character description \n      of a meal your friend just stuffed in their mouth. “nom nom”. \n      This blog post is not for you.\n    \n\nwhich makes this seem quite ironic.\n\n[0]: [http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-\nco...](http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/)\n\n~~~\npearjuice\nThese are not \"meme pictures\" but rather image macros[0].\n\n[0]:\n[https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_macro](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_macro)\n\n~~~\nglomph\nThey are both.\n\n------\nthisiswrong\nGreat article, just one major inaccuracy concerning the Pirate Party:\n\n> they have a silly name and their focus seems to be solely on ‘sharing\n> culture’ at the expense of everything else.\n\nThen you go on to say:\n\n> What we need in this country is a protest party that campaigns on the issues\n> of Internet privacy, censorship, copyright/patent reform and computer misuse\n> laws.\n\nThe Pirate Party campaigns precisely on these issues. For those that think the\nPirate Party is just focused on protesting against unfair monopolies, please\nlook up their actual ideas.\n\nA good illustration is given on Rick Falkvinge's blog:\n\n[http://falkvinge.net/files/2012/manual/PirateWheel-2012-11-1...](http://falkvinge.net/files/2012/manual/PirateWheel-2012-11-10.pdf)\n\n~~~\nMarcScott\nThanks. I'll have a think about this and then edit the article to give a\nfairer representation to the Pirate Party.\n\n~~~\ncabalamat\nThe Pirate Party's manifesto\n([https://www.pirateparty.org.uk/media/uploads/Manifesto2012.p...](https://www.pirateparty.org.uk/media/uploads/Manifesto2012.pdf))\nspecifically addresses privacy. On p.25 it says:\n\n _We feel that citizens ' right to private and confidential communication is\nvital, but at present it is not respected. We will forbid third parties from\nintercepting or monitoring communication traffic (i.e. telephone calls, post,\nInternet traffic, defend the right of citizens to expose emails) and require\nspecific warrants to be issued by a court before the police are allowed to\nmonitor communications traffic._\n\n------\nmodernerd\nWhy not raise £338,568 for the Open Rights Group\n([http://www.openrightsgroup.org/](http://www.openrightsgroup.org/)) instead?\nThey're a British group who actively campaign and defend privacy, freedom of\nexpression, and innovation. They could do with the financial support,\ntechnical help, legal aid, and public awareness.\n\nPutting your time and money behind groups like ORG\n([http://www.openrightsgroup.org/](http://www.openrightsgroup.org/)), the EFF\n([https://www.eff.org/](https://www.eff.org/)), and Privacy International\n([https://www.privacyinternational.org/](https://www.privacyinternational.org/))\nfeels more productive to me than playing an expensive system for a one-off\npolitical statement. We need to support and create sustainable groups with a\nvested interest in putting pressure on the policy makers in power. Groups who\nare well-established, who share your views, and who have a head start.\n\nExpressing your distaste for existing parties is valuable. But it is easily\nignored, especially if you do not intend to fight for seats.\n\nIf the EFF and ORG grew as big, influential, and sustainable as other pressure\ngroups such as the National Rifle Association, then privacy and technology\nmatters could start to influence policy makers pandering for votes.\n\nIf you're reading this from the UK, go ahead and join ORG today:\n[https://www.openrightsgroup.org/join/](https://www.openrightsgroup.org/join/)\nThey need more members. £5 a month can make a big difference to them.\n\nYou should donate to the EFF while you're at it:\n[https://supporters.eff.org/donate](https://supporters.eff.org/donate)\n\n~~~\ncabalamat\n> Putting your time and money behind groups like ORG\n> ([http://www.openrightsgroup.org/](http://www.openrightsgroup.org/)), the\n> EFF ([https://www.eff.org/](https://www.eff.org/)), and Privacy\n> International\n> ([https://www.privacyinternational.org/](https://www.privacyinternational.org/))\n> feels more productive to me than playing an expensive system for a one-off\n> political statement.\n\nI agree that a one-off campaign in the 2015 general election is unlikely to\nbear much fruit. However, having said that, the Pirate Party's strategy of\ntackling these problems by being a political party and fighting elections _is_\nalready bearing fruit.\n\nFor example, one reason the European Parliament decided not to go ahead with\nACTA is that they fear it would give a major impetus to the Pirates, who the\noldparties would rather not see getting bigger in the 2014 European election.\n\nThere is no reason, of course, why digital rights activists cannot do both --\npolitical parties and campaigning organisations -- together.\n\n------\nthenomad\nI care about this issue quite a lot, and the central idea - Kickstarting a new\nparty - is a good one.\n\nHaving said that, there are an enormous number of problems with this\nsuggestion.\n\n _\" There should be no need for local campaigning. I’ve never had a politician\nknock on my door to discuss who I’d vote for, but I have had plenty of\nleaflets and fliers put though my letterbox and they end up straight in the\nrecycling. \"_\n\nGood - because everyone else thinks the same as the OP, right? If we promote\non Twitter and YouTube, everyone who matters will learn about the party?\n\nNot so much. A project like this is going to need a marketing budget, and a\nbig one - as well as volunteers on the ground, whether the OP likes it or not.\n\nMost people don't even have a Twitter account. Most people don't follow\nYouTube particularly closely.\n\nAnd as many, many marketing professionals over the years have noticed, you\nneed to tell people about your product a lot more than once for them to buy\ninto it.\n\n _\" There are 650 constituencies in the United Kingdom.\"_\n\nAnd for each of these, you're going to need a candidate. That's 650 people you\nneed to find, who can appear credible to the media (so, they'll need to be\nskilled public speakers who can handle a debating environment as well as a\nmedia interview focused on soundbites), who don't have any skeletons in their\ncloset or non-standard lifestyle choices that the other parties can use to\ndiscredit the entire organisation (\"GEEK WHO WANTS TO BE PM IN BISEXUAL ORGY\nSHOCKER!\"), and who are willing to give up their current careers should they\nwin.\n\nOne of the biggest problems the mainstream parties have is finding qualified\ncandidates - and they've got 100+ years of experience and network to do so.\nFor an upstart party like this, it's going to be a far, far bigger problem\nthan finding the money.\n\nNone of which means that this idea should just be disregarded, but it\ndefinitely needs more consideration.\n\n~~~\ndoctorfoo\n> That's 650 people you need to find, who can appear credible to the media\n\nThey don't need this; I think the idea is purely protest, with no intention of\nthe person actually getting voted in.\n\n~~~\nvidarh\nAs long as the candidates are not batshit crazy some controversy might\nactually be a benefit in getting PR, as long as everyone knows to answer\neverything with \"You know as well as we do that we don't stand a chance of\ngetting elected and anyone trying to make a point out of that are just trying\nto score points; the point of this campaign is to give people an opportunity\nto show their displeasure with the big parties stance on privacy; [launch into\ninfo about the point]\"\n\n~~~\nAndyPPUK\nI would invite readers to consider just how non-trivial the following task is:\n\nHere is a list of 650 people that are almost as geographically diversely\nlocated as it is possible to be while remaining in the UK. Demonstrate that\nnone of them are \"batshit crazy\".\n\n------\nFrojoS\nI followed the, quite successful, foundation and raise of the Pirate Party of\nGermany very closely. Many of my friends and follow activists from our privacy\nmovement, AK Vorrat, became members. I can not recall, money ever having been\na major problem. This was certainly true for AK Vorrat* and I think it was\ntrue for the PP as well.\n\nSure, you would always like to have more money, but it never stops you from\ndoing sensible moves. On top of that, not having boatloads of money makes you\nlook authentic and fresh. When you campaign, you spend so much of your own\ntime and energy, that you happily spend some of your money as well. The listed\ncosts in this article are peanuts for any group of people that can afford to\nstart and propel a political movement. You certainly don't need Internet\ncrowdfunding for that though it might be a good idea for financing an election\ncampaign. In my experience, there are many, many people who want to support\nyour politics but don't think they have the time. Those people are very\nwilling to support you financially with what ever amount they can easily\nafford.\n\nSo, at least in Germany, starting a political movement is not limited by\nmoney.\n\nPS: There was actually some crowdfunding. The company Spreadshirt included\ndonatations for every T-Shirt with the popular Stasi 2.0 logo.\n[http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi_2.0](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi_2.0)\nAbout 11,000 Euros were raised very quickly and I remember the many discussion\non \"How shall we spend all this money.\"\n\n~~~\nM2Ys4U\nPolitical parties in Germany receive state funding, which doesn't happen in\nthe UK.\n\n~~~\nFrojoS\nFair point. But again, even if you are not a party, your political movement\nwill have to overcome a lot of major problems. I wouldn't count money as one\nof them.\n\n------\nmozboz\nCan someone enlighten me as to how this achieves anything, other than a count\nof people who abstained?\n\nIf you want to reform something, it seems like the required action is to\nreform it. Saying on record 'i want reform', or 'i don't like the old system'\ndoes not achieve anything, and in fact wastes everyones' time. The hard part:\nworking out reform and enactioning it, still needs to be done.\n\nAm I missing something?\n\n~~~\nraesene2\nI think that what this could achieve is stating the importance of the issues\nto the main political parties. Most \"mainstream\" political parties that I've\nseen will change their positions on things if they think it will get them more\nvotes.\n\nSo what would this achieve. Well having a \"privacy reform\" party candidate on\nall the ballots would draw attention to the problem, in that voters would see\nthe name and potentially hear about the platform. Also getting on the ballots\nwould be likely to draw some mainstream media attention (heck the Monster\nraving loony party gets attention in the UK when it's on the ballot at by-\nelections)\n\nThen if the party actually gets a decent number of votes, it may persuade\nmainstream parties to change their positions. My feeling is that at the moment\nnone of them think it's that important a topic, so aren't formulating policies\non the topic.\n\nPersonally I think it's a good idea to try and do something about this now, as\nonce the idea that PRISM etc are fine and accepted gets embedded into culture,\nthe next steps are likely to follow (e.g. what the US seems to be seeing with\nDEA and other law enforcement areas getting access to data). How long would it\nbe before your local police are trawling your smartphone GPS data to see if\nyou were speeding...)\n\n~~~\nrmc\n_Most \"mainstream\" political parties that I've seen will change their\npositions on things if they think it will get them more votes._\n\nYep, this has happened before. 25 years ago the Conservative party brought in\na law banning the \"promotion of homosexuality in schools\", now they are\nlegalising same sex marriage.\n\n------\nspindritf\nI'm not a Brit but how can a country be run by corporations if the government\nis telling them what to do? Whether through judicial orders on what to filter,\nlegislation on how to filter even more, and extraditions at the request of US\nfederal _government_.\n\nThere is a legitimate concern about regulatory capture, about large entities\nhaving an unfair advantage... However, whenever I see the whole \"OMG\nCORPORATOCRACY\" shtick nowadays I just think that the author has seen one too\nmany scifi movie from the 80s about how we will be ruled by some Japanese Omni\nMegaCorp and it has forever tainted his world view.\n\nAnd then there's the signalling. UKIP is, of course, racist. The Pirate Party\nhas a silly name. \"What would my peers and colleagues think? We need a party\nthat would make me, a constituent, look good to my friends!\"\n\nOn the other hand, moral preening as a primary political concern surely is a\nfirst world thing. So that's a good illustration.\n\nNot to mention that this article is yet another political manifesto with\ntenuous connection to technology at best.\n\n~~~\nlukifer\nThe relationship between corporations and governments can be seen as roughly\nanalagous to that of the King and the Church 400 years ago: both colluding and\ncompeting for power.\n\n------\nchestnut-tree\nI think the biggest problem is that single-issue parties never gain widespread\nsupport. I may be interested in internet privacy and technology issues but I\nmight also be interested in education, transport, housing, the economy and\nmany other issues. If these subjects are secondary (or presented as secondary)\nto your party's main focus, how can you ever gain broad support among the\nelectorate? Unless the real goal of starting a party is to make the main\npolitical parties sit up and take notice of the issues you're campaigning for.\n\nThe alternative to creating a party is to create a campaigning body or\norganisation - which of course may struggle to get noticed.\n\nRaising and highlighting important public issues, questioning official claims\nis also the role of the press, but we can never expect that from the utterly\nabysmal UK press.\n\n~~~\nvidarh\n> Unless the real goal of starting a party is to make the main political\n> parties sit up and take notice of the issues you're campaigning for.\n\nThat's exactly what this blog post argued for.\n\nConsider that in 2010 there were 40+ seats where taking less than 1000 votes\nwould have been enough to spoil the incumbent party's chance at winning the\nseat.\n\n------\npcx66\nI am from India, and our parties do not give a shit for the ideals engraved in\nour constitution. Like the ones in most(all?) other countries, they have\ntransformed from leveraging a shitty status quo to enforcing a shittier status\nquo.\n\nBack to your post. What I understand is, you want to show to the existing\nparties that a sizable population wants something the parties are not\noffering, and hope that they will notice. And you yourself cannot support any\nof the existing parties because you disagree with several of their policies.\nWon't your proposed party face a similar problem? It probably will be less of\na problem because the degree of disagreement on issues won't be so big,\nbecause the kind of people you will gather think similarly of most issues,\nhave a similar (modern, liberal?) morality.\n\nBut I think you have to relay the implicit message of your post explicitly.\nLETS STOP BEING FUCKING LAZY.\n\n------\nwikiburner\n_> Kickstarter won’t allow crowd-funding of political parties from what I can\ngather.\n\nKickstarter cannot be used to raise money for causes, whether it’s the Red\nCross or a scholarship, or for “fund my life” projects, like tuition or bills.\n\nIndiegogo has no problem with it though._\n\nDoes anyone know why that's the case? Why would Kickstarter be so restrictive?\n\nKickstarter also requires each project team to sign up for their own Amazon\npayments account. Why wouldn't Kickstarter just collect the money and then\nwire it / cut a check to the funding recipient?\n\nAlso, why does Indiegogo charge upfront while Kickstarter waits until the\ncampaign is successful.\n\nThe whole crowdfunding space seems to operate pretty illogically. Are there\nlegal complexities that aren't apparent to an outsider that force their hand?\n\n~~~\nmjburgess\nI think it's more a \"who we want to be\" kinda thing. Kickstarter doesn't want\nits brand associated with any potentially controversial/etc. topics.\n\n~~~\nwikiburner\nThat's true, some of the Indiegogo campaigns I've seen do sort of have an\n\"off-brand\" feel to them.\n\nStill, I wonder why Kickstarter has each project set up their own Amazon\nPayments account and not collect the money themselves? Could it be a legal or\ntax reason? And how do they extract their 5% if the payment is processed with\nthe campaign owner's Amazon account?\n\n------\nsklivvz1971\nThis is such a bad idea.\n\n(a) null voting is already a \"none of the above\" option\n\n(b) they ask to give money to do... what exactly? Why give this guy 300k£ to\nbasically waste? Give it to charity FFS.\n\n~~~\nsoult\nDoes null voting leave the seats in parliament empty? Or do the other parties\njust get a bigger share?\n\n~~~\nsklivvz1971\nLeaving empty seats is much worse than null voting. It doesn't accomplish\nanything more, as in either case your vote doesn't go to a real, voting\npolitician. It surely wastes more money as the corresponding parliamentary\nstipends are given to - I guess - the party for _doing nothing_. Surely doing\nnothing has a much better price point at \"free\".\n\n~~~\nvidarh\nWhy do think they'd do nothing? Do you think Sinn Fein does \"nothing\" with the\nmoney it receives for it's Westminster MP's?\n\nIt's certainly possible for it to be a total waste, but in Sinn Fein's case,\nfor example, whether or not you agree with their goals, it is a very clear\nprincipled stand: They don't believe Northern Ireland is rightfully part of\nthe UK, nor that the queen is their rightful head of state, so they can't in\ngood conscience give an oath of loyalty to the queen.\n\nVoters who vote for them know full well that this will the outcome, yet they\nstill vote for them because it accomplishes something to these voters: It\n(now) gives funds to Sinn Fein _and_ it keeps sending a signal that a\nsubstantial number of people in these constituencies see British rule as\nunjust.\n\nSurely there can be any number of other causes where the signal effect can be\npreferred by voters who otherwise don't see sufficient difference between the\nmajor parties to believe it makes a difference which one of them gets their\npolicy through.\n\nThe reality anyway is that in the vast majority of votes in the Commons, the\nsmall parties votes have no bearing on the outcome at all because the first\npast the post system means the big parties has such a disproportionate portion\nof the seats, so most votes for parties outside the big three are still\ntotally \"wasted\" by similar logic.\n\n------\nvixen99\n\"There’s a single protest party, the UK Independence Party, but UKIP and I\ndon’t really see eye-to-eye, due to the fact that I am married to a\nnaturalised British citizen and together we have three mixed-race children.\".\n\nRather than cast an unpleasant slur on UKIP (what nasty visions your comment\nconjures up) it would be helpful were you to identify the perceived problem.\nAs far as I am aware, UKIP are not planning to discriminate against my own UK\nnaturalized marriage partner or my child.\n\n~~~\nvidarh\nUKIP may not \"plan to\", but there's been plenty of unpleasant connections\nbetween people involve in UKIP and organizations like BNP and EDL, and with\nEDL endorsing UKIP candidates for upcoming local elections etc.\n\nEnough that as a non-UK citizen with a UK born (and hence citizen) mixed race\nson, the thought of UKIP getting anywhere near power would make me consider\nleaving the country.\n\n------\nsvnee\nWhy not start with a smaller country like Luxembourg. We are currently running\nin elections and want to make of Luxembourg a privacy save heaven. We have a\npretty good chance of making it into parliament and every support helps!\n\nLook we even made a video ;)\n[https://donate.piraten.lu/](https://donate.piraten.lu/)\n\n------\nvehementi\nI'd love to see an idea like this flourish.\n\n------\ncabalamat\nIt's much, much, more important for a party that cares about digital rights to\nfight the 2014 European election than the 2015 general election, for two\nreasons:\n\n1\\. the Euro election is fought using PR, meaning it's possible to actually\nwin seats\n\n2\\. a lot of the relevant issues are decided at Brussels as much as at\nWestminster.\n\n------\nDanBC\nI would be very interested to see people running the numbers on past\nelections, and seeing what the results would have been under different voting\nsystems.\n\nThe UK has a weird 'first-past-the-post' system, and it'd be neat to see what\nthe different results would have been.\n\n~~~\nvidarh\nThe UK's \"weird\" first-past-the-post system is very close to the US and French\nsystems, and many others.\n\nUnfortunately re-running data on past elections would be wildly misleading, as\npeople vote with the knowledge of which parties stand a chance in their seat,\nand hence a lot of votes that might have gone for smaller parties in a more\nproportional system goes to one of the biggest parties.\n\nBut you might look to the EU Parliament elections for a demonstration of how\ndifferent people here _might_ vote (with the caveat that the issues are\ndifferent, and so people might certainly vote differently) with a proportional\nsystem:\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_2009_\\(United_Kingdom\\))\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n3-D Scans Reveal Caterpillars Turning into Butterflies - hunglee2\nhttp://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/14/3-d-scans-caterpillars-transforming-butterflies-metamorphosis/\n======\ndalke\nRadioLab did a podcast on the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly at\n[http://www.radiolab.org/story/goo-and-\nyou/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/goo-and-you/) . It might help in giving\nadditional background on the topic.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy build a site? Why do your customers care? - coconutrandom\nhttp://gist.github.com/40002\n\n======\nfrossie\nYou know this all seems so obvious it doesn't need mentioning, but I am still\namazed that in this day and age people still don't get it.\n\nMy local YWCA just redid their website, and there's all the names of the board\nof directors and their history and this that and the other. What there isn't\nis (a) any e-mail address _at all_ and (b) any schedule for their sporting\nfacilities (whose schedule changes on a monthly basis).\n\nDid anyone not sit and think \"Hmmm I wonder whether the average visitor on our\nwebsite wants to know (a) that we were founded in 1919, or (b) what time the\nlap swim is at the pool\"?\n\n------\nmyoung8\nGood luck if you bury the way to order your product in your contact page.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAdmissions Scandal: When ‘Hard Work’ (Plus $6.5m) Helps Get You into Stanford - doppp\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/us/yusi-molly-zhao-china-stanford.html\n======\ngoodfight\nMight as well just not go to an Ivy League college and just create a startup,\nwho cares about your degree credentials if you actually have the skills and\nconnections to succeed.\n\n------\nNullPrefix\n$6.5 Million can't buy you a building these days? Talk about the economy...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat's with the hate for Go? - berserker-one\nhttps://medium.com/p/why-does-go-get-so-much-flak-from-developers-34ccd972147d\n======\njohnfn\n> They’re royally pissed off at Go users who only want to get shit done as\n> quickly and as easily as possible.\n\nIt's almost funny to me how misguided this is! It's as if Go developers think\nany developers reason for not using go couldn't _possibly_ be anything\nremotely reasonable. Instead, its \"darn those go developers, they're too\nproductive! I hate Go!\"\n\n------\naryehof\nGo is is a good language choice for some things, not all. It is a good systems\nprogramming language, but not one so well suited to systems in business,\ncommerce and industry. Those that require the representation of concepts\noutside of the computing domain in code. In this it is comparable to C.\n\nThe problem is that too many look for a silver bullet language that can be\napplied to everything. One ring, one language, to rule them all. Go isn't it.\n\n------\nSafety1stClyde\nCod psychology.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSoon We Won’t Program Computers. We’ll Train Them Like Dogs - jonbaer\nhttp://www.wired.com/2016/05/the-end-of-code/?href\n======\nsmt88\nUntil code is written that automates its own evolution, there will still be\nhumans programming computers that are trained like dogs.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBritain seen from above - nreece\nhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7539529.stm\n======\ntarkin2\n\"tracked... second... by second\"\n\n: /\n\n~~~\nswombat\n<http://www.art-for-a-change.com/News/eyes.htm>\n\n------\ngeuis\nThat is just TOO freaking cool. Love the visualization of loads of data.\n\n------\napstuff\nSecond by second. Synapse by synapse.\n\n------\npavelludiq\nBig Brother is watching you!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nYour app is an onion: Why software projects spiral out of control - yarapavan\nhttps://medium.com/swlh/your-app-is-an-onion-why-software-projects-spiral-out-of-control-bb9247d9bdbd\n======\nbrad0\nYou hit the nail on the head. What we need are more technical UX or a great\nteam of UX and devs working together to achieve this properly.\n\n------\nyarapavan\nThe complexity isn’t the problem, though. The problem is the way we choose to\nuncover it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLisp Plus Plus - parenthesis\nhttp://www.interhack.net/projects/lpp/\n\n======\nqwph\nThere's a fine line between madness and genius, and as far as I can tell, this\nseems to be exactly on the line. I think I might have to download the\nsource...\n\n~~~\nicky\nMadness and genius actually form an intersecting Venn diagram. This falls\nsquarely in the middle.\n\n------\nBrandonM\nI actually worked for two summers at Interhack, so I found it interesting to\nsee a link to their site here. The founder (Matt Curtin) is a really cool guy\nwho teaches a Lisp course for one quarter a year at OSU (that's how I got the\njob). Matt had a hand in cracking the DES and wrote a book about it called\n_Brute Force: Cracking the Data Encryption Standard_.\n\nUnfortunately, Interhack does a lot of computer forensic stuff that has human-\nintensive requirements. Because of his work, Matt is considered an expert for\nthe purposes of court testimony, and he spends much of his time working on and\ntestifying in computer forensic evidence cases, rather than hacking in Lisp as\nI'm sure he would prefer to be doing.\n\nDon't get me wrong... his company is doing great. They just got an entire\nfloor in a 12-story office building built to their specifications, they worked\non a high-profile case last year for the state of Ohio lost tape archive\nincident, and they have somewhere around ten full-time employees. I just wish\nhe (and the company itself) had some time to show off his programming chops in\nsomething other than internal software.\n\n------\newjordan\nYou know, I'm really not usually too picky about this stuff, but I have to\nsay, this is an extreme example (for me, at least) of presentation\noverwhelming content - I started to read that page, and the combination of the\nfont size, the layout, and (mainly) the color scheme literally made me dizzy\nwithin seconds. I actually can't get through it, the text starts to pulsate on\nthe page as I look at it and it's so distracting that I can't parse the\ncontent.\n\nMaybe a great product, maybe even something revolutionary, but in all\nlikelihood I'll never find out because of the website's color scheme.\n\nIt's funny, I'd always heard that white-on-black was considered bad design,\nbut up until now I never really understood what \"they\" meant by that...\n\n~~~\nBrandonM\nI see this complaint all the time, and it's really annoying. It's just a\nmatter of opinion. I program in vim with light-colored text on a black\nbackground. For the longest time, I used the compiz window manager so that I\ncould invert the color of my Firefox window so that web pages would have light\ntext on dark backgrounds.\n\nI'm betting that the real issue is alternating from one to the other. If you\nspend all your time looking at dark on light and then try to switch, I can see\nhow it could be an issue. But the opposite is also true. At least light text\non a dark background has another good thing going for it... you're not staring\nat what is effectively a light bulb.\n\nEither way, can we please stop talking about this? At least half of the\nsubmissions that lead to such a page have a comment like this. It comes off as\ncomplaining and laziness, since if you really wanted to read it, you can\nsimply highlight the text, use copy-paste, or any number of other solutions\n(the \"No Style\" suggestion was a good one).\n\n~~~\nMaysonL\nNo: it's bad design, and it should be eliminated.\n\n------\nwhacked_new\nReminds of pg on Viaweb: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99143>\n\n------\nYuriNiyazov\nWhere is the REPL?\n\n~~~\ngcv\nDon't be so demanding. :) The library has a couple of debugger hooks, though.\nNot as good as a REPL, but way better than what you normally have to deal with\nin C++ and gdb.\n\nCheck out the sample code in the source distribution. The 'let' type hack the\nauthor uses makes this some of the most readable C++ I've seen. The same thing\nwith templates would've been either a forest of angle brackets or required a\nboatload of typedefs which the reader would have had to constantly refer back\nto.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSpock sign-up flow demonstrates how to scare users away... (by Jeremy Zawodny) - joshwa\nhttp://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/009370.html\n\n======\njzawodn\nUh, it's not a button, it's a link. Notice that it's pushed to the bottom and\nhardly given equal treatment as the actual button.\n\nIf you've ever seen many eye tracking studies, you know that items in the\nlocation on the page aren't likely to be seen, leading the user to believe\n(right or wrong) that they either must disclose a password or go away.\n\n~~~\nwyday\nOf course they don't give the two options equal treatment. Why should they?\nAll that means is that they don't want you to skip the step. They do provide\nan option to skip, however.\n\nMaybe you missed it because you wrote the story with a sensationalist\nconclusion in mind. At least you got to say 'fuck', right?\n\n~~~\njzawodn\nWhy should they? Respect for their potential users.\n\nImplying that I missed because of how I'd written my take on it seems a little\nodd. You do realize that I wrote it after the fact, right?\n\nOf course you do. But it's more fun to pretend that I don't \"get it.\"\n\nHad I wanted to be sensationalist, I could have done so.\n\n~~~\nsteve\nThe point is that you must look at the actual numbers - cost of scaring some\npeople away vs. how many new users this brings in, to actually \"get it.\" I've\nseen this exact technique work extremely well many times before.\n\nBuilding a successful site is absolutely _not_ about giving users everything\nthey want, how they want it. That line of thinking can be very damaging to\nyour site.\n\n~~~\nTichy\nMaybe you are right, but if everybody would be thinking like that, there would\nbe no Linux, only Microsoft.\n\nSome people crave a pure solution. For me, a web site that employs the trick\nabove loses my trust, and I will never really feel comfortable in using it\nanymore.\n\n------\ntipjoy\nI was a bit turned off by the Spock sign up process myself, but for different\nreasons. First, the invite email was extremely vague - \"a new search engine\nthat organizes information around people\"? I thought it might be a new human-\nassisted search site (something which has been in the news a bit lately), but\nwasn't sure. Second, clicking the invite list brings you to a very basic sign-\nup page with no information. As I went through the sign-up process, I really\nwasn't sure what I was actually getting myself into, but since I'm pretty\ntrusting I just went ahead anyway. Once I finally got to the site, I still\ndidn't know what it was, but I recognized that it was some sort of search\nengine, so I typed in a search for a bookstore I like and got one result - a\nperson who said they liked something or other which happened to use the same\nword as the bookstore's name. In the end, I really wouldn't have known what\nwas going on at Spock if my friend didn't send me a link to an article about\nthe site which nicely explained what it was. It's actually a pretty\ninteresting idea, and I can see that the site would work better once more\npeople sign up. Still, Spock needs to work on their user experience,\nespecially on their sign up process. (Additionally, although far less\nimportant, they need to work on their icon: their little person favicon looks\nexactly like the calvin klein logo.)\n\n------\nomouse\n>I can't think of a very polite way to say \"no fucking way\", so I won't even\ntry. There wasn't a button for that.\n\nHow could he miss the \"Skip this step\" button so clearly pictured??\n\n------\nashu\nTo me, the problem is not that they are taking my gmail password, but that\nthey show me this tricky \"spam your friends\" screen before I am even ready to\nknow wtf this new service is!\n\nRegarding the sites getting my Gmail/Yahoo passwords, I don't think any site\nis really happy doing that. (We at Buxfer also do it, but it's tucked inside\nthe site for users who really want to do it.) If Gmail and Yahoo were to open\nup even more and provide secure access to the addressbooks, nobody would have\nto do this stupid scraping anymore.\n\n~~~\nTichy\nThoughts about this:\n\na) I don't want people to give away my email address anyway b) perhaps it\nwould be possible to create a kind of bookmarklet or browser plugin that would\nmake it easy for people to submit addresses from their address book? For\nexample a \"buxfer-invitation-bookmarklet\", which people could use to send\nbuxfer invitations to people from their address book?\n\n------\nsbraford\nI would be willing to trade the few users it scares away for the thousands (or\ntens/hundreds of thousands) that end up signing up as a result of these tools.\n\n------\nTichy\nFacebook does it that way, too. Everybody does it. I don't like it, though.\n\n------\nsteve\nHere's a cookie for not getting it ---> (*)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFormer Freemium Developer Details the Grim Mechanics of F2P Mobile Games - uhhyeahdude\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/7igijd/i_was_a_game_designer_at_a_freetoplay_game\n======\nuhhyeahdude\nFrom the Developer's Introduction:\n\n\" _Cracks Knuckles_ Let's do this dance!\n\n* My soul is the chase prize in a lootbox, along with other, extremely valuable content (gotta be in good company after all). We'll call this box 'The Soul Box'.\n\n* You can't directly purchase The Soul Box from the store. It's a rare drop on a powerful, Dark Souls style boss monster. High HP, insta-kill attacks, very timing heavy, the works. We'll just call this 'The Boss Monster'.\n\n* The only way to fight The Boss Monster is with a Boss Fight Ticket, which is the rare chase prize in the 'The Wheel Game Loot Box'. A ticket cannot be obtained any other way.\n\n* The Wheel Game Loot Box can __only __be obtained by getting the Five Keys from the Wheel Game. It costs hard currency (currency bought with real money) to spin the Wheel. Getting the Keys is rare, spins usually get you lesser loot boxes. Each of the Five Keys is different, and you can get duplicates. This means that you could have 20 of the other Keys, but still need to get the Fifth Key, just to unlock one of the Wheel Game Lootboxes.\n\n _The Fifth Key is way rarer than the other Keys. Like, suspiciously so.\n\n_ Keys can be redeemed for other prizes, like event-unique cosmetics, just for\nthat added temptation. They look amazing.\n\n* The Wheel Game has a ridiculously long spin animation, with lots of flashing lights and grating music. Neither of those can be disabled. You must sit through it. Every. Single. Time.\n\n* That Boss fight? You can't save up tickets for it. You're not allowed to spin the wheel when you have a ticket (the button just greys out). This means that learning the fight patterns is extremely difficult, as you're looking at hours (and tons of money) between fights.\n\n* PvP is enabled during the fight against the Boss Monster. If another Player kills you during it, you lose the fight and they get half of the hard currency you spent getting the ticket. Prepare to get mobbed by griefers every time you get within a mile of that thing.\n\n* Did I mention that the presence of so many PvP players in the Boss Fight will cause terrible lag spikes during the fight? Because that's a thing.\n\n* The Boss Monster has an unskippable cutscene, every time you fight it. He wants to destroy the world because everyone is too sad. The voice acting is horrendous.\n\nI think that covers everything... I'm feeling pretty good about the sanctity\nof my soul.\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMusk’s Tesla Fun Does Not Amuse SEC - kgwgk\nhttps://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-28/musk-s-tesla-fun-does-not-amuse-sec\n======\ndragontamer\nAs funny as this opinion piece is, it is still just that: an opinion piece.\n\nI highly suggest people read the SEC filing for yourself, without bias, if you\nwant to see the SEC's point of view on this.\n\nWith that being said, this opinion piece collates a bunch of news that\nhappened yesterday, and can provide context to what is going on. But I still\nfeel like the SEC's filing is the best primary source document to this TSLA\nnews event. Besides, the \"meat\" of this opinion writer is purely copy/paste\nquotes from the SEC document.\n\n[https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2018/comp-\npr2018-2...](https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2018/comp-\npr2018-219.pdf)\n\n~~~\nstefan_\nThe complaint of one party in a lawsuit is _not_ the best primary source. The\nwhole purpose of it is leaving you with the impression that the defendant\nbrazenly committed all the charges.\n\n------\njamesough\n'Alright so here’s the gameplan:\n\n1\\. Elon removed as CEO by SEC order - can’t be CEO of a public company\n\n2\\. Tesla stock drops 50%\n\n3\\. Tesla stock becomes so cheap they take it private\n\n4\\. Musk reinstated as CEO'\n\n[https://twitter.com/AustenAllred/status/1045554529914089472](https://twitter.com/AustenAllred/status/1045554529914089472)\n\n~~~\nTheodores\nI am inclined to believe that he was just putting the '420' number with a\ndollar sign in front of it just to amuse his girlfriend, as per the BBC\nreporting.\n\nMotivation is not in the sensible world, there is no gameplan beyond\nimpressing the lady. There is a rich tradition of this in Silicon Valley.\nWhole companies are built just to impress a lady.\n\n~~~\nrchaud\nThe infantilization of tech CEO culture could at least be explained by the\nubiqiuity of college-aged founders. And yet I can't think of a single one that\ndid something so obviously ill-advised, and tried to play it off as \"it was\njust a joke bro\".\n\nFor a frame of reference, look at the difference in Zuckerberg's public\nstatements as CEO today vs those he made as an obnoxious techbro CEO at age\n20.\n\nMusk is close to 50 years old. Are we to believe a man of his age thinks a 420\nreference would make his 30yo girlfriend laugh?\n\n~~~\nTheodores\n50 years old is mid-life crisis time. If his girlfriend has already seen\nenough of capitalism then upsetting wall Street might just be a naughty thing\nto make her laugh, if wrapped up in a 420 reference, worth it for two minutes\neven if costing billions. These things happen when mid-life crisis strikes\nsome people.\n\nPeople in their twenties that get thrust into the limelight generally do defer\nto some more sensible babysitting advisers, as per the Google deal with\nSchmidt. The handcuffs are on as far as money and share valuations go with the\njunior crowd. It is the 'responsible 50 year old adults' you need to worry\nabout.\n\n------\ntedunangst\nOne defense might be the admit fault apologize beg forgiveness route. I was\nworking to get funding, was too optimistic, accidentally used some poor\nphrasing in announcing my plans, etc. we've hired a new compliance officer to\nreview future communications for misleading statements.\n\nAnother strategy would be to lean over the desk, pluck a quarter from behind\nthe ear of the SEC investigator, slam it on the desk, and announce \"see that,\nmuppet? I do that 100 billion more times and I've got all the funding I need.\"\n\nChoices, choices.\n\n------\nryanbertrand\nIt’s very hard to read these articles when dynamic ads are injected and then\nremoved 30 secs later causing me to lose my place. Terrible.\n\n------\nmehrdadn\nCould Musk just get this over with and pay back whomever lost money on this?\nIt might be worth it for him to keep his position.\n\nEdit: Ouch, I was only halfway through the article when I wrote this, but just\nnoticed it was mentioned after.\n\n~~~\nanoncoward111\nHe reportedly tore up a settlement at the last moment. Fireworks!\n\n~~~\nvinceguidry\nThe settlement required him to step down as chairman for two years and let\nsomeone else run the company.\n\n~~~\njyxent\nIsn't the chairman position just part of the board of directors? I think he\nwould have still been CEO with the agreement. If the SEC wins now, he won't be\nable to serve as CEO.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEconomist Jim Rickards Bitcoin versus Gold Price Manipulation - westoque\nhttp://www.businessinsider.com/economist-jim-rickards-bitcoin-versus-gold-price-manipulation-2017-12\n======\nsaas_co_de\n\n      \"there’s pretty good evidence that there's a lot of\n       fraud going on ... Are we supposed to believe that\n       bitcoin is the only market in history that's not\n       manipulated? That’s nonsense, of course it is\"\n    \n\nThis. A lot of smart tech people into bitcoin aren't vary savvy when it comes\nto how markets work and in particular how financial scams work.\n\n~~~\nwestoque\nI agree. This was also my guess since volume all of a sudden spikes up without\nwarning and I keep wondering where it was coming from [0]\n\n[0]: [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/historical-\ndata](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/historical-data)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat's so hard about histograms? - robertkrahn01\nhttps://tinlizzie.org/histograms/\n======\nlukego\nWhat a beautiful presentation!\n\nTangentially: I am really enjoying the book \"All of Statistics\" as a reference\nfor better understanding things like histograms, kernel density functions,\netc, and their parameters.\n\n[https://www.amazon.com/All-Statistics-Statistical-\nInference-...](https://www.amazon.com/All-Statistics-Statistical-Inference-\nSpringer/dp/0387402721)\n\n~~~\nemblaegh\nAren't you refererring to \"All of non-parametric statistics\"?\n[https://www.amazon.com/All-Nonparametric-Statistics-\nSpringer...](https://www.amazon.com/All-Nonparametric-Statistics-Springer-\nTexts/dp/0387251456/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0387251456&pd_rd_r=A80KVD50R9SXCVJR2ZF9&pd_rd_w=kMY5a&pd_rd_wg=pdqY8&psc=1&refRID=A80KVD50R9SXCVJR2ZF9)\nEither way I can't recommend these books enough, really opened my eyes to the\ninner workings of statistics in a rigorous yet accessible way.\n\n~~~\nlukego\nJust ordered that one too :-).\n\nI am actually most interested non-parametric statistics, especially to\n\"reformulate\" as many statistical tests as possible using a small number of\nrobust primitives (like the bootstrap.) More pointers in that direction would\nbe very welcome :-)\n\nTangent to a tangent: The other most enjoyable stats book I have found is\n\"Statistical Modeling: A Fresh Approach\" [http://www.mosaic-\nweb.org/go/StatisticalModeling/](http://www.mosaic-\nweb.org/go/StatisticalModeling/)\n\n------\nvanderZwan\nIf you're interested in histograms, I highly recommend _\" Expressing complex\ndata aggregations with Histogrammar\"_ by Jim Pivarski, where he talks about\nhow for decades histograms have been used in unique ways to do amazing things\nin high energy physics (HEP, arguably the original Big Data field in compsci):\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB4Chl0ly-g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB4Chl0ly-g)\n\nOne thing early on is that HEP histograms treats histograms as a kind of\n_accumulator_ that can stream in data (because the amount of data processed\nwas typically too big to load into RAM all at once), instead of a chart. From\nthat starting point you can add, divide, multiply histograms with histograms\nto build crazy things.\n\nThe results are no longer really histograms of course, but it's fun to see how\nsomething that we just think of as a chart can be (ab)used like that.\n\n------\njtxx000\nKernel density plots should be preferred to histograms in nearly all cases.\nHistograms can be seen as a kernel density plot with a uniform kernel that has\nbeen sampled. Since a kernel density plot with a uniform kernel has unbounded\nfrequency content, this sampling introduces _aliasing_ , which is why you get\nall of these strange effects when adjusting the bin width and offset. In fact,\nif the distribution of your data happens to be a sine wave, then the histogram\nwill also be a sine wave, but, due to aliasing, it may have a different\nfrequency and phase.\n\nFor a kernel density plot with a Gaussian kernel, the kernel size does effect\nthe result, but the situation is much better than with histograms for two\nreasons:\n\n1\\. The kernel density plot varies smoothly as the kernel size changes, and so\nthere is greater confidence that you have seen the whole story by only looking\nat a few kernel sizes.\n\n2\\. You can construct a kernel density plot with a larger kernel given only a\nkernel density plot with a smaller kernel. Since the convolutions of two\nGaussians produces a new Gaussian with a variance equal to the sum of the\ninput variances, you only have to convolve the small-kernel plot with another\nGaussian to produce the large-kernel plot. This, again, means that you have\nmore confidence that you've seen the whole story by looking at only a few\nkernel sizes.\n\nAs a side note, there is technically a 1:1 relationship between 1D datasets\nand kernel density plots with a Gaussian kernel, and so in theory you don't\nlose any information by constructing the kernel density plot. In practice,\nhowever, you _do_ lose information due to limited precision.\n\n------\nsvara\nWhen you think you want to plot a histogram, it's often a better idea to plot\na (empirical) cumulative distribution [0] instead. You don't have to worry\nabout how to select your bin limits and you can usually put several in the\nsame plot for comparison without making it unreadable due to overlap.\n\n[0]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_distribution_functio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_distribution_function).\n\n~~~\naji\nI like using cumulative distributions because they make small changes in the\ndata a little more obvious. e.g. if all the buckets are 10 but there's a\nsection where they're 11, that difference will show up in a cumulative\ndistribution as a bend in an otherwise straight line, which in my opinion is a\nmuch easier difference to see\n\n~~~\nconvolvatron\nisn't seeing a little hump in a pdf clearer?\n\n------\nwodenokoto\nIs there a way to read this decently on mobile?\n\nI've tried Firefox reading mode as well as pocket but they both cut off large\nparts of the text.\n\n------\nacbart\nIn my introductory programming class, we teach a few basic forms of chart\nvisualization. By far, students struggle the most with Histograms. Even more\nfrustrating, they love line plots and attempt to use them everywhere. Despite\nmy explanations that you can almost _always_ use histograms, and you can\nalmost _never_ use line plots! Yet they go with what they find more\nintuitive...\n\n~~~\npletnes\nDepends what you're doing I'd say. In physics based modeling, which is used\nmore in e.g. engineering, line plots are often very useful. When examining\nnoisy real world data, not so much.\n\n------\nagumonkey\nGot me curious about non 1D histograms [https://www.r-bloggers.com/5-ways-to-\ndo-2d-histograms-in-r/](https://www.r-bloggers.com/5-ways-to-do-2d-histograms-\nin-r/)\n\n------\nablaba\nThe History of Histograms (vldb paper)\n[http://www.vldb.org/conf/2003/papers/S02P01.pdf](http://www.vldb.org/conf/2003/papers/S02P01.pdf)\n\n------\nSeanLuke\nUnfortunate that they're talking about distributions and yet the very first\nexample they use (\"The paintings of Bob Ross\") isn't a distribution.\n\n------\nRodericDay\n> We notice that you're not using the Google Chrome browser. You're welcome to\n> try continuing—but if some parts of the essay are rendering or behaving\n> strangely, please try Chrome instead.\n\nwhat a world\n\n~~~\nshdon\n20 years ago we had the \"this site works best in Internet Explorer\" buttons on\nway too many sites. Plus ça change...\n\nThat said, the site works just fine in Firefox, Edge and even IE11 too. So, if\nanything, the message is a sign of sloppiness in not even bothering to check.\n\n~~~\nperryprog\nAnd Safari. Also, it’s not very responsive (at least for mobile)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNetflix Instant is coming to the entire Linux Community - taylorbuley\nhttp://benjaminkerensa.com/netflix-instant-is-coming-to-the-entire-linux\n======\njerf\nI will believe it when I see it downloadable, I have downloaded it, and used\nit to watch something, and no sooner. You can't put effectively DRM on Linux;\nyou can binary blob whatever you like, but I own the kernel, graphics drivers,\naudio drivers, X Server, and everything else on the system except your lil'\nbinary blob, and it doesn't stand a chance.\n\n~~~\nniels_olson\ner, I don't think they're worried about _you_. They might offer _you_ a job.\n\n~~~\nZachPruckowski\nYou only really need one guy to hack the DRM and it's game over, since (a) he\ncan share how he did it, and (b) he can freely share the decrypted files. Not\nthat it really matters on Netflix since just about everything is already on\nDVD (and thus on torrents since CSS is cracked) anyhow.\n\n~~~\nniels_olson\nExactly. I'm certain the adults in charge know that some level of hacking is\ninherent to the game at this point. My guess is they're treating the set of\nall consumers as another corporation: an entity to do battle with in the\nongoing pursuit of the best possible ROI.\n\n------\nparbo\nI'm pretty sure it won't be the entire community. There are Linux users\noutside the US, you know.\n\n~~~\njedberg\nNetflix is expanding globally. They've already announced the expansion into\nLatin America.\n\n~~~\nmadaxe\nBut not to that insignificant blot, Europe. No consumers over there, from what\nI hear, just a gang of pirates.\n\n------\njmalcolm\nFrom an engineering point of view, Netflix Instant already works on Linux as\nit is available on Android. So, the issue is not a technical one.\n\nMoonlight (Mono Silverlight) has all the technical chops as well. The lack of\nDRM is what prevents that from being a solution. Also, I will note that\nMoonlight lacks a fair bit of polish.\n\nSo, the issue here is clearly the business strategy and not the technical\nknow-how. The 12 month estimate is meaningless. If the Netflix CEO wanted a\nLinux client it would be available very quickly.\n\nI have no doubt they are playing around with the DRM, or creating proof-of-\nconcept builds using the various options, but it is not like we are waiting\naround for some small technology team to deliver it as a product.\n\n------\njuiceandjuice\noh yeah... I reported on this a while ago. I guess I didn't discuss the\nimplications:\n\n<http://tnkr.net/linchrome.png>\n\n~~~\ntaylorbuley\nWhat a helpful screen grab. Will try. Thank you!\n\n~~~\njuiceandjuice\nI should note... currently Netflix is rerouting to a landing page if you try\nto stream via Chrome OS, even with this plugin enabled. I imagine that will\nchange very soon, and when it does, you _should_ be able to use almost this\nsame exact method to enable it.\n\nFiles from Chrome OS were: netflix.info netflixplugin.so libnetflixidd.so\n\nAll of them were put in /opt/google/chrome\n\n------\nstarwed\nNice! This is perhaps the one single \"essential\" thing I miss on Linux.\n\nI wonder if their work overlaps with the android client at all?\n\n------\ntassl\nThe only way I have been able to watch Netflix in Linux was with a VM running\nWindows XP (max RAM and Graphic card power). In my first trial I tried it with\n1GB of RAM and the sound was not working fine.\n\nOf course, this is not a real Linux experience but... at least it worked.\n\n------\ncookiecaper\nThis is about as reliable as Phoronix's annual \"Steam is coming to Linux and\nwe can prove it this time!\" story. Inside it reads: \"We talked to someone at\nValve and they said Steam is coming to Linux!!1\"\n\nI have heard such rumors specific to Netflix in the past, but really, \"I\ntalked to some guys from Netflix and they said so\" does not meet the standard\nof proof expected to publish such findings in a public pronouncement not\nclearly marked as rumor.\n\nAlso, how many Netflix employees that would know about this project were at\nOSCON? You may be exposing them even if you don't post their names.\n\n~~~\nicebraining\n>This is about as reliable as Phoronix's annual \"Steam is coming to Linux and\nwe can prove it this time!\" story. Inside it reads: \"We talked to someone at\nValve and they said Steam is coming to Linux!!1\"\n\nThere was actually a Linux binary that you could download from their servers\nand it would actually connect and download an update. Not that it would even\nlaunch a window, of course.\n\n------\nbkerensa\nThis is not going to be a chrome plugin.... Instead it will be a proprietary\nclient.\n\n------\nrbranson\nIf this does happen, I see it mostly as important for XBMC-type setups on\nLinux.\n\n------\ncalpaterson\nEven if this is true: big fans of FOSS and hoping to release a proprietary\nclient? If you're going to claim whatever social cachet is going for FOSS\nusers, then you really ought to be avoiding those binary blobs.\n\n------\nrmc\nThe entire Linux community or the US Linux community?\n\n------\ndfc\nIts pretty amazing that these netflix engineers had NDAs just in case they\ntalked to some guy with a blog:)\n\n------\nKwpolska\nNot 'entire', people outside the US can't watch it.\n\n------\njpr\nSomeone still thinks artificial scarcity is a viable business model?\n\n------\nIgorPartola\nSoooo... a proprietary client that nobody but a few hackers at Netflix care\nabout. Sounds like something to get the FSF all stirred up.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIf I Could Go Back In Time & Give Myself Some Advice, This Would Be It - epi0Bauqu\nhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/if-i-could-go-back-in-time-give-myself-some-advice-this-would-be-it\n======\nmildweed\nGreat advice. I especially like establishing the guiding principles early on.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEvidence of XOR electrical property in human cortical dendrites - rajnathani\nhttps://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-01-evidence-previously-unknown-electrical-property.html\n======\nrajnathani\nFor those reading this right now, another albeit better article covering this\nstudy is currently being discussed on in another HN post:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22061718](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22061718)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBullet Journal – The analog system for the digital age - jonbaer\nhttp://bulletjournal.com/\n======\nznpy\nI tried and tbh i found it to be quite a high-maintenance system.\n\nMy solution was to download and print agenda templates from\n[http://philofaxy.blogspot.it/p/diary-\ninserts.html](http://philofaxy.blogspot.it/p/diary-inserts.html)\n\nThe nice thing is that multiple templates are available for free and it costs\nas little as printing 50 or 100 pages (1page/week or 2pages/week), front/back\nand black/white.\n\nBeside that, I'm only using a normal binder.\n\nDespite this, next year I'm going back to a Moleskine weekly agenda.\n15-17€/year is just a worth price for a good agenda.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGetting people to switch podcast clients is hard - GabeBourgeois\n\nOur team built a podcast client that has a lot of interesting features to simplify discovery and listening to podcasts. Having a tough time finding the right channels to get it to people. Anyone have any suggestions?<p>itunes.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;raur&#x2F;id643855633?mt=8\n======\nserg_chernata\nPartner with a popular show?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMona Lisa heist of 1911 concealed a perfect—and far more lucrative—crime - sublemonic\nhttp://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/05/mona-lisa-excerpt200905?printable=true&currentPage=all\n\n======\nmattm\nWow, what a great story!\n\nI'm surprised the thief only served seven months in jail. I can't imagine it\nbeing that lenient today.\n\n~~~\nreitzensteinm\nI was half expecting some crazy penalty like life imprisonment or death. Made\nme realise how out of touch I am with early 19th century Europe!\n\n~~~\ngraywh\n20th century\n\n~~~\nreitzensteinm\nOK that's embarrassing!\n\n------\naresant\nJust spent 10 mins reading, good story but abridged version:\n\n\\- An Italian Louvre worker, Vincenzo Perugia, stole the Mona Lisa, claiming\nhis motivation was that the French had stolen works from Italy.\n\n\\- Years later he attempted to give it back but claim a reward. He changed his\nstory a few times about how he stole it.\n\n\\- The revelation of the larger crime was that a slick con-man claimed he\nhelped Vincenzo steal the work for the purpose of selling credible fakes to a\nhandful of American millionaires since it was widely reported that the\noriginal was stolen.\n\n~~~\nknown\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincenzo_Peruggia>\n\n------\nrthomas6\nThis is like some kind of real-life Ocean's Eleven.\n\n~~~\narch_hunter\nThere was a British TV series that I watched some of a while back about a\ngroup of con artists (sorry, I can not remember the name right now). Several\nof the episodes had this same plot: the group of con artists would steal some\nvaluable antique, and then sell forgaries of it, before returning it as part\nof a plea bargan.\n\n~~~\nKC8ZKF\n_Hustle_ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustle_(TV_series)>\n\n------\npingou\nWhat's interesting is that there are people willing to pay millions to have a\npiece of art that they can't show to anybody or brag about it. I guess these\npeople are true art lovers.\n\n------\ngamble\nThe story is entertaining, but the con-man angle tacked at the end is highly\ndubious. Even if there was reason to believe that Valfierno even existed, its\nhard to swallow a century-old third-hand tale from an admitted con-man without\na shred of evidence. Moreover, there's nothing about his story that explains\nthe theft and plenty that contradicts known details. Sometimes lone nuts\nreally do commit crimes beyond their stature.\n\n------\nthedjpetersen\nIts funny how different this story could have been told, if the plumber hadn't\ncome by.\n\n------\njac_no_k\nInteresting story. Valfierno had a very effective PR and insight into the\nmarket. He would have made an effective head of PR or Sale.\n\n~~~\ndhs\nProbably selling CDOs.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDeep-copying in JavaScript - ingve\nhttps://dassur.ma/things/deep-copy/\n======\nandrewstuart\nIf you find yourself deep copying then you're about to level up your\nJavaScript career.\n\nThe actual answer is not to find out how to deep copy reliably.\n\nThe actual answer is don't deep copy - instead you should be using immutable\ndata structure - check out immutablejs. This will solve the problems that you\nare trying to address by deep copying.\n\nSticking with deep copying will only increase your pain and decrease your\nsoftware reliability.\n\n~~~\nCthulhu_\nDoesn't immutablejs do the deep copying itself?\n\nEven better would be a language (could be plain JS) that enforces\nimmutability. How about a new keyword in Typescript?\n\n~~~\nlittlestymaar\nThere's Object.freeze[1] for that. Of course that's checked only at runtime,\nbecause js is a dynamic language …\n\n[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-\nUS/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-\nUS/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Object/freeze)\n\n------\nstreptomycin\n\"Deep copy\" and \"structured clone\" are not synonymous. A structured clone is\none specific type of deep copy, and it has a variety of quirks. It's not clear\nto me why anyone wants structured clone as opposed to some other kind of deep\ncopy, except if you were polyfilling some API that demands it like I did here\n[https://github.com/dumbmatter/fakeIndexedDB](https://github.com/dumbmatter/fakeIndexedDB)\n\nThere are plenty of more reasonable deep clone functions available, for\ninstance the Lodash one someone posted in another comment\n[https://lodash.com/docs/4.17.4#cloneDeep](https://lodash.com/docs/4.17.4#cloneDeep)\n\n~~~\nSammi\nI'd like to see the benchmark in the article include the lodash cloneDeep\nfunction.\n\n------\nxamuel\nThe solutions presented fail if one of the values in obj is a function. E.g.,\nJSON.parse(JSON.stringify({foo:x=>x})) returns {}.\n\nIt's not intuitively obvious what the \"correct\" solution ought to be. If\ncloner is a deep-cloning function, and f is a function, which of the following\nshould be true?\n\n1\\. cloner(f) === f?\n\n2\\. For all ...args, cloner(f)(...args) === f(...args)?\n\n3\\. For all ...args, cloner(f)(...args) === cloner(f(...args))?\n\n4\\. For all ...args, cloner(f)(...args) === f(...args.map(cloner))?\n\n5\\. For all ...args, cloner(f)(...args) === cloner(f(...args.map(cloner)))?\n\n6\\. Something else entirely?\n\n~~~\ndassurma\nOhai. Author here. That’s indeed one of the trip-wires. So is that any kind of\nprototype is lost.\n\nThe point of the structured clone algorithm is to make values transferable to\nother realms, so functions are actively ignored. Most of the time, I think\nthat is “good enough”.\n\n~~~\nshkkmo\nCan you fix your first statement: \"JavaScript passes everything by reference\"\nwhich is incorrect?\n\nsee: [https://jsfiddle.net/t73ykuj0/](https://jsfiddle.net/t73ykuj0/)\n\n~~~\nzakember\nCan you please explain why this behavior is happening in this jsfiddle, or\npoint me to a link that can help me understand this better?\n\n~~~\nshkkmo\nThe term for what Javascript does is pass-reference-by-value or pass-by-\nsharing:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaluation_strategy#Call_by_sh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaluation_strategy#Call_by_sharing)\n\n------\nchatmasta\n“Deep copy” is a code smell and attempts to implement it will lead to\npernicious bugs. Either you’re copying data, in which case it should be\nserializable to and unseriazable from JSON, or you’re copying objects, in\nwhich case you should think about what you’re really trying to achieve. There\nis usually a better solution.\n\n------\ntlb\nI use lodash.cloneDeep for this.\n[https://lodash.com/docs/4.17.4#cloneDeep](https://lodash.com/docs/4.17.4#cloneDeep).\nIt has variants to munge the object while copying.\n\n------\nricardobeat\nMissing from the benchmarks is simple deep copying:\n\n    \n    \n        function deepClone (obj) {\n            var clone = {}\n            for (var key in obj) {\n                if (obj.hasOwnProperty(key)) {\n                    var value = obj[key]\n                    switch (Object.prototype.toString.call(value)) {\n                        case '[object Object]': clone[key] = deepClone(obj[key]); break\n                        case '[object Array]' : clone[key] = value.slice(0); break\n                        default               : clone[key] = value\n                    }\n                }\n            }\n            return clone\n        }\n    \n\nThis is 5-10x faster than the JSON trick in WebKit:\n[http://jsben.ch/W0ciO](http://jsben.ch/W0ciO)\n\n(naive implementation, but covers 90% of uses, see lodash for the full mess:\n[https://github.com/lodash/lodash/blob/master/.internal/baseC...](https://github.com/lodash/lodash/blob/master/.internal/baseClone.js))\n\n~~~\ndrodgers\nI believe that it's faster, but only because it's not actually deep-cloning.\n\nThis:\n\n    \n    \n        value.slice(0);\n    \n\nis a shallow clone; it makes a new array, but doesn't clone it's contents.\n\n~~~\nricardobeat\nHence being a 'naive' implementation. You can replace that with something like\n`deepClone(value)` + implement copying for different types, ultimately you'll\nend up with code like lodash's.\n\n~~~\ndrodgers\nIt's not just naive though, it's wrong; it won't even give you new objects\nalthough it seems like it's meant-to:\n\n    \n    \n        a = [1, {foo: \"bar\"}];\n        b = a.slice(0);\n    \n        b[1].foo = \"baz\";\n    \n        console.log(a)\n        > [1, {foo: \"baz\"}]\n    \n        console.log(b)\n        > [1, {foo: \"baz\"}]\n    \n\nA naive implementation would do this:\n\n    \n    \n        case '[object Array]' : clone[key] = value.map((item) => deepClone(item)); break\n    \n\nAnd would thus be slower.\n\n~~~\nricardobeat\nWe are in agreement here. My suggestion was to make the deepClone method also\ntake arrays, and walk through them copying values in the for loop\n(significantly faster than map).\n\nAgain, I linked to a full implementation at the end; was more commenting on\nthe lack of this particular approach, wrote this on the spot as an example.\n\n------\nsmt88\nBecause JS doesn't clone natively and library behavior varies somewhat, our\nteam has started to consider deep-copying and cloning to be a smell. It forces\nthe maintainer to figure out how exactly the copying/cloning is going to work,\nand it also creates nasty bugs when modifying a class without knowing it'll be\ncopied or cloned somewhere.\n\nWe instead only use immutable, plain (\"POCO\" or \"POJO\" in other languages)\nobjects for data. If you want to copy an object, you have to call the same\nfunctions to change it that you called on the original. If the functions are\ndeterministic (as they should be), then you get identical objects at the end.\n\nOur code base is effectively functional, even though we still use objects as\nour syntactic sugar (addOwner(car, user) becomes car.addOwner(user), etc.)\n\n------\nfrwhlr\nI think it is almost unbelievable that the ESxx train continues to expand the\nlanguage with ever more features, while at the same time there is still no\nnative method to deep-copy an object..\n\nAlmost everything in JS is an object, but there is no reliable way to copy\none.. Feels like an epic failure to me. Would it not be an idea for the ESxx\nteam to finally fix this core issue for the first upcoming release?\n\n~~~\ntaco_emoji\nWhy is deep copy so essential? Deep copy is the wrong solution to your problem\n99% of the time, IMO.\n\n~~~\nfrwhlr\nI think spamming mutable objects around in your codebase is asking for\ntrouble. I'd be really happy to be able to do something like this:\n\n    \n    \n      foo( Object.copy(barObj) );\n    \n    \n\nI mean, why would you send your state's mutable object as argument if you're\n100% sure you don't want it to be changed?\n\n~~~\ntaco_emoji\nBecause copying is expensive. If mutability is the issue, use Object.freeze(),\nor define properties with Object.defineProperty() setting _writable_ to false.\n\n------\nkin\nI would never deep copy using any of those methods. Can't you just write your\nown recursive version? I remember plenty of examples on jsPerf (site not\nworking at the moment) including my own that significantly outperformed JSON\nparse/stringify.\n\n~~~\nBinaryIdiot\nYeah I'm confused as most of those methods, like postMessage, stringifies\nthings anyway. I simply iterate other object properties to make a copy of a\nfull object.\n\nI've never run performance tests but surely that's faster than parsing an\nobject into its string representation then parsing it back into the language,\nno?\n\n~~~\ndassurma\nAs I explain in the article, postMessage does not stringify. It runs the\nstructural clone algorithm, as per spec. Otherwise things like ArrayBuffers,\nSets et al. would not make it to the other side.\n\n------\ntw1010\nTackling the toughest challenges of our generation.\n\n------\ntakinola\nFor fun and games, try deep copying event objects. Spoiler alert: it doesn't\nwork in ways that are not immediately obvious. Hours of my life I will never\nget back...\n\n------\ntobr\nIs the `await` used in the last two examples a typo? They're not asynchronous\nare they?\n\n~~~\ndassurma\nSo, it’s me being lazy and copy-pasting, but you can use await on synchronous\nfunctions, too. It’s a no-op :D\n\n~~~\nphpnode\nNot a no-op, it wraps the awaited value in `Promise.resolve()`:\n\n    \n    \n       async function foo() {\n          const a = await {then(resolve) { resolve(123); }};\n          console.log(a);\n        }\n        foo();\n\n~~~\npitaj\nIndeed, you don't use `await` on functions either, it's used on promises. In\nfact, when used on a non-promise, it still waits an extra loop cycle before\nresolving and continuing the async function.\n\n------\nkevincennis\nJavaScript is absolutely _not_ pass by reference.\n\n    \n    \n        let a = 1;\n        \n        function foo( a ) {\n          a = 2;\n        }\n        \n        foo( a );\n        \n        console.log( a ); // 1\n\n~~~\njerf\nNowadays, everything is pass-by-value. The only question is whether a\nreference or a pointer is one of the things that can be passed by value, or if\neverything passed is always a copy.\n\nAn exception to pass-by-value would be Forth; in the case of stack-based\nlanguages there really isn't a \"pass\" going on at all. But everything copies\n_something_ for every non-inlined function call nowadays. Another instance\nwhere it's less obvious what is going on is a truly immutable language like\nErlang or Haskell, where the \"value\" is quite likely still being passed via a\npointer, but that's only relevant from the point of view of considering\ngarbage collection behavior.\n\nThis makes the old \"pass-by-value vs pass-by-reference\" terminology vestigial\nto the modern software engineer, which is why the only place you'll encounter\nit is in school courses. A better way of understanding the modern issues is to\nask what powers a passed-in value has and just ignore the old question.\n\n~~~\nkmill\nOff the top of my head, here are languages in use that have a feature for\npass-by-reference semantics: C#, Ada, C++ (though in this language you can get\nahold of the reference as a value if you want).\n\nOf course, to implement pass by reference, you tend to have to pass pointers\naround, but the point is that the language gives the illusion that the\nidentifiers within a function's scope _are_ locations specified by the caller.\n\nI guess a takeaway is that in designing a language, one has to consider the\nrelationship between an identifier, the mutable cell associated with the\nidentifier, and the value stored in that cell. It seem that in common\nlanguages the identifier refers to the cell, but if the identifier is used in\na value context, it evaluates to the value in the cell. Languages with pass-\nby-reference semantics let you make your own & function, so to speak.\n\n(A weird example in C of this relationship is that an identifier for an array\nrefers to a cell that contains the whole array, but, if you use the identifier\nin a value context, it becomes a pointer to the first element. One aspect of\nit not actually being a pointer is that you cannot replace its value with the\npointer to another array.)\n\nAnyway, an everything-must-be-a-first-class-object hard-liner would insist\nthat pass-by-reference is the way of the past. But, sometimes it is not\neconomical to get everything to be a first-class object. For instance, you\nmight decide it is not worth trying to create a pointer type for referring to\nmembers of a packed struct, but it is not too hard to make a pass-by-reference\nfeature for this (via copying).\n\n~~~\nRoboprog\nPascal “var” parameters. Pascal is rarely used any more, but I suppose it’s no\nmore obscure than Ada.\n\n------\nheisenbit\nHow does inmutable-js fit into this discussion? My limited understanding is it\ndefers the copy decision and then can limit it to the area needed. Wouldn't\nthat lead in most cases to a better performance?\n\n~~~\ndlbucci\nIf you have immutable objects (doesn't even have to be ImmutableJS, you can\njust decide to never mutate object properties), then there's really not even a\nneed for cloning at that point. The reason you would clone an object is to\navoid mutating the original object, which you don't need to worry about when\neverything is immutable.\n\n~~~\nDiThi\nExcept that you need to copy _something_ at some point to modify values (or\nmore precisely, having another object that is the same but with X change). In\ntheory everything is re-created with a change, but in practice only the\nchanged objects are copied.\n\n------\nxg15\nSomewhat OT:\n\nIf you click through, you can find the original Twitter conversation that\nprompted this posting [1]. In that conversation, an interesting point about\n\"optimizing away\" string representations was brought up: [2, 3]\n\n> _Interesting! How is this better or worse than the usual trick of\n> `JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(obj))` ?\n\n(...)\n\nMy idea was that the browser could detect that the string is immediately\nparsed anyway and just interpret the two function calls as \"deep copy this\nobject for me\"._\n\nI had thought about somethig like this in the context of innerHTML a whole\nago. Generally, there are a lot of places in the DOM where can modify an\nobject not by setting properties, but by _getting a string representation of\nthe object, modifying that string, then feeding the new string back to the\nbrowser for reparsing_. Examples are document.cookie, css properties and of\ncourse innerHTML.\n\nIn those cases, an optimisation like the above sounds like it could actually\nmake sense.\n\nE.g., if someone abused innerHTML like this:\n\n    \n    \n      for (let i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {\n        myList.innerHTML = myList.innerHTML + \"<li>\" + data[i] + \"</li>\";\n        doSomethingWith(myList.lastChild);\n      }\n    \n\na naive implementation would have to serialize, parse and recreate the whole\nobject tree for each iteration of the list. However you could probably\noptimize it by having innerHTML return some special object that only \"looks\"\nlike a string but somehow keeps track of its mutations internally. When the\nobject is fed back to innerHTML later, the browser could use the internal\nproperties to mutate the DOM instead of recreating it.\n\nI'm curious, does anyone know if optimisations like this are actually used?\n\n[1]\n[https://twitter.com/DasSurma/status/955484341358022657](https://twitter.com/DasSurma/status/955484341358022657)\n\n[2]\n[https://twitter.com/sergiomdgomes/status/955484966313488384](https://twitter.com/sergiomdgomes/status/955484966313488384)\n\n[3]\n[https://twitter.com/moritz_kn/status/956444334970343424](https://twitter.com/moritz_kn/status/956444334970343424)\n\n------\ncodeisawesome\n> If you don’t expect cyclic objects and don’t need to preserve built-in\n> types, you get the fastest clone across all browsers by using\n> JSON.parse(JSON.stringify()), which I found quite surprising.\n\nI wonder if that’s because browser devs know by now that this is a widely used\ntechnique and hence optimise for it.\n\n~~~\nHavelock\nI suspect it is because JSON.parse and JSON.stringify are more commonly used\nmethods and therefore see more optimization than methods use less.\n\n------\npeter_retief\nI was surprised how difficult it was to make a deep copy with javascript, (I\ndid try JSON.parse) but finally decided to rewrite the logic without deep\ncopy. Its a great article, shed some light on an interesting programming\nquestion\n\n------\nklokoman\nIn some cases you can assign the object you want to copy as the [[prototype]]\nof another object, this way you delegate what you don't want to change and\nchange what you want in the \"copy\" via assignments\n\n------\nStratoscope\nOn the \"pass by value\" vs. \"pass by reference\" controversy, I see two issues\nhere:\n\nFirst, these terms have specific meaning in other languages such as C++, but\nJavaScript's behavior does not match either of their definitions.\n\nSecond, there is a widespread myth that JavaScript passes primitive values and\nobjects in two different ways. It doesn't. They work exactly the same, and\nmaking an artificial distinction between them is not useful.\n\nI find it helpful to make up some new terminology, so my thinking isn't led\nastray by implied comparisons with other languages. I like to talk about\n_names_ and _things_.\n\nA _name_ is a variable name or a parameter name.\n\nA _thing_ is any object or primitive value: anything that you can pass as a\nfunction argument or use on the right side of an assignment operator.\n\nA name always refers to one thing. A thing can have multiple names.\n\nWhen you pass an argument into a function, or when you use the assignment\noperator, you are giving a new name to an existing thing. If the name already\nreferred to some other thing, that connection is lost. The name now refers to\nthe new thing, and only to the new thing.\n\nEverything works this way, primitives and objects alike.\n\nThe reason it's often claimed that objects are passed into a function by\nreference, while primitives are passed by value, is that we instinctively\nwrite _different code_ for the two cases. That different code is what leads to\nthe notion that objects and primitives are treated differently.\n\nIf you pass an object into a function and you want to add or change a property\nof that object, you'll naturally write:\n\n    \n    \n      function foo( obj ) {\n          obj.myprop = 42;\n      }\n    \n\nBut if you know the function is going to receive a primitive value, you won't\nwrite this:\n\n    \n    \n      function foo( val ) {\n          val.myprop = 42;\n      }\n    \n\nIf you do, you'll find out soon enough that it won't work. It will throw an\nexception in strict mode, or fail silently in non-strict mode.\n\nInstead you may write:\n\n    \n    \n      function foo( val ) {\n          // Do stuff here with val\n          val = 42;\n          // Do stuff here with the *new* val, which isn't the old val\n      }\n    \n\nThe reason the functions behave differently is not because JavaScript passes\nprimitives and objects differently. It doesn't; they are all treated the same.\n\nBut primitives are _immutable_. They have no properties that we can change. We\nknow that, or we find out if we try, so we simply don't write code that tries\nto change a property of a primitive value.\n\nIt isn't the JavaScript language that treats objects vs. primitives\ndifferently when passed into a function or when used in an assignment\nstatement. We programmers do, by writing different code for the two.\n\n(Edited for clarity)\n\n~~~\nshkkmo\n> The reason the functions behave differently is not because JavaScript passes\n> primitives and objects differently. It doesn't; they are all treated the\n> same.\n\n>The reason is that primitives are immutable\n\nThis is incorrect. See:\n[https://jsfiddle.net/t73ykuj0/](https://jsfiddle.net/t73ykuj0/)\n\nThe reason is that javascript uses \"pass-reference-by-value\" not \"pass-by-\nreference\"\n\nedit: The immutability of primitives is why the \"pass-reference-by-value\"\nbehavior of javascript works like \"pass-by-value\" for primitives (and for\nimmutable objects).\n\n~~~\nStratoscope\nI think we are saying the same thing. Your term \"pass reference by value\" is\nthe same as what I called \"give a new name to an existing thing\".\n\nI simply like to avoid the terms \"pass by reference\" and \"pass by value\" to\navoid comparison with other languages. But if you want to use \"reference\" and\n\"value\", then your term \"pass a reference by value\" is a good description of\nhow it works - both for objects and primitives.\n\nCoincidentally, just before I saw your comment I changed what I said about\n\"The reason is that primitives are immutable\" to make it more clear.\n\nThe real reason is that we instinctively write different code for the two. If\na function parameter named 'val' is a primitive, we're not going to try to\nchange a property on it. If we do, it won't work, because the primitive is\nimmutable. (That's the point I was trying to get at with my original comment.)\nThe same would be true, of course, with an immutable object.\n\nAnd when we pass an object into a function, we _may_ reassign the name\ncompletely inside the function, as in the mutatePassByReference() function in\nyour fiddle, but more likely we will write code that manipulates its\nproperties, as in your mutatePassReferenceByValue().\n\nSo the immutability of primitives isn't the direct cause of what is sometimes\nthought of as different behavior for objects and primitives. It's an indirect\ncause, because it leads us to naturally write different code for the two.\n\nThat's what I was really trying to get at (in my usual long-winded way):\nJavaScript doesn't treat objects and primitives differently, we programmers\ndo.\n\n~~~\nshkkmo\n> I think we are saying the same thing. Your term \"pass reference by value\" is\n> the same as what I called \"give a new name to an existing thing\".\n\n>I simply like to avoid the terms \"pass by reference\" and \"pass by value\" to\navoid comparison with other languages.\n\nThe terms mean the same thing in every language. Some people (as shown in the\narticle and this thread) don't understand what \"pass-by-reference\" means and\nincorrectly use it to apply to javascript.\n\nThe pass-reference-by-value behavior is shared by a lot of languages, I'm not\nsure why you want to avoid comparison with them.\n\n~~~\nStratoscope\n> The pass-reference-by-value behavior is shared by a lot of languages, I'm\n> not sure why you want to avoid comparison with them.\n\nThat's a fair point. I just think a lot of JavaScript programmers are confused\nabout this, and end up thinking that primitives and objects are passed in two\ndifferent ways. Even MDN makes this mistake:\n\n[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-\nUS/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guid...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-\nUS/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Functions)\n\nMy use of \"things\" and \"names\" is just an attempt to get away from this\nconfusion.\n\n------\ntobyhinloopen\nThis is why JavaScript is the biggest joke of web development. And error\nhandling.\n\nCan we please stop using it\n\n------\npotch\nJavaScript is pass-by-reference for all Objects and Arrays. Value types are\npass-by-value.\n\n    \n    \n        let obj = {a: 1}\n        \n        function foo(arg) {\n          return obj === arg;\n        }\n        \n        foo(obj) // true\n    \n\nThe === operator operates on object not by comparing their value, but by\ncomparing their memory reference [1]. A function argument variable can be\nreassigned using = in the function body, but that changes which location in\nmemory the reference points to and isn't somehow \"proof\" of pass-by-value.\n\n[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-\nUS/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-\nUS/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/Comparison_Operators#Equality_operators)\n\n~~~\nshkkmo\nJavascript is pass-reference-by-value for Objects and Arrays, see:\n[https://jsfiddle.net/t73ykuj0/](https://jsfiddle.net/t73ykuj0/)\n\nIf javascript was pass-by-reference for Objects, your code could read: arg =\n{a: 2}; return obj === arg;\n\nand still behave the same.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow to Learn Any (Technical, Programming, Other) Subject in 7 Days - andre\nhttp://okdork.com/2007/05/30/how-to-learn-any-subject-in-7-days/\n======\nabstractbill\nIf only I had read this _before_ I started the PhD. It would have only taken 7\ndays!\n\ncf. Norvig's essay: <http://norvig.com/21-days.html>\n\n~~~\nmachine\nFor real. If only the world really worked this way. Even programming languages\ntake a bit longer than a week to really learn. I find I go through at least\ntwo levels with a programming language: the first at which I know the syntax\nand can code small projects comfortably (this takes about a week), the next at\nwhich I have developed a personal coding style that works well with language\nand allows me to handle large projects (this takes at least 6 months or so of\nregular coding).\n\n------\ninklesspen\nStep 1) Read an introductory text Step 2) Do stuff with what you read\n\nIs this news?\n\n~~~\nstaunch\nYou forgot: Step 3) Significantly overestimate what you've learned.\n\n------\ncrxnamja\n@inklesspen\n\nMake sure to do it fast!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNew Zealand admits illegally spying on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom - 8ig8\nhttp://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/27/14120478-new-zealand-admits-illegally-spying-on-megaupload-founder-kim-dotcom?lite\n\n======\nbeedogs\nThis is my surprised face.\n\nOther western countries do what is asked of them when the US comes calling.\n\n~~~\ndmm\nThe US government is the last true sovereign.\n\n~~~\ntomjen3\nRIAA is the last true sovereign.\n\n------\nrolux\nIn other news, New Zealand's prime minister seems to have issued a public\napology to Kim Dotcom:\n\n[https://torrentfreak.com/new-zealand-prime-minister-\napologiz...](https://torrentfreak.com/new-zealand-prime-minister-apologizes-\nto-kim-dotcom-120927/)\n\n------\nOhArgh\nAh but New Zealand still doesn't let the US nuclear powered ships in their\nwaters! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-free_zone#New_Zealand>\n\nWhy should they fold to the US government who is basically being controlled by\nthe media industry?\n\nThere is a process to get someone extradited it should be followed\n\n------\nnvmc\nOur government has been at the beck and call of the White House ever since\nthey came to power. Key is financier, a snake.\n\n------\nmikerice\nRule #1 of spying: Never admit to it.\n\n------\nbriandear\nThe real question: is Dotcom innocent of his alleged crimes? The real story is\nthat if Dotcom was facilitating piracy. The technicality of if he was wire\ntapped illegally or not is important in theory, but it comes down to this:\nDotcom would not be in trouble if he hadn't broken the law. If he was\ninnocent, then this would be a big story. This is similar to someone caught in\nvideo robbing a store but beating the charge because of a technicality.\n\nCriminals winning cases on technicalities while still having committed the\ncrime is not justice. Justice is getting punished for crimes actually\ncommitted. Justice is when innocent people are acquitted of crimes they did\nnot commit.\n\nTurning Dotcom into somekind of folk hero is ridiculous. He became very\nwealthy by facilitating theft. It isn't like he was donating the proceeds to\nbuild schools for girls in Afghanistan. If he broke a potentially unfair law\nas a statement and did it for something other than getting rich, maybe then we\ncould consider him something other than what he is -- a self-serving criminal.\n\n~~~\nixnu\n\"Justice is getting punished for crimes actually committed.\"\n\nA government's complete disregard for due process is a far greater crime than\npiracy.\n\nThe punishment for this crime is \"[c]riminals winning cases on\ntechnicalities\".\n\n~~~\ndrivingmenuts\n> The punishment for this crime is \"[c]riminals winning cases on\n> technicalities\".\n\nI disagree. The punishment is to find the person or persons responsible and,\nat a minimum, fire them. That should serve as a warning to others that you\neither do it right, or not at all.\n\nThe \"[c]riminals winning cases on technicalities\" is a side-effect of\nerroneous judgement.\n\n~~~\nfreehunter\nI would argue that, in the US at least, criminals winning on technicalities is\n_not_ a side effect. It is a direct punishment of the government not following\nproper procedure. Authorities cannot illegally search your home because if\nthey do they forfeit the right to use that evidence. If that repercussion was\nnot in place, there would be no incentive for the government to actually\nfollow the law.\n\nDo it right or you lose the case. That's the deal.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGrowing By Shrinking - peteforde\nhttp://hackertourism.com/post/44454709336/growing-by-shrinking\n======\ncodewright\nI identify with, and am seeking for myself, a lot of things described here.\n\nThat said, the author is speaking from an intensely privileged point of view.\nReferring to selling one's time as a programmer as 'whoring' caused me to\ncringe.\n\nI have strong aversion to growth for growth's sake now that I've lived and\nworked in Silicon Valley and the startups that go with it (I was CTO at a\nnutrition startup).\n\nThings I've done recently:\n\n1\\. Quit my job and went back to being an independent consultant. Looking to\nstart a product company in the gap time between contracts.\n\n2\\. Exercising more, in my case, 6 times a week minimum as well.\n\nThe real question is whether or not I'll be able to make something that bears\nrevenue fruit or not. I've had small bits of success here and there before but\nnothing substantial or lasting. Current side project is just me scratching an\nitch, no real revenue potential.\n\nI've been reading a lot in an attempt to learn as much as I can and prepare\nmyself to be able to make something profitable. Mostly marketing and sales\nbooks, about to do another read-through of Patio11's stuff again.\n\nCan anyone tell me what the aspiring micro-ISV/self-employed entrepreneur\n_really_ needs to know in order to get ramen profitable? I know I need to\nbuild and experiment quickly - what else?\n\nEdit:\n\nMy book log: <http://bitemyapp.com/post/book-log-1/>\n\nI agree with orangethirty's \"start selling\". I just need to hoof it and do it.\nNot about to stop reading though :)\n\n~~~\npeteforde\nFair point re: whoring, so far as we might have to agree to disagree.\n\nLet me explain differently by saying that when I was young, I wanted nothing\nmore than to get paid to program. I loved to code, and I needed to get paid —\nprofessional coding was the obvious answer.\n\nThe problem was that by my mid-20s I was really sad all of the time, and my\nwork was at the root of it. I was programming and getting paid, yet the more\nwork I did the worse I felt. I thought I had fallen out of love with coding.\n\nOne day it hit me like a lightning bolt: the reason you do something directly\nimpacts whether you enjoy doing it.\n\nBeing a prostitute seems like it would be awesome. You get laid constantly and\npeople throw money at you, right? Well, only if you ignore that you don't have\nany control of who, when, how, why or where in many cases. Awesome becomes\nterrible.\n\nI get the same joy from coding that a painter gets from painting. A painter\nthat can paint what, when, how, why and where they want is likely happy. A\npainter that has to paint what other people want on a schedule is often just\nstruggling to pay the rent. They develop a toxic relationship with their art,\nand that's sad.\n\nSo yeah, I have had some great programming clients and worked on some really\ninteresting code projects for money, but in the end it wasn't worth the\nsadness that my body was literally fighting back against. I was fat and sick\nall of the time, everything seemed like it was getting worse. I was\ndisconnected from the chi.\n\nHowever you want to describe it, everything started getting better as soon as\nI stopped doing it for other people.\n\n~~~\nanu_gupta\nSo, instead of whoring your developer skills, you're whoring your technical\nknowledge?\n\n~~~\npeteforde\nI'm not whoring my technical knowledge. I discovered that I really enjoy\nsharing it, and it's a happy coincidence that people are excited to pay for\nit.\n\n------\nseivan\nI agree with you. A small team of founders that are just developers who can\ndesign will outbeat ANYTHING that might have some VC money behind it.\n\nYou don't need business monkeys, or \"UX experts\" who can't code their JS/CSS.\nI hate it when iOS positions already have a lead designer who can't do Cocoa.\nIt's such stupid notion. It's like saying we're looking for a CSS developer,\nwe already have a lead HTML developer.\n\niOS products are logic + design. And a developer who can design is far more\nuseful, cheaper and faster than a developer + ux monkey.\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5181963>\n\n\"I like programming a lot. If I'm away from it for more than a couple weeks, I\nstart to miss it.\n\nThe software industry deserves to choke on a dick and die, however. Fuck bad\ncode, micromanagers, dopey \"startups\" that expect 14-hour days on the\nassumption that 0.0x equity slices represent real \"ownership\", closed\nallocation, and regimes in which programmers don't choose their tools. All of\nthat can go to hell.\n\nAs software engineers, we're a defeated tribe. We work for businessmen, get\nlittle respect in comparison to the value we add, and often are pigeonholed\ninto roles that are 3 levels below our creative and intellectual ability. We\ndo most of our work for managers and investors who think we're losers because\nwe don't have their jobs. To me, quitting programming is just running away.\nProgramming was never the problem. We need to take control of this game. We\nneed to take it back and make it good-- and fast.\"\n\nLet the downvotes commence.\n\n~~~\nguylhem\nSorry to deceive you but when I see the truth, I can only upvote it.\n\nThere is a lot of cruft in many businesses - so much inefficiency, that it can\nhardly be removed by joining in their ride. The software industry is not\nimmune to that.\n\nTherefore it just is more logical to do something by yourself.\n\nAfter all, there are only 2 possibles outcomes - you do bring value, which\nwill be rewarded by the market, or you don't - and at least, it won't last too\nlong. Unefficiency is a pain.\n\nCreate your business. Sink or swim, with the added advantage (schadenfreude ?)\nof watching the inefficient ones drown while you swim around.\n\nThere no personal hate involved- I don't hate them, and in fact I may even\nfeel sorry. It's the inefficiency that I hate.\n\n~~~\nFourthProtocol\nIt's not that simple. My forever project (started in 2004) needs another month\nor so of polish, but after stripping out many features to ship a version one,\nis pretty much ready.\n\nBuild it and they will come doesn't work. I need paying customers, and being\nthe type that works best when writing code (alone!), I'm about to start\nexploring options to find someone to market this thing for me, and turn my\nspare time over the last 9 years into something that makes real money.\n\n~~~\npeteforde\nBut did you enjoy building your project? Did you learn from it or benefit in\nother ways?\n\nIt's most likely that you won't recoup on your investment if you only see this\nin financial terms. If you expand your definition of success it is possible\nthat you have already succeeded.\n\n~~~\nFourthProtocol\nYes, I've already succeeded. And whether I've learnt from it or not (I have)\nis secondary to the fun I've had with it.\n\nThe money, any money is just a logical next step to a project that will never\ndie, regardless of it's commercial success or failure.\n\n------\nbdunn\nDitto. I gave up lucrative, decently sized consultancy to go solo.\n\nBefore: Long commute to my office from the suburbs, 10+ hour workdays, lots of\nstress, kids would be asleep when I get home. After: 30 second commute\nupstairs, work out daily, lots of sunshine and bike rides to the park, etc.\n\nI wrote about it here: [http://planscope.io/blog/giving-up-a-million-dollar-\nconsulta...](http://planscope.io/blog/giving-up-a-million-dollar-consultancy/)\n\n------\npmorici\nI'm confused first he says, \"I’M DONE WITH WRITING CODE FOR OTHER PEOPLE.\",\nbut two paragraphs later he says, \"All of my work comes by referral now, and I\nhave an agent\". So what exactly is he saying? That he just does other kinds of\nwork besides software development now?\n\nIf that is the case then why is one 'whoring one self out' and the other is\nnot?\n\n~~~\nmrbgty\nWell of course it sounds bad when you put it that way (using all caps when\nquoting him)\n\n~~~\nlindenr\nWhat? In the original it was written in all caps as well.\n\n~~~\npeteforde\nDisclaimer: I'm not a type expert.\n\nIt's technically not _written_ in all caps, the font that my blog theme uses\nfor bolding renders as capital letters.\n\nMy personal jury is out on whether this is okay or not. Your comment leans me\ntowards \"no\".\n\n~~~\nlindenr\nIt does seem a bit more forceful than bold to me; maybe you could have a\nseparate 'bold' font and a 'really really bold' font?\n\n------\nnoelwelsh\nSounds great, but let's be realistic here: it's the N years of consultancy\nthat allow this fantastic lifestyle, because it is the network built then that\nis being leveraged now. In other words, as fantastic as this lifestyle sounds\n(and it really does sound fantastic!) it's not something you can just jump\ninto.\n\n~~~\nAznHisoka\nYep. He calls coding for other ppl \"whoring\".. but he seems to forget that\npeople pay you to do EXACTLY what others won't or can't do. If other people\nenjoy it as much as they enjoy sex, you wouldn't get paid a ton\n\n~~~\npeteforde\nIf you enjoy coding for other people as much as you enjoy coding your own\nprojects, then we are wired very differently - and that's just fine.\n\nHowever, I have found that many of the things I used to think everyone could\ndo are in fact skills that I now get paid to use because they can't do them.\nGo figure.\n\n~~~\nshawn-butler\nWhat can you tell me about the \"agent\". Are you paying him or her or is it a\ncommission basis? How did you find someone you could trust?\n\n~~~\npeteforde\nTed Pearlman (<http://usistwo.com/>) approached me, and I listened because he\nhad an interesting opportunity that was relevant to my interests. He was also\nreferred directly by Hampton Catlin, who I used to run a company with. After\njumping on Skype with Ted, it was clear that we would be friends.\n\nI'd prefer to let Ted discuss how he is paid, but I will point you to his\nPudding Manifesto:\n\n<http://puddingmanifesto.org/>\n\n------\nyesimahuman\nThis quote spoke to me:\n\n> \"Unspace was a convenient umbrella; an excuse for three friends with\n> complimentary skill sets to share a small office\"\n\nIn a lot of ways my company right now is just an excuse for me and my best\nfriend to build cool software together and have our own office. It just turns\nout the money is coming with it and we are able to build a real business out\nof it.\n\nWe've had chances to raise money and grow but we know deep in our hearts it's\nnot what we want. It was hard to be \"okay\" with this because everyone throws\nthe VC stuff at you and makes you think you should be \"going big\" and killing\nyourself at 25. Understanding and being confident that we could still be a\n\"big\", important, and profitable company in our space by doing it \"our way\"\nhas been a really big milestone of our personal and professional growth.\n\nGreat post.\n\n~~~\npeteforde\nThere's a really amazing moment in \"An Evening With Kevin Smith\" (highly\nrecommended!) where he recounts meeting some dick producer who admonished him\nover concerns of practicality.\n\n\"Kevin, making movies isn't about getting together with your friends and\nhaving a good time!\"\n\n[Pauses] \"It isn't?\"\n\n------\nsaravk\nNice. Congrats on your move. I wrote a similar post exactly 2 years earlier\nwhen i decided to downshift from my job of about 10 years and go live in the\nmountains doing photography <http://www.kettik.com/go/articles/16>. Reading\nyour post made me go down the memory lane and examine my own journey.\n\nFast forward 2 years and i have very mixed feelings about the whole thing.\nMonetarily its been a complete flop, failing to earn even a single paise in\nthe past 2 years. But spiritually, the memories and experiences gathered along\nthe way have been priceless. Sounds like a classic Mastercard ad, doesn't it\n:D\n\nAll this experience did motivate me to create my startup. I have to say that i\ntotally resonate with your \"the only code I write will be for my personal\nprojects\" line. It feels more fulfilling this way. But ofcourse there is no\nguarantee that this would arrest the rapid depletion of my bank balance (as\nopposed to taking up parttime consulting gigs). Only time will tell.\n\n~~~\npeteforde\nCoincidentally, I also love photography.\n\nWhat I'm not sure about from your comment is whether you intended to do\nphotography for money or because you loved doing it (or both!)\n\nI made a decision a long time ago that I would never allow myself to be hired\nto take photographs, for all of the reasons around what we're discussing. I\nwant to keep photography as something I do out of love.\n\nIt was a very smart decision to make.\n\n~~~\nsaravk\nI intended to do photography so that i could make a living doing something i\nloved. It seemed a great idea at that time.\n\nBut while i loved the process of taking the photos (i do mostly landscapes,\nwhich basically involves patiently waiting for something magical to happen\n<http://saravk.kettik.com/go/photos>), i didn't quite enjoy the process of\nturning that hobby into an income generating endeavour. So i guess i finally\ncame to the same realization as you did. To keep my passion and profession\nseparate.\n\nI also realised that i didn't lose my love for coding, especially when working\non my own projects. So i'am now working on a solution for my original problem.\nTo find a way to help travellers create, share and monetize their content.\n\n------\nRyanZAG\nBest thing I have read in months. Bravo!\n\nI've done similar stuff, and I'm in a similar situation to yours - although\nI'm only at ~8 years and not 15. I also get all of my work from referrals,\nalthough I participate in (paying) startups too - on my own terms - and drop\nit if it moves away from what I'm interested in doing.\n\nNever been happier.\n\n~~~\npeteforde\nHey - if it took you 8 years instead of 15, that's a good thing! :)\n\n------\nbrador\nIsn't the point of quick growth to work hard in your early years and retire\nearly? Sell, IPO, or just plain bank.\n\nYes, you could have a happier life if you worked at a more relaxed pace\n(there's a guy on HN who works 3, holidays 9), but you'll most likely be\nworking for longer. Wanting to work for longer assumes you will remain fit to\nwork for all those years, mentally and physically. That's not as guaranteed as\nyou'd probably like to think at 25.\n\nMy advice: Push yourself, but keep a sharp eye on life balance.\n\n~~~\nkayoone\nThat assumes working extra hard in your younger years makes you rich before\n30, which in a vast majority of cases does not happen, no matter if you work\nfor a startup, bigco or on your own.\n\n~~~\nbrador\nRich or comfortable wealth or your own personal limits?\n\nYou can retire to a lifetime of minimum wage and no more work ever for just\n$200k. A good software engineer could back that up in under 5 years. Play\nvideo games all day stress free till death if that's your thing. (not\nrecommended).\n\n~~~\nguylhem\nIndeed, not recommended - I'd call that just waiting for death.\n\n------\nmitmads\nBest phrase \"optimize for happiness instead of money\" !!!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApple Contractors Allegedly Listened to 1,000 Siri Recordings a Day – Each - innovateee\nhttps://www.theverge.com/2019/8/23/20830120/apple-contractors-siri-recordings-listening-1000-a-day-globetech-microsoft-cortana\n======\nmkl\nPrevious discussion:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20788463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20788463)\n\n------\nherohamp\nAm I supposed to be shocked by this? Literally every company that makes\nsimilar things does it. It's important for making the voice assistants better\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA Tender Hand in the Presence of Death - wallflower\nhttp://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/11/the-work-of-a-hospice-nurse\n======\nkeithflower\nThe rotation I did through a hospice service when I was a fourth year medical\nstudent was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life.\n\nHospice staff are experts at effective pain-wrangling (pain in all its many\nmanifestations), and, as they say, in helping people _live_ until they die.\n\nI'm grateful for the teaching - from both clinicians and patients.\n\n------\nggamecrazy\nI do wonder sometimes if it's a gift or a curse to know that your eventual\ndeath is coming soon. Death is such a weird concept that at least I personally\nfeel I lack the hardware to fully comprehend or be at peace with (as of right\nnow anyway).\n\n~~~\npavlov\nI try to think of it as something that will feel like falling asleep. I don't\ndread sleeping, so I shouldn't dread dying either.\n\n~~~\nmikeash\nI'm not afraid of death, although I hope mine is delayed a long time for the\nsake of my family. I am, however, afraid of _dying_ , which is often a long\nand painful process.\n\n~~~\npavlov\nFair point. Everybody hopes they can go swiftly into the good night.\n\nIsn't the fearsome part of dying just the pain and sickness though? Those\nthings can exist as a chronic state that doesn't lead to death, so I'm not\nsure it's dying that one should be afraid of...\n\nIn some countries like Belgium, unbearable pain that doesn't lead to death is\nsufficient cause for an individual to be granted assisted suicide performed by\nmedical professionals.\n\n~~~\nmikeash\nThat's a good point, the two don't have to be linked. I always think of them\ntogether, I imagine because so I've seen so many people die slowly, and\nrelatively few end up with horrible chronic afflictions that still let them\nsurvive for a long time.\n\n------\nbb101\nIn a world filled with fast money, quick soundbites, greedy startups and\nselfish individualism, it's heartening to read that people like Heather exist\n- quietly and patiently showing us what really matters.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMost startup theory is ex-post, therefore bs - shafyy\nhttps://shafyy.com/post/startup-theory-ex-post/\n======\nzby\nThe primary social function of giving advice is a domination game\n([http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/03/advice-shows-\nstatus.ht...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/03/advice-shows-status.html),\n[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/01/advice-isnt-about-\ninfo...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/01/advice-isnt-about-info.html)) -\nthat's why there is a lot of shitty advice. That does not mean there are no\ngood business theories that cover startups. Some of them are scientific\ntheories with all the required rigour - but not all theories need to be\nproperly scientific to be useful, in our daily life we live with lots of ex-\npost theories, they are not perfect but are still useful. By the way I am the\nauthor of one non-scientific startup theory myself\n[https://medium.com/hackernoon/aggregators-\nbffd36063a72](https://medium.com/hackernoon/aggregators-bffd36063a72) and I\nhope it can be useful:) There are also useful advice. It is good to read them,\nevaluate, adjust them you your circumstances, etc. In the end you need to\ndecide for yourself, but they show you the possibilities.\n\n~~~\nbigred100\nI hate this interpretation of everything as status games. It seems like a\ngreat way to drive yourself insane and develop mental illness as you overreact\nto mundane situations or fail to take advice from proper authorities. I\nconsider somebody unqualified throwing out nonsensical advice as simply kind\nof a moron.\n\nTo elaborate: I’m convinced that most people viewing this view status as a\ngood or at worse neutral thing, and although they may not approve of tactics\nthey deem immoral (maybe including this one), basically have some admiration\nfor “winning” the game. I view this as a wrong approach. The guy giving advice\nall the time is blinded by pride and fails to realize even the bounds of his\nown competence. He’s not winning anything. My opinion is that he looks like a\nbuffoon.\n\n------\ntlb\nNot all ex-post theories are BS. For example, I slam my hand in the drawer and\ntheorize, \"Slamming hands in drawers hurts; one should not do it.\" That theory\nis pretty solid. It doesn't cover all the edge cases, but following it is\nbetter than not following it.\n\nThere are lots of startup theories that are equally solid, despite being ex-\npost. I know a startup that didn't pay payroll tax for a couple years, and it\nended badly. The resulting advice is pretty obvious.\n\nThere are theories about how to hire, how to find customers, how to negotiate\ndeals. These theories might not apply in every single case, but you should\ndefinitely start by knowing what worked in the past.\n\nThis post picks a couple of unsupported startup theories, but it's sort of\nlike criticizing physics for the 1% of reality it can't explain and ignoring\nthe 99% it can.\n\n~~~\nchibg10\nThe difference is the prior.\n\nThere's strong prior reason to believe not paying payroll tax is not going to\nend well. The theoretical basis is simple, clear, well-reasoned, and supported\nby strong evidence in adjacent realms (i.e. the IRS takes taxes taxes pretty\nseriously).\n\nWhereas the prior on the validity of something like \"early-stage founders\nshould live with their customers\" is much weaker.\n\nEven though the advice for each presented example is based on sample size n=1,\nthe resulting belief can and should be quite different depending on your\nprior.\n\nThe real meta-advice is to be able to understand and evaluate your prior for\nany given piece of advice you receive. This mostly comes down to thinking\nrationally, being knowledgeable, and critically considering each piece of\nadvice for whether it's worth heeding or not.\n\nWhich is not so far from the author's message I think (\"figure everything out\nyourself\", \"I don't mean to say don't take any advice\").\n\n(Obligatory shout-out to Bayes Theorem)\n\n~~~\nnostrademons\n> Whereas the prior on the validity of something like \"early-stage founders\n> should live with their customers\" is much weaker.\n\nThere's a pretty strong theoretical reason for that as well: startups succeed\nbecause they make something customers want; the more time the person making\nproduct decisions spends with times with customers, the more information they\ncan gather about what the customers want; and the more the customer trusts and\nhas a rapport with the founder, the more willing they'll be to share candid\nfeedback.\n\nThere are some practical problems that make living with your customers a\nlittle problematic if you're not Brian Chesky, namely that they may not want\nanother roommate, you may not want a roommate, they or you may already have a\nfamily, or you might just get on each others' nerves.\n\nBut if you extend the general principle to \"spend a lot of time with your\nusers\" (and being able to extend to a general principle is a big advantage of\nhaving theoretical reasoning), there are a lot of other companies that have\nfound similar success. Facebook was another one where the founder literally\nlived with his first users. Google, for all intents and purposes, lived with\ntheir first users (it's grad school, after all). DropBox, Reddit, and\nInstacart _were_ their first users. Apple, Stripe, Clerky, Twitch, etc. were\nin regular contact with their first users.\n\n~~~\nRetric\nThat’s an overly wide definition of living with your customers to be useful.\nApple for example was selling people kit computers at the start, they did not\nreally have much interaction with or feedback from their customers. Nor could\nthey do much to adapt their product with customer feedback.\n\nI mean if all you mean is have even a tiny amount feedback from a few of your\ncustomers. That’s going to include almost every company.\n\n~~~\nunscaled\nTheir first customers were microcomputer enthusiasts and both Steves were\nmembers of the Homebrew Computer club, and Woz built Apple I with continuous\nfeedback from the club meetings.\n\nI would argue that it's moving to the Apple II (were they suddenly lost this\ndirect feedback because of the vast expansion of their customer base well\nbeyond their reach.\n\n------\nhinkley\nI have had a couple of managers over the years who had dreams of writing a\nbook, and with the exception of one, they were all mostly wrong about the\nsecrets of their success. They didn't have any awareness of how their team and\nespecially their leads supported them. Responses varied from humor to hurt\nfeelings.\n\nAsk the people who work for them why the team was successful. They'll probably\nhave very different opinions.\n\n~~~\nmonocasa\nWould you mind expanding on their respective theses? I can see a lot of value\nin looking at these in a anti-pattern kind of way.\n\n~~~\nhinkley\nYou know, it's funny for all of things I can enumerate on 'how not to do\nsomething', there are some pretty big areas where I either don't keep score or\ntear up the scorecard the moment I don't work there anymore. In this case\nprobably the latter.\n\nThe guy I said did have it figured out? I'd like to retract that. He wanted to\nthink of the process of moving stories from the backlog to done as a physics\nproblem. As managers go he was fairly emotionally sophisticated, but that was\nhis big blindspot.\n\nSome of the others had elements of 'mushroom management' (keep them in the\ndark and feed them bullshit), and a lot of quick fix-feeling techniques. Those\ncan be helpful in small doses, as long as someone else is beating a drum for\ntechnical excellence (not perfectionism, but get stuff done, keep it done, and\nkeep getting stuff done).\n\n------\ndrblast\nIt's fun to read older business books like Built to Last and Good to Great\nthat use the \"let's study successful businesses to see what they do\"\nmethodology. It's fun because many of the companies featured in those books\neither are bankrupt today or facing some sort of existential difficulty.\n\nIt's survivor bias bullshit wrapped up in feel-good propaganda and people eat\nit up every time. Study successful people and emulate them. Of course! How\ncould we go wrong?\n\nNevermind that the successful people are more likely to just be lucky or even\njust plain wrong about the reasons for their success.\n\nI attribute my success to hard work, getting up early, making steady progress\nevery day, picking great people to work with, and staying ahead of the curve.\nSounds great, right? But to really know if any of that matters, we have to\nstudy a large number of people who also profess to do exactly those things and\nsee if they're way more successful than average. If they're not...well then\nI'm just wrong about the reasons for my own success and other factors are more\nimportant.\n\nIt doesn't sell books though when your message is \"in order to be successful\nyou have to be naturally smart, tall, and attractive, work about as hard as\neveryone else, and be well-connected and lucky.\"\n\n~~~\nlifeisstillgood\n\n       in order to be successful you have to be naturally smart, tall, and attractive, work about as hard as everyone else, and be well-connected and lucky.\"\n    \n\nI can write a short pithy book on that one :-)\n\n------\nsolresol\nI'm surprised nobody has mentioned the QUT CAUSEE study. They actually did\nfollow a group of early-stage startups, interviewing them each year and then\nafterwards looked at what factors predicted success or failure.\n\nSome of their results: \\- changing direction as a result of customer feedback\n(very, very good, one of the best predictors of success) \\- having an\naccountant (good) \\- having one parent born overseas (helpful for some reason)\n\\- making use of Australia's research and development tax concession (very\ngood) \\- knowing the name of your lawyer (bad) \\- accessing government\nservices designed to help startups (very bad) \\- writing a business plan and\nsticking to it (bad) \\- founders having experience working in enterprises\n(neither good nor bad, but it slowed the process down a lot)\n\nMy favourite gems that they discovered... in the Australian startup community,\nit appears that investors are no better at picking successes than random\nchance. Externally-funded companies had no difference in outcome compared to\nbootstrapped ones; the only difference is that they got to success or failure\nfaster.\n\n~~~\ni_feel_great\nNever heard of it, although I work just up the road from the Garden's Point\ncampus. Where can I find a summary?\n\n~~~\nsolresol\n[https://staff.qut.edu.au/staff/per.davidsson](https://staff.qut.edu.au/staff/per.davidsson)\n\n------\nbovermyer\nWhen I was in my twenties, I was part of the early \"life coach blogger\"\nculture.\n\nNow that I'm almost in my forties, I realize everything I wrote back then was\nbullshit. Earnest, but bullshit nonetheless.\n\nI'm much more cynical, but I'm also much more likely to just do what seems\nright and figure out the rest as I go. I don't read \"best practices\" or advice\narticles anymore.\n\nThis is not to say that there is nothing to be gained from such sources; just\nthat the likelihood of it being useful or accurate given my particular context\nis small.\n\nIn this, my attitude is much closer to where it was in my teens and childhood,\nwhere I just had to figure everything out on my own.\n\n~~~\nkd5bjo\nI’ve read a lot of time management/productivity books, and there seem to be\nonly two things all of the authors agree on: write stuff down, and\ncontinuously tweak your system.\n\nThe latter is usually mentioned offhand in the preface, as the author wants to\ndeliver a _fait accompli_ instead of just some tips and tricks.\n\n~~~\nionforce\nCan you elaborate on \"write stuff down\"?\n\n~~~\nnovok\nPlan, write a log of work, write down your todos, keep track of what your\ndoing and keep yourself accountable.\n\n------\namoorthy\nI'm surprised this blog post made the first page of HN given its lack of\nsources or analysis.\n\nMaybe a good discussion can come on one example startup advice from YC: do\nthings that don't scale.\n\nI think this is really sound in that they're saying \"get product-market-fit\nwith some segment of users.\" i.e. know that there's demand for your\nproduct/service even if it's pretty manual to deliver early on. Then see how\nto automate. Because most product/services aren't materially better than\nexisting options and so you never get product-market-fit even when it's\nentirely manual and customized to the user.\n\nAs a founder I've been guilty of building first because it's fun. I saw what I\nwanted in user research and built a whole app accordingly. It failed. Would've\nbeen better to start with a smaller attack surface (email newsletter) and once\nwe found success to then scale. The interesting thing is I knew of the advice\n\"do things that don't scale\" beforehand. But until I failed I didn't know why\nit mattered and how to apply it.\n\nNet: applying advice is harder than evaluating if the advice is good or bad.\nYou want to have enough time to fail a lot and then appreciate the wisdom of\nstartup advice :-)\n\n~~~\ngtirloni\n_> I'm surprised this blog post made the first page of HN given its lack of\nsources or analysis._\n\nSometimes people will upvote articles not for the quality but for the\ndiscussion they will trigger.\n\n~~~\nthisisbrians\nThis 100%. I sometimes upvote posts without even reading them because the\ncomments are very interesting.\n\n~~~\nthisisbrians\nI guess the parent comment isn't very interesting...\n\n------\ndang\nI think Paul Buchheit said it best in 2007:\n[https://blog.daryn.net/post/32264049/paul-buchheit-\nlimited-l...](https://blog.daryn.net/post/32264049/paul-buchheit-limited-life-\nexperience) and\n[http://redefine.dyndns.org/~andyr/blog/archives/2007/03/note...](http://redefine.dyndns.org/~andyr/blog/archives/2007/03/notes-\nfrom-star-1.html)\n\nBut see\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70808](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70808)\nand\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70795).\n\n~~~\nshafyy\nDamn right.\n\n------\nblrgeek\nCarnap vs Popper\n\nPopper = create hypothesis and falsify\n\nCarnap = see instances and use induction to create hypothesis\n\nEverything else they say about the scientific method is the same.\n\nHerbert Simon, in thinking of sciences of the artificial, used the Carnap\nmethod to create a ton of valuable science.\n\nIt's not that post-facto is bad - carnap showed otherwise.\n\nIt's about the quality of the science and the specificity of the\nrecommendations, that lead to bs.\n\nFor instance you can mitigate for survivorship bias by studying the dead as\nwell as the living, and driving deep into the differences. But that's a lot of\nwork!\n\nAs a theory, effectuation studies the difference in decision making processes\nbetween expert entrepreneurs and corporate CEOs. The result, while similarly\npost-facto, is delightful. See effectuation.org - Vinod Khosla remarked it was\nthe first useful study on entrepreneurship he had ever read.\n\n------\nkrm01\nI think having lots of data points is the only way to give proper advice about\nStartups. YC has given outstanding startup advice from a specific SV\nperspective.\n\nI've been running a UI/UX design firm for the last 10 years, working with\nsmall unknown bootstrapping founders, up to well funded and awesome companies\nfounded by super stars like Elon Musk and others. Though this was never my\nintent, over the years we've collected so many datapoints that alongside our\ndesign work we tend to advice and steer the companies we work with into\ndirections we think the company should go. All backed by real examples from\nprevious experiences. Being in positions where you work with a lot of\ncompanies over a longer period of time, I think, is the best way form\nthoughtful startup advice.\n\n~~~\nshafyy\nWhile data points do help, impactful startups often change the paradigm and\nhow things are done. So, again, I don't think relying too much on emperical\ndata points is good for founders. If you do, you'll rarely do something\ninteresting and new.\n\n~~~\nkrm01\nAs I mentioned, data-points can help steer in the right direction. I'm\ndefinitely not talking about disruption or changing paradigms. The same way a\nYC can't guarantee each startup will disrupt an industry. All they can do is\nhelp make something good, go to great faster.\n\n~~~\nshafyy\nAgreed.\n\n------\ndcolkitt\n> Do you think Musk copied that strategy from the business school he never\n> went to.\n\nElon Musk did his undergrad at Wharton.\n\nI guess the statement might be true if you mean \"business school\" to strictly\nmean a graduate MBA program. But Musk definitely took business classes that\nwould have been nearly identical to those taken by MBAs.\n\n~~~\nshafyy\nHe has an economics and physics degree, not business. Did he take business\nclasses and read business books? Probably.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk)\n\n~~~\nvikramkr\nIt's a business degree. The undergrad wharton degree just happens to be called\na B.S. in economics, but there's only a few economists classes in it, it's\nentirely a business degree with business concentrations and so on. I think he\nconcentrated (like a major) in entrepreneurship but I might be wrong on that.\n\n------\nJackFr\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history)\n\n\"The term is also used extensively in the history of science to mean\nhistoriography that focuses on the successful chain of theories and\nexperiments that led to present-day science, while ignoring failed theories\nand dead ends.\"\n\n------\nsquirrelicus\nEmulating successful startups is folly. It's the myriad failures that you will\nnever learn about that you should be concerned with.\n\nI'll just leave this here.\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)\n\n~~~\nmarcus_holmes\nthis. So much. Copying the success stories makes no sense unless you also\nunderstand how other people following the same strategies failed. You have to\nstudy the failures in order to understand the successes.\n\n------\nstd_throwaway\nIt's hard to test theories when the underlying system constantly changes like\nit does in economics. Something that works today might not work tomorrow. A\ntheory that looks sound when applied to yesteryears data might stop working\nbefore the sun rises. When many others try to apply the same tricks that made\nyou successful the cake on that table might suddenly be divided into so many\npieces that everybody will go home hungry. You must find a new table with a\nnew cake but old data and old theory doesn't help much with that because\nsomeone else is already there. You need to think fresh and unconventional or\nyou need to squeeze blood out of stones harder than anybody else.\n\nPhysicists have it easy in comparison. One of the basic truths of natural\nscience is that the laws of nature are independent of the observer and time\nand experiments can be repeated as many times as you like with the same\nresults.\n\n~~~\nwhatshisface\n> _experiments can be repeated as many times as you like with the same\n> results_\n\nThat is not actually true, there is a lot of randomness, and in quantum\nmechanics the randomness is fundamental. The real secret of the natural\nsciences is that good physicists never publish if they know they don't know\nthe answer. It took hundreds of years of that policy before the narrowly\napplicable theories blossomed into the general laws of the universe. If the\nfocus was determining the general laws of the universe from the start no\nprogress could have been made: Newton could have guessed at the laws of\nmotion, but without the specific and painstaking celestial observations\npreceding him nobody would have known he was right. Economists could enjoy a\nsimilar success, but it would be at the expense of 400 years of saying only\nthings that policymakers thought were obvious, while refusing to answer useful\nquestions.\n\nThere are plenty of \"very true\" theories in economics, but they often aren't\nbroad enough to answer the questions about economics that the fate of nations\nride on. However 400 years from now those narrow but well-tested theories will\nbe the foundation of the _true_ general economics and all the rest will be\nforgotten.\n\n~~~\nstd_throwaway\nSure, there is randomness but in normal cases you can apply statistics to\ndescribe it reasonably well. The results are not 100% sure but 99% or\n99.99999% or whatever you need. It's not that the laws of gravity stop working\nentirely over night. Newtons theory wasn't perfect and Einsteins theory isn't\nperfect but it describes what happens in nature very very well for billions of\nyears.\n\n~~~\nwhatshisface\nYou could find physical places where things seemed to change drastically one\nhour to the next, for example my dog. You can also find things in economics\nthat don't change, like the laws of supply and demand in a true commodity\nmarket. Supply and demand in a true commodity market is a pretty narrow\nsituation, but the early history of physics is full of narrow theories like\nKepler's laws and the precursors to PV=nRT.\n\nIf you went back 400 years and demanded that physicists explain my dog's\nbehaviors, you would probably get some answers that sounded OK (kind of like\nAristotle's attempts at physics) and maybe even were convincing to people of\nthe time, but they wouldn't have much truth value. Present day economics has a\nfew equivalents to Boyle's gas law, many equivalents to ancient Greek physics,\nand no equivalents to atomic theory.\n\n~~~\nstd_throwaway\nThe emotions of your dog are not laws of nature.\n\nThe \"true market\" is like \"no true Scotsman\" or \"a closed system\" or \"a\nspherical cow on a frictionless plane\". It assumes something that doesn't\nexist. In economics the influence of the things it assumes wrongly can be very\nsignificant. In physics wrong assumptions can also make the results wrong and\na lot of work (or rather most work) is done on checking if all the assumptions\nare sound and ensuring that the influence of the remaining gaps are\nnegligible. That is something that is hard to do in economics when it involves\ninteractions with the global market.\n\nYes, special theories can be precursors for more general theories.\n\n~~~\nwhatshisface\n> _The \"true market\" is like \"no true Scotsman\" or \"a closed system\" or \"a\n> spherical cow on a frictionless plane\"._\n\nCome on, what is physics about then? ;)\n\nEven today, systems like my dog are computationally infeasible to predict from\nthe fundamentals, even though everything my dog does is a logical consequence\nof QED. That's why it is impossible to make progress without assuming a\nspherical cow and then traveling to every dairy farm in the world in search of\nthe roundest heifer available.\n\nIn 400 years economists might still be unable to predict recessions, but I\nthink by then the specific and very true theories of today will have had\nenough time to evolve into general laws that could predict recessions in\nprinciple.\n\n~~~\nstd_throwaway\nWith regards to your dog, you should look into chaotic systems and the\nbutterfly effect. Chaos here doesn't mean that anything is possible or that\neach outcome is equally likely. It refers to that the outcome changes greatly\nfor even minimal changes of the inputs. Since we don't know everything at one\npoint in time, we can only make limited predictions about a future state. No\nmatter how precise we measure the system it will still behave chaotically.\n\nTo some extent this is also true for the economy which contains many feedback\nloops and meta-stable states. Even if we have the perfect theory it might\nstill behave chaotically and might be as unpredictable as the weather.\n\n------\ntmemth\n> Or “Airbnb growth hacked Craigslist to link to their own website. And did\n> you know that the founders lived with their users. You should do that,\n> too!””\n\nI was told by a founder that I was a first time founder (I am not) because I\ndidn’t believe this strategy works anymore. He was basically mocking me for\nbeing so stupid to not know now growth hacking like this works.\n\nAnd all the time I was thinking at the back of my head about how dogmatic his\nthinking was. What works 10 years ago doesn’t mean it still works today.\n\nCopying other people’s strategy is the worst way to run a startup. By the time\nyou have heard it, another 100 people probably heard it too and doing the same\nthing.\n\nI agree with the post. Think for yourself. And definitely don’t talk down to\nother founders thinking you know better. Especially if you haven’t succeeded.\n\n~~~\nshafyy\nAgree. Recently listened to a podcast with Jason Fried where he made this\npoint exactly. It's this IndieHacker episode here:\n[https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/105-jason-fried-of-\nbase...](https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/105-jason-fried-of-basecamp)\n\nEdit: Corrected link\n\n~~~\ngringoDan\nCan you update this link? Looks like you just linked back to this thread's\nURL.\n\n~~~\nshafyy\nJust did, thanks\n\n------\nTrackerFF\nStartup (and business) theory is really pretty simple:\n\n1) Identify problem\n\n2) Come up with, or look up for existing solutions\n\n3) Develop, iterate\n\n4) Identify and get some competitive edge\n\n5) Keep pleasing clients\n\nOf course, there's a ton of things underneath all this, like marketing,\nfunding, or simply being lucky with timing.\n\nThe copy-cat method is probably the most legit, and battle-tested method. I.e,\nsimply just copy some existing product or solution, with a known market.\n\nThe entrepreneurship scene preaches originality and novel idea to hopeful\nfounders, but to me, it always ends up with a race for who can do something\nbetter than their competitor.\n\nI've noticed that in many countries outside US, especially western Europe,\nsome of the largest startups are those that play-by-play copy successful US\nstartups, probably hoping to get acquired once the US startups start expanding\nto said countries.\n\n------\nquartz\nI feel like this post mistakes advice for directive.\n\nMost of the great founders I've encountered are excellent pattern-matching\nengines who can absorb large quantities of advice and then re-apply it within\ntheir personal contexts rather than rejecting it outright, ex post facto or\nnot.\n\nNo you probably don't need to live with your users, but yes you should\nprobably spend significant time with them doing the thing your company is\ntrying to help them do better.\n\nPutting advice to work is more than regurgitation... then again, if your\ncompany's goal is to normalize short-term living with strangers well then\nyeah, you probably should live with a few.\n\n------\ndownandout\nFrom the article:\n\n _”Do you think Brian Chesky of Airbnb heard that strategy from a friend?\nHell, do you even think that freeriding off of Craigslist was their reason for\nsuccess?”_\n\nYes, freeriding off of Craigslist was the reason for their _early_ success,\nwithout which their later success was not possible. Having a good model means\nabsolutely nothing without some ability to market it, especially in the\nmarketplace space. Initial momentum is what causes these businesses to either\nsucceed or fail.\n\nThe idea of using free ways to get your startup initial momentum is absolutely\nnot BS.\n\n~~~\nshafyy\n> The idea of using free ways to get your startup initial momentum is\n> absolutely not BS.\n\nAgree, and that's also not what I said :-)\n\n~~~\ndownandout\nThat’s how I read it in the context of your premise. You seemed to be mocking\nthe notion that Craigslist was a vital part of their success. I am not sure\nhow else to interpret _“....Hell, do you even think that freeriding off of\nCraigslist was their reason for success?”_\n\n~~~\nshafyy\nI'm saying that they would have been successful with or without this marketing\ntactics. I am not saying that startups shoulnd't use free marketing\nopportunities.\n\n~~~\nvikramkr\nExactly, which means you're saying that this wasn't a vital part of their\nsuccess, while the other commenter is saying the opposite, so I don't think\nyou agree with the argument that doing things that don't scale is a critical\npart of their success right? Unless I'm misreading something.\n\n~~~\ndownandout\nYeah this was my point. IMO they would have never made it to the point of\nbecoming a viral success without their prolific Craigslist spamming operation.\nEvery virus needs a patient 0.\n\n------\navs733\nThe issue isn't that its ex-post, it's how theory is built. There are better\nand more credible resources/work on this topic than a blog post.\n\nThe most common terms I've seen that gets used in academic research that is\ncritical of how theories about entrepreneurship are built are 'mythifciation'\nand 'reification'...\n\ne.g.,\n[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-6486.00...](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-6486.00196)\n\n------\nsmallgovt\n>> Do you think Musk copied that strategy from the business school he never\nwent to? Do you think Brian Chesky of Airbnb heard that strategy from a\nfriend?\n\nMaybe not, but that doesn't mean talking to other successful founders isn't\nextremely helpful. The best founders have multiple great ideas and not enough\ntime to execute on them. If you want to increase your success rate, you should\nuse feedback from other successful founders to decide which great idea to\ninvest your time in.\n\n~~~\nvikramkr\nAlso, musk could totally have learned that strategy when he was in bschool,\nand chesky could totally have gotten the idea from a friend. Those are hardly\nimplausible situations.\n\n~~~\nshafyy\nI agree, I don't now that for a fact. It's more a form of rhetoric to trigger\ninteresting discussions. Seems to work ;-)\n\n~~~\nvikramkr\nSure, but it wasn't phrased as an open ended question, it was framed as\nrhetorical questions with a given answer that are evidence for your\nconclusion. I'm confused by the \"bschool he never went to\" bit as well. I'll\ngrant that it sparks an interesting discussion, but I don't think that it does\nmuch to support your thesis as evidence.\n\n~~~\nshafyy\nI'm not writing an academic thesis. It's just my opinion in a short blog post.\nDeal with it :-)\n\n~~~\nvikramkr\nNot exactly sure what there is to deal with here, and it's certainly not easy\nto have an interesting discussion about a topic if you decide that it's not\nworth trying to argue your point instead of telling the other person to \"deal\nwith it\" when they ask for clarification about what some of your points mean\nor point out things that would make your argument stronger if addressed\n\n------\nThomPete\nThe problem with startup theory is, that the theory that actually works is\nmostly the \"don't do this\". Only once in a blue moon does they prove to be\nwrong, but they are also the least valuable as many of the are quite obvious.\n\nThe part of startup theory most people are interested in \"the do's\", most of\nthe time doesn't work as they are highly contextual.\n\n------\nrvn1045\nThe thing is though that you've probably read so much startup advice that your\nsick of it and know a lot of it and dont find any value in it anymore. you've\nreached a tipping point where you done reading about this shit and just want\nto build stuff. but if you dont know anything about startups or business or\nwhatever its still probably useful to read about it.\n\n------\nvonnik\n\"Ignore advice\" is not good advice. Even for startups. There are so many\npredictable ways that founders screw up. I, personally, have committed most of\nthem. A few of them I avoided, or stopped doing soon enough to survive, and\noften it was with the help of good advice. YC gives good advice: Talk to your\nusers. Build something people want. Run lean. Those are all great for people\nstarting out. There is a lot of knowledge much more specialized that,\ncontained in the collective wisdom of startup operators and investors. The\nchallenge is to vet your sources, know which advice applies to your situation,\nand how to implement it. Nobody can teach you how to be a good judge of\ncharacter. And nobody knows your startup well enough to decide for you which\nadvice and how. But we can all learn from others who have gone through the\nringer, whether it's PG, Michael Seibel, Naval, Lemkin or others.\n\n------\nrdlecler1\nAirbnb and Tesla surely looked at other business models for success and\nmodified or adapted it to their own. These theories can provide a framework to\nhelp people think through the problems without reinventing the wheel. On to\nthe irony of the post: this post is giving advice “ignore advice think for\nyourself”. Bs.\n\n------\nsamtheprogram\n> Do you think Brian Chesky of Airbnb heard that strategy from a friend?\n\nI'm pretty sure he heard it from Paul Graham.\n\n~~~\nhiccuphippo\nI'd be more interested in learning of what other startups used the same\nstrategy and failed anyway.\n\nUltimately luck is a large portion of success.\n\n------\nstephc_int13\nI think the same about most management theory, most of the corporate bs can be\ncategorized as a form of Cargo-Cult.\n\nLook how well they did doing that, let's copy them without understanding the\ncontext or anything below the surface of the things.\n\n------\nnabdab\nDon’t study success. The people who double their money by betting it all on\nblack didn’t have some divine insight that you can copy, they just got lucky.\nBut do study failure. The people who lose everything by betting it all on red\ndid have a fatal flaw in their approach to risk that will be valuable for you\nto avoid or at least be well aware of.\n\nOne of the obvious faliures to study is that many great teams with great ideas\nfailed to get any funding because they didn’t walk the startup walk or talk\nthe startup talk with potential investors, which is exactly why you should\ntalk about copying Tesla and about growth hacking.\n\n------\nvortico\nI agree that most anecdotal startup advice is BS, which is why I barely pay\nattention to it. What I'd like more of is textbook-like material offering\nterminology and detailed case studies. Simply knowing the common name for\nsomething (e.g. marketing terms like\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good))\nor the usual process of how things work (like a typical schedule of the\nprocess for accepting angel funding) is far more useful than advice that seems\nlike darts thrown at a dartboard.\n\n------\nfloki999\nSo true. Everyone and her grandmother is an armchair startup expert these\ndays. WTF is a startup anyway. I’m building a new for-profit business\nenterprise, not a social i-have-one-too startup. Call it what it is.\n\n------\nrl3\nMany years ago I read a ton of books on trading psychology. The best\nbooks—widely considered to be bibles of their field—came to the following\nconclusion:\n\nThere's many valid approaches, and often these approaches are radically\ndifferent. Regardless of whatever approach you choose, if it is to be\nsuccessful, it must be both reasoned out by—and compatible with—you.\n\nI can't name a single great entrepreneur that didn't have very strong\nopinions, or that largely relied on outside advice. These things must come\nfrom within, and critical thinking is no exception.\n\n------\nryandrake\nSo much crappy business advice suffers from Survivorship Bias [1]. “Companies\nA, B, and C did X and succeeded. Companies D, E, and F did not do X and\nfailed. Therefore, X leads to success.” Ignoring how many companies also did X\nbut failed too. The book “Good to Great” contains nothing but Survivorship\nBias and is adored by Business Schools.\n\n1:\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)\n(excuse the mobile link)\n\n------\nrmason\nI did two startups in the nineties. There was little or no information out\nthere and the Internet quite frankly was a brand new world. Or so we thought\nat the time ;<).\n\nNow there's too much information out there. Lots of it is total malarkey to be\npolite. If I had the choice I'd much rather have too much information than no\ninformation. I honestly believe that I would have made fewer mistakes.\n\n------\nWheelsAtLarge\nIt's not all b.s. but it's hard to sort the good from the bad. It's impossible\nto test out theories so you have to try lots of possibilities and hope for the\nbest. There are 2 basics that are part of every successful projects: hard work\nand luck. Anything else you have to evaluate and decide whether it's worth the\nrisk in time and resources.\n\n------\nAznHisoka\nReminds me of the book \"Good To Great\". The author took a bunch of successful\ncompanies, and found patterns that they all had in common. But just because\nall these companies did X, didn't mean that made them successful. It could've\nbeen because of survivorship bias. So yes, most business/startup advice is\ncurve overfitting, imo.\n\n~~~\nci5er\nI don't recall \"Good to Great\" coming to this conclusion - it was the later\ncritical pieces. (Poor guy - it was a lot of analysis!)\n\nIIRC, the book \"First, Break all the Rules\" actually challenged the \"Good to\nGreat\" methodology a bit on this point.\n\n(The other point, IIRC, was that first you have to find the right questions,\nbefore the right answers can be considered).\n\n------\njoneckhardt\nMuch of the empirical academic literature on entrepreneurship and startups\ndoes not suffer from ex post rationalization.\n\n------\nbikamonki\nYes, all future success stories will play out differently.\n\nAnd no, we have identified patterns accross many past successful cases so we\nthink we can risk theorizing some formulae and advice.\n\nTop of my mind: \\- Build something really wanted/needed \\- The A Team \\-\nTiming \\- Early/easy access to funding\n\nAnd whether you like it or not: luck!\n\n------\ngrumpy8\nThe other side of the coin is after you've built a few startups, you see the\nsame pattern coming up again and again. Part of being creative is to know\nwhere to focus your attention (I.e. figuring out PMF) rather than wasting\ncycles on problems with clear solutions.\n\n------\nufmace\nI'd agree that it's rarely a good idea to directly copy any other startup.\nIt's probably good to hear many of their stories of success - maybe a few\npieces of one or two will give you a great idea, or at least tend to make you\nthink in the best ways.\n\n~~~\nstd_throwaway\nTake a working idea, find out why it's working, find out how to make it\nbetter, try it out.\n\nIt doesn't make sense to only copy a working idea without understanding why\nit's working because your copy will be slightly worse. While you might have\nsome success you won't take the big share. You must find a weakness in the\noriginal idea or the execution or the location or anything else. If you have a\nsolid point where you can improve you have a chance. Don't be afraid of\nstealing ideas and making them better.\n\n------\nMa8ee\nI can't help thinking of this wonderful talk about how to win the lottery:\n[https://youtu.be/l_F9jxsfGCw](https://youtu.be/l_F9jxsfGCw)\n\n~~~\ndownandout\nThat's actually a pretty great video. The tldw version: advice on how to buy\nmore lottery tickets is useful; advice on how to win the lottery is not.\n\n------\nmonikgandhi\nI really like this thinking, its more independent and logical. Just because\nthe idea worked for one, doesn't mean its gonna work for all. We need to\ncreate our own paths to freedom.\n\n------\nchiefalchemist\nBS feels heavy handed, but I sense her/his point. Paraphrasing:\n\nStop following and look for your own magic.\n\nYeah. Pleny of cookie-cutter knock off wannabe brands and products would\nbenefit from such thoughts.\n\n------\ntwothamendment\nMy marriage advice is always this: \"Don't listen to any marriage advice except\nmine\". I suppose if I wrote a longer version it would sound like this article.\n\n~~~\ntlb\nBut can you imagine starting a marriage never having heard any advice or even\nseen a marriage in person? You were raised by wolves, but one day you came to\nthe village, met a girl, and now a guy in a robe says you're married. How much\ntrial and error will it take to become a good husband? You should go acquire\nsome wisdom by asking people.\n\nMany startup founders are basically in that situation for a dozen kinds of\nrelationships. They've never hired, never closed a sale, never rented an\noffice, never tried to collect a late payment, never fired someone, never\nraised VC money, never hired a marketing firm... Those things aren't rocket\nscience and you can certainly learn to do any of them, but noob mistakes are\nexpensive and you don't have a big cushion of time and money. So it's good to\nhave someone to talk your plans over with first.\n\nA lot of advice does come down to \"That's a standard problem, and here's a\nstandard way to solve it that works fine.\" That's fundamentally conservative\nadvice, but startups seem to do best if they innovate only on the few things\nthat make them unique and just do the standard thing for everything else.\n\n------\ncompiler-guy\n\"To what do you attribute your success?\"\n\n\"We listened to the people who gave us advice.\"\n\n\"We didn't listen to the naysayers.\"\n\nOne hears stories of both types.\n\n------\njoneckhardt\nMuch of the empirical work published in academic journals on startups is not\nex post.\n\n------\nAlexDragusin\nMake something people want + Do something you love = All you need to know.\nEnjoy.\n\n------\ntravbrack\nKind of ironic that this is advice for startups.\n\n------\nbillman\nHistory is written by the victors.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: How do you help your team “level up”? - Tharkun\nI&#x27;m the lead software engineer at a company with about 10 other software engineers. Part of my job is coaching them on technical matters.<p>We organize biweekly talks about various technical subjects. And while these are fun to do, I&#x27;m not entirely sure that this approach will scale as the company grows.<p>How do other lead engineers help their team grow their skills?<p>Thanks!\n======\nsethammons\nI help them by bringing forth best practices. What is the state the project\nshould be in? How do you get it there? How is logging, metrics, alerting,\nci/cd (roll out and role back), tracing, performance monitoring, system level\ntesting, unit testing, etc. Is there application state that can be removed?\nCan code reviews be improved? Auto remediation on alerting? Techniques for\nbetter project management. Maybe there are new packages or libraries that the\nteam should investigate. Give projects to team members that require them to\ngrow a bit, including presenting knowledge gains to others. There are few\nteams and projects where that is all perfect.\n\n------\natmosx\nSecure a member budget for online classes (e.g. Coursera), conferences and\nbooks. Have them do presentations on various subjects related to their craft\n(new things they've learned, new frameworks), add standards (coding, testing,\nlinters, etc.) to the team's workflow, send them to conferences and have them\ndo presentations on what they learned and how could help the team grow, etc.\nVoice your concerns, ask them to participate. Remember that ppl have\ndifference backgrounds and learn in many different ways.\n\nNOTE: None of the above should be done if the employers free time, except from\nthe Coursera classes ofc which the company will have to pay if the team member\nagrees. A team needs to have at least some time per month spent in personal\ndevelopment, where you need to combine what everyone in the team likes with\nwhat is useful to the company/team. All the above needs to be decided on a\nteam level, but as a leader you can drive the discussion.\n\n------\njanoka\nPersonal growth is something you really have to do personally. In my team the\ndevelopers are supposed to volunteer to work on stuff they have not worked\nwith before.\n\nWe need to update our deployment pipeline and you have never worked with AWS\nbefore? Go for it!\n\nOnce they do, you can always do a bit of pair programming, but nothing really\nhelps you grow more than the hands-on experience.\n\n------\nlaurentl\nA few thoughts, as a CTO with a small team:\n\n\\- not everyone needs the same leveling up, and it’s not always technical. I\ncoach one of my junior dev on improving his code, another one in being more\nconfident of her skills. My lead dev is solid on code but doesn’t always take\ninto account the business perspective (i.e. in which context the code will be\nused, how often, etc)\n\n\\- my main method of coaching is to ask a lot of questions. How do you plan to\nimplement this feature? Why this way? What’ll happen when <edge case>? Why did\nyou choose this architecture? Have you thought of <situation that’ll result in\na bug with the current implementation>? Whenever possible, I don’t say how it\nshould be done but try to bring them around to figuring it themselves. It’s\nnot (always) leading questions, either. I’m not cross-interrogating them, just\ntrying to understand what they did and why\n\n\\- closely related to above, I let them make their own mistakes. Rather than\ntry to convince someone that their approach won’t work (if the round of\nquestions isn’t enough to clarify this), I let them go ahead. They either\nfigure out on their own that they made a mistake (and then they’re open to\ndiscussing alternative solutions), or when the code has become complex enough\nI ask them to demonstrate a few corner cases. When those fail, sometimes\nhilariously, we can go back to the design phase. I try to balance how long to\nlet them flounder between “long enough that they learn something” and “not so\nlong that they bear a grudge for being played”\n\n\\- refactoring their own code (for junior devs). I ask them to come back to a\npiece of code they wrote mostly on their own, a few months after they’ve\nworked on it (e.g. something they did as an intern, or one of their first\nprojects). Can you figure out what your code is doing? Hmm, guess some\ncomments and clear method names would come in handy now! How would you do\nthings differently in hindsight? How would you reorganize your code? Once the\ncode is refactored, a before/after comparison to highlight how much better the\nnew code is.\n\n\\- I’ll sometimes point someone to books or articles and ask them to read it,\nwhen I want to make a specific point. E.g. I asked a dev who wrote some very\nstateful js (lots of methods without a return value would would manipulate\nglobal variables in weird ways) to read _Learn You a Haskell for Great Good_\nto get him to think about side-effects and how to avoid them when possible.\n\n\\- I haven’t done this yet, but I thought about a team code advent where\neveryone would solve the same problem in the same language, and we would\ncompare solutions. This implies setting out some time each day for everyone in\nthe team to work on the problem, so needs a little bit of planning and finding\nthe right time.\n\nI realize that most of these ideas are time consuming, both for me and for the\ndeveloper. It would be much faster to just tell them how things should be done\n(at least how I want them to be done), or to point out the mistakes as I see\nthem unfold. But I believe that teaching a man to fish is a much better long-\nterm solution than giving him a fish every day.\n\n------\nezekg\nI think one of the most valuable things a team can do to grow each other’s\nskill is to practice good code review.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLosing my mindfulness - whysonot\nhttp://www.tonysheng.com/blog/losing-my-mindfulness.html\n\n======\npedalpete\nThe correct link for this is [http://www.tonysheng.com/blog/losing-my-\nmindfulness/](http://www.tonysheng.com/blog/losing-my-mindfulness/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAutomated iOS app localization tool - Olshansky\nhttp://olshansk.github.com/ios_localizer/\n\n======\nasd\nCool!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGet rewarded with tokens for recommending friends - vartikam\nhttps://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bff-best-friends-forever/id1317793365?mt=8\n======\nvartikam\nBFF is a community to ask and recommend contacts anonymously and earn a trust\nscore which will be converted to a reward as BFF tokens.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIntel announces Cascade Lake Xeons: 48 cores and 12-channel memory per socket - rbanffy\nhttps://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/intel-announces-cascade-lake-xeons-48-cores-and-12-channel-memory-per-socket/\n======\nSantiagoElf\nDesperate move by Intel. They are stuck with Cascade Lake until 2021, when\ntheir 'new' architecture will be available. In order this Xeon to be under\n300W TDP, they disabled the Hyper Threading and when they benchmark vs AMD\nEpyc they disabled AMD's SMT. Just wow.\n\n~~~\neinr\nNot only that, but they also apparently recompiled Linpack with the Intel\ncompiler -- which is notorious for favoring Intel chips -- before running the\nbenchmarks. Some really shady stuff going on here.\n\n~~~\ngeezerjay\nOn the other hand, these shady practices are a testament to AMD's technical\nsuperiority, as the incumbent is showing himself to be very desperate to react\nalthough it has absolutely no answer to AMD's new line of products.\n\n~~~\nKoshkin\nAMD does not have techinal superiority, as Intel cores have better single-\nthread performance. Look at the recent low-end i3-8100 - it is an amazing\nchip.\n\n~~~\napi\nSingle-threaded performance is a toss up and depends on work load. Overall AMD\nbeats them on price/performance and multithreaded performance, which matter\nmore for everything but some games and a few not easily parallelize-able\ntasks.\n\n~~~\nceleritascelery\n> Single-threaded performance is a toss up and depends on work load.\n\nI would actually say the exact opposite is true. Single threaded performance\nis much more reliable and every single application can use it. Multithreaded\nperformance is much more workload dependent, and there are many applications\nthat can’t fully utilize it.\n\n------\nxoa\nAnandtech's article has more technical details and discussion:\n\n[https://www.anandtech.com/show/13535/intel-goes-\nfor-48cores-...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13535/intel-goes-for-48cores-\ncascade-ap)\n\nThe most pertinent technical questions and concern seems to be around the\ninterconnects, since inter-die bandwidth and latency are big factors in\nperformance. I think the major surprise/disappointment there is that within\nthe MCM they apparently are _not_ using their Embedded Multi-die Interconnect\nBridge (EMIB) which was supposed to be their next-gen interposer replacement.\nThey have been pretty flowery about it, right up to on the official page [1]\nhaving fun with a Star Wars riff and calling EMIB \"an Elegant Interconnect for\na More Civilized Age\". Looks like it's all UPI here though. According to\nCutress it also isn't clear exactly how many UPI link are used between the two\nsockets.\n\nIt's not like MCM usage is some necessarily exotic thing, IBM has been doing\nit in various forms including for POWER forever. Even beyond TDP however\nIntel's approach here definitely seems kind of \"odd\" to put it neutrally. I\nthink if this is going to be a major part of their strategy going forward\nthey'll need a different approach, but for that very reason I wonder if this\nis more of a one-off placeholder?\n\n\\----\n\n1:\n[https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/foundry/emib.html](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/foundry/emib.html)\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\nWell... Pentium Pro was an MCM and that was a looong time ago.\n\nI also remember Unisys Micro-A boards (the Unisys equivalent to IBM's PC/370).\nIIRC, they had 6 or 7 chips within a single package.\n\n------\nbigiain\n\" … currently believed to be a 5903 pin connector.\"\n\nThis thing has way more connector pins than the 6502 (the processor that ran\ninside the AppleII) had _transistors!_\n\n~~~\nxxs\nmost of the pins are vcc and gnd, but still impressive indeed. 6502 had\n3500transistors, 40pins... and multiple address modes (with zero page+y being\nmy fav)\n\n------\ndrewg123\nI find the timing of this announcement a bit amusing. Given AMD's planned 'new\nhorizon' announcements today, I'm assuming Intel rushed out this press release\nover the weekend in order to preempt AMD.\n\n~~~\nksec\nIt allows all those going to be EPYC2 buyers know or at least have an upcoming\nIntel chip in their mind, hopefully delaying the purchase decision until later\nand gives Intel sales team time to do their job. Which so far their sales team\nhas been doing spectacularly well and literally every one who has been\ncomplaining about Intel continues to buy Intel. Sad but true.\n\nWe should know more about Zen 2 in a few hours time.\n\n~~~\njaxtellerSoA\n>and literally every one who has been complaining about Intel continues to buy\nIntel\n\nWhile I am sure this isn't LITERALLY true, there is some truth to it. I work\nat a smallish company, who bought 3 new Intel servers about 5 months before\nEpyc servers started to be available from OEM's. We plan on adding another\nserver to our stack next year, I would LOVE to go with Epyc, but I am locked\ninto Intel at this point (until we decided to replace the entire stack).\nVMWare doesn't allow you to mix CPU architecture and maintain HA. So, we stuck\nbuying a crappy Intel Xeon instead.\n\n~~~\nksec\nJudging from the Server shipment and market share this is exactly what is\nhappening. But to be fair, many fought for EPYC, but those who made the\ndecisions, CEO / CFO / CIO / Purchasing Director etc are all well connected\nwith Intel.\n\n------\nGiorgioG\nJust wait until Apple drops Intel. It's going to be a bloodbath.\n\n~~~\nchrisseaton\nIs Apple really a major customer of Intel? I’m not so sure.\n\n~~~\nGiorgioG\nI wouldn't say it's a particularly small number:\n[https://www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-\nma...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-mac-\ncomputers-since-first-quarter-2006/)\n\nAdd that to AMD's recent surge, Intel's in a world of hurt.\n\n~~~\nTuna-Fish\n> Add that to AMD's recent surge, Intel's in a world of hurt.\n\nMeh. Looking at the sales numbers of past quarters, AMD still hasn't\nsignificantly hurt Intel. They have made a lot of inroads among hobbyists and\nin small-store prebuilts, but the major brands still appear to be dominated by\nIntel.\n\nIt's a real shame that nobody seems to have made an actually good Raven Ridge\nlaptop. The CPU is imho objectively better for laptop use than any Intel\ncompetitor, but all laptops built with it appear to have a major deficit of\nsome kind or another.\n\nAnother mystery is lack of Epyc uptake. There are a lot of workloads where\nEpycs should be dominating Intel server chips when compared at the same price\nor power level, especially after all the recent chip vulnerabilities which are\nmuch less serious for AMD than they are for Intel, but Epyc sales are\ndefinitely lagging. Is AMD unable to make them, or are companies just wary of\nbuying AMD?\n\n~~~\nTazeTSchnitzel\nThere's a lot of interest in Epyc for certain use cases. It's just the server\nworld moves slowly because when you're spending millions on massive amounts of\nhardware, and it needs to run 24/7 for years without defects, you want to make\nsure it works.\n\n~~~\njaxtellerSoA\n> It's just the server world moves slowly\n\nTHIS! I am not sure why people are expecting Epyc to take off like a rocket,\nit won't. Companies maintaining 24/7 hardware don't jump on new tech. I think\nEpyc will eventually take a good chunk of the market, but it will take a few\nyears.\n\nAlso, if you are expanding an existing VMWare stack you can't mix CPU\narchitecture and have HA. So unless you are building a new stack, then Epyc\nmight not even be an option, even if the Admin might prefer Epyc.\n\n------\nHNNewer\nI hope they have solved the problems with latest security flaws before\nreleasing these CPUs\n\n~~~\nHeag3aec\nIt takes a long time to design and fab new layouts. So at best you would get\nfirmware mitigations baked in. Or, as mentioned in other comments, the HT\nsidechannels might be fixed simply because HT is turned off.\n\n------\nTazeTSchnitzel\nIntel finally goes MCM! I wonder if their implementation works as well as\nAMD's though. Can it scale to smaller chips (which have good yields)?\n\n~~~\nmtgx\nSo much glue. Glue everywhere!\n\n[https://www.eteknix.com/intel-attacks-glued-together-amd-\nepy...](https://www.eteknix.com/intel-attacks-glued-together-amd-epyc-dies/)\n\nIntel also did another nasty one, after being caught lying about it with\nanother benchmark they did in the same way: they disabled EPYC's SMT, likely\nbecause this chip doesn't have SMT, so they don't want AMD's chip to benefit\nfrom it either, even though in real world scenarios it will.\n\n------\nInclinedPlane\nHow many side channels though?\n\n------\nsireat\nRight out of Pentium D (remember that?) playbook:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_D](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_D)\n\nIt bought Intel some time until Core 2.\n\n------\nCrontab\nFinally, a CPU that can keep up with Google Chrome!\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\nAnd Slack!\n\n~~~\nmooman219\nWhat's the difference? /s\n\n~~~\nlostmsu\nIMHO, /s is superficial.\n\n------\nhajile\nThe die shot looks to have 15 core modules at 2 cores each. I assume the\n28-core variant lasers out 2 for yields and clockspeeds. I guess this one\nwould then be cutting out 6 cores per chip. Big chips really aren't the way\nforward.\n\n~~~\ntolien\nPer the caption it’s an Ivy Bridge, i.e. not the Xeon the article talks about.\n\nThere’s an annotated die photo of the CLAP (seriously, did nobody in Intel\nmarketing predict “Intel gives you the CLAP”, “Intel CPUs have the CLAP” and\nkhibosh this name?!) predecessor die at [1].\n\n1:\n[https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/microarchitectures/skylak...](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/microarchitectures/skylake_\\(server\\)#Extreme_Core_Count_.28XCC.29)\n\n~~~\nwmf\nIntel uses three-letter codenames, so it's probably something like CLX-AP, not\nCLAP.\n\n~~~\ntolien\nFrom TFA:\n\n> Intel is labeling them \"Cascade Lake Advanced Performance,\"\n\nThe Anandtech article suggests they’re de-emphasising the “Lake” so it’s more\nof a C-AP.\n\n------\ndis-sys\nIntel Xeon Platinum 8180 is currently sold for $10k USD each, it comes with 28\ncores. For 48 cores and 12 memory channels, you can almost be assured to see a\nprice tag of close to $20k USD. So basically when they fail to come up with\nsome better architectures to face the competition from AMD, they choose to\nglue up their out of date designs (out of date when compared with Zen2 based\nnew Epyc line) and sell you as a bundle without significant price cut!\n\nTo be honest, I am not surprised - we are talking about a company that worked\nso hard for 10 years to fool its customers on why they don't need more than 4\ncores on desktops. The whole joke is so INTEL!\n\n~~~\nyread\nThat's the list price, not many customers pay that\n\n~~~\naseipp\nIt's wild that so many people here think that e.g. major cloud vendors use the\nsame purchasing logic for multi-hundred-million dollar deals on tens/hundreds\nof thousands of units, that a 17 year old uses when deciding how to spend $700\non a new computer. \"They're scared\", \"Zen is a superior product\", \"EPYC/Rome\nwill blow them away\", etc. It doesn't actually matter.\n\nNot only do many customers not pay the list price you see, they get custom\nSKUs specifically designed for them -- which is a growing portion of their\nXeon business and one AMD has no clear, large-scale answer to AFAICS. And they\nbasically can't get enough of them. Xeons practically print money and Intel\nrecently announced something like 16% revenue increases and even higher\ndemands for Xeon than they've ever had. They just invested an extra billion in\nnew fab production just because they're at capacity right now...\n\nIntel is going to remain very strong in this market for a good, long time as\nfar as I can tell, and things like list SKU prices are an incredibly,\nridiculously small reason to believe otherwise.\n\nThat said I'm very happy with the price/power ratio of my TR 1950X.\n\n~~~\ntutanchamun\n> which is a growing portion of their Xeon business and one AMD has no clear,\n> large-scale answer to AFAICS\n\nProbably depends on the size of the company. AMD has their semi custom\ndepartment which was responsible for the PS4 and Xbox One, as well as PS4 Pro,\nXbox One X (the GPUs are based on Polaris but have features from Vega, which\nno normal Polaris GPU has) and Subor Z (Zen APU with GDDR5 as main memory like\nthe consoles, but can run Windows).\n\nAMD is probably the better vendor if you want custom SKUs (as the underdog\nthey also have more incentive for custom SKUs).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: best music to code to? - AdamJBall\nWondering what music people listen to in order to maintain focus whilst coding.<p>Personally a fan of the TRON: Legacy soundtrack, Justice etc.<p>Look forward to listening to your suggestions!\n======\ntaprun\nThere's a big thread on Reddit that suggests programming to video game music,\nas it's designed to be in the background. Link:\n[http://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/1u4xh1/lpt_look...](http://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/1u4xh1/lpt_looking_for_good_music_to_work_to_try_video/)\n\n~~~\nhashtree\nThe same reason I litsen to Soma FM. Some good channels:\n\n[http://somafm.com/spacestation/](http://somafm.com/spacestation/)\n\n[http://somafm.com/deepspaceone/](http://somafm.com/deepspaceone/)\n\n[http://somafm.com/dronezone/](http://somafm.com/dronezone/)\n\n[http://somafm.com/beatblender/](http://somafm.com/beatblender/)\n\n[http://somafm.com/events/](http://somafm.com/events/) (Def Con Radio)\n\n------\nuser_235711\nI would recommend Boards of Canada[1] and Thievery Corporation[2] most of all.\nBut really anything in the vein of what has been dubbed \"chill\" music works\ngreat for me due to the awesome atmospheres and driving beats. Here[3] is a\nlist I made of some of the best albums IMO in that genre.\n\n[1][http://www.amazon.com/Boards-Of-\nCanada/e/B000APHPF8/](http://www.amazon.com/Boards-Of-Canada/e/B000APHPF8/)\n\n[2][http://www.amazon.com/Thievery-\nCorporation/e/B000APFP6E/](http://www.amazon.com/Thievery-\nCorporation/e/B000APFP6E/)\n\n[3][http://www.amazon.com/Top-10-Chill-Out-\nAlbums/lm/R32Q5RHQR51...](http://www.amazon.com/Top-10-Chill-Out-\nAlbums/lm/R32Q5RHQR51XFO/)\n\n~~~\nragatskynet\nI also listen to these when I am coding. Repetitive techno-like music can be\nalso good, it depends on the mood.\n\n------\nceeK\nI don't particularly understand how people can code whilst listening to music.\nThe two simply do not go hand in hand for me. I find it clouds my thought\nprocess why I'm trying to figure something out or reason about a bit of code.\nEven when I'm doing 'drone' programming I often think about where this bit of\ncode fits in with the rest etc.\n\nSometimes I can listen to music without lyrics, but it has to be fairly calm\nand uneventful. Coffitivity is actually a pretty good thing for me.\n\n~~~\nandrew_gardener\nIt works differently for different people. For me it helps drown out\nbackground noise in the office and helps relax me so I can get in the zone.\nIts important to note that I play my music very low with headphone and with\nrather no lyrics or lyrics in a different language so that it doesn't distract\nme.\n\nWith all that said though, there is nothing worse than being subjected to a\ncoworker's music choice. Having experienced this at different jobs, I can\ntotally understand why other people avoid music at work like the plague.\n\n------\nandrew_gardener\nI usually listen to whatever is on the top of the list for anime radio\nstations\n([http://www.shoutcast.com/radio/Anime](http://www.shoutcast.com/radio/Anime))\nwhile at work (since its easier to just stream some music).\n\nAt home I have a large collection of random music (some music from video\ngames, anime, metal/electronic bands, parody/comedy songs, meme themed songs,\netc)\n\n------\nheldrida\nI'm usually coding while listening to Drum and Bass. But for example, today\nI've been listening to Stax (Soul/Funk). Other days I'm listening to Punk,\nSka, Reggae, Hip-Hop [...] At least twice a week I listen to roots Blue music!\n\nIt's up to you, I don't think there's such thing as \"music\" made for\nprogramming, if so, I would say late night and silence...really...!\n\n------\nstevekemp\nI tend to listen to 80s goth/metal/industrial music, on the basis that that's\nwhat I used to listen to, go clubbing with, and enjoy the most.\n\nThere are times when I'll listen to random things, such as Jeff Wayne's war of\nthe worlds, opera, or piano works, but generally I'm an 80s metal-head at\nheart!\n\n------\nAnimalMuppet\nDepends on what style of music you favor. What music is best depends on who\nyou are.\n\nIt also depends on what you're coding. \"Put your head down and crank\" music is\ndifferent from \"I need to be able to think deeply for a couple of hours\"\nmusic.\n\n------\nKarunamon\nI found a \"Music for Programming\" podcast a long while ago that's fairly\neffective. It's pretty mellow compared to the Legacy OST.\n\n[http://musicforprogramming.net](http://musicforprogramming.net)\n\n------\nJ_Darnley\nWhatever you like. My one suggestion is you listen to things that don't have\nlyrics or possibly even humming or other vocal elements. I find myself\ndistracted by those.\n\nI could list some of my favourites if anyone likes.\n\n------\njohnsoga\nI can listen to almost anything. I usually end up having repeat on and can end\nup listening to the same songs 20-30 times before I even notice... and then\nthe process repeats :)\n\n------\nvishalzone2002\nI have always wondered about this. An interesting thing to think about is if\nthere is a correlation between programming language and type of music a\nprogrammer likes.\n\n------\nablutop\nambient and downbeat [http://divbyzero.de](http://divbyzero.de) (also through\n[http://divbyzeroambient.rad.io/](http://divbyzeroambient.rad.io/) )\n\n------\nwturner\nI like massive attack instrumentals and hang drum solos.\n\n------\nthebrainkid\nwhen I'm coding, I like listening to classical, although I've also been liking\nswinghouse recently.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Do you use market research for your business? - tixocloud\n\nI&#x27;m interested in knowing if you use market research to help your business grow? If so, has it been helpful? Did you feel it was a waste of money and why?\nIf it&#x27;s possible, I&#x27;d also be interested in how much you spent and what kind of research it is? (i.e. custom survey, focus groups, reports, etc.) Thanks in advance!<p>Disclaimer: Reposting this question as I didn&#x27;t get any responses in the first one. Sorry for the spam.\n======\nchrisgoodrich\nMarket research is imperative to success, but it may not always look like\nyou'd expect. Note that I come from a B2B software product management\nbackground. Market research is a major part of my job, but I don't think I\nhave ever called it market research.\n\nBig companies often place a lot of value in more formalized research studies\nto drive corporate strategy. This is very top-down.\n\nI prefer, and often drive, more lean research initiatives. Working in\nstartups, there isn't budget or time for formalized research studies. Instead\nI have often used more scrappy methods of customer development to test ideas\nwith prototypes.\n\nA one hour conversation with 10 people in your target market will likely give\nyou enough information to form a hypothesis about what problems people are\nwilling to pay to have solved.\n\n~~~\ntixocloud\nThanks for the great insight and a really good point on the wording \"market\nresearch\". Would there be another specific term that you use to describe your\ntask?\n\nFor your leaner research initiatives, do you ever leverage high-level customer\nor country profiles?\n\n~~~\nchrisgoodrich\nSteve Blank calls it Customer Development in his book The Four Steps to the\nEpiphany. I highly recommend reading his book.\n\n------\niovrthoughtthis\nHave you looked at The Four Steps to Epiphany? Depending on your companies\nsituation / stage it might have some interesting insight on using market\nresearch.\n\n~~~\ntixocloud\nThanks for pointing it out. I'll have a look at it again in detail - I skimmed\nthrough the section towards the other phases.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFacebook Blocks Chinese Billionaire Who Tells Tales of Corruption - Jerry2\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/01/business/facebook-china-guo-wengui.html\n======\nbm1362\nI was at SoundCloud briefly and an interview with this guy was posted on Ming\nJing radio. We were DDOS’ed and eventually had to take his profile offline as\nwell due to the volume of requests. At the same time, I remember Googling his\nname and found his FB and Twitter accounts were disabled too.\n\nI brought up the optics of blocking him in a MingJing slack channel but at the\ntime there wasn’t another way to mitigate the traffic. I imagine this is due\nto the same pressure. Maybe not, though.\n\n[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/world/asia/guo-\nwengui-...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/world/asia/guo-wengui-\nchinese-billionaire-twitter.html)\n\n[https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/04/21/wanted-billionaire-\nguo...](https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/04/21/wanted-billionaire-guo-wengui-\nbeijing-pressured-us-broadcaster-voa-cut-interview/)\n\n~~~\nrqs\nI searched \"Ming Ling radio\" and didn't get as many results as I did with\n\"Ming Jing Radio\", so I guess that's a typo.\n\n~~~\nbm1362\nYou’re right- I couldn’t quite remember the name. I updated my comment.\n\n------\npdimitar\n> _Facebook said the content on both pages had included someone else’s\n> personal identifiable information, which violates its terms of service._\n\nOh yeah, and in the meantime, if you forget to flick a switch -- which\nunsurprisingly is ON by default and is hard to find -- everybody and their dog\ncan tag you in photos, even if it's not you. Which would either be slander or\npersonal identification without your consent; pick one. They have no problem\nwith that though.\n\n~~~\nmcv\nYeah, definitely sounds hypocritical from Facebook. I can imagine they were\nunder pressure from China to block him and needed a good excuse.\n\n~~~\nimaginenore\nIsnt't Facebook already blocked in China?\n\n~~~\ndawhizkid\nThey are of course salivating at the possibility of (re)entering China.\nAnything to get on the good side of the Chinese gov't is very important if\nthat's what they want.\n\n------\nrdtsc\nI was kind of joking, but kind of not, when I said a few weeks back that\neventually Google, Facebook and Twitter would start selling Silencing as a\nService (SaaS). Whoever pays more gets to control the manufacture of consent\n-- all of the sudden those who like different brands, political candidates,\nwho don't believe the correct things will simply get their accounts\ndeactivated.\n\n~~~\ntsunamifury\nWhy would they sell it? That undermines the fundamentals of the product.\n\n~~~\nsmsm42\nFor Facebook, the users are not consumers, but the raw material. The\nadvertisers are the consumers. Of course, Facebook won't want to lose the\neyeballs, but the way most people use FB would almost not changed, maybe very\nslightly - so within a small margin, nobody would leave.\n\n------\ntehwebguy\nI never forgot about when Yahoo! helped China throw dissidents in prison.\n\nWon't forget this either.\n\n------\nchj\nIf Guo's breaking law, then let him be sued, and actually he's doing these\nthings to try to get sued. Guo is backed up with a legal team, and is hoping\nto expose more in court.\n\nIt's disappointing to see FB taking side with the most powerful government\n(ironically, which is already blocking its service) during this historical\nevent.\n\n------\ncodegladiator\nAlso: [http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/facebook-fascism-\nma...](http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/facebook-fascism-man-posts-\nkamal-ka-phool-hamari-bhool-gets-blocked-for-30-days/story-\nmxVtCEYoabUX3lW1ihxc3N.html)\n\nTLDR: social networking site blocked his account for 30 days after he posted\n‘Kamal ka phool hamari bhool’ (Our mistake, the lotus) with a photo on his\npage. (lotus is the political symbol of the current government in power, BJP)\n\n~~~\neklavya\nDoesn't match my experience. I have been seeing a flood of anti BJP posts on\nsocial media and nobody's getting banned. It's like the opposition is just\nwaking up to the social media outreach reality :P (a welcome change perhaps).\n\n~~~\nthewhitetulip\nDo you post publicly or privately? This is happening increasingly for public\nposts\n\n------\nthewhitetulip\nFacebook is becoming a censoring platform each day\n\nJust a few weeks ago they blocked a mutual friend if mine who posted anti govt\nstuff\n\nAnd they blocked a guy who shared a photo of a bill on which \"Kamal ka ful\nhanari bhul\" was printed (Lotus flower, our mistake as in electing BJP was our\nmistake)\n\nThe guy who shared the oic was banned for 30 days\n\n~~~\nY_Y\nA mutual friend?\n\nOf you and who else?\n\n~~~\nthewhitetulip\nWhat soet of question is this?\n\n------\nasdfologist\nDoes FB have any incentive to bend to the will of the Chinese government?\nThey're already banned in China.\n\n~~~\nithinkinstereo\nAs with India, FB sees China as huge potential market and has been shamelessly\ncourting the PRC government for years now. Zuck even asked President Xi to\nname his child on a state visit to the USA a couple of years ago (naming\nchildren is a big deal in Chinese culture and Xi - who was visibly surprised\nby the request - politely declined).\n\n~~~\nseanmcdirmid\nI posted before, but Zuck isn't Chinese and he isn't exactly a social\nbutterfly in the USA either. This was probably just some awkward smalltalk,\nwhere Zuck was looking for suggestions for the kid's Chinese name (they\ndefinitely didn't ask him to pick out the kid's actual English name). Not\nweird if you don't understand hypersensitive Chinese culture.\n\n~~~\njimmies\nI have replied in another thread, but I will repeat it here. Both his wife and\ngrandparents know Chinese, and I would be very surprised if they would not be\ninterested in giving the child a Chinese name. Asking Xi -- a person who is\nnot a great thinker but just a big ass politician whom he just met -- to name\nit publicly, simply put, you can't kiss more ass than that.\n\n~~~\nseanmcdirmid\nPoppycock. My Chinese wife and my non-English speaking mother-in-law still\nhaven't selected a Chinese name for my 9 month old son yet (wife vetoed my\nsuggestion of 小囧, grandma isn't making any suggestions either even though she\ncan't pronounce his English name), and at this point I'm even willing to ask\nUncle Xi for suggestions.\n\n~~~\nithinkinstereo\nGiving a child a name is a big deal in Chinese culture, so I think your\nsituation is unusual and shouldn't be used as a benchmark here. You also\nedited out \"My Chinese wife and my non-English speaking mother-in-law have\ntaught me very little about Chinese culture\" which might explain your view on\nthis matter.\n\n~~~\nseanmcdirmid\nAgain, neither Zuck nor I are Chinese, I don't think you can use Chinese\nculture at all as a benchmark here. I'm sure Zuck knows less about Chinese\nculture than I do, especially since his wife is American born, and he never\nlived and worked in china for an extended period of time.\n\n~~~\nithinkinstereo\nI've already stated it previously, as have other users, that giving a child is\na big deal in Chinese culture. I'll add to that by noting that this typically\ninvolves the entire family - especially the child's grandparents. I would be\nextremely surprised if this was not the case with Priscilla and her parents.\nThat coupled with the fact that Zuck is actively learning the language and\nculture makes it unlikely that his request was just social awkwardness nor\nthat he is largely ignorant about Chinese culture as you seem to suggest. Plus\nif I recall, his wife was by his side when he asked Xi.\n\nIn regards to your point about Priscilla, many, if not the majority of ABCs\n(esp first gen) are raised by their parents \"Chinese\" culturally-speaking. Her\nnot having lived or worked in China does not mean she is unfamiliar to Chinese\nculture. To suggest that is frankly absurd and runs counter to the Asian-\nAmerican experience.\n\nBecause of all these reasons, many people view Zuck's request as a shameless\nact of ass-kissing and not just being \"socially awkward\".\n\nLastly, the reaction in China was not only due to \"hyper-sensitivity\" but also\nto a mix of 1) media exaggeration and 2) how important naming a child is in\nChinese culture.\n\nWith all due respect to you and your family, your personal anecdote about your\nson not having a Chinese name is not the norm - even for mixed Western/Chinese\ncouples.\n\n~~~\nseanmcdirmid\nStop enforcing your values on other people! You still don't get it. Zuckerberg\nisn't chinese, his wife is Chinese Vietnamese American, his in law as are\nChinese Vietnamese, they don't even speak Mandarin, yet you judge them as if\nthey were narrow-minded hypersensitive northern mainlanders (because\nsoutherners are much more flexible). It distorts and perverts the Asian\nAmerican experience, even among Chinese not everyone will share your values.\n\nWith all due respect, I know many mixed Chinese kids who didn't have formal\nChinese names awhile after they were born, it isn't freaking easy, it isn't\nalways a priority. What was chosen afterwards was informal. It just happens,\nnot everyone shares your values, even among Chinese, and why the heck should\nthey? They have their name, the one they will use for the rest of their lives,\nthat is the important part, the rest is just technicalities.\n\n------\ntudorconstantin\nThis is not a very smart positioning for fb. They decided to play an active\nrole in this dispute and take the side of the oppressing state.\n\nWe don't know the whole story, the chinese billionaire could also have a\nhidden agenda and try to get rid of political adversaries by inventing\ncorruption stories and spreading fake news. So taking his side wouldn't have\nbeen wise either.\n\nFacebook should've thought \"not my circus, not my monkey\" and ignore all of\nthis, letting them solve their issues using the legal system.\n\nWhy would anyone use facebook now to communicate anything more than some cheap\nstories and cute cat photos?\n\n~~~\nusaphp\n> Why would anyone use facebook now to communicate anything more than some\n> cheap stories and cute cat photos?\n\nDid anyone ever use Facebook for more serious stuff anyway?\n\n~~~\nopportune\nYou know how when you go to a website, even one you'd never share, you'll get\na prompt to like/share the page or its contents on Facebook? Every time that\nFacebook widget gets loaded, Facebook receives information about your\nbrowser/operating system/etc. that it uses to create a fingerprint that it\nchecks against your previous history. You'll also get a cookie (which you\nessentially have to opt-out of) to better help Facebook track your browsing\nwithout needing the fingerprint.\n\nSo many websites put up that little like button that Facebook's reach extends\nwell beyond what users upload directly to their website. Facebook's strength\nis that is can combine your demographic data with your network AND your\ninternet habits. Facebook, in countries where it's not blocked, will even\nbuild profiles on people that have not signed up for facebook directly, for\nexample if your friend uploads a photo of the two of you with your name. And\nFacebook advertises to these people as well.\n\nSo I think whatever isn't \"more serious\" that you do on Facebook is probably\nmore serious than you think. You either need to be hyper vigilant about\nJS/cookies or you need to not use the internet at all to be able to divorce\nyour profile and all of its information from the rest of the information\nFacebook has from you browsing the web.\n\n------\nHashThis\nWe need facebook to respond to this. Does he include someone's email or phone\nnumber? Or is simply referring to people's names a problem. If it is only\nreferring to people's names to get banned, then that is horrible of facebook\nto do.\n\n~~~\nCodeWriter23\nI can’t confirm for you how I know this but I know merely mentioning someone’s\nname and associating their name with something that can be construed as\nharassment, combined with use of the Report button is enough to trigger\nFacebook Jail for the poster/commenter.\n\n------\nl5870uoo9y\nFacebook's efforts will be in vain, because letting Facebook penetrate China —\nthe way it has Europe — is a fundamental (geopolitical) security risk no\nmatter how many concessions Facebook gives.\n\n------\nhud8\nHow do you armchair Chinese experts know this guy isn't the Chinese version of\nDonald Trump who is being silenced before he does more damage. To me it just\nfeels like the technocrat class of China that is a big part of the govt does\nwhat the technocrat class in the US is incapable off. Everyone is a hypocrite\nhere. Not just FB.\n\n~~~\nspecialp\nWell the American version of Donald Trump is not silenced as silencing people\nis not the American way. In short it doesn't matter who he is or what he does,\nwe don't like big internet companies silencing people to appease censoring\ngovernments.\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\n> _as silencing people is not the American way._\n\nExcept when it matters -- e.g. if they're whistleblowers, activists, people\nlike Manning, Gary Webb, or heck, MLK, and so on -- all the way to McCarthy-\nism and Hoover.\n\n------\nbilbo0s\nI guess I'd like to know how accusations of criminal conduct are normally\nhandled by facebook?\n\nSuppose a user starts posting, all over facebook, posts that accuse a certain\nmale of sex crimes, or... say... pedophilia. Further, this person names this\nmale explicitly. Suppose further, the male has not been charged with any such\ncrime. (Indeed, for all the users in his social circle know, he may not even\nbe a suspect. He could even be completely innocent.)\n\nWhat is the normal course of action that facebook would take in such cases?\n\nAre the posts taken down? Is the poster warned? Does nothing at all usually\nhappen? (That is, can a user normally make accusations of sex crimes or\npedophilia without restraint?) What, exactly, happens in most cases of posts\ncontaining accusations of some form of CLEARLY criminal activity?\n\nIt seems to me that whatever happens in the proverbial \"girl claims a guy is a\nrapist to their social circle\" case, should probably happen here. I think\ntheir policy should be consistent, to the extent that is possible.\n\n~~~\nrtpg\nThough you're not explicit, I bet everyone reads this as \"Facebook doesn't\nhandle false rape claims equally\", though you've provided no evidence of this.\nInstead just relying on \"internet tropes\" and people will end up filling in\nthe blanks.\n\nNot to mention that the article itself says that someone's PII was posted\n(presumably without consent). I don't know what it was, but it could easily\nhave been some person's phone numbers with a call to action to harass them.\n\nThat sort of stuff _does_ get taken down by Facebook. Sometimes things get out\nof hand, but it's usually one \"report content\" click away from getting\nremoved.\n\nMaybe you honestly don't know FB's policies here, but posting this sort of\ncomment basically reads as an accusation.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nObama defends Bradley Manning's detention in informal discussion - danenania\nhttp://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/04/22/video-of-obama-on-bradley-manning-he-broke-the-law/\n\n======\ndanenania\nTranscript provided by the author:\n\nPeople can have philosophical views about…\n\n[Questioner: unintelligible]\n\nNo, no, but look, I can’t conduct diplomacy on an open source. That’s not\nhow…the world works. If you’re in the military, and…I have to abide by certain\nclassified information. If I was to release stuff, information that I’m not\nauthorized to release, I’m breaking the law…We’re a nation of laws. We don’t\nindividually make our own decisions about how the laws operate…\n\nHe broke the law.\n\n[Questioner: 'You can make it harder to break the law.']\n\nWell, what he did was he dumped…\n\n[Questioner: something about President Nixon's prosecution of Pentagon Papers\nleaker Daniel Ellsberg]\n\nIt wasn’t the same thing. What Ellsberg released wasn’t classified in the same\nway. So. Anyway. Alright.\n\n~~~\ndanenania\nPersonally, I think \"he broke the law\" is a terrible argument and he should\nknow better. I don't have to tell you where we'd be without countless people\nstanding up for what's right and yeah, breaking the damn law throughout\nhistory.\n\n~~~\njamesbritt\n_Personally, I think \"he broke the law\" is a terrible argument and he should\nknow better._\n\nMore so because Manning has not yet even been tried, let alone convicted.\n\nManning is an extreme example of the shitty treatment afforded the accused,\nunless you're a banker who's fucked people over for millions of dollars.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Imprint – Rethinking Medium - rolandtshen\nHello! This is Roland from Imprint (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imprint.to).<p>We&#x27;ve been frustrated with Medium because of their paywall, content ownership issues, intrusive interface, and low post engagement. So we built Imprint to do things different. We want to take the control and ownership you get with Wordpress&#x2F;Ghost, and provide distribution&#x2F;discovery.<p>To us, a blog is...<p>1. Openly sharing your thoughts (freedom of expression)<p>2. Accessible, unobtrusive content (no paywalls)<p>3. Ownership&#x2F;control of your work (our policies, custom domains, customization)<p>4. Building an audience that engages with articles (followers, newsletters, distribution)<p>5. Simple to run, so you focus on what matters — CONTENT<p>Our manifesto (business model, philosophy, guidelines): https:&#x2F;&#x2F;read.imprint.to&#x2F;post&#x2F;the-imprint-rundown<p>Happy to answer any questions and concerns. Thanks!<p>P.S: yes, our title was inspired by the Ghost launch years ago\n======\nthrowaway888abc\nClickable [https://imprint.to](https://imprint.to)\n\n------\npinkpigpie\nThis seems amazing!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nH1b vs L1 visa - pattamonnu\nhttp://frontsimple.com/posts/H1b-vs-L1-infographic/\n======\nelastic_church\nI think I recently pointed out that focusing on H1B was a red herring.\n\nAny way, I love publicly posted salary information for every H1B applicant by\ncompany and date! [http://www.h1bdata.info](http://www.h1bdata.info) Way\nbetter than Glassdoor or Payscale or any of those \"give us your Facebook\naccount and a ton of information before we show you outdated base-salary-only\ninformation but since you clicked we're sure the ad worked\" websites\n\nDon't know about the history of that transparency and don't care, can probably\nconvince Congress to extend it to other work visa types \"as a compromise to\nstudy the effect on citizens\" lol!\n\n------\nwyldfire\nThe infographic doesn't make it clear what substantive differences exist\nbetween H1B and L1 visas. AFAICT from the text below it's more like\ntransferring within the globocorp.\n\nFrom [1]: \"The new U.S. office must have a corporate relationship with your\nforeign entity abroad where you have been employed as a manager, executive, or\nworker with specialized knowledge. This means that the new U.S. office must be\na parent, affiliate, subsidiary or branch of the foreign entity, and that both\nthe U.S. office and the foreign entity must continue to share common ownership\nand control.\"\n\n[1] [https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/l-1-intracompany-\ntransf...](https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/l-1-intracompany-\ntransferee/understanding-l-1-requirements)\n\n------\nsfilargi\nOne more difference is that L1 visa holders cannot change companies.\n\n~~~\npattamonnu\nThat's an advantage for employers. Imagine you are bringing a employee who you\nknow will not leave. That leads to lots of possibilities\n\n~~~\nsfilargi\nI didn't imply the opposite. Just stating a fact that was omitted.\n\n------\nkozikow\nNot fully accurate - spouses of H1B, H4 can work now:\n[http://www.immihelp.com/h4-visa-ead/](http://www.immihelp.com/h4-visa-ead/).\n\n~~~\npattamonnu\nH4 dependents can only work after the primaries's green card process reached\ncertain stage which may take few years. But with L1, spouse can start work\nfrom day 1\n\n~~~\ntopkeker\nIncorrect, the dependent has a 3 month waiting period.\n\n~~~\npattamonnu\nyou mean they become eligible only after 3 months?\n\n~~~\ntopkeker\nYes, as the other comment says. They become eligible to apply for EAD only\nafter 3 months. You then need to wait for the EAD, which processing time\nvaries depending on location.\n\nOnce EAD is issued, they can work.\n\n------\ncredit_guy\nWhy is the vertical scale not starting at zero? This is generally considered\nto be an antipattern in plotting, as it creates the wrong perception of\nratios.\n\n------\ngeodel\nFor general population and media consumption concentrating on 1 keyword is way\nbetter than 2 or more keywords. So if H1B is picked by politicians than it is\nbetter strategy to hammer on it instead of discussing nuances of various visa\ntypes.\n\nIMO H1B or not lots of typical IT jobs are disappearing anyway .\n\n~~~\npattamonnu\nBut, the whole employment visas have to be reformed as a whole. For example,\ntightening H1b means, companies can start using L1 or Eb1c more. These work\nrounds are already being taken advantage of.\n\n------\ninerte\nYour graph makes look like \"L1 + spouse worker\" is a little bit more than\n100k.\n\nThe source document says ~78k L1 were issued in 2015, and ~86k L2, which\nincluded spouses and chidren.\n\nHow do you know how many L1 spouses are working?\n\n~~~\npattamonnu\nIt makes an assumption that 25% approximately end up working. Forgot to\nspecify that. Will fix it. thanks\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nF-Secure will provide Dropbox-like storage [summary in comments] - sampo\nhttp://www.digitoday.fi/data/2013/09/12/f-secure-haastaa-googlen-ja-dropboxin--jakaa-ilmaiseksi-salattua-tallennustilaa/201312767/66\n\n======\nsampo\nSummary (as the link is in Finnish):\n\n\\- F-Secure, a Finnish company, will provide cloud storage like Dropbox and\nGoogle Drive\n\n\\- located in Finland, 256bit AES encrypted\n\n\\- first 5 Gb are for free\n\n\\- virus scanning for stored files\n\n\\- will open at the end of October\n\n------\nhannibal5\nThe content is encrypted with 256-bit AES algorithm and the content is divided\ninto three different parts stored in different locations. One stores the\nfiles, second stores the metadata and the third stores the user information.\n\nThe data centers are located in two Finnish cities F-Secure does not reveal.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nStudents being forced to buy online textbooks to do homework - bjd2385\nI was forced to buy an online textbook for my CS course this past semester to do homework. Now I&#x27;ve been notified that my `subscription&#x27; to this information is ending at the start of January (specifically by ZyBooks).<p>I really liked working on the projects and reading through the descriptions, I thought it was worth the $70 or so that I paid for it. However, it was hardly ``fresh,&#x27;&#x27; I could look up the same information by Googling or surfing SO.<p>I&#x27;ve been forced to buy these now extinct access codes to websites that have ``online textbooks&#x27;&#x27; before for courses (I still have the $60-100 cards, about 4 or 5 of them now). I honestly don&#x27;t feel they&#x27;re worth, most of the time, what I&#x27;ve paid for them. And at the end of the day, I end up empty handed, robbed of that information (unlike an actual textbook, albeit still way overpriced, but at least it&#x27;s _mine_ and no one can take it away from me).<p>Has anyone else gone through the same thing? Thoughts? Opinions?\n======\nbrudgers\nCollege textbooks have been a way to extract money from students for many\nyears. In the old days of physical books, the new copy would be as\nridiculously priced as they are today (in constant dollars). The used copies\nwould be beat up and about 80% of the ridiculous price. At the end of the\nterm, the buyback would be for 10 to 20% of the original price at best.\nSometimes it would be a couple of dollars because a new edition had come out.\n\nOne of the current trends is toward open source textbooks under permissive\nlicenses. It will happen slowly as older faculty are replaced by younger, so\nit probably won't be done by the time you finish your degree.\n\nAnyway, given the cost of higher education this might not be the place to\nworry about maximizing return on investment.\n\n------\ncoreyp_1\n1\\. You need to talk to the department heads at your university and let them\nknow. Schedule a meeting, and when you bring up your (very valid) points,\npoint to the rows of books on their shelf, and show them your now-extinct\ncards. It will be effective.\n\n2\\. Give them the benefit of the doubt. They were probably trying to save you\nmoney. Others in your class probably preferred this lower-cost approach.\n\n3\\. Don't just complain here about it. Your University department will never\nknow that there is a problem unless you communicate with them about this. As\nlong as you do it in the right way, they will appreciate the feedback.\n\nGood luck!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: How to help with time management and project management challenges - source99\nI have an employee that regularly doesn’t finish tasks on time and doesn’t concentrate on items that are high priority.<p>How can I help him?<p>In his defense I’m sure some of it is my type A personality but I have been trying to give him the benefit of the doubt for what I think is long enough already.<p>Thanks\n======\nkazishariar\nSee my response to:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17596293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17596293)\n\n------\nmabynogy\nLet him in peace. Give him low priority tasks. You'll feel better.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDreaming Outside Our Heads - tintinnabula\nhttp://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/04/20/consciousness-dreaming-outside-our-heads/\n======\nsebringj\nManzotti conflates the scientifically observable with the subjective. Because\nit sounds intellectual, it gets voted on Hacker News? Manzotti will shit\nhimself when he puts on VR goggles or takes LSD. What will he do then?\n\n------\nxaedes\n> The only thing that has the properties of the experience is the object\n> itself.\n\nI would say, the only thing that has the properties of the experience is the\n_experience_ itself.\n\n------\nopenfuture\nTim Parks book 'teach us to sit still' is what got me to start a regular\nmeditation practise but only because I enjoyed how hard headed he was and\nunwilling to accept the obvious positive effect it had on him. This post feels\na little bit similar where the other guy is just schooling him and his\nobjections are feeble.\n\nWhich got me to think, is this the modern equivalence of this [1]?\n\n[1]:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8)\n\n------\nmvdwoord\n\"But this sun that feels “now” to you is the sun that shone eight minutes ago.\nThe moon is closer, but it’s still more than a second away from the effect it\nproduces in your body. If this were a starry night, the stars composing the\nUrsa Major would be scattered between 80 and 128 years away.\"\n\nRight.. Because the photons hit you 8 minutes ago and you feel them now? or\nThey traveled for 8 minutes and are actually hitting you now?\n\nStopped reading there.\n\n~~~\ngivan\nI think that what he wants to say that is difficult to locate the \"now\", if\nyou read a little more he explains it more clearly.\n\n\"the quickest neural processes still require tens of milliseconds to complete\nas electronic and chemical signals travel back and forth across the meters of\nneural circuitry packed in our brains. So even for the neuroscientists the\nphysical stuff that they view as constituting our conscious experience is\nspread over space and time, albeit tiny spaces. In fact, if we wanted to be\nreally rigorous and consider only what is present at one instant in time, the\nworld as we know it would disappear. Sounds, light, voices, gestures, actions,\nwords, all require a flexible notion of nowness that encompasses more than a\nsingle instant.\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPet Cloning as a Service - gremlinsinc\nhttps://viagenpets.com/faq/\n======\ngremlinsinc\nSaw this on ProductHunt...and thought it was a joke/hoax, can't believe this\ntotally exists.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nA Tale of CenturyLink Backdoors, PCI Compliance, and Pain - dlgeek\nhttp://thenubbyadmin.com/2014/04/28/a-tale-of-centurylink-backdoors-pci-compliance-and-pain-lots-of-pain/\n\n======\nlunixbochs\nFrom initial inspection of the GPL firmware download, it looks like port 4567\nis controlled by the /bin/tr69c daemon. I also found references from tr69c to\na \"data_center\" program. Neither the data_center or tr69c binaries were in my\nreference firmware source.\n\nResearch suggests tr69c is hosting the TR-069 protocol:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069)\n\nAlso: OpenSSL 0.9.7f 22 March 2005\n\n------\nnullc\nThis is even better than my supermicro 1u systems which turned out to be\nrunning a non-disableable-in-bios unpasworded remote management interface\nwhich provided console access exposed to the network that I only found by\nscanning the subnet. \"Intel inside\" indeed.\n\n~~~\nanemic\nIn Fujitsu servers there is a remote console but that requires a licence to\nfunction. Of course a hacker can acquire (even pay?) for that license and get\nconsole access. This leads to leaving the management network unplugged and\nlosing remote reboots and other management features.\n\n------\nMister_Snuggles\nAnother way to achieve PCI compliance is to simply outsource all activities\nhaving to do with credit cards to a PCI compliant vendor and let them deal\nwith that pain. I've seen sites that let you pay this way and it works pretty\nwell - as well as a payment workflow that involves sending your customer to a\n3rd party site and hoping they make it back can work anyway.\n\nThe whole thing with the modem is scary though.\n\n------\njacquesm\nInteresting. Centurlink could have easily blocked acccess from outside their\nown internal network to that IP and port but instead chose to allow the whole\ninternet to have the possibility to play 20 questions with the web admin\ninterface.\n\nMaybe someone even got lucky. What about all the other customers of that ISP\nwith that particular modem, are those still open?\n\n------\ndeckar01\nI'm not convinced it would have to be secret updates. As the service that\nscanned your ports learned new exploits, it reported them. Scanners sometimes\nuse heuristics to guess.\n\n~~~\nlunixbochs\nAs far as I know, it's common practice for DSL and Cable providers to provide\nover-the-air firmware and configuration updates to your modem. Whether or not\nthey own it.\n\n~~~\nnoir_lord\nOne of the reasons I always use a third-party modem not supplied by them (I\nlike Drayteks for the money they are powerful).\n\nYou have to trust that thing with the keys to the kingdom.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBankers Go Home, Tellers Stay: Virus Exposes Office Inequalities - pseudolus\nhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-13/virus-is-exposing-worker-inequalities-as-corporate-offices-empty\n======\nasdfasgasdgasdg\nThe doctors and surgeons don't get to go home, but the hospital administration\nclerks might be able to. The doctors are higher status and make more. I wonder\nwhy that might be?\n\nThis is just cherry picking imo. Jobs that require f2f and physical\ninteraction as a core responsibility don't get remoted? You don't say.\n\n~~~\nJMTQp8lwXL\nHospital admins might be paid more than you think.\n\n~~~\nAdamJacobMuller\naverage admin staff is paid much less than the average doctor.\n\naverage admin staff is perhaps even paid less than the average RN in some\nplaces.\n\n------\nasn0\n_Bankers Go Home, Tellers Stay: Virus Reveals That Some Jobs Are Different_\n\n~~~\nalharith\nThis would be the reasonable title. However, in the current zeitgeist\neverything needs to be framed as some sort of injustice.\n\n~~~\nDeepThoughts\nWhen the bodies start stacking up, we’ll all have a chance to decide which\ndecisions were injustices and which were pragmatic.\n\n------\narbuge\nBankers make more money, tellers make less. The inequalities were really\nalways there...\n\nLife and the human experience have never come with any guarantees of being\nfair or equal.\n\nAll that said, I fully expect bank branches to be closed just like other\nretail establishments will be.\n\n------\najross\nWhile this is true, and unfair, IMHO it's not really an appropriate thing to\ntry to fix in isolation. Some jobs are more remotable than others. We want to\nisolate people physically, so remotable jobs get remoted. The fact that those\njobs are distributed inequitably is bad, but not something we can fix right\nnow. And once this is over, it's probably not going to seem like something\nworth fixing at all, I suspect.\n\nAnd FWIW: a much bigger injustice is how many of these jobs in the service\nsectors are ephemeral in these situations. Wait staff and shopkeepers don't\nmerely have to go in physically to work, they're at a _much_ higher risk of\nlosing their jobs entirely (or having their hours cut as, say, restaurants\nscale back).\n\nThat latter problem is something we can address with appropriate policy.\n\n~~~\ncelim307\nI'd agree except I have friends in sales and almost unilaterally they were\ntold to keep coming into the office, despite their entire job being done from\nphones and computers. Theres a pretty toxic culture in sales where everything\nis war, and you have to show how committed you are everyday.\n\n~~~\njbc1\nI'm in sales and every role I've held (a grand total of 2 tbf) has been a \"be\nin the office if you need to be\" type deal. Same as other people I know in it\nor other other positions I've considered.\n\nIf spending the weekend at a convention in another state is what's needed to\nmake the sale I do that. If drinking with a visiting client until 2am is\nwhat's needed to make the sale I do that. If coming in to the office when\nthere's no need and I might get sick and die and more importantly not be able\nto make sales, I don't do that.\n\n\"Sales\" is a very broad role to the point where I think someone saying they do\nit is closer to someone saying they \"make things\" or \"perform services\" rather\nthan \"software developer\" or \"lawyer\". It's more of a department than\nanything. Experiences working in it thus vary greatly.\n\n------\ngentleman11\nAt my internship, everyone used to joke about how interns are t real people.\nHowever, I was treated 10x better than any labour or retail job I have ever\nworked. It is amazing how well people treat you once you have a piece of paper\nthat says “engineering” on it, I can’t even describe it\n\n~~~\nxiphias2\nThis was true for my office as well, but at the same time when I was in\nelementary and high school in advanced math classes with mostly other guys, I\nwas always mocked for it by students of parallel classes. Life's not fair for\nsure.\n\n------\nexecutesorder66\nAs someone who has worked for a bank for years, what is a \"banker\"? Is it the\nlegal team? the risk team? middle management? software developers? QA team?\nrisk team? The execs? the cleaning staff?\n\nAnd why are tellers not bankers? They perform one of the main public facing\nbanking tasks/services.\n\nAlso how are tellers supposed to work from home? This is a rather unfair\nsituation, but it's just the nature of the job, not some attack on the lower\nclass.\n\nI just find this whole article weird.\n\n~~~\nthaumasiotes\n> And why are tellers not bankers? They perform one of the main public facing\n> banking tasks/services.\n\nThis question/claim only makes any sense if you're willing to consider that\nthe cleaning staff might deserve to be called \"bankers\" too.\n\nTellers don't provide any banking services. They can't agree to hold your\nmoney or loan you money. They don't provide any advice. They're an\nimplementation detail of the banking agreement you set up with an actual\nbanker, a piece of plumbing that happens to be how you move money into or out\nof your account. Hence the popularity of automatic teller machines.\n\n~~~\nexecutesorder66\nI don't know what the definition of a banker is in the first place other than\nan employee of the bank.\n\nThat is where my confusion lies. What is the definition of a banker? And what\nis their job title?\n\n~~~\nthaumasiotes\nThere are a large number of job titles. But I would say someone qualifies as a\n\"banker\" if they are responsible for a flow of money, or if their work\nconsists of helping other people implement flows of money.\n\nI would be comfortable calling e.g. a corporate treasurer a \"banker\" in this\nsense, though I wouldn't expect corporate treasurers to be included in the\ncategory \"bankers\" in the context of this piece.\n\nFor this piece, something like the intersection of (1) the definition I\nprovide with (2) the class of people employed by \"banks\".\n\nA teller occupies a position of responsibility in that they can cause a lot of\nmischief by misbehaving. But I don't think the responsibility to refrain from\nstealing from the company is the relevant kind of responsibility. A teller at\nwork isn't supposed to be making any decisions of any kind.\n\n~~~\nmandelbrotwurst\nA teller is responsible for flows of money from the bank to its customers and\nvice versa, no?\n\n~~~\nthaumasiotes\nNo. The teller isn't responsible for those flows by transporting the money any\nmore than the security guard is responsible for them by letting the customer\ngo through the door.\n\n~~~\nmandelbrotwurst\nYou're right, the security guard is also a banker by your definition.\n\n~~~\nthaumasiotes\nI suggest you show my definition to a few people, ask them whether it includes\nsecurity guards, and see what they say.\n\nOn the negligible chance that you made this comment in earnest, the results\nmay surprise you.\n\n~~~\nmandelbrotwurst\nIt was in earnest. What seems to be going on here is that we have a very\ndifferent understanding of what \"responsible for a flow of money\" means.\n\nIn my mental model, someone who handles, protects, counts, transfers, etc.\nmoney to and from customers is fairly literally \"responsible for a flow of\nmoney\".\n\nI suspect you believe your definition requires a higher threshold and/or type\nof responsibility that these roles do not entail, but I don't see where that\nis in your definition.\n\nI think maybe you what you mean is that our hypothetical banker is\nindependently making some decisions around how / where / etc this money flows\nwith some degree of autonomy ?\n\nMy point here was primarily just to say that it is maybe a bit thornier of a\nthing to define than you realize given that your definition in my honest\nopinion and in what I consider a reasonable reading did not clearly leave out\none of the primary categories of employee that you intended it to exclude.\n\nSidenote - stating that \"you will find most people will agree with me\" is an,\num, interesting method of argument.\n\n~~~\nthaumasiotes\n> Sidenote - stating that \"you will find most people will agree with me\" is\n> an, um, interesting method of argument.\n\nNot at all. That is the standard for determining what something means.\n\nWhat you're saying here is that I expressed an idea, you agree with me as to\nboth what I meant by it and what other people would understand by it, but, for\nunstated reasons, you think my expression was metaphysically incorrect. Why?\n\nThe project of communication is for the listener to understand the same thing\nthe speaker intended. If that happens, the communication was correct. As\napplied here, if I think \"responsible for a flow of money\", elucidated by a\nnegative example, means something, and everyone else agrees with me that it\nmeans that thing... then that is in fact what it means. Words hold their\nmeaning by common agreement, and solely by common agreement.\n\n------\nLordOfWolves\nHow is this inequality more so than it is simple role differentiation?\n\nCan tellers not be trained for better-paying roles? Better yet, education is\navailable to those who wish to utilize it (though the education system clearly\nhas its own inefficiencies).\n\n~~~\nmaxerickson\nHow is \"simple role differentiation\" not a description of inequality?\n\nWhen you ask that question, you are doing this thing where you don't try to\naddress the concern people actually have, which is about what an equitable\nemployer-employee relationship looks like, not \"role differentiation\".\n\n------\nzootme\nCurrently experiencing a similar situation. I work in quality\nassurance(medical devices) and we're the only ones on site right now besides\nmanufacturing. About half of our department has been set up to work from home\nand management is working on getting the equipment necessary to set up\neveryone. Not to mention they'll now be paying \"designated essential workers\"\ndouble time and we will not be included because our job doesn't necessarily\nrequire us to be on site, just that we're lacking the hardware as of now.\n\n------\nHenryKissinger\nWhat about traders operating Bloomberg terminals? Do they need to come in, or\ncan they VPN into their terminals remotely?\n\n~~~\nhuac\nbloomberg anywhere exists (cloud version) -- but there are regulations that\nrequire trader behavior to be monitored. no personal devices on the floor, for\nexample, last thing you want is someone to send encrypted messages over signal\nthat the SEC/your bank can't read. these seem to be mostly waived:\n[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-09/finra-\ncon...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-09/finra-concedes-\nvirus-may-impact-wall-street-oversight-of-traders)\n\n------\njdkee\nThis is the distinction between staff and line. Line produces, staff is\noverhead. Easy to cut staff but not line, as cutting line reduces production.\n\nProblem is in some industries, staff have more political power than line, as\nwe see in higher-ed and medicine. This upsets the balance and results in\nless/poorer quality production from line.\n\n------\nAnimats\nThe hazard is jobs that are 1) not remoteable, 2) done by old people, and 3)\ndone at high people density.\n\nWhat I'm hearing from a friend who runs a branch of a major bank is that\nalmost no one comes into the branch, because that's only needed for loans. The\nATMs outside are busy.\n\n~~~\nAnimats\nLooking at the above critera, what comes to mind is politics.\n\n------\nhwc\nNine out of ten things I need a teller for a bigger ATM could handle. Like an\nATM that will dispense any denomination of coins or bills or cashier's checks.\nI've seen ATMs that take checks, too.\n\n~~~\nthaumasiotes\n> I've seen ATMs that take checks, too.\n\nI didn't know there were ATMs that didn't take checks.\n\nIn my experience with depositing checks into ATMs, they originally just asked\nyou how much the check was for. This would obviously require human oversight\nat some point, but you as a customer never needed to interact with a human.\n\nEventually they started OCRing the checks and proposing to you what they\nthought the amount of the check was, subject to your correction. Human\noversight is still needed, but dramatically reduced.\n\n------\nduxup\nThis doesn't seem to be about inequality as much as just practicality.\n\nBack office folks have always been not as necessary day to day in person as\nmuch as front line anyone / anything.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThoughworks Technology Radar July 2014 - skrebbel\nhttp://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/\n\n======\nskrebbel\nI love Thoughtworks' Technology Radar. HN is very hype-driven, you see a lot\nof the hottest stuff, and therefore it's my favourite source of information on\ntechnologies.\n\nThoughtworks, a software agency, is necessarily a little more conservative\nthan the startup crowd. Clients expect them to _deliver_ , and if only one\nproject fails miserably because of a risky technology choice, then that will\nreally hurt their image, and thus their sales pipeline.\n\nAs a result, their Technology Radar isn't so much an overview of what is hot\nor not, but more of which of last year's hot stuff really _made it_. If it's\nwell positioned on Thoughtworks' Tech Radar, then you can be pretty sure that\nit's here to stay.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApply HN:Programmable matter - YuriyZ\nGoal: creation of programmable matter, consisting of many microscopic particles (c-atoms). Which can be manipulated to create a user programmed 3d form.<p>Achievements. Verified experimentally:<p>- ways to connect c-atoms with each other;<p>- the movement of c-atom relative to other c-atoms.<p>The experiments were conducted with models of c-atoms in the macro scale. The size of c-atoms models was 3 * 4 cm.<p>Tasks:\n- development of software capable of managing an array of c-atoms;\n- repeating experiments in micro-scale with size of c-atoms - less than one millimeter.\n======\npjlegato\nWhat are the possible commercial applications of this technology?\n\nHow will your company make money from this?\n\n~~~\nYuriyZ\n\\- Programmable matter will replace 3d prototyping, which is now carried out\nby 3d printers. \\- Will be used in telecommunications. The effect of presence\n- Pario. \\- The technology will be used in medicine. The surgeon will be able\nto operate on the patient by manipulating programmable matter, which will be\nan enlarged, precise, copy of the operated area. \\- Toys (gadgets)\ntransformers. The company will make money by selling and renting devices from\nthe programmable matter.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDitching processed foods won’t be easy – The barriers to cooking from scratch - tshannon\nhttps://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/24/725470305/opinion-why-ditching-processed-foods-wont-be-easy-the-barriers-to-cooking-from-s\n======\nvorpalhex\n> First, it takes money. Healthier diets... generally cost more... They note\n> that the unprocessed diet they fed participants cost 40% more than the\n> ultra-processed diet.\n\nAnd yet, a paragraph later:\n\n> Lots of families in our study cooked almost every night, in part because it\n> was the cheapest option\n\nSo wait, hold on, is cooking more expensive or not? What are they eating\nthat's supposedly healthier but significantly more expensive?\n\n> the labor of shopping (often at multiple stores)\n\nWhat major grocery chain doesn't carry everything needed to make dinner?\n\n> This means making healthy food more affordable, but it also means addressing\n> the other challenges families face: for example, by guaranteeing workers a\n> living wage and fair working conditions and by investing in families through\n> universal free school lunch and subsidized child care, so that parents don't\n> feel like they're doing it all on their own.\n\nWait, hold on, what? I thought we were talking about food cooking barriers? I\ncan understand the connection to free school lunch (make sure kids get one\nsolid meal in them a day, if you can call government supplied cafeteria\nmaterials food), but, what?\n\n~~~\nwongarsu\nI guess part of the problem is comparing \"unhealthy\" processed foods with\ncooking \"healthy\" food?\n\nI can cook food for a whole day for about €1. It will mostly be potatoes and\nlack any nutrients, but it will be a lot cheaper than any processed food I\ncould buy. Or I can cook something with fresh ingredients and lots of fiber\nand nutrients, but those ingredients are expensive to buy in part because\nhandling time sensitive squishy stuff makes every step of the supply chain\nmore expensive.\n\n~~~\nlysium\nI agree. I want to add the rumor that you can live on potatoes alone. At least\none guy reported he did it for six weeks and the medical checks did not find\nany malnutrition. Don’t know how scientific that anecdote is, though.\n\n~~~\nMerrill\nPotatoes and milk was the diet that enabled the Irish population explosion\nprior to the famine.\n\n[https://www.dochara.com/the-irish/food-history/food-in-\nirela...](https://www.dochara.com/the-irish/food-history/food-in-\nireland-1600-1835/)\n\n\"The burgeoning population lived on a diet comprised mainly of potatoes and\nmilk, which if eaten in sufficient quantity is a surprisingly nutritious, if\nmonotonous, diet. It is also relatively tasty and easy to prepare.\"\n\n------\njavagram\nThis article is written as if you have to be able to make fancy “foodie” or\nrestaurant style meals to avoid ultra processed foods.\n\nWouldn’t cracking a can of beans and a bag of rice qualify as well? Our\nancestors had far less resources than us and still managed to make food\nwithout spaghetti-o cans or ramen packets.\n\nReferencing people living in hotel rooms or who don’t own a knife seems like a\ndistraction. Obviously being homeless is bad, but there are plenty of people\nwho can afford a $10 knife and have a stove in their residence who still eat\nultra processed diets and become obese.\n\n~~~\ntchaffee\n> can of beans\n\nThat's processed food. Perhaps healthier than other processed food, but not\nthe same as cooking beans from scratch.\n\n[https://www.superfoodly.com/are-canned-beans-\nhealthy/](https://www.superfoodly.com/are-canned-beans-healthy/)\n\nAnd cooking beans from scratch involves about 5 minutes of labor, including\nsoaking them overnight, throwing them in a pot, and setting an alarm for when\nthey are done cooking.\n\n~~~\nsnazz\nRinsing a can of beans decreases the sodium content significantly. Also, it\ncan be a bit of a lifestyle adjustment to think ahead on meals, which is why\ncanned and processed foods are popular in the first place.\n\n~~~\nmrob\nIn the UK it's easy to find unsalted canned beans. E.g., from the biggest\nsupermarket chain:\n\n[https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-\nGB/search?query=beans%20i...](https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-\nGB/search?query=beans%20in%20water)\n\n------\niamnothere\nI would like to see more efforts like this:\n\n* [https://efficiencyiseverything.com/calorie-per-dollar-list/](https://efficiencyiseverything.com/calorie-per-dollar-list/)\n\n* [https://efficiencyiseverything.com/The-Cookbook-v-1.4.pdf](https://efficiencyiseverything.com/The-Cookbook-v-1.4.pdf)\n\n* [https://efficiencyiseverything.com/Weekly_Groceries.pdf](https://efficiencyiseverything.com/Weekly_Groceries.pdf)\n\nHonestly, it is not that expensive to cook at home. The \"foodie\" industry\nfills the Internet with recipes that are complicated and expensive, and this\ncan definitely be a barrier for people who don't know how to cook. But once\nyou learn to avoid recipes with 10+ ingredients, it's actually less of a time\ncommitment than running out for fast food, as long as you have ingredients on\nhand.\n\nOnce you know what you like and you always have your staples available, it\nbecomes almost automatic. It does take time to learn this and develop your own\nsystem, however.\n\n~~~\noverkill28\nSeriously, it bugs me when people try to cook and start with a giant, very\nprecise recipe that has you using multiple pans and a laundry list of fresh\nherbs and spices. That might be fun for a special occasion but it's not a good\nway to introduce beginners to cooking. Salt, pepper, olive oil. Then go get\nany vegetables, grains and proteins that you like. Work your way up from\nthere.\n\n~~~\nAstralStorm\nOr don't and cook Korean. ;)\n\n(Their dishes are components tossed together mostly.)\n\n------\nduxup\nCooking is a skill and like any skill it takes time to both do it, and get\nbetter, and worse is when you fail it really sucks as you've spent a lot of\ntime and you're not happy with what you're eating.... that time, effort, and\nsuch is a huge barrier.\n\nA lot of people without a lot of money often don't have a huge amount of time\nto invest in other things either. Long before I had a better job I worked\nmultiple jobs, went to school, I ate in my car on the way to doing things\nmaybe 60 or 70% of the time. All in an effort to do things that would help me\nmove on. The idea of staying home and coking regularly (and spending extra\nmoney gathering up the food etc) was out of the question. Being poor is\nexhausting.\n\nHaving said that I'm not sure what this article means by \"cooking from\nscratch\". Would throwing some chicken, veggies, potatoes on the grill count?\n\nThere are a lot of varying levels of effort that to me would still count as\n\"cooking\" and not just warming some reprocessed stuff.\n\n~~~\nSketchySeaBeast\n> \"Lots of families in our study cooked almost every night, in part because it\n> was the cheapest option. But when their cupboards ran bare, they ate ramen\n> and hot dogs, not a pan of roast chicken and vegetables, as food gurus\n> recommend. Mothers said that if they had more money, they'd buy fresh fruit\n> for their kids, but this was just an occasional splurge, not an everyday\n> reality. Even the more financially stable middle-class mothers in our study\n> talked about making trade-offs between the foods they wanted to buy for\n> their families and the foods they felt they could afford.\"\n\nChicken, veggies and potatoes, as well as the grill, all cost money. The grill\nespecially. That's a large initial investment - yes, you can buy a cheap\ngrill, but then you have to buy the propane, and the food that comes off it\ngoing to be much harder to get palatable.\n\n~~~\nAlexTWithBeard\nMy grill is made of some bricks and a grate, both are picked up at the nearest\njunkyard.\n\nGetting free firewood requires some elbow grease though...\n\n~~~\nSketchySeaBeast\nYou've now limited the people who can follow your advice to people with a\nbackyard large enough to put a brick and grate grill in.\n\n~~~\nsaalweachter\nAnd with neighbors who won't report them to the HOA.\n\n------\nStavrosK\nSeeing these articles always illustrates how some things are out of the\nordinary in the US, but which other countries take for granted. In Greece, for\nexample, cooking a meal every day is the norm, as in many other countries I've\nbeen to.\n\nI wonder how the US society has \"forgotten\" this practice.\n\n~~~\nLoughla\nTime. Two working parents or one working single parent. Ideally just 40 hours\na week, but could be more than that, depending on career field.\n\nSchool for kids. After school if grades are struggling. Or after school if\nyou're in an 'at-risk' category (see single parent or low income)\n\nFormalized, scheduled, regimented sports/activities after school.\n\nFormalized 'family bonding' events at schools or community centers that are,\nfor all intents and purposes, required by societal pressures.\n\nAll of these things take time. Pre-made meals are an easy, convenient way to\nsave time.\n\n~~~\nStavrosK\nWe do all of that as well, except the \"family bonding\" events, so I don't\nthink that's it...\n\n~~~\nLoughla\nSample Size: 1\n\nNot meant to be snarky, but honestly, the one thing I've learned in life is\nthat just because I can do it, doesn't mean everyone else's life is the same.\n\n~~~\nStavrosK\nOne is not equal to zero, though. One data point is way, way more indicative\nof something than zero data points.\n\n~~~\nLoughla\nOkay?\n\nAgain, this is not intended to be snarky - if we're flexing anecdotal data, I\npersonally know 40 families for who (whom?) my statements are true.\n\n~~~\nStavrosK\nI don't understand what you mean. I'm saying your statements are true for\nGreeks as well, so it doesn't explain why Greeks cook and Americans don't.\n\n~~~\nLoughla\nOh baby did I read that wrong. I read that to mean my family instead of all of\nGreece.\n\nI do wonder what the difference is.\n\n~~~\nStavrosK\nOh, I see. I think maybe the boomers switched because of the convenience and\ndidn't mind the cost, and then society forgot how to cook? Whereas here eating\nout a lot is very expensive, so we just didn't do it.\n\n------\norev\nA regular oven is one of the best tools you have to make food from scratch,\nyet people seem to want to find every way to avoid using them. They try to use\ntoaster ovens, microwave ovens, convection ovens, air fryers, instant pots,\netc... when most of the time a regular oven can do the job. You can make a\nwhole meal with a few baking sheets and 45 minutes. You just put the stuff in\nand check on it once in a while. Take out the veg after 25 min. It doesn’t get\nmuch easier than that.\n\n~~~\nmrob\nI disagree. A regular oven is slow and inefficient because of the high thermal\nmass (taking a long time to heat to working temperature), and it's hard to\ncontrol.\n\nIMO, the most valuable cooking tool is the microwave oven. You can cook grains\n(pasta, rice, oatmeal etc.) and frozen vegetables, and you can reheat canned\nbeans. It's fast and flexible, and much cheaper and smaller than a regular\noven.\n\nSecond most valuable cooking tool is an electric pressure cooker. This lets\nyou cook dry beans (cheaper than canned), and some have a saute mode for when\nyou're making something fancy. It's better than the microwave for cooking\nlarge quantities of food, because you don't need to stir it for even heat\ndistribution. And you can even cook bread in a pressure cooker if you don't\nmind a soft crust.\n\n~~~\norev\nA microwave is indeed a very powerful kitchen tool, however almost nobody\nknows how to use it. People blast food at high power because they can’t wait 2\nmore minutes for a lower power cycle. To most people, a microwave’s primary\nfunction is to “cook” frozen/processed foods like TV dinners and burritos,\nwhich is exactly the type of food the OP article is talking about avoiding.\nYou also absolutely cannot cook meat in a microwave oven and expect it to come\nout palatable (and if you just expect people to not eat meat you’re out of\ntouch with reality).\n\nSo when talking about getting away from processed foods, it’s very helpful to\nalso get away from the microwave, because people have such a strong\nassociation of the two things.\n\nAn oven can do it all. Once you accept the concept and master it, you then\nstop looking for shortcuts in other gadgets.\n\n------\nmsluyter\nFor our family, time is the problem. I do almost all of the cooking, and --\nmuch like when estimating software development -- often tend to underestimate\nhow long even a fairly simple recipe will take. As I become a more experienced\ncook I become more efficient, but some nights we still end up eating quite\nlate. Add to that non-trivial time for dishes/cleanup, and indeed, this rings\ntrue:\n\n _The middle-class families in our study had more resources and more options\nbut felt completely overwhelmed by hectic schedules and competing demands that\nleft little time to cook._\n\nOne strategy is batch cooking in advance on weekends and freezing meals, but\nfor various reasons, we've been fairly poor at that.\n\nIncidentally, if you want to get better at cooking, I highly recommend Cook's\nIllustrated / America's Test Kitchen, in particular, their special edition\nmagazines. They provide recipes but also techniques and the science behind the\nrecipes.\n\nThis one in particular is a gold mine and is almost falling apart from heavy\nuse:\n\n[https://shop.americastestkitchen.com/special-issues/cook-\ns-i...](https://shop.americastestkitchen.com/special-issues/cook-s-\nillustrated-skillet-dinners-special-collector-s-edition.html)\n\n------\nchuckgreenman\nI recently changed how I eat, mostly chicken thighs, stir fry beef, rice and\ncanned / frozen vegetables depending on the deals for the week. Oatmeal for\nbreakfast.\n\nMeals are clocking in between $0.90 and $2.50 per serving, It's pretty cheap\nto eat unprocessed foods, it's just gets kind of repetitive. I feel much\nbetter than I did when I was eating processed stuff and my food budget is much\nsmaller.\n\n~~~\ntchaffee\n> it's just gets kind of repetitive.\n\nLook into herbs and other seasonings, and different cooking methods. Chinese\ncooking for example makes excellent use of them to make very different dishes\nfrom the same raw ingredients. A little bit of soy, Chinese cooking wine, and\nspring onions added to scrambled eggs is very different from steamed eggs for\nexample.\n\n------\nlqet\n> First, it takes money. Healthier diets — diets rich in fresh produce and\n> lean proteins — generally cost more.\n\n2.5 kilos of potatoes usually cost between 1-2 EUR here. As a single person,\nyou can live days on this. Compare this to a _single_ frozen pizza, which\nusually costs the same (1-2 EUR). 2kg of carrots cost 1.99 EUR in my local\nsupermarket, you can get it way cheaper at Aldi. A package of soup vegetables\n(consisting of 1-2 carrots, an onion, a quarter celery, leek and fresh\nparsley) is usually below 1 EUR and is (together with a can of tomatoes for\n0.39 EUR) enough to form the basis of (for example) a lentil stew (a 500g bad\nof dried lentils is 2 EUR, you usually only need 100g for a 2 person meal), or\na bolognese (add 250g of minced meat), or a potato stew (add the potatoes\nmentioned above), or... you don't even need the package of vegetable soups, as\nbuying these vegetables in larger amounts for an entire week is even cheaper.\n\nAnother example: a can of tomatoes (39 cents), some oil and a single onion\n(1kg of onions is usually around 80 cents) are enough to make a fresh tomato\nsauce. A 500g bag of pasta (say: Penne) costs 39 cent if you buy the cheap\nbrand. This is enough for 2 people, at under 50 cent per person.\n\nAnother example: spaghetti aglio e olio. You literally need nothing more than\nsome oil, pepper, spaghetti (39 cent), some garlic (3 bulbs are usually under\n1 EUR, so a single clove is maybe 4-5 cent and fresh parsley. You have a very\ntasty, fresh meal which can be cooked in 10 minutes, again for under 50 cents\nper person.\n\nAnother example: fresh bread. You need roughly 250g of flour (500g are around\n79 cent), water, salt (which is so cheap I won't even mention it) and dried\nyeast (under 30 cents). Fresh bread for 2 people, again for under 50 cents per\nperson. Add a fresh cucumber, 1-2 fresh tomatoes, salt, pepper, and you have a\ntasty evening meal for under 1 EUR per person.\n\nI could go on and on. I can get quite agitated if people claim that \"cooking\nfresh\" is much more expensive than processed food. I cooked fresh and daily\nfor years as a student, very often for 2 people, on a very limited budget, and\n2 EUR per day was usually more than enough.\n\nAll you need is practice.\n\n~~~\nminikites\n>2.5 kilos of potatoes usually cost between 1-2 EUR here. As a single person,\nyou can live days on this.\n\nSo poor people should live like it's 19th century Ireland? I'm sure that will\ncatch on.\n\n~~~\nlqet\nEating potatoes as the main side dish is living like it's 19th century\nIreland? Then what would be a 21st century side dish? Besides, I am quite sure\nthat eating only potatoes for an entire week is healthier than eating\nprocessed food for 7 days.\n\n~~~\nsseagull\nThe sentence that was quoted implied that you would eat only potatoes, not\njust as a side dish.\n\n~~~\nlqet\nTrue, but even then my statement would be correct, as I have written above: I\nam sure that eating potatoes for an entire week is healthier than eating\nprocessed food for an entire week.\n\n------\nbluedino\n>> they ate an average of 508 calories more per day and gained an average of 2\npounds over the two-week period, providing evidence that there may be\nsomething about processed food that drives people to overeat and gain weight.\n\nHas the author tried eating a caloric excess of lean meats and non-fried, non-\nstarch vegetables?\n\nIt's damn near impossible. Throw some cheese, bread, fried potatoes, mayo, and\nsugary drinks in there and you'll do it without blinking an eye. But not with\nchicken, green beans, and other 'healthy foods'\n\n~~~\nminikites\n>lean meats and non-fried, non-starch vegetables\n\nThat's more difficult than you think:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert)\n\n>In 2010, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that\n23.5 million Americans live in a food desert, meaning that they live more than\none mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas, and more than 10 miles\nfrom a supermarket in rural areas.[7] Food deserts lack whole food providers\nwho supply fresh protein sources (such as poultry, fish and meats) along with\nwhole food such as fresh fruits and vegetables, and instead provide processed\nand sugar- and fat-laden foods in convenience stores.\n\n------\nsureaboutthis\nA year ago, my son told me he was spending more money than we thought he\nshould on groceries. So my wife and I decided to keep track of how much we\nspend on eating. This includes the very rare times we eat at restaurants,\nwhich might include a burger joint if we're stuck on the road somewhere, and\nhigh end restaurants for birthdays and anniversary.\n\nI do all the cooking. I rarely use anything from a box or a can. That is, I\nmake my own pasta and tomato sauce and pizza dough and sourdough bread, for\nexample. I also use higher end recipes, not sloppy joe dinners, including\nsteaks and chicken and I more often buy spices like parsley and oregano fresh\nand chop them myself and not dried in a jar.\n\nThe numbers came in, interestingly enough, at $187 each week on average every\ntime. This is for my wife and myself alone plus (cause my wife said so) about\n$15 a week for our two dogs cause, you know, they're family, too.\n\nFor reasons I am not positive about, our weekly expenditure for the last three\nmonths has risen to $209 a week. It had appeared to me that items cost more\nthan in the past but I was unsure till I ran the numbers just a couple of days\nago. Have grocery prices gone up?\n\nIn any case, cooking well designed meals takes an effort. Once you find\nrecipes you like and get used to making them, it's easier, but it will still\ntake one to two hours for every meal without rushing. I work out of my house\nand two major grocery stores down the street so that makes things easier.\n\nEDIT: I should add that I am in the Midwest USA.\n\n------\ni_don_t_know\nFive years ago on NPR:\n\n[https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/08/01/337141837/ch...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/08/01/337141837/cheap-\neats-cookbook-shows-how-to-eat-well-on-a-food-stamp-budget)\n\n(Cheap Eats: Cookbook Shows How To Eat Well On A Food Stamp Budget)\n\n~~~\nduxup\nI don't know if you're pointing out a contradiction or not but I'll say I\ndon't think those two articles are necessarily a contradiction.\n\nI hate the \"Ditching processed foods won't be easy\" article as it doesn't\ndefine anything.\n\nLots of thing are possible, there is information out there, but still might\nnot be \"easy\".\n\n~~~\ni_don_t_know\nIt started out as a contradiction because I thought the argument was that it's\nexpensive. But I guess I should have read the article first. As usual it's\nmore complicated.\n\nOther factors are that it takes effort (it's work to some people after an\nalready potentially long work day) and time (to shop, to cook and for everyone\nto be at home at the same time). And I suspect those are bigger barriers than\njust the financials.\n\n------\nAstralStorm\nBah. Hard thing to avoid is processed meat, as cooking meat right takes a tiny\nbit of skill and gear.\n\nAnything else, unimportant, super easy to make and generally available, except\nin literal food deserts.\n\n\"Pot roast?! Who do you think we are, MILLIONAIRES?\"\n\nThe worst part is probably peeling. That takes serious effort. Then washing\ndishes. Then obviously shopping which has to be batched or mail in for\nefficiency.\n\nIf you're rich enough, there are a whole range of ways to save time, from\ndishwashers, bigger selection of dishes, timers on hardware, through buying\npeeled or lightly prepared food such as frozen (not exactly ready to eat,\nthat's expensive and uncontrollable) through mail shopping or hiring someone\nto shop for you. Finally, outsourcing cooking completely to someone competent,\nthe most expensive way.\n\n------\nMerrill\nThere is hardly anything easier than microwaving a potato and microwaving\nfrozen vegetables, which are just as nutritious as fresh and a lot cheaper on\nsale.\n\nAdd a piece of protein fried in a pan and you are done.\n\nRice cookers have also become inexpensive and foolproof to use.\n\n------\nmark_l_watson\nTwo years ago I went on the ‘eat no processed foods’ Fuhrman diet and it had\nan amazingly positive effect on my health. I realize that I am just one data\npoint but this is my personal experience.\n\nBecause we moved for a job I eventually started eating processed food and got\noff of the diet. Within a few months, I physically felt less good, like I was\nbefore before the Fuhrman diet. Again, I am just one data point, but for me\nthe positive effects of the diet were not permanent.\n\nNow my wife and I are talking about both going on the Fuhrman diet. She did\nnot join me before, but likes the idea of all fresh cooking, no processed\nfoods.\n\n~~~\nSketchySeaBeast\nNo one is arguing against having a higher quality, non-processed diet. The\narticle is pointing out all the impediments to try to achieve that, especially\nfocusing on the lower and lower-middle class. It takes time, coordination,\nmoney, and energy to cook right, and that's really hard for a lot of people.\n\n~~~\nsaalweachter\nAnd hell, some people will suck at it. There have always been bad cooks.\n\n~~~\ntreerock\nI've always though it would make sense to outsource home style cooking to\nspecialists who can cook in bulk much cheaper (and often higher quality) than\nindividuals can cook at home.\n\nI'm surprised that Polish 'Milk Bar'[1] type places, aren't more common.\n\n[1]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_mleczny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_mleczny)\n\n~~~\nSketchySeaBeast\nThe problem now is that they will have to use salt and sugar to make up on\ntaste.\n\n~~~\ntreerock\nWhy? Is bulk/restaurant produced food inherently more bland than home cooked?\n\n~~~\nSketchySeaBeast\nNo, but it's made more tasty with those items. The milk bars seem to have been\nnamed that way for a reason - did they make extensive use of cream?\n\n~~~\ntreerock\nApparently yeah.\n\n> Although the typical bar mleczny had a menu based on dairy items, these\n> establishments generally also served other, non-dairy traditional Polish\n> dishes as well.\n\nBut when I visited, it was more like a canteen that served quality, home-style\nmeals.\n\n------\nsaturdaysaint\nHealthy meal kits have been great \"training wheels\" for my wife and I to make\nless processed meals. Specifically, Hello Fresh meals typically have a major\nveggie/whole food emphasis. The biggest revelation is that roasting veggies\nwith a little bit of olive oil and a little salt is an almost can't miss crowd\npleaser that elevates every meal. Cherry tomatoes, green beans, sweet\npotatoes, asparagus, whatever. We try to get a roastable item or two every\ntime we stop at a store.\n\n------\nsct202\nIt's kind of interesting that they named their book after pressure cookers,\nwhich address a lot of the problems of not having working appliances, living\nin motels, and are relatively affordable compared to a gas utility hookup.\nInstant Pots and knock-offs are <$50 now and are easy enough to use with just\na standard outlet.\n\n------\npmlnr\n\\- dice onions\n\n\\- dice chicken\n\n\\- mix the onions with salt, pepper, paprika powder\n\n\\- put the mix in a pan\n\n\\- fry it on a small amount of oil until the onion gets transparent\n\n\\- add the chicken\n\n\\- add a tiny amount of water\n\n\\- let it boil for ~30 mins\n\nSure, lots of barriers.\n\n~~~\nSketchySeaBeast\nYou've made one \"meal\", which is chicken and onions, and takes about an hour\nto prepare it (cutting, sauteing, boiling).\n\n~~~\nAstralStorm\nOnce you have a timer, it takes 10 minutes. It is scalable too. No need to\nwatch it cook.\n\nAnd you can prepare it ahead of time then reheat...\n\n------\ntaneq\nTo cook from scratch, you must first invent the universe.\n\n~~~\nSketchySeaBeast\nI got all the way to evolution but screwed up somewhere in the precambrian.\nNow I have a race of hyper-intelligent lizardmen living in my basement.\nNeedless to say, the soufflé is ruined.\n\n~~~\ntaneq\nBut I bet the Komodo-steaks are to die for!\n\n------\ndvfjsdhgfv\n> the unprocessed diet they fed participants cost 40% more than the ultra-\n> processed diet. And lots of American families don't have more money to spend\n> on food.\n\nThis fragment made me so sad. if the above is true, it basically means many\npeople in the USA don't have enough money to eat real food and have to live on\nprocessed junk instead.\n\n~~~\nsnazz\nType “food desert” into your favorite search engine.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRust, Julia, and Go: Disruptive New Programming Languages - acangiano\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qCH7Y2rc_w\n======\nremify\nFrom the description :\n\n> designed to keep the best of the legacy languages but are re-engineered from\n> the ground up to meet the challenges of the modern wired world.\n\nSo they're not really disruptive...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: is devving on OSX legit *nix experience? - delinquentme\n\nSo I'm going back and forth about the OS for my new dev machine. Will I be getting good experience with *nix using the \"just works\" OSX.<p>That being said I'm guessing the inital answer is \"No its not\"\n======\ntom9729\nI developed on Linux for 5-6 years before switching over to OS X on my main\nmachine.\n\nInstalling xcode (3 is free, 4 costs a small fee) gives you GCC4 on the\ncommand line, plus some other tools/libs. Note: I've never actually used the\nxcode IDE, I use Emacs.\n\nYou can also install a rootless X11 server and run X applications in it. Wine\non mac actually uses this, and I've been using it to play Homeworld 2.\n\nMost of the cross-platforms IDEs that you would probably be using (if you're\nthat kind of guy) in Linux are available on mac. Take a look at QtCreator,\nEclipse, Netbeans.\n\nMac comes with Java and Python installed. If you do C/C++ development the only\nreal differences are that some libraries are installed as \"frameworks\" instead\nof in the usual /usr/lib (eg. you link with -framework OpenGL). Also the\ndynamic libraries are dylib's instead of so's (and consequently,\nDYLD_LIBRARY_PATH).\n\nMac calls multiple desktops \"spaces\", and they work pretty much the same as in\nLinux/Gnome.\n\nGrep/awk/sed/etc all work pretty much the same as in Linux, although I think\nthey are the BSD versions instead (whatever the reason, they are a little bit\nmore picky about command line options).\n\nMac's Terminal.app compares favorably with Gnome's terminal (including tabs,\ntransparency) and has some nice looking built-in themes.\n\nAnything else, just ask. :) If you've used Ubuntu recently, switching to Mac\nmay give you deja-vu.\n\n~~~\ntom9729\nAhhh sorry to reply to myself, but the biggest thing that hurt me switching to\nmac was that I became very used to selecting text and middle-clicking to paste\nin Linux. On mac, middle clicking does something silly like pop up the\ndashboard. Frustrating indeed.\n\n~~~\nshinratdr\n> On mac, middle clicking does something silly like pop up the dashboard.\n> Frustrating indeed.\n\nNo it doesn't. It does nothing in 99% of situations unless you have customized\nit, although middle clicking a link does open a new tab.\n\n------\nBrianHorblit\nI have a couple of friends who switched to the Mac to get away from WindBlows\nand Cygwin when developing, while retaining a good every-day platform with\ncool commercial software available. They have never looked back to WindBlows,\nor felt like they should be using Linux.\n\nI tried to dump Windows by moving to Linux for my every day OS, but found\ndoing some simple non-dev stuff (synching my PDA properly) too painful.Windows\nwas bad enough that I took the leap and bought a Mac, and have loved it for\ndevelopment as well. I have done mostly command line dev, and IDE-oriented\ndev, and both are great on the Mac. The advantage over Linux is not cost, of\ncourse, but the everyday \"It just works\" experience and the availability of\ncommercial software like Photoshop. And it is plenty Unixy, if you don't mind\nthe fact that things like user accounts aren't managed just like Linux or base\nBSD.\n\nI think it is the best of both worlds and would highly recommend it.\n\nBrian\n\n------\nkstenerud\nIf you want the unix experience, stay in the shell. Use vim or emacs and\nbecome a passionate follower of either of those religions (but not both;\nnobody likes a cleverdick).\n\nActually, it's hard to do powerful things in OSX without using shell commands,\njust like it's hard to do in any graphical environment. But once you drop to\nshell, it's all unix.\n\nThat being said, use the right tool for the job. If you're writing mac or iOS\nsoftware, use Xcode.\n\n~~~\ndelinquentme\nI appreciate your response.\n\nSo no iOS.. Rails =]\n\nAnd ill probs use textmate?\n\nNow what about some of the equivalent operations to GREP and AWK? Or are those\n*nix based..thus you'd use them as I would regularly?\n\n..and lasty a tool that I use constantly:\n\nIs there any function for multiple desktop support?\n\n------\ntobylane\nIt's nix plus a bit more. I'm not aware of anything the GUI does in Linux that\nit doesn't do in Mac. Some workflows will be different, such as xcodebuild,\nbut everything else like svn, git, cp, mv, make, sudo, nano etc is the same.\nYou can do without Xcode, cdto and a Cocoa-only text editor, but don't put\nyourself through it.\n\n------\napi\nIf you use the command line tools like make, gcc, scripts, autoconf, etc.,\nthen it's almost exactly like developing on Linux/Unix.\n\nIf you use Xcode, then not so much... though it's still more like Linux/Unix\nthan Windows.\n\n~~~\ndelinquentme\nso my fellow developers work on OSX ( I'd ask them but they've only ever used\nOSX ) They run textmate / console for the majority of their work, I'm thinking\nthats where I'll be...\n\nSo then its a \"Yes\" sans all the usual matching of drivers / software to mesh\nwith the hardware\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLet “QUIPU” organise your research so you spend more time to explore content - biyanisuraj\nhttp://quipu.tilda.ws/\n======\nbiyanisuraj\nThe very best startup ideas tend to be something the founders themselves want,\nthat they can build, and that few others realise are worth doing\n\nRegister your interest for early Beta access at -\n[http://quipu.tilda.ws/](http://quipu.tilda.ws/)\n\nI want to make QUIPU so that knowledge seekers, like myself, can have all the\nexplored content organised, connected & displayed in real time.\n\nNo more time spent on indexing, trying to remember where that statistic came\nfrom, or keeping 50+ tabs open to avoid dropping a line of inquiry.\n\nClear representations of research information can be created from the\n“digitally exhaustive information” we create when combined with powerful\nartificial intelligence to do the organising.\n\nPlease us know what you think about it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMicrosoft Office 15 to Support Facebook Chat, productivity drops? - brackin\nhttp://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/next_version_of_microsoft_office_to_ship_with_face.php\n\n======\nbrackin\nI guess you could say in a way Google Docs has always integrated with Facebook\nas it's in a browser heh\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Anybody still into ES5 + traditional Javascript dev workflow? Why? - lewisjoe\nClient Javascript development has drastically changed in the last 5-7 years. ES6+ Standards, module bundlers, Managing dependencies with NPM, Typescript &amp; such modern elements in the toolchain is becoming the de-facto.<p>Are there any companies, projects&#x2F;products, indie devs out there still sticking to plain old JS development without the modern tools?<p>Are there any reasons to not switch to the modern workflow?\n======\navoidwork\ni've avoided it entirely with my latest work project; no transpile, or\nunneeded tools... just awk & eslint.\n\nthere are no* \"de-facto standards\", just people doing what they think is\npopular 'cause they read about it on the net.\n\n------\ngfrryjfcryjry\nMe, because of KISS.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nA Continuous Delivery Setup - gsluthra\nhttp://arojgeorge.ghost.io/a-continuous-delivery-example/\n\n======\ngsluthra\nThe setup done here is very impressive. Automation with Docker, RPM, Chef,\nTestKitchen, Tests for Chef Scripts, Go, and the works.\n\n------\njdrago999\nThanks for posting this.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPattern-matching is as real in tech media as it is in Silicon Valley - met3\nhttp://betabeat.com/2013/02/race-tech-media-silicon-valley-pattern-matching-jamelle-bouie-jason-calacanis/\n\n======\nrjknight\n\"Twitter attempted to have a conversation about race and the tech industry\nyesterday. The loudest voices? White men on either side of the argument\nshouting each other down.\"\n\nThe end of this para links to Buzzfeed, which adds nothing except a lot of\ncrap advertising to this Storify: <http://storify.com/mattbuchanan/how-to-not-\nbe-racist>\n\nActually I'm not convinced that Jason Calcanis is as wrong as he looks in the\nlinked story. He's kinda right that if you want to be a top tech writer, you\ncan probably get there by starting your own blog, building a following, and\nthen being rewarded with a column on <insert major tech site here>. And this\nprocess will probably work just as well for a person of any given ethnicity.\n\nThe real problem isn't that awesome ethnic minority tech writers can't\nsucceed, it's that there's an awful lot of mediocre white male tech writers,\nand relatively few mediocre black/female ones. This is presumably because a\nlot of tech writers aren't really judged on their merits; their editors need\nto employ some people to write about technology, and they're making 'safe'\nchoices by going for the white guy who fits the pattern of 'tech person'.\n\n------\nsixbrx\nWarning: not about pattern matching as found in functional languages.\nHopefully those discussing race in tech can latch onto another term.\n\n[Edit: yeah I missed the word \"Media\" in the title which would have been a\nhint...]\n\n~~~\nnkt5\nThat's the term VCs use. What would you suggest?\n\n------\npwang\n> That might also be the reason why, when we read about how black people use\n> Twitter, it’s so rarely from their own perspective.\n\nIsn't this whole framing that \"black people\" use Twitter differently than\n\"white people\" or \"Chinese people\" part of the inherent dysfunction in these\ndiscussions?\n\nI wish civic discourse in America would grow up and talk about the issue of\nsocioeconomic class as a first-class concern (no pun intended), instead of\noverloading it on race.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDo you think this iOS Game idea will be fun? I do - FileNimbus\nhttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1699170558/make-catch-crisis-reach-its-full-potential\n\n======\nnickynix\nIt looks generic and already claims to adopt the freemium model. It almost\nlooks like something Ray Wenderlich (a great blog, by the way) would have made\nto teach people how to develop a game for iOS.\n\nHowever, I could be wrong. The gameplay could be completely unique, but there\nis no demo video to demonstrate that fact; all we have to rely on is the\nauthor's word.\n\nIt doesn't look like something I would pay for, especially given that it is\nstill in the design stage. It might work as a paid-tutorial if all the code is\nreleased (gameplay code, assets, detailed tutorials, IAP code, etc.), but in\nits current state it looks like a Chinese-developed clone.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDropbox sends email about credit card expiration to non-paid users - bdcravens\n\n8:34pm (ET)<p>Subject: Your credit card is about to expire!<p>Your credit card is about to expire! To keep your Dropbox Pro subscription, please make sure that your billing information is up to date. If we are unable to bill you, your Pro plan will automatically be canceled after 2 weeks (all your files will still be safe).<p>Visit to update your information.<p>As a reminder, Dropbox Pro gives you lots of great benefits:\nTons of space for all your files (100, 200, or 500 GB)\nFaster support from the Dropbox team\n10x the bandwidth for sharing links\nKeep over 20,000 photos and memories<p>- The Dropbox Team<p><i>Ignored it, thinking it was phishing attempt</i><p>11:47pm (ET)<p>Subject: Email Sent in Error - Re: Your credit card is about to expire!<p>Earlier today you may have received an email from Dropbox stating that your credit card is about to expire. Though the email did in fact come from Dropbox, it was sent to you in error. We recognize that you’re not a paid Dropbox user, and there haven’t been any changes to your account.<p>We apologize for any confusion we may have caused.<p>Sincerely, \nThe Dropbox Team\n======\nc0deporn\nDidn't contain any sensitive information, so not a huge deal in my opinion.\nObviously someone needs to pay attention though.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAnnouncing the First Art of Computer Programming EBooks - gholap\nhttp://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news.html\n\n======\ndang\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9825421](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9825421)\n\n------\nmauricioc\nThis announcement is on Knuth's website since June 2014 at least [0]. Did I\nmiss an update or something like that?\n\n[0] [https://web.archive.org/web/20140620191712/http://www-cs-\nfac...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140620191712/http://www-cs-\nfaculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news.html)\n\n~~~\nengi_nerd\n\"Here then, ta-da, is the current draft of pre-fascicle 6a (318 pages). This\nis revision 1, dated 08 July 2015.\"\n\n------\nscriptdevil\nIsn't the AoCP series a little too dense to be read as an ebook? It isn't\nreally organized as a reference and requires one to pore over it for a long\ntime. Not having a mobi/epub also rules out several good ebook readers. Are\nthere good ebook readers that have e-ink but still manage to render PDFs well?\nMy Kindle Paperwhite is trash at PDFs.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nYahoo Announces Non-Exclusive Search Agreement With Google - ideas101\nhttp://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/12/yahoo-announces-non-exclusive-search-agreement-with-google/\n\n======\ndmix\nAs much as monopolies hurt business and innovation I set two benefits to this:\n\n1) As a publisher using Adsense I have much more relevant ads with more\nadvertisers flocking to one supplier.\n\n2) As an advertiser I have access to a nearly unlimited amount of channels in\nalmost every market.\n\nI'm sure one day we might look back at this as a negative thing but for now I\nstill hold respect for Google.\n\n------\npopat\nyahoo made a smart move - problem creators now have to calm down for a while -\nit will give some time to breath and move their strategy as a success ... kind\nof wait and watch.\n\n~~~\nideas101\nas pg once said that if enough time and freedom is give to jerry yang to run\nthe company the way he wants then he can prove his worth - i think the time\nhas come that he proves himself and get back the reputation and business as\nearlier ... good luck to him.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA friend of mine gave me this link, what does it mean and is it CQC material? - LeInception\nhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1KYzuxSAKBbQhfVP200_4QdWMXYlUA2FwP339Sfilw3Y/edit?usp=sharing\n======\ngus_massa\n> \"tY1WKT...EEdLVw==\"\n\nPretty sure it's base64!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow: Bfore.me want to send a handwritten christmas card to world, join them - replayzero\nhttp://christmas.bfore.me\n\n======\nbenwerd\nI'm not sure it's any more personal to have your card be handwritten by a\nstranger.\n\nFor friends and family, a card or a personal letter is really worth taking the\ntime over. For bonus points, you could even make the card yourself.\n\n~~~\nreplayzero\nHi Ben, We are not trying to be insincere, we want to do something fun for\neveryone :)\n\n------\ngobengo\nYou say 'fun and meaningful'. I hear 'unnecessary waste of paper'.\n\nYou're capitalizing on something that is actually harmful at the scope of the\nplanet and race.\n\n------\ntaskstrike\nThe design looks great.\n\nHowever, handwritten makes me think that you can \"draw\" your own message via\nthe mouse rather than typing. I was only allowed to type.\n\n~~~\nreplayzero\nIt would be great if you could give us a share on twitter - This is an epic\nquest, the more the merrier :)\n\n------\njstanley\nWhat is the point in this?\n\n~~~\nreplayzero\nI have a web start up that enables people to send handwritten greeting cards\nwithout an address. We have made it as cheap and easy as possible to help\npeople send hand written cards to each other - It's a fun and meaningful way\nto connect with people. Everyone loves christmas cards right?\n\n~~~\nSamuel_Michon\nThere's no privacy statement on the Xmas page, you might want to add one.\nThere is a link to one on the main website. [1]\n\nThe statement mentions the product containing ads and sharing information with\nad networks. Nowhere else do I see anything about that on your web site.\n\nYou also want to use the addresses later on, not just to send one free card.\nCustomers should know that.\n\n _\"We use information held about you in the following ways: […] to provide you\nwith information, products or services that you request from us or which we\nfeel may interest you, where you have consented to be contacted for such\npurposes\"_\n\nAnd if I don't give out the address for the person I'd like you to send a card\nto, you'll make him sign up too:\n\n _\"We will mail your card as soon as your friend updates their address\ninformation at Bfore.\"_\n\nSo, thanks for the offer but I'll pass.\n\n[1] <http://www.bfore.me/privacy>\n\n~~~\ntomsinger\nSome parts are also irrelevant:\n\n\"to provide aggregate statistical information about site visitors and users to\nrecruiters (such as the number of CVs on the database, or the number of\nvisitors to the site) and for other lawful purposes. We provide this\ninformation to customers, advertisers, suppliers and other reputable third\nparties on the basis that it will not include any information that enables\nthem to identify individuals.\"\n\nWhich appears to have been lifted from Total Jobs\n<http://www.totaljobs.com/privacy-policy>\n\n~~~\nreplayzero\nWe have updated the page with the privacy policy.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nReclaiming Software Engineering (2010) - akkartik\nhttp://www.zerobanana.com/essays/reclaiming-software-engineering\n======\ntwic\n> Yet so long as we are developing software within a social context, where the\n> finished artefact has users other than its designers, we can scarcely escape\n> the conclusion that what we are doing is engineering.\n\nThis conclusion is far from inexorable.\n\nThere are kinds of making other than engineering. Carpentry is not\nengineering. Cooking is not engineering. Gardening is not engineering. Sewing\nis not engineering.\n\nAll of these things involve making artefacts for users other than their\ndesigners, within a social context no less. All of them require specialist\nknowledge and tools, involve the application of judgment learned from years of\nexperience, and give rise to communities of practice which codify their agreed\nknowledge in books. They even have formal certifications.\n\nBefore you can declare that making software is (or can be) engineering, you\nhave to be able to explain why those things aren't.\n\nMy tentative theory is that engineering has rigorous ways to check whether a\ndesign will work before it is manufactured, and even before it is drawn in\ndetail. A civil engineer can use known formulae to check if a bridge span of\ngiven dimensions is even possible before sitting down to design it. A chemical\nengineer can use known formula to check if a reaction is plausible. A\nmechanical engineer might need to draw a detailed design, but can then check\nit rigorously with finite element methods. When we make software, in practice,\nwe have to construct the software and test the artefact, hoping that our tests\nare adequate. We can't do meaningful checks on the design itself, let alone on\nany sketch which prefigures the design.\n\n~~~\ngroovy2shoes\n> _When we make software, in practice, we have to construct the software and\n> test the artefact, hoping that our tests are adequate. We can 't do\n> meaningful checks on the design itself, let alone on any sketch which\n> prefigures the design._\n\nBut we _can_ do meaningful checks on the design beforehand, and we _can_\ncreate high-level sketches of a design. We have tools from computability\ntheory, complexity theory, automata theory, graph theory, etc. We have tools\nfor formal specification and verification. We have tools and principles for\ndesigning software components and their interactions. We have experiences from\npast projects that we can draw upon. We can do research, and we can readily\ndiscuss issues with other engineers all over the world.\n\nI (and I suspect that I'm far from unique in this) do these things in the\nearly stages of every project. My boss will come to me with a list of\nrequirements, and _some_ requirement(s) will invariably be intractable in\nterms of computational complexity, and I'll have to sit down with him and work\non a compromise (most often, it's a case of the client trying to describe the\nsolution they invision rather than the problem they need solved, and once\nwe've determined the rationale for a requirement, we can come up with an\nalternative that fits the bill easily enough).\n\nAfter all of the requirements are both computationally possible _and_\ntractable, I come up with a design sketch to illustrate the architecture of\nthe application at a high level. I identify the major components and how they\nrelate to each other, and I identify the flow of data for each her case and\nwhat happens to it at each step. I describe what extension points we'll need\nin order to accommodate the addition of functionality that didn't make the cut\nfor the first iteration, but that we already know to be needed in a future\niteration.\n\n------\nlolc\nSeeing source code as design documents is very helpful. Every design has\nerrors, and these errors may or may not cause failure during construction and\nuse. So the focus must be on controlling the errors, keeping them within\nsafety margins.\n\n\"Breaking the build\" has become a really cheap mistake these days.\n\n------\ntwic\n> Pencils and paperclips break all the time. Even in areas where safety of\n> life is an issue - popularly assumed to be the sole province of engineers -\n> failures still occur absent any negligence on the part of engineers.\n\nReliability of software is not like reliability of a machine, or building.\n\nMachines and buildings are made of matter, and so have uncontrollable\nvariation, and wear out over time. Everything made of matter fails eventually;\nit's part of the engineer's job to trade off reliability and cost.\n\nSoftware is made of bits. The only reason it fails (cosmic rays and other\nnegligible intrusions of matter aside) is defects in design.\n\nDo you really get mechanical or civil engineers saying \"yeah, we expect there\nare a few fatal flaws in the design, that's just how it goes, we'll build it\nanyway and ship a fix if customers complain\"? Apart from on Kickstarter, I\nmean.\n\n~~~\nzb\n(Author here)\n\n> Do you really get mechanical or civil engineers saying \"yeah, we expect\n> there are a few fatal flaws in the design, that's just how it goes, we'll\n> build it anyway and ship a fix if customers complain\"?\n\nHeck yes! (Well, not _fatal_ flaws.) Any product you can think of that has\nbeen popular enough to get a second production run probably has had some\ndesign flaws corrected. Some of which were probably already known by the time\nthat the first version shipped, and some of which were probably only\ndiscovered after real users had it in their hands for a while.\n\n> it's part of the engineer's job to trade off reliability and cost.\n\nCorrect. But the cost includes not only the cost of the artefact but also the\ncost of the design. The difference with software is that design costs dominate\nin a way that isn't often the case with physical artefacts.\n\n------\nktRolster\nI would suggest that a reasonable proxy-measure for how good a code base is\nwould be to look at how long the bug list is (of course, this assumes the bug\nlist hasn't been gamed). Is the bug list ever-growing, with no hope of being\nfixed and cleared? The code quality is awful.\n\nIs the bug list empty, with bugs fixed rather quickly once they are reported?\nThen the code quality is probably good, because that is hard to reasonably\nachieve with a moderately-sized (or larger) lousy codebase.\n\n~~~\ngravypod\nIf there is an ever growing bug list and the list is being worked through is\nthe software still bad? Could there just not be many issues compounded with\nthe design that must be worked out?\n\n~~~\ndigi_owl\nOr it could be that large projects inherently gather bugs, no matter how well,\nor poorly, it was designed from the outset.\n\nJWZ seems to be of the notion that it is better to hammer away at a known\ncodebase than keep trying to reset the clock, while certain big name FOSS\nprojects seems to reset the clock at every generational changing of the guard.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Coming up with ideas? - jwdunne\n\nI&#x27;d like to build a few small but useful apps to build experience and a portfolio outside of my workplace, an area shamefully neglected.<p>I&#x27;m stuck at the first hurdle and I haven&#x27;t got a clue where to start or what to build first!<p>Do you have any tips for coming up with ideas?\n======\nmc_hammer\ni usually just get the ideas while im working, from things that suck\n\nneed to write a regex for css parsing... why isnt there a regex generator yet\n\nneed to debug my javascript... why isnt there a repl?\n\nwriting windows 10 hello world, <button xmlspec123ABCUnstandard=\"{{\nMicrosoft.Windows.XAML.WinForms.Imaging.Image.NewBitmapFromFilestream(filestream)\n}}\" /> ... wow mixing xml with code sucks why doesnt someone make a good\ntemplate language\n\n(edit: actually, why dont compilers have enough logic to at least try to\ninclude the right library so I dont have to type shit like use Namespace\nWindows.XAML.Winforms.Imaging 10 times for every file)\n\netc!\n\nanyway\n\nanother good idea is to get your ideas from books, say a productivity book,\nthe guy recommends keeping a schedule? make a scheduling app with the features\nyou need, the author recommends using timers? make a timer app with the\nfeatures you need. this is actually what i did. heck why not even sell it on\niphone for a few bucks afterwords using phonegap.\n\n------\ningenieros\n[https://www.udacity.com/course/product-design--\nud509](https://www.udacity.com/course/product-design--ud509)\n\nStart with Lesson 1: Ideation and validation to get those creative juices\nflowing.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Advice for those getting started in the Web Industry? - danw\n\nIf you were starting out in the web industry again, what advice would you give yourself?<p>Or if you're just getting started, what would you like to know?\n======\ndanw\nI'd have given myself three tips:\n\n    \n    \n      * Learn constantly. Read books, blog, tweets, attend events and network.\n      * Build things. Apply what you've learnt and constantly build things. Either at work or as personal projects. Don't worry if the things you built are crap or pointless or un-monetizable.\n      * Share. Constantly share what you've learnt and built. Help others. Join the community and participate. You could be the best developer ever but it won't matter if nobody knows about you and your work.\n\n------\nvaksel\nStop being a perfectionist, build something and get it out there as soon as\npossible. Don't waste time making sure everything is perfect. Better to lose a\nfew people who get annoyed, than lose the 2-3 months w/o any users\n\n------\nblender\nAlthough the first rule of a startup is build something people want (after PG)\nmore and more that something should solve some \"serious\" problem (after\nO'Reilly).\n\nPlease - no more social networks!\n\nCheers\n\n------\nnoodle\n\n      * learn while/from doing\n      * continuously learn \n      * avoid planning paralysis\n      * don't be afraid to scrap chunks of code or whole projects.\n\n~~~\ntruebosko\nAgreed. Keep learning new things. Don't ever stop, but don't feel rushed if\nyou feel you're behind. Someone out there is always going to be better and\nsmarter then you at what you are doing\n\nEngage people that are smarter then you (It's why I read Hacker News)\n\n------\nyaj\nDo -> Read -> Repeat\n\n------\nram1024\nkeep abreast of emerging tech and trends. stuff moves fast and it's very easy\nto fall behind.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nI spoke at our PTA about games - ssclafani\nhttp://penny-arcade.com/news/post/2015/04/08/i-spoke-at-our-pta-about-games\n======\npo\nI feel like if you're a tech person with a child this is a great example of an\n_extremely_ valuable public service you can perform. People out there are\nreally looking for guidance and it's extremely hard to know what to do if\nyou're not into tech. This article itself is a great FAQ to get started.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Prisma – Turn Any Database into a GraphQL API - sorenbs\nhttps://www.prisma.io/?q=a\n======\nsorenbs\nSøren, Co-Founder of Prisma here!\n\nWe have raised $4.5M from KP, but Prisma stays open source. Happy to answer\nany questions about Prisma, GraphQL and databases :-)\n\n~~~\nfiatjaf\nOk, I have question about GraphQL in general: is there any tool that supports\noffline-first use-cases with GraphQL? I mean storing the data in a local\ndatabase in the browser, then syncing it back to the server.\n\n~~~\ntango12\nIt's not exactly what you want, but I think realm comes closest to that kind\nof an offering.\n\n[https://realm.io/](https://realm.io/) [https://realm.io/blog/realm-scales-to-\nthe-web/](https://realm.io/blog/realm-scales-to-the-web/)\n\n~~~\nnslog\nAppSync does this as well:\n[https://aws.amazon.com/appsync/](https://aws.amazon.com/appsync/)\n\n------\nthedangler\nAny? We use MS SQL at my work, I didn't see that its supported. Will you\nsupport it?\n\n------\ngdi2290\nThis is great news for GraphQL adoption. I also really like the landing page\ndesign\n\n~~~\nfiatjaf\nI don't like it that much, but the explanatory drawing/schema is wonderful.\nI've tried to understand where exactly Prisma fitted before, but couldn't\nbefore watching it.\n\n------\nyodon\nLooks very cool - How do you see permissions/roles/authenticated access being\nmanaged for APIs where say most gets are public but most puts and a few gets\nare private? (I apologize if I missed that in the intro)\n\n~~~\nmurdockq\nI have done this in a node app that acts as the intermediate / proxy between\nyour frontend and the prisma service. Infact you can even run it as a\nserverless endpoint just fine to keep it lightweight.\n\n~~~\nyodon\nIs that whitelisting routes? I’m sure there’s a good solution, I’m just not\nsure how to make sure I’ve got the full surface area properly covered (which\nnaively feels tricky to do with GraphQL but again I’m still trying to\nunderstand what are the best practices)\n\n~~~\nmurdockq\nI have had good results with [https://github.com/maticzav/graphql-\nshield](https://github.com/maticzav/graphql-shield) but I am also keeping an\neye on [https://github.com/prismagraphql/graphql-\nmiddleware](https://github.com/prismagraphql/graphql-middleware) as it is\nwritten by the prisma team but isn't ready for production just yet.\n\n------\ncrubier\nI love Prisma and use it daily for the backend of our apps\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nArmies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software - kalvin\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/science/05legal.html\n======\nfleitz\nI've written software to replace this type of thing, in my case it was\nclassifying communications as to whether they were attorney-client privileged\nor not. It has to be cheaper, it was about a month of my time. And about a\nweek working with a high priced lawyer to write the ruleset and confirm it\ncaught everything and was excluding all the right stuff. With that software\nthey've essentially got their best lawyer going through every piece of\ncommunication.\n\nIt has to be cheaper, I can't imaging paying someone with a law degree to go\nthrough all of that. And now their lawyers are freed up to do something more\nuseful.\n\n~~~\nsandGorgon\nis it possible for you to mention, how you went about doing this ? technology\nstack, algorithmic approach, etc.\n\n~~~\nfleitz\nTries for text search, that's really the only thing I learned is that if your\nsearching through a body of text for 40,000 odd keyword you need to turn the\ndocument in to a trie. But that's something you'd learn as soon as you read\nany of the research on the topic.\n\nIt's basically a programming language for text search that's stored in a\ndatabase. If I had to do it again I'd base if off a parser-generator and use a\nDSL, possibly using git for versioning.\n\nI ended up basically storing an AST in the db and then creating an object for\neach node in the decision tree. It was written in perl but that was more of a\nconstraint than a choice.\n\n------\nkalvin\nThings I didn't know (no idea how accurate they are, if anyone has more\ndetail, chime in):\n\nOn the Enron Corpus:\n\n\"He bought a copy of the database for $10,000 and made it freely available to\nacademic and corporate researchers. Since then, it has become the foundation\nof a wealth of new science — and its value has endured, since privacy\nconstraints usually keep large collections of e-mail out of reach. “It’s made\na massive difference in the research community,” Dr. McCallum said.\n\nThe Enron Corpus has led to a better understanding of how language is used and\nhow social networks function, and it has improved efforts to uncover social\ngroups based on e-mail communication.\"\n\nOn future law employment:\n\nQuantifying the employment impact of these new technologies is difficult. Mike\nLynch, the founder of Autonomy, is convinced that “legal is a sector that will\nlikely employ fewer, not more, people in the U.S. in the future.” He estimated\nthat the shift from manual document discovery to e-discovery would lead to a\nmanpower reduction in which one lawyer would suffice for work that once\nrequired 500 and that the newest generation of software, which can detect\nduplicates and find clusters of important documents on a particular topic,\ncould cut the head count by another 50 percent.\n\nThe computers seem to be good at their new jobs. Mr. Herr, the former chemical\ncompany lawyer, used e-discovery software to reanalyze work his company’s\nlawyers did in the 1980s and ’90s. His human colleagues had been only 60\npercent accurate, he found.\n\n“Think about how much money had been spent to be slightly better than a coin\ntoss,” he said.\n\n~~~\nanigbrowl\nIt's mainly accurate. My wife works for a major vendor in this sector, and I'm\na pre-law student with a hacking background, knowing more about this\ntechnology than I can say here. However, discovery is just one part of the\nlegal industry. Lynch's numbers are exaggerated, though his basic points are\ncorrect. Don't generalize too much from this.\n\n~~~\nsunchild\nCorrect. This has little to no effect on transaction or corporate practice.\nSome of these vendors claim to handle M&A due diligence. Having been through\none or two mergers/sales myself, I am convinced that no expert system in the\nnear term will be able to replace humans in that area. Unlike discovery, which\nis focused on a readily-searchable data set like email, the job of piecing\ntogether a company's assets and contract obligations is extremely complex\nbusiness, where the bottleneck is often the mish-mash of paper records and\nbroken contract management tools, and nuanced judgment calls about critical\nasset dispositions must be made every few hours over the course of months and\nmonths. I'm not saying there isn't an obvious, eventual technology solution to\nthese problems – just that it isn't anywhere near as mature as litigation\nsupport, discovery, and patent practice.\n\n------\nstretchwithme\n“Over the long run we find things for people to do. The harder question is,\ndoes changing technology always lead to better jobs? The answer is no.”\n\nOverall, I have to disagree. Letting machines do all the mind-numbingly boring\nwork leaves the rest for human beings. And we pay a lot less for the final\nproducts, leaving resources for new jobs, which will also have the boring\nparts automated.\n\nDisagree? Hire a hundred people to do all your drudgery. Then pretend you're\npaying them hardly anything. I submit your life will suck less.\n\n~~~\nhackinthebochs\nYou're assuming most human beings are capable of doing knowledge-based work. I\ndon't think this is true. The reason knowledge based workers make so much is\nprecisely because the skills necessary to perform it are rarer than manual\nlabor. Fully automating manual labor means a large class of people (possibly a\nmajority) will not have any marketable skills from which to make a living.\n\nFurthermore, there are much fewer knowledge based jobs necessary to run an\neconomy. At the end of the day, most knowledge work is a one-off thing. Once\nthe program is written, it can be duplicated at no cost. Once the drug is\ndiscovered, that knowledge is spread for no cost. Of course there are many\nexceptions to this, but this is a trend. There is necessarily orders of\nmagnitude fewer knowledge based jobs necessary to run an economy than labor\njobs.\n\nWhen the automation revolution comes we're going to need a new basis for the\neconomy because the current one just doesn't fit in that world.\n\n~~~\nreemrevnivek\nYou seem to be assuming that knowledge-based workers can deplete the corpus of\nknowledge work.\n\nI don't think that's the case; once one program is written, another will be\nneeded, once one drug is discovered, there will be still more diseases to cure\nand more side effects to eliminate.\n\nI'd even go so far as to say that knowledge work is growing and will continue\nto grow - The more you know, the more you know you don't know, right? There\nwasn't a need for working on computers or airplanes as short as a century ago.\nNow how many people are employed in those fields?\n\n~~~\nhackinthebochs\nMy assumption is that growth in knowledge work is dependent on there being\ngrowth in disposable income for the population. In my scenario where a large\nportion of the population has no marketable skills and therefore can't find a\njob, this effectively puts a cap on the amount of knowledge work the economy\ncan sustain. See my reply to stretchwithme for a further explanation of my\nthoughts on this scenario.\n\n~~~\nstretchwithme\nThe growth in knowledge is dependent on how much brain power there is.\nEverything we do is subject to improvement by anyone that cares to analyze and\ninnovate.\n\nIn the scenarios of those against technology 50 years ago, they also could not\nsee how the economy would evolve or how people would adapt. But that lack of\nvision isn't proof that they were right.\n\n------\ncrux_\nWe're rapidly approaching (have almost certainly passed) the point where it\nwould be feasible for the average worker to do far less than 40 hours a week.\n\nNotwithstanding the cultural & structural reasons we can't get there from\nhere, that is.\n\nBut at some point in the future, most of what we now call \"work\" will not be\ndone by people.\n\nThis has the potential to be incredibly liberating, if by then we will have\nfound ways to decouple a persons ability to meet basic economic necessities\nfrom their ability to find a job.\n\n------\nregularfry\n\"The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.\" - William\nGibson.\n\n------\nbhousel\nFor those that don't know, this is the model by which electronic discovery is\ngenerally conducted today: <http://edrm.net/>\n\nIt's over a billion dollar market and there are plenty of enterprisey vendors\nthat have positioned themselves into every box on that EDRM chart. Lawfirms\nand corporate counsel will happily pay for this stuff because the amounts at\nstake in litigation are so huge.\n\n~~~\nkovar\nActually, the EDRM model is only one model, and it is rapidly falling by the\nwayside. For example, ECA - early case assessment - is becoming a very\nimportant part of ediscovery but you can't fit ECA into the EDRM as the EDRM\nis essentially linear and doesn't allow for loops.\n\n~~~\nbhousel\nWha? EDRM has loops built into it..\n\nI admit that my understanding may be off, but it seems like ECA is just using\nthe same EDRM model and iterating faster upfront. I feel that it's more of a\nvendor buzzword than a new way of conducting electronic discovery.\n\n~~~\nkovar\nThe industry is full of buzzwords, hype, and snakeoil, alas. ECA is one\nexample, and I'd argue that the EDRM is another. The EDRM was good a few years\nago but hasn't really evolved to reflect current, and developing practices.\n\nECA describes a part of the process that was hard to do in the early days\nbecause the tools didn't support the faster iteration upfront. As people\nrealized the value of that iteration, the tools improved and the term gained\npower and marketing presence.\n\nIn other words, I agree with you.\n\n------\nkovar\nOne of the things the article doesn't address is how do we determine the\naccuracy of these tools and processes?\n\nSelf-serving answer -\n[http://integriography.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/building-\nvirt...](http://integriography.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/building-virtual-\ncrime-scenes-for-the-ediscovery-world/)\n\nIt is a real problem and not one we're trying to create. There was a lot of\ndiscussion at Legal Tech this year about the need to determine the accuracy of\nediscovery processes, and in particular, review processes.\n\n------\ndjm\nI think we can expect much more of this sort of thing. Technology always\nremoves humans from the work force and we now have the right set of resources\n- reliable, cheap computers and a large enough pool of skilled programmers -\nto do to office workers with software what we did to farm works with tractors\nand auto workers with robots.\n\n~~~\ngfodor\nThere is still a big piece missing -- the methods for translating business\nrules used by these people into workable software is error-prone, cumbersome,\nand ad-hoc.\n\n~~~\nUnseelie\nThat really doesn't sound like a huge problem.\n\nThe method for building robotic arms was full of early errors in robotic arm\nprograms(and likely still is), but the programmers identified those errors and\nfixed them, over and over again. For that matter, programming in general is\nerror prone. Bugfixing happens.\n\nBusinesses which can hire ten men to oversee a buggy program rather than\ntwenty men to do the actual work will do so, and over time, the program will\nget better and need less overseers. Its an iterative process, and one that\ndoesn't need perfect programs to bootstrap.\n\n------\nbane\nOne of the difficulties in the legal analytics space is that there's not much\nincentive for lawyers to spend less time on a case. In fact it's the opposite,\nthe more billable hours they can charge for their work, the better. Speeding\nup their process is not necessarily hitting their pain point.\n\n~~~\nkerben\nConsider the firm or lawyer being compensated on a contingency fee basis --\nthey must cover all the expenses and overhead related to prosecuting the case,\nincluding the salaries for attorneys and paralegals working the case -- and if\nthey lose they get nothing. Since their reward for winning the case is fixed,\nat usually 1/3, reducing the time and cost they expend on a case, particularly\nduring e-discovery (which can consume quite a bit of time and manpower), is\nboth valuable and in their best interests.\n\n~~~\nbane\nAny idea how common this is?\n\n~~~\njakewalker\nVery common for plaintiffs lawyers in many types of cases (consumer class\naction (sort of), personal injury, among many others). Almost impossible to\nhave a contingency fee for a defendant. And often the defendants are the ones\nwith the burden of producing (and first reviewing) a high level of documents.\n\n~~~\nippisl\nIn the last few years , there was in the legal industry for fixed-fee\narrangements(probably because of the financial crisis).\n\nDoes a similar business model change happens in the defense part?\n\n------\ndougabug\nFinally, here is a technology I can get with. Most of the web entrepreneurs\nseem to embrace a \"Field of Dreams\" breed of business plan: build it and they\nwill come. And when they do come - advertise, upsell, follow, track and slice\nand dice the hell out of them! Thanks, but no thanks.\n\nBut saving millions of lawyer hours a year? Realizing substantial savings on\nsignificant business costs will always prove valuable. Win for society, win\nfor technology, win for capitalists. While I wouldn't say that lawyers are\nparasites, reducing the proportion of lawyer cost strikes me as highly\npositive for the economy.\n\n~~~\nkovar\nIf you literally want to get behind it, let me know ... I can throw in \"hold\nlawyers, SaaS providers, and vendors accountable for the quality of their\nofferings in a court of law.\"\n\n------\njasonostrander\nI wonder if something like this could help solve the patent troll problem. As\nI see it, there are two conditions that allow patent trolls to function:\n\n1\\. The ease of obtaining frivolous patents. 2\\. The cost of litigating patent\ndisputes exceeds the cost of settling.\n\nThe software industry has focused primarily on the first point, but if we\ncould reduce the costs of litigating, it may well reduce the financial\nbenefits of being a patent troll.\n\nI'm thinking of something like IBM's Watson being used to find prior art,\nauto-filing court motions, etc. Of course, it all comes down to what some jury\nin Texas thinks so I'm probably just dreaming.\n\n------\nMatthewDP\nThis thing reads like a press release... Sponsored post?\n\n~~~\nkovar\nI know several of the firms quoted pretty well. I don't think they sponsored\nit, I think they just have very good PR departments.\n\n------\nwisty\nI read somewhere that it's easier to spot a lie in written communication than\nfrom listening to a tape. People are magnificent at bluffing, if you listen to\nthe tone of their voice, but when you look at the transcript they become a lot\nmore transparent.\n\n------\nstretchwithme\nThere are probably all kinds of potential jobs in the real world that are way\ntoo expensive to have a human do and that computers are better at or will be\nsoon.\n\nLike gold mining. I'm sure there are rivers in Canada that haven't been fully\nexplored. Send in the drones!\n\n------\nfredBuddemeyer\nthis technology wont hurt legal employment because it enables so many more\nlawsuits. every document on earth holds potential tort value that can be\nexploited now. after discovery its still a manual process to litigate so the\nnumber of attorneys should rise.\n\n~~~\nkovar\nEnhancing the quality of automated review tools will significantly reduce the\nnumber of lawyers employed doing sweatshop style review.\n\nJust because a technology might enable more lawsuits (which I am not certain\nis the case here) doesn't mean more lawsuits will be filed. Oftentimes,\nfinding evidence causes parties to settle rather than go to court.\n\nFurther, the existing courts can only handle so many cases per year. You can't\nsuddenly up the throughput on the court system.\n\n------\nsabat\n\"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.\" --William Shakespeare,\nHenry VI\n\nMaybe this is coming true in an unexpected way.\n\n~~~\nsabat\nHmm. So either you don't get the not-that-nuanced reference, or you just look\nfor any opportunity to vote people down. I used to take downvotes more\nseriously -- but less and less so these days.\n\n------\nzephjc\nI think we are behind schedule for Back to the Future 2's 2015 prediction of\nthe abolition of all lawyers.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHacker News Daily (direct link) - cperciva\nhttp://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/\n\n======\nachew22\nFirst, let me say that I really like the idea of this site. You already have\nthe tools built to scrape HN every 5 min so why not expand on this idea. It\nwould be very interesting to create something that scrapes HN and then\nprovides the N most popular articles (by vote) for the day where N is defined\nin the URL. It would also be interesting to scrape the \"New\" section and then\nhave a special section that has more stringent than the HN front page. A sort\nof \"HN Plus\" (forgive my reference to Hulu). Personally I like that HN\ntrickles (sometimes torrentially) in through the day. I will admit that\nsometimes I feel overwhelmed by the content but it is always a good break from\nwhatever I'm doing. Maybe that should be an \"Ask PG\" of my own but the idea\nhas been rolling around in my head for some time to do something similar. I'm\nglad you're a lot less lazy than me and doing something about it. Is there any\nway you would be willing to put the source up on GitHub?\n\n~~~\ncperciva\n_provides the N most popular articles (by vote) for the day where N is defined\nin the URL_\n\nAside from the \"don't include links which were on a previous Daily Hacker\nNews\", this is exactly what I do. The top-10 list for YYYY-MM-DD is at\n<http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/YYYY-MM-DD.html>\n\n_s there any way you would be willing to put the source up on GitHub?_\n\nI'd prefer not to do that, simply because it would encourage people to add\nextra load to the HN web server -- besides which, the code is extremely\ntrivial and I'm sure anyone who wants to could replicate it easily. :-)\n\n~~~\nalmost\nMaybe you could provide the data as a JSON feed? Then others can do their\nthing without hurting the HN servers. I imagine the bandwidth to serve them\nwould be pretty small (or maybe I underestimate the hunger for HN JSON feeds\n:p)\n\nI'm sure you have better things to do with your time, but it would be cool and\nmaybe would lead to some other cool stuff...\n\n------\netm117\nI love the idea as I agree it is difficult to keep in the loop during the day\nwith the volume of posts.\n\nOne quick request though, would it be possible in the RSS feed to send the\nentire post and not just the first ~125 characters?\n\n------\ncperciva\nDiscussion about the annoucement (I'm not sure which people will vote for, the\nsite or the announcement of the site):\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1514037>\n\nEDIT: Looks like almost all of the discussion is over in the other thread.\n\n~~~\njacquesm\n> I'm not sure which people will vote for, the site or the announcement of the\n> site\n\nApparently both :)\n\n~~~\ncperciva\nYeah, I wasn't expecting that. I figured that once one had received a\nsignificant number of votes people would just pile onto that one.\n\n(I considered only submitting the blog post, but I figured that if I didn't do\nit someone else would submit the direct link, and by submitting both at once\nat least I could have links pointing back and forth.)\n\n------\nsmitjel\nI give him an \"A\" for effort but the higher the vote does not always equal the\nmost interesting. Take yesterday for example...the old spice twitter feed.\nWtf?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow I Outsourced My Online Dating - jcsnv\nhttps://josecasanova.com/blog/how-i-outsourced-my-online-dating/\n======\nwrrr\nDid you see the 2nd date again?\n\n~~~\njcsnv\nYup!\n\n------\nCypher\nOutsource swipe right.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: I made a site that calculates the market price of items on ebay. - locksley\nhttp://www.getmarketprice.com\n\n======\nlocksley\nI made this in rails over a couple of weekends after learning how to code late\nlast year. The inspiration came from wanting to buy an iPhone 5 from ebay but\nnot knowing what a fair price should be. After a writing a script to calculate\nthis for myself, I thought it could be useful for others too and abstracted it\ninto its current incarnation.\n\nAny feedback would be fantastic, especially on UX!\n\n------\nbyoung2\nI keep getting an error:\n\n _Application Error\n\nAn error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please\ntry again in a few moments.\n\nIf you are the application owner, check your logs for details._\n\n~~~\nlocksley\nSorry! It should be ok now.\n\n~~~\npavel_lishin\nNow it's throwing a 500 error that says: \"Sorry, we stuffed up. Please try\nagain.\"\n\n<http://i.imgur.com/zhNDB.png>\n\n------\ntoki5\n/results?utf8=✓\n\nThis made me laugh aloud.\n\n------\nklous\nCan you dive more into the technical details of this, eg. are you using the\nebay API or are you scraping the data?\n\n~~~\nlocksley\nYeah sure, it's a scraper. The histogram is then built out of the 200 results\nretrieved from 'completed listings', minus the ones that weren't sold. The X/Y\nscatter plot is built from the 200 upcoming results, intended as a way to find\ngood bargains after you know the median/mean price.\n\n~~~\nklous\nAnd the scraper is using a \"logged in\" ebay account, correct? Because I\nbelieve to view completed listings you need to be logged in.\n\n------\nPezmc\nPerhaps implement a cache for the results? It already seems to be being hit\nquite hard!\n\n------\nbdfh42\nSadly just reporting an error when I tried.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIs Your Tribe Holding You Down? - mikecuesta\nhttp://www.copyblogger.com/two-tribes/\n\n======\nomouse\nGah, marketing people.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nOn moving from CouchDB to Riak - franckcuny\nhttp://labs.linkfluence.net/nosql/2011/03/07/moving_from_couchdb_to_riak.html\n\n======\nsmanek\nI went through a length evaluation process of Riak recently, and came away\nwith a generally positive impression.\n\nFirst of all, it's beautifully engineered, as long as you just need a KV store\nor a graph DB (I wasn't in love with the MapReduce stuff, but that's another\nstory). None of the hassle that Hadoop/Hbase have about some nodes being\nspecial (HBase Master, HDFS Namenode, etc). Also, no running multiple daemons\nper server (e.g., no distinction between regionserver and datanode daemons,\nlike HBase). Easy config files, simple HTTP API (so you can just throw an off\nthe shelf load balancer like HAProxy in front of it), and lots of little\nthings that just make life easier.\n\nI also really like how it's very explicit about the CAP tradeoffs it makes -\nwith powerful conflict resolution available for when consistency has been\nsacrificed (instead of trying to sweep the issue under the rug, like many\nother distributed dbs do).\n\nHowever, there are a few downsides.\n\nFirst, as mentioned in the article, with the default backend (a kv-store\ncalled 'bitcask') all the keys per node have to fit in memory (and each key\nhas, on the order of, 20 bits of overhead, IIRC). Annoyingly, this fact isn't\nnoted anywhere in the Riak documentation that I saw (although, there is a\nwork-around by using the InnoDB backed). This won't matter too much for many\nuse cases, but it can be pretty painful if you're not expecting it.\n\nSecond, you can guard against data loss by specifying N copies of each piece\nof data are stored on your cluster. However, under some conditions\n(<https://issues.basho.com/show_bug.cgi?id=228>), the data may be replicated\non less than N distinct nodes. So, the failure of less than N nodes could\nresult in dataloss.\n\nFinally, to the best of my knowledge, the largest Riak clusters in production\nare around 60 nodes, while Hadoop has 2000 node clusters running (e.g., FB) in\nproduction. Perfectly acceptable for most users, but just one more thing to\nworry about if you're planning to roll out a large cluster (more potential for\n'unknown unknowns', so to speak).\n\n~~~\not\n> (and each key has, on the order of, 20 bits of overhead, IIRC)\n\n20 _bits_? Really? Less than an integer? Or did you mean bytes? (Not\nnitpicking here, I'm just curious)\n\n~~~\npkulak\n20 bits can support a million records. As an average, per node or cluster, it\nseems reasonable to me.\n\n~~~\nDevilboy\nOnly a million records? That's waaaay too small.\n\n------\nrnewson\nDescribing Bigcouch as a bit of hack while admitting you've not used it seems\na little unfair. That said, it's very valuable to hear how other people see\nour product.\n\nWithout doing a full-on sales pitch (I am not a salesman and do not portray\none on TV), I should say that Bigcouch adds a lot of desired features to\nCouchDB, notably scaling beyond a single machine and sharding (which supports\nvery large databases). We run several clusters of Bigcouch nodes in production\nand have done for some time, it's a thrill for me personally to see a\ndistributed database take a real pounding and keep on trucking.\n\nI've been meaning to try Riak myself, so you've inspired me to finally pull\ndown the code and give it a proper examination.\n\n~~~\nbiot\nMy reading was that they found CouchDB to have problems and adding complexity\non top of a problematic base wasn't an appealing proposition for them.\n\n~~~\nrnewson\nMy counterpoint is that Cloudant test and harden the CouchDB that we embed,\nit's not, for various reasons, a verbatim copy of CouchDB itself.\n\nThat said, vanilla CouchDB is quite stable. While there are always bugs, I\ndon't recognize the system that the original poster is describing.\n\n~~~\ncdavid\nWhat kind of data do you record (number of documents, average size of\ndocument) ? We have to use couchdb at my current job, and I have encoutered\nall those issues for even moderate size (replication failing more often than @\n~30-40 Gb). I wonder if that's an environment issue.\n\n~~~\ntimanglade\nThe current CouchDB replicator is notoriously inadequate for the larger\ndatasets or transfers across datacenters. A complete rewrite has been\ncompleted and will be merged in CouchDB & BigCouch soon.\n\n------\nsiculars\nRe. File size growth in Couch:\n\nCouch files are written in an append only fashion so that all operations are\nconsidered appends, such as updates. The main upside is durability meaning the\nfile is always readable and never left in an odd state. As noted, however,\nthis has the downside of requiring compaction to reclaim disk space. You\nshould note that if you are using bitcask, the default backend for riak, you\nwill have the same problem that you had with couch as bitcask is also an aol\n(append only log) (aka. wol - write only log). Bitcask will also need\ncompaction but as of the latest release there are various knobs to tweak\nregarding when that is queued up and when it is executed.\n\nRe. database being one file:\n\nI'm not exactly sure why couch uses one file but I suspect it is due to the\nuse of b-trees internally. Would love to hear more from someone more\nexperienced in couch. Riak splits its data amongst many files. Specifically\none file (or 'cask' when using the default bitcask backend) per 'vnode'\n(virtual node, 64 by default). The drawback here is that you need to ensure\nthat your environment has enough open file descriptors to service requests.\n\n~~~\ndavisp\nThe main two reasons that CouchDB doesn't use multiple files per database are\nsystem limits and increased complexity.\n\nCouchDB has a bit of an alternative design in that it accepts that people\nmight be running a large number of databases on a single node. I don't\nremember the exact numbers but I think we've heard of deploys using 10-100K\n(small) db's on a single node.\n\nAs to complexity, with a single file, there's no magical fsync dance to\ncoordinate when committing data to disk. Its not unpossible, its just more\ncomplex.\n\nIts not out of the question that CouchDB will move to using multiple files per\ndatabase, but as its open source, the biggest road block so far is that no\none's needed it badly enough to implement it.\n\n~~~\nrch\nI've noticed that interesting things tend to show up in bigcouch before\ncouchdb. So, if I were starting a couchdb based project today, it would be\nwith cloudant.\n\n------\nphilwise\n\"We store a lot of data... 2TB\"\n\nGiven that a pair of 2TB drives is less than $250 on ebuyer right now, 2TB of\ndata is not 'big data'. You could comfortably stuff that in any decent\ndatabase (SQL Server for example, I'm sure PostgreSQL would work too).\n\nJust because a tiny machine on slicehost isn't big enough doesn't mean that\nyour data won't fit in a normal database.\n\n~~~\ndefroost\n> You could comfortably stuff that in any decent database (SQL Server for\n> example, I'm sure PostgreSQL would work too).\n\nYou may have noticed that the OP's requirements were: * a REST interface *\nsharding The costs of SQL Server are unbelievably high, and which you can do\nhorizontal partitioning and sharding, Riak is designed to be used in this\nmanner. On the other hand, re: SQL Server according to this article the\n\"horizontal partitioning feature requires Enterprise or Datacenter licenses\nwhich have a retail price of 27,495 and 54,990 per processor.\" I think the OP\nmade a wise choice. <http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/02/SQL-Sharding>\n\n~~~\nJoachimSchipper\nYou don't necessarily need to shard if the data fits comfortably on a standard\ndisk... and the parent did mention PostgreSQL.\n\n~~~\ngrncdr\nSharding (for free) on PostgreSQL is surprisingly painful\n\n~~~\nJoachimSchipper\nI thought people just built sharding into the application level when using\nMySQL stuff - I'd imagine the same thing works just fine for PostgreSQL. Or\nwere you talking about something else?\n\n~~~\nprodigal_erik\nAnyone who volunteers for app level sharding is going to find themselves deep\nin Special Hell. Step one is to rewrite all your queries so they no longer\nexpect really exotic use cases like \"SELECT ... WHERE\" to actually work until\nyou somehow figure out which nodes to run them on (and if it was supposed to\nbe a join between entities crossing shards, good luck with that). Step two is\nto find working XA-aware drivers (haha). For step three you need a knife and a\ngoat....\n\nApparently really high-end clustered databases solve this problem correctly,\ni.e., the schema is extended to specify where any record can be found, the\ncluster uses that to work out a minimally-stupid query plan, and record->shard\nmapping becomes merely a tuning decision. I've never had the opportunity to\nwork with one. But I'm not bitter.\n\n~~~\nJoachimSchipper\nActually, if you use MySQL as a \"great hashtable in the sky (cloud)\", it's not\nall that much more painful to shard things. That said, if you do that you're\nalready in a state of sin/pain...\n\n------\nrch\nAnyone planning to store significant quantities of data across multiple\ndistinct nodes should have a look at the Disco Distributed File System:\n\n<http://discoproject.org/doc/start/ddfs.html>\n\nIt handles 'data distribution, replication, persistence, addressing and\naccess' quite well.\n\n------\nelectrum\n> We rolled out a cluster of 5 nodes and 1024 partitions. Each node has 8gig\n> of memories, 3x1Tb disk in RAID5.\n\nThis hardware configuration doesn't make sense. 8 gigabytes of memory is\npathetically small today. 32 gigs is basically standard, with 64 gigs costing\nlittle extra. RAID 5 with only three disks will have horrible performance. A\nsingle machine with 32/64 gigs and 12-16 disks in a better RAID configuration\nshould perform better at a lower operational cost.\n\n~~~\ntimanglade\nDon’t forget what node separation gets you in terms of availability and\npartition-tolerance. But I do agree that the 8gig, RAID5 and 3-disk specs seem\nodd. It'd be useful to get some additional details from Franck or the Basho\nfolks as to why they chose those.\n\n------\ndavidhollander\nWhat I disliked about Riak is that although at first glance it appears you can\nnamespace key\\values into multiple buckets you can't. The whole database is\nreally only a single bucket and if you want to run a map\\reduce it's always\nover every key in the database!\n\nNow you can simply increase complexity and create multiple Riak clusters for\ndifferent data schemes and treat it as a replication tool. However, their in\nmemory bitcask map-reduce was actually slower than a hard-drive map-reduce on\ntext JSON files in a folder. Where each file was individually opened, read\nfrom disk, encoded, and closed in a loop (with nothing held in memory). Which\nwas rather scary!\n\nTheir replication scheme appears to be a pretty genuine copy of Amazon Dynamo\nthough (consistent hashing ring, quorum, merkle trees) which is nice.\n\n~~~\naphyr\nTo my knowledge, there is no such thing as an in-memory bitcask backend for\nRiak. Could you have been using regular Bitcask (keeps values on disk in log-\nstructured files) or the ETS memory backend?\n\n~~~\ndavidhollander\nBitcask is an in memory datastore because it keeps a copy of the entire\ndataset in memory. 4GB of data==4GB of memory>trivial amount of memory used by\na file descriptor.\n\n> _keeps values on disk in log-structured files_\n\nOf course it does. Log files are the easiest way to make an in memory\ndatastructure persistant. Logs are generally used for periodically dropping\nfast writes as a backup in case you want to reload the memory datastructure in\nthe future. Read requests are structured and served from the in memory\ndatastructure and do not require a disk access.\n\nThe fact that you have something using all your RAM that should require 0 disk\naccesses for reads NOT substantially beating something performing thousands of\ndisk accesses is a FUBAR situation.\n\n~~~\naphyr\n_Bitcask is an in memory datastore because it keeps a copy of the entire\ndataset in memory._\n\nBegging your pardon, but I think you may be misunderstanding bitcask. The\nbitcask keydir is stored in memory, but the values are stored on disk. The\nkeydir is a hash mapping each key to a file ID and the offset/size in that\nfile at which the value is stored. The only time _values_ are stored in memory\non is when the kernel's fs cache or readahead buffer provide them.\n\n<http://downloads.basho.com/papers/bitcask-intro.pdf>\n\nSince a filesystem directory listing is likely held by your OS cache, you\nshould see similar performance between bitcask and files on disk: an in-memory\nlookup to obtain the inode/offset, and a disk seek+read.\n\nRiak will be substantially slower than directly using bitcask, however,\nbecause you may need to talk over the network to as many as N nodes, wait for\nall their responses, and compute the resultant vclock/metadata, and then\nserialize it for HTTP (huge TCP overhead) or protocol buffers (relatively\nfast). If you're running on a single machine, then you may incur additional\ntime for that machine to run what would normally be distributed over three\nnodes. Without knowing more about your benchmark, however, it's difficult to\nsay.\n\n~~~\ndavidhollander\n> _you may be misunderstanding bitcask_\n\nYes I was, I apologize. It must have been MongoDB that required total data be\nno larger than amount of RAM.\n\nThe test was run using protocol buffers and Python client on the same computer\ntesting reads vs. a naive map reduce. The naive map reduce was storing 4,000\nfiles in a folder, treating the filename as the key and parsing the text file\ncontents from JSON into a python dictionary to see if an attribute matches.\nBasically I figure doing a loop of thousands of blocking disk accesses from a\nlaptop harddrive on a standard filesystem buffering nothing in memory should\n_always_ be much slower than _any_ database.\n\nThis was last year so maybe Riak's performance has increased since then. I'd\nbe interested if TokyoCabinet was added as a backend.\n\n~~~\naphyr\nRiak, by default, uses a replication value of three. Your single test machine\nhas to do ~three times the work, so you should expect slower performance here.\n(I'm oversimplifying somewhat.)\n\nYou'll see significantly improved performance on a linear test (in my informal\ntesting, 3-4x speedups) by adding an extra two nodes. _Parallelized_ tests\npretty much scale linearly with nodes.\n\nIn practice, I've found Riak to be slightly slower than MySQL. Direct\nreads/writes tend to be fast, but JSON parsing can bite you and\ndenormalization requires more writes. The major advantage is that the Riak\nsystem can scale linearly with nodes, and that it can fail in predictable and\nresolvable ways.\n\nAs an example, the feed system I'm currently building on Riak will survive a\ntotal network partition and allow full reads and writes from every node with\nno data lost. Everything is automatically merged when the partition ends. The\nvclock-tagged multi-value functionality of Riak is exceptionally powerful when\nyou want to design these types of systems, and is, in my mind, worth the\nperformance hit and additional design complexity for certain classes of\nproblems.\n\n _This was last year so maybe Riak's performance has increased since then. I'd\nbe interested if TokyoCabinet was added as a backend._\n\nThere are also InnoDB and multiple in-memory backends, which may provide\nperformance characteristics more in line with what you are looking for.\n\n------\nrb2k_\nIt's great to see that I'm not the only person having problem with CouchDB's\ncompaction failing when dealing with larger datasets.\n\nI had the same exact experience during my master's thesis (hn:\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2022192> ) and this was one of the\nreasons why CouchDB didn't seem a good solution for a dataset that has a high\nnumber of updates.\n\n------\ntillk\nI'm a little let down by the detail of this blog post.\n\nFor anyone who cares: we've had 6x as many documents (as linkfluence) in a\nsingle CouchDB instane before we moved to Cloudant. We now have over 360\nmillion documents on Cloudant.\n\nOur database is very write intense, lots of new documents, little updates to\nthe actual documents and a lot of reads of the documents in between. We also\nhave a couple larger views to aggregate the data for our users.\n\nThe ride with CouchDB has been bumpy at times, but not at the 'scale' where\nlinkfluence is at.\n\n------\nkarmi\n> Each modification generates a new version of the document. (...) we don’t\n> need it, and there’s no way to disable it (...)\n\nNote that there's a `_revs_limit` setting available:\n<[http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/HTTP_database_API>](http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/HTTP_database_API>).\nIt's very beneficial for a use case like yours.\n\n(Though I've seen CouchDB performing rather poorly when taking _really_ heavy\nread/write load or compacting big datasets, on occasion.)\n\n------\ndavidw\nHrm... with N \"nosql\" things, there's great potential for writing. Redis vs\nRiak. Cassandra to CouchDB. Why I gave up on Mongo and moved to Mnesia. And so\non and so forth;-)\n\n~~~\npjscott\nYour comment applies to any job for which there are multiple competing tools.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGoogle’s 18th Birthday - ForFreedom\nhttps://www.google.com/doodles/googles-18th-birthday\n======\nmattbgates\nOkay, for the most part, most of us alive today are older than Google and\nremember it began around 1998, but someday... everyone alive is going to be\nyounger than Google, and there's going to be no one alive that even remembers\nwhen Google was founded, and everyone alive is going to use Google as like its\nSkynet.\n\n~~~\nmartin-adams\nYep, they're called the 'after Googlers':\n[https://youtu.be/ozYez0I0Xs8?t=1m25s](https://youtu.be/ozYez0I0Xs8?t=1m25s)\n\n~~~\nmeira\n15 years ago, we could spend a lot of times thinking about 'after\nmicrosofters\", and today we can laugh a lot.\n\n~~~\ndrdeadringer\nWhy are we laughing?\n\n------\nbfuller\nWho else remembers the first time they visited google.com?\n\nI was on a 56k dial up connection, but the page loaded so quickly.\n\nThis was during a period I was used to pages taking 20+ seconds to load, and\nthe google homepage loaded almost instantly.\n\nIn fact, just for fun, I went to google.com on my new laptop with ssd and 16\ngig of ram using the latest version of chrome, and maybe it is through rose\ntinted glasses, but it seems like the first time I visited google using my\ndial up connection it loaded a lot \"snappier\" than it does today.\n\n~~~\nguessmyname\nMost if not all the ISP companies in my home country used to ask you to access\ngoogle.com while troubleshooting connectivity issues. They would eventually\nassume your Internet was working as expected if at least Google loaded.\nRecently they changed the strategy and now use Internet speed tester which\ncome with the requirement to have Flash installed _and_ enabled.\n\nMany people in my country still believe that Google == Internet so I am pretty\nsure that if Google stops serving for whatever reason here the majority of\npeople will get cut out of the Internet because they don't understand how to\nuse the address bar. I have even seen people accessing google.com just to put\nfacebook.com in the search form instead of simply typing that domain in the\naddress bar, I cringe every time.\n\n------\njamespo\nI still recall switching from AltaVista :D\n\n~~~\njagermo\nFireball for me. I remember the icq chat with a friend who told me to try this\ncool new thing without ads!\n\n~~~\nzakki\nAnd now Google push all possible ads to us :(\n\n~~~\nkarakal\nA couple of ads (clearly marked as such) at the top of the results page are\n\"all possible ads\"? Come on.\n\n~~~\nDoctor_Fegg\nIn a new Safari window (private browsing, 1920x1080 screen), for the search\nquery \"holiday cottages Wales\", I don't get any organic results above the\nfold. The first one is at 1380px down the page.\n\n~~~\nIntermernet\nVery OT, but if you're actually looking for one, I can recommend\n[https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/12448783](https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/12448783)\n. My partner and I stayed there a few months ago and it was wonderful!\n\n------\nSmellyGeekBoy\nI'd never really considered it before, but Google is pretty old now in\ninternet terms. It's been around twice along as some of its fellow giants like\nFacebook (2004), YouTube (2005), Twitter (2006) and the like - although not\nnearly as long as Yahoo! (1994) and AOL (1991).\n\n~~~\nMahn\nWhat's impressive is not that that it's one of the oldest internet companies\naround, but that it's _still relevant_ today! The vast majority of large\ninternet companies usually fade into obscurity in less than ten years as they\nfail to change and adapt and are replaced by whatever is new and shiny at the\ntime; Google though, they knew they had to place bold bets beyond what's\nmaking money _today_ , and that paid off beautifully.\n\n~~~\nmuse900\nand their main website is old-style. Well they implemented new fonts etc and\nthey didn't change over to use a bootstrap template. Simple and easy, is what\ntheir search engine is actually.\n\n------\nzerognowl\nGreat to see Google splintering off into single duty compartments instead of\nspreading itself so thin that nothing gets done with the same amount of focus.\nAlphabet was a true design decision, and a mature one at that. One thing that\ncrossed my mind recently was the notion of Google and its long relationship\nwith hardware: we have this thing called the Blockchain now, and it could do\nwith some of Google's hardware to run on, instead of independent factions of\npeople spending their pocket money on their own hardware. It kind of makes me\njealous and annoyed that so much could be spent for what effectively is\nsometimes just a data center for storing people's holiday snaps on Google\nPlus, when it could be used to host micro democracies and change the direction\nof finance. I suspect all that hardware will eventually be re-purposed many\ntimes throughout the course of the Google experiment and probably will\neventually be given away at some point to the blockchainers who need it. I can\npicture the scene: dreadlocked decentralists rejoicing at their new hardware\ngift from Google, 25+ years from now. The ultimate redemption from their years\nof slavishly handing their personal information over to Google in exchange for\na decent search experience. A true revenge for consumers of Google. Meanwhile\nGoogle would have entirely switched to SSDs and are probably using post-\nquantum chips, but at least we can host multiple different blockchains now\nwithout spending our pocket money on them. The blockchainers can start to get\nrich and blockchain can really flourish.\n\nAlso, Google needs to create services which are for a post Snowden world. Allo\nis cute, but entirely inferior to things like Signal which addresses the\nproblem of encrypted private chat head on. Google needs to create things like\nits own VPN service, perhaps?\n\n~~~\ndpark\n> _One thing that crossed my mind recently was the notion of Google and its\n> long relationship with hardware: we have this thing called the Blockchain\n> now, and it could do with some of Google 's hardware to run on, instead of\n> independent factions of people spending their pocket money on their own\n> hardware._\n\nI was under the impression that most mining is now done by a few groups using\nspecial purpose hardware. Mining using hardware bought with \"pocket money\"\nseems like a losing game at this point.\n\n> _It kind of makes me jealous and annoyed that so much could be spent for\n> what effectively is sometimes just a data center for storing people 's\n> holiday snaps on Google Plus, when it could be used to host micro\n> democracies and change the direction of finance._\n\nIt makes me sad that so much energy is wasted computing hashes for mining when\nit seems to add so little to society. In comparison, I think hosting holiday\nphotos is a more valuable task.\n\n> _I suspect all that hardware will eventually be re-purposed many times\n> throughout the course of the Google experiment and probably will eventually\n> be given away at some point to the blockchainers who need it._\n\nI'm not sure why Google would give their hardware to a random group of miners.\nI'm not sure why the miners would want it either since x86 is not an efficient\nway to mine. Out of date x86 hardware especially.\n\n------\nthe_common_man\nGoogle makes great doodles :\n[https://www.google.com/logos/doodles/2016/googles-18th-\nbirth...](https://www.google.com/logos/doodles/2016/googles-18th-\nbirthday-5661535679545344-hp.gif)\n\n~~~\nzargath\n\"stolen\" from a danish tv show\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDZR_8SoD20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDZR_8SoD20)\n:)\n\n~~~\ngiancarlostoro\nI'm in the US: This video contains content from DR, who has blocked it in your\ncountry on copyright grounds.\n\n~~~\ndawnerd\nI was hoping it would say Google, Inc. as soon as I saw the removed video\ngraphic loading. Would have been all too perfect.\n\n------\ncko\nAlmost everything I've ever learned started with a Google search. I'm 30 now -\nI started using it when I was 15 - and since I didn't have a lot of friends or\nstuff happening growing up, I spent hours browsing. A lot of porn, but also a\nlot of random stuff I was curious about. I kind of stopped believing the words\nof people around me and chose to believe everything I read instead. Over time\nI did develop a better sense of what's credible and what's not.\n\nBy the way I've always had the idea of a credibility plugin to a browser that\nrates the credibility level of everything you visit.\n\nSometimes I judge someone based on how they search. If they're typing out a\nwhole question, perfect punctuation: not a good sign.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\n> Sometimes I judge someone based on how they search. If they're typing out a\n> whole question, perfect punctuation: not a good sign.\n\nYou read the Google instructions \"How to use Google\" about 15 years ago, and\nyou started using Google when they had a 10 word limit, with no substitutions\nand no stemming.\n\nNowadays Google is mostly used by people who ask whole questions, complete\nwith punctuation, and websites and Google optimise for those people.\n\nSometimes it's the best way to get to a good website.\n\n~~~\ncko\nI never knew that. I always just thought those words were parsed out as noise.\nYou're saying that whole questions help?\n\nAlso sometimes when I search I don't know exactly what I'm looking for, so it\ntakes a few queries to learn the basic vocabulary of the area I want to learn\nabout. So putting a few keyword guesses into the box seems to work. In other\nwords I never expect to land on a good website on my first try because I don't\neven know the right vocabulary.\n\nIs there a better way to do it?\n\n~~~\nDanBC\n> Is there a better way to do it?\n\nWho knows? Google used to tell people how to search. SEO arseholes ruined it\nfor everyone, and now Google has an opaque mechanism.\n\nIf I don't kno much abotu something asking a full question seems to get useful\nintroductory pages. If I know a bit about something keywords seems to work.\nI'm I know a lot about something I have to include \"exact\" words, and use the\n- to remove some not relevant terms.\n\nGoogle went from being a precision tool to good enough most of the time.\n\n------\nYhippa\nI was a bit late to the Google party. I first heard about it when I was in my\nCS seminar in undergrad. Someone in class talked about a cool new search\nengine called \"googol\" (what I thought it was called). I am not sure when but\nslowly I ditched Yahoo!, AltaVista, and Ask Jeeves in favor of it and never\nlooked back. Each time I try alt search engines like Bing or DDG I keep coming\nback.\n\nThe second big Google moment I remember was when Gmail first came out. I\nwanted an invite so bad and eventually got one. I thought how cool is this\nthat you can have a usable email client in the web browser. Not that it was\nthe first one; I remember using Hotmail before that. But it had threaded\nmessages!\n\nOf all the tech companies I've used in the past Google has treated me the\nbest. They've done some unforgivable things like killing Google Reader but for\nthe most part I'm happy with them.\n\n~~~\nryanobjc\nthe death of google reader was sad, but at the same time, RSS as a method of\nreading blogs and news has exited the building. Competing products have failed\nto provide the same kind of mindshare that reader apparently had. Social media\nhas taken over, for better and worse.\n\nThe internet has changed, and reader is one of those things that is solidly in\nthe past.\n\n~~~\nCaptSpify\nHeavily disagree. I still use RSS constantly. Sure, I don't think RSS will be\nhere 100 years from now, it'll die someday, but I've yet to see an actual\nalternative to it.\n\n~~~\nryanobjc\nHere's the issue, yes, you can disagree, and your workflow is different.\n\nBut in general, most people get their news from social media now - mostly\nFacebook as it turns out. That is hardly a disputable fact. RSS is a technical\ndetail of how sites publish, and in the end, people seem to not care about it.\nThey care about end user features, which apparently includes their friends\ncommenting. And that is what Facebook does.\n\nYeah you could make an argument that Google Reader killed the promising RSS\nmarket, but I don't think that argument really holds a lot of water.\n\n------\nhypertexthero\nThe first time I visited Google.com was at a startup called European Artisans\nin Rome, Italy, using a Flower Power iMac G3. I was reading a book called The\nCluetrain Manifesto at the time and remember thinking that Google 'got' what\nthe [internet][1] is and where it was was going. And despite some missteps,\nthey still do!\n\nLooking forward to the next 18 years! Happy birthday, Google!\n\n[1]: [http://www.worldofends.com/](http://www.worldofends.com/)\n\n------\nlaumars\nInterestingly the top result I get from that query is the following article\nfrom UK newspaper, The Independent:\n\n[http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-\ntech/new...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-\ntech/news/when-is-googles-birthday-18th-doodle-today-a7331271.html)\n\n[Title: When is Google’s birthday? The big thing wrong with the search\nengine's celebratory doodle]\n\n~~~\nchki\nI think there are always at least five news articles written on any topic that\nis mentioned in a Google Doodle because those are really the simplest clicks\nyou can get with so much traffic coming from Google. (They often get shown\nunder the \"news\" segment)\n\n------\nnachtigall\nThen: Don't be evil.\n\nToday: Google is the new MS. XMPP kicked out of Google Talk, RSS put on a\nhold. If there wasn't Firefox, Chromium would be burried. I'd even wish that\nBing would be more successful, let alone DuckDuckGo.\n\n~~~\ndomfletcher\nI have some sympathy with this but I think people ignore a lot of the stuff\nwhich Google just gives away with some fairly light advertising. Think about\nnavigating with Apple maps, or trying to organise your life with Hotmail or\ntrying to do anything without Google search. Some of their product decisions\nwind people up but I think they do a lot more good than harm.\n\n~~~\npbhjpbhj\n>a lot of the stuff which Google just gives away with some fairly light\nadvertising. //\n\n... which furthers their eco-system and cements \"vendor lock-in\". They kill\noff too many major projects seemingly for purely financial purposes for the\npoint you make to carry well.\n\n------\nEugeneOZ\nI think tone of \"congratulations\" on this site should be really important sign\nfor Google to reconsider their way.\n\n~~~\nocdtrekkie\nThe problem is that Googlers live and work and are friends with other\nGooglers, and have a massive echo chamber effect. Most of the people who\nGooglers interact with are either Google employees or Google enthusiasts, so\nit's easy for them to believe that something like the comments on this article\nare some sort of concentrated effort by a small group or something, as opposed\nto a very real, widespread concern.\n\n~~~\ncobookman\nMost googlers recognize the echo chamber of not just google but silicon\nvalley. Many of the complaints issued here are also issued directly to the top\nexecutives as well. Sometimes the issues get resolved, other times its a\ncomplicated issue with no good answer (in regards to google itself).\n\n------\nwiremine\nI remember using Google for the first time in college. It was like a breath of\nfresh air after using Yahoo, Northern Light or any of the other search engines\nback in the day.\n\n------\namelius\nGoogle has lost its innocence and is slowly turning into an old voyeur :)\n\n~~~\nnommm-nommm\nAnyone remember google-watch.org? Unfortunately it's something else now and\nit's excluded by the wayback machine. Would be interesting to read now.\n\n~~~\norly_bookz\nIs that the guy that set up scroogle?\n\nI suppose DuckDuckGo with !g is a better version of that now anyway but it was\nalways an interesting concept...\n\n~~~\nnommm-nommm\nI have no idea, I don't know what scroogle is. Google-watch.org was a site\nthat existed in the early 2000s (before Gmail) that was critical of Google and\nbrought up some of the issues with things they were doing.\n\nIf I recall correctly.\n\n------\nlegopicode\nThen: An epic algorythm\n\nNow: An interner super power\n\nHappy birthday\n\n------\nMithaldu\nShould i be seeing anything special on that page, other than a list of \"news\"\narticles discussing when Google's birthday should be?\n\n------\nfranze\nI'm part of the Google economy now for 12 years, so well thank you Google,\nkinda.\n\nMy story for all who are interested:\n\nIn 2004 the director of the Austria Press Agency (APA) came to me and said\n\"Hey, our PR customers wan't to find their press releases in Google, do that!\"\nI was in web business development then, a fancy name for a one man team of\ndeveloper, coder, hacker, sysadmin, product development, cooperations,\nconceptionist, designer, data analyst, external contributors coordinator for\nwww.ots.at, the public relations branch of APA.\n\nI did, and it worked. As a matter of fact it worked so good, that for some\ntime the press releases of the companies showed up before the actual websites\nof the companies. (I used such advanced and then highly controversial\nstrategies like internal interlinking and title-tags) Traffic and soon later\nrevenue exploded.\n\nAs I was frustrated with web development at that time (IE6 had a market share\nof 90% plus, FF (firebird or phoenix at that time) wasn't ready yet, no\ncompetition anywhere near). Web 2.0. was just starting at that time, we saw\nwhat was possible, but we could not do it, as the IE6 bugs were crashing all\ninnovation.\n\nI could code since I was a child, then I made code my work, now I swore to\nmyself that I will always ever code for fun (or projects that are 100% owned\nby me and therefore fun) again, but earn money in another way.\n\nI followed the money and started my first company \"Search Engine Optimized\ndistribution of PR and Corporate Information via Blog and Web 2.0. Networks\"\nin 2006 i think. Today we would call it a \"Corporate Blog\"!\n\nI created a piece of software that was from the front end better than\nWordPress of that time, faster, bug free HTML, W3C valid, beautiful tag\nclouds, just awesome. The backend and the actual getting content in there was\na complete mess, so what, I had a product!!!! Now I just needed to sell the\nproduct, cold calling companies and convince them that they need a corporate\nblog and that their content needs to get found by Google. Oh yeah, zero sales\nexperience from my side. Lets just say it didn't work.\n\nSo I did what any young founder would do: went to a party, jumped over a wall\nto save entrance fee, broke my knee in a very complicated way and went into\nhospital for 3 months.\n\nI took a job again: This time as a key account manager to sell websites in the\nreal estate business. I learned a lot, most horrible job ever, too.\n\nWent to the next job, now officially called myself SEO for the first time:\nbecoming the SEO manager of the then world leader in sports-betting, poker and\ncasino. Oh what fun! For the first time I realized what unbelievable esoteric\nbullshit people started to believe about Google and SEO. High-up management\ntalked about \"PageRank Black Holes\" whereby I explained to them that \"Google\nbeing able to crawl us\" is kinda a good idea if you want to get found for\nanything. Also I had months long projects to convince the powers to be, that\nit just isn't a good idea to run internal links over 16 (internal & external )\nredirects (whereby IE which was still around at that time only supported\n10...). I had 70 people working on changing the footer links (as they were\nowned by different departments and country managers). Learned a lot in those\nyears, especially about working with consultants and other third parties\nbrought in by country managers, product heads, other consultants, bought\ncompanies, ...\n\nAnd I learned that the state of SEO, which was a dev driven discipline for a\nlong time became the ultimate bullshit industry. With people selling links\nthat suck, selling tools that nobody needs, telling stuff that could neither\nverified nor falsified, hurting businesses until the point of bankruptcy. And\nwhenever I though SEO has arrived at a new bottom, it became worse.\n\nThen I did what any employee which was fed up with the status quo did, I\njoined a startup. Well not one, an incubator which owned the majority of all\nthe startups it incubated. I.e.: I helped scale 123people form about 300 000\nmonthly to 60 000 000 monthly visits before it was sold. And some others which\nI'm more proud of. Then joined another startup.\n\nIn 2011 I started my second company, my goal is simple: To make all SEO\nagencies, including my own, redundant. I'm doing great, it's still lots of\nfun.\n\nSo anyway, thx Google. You gave me a career. I work in the world/economy you\ncreated.\n\n~~~\namelius\n> So anyway, thx Google. You gave me a career.\n\nInteresting story. But in that last line you make it sound like without Google\nyou didn't have a career :)\n\n~~~\nfranze\nWell, you never know the paths not travelled.\n\n------\nksk\nI don't quite like Google, but happy birthday Google :)\n\n20+ years of being online. Google was a welcome change when they launched, but\nthey've been on a path of slow credibility erosion for much of the last\ndecade. IMHO.\n\n------\nsocial_quotient\nHappy birthday!\n\n------\nmeira\nMaking Internet a worse place day after day. Congratulations, Google!\n\n------\nDolores12\nBarely legal Google.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWho Are The Top Tech Bloggers? - hwork\nhttp://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/20/who-are-the-top-tech-bloggers/\n======\nshafqat\nAs I mentioned in the TC comments, in the context of that list, ‘top’ means\nmost frequently quoted on TechMeme. At NewsCred (my startup), we’re collecting\nmetrics so that we can determine lists of the top news sources as well as top\njournalists (both mainstream/bloggers), but using credibility as our\ncriterion. We want to highlight writers and sources based on quality, rather\nthan popularity or frequency of posts.\n\nWe just launched our Alpha, so the dataset is very limited, but in terms of\nsources, the Economist and Techcrunch (go figure!) came out on top this week.\n\nAlso, the lists will be syndicated each week of course!\n\n------\nchrisbroadfoot\nInteresting, I guess, but not really surprising or useful\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHey Dropbox, build MailDrop. I will pay you to replace my Gmail - iProject\nhttp://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/03/15/hey-dropbox-make-maildrop-and-i-will-pay-you-to-replace-my-gmail/\n======\njubari\nIncidentally, that's somewhat what I've been building since my recent\nsubmission: Show HN: A personal Gmail.\n(<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4804690>)\n\nI learned a lot from HN about trust and got a lot of great feedback via email.\n\nBasically, I currently manage my own email via a native app I build with\nTideSDK and AngularJS. MailGun catches the emails and my rails service drops\nthem into my dropbox as JSON files.\n\nThere is some magic going on regarding conversation views, labels,\nattachments, etc.\n\nSadly, I came across a critical memory leak in TideSDK, which currently\nprevents me from releasing the app/service to the public.\n\nFeel free to drop me a message if you're interested in updates.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCreditor moves to dismantle copyright troll Righthaven - llambda\nhttp://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/creditor-moves-to-dismantle-copyright-troll-righthaven.ars\n======\nathom\nQuoting:\n\nA filing in the case shows that Randazza wants the court to “authorize the\nU.S. Marshalls to execute Hoehn’s judgment through seizure of Righthaven’s\nbank accounts, real and personal property, _and intangible intellectual\nproperty rights_ [my emphasis] for levy, lien, auction or other treatment\nappropriate for satisfaction of Hoehn’s judgment.”\n\nI hope this isn't a spurious question, but could this end with _Hoehn_ owning\ncopyrights entrusted to Righthaven?\n\n~~~\nnash\nRighthaven never had any copyrights to begin with. Which is why they keep\ngetting absolutely slaughtered in cases (no standing).\n\nSo unfortunately Randazza won't get those copyrights.\n\n~~~\nstan_rogers\nI believe the rights being referred to are things like Righthaven's own name,\ntrademarks, copyrights and so forth, not just what they may have acquired from\nother parties.\n\n~~~\nnash\nProbably.\n\nStill, I can't imagine the trademark \"Righthaven\" has a lot of value any more.\n\n------\npseudonym\nHilarious, but also sad. What's going to happen to the $120,000 payment handed\ndown to the other folks, plus all other Righthaven suits still in court?\n\nDoes it end up being just $120,000 out of pocket to defend against a frivolous\nlawsuit, or can people go after the people behind Righthaven for this as well?\n\n------\nCaptainZapp\n\"Righthaven had asked U.S. District Judge Philip Pro of Nevada to stay the fee\naward, saying it might slip into bankruptcy if forced to pay.\"\n\nSo fucking what?!\n\nThis must be about the dumbest, most ludicrous reasoning I have read in a\nlong, long time.\n\nSo you frivolously try to screw people and companies with dodgy copyright\nlawsuits. After the bullets of your double barrel shotgun forcefully blasted\ninto your feet you argue that you can't continue with your \"business model\"\nwhen forced to pay for the consequences?\n\nEither something here is very much out of context or those Righthaven dudes\nare really not the smartest cookies in the jar.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApple solves marital spat with three simple words - abennett\nhttp://www.itworld.com/offbeat/140984/apple-solves-marital-spat-three-simple-words\n======\nRiderOfGiraffes\nSame story: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2351084>\n\nMany comments.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPLEAC-Haskell - brassybadger\nhttp://pleac.sourceforge.net/pleac_haskell/\n\n======\ndasil003\nAre there any plans by the maintainers to get off of SourceForge? I realize it\ndoesn't have the risk of distributing binaries, but still, any time I see\nSourceForge now it's a huge red flag.\n\n~~~\nerpellan\n[http://sourceforge.net/p/pleac/code/](http://sourceforge.net/p/pleac/code/)\n\nCVS?? Now there's a name I've not heard in a long time... a long time.\n\n------\nasimjalis\nPLEAC is a good resource as long as you watch out for the Blub paradox. “But\nwhen our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the\npower continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely\nweird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub,\nbut with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well.”\n[[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BlubParadox](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BlubParadox)]\n\n~~~\nvezzy-fnord\nWasn't the Blub paradox particularly in relation to dynamic languages with\nadvanced metaprogramming capabilities?\n\n------\nkwhitefoot\nLooks like SF is falling apart, every link I try from the PLEAC home page\ngives me a guru meditation error. Pity, because it sounds like a worthwhile\nresource, a shame too because SF used to be so good. This is the sort of thing\nthat really should be on some kind of distributed file system so that it is\nnot beholden to any one organization. I could give some space and a few kB/s\nof bandwidth.\n\n------\nLukeHoersten\nThis is awesome. I've never heard of PLEAC before but it's exactly what I want\nto see when starting a new language. Idioms and best practices are much easier\nto grasp when factoring out superficial differences.\n\n------\ngaius\nPLEAC is absolutely the best resource if you are an experienced programmer in\nthe throes of learning a new language.\n\n------\nkarmakaze\nGreat resource. Why does it not cover files/directories, databases or\nsockets/Internet which is where I could most benefit?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGreat Manager Institute Publishes the 'Manager Mantras' Ebook - GMI\nhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FNQ8VFD\n======\nGMI\nTaking inspiration from People Managers across the spectrum, Great Manager\nInstitute™ brings in a collection of some of the best stories heard. Among\nthese pages, the reader can find understandable and actionable practices that\nhave been tried and tested by a plethora of People Managers. This e-book would\nbe every manager's go-to book when it comes to inspiration and motivation.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy education is about more than jobs - AndrewDucker\nhttp://lizw.livejournal.com/517257.html\n\n======\nchasingsparks\nI have no experience with university education over the pond, but I have to\npersonal observations about the US system: 1) far too many people go to\ncollege and 2) the wrong people go to college.\n\nPolitical pressures have created a huge demand for colleges while supply\nremains comparatively inelastic. Consequently, the student population has\nbecome dominated by people whose parents can afford to send them to college,\nbut whose intellectual credentials and academic interest are far from stellar.\nCollege revolves around teaching the mean -- and I don't like it.\n\nI hope graduate school is different.\n\n~~~\nchasingsparks\nI should follow this up by correcting myself: obviously, the pressures are not\nonly political. If a college education offers the perception of competence,\nthen market pressures increase the demand that the universities are more than\nwilling to accommodate. I think -- somehow in a way that I do not see --\nuniversities have to just start being more selective.\n\n------\njrwoodruff\nI might just be imagining it, but I seem to be getting an 'anti-college' vibe,\nor at least 'anti-traditional education' vibe from HN these past few weeks.\n\nSure, we probably can't afford to send 50% of the country to college. But why\nnot try to send as many as possible, at least of those who want to go?\n\nDominated by those whose parents can afford to send kids to college? Hasn't it\nalways been that way? After all, if you can't afford it, no matter how bad you\nwant to go, you won't. Not without assistance.\n\nI'm not sure I understand this negative bent on college education - or am I\njust reading things wrong?\n\n~~~\ncschneid\nLike everything else in politics, there is a nice gray area in education. The\ninternet is very bad at gray areas, and tends toward extremism.\n\nThe gray area here is between \"pursuit of knowledge, become better citizens\"\nand \"career school, what is history for anyway\".\n\nUniversities used to be #1, and have shifted toward #2 over the years. Now\npeople see it more as the default to be the career school, and laugh at people\nwho are in favor of learning for the sake of learning.\n\nThen the problem is that while both approaches are relatively valid, they lead\nto different conclusions to the answer of \"who should go to college\".\n\n~~~\njrwoodruff\nThat makes sense, actually, since I definitely reside solidly in the middle of\nthe two. Prior to college, I was definitely in the 'what is history for'\ncrowd, but college broadened my horizons so much, and I enjoy learning to the\nextent that I could easily argue the 'pursuit of knowledge' reasoning these\ndays. I went to a liberal arts college for an applied degree, so I guess\nthat's a little of both worlds.\n\n------\nmattj\nI think this attests more to the dangers of early tracking in European\nsocieties (didn't take the right tests in high school? You're never going to\ncollege) than the benefits of education as access to knowledge. In the us,\ntaking classes like this COULD lead to a job, if you were willing to fight\nreally hard for it.\n\n------\ngaius\nIf there are _intangible_ benefits, then by all means, have all the\n_intangible_ support you want.\n\nWe can't afford to put 50% of the population through university, it's as\nsimple as that.\n\n~~~\nfhars\nA modern industrialized society can't afford _not_ to put about 50% of the\npopulation through an education that gives them at least something like a\nbachelors degree.\n\n~~~\nkaa2102\nAre we trying to make University trustees rich or have a well-educated and\ncivil society? I don't think 4 years of college are required to teach someone\nto think critically, be rational, and right/speak well.\n\n~~~\ngloob\nI don't want my open heart surgery to be performed by a dropout, no matter how\npassionate and relentlessly resourceful they might be.\n\n~~~\njerf\nThat's a total strawman. It's not even worth expanding on this reply further.\n\n~~~\ngloob\n_That's a total strawman._\n\nNot really. It's probably not a terribly popular sentiment on a site for web-\nbased hacker startups, but there are plenty of jobs that actually require some\nsort of meaningful education. Most of the medical system is composed of such\njobs, as are large chunks of the legal system. Government bureaucracy (while\nthe benefits of having a degree in such a job may be questionable) commonly\nrequires them, at least in Canada. The government is not a small employer.\n\n50% may well be excessive, but there are a huge number of jobs out there that\ndemand a degree.\n\n~~~\njerf\nWho said \"Hey, let's do away with higher education entirely, such that doctors\nwon't have an education?\"\n\nTotal strawman. Thinking there's too many people going to college is not the\nsame as thinking _nobody_ should go to college, and you're not helping anybody\nwith anything by conflating the two.\n\n------\nakl\n... from a teacher at open university, apparently.\n\nI'm sure I'm biased as a college drop out myself, but I've never been\nimpressed by abstract ('learn how to help society!', etc) type reasons to go\nto college.\n\n~~~\npavel_lishin\nUnderstanding what you read on the news, being able to communicate clearly and\neffectively, and being able to spot bullshit and faulty arguments when you see\nit - great reasons to go to college.\n\nBut 90% of people won't be using what they learn to \"improve their community\"\nand whatnot, not unless they're specifically going to school to learn that.\n\n~~~\nhughprime\n_Understanding what you read on the news, being able to communicate clearly\nand effectively, and being able to spot bullshit and faulty arguments when you\nsee it - great reasons to go to college._\n\nIt's a pity, then, that these skills aren't very well taught in university (at\nleast on the humanities side). Indeed, if you do a course on, say, Foucault or\nDerrida then you'll need to _unlearn_ how to spot bullshit and faulty\narguments if you want to pass the course since a final essay which says\n\"Derrida in this book says a whole bunch of vague bullshit that doesn't make\nany real sense\" will get low marks.\n\nInterestingly, I don't think spotting bullshit or faulty arguments is that\ndifficult a skill -- relatively uneducated people can easily spot a BS\nargument when it's used to argue for something they don't want to believe. The\nreally hard part is developing the discipline to be able to spot a BS argument\neven when it's arguing for something you _do_ want to believe.\n\nI don't think this skill is very well taught, either.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nInternet Archive responds to publishers’ lawsuit - ghastmaster\nhttps://blog.archive.org/2020/07/29/internet-archive-responds-to-publishers-lawsuit/\n======\nilamont\n> These publishers call for the destruction of the 1.5 million digital books\n> that Internet Archive makes available to our patrons. This form of digital\n> book burning is unprecedented and unfairly disadvantages people with print\n> disabilities.\n\nIt's a stretch to call this a book burning. It is not a politically motivated\ncampaign to destroy books, or a witch hunt to root out deviant social or\nreligious teachings. It's a dispute over copyright law.\n\nIn addition, I thought the justification for expanding controlled digital\nlending was around COVID-19, not rights for people who have low vision. Was\nthis issue a central part of the the IA's reasoning before the lawsuit?\n\n------\nghastmaster\n[https://archive.org/details/internet-archive-\nanswer](https://archive.org/details/internet-archive-answer) \\- Defense Filing\n\nI'm seeing more and more \"503 Service unavailable\" on the waybackmachine.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAre women bad at math: Graphs refute. - ColinWright\nhttp://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/08/29/are_women_bad_at_math_graphs_refute.html?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=sm&utm_campaign=button_toolbar\n======\nALee\nThe last slide is really important since studies have also shown that social\nstereotypes (\"women are bad at math\") are reinforced in testing conditions.\nWhen people are reminded of these stereotypes, they perform worse (questions\nof race/gender before the big test).\n\nI found that I did better at stuff when (a) I didn't care and (b) when I\nrealized I'm not the smartest person, but darn it, I'm gonna try.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nKubernetes 1.7 with Tim Hockin [audio] - chrisbroadfoot\nhttps://www.gcppodcast.com/post/episode-88-kubernetes-1-7-with-tim-hockin/\n======\ncobbzilla\nI have nothing to add here but a positive ad-hominem: I went to high school\nwith Tim and he's a super nice, super smart guy. When we were in HS I didn't\neven know he was such a cool nerd. I only discovered this when I was getting\ndeep into Linux (late 90s/early 2000s), and found out he was the author of an\nimportant kernel patch that I needed. Go Tim!\n\n~~~\nphilips\nTim is one of the people in the Kubernetes community that makes it an\nenjoyable place to work.\n\nBuilding an open source community is hard and building an open source\ncommunity for a platform that has a ton of orthogonal interests is even\nharder. But, Tim, along with many of the other leaders, do a solid job of\nensuring that the project does its best to listen to all of the various users\nand stakeholders and then ultimately takes an opinion and heads in a direction\nthat tries to navigate immediate needs without egregious long-term compromise.\nIt is hard work and no one can expect a 100% success rate, but Tim has done a\ngreat job and has been pretty close.\n\nIn any case, thanks for your dedication to the project Tim.\n\n------\nnameless912\nWhat have people been experiencing with K8s 1.7? For me it's been nothing but\nRBAC issues everywhere (Granted, I'm upgrading from 1.5 so it's kinda my own\ndamn fault).\n\n~~~\nrascoe\nWe took the RBAC \"hit\" in 1.6. This mostly involved grokking the\nRole/RoleBinding and ClusterRole/ClusterRoleBinding details first. After that\nit was primarily a matter of updating a slew of Helm charts. Ones that we\nmaintain for ourselves, and several community charts that had yet to be\nupdated.\n\n~~~\nnameless912\nI think I understand cluster roles and bindings, my biggest thing is that I\nwas using a bunch of off-the-shelf helm charts (for spinnaker, k8s dashboard,\nand deis workflow especially) and all three stopped working with RBAC. Those\nhave been an...adventure to fix.\n\n------\nnodejscloud\nI'm coming from traditional VM's and want to play around with Kubernetes. What\nare the best guides/articles to get started with Kubernetes?\n\nI've heard to start with\n[https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube](https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube)\nlocally, but looking for a solid article to get familiar with all the concepts\nand best practices.\n\n~~~\ndankohn1\nMinikube is a good place to start and the kubernetes.io guide is pretty good:\n[https://kubernetes.io/docs/tutorials/stateless-\napplication/h...](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tutorials/stateless-\napplication/hello-minikube/)\n\nIf you like video, try out this new (free) EdX course:\n[https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-kubernetes-\nlinuxfoun...](https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-kubernetes-\nlinuxfoundationx-lfs158x)\n\n(Disclosure: I run CNCF and we developed that course.)\n\n------\nswozey\nI completely forgot about this podcast. Thanks for posting this here.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSick whale found to have 30 plastic bags blocking its stomach - happy-go-lucky\nhttp://news.sky.com/story/sick-whale-found-to-have-30-plastic-bags-blocking-its-stomach-10754077\n======\nevolve2k\nMy home state introduced a plastic bag ban a couple of years back. It was\nacccompanied by a simple campaign that encouraged families to bring re-usable\nbags to the checkout counter when shopping for groceries. If you forget to\nbring bags, you can buy these re-usable canvas bags from the supermarket for\naround $1. Initially we all bought a bunch while our habits switched over, but\nthis worked as the bags are useful anyway and most of us now keep some in the\ncar and some in the pantry.\n\nThin supermarket bags were the focus of the ban. Surprisingly after the ban a\nnumber of venues that sort of need plastic bags, eg for vegetables or takeout\nstarted sourcing 100% compostable bags that are allowed. I didn't even know\nthis solution existed before the ban.\n\nThere is a culture locally now to have reusable bags in the boot of your car\nand for a few items to just load up your arms.\n\nIt's been pretty successful and no-where near as interrupting as you'd\nimagine.\n\nRef: [http://www.zerowaste.sa.gov.au/plastic-\nbags](http://www.zerowaste.sa.gov.au/plastic-bags)\n\n~~~\nabawany\nIn Austin, TX (USA), one of the few progressive cities in Texas, a plastic bag\nban was passed four years ago to much grumbling. AFAICT, the residents have\nadapted to it and the prices for reusable bags are quite reasonable.\n\nUnfortunately, the TX state legislature has other ideas and will likely attack\nthis ban this year: [http://www.mystatesman.com/news/texas-lawmakers-look-\ncourts-...](http://www.mystatesman.com/news/texas-lawmakers-look-courts-they-\nmake-new-run-bag-bans/rag2OQD3Fi3QmVtb6t5GMP/) .\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFacebook XSS Exploit [CODE][GIST] - pokoleo\nhttp://shalecraig.posterous.com/57983906\n\n======\nspcmnspff\nI get this error message when I try to post it as a status:\n\nMessage Failed This message contains blocked content that has previously been\nflagged as abusive or spammy. Let us know if you think this is an error.\n\n------\njoshmlewis\nI've seen this used before this past week.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy I use Object Pascal - samuell\nhttps://dubst3pp4.github.io/post/2017-10-03-why-i-use-object-pascal/\n======\nStillBored\nAs I get older, I'm strongly swinging into the camp that thinks languages\nshould have strongly restrictive syntax. Object pascal is one of those\nlanguages which is both low level enough to cleanly map to efficient code, as\nwell as high level enough not to feel really restrictive. Its a language that\nis completely misunderstood because far to many people read a couple critical\nessays, and believed everything they read, even though the strongest argument\nfrequently was that its harder to type \"begin/end\" than \"{/}\". Which is a\npretty lame thing, given code completion in editors as old as emacs.\n\nPut another way, the thought patterns programmers fall into when using it seem\nto result in code which is easier to understand than most other languages\nwhich seem to encourage \"perlism\" (creating a single unreadable line),\n\"forthism\" (creating a billion two line words that combine to solve all the\nproblems in one word), or a few other things which become completely\nunmaintainable when the project grows beyond what can be written by a over-\nenergetic student in a semester at school.\n\n~~~\nchubot\nI don't think anyone really disagrees with you -- most people have problems\nwith the syntax of Perl, C, and C++. Sure, they can get used to it,\nparticularly with C because it's small, but the syntax isn't why they use the\nlanguage.\n\nSomewhat surprisingly, I think Perl's syntax is one of the reasons that Python\nbecame popular. Perl can do pretty much everything Python can, and it came\nsignificantly earlier. Yet people gravitated toward Python.\n\nI wouldn't call Python \"strongly restrictive\", but I would call it \"just\nright\". It's terse without being unreadable.\n\nJavaScript syntax is also pretty sane (but there are many horrible parts to\nthe semantics.)\n\nRuby seems to be pretty nice in the common cases, but there are apparently\ngremlins lurking in corner cases. Python has only 1 or 2 syntactic gremlins I\ncan think of (trailing comma, etc.)\n\n~~~\nkibwen\n_> Perl can do pretty much everything Python can, and it came significantly\nearlier. Yet people gravitated toward Python._\n\nI don't think syntax is the main culprit here, and Perl is only four years\nolder than Python. For about 15 years Python tried, unsuccessfully, to compete\nwith Perl as the premier language for shell scripting and sysadmin tasks. It\nwasn't until around 2005 that Python finally caught on, its rise coinciding\nwith Ruby. While I do personally find Python more readable than Perl, I\nattribute its ascent more to the combination of the Web 2.0 gold rush\ndemanding dynamically-typed languages for quick prototyping, Perl's apparent\nmid-2000s limbo due to Perl 5 vs Perl 6, the then-declining reputation of PHP\nand the shared hosting services which first popularized it, and the quality of\nPython's standard library (which made up for CPAN).\n\n~~~\nwainstead\nI have long thought Perl can do _anything_ Python can, and then some. I still\nuse Perl one-liners to find/change strings in code bases:\n\nperl -pi -e 's/somestring/newstring/g' $(ag -l --python Foo)\n\nDoes Python have an equivalent?\n\nI think the fabulous Python libraries for data science have really propelled\nthe language to the top of the list, in terms of users.\n\n~~~\nrichardwhiuk\nYou could have just used sed for that?\n\n~~~\nthrowaway7645\nSo Perl was built because Sed/Awk had \"whipupitude\", but fell short of being a\nreal application language like C which was great and fast to run, but slow to\ndevelop in. Perl was the middle ground which took the power of Sed/Awk/Bash\nand made it faster and more respectable and added a huge module repository. Of\ncourse take this with a grain of salt.\n\n------\nkrylon\nI feel kind of sheepish to admit that \"Why Pascal is not my favorite\nprogramming language\" had a huge impact on me and caused me to avoid Pascal\nuntil I was forced to deal with it because a coworker quit and dropped\nmaintenance of an in-house application in my lap.\n\nI was happy to realize that most of the criticism in that essay no longer\napplies to relatively recent versions of the language/IDE (Delphi 7 in my\ncase).\n\nOne huge advantage if Pascal is that it is very easy to read; the code does\nnot look or feel pretty, but it is so easy to read I could get an idea of what\nwas going on without any prior knowledge of Pascal within a few hours.\n\nKeywords not being case-sensitive felt weird at first, but one gets used to it\nvery quickly.\n\n~~~\njandrese\nMy High School programming class was taught in Pascal (Turbo Pascal version 3\nIIRC). I remember liking it just fine, but when I went to the university I\nswitched to C because everything interesting was written in C. Also, there\nwere no Pascal compilers in the FreeBSD (2.0) ports tree back then.\n\nI had a notion that Pascal was a \"toy teaching language\" too, but for what I\nwas doing that didn't really matter.\n\n~~~\nwhatyoucantsay\nYou must be 50... and you're still on HN! Are you still an engineer? If so,\nwhat stack are you using now?\n\n~~~\njandrese\nYou are off by about a decade. FreeBSD 2.0 was released in the mid 90s.\n\nI still skim Slashdot too.\n\nMost of the time I'm working on ancient versions of RHEL that are never\nconnected to the internet so I don't exactly get to use \"stacks\" or anything\nthat wants to pull code from Github. If it doesn't come on the RHEL 5.5 disk\nit's not available. You might be surprised how much you can do with a modest\nCGI script, a touch of JS, and some basic styling CSS.\n\n~~~\nwhatyoucantsay\nI clearly misjudged the time of Pascal's popularity and have never heard of\nRHEL but thanks for the response!\n\nWhat is Slashdot's strength from your POV?\n\n~~~\nkhedoros1\n> have never heard of RHEL\n\nBut surely you've heard of Red Hat itself? In the early 2000s, Red Hat Linux\nbroke into a couple directions: \"Fedora Linux\" as the community version of the\nOS, and \"Red Hat Enterprise Linux\" as the supported, enterprise-level version\nof the OS (and CentOS as the community-supported version of RHEL).\n\n------\npulse7\nUltibo - the barebone unikernel OS for Raspberry Pi - is written completelly\nin Object Pascal... it's source code is >>much<< easier to read than C\ncounterparts (see [https://ultibo.org](https://ultibo.org)).\n\n~~~\njustin66\nThis is strange and wonderful. Thanks for sharing. Somehow I wasn't aware of\nthis, and I follow Raspberry Pi stuff.\n\n~~~\nleledumbo\nToo wonderful. I was shocked when I see common filesystem drivers (including\nNTFS!), completely written in Pascal. The author must be a programming God.\n\n------\nmdhughes\nI've lately been trying out FreePascal for building my indie games (which have\nin the past been in C, Python, Java, Objective-C, and finally JavaScript), and\nit's going well enough. There's certainly room for improvement, and the\nLazarus IDE is not at all to my taste, but it's likely to be my next-ten-years\nlanguage.\n\n[https://mdhughes.tech/2017/09/02/pascal/](https://mdhughes.tech/2017/09/02/pascal/)\n\nand a couple of followup posts\n\n[https://mdhughes.tech/category/pascal/](https://mdhughes.tech/category/pascal/)\n\n~~~\nj_s\nAny early feedback on mobile?\n\n~~~\nleledumbo\nLazarus and/or Free Pascal? Android is looking good, though maybe not really a\npleasing experience for those with less experience. It even has multiple\napproaches. iOS is still dark, no one seems interested in making it work, even\nArduino gets its place before iOS.\n\nDelphi? Some big mobile apps are written in it already. WPS Office for Android\nand/iOS, if you ever heard, was written in Delphi. At least the last time I\ndecompile their APK it confirms a Delphi runtime existence. Disadvantage would\nbe the framework that's not native, thus you may end up in jumbo size APK even\nfor a form + label containing hello world.\n\n------\ns_kilk\nHow do users of languages like Pascal get by without any/many libraries? Do\nthey need to use the FFI to call out to C functions constantly?\n\nI mean, I certainly buy that $VINTAGE_LANGUAGE could still be great to develop\nin, but I'm curious the practicalities of working on modern systems without\nre-inventing every single wheel.\n\n~~~\nsamuell\nIn my experience (talking FreePascal/Lazarus here, as I'm on Linux most of the\ntime), the library situation is not _that_ bad, actually. The standard lib has\nmost of the mundane stuff, and a little github-searching can often find a\nworking version of more specific stuff (like SSH2 which I needed recently).\n\nTo the contrary, in some areas (like GUI tooling) it is far far beyond newer\nalternatives like Go.\n\nAlso, I think the higher level of the language than C/C++ etc can make it\neasier to develop your own solution, should you have to.\n\n~~~\noneweekwonder\nWe needed a app for branding. That login to a website. So it needed to do a\nPOST request. I struggled with fp and google for 30 min, and dropped to the\n`RunCommand('curl',['[https://ifconfig.co'](https://ifconfig.co')],s, opt)`\nclutch with curl.exe(with licence file) bundled into my innosetup file...\nmagic?!\n\n~~~\nconductor\nlibcurl (with examples) is bundled in the FreePascal distribution, as well as\nsimpler alternatives like fphttp, fphttpclient, fphttpwebclient, etc.\n\n~~~\noneweekwonder\nThanks will look into it.\n\nIt is hard to get the boss to allow you to write a mvp in non mainstream\nlanguage.\n\nSo I had a quick swing at the libs and wondered about so/dll dependancies\ncompiled against my exe; and just went for a bundled exe, yum and apt curl\ninstall script... under a day native win and ubuntu support?!:D I'm sure there\nis a TODO tag above my command for the junior that is going to hate me because\nhe now needs to code in lazarus... ;)\n\n------\nbaldfat\nTurbo Pascal and Forth were my first languages past Assembly on C64. They were\nso much better then Basic and Assembly for a young teenagers.\n\nDelphi is now $1,200 to $4,400 a user!!! WOW more then the $75 in 1983\n\n[https://www.embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-\nstore/delp...](https://www.embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/delphi)\n\n~~~\ndubst3pp4\nCurrently I'm learning Forth and I really like that language! It's a brain\ntwist and that's reason enough to have a look at :-)\n\n~~~\nstevekemp\nI've never done anything serious in Forth, but I was first exposed to it in\nthe late 80s, and keep coming back to it.\n\nOver the past couple of years I've written, and thrown away, several\nimplementations of Forth in C, C++, and Perl. I've even had it running,\nembedded, on ESP8266 devices.\n\nIt continues to be something I enjoy toying with, but equally something I\ncan't find a _perfect_ use for.\n\n~~~\nbaldfat\nGive it a try in Racket. Racket's macros is a dream to create another language\nin.\n\n------\nV-2\n_\" You can also define your own types\"_, _\" classes can also inherit other\nclasses\"_, _\" Pascal is modular\"_...\n\nNot to say these are not valid reasons, or expectations one may have from a\nlanguage, but - what exactly is Pascal being compared to? I mean, it's 2017.\n\n~~~\nmdhughes\nC has no classes, and everything's in one global namespace.\n\nScheme & LISP have no built-in classes, and one can argue that CLOS isn't what\nwe normally describe as OOP. Both normally have a global namespace.\n\nInheritance in JavaScript is possible but very hard to implement correctly\nbefore ES6. Node has namespaces (sort of) but client-side JavaScript generally\ndoesn't.\n\nPHP in theory has namespaces, but the standard libraries are just dumped in\nglobal.\n\n~~~\nCiPHPerCoder\n> PHP in theory has namespaces, but the standard libraries are just dumped in\n> global.\n\nModern PHP development almost exclusively uses Composer libraries rather than\nthe standard libraries, which overwhelmingly use namespaces in Vendor\\Project\nformat.\n\nThere's going to be a push to clean up the standard library in the coming\nyears. The plan is to introduce a namespaced alternative to the standard\nlibrary in the global namespace which also cleans up a lot of nits (e.g.\nphpsadness.com posts). Maybe in PHP 8? Then when the ecosystem catches up, we\ncan discuss deprecating/removing the \"just dumped in global\" way of doing\nthings in PHP 9.\n\nSource: I'm very likely going to be the main person driving this push.\n\n~~~\nmdhughes\nNamespaces by 2020? That'd be nice. The \\ syntax still makes my eyes bleed a\nbit, when most others use . or :\n\n~~~\nCiPHPerCoder\nYou might want to go see a doctor and get that checked out then.\n\nJust because \"most others use . or :\" doesn't mean it's the only correct\nsyntax in the realm of possibility.\n\n------\n_pdp_\nMy dad still runs his business on a software I wrote in 1998 in Delphi. I\nhaven't touched it since then but it is the only code I have that still works\n19 years later.\n\n~~~\nslig\nDoes it runs on modern Windows or is it running on a VM?\n\n~~~\nnarag\nIt could very well work without VM. Current Windows is binary compatible with\nold programs.\n\nThere are a few reasons that programs stop working and most of them are\nrelated to hardcoded directories that got perm. restrictions over the years.\n\n------\nidlewan\nThe Nim language [0] feels very inspired by Pascal while looking like Python.\nIf you're interested in fast, compiled & typed languages, I suggest you also\ntake a look at it. I personally love its readability.\n\n[0]: [https://nim-lang.org/](https://nim-lang.org/)\n\n~~~\njustin66\nI'm curious what's similar to pascal about it? It's garbage collected, it\ncompiles to C or JavaScript, and its syntax is inspired by Python, so I just\nwonder what is left.\n\n~~~\ndmux\nFrom [https://nim-lang.org/features.html](https://nim-lang.org/features.html):\n\n> Oberon-inspired visibility markers\n\n> Pascal-inspired type sections for leaner definitions\n\nWhile Oberon isn't Pascal, they're both Wirth languages that share many\ncommonalities.\n\n------\nhvs\nI used Delphi (1) to Delphi 5 in the 90's and used Delphi at a company for\nproduction software from 1998-2001. I loved it. It was (?) a great language\nand was always a pleasure to work in. I'm not a language fundamentalist (I use\nwhatever it takes to get the job done and whatever my employer prefers), but I\ncan say that at least 16 years ago it was a joy to work in.\n\n------\nSmallDeadGuy\nSome fun I had with free pascal in college was that you can $DEFINE almost\nanything to almost anything else:\n\n    \n    \n      {$DEFINE (:=ab}\n      {$DEFINE ):=ba}\n      ...etc...\n    \n\nCode becomes pretty ridiculous:\n\n    \n    \n      WriteLn ab ab a + b ba * c ba\n    \n\nIf you define WriteLn, +, and * as other things too you can get horrific\nlooking code. All keywords like program, if, then, and end can be redefined. I\nwrote a script that would take a regular source file and output a functionally\nidentical file which looked like:\n\n    \n    \n      {$DEFINE program:=a}\n      ... many more defines ...\n      {$DEFINE [:=zd}\n      {$DEFINE ]:=ze}\n      a b c d e f g h (* ... the entire program on one obfuscated line *)\n\n~~~\nboznz\nWow, using pascal for 30 years and diddnt know this..\n\nI am actually thankful its not that well known. Pascal is still readable where\nas #defines in C libraries give me terrible headaches decoding.\n\n------\nckok\nYeah I've written compilers for Swift, C#, Java, JavaScript and Pascal and\nagree Pascal is the cleanest and nicest language, both on the parsing side and\nwriting in.\n\n~~~\nfrik\nPascal language has a LL(1) grammar, typical for Wirth and other 1980s work.\n\nLL(1) grammars are of great practical interest, as parsers for these grammars\nare easy to construct, and many computer languages are designed to be LL(1)\nfor this reason.\n\n~~~\nckok\nI always hand write them but yeah. LL(1) is always nice\n\n------\nj_s\nI believe the toolchain offers the best cross-platform GUI option right now.\nIn the best case this can serve as a wake-up call to other languages: get your\nGUI house in order!\n\n~~~\njdhawk\nEveryone is (sadly) switching to Electron for this purpose.\n\n------\noneweekwonder\nWhile the author mentions castle-engine at the end I also want to mention\nglscene[0]. Don't think it is actively maintained like castle. But boy was it\namazing to read through the code to learn OOP principles and GL.\n\n[0]:\n[http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/GLScene](http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/GLScene)\n\n------\n_pdp_\nApollo Computer used Pascal as the systems programming language for its\noperating systems beginning in 1980. Variants of Pascal have also frequently\nbeen used for everything from research projects to PC games and embedded\nsystems.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_\\(programming_language\\))\n\n------\ntekacs\nFolks interested in Object Pascal might also be interested in\n[http://www.elementscompiler.com/elements/oxygene/](http://www.elementscompiler.com/elements/oxygene/)\n(no affiliation, but as an observer it seems relevant and interesting).\n\n~~~\nckok\nI am obviously biased, thanks for mentioning it :)\n\n------\naswanson\nWhat caused pascal to lose out to C? Seems like it was a good language that\nhad developer uptake.\n\n~~~\njhbadger\n1) The popularity of UNIX where C was the standard language 2) The fact that,\nmuch like BASIC, most implementations of the language didn't follow the\nstandard. In practice, Turbo Pascal was more of a standard than the official\none.\n\n~~~\nrpeden\nIt was more than just the popularity of Unix.\n\nA while back, I ended up following a link on HN and reading a bunch of old\ncomputer magazines. I came across an article by Peter Norton (in PC Magazine)\nfrom around 1986 or 87. In it, he discussed why C was rapidly displacing\nPascal among DOS programmers.\n\nNot that Unix didn't have an effect, but as DOS and then windows exploded in\npopularity in the 80s, C displacing Pascal there played a big role in Pascal's\noverall decline vs C.\n\nedit: I think this is the article I'm thinking of:\n\n[https://books.google.ca/books?id=NZrPkWywRXgC&pg=PA75&lpg=PA...](https://books.google.ca/books?id=NZrPkWywRXgC&pg=PA75&lpg=PA75#v=onepage&q&f=false)\n\n~~~\npjmlp\nIn those days without Internet and expensive dial-up access to BBS limited to\n5 simultaneous users, it depended very much where in the globe we are talking\nabout.\n\nOn my area in Portugal, using C was mostly for university projects.\n\nFor anything else we were using Turbo Pascal and Assembly, with Clipper for\nbusiness applications.\n\nActually many MS-DOS systems programming books had code listings in C, Pascal\nand Assembly.\n\n~~~\nrpeden\nA BBS with 5 simultaneous users? Sounds amazing. Most of the BBSes here in the\nToronto area only had a single phone line. :)\n\n~~~\npjmlp\nYep, at least they had 5 different numbers, but given the price of regional\nphone calls, I only used it a couple of times during a Summer job.\n\n------\npjmlp\nI loved Turbo Pascal and Delphi, which is why I having Java and .NET compile\ninto bytecode always felt a bit of deception.\n\n~~~\nckok\nWhat makes bytecode a deception though?\n\n~~~\npjmlp\nIf Java and .NET produced executables like C and C++, there would be less need\nfor them.\n\nInstead, one is forced to deliver the VM with the application or buy a third\nparty AOT compiler like Excelsior JET, while depending on another language for\nimplementation.\n\nThis made everyone that cared about writing native executables focus on C and\nC++, with the respective increase in unsafe code.\n\nThis is finally changing thanks to D, Go, Swift, Rust, but slowly.\n\nSo we have .NET Native on UWP, Xamarin on iOS and Android and IL2CPP on Unity.\n\nJava now started a long road that will take several years until Project\nMetropolis will finally deliver some kind of results.\n\n~~~\ns_kilk\n> This is finally changing thanks to D, Go, Swift, Rust, but slowly.\n\nThis whole thread has me imagining what it would be like if all the energy\nthat went into Go/D/etc had gone into Free Pascal instead.\n\nImagine if Free Pascal had a swanky website, and an army of people blogging\nabout this hip, powerful language, all the kids are getting on board, I heard\nNetflix are re-writing their routing layer in Object Pascal, have you seen the\nbenchmarks for this awesome new non-blocking Pascal web server...\n\n~~~\npjmlp\nI did enjoy Pascal a lot, but right now it lost the PR battle.\n\nIts spirit leaves on in languages like Rust, Swift, Kotlin and similar.\n\nIt is easier to drive adoption to those languages, than try to convince\nyounger devs to use Pascal, even with a swanky site.\n\nI like your idea, though.\n\n------\ndmix\nHow are the available packages? Is there a package management system ala\n`bundler` or `npm`?\n\nThis to me is a critical piece of adopting a language, especially a non-\nmainstream one. Pascal has the benefit of being older but access to clean\nmodern libraries is critical.\n\nPascal looks like an excellent option for building cross-platform desktop\napps, given the excellent GUI libraries. But I doubt I'm sold enough on it for\nany web stuff, given the great other options. I'd likely use OCaml if I was\ngoing to gamble on a non-mainstream language.\n\n~~~\nrufusroflpunch\nThis is a pretty critical piece for me as well. I've done some googling and I\ncan't find anything definitive.\n\n~~~\ndubst3pp4\nLazarus has a concept of packages for years. There is a newly created package\nmanager to handle updates and dependencies as well:\n[http://wiki.freepascal.org/Online_Package_Manager](http://wiki.freepascal.org/Online_Package_Manager)\n\nBut I don’t think that it is comparable to gem/npm or whatever yet...\n\n------\nseabrookmx\nAll of the arguments given for Object Pascal in this article could apply to\nother languages.\n\nA better question might be \"why use Object Pascal over Language X\"?\n\nI could see a niche in cross-platform desktop development, assuming you didn't\nwant to go the Electron route (and there's valid reasons for doing so). I've\nworked in Qt quite a bit in my desktop days and Qt/C++ is quite complex.\n\nObject Pascal still has manual memory management though, IIRC, which is a\nlarge portion of that complexity.\n\n~~~\nemodendroket\nYeah, I don't have the sense from reading this that I have any idea why I'd\nprefer Pascal over, say, Java, or C#, unless I liked begin and end blocks more\nthan braces and felt really strongly about it.\n\n------\nPaulHoule\nI loved Turbo Pascal back in the day, thought it was better than C when I was\nworking with DOS. I switched to C when I started working on Unix workstations.\n\n------\na76\nI just what to thank the author of the article. I am from the camp of those\nwho had this misunderstanding of thinking that Pascal is only a \"toy language\"\nto be studied at school or university and the articles gave clear proofs it's\nnot. I'm not going to switch to Pascal now or explore the question more\ndeeply; it was just an important thing for me to learn.\n\n~~~\ndubst3pp4\nThank you, this really encourages me after all that discussion! :-)\n\n------\npcunite\nI wrote the first version of Outlook Profiler in Delphi 6, then in Delphi 7.\nWonderful introductory language for making products (although Perl was my\nfirst exposure). The VCL GUI library and IDE work so well together that things\ntoday are second rate. Strange that we've not improved this basic need.\n\nToday, I write most things in C++ (or C# if I can).\n\n~~~\nido\nI always felt it’s really strange that making a quick and dirty GUI\napplication is still easier with Visual Basic 4.0 (circa 1995) than with most\nany modern tool.\n\n~~~\nmeredydd\nI'd like to see what you think of [https://anvil.works](https://anvil.works)\n\nIt's deliberately built in the Delphi/Visual Basic tradition, and trying to\ncarry those virtues onto the modern web.\n\n~~~\nido\ninteresting, thanks for the tip!\n\n------\njetti\nI've tried picking up Free Pascal and, for me, the documentation is lacking. I\ncome from C# where Microsoft has amazing documentation and small examples on\nhow to use just about every single class in the .NET framework. I guess I'm\njust spoiled with the documentation I have had and need to get used to it.\n\n~~~\ndubst3pp4\nDid you have a look at\n[https://www.freepascal.org/docs.var](https://www.freepascal.org/docs.var) and\nespecially at the RTL [https://www.freepascal.org/docs-\nhtml/current/rtl/index.html](https://www.freepascal.org/docs-\nhtml/current/rtl/index.html) and FCL [https://www.freepascal.org/docs-\nhtml/current/fcl/index.html](https://www.freepascal.org/docs-\nhtml/current/fcl/index.html) documentation? I think the Free Pascal team has\ndone a good job documenting nearly everything!\n\n~~~\njetti\nWow, not sure how I missed that. I was just looking at their Wiki and then\nthere was a page where they had the language spec. This changes a lot. Thanks\nfor bringing this to my attention.\n\n~~~\npjmlp\nThe old Borland manuals are on bitkeepers.\n\nThey are quite good.\n\n------\nnoonespecial\nThe default setup for the industrial control systems I've had to work on is\nWindows2000 with Delphi applications.\n\nThere are a shocking number of these systems still in use today.\n\nI've come to have a grudging admiration for these clunky old things and a\nspecial respect for pascal in its many forms.\n\n------\ndehef\nIn my university (in Paris) we used to learn programming that way for the\nlicence degree\n\n1st year -> pascal only\n\n2nd year -> c only\n\n3d year -> java only\n\nThat was a very nice learning curve for the core course of programming.\n\n~~~\nksec\nFor absolute beginners, I still think Pascal, or Turbo Pascal is best to\nstart. It has a syntax that doesn't scare people away, and very readable.\nDeploying is also 1 trillion times easier then what ever we have today, ( C ,\nPython , Ruby , Node.js ... )\n\nI would have picked Ruby if it could compiled into a single executable file,\nand if the Dev environment actually work on Windows.\n\nP.S: It does work on Windows, but not as simple and easy as it should be.\nCompared to every other alternative on the market.\n\n~~~\nthethirdone\n> Deploying is also 1 trillion times easier then what ever we have today, ( C\n> , Python , Ruby , Node.js ... )\n\nWhat makes it easier?\n\nDistributing an executable from C seems easy. And using package managers from\nothers also seems easy.\n\n~~~\nboznz\nPress F9 and you get a self contained exe which was not dependent on any\nlibraries in about a second.. I think that was what the poster was getting at.\n\n------\npartycoder\nPascal and C are very close to each other as they implement the same\nprogramming paradigms. Haven't tried Object Pascal but I assume it extends\nPascal with OOP and some other stuff... while still being the same\nimperative/structured/object oriented combination we all know.\n\nIf you are coming from C, it should be like moving from Python to Ruby, or\nJava to C# or viceversa... same paradigms for the most part.\n\n------\ni_feel_great\nAnyone here used PascalScript[0], specifically with compiled Pascal itself? I\nam planning an application that is compiled and delivered with PascalScript to\nallow the end user to extend and customise the application without access to\nthe source code. Preferrably using FreePascal.\n\n[0][http://www.remobjects.com/ps.aspx](http://www.remobjects.com/ps.aspx)\n\n------\nMikeb85\nAnyone who likes Pascal should check out Nim. Inspired by Pascal, with some\nPython-like syntax (and significant whitespace), as well as some really cool\nfeatures from other languages. Also compiles to blazing fast binaries via C or\nC++ (JavaScript too but not sure about the performance there).\n\n------\nLewton\nMost of the points are all well and good (albeit underwhelming) but\n\n>This is maybe the fact, that most developers are annoyed about: the absence\nof braces and the very verbose syntax of the language. As an example, instead\nof opening and closing braces, Pascal uses the begin and end keywords for\nblocks. The if keyword is complemented by the word then. As you can see, the\nwhole syntax is readable like plain English. If you start to cry now, you\nshould consider one important question by yourself: What is more important?\nThe ability to have a short syntax to write code fast or the possibility to\nread and understand code that was written by other developers or even by you a\nyear ago? I’m in favour of the second fact and I really enjoy that\nverboseness.\n\nYou don't make code more readable by adding more noise.\n\nBEGIN and END is just plain noise\n\nBEGIN And how exactly does this make code \"readable like plain English?\" END\n\n~~~\nastrodust\nEnglish is great but for all the \"noise\". Why is \"the\" a three letter word and\nnot something more concise like \"le\" or \"a\"? Why is it \"and\" and not a single-\nletter \"y\" like any sensible language?\n\nYou get used to the syntax, and after a while it becomes invisible.\n\n------\ngwbas1c\nI know C# borrowed heavily from Pascal. (So much that a lot of its\nimprovements over Java were overlooked.)\n\nWhat's the advantage of using Pascal over C# or Java? Is it that Pascal\noutputs true compiled programs instead of requiring a VM?\n\n~~~\nmmargerum\nMakes sense since Anders H. architected c#, turbo pascal, and Delphi. As soon\nas he left Borland, Delphi began to atrophy. Too bad because it was a ground\nbreaking product when it came out.\n\n------\noneweekwonder\nSomething I wonder how will one get object pascal work? The worst part is I\nwould like to be picky and only to fpc/lazarus dev, no delphi. Otherwise I\nneed to stick to selling my python/flask, html5 fizz buzz.\n\n------\ncoldcode\nWeird anyone still uses this, I first saw Object Pascal on a Apple Lisa in\n1983.\n\n~~~\nbadsectoracula\nFWIW Apple's Object Pascal and modern Object Pascal have little common.\n\nAlthough i think Free Pascal does have a Mac Pascal mode so that it can\nunderstand Apple's Object Pascal dialect.\n\n~~~\njetti\nFrom what I've read Object Pascal is just another name for Delphi but without\nthe trademark hassle.\n\n~~~\noneweekwonder\nNo need to speculate[0]. The name \"object pascal\" was firstly used by apple\nfor their dialect of pascal. Then Borland came and evolved Turbo Pascal into\nObject Pascal(and brand it Delphi) and then fpc came and branded them a open\nsource object pascal implementation.\n\nAs for Pascal vs Object Pascal, Procedural vs OOP, Think C vs C++(not that I'm\nsaying c++ is better).\n\n[0]:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Pascal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Pascal)\n\n~~~\njetti\nFrom the wikipedia article:\n\n\"Borland used the name Object Pascal for the programming language in the first\nversions of Delphi, but later renamed it to the Delphi programming language.\nHowever, compilers that claim to be compatible with Object Pascal are often\ntrying to be compatible with Delphi source code.[citation needed] Because\nDelphi is trademarked, compatible compilers continued using the name Object\nPascal\"\n\nYou're still right that Object Pascal can encompass more than just Delphi.\n\n------\n_dcwr\nMy first language in high school was actually Pascal (as in - Delphi) but now\nI love C, C++, Lua and Python and barely can write Pascal at all, especially\nsince it's so separate from the C inspired syntaxes and semantics. For job\nreasons I'll also probably learn something 'proper', mainstream, industrial,\netc., but not relearn Pascal. But for trolling, having fun or some private GUI\nwork (especially that, thanks to Lazarus) it's just great.\n\nWhen I got to university they (the university, not the high school, no idea\nabout them) dropped it from the curriculum so my Pascal skill makes me quite\nunique in that sense.\n\nI only used it once or so during university to troll one doctor leading a\nclass, an old homework grading system still had Pascal available in it in\naddition to C and C++ so I submitted a Pascal program. In a twist of irony the\nnext class after that assignment was led by another person, a really smart\nprofessor who usually teaches in Warsaw who also happened to be quite a good\nsport about jokes and such, who quickly sarcastically remarked to my Pascal\nprogram: we've got a _connaisseur_ in here.\n\nAnd this whole joke was actually in response to story the person usually\nleading that class told, about how once during a competitive coding\ncompetition (allowing C, C++ and Pascal) where everyone was using C or C++ he\nwas first to submit a correct program and it was in Pascal to which the live\njudges commented that Pascal is making a grand return, since even back then it\nwas on its way out.\n\nRecently I picked it up again when I needed to do something quite graphical\nfor statistics class on a short notice that would be dealing with graphs and I\ndidn't want to fight Qt, GTK+, HTML5 or whatever into submission and having\nrecently discovered Lazarus I knew it can do it. I quickly whipped up the\nprogram, the graphing components were great with API and all but were poorly\ndocumented (or not at all). Sadly there were no funny comments from the doctor\non that one.\n\nPart of using Pascal for anything at all or even knowing it is actually the\nfunny comments and reactions of others. Some people seem to think Pascal is\nproperly dead, as in - no longer usable, no longer worked on, no longer coded\nin, at all. Like COBOL or something but with no 'old bank software' and such\nto save it. When looking for a job I actually even forgot to put Pascal on my\nCV as being one of my 'very weak' skills but I imagine it didn't hurt my\nchances... I even share the first name with Blaise Pascal (the French\nmathematician the language was named for) so that makes my use of Pascal even\nmore appropriate and allows for even more jokes.\n\nAfter that I also did few UVA[0] tasks but sadly Pascal seems to be broken for\nmany tasks so I gave up (I get an error saying 'mv failed: program.pas and\nprogram.pas are the same file').\n\nLater, to not waste and forget what I relearned for the graph program homework\nand since GUI in Lazarus is so easy to do, I also (shameless plug) wrote a\nnotes program[1] for myself and it was a breeze thanks to Lazarus and the LCL\ncomponents. Now I use that program daily for my various notes, todos, etc.\n\n[0] [http://uva.onlinejudge.org/](http://uva.onlinejudge.org/)\n\n[1]\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15436840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15436840)\n\n------\nnikolay\nA huge chunk of my career has been programming in Turbo Pascal and Borland\nPascal for Windows. I miss those days!\n\n------\nst3fan\nTHINK Pascal\n\n------\nluizb\nRe: Because I can't learn any other language\n\n------\nthriftwy\nTo my limited experience, everything Pascal had of its own is unusable.\nEverything usable in the language comes imported from C.\n\nHowever I can see how one would prefer Object Pascal over C++.\n\n------\nsizzzzlerz\nHopefully, it has changed but, when I was learning Pascal many years ago, an\nentire program had to be contained within a single file. No separate\ncompilation files and no linker. For all but toy programs, this made for some\nvery long files which, given the state of editors then, made maintenance a\nreal problem.\n\n~~~\npsykotic\nUCSD Pascal had separate compilation units (late 1970s). A lot of people from\nmy generation got started with Turbo Pascal and it had units based on UCSD\nPascal starting in TP 4.\n\n~~~\nhoward941\nOMFG this brings back memories, like the promise of a processor that executed\np-code. Good times.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPinax 0.9a2 Released - jtauber\nhttp://pinaxproject.com/blog/2011/11/29/pinax-09a2-released/\n\n======\nmixmastamyk\nLooking forward to a strong Pinax. I'm tired of reinventing the wheel.\n\n------\njezdez\nw00t!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTell HN: App idea that should become reality - stasy\n\nI would pay for an app that allowed me to take a picture of a reading&#x2F;pages of a book and get a summary for it. This would be incredibly useful for schoolwork.\nBasically like summly, but the summarized text isn&#x27;t from some news site, but from the place you want it from (preferably a picture).\nIf you make this and have it as an iPhone app, please tell me about it, and I will definitely buy it: aeip@live.com\n======\nnklas\nI would like an OCR app that, when launched, just OCR's the latest photo i've\ntaken and put the resulting text in the clipboard.\n\nExample use case: You're in a hotel and want to connect to the WiFi so instead\nof looking at their sign and typing in the password by hand, you just take a\nphoto and launch the app and then paste the password where needed.\n\nWould also be good for power users with apps like Launch Center and\npythonista.\n\n------\nbuss\nOr go one level down - I'd pay for a good OCR library and a good summarization\nlibrary. The current OCR offerings are too difficult to get working well, and\nsummarization tech is way too specialized at the moment.\n\n~~~\nquahada\nWhat sort of challenges have you had with OCR? I'm working on an easy to use\nOCR sdk (iOS), we're going to start beta in a few weeks.\n\n~~~\nbuss\nTesseract is really difficult to tune such that you get decent results from\ncamera images instead of cleanly scanned text.\n\nOcropus is really slow, but does seem to work better than tesseract out of the\nbox. It's still quite bad with camera-captured images and IIRC doesn't give\nyou any hooks to improve the results.\n\nI couldn't find any other viable options when I was looking about six months\nago.\n\nI want an SDK that gives me an easy way to train the OCR engine. That means\nbeing able to view the images which performed badly, with text bounding boxes\nand the OCRed text overlaid that allow me to manually correct the results\nwhich it will then learn from. And, perhaps most importantly, good defaults\nfor the common cases of document scans & camera captures.\n\n------\ncoffeecodecouch\nThis is an interesting idea, but what exactly do you mean by \"summary\"? Do you\nwant an app to detect the most important parts of the text, and give you just\nthose parts? Or are you interested in an app that detects what it is you would\nlike summarized, and then find summaries on external sites like SparkNotes?\n\n------\nkrrishd\nNot really a mobile developer myself, but Im guessing it would require parsing\nthe text from a book with something like OpenCV, and then passing it through\nSummly's or clipped.me's API.\n\n~~~\nstasy\nWhere do you get Summly's API?\n\n------\najiang\nEven better - auto summary of everything you see through Google Glass.\n\n------\nnamenotrequired\nI'd already be interested in one that just reads out the full text to me in a\nway that sounds natural enough that it isn't distracting.\n\n------\nyaur\nWith an ISBN it wouldn't be that hard to pull it from amazon.\n\n~~~\nstasy\nWith printings from school, you often get short passages or short stories that\nare not in books or very difficult to find within books. But just being able\nto take a picture of it would make it so much easier.\n\n~~~\nyaur\nIdentifying the text isn't that hard, generally 10+ word excerpts pasted into\nGoogle will give you a source. The reviews/summaries though... for books you\nhave amazon and good reads, for short stories though I don't know where you\nwould find them. The search: '\"no advantages\" review alice munro' for instance\nonly turns up material related to the collection that it is a part of, not for\nthe story.\n\nbtw, I'm kind of just brainstorming now.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLet Vim Do the Typing - tambourine_man\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TX3kV3TICU\n======\nswah\nDidn't know anything other than C-N/C-P concerning completion on Vim -\nconsidering switching back now :P\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "Ask HN: What is the difference between cold emails and spam? - WolfOliver\n======\nSomeone\nA cold email is something that takes a human at least an hour to write.\n\nSpam is something that takes a factory less than a second to spit out.\n\nSomewhere in-between, there’s a gray area. ‘Spam’ is in the eye of the\nbeholder (nobody claims to produce spam) so where that is is a matter of\ntaste.\n\nFor me, a cold email _must_ have a human writer. That _hour_ isn’t a strong\nboundary, but once you’re cold emailing ten different people an hour, I think\nyou’re reaching spam country.\n\nI also think there’s computer-produced emails that aren’t spam, but I can’t\nthink of any I would call “cold email”.\n\n------\nandreicon\nSpam is unsolicited correspondence. Cold emails are unsolicited, therefore are\nspam.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAmerica’s awful airports: A new ranking - iamchmod\nhttp://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599801-new-ranking\n\n======\nmbillie1\nIt would be nice to see a list of the airports in question (not that I have\nany doubt about the awfulness of US airports, having been a twice-a-week-\ntraveling-consultant for 2+ years).\n\nLaGuardia would be my personal nominee for US Airport Hell, but I'm sure there\nare others...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHadoop Platform as a Service in the Cloud - amitry\nhttp://techblog.netflix.com/2013/01/hadoop-platform-as-service-in-cloud.html\n\n======\nnwenzel\nOther than the architecture of their multi-cluster management system, which us\ncertainly fascinating, I found two interesting points.\n\n1) Use of S3 as the data storage platform allows for Production, ad hoc,\nanalytic, and \"personal\" clusters to all work with not only a full-size data\nset but the same data set. Brilliant.\n\n2) The investigation of Amazon Redshift as a Teradata replacement. First, it\nvalidates Amazon as a new competitor to on-premise relational data warehouse\nimplementations. Second, it would seemingly move substantially all their data\nto the cloud. Third, what does that mean for their other apps such as\n\"traditional\" BI? No sense having Cognos on a local server if all the data is\nin the cloud.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPray for the Souls of the People Sucked into This Dating Site Hell - rbanffy\nhttps://gizmodo.com/pray-for-the-souls-of-the-people-sucked-into-this-datin-1825735565?rev=1526922420917&utm_source=gizmodo_twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow\n======\ncowboysauce\n>they have hired “programmers with quantum computers to fight this stuff,”\n\nWow, either he's talking out his ass or he's been scammed hard. I'm leaning\nheavily towards the former given the overall shady feel of the business.\n\nI think it's obvious that they knowingly tolerate these fake profiles, if not\nactively create them. To give the impression that their site has a lot of\nusers.\n\n------\nmnm1\nAre these scammy tactics a surprise? They shouldn't be. Sites like match.com\nand pof.com employ them effectively also, perhaps even more effectively\nbecause the scams are hidden in a network with actual human actions as well.\nThey will cause a whole bunch of fake activity for new profiles that mimics\nreal interest. Only when one clicks on the messages or winks or whatever,\nthere are bugs and the profiles don't load or other such nonsense. I have a\nhard time believing that just the profiles that recently interacted with me\nare the only buggy ones that aren't loading on the whole site. As far as I can\ntell, the entire dating site industry is mainly a scam that supports a small\namount of actual human interaction at the expense of millions of users, often\nusing shoddy programming as cover for the scam.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nInterview With the Man Who Could Destroy Photography - nickb\nhttp://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/06/exclusive-inter.html\n======\nryanmahoski\nI've never seen such hype. Does anyone actually think \"the possibilities are\nendless,\" that this device \"is a prankster's dream\" and \"could destroy\nphotography\"? I am skeptical of the physics described but since I'm not a\ndigicam expert I will just have to trust von Bismarck solved an apparent\nlatency problem. (When my digicam flashes, the fulgerator has to receive that\ninput and respond with its own flash, all before my shutter closes.) Ambient\nand direct lighting would both have to be below normal daytime levels and the\nsubject needs to be dark enough to contrast the fulgerator's light. I wish\nthis guy all the luck due a man caught adulterating vacation photos but I\ndon't see how he has developed a viable tool. Maybe if I followed his über\noptics hack, I'd understand the secret implications of his toy.\n\n~~~\ngaius\n\"(When my digicam flashes, the fulgerator has to receive that input and\nrespond with its own flash, all before my shutter closes\"\n\nThis really isn't a problem. People have been using on-camera flashes to\ntrigger studio lighting for decades now. A flash is actually between 1/700 and\n1/2500 seconds long, which is _plenty_ of time for the electronics to react.\nYou shutter is probably going to be open between 1/60 and 1/250 seconds (if\nyou're on P mode).\n\nYou can see this at nearly any wedding you go to, the pro photographer might\nhave some studio lights set up for the formals, unless he's using fancy radio\ntriggers, his lights can be set off by guests with cameras.\n\n------\nm0nty\n\"You couldn't take a photograph of a tourist attraction ever again without\nworrying that some marketing crap would be pushed into your camera.\"\n\nOoooh! Look! Those guys from Coke f*cked up all my photos. Guess I'd better go\nand buy lots of Coke then.\n\n~~~\nHexstream\nSometimes it looks like marketers _actually_ think like that, judging by the\namount of IN YOUR FACE advertising that I can't in my right mind fantasize\nthat it might reflect well on a brand.\n\n~~~\nbayareaguy\nPropagandists of all kinds come to mind.\n\n------\nbayareaguy\nI can see this messing up current cameras but couldn't the added images just\nbe removed with embeddable postprocessing logic?\n\n~~~\njws\nAutomated post processing won't work well because it is an arbitrary\nsuperimposed image, but the big key here is that it only works for flash\nphotographs. They say that in the article but then drop it. Tourist\nattractions are generally the wrong scale for flashes to be required.\nOverblown.\n\n~~~\njfarmer\nRight, well, people who have even a bit familiar with photography know that,\nbut most people with their point-and-click digital cameras don't.\n\nThey'll still get, er, fulgerated.\n\n------\npmjordan\nWith digital cameras having preview screens, I suspect you'd notice pretty\nquickly. Besides, this won't scale well to multiple flashes going off in\nsuccession. As for monetisation, uh, I don't see the potential, but if people\nare willing to pay for the tech then I can't argue with that.\n\n------\nruss\nThis would be pretty awesome for celebrities tired of the paparazzi, or for\nBritney to revisit 2004.\n\n~~~\nnoonespecial\nIt would not function in that environment as hundreds of flashes are going off\nall at once.\n\nThis hack is one camera, one flash, one angle, close range, once every 30\nseconds or so.\n\n------\ncheponis\nI can think of half a dozen ways to defeat this, as any hacker could. Seems to\nme to be much ado about nothing.\n\n------\nAngostura\nIt seems to me that this could easily be defeated by switching on 'red eye\nreduction' to produce a smaller flash moments before the main flash.\n\n~~~\nComputerGuru\nRead the article. It claims he's using certain technology to detect fake red-\neye flash from real flashes when a photo is being taken.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNews anchor Anthony Ponce quits to become a Lyft driver - curtis\nhttp://money.cnn.com/2016/07/27/technology/anthony-ponce-lyft-backseat-driver/index.html\n======\nsheraz\nSo basically guy wants to quit and make a modern day version of this?\n\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_Confessions](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_Confessions)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBitcoin mining power reaches 1000 petahashes per second - no_gravity\nhttps://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate?timespan=all\n======\nraducu\nI really don't get why people are so hung up on these two issues -- \"wasted\"\nelectricity and wasted computer power without actual numbers to put things\ninto perspective.\n\nAnybody has any real numbers on electricity used for bitcoin opperations vs.\nelectricity used by banks?\n\nFrom what I know about hashing algorithms and hardware, I'm pretty sure that\nthe dedicated bitcoin hardware is not so capable for general computation\nstuff.\n\nI'm more concearned about the pissed brain cycles that go to waste inside the\nbig corporate oligarchies that we call banks.\n\n------\nJoeAltmaier\nAll that electricity pissed away because people can't (won't) trust a banking\nauthority.\n\n~~~\nRealityVoid\nIf you think about it, there is a lot of energy and time pissed away because\nof trust issues. Reports, \"cover your ass\" emails and tasks, workflow\nlimitations because of lack of trust, locks on doors, security systems, LOADS\nof bullshit jobs. Lack of trust shows in most aspects of our life. And,\nironically, I think(without any concrete data to back up, it's just my own\nmusing on the subject) that verification and \"check systems\" contribute\ngreatly at the trust individuals show to each other.\n\n~~~\nJoeAltmaier\nBut bitcoin miners have turned this into an energy-squandering engine with no\nupper limit. They've automated pissing away energy for imaginary points.\nThat's not going to end well.\n\n~~~\nraducu\nDon't you think there are market forces that will resolve this energy-\nsquandering thing?\n\n~~~\nGFK_of_xmaspast\nIt sounds like an externality to me, so \"no\".\n\n------\ntromp\nIt's simple economics.\n\nIf you have a lottery with a single 25BTC prize, that can only be played by\nspending electricity to compute hashes, then expect 25BTC worth of cheap\nelectricity to be spent (every 10 minutes that the lottery is held).\n\nThe increase to 1 exahash/sec is simply due to the latest generation ASICs\nhaving achieved 0.06 joules per gigahash.\n\nAt least this \"waste\" is reduced in half every 4 years.\n\n------\nwebaholic\nAll that compute power could have been put to so much use only if the inventor\nhad thought of a better way to choose a nonce which works to create the hash.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway7767\nWhat useful work do you imagine being possible with\nSHA256(SHA256(nonce+block)) by choosing the nonce differently?\n\n~~~\nwebaholic\nInstead of having an arbitrary number as a nonce... let's say you chose the\nnext prime number to create the hash. This itself will help us discover lots\nof prime numbers :)\n\n~~~\nthrowaway7767\nIt would also make bitcoin completely unusable, as the block time would be\ntied to the time it takes to find a new prime. So transactions would only go\nthrough every few years. So that would not work.\n\n~~~\nwebaholic\nThat was just an example of useful work. I am sure we could find something\nboth useful and that is not time consuming.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway7767\nI agree that this would be great, but this is not a new idea, people have been\ntalking about these things since 2008-ish. Unless you have a firm proposal, I\nthink we're at exactly the same place as we've always been: everyone agrees\nthat it'd be nice, but noone has any idea how to make it happen[0].\n\nThe useful work also has to happen as a byproduct of the blockchain securing\ncalculations, because if it's seperate, the blockchain will offer worse\nsecurity properties than a competing blockchain with similar hashing power, so\nthere's a disincentive to use it.\n\n[0] There was PrimeCoin, which computed some series purported to be\nmathematically interesting. Math people I've talked to mostly shrugged their\nshoulders when I asked them whether that work had any real applications.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGloucestershire radio ham manages to contact International Space Station - colinprince\nhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/gloucestershire-radio-ham-manages-to-contact-international-space-station-10441887.html\n======\njdietrich\nISS crew members make regular amateur radio contacts as part of the ARISS\nscheme. A proportion of these contacts are pre-arranged for school and youth\ngroups, but many amateurs have made spontaneous contact.\n\nContacting the ISS doesn't require anything more sophisticated than a 2m/70cm\ntransceiver and a handheld Yagi-Uda - the difficulty comes from the very short\nwindows of opportunity and the substantial doppler shift.\n\n[http://www.ariss.org/contact-the-iss.html](http://www.ariss.org/contact-the-\niss.html)\n\nSimilarly, many amateurs have made earth-moon-earth contacts, using the moon\nas a reflector. UHF and VHF are most common, but some highly skilled amateurs\nhave made EME contacts using millimetre-wave bands.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%E2%80%93Moon%E2%80%93Ear...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%E2%80%93Moon%E2%80%93Earth_communication)\n\n------\nflashman\n200 miles isn't all that far for a ham radio signal. I'm not trying to\ndiminish the achievement at all, however.\n\nPeople interested in RTL-SDR (software defined radio on a USB TV dongle,\nbasically) might like to know that ISS transmissions can be heard on\n148.500MHz. Requires a little bit more effort, and a licence, to chat back.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Accelerate or slow down? - glow\n\nI have been tossing around a few ideas for a start-up, a couple of different angles on small-scale game development for download services, and getting good feedback from people around me.<p>So I'm faced with a dilemma: I have a family with small children. Not really the optimal situation for an time-consuming adventure like this. Is this the time to do this, or should I step down and postpone things, possibly losing the opportunities I see?<p>Try to put yourself in this situation and tell me how you'd reason. I won't really base my decision on answers here, but I'm hoping for a good discussion at least as I've been turning my head inside out thinking about this for a couple of months.\n======\nvaksel\nstart now.\n\nBetter to do a startup for 3 years @ 20 hours a week, than 2 years @ 80 hours\na week\n\nGrowth isn't instant, it'll take time to get new users. And if you are taking\nthe long view, you'll actually be more mentally prepared for when your startup\nisn't an instant success\n\n------\nbprater\nIf you mean \"step down\" as in leaving your current employ, the critical\nquestion is this: How many months savings do you have?\n\nAnd if you have at least a year's saving, what is the revenue model and how\nquickly can you get to the point where you can ship product?\n\nOh, and don't listen to what people around you say about your ideas. They'll\neither think it's brilliant or say it's stupid, but rarely have anything\ncritical or useful to say.\n\nThe genius is in your passion for the idea.\n\n~~~\nglow\nWhen I say \"slow down\" I don't mean quit my day job, but rather put it off for\na couple of years. Quitting my day-job feels like a bad move, but if things\nstart working out I might take a day off every week to work on my stuff.\n\n------\nlsc\nIf you are self-funded, or can self-fund, accelerate. I personally see this as\nmy only chance.\n\nNothing has changed for me, in terms of revenue. I still have more consulting\nwork than I can handle, at ridiculous rates. What is different now is that\nnone of my competitors can get loans or venture capital, and I can hire really\ngood people for quite a lot less than usual.\n\nMarketing, too, seems easier than usual. Consumers care about price now, which\nunlike the intangibles people usually compete on, is an area where I can\ncompete.\n\nbut then, I don't have kids.\n\n------\nglow\nThanks a lot for the comments.\n\nAs I read through some of the comments, I see that my arch-nemesis \"time\nmanagement\" probably is one the reasons I'm sweating over this. Using the\nright amount of spare time effectively and letting it take it's time is\nprobably key, but oh so hard to do.\n\nYou've given me good food for thought, thanks!\n\n------\napage43\nCertainly not the time to quit your day job and then try a start-up, but i\ndon't see why you couldn't throw together your startup in your spare time. Is\nthere a reason you need the 'time-consuming adventure' to actually consume so\nmuch time? It'll take longer to launch but on the whole, be less risky.\n\n------\naxod\nDo it in spare time and see how it goes :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy I'm not laughing at C Plus Equality - xs_kid\nhttp://blog.mollywhite.net/why-im-not-laughing-at-c-plus-equality/\n======\nvezzy-fnord\nThe comments section got absolutely slaughtered by Reddit and 4chan after this\nmade its way on a popular subreddit.\n\nThat said, I personally thought her entry only ended up (unintentionally?)\nconforming to the very stereotypes the project served to satirize in the first\nplace.\n\n~~~\nskunkworks\nI agree with you that her entry unintentionally ends up skewering itself by\nrunning head-first into the joke. Really though, she skewered herself by\nranting about a really bad joke.\n\nThe C+= joke sucks. It's poorly executed. It's far too self-conscious and has\nway too many \"wink-wink\" moments to be effective satire. You either need to be\nclever and subtle, or absurd and outrageous. Instead, most of the jokes fell\nflaccidly in the middle: too obvious about its subject matter, but not even\nremotely clever. Making it a programming language doesn't make it clever joke,\nit just means you tried really hard to tell a joke.\n\nAnd she fell for it. Which ironically validates its existence, poor joke\nexecution be damned.\n\n------\n__pThrow\n\"Your document is a collection of sexist, trans*phobic jokes and negative\nstereotypes, and I'm not laughing.\"\n\nI think it's great the way Ms. White met their ugly speech with more speech of\nher own.\n\nThat's the remedy to ugly speech, more speech.\n\nI disagree with Ms. White almost entirely, but I do approve of the way she has\nchosen to confront them.\n\nIn the past 36 hours, we've seen github censor this speech, and calls from\nfeminists to have bitbucket censor this repo at bitbucket as well. On twitter\nthere have been callouts where people who \"star\"ed the repo were listed and\nimplicitly threatened and people tweeting in support of the parody were named\nand labeled.\n\nThat sort of behavior from github and from internet feminists trying to stifle\nspeech and police speech is wrong.\n\n~~~\n10098\nThe sad part is that this sort of behavior is _exactly_ the reason that repo\nexists.\n\n------\nflyinglizard\nGreat promotion to that repository (some of which I found quite clever). I'm\nnot sure what the writer wanted to achieve by publishing this blog entry,\nespecially as it's pretty thin on commentary.\n\nThat being said, maybe the best way to change the tone of the open source\ncommunity - or any male-dominated community, for the matter - is to get\ninvolved with it?\n\n------\neliteraspberrie\nHumour is subjective. What I find not funny, other people will find hilarious,\nand vice versa. I am not humanity's arbiter of what is or isn't funny, and\nneither is Molly White.\n\n------\nvinkelhake\n\"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.\"\n\n------\nanigbrowl\nI didn't see the point of dignifying it with a comment when submitted earlier,\nsince it's obvious unfunny trolling, better ignored than acknowledged.\n\n~~~\nsupergauntlet\nFeminism discussions in tech circles never go anywhere good anyways, because a\nhuge number of people have a warped perception of feminism that they rally\nagainst and it just ends up being one big shitshow where no meaningful\ndialogue occurs.\n\n------\nthenerdfiles\nReminds me of the\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nInstantCab (YC W12): A Hybrid Alternative To Ride-Sharing and Taxi Apps - ajju\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/instantcab/\n\n======\njoshwa\nA big problem I've seen with the proliferation of these apps is that I've seen\ndrivers with three or four devices, (which makes sense from the driver's\nperspective--maximizing opportunity), but even though I'm in the car paying a\nfare, they show up on the other apps as available! The result is that when you\nput out a call for a ride, even though it shows tons of vehicles available,\nmost of them are actually currently occupied. As TFA points out, this leads to\ndistrust since as a rider you can't actually be sure you'll be able to get a\nride.\n\nI think the app makers need to encourage riders to report to them when they\nsee drivers using other apps and misleadingly showing themselves as available.\nI know I'm going to start doing it.\n\n~~~\najju\nThat's a good point Josh. We ask drivers to set themselves as unavailable if\nthey are on another ride, and we are measuring a lot of things that help us\nfigure out which drivers are more reliable so we can reward them accordingly\nvs which drivers are unreliable so we can part ways with them.\n\nOf course we'd definitely love feedback from you and other users when you see\na driver engaging in untrustworthy behavior. Email us ask at instantcab.com\n(or leave a comment with your rating if you are using InstantCab)\n\n------\najju\nHN Readers: there's a $5 off coupon at the end of TechCrunch article, but we\nhave a special coupon for π off your ride. Use \"HNFriends\" at or after signing\nup.\n\nAlso happy to answer any questions you have :)\n\n------\njoseakle\nHi, i am one of the founders of Yaxi. We are doing very similar in Mexico if\nyou are interested in having a chat, pepe at yaxi dot com. We are also taking\nthe hybrid approach and have sent thousands of trips too.\n\n~~~\najju\nJose: sending you an email\n\n------\najaymehta\nThis is a totally awesome service -- once called an InstantCab in SF and a\nlimo came to pick us up. A goddamn LIMO.\n\n~~~\najju\nThanks Ajay. As the commenter on TechCrunch said, ballers get baller service\n;)\n\n------\nianferrel\n>InstantCab drivers are more likely to actually use the app the way it’s\nintended. Also, there’s really no way for drivers to cancel. Once they’ve\naccepted a ride, there’s simply no button they can push to get out of it.\n\nWhat if they hit the button accidentally?\n\n~~~\najju\nIan: We have worked hard to make the app easy to use for drivers to minimize\nmistakes. For example: when we started the company, every one of us including\nengineers drove cars for 10 hours shifts for 3 weekends in a row, giving rides\nto friends to understand how to design well for drivers.\n\nMistakes still happen occasionally, and we have procedures to deal with them\nbut we took this approach to make it clear that bailing after accepting a ride\nis not an option.\n\n------\neeek\nI worked with these guys for a couple days and I can say they are a really\namazing team: positive energy, healthy debate and mutually supportive. Way to\ngo InstantCab!\n\n~~~\najju\nThanks Eric! Appreciate your vote of confidence. Come by the office and let's\ngrab lunch on Monday if you have some time!\n\n------\ngarfbargle\nLove it, can't wait for it to make it's way down to SoCal\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDepression, anxiety rising among U.S. college students - HNLurker2\nhttps://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-mental-undergrads/depression-anxiety-rising-among-u-s-college-students-idUKKCN1VJ25Z\n======\ntempsy\nI think a huge part of it is that getting a “good” job out of college has\nnever been more competitive and more important. The idea that one works their\nway up from a secretarial position to executive could not be more unrealistic\ntoday. On the other hand, if you beat the competition (your peers) to get a\nreputable corporate gig at a big co, well known startup, or prestigious\nconsulting or banking you’re setting yourself up for life. Not getting one of\nthose jobs out of college makes it near impossible to be hired at those\ncompanies even a year or two down the road simply because many of those\ncompanies source all their entry level people from colleges and past interns.\n\nYour trajectory is just so different depending on your first job and I think\neveryone is acutely aware but no one wants to talk about it.\n\n~~~\nhourislate\nI don't know if you read the article but I think the authors clearly state\nwhat they think is the issue and it isn't finding your first job.\n\nFrom the article:\n\n>“It suggests that something is seriously wrong in the lives of young people\nand that whatever went wrong seemed to happen around 2012, or 2013,” said\nstudy coauthor Jean Twenge. She noted that this was around the time\nsmartphones became common and social media moved from being optional to\nmandatory among youngsters.\n\n>The study wasn’t designed to determine the causes of the increases in mental\nhealth issues among college students, though the authors speculate about a\nvariety of possibilities. Smartphone use, for example, has been associated\nwith poorer sleep quality and fewer face-to-face interactions, both of which\nare deemed essential for mental health, the researchers write in the Journal\nof Adolescent Health.\n\n~~~\nnilkn\nJust based on only my own experiences and perception, the entire news\napparatus of the United States seems to have underwent a rapid shift starting\napproximately in 2013. Outside of only a small handful of venerable\ninstitutions like The New York Times, news and social media seem to be merging\nin a way that is completely changing the character of how important\ninformation is delivered to millions of people. It was a shift towards a level\nof partisanship, hostility, and fear-mongering that, to me at least, has felt\nutterly unprecedented. Anecdotally, this has caused me a great deal of\npersonal stress, and I've had to become extremely diligent with how I consume\nnews media in order to maintain a healthy state of mind.\n\nI can't help but wonder if the effect of this would've been magnified if were\nyounger, less prepared to deal with it, and just now entering college instead\nof being half a decade out of college.\n\n~~~\narcheantus\nThis is the right answer. Smartphones aren’t inherently bad, but they enable\nthings that are toxic without us understanding - chief among them the news.\n\nBack in college I thought it was the grown up thing to do to read the news\neveryday. Fast forward ten years and I’ve finally realized how much\nfrustration and misery the news (Twitter) was bringing into my life.\n\nAs of a week and a half ago, I’m now completely off of the news. I deleted the\nnews app, blocked Twitter and FB from Safari, and avoid other news sites. The\noutcome has been remarkable! My wife continues to remark how much less\nirritable I’ve become and how much less stressed I seem. I use HN to stay\ncurrent on industry news, but I can honestly say I don’t miss that other\nstuff.\n\nTo anyone reading this that is hooked on news consumption - try cutting it\nfrom your life! It is a life-changing experience.\n\n~~~\nKaveren\nIt's such a sheltered attitude I see on HN where people talk about just\nignoring the news, when you know that you don't have to worry about anything\nbad happening to you. It's a civic responsibility in a democracy to be\ninformed. Even if you can't influence much with one particular vote depending\non where you live, your voice can do a lot (see the NRA).\n\nThere's people dying in Yemen from a war that the US is supporting. There are\nserious debates occurring about the future of the economy which will have\nmassive repercussions. Climate change poses a threat to the stability of\ncivilization. We're coming to a crossroads with government surveillance\nissues.\n\nIt is deeply annoying when I see that people just tune out. You don't need to\nobsess over the latest 24 hour news cycle, but it's important not to be a\npersonal isolationist for the good of society.\n\n~~~\ncaseysoftware\nFundamentally, I agree with you _except_ :\n\n\\- That assumes the situation is presented without an agenda or - at minimum -\na disclosed agenda.\n\n\\- That the coverage is an accurate - and preferably complete - summary of the\nsituation.\n\n\\- And that it's clear which details are facts vs assumptions vs conjecture vs\nconclusions vs whatever.\n\nUnfortunately, we have few of those things at best. There are many ways to be\ninformed, the current media is not a good, useful, or productive way to do\nthat on just about any topic.\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nAlso, additional assumption: that most of the news is in any way actionable or\neven relevant to your life. In vast majority of cases, it isn't.\n\nPeople don't read the news to be informed (otherwise they wouldn't tolerate\nthe ridiculously low journalistic standards of today). They consume news\nbecause it gives them stuff to talk about with other people. Whether or not\nthe stories are true is irrelevant, as long as everyone hears the same\nstories. The psychological cost of these stories is, however, unaccounted for.\n\n------\nVomzor\nI think it's parenting. Parents started to become overprotective somewhere in\nthe late 90's and it's only getting worse. Kids don't learn to deal with\nsetbacks anymore. So the real world overwhelms them.\n\nThere's a book, The Coddling of the American Mind, that explains the problem\nmuch better than I do.\n\n\"First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt\nshow how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas\nthat have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education:\nWhat doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life\nis a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths\ncontradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom\nfrom many cultures. Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of\nsafetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual\ndevelopment. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are\nable to navigate the bumpy road of life.\"\n\n[https://www.thecoddling.com](https://www.thecoddling.com)\n\n~~~\nadjkant\n> Kids don't learn to deal with setbacks anymore. So the real world overwhelms\n> them.\n\nIt doesn't sound like you interact with many \"kids\" these days. As someone\nsurrounded mostly by them, I can assure you none of this is true. Sad to see\nthis upvoted so highly and especially sad to see people pointing out this is a\nlong brought up conservative talking point with no evidence downvoted. I\nthought we got over this myth 10 years ago. Yet people still want to yell at\nMr. Rodgers for caring about child psychology and being on the forefront of\nmental health in a real way...\n\nPerhaps one should look to the external world these people are coming into for\nanswers. Climate change, the economy, and the political climate with hateful\npolicies against many people over the world in many countries.\n\nNot to mention that mental health being destigmatized raises statistical\nreporting rates as people are simply more open about it.\n\nBut yeah, let's blame bad parenting that people first accused millennials of\nwhen no millennials are even left in the post high school college population.\n\n~~~\nThrowawayR2\n> _Climate change, the economy, and the political climate with hateful\n> policies against many people over the world in many countries..._\n\nBecause none of that stuff existed in the '50s, '60s, and '70s? /s\n\nJust substitute \"nuclear war for \"climate change\".\n\n~~~\n205guy\nI agree with those saying climate change is a huge stressor for young\ngenerations. I had the same argument with a friend about fear of nuclear war\ninto the 80's, but she convinced me it wasn't the same. They are both\nexistential fears, but nuclear war was something that only the military could\nmake happen, and as long as it didn't happen, life could go on as usual (well\nnot really, we know now). Whereas climate change is happening slowly but\nsurely all around and everyone will have to change their behavior to avoid it.\n\nMy wife and I cannot talk about climate change around our kids because they\nunderstand how scary it is and we see their fear about the consequences.\n\n~~~\nkhyryk\nI think this, in some way, can be interpreted in a way favorable to the\noriginal parent's comment. Kids being stressed by climate change to the point\nthat their feelings overwhelm all of their coping mechanisms is not an\neffective strategy for actually fixing the root cause.\n\nIdeally, kids would develop, by trial and error, effective strategies for\nidentifying solvable problems and dealing with them, and not being extremely\nnegatively affected by (directly) unsolvable problems. It would be beneficial\nfor society if people heard about climate change and thought, \"Okay, that\nwon't be good, so what are some things I can do in the short term and in the\nlong term to make a positive impact?\" The great thing about such an approach\nis that it's omni-applicable, such as when one's car breaks down on a long\ndrive, etc.\n\nParents who constantly hover around their kids presumably interfere with this\nvital process, perhaps because these important lessons can only be discovered,\nnot forcibly taught.\n\n~~~\nlozenge\nTo me this is akin to saying that kids under slavery need to learn coping\nstrategies. Yes, it could help, but there is no reason to think it would\ncounteract the inherent effect of their environment - and it lays the blame in\nentirely the wrong place.\n\n------\nGustomaximus\nI'm a big believer in social media being toxic for many people. I see the core\nproblems as it pushes life views to the extremes.\n\nIts full of posts of 'see how great my life is' or 'see how bad the world is'.\nThis combined with a media intergrated into our lives almost real-time whose\norganisations are all looking to maximise our attention.\n\nWe used to go through the world in a much simpler bubble and get our half\nhours news window on TV or newspaper in the morning. And being connected to\nthe wider journeys of people for more realistic expectations e.g. rather than\nseeing someone post a picture of a great car saying 'how good is this' you\nalso got to see they had been working and saving hard for a few years.\n\nIve thought about this a bunch and dont know how we can deal with it better. I\ncant see social media going away. I tried one of those apps that shows the\nscreen time you spend but it didnt really change habits for me. I mentioned to\nmy partner the other day that we should consider setting on weekend day as a\nscreen free day.\n\nI really think this is somethign important for society to work on.\n\n~~~\nsdrothrock\n> Its full of posts of 'see how great my life is' or 'see how bad the world\n> is'. This combined with a media intergrated into our lives almost real-time\n> whose organisations are all looking to maximise our attention.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out)\n\n[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11031-018-9683-...](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11031-018-9683-5)\n\n[https://time.com/4358140/overcome-fomo/](https://time.com/4358140/overcome-\nfomo/)\n\nFor a long time I thought \"FOMO\" was just a trendy bit of slang that hit the\nnail on the head nicely, but it's actually a documented psychological\nphenomenon (though I don't know which came first).\n\nEver since I learned about it, I've basically trained myself to not check\nsocial media often and, when I do, to remind myself that the pieces I see of\nother people's lives aren't representative of their lives as a whole, nor are\nthey representative of what I should be expecting or enjoying from my own\nlife. It's helped a little.\n\n------\nkingkawn\nAmerican culture has become a dysfunctional parody of itself, and young people\nare left to grapple with a worldview that does not seem to adequately address\nthe world.\n\n~~~\nadjkant\nThis x 100. Most of Gen Z has become absurdist (memes only make sense to young\npeople often for this reason) out of necessity. The \"adults\" have failed them\nand they have no power to change it. Depression and anxiety should only be\nexpected.\n\nThere really should also be more discussion about the complexity of the world\nand decision fatigue, both of which I think are affecting people of all ages\nbut especially younger people.\n\n------\ntehjoker\nCould it be the increasing inequality in the United States? The elimination of\nmost middle class jobs? The increasingly generational inheritance of wealth,\npower, and connections? College debt? Asking for a friend.\n\n~~~\nwaynecochran\nI can't imagine the debt students are taking on now. Add to that the high\nexpense of housing. Why don't student speak up about this instead of defending\nall the \"safe space\" and \"trigger warning\" nonsense?\n\n~~~\nsudosteph\nI'm not Gen Z myself (millenial who graduated right before asking for pronouns\nbecame a thing on college campuses), but that's a question I've asked myself\nas I well.\n\nI get the feeling that it's simply because they believe they have leverage\nover the words people use on their campus, but no leverage over housing\nexpenses or other economic issues that actually have broader appeal.\n\nRemember that neither Gen Z nor Millenials have ever witnessed significant\neconomic change that was brought on by direct action of normal people. Unions\nhave been utterly defanged and left-wing candidates never manage to win or\ndrive change either. Occupy Wall Street was the closest thing we've ever seen\nto an economic solidarity movement, and that was widely mocked and derided as\nan utter failure.\n\nWhile the movement around language policing may give Gen Z the feeling of\nparticipating in successful direct action, it unfortunately is contributing to\na schism between them and older generations who may be otherwise willing to\nally with them on broader causes, but are fearful of mis-stepping and being\ncalled out publicly.\n\nOf course, maybe that very same fear of public call-outs ties back to what one\nof the professors in the article mentioned. The new generation is used to\nhaving every little thing they do be potentially subjected to being recorded,\npublicized, and criticized at any moment through social media. They are\nconstantly self-managing themselves and their social media presence with that\nin mind. They don't see why older generations shouldn't be held to the same\nstandards - even if they'd rather be exempt from that standard themselves,\nthey accept it as reality.\n\nThere's a mockumentary series on netflix called \"American Vandal\", which\nbesides being funny, was surprisingly insightful about the challenges that\nyoung adults are facing in part due to growing up with instagram, twitter,\netc. as part of their world. I have a lot more sympathy for them after\nwatching that.\n\n~~~\ntracer4201\n>Remember that neither Gen Z nor Millenials have ever witnessed significant\neconomic change that was brought on by direct action of normal people.\n\nDid you forget about the Great Recession and it’s economic impact? Do you\nbelieve it didnt bring significant economic change or is it that it wasn’t\nbrought on by normal people? What exactly defines normal people in this\ncontext or better yet, how is that relevant?\n\nIt’s confusing to me that despite the soaring costs of housing, the hyper\ncompetitive job market ( kids compete not just against other Americans but\nalso students from other countries like India and China, where many of those\nimmigrant kids didn’t have the crushing college debt), the shrinking middle\nclass, and general deregulation that has shifted power to the wealthy -\ndespite all these issues, your view point of what affects these kids is based\naround social media or more specifically, what standard these kids are held to\non social media.\n\n~~~\nsudosteph\nOf course I remember the great recession - I mentioned Occupy. It was the\nbanks which caused the great recession. The politicians then responded to the\nneeds of the banks, not the people. There were some regulations around lending\nadded to protect banks from themselves, and a small stimulus package that most\nof my generation didn't even receive. The average person though did not see\nanything change meaningfully to make their economic situation better. So both\nthe change it brought was insignificant to the working class (aka \"normal\npeople\"), and the working class had no say over what changes were even\ndiscussed (because Occupy was not taken seriously).\n\nI agree with you on the importance of all those issues. My point is that we\nhave a large number of young people who are disillusioned with both the\ncurrent economic situation AND lacking confidence in historic tactics (ie,\ndirect action) that the working class used in the past to improve economic\nsituations (ie, joining a union, going on strike, electing leftist officials).\n\nThe neo-liberal philosophy that has been sold to Americans for the past few\ndecades teaches people that you are supposed to be able to effect change by\nchoosing with your wallet and advocating by mouth. This too is proving to be\nineffectual for meaningful change, but the concept does relate to my greater\npoint: the most powerful currency accessible to this generation is social\ncapital. It accumulates fast and spreads to all corners when it resonates.\nSocial capital is the only reason Trump could become president. It's making\nand breaking careers (see the rise of \"influencers\" and streamers), and it's\nplaying out comparitively microscopic level as young people are using modern\ncommunication frameworks to define their success in their personal social\nspheres.\n\nI'm not saying this is a good development. It does distract and divide the\nworking class from one-another. But I see why it happened, and don't think\nit's apathy or selfishness that has caused this way of thinking to become\npopular. Either the young generation will reject their hyper-connected\n\"always-on\" culture, or the older ones will get on board. Until then it will\nbe hard to work together on bigger issues, and I doubt Gen Z can solve those\nalone.\n\n------\nelicash\nITT: People taking whatever their pet issue is and saying THAT must be\nresponsible without having any data to back it up.\n\n~~~\ncrummy\nIt's the increased prominence of languages with garbage collection that is\nruining children. They need to learn proper memory management!\n\n~~~\ndefterGoose\nAnd their music! It's just ones and zeroes!\n\n------\ndschuetz\nTL;DR: people sharing their angst inside filter bubbles causes unrealistic\nexpectations from questionable sources\n\nI think, thanks to social media classic socialization among students via\nsocial events and clubs has ceased. Person to person interaction isn't a thing\nanymore, but it's necessary to learn having realistic expectations. Most\npeople crave interaction, comparison, sharing experiences with others, this is\nnormal. With social media it's a two-fold problem: much more people are\ninvolved in comparisons (likes, followers), so having little or no followers\ndoesn't help feeling worthy, and the expectation having to have followers at\nall is unreasonable and unrealistic. The depression is based on doubts that\none has any significance in the world, plus, having to keep up with\ncompetition. Then there is fear of missing out that drives anxiety like\nwildfire.\n\nThere's pressure from everywhere, even internal. Why wasn't it that big a\nthing back then? Because personal expectations weren't as bloated then as they\nare now, and today's young people derive their expectations of themselves\n(what they think they ought to be, to do) and expectations of others (what\nthey think they can expect from others) from the Internet, forums, social\nnetworks mostly, not from _personal experience_. That is it. Personal physical\nexperience once provided the basis for expectations, people had to learn\neverything themselves. But now people learn expectations from other peoples'\nexperiences, and not their own. So, today the unrealistic expectations of\nother people are failing on us, naturally, and we are confronted with the\nreality of things and people. This is what it feels like leaving one's\nfavorite Twitter filter bubble and learning that the actual world is different\nand much more complicated.\n\nAnd I didn't mention the job market yet, because I think it's just a part in\nthe pool of sources of pressure. Anxiety about one's job isn't as new as\npeople think. The awareness is different now, because _people share their\nangst_ and amplify it via the social media making it even worse. Social media,\njob situation, pressure are all parts of the same problem - unrealistic\nexpectations from questionable sources.\n\n------\nJulianMorrison\nCould it be something to do with the CRUSHING BURDEN OF DEBT?\n\nNo, clearly it is smartphones.\n\n~~~\ngrenoire\nEuropean students who are not under crushing debt are also having difficulties\nwith such mental health problems. The root of the anxiety and the following\ndepression is economic prospects and the terrible status quo.\n\n~~~\nJulianMorrison\nFair, although I expect you'd find less of it. The feeling of \"I am literally\ngoing to die owing this, I will never be free\" isn't doing anyone but the\nloan-owners any favours.\n\n~~~\ngrenoire\nIn the end it's not a pissing contest by any means. The factors contributing\nto the mental issues of European students might be different than the\nAmericans', but the overall _trend_ is apparent for both demographics.\n\nSadly enough, the environmental pressures faced in terms of economic situation\nand extreme competition have been observed for a very long time in Asian\nnations, exhibiting themselves in the form of suicides. I hope, deeply so,\nthat the West does not devolve that far...\n\n------\nalephnan\n> Students may also avoid using resources on campus because some colleges may\n> expel students who have suicidal ideation ... to avoid liability related to\n> student suicides\n\n~~~\nthrowoutIIIII\nMy (top tier) school forced me to take a medical leave of absence, which\nrequired a doctors note to get back in and finish the degree. A very expensive\nendeavor.\n\nEdit: Ah, it says that right in the article. Yeah it sucks, I wouldn't trust\nthe schools mental health services again.\n\n~~~\nSomeOldThrow\nExact same scenario. I never ended up going back.\n\n------\nmuzani\nWe have vastly increased wealth, and now every college student owns a credit\ncard, a smartphone, high speed internet, nice clothes, and has a far higher\nlikelihood of landing a good job with savings compared to 50 years ago. Or\neven compared to graduates in poorer countries.\n\nMaybe there's a mismatch between wealth and happiness.\n\n------\nquaquaqua1\nImagine taking out 200k in loans for an uncertain future income.\n\nImagine that previous generations paid less for the same hiring opportunities.\n\n~~~\ndantheman\nThese crazy loan amounts are not taken by most students. There are many ways\nthat most people choose to keep their costs low - living not as nice housing,\nnot going to your top school, working while in college.\n\nHere's some stats: [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/13/facts-\nabout...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/13/facts-about-\nstudent-loans/)\n\nMedian bachelors degree debt: $25,000\n\nMost of these people with huge debts are getting graduate degrees and they\nsignificantly skew the results when looking at the average, the median is far\nmore insightful.\n\n~~~\nmattwest\nAn appropriate correction, but I don't think it changes the inevitable feeling\nof doom that many college students and recent graduates face. $25,000 is an\nenormous amount of debt, especially when there is a multitude of uncertainties\nwith the investment. When you borrow for a house or car, there is an\nimmediate, tangible benefit. With college, it's not so simple. It would be\ngreat if you didn't need to go to college, but let's face it. You simply make\nmore money with a degree, and many employers require them. There is an\nundeniable problem with tuition rates over time and its affect on the mental\nhealth of many American students.\n\n~~~\ntwblalock\n$25k is actually less than the average price of a new car sold in the US. It's\nnot an enormous amount of debt. It's manageable.\n\nWould it be better if students didn't owe money after college? Yes. Is the\nstudent loan debt equivalent of a new midrange Toyota Camry a life-crushing\nburden? No, not really.\n\n~~~\nTheOtherHobbes\nStudent debt is running at around 8% of US GDP.\n\nIt might or might not be a life-crushing burden for individuals. But it's\nstill an incredibly risky burden for a fragile economy.\n\nAnd personally I don't find \"And don't even think about a graduate degree\nunless you want to end up with >$40k\" all that reassuring for those with\npostgrad talent and ambitions.\n\n~~~\ntwblalock\nI don't know who says \"And don't even think about a graduate degree unless you\nwant to end up with >$40k\". When I went to grad school the standard advice was\nthat you shouldn't go anywhere without a free ride in the form of tuition\nwaivers and/or a stipend or TA job.\n\nProfessional schools (law, medicine, MBA, etc.) are different, but they also\ncost way more than $40k.\n\n------\ndgzl\nToday's kids are essentially experiments. Being connected to the modern\ninternet from as early as age zero is going to have some very serious side\neffects, and I don't believe parents understand that. This is especially bad\nif the parents don't have the understanding or ability to keep the child's\nexperienced age appropriate.\n\n------\nelamje\nPut simply, social media and news exists to drive clicks. Once you understand\nthat terrible news and completely misleading story titles drive clicks better\nthan anything else, you realize that there is almost no value in today’s news.\n\nWhen you are listening to a news anchor, or reading a story, ask yourself one\nsimple question - “How is the organization maximizing profit off of this\nstory?”\n\nMainstream, advertising-supported, news sources will continue to devolve until\neveryone wises up.\n\n~~~\nInternetUser\nWhen do you think everyone will wise up? Like in what year?\n\n~~~\nthrowawayjava\ns/click/viewers and the basic business model has been going strong for half a\ncentury.\n\ns/clicks/listeners and the basic business model has been going strong for just\na little over a century.\n\ns/clicks/circulation and the basic business model has been going strong for at\nleast a few centuries now.\n\nSo, never. Or, more accurately, in about 20 years when \"clicking\" becomes an\nanachronism and someone will make this comment except it'll be: _\"\ns/taps/clicks and this has been going on for half a century\"_\n\n~~~\ndredmorbius\nMass circulation media date to the early 19th century, so approaching 200\nyears. Benjamin Day's _Sun_ wasn't the first \"penny-press\" newspaper, but it\ntransformed the concept, in 1833.\n\nDevelopments (and cost reductions) in printing and paper-making, as well as\nrapidly increasing literacy rates, climbing from 25% or lower around 1700 to\n90%+ by 1900 throughout much of Europe and North America, also meant that\nprior to 1800 there really _wasn 't_ a mass-circulation media of any stripe,\noutside religious mass, and that there very much was one afterwards.\n\nThough yes, your observation that this has been going on for a while is valid.\n\n------\nraxxorrax\nI would also be depressed if my education nets me excessive debt. Probably\nmanageable for lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc., but general higher education\nseems to be something restricted to people with rich parents.\n\nI don't know the details since I am not based in the US. But from outside it\nseems that there are incentives to willfully sabotage the educational system.\nAnd the raw numbers about the accumulated debt look terrifying.\n\n~~~\ntracer4201\nImo even if it is manageable debt, that doesn’t make the problem just\ndisappear. My own student debt is long paid off. It was only $25K - not\nexactly chump change but only a fraction of the more egregious examples I’ve\nseen.\n\nHonestly, college provided some decent experiences but did it make me a better\nhuman or teach me something significant enough to justify that debt? No. There\nwere maybe 3 or 4 key classes in my four year program that had anything really\nrelevant to my career. Most of it was stuff I would forget after a couple\nsemesters and never apply anywhere.\n\nIn hindsight, college is an institutional shackle. It’s a right of passage we\nforce on kids, and employers require it when it shouldn’t be necessary. My\n$25K feel less like an investment an education and more like a bribe I had to\npay before anyone would hire me.\n\n------\nsystematical\nIs it on the rise or are people feeling more comfortable about reporting these\nthings compared to decades ago?\n\n~~~\ninsickness\nOr it could be that people are more aware of their internal states. In other\nwords, twenty years ago, I would not be able to tell you that I had anxiety or\ndepression, even though I did. As I went through cognitive behavioral therapy\nand became more aware of my internal states, I can tell immediately if I start\nto feel anxious or depressed. Due to cb therapy, I experience far less anxiety\nand depression but I am aware of it when I do experience it (which can help\nminimize it).\n\n------\nredleggedfrog\nDoes it really matter _what_ the causes of the depression and anxiety are if\nthere is no easy way to change them (global warming, debt, parody of a\ngovernment, news that's hyperbole not information, overwhelming technology,\nworld competition, and so on)? None of those are going away, so the emphasis\nneeds to be on taking care of the the young people (or all people) stressed by\nthese factors.\n\nWhat to do? Anecdotally, I can certainly say that lessening exposure to these\nthings really helps. But not everyone has the environment or self control to\ndo such things.\n\n------\nDoctorOetker\ndepression is just the natural response to oppression\n\n------\ntickerticker\nAlthough I am not a college student, something that causes worry for me is the\ndifficulty of knowing what is going on and what to believe, even though I\nconsume news from many sources. The battle for readers/viewers' attention has\nescalated to manipulative tactics like clickbait or pandering. The slow demise\nof old media has created a sense of desperation in their reportage. New media\nRARELY seeks a footing of disinterested journalism. This adds a struggle to\nthe experience of \"adulting\" for college kids.\n\nAnother issue is the change in the number of people living here. 1990 had\n250MM. 2018 had 327MM. That 30% increase is bound to add stress and conflict.\n\nAnother: the pace of change has been overwhelming in the last 25 years. That\nmight create self-doubt about one's capacity to keep skills updated.\n\nAnother: the decrease in life expectancy of white middle class people due to\noverdose and suicide. The plague of suicide is the message of futility and\nnihilism for survivors to absorb.\n\nProsperity cures a multitude of ills. Widespread under-employment brings every\nbruise, boil, laceration, and trauma to the forefront. College students see\nthe employment landscape. They face competition from citizens and non-\ncitizens, and thus a pie that gets divided among a bigger denominator.\n\nThe economic reality is that college is necessary for skilled occupations.\nParents steer their kids into college, even though some of those kids don't\nhave the self-management skills to succeed in college. If they do have these\nskills, they commonly are allowed to take coursework that is bound to result\nin a minimum wage job. This mortgages the first 20 working years of their\nadult lives with student loan debt service. I would certainly be discouraged\nby this prospect.\n\nLastly, the disconnect in authentic relationships that social media fostered\ntook away a piece of the fundamental human safety net.\n\n------\nHavoc\nSeeing this among my peers. A scary amount are on some form of meds\n\n------\nlunias\nI believe that we've reached an inflection point on the path to a utopian-\nesque society and it feels as though we're primed to backslide\ncatastrophically.\n\nFor a variety of reasons innumerable, but generally containing in my mind:\n\nTechnical literacy being outpaced by technical dependence. The threat of the\noligopoly - and the lack of action to dismantle it. The inability of humans to\nwork together as a species and their preference for in-fighting over\ncollaboration and compromise. A breakdown in natural selection, increased\ncoddling, and a general weakening of ability and character relative to other\nnations. Short-sidedness with regard to most everything from education to the\nenvironment.\n\nExisting in a liminal state where great things appear to be possible, but seem\nunlikely to be obtained is torturous.\n\n------\nmlang23\nWell, since education puts people deeply into debt in the USA, I am actually\nnot very surprised.\n\n------\nsak5sk\nMultiple reasons really: \\- Grass is always greener \\- Access to 24/7 negative\nnews \\- Environmental doom and gloom (we even call it an existential crisis)\n\\- Baked in addiction building mechanisms (likes, retweets, shares, views,\nunlimited scrolling, constant stream of crap to consume) \\- Fewer personal\ninteractions \\- Less community activity \\- Lack of sleep (probably one of the,\nif not the biggest issue) \\- Stress from having a constantly busy mind full of\nuseless thoughts \\- Worry about the future \\- Worry about environment \\- Worry\nabout lack of jobs \\- Worry about money \\- Worry about school debt\n\nThis is probably just scratching the surface.\n\n------\n88840-8855\nI agree with the article and most comments here. Although I am not in the US\nbut Europe, similar trends have evolved here: pressure from getting a good\njob, non-satisfaction with the status quo, high pressure from the race against\nthe peers and much more.\n\nMy direct question to this community. What do you think could help these\npeople/us? What are tactical quick win measures and what are strategic long\nterm measures that could work? I am interested not only in \"getting your shit\ntogether by yourself\", but also in what help can be offered to the people that\nsuffer to help?\n\n------\nnewsgremlin\nThe rat race is no longer desirable as the old dream of owning your own home\nis becoming more fantasy. Pregnancy rates are down and divorce rates are high.\nHousing is simply too big an investment for people barely able to afford a\nsingle home.\n\nYour only options are to move to a city and adjust to make a lucrative and\nhighly commercial life there - or live in the middle of nowhere with fewer job\nprospects while the cost of everything around you goes up.\n\nAs others mentioned, we now all have devices in our pockets that tell and show\nus the lives we don't have and the lives we desire.\n\n------\nabc_lisper\nI know this is late, but check this article that appeared couple of days after\nthis was published\n\n[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjEjYqWxLfkAhWRtlkKHd_kB1oQFjAAegQIAxAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F09%2F03%2Fopinion%2Fcollege-\ngraduates.html)\n\n------\nrvn1045\nHow much of this perceived increase is also because people are more open to\ncommunicate they have mental health problems.\n\nPeople are also more encouraged to seek help and counseling as opposed to\nbefore.\n\nI also think that people today more readily label their feelings with labels\nsuch as anxiety, depression or whatever. As opposed to previous generations\nwho lacked such a vocabulary.\n\n------\npippy\nHere's a 2019 APA study that suggests that technology, and digital media use,\nand sleep disturbance may play in mood disorder.\n\n[https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/abn-\nabn0000410.pd...](https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/abn-\nabn0000410.pdf)\n\n~~~\nveb\nAs soon as I learned the discipline for social media, and that's all forms:\nFacebook, Twitter, IRC, Slack etc and learned how to control myself from\nvisiting every three seconds, I got a lot happier.\n\nThere's just nothing better for peoples health than to ignore social media, to\nignore technology, to keep their phone far away from them as possible.\n\nWhile I have other issues, it really wasn't until I cut out all medications,\nalcohol and then technology from my life. I use social media sparingly these\ndays because I've trained myself to avoid it.\n\nI lost a lot of friends when I went through a segment in my life where I was\ndepressed, moody and so on so forth, but at the end of the day I'm happier now\nbecause the experience taught me what I did wrong, and what some of the\ncatalysts were, so there's a silver lining in every 'bad' thing that happens\nso to speak.\n\nRegarding sleep disturbance, I've just taken to edibles and having zero light\nin my room with one of those artificial sunlight alarms to wake me up in the\nmorning. Seems to help a lot.\n\nNew Zealand also seems to have a crisis with suicide. I'm super lucky that I\nhave a blank cheque from ACC to get any help I need, along with my family.\nMost people don't have that, unfortunately and I feel extremely bad for them.\nI wish I could help, but really I feel, what can one person do in this\ninstance than to try and understand what people are going through but that's\ndifficult as hell because most people hide and mask their symptoms through\nother crap like drugs, alcohol, which all simply lead to temporary psychosis\nand worsening depression-like symptoms.\n\nAt least these days things are better, but I'd like to reconnect with old\nfriends and say sorry for all the damage I caused, but it's hard to know where\nto even start.\n\n------\nsupergilbert\nDepression, anxiety are rising among a large part of the population in Western\nsociety. My personal take on this: we need to reconnect with religion because\nwe need something transcendant to help us go through life. Modern life is very\nalienating if you take a purely material approach to it.\n\n------\nalephnan\nFacebook was already popular before 2012, 2013 which the article highlighted\nas the transition point. Instagram was becoming popular at this time.\n\n------\ninquisitor19\nThere are a lot of factors contributing here, but kids today, probably more\nthan in Leary's days, need to turn on, tune in, and drop out.\n\n~~~\nhi41\nI have heard this phrase several times before - \"turn on, tune in, and drop\nout.\"\n\nCould you please give more context and explain more. I don't understand this\nphrase. Please note that I did not grow up in USA.\n\nTurn on to what? Radio? Tune in to what? A radio music program? drop out from\nwhat? From high school or college?\n\n~~~\nmadman1444\nFrom Timothy Leary's 1983 autobiography, Flashbacks (via Wikipedia): \"Turn on\"\nmeant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become\nsensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific\ntriggers engaging them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. \"Tune in\"\nmeant interact harmoniously with the world around you—externalize,\nmaterialize, express your new internal perspectives. \"Drop out\" suggested an\nactive, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or\nunconscious commitments. \"Drop Out\" meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's\nsingularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily, my\nexplanations of this sequence of personal development are often misinterpreted\nto mean \"Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity\"\n\n~~~\nhi41\nThank you! I find this happening with acronyms and truisms that get shortened\nto look like captions. Outside the in-group, people don’t understand the\nmeaning. With times passage, the in-group slowly fades and the usage and\nmeaning that is generally understood is incorrect like the one you mentioned\nabout getting stoned and do nothing worthwhile.\n\n------\nbitexploder\nI think Cal Newport touches on this in his book Digital Minimalism. He links\nit pretty convincingly to the rise of people been glued to screens.\n\n------\nsegmondy\nDepression and anxiety is rising among the entire population of the US, from\nmiddle schoolers to senior citizens 1 year away from their grave.\n\n------\nZarath\nDuh. I'd also be willing to bet it's correlated with screen time.\n\n------\ngingabriska\nIt's the lack of meaningful connections which is on rise.\n\nWhen my wife was at university, I was shocked being a pretty woman - how\nlonely she was.\n\nShe did try to talk with people and even hang out on weekend with a girl group\nbut it seemed as if during the weekdays nobody had any time for her.\n\nThis is the main reason I think.\n\nMen are being treated as disposable just look at the male Vs female sucide\nstatistics. Present society is very toxic to be a man. There is nowhere to get\nsupport from if you are a \"weak man\" for the society, a label which is slapped\non you the moment you talk about your issues.\n\nIn relationships, there is a new trend that relationship ends when initial\nspark ends. If you go to any relationship advice forum, you can see people\ndumping their partner because the initial spark ended, it's too easy to find a\nnew partner for some. Nobody bothers putting much effort into a relationship.\n\n------\ngingabriska\nI'd mention one thing which I think no one has mentioned so far.\n\nToday we've more freedom than ever, more access to people and more prosperity\nthan ever.\n\nThis creates a dynamic were people cluster according to their outlook. No one\naccepts a \"downer\" in a happy group.\n\nI'd say more happy, more prosperous country, a country which has more freedom\nwill see higher sucide rates due to loneliness.\n\nI wouldn't be surprised if the examples of this like Scandinavian countries\nhave higher sucide rate if not highest.\n\nI'd be lot better being a \"sad\" person with other sad people than being the\nonly sad person among all other happy people.\n\n~~~\njinglebells\nYou'd be surprised to find the US has a higher suicide rate than Sweden and\nNorway then.\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate)\n\n------\npatientplatypus\n_“It suggests that something is seriously wrong in the lives of young people\nand that whatever went wrong seemed to happen around 2012, or 2013,” said\nstudy coauthor Jean Twenge. She noted that this was around the time\nsmartphones became common and social media moved from being optional to\nmandatory among youngsters._\n\nI just...OMG who the hell are these people. Maybe the economy just stopped\ngetting better for most people after 2008? I mean __duh __. After a few years\nwhen finally becomes obvious that the new normal is gig economy jobs and\nliving under debt until you die, say around 2012-2013, then people 's\nhappiness starts to nose dive. That's a much more explanatory answer than \"the\ncell phones did it\".\n\nIt's like an old person - I thought she was a baby boomer, but she's only 48 -\nthat has a phd (and everything!) is desperately trying to figure out what's\ngoing wrong, and they have all the data.\n\nThey. Just. Can't. Quite. Get There.\n\nThis is the type of person that's running society, maybe that's the problem.\nFace palm.\n\n------\namriksohata\nThe link between modern day food....\n\n------\nflaque\nSince no one's mentioned it yet: both depression and anxiety are extremely\ntreatable.\n\nRegardless of whatever HN folks think is the cause, therapists and\npsychiatrists are an actual solution; you should see one.\n\n~~~\ntomhoward\nThis is largely false.\n\nSome mainstream treatment approaches can be somewhat effective for some\npeople. Maybe they can be completely effective for some people. I'm not going\nto argue the toss on that.\n\nBut there's a significant cohort of people for whom these conditions do not\nrespond well to conventional treatment, at least to the extent of full\nrecovery.\n\nI'm one of those people.\n\nWe're talking about at least 19 years of dealing with anxiety, and plenty of\ndepression along the way. Some medications have been moderately effective at\nabating some of the symptoms, but not at bringing about anything approximating\ncomplete recovery and a \"normal\" life.\n\nWhat has been effective for me is a long-term program involving a combination\nof subconscious emotional healing techniques, as well as various physiological\nhealing methods, including:\n\n\\- detoxification of heavy metals (including lead, mercury, aluminium),\n\n\\- increasing/balancing levels of critical nutrients (particularly minerals -\ncalcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, iron and zinc, as well as iodine, which\nis critically low in many people with complex health problems, due to its\ncrucial role in thyroid function, and which is insufficient in may people's\ndiets, particularly in western countries),\n\n\\- addressing chronic infections (e.g., Epstein Barr, Cytomegalovirus, fungal,\nbacterial and parasitic infections),\n\n\\- adopting an anti-inflammatory diet, and\n\n\\- regularly engaging in the right kinds of exercise (stretching and core\nstrength exercises like yoga/pilates), and moderate (definitely not strenuous)\ncardio exercise like brisk walking.\n\nAfter about 8 years of that I'm almost fully recovered, I think and\ndesperately hope.\n\nBut you won't get recommendations for any of these approaches from a\nconventional psychologist or psychiatrist, and if you were to ask one about\nthem you'd get laughed out of the clinic.\n\nThus, many people continue to suffer, even after years of treatment from\nmainstream practitioners.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Review my first MVP - fhub\n\nSite: finishstart.com<p>Premise: Write funny stories with random strangers... one sentence at a time.<p>My Design Goals:<p>1. Be a true MVP - test the idea without wasting any time<p>2. Go from idea conception to deployment in 1 day (I nearly achieved that)<p>3. Try to develop something with some viral marketing potential<p>4. All content to be user generated<p>5. Moderation sessions should be fun<p>6. Try out heroku.com to see if it would be a good fit for another product<p>7. Do something silly and fun (I come from the enterprise software world)<p>You can follow my thinking through the process at http://twitter.com/finishstart<p>All feedback more than welcome.  Especially in the areas of:<p>1. Conversion - I consider a conversion to be someone who adds some\nwell thought out content and who submits their email address to get a\ncopy of the story sent to them on completion<p>2. Viral Marketing approaches<p>Cheers\n======\ndamoncali\nA few thoughts:\n\n1\\. You need a reason to keep people coming back - some sort of hook to keep\npeople interested. Off the top of my head:\n\n-private stories (restricted to a group)\n\n-solo stories (one sentence a day for one user)\n\n-stories limited to people with a certain birthday\n\n-graduation class stories\n\n-drama/english classes\n\n-let people upvote/downvote/move sentences\n\n-publish a blog of anything that turns out good\n\n-allow combination of random sentences from different stories into new stories\n\n2\\. The \"Anything Goes\" section could easily turn into porn/adult content.\nThat can make advertising revenue difficult and make it unusable by schools,\netc.\n\n3\\. If you get a lot of traffic, this blows up and becomes hard to manage. A\nstory could grow very rapidly if you're not careful. Although on the edge of\n\"premature optimization\" I would keep an eye ont his as you work.\n\nFun site. It will be interesting to see if you can take it from \"interesting\ncuriosity\" to \"something I check when I'm bored\".\n\n~~~\nfhub\nGreat feedback! Thanks.\n\n------\nzaidf\nDude I had the very idea =) Except mine was one word at a time. It came from\nan exercise we did in improv101.\n\nI think you can make the UI a lot tighter. Imagine just a WHITE screen with\nTHE story...constantly refreshing. Along with an inputbox at the top to add\nyour contribute to it. Perhaps integrate with twitter.\n\n~~~\nfhub\nThe UI does need some work but I probably won't invest too much effort until I\nwork out if the idea is viable.\n\nOne story is a bit hard for lots of people to concurrently work on\nunfortunately. Part of my strategy is to have short stories so that I can\nemail it to the contributors when it is completed (hopefully within a day or\ntwo). Then I'm hoping they will forward the funny story to their friends (with\na link of course).\n\n------\nresdirector\nGood work, esp idea-to-deployment in about a day. I found this to be pretty\naddictive. i.e. I started filling out stories rather than hammering HN, Google\nNews when I've got time to kill.\n\nSuggestion: email users once per week/fortnight with a partial story +\nembedded form so they can play via email, especially if they haven't played\nfor a while. Increase/decrease frequency of email sending depending on how\nthey respond to playing via email.\n\n~~~\nfhub\nThanks for your feedback. I'll have a ponder about your email idea. Ta.\n\nI think I'm up against a lot of tough competition in the time killing market\non the web :)\n\n------\nrevorad\nI had the exact same idea a long time ago. I just kept toying with it in my\nmind. It's so awesome to see someone actually make it.\n\nYou've made a very good first version. Just get lots of people to use it to\nwrite at least one line and then publish and popularise the finished stories\non social networks. You will get to see if the stories are actually any good\nand also might get ideas on improving the app itself.\n\n~~~\nfhub\nThanks. The idea is fun, but getting people back is tough. Let alone getting\nthem to share the link with their friends. I had fun building it and iterating\nit over the last few days.\n\nI'm going to give it a couple more days and if I don't see much traction I'll\nprobably let it pass away quietly.\n\n~~~\nrevorad\nI wonder if this is better suited as a Facebook or twitter \"game\", at least\nfor a start. For example, some friends dragged me into playing the name game\non facebook and although I hardly check Facebook, that thing made me go back\nquite a lot. Once you get a good base of users you could get them to an\nindependent site which is more usable and focussed.\n\n------\nnailer\nWhat does mvp mean in this context?\n\n~~~\nshrikant\nI had the same question, and\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product> was quite helpful in\nthis regard :)\n\n------\nfhub\nClickable: <http://finishstart.com>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPokemon Yellow Total Control Hack - mzs\nhttp://aurellem.org/vba-clojure/html/total-control.html\nGo to 666s into the video to see the bootstraps running.\n======\nmzs\nSeek 666s into the\n[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5T81yHkHtI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5T81yHkHtI)\nvideo to see the bootstraps begin running.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat's really wrong with WikiLeaks -T. Dalrymple (2010) - bad_ramen_soup\nhttps://www.city-journal.org/html/what’s-really-wrong-wikileaks-10794.html\n======\nbad_ramen_soup\n\"The actual effect of WikiLeaks is likely to be profound and precisely the\nopposite of what it supposedly sets out to achieve. Far from making for a more\nopen world, it could make for a much more closed one. Secrecy, or rather the\npossibility of secrecy, is not the enemy but the precondition of frankness.\nWikiLeaks will sow distrust and fear, indeed paranoia; people will be\nincreasingly unwilling to express themselves openly in case what they say is\ntaken down by their interlocutor and used in evidence against them, not\nnecessarily by the interlocutor himself. This could happen not in the official\nsphere alone, but also in the private sphere, which it works to destroy. An\nIron Curtain could descend, not just on Eastern Europe, but over the whole\nworld. A reign of assumed virtue would be imposed, in which people would say\nonly what they do not think and think only what they do not say.\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFlickr Blog: Lessons Learned while Building an iPhone Site - timtrueman\nhttp://code.flickr.com/blog/2008/10/27/lessons-learned-while-building-an-iphone-site/\n\n======\nHexstream\n\"The only way to get the size of your JavaScript down is to selectively pull\ncode out of libraries, and include only what you use.\"\n\nWould it be possible to make some kind of library management system that\nautomatically takes care of including only those parts of the libraries you\nuse? (even if each library needed to supply its own \"annotations\" to guide the\nprocess)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Impact of Meditating Every Day - PascalPrecht\nhttps://pascalprecht.github.io/posts/meditating-every-day\n======\nmr_overalls\nThis type of meditation - a secularized form of Vipassana in which one\npassively observers mental events - is very popular in the West.\n\nBut it's not the only one, and shouldn't be called merely \"meditation\" without\nregard to the vast body of practices that exist.\n\nAnother form of meditation that's traditionally talked about in Buddhism is\nshamatha, which translates to something like \"concentration\" or \"tranquility.\"\nIn this type of practice, the meditator works with a meditation object,\ncommonly the breath, but possibly a sound, mental image, etc. The meditator\nlearns to stabilize the mind and remain fully aware of the object, and in the\nprocess learns to debug the mechanisms that direct (and destabilize) conscious\nattention.\n\nA recently published book called _The_Mind_Illustrated_ by John Yates is fa\nfantastic resource for this kind of practice.\n\nIf you're interested in scientific attempts to categorize and study\nmeditation, the Center for Healthy Minds at UW-Madison does some fantastic\nneuroscience & psychology research.\n\n[https://centerhealthyminds.org/assets/files-\npublications/Dah...](https://centerhealthyminds.org/assets/files-\npublications/DahlReconstructingTICS.pdf)\n\nIn the scientific terminology that is emerging these days, Attentional,\nConstructive, and Deconstructive types of meditation are mapped onto various\ntypes of traditional practices (there's a handy chart in the paper).\n\n~~~\nservercobra\nHuh, I went to UW and never heard about the Center for Healthy Minds. This is\nreally interesting, thanks!\n\nWhere does transcendental meditation fall?\n\n~~~\nmr_overalls\nI think TM's basic mantra practice would qualify as an Attentional practice. I\ndon't now much about more advanced practices in that school, so I'm not sure.\n\n------\ncube2222\nI had always had some kind of anxiety or ocd for as long as I can remember.\nI'd searched for various ways to deal with it but only discovering meditation\nreally worked for me.\n\nAfter meditating for 6 months every day (starting with 5 minutes daily, ending\nwith 20-30) I've completely got rid of it. A nice side effect was that I got\nto be a happier person overall (though that wasn't ever a problem for me), and\nlearned to deal with any kind of stress whatsoever.\n\nI'll happily recommend the, oh so often mentioned on hn, book \"the mind\nilluminated\" it really is great to start with: [https://www.amazon.com/Mind-\nIlluminated-Meditation-Integrati...](https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-\nMeditation-Integrating-Mindfulness-ebook/dp/B01INMZKAQ)\n\nRecently I haven't been meditating as much as I'd like to unfortunately (I'm\ntrying to get back to it), but the effects are lasting nevertheless. And I\nstill know how to calm myself in a matter of minutes or get more distanced to\nthe situation.\n\n~~~\naNoob7000\nWould you recommend an app like Calm or Headspace to get started with\nmeditation?\n\n~~~\nc1sc0\nTo get started. Absolutely. Headspace has been instrumental in dealing with a\nvery hard time in my life. For a secular, scientific look at mindfulness\nmeditation read the book “Why Buddhism is true.”\n\n~~~\nadolph\nHere is a podcast with the author:\n\n[https://samharris.org/podcasts/is-buddhism-\ntrue/](https://samharris.org/podcasts/is-buddhism-true/)\n\n~~~\nhombre_fatal\nOf course, Sam Harris himself has a meditation app (Waking Up). I think might\nbe the best option for the HN crowd.\n\n~~~\nFnoord\nHere [1] is the Exodus Privacy report for this app. To be fair, I did like the\nFAQ on the website.\n\n[1] [https://reports.exodus-\nprivacy.eu.org/en/reports/38025/](https://reports.exodus-\nprivacy.eu.org/en/reports/38025/)\n\n~~~\nhombre_fatal\nFwiw, Waking Up gets better marks by those metrics than the other popular\nmeditation apps mentioned in these comments: Headspace and Calm.\n\n(Lower is better)\n\n\\- Waking Up (3+11=14)\n\n\\- Headspace (11+16=27)\n\n\\- Calm (9+15=24)\n\n------\nspodek\n> _I try to meditate every morning for about 15 minutes and been doing that\n> for quite some time now._\n\nI find that doing any Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity will\nimprove your life tremendously, meditation being just one type of SIDCHA.\n\nWhile the benefits differ slightly, the magnitude of benefit from other\nSIDCHAs -- like exercising, drawing a picture, writing a blog post, writing\nthree business ideas, cooking a meal from scratch, etc every day -- can be\njust as great. You develop discipline, ability to overcome internal\nresistance, self-awareness, etc.\n\nI'm a big fan and practitioner of SIDCHAs and wrote them up:\n[http://joshuaspodek.com/sidchas-the-series](http://joshuaspodek.com/sidchas-\nthe-series).\n\n~~~\nonefuncman\nI love the approach of digging into the underlying pattern rather than\nfixating on the details of the routine.\n\nI used to struggle with Agile and daily standups at $JOB until I started\nkeeping a private journal daily. Now I have several years of daily notes\nacross several jobs that I can refer back to and use for reflection, avoiding\ncommon pitfalls, revisiting particularly difficult challenges with a different\nperspective. The most valuable entries I have beyond technical details or\ncompany idiosyncrasies are about arguments I've gotten into or interpersonal\ndynamics I've noticed.\n\nThe biggest benefit I've noticed is that I feel much more resilient to both\nstress and change, and I don't sink near as much time and effort into\ndistractions or rabbit holes. Random ideas get written down and set aside for\nmonthly review and I can get back to work.\n\n~~~\ntheonemind\nIt sounds like you do something more comprehensive, but I thought I'd share my\nexperience with journaling at work.\n\nI pretty much try to write (with pen and paper) for 10 minutes a day to sort\nmy thoughts out and figure out what do focus on, perhaps think about what has\naffected my performance lately (good and bad, to do more of the good and get\nless of the bad). Occasionally, I'll stop doing it for periods of time, until\nI notice that my recent work has started to seem less effective.\n\nThe 10 minutes of writing increases the chance that I'll feel like I've\naccomplished something by the end of the day by like 200%. So you'd think I'd\nnever skip it, but of course, when actually _doing_ it, it feels like wasting\n10 minutes at any given time, so sometimes, I just don't.\n\n------\nspectaclepiece\nI began meditating every day after I wake up four years ago and it has been\nthe most beneficial change I ever introduced into my life, quitting cannabis\nsecuring a stable second place.\n\nI began with five min and worked my way up to 15. Now I have an iOS shortcut\n“hey Siri, start meditation” which sets a timer randomly between 15 and 20 min\nto counteract the body clock expectation of a fixed duration.\n\n~~~\ncols\nYou mentioned quitting cannabis. If you don't mind elaborating, I'm curious\nwhat benefits you have experienced and why you ended up quitting. Thanks!\n\n~~~\nthomk\nEx cannabis user here, so I thought I'd give you my empirical perspective &\nand opinion.\n\nI will tell you what I would tell my own child:\n\nCannabis, like any recreational drug, steals the most precious resource we\nhave: our time. I've been on benders in my life that I simply can not remember\nwhat I did during that period, sure, but that's not what I'm talking about.\n\nWhat I am talking about is the time any person needs to become a well\nadjusted, functioning adult. When you are taking a recreational drug, you are\nnot dealing with life, you are on a 'get away'.\n\nLife is the best teacher and recreational drugs are how you forfeit that\nprecious, amazing, education.\n\nYou don't have to go far to see this in action. Think of someone who is a\nhabitual drug user and ask yourself 'are they emotionally mature?'. They\naren't. They are taking an escape. Recreational drugs are antithetical to\nemotional growth.\n\nThis type of behavior is ESPECIALLY harmful if you are taking recreational\ndrugs early in life. It simply puts you behind.\n\nI wasted 20 years of my life 'partying' even on a casual basis. Time slips\naway and being high puts time on a damn bullet train.\n\nI heard recently that the fastest way for an addict to relapse is a windfall\nof money. Money doesn't help them get out of their situation because money is\nhard to manage, particularly if you are emotionally immature.\n\ntl/dr: Recreational drugs make you immature which will prevent you from going\nvery far in life.\n\n~~~\nstronglikedan\n> Recreational drugs make you immature which will prevent you from going very\n> far in life.\n\nPut a \"may\" before \"make\" and a replace \"will\" with \"may\", and you have a\ntruthful statement. However, as it stands, it's simply false. Some of us \"well\nadjusted, functioning adults\" just use drugs safely and responsibly, because\nit can make life just a bit more interesting.\n\n~~~\nthomk\nAhh, so if you take away the recreational drug, you remove the part of you\nthat has the ability to find life more interesting? Turns out it was the drug\nthe whole time.\n\n------\ngaryrob\nI just want to share that I'm finding the practice of Zen meditation in the\ncontext of its overall philosophy to be profoundly helpful. I've read a\nsubstantial number of books on the subject. Books are only useful as pointers\nfor how to practice; knowledge alone is useless in Zen. You have to practice,\nperiod. But the best books _are_ useful as pointers for how to practice. And\nif anyone here is interested in exploring Zen, the single book that I feel\ndoes the best job of giving you what you need to really practice is \"Opening\nthe Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice\" by Kosho Uchiyama\nRoshi[1]. \"Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind\" [2] is also a wonderful book, and it's\nwhere I started. Its poetic manner of expression made me feel there was\nsomething there that I needed to explore. But the Uchiyama book just takes the\ncake for being very clear and down-to-earth, without watering down either the\npractice or the philosophy. After that it's helpful to read commentaries on\nwritings by Dogen. And, ideally, sitting regularly with other folks in a Zen\ncenter is extremely helpful. Avoid overly simplistic beginner's Zen books. I\ncan't recommend them because they seem to distort the essence in an attempt to\nmake it seem as approachable as possible.\n\n[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Opening-Hand-Thought-Foundations-\nBudd...](https://www.amazon.com/Opening-Hand-Thought-Foundations-\nBuddhist/dp/0861713575/ref=sr_1_1)\n\n[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Mind-Beginners-Informal-\nMeditatio...](https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Mind-Beginners-Informal-\nMeditation/dp/1590308492/ref=sr_1_3)\n\n------\nmlangenberg\nPersonally, I find meditating on a daily basis for longer periods (months),\nthe most difficult.\n\nWhenever I go through a \"down\" phase in life, I start meditating and observe\nit being really beneficial, but the routine quickly starts to bore me.\n\nWhen I feel good and energized, I jump out of bed, enjoy a day at work and\nfill the evening with stuff I enjoy.\n\nI totally forget to meditate and (digital) reminders are easily dismissed.\n\n(It doesn't help that I'm an evening person, so most of the time I tried to do\nas less as possible in the morning in order to arrive at a \"normal\" time at\nwork)\n\nHow do other people cope with this?\n\n~~~\nemanuensis\nSame for me. Though i am very \"advanced\" having been a yogi for over 50 years.\nWhat really helped me was meditating hourly, on chimes. i have found the\npractice mentioned a few times, eg Thich Nat Han recommends. Content wise,\nlength wise etc etc there are many variations. Pick one. Maybe graduate to\nanother. Or out, or on infinite repeat. Taking control of yourself, at all\ntimes, even when not \"meditating\" is to be awake.\n\n------\njason_slack\nI have the habit now of meditation for 1 hour each morning and then for 20-30\nminutes before laying my head to pillow. It's really helpful to me to get\nmyself in a space to start a productive day and end it with a good relaxing\nsleep. I usually get 4.5 to 5.5 hours each night. Up at 4:30am without an\nalarm and to bed by 11-midnight usually.\n\nI attended a 10 day silent meditation retreat last year and it really had an\nimpact of my technique and focus along with realizing my life is what I indeed\nmake of it.\n\nIf anyone wants to start meditating, start slow. maybe just 10 minutes of\ntrying to do basic breathing exercises.\n\n~~~\nagent008t\n4.5 to 5.5 hours sounds ridiculously low. I thought humans need at least 8\nhours of sleep to function well? Have you tried sleeping for longer and if you\ndid, what difference did it make to your wellbeing?\n\n~~~\ntheboulevardier\nMany people find that meditation reduces their need to sleep. A few months ago\nwhen I was meditating for around 1.5 hours per day (a mixture of walking and\nformal sitting meditation) I felt well rested on 5.5 to 6.5 hours of sleep,\nwhen my normal needs are 7.5 - 8 hours\n\n~~~\njammygit\nSometimes when I have insomnia I sort of daydream instead of sleeping. When I\nget up, I am more rested than the 3-4 hours or actual sleep would suggest. I\nhad wondered if the daydreaming was similar enough to sleep to be a poor\nsubstitute\n\n~~~\nagent008t\nI find the opposite. On the nights where I dream a lot, I do not wake up well\nrested. The best rest I get is when you fall asleep, next moment open your\neyes, and it's morning. But I haven't had much of that kind of sleep since I\nwas a kid.\n\n------\nTaylor_OD\n10 minutes of guided meditation per day is the only non-medical option that\nhelps my ADHD other than removing caffeine and getting more sleep.\n\nIt's insane how little I need to feel much more in control of my thoughts.\n\n~~~\nposlathian\nI dropped my scrip when I realized a long morning sit has about the same\neffect but without the side effects of stimulants - which were considerable.\nNot to get down on stimulants, those can be amazing drugs.\n\n------\nnabla9\nI have been meditating 20 years now (zazen). I do 2-4 hours a day. Several 7\nday retreats per year.\n\nMy starting motivation was philosophical and academic interest. I was curious\nhow it affects the mind. Then I did it because it seemed so hard to do, mind\nseemed like a buggy device I had no control over. I also had self improvement\ngoals at some point. And feeling balanced is a good feeling.\n\nBut there is no way I can justify the amount of time I spend meditating with\nany of those. Meditation teachers say that first you start to work with\nmeditation, then it starts to work with you. The whole view of the world\nchanges.\n\nI'm completely secular humanist but meditation has turned into spiritual\npractice. If I worship something, it's this moment. Asking why I meditate is\nlike asking why people go surfing. Staying in the moment and balancing on the\nwave between the past and the future is not a activity you do for gaining any\nother goals. Being alive and experiencing the raw existence is something you\nsacrifice other things in your life.\n\n~~~\nvcoelho\n> I do 2-4 hours a day.\n\nJust reading this gave me anxiety.\n\n~~~\nsnikeris\nWhat is this anxiety? Does it come from the fear of non-existence? I will be\ndead some day, and I surely don't want to spend my limited existence staring\ninto the void. Gotta keep moving!\n\n~~~\nsixstringtheory\nOn the right time scales, is there even any difference between \"staring into\nthe void\" or \"moving\"?\n\nWhat difference will it make anyways after you're dead?\n\n------\namriksohata\nHindu sages have advocated meditating for thousands of years, they do this in\na specific time called Brahmamuhurtha in the morning when its most potent. Its\nthe same sages that promote Yoga and Ayurveda\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmamuhurtha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmamuhurtha)\n\nIt won't be long before the West I hope catches onto the next phase which is\nlearning about Mudras - kind of an accupressure to target certain nerves.\n\n~~~\npbowyer\n> It won't be long before the West I hope catches onto the next phase which is\n> learning about Mudras - kind of an accupressure to target certain nerves.\n\nMudras are awesome! I discovered them accidentally because I'd get spots on my\nfingers that felt \"heavy\" and would make me jerk and shiver when touched.\n\nPressing them can clear the tension, but it's always a temporary relief. If I\ncan shiver then the energy release is much better.\n\nI've tried various mudras but not known what to expect from them, or how best\nto use them. And never seen an explanation (or anyone else) experiencing what\nI do.\n\n~~~\nL_Rahman\nWestern psychotherapy has developed a specific ritual for activating this kind\nof shivering focused on releasing traumatic energy. It's called a TRE (Trauma\nRelease Exercise) and particularly when done in the presence of someone who\ncan help guide through energetic blocks, I've found it to be a transformative\nexperience.\n\n[https://traumaprevention.com/](https://traumaprevention.com/)\n\n------\nypcx\nMindfulness meditation is absolutely great, a miracle, a root. I don't\nmeditate regularly but every time that I do it again (and if properly), the\nthought that opens is something like \"where have you been so long / why have\nyou denied this to yourself for so long\" type of question.\n\nAnd yet, I feel like doing that every day is not fully compatible with the\ntype of consciousness which is optimal to get me from day to day in my life as\na software engineer.\n\nMeditation sharpens your senses -- you may then find yourself distracted by\nsounds of road traffic that you previously didn't care about, you may discover\nthat the air in your area smells bad to you from time to time, you may realize\nhow locked most people are in their own patterns (that includes you). You may\nfind yourself thinking about going to a Buddhist monastery somewhere and\ntrying this for a longer time. I'm just saying it's really _that_ good.\n\nWhereas, if I do what I love, and I let my consciousness to its own momentum,\nI feel like it's auto-tackling the daily roughness of life more on its own and\nnot bothering me with otherwise unimportant things that much. In essence, you\nwere born into this physical reality to be a thought / to have thoughts, not\nto be thoughtless / formless.\n\nThat said, mindfulness meditation as a consciousness-momentum modification\ntool, applied (even daily) within the proper bounds, can a venerable weapon\nfor life.\n\nI guess I just find it to be an extra overhead to manage if everything else in\nmy life goes really well even without it.\n\np.s. If you use meditation as a daily crutch(?)/bandage(?) to something that\n_really_ bothers you, there are much more effective weapons to try (one-off,\nby no means regular use): Ayahuasca, Shrooms, Family Constellations -- after\nhealing with these, the meditation itself can provide you with much more, as a\ncherry on the top.\n\n~~~\nObi_Juan_Kenobi\nThere's more to meditation than just mindfulness. Look into samatha practice.\n\n------\njasonmcaffee\nI've been meditating for the last 2 years, and I've found many benefits.\nStress reduction, better control of feelings, better understanding of self,\nand joy are just a few.\n\nIt's really simple to start out:\n\n1) Devote 10 minutes of each day to meditation time. Early morning is best, as\nyour mind is fresh and not as distracted.\n\n2) Find a quiet/non-distracting place to sit in a comfortable position. Legs\ncrossed on the floor or in a chair are fine. You want to keep your back\nstraight to help keep from falling asleep.\n\n3) Focus on the sensation of your breath, wherever it is strongest. Typically\nthis is the tip of the nose, or in the nostril, but chest can work as well.\nYour mind will become distracted with work, worries, thoughts of food, etc.\nWhen this happens, congratulate yourself on noticing that it happened, and\nbring your attention back to your breath.\n\nThat's it! It blows my mind how developing concentration can have such a\nprofound impact on your life.\n\nHere are some good resources for those interested:\n\n[http://dharmatreasure.org/wp-content/uploads/beginning-\nmedit...](http://dharmatreasure.org/wp-content/uploads/beginning-meditation-\nhandout.pdf)\n\n[https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Meditation-\nIntegrati...](https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Meditation-Integrating-\nMindfulness/dp/1501156985/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3AWJMAYQPSKPY&keywords=the+mind+illuminated&qid=1565973855&s=gateway&sprefix=the+mind+illu%2Caps%2C239&sr=8-3)\n\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/wiki/index#wiki_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/wiki/index#wiki_getting_started)\n\n------\nrramadass\nThe Tibetan Texts on \"Mind Training\" (called _Lojong_ ) maybe helpful for\npeople looking for instructional techniques;\n\n* Mind Training: The Great Collection - [https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Training-Collection-Library-Clas...](https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Training-Collection-Library-Classics/dp/0861714407/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=mind+training&qid=1566021731&s=books&sr=1-1)\n\n* Essential Mind Training (subset from the above book) - [https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Mind-Training-Tibetan-Class...](https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Mind-Training-Tibetan-Classics/dp/0861712633/ref=sr_1_16?keywords=mind+training&qid=1566021789&s=books&sr=1-16)\n\n------\ngnikif\nIn my experience, apps (like Headspace) mostly distract you from witnessing.\nAny type of guided mediation has an entertaining aspect to it - you have to\nfollow the guidelines instead of pure witnessing.\n\n~~~\nme_me_me\nWould you mind elaborating a bit more on that?\n\nI've been meaning to get into the meditating for a quite a while now. But\nnever seem to find time/motivation to research how to start.\n\n~~~\nseren\nI started meditating using some written guide/books and Headspace.\n\nAn app is helpful to guide you at the beginning, but past a certain point\nhaving someone talking during most of the session seems a bit detrimental to\nyour actual focus or awareness. I even wonder if there isn't some sort of\nPavlovian response, whenever you listen to Andy Puddicombe voice, you want to\nmeditate.\n\nThe core of the issue is that there is a conflict of interests between an app\nthat want to keep you subscribed forever, and the idea of teaching something\nuniversal. In any app, I have never heard the teacher saying that you don't\nneed the app to actually meditate (which is obviously true). By making you\ndependent of an app, you are actually less free than before.\n\nUnderstand that these meditation apps (Headspace/Calm) are mostly VC funded ,\nand they don't only want to teach you something, their investors also want\nsome hockey stick curves. There is nothing wrong with that but it also\nexplains how some features are designed.\n\nThat being said I think it was helpful to use them, they provide some value so\nI would rather recommend them, just not forever.\n\n~~~\nawinder\n\n      I even wonder if there isn't some sort of Pavlovian response, \n      whenever you listen to Andy Puddicombe voice, you want to \n      meditate\n    \n\nYES. I've wondered the same, it almost seems like a waste if that's not what\nthey're going for because it's right there.\n\n    \n    \n      Understand that these meditation apps (Headspace/Calm) are \n      mostly VC funded , and they don't only want to teach you \n      something, their investors also want some hockey stick \n      curves. There is nothing wrong with that but it also explains \n      how some features are designed.\n    \n\nI don't know if that's completely fair. Both of these seem to really be trying\nto go after a model where businesses buy group subscriptions as an employee\nwellness perk. I think there's also untapped potential in trying to team with\nlarge healthcare providers because mental health is treated in the US in one\nof the most cost-ineffective ways, and it isn't even especially an effective\nway from a patient outcome standpoint either.\n\nAnyways -- that's just all to say that achieving hockey stick growth in a B2B\nmodel should create better alignment and it shouldn't mean that they don't\nwant to teach you something, I'm sure lots of people with good hearts are\nworking there & want to do good for people/users.\n\n~~~\nyodon\nPlease don't use code formatting for quotes. It makes your text unreadable on\nmobile.\n\n------\nyjhoney\nI had been reading articles (like this one) that raves about the benefits of\nmeditation and so I decided to try it for 30 days every day.\n\nI did not see any improvements in any areas. Could I be doing something wrong?\nI really don't get meditation and I feel like I'm the only person who feels\nthis way.\n\nAll the benefits that this article specifically talks about is my default\nstate. I'm never stressed and I don't feel anxiety unless I drink alot.\n\nIs it be possible that meditation simply have no effect for some people?\n\n~~~\nnefitty\nTry asking someone close to you if they notice a difference. I went through a\nlong stint of daily meditation a few years ago but I eventually lost the\nhabit. A while afterwards my wife randomly said, \"I wish you still meditated.\nYou were nicer when you did.\" I was taken aback.\n\n------\ntryitnow\nWhenever I hear about a particular technique that is supposedly backed by\nevidence I wonder what specific protocol was used in the studies supporting\nit. I also wonder how many studies have been conducted and for how many years.\n\nFor those of you who want an actual evidence-based practice check out\nMindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). It's the most frequently studied\nprotocol and it's been studied for decades. When you read stories about\nstudies showing how meditation does XYZ and ABC, it's almost always MBSR that\nthe researchers are using.\n\n\"Meditation\" is a huge category, there's a lot of stuff in there. Some of it\nprobably works, a lot of it doesn't (other than the placebo effect).\n\nWhat you think of as \"meditation\" may not be what actually has been researched\nin a given study.\n\nOf course, all of the above is only applicable to those of you who want to\npursue evidence-based techniques. If you're just satisfied with trying stuff\nyou read about on random blogs and HN posts then go ahead and try anything:\nprayer, astrology, witchcraft, etc - you'll probably realize a little positive\nbenefit as long as you genuinely believe it will work.\n\n~~~\nflr03\nWhy would you need studies ? It's not like trying to introduce a new\nmedication on the market. If I like knitting 30 mins a day and I feel relaxed\nafter that I'm not going to wait for a study to tell me it's actually making\nme feel better or not.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nBecause it may be harmful.\n\nSee for example the idea of giving people involved in road traffic accidents a\nbit of psychological therapy afterwards.\n\nThat seems like it'd help, and most people would say that it can't hurt, but\nwhen you look at the people 3 years later we see the group randomised to\ntalking therapy have worse outcomes than the group randomised to no talking\ntherapy.\n\n(I'll try to find a reference).\n\nHere's the reference:\n[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/10974967/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/10974967/)\n\n~~~\nandreilys\nWhich may only generalize to a specific group of people, in a specific\ncountry, at a specific period of time. All subject to change when we tweak a\ncouple of variables.\n\n~~~\njblwps\nThat point, while valid, is only against this study; it doesn't speak to\nstudies in general.\n\n~~~\nandreilys\nIf we're speaking in the context of social sciences I would say it applies to\nnearly all of them.\n\n~~~\njblwps\nPossibly. While I'm definitely sympathetic to the idea that social science (at\nleast as it's actually practiced) is relatively soft, I don't know how we'd go\nabout discounting it all. Seems to me like we'd be throwing the baby out with\nthe bathwater.\n\nAt the very least, I don't know what we could do differently, short of\nimproving the practice of social science in various ways. The questions it\nwould purport to investigate (i.e. social questions) are of course critical\nquestions, but I'm not sure how we'd better answer them. More specifically,\nI'm not sure how we'd better answer them now. Sure, maybe if we had some Grand\nUnified Theory or even sufficiently sophisticated computer models. But we\ndon't have those. (In the case where we did have them, it seems almost\ntautological that social science as such would have participated in their\ncreation--but I digress.) What we've got now are social questions worth\nasking, and an admittedly imperfect practice of answering those questions.\nWhat do we do now?\n\n~~~\nandreilys\nWe realize that scientific studies that are in the social sciences may only\ngeneralize to a specific group of people, in a specific country, at a specific\nperiod of time. All subject to change when we tweak a couple of variables.\n\n------\nslothtrop\nThis reminds me of an article shared here on the value of doing nothing.\n\nHow does walking around with a clear head compared to meditation practically\nspeaking?\n\n~~~\nObi_Juan_Kenobi\nI'd liken it to the difference between exercise and training. Exercise is\ncertainly good for you, but if you want to achieve high performance, you need\nstructure and discipline.\n\nMeditation isn't clearing your head, it's changing it. It's developing the\nfaculties of attention and awareness in a deliberate way. Ultimately, these\nare the tools you use to develop insight.\n\n------\nle3dh4x0r\nI can recommend meditation for people with social anxiety. When I meditate on\na regular basis, the way I interact changes completely. It's more intuitive\nand I say and do things I wouldn't do otherwise, yet people are completely\nfine with it and like me more. Like I am really authentic\n\n------\nmusicale\n> Meditation can open up surprisingly many doors when it comes to being more\n> aware, mindful, focused and just at piece with yourself\n\n\"At piece with yourself\" reminds me of Iron Maiden's album Piece of Mind.\nWhich is also good for mindfulness and focus.\n\n------\nriskneutral\nIn my humble opinion, meditation is the only way. There is no substitute for\nmeditation. There is a nice app for free called Plumb Village. It’s by Thich\nNhat Hanh, who I think gave a talk at Google once.\n\n------\ndnprock\nMeditation sometimes reveals itself through meditation. It's kinda like\nrecursion in programming. I come from Vietnam. Meditation in Vietnamese is\ntranslated literally to \"sitting zen\" (ngồi thiền). Sitting seems like the\noptimal balance point for meditation. Standing/walking has more distraction.\nLying down makes you prone to sleeping. Now, I haven't figured out which\nsitting position is more optimal. Perhaps, the lotus position is popular for a\nreason.\n\n------\nthewhitetulip\nI can testify to the benefits of meditation\n\nWhen I don't meditate, I feel restless, I doubt myself more and always feel\nempty.\n\nAfter meditating, I feel at peace.\n\nAnd I only meditate once every 15days.\n\nMeditation also helped me reverse acid reflux.\n\n------\n40acres\nThere's a small urban park 5 minutes away from my apartment, I live in Oregon\nso the greenery is very lush and evergreen. It's the perfect spot for a quick\n10 minute headspace session.\n\nThe mind is an incredible thing, it's difficult to know if tech has reduced my\nmind's ability to remain still -- but it's quite something to sit and realize\nthat my mind goes it's own way and I struggle to keep up, like a dog walking\nit's master.\n\n------\ngpsx\nI'm sold on meditating being beneficial. This article is a reminder that I\nneed to start doing it regularly again. How difficult it is for me is probably\na reflection of how much I need it.\n\nI wonder about some of the _negative_ effects of meditation. Actually, I don't\neven mean negative, but just effects period. For example, does it make you\nless aggressive? In many ways this is a good thing but there are also benefits\nto being aggressive.\n\n------\nalbanberg\nIn the Viniyoga tradition of Krishnamacharya and Desikachar, yoga\nposes/exercises (asana) are used to prepare the body for meditation. The\nmeditation is a process of exercises while focusing on an object. The object\ncould be gross, such as a mountain, or subtle such as a concept. The teacher\nchooses the object for the student.\n\n------\nkishoresurana\nI strongly recommend Shambavi mahamudra Kriya taught by Sadhguru\n[https://www.innerengineering.com/](https://www.innerengineering.com/) I’ve\nbeen practicing their 18 minute meditation for almost a year and it has been\nquite amazing.\n\n------\nwinkelwagen\nI've been meditating for about 3 months now. Mostly focussing on building the\nhabit part of it.\n\nI could definitely recommend 10% happier book, It's a fun read, and a kind\nintroduction to meditation. I had an easier time connecting with that author\nthen all the other writers that have all have been meditating for 20+ years\nwith countless 10/30 day retreats.\n\nThis week I finished Waking up from sam harris. Have been listening to his\npodcast for ages. If you are interested in meditation, from a non-religion\nperspective I would definitely recommend it. I'm still having a tough time\nunderstanding what all this no-self and no-ego is about. That will just take\nsome time I guess.\n\nFor me personally I've been mixing meditation and stoisism a bit to find some\npeace and acceptance for my very critical self image. But it's hard to find\ngood stoic teaching, most of it just seems written by sleazy marketeers.\n\nLast thing I would recommend for anyone interested in meditation, starting\nwith tools like headspace a good way to get into the habit. But to be honest,\nI'm having a hard time still getting value out of their teachings. I went from\n\nheadspace > just settings a timer with the Oak app for 20-30 min > back to\nheadspace.\n\nI feel if made less progress then the simple timer. of course I'm not 100%\nsure if it the headspace app, or me just simply plateauing but my I think I'm\ngoing to go back to a simple timer. The headspace app is just so damn noisy.\n\n~~~\nscns\nYou need to know how to progress. The book The Mind Illuminated which has\nallready recommended here helps with this. One commenter in another thread on\nhn allready practised for years, that book got him further.\n\n------\nEamonnMR\nI've tried in the past, but I wonder: how do you know if you've successfully\nmeditated or not?\n\n~~~\njrochkind1\nSo in the kind of meditating he's talking about, you sit there focusing on\nyour breath. When you notice your thoughts doing something else, you non-\njudgementally bring them back to your breath.\n\nThat's it. If you're doing it, you're succesfully meditating. It doesn't\nmatter how often your thoughts go somewhere else, or for how long before you\nnotice. No matter, if when you notice you focus on the breath, you're doing it\nsuccessfully. Really, that's the whole thing.\n\nIf you're just starting out, you might find some introduction guidance\nhelpful, either from an online video or app (there are many, OP mentions a\ncouple), or from someone in person (If there's a Shambala temple in your area,\nthey probably have intro to meditation sessions; there are other options).\n\n~~~\njrochkind1\n(It can be \"hard\" to do because it can be an uncomfortable or \"boring\" thing\nto do, that you don't really want to do. But if you just do it anyway, it's\n\"easy\", it doesn't take any skill, anybody can do it, you just have to do it.\nIt is sort of a kind of exersize for your mind, like going to the gym for your\nmind. You are practicing: a) noticing what your mind is doing, self-reflection\nin the moment; and b) directing your attention).\n\n------\ncristinabunea\nYou can listen to this article here:\n\n[https://www.listle.io/#/article/3127906797](https://www.listle.io/#/article/3127906797)\n\n------\ncryptozeus\nI have been meditating for sometime now however lately I have been thinking\nthat this is one more attempt at managing the stress of daily life. Its not\nthe cure and definitely does not help in finding out why we need to do this to\nbegin with.\n\n~~~\nwhiddershins\nI might argue that it is precisely a route to figuring out why we need to do\nthis to begin with.\n\nThis notion that somehow all this suffering and stress is generated by\nexternal factors is a trap, in my experience.\n\n~~~\ncryptozeus\nI didn’t mean that all our troubles are based on external factors but it does\nimpact our day to day.\n\n~~~\nRugnirViking\nI think the thing is that in our past lives we had a lot more time to do\nnothing. Have you ever sat and stared into a fire for an extended period of\ntime? These kinds of calm moments of reflection happened far more often in\ntimes gone past, especially for tens of thousands of years before significant\nwe developed civilisation.\n\nPresumably because this time was abuntantly available, evolution found ways to\ndo some kind of bookkeeping that is very important for our survival, in a\nsimilar manner to why sleep is important.\n\nThis is of course speculation, but in the absence of definative research about\nthe human brain, which is a ways off just yet, this is almost the best we\nhave.\n\n------\nvitro\nFor those interested, there is also Suizen [1] meditation which involves\nplaying shakuhachi bamboo flute.\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suizen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suizen)\n\n------\nnamelosw\nI personally don't find it useful. But it might be my own problem because I\ncannot get rid of the idea of questioning meditation itself.\n\nHowever if you are in doubt like me try take a nap. I find 20mins nap at noon\nalso works great.\n\n------\nptah\nGood start. It becomes even more beneficial with more time and by learning\nfrom a real live person. My life has improved dramatically doing TM for the\nlast 15 years.\n\n------\npadpnut\nMeditating daily has helped with my focus. I can now follow conversations in\nwork meetings a lot longer, without my mind drifting away.\n\n------\nkovek\nDoes anyone know what is the history of the Ohmm sound? What is the desired\neffect?\n\n~~~\nkishoresurana\nThe correct way to say is AAAUM and not Om\n\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om)\n\n~~~\nkishoresurana\nCheck this video [https://youtu.be/-HMgaToaEac](https://youtu.be/-HMgaToaEac)\n\n------\njimkri\nI started meditating in the beginning of the year and it really has helped me\nwith a lot of things. It has helped me the most with anxiety and my\nADHD/concentrating.\n\nIve been using Waking Up with Sam Harris, which is talked about in the\narticle. It has a ton of learning materials, self-timers. It follows vipassana\nmeditation and the app offers metta as well.\n\n------\nausjke\ni tried meditating myself but ended up with taking a short nap, 15-20 minutes\nthat is, no need to go to bed though, but seems nap-taking recovers the most\nenergy for me for the rest of the day.\n\n------\ncarapace\nOysters can be eaten, but don't ignore the pearl.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCodes of Misconduct - mpweiher\nhttp://hintjens.com/blog:108\n======\nunimpressive\nMy biggest problem with this essay is the idea that in all instances of\negregious social misconduct it's the result of psychopathy. I think the\npsychopath factor should be given a much higher prior, but not an absolute\none. Sometimes people didn't get the socialization that they should have\ngotten in childhood or adolescence, within this industry in particular it\nseems odd to ignore the possibility of social impairment through autism.\nSometimes people really do make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes make\nyou go \"Wow how did somebody not know this wasn't okay?\"[0], and sometimes\nthey know better and had a lapse in judgment or read the wrong signals.\n\nPredators exist, psychopaths exist, most harassment is probably repeat\nvictimization by the same bad actors, but mistakes still exist.\n\n[0]: I know I've asked this question about _my own_ behavior before, I somehow\nsuspect most of us have at one point or another.\n\n~~~\ncbd1984\nAnd you have to take into account the fact culture plays a role.\n\nWhat's your personal space? It varies based on where you were born and where\nyou grew up. Invading someone's personal space is perceived as aggressive and\nnoisome and perhaps even threatening, which makes it even worse to assume it\nmust be based on pathology rather than \"This person was born in Italy, I'm\nfrom Norway\" or similar.\n\nSimilarly, saying things like \"culture doesn't excuse bigotry\" is rather\npointless, given that culture defines what you consider to be bigotry in the\nfirst place. What's perfectly tolerant and open-minded in Russia might be\nunspeakable in Liberia and vice-versa.\n\nMy point is, add a culture out of step with the mainstream notions of\npropriety to someone with even a relatively mild social dysfunction (not\nnecessarily diagnosable!) and you have a \"harasser\" in the making, especially\nif everyone castigates them on the first offense and nobody tells them what\nthey're actually doing wrong.\n\n~~~\nPieterH\nHere's a funny thing about culture. It distorts a lot, so some cultures accept\npublic stonings and lashings, while others won't let a parent slap a child.\n\nYet what constitutes abuse is universal, and what constitutes positive social\ninteraction is universal. In every culture in the world, a man putting his\nhand on another's shoulder is a gesture of dominance, and putting his hand\ninside a woman's knee is a gesture of intimacy.\n\nThe size of personal spaces changes per culture. Just as some cultures speak\nlouder than others. Yet it always follows the same dynamics, positive and\nnegative.\n\n~~~\ncbd1984\n> Yet what constitutes abuse is universal, and what constitutes positive\n> social interaction is universal.\n\nOnly if you define it down to the basics. Some jokes are considered abusive in\none culture and funny, or at least innocuous, in another. You mentioned one\nman putting his hand on another man's shoulder, but back-slapping is certainly\nviewed differently across cultures, and then there are the subtle rules around\neye contact which usually aren't written anywhere at all except maybe\nsociological research papers. All of those things can make someone feel rather\nuncomfortable if they meet exactly the wrong person, perhaps after everyone's\nhad a few drinks.\n\nAbuse is culturally dependent. Some things are regarded as universally wrong,\nperhaps, but vast swathes of things aren't universal in the slightest.\n\n~~~\nPieterH\nCitations, please. I've grown up and lived in many cultures. Manners change.\nAbuse does not. Invoking cultural relativism is not going to work here.\n\nLet me explain: abuse is about identifying a boundary and then crossing it,\ndeliberately, and repeatedly, to gain control over another person.\n\nThe boundaries shift from person to person and culture to culture. Yet it\nalways the same dynamic, and you can see it, and you can stop it.\n\n------\npeteretep\n\n        > The mainstream theory of harassment (let's call it\n        > \"Model A\") has these assumptions:\n        > -  Anyone can be the harasser.\n        > -  Harassment is a motiveless act.\n        > -  Outlawing harassment will stop it.\n    \n\nI don't think that's right.\n\nI think people who want a Code of Conduct generally see the _primary reason_\nfor a Code of Conduct as a signal from organizers that they will take actions\nlisted seriously as harrassment if they happen.\n\nIt's like a sign at a small rural hotel that says \"Same-sex couples welcome\".\nThey don't mean that other couples are unwelcome, they don't mean they're\ncatering exclusively for same-sex couples, they don't think you should change\nreligion: they're just sending out a signal that if a guy and his husband stay\nthere, they're not going to run in to official hostility.\n\nA CoC sends the signals that: the organizers know harrassment takes place,\nthey care, and they're willing to publically agree to address it and take it\nseriously when it occurs.\n\n~~~\nPieterH\nI think we agree that is the intention. However it's more like putting up a\nsign on a hotel saying \"Murder and mayhem will not be tolerated.\"\n\nIf there is a real risk of murder and mayhem, the sign needs to read, \"If\nsomeone tries to murder you, please call 911!\"\n\nHarassment does not simple \"take place\" and that's the point. Participants\nenter zones of vulnerability caused by distance from home, separation from\nfriends, alcohol, the need to socialize, etc. This draws in predators. The\norganizers need to understand that, and guard against it.\n\nThe term \"code of conduct\" is itself a problem as it strongly suggests \"behave\nor else!\" while talking to the entire audience.\n\nDo you have a better explanation for the antagonism many feel (and I\npersonally used to feel) towards codes of conduct?\n\n~~~\npeteretep\n\n        > However it's more like putting up a sign on a hotel\n        > saying \"Murder and mayhem will not be tolerated.\"\n    \n\nI have previously held that view, but now think that was mostly a function of\nmy white male privilege. If you go to a hotel proprietor and report murder and\nmayhew, you have a reasonable expectation that it will be dealt with properly.\nMany people apparently did not have this expectation of technical conferences,\nbased on their experiences. Many people like myself - who hadn't had those\nexperiences - assumed it was so obvious it didn't need saying.\n\n    \n    \n        > This draws in predators\n    \n\nI think that's right, but is a massive simplification. I think good people can\nact in ways that make other people feel uncomfortable, without meaning to, and\nthat also needs some consideration.\n\n    \n    \n        > The term \"code of conduct\" is itself a problem as it\n        > strongly suggests \"behave or else!\"\n    \n\nReally? To me it says \"these are our expectations\".\n\n    \n    \n        > Do you have a better explanation for the antagonism\n        > many feel (and I personally used to feel) towards\n        > codes of conduct?\n    \n\nI think many men growing up have negative formative experiences with certain\nwomen who have considerably more social power than them (for simplicity: the\npopular girls!) exerting it to make them feel ashamed. They see potential for\nwhat they see as a safe space being used against them. They have a genuine\nfear of their well-intentioned actions being used to label them as a _bad\nperson_. They see the Adria Richards and Pycon examples as a realization of\ntheir worst fears in this area.\n\n~~~\nPieterH\nHonestly, accidental discomfort is part of being grown up. To try to regulate\nthat is IMO both patronizing and counter productive. We need some level of\nfriction to socialize. A CoC that lets well-meant actions become crimes is\nworse than no CoC at all. I explain this in my article: certain people will\nuse poorly-designed tools to harass.\n\nThe key to solving this mess is, and I stick by it, to separate accidental\nclumsiness from predatory behavior. There is no grey overlap.\n\nOnce you separate these two, you can teach people to trust each other much\nmore, while being properly cynical of the small slice of predators.\n\nThis isn't hypothesis: we use this approach in our open source communities to\nencourage and thrive on honest mistake while watching for, and blocking\npredatory actions.\n\nI may add a piece to the protocol along the lines of, \"Tolerance means\naccepting that people make mistakes, and working with them instead of treating\nthis as a violation.\"\n\n------\nchippy\nThis is a good approach to severe acts of harassment in real life meetings of\npeople. In particular social events involving beer.\n\nBut these acts are rare in tech events. The most common acts of behaviour we\nsee that some people call for Codes of Conduct are not this severe. The most\ncommon types of things would include: telling lewd jokes, being loud and\nargumentative, questioning particular religious or political beliefs, or being\nnot politically correct enough.\n\nIn short behaviours which do not fall into a right and wrong objective\nmorality, but which depend greatly on the thoughts and feelings of those\noffended. They are subjective. These are the behaviours which I think many\nproponents of Codes of Conduct in tech events are thinking of.\n\n~~~\nPieterH\nThe reason I wrote this article is because I think the mainstream is so wrong\nit hurts. All the behaviors you listed are a normal and necessary part of\nsocialization. Without some argument there is no learning. There is a real\nright to freedom of speech.\n\nThis is why I tried to define \"violation\" from first principles as an unwanted\nintrusion into personal time and space. There must be (profoundly) the\nintention of damage. Offense is not damage.\n\n~~~\nchippy\nI see, thank you!\n\n------\nfche\n\"So the solution is to remove the incentives and opportunities for\nmisbehavior, and raise the risks of exposure. Then, bad actors will adapt and\nself-select. Either they will behave, or they will go elsewhere.\"\n\nThat sounds good, but nothing in the rest of the write-up actually \"removes\nincentives and opportunities\" etc. It's the usual sort of \"don't harass, don't\ntouch, don't X Y Z ...\" litany, without any procedural prescriptions as to\nwhat to do in case someone does X.\n\n~~~\nPieterH\nThe protocol I describe is almost entirely about procedure. Was that not\nclear, or not detailed enough?\n\nRemoving incentive and opportunity means recognizing what creates risk for\nparticipants, and reducing that. Which I also did try to cover.\n\n~~~\nfche\nOK, there were three bullets in the middle of the \"protocol\" that dealt with\nprocedure. (\"The organizers shall provide as secure ...\" through \"... privacy\nof all parties\"). But it belabours trivia (\"collect time, place, name ...\")\nand skips over substantial questions like burdens of proof, appeals, range of\npenalties, false complaints, violations of procedure. That's the meat &\npotatoes of law, amateur or professional.\n\n~~~\nPieterH\nYou're right, this part is thin. In terms of penalties, there is only\nexclusion, or law enforcement. We can expand on the procedural part later.\n\n------\ncbd1984\n> The organizers shall be aware of the risk of \"date rape\" drugs.\n\nThey shall be aware that the most important \"date rape\" drug is alcohol.\nThat's un-PC to say, especially around drinkers, but it's true.\n\n~~~\nPieterH\nYes, very much so. This is critical. We often depend on alcohol to relax and\nsocialize, when among strangers. Yet it makes us vulnerable to all kinds of\nmanipulation, and the next day everything is blurred and we forget.\n\nWhen I see a man (or woman) offering shots, time after time, to people who are\nalready drunk and careless, I watch his face and his eyes.\n\n------\npornel\n> Harrasement is not a gender issue\n\nIt's interesting that it can be true, but not change much in practice due to\ngender imbalance at tech conferences.\n\nLet's assume that 1% of attendees (of any gender) are bad actors attacking the\nother gender. If a conference has e.g. 800 men and 200 women, then there will\nbe 2 female harassers vs 800 men, and 8 male harassers vs 200 women. That's a\n16 times difference in likelihood of being harassed ((8/200) / (2/800)), just\nfrom attendee imbalance, and no fault of any gender.\n\n~~~\nPieterH\nMost harassment at tech conferences is male-on-male, and it is not sexual. It\nis about power and control, and perhaps amusement. Sex, gender, height, choice\nof programming language: these are ways to create and exploit vulnerability.\n\nSometimes I don't think psychopaths, sorry, bad actors, care about sex at all,\nexcept as a tool for controlling people.\n\n~~~\npvdebbe\nIs making fun (not constantly though) of some bad languages now harassment?\n\n~~~\nPieterH\nIf it's used to intimidate and isolate, then yes.\n\nRemember school bullies? Same thing yet more subtle and stealthy.\n\nOften the model of harassment is indirect. For instance you have a group of\npeople who are happy and working together. A predator arrives and sees\nopportunity. He sees another guy is protecting and coaching the group. So he\nslowly undermines and destroys this guy's credibility, provoking him to anger\nand finally making him leave. Then, the group is exposed and easy to play\nwith.\n\nYou almost never see it. Even when it happens to you, you can almost not see\nit. It is so slow, careful, smooth. This is why education of these patterns of\nstalking, isolation, and attack are so important.\n\n------\nrl3\n> _The organizers shall be aware of the risk of \"date rape\" drugs._\n\nI'd love to see sensor hardware combined with computer vision techniques\nemployed to combat this problem.\n\nSmart glassware already exists, but a major caveat is that it doesn't catch\nthe perpetrator.\n\n------\n4ad\nWell, this article is interesting because it's not the typical mindless Yes We\nCan article written by someone who heard that now wanting \"Social Justice\"\n(whatever that is) is the trend of the day, without understanding the dynamics\nof social interaction in the slightest.\n\nIt's also not an article written to sound like someone in the above category\nwrote, but in fact is being written by someone who _understand_ the social\ndynamics, and just has an agenda.\n\nIn fact the article is sincere, and correctly identifies the \"problem\". There\nare many things I find abhorrent about the proposed world described in the\narticle, but I will refer to only one of them. Btw, even if I find abhorrent\nthis \"new\" world order, it's much better than the world order imposed by the\nYes We Can people.\n\n> Additionally, they shall have one or more \"hosts\" who do not drink alcohol,\n> and who are trained to observe and catch violations should they occur.\n\nYeah, this casual suggestion that some sort of \"police\" should exist to\n_monitor_ people's behavior and catch policy violations quickly is the worst\nthing that is currently happening to humanity in my opinion, and ultimately\nresults in a world I don't want to be part of.\n\nThe police part is bad in itself, but much worse is how casual this \"final\nsolution\" is proposed, and how little people complain about it. People were\nbred into obedience and submission. We already lost.\n\nThere's very little for me to do about this. All I can do is vote with my\nmoney, e.g. I don't go to conferences where people are not adults enough that\nthey don't know how to _live_ , yes, live life, without CoCs and police, even\nthough I am one of the nice people at those conferences, not one of the \"bad\nactors\" the author mentions. Of course this doesn't affect the world in the\nslightest.\n\n~~~\nPieterH\nI've a large building and we've hosted many parties here. Almost always,\npeople are great, even when drunk. Alcohol does not make good people turn bad,\nin my experience. Every now and then an event deteriorates. I learned that\nsomeone has to stay sober and play host. It's not about policing. It's about\nbeing available, and separating parties when there's an incident. That's all.\nI'll modify the text to make this clear, as the notion of policing is exactly\nwhat I'm trying to make distance from.\n\nOne example: we had a party downstairs with several hundred guests. It was a\nCongolese wedding, so people were drinking a lot. I go to sleep, and around\n2am get woken by extremely loud noises. I put on some clothes and go down, and\nfind a battle raging in the entrance to my building.\n\nSeems two young guys (North African) had come in and were caught stealing from\npeoples' jackets. The crowd had caught them. One had escaped, one was still\nprisoner. The one that fled had come back with reinforcements, so I found\nabout eight young men hammering on the doors of my building with a steel bed\nframe (don't ask me where this came from). Inside, a group held the other\nyoung man down, while he was shrieking for help, afraid they would murder him.\n\nIt took only a few seconds to get this whole story from various people. I\npicked up the young man by his arm and dragged him out, and threw him at his\nfriends. \"You will leave now, or the police will be here,\" I told them. They\nput the bed down and left. I told the party goers, \"are you utterly insane?\nWhat did you think was going to happen?\" and ushered them back into the party\nroom.\n\nIt all took maybe 5 minutes.\n\nIf I'd had even a small amount to drink, no way I could have done this.\n\nNow, such incidents are extreme. Yet when you have guests in your home or\nevent, and you offer them alcohol, you have (in my mind) to look after them.\nNo ifs or buts. Bad stuff can happen.\n\nI also learned after this night to have professional security, which is\nanother thing that can help.\n\nHope this helps. The host absolutely does not monitor peoples' behavior.\nHe/she intervenes quickly when there is an issue, before it gets out of hand.\n\nThanks for your feedback, it was helpful.\n\n~~~\nafarrell\nWow. I admire your ability to take command of a situation.\n\n------\nstefantalpalaru\n> The term \"bad actors\" is a convenient euphemism for sub-clinical\n> psychopaths.\n\nNice example of dehumanizing the enemy. We now have our very own\nuntermenschen.\n\n> It will speak to bad actors and say, clearly: you are welcome as long as you\n> act decent. Otherwise, we are watching, and we will catch you.\n\nIs this why we, a bunch of adults, congregate in technical conferences? So we\ncan hunt down the \"baddies\", play the policing game, recycle some old\npresentations so we can feel good about our technological choices and at the\nsame time pat ourselves on the back for finally being able to bully someone as\na group?\n\n~~~\nPieterH\nYou're projecting and/or reading meaning that isn't there. Most of us\ncongregate to learn and open our minds. A small percentage come to prey on\nothers. This is just how it is, no good or bad.\n\nMy book The Psychopath Code\n([http://psychopathcode.com](http://psychopathcode.com)) makes it quite clear\nI don't consider psychopaths as enemy or bad guys. It's much more fun than\nthat.\n\n~~~\nstefantalpalaru\n> Most of us congregate to learn and open our minds.\n\nSo not to feel safe and protected, like when we were children?\n\n> I don't consider psychopaths as enemy or bad guys\n\nBut you consider them \"bad actors\". Furthermore, you simplified everything by\ndeclaring that every unsavory character suffers from the same pseudo-\npsychiatric pathology. And you're supposed to be an authority on the matter\nbecause you wrote a book?\n\n~~~\nnailer\n> bad actors\n\nThat's a common infosec term. Eg:\n[http://www.csoonline.com/article/2124416/malware-\ncybercrime/...](http://www.csoonline.com/article/2124416/malware-\ncybercrime/bad-actors-exposed--mccolo--zlkon--hostfresh-and-the-damage-\ndone.html)\n\n~~~\nstefantalpalaru\nIt is. You still can't say that \"bad actors\" are not bad.\n\n~~~\nPieterH\nI can, and do.\n\n\"Bad actor\" is a term. \"Bad\" is an adjective. It's like saying \"apple\" and\n\"pine apple\" must be the same fruit. We're smart enough to give different\nmeanings to the same word, in different contexts.\n\nBad actors act in a specific way that we can observe, model, understand, and\npredict. This is independent of perspective. \"Bad\" is a moral judgement that\nonly exists in the head of the target.\n\nA beetle parasite of an ant colony is a \"bad actor.\" It is not \"bad.\"\n\n~~~\nstefantalpalaru\n> It's like saying \"apple\" and \"pine apple\" must be the same fruit.\n\nNo, it's like saying that a \"bad apple\" is not necessarily bad.\n\n~~~\nPieterH\nIf you're making cider, then a \"bad apple\" is essential.\n\nI'm not making this up as I go along. Almost four years ago I wrote\n([http://hintjens.com/blog:18](http://hintjens.com/blog:18)) \"The Economics of\nEvil\" explaining why bad actors (I used \"bad guy\" in that post) were necessary\n(so \"good\" overall).\n\nNothing radical here. Predators are bad for individual prey animals yet\nessential for the health of the prey species.\n\nI'm curious what you are trying to argue here because while this is\ninteresting stuff, it seems quite random.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: What is ONBOARD-2698? - shay_ker\nI see it in Twitter&#x27;s robot.txt file, as well as many others:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;robots.txt<p>&gt; # Wait 1 second between successive requests. See ONBOARD-2698 for details.<p>Is this some internet meme?\n======\ndetaro\nI'd guess thats a reference to a twitter-internal bugtracker - JIRA issues\nhave that format.\n\n------\ndotti\nLooks a lot like Jira ID of some bug/task\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow We Think with Bodies and Things - wslh\nhttp://www.youtube.com/user/StanfordUniversity#p/u/147/Vhcubb00g6c\n\n======\ncpaone\nI don't think he's got Wittgenstein right. But it's interesting.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nReal Programmers... - marcog1\nhttp://www.pbm.com/%7Elindahl/real.programmers.html\n\n======\nraganwald\n_The academics in computer science have gotten into the \"_____\" rut over the\npast several years. They claim that programs are more easily understood if the\nprogrammer uses some special language constructs and techniques. They don't\nall agree on exactly which constructs, of course, and the example they use to\nshow their particular point of view invariably fit on a single page of some\nobscure journal or another-- clearly not enough of an example to convince\nanyone. When I got out of school, I thought I was the best programmer in the\nworld. I could write an unbeatable tic-tac-toe program, use five different\ncomputer languages, and create 1000 line programs that WORKED (Really!). Then\nI got out into the Real World. My first task in the Real World was to read and\nunderstand a 200,000 line program, then speed it up by a factor of two. Any\nReal Programmer will tell you that all the _____ in the world won't help you\nsolve a problem like that-- it takes actual talent._\n\nThis paragraph still holds, and it does so for any quiche-eating,effete value\nof _____.\n\n~~~\ndkarl\nFunny how often Real Programmers deride ______ while using _____ - 1. The Real\nProgrammer's objection to ______ is always that it isn't performant or\npractical or available on the right platforms. In other words, Real\nProgrammers stick to mature, widely-deployed technologies and become\nprodigiously adept at dealing with their (well-known) shortcomings while the\nidealistic Quiche-Eaters fight against the shortcomings of immature,\nincomplete systems that have unknown and often show-stopping flaws. It doesn't\nsound to me like Quiche-Eating programmers (distinct from Quiche-Eating\npundits/academics) have it any easier than the Real Programmers. They may even\nbe a little bit braver. (You might not want them working for you, though. Let\nsome other company or project bear the burden of polishing immature\ntechnologies.)\n\n~~~\nraganwald\nWhile what you say is interesting, I consider it orthogonal to the statement\ngiven, namely that understanding _____ without real-world programming\nexperience is not helpful when facing a real-world program for the first time.\n\nOr more simply, _____ is never a silver bullet.\n\n~~~\ndkarl\nI disagree. I think a programmer would be much worse off facing his first\nreal-world programming problem armed only with an instruction set and a hex\neditor than if he had a C compiler and knowledge of C. Just knowing how\nstructs and functions work gives you some mental tools for solving the\nproblem. \"Any Real Programmer will tell you that all the _____ in the world\nwon't help you solve a problem like that\" just doesn't make sense if read\nliterally -- is he claiming that no set of ideas for structuring programs\nactually enhances your abilities at all? \"It takes actual talent\" is just an\nempty truism (like \"______ is never a silver bullet.\") So the statement falls\napart when taken seriously, which calls the attitude it expresses into doubt.\n\nAnd that's the dual thrust of the article. It doesn't just make fun of Quiche-\nEaters. It also makes fun of Real Programmers. The humor is based on the\ndifficulty of drawing a line between progressivism and trendiness. Or, to turn\nit around, the difficulty of drawing a line between pragmatism and fatalism.\nThe article is written from the point of view of someone who errs on the side\nof fatalism (believing that no new ideas will ever prove useful) and who makes\nfun of people who err on the side of trendy prissiness (turning up their noses\nat anything mature enough to actually work.) The Real Programmer speaking in\nthe article manages, quite ironically, to make just much fun of Real\nProgrammers as Quiche-Eaters. Consider the paragraph you quoted. Of _course_\nthe most appropriate ideas for finding your way around a legacy system are the\nideas that were used to _create_ that system! That illustrates how the\n(caricature) Real Programmer's perception of technical superiority is skewed\nby a lack of historical perspective (quite funny given his relish for\nhistory.) Quiche-eating, effete values of _____ have a way of turning into\nReal Programmer stuff when they became widespread and uncool. That means a lot\nof today's Real Programmer stuff consists of yesterday's quiche. Structured\nprogramming? That's _C_! The present-day Real Programmer sees himself as the\ninheritor of the guy who scorned present-day tools as effete, not as the\ninheritor of the Quiche-Eaters who pushed the development of present-day\ntools. (Likewise, one might parody Quiche-Eaters as not _wanting_ their ideas\nto suffer the indignity of becoming mature and practical.)\n\n------\nrussell\n1983? It's obvious this guy is just a kid. The stuff he talks about is new\nstuff. OS/370, 029 keypunches, Fortran 66, Quiche, for god's sake? I started\nprogramming in college in Fortran II on a 7094 running UMES (University of\nMichigan Executive System). The 360 let alone the 370 was yet to appear.\nQuiche had yet to make it across the Atlantic. My roommate told tales of his\nsummer job in high school, programming an IBM 650 for NASA. The 650 didn't\neven have core memory, just a drum.\n\nIt wasn't \"Real Programmers\". It was \"Real Men\" programmed in Assembly\nLanguage. \"Boys\" programmed in Fortran. We had our testosterone unadulterated.\nExcept an old coot told me, \"Real Men do it in binary.\"\n\nNone of this Pac-Man stuff. We played baseball using the index register lights\non the 7094 console and Space War on the PDP-1. We didnt use terminals or even\nthe newfangled terminals, just the trusty 026 keypunch.\n\nI tell you, we were Real Men, even the girls.\n\n~~~\nMaysonL\nFortran II? Real Programmers used FAP! [EDIT: Fortran Assembly Program]\n\nI have fond memories of the Bendix G15 - a drum memory machine where each\ninstruction included the address of the next instruction.\n\n------\nXichekolas\nHonestly, I sat down to read this with the preconceived notion that it would\nbe part of an ancient language war, but instead discovered one of the most\ncleverly written pieces of satire I can remember.\n\nI especially like how the things he derides as belonging to \"quiche eaters\"\n(notably Unix, Emacs, and Vi), are what we consider 'hardcore tools for real\nprogrammers' today.\n\n~~~\njamesk2\nIn 20 years real programmers will program in Visual Basic and Quiche\neaters/script kiddies will just go brain-to-binary with a SQUID.\n\n------\nori_b\nI still think my favorite \"hackers of old\" story is The Story of Mel:\n<http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html>\n\n------\nsmanek\n_If there is not enough schedule pressure on the Real Programmer, he tends to\nmake things more challenging by working on some small but interesting part of\nthe problem for the first nine weeks, then finishing the rest in the last\nweek, in two or three 50-hour marathons. This not only impresses the hell out\nof his manager, who was despairing of ever getting the project done on time,\nbut creates a convenient excuse for not doing the documentation._\n\nWow, some things never change ;-)\n\n------\nhuhtenberg\n_If you can't do it in Fortran, do it in assembly language. If you can't do it\nin assembly language, it isn't worth doing._\n\nPhysics department guys in my university had this printed out and stapled to\nthe wall. Pretty much all math modeling libraries they wrote were in Fortran\nwith some bottlenecks redone in assembly. It was more than 20 years ago though\n:)\n\n~~~\npmjordan\nIt hasn't changed that much, at least not at the University where I got my\nComputational Physics degree in 2006. Instead of FORTRAN70 everyone was using\nFortran 90 (using F70-era libraries) and I don't think anyone was doing any\nassembly language programming as the modern compilers even do\nautovectorisation.\n\n------\nverdant\nSeems to parallel how some of the Pascal/C/C++ era programmers feel about\nPython/Ruby/PHP web developers of today.\n\n~~~\ndryicerx\nThere had been a Pascal era, but C and especially C++ are still alive and very\nmuch current.\n\nEven then, those two sets of languages aren't really comparable. Where it does\nhold true is how lot of the C and C++ programmers feel about Java and C#.\n\n~~~\nverdant\nI didn't mean to imply that C and C++ were from a bygone era. Even Fortran is\nstill used today, (though of course C and C++ are still in very wide use).\n\nI just meant to draw a parallel about those who learned to program after the\nera of mainframes and terminals, on operating systems like Unix, Windows, and\nMac OS but before the Web really became a true platform and how they would\nfeel about web programmers. I included Pascal because it was discussed in the\narticle extensively.\n\n------\nHexstream\nI liked this:\n\n\"Nicklaus Wirth, the designer of Pascal, gave a talk once at which he was\nasked, \"How do you pronounce your name?\". He replied, \"You can either call me\nby name, pronouncing it 'Veert', or call me by value, 'Worth'.\"\"\n\n------\nrvirding\nA true classic, and wonderfully funny. Though I prefer tea.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Comercial software protection - ukmar\nAs a side project I developed an application which update after update turned out quite nice.<p>Since I know it fits a niche market I would like to make it comercial ($50) per license.<p>However what bothers me is the protecion.<p>What type of protection can I use that:\n1) does not use a dongle\n2) should not take more than 2 months to implement.<p>I&#x27;d like if you pointed to materials to read and implementations examples.\n======\nazeirah\nWhat exactly do you want to protect against?\n\nIn my personal experience, customers can be trusted and hackers don't care\nabout your software. For my own software I've implemented an extremely basic\nlicensing system. I've collected data about how many unique mac addresses use\neach unique license, so I can count what licenses are used by multiple\ncomputers. I've just done a simple filter on all my licenses to see which ones\nare used by over 5 mac-addresses. I expected there to be more, but the result\nwas 13. There are 13 licenses that are being used by more than 5 computers,\nnone of those licenses are used by over 14 computers.\n\nThat's 13 out of about 3500 licenses mind you.\n\nThis is just my reality, maybe your target niche is script kiddies or broke CS\nstudents, consider your target group, but I suggest you not to worry too much\nabout it, just implement a really basic licensing system to prevent no-effort\nabuse and you'll be fine.\n\n~~~\nukmar\nExactly, I want to protect from multiple installation with one license.\n\nDo you have a server that you use for the licensing? How did you come up with\nsuch statistic?\n\nHow do you handle if one client changes pc (MAC changes), does he really\nchange pc?\n\n~~~\nazeirah\nI have a server, yes, every time someone starts up my application, it sends a\nrequest to my server to with a (LICENSE, MAC-ADDRESS) tuple, which I store.\n\nSo far, I've never acted on MAC changes. If I saw a license that was used by\nsay 50 MAC-addresses, I would disable it and send an email to the original\nbuyer, scoff at him and give him a new license. But so far no-one has done\nthis, not one person out of ~3500 has shared their license with a larger group\nof people.\n\nJust trust your users for now, collect some statistics if you're really\nconcerned, and act if someone is really abusing your system. Don't ever go\nafter ambiguous cases, ever. I made this mistake in the beginning, got many\nMANY false flags.\n\nI think collecting the statistics is a really good idea, because it will show\nyou that your userbase is trustable, and you will change your perspective on\nsoftware protection :)\n\n~~~\ndanieltillett\nYou do realise crackers strip out your server request code. This is trivial to\ndo. You really have no idea of how many people are using your program.\n\n~~~\nazeirah\nOh yeah true, but I know I can't project against that anyway, pirates gonna\npirate, and I'm not against that.\n\nBut tbf, I don't think there are any people who even bothered cracking my\nprogram...\n\n~~~\ndanieltillett\nYou can, but it is not easy, simple, or very user friendly.\n\nIt really depends on your market and software. For most software it doesn't\nmake sense to bother with anything other than the most basic licensing system,\nbut for some software it does. I sell quite a lot of software in China and\nIndia and I would not be able to do this unless I spent a lot of time and\nmoney on anti-cracking activities.\n\n------\nbrudgers\nThe best way to protect commercial software from piracy is to sell into\nmarkets where piracy is against market practice. For example, enterprise and\ngovernment institutions often have license compliance policies accompanied by\naudits and trainings and memoranda and scoldings.\n\nPart of that means that the pricing policy should discourage piracy. An\ninstitution for which the difference between $50 per seat and $500 per seat is\na big deal for a product that provides $10k+ of value is more likely to pirate\nas a matter of cultural ambiance. And a price of $500 per seat increases the\nlikelihood of having the resources to provide $10k+ of value over the long\nterm. $500 per seat also means that piracy is less likely to take food off the\ntable even if a substantial fraction of use is unlicensed.\n\nGood luck.\n\n------\ndanieltillett\nIt depends on what market you sell into. If you are selling niche software in\nthe USA and Europe then don't worry too much about piracy. If you are planning\non selling in China and India then you need to think very seriously about how\nto protecting your software.\n\nMy company sells a lot of expensive niche software into the Chinese and Indian\nmarket and about 50% of our development effort goes into software protection.\nUnfortunately there is no easy solution, but if you want to contact me offline\nI can suggest some solutions.\n\n~~~\nukmar\nActually the thing that bothers me is not protection per se as I know that\nsomeone with enough determinism will crack it.\n\nI am curious how do you handle license revocation or when you detect if\nsomeone is using an illegal license.\n\nWhat about offline users? How to handle licensing?\n\n~~~\ndanieltillett\nSure if someone puts enough effort into something anything can be cracked, but\nyou can make it long and slow job. This is 99% of the job done if you have\nniche software.\n\nIn regards what protection we use, I am not too keen to list them in public,\nbut my basic principle is layering. Use enough different systems and layers\nand you are going to make life very hard for a cracker.\n\n------\nBjoernKW\nFor Java there's License4J:\n[http://www.license4j.com/](http://www.license4j.com/)\n\nThere should be similar tools for other languages as well.\n\nMy suggestion is to not overthink it. There's no perfect solution that will\nprevent your software from being copied in every scenario imaginable. Just use\ncommon sense. It certainly shouldn't take 2 months to implement. Your\ncustomers aren't paying for copy protection after all.\n\n------\ndsl\nSee if you can sell it first. When piracy becomes a problem, then look into\nsoftware protection.\n\nNiche software rarely gets pirated because the demand is low.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Great Lakes: An Ojibwe Perspective - bookofjoe\nhttps://decolonialatlas.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/the-great-lakes-in-ojibwe-v2/\n======\nbookofjoe\nMap toponyms here: [https://decolonialatlas.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/the-\ngreat-l...](https://decolonialatlas.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/the-great-lakes-\nin-ojibwe-v2/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow to conduct a good programming interview - lihaoyi\nhttp://www.lihaoyi.com/post/HowtoconductagoodProgrammingInterview.html\n======\nthiscatis2\nSo reading over some of the questions posted on technical programming\ninterviews I must say that I would definitely fail such an interview without\nstudying for it for a month first. Having recently discussed job interviews of\nex-colleagues that went to EBay, Facebook, Google, etc.. I wouldn't even pass\nthe whiteboard test.\n\nHowever I'm shipping scaleable API's used by web and native apps, using\nContinuous Integration and Deployment on an AWS infrastructure that I set up\nmyself. Furthermore I'm responsible for hiring developers that I work with on\nagency projects and most important of all getting projects delivered within\ntime, scope and budget AND getting paid for it. Yet I would fail most\ntechnical interviews.\n\nI've been doing this for about 10 years and never ran into any major problems.\nI've worked both as a freelancer and in-house permanent dev and never had any\ncomplaints about my work. (Feedback and improvements yes, big failures never).\nYet I would fail most technical interviews.\n\nI talk directly to clients and vendors, I sell projects, I take over projects,\nI end projects and I've created 2 startups, one of which I sold but I would\ndefinitely fail a purely technical interview.\n\nI completely understand the need for these technical interviews and weed out\nobvious bad programmers and get experts on board but sometimes from a business\npoint of view it just doesn't make sense.\n\nAt a previous company I worked for the team almost crashed & burned because of\nthe TL's focus purely on technical skills. No code was being shipped but hours\nof meetings and Slack conversations and discussions on PR's for no good reason\nabout 0.01% improvement gains.\n\nI know I'm not the best developer out there and never will be. Often I'm in\nawe of the technical skills of people out there but I rather have a less\nskilled dev with great \"people & shipping\" skills as I call it than some of\nthe people that would pass all these tests but that I couldn't put in front of\na client or even let them email a vendor.\n\n~~~\nnolemurs\n> I completely understand the need for these technical interviews and weed out\n> obvious bad programmers and get experts on board but sometimes from a\n> business point of view it just doesn't make sense.\n\nThe thing is that the main goal of the technical interview is _not_ to hire\nall good candidates. The main goal is to _avoid_ hiring bad candidates. A\nlarge high paying company like Facebook has plenty of candidates to choose\nfrom, and the main priority is avoiding expensive bad hires. The cost of\nfailing to hire a good engineer is small - they can just take the next guy.\nThe cost of hiring a bad engineer is large.\n\nWith this in mind, the process makes a lot of business sense. Someone who is\ncapable of learning what's needed to do well on a technical interview has\ndemonstrated a fairly high level of competence, and is (relatively) unlikely\nto be a really bad hire.\n\nThis filter does limit your applicant pool a little, but if you're Facebook,\nthe largest chunk of your applicant pool are recent comp. sci. graduates. If\nthey can't solve an algorithms problem reasonably gracefully then that's a bit\nof a red flag. For non-recent-comp-sci-graduates, a competent candidate really\nshould be able to prepare pretty well in a month or two of spare time.\n\nFacebook might miss out on hires like you who would likely be quite good at\nthe job but aren't willing to put in the effort to prep for the interview, but\nthat's a trade off they'll make happily if they minimize bad hires.\n\nSmaller companies with lower pay and access to fewer qualified candidates\nwould probably be ill advised to copy the Facebooks and Googles of the world\nthough. I'll grant that.\n\n~~~\nsidlls\n> Someone who is capable of learning what's needed to do well on a technical\n> interview has demonstrated a fairly high level of competence, and is\n> (relatively) unlikely to be a really bad hire.\n\nSure, as long as their only role is repetitive coding tasks that require\nlimited amounts of broadening their experience beyond the DS&A trivia places\nlike Facebook require.\n\nHowever then Facebook ends up with stuff like their iOS app (\"iOS can't handle\nour scale\"), which had a lot of (probably) very talented CS folks putting\ntogether an app that was pure garbage (from an engineering and usability\nperspective).\n\nThe filter limits the applicant pool to that set of people uninterested in\nsolving problems outside the scope of a CS textbook. Capability has little to\ndo with it.\n\n~~~\nnolemurs\n> The filter limits the applicant pool to that set of people uninterested in\n> solving problems outside the scope of a CS textbook.\n\nThe only way this would be true is if being good at textbook CS makes you bad\nat solving other problems. I'm assuming you don't actually think that, 'cause\nit's kind of crazy.\n\nEven giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming you mean that the filter\nmakes the pool less likely to contain good problem solvers, it's hard to see\nwhere this idea is coming from. In my experience, being good at one sort of\nproblem solving makes someone _more_ likely to be good at other sorts of\nproblem solving. The correlation between skill in problem solving across\ndomains is weak sometimes, but it's definitely not negative!\n\n~~~\nubernostrum\n_The only way this would be true is if being good at textbook CS makes you bad\nat solving other problems._\n\nThe way the typical interview process works, basically, is \"we have a list of\n6-12 algorithms we will ask about; if you have memorized implementations of\nthem, and certain key phrases to identify which one to regurgitate on command,\nyou pass the interview\".\n\nThis is then touted as a test of \"CS knowledge\" and \"problem-solving ability\".\n\nTech interviewing is Goodhart's law in action.\n\n------\ntptacek\nIt's good to think carefully about how you interview candidates. Most of the\nideas in this post are good. You should definitely let candidates type answers\non computers. You should definitely work to put them at ease, in an\nenvironment that approximates their actual working environment.\n\nBut really, this is window dressing. The problem is that technical interviews\njust don't work reliably. We have better ways to qualify candidates.\n\nRather than trying to read subjective, noisy signals from in-person\ninterviews, give candidates a small battery of _work-sample tests_. These can\nbe bug-fixes, small features, diagnostic challenges, or even specification\nwriting assignments.\n\nA properly designed work-sample challenge has a _rubric_ : a set of\ninstructions for scoring a result. Ideally, the rubric is straightforward\nenough for someone who hasn't met the candidate to quickly score their result.\n\"Runs correctly\". \"Passes a battery of unit tests\". \"Includes appropriate\ndocumentation\". Whatever is important for your team.\n\nWork to give every candidate the same set of challenges, so you can track\nresults over time. You'll find that after refining and iterating for a few\nmonths, you'll rapidly build confidence in the tests, to the point where in-\nperson interviews become superfluous for technical qualification.\n\nWorking on technical qualifiers is stressful. Most candidates will perform\nmore poorly on them than they would on normal work. You should build that into\nyour rubric (though, really, data from candidates will ultimately determine\nhow strict the rubric becomes).\n\nUnderstanding how stressful qualifying work is, you should consider not\nrequiring candidates to work on problems on-site. Instead, administer them\nonline. Suggest the amount of time you expect the problems to take to finish,\nand offset that amount of time from the amount you demand on-site.\n\nWhen you must interview, you should work hard to _standardize the interview_.\nInterviewers _hate_ this. Everyone has their favorite questions. People want\ninterviews to be conversational and adaptive. Interviewing isn't supposed to\nbe fun for the interviewer; it's supposed to be reliable.\n\n~~~\nballs187\nOther than the pain of being rejected (or rather the lack of validation),\nwhere does this reliability problem manifest?\n\nElite tech companies have no problem with the current implementation of\ntechnical interviews.\n\nEngineers whos skills range from Great to Mediocre don't have a problem\nfinding a job.\n\nSoftware quality has generally improved or stayed the same.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nThis is demonstrably false. Lots of great engineers are terrible at\ninterviewing. If you ask around, you can get even some very high-profile devs\nto tell you stories about why they're not working at Google or Facebook or\nAmazon because of how badly their interviews went. Equally importantly: lots\nof terrible engineers are _great_ at interviewing, and most people in the\nindustry have had the experience of working alongside someone who is failing\nup, 2-year-stints at a time.\n\nWhat's true is that Google and Facebook have such enormous budgets and such\nhuge positive profiles in the talent market that they don't need to work hard\nto put together functioning teams. They're paying more than they need to and\nhaving to deal with more bad hires than they should, but it's for them a\nmarginal problem.\n\n~~~\nballs187\n> lots of terrible engineers are great at interviewing and most people in the\n> industry have had the experience of working alongside someone who is failing\n> up, 2-year-stints at a time.\n\nYou mean lots of companies are terrible at firing terrible engineers.\n\nThe argument is basically the current implementation leads to false negatives.\nWhat impacts does that have?\n\nPresumably those very high-profile devs aren't lacking employment\nopportunities, even if it isn't at the elite tech companies.\n\nCompanies, from Elites down to pleb-tier, while perhaps pressed for resources,\nare still able to execute.\n\nSo why is the problem of false negatives a problem we should focus on?\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nAlmost every company is terrible at firing ineffective engineers. Even some of\nthe companies that are famous for doing so (\"'meets expectations' earns a\ngenerous severance package!\") don't necessarily manage to accomplish that in\nless than a year. This stuff sounds very simple on message boards, but is much\nharder to do in real life.\n\nThe first N months of a developer's tenure at a job is difficult to measure\nbecause of ramp-up and calibration (even good developers might hop to\ndifferent teams after getting hired based on work style fit issues). Whole\nprojects can flounder and need rescuing so that attention to ineffectiveness\ngets deflected to group leads. Most good development shops will try to make\nthings work for a new hire that isn't performing at the 6 month mark, and that\nprocess takes a few months.\n\nOnce the decision is made to fire, most big companies will PIP rather than\nfire. Sure, once you've hit the 7-8 month mark of poor performance, your\nseverance from the firm may be a fait accompli. But the ultimate process to\nmake that happen can easily be made to take more than 12 months.\n\nOnce you have a year-long stint at a company on your resume, you can bank that\n\"experience\" on your resume.\n\nAnd that assumes a relatively well-run companies. Most companies aren't well\nrun in this regard, and you can be a terrible developer but last 2+ years in\nmost jobs. If you can reliably put more 2+ year jobs on your resume than\n1-year jobs, you will end up with what will appear to most companies to be an\nextremely attractive resume.\n\nRemember, many management-track developers only write code for ~8-10 years.\nOnce you fail up to Dir/Eng, you're basically tenured.\n\nSince almost nobody qualifies candidates effectively, failing up is a super\npowerful strategy for this field.\n\n~~~\nballs187\nWhy are the terrible engineers terrible, leading to them being fired (after\n1-2 years?)\n\nI've not hired anyone who turned out to be bad at coding, but I have hired\npeople who had other performance related issues, which were difficult to suss\nout during an interview.\n\nFrom my own personal performance, my approach to interviewing has led to far\nmore true positives, than false positives, so I am biased towards continuing.\n\n~~~\nJhsto\n> other performance related issues\n\nWhat are some examples of these?\n\n~~~\nballs187\nTypically it's patterns of repeated performance issues, such as providing\nestimates then routinely not completing work on time.\n\nOr, failing to complete tasks they've taken on, requiring other teammembers to\nstep up in order to meet deadlines.\n\nThere are more extreme cases, like insubordination, theft etc, but they are\npretty rare.\n\n------\nsillysaurus3\n_While there are a variety of ways you can conduct a programming interview,\nthe goals typically are the same:\n\nWill the candidate be able to write working code if they join the team?\n\nCan the candidate discuss code and problems with the people they'll be working\nwith?\n\nCan the candidate reason about arbitrary problems and constraints?\n\nIs the candidate someone we would enjoy working with?_\n\nAll of these can be solved directly by asking the candidate if they'd be\ncomfortable doing an actual task on the actual codebase, having them sign an\nNDA, and then giving them a bugfix to perform. They're compensated for their\ntime, of course.\n\nI'm doing it right now as a candidate and it's by far the best interview\nexperience I've had. The others were all artificial.\n\nA lot of people have a problem with this model for one reason or another, but\nin terms of effectiveness it's probably at the top 1%.\n\n~~~\nwjossey\nI also agree. As someone who has recently co-founded a startup, this is\nsomething my co-founder and I have spent a lot of discussing and exploring.\n\nMy personal experience with this style of interview was that it really helped\nme to personally demonstrate my abilities. I was interviewing at a startup in\nSan Francisco in 2012 who wanted me to do a quick version of \"battleship\" as\npart of their hiring exercise. I proposed, mid interview, \"how about I help\nyou solve a performance problem with your current system. What's your biggest\nissue right now?\" My interviewer actually showed me, and we ended up solving\nthe problem together and then deploying out the change.\n\nThe funny thing about that experience was that when we were done improving\ntheir platform, the VP of engineering was told what I did, and then had the\ninterviewer go back and do the battleship exercise anyway. They needed to\n\"benchmark\" me against other candidates, and the only way to do that was with\na consistent \"test\". I did far more poorly with the battleship exercise than I\ndid helping them on their platform.\n\n~~~\nThrowawayR2\n> _They needed to \"benchmark\" me against other candidates, and the only way to\n> do that was with a consistent \"test\"._\n\nIf your employer were ever sued by a candidate for discrimination and it came\nto light that you had received different treatment than other candidates, some\nvery uncomfortable questions regarding the reason would be asked in the\ncourtroom. An unfortunate bit of fallout from the litigious environment we\nlive in today, but it is what it is.\n\n~~~\ne12e\nWouldn't it be (well, look) even worse if any number of the non-hires dud\ngreat on the battleship test?\n\n------\nkevmo314\n> If you ask the candidate the define the requirements for the task you're\n> going to give them, you can't be surprised if the candidate imagines a use\n> case with entirely different requirements from what you expected!\n\nThis section really resonated with me. I've had a few interviews where I came\nup with a different answer than what the interviewer expected and this\nresulted in a lot of tension, as the interviewer asserted they were correct\nwith zero exception. This often led to a lot of dead-end scenarios and the\ninterviewer trying to get me to see an alternate solution without telling me\nexplicitly.\n\nI once had an interviewer tell me that O(k) was constant if k was a config\nparameter (I disagreed because in practice, k would need to be tuned as a\nfunction of the size of the data, and it would be like saying O(n) is constant\nif you just fix n = 1M), and an interviewer tell me that you could solve an\noptimization problem without an objective function (in actuality, he had an\nobjective function, he just thought it was obvious and didn't want to specify\nit). In both cases, I understood what they were trying to get at _after_ they\nexplained their solutions, but in the process it was incredibly frustrating as\nthey seemed to just disregard my answer all together.\n\n~~~\nbaddox\nI love interview horror stories! In my most recent job search, which was early\nthis year, I debated with one interviewer whether checking for key existence\nin a hash was a constant time operation. I insisted it was, and the\ninterviewer insisted otherwise with the same amount of conviction. That was\njust a small portion of an all-day onsite interview. After leaving, I was told\nthey were looking for a more senior candidate. I was not upset.\n\n~~~\nGeneralMayhem\nCould just be a terminology mismatch. Checking for hash existence should\nalways be constant, but checking for _key_ existence is generally only\namortized constant (that is to say, not constant across all lookups) - he may\nhave wanted you to talk about addressing schemes and degradation at high load\nfactors?\n\n~~~\nbaddox\nThere was no subtle argument. It only came up because I was on the whiteboard\nsolving some simple word game that involved matching user input against a list\nof valid words (e.g. the Scrabble dictionary). When asked to explain the\nrunning time of the various operations, I said that we can store the\ndictionary in, well, a _dictionary_ , and checking whether the user input is a\nvalid word will be a constant time operation. The interviewer insisted, with\nno subtle argument about amortization or collisions or addressing, that this\nwas in fact a linear time operation.\n\n~~~\nfencepost\nSo likely thinking of it in terms of checking a tree based on characters\ninstead of hashes of full words. Which is more viable would likely depend on\nwhat kind of memory constraints and dictionary size was being considered. Also\nvery implementation dependent, what's the size of the hashes generated?\n\nEdit: curiosity got me looking at this for Python, with an answer of \"it\ndepends, and both have correct aspects\" based on Python's implementation [1].\nThe hashing varies by string length, the lookup is fixed unless there's a\ncollision and probing, probing will be minimized by growing the dictionary as\nitems are added. In any case, better than O(n) but worse than O(1) and with\nsome possible slowdowns during loading unless you can set an expected final\nsize during initialization.\n\nEdit again: since I brought it up, turns out initialization doesn't really\nmatter, resizing is not a speed factor. Relevant discussion starts from\n[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1298636/how-to-set-\niniti...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1298636/how-to-set-initial-size-\nfor-a-dictionary-in-python)\n\n[1] [http://www.laurentluce.com/posts/python-dictionary-\nimplement...](http://www.laurentluce.com/posts/python-dictionary-\nimplementation/)\n\n~~~\nkevmo314\nIt's also possible the interviewer meant linear time as a function of the\nlength of the word, which would be true. Regardless, not being able to express\nthis clearly is a sign of a poor interviewer which unfortunately the candidate\ntakes the hit for.\n\n~~~\nbaddox\nThat was certainly not the case. Multiple times the interviewer \"explained\"\nthat with my approach you have to run through every entry in the word list\nwhich is linear time. My guess is that the interviewer wanted me to mention a\nprefix tree of some type, and was completely blind to any other approach.\n\n------\nGoopplesoft\n> 5 minutes of resume discussion > 45 minutes of coding\n\nAs anyone else found that a good resume discussion is often much better than\nthe coding component? I've concluded that implementation difficulties,\ndecisions made (tradeoffs, technologies, etc.) and the collaborative\nenvironment around projects, are much better signals than the code part of my\ninterviews.\n\nIf you've dealt with a broad range of tech and can ask the right questions,\nit's relatively easy to get a strong signal from a candidate by having a deep\ndiscussion on their work on prior projects. Both are needed and very useful.\n\n~~~\nmajormajor\nYeah. If they can't tell me about what they've built before, and aren't a\nless-than-one-year-away-from-school new grad, I'm going to be wondering how\nthey deal with real problems regardless of whatever they can do algorithm-\nwise.\n\nIf someone can talk about what approach they took, what other approaches they\nconsidered, what made it hard, what made it easy, how often the requirements\nchanged, etc, then I'd rather ask them questions about that then spend the\nwhole time in code. Just do some small spot checks to make sure they aren't\ntaking credit for the work of others.\n\n~~~\nGoopplesoft\n> Just do some small spot checks to make sure they aren't taking credit for\n> the work of others.\n\nAgreed, asking tough technical questions on this front gives a really solid\nindicator of a 'bullshitter'. For example, I often ask people to diagram a\nprior project architecture they worked on, and then ask them very fine details\nof how things work and try to challenge them with alternative approaches to\nsee how they react. I get to experience working with them during the interview\nthrough which I learn if they're smart and capable.\n\n------\nHugoDaniel\nHere is how to do a good coding interview if you are a recruiter:\n\n1\\. Do your homework: know what projects drive the interviewee (what kind of\nthings she likes to code, what recent projects has she been involved in), make\nsure they are a match for your company projects and goals\n\n2\\. Ask the interviewee for a git repository and take a careful holistic look\nat it (commit messages and code, timespan, branches, merges etc...)\n\n3\\. Go for a 2h lunch with the interviewee in a relaxed environment to check\nspeak communication skills (talk about whatever you think is interesting, if\nyou can't have or don't know how to have 2h lunches you shouldn't be\ninterviewing, check your life first and learn how to enjoy it before doing\ninterviews).\n\n4\\. Stop asking programmers to write code in 40 minutes. Learn how to respect\nbefore expecting respect in return, if you didn't take the time to read\nthrough their code repositories then don't ask for a 40 minute code problems.\n\n~~~\nmwcampbell\nI think you missed the part where the OP said not all candidates are willing\nor able to work on open source projects.\n\n~~~\nHugoDaniel\nWell the .2 \"Ask the interviewee for a git repository\" can be a private\nrepository. It is a very hard problem to solve if they have no visible code to\nshow but it does happen in other areas. Imagine asking for a management\ncandidate for the private e-mails he shared in certain tricky situations of\nprevious jobs. Or even public e-mails. Or even to take 40 minutes to write in\na whiteboard a team statement for a certain conflict scenario.\n\nTrust is entailed when recruiting in most areas. But in programming not as\nmuch.\n\n~~~\njonathankoren\n> Well the .2 \"Ask the interviewee for a git repository\" can be a private\n> repository.\n\nIf someone shares a private git repo, they should not be hired, and in fact\nshould be fired from their current job, and possibly sued. (Think Anthony\nLevandowski sharing Google lidar designs as an example of his work with Uber.)\n\nThis isn't promoting trust. This is a violation of trust.\n\n~~~\nHugoDaniel\nYes I agree with you but I was not making the point of sharing a repository\nyou shouldn't share to a recruiter (I do own a few private repositories that I\nwouldn't mind sharing to recruiters).\n\nMy point was that seeing code is not as mandatory for a recruitment as we\ncurrently make it so. I gave the comparison to management but it happens even\nin engineering areas. It is worth to know your candidate before asking to\nwrite a solution to an air conditioning problem in a whiteboard in 40 minutes\nwhen applying to a mechanical engineering position. Specially if your company\nnever solves air conditioning problems.\n\n------\nXCSme\nInterviews suck for both parties, a world without interviews would be a better\nworld. Why can't we just hire someone based on his experience and projects he\npreviously worked on? You can have a first month as a \"trial\" where both\nparties can cancel the contract.\n\nWhy interviews suck is because they are very, very biased and subjective and\nalso not a good way to estimate the actual performance of a candidate.\n\nSay no to interviews! If you like what someone did, hire him. You can't get to\nknow a person after 1 or even 10 interviews, because the interview environment\nis totally different from the work environment.\n\nPS: I have been interviewed by 14 different people at Google. I didn't get the\njob. The overall conclusion was that some interviewers loved me, my skill and\nmy work, others didn't like me from the start or simply didn't care about me.\nSome of them had a good day so they gave a good \"review\" even though I made\nmistakes, some of them had a really bad day (one fell of the chair) and gave\nme a really bad review even though, related to the actual interview questions,\nI did really well.\n\n(14 interviews = applied twice, 2 x (5 on-site + 1 online), and they also\nwanted 2 extra interviews to take a decision)\n\n~~~\nCJefferson\nI'm sure most businesses would love that situation, but for employees it would\nrequire you quit your current job, but have a good chance of being fired after\na month at your new job.\n\nI imagine young employees would be happy (I did a bunch of short-term\ncontracts myself), but once you have a mortgage and kids, it's nice to be a\nlittle more certain about your new job, before quitting your old one.\n\n~~~\nnolemurs\n> I imagine young employees would be happy (I did a bunch of short-term\n> contracts myself), but once you have a mortgage and kids, it's nice to be a\n> little more certain about your new job, before quitting your old one.\n\nAnd just to make this really explicit - this means that a company with this\nhiring practice would have a _very_ hard time hiring experienced competent\nengineers. If I were looking for a job, I'd have lots of options, and I would\n_not_ waste time on a company that demanded this.\n\n------\nsidlls\nSome points are quite good, and in particular the author calling out the\nrubbish of asking \"neat little algorithmic\" questions (e.g. asking things like\n\"implement mergesort\").\n\nHowever one thing I'd point out is that this guide still falls far short of\nbeing a good guide for finding _engineers_. Particularly noteworthy, in my\nopinion, is that the measurement criteria are still applicable only to the\ncoding question itself. For example, \"how well the candidate manages time\"\nstill applies only to this limited 40-60 minute question. It doesn't really\nhelp evaluate how the candidate might consider prioritization of tasks\n(implementation or otherwise) in a broader, bigger sense.\n\n------\nmwcampbell\nHere's another disadvantage of whiteboard coding: it's inaccessible to blind\npeople, and impractical (even more than usual) for people with only a little\nvision (like me). Such candidates will need to do the coding on a computer, so\none might as well make that the default, as the OP recommends, and eliminate\none variable and a possible source of bias. Of course, once a blind or low-\nvision programmer stays at a given company long enough, they'll probably be on\nthe other side of the interview at some point. So for consistency among a team\nof interviewers, I imagine it would be best if all of them have their\ncandidates do coding problems on a computer, not just one of them.\n\nI'm curious about why whiteboard coding is still a thing in the first place.\nIs it a matter of convenience or cost? If so, surely that equation has changed\nnow that we have ubiquitous, cheap, portable computers. Or do some\ninterviewers really think that it's good to deny a candidate access to a real\ncomputer while solving a coding problem during the interview?\n\n~~~\nmahyarm\nThese places use the computer for interviews already for the visually\nimpaired. It's just a name for a type of interview.\n\nI even give people the option to use the computer if they are more comfortable\nwith that or a whiteboard. It can be 50:50 in who choses what.\n\n------\nXoros\nThose white board stuff reminds me when I was a CS student in the beginning of\nthe 90's in France.\n\nWe had our exams on paper. And believe me, writing LISP on paper, knowing if\nyou forgot one parenthesis you got 0 point (\"if I type it on a computer, it\nfails !\"), was pretty and unnecessary stressful.\n\nSo I relate with candidate facing that. Dude, on your day to day work, you\nWILL have a computer to check those !\n\nHow can you decently check those skill on a white board ? I totally agree with\nwhat's stated in this post.\n\n~~~\ne12e\nIf you think writing lisp by hand is bad, try implementing a linked list\ninterface in java on paper... _shudder_. (in fairness, we were sanely graded,\nminor syntax errors didn't subtract terribly from the grade...).\n\n------\nbostik\nA year ago I wrote a (shorter) post on the same topic:\n[https://smarketshq.com/notes-on-interviewing-\nengineers-a4fa4...](https://smarketshq.com/notes-on-interviewing-\nengineers-a4fa4383968a)\n\nA reasonable question should never require the candidate to know \"just a\nsingle trick\". Questions that require to combine approaches are far better -\nthey can actually measure if the interviewee can reason about the problem and\nidentify the points for trade-offs.\n\nBtw: if you're interviewing more senior candidates, a code review question is\noften a good idea. It turns the situation around, from \"how do you build\nthis?\" to \"how would you fix this?\"\n\n------\nballs187\nBeing a better interviewer is important.\n\nAs stated, some types of questions aren't good judge of skills, like implement\nmergesort. If you can implement mergesort, you probably studied up for your\ninterview. You're not testing anything, other than did the candidate care\nenough to study.\n\nInterviewing should test the candidates ability to write code that is:\n\n1\\. Correct (solves the problem)\n\n2\\. Efficient (solves the problem without unnecessarily wasting resources)\n\n3\\. Understandable (goes hand in hand with maintainable)\n\n4\\. Maintainable (can be modified by another developer, or even yourself after\na few months)\n\nCoding on a computer can lend itself to all of these (no brainer there), but\nyou lose a key aspect of whiteboarding that I think is really important--how a\ncandidate approaches solving a problem.\n\nKnowing how to implement merge sort, or memorizing every possible linked-list\nquestion isn't all that valuable--but having a concrete approach to tackling\nproblems is, and I want to understand that process from my candidates. I want\nto know the design tradeoffs you make, how you think about optimization, how\ndo you reason about constraints as you learn about them.\n\nIt seems that explaining your process while coding on a computer would be\ndifficult to do without practice--and if you're going to practice, why not\ninstead just practice whiteboard coding, which is how most tech companies\ninterview.\n\n~~~\nrimliu\nSo do you want someone who is good at explaining how they are looking for the\nsolutions, or someone who is good at finding the solution? For me personally\napproaching a problem never involves a whiteboard.\n\n~~~\nballs187\nI don't think I've ever been at an engineering company that didn't have\nwhiteboards, at the very least in conference rooms--I infer from that that\nsome portion of employees find them valuable.\n\nClearly someone who is good at solving problems is preferred. However, between\nsomeone who is good at solving problems, and someone who is good and can\nexplain/demonstrate their process is more desirable.\n\n------\njonathankoren\nI have to disagree with this trend of having people write code on a computer\ninstead of a whiteboard. Sure, it mimics the real world, but in practice you\nspend a bunch of time dealing with crap about syntax errors, and argument\norder mismatch instead of dealing with the actual underlying algorithm. Even\nworse, you may end up with a candidate that realizes that there's probably a\nlibrary that would be really useful for this, but then has to spend time\ngoogling for the name of the library, then installing it, and then desperately\nskimming for a quick start in documentation because the question isn't, \"Can\nyou work google and run pip install?\", but rather some other task. So now\nyou've probably lost 15 minutes just dealing with that shit.\n\nIf you're going to do this, it simply doesn't work in a 40 minute setup\nwithout some sort of provided scaffolding and test cases.\n\n~~~\njpatokal\nIs doing interviews in an IDE and expecting fully functional code actually a\nthing? My company uses a simple text editor: perfection is not expected, and\nit's still way better than a whiteboard.\n\n~~~\njonathankoren\nI can confirm that this is a thing at multiple companies. Instead of of\ntesting the actual algorithm, you'll encounter such blasts from the past like:\n\"Network Socket Debugging\", \"How The Fuck Does Java Read From STDIN?\", and\neveryone's favorite, \"Why The Fuck Did You Give Me Text Data In CSV Format?\"\n\nI have seen this go well exactly once. And they provided an environment with a\nworking (albeit do nothing) scaffold along with test data. Also it was like a\nthree hours in a room.\n\n------\ncbanek\n> Hopefully in your realistic setting, the challenge comes from the difficult\n> tasks you are given to solve, not some jerk that's sniping at you from the\n> sidelines.\n\nI wish I could say that's true. If you're getting sniped from the sidelines in\nyour interview, it's probably a part of the culture where you are\ninterviewing. So it's quite likely to be a non trivial part of the problem\nyou're solving.\n\n------\npnw_hazor\nThere is no reason to haze potential employees.\n\nJust fire them if they don't work out. You set expections by telling them up\nfront they are on probation and that they will be fired if they fail to live\nup to their resume.\n\nSome of the worst programmers I ever worked with could pass hazing interviews\nlike a champ. Whereas some of the best would refuse to step foot in companies\nwith a reputation for hazing their prospects.\n\n~~~\nClubber\nThat's a funny term to apply to this type of interview process, but it fits.\nKudos.\n\nAgree on the invalidity of technical interviews. We hired a guy who correctly\nanswered every question I asked, but he could never ship a product. He always\ngot distracted by silly things. He was great at solving tough little problems,\nbut never could grasp the big picture.\n\n------\namriksohata\nFor me I have interviewed many people with a technical test, that was the\neasiest part i.e determining their competency. The hardest part is figuring\nout what their work ethic is, can they pull their own weight and will they\ncause friction in a team, sadly you only find that out often AFTER hiring\nthem.\n\n------\nzerr\n_Small_ take-home _paid_ project.\n\n------\nJemaclus\nI have a lot of thoughts about this particular topic, probably ideas that are\nunpopular and definitely go against the grain, at least in the way the Bay\nArea operates.\n\nIn my opinion, if you bring a candidate on-site for a 4+ hour interview and\nyou ask them to write code, you've failed to properly vet the top of your\nrecruitment funnel. As a software engineer, writing code is the BARE MINIMUM\nof your job. Imagine hiring a construction worker by merely asking them to\nhammer a nail for 4 hours.\n\nYou should have a thorough understanding, through various means such as phone\nscreens, code samples, portfolio work, and simple tech challenge, to determine\nwhether they can write code _before you even bring them on-site_. Once they're\non-site, you should _quickly_ verify that they can actually do what you\npreviously learned that they can do. I'm talking 15-20 minutes worth of time.\nThe remaining time should be 100% on the \"soft skills\" and other things\nmentioned, including but not limited to my big criteria: \"Can you quickly get\nup to speed and learn the things you don't already know?\" and \"Do I want to\nsit next to you for the next 6 months of my work-life?\"\n\nIf your on-site interview includes 45 minutes of coding (much less multiple\nsets of 45 minutes of coding!), you're doing it wrong. Very wrong.\n\nKeep in mind you've asked your candidate to effectively take a day off work\nfrom their current job. They're calling in sick, taking a vacation day, or\nsomehow lying to their boss and taking a risk of not being in their office\nwhen they're in yours for the interview. If they're smart, they've lined up\nmultiple interviews with multiple companies, because putting all their eggs in\nyour basket is just a terrible idea. Imagine having to take four days off to\ninterview with four companies. And they probably aren't four days in a row, so\nyou can't just pretend to have the bubonic plague or something.\n\nYou're asking them for a huge commitment of their time. And if you're willing\nto kick out a candidate because they didn't know how to invert a binary tree,\nthen you should have found that out before they even walked in the door and\nsaved everyone a whole bunch of time.\n\nIMO, an interview should be a _max_ of 4 hours. Any more than that and the\ncandidate is simply repeating themselves over and over to different people,\npotentially solving the same tech problems (that should have been evaluated\nbeforehand), and generally making it a huge waste of time.\n\nMy two cents. Happy to debate these ideas with anyone interested.\n\n------\nilaksh\nMostly makes sense but your ability to write a parser is still going to depend\non how many parsers you wrote or when you wrote them or whether you are able\nto use a framework/tool to do it.\n\n------\nthe_mint\nAll his example interview questions are stuff that were actually used at\nDropbox!\n\n~~~\nkevmo314\nHis resume ([http://www.lihaoyi.com/Resume/](http://www.lihaoyi.com/Resume/))\nsuggests he worked at Dropbox for quite a while. :)\n\n------\nspraak\nWhat are some good resources for developing good algorithm skills for a non CS\ngrad? Examples in JS, Python or Go preferred.\n\n~~~\nSmirkingRevenge\nThere's lots of stuff online.\n\nCheck out hackerrank.com for example. There are other sites like that out\nthere.\n\nIts becoming a real cottage industry, this whole IT interview prep thing.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy People Become Internet Trolls - rchaudhary\nhttps://dradambell.com/why-people-become-internet-trolls/\n======\nWheelsAtLarge\nOne that was not emphasized enough is that people have learned that you can\nget a lot of attention by being a troll. You speak out without regards to\nother people and you'll get people to follow you just because you are saying\nwhat other wished they could say. A lot of internet influencers have created a\ncareer by doing that.\n\nThe article is right, Empathy deficit, is definitely a cause. I know that for\nmany people it is hard to understand that there is a human with feelings on\nthe other side of the internet. Having a real picture of the other person\nwould solve a small bit of that. But ultimately the only thing that would help\nwould be to figure out how to get users to get to know each other better.\n\n------\numvi\nTrolling has existed long before the internet. Prank phone calls, ding dong\nditch, antagonizing your younger siblings... there's a certain satisfaction\nwith experiencing the fruits of your virtually consequence-free social\nmanipulation efforts.\n\nIt makes you think \"wow, with just words I was able to rile someone up into\nconniptions\" while simultaneously thinking \"how are these people taking this\nso seriously? _I_ am able to keep my cool on the internet\"\n\n~~~\nhappytoexplain\n>wow, with just words I was able to rile someone up into conniptions\n\nYour description of the mindset is accurate. What's interesting to me is how\ncommon it is, considering how irrational it is. Scoffing at the emotional\nresult of \"just words\" is like scoffing at the physical result of \"just\nbombs\". At its root, it's usually a hypocritical expression along the lines of\n\"people are too sensitive\", but also, \"I want to provoke people as much as\npossible\".\n\n------\nSimulacra\nI always thought people became trolls for the passive aggressive power. It's\nlike telling a manager an employee did something really bad when all they did\nwas tell you that you couldn't do/say/whatever something. It's a weird sort of\nfetish.\n\n------\nsleepysysadmin\n\"Trolling\" has very little to do with Sadism, psychopathy, narcissism, or\nmachiavellianism.\n\nAn troll has there priorities, they target a certain group of people just to\nget a rise out of them.\n\n------\ncercatrova\nBecause it's fun? That's the main reason I can see.\n\n------\ngreesil\nFor the lulz? Less idiomatically, to relieve boredom with no consideration\nthat their victims are real people.\n\n~~~\nhappytoexplain\nI feel like this used to account for nearly all trolling, whereas now a\nsignificant portion of it crosses over into an expression of hatred, if the\ntroll perceives the target to be of an opposing ideological group.\n\n------\nkeyle\nSite overwhelmed, cache here\n\n[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DwqAFQ...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DwqAFQJS05QJ:https://dradambell.com/why-\npeople-become-internet-trolls/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au)\n\nGreat read!\n\n------\nSvperstar\nWhen I was 14 and got online I liked trolling websites that I knew had older\nuserbases. Like one time I had a 50 year old man reacting to my troll posts it\nwas hilarious to see\n\n------\nRickJWagner\nBecause some people are just juvenile, and are a little broken inside. It's\nnot complicated.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat Keynes Knew About Bitcoin - petethomas\nhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-09/keynes-worked-out-the-bitcoin-interest-rate-it-s-57\n======\nthisisit\nJust another clickbait headline article which barely mentions Keynes for the\n\"effect\" while explaining one of the terms in a futures market -\nbackwardation.\n\nThe explanation is also incomplete. No mention of \"cost of carry\" or contango.\nWhile forgetting backwardation doesn't imply _only_ interest rate but risk\npremiums too.\n\nTo top it, the implication of the so-called _interest_ is from an exchange\ncalled Deribit. The 24-hr volume on the market is ~3.8 million or 1% of last\n24 hr BTC volume (from coinmarketcap). Not to mention the contract size is $10\nwhich 0.0014 BTC at current prices. The market is super illiquid to be use for\nany kind of useful analysis.\n\n~~~\nempath75\nSo what do you think the cost of borrowing bitcoin should be?\n\n~~~\neigenvalue\nThe whole thing is absurd because we don't have to guess or speculate-- just\nlook at what the actual historical rates have been for BTC margin loans on\nexchanges such as Poloniex. Nowadays the rate is pretty low, 3.5% to 5%, but\nit can spike to much higher levels based on supply and demand (for example,\nleading into the bitcoin gold fork, rates spiked because the exchange wouldn't\ncredit BTC balances with the fork if the coins were being lent at the time).\n\n------\nempath75\n[https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iI77KmfJdUn...](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iI77KmfJdUn0/v1/1800x-1.png)\nthat is not what line charts are for.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nStudio History - Delta Versioning in JS - Hunterhdolan\nhttps://github.com/Studio182/Studio-History\n\n======\nchi_h\nWhen i first saw it, I wondered why they didn't just use google's awesome\ndiff-match-patch library - <http://code.google.com/p/google-diff-match-patch/>\n\nThen, I looked at the source code and saw that it actually was just a thin\nwrapper around diff-match-patch.\n\n:(\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMetabolic Pathways - Tomte\nhttp://www.cc.gatech.edu/~turk/bio_sim/articles/metabolic_pathways.png\n\n======\ndalke\nFor some context, this is the Roche Biochemical Pathways Wall Chart for\nMetabolic Pathways. It is available in interactive form, including search\nsupport, from [http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1](http://biochemical-\npathways.com/#/map/1) .\n\nNote that this link from Georgia Tech manages to omit the copyright notice and\nmost of the notes. It also has alignment problems. On the other hand, it can\nbe printed directly as a poster.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNanoparticles awaken immune cells to fight cancer - DrScump\nhttp://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/nanoparticles-awaken-immune-cells-fight-cancer\n======\nDrScump\nRelated Papers:\n\n[http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12499](http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12499)\n\n[http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.6b09538](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.6b09538)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nOut with BTFD, in with BTFR - Four_Star\nhttp://thesoundingline.com/taps-coogan-out-with-btfd-in-with-btfr/\n======\natomical\n> Those policies were met by snarky critiques from a slew of traders and\n> bloggers who remarked that ‘you can’t fix a debt crisis with more debt’ and\n> that ‘you can’t print your way to prosperity.’\n\nI thought it was well accepted that austerity measures in a depression are a\nreally horrible idea. Greece may be the most recent example. Is that not the\ncase?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWorld Record for Compact Particle Accelerator - jonbaer\nhttp://newscenter.lbl.gov/2014/12/08/world-record-for-compact-particle-accelerator/\n======\ntwic\nThe accelerator is pretty tiny! Unless you count the FREAKING GIANT LASER\nsitting next to it. Seriously, it's not just big, it's old-computer big:\n\n[http://www2.lbl.gov/ehs/news/assets/img/news/setupBELLA.jpg](http://www2.lbl.gov/ehs/news/assets/img/news/setupBELLA.jpg)\n[http://www2.lbl.gov/ehs/news/assets/img/news/finalBELLA.jpg](http://www2.lbl.gov/ehs/news/assets/img/news/finalBELLA.jpg)\n\nAlthough smaller than the LHC, i guess.\n\n------\nyummybear\nNon-physicist here: Can this be used for science in the same way as LHC or are\nthe applications totally different?\n\n~~~\nFiatLuxDave\nPhysicist here, typing from the room next door to a linac. For the sake of\nfull disclosure, I work in the low energy (nuclear) regime, and I am not a\nqualified high energy physicist.\n\nThe short answer is yes and maybe yes.\n\nThe primary intention behind researching laser wakefield accelerators is to\nprovide a way to get to higher energies, like at LHC or beyond, without the\nhuge cost. Physicists would love to test theories at higher energies than LHC\nis capable of, but the budgets for building a normal accelerator of that size\nare prohibitive. You don't necessarily need to figure out a way to make the\nbeam go in a circular method to do this; linacs like SLAC just collide the\nbeam with a stationary target. An effective wakefield accelerator would save\n$billions.\n\nHowever, what this article doesn't say is what are the efficiency and\nluminosity of this accelerator. Just like a car is measured by more than just\nhorsepower alone, accelerators need high efficiency (amount of power to run\nthem, and cool them) and high luminosity (how much of your beam can be\nusefully put on target). I can't comment on this yet, because I'm not up on\ncurrent wakefield research.\n\nIf you have good efficiency and luminosity as well as acceleration gradient,\nit might be valuable in the medical linac field. Much of the cost of medical\nlinacs is in controls and software, but having a smaller head makes the whole\nlinac cheaper. You can move it around and do stuff like Cyberknife does. It\nmay provide a cost advantage which allows a new company to compete with Varian\nand Elekta. But reducing the size of a 1 meter object to a 1 cm object is not\nas valuable as reducing a 100 km object to 1 km.\n\n------\nearljwagner\nSo how are the portable ectoplasmic containment units coming along?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDe-batching, or how to juggle too many balls - swombat\nhttp://www.inter-sections.net/2008/04/23/de-batching-or-how-to-juggle-too-many-balls\n\n======\nkirubakaran\nI started using similar method few months ago and it works well for me. I\nwrote a simple web app to help me with this... Smacklet\n<http://www.smacklet.com>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCommunication with the User: Some Examples from the Lisa - pcr910303\nhttps://systemfolder.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/lisa-ui-examples/\n======\nktpsns\nWow. This kind of lessons from the past, unrevealed by a person from today, is\nreally instructive. We have Personal Computers since decades. Many problems\nhave been already solved and are solved again worse then they used to be.\nThat's what \"old people\" complain as \"culture being lost\", but it's really up\nto us, the old ones, to explain the culture of the past. (Lisa was before my\ntime anyway. I will tell tales about Win95 when it is about time ;-). )\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n2000 shell companies at one address in Wyoming - hendler\nhttp://news.yahoo.com/special-report-little-house-secrets-great-plains-113759191.html\n======\nsivers\nI used Wyoming Corporate Services (the company at this address) to set up an\nLLC a couple years ago, and they were the most wonderful people to work with.\n\n(I would only contact them a few times a year, but when I did, the lady on the\nphone would remember me, \"Oh hi Derek! How are things in the music biz?\")\n\nTheir service is 100% legit, they're prompt and friendly, and I recommend them\nhighly.\n\n<http://www.wyomingcompany.com/>\n\nAs most of us know here, there are many valid reasons to set up your\ncorporation in a neutral place that is not your current residence.\n\nMaybe you're online-only and traveling the world.\n\nMaybe you're starting your business in one place for now, but you feel kinda\n\"one foot out the door\", and feel you're going to move it somewhere else some\nday.\n\nOr maybe just because you want to, it's legal, and you need no other reason\nthan that.\n\n~~~\nchopsueyar\nAs I was reading the article I thought about how trying to increase regulation\nof this type of activity would kill entrepreneurship in this country.\n\nThe article had a negative slant to it, and there are legitimate benefits to\nthis service.\n\nPerhaps some are upset because only the ultra-wealthy should be allowed such\nprivilege?\n\n[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-\nhousewive...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-\nof-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411)\n\n~~~\ndavidw\nIn Italy, you have to have thousands of Euros available to start a limited\nliability company and _it sucks_. It's just a complete and total negative in\nmy opinion.\n\nWe can all argue about the ideal level of taxation, but don't tax companies\nuntil they're actually making money.\n\n~~~\narethuza\nIn the UK setting up a limited company is extremely easy - here is one site\noffering limited companies for £2.99 in 3 hours:\n\n<http://www.eacbs.com/>\n\n~~~\nStavrosK\nI've set up my company (Stochastic Technologies) using one of these services\nand I can attest to it. I paid about 15 GBP, not 3, but it was ready in half\nan hour. The HMRC (the equivalent of the IRS) people are as polite and\naccommodating as people who take your money should be, and everything was very\nstraightforward to do.\n\n~~~\nashleyw\nCan I just ask something on an unrelated note, since you've been down this\nroad: what are the costs of a Limited Company, in the long run? I've read that\nwhen tax time arrives, it's nearly impossible for a non-accountant to do, and\nso it'll cost a minimum of £400 for even the smallest company. Not a crazy\namount, of course, but it'd put a dent in the profits of a young startup or\nside project. What's your experience been like?\n\n~~~\nStavrosK\nThat is accurate, I had accountants quote me £1,000 or more for ten invoices a\nyear. It's absolutely crazy for something that takes two hours a year to do,\nand it seems to me like the space is ripe for disruption.\n\nFortunately, I found a much, much cheaper accountant. I don't know if it'll\ncome back to bite me in the long run, but it was the only way to keep the\ncompany profitable.\n\n~~~\nashleyw\nBy cheap, is that near to my £400, or even less?\n\n------\nzach\nWait until you hear about 2711 Centerville Road, Wilmington, Delaware.\n\nSuch shady entities registered there include \"Level 3 Communications\",\n\"California Pizza Kitchen\", \"The Walt Disney Company\", \"Dole Food\" and\n\"Qualcomm\".\n\nSeriously, all those companies are Delaware corporations who maintain their\nregistered office at that address, despite the fact that their CEO has\nprobably never visited that address in their lives.\n\nThis is such a common occurrence that it hardly merits notice. Even if you\nthrow in the observation that dubious businesses favor incorporation in\nWyoming (which has no corporate income tax, franchise tax or tax on corporate\nshares), that's still not saying much.\n\n~~~\nihodes\nI'll be registering my company in Delaware. Why the hell wouldn't I?\n\n~~~\ntzs\nWhy Delaware over the state you are in? (Assuming you aren't actually in\nDelaware).\n\n~~~\ndunham\nThey have a different legal system (a court of chancery) that businesses\nprefer when resolving disputes. See \"Delaware Court of Chancery\" on Wikipedia.\n\n------\nsdfjkl\nSuch special purpose companies[1] are quite common and don't necessarily\nindicate any \"shady\" practices.\n\n[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_purpose_entity>\n\n------\njoe42\nBusiness hackers.\n\n~~~\nhendler\nMy favorite use of shell corporations in fiction so far is in Accelerando [1]\n- corporations start out as python scripts:\n\n[1] - [http://www.amazon.com/Accelerando-Singularity-Charles-\nStross...](http://www.amazon.com/Accelerando-Singularity-Charles-\nStross/dp/0441014151/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309324277&sr=1-1)\n\n~~~\nJeremyBanks\nAvailable for free on the author's website:\n[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-\nstatic/fiction/accelera...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-\nstatic/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html)\n\n------\nmynewcompany\nI think this article is inaccurate and overhyped. First of all, I run a\nsimilar company that does this in Nevada. We are the \"Registered Agent\" for\nthousands of companies. All it means is that we are the address the state can\nsend their \"Annual Report\" paperwork to and a process server can deliver and\nhave legal docs signed for. The Registered Agent must have an address in the\nstate and be available during business hours. These aren't \"shell\" companies -\nevery company in NV from Amazon to Zappos has to have an agent.\n\n------\ncheez\nAt some point, I hope people realize that the tax code is for the rich.\n\n~~~\nchopsueyar\nI think that is the problem the government has with these services. They are\ntoo affordable.\n\nOnly $10k for an LLC from 1997, plus $2,500 to have attorney client privilege?\n\nOnly the ultra-rich should be allowed to do stuff like this.\n\n~~~\ncheez\nPardon me but it only makes sense to do this if you are making mounds of cash.\nOtherwise the cost for compliance will easily eat up any excess profit. Even\nvery profitable companies don't do this, so you should ask yourself why.\n\n------\nrovar\nSeriously, how did this make the front page?\n\n~~~\nSukotto\nI upvoted it based on the many extremely useful comments. Perhaps other people\ndid too?\n\n------\ngeorgieporgie\n...and there are plenty of shared offices and pseudo-offices in the\nEmbarcadero Center in San Francisco. Unexpected != shady.\n\nI started a Wyoming \"close corporation\" (unique to WY and awesome for small\nbusinesses) last spring, and used FreeRegisteredAgent.com aka Incorp.com as my\nregistered agent. They do the first year free, $99/yr after that. They weren't\nthe fastest responders, but when I dissolved the company a year later they\n_did_ get back to me, and it _didn't_ prove to be a scam.\n\nI don't have my numbers handy, but in the end I calculated that it would cost\nsomething like $1,000 per year to even _begin_ to legitimize a presence in\nWyoming. You'd need a mail forwarding service in the state, of which there are\nfew. You'd also almost certainly want a state driver's license, and some of\nthe mail forwarding and registered agent companies will let you use their\naddress for that!\n\nIncidentally, I went with Wyoming because NV and DE have both started charging\nrather steep annual licensing fees.\n\n(the reason for all this, by the way, is because my plan was to live abroad\nand do some coding on the side, which puts me in a strange tax situation, and\ncosts had to be extremely low.)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: TorProxy, a kernel module which routes all network traffic through Tor - raw23\nhttps://github.com/r-a-w/TorProxy\n======\nbjpbakker\nInteresting but I doubt whether you really want to route /all/ your network\ntraffic through Tor.\n\nAs soon as some packet that reaches the internet (through an exit node) that\nincludes some identity information your Tor connection is no longer private.\nRouting all your traffic via Tor, increases the chance this will happen.\n\nAlso if many people use Tor for all their traffic, this will become a\nscalability problem for Tor (lack of exit nodes).\n\n~~~\ngiancarlostoro\nI would assume if you're going this far you're likely running this module\nunder a Linux VM so only specifics go through Tor.\n\n~~~\nfmx\nIf you do that then you may as well just use two VMs - Tor router and client -\nand that's basically Whonix.\n\n------\nacebarry\nIt's a terrible idea to route _all_ your traffic over tor. If you have any\nexpectation of anonymity you'll be disappointed. Since tor does not do any\napplication level filtering, it is easy for exit nodes to track you.\n\nIt's a neat idea but has the same problems as network wide tor routers.\n\n~~~\nnikcub\nExactly. Good implementations like Whonix take steps to isolate your circuits\nbetween different applications and profiles[0].\n\nFurther in those cases you're isolating your identities with virtual machines\nby default, which helps enforce good compartmentalization.\n\nForcing all traffic into one environment and then over a single circuit means\neverything you ever access is linked together. The other story on the front of\nHN is the accused stalker who was caught partly for doing exactly this (would\naccess his real Gmail and then \"stalker\" Gmail over the same connection)\n\nWhonix also provides a model of enforcing Tor by using an isolated proxy -\nwhich doesn't require kernel modules and also allows firewall policies\n\nI'd classify this as a naive approach that sounds like a good idea at first\ninspection - but the Whonix developers have _really_ thought this through and\ntheir Wiki[1] is a tremendous resource that explains why they use the model\nthey do.\n\nQubes OS is another similar approach[2]\n\n[0]\n[https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Stream_Isolation](https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Stream_Isolation)\n\n[1]\n[https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Main_Page)\n\n[2] [https://www.qubes-os.org/](https://www.qubes-os.org/)\n\n------\nCodesInChaos\nHow does this compare to Tails? Conceptually they look similar, both having\nthe kernel enforce that all traffic goes through Tor.\n\nBut Tails is a configured with security and Tor in mind. I don't see when I'd\nwant to install such a kernel module on a normal distribution over a\nspecialized distribution. (Or a multi-vm setup like whonix, instead of\ntrusting the kernel)\n\n------\ntgragnato\nIs there any particular reason for being IPv4-only?\n\n> /* Drop all ipv6 traffic */\n\n~~~\nhendi_\nYes.\n\n> The Tor network currently only supports TCP ipv4 traffic\n\n~~~\ntgragnato\nTCP IPv6 traffic is supported.\n[[https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5547](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5547)]\n\nOnly relay to relay traffic is actually IPv4 only.\n[[https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4565](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4565)]\n\n------\naminorex\nWe need to pump this. Anonymity only protects the vulnerable in inverse\nproportion to it's ubiquity.\n\n~~~\ncisanti\nI can't even comment here when I use my homemade vpn, hosted digital ocean or\nlinode. And HN is not the only place... I understand spam is a problem, but it\nfeels like a hammer solution.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDemon Core: The Strange Death of Louis Slotin (2016) - BerislavLopac\nhttps://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/demon-core-the-strange-death-of-louis-slotin\n======\nmjb\nI've always found this story fascinating, because it's such a clear example of\nthe role of operator error in safety. Both Daghlian and Slotin were experts in\nthe work they were doing, and both were well aware of the danger of getting it\nwrong. Still, they made a mistake. As people do.\n\nOn one hand, the mistake was the effect of time and schedule pressure. Some of\nthat was real, but some also illusory (as shown by the fact that Los Alamos\ncould stop doing those experiments entirely as still deliver). They chose the\napproach they did because it was the easiest. But not only that - at least in\nSlotin's case he chose the approach he did because he didn't believe that he\nwould make a mistake. He'd done this a bunch of times. The danger had become\nroutine, an idea captured in Diane Vaughan's books as \"normalization of\ndeviance\", and in economic and sports research as \"the familiarity heuristic\n(\"I know this, so I'm safe\").\n\nOn the other hand, the experiment itself set them up to fail. Minor tweaks\nwith near-zero cost impact, like bringing the tamper up from the bottom rather\nthan down from the top, would likely have saved both men. My understanding is\n(and it's hard to get clear evidence of this) that both men designed their own\nexperiment. Both were in a position to do it in a safer way with no additional\ncost. With hindsight, both likely would have. In Slotin's case it seems like\nthe commitment heuristic (\"I want to be consistent with my past actions\")\nplayed a role in him doing something he knew to be dangerous \"one last time\".\nIn Daghlin's case, there seems to have been some role of the scarcity\nheuristic (\"if I don't get this done tonight after the party, I might not get\nanother chance\").\n\nThis all goes to show how fallible we are. Not only these guys, both extremely\nsmart people. We take irrational risks all the time. The big take away here is\nthat systems need to be safe _even though_ people are going to make bad\ndecisions for bad reasons. One extremely effective way to do that is to\nseparate design from implementation, using our rational decision making\nprocesses to make the hard decisions ahead of the moment. Then write the\ndecisions down. Then follow them in the moment.\n\n~~~\nska\nA more mundane and perhaps relatable version of this is the relaxation of key\nautomobile driving skills once the operator has become comfortable. It is not\nunusual to see someone performing maneuvers that are only \"safe\" under\nassumptions that cannot be strictly true but are statistically likely to be\ntrue (e.g. there is nobody coming the other way around this blind corner,\nthere is no cross traffic this late at night, whatever). I doubt people\nconsciously think of it as a dice-roll every time they do it, but it is. Over\ntime you may get comfortable doing things simply because nothing bad has\nhappened but if the assumption fails you will likely crash.\n\n~~~\nethbro\nI can't seem to find the statistics, but I've always wondered if there's a\nsecondary peak around ~1-2 years of driving experience.\n\nHypothesis: at that point you feel comfortable, but you haven't accumulated\nthe full spectrum of experience.\n\nI'd expect the relevant statistic would be accidents per person, by age. But\neverything seems to normalize per miles-driven (where no such effect is\napparent) or against total accident rate.\n\n------\nliability\nSlontin was a cowboy (in the derogatory sense of the term) who thought bravado\nwould keep him safe from intense radiation. The demon core incident wasn't an\nisolated incident, one of his less famous exploits involved swimming in an\nactive nuclear reactor, which obviously irradiated him badly.\n\n> _\" In the winter of 1945–1946, Slotin shocked some of his colleagues with a\n> bold action. He repaired an instrument six feet under water inside the\n> Clinton Pile while it was operating, rather than wait an extra day for the\n> reactor to be shut down. He did not wear his dosimetry badge, but his dose\n> was estimated to be at least 100 roentgen.[12] A dose of 1 Gy (~100\n> roentgen) can cause nausea and vomiting in 10% of cases, but is generally\n> survivable.[13]\"_\n\n~~~\nethbro\nThat seems unfair. As a trained nuclear physicist and engineer, he was no\ndoubt quite clear on the risks related to radiation.\n\nJust because I choose to jump a motorcycle through a flaming hoop doesn't\nindicate that I think my body is impervious to flame.\n\nIt means I weighed the risks and made a choice.\n\nIn other words, ignorance, chance, and bravery are different things. And\naccidents are some mix of all of them.\n\n~~~\nliability\nExtreme risk taking is characteristic of young men. It's not so much a\nrational decision as it is a mind clouded by testosterone. Sometimes it's\nentertaining good fun. I enjoyed _Jackass_ as much as anybody. The problem is\nwhen such men do it without consideration for the wellbeing of those around\nthem. Slotin didn't, he regularly performed his \"tickling experiment\" with\nother people in the room.\n\n------\nBurnGpuBurn\nStories like these will forever remind me of Hisashi Ouchi who died horribly\nfrom a different kind of criticality incident in Japan in 1999 [0]. He had\nreceived 17 sieverts and they tried to keep him alive for as long as possible\nin a human experminet. I won't post links to articles about this as you can't\nunsee pictures like that, putting his name in a search engine will get you\nthere.\n\n[0] [https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/1999/12/22/national/jco-\nwo...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/1999/12/22/national/jco-worker-\nsuccumbs-after-83-days/)\n\n------\nroryrjb\nAlso discussed a couple of months ago:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20205876](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20205876)\n\n------\nfnordfnordfnord\nThe incident that caused Slotin's death was discussed a bit in a recent\ndocumentary: _The Half-Life of Genius Physicist Raemer Schreiber_ (2017)\n[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4870510/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4870510/)\n\nIt's available on Amazon Prime.\n\n------\nlarrydag\nThis sounds a lot like Fat Man and Little Boy movie. The John Cusack character\nwas killed by radioactive exposure from a mishap at Los Alamos. The movie is\nreally interesting.\n\n[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097336/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097336/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt)\n\n------\nwatersb\nThere is a replica of the Demon Core in the Bradbury Science Museum in Los\nAlamos.\n\nA sphere of metal, a bit larger than a basketball, it's just the right size\nand shape to be manipulated by hand tools.\n\nI wonder if that contributed to normalization of deviance. It doesn't look\nweird enough to kill you.\n\n------\nhmahncke\n> \"Four of the fatalities were just bad luck, involving a group of janitors\n> who shared muscatel wine that was laced with antifreeze\"\n\nI'd like to hear a little more about the \"bad luck\" that caused a bottle of\nmuscatel to get laced with antifreeze...\n\n~~~\nAbekkus\nSmall amounts of antifreeze can be used to make bad wine taste better, and\nkill you faster.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_diethylene_glycol_wine_sc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_diethylene_glycol_wine_scandal)\n\n~~~\nsp332\nMore recently, Fireball whiskey was recalled in a few countries for high\nlevels of propylene glycol. [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fireball-whiskey-\nrecall_n_606...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fireball-whiskey-\nrecall_n_6067486) Note that it had the same levels in the USA but was not\nrecalled because our standards are laxer. Still, it's unlikely to to kill you.\n\n~~~\nfnordfnordfnord\nPropylene glycol is a food additive. It is also used in \"safe\" anti freeze. It\nis not the same as Ethylene glycol which is common automotive anti freeze and\nvery toxic.\n\n~~~\nsimcop2387\nIt's also one of the primary ingredients in most e-cigarette vape fluids too,\nand used in fog machines for the same reason.\n\n------\nwernsey\nThis video \"A Brief History of: The Demon Core\" on the Plainly Difficult\nchannel showed up in my YouTube recommendations just the other day:\n\n[https://youtu.be/VE8FnsnWz48](https://youtu.be/VE8FnsnWz48)\n\n------\nHalluxfboy009\nLove Alex's archival research work. Never seen a couple of those pictures or\nheard that particular account of the airglow from Schreiber before. I'm glad\nto see it finally falling out of favor to paint Slotin as some kind of\n'Canadian hero' as it was fashionable to do 15-20 years ago. He was a fool who\nregularly courted fate, doing things like diving to the bottom of a cooling\npool of an operating reactor to repair an instrument he didn't want to wait\nanother day to do, giving himself a nice 100R dose.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAnyway, stop recommending bazookas to kill flies in programming - greenchriss\nhttps://medium.com/@arieldi/anyway-stop-recommending-bazookas-to-kill-flies-in-programming-65f13439be3d\n======\nwstuartcl\nAre you asking on reddit (or some other site that is structured to pass quick\nthoughts on a subject)? Are you giving no more information on your questions\nthan - OP: I have an issue with SEO in my current Vue project how can I do\nthis? \\- Community: Have you tried nuxt?\n\nContext and details are important on both sides of the fence, Explain enough\nabout your apps architecture and reasoning to convey that you have considered\nother structures before you expect to get answers that take more time than\nsimply pointing you down a path that resolves your issue without any details.\n\nPointing you to NUXT is equivalent of a longer sentence: \"You don't tell us\nwhat you have tried or considered, what your application architecture is or\nwhat problems you have run into based on your previous design decisions --\ntherefore we recommend using something like NUXT which has boilerplate design\ndecisions baked in that resolve your issues.\"\n\n\\- OP: I have two components, I want to share data, how can I do? \\-\nCommunity: Have you tried vuex?\n\nThis seems perfectly reasonable to me, vuex, while being one option for\nsharing data/state between components is IMHO almost always the best option\nfor doing so. It has a little more boilerplate than event bus or data\nreference passing, but for almost every non-trival need I have come across\nvuex has been a better choice. So much so that I have found myself reworking\nto modular vuex stores in _every_ circumstance where I have used event bus or\nother slight of hand to accommodate shared data/state (hoping to avoid the\nsetup work of vuex).\n\n------\nsdegutis\nWhere are you seeing this happening so often? I've only seen this kind of\nthing in help-communities where the emphasis is on quantity over quality, and\ngiving the quickest and most answers, and where it's not necessarily important\nthat they're correct.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDonald Sherman orders a pizza using a talking computer (1974) [video] - adamnemecek\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94d_h_t2QAA&t=12s\n======\nmelling\nDec 4th is the 40th anniversary?\n\n[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2266780/Vintage-\nfoot...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2266780/Vintage-footage-\nshows-pizza-order--took-attempts-right.html)\n\n------\nantsam\n\"Can you spell that?\" \"Yes.\"\n\n------\nFundlab\nApparently pizza prank calls arent new\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGrabaGoodDomain.com - Get a Great Domain - dawie\nhttp://www.grabagooddomain.com/\n======\ntimg\nI'd pay 100$ for a really good one that describes one of my sites in a non-\nlimiting way, and has ALL of the good qualities that a domain name should. I\nam just nearly certain that all of these that consist of any keywords that\ndescribe my sites are taken.\n\nSo, last night I registered for a similar service for 50$. But feeling guilty\nfor spending money that I don't really have without exhausting every other\noption, I wrote a program to use letter/letter combination frequencies from a\nnumber of various data sets to find the best available names consisting of\npseudo-words that are left.\n\nIt's man against computer, and this time I'm betting on the computer.\n\n~~~\ndawie\ntimg, We will prove to you that we are the best. Send me the infortion found\non <http://grabagooddomain.com/?q=node/3,> and I will give you suggestions. If\nyou use my suggestion you can pay us $100. Just this one time, you don't even\nneed to make a deposit. This is to show you how certain we are that\nGrabaGoodDomain.com is better than computer programs or anyone else...\n\n------\nimer111\nOur service will do the same or better job for only $50. Just because someone\nis asking for twice the going rate, doesn't mean they necessarily do a better\njob.\n\nPlease check us out at <http://PowerNamer.com>\n\n------\nbls\nHow do you expect to differentiate yourself from pickydomains.com?\n\n~~~\ndawie\nWe provide better results. You get what you pay for. Quality costs more money.\nIn any case, its risk free.\n\n~~~\nAlex3917\nIf you think finding a great domain is hard, try selling a great domain. heh.\n\n/trying to sell eskimokissing.com.\n\n~~~\ndanielha\ni just find it kinda funny that eskimo kissing came to mind while trying to\nregister domain names. :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nJohn Gruber: Windows Phone 7 \"Really Nice\" And Better Than Android - Flemlord\nhttp://www.businessinsider.com/john-gruber-windows-phone-7-2010-10\n======\nmycroftiv\nSince Android is much more of a threat to Apple than Windows Phone 7 appears\nto be, it makes sense that Gruber would praise it at the expense of Android.\nThis evaluation is based on 5 minutes of use at a cocktail party. I think if\nsomeone had put a live eel in his hand and asked him to compare it to Android,\nhe would have praised the eel's smooth skin in comparison to Android devices.\n\n~~~\norangecat\nRight. Microsoft, Apple, and the carriers would all be pleased if Android were\nto be replaced by WP7 in the market. No more pesky suggestions of user\nfreedom, so everybody gets to keep their comfortable oligopolies and maintain\nveto power over potentially disruptive innovations. Expect to see many more\nMac fans praising WP7, especially once it or the iPhone is on Verizon.\n\n------\nsteverb\nI got about 5 minutes hands on with WP7 hardware last week, and I have to\nagree with Gruber. WP7 is really nice.\n\n* The UI is very responsive on pre-release hardware. I've been told that the released version will be faster.\n\n* The keyboard is very nice. I can't compare it in over-all usability to other smart phones as I haven't lived day in day out with a smart phone.\n\n* The way applications are organized is interesting. Instead of merely having a mongo huge list of apps, apps can also register themselves in app hubs. So applications that manipulate photos will show up under your photos, applications that deal with music show up there, etc. I'm not totally sold on this, but it seems like a good idea.\n\n* Development for WP7 in silverlight is shockingly easy. And silverlight on WP7 runs super fast. Actually runs faster on the device than on my beefy desktop in emulator. Given the number of .NET developers I know that are registered for the WP7 marketplace I expect the MS app store to add applications at a blistering pace.\n\n* There isn't yet an easy way to handle deploying WP7 phones in an enterprise, but I was told that this will be addressed later. There was only so much they could do before this launch though.\n\nI'm in the market for a smart phone, and after handling the WP7 phones I'm\nsold. In my opinion it's at least as good as the current iPhone. I'm not sure\nwhether that will translate to market share or not though.\n\n------\nwazoox\nHum, the \"one button\" is a real problem on the iPhone. Having one interface\nelement working in an extremely modal manner is a bad ergonomic choice for the\nsake of esthetic. Having 3 or 4 different buttons is much more practical.\n\n~~~\nsteverb\nWP7 mandates three buttons. Back, Home, and Search.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGigapixel AI Accidentally Added Ryan Gosling’s Face to This Photo - Hard_Space\nhttps://petapixel.com/2020/08/17/gigapixel-ai-accidentally-added-ryan-goslings-face-to-this-photo/\n======\nmurbard2\nBefore casting stones, have they checked with Ryan Gosling to make sure that\nwasn't him behind a giant magnifier at that window?\n\n~~~\nTheSpiceIsLife\nI started posting IFOTD - Inanimate Face Of The Day on social media a few\nweeks back.\n\nWhen you start looking you see faces _everywhere_.\n\nThe Gigapixel AI is a fair bit more detailed in this example though.\n\n~~~\nJudgmentality\n[http://facesinplaces.blogspot.com/](http://facesinplaces.blogspot.com/)\n\nHasn't been updated in forever but I used to love this.\n\n~~~\nTheSpiceIsLife\nThat's great!\n\nI'm here if you want to have a look:\n\n[https://www.facebook.com/amosrust](https://www.facebook.com/amosrust)\n\n------\nwongarsu\nIf Gigapixel AI works like other state of the art upscaling networks it\nupscales patches at the time, not the whole image at once. If the only context\nyou have is small enough, scaling it up as Ryan Gosling's face seems\ncompletely reasonable. After all I see a face there too. When looking at the\nlarger context(some kind of building) it becomes clear that there isn't\nsupposed to a face, but the AI likely didn't have that much context.\n\n~~~\nWillPostForFood\nIt's like the AI is replicating the same mistake a human brain on LSD makes.\n\n------\nvirgilp\nIt's only now that we fully realize how bad the depicted policing was in all\nthose TV shows where they zoomed & \"enhanced\" the photo evidence.\n\n~~~\nmurbard2\nNot quite. Super-resolution from face prior is probably a bad idea if you're\nlooking to identify someone, but super-resolution _from video_ works. It\ndoesn't make up information based on what it expects the face to be, but\ncollects and aggregates information from multiple frames.\n\n~~~\n_visgean\nsauce?\n\n~~~\nmorsch\nLiterally the first Google result for _super-resolution from video_ :\n[https://paperswithcode.com/task/video-super-\nresolution](https://paperswithcode.com/task/video-super-resolution)\n\n~~~\n_visgean\nYeah thats not a source at all. Its a collection of paper on the relevant\ntopic.\n\nThe claim of the parent comment was\n\n> but super-resolution from video works. It doesn't make up information based\n> on what it expects the face to be, but collects and aggregates information\n> from multiple frames.\n\nSo I was simply interested in hearing where this claim comes from. Has any of\nthese papers mentioned that this is the case? I briefly went through some of\nthem but did not see any such guarantee.\n\n~~~\nmurbard2\nMany of the modern ones are based on deep learning and might indeed capture\npriors for faces. However, other approaches do not depend on machine-learning.\nThe priors that they implicitly use are weak or rather general (e.g. natural\nimages have mostly sparse wavelet representations, videos represent things\nthat move mostly continuously, etc). They essentially compensate for the\nmotion over several frames and use the redundant information to denoise the\nresult.\n\n------\nPoissonVache\nIt's like robots are now like human, seeing faces everywhere !\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/facesinthings/](https://www.reddit.com/r/facesinthings/)\n\n~~~\neternalban\nWait till they start getting religion.\n\n~~~\ntzs\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_(short_story)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_\\(short_story\\))\n\n------\nblauditore\nPretty sure that's not Ryan Gosling. Just a random face, but adding a\ncelebrity to the headline probably generates more clicks.\n\n~~~\njonplackett\nYeah it's just some dude's face. Excellent headline writing to take advantage\nthough.\n\n~~~\nchrisco255\nTurns out the article was written by a GPT-3 bot optimized for clicks. Welcome\nto the future.\n\n~~~\njonplackett\nIt's like a kind of virtual grey goo EOTW scenario where all the world's\nresources are consumed writing increasingly effective clickbait.\n\nThe Utopian version of the story has the clickbait getting so good that it\nactually evolves into a high form of art and expression.\n\n------\nJabbles\nThis is an AI-supercharged version of this bug, which just changes numbers\nwhen photocopying:\n\n[https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_mea...](https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_means_dodgy_numbers_and_dangerous_designs/)\n\n~~~\ntaneq\nYep, Xerox was hallucinating different numbers way before it was cool!\n\n------\namelius\nThe main problem I see here is that the inserted image is much sharper than\nthe original. I'd guess that the result would be more acceptable and less of a\nproblem if the \"blurriness\" was preserved. Perhaps they should train on this\naspect; it shouldn't be too difficult.\n\n~~~\nlondons_explore\nI have a feeling the \"detect faces\" feature is a hand-engineered feature. It\nisn't end-to-end ML like the rest of the software.\n\nI guess they run a face detector over the whole image, then cut out faces,\npass them through a system to generate a similar but sharp and clear face, and\nthen blend that back into the original image.\n\n------\njonplackett\nThis is just fantastic.\n\nAlso, red dwarf's enhance sequence must be added to any commentary about photo\nenhance, just in case someone hasn't seen it.\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aINa6tg3fo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aINa6tg3fo)\n\n------\nhellofunk\nThat does not look like Gosling to me. Why does the photographer think it is\nhim?\n\n~~~\ngibolt\nFor the headline!\n\n------\ngrenoire\nHilarious; now that I look at the original photo, I could see myself making\nthe same mistake, perhaps not in such detail!\n\n------\ndewey\nThat sounds like a classic Submarine article\n([http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)).\n\n------\ncoryfklein\nI'm sorry, but that does not look like Ryan Gosling.\n\n------\nffhhj\nThere are lots of crossing lines, if the AI took those geometrical shapes into\naccount it should have placed lines in front of his eyes and mouth. That would\nhave been more accourate, incidentally avoiding the match with Goslin. Is that\npossible to implement in Gigapixel? Asking as a CV enthusiast that tailored a\nvolume recognition solution in OpenCV years ago.\n\n------\njasode\nfyi of related terminology:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia)\n\n------\npolskibus\nThat just shows how far away from the expectations is the quality assurance\nfor AI-supported projects. Black-box methods like NN will at some point\nproduce weird results. Now we need an AI to check AI if a random face was\nadded to the image in the process.\n\n------\nfierarul\nEnhance! Enhance!\n\nI bet the Pentagon pays good money for such unblur features.\n\n~~~\ndiegoperini\nNow you a have a fractal of faces as you go deeper!\n\n------\nscott31\nBesides the added face, rest of the upscaling done seems to be terrible as\nwell. I wonder why the photographer is using the software\n\n~~~\nsudosysgen\nThe image is likely zoomed in 800% or more. It's normal that it looks terrible\nfrom that close. When you see the images at a normal scale using Gigapixel AI\nthey often look much more detailed (but not always).\n\nYour phone also does this, but even more poorly.\n\n~~~\nhombre_fatal\nYep. You can find the finished product here [https://retoucher.fi/mercedes-\nbenz-eq](https://retoucher.fi/mercedes-benz-eq) (first image), and the\nGosling-area in question on the right where the tiny green dot is.\n\n------\nrenewiltord\nWow, this software is amazing. The results are _great_. The moon landing\nvideos linked there are remarkable.\n\n------\natkbrah\nIt's not just Ryan Gosling. It's Ryan Gosling with \"Charlie Chaplin mustache\".\n\n------\ndghughes\nThe day in the life of AI \"Meh, close enough. Nobody will notice.\"\n\n------\nperlpimp\nthis for some reason triggers recall of jesus on a toast from a while back.\n\n------\ncpach\nReminds me of this: [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/phallus-purposely-\nadded-ar...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/phallus-purposely-added-\nartwork-little-mermaid-vhs-cover/) [NSFW]\n\n~~~\ntaneq\nThe term for things like this is Pareidonglia.\n\n~~~\ncpach\nAh. TIL!\n\n------\nChrisMarshallNY\nIt wasn't Rick Astley? Times, they are a' changin'...\n\n------\nmrlonglong\nPerhaps the AI has a crush on Ryan Gosling\n\n------\neplanit\nRyan Gosling is the new Rick Astley. You can now get Ryan Rolled!\n\n------\nRuhrbaron\nWhy not Nicolas Cage though?\n\n------\nnumlock86\nYes, just like any camera since cameras have a \"detect and focus face\" feature\nlike to see faces in things like curtains or other seemingly random\nstructures, just without trying to match a specific known face to it and\nreplacing it. So how's this news? Because of a celebrity name? Surely it's not\nbecause it's screaming \"ad for Gigapixel AI\" in my face. My Sony Ericsson C905\ndid this over 10 years ago. But looking at the other comments its at best\nentertaining a little because it's just silly.\n\n~~~\nmorsch\n_Yes, just like any camera since cameras have a \"detect and focus face\"\nfeature like to see faces in things like curtains or other seemingly random\nstructures, just without trying to match a specific known face to it and\nreplacing it. So how's this news?_\n\nIt's news because it's trying to match a specific known face to it and\nreplacing it.\n\n~~~\ndrusepth\nIt doesn't seem like it's matching a \"specific known face\". The face only\nmarginally looks like Ryan Gosling; more realistically it just inserted a face\nthat happens to look like a random celebrity and the site ran away with it for\nclicks.\n\n------\nashleytharp\nHi, Ashley from Topaz here. We all had a good laugh about this. Want to help\nus fix it? we're hiring a deep learning researcher at the moment,\n[https://jobs.lever.co/topazlabs/5ff7aa41-d733-4ca9-9323-f68a...](https://jobs.lever.co/topazlabs/5ff7aa41-d733-4ca9-9323-f68af5ebcfbb)\n...,\n\nI am researcher there, please feel free to ping me at\nashley.tharp@topazlabs.com with questions if you would like.\n\n------\nAmVess\nI just tried it with his images and did not come close to replicating his\nresults. I am using the current version of Gigapixel AI on Windows.\n\nMy first thought when I saw the image was that he photoshopped it. Looks like\nI am not wrong. Why? Who knows. Bored, I suppose.\n\n~~~\nhombre_fatal\nI reckon it's like that one paper that shows a neural network swinging from\n1.0 confidence that a picture of a lion is a picture of a lion to 1.0\nconfidence that it's actually a baseball bat once a single pixel had been\nchanged.\n\nSo to repro, you would need the original image, not this zoomed in crop nor\nhis final retouch.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016 - submeta\nhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-21/tesla-s-musk-paid-at-least-593-million-in-income-taxes-in-2016\n======\ntdehollain\nThat's $593M taxes on $1.34B earnings on exercising stock options...44% tax\nrate is pretty harsh!\n\n~~~\nWJW\nFor the US maybe. Income tax in the Netherlands (my country) in the top\nbracket is 52%. On the second hand, we have no capital gains tax so he might\ncome out ahead when exercising options. On the third hand, we have a wealth\ntax of 1.2% on your entire capital above a certain floor (of about 20k) so he\nmight not come out ahead in the end.\n\nIt's always interesting to see the opinions of different cultures about how\nmuch tax is reasonable :)\n\n~~~\nmatt_wulfeck\nNot bad, but doesn't that come with social services like free medical care and\ngreatly subsidized education?\n\nHere in he US the middle income pays taxes and receives almost no directive\nsocial benefit, as most social programs are geared towards lower income and\nthe rich can afford accountants and lawyers to keep their tax burden very\nlight.\n\n~~~\nkareemm\nI'm not sure how you can say that the rich keep their tax burden light when\nthe topic of this thread is how Musk paid tax amounting to 44% of his income\ntotalling over half a billion dollars.\n\n~~~\nCocaKoala\nIf it were common for rich people to pay 44 percent of their income in tax, it\nwouldn't be a newsworthy story.\n\n~~~\njstelly\nAre there people who receive millions of dollars in income via stock options\nwho pay a lower rate? If so, how does that work?\n\n~~~\nCocaKoala\nHere's a Bloomberg article from 2012 that lists ten techniques:\n[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-17/how-to-\npa...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-17/how-to-pay-no-\ntaxes-10-strategies-used-by-the-rich)\n\n~~~\njstelly\nIt's worth mentioning that none of these techniques actually apply to the case\nwhere you exercise stock options - other than the one that says basically\n\"take options as compensation if you can because you don't pay taxes until you\nexercise them\" which is true for everyone who gets options (because you don't\nget any liquidity) not just rich people with expensive accountants.\n\nThe only techniques that apply to income taxes are the \"borrow against stock\ntechnique\" (has a big caveat about a rich person who lost in court when he\nused it) and the deferred compensation example (which is also zero liquidity;\npresumably you pay all of the income taxes when you actual get the money).\n\nThe article makes a better case for ways to avoid death taxes or real estate\ntaxes though.\n\n------\nthrowaway999a\nIt's very strange how people now seem to feel like they are entitled to see\nthe tax returns of public or well-known figures. Tax returns are nobody else's\nbusiness! Would you demand to see their medical records as well?\n\nThe implicit subtext (especially with highly successful people like Musk) is\nthat we do this to \"make sure they pay their fair share\". Here's the reality:\nthe top 1% of US tax filers pay nearly half of all US income taxes[1]. The\nbottom 80% of filers (by income) pay only 15% of all taxes. This myth that the\nrich don't pay taxes is completely, utterly false. It is a myth promulgated\nfor political purposes.\n\n1\\. [http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/13/top-1-pay-nearly-half-of-\nfede...](http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/13/top-1-pay-nearly-half-of-federal-\nincome-taxes.html)\n\n~~~\naccountyaccount\nI think people care that the rich pay a smaller proportionate rate[1] than the\npoor. People who make under $19k a year pay twice the rate of those making\n$470k+\n\nComparing total of taxes paid and leaving it at that is generally a tactic to\ndistract from the proportion problem.\n\n1.[http://www.itep.org/whopays/full_report.php](http://www.itep.org/whopays/full_report.php)\n\n~~~\npropman\n45% of Americans pay 0 federal income tax. That is a very small rate\n\n~~~\nc0nducktr\nFederal income tax isn't the only tax out there...\n\n------\nengx\nThe video clip seemed unusually harsh. The reporter said he'd announced the\nHyperloop to \"thrill and confuse\"? Followed by several skeptical tones and\nquestions all while contrasting it with saying he'd done things no one else\nhad.\n\n------\nsubmeta\nOn the other hand this: \"Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion\nin government subsidies\"\n\n[http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-\nsubsidies-2015...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-\nsubsidies-20150531-story.html)\n\n~~~\nmarricks\nSounds like money better spent to me than the 5 trillion dollars in global\nfossil fuel subsidies in 2015, or 500 billion just in the US[1]\n\nThat 5 billion number for Musk I think is a grand total of all subsidies,\nspanning all time.\n\n[1]\n[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16304867)\n\n~~~\nkolbe\nI don't have to click any like to know that the US did not spend $5t on fossil\nfuel subsidies. I'm pretty sure the US only spent like $5t total in 2015, and\nmost of that is in medicare and social security.\n\n~~~\nadventured\nThat $5 trillion figure isn't actually spending at all. It's entirely an\ninvented figure, meant to supposedly cover all estimated environment damage\nfor example. Really what it's meant to do, is be massive enough to enable\npeople to throw it around when arguing in favor of obliterating the fossil\nfuel industry.\n\nWhy does the invented aspect matter? Because it's comical. It leads to the\npremise that over just the next 10 years, the subsidies are a likely\ncumulative ... $56 trillion or so (about 20%-25% of all wealth on earth). Aka,\ngreater than the combined profit of every oil company in world history going\nback ~140 years.\n\n~~~\nZeroGravitas\nImagine you ran a small, successful business. Imagine, as part of that\nbusiness you killed someone every year.\n\nNow, we could look at your tax returns and see that you have a successful\nbusiness. Or we could \"invent\" some figure to represent the lives you ended.\n\nIs it really crazy to imagine that the total we invent would be higher than\nyour yearly, or even total profits?\n\nJust scale that up to the point that you're starting wars, causing a crime\nepidemic with lead poisoning, overheating the planet, etc.\n\n------\njkchu\nThe article mentions that he kept the remaining shares (as opposed to selling\nthem as well). I wonder what is the general strategy for founders to cash out\ntheir stocks? Of course holding the shares for 1 or 2 years to get short/long-\nterm capital gains tax breaks makes sense. But outside of that I imagine there\nis a balancing act of not selling so many shares to raise investor's eyebrows,\nbut also freeing up money to diversify your assets.\n\n------\njoatmon-snoo\nImagining this scaled down to options that someone might get for joining a\nstartup early... wow.\n\n------\nSEJeff\nNot sure about everyone else, but I'd love to have this problem. Oh I have to\npay $593 million in taxes? Boo hoo, let me cry all the way to the bank to\nwrite the check.\n\n~~~\nuser5994461\nImagine that you are a GAFA CEO 2 years before you IPO and you are asked to\npay 593 millions based on the estimated value of your shares.\n\n~~~\naccountyaccount\nI keep trying to imagine it, but I can't get past the part where I'm excited\nabout having hundreds of millions of dollars.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway999a\nJust having hundreds of millions of dollars wouldn't be particularly exciting\nonce the novelty wore off. The exciting part is _earning_ hundreds of millions\nof dollars via the immense success that it implies/requires.\n\n------\nsubmeta\nI wonder how much the founders of Google paid. Or the CEO of Apple. Or Uber's\nfounder. Or for instance Mr Trump.\n\n~~~\nr_smart\nIt really depends on the year. The people who top income tax payments one year\nwill generally not be anywhere near it on subsequent years because they don't\ndraw a steady income, but instead cash out periodically. So while none of the\npeople you've listed are likely to be in this years top earners, at some point\nin the years prior, or in the years to come, you'll likely see their names pop\nup. And when they do, they'll have paid some massive amount of money in taxes.\n\n------\nAlir3z4\n$593M could be used for developing the company and its products.\n\n~~~\nArchio\nWhat is the point of this comment?\n\nI initially misread \"company\" as \"country\" \\- and in that interpretation I\nwholeheartedly agree.\n\n------\neconner\nWow. That's a yuge amount of income.\n\n~~~\nneaanopri\nA narrow and literal reading of events makes Musk the richest african\namerican. It's pretty depressing the richest african american is white\n\n~~~\ngotodengo\nI'm not trying to deny the (until very recently legally enforced) class\ndifference between whites and blacks in South Africa, nor the social issues\ncausing hiring discrepancies in the States.\n\nHowever, it's not a narrow reading of events. Musk is African. Head a bit out\nof the way in South Africa and you'll find white kids who spend all day\nrunning around with black friends with the whole group speaking fluent Zulu.\nThey've grown up there and their families have been there for generations.\n\n~~~\nbmmayer1\nThe problem here lies with the imprecise term 'African American', a\ndesignation which, according to customary usage, includes many native-born\nAmericans who have never been to Africa, as well as excludes many native-born\nAfricans (like Musk) who are also Americans.\n\n~~~\ngla8\nAs a thought experiment, if you define Americans as those with natural rights,\nthen every human being on Earth could be considered African American.\n\nAlthough I've met a surprising number of intelligent people who somehow do not\nbelieve we are all descended from Africa. Which I suppose is related to people\nfailing to understand that all individuals have innate inalienable rights,\nregardless of their citizenship.\n\n~~~\nbmmayer1\nSure, we're all descended from Africa. But we all know that ethnographic\ndefinitions are arbitrary, and how long ago you or your ancestors immigrated\napply more or less to your demographic label depending on a host of cultural,\nsocial or economic factors. The definitions are convenient only in labeling\npopulations in broad strokes anyway; every individual has multiple ethnic,\nreligious, cultural, racial identities that can be sliced/defined/labeled any\nway that society deems 'normal'...\n\n------\nyoudontknowtho\nI personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should\nbe 100%. That's still an incredibly large amount of money. After that we need\nthe resources to tackle problems and we can't if people hoard them.\n\nI know that it sounds simple, and lots of people on this site will disagree,\nbut I'm having trouble justifying this kind of extreme wealth to myself\nanymore.\n\nThere are so many people in poverty and ignorance. What's it for any way if\npeople are starving and illiterate?\n\nI'm really not looking forward to some of the responses to this comment, but I\nfind myself thinking more and more about the morality of letting people\naccumulate massive sums when the resources that wealth could muster go unused\nby the people that need them most.\n\nI don't know. I'm genuinely interested in hearing what other people here have\nto say if you can keep from being condescending or mean. Please be nice.\n\n~~~\njcsnv\n>I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should\nbe 100% Remember, Elon funded SpaceX and Tesla with the wealth he generated\nfrom the sale of Paypal. Where would the funding have come from for those\nentities if he was taxed at 100% after 1.5mm?\n\n~~~\nyoudontknowtho\nTo be fair, he has raised money from investors to start those companies. I'm\nnot advocating for the end of banking, so people would still be able to borrow\nmoney and invest. I'm also not talking about taxing wealth, but income.\n\nSpaceX is interesting because we could be doing that stuff at NASA if it were\nfunded well.\n\nI get what you are saying though, it would have an effect on investment and\nspeculation. Maybe we don't need as much of those things.\n\nI'm also not saying that this is particularly well thought out.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGirard in Silicon Valley: Notes from a Lecture by Peter Thiel - sergeant3\nhttp://www.imitatio.org/mimetic-theory/girard-in-silicon-valley.html\n======\nfitzwatermellow\nGlosses over the role of dynastic succession as a primary motivation to\ninstitute what we now call monarchic control over subjects.\n\nAs much as I dig ontological psycho-historical speculation I find myself\nbeginning to realize just how different we moderns are from the ancients. I\nfear that any resemblance between our own systems and those that existed\nseveral millennia ago would, like \"Business Secrets of the Pharaohs\", be\npurely coincidental.\n\nIt just so happened on this moist summer eve that as I stumbled upon this link\nI happened to be perusing Tagore's Sādhanā.\n\nIn \"The Relation of the Individual to the Universe\" he indeed speculates about\nwhat caused the ancient forest-dwellers to acquire wealth, build cities and\nbecome kings. After failing to become one with Nature, the ancient sadhus\nsought to emulate the wider Cosmos in a controllable microverse, in which they\ncould achieve a limited all-consciousness.\n\nPerhaps somewhat analogously to the way mathematicians in the 1930's, stymied\nby Gödel's proof that axiomatic formalism would always remain necessarily\nincomplete, created their own artificial oasis of finite and deterministic\nbinary logic in the form of early computing.\n\n------\nAndrewKemendo\nInterestingly this kind of progression is mirrored in a previous link today\nabout the \"clock like nature\" of technology press - nothing > glowing >\nskeptical > sacrificial.\n\nI think it's just something in human nature to want to raise and nurture\nsomething successful - but past a threshold you become too much and are now\nsomething to vilify and despise. Seems like a good way to put it is that for\nsuccessful people, the public says \"We think you are a God, but as soon as you\nbelieve you are, we will kill you to prove that you aren't\"\n\n[1]\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9846003](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9846003)\n\n------\nw1ntermute\nMirror (it was sporadically down for me):\n[https://archive.is/lM0Ds](https://archive.is/lM0Ds)\n\n------\nbiohax2015\nWhat a self-absorbed article.\n\n------\nSandersAK\nIt's got graphs so it's definitely scientific.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy Not the Funnel Chart? - pella\nhttp://practicetrumpstheory.com/2013/09/why-not-the-funnel-chart/\n\n======\nggchappell\nLink is bad. Correct link:\n\n[http://practicetrumpstheory.com/2013/08/why-not-the-\nfunnel-c...](http://practicetrumpstheory.com/2013/08/why-not-the-funnel-\nchart/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nInterview w/ Mateusz Cyrankiewicz, Co-founder of Dropr - keesj\nhttp://interviews.betali.st/interviews/mateusz-cyrankiewicz\n\n======\nhedaru\nInteresting one.\n\n------\nbetalist\nNice post Beta List.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWebhooks, REST and the Open Web - bpedro\nhttp://apiux.com/2013/09/12/webhooks/\n\n======\nbrissmyr\nWebhooks are in need of some standardisation for sure, so moving towards\nsomething like PuSH is a step in the right direction. However this technology\nhas been around for a while, so whether this will become standard or not\nremains unclear.\n\nPuSH solves a couple annoyances with webhooks that comes to my mind:\n\n\\- Lack of debuggability: the inability to subscribe to events forces me to\nexplicitly set up callback URL(s) on service providers' dashboards or in query\nstrings in requests. IF I managed to set them up correctly, data will come\ncrashing in any day in the future, throwing exceptions, or bouncing on\nunspecified routes. And all these POST catchers and local tunnels developers\nplay with to get this right in the first place.\n\n\\- Ad-hoc verification schemes: Every service comes up with their own way of\nensuring the data originated from their servers. Signature hashes as\n'X-*'-headers, a number of extra fields inside the JSON body, etc.\n\nThere are more, but these two has annoyed me for quite some time.\n\n~~~\njohns\nWe've (Runscope) tried to make debugging better than what you can do with a\nsimple post catcher like requestb.in. The nice thing about our forwarding\nsetup is that if a webhook fails on your server you have a log of that and can\nretry it.\n\n~~~\nbrissmyr\nYeah, I saw your service on Heroku a couple of weeks ago. Haven't tried it for\nour API's yet but I recall you had a pretty nifty approach. Good work!\n\n------\nchesh\nNice article with a concise overview of PubSubHubbub and HTTP Subscription\nSpecification. It would be really nice if you could complement it with\npointers to some real example of interfaces using one or the other approach.\nThis could help practitioners identify is the better fit for their use case.\n\n------\nrdtsc\nI don't understand the diagram.\n\nThe POST to /subscription line going from left to right is clear. What is the\nGET request below it, is that another HTTP GET requests or a the response to a\nPOST. If it is a GET why is the arrow going from Server to Client.\n\nThen the response to that GET has a 201 code but that is going from client to\nServer?\n\n~~~\nihsw\nThe POST to /subscription informs the API server that there is a \"webhook\nendpoint\" that's available to respond to API events. This request happens only\nonce.\n\nThe GET request represents the \"webhook request\", where the API server makes\nGET requests to the webhook endpoint. These requests are on-going and\nregularly occurring as a result of service events.\n\nThe dotted arrow at the bottom is the webhook endpoint responding to the\nwebhook request, and many API services treat responses with 2XX code as\nsuccessful, whereas 4xx and 5xx response codes are unsuccessful. In the event\nof an unsuccessful webhook request then the API service will make multiple\nattempts at sending the webhook request.\n\nFor example:\n\n* HN comment gets posted\n\n* webhook endpoint receives GET request with related information (eg: user id, username, comment date, comment body)\n\n* webhook endpoint responds with 2XX indicating success\n\n~~~\nrdtsc\nI think I understand now, thank you for explaining!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGoogle instant previews - rbarr\nhttp://www.google.com/landing/instantpreviews/\n\n======\nterryjsmith\nI'm beginning to miss Marissa Mayer's axe on things on the main search page. I\nthink Google's primary advantage for a while now has been cleanliness of\nresults (as the difference in relevance between search engines has slimmed);\nthey're opening themselves up to a competitor with a better design/flow by\ncontinuing to cram these \"useful\" items in.\n\n------\nrgrieselhuber\nSo far, it's been one of the goddamndest annoying things I've ever seen on the\nserp.\n\n------\nzachster\nThis has been Snap.com 's competitive advantage for years. I suppose Google\ngave them enough of a head start for them to make something of it if they were\ngoing to. Theirs is certainly more mature though. And they have a JS include\nyou can place on your site to enable this sort of image preview on all\nexternal links.\n\nTheirs customizes the preview type depending on the content. For example,\nlinks to stock information shows a little quote and graph preview.\n\n~~~\nharrybr\nTo call it a \"competitive advantage\" is stretching it a bit. It's a feature,\nthat much is unarguable.\n\nI'd say that the snap.com UI probably falls into the \"Hover and cover\" UI\nAntipattern (as defined by Bill Scott)\n\n[http://www.slideshare.net/billwscott/design-anti-patterns-\nho...](http://www.slideshare.net/billwscott/design-anti-patterns-how-to-\ndesign-a-poor-web-experience)\n\n(slide 36 onwards)\n\n------\nTycho\nI installed an extension on Safari called Apperture or something - when you\nselect any text it lets you bring up search results in a little sub-window,\nconveniently organized to put wikipedia at the top and videos in a separate\ntab and stuff. Search technology is changing, Google are no.1 at the moment\nbut they need to be a moving target.\n\n~~~\nsathyabhat\nApture[1], you mean ?\n\n[1]: <http://www.apture.com/>\n\n------\nmeinhimmel\nIt was enabled for me by default, and to be honest I didn't care for it at\nfirst. It's grown on me a little bit, but I'm still not sure I'll keep it.\n\nI highlight while I'm reading, and it plays against that by distracting me\nwith the popup. The article says that it comes up from pressing the icon, but\nit also includes the text. I'm leaving it enabled though to see if I benefit\nfrom it like I do Instant.\n\nThat said, I'm still unsure about Google Instant because I'll see my result\nthen keep typing and fly by it having to backtrack and see where Google gave\nit to me.\n\n------\nseiji\nInteresting implementation detail: the images are XHR'd in with a json wrapped\ndata URI. Try to right click on an image and share it.\n\nOther notable notes: they don't render flash in the previews and they let the\nhovers cover up the right-hand ads.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Write rust in off-side syntax (indent instead of braces like in Python) - chankyin\nhttps://github.com/chankyin/off-side.rs\n======\nkarmakaze\nToo bad about the trailing commas and semicolons. It would be cleaner if they\ncould be implied and there be punctuation for when a comma or semicolon is not\nmeant.\n\nThe commas aren't visually as bad as the semicolons. Would it work to say in\nan off-side block any non-blank line implicitly ends with semi-colon unless it\nexplicitly ends with comma or colon?\n\n~~~\nchankyin\nAlso, semicolons in Rust have special semantics. In Rust, semicolons are\ndelimiters rather than terminators, and function similar to how comma\noperators work in C++ (see\n[https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/operator_other](https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/operator_other)).\nWhile some may not like the implicit return behaviour in Rust, I think it has\na genuine idiomatic meaning in Rust that cannot be easily replaced. Ending a\nfunction with a semicolon differentiates returning the last value from\nreturning void (i.e. the empty tuple), so it does not seem like a good idea.\n(This is a proof of concept anyway it's not like I'm introducing a new\nlanguage)\n\n------\nsmt88\nWhy do you prefer semantic whitespace?\n\n~~~\nchankyin\nYou can find loads of reasons for and against semantic whitespace out there. I\ncreated this project not because I think it's better or worse, but just that\nit's cool to offer such a variant. As mentioned in the README, I don't really\nrecommend using this in serious projects, not because I am against semantic\nwhitespcaes, but because multiple variants of the same language just sucks.\n(Yes, just like Python 2 vs Python 3) (I actually hate Python for lots of\nthings, but nothing to do with the semantic whitespaces)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Pantry – Free JSON Storage for Personal Projects - fiveSpeedManual\nhttps://getpantry.cloud/\n======\nstevage\nLooks useful. I really dislike the \"Download Postman and then you will have\ndocumentation\" approach. Documentation lives on the web, and there are better\nalternatives to Postman anyway.\n\n~~~\nNezteb\nI’m curious: what are your top alternatives to Postman?\n\n~~~\nbovermyer\ncURL, with some bash aliases to help things along.\n\n~~~\nfiveSpeedManual\nI prefer this as well.\n\nRather not go down the road of having examples for every major platform.\n\n------\nfiveSpeedManual\nI'm so excited to finally be able to share this with you!\n\nPantry is a free cloud storage service that I've been building for the past\nfew weeks. You can use the API to store & retrieve data for you and your users\nonline for free.\n\nLooking forward to seeing what you all think of it, and please feel free to\npost suggestions or AMA.\n\nThanks!\n\n~~~\nwhalesalad\n\\- How would you sell me on Pantry vs. AWS S3? (You can use S3 in much the\nsame way ... throwing up JSON at a path and fetching it. The cost some would\nargue is neglible)\n\n\\- How do you deal with CORS?\n\n\\- How do you deal with authentication?\n\nIs this intended to be like the take a penny leave a penny jar? You put stuff\nhere knowing anyone could come and destroy it at any time?\n\nI did not sign up, I am only going off your API docs.\n\n~~~\nstrogonoff\n> How would you sell me on Pantry vs. AWS S3?\n\nIs this question really appropriate? The developer is sharing a pro bono\noffering, where does selling anyone on it against a commercial service even\ncome into play?\n\nIt looks like a project that must have been fun to make and could be useful\nfor storing non-sensitive data with very little hassle. Long bucket IDs appear\nto leave little chance for name collision.\n\nIf you are building a piece of software that deals with anything remotely like\nPII or has specific availability requirements, I sincerely hope this is not\nsomething you are seriously considering (otherwise, pardon me, I hope I won’t\nbe your user or customer), starting from the fact that you aren’t paying for\nit and there is no SLA.\n\n~~~\nmarktangotango\nOf course it’s appropriate! From the docs this service doesn’t even meet the\n“viable” part of MVP! Ok a user can post some json that’s public (no\nauthentication) and doesn’t even work across domains (CORS).\n\nSuppose adding those things and targeting “mobile backend as a service” or\neven more general “backend as service” there is still a lot to be desired.\nLike static html, ok you’re competition is Firebase.\n\nHow’s Firebase doing these days?\n\n------\njventura\nI've done something similar for some of my students to test restful apis at\n[http://mockrest.com](http://mockrest.com).\n\nIt is quite similar to this although you just write your own data on a\ntextarea, and get/post/put/delete to modify it.. Then you can copy-paste the\nresult json from the backend to a text file or something like that..\n\nIt dynamically finds your objects (even nested ones) and you can CRUD them..\n\n------\nosrec\nIs the pantry GUID the only form of security for all objects? Can this be\nrotated should it be compromised?\n\n~~~\nfiveSpeedManual\nGreat question!\n\nCurrently, the PantryID (uuidv4) is the only form of security, I am thinking\nthat in a future release perhaps another form of authorization may be\nrequired.\n\nDo you have any suggestions - I'm all ears!\n\n~~~\nosrec\nYeah, I imagine this is okay for testing, since UUIDs are fairly impossible to\nguess, however, you probably want a slightly more elaborate \"authenticated\nsession\" based structure to ensure someone malicious who has obtained the UUID\ndoes not have an unlimited time window to exploit it.\n\n------\n1-more\nI had this exact idea the other day with a tiny twist. This is rad. Might use\nit for my little project. TY\n\n~~~\nfiveSpeedManual\nThanks for the kind words, this means a lot to me :)\n\nI hope you find some good use out of Pantry, very excited to see what you come\nup with!\n\n------\ntyhoff\nVery cool! I was looking for something like this about a month ago when I was\nbuilding an example web application for firmware developers. Firmware\nengineers aren't expected to know anything about databases and usually don't,\nso I just wanted some dumb JSON store in the cloud that didn't need any\nprovisioning.\n\nIn the end, I went with Heroku and it's included PostgreSQL offering and\nstomached the complexity, but along the way I found\n[https://jsonbox.io/](https://jsonbox.io/), which I thought was neat and seems\nvery similar.\n\n~~~\nfiveSpeedManual\nThanks for the kind words! You're essentially the use-case that I had in mind\nwhen I was developing Pantry!\n\nHow did your project turn out btw, did the firmware developers get their mind\nblown by web tech?\n\n~~~\ntyhoff\nProject/Article turned out very well. It was more of a proof of concept with\nthe code open-sourced so people can have something to start with to track\nfirmware binary sizes on a commit-by-commit basis.\n\n[https://interrupt.memfault.com/blog/code-size-\ndeltas](https://interrupt.memfault.com/blog/code-size-deltas)\n\nUnsure if their minds were blown, but I at least know that mine would have\nbeen if I showed it to myself a couple of years ago. During that time, I had\nnever touched databases, migration files, or devops in general. Now that's\nchanged, but I still try put myself in those shoes.\n\n~~~\nfiveSpeedManual\nWow, this is pretty neat!\n\nI have some friends who are into firmware development so ill pass this along.\n\nLove how verbose your docs are - good stuff!\n\n------\nmikequinlan\nWhat are the rate and size limits for the API? Also what is the data retention\n(how long before you delete the buckets)?\n\n~~~\nfiveSpeedManual\nGreat question!\n\nSize limits are pretty small, a little over 1mb per basket.\n\nAs for data retention, the account has a TTL of 5 days, baskets 3. Any\nactivity on the account/bucket will result in the TTL's being refreshed.\n\n~~~\nmikequinlan\nSome API requests get a JSON response (Retrieve Account, Get Basket). Others\nget a plain text response (Create Account, Create Basket). Errors seem to get\nan HTTP response with an HTML page. Is this documented anywhere?\n\n~~~\nfiveSpeedManual\nOuch that is confusing. And no, I haven't added these details to documentation\nyet. This is a bit of an issue at the moment, having everything return in one\nformat is the right thing to do.\n\nWill be addressing this in the near future - thanks!\n\n~~~\nmikequinlan\nThe Retrieve Account API seems to always return an empty baskets array, even\nif baskets with data exit. fyi,\n\n~~~\nfiveSpeedManual\nOh yeah, this definitely needs to be addressed and is currently an active\nissue on GitHub. Thanks for reporting!\n\n------\narthurcolle\nHow do you prevent someone from spamming you and filling your cache up with\nabusive documents?\n\n~~~\nfiveSpeedManual\nI have a basic rate limiting implemented, but nothing that prevents people\nfrom really abusing the storage platform.\n\nAccounts and Baskets that are stale are automatically removed, however, so\nthere's that?\n\nWill look into alternative methods of spam prevention - any tips?\n\n------\nammmir\nI love the graphics and web design! It looks like a simple service, and more\nalternatives in the space are welcome!\n\nFull-disclosure, I also develop a \"competing\" (if you can call it that)\nservice: [https://kvdb.io](https://kvdb.io) \\- my landing page isn't as nice.\nOur buckets offer some atomic operations on keys and Lua-based scripting (you\ncan spit out arbitrary text or HTML and handle basic GET/POST requests with\nparameter parsing), which might be useful for prototyping.\n\nYou should figure out how to sustain this kind of service on $FREE. In my\nexperience, I've found a lot of people sign up but don't use it for anything\nserious. One of my first customers signed up and demanded a refund immediately\nafter he discovered \"oh, your simple key-value store doesn't support SQL\nqueries?\"\n\nGood luck!\n\n~~~\nnurettin\nIs this a monetized redis?\n\n------\nsosodev\nI’m currently building something very similar but with a usage based payment\nsystem (not implemented yet). [https://quickstash.io](https://quickstash.io)\n\n~~~\nfiveSpeedManual\nVery exciting, I really like your website - especially the API docs!\n\nAwesome work!\n\n~~~\nsosodev\nHey thanks! I guess we'll have some friendly competition. :)\n\n~~~\nfiveSpeedManual\nLooking forward to it!\n\n------\ndontchooseanick\nA mozilla alternative is Kinto\n\n* Used e.g. for profiles sync\n\n* Deploys to heroku - 1 click\n\n[https://www.kinto-storage.org/](https://www.kinto-storage.org/)\n\n------\nonion2k\nThe API docs page is only scrollable if your mouse is over the docs text. If\nyou try to scroll on either side nothing happens (OSX, Chrome Canary).\n\n~~~\nfiveSpeedManual\nOuff - good catch!\n\nWill fix soon, thanks!\n\n------\nMattGaiser\nWhere are you sourcing the clip art? You are the 3rd startup I have seen with\nthe zen woman in the past week.\n\n~~~\nfiveSpeedManual\nI found these great illustrations here -\n[https://www.opendoodles.com/](https://www.opendoodles.com/)\n\nThey're really well done!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Why is there no software for generating cross-platform native UI code? - dreamer7\nHTML + CSS, iOS and Android all are complete design systems. Any UI that we design can be developed for these platforms.<p>Forgive my possibly naive understanding of mobile UI. Why is there no software&#x2F; service that allows us to develop on one platform and automatically transpiles into the other platforms?<p>Is it because it is extremely complex or because developing the UI is not the most time-consuming element of cross-platform development or both?<p>A form field for web -\n&lt;input ....&#x2F;&gt;<p>is \n&lt;EditText ....&#x2F;&gt; for Android<p>and \n&lt;UITextInput ....&#x2F;&gt; for iOS\n======\npraveen9920\nKony is proprietary platform which does generate native app code (\n[https://www.kony.com/](https://www.kony.com/) )\n\nMajor problem for implementing such thing is that there is no exact 1-1\nmapping between all UI elements. There are certainly few elements which has\nthe mapping but all the features cannot be done with those.\n\nAlso, I remember that apple has problem with generated code.\n\nNote: I worked for Kony few years back\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAmazon patents wristband that tracks warehouse workers' movements - neverminder\nhttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/31/amazon-warehouse-wristband-tracking?\n======\nle-mark\nAh, gathering data to train ML picker bots? Ie reverse kinematic the arm\n(shoulder, wrist, elbow) movement? Very interesting indeed.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLaura Poitras learns why she endured airport stops for years - bearcobra\nhttps://apnews.com/d69a8e6db867477795f4152d0511bbf9/Filmmaker-learns-why-she-endured-airport-stops-for-years\n======\nkw71\nIt sounds like someone knowingly fabricated false information. If so that\nperson should be civilly and criminally liable because that act caused obvious\nharm.\n\n------\nstevep98\nEven if it's true that she broke the law with regards to the ambush, how does\nthat lead to being stopped and questioned every time you enter the country?\n\n------\nNeliquat\nSo, it seems like an elaborate cover, to justify the obvious reasons of her\nheightened scrutiny. What was not clear in the article is if/when this\nstopped. Tbh, you could have reasonable suspicion just for the documentary,\nbut that would have looked worse than a security incident. I will now remove\nmy Reynolds Cap.\n\n~~~\ntinus_hn\nIt looks like she just published some things someone didn't like and they\ndecided to punish her by putting her on the list. Why not? There's no\nconsequence for it.\n\n------\njti107\nis Laura a US citizen? when the US invaded Iraq what laws were in place? Seems\nlike a pretty big leap to say that \"A female was videotaping us\" to \"she knew\nan ambush was about to take place\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSears Kit Homes Changed Housing - prostoalex\nhttps://www.curbed.com/2018/10/16/17984616/sears-catalog-home-kit-mail-order-prefab-housing\n======\nwalrus01\nThe person who does the McMansion Hell blog has a guide to historical kit\nhouses:\n\n[http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155602312686/the-mail-order-\nam...](http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155602312686/the-mail-order-american-\ndream-an-introductory)\n\nPart two: [http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155922980391/the-mail-order-\nam...](http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155922980391/the-mail-order-american-\ndream-part-ii-the-hunt-is)\n\n------\nclatan\nThere's a recent 99% invisible episode about this:\n\n[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-\ncame-i...](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-in-the-\nmail/)\n\n~~~\ndjsumdog\nThat's where I first heard about this. Excellent podcast episode. It's pretty\ndifferent to actually see photos though.\n\n------\nZachWick\nThe \"DIY with basic tools\" approach of Sears extended well beyond houses.\nSears also sold motorcycles [0] that came with a thick manual that gave\ninstructions on how to do everything from assembling the motorcycle from the\nshipped pieces in the crate to fully disassembling and rebuilding the engine.\nI've restored a handful of them before, and they are a lot of fun to work on.\nThey are simple enough that there aren't too many hurdles to get over, and\nthey are always a good conversation starter when you're parked somewhere.\n\n[0]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puch_250_SGS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puch_250_SGS)\n\n[1] A build log of one restoration that needs updating\n[https://zachwick.com/sears-allstate-project-1-n/](https://zachwick.com/sears-\nallstate-project-1-n/)\n\n------\nasaph\n> Sears promised that a buyer with only rudimentary skills could assemble a\n> kit home in 90 days.\n\nPeople used to be handier than they are today. I don't know anyone who would\ndare take on this project.\n\n~~~\nCalRobert\nI would, until the neighbors started threatening to sue me in planning\nmeetings and the local authorities demanded $30,000 of architect's drawings\nand then I was told I had to have two parking spaces for some reason and that\nmy house was too small for any decent individual.\n\n~~~\nnamdnay\n> I had to have two parking spaces for some reason\n\nThe reason for that is that in ten years' time, you may have moved on and sold\nyour house, and the next tenants will probably own two cars (this being the\nUS), and so will end up parking on the street. If everyone does this, it's a\nnightmare\n\nEnforcing a number of parking spaces per dwelling is very common even here in\nFrance\n\n~~~\npc86\nAnd these are exactly the kinds of things the home buyer should take into\naccount. But if the builder doesn't need or want something, they shouldn't be\nforced to build it for the sake of a theoretical buyer decades in the future.\nIf the builder doesn't put in something that is in high demand it will\nnegatively impact their ability to sell the home or they'll have to price it\naccordingly. Seems like a pretty good system without having a government\ncommission tell someone they need an arbitrary number of parking spaces that\nthey have no use for.\n\n~~~\nnamdnay\nThe problem is that the impact is also external. Maybe the future buyer\ndoesn't mind parking in the street, but the neighbours definitely do.\n\nThe government isn't telling anyone anything - it's a purely municipal\ndecision\n\n~~~\npc86\nMunicipalities are governments.\n\n------\nbluedino\nYou can buy a house kit today from places like Menard’s - my uncle purchased a\ngarage and we assembled it over a couple weekends, I could see doing a house\nwith much more time and skill\n\n[https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/books-\nbuildi...](https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/books-building-\nplans/home-plans/shop-all-home-projects/c-9919.htm)\n\n~~~\ntomcam\nThe prices are literally unbelievable to me. What’s missing? These sure look\nlike the spiritual successor to the Sears homes.\n\n~~~\nnikanj\nThe labor and the land. Those are by far the most expensive components of a\nhome.\n\n~~~\ngambiting\nYep. People outside of the construction business can be shocked by how cheap\nmaterials to build a house actually are. It's the land and labour where the\nmoney goes.\n\n~~~\ndsfyu404ed\nContractors are like lawyers. You're not paying them to argue your case.\nYou're paying them because they have a professional relationship with all the\nother parties that's been built upon years of doing business with them.\n\nThe lawyer knows the prosecutor and the judge. The contractor knows all the\ninspectors and bureaucrats. They get favorable treatment compared to some\nnobody off the street. A huge chunk of what you pay them is compensation for\nall the time they spend building that professional relationship with the\npeople who you need to appease. The fact that services are rendered is what\nblurs the line between business and corruption.\n\n~~~\nencoderer\nThis guy remodels.\n\nSeriously, good luck getting the subcontractor back to finish quickly when\nsomebody who has been providing him with work consistently calls and needs a\nhand. As a homeowner you are back burner.\n\n~~~\nnikanj\nVery similar to trying to get support from a software company, when you're a\none-off $19.95 customer, and their biggest enterprise clients are also\ncalling.\n\n------\nfallingfrog\nAccording to the CPI inflation calculator, The Classic home from 1916 for $918\nwould cost $22,282 today. That's actually quite a bit less expensive than the\nsame size houses being offered by Menard's today, by about a factor of 2. I\ndon't have any good insight as to why the cost would actually be higher today\nafter 100 years of productivity gains. Productivity has increased by about a\nfactor of 5, so all other things being equal the same house should cost only\n$4400 today. What gives?\n\n~~~\ngreeneggs\nI'm not sure where you are getting your numbers, but the construction industry\nhas long had notoriously slow productivity growth. In the US, labor\nproductivity in construction has stayed essentially flat since 1947, and\ndecreased since its peak in 1968.\n\n\"Reinventing construction: A route to higher productivity\", McKinsey Global\nInstitute (2017) (pdf, see page 23):\n[https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Capital...](https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Capital%20Projects%20and%20Infrastructure/Our%20Insights/Reinventing%20construction%20through%20a%20productivity%20revolution/MGI-\nReinventing-construction-A-route-to-higher-productivity-Full-report.ashx)\n\n~~~\nfallingfrog\nMy numbers are very very approximate and come from eyeballing the following\ngraph, which was the best I could get from a google search:\n\n[https://images.slideplayer.com/27/8913519/slides/slide_9.jpg](https://images.slideplayer.com/27/8913519/slides/slide_9.jpg)\n\n------\nrmason\nThere are several Sears kit homes near me. They succeeded because they offered\nvalue. I don't know about the coasts but the homes were very popular in the\nMidwest.\n\nSo popular that close to eighty years after they were last available it is\nvery common to mention a property is a Sears home in real estate ads.\n\nAmazon may have sped up their demise but Sears lost track of offering their\ncustomers value decades ago.\n\n~~~\nadventured\nAmazon had close to zero role in the demise of Sears. Keep in mind, Amazon had\na mere $34 billion in total sales as recently as 2010. Sears was realistically\nalready a zombie ten years ago, long before Amazon was taking a consequential\nbite out of retail.\n\nThe rise of Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, Best Buy, etc. serving the Sears\ncustomers better - as you mentioned - is entirely what killed Sears. They\nultimately lost in every category to those guys, from clothes, to electronics,\nto home & garden. They kept doing a lot of things, and did nothing well. Any\narticle that claims Amazon played a role in the demise of Sears, is selling\nclick-bait.\n\n~~~\nghaff\nArguably they did a couple of things (e.g. appliances) at least competitively.\nBut the competition in those areas definitely increased from the big box\nstores, department stores in general have been in significant decline, and\nSears as a whole was quite a mish-mash.\n\n~~~\nFinnucane\nIt used to be that Sears house brands--Kenmore, Craftsman, etc--provided good\nvalue to the customer. Not luxury or top-of-the line, but reliable stuff that\nworked and was worth what you paid for it. But in recent years that hasn't\nreally been true. But then, it's not really true for just about anyone any\nmore. Amazon copied the Sears model--sell everything to everyone--but it has\nalso opened the floodgates of third-party sellers selling cheap crap and\ncounterfeit goods. It's less like the old Sears and more like an old-world\nmedieval bazaar.\n\n------\nwnoise\nSo, does anyone else offer catalog homes? If not, why not? Have building\npermits gotten too complex?\n\n~~~\nnewnewpdro\nCabelas does log homes\n\n~~~\nbusterarm\nNot anymore (at least not referenced on their site anymore). They're also at a\nhuge markup compared to other kit log cabins.\n\n------\nskookumchuck\nIf you ever watch a house being built, there's a huge pile of waste lumber\nfrom cut off ends. Carpenters don't look through the pile looking for an end\nto reuse, they just pull a fresh board and cut off what they need. With some\ncareful design, and pre-cut pieces, one can nearly eliminate this wastage and\ncut costs substantially. It's not just the boards, it's the millwork,\nplumbing, carpet, etc.\n\n~~~\nbluGill\nWhen I was in construction all ends longer than a foot (30cm) were saved and\nmost were used. They look like the are to be discarded, because most are\ncreated the first day and just sit there. However the very last thing before\nwe leave we look around and verify that there is backing in all the corners to\nattach the drywall to. This used most of the longer scraps.\n\nI don't know about the other steps you name.\n\n~~~\nskookumchuck\n> other steps\n\nI recall reading about a spec house builder who would design the houses so\nthat the dimensions of the rooms would fit an even multiple of the widths of\ncarpet rolls. This nearly eliminated carpet waste, and made installation\ncheaper, too, as there were no seams.\n\n------\nfallingfrog\nI live in one on these houses! The construction is very solid, the insulation\nis thinner than you would ideally want but overall it's a nice house. The trim\nwork is beautiful, every piece fits together nice and tight. My only complaint\nis that I wish they hadn't used lead paint on it.\n\n------\nexamancer\nI didn't know they sold homes. Kind of amazing. It's a surprising footnote in\nthe tragedy of Sears.\n\nThe popular narrative of an out-of-touch company unable to compete with the\nlikes of Amazon is false. The CEO is a hedge fund manager who pillaged the\ncompany, sold off it's best assets (sometimes to himself), loaded up the\ncompany with debt, and used it to pay himself millions.\n\n[http://prospect.org/article/it-was-vulture-capitalism-\nkilled...](http://prospect.org/article/it-was-vulture-capitalism-killed-sears)\n\nThere is no good reason we are losing this company which has been the backbone\nof American commerce for over a century.\n\n~~~\nnewnewpdro\nYou need to see one of the old Sears catalogs, the ones that were two+ inches\nthick and sold ploughs, wagons, blacksmithing tools, everything you could\nimagine of use to homesteaders. It's fascinating to flip through, excellent\ncoffee table reading material.\n\n~~~\nwalrus01\nShotguns, corsets, wagon wheels, pocket watches, derringers, medical\napparatus, furniture, top hats, bowler hats, Masonic accessories, oil lamps,\nwood stoves.\n\n------\nRickJWagner\nThose are nice looking houses, I'm surprised.\n\nMy wife and I are thinking about building a new house. I'm surprised how many\nnew houses are still built from bespoke plans, and how much the plans cost.\nYou'd think house plan 'Open Sourcing' would soon give us better houses at\nbetter prices. (I hope so, anyway.)\n\n------\nrtpg\nI'd be really interested in what these \"kit homes\" end up arriving as to the\ncustomer. Are you shipped a bunch of wood and materials at a spot and you\nstart building? Is there some prefab stuff going on?\n\nVery interested in knowing what the user experience is on this sort of\nproduct, so to speak\n\n~~~\nanonymous5133\nThese questions are hilarious because all of us are just a bunch of young\n\"know it alls\" and all the old timers would be able to tell you all about\nthese sears homes....too bad no one here is older on this site.\n\n~~~\nwoolvalley\nThe youngest person to have conscious memory of these things would have to be\n82 or 83, and wouldn't be much of a help in building them. The 95 year old\nadult in 1940 is even rarer still.\n\n------\nInsanity\nFirst time I heard of 'home building kits'. I don't think they are popular\nhere in Europe (Belgium at least?) but the idea is quite neat.\n\nThen again, I don't consider myself handy enough to take on such a project\nanyway :)\n\n------\nwj\nHow does being a kit home affect resale value if at all?\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nI don't think it does. I think it's regarded as charming. There's a whole\nenthusiast community. Also: they're kit houses, but they're not like, mobile\nhomes or pre-fab; they're just houses, like any other.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWanted to get into RC but didn't have the money - KrisCubed\nI wanted to get into the RC hobby but I didn&#x27;t have $300 to drop on a Traxxas or other rig--I have a friend who had a really nice RC car and it made me want one--So I made my own!!<p>Its really cool!<p>People have been telling me none stop that PLA will never work for this...<p>The wear is actually so minimal that I haven&#x27;t needed to grease the moving parts more than once--After hours of drive time, there is almost no wear on the gears--The only thing that wears are the dogbones, but that is because sand and dirt get into the joint and cause wear, but they still last much longer than you&#x27;d ever guess.<p>What are your thoughts?<p>Video: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fneoYrtdVjo<p>Thingiverse: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thingiverse.com&#x2F;thing:3545173\n======\njakobegger\nHow much did you end up spending on the parts that you couldn't print? This\nlooks like a pretty sweet car, but is it really cheaper to build your own than\nbuying a finished kit?\n\n------\nonemoresoop\nThat's the way to go. Great project. Hope to see a lot more innovation coming\nout of DIY projects. Great job!!!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n(Futurama) Bender Smartspeaker using completely offline software - crankylinuxuser\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/g3whxq/i_will_make_my_own_smart_speaker_with_blackjack/\n======\nourcat\nNice. Since there's no way I'm going to put a multi-billion-dollar company's\n'smart' speaker in my apartment, I've been wanting to build something offline\nlike this inside an old dial telephone (like a red Bat phone) which only\nlistens to your commands when you pick up the handset. ;)\n\n~~~\nNotSammyHagar\nI like the idea. I'm shocked that a ras pi has enough cpu power to make this\nwork.\n\n~~~\nfoxyv\nMy Dad used to use voice typing on his old Pentium II laptop in the late 90s.\nIt's doable, although a lot less reliable than the ones nowadays.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGreat User Experiences Require Great Front-End Development - mbesto\nhttp://uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/04/great-user-experiences-require-great-front-end-development.php\n\n======\nkenrose\nThere is a great irony in the fact that the UX for this site is pretty awful:\n* Gigantic social sharing buttons (they're bigger than the headline) * Glossy\nnav bar makes options difficult to read * When scrolling a long article, the\nleft and right areas for nav are completely empty. I end up with two giant\npurple bars flanking the article. * On the topic of purple, sooooooo much\npurple.\n\nMaybe I'm spoiled by the reading UX that medium.com provides.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGovernment Shuts Down as Congress Misses Deadline - ISL\nhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304373104579107051184641222.html\n======\nrodgerd\nFrom the perspective of someone who live in a Westminster-style democracy this\nis made especially bizarre by virtue of the fact that failing to be able to\npass a budget bill results in new elections[1]. If you're going to block the\nbudget, you'd better be damned confident that voters agree with you.\n\n[1] I suppose technically it results in the head of state inviting other\npolitical partites to form a government, and then calling elections when they\ncan't.\n\n------\ndaegloe\nWe had two similar \"partial shutdowns\" of the US Gov't in the 1990's.\nDemocratic President refusing to cut healthcare-related spending vs.\nRepublican-controlled Congress holding the debt ceiling hostage. Sound\nfamiliar? Same game, different players.\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_governmen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_government_shutdown_of_1995_and_1996)\n\n~~~\nkhuey\nIn the 90s Congress failed to pass a budget. Holding the debt ceiling hostage\nwas never seen or tried as a legitimate political tactic before the last few\nyears.\n\n~~~\ndaegloe\nNope. In the former speaker's own words...\n\n[http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/19/opinion/gingrich-obama-\ncongres...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/19/opinion/gingrich-obama-\ncongress/index.html)\n\n------\nck2\nI imagine a Koch brother handing the other a single $1 over a bet they could\nshutdown the government like in Trading Places.\n\n~~~\nD9u\nMaybe the loser has to donate an extra million dollars or so to the winner's\nfavorite charity?\n\n[http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/09/02/koch-brothers-\ngive-m...](http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/09/02/koch-brothers-give-more-to-\ncharity-than-to-right-wing-causes/)\n\n------\nclarkmoody\nWouldn't it be nice if the federal government were small enough that it\ncontained no personnel who were \"non-essential\" ?\n\n~~~\nsquidi\nIt's impossible to have only \"essential\" staff as you will always need \"non-\nessential\" staff to support their work. For example, NASA TV employees are\n\"non-essential\" [1] but without the TV station it may mean lots of kids are\nnot inspired by NASA any more. Also, Labor statisticians are \"non-essential\"\nbut would you rather the Department of Labor make decision on gut feelings\ninstead?\n\n[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/27/us/who-goes-\nto...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/27/us/who-goes-to-work-\nduring-government-shutdown.html?_r=0)\n\n~~~\ninsertnickname\nI'd rather not have a Department of Labor.\n\n------\ncoffeeaddicted\nOne sad aspect of this is that it won't have any effect on the income of the\ninvolved politicians.\n\n~~~\nsummerdown2\nIf they were on suspension too, how would they get together to eventually\nagree a fix? I agree about the incentives being wrong, and I think the whole\nthing is ridiculous, but unfortunately, they're exactly the ones who have to\nkeep working until it's over.\n\n~~~\ncoffeeaddicted\nDoesn't have to be all or nothing. But they are responsible for this mess, so\ncut their income by 50% or even just 25% for the time. Or reducing their\nincome by X% each day where they can't find a solution.\n\n------\nmalkia\nDoes anyone know how would this affect public schools?\n\n~~~\nseanalltogether\nI've always been under the impression that public schools and police services\nare all managed by state/local taxes and not tied to the federal budget.\n\n~~~\nLandoCalrissian\nThey get federal dollars for certain things, but you are correct that they are\nmanaged and largely paid for by their respective state.\n\n------\norsenthil\nI can't understand this. What is meant by Government Shuts Down? No law and\norder will be enforced?\n\n~~~\nCub3\nThe US government is on _partial_ shutdown. So many hundreds of thousands of\nUS government workers will either 1. not be paid to work, or 2. be furloughed\n(not go in to work). This applies to non-essential workers (found a list here\n-\n[http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/09/politics/government-s...](http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/09/politics/government-\nshutdown-impact/index.html?hpt=hp_t1) ).\n\nRetroactive pay will apply once things are worked out.\n\n~~~\nrbritton\nOne important thing not to forget, Partisan issues aside, is that both\nCongress and the President still get paid without any hiccups.\n\n~~~\ntechsupporter\nCongress and the President are both required to be paid by the Constitution\n(20th amendment and Art 2, Sec 1, respectively).\n\n~~~\nalan_cx\nAh, so they like that part of the constitution.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nS3 Bandwidth from Every EC2 Instance - DVassallo\nhttps://github.com/dvassallo/s3-benchmark\n======\nQuinnyPig\nThis is awesome!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSilk Road owner can't be guilty of money laundering if Bitcoin isn't money - markmassie\nhttp://theverge.com/2014/4/1/5570984/alleged-silk-road-owner-says-he-cant-be-guilty-of-money-laundering\n======\nmschuster91\nStill the fact remains that DPR attempted to hire at least one hitman for a\njob. He won't get out of this one easily, I'm afraid.\n\nAlso, the Feds might pull a Capone on him and fine/imprison him for not\nreporting the (significant!) income from SR.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSmartest Kids in the World: American Schools - jseliger\nhttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2014/06/21/smartest-kids-in-the-world-american-schools/\n======\nbobzibub\n[http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/04/15/m...](http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/04/15/map-\nhow-35-countries-compare-on-child-poverty-the-u-s-is-ranked-34th/) Is child\npoverty an issue or is it not? Is it left to the schools to correct? Finland\nis the best in the world for child poverty. America, (ahem) less so. So the\nquestion is not really answered.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy a Hacker Who Exposed Rapists Faces More Jail Than the Rapists - chunkyslink\nhttps://www.inverse.com/article/20876-steubenville-rape-case-deric-lostutter\n======\nbrett_shavers\nHacker should have asked for immunity prior to disclosing criminal activity.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMDMA - kaboro\nhttps://www.profgalloway.com/mdma/\n======\nmindfulplay\nHe does not convey anything new and it almost feels like he is milking the\nlimited fifteen minutes of limelight a bit much.....\n\n------\nloceng\nFortunately, the reality - now that the lights are on for many more, people\nwoke by Trump, by China with Hong Kong - isn't insurmountably ugly.\n\nThere is abundance. There is plenty of capital, plenty of passionate,\nhardworking, healthy-educated people or those who we can quickly lead to being\nhealthy and have higher productivity, who will find their passion if they\nhaven't yet.\n\nThe issue and why the ugliness has formed at all, why the lights have dimmed\nsome, is because capital has increasingly been generated by fewer players -\ndue to increasing efficiency of automation, consolidation of markets, and\nmoney pooled into the financial industrial complex - and simply billionaires,\nlarge companies holding onto cash reserves, while doing their best to not pay\ntaxes.\n\nBadly run government due to regulatory capture, two-party system, and bad\npolicy that doesn't provide people with the basic necessities of life -\ncausing multi-generational dis-ease progression is another artifact of this\nsuffocation of society; capitalism isn't the cause, it is the bad actors\nmaximizing their profits through any means - and society not understanding\nthis: Andrew Yang is the only 2020 POTUS candidate that is shining light on\nthese foundational mechanisms, and has policies aligned to correct them -\nincluding his flagship policy - the Freedom Dividend, a Universal Basic Income\nof $1,000 / month to every adult American.\n\nUBI is a simple mechanism that will \"take the boot off the neck of people\" and\nadd fluidity to an otherwise stagnating, decaying and dis-eased system -\ncreating a trickle up economy. Elon Musk recently publicly endorsed Yang via a\nTweet saying \"I endorse Yang,\" not surprising as he also beforehand relatively\nrecently mentioned that he believes UBI is inevitable; business economics wise\nit also is smart to support as empowering every adult American with $1,000 /\nmonth can pay for many rides in his upcoming Tesla Network as a competitor to\nUber/Lyft, or afford people to lease a Tesla or any of their other offerings.\n\nIt would play very well for Jeff Bezos of Amazon to step into the arena in\nsupport of Yang at the right moment - regardless of the profit hit he takes -\nas to whether he is for the people or for himself. All things created equal:\nthe future economy, who people buy from - who they vote for with their money -\nwill be based on who that person is, how they lead, their vision, plan, how\nthey are helping humanity - how they are helping educate people, helping heal\npeople, improving their lives on an ongoing basis; governance with a\nfoundation of building trust, relationship, community.\n\nEcosystems will form as different systems of automation and the best leaders\nalign, converging different markets and technologies to compete with the\nremaining status quo. Once the Freedom Dividend is implemented there will be a\nmassive new market of people who only have at minimum $1,000 / month to spend,\nand that will drive an immense amount of competition to capture as much of\nthis market as possible - all of which will be related to providing the best,\nhighest, quality of life - for the lowest cost; all survivability related\ninnovation, in reality leading to a foundation that will allow people to\nthrive.\n\nAll of what Scott is highlighting here is a distraction, designed chaos,\nfunded, perpetuated by the financial industrial complex - and at a basis by\nego-driven greed. VCs primarily funding entrepreneurs with ideas instead of\nleaders with a vision and who have proven themselves enough to deserve capital\nto allow them to further implement their vision, accelerating the leader's own\nopportunities for personal development - along with their plan. Leaders who\nare ready for being allocated an increasing amount of resources to manage,\ndistribute, perhaps seemingly at their whim with a simple command of language,\nmeanwhile hopefully carefully pointing the direction of their drawn sword for\ndirection - have to first prove that they as an individual deserve this power,\ninstead of - seemingly for the vast majority of cases - having an idea, being\ngood enough to execute - or just a single member or luck being why you\nexecuted well - toward shallow metrics that are moving upward at a pace that's\nexciting only because it means they can lure in the next funding round they\nmostly plan to depend on for survival.\n\nWhy has the financial industrial complex evolved to where it has? In part it's\nthe speed at which capitalism has been successful with innovation, with\nallowing funds to be pooled. Another part is systems of indoctrination working\nmore and more efficiently, along with the general population not knowing who\nthey should invest part of their income into - so they buy into whatever\nshallow hype their advisor(s) present, no matter how seemingly intellectually\nor cleverly supported these systems have evolved to look to us.\n\nThose who understand these systems best of course can make the most profits,\nmake the best bets, alas the system is currently structured to be ripe for\ncorruption, for bad actors to influence and unreasonably gain wealth through\nbad behaviour - behaviour that is against the outcome of humanity.\n\nI'd argue the biggest problem however is that historically we've had\nrelatively weak leaders to choose from - to invest in, vote for. Politically\nand technologically hope is in the air with leaders like Elon and Yang: Elon\nat lead of shifting away from the \"dumbest experiment in history\" re: burning\nfossil fuels, and Yang clearly the yin to Trump - yin being slowness,\nfriction, stagnancy, destruction-failure, toward death - and Yang being rapid\nflow, fluidity, movement, creation-innovation, life.\n\nAnother point I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere, a pattern I realized\nrecently, is that the Software-as-a-Service business model is rent-seeking\nbehaviour. It's the mechanism of the Landlord-Rental complex - as I call it -\nand will be another industrial complex to have a large disruption within the\nnext decade, as global economic pressure is being felt - along with platforms\nlike Airbnb being an additional negative pressure. Local governments, and\nhigher, are doing a terrible job at adjusting, compensating and managing for\nthese various pressures.\n\nScott's also completely wrong on Tesla: he should study it, the synergy of\nwhat Elon is designing for, to realize he's going to force competitors not\nonly to attempt to create comparable EVs - but also to change their business\nmodel; one competitive lever he has in hand: at an instant Tesla could offer\nfree charging for life at their growing network of Supercharger stations - but\nhe doesn't have to. He's got this. Yang too.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPaul Graham on War Powers - crystaldev\nhttps://thehill.com/homenews/senate/477625-graham-paul-rift-deepens-over-trumps-war-powers\n======\nzimpenfish\nThe title is wrong: it's actually \"Graham, Paul rift deepens over Trump's war\npowers\" (which is a somewhat different slant!)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nOpera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes - snaky\nhttps://www.zdnet.com/article/opera-brave-vivaldi-to-ignore-chromes-anti-ad-blocker-changes-despite-shared-codebase/\n======\nrndgermandude\nThe problem at this point isn't whether chrome will disable it... It can be\nadded back, probably fairly easily as google intents to keep it around for\n\"enterprise\" anyway, so it's probably just gonna end up changing/removing one\nif-statement. If not, then the code already exists and has to be merged back\nin.\n\nThe problem is distribution of the actual extensions, as Vivaldi kinda pointed\nout, as the other browsers mostly rely on the Chrome Extension store. If\nGoogle really decides to pull the plug here they could start rejecting\nextensions using the old, removed-from-Chrome APIs. And then what? Each\nbrowser such as Vivaldi, Brave, Opera has to implement their own app store\njust to host the old-API ad-blockers. And implementing such a store is a major\nfeat. And the walled garden strikes again.\n\nVivaldi already indicated they might create a \"limited\" store, meaning not a\nreal store open to the public, but one where they list hand-picked old-API\nextensions such as ublock origin. Of course, innovation is still stiffed as\nyou in such a \"chrome-store + limited vendor store\" scenario cannot just\ndevelop new extensions using the old-API because you'd have no chance of\ngetting listed in the chrome store, and essentially no chance in the hand-\npicked limited vendor ones.\n\n~~~\nel_programmador\nMy gut feeling is that Google won't pull this stunt with chrome, this is some\nkind of scare mongering or a PR tactic, I dunno.\n\nIt doesn't make a logical sense because if they are banning the ad-blockers,\nit means they accept that chrome is largely used by power users who can\ninstall these blockers (otherwise, what's the need?). But they should realize\nthat a power user who installs an addon can just as easily move to another\nbrowser like firefox/brave. And the PR repercussions will ensure that a lot of\nnewbies will leave too (because they usually follow the power users on\nyoutube) which will essentially kill the advertising income that they wanted\nin the first place?\n\n~~~\nuser17843\nMaybe think about it in a different way. Right now, there is a kill-switch\nwithin googles primary product that could essentially destroy their business\nmodel.\n\nThis is not about google wanting to harm the current power users. It is\nprobably the idea that someone could come along and destroy their business.\n\nIf such an extensions goes mainstream that could seriously harm them.\n\nThey may also want to get rid of paying Adblock Plus money for their highway\nrobbery.\n\nNow that I think about it, getting rid of ABP may be the primary reason for\nthis move. They have to basically pay a third party to get access to their own\nusers.\n\nEither way, the battle is not over the power user minority, but over the\naverage user.\n\nThe idea is to make the API just powerful enough for the most annoying ads to\ndisappear. Most users would probably be content with this. They will probably\nmake it so they won't lose all of their power users. I think what they really\nwant is increasing the amount of works it takes to have full adblocking\nfunctionality to the point where the average user has no access to it.\n\n~~~\nIsinlor\nABP is compatible with the new API and will not be affected.\n\nSee:\n[https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/declarativeNetReques...](https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/declarativeNetRequest#type-\nRule)\n\nThis is API that ABP can use. But with the new API the rules list will be\nlimited to 30 000 rules vs. for example 42 000 EasyList is using, and an\nupdate to the rules will require a full update of the plugin.\n\nSee also comments from gorhill: [https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-\nissues/issues/338#iss...](https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-\nissues/issues/338#issuecomment-456171375)\n\n~~~\nuser17843\nABP released a statement to german news site golem.de, saying that they\n\"prepare for the worst case\".\n\nThis means they anticipate Google to target the Acceptable Ads program.\n\nOriginally I thought 30,000 rules wouldn't be enough to cover things, but\naccording to this research, only a couple hundred rules are enough to block\n>90% of the ads: [https://brave.com/the-mounting-cost-of-stale-ad-blocking-\nrul...](https://brave.com/the-mounting-cost-of-stale-ad-blocking-rules/)\n\nSo maybe there's another limiting aspect of the declarativeNetRequest API I\ndon't know of.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway2048\n90% of the ads right now, but its trivial to design adtech so its only\npossible to block a tiny percentage of everything with only 50k rules.\n\n(register 50k domains, use 50k different subpath/subdomains and mix\ncontent+ads on something like youtube where you cant wholesale block youtube,\netc)\n\n------\nnegamax\nDamn Google! This is so short sighted. People/everyone just installed Chrome\non whatever systems they could find and that's how Chrome become so prevalent.\nNot because it was a superior product, not because of technology but because\neveryone was anti IE. Google is painting Chrome into similar corner. In a way,\nthis is a good indicator of decline of Google. Revenue not through innovation\nbut by coercion\n\n~~~\nTylerE\nI think that's rather revisionist. At a point in time Chrome was way better\nthan not just IE, but way better than Firefox. The performance was leaps and\nbounds ahead.\n\n~~~\nwhatpreventsit\nI’ve been using both Firefox and Chrome since they came out and they have\nalways felt near each others performance. It would be interesting to see some\ndata on the subject.\n\n~~~\nTylerE\nOne huge advantage Chrome had was it's multi-process model. This was back in\nthe day when stuff like Flash would often nuke your entire Firefox session.\n\n~~~\ntty2300\nFirefox has had this for years.\n\n~~~\nTylerE\nBut it didn’t until years after a chrome did\n\n------\nred_admiral\nI tried opera a while back, and while it's fast and looks good, it has a new\ntab page with \"recommended\" sites that you can't turn off - I tried, but it's\nprotected by DRM (opera will refuse to start if the file doesn't have a valid\ndigital signature).\n\nSo if I'm going to switch browsers because of privacy/advertising concerns,\nit's not going to be Opera.\n\n~~~\nModernMech\nThe new tab page has a list of bookmarks you can customize. It starts off with\nsome \"recommeded\" sites in there, but you can just remove them once and they\nnever come back. The only thing you can't remove from the new tab page is the\nGoogle search bar, which never really bothered me. Either way, it seems like\nyou're implying that Opera will populate the new tab page with sites it\nchooses, but that's just not the case.\n\n~~~\nlaqq3\nOpera does allow you to remove the Google search bar (actually, it's not tied\nto Google).\n\nGo to browser settings -> advanced settings -> Start Page.\n\nThis is what I use\n[https://i.imgur.com/GpF0sQt.png](https://i.imgur.com/GpF0sQt.png)\n\n~~~\nModernMech\nThanks for the tip!\n\n------\njraph\nI feel like things would be easier if Firefox could be embeded in another\nbrowser just like chromium can.\n\nLet Google cripple their browser for themselves, and Mozilla provide the good\nand strong de facto browser engine.\n\n~~~\nyoz-y\nWhat is currently stopping its adoption? Iirc there were several browsers\nbased on Gecko engine. Is it drm?\n\n~~~\nsametmax\nFirefox is probably still a legacy mix of XUL, cpp and migrating to rust. I'm\npretty sure chrome is easier to adapt.\n\n~~~\nfeanaro\nXUL was replaced quite some time ago.\n\n~~~\njccalhoun\n>XBL stats update :\n\n>* 28 bindings (9.33% of original bindings)\n\n>* 10517 lines of code (21.02% of original LOCs)\n\n[https://twitter.com/mozxbl](https://twitter.com/mozxbl)\n\n~~~\nfeanaro\nYes, apparently I was wrong. Thanks for the additional data.\n\n------\nlsiebert\nI switched to Chrome years ago. Recently I switched back to Firefox.\n\nIt's changed dramatically. Speed, security, and stuff that you can't do in\nChrome, like extensions like Facebook Container.\n\nTo me this isn't about Chrome Vs Firefox though. It's about the benefits of a\nhealthy marketplace for software, and the dangers of near monopolies to\nconsumer choice.\n\n~~~\njosh2600\nThe world is changing. People are starting to care about things they didn’t\nbefore. I think the pendulum is swinging towards privacy and I like it.\n\n------\ntzury\nThis one[1] and the likes will prevent vast majority of ads, regardless of\nwhich browser you have chosen to use this morning.\n\n[1]\n[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/h...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts)\n\n~~~\nclose04\nExcept mobile browsers, arguably the most critical place where you need\nblocking to get any kind of reasonably decent experience (load times, viewable\narea, battery life, etc.).\n\nExtensions like uBlock target people who don't want to bother with editing\nhosts files and keeping them updated.\n\n~~~\nbambax\nFirefox on Android supports extensions, including uBlockO, and it works\nperfectly. It can be set as the default browser and voilà, no more ads ever.\n\n~~~\nclose04\nAgreed. My point was playing with hosts file is definitely not something easy\non a mobile, or something most people would want to bother with. Especially\nwhen it comes to adding exceptions and getting some sites to work.\n\nFor computers and Android devices Firefox and uBO are far more capable\nsolution than DNS blocking, at least when it comes to browsing.\n\n------\npartiallypro\nI don't see how Chrome's new anti-ad blocking isn't seen as anti-competitive,\nconsidering Google basically runs the ad business on non-Google sites, etc.\nSure, Facebook and Amazon also serve up ads...but Google is by far the company\nthat is hurt the most by ad blocking. Then at the same time Chrome is\nessentially blocking \"intrusive\" ads by default...and by intrusive they\nbasically mean non-Google ads that have the same CPC and CPM model Google has.\n\n~~~\nbongobongo\nIt is absolutely anti-competitive garbage, and you should be prepared to see\nmore and more of it (and increasingly anti-consumer iterations if it) until\npeople wake up and start demanding that their political leaders do something\nabout it.\n\n“Companies will regulate themselves” is a cute libertarian bedtime story.\n\n~~~\ntechntoke\nGoogle never said they were blocking ad-blockers. It was the hyperbole Firefox\ncrowd who used some post by Raymond Hill from the creator of uBlock Origin as\na reason to start another \"Switch to Firefox\" campaign.\n\nHowever, Hill admitted that adblockers aren't going away and it is just a\nproposed change in the WebRequest API to make things more akin to Safari to\nhelp adblockers operate in a standard in speedy way.\n\nMozilla on the other hand did expose a bunch of users to ads and malicious\nsites recently though when they didn't renew a certificate and didn't push out\na fix for over 24 hours in which all addons were disabled in their browser and\nthe configurations were lost as well.\n\n~~~\nqtplatypus\nCan you link to the site where he says this?\n\n~~~\ntechntoke\n[https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/chrome-may-get-faster-ad-\nblock...](https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/chrome-may-get-faster-ad-blocking-\nwhile-breaking-ublock-origin/)\n\n~~~\ngorhill\nI said:\n\n> Ad blocker uBlock Origin “can no longer exist” if a proposed change to\n> Chrome goes through.\n\nFirst, I never ever referred to uBlock Origin as an \"ad blocker\", so the\narticle is wrong there. Second, I specifically point out that uBlock Origin\ncan no longer exist, not that \"ad blockers\" can no longer exist.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway89403\nuBlock Origin isn't an ad blocker?\n\n------\nagumonkey\nI, for the first time ever, uninstalled chrome/chromium from my computers. It\npains me because I liked it overall, and firefox isn't happy with my 2009\nlaptops.\n\nMaybe chrome devs mistake will be the air gap that creates a new leader from\nanother group.\n\n~~~\nChirael\nI got a new computer recently (old one died), and because of this change I\nwill not install Chrome on the new computer. I’m planning to use Edge for\nanything Google-specific like Google Docs or Sheets, and Firefox for\neverything else.\n\nUnfortunately, my wife has a Chromebook and it’s hard to convince her that her\nvery cheap, almost-disposable laptop should be replaced with something more\nexpensive just to avoid Chrome. (And no, she did not want me to install Linux\non it - sigh.)\n\n~~~\nagumonkey\nBuy a second hand machine. I just grabbed a 3rd gen thinkpad x1 carbon for a\nneighbor and the thing is a ferrari compared to any laptop I have. 390$.\nProbably less than 300$ for a less thin model (x250~)\n\n------\nindronilbanerji\nI really don't understand why security concerned people use Google's product\nin spite of knowing that Google steals everything and compromises user's\nprivacy.\n\n~~~\nicxa\nI think you are confusing security with privacy.\n\nAs far as security goes, I trust Google way more than any other site to handle\nmy credentials properly, follow security best practices, use the highest level\nof encryption where applicable, keep servers up to date and patched faster\nthan anyone else, etc. Outside of Google+, I can't remember the last time\nthere was a major security incident at Google, when they happened, the impact\nwas minimal (contrast this to say the Apple Cloud leak which led to the\ninfamous \"fappening\", the Marriot leak, the Equifax hack, Target, etc).\nBreaches and 0-days happen, but as far as I know, Google is going to be the\nbest it gets when it comes to security.\n\nNow when it comes to my privacy, no. I don't trust Google as far as I could\nthrow them.\n\n~~~\nmistersquid\n> contrast this to say the Apple Cloud leak which led to the infamous\n> \"fappening\"\n\nThis breach was not due to missteps or problems with security on Apple’s part\n(though Apple has had issues with security lapses, notably passwordless root\nlogin on macOS which was never reported to have been exploited [0]).\n\nIn the instance of “The Fappening”, the breach that lead to the exposure of\niCloud data was “revealed to have been gained via spear phishing attacks”. [1]\n\n[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/29/macos-\nhig...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/29/macos-high-sierra-\nbug-apple-mac-unlock-blank-password-security-flaw)\n\n[1]\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud_leaks_of_celebrity_ph...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud_leaks_of_celebrity_photos)\n\n------\nSanchoPanda\nI wonder if that is sustainable as features are built on top of the new system\nand their codebase diverges further and further from chrome as a result.\n\n~~~\nralphstodomingo\nI won't worry about that. I'm guessing this effectively creates a fork of\nChromium that does not have the anti-ad blocker changes in question, which\nOpera/Brave/Edge will use instead of the main one.\n\nOn that note, are people switching over to Firefox already?\n\n~~~\nunicornporn\n> On that note, are people switching over to Firefox already?\n\nNot sure why power users ever left Firefox as their default browser when\nsurveillance tech came along. I sure didn't. Firefox was always the more\ncompetent and customizable browser. Happy to see users returning. Among other\nthings, the current \"Welcome Chromium/Chrome users!\" megathread in the Firefox\nsubreddit[1] seems to indicate there's something going on. :)\n\n[1]\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bvh4pq/welcome_chr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bvh4pq/welcome_chromiumchrome_users_check_out_the/)\n\n~~~\nfeanaro\nI never understood the appeal of Chrome over Firefox in the beginning.\n\n~~~\nnickserv\nIt was faster, especially for JavaScript heavy sites... Which is the majority\nof sites these days it seems.\n\nIt took a couple years at least for FF to catch up. I would say for most sites\nFirefox is now at least as fast while using less RAM.\n\nNow the problem is that Google web apps are tuned for Chrome, so users will\ncomplain their gmail is slow on FF.\n\n~~~\nfeanaro\n> Now the problem is that Google web apps are tuned for Chrome, so users will\n> complain their gmail is slow on FF.\n\nI've heard this argument often, but it does not really resonate with me well.\nI've always used Gmail in Firefox and never noticed it being especially slow.\nI just tried it now and emails open seemingly instantly when I click on them.\nIt feels quicker than ~100ms on average and certainly not slower than 200ms\neven for the occasional large email or hiccup. I just don't see how this can\nbe used as a reasonable metric for choosing a browser.\n\n------\nTheSeeker11\nAdGuard will not be affected by these changes -\n[https://adguard.com/en/blog/chrome-api-\ncomment.html](https://adguard.com/en/blog/chrome-api-comment.html)\n\n~~~\nslenk\nApples and oranges. AdGuard is a third party app that runs at the system\nlevel. Not the same thing.\n\n------\npaulcarroty\nThe main question is _how long_ they will do it. Now it's easy, but google can\nmove the locker deeply inside. If anti-ad-blocker changes will needs 1-2mb\npatches every release, they will just give up fast.\n\n------\nfourier_mode\nMy worry is that because Chrome has become a standard of web-browsing so even\nafter such decisions taken by Google, people would not switch to other(better)\noptions.\n\n------\nnathanasmith\nI looked around but I can't figure out if this affects extensions like\nTampermonkey. If not, writing an adblock script for that seems like an\nalternative.\n\n------\ncfarm\nWhen Chrome did this they quickly highlighted how much control they have over\nwhat people view. Privacy focused open browsers will gain marketshare because\nof it.\n\n~~~\ntechntoke\nWhat did Chrome do exactly? Cause they never said they were disabling ad-\nblocker extensions. That was the grapevine effect from the Firefox crowd.\n\n~~~\ncfarm\nI was referring to this, but it looks like there was an update to the article\nsaying that it might not block everything\n[https://www.tomsguide.com/us/chrome-block-ad-\nblockers,news-3...](https://www.tomsguide.com/us/chrome-block-ad-\nblockers,news-30206.html)\n\n------\nycombonator\nWhat about Microsoft Edge Chromium ?\n\n------\nnerd7473\nGood news :D\n\n------\nla_barba\nIf you don't control the browser you downloaded, do you control the OS you\nchose to install? Can Microsoft ban Google Chrome from even running on their\nplatform? Where does the 'user gets to decide' line end and the 'vendor knows\nbest' line begin?\n\n------\njackcosgrove\nSo not only is Google introducing this change into the Chromium codebase, but\nit sounds like they aren't putting it behind a Chrome-only compiler flag. And\nif you're satisfied with Chrome as-is then too bad because the GoogleUpdater\nwill automatically update Chrome and is harder to kill than a cockroach, and\nChrome will give you an annoying popup 80-some days after that version's build\ndate telling you to upgrade Chrome even if you have managed to block\nGoogleUpdater.\n\n------\nEugeneOZ\nTried Opera on Mac OS - half of toggles on the Settings page is not rendered -\n\"Pref not found for element SETTINGS-TOGGLE-BUTTON in SETTINGS-APPEARANCE-\nPAG\". It was so epic trash - removed instantly. They obviously don't test it\non Mac OS.\n\nTried Vivaldi - render sites with errors (some images missing). 0 plugins\ninstalled. Not acceptable, removed.\n\nBrave - I really hate person who run this project and how he is trying to sell\nhis product by \"if you hate google as much as me, use Brave\", while using\nChromium.\n\nSo, for now I don't see any Chromium-based alternative.\n\n~~~\npedrocx486\nEdge Chromium maybe? I've been using it and have no complaints...\n\n~~~\nEugeneOZ\nYeah, testing it right now :) Thanks for the reminder - it's easy to forget MS\nhas a browser for Mac :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGames Are Not Startups - danso\nhttp://gamasutra.com/blogs/RobLockhart/20131014/202310/Games_Are_Not_Startups.php\n\n======\nrobabbott\nThe title of this article doesn't seem to match it's content. This feels like\na rant by a game designer about games developed by non-game designers.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCarbonCalculated - Platform, Apps & API - Darraghb\nhttp://www.carboncalculated.com/\n\n======\nDarraghb\nCarbonCalculated is a suite of industry specific web tools to help\norganisations accurately measure carbon footprint.\n\nWe believe that carbon data should be freely available. We have opened up our\nlarge database, so all the sources and formulas are available via our browser.\n\nOur API allows developers to leverage our datasets without worrying about\ncomplex CO2 calculations. Access is available on request.\n\nAny feedback is greatly appreciated ;-)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHidden method of reading revealed - aston\nhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6983176.stm\n\n======\nwhacked_new\nGlad to see this posted here.\n\nKim Peek ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek> ) supposedly reads two\npages at the same time, left page with left eye, right page with right.\n\nI hope there is some followup study on split-brain patients.\n\n------\nFatBastard\nThey need to study the difference between familiar and unfamiliar words. They\nprobably note this in the conclusion of the actual paper. I speculate that\nunambiguous and familiar words are recognized whole (in the same way a chess\nmaster recognizes the pattern of the whole board), and kids and adults finding\na new or ambiguous word look at each letter and pause there to figure it out\n(like a chess novice looks at each piece and can only anticipate the next\nmove). I hope this work isn't used as ammunition in the whole word vs\nphonetics holy war.\n\n------\nsoundsop\nThe article doesn't really explain how reading occurs, although perhaps the\noriginal paper does. All the article says is that your eyes sometimes look at\ndifferent spots.\n\n------\nahsonwardak\nI've also heard that a classic way for speed-reading is to then focus on the\nmiddle of each line of test. This minimizes eye movement and relies on your\nperipheral vision to read faster.\n\n~~~\nwhacked_new\nMost speed reading courses are based on theories as solid as air. Peripheral\nvision does matter in comprehension, but that doesn't make them suited for the\nbulk of information processing, let alone rely on them. When you actually take\nin information from the periphery you usually piece it together from imperfect\ncues, which suffices for waffly material but won't work if you're reading a\ntextbook. Duh, you say, but the amazing courses will tell you it works for\neverything, and people believe it!\n\nThe read-between-the-line thing, AFAIK, is just supposed to make your eyes\nbacktrack less, which lessens fixations. More fixations = slower reading; it\ndoesn't matter where you place your eyes.\n\n------\nrachel\nI wonder if dyslexics focus both eyes on one letter at a time.\n\n~~~\naston\nI read a paper that talked about the difference between dyslexic reading and\nnormal reading. The researchers found that dyslexic people actually see too\nmuch at once and that by forcing them to focus on a smaller region of text\n(by, for example, having them read through a small hole in a piece of paper),\nthey had much better performance. With consistent drills, they could even read\nwithout the mask.\n\nedit: <http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.803/pdf/geiger1992.pdf>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLess then 48 Hours until The TPP Vote - fur0n\nhttps://openmedia.org/expression?src=156476\n\n======\nxxxmadraxxx\nDear America.\n\nTHEN != THAN\n\nThank you for your attention.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nClojure at BackType - omakase\nhttp://sna-projects.com/blog/2010/11/clojure-at-backtype/\n\n======\nmark_l_watson\nGreat talk! I did a quick one-weekend evaluation of Cascalog a few months ago;\nI wish I could have first watched this video as a good introduction.\n\n~~~\nogrisel\nGreat talk indeed. Note that most (all?) the material covered in the talk is\navailable from the tutorials referenced on the README of the project on\ngithub: <http://github.com/nathanmarz/cascalog>\n\nAnd the demo project: <http://github.com/nathanmarz/cascalog-demo>\n\n------\ntav\nIt's worth noting that the video/talk also provides a fairly good crash course\non Clojure.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApple told some Apple TV+ show developers not to anger China - jmsflknr\nhttps://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/apple-china-tv-protesters-hong-kong-tim-cook\n======\nmokash\nApple are beholden to China. Sure, China is a huge market for them but I think\nthe bigger issue is manufacturing: if they piss China off they won’t have\nanything to sell, anywhere! I’m sure Apple execs know this and I hope they’re\nquickly planning to reduce, if not remove this dependency.\n\n~~~\nchrischen\nChinese people are also beholden to China (the government). It may be a\npolitical game to you, but trying to destabilize the government would have\nserious consequences to the livelihoods of the people there, just because some\npolicies (that don’t affect you) don’t agree with your world view.\n\nEven though there are kinks in their regime, for the most part they’ve lifted\nhundreds or millions out of poverty. Imagine if the U.S. had a massive foreign\npower prodding it during the early years of slavery, manifest destiny (the\njustification for eradicating the Native Americans), racism, drug war,\nVietnam, and mass incarceration.\n\nYes, they have a big brother-style regime, but they are also capable of\nsorting out their own political issues. And if not, they’ll reap the\nconsequences without you having to do it form them.\n\nIf you really believe in democracy, then trying to influence their politics\nfrom afar is ultimately going to be far-less democratic than they influencing\ntheir own politics. I understand they don't have directly elections or a\nmulti-party system, but that does not mean there is not opinion sharing in\npolicy decisions, or intra-party elections. In a representative form of\ngovernment direct-elections are not really a thing anyways.\n\nIf you truly support democracy, the last thing you would do is to try to\ninfluence the policies of another people. That would be robbing them of their\nself-determinacy, even if it is to prevent them from robbing themselves of it.\n\n~~~\nksec\nThat is very much a Mainland Chinese World view, which is accurate to the\npoint of only to Mainland Chinese people, and no offence intended.\n\n>they’ve lifted hundreds or millions out of poverty\n\nAnd they did, by first and foremost down to joining WTO.\n\nOnce this government starts ( and has already done so ) influence or force\nRest of the world to cooperate or kowtowing to their own self interest, which\nfundamentally undermines everyone else basic value and principles, then it is\nno longer their _own_ policy and issues.\n\nAnd that is about as civilised as I can put it.\n\n~~~\nchrischen\n> That is very much a Mainland Chinese World view, which is accurate to the\n> point of only to Mainland Chinese people, and no offence intended.\n\nYes because this is a Mainland issue. So only Mainland opinions are\nlegitimate. They enact their policies with their best interests in mind,\nhowever misguided it may be because a foreigner can only enact policies with\ntheir own interests in mind, however well-guided they may be. A white person\nprobably shouldn’t go into a black community to tell them how they should run\nthings for their best interests.\n\nThe issue isn’t that they are doing something right or wrong—all governments\nwill enact policies that are disagreeable... the US included (in the case of\nEdward Snowden). The issue is that to the Chinese they will never take the\nprotests of foreigners seriously because foreigners will have their own\ninterests in mind, not to mention are generally poorly educated about\n_Chinese_ policy decisions in general.\n\nTrying to influence policy from afar is simply a form of taxation without\nrepresentation. A foreigner really should have no say in the policy decisions\nof afar because 1) they do not have to suffer the consequences of the\npolicies, 2) they cannot understand the experiences leading to such policy\ndecisions and 3) as a result of 1 and 2 they will always have _their own_\ninterests in mind rather than those or their constituents. Imagine a product\nmanager in the US trying to manage a product built by a team of engineers in\nChina for the Chinese market. He’ll sure fail because he will have no grasp pf\nthe product in practice being used over there, and for that reason anyone that\ndetached from something should not be trying to exert influence for their own\ninterests.\n\nA poor inner city black family may have a whole different set of daily\nproblems than a rich white suburban family. Imagine if the white family\nadmonishes the black family because their kids are failing school or dealing\ndrugs. In absolute terms dealing drugs is wrong, illegal, and failing school\nmay be a sign of bad parenting, but in reality the needs and priorities of the\nblack family are on a completely different level from the white family.\n\nDisenfranchising the Chineses’ right to self-govern because of your limited\nframe of reference that they are _doing it wrong_ is myopic. Waging political\nand ideological war against them because they do things differently is the\ntrue crime. You should criticize their bad policies by pointing out why they\nare bad, not by disenfranchising and belittling the voice of the rest of the\npopulation.\n\n~~~\ntoxik\nYou talk a big talk about right and wrong, but it’s clear to everyone that the\nCCP is intent on not honoring the agreement that HK be allowed to elect their\nown leader.\n\nThat’s what this is about: tyranny versus freedom. It’s disingenuous and\nfrankly racist to compare this struggle to what a poor family lives through,\nand then conflating that with their skin color. I’m sure there are legitimate\nconcerns with regards to the justice for minorities, but your argument is that\nthat’s only the concern of black people? No. Your argument is a very typical\nCCP stance that the West best keep out of their dealings. No, I say, let’s\nstand for freedom and democracy when it is truly being attacked.\n\n------\nReason077\nI see lots of trailers for upcoming Apple TV+ shows that look vaguely\ninteresting, but then I remind myself that it’s Apple and they’d never risk\ndoing anything even remotely edgy, racy, subversive or controversial.\n\nDon’t want to risk offending someone and harming the brand and it’s squeaky-\nclean, inoffensive values!\n\n~~~\nSimon_says\nThey shouldn’t even be in the content creation business. But shareholders\ndemand their 10% growth every year.\n\niTunes was great, but can you imagine Apple-made music?\n\n~~~\nlayoutIfNeeded\nU2 but with rounded corners!\n\n~~~\ndictum\nSo, U2 from _All That You Can 't Leave Behind_ onwards?\n\n------\nthesquib\nApple used to say \"Think Different\" \\- perhaps allowing individuality and\ncreativity. Overwhelmingly, it now feels like they want us all to think in the\nsame Apple ordained way.\n\n------\nfoogazi\nWhat I don’t understand is how the US accepts doing business with China,\nallowing tourist and student visas for a country that can just block US\ncompanies from doing business there without due process\n\nThe moment the CCP tried to influence a US company the US should have\nresponded in kind - open the market or face tariffs\n\n~~~\npas\nExactly. Some people probably knew well before 2012, but since the publication\nof Why Nations Fail it should be more common knowledge that doing business\nwith an extractive political system makes very little difference in their\nchance of becoming inclusive. (A better economy does not translate into better\npolitics.)\n\nIt's upon other political systems to ratchet open these totalitarianist\nsystems.\n\n------\nthesquib\n1\\. American companies: don't piss off China. 2\\. American companies: make\nmore money than ever before from China. 3\\. China now controls those companies\neven without holding majority shares. 4\\. ...\n\n------\nNicoJuicy\nSo, Apple has become China's bitch or was it already?\n\nThanks for increasing the influence of authoritarian regimes in our Western\nworld.\n\nLast time I checked, freedom of speech is a human right.\n\nThanks for not defending it.\n\nWith a gay ceo on top ( with all respect, it means they should better\nrespect/understand Western values and freedom than other companies), these\nactions make clear that privacy and security are not on top of apple's list as\nthey claim. It's profits and nothing else. They just pack innovation to have\nanother POV and privacy and security was the easy tactic.\n\nScrew you, crApple.\n\n------\nnotadoc\nRemember when the US entertainment industry was considered part of American\nsoft power? I guess that is now Chinese soft power?\n\n------\nngcc_hk\nAs said hk is the frontier. You can’t fight the dragon who has such a large\nmarket and production empire. You can’t. We know.\n\nWe fight still.\n\nNot because we see hope. But we fight may be we can have hope. Or our kids. Or\nour grand. Or at least we can tell them we do not run like our father and\ngrands. We stay and fight.\n\n------\nnewscracker\n> _“Given how authentically good Apple is at protecting user privacy, it 's\n> very dismaying to see it doing the wrong thing in other areas, especially\n> its relationship with the [Chinese Communist Party],” one former Apple\n> employee told BuzzFeed News._\n\nApple seriously needs to stop knee jerk reactions and pause to think about the\nvalues its been trumpeting. Its actions seem to portray a company that will\nsay things that are favorable to it in the market. I don’t believe that to be\nthe case in every instance with Apple, but soon these actions will drown out\nthe positives it has done on its own initiative.\n\nThe sooner Apple moves manufacturing out of China, the better for it and\nothers. There are many other markets it can make money in.\n\n~~~\nmb_72\nI'm not sure it's realistic for many or any countries to move manufacturing\nout of China. Say assembly is moved out of China, they still need to source\nthe parts, and how far do you go with this? To the point where Apple is\nmaking, in their own factories, every resistor, capacitor, logic IC, ribbon\nconnector, PCB etc? This would seem to require a reversal of the changes in\nmanufacturing that have occurred over recent decades in a much shorter period\nof time.\n\nI am no fan of China - in the news recently a couple of our politicians have\nbeen called out as having a 'cold war mentality' just because they pointed out\nthere differences between Australian and Chinese values - but I have to keep\nusing Apple devices to develop and support software for clients. Likewise, I\nbet no matter what Apple does there will be others who stick with them as a\nmatter of commercial reality. 'Commercial reality' has been and will continue\nto be China's way to be a mandatory part of world events.\n\n~~~\ntooltalk\nWhy is not realistic? Just look at Samsung's Vietnam operation -- there are\nnow over 200 suppliers who relocated and set up shops in Vietnam. There are\nalso now at least dozens of domestic suppliers and contractors supplying parts\nfor Samsung. Samsung is the largest producer of smartphones in the world and\nmost of their mobile devices now come from Vietnam, contrary to Tim Apple's\nridiculous claim that no large scale electronic production is possible outside\nChina.\n\n~~~\nmb_72\nHow many of those basic components still are manufactured in China? My\nargument was that it's impossible to remove China completely from the supply\nand manufacturing chain, not that it's impossible to move 'production' outside\nof China.\n\n~~~\ntooltalk\nI'm guessing probably none today. The smartphone business is heavily\ncommodified at this point and there is no \"basic components\" that be made\nexclusively only in China. As I noted earlier in my comment, there are over\n200 suppliers and subcontractors who set up shops and make basic parts for\nSamsung in Vietnam. Further, none of the \"key\" components such as AP, memory,\nstorage, wireless radio, display, or glass, is made in China. Lastly,\nconsidering South Korea's recent brouhaha over THAAD, no South Korean company\nwants any further economic risk from political conflict with China and have\nbeen severing their dependency on Chinese suppliers last two years.\n\n~~~\nmb_72\nThank you for the extra information, looks like my info and hence opinion is\nnot up-to-date.\n\n------\nrosege\n\"anyone who would betray their ideals just to make money in China isn't worth\na lick of spit.\" \\- Stan South Park\n\n~~~\ncapableweb\nHow is Apple betraying their ideals here? The entire point of Apple as a for-\nprofit company is to earn a profit. They are doing what they are saying is the\nmost important for them. Big surprise?\n\nSeems many Americans think that companies somehow have to have a moral or\nsomething. The explicit purpose of setting up a for-profit company is to make\nit explicit that the company is out after earning a profit.\n\nIf there is a choice between two options, and one will lead to less profit,\nthe choice is obvious to them. If you think Apple is \"for encryption\" because\nthey are just the good guys, you're missing the picture of why a company\nexists in the first place.\n\n~~~\nSwenrekcah\nIf you are content with letting any company or executive off the hook with\neverything because “the purpose of a corporation is to increase shareholder\nvalue” then you have given up on democratic society.\n\n~~~\ncapableweb\nI'm not content with that, but people seems to have the wrong expectations\nabout what a for-profit is all about. Of course, there are ways to get profit\nthat are illegal, but agreeing to self-censor (or be censored) by states is up\nto the companies. If it gives them more money, you can't be shocked when they\nchose that way.\n\nI would only put trust in organizations who are not for-profit companies if\nit's for important things. I couldn't care less about food-delivery services\nfor middle-class and above, but for hospitals, prisons, water, electricity and\nso on, you can't have (well, you can [look at the US], but usually doesn't\nturn out great for the people, only the stakeholders) for-profit companies\nrunning them as the incentives are all misaligned.\n\n~~~\nsemiotagonal\nIf Apple was transparently a profit-at-all-costs operation you'd have a point,\nbut if you look at their advertisements you'll see them invoking humanistic\nvalues constantly. They should, at the very least, be criticized for\nhypocrisy.\n\n~~~\ncapableweb\n\"if you look at their advertisements you'll see them invoking humanistic\nvalues constantly\"\n\nThe reason companies do this is not to be a friendly company in general and\ncare about the world and it's people. If that was the point, they would have\ncreated a non-profit or similar. The criticism of hypocrisy should come when\nthey make those ads instead.\n\nLook at the Activision/Blizzard situation where a player was banned for\nspeaking for a cause they believe in, they release different statements in\ndifferent countries (one pro-China in China and one not pro-China in the US),\nand applies different rules in different cases where it makes sense for the\nmarket. In China, shouldn't speak about freedom for Hong-Kong and in the US,\nit's important you support LGBT. The company will reflect that in their\nadvertisement, where they want people to buy their products.\n\n~~~\nsemiotagonal\nAnd when they're caught lying, they should be criticized and penalized in the\nmarketplace.\n\n------\ngigatexal\nEvery world power worth the title forces trading partners to treat it like a\ndelicate flower or otherwise lose the opportunity to trade and even though the\nUS is the current largest economy in the world China is on track to surpass it\nso US companies have almost no choice but to appease the heavy-handed Chinese\ngovernment.\n\n~~~\nthrow_m239339\n> Every world power worth the title forces trading partners to treat it like a\n> delicate flower or otherwise lose the opportunity to trade and even though\n> the US is the current largest economy in the world China is on track to\n> surpass it so US companies have almost no choice but to appease the heavy-\n> handed Chinese government.\n\nYes, but what China does is go one step further by making extremely clear that\nWestern corporations who want to do business with China don't disparage the\nChinese government publicly, don't talk about Tibet, don't call Taiwan a free\ncountry...\n\nAnd every company has the choice, it's just that they chose to abide by\nChinese rules, that's all.\n\nI mean the bill always comes due, always. For 30+ years the west has depended\non China to produce consumer grade products such has high tech, toys, and what\nnot, looking the other way when it comes to human rights, and now people are\ncomplaining that a bloody dictatorship behaves like one? When trade agreements\nwere signed, why did no other world power imposed ethical conditions on China?\nBecause building our stuff in a bloody dictatorship to drive down cost is what\nall the west wanted, that's all.\n\nIt's a bit easy to wake up 30+ years later and act all surprised that there\nare political consequences to this.\n\nLook at Hollywood, the biggest propaganda tool in the world, bending over\nbackward not to offend China because of their cinema market. All these\n\"actors/activists\" so vocal about everything, you never hear them talking\nabout China curiously, That's the bill I was talking about earlier. Now they\nwork for China.\n\n~~~\nDiogenesKynikos\nThe blindspot most people have here towards atrocities committed by Western\ngovernments is really striking. The United States regularly invades other\ncountries (causing hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq, destroying Libya),\narmed Sunni extremists in Syria, backs the Saudi dictatorship and the Israeli\noccupation, is economically strangling Iran and Venezuela, ran a global\nabduction and torture operation, still runs a global assassination program,\nand spies on the communications of billions of people around the world. Yet\nsuddenly, everyone is up in arms about China as the threat to the world that\nmust be stopped. This sudden paranoia just happens to coincide with American\nforeign policy interests - preventing the rise of a challenge to American\nhegemony.\n\nA couple months ago it was Russia. Now it's China. In a year from now, it will\nbe the next country it's convenient to US foreign policy to hate.\n\n~~~\ngigatexal\nI'm not at all thinking that the US is exempt from atrocities of foreign\npolicy from regime change to unfounded wars. The one distinction that exists\nis that elected officials are the ones that carry these things out in the US\nsuch that in some way all Americans carry the burden of those actions, in\nChina, not so much. Xi has taken steps to be leader for his lifetime; China is\ncarrying out mass camps where Uighurs are being systematically targeted for\ntheir religion among other things. Being an American, I know I can be blind to\nmy government's policies and how they affect other nations, I mean, we use the\nfact that the US dollar is the world reserve currency such that it can use the\npower of the US Treasury to wield the banking system to shut down nation\nbanks. Great power, much responsibility and all that.\n\n------\nnoah-kun\nAmerican films often use military assets and personal, and give the military\nfinal cut on the films. They follow rules set by the navy, Air Force, etc to\nportray their personnel and decision making in a certain, glorifying way. This\nprogram has been rampant in US film, but it's arguably increased in it's\nofferings to film makers; more money, more sets, more extras--and more\ndemands. Film franchises work with U.S. forces to produce recruitment material\nusing the film's IP, story, actors and brand.\n\nBlack Mirror, from memory, season 3 episode 5(?), a soldier fights a non-human\nenemy that is simply hiding from them. [Spoiler ahead] Turns out, military\nmanipulation of the soldier's brain causes him to see non-humans where there\nare actually helpless humans.\n\nIndependence Day 2 lent their story, one of fighting alien invasion, to US\narmed forces recruitment videos. Actors gave mock interviews about their brave\nchildren who fought the aliens, and viewers were encouraged to join the REAL\narmed forces to be like the fictional ones fighting the fictional enemy.\n\nThis scratches the surface of what I mean to compare Cook's alleged requests\nto. Apple, without military money, asked writers to be sensitive of another\nnation. Their motive: a wider audience and more subscribers and customers.\nHeinous and selfish--sure, why not--but a far cry from recruiting folks to\ndump napalm on villages or use Iraqi farmers as target practice.\n\nAs a freaking media company, producers and other executives ask for content\nand define the market in which they want to address. It sounds like that's all\nApple's really done. And if they've actually made an effort to curb US\npropaganda about China, then, even better. But I think it's more about\nexpanding to a very promising market.\n\n~~~\nizacus\nYeah, the fact that any appearance of US military assets requires Pentagon to\napprove the script means that Hollwood is unable to record a movie depicting\nmodern US millitary in any critical or non-heroic manner. Is you look at the\nrecords, you can see that the requirements are very strict, to the point where\nmany movies aren't even allowed to depict US millitary losing in larger combat\noperations.\n\nThis obviously shifts the tone of any war movie to the point where we could\nalmost call it propaganda. How can movies be true to history if they're not\nallowed to ever show a major player in a bad light?\n\n~~~\nspeedplane\n> Yeah, the fact that any appearance of US military assets requires Pentagon\n> to approve the script means that Hollwood is unable to record a movie\n> depicting modern US millitary in any critical or non-heroic manner.\n\nApocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon ... There are probably more movies\ncritical of war than promoting it. Actually, the general theme is to display\nthe senseless of war than to glorify it. To say hollywood is in the pocket of\nthe pentagon is to ignore most of its history.\n\nChina on the other hand, won't approve a movie if winnie the pooh appears in\nit.\n\n~~~\nizacus\nYes, movies about old operations can be made because you can get/mock hardware\nwithout military approval. But note how those are all more than 50 years in\nthe past.\n\nAnd we didn't even get to censorship of any sexual content, where depictions\nof human bodies make sure that US will censor it.\n\nIt's really hard to be sympathetic to this US hand-wringing where we've had\nour own content censored constantly under conservative American value system\non American platforms.\n\n~~~\nintended\nThis is a spurious comparison- at the end of the day if you wanted to make a\nmovie or Documentary denouncing the army- you can in america.\n\nYou can’t in China.\n\nThe act of NOT giving resources and bases to film makers is not censorship.\n\n~~~\nizacus\nIt doesn't matter if something is forbidden by directly via law or via\nindirect pressure of money. The result isn't all that different.\n\n~~~\nintended\nSince The results are very different, in practice and observable reality, I\nwould have to say that the statement is wrong.\n\nFor all the indirect pressure, anti war movies do exist as do movies that\nchallenge American systems and narratives of superiority - from within their\nown country.\n\nDissent is enshrined as a part of existence in america.\n\nIn China it is anathema, and they explicitly and implicitly act to maintain\nthat strength.\n\nHence the whole point of the article - it’s not america which is asking Apple\nto take down apps because they hurt China’s image, and it’s not America\ntelling the NBA to correct its errors.\n\nWhen people kneeled in america during football games, or highlighted their\nprotest, it was handled publicly and all sides were audible. political tribes\nfought over the act on the air waves- but that’s something that doesn’t happen\nin China at all; No one was whisked away to a re-education camp.\n\n------\nexabrial\nApple: We're totally LGBTQ friendly!\n\nAlso Apple: We make all of our products in a country that brutally oppresses\nthese people!\n\n~~~\ntachyonbeam\nI got the impression Chinese people didn't really have as much of an issue\nwith LGBTQ people as other cultures, because they don't have as much religious\nhangups as people from a christian background. Is that inaccurate? I know the\nChinese government suppresses speech it doesn't like, but is it actively doing\nthings against LGBTQ people? Honest question.\n\n~~~\njustin66\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_China)\n\n------\npraptak\nThis makes me want to anger China. What would be the best way to go about it\nfor an individual person?\n\n~~~\nrahidz\nAs one person? I'd go with art and/or memes. Winnie the Pooh is verboten in\nChina because one person made a comparison of Xi to Winnie and it took off. I\nknow some people are doing this with Overwatch (creating art and memes of Mei\nsupporting the Hong Kong protests) with the idea of getting Overwatch banned\nin China as well.\n\n~~~\n52-6F-62\nWinnie is a Canadian-British treasure and it makes me a little disappointed\nthat he gets to be associated with someone like Xi. I do understand that it\nundermines the strong-arm image, but still...\n\n------\nRazengan\nThis whole situation is depressing.\n\nHere's a list of companies that have bent over for Chinese censorship\nrequests:\n\n[https://github.com/caffeine-\noverload/bandinchina](https://github.com/caffeine-overload/bandinchina)\n\nYou can add any others that you know of.\n\nThis is what it must have felt like for a sane person watching the Nazis\ncoming into power.\n\n~~~\nim3w1l\nI think you should sort them according to importance or categorize them.\nOtherwise seeing a too long list may lead to outrage fatigue.\n\n------\ncaublestone\nWhy does the culture that becomes outraged by offending people’s identity also\nbecome outraged by China being offended?\n\n------\nanon9001\nWhy is this such a big deal? If companies can buy product placements in TV\nshows, I don't see why China can't buy censorship.\n\nApple, the NBA, Google, and Blizzard are all trying to make money. Somehow\nshilling for Pepsi is widely accepted, but shilling for China is too far?\n\n~~~\nausthrow743\n>Somehow shilling for Pepsi is widely accepted, but shilling for China is too\nfar?\n\nUhh yes? That's a completely valid line of acceptance for people to have. One\nof those things harvests organs out of people in concentration camps. How is\nthis confusing?\n\n~~~\nsadris\nThey're not harvesting organs. Criminals who are executed have their organs\nnot go to waste in a coffin.\n\nIt's not like they're taking everyone's second kidney.\n\n~~~\nchillacy\nI think it's problematic because it creates perverse incentives to make more\ncriminals. And there are religious / moral concerns about taking parts of your\nbody after you die without consent.\n\nBut I also understand that the biggest objections are the religious / moral\nones, and I don't know maybe that doesn't bother people as much in China?\n\n~~~\nFireBeyond\n> I think it's problematic because it creates perverse incentives to make more\n> criminals.\n\nWe have this issue all over the US. Private prison contracts often have a\n\"minimum filled cell\" clause that causes penalties to the city/county/state if\nthere are too _few_ people incarcerated.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFrench researcher treated 1000 virus patients with 99.3% success rate - EGreg\nhttps://techstartups.com/2020/04/06/french-researcher-dr-didier-raoult-has-now-treated-1000-coronavirus-patient-with-99-3-success-rate/\n======\ndboreham\nActually it says there was a 0.7% death rate in the sample and some patients\nare still in hospital.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nScientists Claim New State of Matter Created - dpurp\nhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090729/sc_livescience/scientistsclaimnewstateofmattercreated\n======\ntokenadult\nEarlier Hacker News thread on same press release:\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=727824>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Control Group Is Out of Control - nbouscal\nhttp://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/\n======\ntokenadult\nThis is a very interesting review of some of the most challenging published\nliterature on the reliability of psychological science. The author's point is\ncorrect that parapsychology (ESP and the like) basically has no prior\nplausibility. Yet a researcher who has the chops to do reliable research,\nDaryl J. Bem, has conducted \"experiments\" that appear to show that some human\nexperimental subjects can see into the future. As the article says, \"Bem\ndefinitely picked up a signal. The only question is whether it’s a signal of\npsi, or a signal of poor experimental technique.\" Please read this submission\nfrom beginning to end and follow the links to see more of the background.\n\nI had the opportunity to discuss the original Bem paper on psi in the journal\nclub I regularly participate in. The conclusion is plainly wrong, but the\nerror in procedure is subtle and it took a while for response papers to come\nout about his initial finding. (And everyone agrees that Bem is a smart man,\nso the subtle errors are all the more dismaying.) If Bem can't design\nexperiments carefully, who can?\n\nAFTER EDIT TO RESPOND TO QUESTIONS IN ANOTHER SUBTHREAD HERE:\n\nAnother participant is asking why parapsychology has poor prior plausibility.\nParapsychology is a rather recent discipline, always with sloppy experimental\npractices,[1] and meanwhile the disciplines of physics and medicine are much\nolder. The study of how information is transmitted by electromagnetic\nradiation and how the human body perceives sensations is incompatible with\nsupposed abilities like ESP, and completely incompatible with seeing into the\nfuture in the manner described by Bem. Extraordinary claims require\nextraordinary evidence. A million dollars says that psychic claims are\nbogus,[2] and so far no one has won a million dollars by proving that\nproposition wrong.\n\n[1]\n[http://www.skepdic.com/projectalpha.html](http://www.skepdic.com/projectalpha.html)\n\n[2]\n[http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html](http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html)\n\n~~~\nrainmaking\nThere are plenty of reasons the $1M might have not found a psychic new owner\nyet.\n\n(1) Randi is condescending and downright nasty to people who identify as\npsychics. $1M might not be worth being in his presence, let alone scrutinized\nby him.\n\n(2) Randi has a lot invested in being right, so the tests could be downright\nrigged\n\n(3) Many psychics propose all humans radiate quasi-electromagnetic energy, and\ntheir power comes from consciously directing it. Randi could therefore be\nunintentionally interfering.\n\n(4) The test could be inadequate to describe the psychic phenomenon. For\nexample, the psychic could be skilled at generating a particularly strong\nplacebo effect, which would get written off regardless.\n\n(5) The results might dismissed because they would invalidate too many\nexisting theories, all of which have been constructed on the assumption that\npsi does not exist. A frequently accepted circular argument.\n\nI'm not saying any of these explanations are true, but I am saying that no one\nknows either way.\n\n~~~\ncodeflo\nJust one point:\n\n> (3) Many psychics propose all humans radiate quasi-electromagnetic energy,\n> and their power comes from consciously directing it. Randi could therefore\n> be unintentionally interfering.\n\nIf they really believe that's the case, then they should make a different\nmillion dollar claim: that they can remotely detect Randi's presence or\nabsence in the monitoring room by observing whether or not their psychic\npowers are currently working. It's very easy to imagine a test protocol for\nthat.\n\nOf course, one can invent an even more elaborate effect that would explain why\n_that_ test also wouldn't work, and then I can design a test for this new\nidea, ad infinitum.\n\n~~~\najcarpy2005\nI can't speak of psychic energy as it's not well-defined but if anyone is\ninterested in some interesting science on radiation emitted by humans, here\nare two good studies:\n\n[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1767800](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1767800)\n\n[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23865304](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23865304)\n\n------\nbtilly\nIt was an interesting read, but the author showed absolutely no clue why pre-\nregistration was important. The point is to avoid selection bias. If the same\nexact study is done 100 times, but only the best 50 results get included in\nyour study, a meta analysis of those results is going to show a strong\nstatistical bias. No amount of waving around the word \"Bayesian\" can fix this\n- the only way to fix it is pre-registration of honest results.\n\nWhy am I so certain of this? Because of the following passage:\n\n _By my count, Bem follows all of the commandments except [6] and [10]. He\napologizes for not using pre-registration, but says it’s okay because the\nstudies were exact replications of a previous study that makes it impossible\nfor an unsavory researcher to change the parameters halfway through and does\npretty much the same thing._\n\nBut that misses the whole point. Whether the studies had the same or different\nparameters is irrelevant - the fact that you see the ones that worked out and\ndon't see the ones that didn't is the only thing that matters. And the fact\nthat the meta analysis didn't get this right makes the output statistical\ngarbage. No further discussion needed.\n\n~~~\ngwern\n> It was an interesting read, but the author showed absolutely no clue why\n> pre-registration was important. The point is to avoid selection bias.\n\nYou've missed his fundamental point: the mechanisms he listed like pre-\nregistration are excellent for defending against plucking signal out of random\nsampling error. They do nothing for when you are investigating a real effect\nwhich is not what you think you are investigating: the point of the spooky\nstudies listed is that in the psi experiments, there is still a signal of\n_something_. We don't think it's actual psi in the sense of supernatural\nactivity, but the alternate explanations seem almost as bizarre and have\nalmost as painful implications.\n\n~~~\nbtilly\nI did not miss his fundamental point. I was making a different fundamental\npoint about why I view virtually every meta-analysis out there to be even more\nsuspect than regular research.\n\nIt was the point which is most commonly pointed out by Randi et al, but which\nwould be most worrisome for the author because it throws into serious question\nthe kind of research that he thinks should be most reliable.\n\n~~~\ngwern\n> I did not miss his fundamental point. I was making a different fundamental\n> point about why I view virtually every meta-analysis out there to be even\n> more suspect than regular research.\n\nIt certainly sounded like you missed it, but regardless: meta-analysis is\nwell-aware of the selection issue. Dealing with that is half the point of\nmeta-analytic techniques - p-curves, heterogeneity, funnel plots, the binomial\ntest, trim-and-fill, etc. Publication bias is an issue which has been\nrepeatedly quantified, and these techniques work reasonably well: when meta-\nanalyses are compared to very large RCTs where selection issues are not a\nconcern, the agreement is pretty good (confidence intervals are blown a bit\nmore than they should be, but not horribly so). So you're either ignoring OP's\nvery interesting points or you're tendentiously overrating an issue. Neither\nis a worthwhile comment.\n\n------\ntomp\nFrom _A Meta-Analysis of 90 Experiments on the Anomalous Anticipation of\nRandom Future Events_ [1]:\n\n> [...] a meta-analysis of 90 experiments from 33 laboratories in 14 different\n> countries which yielded an overall positive effect in excess of 6 sigma with\n> an effect size (Hedges’ g) of 0.09, combined z = 6.33, p = 1.2 × 10-10. A\n> Bayesian analysis yielded a Bayes Factor of 7.4 × 10-9, greatly exceeding\n> the criterion value of 100 for \"decisive evidence\" in favor of the\n> experimental hypothesis (Jeffries, 1961). [...] The number of potentially\n> unretrieved experiments averaging a null effect that would be required to\n> reduce the overall effect size to a trivial value was conservatively\n> calculated to be 520. An analysis of p values across experiments implies\n> that the results were not a product of \"p-hacking,\" [...].\n\n[1]\n[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2423692](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2423692)\n\n~~~\nrobinh\nSo... I know next to nothing about parapsychology itself, but have seen a lot\nof the drama around it, and I just have to ask: is it not intellectually\ndishonest to call something the 'control group of science' when their results\noverwhelmingly support the hypothesis? I have a hard time seeing how this is\ndifferent from any other form of science denialism. \"We don't like the results\nbecause they clash with our preconceived notions of how the universe works so\nwe made up this thing to ignore your evidence\"? That's hardly a valid\ncomplaint. Basically, on what grounds can people claim one field to be\nnonsense (e.g. calling parapsychology the control group of science) but not\nothers? Can someone explain this to me?\n\n~~~\njarrett\nIt's a valid question. The article takes the following premise: Parapsychology\ngets positive results following the scientific method as defined by prevailing\nnorms in the scientific community. So why can't we draw the conclusion that\nparapsychology is as legitimate as other branches of science? What is to\nseparate it?\n\nI would offer a pseudo-Bayesian[1] answer to that question. Parapsychology\naims to prove hypotheses that lacks theoretical foundations. Our current\nunderstanding of physics and biology weigh strongly against the existence of\npsychic phenomena. Even before any experiment is conducted, we must admit that\npsychic phenomena are unlikely to exist. Our experimental results must be\nevaluated in light of that prior probability.\n\nThus, parapsychology is and should be held to a higher burden of proof than\nother branches of science. We should demand more rigorous experimental\ndesigns, stronger effects, and smaller p values. This XKCD presents a similar\nidea, if you substitute \"psychic phenomena exist\" for \"the sun has gone nova\":\n\n[http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1132:_Freque...](http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1132:_Frequentists_vs._Bayesians)\n\n[1] I say \"pseudo\" because I'm not a statistician by trade. I'm basing my\nargument on my rather superficial understanding of Bayesian statistics. I\nstill think it's a valid argument in its own right, but I don't claim that\nit's an accurate representation of Bayesian statistics.\n\n~~~\nChuckMcM\n_Parapsychology aims to prove hypotheses that lacks theoretical foundations._\n\nThis is the lynch pin for most scientists. Before you can have a hypothesis,\nyou must have a theory, and you can work to prove or disprove that theory by\nexperimenting to create or observe results that the theory predicts.\nParapsychology doesn't have good, testable, theories. Rather it has some\ninteresting unexplained correlations.\n\n~~~\npjreddie\nDoctors rejected hand washing for a long time because there was no theory\nbehind why it would improve patient care, even when there was overwhelming\nevidence showing it decreased mortality rates.\n\nDo you discount all evidence that doesn't fit into your world view? Maybe\ntheory hasn't caught up with evidence yet.\n\n~~~\njarrett\n> Doctors rejected hand washing for a long time because there was no theory\n> behind why it would improve patient care\n\nThe germ theory of disease and experiments supporting the theory predate\nmedical sanitation. (Pasteur's work did come after, but he wasn't the first.)\nThe medical community's initial rejection of handwashing was not due to a\nscientifically motivated demand for a sound theory. Rather, it was due in\nlarge part to doctors' unwillingness to believe that they were the ones\nspreading disease from patient to patient. Additionally, the medical community\nat the time did not embrace the scientific method to the extent that it does\ntoday. Had it, handwashing would have been evaluated in a controlled study and\nproven effective.\n\n~~~\npjreddie\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis)\n\n> Despite various publications of results where hand-washing reduced mortality\n> to below 1%, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established\n> scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by\n> the medical community. Some doctors were offended at the suggestion that\n> they should wash their hands and Semmelweis could offer no acceptable\n> scientific explanation for his findings.\n\nHe published a lot on the subject and was rejected because it didn't fit in\nwith how doctors saw the world and he had no theory to back up his findings.\nIt wasn't until Pasteur that germ theory gained any widespread acceptance so\nit's pretty irrelevant that other people thought of it first.\n\nPlenty of things are evaluated in controlled studies and still rejected today.\nFor example, the article that you presumably just read discusses one such\nthing.\n\n------\nyummyfajitas\nIf anyone here hasn't read the comments on this as well, go read Eliezer\nYudkowsky's comment on meta-analysis:\n\n[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-\nou...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-\ncontrol/#comment-66077)\n\n~~~\nSoftwareMaven\nI've spent a lot of time in the past year studying nutrition as I've tried to\noptimize my health. I don't believe there is a field that gets science more\nwrong and, as a result, whose meta-analyses are, to put it in Yudkowsky's\nwords, more bullshit. Unfortunately, I don't think there is another field\nwhose bullshit gets more media play, either (except maybe politicians, but\nthat's a tautology).\n\n------\nreturn0\nI think it's a larger issue with life science that everyone is looking for\ncorrelations. In physics, correlation is the hint that leads to the\ndevelopment if a theory, which leads to predictions, which are invalidated by\nexperiments. In life science it seems correlations is the end goal. I think\nthe issue is with the kind of questions one poses, not only with the\ninterpretations.\n\n~~~\nepistasis\nJust to be clear about how this is incredibly wrong, as clearly this poster\nhas never read life science research, and it's very strange for such a\nblatantly misinformed comment to stick around on HN.\n\nThere are no biologists out there who are just looking for correlations,\nmistaking them for the real finding. Look through the life science papers in\nNature, Science, Cell, PLoS Biology, etc. You will find people starting with a\nhypothesis, and running controlled, causal experiments, often with two or\nthree different methodologies to establish non-correlational evidence. These\nare often based on initial observations that are correlational, but there is\nno publication where people are like \"whoa, we found a correlation, our work\nis done!\"\n\nIn contrast, there are some subfields where most of the work is correlational,\nand those are the fields where researchers are limited to analyzing data more\nthan running experiements: epidemiology and bioinformatics. Now\nepidemiologists collect tons of data, but there's very little that they can do\nin noncorrelational analysis, because that's the nature of ethics and human\nlife. But that doesn't mean that they don't try to invalidate their\ncorrelation-based hypotheses with experiments, it's just that they get to run\nvery few of them. Bioinformatics is somewhat different, and in some ways is\nmuch more like a theoretical physics in that developing new methodology can be\na publication-worth, even if there was no new data collected to validate the\ncomputational methodology.\n\nIn short, there's no truth at all to what return0 posted.\n\n------\nlauradhamilton\nThe fact that a lot of journals refuse to publish negative results is damaging\nto science and to our understanding.\n\nRelevant XKCD: [http://xkcd.com/882/](http://xkcd.com/882/)\n\n------\nZigurd\nStarting out with a flawed analogy to placebos makes the whole article hard to\nswallow. Placebos are complicated, especially for drugs with receptors in the\nbrain. Stating that we know placebos \"don't work\" is outright incorrect. We\nknow the opposite: placebos can produce real results, and there are physical\nmechanisms that explain those results. Nothing paranormal about it.\n\nIf the conclusion is that there is no magic wand in methodology that makes an\nexperiment \"good\" \\- that's true. But the approach gets off to a rough start.\n\n~~~\npdonis\nI don't think the analogy with placebos is flawed; it's just not quite the\nanalogy you are describing here.\n\nThe point is not that placebos \"don't work\"; it's that, if a placebo works as\nwell as some drug, the drug itself doesn't work. That is, it adds nothing to\nwhat you can already get using the placebo effect. Which may indeed be a\n\"real\" result; but why pay extra for a drug to get it when you don't need to?\n\nNote, btw, that while placebos can indeed produce real results, and there are\nindeed physical mechanisms that explain those results, those mechanisms have\nnothing to do with what's in the placebo itself; they are entirely to do with\nwhat goes on in the mind and body of the person taking the placebo. In that\nsense, it's true that placebos \"don't work\": it doesn't matter what specific\nsubstance you put in the placebo pill--sugar, starch, gelatin, whatever--as\nlong as it looks and tastes the same to the subject.\n\n------\nrainmaking\nWait a minute. The author calls for \"stricter scientific standards\", and than\nhas the audacity to define \"strict\" as \"something that excludes\nparapsychology\".\n\nSay it was 1600 A.D. and we would like to improve the standards of science.\nEverybody knows the cart stops when the ox stops pulling, so why not use this\nreasonable observation as a litmus test for all future scientific endeavor?\nBye, Newton.\n\nThe whole article is just a particular set of beliefs trying to\ninstitutionalize itself, the very thing science is supposed to put an end to.\n\n~~~\nKutta\nIt is always right to institutionalize correct ideas, like Newtonian mechanics\n(while having in mind its later refinements, of course), or the notion that\nparapsychology doesn't exist.\n\n~~~\nksmiley\nOk, but how do you determine which ideas are \"correct\"?\n\n------\nzackmorris\nThe Ganzfeld experiment suffers from bad statistics but it would sure be cool\nif it worked:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_experiment)\n\nIt required so many lengthy trials to get statistically meaningful results\nthat only large institutions could pull it off. I think it would make a cool\ncrowdsourced/crowdfunded project today though.\n\nIf there's something to it, I'd like to see the relationship to distance and\nespecially time, but I'm not holding my breath.\n\n------\nnateabele\n\"You’d have to _find_ a phenomenon that definitely doesn’t exist [...]\"\n(emphasis added)\n\nWelp.\n\n------\nDanielBMarkham\nThis is one of the better HN posts in a while.\n\nScience is our light in the darkness.\n\nIt is not a new form of religion. It does not give us the answers to\neverything. It may not even be able _ever_ to give us the answers to\neverything. It does not even give us a way to think.\n\nIt does not advance in a linear way. Instead, many false starts are made\nbefore progress takes hold.\n\nBetter ideas/models do not win out over older ones automatically. Instead,\nmany times an older generation has to die before new ideas can firmly take\nroot.\n\nFunding does not equal knowledge. You can throw as much money as you want at\nsome problems and get nowhere. Many times this is because the questions are\nbeing asked the wrong way. But you'll never know -- until progress is finally\nmade.\n\nIt's just Bayesian. Science is that study which tells us if we do something or\nif some state exists --- then there's a very high likelihood that something\nelse will happen or some new state will occur. We try to create models to\nexplain this tenuous causality, but over the generations, models have gotten\nus into more trouble than they have gotten us out of. If we understand science\nas just being the study of what most likely follows what, instead of _how_\nthings work, it's easier on everybody. After all, at the end of the day, even\nwith a model, for you to manipulate the universe around you? You're going to\nneed to know if you do one thing, what other things will happen.\n\nI fucking love science. But it's not what people think it is. We teach science\nin much too prideful a manner. If anything, the history of how science has\nbeen done should give us a deep and overpowering sense of humility.\n\n~~~\ngizmo686\nOne of the assignments in my high-school science class was to do a\npresentation on the history of some scientific question. This meant stating\nthe question, explaining the early hypothesis, explaining the early tests that\ndisproved those, explaining the new hypotheses, explaining the new tests that\ndisproved those, ETC.\n\nAs the end of almost every one of those presentations, there was a strong\nfeeling of \"then what\" hanging in the classroom, until people realized that\nthe most recently stated hypothesis is what they had learned, and scientists\nhave not yet discovered why it is incorrect.\n\n~~~\nDanielBMarkham\nIt used to be that part of the magic of becoming an expert in something was\nlearning all the 17,000 things that we still didn't know. Scientists were very\nproud of all the work ahead of them.\n\nNowadays physicists still mostly sound that way, but a lot of others,\nincluding many fields that we would consider hard sciences, are taking a\n\"we're smarter than you\" attitude when dealing with the general public. Even\nif they are correct in one particular instance, the idea of placing science on\nsome kind of pedestal where it can be asked anything from \"what makes a good\nlife\" to \"what's the mass of an electron\" is crazy. A really bad idea.\n\nScience has always been political, but lately it's getting politicized: it's\nchoosing up teams and playing the role of arbiter of truth. That's bad for all\nof us.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWe're going to send out invitations to YC interviews close to midnight - pg\nThe person in charge of sending out the invitations to interviews is in a different time zone, so we&#x27;re going to be sending out invitations close to midnight Pacific time.  So please don&#x27;t worry if nothing seems to be happening.<p>The good news is, we got so many good applications that we decided to add another day of interviews, so we&#x27;ll be inviting 20% more groups than we planned to.<p>(No, that doesn&#x27;t decrease the probability that a group we interview will get funded.  We don&#x27;t and in fact couldn&#x27;t aim to fund a target number of startups.)\n======\npg\nWhile you're waiting, will you guys please remind yourselves that it's not the\nend of the world if you don't get invited to interviews? Drew Houston didn't\nget invited the first time he applied. And a good thing too, because the idea\nhe applied with was not Dropbox, and if he'd used YC to launch it, he would\nprobably never have started working on Dropbox.\n\n~~~\nsaihan-tal\nNew York is pretty chilling tonight. I just asked my cofounder \"would you find\nthe project hard to stick to if YC turned us down, which is highly possible?\"\nShe said, \"No.\" I asked \"would you be upset then?\"She said,\"No. I'm more\nanxious about when are you going to call the guy who said he had a great\ncontact.\"\n\n~~~\nsaihan-tal\noh, btw, I think the best part of applying YC is starting conversations with\neverybody on HN. I like the synergy here very much.\n\n~~~\nbustamove4\nagreed. Fun Fact: Just received email from my mum (she is 69 & not up w/ all\nthings tech): - \"Was today the big day to hear from dominator…\" ;) obvious\nnext steps = YC rebranding as \"Y Dominator\" \\+ getting theme song in the tune\nof John Oliver's \"Danger\"\n[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmWDm2Yw9dk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmWDm2Yw9dk)\n\n------\nsaihan-tal\nRejection letter arrived when I was writing a letter to a customer and when\nthe first actual transaction took place on this 3 weeks old platform. Ugh.\nHonestly the latter didn't make me feel better, though I didn't quite expect a\nmiracle, because expecting a miracle often indicates the short of preparation.\nThis is be a 4-star strenuous hiking trail, we are a beginner level; next time\nwe'll be real fit. Congratulations to all got the interview and good luck!\nVirtual toast to everybody who received the same letter, c u soon again on HN.\n\n------\nGohardout\nYUSS!! got rejected... and that's one more reason to work harder. Honestly I\ndon't even feel I worked enough, so this is no surprise. :)\n\nI get rejected all the time (eg. Uni applications) so every time I get\nrejected, it just makes me a bit stronger I reckon. Imagine if it always\nworked out your way.. You wouldn't be a very strong person!\n\n------\nsaihan-tal\nIs it too early to propose a Google Hangout like thing between teams got\nrejection letters? So we could share some ideas and encourage to take further\nmarching/pivoting. Up vote?\n\n------\nsashaeslami\nTechnocrats don't pray often, but......\n\n~~~\nbrettgeoghegan\nAmen!\n\n------\nPabloOsinaga\nBut you did decide to fund \"less\" startups when you had some scaling issues.\nDoes this mean you said \"no\" to startups that you would've said \"yes\" to if\nyou had scaled well?\n\nIt looks like the increase in quality of startups is an independent factor to\nyour ability to accept all of the really good ones.\n\nDoes this mean that you will need to figure out how to scale more aggressively\nor start rejecting more and more good startups?\n\n~~~\npg\nThe way we managed to fund fewer startups was to train ourselves to pick\nbetter. So essentially we said no to startups we would have mistakenly said\nyes to before.\n\nUnless we can improve our ability to pick winners at the same rate the number\nof startups increases, which is unlikely, we'll have to grow.\n\nFortunately we can now. The reason we tightened up our filters in w2013 was to\nbuy ourselves time to figure out how to shard YC. We've now done that, and we\ncan probably grow another 2 or 3x before hitting the next bottleneck-- which\nwill probably be the format of Demo Day.\n\n~~~\npetervandijck\nSo you 1. optimized the algorithm and 2. sharded the backend.\n\nNext: buy more hardware and scale horizontally? (aka partners)\n\n------\nzekenie\nWhat about rejection emails? Same time?\n\n~~~\npg\nYes, all the emails go out at about the same time.\n\n~~~\nzekenie\nThanks!\n\n------\npowerpoetry\nAny other non-profit applicants out there? Would love to connect with other\nnon-profit tech folks regardless of YC outcomes :)\n\n~~~\nbrittanymorgan\nI'm a non-profit applicant too. I wonder if the increased number of applicants\nhas anything to do with the intentional invitation to social benefit ideas.\n\n~~~\nsaad_r\nHey guys, non-profit applicant too. Yh i wonder what share of applications\nwere the non-profit ones but imagine there'll be a quota for this (?). But\ngreat addition to Y comb - the third sector generally suffers from IT\nretardedness i think\n\n~~~\nVonGuard\nHey another Non-profit here: [http://www.themade.org](http://www.themade.org)\nHaven't received either acceptance or rejection letter. Maybe I screwed up the\napplication?\n\n~~~\npowerpoetry\nMaybe that's good news? We received a rejection letter last night. Best of\nluck to you!\n\n~~~\nVonGuard\nThanks. Frankly, we're a fairly stable non-profit, so if you've got a non-\nprofit, or are working on a game, I'm happy to offer co-working space in our\nfacilities in Oakland. Drop me a line if you're into it. alex@themade.org\n\nI think we're playing Artemis tonight at the museum, too.\n\n~~~\npowerpoetry\nThanks so much! We're NYC-based, so if you're ever in the area drop a line for\nsure.\n\n------\nsaihan-tal\nGood luck to everybody. Let's get more productive in the waiting hrs. May the\nforce be with you.\n\n------\nNamTaf\nGood luck, everyone! Remember me when you're rich beyond your wildest dreams!\n\n------\nnetpenthe\nhow rejection letter feels:\n[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePQcRspK5z8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePQcRspK5z8)\n\n------\nbustamove4\nJust got back from \"I didn't get to Round 2-Comfort Food trip to Rite Aid for\nbest ice cream ever- Thrifty brand mint chocolate-chip,\" and they definitely\nstop serving ice cream well before midnight, so logically, a second trip is\nout of the question, which means… I will haavve to get an interview. ;) Good\nluck All and when in doubt - Rite Aid's Thrifty ice cream :)\n\n------\njermaink\nHello everyone, I just want to shout out to those who cross their fingers in\nfront of the screens, hoping for an invitation or being afraid of a rejection.\nWhile I'm writing this, I have to say that I didn't apply (this year), but\nhave been in touch with a few YC teams in the last years.\n\nEveryone who goes through the application process knows what time it takes and\nwhat it's worth. Especially _worth_ , because it enables you to reflect on\nmany points and it forces you to make a point. If you are at an early stage\nworking on your product and still iterate lots of ideas you exactly know how\nchallenging that can be. Even recording a 1-min video can be very challenging,\nif the founders are not at the same time at the same place or have totally\ndifferent risk aversions. Just ask yourself how much time you invested into\nthe last point and how that could equal in lines of code for your product.\n\nAt different points in time, I lived with a few other YC applicant companies\nunder one roof and could pretty well observe how each handled the application\nprocess and feedback. The most important take-away was that those teams were\ninvited and accepted, who did not care very much about the outcome, while the\nothers studied HN and the application chronologies like monks the Genesis and\nLevitikus. One team even developed a pathological detail in collecting\nrecommendations from YC alumni, while other teams could tell you the number\nand names of teams within the last four badges. Unfortunately, the rather too-\nwell informed teams had in common that they struggled to break down their idea\ninto a single sentence.\n\nYC is not about rejection, it's rather about selection. There is no inversion\nof this argument, so don't think you're not good enough. It's rather like the\nMatrix, selecting their Neo-teams with some mixture of likelihood and gut\nfeeling. Just imagine the amount of applications they receive and the short\ntime that allows them to go through it. There are so many small details and\nfactors that flow into a decision that it would take days to summarize them.\nIf you go only through _traction_ and _team_ behind your product, there might\nbe a good chance to find a weak spot already.\n\nWithout any doubt, Y Combinator is a great way to start a company. In this\nregard, the book title \"launch pad\" might be just right. It’s just as great as\ngetting into a top university, because you get social proof and a valuable\nnetwork in many ways (especially the internal startup economy and experience\nexchange has its benefits). 3, 2, 1 lift off. But at the same point, being at\nYC might be no self-fulfilling prophecy, even if someone could easily\ncalculate the valuation effects (on paper). Also, getting into YC should not\nbe for the sake of getting into YC. If you really believe into yourself and\nyour idea, you _have_ to make it without a program like this - like all the\nsuccessful entrepreneurs did before accelerators even existed. Even if there\nwas a launch pad, they still needed to work on their rocket too. Today, you\neven have a big advantage: YC and its alumni offer so much for free. Not only\nHN but all the input on the website, blogs, alumni advice, startup school etc.\nFrom my experience, the network is not a closed fortress but a very open\ncommunity with people that care much more about your own ideas than your\ncredentials and affiliations. It's an open university where you can access\nmany resources that might be helpful as long as you don’t read them like the\ntruth and the only truth. Now I don't want to put my head above the parapet\nand speculate too much, but at the core of YC might be a _socratic method_ ,\nwhich is about finding _truth_ within the dialogue. Literally, dialogue means\nthe exchange ( _dia_ ) of reason ( _logos_ ), where reason means anything\nbetween rational, valid and practical. Partners challenge your ideas and\napproaches and as a result of dialogue, both of you are likely to find\nsomething useful to take-away. The advantage of this is that while your best\nfriends are rather likely to tell you lots of things that sounds good to you\nbut are not necessarily the truth, YC might be brutally honest in sending you\nreasonable signals.\n\nTo come to a point: If you don't make it into YC, my advice is to take care\nabout four things:\n\n1\\. Find people (friends and customers) who give you honest signals and that\nlet you know when you're running into the wrong direction.\n\n2\\. PG essays are like the encyclicals of the YC community and they have great\npoints. But be sure to read _between_ the lines and to find your personal\ntake-away, your _reason_.\n\n3\\. Do not study how to apply successfully or how to hack the process. This is\nno GMAT or a gumball machine. Try to find out how YC helped the companies who\nstarted here, struggled after demo day or came up with a new idea. Maybe, you\ncan emulate some of these things and benefit from information.\n\n4\\. If you have problems making decisions –like continuing on an idea or not\nas a result of not being accepted - throw a coin into the air and decide for\nhead or tail with each one decision. The outcome that you desire while the\ncoin still twists in the air is what you should do.\n\nSurely, these methods don't replace an office hour but they at least enable\nyou to improve your experience.\n\nGood luck and march on!\n\n------\ngemstone\nI'm full of excitement and hope\n\n------\nTarang\nJust got my rejection message. At least its worded very thoughtfully it makes\nit a bit easier.\n\n------\njtcchan\nLetter's are coming out - just got my rejection letter. Grrr.. back to work.\n\n------\nrladson\nI rarely get nervous, but this time around I am. Good luck to everyone!\n\n------\nclola\nThe kind of euphoria that could be on the way?...\n\n[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlcqWQVVuU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlcqWQVVuU)\n\n~~~\nbustamove4\nlol yes.\n\n[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bw9RE_ruMk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bw9RE_ruMk)\n\nSuggestion: Gold interview invites inside candy bars for next time.\n\n~~~\nclola\nClassic. Nice find. And beware of Slugworth-like-term-sheets.\n\n~~~\nbustamove4\nword.\n\n------\nasadlionpk\n\"Remember, remember, the fifth of November...\"\n\n------\nbrothe2000\nI am just happy that we have an opportunity to apply for something like this.\nFilling out the app was a good exercise in focusing my idea.\n\n------\nmaikoo811\ngot invitation! now booking flight from tokyo.\n\n~~~\nmathrawka\nCongrats! I looked up who you were and we worked together a few years ago at\nTonchidot. I went to the interview for S13 and applied again this time,\nhaven't got a reply yet though.\n\nAnyways, good luck at the interview!\n\n~~~\nmaikoo811\nhey good to e-meet you! you still in Tokyo? would like to see and hear how the\ninterview went on S13.\n\n~~~\nmathrawka\nI live out in western Kanagawa, and won't be up in Tokyo for a bit.\n\nI'll actually be in SF from the 12th though, you can get my email from my\nprofile and contact me if our schedules overlap!\n\n~~~\nmaikoo811\njust sent message to your licq address! hope we can meet you there ;)\n\n------\njohiya\nThanks for the update. I was wondering what's happening to the results. It's\n10:15am on 5th Nov already in India.\n\n~~~\nvrksh\nWe're from India too! Best of luck!\n\n------\nadiehl\nwe didn`t receive any mail yet, I doubelchecked with my SPAM folder but\ncouldn`t find anything. Are you sill sending out?\n\n------\ngemstone\nPG How many applications did you recieve ?\n\n------\ndzink\nSo, who is building up your startups while you're waiting for an interview?\nBack to work, YC candidates! ;)\n\n------\nMimino\nStrange. It looks like noone even clicked on the video or demo link in our\napplication. Does this happen a lot?\n\n~~~\nGohardout\nsame here.\n\n------\npgrote\nGood luck to those that are waiting!\n\n------\nsmaili\nThanks for the update!\n\nGood luck to all who applied!\n\n------\nanamecheverri\njust got my rejection letter :-(\n\n------\ngemstone\nThank You everybody at Y combinator For giving us a platform to do great\nthings\n\n------\ncolingrussing\nThanks for the update, I had already become despondent, but am now\nreinvigorated!\n\n~~~\nGuerraEarth\nOkay, well, don't please anyone be despondent. Do something fun to pass the\ntime and start thinking about what we will all build tomorrow. We need every\nman on deck for our future. And remember, if we don't get YC, there are mass\nAngel investors out there, and there is Kickstarter (did you see that Dark\nMail Alliance is taking bids!?). And I applied for a Shuttleworth Fellowship.\nOr alternatively, we can just build our stuff with no help at all. We actually\ndon't need any cash. Just good advice because navigating the processes are\nfull of pitfalls. Honestly, I am in my school library reading a Gothic horror\nnovel to pass the night. That and doing an investigation of radium dial\npainters in the 1920's.\n\n~~~\nbthornbury\n\"We need every man on deck for the future.\" I really like that.. I may say it\nmyself.. do you require attribution? Lol\n\n------\nblak3r\nLove having extra justification for staying up way past 3am EST tonight :)\n\n------\nclola\nThanks...We too are in a different time zone. No sleep until 3am :)\n\n------\naut0n0m3\nThank you for the info.\n\n------\nroryreiff\nThanks for keeping us informed - excited to see the results!\n\n------\nmknappen\nThanks for the update!\n\n------\nalleycat\nI didn't even get any views of the video :(\n\n------\ncscade2012\nThanks for the update. Good luck everyone!\n\n------\nconorpp\nFingers crossed\n\n------\nmotocycle\nmaybe it's good that it's not easy to go get alcohol at this time of the night\n(3am east coast)\n\n~~~\nsaihan-tal\nmaybe east coast should hold a party.\n\n------\nsannabonner\nHas anyone else not heard back yet?\n\n~~~\nsannabonner\nOh, shoot. So I sent myself a test email from a different account, and it\nstill hasn't shown up, either, so I imagine YC has sent me something and it is\nwaiting to get through.\n\nOutgoing mail is fine...\n\n------\nStyleSage\nTime to watch some BSG reruns.\n\n~~~\npowerpoetry\nNice! So say we all :)\n\n------\nbepitulaz\nI'll be wait and pray :D\n\n------\nandrescala\nNice! We'll be waiting!\n\n------\nimd23\nThanks!\n\n------\naglevy\nGood luck to everyone.\n\n------\nUmohPeter\nWe will be waiting...\n\n------\nravshan707\nGood luck, everyone!\n\n------\nthilton1984\nThat's awesome!\n\n------\ncalvinapp\nGood luck everyone!\n\n------\nthirdknife\nGood luck everyone!\n\n------\nkuntsevich\nShivering inside :)\n\n------\nhariharasudhan\nFingers Crossed!\n\n------\ntalibro\nLooking forward)\n\n------\njaggill\nexcitement..nerves...trepidation...\n\n------\nfatoki09\nthis is beautiful. thanks pg.\n\n------\niamtechaddict\nHope\n\n------\nFYI\nLikewise!\n\nThanks pg.\n\n------\nmichaelZejoop\nrejection letter\n\n------\ngailees\nHell yeah :)\n\n------\naryatoufanian\na@ImShmacked.com\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGoogle Bans Developer for Life - anonymous1983\nhttps://medium.com/medium-long/banned-for-life-c62f2404f66\n\n======\ntreerex\nYou get an app banned and it doesn't occur to you that maybe you should pull\nthe other apps that couple violate the same nebulous terms? The \"I grew up in\nthe 70s/80s and it was cool to defy authority if you didn't agree\" argument is\na canard. If you claim to be a professional developer then act like one.\nGetting in a pissing contest with Google will not end well.\n\nExpecting Google to act like a sane company for one developer in a garage is\nnaive.\n\n------\nzachlipton\nGuy makes a bunch of spammy apps that clearly rip off third party trademarks,\ngets banned from Google Play. While I think this could have been handled\nbetter from Google's side (such as a way to let him post a new app in the\nfuture, with appropriate review, if he agreed to knock it off), I'm not sure\nwhat else you'd expect. He even acknowledges ripping off the app icons.\n\n~~~\nanonymous1983\nI agree that he did violate one of their terms of service, and, like you, I\nbelieve it is unfair and too extreme to ban him from ever submitting an app to\nthe Google Play store again.\n\nThe author links to a few other people who have also been banned. It's amazing\nthat Google does not provide some way for developers to get reinstated in the\nGoogle Play store. Google basically owns the Android app market space and a\nban for life is too severe.\n\n~~~\nMattPearce\nIt is possible to be reinstated, but very difficult - I signed up for a Play\nDeveloper account a year ago, and didn't end up using it at all. A few months\nlater, I got an email saying my Play Developer and Wallet accounts were\nbanned. I emailed their appeals system once and got an autoresponse saying it\nwouldn't be reviewed. I emailed again and got a personal response saying they\ncouldn't tell me why they banned it for \"security reasons\". I pushed them, and\nthey finally told me it was part of some sort of auto-ban on a Play Developer\naccount that had also banned all other \"associated\" accounts. I only have one\naccount. I asked them to investigate further, and got told it wouldn't be\nreviewed. I finally managed to contact someone at Google Support who helped\nput me through to someone on the Google Play team, who finally confirmed it\nwas a bug in their system designed to automatically find associated accounts\nwhen banning a particular account. Someone else had been banned, and I was\ncaught up in the sweep.\n\nI finally got my Play Developer and Wallet accounts reinstated, and I promptly\nshut down my Play Developer account so that I wouldn't risk having my Wallet\naccount accidentally banned again due to someone else's actions. Now I just\ndevelop for iOS.\n\n------\nhashtag\n1\\. The author chose to blatantly ignore clear signs of a problem.\n\n2\\. Then proceeds to make all sorts of insane and stupid reasoning to defend\nwhat is obviously his problem for ignoring the issues.\n\n3\\. Even after the lifetime ban came in, he chooses to ignore the problem was\nwith him and what he chose to do, and instead still holds his innocence and\nexpects someone on Google's end will realize their mistake when in fact it was\nhis.\n\nI believe a lifetime is a bit too harsh. But I also believe that when someone\nmakes a mistake and doesn't bother to realize the problem themselves and\ninstead continue to cry innocence like a dunce, they probably should remain\nbanned until they get a clue.\n\nAlso the argument that others got away with it is NEVER a good argument for\nwhy you should be allowed to do something (not saying thats what he said) or\nthat it should be okay for you in any way (something he did say).\n\n------\nGlickWick\nWhile I think this guy was more than a little ignorant and probably should\nhave been more careful, Google's policy here is just ridiculous. Banning\nsomeone from literally everything and offering no real process for contacting\nthe company is more than over the top.\n\nI lost my Google AdSense account a while back because I forgot to update my\naddress when I graduated from college. There's no way to get it back, and if\nyou create a new one it immediately recognizes you and tells you to use the\nold one. There's no customer support you can talk to.\n\nIf Google wants to stick by their whole \"Don't be evil\" mantra, they really\nneed to look into their customer support policies in general.\n\n------\njgeorge\nLike others here I'm a little short on sympathy for the author specifically,\nif Google bans one app, I think I'd be upset about it enough to not just let\nit go under the assumption I was innocent - obviously someone or something at\nGoogle disagreed.\n\nHowever I do think that banning anyone \"for life\" over three apps is a bit\nmuch. Ban the developer account, fine, but Google has gone to such great\nlengths to entrench people in their own ecosystem that a more widespread ban\n(like Wallet) can have repercussions far more punishing than the crime.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNASA research shows alien life is far less likely than previously thought - hhs\nhttps://thenextweb.com/science/2019/06/12/nasa-research-shows-alien-life-is-far-less-likely-than-previously-thought/\n======\napotatopot\nWhat a preachy article. Why can't we have multiple endeavors?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSoftware Patents are Self-Defeating - ktr\nhttp://blog.datamules.com/blog/2012/02/13/software-patents-are-self-defeating/\n\n======\nnitinthewiz\nInteresting read. I also believe that software patents reduce your own\nflexibility in work. If you spend the time and money to patent your software,\nyou won't be changing it any time soon, even if you eventually discover that\nthere is a better way to design your product.\n\n~~~\nanamax\n> If you spend the time and money to patent your software, you won't be\n> changing it any time soon, even if you eventually discover that there is a\n> better way to design your product.\n\nHow does that follow?\n\nIt certainly isn't true with physical device patents, like automatic\ntransmission mechanisms, so why would software be any different?\n\n------\nmonochromatic\nI stopped reading here:\n\n> I doubt whether our software could be patented anyway, but if you can patent\n> a [linked list](<http://www.google.com/patents/US7028023>), perhaps it could\n> be after all\n\nIf this guy knows so little about patents that he thinks the title of that\npatent defines what it protects, and apparently has not even looked at the\nclaims, then why should I listen to his opinion about them?\n\n~~~\nmancaus\nThe claims are very closely aligned with the title.\n\nClaim 1 - Linked list with two traversal orders Claim 2 - Linked list with\nthree traversal orders Claim 3 - Method of traversing the lists in claim 1 and\n2 Claim 4 - A device (computer) to traverse the lists in claim 1 and 2\n\n~~~\nmonochromatic\nWhat is claimed is _very clearly_ not just a standard linked list. We can\nargue about whether this patent should have been granted, and whether its\nclaims are invalid... but there can be no dispute about whether this person\nhas \"patented a [scratch that, _the_ ] linked list.\"\n\n~~~\nrtperson\n_Very clearly_ my ass. From the patent:\n\n> The present invention overcomes the disadvantages and limitations of the\n> prior art by providing a system and method for traversing a list using\n> auxiliary pointers that indicate the next item in a sequence.\n\nThe \"invention\" here is called a sentinel, and have been used in conjunction\nwith linked lists since time immemorial. For \"prior art\" I would refer you to\nCLRS.\n\nGo ahead and downvote me. Please.\n\n~~~\ngjm11\nNo, the invention here is not a sentinel. It's having a bunch of things each\nof which has two or more next-item pointers so that you can traverse the list\nin two or more different orders. For instance, this would cover any doubly-\nlinked list.\n\n... Which is pretty strange, actually, since the patent itself references\nprior art involving doubly-linked lists. Maybe that's why they had a separate\nclaim for a list with _three_ \"next\" pointers in each node. I have no idea why\nclaims 1, 3 add 4 weren't thrown out by the examiner given that everything\nthey describe is done by every doubly-linked list implementation anywhere\never. (Claim 2 looks obviously not novel to me, but it's not quite such a\nslam-dunk as the others.)\n\nSo, anyway. The patent is preposterous. It isn't a patent on The Linked List.\nIt doesn't involve sentinels. It doesn't cover any singly-linked list. It does\ncover any doubly-linked list (which is one reason why it's preposterous). The\nauthor of the OP is right about the patent's preposterousness but wrong to\ndescribe it as \"patent[ing] a linked list\". monochromatic is right that the\npatent isn't a patent on the linked list, but arguably wrong to think this\nproves the original author is a twit (perhaps s/he knows perfectly well what\nthe patent purports to cover, but preferred terseness to precision). rtperson\nis wrong to say that the patent is about \"a standard linked list with\nsentinels\", wrong to be obnoxious about it, but probably right that there's\nprior art in CLRS at least for claims 1,3,4.\n\n------\nrtperson\n> In the end, I doubt owning a patent on something will have any impact on our\n> ultimate success or failure.\n\nHow I wish that were the case. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of patent\ntrolls out there that would love to use their patents to extract value from\nyour company. When the trolls come knocking (and they will), having a patent\nof your own may literally be the only defense.\n\nEveryone who wants to understand just how incredibly corrupt the US patent\nsystem is needs to do themselves a favor and listen to the \"When Patents\nAttack\" episode of NPR's This American Life. Then you'll understand why\nneatly-reasoned arguments are, in this instance, entirely besides the point.\n\n~~~\nmonochromatic\nPatent trolls are by definition non-practicing entities. How does having your\nown patent defend against them, if they're not actually producing anything\nthat would infringe it?\n\n~~~\nrtperson\nAgain, the error you're making is mistaking patent law with the insane way\npatent law is actually enforced. Listen to \"When Patents Attack,\" and you'll\nunderstand that non-practicing entities have been very successful lately in\nfilling their pockets at the expense of the genuinely productive.\n\nPatents are also not supposed to overlap each other. However -- and again this\nwas made startlingly clear by NPR -- they do, and by the tens of thousands.\n\nYou're making the mistake of believing yourself to be in a world where\nreasonableness prevails.\n\n~~~\nmonochromatic\nI think you missed my point.\n\n~~~\nrtperson\nI apologize for doing so. I think my idea of holding your own patent was not\nfor the ability to counter-sue, but (and I am quite obviously not a lawyer) so\nyou have a legal basis to petition for dismissal of the patent troll's suit.\nIf there were any effective way to savage non-practicing entities, I'm sure\nwe'd have fewer trolls out there.\n\nIt would be a weak form of defensive patent aggregation\n(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll#Defenses>), but it would still be\nbetter than nothing.\n\nMy larger point is that, by vocally opting out of the patent game, the author\nof the original article has practically painted a bullseye on himself.\nAverring yourself to be above the fray seems to me to be a sure-fire way to be\nvictimized yourself.\n\n~~~\nmonochromatic\nDefensive patent aggregation is about the ability to cross-license. If a troll\nisn't making anything, they don't need to license your patents.\n\nNow, your own patent could _in some circumstances_ be used as prior art\nagainst the patent troll... but if that's all you're using it for, why not\njust publish everything you're doing? Publications are prior art just as much\nas patents are.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Corp-2-Corp vs W2 Work in San Francisco / Bay Area - lowhangingnuts\nI have over 20 years experience in over 10+ languages, tools frameworks. Active on github and open source also.<p>Trying to make a lot of $$ in next 5 years and quit the rat race.<p>Everywhere I apply for contract jobs, the recruiter &#x2F; person with job says they can only do W2 and not independent 1099 or corp 2 corp contract.<p>I don&#x27;t need benefits (have it from my partner) and W2 rates are much less than Independent 1099.<p>So what&#x27;s the deal ? Why do recruiters and firms insist on W2 in Bay Area?<p>Also how do I set my W2 rate vs my C2C expectation.<p>Ex: If my 1099 &#x2F; Independent rate is 100 $ &#x2F; hour, what would the equivalent W2 rate be, so I don&#x27;t lose money?\n======\nnunez\nI don't know why W2 is so common over there, but you should be hitting up\nLinkedIn and reaching out to recruiters that way. There are plenty of 1099\nopportunities to be found. Ensure that you get contracts with fixed time\nperiods so that you can plan your cash flow a little easier. (It's not a hard\nand fast guarantee, but a six-month contract is much easier to plan around\nthan some flexible contract scenario where the client can fire you at\nliterally a moment's notice.)\n\nAlso, $100/hr for 1099 is really low for your experience. You'll get work\neasily, but will need to work literally all of the time to make ends meet. You\nshould aim for at least $240/hour.\n\nThink about it like this. Your experience would probably net you a\n$175-200k/year salary in the Bay Area. That's the money you take home (before\ntaxes). This _does not_ include offset compensation (equity, bonuses,\nVACATION) and benefits (401(k) with match, health insurance (medical, dental,\nsometimes vision, HSA, FSA, etc.), commuting discounts, etc.). I don't know\nthe exact numbers, but after factoring all of this in, I would wager that the\ncompany is actually paying $500k/year for your services in the W2 scenario.\nThat's ~$240/hour assuming a 52-week business year at 40 hours/week.\n\nAdditionally, your experience makes you a premium product depending on how you\nsell yourself. If the talent pool for one of the languages that you know (say,\nDelphi) is dying but is still used for critical business functions that make\ncompanies serious amounts of money, you can increase the margin on your rate\neven more. 20 years of experience is a lot.\n\nLastly, for the businesses that you're probably trying to go after (big\ninstitutions with beefy IT budgets), trying to sell yourself short will\nactually make you appear to be _less_ experienced than you really are. These\nbusinesses are used to paying top-dollar for quality and/or insurance, so you\nshould play the game in kind.\n\nTL;DR: Pay for LinkedIn; use competing salaries PLUS BENEFITS to calculate\nyour rate; add some margin to the top; get the fuck out of the rat race.\n\n------\ngt2\nThere are plenty of businesses that would prefer to pay you or your small corp\ndirectly without a w2. They are usually the smaller companies or individual\npeople. The w2 is common when a contracting company is managing all of the\ncontractors for a medium to large company. It could be that those contracting\ncompanies want uniformity between their Human Resources but I'm not sure. I\nthink you just need to branch out and talk to a few new recruiters or contact\nbusinesses directly. Sell them on yourself and then just tell them you always\ndo 1099. Someone will bite if you pass the interviews.\n\nLastly the w2-- it could be at least 15 percent less to be equivalent to 1099\nsince you don't have to pay he employer share of social sec, but you should\nstill shoot for as high as possible given that a contract (even w2) is more\nvolatile than a long term gig and the employer should pay a premium for that\nover a regular hire.\n\n------\ncodegeek\nClients prefer W-2 because of the so called assumed \"risk of liability\". They\ndon't want 1099s on their payroll because of fear from IRS that they could be\ntagged as employees and hence needing to pay fines and extra benefits that\nthey don't want to. I personally think that is bullshit but that is what it\nis. In fact, some large clients force their vendors to only hire W-2 even if\nthe payroll is run by the vendor company and not the client. So that is why a\nlot of these clients have started preferring W-2 and it is increasing\ndifficult to find direct contracts with large clients who offer 1099 (many\nstill do but rare these days).\n\nNow to your question about the rate between W-2 and 1099. It depends.\nGenerally, a W-2 rate is usually going to be less than 1099 due to factors\nsuch as Payroll tax, benefits etc. AT the end of the day, someone has to pay\nfor those regardless but in case of 1099, you the contractor is responsible to\nfigure that out (risk is on you) vs W-2 where the employer has to figure that\nout for you.\n\nYou first need to ask these questions to ANY recruiter you talk to:\n\n1\\. Are you a direct/preferred vendor to the client ? This is critical because\nif they middleman to the actual vendor, they will take their own cut thereby\nreducing the size of the pie for you. They are of not use to you and never\ndeal with 3rd party recruiters. Only deal with direct vendors who talk to\nclients directly.\n\n2\\. If they only offer W-2, is it with Benefits or without benefits. Yes, you\ncan get W-2 with some benefits (health insurance etc) even if you are a\ncontractor. This is important to know because if you don't necessarily want\nbenefits, you could potentially negotiate a higher rate even on W-2 by asking\nthem not to pay for benefits .\n\nOnce these 2 questions are answered, then you can start playing with numbers\nto figure out what you should ask for at the very least to even break even.\nItems to consider:\n\n\\- Your current salary\n\n\\- Do you receive any bonus on average every year ?\n\n\\- Vacation days you take in a year\n\n\\- monetary value of benefits like Health insurance, 401k etc\n\n\\- How much Payroll taxes are paid by your employer ? Remember, as an\nemployee, you only pay your portion (about 7.5% SS + Medicare) but as a\ncontractor, you will have to handle that part yourself (if 1099).\n\nYou need to figure out all these and then get to a daily/hourly rate.\n\nMOST IMPORTANT: Your daily/hourly rate must consider the number of billable\nhours/day you will work in a year. You need to factor in downtime. Contracts\ncan end quickly at times. So you need to factor the extra month or so that you\nmay be in transition.\n\nFinally, in Bay area, my general assumption is that $100/Hour on 1099 is low\nfor a skilled and experienced developer.\n\nShameless plug: I wrote a simple calculator to convert salary to a daily rate\nin the US. It is a general estimate but should give you an idea:\n\n[https://codegeek1001.github.io/salary2consultantcalc/](https://codegeek1001.github.io/salary2consultantcalc/)\n\n~~~\ncorporateslave3\nQuick question, how do you feel about a long term contract (never ending) at\n125$ per hour. Assume highly in demand skills (ML, Big Data Architecture,\nstream processing) with 5 years experience in NYC/SF.\n\nIs that too low? Just right?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow long would it take to crack your password? - vinchuco\nhttps://password.kaspersky.com/?\n======\nwarrenm\nDiscounts the fact that brute force is rarely the best way to find out\n\nSocial engineering is far easier\n\n~~~\nvinchuco\nAbsolutely.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMaking integrated circuits from uranium oxides - RiderOfGiraffes\nhttp://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium/pdf/WM01Semicond.pdf\n\n======\nseekay\nzero value for industry for now... unbiassed review nonetheless\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWays to make a web component - kjhughes\nhttps://webcomponents.dev/blog/all-the-ways-to-make-a-web-component/\n======\nbadsectoracula\nI'm not into web development at all so this sounds very new to me, but aren't\ncomponents in general meant to be self-contained so that they can be reused as\n\"building blocks\" for larger applications (or pages, i guess)?\n\nDoesn't using a framework in this case mean that you also have to at least\nbundle that framework with the component? What happens if you want 10\ncomponents that each use a different framework? Or some of them use the same\nframework but different versions? What about the same version, does that get\nduplicated for each component or they get shared?\n\nAlso are these components meant to be \"bundled\" with your code or you are\nsupposed to source them from their \"home\" server? In the latter case does that\nmean that a site using 10 components will open connections to 10 different\nservers (one for each component, assuming all components are from different\ndevelopers)?\n\nOr am i missing the point completely? TBH i think of \"components\" as in\nLazarus, Delphi, .NET, etc (where you have reusable components like buttons,\nlabels, input boxes, etc but also nonvisual stuff like timers, imagelists,\netc).\n\n~~~\nsillysaurusx\nNope, your thoughts are all essentially correct. The answer is “yes” to all of\nthem; even the ones where it seems that “yes” would be contradictory.\n\nBundle everything? Yep. Self contained? Yep. 10 components that open\nconnections to 10 different severs? Yep.\n\nThe web is so massive that there is a way for pretty much everything (though\nfor some reason webdevs try not to admit this).\n\n~~~\nstaycoolboy\nExcept for the pure HTML5 solutions, everything else uses a JS framework.\n\n~~~\njohnmw\nI don't know why the sibling reply comment to this by golemiprague was killed.\n\nMy understanding is that he is correct - in terms of requiring a framework to\nbe bundled with your code. Svelte is not a framework that needs to be bundled\nwith your code, instead it injects helper code during the transpilation step\nand the result has no dependencies.\n\nIf I'm incorrect I'd appreciate the trigger happy person to explain why rather\nthan killing this comment.\n\n------\njjcm\nI've been working on a webcomponent based reddit/patreon competitor for about\na year now, and one thing I found was how incredibly easy it was to spin up my\nown micro framework.\n\nI would highly encourage people to give it a shot. It's just going back to\nbasics and working with class-based inheritance. It will take you a day to\nwrite out the basic functions you will need for 95% of your components, and\nyou'll be left with a tiny library that not only solves your needs, but you\nknow inherently.\n\nIf you're curious, lines 1-26 are all you need to easily bind an html block, a\nstyle block, and to do event/attribute binding via @/? statements:\n[https://github.com/jjcm/soci-\nfrontend/blob/master/components...](https://github.com/jjcm/soci-\nfrontend/blob/master/components/soci-component.js) . The rest of the file are\njust shared helper functions.\n\n~~~\nBigJono\nDon't be stupid, how do you know those 26 lines of code are free of bugs?\nThey're not battle tested and you're just re-inventing the wheel instead of\nfollowing best practices.\n\n~~~\nDonHopkins\nThat's right, we should all follow best practices and use 26,000,000 lines of\nAngular code, which has been written and debugged by thousands of people,\nbattle tested and wounded and scarred in wars we've never heard of and don't\ncare about, and that we will never get around to reading all of.\n\n~~~\nBigJono\nThose 26 million lines of code have been engineered over the better part of a\ndecade to perfectly cater to every possible use case. To not leverage those\nproductivity gains would be insane. You wouldn't build your own car would you?\n\n(/s, btw)\n\n------\nmshenfield\nFirst contentful paint (FCP) is basically the same (+-10ms) from React down to\na raw HTMLElement. I guess at some point appending elements to the DOM is the\nbottleneck, rather than the overhead of parsing JS and the efficiency of said\nJS.\n\nTo get a faster FCP, statically rendering the component to HTML and re-\nhydrating it in the client (using Gatsby, for example) seems like it will have\na bigger impact than the WebComponent library used. Unless the client is\nbandwidth constrained of course.\n\n~~~\ngeorges_gomes\nCo-author of the blog post here.\n\nMy mistake is to call it FCP. This local benchmark only shows the performance\nof: \\- parsing the javascript code \\- creating the DOM node\n\nThat was the only goal.\n\nWe should have network simulation for the next update of the blog post to show\nsome additional color. Good idea :thumbsup:\n\nStatic + re-hydrating is actually built in Web Components (technically).\n\"Only\" tooling like Gatsby or Next.js is missing to make it more developer\nfriendly.\n\n~~~\nhoten\nWould you consider comparing the results of a Lighthouse report?\n\n~~~\ngeorges_gomes\nSounds good. Like have some sort of generic page with components and look for\nlighthouse score. I'm adding to the list!\n\n~~~\nhoten\nSweet, thanks!\n\nFeel free to DM me if you need any help. twitter is in bio.\n\n------\nalfonsodev\nIt is very interesting that it includes the build size including compressed\nsize, it makes me thing that one of the reasons that we don't have a popular\nrepository of interchangable Webcomponents yet, is that if you commit to a\nframework to make things easier, then the size of the bundle is easier to\njustify if you keep all the components made within the same framework.\n\nImporting components that have been made with different framework come with\ntheir extra bunde overhead, at least that what looks to me at first glance.\n\n~~~\nspankalee\nThis is a fine state to be in now. The first priority of web components is to\nmake components interoperable, so that at least you _can_ use components built\nwith different libraries together.\n\nMeanwhile, the size of modern rendering libraries has dropped significantly,\nan order-of-magnitude less than React/Angular. This will continue as JS and\nweb platform APIs advance. Proposals like Template Instantiation would finally\ngive the DOM a good pattern for fast updates and reduce sizes even further.\n\n------\nsequoia\nWeb components to me represent the architecture I’d _like_ to have. I think a\ngood arch could be:\n\n1\\. Build a rails/django type site, make everything work vanilla http+html\netc.\n\n2\\. Create standalone web components for the places you need some more\ninteractivity, like type-ahead search box, “click to add” type thing, or a\ndatatable\n\nSo _most_ of your performance stuff could be handled/improved on the server,\nfocus on aggressive caching etc. and most of the complexity would be on the\nserver with small stand-alone parts on the client (ideally without a lot of\ninterconnection, i.e. without a big client side state manager). This would not\nallow full-spa but I am not convinced SPA is the answer in many/most of the\ncases it’s used.\n\n~~~\nedisonywh\nHave you heard about Phoenix LiveView? Sounds like what you want.\n\nIt's a Rails-like framework written in Elixir (piggyback-ing off 30 years of\nBEAM), and LiveView changes the game by allowing you to build rich front-end\napplication from your backend.\n\nThe way it works is that it serves you static HTML on initial load (yay SEO),\nand then it establishes a websocket connection to the server (very efficient\nthanks for BEAM), and every subsequent user interaction sends a event_name\nwhich you handle on the backend, and the backend respond with only the changed\ndata (Phoenix can intelligently track your changes so it only sends what has\nactually changed), and then morphdom on the browser side patches things onto\nfront-end.\n\nYou get the full power of interactivity but you barely have to touch any front\nend at all (and if you really do, it plays super well with AlpineJS, so you\nstill get that escape hatch).\n\nAll in all, LiveView is amazing (and the surrounding technology), I just wish\nmore people know about it!\n\n~~~\nelcritch\nAgreed, Elixir LiveView is a lot like what @sequoia describes. I use LiveView\nto handle creating the more complex logic, data handling (and caching) on the\nserver. For UI layout you can get surprisingly far with mostly CSS nowadays\nwith small events back to the server just changing a CSS class here and there.\nOddly despite the server round trip, the responsiveness is great.\n\nHere’s a demo I built for a small wrapper around Bulgaria CSS. Running on a\ntiny VPS: [http://lacritch.xyz/](http://lacritch.xyz/)\n\nNow Elixir/BEAM is an excellent platform for this as the average and 99.9th\npercentile response times are really consistent. So your UI interactions don’t\nusually take 70ms with every Xth one taking 400 ms, which would be really\nannoying.\n\n~~~\nedisonywh\nRight? I use LiveView with Tailwind, and for those little extra interactions,\nAlpine works amazingly well. Such a dream stack! Alpine was created by Caleb\nfor LiveWire (inspired by LiveView), which is why it works so well too :)\n\n------\nrishav_sharan\nIt infuriates me that the concept of composable web pages using small\ntemplates/components is not baked into the html spec and supported by\nbrowsers.\n\nEvery bit of code that we write in any programming language is made of\ncomposable bits which can be imported into other bits of code.\n\nBut we cannot do anything similar with html. every time any attempt at having\ncomposable component based html is made, it gets mired down in arguments, and\nwe end up with Frankenstein monsters like Web Components, Shadow DOMS etc.\n\nWeb shouldn't be this hard. but the html governing bodies and the browsers\nhave done a horrible of taking it forward.\n\n~~~\nblitmap\nSVG has the concept of re-usable components.\n\nMaybe in 10 years we can replace HTML with SVG.\n\n _hides_\n\nI'm sure that would make it much, much harder for people with accessible\nneeds.\n\n~~~\nhinkley\nReusing SVG elements isn't as easy as they claim either, and they seem to have\ntaken some of the options away in SVG 2.0\n\n~~~\nhutzlibu\nAlso SVG has also some very ugly things in the spec. And you would have to\nbuild up every UI-Element by yourself. It would have nothing to do with SVG,\nif it would be like HTML.\n\n------\nclairity\nis there any reason you can't write a web component with a <style> block, a\n<script> block, and a bunch of html?\n\nthe wedging everything into js is messy, to say the least. it seems the main\nbenefit is being reusable and tightly scoped, but with randomized class names,\nyou could tightly scope the aforementioned bundle as well. even better would\nbe if html added 'for' attributes to <style> and <script> tags, like labels\nhave, so you could target nodes in the dom by id.\n\nperhaps being composable is a bigger challenge, but is it insurmountable with\nthis approach?\n\n~~~\nrishav_sharan\nI tried that using <template> <style> blocks, a few years ago.\n\nmy biggest problem was simply that I still had to add all my templates to a\nsingle long html file. And that really feels suboptimal. I had a scaffolded\npage structure at top. and then dozens of template sections following it. and\nthen as some templates are supposed to call other templates (form inside page\nsection) there was a clear hierarchy but my html file was flat and it was\ngetting harder to reason about the structure of my app the more templates I\nadded. I finally threw it all away and just did a vanillajs spa.\n\nI really wanted to be able to breakup my html file into smaller composable\nones without having to do that in JS. but there is no current solution for\nhtml importing other html files, and the spec discussion around html import\nare pretty much dead in the water (and have been since 2013)\n\n~~~\norange8\n> my biggest problem was simply that I still had to add all my templates to a\n> single long html file.\n\nThe alternative (atleast when using frameworks like React and Vue with\npackagers like webpack is having it all in a single long html file. Which is\njust shifting markup from html to js. The other alternative is to dynamically\nload the html via ajax calls.\n\n> I had a scaffolded page structure at top. and then dozens of template\n> sections following it. and then as some templates are supposed to call other\n> templates (form inside page section) there was a clear hierarchy but my html\n> file was flat\n\nHere you could make use of the document.ready event, and a js script that\nautomatically parses and saves all <template> tag by id. That way, the\ntemplates calling other templates have a single source of truth for all\ndependent templates. You could also combine this will lazy loading via ajax\ncalls.\n\n> I really wanted to be able to breakup my html file into smaller composable\n> ones without having to do that in JS. but there is no current solution for\n> html importing other html files\n\nThere is no getting around JS if you want client side dynamic rendering -\nthat's what its for. HTML is for static content, css for styling, JS for\neverything else.\n\n------\nsillysaurusx\nGPT-3 has an interesting contribution to this:\n[https://twitter.com/sharifshameem/status/1284095222939451393...](https://twitter.com/sharifshameem/status/1284095222939451393?s=21)\n\nTell it what you want in plain English, then it builds you a web component in\na random language that happens to be React.\n\nI wonder if in the future we’ll be comparing the size of components generated\nby an ML model...\n\n~~~\nBjartr\nIt's not random, it would have been part of the prompt, like his earlier\nprototype\n\n[https://twitter.com/sharifshameem/status/1282692481608331265...](https://twitter.com/sharifshameem/status/1282692481608331265?s=19)\n\n------\ngeorges_gomes\nco-author of the blog post here. Thank you @kjhughes for sharing our work here\n:pray: I don't know you but I love you already :heart: :)\n\nI'm trying to comment where I have something to bring. If you have questions\nor maybe a list of things that you would like to see in the next update,\nplease shoot at me!\n\nMany thanks\n\n~~~\nfouc\nI wanted to suggest that you could consider adding mithril.js to the list of\nlibraries perhaps. It's a nice alternative to preact/svelte, and it's been\naround awhile.\n\n-\n\nBTW, When I go to\n[https://webcomponents.dev/edit/uLX8C4bJf4Kmg2jWu1dL?pm=1](https://webcomponents.dev/edit/uLX8C4bJf4Kmg2jWu1dL?pm=1)\nit doesn't load the component in the \"Stories\" tab for latest Safari or an old\nChromium v68. Works fine in latest Firefox.\n\nI see error message \"Unhandled Promise Rejection: SyntaxError: Invalid\ncharacter '\\ud835'\" on the worker.helper file in Safari. Chromium 68 ends up\nwith \"Unknown worker: undefined\"\n\n~~~\ngeorges_gomes\nAdding Mithril.js to the list :thumbsup:\n\nThanks for reporting the issues we will look into it. How to you install a\nChrome v68?\n\n------\nnend\nAlternate title: The fractured state of web UI design explained using a simple\ncounter.\n\nI say that only slightly in jest, as it is a neat way to show all (or most) of\nyour options.\n\nAlthough it doesn't have my at-the-moment favorite way to make web components,\nblazor/web assembly. For me, it's made front-end development fun again, which\nI haven't enjoyed in a long time.\n\n~~~\nspankalee\nThis isn't a collection of ways to \"build components for the web\" though, it's\na set of ways to build \"web components\" the W3C component standard that ships\nnatively in all modern browsers.\n\nEven those these components are built with different libraries, they are all\ninteroperable and require no framework to use them, so I'd say this points to\nthe defragmented future of web development.\n\n~~~\nhn_throwaway_99\nEdit: D'oh, I misread it, sorry.\n\nYou misread this post. The left panel has all the different popular libraries\nand frameworks that can be used to build a web component, including things\nlike React, Svelte, Vue, etc.\n\n~~~\nspankalee\nI actually helped contribute to this list. If you look at the React, Svelte,\nand Vue, examples, they are specifically being wrapped as standard web\ncomponents.\n\n------\nsrameshc\nI love the simplicity of StencilJS. Not sure why it's adoption is so low but\nthose guys have put a lot of work. Much better than what Google is doing with\nLit Element.\n\n~~~\nyesimahuman\nThanks! I wouldn't say Stencil's option is low. It's being used in some pretty\nmajor apps today, like Apple Music, Amazon music, and powering the next\nversion of AWS Amplify components. Not to mention powering every Ionic\nFramework component which is upwards of 15% of the app stores (not all use\nlatest w/ WCs however). One downside to that is npm stats won't show\ndependency network effects with stencil because it is compiled out for\ncomponent collections like framework.\n\n~~~\nyesimahuman\nWhoops, meant _popularity_ , not option\n\n------\nbob1029\nI have a server-side rendering approach that can get instantaneous paint of\narbitrarily-complex views after pulling down index.html and exchanging a\nsingle pair of websocket messages. Once the initial page is loaded, redraws\nare as fast as you can get packets between the machines plus 2-3ms for\ndecoding. It involves some very unorthodox methodologies and has latency\nconstraints (similar to Google Stadia hosting model), but there are serious\nupsides. Including completely untouchable load & response times.\n\nI strongly believe we are stuck in a Malthusian Trap regarding the use of\nHTML/iOS/UWP/Android for clients and then an entirely separate stack of things\nfor the server - Go/.NET/Rust/Python/C++/etc. This separation adds such a huge\nburden to the development and maintenance of any application. I argue that if\nwe must have some division between client & server, lets move as much of the\ncomplexity to the server as we possibly can. It's so much more manageable when\nyou have all of your state in 1 domain like that. If the client doesn't have\nto track state or reason about its views, the application implementation for\neach device can be trivial.\n\nI don't think that HTML/JS/CSS/JSON APIs represent a good boundary layer. I\nthink final rasterized views, viewport dimensions and client events do.\nJPEG/MPEG can be decoded incredibly quickly on most mobile client devices due\nto availability of hardware acceleration. You will never be able to write a\nwebsite in the traditional sense that can outperform the speed at which you\ncould decode a full-screen JPEG image and display it. Server hardware is also\ngetting insanely powerful with the new generations of AMD CPUs rolling out.\nEncoding JPEGs using something like LibJpegTurbo on TR/Epyc is ridiculously\nfast. This is also a type of application that does trivially parallelize\nacross many cores. As bandwidth becomes ever more ubiquitous, and services\nmore geographically-distributed, there is a good chance something like this\ncould become practical in the general case.\n\nFor now, this is all just a crazy experimental thing that only works for a\nnarrow range of applications. But, I would strongly encourage other developers\nto start thinking outside of the box. As networks get faster and latency gets\nlower, we will begin to encounter new \"step function\" opportunities that\nfundamentally shift how we do business.\n\n~~~\nmadeofpalk\nGranted you don’t go into much detail, what I can gather you’re describing\nsounds incredibly unusually by vast amounts of people.\n\nShipping web pages as rendered jpeg images is a terrible idea for many many\nreasons.\n\n------\nragerino\nWhen I was a young web-developer, I joined the WHATWG group. And one of my few\ncontributions was asking for custom HTML elements.\n\nI actually developed a framework myself in LotusScript ;)\n\n------\nagquick\nOur company had been looking to move our project away from Knockout.JS and on\nto Vue/React. I started playing around with native Web Components just because\nI like the idea of not being locked into a single framework.\n\nHowever, I also wanted to keep using observables/computeds so I wrote a quick\nlibrary that ties MobX with Native Web components, but has a Vue-like binding\nsyntax.\n\nYes I know it’s yet another library, but it mainly just provides for a simple\nway to use MobX (an established library) with Web Components (a browser\nstandard), _and nothing else_. It’s still very new but it works and I’d love\nfeedback.\n\nExample fiddle:\n[https://jsfiddle.net/agquick/d0tsqar6/](https://jsfiddle.net/agquick/d0tsqar6/)\nGithub:\n[https://github.com/agquick/elemx.js](https://github.com/agquick/elemx.js)\n\n~~~\ngeorges_gomes\nI love this creativity :) We should have you in the next update of the blog\npost!\n\n~~~\nagquick\nThanks, that would be awesome! It really makes state management within custom\nelements a breeze. I'm hoping others who appreciate observables/mobx will take\ninterest and help me grow/maintain it :)\n\n------\ndpweb\nBeen working on this off and on for the last 15 years. Pretty much ended up\nwhere I started. Except the newer JS syntax is nicer than in 2005.\n\nControl:\n\n    \n    \n      controls.hello = e =>\n        e.innerHTML = `Hello ${e.getAtttribute('x-who')}`\n    \n      <hello x-who='world' />\n    \n\n\"Framework\" just cycles thru the dom and calls control def with the element as\nthe param.\n\nTo handle data, there's a window.data object, which is global data for the\napp. Its a proxy object. So when window.data is changed, for instance from the\nresults of a fetch, any controls that specify that key - their set() function\nis called.\n\n    \n    \n      <button onclick='data.count++'>Click me</button>\n      <counter x-datafield='count'></counter>\n    \n      data.count = 0\n      controls.counter = e =>\n        e.set = () => e.innerHTML = data.count\n\n------\naylmao\nNote: if you're building your whole page on top of a library, a larger library\nisn't necessarily bad.\n\nIf a library is larger because it does more, useful things, and this means you\nhave to write less and/or smaller components, in a complex app the tradeoff is\nprobably worth it.\n\n~~~\ndmix\nWebpack tree-shaking and automatically chunking into multiple tiny js files,\nwhich can be selectively loaded only when needed, is also super helpful here.\n\n------\nstaycoolboy\nIt would be great to include metrics on:\n\n1\\. size of framework javascript required to load first\n\n2\\. tooling to compile. For example, the Vue.js works without tooling, but the\nReact w/Class requires command line tools to build before the site is ready.\nThat's a HUGE difference, IMHO.\n\n~~~\ngeorges_gomes\nco-author here.\n\n1\\. The bundle size barcharts shows the component size (in light blue) and the\nframwwork size (darrk blue)\n\n2\\. The Bundle Analysis chapter contains a description of the build tooling\nuse for each component.\n\nVue can be used without build tooling if you choose to use the Vue lib with\nthe compiler included but we use the pre-compiled way for max performance and\nsmaller Vue runtime (without compiler).\n\n~~~\naylmao\n> Vue can be used without build tooling if you choose to use the Vue lib with\n> the compiler included but we use the pre-compiled way for max performance\n> and smaller Vue runtime (without compiler).\n\n+1. And likewise, you can use React without a build step too, though of course\nit is slower. [1]\n\n[1] [https://shinglyu.com/web/2018/02/08/minimal-react-js-\nwithout...](https://shinglyu.com/web/2018/02/08/minimal-react-js-without-a-\nbuild-step-updated.html)\n\n------\neeJah9to\nI've rewrote the frontend of one of my personal apps from react to\nwebcomponents lately. For me, the most interesting aspect was that it's part\nof standards, requiring no dependency, so it means that I can use this app for\ndecades without having to maintain it.\n\nFor the same reason, only the first example in this page would do for me (the\none based on standard without using any library). But I suppose that for\nactually publishing something, such library would be needed, if anything for\npolyfills for older browsers (but then again, we don't expect published work\nto stand for decades without changes, so maybe the call for standardized\ntechnology is not as strong there).\n\n~~~\naylmao\n> For me, the most interesting aspect was that it's part of standards,\n> requiring no dependency, so it means that I can use this app for decades\n> without having to maintain it.\n\nI mean, you can also do that with React. Just don't update the library. The\nreason a web-component for decades without maintenance is because you won't be\nusing all the new features— same thing.\n\n~~~\ngeorges_gomes\nI think the difference is that when you design a full React app, everything\nsit on the same \"React base\". If you want to move to upgrade to a new React\nversion everything needs to upgrade. And if you need to migrate to Vue or\nEmber or Svelte... everything needs to migrate (or move to some sort of\nmicrofrontend strategy. But given the javascript cost of some of these\nframeworks, it's not cheap to go this route).\n\nWeb Components have a longer life span as they can be used in another app or\nanother version with another technology without been migrated. Makes more\nsense for expensive component that have been battle tested. You don't want to\nrewrite them.\n\n~~~\naylmao\nReact is built to interop with \"general\" JavaScript, so in theory you can use\nit with other rendering frameworks. I used React and D3 all the time.\n\nPerformance-wise, it IS better to stick to a single framework, so I see what\nyou mean. Web components being implemented in the browser do mean the user\ndoesn't have to download any more JS.\n\n------\nmartini333\nWhy would you ever have the logic in methods in Vue? Just keep it simple\n\n<button @click=\"count--\"> <button @click=\"count++\">\n\n~~~\npreommr\nBecause templates should be declarative.\n\nError checking code becomes much more difficult because of the ambiguity and\nspecial parsing that has to be done. Its not just the loader, but things like\nthe ide extensions used.\n\nAllowing small bits of logic like this makes for very nice one-liners and\ndemos, but in the long term its well worth it to make the template as\ndeclarative as possible - ideally just a method name.\n\n------\nasutekku\nSuper cool, thanks for this!\n\nNow regarding the results: Are there any actual usecases where one would\nchoose Angular over some other library?\n\nFrom what i’ve seen from before and now this, i am not aware of a single\nreason why would anyone choose to use it, if they are not constrained by\nlegacy codebase or if there are no stubborn developers who swear by it.\n\n~~~\nKuinox\nVue is great to make small webapp. Also wikipedia chose Vue to remake their UI\nIIRC. React is even simpler, but I really hate it for technical reasons.\n\n~~~\nEGreg\nWe are working to document Q.js out of our entire platform becauss it can be\nused to make much simpler to understand web components, which work seamlessly\nwith SPA pages, events and more:\n\n[https://qbix.com/platform/guide/tools](https://qbix.com/platform/guide/tools)\n\n[https://github.com/Qbix/Platform](https://github.com/Qbix/Platform)\n\n------\nBlackthorn\nI saw at least one that uses \"style scoped\", which I still can't believe is\ndeprecated.\n\n------\nsunseb\nIt's too complicated.\n\nJust look at how Svelte is doing components. It's way better and easier.\n\n------\nCivBase\nThis is neat, but I wish there were more examples than just a counter. I would\nnever use something like Angular, React, or Vue to implement something so\ntrivial.\n\n~~~\nillumanaughty\nThis distills the differences into the simplest possible example, which given\nthe number of examples is incredibly useful.\n\nAlso if you're in a React project, yes, you would use it for a counter.\nObviously you wouldn't use React for _just_ a counter, but it's a great way to\nshow the basics of working with each option.\n\n~~~\nM2Ys4U\n>Obviously you wouldn't use React for just a counter\n\nYou probably shouldn't, but there are a _lot_ of people who reach for a React\ncomponent to do _anything_ on the web.\n\n------\nnotJim\nCan't wait for 2–5 years from now when most of these have failed, and the One\nTrue Way emerges.\n\n~~~\nsqueral\nDon't bother waiting. By that time there will be another set of frameworks.\n\n~~~\nnotJim\nI kinda disagree, I think people are more pessimistic about fracturing than is\nwarranted. For greenfield work, it seems like people have mostly converged on\nReact and Vue, which are conceptually fairly similar. State libs have changed,\nbut again the concepts translate pretty well. Similarly, webpack is the lingua\nfranca. Years ago, we had a new build tool every week, and multiple competing\nframeworks (backbone, angular, and ember) with very different approaches.\n\n~~~\nwishinghand\nI don't think any One True Way will emerge. Svelte is coming out to challenge\nReact and Vue, Alpine+Laravel LiveWire/Phoenix LiveView challenges the concept\nof needing a front end framework, WASM is challenging needing Javascript at\nall, and Snowpack/Parcel/Rollup are coming for Webpack's crown.\n\n------\nnonbirithm\n\"Compare coding style, bundle size and performance of 33 different ways to\nmake a Web Component.\"\n\nI thought this was a joke at first.\n\nBut it suddenly made sense in the context of modern web frameworks and\nmicropackages and all these different ways of doing the same thing.\n\nBut wait, I thought. Surely it was a typo and they meant to type \"3\" and fat-\nfingered it instead?\n\nBut no. It really is 33.\n\nWhich one of those 33 would be the best way of doing things for me? How much\ntime would I have to spend evaluating enough of them?\n\nI'm going back to HTML 4.\n\n~~~\nnogridbag\nI was surprised by the low number too. I'm much happier being a backend\ndeveloper where I have a choice of over 400 frameworks in over 30 programming\nlanguages:\n\n[https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nYo platform as a Launch Pad: Moto 360 launch or bad joke? - chermanowicz\nhttps://medium.com/@YoAppStatus/yo-platform-as-a-launch-pad-73d740b6873c\n\n======\nminimaxir\nWorth noting that Yo did a similar marketing stunt last week...which had\nabsolutely no impact: [http://valleywag.gawker.com/gimmick-app-yo-offered-\ngimmick-c...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/gimmick-app-yo-offered-gimmick-car-\nservice-and-no-one-1625237703)\n\nMy theory is that Yo is milking its $1.5M seed money for counterintuitive\nmarketing deals. The problem is that negotiating and completing marketing\ncampaigns takes time, and Yo's 15 minutes of fame expired before then.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEnergy Storage Investments Boom as Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade - zeristor\nhttps://about.bnef.com/blog/energy-storage-investments-boom-battery-costs-halve-next-decade/\n======\nAnimats\nIt irks me to see predictions talked about as if past events. But this is a\nmore solid guess than most.\n\nActual progress has been impressive: 85% reduction in the 2010-18 period, says\nthe article. Graph here: [1] Getting another 50% in 10 years can probably be\ndone from manufacturing scale alone. Giant battery pack factories seem to be\ngoing up all over.\n\nThis is something that ought to be almost totally automated, but doesn't yet\nseem to be. You're making large numbers of identical units for years per\nmodel, the best case for automation. Somebody will get that right soon.\n\nDo we get more energy density? 2x more, and gasoline cars are toast.\n\n[1] [https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-\nion-b...](https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery-\nprices/)\n\n~~~\nGustomaximus\nHalve the cost and I suspect energy utilities as we know them are in trouble\ntoo.\n\nCurrently solar is a no brainer in my country of Australia. Typically around a\n6 year payoff for a 20 year benifit.\n\nBatteries are about break over ~10 years payback. But if you could half that\nit's becomes something many people will do. And once that starts happening\nit's a death spiral for utilities as they will have a every reducing customer\nbase for a business with large fixed costs. As they put these expenses onto a\nshrinking base it only encourages more people to swap.\n\nSo for a country with a large suburban population that has the solar battery\noption this is going to hit utilities hard. Their market could shrink to\nlargely providing high density areas where households dont have the roof space\nto generate their own power.\n\n~~~\namluto\nResidential batteries are currently BS. They serve three purposes IMO:\n\n1\\. A degree of backup. Solar alone is crappy at backup power. Solar plus\nbattery is okay as long as one’s house is wired appropriately to shed load.\n\n2\\. They can reduce peak loads. This is called “peak shaving”. If the utility\ncan rely on it, it can genuinely reduce equipment costs to the utility. As far\nas I know, almost no _residential_ rates give any incentive for peak shaving.\nCommercial rates give an extremely strong incentive.\n\n3\\. Batteries can arbitrage nonsensical rate schedules. PG&E will buy a\nlimited but large amount of peak energy from me for over 50 cents/kWh, and it\ndoesn’t really matter that I’m just selling them power that I bought from them\nfor about 12 cents/kWh a few hours earlier. This is the magic of NEM2PS + EV-A\n(now unavailable, but NEM2PS + EV2-A is still available and is not all that\ndifferent). It is, IMO, crazy.\n\nHome batteries would need to come down considerably in cost (way more than 2x)\nto make them worthwhile without these crazy incentives.\n\n~~~\nsitkack\nEasier to just increase the cost of power more than 2x.\n\n------\nspenrose\nThat halving will make variable renewables much more effective:\n[https://www.vox.com/energy-and-\nenvironment/2019/8/9/20767886...](https://www.vox.com/energy-and-\nenvironment/2019/8/9/20767886/renewable-energy-storage-cost-electricity)\n\n------\ndwheeler\nIf this prediction turns out to be true, it would be a real boon for reducing\ncarbon emissions. Changing from 7% to 40% of electrical generation is a big\ndeal. I'm sure it's not enough, but it sounds like a start.\n\n~~~\nadrianN\nLet's hope we didn't just replace 40% of electricity with renewables by 2040,\nor we can probably kiss civilization as we know it goodbye. We need to reduce\nglobal carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 if we want a fighting chance of staying\nbelow 2°. That's much more than just electricity.\n\n~~~\neloff\nI think the chances off staying under 2 degrees are slim to none. But that\ndoesn't mean kissing civilization goodbye either.\n\nAnd for Canada and Russia it will probably be a net positive.\n\n------\nvolak\nNo companies listed in article - anyone have a list of companies developing\nnew battery technology?\n\nBeen something I've tried researching in the past with little luck\n\n~~~\niams-\nIn the united states the main commercial option for non-lithium batteries is\nNant who is developing zinc-air batteries (but for usage alongside lithium)\n\nThen there is Redflow out of Australia and Voltstorage in Germany.\n\nNot sure on vanadium flow batteries\n\n~~~\nmerrymoccasin\nI worked for a vanadium flow battery startup which went out of business.\nVanadium provides a higher degree of safety due to the chemistry not being\nflammable. The chemistry also cycles (charges and discharges) without\ndegradation in energy storage capacity. However, vanadium flow batteries are\nfar less energy dense, have moving parts (pumps), and a poor track record of\nreliability. There was a lot of interest in vanadium flow batteries when Li-\nIon was way more expensive, but now that prices have plummeted (and will\ncontinue to do so) I don't see much of a future outside of certain\napplications.\n\n------\njosmala\nThe numbers given in article the world wide battery installations are\npredicted in 2040 to cover about 20 minutes of world electricity consumption\nassuming it would be equal close to 2016 figures, where majority of world is\nin relative poverty. It definitely is at least two orders of magnitude too\nlittle to stop climate change. People assume the reducing emissions would stop\nclimate change. Nope, emissions are only related to rate of change not\nabsolute value. Reducing emissions by 90% would only slow down the change, it\nreducing 99% would actually stop it, and it would need to be about 100% to\nslowly reverse the effects of what has been done by the time humanity gets\nthere.\n\n~~~\nx43b\nI actually work on reducing emissions tangentially and am absolutely not a\n\"denier\", but I have not seen any evidence that our models are so accurate\nthat we can predict the tipping point from halting increases to decreases\nwithin 1%.\n\n~~~\njosmala\nJust took a number which carbon is removed from air-sea-plants natural\ncirculation. The increase in CO2 stops when emissions match the removal of CO2\nfrom circulation as permanent basis. And that figure seems to be about 1% of\nour emissions. But the key issue is that those two numbers need to match in\norder to actually stop the climate change permanently which is so far away\nfrom every politicians discussion points. All the renewables and storage\ntechnologies fail when we start to calculate amount of material required to\nbuild them and mining of those resources. Only energy technology so far that\ncould actually do it is nuclear. As for uranium limited reserves they are\ncalculated about 0.1 cent per kwh price limit. It is one of those situations\nwhere emotions points towards renewables while numbers are clearly for the\nnuclear if people could accept tiny risk of having two bananas worth of\nradiation or even the extreme case of getting so high radiation dose that it\nwould give as high cancer risk as the average alcohol consumption.\n\n------\nnew_realist\nFor long term energy storage batteries are not ideal. Their costs increase\nlinearly with time of storage and amount of storage. Peak shaving is an OK use\nfor them, though.\n\n~~~\nZeroGravitas\nWhat percentage of our global storage needs do you believe are \"long term\" in\nthis dichotomy?\n\nIs this at the \"electric cars can't do my daily commute\" or \"electric cars\ncan't tow my boat 600 miles without stopping, once a year\" stage?\n\nSeems like most of the world just needs solar to last until the next day with\na decent chunk of that power needed immediately after the sun sets and any\nwind power available could get smoothed out and/or stored for the morning by\nthe same batteries.\n\n~~~\npfdietz\nShort term = diurnal\n\nLong term = weeks to seasonal\n\nBatteries, especially that sort of cheaper battery, would be great for diurnal\nload leveling.\n\nLong term storage is probably more hydrogen and mass thermal storage. The\ntradeoff would be capital cost per unit stored energy vs. efficiency.\n\nStorage competes with and complements two other approaches: overinstallation\nof generation capacity w. curtailment, and dispatchable demand.\n\nCurtailment involves installing more wind and PV than you need, and curtailing\nits output when supply > demand. A study in Minnesota found that this was\ncheaper than adding storage up to about 70% of the electrical power supply. Of\ncourse this creates dirt-cheap power during the curtailed periods that people\ncan find use for (industrial thermal storage, production of hydrogen in low\ncapital cost membraneless electrolyzers).\n\nDispatchable demand would involve redesign of industrial processes to operate\nin fits and starts. For example, today's aluminum cells do not respond well to\ninconstant power sources (their either freeze up or overheat and damage the\nlining). This was fine when the cheapest power sources were baseload sources.\nBut perhaps an aluminum technology could be developed that would be more\nforgiving of variation and outages, to exploit the new situation where\nintermittent power is becoming the cheapest.\n\nOf course, another approach is to move those industrial processes down close\nto the equator, where there is little seasonal variation in insolation. High\nlatitude countries may become industrially disadvantaged in a renewable\npowered world.\n\n~~~\nmagicalhippo\n> Long term storage is probably more hydrogen and mass thermal storage.\n\nI was thinking about how multiple big heating packs[1] would stack up. Seems\nthe Wikipedia reference[2] has the topic well covered. Tricky but possible.\nAnd apparently (duh) not a novel idea by any means[3][4].\n\nThough the references I could find were mostly for home-size installations or\nfor actual heating packs. Here in Norway we're blessed with lots of mountains\nwith lakes, so we can do pumped hydro for latent storage. But for flatter\ncountries (say our neighbors Denmark), is grid-size PCM storage viable?\n\n[1]:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_acetate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_acetate)\n\n[2]:\n[https://books.google.com/books?id=EsfcWE5lX40C&q=latent+heat...](https://books.google.com/books?id=EsfcWE5lX40C&q=latent+heat+of+fusion+sodium+acetate#search)\n\n[3]:\n[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13594...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359431115008510)\n\n[4]:\n[https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/appene/v221y2018icp522-534.htm...](https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/appene/v221y2018icp522-534.html)\n\n~~~\npfdietz\nI was thinking more in terms of artificial geothermal. The time constant for a\nsphere of bedrock to cool off goes as the square of the radius, and can easily\nbe made to be many years. These would be very large installations, of course.\n\n------\nqbaqbaqba\nDo we know how to safely dispose these batteries?\n\n------\ndeepnotderp\nWhat happened to molten salt batteries?\n\n------\nalexandra_cgg\nThis is not happening, this is larger than the amount of energy demand in the\nUS and renewables forecasted\n\n~~~\npfdietz\nMany such forecasts have been embarrassingly wrong as of late, grossly\nunderestimating the pace of renewable installation.\n\n------\nzeristor\nI had assumed fold was the same as 2^x, as in the number of layers for each\nfold of a piece of paper.\n\nThe artice talks about a 122 fold increase in the amount the power of\ninstalled battery power, I assume that a 2^122 increase is impossible, even\naccounting for replacement of end of life power packs.\n\n~~~\nben_w\nI believe “x-fold” means “times x“.\n\n~~~\nzeristor\nPerhaps a question of mere semantics but why use the word 'fold' when it means\ntimes? Is it just to sound more \"sophisticated\"?\n\n~~~\nben_w\nApparently “fold” is an archaic suffix that means the same thing as times. I\ngrew up with that so I haven’t really thought about it much.\n\n~~~\ndwheeler\n\"Fold\" is not archaic, but it may be more common in some regions compared to\nothers (see \"pop\" vs. \"soda\"). The \"-fold\" suffix is in Webster's Ninth New\nCollegiate Dictionary and it does NOT have an \"archaic\" marking. It's also one\nof the answers when you ask Google to \"define fold\" (you have to look lower\nbecause suffixes are sorted after the main word).\n\nI use the suffix myself; it's nice and short when you need to express the\nconcept.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: How do you deal with competition - Void_\n\nI have an idea. I know that millions do.<p>I'm willing to execute. That makes me a little different from the millions. I already started working on it, already spent some time and already see some results. That makes me quite different from the rest with the ideas.<p>But my problem is the competition.<p>There is competition, which is selling pretty much the same idea. I knew about it, but I always thought it's not good enough. It's not good enough for me and that's why I think I can make something better.<p>My question is if I this is enough. There's nothing that makes the idea unique. No extra feature, no additional value. Not in the idea. So should I refine the idea? Or maybe pick a different one? Or should focus on executing better?\n======\nsebg\nFrom your comment \"it's not good enough for me\" tells me that there most be\nsome way of refining the idea so that it does become good enough for you.\n\nAs a first step, talk to people who use your competitor's product and see if\nit is \"not good enough\" for them as well. Then ask them if your refining idea\nwould make it good enough for them. After you've talked to enough people you\nwill have a more clear understanding of what needs/problems/frustrations your\ncompetitor is addressing and what needs/problems/frustrations your competitor\nis not addressing.\n\nThen you can start implementing the solution for those needs.\n\n------\nbrk\nAll of the above.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nUK startup scene needs a confidence boost - bosshog\nhttp://www.carsonified.com/web-apps/the-problem-with-web-mission\n\n======\nabless\nThere's recently been a debate at Cambridge University (UK) about Silicon\nValley vs. Europe as the future for start-ups. Hermann Hauser, a very\nsuccessful entrepreneur from Cambridge, argued that Europe will catch up when\nit comes to new technology (I think he mentioned mobile phone chips). I find\nhis point quite interesting and I am willing to believe that Europe has a\nchance of winning when it comes to new inventions.\n\nOn the other hand, Silicon Valley is where the money is. Much more\nimportantly, however, seems to be the willingness to take risks and embrace\nfailures. This is something that cannot be found in the UK and I dare say it\nis vital.\n\n~~~\nbaha_man\n\"I think he mentioned mobile phone chips...\" - that would be ARM, one of the\n(sadly too few) UK technology success stories:\n\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_RISC_Machines>\n\n------\npaulsb\nIt's all well and good saying that we have everything here in the UK, but\nwhere? I want names, places and events.\n\nWhere is the UK start-up school with an illustrious list of speakers -\nincluding SV ones?\n\nWho are the VC's with some balls to back some risky, yet exciting start-ups?\n\nIf we are to catch-up with SV, shouldn't we be doubling, or even tripling, our\nefforts, like having Seedcamp run twice a year in a similar vein to YC, etc.,\netc.\n\nThere is good reason why the UK/European start-ups have gone to the sates, and\nthat is because they don't believe we have everything here. If we have\neverything here, then make it more evident.\n\n------\nmenloparkbum\nA package tour for a bunch of nerds to stay in the tenderloin and commute to\nOracle during the day? I don't foresee many important deals being made during\nthis trip.\n\nOn a certain level, this is a bit disturbing, as I distinctly remember the\nnumber of silly conferences and mixers increasing to a critical mass right\nbefore the dot-com bust. Lately, in SF there has been a Web\n2.0/TechCrunch/Valleywag event every other night.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat would a python pip replacement look like? - dfee\nHaving branched out from the world of Python in recent years, I&#x27;ve seen some interesting package managers for other languages and of course operating systems. I&#x27;ve got some hang ups with pip and setuptools that I imagine could be resolved with an extensible approach. For example, I imagine scoped package support (see NPM), transparent versioning (aka deterministic installs, or a better pip-tools), automatic project dependency management (again, NPM), parallel installation (yarn)...<p>So what would a re-think of pip look like?\n======\nvforgione\nTwine[0] is the tool I've been using for PyPI archive management and Pipenv[1]\nis looking promising as the next iteration of pip.\n\nTwine makes the packaging process _slightly_ easier, although setuptools is\nstill a bit of a pain.\n\nPipenv handles a lot of project cruft for you: setting up a virtualenv,\ndistinguishing dev and prod packages, locking them down and deterministic\nbuilding.\n\n[0]: [https://github.com/pypa/twine](https://github.com/pypa/twine)\n\n[1]:\n[https://github.com/kennethreitz/pipenv](https://github.com/kennethreitz/pipenv)\n\n~~~\ndfee\nOh man, how have I not known about pipenv? This addresses a huge amount of my\ncomplaints with pip. Thanks for sharing!\n\n~~~\nvforgione\nThe downside to pipenv is that there aren't any good docker images to work\nwith it. I've tried a few times, but I've never given enough time to learning\nthe guts of Docker to make anything stable enough to run with it.\n\n~~~\ndfee\nHere's my Dockerfile:\n[https://gist.github.com/dfee/388c3f270fdfc4f31aba906770f9313...](https://gist.github.com/dfee/388c3f270fdfc4f31aba906770f93137)\n\n~~~\nvforgione\nVery cool. I'll have to give it a whirl. I haven't taken a stab at a custom\nimage in a while. Thanks!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDo you want some Belle with your ReactJS? - iweinfuld\nhttps://www.startersquad.com/blog/you-need-to-belle-with-reactjs/\n\n======\njyotipuri\nBuilt with ❤ on Planet Earth :)\n\n------\nkitze\nAwesome library.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nJobric: A smart job search engine that uses artificial intelligence - yataa\nhttp://jobric.com/?ref=ijm_hn\n\n======\nyataa\nThis is a little something I've been working on which will be launched to the\npublic in the coming months. Request an invite to get earlier access.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nU.S. CEO to France: ‘How Stupid Do You Think We Are?’ - kruken\nhttp://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/02/20/u-s-ceo-to-france-how-stupid-do-you-think-we-are/\n======\njacquesm\nWow, what a total jerk. Regardless of the differences between US, Chinese,\nIndian and French work ethics the least you could do as a CEO is to learn how\nto write a polite refusal.\n\nWhen you don't _have_ to insult someone it is probably better not to. Because\nthose pesky French just might publish your less than elegant letters, your\nstockholders might read those letters and could very well think: \"This guy\nruns the company I invest in? I'd better move my money out before his loud\nmouth causes him to lose business.\".\n\nStockholders are fickle, and some stockholders actually care about more than\njust the numbers (of course, that is a minority).\n\nAlso, if you communicate you negative interest when a foreign representative\nhas thought to offer you a chance at some deal you may want to think of the\nfuture. Effectively you are saying 'if you are so kind as to think of me I\nwill repay you with trash'. That will likely not be repeated again and likely\nthe effect will be much further spread than just this one country and just\nthis one official.\n\nThat bulk deal for Tires for all the vehicles of the French armed forces\n(Michelin?), the police force or their connections with the ministry of labour\nand their counterparts in other countries. Piss off politicians in enough\nplaces and it will backfire.\n\nMaybe there is some hidden upside but I don't see any.\n\nFinally, you are also representing your country when you do business abroad.\nEvery other American CEO lost a little bit of respect today by re-inforcing\ncertain stereo types that we could all do without.\n\nIf you are ever in a position like this, please say 'no' with some grace.\n\n~~~\n16s\nI like people who tell it like they see it. Sure, he could tone it down a bit,\nbut I would prefer he does not. When you guard your words and hold back how\nyou really feel, you are not doing anyone any favors.\n\nSaying nice, comforting things to them (while they fail and people lose their\njobs) would be a greater injustice than being honest and frank. I bet no one\nelse has ever spoken that directly about the matter. Sometimes, that's\nprecisely what is needed.\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nSure, but this is not in any way productive.\n\nAnother thing that bugs me is the hypocritical stance of suing Chinese tire\nmanufacturers and then turning around and manufacturing in China.\n\nIf you do something like this - it's a pretty drastic departure from good form\n- there ought to be a reason for it, some kind of upside to balance the\nobvious downsides.\n\n~~~\nericd\nI think it is productive - a polite refusal would leave the minister with less\ninformation about the opinion of business leaders towards French policies.\nThis way, he knows of a few specific issues that the CEO has with the idea of\noperating in France.\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nAll he succeeded in communicating is that he thinks in stereotypes and is a\njerk. Why do you think this letter is now on public display?\n\nWorkers in France work for three hours, eat for two and talk for another\nthree? Really?\n\nProducing in France is only expensive because of the labour costs? Or is there\nmaybe also that pesky environmental controls issue?\n\n~~~\noelmekki\nFrench here. What I'm mostly concerned here is that the guy is basically\nsaying : \"we will produce tires in China for cheap and then sell them to you,\nbecause we can\".\n\nEurope has very low restrictions on imports, because it tries to implement\nfree market as purely as possible. Many voices in France say we must be more\naggressive on importation taxes, and that even US has a more protected market\nthan us. After all, no west country can beat China in production costs.\n\nProblem is, those voices are mostly from nationalist and xenophobic parties.\nEven current left wing french government would not touch total free market.\n\nNow, there is the insult. Saying french workers work 3 hours a day is totally\nstupid. Normal work day is 8 hours for private sector, and 7 hours for public\nsector (but most public sector workers work 8 hours and then take a day off to\ncompensate over worked days). The reason because average hours per day is low\n(see other comments) is because unemployment is high, so many people accept\npart time jobs and short term jobs.\n\nNow, combine the cynical stance \"we can produce cheap products in China and\nsell them to you with no penalties\" and the insult, and you've got perfect\nfood for nationalist parties. Once again.\n\n~~~\nbrousky\n> Saying French workers work 3 hours a day is totally stupid. Normal work day\n> is 8 hours for private sector, and 7 hours for public sector (but most\n> public sector workers work 8 hours and then take a day off to compensate\n> over worked days)\n\nHe didn't say workers came to the factory for 3 hours then left. What he said\nwas that out of the 7 hours of a work day, 1 is lost in breaks and lunch, 3\nare spent chatting instead of working and there's only 3 ours of actual work\nbeing done.\n\nIf you read the comments on the article the vast majority actually support\nwhat that CEO says and disapprove the actions of the CGT.\n\n------\nnostromo\n> Titan had to pay millions to Washington lawyers to sue the Chinese tire\n> companies because of their subsidizing. Titan won. The government collects\n> the duties. We don't get the duties, the government does.\n\nThis is how tariffs work. You don't tax imports to fork over free money to\ndomestic companies. The point is to increase the cost of the imported good to\ncompensate for illegal (from the WTO's point of view) Chinese subsidies.\n\nI'm confused as to why he thinks those taxes should go to Titan.\n\n~~~\nOGinparadise\n_Maybe_ he meant to say: we were harmed financially, paid lawyers, sued, won\nand got jack in return.\n\n~~~\nrtpg\nthey got their tariffs, and made life generally harder for their competitors.\nThat's something.\n\n~~~\nOGinparadise\nYeah but generally you should be compensated for the already done damage.\n\n------\nrayiner\nWhat's amusing about the letter is that it shows how even executives buy into\ncultural stereotypes to justify their activities.\n\nThe substance of the letter is this: we'd rather buy an Indian or Chinese tire\ncompany to get the government subsidies and take advantage of the low cost of\nlabor.\n\nThe stuff about French workers only working three hours a day is fluff, and on\ntop of that almost certainly exaggerated out of context and/or apocryphal.\n\nSee: <http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/work-life-balance/>\n\nThe French work on average 1,554 hours per year, about 10% lower than the OECD\naverage of 1,749. Is that 10% breaking the backs of French tire manufacturing?\nOf course not. Consider that South Koreans work on average 2,193 hours per\nyear, a staggering 25% higher than the OECD average. Why doesn't Titan\nmanufacture tires in South Korea?\n\nThe answer is that relatively small differences in the number of hours people\nworked aren't driving the economics here. The French work somewhat less than\nsay Americans, but also make somewhat less money than say Americans (last I\nchecked, manufacturing jobs paid on an hourly basis). To be accurate, the\nletter could have said: \"we won't manufacture tires in France because the\nFrench work 6.5 hours per day on average versus 7.5 per day for Americans.\"\nBut that would have sounded stupid. Hence the need to exaggerate and say: \"the\nFrench only work 3 hours per day!\"\n\nWhat's driving the economics is, as the letter points out, $1/hour wages in\nChina or India, where people are happy to get so little money because those\ncountries are poor and have low standards of living relative to western\ncountries. The rest is just handwaving and fluff.\n\n~~~\ngojomo\nThe \"three hours a day\" is obviously an impressionistic account, but he\nreports having visited that factory more than once and spoken with its\nworkers. And, as someone who's managed similar factories in other\njurisdictions, he'd have some insight about what 'tempo' of production is\nnecessary for profitable operation.\n\nSo it's not fair to accuse him of imagining this based solely on cultural\nstereotypes. He has expertise beyond that, both in the industry and the\nspecific factory; that's why the French government approached him.\n\nAlso, your OECD averages for France don't tell us anything about how a single\ntroubled factory works. Many French businesses are doing fine, but they aren't\nlooking for a foreign-buyer rescue. The Titan CEO is speaking of one, specific\ntroubled factory, with a specific (likely unfireable) workforce. Its work\nenvironment might be among the worst France's traditions, unions, and\npolitical influences has to offer. As thin as the anecdote in the CEO's letter\nis, it's still stronger than an argument based on national averages that\ninclude healthy businesses.\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nThe third paragraph is talking about that factory, but he's clearly\ngeneralizing to French workers. He uses the word \"French\" three times in four\nshort sentences.\n\n~~~\ngojomo\nIt can be stretched to read that way, but I believe the context makes it clear\nthat he is primarily speaking about those he observed and spoke to in that\nfactory.\n\nFor example, the last sentence phrase \"I told this to the French union workers\nto their faces\" is clearly referring to specific workers at a specific site,\nnot all French workers (or even French union workers) everywhere.\n\nHe does emphasize the descriptor 'French', but that seems both to rub a little\nsalt in the wound of the national official he's responding to, and perhaps to\ncontrast those he's describing with non-French workers at the same factory, or\nwith workers in similar tire factories outside France. It isn't evidence the\nauthor has the same judgement of all French workers, even though that\nexpansive interpretation is an easier strawman to knock down.\n\n------\niuguy\nI have an idea that the differences in work ethic across Europe may be partly\nto do with climate and partly to do with language.\n\nIn France, the verb 'work' is _travailler_. Traditionally this meant literally\nto toil, a chore, an obligation. In Germany, the word werken means to build,\ncreate, do. The German word more aligned with travailler is arbeit. This lack\nof correlation in the word work I believe may explain the differences in the\napproach and cultural views towards work that I see across Europe,\nparticularly with latin root romance languages.\n\nThe second factor I've seen is climate. In the more productive northern\nEuropean countries, it's generally colder. There's been a historical need for\nproduce and for people to work (not endure or arbeit) to trade in order to get\neverything you need in terms of food and shelter.\n\nSouth of the Olive line something strange happens. If you look at Spain you'll\nsee that there's a long siesta during the day. This is because for a large\npart of the year Spain's too hot to work in during most of the afternoon.\nWhile we have air conditioning now, hundreds of years of cultural differences\nI feel may have led us with ingrained ideas about what work is and what it\nmeans, with those differences reinforced by climate.\n\nFor example, in Turkey there's no such thing as a siesta (there's no time in\nIstanbul for one anyway). Culturally it doesn't really exist, yet it's as hot\nas parts of Spain that do.\n\nI could be completely wrong about this, but it's just something I've noticed.\nI do believe that the unions are crippling France's productivity, but France\nis as likely to change in the short term as the rest of Europe to France's\nview IMHO.\n\n __EDIT __: I'm not saying that Germans, Brits or whoever are harder working,\nor that the French, Spanish, Moomins are lazy, far from it. I'm pointing out\nsome differences in how people perceive work (i.e. neutrally or with negative\nconnotations) based on language and culture, based solely on my own\nexperience. For what it's worth I've worked with lazy Brits and Germans and\nhard working French and Spanish people. The Moomins I've never worked with,\nsorry if you're a Moomin and my ignorance upset you.\n\nraverbashing makes a good point here:\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5252446>\n\n~~~\ngalactus\nFrance is one of most productive countries in the world, when measured as GDP\nper hour-worked:\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita_per_hour)\n\n~~~\nhollerith\nRight, but that is partly or wholly because French unemployment is higher than\nit is in the US with the result that the less productive workers do not have\njobs and consequently are not included in the statistic. If we use a different\nstatistic, namely, GDP per capita, France is significantly lower than the US.\n\n~~~\ncpleppert\nGDP per capita doesn't track unemployment either. France isn't 'significantly'\nlower than the US either it is about where Germany is and Britain is far\nbehind them both.\n\n------\nrdl\nI don't get why you'd ever send a letter like this (except anonymously, or if\nyou were a politician). There is no upside beyond just \"Sorry, we're not\ninterested -- our new investments are focused on Asia, where demand for tires\nis growing 200%/yr. Sincerely, CEO.\" There is downside -- you might provoke\nsome tariffs in EU/France, or disinvestment from the pension fund, or\nwhatever.\n\n~~~\nctdonath\nWhile scathing, it is also very informative. \"Not interested\" and a vague\n\"lookin' better elsewhere\" doesn't get into the reality of \"why?\"\n\nMethinks he did them a great service in being brutally honest. Those trying to\nsolve the obvious problems will make much greater progress with such a letter\nin hand, rather than the usual apologetic tact. \"Helpful are the wounds of a\nfriend...\" I'm sure he would, in fact, _like_ to buy a French tire factory,\nbut ridiculous pay for minuscule work makes for an offer no less insulting\nthan his reply.\n\n~~~\nrdl\nYes, but there is no percentage in it for him. It's like telling a random fat\nperson on the bus that he's fat. Probably nothing happens, but there is a\nsmall chance he will fly into a rage, or will tell everyone that you called\nhim fat (maybe blogging about it, with video!). There's a much smaller chance\nthat he'll suddenly start to diet/exercise, but how does that benefit you?\nIt's different if it's a friend/family member, or if you're hired as a trainer\nor doctor.\n\n~~~\nctdonath\nThere _is_ a percentage in it for him: I'm sure he _would_ like to own a\nFrench tire factory IF they actually had competitive productivity. With a\nverbal kick in the pants, perhaps the situation will change and he'll get a\nviable opportunity there. That aside, he's giving someone fair warning they're\nengaging in self-destructive behavior - a kind act.\n\nAnd no, it's not like telling a random fat person he's fat. He was approached\nwith a request that he purchase the company. It's more like an obese slob\napplying for a serving-staff position at Hooters or Tilted Kilt.\n\n~~~\nnraynaud\nFrance is not the greatest manufacturing country, it's still one of the most\nproductive country in the world, by a lot of measures.\n\n~~~\nrdl\nSomewhat ironically, it's also one of the best manufacturers for tires, the\nproduct specifically mentioned in the article. Michelin (for passenger car\ntires) is amazing, although their US-market tires (at least for everything but\nsome specific race/customs) are all made in South Carolina.\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nQuite the flame, I share others surprise that he would be quite so flagrant in\nhis discussion. It is something of an art, and perhaps a bit of fun, to tell\npeople 'no freaking way' with language that reads nicely. Clearly the guys at\nTitan have no interest in that :-).\n\nIt would have been more effective perhaps if he had shared with the people of\nAmien the context of the discussion. Something along the lines of \"this is\nwhat we can pay per worked hour if we want to sell tires to your neighbors.\nMore than that, and they will buy them from Chinese factories.\" And let the\nunions be the ones who get to decide that the jobs go out of the country.\n\n------\nfatjokes\n> Insulting the French doesn’t seem to be rewarded by the stock market, and\n> Titan is down about 1% so far today.\n\nJournalists should be forced to say \"correlation is not causation\" ten times\nbefore writing each article.\n\n~~~\nlostlogin\nNot sure where you live, but the national paper in New Zealand doesn't have\njournalists write its articles. Badly written advert/infotainment.\n\n------\ndaenz\nOne of Mr. Taylor's Titan commercials is pretty interesting\n<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exFF_2Eh9Ec>\n\n------\nkordless\nTalk about a financial blowout. Sounds like his intent is to waste Titan's\ntime writing negative remarks and being disrespectful. I agree they shouldn't\ndo business with France, but to be so rude is, well...rude.\n\n~~~\npanzagl\nMaybe he thinks you have to be rude to deal with the French? There is a\nstereotype there, right or wrong.\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nBut do you have to be rude _not_ to deal with the French? What is the upside?\n\n------\neloisant\nThe CEO is Maurice Taylor, and he's used to say the same bullshit to US\npoliticians.\n\nThat guy is pretty crazy.\n\n~~~\nguizzy\nI wonder if he's aware of how very FRENCH his first name is.\n\n------\nstfu\nIs there somewhere already a translation of the French response?\n\n[http://www.lesechos.fr/economie-\npolitique/france/actu/020257...](http://www.lesechos.fr/economie-\npolitique/france/actu/0202578488071-exclusif-goodyear-la-reponse-de-\nmontebourg-a-titan-540536.php)\n\n~~~\nguizzy\nHere's my amateur translation...\n\nSir,\n\nYour words, as extreme as they are insulting, pay witness to your complete\nignorance of our country, France, and its solid assets, such as its world\nrenowned power of attraction and its ties with the United States of America.\n\nFrance is proud to host more than 20 000 foreign businesses, representing\nnearly 2 million jobs, a third of it's industrial exports, 20% of its private\nR&D and 25% of its industrial jobs. Every year, 700 foreign investors make a\ndecision to localize job and value creating investments in France. And this\nstrong attractivity is not waning, on the contrary, it is strengthening every\nyear.\n\nAmongst these foreign investments, the United States take the first place.\n4200 subsidiaries of american businesses represent nearly 500 000 jobs. The\npresence of american businesses in France is not new: Haviland since 1842, IBM\nsince 1914, Coca-Cola since 1933, General Electric since 1974, and so many\nothers. These ties are renewed every year: in 2012, businesses like Massey-\nFergueson, Mars Chocolat, or 3M chose to grow their presence in France.\n\nWhat were the decisive factors in these decisions? Foreign businesses come to\nFrance for its quality infrastructure, its enviable living environment, one of\nthe most competitive energy in Europe and an enviroment favoring research and\ninnovation. But above all, in opposition to your ridiculous and disparaging\nremarks, the bulk of these businesses know and appreciate the quality and\nproductivity of the french workforce, its engagement, its knowhow, its talents\nand the competence of french workers.\n\nTo strengthen this power of attraction, the french government has just taken\n35 measures in the \"National pact for growth, competitivity and work\". Amongst\nthem, a tax refund for competitivity and work lighten by 6% the salary load of\nbusinesses of between 1 and 2,5 SMIC. Social partners have also reached an\nagreement on job security, which illustrate the quality of the social dialogue\nin France and its importance to our government.\n\nMight I remind you that Titan, the company you helm, is 20 times smaller than\nMichelin, our French technology leader with global reach, and 35 times less\nprofitable? This demonstrate how much Titan could stand to learn and gain from\nimplanting in France.\n\nFrance is even prouder and happy to host american investments that our two\ncountries are linked by an old and passionate friendship. Are you at least\naware of what La Fayette did for the United States of America? And as for us,\nwe will never forget the sacrifices young american soldiers made on the\nbeaches of Normandy to free us from nazism in 1944. And since you chose to\ncriticise your own country in the email you sent me, I must tell you how much\nthe french government admires the policies put in place by President Obama. As\nour minister of industry, I am particularly impressed by his action favoring\nrelocating industrial jobs in the United States and its radical innovation.\nThere is a certain link between our current policy and the one inspired by\nyour President.\n\nYou evoque your intention to use certain countries' workforce to flood our\nmarkets. I have a duty to inform you that this condamnable short-term thinking\nwill one day face a justified reaction from States. Such is already the case\nfor France and it's growing amount of allies within the European Union who are\ncampaining for reciprocity of trading and are working against dumping. In the\nmeantime, be assured that I will make certain that our competent governmental\nservices will work twice as hard to inspect your imported tires. They will be\nespecially mindful of the respect of the applicable standards in matters\nsocial, environmental and technical.\n\nPlease accept, sir, my greetings. ((That greeting is essentially\nuntranslatable)).\n\nArnaud MONTEBOURG\n\n~~~\nCamperBob2\nWould have been a much more powerful response if he'd left out that last\nparagraph. In two sentences he reinforced every incorrect stereotype of France\nas a third-world chickenshit bureaucracy that any Americans might have held.\n\n~~~\nquicksilver03\nAgreed, he's basically demonstrated (as there were any doubt by now) that he's\nunfit for his position as minister.\n\n------\napi\nSummary: \"I'd rather pay slave wages.\"\n\nOf course he would. Of course, the French union workers might be a bit too far\non the other end of the spectrum.\n\n------\npcrh\nSo he's going to buy a Chinese tire factory and pocket Chinese government\nsubsidies? /s\n\n------\naioprisan\nHe makes some great points. People don't care where their good come from, they\njust want them to be cheap and high quality. # hour workday? Unbelievable.\n\n~~~\nanonymouz\nWell, on the one hand people don't care where their goods come from when they\nbuy them (or more to the point, they don't care under which conditions they\nwere manufactured). But then, on the other hand, they don't want to have the\nstandard of living of the people working in those factories. Short-term self-\ninterest tends to make people ignore that in the long-term this model is not\nsustainable.\n\n~~~\nctdonath\nExorbitant pay for 3 hours of labor* is much less sustainable. The euro-per-\nhour workers will (and do) work their way up to better conditions, while their\noverpaid slothful competition will just get shut down.\n\n(* - we may also presume those 3 hours do not constitute \"hard\" work.)\n\n------\nlutusp\nThe letter should include a p.s.: \"We don't have a public relations department\nand I am marginally literate.\"\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nHe's marginally literate because...?\n\n~~~\nlutusp\nHis letter shows the classic signs of someone uncomfortable expressing himself\nin words. Reading his letter is like watching someone ice skate for the first\ntime -- all the expected motions are there, but without any familiarity or\nsense of style.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nInteresting. It came off much more casual and dashed-off to me.\n\n~~~\nlutusp\n> It came off much more casual and dashed-off to me.\n\nYes, but both can be true at once. :)\n\n------\nmaceo\nThe letter is a good example of the cognitive dissonance so prevalent amongst\nthe privileged elite. In the same paragraph where he laments that the French\ngovernment \"does nothing\" while the Chinese ship tires to France, he predicts\nFrench industrial degradation because \"its government is more government.\"\nWhich is it, is it too much government or not enough?\n\nIt's this deafness to the meaning of your own words that would allow a\nloudmouthed industrialist-type to shout \"class warfare!\" the moment new taxes\nare proposed on the wealthy. This letter is an unprovoked attack on French\nworking people. And if French working people decide to non-violently retaliate\nagainst the company by petitioning for import restrictions, organizing a\nboycott, etc, it would be wholly justified.\n\n------\nfruzz\nI find it somewhat odd that he rails against workers earning too much, when\nwhat they earn is but a fraction of his own salary. I doubt they work any less\nharder than him either.\n\n~~~\nbrousky\n> I doubt they work any less harder than him either.\n\nActually, his main gripe is that after visiting the factory, he realized\nworkers only do 3 hours of actual work in a typical 7-hour day. When he\nbrought that up to union reps, they bluntly replied that \"it's the French\nway\".\n\n------\nmathattack\nI can't see how taunting government leaders ends well for a company. You may\nnot agree with them, but what good comes from taunting? Will this really be\nproductive to getting France to ease up on union laws?\n\n------\nmariuolo\nHe could have got his point across in a more civil way.\n\nI understand he felt the urge to vent his spleen at someone, but now they are\ngoing to be blackballed should they ever need anything from the French\ngovernment.\n\n------\npavel_lishin\nThe best part is \"best regards\" at the very end of a fairly insulting letter.\nI long for the day when letters are signed honestly.\n\n------\nnraynaud\nDon't forget this a member of the GOP talking to a member of the Socialist\nParty. It might just be a posture.\n\n------\neqreqeq\n>>Alas, America isn’t what it used to be: Insulting the French doesn’t seem to\nbe rewarded by the stock market, and Titan is down about 1% so far today.\n\nAs if. Correlation is not causation.\n\n~~~\nImprovedSilence\nTrue. Also, the wsj article is dated today. Look at the market, EVERYTHING is\ndown today. The letter was dated Feb 8. As if this news is just getting around\nto the big players today...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nKerbal Space Program Extension Now Available - granto\nhttps://kerbalspaceprogram.com/en/?page_id=591\n======\nrocky1138\nI had heard the original team that built this game quit due to poor working\nconditions. Is that true? If so, who built this expansion and have the working\nconditions improved?\n\n~~~\nthomasz\n[https://www.destructoid.com/former-kerbal-space-program-\ndeve...](https://www.destructoid.com/former-kerbal-space-program-developers-\nslam-studio-for-poor-pay-and-crunch-time-359507.phtml)\n\nThey won't get a dime from me ever. For anything.\n\n~~~\nDonHopkins\nI was just thinking of buying it, and now I have changed my mind. Back to\nFactorio for me!!!\n\n~~~\nreificator\nI should get back to Factorio, but Cities Skylines has taken over my brain-\ngame timeslot lately.\n\nIt's really amazing to me how fun they both are, given that they're just\nexercises in logistics.\n\nCities Skylines is about managing traffic flow, basically every other mechanic\nstems from that in some way or another. Not a surprise given the developers'\nprevious games were the Cities In Motion series.\n\nFactorio is about efficient transport of materials into machines that assemble\ngoods, and about building up abstractions so you are constantly solving new\ntypes of problems with the resources you've automated already.\n\nBoth of them have helped me to better understand concurrency, throughput, and\noptimization. And playing Factorio with friends has helped me stretch my\nproject management muscles. By halfway through the game I had to make a Trello\nboard just to keep track of what needed to be done and where the bottlenecks\nwere.\n\nIf you're in the mood for a thinking game I highly recommend both of them.\n\n------\nsandworm101\nBeen playing since first linux biulds. Love the game. Hate the developer. Too\nmuch politics. Too many mind games. Too many unaddressed bugs. Would jump at\nany similar game, something more based on physics, if run by anyone else.\n\n~~~\nB1FF_PSUVM\nDo you know of Orbiter:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiter_(simulator)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiter_\\(simulator\\))\n\nOrbiter vs Kerbal, etc.:\n[http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3091/1](http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3091/1)\n\n(Via XKCD, note title text: [https://xkcd.com/1244/](https://xkcd.com/1244/)\n\\- nice slingshots too )\n\n~~~\nsandworm101\nOrbiter imho is more about flying than operating a space program. Flying is\nnice, but I am much more a fan of coordinating a mission between multiple\ncraft.\n\nI can live with the cartoon nature, but I do not appreciate \"features\" as\nwindow dressing for poor coding. The way KSP handles memory (loads everything\n24/7) is ridiculous and necessitates many silly compromises. And don't get me\nstarted on how they handle \"heat\" and aerodynamics.\n\n------\nremarkEon\nI’ve spent a lot of time playing KSP. This game has an incredibly steep\nlearning curve. The best thing they could do is build a player autopilot that\nlets them get to orbit with basic rocket builds. There’s a ton of hardcore\nplayers (like me) who do things like write kOS scripts to run rockets to the\nmun and beyond. But that kind of thing is lost on the person who first\ndownloads this game.\n\nIf the devs are reading this, that’s the package you need: a basic autopilot\nfor noobs.\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nI disagree. Half of the value of this game comes from the fact it forces you\nto learn a few things about real physics along the way. Beginnings ain't hard.\nYou can easily get to orbit manually, and you can even eyeball your way to the\nMün.\n\nThat said, something like the per-stage ∆v display from KER (a mod) should IMO\nbe stock, both during construction and in-flight - without that one piece of\ninformation, any trip past Kerbin orbit gets too difficult - you either end up\nseriously overbuilding your vehicle, or run out of fuel in the middle of a\nmission.\n\n~~~\nbunderbunder\n100% of the value of the game is that it's a sandbox that lets you play with a\nbunch of different things - rocket design, orbital mechanics, exploring a\ntechnology tree, resource management, etc. etc.\n\nTo that end, _any_ feature that makes it easier for different players to\napproach the game in their own ways will make for a game that appeals to more\npeople. Let people who want to control the rocket manually control it\nmanually, and let those who want to just have nice, automatic, repeatable\nlaunches use the autopilot. Let people who want to fiddle with rocket designs\ndo that, but also hand out a bunch of prefab rocket designs for when you just\nwant to sit down and fly a rocket. Let the same people play the game in\ndifferent ways in different sessions, depending on their mood.\n\nJust don't try to tell them that there's only one proper way to have fun,\nbecause all you'll do with that is ensure that they tend to get bored more\nquickly.\n\n~~~\nsmrq\nThat's a nice idea in theory, but in practice, players will take the most\nefficient method of completing a task, even if that method isn't fun. If you\ngive players autopilot, they will use it, even if they would prefer the game\nwithout it.\n\nI'm sure I've read research on this, but I'm not sure how to dredge it up from\nthe internet. So I apologize for the lack of citation.\n\nAnecdotally, in the Elder Scrolls series, I vastly preferred Morrowind's lack\nof unlimited fast travel. But I still used fast travel liberally in future\ninstallments, in no small part because the games were designed under the\nassumption that fast travel would be used. The takeaway is that you can't\nassume that players will ignore a feature just because they don't like it.\n\n------\niopuy\nTried out KSP and just couldn't get into it. I may be the only one but there\nwas absolutely way too high a curve to jump right in and have some fun. I did\nover half their tutorials and could not improvise at all based on what I had\nlearned. Not much fun when I have to go watch a YouTube video to figure out my\nnext step in career mode.\n\n~~~\ntytytytytytytyt\nIt only took a few videos to figure out how to do things, for me. But I sure\nwouldn't recommend it without those few.\n\n~~~\nKing-Aaron\nScott Manley's tutorials were absolutely invaluable in my learning with the\ngame. However I've never before in my life played a game while having a pad\nnext to me to make notes, haha.\n\n~~~\ntytytytytytytyt\nCome on, you need a spreadsheet!\n\n------\nshmerl\nI like how they use the proper term expansion, instead of pretty nonsensical\nDLC.\n\n------\ntantalor\nmods: \"extension\" -> \"expansion\" in title\n\n------\ntechdragon\nPage 4 of their comic has a pretty irritating typo. It’s “Wry” not “Rye”.\n\n------\njohncalvinyoung\nNote: not available now.\n\n`Kerbal Space Program: Making History Expansion is still in development and\nwill be released as a paid expansion. Pricing and availability details will be\nannounced at a later date.`\n\n~~~\nadventured\nIt is available now.\n\n[http://steamcommunity.com/games/220200/announcements/detail/...](http://steamcommunity.com/games/220200/announcements/detail/1678026870137797509)\n\n~~~\nTheEnder8\nSteam store link:\n[http://store.steampowered.com/app/283740/Kerbal_Space_Progra...](http://store.steampowered.com/app/283740/Kerbal_Space_Program_Making_History_Expansion/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCowsay: 19 years ago - avckp\nhttps://github.com/tnalpgge/rank-amateur-cowsay\n======\nLinuxBender\nI used cowsay together with fortune-mod extensively!\n\nCowsay was also useful for getting someones attention in a \"wall\" message on\nsystems. One-line, they miss. One cow, they never miss!\n\n~~~\nPiskvorrr\nAnd nobody misses an announcement if it's made with -f dragon\n\n~~~\nLinuxBender\nIndeed! Figlet is also useful in this case.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGeocities Forever – neural network generated geocities pages - laacz\nhttp://www.geocitiesforever.com/\n======\nversteegen\nThe generated English (and a number of other languages) doesn't make a lick of\nsense (certainly not comparable to decent NN language models), and there's\nHTML and JS visible all over the place. But they certainly _look_ a lot like\ntypical geocities pages. How do you generate HTML and JS with NNs? I wish\nthere were an explanation somewhere. Maybe that's the reason that there's so\nmuch invalid HTML.\n\n~~~\njnpatel\nAgreed about wishing there were an explanation.\n\nIt's not clear to me that NN are the best way to get interesting Franken-\npages. Maybe a Markov chain instead?\n\n~~~\nyolesaber\nThe best way is to have the NN generate the HTML / CSS / JS code and then use\na markov chain to create content to populate the page with.\n\nIt also has to do with quality of input. The texts on geocities pages aren't\nexactly pinnacles of clear and legible language. Same with the HTML.\n\n------\nsupernintendo\nGeoCities was the spark that ignited my interest in programming. I can\nremember hacking together awful HTML, CSS and JavaScript for a Sonic the\nHedgehog fan page as early as middle school. Now the \"home page\" has been\nreplaced by Facebook and Twitter. The culture of the Internet has changed and\nfuture generations are spared the need to even think about tables or color\ncodes (unless they actively pursue web development).\n\nAnd sure, there's undeniable value in convergence. But part of me will always\nmiss those magical days of animated GIFs sliding across my CRT.\n\n~~~\nvoltagex_\n[https://neocities.org](https://neocities.org)\n\n~~~\nkyledrake\nI will confirm that's why I made it.\n\nDoesn't look like web sites are going to be replaced by a neural network\nanytime soon. Not sure if I prefer the Orwellianism of social networks to a\nBorg cube at this point.\n\n------\nbadloginagain\nI know some developers who write code like this:\n\nindex var menubar = 'solid //speed of NS message master pathwave seconds //\nDon't edit below! var message=\"./www.oocities.com/Wraith.js\"); //for yellow\nyou are browsers var message=\"Merry You are moving your source code, it you\nshould you have decide to one of the counter.\" var yvAlt = 10; var\nxpos=mysteps - var ypos=new Array(); function snowNS() { if (document.all) {\n// show position var a = slide.obj - expires.length; msg += (de_coselect(dy);\nif (remarks < red.focus); i <= cool ; //if layer is the area b =\nobj.visibility = eval(window) } // end hiding craft // set the link is the\nwindow // showdown down for idiot swd obj = document.getElementById(e);\nif((obj.top=top[i]+spring) setTimeout(\"move( tmLn.left+\":\"+minutes\") +\nmusionhamessages; } // End Created by GeoCities Home Page Generator Yahoo!\nGeoCities - father_gabriel's Home Page function Help(daLink) { var\nhelpWnd=window.open(daLink,\"help\",\"width=500,height=500,scrollbars=yes,dependent=yes\");\n} // COLOR HEAD1 HEAD2 LINE1 BODY\n\n------\nowenversteeg\nAnyone want to start posting the most interesting sites they got? I'll start:\n\n[http://www.geocitiesforever.com/ef582a29d49c0447347774cb7efc...](http://www.geocitiesforever.com/ef582a29d49c0447347774cb7efcc836bd07669e.html)\n\n[http://www.geocitiesforever.com/4ade38484ae7d646b2c603cf21aa...](http://www.geocitiesforever.com/4ade38484ae7d646b2c603cf21aaa60d6612011d.html)\n\nThis one has a fascinating layout and a bunch of different languages:\n[http://www.geocitiesforever.com/a6f8354b522a6cc573db0ddb5e07...](http://www.geocitiesforever.com/a6f8354b522a6cc573db0ddb5e073c145c31d266.html)\n\nThis one is a huge mess:\n[http://www.geocitiesforever.com/0d92d6d58a7f18c3a81060cf1c99...](http://www.geocitiesforever.com/0d92d6d58a7f18c3a81060cf1c997fe2b3ed19dc.html)\n\nThis one is an experience:\n[http://www.geocitiesforever.com/186fdd2501f72c7c9088678f1a06...](http://www.geocitiesforever.com/186fdd2501f72c7c9088678f1a0677149ec86eec.html)\n\n------\njnpatel\nIn case it's not clear (it wasn't to me), refreshing the splash screen and\nclicking the big `Enter` will show you a different generated page.\n\n~~~\njoelgrus\nAs will clicking any of the links on one of the generated page.\n\n------\nphreeza\nI got an entire website inside a <marquee> tag, chrome showed it moving across\nthe screen. Didn't know such a thing was possible, i am impressed.\n\nAlso, looking at the actual page source, it makes no sense whatsoever, so this\nis probably saying more about the fault tolerance of modern rendering engines\nthan about the NN used to generate these pages :)\n\n------\nnamuol\nThis has to be the most interesting way to fuzz-test a browser's rendering\nengine.\n\n~~~\nTazeTSchnitzel\nModern browsers are supposed to have finally standardised on how to deal with\ngarbage HTML like this, but it'd be interesting to see if that's actually the\ncase.\n\n------\nmortenjorck\nI do see one missed opportunity here, and that was to frame this project not\nas a NN-based Geocities page generator, but as a _mystery_.\n\nImagine instead a much more cryptic domain name and no landing page - just a\nrandom page each time (but keeping the shareable links). No credits or\nattributions, inviting speculation. It could have been the next Horse_ebooks!\n\n------\nKON_Air\njust in case didn't know or need detox;\n[http://www.oocities.org/](http://www.oocities.org/)\n\n------\ndavesque\nI think the takeaway here is that it generates even remotely valid HTML in\naddition to remotely coherent content.\n\nI'm not sure why they include those irrelevant promotional quotes on the\nlanding page. Also, zero details on the properties of the network they used.\n\n~~~\ncorndoge\nsometimes I think its better to leave out the details and just let the\nexperience be, not everything needs a how-its-made blog post and the lack of\nthat here feels refreshing in a way.\n\n------\ncode_research\nThe brokenness was not the dominant factor of geocities, more the\nindividualism in using a limited set of design resources.\n\nThis project should be tuned more into that direction.\n\nIs the source available?\n\n~~~\nnefitty\nWell, it took me about 5 minutes of clicking through oocities to find this:\n[http://www.oocities.org/tokyo/4633/xindex.html](http://www.oocities.org/tokyo/4633/xindex.html)\n\n------\njamespitts\nThis is high art. Congrats.\n\n------\nbobbygoodlatte\nI like to imagine randomly clicking \"Enter\" and having today's Drudge Report\npop up\n\n------\nrspeer\nIt's about time that the Library of Babel had a Web presence.\n\n------\ndonatj\nThis literally makes my day. They should bring back Geocities\n\n------\nPitarou\nIs there an archive of TimeCube we can train this thing on?\n\n~~~\najosh\nThe first page I saw reminded me an awful lot of the time cube page.\n\n~~~\nrspeer\nYeah, why would you even need to seek out Time Cube-like input? I got a page\nwith a large bold, italic, underlined link that said \"CLICK HERE TO BE GOD 4\".\n\n------\nl33tbro\nAren't all of these just available at the Wayback Machine? Was really hoping\nthis person found a way to display original pages correctly with their images\nintact.\n\n~~~\ndrdeca\nThese are randomly generated based on things from geocities.\n\n~~~\ndrauh\nWhere does the neural network come in?\n\n~~~\nyolesaber\nThe HTML contents of geocities pages are the input to the NN which then\ncreates the page you get when you hit ENTER\n\n------\nlarvaetron\nReminds me of the days of sites like hell.com\n\n------\njrnichols\nI feel like I just hacked too much time. o.O\n\n------\nmeeper16\naol -> geocities -> frienster -> myspace -> facebook -> _next_\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBook search engine FINDPDF.NET launched in BETA version. Check it out - BookKeeper\nhttp://findpdf.net\n\n======\nBookKeeper\nWith more than 250 million books, articles and tutorials FindPdf.net will\noffer set of tools for your document needs: read online, download or store for\nlater reading or share via PDFbox with your Twitter or Facebook friends. Soon\nto start: reviews, comments and API to provide developers way to integrate\nbooks in they apps. Own database is over 1300 books and counting. Contact us\nat contact@findpdf.net\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where - Osiris30\nhttp://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21646220-it-depends-what-you-study-not-where?%3Ffsrc%3Dscn%2F=tw%2Fdc\n======\njerf\nIn addition to the obvious 0 line, it's worth taking the article's observation\nthat S&P has returned 7.8% and mentally drawing a line there too.\n\nAlso, for anyone in the position of deciding which to do, I'd add the\nobservation that it is _way_ easier to go to college and get a formal\neducation in science, math, or engineering, and pursue an ongoing adhoc self-\ndirected education in the arts and humanities in your remaining decades of\nlife, than the other way around. Locally to HN's interests, this calculation\nis a bit distorted by the way that programming can actually be learned via\nadhoc self-directed education, but as science, math, and engineering goes, I'd\nsuggest it's on the short list of exceptions, not the rule.\n\n~~~\nemodendroket\nI studied Japanese in school and I think it would have been extremely\ndifficult to learn on my own. So... I'd say it depends.\n\n~~~\nBartweiss\nLanguage seems like a complicating factor here. It's difficult (especially in\nnon-Latinate cases) to learn self-directed, and people who are fluent and\nwilling to work in the field can actually do quite well traveling and\ntranslating for businesses and government agencies.\n\nOf course, all of these numbers are complicated by \"salary of graduates\"\nversus \"salary of graduates employed in field\".\n\n~~~\njjuel\nBut it does depend. If the above poster was taking Japanese as his sole Major\nit is probably not worth it. If he/she is taking it as an addendum to say a\nBusiness degree then it is very much worth it.\n\n~~~\nemodendroket\nI guess it depends how you define \"worth it.\" I have a satisfying career but\nit has nothing to do with my ability in Japanese.\n\n------\nbisRepetita\nThis study, like pretty much all the ones I have read on such topic, seems to\ncompare income people going to college vs people not going to college. And\nthey attribute all the benefits and ROI to college. While often it just\nmeasures that people that are smarter and motivated (because they can and want\nto go to college) do better financially than the one less smart and less\nmotivated.\n\nI wish I could find a study of similarly smart and motivated people who\ndecided themselves to go or not to college. As a choice. And see what the\ndifference in earnings over life would be. That would measure the added value\nof college education.\n\nAnybody knows any such study?\n\nI would think a smart, motivated person skipping college, having no such\ncosts, plus 4 extra years of income and (hopefully) savings, would have a good\nROI compared to college-educated peers. And even if they would start at a\nlower level initially, they would accumulate work experience earlier, moving\nup the ladder sooner.\n\nDifferently said, after 4 years, in addition to having a much healthier bank\naccount, could this person be the person hiring the new college graduate?\n\n~~~\njhspaybar\nI consider myself smart and motivated, I was in sales for about 8 years by\nchoice rather than going to college. I was good at it, but 2 years of\ncollege(a double major), and a few years in industry and I'm now making 5x\nwhat I did. It's an anecdote sure, but I haven't changed at all, my degree\nsimply qualified me for a different industry.\n\n~~~\nTDL\n\"2 years of college...\"\n\nThis bit right here might need some clarification. I believe the current U.S.\naverage time in college is more than 4 years. I'm guessing you were motivated\nto get your degree as quickly as possible. I don't believe young adults in\ndeveloped nations have the same motivation. 8 years in the real world will\ndisabuse anyone of a desire to spend more time then necessary in school.\n\n~~~\njschwartzi\nOr they got an associate's degree, which is a 2-year degree which typically\nrequires some lower-division coursework.\n\n------\nemodendroket\nI find it disheartening that the only way it seems we can think about college\nanymore is a sort of vocational school where we train for careers.\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nI find that point of view to be a conceit. It's an emulation of the noble\nclasses of yore, who learned things they didn't need to know as a way of\nsignaling that they could afford to do so because they didn't need to work.\nMost people are no better off 10-years down the line for having learned about\nwhat native Americans used to live in Virginia or what covalent bonds are.\n\n~~~\nJackFr\n> Most people are no better off 10-years down the line for having learned\n> about what native Americans used to live in Virginia or what covalent bonds\n> are.\n\nThat all depends on how you measure better off.\n\nKnowledge, understanding, wisdom are goods unto themselves. No doubt, we need\nto eat, but I'd rather know Latin, Norse mythology, Anselm's ontological\nproof, the Platonic solids, and the major players in the Glorious Revolution\nthan not. And I'm better off for simply knowing them.\n\n~~~\nsaint_fiasco\n>Knowledge, understanding, wisdom\n\nYou can get the first two for free on a library.\n\nYou are making a mistake when you compare the knowledge, understanding and\nwisdom you would get in College against nothing and then decide that College\nis better than nothing. You should compare it against all the other things\npeople could be doing with that time and money. The opportunity cost.\n\n~~~\nJackFr\n> The opportunity cost.\n\nWith respect to the original article, yes absolutely.\n\nI was responding to the parent comment who described people 'no better off'\nfor knowing versus not knowing.\n\n~~~\nsaint_fiasco\nI interpreted it not as 'knowing versus not knowing' but as 'knowing about\nNative Americans and covalent bonds' versus 'knowing whatever people would end\nup knowing if they didn't go to College'.\n\nMaybe they will acquire work experience, life experience, pragmatical\nknowledge about how real world works, that kind of thing. Why is knowledge\nabout covalent bonds intrinsically more important than that?\n\n------\ngeebee\nThis is interesting, and it came up recently in a WSJ study that showed that\nthe eliteness of your college doesn't matter - if you major in engineering or\nCS.\n\nI started to wonder if maybe there's another distinction that is hidden in the\ndata. I think we can all agree that there is a difference between earning 150k\na year as a senior software engineer and as a director of the American Musical\nHeritage foundation. Some people could reasonably see those as very different\noutcomes, one job far more desirable than the other.\n\nHere's the thing - do those distinctions actually exist within computer\nscience as well? There's a big difference within tech. Think about being a\ndata scientist who writes a lot of code, but has a tremendous amount of\nautonomy and freedom, who gets to initiate projects, direct his or her own\nwork, make presentations, speak at conferences, and so forth. Now imagine\nbeing a senior crud bug fixer who checks JIRA every morning and works (under\nconstant pressure to provide updates about whether we'll still meet the\n\"deadline\") to figure out why some payroll calculations are sometimes included\ntwice in the pdf report but not the excel report. Say both jobs pay 150k.\n\nThere's a big difference between that first job and the second one. Is it\npossible that elite schools make it more likely that you'll get that first\njob? I'm not saying this is the case, just that a hidden distinction similar\nto the humanities/engineering divide may exist here...\n\n------\ncodingdave\nThis article is about statistics, not individuals. While it certainly shows\ntrends, for any individual person, their ROI depends on what they do with\ntheir own lives. (And ROI might not even be their #1 goal.)\n\nAs for me, I got a degree in Fine Arts from a small liberal arts school, then\nbecome a coder. I have almost zero regret about that choice, 20+ years down\nthe line. Actually, if I had to do it again, I am more likely to skip the\ncoder part, not the college part. (20+ years behind a desk... I could probably\nfind a better path.)\n\n------\nincongruity\nDo those ROI calculations include the cost of borrowing? I'd expect they don't\n- and if not, it means that most degrees are no longer worth it if you have to\nborrow a significant portion of the money.\n\nWith federal loans ranging between 6-8.5% (last I looked) it means that for\nthe first 10-20 years, the government is the one capturing the gains from many\npeople's college educations. There may well still be a positive ROI for some\ndegrees but the loan picture means it comes on a much longer timeline, doesn't\nit?\n\n~~~\nroymurdock\nThey do. Here's the website that compiles the data:\n\n[http://www.payscale.com/college-roi](http://www.payscale.com/college-roi)\n\nAverage loan amount is factored into the ROI calculation.\n\n~~~\nincongruity\nAwesome. Thanks for the pointer.\n\nThe concern is definitely still there for folks who take above average loan\namounts.\n\n------\ndpierce9\nBecause this compares present day cost to all earners (not sure how they\nnormalized for graduate degrees, etc.), there is a huge recency bias. I\nmajored in humanities and minored in sciences/math about ten years ago. Even\ncounting my piddly graduate stipend (again, in humanities) for several years,\nmy return rate of return is over 20% (IRR). If my school had cost twice as\nmuch, as it does just ten years later, the rate of return would have been less\nthan 10% as predicted.\n\n------\nfredley\nIt also depends on how much your parents earn:\n\n[https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/graduate-earnings-\nwhat-y...](https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/graduate-earnings-what-you-\nstudy-and-where-matters-but-so-does-parents-income)\n\n~~~\nutexaspunk\nWhile cronyism and nepotism are probably significant factors, beyond those I\ndon't know if what your parents earn matters as much as it may be an indicator\nof your manners, knowledge of social customs, proper grammar, etc.. Perhaps\nthose raised in wealthy homes tend to know better how to behave among wealthy\npeople than those who come from poor backgrounds. All else being equal, those\nwho comport themselves better are more likely to get ahead.\n\n~~~\nfrobozz\nIn the broad middle, I don't think there is much of a manners/customs/grammar\ndistinction. Any well-brought up middle class child should be perfectly\ncapable of interacting with all but the wealthiest nobility. Of course, there\nare a few upper-middle class snobs who will think less of you for your lack of\noenological prowess or your off the peg suit, but such people are not a common\ndirect influence on that many people.\n\nThere are other factors:\n\n* One thing is simply understanding the opportunities available to you. The idea that \"People like me don't (go to university | start companies | go for promotion beyond a certain level)\" is quite harmful.\n\n* It is not uncommon that people go into the same field as one of their parents, simply because of how big an influence they are on your life as a child. If one is a doctor, and the other a barrister, then if you follow one of them, you'll make more money than if they are both in minimum-wage jobs.\n\n* If you do follow your parents in their careers, you will have had early exposure to some of the concepts. You may therefore perform better at university intake interviews, and the relevant prerequisites. They will also know about how to progress through the career in the best way.\n\n* Regardless of nepotism, your parents' friends are another source of examples to follow in a similar way, and may be able to dispense similar advice.\n\n* Even if you don't follow your parents in their careers. Having a parent who graduated from a competitive course at a prestigious university (which might be indicated in their lifetime earnings) means that you still have an example to follow, and their experience to draw on. One of the reasons for poor state school intake at Oxford is that most youths don't actually know how to apply. Also, if you know what to expect from such a place, you can make more of it, particularly in terms of the extra curricular offering - e.g. networking, bursaries and careers service.\n\n* A youth with wealthy parents may be able take better advantage of low-paid and unpaid internships. If your parents can't support you through university and early career, then you may have to make more short term decisions - e.g. taking a low-paid summer job at a bar, instead of a lower or even unpaid job at a law firm, or working evenings and weekends instead of studying.\n\n* At the extreme end, a child in poverty is likely to have fewer books and poorer nutrition when those things matter most.\n\n------\nHarryHirsch\nThat is very scary if it's true. If a degree in the experimental sciences from\na top-10 institution does not pay better than a degree from Tumbleweed State\nthen the employment market for scientists is completely broken.\n\n~~~\ntyingq\nIt may pay better, but they are calculating the overall return, meaning the\ncost of that top-10 degree is a factor as well.\n\n~~~\ncmdrfred\nI agree this might indicate that top tier institutions simply extracted all of\nthe value difference that separated them from the others.\n\n~~~\nhumanrebar\nWell, maybe they extracted all the cash difference. Some people use degrees as\nstatus symbols. What's the old joke? How do you know if somebody went to\nHarvard?\n\n------\noptforfon\nSo does this mean that the mediocre and expensive private colleges end up\npaying off a lot more than state schools? (the \"I\" being higher and therefor\nthe \"R\" being higher too)\n\nThat's deeply unsettling...\n\n~~~\nmywittyname\nThis was the takeaway that I had too. I'm surprised to see your comment is not\nat the top of this thread.\n\nIf a more exclusive college (x-axis) is proportionally more expensive, then\nthis graph suggests that everyone, regardless of field, is better off going to\na more expensive college. Getting a 12% annualized return on a $100k private\nbachelors is better than getting the same return on a $30k public university\neducation.\n\n------\nebbv\nThis \"article\" is barely two paragraphs, and doesn't have any new information.\nThere's a reason Art History majors working as baristas is a well worn cliche.\n\n------\nbluthton\nBear in mind this is 20 years and not lifetime earnings. Many studies have\ncome out that across majors lifetime earnings are anywhere from USD 300k to\nUSD 1 million higher than those with only a high school diploma.[1]\n\n[1]\n[https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/curre...](https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/current_issues/ci20-3.pdf)\n\n~~~\nbluthton\nAlso the payscale report may not be peer-reviewed, which should give caution\nwhen going against many peer-reviewed studies on the subject.\n\n------\ngolergka\nI would love to also see the data linking ROI and whether you went to study\nsomething out of love for the craft or just because you wanted a well-paying\njob.\n\n------\ns0uthPaw88\nThe report[0] this article reference has some puzzling exclusions to its data\nset. For example, why is Harvey Mudd included, but its next door neighbor\nClaremont McKenna College not? Some other notable liberal arts exclusions are\nAmherst College, Swarthmore, Bowdoin and Davidson.\n\n[0][http://www.payscale.com/college-roi](http://www.payscale.com/college-roi)\n\n------\nan4rchy\nThis would be very interesting to see when compared with schools outside of\nthe US where higher education is free or very cheap.\n\nI'm curious about how many people go to the standard (STEM) fields of\neducation because of the cost, and ROI vs they are interested in them.\n\nIf people had 0 debt maybe more people might choose alternative fields of\neducation/careers that can impact the world in other ways.\n\n------\nvparikh\nThis is very encouraging to read. I have had a sense of this all along - that\nwhich college you attend has very little to do with your intelligence or your\ncapabilities. In my opinion it has more to do with how much your parents make\nthen anything else. E=mc^2 wether you go to Princeton or you go to Caldwell\nCommunity.\n\n------\nnepstein\nWorth noting that selective schools also tend to be more expensive. Even if\nthe ROI isn't markedly higher, high price tag means a \"larger investment\" into\nthe high ROI option of college education.\n\nThat's a substantive advantage (to those that can afford it) given that 12%\nreturn opportunities are scarce.\n\n------\ncoldcode\nI spent 6 years studying chemistry (BS and MS) and worked as a chemist for 3\nmonths, then became a programmer in the 80's. Was my degree worth it? No.\nWould I be here without a degree, unlikely even back then.\n\n------\nKinnard\nI'd be curious to see results from the uncollege program but they may be too\nnew for the data to make any sense:\n[http://uncollege.org](http://uncollege.org)\n\n------\nCypher\nDepends on where you work too....\n\n------\nknown\nFor MBA it depends on where you study\n\n~~~\nbryanlarsen\nMBA's also have a much wider variance on costs, so return per dollar spent may\nalso be similar between good/expensive and bad/cheap schools.\n\n------\ntehabe\nOn one hand it is nice to see that the school doesn't matter as much as people\nthink but on the other hand it is sad that people see their studies only\nthrough the eyes of ROI. As if education has no value of its own. I'm probably\njust naive and an idealist.\n\n~~~\ncableshaft\nNaivete and idealism is how we have a whole generation saddled with student\nloans they can barely afford to pay, forcing them to stay in jobs they'd\nrather not have, delay buying a home or getting married for decades.\n\nI know some people on the other end of six figure student loans (I'm not,\nthankfully, but I'm still going to be paying mine off for four or five years\nstill). These people are not doing what they'd like to do, what they studied\nto do (because they can't find a job in it) and are praying for a windfall. In\nsome cases, hoping their family members die and leave an inheritance just so\nthey can pay off a chunk of the loans.\n\nThis is going to have profound effects on the economy and society for a long\ntime.\n\nSo yes, idealists should know what they're volunteering themselves for and how\none simple decisions can make life really difficult for them for the next\n20-30 years.\n\nThis isn't the era where you could pay for a year of college with a part-time\nsummer job anymore, like the baby boomers had.\n\n~~~\ntehabe\nI remember the long fight against tuition fees in my country and how we argued\nthat tuitions wouldn't improve anything except leaving students with a lot of\ndebt and problems. It would disadvantage so called \"orchid subjects\" and other\nsubjects which didn't promise a great career. Utilisation of education would\nbecome more important than education. Even the switch to the Bachelor/Master\nsystem was/is seen as part of this development. Especially since it lead to a\nmuch more school like university. Which is the opposite of Humboldt's idea of\nresearch and studies being one.\n\n------\nIkmoIkmo\nFinancial ROI of a degree primarily depends on whether the degree is in a high\nor low paying field... In other news, the ocean is full of water.\n\nNo story there. But then they draw almost flat lines, indicating the\nselectivity of the university (as a proxy for all kinds of things, prestige,\nquality of education/network etc) plays no role. But I find it misleading.\n\nIt makes sense I think to consider that they're not looking at earning\npotential, but at ROI. That means a selective school that costs $100k a year,\nand nets you a $100k annual salary, yields the same ROI as going to a 10k a\nyear state school that gets you a 10k salary. You'd get a flat line on\nselectivity/ROI, as if it doesn't matter where you study.\n\nYou can be the judge of whether you think those are equal or not, and whether\nyou'd be indifferent because they have the same ROI, particularly when you can\nafford the investment or get the investment subsidised.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLooking for a keybase.io invite code - tvvocold\nIf anyone has a spare Keybase.io invite code, could you please PM me? I&#x27;d like to share mine if i got in there. Thanks in advance!! :)<p>Update:<p>Thx to constantin i got in.Now i got O Invitations Available,but you can still leave your email address here, someone (maybe me) may send the code if available.\n======\nchrisvogt\nWould you share one with mail@chrisvogt.me please? ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ\n\n------\ntvvocold\nUpdate:\n\nOk, Got 5 Invitations, Who want it?\n\n~~~\ngonchs\nDo you still have them? I'm interested.\n\n~~~\ntvvocold\nSure, just leave you email here.Try it, it's cool!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWill the spring launch of Apple TV signal the end of broadcast TV? - kposehn\nhttp://9to5mac.com/2014/02/21/opinion-will-this-spring-signal-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-live-broadcast-tv/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+9To5Mac-MacAllDay+%289+to+5+Mac+-+Apple+Intelligence%29\n======\ndodders\nNot until live sports broadcasts are more widely available it won't.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMagic and Software Design (1993) - cstejerean\nhttp://www.asktog.com/papers/magic.html\n======\ngoolulusaurs\nReminds me of the opening paragraphs from SICP\n([https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-\ntext/...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-\ntext/book/book-Z-H-9.html#%_chap_1))\n\n\"We are about to study the idea of a computational process. Computational\nprocesses are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve,\nprocesses manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a\nprocess is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create\nprograms to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the\ncomputer with our spells.\n\nA computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It\ncannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is\nvery real. It can perform intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can\naffect the world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot arm\nin a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer's\nspells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and\nesoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes\nto perform.\n\nA computational process, in a correctly working computer, executes programs\nprecisely and accurately. Thus, like the sorcerer's apprentice, novice\nprogrammers must learn to understand and to anticipate the consequences of\ntheir conjuring. Even small errors (usually called bugs or glitches) in\nprograms can have complex and unanticipated consequences.\n\nFortunately, learning to program is considerably less dangerous than learning\nsorcery, because the spirits we deal with are conveniently contained in a\nsecure way. Real-world programming, however, requires care, expertise, and\nwisdom. A small bug in a computer-aided design program, for example, can lead\nto the catastrophic collapse of an airplane or a dam or the self-destruction\nof an industrial robot.\"\n\n------\nempath75\n> Houdini’s fondness for reading extended to magazines, too: after his famous\n> escape from inside a locked safe behind a screen, which took mere seconds,\n> he spent the next fifteen minutes back stage, idly reading a magazine, after\n> which he dotted himself with water and burst forth, looking properly sweaty\n> and exhausted\n\nTurboTax famously does this. It has a few loading screens where it slowly\n‘calculates your best return’. It happens instantly, of course, but they spend\nabout 10 seconds showing you loading bars so you think that whatever it’s\ndoing is difficult.\n\nI’m a big fan of magic, and the main thing to take away from magic is this —\nnone of us perceive ‘reality’. Our minds create a simulation of the world\nbased on very limited and error prone input. And if you can carefully control\nthe sensory input if your spectators, you can control their reality.\n\nThe moment of the magic trick is often when the false reality you’ve created\ncollapses — you’ve made them believe that you put a card in the middle of the\ndeck, or that you’ve shuffled it, or that they had a free choice — and then\nyou present them with incontrovertible evidence that they had not. That moment\nof inconsistency is what causes the perception of magic to happen — their mind\nmoves the card from the center of the deck to the top in an instant in their\ninternal reality, which is the only reality they’ve ever existed in.\n\nSo I guess when you’re designing software, don’t just think about how your\nsoftware works, but also think carefully about the model of reality that your\nusers are building. If you manipulate it carefully, you can seem to perform\nmiracles.\n\nGame designers, btw, I think already understand this — games are full of hacks\nand cheats that make you think there’s a whole world or a mind behind what’s\nhappening to your character, when it’s often quite simple behind the scenes —\nmagician’s choices in particular are quite popular in games — where you’re\npresented with seemingly several options which all produce the same outcome.\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nOne of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't\nbelong.\n\nMagic is consumed for entertainment. Applying the same techniques to more\nserious aspects of life is called \"fraud\", and the magician is called a \"con\nartist\".\n\nWhat game developers do with their hacks and dirty tricks is building\nimmersion for their make-believe worlds. The player that sits in front of a\ngame does so voluntarily, fully aware that they're just _playing_ , that it's\nall entertainment. They can lower their defenses, because they know nothing\nwill harm them.\n\nWhat TurboTax - and other companies adopting similar UX patterns - does is\nstraight up lying to people. Manipulating their perception of reality for\ntheir own economic gains. It's a malicious activity, and as such it should be\nshamed, not commended.\n\n~~~\nempath75\nI don’t think you should be deceitful in any meaningful way, but I don’t think\nthat making people wait a few seconds is anything more than showmanship.\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nThere's no reason to do that in a non-entertainment app, unless you want to\nmanipulate users for your own benefit.\n\n------\neandre\nThat was a quite interesting read; I hadn't heard that analogy before. It's a\nshame the formatting of the page really makes it difficult to engage with the\ncontent.\n\n~~~\nUsername_w\nFormatted version for you:\n\n[https://gundog.herokuapp.com/?gundog_url=https://www.asktog....](https://gundog.herokuapp.com/?gundog_url=https://www.asktog.com/papers/magic.html)\n\n------\nsmoyer\nI have a couple of Tog's books (both are amazing) and used to read asktog for\ninspiration ... thanks for reminding me that I should be rereading his wisdom!\n\n[https://amzn.to/2OZSKoj](https://amzn.to/2OZSKoj)\n\n[https://amzn.to/2UXXGO9](https://amzn.to/2UXXGO9)\n\n------\ndavid-cako\nsocial media is surveillance disguised as a top hat. :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDeb Roy: The birth of a word - skm\nhttp://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html\n\n======\nbane\nI've read about this project with some interest.\n\nSeeing this presentation was remarkable. Beyond the absolutely amazing\ntechnical achievement here, I don't know why, but I found myself incredibly\nmoved by this.\n\nSome of the most stunning and _beautiful_ research I've ever seen.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMicrosoft Should Give Windows 7 Away For Free - Flemlord\nhttp://i.gizmodo.com/5141443/why-microsoft-should-give-windows-7-away\n======\nlionhearted\nMy XP laptop died permanently a little over a year ago, and there was a Vista\nToshiba at Best Buy for $1100 on a model that was $1400 most other places.\nMaybe there'd have better value elsewhere, but I needed something immediate so\nmy work wouldn't be delayed and I got it.\n\nVista: Not so bad. I'd love to see it less bloated with MS processes running\ninvisibly, and I'd like to see it change the order things boot in so I turn it\non and get up and running faster.\n\nSecond issue: Some driver issues and some poor backwards compatibility with\nprograms that run fine on XP, which is quite ugly.\n\nBut beyond that, it's a good OS and a legit upgrade over XP. The UI is\nfaster/better once you adopt to the learning curve. Security is legitimately\nupgraded, and I haven't been infected with any viruses or spyware, and I play\naround with random applications all the time. I like that I can easily stop\nnon-MS programs from updating themselves without my blessing. Being able to\nchoose giving a program default \"Run as Administrator\" vs. leaving it less\nprivileges is really good.\n\nVista's not enough of an upgrade over XP to be worth buying, especially\nconsidering all the good SP2 did. But everyone I know that's run Vista for at\nleast a couple months came around on it, unless the drivers thing bit them.\nThe Vista-hate is a bit overblown, though Windows 7 does look like a legit\nupgrade.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Atomic Soldiers: U.S. Veterans, Used as Guinea Pigs, Break the Silence - howard941\nhttps://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/590299/atomic-soldiers/\n======\ncharlescearl\nDoes anyone know of a way to obtain an official listing of participants in\nnuclear tests? My father had described in detail being taken out to one of the\nNevada tests sometime in the '50s when he was in USMC. He passed away from\ncancer in the 1980's. I reckon with some cross checking of muster rolls and\ntests I should be able to piece it together.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Peter Principle is a joke taken seriously. Is it true? - cirrus-clouds\nhttp://timharford.com/2018/08/the-peter-principle-is-a-joke-taken-seriously-is-it-true/\n======\nsofon\nReally interesting article!\n\nThe Peter principle states that \"every employee tends to rise to his level of\nincompetence\". The article cites an example from Sales teams. That it's the\nhighest performing sales people that are promoted to sales team managers, and\nthey don't perform well as managers (team performance drops).\n\nThey then talk about solutions, such are promoting people at random.\n\nBut it seems like at least part of the problem in endemic in our view of\norganisations. People often want management positions because they are paid\nmore, are more secure, or have more power. Maybe if we shifted our view of\nmanagement as \"just being a different skill set\" and not always being higher\npaid then we'd find people without the required skills wouldn't try and obtain\nthose positions and would focus on what they are good at.\n\n~~~\nmasklinn\n> But it seems like at least part of the problem in endemic in our view of\n> organisations. People often want management positions because they are paid\n> more, are more secure, or have more power. Maybe if we shifted our view of\n> management as \"just being a different skill set\" and not always being higher\n> paid then we'd find people without the required skills wouldn't try and\n> obtain those positions and would focus on what they are good at.\n\nSome tech companies have started to do that with technical seniority tracks. I\nthink one bit that's still missing remains the ability to move people back\ninto previous positions without loss of face or income if they don't fit in\nthe new one.\n\n~~~\nCJefferson\nThe problem, which I worry is unfixable, is that managers are the people who\ndecide which jobs are most stable and paid the most. Unsurprisingly, they give\nthemselves the majority of the spoils.\n\n~~~\nrollthehard6\nIt's interesting too that democracy is lauded in the west but companies are\nnever run that way.\n\n~~~\nalexandros\nTry to start a democratic company (or run a thought experiment about doing so)\nand you will probably find the reasons why democracy works better as a way to\nmanage a society than a single company.\n\n~~~\ndsego\nIt's not like it's unheard of, but it doesn't fill the pockets of the selected\nelite.\n\nThere are worker cooperatives:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative)\n\nWorkers' self management: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-\nmanagement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management)\n\nAnd serious economists who advocate for such a system:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branko_Horvat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branko_Horvat)\n\n------\nharryf\nMost organisations structure power in hierarchies, meaning a small number of\npeople at the top of the pyramid are responsible and supposed to be ultimately\naccountable for ALL decisions being made under that structure.\n\nThis naturally leads to a situation where those working at the top are being\noverwhelmed with demands for their attention and decision making approval.\n\nA conscientious person - arguably a good _leader_ - will take this\nresponsibility seriously, and devote their time and energy to handle all those\ndemands as best they can.\n\nBut another type of person - a \"player\" \\- will realise that the work of\ndecision making actually _detracts_ from their success within the\norganisation. A \"player\" will figure out they should avoid the work of\nleadership as much as possible and instead devote their time to fostering\ntheir own image, gaining popularity, claiming responsibility for other peoples\ngood decisions and generally working their way up the pyramid.\n\nFor me hierarchical power structures are the root cause of the problem here,\nnot human nature - the \"player\" is really acting rationally, taking the path\nof least resistance to achieve their goals.\n\nThe problem IMO is we're using legacy approaches to organising ourselves\ngroups that stems from military theory of the 18th century - that most armies\nthemselves have now moved beyond - see [https://www.amazon.com/Corps-Business-\nManagement-Principles-...](https://www.amazon.com/Corps-Business-Management-\nPrinciples-Marines/dp/0066619793).\n\nWe need smarter ways to organise and we probably need AI at some level to help\nus scale up to higher volumes of effective decision making.\n\n~~~\njs8\nI agree. However, I don't see any other way how to prevent players doing this\nexcept democracy - a system where every person has (prescriptively) the same\namount of power.\n\nHowever, many people reject the idea of economic democracy, despite studies\nshowing that e.g. worker cooperatives often have higher productivity and\ndespite the fact that we accept democratic governance as a way to operate the\ngovernment.\n\n~~~\nwolf550e\nFlat organizations aren't really flat. Instead of written org chart you have\nan unwritten org chart and it might be harder to replace a bad informal\nmanager than a bad formal manager. See:\n[https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm](https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm)\n\n~~~\njs8\nDemocratic and flat is not the same (I was wondering if this confusion comes\nup). Flat doesn't necessarily prescribes what the power distribution is, but\ndemocracy does. On the other hand, democratic systems can have an\norganizational hierarchy too, as is a case with representative democracy.\n\n------\nbrownbat\nThe Peter Principle suggests people are promoted to the level of their\nincompetence. The Dilbert Principle (which Harford also mentions) suggests\nincompetents are promoted to middle management to minimize their ability to do\nharm.\n\nThe Gervais Principle uses The Office (and organizational theory according to\nWhyte) as a reference. The firm ranges from pathological to chaotic. Clueless\noverachievers get put in middle management, while sociopaths are groomed to\njump to the top positions.\n\nThis was a funny, interesting overview, made me actually want to read about\nacademic organizational theory for the first time in my life:\n\n[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-\nprinciple-...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-\nthe-office-according-to-the-office/)\n\n~~~\ntpm\nYes, that is an excellent series of articles. Highly recommended.\n\n------\ncoldtea\n> _The Peter Principle is satire: it mocks management and it mocks books about\n> management. It is striking, then, that most people take it quite seriously._\n\nIt might have been intended as satire.\n\nI see nothing in it that cannot be used as a straight argument with quite good\nexplanatory and predictive power.\n\nA lot of things started as something else. It's their inherent qualities that\nmatter as to what they are, not the intentions of the creator.\n\n> _So Profs Pluchino, Rapisarda and Garofalo suggest a compromise: promote\n> people at random. This may be the best response to a world where leaders\n> stick around until they are ready to depart. But there is an obvious\n> alternative: when people are not up to the demands of their job, we should\n> not wait for them to resign. They should be sacked — or, perhaps better,\n> demoted back to the roles where they once flourished._\n\nBoth were attributes of the old Athenian democracy.\n\n------\nstareatgoats\nThe problem with the Peter Principle (and similar) is that it doesn't account\nfor the skill of getting promoted, which is a separate skill from professional\nskills as in salesmanship, technology and math skills, or people skills.\nPeople who rise to the top usually have developed a keen sense of what enables\npromotion, and once promoted what it requires to keep that position. To a\nlarge extent it becomes managerial skills which may as such be learnt in\nschools, but such courses seldom deal with the politics side. To be successful\none probably need to figure it out for oneself, and even then chance plays a\nlarge part.\n\nWhich is why the article is wrong: the front bench of the house of commons and\nthe people mentioned (and others mentioned in similar tirades) are not stupid,\nthey are highly adept, it's just that this skill doesn't have a (non-\nderogatory) name AFAICT. And it doesn't necessarily correlate with our\npreconceptions of what people at such positions in society or organizations\nshould be good at.\n\n------\nlkrubner\nFrom what I've seen, there is a large random element to promotions. A few\ncorporations put in place good processes that ensure that promotions occur\naccording to some specific criteria, but such corporations are rare. Most\npromotions arise from the gut level feelings of managers, and we all know how\nmuch those gut level feelings are open to irrational biases. There are the\nobvious, well documented biases involving race and language and religion and\ngender, as well as many other forms of biases that come down to subtle\ndifferences in communication style.\n\nFor those who prefer famous examples, I'll offer one that Peter F Drucker\noften discussed: the difference in communication styles between John F Kennedy\nand Lyndon Johnson. Both men were very smart and talented, in their own ways,\nbut Kennedy preferred to receive information in written form, whereas Johnson\npreferred to receive information orally. Kennedy was a reader, Johnson was a\ntalker. However, Johnson also felt insecure regarding the dazzling education\nthat the Kennedy's had, and Johnson wanted to imitate their style. So when\nJohnson became President, he kept around many of the Kennedy people, who\ncontinued to write long reports, of the type that Kennedy would have\nappreciated. Johnson didn't read them, he wasn't a reader. And then he'd ask\nsomeone like McNamara to orally offer a short summary of a long report, and\nMcNamara would leave out a lot of details that he assumed Johnson had already\nseen in the written report.\n\nIn Drucker's opinion, this was how a leader as smart as Johnson could stumble\ninto a mistake as big as Vietnam.\n\nDid Johnson deserve the promotion he got? Most would say he had the\nintelligence and managerial skill to handle the top job. He had done a\nfantastic job in the Senate. But he was undermined by irrational and emotional\nfactors, in particular the subtle kind of class envy that would cause him to\nwant to imitate the highly literate style of the Kennedy's.\n\nI've seen something like this at most of the places I've worked, leaders who\ncould have been good if a few circumstances were different, but its only in\nretrospect that it becomes clear which circumstances should have been\ndifferent.\n\nThe Peter Principle describes a system of promotion that basically rational\nuntil it goes too far. But I've never seen anything that rational, not at any\nof the places I've worked.\n\n------\nsureaboutthis\nI thought a lot about this a while back. A very few large companies have dual\ntracks, one for promoting professional engineers but keep them out of the\nmanagement track. In my opinion, this is a good idea.\n\nIf a software or hardware engineer is promoted into managing other engineers,\nthis is an entirely different skill. It helps when one understands the\ntechnical requirements and issues but management is a business skill.\n\n~~~\ngregoriol\nManagement is not a business skill: it's an HR skill.\n\n~~~\nbarrkel\nThere's at least two distinct aspects to management.\n\nOne is getting the best out of the team. The manager is subservient to the\nneeds of the team, from this perspective.\n\nThe other is ensuring the team is doing the right thing. The manager is in\ncontrol of the team in this perspective.\n\nThe former has more of the human relations aspect. The latter is definitely\nbusiness focused.\n\n~~~\nPeterisP\nThe military approach is interesting in this regard - generally you have a\n\"leadership pair\" of officer+NCO; commanding officer + executive officer, with\nquite separate duties, one is responsible for planning and giving the\norders/deciding what needs to be done; and the other is responsible for\n\"managing the troops\" to get that task done effectively and ensuring that they\nhave what they need to do it.\n\nBusiness, on the other hand, tends to conflate these roles in a single\nposition.\n\n------\nscarface74\nI know of a lot of tech people who “self demote” because they don’t enjoy\nmanagement and others who left jobs to avoid managemt. and you can do quite\nwell as an individual contributor. Is that true in other industries?\n\n~~~\nFtuuky\nIn a similar way, I know a lot of people who do their best to not look good\nfor a promotion. Most of them are coders that do not want to stop programming\nand start managing teams.\n\n------\nnotahacker\n> The better they had been in sales, the worse their teams performed once they\n> arrived in a managerial role\n\nI hope the study authors controlled for the [short term] effects on relative\nteam performance of taking a very effective salesperson out of the sales force\n[and not even having a replacement]...\n\n------\ntoxik\nJokes aside, I'm not so sure the Peter principle applies equally to everybody\n-- I know a some who hold on to positions because they enjoy the position.\nGranted, in some fields it is essentially impossible to not be promoted as it\nwere.\n\n~~~\ntreve\nI don't the the implication is that it applies to everyone. I think the\ngeneral idea is that in a large enough organization, there's going to be a\nrelevant amount of people whom it does apply to.\n\n~~~\ntoxik\nMaybe it should be thought of more as a force, proportional to the\norganization size. But then I guess the comedy of it kinda dies out.\n\n------\nmegamindbrian2\nMy manager at Charles Schwab said \"managers don't know anything\"\n\n~~~\nbobosha\ndid he?\n\n~~~\nmegamindbrian2\nThey knew how to have a better attitude about it than me. Didn't last long.\n\n------\nmasswerk\n(Not so seriously.) I suggest, it may be even worse. Arguably, a person who is\nable to integrate, to connect and to convey her/his thinking to an audience is\nmore likely to be regarded widely as competent than a person who doesn't. But\nthere's a problem with this, namely complexity of thinking. We may observe\nthat it becomes extremely more difficult to connect in this way, as the\ndistance in understanding and the complexity of reasoning increases from a\ncommon mean of understanding, as the load of information and education implied\nand required to follow an argument separates an expert from a layperson.\nHowever, there's a feeling of suitability of what is to be conveyed, to be\ndiscussed, what may be worth to be communicated. Generally, we do not like to\njust repeat the basics of our understanding, this is not the point we're at,\nthe gravitational center of our deliberations. We haven't engaged in higher\neducation, just to repeat the eyeopening one-liners of the introductory\nlessons over and over again. There's a gradient of complexity, and arguably a\nworthwhile statement is located somewhere at the higher half of it. And, as\nthings are, the more natural we are, the better, the more successful we are in\ncommunications.\n\nBy this, we may conclude, a person commonly acknowledged for her/his\ncompetence is also a person successful in communicating understanding, thus a\nperson, who's understanding is essentially neither more informed nor more\ncomplex than the average understanding. A person at the high point of the\ncareer, just before adhering to Peter's principle, is also a person, who has\nbeen shifting for merits, understood by just few, eventually to a field, where\nher/his genuine level of competence is just a bit above of the one of the\ngeneral public, honoring this with general praise. The experts must stand\naside, in shame, as they are necessarily excluded from this communion. Even\nif, by some peculiar accident, our person has maintained a respectable level\nof expertise, she is ultimately nudged towards a flattering level of\ncommunicability. Thus we may propose, a successful career is rather the matter\nof a diminishing epsilon, which separates expertise from common understanding.\nPeter's principle is not dysfunctional, but rather the vanishing point (quite\nin the literal meaning, as far as this epsilon is concerned).\n\n------\nthedancollins\nWithout the social component we as a species would not have accomplished as\nmuch as we have. We would not, for instance, have been so successful at\nsustenance that we would have time to sit around griping about our bosses -\npeople who are there precisely because without them - we would not have time\nto sit around griping about them.\n\nOrganizations scale at the cost of efficiency - but scale they do. Incredibly\npowerful and inescapable - your idiot boss is here to stay.\n\n------\njvanderbot\nAt my job, leadership and mgmt responsibilities are given before promotion,\nand those who do well are promoted to management much later. Those who do not\ndo well in managrment are instead promoted if they stuck to what they are good\nat.\n\nOh also, promotions and raises are seperate. One is responsibility change, one\nis salary change.\n\nThis doesn't seem hard.\n\n~~~\njhayward\n> At my job, leadership and mgmt responsibilities are given before promotion\n\nThis is the principle used in the US military (at least, the enlisted ranks)\nas well - the promotion signifies not that the person is capable of carrying\nout the responsibilities, but recognizes that _they are already doing so_.\n\n------\nperculis\nAs a developer who has risen through management ranks quickly I can say that\nwithout training and support I would have very readily lived this principle.\nOne set of skills can only be partially transferable to the new demands of\nmanagement.\n\n------\nstefs\nmy thoughts on this. warning: lots of assumptions, technicalities and\nanecdotal evidence following.\n\nlet's assume the reward we're talking about here and people are mostly after\nis financial (i.e. pay increase). so if you are after higher pay, a promotion\n\"up the corporate ladder\" is the natural way, as your wage would increase much\nmore slowly if you stayed at the same job. this at least is even codified in\nmost countries minimum wage laws.\n\nbut what about that ladder? why is it \"moving up\" (good) and \"moving down\"\n(bad)? software engineering is an interesting example here, as you can fill\nalmost every available position with people whose skill can make a difference.\nan expert tester, an gifted community manager, UX designer or talented\ntechnical documentation writer might all have an impact on the product that's\nworth their weight in gold, even though the results might not be as obvious\nand tangible as those of, say, a project manager (who could convincingly claim\nthe success of a project while this would be strange for a technical writer).\ncompared to unskilled rote work where the worker mostly simply has to show up\nand do his/her job.\n\nthus, the question is, why does someone \"higher up\" the ladder earn more than\nsomeone \"lower down\". obvious answers to this are workload, skill,\nresponsibility and quantity.\n\nas for workload: 1. being higher up the ladder doesn't automatically mean one\nis working more and harder than the people below one. 2. working more (hours)\ndoesn't necessarily mean one's more effective. at some point effectiveness\ndecreases due to stress, sleep deprivation, burn out.\n\nas for skill: the peter principle itself and years of anecdotal evidence\n(through the media, not necessarily personal) have shown that moving up the\nladder into different jobs doesn't necessarily equate with higher skill in the\nnew position.\n\nas for responsibility: 1. at least in software engineering, criminal\nprosecution for incompetence at the managerial/top level is rare (assumption).\npositions that require _real_ personal responsibility (say, something where\nlives are on the line) aren't necessarily paid better. nurses or teachers\naren't paid better than CFOs, they're much more at risk for prosecution in\ncase of negligence or incompetence. 2. failure to do your managerial job in\none company well doesn't necessarily prevent you from getting the same job in\na different company, as much hinges on a personal network and it's usually\neasier to get exposure to potential future employers if you're regularly\nworking with partners and customers instead of just interfacing with other\npeople from the same company (assumption). 3. personal responsibility for your\nfamily and dependents: higher pay usually means more savings, which makes one\nless dependent on keeping the same job than someone with less pay and savings.\nthis might be disputed as higher pay usually means a more lavish lifestyle and\nhigher expenditures, but a loaf of bread costs the same for everyone, some\ncosts are just fixed and the system is somewhat rigged to care for those at\nthe top (anecdotal evidence).\n\nas for quantity: this is what makes it a hierarchy. if there's one project\nmanager for a project with, say, five developers, PM positions are obviously\nrarer than developer positions. i can't think of a reason why this should have\nan influence on reward though. managing people is a very different skill to\nwriting code; there's technically less demand for it (as you only need one\nmanager for N developers) but i'm not convinced that your skill here has a\nhigher impact. while four good developers can make up for one bad developer\nand still keep the quality high, five good developers could also make up for\none bad manager and still keep the quality high. the quality of the managerial\nwork doesn't introduce a skill ceiling; i see it more as a multiplicator of\nthe work of his/her teammates (and maybe a lower skill boundary, if a good\nmanager can effectively handle sub-par actors). the other angle here is\n_availability_, but i'm not convinced it's harder to find a good PM than it's\nto find a good technical writer nowadays.\n\nso, what i want to say is that the corporate ladder itself is a misguided,\noutdated construct and basing your wage on your position on it is actively\nharmful. it forces employees to abandon the work they're skilled and talented\nat for jobs that are rewarded better for worse quality and job satisfaction.\n\nit should be seen as a graph where the node weight (pay) depends on\neffectiveness. which is hard compared to ladder position as the latter is\ntrivial to assess, constant and traditionally socially accepted while the\nformer is highly dependent on circumstances, hard to measure and introduces\nadditional risks due to social dynamics.\n\ni'm convinced the upsides of removing the pressure to \"move up\" the\nladder/hierarchy for financial gain would greatly benefit a company - and\nsociety as a whole, if implemented universally -, but i'm not sure if people\nare ready for it and whether we have the tools and systems to implement it\ncorrectly.\n\ni guess back then i thought google would be the company that finally broke the\nbarrier back then when one of their mottos was that managers aren't more\nimportant than developers. not sure if that's still the case, ever was the\ncase or whether they have reverted to a more traditional model.\n\n------\nConfusion\nContra Betteridge's law of headlines.\n\n------\ncrooked-v\ntl;dr: yes\n\n------\njimwhite\nIt's not a joke. It's an aphorism that is funny because it is true.\n\n------\ncma\nYou could apply the same joke principle to athletes and say they are all in\nthe wrong league for their skill level.\n\n~~~\nwizzard\nThe Peter Principle is about being promoted to a job that demands different\nskills. Athletes are promoted to jobs with the same skills, so the principle\ndoesn't apply.\n\n~~~\ncma\nDoes that really happen all that often? Pitchers are usually paid highly.\nWould a really good catcher get promoted to pitcher? Why wouldn't businesses\ntreat it mostly the same? Of course sometimes people try out a new role, but\nif they aren't good they are often fired or go back to their old role.\n\n------\njchook\n> If someone is good at her job, she’ll be promoted...\n\nThis is exactly the opposite of how I understand the Peter Principle.\n\nMy understanding is that folks who are good at their job remain in their\nposition (because they are good/effective workers adding value to the\ncompany). Meanwhile, employees that cause problems on the job get promoted out\nof a position where they can do damage, because it’s easier to promote than to\nfire for whatever reason.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAmsterdam tourist unwittingly pays for shipping container in Airbnb booking - rayascott\nhttps://news.sky.com/story/amsterdam-tourist-unwittingly-pays-for-shipping-container-in-airbnb-booking-11721244\n======\nskloff\nEvery Airbnb page should have a floor plan and it would make things harder for\nfraudulent hosts [https://www.archibnb.com](https://www.archibnb.com)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWSO2's Employee Performance Evaluation System - TylerJewell\nhttps://medium.com/@tylerjewell/wso2s-new-approach-to-performance-reviews-66daac9500b9\n======\nTylerJewell\nHi - HN community. WSO2's leadership would be happy to discuss the philosophy\nbehind our approach to recruiting and performance reviews discussed in the\narticle. Feel free to ask questions here.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLearn AngularJS with free interactive lessons - Garbage\nhttp://www.learn-angular.org/\n======\njschuur\nCodeSchool recently launched a (Google sponsored, free) Angular course with\nexercises too:\n\n[http://campus.codeschool.com/courses/shaping-up-with-\nangular...](http://campus.codeschool.com/courses/shaping-up-with-angular-js)\n\nThe more the merrier!\n\n~~~\naaronm14\nLooks promising, but the videos don't seem to buffer for me at least. My\ninternet isn't strong enough to play it continuously so I normally just pause\nvideos, wait a few minutes, then try playing them. Doesn't seem to make a\ndifference with their videos for some reason. Any tips?\n\n~~~\nsespindola\nThey're probably using DASH[1]. The video is split into several segments and\ntherefore the player will fill the bufer only until the end of the current\nsegment.\n\nBelow each codeschool video you have a download link, so you can view them\noffline.\n\n[1]:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP)\n\n~~~\naaronm14\nI see that's probably what it is, thanks for the info. I will probably just\nneed to download them.\n\n------\nttty\nLook at the pages indexed in google:\n[https://www.google.pt/search?q=inurl%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.lear...](https://www.google.pt/search?q=inurl%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.learn-\nangular.org%2F)\n\nNow look at the source with ctrl+u. (example url: view-\nsource:[http://www.learn-angular.org/#!/lessons/binding-css-\nclasses](http://www.learn-angular.org/#!/lessons/binding-css-classes))\n\nNow you know why he needs server side rendering (:\n\nAnyway I never tried angular, and this tutorial made me try it. Is explains\nvery very well how to get started, that's true.\n\n~~~\nclubhi\nSeeing how I figured out how to index angularjs pages for searching myself in\none evening I imagine it won't be too long before google improves on this.\n\n~~~\nandybak\nI'm not sure it's Google's job to.\n\nOr rather - even if Google figures out how to index these pages, why should\nevery other consumer of web content have to also figure it out when it's the\nfault of the content itself.\n\ni.e. don't break the web.\n\n~~~\ntwerquie\nI would argue that Google's job now includes executing javascript and\nevaluating dynamically loaded content.\n\nBreak the web.\n\n~~~\nandybak\nBe careful what you wish for.\n\n~~~\ndlsym\nFlash. _shiver_\n\n------\ncarrollgt91\nGreat tutorial. I love these interactive lessons, but one thing I'd love to\nsee in this tutorial (and many others like it) is something that Michael Hartl\ndoes in railstutorial.org, which is an extra credit section.\n\nIn the later sections of the tutorial, the addition of some suggestions for\nextending each example would be great. You don't need any \"stuck\"\nfunctionality or anything like that here; just some casual examples of how\nelse you could use the subject of the tutorial would really help solidify the\nconcepts.\n\n------\ndabit3\nAwesome resource and great lessons. I just went through a lot of them, but I\nhave to say the quality of the new CodeSchool course is amazing (and a lot\nmore comprehensive than this one).\n\n------\nusablebytes\nI was using the CodeAcademy courses, they are equally good. Although I have\nlooked into only the first few lessons on learn-angular.\n\n------\nsycren\nIs there anything like this for other languages and libraries? I know about\ntry ruby, js & python. Any others?\n\n~~~\nnkozyra\nGo has a omnipresent compiler not just in the Playground:\n\n[http://play.golang.org/](http://play.golang.org/)\n\nBut also in their tutorials:\n\n[http://tour.golang.org/#1](http://tour.golang.org/#1)\n\n------\nfull-of-foo\nGreat, bookmarked and thank you.\n\n------\nexodust\nI might take a look at this, have not yet looked into Angular.\n\nIt is a little disappointing to disable javascript and refresh the page at\nwww.learn-angular.org, it's just a blank page. As much as I'm a javascript\nfan, and have made single page apps, a completely blank page without JS just\nfeels wrong. I'm guessing this isn't the fault of Angular.. or is it?\n\n~~~\nrev087\nWhile Angular can certainly be used for simple progressive enhancement-kind\ninteractions, its strength lies in single page/fat client apps, and in this\ncase not having javascript and still getting basic functionality would mean\nduplicating it on the server. Still, it would be a good idea to display a\nnoscript message alerting the user about the JS requirement.\n\n~~~\ncamus2\nBlank landing pages = bad CEO,no matter how much escape fragment or trick one\npulls. And CEO still make a difference,when the social echo dims.\n\n~~~\nbabuskov\nWhile I agree that having a good CEO is important for any company, it this\ncase SEO would be much more relevant ;)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTabula PDF: Extract table data from PDFs - scrollaway\nhttps://tabula.technology/\n======\nscrollaway\nSo I started working with MCCs (Merchant Category Codes AKA ISO 18245) and I\nneeded some decent lookup tables for them.\n\nI just spent several hours fighting with awful spec PDFs containing hundreds\nupon hundreds of tables of these. Well, Tabula made quick work of all of them:\n\n[https://github.com/jleclanche/python-\niso18245](https://github.com/jleclanche/python-iso18245)\n\nIt extracted over 200 pages of tables with nearly no errors, and maybe a grand\ntotal of ~15 mins of manual cleanup work needed to have the data be\nprocessable by the library.\n\nFinal CSVs: [https://github.com/jleclanche/python-\niso18245/tree/master/is...](https://github.com/jleclanche/python-\niso18245/tree/master/iso18245/data)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFor financial geeks, a do-it-yourself hedge fund site - arbuge\nhttp://finance.yahoo.com/news/financial-geeks-yourself-hedge-fund-185923956.html?l=1\n\n======\nchrisgd\nReAlly interesting site that I have spent some time on. I am not sure all back\ntesting data accounts for survivorship data. Neat site though\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy Do Americans Hate Android And Love Apple? - treskot\nhttp://readwrite.com/2013/01/29/why-do-americans-hate-android-and-love-apple\n======\nmikecane\nIn America, people were burned badly by a bunch of Android craptabs two years\nago. For example, the now-gone Borders sold the hell out of the Cruz Tablet,\nwhich was simply a piece of shit. The parade of craptabs have continued, with\nArchos producing a Retina-class tablet -- the 97 Titanium -- that is simply\njunk.\n\n------\nZigurd\nMight be a simpler explanation: iPhone had the longest head-start in the US.\n\nUsers, developers, and designers all have an iPhone bias because, for a few\nyears, it was the only new-generation smartphone.\n\nFor many users, there is simply no reason to switch. iPhone is a really nice\nproduct.\n\nTablets are a more-competitive situation. I can see someone switching to a\nNexus 10 or Asus from an iPad. But there, again, Apple has a huge head start,\nand many users will find too little reason to switch.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAbstractQueryFactoryFactories and alias_method_chain: The Ruby Way - wycats\nhttp://yehudakatz.com/2010/02/15/abstractqueryfactoryfactories-and-alias_method_chain-the-ruby-way/\n\n======\nduairc\nI've always thought that alias_method was a pretty silly way to solve the\nproblem of defining a new method in terms of an existing method with the same\nname. alias_method is definitely \"simpler\", but I think the way it actually\ndestructively creates a method in a class is a bit ugly. I don't know what\n\"AbstractQueryFactoryFactories\" are, but the name makes me want to stay pretty\nfar away from them.\n\nThese monkey patches constitute my solution to the problem:\n\n    \n    \n        class UnboundMethod\n          def origin\n            owner.instance_method(name)\n          end\n        end\n        \n        class Proc\n          def to_method(object, method)\n            me = self\n            object.class.class_eval do\n              current = instance_method(method).origin rescue nil\n              mine = current.owner == self rescue false\n              define_method(method, &me)\n              result = instance_method(method)\n              mine ? define_method(method, current) : remove_method(method)\n              result\n            end.bind(object)\n          end\n        end\n        \n        class Module\n          def redefine(method, &code)\n            original = instance_method(method).origin\n            define_method(method) do |*args, &block|\n              code.to_method(self, method).(original.bind(self), *args, &block)\n            end\n          end\n        end\n    \n\nYou use this as follows:\n\n    \n    \n        Fixnum.redefine(:+) do |old_plus, other|\n          if self == 2 and other == 2\n            5\n          else\n            old_plus.(other)\n          end\n        end\n    \n        >> 2 + 2\n        => 5\n        >> 2 + 3\n        => 5\n        >> 2 + 1\n        => 3\n    \n\nI'll admit that its implementation is pretty horrible, but I think the\ninterface is much nicer: you pass in a function which specifies your new\nfunction in terms of the old one, which is always passed as the first\nargument.\n\n~~~\njherdman\nYou're actually reimplementing some parts of Ruby that already exist:\n<http://ruby-doc.org/core-1.8.7/classes/UnboundMethod.html>\n\n~~~\nduairc\nSorry, I'm not sure what you mean. What did I implement that already exists?\nThe only method I added to UnboundMethod was origin, and I don't see a method\non that page that does that.\n\n~~~\njherdman\nErr... apologies. I thought you were unaware of the UnboundMethod class.\n\n------\nhypermatt\nI'm glad someone responded to the original post, after so many years of java,\nI can't really say I ever enjoyed factories they always seemed to solve a\nproblem that was a weakness in the language itself.\n\n~~~\ntechnomancy\nI'm surprised anyone bothered; the original post was so very obviously troll\nbait. People who've been in the Ruby community as long as Yehuda should know\nbetter.\n\n------\nnaz\nGood writeup but it could have been more useful if he showed the equivalent\nJava code.\n\n~~~\njdminhbg\nThe equivalent Java code is in the original post he's responding to.\n\n~~~\npvg\nIt's Scala code.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nApple Files Lawsuit Against White iPhone Kid - bproper\nhttp://www.betabeat.com/2011/05/27/as-apple-cracks-down-white-iphone-kid-hopes-to-go-it-alone/\n\n======\nglenra\nApple filed suit to put on record that it's illegal to sell (and profit from)\nwhite iPhones that customers might confuse with the official ones. But then\nthey appear to have _settled out of court with the family_ , making this a\nnon-story. Quote:\n\n\"Apple did, however, also file a _voluntary dismissal_ of the lawsuit at the\nsame time, suggesting that a settlement has may have been reached, although\nApple's request for dismissal without prejudice means that the company\nreserves the right to refile the claim at some point in the future.\"\n\nSource: [http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/26/apple-files-lawsuit-\nagai...](http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/26/apple-files-lawsuit-against-\nteenager-who-sold-white-iphone-4-conversion-kits-settlement-reached/)\n\n~~~\nalanh\nI was really disheartened to read this story, but now you point out it’s a\nnon-issue and essentially that the article is misleading to the point of\nlibel. Flagged this story.\n\n------\neck\nHe sold a product with the trademarked Apple logo on it without authorization\nfrom Apple, and they're protecting their trademark. How is this a story?\n\nIs there a trademark exception for being a kid? No.\n\nIs there a trademark exception for \"same shape as different colored component\nof product\"? No.\n\nNow, had he sold a white case _without_ the logo, that would be a totally\ndifferent story...\n\n~~~\ntsuraan\nHe stopped when they told him to. He complied with their requests, and now\nthey're suing him and his parents. They aren't just protecting their trademark\nat this point, they're going for blood.\n\n~~~\neck\nIf it were acceptable to infringe a trademark for a few months and make $130k,\nand the only consequence was being forced to stop, a lot of people would think\n(correctly) that doing so is a profitable activity. Apple is demonstrating\nthat it is not.\n\n------\nGHFigs\n_Apple did, however, also file a voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit at the\nsame time, suggesting that a settlement has may have been reached, although\nApple's request for dismissal without prejudice means that the company\nreserves the right to refile the claim at some point in the future._ \\--\n[http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/26/apple-files-lawsuit-\nagai...](http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/26/apple-files-lawsuit-against-\nteenager-who-sold-white-iphone-4-conversion-kits-settlement-reached/)\n\nNote: This is the article that Betabeat itself links to.\n\n------\nxxpor\nIs Woz on Apple's board? Wouldn't it be inappropriate for him to help Fei if\nhe is?\n\n~~~\nqq66\nNo he is not.\n\n<http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/bod.html>\n\n~~~\nxxpor\nThanks for that link. I'm surprised at who's on that board. CEO of Avon? Seems\npretty random.\n\n~~~\nahi\nThey are legally required to have some number of independent directors. This\nis to prevent executive backscratching, self-dealing, etc. The CEO of Avon is\nprobably on the board precisely because it's kind of random. Their job is to\nread the financials and keep an eye on the board members that have experience\nin the industry.\n\n------\njrspruitt\nI think it will be interesting to see if he is tried as an adult or not. Seems\na bit odd, someone his age has the potential for a lesser sentence had he\ncommitted a violent crime, but perhaps not for copyright infringement. Either\nway, I think the MPAA/RIAA proved legally roughing up kids isn't the best\nhabit to have.\n\n~~~\nmbrubeck\nThis is a trademark infringement suit, not a criminal trial. (This means he is\nnot being \"tried\" or \"sentenced\" and it's not like he's risking jail time.)\n\nUpdate: It actually is possible for willful trademark infringement to lead to\nchanges of \"criminal counterfeiting\" although this particular case was a civil\nsuit brought by Apple, not a criminal case brought by the state.\n\n[http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/US_Trademark_Law#Criminal_count...](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/US_Trademark_Law#Criminal_counterfeiting)\n\n~~~\njrspruitt\nah, I apologize, I didn't realize there was a difference when it came to\npeople under 18. Still seems a bit odd they would cut kids slack for one, but\nnot the other.\n\n------\nankimal\nCome on.. cut the kid a break. If you wanna _punish_ him, take his profits,\nput it in some kind of trust fund or education fund for him and win some PR\npoints while you're at it.\n\n~~~\nbrandall10\nSounds like that was what the kid was doing with it -\n\n\"Since shutting down whiteiPhone4now.com, Lam has been working on a startup,\nsimilarinterests.org, a social web application for connecting users with\nshared likes. “I’m very thankful,” he said of the money he made on the\niPhones. “For months I was struggling for an idea that would bootstrap my\nfirst startup and help pay for college.”\"\n\n------\nwccrawford\nThat's pretty cold and heartless. I understand defending your trademarks and\nall, but beating a 9 yr old into the ground AFTER he complies with everything\nyou asked is too much. ALL his profits? Ugh. He never pretended to be Apple\nand it was very clear that they weren't official Apple products.\n\n~~~\nSeoxyS\nTerribly misinformed comment. First of all, he's is definitely not a 9 year\nold. He's 17. Also this is one of the least objective stories I've seen on HN\nin a while. It makes no mention of Apple withdrawing the suit upon successful\nsettlement.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nManhattan Resident Develops iPhone App to Track Homeless People - jsnathan\nhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelthomsen/2015/09/26/manhattan-resident-develops-iphone-app-to-track-homeless-people/\n======\na3n\n[http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelthomsen/2015/09/26/manhat...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelthomsen/2015/09/26/manhattan-\nresident-develops-iphone-app-to-track-homeless-people/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWant to surf a web w/out flash ads? Add \"Gomez\" to your user agent. - freejoe76\n\nGomez is the name of a site performance monitor, and it sends bots out across the web, and many ad vendors \"sniff\" for it and don't serve ads if they think you're a Gomez bot.\n======\ntechnomancy\nAnother way is to just not install the flash plugin.\n\n~~~\nfreejoe76\nBut then you wouldn't get to see restaurant web sites.\n\n~~~\ndholowiski\nOr Beer sites.\n\n~~~\ngentle\nOr \"video\" sites\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nOpen Letter from DHH to Jeff Bezos - auslegung\nhttps://m.signalvnoise.com/dear-jeff/\n======\nhtk\nDemagogue.\n\nAlso, I’ve learned nothing from this blog post.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGoogle IO 2013 – Google Glass Sessions - ireadqrcodes\nhttp://glass-apps.org/google-io-2013-google-glass-sessions\n======\nnolok\nWhere is the app from a few years back, where you pointed your phone camera at\nsome text and it switched it with a translated version of it live in-picture ?\n\nNot only did it look awesome, but it would also be a perfect application for\ngoogle's glass. Imagine, you're in berlin, or tokyo, or madrid, you read the\nmenu in a restaurant and you have the exact translation displayed to you live\nin the corner of your view ? Or in a museum, etc ..\n\n~~~\nnati\nI think there is such a feature built in google glass or someone will\nintegrate google goggles into google glass\n\n~~~\ndombili\nNot exactly. You have to talk to it in order for it to translate a text.\nSomething like \"OK Glass, say something something in Japanese\".\n\n------\nstuartmemo\nThe fireside chat had an interesting moment where they showed Glass on\nprescriptions glasses, which made them slightly more inconspicuous I thought -\n[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8OUSd8zqT4&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8OUSd8zqT4&feature=youtu.be&t=5m11s)\n\n------\ntwiceaday\nI like the Sharingan logo, very apropos. In Naruto, the Uchiha clan derives\ntheir powers from having special eyes. A three-prong pupil indicates that the\nbearer unlocked extremely powerful abilities by killing somebody very close to\nthem, usually a best friend.\n\n~~~\nnati\nwith google glass you only need to kill your best friends privacy :-)\n\n------\nspiritplumber\nSaw some people with them at maker faire, you still have to interrupt a\nconversation to take a picture and whatnot. I'm waiting (read: hacking at it)\nfor Neurosky integration, or at least blink-pattern reading.\n\n~~~\nKiro\nI thought winks were the standard way to take pictures with Glass now. At\nleast that's how everyone at Google I/O is doing it and is the feature most\npeople are praising.\n\n------\nireadqrcodes\ndid you see the first cellphones?\n\n------\nStartupSushi\nGoogle Glass only needs to get over its initial days in which it is viewed as\nawkward and then it will be socially acceptable. Unlike the first cellphones,\nits plainly visible even when you're not using it, and like Bluetooth headsets\nthere's a risk of being perceived as someone not caring about their\nsurroundings.\n\nEven on a forum like Slashdot which is populated by uber-geeks, here's the\nresults of an ongoing poll with ~5000 people voting.\n\nHead-mounted displays / sensors like Google Glass are:\n\nCreepy 1823 votes / 32%\n\nCool 821 votes / 14%\n\nUgly 502 votes / 8%\n\nBaffling 323 votes / 5%\n\nIntriguing 1498 votes / 26%\n\nShort-sighted 413 votes / 7%\n\nI've got my own adjective! (Explained in comments.) 208 votes / 3%\n\n[http://slashdot.org/poll/2577/head-mounted-displays--\nsensors...](http://slashdot.org/poll/2577/head-mounted-displays--sensors-like-\ngoogle-glass-are)\n\nThe 40% positive outlook is still not bad though.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nI love the idea of Google Glass and I'd definitely use them if I had them.\n\nBut...\n\n> Google Glass only needs to get over its initial days in which it is viewed\n> as awkward and then it will be socially acceptable.\n\nPeople said that about segway and sinclair C5s and etc etc.\n\nI really hope that Google can manage to make Glass work. Lots of other\nheadmounted displays failed or didn't make it out of very small niches.\n\n~~~\nams6110\nI think the segway is a good comparison. It had similar hype (\"it will change\nthe way cities are designed\") and who uses them today: nerds, and obese mall\ncops.\n\nUnless Glass solves real problems in a way that is compelling to real people,\nthey will remain nerd toys.\n\n~~~\nmikeash\nFor all the discussion of \"cool\" and whatever, utility certainly seems key.\n\nWe can talk about the Segway's coolness all we want, but it's ultimately not\nthat important. Why did the Segway never become more than a niche product?\nBecause it's pretty much useless! It fills a mostly-unwanted niche between\nwalking and bicycles. Most people can walk. Bicycles are cheap. Given how\nlittle it does, I can't fathom how one would have looked at a pre-production\nSegway and thought, wow, I bet these will sell like hotcakes.\n\nGlass is more of a platform than a product right now. The question of what\nit's _for_ is still mostly unanswered. Find the killer app for it, and all the\nquestions of creepiness or uncoolness will melt away. Fail to find anything\nuseful to do with it, and the lack of coolness will just become an excuse for\nthe fanboys to use.\n\n------\ndror82\nThis can't be the future... Look how cumbersome the glasses are\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nI Just Presented as a Finalist at Launch Hackathon: Here's what I learned. - georgebonnr\nhttp://georgebonnr.github.io/blog/2013/11/11/i-just-presented-at-launch-hackathon/\n\n======\nracerx\nCongratulations - well done, sounds like a great experience.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRebinding attacks in browsers - cstejerean\nhttp://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/455\n======\nandrewcooke\ncouldn't this be ameliorated by forcing dns responses with short ttls to be\npersistent for longer periods? how much of an impact would that have on load\nbalancing strategies? would anything else be affected?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWe Are Legion - The Story of the Hacktivists - Documentary [video] - sathishmanohar\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pGYKIRj5_8\n\n======\nrsingel\nThis is a leaked old version. The new cut will be released in theaters and\ncheap download ala Louis CK very soon.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGood interview question - huhtenberg\n\nGiven that yesterday was a Pi day (03/14), here's a good interview question:<p><pre><code>  Write Pi in a hex base\n</code></pre>\nA written test version asks for 3 digits after the dot; in person interview version - for 2.<p>The question is really good because very few people have experience dealing with fractions in non-decimal base, so it forces them to really work on the answer. It also a very quick way to separate \"hackers\" from hackers :)\n======\nejs\nI never understand these types of questions, is that really important to job\nfunction? Maybe ask them to do it in octal too? Or just use a random number as\nthe base, how about base 47? Will that weed out the slackers?\n\n~~~\nbkrausz\nI find that interviewers are more interested in the method than the\nanswer...if you just sit there and say \"I was never taught this\" you probably\nwon't get the job. On the other hand, if you stand up, go to the whiteboard,\nand start writing things down, while talking them through your train of though\n(\"Well I'm not positive how to do fractions in other bases, but this way makes\nsense to me\" and then proceed to work out the problem as best as you can) then\nyou show more motivation and enthusiasm.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFlight/hotel booking REST API - devsri\n\nIs there a REST API available from any travel aggregator (such as travelocity) or hotel/airline, that allows me to do booking via API (or is scraping the only choice)?\n======\nboolean\nExpedia Affiliate Network (EAN) has an API: <http://developer.ean.com/>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: What's your consulting rate? - equity\n\nI am looking to get a pulse on the going consulting rate for software engineers in the bay area.  Please post your rate and include languages of competency, years experience, etc.\n======\nlarrykubin\nI currently charge 95/hr. Been doing a mix of Python/PHP/JavaScript and know\nmy way around their associated frameworks and CMSes\n(Cake/Django/Flask/Drupal/CodeIgniter). I've done only freelance for 5 years\nand have worked in Austin and Portland. Rates are probably higher in SF.\n\n------\ngamechangr\nFriend (moved to palo alto,part of silicon valley, in Feb of 2011) makes $140\nhr for five yrs experience in Ruby/PHP and 2 yr in Python/Ruby on Rails\n\nHe claims most engineers make $120-$150 with a couple years experience.\n\n------\nsamstave\nAvg rates I see for everything/everyone is between 100 and 150/hr.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWelcome to OpenBSD [pdf] - fcambus\nhttp://devio.us/~bcallah/rcos2015.pdf\n======\nMartinMond\n> Random PIDs > Eliminates race conditions > Say you have a root daemon that\n> forks then the child drops privileges. If you can beat the child you can\n> inherit root privileges\n\nCan someone explain this? I don't see what this has to do with the randomness\nof pids.\n\n~~~\ngrkvlt\nSomething like after the parent forks, the child opens a file called\n\"/tmp/log.$$\" with its PID in the name as root. If you can guess the PID of\nthe child, you could create a link with that name, pointing at a file of your\nchoice that is owned by root, such as \"/etc/passwd\". Then, you need to make\nthe child do something predictable to that file, such as ensuring that the\nuser supplied data being logged contains text like \"\\npwn::0:0::/:/bin/sh\\n\"\ngiving you a valid password file entry for \"pwn\" with no password and root\nprivileges.\n\n~~~\nxorcist\nPredictable file names in tmp is considered a security issue pretty much\neverywhere (hence mkstemp), so I would guess that's not what they mean.\n\n------\nwalterbell\nTheo's opinion notwithstanding, what's the best virtualization platform to run\nOpenBSD?\n\nThere's a project to improve AWS/Xen support,\n[http://www.joelroberts.org/openbsd/](http://www.joelroberts.org/openbsd/)\n\n~~~\ncssmoo\nWorks fine in VMware ESX and HyperV. Need to run NTP though to combat clock\ndrift. Not tried it on Xen but it has drivers for virtual NICs and storage\netc.\n\n------\nbch\n> Proactive security ●64-bit long long time_t (NetBSD technically did it\n> first)\n\nThe best kind of first. Joking aside -- why is so much OpenBSD advocacy\nbackhanded like this ? Do the writers not think that OpenBSD can stand on it's\nown ?\n\n~~~\ndwc\nYou left off the following bullet point:\n\n* NetBSD technically did it first\n\n* But OpenBSD is the one who engaged with the rest of the software community to fix bugs that were uncovered\n\nNow it doesn't seem so backhanded.\n\n~~~\njustincormack\nWell I think actually NetBSD just made less noise about it. You can call that\n\"engaging with the community\", and it can be helpful but since NetBSD switched\nin 2012 it was not the case that there was no engagement in making software\nwork if it needed fixing.\n\n~~~\ncalvin_\nThe thing is to ask and poke pre-emptively before problems actually occur.\n\n------\nBorisMelnik\nyou are my hero, not just for all the awesome OpenBSD contributions and\ndedication but for the fact that you still maintain a GOPHER protocol'd site!\n\ngopher://gopher.anthrobsd.net/\n\n~~~\niso8859-1\ndo you know what gopher server is in use?\n\n~~~\njethro_tell\nIf I remember correctly it is The Gophernicus Project.\n\n[http://gopherproxy.meulie.net/gophernicus.org/](http://gopherproxy.meulie.net/gophernicus.org/)\nor you can use the overbite extension for firefox.\n\n~~~\nBorisMelnik\nyes that is one. I remember accessing txt files via gopher on university\nsystems back in the 90's. It was similar to browsing an FTP directory via a\nweb browser, with a few more features.\n\n------\nlegulere\n> strlcat() and strlcpy() > \\- Solves the problem of unterminated C strings\n\nHandling truncation correctly with those is just as much work as handling\nstrcat and strcpy correctly. The only difference is that wrong handling of\nstrcat and strcpy have worse effects usually.\n\n------\nkijiki\n\"OpenBSD's OpenBGPD responsible for 30% of worldwide BGP communication\"\n\nUmmm. Citation needed?\n\n~~~\njlgaddis\nYeah, that was my first thought, too.\n\nIn all my years in networking, I've ran exactly _one_ instance of OpenBGPD and\nthat's used simply for real-time updates of (anti-spam) blacklists and\nwhitelists [0,1].\n\n[0]: [http://bgp-spamd.net/](http://bgp-spamd.net/) [1]:\n[http://www.openbsd.org/papers/asiabsdcon2013/phessler-bgp-\nsp...](http://www.openbsd.org/papers/asiabsdcon2013/phessler-bgp-spamd-\npresentation.pdf)\n\n~~~\nzdw\n[http://www.openbgpd.org/users.html](http://www.openbgpd.org/users.html)\n\nAlso, most large service providers don't tend to talk about their internal\nimplementations.\n\nMany in the networking field have been indoctrinated in a Cisco-only\nphilosophy, and then get hired into that monoculture over and over to the\npoint they don't know about anything else, other than if it's something viewed\nas a Cisco competitor.\n\n~~~\njlgaddis\nSorry, I never doubted that there are large organizations that run OpenBGPD --\nit's just that I, myself, have never personally encountered one (meaningless,\nI know).\n\nI do know that it's used quite often as a route server/reflector at various\nIXPs (and I may be standing up an instance to do just that in the near future\nas well) as well as a looking glass. I've managed routers from most of the\nlarge manufacturers (Cisco, Juniper, Brocade, HP/H3C, ALU, Mikrotik) and I\ntook a good hard look at OpenBGPD a while back for a customer project so I am\naware that it is quite feature-rich and capable and I certainly didn't intend\nto imply (if it came across that way) that it's not.\n\nReally, the thing that I took issue with was:\n\n _> OpenBSD's OpenBGPD responsible for 30% of worldwide BGP communication_\n\nIt was followed up with:\n\n _> Correction: 20% of ISPs using OpenBGPD_\n\nThat claim may very well be _technically_ correct, but it strikes me as\nsimilar to, e.g., someone claiming that 90% of users on the Internet \"use\nLinux\" simply because their traffic may have {passed through|been directed to}\na {router|server|firewall} that runs Linux.\n\n------\nusaif\nVery useful, sans the font. Pardon the pun\n\n------\ncarlesfe\nSlightly off topic, but does anybody know why the OpenBSD community has\nstarted using Comic Sans in all their material? Is it some kind of inside\njoke?\n\nI don't find it neither good nor wrong, but there must be some reason behind\nit.\n\n~~~\nma2rten\nThere was another discussion about it recently on HN, which linked to this:\n\n[http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan14-libressl/mgp00025.htm...](http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan14-libressl/mgp00025.html)\n\n~~~\nbcook\nlol... weaponizing fonts. Well played.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSymbolic expressions can be automatically differentiated too - objections\nhttp://h2.jaguarpaw.co.uk/posts/symbolic-expressions-can-be-automatically-differentiated/\n======\njohnbender\nOne can also calculate the derivative of a context free grammar with respect\nto a given terminal.\n\n[http://matt.might.net/articles/parsing-with-\nderivatives/](http://matt.might.net/articles/parsing-with-derivatives/)\n\n~~~\nApanatshka\nThat's also a really cool article. Thanks for sharing it!\n\n------\ndelluminatus\nGreat post, as an AD tutorial and as a (an?) Haskell exercise. Having known\nnothing about AD before, I feel like I have a good understanding of what it is\n-- as he says, it's so simple -- but I don't understand _why_ the algorithm is\nso much faster. Just looking at the differentiator function and the AD\nfunction, it actually appears that the AD should take longer because it does\nmore computation per step (both the function and the derivative). But it seems\nlike every article or paper is talking about how to implement AD, not why the\nalgorithm is so efficient. Does anyone happen to know of a good article or\npaper about that? Ideally, one just as nice and comprehensible as this!\n\n~~~\nvidarh\nThe first alternative builds a large tree structure, and then evaluates the\nwhole tree structure afterwards.\n\nSo first it blows up the size of the expression to process and _then_ it\ncalculates the result. A lot of those calculations will be redundant\n\nThe second one not only avoids evaluating the tree separately, but \"prunes\" a\nlot of the evaluation automatically by effectively short-circuiting the whole\nprocess. Consider (with the caveat that my Haskell understanding is\nrudimentary at best and it was about 20 years since I last did anything\ninvolving symbolic differentiation) :\n\n    \n    \n       Product e e' -> Product e (diff e') `Sum` Product (diff e) e'\n    \n\nFollowed by a separate run with:\n\n    \n    \n        Product e e' -> ev e * ev e'\n    \n\nvs\n\n    \n    \n        Product e e' -> let (ex, ed)   = ev e\n                                (ex', ed')       = ev e'\n                        in (ex * ex', ex * ed' + ed * ex')\n    \n\n(I pick the \"Product\" rule as an example because it is one of the ones that\nblows up the size of the tree)\n\nLets say you do something simple like Product X X. You get Sum (Product X One)\n(Product One X) out, and then you have to evaluate each node.\n\nIn the second case, you match Product e e'. You process X and assign (x,1) to\n(ex,ed), and process the second X and assign (x,1) to (ex', ed'), and then\nreturn (ex * ex', ex * ed' \\+ ed * ex').\n\nIn the first case, you've first differentiated 3 nodes (Product + 2x \"X\"),\nthen evaluated the 7 nodes that was produced as output, for a total of ten\nnodes processed.\n\nIn the second you've evaluated/differentatiated 3 nodes in one go without the\nintermediate step of having to evaluate a much larger tree.\n\nIn a large example, the number of nodes in the differentiated output quickly\nexplodes and subsequent evaluation would increase rapidly in cost.\n\n~~~\namelius\nFrom an asymptotic complexity viewpoint, I don't see any difference between\nthe two algorithms (AD versus building an expression tree and doing it\nsymbolically, then evaluating). Both are linear in the \"size\" of the\nexpression. So I don't understand what you mean by \"quickly explodes\".\n\n~~~\ntome\nSee here:\n\n[http://h2.jaguarpaw.co.uk/posts/why-is-naive-symbolic-\ndiffer...](http://h2.jaguarpaw.co.uk/posts/why-is-naive-symbolic-\ndifferentiation-slow/)\n\nIn summary, yes both functions are linear, but the size of the symbolic\nderivative is quadratic.\n\n------\nkazinator\nI would swear I read some Lisp-related paper about this with some nice Lisp\nadvocacy in it, too.\n\nAha, here it is:\n[http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/ADIL.pdf](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/ADIL.pdf)\n\n> _For fans of Lisp, there is no question that one motivation is to show how\n> easy it is to implement in Lisp. Lisp provides a natural representation for\n> programs as data and a natural form for writing programs that write\n> programs, which is what we do in ADIL. The code is short, and is in ANSI\n> standard Common Lisp. Since it is not \"naive\" code written in just the\n> obvious idioms of introductory Lisp, it illustrates, for those with only a\n> cursory familiarity, that Lisp is more than CAR and CDR. In fact we did not\n> use those routines at all._\n\nAh, but you did use A and D. cAr-tomatic cDr-ivation!\n\n:)\n\n------\ndavexunit\nSurprised to not see SICP's excellent section on symbolic differentiation not\nmentioned here:\n[http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/html/2_002e3.xhtml#g_t2_002...](http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/html/2_002e3.xhtml#g_t2_002e3_002e2)\n\n------\n33a\nAlgebraically, automatic differentiation is the same as adding a nilpotent\nelement e, such that e^2=0 to your algebra. You can continue this pattern out\nto get higher order derivatives. For example, if you also add an element f\nwhere f^3=0, the coefficient of f is proportional to the second derivative.\n\n~~~\namelius\nSounds interesting. But could you explain this so that people without a\npostgraduate degree in mathematics can understand this?\n\n~~~\neru\nThe idea might be similar to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-\nstandard_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-standard_analysis)\n\nEdit: Actually,\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smooth_infinitesimal_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smooth_infinitesimal_analysis)\nseems much closer.\n\n~~~\namelius\nInteresting. But...\n\n> by denying the law of the excluded middle, e.g., NOT (a ≠ b) does not imply\n> a = b\n\nOuch, that is where my brain starts hurting.\n\n------\nturkishrevenge\nConal Elliot's paper on the subject is a really good starting point:\n[http://conal.net/papers/beautiful-\ndifferentiation/beautiful-...](http://conal.net/papers/beautiful-\ndifferentiation/beautiful-differentiation.pdf)\n\n------\nnwhitehead\nThis example makes it really clear what's going on. Could someone translate it\nto do reverse automatic differentiation? That's the one I never quite\nunderstand.\n\n~~~\nAnimats\nYou mean integration? That's much harder, but has been done automatically.\nSymbolic differentiation is easy, because you can just keep blindly applying a\nset of rewrite rules until none of them apply. That process converges on a\nunique result. Symbolic integration doesn't converge in that way. More\nstrategy is required, and you're not guaranteed a closed form solution.\nMathematica has a good symbolic integrator.\n\n~~~\ncperciva\n_Symbolic integration doesn 't converge in that way. More strategy is\nrequired, and you're not guaranteed a closed form solution._\n\nHowever, if a closed-form solution exists which can be expressed in terms of\nthe operations + - * / exp log, then it is guaranteed to be found.\n\n------\neru\nGreat article! It might benefit from a comparison with Oleg's Typed tagless-\nfinal interpretations ([http://okmij.org/ftp/tagless-\nfinal/course/](http://okmij.org/ftp/tagless-final/course/)).\n\n------\njfoutz\nThe thing that's great about the typeclass approach, you can do anything you\nwant behind the implementation. you can numerically evaluate the expression,\nbut even cooler, you can recover the parse tree. I never could sort out how to\ndeal with 'if', because it's not typeclassed. if it was, boy could you do some\namazing stuff. partial differentiation, tree rewriting, with the LLVM stuff\nyou could runtime compile arbitrary functions. super neat trick.\n\n~~~\nmpweiher\nThat's also what's great about pure dynamic systems like Smalltalk. 'ifTrue:'\nis just a message-send, the class \"False\" doesn't evaluate the block\nparameter, the class \"True\" does. And yes, you can then recover the parse\ntree, for example the Gemstone OODB lets you use arbitrary blocks (closures)\nas queries, recovers the parse tree and then creates an optimized query from\nit. Quite neat.\n\n------\nfinin\nTHE LISP DIFFERENTIATION DEMONSTRATION PROGRAM, K. Kaling, Artificial\nIntelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, AI Memo 10, 1959.\n\n[https://archive.org/stream/bitsavers_mitaiaimAI_878286/AIM-0...](https://archive.org/stream/bitsavers_mitaiaimAI_878286/AIM-010_djvu.txt)\n\nftp://publications.ai.mit.edu/ai-publications/pdf/AIM-010.pdf\n\n------\ndeepnet\nCould Automatic Differentiation learn by applying learnable weights to the\ncompiled S-expression atoms - Backpropagating Errors applied with Stochastic\nGradient Descent ?\n\nA program would constrain a task with functional statements, which is then\ncompiled to weighted s-expressions which learn the specific task from training\ndata.\n\nA sort of Neural-net functional program hybrid.\n\n------\nnotthemessiah\nDual numbers are just a means of formalizing the properties of an epsilon (a\ntiny change in calculus), and are the means of preserving enough information\nto think of the function and its derivative at the same time. EG: (x + ε)² =\nx² + 2ε + ε², but ε² = 0, so we get x² + 2ε, (a tiny change squared becomes an\ninsignificantly tiny change)\n\n------\nplatz\nForward-mode AD doesnt't really scale. Reverse kode AD is useful for the\nbackpropigation algo in machinelearning however\n\n~~~\nguest1539\nWhat part doesn't scale?\n\n~~~\nkxyvr\nI'm a little late to the party, but hopefully this'll explain.\n\nBasically, you have to be careful about what it means to scale or not scale.\nIf all you want is a derivative with respect to a single variable, forward\nmode scales just fine, great in fact. However, if you want the gradient, or\nthe derivative with respect to every variable, then the forward mode does not\nscale well at all with respect to the number of variables. Specifically,\nassume we have m variables. In order to calculate the derivative of an\nexpression with respect to 1 variable is 2 times the cost of a function\nevaluation, 2 * eval. In order to see this, it's easiest to note that we don't\nneed an expression tree for forward mode AD like the article uses. Really, we\ncan get away with just a tuple that contains the function evaluation as the\nfirst element and the partial derivative as the second element. Then, all of\nthe rules are basically the same as the article, but we're always doing one\noperation on the first element, whatever the function is, and a different\noperation on the second element for the partial derivative. This is twice to\nwork, so 2 * eval. Since we have m variables, this becomes 2 * m * eval. And,\nyes, memory layouts, fewer optimizations for algebraic data types compared to\nfloats, etc. mean that it's actually slower, but, honestly, it's pretty fast.\n\nThe reverse mode is different because it turns out that it can calculate the\nentire gradient, or all m partial derivatives, with 4 * eval cost. Note, this\nis independent of the number of variables. Proving this is a pain, so I can't\ngive a good explanation here. Realistically, source code transformation tools\nperform around 10-20 * eval. Operator overloading tools perform around 20-30 *\neval, so it's slower in practice, but pretty damn good.\n\nNow, unlike the forward mode, where we really only need a tuple to carry\ninformation, the reverse mode does require an expression tree. In order to\nunderstand why, it helps to note that the forward mode is really a directional\n(Gatteaux) derivative and the reverse mode is the total (Frechet) derivative.\nThis affects how the chain rule manifests. Specifically, the forward mode\nrepeatedly applies two rules\n\n(f o g)'(x) dx = f'(g(x)) g'(x) dx\n\n(f o (g,h))'(x) dx = f'(g(x),h(x)) (g'(x)dx,h'(x)dx)\n\nBasically, in the function evaluation, we do some operation g before f. In\norder to figure out the derivative, we also do the g derivative operation\nbefore the f derivative operation. The first rule is for unary operations like\nnegation and the the second rule is for binary operations like addition.\nAnyway, the reverse mode takes the Hilbert adjoint of this. Specifically:\n\n(f o g)'(x)^* = g'(x)^* f'(g(x))^*\n\n(f o (g,h))'(x)^* = [g'(x)^* h'(x)^* ]f'(g(x),h(x))^*\n\nWe care about the adjoint because of a trick from the Riesz representation\ntheorem. Specifically,\n\nf'(x)dx =\n\n(f'(x)dx)1 =\n\n<f'(x)dx,1> =\n\n<dx,f'(x)^* 1> =\n\n<dx,grad f(x)>\n\nwhere <.,.> denotes the inner product. Anyway, basically the gradient of f is\nthe adjoint of the total derivative of f applied to 1. Therefore, if we knew\nthe adjoint of a computation applied to 1, we'd get the gradient. In other\nwords, we can rewrite the chain rule above as\n\ngrad (f o g)(x) = g'(x)^* grad f(g(x))\n\ngrad (f o (g,h))(x) = [g'(x)^* h'(x)^* ]grad f(g(x),h(x))\n\nThat's the core of reverse mode AD. Note, many, if note most descriptions of\nreverse mode AD talk about doing the chain rule in reverse and then they add\ndual variables, etc. That may be a description that's helpful for some, but\nnot for me. In truth, it's just a bunch of adjoints applied two one and\nknowing the Riesz representation trick.\n\nNow, the reverse mode AD does require an expression tree to be kept. The\nreason for this is that the computation about did g before f. However, if we\nlook at the chain rule we have\n\ngrad (f o g)(x) = g'(x)^* grad f(g(x))\n\nThis means that in order to calculate the gradient of the composition, we need\nto know the gradient of f first even though we did the evaluation of g first.\nHowever, we need to know the evaluation of g in order to calculate the\ngradient of f. The way we resolve this is that we evaluate the functions in\norder, but keep an expression tree of what we did. This gives all of the g(x),\nf(g(x)), etc. Then, we run over that expression tree backward to calculate all\nof the gradients. Because we run over the expression tree backwards, we call\nthis the reverse mode.\n\nHow we run over the expression tree backwards is important and tricky to do\nright. The way that we can sort of see that we can do everything in 4 * eval\ncost is that the trick is not to create multiple vectors to store the gradient\nwhen running over the tree, but to have 1 vector and to update this vector\nwith the new derivative information when required. Basically, we're just\ninserting information in the right spots, which can be done efficiently. In\npractice, storing the expression tree in memory can be really expensive. For\nexample, imagine a for-loop that had 10 billion loops. That's a really long\nexpression tree to hold in memory. Now, source code transformation tools are\nreally clever and don't actually store all of those expressions in memory, but\njust run back the for loop, which is why they're more efficient. Operator\noverloading techniques (algebraic data types) can technically optimize this as\nwell by doing some interesting caching techniques. However, the overall idea\nis that it can be expensive and there are lots of ways to do this wrong, but\nalso lots of places to do things right and be creative.\n\nAs aside to a comment left above, back propagation is indeed just reverse mode\nAD combined with a nonglobally convergent version of steepest descent. I've\nnever seen a paper that worked this out, but it's something that's known\nwithin the AD community. Someone, someday, should really write that down.\n\nAnyway, that's probably a much too long response to your simple question. In\nshort, forward mode doesn't scale when calculating gradients because the cost\nis 2 * m * eval whereas the reverse mode can do it in 4 * eval. For a single\nvariable, or an entire directional derivative, the forward mode scales fine\nand in fact works better than the reverse mode for this case.\n\nEdit: This formatting is killing me. Hopefully, it all looks fine now.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\n Contracting out an API - comments on the spec, or even a bid? - andrewljohnson\nhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1-OQrDRvoHk-fX0Yc9NJ_Os9y9wbxK_W2-jMXAKbFCRg/edit?hl=en_US\n\n======\nErikHuisman\nSo basically only one user can login per UUID? There are no means of\nunregistering the device? A user can log in on multiple devices but can't\nlogout. Also store the APNS key @ device_register you might wan't to sent\npushes in the future. Put password in basic auth and use ssl (at minumum)..\n\n~~~\nandrewljohnson\nYes, one user per UDID for now. If you want to unregister a device, you can\nemail me, and if we get multiple requests, we'll code a solution.\n\nStoring APNS sounds like a good idea.\n\nAs for security, I am ok that this would be susceptible to a wifi sniffer. We\nwill note that it is insecure for users, but they won't care. If we get a bid\nthat implements security, we'll consider it, but I'd rather have it work than\nbe secure.\n\n~~~\nAretNCarlsen\n> We will note that it is insecure for users, but they won't care. ... I'd\n> rather have it work than be secure.\n\nI would have an easier yet more profitable life if I could manage to adopt\nthat attitude for my projects.\n\n------\nwccrawford\nYou might be better off having 2 people, one to make your web API and 1 to\nhandle the 'backup' portion of it. One is programming and 1 is systems work,\nand it can be difficult to find 1 person that does both well, and it\naffordable.\n\n------\nsimonhamp\nFirst you have to tell us your budget! You should always have a budget. But\nalso be prepared to stretch that budget\n\nOtherwise, the spec is pretty well written. Some of the finer details will\nprobably come out as the project progresses, but this is a good starting point\n:)\n\n~~~\nandrewljohnson\nI think you should always have a budget, but that it is probably unwise to\nreveal that budget.\n\nI certainly don't expect to pay a few hundred bucks for this. The spec is\nclear, and I'll accept a reasonable bid, either for the project or at an\nhourly rate with an estimate.\n\n------\ndools\nI can't find the link or remember the name of the service, but a few days ago\nI saw a website for a company that allows you to easily create a \"cloud\nbackend\" for your mobile application.\n\nI've tried every search term I can think of but can't find it. Maybe someone\nelse has seen it?\n\n~~~\nbdb\nThere have been two mentioned on HN recently: zStack and StackMob (the latter\nis run by a friend and former coworker of mine.)\n\nIronically, zStack has the OP listed as their only reference customer. Er,\nguess that's not working out so well?\n\n~~~\ndools\nHA! Yes zStack was it. I only know now because I just received an invite to\nzStack (now called Parse) - then I returned here to see if I could still tell\nthe OP about it, I guess they already know ;)\n\n------\ntgrisfal\n* Use KML or other existing standards.\n\n* You get what you pay for.\n\n~~~\nandrewljohnson\nThe track files will be stored in the flat file format we use within the app.\nThe server won't really do anything with them besides ferry them around.\n\nWe do have client code that converts those files to GPX though, because we do\ndata exports.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nUS states: If they were countries - timr\nhttp://www.economist.com/node/17910000?story_id=17910000\n======\nshawnee_\nCalifornia needs to be two states: Northern CA and Southern CA. It doesn't\nmake sense for one state to have so much oomph, but to be such a disaster,\nfinancially.\n\nNorthern CA and Southern CA are completely different worlds; they have\ndifferent agendas and different kinds of people flock to each one for\ndifferent reasons.\n\nState taxes, government latency, budgeting. . . all of these things could be\nsimplified and improved if the state were not such a behemoth.\n\n~~~\nbendmorris\nMany states have groups that want their state to be divided into two or more\nstates; you just hear about California more in the news because they're\nbigger. One less prominent example is eastern vs. western Washington, where\nthe farmers in the east feel dominated by the liberals in Seattle; I believe\nthey even voted on it in the past. If we divide up states into homogeneous\nsections, pretty soon every neighborhood will be its own state.\n\n(Edit: Apparently it's so common there's a Wikipedia article:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_partition_pr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_partition_proposals))\n\n~~~\njerf\n\"If we divide up states into homogeneous sections, pretty soon every\nneighborhood will be its own state.\"\n\nSome science fiction writers have hypothesized about this for a while.\nTechnology is trending towards empowering ever smaller groups to manage their\naffairs quite effectively, and enabling those groups to rapidly snap together\nwith other groups on an as-needed basis. It isn't that hard to look out 50-100\nyears hence and ask what all these massive centralized governments are really\ndoing for us that couldn't be done by much finer-grained bands of smaller\nones. (Don't think something like every county fully a nation in the modern\nsense, think something more like the relation of states to the federal\ngovernment, and counties doing things like perhaps buying into pre-existing\nhealth care plans or something, across a wide array of such issues.) There are\ndays when the US government's current trend toward centralization seems\ndownright anachronistic to me.\n\nI recall one science fiction story in Analog where after significant advances\nin nanotechnology, the minimum self-sustaining unit of civilization became a\nsingle house. It was literally possible to seal off a suburban house plot and\nit could survive solely on the incoming solar energy and the technologies it\nhad. After the homeowner got in some trouble with the local law enforcement,\nhe has the bright idea of simply seceding from the nation, though various\nlegal handwavery and appeals to the ancient question of the social contract.\nIt was one of those interesting, thought-provoking stories that at least made\nme think. Yes, I am well aware of the other tradeoffs involved and how\nimportant defense and preventing the tragedy of the commons is, the point is\nnot that this is obviously a good idea, the point is that it is not\n_unthinkable_ that we may indeed be trending towards smaller polities in the\nfuture. The outcome of the battle between centralization and decentralization\nhaven't been written yet.\n\n~~~\nunsigner\nOne of the core ideas of Mao in the mid-20th century was to divide China into\ncompletely self-sufficient entities of about 3 mln. people, who should produce\nEVERYTHING without any trade whatsoever - because trade breeds wealth, which\nbreeds inequality. They were supposed to mine their own iron and smelt their\nown steel from their own territory, for example.\n\nUnsurprisingly, didn't work too well.\n\n~~~\nUnseelie\n>Unsurprisingly, didn't work too well.\n\nI find I cannot pidginhole this statement in an easy anti-communism idiom.\nWhile it may be addressing the failures of communism (read centralized\nplanning), it actually holds rather well on a long view historical suggestion.\nMao was talking about peasant-farmer communities, and ones of around three\nmillion people, with strategically divided borders, could easily continue\ntheir existence at a turn of the century (for North America) standard of\nliving.\n\nJust saying, there's nothing structurally wrong with the idea.\n\n------\nizendejas\nI'd like to see a graph with per capita numbers now.\n\nOn a per capita basis, California does slightly better than the US at large:\nabout $50.8K vs. $47k US (according to the CIA/IMF):\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\\(PPP\\)_per_capita)\n\n------\njohnohara\nWe're still waiting for a porn star to run for California's highest office. In\nthe meantime, Italy owns the headlines.\n\n~~~\nMz\nActually, a porn star did run. But was beat by Schwarzenegger.\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Carey_(pornographic_actres...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Carey_\\(pornographic_actress\\))\n\n------\nSwizec\nHuh, I never imagined Italy was that rich ... then again, FIAT does own half\nthe motoring world.\n\n~~~\nmooism2\nItaly's population _is_ over 50% more than California's.\n\n~~~\nsliverstorm\nAren't they _tiny_? (As a landmass. Not the people themselves.)\n\n~~~\narethuza\nThe area of Italy is 301,338 km2, the area of California is 423,970 km2\n\nAccording to a list of US States by size\n([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_area))\nItaly is larger than all but four US states (Alaska, Texas, California and\nMontana).\n\n------\nmashmac2\nWest Virginia = Iraq.\n\nWhat can we say about that?\n\n~~~\nbrudgers\nDear Honorable Mashmac, Esquire,\n\nCongratulations on your recent promotion. My uncle the late ambassador\nProfessor Bubba Watts deposited $419 million dollars in the first National\nBank of Montgomery prior to his departure. Due to my recent marriage to a\nclose relative, I am unable to access these Funds. Please forward your social\nsecurity number and Bank Account password so that I may deposit these funds\nfor your finders fee.\n\nSincerely and respectfully your humble servant,\n\nbrudgers of Alabama=Nigeria\n\n------\nmaukdaddy\nFYI there is an interactive version, which also includes population:\n\n[http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/comparing_...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/comparing_us_states_countries)\n\n------\nschwit\nIt would be nice if the states were permitted to run their states as if\ncountries, without the incessant interference of the federal government.\n\n~~~\nMz\nThat was basically the original conceptualization. It didn't work too well and\nwas modified. IIRC, that political configuration has a history of failure\nwhenever tried. (Maybe someone who is more of student of political history can\nelaborate. Not my strong point.)\n\n~~~\nclarkm\nWhat makes you say it was modified because \"it didn't work too well,\" and what\ndoes that even mean?\n\n~~~\nAnechoic\nPresuming your question wasn't rhetorical:\n\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation>\n\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shay%27s_Rebellion#Consequences>\n\n~~~\nhugh3\nI'd say power centralised at the Federal Government because that's what power\ntends to do -- it tends to centralise.\n\nThose who have more power tend to find ways to use that power to (always with\nthe very best of intentions) to obtain more power. Whenever the Federal and\nState governments argue about who has a certain power it always winds up\nlooking like a wolf and a chicken arguing about what's for dinner.\n\n~~~\nbtilly\nPower does not always centralize. For instance the long-term trend in Canada\nhas been towards decentralization. According to the Constitution there are\nmany things that the federal government has sole responsibility for that in\npractice have been moved to the provincial level (with the blessing of the\nfederal government).\n\n------\nknown\nDue to the intrinsic cultural diversity, each State cannot _productively_\ngovern more than 2 million citizens. We should _decentralize_ the World into\nStates or Cantons as in Switzerland.\n\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland>\n\n------\nsimon_kun\nI love this work. It would be nice if there was some representation of the\nsimilar country area - kinda like a cartogram\n(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartogram>)\n\n------\nnnutter\nI would be interested in seeing a similar map based on GDP per capita.\n\n------\ncromulent\nCome on, _three_ Finlands? Take a number, folks.\n\n~~~\nkuzux\nMight be a reference to the Monty Python's Finland song, or just coincidence.\n\n------\nBlackLogic\nPoor Washington got Greece\n\n------\nbenohear\nWhere's China?\n\n~~~\ngrhino\nNo single US state has a GDP equal to China. You would have to combine\nmultiple states to equal the GDP of China.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Good blog or publication that covers startups (both tech and non-tech)? - stevenj\n\nOne(s) that primarily just cover new products, companies, etc.<p>Not general industry news, etc.\n======\ntemplaedhel\n<http://thinkstartups.com/> covers weekend projects, hackdays, and other\n\"hacker culture\" such things. It is not updated daily, more like weekly, but\nstill good to have in an rss reader somewhere.\n\n~~~\nthehodge\nThanks for the mention :), I'm trying to update daily but my computer died\nwhilst I was in Wales and I couldn't write posts on my iPad ;)\n\n------\nevancaine\n<http://www.springwise.com> and sister site <http://www.trendwatching.com>\n\n------\naspir\nInc.com\n\n~~~\nstevenj\nInc.com covers a lot of general industry news.\n\nI'm thinking more like the \"Show HN: Please Rate My Startup/Web App...\" type\nof posts that reveal tech products, or a local business that just opened, or a\nnew, tangible product that just launched (and is ready to be purchased and\nshipped).\n\n------\nfrankydp\nwww.mixergy.com\n\n~~~\nstevenj\nIf I remember correctly, Mixergy primarily takes a look back on successful\nproducts and companies.\n\nI'd like to read/learn about products and companies that are just becoming\n\"real\". Ones that have just shipped.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTeaching my 10-year-old daughter to program - RobbieStats\nhttps://unsupervisedmethods.com/teaching-my-10-year-old-daughter-to-program-9e2d7963938\n======\nbridge_ro\nThis is really cool. I tried introducing my 7 year old daughter to programming\nover the weekend and, while she was interested in being able to make things, I\nhad a hard time keeping her attention (which is probably a reflection more on\nmy lack of teaching ability). Maybe I'll give her a few more years and try\nagain.\n\n------\nrem1313\nI have an old Thinkpad x61 lying around. What would be the best way to\nintroduce a 7-year-old to programming? I plan to be heavily involved of\ncourse. Can anybody recommend Linux distro that is responsive and programming\nenviroment? From the looks of it, Scratch requires Flash...\n\n~~~\nMuges\n> From the looks of it, Scratch requires Flash...\n\nSnap may be a good flash-free alternative:\n[http://snap.berkeley.edu](http://snap.berkeley.edu)\n\n~~~\nrem1313\nThanks!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPlugged in [2009] - digisth\nhttp://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/24/plugged-in\n\n======\ndanclr\nThe charging infrastructure is the key for growth and changing behaviour? What\nis the associate cost for deploying the network.\n\n------\nsbnpr\nwhat is the growth expected in e-mobility?\n\n~~~\nrdyms\nThis is important for having a better environment in the future.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Today I Learned - camerondaigle\nhttp://til.hashrocket.com/\n======\nminimaxir\nA blog is not a Show HN.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCreative demo of HTML5 canvas - vl\nhttp://mrdoob.com/projects/harmony/\n\n======\nolalonde\nWas posted here a few days ago.\n\n~~~\npan69\nAnd a few days before that... I don't like going into the 'old'ing but I was\nunder the impression that there was a URL check when posting doubles on HN.\nMaybe I was wrong...\n\n~~~\nfnid2\nThe fancy HN dup checker doesn't look at #'s in the url.\n\n------\nmlLK\nThere is a lot of interesting code in here; I took the liberty to beautify the\nJavaScript here, <http://pastebin.com/zVe5a1Fi>\n\nThis got me so excited I've decided to dedicate my spring break to getting\nacquainted with HTML5 by learning to us <http://processingjs.org>\n\nI think HTML5 could quite likely liberate JavaScript from the DOM altogether\nand provide the necessary foundation for revolutionizing 'the manner' in which\nwe develop the browser as a client-side application on 'some system' while\nfurther streamlining the web-server as a means of storage. I mean HTML5 could\nvery well be the solution for writing _formidable_ JavaScript that can do so\nmuch more besides molesting the DOM. ;)\n\n------\nest\nIt didn't work last time on Chrome Dev 5.0.307.1 (r37331)\n\nToday I found out it was because an extension called Kill Evil\n\n[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/epieehnpcepgfiil...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/epieehnpcepgfiildhdklacomihpoldk)\n\n------\ndbz\nThis is amazing. I wish there was the ability to make text via typing as well\nbecause I could easily make some basic designs to pretty up my website with\nthis =]\n\n(Yes. I'm not a designer)\n\nEdit: Hold Shift for colors!\n\n------\nclusterfu_k\nThis works for me in Firefox 2 and Opera 9.64... should it?\n\nI guess basically my question is, what HTML5 features are used in this that\nthey would be supported in Firefox 2 and Opera 9.64?\n\n------\nnirmal\nI wish someone would translate Fugpaint (<http://www.benfry.com/fugpaint/>) to\nbe Canvas based.\n\n------\njuvenn\nFantasic!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Can a bill be introduced to stop HFT? - mandeepj\nHFT is not trading. It is gambling. It has killed stock market.\n======\n1971genocide\nBernie Sanders has an interesting idea based on some research done by\neconomist.\n\nHe calls it the \"Robin Hood Tax\". Essentially you charge a small fee whenever\nany trade happens in the market.\n\nThe opponents of this idea state that it will prevent the market from being\nefficient as trading would slow down - undermining the Efficient Market\nHypothesis.\n\nHowever his argument is that a small enough charge will not prevent genuine\ninvestor from trading and just discourage the speculative traders.\n\n~~~\nmandeepj\nThere is already a trading fee which equates to 'Robin hood tax'. Each\nplatform has their own number for e.g. scottrade charges $7 for each buy and\nsell. I think HFT traders don't pay that fee for each trade.\n\nHFT is just evil. Direction less buy\\selling based on the trend that is\ncurrently prevalent in the market.\n\n------\nAnimalMuppet\nYes, such a bill can be introduced. I doubt it could pass, though, unless\nthere's _much_ more documented _and publicized_ evidence of damage caused by\nHFT.\n\n~~~\nmandeepj\nOne of the biggest reasons for market crash is automated selling that gets\nstarted by computers.\n\n~~~\nminimaxir\nMacroeconomics is a _little_ more complicated than that.\n\n------\nmandeepj\nThe other thing that I like to be stopped is giving stock ratings. If a fund\nmanager wants to buy a stock then they would cut down its rating and other way\naround if they want to sell it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDigital Ruins of a Forgotten Future: Second Life Still Has 600K Regular Users - grzm\nhttps://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/second-life-leslie-jamison/544149/?single_page=true\n======\naryehof\nInteresting perspective that Facebook perhaps encouraged the demise in\npopularity of Second Life. While Facebook is more based on reality, much of it\nimaginary nevertheless. It is full of stylized and posed selective personal\nphotos and experiences, that propose an idealized version of ourselves to the\nworld.\n\n~~~\ndom96\nAnd interestingly, Facebook is creating something very similar to Second Life:\n[https://www.facebook.com/spaces](https://www.facebook.com/spaces)\n\n------\narisAlexis\nDecentraland will be a proframmable VR world blockchain based. It will be\nsecond life 3.0\n\n------\nOvertonwindow\nFor many it's all they have....\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: How do you maintain your garden? - StianSando\n\nDo you do it yourself or do you use professionals? If you use professionals, who?\n======\nkjs3\nI have a garden so I have something that isn't tech related to enjoy. So...I\ndo it myself.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBoeing Fought Lion Air on Proposed Max Simulator Training Requirement - berkut\nhttps://aviationweek.com/air-transport/boeing-fought-lion-air-proposed-max-simulator-training-requirement\n======\nmcv\nBoeing was already plenty culpable for these disasters, but this underscores\njust how much they pressured they pressured their customers to avoid training\nthat could have mitigated the problems and prevented the crash, just to keep\nup the illusion that they wanted to present to the world: that it was\neffectively identical to the NG when it really wasn't.\n\n~~~\nrob74\nOn the other hand, Boeing was also under pressure from other customers\n([https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-airplane-\nsouthwest...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-airplane-\nsouthwest/u-s-lawmakers-question-boeings-1-mln-rebate-clause-for-\nsouthwest-737-max-orders-idUSKBN1X92D4)) who wanted to avoid simulator\ntraining for their pilots. Which doesn't excuse them of course, but I think\nit's important to see the whole picture...\n\n~~~\nCaptainZapp\nSorry, but: So what?\n\nIf you're not able to keep promises you shouldn't make them in the first\nplace. The buck stops with you, period.\n\nNo pilot training was often used as an argument. But I think the problem was\nactually much more severe.\n\nIf Boeing would have designed a completely new plane (which they should have)\nthey would have lost a decade to Airbus' offerings in their most important\nmarket.\n\nThat, in my opinion, was the real reason for that shoddy hack of a plane.\n\n~~~\nEntalpi\nSo Boeing was slow to react to the market forces at play and lost out to a\nfaster moving more adaptive competitor. When that happens in a market you\ntypically lose money and try to stage a comeback by reinventing yourself or in\nsome way try to work your way back. Boeing chose to rush and is now paying the\nprice for being a slow and complacent behemoth of a company at a market where\nothers are innovating and competing.\n\n~~~\nwu_187\nThis has nothing to do with markets and everything to do with ethics. It is\nnot ethical for a company to knowingly risk lives to rush out a new product.\nIn the airline industry, it is unheard of for this to happen. Everything is\ntriple redundant for a reason. Typically you would cut corners elsewhere that\nis not a risk for human lives. Boeing already tried that by outsourcing the\nconstruction of the 787 and it was riddled with failure. They should have\nlearned their lesson there.\n\n------\nameen\nIn a way, Boeing’s plight underlines American work culture vs. European and\nother relaxed but stringent work cultures.\n\nAmerican businesses are constantly churning output with not much to show for\n(relative to effort vs results) as the employees are burned out, investors and\nC-suite demand more of the middle-management and they in-turn pressure\nengineering and sales teams, etc.\n\nThe results have spoken about which one works and which doesn’t. Toxic work\nculture starts from the top.\n\n~~~\ndatenhorst\nI believe Harvard Business School and its ilk deserve a lot of blame for the\ninstilling of a profit-at-any-cost culture across the US.\n\n~~~\nneuronic\nI studied abroad in the US as a European and the first sentence the\nmicroeconomics professor blurts out: \"Greed is good.\"\n\nAt that point I wasn't as gobsmacked anymore because several days before some\n17 year old girl yelled in a 300 person biology lecture at the professor to\nstop telling lies about evolution (first week of college).\n\nBut \"greed is good\" struck me as an oddly American way of viewing the world.\nEurope isn't free of greedy people, by any means, but it's sort of not the\nfirst rule you learn in school.\n\n~~~\nmsiemens\nI guess it depends. I have a German engineering degree and took a business\nadministration course as a part of that. And in one of the first lectures our\nprofessor told us that _The formal goal of the company is to maximize profit_.\nWhich seems to be just a more formal way of expressing _Greed is good_. But\nthen again, this might be influenced by American business culture…\n\n~~~\nneuronic\nAgreed, and I obviously suffer from some bias since I could not experience\ncollege in both countries.\n\nBut the microeconomics angle seemed more personal - as in attempting to\ndescribe interaction between people with some extrapolation to larger\nentities.\n\n------\ntoast0\nEven if Lion Air had done simulator training, it seems unlikely to have\nhelped, unless there was specifically material on MCAS or at least stabilizer\nrunaway by the electric trim system.\n\nOne airline demanding and getting simulator time doesn't help if the decision\nhas already been made to not inform pilots about MCAS. Boeing's flight rules\nmodel has always been around the pilot(s) having situational awareness and\nbeing in absolute control; the problem with MCAS is not what it does, or that\nit's needed to avoid stalling, the problem is that it was not known to pilots,\nthat it operates without any clear indication that it's operating, and that it\ncan only be disabled by disabling electric trim, and that manual trim is\nextremely difficult to impossible to use if the stabilizer is at full nose\ndown (there was an old 737 procedure for this, but it was removed some number\nof redesigns ago, it was reportedly not in the 737 NG manual)\n\n~~~\nwillyt\nHere is a video explaining how difficult the manual trim procedure is:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoNOVlxJmow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoNOVlxJmow)\n\n~~~\ntzs\nNote that the video is about manual trim in extreme conditions.\n\nIf pilots knew about MCAS and that in the case of a runaway trim due to MCAS\nthey need to disable electrical trim and switch to manual trim early and keep\nit manual for the rest of the flight, they would not get into the conditions\nwhere it is hard to turn the manual trim wheels.\n\n~~~\nwillyt\nBut even if they had known about MCAS, I think I read somewhere that they had\n30 seconds to diagnose the problem before it put the trim in this\nconfiguration.\n\n------\njakobegger\nCan someone explain how Airplane Simulators for pilots work?\n\nDo simulators have the same hardware as real planes, or do they have a\nsoftware model of the airplane?\n\nIf you simulated a broken AoA sensor, would the simulated plane behave similar\nto the real plane? Would the MCAS system have the same bugs in the simulator\nas in the one in the real aircraft?\n\nCan you try new scenarios in a simulator, or can you just try scenarios that\nthe simulator was designed to run?\n\n~~~\nphugoid\n> Do simulators have the same hardware as real planes, or do they have a\n> software model of the airplane?\n\nIf you're looking at the highest fidelity level D simulators, the instruments\nand controls in the cockpit are either the same parts as the aircraft, or\nfunctionally identical (but cheaper).\n\n> If you simulated a broken AoA sensor, would the simulated plane behave\n> similar to the real plane? Would the MCAS system have the same bugs in the\n> simulator as in the one in the real aircraft?\n\nOne of the big costs in building a simulator is buying the data package from\nthe aircraft manufacturer, with the aero model and details of system\ninternals, things like electrical and hydraulic schematics. Sim makers build a\nsoftware model of these internals at a pretty low level. For the most part, if\nyou introduce a fault in some part of the system it will behave the right way\nas an emerging property, not because you're forcing the system to have the\nright outputs.\n\nSome software components from the aircraft get installed on the simulator with\nthe same hardware platform from the aircraft, others get run as executables on\nthe simulator's computers, and others get re-implemented from scratch (lots of\nFORTRAN and C).\n\nThat kind of detail comes into play when the instructors introduce multiple\nfailures at the same time - pilots have to take corrective actions to make the\nfaults go away or manage them - if you don't model the systems at a pretty low\nlevel you'll never high fidelity.\n\n> Can you try new scenarios in a simulator, or can you just try scenarios that\n> the simulator was designed to run?\n\nThere is a list of malfunctions available to the instructor, who runs the\nsession from the back of the \"cockpit\" on touch panels. For the most part,\nthese malfunctions cover failures that are anticipated by the aircraft\nmanufacturers, and the corrective actions / system behavior are well\nunderstood. Each fault is tested to make sure it works properly. You don't go\nand fail some random component in the system.\n\nWhen an important failure happens in the real aircraft, it might get added as\na training scenario to simulators already in operation.\n\n~~~\nNotCamelCase\n> You don't go and fail some random component in the system.\n\nI always wondered if they did that, something akin to fuzzing tests in SW.\nWouldn't it be useful to detect unexpected situations that'd be catastrophic?\nOr the benefits from it wouldn't outweigh the cost/time loss?\n\n~~~\nphugoid\nEven with a pretty good model, if you introduce new failures that were not\nanticipated/tested, there's a risk that the system will not behave as per the\naircraft. Now you're giving \"negative training\" to your pilots, maybe worse\nthan no training at all.\n\nAlso, imagine you're an airline with thousands of pilots and dozens of\ninstructors: you're running an airline and a school at the same time. You need\nto build a curriculum of training and testing that will standardize your\npilots. There's room for thinking outside the box but not too much.\n\n~~~\nNotCamelCase\nGood point, thanks for your insights!\n\n------\nhhas01\nJesus.\n\nPardon my French, but seeing that photo makes me fully appreciate two things:\n1. Just how incredibly low 737 sits to the ground (obviously a feature from\nback in the days when luggage was manually loaded), and 2. How _anyone_ would\nthink pushing those enormous engines forward like that could be any less\ndisruptive of its proven design than lengthening the undercarriage to give\nthem the clearance they so desperately need.\n\nDeath of a thousand cuts. Indeed. Hope the monster never flies again.\n\n~~~\namyjess\n> how incredibly low 737 sits to the ground (obviously a feature from back in\n> the days when luggage was manually loaded)\n\nPeople, not luggage. Specifically, the 737 was designed to cover short-haul\nroutes between regional airports that didn't have gates, where people had to\nget on the plane by walking up portable steps.\n\nBoeing never expected the 737 to be the low-cost plane of choice between major\naviation hubs.\n\n~~~\nalistairSH\nNot always portable steps. The 737 has (optional?) steps built into the\nchassis.\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ-6PDYRj80](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ-6PDYRj80)\n\n------\nkonspence\nThis whole thing looks like a disaster. As other commenters are pointing out,\neven if the pilots did the MAX simulators, would they have been trained to\nrespond to the AOA failure? Unlikely.\n\nIt seems like Boeing completely missed serious cases on the testing of the\nplane, and is hoping that the \"UAT\" phase (simulator training) would have\nuncovered the issues.\n\nBut UAT never underwent the condition of an AOA sensor failing.\n\n------\n_Codemonkeyism\nKey take away\n\n\"There is absolutely no reason to require your pilots to require a MAX\nsimulator to begin flying the MAX,” the Boeing employee replied. \"Once the\nengines are started, there is only one difference between NG and MAX\nprocedurally, and that is that there is no OFF position of the gear handle.\nBoeing does not understand what is to be gained by a three-hour simulator\nsession, when the procedures are essentially the same.”\n\n~~~\nAthas\nI still think it's interesting to reflect on the mindset that leads to this\nconclusion. As far as I have been able to determine (although I'm not in the\naerospace field), the 737 MAX _is_ procedurally identical to the NG, _except\nwhen something breaks_. The failure modes are slightly different, with\npotentially lethal results. As a computer scientist, I'm not accustomed to\nthinking about functional equivalence in the presence of hardware failure, and\nmaybe this Boeing employee was not sufficiently drilled on the need to\nconsider such aspects for aeroplanes. It is of course the fault of Boeing\ncorporate culture and internal procedures that this can be overlooked.\n\n~~~\nsalawat\n>As a computer scientist, I'm not accustomed to thinking about functional\nequivalence in the presence of hardware failure...\n\nHow are you not?\n\nI mean, I get it 90% of the time we screw up the programming somehow, but as a\ncomputer scientist, I never ignore the possibility of hardware failure. Memory\ngoes bad. Devices fail. Networks die. Semiconductors transiently in strange\nways if you don't take the right precautions...\n\nIt's the entire impetus behind GIGO. If you shove garbage into a perfectly\nworking software system; (corrupt data from a malfunctioning input source),\nyou still get out garbage.\n\nIt's why life and safety critical automation is so fundamentally different\nfrom lower stakes programming tasks where \"reboot the damn thing\" is a viable\noption.\n\nIf your sensor goes bad, and you're in the air, you can't do squat to fix it.\nYou have to detect the error, and fail the system gracefully by taking it out\nof the loop, informing the operator of the system failure, and most\nimportantly, _never allow that system to do anything that could jeopardize the\nability of the operator to continue operating_.\n\nThis is or at least I thought it was basic Control Systems 101...\n\n~~~\nAthas\n> How are you not?\n\nI research compilers and type systems. If the RAM dies while the compiler is\nrunning, you rerun the compiler on a new machine. A lot of computer science\nabstracts away the notion of hardware failure, because otherwise it becomes\nenormously cumbersome to talk about anything. This is fine as long as you\ndon't actually build real high-reliability systems with the same approach.\n\n~~~\nacqq\n>> How are you not?\n\n> I research compilers and type systems.\n\nI hope it's obvious that the software you work on is not supposed to be run\nduring the flight.\n\nThe critical software is supposed to do as little as possible, and everything\nis expected to be in already compiled (and thoroughly verified) state.\n\nAnd even for the product of yours, as soon as it is not used only for the\nresearch but as a production compiler which produces a firmware for the plane,\nit would have to be proven much more than what is expected from it while it is\njust an artifact of a research.\n\nIn short, even if you are lucky to just do the research, you should be aware\n(and thankful) that the critical software has other expectations. Including\nhow it responds to failed sensors: different response to the external inputs\nis _a fundamentally different_ software, even if you never thought about it\nbefore.\n\n~~~\ngknoy\nI think his main point was that for most of us, hardware failure is considered\nan adequate excuse for why something works -- most of us are not expected to\nhave software that _continues working_ when things break.\n\n~~~\nacqq\nThe \"failures\" of the sensors are simply the \"less common\" inputs. The proper\ncontrol software should simply be written for all possible inputs, which\ninclude inputs from faulty sensors, and the result of the processing should\nnot have some catastrophic consequences.\n\nCompare to the web app that awaits the username, but when the username is not\nthe \"most common\" (e.g. contains some new unicode symbols, or is of zero\nlengh) it allows catastrophic security failure and intrusion.\n\n------\nGenericsMotors\nAround the time just before the MAX was grounded, I remember there being lots\nof unfounded speculations (here on HN as well!) that Lion Air's and\nEthiopian's pilots were somehow substandard and lacking the training of their\nfirst world counterparts. Meanwhile it was Boeing actively keeping vital\ninformation and training from pilots.\n\nThe lesson from this is still not learned, and can see at least one apologist\non this thread repeating this same BS again...it's infuriating.\n\n------\nummonk\nOn the specific issue of simulator time though, if the simulator behaves\nbasically the same as a Boeing 737 NG, what is the point of putting them\nthrough the MAX simulator? It does seem like a pointless exercise that\nwouldn't have provided the pilots any extra practice (or crucial knowledge of\nactual differences like MCAS).\n\nObviously, now that they're adding checklist practice for emergency scenarios\nrelevant to the 737 MAX, it makes sense to require simulator practice, but I\ndon't think that would have previously made a difference.\n\n~~~\ninferiorhuman\nHere's the ASRS entry I was thinking of:\n\n _I had my first flight on the Max [to] ZZZ1. We found out we were scheduled\nto fly the aircraft on the way to the airport in the limo. We had a little\ntime [to] review the essentials in the car. Otherwise we would have walked\nonto the plane cold.\n\nMy post flight evaluation is that we lacked the knowledge to operate the\naircraft in all weather and aircraft states safely. The instrumentation is\ncompletely different - My scan was degraded, slow and labored having had no\nexperience w/ the new ND (Navigation Display) and ADI (Attitude Director\nIndicator) presentations/format or functions (manipulation between the screens\nand systems pages were not provided in training materials. If they were, I had\nno recollection of that material). _\n\n[https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/03/heres-what-was-\non-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/03/heres-what-was-on-the-\nrecord-about-problems-with-the-737-max/584791/)\n\n~~~\nummonk\nWow, that is pretty damning.\n\n~~~\ninferiorhuman\nYeah, I'm curious which airline this was. For obvious reasons ASRS anonymizes\ndata but this seems like an end-to-end failure and it's pretty disappointing\nthat the pilot(s) didn't feel comfortable rejecting the plane.\n\n------\nBrave-Steak\nI'd _really_ be interested in knowing at what level these two employees were\nat. How deep does the rot go? Even if the CEO is gone, these people are still\naround.\n\n------\nvmchale\nWhat a shitshow. The entire thing is graft, and the US government turned a\nblind eye because it's deemed an important industry.\n\n~~~\nmrtksn\nIsn't it also unfaithfulness to capitalism to protect an industry in such a\nway? I would have assumed that if someone believes in the mechanics of\ncapitalism would have let it be.\n\n------\ntriceratops\nCan anyone experienced in aviation ballpark how much retraining a pilot on a\nnew plane costs? How does it compare to a pilot's annual compensation or other\nfigures of importance (e.g. annual airline revenue or profit, operating\nexpenses of a plane etc)? Helping airlines avoid retraining seems like the\ndriving factor behind all these apparently shortsighted decisions that led to\nthe MAX but, assuming everything had gone well, what were the actual potential\nsavings? I'm just trying to understand the stakes.\n\n------\nEntalpi\nWhat ever happened to ”safety first”.\n\n~~~\nxiphias2\nIf you ask the Boeing CEO about it, safety was always the top priority.\n\n------\nepicgiga\nLion: \"we'd like to practice using this plane so we don't crash it\". Boeing:\n\"no\". Lion: crashes it. Hundreds die. Boeing: \"not our fault, their pilots\nwere untrained\".\n\nHow is no one is prison again?\n\n~~~\nmattacular\nThe Boeing CEO exited the company with just 60 million dollars, which is a lot\nlike being sent to prison.\n\n~~~\nAloha\nIn fairness to the guy, he came from the Military side of the house, the\nprogram was basically ready for flight by the time he took over the CEO slot.\nBasically all of the fatal design decisions were made before he became CEO.\n\nThe 737 MAX was a failure of process, not by specific choices made by a leader\n- he was fired however for his poor response to the crashes, he committed many\ntactical and PR errors, which made the restoration process longer than it\nshould have been.\n\nIf still you want to lay blame at any single persons feet, lay the blame at\nthe feet of James McNerney, the CEO who ran Boeing while the bulk of the\ndevelopment of the MAX was done, he's the one who kicked the MAX program off.\n\n~~~\nstefan_\nWhat do you mean? The policy set here was literally set at the highest level,\na specific choice - \"no training, no certification\" was the precise goal for\nthe 737 MAX. How can you claim that is a failure of process.\n\n~~~\nAloha\nI'll argue that making the MAX behave the same as a non MAX 737 is a reachable\nand reasonable engineering goal, the process failed because it didnt do it\nsafely.\n\nAirbus absolutely uses its fly-by-wire system to change the handling\ncharacteristics of its airplanes, to make them fly the same - I see no reason\nwhy Boeing couldn't do the same thing.\n\n~~~\nacqq\n> I'll argue that making the MAX behave the same as a non MAX 737 is a\n> reachable and reasonable engineering goal\n\nAnd I argue the opposite: it can‘t be made to behave exactly the same as soon\nas the failure scenarios are considered.\n\nIn computer speak, you just look from the point of view of a “most common”\nrun, not all the special cases, exceptions etc.\n\nThere are other impossibilities too, directly related to the certification\nrequirements, already documented in the news articles before.\n\n~~~\nYawningAngel\nThe normal failure scenario for safety critical electronics on an aircraft is\nthat you have an entirely redundant system that takes over. I don't see why\nthat approach wouldn't have been sufficient here.\n\n~~~\nacqq\nIt is documented in the articles: failure modes have to be trained if they\naren’t the same, and with MCAS as it should be (not as if was and failed\ncatastrophically twice) they can’t be the same. New devices have to be\nrecertified. Two sensors can’t be redundant, three would be again not the same\nplane. Newer computers won’t be the same plane etc.\n\nWait to see what the final opinion of European agencies are once the latest\nchanges are evaluated and you’ll see that it’s not the same plane, even if\nBoeing all the time bent over backwards over the dead bodies of others.\n\n------\nhurricanetc\nThey wouldn’t have trained on an MCAS failure so this is irrelevant as far as\nthe actual crashes are concerned.\n\nIt’s just more evidence of Boeing being a corrupt organization.\n\n------\njustinclift\nThis is why Boeing shouldn't be allowed to have anything to do with new Space\ncontracts (ISS, etc) until this MAX issue is a solved, faint memory. eg for\ndecades\n\n~~~\ntzfld\nSpace hardware development is heavily supervised, and there are no issues\ninduced by mass production.\n\n~~~\njustinclift\nSo, exactly like aviation, and it hasn't worked out there. :(\n\n------\ntzfld\nThe way Boeing seems more and more evil as the story is folded out, makes me\nthink that all these article may be heavily one sided and never hearing\nBoeing's own version and motivations.\n\n~~~\ncjslep\nYou can always read the prime source material yourself: Boeing's own internal\nemails and chats they released about the 737 MAX.\n\nAnd do note: those released items are Boeing putting its best foot forward.\nAnd it's a low bar. Imagine the emails and chat transcripts that were not\nreleased.\n\n~~~\nwahern\n> And do note: those released items are Boeing putting its best foot forward.\n> And it's a low bar. Imagine the emails and chat transcripts that were not\n> released.\n\nMy guess was that the new CEO was trying to get out ahead of developments by\nairing the remaining dirty laundry. It makes him and Boeing look sincere and\nstarts the clock on the public forgetting the bad news. The constant drip of\nbad publicity made the previous CEO look like an idiot.\n\nI don't expect Boeing to actually clean up their act, but I bet they're going\nto be smarter about things going forward. I doubt there are going to be any\nmore damning reveals about the 737 other than what can be mined from these\nlatest disclosures. 777X is another matter, but I bet any revelations will\noccur more quickly and cleanly.\n\n------\nredis_mlc\nTo give you an idea how big a tragedy an airliner accident is in Indonesia ...\n\nThe average Javanese person I've talked to knows 900 relatives by name.\n\n------\nWalterBright\n> and that an erroneous MCAS activation would be quickly diagnosed as a\n> runaway stabilizer. The 2013 memo casts doubt on the former, and the two MAX\n> accident sequences disproved the latter.\n\nThis does not mention that an Emergency Airworthiness Directive was sent to\nall 737MAX crews after the LA crash explaining exactly how to resolve the\nrunaway trim issue, which is:\n\n1\\. restore normal trim using the column trim switches\n\n2\\. cut off the stabilizer trim with the console cutoff switch\n\nThe text is:\n\nBoeing Emergency Airworthiness Directive\n\n\"Initially, higher control forces may be needed to overcome any stabilizer\nnose down trim already applied. Electric stabilizer trim can be used to\nneutralize control column pitch forces before moving the STAB TRIM CUTOUT\nswitches to CUTOUT. Manual stabilizer trim can be used before and after the\nSTAB TRIM CUTOUT switches are moved to CUTOUT.\"\n\n[https://theaircurrent.com/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2018/11/B737-MA...](https://theaircurrent.com/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2018/11/B737-MAX-AD-1107.pdf)\n\nBoth the LA and EA crews repeatedly successfully countered the runaway trim\nwith the electric trim switches. The LA crew never took the next step of\ncutting off the trim. The EA crew did cutoff the trim, but did not trim to\nnormal first.\n\nDealing with runaway trim is a \"memory item\" for the 737, meaning the pilots\nare supposed to know about the cutoff switches that are prominently placed on\nthe center console in easy reach.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPeter Thiel aims to purchase Gawker's archives - scandox\nhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/12/12/if-you-miss-gawker-dont-let-peter-thiel-buy-its-archives/?utm_term=.dc77956cc23a\n======\nscandox\nIs this a case where a quick scrape and an IPFS version might make the whole\nthing moot? I presume that isn't legal - but is it viable and will it prevent\nthe loss of the material?\n\nNot that I have a strong moral view either way. Just interested.\n\n~~~\nQAPereo\nTo be fair, if you find yourself taking a strong moral stance opposing Thiel,\nyou’re probably in the right.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat contextual information would best improve HN discussions understanding? - antpls\nHello! I&#x27;m from France. I find myself misinterpreting some of user&#x27;s comments because of lack of context or introduction to the comments or personal experiences of authors. Comments currently have 4 pieces of information so far beside text : author&#x27;s username, vote count, date time and, implicitly, parent comment. According to you, what 5th piece of information would help to better understand author&#x27;s point of view? As an example, each post could also have the continent or country where the author is currently living in (at the time of writing and posting)\n======\nantpls\nTo better explain why I suggested country : with that information and the\ndate, we can for example infer what was the political system at the time of\nwriting the comment, among many other inferences we could imagine.\n\n~~~\nantpls\nAnother example could be the field in which one declares working in : legal\n(no more IANAL required :-)), science, driving, engineering, programming,\ncook-chief, investment, etc\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNudging out support for a carbon tax - colinprince\nhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0474-0\n======\nPxtl\nThis is happening in Ontario right now as we speak.\n\nThe Ontario government is fighting against the federal revenue-neutral carbon\ntax and has instituted a small grab-bag of subsidies for businesses doing\ngreen refits.\n\nSo in essence, they're taking a neutral system that put money to taxpayers and\nturned it into a subsidy on corporations that pollute, and claiming it as a\npopulist victory. And the public ate it up.\n\nI've heard nonsense like \"I recycle and don't litter, why should I have to pay\na carbon tax\" as if those things are related.\n\n~~~\nmartythemaniak\nIt should also be noted that the federal carbon tax is a tax-and-rebate\nscheme. Ie you get taxed on the carbon and the revenues get refunded to the\nconsumers. If you make a lower-carbon choice, you keep your money. If you\ndon't, nothing really changed. It's also slightly progressive, since lower-\nincome folks will actually come out ahead by a bit without making any changes.\n\nWarning: strong political opinions below.\n\nWhat we're seeing is really a replay of the ACA reaction in the US. Obamacare\nwas a rejigged Romneycare, which was a rejigged Heritage Foundation plan which\nwas a reaction to the Clinton's healthcare plans. It was a conservative,\nmarket-friendly approach to solving an issue... until it was actually\nimplemented. Then we found out it was just a talking point meant that was\nnever meant to be acted upon, a mere cover that allowed conservatives to\npretend they were interested solving an issue.\n\nLikewise, the tax-and-rebate scheme is basically most conservative and market-\nfriendly approach to tackling climate change that actually produces results.\nBut now that it's actually been implemented, the Ford/Kenney/potential-Scheer\ngovernments are reacting by repealing it and replacing it with nothing that\nproduces results. Because they don't have the guts to say simply \"No, we don't\nbelieve in this and we're not going to do anything about it\"\n\n~~~\nJoakal\nLets say it cost consumers $100.\n\nAfter Carbon tax, company gets $20 tax. Price becomes $120. Government says to\nconsumer, here's $20. Consumer and company see no difference. Government cost\ngoes up to maintain the scheme.\n\nThis is why people say the carbon tax/price must go towards non carbon\nressearch/products.\n\n~~~\nlodi\nLet's further say that there exists another company that can produce the same\nwidget with fewer emissions, but it costs $110 base price + $0 carbon tax to\ndo so. Now the green company actually has a viable product, and consumers are\nincentivized to switch to it.\n\n~~~\nJoakal\nConsumers still see $100 net pre and post tax. That's why I think the rebates\nare flawed.\n\n------\noski\nIn researching what we can do about climate change, the most convincing\nproposed policy solution I've seen comes from the Citizen's Climate Lobby -- a\nCarbon Fee and Dividend ([https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-\ndividend/](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/)),\nwhich I learned about while reading \"Being the Change\" by Dr. Peter Kalmus.\n\nBasically, it's a plan for a carbon tax along with a rebate program (similar\nto UBI in my opinion) so that the least well off financially don't get crushed\nby things like higher gas prices.\n\n~~~\nPxtl\nThat's actually what was implemented in Canada last month on all provinces\nthat didn't run their own carbon pricing system.\n\nYou'd think everybody could get behind it, right? I got $300 on my tax rebate\nas an advance for this year's carbon pricing.\n\nOf course the conservatives hate it, because their carbon plan is \"no.\"\n\nAnd they're on track to win in November.\n\n~~~\nttul\nWe shall see. A lot can change between now and then. The SNC affair will fade\nover the summer and the truth is the economy is doing very well - that\ntypically drives election results.\n\n~~~\nPxtl\nI wish I shared your optimism. I keep worrying we're going to see a repeat of\nOntario's provincial election.\n\n------\nadrianN\nWe need to just introduce that damn tax already. We should have introduced it\nthirty years ago after the Rio summit! The longer we wait the harder the\ntransition will become.\n\n~~~\nmauflows\nIt's currently before Congress\n\n[https://energyinnovationact.org/](https://energyinnovationact.org/)\n\n~~~\nchewbacha\nNothing moves in Congress right now because Mitch McConnell is only interested\nin confirming judges as fast as possible. And he has been explicit in being\nnon-cooperative with Democrats.\n\n------\njlgray\nAn under-represented argument for a carbon tax is the fact that it would\nencourage companies to innovate, both with respect to efficiency as well as\nusing renewable energy.\n\nI predict that industries in countries that adopt a carbon tax earlier will\nend up with a competitive advantage.\n\n~~~\nspodek\nI'll go further with the example of the U.S. car industry in the 60s, when the\nevidence was clear that consumers preferred safe, reliable, affordable,\nefficient cars -- from increasing sales for Volkswagen and Toyota, and most of\nall from the success of _Unsafe at Any Speed_.\n\nI doubt anyone then would have predicted that two of the U.S. big three would\ndeclare bankruptcy and that Toyota, then manufacturer of podunk little cars,\nwould become the #1 manufacturer, but it happened.\n\nHad U.S. regulations met consumer demand, U.S. manufacturers may have\ninnovated what consumers wanted instead of more chrome, tail fins, size, etc.\nRegulation came eventually, but too late for the industry to avoid\nbankruptcies, unemployment, and so on.\n\nIn fact, regulation didn't stifle innovation but directed it. Engineers can\ninnovate around safety and efficiency as much as on speed and tail fins. I'd\nrather have 100,000 mile warranties and electric cars than more chrome, which\nU.S. market forces created.\n\nToday, regarding the environment, the governments that regulate to reflect\ncitizen demand for clean air, land, and water will create markets and\ncompanies that beat ones that don't. I hope current U.S. policy doesn't\nbankrupt more future U.S. markets and companies.\n\n------\nmrosett\nFull text pdf:\n[https://www.researchgate.net/journal/1758-678X_Nature_Climat...](https://www.researchgate.net/journal/1758-678X_Nature_Climate_Change/publication/333068802_Nudging_out_support_for_a_carbon_tax/links/5cda4b91299bf14d95950a77/Nudging-\nout-support-for-a-carbon-tax.pdf)\n\n------\nwbeckler\nThe latest IPCC report says we have just 11 years to halve global emissions or\nwe'll be seeing massive destruction to civilization. This is what is spawning\norganizations like Extinction Rebellion, which forced the UK government to\ndeclare a climate emergency. A tax now seems like too weak a measure. Greta\nThunberg and Extinction Rebellion and others are talking about 15% reductions\nannually in industrialized countries. Any other proposal accepts doom or\nmillions of unnecessary deaths as options.\n\n------\nsandworm101\nSo market driven. So incentive-based. So flat. So American.\n\nAmerica loves to do things via tax code, which is why the US tax code is\nfamously so complicated, but that time is gone. The answer isn't a new tax to\nnudge the market. The answer is not an incentive to _please_ stop polluting.\nWe don't need 10% reductions here and there. We need massive reductions\neverywhere, preferably with active capture that pushes carbon emissions into\n_negative_ territory. We cannot afford to fund green energy by taxing non-\ngreen energy. Coal cannot fund solar. Coal has to stop. We need rules to say\nthat burning coal is now illegal. We need rules that mandate solar+wind as a\nfixed percentage of energy generation. We need massive rewrites to the rules\nthat limit the deployment of new nuclear technologies. The opportunity for\npolitically-friendly market-based (ie American) approaches has passed. It is\ntime for governments to pass absolute rules forbidding some behaviors and\nmandating others. If that offends political sensibilities, those political\nsensibilities need to be set aside.\n\n(1) Burning more than 100kg of coal per year is illegal.\n\n(2) All new houses must include 10m2 of solar panels per resident.\n\n(3) Windmills are, by law, not \"an eyesore\". No more complaining about them\nspoiling your retirement view.\n\n(4) Those who cannot articulate the difference between a millisievert and a\nmicrosievert, between fission and fusion, are not allowed anywhere near the\nplanning meeting for any new power plant.\n\n~~~\njoshe\nIncentives work really really well. Almost nothing else does over the long\nterm.\n\nFor a concrete alternative with incentives:\n[https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-\ndividend/](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/)\n\nA massive $600 billion dollar per year incentive based nudge.\n\n~~~\nsandworm101\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol)\n: absolute ban on CFCs worked.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead)\n: EPA mandated reductions of lead in gasoline worked.\n\nNot to mention the thousands of little things (drunk driving, slavery,\nuniversal suffrage, speed limits etc) that were overturned relatively\nsuccessfully without any market-based approaches. There is a right-wing\nphilosophy that all government actions are inherently inefficient, but the\nreality is that laws work. It is possible to ban a behavior on day one and see\nit substantially reduced on day two.\n\n~~~\nthebooktocome\nChina has continued to leak CFCs despite the ban.\n\n~~~\nwcoenen\nCFCs in the atmosphere are still dropping. (The news was that the rate at\nwhich CFCs disappear has slowed down a bit, and some are pointing at China for\nthat.) I'd say the policy was pretty effective.\n\n~~~\nthebooktocome\nI don't think China deserves the benefit of the doubt on this topic.\n\n\"From the Korean and Japanese data, we used our models to show that emissions\nof CFC-11 from north eastern China had increased by around 7,000 tons per year\nafter 2013, particularly in or around the provinces of Shandong and Hebei,\"\nsaid Luke Western, a University of Bristol atmospheric modeler. \"We didn't\nfind evidence of increasing emissions from Japan, the Korean peninsula or any\nother country to which our networks are sensitive.\"\n\n[https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/22/health/china-cfc-pollution-\nen...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/22/health/china-cfc-pollution-environment-\nintl-scn/index.html)\n\n~~~\nwcoenen\nOK, the emissions were indeed confirmed to be coming from China. Fortunately\nthey are tracking down the CFC producers now and shutting them down:\n[https://nationalpost.com/news/world/china-makes-arrests-\nshut...](https://nationalpost.com/news/world/china-makes-arrests-shuts-down-\nrogue-chemical-factories-that-spewed-banned-ozone-depleting-\ngas?fbclid=IwAR2D_XkH2BtI20r1AeessWBVp8uMXyIWpe5L4wQ1FZAPaWUreQjuwoszVU4)\n\n------\navsteele\nI don't think you'd see as much resistance to such a tax if it was dollar for\ndollar paired with a reduction in other taxes. This has two benefits:\n\n1) In the absence of this pairing it just looks like a government-growing cash\ngrab to a segment of the population.\n\n2) People who aren't even convinced of the dangers of AGW can still support\nit.\n\n~~~\nshaki-dora\nI wish I had your optimism. I'm almost certain that even a revenue-neutral\nbill would be presented as a tax increase in the right-wing media.\n\nAnd, of course, even something that is revenue-neutral overall will have some\nwinners and losers: SUV owners will pay more than those commuting with public\ntransport. Poorly isolated single-family homes in the south relying on air\nconditioning through the summer will be more expensive compared to flats in\nnorthern brick houses, etc.\n\n~~~\nsokoloff\n> SUV owners will pay more than those commuting with public transport. Poorly\n> [insulated] single-family homes in the south relying on air conditioning\n> through the summer will be more expensive compared to flats in northern\n> brick houses, etc.\n\nThose all sound like _excellent outcomes_ in terms of linking behavior to\ncarbon emissions via a price-signaling mechanism.\n\nLogically, it's impossible to simultaneously incentivize people to emit less\n_and_ not have the current high emitters feel some incentive to change.\n\n(Edit: removed one extraneous negation in the last sentence.)\n\n------\ngwbas1c\nI personally wonder if taxing carbon producing machines makes more sense than\ntaxing fuel? The taxes could directly subsidize cleaner alternatives.\n\nThen, once a lot of carbon producing machines are out of use, introduce a\ncarbon tax to help push the remaining ones out?\n\n------\ngdubs\nInstead of calling it a tax, let’s just say we’re going to stop subsidizing\ncarbon.\n\n------\nGiorgioG\nThis won't be popular with the HN crowd, but taxing activities that we want to\nreduce/minimize doesn't work. Cigarette taxes didn't work in any meaningful\nway (see\n[https://www.nber.org/papers/w18326.pdf](https://www.nber.org/papers/w18326.pdf))\n\n~~~\njlgray\nI don't think the comparison to cigarette taxes is completely fair. Cigarettes\nare relatively inelastic w.r.t. price as they are addictive, and have no real\ncompeting product.\n\nElectricity and power generated from carbon emitting sources on the other hand\nhave a much more elastic demand curve. E.g. if your energy bill is cheaper\nwith renewables, no one would choose to go with fossil fuels. Likewise with\nelectric vehicles. If the cost of tanking up an EV is significantly lower than\nan internal combustion vehicle, people will switch for purely economic\nreasons.\n\nYou can look at the lack of a carbon tax as an incentive on fossil fuels which\nsocializes the externalities.\n\n------\nthrowaway857384\nI think this sums it all up \"but is controversial because it imposes costs on\nconsumers.\"\n\nA carbon tax is a way for all of us (people) to deal with the problem, while\nthe corporations that created and caused it get a 'get out of jail free' card.\n\n~~~\nadrianN\nCorporations don't burn coal for fun, they satisfy demand created by people\nlike you and me while trying to maximize profits. Without a carbon tax,\ncorporations that manage to successfully externalize that cost have a huge\ncompetitive advantage.\n\n~~~\nken\nCompanies don't pay taxes for fun, either. What I think that comment is\nreferring to is the fact that corporations have a history of being really good\nat weaseling their way out of paying taxes, and the bigger companies are the\nbest at it.\n\nA carbon tax, in particular, looks like it would be very easy for a\nmultinational to escape. It's reason #{xyz} to move your facility across the\nborder and out of American jurisdiction.\n\nIf we can't get them to pay taxes already, won't a carbon tax simply be yet\nanother tax which is disproportionately paid by small businesses and\nindividuals, and not the actual biggest polluters, while driving more\nmanufacturing jobs overseas to countries which don't have such laws?\n\n~~~\namelius\nI guess the solution here is to have customs duties based on emissions taxes\npaid in the originating country. This is not only needed to prevent\ncorporations from moving their business elsewhere, but also to compete with\nexisting/new corporations in foreign countries.\n\n~~~\nsokoloff\nYou can't base duties just on emissions taxes paid. (Setting aside practical\nrecord-keeping concerns,) If factory A pays no emissions taxes paid because\nthey're based in a country without carbon taxes and factory B pays no\nemissions taxes because they're in a country with no carbon taxes _but also_\nare using carbon-free energy sources and factory C is located in a country\nwith carbon taxes and pays those taxes, should we charge B the same as A in\nduties? Should A pay more than C by the exact amount of the carbon taxes? If C\nimplements an energy efficiency program to cut its consumption in half, should\nA now pay less? How could B \"prove it\"? How do we control such that A can't\nrepresent itself as B?\n\nAt some point, these other countries are sovereign entities, and it's going to\nbe difficult to dig into the on-the-ground facts at each factory and step\nalong the supply chain to determine emissions.\n\n~~~\namelius\nWe can measure CO2 emissions from space:\n\n[https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/99/graphic-\nmeasur...](https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/99/graphic-measuring-\ncarbon-dioxide-from-space/)\n\nIf company X in country Y wants to trade with the US, they could require that\ncountry Y provides full transparency in carbon emissions, where the\nmeasurements from space could be used as a checksum.\n\n~~~\nsokoloff\nNeat tech. (For those curious, it seems like we are capable to measure CO2\nincrease or decrease to an uncertainty of approximately 0.3% [of CO2, meaning\n~1ppm overall]. That's impressive.)\n\nEven if the last \"embargo uncooperative countries\" strategy were possible, I\nthink you'd find that all of their domestic production would be carbon-\nintensive and their exports would all be \"carbon neutral\".\n\n~~~\namelius\nWell, we could require that countries (trade partners) pay tax on their\nemissions as opposed to companies. How these countries tax their companies\ninternally could be an internal affair entirely. And this also solves the\nbookkeeping at the border.\n\n------\nLendal\nGrand projects like TVA and Tesla Inc are what will solve global warming.\n\nCarbon tax is just money. More money doesn't solve global warming. In fact I\nwould say money is the reason we have global warming in the first place.\n\n~~~\ntybit\nMoney is probably the most persuasive tool we have as a society to change\nbehaviour. Yes engineering is vital but it works with economics not in\nisolation.\n\n~~~\nwolco\nI think the issue is who pays. If it ends up as consumer tax only it will take\nawhile before change is reflected. A business tax would accurate change.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow to Kill Mysql Performance - arjunlall\nhttp://www.slideshare.net/techdude/how-to-kill-mysql-performance\n\n======\njaypipes\nHi folks, this is Jay Pipes, the author of the slide decks in\nquestion...someone notified me via email that these slides were up online.\n\nI had no idea those slides were even up online! People tend to take the slides\nfrom my website (<http://jpipes.com>) and post them on various websites\nwithout my knowledge, which is perfectly fine. :)\n\nThose slides are also quite old (2+ years now). I've done many presentations\nsince then and have a number of alternate slide decks which you may find\nuseful. Here are the links to download PDFs from my website.\n\n<http://jpipes.com/presentations/kill-mysql-performance.pdf>\n\n[http://jpipes.com/presentations/target-practice/target-\npract...](http://jpipes.com/presentations/target-practice/target-practice.pdf)\n\n[http://jpipes.com/presentations/target-practice/target-\npract...](http://jpipes.com/presentations/target-practice/target-practice-\nworkbook.pdf)\n\n<http://jpipes.com/presentations/joinfu/joinfu_part_one.pdf>\n\n<http://jpipes.com/presentations/joinfu/joinfu_part_two.pdf>\n\n[http://jpipes.com/presentations/dqm/legend_drunken_query_mas...](http://jpipes.com/presentations/dqm/legend_drunken_query_master.pdf)\n\nYou can also download a chapter of my book (Pro MySQL) on SQL Scenarios:\n\n<http://jpipes.com/presentations/sqlscenarios.pdf>\n\nCheers!\n\njay\n\n------\nams6110\nHow to ensure that [some] people won't read your post: require Flash.\n\n~~~\narjunlall\nYou would probably be better off complaining to slideshare.net or the original\nauthor of the slideshow for posting it there.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy Does Moby-Dick Sometimes Have a Hyphen? (2015) - Tomte\nhttp://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/moby-dick-has-mysterious-hyphen-180957512/?no-ist\n======\nbane\nEnglish hyphens are kind of one of the world's worst language features of all\ntime. They're supposed to indicate when two words are being joined together,\nuntil people get tired of using the extra symbol and then just drop it\naltogether and mush the words together into a proper Germanic compound word.\n\nThis can happen incredibly fast in linguistic terms -- anybody remember\n\"e-mail\"?\n\nSince compounding words happens naturally in English grammar, hyphenation is\nsome weirdo vestigial hangover from the times before English was written with\nspaces and the \"rules\" are entirely arbitrary and up to whatever style guide\nyou happened to have studied in school.\n\nIn some bizarre twist of fate, hyphenation is on the decline and instead of\njust compounding two words together like any decent Germanic language, some\nstyle guides are encouraging people to keep the words separated with spaces,\ncoming a full 180 degrees from the original use of a mark to compound words\nfor clarity in texts made without spaces.\n\nIs it \"on-line\", \"on line\", \"online\", how about \"log-in\", \"log in\", \"login\"?\n\nIt shouldn't go beyond notice that the hyphen seems to exist as a way to\nprevent compounding in the proper Germanic way, but isn't needed at all for\nLatin or Greek based compounds or neologisms.\n\nLanguage prescriptivists can make a real mess of things and really screw the\nlanguages up for the rest of us. Trying to Romanize English was a terrible\nidea.\n\n~~~\nghurtado\nI agree with much of what you said, but this:\n\n> \"log in\", \"login\"?\n\nIs a bad example, because these two have taken on two slightly different\nmeanings: the spaced version is the verb, and the single word version is the\nnoun.\n\n~~~\nbane\nIt also turns out that English tolerates noun/verb homophones just fine, the\northography doesn't change the pronunciation at all and it doesn't really\nmatter in this case.\n\n~~~\nademarre\nYou sound like you know more about this than I do, but I find _login_ as a\nverb distasteful and believe such usage should be avoided. What would you do\nfor the past tense? You'll decompose the word to its natural verb, _log_ , and\nwrite _logged in_.\n\nAlso, I, for one, still favor _e-mail_ , but I'm definitely in the minority\nthere.\n\n~~~\nbane\nI think the problem I have more is that most of this business hinders\ncommunication by trying to establish rules that are orthogonal to the language\n-- usually with some kind of prestige agenda towards Romanticizing English.\nHyphens to compound words were simply a convenience and clarification mark for\na time before we used spaces. We use spaces now, hence we don't need hyphens\nanymore to compound words.\n\nWhat we do need is a more reasonable set of conventions that are well\nharmonized with the mechanics of the language.\n\ne.g. Shall we use \"login\" as a verb? Then we're going to get verb tenses like\n\"logined\" and \"logining\". Are we, collectively, okay with that? Then fine,\nwe'll use that.\n\nIf we don't like that then we won't compound the words in the verb usage and\ncontinue on with \"logged in\" and \"logging in\".\n\nBut then we'll have this weird case where the verb \"log\" almost always means\n\"to keep a record of\", _except_ when followed by \"in\" or \"out\". But languages\ntend to not like this kind of exceptionalism and we'll probably be in a state\nwhere we keep evaluating just compounding them and applying the existing\ntensing rules.\n\n~~~\nademarre\nPersonally I prefer _sign in_ over _log in_. Partially because _to sign_ seems\nto carry a stronger connection to the intended meaning, _to authenticate_ ,\nthan _to log_ does.\n\n~~~\nevincarofautumn\nIt’s the same metaphor—you’re signing the (virtual) logbook to get in.\n\n~~~\nademarre\nGood point, it is the same metaphor, but signing is the essential action. What\ndo you do with the log book? You _sign_ it.\n\nAnother reason I prefer _sign in_ is because there's less discord about its\nusage. I have never seen anyone try to write _signin_. Maybe they'll hyphenate\nit, but even then people seem less inclined to use _sign-in_ as a verb\ncompared to _login_.\n\n~~~\ngrzm\nMy general rule (I don't remember where I picked it up. Maybe the Chicago\nManual of Style?) is that the verb form is that the hyphenated or single-word\nform is the noun or adjective, and the unhyphenated form is the verb.\n\n\\- He will log in to the system.\n\n\\- What's your login?\n\n\\- Please sign in.\n\n\\- That's the sign-in table over there.\n\nAlong these lines, does the button/link describe the action (click the button\nto _log in_ ) or the type of button (the _login_ button).\n\nThe question of whether to to use sign in or log in is separate.\n\nI go back and forth on prescriptivist vs descriptivist versions of language,\nthough at the end of the day, languages that are in use change. I think it\nmakes sense to create the equivalent of a stylebook for a publication or site\nso that there's consistent usage (prescriptivist), but understand that there\nare going to be inconsistencies across the use of language as a whole\n(descriptivist).\n\n------\ndjsumdog\nSo when I finish a book, I'll occasionally switch over to Moby Dick while I\nfigure out what book to start next. Over the course of like a year, I've made\nit past the 50% point.\n\nIt's honestly a terrible book. The author is more obsessed with whales than\nhis characters. There are entire chapters dedicated to whether whales are\nfish. Other chapters that describe every tiny detail about the whaling\nindustry.\n\nI mean I guess it's good if you want to understand historical whaling. But\nit's hardly an enjoyable read.\n\n~~~\ncolechristensen\nThere's a big different between \"a[n objectively] terrible book\" and \"not\nsomething I like\".\n\n------\nwanderr\nWTF with the auto playing video on mobile when you scroll down? I guess I'll\nbe avoiding smithsonianmag links...\n\n------\nmpclark\nTLDR: We don't know\n\n...and, let's face it, nobody cares. Move on, dear reader.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: OpinionatedC – Because ObjC should have inherited more from Smalltalk - Rockslide\nhttps://github.com/leoschweizer/OpinionatedC\n\n======\nRockslide\nOp here.\n\nFirst of all, let me say that I'm totally aware that with Swift lurking around\nthe corner, Objective-C is far from being the cool kid on the block. However,\nthe latter is not going away anytime soon, and as long as Objective-C code has\nto be written and maintained, there is a need to produce readable and succinct\ncode.\n\nDuring the past year, I've basically worked full time with Objective-C. Since\nI use the excellent ComponentKit (Objective-C++) to build app UIs, it wasn't\nreally practical to switch to Swift. So I was sitting there, stuck with\nObjective-C, and coming from a Smalltalk background, I couldn't help but\nnotice the influences it took on Objective-C. But I also couldn't stop\nnoticing where brilliant design decisions didn't find their way from Smalltalk\nto the Apple world.\n\nThat's why I created OpinionatedC.\n\nThe thing I was missing the most was the super-immersive and highly-consistent\nSmalltalk collection API. In Smalltalk, most of the time it doesn't really\nmake a difference if you work with an Array, an OrderedCollection, a Set or\neven a String. In ObjectiveC, it does. That's why the focus of OpinionatedC is\nclearly on collection extensions at the moment.\n\nP.S.: I'm aware of many of the alternative libraries that offer a similar\nfeature set, like Undersocre.m or ObjectiveSugar (or even ReactiveCocoa -\nwhich is great but a really big dependency if you just want the kind of\nextensions offered by OpinionatedC). However, none of those did really\nconvince me. Don't get me wrong, they are great libraries, and badmouthing\nthem is the last thing I want to do. But ultimately, I decided to build my own\nalternative anyway ;)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBad Times in Tech? Not If You’re a Startup Serving Other Startups - SREinSF\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/technology/brex-start-up.html\n======\nnlh\nI will say, for what it’s worth, that the customer experience of using Brex is\nreally quite outstanding (my current startup is a customer.)\n\nThey’ve figured out things that in hindsight just seem so obvious to a good\nUX, and yet we’ve all been so trained to have low expectations from the\nmediocre service traditional banks/corporate card providers offer that it\nseems outstanding.\n\nFrom limited experience - the fact that virtual cards are first-party\ncitizens, the helpful text messages you get (which include a warning the first\ntime you use a card physically, instant text records when you use a card\nphysically, the ability to photograph receipts and send them back to that same\ntext phone #, and and and.)\n\nAmerican Express (my only other corporate card comparison) of course _could_\noffer this stuff, but it’s just not in their DNA because, well, they haven’t\nhad to innovate because they had what amounts to a monopoly on corporate\nspending cards. And I should note - Amex ties the credit on those cards to the\nfounder (requiring a personal guarantee until the company reaches a certain -\nlarge - size.)\n\nAnyway, this is all to say I’m a fan and it doesn’t surprise me they’ve having\nthe success they are so far. Let’s hope they can do it profitably and keep it\nup!\n\n~~~\ntempguy9999\nI have a visa card. They introduced a verification check for online use a few\nyears ago. This involved giving the answer to a question or typing in a\npassphrase or something (can't remember, I almost never use it).\n\nWhen setting it up on the web I had to type in the answer/passphrase/whatever.\nIt was rejected. I read the form again, looked at the error msg, no indication\nwhy, typed it in again, again rejected.\n\nI called the bank, \"oh, it's got to have a digit in it\". It did not say on the\nform a digit was needed, nor did the error message.\n\nThey could not even manage to tell the users the most trivial requirements\neither directly or in the error message. It's beyond pathetic. It's literally\nincomprehensibly incompetent to fail at such a low level.\n\n~~~\nPaulHoule\nI remember \"Verified By Visa\" which would send you to a site that looked like\nit was drawn by a crayon. It shocks me how financial institutions often make\nweb sites that look like a parody of a phishing site. For instance, my credit\nunion had an online banking service which used the name \"myvaultsentry.com\"\nwhich just seemed liked something a high school hacker would think up.\n\nIt is strange because operationally Visa is good at what they do, and they put\na huge amount of effort and expense into developing a brand, but for legacy\norganizations (academia too) the web seems to be made of kryptonite.\n\n~~~\njackweirdy\nMBNA, a credit card provider in the U.K., used to provide online services\nunder a completely different website than their main one, with a domain like\n“bank card services dot co dot uk”* and a barely-styled website\n\nI thought I was being phished until I confirmed it was real on the phone with\nthem.\n\n(it may not have been that domain so don’t try in case that’s a sketchy site)\n\n------\nfizx\nI ran a bootstrapped company with $150k/mo of well-documented, above-board\nrecurring revenue and Chase wouldn't give it a credit limit above $5k.\n\nEntrusting my finances to another startup like Brex is scary, but damn is the\npitch compelling compared to mainstream banks.\n\n~~~\nopportune\nI think you could easily buy an hq (or any other relatively liquid asset that\nwould also help the business in other ways) outright with that kind of money\nand use that to collateralize a much larger credit limit\n\n~~~\ninsulanus\nWhat's an hq?\n\n~~~\nQuantumGood\nHeadquarters (real estate)\n\n~~~\ntechslave\nuh that’s not liquid\n\n~~~\nopportune\nReal estate (especially smaller, less customized office space) is usually\nliquid enough to use as collateral for a loan\n\n------\nrchaves\nThis Pedro Franceschi is the same kid that created iUsers to allow multi-users\nin iPad and hacked Siri to understand portuguese years before Apple. I’m\nreally happy that their startup has a big potential and I hope it succeeds,\nI’m a real fan\n\n------\nhn_throwaway_99\nAs this is Hacker News, Paul Graham's comments on Yahoo during the .com bubble\nare particularly relevant:\n\nBy 1998, Yahoo was the beneficiary of a de facto Ponzi scheme. Investors were\nexcited about the Internet. One reason they were excited was Yahoo's revenue\ngrowth. So they invested in new Internet startups. The startups then used the\nmoney to buy ads on Yahoo to get traffic. Which caused yet more revenue growth\nfor Yahoo, and further convinced investors the Internet was worth investing\nin. When I realized this one day, sitting in my cubicle, I jumped up like\nArchimedes in his bathtub, except instead of \"Eureka!\" I was shouting \"Sell!\"\n\n[http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html)\n\n~~~\nrolltiide\n> except instead of \"Eureka!\" I was shouting \"Sell!\"\n\nand then missing 2 more sustained years of jaw dropping prices\n\ndon't act clairvoyant.\n\n~~~\nhn_throwaway_99\nYou do realize that was a quote from the pg blog post I linked, correct?\n\n~~~\nrolltiide\nYes, I even read it to make sure he didn't call it closer to the crashes\n\n------\ndrawnwren\nBrex's PR firm certainly seems to be earning their keep. This is the third or\nfourth article about Brex that 'wasn't about Brex' I've seen on HN in the last\ncouple of months.\n\n------\nmeddlepal\nIsn't this just a reformation of the idea there's only two business models?\n\nEither you mine for gold yourself or you sell shovels to others who want to\nmine for gold.\n\n~~~\npkaye\nBtw Google for the word \"Bre-X\" and you will read about a gold mining scandal\nfrom the dotcom era.\n\n------\nb_tterc_p\nBrex sounds like it’s headed for bankruptcy based on the article. They’re\nunprofitable now, and have incredibly risky clients sitting in front of what\nfeels like a looming recession.\n\n------\ncryptica\nIt seems like it's doing well because things are bad in silicon valley, not in\nspite of. It sounds like there are a lot of desperate startups getting loans\nto 'simulate' growth by having negative profit margins (since they can't get\nreal growth otherwise), then they use that fake growth to get investors' money\nwhich they use to service debt, then they keep raising money until they exit\nor IPO. It doesn't seem sustainable. All these debts end up the hands of\ncorporate shareholders. There's a point where companies and the public will\nstop buying useless startups (if that point hasn't already passed).\n\n~~~\ndehrmann\n> things are bad in silicon valley\n\nReally?\n\n> there are a lot of desperate startups getting loans to 'simulate' growth by\n> having negative profit margins (since they can't get real growth otherwise)\n\nYou're conflating a few things, here. The Amazon strategy of reinvestment\nworks as long as it's genuine growth and not overdone. Uber's more of an open\nquestion: they've increased demand through subsidies, the question is what\nwill demand look like when prices reflect the true cost. Postmates is in the\nsame situation as Uber, but much worse because they offer a service people can\ntrivially do themselves.\n\n> All these debts end up the hands of corporate shareholders.\n\nNot usually. And startups don't usually use debt (except in ~2015/2016), they\nsell equity. VC funds tend to have more pensions and sovereign wealth.\n\n------\nitschekkers\nThere's always a PG article --\n[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)\n[April 2005]\n\n------\npaxys\n> for his Bernese mountain dog, Ruby, who is named after the coding language\n> Ruby on Rails\n\n/facepalm\n\n~~~\nrchaves\nI remember Pedro giving talks on Rubyconf in Brazil with only 15 years old,\nthis kid grew with the help of Ruby community, so it makes sense he gives so\nmuch importance to it\n\n~~~\nskrebbel\nI think the facepalm was meant to be \"OMG this finance journalist doesn't know\nthe difference between a framework and a language, what an idiot\".\n\n(Fwiw, the difference between the two is super nuanced and irrelevant to most\njournalism about tech. They're both \"tools to make software\". If I were a\njournalist, I'd also call Rails a programming language, because that's a term\nmuch of the general public understands is \"a thing people use to build\nsoftware with\")\n\n(so who knows, maybe the author actually knows, but decided to write for the\nNYT audience and not pedants on HN)\n\n~~~\ndang\n> I think the facepalm was meant to be\n\nReading it again, I'm sure you're right, but I totally missed that. Actually\nthe lines between language and library and framework are not so easy to pin\ndown. Maybe the finance journalists are on to something.\n\n------\nscarface74\nIt’s nothing more than the same Ponzi scheme we saw in 1999. If venture\nfunding dries up, for their customers, they are also toast. I hate that the\nmodern idea of a “successful” company is how much money they can raise and at\nwhat evaluation.\n\n~~~\ndehrmann\nIt's very different. Look at how the public market is treating Uber. Its pre-\nIPO valuation was rosy, but not out-of-line, and its price has been pretty\nconsistent since the first few weeks. It's not like every tech IPO is up\n200%-500% on the first day, then keeps climbing by 1% per day.\n\n> I hate that the modern idea of a “successful” company is how much money they\n> can raise and at what evaluation.\n\nSo the value of the company? I agree that it doesn't capture value to society,\nbut it's better than \"community-adjusted EBITDA.\"\n\n~~~\nscarface74\nIt’s always “different this time”. Uber still hasn’t proven it has a\nsustainable business model. It’s marginal profit is still negative with no\nsigns of bring cash flow positive. During the dot com boom the first time, you\nalso had companies going public with no profitability and crazy valuations.\n\n------\njonathanedwards\nThe scariest thing about this article is it didn't contain the word \"bubble\"\n\n------\nauvi\nI think this is a good example of a \"Submarine\"[0] article\n\n    \n    \n      [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html\n\n------\nCPLX\nFor those that are familiar with the service are they really mostly/only\nfocused on companies that have outside investment?\n\nFrom glancing at their literature it seemed like their gig was lending money\nto companies that actually already had the money in the bank, like providing\ncompany spending cards to a startup with a few million in VC money sitting\nsomewhere.\n\nIs that correct or do they lend to companies with more traditional economics,\nlike a bootstrapped company with a million or two in annual revenue but\nwithout major cash reserves or investment?\n\n~~~\njohns\nThey told me they basically only serve companies with VC investment. We were\ndeclined despite meeting the stated balance requirements because we were self-\nfunded.\n\n~~~\nCPLX\nThat seems like a pretty lame business model. Like why bother?\n\nThough I guess that question answers itself, it seems logical to the\npredictably solipsistic VC community, who then throw money at it.\n\n~~~\ntylerhou\nLess risky, because a VC does due diligence.\n\n------\nremote_phone\nStartups serving other startups sounds exactly like the dot com boom/bust.\nWhen the bust started, it spread across the entire Valley because exactly\nthis.\n\n------\nxivzgrev\nI.e., when people are mining for gold, sell pick axes!\n\n------\nrjzotti\nI don’t understand the economics of Brex. I used to work for a large,\nanalytics-savvy credit card company, and people would freak out if the\npercentage of customers going bad (not paying their debt) exceeded something\nlike 3-5%. Given that VC-funded startups fail at a rate of 11/12, isn’t Brex\neffectively throwing money down a massive black hole, assuming they’re\nextending credit? And this is at the top of credit cycle, probably within a\nfew years of a recession, where a higher than normal percentage of good debt\nwill go bad too.\n\n------\ntrhway\nBad times? Only lazy bums like me and poor H1s are still sitting at our old\nBigCo (life work balance is amazing, plus there are too few of us left who is\ndoing the stuff so we are treated pretty soft and accurately :) . Anybody who\nleft during the last year and a half got minimum 300 (junior and/or really\nincapable engineers) with the normal engineers getting 400-500K and that isn't\nin a red hot AI and the likes. The money is just sloshing around. Granted\neverything comes to an end, and we're definitely due for the one, yet it\ndefinitely didn't happen yet.\n\n~~~\nrak00n\nWho's paying 400-500K for normal engineers? Even FAANGs don't pay that much\nfor for Senior Software Engineers.\n\n------\nbrexthrowaway\nThe Brex interview handed out real customer bank balance and transaction\nhistory and suggested that that data was all they they used to build their\nunderwriting model.\n\n------\nzed88\nHow is it different than say, stripe issuing?\n\n[https://stripe.com/nz/issuing](https://stripe.com/nz/issuing)\n\n~~~\nrelyks\nBrex is identical to what Stripe is offering, but Brex's cards offer credit.\nFrom what I can see and correct me if I'm wrong, Stripe doesn't offer credit\nlines\n\n~~~\nnekitamo\n[https://stripe.com/partners/fundingcircle](https://stripe.com/partners/fundingcircle)\n\nI’ve used it for my bootstrapped company, works great.\n\n~~~\nalbertshin\nI haven't touched base with these lenders in a while but I thought p2p lenders\nlike fundingcircle only offer term loans?...\n\nDo they offer credit lines and revolvers now too? Curious how that works out\nin the p2p space.\n\n------\nchiefalchemist\nIs it official? The Startup Industrial Complex?\n\n------\nIgorPartola\nDuring a gold rush the best way to make money is to sell shovels.\n\n~~~\nadventured\n> During a gold rush the best way to make money is to sell shovels.\n\nThat's never actually true, it's just a nice saying. The most money is always\nmade in owning a super structure business - in tech, a platform - that has\nvery wide appeal, rather than concerning yourself with trying to compete to\nsell shovels to a temporary gold rush.\n\nSelling shovels is an opportunistic business, only good for a short-term run.\nThe real money is always made by focusing instead on larger, longer term\nopportunities that are sustainable.\n\nSome things persistently ignored about the shovel selling business during gold\nrushes: most of the shovel sellers lose their hats in the bust, because they\ndon't see it coming and they carry inventory and speculate on demand\nconstantly. The history of gold rushes is that the shovel sellers frequently\nmiscalculate the duration of the rushes. They get hammered when it ends, most\nof them go bankrupt (see: every oil boom in US history).\n\nIt's better to be Exxon or Chevron and own large reserves in the ground, not\nthe primary company selling little pieces of gear to Exxon. It's better to be\nthe majors in the Permian (gold rush) making money long-term off the reserves,\nnot the little shovel sellers that constantly boom and bust with each big blip\nin the oil market.\n\nIt was far better to own refining and pipelines - chokepoint super structures\n- during the oil boom in Standard Oil's time, than to be a shovel seller to\nthe oil industry or oil wildcatters.\n\nIt's better to be Rio Tinto, Newmont or BHP and own the mines & supply than to\nbe selling mining equipment. BHP is a $137b company, Rio Tinto is a $91b\ncompany. The shovel sellers are comically tiny by comparison, borderline\nirrelevant in size versus these juggernauts.\n\nFor the last century it has been better to be De Beers than to be selling\ndiamond industry equipment.\n\nDuring the car boom in Henry Ford's time, it was better to be one of the\nsurviving majors than to be a shovel seller. This fundamental is always true.\n\nDuring the mobile gold rush it's better to be Apple and Google than ARM,\nFoxconn or Qualcomm (Samsung for their part covers all the bases). The super\nstructures - Apple & Google platforms in this case - usually by far make the\nmost money, the shovel sellers are typically much smaller and less profitable.\n\n~~~\nkev009\nIBM is over 100 years old. I don't think most people in tech understand how\nprofound that is, between the obvious changes in leadership but more\nastonishingly business-sinking technology shifts, industry tanking economic\nphenomenon, etc.\n\nThere will not be another IBM coming out of San Francisco culture.\n\nI only skimmed the article so I couldn't tell if it was loathsome or self-\nparaody of what is going on in SF right now. But I hope they and readers\nrealize it is simply ouroboros.\n\n~~~\nadrianN\nI don't know. Apple has something like 250 billion in their war chest. They\ncould stop selling stuff for a hundred years and still pay 20000 people $100k\na year.\n\n~~~\nkev009\nSure but neither a startup nor raised in the current SF startup culture. Apple\ndefinitely has potential to transcend tech and leadership although we need to\nsee 1-2 more changes in leadership to know for sure.\n\n------\nsegmondy\nHow do they monitor the bank account and balances?\n\n------\njhayward\nIn a gold rush the miners go broke but the hardware store makes boatloads of\ncash.\n\n~~~\nOldHand2018\nIn a tech boom the startups go broke but the property owners make boatloads in\nrent.\n\n~~~\ngingabriska\nWho are property owner if not executives at big companies and also people who\nare contributor of VC funds?\n\n------\nwishrider\nI offer small services other startups too\n[https://launchpropeller.com/#/](https://launchpropeller.com/#/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nObesity rising in American women - tatobug\nhttp://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2526639\n======\ncloudjacker\nSpeaking for all American men: we know.\n\n~~~\nravenstine\nBasically, yeah.\n\n------\nMollyR\nMaybe the title should be changed to match the actual paper title \"Trends in\nObesity Among Adults in the United States 2005 to 2014\" ?\n\nEDIT: as some people mentioned below that the title does match a sentence in\nthe conclusion. The study is still for women and men, and has interesting\ncross-sectional data for both.\n\n~~~\nravenstine\n\"For women, the prevalence of overall obesity and of class 3 obesity showed\nsignificant linear trends for increase between 2005 and 2014; there were no\nsignificant trends for men.\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPHP Anthem - Uncle_Sam\nhttp://shiflett.org/blog/2010/aug/php-anthem\n\n======\njacquesm\n> PHP finally has an anthem. This is what we’ve been lacking.\n\nRight. I don't think that a song was the thing that PHP was lacking most.\n\n------\nmissizii\nAnd we wonder why there aren't more women in tech.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nUnited Says It Won’t Use Police to Remove Paid Passengers - walterbell\nhttps://www.wsj.com/articles/united-ceo-blames-system-failure-on-passenger-removal-incident-1492003424\n======\ncoreyp_1\nUnited: You're doing it wrong.\n\n[https://www.xkcd.com/463/](https://www.xkcd.com/463/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: I made my website/resume voice controlled - ddod\nhttps://benwasser.com/\n\n======\nar7hur\nVery interesting Ben! Did you have a look at [https://wit.ai](https://wit.ai)\n? It's an API that encapsulates both speech rec and semantic interpretation.\n\n~~~\nddod\nI hadn't seen this yet. It looks really cool and I'll have to devote some time\nto learning what they're doing.\n\n------\nddod\nThis was made using the Web Speech API and a matching system I came up with\nthat uses Levenshtein distances and tokenized string matching. I wrote up some\ndemo code here:\n[https://github.com/benwasser/WebSpeechAPI](https://github.com/benwasser/WebSpeechAPI)\n\n------\nyoshokatana\nThis is brilliant! One feature request though: It'd be cool if the microphone\nicon toggled the voice recognition, rather than simply enabling it. I couldn't\nfigure out if there was a way to disable it (besides closing the tab and\nreopening it).\n\n------\nmaccard\nThis is cool and all, but it's another Chrome only site. You might as well\nhave another desktop app that I have to download. Why isn't there support for\nother major, Modern browsers such as FF, Opera and IE11?\n\n~~~\nddod\nSorry about that! It uses the nascent Web Speech API which seems to rely on\nexternal audio processing (i.e. how Siri works). Google has such capabilities\nso that's why it currently works with Chrome (although I think it works in\nSafari, as well).\n\n------\nbrianbreslin\nSo it only lets me ask one question on chrome mac, then i have to reload the\npage.\n\ngreat idea btw. I wondered instantly if this could be turned into a service.\n\n~~~\nddod\nThat's not the intended behavior. I developed it on Chrome for Mac, so it\nshould just listen continuously. If you have a second, could you let me know\nwhat OS and browser versions you're on?\n\nAlso, I agree that it could be a cool service, but my wrapper is relatively\nlight compared to the work being done by Google, so I'm guessing you'll start\nto see a lot of competition in this area.\n\n------\nonuryavuz\nCool, I like it. I'm not a native English speaker, but it worked for me better\nthan Siri :)\n\nHow many predefined answers do you have?\n\n~~~\nddod\nGlad you liked it. It uses Google's voice recognition servers, so Android's\nvoice recognition may prove better for you than Siri.\n\nIt currently has 64 predefined answers with multiple triggers linked to each\none.\n\n------\ngaitme\nBest time of my life, saying 10 times \"work\" for nothing: wall, rock, west,\nwall, welcome...\n\nFrench power I guess\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNeed Help to Recall CSS in JavaScript – Dec*** - proyb\nIt was posted in HN and can&#x27;t recall the name of the CSS framework in Javascript. What that call?\n======\nproyb\nFinally, after hours of search, I would have never foud it if not for hnapp.\n[http://hnapp.com/?q=score%3E50%20css%20javascript](http://hnapp.com/?q=score%3E50%20css%20javascript)\n\n[https://descartes.io/](https://descartes.io/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: HNBuzz – daily/weekly digests, full-text search and mobile awesomeness - leandot\nhttp://hnbuzz.com\n\n======\nleandot\nInitially I built HNBuzz in order to have a daily digest with the top stories\nfor myself. Then I added some more features and I believe someone else could\nappreciate it as well. So looking forward to your feedback at hello@hnbuzz.com\nor in the thread below\n\nCurrently HNBuzz has:\n\n\\- sections - All, Ask HN, Show HN, Hiring\n\n\\- time ranges - daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, any period you want\n\n\\- full text search within each section\n\n\\- mobile optimised\n\nIn the future I have plans to make HNBuzz personalised and categorise the\nstories. Other ideas?\n\n------\nadvance\nNeat, clean, minimalist and easy to use, providing interesting tech feed from\nmultiple sources in one spot.\n\n------\nhack2good\nnice website. I like the full text search for example to find python related\narticles :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: DNS service with an api - bhurlow\n\nWhat's a good DNS hosting solution that has a good, straightforward api. (I find route53 to be an api headache)\n======\ngamedna\nI use <http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/dns/> Free RESTful API with language\nbindings.\n\nApi docs: [http://docs.rackspace.com/cdns/api/v1.0/cdns-\ndevguide/conten...](http://docs.rackspace.com/cdns/api/v1.0/cdns-\ndevguide/content/index.html)\n\nPython examples:\n[https://github.com/rackspace/pyrax/tree/master/samples/cloud...](https://github.com/rackspace/pyrax/tree/master/samples/cloud_dns)\n\n------\nbenologist\nwww.dnsimple.com\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGoogle Play Store warns Mastodon app – content “incites discrimination” - ColinWright\nhttps://toot.fedilab.app/@fedilab/104765191594914330\n======\nraxxorrax\nHaving an opinion incites discrimination in today's time. I would not react to\nGoogles requirements. F-Droid is a good alternative.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMitt Romney Calls Tesla a 'Loser' - rsingel\nhttp://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/romney-tesla-loser/\n======\nkgermino\nFor Context, from [http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/presidential-debate-\ntran...](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/presidential-debate-transcript-\ndenver-colo-oct/story?id=17390260&singlePage=true#.UG0JJ03oR3A) :\n\n(CROSSTALK)\n\nROMNEY: ... to oil, to tax breaks, then companies going overseas. So let's go\nthrough them one by one.\n\nFirst of all, the Department of Energy has said the tax break for oil\ncompanies is $2.8 billion a year. And it's actually an accounting treatment,\nas you know, that's been in place for a hundred years. Now...\n\nOBAMA: It's time to end it.\n\nROMNEY: And in one year, you provided $90 billion in breaks to the green\nenergy world.\n\nNow, I like green energy as well, but that's about 50 years' worth of what oil\nand gas receives. And you say Exxon and Mobil. Actually, this $2.8 billion\ngoes largely to small companies, to drilling operators and so forth.\n\nROMNEY: But, you know, if we get that tax rate from 35 percent down to 25\npercent, why that $2.8 billion is on the table. Of course it's on the table.\nThat's probably not going to survive you get that rate down to 25 percent.\n\nBut don't forget, you put $90 billion, like 50 years' worth of breaks, into --\ninto solar and wind, to _Solyndra and Fisker and Tester and Ener1. I mean, I\nhad a friend who said you don't just pick the winners and losers, you pick the\nlosers, all right?_ So this -- this is not -- this is not the kind of policy\nyou want to have if you want to get America energy secure.\n\nThe second topic, which is you said you get a deduction for taking a plant\noverseas. Look, I've been in business for 25 years. I have no idea what you're\ntalking about. I maybe need to get a new accountant.\n\nLEHRER: Let's...\n\nROMNEY: But -- but the idea that you get a break for shipping jobs overseas is\nsimply not the case.\n\n(CROSSTALK)\n\nRegardless, I won't comment on this myself since I can't imagine any thread on\nthis article staying clean...\n\n~~~\nprotomyth\nI figure given the speed of writing, it was a poorly written article to take a\nsoundbite and put it to a pre-existing opinion. It gets clicks and maybe a\nquick scan without providing the actual context. This is just one example of\nthe next 24 hour news cycle from both side's news outlets. Job numbers hit\nFriday, so I only expect a day of it.\n\n~~~\nsharkweek\nVery much so -- watching it live, it really did not come across that harsh\n(this coming from someone who will 99% certainly be voting for Obama).\n\n~~~\n001sky\nYes, the title: _Mitt Romney Calls Tesla a 'Loser'_ is just Factually\nwrong.[1]\n\nHe may (or may not) have _implied_ it. But then again, this is in they eye of\nthe beholder.\n\nExcluding the _may_ , _not_ , and _implied_ are material defects, for example.\n\n_____\n\n------\nnwienert\nThis article is wrong. He wasn't calling them losers he was saying that\npoliticians in general don't have the ability to pick the winners, they can\nonly pick the losers through their policies. He was basically saying that\nObama was trying to pick the winners in green but that it wasn't working\nbecause the market isn't ready (basically claiming he is failing because\ngovernment can't make an industry a winner through policy). He was also\nprobably implying that Obama was purposely choosing Oil as the loser.\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nNot even close!\n\nRomney's statement was in the context of his reference to someone's joke\nmaking fun of Obama for picking losing companies. He was clearly calling Tesla\na loser.\n\n~~~\nanigbrowl\nThat's certainly consistent with conservative tech skeptics. I think the\ngrandparent post offers a worthwhile alternative interpretation, but I think\nthe majority of people would go with yours.\n\nThat said, the majority of people probably found both candidates too wonkish\nand abstract in this debate for many minds to be changed. As a policy guy, I\nenjoyed it, and I thought Romney did well for himself although I prefer Obama.\nBut the candidates talked past each other to a large extent, and both were\npulling their punches a little.\n\n------\ngavanwoolery\nNot to pick one side or the other, but Tesla was made possible by artificial\nmeans, not market demand. The time will come when batteries are cheap and\npowerful enough that you could buy an electric car for $10k, but that time is\nnot now and the government should not be an investor - historically it has\nboth a bad record of managing budgets and delivering innovation per the\ndollar...And don't start with arguments about the internet - it was actually\nXerox that largely made the internet possible:\n[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044446430457753...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577539063008406518.html)\n\n __Edit: overall, I have to concede, it is kind of dumb to attribute the\ninternet to a single entity or person - it was a pretty natural progression of\ntechnology - basically the digital evolution of phone lines. Could you imagine\ntrying to patent the internet?\n\nIf the government really wants to help out with energy, it should loosen\nenvironmental restrictions. I am as much a supporter of green tech and\nprotecting the environment as the next guy, but there is something like 1000x\nthe volume of natural gas under our soil as all the oil in the world combined.\nThe sheer amount of wealth generated from tapping that resource could fund all\nkinds of green tech, and lessening foreign dependence creates jobs here and\nmakes us stronger politically.\n\n~~~\nrayiner\n> If the government really wants to help out with energy, it should loosen\n> environmental restrictions. I am as much a supporter of green tech and\n> protecting the environment...\n\nIt's not about protecting the environment in the abstract. It's about who\nbears the costs of industrial activity. Loosening environmental reactions\ndoesn't reduce costs, it shifts costs from polluters to the general public,\nparticularly to the poorest people.\n\nPolluting the air you breathe is no different than any other injury--if the\ngovernment has any function it is to protect your bodily integrity. It is a\nfailure of organized society when a company can profit by physically hurting\nyou, and it's economically inefficient to allow polluting industries to shift\nthe inherent costs of their activity onto other people. It causes companies to\npick the technologies that have the most costs that can be passed to other\npeople, not the technologies that are the most absolutely efficient.\n\nThe oil, coal, etc, industries were made possible by the intervention of\ngovernment. Did you know that in the 1600s in American law pollution was\nbasically illegal? E.g. if water ran through your property, it had to leave as\nclean as it went in. Allowing people to pollute during the industrial\nrevolution was actually a tremendous government subsidy of industry.\n\n~~~\ngavanwoolery\nIt is actually not the government's job to decide this - it is the voters.\nPeople vote with their mouths and dollars, and right now everyone just does\nnot care enough to boycott coal power or stop driving SUVs. I'd like solar\npanels to become cheaper and electric vehicles to become more common, but the\ngovernment cannot realistically control free markets like energy generation.\n\nThat said our perception of air pollution may be a bit exaggerated.\nAtmospheric aeroforming is a very difficult task -- even if we tried actively\nfor 500 years, I think we might have difficulty changing the composition of\nthe earth's atmosphere significantly. Before air pollution is even a _real_\nthreat, our technology will have probably progressed far enough naturally\n(i.e. sans government investment) to handle any problems. Keep in mind there\nare over 5,000,000,000,000,000,000 (5 Dectillion!) kilograms of atmosphere.\nHumans produce 2,500,000,000,000 kilograms of CO2 year roughly (2.5 trillion).\n_However_ , each tree (on average consumes 33 kilos of CO2, and (by NASA\nestimate) there are roughly 400,000,000,000 trees on earth -- thus trees could\nconsume up to 13,200,000,000,000 (13.2 trillion kilos of CO2), and CO2 is\nheavier than air so probably a fair amount of it reaches the ground. Even if\nonly 1/5 of the trees processed CO2, we would still be not generating any\nsignificant amount of it. Anthropogenic global warming is mostly alarmist\ntheory until we prove humans have a significant effect on the atmosphere (as\none scientist pointed out, the earth has warmed and cooled dramatically before\nhuman existence, and it will continue to during it, despite our actions).\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nIt is the governments job to protect you from other people physically injuring\nyou. That's the whole point--you don't get a choice. I can protect my daughter\nfrom inhaling particulate matter from coal energy just by not using coal\npower. It's literally the economic definition of negative externality--where\nthe costs of activity are borne by people not parties to any transaction.\n\nAlso your analysis of air pollution is shockingly bad and you should feel bad.\nWhat on earth makes you think pollution mixes perfectly with the whole\natmosphere before anyone breathes it in? It's like saying 2+2=cat.\n\n~~~\ngavanwoolery\nI do feel bad ;) - yes, I am aware that the thermodynamics of our atmosphere\nare extremely complex, so complex that we can barely model them. This is\nexactly why I advocate people to be wary of when any scientist claims \"x is\ngoing to happen in y years\" -- we simply do not know how our atmosphere will\nbehave, no more than we know what the exact weather will be like in two\nmonths. Right now, everything is basically a theory - we know that CO2 warms\nthe atmosphere, but we do not know how much CO2 will be in the atmosphere in 2\nyears (we do not even presently have an exact amount).\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nWe don't need to know exactly how much CO2 will warm the atmosphere. We have a\nprobability distribution. We can't quantify the economic damage of climate\nchange precisely, but we know enough to know it won't be $0, which is what the\n\"wait and see\" point of view prices the cost as.\n\nAlso, climate change isn't even the big issue here. I'm talking about much\nmore mundane and also much more damaging air and water pollution from\nfactories, cars, etc. We have very solid empirical evidence about that. Did\nyou know that after the EPA's ban on leaded gasoline, blood lead levels in\nchildren dropped by a factor of 3-5x in just one decade? See:\n<http://www.epa.gov/ace/body_burdens/b1-graph.html>. This corresponds to a\nmultiple IQ-point impact from lead. What's the dollar value of a multiple IQ-\npoint impact on the nation's children (and future workforce)? It's a huge\nnumber.\n\nDid you know that a recent Harvard Medical School study concluded that the\ntrue price of coal power factoring in the externalized environmental costs is\n2-3x as much as the market price?\n[http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/green/greenblog/2011/02/new_...](http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/green/greenblog/2011/02/new_harvard_study_looks_at_ful.html).\nThe same study found the total externalized costs of coal power to be\n$200-$500 billion/year:\n[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2010....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2010.05890.x/full).\nHere in Chicago we recently shut down two coal-fired power plants that were\ncausing $100 million in health damage per year and only creating 50-60 jobs\neach.\n\nThe total cost of environmental damage being down every year, in terms of\nquantifiable impact to people is probably into the trillion dollar per year\nrange. People tend to think of environmentalism as being about \"soft values\"\nbut that couldn't be further from the truth. Even if we assign zero value to\nthe environment itself, we can't avoid putting a dollar figure on the value of\nthe services the environment provides us. When New York manages to avoid\nbuilding a $6-$8 billion filtration facility by properly managing the\nCatskills watershed, we can't avoid the inescapable economic conclusion that\ndamage to the Catskills and similar watersheds needs to be valued in the\nbillions of dollars range. We can't avoid the conclusion that when a company\ndumps waste into those watersheds, it's an economic injury no different than\nif tore up city streets or caused a bridge to collapse.\n\nIt's the government's job to protect us from all this, the same as it's the\ngovernment's job to protect us from people who steal your car or break into\nour houses. It goes to the heart of why government exists.\n\n------\nrayiner\nThe larger \"government shouldn't pick winners and losers\" meme is idiotic in\nthe context of alternative energy and green tech. It's basic economics that\nthe market fails to pick efficient winners and losers in industries that\ninvolve large negative externalities.\n\n~~~\nothermaciej\nMost economists do not accept that direct government subsidy to businesses\nleads to an economically efficient outcome, even in cases of negative\nexternalities. Many economists would say that Pigovian taxes or creation of\nmarkets in the externality are likely to be more efficient. Bottom line:\nmarket failure does not mean that government solutions are automatically\nbetter. Government failure exists too!\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nI think in the political discourse, pigovian taxes would be considered\n\"government picking winners and losers\" (specifically losers).\n\nAlso, the question isn't whether direct subsidies are more efficient than\ntaxing externalities. The question is whether direct subsidies are more\nefficient than doing nothing (which is the only politically feasible\nalternative).\n\n~~~\nothermaciej\n1) I read a lot of economics blogs and I see many economists who are against\n\"government picking winners and losers\" in the form of subsidies; but favor,\ne.g. revenue-neutral carbon taxes. There are strong economic reasons why the\ntwo are not at all the same.\n\n2) Direct government subsidies for favored corporations is likely less\neconomically efficient than doing nothing in cases. Subsidy decisions are not\nguided at all by the info encoded in the price system, and are instead likely\nto be based on rent-seeking by favored interests groups. See\n<[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem\u0006...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem>);\n\nYour original comment cited \"basic economics\" and implied that the government\nwould be better than the market at \"picking winners and losers\" in the face of\nnegative externalities. But that is not a consensus view among economists.\n\n~~~\nrayiner\n> Direct government subsidies for favored corporations is likely less\n> economically efficient than doing nothing in cases.\n\nIn cases, yes. Given the sheer magnitude of thee externalities in\nenvironmental situations, not likely. We're talking trillions of dollars of\nimplicit subsidies here.\n\n~~~\nothermaciej\nI believe you are committing the \"Yes Minister\" fallacy:\n\n\"Politician's logic: We must do something. This is something. Therefore we\nmust do it.\"\n\nDirect government subsidies create deadweight loss, and by hurting the\ncompetitive position of companies and technologies that don't get the subsidy,\nthey can actually make the negative externality worse. You can't justify a bad\nintervention just by pointing to the magnitude of the externality.\n\n------\nbeatgammit\nMeh. Tesla is still in debt (and had to renegotiate their loan at that), so\nRomney's technically correct about that. The major benefit I see from the\nTesla project is it puts pressure on other companies to make better electric\ncars.\n\nI really hope they go mainstream, but it seems they're not targeting the\naverage Joe. If it's going to be an \"energy\" project, it needs to go\nmainstream, like the Nissan Leaf or the Chevy Volt. I just don't see why the\ngovernment should be sponsoring a company that will probably only ever sell to\nupper and upper-middle class customers.\n\nDon't get me wrong, I love the Tesla company, but I think there were more\ninteresting points of the debate than this. To be fair, Romney didn't single\nout Tesla; it was lumped in with other projects that haven't proven successful\nyet.\n\n~~~\ntantalor\n> Tesla is still in debt\n\nYes, they have debts, about $505M.[1] They also have $700M in assets.[2]\nCalling them a \"loser\" implies bankruptcy or insolvency.\n\n[1] <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/tesla-motors>\n\n[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors>\n\n------\ndr_\nInteresting. Musks' political contributions are widespread, not to one single\nparty, but apparently none for Romney, allowing him to make such a comment:\n\n[http://www.opensecrets.org/usearch/index.php?q=elon+musk&...](http://www.opensecrets.org/usearch/index.php?q=elon+musk&searchButt_clean.x=0&searchButt_clean.y=0&searchButt_clean=Submit&cx=010677907462955562473%3Anlldkv0jvam&cof=FORID%3A11)\n\n------\ntsahyt\nPolitics aside, Tesla is not the future either. At least not with their\ncurrent models or anything derivable. Sure, they're doing a great job building\nbattery powered electric cars but personally I don't see how they can work for\neveryone in the same way that fossil fuel powered cars do today.\n\nI'm driving a diesel (being european this isn't too odd) and I'm driving a lot\nof long distances. The beauty about the fossil fuel powered car is, that I can\ndrive some 800km on a tank, stop for fuel which takes me about 5 minutes and\nthen carry on. Tesla claims a 3-3.5h charge time. Even if the range was the\nsame, which it isn't, this just isn't gonna work for anyone who drives across\na country rather than through cities. To this day I haven't heard of any\nbattery powered car that is charging in acceptable time compared to filling up\na fuel tank.\n\nDon't get me wrong, in a way I like electric motors. The torque they produce\nis amazing! What bothers me is the use of batteries. The technology I\npersonally saw most potential in was the use of hydrogen fuel cells. The tank\nis filled with hydrogen, the fuel cell powers the electric motor. I'm not for\na second suggesting hydrogen is a good \"fuel\" in the sense that we can just\ndig it up somewhere and get additional energy. What hydrogen is good at\nthough, is storing energy and because filling a tank with it happens in a\nmatter of minutes it's a whole lot better than carrying thousands of laptop\nbatteries in your car.\n\n~~~\nwutbrodo\nI'd wager that most automobile use day-to-day doesn't come close to 800km\nstretches. Would it not be interesting enough if electric cars managed to\nreplace all the fossil-fueled, city-driving cars? Even with that point aside,\nI don't think one can write off Tesla based on a snapshot of charging\ninfrastructure at this instant. There are already concepts like Better Place\nthat involve swapping out batteries instead of waiting to charge the one in\nyour vehicle. A little less ambitiously, DC Fast charging stations (already\ninstalled in places like Los Angeles, Wash. state and Oregon) charge EVs up to\nroughly 80% of capacity in around 30 minutes. My point isn't that the system\nis perfect, or that these concepts completely solve the range issue with EVs.\nComparing charging options now to even one or two years ago shows a\nsubstantial difference in potential (heh), so it seems a little myopic to say\n\"I can't do this right now perfectly so it will never happen\".\n\n~~~\ntsahyt\nGood point on the city cars and yes you're right, predicting the future has\nnever gone well and I can't predict how the infrastructure is going to look\nlike in a decade or so. However, the hydrogen fuel cell technology is here\n_now_ and it works well yet there's very little hype around it. Hybrids and\nEVs on the other hand are hyped to hell and back while (for the time being)\nthey are just not good enough. Hybrids, yes, obviously. But they don't solve\nthe problem. Additionally those batteries weigh quite a bit. Unnecessary\nweight == wasted energy.\n\n~~~\nwutbrodo\nThanks for the insight; I had heard about hydrogen fuel cells as far back as\n2002, but only in a very theoretical sense (plus I was in middle school back\nthen...). They definitely do look promising; my guess regarding why there\nhasn't been much hype around them is that (per Wikipedia) they've been\nprohibitively expensive until rather recently (in 2002, hydrogen fuel cell\ncars were estimated to cost $1mn, $300k in 2009, etc)[1]. That being said, it\ndoes like it's approaching cost-effectiveness in the near future.\n\n[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle#Fuel_cell_cost>\n\n------\nsudonim\nHeadlines like this always remind me of the term wikipedia taught me:\n\"Disambiguation\". A simple Mitt Romney Calls Tesla Motors a 'Loser' would have\nclarified in the headline whether the author meant Tesla (the person), or\nTesla (the car company). Leaving it vague probably gets more clicks.\n\n~~~\nwmf\nWhy would Romney have anything at all to say about Nikola Tesla?\n\n~~~\nSquareWheel\nI have no idea but it was my first assumption. But then I also assumed it was\ntaken out of context.\n\n------\nmichaelfeathers\nThank goodness he wasn't talking about Nikola. I was about to have a fit.\n\n------\ngaius\nFlagged; flamebait.\n\n------\nnicolaus\nWhen the government set up and fostered the development of the Internet, was\nit picking winners and losers then, too?\n\n~~~\nanamax\n> When the government set up and fostered the development of the Internet, was\n> it picking winners and losers then, too?\n\nThe total expenditures then were a small fraction of what we're spending now.\n\nDo you really think that the ROI today is as high as it was then?\n\nDo you really think \"govt spent money well once\" implies \"govt money spent now\nis well spent\"? (It's also false that \"govt money was spent badly in the past\"\nimplies \"govt money spent now is badly spent\".)\n\n------\nzeruch\nThe constant dissonance between \"don't you dare touch all the subsidies we\ngive the petro\" industries and the \"dont you dare waste money on any\nalternatives\" is just dumbfounding. I mean, the stuff is orthogonal to\npolitics (or at least it should be).\n\n------\ngrkovalev\ni think, all this interest around for Tesla, grants and Obama associated with\nelection president program. I like Teslo but it is too early say about loosers\nor winners Teslo.\n\n------\ntemp1111\nIs GM also a loser?\n\n~~~\nprotomyth\nFrom an American taxpayer point of view, yes they are. We aren't going to get\nour money back anytime soon if at all.\n\n~~~\ngfodor\nGM has paid back its loans and for the taxpayer to break even on the stock the\ngovernment owns (~30%) it currently needs to about double.\n\n[http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2012/08/29/automaker...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2012/08/29/automakers-\nreport-card-who-still-owes-taxpayers-money-the-answer-might-surprise-you/2/)\n\n~~~\nanamax\nYou're \"forgetting\" the $15-20B in tax carry-forwards that are typically lost\nin bankruptcy. And, by stiffing some public pension plans who owned GM bonds,\nthat bankruptcy increased the taxes that those jurisdictions will have to pay.\n(That money went to the ordinarily unsecured pensions, Fiat, and a couple of\nother places.)\n\nGM and Chrysler's assets would have been bought and put to use.\n\n~~~\ngfodor\nIf you really think liquidating GM and Chrysler's assets would have resulted\nin anything other than a net destruction of wealth for the U.S. I don't know\nwhat to tell you. What good is a car factory if the entire supply chain has\nbroken down?\n\nYou can argue that the loans should not have been made on principle, and you\ncan argue that they were a poor investment vis a vis net return to taxpayer\ndollars, but it's very hard to argue that they were a net loss on U.S. GDP\nunless you assume a \"controlled bankrupcy\" for GM and Chrysler would not have\ndestroyed the U.S. (or global) auto industry. That's a big leap.\n\n~~~\nanamax\n> If you really think liquidating GM and Chrysler's assets would have resulted\n> in anything other than a net destruction of wealth for the U.S. I don't know\n> what to tell you. What good is a car factory if the entire supply chain has\n> broken down?\n\nWhy do you assume that the supply chain would have broken down?\n\n> it's very hard to argue that they were a net loss on U.S. GDP unless you\n> assume a \"controlled bankrupcy\" for GM and Chrysler would not have destroyed\n> the U.S. (or global) auto industry. That's a big leap.\n\nIt's easy to assume that standard bankruptcy would not have destroyed the US\nauto industry because there's no reason why it would have destroyed the US\nauto industry.\n\nBankruptcy is basically about separating assets from liabilities.\n\nIf GM's assets are well-suited to profitably making cars, that's what they'd\nhave been used for post-bankruptcy. Why do you assume otherwise?\n\nUS airlines go bankrupt every so often. Their creditors take a loss but the\neffect on the rest of us is that a few flights get cancelled and that's about\nit.\n\n~~~\ngfodor\nComparing GM, Ford, and Chrysler all going bankrupt simultaneously in the\nmiddle of credit crisis is not comparable to when individual airlines go\nbankrupt due to poor management. The auto industry is highly concentrated in a\nsingle geographic area and are all economically dependent upon one another due\nto shared suppliers. It's very likely that if GM or Chrysler went bankrupt\nFord would too. Who would be left then to use these assets? Some unnamed US\nautomotive company? A Japanese automotive company? (imagine how that would go\nover.) Just how long do you think it would have taken for Detroit to get back\nto work? A month? 6 months? A year? A decade? Don't forget that if Detroit\nwent bankrupt and turned into a dust bowl, aside from the untold amounts of\nhuman suffering it would drag down GDP and have wide-ranging effects on the\nrest of the country.\n\n~~~\nanamax\n> Comparing GM, Ford, and Chrysler all going bankrupt simultaneously\n\nGM was the only problem because Ford wasn't in trouble and Chrysler was (and\nstill is) negligible.\n\n> auto industry is highly concentrated in a single geographic area\n\nMost \"US made cars\" are not made in Michigan.... \"In 2011 , the Detroit Region\nproduced 1.56 million vehicles, accounting for nearly 82% of Michigan's motor\nvehicle production, over 18% of the United State's motor vehicle production,\nand nearly 12% of North America's motor vehicle production. Currently more\nthan 151,000 metro Detroiters work in the automotive and auto-related\nindustries.\"\n[http://www.detroitchamber.com/component/content/article/14-a...](http://www.detroitchamber.com/component/content/article/14-about-\ndetroit/924-auto-industry)\n\nUS auto suppliers sell to all companies that make cars in the US.\n\n> Who would be left then to use these assets? Some unnamed US automotive\n> company?\n\nNot necessarily - there are folks who could have afforded the assets. (Penske\nis a minor player and they made a serious bid for Saturn.)\n\nNote that GM was selling cars for more money than it cost to make them - the\nproblem was the legacy liabilities, liabilities which they'd have shed in\nordinary bankruptcy.\n\nThe \"bailout\" money was a political payoff. It mainly went to keep the UAW\npensions solvent and GM shut down Saturn as a sweetener. (The UAW always hated\nSaturn, even after organizing it.)\n\n------\nbenologist\nWired Panders To Reddit, HN, Etc\n\nFixed the title.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCarrier Hotels Are Sexy Again - 1SockChuck\nhttps://datacenterfrontier.com/netrality-carrier-hotels/\n======\naaronem\nFor those like me who'd never heard the term \"carrier hotel\", it's what is (in\nthe US perhaps much more commonly) also known as a colocation center.\n\n~~~\nchinathrow\nMore peering sites/IXes than colo in this case.\n\n~~~\npyvpx\nthough in reality, today the difference is almost academic. One Wilshire is\nknown as _the_ carrier hotel in Los Angeles, if not all of the US. The 4th\nfloor meet-me room was widely known as the most expensive real estate on the\nwest coast, at one time.\n\nWhile many large, international networks still setup inside One Wilshire at a\npremium, if I just need cross connects, I can get them for exactly the same\nprice inside Wilshire Annex -- a more \"colocation for server farms\" oriented\nbuilding that is slightly cheaper and much larger (for individual spaces, not\nin total conditioned square footage, iirc).\n\nWhy do large international carriers pay the premium for being in the \"carrier\nhotel\" One Wilshire? Because they don't want to rely on CoreSite (the\nbuildings and associated interconnection infrastructure management company)\ninfrastructure. They want \"home runs\" to the other large international\ncarriers they interconnect with and sell to.\n\nIf you aren't ATT or AWS, there is little need to be inside One Wilshire --\nexcept perhaps for the \"prestige\" factor.\n\n~~~\nskuhn\nI think this is true in a lot of markets. 11 Great Oaks is the place to be in\nSilicon Valley (with PAIX and MPT as distant second and third), but it's an\nold, shitty building and you can't get any kind of reasonable power density.\nEnter 9 Great Oaks, on the other side of the parking lot, which is a modern\nbuilding that has cross connects at the same price back to 11 Great Oaks.\n\nI think there's a lot of money to be made in having modern buildings that are\nsituated close by the dominant carrier hotels. The crazy money is still made\nfrom cross connects, but you can also charge a premium on space because it\nstill makes more sense than running a ton of fiber to the middle of nowhere.\n\n------\nbitwize\nHey, only one place for the FBI and NSA to strongarm into giving them\nunfettered access, and then they can sniff many networks at once!\n\n~~~\ntjohns\nGiven that these are used for peering between different independent networks\n-- pretty much the definition of the \"public internet\" \\-- there shouldn't\nreally be much expectation of privacy. At least not if you're smart about it.\n\n(Network taps aside, at that level traffic can often get redirected through\nhostile networks via BGP spoofing.)\n\nHopefully any important information going through them is already encrypted.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBerry Blocks - your rack in your colors (Kickstarter) - smewpy\nhttp://www.kickstarter.com/projects/asianops/berry-blocks-a-wine-and-glass-rack-that-fits-your/\n\n======\nsmewpy\nHi HN, thanks for taking time to look at my project!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Lynx Queue - jsnell\nhttp://www-dyn.cl.cam.ac.uk/~tmj32/wordpress/the-lynx-queue/\n======\npkhuong\nWhy do the authors report performance at O0 and O1?\n\nAFAICT, the experiments are all single socket. There's an important difference\nin coherency overhead for single VS multiple sockets; same for futzing with\npage protection. It also looks like they only tested a single\nproducer/consumer pair. I expect page protection tricks don't scale as nicely\nwhen you have 20+ pairs on two sockets: contention on the page table _and_ IPI\nstorms. The mprotect trick also seems to depend on using small (4K) pages,\nunless you're OK with fairly stale data; probably not ideal for overall app\nperformance.\n\nAlso while they indirectly mention the batching trick of the disruptor (keep a\nreader-local copy of the write index and vice versa), it's not tested… and\nalso not tested with a forced lag between the reader and the writer. If you\nwant to avoid the ping pong, you can let the reader keep a copy of the\nwriter's write pointer (and update the copy when the reader catches up), and\nartificially make the reader lag behind the writer. That lag gives much\nsimpler code on the hotpath than the MCQueue they mention, which would be the\nclosest equivalent to a laggy disruptor (keeping in mind that the disruptor\npattern tends to be used in low latency settings, so that configuration is\nunlikely to be benchmarked, except indirectly, with cacheline-sized queue\nitems).\n\nIt's interesting work, but as is too often the case, the benchmarks give me no\nactionable information.\n\n~~~\nJweb_Guru\nI think the single socket assumption is justified because they are talking\nabout pairing each executing core with a checker core partner, right? So I\ndon't think the paper is misleading for that use case.\n\n(I do agree that they aren't really fairly representing prior work in this\narea, though, and that nobody optimizing for high performance on commodity\nhardware is likely to be using 4kb pages).\n\n------\neloff\nIt's an interesting technique that I haven't seen before in the context of a\nqueue.\n\nIt's not without drawbacks, relying on handling sigsegv is a pain to make\nportable (libsigsegv helps!) HotSpot handles sigsegv, but I think it's\npossible to install your own handler as well by setting it before loading the\nJVM. When the JVM loads it will chain pre-existing signal handlers behind its\nown, and they'll be invoked if the signal doesn't pertain to HotSpot.\nLD_PRELOAD can be used to accomplish that. My information may only apply to an\nolder version of HotSpot though, I don't know if that's still the case.\n\nThe other thing is relying on the TLB here becomes trickier with huge pages.\nIt seems to me that the section and queue boundary trap pages are set just\nonce at queue init and then never changed - so one could do the same with 2mb\nhuge pages, without wasting memory, if the sections are sufficiently large.\nThe problem is that requires the producer and consumer to be at least 2mb of\nqueue apart, which is probably too much delay for many applications where\nlatency is important. But I really don't see the need for huge pages here. A\nqueue where both producer and consumer are repeatedly touching the same page\nseems like the ideal use case for the TLB anyway.\n\nNot all applications can tolerate a sectioned queue though, for example what\nhappens when the producer writes less than a full section of items to the\nqueue and then pauses for a long time? The consumer won't be able to access\nthat data until the producer finishes the section.\n\n~~~\nstcredzero\n_relying on handling sigsegv is a pain to make portable_\n\nIs there any effect due to virtualization?\n\n------\ngpvos\nGoogle cache:\n[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ekFSEe6...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ekFSEe6ogcAJ:www-\ndyn.cl.cam.ac.uk/~tmj32/wordpress/the-lynx-queue/+&cd=1&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=nl)\n\n~~~\nruneks\nRemember to use the text-only version, or it will hang fetching other\nresources:\n[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ekFSEe6...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ekFSEe6ogcAJ:www-\ndyn.cl.cam.ac.uk/~tmj32/wordpress/the-lynx-\nqueue/&num=1&hl=nl&gl=nl&prmd=ivn&strip=1&vwsrc=0)\n\n~~~\ngpvos\nAh, sorry. My content blocker does that for me.\n\n------\nwebaholic\nThe article is quite simplified I presume to make the reader understand the\ntechnique. There are many more details in the paper. I like that the simpler\nversion is available, kind of like the simple version of an article in\nwikipedia to quickly skim through before diving deep.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Are Facebook keeping data on deleted accounts? - jimnotgym\nI deleted my Facebook account some time ago,  maybe 2 years. I did it with the service where you ask them to delete everything.  Recently I had a need to use Facebook again. From a new computer I attempted to register an account, to find I got an immediate ban! I really did need to join this group, so I used my work computer to create an account from a work email. It worked ok, so I added it to my phone app,  and I got an immediate ban. I certainly never had this phone when I was on Facebook before. I was on 4g at the time,  so it was nothing to do with IP addresses. I don&#x27;t understand how this is possible unless Facebook withheld data about me after deletion. I also don&#x27;t understand why they banned me, do they ban people who leave and rejoin? Has anyone else had this. I also note that &#x27;due to Coronavirus&#x27; you can&#x27;t appeal. This raises the issue of how Facebook can become a service that society relies on whilst arbitrarily denying access to certain users with no right of appeal?\n======\npoormystic\nThere's nothing wrong with your thinking... you've just discovered the real\nworld. Facebook can not be trusted and it will someday amaze you that you ever\nthought otherwise. For me, first principles guarantee predatory behaviour in\nmost relationships... there are few who are motivated by anything other than\nself-interest. If you want to find someone you can trust, look within\nyourself.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy Healthcare.gov was sunk by \"Iceberg-style\" delivery - rjmarvin\nhttp://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=66402&page=2\n\n======\nsqqqrly\nOne of the less useful links on HN.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe 5 causes of failure as an entrepreneur - lewisa\nhttps://www.swabbl.com/en/business-news/the-5-causes-of-failure-as-an-entrepreneur/\n======\nchrislyon\ngreat and real, thanks :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: How to go from Idea to Product? - funwie\nStarting from zero, how do you initiate projects to turn ideas into products or even prototypes?<p>From a thought about building something to design it, implementation, release, and maintenance without losing focus.<p>What do you think is the driving force that keeps you going<p>What advise will you give to people who just write down ideas, those who lack execution?\n======\ndeepthought42\nThe best way to initiate a project and turn it from an idea into a prototype\nis to start. It's literally that simple. Building a product is hard, but the\nonly way it's going to happen is if you start. Other than that, the steps are\nthe same as starting anything else. Determine what you think is a good first\nstep to take, then do it. Then pick the next step and do it. Keep doing that\nuntil the product exists.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nEA: Fired and lost Overtime pay compensation - kelvin0\nhttp://translate.google.ca/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftechno.lapresse.ca%2Fjeux-video%2F201302%2F27%2F01-4625810-jeu-video-les-heures-sup-sans-limite.php&act=url\n\n======\nkelvin0\nThe original article is in french, I submitted a link that translates to\nenglish (google translate).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHackers went undetected in Citrix’s internal network for six months - marcc\nhttps://techcrunch.com/2019/04/30/citrix-internal-network-breach/\n======\nbenmarks\n> Citrix said in a later update on April 4 that the attack was likely a result\n> of password spraying, which attackers use to breach accounts by brute-\n> forcing from a list of commonly used passwords that aren’t protected with\n> two-factor authentication.\n\nHow did Citrix not have 2FA in place?\n\n~~~\nSCHiM\nHaven't read the article, don't know anything about their network. Assuming\nthey use a Windows domain for their corp infrastructure.\n\nLower level Windows authentication mechanisms can't be configured for 2FA. If\nyour active directory domain is functional at all then at the very least your\nsystems need to be able to talk via SMB and ldap to a domain controller. With\nsufficient privileges you're able to execute code on other machines via either\nprotocol.\n\nYou only need an infected machine, not even user credentials, to be able to\nperform password spraying or kerberoasting attacks.\n\n~~~\nsbr464\nNot sure what you meant by lower level mechanisms, but you can protect console\nlogins and RDP with 2FA: [https://duo.com/docs/rdp](https://duo.com/docs/rdp)\n\n[https://help.duo.com/s/article/1084?language=en_US](https://help.duo.com/s/article/1084?language=en_US)\n\n~~~\nw8rbt\nnet commands, kerberos tickets, etc. You can really only 2FA web interfaces,\nVPNs, RDP and interactive console logons. You can 2FA LDAP, but it's a real\npain to do so (I've seen it done).\n\nJust think of any backend protocol that the system uses. The vast majority of\nthose can't be 2FA'ed. This is not Windows specific either. The same is true\nfor most all protocols.\n\nThis is why most companies buy firewalls and VPNs and only 2FA the VPN. That\nmeets most compliance requirements and is simple to do. Is it secure? Probably\nnot, but it checks the box (makes audit happy), so buy compromise insurance\nand move on.\n\n~~~\nynniv\nYou can firewall the backend services and use 2fa to temporarily open them for\na specific workstation.\n\n------\ntodd3834\nI fully assume there are more hacks we don’t hear about that ones we do. Not\nonly because of cover ups but it can’t be that hard to cover your tracks if\nyou know what you are doing.\n\n~~~\npandapower2\nIts an interesting question. If someone unauthorized was on your network\nexfiltrating data how would you know?\n\n~~~\ncmroanirgo\nEven more interesting is how the FBI knew they'd been infiltrated before they\nthemselves did? (There's the obvious conspiracy style accusation in that they\nwere already in there poking around... but that doesn't seem to ring true in\nthis regard)\n\n~~~\nauiya\nSame way any criminal investigator uncovers stolen goods.\n\n------\nm3nu\nSecurity is hard. On the upside, every breach is a chance to learn for\neveryone else. I hope they release more details on how it happened.\n\nIs there any blog or news that summarizes such post-mortem lessons? Could be a\nnice project to collect that.\n\n~~~\nh2odragon\nThere's always\n[https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/](https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/)\n\n~~~\nm3nu\nSubscribed. Also found [https://securereading.com/category/news/latest-\nhacks/](https://securereading.com/category/news/latest-hacks/)\n\n------\nrobbiet480\nHas anyone gotten that kind of call from the FBI and can shed light on how the\nprocess works? Would be fascinating for a outsider and provide a guide on what\nnext steps look like for those poor souls that receive the call in the future.\n\n~~~\n4s2A1tD5\nI've been on this call (both sides of it) probably a dozen times by now. Gov\nagencies are decent at doing research so it's pretty unlikely that the FBI\njust called their 1800 number or whatever.\n\nMost small start ups don't get to the level where anyone that \"big\" is looking\nat them but in the event that something does get flagged the agency will go\nfind their CEO/CTO/counsel on LinkedIn and either message them there or email\nthem. I've never seen an actual vulnerability disclosed in email, if it's a\npotential legal issue (hello SEC and fintech) they may ask that your lawyer\nresponds to them in writing but more often it's just \"this is Agent XYZ with\nABC. I have information about your company, please call me immediately.\"\n\nFor someone bigger (like Citrix) the company is _hopefully_ big enough to have\na team that is connected to the agencies in someway. Either the agency knows\nsomeone who knows them, or they have a designated Security and Compliance team\nthat can handle these inquires.\n\nThe real problems come when you're in the middle of sizes - too big to have\neyes on every email but too small to have a real security team.\n\nAbout 5 years I was working for a SaaS company and one of our clients\naccidentally discovered a pretty serious hole in another company's product.\nThis client wasn't overly tech savy and was basically like \"hey is this how\nthis is supposed to work?\" when it very much was not... so we killed the API\nconnection and told the client we'd take care of it. It's about 7pm ET by the\ntime we figure out what's going on so we call and email the other company but\ncouldn't find anyone. In the end we got the home phone number of their CTO and\nhad our CTO call him at around 10pm. He thought it was a prank call but once\nour CTO convinced him this was a problem he was able to get their on call eng\nto patch it within hours.\n\nNowadays almost any company involved in security work either has a direct line\nto FBI/DHS or has a vendor who does. ie if I'm some medium consumer platform I\nprobably don't get to talk to the FBI directly, but if I called up Crowdstrike\nor any security consulting firm they could do that. In the event that my\nmedium consumer platform was infiltrated by Fancy Bear (and the government\ndecided to tell me, sometimes they don't) an FBI agent would email/call the\nmost likely point of contact for the fastest resolution without causing panic.\nLots of time the damage is already done, two vs four hours on a response won't\nmake a big difference in the long term so no need to email info@ or anything.\n\nOver the past 6-8 years the corporation on public/private cyber investigations\nhas definitely changed as red tape has decreased in sharing of info has\nincreased - even more the last 4ish years since the DNC email hacks. I've had\na clients get a casual \"just a heads up, you should check this out\" from the\ngovernment without no paperwork and no follow up, something that would have\nbeen virtually unheard of 8 years ago.\n\nDHS gets a lot of shit in the media (lots of which is deserved) but they've\ndone a pretty good job just opening basic lines of communication and training\nother agencies that spending 20 minutes looking at a random tip, and following\nup if needed, is actually a pretty good use of time.\n\n~~~\nrobbiet480\nThanks for going to the trouble of creating a new account just to reply,\nappreciate it!\n\n------\nrmason\nIf you'd like a full perspective of the Citrix hack three security people from\nDetroit discussed it on a recent episode of their show, How they got hacked:\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMgdrq0xMLk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMgdrq0xMLk)\n\n~~~\nIncRnd\nDid you watch that? They mentioned that they don't know any more than is\npublicly disclosed how the attack occurred and that they were speculating.\nThat was literally their first sentence about the attack.\n\n------\naxaxs\nHaving worked with Citrix, I'm shocked. Shocked that they detected it at\nall...\n\n~~~\nda_chicken\nI was going to say the same thing, but it sounds like it was the FBI that\nnoticed it:\n\n _> [T]he hackers had “intermittent access” to its internal network from\nOctober 13, 2018 until March 8, 2019, two days after the FBI alerted the\ncompany to the breach._\n\n~~~\nlawnchair_larry\nThis is extremely common. 6 months is not that long, even among competent\ncompanies that have good security. You usually hear about it from the FBI. I\nthink the FBI forwards tips from agencies like the NSA, but they don’t tend to\ngive much information.\n\n~~~\naxaxs\nIt may be common, but I'll disagree it's common for companies with \"good\nsecurity.\" Password spraying doesn't work with good 2FA, nor sane login\nlimits. I set off a flag anytime logging in from a new IP, for example.\n\n~~~\ndub\n2FA and login limits alone aren't likely to stand in the way of state-\nsponsored hackers.\n\nLots of companies still haven't upgraded to zero trust / BeyondCorp AuthN, and\nlots of companies don't have reproducible signed build artifacts from CI/CD\nwith automatic policy enforcement regarding the properties that those build\nartifacts must have before they can be deployed.\n\nHigh-profile companies that think VPNs and networking rules are a security\nsolution have probably already been hacked and just don't know it yet.\n\n------\nempath75\nIf you have anything of value, I absolutely guarantee you that there are\nhackers in your network right now.\n\nOne thing that frustrates me more than anything else is people assuming that\ntheir corporate network is safe. Your firewall and your vpc or whatever is a\nspeed bump at best. You have to assume that you have an attacker on the desk\nright next to you, because you will eventually.\n\n~~~\nviraptor\nThat's a really defeatist attitude. There are different levels of \"value\" and\ndifferent levels of protection. Not everything is internet facing. Not\neverything is managed like a corp where turnover requires lots of access\nchanges. Not everything allows you persistence in the network. And not all\naccess is \"access\".\n\nI really wish we moved past the \"everybody's owned\" idea. Your defence should\nbe proportional to the value you can lose. You can monitor for the rest. And\nyou can't guarantee the are hackers in my network. (Unless you're saying\nyou're guilty of breaking in? ;-) )\n\n~~~\nhibikir\nI don’t think the grandparent says that everyone is owned, but that if your\ndata is interesting enough, your threat model must include employees that are\nwillingly exhilarating data, sometimes for nation states. That your first\nbarriers are therefore assumed to be breached to those attackers.\n\nThis of course does not apply if you are not holding on to anything\ninteresting, but it’s very easy to become interesting at a certain size, or if\nyou have interesting customers. Still, not everybody.\n\n~~~\nmandevil\nYour threat exposure is not just your network. It's all of your customers and\nall of your vendors as well.\n\nRecall that the Target POS hack back in 2014 happened because someone hacked\nthe largest refrigeration contractor in western Pennsylvania, then bounced\nfrom there onto the Target Partners Online portal with legitimate credentials,\nand then from there in unspecified ways got onto the POS system. Obviously\ngoing from TPO to POS is a failure of Target's network security, but their\nnetwork perimeter was much larger than just Target computers.\n\n------\nngcc_hk\nYou need network sniffer and pattern recognition. Otherwise basically you hope\nsome of the unusual activities will affect ids/ips (or touch internet).\nHowever if it is normal account you need some sort of intelligence to\nrecognise and alert.\n\nNot many software can do this.\n\n~~~\n6wKZhFkquv\nThrowaway, worked at Citrix. The unfortunate thing about this comment is that\nthey sell Citrix Cloud as having the intelligence to detect anomalies exactly\nlike this in your network.\n\n~~~\nzild3d\nOuch. This page [0] hurts a little bit to read now. Feel free to grab their\nfree ebook though! You'll learn how advanced analytics can help IT identify\nuser behaviors, determine risk profiles, and assess and address potential\nthreats\n\n[0] [https://www.citrix.com/analytics/prevent-security-\nbreaches.h...](https://www.citrix.com/analytics/prevent-security-\nbreaches.html)\n\n------\nmarkholmes\nThis might not be the right place for this, but where should one get started\nwith security research?\n\n~~~\nrando444\nI feel like an answer to this would depend largely on your age, background,\nand what you are looking to learn.\n\n------\nqaq\naverage is 206 days\n\n~~~\nGodel_unicode\nAccording to whom? That's significantly above what fireeye says (71 until\ninternally discovered):\n\n[https://content.fireeye.com/m-trends](https://content.fireeye.com/m-trends)\n\n~~~\nqaq\nAccording to Google search snippet I am totally ready to trust that FireEye\nestimate is much more accurate\n\n------\ninapis\n>Citrix said in a later update on April 4 that the attack was likely a result\nof password spraying, which attackers use to breach accounts by brute-forcing\nfrom a list of commonly used passwords that aren’t protected with two-factor\nauthentication.\n\nWow. This simply reinforces the fact that humans cannot, and should not, be\ntrusted with actively maintaining security of a system especially if there\ncould be significant economic consequences.\n\nWould a password manager help in this? I don't know.\n\nProbably a hardware token which controls all and any access to a system.\n\n*Removed some ambiguous sentences.\n\n~~~\nGodel_unicode\nI was with you up until the last paragraph, but no. That's not 2fa, that's\nswitching one factor for another.\n\nPeople should use a password manager with an rng to generate and store\npasswords. IT departments should run password spraying attacks themselves as\nwell as blacklisting known-compromised passwords. There's really good tooling\nfor this (likely the same tooling this adversary used!)\n\nSeparately from this, people should use hardware 2fa tokens whose weakest link\nisn't the cell phone company support.\n\nEdited for clarity.\n\n~~~\nu801e\n> People should use a password manager with an rng to generate and store\n> passwords.\n\n[...]\n\n> Separately from this, people should use hardware 2fa tokens whose weakest\n> link isn't the cell phone company support.\n\nWhat would be better is to support certificate based authentication in\ncombination with a username and password. Then you have 2FA without having to\nshare the private key. You can even get 3FA if the private key requires a\npassphrase to decrypt it.\n\nUsing SMS or email based 2FA is not secure (or is only as secure as the email\nor cell phone account as you already pointed out). Using TOTP requires sharing\na secret between the device and the server.\n\n~~~\nIncRnd\nA passphrase doesn't make it 3FA, since that is an already used factor class,\nwhat you know. 3FA is one from each category of what you know, what you have,\nand what you are. Depending on the implementation, what you describe may only\nbe 1.5 factor auth.\n\n~~~\nu801e\nI believe we can agree that just using a username/password for authentication\nis 1FA (single factor authentication). If we add a one-time token sent via SMS\nor email, or generated via TOTP, that's generally considered 2FA (with the\nusername/password considered what you know and the one time token being what\nyou have, I believe).\n\nWhat I proposed was using a client-side TLS certificate in combination with\nthe username/password for authentication. If the private key corresponding to\nthat certificate requires a passphrase to decrypt, then it should be more than\n2FA. What you know is the username/password, what you have is the private key.\nWhether the passphrase for that private key is considered what you know vs\nwhat you are is debatable (since, unlike the username/password or one-time\ntoken, the secret isn't shared by transmitting it over the network).\n\n~~~\nIncRnd\nMany security people will discount everything that someone says once they see\nthat person misapply marketing-phrases to describe security technology.\n\n2FA does not become 3FA when adding a new passphrase to a system that already\nhad a knowledge based entry.\n\nA password for a private key is _never_ considered what you are. You are\nseverely misusing security terms and will mislead people to believe that a\nproposed solution has greater strength than it really possesses.\n\n~~~\nu801e\n> [You] will mislead people to believe that a proposed solution has greater\n> strength than it really possesses.\n\nThen explain how authentication via a username and password validated server\nside, a client-side TLS certificate validated during the negotiation of a TLS\nconnection between the client and server, and a passphrase validated locally\non the client's device is not a better solution compared to typical 2FA\nimplementations using email, SMS, or TOTP.\n\n~~~\nGodel_unicode\nKey-logger on the box your soft cert is on. Soft cert is comprised\nimmediately, fully, and permanently. And you might never know. With email/sms,\nat least it's possible for you to realize they're compromised, and with TOTP\nthe underlying keymat is likely not on the device so the attacker has to\nrepeatedly win the race.\n\nMore importantly, this is also a false dichotomy, as the correct answer here\nis hardware protection of the private key, e.g. yubikey.\n\n~~~\nu801e\n> Key-logger on the box your soft cert is on. Soft cert is comprised\n> immediately, fully, and permanently.\n\nThat essentially means the entire machine is compromised and logging into any\nservice would allow the adversary to access them. That would compromise the\nemail and SMS routes. If they have root access to my phone (or whatever I use\nto store the TOTP secret), that would allow them to generate the correct one\ntime token to log into any service that I use TOTP 2FA with.\n\n> With email/sms, at least it's possible for you to realize they're\n> compromised\n\nThat's assuming I check carefully and often enough. If someone brute-forces my\npassword over IMAP, then they could read my messages without me ever knowing.\nBut I could always check the process list on my computer to determine if a\nkeylogger is installed.\n\n> and with TOTP the underlying keymat is likely not on the device so the\n> attacker has to repeatedly win the race.\n\nIt depends on the application. If someone got access to my phone, they could\neasily get the TOTP secret out of my GAuth app.\n\n> the correct answer here is hardware protection of the private key, e.g.\n> yubikey.\n\nExcept that it's not universally supported. It's not going to work with my\nemail client nor will it work with my IRC client.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLearning Ada - weinzierl\nhttps://words.steveklabnik.com/learning-ada\n======\njcadam\nI learned Ada because I took a new job back in 2008 (at Boeing, doing\nspacecraft modeling and simulation) and discovered on my first day that I\nwould be using Ada. Naturally, I was expected to just pick it up on my own\n(Not complaining, that's pretty much how it goes these days).\n\nMy mother (who found it amusing I was going to be coding Ada in 2008) gave me\nher old Ada books from the 80s (her employer at the time sent her to an actual\ncourse to learn the new DoD mandated language, back in the days when employers\ninvested in their people), which I still have. I ended up programming in Ada\nup until 2012, when I managed to get a job using Java.\n\nThe language itself I rather liked (better than Java, for sure). It's the only\nlanguage I've ever used that tended to produce programs that worked correctly\non their first run (getting them to compile was the difficult part). The\naerospace industry OTOH, I don't miss.\n\n~~~\nbibyte\n> It's the only language I've ever used that tended to produce programs that\n> worked correctly on their first run\n\nFrom my experience that is generally true with languages that have strong\nstatic type systems (like Haskell and Rust).\n\n~~~\neeZah7Ux\nScientific research on the source of bugs shows that type-related bugs are a\nminority.\n\n~~~\nOneWingedShark\nWell, there's a bit of a problem in how you're qualifying things. For example,\ncertain things that aren't obviously handled by the type-system might be.\n\nOne example would be loops and off-by-one errors. For the case of For-loops on\narrays Ada's solution arguably does so via the type-system; in Ada arrays\n\"know\" their own length, start- and stop-index and these are query-able via\nattributes.\n\nSo, given Function Sum( Input : Integer_Array ) return Long_Long_Integer you\ncould for-loop on the parameter, querying the 'Range attribute -- yielding a\npossible implementation of:\n\nFunction Sum( Input : Integer_Array ) return Long_Long_Integer is Begin Return\nResult : Long_Long_Integer := 0 do For Index in Input'Range loop Sum:= Sum +\nLong_Long_Integer( Input(Index) ); End Loop; end return; End Sum;\n\nAnd the entire problem is avoided via the type-system.\n\n------\ngvb\nWRT \"out\" parameters, it means that very literally. There the variable is only\npassed out, it is not passed \"in.\" Steve's test never assigns \"A\" in Foo() so\n\"A\" is an uninitialized variable that then gets stored in the mainline \"A\"\n(which has the same name, but is an entirely different variable). The mainline\n\"A\" is assigned the value 12 but then gets overwritten by the uninitialized\nvalue passed out by Foo().\n\n    \n    \n       with Ada.Text_IO; use Ada.Text_IO;\n    \n       procedure Outp is\n          procedure Foo (A : out Integer) is\n          begin\n             Put_Line (Integer'Image (A));\n          end Foo;\n          A : Integer := 12;\n       begin\n          Foo(A);\n       end Outp;\n    \n\nA clearer example would be:\n\n    \n    \n       with Ada.Text_IO; use Ada.Text_IO;\n    \n       procedure Outp is\n          procedure Foo (A : out Integer) is\n          begin\n             Put_Line (Integer'Image (A)); -- Uninitialized variable, random value\n             A := 42;\n             Put_Line (Integer'Image (A));\n          end Foo;\n          A : Integer := 12;\n       begin\n          Put_Line (Integer'Image (A));\n          Foo(A);\n          Put_Line (Integer'Image (A));\n       end Outp;\n    \n\nThis will still give the uninitialized variable warning (typically can and\nshould configure the compiler to turn that into an error, not a warning).\n\nPlaying compiler, the output should be\n\n    \n    \n       12 -- Outp()\n       <random value> -- Foo()\n       42 -- Foo()\n       42 -- Outp()\n    \n\nYou can make variables in and out by saying that (literally). This will do\nwhat Steve expected:\n\n    \n    \n       with Ada.Text_IO; use Ada.Text_IO;\n    \n       procedure Outp is\n          procedure Foo (A : in out Integer) is\n          begin\n             Put_Line (Integer'Image (A));\n          end Foo;\n          A : Integer := 12;\n       begin\n          Foo(A);\n       end Outp;\n\n~~~\n0xDEEPFAC\nAlso, added in a recent version of the language (as part of 2020) you can\nsimply use 'Image directly on an object saving you a bit of typing : ). And\nlet me let you in on a secret Ada programmers don't talk about or put in\nexamples - you don't have to type the Identifier at the end of the procedures!\n\n    \n    \n       with Ada.Text_IO; use Ada.Text_IO;\n       procedure Outp is\n          procedure Foo (A : in out Integer) is\n          begin\n             Put_Line (A'Image);\n          end;\n          A : Integer := 12;\n       begin\n          Foo (A);\n       end;\n\n~~~\nthestoicattack\nOoh, I like that new 'Image usage.\n\nI was told that adding the identifier to the end of blocks is just a good\npractice, since the compiler can tell you if you misread the nesting and wrote\nthe wrong name.\n\n------\nnoneeeed\nI miss working in Ada, but I don't miss the industry.\n\nWorking in SPARK Ada and Prolog early in my career taught me the importance of\nunderstanding what the \"philosophy\" of a language was in order to use it well.\nAfter far too much time spent trying to make them behave like a different\nlanguage it clicks and then you get productive.\n\nI think it's made me much more tolerant of new languages and more forgiving of\nmy struggles when first learning them. Some times it can take a while to\nunderstand what idomatic programs look like in a new language, especially when\nit's a very differnt model to ones you have been used to.\n\n------\ninetsee\nI started reading about Ada back when it was still called \"Green\". One of my\nco-workers was one of the (very large) group of people invited to evaluate the\ncandidate languages, and he let me read the draft proposal for the Green\nlanguage. I learned Ada and used it in several projects throughout my career.\nIt was one of those \"good ideas\" the Defense Department came up with that\ndidn't quite work out.\n\nAt the time the programming language that became Ada was proposed, the Defense\nDepartment had somewhere around 700 programming languages being used in\nvarious projects. A project looking to add staff had very little chance of\nfinding someone who knew the language being used. They had to hire an\nexperienced programmer and expect that he would be able to get up to speed on\nthe language being used in time to meet the (often unreasonable) deadlines.\nAda was intended to replace many or most of those 700 programming languages.\nIt sort of worked for a while. A lot of smart people worked on developing the\nlanguage, and it was used in a lot of projects. The problem was that it never\ngot wide adoption outside of defense contractor companies and aviation\ncompanies, and sometime back the Defense Department dropped the mandate that\nall new projects had to use Ada.\n\nAda is still being used in some fields, especially in some Defense Department\nprojects, avionics and air traffic control, but it isn't in the TIOBE top 20\nlist of programming languages. Unless you're planning on making a career of\nworking on defense projects, Ada probably isn't a language you should think\nabout learning.\n\n~~~\nRaphael_Amiard\n> Ada is still being used in some fields, especially in some Defense\n> Department projects, avionics and air traffic control, but it isn't in the\n> TIOBE top 20 list of programming languages. Unless you're planning on making\n> a career of working on defense projects, Ada probably isn't a language you\n> should think about learning.\n\nI guess it depends:\n\n1\\. Ada, associated with SPARK, constitutes one of the most cutting edge\ntechnologies when it comes to automated proof for embedded code. This has\nencouraged some very cutting edge users such as NVIDIA to invest into\nAda/SPARK ([https://blog.adacore.com/nvidia-blogpost-\nannouncement](https://blog.adacore.com/nvidia-blogpost-announcement))\n\n2\\. Learning a new language is always interesting. If you are interested in\nembedded programming in general, there are few languages more interesting than\nAda today IMHO. I would probably tell somebody \"Learn C/C++, Ada and Rust\".\n\n------\nfuball63\nWhen I learned Ada, I used the wikibook [1] and bought an inexpensive used\ntextbook from Amazon. I have a basic competency of the language, and really\nlike the quality of the compiler toolset, the type system, the \"DIY\" OOP (as I\ncall it), and the packaging system. My biggest issues with it are that\nbindings for databases, graphics libs, and web development libs are few and\nfar between and usually just a lonely github repo. But, as another positive,\nwriting bindings to C libs seems pretty easy [2], so someday I'll give it a\ntry.\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming)\n\n[2]\n[https://flyx.org/2012/06/13/adabindings1/](https://flyx.org/2012/06/13/adabindings1/)\n\n~~~\nxemdetia\nI think this is the death knell of most people trying to casually pick up Ada\nor most used-but-not-extremely-popular languages from the 70's and 80's, our\nexpectation of doing something meaningful and sensible has just moved so far\nthat not having the supporting libraries means a lot of upfront work. I think\nI've gotten stuck here for LISP, getting back into Pascal, Ada, and probably\nsome other languages I wanted to experiment building a modest size application\nwith.\n\nIt really shows how valuable having that very active and mature core library\nor managed package library is to a language. I did the same learning path as\nthe prior poster but then just ended up stuck.\n\n~~~\nfuball63\nPart of it is admittedly laziness and used to a certain convenience. There's\nno package manager for the language, and OS package managers rarely carry\nused-but-not-extremely-popular language bindings. But the code is out there,\nlike this SDL2 binding:\n[https://github.com/Lucretia/sdlada](https://github.com/Lucretia/sdlada)\n\n------\nThomasBHickey\nI watched the whole Ada process (a series of reports that developed into the\nlanguage spec). While often criticized at the time of being 'designed by\ncommittee' that wasn't really the case, but did have a lot of people\ncritiquing it. It was a great language once you understood how to structure\nyour programs. I think it would have had much better uptake if there were\nfree/open source implementations of it back then, but I don't think the DoD\neven considered that, so it cost quite a bit of money to experiment with it\nand very few students had a chance to use it.\n\n~~~\n4thaccount\nI'd argue it is largely true now. If the free version is GPL'd, students can\neasily use it, but a lot of folks won't want to develop in something that has\nwhat is likely to be a high commercial cost. I'm still curious how much they\nwould charge me to use the commercial version to write some scientific\nsoftware that will likely have no customers. Would they be lenient and not try\nto charge what they would for a developer at Boeing? I'd love to know as Ada\nand Spark just seem really cool.\n\n~~~\nThomasBHickey\nThere is GNAT\n[https://www.gnu.org/software/gnat](https://www.gnu.org/software/gnat)\n\n~~~\n4thaccount\nThat's what I'm referring to. I believe there is a runtime clause that means a\nprogram (Ex: hello world) isn't automatically under the GPL. However, a lot of\nthe Adacore libraries are either GPL or commercial. At least this is how it\nhas been explained to me.\n\n------\ncdeutsch\nAda was the first language I learned at the University of North Dakota's\nComputer Science program in 1996.\n\nSince the university is known for its Areospace program, I guess that made\nsense to pick Ada as their primary language.\n\n~~~\nprotomyth\nInteresting, in Fall of 1988, University of North Dakota was using Modula-2 as\nthe starting language for their core classes having switched from Pascal in\nthe Summer. The classes were taught on an IBM 370, so students also got to\nlearn the joys of Xedit, IBM terminals, EBCDIC, and batch processing. They\nonly used Ada for the Software Engineering class which I took and was very\ndisappointed in, but not the language which I liked. Lisp was not fun on the\nVAX.\n\nOne of the things I'm a bit ticked about is that they moved the CompSci\nprogram from Aerospace to the School of Mines and Engineering. So, just as the\ndrone era is starting they move CompSci to better align with other colleges.\nWhat a crock.\n\n~~~\nbarryp\nOh cool, a UND Computer Science Alumni hangout. I started with Pascal on the\nIBM mainframe VSPC in the fall of '83\\. Batch processing was a shock coming\nfrom an Apple ][ background in high school. Was nicer when we got access to\nthe interactive machines like the VAX and the PDP/11\\. I liked Ada, vaguely\nremember it being on the VAX.\n\nStill have my photocopied manual for BSD 2.9 on the PDP/11 - never imagined at\nthe time that that Unix stuff would take over the world. Nice to have had that\nearly exposure.\n\n~~~\nprotomyth\nThey still had VSPC in 85, but had switched to CMS by 87. The punch card\nreader / printer ended in 85, and somewhere in a box I got a stack of cards. I\ntook C on the VAX (they bought a AT&T 3B2 somewhere around 90 or 91), and I do\nvaguely remember Ada was on the VAX also.\n\nMy early hate of Lisp was a direct result of them teaching it on the VAX. I\nwas told the VAX had 4MBytes of actual memory and the each Lisp instance took\n5. I played poker in the basement of Upson II while the damn thing loaded my\nprogram and played more while it ran. Being a lover of Forth at that point,\ntended to make me think Lisp was a bit of a hog.\n\nSomehow the school got a Cray (I think from a oil company), but they weren't\ngiven the manuals right away. The manuals that they printed came from\nmicrofiche I had. I'm not sure if any students ever got to use it.\n\nUND did give a unique experience in a CompSci degree.\n\n~~~\nbarryp\nNever got to touch the Cray, but did some Fortran work on a Perkin-Elmer\nminicomputer the Aviation department had.\n\nLooking back, in the space of 3 years I got to work on quite a few completely\ndifferent OSes (VSPC, VM/CMS, MS-DOS, VMS, Unix, whatever the Perkin-Elmer\nwas) and languages (Pascal, 370 assembler, PL/I, Fortran, Lisp, Ada, C)\n\nI wonder if kids nowadays get that kind of broad experience.\n\n------\neggy\nSyntax is a sore point for me, but as a polyglot, I push through my bias. I am\nlearning Spark instead of full Ada, and instead of Rust for a project simply\nbecause there is a lot of precedent and libraries for what I need to do - a\nmachinery controls package with high-level safety. I do like Rust though, but\nI am also playing with Zig for good measure.\n\n------\nxhrpost\nWikipedia > \"Ada was originally designed by a team led by French computer\nscientist Jean Ichbiah of CII Honeywell Bull under contract to the United\nStates Department of Defense (DoD) from 1977 to 1983 to supersede over 450\nprogramming languages used by the DoD at that time.\"\n\nWow, it is mind blowing to me that 450 different programming languages existed\nin the late 70's. Do we know what most of these were? Do most exist today or\nhave they been lost to time?\n\n~~~\nJtsummers\nMany were variants or specific implementations of other languages (like\nAlgol), or assembly languages for numerous machines. Remember, this was pre-\nInternet. A lot of languages were developed because an office needed them for\na specific application. Or they knew the theory (enough at least) of a\nlanguage but didn't have an implementation for their hardware or OS, so they\nmade a new one if they couldn't purchase one. And when you develop the\nlanguage in tandem with the application, you end up with something custom and\nnon-portable (or hard to port).\n\n------\ntombert\nI've never used Ada, but some of the graybeards I talk to have said that it's\nsort of like a predecessor to Rust, at least in some of the same concepts of\nsafety with an emphasis on performance.\n\nWith the risk of having my foot planted in my mouth, how \"systems-ey\" is Ada?\nCould I conceivably write an OS in nothing but Ada (and obviously a bit of\nassembly to kickstart it), similar to something like Redox-OS in Rust?\n\n~~~\nnickpsecurity\nA few OS's and a micro-hypervisor done in Ada or SPARK including a high-\nassurance, secure kernel for Ada apps with strong isolation and leak\nresistance. Given its main domain, Ada is often used to write bare metal with\nno OS or for the app (not OS) in a runtime on top of a RTOS. They're usually C\nand/or assembly since those are dominant for OS work.\n\n[https://www.muen.sk/](https://www.muen.sk/)\n\n[https://marte.unican.es/](https://marte.unican.es/)\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiiN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiiN)\n\n[https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a340370.pdf](https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a340370.pdf)\n\n[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220713695_Specifica...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220713695_Specification_and_Verification_of_the_ASOS_Kernel)\n\nNote: This one is also downloadable on ACM or IEEE. I got it off of one of\nthem. Has good example of Gypsy language for verifying systems.\n\n~~~\njecel\nSince you mentioned BiiN we can add its predecessor to the list. The iMAX\noperating system for Intel's first 32 bit processor, the iAPX432 (which Intel\nlikes to pretend never existed), was written entirely in Ada.\n\n[https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~Brecht/courses/702/Possible-\nReading...](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~Brecht/courses/702/Possible-\nReadings/oses/imax-multiprocessor-os-sosp-1981.pdf)\n\n------\neddieh\ncamelCase, snake_caske, PascalCase, kebab-case, so I think I'd call that\nPascal_Snake_Case or something. Other than that this is really great, Ada is\npretty neat and used in the most critical systems in the world:\n[https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-project-\nsummary.html](https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-project-summary.html)\n\n~~~\nsteveklabnik\nYeah, I got hung up on exactly what to say and then was like \"Steve, you're\ntrying to learn Ada, not trying to determine what this case is called\" and\njust wrote something. I like Pascal_Snake_Case, I'll update the post. Thanks.\n\n------\nagumonkey\nFunny how trends work, Ada is popping up in mainstream places (considering HN\nmainstream somehow, also reddit) recently.\n\n~~~\nainar-g\nAda has always had a reputation for being a more secure system-level\nprogramming language, and _thankfully_ security is very much _in_ right now. I\nthink Rust has played a significant role in this mini-resurrection of Ada.\n\n~~~\nagumonkey\nMuch probably. Safe + low level was synonymous with Ada but it wasnt trendy\n\n------\neithed\nI've learned Ada at uni - while I didn't appreciate it at that time, probably\ncurrently (almost 10 years later) I'd find it more interesting. Fact that your\napplication doesn't compile if you don't write assertions validating it\ncertainly has gained more appeal to me.\n\n------\nmarcodave\nBack in university (~2005/06) I still remember the \"concurrent and distributed\nprogramming\" course, held by an _extremely_ opinionated professor who was an\nAda enthusiast and spent half of the lessons bashing Java and its lack of\nproper constructs for concurrent programming. We all at the time commonly\nagreed to hate on Ada :) (it was not a popular professor)\n\n------\nmr_overalls\nAda looks extremely similar in syntax to PL/SQL - Oracle's database-side\nprogramming language. In fact, I wasn't too surprised to find out that its\noriginal syntax was borrowed from Ada.\n\n[http://www.orafaq.com/wiki/Ada](http://www.orafaq.com/wiki/Ada)\n\n~~~\nmcguire\nI believe they're descendants of ALGOL along with PL/1 and Pascal, which\nexplains the similar syntax.\n\n------\nbibyte\nI really like the format of this article. From my very brief experience with\nAda it seemed like a very well designed language to me. It's a shame it didn't\nget popular enough to compete with C and C++.\n\n~~~\n0xDEEPFAC\nYea Ada 95 was set to take off in some sort of way, but Java came out just a\nbit earlier and crushed it with publicity - and then Javascript was \"birthed\"\nin 2 weeks and ruined software forever..\n\n~~~\nafiori\nIt is fair to mention that when javascript was created it was indeed the best\ntool for the job\n\n~~~\ngambler\nIf browsers used SmallTalk we would leapfrog about 30 years of reinventing the\nbroken wheel and everyone would be better off (except maybe a few overpaid\nframework experts).\n\n~~~\nkbenson\nAssuming there would have been the same rate of adoption. I don't know, is it\nas easy to learn SmallTalk and do small tasks with it?\n\nThe existing ecosystem may have been pretty good, all things considered. Fast\nramp-up, with eventual shift into supporting bytecode efficiently so any\nlanguage can run.\n\nWould you rather be coding around the inconsistencies in the SmallTalk\nimplementations of Microsoft, Google and Mozilla, or just delivering a\nbytecode package of your code in whatever your favorite SmallTalk\nimplementation (or any other language) is?\n\n~~~\nfao_\n> is it as easy to learn SmallTalk and do small tasks with it?\n\nBASIC would be better than Javascript.\n\nC would be better than Javascript.\n\nLiterally anything else, would have been better than Javascript.\n\n[http://archive.oreilly.com/pub/a/javascript/excerpts/javascr...](http://archive.oreilly.com/pub/a/javascript/excerpts/javascript-\ngood-parts/bad-parts.html)\n\n[https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat)\n\n[http://www.javascriptgotchas.com/gotchas/common-\njavascript-e...](http://www.javascriptgotchas.com/gotchas/common-javascript-\nerrors-and-mistakes.html)\n\n[https://medium.com/javascript-non-grata/javascript-is-a-\ndysf...](https://medium.com/javascript-non-grata/javascript-is-a-\ndysfunctional-programming-language-a1f4866e186f)\n\n[https://whydoesitsuck.com/why-does-javascript-\nsuck/](https://whydoesitsuck.com/why-does-javascript-suck/)\n\n[https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2015/12/09/javascript-t...](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2015/12/09/javascript-\nthe-bad-parts-with-john-k-paul/)\n\n[http://blog.thefirehoseproject.com/posts/why-im-angry-at-\npeo...](http://blog.thefirehoseproject.com/posts/why-im-angry-at-people-who-\nonly-learn-javascript/)\n\n~~~\nkbenson\n> C would be better than Javascript.\n\nYeah, I don't think so. No matter how bad Javascript is, C would be way worse.\nEvery problem of C ported to the web so all those bad practices that are\nmostly harmless because they are usually in simple programs with no network\naccess when local program all of a sudden being entirely exposed.\n\n------\nagumonkey\nthe <receiver>'<method> syntax killed me as a student, killed me hard. That's\nhalf the reason I went deep into Lisp.\n\n------\nxnXY\nThe title should be \"Why Rust is superior to Ada in 5 minutes\".\n\nHe is not trying to learn Ada.\n\n~~~\nsteveklabnik\nYou can think whatever you’d like, anonymous hacker news account created for\nthis comment. Everyone can read ill will into things.\n\nI am trying to understand Ada better. I draw some comparisons to Rust because\nthat’s one of the reasons why I’m reading about it in the first place: people\nask questions comparing the two and I have no idea of the answers.\n\nI spent much more than five minutes here, even though the writing is short;\nthe learning website has a lot of stuff! As I said I’m the intro, this is\nmostly just a log of thoughts. But it was a good solid half-day of\ninvestigation. I’ll be doing more of it in the future, too.\n\n~~~\nainar-g\nThanks for the write-up. It pretty much mirrors every thought I've had while\nreading the same tutorial, except that I personally find That_Funny_Ada_Case\nweirdly appealing.\n\nAnd, since you're here, you probably have a typo: “GNATT” in the paragraph\nabout threads should be “GNAT”.\n\n~~~\nsteveklabnik\nThanks for the thanks, and for the typo spotting! I've fixed it.\n\n------\nEugeneOZ\nJust some log of initial negative emotions. Maybe author forgot, but Rust can\nraise negative emotions on the initial stage also. It takes some effort and it\nworth it. Maybe with Ada it's the same.\n\n~~~\nGolDDranks\nHow did you read negative emotions into that? Most of it was \"oh, cool! I\nwonder if...\" or something like that.\n\n~~~\nEugeneOZ\nIt mostly \"it doesn't work as I expect, cool\". So yes, I read it as negative\nemotions.\n\n~~~\nkbenson\nWere you reading that as sarcasm? From Steve's other writing I've seen, and\nhis comments here, I don't think he was being sarcastic. I think he's\nliterally expressing something along the lines of \"Oh, that's not what I would\nhave assumed, but it's an different way that I may or may not have thought\nabout much. That's cool, I'll see how it goes.\"\n\nIf that interpretation comes across as negative, then I think you either must\nview most interactions with the world as negative or you've somehow managed to\nsurround yourself with \"yes\" men...\n\n------\nlayoutIfNeeded\nInteresting. I would have guessed that a person contributing to what's touted\nas the new safest language ever, should already be familiar with prior art in\nthe field. Otherwise one would be prone to unnecessarily reinventing the\nwheel...\n\nBetter late than never I guess.\n\n~~~\nlukebitts\nWhat a weird expectation\n\n~~~\nAnimalMuppet\nYes and no. No, if one is designing something that will be state of the art,\nit is not unreasonable to expect that the designer knows what the previous\nstate of the art is.\n\nBut yes, it's weird. First, he's not a designer of the language. Second, there\nare too many languages for anyone to be intimately familiar with all of them.\n\nAnd third, there's just this weird bunch of very negative comments. What's up\nwith that? You don't like Rust? (Not you, lukebitts, but the original\ncommenter.) Fine. Don't use it. You don't like the publicity it's getting? You\nthink your language is better? Languages are tools; they're not rock bands.\nFeel free to like and use yours. Rust doesn't take anything away from that.\nYou don't like _Steve_? You think he's getting too much attention? He's\ngetting it for useful, informative contributions. You want that kind of\nattention? Go and do likewise, rather than whining and sniping because someone\nelse is getting attention.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhat is your opinion on learning iOS development now? - bidev\n\nHello, iOS is out for around 6+ years now.  I am computer programmer but involved in more towards data management, backend stuff. I am planning to learn iOS app development.  I am 28 years old now. What is your opinion on learning at this stage ? Where do you see future of iOS from here ?\n======\npope13\nI think you'll safely get a few years out of the skill set, as even if it\nstarts downhill now IOS has a large footprint. It's also not a bad way to get\nfamiliar with objective C, and many of the tools and frameworks can be used\nfor OS X development.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy is Mayor Bloomberg Talkin’ Trash on Boston at Techstars NYC Demo Day? - pgatzke\nhttp://bostinnovation.com/2011/10/18/why-is-mayor-bloomberg-talkin-trash-on-boston-at-techstars-nyc-demo-day-twitter-reacts/\n\n======\napaprocki\nWhy don't Google and Apple work together to create a single smartphone\nplatform? In the end, cities are businesses. NYC's tax base might only be\nslightly improved if Boston becomes the east-coast leader. Alternatively, if\nBoston and NYC have some competition, each city will boost its scene and\noverall the east-coast will improve. There is nothing wrong with a little\ncompetition :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nmacOS app to open the current directory in Terminal, iTerm, Hyper or Alacritty - rayascott\nhttps://github.com/Ji4n1ng/OpenInTerminal\n======\njimpudar\nRight clicking in a Finder window should allow you to open a \"New iTerm2\nWindow Here\" if you are an iTerm user.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFreedom, the US Government, and why Apple are still bad - zdw\nhttp://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/39999.html\n======\nIBM\nHuh. The fact that Apple are the only ones that can sign software that runs on\nan iPhone may just allow them to defeat the DoJ in court.\n\n[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-24/apple-\nfbi-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-24/apple-fbi-fight-\nasks-is-code-protected-as-free-speech)\n\nApple has indicated that they're going to continue to keep increasing the\nsecurity of their products in the future, which may make it impossible to\nupdate firmware to the Secure Enclave (or at least require the user's\npermission first), but that's actually a weak measure.\n\nI'm not sure why tech people think that technical means to accomplish zero\nknowledge is the holy grail, that will never trump having the law on your\nside. Congress could pass legislation (like CALEA for tech companies) that\nwould require everyone to design their products to make them accessible to law\nenforcement any time they want.\n\n~~~\nspiralpolitik\nAt this point you might as well kiss goodbye to the US tech industry as nobody\noverseas will by anything that has a US government mandated backdoored.\n\n~~~\nIBM\nI'm pretty sure if Congress passes legislation mandating it they can influence\nplenty of non-American businesses by withholding their ability to do business\nin the US.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway2048\nIf they don't buy American products? I don't think so.\n\n~~~\nIBM\nDo any of those businesses want to sell their products to Americans? Maybe\nthey can sell different SKUs with those capabilities but they'll have to do it\nfor every market they sell to because the US won't be the only government that\nwill want backdoors.\n\n~~~\npjc50\nIndeed. This already works the other way round: companies selling into China\nhave to comply with their \"great firewall\" requirements.\n\n------\nthothamon\nI agree with all the ideas in the article, but at a bare minimum, Apple should\nconfigure devices so that no firmware update can be installed unless the user\nenters their PIN first. This would be an easy move that would make this whole\ndebate moot. The problem is that Apple only partially protected users from\nApple itself.\n\n~~~\nteacup50\nThere's a much bigger elephant in the room, though:\n\nUpdates to the OS and applications are encrypted, completely opaque, signed by\nApple instead of the original developer, can be granted additional\nentitlements for arbitrary permissions, and cannot be audited by anyone but\nApple without a jailbreak.\n\nWhen coupled with push updates, Apple already _has_ a targeted backdoor into\nevery iPhone anywhere connected the network.\n\nThis is a much more difficult problem to solve, as securing against that\nthreat model requires an diverse ecosystem of 3rd-party audit/review,\nsoftware, and tools.\n\nI don't see any way of solving that issue while also maintaining their\nstranglehold on the platform via DRM.\n\n~~~\nikeboy\nDon't users need to confirm OTA updates?\n\n~~~\nsaurik\nThis person is talking about for applications, to which many users have\n\"automatic updates\" turned on; this is one of the places where Android is\nfundamentally by design more secure than iOS (though by implementation has\noften been weaker :/ see the Master Key family of vulnerabilities).\n\n~~~\nikeboy\nAh. Missed that point.\n\nWhat's the highest permission an app can have? Wouldn't that be the limit of\nthe vulnerability here? Also, many permissions require manual granting, e.g.\ncontacts, camera.\n\nEdit: also, that could be mitigated partly by requiring user approval of any\nupdates adding permissions.\n\n~~~\nsaurik\nThe kinds of permissions that can be granted to an application by way of\nentitlements is pretty brutal and go well beyond the permissions that people\ntend to think of applications as being able to have: there are entitlements\nfor things like \"can install other applications\" and \"can obliterate all data\nstored on the device\". I'm not certain if some of these are blocked to\napplications of certain kinds, but I know that a lot of them are available if\nApple chooses to deploy them.\n\n------\nupofadown\nI don't have anything against Apple retaining control of the firmware on an\nApple phone. It _is_ their closed system after all. It's just that Apple\nshould not imply that their phones are somehow secure. The FBI thing reminds\nus that they are all effectively backdoored by Apple.\n\n------\npjc50\nOn this topic I have a large unfinished essay:\n[https://github.com/pjc50/pjc50.github.io/blob/master/pentagr...](https://github.com/pjc50/pjc50.github.io/blob/master/pentagram-\ncontrol.md)\n\n------\nbcook\n... _is_ still bad? /grammarnazi\n\n~~~\nRedoubts\nThe British tend to use plurals with corporations.\n\n~~~\nbcook\nInteresting... the plural says to me \"all the individuals at Apple\", vs the\nsingular referring to the company as a single, faceless entity.\n\nI wonder if that was intended by the author.\n\n~~~\nokonomiyaki3000\nSurely not. Just a weird British thing. Like how they write \"math\" as \"maths\"\nand pronounce it \"mafs\"...\n\n------\nzekevermillion\nWhose logo is on your i-thing? Render unto Apple the things that are Apple's,\nand keep private what is truly private in the first place.\n\nIf you'll forgive the abuse of an old parable...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSecurity Update Release - slyrus\nhttps://www.postgresql.org/about/news/1746/\n======\nnewsat13\nHow does one verify that we got this security update on ubuntu? Don't see it\nin [https://www.ubuntu.com/usn/xenial/](https://www.ubuntu.com/usn/xenial/)\nyet.\n\n~~~\nenzanki_ars\nDebian:\n\n[https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2017-7484](https://security-\ntracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2017-7484) [All vunerable]\n\n[https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2017-7485](https://security-\ntracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2017-7485) [Only postgresql-9.4 and\npostgresql-9.6 (stretch) is vunlerable]\n\n[https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2017-7486](https://security-\ntracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2017-7486) [All vulnerable except\npostgresql-8.4]\n\n\\---\n\nUbuntu:\n\n[http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-\nsecurity/cve/2017/CVE-20...](http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-\nsecurity/cve/2017/CVE-2017-7484.html) [All vulnerable]\n\n[http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-\nsecurity/cve/2017/CVE-20...](http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-\nsecurity/cve/2017/CVE-2017-7485.html) [All vulnerable except postgresql-9.1]\n\n[http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-\nsecurity/cve/2017/CVE-20...](http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-\nsecurity/cve/2017/CVE-2017-7486.html) [All vulnerable except postgresql-9.1]\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGuy Who Copied Digg Slams Digg For Copying Twitter - jordanmessina\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2010/05/29/guy-who-copied-digg-slams-digg-for-copying-twitter/\n======\npg\nActually Reddit didn't copy Digg. It copied del.icio.us/popular. This will be\nclear if you look at screenshots of the two sites in summer 2005. Reddit was\ndel.icio.us/popular with votes instead of bookmarks, in the same way that Digg\nwas Slashdot with votes instead of human editors.\n\nThe differences between Reddit's and Digg's origins are visible even today.\nWhen a story gets enough votes on Digg it becomes the new top story, as on\nSlashdot. Whereas on Reddit stories bubble up from the bottom then sink back\ndown again. This is a significant difference because it makes Reddit harder to\ngame.\n\nOriginally the Reddits thought they'd have to motivate people to upvote\nstories by using the votes to train a filter. But it turned out users were\nwilling to vote out of a form of altruism, so the idea of training a filter\ndied out after a couple months.\n\nAs for the names, what they originally wanted to call Reddit was Snoo, as in\n\"what's new?\" But the name was owned by a squatter who wouldn't sell, so as a\ntemporary expedient Alexis chose Reddit, which Steve and I both hated\ninitially. (They had to settle for calling the Reddit alien Snoo.)\n\nThe Reddits learned of the existence of Digg a week or two after launching.\nThey were pretty bummed. We still use their story as one of the canonical\nexamples to encourage new YC funded startups to launch quickly.\n\nIf Michael wasn't sure whether Reddit copied Digg, he could have just asked\nme. But saturdays are slow days for traffic, especially on Memorial Day\nweekend. Arguably he genuinely thinks he's giving Alexis a gift of pageviews,\nwhich to an online publication must seem valuable almost regardless of\ncontext.\n\n~~~\nkn0thing\nThanks, PG. In fact, I was talking about delicious -> reddit as recently as my\npublic interview with Jessica on Thursday.\n\nI, unfortunately, care more about reputation than pageviews. My reply has been\nwell-received, but I'd love for Michael to revise his headline to just insult\nme (which he's entitled to do) instead of make stuff up. I even have the email\nI sent Steve alerting him to digg (dated 7/11/05 - we launched 6/23/05).\n\n[http://alexisohanian.com/are-we-still-talking-about-this-\nres...](http://alexisohanian.com/are-we-still-talking-about-this-response-\nto-m)\n\nThe rest of the evidence to support what PG has said in the above comment can\nbe found here, in screenshots from reddit since day 0.\n\n<http://reddit.blogspot.com/2006/12/time-machine.html>\n\nI hope everyone has a splendid memorial day weekend. Surely the Internet has\nmore important & interesting things to be discussing.\n\n------\nvito\nCan we keep this sensationalist tripe out? (That's rhetorical.)\n\nHaving read Alexis' letter I'd hardly call it \"slamming,\" and undeserving of\nthis melodramatic bullshit.\n\n~~~\ncoderdude\nThey won't stop because it gets them clicks. People won't stop submitting\nbecause it gets them karma. It will never end.\n\n------\nbenologist\n\"One of the founders of Reddit, a Digg-clone\"\n\nHarsh. Digg might have done it first by a short margin but while digg fights\njust to remain relevant reddit and its community are doing massive actual good\nfor the world - Haiti, Kiva, etc.\n\n~~~\ncoderdude\nI liked your comment better when it called TechCrunch a tabloid clone.\n\n~~~\nbenologist\nYeah I was going to roll with that then a readwriteweb clone since they beat\ntechcrunch by years, thought it was a bit petty though.\n\n~~~\ncoderdude\nWell at least you decided to take the high road.\n\n------\nmark_l_watson\nThe reddit founder letter was basically OK and interesting, but the Techcrunch\ncritique sort-of irritated me.\n\nToo bad: I really enjoyed the Techcrunch web site last week because my\ncustomer CompassLabs was presenting at Techcrunch and it was a lot of fun\nfollowing along remotely. I don't understand the negativity of the linked\narticle though.\n\nThe more positive energy and kindness you give, generally the more good stuff\ncomes back your way. Such a simple principle and it is strange that some\npeople just don't get it.\n\n------\nErrantX\nI mean, what Alexis said was pretty silly for sure. And this does make some\nreasonable points r.e. that.\n\nBut why the vitriol? Smacks of trolling to me...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGetty's New Watermark - tortilla\nhttp://www.gettyimages.com/Creative/Frontdoor/NewWatermark\n======\nJimmyL\nI think this is great - it's either a win or no-worse-than-it-used-to-be,\ndepending on the kind of Getty client you are.\n\nIf you're a designer at an agency (which would use watermarked photos in their\ncomps, and then purchase proper rights once the client has approved) this is\nno worse than it used to be. You still have a watermarked image, it's just\nslicker looking. Having the URL in there is handy, but you would have recorded\nthat anyways as part of your workflow. It's worth noting that the license\nbehind these images still hasn't changed - you're only allowed to use them for\n30 days, and not in a finished commercial product.\n\nThe other kind of client is the small-time blogger who would never pay for the\nimage rights anyways, and would just use a watermarked comp shot in a post.\nAccording to the click-through license agreed to when downloading these\nimages, this client type shouldn't exist - it's explicitly against what's\npermitted in the license - and yet it does, widely. For these clients, putting\nthe URL in the image is a win for Getty; people who used these images will\nkeep using them, but now those clients' viewers will be able to easily track\nthe image back to its source, making it easy to actually purchase the image\nlegally. This turns someone using a Getty image without permission from a\nproblem (violating a license) to effectively free advertising.\n\nThe obvious next step - although I bet this would be difficult based on all\nthe pre-existing contracts with the photographers - would be to accept that\nthe second type of client exists, change the license on the comp shots, and\ntry to bring them into the Getty fold. Change the license to say that you're\nallowed to use the images anywhere online you'd like for free, as long as the\nphoto and watermark stays intact and your number of average monthly unique\nusers is less than, say, 10,000. Doing this would take a sizable user base and\nturn them from license-violators into free advertising. Financially, this\nwouldn't affect 90% of the type-2 clients (they'd stay under the viewership\ncap), and would only impact the bottom line of mid-sized publications, who\nreally should be paying for the rights anyways.\n\n~~~\nrdl\nFor type 2, what about allowing them to be embedded and linked from the gty.im\nserver (which could enforce the 10k hits limit, do analytics/tracking, etc.),\nfor free?\n\n~~~\nJimmyL\nI like it - but I'd do both. No matter how nice the service gty.im would\noffer, there would be people out there who wouldn't want to link to the Getty\nservers, who would just choose to copy/paste anyways, or who would get stopped\nby the signup and clickthough requirements.\n\nMaybe make gty.im a value-added free service - users could use the comp shots\nfree for X users/month (where X is enough to cover only small/local sites),\nand then the next tier (X to 3X, say) would be hosted off gty.im, either for\nfree or for a nominal fee. It'd provide analytics, a better-quality image, and\nwould indirectly act as a sales funnel for moving up to a full Getty contract\n- and even if it didn't, it would start the relationship between Getty and\nsmall/independent publishers who have never thought about image rights.\n\n------\nofficemonkey\nThis is seriously better than the old \"gettyimages\" watermark. And it's a very\nthoughtful way to get traffic back to their website. It (almost implicitly)\nexpects people to use and share the watermarked image.\n\nI predict a greater use of watermarked images and greater traffic back to\nGetty Images.\n\n~~~\nrorrr\nThey could've made shorter URLs if they used numbers and letters (base 36).\n\n~~~\nmatt312\nThe short URL link isn't just random, it correlates to the image's \"Creative\nImage Number\".\n\n~~~\nofficemonkey\nAh, so powerusers can just write down the number and know it's the Getty\n\"Creative Image Number\" and look it up at their liesure. Very clever.\n\n------\nMaro\nThose pictures look really nice, so I clicked through to see how much it would\ncost to use them on a website. It asked me all kind of bullshit questions like\nwhich industry I want to use them in, whether it's a site or an ad, TBH I\ndon't think there's even a good way to answer their question. At the end it\ngave me a quote of $160 to use the image for a 1 month period. What a joke.\n\n~~~\npvarangot\nAre you at least moderately aware of the average costs and profit margins for\nthat kind of photography? u$d 160 a month is sort of on the cheap side for the\nkind of images in that landing page, specially if you are thinking about the\nkatana one. And of the stock photo services, Getty is by far the one that\ntreats the photographers with most respect and compensates them very\ncompetitively.\n\n~~~\nGoodIntentions\nGetty isn't after anyone that thinks 160 is expensive. They're after\ncompanies/individuals that understand 160 is much cheaper than paying 1+\nprofessional for n hours to \"maybe\" get a usable shot.\n\nHaving said that, the profusion of really really good modestly priced pro-am\ncameras has spawned an ugly race-to-the-bottom on stock photography. You can\nget ( often quite good ) stock photos for next to nothing from the low cost\nstock photography sites.\n\nTo put it in HN parlance, Getty's model has been thoroughly 'disrupted'.\n\n~~~\npvarangot\nNone of the images on that landing page can be achieved with only a moderately\npriced pro-am camera. I understand your point, but Getty's model has not been\ndisrupted and in fact they have no real competition. Getty offers professional\nimages in a stock-like pricing model, short of agencies like AP there is no\ndirect competition to them.\n\nLets go one by one on the photos on that landing page in terms of minimum\nequipment and people behind them... short obviously of a camera and an\nachieved photographer, that is already hard enough to come by and expensive\nbut is a common factor in all images.\n\nKatana image: model, make up, big room with stupidly expensive lamps, costume,\nkatana, watermelon, more than one 1k/2k+ flash head.\n\nWar image: ticket to war zone, bulletproof vest, AK-47, missile launcher,\nmissile, model/combatant. Very likely many pro camera bodies, pro to resist\ndust, many to have spares. You won't find a pro body there if one breaks up,\nunless you can loot a dead photographer.\n\nLondon image: helicopter, helicopter pilot, weather controlling machine (can\nbe replaced by an insane amount of luck or many tries and a lot of time in\neach one).\n\nGuy with car hat: model, car hat, not sure if only one flash head or camera\nmounted strobe. I'm not sure of how much a car hat costs but I think this is\nthe cheapest photo of the lot.\n\n~~~\n_delirium\nI agree these examples of high-end Getty photographs don't have a lot of\ncompetition, but I do think they've been losing their formerly strong grip on\na wider range of middle-end stock photography, which traditionally was a big\nmoney-maker for them (and photographers) due to being high-volume. Nowadays\nthere are a lot of alternatives for run-of-the-mill stuff like \"photo of guy\nworking at a cubicle\", \"photo of multi-racial group in a park smiling\",\n\"cheesecake on a plate with strawberry topping\", etc.\n\n------\npg\nAre there also invisible watermarks on the images?\n\n~~~\nig1\nGetty used to use Digimarc's steganographic watermarking technology, but I\ndon't know if they still do.\n\n~~~\nk33l0r\nApparently not, just tried to unsuccessfully read the Digimarc watermark off a\nrandom Getty photo in Photoshop…\n\n------\nojilles\nAnother site that takes IP address to force the language, even after chaning\nit back to .com. Sigh.\n\n~~~\nben0x539\nI don't even have a non-english language listed in my browser preferences.\n\nApparently they expect people to use their javascript widget to select a home\ncountry, and then send you to e.g.\n[http://www.gettyimages.com/Creative/Frontdoor/NewWatermark?L...](http://www.gettyimages.com/Creative/Frontdoor/NewWatermark?Language=en-\nUS)\n\n~~~\nWilya\nThis links redirects me to the local language version _with the\nLanguage=mylanguage in the url_. This is beyond annoying.\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\nWhat kind of redirect is used? Maybe you can get around it by blocking\nscripts.\n\n------\njohncoltrane\nDesigners use these watermarked images when goofing around at the beginning of\nthe creative process because they can't buy the dozens of image they need\nbefore actually knowing which one will be accepted by the client. Some images\ncan be cheap, of course : royalty-free photos often are, compared to those\nwith \"exclusive rights\", for example, but it would still take too much time\nand money. I know: I've spent countless hours looking for businessmen/women in\nGetty's and other databases. When you come up with 30 or 40 possible images\nand it's time to try them all in your comp it will be really hard to like this\nstupid square.\n\nSuch a temporary picture MUST be neutral because you need it to fit your\ncomposition/layout. This rectangle is the opposite of neutral: it's huge and\nvery visible. This big square is going to clash more often than not with other\nshapes around the image which won't be aligned with it provoking all kinds of\ntroubles for the designers who use them. Clients will think that the square is\npart of the designer's intent and, when it will be explained to them that no,\nthis big ass square isn't part of the design they will rightfully say \"Well,\nget rid of it!\". But it won't be possible without paying large buckets of\nmoney to Getty.\n\nOr using another service.\n\n------\ntechietim\nI just typed in the address listed on the sample image and, due to the\ncontrast between the text and the image, mistook it as \"gly.im\". Did anyone\nelse notice this?\n\n~~~\ncallmevlad\nI noticed the same thing. The typeface choice makes it easier to confuse \"t\"\nand \"l\".\n\n------\nkibwen\nThis watermark takes up way too much of the image, but I suppose that's the\nwhole point; they don't want to make it easy to crop out the attribution.\n\nThis may seem like an intractable tension, but I don't think it necessarily\nhas to be--at least not in the following situation:\n\n1) The content creator cares more about attribution than monetization.\n\n2) The content sharer cares more about sharing unobstructed images than about\npassing off the content as their own original creation.\n\nIn this case, there could be some sort of standard metadata that accompanies\nthe image and is only displayed upon some user interaction, such as a\nmouseover. We could even use steganography[1] to do this right now, without\nneeding to settle upon a new image format.\n\nI realize this is a bit too idealistic to be taken seriously. Just interesting\nto think about, is all.\n\n[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography>\n\n~~~\nJimmyL\nFor these images, the content creator is Getty (\"they\" didn't press the\nshutter button, but they paid for the shoot and own the images) - and they\ncertainly care more about monetization than attribution.\n\n------\nben0x539\nIf see a thing of the form <three letters>.<two letters that aren't a country\nI know>/<newline><huge number>, it doesn't really occur to me that it's\nsupposed to be a URL. Doesn't help that in their big example image, the \"gt\"\nof gty.im kind of blurs into the bright bit of the image it is laid over.\n\nApart from the pet-peeve of the missing <http://>, is splitting URLs across\nlines a thing now?\n\n~~~\nthere\n<http://>? What's that? My Firefox and Chrome don't show that.\n\n~~~\nmiahi\nThis week a coworker and I (more than 10 years of admin experience each) spent\n15 minutes wondering why one internal web server was not reachable from a\nspecific computer. Turned out that we got so used working with Firefox and\nChrome that we forgot IE8 doesn't understand an address like IP:port/ if you\ndon't specify the protocol (<http://IP:port/>).\n\n~~~\nciupicri\nAs the Zen of Python says, explicit is better than implicit.\n\n~~~\nlowboy\nAs my fingers say, thanks for the reduced keystrokes.\n\n------\nbpowah\nWhat do they do for almost-white images? Hopefully at some threshold they\nswitch to black test. Even at that, a black/white tiled checkerboard image\nwould leave the url illegible. They should have outlined the white text in\nblack.\n\nAlso, it looks fairly easy for an \"unfair use\"-er to \"heal\" the watermark\naway. They should consider a watermark with higher entropy. (like a stipple-\nshaded box or one with subtle random variation in shade around the box edge.)\n\n~~~\nmiahi\nYou don't really need a higher entropy. It's enough to have a strong enough\nshade, so the shaded part loses enough color information that when you undo\nthe shade that part looks posterized. That way an \"attacker\" needs to work a\nlot more on the picture, as it's not easy to add the lost color information\nagain without adding a blur to that part.\n\n------\njoeshaw\nThese watermarks are a lot less annoying, but if I remember correctly the old\nwatermarks were centered on the image, right? These new right-justified ones\nseem like they could be fairly easily abused. It took my about 30 seconds to\nfind one like this:\n\n[http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/singer-and-\nsong...](http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/singer-and-songwriter-\nlisa-marie-presley-is-photographed-news-photo/144741552)\n\nPretty easy to crop out the right shot and have a perfectly fine, watermark-\nless photo.\n\nOn the other hand, like most DRMish solutions, I guess if you're dedicated\nenough to not paying for works like these, you will.\n\n------\nidspispopd\nI have never really understood why stock photo stores insist on aggressive\nwatermarks. They don't help their business, rather the opposite. The number of\npeople who can get by with a low resolution preview image are going to be\nprivate users who are never going to buy the image anyway. (Especially with\nsites like sxc.hu where you can just get high resolution photography for no\ncost.)\n\nAs someone who works with stock photos constantly, I can tell you that clients\nhate seeing watermarks, they're usually right in the way of the useful part of\nthe image and are often distracting. As a result the art department photoshop\nthem out which is painstaking and a waste of time for a low resolution image\nthat is only going to be used once.\n\nI'm pleased that this new watermark is very easy to undo/disguise. Getty seem\nto understand that stock-pirates are fine with using low-resolution, highly\ncompressed preview images without a license, while their actual customers need\nimages with watermarks that are unobtrusive and easier to sell to the paying-\nclient.\n\nThe truth is that the image need only a very minor watermark, so the creative\ncan track down the original. Creative agencies aren't stupid and are well\nversed in the laws that relate to stock images. They don't use random photos\nthey find on the internet, and larger or risk-absolving clients will often\nrequire a copy of the license and waiver for the stock imagery.\n\n------\nDigitalSea\nI think the new watermark is fantastic, it is definitely way better than their\nold watermark (a million times over). If you ever saw what the old watermark\nlooked like, it ruined the images so much. Check out this image with the old\nwatermark here:\n[http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3bvopcnLC1qbi7o0o1_400.jp...](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3bvopcnLC1qbi7o0o1_400.jpg)\n\nThe watermark obscures vital detail in the image, kind of destroys the feeling\nof the original photo. So those of you who can only seem to muster up negative\ncomments, go back to 4chan. The new watermark is innovative in an industry\nthat feels like its been the same forever.\n\n------\nbostonvaulter2\nAnyone have examples of their old watermarks?\n\n------\ntaejo\nSeems like it would be easy to make a GIMP script to remove. I think the\nwatermark needs more entropy/randomness to make it more difficult to separate\nthe image from the watermark.\n\n------\nwaffle_ss\nAll these comments about a silly watermark and not one mention of Getty\nImages's contemptible RIAA-like business tactics of shaking down people who\nuse their photos illegally? The owner of my daughter's daycare had posted one\nof their images on a simple little website he built for us parents, and they\nsent him a letter demanding a few hundred dollars or were going to take him to\ncourt for thousands (he paid up). Apparently they must have some type of\ncrawler that searches the Web for their images.\n\n~~~\nJimmyL\nIt obviously depends on the numbers involved, but from your brief description\nnothing sounds wrong. It's pretty hard to \"accidentally\" stumble onto a Getty\nimage used without a copyright statement which could lead you to think it's\nfree to use, and a few hundred bucks is about what Getty charges as the rack-\nrate for a small business using one of their images (as you can see from their\nwebsite).\n\nMaybe there are details I'm missing, but you don't mention any RIAA-like\npractices or gross inflation of the cost/damages.\n\n~~~\nwaffle_ss\nYou might be right - I've never been in the situation - but he claimed to have\ntaken it from some other site without any obvious copyright notice. Obviously\nnot a smart move, and he did pay a price for it. The whole topic got brought\nup because I was planning on interviewing in one of their Rails shops and by\ndoing research on the company I had stumbled across stories of people that had\nthis exact thing happen to him, so I was shocked when he explained that it had\nhappened to him as well.\n\nI don't think the \"fee\" is unreasonable if a few hundred dollars is the going\nrate for licensing the image (although I personally would never pay that\nmuch), I just find the automated process of hunting these people down and\nasking for money right away (no option to just take it down immediately) a\nlittle distasteful, and in a similar vein to the RIAA's tactics.\n\n~~~\ncount\nWhy should you get the option to 'take it down immediately'? You've already\ncaused the harm / received the benefit / etc., and you should pay for it.\n\n~~~\nwaffle_ss\nDid that daycare owner really cause a harm worth hundreds of dollars - was the\npicture devalued that much by posting it on a micro website visited by maybe a\ndozen people? I think it helps to be a little objective here. I mean, I'm as\ncapitalist as the next guy, but I fail to see how taking taking hundreds of\ndollars away from a small business owner who is technologically naive is\ncorrecting an imbalance in the free market.\n\nIt's a slippery path from there to charging arbitrarily ridiculous amounts\nlike [$15K][1] for a violation, leading to insane lump sum damage amounts like\n[$75 trillion][2].\n\n[1]: <http://arbornet.org/~danpeng/> [2]:\n[http://www.pcworld.com/article/223431/riaa_thinks_limewire_o...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/223431/riaa_thinks_limewire_owes_75_trillion_in_damages.html)\n\n~~~\ncount\nI won't argue about amounts, just the principle behind it.\n\nI don't think it's got anything to do with devaluing the image by posting it\non a micro website, so much as recognizing potential commercial value on\nsomeone else's work, without giving them their due.\n\nIf this had not been a business (like folks downloading mp3s, and not\nreselling them), I'd probably think about it differently, but in this case,\nthere was specifically a commercial intent.\n\nI agree the $15k / $75T thing is beyond ridiculous, especially given the non-\ncommercial nature of that infringement. We're not arguing there.\n\nI'm arguing 'oops, I'm sorry I made money using your work without paying you'\nisn't good enough. Who knows, maybe it could have been $5 - the _sum_ isn't\nthe important part, it's the principle.\n\n------\ngeetee\nWhy not have the info box AND a real watermark?\n\n~~~\ngreghinch\nWhat would the point be? I think this brilliantly satisfies the requirements\nof a watermark while also achieving a simple usefulness. This is where design\nreaches its peak, when functional requirements, practical use, and pleasing\naesthetics meet. Well done Getty\n\n------\ntferris\nPlease help me understand: What is so special about a visible watermark which\nis gone anyway when I buy the image? Was it before that bad? Clueless.\n\n------\nbillpatrianakos\nWow, as of this writing the vast majority of comments are just so negative! Do\nwe have to hate on everything? I like it! It looks way less tacky than their\nold watermark. In fact, it actually makes the photos look better compared to\nthe old watermark and others' watermarks. They did a great job and they're not\ndummies. I'm sure a lot of thought went into how this would look or change\nwhen it was laid over light, dark, or patterned photos. Kudos to them. Getty\nImages preview photos now look way more attractive.\n\n~~~\ngjulianm\nThe only problem I see with this new watermark is that it takes too much\nspace. It's too tall for me, it could be shorter. But it's just a tiny detail,\nI love the concept and the design.\n\n~~~\nfreditup\nIt's actually a square interestingly. Just glancing at it, I felt it was\ntaller than it was wide. Had to measure twice to believe it was a square :D\n\n~~~\nDrbble\nI think the rectangle illusion is created by the text that is vertically\njustified but not horizontally justified.\n\n~~~\nthenonsequitur\nI think the illusion is reinforced by virtue of the square itself being flush\nwith the right-hand edge of the image, but offset from the bottom edge.\n\n------\nm_for_monkey\nA QR code would have been a better choice to embed than the URL. Who wants (or\nable to) type correctly 10 digits?\n\n~~~\nmdda\nYes - that has been the problem that's prevented the adoption of sequences of\n10 numbers in the telephone system </sarcasm>\n\n~~~\nm_for_monkey\nTelephone numbers are always use grouping (432-23-43), which makes copying\neasier. People still have problems with software license codes, although those\nare grouped too.\n\n~~~\nktizo\nHowever you can just imagine any grouping you like though, by using the power\nof thinking about stuff. It's a new process they just invented that, get this,\nlets you think about stuff. It isn't just restricted to thinking about stuff\nlike groups of numbers however, but also works on things like duck\nidentification and fluid dynamics, so it is very flexible.\n\n~~~\npbhjpbhj\nThey should teach that stuff in school. Thinking, that could be really\ntransformative.\n\n~~~\nktizo\nBeen thinking along these lines, I've been wondering how to write a very short\ncourse for people who hate school on how to research and learn stuff.\n\n------\ngbog\nI don't like it.\n\nThere are three purposes mixed in this \"watermark\":\n\na) Give the innocent viewer a way to know the name of the photograph and go\nthe original source of the image, maybe to buy the picture.\n\nb) Make it harder for less-than-innocent people who want to take these images\nand use them for illustrative purposes without people noticing they did not\nactually take these pictures.\n\nc) Inject a fingerprint in these images so that can serve as a proof of\nownership in case of legal issue, and that may also help crawling the web\nsearching for them.\n\nFor a), it seems much preferable to have a classic caption, where more useful\ninformation may fit (date, place, etc)\n\nFor b), with my limited gimp skills, I guess I would need 30 minutes to remove\nthe watermark the first time, and then it would take 2 minutes.\n\nFor c) I suppose a real invisible watermark is actually much harder to erase\nand a better proof of ownership, but maybe they do add such a fingerprint\nalso?\n\nAnyway, I see here yet another contradiction of DRMs: content provider want\nmore and more people accessing their content for free, but they also want, at\nthe same time, this access to be unpleasant enough so that these users would\nbuy the paid content. I don't think this scheme will survive in the long-term.\n\n~~~\nshortformblog\nYou realize that Getty Images used to have much uglier watermarks, right?\n\nExample: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/58607934/stuff/getty.jpeg>\n\nSo in other words, option b and option c has always been on the table.\nHowever, we're in an era where images are becoming much easier to share on\nother platforms. All someone has to do to share a picture these days is to pin\nit or post it on Tumblr. All that metadata gets stripped when people do that.\nAt least with this, people know where to find it.\n\nConsidering the changes in sharing images, why wouldn't Getty want to take\nadvantage of this? That way, if people are going to share them anyway, at\nleast it isn't a total loss to them — and hey, people might even be more\nlikely to share them because it doesn't have a supremely ugly watermark.\n\nMedia outlets pay $100 — each — for many of these photos. This a big business\nfor Getty, so they need to protect it. Now, Getty could do things to make it\neasier for smaller entities — say, bloggers — to take advantage of this. This\nfeels like a good, if imperfect, compromise.\n\nNow _you_ might be willing to use GIMP to modify a photo, but most people\nwon't. It's why Adobe can charge $600 for Photoshop. Too expensive? You're not\ntheir target market.\n\nThis isn't to say there's not a better way, but it just feels like we're\nwringing our hands over what seems to be a good-faith effort to improve\nsomething which previously hindered the experience.\n\n~~~\ngbog\nYou say \"much uglier\" but this is a subjective judgment, right? In fact if I\nhad the choice I may prefer the previous one, they may have a less annoying\ninfluence on the original photo.\n\n~~~\nshortformblog\nI feel like you're just being contrarian at this point — I mean, you weren't\neven aware that this watermark existed until I pointed it out.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nXcode and XCFrameworks (2019) - tosh\nhttps://medium.com/trueengineering/xcode-and-xcframeworks-new-format-of-packing-frameworks-ca15db2381d3\n======\ntosh\n\"\"\" XCFramework has several advantages in comparison with the established\napproaches:\n\n1\\. Packing dependencies under all target platforms and architectures into one\nsingle bundle from the box\n\n2\\. Connection of the bundle in the format of XCFramework, as a single\ndependency for all target platforms and architectures\n\n3\\. Missing the need of building fat/universal framework\n\n4\\. No need to get rid of x86_64 slices before uploading end applications to\nAppStore \"\"\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGoogle now forcing you to use your Google+ profile to rate Android apps - trendspotter\nhttp://www.droid-life.com/2012/11/26/full-google-integration-with-google-play-on-the-way/\n\"Google has made a major change to the way that app reviews are implemented on its Play Store. From now on, users posting reviews on the web store will have to sign in with their Google+ profiles, attaching their real name and associated data to their opinion.\"\n======\ntrendspotter\nSee also: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/27/3696328/google-plus-\nplay-...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/27/3696328/google-plus-play-store-\nreviews) & [http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/26/google-play-gets-real-\nrevie...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/26/google-play-gets-real-reviews-will-\nnow-be-posted-with-your-google-name-and-picture/) via [http://www.droid-\nlife.com/2012/11/26/full-google-integration...](http://www.droid-\nlife.com/2012/11/26/full-google-integration-with-google-play-on-the-way/) &\n[http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/11/26/google-\nintegration-f...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/11/26/google-integration-\nfor-play-store-reviews-is-live-all-previous-reviews-say-a-google-user/)\n\n------\nmichaelhoffman\nPosted elsewhere on HN. See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4837109>\n\n~~~\ntrendspotter\nYes, but several hours later than my post on HN. I found and posted it while\nit was morning in Europe while people were still sleeping in the US.\n\n~~~\nmichaelhoffman\nThis isn't a who-posts-first contest. The discussion of the other post is much\nbetter.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy BlackBerry Storm Is An iPhone (and G-1) Killer - raju\nhttp://gigaom.com/2008/10/29/blackberry-storm-should-be-blackberry-stealth/\n======\niigs\nFor a long time I was an unflappable Blackberry fanboy. The reality of the\nsituation currently is this:\n\n1) Enterprise ready isn't the unique feature it was 18 months ago. ActiveSync\non WM no longer sucks to the point it lowers the barametric pressure in the\narea (although that's about all the compliments I have for it), the iPhone has\ncompelling Exchange integration, and I have heard good things about Nokia's\nExchange support (will know more when my wife's E71 arrives this weekend).\n\nHaving to pay an extra $15/mo/device for BES service, plus BES server hardware\n+ BES license fees, just to maintain parity with the other products is a\n_huge_ disadvantage. The best thing they could do is walk away from BES, but\nthe carriers won't do it because it's margin for them.\n\n2) They release phones _so slowly_. I appreciate that the build and radio\nquality of the phones are top notch, but slipping announced release dates\n(AT&T BB Bold, at least Sept-Nov, and maybe Jul/Aug-Nov) is not cool. I don't\nknow if that's AT&T's fault or RIM's fault, but the whole process is under\ncontrol of two major corporations -- get it together. If the Storm's release\nhappens at all similarly, it better have iPhone v3 killing features -- that's\nwhat it's going to be competing with.\n\n3) The BB App store has a 2009 release date and appears to be a me-too\nannouncement. Unless there's some magic that has escaped announcement, it's\nnot going to be a notable feature at all.\n\n~~~\nnotauser\nThey also have an awful browser. The bold I tried couldn't even load Slashdot\n- it just died. Even the S60 browser can manage to load it, albeit badly.\n\n~~~\niigs\nI wrote that before lunch when I was hungry and cranky. I saw that it was\ngoing downhill, so I shut it down. The browser situation is something I didn't\ncover, but it truly is the most awful smartphone browser experience.\n\nBy far the most charitable thing I've heard about the blackberry browser is\nthat the phones can all run Opera Mini.\n\n------\nyan\nI find in the past, once something was labeled an X-killer, it wasn't ever as\nsuccessful as X. These labels are cute for getting clicks but lack in\nsubstance.\n\n~~~\nbaddox\nThe iPhone was an \"other smartphone\"-killer.\n\n------\nmike_branski\nI don't really feel the article hit on too many \"killing\" points and wasn't\ndeep enough to support his claims that it will beat out the iPhone. He didn't\neven mention the G1 in the article (aside from the title).\n\nAlso, the [Insert Product Name] Killer is getting stale fast.\n\n~~~\njcl\nJust reading the article, it looked to me like the \"clickable\" touchscreen has\nthe potential to be a \"killer\" feature -- or, barring that, a widely copied\none.\n\nI haven't heard of any touchscreens that distinguish between pointing at\nsomething and clicking it, without adding an additional tap gesture or a press\nof an external button. Allowing both actions in a touchscreen interface\ncombines the expressive power of a mouse (hot zones, tooltips) with the\nintuition of a touchscreen. It also lets you distinguish between a swipe and a\ndrag -- gestures that are intuitive with this pointing device but difficult or\nimpossible with others.\n\nThis feature gives Blackberry a slight edge, like the iPhone's multitouch...\nActually, in light of the swipe/drag distinction, I think this feature is more\ndesirable than multitouch. Looking at Apple's recent laptop touchpads, it's\nobvious that they, too, see the value in such a feature; I wouldn't be\nsurprised to see a similarly clickable screen appear in a future iPhone.\n\n------\ndhimes\nI have found the iPhone to be good at everything except being a phone. We have\ntwo in the family (a v1 and a v2), both on the same network as me (I have a\nRazr). I get great reception with the Razr where the iPhones don't. Dropping\ncalls is common for them. My phone is my business line and I can't risk that.\nA good alternative would be nice (or a better iPhone!).\n\nAnybody else have these issues with the iPhone?\n\n------\ndavidw\nWhat's the development environment like? I know you can use Java ME, but is\nthat it?\n\n~~~\nmartythemaniak\nThe SDK is much like Android's. That is, it implements the full java language,\nthen provides J2ME classes as well as its own Java packages.\n\nThe J2ME stuff is there so it can run old apps, but when you're writing a\nBlackBerry app, you typically use the net.rim.blackberry.* classes, as they\nprovide a ton of extra functionality, UI etc (similar to how on Android you\nuse the android.* classes)\n\n------\nHoff\ngigaom is the new cnet. nothing to see. move along.\n\n------\nram1024\nit's basically an iPhone clone, which will allow them to remain in the market\nfor a short while longer.\n\n~~~\nmartythemaniak\nYou're aware the iPhone wasn't the first full screen touch-based smartphone on\nthe market, right? Apart from that, what exactly the Storm 'cloning'? Or is\n'cloning' some new slang for providing a ton of functionality which is either\nnon-existent or broken on the iPhone?\n\n~~~\nram1024\nby clone, i mean it offers the same thing that the iPhone already does. it's\npractically a genetically identical. i mean if it could only connect to itunes\nseamlessly...\n\n~~~\nmartythemaniak\nLet's see. Product X comes out with functionality A. Product Y comes out with\nfunctionality A, B and C. Product Y is therefore a clone, because it offers a\nsuperset of the features?\n\nBut hey, let's apply your argument to the iPhone itself. You see, the iphone\nis a clone of the LG Prada, since the Prada came out months before that and\nthe iPhone offered the same thing... Believe that doesn't make any sense to\npeople without an Apple fanboy mindset.\n\n~~~\nram1024\na clone of a clone is a clone\n\niphone is a clone. so?\n\ni don't get what you're complaining about. if storm came out first i'd say\niphone is a storm clone. butthurt much?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nZed Shaw on Python - inklesspen\nhttp://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2008-03-02.html\n\n======\ninklesspen\nI like the following quote:\n\n\"I also still haven’t figured out why the fuck I was backing Ruby when the\nPython guys clearly did a way better job at building their community and\ninfrastructure. I kind of feel like I backed the wrong horse completely.\"\n\nAs a Python fan, this makes me happy.\n\n~~~\nanewaccountname\nThat's like being happy about an endorsement from Louis Farrakhan. I denounce\nand reject Zed's endorsement.\n\n------\njackdied\nThe Python community has the advantage of being older. The fanboys (if there\nwere any) have moved on or calmed down. The libraries and documentation have\nhad more time to be beefed up. A few years can make a lot of difference.\n\n------\ntx\nAfter a year of Ruby programming I am in the middle of learning Python. The\nlanguage part seems very easy (the \"mechanics\" of programming process) but\n\"thinking in Python\" part suggests that Ruby is a significantly higher level\nlanguage. Once I will have spent some more time with Python I may realize I\nwas wrong.\n\nWhy switch, you ask? Well, I am not switching, it's just another project where\nquality of language implementation matters, one area Ruby can't be proud of.\n\n------\ndavidw\n\"Slightly unhinged\" comes to mind. Ruby and Python are both good. I actually\nstarted using Python about 9 years ago, but... I got kind of tired of it for\nsome reason. Not that it's bad, but I happen to like Ruby a bit more. Entirely\nsubjective though, and I'm not going to try to rationalize it, even though I\nthink there are some good reasons to prefer Ruby in some situations.\n\n------\nmronge\nI agree. Python code is generally much easier to read than Ruby, and it's just\nas succinct.\n\n------\ntptacek\nDid I miss the reason he like Python, or is it really just because he likes\nthe Python documentation better?\n\n------\nsystems\n\"I fucking learned it in four hours.\"\n\nWell I hate python, I wish it dies, but honestly I believe with the right\ndocumentation, you can learn right about any language in 4 hours, except maybe\nMDX you will need 8, but thats because MDX is stupid, like most the OLAP\nstuff.\n\nGood porgramming languages book are rare, if they ever exist.\n\nFinally, I believe in Perl, Perl is the language of choice for the\ndiscriminating hacker, lets wish for Zed to finally realize it!\n\n~~~\nJoeBlu\nGo right ahead and learn C in four hours - I think it would still be pretty\ndifficult to use, because I doubt that you could cover enough pointer and\nmemory management intricacy in four hours.\n\n~~~\nsystems\nbut you can learn OO and functional programming in 4 hours?\n\nAgain, I still think, a good writing essay can teach memory management and\npointer, and it shouldn't take you more than a couple of hours to finish it,\ndon't underestimate the powers of good writing and expression skills\n\nsome authors are really talented and if they know the topic well, can be\nconcise enough, and clear enough to teach you Programming A to Z in few hours!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWWDC 2020: Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon Macs and Virtualization - miles\nhttps://www.macobserver.com/news/wwdc2020-rosetta-2-apple-silicon-macs-virtualization/\n======\nsgerenser\nI still can’t figure out what the deal will be with Virtualization on Apple\nSilicon. If they just mean that you can run the Arm version of a Linux distro\nit’s not that useful (At least for devs like me who need to write native\nsoftware for Windows and Linux). But if it actually means you can continue to\nrun x86-64 versions of Windows and Linux at near native speeds, that sounds\ngreat. Although I would wonder how that’s possible.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGuestToGuest Gets $35M - anjalik\nhttps://skift.com/2017/03/10/guesttoguest-travel-startup-funding-this-week/\n======\nnerdponx\nI didn't know Couchsurfing had raised any money. What had their monetization\nplan been?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nScrutiny of 'Truthy', a university project that studies trends on Twitter (2014) - diyorgasms\nhttp://thehill.com/policy/technology/221565-five-things-to-know-about-truthy\n======\npnathan\n> One study highlighted an attack on Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) when he was\n> first running for his seat in 2010. It found that one social media campaign\n> criticizing him for spending taxpayer money on dinners and fashion shows was\n> largely the result of 10 Twitter bots.\n\nThis is an interesting finding. I think part of the broader question at hand\nin our society is that the relationships and communications are becoming\nworld-readable, with significant consequences for shifting the flow of\ndiscourse.\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nI expect a strong correlation with authoritative overreach :-) But more\nseriously, the study of information flows to uncover information sharing\nnetworks is not new, that the networks want to protect themselves from being\nexposed is also not new. I don't agree with a lot of what Assange says but I\ndo agree with him that conspiracies hate light, and what is more making it\nharder for them to communicate makes it harder for them to be effective.\n\n------\nelevenfist\nThis article talks about a research project studying the virality of\npropaganda in social media. The article paints a political picture, the only\npaper cited by the article (one of at least 30 published by the project)\ndiscovered that a viral social media attack/campaign against a democratic\nsenator was the result of about 10 twitter bots. The article then cites the\nrepublican congressman who launched the investigation into this study.\n\nNo mention of the FBI, and the NSF provided funding but the project has made\nstatements to the effect that the NSF is not involved, as listed in the\narticle.\n\nThis title is very misleading...\n\nfrom the article: ' “Truth about Truthy.” In a series of bullet points, the\ndepartment said the project is not a \"political watchdog, a government probe\nof social media, an attempt to suppress free speech, a way to define\n'misinformation,' a partisan political effort, [or] a database tracking hate\nspeech.\"\n\n\"There is a good dose of irony in a research project that studies the\ndiffusion of misinformation becoming the target of such a powerful\ndisinformation machine,\" the research department wrote. '\n\n~~~\ndiyorgasms\nYeah I was reading a few articles about this and one mentioned that the FBI\nwas involved. Turns out it rant this article, and turns out not to have been a\nreputable source. However it's too late for me to edit the title, and I can't\nfind a way to delete the post. Please feel free to flag our downvote.\n\n------\ngolergka\nGood.\n\nI don't know how effective it'll be, but after witnessing first-hand how\nsuccessful government-sponsored social media manipulation have been in the\nlast decade, I'm really glad that western world finally reacts to it and at\nleast tries to do something about it.\n\n------\n__david__\nSimilarly to the irony mentioned in the article, many of the other comments\nhere clearly commented without reading the actual article, which has caused\nmisinformation to spread due to the misleading title.\n\n------\ndiyorgasms\nI apologize, I read the FBI part in another article and I can't seem to\ncorroborate the claim that the FBI is involved. As such I am editing the\ntitle. Apologies for the sensationalism.\n\nEdit: it would seem I can no longer edit the title.\n\n------\nhackuser\nThat's not the article's title and the article says nothing about the FBI. The\ntitle should be changed.\n\n\"NSF funds Indiana University study of social media misinformation\" would be\ngood. The actual title, \"Five things to know about 'Truthy'\", isn't helpful.\n\n------\nbobwaycott\nThis could use a (2014) in the title.\n\n~~~\ndang\nSo it could. We also changed the title to a representative phrase from the\nfirst sentence.\n\n------\nDowwie\nThey need to turn their sensors towards their own political parties and\ncampaign advertising\n\n------\nmtgx\nAnd it's called Truthy, too? What - \"Ministry of Truth\" was trademarked?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nStanford scientists use DNA to assemble a transistor from graphene - ArikBe\nhttp://engineering.stanford.edu/news/stanford-scientists-use-dna-assemble-transistor-graphene\n======\nEinherji\nThis does indeed look awesome, but the article doesn't fully explain what it\nis that prevents us from scaling ordinary transistors further. If I understand\ncorrectly electrons start tunneling when transistors shrink to around 10nm\n(correct me if I'm wrong here) however Intel has 6nm process on their roadmap.\nIs Intel doing something magical to prevent tunneling or is my physics way\noff?\n\n------\nspellboots\nScience buzzword bingo!\n\nDoes look awesome though.\n\n------\ntonyplee\nNext step: synthesize Skynet!\n\n------\ncli\nHere is the link to the paper:\n[http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130830/ncomms3402/full/nco...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130830/ncomms3402/full/ncomms3402.html)\n\n------\nbalsam\nPeople are talking about making smaller chips, but what about _space\nelevators_? Since DNA in a single cell is on the order of metres, we could\npresumably grow this macroscopically and find out if the breaking strength is\ngood enough for space elevators. Also the graphene doesn't look like it's in\nthe oxidized form touted a few years back, which was weaker than ordinary\ncarbon fibers.\n\n------\nmike_ivanov\n...\n\n\"How is he, dr.Riviera?\"\n\n\"Well, you see, it appears that your husband caught that transistor virus..\nRemember the breakout on the biochip factory he last year?\"\n\n\"Oh dear, will he survive?\"\n\n\"Why? Yes, of course! You just feed it from a stabilized 5/12 Volt source. Buy\na 120W one.\"\n\n------\nzrgiu_\nThis is a great achievement towards developing new methods of creating usable\ngraphene, but they key word here is \"usable\". As the article says, not all\ncreated graphene follows the pattern required for usable transistors, and it's\na process that's going to get exponentially harder to refine as you try to get\ncloser perfection.\n\nUntil we get there, I'm tending to treat this as another graphene vaporware,\nsince I haven't actually seen anyone use any form of graphene for building\nsome kind of usable (and more efficient) piece of tech larger than a few\nmicrons. I truly believe graphene to be \"the real next big thing\", but we're\nnot there just yet.\n\n------\nJonSkeptic\nThe article is from Stanford, so I don't doubt it's legitimacy.\n\nThat said, the title sounds like the most ridiculous collection of scientific\nbuzz words. All they are missing is \"big data\" and it will be complete.\n\n~~~\nacadien\nThe best part is the picture which depicts DNA and copper being turned into\ngraphene using fire. SCIENCE!\n\n~~~\ngnoway\nYes I was about to post this! It has shadows and everything!\n\n------\ncaniscrator\nChemically modified graphene (CMG) nanostructures with their microscale area,\nsensitive electrical properties, and modifiable chemical functionality are\nexcellent candidates for biodevices at both biocellular and biomolecular\nscale.\n\n~~~\nchm\nI'm sorry but that was a load of horse-sh*t. Meaningless.\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\nPerhaps you should have studied more? It definitely has meaning, and actually\nquite trivial at that.\n\n~~~\nchm\nI'm a MSc student in theoretical chemistry. I'm not a world-class professor,\nbut neither an uneducated peasant. I meant what I wrote.\n\n\"Chemically modified graphene\" is a tad ambiguous, but adding \"nanostructure\"\nis a pleonasm. And calling their area \"microscale\" is not only wrong, but\nmisleading. Leaving the electrical properties part alone, I can only laugh at\n\"modifiable chemical functionality\". \"Biodevice\" is a somewhat clear concept\nand yes, graphene has potential applications in the field. But what does \"bio\"\nhave to do in \"biocellular and biomolecular scale\"?\n\nFancy words but not much meaning.\n\n~~~\nadamio\nActually OC's sentence is a quote from this paper\n[http://www.che.ksu.edu/~vberry/papers/Berry-NanoLetters-\ngrap...](http://www.che.ksu.edu/~vberry/papers/Berry-NanoLetters-graphene-\nbiosensors.pdf)\n\n~~~\nchm\nHa! I still think it's jibber-jabber.\n\n------\nvenomsnake\nThe approach is very elegant. DNA is uniquely good at manufacturing molecules.\nSome of the proteins the nature can make are amazing. So if you want to\nassemble something on the molecular scale this is probably the way to go.\n\n~~~\nJoeAltmaier\nStrangely, they didn't use the role of DNA in manufacturing molecules. They\nhad DNA-manipulation techiniques handy; they used them to lay out doped DNA,\nthen essentially burn it to leave graphene sheets.\n\n~~~\nvenomsnake\nYeah I know that. But I was thinking a few steps forward. To be able to make a\nbunch of cells manufacture a whole logical block and then just burn them to\nget the graphene.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nQuantum radar will expose stealth aircraft - jonbaer\nhttps://phys.org/news/2018-04-quantum-radar-expose-stealth-aircraft.html\n======\nburfog\nAlways remember that stealth is not a boolean.\n\nThe enemy is constrained by size, cost, power, and heat dissipation. What can\nbe done on the ground is not the same as what can be done in a fighter plane,\nand that isn't the same as what can be done in a small-diameter missile, and\nthat isn't the same as what can be done in an anti-aircraft shell.\n\nThe enemy might be able to briefly detect at close range, reliably track at\nlong range, or anything in between.\n\nBecause of this, stealth is not simply defeated, and it does not suddenly\nbecome 100% useless.\n\n~~~\ndingaling\n> and that isn't the same as what can be done in a small-diameter missile\n\nWhich was the genius idea behind Track-via-Missile in the Patriot SAM\n\nInstead of having the missile work-out the best interception based on what it\ncan detect, it relays its view of the World back to the ground station which\nreturns its recommended geometry. Constantly and at high frequency.\n\nAnd since the ground station is more powerful and can be upgraded more easily\nthan the missile's electronics, Patriot has made huge improvements since the\n1991 Scud incidents.\n\nIn an anti-stealth context having each missile 'see' from a different angle\nand being able to fuse that I to one picture is also useful in defeating\nshaped reflections. It's like a network of remote, lethal sensors.\n\n~~~\namelius\n> it relays its view of the World back to the ground station which returns its\n> recommended geometry.\n\nCan't the missile jam the signal?\n\n~~~\ndotancohen\nSure it could. And then the impactor could target the jamming transmitter.\nTherefore emitting a jamming signal would actually make the missile easier to\nintercept.\n\n~~~\namelius\nYou could attach the jammer to the missile using a wire of some random length.\n\n~~~\ndotancohen\nI see that you work in software, not hardware.\n\n------\nJumpCrisscross\n> *Quantum radar...works by sending one of the [entangled] photons to a\n> distant object, while retaining the other member of the pair. Photons in the\n> return signal are checked for telltale signatures of entanglement, allowing\n> photons from the noisy environmental background to be discarded. This can\n> greatly improve the radar signal-to-noise in certain situations.\"\n\nWhy do they need to be entangled? Aren't there other ways of checking if the\nphotons coming back are the ones you sent?\n\n~~~\nmorcheeba\nWe do that now with spread-spectrum and chirps - you correlate the signal sent\nwith the return signal and you can pick out reflections below the noise\nthreshold.\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_compression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_compression)\n\nI'm guessing that this might be more effective at very small returns, where\nthe reflection is so small that it suffers from shot noise - the fact that the\nenergy comes in discrete packets makes it hard to correlate. This is another\nway to verify that the photons received are the same ones sent out (and not\nbackground noise)\n\n------\nsbisson\nBack when I worked on skywave HF OTHR systems in the late 80s we knew that\nthey could detect and pinpoint stealth aircraft easily.\n\nMost stealth systems are designed to either absorb or reflect millimetric\npoint source radar. HF long wavelength systems reflect nicely off the top\nsurfaces of the aircraft, which aren't designed to dissipate and absorb those\nfrequencies. To one of those systems a stealth aircraft shows up brighter than\na 747...\n\nSo while this is neat science, it's not economical compared to the systems\ncurrently in use. The only real downside of OTHR systems is that you need a\ncouple of miles space for the transmit antenna and a big empty space for the\nreceiver; plus plenty of CPU to process the data.\n\n------\narthurz\nI am quite offended by how the news provider phys.org reacts to me using an ad\nblocker: \"It appears that you are currently using Ad Blocking software. What\nare the consequences? Click here to learn more.\" -> Will never ever click\n\n~~~\nkwoff\nThanks, I remove those bookmarks too. (Being offended gives them more control\nover you than necessary, in my opinion.)\n\n~~~\ndb48x\nNot if you're offended enough to never visit the domain ever again.\n\n------\nthrowaway84742\nI thought stealth aircraft is already visible on the latest Russian gear. They\njust use different frequencies to see it. The problem now seems to be not in\nseeing the plane per se, but homing the missile on a low observability target.\n\n[http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-\nbuzz/americas-f-22-f-35...](http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-\nbuzz/americas-f-22-f-35-stealth-fighters-vs-russias-s-300-s-400-s-17394)\n\n~~~\ngandhium\n> I thought stealth aircraft is already visible on the latest Russian gear\n\nThat's just a usual FUD stuff from Russians.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway84742\nSure. That’s why our government pisses itself every time Russians try to\nexport S400.\n\n------\njk2323\nAn opinionated post about another quantum radar:\n\nChinese \"quantum radar\" is a thing that cannot exist\n[https://motls.blogspot.com/2017/03/chinese-quantum-radar-\nis-...](https://motls.blogspot.com/2017/03/chinese-quantum-radar-is-thing-\nthat.html)\n\n~~~\nandrewflnr\nI think that guy has gone too far in pushing against quantum woo. Also, I'm\nnot aware of any actual science that forbids closed time like curves, either;\nAFAIK they're allowed by GR and anything that rules them out is strictly\nspeculative.\n\n------\ndanbruc\nWhich reminds me of a paper I once submitted to HN, »Gravimetric Radar:\nGravity-Based Detection of a Moving Point-Mass« [1]. But I don't remember much\nabout it, especially how far this was from being practical and not even how\ncredible the paper looked. But given that I submitted it, I must at least once\nhave thought that it is not total nonsense.\n\n[1]\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8369812](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8369812)\n\n~~~\nblauditore\nLol, it's pretty ambitious to try tracking planes with gravitational effects.\nBut now that gravitation wave detection works, I think there are plans (or at\nleast ideas) to build such devices in earth or solar orbit for triangulation\nof distant objects like stars and black holes. Detection arms could be much\nlonger and disruptions much lower than on earth, so results would me much more\naccurate.\n\n~~~\njcims\nI did some noodling a while back to see if LIGO could detect the mass energy\nconversion of a fission 'event' in North Korea. If memory serves it was\ndefinitely within the range in terms of impact to the gravitational field, but\ncorrelating a infinitessimally short pop of noise would be much more difficult\nthan the death waltz of binary black holes.\n\nHowever, a larger array of more sensitive detectors that are immune from the\ntremendous amount of terrestrial noise might make short work of it.\n\n~~~\nStormChaser_5\nWhy would an event in NK cause a change in gravity? Wouldn't the energy\nliberated in a nuclear event would cause the same amount of gravity to be felt\nelsewhere as the mass it came from?\n\n~~~\nDoctorOetker\nInitially I thought the same for a couple of seconds because of mass energy\nequivalence, but then I realized:\n\nassume the fission event to occur in empty space, assume the liberated energy\nis isotropically radiated, and assume all the energy is thus expanding\nspherically, then the mass/energy that was initially in the mother isotope is\nnow after some time distributed on a spherical surface.\n\nAs long as the observer is outside of the shell of escaping energy, to the\nobserver the gravitational field looks like all the mass is concentrated at\nthe center of the expanding shell of energy, exactly where the mass/energy\noriginally was, and hence gravitationally undetectable.\n\nAfter a while the expanding surface has past the observer, and the observer is\ninside a spherically symmetric shell of mass/energy. Even if the observer is\nnot at the center there will no gravitational field at all according to the\nobserver. (consult any physicist or physics textbook, or do the exercise for\nthe gravitational field in a 'hollow earth'). So to the observer this looks\nlike a bit of disappearing mass at the location of fission event.\n\nIt seems extremely difficult to me to actually measure such an event\ngravitationally though..\n\n------\nmistercow\nAre there interesting spinoff technologies that having an efficient entangled\nphoton source would enable? My very spotty understanding makes me wonder if\nthis could have an impact on quantum computing. It seems like an interesting\nquestion, since military funding is involved.\n\n~~~\nkrastanov\nYes, so much so that I would not call it a spin-off, rather one of the main\ntasks that people building quantum computing hardware are dealing with.\n\nEntanglement is one of the main phenomena that permit quantum hardware to do\nthings infeasible on classical hardware. In the context of communication it\npermits quantum key distribution, whose security depends only on quantum\nmechanics being a not-too-wrong description of nature (while classical schemes\ndepend on less tested computational complexity conjectures). In the context of\ncomputing, it is an integral component of many of the \"fault-tolerant error\ncorrecting\" schemes, necessary in order to protect the extremely fragile\nqubits (similar to what ECC RAM does for classical computing).\n\nIn the context of sensing, it does permit some cool unbelievably sensitive\ndetectors (the case discussed in the article), but it is only one of the\navenues of intense research.\n\n~~~\nmistercow\nDoes quantum computing require entanglement of more than two photons with each\nother? One of the reasons I could see this not actually advancing QC is if\nwhat's needed for quantum radar is easy generation of entangled _pairs_ ,\nwhile QC requires something more difficult.\n\n------\neverdev\nTLDR; University of Waterloo is investing $2.7M to speed up the process of\nphoton entanglement. One photon will be beamed to the object and the radar\nresponse will be checked to see if it was an entangled photon that came back.\n\n------\nWillReplyfFood\nWhat really is horrible here is the asymmetry of cost- the development of\nstealth technology costed billions and took from drawinboard to reliable\nimplemenetation close to half a century.\n\nAnd it seems that detection is always easier and cheaper. I wonder wether\nradar and quantum \"noise\"-bombs that basically spam the enemy detection\nmethods would be a cheaper approach.\n\n~~~\nTickleSteve\n\"quantum noise bombs\"... this wont work as the photons that hit the receiver\nwont be entangled with the one you sent out... This makes it potentially un-\njammable in that sense.\n\nOf course, overloading the receiver may be an attack worthy of investigating.\n\n------\ndschuetz\nQuantum radar will expose quantum stealth of quantum aircraft.\n\nI'm getting quantum sick.\n\n~~~\nkrastanov\nWhile it is true that quantum is used a lot as a buzzword, here it is used in\nits literal scientific sense. And it is an exciting technology that has taken\na lot of effort to be created that does not deserve such knee-jerk\nderisiveness.\n\n~~~\ndschuetz\n\"Quantum\" is a science-y sounding word which sensationalist scientists use to\npush their otherwise inexplicable \"exciting\" ideas for fundraising. It's a\njoke in itself. A parody of what physics actually is.\n\nEven the _actual_ scientist who formulated Quantum Electrodynamics didn't\nquite understand what _quantum_ is and what to make of it, nor did he find a\nway to properly explain it. This term and the theories behind it were used\njust to explain some connections in phenomena, not to invent new ones! Quantum\nlaser, quantum liquid, quantum crystals, quantum nose, quantum ass!\n\nThere was a post here somewhere, discussing that science isn't exactly science\nanymore when it very closely resembles its own stereotype. A philosopher for\nexample today isn't someone who actually thinks, but rather a person who\nwrites non-sense papers just for the sake to be published in a major journal,\nbecause otherwise they can't find a job. So, it's not the scientists who\npublish science-y papers who deserve credit. I don't know who deserves any\ncredit anymore. Academia makes me sick to my stomach.\n\n~~~\nkrastanov\nYou are referring to Feynman, but you are misunderstanding his quote quite a\nbit. He belongs to the \"shut up and calculate\" camp of science, and tried to\nsay that it is not worth it to try to build \"intuition\" about a phenomenon so\nremote from the scale at which humans experience the world.\n\nInstead of relying on hearsay to reinforce your beliefs, I implore you to\nchallenge them and read an intro science textbook on quantum mechanics. It is\nthat theory of nature that permitted us to build the day-to-day electronics\nthat powers our lives and our civilization, and it is empowering to understand\nit. \"Theoretical Minimum\" is a good set of free courses with video lectures\nfor instance.\n\nOr if you prefer you can just continue with your self-aggrandizing pity and\nwillful ignorance. It is true that there is a rat race in the sciences, but\nthat does not devalue the amazing advances that science has nontheless given\nus.\n\nEdit: for the more advanced I would suggest reading the first few chapters of\nSakurai's or Griffiths' Quantum Mechanics textbook - if you know math they\nexplain how quantum mechanics works quite well. Or Aaronson'a Quantum\nComputing since Democritus if you are more interested in computational\ncomplexity.\n\n------\nKaiserPro\nStealth aircraft haven't been stealth for a while. The Serbians managed to\ndestroy one F117a\n([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown))\nand damage another.\n\nThis was because the Radar battery were using a different frequency.\n\nYou don't need a direct hit with a missile, just be close enough when you\nexplode it.\n\nAlso, all the \"shared battle information\" is done via radio, which with\npassive radar will give wonderfully accurate positioning with cheap off the\nshelf hardware.\n\n~~~\ngreedo\nNot really. The opsec was poor; the aircraft had been using the same\ningress/egress routes, so the SAM batteries knew where to look. That helps\ntremendously. Also, the F-117 has to open it's bomb bay to release its weapon.\nWhen it does so, it increases it's radar return dramatically, if only for a\nvery short period of time. This helped the Serbians a lot.\n\nAnd passive radar isn't a thing. There's passive radio sensors, that can\ntheoretically detect a transmitter, but frequency hopping etc make that tough.\n\n~~~\nKaiserPro\nPassive radar is a thing, because I use it.\n\nit works by using known radio sources (ie tv transmitters) which has the\nadvantage of being powerful , continuous and reasonably unique signal pattern\n(for timing)\n\nradio sniffing is where you listen for the aircraft directly, and there are a\nnumber of offerings on that front too. Phased array antenna with SDR front\nends, are smashing bits of kit.\n\nnow frequency hopping spread spectrum means you need more DSP to find the\nsignal, but its still there. In fact it provides nice timing signals because\nthey hop frequency so much. There is more, but thats for another time\n\nIn theory the frequency hopping can be random, but that requires a shared\nrandom source, which is hard to sync.\n\n~~~\ngreedo\nThat's not really radar though. Radar systems have a dedicated transmitter\nthat broadcasts. Phased array radars have transmitters as well. What you're\ndescribing is more akin to ESM. Conflating the two definitions diminishes\nboth. It's like when submarine movies depict sonar using a hydrophone without\na transmitter; that's passive compared to real sonar that creates a ping.\n\nPassive and active are both valuable in their own regimes, but they're not the\nsame.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Innovator's Dilemma for SaaS Startups - edwinespinosa09\nhttp://localhost:1313/innovators-dilemma-in-saas/\n======\nactraub\nYou linked to localhost :)\n\n~~~\ngus_massa\nJust guessing: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/innovators-dilemma-saas-\nstart...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/innovators-dilemma-saas-startups-\ntomasz-tunguz)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nYouTubers lost thousands of dollars as channels were mistakenly demonetized - bigpumpkin\nhttps://www.businessinsider.com/youtubers-entire-channels-can-get-mistakenly-demonetized-for-months-2019-8\n======\ntaylodl\nYouTube is the only Google service I use and this news just brings to the fore\nwhy we need a viable alternative. I understand mistakes happen and when they\ndo there needs to be a process to get things ironed out. Instead, the people\nwho are making tons of money for Google are told to pound sand - and they\nwonder why people are starting to revolt against Big Tech.\n\n------\nsmt88\nGoogle has built its businesses with the assumption that software can do what\nother companies use humans for (customer service, moderating communities,\nrecommendations, etc.)\n\nThey're right in some cases, but they dive so shallowly that their\nimplementation is awful compared to competitors (e.g. Play Music's\nrecommendations vs. Spotify's).\n\nThe cases where they're wrong, like this debacle, should make them sober up\nand build a human organization until machines catch up, but of course they\nwon't because they don't believe anyone can compete with them.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNYT on analytical versus subjective risk management - jacobscott\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04risk-t.html\n\n======\nrussell\nAn excellent article that gives you a look at the mathematical model, Value at\nRisk, that brought down Wall Street. VaR turned out to be a problem because it\nwas accepted by the regulators and executives, but it could be gamed by the\ntraders.\n\nIt has a profile of Nassim Taleb, author of \"The Black Swan.\" A Black Swan is\nan unpredictable event, because the day to day probability is so low, say a\nworld wide liquidity crisis. Taleb argues against probability based models,\nbecause in the long run an outlier is going to kill you. I got \"The Black\nSwan\" for Christmas. I have read only 3 or 4 chapters so far, but I highly\nrecommend it. Very interesting and very entertaining.\n\n------\nmattmcknight\n\"For instance, if you have $50 million of weekly VaR, that means that over the\ncourse of the next week, there is a 99 percent chance that your portfolio\nwon’t lose more than $50 million.\"\n\nSo, if you run with that strategy for, say, 2 years, the odds are one of those\nweeks you will lose $50M. Sounds secure, where do I buy in? Fortunately for my\ncurrent portfolio and margin limits, it is mathematically impossible to lose\neven $1m in a given week.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nVive Pro Is Targeted at Prosumers and Will Be More Expensive Than Consumer Vive - SkarredGhost\nhttps://www.roadtovr.com/htc-vive-pro-targeted-prosumers-will-expensive-consumer-vive/\n======\nlev99\nVive Pro is mostly an incremental step. Hopefully in 3-5 iterations we can\ncomfortably read small text, improved screen refresh, and decrease the weight.\n\nFor screen refresh and resolution numbers I wonder if the bottle neck is\nhaving affordable displays or having affordable GPUs.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "Ask HN: Do you keep a journal, and why? - zabana\n======\ntrykondev\nI do! I started one in the summer of 2013. I originally started it as a way to\naggregate links & helpful information for my game development endeavors, but\nit eventually evolved into more of a recounting of what I did or how I was\nfeeling on a particular day. I now have daily entries for the entire time\nperiod since I started it, and I consider my journal to be one of my most\ntreasured possessions. Sometimes I'll get busy and not add entires for a few\ndays at a time, but I always go back and at least put a one-liner of why I was\ntoo busy to write anything.\n\nI've found it to be a slightly more structured & useful way to essentially\ninteract with my own brain -- it's a place for me to vent, a place to record\nnot-so-important but still fun-to-have memories, to keep notes & sort out\nplans for the future.\n\nIt's a lot of fun to be able to scroll back and say \"hey, what did we do for\nmy birthday three years ago?\" :) It's also fun at times like new year's to\nflip back through my journal and remind everyone what they listed for a\nresolution last year.\n\n------\ngrep_name\nFunny, I just ordered a pocket notebook for the first time in years today. I'm\ncurious to see what contingent of people on HN still use a physical notebook.\nI also use orgmode extensively to keep track of my intentions, media\npreferences, notes, and stray ideas, but it doesn't really scratch the same\nitch as a physical notebook.\n\nThe reason I had to order a physical notebook online is because I wanted a\npocket notebook with no lines, dots, or grids on the pages, which is\nsurprisingly hard to find. I'm attracted to the non-linear approach to\nnotebooking, and plan to fill this one with content in a random page-order as\nthings strike me. Sometimes I just have a cool thought or sentence, or just\nwant to slowly fill a page with something, and it can really help your\ncreativity solidify to have a trailing log of your weird random inspirations.\nSometimes I just transcribe lines from a song or book I like, or write down\nsomething someone said. Some pages are just geometric shapes. Rarely, I'll\nmake a simple \"today this happened and this is how I felt about it\" page. By\nthe time you fill it up you have a really organic document that can help you\nunderstand what makes you unique and what you like / care about in your daily\nlife, without the stress of writing a cohesive or linear work.\n\n~~~\njolmg\nI've also used org-mode and tried to make the switch to pocket notebooks[1].\nMy reason was that org-mode just wasn't as accessible to me. It's not as\npractical to use when away from a keyboard as a physical notebook is. However,\nwriting as much in the physical notebook as I do in org-mode would fill it too\nquickly. I also can't be as structured in the physical notebook as I can in\norg-mode.\n\nI guess I'm still figuring stuff out. Lately, I've been mostly using the\nnotebook for taking notes of measurements or prices at the store. Maybe in\nreality my reason for trying a physical notebook is that I missed using a\nwriting utensil.\n\n[1]\n[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J535NN2](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J535NN2)\n\n------\nPragmaticPulp\nYes, but with constraints.\n\nJournaling is an efficient way to elucidate your stray thoughts and feelings.\nWriting forces you to distill everything into cohesive paragraphs, which in\nturn forces you to put some structured thought around otherwise nebulous\nmental energy.\n\nHowever, journaling is only helpful so long as it's supportive. If you get\nstuck in reinforcing thought loops or you find it just amplifies your\nfrustrations, it's time to change your approach to journaling or find another\noutlet for your thoughts.\n\n------\ndhagz\nI do. It's rather minimal, but I like it. I use a Rhodia Goalbook, which has\nnumbered pages and a nice month/day view in the front. I can jot down events\non specific days, or I can do more longform stuff on the regular pages. I'm\npretty loose with how I journal, and I don't require myself to do it every\nday. I'm a fan of Merlin Mann's \"The first page is profound\" method to get\nmyself in the mindset of putting whatever I want in the journal.\n\n------\nslipwalker\nafter reading this thread sometime ago (\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20244848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20244848)\n) i decided to start one. It's been an on and off endeavour, when i am most\nbusy, that's when i _should_ be taking those notes, and that's exactly when i\ncompletely forget about it... :/\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAutoscaling Amazon's DynamoDB - samwho\nhttp://devblog.getinvisiblehand.com/autoscaling_dynamodb\n\n======\nmdupenois\nVery cool, really like the DSL, eminently readable.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTreeScope: Finding Structural Anomalies in Semi-Structured Data [pdf] - jcr\nhttp://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol8/p1904-Ying.pdf\n\n======\nirickt\nDemo server linked in the paper:\n[http://42.61.39.87/TreeScope/](http://42.61.39.87/TreeScope/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFeatures are faults redux - gbrown_\nhttp://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/features-are-faults-redux\n======\nakkartik\nI've been imagining for some time an ideal system with just two languages: one\ncompiled low-level one, one interpreted high-level one -- and absolutely zero\nruntime configuration beyond that. Anytime you want to change how a program\nbehaves you would have to edit its sources. A whole system with the dwm[1]\naesthetic, basically. Always keep sources close to programs, allow the entire\nsystem to recompile with a single command. Encourage people to micromanage\nprecisely which image formats they want to turn on. The only thing that is\ninterpreted at runtime is code in the high level language.\n\n[1] \"dwm is customized through editing its source code..\"\n[http://dwm.suckless.org](http://dwm.suckless.org)\n\n------\nelchief\n> What’s the first thing anybody does when they get a second computer? That’s\n> right, set up a kerberos domain\n\ntedu is a funny guy\n\n~~~\nsmhenderson\nNo doubt, especially like this line at the beginning...\n\n _If you’ve never heard of OpenBSD, it’s a free unix like system. So kind of\nlike Linux, but better in every way. Totally unbiased opinion._\n\nBut the article is also really good, a cautionary tail of what can happen\ntrying to please everyone. The links lead to a lot of interesting reading too.\nI especially liked this one. [1]\n\n[1] [http://www.daniellesucher.com/2014/04/24/my-new-favorite-\nvim...](http://www.daniellesucher.com/2014/04/24/my-new-favorite-vim-tmux-\nbug/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMunich mall attack: Calls in Germany for tighter gun laws - benevol\nhttp://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36877388\n======\nnunobrito\nThere is no problem with the current gun laws.\n\nThe problem are religious fanatics. They will hit you stones, gasoline and\nfire if they have to.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMy Job Interview at Google (2008) - trymas\nhttps://catonmat.net/my-job-interview-at-google\n======\n120bits\n> The questions were technical but not very challenging or difficult.\n\nI might be really bad, because few of the questions were challenging and\ndifficult. I was expecting a rant how bad the google interview process is,\nwhich is usually what I come across. I do agree the questions are fun and are\nhelpful to someone who is preparing for an interview. The interview and\nprogramming questions covered lot of topics.\n\n------\nquirkafleeg3\n> The questions were technical but not very challenging or difficult. So THATS\n> why Google products are so consistantly shite...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat Should We Call the Language of Mathematica? - mh_\nhttp://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/02/what-should-we-call-the-language-of-mathematica/\n======\nquink\nWithout even reading it (and avoiding looking at the comments here), I predict\nthat he'll advocate 'Wolfram'.\n\nEdit: Yep... <http://imgur.com/KRyN97S.png>\n\nI love the ramp up, first it's just mentioning that the name of the company is\nWolfram... then going underground before coming out, in bold, with Wolfram\nLanguage, then four paragraphs before concluding that \"At this point, we\npretty much have to have 'wolfram'—or at least some hint of it—in the name.\"\nand there goes the rest of the article.\n\nWhy not just call it Wolfram and be done with it. We know there's a big ego\ninvolved and we can't possibly bear Stephen Wolfram strain himself so much as\nto not name the language after himself. Anything else would be inhumane :)\n\nAnd considering the good he's done with both the quality product Mathematica\nand Wolfram Alpha, it's only justified.\n\n~~~\npatmcguire\nAm I missing something or is that just a surreal picture?\n\n~~~\nrtra\nI think it's marking the positions of the word 'Wolfram' on the document.\n\n------\nscarmig\nWolfram has written a lot of egotistical, boring things before. I have to give\nit to him: this time he's outdone himself.\n\nWhy not just outsource the naming to a flunky and then take credit for it if\ns/he comes up with a good one?\n\n------\nh2s\nAs far as I was aware everybody was already calling this language\n\"Mathematica\".\n\n~~~\nonedognight\nWith projects like Mathics[1], that aim for Language compatibility with\nMathematica, on the horizon it makes sense to want to separate the language\nfrom the implementation.\n\n[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5196551>\n\n~~~\nwmf\nSeeing this post hit HN just a few days after Mathics gave me a paranoid\nfeeling. Why now? Is Wolfram feeling the heat and looking for a new trademark\nto deny his competitors?\n\n~~~\nics\nAnd Mathematica 9 just came out, so maybe it was _Mathics_ feeling the heat!\nDespite the vacuum-like nature of our internal HN-eval-post loop, the rest of\nthe world isn't standing still. It's actually a little surprising that they're\nonly talking about this _now_ , given how long Mathematica has been around.\n\n------\nzem\ngood post, but it seemed like he dismissed \"tungsten\" far too lightly (\"And in\nthe direction of whimsical, there are also words like Tungsten\"). it seems\nlike the best choice to me - it has the \"wolfram\" association, as well as\nfitting in with the general mineral theme while differentiating itself from\nthe gemstone cluster. also it's easy to pronounce and rolls off the tongue\nfairly readily.\n\n~~~\njerf\nYou beat me by one minute. Tungsten works for me.\n\n<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten> \\- \"Tungsten, also known as\nwolfram... the free element is remarkable for its robustness, especially the\nfact that it has the highest melting point of all the non-alloyed metals and\nthe second highest of all the elements after carbon. Also remarkable is its\nhigh density of 19.3 times that of water, comparable to that of uranium and\ngold, and much higher (about 1.7 times) than that of lead.... It is the\nheaviest element known to be used by any living organism.\"\n\nNot bad.\n\n------\njpdoctor\nEgotistica. (ld;o)\n\n------\nfusiongyro\nI wouldn't have been surprised to learn it were already named Lingua\nMathematica, and I submit that as the best reason to give it that name (and\nnot some other).\n\n~~~\nfusiongyro\nI thought the grammar might be wrong there, and it turns out, it is:\n\n[http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/103916/it-were-\nve...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/103916/it-were-versus-were-\ni-the-proper-subjunctive-for-this-statement)\n\nThe corrected versions are: \"I wouldn't have been surprised if it were already\nnamed Lingua Mathematica...\" or \"I wouldn't have been surprised to learn it\nwas already named Lingua Mathematica...\"\n\n------\nballstothewalls\nI propose \"Stephen\"\n\nI have found Mathematica to be super simple learn and use, so by calling it\n\"Stephen\" it shows how friendly and approachable the language is while\nmaintaining the connection to the founder's ego.\n\n~~~\nhvs\nI've never heard anyone refer to Stephen Wolfram as \"friendly and\napproachable,\" and naming the language based on that reason would be both\namusing and disturbing.\n\n~~~\nmauvehaus\nI, for one, don't remember Mathematica being especially \"friendly and\napproachable\" either. Maybe for basic stuff, but my introduction to it was a\ngrad-level computational neuroscience class, and it was the source of a great\ndeal of misery in my life for a semester.\n\nMaybe for amusement value it /should/ be named Stephen.\n\n~~~\nballstothewalls\nThis is a common complaint, but I don't understand it. Most of my peers that\ndidnt like it had no exposure to programming, though.\n\nI have tried to teach myself Ruby and Python before but I have never gotten\nreally far. I am pretty competent in Mathematica though. The key is getting\nused to their documentation center where they have lots of examples.\n\n------\nlogn\nHow about \"Leibniz\" in honor of the mathematician who independently invented\ncalculus and, compared to Newton, used a superior notation (which he took\ngreat pains to make nice)\n\nOr, Zinbiel.\n\n~~~\nquink\nI'd agree, but unfortunately \"Leibniz\" is not, nor does it rhyme with or even\nallude to \"Wolfram\" and is therefore out of the running.\n\n------\ndnc\nI think Aleph is nice name. There is already Wolfram Alpha, and Aleph, while\nit is related to it, is IMO more appropriate for general purpose language.\n\nIt sounds to me mystical and abstract/mathematical at the same time as it\nreminds me of Blaise Pascal's definition of Nature (or God) as \"an infinite\nsphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere\"\n(because Jorge Luis Borghes has a story with the same name in which he cites\nthe Pascal's quote :)).\n\n------\nmturmon\nWolfram prefers \"Wolfram.\" Telling.\n\n------\ngeorgemcbay\nA New Kind of Language\n\n------\nzwegner\nOne of the names he dismissed is actually a pretty good word to use to\ndescribe the blog post: Wolframble.\n\n------\nscott_s\nEgo.\n\n------\npg\nM\n\n~~~\nhuhtenberg\nW\n\n~~~\nnetworked\nThere is already a programming language called W [1]. It's not related to the\nlanguage of Mathematica but you could say has a little bit of relevance to\nscientific computing since it was created for the HP-95LX and the HP-200LX\nDOS-powered programmable calculators.\n\nI used to have a decent collection of subroutines for it.\n\n[1] <http://www.vttoth.com/CMS/index.php/projects/49>\n\n------\nJD557\nMy December PLT Game's entry was actually called Wolf:\n<https://github.com/JD557/Wolf>\n\nThank god he didn't chose that name, then I would be the one that would need\nto think of a new language name.\n\nAnyway, as stated in other comments, Tungsten seems like a nice choice.\n\n------\nokku\n1\\. Mathematica or 2\\. Just pick a random cool name, how about: pipe | (they\nuse pipe in wolfram|alpha)\n\n------\njimmytucson\n\n        > In the years since, the name Mathematica has been widely imitated (think Modelica, for example).\n    \n\n...or Metallica, for example.\n\nSeriously, isn't sticking 'a' (or 'ica') onto the end of a word some kind of\nLatin thing?\n\nBritannica!\n\n~~~\nStefanKarpinski\nThe Romans were just copying Stephen Wolfram.\n\n~~~\ndavrosthedalek\nThey were pre-covering him. Like all the pre-covers of the songs from Glee....\n\n------\nreader5000\nTo me, \"language\" implies freely available to use. This is not a critique of\nmathematica nor its pricing, but merely when I think of \"computer language\" I\nthink of python or c++ or java etc.\n\n------\nopminion\nAsk Umberto Eco <http://books.google.co.uk/?id=2sDMxqbibS0C>\n\n------\nxntrk\nFORMATH!\n\n~~~\nsnogglethorpe\nFORGREATJUSTICE!\n\nI'll get me coat.\n\n------\nEvanMiller\nWhy not return the favor and call it \"Jobs\"?\n\n------\nrevorad\n\"Steve\" would have been better, as a nod to both men.\n\n------\njonsen\nMathematicall\n\n------\ndanbmil99\n\"Wolf\"?\n\n------\nNonEUCitizen\nWolfie ?\n\n------\ncalciphus\nMash\n\n~~~\nzwegner\nWeird, that's the name of a language I worked on at a former job. It was\nseriously awesome, it was like a functional version of Python mixed with\nassembly, and was much clearer and also faster than C++. Shame that it will\nprobably never see the light of day (though I have plans for a similar\nreplacement).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGoogle buys Meebo - jcdavis\nhttp://blog.meebo.com/?p=4974\n======\njry\nOne thing no outlet has reported is that everyone except business development\nand select engineers were laid off as a result of the deal.\n\nThis all comes from someone who left Meebo recently and is still close with\npeople that work there.\n\nNot sure exactly how many, but it sounds like it was a good number.\n\nNote: I said it was the majority, that's what my friend made it sound like,\nbut I'm not sure.. will update once I find out\n\n~~~\nnandemo\nThat sounds pretty bad if true.\n\nIs there a point of working for a startup if there's no financial upside, only\nthe downside?\n\nNot being in the US, I'm curious if people getting laid-off from funded\nstartups get severance packages.\n\n~~~\nmikeryan\nThey're not getting laid off by a startup now they're getting laid off by\nGoogle. They likely get a severance. In CA at least if they're laying off a\nsignificant portion it's cosidered a plant closing which should give everyone\nabout 6 months severance.\n\n------\nmichaelbuckbee\nTo me this makes sense as Meebo has really transformed themselves from a\n\"chat\" company to an \"advertising toolbar\" company.\n\nThey (for better or worse) absolutely dominate the annoying popup toolbar at\nthe bottom of a website market.\n\nEx: <http://www.slate.com>\n\n~~~\nAznHisoka\nThat toolbar is godawful, and I have no idea how they managed to sign up so\nmany companies to display it. I mean.. it's not like they had access to all\nthese advertisers since they were primarily a chat company. It's something\nthat can be duplicated by any one of us. What gives?\n\n~~~\njpark\nIt's the result of an incredible bd and ad sales team. If you look at the\nsenior team, esp in sales, it's a lot of very senior CNET veterans who took\nalong most of their experience and contacts from CNET to Meebo.\n\nThis is not something duplicated easily.\n\n~~~\nveemjeem\nYes, but it probably didn't need most of the original functionality of meebo\neither. It was essentially a chat bar for webpages...\n\n------\nALee\nI met the Meebo team at SXSW in 2008 and, being the uppity entrepreneur, I\nasked if I could stay in touch with them...\n\nEven though they were super busy, Seth would take a call over the phone when\nmy startup was about to get acquired or when we were trying as hard as we\ncould to raise money in late 2008.\n\nWhen I was playing a game of Underground Assassins in 2011, nobody knew my\nname. So they went by my t-shirt's logo - Meebo. Honestly, six years after\nthey began, people still remembered their logo.\n\nI still find it amazing how Meebo for a period of time inhabited the social\nconsciousness. Like art, I'm glad to have experienced it, and being in the bay\narea, felt a little closer to it.\n\n~~~\nmkopinsky\nOff topic, but what is underground assassins? Google is not helping.\n\n~~~\nintended\nI'm guessing - and I could be wrong - but based on the fact that its a real\nworld thing - its likely the game where you get a bunch of people to play at\nhunting/assassinating each other as they go about their daily life.\n\nThe objective is to tag enemy players and become the last player standing.\n\n~~~\nmkopinsky\nI've played assassins before, which I think is what you're describing. I'm\nwondering if Underground Assassins is a variation on the game, or just a\ndifferent name.\n\n------\nSpikeDad\nNot good news. I do hope Google leaves the Meebo name intact so it's easy to\nblock their garbage with Adblock.\n\nI assume shortly we'll be seeing new postings from Google on what new personal\ninformation they'll be adding to the Google brain from Meebo.\n\n------\ndm8\nI loved Meebo back in 2005 but they became annoying as hell with their\ntoolbar. I always felt that product was more of a \"solution in search of a\nproblem\".\n\nAnyways, I'm happy for Meebo team. I'm following them for a while and they\nseem to be really good guys. Especially, their founding team.\n\n------\nkul\nThere was a lot of Meebo coverage on TC over the years:\n<http://techcrunch.com/tag/meebo/page/5/>\n\nEarly rounds were rumoured to be done at $200m valuations so with liquidation\npreferences I'm not sure how much this really leaves on the table after the\ninvestors are paid.\n\n------\nrokhayakebe\nMeebo definitely went through its nine lives. I wonder what Google was trying\nto acquire through this purchase.\n\n~~~\nstarpilot\nThe talent. Meebo was started by Stanford grads who demonstrated their talent\nin developing a product and a launching company. It'd be a safe way to hire a\nfew competent engineers, and I doubt the acquisition price contains much\ngoodwill.\n\n~~~\njpeterson\n_The talent. Meebo was started by Stanford grads..._\n\nCan we please get over this dopey fixation on big-name elite schools?\n\n~~~\nhack_edu\nUnfortunately tons of firms put a huge value in this. Try getting a high level\nrockstar-ninja-badass (lol) engineer job, especially at a bay area startup,\nwithout some sort of pedigree from a named institution. Its bullshit, but\nreality.\n\nGoogle used to, might still, place a degree from a top-tier institution as the\nfirst requirement in upper level job postings.\n\n~~~\nstrlen\n> Unfortunately tons of firms put a huge value in this. Try getting a high\n> level rockstar-ninja-badass (lol) engineer job, especially at a bay area\n> startup, without some sort of pedigree from a named institution. Its\n> bullshit, but reality.\n\nI've worked at or (or received employment offers from) quite a few \"name\nbrand\" Bay Area technology companies, have received recruitment email/etc.\nfrom many more, despite going to a university most haven't heard of.\n\nSilicon Valley is much more meritocratic than Wall Street: if you can't pass a\ncoding interview, the name on your diploma will not help you. A name on your\ndiploma might make it easier to get interviews lined up as a student, but\nundergraduate research, open source contributions, referrals from other\nemployees, are much more useful for that purpose.\n\nThat's not to say SV is without its own brand of homogeneity: ironically,\nwhenever I am on Stanford campus, I am amazed at how much more diverse it is\ncompared to the rest of Palo Alto.\n\n------\n1123581321\nI was expecting this or a shut-down announcement soon. Meebo has never been\nable to provide something valuable to enough people to become a going concern.\n\n~~~\nmibbitier\nI don't think that's true. They had a lot of people using their messenger\nclient.\n\nMore to do with mistakes and execution. Why did they take $70m in funding?\nThat's a ridiculous amount of investment to take.\n\nWhy couldn't they monetize that amount of eyeballs?\n\n~~~\ndanudey\nOr go beyond monetizing eyeballs. Turn it into a live chat service, so\nvisitors to your website can instantly communicate with you. Or do what\nChatterous did and let people create custom IM group chats. Maybe they did\nthese things and I didn't notice, but anything seems better than 'Let's put a\ntoolbar at the bottom of other peoples' sites!'\n\n~~~\ncatch23\nYeah, they had that back in 2007. Meebo bar appeared in Dec 2009.\n\nsee: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meebo#Timeline>\n\n------\njorgeortiz85\nMy first full-time job offer as I was wrapping up college in 2007 was from\nMeebo. At the time, they were about 12 employees.\n\nI didn't realize it at the time, as it was my first time going through the\ninterview/offer dance, but having much more experience with these things now\n(from both sides of the process), I can honestly say it ranks as the best I've\never heard of.\n\na) The technical portion of the interview was the best I've ever been through.\nIt culminated in them asking me to set aside 4 hours to come into their office\nand work alongside them (asking questions if I needed to), writing an HTTP\nserver in C.\n\nI almost shat my pants when I heard the question, but to this day its the most\nrewarding technical interview of my life. I started off with a problem I\nwasn't sure I could sove in the allotted time, I _built_ something, and it\n_worked_. (Well, it mostly worked. There was one elusive bug I couldn't figure\nout that day. I had to leave because of another commitment, but I promised to\ncome back the next day and fix it. When I got back the next day, a senior\nMeebo engineer had spent 3 hours debugging my code until he figured out the\nproblem. We code reviewed my code line-by-line as a wrap-up to the interview.)\n\nb) The non-technical portion of the interview was the best I've ever been\nthrough. They were very concerned about the ever-elusive \"culture fit\", and\nthe entire team made an effort to get to know me, taking me out to meals, etc.\nI met all three of the co-founders (Seth, Elaine, and Sandy), all of whom I'm\nsure were busy trying to build a product and grow a company, but they were\nincredibly warm, genuinely interested in getting to know me, and generous with\ntheir time.\n\nc) They gave me a great offer. For a fresh-out-of-college student with not\nmuch real work experience, both the salary and the equity portions of my offer\nwere extremely generous. I didn't even have to negotiate. At the time, Seth\nexplained they didn't want to go through a contentious negotiation process, so\nthey were opening off with a generous offer and it wasn't really open to\nnegotiation. It was, indeed, a generous offer. (Five years of experience\nlater, and I'm making less money, adjusted for inflation, than Meebo offered\nme as a fresh-out-of-school untried new hire.)\n\nd) The post-offer process was the best I've been through. At the time, I knew\nnothing about startups, stock options, VC, etc. I didn't even know how much I\ndidn't know. At his own initiative, Seth (the CEO!), took the time to explain\nthe equity portion of my offer. The offer included a number of options and a\nstrike price (standard), but unprompted told me about the other numbers I\nshould be concerned with: total shares outstanding, fully diluted % stake,\npreference multiples, etc. There's much more transparency about this stuff\ntoday (blogs, etc), but at the time no one else explained this stuff to you\n(and as a stupid college student, you wouldn't know to ask). Even today, in a\nmuch more competitive hiring environment, I hear about companies that tell\nexperienced engineers (who know what they're negotiating) that certain numbers\nwhich are essential to understanding an equity offer (like total number of\nshares outstanding) are \"confidential\".\n\nI ended up turning down the offer, but I have enormous admiration and respect\nfor Seth, Sandy, Elaine, and the whole team at Meebo. Congratulations on your\nmany successes over the years, and I hope to continue seeing great things from\nyou in the future.\n\n~~~\nonedev\nwhat offer did you think was more attractive than what they offered?\n\n~~~\njorgeortiz85\nHa! It's a long story. Let's just say I made a lot of mistakes over the course\nof the next few years.\n\nYou live, you learn.\n\n------\nRossDM\nThis makes me sad for the future of their chat client. The toolbar may suck,\nbut their IOS client rocks. It synchronizes with their web chat interface, so\nthat you may switch between conversations on mobile/desktop.\n\n------\nfranze\nI don't think that (even) more developers for G+ will solve ... anything.\n\n~~~\nKarunamon\nThe \"G+ is dead/dying\" canard again? Really?\n\n~~~\nericd\nHonest question - is it not?\n\n~~~\ndrivebyacct2\nNo. I'm just as tired of seeing it repeated here as I was hearing people\nrepeat \"Twitter is dumb and useless and not going anywhere\" 3 years ago. Just\nbecause you don't use it or subscribe to people that use it, doesn't mean the\nrest of us didn't take the time to actually utilize it.\n\n~~~\nmibbitier\nPeople said this about Wave as well.\n\nI'm not convinced. I tried google+, I was really impressed with the UI. I used\nit for a few days, then a few weeks later I suddenly remembered it existed. I\ndon't think I'm alone.\n\nPresumably they still count me as a 'user', even though I haven't used Google+\nfor ages.\n\n~~~\ndrivebyacct2\nWhy do you care if they include you in their user count? Why does it bother\nyou?\n\nI love Google+. I love the UI. I love the interaction I have with the people I\nfollow. They post good content, it's well featured, it's _fast_ on mobile\n(which is something its competitors flatly can not claim) and the Circles\nmodel works really well. For me.\n\nFunny, I also got a shockingly huge amount of value out of Wave. It was for\nvery specific group-school-project sorts of things, but it has been\nirreplacable in terms of simplicity and strange overlapping feature set. In\nfact, as others have noted, many features that people wish to see in a\n\"futuristic email 2.0\" were embodied by Google Wave.\n\nI guess I reject the notion that since _you_ don't like/use it, no one does.\n\n~~~\nmibbitier\n> \"Why do you care if they include you in their user count? Why does it bother\n> you?\"\n\nIt bothers me if they're being dishonest. Tell me how many people actively\nshared things on Google+ yesterday. Telling me how many people have ever used\nGoogle+ in the past isn't useful, and is going to vastly distort peoples\nperception.\n\n> \"I guess I reject the notion that since you don't like/use it, no one does.\"\n\nSure, valid point. I'd reply that out of all my facebook friends, a few tried\ngoogle+, and none actively use it that I know of. So it's not just me.\n\nIt's also telling that you got a huge amount of value out of Wave as well as\nplus. Perhaps Google+ isn't that much different to Wave... in which case it's\ndoomed.\n\nRelease Wave -> Failing -> Buy Etherpad -> Wave fails\n\nRelease Google+ -> Failing -> Buy Meebo -> Google+ fails\n\nDon't get me wrong, I love Google. But I can see history repeating itself\nhere...\n\n~~~\nRaphael_Amiard\n> Release Wave -> Failing -> Buy Etherpad -> Wave fails\n\nExcept etherpad technology is actively being used in google docs, maybe more\nthan it has ever been used in wave, and docs is quite far from dead\n\n------\nsakopov\nNice, generic and overenthusiastic post-acquisition blog post. They'll likely\nbe shutdown within a few months.\n\n------\nhuhtenberg\n> _Thank you all for coming along for the ride!_\n\nReads like a farewell note to me, not very encouraging.\n\n------\nemehrkay\nI like meebo, I always have and still use it (for AIM). I consider myself a\nfan even though I used to hate: \"They got 15 million for online instant\nmessaging?\"\n\nI really liked how in the early days they would show off their growth, new\noffice/employees, etc. when you logged in. It subconsciously acted as a source\nof inspiration.\n\n------\njamesflorentino\nI honestly did not see that coming. I was a regular user of meebo way back in\n2006-2008 but I don't have a solid recollection as to why I left (now using\nimo.im).\n\nI can only assume that the acquisition has something to do with Google Plus.\nWell, whatever it is for, I wish them good luck.\n\n------\nKenCochrane\nLooks like the site is getting crushed, I can't load the page.\n\n~~~\nmarkus2012\nThere's probably whiskey involved.\n\n------\ngfosco\nInteresting... does Meebo have any patents? I really would've expected that\nGoogle could re-develop any Meebo technology for cheaper than an acquisition.\n\n~~~\ngrhino\nI'm guessing the relationship Meebo has built with its customer base is more\nimportant than the technology.\n\n~~~\nlbbb\nI've been using the (old) Meebo Messenger for years. I've never had the\nimpression that they cared about its users a lot. There were no updates on the\nuser interface since I began using it, they didn't add features that were\nhighly requested on the feedback forums.\n\nThe toolbar thing is just... I don't know what that is. Looks useless to me.\n\nAnother thing, are there any good other web based multi messengers? I guess\nthey will shut this down soon then?\n\n~~~\nmibbitier\nI'm pretty sure they gave up on the messenger, and decided to put all their\neffort into the toolbar.\n\n------\nrorschachh\ngoogle is smart enough to realize that buying user bases doesnt work so it\nmust be the meebo metrics and their client install base? over the last few\nyears it seems like meebo has been struggling to make chat more of a commodity\nthan it actually is, IMO and at this price its more like a push for investors.\nas for g+ - desperate times call for desperate measures.\n\n------\nricardobeat\nI hope Meebo Messenger doesn't die. It's still the best web-based chat app,\nand the only way I still connect to my old MSN account.\n\n------\njpkeisala\nFor a moment I was thinking they bought Meego.\n\n------\nsoulclap\nMeebo was useful, back then. Sometimes. But right now I am tempted to just\nrespond with 'A/S/L?'.\n\n------\nkevinsd\nI have no doubt that startups including meebo got talents. But how does google\nmaintain its bar of engineer qualification? Or does it?\n\n------\nevanwolf\nThis is exactly the kind of talent and infrastructure you want for building\nWebRTC clients for Adsense. Think enhanced, in-browser, click-to-call ads.\nWith video chat. Talk to other shoppers and customers, then talk directly with\nthe restaurant or plumber.\n\nOr they could join the Google+ team as G brings videoconferencing in-house.\n\n------\ntaylorbuley\nI liked how they phrased the news in the body of the post -- \"Meebo has\nentered into an agreement to be acquired by Google\" -- more than how they\nphrased it in the headline: \"Google is acquiring Meebo.\" I'd like to think\nthat if I was selling a startup I would be master of my own destiny, too.\n\n------\nzinssmeister\nWhy?\n\n------\ndirtyhand\nGoogle is scared of Pinterest.\n\n~~~\nscribu\nWhat does Pinterest have to do with live chat?\n\n~~~\nketralnis\nEven less than either has to do with their current business model of being an\nadvertising network through their toolbar.\n\n------\ncapo\n\"... has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google!\".\n\nDoes that mean that they are expecting some sort of regulatory review before\nit's a done deal or is it just standard speak?\n\n~~~\ntomkarlo\nStandard language. Mergers usually can't be completed until after certain\nregulatory reviews are complete. In the US, one of the most common (for larger\ndeals) is HSR: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart-Scott-\nRodino_Antitrust_Imp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart-Scott-\nRodino_Antitrust_Improvements_Act)\n\n------\nshasty\nIf they are like a company I used to work for Meebo probably has a patent that\nreads as follows:\n\nSystem and message for sending a message using a computer system\n\n------\nshasty\nGoogle should definitely buy ICQ next.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDriving directions from SFO to Honolulu, HI (3,621 mi, 125 hours) - yummies\nhttp://maps.google.com/maps?q=SFO+to+Honolulu,+HI&saddr=SFO&daddr=Honolulu,+HI&hl=en&sll=37.7577,-122.4376&sspn=0.231261,0.4422&geocode=FRT7PQId3Ii0-CE_7c0aV1zypClVVVVVjHePgDE_7c0aV1zypA%3BFUAeRQEd40WX9ilNRsOMOxgAfDFsl6fzX_UoSw&oq=sfo+to+honolu&t=m&z=5\n\n======\nmatt_brushlabs\nI do wonder why they're asking me to drive to Seattle first. There's sailboats\nin San Francisco, you know...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEmployees who quit Shopify over its Breitbart ties can find new jobs - nomadicactivist\nhttps://news.fastcompany.com/employees-who-quit-shopify-over-its-breitbart-ties-can-find-new-jobs-through-this-service-4030797\n======\nclickbait\nI don't particularly like how it has become a normal occurrence for people to\ntry and ruin the lives of others simply because they have a different opinion.\n\n~~~\nflukus\nI wonder how easy it will be to abuse this new system to bootstrap a company.\nFirst clone an already successful company, then find someone politically\nundesirably using the competitor. Finally release a virtue signalling\nstatement that gets people to use your company instead.\n\n~~~\ngydfi\nIt's happening already, but with pretty limited success. Voat is reddit for\npeople driven off reddit. Gab is twitter for people driven off twitter.\nNeither of these is a roaring success just yet, but they're better positioned\nthan the average clone.\n\nIn general I don't think the splitters are ever likely to gain half the market\nshare of the original because 99% of people do not care for this kind of thing\nat all.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nVisualization of the Django Project, by code_swarm - DaniFong\nhttp://oebfare.com/blog/2008/jun/24/django-code_swarm/\n\n======\nDaniFong\nIncidentally, there's a gallery of code_swarm videos here.\n\n<http://code.google.com/p/codeswarm/wiki/Gallery>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGoogle Open-Sourced Kubernetes to Boost Its Cloud - kalgen\nhttp://www.wired.com/2015/06/google-kubernetes-says-future-cloud-computing/\n======\njustinsb\nI've been working with Kubernetes a fair bit (I'm contributing to porting it\nto AWS). It's an exciting time: I believe that we'll be running everything in\ncontainers within the next few years, and Kuberentes solves some of the big\nmissing pieces with actually running Docker in production across a cluster.\nThere are other competing systems trying to do the same thing (including\nDocker Inc itself), but I think Kubernetes has a huge advantage by having\nyears of experience of what did and didn't work well in Borg.\n\nMost importantly of all though, I have found it a great project to use, and a\nreally great project to contribute to. I think that contributions are the\nlifeblood of open-source projects, and I give Kubernetes 10/10 for their\ncommunity and processes, which I think bodes very well for the future.\n\n------\nmark_l_watson\nI am a little surprised that Google is join this route. Making Google Cloud\ninto a huge business must be a high priority. I used Borg for a while in 2013,\nand it was amazingly, specially the logging for tracking down runtime\nproblems.\n\n~~~\nfweespeech\nWhy? Google hands out all sorts of papers and such a few years after the fact.\n\nThis is just another example, an open source version of Borg that will always\nbe a few years behind.\n\n~~~\nthockingoog\nWhile it is true that Borg is 10 years ahead of Kubernetes, we have the\nbenefit of knowing where Borg arrived rather than following the same winding\ncourse.\n\n~~~\nfweespeech\nOf course, but unless there is a massive maintainability flaw in Borg, its\nunlikely you can duplicate 10 years of effort AND maintain pace with\nBorg's/Borg's successor(s) progress.\n\nWell, without a huge influx of developers to the open source side.\n\n~~~\nthockingoog\nFirst, there are a LOT of people working on Kubernetes right now.\n\nSecond, of course it will be asymptotic for a long time. But keep in mind that\nwe don't want or need everything that Borg has, and Borg does not have\neverything that Kubernetes does. Kubernetes is not a clone of Borg - it is\ninspired by the lessons and experiences we got by doing Borg. Often that means\nwe learned how NOT to do something.\n\nIf we can get 75% as functional as Borg in 1/3 the time, we'll be doing pretty\ndarn well. I think we're on track for that.\n\n~~~\nfweespeech\n> If we can get 75% as functional as Borg in 1/3 the time, we'll be doing\n> pretty darn well. I think we're on track for that.\n\nI'm sure you can do that. That doesn't invalidate my statement that it isn't\nsurprising Google would do this _precisely because it 'll only be 75% as\nfunctional as Borg at any given point in time_.\n\n------\nbsaul\nIs it me or does anyone else interprets all the recent wave of open sourcing\nas a trend to not create open standards anymore, but instead open source the\ntechnology altogether (without even creating the standard).\n\nHave standards failed ?\n\n~~~\nobstinate\nMy 2c, not speaking as a Google rep but as myself, is that if you have a\nproblem only a single actor needs to solve, you're going to end up with\nsoftware, not a standard. To get a standard, you have to have a situation\nwhere the value of cooperation is higher than the cost.\n\nThere are plenty of people _now_ who need to solve the container problem, but\nGooglers been working on this shit for years, before it was really on anyone\nelse's horizon. Google employees incepted the cgroup feature way back in 2006,\nto solve problems that were already being felt acutely at that time within\nGoogle. Folks have been working on this stuff a long time before it mattered\nto anyone else, and that's why what's coming out is software rather than\nstandards. There is no way a big company is going to delay solutions to an\nurgent strategic problem in order to be part of a democratic process for the\nsake of a few people's ideals. Maybe if they'd seen it coming five or ten\nyears in advance, to give enough time for the standardization process to\noccur, but Google was far too small and the future far too uncertain in 2001\nto predict what might be needed in 2006.\n\n~~~\nsitkack\nAlmost every problem that containers solved, was solved with EclipseBSD\n[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.25.8...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.25.8401)\nway back in 1998\n\n~~~\nmenage\nYes, the concept of resource control wasn't new. Getting it from a research\nproject to the form where it was production-ready and supported for inclusion\nin the mainline tree of Google's kernel of choice took a bit longer.\n\n~~~\nsitkack\nI used EclipseBSD, it was production ready. The community wasn't receptive at\nthe time for getting it into the mainline FreeBSD tree.\n\nFor this I applaud Google for making it in, even when the masses don't see the\npoint.\n\n------\ndigitalzombie\nKubernetes is alpha software right now. I was at a meet up last month and\nthere are a lot of missing features from what I recall. They're planning to\nfix one of these feature with some project call Ubernetes.\n\nWhile people are raving about containers, there are still security issues with\ncontainers no?\n\nI think VM will be here to stay for a long while and while we might have to\npay a performance and memory hit for them, they offer better isolation.\n\n~~~\n4ad\n> there are still security issues with containers no?\n\nIn Linux, perhaps. However FreeBSD jails and illumos zones are rock-solid.\nThere's this crazy hype around containers these days and people just ignore\nthe stable, secure, and tried technology, I don't understand it at all!\n\nFreeBSD and illumos are not Linux, but their still Unix-like, it's not like\nyou'd have to use OpenVMS. Plus you'd get other benefits too, like DTrace and\nZFS. And on illumos now you can even run Linux binaries in a zone.\n\nSo why do people simply pretend these secure technologies don't exist? Can\nsomeone explain?\n\n~~~\nmateuszf\nBecause there are lot more Linux users / developers than BSD.\n\n~~~\n4ad\nI don't think that \"X has more users than Y\" is a valid complete argument in\nitself, otherwise nothing would ever change. Of course it matters in the grand\nscheme of things, but the causal relationship is more complex, involves many\ndegrees of freedom and goes both ways.\n\nBefore docker came, Linux had LXC, which wasn't as popular as docker is now,\nbut it was certainly known and used by people. So when docker came, LXC had\nmore users than docker, and yet docker surpassed LXC in popularity in weeks,\nso the \"X has more users than Y\" state can be changed by various factors and\nit's not enough to keep the system in equilibrium.\n\nSo yes, the fact that Linux is more widely used than FreeBSD and illumos in\nthe developer community is certainly an important factor, but I don't see\nanyone ever saying \"FreeBSD is great but we want to use something supported by\na larger community\", or \"illumos is great, but we don't have expertise with\nit\", which are certainly important arguments to consider when making a\ndecision.\n\nBut I hardly see anyone making these arguments, or any other arguments really.\nIt's like these systems don't even exist. At first I attributed this to the \"X\nhas more users than Y\" factor, but then I see people having particular\nproblems with Linux container technology, in areas such as security, virtual\nnetworking, etc. And these are problems already solved by FreeBSD and illumos.\nSurely when you have a problem you look for alternative solutions that don't\nhave these problems?\n\nBut I don't see people looking over the alternatives at all. As I said, there\nare many valid reasons not to use these other technologies, but I am very\nperplexed that people refuse to even acknowledge the existence of them.\n\nAnd now that illumos can run Linux inside a zone (and FreeBSD did this too 15\nyears ago, and still does for 32-bit binaries, I believe work is well underway\nto extend this to 64-bit as well), I think the \"I only know Linux\" argument\nloses some potency, you _can_ run Linux after all...\n\n~~~\nderefr\nLXC and Docker are operations technologies. It takes the same codebase and\njust generates a different product from it.\n\nSwitching to a different OS, however, requires different _development-time_\ntechnologies. Some third-party dependencies like libraries you're used to\nusing might not even exist on the other platform.\n\nEffectively, developers are locked into a pretty _tiny_ development-time\necosystem: all the devs I know develop on Ubuntu (or on OSX with testing on\nUbuntu, if they can get away with it.) They depend on the apt package graph,\nincluding PPAs.\n\nHalf of the renewed enthusiasm behind containers isn't about security; it's\nabout the fact that a lot of operations people prefer RPM-based distros, and\nit was always really annoying to try to keep a given piece of Linux software\nportable between deb-based and RPM-based distros. You needed to figure out how\nto specify operation-time dependencies against at least two package graphs,\nand also compile-time dependencies using autotools or similar.\n\nIn contrast, Docker and similar ops software are interesting (from one\nperspective) precisely because they let devs _learn fewer things_ : you\ndevelop your software on your Ubuntu machine, create a container that\nbasically replicates your development environment, \"install\" your software in\nthere, and then distribute that. Now your software can be run on some other\ndev's (Ubuntu, OSX) machine, or deployed to a production (RHEL) machine. The\nother deployment scenarios are pretty minor in comparison.\n\nOr, in short: devs and ops are separate jobs. Containers make ops people do\nmore work/learn more things, but let devs do less work/learn fewer things.\nThat's why devs are enthusiastic about them: it pushes the work of packaging\ntheir software (or writing autoconf scripts) for various platforms off their\nplate.\n\nDevs are interested in learning one thing—e.g. how to write a Dockerfile—that\nlets them drop an entire stream of continuous work/learning/keeping-up they\nhave to do, e.g. handling changes in the multiple platforms their software\nsupports.\n\n~~~\nwalterbell\n_> Now your software can be run on some other dev's (Ubuntu, OSX) machine, or\ndeployed to a production (RHEL) machine. _\n\nWhat about dependencies between user-space and the host kernel? Aren't all\ncontainers forced to use the same kernel as the host?\n\nThe packaging scenario thst you describe has existed for years with VMs, where\nthe VM _can_ have a kernel or even OS version that is different from the host.\n\n~~~\nderefr\nThe main difference (besides overhead) is that a VM contains a running\ncollection of OS services along with your app. Because of this, the ops team\nneeds to be involved in keeping the VM up to date, the VM usually needs to be\n\"managed\" with orchestration much like a physical machine, and all-in-all it's\nbig interdependent mess where the devs can't just forget about deploy-time\nconcerns.\n\nIdiomatic usage of containers forces one particular solution for this: a\ncontainer contains one service; multiple services means multiple containers,\nand the orchestration of those containers is up to the ops people and their\nsoftware.\n\nVMs _can_ also be done this way. EC2 ephemeral instances work great for doing\na CoreOS-like \"upgrade by starting up new AMIs instances and killing the old\nones\" strategy.\n\nHowever, since ops people can't be _guaranteed_ that random VMs they're handed\ndo not, in fact, have arbitrarily-old services running in them with possible\nsecurity vulnerabilities, they have to be conservative about deploying random\nVMs created by devs. Thus, VMs don't tend to get created by devs; thus, the\ndevs still have to solve the deploy-time problem some other way to get the ops\npeople something they can _build into_ a VM. This isn't as much of a problem\nwith containers.\n\nUnikernel VMs, on the other hand, are effectively equivalent to containers:\nthey both provide \"just one service in a sandbox\"-level granularity, that ops\ncan then manage as it pleases. If Unikernels had come around 10 years ago—if\nLinux had been factored into a rump kernel, for example—I don't think we'd be\nnearly as interested in containers today.\n\n------\namelius\nAny references to the publications containing the real blueprint?\n\n~~~\nkalgen\nBorg:\n[http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43438.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43438.html)\nOmega:\n[http://research.google.com/pubs/pub41684.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub41684.html)\n\n------\ndegenerate\nThis has nothing to do with the article, but I absolutely hate the way wired\nunderlines their article links. It might fit with their magazine style design\nbut it's so incredibly distracting. I always want to bump it 1px up or down!\n\n------\ndkarapetyan\nGoogle open source projects in general are just shitty. The reason is that\nthey don't open source the whole thing and the code ends up being full of\nassumptions that don't hold because you are either not running things at\ngoogle scale or are missing certain key bits of the \"secret sauce\".\n\nIn any event google compute is a terrible user experience compared to the\nlikes of AWS and other cloud providers. Heck, even the shittiest VPS providers\ntend to be better than google compute. So open sourcing their \"secret sauce\"\nas the article puts is still missing key bits so I don't know how many people\nactually fall for the good will part.\n\n~~~\ncmcluck\ndisclaimer: i am a founder of the Kubernetes project and did the article with\nCade at Wired. i also was product lead for compute engine back in the day fwiw\n:).\n\nI am not sure which projects you have looked at from Google in terms of Open\nSource, but in the case of Kubernetes we have worked pretty hard to engage a\ncommunity outside of Google and work with the community to make sure that\nKubernetes is solid. One of the things that I like about the it is that many\nof the top contributors don't work at Google. People like Red Hat have worked\nvery closely with us to make sure that (1) Kubernetes works well on\ntraditional infrastructure (2) that it is a comprehensive system that meets\nenterprise needs, (3) that the usability is solid. People like Mirantis are\nworking to integrate Kubernetes into the OpenStack ecosystem. The project\nstarted as a Google thing, but is bigger than a single company now.\n\nAnother thing worth noting: building a hosted commercial product (Google\nContainer Engine) in the open by relying exclusively on the Kubernetes code\nbase has helped us ensure that what we have built is explicitly _not_ locked\ninto Google's infrastructure, that the experience is good (since our community\nhas built much of the experience), and that the product solves a genuinely\nbroad set of problems.\n\nAlso consider that many of our early production users don't run on Google.\nMany do, but many also run on AWS or on private clouds.\n\n\\-- craig\n\n~~~\njacques_chester\nI'd be interested to see whether Google follow's Pivotal's lead and donates\nits IP to an independent foundation, as happened with Cloud Foundry.\n\nDisclaimer: I work for Pivotal, in Pivotal Labs.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat is the best way to test mobile app across several networks and phones? - rokhayakebe\n\n======\nsimul\nIn the past I have used a combination of tools: \\- Smartphne emulator\ndeveloper edition (comercial) from yospace\n(<http://www.yospace.com/spede.html)>\n\n\\- Two firefox extenstions: user agent switcher, wmlbrowser.\n\n\\- You can find some more info. at <http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/> . Their\nmailing list is pretty good too.\n\n~~~\nrokhayakebe\nYospace is really cool. thank you\n\n------\njsjenkins168\nWhat language are you writing your app in? If using J2ME, I would suggest\nchecking out J2ME Polish to organize your builds across multiple platforms.\nThere is a built in device database that lists most phones along with their\nsupported APIs.\n\nWhile it wont replace eventual real-world testing, it at least allows you to\nfocus in on devices that support the specific APIs, form factors, etc that you\nneed and ignore the ones which you do not.\n\nThe J2ME Polish GUI libraries are also excellent and work well across\ndifferent devices.\n\n~~~\nrokhayakebe\nthank you. That would be nice but it doesn't test the functionality from one\noperator to the other.\n\n------\nmerlot-qa\nGot a budget? Check with centercode.com; they have a pool of volunteer\ntesters, and can send out a survey to select users with the target phones on\nthe target networks.\n\nNo budget? It's a really tough problem. Test where you can and ask for reports\nfrom other users. Offer something of value or interest for detailed bug\nreports from platforms you can't test yourself. There are only so many J2ME\nbase platforms so you can group by those, but in the end you need to test on\neach specific device.\n\n~~~\nrokhayakebe\nNot too bad centercode. Thank you Merlot.\n\n------\nNonEUCitizen\ni have not used this myself, but seems to be a good option (if claims are\ntrue):\n\n<http://deviceanywhere.com/index.jsp>\n\nif you try it, i would be interested in how you find the service.\n\n~~~\nrokhayakebe\nNice. but cost too much. Thanks for the link.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n5 Financial Rules for Startups - jasonlbaptiste\nhttp://www.businessinsider.com//5-financial-rules-startups\n======\nthaumaturgy\nLess than two years ago, I bootstrapped a consulting startup, by myself, and\nmade $300 in my first month. I had one client.\n\nMy goal this year was to hit $3,000 a month by the end of the year; I hit it\nin June. I'm now regularly picking up new clients -- still entirely by word-\nof-mouth -- I have two people working for/with me, and so far the growth isn't\nshowing any signs of slowing down.\n\nWhile these aren't very impressive numbers, they're not too bad for one guy\nwith no resources starting out. It's been a good exercise in non-stop business\njudo.\n\nSo, according to me:\n\n1: Don't waste your time reading crap like this. You won't learn as much from\nit as you will if you just go out and work your ass off.\n\n2: Oh yeah, working your ass off: do that, a lot. It's been hard off and on,\nbut I also keep getting better at it, and now any potential competitors that\ncome along are going to find themselves facing off against a human dynamo.\n\n3: I haven't figured out what #3 is yet. I've pretty much just done the first\ntwo. What comes next depends too much on the individual and their business and\ntheir market, so it's impossible to come up with one rule that works for\neveryone. Having tried out a couple of different business \"coaches\", I've\nfound them to be completely unhelpful. So: nobody should be telling you what\nto do, least of all me.\n\n~~~\nquizbiz\nHow do you pitch consulting? What exactly do you consult? If I may ask.\n\n~~~\nthaumaturgy\nI haven't had to pitch, for the most part, and that's definitely my weakness.\nI really suck at it.\n\nOne of the nice things about word-of-mouth growth is that people come to you,\nand they've already heard that you're good, so all they want to know is how\nmuch you cost and when you can come out.\n\nFor business mixers and the like, I have some pretty fancy business cards that\ncost me about $.80 apiece, but they've really paid for themselves in helping\nwith that whole first impression thing.\n\nI do I.T. consulting. In a nutshell, I'm one of the few guys that builds and\nadministrates networks and computer systems, can recover data from drives\n(usually), clean up your nastiest viruses without formatting your drive,\ninstall and troubleshoot IP telephony, as well as do software development,\nreverse engineering, and all kinds of other stuff. Up until recently, I had\ndays where I was a telephone technician for a couple of hours, a network admin\nfor a couple of hours, and a programmer for the rest of the day. We've just\nstarted a new one-obligation-per-tech-per-day policy, so that's gotten a\nlittle easier.\n\nI'm pretty much an affordable on-call I.T. department for anyone that needs\none.\n\nHey, wait-a-minute: that's not a bad pitch! _writes it down for later_\n\n~~~\npatio11\nI think if you charge more, you'll find that people become automatically more\nrespectful of your time. You might also find that you deal less with difficult\nclients who prioritize \"affordable\" (i.e. dirt freaking cheap) over everything\nelse, and as a result have a million problems which they expect you to solve\nfor $20. (\"What? That's a lot of money! I could get my brother's cousin in\nhere for $15, its a generous offer!\")\n\n~~~\nthaumaturgy\nYou are right, and I don't disagree, and I've even had a couple of clients\ntell me that I should be charging more -- the usual number they offer is twice\nmy usual rate ($35/hr for students; $39/hr for home/home office; $45/hr for\nbusinesses).\n\nHowever, I started doing this in part because I was extremely frustrated with\nthe various expensive I.T. support companies and draconian vendor support\ncontracts, and because there's a huge under-served market of people who just\nneed help with stuff they don't understand, and can't afford to pay Geek\nSquad's silly rates.\n\nI wanted to be part of the solution, instead of adding to the problem.\n\nFor the most part, we have a pretty good relationship with all of our clients.\nThere are occasional frustrations, but most of that is due to our own growing\npains. We just \"fired\" a client recently after a large project went sideways\nand we ended up getting a bit soaked on it; we won't hesitate to do that in\nmost cases, and I think it helps keep our business relationships healthier.\n\n~~~\npatio11\n_huge under-served market of people who just need help with stuff they don't\nunderstand, and can't afford to pay Geek Squad's silly rates_\n\nI know that market very well. I sell to them and, prior to moving to Japan at\nleast, I was frequently their on-call tech support as a result of being\nsomeone's sister's bridge partner's nephew.\n\nI love my customers (and not-quite-customers since they never, you know,\nactually paid money for my services) as people. I don't think they're less\nintelligent or less worthwhile as human beings just because they don't\nunderstand that the little beige box over there is not a \"CPU\". They don't\nneed to understand networking, automobile engines, or plumbing, just like I\ndon't need to understand the HR policies of the local streets and sanitation\ndepartment.\n\nWhat they do need to understand: you can solve some problems cheaply with\nproducts that can be produced at scale. You can teach yourself to manage some\nproblems cheaply with educational resources that can be produced at scale. If\nyou want an IT consultant with a range of skill broad enough to encompass\nalmost any problem you could have available to perform arbitrary tasks, it\nwill be _affordable_ in the sense that it will cost you far, far less than the\nbusiness value generated, but it will not be _inexpensive_ by any stretch of\nthe imagination.\n\n------\nbrown9-2\nEveryone one of this article's \"rules\" looks like this:\n\n    \n    \n       1. In the words of Evan Williams...\n       2. According to Jason Cohen...\n       3. This advice from Michael Arrington of Techcrunch...\n       4. According to Jason Calacanis...\n       5. Those are the words of Mark Cuban...\n    \n    \n\nA true list of N things ...\n\n------\nzaidf\nWeird to read an article that stresses making money but is anti-marketing.\n\nI understand most marketing is bloated. But even the best products need GOOD\nmarketing to bring in the dough. The solution is not to be anti-marketing.\nRather, be pro revenue focused marketing.\n\nUnimpressed.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGoogle Play security metadata and offline app distribution - el_duderino\nhttps://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/06/google-play-security-metadata-and.html\n======\nabrowne\nWill this block e.g. when Android Police has an APK download of an updated app\nbefore it rolls via normal updates?\n\n~~~\nsofaofthedamned\nNope. It just verifies that the apk came from Google Play to start with.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow to be a VC without any Capital - replicatorblog\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2015/09/19/how-to-be-a-vc-without-any-capital/\n======\narbuge\nYou would not, by definition, be much of a venture _capitalist_ without any\ncapital to command. Perhaps a better title might be \"How to raise your chances\nof some day being a professional VC, slim as they might be.\"\n\n~~~\ncharlesdm\nMoney flows to opportunities, not the other way around. If I can put X + Y\ntogether for $z, and I can sell it for $z*3, then it will be easy to find\nsomeone to give me $z.\n\n~~~\narbuge\nQuite true but this kind of wheeling and dealing is not something that VCs\ntypically do, in my experience at least.\n\n------\ndovereconomics\n> there will be plenty of angels or firms willing to cut a check or, at least,\n> take a meeting.\n\nWhat would keep them from ditching you and getting the deal without\ncommission/bonus? 'Niceness'/'Decency' doesn't really work in this industry.\n\n~~~\njoshu\nI think most better funds will not engage in this. It is a bad sign for the\nstartup.\n\nI often introduce companies to funds, but I just want the chance to invest\nalongside, which almost always happens. I am sometimes offered advisory shares\nfor making a conndction which I have always declined.\n\n~~~\nreplicatorblog\nThat was the author's point—this isn't something you do to make money, it's a\nway to show good firms that you have the skills needed to be a solid\nassociate/analyst.\n\n------\nrmason\nThe article is click bait. These days if you've sold your company and have a\nsmall amount of money to invest you might as well start your own fund, but do\nit as an AngelList Syndicate.\n\n[https://angel.co/syndicates/start](https://angel.co/syndicates/start)\n\nIf you're going to become an angel investor then why not let other people\ninvest alongside you? So instead of putting just $25,000 into a deal you can\nput $250,000 - 500,000 into a startup. Course if you're a flop you will lose\nyour investors but then again that is how it works in the real VC world ;<).\n\n------\nmmastrac\n> There is no clear mechanism for getting cut in on the deal in this model.\n\nSo, volunteer work?\n\n~~~\nlogicallee\nas far as I can tell, the author of this blog post would like to increase his\ndeal flow by arguing that volunteers should do his work for him, and send\nvetted deals his way (after doing due diligence).\n\nI only gave it a cursory reading though! Thoughts on my take?\n\n~~~\nreplicatorblog\nNot the point of the post at all. The author wrote this as advice to people\nwho want to break into VC, which is a common question he receives, per the\narticle.\n\n------\ncpach\nWhy not just start your own company?\n\n~~~\nreplicatorblog\nA few reasons:\n\n\\+ Different skill sets: VC is very much a relationship/network/finance job,\nfounding an operating company requires execution against many more functions,\nespecially product.\n\n\\+ Diversification: Often people who want to be VCs have had some success in\nfounding companies, but modest. If you look at most entrepreneurs turned VCs,\nthey sold their companies for relatively small amounts (with some notable\nexceptions e.g. Rich Barton, Reid Hoffman, Vinod Khosla). They know how hard\nit is to build an amazing company. Being a VC allows you to use those hard won\nskills while diversifying your portfolio.\n\n\\+ Lifestyle: Being a founder is great, but it's a roller coaster. Being a VC\nis hard work, but a bit more steady state.\n\n------\nRoadgazer\nHelping startups and investors to get connected and close the deal is very\nvaluable by itself. Though it should be real help to matter to both. And it's\nnot highlighted well in the article.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHave any of you used LiveScribe? Wondering if I should go for it or not - anjalimullanyny\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2013/11/13/gift-guide-gadgets-and-an-app-for-digital-bookworms-and-writers/\n\n======\nod2m\nThe technology itself works quite well. I did not like feel of the pen. The\nroller was approximately bic quality which is unacceptable for a $200 pen. My\npen died after a couple years of virtually no use. It would probably require a\nredesign of the pen, but I find I prefer gel pens nowadays and wish there was\na gel pen insert.\n\nIf you REALLY REALLY need to take notes during meetings, its the best thing\never. I find in most meetings however, there's probably one or two facts I\nreally need to know. I decided that instead of taking notes I would just stop\ncaring about meetings. I enter those one or two facts into evernote on my\nphone and I'm done with.\n\n------\nljf\nThey are awesome, if you ofter review hand written notes then get one, and if\nyou work with people who don't mind you recording conversations (such as\nrequirements gathering sessions) they are really useful.\n\nPretty much use mine daily\n\n~~~\nanjalimullanyny\nThis is helpful, thanks for the comments. I don't really want it for meetings\n- lately I've been writing more fiction, again, tho, and find I sometimes want\nto write freehand instead of on my laptop -- but then I have to deal with\ntranscribing pages and pages of my looping handwriting...\n\n------\njhcedric\nI use mine to create annotated recordings of lectures. It works quite well for\nthat purpose. Clicking on my notes skips the recording directly to the\nrelevant part of the lecture.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWikipedia Has Cancer - avery42\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2017-02-27/Op-ed\n======\ngreenyoda\nThis article is from 2017.\n\nIt was discussed extensively 8 months ago:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21699011](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21699011)\n\nThus, it's too early to repost it based on HN Guidelines (1 year). See\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)\n\nDiscussions from 2017:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14287235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14287235)\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15429067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15429067)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWorking on a few things in your bedroom doesn't make you an expert - zachinglis\nhttp://zachinglis.com/2012/working-on-a-few-things-in-your-bedroom-doesnt-make-you-an-expert/\n\n======\nlutusp\nI scanned the linked article until I got to: \"I am seeing an increased group\nof what I’d call newbies and inexperienced designers having started speaking.\"\nThe remainder of the article lives up to the impression this sentence creates.\n\nAt that point I realized the author isn't in a position to criticize the\n\"novice\" writing and speaking of others. And a Web page with a red background\ndoesn't demonstrate the experience and maturity the author evidently thinks he\npossesses.\n\n~~~\nzachinglis\nYou scanned an article and made a judgement?\n\nI've worked on a variety of projects, small and huge. Lead the redesign of a\nmajor website among other things.\n\nI never criticised people's grammar, purely where they come from.\n\n~~~\nlutusp\n> You scanned an article and made a _judgement_? [emphasis added]\n\nNo, I scanned the article and made a _judgment_. If you don't want to be\njudged on your use of English, improve it. What works for computer languages\nshould work for English too.\n\nHowever unfair you believe it to be, people are going to judge you based on\nyour use and misuse of English, and they will often do it in a flash.\nComplaining about it won't work -- all you can do is adapt and overcome, which\nI am sure is within your power.\n\n> I've worked on a variety of projects, small and huge. Lead the redesign of a\n> major website among other things.\n\nI believe you \"led\" the redesign of a major Website.\n\n> I never criticised people's grammar ...\n\nUnder the circumstances, that's a wise choice.\n\n> ... purely where they come from.\n\nI believe you mean \"where they're coming from\", as in \"what their attitudes\nare\", rather than their place of origin or residence. But I could be mistaken\n-- the above might be an Americanism with no British corollary.\n\nI find it very funny that people will unsentimentally dissect a piece of\ncomputer code (computer \"language\") with the aim of extracting a 10%\nimprovement in its running speed, or readability, or maintainability, but will\nbristle at the suggestion that the same high standards could be applied to\nwritten language.\n\n~~~\nzachinglis\nFair enough. I made some spelling and grammar mistakes. Although a lot was due\nto the fervour of all of yesterday's events.\n\nHowever, your comment was about how you skipped through a post and made a snap\njudgement. This doesn't help anyone - nor does it make your comments relevant.\nThe post was not about anyone's spelling or grammar and you were the only\nperson out of the thousands who read it who had a problem.\n\nAs for judgement which no doubt you're spitting vitriol at your screen, it can\nbe spelt either way: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement>\n\n~~~\nlutusp\n> However, your comment was about how you skipped through a post and made a\n> snap judgement. This doesn't help anyone - nor does it make your comments\n> relevant.\n\nOn the contrary, it does both. You need to learn that, in modern times, people\nare going to glance at your website, read the first few sentences, and draw a\nconclusion. Again, complaining about it is pointless -- all you can do is\naccommodate reality, as I am sure you can do.\n\nTop-flight advertising executives spend a huge amount of time writing and\nrewriting advertising copy, sometimes changing just one word before submitting\nthe result to a focus group, because a prime-time advertising spot can cost\nupwards of a million dollars. Do you think they complain that consumers\nrejected their offering because they chose the wrong word, or worse,\nmisspelled it? No, they fix the problem and get on with their lives.\n\nFix the problem and get on with your life.\n\n~~~\nzachinglis\n> Fix the problem and get on with your life. You see the irony in your\n> trolling right?\n\nI know all about copy, rewriting and reiterating on such. This is a blog, not\na high level advertisement. Most advertising can't be changed when in the Real\nWorld™ - whereas a blog can be.\n\nIf you don't like the article, you don't have to read it. If you want to\ncomment about it, read it so you actually know what you're talking about.\n\n~~~\nlutusp\n> This is a blog, not a high level advertisement.\n\nThat depends. Do you actually want people to read what you write, or is this\nall an exercise in lexical onanism?\n\n> If you want to comment about it, read it so you actually know what you're\n> talking about.\n\nYour problem is not that I didn't read the article. Your problem is that I\ndid.\n\n~~~\nzachinglis\nI get thousands of hits of people reading my articles. You are perhaps the\nfirst who really cared that much over the last 13 years. But I mainly write on\nmy blog for me and those who want to read. I am not mad hungry for visitors -\nI have plenty - but if people want to read then all the better.\n\nI have read a few lines in the Bible, there for I am an expert. I have read a\nfew lines of a medical text book, therefore I can perform operations. I have\nread a line of a blog post, therefore I know what the blog post says and about\nthe author.\n\n(Also, in response to your earlier criticism about design. What do you think\ndesign is? Prettiness? Design is about the simplest answer to the problem. As\nyou would have read - that was a Live Redesign, and since has been changed\nwith yet more fiddling. It was not meant to be.)\n\nThe truth is I received hundreds of responses via Twitter and Email (some\nseemed scared to talk so openly about such a problem for fear of being\nostracised.) It is a problem and one I wanted to discuss. I've seen it less so\nin the Ruby world mainly because front-end is much easier to master and slower\nmoving. The Ruby world is less forgiving - remember Yehuda's heckling earlier\nthis year.\n\nSo I wrote a post about what I felt was a serious matter and you decided that\nyou had read one sentence and it offended you because of your snap judgement\nthat you knew who I was. You decided that I know nothing about design based on\nyour subjective knowledge (and looking at your Geocities-style abomination of\na website - this doesn't help you any further) and the fact that I am dyslexic\nand perhaps don't always get the words that I want to say out correctly. It\nwas a needless comment that held no value to the thread, to the subject matter\nor anything.\n\nIf you had said \"This content is hard to read. I wish the author would rewrite\nit\" then I would have acknowledged that and even perhaps done that. As I have\ndone once before. Instead you tried to act clever (even failing the mark on\none of the corrections.)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSimple but Interesting Features of VS2010 and C# 4.0 - yread\nhttp://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/VS2010InterestingFeatures.aspx\n\n======\nnumlocked\nI think the only one of these that's innovative enough to be of interest to\nnonusers of C# + VS is the DataTips. It's basically a small watch window you\ncan pin anywhere in the code, almost like a sticky note. You can pin any\nnumber of them, anywhere in the code, and they scroll around and are visible\nwhen viewing source & debugging. They remain in place between debugging\nsessions (presumably stored in the VS project file). Seems extremely useful.\nDefinitely better than setting up and tearing down watch expressions all the\ntime.\n\n~~~\nmendicant\nYup. There's so many of these that are either irresponsible (Hiding code) or\nof limited usefulness (IsNullOrEmpty) or too limited to be truly useful (Named\nParameters).\n\nHiding Code: I've got an idea. If you've got to hide code, maybe it _doesn't\nbelong in that class_. Single responsibility people.\n\nString.IsNullOrEmpty(): Wow! Thanks MS for saving me from writing one 4 line\nhelper method. What would be useful is if you provided these helpers for the\nother 90 that I need every project. Seriously, any C# dev can provide you with\ntheir \"utility\" project that has them.\n\nNamed Parameters & Defaults: Awesome!..... unless you need something other\nthan a primitive, in which case you can't set default values, since it's\nnothing but a fancy compiler trick.\n\nI like C#, but really, there's not much they've added since Linq that's really\ncrazy interesting. Not that there isn't, but most of it isn't listed in this\narticle.\n\n~~~\nvarunsrin\nHiding code is actually quite useful - its not meant to obscure code that\ndoesn't belong, as you imply.\n\nSay for instance, I'm working on two methods that are expansive, but i'm\ntrying to debug a small part of those methods. To make watching breakpoints\nand tracking flow easy I hide all but the necessary parts of the code.\n\nI use regions in pretty much the same way - once I have a certain region of\nfunctionality locked down and tested, I hide it so I can focus on the part\nthat's still being developed / tested.\n\n~~~\nmendicant\nMy point is: If your class/code/file is so big that you need to hide code to\nbe able to easily navigate (or worse, understand) it, you're doing something\nwrong.\n\nI understand this is a religious argument of the code world and you're likely\nto disagree with me. I'm fine with that.\n\n~~~\nboyter\nYou are missing the point. Lots of large applications I work on maintaining\nhave large awful methods. This feature is excellent in these cases.\n\nYou could argue that I should re-factor the whole thing to avoid this issue,\nbut certain design decisions made by someone else make this a huge change, and\nin the world of risk adverse enterprise applications that is not going to\nhappen.\n\n~~~\nhkarthik\nCan you not start writing tests against those monster methods so that you've\ngot a refactoring safety net?\n\nI totally agree on being practical and not refactoring methods that work\ncorrectly. But if you find yourself in the monster methods making changes\nquite often, it seems irresponsible to not refactor and leave the camp ground\ncleaner for the next time you or someone else comes through it.\n\n~~~\nboyter\nIts a big ball of dependencies with no chance to mock due to someone deciding\non being \"clever\". Its up there with being untestable.\n\nGenerally I agree. If possible clean it up, but quite often its a small one\nline change, which needs to be fixed ASAP, so there is little chance to\nrefactor.\n\n------\nkogir\nBeware default values. They're set _at the point of invocation_ at compile\ntime. This isn't a problem, but you need to be aware of it. For this reason\nit's considered bad form to publicly use default values library assemblies -\nthe callers won't see any change until they too are recompiled.\n\nSee\n[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2011/05/19/optio...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2011/05/19/optional-\nargument-corner-cases-part-four.aspx)\n\n~~~\nphoton137\nIsn't that a standard feature of x86 function-invocation, ie, argument values\nare stored in caller's stack? (although C# runs on CLR, but still...)\n\n------\naforty\nA few of those features are ones that VB.NET developers have long been\nenjoying and yet VB.NET is still looked down upon when functionally it and C#\nhave been equal for years.\n\nYes I'm a little bitter because I had to learn the disgustingly ugly syntax\nthat is C# when I recently switched jobs.\n\n~~~\nnopassrecover\nThe \"ugly\" c-style C# syntax is far more expressive. Using VB.NET feels like\nusing crayons to draw portraits.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Good Fight - ryaninmtv\nhttp://kevinprentiss.com/?p=156\n\n======\nedw519\nAs I read about OP's awakening as he talked to some of the Techstars mentors,\nI kept thinking, \"Haven't I heard this somewhere before?\"\n\nThen I realized that I got many of the same feelings from reading the book _Do\nMore Faster_ by Techstars founders David Cohen and Brad Feld. This is a\ncollection of essays by Techstars mentors and founders sharing their\nexperiences. I imagine that OP could have gotten a lot of perspective if he\nhad read this book first. Many others would, too. The book is excellent.\n\nI already shared some of my favorite quotes from that book here:\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1974020>\n\nI'd love to see a similar book by YCombinator mentors and founders. What a\ntreat that would be.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat The Sleep Habits of Famous Writers Reveal About Their Productivity - angelohuang\nhttp://www.fastcompany.com/3026741/work-smart/what-the-sleep-habits-of-famous-writers-reveal-about-their-productivity?partner=rss&utm_content=bufferff287&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer\n======\nsocrates1998\nThis is interesting, but generally meaningless.\n\nStudying successful people doesn't reveal secrets.\n\nIt's the problem of induction. There are probably tons of unsuccessful writers\nthat have similar habits and write a ton of horrible writing.\n\n~~~\nNursie\nThis sort of article also seems to pander to a certain sort of personal\ncontrol-freakery - \"if I just change this one more thing about myself, then\nI'll be truly successful!\"\n\n------\numjames\nWould love to see this for notable programmers. Don't know if the data is\navailable for their wake-up times.\n\nWould also love to see how many of these writers/programmers took naps during\nthe day, at what time, and for how long.\n\n------\nsukuriant\nOkay, so I'm basically seeing that 9am is a pretty good time to wake up; and\nif you like to wake up earlier, that's good too?\n\nThis is still a very small sample of people.\n\n------\nWalterSear\nWhat did it reveal?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow not to hire an engineer - eddieSullivan\nhttp://www.chickenwingsw.com/scratches/programming/how-not-to-hire-an-engineer\n\n======\nbriancray\nI love the recent focus on hiring people, not job descriptions. I saw another\narticle written by David Cancel of Performable on the same subject. Technical\nskills are important, mind you, but personalities can't be taught.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPURE study makes headlines, but the conclusions are misleading - jonathansizz\nhttps://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutrition\n======\ninetsee\nThe link attached to the title takes you to the home page for Harvard's\nNutrition department. The actual critique of the PURE study is at\n[https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2017/09/08/pure...](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2017/09/08/pure-\nstudy-makes-headlines-but-the-conclusions-are-misleading/).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBe Happier: Things to Stop Doing Right Now - wallflower\nhttp://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/how-to-be-happier-work-10-things-stop-doing.html\n======\nSwizec\nJust wanted to say it's fascinating how articles are targeted to demographics.\nNever seen a \"Be happy at work\" post before that said things like\n\n\"People make mistakes. Employees don't meet your expectations. Vendors don't\ndeliver on time.\" - don't blame employees\n\n\"Yeah, you're the boss. Yeah, you're the titan of industry. Yeah, you're the\nsmall tail that wags a huge dog.\"\n\n\"Yeah, you're more educated. Yeah, you're more experienced. Yeah, you've been\naround more blocks and climbed more mountains and slayed more dragons.\"\n\n\"The higher you rise and the more you accomplish, the more likely you are to\nthink you know everything--and to tell people everything you think you know.\"\n\nThis is not your usual \"How to be happy\" article. Fascinating. I wonder what\nwould happen if I forwarded this to, say, my mum who works as a government\nclerk, or any of my college student friends bussing tables on weekends.\n\n~~~\nExpiredLink\nDale Carnegie?\n\n------\nalexholehouse\n_Impressing\n\nNo one likes you for your clothes, your car, your possessions, your title, or\nyour accomplishments. Those are all \"things.\" People may like your things--but\nthat doesn't mean they like you.\n\nSure, superficially they might seem to, but superficial is also insubstantial,\nand a relationship that is not based on substance is not a real relationship.\n\nGenuine relationships make you happier, and you'll only form genuine\nrelationships when you stop trying to impress and start trying to just be\nyourself. _\n\nImpressing should be a side effect of being exceptional at something. The\nabove paragraph describes, \"caring what people think about your appearance\".\nI'm not sure it has all that much to do with impressing.\n\n~~~\nn3rdy\nIt kind of does, \"dress to impress\", \"fake it til you make it\", are different\nways of trying to manipulate other peoples perception of your abilities.\n\nInstead people should dress to make themselves feel good about themselves,\nchilden wearing a superhero cape aren't trying to make you think they're super\nheros, they wear it because it makes them feel like super heros, because when\nthey look in a mirror, they think they look awesome.\n\nWhen you find the perfect hat that makes you look awesome, there's a moment\nwhere all that matters is that bad ass person looking back at you in the\nmirror, who for that moment looks like the you that exceeds every standard\nyou've ever set for yourself, who can do anything. You know other people would\nnever think the same thing about the same person in that mirror, that's fine,\nthis is your moment, not theirs. Every time you wear that hat, you get to\nexperience a little bit more of that moment, even if everybody insists the hat\nlooks ridiculous on you. They call you stubborn for wearing it, but the\nreality is in this case, you have transcended caring about what they think\nabout you, when you wear that hat.\n\n------\nhp50g\nIf I stopped doing all of those I would be miserable. This is someone writing\nabout how they want you to treat them but is incapable of doing so themselves\n(we all are incapable).\n\nHappiness is an balance of many personality traits, not some absolute concept.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Article on Diversity in Tech That Forbes Took Down - ahmacleod\nhttps://www.brianshall.com/2015/10/07/the-article-on-diversity-in-tech-that-forbes-took-down/\n======\ngjmulhol\nHard work is important, but the implication here that pure meritocracy created\nhighly homogenous companies is asinine. I am one of the privileged few that\ngets to live in this magical place, be told great all of us are, and how we\nworked hard to get here. We all are great, and many of us did work hard. But\nthat does not mean that being great and working hard are enough. When I look\naround me, I see almost exclusively people that look like me. This should not\nbe the case.\n\n------\nvictorhugo31337\nThey took your article down because you are very short-sighted. You believe\neveryone has had the same privileges and opportunities you've had, thus you\nexpect the same \"success\" from others. Step into someone else's shoes for a\nchange \"Bro\".\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Internship: Not the Movie - nsedlet\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/the-internship-not-the-movie.html?_r=0\n\n======\nLocke1689\nFriedman is a hack[1]. Aside from the fact that his primary source for this\narticle seems to be a New Yorker _cartoon_ , he seems unaware of federal law\non unpaid internships, which is quite stringent.\n\n[1] [http://nypress.com/flathead&#x2F](http://nypress.com/flathead&#x2F);\n\n~~~\nmichaelhoffman\nQuite stringent and largely unenforced.\n\n~~~\nLowKarmaAccount\nThis article was written in 2005. I've read Friedman's columns since, and they\nhaven't gotten any better.\n\nLook at this [1] piece in the _Columbia Journalism Review_ about Friedman's\nramblings two years ago about a \"radical centrist president\".\n\nFriedman lost a lot of credibility when he advocated for the Iraq War.\n\n[1]:\n[http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/tom_friedman_still_wrong.ph...](http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/tom_friedman_still_wrong.php)\n\n------\ntimdiggerm\nIt remains unclear to me how I was able to get an entry-level Software\nEngineering position in the DC/Baltimore area with nothing but a BS in CS from\nUMBC and no internships or relevant experience.\n\nAlso, Tom Friedman was a really boring commencement speaker.\n\n~~~\nwalshemj\nBecause SE is not a sexy a job as being a \"journalist\" or working in the\n\"medja\"\n\n------\nonewong\nNice follow up\n\n------\nesharef\nLol Dwight. Read article. Watch Vince Vaughn.\n\n------\ndw5ight\nw00t hireart 4tw. although wth is friedman writing about?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy I Can’t Quit Amazon, Even if I Wish I Could - myinnerbanjo\nhttps://medium.com/s/story/why-i-cant-quit-amazon-20bbb3c2b7e1\n======\nisacikgoz\nInteresting point of view. I lost in the paradox of \"While data can be used to\ntailor specific product offerings to consumers, it can also be used to deny us\nthings. Consider how a health care company might use the information acquired\nfrom your Fitbit, or even your Instacart and DoorDash deliveries.\" statement.\n\nHow can you trust a \"company\" to actually care about you?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSo does Google Glass have a back door? - ForFreedom\n\nHas anyone pondered about Google Glass having a back door.\n======\nmikemoka\nIn theory everything goes through the big G servers and might even be\nactivated remotely as far as we know at the moment, anybody in the developer\nprogram cares to weigh in?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nListe – A home for your ideas and task - qrs\nhttps://medium.com/schaffen-co/liste-ae56cdedf313\n\n======\nqrs\nWe're looking for a front-end developer and a back-end developer to help build\nthis great product with us!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSlack is Down for Chrome due to CDN issue - tcarn\nhttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByaKKJwF1jFsWjdCZ0FFR3lqVU0/view?usp=sharing\n======\ntcarn\nOddly issue only seems to be affecting Chrome - not Internet Explorer....\ncan't believe they use a different CDN on different browsers....\n\n~~~\nPiskvorrr\nUnlikely. Perhaps a HTTPS cert issue that the other browsers can handle?\n\n------\npm90\nWhat? I see it on FF and Safari as well.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDear Programmer, I have an idea - mkrecny\nhttp://blog.mkrecny.com/entry/23/\n======\npadobson\nI'm always looking for a co-founder, whether I'm the geek or the suit. When a\nsuit approaches me to be the geek for their idea, I usually give them some\nsimple technical task to do - like setup a Tumblr or a Twitter account for the\nidea. Then I'll often ask for something businessy - form a C-corp for the idea\nor file a provisional patent.\n\nFinally, before I even consider opening my laptop to code their idea, I want\nsome paltry measure of idea validation. Are you selling a product? Good, find\nsomeone who will pay you to do the task manually before we program it. Are you\nlooking to give the service away and monetize the user base? Good, get 5000\nemails from a landing page describing your idea, or get 1000 followers on\nTwitter for your idea's account.\n\nIf they can do all this in a day or even a week, then they're quality co-\nfounder material. Any longer and it's a judgement call. Most won't get past\nstep one, and you certainly didn't want them as a co-founder.\n\n~~~\nsaurik\n(Note: I am a programmer.) Being \"the suit\" isn't just \"I have an idea\", and\nassuming the suit must be capable of doing something technical undermines the\ninteresting complexity that that kind of knowledge entails.\n\nInstead, imagine someone who has found a \"market opportunity\" (not \"an idea\":\neveryone has ideas, and assuming programmers somehow don't have enough of\ntheir own to work on is part of what makes these kinds of e-mails insulting\n;P): in this case, \"the suit\" is someone who has the knack for turning ideas\ninto formal/defendable contracts and closed/agreeable business relationships\nin the same sense that you or I have the knack for turning ideas into stable\nprototypes or scalable production implementations.\n\nI personally then _love_ dealing with \"the suit\": I love bringing my ideas to\nhim, and I love seeing what he does with them; I love not having to worry\nabout that particular aspect of building a business that I often find tedious,\nfrustrating, or even intractable (a similar feeling, I imagine, to how he\nfeels about what I do).\n\nFrom this perspective, I can't imagine any of \"the suits\" that I know (and I\nnow know a bunch) sending an e-mail like the one in this article: it doesn't\nhave any of the properties I'm used to \"the suit\" having found fascinating\nabout these kinds of problems. (Of course, this e-mail is probably not\nverbatim, summarized through the veil of this blogger, and I might be reading\na bunch into it based on your response.)\n\nI can thereby understand feeling the need to ask someone like this to go off\nand do tasks like \"try to find a customer\" and \"can this be done manually\",\nbut somehow I feel like this is really just trying to tutor the person on the\nother end to see if they have basic business sense (the same kind I imagine\nyou have): when \"the suit\" contacts you, you will know it ;P.\n\nNow, you may also have been contacted by many such \"the suits\" already, and\ndisliked them: sometimes, these people's slavish devotion to business\nopportunity and formal agreements might cause them to be as alien as someone\nwith a slavish devotion to process and repeatability (as many programmers\nhave) is to a \"normal\" person.\n\nAlternatively, you might not have been inspired by the kinds of markets they\nattack: they might not seem world-changing, or challenging, or technical\nenough to even involve you; but the property of \"the suit\" that gives him that\ntitle is that he didn't just have an idea: he is thinking about how all the\npeople fit together, and is fully intending to be the person who makes it all\nhappen.\n\nI thereby encourage everyone to get to know a real \"the suit\", get to know his\nfriends, and try to see how they live their lives and why they do so: I think\nyou might be pleasantly surprised. That said: you might wonder how to\nrecognize \"the suit\" if you feel all of them are like this e-mailer (by which\nI really mean the stereotype of the guy who has a lightbulb go off in his\nhead, brands himself \"the idea guy\", and tries to find \"the programmer\").\n\nI might recommend finding someone older (although my go-to \"the suit\" isn't),\nwho honestly likes wearing suits (;P), and weirdly knows all of the lawyers in\ntown; he probably also knows about every business operating nearby (and\nexactly who funded them), is friends with the guy who owns half the buildings,\nand is respected enough to be invited to give advice to others at local\nbusiness plan programs.\n\nYou might, then, be surprised both at how useful these people are, how\nunimportant it might be that they are currently technical (although enough\ngeekiness in their past to have at least some feel for what is technically\npossible is quite handy), and at the same time how the people sending these\ne-mails are more like a guy who just learned PHP last week trying to start a\nbusiness with the CEO of General Motors than someone we should be up-in-arms\nabout.\n\n~~~\npadobson\nI am with you all the way on this. The great businesses and fortunes of the\nlast 200 years of industry did not come from engineering or technical\nexpertise, but rather from those few, adept individuals who were able to\nnavigate the mysterious world of relationships. If you do not make a dozen\nfriends in every crowded room and instinctively form lucrative relationships\non a daily basis, then knowing someone who does is the most valuable asset to\nyour professional goals.\n\n~~~\njkbyc\nThat's a simplistic view. I did almost exactly what you suggested and failed\nbecause although my co-founder was good at building lucrative relationships\nand even had some technical knowledge, he thought that he always knew best\nwhat should be done, wasn't really open for discussion, and generally was full\nof BS thinking he's likely the next Steve Jobs.\n\nUnfortunately I recognized this way too late. Also, he never really proved he\ncan in fact build something really valuable (but there were some smaller\nsuccesses so I was hopeful).\n\n~~~\npadobson\nSounds like he wasn't very good at managing the relationship with you. Steve\nJobs turned on the charm when he needed it - he was so good at reading people\nthat he knew when he could treat them like crap and when he had to really\nsuckup.\n\nSounds like you're partner didn't have anything like that. That's too bad\nbecause there's no relationship more important than the one with your co-\nfounder.\n\n------\nloumf\nMostly, I want to hear that they know that their idea is not the end of their\ncontribution -- that they are going to spend as much time as I spend on\ntechnical things getting market validation, building traction, creating\ncontent, acceptance testing etc.\n\nUsually, I get the sense from these kind of emails that they think the idea is\nso great, that just by itself, it's more valuable than the time you will spend\nimplementing it (or even comparable).\n\n------\nSwizec\nThey usually understand when I tell them that \"Equity isn't tasty\".\n\nSome of them then offer money, which can be traded for things that are tasty.\nThey are the ones I usually end up working with.\n\n------\nJoeboy\nI don't think I've ever received the kind of email the poster is talking\nabout. Is there something wrong with me?\n\nEdit: I do get a reasonable number of cold(ish) recruitment emails, but they\nmostly seem to be for real jobs. I'm not seriously worried about not receiving\nlame proposals, although I appreciate the sympathetic thoughts :-)\n\n~~~\nayi\nWell, even the \"create a wordpress blog for $100\" kind of programmers get this\nkind of mails these days.\n\n~~~\nmikle\nDon't dishearten him. I think this is more location based. As someone in Tel\nAviv I get a lot of these. Friends in less \"Startupy\" regions in Israel don't.\n\nTo be more general - these \"founders\" know they have a bigger chance to find a\ntechnical-co-founder (I'm using that very liberally) is in a place with lots\nof programmers.\n\n~~~\nayi\nactually i was refering to entrepreneurs, not programmers. some of them think\n\"important thing is founding the idea, any programmer can code it\".\n\n~~~\nmikle\nWith that I can agree. Ideas are worth nothing. Execution is what matters. And\nluck. Mostly luck.\n\n------\ndaemon13\nI am surprised [may be even amazed] that these kind of articles are making it\nto the HN's front page on a regular basis.\n\nThere are tons of people with muddy wishful thinking that can not execute even\nif you put the gun to their heads. This statement covers both commercial and\ntechnical side. If these people approach you, say no... unless they can offer\nmoney for your efforts.\n\nOnly the minority have required knowledge, experience, focus, will and smarts\nto execute on any kind of idea and build a proper business. It easy to\nrecognise such people [based on hiring 101] - look at their past successes. If\nthese people approach you, say yes... even if you are offered shmequity [but\ncheck the legal docs].\n\nI have a feeling that most of such articles are driven by the ego thing, and\nhelp people to validate their self-worth. Not sure this the most effective way\nfor self-validation.\n\nMy another feeling is the SV people are living in a kind of rosy bubble and\nare constantly patting each other in back to help their view of the world hold\ntogether. Well, may be do something of value?\n\nP.S.: of course the above does have certain generalizations, but smart people\nshall have not hurt feeling, yes?\n\n------\njavajosh\nIt's a little like having an idea for a book or a movie, and going to an\nauthor or director wanting to \"collaborate\" to make the idea a reality. The\nsimple fact is that it's hard to render ideas into any form that is _widely\ndigestible_. Just like directors and authors, programmers \"prechew\" ideas.\nThere are some surprising rewards to learning how to do this, in that much\nlike a sculptor or a painter one realizes that the medium is actually rather\ninfluential, and how pleasant it is to \"go with the grain\" for any given\nproject. But still, it's hard to learn how to prechew software ideas into\nreality, it is often not a pleasant task, which is probably why emails like\nthis one have such an unpleasant character.\n\nAlthough, wanting to have a pet geek to do your bidding is entirely\nunderstandable. Heck, I've been guilty of wanting that myself! And, I guess if\nI had the dough (or the charisma) I could have one. But an idea is an\ninsulting offer - like offering $20 for your house.\n\n~~~\nopminion\nThere is a remark about that in Robert Makee's Story, a screenwriting manual.\n\nHe describes a similar situation and points out that the reason why the\nscriptwriter got into the profession very likely was to learn the difficult\ncraft of translating their own abundant ideas into scripts.\n\n------\nlouhong\nI'll throw in my 2 cents as typical HN 'suit'. For background, I do have a\ntechnical co-founder and am working on something currently and we've been\nworking together over a year and are on our second project.\n\nFirst, I think the OP's response was perfectly acceptable. Its important as a\ntechnical co-founder to determine quickly what the \"suit\" can bring to the\ntable although I do think he left out some valuable skills like marketing,\nuser adoption, team building. He did include 'industry experience' which is\ncritical. (edit: I also recall my co-founder then asking me situational\nquestions like how I would market x app, who would use it, pricing, etc to see\nif I've thought through the process)\n\nSecond, one aspect that I see missing often is chemistry. Over the last few\nyears I've attempted multiple projects with several different people and I\ncan't stress how important chemistry is with your co-founder and/or team. I\nactually really enjoy hanging out with my co-founder and consider him a friend\nand we regularly hang out (with each other's families) and that kind of trust\ncarries over to our work. Trust is something you can't quantify so for those\nin search of co-founders, don't just look at credentials but look at the\nperson too.\n\nMy last thought is that although you're a 'suit' like I am, you need to make\nan effort. There is a general curve that says in the idea phase the majority\nof the workload is done by the technical co-founder. While true, I do my best\nto try and offset that. It gives me no joy to sit on my ass while my buddy is\ncoding to 3am every night. How would it make you feel if you're busting your\nass pitching, getting customers, and doing cust dev while they are at happy\nhour? So to respond to this I do my best. I've picked up basic design skills\n(PS/AI/FW), I've gotten his help to install ruby and learn basic HTML/CSS so I\ncan make easy changes. I alternate every few days from doing something design\ncentric, customer oriented (get feedback/lead gen), to thinking about our\nproduct direction.\n\nSo my take aways are: ask questions, figure out if you can work together, and\nmake sure everyone is willing to put in the work to make it happen.\n\n------\nj45\nPartnerships are harder than marriage. I have learnt so much about successful\nfriendships and relationships from successful partnerships.\n\nGetting on the same page, and staying on the same page is the defining\nchallenge of partnerships.\n\nIf reports of how much YC focuses on the co-founder relationship are true, I\nthink it's a big part of the secret.\n\nThe healthiest partnership that I enjoy is based on a tough/fair love approach\nof mincing no words, but having a deep, deep respect and trust for the others\nabilities and judgement based on one thing: We know what we know, and we know\nwhat we don't know, and we don't bs.\n\nWe work to get the hell out of each others way and instead support and push\neach other forward so we keep moving, inward, onward, and upward. I want to\nmake sure in partnership, that 1+1 = 11, not 2. If our collective footprint\nisn't larger than any two normal people coming together, the leaps we have to\ntake will take that much more work.\n\nWhen finding a partner, one relationship for me has been forming since high\nschool, through university, and now a friend doing some consulting for me. We\nhave solved complex problems with differing opinions for over 15 years. I have\nfound the bliss of knowing everything that we build will be built at least as\ngood as I would have imagined to do it. (I code or can sell, but not both at\nthe same time very easily). If he's hell bent on doing something a particular\nway to be kinder to ourselves in the future, great. He's usually hell bent on\navoiding premature optimization, though, so again, the balance is there in a\nway we both agree. Having the chance to work together on in consulting, with\none of us\n\nI don't care to argue details that my partner understands better. If there's a\nscenario I need explained until I get it, I focus on asking for input and\nteaching on that. Likewise, my partner treats me the same.\n\nPartnerships reveal not just the good, but the bad and ugly. You need to know\nhow your partner will be at your side and have your back in times of\nchallenge, stress, trouble and disagreement. Stress, and disagreement is\nguaranteed. How you both approach resolving and being in a place of mutual\nagreement is critical. Really, it's about learning to communicate early,\noften, and openly. If you can't do that, like any marriage, the relationship\nsuffers from what it could have accomplished. You need to know how to disagree\nand be able to constantly say \"You might be right / I don't know / Let's find\nout.\" without fear.\n\n------\nyesbabyyes\nMost of the \"ideas\" that come to me in this way are not really ideas. It's\nmore like \"a blog network\", \"streaming audio\" or, in a few cases, more like \"a\nblog\". If it's someone I know, I discuss with them and try to give them some\nadvice on what a situation would look like where I _might_ be interested.\nUsually, I try to give some tips on how to start small. Usually, they don't,\nbut keep on trying to build a team, or get someone to give them money.\n\nThere was a post like this on HN some time ago (a few months or perhaps a\nyear) which I found well put, not too harsh while shedding light from the\nauthor's perspective. Does anyone remember this article?\n\nEdit: I found this[1], it might be the one but I think I remember a better\none. This one[2] about NDAs is also good.\n\n[1] [http://martingryner.com/no-i-wont-be-your-technical-co-\nfound...](http://martingryner.com/no-i-wont-be-your-technical-co-founder/)\n\n[2] [http://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2012/04/why-i-wont-sign-\nyour-...](http://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2012/04/why-i-wont-sign-your-nda/)\n\n------\nnoonespecial\nHey, at least he told you the idea. Most of the time when I get this email,\nthe project is suuuuper secret and I'm just supposed to take the senders word\non the awesomeness.\n\n~~~\nabishekk92\nAnd sign an NDA,before he could tell you his suuuuuper awesome idea.\n\n~~~\ntsotha\nOnce someone says \"NDA\" the conversation is over for me, unless they're\nrepresenting an established company.\n\n------\nVSerge\nI'm a non-tech founder (second startup) and I've had a hard time finding a\ntech co-founder. So I worked with programmers who are partners on the project,\nie they get paid much less than they would in a normal gig, but they get their\nprice cut \"risk\" paid several times down the road if it works. And since it's\nalways a big if, I think this is the most genuine form of risk and revenue\nsharing short of being real co-founders. (feel free to get in touch on\nsversille@flirtatiouslabs.com if you'd like to see a contract template for\nthis kind of partnership)\n\nThis being said, programmers tend to be the tiniest bit too full of\nthemselves. So, besides the idea, here's a few things I've done as a non-tech\nfounder: fundraising, algorithm writing, iterative design (with playtesting\nfrom recruting testers to analyzing results quantitatively), marketing,\ndebugging. Also, hey, I managed the project, which with 3 devs, 1 graphic\ndesigner, 1 sound designer, and 2 creative writers accross 3 timezones does\nrequire a bit of work. Here's the Facebook game we've done on 20k€ FYI, and\nfor which we're approaching launch: apps.facebook.com/flirtati\n\nIt's obviously far from perfect, but my point here is that \"suits\" can have\nvalid ideas and should not just be seen as wantrepreneurs, especially by\ndevelopers who are good but might still for example need me to do a search\nduring debugging and tell them why nvarchar should be used at some point\ninstead of a simple varchar. End of rant.\n\n~~~\nacomar\nI think the point is that everyone wants a non-technical co-founder to be more\nlike yourself. But the emails from the \"idea\" people fail in a more\nfundamental way -- imagine writing a cover letter to an employer that\nbasically told the employer only what you got out of employment. Suddenly that\nsounds like begging for charity, not a potential business relationship, and so\nthe email gets ignored. Ignore enough of those emails and you get posts like\nthe OP.\n\n------\nKilimanjaro\nDon't fall for that idea trap. Just ask for money. If they don't have it, tell\nthem to get funders and hire you as a first programmer AND equity if they\nreally want you.\n\nIt is always better to have something in your pocket than 50% of nothing.\n\n------\njiggy2011\nTo be honest I might consider some sort of profit/equity split with somebody\nwho had a really good idea (and had done the research to prove it).\n\nSometimes between reading stuff like HN and working on code all day I feel\nlike I'm a bit too close to everything to really evaluate ideas rationally.\nEvery time I've had I can usually think of 100 reasons to shoot it down and\nmake it seem like more effort than it's worth.\n\nThe problem I guess is that most of these ideas aren't really that good\nbecause the person thinking of them hasn't really considered the effort and\ncost involved.\n\nReminds me of being back in school where a handful of us had learned very\nbasic BASIC programming. Naturally we decided \"shit, let's make an awesome\ngame and be rich!\". Of course such a project attracted entire legions of\nhangers on who wanted to be \"game designers\" or \"level designers\". Nobody\nthought that making a few shareware text-adventures or sprite based games\nwould be cool, everybody came with ideas about how to make the next Doom or\nSonic except _even more_ ambitious.\n\n~~~\nTomGullen\n> To be honest I might consider some sort of profit/equity split with somebody\n> who had a really good idea (and had done the research to prove it).\n\nWhy wouldn't you just take the idea and execute it yourself with 100% equity?\nThe guy with the idea needs to bring something else to the table, whether it's\na particular skill set or something crucial to the deployment of said idea\nsuch as a patent.\n\n~~~\nSoftwareMaven\n1\\. Because that research has value, so it would be unethical.\n\n2\\. It takes more than code to make a business.\n\n3\\. A partnership will be more fun and less likely to suffer from technology\nmyopia.\n\n~~~\nTomGullen\nSome of those points are valid (#1 especially). But when you run a business\nit's important that all parties are happy and feel like they have a fair deal.\n\nYou need to ask yourself that 6 months down the line, when the other person\nreally isn't contributing much because they can't, and you're working long\ndays sweating, working hard and putting a career on hold, and you've got 50%\nequity, are you going to be happy? It's not going to be a sustainable\nrelationship for very long and has a good chance of being doomed to fail\nbefore you've written any code.\n\n~~~\nDomenic_S\nHence,\n\n> _2\\. It takes more than code to make a business._\n\nLike culture, marketing, market validation, generating press buzz, interviews,\nrecruiting, and so forth. If the idea guy can't do a lot of those business-y\nthings, you don't have a business so the 6-month question is premature.\n\n~~~\nTomGullen\nI don't think it's premature, a lot of people will want a product (MVP) before\nthey go ahead and formalise the entire thing. You're going to be the guy doing\nall the work in that department. Up until the MVP is developed there's really\nnot much else to do.\n\nPretty much everything you listed is most effectively after you actually have\na product.\n\n~~~\nSoftwareMaven\n_Up until the MVP is developed there's really not much else to do._\n\nAs a guy that straddles the line between \"tech guy\" and \"business guy\" (I've\ndone both of them), my opinion is that there is a _lot_ that can be done\nbefore the MVP is developed. In fact, if the business guy isn't out validating\nwhat the tech guy is building from day one, it is almost guaranteed the MVP is\ngoing to be wrong and/or it is going to land with a resounding splat.\n\nAs the business guy, my job was getting out, meeting with potential customers,\nunderstanding what they would buy, what they wouldn't buy, and why. My job was\ngetting early interest in our idea that could translate into (eventual) early\nuse of the product. My job was making sure we understood who else was in the\nspace and how we were going to differentiate our product.\n\nIn short, if you practice \"throw some code out and start selling\", you are\ngoing to have a really hard time getting traction.\n\n------\nrcavezza\nAt one point in time I was the person writing these emails. Now, I'm the\nperson getting these emails.\n\nIt is hard to be an entrepreneur when you can't make things. If you're good at\nselling, you still need something to sell.\n\n~~~\nwmeredith\n>>It is hard to be an entrepreneur when you can't make things. If you're good\nat selling, you still need something to sell.\n\nIf you find yourself in this scenario, step one is selling yourself.\n\n------\nfunkwyrm\nI have been through this a lot with a music/art interactive platform I've been\nworking on for the past year and a half or so. My gut take on this is that\nprogrammers have the same problem musicians have; although they may be in\ndemand, they overestimate their ability to evaluate potential enterprises.\n(great players have about as much trouble evaluating whether a band is worth\njoining as A&R people did picking winners)\n\nI started not only with an innovative and fun product idea which is fairly\ncontained technically, but also very significant technical ability of my own\n(working professionally as everything from an SEO guy back in the day and a\nUI/UX guy for 10 years), niche expertise/perspective and very hard to get\nconnections, marketing experience, a fairly coherent business strategy with\npotential customers expressing interest, and although I don't have a ton of\nfunding I have never asked anyone to work for free or \"just equity\" ... ever.\n\nAnd I still can't hire objective C developers. What's wrong with this picture?\n\nDid I mention I live in a major US city. And I'm friendly and (usually)\neasygoing?\n\nOne conclusion is that I have an unrealistic view of what I'm offering, or\nthat I am terrible at looking for people (probably both true) but another\nfactor may be unexamined assumptions on the part of developers when they\nevaluate a potential opportunity. Perhaps they already \"know\" what a cofounder\nlooks and talks like, without realizing their preconception exists. Perhaps\nthey have a picture in their head already of what a \"good\" or \"successful\"\nproduct will be ... or perhaps they really want to be working on a idea of\ntheir own but are having trouble getting started, which creates semi-conscious\nambivalence about working on the ideas of others. I don't know that any of\nthis is true, but having spent my life around talented creative people of\nwidely varying levels of \"success\" that's what occurs to me.\n\nJust an outside perspective.\n\n~~~\nSamuelMulder\nYour biggest problem is probably that Objective C developers are in extremely\nhigh demand. They can make a lot of money, or if they have an interest in\nstart-ups the barrier for entry is so low to get in the app store that they\nprobably don't see a need to partner. Everyone has a dozen ideas for cool\napps.\n\nIt sounds like you have a pretty compelling pitch, but you are pitching to a\nvery small market with tons of competition.\n\nGood luck!\n\n~~~\nfunkwyrm\nYeah, that's kind of the conclusion I came to. But that just makes me ask the\nquestion: Then why doesn't every developer with a related skillset just learn\nObjective C already and try to charge me lots of money? I mean, if I didn't\nalready have two jobs on top of spending months of the year on tour, that's\nwhat I would do. Sometimes capitalism doesn't work.\n\nThanks for your well wishes!\n\n------\ntomasien\nThe first app I ever recruited technical people to was thecityswig.com. It\nrequired a ton of industry knowledge and foot work, all of which I provided,\nso we all felt like we were equal.\n\nNow, when I present ideas I come at it from this direction: if you want to\nwork with me, you're the boss. You decide how much I'm worth and we'll go from\nthere. I know you're going to be more valuable, especially initially, so your\nownership should reflect that. However, I'm going to work my ass of to make\nsure you don't have to worry about anything but building the product. What's\nthat plus my experience and hustle worth to you?\n\n~~~\njnbiche\nthecityswig is impressive. Any plans to expand outside of VA?\n\n~~~\ntomasien\nI wish! Thank you for the kind words, we've run out of money. Couldn't quite\nget the proof of concept traction we needed. Great user base, no revenue (bc\nof restrictions in VA that could be overcome with an investment). Too bad!\n\n------\ndmor\nDefinitely goes both ways. \"Dear Business Person, I have a side project\" and I\nheard you are good at getting customers/funding/partnerships/employees - can\nwe get coffee for an hour so you can tell me how to achieve these goals so I\ncan raise some funding, or maybe you'd like to be an advisor and we can meet a\ncouple times each week for free. Sometimes a polite no works, but often I am\nsurprised by the degree of entitlement people seems to feel when making this\nkind of ask, and have to decline multiple times before they get it.\n\n------\ngamebit07\nIncidentally, i had a discussion with a colleague(non techie) of mine, who\nwanted to learn programming so that he could make apps and earn money. People\nactually think if they learn programming or have an app out there in the\nmarket will get rich. At least this has been the reason I have seen quite a\nfew people drifting towards programming, they see it as a shortcut to realize\ntheir million dollar dream overnight. But the story out here in market is\ntough, bro! \"It takes 20 years to be an overnight success.\"\n\n~~~\nmej10\nHonestly, someone's willingness to learn programming just to implement their\nidea (if they stick with it) would be a huge positive to me. It is the people\nthat think 99% of the work is having an idea that dishearten me. \"Oh, if you\nimplement my idea I will let you have 10% of the profit.\" Great...\n\n\"Yep, the only reason I'm not rich is that I couldn't think of the idea for a\nsocial photo gallery for cat pictures. I am just not creative enough to think\nof such amazing ideas.\"\n\n------\nsliksal02\nIf you're the ideas guy--\"the suit\" or whatever slightly condescending term\nyou're calling us now--I think you're almost always better off learning to\nprogram on your own. Once you've learned enough to build a prototype, and are\nactually on your way or have created an MVP, you've indicated a) that you're\nserious about this project, b) whether it's viable going forward, and c) that\nyou're not a complete technical neophyte. Most importantly, you've flipped the\nscript to a certain extent -- you can now be selective about who you choose to\nwork with, and you've qualified yourself enough to be an arbiter of quality.\n\nJust my two cents. I can understand why the developers here might hesitate to\nwork with someone who hasn't proven that he's willing to put in the work. But\non the other hand, if you're a serious non-technical co-founder, I'm not\nconvinced it's a great idea to just pick the first developer who's willing to\nwork with you. Seems like a recipe for disaster.\n\n------\nfghh45sdfhr3\nThat is a really great response by the programmer! I think I will copy it\nverbatim.\n\n~~~\nhenryaym\nyou should really cite your response :)\n\n~~~\nfghh45sdfhr3\nImitation is the highest form of flattery!\n\n------\nSnaKeZ\nI hate that font, unreadable.\n\n~~~\nbrittohalloran\nThere's a lot of blogs with bad fonts that show up on HN. Readability chrome\nextension is my savior (no affiliation)\n\n<http://www.readability.com/>\n\n------\nJVIDEL\n_Idea guys_ these days don't even bother, it used to be that they would make a\nserious attempt, make documentation, mockups, a .ppt, etc...\n\nThese days I get emails from people who don't even know how to make an\nexecutive summary, how am I supposed to believe this guy can take care of the\nbusiness side while I get 5 hours of sleep a day trying to code the app?\n\nAnd that's the problem, if your pitch email is less than three paragraphs long\nI don't even bother, because I know it's probably the same one you sent some\nother coder and you couldn't even bother to write a proper personal request.\n\n------\ndrp4929\nRegarding your 4 bullet points :\n\n1) Why do you assume that he is asking you to code for free or equity and not\nfor pay ? Did he say it explicitly in email or you just assumed ?\n\n2) There is not enough info here to say anything.\n\n3) On the flip side, do you have considerable leadership skills as a technical\nperson to complement this non-technical person's considerable technical skill\nyou expect him to have?\n\n4) Do you have considerable communication skills to complement this person's\nconsiderable design skill you expect him to have?\n\n[Note, I have been programming since last 20 years.]\n\n------\nmmphosis\nGreetings Idea Person,\n\nTo proceed, please sign a Retainer Agreement.\n\nKind Regards, Programmer.\n\n<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retainer_agreement>\n\n------\nshalintj\nThere's one more thing I would like to add. Apologies if it's already\ndiscussed... Non-techie guys with ideas should not think that by offering nice\nstock options/equity to a techie, they can get them on board.. A simple\nthought - there's no value of your equity.. So, do not make the mistake of\nthinking that you're obliging the techie by offering him/her a considerable\nstake in your idea/company...\n\n------\nmijail\nPitching to a programmer is the best from of natural selection. Someone should\nmake a webform that directs non programmers through The Wax on Wax Off of\nbeing an effective non programmer. There is equal contribution that can occur\nwith non programmers but it takes quiet a bit more effort than most non techs\nthink.\n\n------\nkaiserama\nNext up, I'd like to read.\n\nDear Investor, I want some money\n\n------\nZanderEarth32\nWasn't this just an intro email? I occasionally get emails from friends or\nfriends of friends who are looking for marketing advice and while most of the\nprojects don't interest me, I at least send back another email asking a few\nquestions before rejecting them.\n\n------\npradeep89\nunfortunately being beginner , i also came across same people as mentioned\nhere, just offering idea and just seating next to you, doing nothing and\nasking for percentage in project/start up.Soon after i realized, people should\nbe credited depending on their contribution and not just for sitting. We\nfamously call this people as \"Associate Percentage Partners\" :D but this time\nlesson learned !\n\n------\npav3l\n>In the current tech environment, any programmer worth their salt and known to\nbe somewhat available is also getting these emails.\n\nIs this actually true?\n\n~~~\nTomGullen\nIt's a bit of an exaggeration to get the point across. I don't get many\nemails, if any at all, but I do get friends or friends of friends every now\nand then proposing ideas.\n\n------\nwillholloway\nThe best kind of non-coding cofounder is a brilliant showman.\n\n------\ncin_\nmeh\n\n------\nits_so_on\nthere's another route. break down what you want to do and you can basically\nget it done for free. For example:\n\n\\--------------\n\nRequirements.\n\n1\\. requisition an Amazon EC2 instance for me.\n\nNo other steps.\n\n\\--------------\n\nthen a tech guy on IRC will do it for $5. Next, you want to get someone to do\nthe following. I need a programmer to put a plain rails installation on my\namazon ec2 instance.\n\n\\--------------\n\nRequirements.\n\n1\\. Install rails on my amazon server.\n\nNo other steps, no configuration.\n\n\\--------------\n\nThen someone from IRC will do it for you, shittily, for $10.\n\nNext, you want to do the hard part. \"I need someone to create a page in my\nrails installation that says Enter your email address in the box below. It\ndoesn't have to work. Like this:\n[http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_for...](http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_form_submit)\n\n\\--------------\n\nRequirements doc:\n\n1\\. The following code translated into a rails app that doesn't have to do\nanything:\n\n\\-\n[http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_for...](http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_form_submit)\n\nThere are no other requirements.\n\n\\--------------\n\nSomeone will do it for you for $5. Next you would say:\n\n\"I need to get this rails form working.\" and link to the page showing the non-\nworking form.\n\n\\--------------\n\nRequirements doc.\n\n1\\. Whenever a user submits their name and address on the following rails page\n__________ it should be added to a database connected to rails.\n\nThere are no other requirements.\n\n\\--------------\n\nSomeone on IRC will do it for $10.\n\nNext you would requisition a non-working table of other names who have used\nthat field. Next you requisition someone to get the table working.\n\nNext you requisition a change from \"name and email address\" to the REAL point\nof your form. Maybe you're building an online trading platform where people\ncan enter information about collectable turds, and you will be monetizing\nthis.\n\n\\--------------\n\nRequirements doc.\n\n1\\. Change \"name\" and \"email address\" to two different fields I give you,\nkeeping the application working.\n\nNo other requirements.\n\n\\--------------\n\nSomeone will do it for you for $10.\n\nIn this way you can boil the chicken slowly, and by the time you've blown\nthrough $85 you'll have a complete turd-trading platform with built-in\nrecurring billing and a % commission your turd platform takes on every\ntransaction.\n\nYes, not everyone can pull it off. Your main risk is that you have to kind of\nscreen the fifty-sixty programmers who will be comming in and out of your\namazon instance.\n\nBut with a little dedication, you can pretty much get unlimited work for free\nand get to keep 100% of it. The point is to only do one super-simple thing at\na time.\n\nI guess you have to have some technical understanding of what's happening\nbehind the scenes to pull this off though. Maybe enroll in a quick seminar :)\n\nGood luck with your turd platform.\n\n~~~\nTillE\nThat seems like a clever idea, but really each step you're describing would\ntake about five minutes for someone who knows what they're doing.\n\nIf you can enumerate your requirements so precisely, I'm sure you can find\nsomeone decent for less than $60/hour to execute them.\n\n------\nhpguy\n>> Have some way to pay the developer.\n\n>> Have an impressive track record of expertise / success in the relevant\nindustry.\n\n>> Have considerable technical skills.\n\n>> Have considerable design skills.\n\nIf I have all that, why do I need YOU to execute this idea?\n\n~~~\nmyhf\nIt said you need ANY of those, not ALL of them.\n\n~~~\nhpguy\nMy bad, I misread it. Still, I would ask the same for the requirement of \"have\nconsiderable technical skills\".\n\n~~~\nfunkwyrm\nConversation with a very technical friend of mine about filling positions in\nmy bootstrapping company:\n\nHIM - you need a technical cofounder\n\nME - don't I know it ... perhaps you could learn objective C and not only work\nwith me but have tons of high paying freelance work available\n\nHIM - that's a huge time investment. Maybe you should learn objective C and\nthen you wouldn't have this problem any more.\n\nME - I would genuinely enjoy that. But then who will go out and talk to bands\n(my first target customer) not to mention doing all this design work,\narchitecture for the product, finding more staff, managing projects, marketing\nthe product ...\n\nHIM - Lot's of people can go talk to bands. Get a college kid to go talk to\nbands. Developers are what's hard to find.\n\nThe thing is, he's probably right ... but there is a structural problem in how\nwe make these decisions about working with other people ... it is nearly\nimpossible to assess expertise in something that you are not knowledgable\nabout. So we often either massively overvalue stuff other people do; i.e. \"set\nup a C corp\" is quite a small undertaking and isn't how I would evaluate a\nbusiness cofounder, or undervalue it \"anybody can go talk to bands\" displays a\nlack of specific understanding of the music industry.\n\n------\nimechura\nRant warning...\n\nSince when are computer programmers too good to want ideas to work on from\npeople who may have valid business domain knowledge?\n\nIn my opinion software and programming skills are worth LESS THAN NOTHING if\nthey don't have a business idea to monetize them... And last time I checked,\nmy programming colleagues rarely possessed valuable insights into what\nproblems non-programmers are willing to spend money on.\n\nTell you what, if anyone wants has ideas like the one posted above, please\nsend them to my email address because I would be more than happy entertain\nyour start-up ideas in my spare time. If its not a good fit I would love to\ntake the time to discuss it with you as it will probably be a good learning\nexperience for the both of us if nothing else we will both make a new friend\nor connection.\n\nemail: imechura AT gmail DOT com\n\n~~~\ngexla\n\"In my opinion software and programming skills are worth LESS THAN NOTHING if\nthey don't have a business idea to monetize them... \"\n\nTell that to the developers that Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc are fighting\neach other to bring on board. The skills are worth a job with a guaranteed\npaycheck.\n\n\"And last time I checked, my programming colleagues rarely possessed valuable\ninsights into what problems non-programmers are willing to spend money on.\"\n\nNobody possesses this without putting in the legwork to see if the idea will\nsomehow make enough money to be worth the effort. You do the legwork and from\nthat feedback, decide to keep moving forward, drop the idea, or pivot. The key\nis getting the process started. Sure, different people have different industry\nknowledge, but nobody can predict success from the beginning.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe best linear algebra books - begriffs\nhttps://begriffs.com/posts/2016-07-24-best-linear-algebra-books.html\n======\ndoppioandante\nThere's a introductory book that I would add to the \"generalist\" list, that is\n'Linear Algebra Done Wrong' by Sergei Treil. It can be found freely here:\n[https://www.math.brown.edu/~treil/papers/LADW/LADW.html](https://www.math.brown.edu/~treil/papers/LADW/LADW.html)\n\nI've used it to prepare my linear algebra exam in an italian university (which\nusually emphasize theory over practice, even in engineering courses), and I've\nloved it. There are few exercises but they're to the point. Complex inner\nproduct, self-adjoint operators etc. are treated. I find the notation used in\nthere particularly easy to understand, and proofs are elegant but very easy to\nfollow.\n\n~~~\nznpy\nI have skimmed some books about Linear Algebra, both in Italian and in\nEnglish, and my favourite so far is \"Geometria e Algebra Lineare\" by Enrico\nSchlesinger.\n\nThe book is very well written but sadly it won't be enough to pass a typical\nitalian Linear Algebra exam. This is because, in my opinion, examples are too\nvague or too \"abstract\": when you're first learning such subject, it would be\nbetter to have layman terms, that is simple examples with simple numbers. More\ncomplex examples might be okay too, but simple examples should come first.\n\nReference: [http://www.zanichelli.it/ricerca/prodotti/algebra-\nlineare-e-...](http://www.zanichelli.it/ricerca/prodotti/algebra-lineare-e-\ngeometria)\n\n~~~\ndoppioandante\nMy favourite linear algebra book in italian is \"Geometria e Algebra Lineare\"\nby Abbena, Finno and Giannella. Really great book, with a wealth of exercises\nand extensive material.\n\nI can also suggest the youtube lectures[0] by Francesco Bottacin, who actually\nwas the one that eventually did my oral examination.\n\nHe's also written two books based on the course, the one with exercises[1] is\nvery solid and I think you can pass the written exam by just doing it whole.\nThey told me he is a wonderful lecturer. Pity that all this material is in\nitalian.\n\n[0]\n[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpJGeVBfmf-6S3neeImAw1w/fee...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpJGeVBfmf-6S3neeImAw1w/feed)\n\n[1] [https://www.amazon.it/Esercizi-algebra-geometria-\nFrancesco-B...](https://www.amazon.it/Esercizi-algebra-geometria-Francesco-\nBottacin/dp/8874889305?ie=UTF8&SubscriptionId=AKIAJALSGXBDME3OOGUQ&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=8874889305&linkCode=xm2&tag=esculapio-21)\n\n~~~\nx0x0\nYou'd probably like Strang. He's an mit professor who shared his linear\nalgebra course lectures. They're excellent.\n\n[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-\nalgebra-...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra-\nspring-2010/video-lectures/)\n\nA one-edition back version of his book _Introduction to Linear Algebra_ is\navailable for under $30.\n\n[https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Linear-Algebra-\nGilbert-S...](https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Linear-Algebra-Gilbert-\nStrang/dp/0961408898/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1469389149&sr=1-1&keywords=introduction+to+linear+algebra+3rd+strang)\n\n~~~\nznpy\nI actually don't like the Strang book and his MIT course.\n\nI watched 6 or 7 of his lessons, and to be honest, I think they're nice if you\nalready know the subject.\n\nI have skimmed both an italian version of his book and an english one, still\ndidn't like it.\n\nThe nice thing about the Schlesinger book is that it builds all of the\nconcepts basically from scratch. Euclid’s Elements are quoted too, in the\nintroduction.\n\nToo bad it has poor examples.\n\n~~~\nx0x0\nThat was not my experience -- I was utterly confused by my college linear\nalgebra class which was taught as a bag of techniques. I couldn't figure out\nwhy anyone would care or what you would do with any of it. And I definitely\ndidn't get the connections to the geometry that Strang goes over in Ch4 iirc.\n\nStrang taught me linear algebra. His course -- and I read a couple other books\nafterwards -- is the only reason I understand it. Not only the how of the\ntechniques, but why and what they do.\n\nI don't suppose there's an english translation of the Schlesinger book? Google\nsays no.\n\n------\ndxbydt\nGiven the frequency and popularity of these \"math texts for programmer\naudience\" threads on HN, I think there's a solid business model where\nprogrammers pay a onetime subscription fee for unlimited email/hangouts access\nto a math professor. The problem with learning math all by yourself is, to\nquote my favorite math professor- \"math is a foreign language\". So its a bit\nlike trying to learn chinese sitting in a non-chinese setting, with only a\nchinese grammar text. You are simply not going to get very far. Far easier to\nbuy a plane ticket to China and surround yourself with Chinese speakers, so\nyou learn through osmosis - which is what the university experience is all\nabout. But not everyone can take time off and go to a university. So then,\natleast have a Chinese mentor on call, who can guide you through the difficult\nparts, tell you why things are the way they are etc.\n\nI'd be glad to pay $1000 for a 1year unlimited email access to a math prof who\ncan help me with some of the harder portions of measure theory and Banach\nspaces. Sign up enough students like myself and you have a lucrative gig.\n\n~~~\nmath_and_stuff\nAs a former math professor, I'm not confident that this would be as scalable\nas you might be assuming. Given a nominal fee of $1k/year and a reasonable\ntarget of 100 such subscriptions, that is 100 people requesting \"unlimited\"\namounts of your time in 1on1's. And decent 1on1's require non-trivial prep.\nAnd, given 100 customers, at least one is bound to push the limits of the\n\"unlimited\" premise.\n\n~~~\ndxbydt\nThe \"unlimited\" is mostly branding, like gmail's unlimited email storage. In\npractice, professionals like myself simply don't have the time to bug you at\nall hours of the day. I have a dayjob and maybe an hour I could devote to math\nevery weekday. So worst case you'd receive 1 question a day...usually far\nless. Moreover, students tend to ask the same questions, so after the initial\nphase you can simply redirect most queries to preexisting URL. Also, you as a\nprofessor don't have to chime in for everything - have a graduate student\npreprocess the majority of the questions and you attack the harder 10%. Its\ndefinitely feasible. Chegg does something similar - what's missing is the\nquality and rankings\n\n------\njacobolus\nSo has the author read all these books? Is there a review? What makes these\nthe best? Isn’t a significant part of the content in these books overlapping?\n\nWhat is someone who isn’t a graduate student algebraist supposed to take away\nfrom a list of 33 books? At typical textbook prices, that’s like $4000 and 5\nyears of doing nothing but reading about linear algebra.\n\n(Sorry if this sounds negative; I’m sure there’s some audience who will find\nthis list useful.)\n\n~~~\ndavidmr\nHonestly, I'm not even sure how much a review would help either. I struggled\nquite a bit with linear algebra in school with Curtis' _Abstract Linear\nAlgebra_ , and eventually I decided to hole up in the math library for the\nbetter part of a week and went through every linear algebra book they had\n(definitely more than 33) to find the best supplementary material. I guess it\nwas a pretty hard class because about half of the other students had the same\nidea. None of us settled on the same book as our favorite.\n\nMy sample size is exceptionally small, but the opinion I took away was that\nlinear algebra was just one of those things you have to plod through lots of\nbooks to find the one that works for you.\n\n------\nscottlocklin\nI can't believe he didn't mention Gilbert Strang. This should be the starting\npoint for everyone, IMO.\n\nThe oddball Russian books look very interesting, but for a computer guy to\nlearn, I'd suggest Strang, then Trefethen & Bau (my favorite). If there is\nanything else worth knowing about numeric linear algebra it is in Gollub, or\nDemmel's applied numerical linear algebra (another unforgivable omission; he\nonly helped write LAPACK!).\n\nThe problem books can also be important; they're all pretty good if you pick\nthe problems right.\n\nNot sure the highly theoretical stuff is actually worth anything as far as\ngetting things done, unless you go on to study Algebra and mathematics in\ngeneral. Ultimately the \"real world\" stuff where linear algebra is studied as\nsystems of equations and geometric constructs is going to be closest to what\nyou actually do with linear algebra on a computer.\n\n~~~\npeatfreak\n> I can't believe he didn't mention Gilbert Strang. This should be the\n> starting point for everyone, IMO.\n\nNot everybody loves this book, you know. A lot of people find its sloppy,\ndisorganized, chatty style quite irritating.\n\n> Not sure the highly theoretical stuff is actually worth anything as far as\n> getting things done, unless you go on to study Algebra and mathematics in\n> general.\n\nYou've answered your own question. It's \"highly theoretical\", not \"highly\npractical\". The focus is different by definition.\n\n------\njm547ster\nReally appreciate this effort. My mathematical background is somewhat lacking\nand I'd love to pursue ML/Data science where I'm led to believe this is a\nprerequisite. Anyone able to tell me what other areas of math I might need as\na baseline before diving in here?\n\n~~~\ndavidmr\nMy advice to you would be to start backwards. Find a few interesting-looking\npapers in the field and get a feel for the math involved and learn it. If you\nlearn your mathematics as a tool to make sense of the papers you're reading,\nyou're likely to be going down the right path for your goals.\n\nThat said, linear algebra and statistics (+ prereqs) are an absolute\nnecessity.\n\n------\nswordswinger12\nWhy no Halmos, \"Finite-dimensional vector spaces\"? It's pretty theoretical but\nvery approachable also.\n\n~~~\nbegriffs\nI own that book and have worked through a few chapters. It is one of the first\nlinear algebra books in a \"modern\" style, being published in 1958. The reason\nit's not on the list is I just didn't see what it had to offer that isn't\ncovered in later books. Happy to be convinced otherwise though.\n\nI do have Halmos' linear algebra problem book on the list because it's quite\ngood.\n\n~~~\ngraycat\n> The reason it's not on the list is I just didn't see what it had to offer\n> that isn't covered in later books. Happy to be convinced otherwise though.\n\nHalmos wrote _Finite Dimensional Vector Spaces_ in 1942 -- shortly after he\ngot his Ph.D. from J. Doob at University of Illinois -- at the Institute for\nAdvanced Study in Princeton as an assistant to von Neumann.\n\nThe book is a mostly finite dimensional introduction to von Neumann's Hilbert\nspace theory. Some physics profs tell their students to read that book to\nlearn the Hilbert space theory they need for quantum mechanics. Generally the\nbook uses Hilbert space, that is infinite dimensional, notation and arguments\nwhen they also work for the finite dimensional results -- cute. This approach\nis easier and cleaner when it works.\n\nThere is emphasis on duality, as is important in functional analysis including\nHilbert space.\n\nSome of the special emphasis is on spectral theory, important in\ntransformations on Hilbert space.\n\nHalmos includes some multi-linear algebra (can see again in exterior algebra\nand more modern approaches to general relativity) and near the end has an\nergodic theorem!\n\nAt one time the book was one of three basic references for Harvard's somewhat\nfamous or notorious Math 55 as in\n\n[http://www.american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-\nco...](http://www.american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-contents/why-\ncan2019t-a-woman-be-more-like-a-man/?searchterm=Sommers)\n\nThe other two references were Rudin's _Principles_ and Spivak's _Calculus on\nManifolds_. So, from Harvard get a good recommendation for excellence for the\nHalmos book.\n\nI very much enjoyed that Halmos book and later more of his books. He was one\nof the best writers in math of the 20th century.\n\nHis proof of the Hamilton-Cayley theorem is a little less general than the one\nin, say, E. Nering's book, and I wrote Halmos about that. He wrote back a nice\nletter.\n\nI learned linear algebra from a course in abstract algebra, Murdoch, _Linear\nAlgebra for Undergraduates_ , (about the easiest linear algebra book anyone\ncould read), one by E. Nering, some work I did in mathematical physics, the\nfirst chapters of Nickerson, Spencer, and Steenrod's _Advanced Calculus_ , my\nugrad math honors paper on group representation theory, Herstein's _Topics in\nAlgebra_ on abstract algebra, Halmos, _FDVS_ , Forsythe and Molar on numerical\nlinear algebra, applications in multivariate statistics, some work in\noptimization, carefully wrote out my own notes, enough for a book, and more.\n\nThe OP list also includes Horn's book. After all that study, mostly\nindependently and part of my career in applied math and computing, eventually\nI took Horn's course, intended to be an advanced course. As part of my\napplication to his grad school, I did include a copy of the Halmos letter!\n\nThere was next to nothing in the Horn course new to me, and I didn't try very\nhard. Everything in the course was carefully graded. I did the homework but\ndidn't study for the tests. On an early homework assignment, the grader made a\nmistake on my paper; I corrected him; and he made no more mistakes. About\n3/4ths the way through the course the grader showed me the class scores -- I\nwas first on everything by wide margins. Did that again on the final.\nApparently did that again on the corresponding Ph.D. qualifying exam.\n\nIn the course, when Horn got to the polar decomposition, I got excited and\nblurted out in class \"That's my favorite theorem\" which it was and is. Horn's\nremark was, \"Thank you Dr. Halmos\".\n\nThe polar decomposition? Go through a lot of stuff in linear transformations\nand then discover something really simple: All a linear transformation can do\nis just a rigid motion (rotations, reflections) followed by\nstretching/shrinking on orthogonal axes. A _singular_ transformation? One or\nmore of the axes go to zero. In the non-singular case, the proof is really\nsimple. In the singular case the difficulty is that there are many choices for\nthe rigid motion part and just have to pick one.\n\nHorn did at times have some especially good proofs.\n\nHorn is very precise with high quality.\n\nIt's possible to have a quite fast introduction to linear algebra, but then\nare missing out on a lot if don't work carefully through a classic text such\nas Hoffman and Kunze. IIRC it is available as PDF on the internet for free.\n\nE. Nering's book is also fine except for his material in the back on linear\nprogramming which is easy (for a lot of it, just slightly tweak Gauss\nelimination) but he makes difficult. For linear programming, get a good book\non linear programming, e.g., Chvatal or Bazaraa and Jarvis. In the back,\nNering also does group representations -- very cute.\n\nI'd recommend Halmos, _FDVS_ as ice cream and cake desert after something like\nHoffman and Kunze.\n\nFor the numerical stuff, should look at the documentation for Linpack. Maybe\nalso look at Forsythe and Molar. Some that has been done since then for\nnumerical methods, e.g., for models of oil reservoirs, is impressive -- might\nat least glance at that.\n\nBroadly there are two directions in linear algebra: One direction assumes that\nthe field is the real and/or complex numbers and is aimed at _analysis_ and\napplied math. The other direction assumes finite fields and is aimed at high\nend abstract algebra and has applications in, say, algebraic coding theory\n(high end error correcting codes).\n\nThe direction with real and complex numbers is, sure, a start on functional\nanalysis (you are in a vector space, but each _point_ is a function -- get to\nlearn how to approximate functions by other functions, e.g., how to\napproximate random variables by other random variables, e.g., learn Fourier\ntheory), but for that also should have measure theory, e.g., from Royden,\n_Real Analysis_ and/or the first half of Rudin, _Real and Complex Analysis_.\nFor that, as in Math 55, a prerequisite is Rudin's, _Principles_.\n\nRudin's _Functional Analysis_ is more advanced, still. I got accepted to grad\nschool at Brown's Division of Applied Math (didn't go there), and Rudin's _FA_\nwas popular there, but I haven't seen a lot of popularity for it elsewhere.\n\nA huge fraction of applied math, somewhere on the way to implementation and\ncode, boils down to linear algebra.\n\n~~~\nswordswinger12\nOh god, I still have nightmares about Herstein. I took an _undergrad_ algebra\nclass from a very old-school prof who thought it would be good for undergrads\nto be exposed to some of the problems - they gave all of us quite a bit of\ntrouble.\n\n~~~\ngraycat\nHerstein is a bit obscure for a first course. Once I was pushed into a course\nfrom Herstein. At first it was in group theory below what I'd already done. I\nasked the prof if he was going to get to group representation theory. He said\nthat that topic was \"deep\". I told him it was my ugrad honors paper. The\ncourse was beneath me, and I saved time and didn't go. For the final exam, he\ngave me an oral. He asked me something about Galois theory, which is in\nHerstein and which I learned from there for his exam. His other question was\nabout duality. He wanted me to show that the dual space of the dual space is\nisomorphic to the original space. That's true and easy to show, mostly just\npushing symbols around, and the notation can get a little confusing, but is\nnot true in some cases.\n\nSome point set topology courses consider duals of duals, and when there is\nequality say that the original space is _reflexive_. Then they want to define\nthe weak topology and the weak* topology, etc. Can see some of this in, say,\nG. Simmons, _Introduction to Topology and Modern Analysis_ , super nicely\nwritten book although I have never seen any applications for it.\n\nPushing around duality in linear algebra can get to _adjoint_ transformations.\nTo me it turns out to be a lot of careful notation for something that turns\nout to be nearly trivial.\n\nYes, on problems in Herstein, there was one on rings. It took me a while but I\ngot it. I showed it to the prof, and he sent me to another prof who thought\nthat solving that problem was good. He gave me a more difficult related\nproblem, and I made a mess out of it. The problem needed transfinite\ninduction, and I was supposed to understand that but didn't understand it very\nwell. So, I got pissed off: I should have been studying stuff I didn't know,\ne.g., transfinite induction, instead of wasting time in the Herstein course\nthat had, say, only Galois theory I didn't already know.\n\nAt that school same thing happened in a topology course: The book was Kelley,\nfamous. Heck as an ugrad, I'd taken that book and given lectures once a week\nto a prof and did a stack of the exercises. I did all but the chapter on\ncompactness at which time I dropped everything to finish my honors paper. For\nme to sit in that topology course was stupid.\n\nI went to the department chair and tried to get into some material I didn't\nknow but wanted to, especially differential geometry for relativity. He told\nme no.\n\nSo, I did my teaching, started violin, met my wife, and left for a good job!\n\n------\nivan_ah\nThe books in the list are pretty advanced. It would be nice to see some sort\nof \"star\" rating for each book to indicate which books the authors found best.\n\nOn a shorter note, here is a four-page introduction to the basics of linear\nalgebra:\n[https://minireference.com/static/tutorials/linear_algebra_in...](https://minireference.com/static/tutorials/linear_algebra_in_4_pages.pdf)\n\n------\nliamconnell\nI studied under the author of this book [1] and I can anecdotally say that I\nfinished with a very strong understanding of the subject. Learning linear\nalgebra and being able to whip out some of the less common theorems has been\nvery valuable to me as someone who uses numpy, pandas and tensorflow\nregularly.\n\n[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Applications-Otto-\nBret...](https://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Applications-Otto-\nBretscher/dp/0136009263)\n\n------\nverylongaccount\nI am a big fan of Hoffman and Kunze. I also think many would benefit from\nreading a book on ordinary differential equations after they read a linear\nalgebra textbook. Much of the elementary theory of linear ODEs consists of\ncombining relatively simple observations with linear algebra. Coddington and\nLevinson is the one I used for a course in college, but it is quite detailed.\nI am sure there are less ponderous options available, but I don't know any off\nthe top of my head.\n\n------\nSFJulie\nThe Lipschutz (that is quoted) is good. While looking stupid and repetitive it\nis giving very good basis.\n\nApplying linear algebrae to grok more complex problems can be done with the Mc\nGrawhill book on Mechanic (solid & punctual). It is the same pattern : simple\nexplanation and a lot of exercises.\n\nThermodynanmic, quantum mechanics, relativity and electromagnetism are\nintroduction to even more interesting algebrae.\n\nMaybe Feynman physics lessons are the right books :)\n\n------\nmathaftermath\nMy favorite LA books are Linear Algebra by Friedberg/Insel[0] which is a\ncombination of Axler style book with more computation oriented one (Terry Tao\nhas a set of lectures based off this book). Another one I like is Modern Intro\nTo LA by Henry Ricardo[1] which implicitly introduced me to Replacement\ntheorem which is really overlooked in a ton of LA books. Again, this book's a\nrigorous mixture of both theory and computation done very well. If you've\nnever seen higher level math before, there's Linear Algebra: Gateway to\nMathematics by Robert Messer[2]. It has tons of commentary about elementary\nset theory and proof techniques along the way. Whenever someone mentions\nAxler's book, someone else brings up Treil's book. But there's a third one in\nthe same league/group which is Linear Algebra: An Introduction to Abstract\nMathematics by Robert Valenza[3]. Other favorites are Coding the Matrix by\nPhilip Klein[4] for Python aficionados and Linear Algebra Through Geometry by\nBanchoff/Wermer[5] for those who like geometry.\n\nIf you are way beyond all this, you can still pick up new things from Advanced\nLinear Algebra by Steven Roman[6].\n\n[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Stephen-H-Friedberg-\neb...](https://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Stephen-H-Friedberg-\nebook/dp/B003YNXP7U/ref=sr_1_30?ie=UTF8&qid=1469389674&sr=8-30&keywords=linear+algebra)\n\n[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Introduction-Linear-\nAlgebra/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Introduction-Linear-\nAlgebra/dp/1439800405/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1469389844&sr=8-7&keywords=ricardo+henry)\n\n[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Mathematics-Robert-\nMes...](https://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Mathematics-Robert-\nMesser/dp/0065017285/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469390271&sr=8-1&keywords=linear+algebra+gateway)\n\n[3] [https://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Introduction-\nMathemati...](https://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Introduction-Mathematics-\nUndergraduate/dp/0387940995/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469390501&sr=8-1&keywords=linear+algebra+valenza)\n\n[4] [https://www.amazon.com/Coding-Matrix-Algebra-Applications-\nCo...](https://www.amazon.com/Coding-Matrix-Algebra-Applications-\nComputer/dp/0615880991/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1469390643&sr=8-2&keywords=linear+algebra)\n\n[5] [https://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Through-Geometry-\nUndergraduat...](https://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Through-Geometry-\nUndergraduate-\nMathematics/dp/0387975861/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469390814&sr=8-1&keywords=linear+algebra+geometry)\n\n[6] [https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Linear-Algebra-Graduate-\nMath...](https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Linear-Algebra-Graduate-\nMathematics/dp/0387728287/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469390934&sr=8-1&keywords=linear+algebra+roman)\n\n~~~\nsn9\nSeconding Klein's _Coding the Matrix_. It's a great alternative introduction\nand actually implementing linear algebra ideas in Python is both useful and a\ngreat aid for learning.\n\nThe auto-grader is helpful for making sure you got the right solutions.\n\n------\nperseusprime11\nHigher Algebra by Hall and Knight\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCan flash memory become the foundation for a new tier in the storage hierarchy? - prakash\nhttp://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=printer_friendly&pid=547&page=1\n======\njacobscott\nInteresting, although I wish there was a pro/con table somewhere, article is\nlong and has lots to digest. Footer notes that author was one of three Sun\nengineers who wrote DTrace, so he obviously has chops.\n\nDon't see any discussion of comparative throughput rates (its my understanding\nthat flash has much shorter latency, but lower throughput, especially for\nlarge writes), but this may be because the article doesn't talk much about the\nreplacing-for-disks approach taken in laptops.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy You Should Use Sass - yon\nhttp://www.yonbergman.com/2012/05/19/why-you-should-use-sass/\n\n======\nroycyang\n+1 for SASS and especially Compass, if you know CSS well, the learning curve\nis essentially flat and the dividends are enormous.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nICANN Paid 197 People over $100k Last Year - bhartzer\nhttps://twitter.com/georgekirikos/status/1260354614551089155\n======\ntuananh\nI thought $100k is not that big in US?\n\ndo those 197 people not deserve it?\n\n------\nsunstone\nThat 2 billion dollar payday would have kicked that up a bit. But c'est la\nvie, it was not to be.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWu-Tang Clan will sell only one copy of new album - robrenaud\nhttp://pitchfork.com/news/54518-wu-tang-clan-announce-another-new-album-once-upon-a-time-in-shaolin/\n======\nFatalLogic\n>visitors will be charged a price to listen to the 128-minute, 31 song album\non headphones provided by the venue. (Rigorous security checks will discourage\nthe possibility of any illegal recording.)\n\nCould a powered recording device be made small enough to fit in the ear canal?\nSearching for \"In-Ear Binaural microphones\" finds some fairly small devices\n(they require external power and storage, though)\n\n~~~\ntoomuchtodo\nWhat about a remote TEMPEST attack?\n\n~~~\nbloaf\nWhat about a night-shift guard with a male-male audio cable and any device\nwith a microphone jack.\n\n------\nshittyanalogy\n\n        1) They are artists.\n        2) Artists do weird things.\n        3) This will be released.\n           a) There's no way they can resist.\n           b) They need the ego boost.\n        4) There's nothing illegal about recording it.\n        5) It's only illegal to distribute it.\n        6) It's an experiment.\n        7) They will gain much press.\n\n------\nsebular\nPaying some exorbitant ticket price to sit for over 2 hours in an isolated,\nmonitored environment for a single play-through of a rap album? I can't\nimagine a less enjoyable listening experience.\n\nArtificially inducing scarcity in order to increase value is an interesting\nexperiment, but this doesn't seem like the way to do it. At some point on this\ntour, some handler is going to have 5 minutes alone with the album, at which\npoint they'll immediately make a copy and leak it.\n\nNevertheless, the original will sell for a small fortune. Genuine scarcity\nwill always be a good reason to pay lots of money.\n\n~~~\ndllthomas\n_\" Artificially inducing scarcity in order to increase value is an interesting\nexperiment\"_\n\nThis is an interesting experiment in another (more extreme) way of doing that,\nbut \"artificially inducing scarcity in order to increase value\" is the basis\nof much intellectual property.\n\n~~~\nsebular\nI'm not so sure I agree with that statement. Intellectual property (as it\napplies to digital goods) is rarely about inducing scarcity. The purpose of\nIP-protection tools (DRM) isn't typically to limit the availability of a\nproduct-- it's to limit possession of a product such that the quantity\npossessed is equal to the quantity purchased (the attempt to minimize piracy).\n\nThere have been cases where companies have tried to artificially induce\nscarcity--I recall that during the release of a certain Battlefield game, EA's\nstorefront had temporarily \"sold out\" of digital copies--and in that case, the\nsame DRM-based distribution tech that was designed for IP protection was being\nused to induce scarcity.\n\nIn other words, if ten people are trying to purchase your product, IP\nenforcement means you want exactly ten copies to exist. Inducing artificial\nscarcity means you want fewer than ten copies to exist.\n\nIt's hard to find examples of artificial scarcity in the digital world, which\nis what makes this somewhat interesting to me. However, in the brick and\nmortar world, the diamond industry is a good example.\n\nedit: it's worth noting that the handcrafted case is a legitimately unique\nitem, so in that sense, the scarcity of the complete package is real, not\nartificial.\n\n~~~\ndllthomas\n_\" In other words, if ten people are trying to purchase your product, IP\nenforcement means you want exactly ten copies to exist.\"_\n\nMonopolistic rent is extracted through underproduction.\n\n------\nHPLovecraft\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pizza_Tapes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pizza_Tapes)\n\n------\nlogfromblammo\nRigorous security checks. Right.\n\nThe album will be anonymously leaked to the Internet by a trusted insider\nbefore a physical copy even makes it to the first museum. Absent that, someone\non a museum's security staff will do it.\n\nDid they forget that most bootleg recordings come from the venue's sound\nboard, and not from some random guy in the audience?\n\n------\nnnq\nI guess they _really_ want to fail:\n\n\\- if nobody pirates this, it means they've completely failed at producing\ngood art/music\n\n\\- if somebody pirates this, it means they've completely failed at\nimplementing their artistic/marketing concept of \"one copy album\"\n\n...one way or another, the inevitable result will be _a big fat failure :)_\n\n------\ncwal37\nThe Forbes article on this is much better.\n\n[http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2014/03/26/...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2014/03/26/why-\nwu-tang-will-release-just-one-copy-of-its-secret-album/)\n\n------\niamthepieman\nIt's likely this will just end up on filesharing/torrent sites depending on\nwho buys it, how secure their recording process is, how trustworthy the\nrecording studio personnel are etc.\n\nThey're really just selling the box.\n\n~~~\nmigrantgeek\nI think that's the point. If you only expect to make 500K* from album sales,\nit makes sense to sell a single copy for 500K to a wealthy fan and let the\ncontent leak out to other fans.\n\nSame pay, less work and more happy fans.\n\n* - I don't really know what the numbers are. 500K is just an example.\n\n~~~\ntoomuchtodo\nOr crowdsource it and not release it until you hit 500K.\n\n~~~\ndllthomas\nRight, this is mostly a threshold-pledge model, with the caveat that one\nwealthy individual _could_ buy it up and destroy it.\n\nWhat's interesting is that this model works in a world without copyright - you\ncan always sell the _first_ copy.\n\n------\nevan_\nI could imagine a lot of Wu-Tang fans joining forces to fund a Kickstarter-\ntype thing to buy it and release it under some permissive license.\n\nI wonder if they even bothered clearing their samples...\n\n~~~\nstaticshock\nTo \"release it\", fans would have to buy the copyright, not just the album.\n\n~~~\nevan_\nOther sources have speculated that the sale of the box set will include the\ncopyright.\n\n[http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2014/03/26/...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2014/03/26/why-\nwu-tang-will-release-just-one-copy-of-its-secret-album/)\n\n------\nlcasela\nPublicity stunt.\n\nOh, and it will deff be leaked.\n\n~~~\nToastyMallows\nI couldn't even imagine how I'd feel if something I worked on for multiple\nyears and only made one copy of was leaked. I'd have to question my entire\nexistence.\n\n~~~\nlcasela\nWhat's the point of working so hard on something for so long so that so few\npeople could listen to it once?\n\n------\nxkarga00\nThey wouldn't sell many more in any case... unfortunately..\n\nps. huge Ghostface fan right here\n\n------\nGonzih\nI'm not sure how this is relevant to HN.\n\n~~~\nTylerE\nIt can be seen as a disruption of the current meme that music is a commodity\nthat can be duplicated ad-infinitum.\n\n~~~\nFuxy\nI sure as hell wouldn't go through the effort of listening to that even if\nit's the most divine thing i will ever hear (seriously doubt that).\n\nMusic is meant to be heard if you want to turn it into a publicity stunt keep\nit it's probably not worth my time anyway.\n\nAlthough it would be hilarious to have a kickstarter to buy the album and rip\nit into mp3's for the masses to listen to :)) given how much you will be\npaying for i argue you should be allowed to do whatever yo want with it.\n\n~~~\nSixSigma\nMusic has no fixed meaning.\n\nSome would argue that it is meant to be experienced, not heard.\n\nWhat some people call \"the greatest piece of music ever written\" was composed\nby a deaf man, indeed Beethoven even conducted its première, setting the tempo\nfor an orchestra he couldn't even hear. But still he got 5 standing ovations.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThis has been happening for a few hours now. - DanLivesHere\nhttp://i.imgur.com/8eqqe.png\n\n======\nDanLivesHere\nThat's traffic from a reddit _comment_ to a page of mine. I'm sharing it to\ndemonstrate the sickeningly huge potential of such a link -- scary stuff.\n1000s of views, probably.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: BASIC Interpreter in under 500 LOC of Swift - jdmoreira\nhttps://github.com/jdmoreira/foobarbas\n======\njdmoreira\nOP here.\n\nIf you read through the code and have comments/suggestions, please let me\nknow.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow I Decide Who Gets Banned on OkCupid - dalequark\nhttp://nymag.com/thecut/2017/02/banned-from-okcupid-sexting-moderation.html\n======\ndraw_down\nI would hate to have to deal with such things in my job as an engineer. And\nI'm not talking about C++. (Well, ok, maybe I am just a little bit.)\n\n------\nMyraMains\nA bit off topic but why does OkCupid use C++? Seems like a odd choice for a\nwebsite and two mobile apps.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMeasles Outbreak Infects 695, Highest Number Since 2000 - rcao\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/health/measles-outbreaks-us.html\n======\ninstance\nFor comparison, 1082 cases in Europe in February alone this year [1]. And more\nthan 80000 cases in total in 2018 [2].\n\n[1] [https://ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/infographic-\nmeas...](https://ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/infographic-measles-\neurope-february-2019)\n\n[2]\n[https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l634.full](https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l634.full)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApply HN: Patron – Uber for the Service Industry - Patronapp\nPatron- patronapp.org  Get Sh*t Done<p>I often find myself not having time to complete chores such as shopping and cleaning. Along with this I found it incredibly costly to hire a maid or caretaker therefore I founded Patron, an app that allows people to post tasks and set their own prices. Well who does the work? I&#x27;m doing what no other similar service on the market does, anyone can download the app and complete tasks to earn money. I am hoping to build Patron to be the Uber of the service industry where anyone can be their own boss and work on their own schedule.<p>Right now, I got a completely working application and am focusing on polishing it for publication.<p>How (are you going to make money): We take 10% of the total post cost.<p>Where (are the competitors): UberEats and Taskrabbit are our closest competitors. They all have the issue of quick expansion as they have an actual employee system.\n======\nzelloworld\nIf a customer gets to know a good service provider via you, e.g. a house\ncleaner, they are likely to create a direct relationship with him/her, and\nskip going via your app the next time they need a cleaner. How are you going\nto get repeat customer orders for the same kind of service, i.e. house\ncleaning ?\n\nAFAIK, this is one of the issues HomeJoy faced.\n\n~~~\nPatronapp\nAs long as you use our service, you have access to that dispute system. Also\nwe aren't just for cleaning or repeat services like homejoy. People will still\nuse the app when they're in a quick need of something, as this is the niche\nits meant to fill.\n\n------\ngpsgay\nInteresting! Would you do some kind of \"Quality assurance\" of the services\nproviders? How do you make sure they keep paying you once you find someone?\nMaybe some kind of rating based on number of tasks completed?\n\n~~~\nPatronapp\nI'm currently working on adding in a rating system. The back-end is set up in\nsuch a way that your credit card is authorized when you make a task, and\ncharged when you hit \"Confirm Task\". If your task is accepted and its been 5\ndays and you haven't hit confirm or dispute, it automatically charges the\ncard.\n\n------\njenny291\nI own a small brick and mortar store and sometimes need a bunch of help\nunpacking or moving inventory. I can see myself utilizing this\n\n~~~\nthesnowsm\nYea good way to get cheap labor\n\n------\nfiatjaf\nTaskRabbit has an \"actual employee\" system? If so, it's probably because the\nlaw has forced them.\n\n------\nsaraphine1\nThis has some major growth potential. As long as its secure, of course.\n\n------\nGoalie27\nHow are you vetting both sides?\n\n~~~\nPatronapp\nWhat do you mean?\n\n~~~\nsharemywin\nAny kind of background checks?\n\n~~~\nPatronapp\nWe have a rating system in place, and thats about it currently. Background\nchecks seem like a good idea! We'll look into it\n\n------\ncab9904\nI would definitely use this!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIf you are not a professional, you are a hacker - laki\nt|f\n======\nCyberFonic\nIn golfing circles, a \"hacker\" is somebody who plays occasionally and not\nparticularly well.\n\nIn software circles being a hacker used to be somebody who was technically\nvery good. But the media has bestowed the label upon the black hats.\n\nPersonally, I tend to think more along the old time's definition: as somebody\nwho doesn't do much design, just churns out good to excellent code. Being a\nprofessional suggests doing more design and documentation. That is, code that\nmight not be as brilliant, but maintainable by lesser mortals.\n\n------\nkrapp\nFalse. \"Hacker\" has been co-opted by startup culture, so being a professional\nis an accepted term in the definition.\n\nAlso, given those terms, anyone not a professional and also having nothing to\ndo with programming would be a hacker, which is absurd given most accepted\ndefinitions.\n\nQED. Cogito Ergo Sum. Ipso Facto and Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati.\n\n------\naaronchall\nFalse. A Hacker is by definition someone who writes good/smart/clever/expert\ncode. I would expect the same from a professional.\n\n~~~\njacalata\nBy whose definition?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhitewashing Neoliberal Repression in Chile and Ecuador – Fair.org - wry_discontent\nhttps://fair.org/home/whitewashing-neoliberal-repression-in-chile-and-ecuador/\n======\ndlcmh\nI suspect there’ll never be an end to these problems until we all evolve to a\nhigher level of thinking and start demanding for specific measurements of\nperformance of the government.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPosterous (YC S08) launches group blogs that are also email lists - rantfoil\nhttp://mashable.com/2009/05/05/posterous-email-lists/\n\n======\njonas_b\nI'm not sure, but this, or some evolution of this feature, could turn out to\nbe a real revolution when it comes to group collaboration and sharing.\n\nOr it might just be another feature, or that I'm trying to see something that\nisn't there.\n\nI've been searching for a merge between this, Chatterous and possibly etherpad\nfor small-group collab. Alas, it eludes me still.\n\n~~~\nrantfoil\nWe're definitely excited about the potential for this feature to grow into its\nown product!\n\nYou can expect improvements to this coming fast and furious.\n\n------\nzaidf\nThis is ridiculously awesome and the exact feature we needed few months ago.\n\nWe started a blog for our larger extended family(50+ people) so there is a\nsimple place for all our family communication. Yet a lot of the people in our\nfamily know only rudimentary use of the computer--and that means email. So the\nblog idea didn't quite work out and we're back to emailing--which is\ndisorganized but works.\n\nWith this we can get the best of both worlds! Communicate via email, archive\non a blog!\n\n~~~\nrantfoil\nWould love for you to use Posterous for this, and would love to chat with you\noffline about how it works out for your team and how we can get better. My\ncontact info is in my profile. =)\n\n------\nhboon\nI'm more interested in how you got Mashable to cover this (so quickly).\nAnything you could share there? (yes, PR-related question).\n\nAwesome feature, I'd imagine you will be using this mechanism to allow\ndevelopers against your API to track API changes? :)\n\n~~~\nrantfoil\nFor a brand that's gaining momentum, getting coverage is a bit easier. You\nmight already follow the writers on twitter or vice versa, or if you're in\nSF/the valley you might even grab coffee with them.\n\nFor a company starting out, you need to either have a product so thoroughly\nbadass that it trounces something else that is hot, or you need a connection /\nintro to someone who knows them well.\n\nIt doesn't have to be Michael Arrington himself -- in fact, he's obviously\nsuch a busy and important guy that it's almost impossible to get his\nattention. However, at each of these blogs there are staff writers. They're\nthe ideal person to reach out to -- they're looking for great stories, and\nhey, you've got one.\n\nFinal tip: use bullet points. Include screenshots if you can. If you make it\nso compelling and so obvious that it's a story, and you practically write it\nfor them, you make their life easier and that makes it a no-brainer for them\nto write about you.\n\nAs for API -- that sounds very cool. We're very psyched about becoming a more\nopen platform to let people build apps on top of Posterous.\n\n------\njcbozonier\nI'm in love. May I have permission to marry your daughter?\n\n[I just realized we don't do humor here. Mod me down :(]\n\n------\ntybris\nWoah! I can see how this is different from an e-mail list that gets published\non the web. ;-)\n\nInteresting to see how a new layer of paint can bring old concepts to the\nmasses.\n\n~~~\nmadh\nAbsolutely. Great ideas never die.\n\n------\njoepestro\nPosterous is great. I'm interested to know - was this something that you've\nhad planned for a while, or did it come as a natural evolution of the product\n/ feedback from users?\n\n~~~\nrantfoil\nIt's something we talked about even back during last summer when we first\nlaunched Posterous. It's great to finally be able to put it out there.\n\nOnce we launched group blogs though -- we did start hearing a lot of requests\nfor this feature too. There's absolutely a validation piece to it. When users\nask for it, you know there's something there.\n\n------\nqeorge\nI've got a Google Group with old college friends which we've always wanted to\nbe richer, but we don't want to lose the casual members by trying to migrate\nand change their habits. I think hooking it up to a group posterous account\nmight be the right way to please everyone.\n\nVery cool.\n\n------\nthorax\nI wonder-- are they stripping out the reply/quotations somehow, or are those\ngoing to be showing up on the blog, too? Long, long streams of\n>>>>>>>>>>>>>||||>>>> make for crummy blogging.\n\n~~~\njoepestro\nGood point. I did an experiment a few weeks ago to see how this was handled on\nposterous by sending an email to a friend and cc'ing post@posterous.com.\n\nIt was handled well on their end with a solid line on the left side of the\nreply. So it looks like something they are already prepared for.\n\n------\nanigbrowl\nI like it, but it fails to load 3 out of 5 times when I click on a Posterous\nlink. First day traffic blues?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNice list of show HNs - kvdr\nhttp://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=webhp&source=hp&q=show+hn\n\n======\nRiderOfGiraffes\nAlternatively:\n\nBy date: <http://searchyc.com/submissions/Show+HN%253A?sort=by_date>\n\nBy points: <http://searchyc.com/submissions/Show+HN%253A>\n\n~~~\nsaturdayplace\nOr\n[http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#hl=en&safe=active&...](http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#hl=en&safe=active&site=webhp&q=site:news.ycombinator.com+show+hn&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&bav=on.1,or.&fp=2b46d9948ae83371)\n\n~~~\nkvdr\nYes, that's what I was querying with, but the results link to HN threads while\nI wanted to look at actual sites/products.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy Instagram turned out to be so successful - shobhitic\nhttp://www.pilanites.com/?p=58\n\n======\nshobhitbakliwal\nIt would not have been able to monetize itself anyway!\n\n~~~\nshobhitic\nWhat about premium filters?\n\n------\nraghavrawat39\nadvertisements could have been done too\n\n~~~\nshobhitic\nNot sure about it\n\n------\nshobhitic\nIt could have given premium filters\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n“Show HN” Topvisor – explore, track and analyse - Al_V\nhttps://topvisor.com/\n======\nAl_V\nAn ultimate SEO toolset. It tracks rankings across multiple search engines and\nlocations, can research keywords, grabs some analytics insights like search\nvolume data, traffic, indexing. One can also get a comprehensive keyword\nstructure for the website with the Keyword clustering tool, track changes on\nthe site with Site Watcher or scan your site for possible errors and warnings\nwith Site Auditor.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRoss Ulbricht’s Lawyers Found Another Corrupt Agent in Silk Road Case - sprucely\nhttps://www.wired.com/2016/11/ross-ulbrichts-lawyers-point-another-corrupt-agent-silk-road-case/\n======\nat-fates-hands\nKind of misleading headline.\n\nHere are the important parts of the article:\n\n _Even if defense lawyers manage to prove the existence of a third corrupt\nagent, Ulbricht’s appeal of his conviction in the New York trial—the 32-year-\nold’s last chance to escape a life sentence—isn’t likely to be affected._\n\nSo no changes in the outcome of the trial, or chance for a new trial.\n\n _The same judge also argued that nothing indicated the two agents had\nactually tampered with evidence against Ulbricht._\n\nThey made some money on the side, but never tampered with evidence that could\nbe thrown out, so the verdict will stand.\n\nof course in the last paragraph:\n\n _The clues of tainted evidence are hardly enough to change Ulbricht’s legal\nfate._\n\nIt might be something, but not nearly enough to warrant a new trial.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: What tools do you use to monitor your servers? - coderholic\n\nI recently ran into a problem where MySQL was running out of connections. For now I've upped the maximum_connections setting and I'm keeping a close eye on the server.<p>I'm sure there are lots of tools that could monitor this sort of thing for me, and alert me if any problems occur (or ideally before they occur).<p>I suspect there are also tools that would make it easier for me to diagnose the problem, and allow me to see what was happening on the server at the time.<p>So my question for HN is: What tools do you use to monitor your servers?\n======\niuguy\nMunin and Monit, mostly.\n\nAnd it's a PITA to set up but Puppet is incredible, especially when combined\nwith git. You can automatically redeploy your infrastructure pretty much at\nthe drop of a hat.\n\n------\nbarredo\nI made a tiny script on my server that get's all the numbers that I want (http\nconnectios, mysql connections, cpu usage, etc) and put them on a txt file.\n\nThe only thing I got to do is check the file online whenever I want.\n\nYou could do this and also add email alerts easily.\n\n------\npclark\nGetExceptional for rails apps & pingdom for everything else.\n\n------\nhedgehog\nMunin + some shell scripts that make sure the web server is rendering pages\nthat look reasonable.\n\n------\nTangurena\nCurrent employer uses WhatsUp. Previous employer used SiteScope.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nExploring Python through counter-intuitive snippets - ausjke\nhttps://github.com/satwikkansal/wtfpython\n======\nn3k5\n20 days ago:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21862073](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21862073)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Linux Kernel - Structure Analysis - ernstsson\nhttp://ernstsson.net/post/25837804958/the-linux-kernel-challenge\n\n======\nwillvarfar\nI remember the early runs of Coverity on the Symbian kernel and user-space.\n\nBecause Symbian's C++ is not very conventional, and is very careful in its own\nconventions, Coverity found basically nothing except false alarms.\n\n~~~\nernstsson\nTrue, Coverity needs to be configured correctly for the target system to get\nit working for you (I assume that especially Symbian C++ can be tricky).\nSimilar here, the tolerance values for complexity might be set wrong giving us\na lower score than we should have. The image itself is valid though.\n\n~~~\nwillvarfar\nIsn't the very low quality score setting off alarm bells and making you\nquestion if you're measuring the right things?\n\n~~~\nernstsson\nYes, definitely. I think (or hope?) the main reason for the score is that the\ndirectory structure and the actual architecture of Linux isn't fully in sync.\nMost of the score comes from the top directory tangles and complexity. When I\ncompare it to the commonly used kernel map\n(<http://makelinux.homelinux.com/kernel_map/LKM3_512.png>) I really don't see\nit matching as well as Arqua requires for a good score. Note also that the\nscore doesn't say that the software doesn't work, just that the structure of\nthe source in relation to the call graph of the functions is complex.\n\n------\nboyter\nI found it took a bit of digging to find Arqua (Google turned up nothing), but\nif you look through the other blog posts you can find the link which is here\n<https://github.com/ernstsson/Arqua>\n\n------\nernstsson\nThanks for the comment, added the link in the post as well.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Election Won’t Be Rigged, But It Could Be Hacked - the_duck\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/opinion/campaign-stops/the-election-wont-be-rigged-but-it-could-be-hacked.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0\n======\nmicaksica\nOf course it will be hacked. I find it hilarious that people think that our\npolitical parties have some type of moral code they actually use to play by\nthe \"rules\", whatever nonexistent rules those are. As long as they aren't\ndoing something directly illegal or can deflect the blame for illegal behavior\nto an underling that \"misunderstood the directions\", the incentive is there\nfor ALL political parties to play as dirty as they possibly can. Democrat,\nRepublican, whatever, doesn't matter.\n\nThe party's game is to win seats in Congress and the Presidency. Not win\nfairly. Not win \"by the rules\". To win, at whatever cost, as long as that cost\nisn't the elected positions themselves.\n\n~~~\nianlevesque\nExhibit A: Gerrymandering\n\n~~~\nktRolster\nI think someone pointed out here that gerrymandering would be useless if\npeople didn't reliably, blindly, vote based on party.\n\n~~~\nfatbird\nIn the normal case, wouldn't a person usually vote in the next election the\nway they voted previously? A party's platform is generally the same election-\nto-election, and if I voted previously for that platform, I'd tend to continue\nvoting for it unless I had a pretty significant change of heart--and then\nchanged it again for the election following? Unless either the party or the\nvoter swung wildly around, gerrymandering doesn't require \"blind\" allegiance\nto a party.\n\n~~~\nktRolster\nThe issues favored by one party or another change dramatically over a period\nof even a decade. \"Party\" is just a way to make people feel like they're part\nof a team.\n\n------\nsverige\nI was an election judge in Colorado in 1994, '98, '00, and '04\\. I observed\nelections in North Carolina in 2006 and '08.\n\nThe Colorado elections used paper ballots (complete with \"hanging chads\") and\nfrom what I could tell were run pretty fair and square. One year there were\nsome problems with some of the kids from the local college where rich\nEasterners send their lower-caliber offspring when they can't get into the Ivy\nLeague. They flooded a particular precinct insisting that they be given\nprovisional ballots (name not on the list and ballots not counted unless it's\nclose). They didn't meet the requirements even for those ballots and some\nthrew a hissy fit. The local prosecutor discovered that many had already voted\nabsentee back in their home state. They were not prosecuted, unfortunately.\n\nIn North Carolina in '06, the precinct captain ran it by the books. In '08,\nsame precinct, same captain, many were allowed to vote provisionally even\nthough they didn't meet the requirements (didn't live in the county they were\ntrying to vote in). Others told me it was similar in other precincts.\n\nPaper ballots, ID, and lots of well-trained observers seem to be the best way\nto avoid the threats from social engineering and hack attacks on the integrity\nof the voting process. I would even go for the purple dye they use on the\nthumbs of voters in some countries to prevent people from traveling precinct\nto precinct to vote for dead people and people who have moved away who are\nstill on the rolls. (There are more than you probably think.)\n\nIn general, my observation has been that the voting process has become more\ncorrupt over the past 20 years. It's just damn hard to catch it if the people\nwho are supposed to enforce the rules don't care to.\n\n~~~\nmarcoperaza\nBut here's the problem: \"You want to check ID at the polling place? You must\nbe a racist! Here's how that represents a tiny, yet unacceptable burden, for\nsome underprivileged group.\"\n\nThis is actually where we are as a country. It's depressing.\n\n~~~\nIIAOPSW\nI think that the issue there is not with the ID per se, but with the cost (in\ntime and money) disproportionately affecting the poor and also with the fact\nthat it de facto creates a national ID system (which some are ideologically\nopposed to).\n\nI would be ok with voter ID laws which accepted a multitude of valid existing\ndocuments. E.g if you allow passport, driver license, state ID, SS card and\nbirth cert then there probably does not exist a person whom does not have at\nleast one of those.\n\n~~~\nimjustsaying\n> E.g if you allow passport, driver license, state ID, SS card and birth cert\n> then there probably does not exist a person whom does not have at least one\n> of those.\n\nPassports, driver licenses, and state IDs are dependent upon first having an\nSS card and/or birth certificate, depending on the state. Therefore, we can\nnarrow the nexus down to a birth certificate or an SS card.\n\nThere are plenty of domestically-born citizens who do not have an SS card\n(based on some state birth procedures I am familiar with, acquiring a federal\nSS number at birth is optional at the choice of the parents).\n\nThere are also plenty of people who were not born in the US, but have become\nnaturalized citizens.\n\nSo it seems that there would be plenty of people who have neither of those\nnexuses.\n\n~~~\nNhanH\n> There are plenty of domestically-born citizens who do not have an SS card\n> (based on some state birth procedures I am familiar with, acquiring a\n> federal SS number at birth is optional at the choice of the parents). There\n> are also plenty of people who were not born in the US, but have become\n> naturalized citizens.\n\nI don't have ball in the game (not US citizen), but your argument is flawed,\nspecifically in two cases:\n\n\\- Domestically-born citizens who do not have an SS card but have a birth\ncertificate.\n\n\\- Naturalized citizens without birth certificate but have SS.\n\nYou didn't specify why it could happen that these two cases would not cover\neveryone in your two listings.\n\n~~~\nimjustsaying\nA person doesn't necessarily get an SS number at birth. And a naturalized\ncitizen doesn't have a birth certificate. Therefore, some people might not\nhave either one of these documents.\n\nOf course, a citizen is normally eligible to get such documents by applying at\nwhichever bureau. But, it is conceivable that some people don't have them.\n\nPractically speaking, it is difficult to live life in the US without an SS\nnumber/card. You can't open a bank account, get identity documents, (get a\npassport?), get student loans, or be a employee in a company that wants to\nrecord your SS for tax compliance purposes.\n\nAnecdotally, I have read that some people refuse to give their kids a number\nat birth via SS. This then means they have to go through extra paperwork later\nin life if they want to get one when they are adults.\n\nAlso anecdotally, I was renewing my driver's license recently, and I overheard\nthe 40+ year old woman at the counter next to me tell the clerk she never had\na driver's license or a state ID.\n\nShe seemed pretty embarrassed about it, probably because without a driver's\nlicense or state ID, it's clear that she wasn't able to participate in things\nlike opening a bank account, for which a photo ID is required (unless she had\na passport).\n\nIf this all seems kind of crazy, just consider that in the US, the federal\ngovernment, state government and individual are all sovereign, just in\ndifferent and sometimes overlapping ways.\n\n~~~\nfoldr\nJust a small correction. You can in fact open a bank account without an SSN.(I\ndid so without any problem when I was studying in the US.)\n\n~~~\nimjustsaying\nThat's cool, I'm glad to learn that.\n\nRegulations on some things, for example driver's licenses, private mailboxes\n(and maybe bank accounts?), got tightened up/federalized with the passing of\nthe Patriot Act/Real ID Act in (2004?). For example, to open a private\nmailbox, I have to fill out a federal form now. Additionally, I can no longer\nuse that mailbox as a registered address for a bank account.\n\nDid you use any kind of federal identifier, for example an EIN (something you\ncan apply to the feds to get, often used for businesses), or did you use your\npassport/passport number, or none of the above?\n\n~~~\nNhanH\nThe Patriot Act requires bank to keep home address of foreigner in the foreign\ncountry on file. But otherwise, you only need to provide passport + 1 more\ntype of picture ID to open the bank account. This was in 2010\n\n~~~\nfoldr\nI only had my passport as ID and didn't have to give my home address, so it\ncan be even easier than that in practice.\n\n------\ngizmo686\nI submitted this as its own post, but it didn't get much traction, so I'll\nlink it here as well.\n\n[http://static1.squarespace.com/static/579f40a01b631bd12f10c2...](http://static1.squarespace.com/static/579f40a01b631bd12f10c29e/t/57a759c2f5e231cfd155331b/1470585287273/000+An+Electoral+System+in+Crisis.pdf)\n\nThis paper argues that the 2016 primaries were hacked based on the fact that\n(among other arguements):\n\nThere was consistent discrepencies between paper and machine voting results,\nfavoring Clinton and against Trump.\n\nClinton and Trump support was corralated with precinct size\n\nDemographics are not sufficent to explain the above observations.\n\nI have not verified the accuracy of this analysis, or found other commentary\non it.\n\n~~~\nktRolster\nIf someone hacked the voting machines, I would expect them to only find\nvulnerabilities in some of the machines, not all of them. Thus if the paper\nfinds a discrepancy that isn't related to the type of machine, I would expect\nit is some other kind of cheating (or just an anomaly).\n\n~~~\nDavidPlumpton\nYou don't need to hack voting machines. If you control the body that allocates\nthem in your area you send more of them to areas favourable to your desired\noutcome. So in other areas the lines get too long and some people don't get to\nvote. That alone will swing things a few percent.\n\n------\naYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA\nI wish that we would abandon the concept of all-in-one electronic voting\nmachines and instead incentivize _ballot printers_.\n\nThey could have a happy touch screen UI that is easy to localize, and then\nprint out a human-readable paper ballot for the voter to review and then drop\ninto a physical ballot box. And you could have one machine with a special\nprinter to produce raised-character printing for blind voters to verify.\n\nAll the advantages of a computer UI and very few of the disadvantages of the\nDRE voting machines.\n\n~~~\nr00fus\nThe electronic voting machines used by many districts are not only insecure,\nbut run by former felons (link from 2003!) [1].\n\nThe only reason I can see why we use voting machines run by criminals is that\nthe powers-that-be want it that way. No amount of ineptitude can survive for\n15 years without a small group benefitting immensely (and then selling that\naccess).\n\n[1]\n[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20031218/0933248.shtml](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20031218/0933248.shtml)\n\n------\ntoodlebunions\nLack of paper trail has been an election complaint for at least 16 years now.\n\n------\nelihu\nIs there any practical difference between rigging and hacking? Whether the\nelection outcome is manipulated by government officials, one or both major\npolitical parties, Vladimir Putin, corporate insiders at the vendors that\nsupply voting machines, some guy named Chad, or some collaboration between any\nof the above, it amounts to the same thing: the loss of voter's right to hold\ntheir elected leaders accountable.\n\nMost election tampering requires a pretty big conspiracy and is therefore hard\nto pull off on a large enough scale to change the outcome without being\ncaught, but electronic voting with no paper trail makes it possible for\nsomeone to do just that without more than one or a handful of people knowing\nabout it, which I think makes it the biggest threat to the accuracy and\ncredibility of elections in the United States.\n\nEven in the absence of real election fraud, if the voters have no credible\nreason to believe it didn't happen, then the election system ought to be\nfixed. Ideally, the burden of proof should be on election officials to show\nthat the results are correct, not on activists to prove fraud.\n\n------\nktRolster\nSounds like a challenge! If any of the precincts turn up 100% for Jill Stein,\nyou'll know it was me.\n\n------\njack9\nIt is rigged AND is going to be hacked. That's a given.\n\n~~~\nskrowl\nAfter the Wikileaks releases, we know without a doubt that the Democrat\nprimaries were rigged for Clinton. Multiple people were forced to resign from\nhigh paying DNC posts over it.\n\nI see no reason to think that the actual election in November won't also be\nrigged to the maximum extent possible for Clinton.\n\n~~~\nroywiggins\nWhy was Clinton so effective compared to the GOP's old guard? They absolutely\ndespise their nominee- why weren't they able to pull enough dirty tricks to\nsink Trump?\n\nAnd, again, in the general, I've seen no evidence that the Clinton camp is\nvastly less moral than the GOP/Trump camp- why attribute all potential rigging\nto Clinton when the GOP has just as much reason to pull the same tricks?\n\n~~~\nem3rgent0rdr\nMaybe because GOP primaries isn't more corrupt than Dems. Maybe the GOP\nconstituency actually does consist of the type of people who want Trump.\n\n~~~\nroywiggins\nSimilarly, the Democrats have a lot of people who wanted Clinton, and 3\nmillion more of them appear to have turned out to vote than did Sanders\nsupporters.\n\nI just don't see how, if widespread primary rigging is effective and not all\nthat difficult (since the DNC, who really aren't all THAT clever, supposedly\n\"rigged\" it without much in the way of repercussions) Trump could end up the\nGOP nominee against the wishes of the GOP elite.\n\nIt's quite easy to explain Clinton's win without any shady \"rigging.\" It's\nquite difficult to manufacture 3 million net votes- that's either a lot of\nballot-box stuffing or a huge voter disenfranchisement campaign and there's no\nevidence of either. The simplest explanation is that the Dem constituency\nconsists of people who want her.\n\n------\nvaadu\nIt could easily be rigged without a papertrail or having to show ID to vote.\n\n~~~\nethanbond\nWhat on earth makes you think IDs are secure?\n\nHave you been near a college campus anytime... I don't know... Ever?\n\n~~~\nams6110\nFaking IDs on a scale necessary to influence a presidential election, without\nbeing detected, would be a bit more difficult.\n\n~~~\nethanbond\nUh yeah, because it's impossible to manipulate an election from the voting\nbooth under basically any circumstances. That's why ID laws make no sense.\n\nThe physical ID manufacturing isn't the hard part and never would be. It's\nfinding the identity you're masquerading as and then actually standing in line\nat a voting booth.\n\n~~~\nktRolster\n_it 's impossible to manipulate an election from the voting booth under\nbasically any circumstances._\n\nThat's just a lack of creativity. A popular mechanism in the past was the\nfalse-bottom ballot box (the man who first brought that to SF in the 1800s was\nrewarded handsomely, reported by Irving Stone).\n\nYou can have ghost voters, for example. People registered at addresses that\ndon't exist, then bus people from precinct to precinct voting multiple times.\nAlso, people register to vote in two different places:\n[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/200...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2004/10/people_who_vote_twice.html)\n\nI have seen foreigners vote with my own eyes. I don't know how common that is\n(or any of it is, actually), but that is something that happens.\n\n~~~\nXorNot\n_I have seen foreigners vote with my own eyes._\n\nHow could you _possibly_ know they're not entitled to vote? Did you know them\npersonally? Were you aware fully of their immigration status?\n\n~~~\nktRolster\n_How could you possibly know they 're not entitled to vote?_\n\nYou listed two possible ways in your post.\n\n~~~\nXorNot\nWhich you didn't seem to think were relevant to list while making your claim.\nAnd which are both odd things to \"just know\" about a person. Did they say one\nday \"oh yeah, I voted illegally lol\"? Doesn't seem like the type of thing\nwhich comes up in conversation easily.\n\nEDIT: To be clear, I am asking specifically _how_ you know you saw people who\nwere ineligible to vote voting. A follow up would also be why you observed\nthis and didn't tell anyone.\n\n~~~\nktRolster\nTo be honest, I don't know you at all. If you don't believe me, if you think\nI'm lying, that's fine.\n\n------\nshireboy\nIf the election gets hacked, won't it by definition be rigged by the\nhacker(s)? I just don't see how it's \"ridiculous\" to think the vote somewhat\nimpacted by 1) some people voting more than once since many jurisdictions are\nbasically \"honor system\", 2) exploits of vulnerabilities in electronic voting\nsystems, and 3) ballot stuffing and other illicit activities by poll workers.\n\nHow prevalent those are, the full impact, etc. are debatable, but it seems a\nlittle naive to say those things never happen at all or that people who\nsuspect they happen are crazy conspiracy theorists.\n\n~~~\nlotso\nI don't think you understand how voting works in the US. Voting isn't even\nclose to the honor system. The people who run precincts are incredibly\ndecentralized and individual precincts have such a small impact on national\nelections.\n\n~~~\nshireboy\nIn my area (and most without voter ID) anybody can give any name and address\nand vote as that person. The \"honor system\" refers to the fact people are\ntrusted to not just look up a name/address and vote as someone else.\n\nYes, the electoral system and general statistics of the election mean in any\none case that doesn't necessarily sway the outcome. Which is why I said the\nimpact is debatable but to deny it could happen is naive.\n\n~~~\nleot\nCould someone please describe a plausible scenario in which an election is\nimpacted by so-called \"voter fraud\"?\n\nWhile elections have been rigged from the very beginning (ballot stuffing\netc.), \"voter fraud\" is an invented concept that didn't exist before passage\nof the Voting Rights Act.\n\n~~~\nshireboy\nNot sure how many more times I can say \"the impact is debatable\" in\nrecognition that individuals voting as other individuals would be an\ninefficient way to sway an election. However, it is fairly well documented\nthat this happens to some degree:\n[https://ballotpedia.org/Dead_people_voting](https://ballotpedia.org/Dead_people_voting)\n\nand that it is completely feasible to pretend to be another person when\nvoting: [https://youtu.be/pZMU2oMJNHU](https://youtu.be/pZMU2oMJNHU)\n\nBut, since you asked, here is a scenario that I think is entirely plausible: A\ngroup of over-zealous activists travel to a very tight state with a handful of\nclose precincts. They look up recent deaths in the areas and get a list of\n1000 names and addresses that they then use to vote, each voting multiple\ntimes. They simply go in, give the name and address, and vote, then go to\nanother polling location and repeat. Other groups decide on other tactics. A\npoll worker decides to stuff a box. A hacker changes a few 100 votes just to\nsee if she can. No one technique alone would have swayed the election, but in\nconcert they push it to the opposite of what a 100% fair election would have\nbeen.\n\nIn this scenario, note that there is no big evil conspiracy - just a handful\nof misguided people taking actions with a collective big consequence.\n\nObviously the risk of fraud has to be weighed against the risk that someone\ndue a vote will be unable to do so because they couldn't obtain an ID or lost\nit. It's also worth pointing out that before the general election, the various\nshenanigans of the primaries and two parties mean that the general is not\nreally \"fair\" before it even starts. Again, my point is that it's not\n\"ridiculous\" to posit that US elections have systemic flaws that could sway\nthe outcome.\n\n~~~\nleot\nIt still requires some cooperation, which means it's subject to game theory\nand defector risk. And there are numerous after the fact approaches to\nenforcement.\n\nJust make a $1,000,000 reward for anyone exposing a conspiracy to rig an\nelection, and audit the voter rolls on close elections, and impose stiff\npenalties for voter fraud.\n\nThese are all cheaper and probably more effective than voter ID laws.\nStrangely, these kinds of approaches come up far less than imposing an ID\nrequirement. Also, mail in voter fraud is a far greater risk, yet is also\nignored.\n\nVoter ID laws are a cynical and despicable evil.\n\n------\nruffrey\nOSET is trying to help with this. They are working to make open source voting\nsystems available.\n\n[http://www.osetfoundation.org/about/](http://www.osetfoundation.org/about/)\n\n~~~\ntaserian\nI'd be interested in seeing if a transparent, fair and honest voting booth can\nbe achieved with commodity hardware: \\- Raspberry Pi with a multiple checksum-\nverified OS image \\- simple receipt printer with a verifiable hash of your\nvote \\- etc.\n\n------\nnxzero\n>> \"A recent poll found that 34 percent of likely voters believed the general\nelection would be rigged.\"\n\nEven if it the US election was rigged, very possible US wouldn't even care.\n\n~~~\nmicaksica\nI would suspect whomever voted for the winning \"team\" wouldn't care at all.\n\n~~~\nnxzero\nGiven only 40% of living Americans vote, and that it's likely 35-45% voted for\nthe party that benefited from the fraud - that would leave a very small group\nof people to force a reversal.\n\nAgain, possible that all Americans would reject it, but seems possible that\nthey would not.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy Skee-Ball Doesn't Change - prismatic\nhttp://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/why-skee-ball-doesnt-change/509117/?single_page=true\n======\ndottrap\nBut something did change, at least where I went.\n\nWhen I was a kid, I remember the ball effortlessly glided off the launch ramp\ninto the air for the holes. Sometimes I would roll as hard as I could just to\nsee how high it would go (into the top net and ricochet down into the scoring\nholes).\n\nI recently went back and the launch ramp is like a speed bump now. The balls\nno longer smoothly roll and launch into the air. Instead they smack hard into\nthe bump and lose most of their momentum and barely make it to the holes.\n\nI can't for the life of me figure out how to actually get the ball in the\nhighest value holes any more. The harder I roll it, the harder is smacks into\nthe bump and it goes nowhere near the holes. Don't roll that hard, and it\nbarely makes it over the bump.\n\nI really hate the change and I stopped playing. It is no fun anymore.\n\n~~~\ndeelowe\nI thought it was just me. I guess this is to make it difficult to rack up\npoints, making it more a game of chance than skill?\n\n------\nGnarfGnarf\nI was a carny in 1968, handing out prize tickets to Skee-ball players. The\nowners disallowed \"banking\" (bouncing the ball off a side) because it improved\nplayer accuracy too much.\n\nI could not believe how much people were willing to spend to win a prize of\nlesser value.\n\n~~~\nfreditup\nI've played skee-ball quite frequently and done well using this banking method\n(as taught to me by my grandfather!). But I'm not sure why it's better. Do you\nknow what makes it easier when banking as compared to rolling the ball\nstraight?\n\n~~~\nwernercd\nI assume it's the same reason that basket-ball players bounce shots off the\nback-board more often than they go for the swish...\n\n[https://www.wired.com/2011/07/st_cheatsci_basketball/](https://www.wired.com/2011/07/st_cheatsci_basketball/)\n\n[https://hiphopandhoops.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/bank-it-\nstud...](https://hiphopandhoops.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/bank-it-study-\nreveals-that-using-the-backboard-can-increase-free-throw-shooting-by-20/)\n\nA quick look shows some interesting starting points that goes with my \"gut\"\nabout basketball and banking off the backboard.\n\nI don't see any similar articles relating the two (banking Basketballs and\nbanking Skeet Balls), but I bet there's some sweet spot that you aim for and\nget better with practice.\n\n~~~\ndouche\nShooting basketballs off the glass is something of a lost art, at least\noutside of point-blank layup range. Not too many people bother to invest the\neffort to learn the geometry to bank shots from each particular spot on the\nfloor, compared to shooting for the rim, where your aim point and mechanics\nare pretty much always the same.\n\nIt's rare enough nowadays that it was something of a signature move for\nplayers like Tim Duncan.\n\n------\nebbv\nThis article is wrong about skee ball being \"pure\" unlike other carnival games\nthat are skewed against the customer. It is just as easily and often\nmanipulated by proprietors just like any other carnival game. The collars\naround the holes can be taller and/or narrower, the angle of the ramp can be\nmanipulated, the weight of the balls, the amount of points for each hole, the\nreturn and price, etc.\n\nIt is fun to play once in a while, I'll usually do a few rounds every time I\ngo to Cedar Point. But it is subject to the same machinations as all the other\ncarnival games.\n\n~~~\nevanelias\nI haven't seen evidence that manipulating skee-ball machines is a common\npractice by owners, and I've played at a lot of places. Several of the\nmodifications you mention aren't easy to make. (At least, I can say that's\ntrue when it comes to the official machines made by Skee-Ball Inc -- I usually\navoid the knock-offs so I don't have much experience with those.)\n\nI was saddened to learn that the company was acquired by a rival earlier this\nyear and relocated production from the Philly suburbs (where it had been over\n100 years) to Wisconsin. Strangely, no mention of any of this in the article.\n\n------\nxiaoma\nIt didn't used to have the 100 point holes on the sides. The 50 in the middle\nwas the highest.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nI've written a game Now what? - joeyspacerocks\nhttp://pixelated.postagon.com/8xz7e15m1\n\n======\nemsy\nThe graphics look nice. Definitely better than the average App Store crap\nimho. The particle effects are a bit too much for my taste though. While I\nfound the graphics polished, I can't find anything in the video or app\ndescription that would make me want to play this game right now. Something\nthat would let me think: \"F __* it, what 's 99 cents?\". That may be a well\nthought of combo mechanism, dual ship power-ups, size modifiers etc. And if\nthey're already there, show them!\n\nI think the strength of games like this lies in competing with yourself and\nothers. For example I thought Flappy Bird was a terrible game, but I HAD to\nbeat my brothers highscore. So that would be another way to generate\ndownloads. In fact I think another strength of Flappy Bird is that you don't\nhave a warming up phase regarding the difficulty which keeps you in the flow.\nPlayers in the flow keep gaming on and on and therefore expose your game to\nothers.\n\nI hope my thoughts can help you to improve your game. Regards, a fellow indie\nwho has yet to launch his game.\n\n~~~\njoeyspacerocks\nThank you for your comments! Yes, that's the crux of it - you need a hook or\nsomething to nudge people into giving cash for it.\n\nI also suspect that I haven't done myself any favours with the trailer or the\napp icon.\n\nStill, onwards and upwards :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWays in which the WannaCry ransomware could have been much worse - Mojah\nhttps://ma.ttias.be/ways-wannacry-ransomware-much-worse/\n======\njobigoud\nWow the second point, encrypting the files but providing transparent access\nfor a while thereby corrupting even the backups is really scary.\n\nAlthough maybe this would be detected when your incremental backups start\nsaying that all the files have just changed. Some softwares will require\nmanual action if more than x percent of the corpus needs to be resynched.\n\n------\nRichardHeart\nOne option I don't see in the list, is just basic, file wiping, instead of\nencrypting. People are lucky there's even an option to unencrypt.\n\n~~~\ntheoh\nBut why would you pay if there's no \"hostage\"?\n\n~~~\nRichardHeart\nI'm saying that a virus that wants only to destroy, instead of get paid, is\nmore dangerous than a virus that wants paid. It's the difference between a\nkidnapping and a murder.\n\n~~~\nbigbugbag\nWhat's the incentive for such a virus ?\n\n~~~\nsushid\nDo you not remember viruses in the 90s like the ILOVEYOU virus? Plenty of\nhackers wrote viruses that maliciously destroyed data just because they could.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTablets are a fad - VonGuard\nhttp://www.sdtimes.com/blog/post/2011/06/20/Tablets-Meh.aspx\n\n======\nmichaelpinto\nIt reminds me of all the talk that \"PDAs were just a fad\"\n\n------\nSynaesthesia\nTablets as opposed to iPads.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMicrosoft Band - N0RMAN\nhttp://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-band/en-us\n======\nguylhem\nAll the sensors + apparently a very lightweight OS + small form factor = I\nlike it.\n\nThe killing feature is the integrated GPS. As mentionned on the website, you\ncan go without your phone. That alone could make it a buy if it supports\nwireless charging (I don't want to bother with wires in 2014)\n\nAlso, it is multiplatform, which is a big plus. I do not want an android watch\nor an iwatch, but something that will work regardless of the cellphone I\nchose.\n\nI wonder if there's a devkit to read the data. If some HN is from Microsoft,\nI'd love some links to the devkit page (simple stuff, like retreiving GPS log,\nheartrate log, etc)\n\n~~~\nfelixrieseberg\nHey, I'm an Open Source Engineer with MSFT (and the msft dude for YC) - there\nisn't anything out yet, but we have always released SDKs for pretty much\nanything we build.\n\n~~~\njmsdnns\nWhat does \"the msft dude for YC\" mean?\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nIt means: try to get companies that otherwise would not go for Microsoft\nproducts to give it a try through free product samples, and talking down\ncompanies not microsoft.\n\nI really wished that companies like Microsoft, Google and so on would not have\na 'HN guy' (and would not have non-disclosed HN guys either, Felix is at least\nabove board on that), it can make it a lot harder to figure out what is a\ngenuine user experience and what is product placement.\n\nUnless the Microsoft stack is something you already have experience with\nyou're _much_ better off using non-proprietary stack software. Anything coming\nout of Microsoft will sooner or later cause a bunch of licenses to be sold\nsomewhere down the line or monthly invoices for metered usage to appear so\nmake sure you know exactly what you're getting into. $50K in freebies will\nhave to translate into $50K more profit somewhere along the line.\n\n~~~\nradmuzom\nThe \"much\" better off is an assumption. If I remember correctly, Fogcreek\nprimarily uses a Microsoft stack; so did lot of people who used to hang around\nin the Business of Software forum run by Joel Spolsky. Most of them had\nbootstrapped companies rather than use a lot of VC money to buy expensive\ntools. Most of them did quite well making money with their business. Using\nopen tools is not a criterion for both technical or business success.\n\n~~~\nghshephard\nJoel Spolsky - former Microsoft Product Manager? Yes, it's not particularly\nsurprising that they would use Microsoft Products - their incredible\nfamiliarity with the product would offset any downstream licensing costs.\n\nSmall business usually get everything for free (or nobody bothers to check in\non their licensing status, at the very least, they run on a massive discount\nusing \"developer editions\").\n\nVery large businesses have so much bureaucratic overhead, that unless their\ncore business is Software/service (I.E. Amazon, Facebook, Google, Dropbox,\netc...) - the cost of software licenses is minor, and anything they can save\nby going with something \"Standard and Supported\" is worth the offset.\n\nBut, anybody interested in trying to run their small-medium business on\nsomething like Oracle Enterprise edition on their 16 Core Server will quickly\nstart taking a second look at Postgress/MariaDB once they see what the annual\nlicensing costs for Oracle are. Partitioning and Optimizer are only worth so\nmuch...\n\n------\nsytelus\nWhile everyone is trying to make a watch that looks as traditional as\npossible, Microsoft is thinking radically different for how the future watch\nshould look likes. That's some guts.\n\nAt $200 this looks like great device with built-in sensors including GPS and\nUV that also talks to whatever phone you own. I also like the fact that heart\nrate monitor is always on. Addition of barometer could have been nicer,\nhowever.\n\nOther tidbits:\n\n-Screen looks too small to do much of an interaction so I'm guessing type of apps would be mostly notification types.\n\n-I seriously hate all these stock photos and videos. Marketing seems to be out of ideas and creativity yet again. Show the f __*ing product, not random faces.\n\n-48 hr battery life\n\n-Cortana works only for Windows Phone\n\n-It's supposedly made for the right hand which is very weird.\n\n-Sleep quality monitoring seems pretty cool\n\n-The whole thing is projected as health device and makes me feel that it's designed for fitness nuts. This is going to severely limit the audience and very bad marketing strategy. Apple's watch is much more human/teens oriented that anyone wearing watches wouldn't mind to wear regardless of its health related features and probably mostly just for fun (send my heartbeat!).\n\n~~~\npiotrkaminski\nThey claim a battery life of 48 hours under \"normal usage\" (read: no GPS),\nwith a charging time of 1.5 hours. Though if it's supposed to be used as a\nsleep tracker, I kinda wonder when we're supposed to charge it.\n\n~~~\neitally\nIf you compare it more closely to a Garmin than to a Fitbit, this is\nreasonable/comparable battery life. A Garmin GPS watch will track 8-15 hours\nof activity, if you're lucky ... but without GPS and in pure watch mode will\nlast a couple of weeks.\n\nI'd buy this to replace a Fitbit any day of the week.\n\n~~~\nscblock\nUnless you compare it to a Garmin Vivosmart, which does notifications and\nlasts about 7 days. No GPS, but fully waterproof.\n\nOr if you compare it to the just-announced but not yet available Fitbit Surge,\nwhich claims 5 days without GPS.\n\nTwo days is not much time in this space.\n\n------\nsteven2012\nFinally a Microsoft product that isn't stupidly handcuffed to their ecosystem.\nMicrosoft has amazing engineers still, and they must be frustrated that they\naren't allowed to produce the best device they can, regardless of os. I hope\nfor their sake this thing does well.\n\n~~~\nmadeofpalk\n> Finally\n\nThis isn't 'finally'. This 'new Microsoft' has been doing this for a while.\n\n~~~\nthescrewdriver\nVisual Studio doesn't seem to install correctly on my Ubuntu box.\n\n~~~\ndarklajid\nLast time I tried running Unity on my Windows box I ran into some issues.\n\n(Put differently: The argument is nonsense)\n\n~~~\nthescrewdriver\nIt installed fine for me. Get the latest download here:\n[https://unity3d.com/unity/download](https://unity3d.com/unity/download)\n\nPerhaps you were installing an older version?\n\n~~~\nfeld\nwrong unity\n\n[https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity](https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity)\n\n------\norbifold\nI certainly would not want a bracelet that tracks so much information from a\ncorporation that is known to cooperate with the NSA. The bracelets they force\nrepeat sex offenders to wear track less information about them. The only way I\nwould consider using such a device was if both the hardware and software were\navailable for public review.\n\n~~~\nVoid_\nI'll be happy to share my data with Microsoft or NSA for that matter, I'm\npretty sure nobody there cares how I spend my days, and I don't think they're\ninterested in your days either...\n\n~~~\norbifold\nWell western governments are experts in keeping their population docile and\npolitically disinterested. So I'm not surprised a growing percentage of their\npopulation is fine with being monitored and spied on. The majority of the\npopulation might not really need protection from the state, but the few that\ndo, dissidents, political activists definitely do.\n\nBy establishing a culture, where people are happy to share their data with the\ngovernment anyone who isn't will automatically be a suspect. For example\npeople who use TOR are put on a list. I don't know what live you lived, but\nsome of my friends were under police surveillance (some police officer lived\nas a student for several years before his cover was blown by an acquaintance)\nbecause the government thought they had to keep taps on far left student\norganisations. Considering how much effort they went through to do that, I'm\nsure they monitor much more benign activity electronically.\n\n~~~\nblumkvist\n>because the government thought they had to keep taps on far left student\norganisations.\n\nThat's a perfectly sensible thing to do. I would do the same thing. Any\nenlightened person would do it.\n\n~~~\norbifold\nI agree but there are different ways of going about it. In the particular case\nI know of, a police officer infiltrated all left leaning student organisations\nin order to get access to the more radical ones. By infiltrated I mean that he\nwent to their meetings, was invited to parties and reported all their personal\ninformation. In any case, I just wanted to defuse the argument that the\ngovernment is probably not that interested in your data. Its far easier to\nturn devices such as this against you, I mentioned the case where they\nrecorded the phone numbers of every mobile device at a largely peaceful\ndemonstration. Since there is no reason to ever delete this data, you not only\nhave to trust that the current government is benevolent and reasonable, but\nalso that this form of government is stable, does not crumble and you don't\nend up on a kill list 20 years later. This might not be an issue in the West,\nbut there are countless cases around the world, where based on much less\ninformation political activists / dissidents were murdered.\n\n~~~\nblumkvist\nI'm not a proponent of this unsupervised mass data collection. I wanted to\npoint out that your example is an especially counter-productive one.\n\n------\ncyanbane\nI went and picked one of these up at lunch from local Microsoft Store/Kiosk.\nNo line, walked right up. Sales person was very informative, helped with wrist\nsizing. Came with some small swag (Starbucks gift card, water bottle, etc).\nThere were two other people at the store - one looking at Surface another\nstarted looking at Band as I was leaving, I noticed they were looking at mine\nas I tried it on. Not hard to purchase one, no line.\n\nI walked by the Apple Store on the way out and there were people queued up\noutside to get in, probably about 10-12 deep.\n\nIt was a sign of the times, as someone who purchases products from (and\ndevelops for) both camps, I am really happy to see the competition. Happy to\nsee MS embrace iOS devices with their new tech and happy to see Apple allow MS\napps in the app store. Its not all pats on the backs between Apple and MS, but\nthe competition benefits all us and is great to see. Plus, some cool gear is\ncoming out of it.\n\n~~~\nssully\nI would be really interested to hear any feedback you have on the device\n\n~~~\ncyanbane\nBeen wearing it since lunch, don't really notice it all that much however I\nusually wear a watch. I didn't opt for the opposite hand. It has time as a\nlarge numerical on the initial UI display, so felt it could take place of my\nwatch. I do use it with the screen on the inside of my wrist, so when I want\nto look at device I hold up my arm, palm towards me. Feels a lot more natural\nthan wearing it and viewing the UI \"as a watch\".\n\nWent for a run, tracked the run well. I forgot to set the device to record for\na run, but it did track my steps, mileage, etc pretty well (compared it to\nMoves App on iOS).\n\nGetting texts and phone call alerts on it is pretty nice, actually. I have\nphone off to side charging and this is a good alert system (I'm using iOS as\nphone).\n\nI wish they had a button press configuration that allowed for a \"flashlight\"\nlike app to display all white-light on LCD. Would almost feel magical/wizardry\nwhen taking the dog out to pee.\n\nWill try sleep (one the main reason I bought) tonight. I use \"Sleep Cycle\" app\non iOS (I sometimes have problems sleeping) so will be interesting to compare\nBand vs that app's morning results.\n\n------\nEncosia\nI was pretty underwhelmed by Apple's watch and have actively disliked the\nAndroid watches that I've seen so far. I use a Fitbit One every day currently,\nso the new Fitbit Charge bands with some phone integration kind of piqued my\ninterest, but seemed very feature poor.\n\nAfter seeing the functionality this thing offers and that it will work with my\niPhone instead of requiring a particular phone OS, take my money.\n\nIf it really does as much and works half as well as the promo video suggests,\nMS may have a big winner here.\n\n~~~\nlhl\nThe only thing that's a bit of a bummer is the battery life (the Peak Basis\nclaims 4 days and the Fitbit Surge claims 5 days) and the MS Band is only\n\"Dust- and splash-resistant\" while those other devices are waterproof to 5ATM\n(usable for swimming), but the sheer number of sensors is really impressive\nand I'm much more confident about software/data access. At the very least it\nlooks like MS Health pipes data into HealthVault, which is API accessible),\nbut I'm most looking forward to getting access to the raw data stream\n(considering it's _my_ biometric data they're collecting).\n\n------\nsomberi\nQuoting an article from The Economist.com:\n\n\"... Strikingly, one-third of users discard their devices after six months,\naccording to research by Endeavour Partners, a consultancy. Some industry\ninsiders speculate that the true number may be much higher than that. ...The\nnovelty of being able to track your steps, calories or other metrics is\nappealing at first, but swiftly wears off. ...\"\n\nFull article - [http://goo.gl/hR5LxJ](http://goo.gl/hR5LxJ)\n\n~~~\nethomson\nTo compare Microsoft Band to a FitBit doesn't do the Band justice. FitBit is a\ntoy - counting footsteps isn't \"fitness\" and a few LEDs isn't feedback. With\nGPS and an actual display, the Band actually has the ability to compete\nagainst Garmin and Suunto and _actual_ fitness watches.\n\nMy Garmin is bulky, can't lock a signal in a neighborhood with tall buildings\nand has software reminiscent of an Atari. And it was more expensive than this.\n\nI'm _very_ excited about this. (Though, disclaimer, I work for Microsoft.)\n\n~~~\nblumkvist\nHey, you seem to know to be an enthusiast about fitness tracking, can you give\nme a quick advice?\n\nI want a fitness tracker, but I don't want the display. I want it to be\nlightweight and comfortable to wear, ideally wrapping around my wrist. Sweat-\nproof. Pedometer, accelerometer, and have decent sleep tracking. A killer\nfeature for me for me would be measuring jumps, as in rope jumps.\n\nDoes something resembling this exist somewhere?\n\n~~~\nsomberi\n@blumkvist.\n\nI own and use Argus (on the Iphone), FitBit and a Garmin Forerunner and in\nthat order. The way I \"teach\" Argus is to first create a sample set of data\nand add it as an \"new\" exercise. In your case, I would count the number of\njumps you do in a minute, obtain the calories burned online, and feed both\ninto Argus. With Garmin afaik you cannot do that. FitBit has a funky \"Steps\nclimbed\". I don't know what to make of the number it shows.\n\n~~~\nyaur\nFitbit uses a barometer/altimeter to work out the floors climbed so in place\njumping shouldn't trigger it.\n\n~~~\nblumkvist\nIs this too hard to make? Shouldn't 3 axis accelerometer be able to do it out\nof the box, if you program it?\n\nIf somebody from these companies is reading... this is a killer feature! Lots\nof people jump and would throw money at you if you can integrate it into a\nfitness app.\n\n~~~\nyaur\nSuunto supports third party \"apps\" and has a \"rope skipping\" app[1]. Can't\nvouch for its accuracy (I'm personally more interested in hiking/climbing\nfeatures), but it exists.\n\n[http://www.movescount.com/apps/app10028993-Rope_Skipping_R3](http://www.movescount.com/apps/app10028993-Rope_Skipping_R3)\n\n------\ncuriousDog\nWow, this actually looks fantastic. Microsoft has always killed it in the\nhardware department. Looks like it connects to their cloud service as well.\nWill probably consider getting one.\n\n~~~\nbeggi\nErm, always killed it? Zune, Surface, Lumia?\n\n~~~\ncuriousDog\nHardware-wise, I'd say yes. I haven't used a Lumia but the Zune-HD and Surface\nwere actually well made.\n\n~~~\nlotharbot\nThere's an old Microsoft joystick (the Sidewinder 3D Pro) that hasn't been\nmade in at least a decade, but several friends of mine still use them (with\ncustom gameport-to-USB converters specifically designed for that stick.) Yet\nanother quality piece of Microsoft hardware.\n\n~~~\nprawn\nWith my RMBP, I use a Microsoft wired mouse that would be about 15 years old.\nI want to get a wireless mouse, but I don't want to lose the feeling of this\none!\n\n------\nnilkn\nWhile so many competitors are scrambling to make smartwatches that can't\ncompetently track your fitness and can't competently replace your phone, this\nBand has all the sensors necessary to be a legitimate fitness tracker, the\nform factor will ensure it's more accurate, and it also can function as a\nuseful proxy to your phone. While it may not have all the features of the\nApple Watch, it seems to have all of the most useful ones, like delivering\nimportant notifications straight to your wrist. And it's cross-platform!\n\nIt seems to me that Microsoft has found the two areas where wearables really\nexcel -- quantified self and notifications -- and focused on these features\nabove all else. It's not high fashion, although the band form factor is hard\nto be offended by, especially if you have the screen facing down. It doesn't\ntake photos, but why would you take photos with your watch?\n\nThis is not unlike the iPod, which focused on storage space and an extremely\nsimple interface above all else.\n\n------\nfrade33\nJesus! it's perfect. and because MS got it right. compared to apple or pebble.\nin short, 'band form factor' is the one I was hoping, when apple introduced\nits watch. I was bit shocked when it was actually rounded-square shape. with\nthis form, you get more with less.\n\n~~~\nCamperBob2\nYep. Apple gave its customers the proverbial faster horse. This looks like an\nactual step forward.\n\n------\nwebXL\nBesides the landscape content not being oriented to your eyes when your\nforearm is across your body, a la Samsung Gear Fit, this looks very nice. The\norientation obviously depends on how you wear it (the screen on the top or\nbottom of your wrist), as others have pointed out.\n\nI don't know how big of an issue that is with limited content, but it drives\nme nuts when a touch device isn't oriented the way I want (in bed primarily).\nThey could give the user options to lock the orientation one way or another or\ndetect how the user is wearing it somehow, but my money would be Microsoft to\nfigure that out much faster than Samsung.\n\nAs a Pebble owner, and potential Apple Watch buyer, this seems to have the\nbest of all smart-watch worlds technology-wise. Cross-platform is huge.\nBattery-life, reliable software, comfort and style (in order of importance)\nwill make or break this.\n\n------\nsuprgeek\nGot a nice package of on board sensors:\n\nOptical heart rate sensor\n\n3-axis accelerometer/gyro\n\nGPS\n\nAmbient light sensor\n\nSkin temperature sensor\n\nUV sensor\n\nMicrophone\n\nHaptic vibration motor\n\nThe 2 day battery life is the one turn off for me. Otherwise this is actually\nquite nice for $199 cross platform fitness wearable\n\n~~~\nrplnt\nJust curious, what is UV sensor good for?\n\nAnd I'd really like altimeter for this kind of device.\n\n~~~\nmolmalo\nAccording to the site, \"Get a quick read of the UV Index so you can decide to\napply sunscreen before you hit the road.\"\n\n~~~\njoosters\nCouldn't you just look up at the sky to answer this question?\n\n~~~\nk-mcgrady\nAs much as I agree with you the same thing is often said about weather apps.\nHowever the really accurate ones (e.g. Dark Sky) that can predict to the\nminute and give intensity are really useful. For example I was able to plan my\nlunch break using it yesterday so I was out of the office in the 30 mins of\ndry weather between rain showers. The the UV sensor you could probably work\nout what strength suncream you need and if people apply the correct strength\nmaybe in the long term skin cancer rates will fall. Small change in behaviour\ndue to better information, big improvement for society.\n\n~~~\njoosters\n(Thanks for highlighting Dark Sky, that looks like an interesting app!)\n\nDon't your arguments (and app recommendations) point _against_ a UV measure as\nbeing useful? If you want to know whether or not to put on sunscreen now, for\na day out, knowing the current UV strength is no use since the conditions will\nbe different later. That's where weather prediction comes in and makes your\none little watchband UV datapoint useless. Looking up at the sky and observing\nweather conditions will always be better than that, and better weather\nprediction will beat looking up at the sky.\n\n~~~\nk-mcgrady\nAh, very good point I didn't think of that. I suppose it could function as a\nwarning system. You're go out in the morning and it's cloudy and suncream\nisn't required. As the day goes on the UV levels increase and your fitness\nband can warn you that you should think about applying suncream as the UV\nlevels have increased.\n\n------\ndarklajid\n\\- Click on 'Buy'\n\n\\- See 'you need a store to find out the right size' (reasonable)\n\n\\- Click on 'Find store'\n\n\\- Notice 'Only available in the US'\n\n\\- Close tab. Fail.\n\n~~~\nmeta\nI was wondering if anyone had information about this.\n\nIt looks like it ties to Microsoft HealthVault. That is not available in\nCanada. It appears (from the outside) that MS sold the \"rights\" to HealthVault\nto Telus, whom did absolute nothing with it. Does anyone know, is that the\nright read of the situation? Can MS ever offer HealthVault to Canada or will\nwe have to hope that Telus will?\n\nAlso, to the people below. As far as I can see, even a service to forward the\nhardware from the US to Canada, this probably will not work. If you register\nyour live account in Canada (which you probably would, so you can put a CC on\nit) then you will not be able to active HealthVault on your live account - it\nwill send you to a Telus page.\n\n~~~\ngoatforce5\nOh. Huh. This was the first product that I would have entered a Microsoft\nStore to look at. I might have even bought one.\n\nYou've just saved me a trip. Thanks!\n\n------\nblackaspen\nThis is what the modern \"software driven company that happens to make hardware\nlooks like\". And I'm glad it's Microsoft. This looks awesome.\n\n------\nitsravi\nI spent about 8 hours using this today. Some notes.\n\n    \n    \n      + It does feel heavy at first, but I got used to it pretty quickly. \n    \n      + I plugged it in to charge and it seemed to be stuck at 80%. This may be because of the port I was using so I can't lay blame on Band. \n    \n      + The charging mechanism is solid and feels great. \n      + I keep wanting to swipe the screen to turn it on (you need to press the \"home\" button).\n    \n      + I went for a 1.5 mi run. It took *4 minutes* to lock in GPS. This is in a fairly populated area, but the I was kind of in the woods. My iPhone has zero issues locking into GPS. \n    \n      + It mirrors all my notifications from my iPhone which I love. \n    \n      + After running, I went straight to Starbucks and tried to pay with the band but failed because the screen does not respond to sweaty fingers. This is partly my fault.\n    \n      + Haven't detected any UV yet. \n    \n      + HR locking is quick.\n\n~~~\njimueller\nYour phone can't lock to GPS faster because it can use cell towers to narrow\ndown your position first. The Band should lock more quickly now that it has a\ngeneral idea of where you are. I have a Garmin GPS watch, and the initial lock\ndoes take a long time.\n\n~~~\nitsravi\nThanks, you are correct. I tried again a few hours later from home (about 50\nmiles away from my initial test) and it locked within 30 seconds.\n\nEdit: I've had it plugged into my MBP to charge for about 35 minutes and it\nstill said 80%. After turning it completely off and back on fixed this (now\nsays 100%).\n\nEdit2: I really wish I could play music via bluetooth with this.\n\n~~~\nygra\nThe very first GPS lock for a device in a new area takes a while because it\nhas to download the satellite positions first. After that (if you haven't\nmoved too far away in the meantime) subsequent GPS fixes should be much\nfaster.\n\n(Quoting Wikipedia: »in order to obtain an accurate satellite location from\nthis transmitted message the receiver must demodulate the message from each\nsatellite it includes in its solution for 18 to 30 seconds. In order to\ncollect all the transmitted almanacs the receiver must demodulate the message\nfor 732 to 750 seconds or 12 1/2 minutes.«)\n\n------\nturnip1979\nThis actually seems better than Android Wear. I like their form factor more\nthan a watch. It might give Apple a run for their money.\n\n~~~\nghshephard\nThey are chasing after slightly (but not completely) different markets. This\nis a (very capable) fitbit competitor. Apple is definitely targeting fashion.\nMicrosoft is marketing a < $200 band. Apple will be selling a $5K+ Gold Watch\namongst its offerings.\n\nIn some ways, the Microsoft watch is actually much more capable than the Apple\nWatch (Hello, untethered GPS!) - but nobody is going to put it on the front\npage of vogue.\n\n------\nastrojams\nThis looks really good. I love the new Microsoft - it feels good to root for\nthem again.\n\n~~~\nwebwielder\nWhen would you have rooted for them in the past?\n\n~~~\ndigisign\nLast time I remember was when they provided Basic for my C64 and were biting\nthe hands of IBM.\n\n------\nFlyingLawnmower\nAt first, the $199 pricepoint seemed high, but it seems to be a cross platform\nhigh end fitness tracker with basic smartwatch functionality. Incidentally,\nthis puts the price point right in-between FitBits and Android Wear watches\n(and also the iWatch).\n\nFurthermore, 2 day battery life is a very welcome addition. I wouldn't mind\nputting one of these on my wrist.\n\n~~~\njosu\nMy problem is that if it's also a sleep tracker. When are you supposed to\ncharge these things?\n\n~~~\nimajoo\n1.5 hrs to full charge, 30 min to 80% charge. I'd charge it while making\nbreakfast.\n\n~~~\njosu\n>30 min to 80% charge\n\nThat's impressive. But why does it take 60 minutes to charge the last 20%?\n\n~~~\nkevingadd\nTo put it really simply: Batteries are nonlinear. Charge/discharge rates vary\nbased on the current amount of power stored in the battery.\n\n~~~\njosu\nThat makes a lot of sense, thanks.\n\n------\ntwodayslate\nThe battery lasts for two days\n\n[http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-band/en-\nus/support/hardwa...](http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-band/en-\nus/support/hardware/battery-life-tips)\n\n~~~\nstephengoodwin\nNot surprising with all its features, but for wearables, that's a killer. My\nFitbit can do 5-6 days, and I would consider that on the shorter end of decent\nbattery life.\n\n~~~\njmspring\nThe overall quality of the fitbit (both as a band and a clip) is complete\ncrap. My wife, hardly a heavy user of such, has had the clip die within two\nmonths, the band (a replacement) started acting up within about 3 months.\nBought at two separate times from two different places. Friends have similar\nstories.\n\nI haven't delved into wearables yet. I mostly have used my iPhone 5s (now 6)\nfor the motion tracking, but it certainly doesn't catch everything (let alone\ndoesn't catch vitals) since I don't carry it everywhere.\n\n~~~\nstephengoodwin\nI haven't had any issues, but my wife's Fitbit battery wouldn't stay charged\nfor more than 2 days, within a month of getting it. Since her replacement came\nin, we've had no issues.\n\nMy biggest complaint with the Fitbit is the lack of any battery meter on the\ndevice itself. Unless you sync frequently, you wouldn't know when your battery\nis running low.\n\n------\nHytosys\nAwkward, cliché, and yet still effective advertisement video. The work-out and\nskydiving bits were neat, but the graduation text message bit and the \"keep\nyour head up\" catchphrase (you look down to see the watch) made me feel\nstubbornly aware and annoyed at the problems that this device still causes;\nthe disconnect with reality.\n\nAlso, I don't know that anyone looks back at the time they got a Facebook\nmessage while holding their newborn (\"the small moments you never forget\").\n\nI'm not sure of the problems to these alleged solutions, but I suppose time\nwill tell.\n\n~~~\n72deluxe\nHaha that's a very good point. \"the small moments FACEBOOK NEVER FORGETS\"\nshould be the tagline.\n\n------\nmpg33\nI actually like the look of these bands more so than the watch look Apple is\ngoing for...\n\n------\ntuxguy\nTo me, MSFT's efforts to become a centralized hub for fitness& health data, is\nthe more exciting bit of news. [0]\n\nWith machine learning & cloud pieces in place, MS health could _potentially_\nbe HUGE !\n\nHealth care data is all over the place, & if msft can become a central\nrepository for all/a significant portion of fitness/health data, it will be\nreally valuable.\n\nfrom [1], \"There's just one problem. \"Most of these things are individual\nislands,\" Mehdi says — there are a million options, but they're all siloed to\na single platform, app, or gadget. \"You'll use device X or Y, some stuff is in\nthe cloud, but we think that there's kind of a next step that's coming, which\nis the ability to unify all that data and democratize it, and then add some\nreal value on top. And that's where we see the ability to kind of get to that\nnext level.\"\"\n\n0\\. [http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/29/introducing-\nmicro...](http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/29/introducing-microsoft-\nhealth/)\n\n1\\. [http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/29/7118533/microsoft-\nhealth-...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/29/7118533/microsoft-health-band-\nhub-for-fitness-data)\n\n------\nRayVR\nalso, this: [http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-band/en-us/get-\nstarted](http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-band/en-us/get-started)\n\n~~~\nRayVR\noptical heart rate monitor and UV sensor are interesting but not enough to get\na microsoft phone\n\nEdit: works with iphone and android. [http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-\nband/en-us/support/hardwa...](http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-band/en-\nus/support/hardware/system-requirements)\n\n------\nmrigor\nPromo video is up\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEvjulEJH9w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEvjulEJH9w)\n\n~~~\ndavmar\nfor maximum effect, watch this first: [http://funny.garrytan.com/this-is-a-\ngeneric-brand-video](http://funny.garrytan.com/this-is-a-generic-brand-video)\n\n~~~\nwes-k\nThank you, I needed this after the video started with cheesy music and the\nwords \"life is made up of moments\".\n\n------\nroxtar\nLook pretty slick. It's interesting that it's marketed as a fitness device but\nis actually a smart watch. I own a Garmin Forerunner 305 which can last 6-8\nhours of active use. I know that the recent Garmin devices last close to a\nday. The Microsoft Band doesn't tell us how well it does on battery with the\nGPS -- without the GPS it claims 48 hours.\n\n~~~\npedalpete\nIf you're using gps to track running and such, you aren't running 24 hours a\nday, so you can save battery by turning it on and off. I think that's a great\nfeature. But it would have been nice to say 'GPS' time, like phones describe\n'talk-time'.\n\n~~~\njackalope\nThere are times I wish I could leave GPS tracking on all the time, with a\nsimple way to add markers either now or later, and with the ability to share\nthe data with any app I want. There are times I just want to hop on my bike\nand ride without doing some dance with a finicky GPS app that I have to\nremember to stop at the end (and hope it doesn't crash during my ride).\n\n~~~\neli\nFor what it's worth, any Android phone with Google Now already can track you\n(albeit without super high resolution) 24/7\\. It's actually kind of cool; it\nlooks at where you are and how fast you're going to infer walking vs biking vs\ndriving.\n\n------\nslackgentoo\nBackground story from Microsoft:\n[http://news.microsoft.com/features/microsofts-new-cloud-\npowe...](http://news.microsoft.com/features/microsofts-new-cloud-powered-\nwearable-keeps-fitness-and-productivity-insights-a-glance-away/)\n\nInteresting that MSR also helped developing activity recognition algorithms\nfor the device.\n\n------\nnnutter\nThis looks intriguing. Much more so than Apple Watch. However, the thickness\nof the band has me concerned. I stopped using UP because the band was thick\nenough it made my hand fall asleep when typing. (Having to take it off negated\none of its main purposes alarm.)\n\n------\nnnd\nI just got it.\n\nFirst impressions:\n\n* the UI is a bit laggy\n\n* voice commands work only with windows phones\n\n* it's pretty awkward to use, one has to twist his hand to be able to use the touch display\n\n* step measurement has a high lag, an it seems to be inaccurate\n\nI like the design of the watch though, but I wouldn't say it fits perfectly\nfor me.\n\n------\nviggity\nin general, I'm a pretty big MS fanboy (win phones since 7, surface 2, etc).\nAnd I am suspect of the category as a whole, but the orientation of the screen\njust seems so dumb.\n\nAlso, people keep saying it is so small, it certainly doesn't look like it to\nme, especially on the sides it looks relatively thick.\n\nI'm going to be out in Redmond soon, hope to see some in the wild.\n\n~~~\nBinaryIdiot\n> but the orientation of the screen just seems so dumb.\n\nI thought this at first but after thinking about it I think it's really\nintuitive! When you use a watch you have to turn your arm in a non-natural way\nbut when you turn your palm up it's actually easier because of the way the\nmussels are laid out. Also that's how you always look at your phone.\n\nI wouldn't mind trying one out.\n\n~~~\nTheTaO\nyes exactly what I was thinking. For reading anything on this it will help to\nhave it worn with screen inside which is more natural for me.\n\n------\ngrimlck\nI'm really impressed, I was set on getting an apple watch until now, but this\nmay change my mind - great form factor and style, has the sensors I'm looking\nfor, and cross platform. I'm eagerly waiting a review.\n\n------\npzaich\nThis looks like the perfect form-factor for a more powerful wearable swim\nwatch. Most of the other options are bulkier or too limited in their feature\nset. Unfortunately it looks like it's only splash resistant.\n\n------\npradn\nAnyone know if the data will sync to the iOS Health app? I use it to track my\nfitness goals and such.\n\n------\njafingi\nAm I the only one who thinks the screen orientation is totally off? When you\nhave it on your wrist, you cannot look at it without having your arm in a\ntotally awkward position.\n\n~~~\nJoeri\nNot if you have the screen on the underside of your wrist.\n\n------\nnetcan\nIt's an interesting time. People are incredibly interested and open to\ntechnology and that is an opportunity.\n\nHN probably has a thousand joking references to calculator watches of the 90s,\nhow goofy they looked and how they marked you as chronically uncool. There's\nsomething to that. Sensibilities have changed and there is an expectation that\ngadgets will evolve and unlock all sorts of cool magic. People are so open to\nthis stuff today.\n\nMy reading of these bands/watches/wearables is that they're still exploring.\nThey're not getting enough data passively and they aren't really working to\nthe point where they're a permanent addition our lives. Basically, not good\nenough yet. Maybe they need 10X better battery life. Maybe they need better\nsensors or somesuch. Maybe it's a killer app they need. I just see around me\npeople buying one, playing with it for weeks or months and then not using it\nanymore.\n\nEither way, device makers are being tossed a soft ball by consumers. They're\nwilling to buy and try them and help explore. I hope this means they'll get\nsomeplace useful. But, people are ultimately fickle and these need to start\ndelivering fast. I hope this isn't a misfire, too early to really achieve\nsomething.\n\n------\nPeterisP\nIs it just me or the advertised pictures look as something that I wouldn't\nwant to put on my hands even if I had bought it?\n\nI.e., visibly bigger than the wrists of those models and hanging loose, which\nis uncomfortable, and a rather long (much longer than most watches) flat\nsegment in a spot where any comfortable wristband should be with a curved\ninside.\n\nOK, seeing isn't touching, we'll have to wait for the wearer reviews for that.\n\n------\njeffmk\nSomewhat tangental to the actual story here, but is there some way to make\nsomething like Microsoft Band, Fitbit, Jawbone Up, or Nike+ FuelBand self-\ncontained to your own server?\n\nI'd love to use one of these devices, but I abhor the idea of my very personal\nmovement/biometric data to be in the hands of a third party. If this data\ncould be contained to my own server, I'd be all over it.\n\n------\nstephengoodwin\n\"A full charge can last up to 48 hours, but can vary significantly depending\non your settings, usage, and other factors.\"[1]\n\nThat doesn't make me optimistic about using the GPS for very long.\n\n[1] [http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-band/en-\nus/support/hardwa...](http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-band/en-\nus/support/hardware/battery-life-tips)\n\n------\nnilkn\nEven though I'm not much of a fitness buff, the sensor array that this has is\nsomething that I view as more or less necessary in any smart wrist wearable.\nThis sort of quantified self tracking is something that a smartphone simply\ncannot do in any reliable and persistent way.\n\nSo I think this is a huge step in the right direction. So much so that it'd be\na nearly guaranteed buy if I were more assured that it'll be fully functional\nwith an Android phone. The lack of Cortana support for non-Windows phones,\nthough, is not reassuring. I can live without that, but will I still be able\nto get notifications with an Android phone? If I wanted _only_ a fitness\ntracker, there are other options out there.\n\nIt'd also be awfully nice if it supported wireless charging. I'd really like\nto see the sort of charging dock for this that the Moto 360 has (transforming\nit into a snazzy desk clock). I think this could look even better on such a\nstand, since it wouldn't have the watch strap hanging off the sides.\n\n------\nhardwaresofton\nThis is probably said pretty rarely on the internet as a whole (and even more\nrarely here), but way to go microsoft for knocking it out of the park and\ncreating a great product.\n\nBravo for committing to cross-platform support also, thanks for putting user\nvalue above locking people in (in hopes they'll buy other MS things)\n\n------\nambrop7\nHow much of the advertised functionality does it have if you don't want to\nturn your data over to Microsoft?\n\n------\nscotchio\nDang it! I was just about to buy it. Looks like Cortana will only work if you\nhave a Windows phone. That missing killer feature IMO is a deal breaker.\n\nFrom the article: \"Cortana: If you’re using Windows Phone 8.1, you can take\nnotes and set reminders with your voice using Cortana personal assistant.\"\n\n~~~\nWorldWideWayne\nIt's got a microphone and bluetooth so it might just be a software limitation.\nI wouldn't be surprised if Apple actually locked third parties out from using\nSiri like this though.\n\nAre you saying that you want Cortana even if you're using Android or iOS? I\ndon't think that's going to be possible.\n\n~~~\nnilkn\nIt'd be nice if you could get Google Now on Android at least. I doubt Apple\nwould open up Siri, though.\n\n~~~\ncrojach\nThey have the SDKs available so it's up to Google and Apple to integrate...\n\n------\nskc\nIf this thing catches on they will end up with a literal treasure trove of\nuseful data that can be mined for some pretty mind bogglingly accurate stats\non some aspects of our health.\n\nI like this sort of thing but I can also understand why some people might feel\na bit uneasy about so much data gathering.\n\n~~~\nSideburnsOfDoom\nNot just health - also location, activity levels (meaning a reasonable guess\nat to if you're awake) etc. This is basically a tracking bracelet.\n\nAlso \"can be mined\" is putting it mildly. Apple, Microsoft and google are all\nNSA partners. If the data's there, the incentive is to utilise it....\n\n~~~\ncrocowhile\nThose are all pretty much data that are available already to whoever is\naccessing your smartphone. Google has been tracking activity and location for\nyears now\n[https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0](https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0)\n\n~~~\nSideburnsOfDoom\nI'm not disagreeing with you; but this is not an argument in favour of going\nfurther down this road by using a bracelet instead.\n\n------\nstevebot\nYou had me at \"Works with Windows Phone 8.1 update, iOS 7.1, 8 and Android\n4.3-4.4 phones, with Bluetooth\"\n\nIf that's true, this is pretty awesome. Funny I had to read the small print to\neven find this feature of the band.\n\nSucks that Apple Watch + Android Watch are not cross platform.\n\n------\ngelatocar\nDo you wear it on the inside of your wrist? Otherwise wouldn't the display be\nsideways?\n\n~~~\nnilkn\nIt looks like the display is meant to be facing outward from the bottom side\nof your wrist (i.e., down, if you put out your arms straight in front of you).\nA lot of the videos show people just flipping their wrist around to correctly\norient the display. It's a little unusual but doesn't really seem like it'd be\nany sort of issue to me.\n\nMy only concern would be scratching the display.\n\n~~~\nGigablah\nWell, apparently some people wear their regular watch that way as well.\n\n------\nKobaQ\nDamn, recently MS nails it with their web design.\n\n------\nilaksh\nI want a device with the band form factor that actually has real phone calling\nand receiving functions. There is at least one smart band or smart watch out\nthere that does that. This doesn't.\n\nThe smart watches out there are big and flashy, like most watches for men. I\nam a heterosexual male, but I find the large watch faces to be immodest. I\ncertainly do want to show off with a watch, but in a more subtle way. And I am\nnot a really big person so the large watch faces don't fit my anatomy that\nwell.\n\nSo I actually want my smart watch to look like a smart band and act like a\nreal smart phone (to the degree that is possible).\n\n------\nggchappell\nSomething I can't quite tell from the site: how big are the characters on the\ndisplay?\n\nThis kind of device might get a good reception among, say, men in their 50s.\nBut presbyopia[1] presents some challenges that younger engineers & designers\nmight not think about. If a guy has reading glasses, but (as is likely)\ndoesn't wear them while exercising, then a Band with small characters is\npretty much a non-starter for him, even though it looks perfectly readable to\na 30-year-old.\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyopia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyopia)\n\n------\nrobomartin\nWow!\n\nThis.\n\nIs cool.\n\nAnd $199?\n\nJust ordered three of them. Happy to see Microsoft put out something like this\nand, to some extent one-up Apple. While the i-everything world is interesting,\nnot sure I want to shackle myself to a single company like that.\n\nSwimming? Is it waterproof? Any swimming apps?\n\n~~~\nrobomartin\nAh, not waterproof. That's OK.\n\n~~~\nrplnt\nIt's weird though, isn't it? I would expect it to be waterproof. If not\nswimming, then just not having to worry about it when being in rain, washing\nhands, etc..\n\n~~~\nrobomartin\nAgreed. Yet not one of my cellphones from iPhone and my old Blackberry back\nthough various motorola's have been waterproof and that worked out OK for me.\n\nOn a watch form factor this is kind of strange. These are the kinds of things\nthat make me wonder what designers might be thinking sometimes or perhaps\nquestion the design process itself. Do they wash their hands? Do they cook?\nHave they ever had to walk a few blocks in pouring rain? Or bike? Do they go\nfishing? Swimming? Surely the question had to come up. Who said \"no\" and why?\n\nI still bought them. I want to support this and see where it goes.\n\nIs the Apple watch waterproof?\n\n~~~\nbrlewis\nFitbit Flex: [http://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/About-\nthe...](http://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/About-the-Fitbit-\nFlex)\n\nWhile it is water resistant and can be submerged up to 10 meters, Flex is not\ndesigned to track swimming activities. If you want to better reflect your\nswimming activity and calories burned, we recommend logging the activity on\nthe Activities page of your dashboard.\n\nThere are similar \"About\" pages for the other Fitbit trackers that you can get\nto easily from the page above. Most say something like this: Your Charge is\nwater-resistant. It is rain and splash proof and can stand up to the sweatiest\nworkout. Remove before showering or swimming.\n\n------\nojbyrne\nI wanted to see Strava in the partner list. I would have clicked Buy Now if\nso.\n\n~~~\ngggggggg\nI am surprised with a Find, that this is the only mention of the word strava\non this page. Or have I not understood the device right?\n\n------\nezxs\nThis could be an iPod moment for Microsoft.\n\n~~~\nAdamTReineke\nThat's a bold statement, care to expand? Why isn't this just another fitness\nband? (From a current MS employee to an [ex?] MS employee.)\n\n~~~\npsbp\nMaybe he means that MS has made an attractive device that supports its\ncompetitor's (more popular) platforms?\n\n------\nbasicallydan\nThe video is actually pretty good. There's a lot of build-up but they do show\nthe product working in a realistic manner to wrap it all up at the end, with,\n\"Keep your phone in your pocket\".\n\n------\ncyanbane\nI wonder what considerations were taking for wearing this device while using a\nmouse. Most people are right handed, so this device on your right would\ncertainly need to have a hearty outside surface I would think. It has been\nnoted that \"in front of computer\" time may be \"charging\" time due to minor\nactivity, but I have always thought (for me at least on the computer/mouse 5+\nhours a day) an opposite hand device would be hard sell with people who use\nmice with that hand.\n\n~~~\njader201\nI thought most people wear their watch on the opposite wrist?\n\n~~~\ncyanbane\nThey do (right hand users), watch on left hand (opposite), use mouse with\nright hand. This device would be on the right hand for those people - the same\nthat they move the mouse with. My question is, will it interfere with using a\nmouse?\n\n~~~\njader201\nI'm confused then. Why would one wear this _and_ a watch?\n\n~~~\ncyanbane\nGood question. The initial UI displays time. I picked one up today and have\nbeen wearing it on my normal \"watch\" hand. That being said I have been wearing\nit so that the UI is on the inside of my wrist. Definitely feels more natural\nwhen sing the UI.\n\n------\nboh\nJust tried the band. I wanted to want it but I wasn't into it. Wearables in\ngeneral have some ways to go aesthetically. Every band/watch I've tried so far\nhas fairly unflattering proportions (which is totally understandable given the\nhardware). Wearables would ideally disappear into the fabric of your life but\nso far they're mostly big plastic chunks you strap to your arm. I definitely\nlike where things are going, but they haven't gotten there yet.\n\n------\ntdicola\nLooks interesting and good on Microsoft for finally getting in front of a new\nhardware trend. I kind of wonder if all these health trackers are just going\nto be a fad though. Do you really need to micromanage every calorie and heart\nbeat with a $200 gadget? There's a ton of hand waving about combining all the\ndata, synergies, etc. but what are the actual benefits of these devices over\njust regular checkups with a doctor?\n\n~~~\ndominotw\nYep definitely a fad. I used up band religiously for a year couple of years\nwhen it came out. After a while I got sick of one more thing to keep track of,\nwas just too overbearing.\n\nI see a counter trend where technology becomes invisible, fades into\nbackground and still works for us instead of being in out faces all the time.\n\nSmartphones, smart glasses, smart watches everything that wants a piece of our\nattention is going away soon.\n\nI want to learn the routes around my neighborhood and not need a map in my\neyeglasses. I want to talk( or not talk) to friends in real life not text\nmessage them. I just want to come home an play my piano not read a twitter\nbattle on my phone. I want fall asleep talking to my partner/dreaming about\nfuture, not obsesses about my deep sleep rem cycles. I want wake up when I am\ndone sleeping not by a smart alarm keeping track of my sleep cycles. I just\nwant to eat eggs and toast for breakfast not powdered rice from a plastic bag.\n\nI don't want any of this smart* shit. Please make it stop.\n\n~~~\nantjanus\nI completely agree with you, I like the concept of \"disappearing technology\"\nbecause just about anything I want to do is somehow stupidly tied to a device\nwith a screen. It's annoying.\n\nWith that said, one of the main things I wish I could have during my workouts\nis something to track what I do without me having to manually input it. So, if\nit can count the number of reps I do, sweet. If it can count how many steps I\ntook within my 3 mile treadmill run, awesome. If i can see my heartbeat at a\nglance, great! Because treadmills fucking suck at that.\n\nHOWEVER, and one of the reasons why I'm not considering the band, I don't want\ntweets, or messages, or updates, or any of that shit even more in my face. I\ndon't want another touchscreen vying for attention. The new Fitbits do that\nbut (luckily) not with WIndows Phones. I have one, and I see this as a FEATURE\nrather than a detriment. Why the fuck do I need to see stupid notifications\nwhile I'm trying to run?\n\n~~~\nlhl\nIt looks like you'd have the ability to control/turn off all the notifications\nyou don't want. Why would you assume that wouldn't be the case?\n[http://www.microsoft.com/Microsoft-Band/en-\nus/support/phone-...](http://www.microsoft.com/Microsoft-Band/en-\nus/support/phone-app/manage-tiles-and-notifications)\n\n~~~\nantjanus\ni never assumed it wasn't the case.\n\n~~~\nlhl\nThen why would you complain about getting alerts if they can be disabled? Or\nare you complaining about the idea of other people being able to get alerts\nbecause you don't approve of the concept?\n\n~~~\nantjanus\nThis is going to sound silly but here's my thing: the Band is built around\nreceiving notifications, that means that even if you disable them, you'll\nstill see text message icons, emails, etc. even if you can't use them.\n\nI want to look at my watch and see \"hey, you've walked 30,000 steps today\",\nnot \"you know, you can check all this crap on here!\".\n\nIt's the concept, and it's also that mental reminder that you MAY have\nnotifications. I hope that makes sense!\n\n~~~\nlhl\nActually, I think the psychological weight of both notifications and infoglut\nin general is a very valid concern, but I think making crazy assumptions /\nrants is silly.\n\nCase in point, what if I told you not only can you turn off the notifications\ncompletely (which we established earlier), and that no notification icons show\nup on the main screen (which is obvious from the video/screen shots - we're\nnot talking about old-school LCD stencils, after all), but that you can\nfurther manage the tiles so even if you can't control yourself from actively\nswiping around you won't see anything?\n\nBecause now that I have the device on my wrist and the app on my phone, that's\nexactly what you can do.\n\nI have very little skin in this game (it annoys me slightly to see rants w/o\nany basis necessarily in reality, but life's too short for arguing on the\nInternet), but maybe it can be better to be more reserved about a product\ncritique until having seen how it actually works?\n\n~~~\nantjanus\nI totally get what you're saying and am happy to hear that it works that well\nbut, I haven't seen anything like that in the shots. The only thing I've seen\nis the \"do not disturb\" mode which is probably what I'll do when I get it.\n\nI'd love to hear more about what you like about it and how it is. My main\nconcern was basically not having yet another phone-like device that will annoy\nthe crap out of me. And the Band is begging for it.\n\n~~~\nlhl\nHere's my first day thoughts: [http://randomfoo.net/2014/10/30/microsoft-band-\noverviewrevie...](http://randomfoo.net/2014/10/30/microsoft-band-\noverviewreview)\n\n~~~\nantjanus\nvery useful! So I saw that you said it's uncomfortable? That's a major concern\nfor me. I spend the entire day typing. I wonder if my strangely-shaped wrists\nwill alleviate that though.\n\n------\nslackstation\nWhy the fuck is Starbucks a launch partner for a fitness band? What could\ninterest could they possibly have in my health other than undermining it?\n\n~~~\nphatfish\nBecause Starbucks is packed with the sort of hipsters that syphon as much data\nas possible about their personal lives to the databases of multinational\ncorps, obviously!\n\nIt really is easier than anyone could have imagined to get people to part with\ndata. Smart phones provide a genuine quality of life improvement, but unless\nyou are a professional athlete is the privacy cost really worth the gain of\nseeing your heart rate at the gym?\n\nIt seems for Hacker News it is a resounding yes...\n\n------\nbane\nThis looks fantastic. I was really disappointed with all the possible\ndirections Apple could go with their smartwatch, they just iterated on a\ndesign Samsung's been out with for a few years now. _This_ is actually a good\nrethink, looks like a good v1 device, isn't overpriced, has basically the\nfunctionality you'd want and works cross platform.\n\nAbsolutely fantastic.\n\n------\nsorahn\nI use a laptop and usually my wrists are resting on the desk. A face down\ndisplay seems like it would just scratch up immediately.\n\n------\nrichev\n\"Only available in the US\" \\- unless you arrange for a friend in the States to\nget one for you ship it to you.\n\nHowever, it looks like the accompanying Windows Phone Microsoft Health app is\nnot available if you're outside of the US. (not sure if this also applies to\nthe Android and iPhone apps as well)\n\nWorkaround anyone?\n\n~~~\nrichev\nFound a workaround for Windows Phone: In settings, go to region and change\nCountry/Region to United States. Restart phone, go to Store, and you'll see\nMicrosoft Health in there. After installing you can change your regional\nsettings back to your own country and the app is still available on your\nphone.\n\n------\nkolev\nBetter than Basis Peak... except it's missing the galvanic skin response\nsensor. I'm really happy about the UV sensor (although I already backed\nSunSprite, which is a disaster)! Best of all, Microsoft Band will have APIs\nunlike the data-stingy Basis!\n\n~~~\ndataminded\nI can't figure basis out. So much potential. They should be crushing the\nmarket.\n\n~~~\nkolev\nYes, I thought so, too, but they suck at material choices and ergonomics.\nAlso, they don't have an API. Since Intel bought them, Basis Peak seems to\nlook and feel better, but where's the API? Anyway, Microsoft just made a no\nbrainer to decide - they offer everything that everybody else has (except\npulse oximetry that Amiigo was supposed to have - not sure if they delivered\nit) and much more at the same price.\n\n~~~\nlhl\nI've had a B1 for 1.5yrs. They've promised a public API since before that\ntime, but it still doesn't exist. In fact, I have a hard time thinking of any\nfeatures they've added this entire time (in fact it's terrible as a watch\nsince you can't set the time/time zone except via the web and after a full\ndata sync, making it often useless if you travel much).\n\nI finally got the Amiigo a couple months ago - I didn't see SpO2 stats\ndetailed. It was actually pretty underwhelming - the Amiigo doesn't have the\npromised API/SDK either. The MS Band's sensor suite is better (GSR, skin\ntemp), it's just too bad it's not waterproof.\n\n------\nakimc\nI'm not a big Microsoft fan, but I think this device isn't that bad especially\nfor the fact that it is working on Android, iPhone & Windows Phone.\n\nI'm a bit thrilled to see it live in action !\n\nIt is fun to see wearable becoming more and more present with big tech firm\ntoo.\n\n------\nEncosia\nIt's sold out online now:\n[http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/productI...](http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/productID.308308800#buy-\nproduct)\n\nI wonder how many that was.\n\n~~~\nlhl\nI ordered online but canceled and just swung by my local (West LA) store in\nthe morning to pick one up. I called late last night to ask about stock and\nwas told they couldn't tell me anything about future products (even though the\nwebsite/online orders were up and a couple hours later they were advertising a\n\"fitness launch event\" in the store the next). When I dropped by the store, it\nwas predictably empty (and it took some time to flag down someone to help me,\nwhich never happens at the Apple Store), but I got a chance to make sure on my\nsizing and picked up the device. I set my Band up in front of the store (took\nabout 10 minutes) and have been wearing it all day. Everything seems to work\npretty well so far, although I haven't stressed tested it...\n\n~~~\nEncosia\nI'm planning to do the same soon. There are three Microsoft stores here in the\nAtlanta area. I'd just rather do just about anything other than fight traffic\nto get to one.\n\n------\nwiradikusuma\nI don't want to sound skeptical (I like the device and consider buying it),\nbut how likely is it they gradually introduce \"Windows (Phone) only\" features\nfor this device, up to the point it's not so useful in other platforms?\n\nEDIT: clarification\n\n~~~\nwfjackson\nIt also depends on how much the other platforms support deep integration. For\nexample Apple tends to lock down things like Siri(perhaps this can connect as\na bluetooth mic) and Google had scuffles over Youtube on Windows Phone so is\nlikely to do everything in it's power to undermine this.\n\n------\nDavidWanjiru\nCan it (or could it be made to in future iterations) record the sort of data\nused to produce the output of an ECG (echocardiogram)? That would be quite the\napplication for people with actual or high risk for hear disease, I think?\n\n~~~\nlloeki\nECG (electro- — not echo- — cardiogram) records electric potential changes\nbetween various points on the torso, of which pulse rate is really only a very\naveraged metric, obtained via blood flow and pressure changes.\n\nNo chance you'll detect a QT interval change with this.\n\n------\nk_bx\nI wonder if some day someone would release a watch (or bracelet) that is able\nto have a sim-card and receive SMS. In a world of pin-code based\nauthorizations and fast-dying-battery smartphones this looks like a thing I\nwould own.\n\n~~~\nakst\nI think will.i.am actually released something this...\n\n> Puls will require its own SIM card and mobile connection, but can completely\n> replace a phone...\n\n[http://www.dezeen.com/2014/10/20/will-i-am-zaha-hadid-\npuls-s...](http://www.dezeen.com/2014/10/20/will-i-am-zaha-hadid-puls-\nsmartwatch-cuff/)\n\n------\njimmcslim\nI wonder if integration with Xbox One is on the cards? It would seem to be\nnatural given the fitness side of Kinect; if this has a HRM integrated perhaps\nthat could be sent while you are doing your P90X workout or some such...\n\n------\narjie\nWould have bought this if it were fully functional with non-MS devices. It has\nall the sensors I want and looks unobtrusive. Even the Apple Watch looks like\na Casio, so it's not like we're in top style here.\n\n------\nantjanus\nI'd love to see someone compare this to the new Fitbit Charge HR! :)\n\n~~~\nddrmaxgt37\nThe MS Band has more sensors and his bound to have much better software. I'm\nguessing that it's not going to be a very fair fight.\n\n~~~\nantjanus\nyeah but Fitbit has the whole \"light-weight band\" going for it plus 5 days of\ncharge.\n\nI do like the GPS feature though, that's fucking killer\n\n------\nnullz\nAs a comparison, worth noting that the watch does _not_ have GPS without the\npaired phone. So if you wanted to go out for a run and track the course, you\nwould need to bring the phone.\n\n------\ndataminded\nAny word on silent alarm and convenient wake-up like the fitbit?\n\n~~~\njbigelow76\nThat's a feature I like about my fitbit, but with the Band requiring a charge\nevery two days could result in sporadic sleep data since most people will\ncharge it as they sleep along with their cell phones. Granted, I charge my\nphone at work at my desk but taking off and putting on something that is\nsupposed to track your activity could get annoying.\n\n~~~\ndataminded\nThat does sound kinda messy. I think that I'll wait until the Fitbit Surge or\nCharge HR. Wish they'd gotten their act together well enough to get them out\nbefore holidays.\n\n------\nresu\nGalvanic skin response is listed as one of the sensors, but there's no mention\nof it in the marketing material.\n\nAnyone know if it'll be able to measure exertion via sweat?\n\n------\n72deluxe\nIt looks great; the only problem is that I'd have to be active and fit to use\nit so looks like I won't be getting one; I type this from my armchair.\n\n------\ntkorri\nOh the title got me thinking that this is music related, like a new version of\nSongsmith. I'm glad I was wrong, the device looks very nice!\n\n------\nperfunctory\n\"Life is made up of moments. How many do we miss? Tied to our desks.\" Yeah,\nMicrosoft band will rescue you from your desk.\n\n------\nBasDirks\nThe pictures promoting the product only feature very healthy, attractive\n30-somethings. Is this intentional or simply and oversight?\n\n------\nchenzhekl\nIt' with Bluetooth 4.0. So my HTC 8X which is loaded with Bluetooth 3.0 may\nnot be able to work with it. Such a pity.\n\n------\nmahyarm\nTwo things that I'm missing:\n\n\\- How do you charge the thing?\n\n\\- Is the sleep tracking automatic or do you have to press a button to start\nit?\n\n~~~\nnfmangano\nI have one on my wrist right now, and from the limited amount that I've played\nwith it:\n\n\\- There's a magnetic connector (like mac boks) that hooks up to USB. It\ndoesn't come with a wall connector, just USB, which is a bit weird.\n\n\\- It does indeed look like you need to press a button to start tracking\nsleep.\n\n~~~\nmahyarm\nA big thing about sleep tracking for me is it being automatic. When I'm about\nto fall asleep, I'm often too sleepy to remember to press that button. It why\nI ditched my fitbit.\n\nOther fitness trackers have automatic sleep tracking, even it's only heuristic\nbased. For example misfit just has the formula of 'if not moving much for a\nlarge chunk of time in between these user configurable hours, mark that as\nsleep time'. That is a huge improvement.\n\nThe basis band seems to have a more advanced automatic sleep tracking algo.\nYou guys would be probably interested looking into it.\n\n------\nnulterm\nI wonder if it would be usable for navigation. I guess it would be impractical\nbecause it lacks a compass?\n\n~~~\nmaxerickson\nI think most handheld navigation aids infer direction of travel from position\ninformation. An electronic compass gives the orientation of the device, who\nknows how it is being held.\n\nI guess they use a compass when it's available, like for trying to display a\nmap oriented to compass north, but I don't think it is dependable as\nalgorithmic input.\n\nSomething mounted in a vehicle can directly factor the compass data into\ndirections though (just saying that to emphasize that I'm talking about\nhandheld stuff above).\n\n------\noutside1234\nThis is the first thing I have excited enough to buy from Microsoft on launch\nday since Windows 95.\n\n------\nShad0w59\nHow do I buy it (international)?\n\n------\ngirmad\nThat's very Yahoo purple.\n\n------\nMrDosu\nThe watch is dead, long live the watch...\n\nThis money grabbing gadgetarianism is getting silly.\n\n------\nha292\nPrediction: no one will be talking about it past June 2015.\n\n------\nbrettkc\nLooks like this is what Nike Fuelband should have become.\n\n------\naercolino\nNice, it could work as a wrist band lie detector too.\n\n------\nkmfrk\nI see a lot of stories about people in retirement homes running away without\nanyone being able to find them. This looks like a decent tool for the job.\n\nDecent GPS trackers are hard to find and recommend.\n\n------\nlziz\nfriends with the engineer behind the sensor tech inside it. if you have any\nquestions i'd be happy to forward them to him\n\n~~~\nnnd\nmore like a product question, but... UV sensor looks more like a gimmick,\nrather than something which could be somewhat useful. What's the reason for\nhaving this?\n\n------\nmrmondo\nBit late to the game aren't they?\n\n------\nrubython\nfinally a microsoft product that works well with other players in the\necosystem\n\n------\npeterclary\nIt makes me think of a high-tech hospital wrist tag, so not particularly\nappealing on first glance.\n\n------\nhxw\nHow is an integrated GPS cutting edge? Polar has had watches with GPS for a\nwhile now..\n\n~~~\ncujo\nTake out the windows phone specific stuff and I'm fairly certain there isn't a\ndevice on the market with this feature set anywhere near this price point.\n\n------\njezfromfuture\nwhere fit bit and apple tread microsoft will eventually follow.\n\n~~~\nsumedh\nThat is pretty much MS's strategy for all these years. Someone else does the\ninnovation and then they follow.\n\n------\nlafar6502\nHey, this makes sense!\n\n------\nenthdegree\nMicrosoft Band Wagon\n\n------\neridal\nman, their site took ages to load!!\n\n------\ncnp\ncan someone explain this?\n\n~~~\no0-0o\nMS is rumored to be working on a wearable. This is obviously it. Looks like\nApple outed them through their submitted app.\n\n~~~\neslaught\n> \"Apple outed them\"\n\nMore likely someone at Microsoft hit the wrong button, or failed to set\nsomething to private, or whatever. This even happened to Apple with some iPad\nAir 2 documentation not so long ago, so obviously this stuff happens.\n\n------\nznowi\nThis will be perfect for PRISM\n\n------\nsatheeshKR\nnice\n\n------\nmmcconnell1618\nI guess someone selected \"Release when approved\" instead of \"Release\nmanually.\"\n\n~~~\ndrawkbox\nOr a sneaky market test for reactions.\n\n~~~\nkolev\nIt seems that it's available to order.\n\n------\ndang\nUrl changed from [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-band-\nsync/id926162...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-band-\nsync/id926162815) via\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8531131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8531131).\n\n------\nrrobbins04\nSad. Even from just the website and the logo, you can tell that microsoft\nnever understood the internet.\n\n------\nzenbane\nLoL\n\n------\nlectrick\nmicrosoft is always the \"me too\" company\n\n~~~\njongalloway2\n[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-04/microsoft-\nma...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-04/microsoft-made-a-\npretty-good-smartwatch-back-in-2004)\n\n~~~\nlectrick\nok, good point. :) I VAGUELY remember that watch...\n\n------\nacd\nThe funny thing is that Microsoft has always been good at creating good\nhardware but never at masking great software except Office.\n\n------\nbluthru\nI'm surprised so many are drawn to the industrial design of this. It seems\nquite clunky with the electronics distributed throughout the band. The flat\nportion is also too long.\n\nMicrosoft wants to sell you a gadget while Apple wants to sell you a watch.\n\n~~~\njader201\nI belong to a certain group of people that I'm guessing many smartwatch makers\nare targeting.\n\nThat is, I've not worn a watch for years, mostly because a) I've never needed\ntime to be any more convenient than checking my phone, and b) watches tend to\nbe more about style than function, and I care almost zero about the former and\nalmost everything about the latter.\n\nNow that the \"watch\" is becoming functional, it really is more of a gadget,\nand that's the only thing drawing me back to considering having something\nattached to my wrist again.\n\nOf course, I also realize there is a group that does care more about style,\nand maybe these people aren't the target for the more \"gadgety\" type\nsmartwatches.\n\nOne of the reasons I think the Apple Watch Edition is a joke is that it's\ntrying to target both groups (the other reason being the ridiculous name). And\nI don't think there is that large of an audience that is willing to spend that\nmuch for style + functionality -- if they want to spend that much, they likely\ncare more about style, and will stick to a traditional watch.\n\nSo if gadget = functionality, then I say \"Finally. Sign me up.\"\n\n~~~\nthreeseed\n\"I also realize there is a group that does care more about style\"\n\nAmusing that you call the majority of the population a \"group\". People buy\nclothes, shoes, cars etc based on style not specs. And you only have to look\nat the LV, Prada etc of the world to know they are willing to spend huge\namounts of money on it.\n\nGadget on your wrist ? Nice. But it's a niche market.\n\n~~~\nwfjackson\n68% of people in the US are obese or overweight. The numbers in other\ncountries aren't much better and are rising. The iWatch is a luxury watch that\ndoes fitness tracking and also allows you to view images. This is a fitness\nband that allows you to see the time.\n\n------\nblhack\nHow many mentions of the apple watch in this thread?\n\nThe moto 360 is already out, it's completely awesome, I use it every day, and\nas far as I can tell is _already_ ahead of the apple watch in terms of\nfunctionality.\n\nApple are seriously gods at marketing. Wow.\n\n~~~\nthreeseed\nIt has nothing to do with marketing. Apple simply has a record of disrupting\nindustries e.g. music player, music store, smart phone.\n\nSo of course people are going to compare it to the iWatch.\n\n------\nfortuitous\nCrashed for me browsing that website with win 8.1. Thanks, microsoft. It\nactually rebooted my computer. Only microsoft can reboot your computer from\ntheir own website.\n\n------\nbigtunacan\nWhen I saw the app name I instantly thought of the D12 song.\n\n\"These chicks don't even know the name of my band...my band...my band...\"\n\n------\nyohanatan\nI am sure the Microsoft employees which will make up about 95% of the market\nshare of this thing will be happy (until it goes the way of the Kin, Zune,\netc).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApple tells U.S. judge 'impossible' to unlock new iPhones - aaronbrethorst\nhttp://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/20/us-apple-court-encryption-idUSKCN0SE2NF20151020\n======\nBWStearns\nI applaud Apple for having made it technically impossible for them to betray\ntheir customers' trust, but I was just wondering about third party\napplications which have been granted access to various data on the phone. If\nthe prosecution is looking for evidence in photos, and the suspect has granted\nFacebook access to their photos, could a judge compel Facebook to use their\naccess to the phone in question to retrieve photos that were never on\nFacebook? I ask this in both a legal sense as well as a technical sense as I\nam not familiar enough with iOS permissions/API.\n\n~~~\navn2109\n>> \"...technically impossible for them to betray their customers' trust...\"\n\nImpossible is a very strong word in this context. Let me take the opportunity\nto remind everyone that an iPhone is a very complicated device running nearly\n100% closed source hardware and software, include all sorts of opaque\ncryptographic hardware and a known-to-be-compromised secondary baseband\ncomputer, such that the security of the device's entire stack, top-to-bottom,\ncould not possibly be verified by a third party in principle, let alone in\npractice.\n\nIn light of that fact, security claims by Apple could be regarded as changing\n(reducing?) the probability of the law getting your data by technical means or\ncollusion with Cupertino, but certainly not as insuring that the probability =\n0.\n\nEdit: This is not an indictment of Apple per se, since the same is true of\nliterally every smartphone ever constructed, but at least e.g. Blackberry\nisn't out there claiming that they're unable to compromise your data, full\nstop.\n\n~~~\nBWStearns\nI wasn't trying to imply that Apple has forged a perfectly secure complex\nsystem, but rather that they have (likely) legally and practically prevented\nthemselves from being compelled to betray their users. While forcing Apple to\nhand over a password they have stored in plaintext is quite definitely in the\nlegal realm of accepted behavior, I don't think a judge could reasonably order\nApple to devote engineering time towards defeating their own security system\nin order to make the prosecution's job easier, especially when it is not\nactually assured that the effort would be a success and any success would\npreclude the same work from being used in subsequent prosecutions.\n\nI was merely skipping the caveats (back doors, implementation error, leaky\nbehavior, etc) and giving benefit of the doubt with regards to honesty of\nintentions.\n\n~~~\nckcheng\nI think \"legally and practically prevented\" is key here.\n\nNot sure if anyone noticed but this article is like a continuation of the\nstory from days ago [1] when the judge in the case \"questioned the\ngovernment’s authority to compel Apple to unlock a seized mobile device using\nthe All Writs Act\" [2] and \"called on Apple to weigh in about whether it is\neven capable of bypassing the lock screen in this case\" [2].\n\nGuess Apple has weighed in now as to its technical feasibility. Now it's up to\nthe judge to decide whether it is an unreasonable burden on Apple, and whether\nit violates the Constitution, as to whether to compel Apple to help in the\nJustice Department's investigation.\n\nIn this one single case, the iPhone has an older iOS, so maybe it's not an\n\"unreasonable burden\".\n\nBut if it was iOS 8 or later, it might be deemed an unreasonable burden to\ncompel Apple to brute force or otherwise crack the password, even if it was\nsomehow technically possible. And \"forcing Apple to push backdoored updates\nwould constitute 'compelled speech' in violation of the First Amendment\" [2].\n\nSo it does look as if Apple thought it through, and made iOS 8 so that they\nlegally and practically cannot \"betray their customers' trust\" as you say.\n\n[1]\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10383253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10383253)\n\n[2] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/judge-doj-not-all-\nwrit...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/judge-doj-not-all-writs)\n\n------\nshalmanese\nFor those who have questions about \"Couldn't Apple just do X or Y?\", Apple has\npublished an eminently readable whitepaper on the software and hardware\ncomponents of their security:\n[https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)\n\nOf course, Apple could be implementing things differently from as described\nbut the whitepaper lays out what is and is not possible in the described\nsystem.\n\n~~~\nzaroth\nThe iOS Security Guide is 60 pages of technical goodness, but when dealing\nwith encryption, it's really not enough to fully understand the system, even\nputting aside concerns about it being closed-source. There is such an\nincredible level of detail in the document, it would take a really long time\nto peel that onion back to be able to claim to really understand the trust\nmodel. It's some of the best technical documentation on encryption methods\nI've read, but even still there is plenty of room for ambiguity.\n\nThe key section I think most people really should take a look at is \"iCloud\nBackup\" starting on page 42. Almost everything you do with your device will\nend up in an iCloud Backup if you have enabled that, and while the data is\nencrypted for transport, _note well the following_ ;\n\n    \n    \n      The backup set is stored in the user’s iCloud account and consists of a copy of the\n      user’s files, and the iCloud Backup keybag. The iCloud Backup keybag is protected by\n      a random key, which is also stored with the backup set. (The user’s iCloud password\n      is not utilized for encryption so that changing the iCloud password won’t invalidate\n      existing backups.)\n    \n\nIn plain English, if you have enabled iCloud Backup, everything but your\nkeychain itself is accessible in plaintext to Apple, and can be restored,\nwithout your password, to any new device that [you / the Feds] may provide.\n\nI would very much love for Apple to provide an opt-in where the iCloud backup\nkey is tied to the account password with extremely aggressive key-stretching.\nI would take the risk of losing my iCloud Backup over the trade-off of having\nmy backups accessible to Apple and anyone they can be compelled to share them\nwith. But I do appreciate for the average user, it's not uncommon for iCloud\nBackup to be immediately preceded by a password reset (just look down-thread\nfor an example).\n\nNote, Apple says that they use a combination of S3 and Azure to actually store\nthe iCloud data, but that they have an additional layer of encryption over the\ndata before sending it out. So while backups technically reside on\nAmazon/Microsoft servers, it's a black box to them.\n\n~~~\nshalmanese\nYup. As the celebrity photo hacking should have made clear, Apple can only\noffer far weaker security guarantees on the web because they control less of\nthe ecosystem.\n\nAt a minimum, if the police get access to your email account, they can force a\nApple ID password reset and then restore your data onto a new device without\nneeding permission from you or Apple.\n\nNote however it is still possible to backup your iphone locally using iTunes\nand Apple now supports encrypted local backups. If you are worried about this\nthreat vector, encrypted local backups provides a large degree of the same\nusability with significantly stronger security guarantees.\n\n~~~\njameshart\n\"if the police get access to your email account, they can force a Apple ID\npassword reset\"\n\nThat's an interesting assertion. I mean, yes, sure, they could do that, but\nit's an interesting question of whether they are legally allowed to do that.\nEffectively they'd be misrepresenting themselves to your email provider and to\nApple as if they were you. Is that acceptable 'undercover policing'? Can they\nreset your banking password too? Can they do this only while they have you\nunder arrest?\n\n~~~\nFD3SA\nThey don't need to admit they did it. Parallel construction works more\neffectively.\n\n~~~\neridius\nIf they have information that was only present on your device or your iCloud\nbackup, and they already can't get at your device, how exactly does parallel\nconstruction help them explain the fact that their evidence includes\ninformation that could have only been obtained one way?\n\n~~~\nNatanael_L\nBecause that's not the evidence they present, they use that to figure out\nwhere else to look for evidence, pretending they found that randomly or by\nguesswork or suspicion or following an anonymous call.\n\n~~~\nFireBeyond\nRight. \"By virtue of my training and experience, I had reason to believe\" is a\nstock statement re anything, in trying to establish probable cause for\nsearches, stops and the like.\n\nIt's a broad, overarching, and highly vague statement that amounts to, in many\ncases, \"I decided you do, so therefore I have the right to act as if you do\".\n\n------\nfaide\nIn case anyone shares my confusion: they aren't talking about unlocking in the\nsense of removing carrier restrictions, but rather in the sense of disabling\nthe security features of the device to access the data stored on it.\n\n~~~\ndaimyoyo\nI believe they're talking about trying to access a phone once it has been\n\"locked\" from too many wrong tries at the lock screen.\n\n~~~\npakled_engineer\nThat's what I got from the article, the key was wiped because of X many tries\nso Apple can't \"unlock\" the data on the device (excluding everything backed up\nto apple cloud).\n\nIn the future they will use shady FinFisher iTunes and other exploits to grab\nthe data then seize the phone.\n\n------\napi\nSo on one hand we're carrying around little location-aware sensors that upload\nall kinds of tracking data to who-knows-where, enabling unprecedented tracking\nof human beings and their movements at incredibly high resolution. We also\nvoluntarily post so much data online any number of social media sites,\nfinancial institutions, etc. can see almost everything we do.\n\nBUT on the other hand with proper use of crypto it is now possible to engage\nin secure communication at a distance that can _never_ be decrypted without\nour consent and (if certain protocols and method are used) allow anonymity at\n_both_ ends of the link (e.g. Tor hidden services). It is also possible to\nsecurely send money to others using Bitcoin without knowing their identity...\never.\n\nVery interesting times... it's both a panopticon and an unprecedented age for\nanonymity and privacy.\n\n~~~\nrevelation\nWell no, you have already detailed the crucial vulnerability in this\npanopticon: the devices can not be trusted. Trying to do encryption and secure\ncommunication with untrusted devices then is utter folly.\n\nI'm just astonished by the breadth of vulnerability in modern smartphones,\nparticularly with Googles handling of Android security. We haven't even gotten\ninto baseband vulnerabilities yet because the whole applications processor\nsecurity thing is just an entirely crumbling piece of cardboard.\n\n------\nlemiant\nCan someone explain how Apple has managed to render brute force ineffective if\nthere are only 10000 possible 4-digit passcodes?\n\n~~~\npeterhadlaw\nTo everyone replying to this comment saying that you can set a limit and then\nthe phone will wipe itself after the limit has been reached - that point is\nmoot. Although I wish it wasn't so, there are a couple people who were able to\nsetup a mechanism to brute force an iPhone pin by shutting off the device\nbefore it registered an unsuccessful attempt therefore ... giving you\nlimitless potential.\n\n~~~\nscintill76\nThat's patched:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9225317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9225317)\nUnless you're talking about a newer instance of the same bug.\n\n~~~\npeterhadlaw\nHere is what I was referring to:\n[https://youtu.be/meEyYFlSahk](https://youtu.be/meEyYFlSahk)\n\nSeems more of a mechanical setup, rather than this guy's video. Like put a\nkill switch ON THE PATH (i.e. before signals reach) the \"Okay iPhone, register\nthis failed attempt\" destination.\n\n~~~\nscintill76\nThe automatic thing is just an automatic exploit of the same issue[0]\n(forcefully cutting power rather than powering off with the buttons might make\nit more reliable.) It's called an iPBOX and AFAICT it doesn't support iOS\n8.1.1[1], when the issue was fixed.\n\nOther commentors have pointed out that the PIN/crypto stuff is handled by\ndedicated hardware designed to resist tampering, probably pretty much state-\nof-the-art. The issue before was a software issue. Now that it's fixed it's\nvery hard to completely hack the hardware and would have to be done to each\nphone individually:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10424439](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10424439)\nI'm not an expert, but I imagine intercepting the signal would be just as\nhard, as the signal is contained within one tiny chip and it might not even be\npossible to reliably modify a circuit on that scale. You can't just replace\nthe chip with a no-PIN version either, because it contains a unique crypto key\nto the data you presumably want from the phone. This also makes modifying the\nchip difficult, because if you screw up you could lose the key.\n\n[0] [https://www.mdsec.co.uk/2015/03/apple-ios-hardware-\nassisted-...](https://www.mdsec.co.uk/2015/03/apple-ios-hardware-assisted-\nscreenlock-bruteforce/) [1]\n[http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/10720367-post1.html](http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/10720367-post1.html)\n\n------\nguelo\nTheoretically, couldn't Apple push an auto-update to the phone that could\ndecrypt the data?\n\n~~~\njacobwil\nWhere would that software auto-update get the decryption key from? If the user\nhas enabled a passcode, then their passcode is used in generation of the key\nused to protect the disk encryption key. Even if apple did push an update, the\nuser would still have to unlock their device post-update.\n\n~~~\nbaddox\nThe update could wait for the next time the user types in that password. If\nyou own the phone (which you do if you can push OS updates), you can own the\ndata on it. There's no way around that, unless the phone is already\nconfiscated or the user knows to not type in their password.\n\n~~~\njohncolanduoni\n> which you do if you can push OS updates\n\nUnless Apple already inserted a secret backdoor that allows for forced\nupdates, you don't have to update the phone when it prompts you. The closest\nI've seen it get is a reminder that asks you if you'd like to schedule an\nupdate for 2:00 AM or some such time, and then asks for your passcode to do\nso. You still need to type it for the explicit purpose of updating for it to\ngo through.\n\n~~~\ncrazypyro\nWas there not a huge storm when iOS 7 came out because they automatically\npushed the update?\n\n~~~\ncomex\nThat was about iOS automatically downloading the update file in the background\n(and at the time lacking an option to delete it), not automatically installing\nanything.\n\n~~~\ncrazypyro\nAh okay, thanks for the clarification.\n\n------\ntacotuesday\nThis sounds really similar to when the Snowden docs were first leaked. You\nhave to listen very carefully to exactly what is said and read between the\nlines.\n\n[http://www.cnet.com/news/obama-denies-that-us-spied-on-\ngerma...](http://www.cnet.com/news/obama-denies-that-us-spied-on-german-\nchancellor-or-does-he/?_escaped_fragment_=#)!\n\n\"the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications\"\nmeans, \"Was monitoring up until just now.\"\n\nHere Apple says \"We can't unlock new iPhones.\" Apple says nothing about their\nability to restore iCloud backups or load software to capture evidence from a\nlocked phone.\n\n------\nPopeOfNope\nYou hear that? That's the sound of a million security researchers\nsimultaneously shouting 'Challenge Accepted!'\n\n------\nasadhaider\nFor users with Touch ID enabled, would it be legal for law enforcement to use\nyour fingerprint on file to access the phone that way?\n\nI'm not sure how easy it would be to fool the touch ID sensor on the phone. I\nthink I remember a MythBusters episode where they made a silicone mould of a\nfingerprint to bypass a security system.\n\n~~~\nzaroth\nYes, and there is case law that fingerprints are not testimony (since you\nleave them everywhere you go). However, as others stated below, it won't work\nbecause the PIN is still required after a timeout. Really, they thought this\nthrough.\n\n~~~\nMBCook\nOr you can quickly disable TouchID by giving it an invalid fingerprint too\nmany times or simply shutting off the phone. Then you'll need a password and I\ndon't believe they can compel that.\n\n------\nTitanous\nHere's the actual filing from Apple:\n[https://s3.amazonaws.com/f.cl.ly/items/2G372p3E1D0m3806001A/...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/f.cl.ly/items/2G372p3E1D0m3806001A/document.pdf)\n\n------\nqyv\nThe only direct quote in the article that offers any real context:\n\n\"Forcing Apple to extract data in this case, absent clear legal authority to\ndo so, could threaten the trust between Apple and its customers and\nsubstantially tarnish the Apple brand\"\n\nThis quote, granted taken without full context, seems to indicate a pretty\nclear stipulation of \"clear legal authority\". Not sure what to make of that,\nbut I do think that in matters of privacy and surveillance the words are\nalways chosen very carefully indeed.\n\n------\njoeyspn\nIn security, _impossible_ is a marketing word\n\n~~~\nvenomsnake\nThere is situational impossibility though. Apple not being able to decrypt a\npowered down phone is possible if they did their design work properly.\n\n~~~\njoeyspn\n> There is situational impossibility though.\n\nAgree, but often impossibility claims have an expiration date. They also said\nit would be impossible to jailbreak iOS 9 with the new rootless security... It\ntook few months for a Chinese team to completely by-pass Apple's new design.\n\n[http://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2015/10/18/how-\nto-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2015/10/18/how-to-jailbreak-\nyour-ios-9-ipad-or-iphone/)\n\n------\n__sarcasm\nBut what if some diabolical fiend attaches an encrypted iPhone to a nuclear\nbomb, and the only way to diffuse the timer is by asking Apple to unlock the\nencryption to stop the timer???\n\nAlso, \"child pornography\" ...what if \"child pornography\" is involved? You\nwouldn't want _THAT_ , right?\n\n------\nxkiwi\nwhat if this is parallel construction? Can it state as 'impossible' to\n'unlock'(crack/backdoor) in civil level but unlock-able on DoD/NSA level?\n\n------\nvbezhenar\niPhone pincodes by default are very short. iPhone protects them from\nbruteforce with delays after unsuccessful tries. But does the hardware, where\npincode's hash is stored, protects it with delays and protects it from\nlabaratory attack? I mean, government could just open iPhone, extract that\nchip, extract pincode's hash and crack it. You would need quite long password\nto withstand such an attack.\n\nAnother vector of attack is fingerprint scanner. After iPhone turned on, by\ndefault you can unlock it with fingerprint scanner. And turning iPhone off is\nnot very quick, you need to push power button for a few seconds and then slide\nover screen. If police arresting you, then will get your phone from your hands\nand just force your finger to open it, no pincode needed.\n\nSo yes, while iPhone is probably safe when properly configured (ruling out\npossible vulnerabilities), the proper configuration is hard to use and is not\ndefault.\n\nThat's from the point of goverment attacker. If attacker is just some thieve\nor commercial espionage, probably iPhone is a good device even with default\nsettings.\n\n~~~\nBillinghamJ\nComments above suggest that the pincode information is managed within a HSM-\nesque onboard hardware device. As such, extracting that chip and retrieving\nthe pincode hash is likely to be entirely infeasible, even for very capable\norgs like the NSA.\n\n------\nyyhhsj0521\nChrome says that the page contains malicious softwares... oops?\n\n------\njlebrech\nSo the US wants it to be impossible for the average person to unlock a phone\n(via law) but Apple make it technically impossible and the US justice system\ncries foul. Swings and roundabouts.\n\n------\nrandyrand\nAnyone know how iCloud backups are encrypted?\n\n~~~\nfrankzinger\nThis comment above by zaroth might answer your question:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10422952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10422952)\n\n------\ndsfyu404ed\nThey're saying \"there isn't an easy way in that we know of\" not that there\nisn't one...\n\n~~~\nnetheril96\nNo one can never be 100% sure that their security does not have flaws, either\nin design or in implementation.\n\n~~~\nbriandear\nRigh. But a court cannot compel Apple to find an unknown flaw in something to\nhelp law enforcement.\n\n------\nLearn2win\nIt sounds Apple is saying \"If you don't want law enforcement to to break into\nyour iPhone, buy a newer iPhone.\"\n\n~~~\nrunholm\nSpecifically they can't break iPhones running iOS8 or newer. Which is\navailable for quite old iPhones.\n\nI do not think this is an attempt to sell newer iPhones to the small fraction\nof users they have running iPhones too old for iOS8.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nUnsurprisingly, studios don't 'get' technology or their customers - boredguy8\nhttp://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/01/warner-bros-props-up-decaying-dvd-market-with-netflix-pact.ars\n\n======\nboredguy8\nIt really seems to me like they should try and capture online distribution\nrather than fighting against Netflix. Hell, charge a premium to NetFlix to get\nthe media BEFORE the general DVD release but only via streaming, say.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy You Need a Co-Founder - maxcameron\nhttp://bigbangtechnology.com/post/why_you_need_a_co-founder\n======\nSwizec\nAs a guy who very recently split-up with his cofounder, I can say that having\na cofounder is awesome and much better than going it alone, but if they aren't\nalso a partner and willing to pick up your slack when real life crap is going\non next to the startup crap ... it isn't going to work out.\n\nAlso a word of advice: When crap starts going on, on either end, the proper\nsolution isn't to stop talking to each other for a few weeks.\n\n~~~\nmaxcameron\nTotally appreciate your take on the subject. Yeah, two weeks would constitute\na major breakdown of communication. Do you think it's possible to have\ncontingency plans in place for actual situations like that?\n\n~~~\n9oliYQjP\nThe best contingency plan is to have at least 3 co-founders. This can be an\nasymmetrical relationship at times. But I think you'll find a lot of\nsuccessful companies usually quickly added a 3rd person to the mix early on.\nIt's a matter of semantics whether you want to call them co-founders or not.\nThe point is that they're in there early on before the major successes of the\ncompany which they help contribute to.\n\n------\nthaumaturgy\nWhether finding a co-founder is appropriate or not is completely dependent on\nyour goals. For a relationship to work out between two or more people --\nespecially one as stressful and challenging as starting a business --\neverybody involved has to be equally committed to the goals set in the\nbeginning.\n\nOK, so let's say that the only goal you set in the beginning is, \"churn out\nsocial 2.0 web app, sell to megacorp inc., make lots of money\". Yeah, you can\nprobably find one or two other people that are willing to commit to that for a\nyear or two.\n\nBut, let's say instead that your only goal is, \"build a high-quality service\nin some niche, fill a customer need, money and popularity be damned\". Are you\nas likely to find someone else willing to fully commit themselves to such a\nproject? I doubt it.\n\nFor \"crusaders\" -- people who are willing to sacrifice a lot in order to\nchange some aspect of the world they're in -- you're probably never going to\nmeet anyone that will be as committed to your goal as you are. Holding\nyourself hostage to a co-founder search will just kill your project.\n\nFor everyone else: spend some effort on putting together \"the team\" -- the\nsmallest possible group of people that can handle all of the roles of sales,\nengineering, direction, management, finance, etc. etc. -- apply to YC, build\nyour thing, get money, cash out, have a great life.\n\nTo that end, I think startup speed dating is a pretty great idea.\n\n------\nrottencupcakes\nI think Steve says it best:\n\n> My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each\n> other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the\n> total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are\n> not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.\n\nI think this applies to co-founders too.\n\n------\nm311ton\nStartup speed dating is a cool idea in my opinion. The single hardest thing\nI've ever done is trying to find a co-founder. Two years in I'm still looking\nfor that partner. Anything to help alleviate that pain point would be\ntremendous.\n\nFlying solo is convenient at times because you don't have interpersonal drama\nand the risk of a nasty split. But on the whole I would never recommend anyone\ngo solo.\n\n~~~\nworldtize\nWould you happen to be located in San Jose?\n\n~~~\nm311ton\nUnfortunately not. Half my problem might be that I'm located in the anemic\nMidwest. St Louis to be exact. Are virtually connected co-founders very\nprevalent?\n\n~~~\nworldtize\nAs long as there is a connection, things can happen. Do you have a facebook?\n\n------\norky56\nWhen seeking funding, having a co-founder or team looks much better to an\ninvestor than a sole founder. If you take a look at YC, I believe Dropbox is\nthe only (or one of the few) with just one founder. Having more than one\ndemonstrates that there is less risk through complementing abilities and\nchecks/balances. Also, it can get kinda lonely...\n\n------\nmaxcameron\nHi,\n\nI'm the author of this article. You should read it if you've been following\nthe debate about whether you're better off with a co-founder or going it\nalone.\n\nMax\n\n~~~\nCapitalistCartr\nI think we're all better off with the right co-founder, and worse off with a\nwrong one. Better off != need, though.\n\n~~~\nmaxcameron\nSo do you think that it's just a personal relationship, or do you think there\nare actual characteristics you could look for in a co-founder?\n\n------\nTimJRobinson\nI think the startup speed dating is a fantastic idea, especially for those\ncities outside of the valley where just finding people interested in startups\nis damn near impossible.\n\nI recently found a good partner after 2 years of going it solo (and searching)\nand it's made a world of a difference.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nUne stack Sublime Text 2 pour développeurs Ruby - florian95\nhttp://www.synbioz.com/blog/sublime_text\n======\nmdomans\nLearn english\n\n------\njezfromfuture\nUmm French ??\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTrack Expenses in Google Docs via SMS - avand\nhttp://avandamiri.com/2012/05/14/track-expenses-in-google-docs-via-sms.html\n\n======\nandrewneilcrump\nlike _\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNorway authorities take away Indian couple's kids, say feeding with hands wrong - x3c\nhttp://www.ndtv.com/article/india/indian-couples-norway-nightmare-kids-taken-away-for-feeding-with-hands-167660\n\n======\nsenthilnayagam\neating with the hands is common practice in India, it gives an additional\nsense of touch, besides looks(eye), smell(nose), taste(tongue) of the food.\n\nalso please dont site hygiene as a reason as the mother has masters degree in\nhealth care administration.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNewton Mail app shutting down September 25 - zeitg3ist\nhttps://9to5mac.com/2018/08/07/rip-newton-mail/\n======\nljoshua\nNooo! Newton is my favorite! This is a sad day for me, and of course even more\nsad for the team.\n\nAlright, what is everyone's favorite cross-platform mail client these days\nthen?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRecovering Atari ST ASIC Designs - walkingolof\nhttp://www.chzsoft.de/asic-web/\n======\nwalkingolof\nAtari's chip company Styra (from the article) got me to search a bit and its\nonly mentioned on 3 sites according to google, and this goldmine for an Atari\nfan was one of them:\n\n[http://mcurrent.name/atarihistory/tramel_technology.html](http://mcurrent.name/atarihistory/tramel_technology.html)\n\n------\nAnnatar\nThis is amazing! Time to fire up my Atari Falcon again (anyone out there\nwilling to sell a CT63?)\n\nThese schematics could be used to implement the entire Atari STE's or Falcon\n030's in a single FPGA. In phase two, new chips could be added, or existing\nchips enhanced (Blitter with texel and shading support, anyone?) The best part\nis, as the Amiga 600 Vampire II accelerator proved, the FPGA implementation\ncould be anywhere from ten to 50 times faster and cheaper than the original\nhardware![1] The possibilities are endless with these schematics...\n\n[1]\n[https://youtube.com/watch?v=lEjtc6JWlsk](https://youtube.com/watch?v=lEjtc6JWlsk)\n\n~~~\ncmrdporcupine\nIt's worth pointing out that the entire Atari ST has been already done in a\nsingle FPGA. See the MiST project:\n[http://harbaum.org/till/mist/index.shtml](http://harbaum.org/till/mist/index.shtml)\n\nI'm sure there are things to be learned from the ASIC designs that could\nimprove the GLUE/MMU/Blitter/Shifter etc. VHDL. But they already work really\nwell.\n\nThe rest of the Atari ST is off the shelf (mostly Motorola) chips.\n\n------\nlarsbrinkhoff\nThere's also an effort to decap the ASICs and take die photos to reverse\nengineer the schematics:\n\n[http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=29658](http://www.atari-\nforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=29658) (Shifter, display controller)\n\n[http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=30241](http://www.atari-\nforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=30241) (MMU, memory controller)\n\n------\nNoseshine\nAh memories... and my personal progress over time:\n\nMy very first calculator: [0]\n\nMy first slide rule: [1] (for two years or so, then we switched to electronic\ncalculators)\n\nBefore I could afford a computer I spent a a few years on computers I didn't\nown, ZX Spectrum, C64, C128, 8bit Atari, KC85/1,2,3, but also LC 80 [2]\n\nMy 1st (own) computer: East German 8 bit KC85/4 with the CAOS operating system\n(the makers had a good sense of humor, it means \"Cassette-Aided OS\") [3][4].\nMass-storage was ones regular stereo cassette radio recorder, a floppy disc\ndrive was available but rare.\n\nMy 2nd computer: Atari 1040 STFM [5] - bought with my first West German money\nafter reunification! Finally 16 bit!\n\nAtari ST software worth mentioning: \"Script 2\" was a wonderful word processor\nfor Atari [6]. When used in combination with the (for the time) excellent\nblack/white monitor and a 24 needle printer (Epson LQ 580) I got near laser\nprinter quality through the special drivers of that program.\n\nWorst Atari incident: I had a capacitor (literally) blow up on me with a very\nloud _BANG!_.\n\nI'll end with the Atari. The next one - for my studies - was a 486DX33 8MB RAM\nmachine with Windows 3.1, soon RedHat Linux (1995). Thanks to the student\nnetwork I could start large programs like Netscape on another student's\nPentium PC (in another building) and export the display until I was able to\nupgrade to 16 MB RAM... and all the usual mid-1990s Unix systems, also\navailable remotely thanks to the network.\n\n[0] My grandfathers calculator (really!)\n[http://i.imgur.com/jBDUHPp.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/jBDUHPp.jpg)\n\n[1] My slide rule:\n[http://ossikult.de/ossi/images/product_images/original_image...](http://ossikult.de/ossi/images/product_images/original_images/img_2552.jpg)\n\n[2] LC 80\n[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/LC80#/media/File:Lc80offen.jpg](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/LC80#/media/File:Lc80offen.jpg)\n\n[3] KC 85/4 picture\n[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/KC85-4.j...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/KC85-4.jpg)\n\n[4] KC 85/4 Wikipedia article\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC_85](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC_85)\n\n[5] Atari 1040 STFM\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST#/media/File:Atari_ST_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST#/media/File:Atari_ST_1040.jpg)\n\\- just like mine was, minus the hard drive\n\n[6] Atari ST word processor Script 2\n[http://www.stcarchiv.de/stc1990/10/script-2](http://www.stcarchiv.de/stc1990/10/script-2)\n\n~~~\nSwellJoe\nThe picture of the Atari ST linked in 5 also happens to have the back of a\nFairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument) in it, which is a piece of history\nitself, and dwarfs the price/rarity of the ST.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairlight_CMI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairlight_CMI)\n\nThe ST was strong in the music industry, particularly in Europe, because of\nits built-in MIDI interface.\n\n~~~\ndigi_owl\nAs a long term pen and paper gamer, i can't see the name Fairlight without\nthinking of Shadowrun. There Fairlight brand cyberdecks were the cream of the\ncrop of preconstructed decks.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSoureForge starts preventing misleading download button advertisements - chris_wot\nhttps://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-blockthis-initiative-update/\n\n======\nchris_wot\nMakes me wonder why it took them this long - but brilliant though! Finally\nSourceForge is going to fix their UI issues and downright misleading malware\nlinks. This should go some way to restoring their reputation.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: A generator for random ASCIItabs - rocheio\nhttp://www.asciitabs.com\n======\nrocheio\nI made this site to help myself practice guitar / music theory and learn the\nbasics of music composition.\n\nIt's all written in Go and hosted on an AWS t2.micro instance right now. I\nhaven't implemented any caching yet so we'll see what happens if it gets any\ntraction...\n\nFeedback / bugs / feature requests encouraged. Thanks!\n\n~~~\nSwellJoe\nThis is a cool tool...but, as a musician of more than three decades, I would\ndiscourage new players from spending too much time on tablature.\n\nI'd recommend you jump to traditional music notation for your learning\nprocess, ASAP. You're learning new things, anyway, you might as well learn a\ntool that is generally much more useful. There's a wealth of music and\nexercises in standard notation available to practice with.\n\nI'm not saying this to be preachy or holier-than-though, or to suggest you\ncan't be a good musician without knowing how to read music. But, standard\nnotation is technically superior to tabs, on nearly every dimension. It\nprovides more information in a smaller space, it is transferable to other\ninstruments and other musicians, it is much faster/easier to read once you are\nproficient with it, and it provides visual cues about the things that you're\ncurrently trying to learn that tablature does not (e.g. you can usually\nreadily discern keys and chords from traditional notation, while it is not at\nall obvious from tabs until you've read quite a bit of it and mentally or\nphysically applied it to the guitar).\n\nI wish I'd learned traditional notation sooner and with more gusto. I would\nhave been a better musician more quickly if I had.\n\n~~~\nrocheio\nThank you for this advice. You make a strong case for standard notation and\nI'll keep that in mind as I try and advance as a musician. I've found the\n'Masters in Tab' series to offer tabs / standard notation interlaced, so\nperhaps that would be a good way to transition from one to the other\n([https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Guitar-Masters-TAB-\nIntermedia...](https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Guitar-Masters-TAB-\nIntermediate/dp/0739000772)).\n\nThis also makes me think I should focus the website on where ASCIItab excels\nover standard notation -- editability as opposed to being a precise blueprint\nfor how to play complex compositions. I think offering an in-browser editor\nwould still make this a good tool for novice composers to get a feel for\nenhancing / creating music before they advance to standard notation.\n\n------\ngnode\nPretty cool, thanks for creating this.\n\nA good addition would be audio output, or MIDI export.\n\nFrom looking at the tabs, this seems mostly aimed at fingerstyle guitar\nplaying, rather than playing with a plectrum. Some parameters to the\ngeneration could produce tabs for a wider range of styles.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSubmit shameful recruiter actions to - thegorgon\nhttp://shame.heroku.com/\n\n======\ntypicalrunt\nThis is an interesting app, but I fail to see the use of it after I forward my\nspam onto the service. I can't click on the submissions to see what other\ntypes of spam there are or what other people consider 'recruiter spam'.\n\nThere's also a privacy issue with displaying other people's full names\n(probably pulled from the email headers).\n\nWithout any feedback about the submission, it would be easy to game the system\nand skew the results by forwarding emails to the email address listed.\n\nLastly, IMHO there's a bit of spamminess to the whole service because now the\nservice now has now verified email addresses. Who's to say that the service\nwasn't setup by another recruiting agency looking to increase their cold-call\ndatabase?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGoogle says ad blockers will save online ads  - peter123\nhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/16/google_on_adblockers/\n======\npavs\nWow, the first half was all good and informative, than the second half the\nauthors started to dump all his opinion as known, absolute facts.\n\nThe fact is that Google, a multi billion dollar company which make ~90% of its\nrevenue through ads, not only allows ad blocking extensions to be installed in\nits browser (which is rapidly gaining market share) but also not-so-evil\nenough not to tinker with the Top 10 extension list and allow an ad blocking\nextension to be listed as the second most downloaded extension. (2 of the top\n10 extensions are ad blockers:\n<https://chrome.google.com/extensions/list/popular>).\n\nTo top it off, they are forthcoming about the ad blockers and how they view it\nand discussed it openly with everyone, by justifying it as a good thing. They\nagree with something most of us already know is that the single biggest reason\nwe use ad blocking extensions is because of the intrusive and extremely\nannoying ads. If ads were non-intrusive and fast and targeted most people\nwouldn't bother with ad blockers. Google, the biggest online ad company gets\nit. This is good news.\n\nAnd this is what the author writes?\n\n\"And of course, there's no guarantee that Google will always allow ad\nblockers.\"\n\nIs the author really this ignorant? You don't even have to rely on extension\nto block ads. Hello privoxy: <http://www.privoxy.org/>\n\n~~~\naxod\nAgreed. Google should really be applauded. I'm bored of all this \"Ah but\ngoogle have access to all my data. What if they turn evil\".\n\nThere was a recent story about Google adding a _cookie_ so that people without\ngoogle accounts/not logged in, got some extra functionality. Instead of being\napplauded for improving the product, people started moaning that they were\nharvesting data from everyone. Tracking peoples movements on the web so they\ncan sell that data. I don't know why there's this recent \"But what if Google\nstart being evil\" meme, but I think I'll trust them until they do show signs\nof abusing that trust.\n\n~~~\nhyperbovine\nOT, but why do people keep saying \"Google have too much power,\" \"Google have\n60 billion dollars\", etc. ? It's a singular noun. The circle _is_ round.\nGoogle _is_ powerful. _It_ is turning evil. We _are_ hungry. etc.\n\nThis is not meant to flame, I'm really curious why/when the usage shifted.\n\n~~~\nnaz\nBritish English\n\n~~~\nwhatusername\nReally?\n\nI would have written those sentences as: \"Google has too much Power\", \"Google\nhas 60 billion dollars\"\n\nThe usage of _have_ seems wrong to me\n\n~~~\naxod\nBoth are common/valid, at least in the UK, but the plural is more common here\nthan singular afaik.\n\n------\nlliiffee\nI don't buy it. The assumptions seem to be that A) annoying ads work in the\nshort term and B) annoying ads cause people to use ad blockers. Sure, it\nfollows that it is in the ad industry's long-term interest to avoid destroying\nthemselves through annoyance. However, _individual_ advertisers still have the\nincentives to be annoying, since the costs (more adblock) are distributed to\nall advertisers, but the benefits accrue entirely to them.\n\nMaybe individual advertisers can avoid being annoying and hope that adblockers\nonly target the biggest offenders.\n\n~~~\nRyanMcGreal\nIt's a straightforward collective action problem. However, annoying\ninterruption ads work only when they can successfully interrupt people -\nthrough pop-ups, flashing, grabbing focus, and all the other annoying things\nthey do.\n\nIt seems to me that the widespread adoption of adblocking software can only\nhurt the annoying, short-term thinking advertisers and help the not-annoying,\nlong-term thinking advertisers.\n\nAs it gets easier to avoid annoying ads, the PR cost of being annoying will\ncontinue to rise until it starts hurting annoying advertisers in the short\nterm - in effect, internalizing the negative externality of their activities.\n\n~~~\nHoff\nAnd that spam email stuff is going to stop arriving, too.\n\n~~~\neli\nHey, if there were a plugin for Outlook that blocked _all_ commercial messages\n(spam or not), I'm sure many people would use it.\n\n------\ngyardley\nI don't believe the market will balance itself at all. Online publishers are\nreliant on advertiser revenue, and there's far too much ad space to fill\nsolely with useful ads for useful products. At the same time, the vast\nmajority of AdBlock users block almost everything - including the 'useful ads\nfor useful products' and the high-value branded advertisements that pay by the\nimpression and really don't care whether you click on them or not, just as\nlong as you _see_ them.\n\nRight now, online publishers view ad blocking as an annoying evil not worth\ncombatting - under the assumption that <5% of all users block advertisements,\nthat the users that do often aren't advertisers' most desirable demographic,\nand that playing cat-and-mouse with ad blockers is more annoying than it's\nworth. But as the percentage of users using ad blockers rises, more online\npublishers will be open to technical solutions to this problem. I know of\nmultiple projects that incorporate server-to-server ad calls (so the ads are\nserved from the same domain as the content) and slicing of ads into multiple\nsmaller images (so the ads aren't standard IAB image sizes, but chunks of the\nkey content are.) Other projects I've seen tie the presence of advertising to\nkey site functionality, making it impossible to use the site effectively\nwithout referencing a visible advertisement. As ad blocking increases to the\npoint where it's material to publishers, blocking ad blocking will spawn a lot\nof startups.\n\nThere's already a good example of this: the increasing use of Local Shared\nObjects (also known as 'Flash cookies') to store data formerly stored in\ncookies and even to respawn data in deleted cookies. Use of Local Shared\nObjects for advertising purposes was extremely rare several years ago. As the\nproportion of users regularly deleting the cookies that contained unique IDs\nfor ad targeting and frequency capping crept up, the market didn't 'balance'\nby forgoing unique identifiers in cookies - it found a technical workaround by\nrepurposing rarely-deleted LSOs.\n\nI never really understand it when ad-blocking advocates evangelize to the\ngeneral public - the more there are, the more likely it is that their blocking\nwill in turn be blocked.\n\n~~~\nm_eiman\n_the vast majority of AdBlock users block almost everything - including the\n'useful ads for useful products'_\n\nIs there such an option in AdBlock? If there is, I wouldn't mind seeing those\nads. Currently they get blocked along with the rest, though.\n\n~~~\neli\nNo, not really. You can subscribe to different block lists, but last I checked\nthe goal of all the lists (or at least all the default lists) is to block\n_all_ ads.\n\nAnd anyway many of the block rules target ad networks and platforms. One site\nmay use doubleclick.net's ad servers to serve up great, well-targeted ads and\nsomeone else may use the same system to server really obnoxious ads.\n\nPersonally, I don't subscribe to any lists and add all the block rules by\nhand. I really just don't want anything that moves or talks to me. But it\nain't easy.\n\n------\nvdm\nI don't want to see graphical ads with tits (I'm looking at you Evony), ripped\nbodies, or oral cavities (teeth whitening). All of that stuff is, just like\nporn, opt in. Its also why I sign new PC users up to Gmail and not Yahoo Mail.\nAnything else, and especially contextual text ads, is fine by me.\n\nThat's why I agree with Google's position.\n\n~~~\npavel_lishin\nI don't care about tits, skin or toofs, but I am incredibly easily distracted,\nand a single blinking flash ad can totally plummet my concentration.\n\n~~~\nPeriodic\nI can't have a real conversation at any restaurant that shows sports or the\nlike. I find my eyes wander to the bright and active pictures too often. I\nusually try to position myself facing away, but it doesn't always work. I\nblame a huge part of it on not having a TV, so I'm not used to tuning it out.\n\nThe same thing occurs on the web. I find it very hard to read text if there is\nsomething flashing right next to it. For this reason I install NoScript as one\nof my first add-ons on new systems. It blocks the worst offenders and adds a\nlayer of security to boot.\n\nSimply blocking unauthorized scripts is usually good enough for a while, but\neventually I'll get to a few pages with non-flash, non-javascript ads that are\nso annoying I go out and install AdBlock anyway.\n\nI'm happy to meet in the middle, but I don't intend to waste my time.\n\n------\nrobk\nThis is the historical Google line and a pretty fair one at that. Those of us\nthat are extremely savvy enough to use ad blockers everywhere are also rather\ncognizant of where ads appear and usually consciously ignore the ads. Most\naverage users won't find the ads so objectionable as to warrant blocking them\nor dealing with the hassle of installing extensions.\n\nFirefox has over 90M active daily users _. The Adblock Plus plugin is by far\nthe biggest and most compelling Ad Blocker - it has 11M active daily users\nright now_ _. Google seems willing to live with this 12% opt-out in effect. I\nsuspect of those 12% of users, most of those wouldn't click ads anyways, so\nit's not a big deal in the end.\n\n_ \\- [http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2009/05/firefox-\nhits-27...](http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2009/05/firefox-\nhits-270-million-users.html) __-<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-\nUS/statistics/addon/1865>\n\n------\nTallGuyShort\nI've never minded Google ads at all. In fact I quite like them. The reason I\nhave an ad-blocker is because of the many sites featuring sexually explicit\nadvertising with no warning - a big no-no when you use the internet as a\nreference at work.\n\nI'm not sure if I trust their motives entirely, but Google's theory about the\nmarket balancing itself is right on, IMHO.\n\n------\njsm386\n_\"There will always be some group of people who want to block ads for personal\nreasons. But if we do a good job on the advertising side, people won't want to\nblock ads. People will find them actually useful.\n\n\"I think there will be a nice equilibrium. If people get too aggressive with\nads, then ad blockers will become more popular and companies will get less\naggressive with ads. The market will sort itself.\"_\n\nAs an Adwords advertiser, I agree. Maybe it's because I am selling a B2B\nproduct, but I have no interest in 'aggressive' ads that trick gullible people\nclicking them (the phrasing from this post last week:\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=989729>)\n\nP.S. The headline seriously distorts Google's argument. Saying that the market\nwill balance itself out as aggressive ads and ad blockers play off each other\nis not 'ad blockers will save online ads.' In fact, the Google rep doesn't\nmake that statement at all.\n\n------\naxod\n>> \"But the truth of the matter is that most people won't install ad blockers\non Chrome because people are fundamentally lazy.\"\n\nBS. Most people don't install ad blockers because they don't want them. Not\neveryone is a new age hippy anti consumerism activist.\n\nIf an advert annoys you, don't visit that website again. Vote with your feet.\nThat's being honest.\n\nI not lazy, and I won't be installing adblock. I don't think doing so is good\nfor the web.\n\n~~~\nanigbrowl\nI rather think it's because a lot of people don't really know how. Like a lot\nof others, I don't mind advertisin in principle; indeed, I think they have\nutility and sometimes click on them because I'm actually interested in what's\nbeing sold.\n\n...BUT not the ones that float in when I've already started reading the page,\nor that take over my screen when I unwittingly roll over them with the mouse\n(and obscure their close button), or that feature hot pink silhouettes of\npeople dancing in a .gif loop to sell me car insurance, or use what's\napparently some guy's mugshot to tell me about some shady mortgage refinance\nscheme.\n\nFor every informative, polite, and compelling advertisement that represents a\nmeaningful commercial communication, there are about 99 that are equivalent to\nbeing shouted at via megaphone.\n\n~~~\naxod\nAbsolutely not my experience. Also do bear in mind that most people also have\nTVs. And weirdly, out of choice!!! So they're quite used to adverts.\n\n------\nPeriodic\nI believe this other article was posted about a month ago and may be very\ngermane:\n[http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArtic...](http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=115210&lfe=1)\n\nIn brief: only 32% of Internet users clicked on at least one ad in a month,\nand 8% of users accounted for 85% of ad clicks.\n\nThe people using ad blocking software are not the people often clicking on\nthese ads, and most of the clicks come from people who click on a lot of ads\nand are (I'm guessing by this behavior) unlikely to install an ad blocker. In\nother words, ad blocking is not a threat.\n\n------\nmotters\nI agree with Google that advertisers will eventually sort themselves out. I\nhave no objections at all to discreet banner ads, but irritating/puerile\nanimations or anything which obscures the text I'm trying to read or forces me\nto click on a close button I find unacceptable. For the foreseeable future\nI'll continue to use Adblock/Ad-Art, but if advertising becomes more sensible\nand restrained I may have no need to use those.\n\n~~~\nyungchin\nI'm not sure if advertisers will sort _themselves_ out... but I hope websites\nthat care about their readership will learn what ads to refuse.\n\n------\nhouseabsolute\nIrony: <http://imgur.com/4QOPv.png>. Note that the only ads so blocked are\nflash ads.\n\n~~~\nchronomex\nI don't have flash installed in my primary browser (Opera). When I want to\nview flash, I boot up Firefox and paste the URL over.\n\nI also have a shellscript to download Youtube videos and feed them to mplayer,\nsince my computer is too slow for most Flash video.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy I Pay for Draft and Other Free Products - rrhoover\nhttps://medium.com/on-startups/77f78bee355f\n\n======\njmduke\nI feel like this is as good a place as any to plug Gittip\n(<https://www.gittip.com/>) if you haven't heard of it.\n\nYou basically set up weekly donations to people through Twitter/GitHub. The\nbest sell I can think of is for those well-versed in Python: how much time do\nyou think Requests has saved you? An hour a month? How much do you value that\nhour? Let's be crazy conservative and say you value it $20/hr.\n\nKenneth Reitz saves you $20 a month. What's wrong with throwing him a little\npiece of that pie?\n\n<https://www.gittip.com/kennethreitz/>\n\n------\njmedwards\nWell put, same sentiments here exactly (and same products!).\n\n~~~\nrrhoover\nThanks. :) Which free products do you pay for?\n\n------\nfrakkingcylons\nTL;DR of the article: I pay for them because I mainly want to support the\npeople behind them.\n\n------\nalcuadrado\nAnd that's why I bought Sublime Text although I could have kept using it for\nfree\n\n~~~\nnate\nI'm glad you brought up Sublime. They were a big inspiration to how I wanted\nto charge for Draft. I love their model. It really makes trying out the entire\ntool super easy, and still allows the people who do get a lot of value from it\nto pay for it.\n\n------\nkrmmalik\nI pay Quoterobot for the same reasons and will be doing the same for\npostach.io\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nKrzysztof Penderecki has died - stared\nhttps://culture.pl/en/artist/krzysztof-penderecki\n======\nH8crilA\nWhat an absolute legend, his music was like nothing else that came before.\nRest in peace.\n\nIn case you're not familiar with his work - one of the best known pieces is\nthe \"Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima\". Here you can see it overlaid on\ntop of the notation he had invented to write this composition down:\n[https://youtu.be/HilGthRhwP8](https://youtu.be/HilGthRhwP8)\n\nWikipedia page on the piece:\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threnody_to_the_Victims_of_H...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threnody_to_the_Victims_of_Hiroshima)\n\n~~~\nthr0w3345\nI don’t get this at all.\n\nIt’s unlistenable. Dreadful. Who considers this music and why? What’s the\npoint of it?\n\nWhat am I missing?\n\n~~~\nsoftwarejosh\nit wasnt exactly written for easy listening, it represents the instantaneous\nannihilation of life on the largest scale the world has ever seen.\n\n~~~\nMediterraneo10\n> it wasnt exactly written for easy listening, it represents the instantaneous\n> annihilation of life on the largest scale the world has ever seen.\n\nAs is well known (or should be), Penderecki wrote the piece initially as\npurely abstract music, a study in sound. The title referencing Hiroshima was\nonly applied to the piece later.\n\n------\nmicrotherion\nThe first piece of his I heard is still my favorite: \"Stabat Mater\"\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f403XsOAFXE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f403XsOAFXE)\n\nIt uses such a great palette of composition techniques — gregorian chant,\nunison passages, clusters (the bell-like effects he achieves with clusters are\nmy favorite part of the piece), up to the surprise effect at the end.\n\n------\npavlov\nFans of David Lynch’s work will recognize Penderecki’s “Threnody for the\nVictims of Hiroshima” as the soundtrack to “Twin Peaks: The Return” (in)famous\nEpisode 8:\n\n[https://robertsabinbass.blog/2017/09/20/this-is-the-water-\nan...](https://robertsabinbass.blog/2017/09/20/this-is-the-water-and-this-is-\nthe-well-ravings-on-twin-peaks-the-return-episode-8/)\n\n------\nrurban\nRight before the Corona lockdown there was a concert announced with him as\nconductor, for a late piece of him. About a month ago. In our city which is\nabout an hour away from the place where he lives in Poland. Unfortunately he\ndidn't show up. We already thought, how bad, he's probably not feeling well. I\nhad this bad feeling already then.\n\n------\nacjohnson55\nOne of the real banner carriers for contemporary orchestral music. Rip.\n\n------\nttlaxia\nI never hear anyone mention his Capriccio for Violin and Orchestra, which I\ntend to think is kind of a masterpiece of its type, for what that's worth.\n\n[https://youtu.be/axVXBZBBUPM](https://youtu.be/axVXBZBBUPM)\n\n------\nthe-rc\nThe Cello concerto no. 2 is his first work I listened to and still holds a\nspecial place for me:\n\n[https://youtu.be/ApJU2QbbXpc](https://youtu.be/ApJU2QbbXpc)\n\n------\nkolmogoshannon\nTime to play Lacrimosa.\n\n------\napp4soft\nMy first thought was: _\" Has this death relation to Covid-19?\"_\n\nAnd just found an answer:[0]\n\n> _Penderecki had been tested for coronavirus after his carer was diagnosed\n> with the illness, but the composer 's result was negative, his daughter\n> Beata Penderecka told Reuters._[1]\n\n> _Part of the family had been under quarantine at home after attending a\n> family meeting on March 7, Penderecka said. Several people present later\n> tested positive for coronavirus._\n\n> _Elzbieta Penderecka, the composer 's wife tested negative, Beata Penderecka\n> said._\n\nUPD: On Wikipedia there no info about his \"long illness\".[2]\n\nJFTR, _My Personal Opinion:_ Tests which used now around the world for\nCovid-19 testing has NO 100% guaranties on its results.\n\n[0] [https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2020/03/29/polish-\ncompos...](https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2020/03/29/polish-composer-\npenderecki-dies-at-86-after-long-illness.html)\n\n[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/poland-music-\npenderecki/upda...](https://www.reuters.com/article/poland-music-\npenderecki/update-1-polish-composer-penderecki-dies-at-86-after-long-illness-\nidUSL8N2BM082)\n\n[2]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_2020#29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_2020#29)\n\n~~~\nelwell\n>\n> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_2020#29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_2020#29)\n\nThat wikipedia link has 108 references to COVID-19, wow...\n\n~~~\nmantap\nI was going to point out that some deaths may be more likely to be included in\nthe list _because_ they died of COVID-19, but fuck, that does not seem to be\nthe case. Genuinely terrifying.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBacker of the Day: Should Thinkful teach a class on Angular? - bhaumik\nhttps://backer.app.net/thinkful\n\n======\nraddevon\nI took the front-end and Python courses. These guys delivered a lot of value\nfor me with those. Not only that, but I'm also interested in Angular. I'd\nlikely be all over this if not for personal economic scarcity. ;-)\n\n------\nredbearded\nThis is the course I voted for! Awesome to see it coming together.\n\n------\nfrimmy\nheck yes, took their front end course/python course, learned more than I ever\ndid just reading/going thru the docs.\n\nDO IT.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLibcrtxy – The CRT X-Y Library for drawing vector-based games - networked\nhttp://libcrtxy.sourceforge.net/\n======\ntdicola\nNeat looking library, but it seems woefully out of date for today's modern\ngraphics pipelines. Would be cool to see a similar library but that uses\nOpenGL and modern GLSL shaders to more closely emulate drawing vectors on a\nCRT. Still this could be a neat little library for use on low end systems like\na Raspberry Pi.\n\n~~~\ndddddannyyyyy\nThe owner of the github repo and myself worked on this for a while:\n[https://github.com/blucz/Vector](https://github.com/blucz/Vector)\n\nIt does what you said. We never took this anywhere, but it does work, and on\nretina displays, it's really pretty.\n\n~~~\ntdicola\nWow that looks great, nice work!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhen to start publicizing a startup. - knandyal\n\nFriends,<p>We are a startup that deals with fashion.  We are about 3-4 months away from the final product.<p>Questions are:<p>1) When is a correct time to start seeding the news about this site?<p>2) Who are the professionals that do this sort of \"spreading the news\"?<p>If anyone have any guidance regarding this I will be thankful.<p>Regds\nKarthik\n======\nbadmash69\nDefine your target audience, find a small representative sample whom you know\nand have them come in to your site and kick the proverbial tires. Don't go\nabout \"spreading the news\" until your representative sample is happy about\nyour product.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Create Interactive Coding Tutorials in Visual Studio Code - mlejva\nhttps://codelines.dev/home\n======\nmlejva\nHey HN. Our goal with Codelines is to create a tool that makes it easy to\nshare programming knowledge between developers. We've created a code editor\nplugin that let you create and read interactive coding tutorials/walkthroughs\nin your IDE. We believe the way we share programming knowledge on the Internet\nis hugely ignored. But it's a real problem that developers face every day. How\nmany times have you seen a snippet of code that could solve your problem but\nthe API was now deprecated, or just simple things like code highlighting and\nbeing able to see a bigger code context.\n\nWalkthroughs created with our plugin are full projects combined with text so\nit gives you a lot of benefits. That way you can execute the code and at the\nsame time be able to read the \"story\" behind the code.\n\nWe are interested in what people on HN think about this. Feel free to ask any\nquestions.\n\n~~~\nzekehernandez\nThe idea sounds cool, but I'm struggling to know exactly what this does or how\nto use it. The descriptions on the website are very brief and kind of vague,\nand the screenshots are quite small. The only feature that's really clear to\nme is running the terminal commands. But, like I said, sounds cool, just wish\nI could gain more info as to what it is without having to install it and use\nit.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGotify – a self-hosted push-notifications service - adraenwan\nhttps://github.com/gotify\n======\ndmitrygr\nIt is worth noting that this will use a noticeable amount of power more than\nGoogle cloud messaging. The basic idea of how is works is about the same, but\nthe devil is in the details. If you look at an idle connection over LTE, you\nwill notice that after a while your carrier will close it. You need\nkeepalives. If you look at the connection for Google cloud messaging, you\nmight notice that it needs much fewer keep alives than YOU need to keep your\nconnection alive. This means fewer wakes from sleep mode and lower power.\n\n~~~\nnbevans\nIs that because carriers have put GCM/FCM on some sort of white-list?\n\n~~~\npas\nProbably because GCM/FCM has been very well optimized.\n\n~~~\nfyfy18\nTCP connection can be open and idle for hours without keep alives. This can\neasily be configured with kernel parameters:\n\n[https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/TCP-Keepalive-\nHOWTO/usingkeepaliv...](https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/TCP-Keepalive-\nHOWTO/usingkeepalive.html)\n\nI suspect the hard bit for normal apps is keeping the app active on the device\nwhile it is in the background. Google has their FCM receiver running as a low\nlevel service so can make sure it is always running.\n\n~~~\nktjfi\nYou can configure it locally in your kernel, but your ISP will most likely\nclose your connections for you, especially if you're behind a CGNAT.\n\n~~~\nlondons_explore\nEven if you have native IPv6, some carriers do connection tracking anyway to\nprevent random port scans from the internet waking up your phone or trying\nvarious exploits.\n\n------\nwybiral\nAwesome! I've been working on a collection of news source parsers [1] (a\ncombination of RSS and HTML scrapers) that this will work perfect with to\nreplace my native news app. All I have to do is pipe the lines from my parser\nthrough a Python script issuing these message POST requests and it just works\nout of the box.\n\n[1] [https://github.com/wybiral/stream-\nsources](https://github.com/wybiral/stream-sources)\n\n------\nrubenbe\nI gave it a quick try and \"it just worked\" with minimal configuration. Really\neasy to get started.\n\nUnfortunately messages are only plaintext.\n\n~~~\njohnchristopher\nSame. I wasted more time this evening setting up octobercms behind a reverse\nproxy (hours, not working) than getting that server handling notifications\nfrom a VPS running many small services.\n\n------\nnoahster11\nAlthough I've been using Pushover[0], a paid service, instead of Gotify, I\nfound a really cool project to pair a push-notification service with is\nhuginn[1], which allows you to program bots to do things on cron jobs, among\nother really powerful actions.\n\n[0] [https://pushover.net/](https://pushover.net/) [1]\n[https://github.com/huginn/huginn](https://github.com/huginn/huginn)\n\n~~~\nthere\nJust to clarify, Pushover is not a \"paid service\" in that you need to pay for\na subscription. You only have to pay once to use it past the 7-day free trial.\n\n------\ndraugadrotten\n[https://gotify.net/](https://gotify.net/)\n\n------\nsiscia\nI would like to point out that there exists solutions tested in the field in\nthe last 20 years to solve the same problem.\n\nIn particular I would suggest to get to know MQTT an open protocol with\nseveral (open and close) implementation that is know for its flexibility and\nscalability (if nothing has changed it is used to power the Messager Facebook\nplatform, but don't quote me on that).\n\nverneMQ is the server implementation I would suggest if you are interested in\nsuch topic.\n\n~~~\nqwertox\nMQTT is just a protocol, not a service. I don't think it was the developer's\nintention to provide an alternative to MQTT, but to offer a solution for push-\nnotifications, which just happens to be built on top of WebSocket without\nMQTT. Also keep in mind that MQTT will usually get wrapped by WebSocket to\navoid issues with firewalls or to easily get TLS via a proxy server like\nNGINX, or simply to add web browser support. VerneMQ is not the only server\nimplementation for MQTT.\n\n------\ndlhavema\nInteresting project. Is this intended to replace Firebase Cloud Messaging on\nandroid or be a wrapper in front of it?\n\nI only saw android support, anything for iOS in the works?\n\n~~~\ndgivney\nFrom what I can tell it appears to be a replacement FCM/APNS. The client\nsubscribes directly via websocket to a self-hosted server (Go binary).\n\nNew messages in the queue are then notified (gotified) via the websocket.\n[https://gotify.net/api-docs#/message/streamMessages](https://gotify.net/api-\ndocs#/message/streamMessages)\n\nThe payload can be picked up and managed via REST API as well.\n\nI'm building a similar solution for a slightly different usecase, so wanted to\nhave a look under the hood. There's nothing I can see that would stop you\nusing this for iOS so maybe they just don't have a iOS dev on the project.\n\nEdit: Ah, here's why.\n[https://github.com/gotify/server/issues/87](https://github.com/gotify/server/issues/87)\n\n~~~\nzmmmmm\nSo, their conclusion in the end that it is technically impossible to build a\nself-hosted notification solution on iOS due to Apple's restrictions. Shame\nbecause I would love to be able to deploy something like this internally at\nwork, but of course, half the business is walking around with iPhones. I'm\nkind of curious though why it doesn't ruin every single XMPP client out there\n- there seem to be a few on the App store.\n\n~~~\npetronio\nEither the server is sending pushes through APNS or the client is simply not\ngetting messages reliably when the screen is locked or the app backgrounded,\nas the network restrictions very much apply to those clients as well (and to\neverything, to save power by sleeping the NICs).\n\n------\nbenoliver999\nFunny, I was just looking for an alternative to pushover that doesn't use\ngoogle services last week. Tested this and it worked quite well.\n\nI actually wound up just using an SMS gateway provider with a simple API you\ncan just fire a get request to.\n\n~~~\ncallalex\nSending a text message uses the GET verb? Yuck.\n\n~~~\nverelo\nI get why that's \"yuck\" but if I'd hedge a bet...it's probably done because\nit's easier to make a GET than it is a POST or PUT request and the length of a\ntext message will never exceed the query string uri length limits.\n\nNot saying I disagree, but i don't know it changes a whole lot in this case.\n\n~~~\nbeager\nIn this case maybe, but generally GET should be avoided for any\ncreative/transactional action because many systems will replay/cache GET\nrequests, assuming that they’re idempotent.\n\n~~~\nverelo\nYeah the caching issue is a great reason not to use a GET, i was more just\nsuggesting if you're being lazy and pasting a request into a browser v's using\na command line (which obviously you should) then it's easy to get going\nquickly to kick the tires.\n\n------\nrakoo\n[https://pushpin.org/](https://pushpin.org/) is another alternative that has\nsome history, has support for more protocols and is used in production by its\ncreators\n\n------\n188201\nFCM is integrated in kernel, so it cannot be killed. And it starts a\npersistent TCP connection to Google server. If all apps uses FCM, then all\nnotification would route through this connection, and this significantly\nreduce battery consumption than the alternative, where each app uses its own\nweb socket server.\n\nSo, assume using a degoogled android, can this notification replaced FCM if\nmore apps use this notification server? This server uses web socket, so what\ndoes FCM use for its connection? Does web socket battery efficient enough?\n\n~~~\ngruez\n>FCM is integrated in kernel, so it cannot be killed.\n\nWhat do you mean it's \"integrated in kernel\"? Are you saying google play\nservices includes a kernel module?\n\n~~~\nlondons_explore\nIt does not.\n\nIt's a plain-old TCP connection in GMSCore, but has special permissions to\nignore various power save modes.\n\nI personally wish Google would work with mobile networks to replace it with\nsomething lower level (eg. Based on the same thing used to initiate phone\ncalls), because a hanging TCP connection open for many hours gets unreliable\nas NAT drops it and as the phone migrates from one mobile network to another\n(eg. Across country boundaries)\n\n~~~\nsofaofthedamned\nThat was how BlackBerry worked wasn't it?\n\n------\nblumomo\nThe documentation states that End2End tests are included. I didn't find them\nin the repository. I want to learn from the tests - Can somebody please help\nme and point me to the End2End tests?\n\n~~~\njmattheis\nYou can find the ui end2end tests here:\n[https://github.com/gotify/server/tree/master/ui/src/tests](https://github.com/gotify/server/tree/master/ui/src/tests)\n\n------\nlinkmotif\nIs there a standard understanding of what are push notifications? Are they the\nsame for android and iOS? I’m not sure what this project is about!\n\n~~~\ndgivney\nI think Push API is an industry standard but there is this W3 draft\n[https://www.w3.org/TR/push-api/](https://www.w3.org/TR/push-api/)\n\nBut yes, it's essentially implemented the same across iOS/Android and browsers\nlike Chrome, FF, Edge etc. There are services such as Amazon SNS or Google\nFirebase that provide a single interface which can talk to all the slightly\ndifferent implementations.\n\nIn a nutshell the device registers to the server and receives an identifier\ntoken. Then a server can send messages to that identifier and the message will\nbe displayed on the screen. Some providers allow for Icon, Audio and some\nActions to also be sent as part of the message payload.\n\n~~~\nlinkmotif\nThank you! I’ve never actually implemented push notifications. Will soon so I\nwas wondering...\n\n------\nwiradikusuma\nI like the idea of the project, but I'm curious.\n\nWhy would you need a self-hosted (or really, any other push-notif service)\nother than the official one from Apple/Goggle?\n\nThey're optimized (for each respective platform), no need to maintain a\nserver, and free. If you need \"cross-platform\", you can use Firebase(?) that\nabstracts that away.\n\n~~~\nwybiral\nPrivacy? Keep in mind that not everyone intends to build a user-supporting\nplatform on this tech. I like the concept because it's an easy way for me to\npush notifications from my homebrew IoT stuff and news streams without it\nflowing through ad companies.\n\n~~~\nthere\nYou can encrypt notifications that go through Google's FCM and Apple's APNS\npush notification servers. This is how Pushover works - each notification is\nencrypted with a device-specific key, sent through the notification servers as\nan encrypted blob, then the app on the device is woken up and receives the\nblob, decrypts it, and posts it as a normal notification.\n\n~~~\nwybiral\nYou could. But if you don't need that kind of added complexity and scale (and\nI don't for personal news updates or IoT device alerts) then why jump through\nthose hoops?\n\n------\ncanada_dry\nBah... no linux 32 bit binary for my old home-automation server.\n\n~~~\nadraenwan\njust build it yourself :)\n\n$ git clone\n[https://github.com/gotify/server](https://github.com/gotify/server)\n\n$ cd server\n\n$ env GOARCH=386 go build\n\n------\nsandos\nThis is what home assistant needs! The only really lacking thing about HA is\nthe lack of native Android app, but the most important thing is notifications.\n\n------\neponeponepon\nNeat. I could definitely use this for some home infrastructure I'm playing\naround with at the moment - will definitely give it a shot!\n\n------\nAlfeG\nHave anyone used Nats as a push notification service? We are looking for\nalternatives to Google Play Services.\n\n------\nskybrian\nHmm, I didn't see anything about security while skimming the docs?\n\n------\nborn2discover\nAwesome! This opens the door to so many possibilities!\n\n------\njohnchristopher\nLogo reminds me of traefik. Is it related ?\n\n~~~\nfrancislavoie\nThat's the Go Gopher:\n[https://blog.golang.org/gopher](https://blog.golang.org/gopher)\n\n~~~\njohnchristopher\nThanks ! That mascot is super cool.\n\n------\ntriplewipeass\nUseless without iOS support. What’s the point of an abstraction that has only\na single implementation?\n\n~~~\njkarneges\nI'm not sure, but I don't think iOS lets apps auto-start and run in the\nbackground forever. This would be needed for any alternative push notification\napp, else it would be too easy to miss notifications.\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nIt doesn't, but iOS will wake your app up when it receives push notifications.\n\n------\nnukeop\nI'm not up to date with Android, but why does displaying notifications require\nan entire server or a paid service? Is it not just a matter of installing a\nclient program and sending a curl to an endpoint?\n\n~~~\nnpmn2\nIt is not needed for displaying the notification but specifically targeting\nusers. You would usually call an FCM function to get a token, which can be\nused to specifically target that user and is stored in the database. To send a\nnotification to your customised target audience based on user-generated\nevents, it becomes essential to use web-service that does it for you.\n\nFor example- Let's say you wish to send a notification to user A when user B\nsends him a message. In this scenario, you can call another FCM fn, using the\ntoken user A had generated. Of course you can use the web dashboard to send\nthe notifications, but in this case, you would not be able to send event-based\nnotification reliability and in real-time. Other services also work in a\nsimilar manner.\n\n~~~\nizacus\nOf course FCM also has notion of channels where you can broadcast to certain\ntopics (which apps listen to) without having to track tokens on application\nserver side.\n\n------\nNicoJuicy\nOff-topic\n\nI got so scared when I looked at the swagger. The authentication uses the\nexact same variables as mine and is somewhat similar. The name of the\nendpoints are also very similar and the project has resemblance to mine.\n\nThat was really really akward for a moment.\n\nI'll use the project though ( different use-case), looks really interesting.\nCoincidentally it's for the same project as I mentioned.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nReplacing ‘that = this’ assignments in JavaScript with Arrow Functions - kiyanwang\nhttps://dbwriteups.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/replacing-that-this-assignments-in-javascript-with-arrow-functions/\n======\nandrewstuart2\nI have never subscribed to this particular pattern (antipattern IMO), though I\ndo agree with a lot of the concepts Crockford proposes in \"The Good Parts.\"\nThe concept of 'this' is complicated enough in ES5, with a few new\npossibilities for its value in ES6+.\n\nSince this is nearly always the pattern that's followed in the class pattern,\nI nearly always alias `this`, if needed, to the lowercase instance name or\nsome short identifier that semantically maps to \"an instance of the class\". It\ngets you instantly out of both the problem of \"I already used `that` as an\nidentifier, now what?\" as well as providing some nice context to what you're\nworking on if you happen to be scrolled beyond the function/constructor name.\n\n    \n    \n        function SomeClass(arg1, secretArg) {\n          var someClass = this; // or `var sc = this`, more often these days\n    \n          // Hopefully do something more interesting than this...\n          someClass.arg1 = arg1;\n        \n          someClass.method = function(foo) {\n            someClass.bar = foo;\n            // Do something with the \"private\" param via closure.\n            secretArg.count++;\n          };\n        }\n    \n\nEven if lambda expressions do fix the issue of \"which that is that\" it doesn't\nprovide me any helpful context for when I'm deep in coding or reading modes.\n\n~~~\nksenzee\nThe this/that antipattern is one reason I dislike the class pattern. I avoid\nit by using prototypes:\n\n    \n    \n      SomeClass = function (arg1) {\n        // Hopefully do something more interesting than this, indeed. :)\n        this.arg1 = arg1;\n      };\n    \n      /**\n       * Assigns foo to the instance variable bar.\n       */\n      SomeClass.prototype.method = function (foo) {\n        // Hopefully you do something more interesting than this, too!\n        this.bar = foo;\n      };\n    \n    \n      someClass = new SomeClass();\n      someclass.method(foo);\n    \n\nThen when I need a handler for a DOM element, I bind the instance to the\nmethod:\n\n    \n    \n      someClass = new SomeClass();\n      var handler = someclass.method.bind(someclass);\n      $('.link').click(handler); // using jQuery as easy-to-read DOM shorthand; it's not required\n    \n\nOr if I'm creating the handler within the class:\n\n    \n    \n      /**\n       * Creates a click handler for <a class=\"link\"> elements.\n       */\n      SomeClass.prototype.init = function () {\n        var handler = this.method.bind(this);\n        $('.link').click(handler);\n      };\n    \n\nOver the years I've found it really easy to maintain code written like this.\nThere's no callback hell, you don't even need Promises, and everything is easy\nto document. But often I find myself in an environment where I'm maintaining\nsomeone else's code, and I can't just refactor everything, so I grit my teeth\nand use 'that' or 'self'. I like your idea a lot better.\n\n~~~\nandrewstuart2\nThe main reason I've come to avoid prototypes in many cases (except when I\n_really_ need to control memory) is that you can't keep any kind of\ninformation private (via closure) and share it across instance methods. It\n_has_ to be a property on the instance, and is therefore accessible to anybody\nwith access to the instance.\n\nConventions (like prefixing with _) are great, but they can only help loosely\nenforce encapsulation and provide no form of real privacy.\n\n~~~\nlearc83\nI just use factory functions that return an object that has arrow functions as\nproperties, then I get private information via closures, and I don't have to\nworry about dealing with this.\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImwrezYhw4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImwrezYhw4w)\n\n------\nacjohnson55\nThe dynamic binding of `this` at the callsite is one of Javascript's biggest\nmistakes. It's a tremendous source of run-time errors, and we have to hack\naround it with closures and arrow functions. How counterintuitive is that?\nIt's exhausting to reason about what `this` refers to within a given block of\ncode.\n\nI very frequently want to pass methods around as callbacks and almost never\nwant my functions re-bound as methods on alternative objects. The only times I\ncan think of that I want to re-bind is when I'm writing library code.\n\n~~~\nint_19h\nThe real problem is the lack of distinction between functions and methods.\nDynamic \"this\" is really just a hack to make functions behave like methods\nwhen invoked via an object member.\n\nPython has an interesting solution to this, which is a lot more complicated -\nit has a more generic concept of \"descriptors\" that's used to wrap functions\ninto magic sauce that makes them methods, taking care of \"self\" etc - but with\nmost of that complexity hidden from either side (definition and invocation).\n\n~~~\norf\nI wouldn't say the Python solution is more complicated (complex, maybe), it's\nquite elegant and it essentially boils down to just pre-setting the first\nargument to the class instance or class value.\n\nYou can do it yourself:\n\n    \n    \n       >> def x(*args): print(args)\n       \n       >> new_func = a.__get__('silly sausage')\n    \n       >> new_func()\n    \n       ('silly sausage',)\n    \n\nWhen you do instance.method() Python will look up 'method' inside 'instance'.\nIf 'method' is a descriptor (with functions are), then `__get__` is called and\nthe first argument is set to 'instance'\n\nHere are the docs if anyone is interested:\n[https://docs.python.org/3/howto/descriptor.html](https://docs.python.org/3/howto/descriptor.html)\n\n~~~\nint_19h\nYeah, I meant descriptors themselves. Conceptually, having an ability in the\nlanguage for an object to do some special handling when it's retrieved as a\nmember of another object is a very powerful tool, and once you have it, it\nsolves this particular problem neatly. But it's also an unusual thing to have,\nand few people are aware that something like this is at play every time you\nwrite something like `a.b`.\n\n------\nbobbytherobot\nOver many years of writing JavaScript, I've come to generally avoid the issues\nregarding `this` by preferring a functional style of programming instead of\nOO. I don't get away from OO completely and sometimes OO is the \"goodest\"\nsolution for a problem.\n\n------\nsailfast\nIn sum: \"Since the...function was defined as an arrow function rather than the\ntraditional anonymous function, and since it is defined within the lexical\nscope of another function X, the value of 'this' is set to the surrounding\nlexical scope of X [instead of the global]\"\n\n------\nyodon\nWould love suggestions here, I've migrated towards a style of always using\nthat=this (even when not required because we're in an arrow function, for\nexample) because the JavaScript refactoring tools I'm aware of aren't\nparticularly robust (I'm mostly refactoring by hand) and I don't have\nconfidence that the dev (me) moving code from one method to another will\nalways correctly identify whether the source and destination this inheritance\ncontexts will have the same shape. Always using that=this doesn't solve all\nproblems (you can still get weird this's you're not expecting) but from what I\nthink I've seen this sort of \"conservative\" approach seems to increase the\nsafety of a lot of refactoring efforts in the more common use cases.\n\nAre there sweet JS refactoring tools that a VS Code using, typescript\npreferring dev like myself should be using? I'd really like to drop this style\nif I can.\n\n------\nc-smile\nJust on case, there is a `this super` construct in Sciter's Script for that\npurpose:\n\n    \n    \n       function Foo() {\n         return function() {\n           (this super).Bar(); \n         }\n       } \n    \n\n_this super_ , when used in inner function, returns _this_ passed to outer\nfunction call.\n\n------\ngerso\nIn reference to constructor invocation:\n\n    \n    \n      ...a new empty object is created, (let’s name it newObj) and the function is invoked on that object,\n      like say, newObj.Person() in this case.\n    \n\nIs this true? When a function is invoked with \"new\", \"this\" is set to the\nobject being constructed, but is that accomplished by making the constructor a\n_method_ of the object being initialized? If so, it must be removed later on\nin the process:\n\n    \n    \n      (new Function).Function\n      => undefined\n\n~~~\nlaughinghan\nIt is not true. It's just a confusing attempt by the article to explain what\nhappens to `this` inside Person().\n\nIf anything, it's more like:\n\n    \n    \n        var newObj = Object.create(Person.prototype)\n        var result = Person.call(newObj)\n        if (typeof result === 'object' && result !== null) return result\n        return newObj\n    \n\nThe article didn't explain it like that because that requires introducing the\nconcept of .call() on functions.\n\n------\nlearc83\nI prefer to combine arrow functions with factory functions, and avoid classes\ncompletely. You get private variables and functions via closures. The only\nreal downside is that it's slightly slower.\n\nHere's a good video on the subject\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImwrezYhw4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImwrezYhw4w)\n\n------\nh1d\nThe arrow function doesn't solve it in cases where you define generator\nfunctions. You cannot use the arrow operator for those causing syntax errors\nand you still have to keep binding \"this\" or define \"self\" like in the\narticle.\n\nThis is one area where typescript (or es7) does it better with async functions\nwhere arrow operators are permitted.\n\n------\nforeigner\nOne of my coworkers made the good suggestion that \"that\" is only one character\naway from \"this\", so we use \"self\" instead for the same purpose.\n\n~~~\nyathern\nNot to be overly pedantic, but I'm I missing something here? \"that\" -> \"this\"\nis a two character change, no?\n\n~~~\nforeigner\nHa ha of course you're right! Math is hard.\n\n~~~\nkevin_thibedeau\nBarbie? That you?\n\n------\nWaterluvian\nI haven't had to use that = this in a few years and it's immensely improved\nunderstandability of the code I work on.\n\n------\ngcb0\nif you develop for browsers, title can be: how to lose 60% of your user base\nto avoid one simple line.\n\nif you are a node developer, title can be: something very banal you've been\nusing for ages.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat Wittgenstein Learned from Teaching Elementary School - Hooke\nhttp://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/03/05/wittgenstein-schoolteacher\n======\na_bonobo\n>It’s hard now to know how consistent his use of corporal punishment was with\nstandard practice at the time.\n\nThe quoted Wittgenstein biography of Monk (highly recommended!) actually has a\ncomment on that:\n\n>Another girl who was weak at mathematics remembers that one day Wittgenstein\npulled her hair so hard that when she later combed it a lot of it fell out.\n[...] It was not that the villagers disapproved of corporal punishment, nor\nthat such methods of discipline were at all unusual, despite Glöckel’s\nrecommendations. However, though it was accepted that an unruly boy should\nhave his ears boxed if he misbehaved, it was not expected that a girl who\ncould not grasp algebra should receive the same treatment.\n\nLocation 419.4/1469 in my ebook copy\n\nSo, at least according to Monk, Wittgenstein's methods of corporal punishment\nwere according to the times when it came to male students, but not according\nto the times when it came to female students, especially when it's about\nmathematics.\n\n~~~\na_humean\nMonk's biography on Wittgenstein is great. I recommend his newest one on\nOppenheimer if you haven't read it.\n\nI think Monk's point wasn't just about gender, but also about whether the\npunishment was appropriate or proportionate in any case. Disrupting a class\nshould be punishable regardless of gender, but struggling with a difficult\nlesson, especially one deemed unimportant for young girls at the time, is not\na publishable fault. There was also the fact that Wittgenstein's corporal\npunishment was particularly harsh, and on one occasion fled town when even he\nrealised that he went too far by basically hospitalising a young girl. In\nlater life he eventually returned to apologise, but had his apology refused.\n\n------\nleroy_masochist\nWhat I find interesting is that Wittgenstein seemed to view his students not\nas \"students\" per se, but as foils for his ongoing inquisition into his own\nunderstanding of philology, ontology, and philosophy.\n\nHe wasn't teaching just for the sake of doing something good; he was using\ngrade school students as test subjects (in a very benign way) for his own\nexploration of paradigms of human consciousness. I find this to be an\ninteresting twist -- one might expect that a prominent philosopher hanging up\nthe gloves to teach grade schoolers constituted an instance of the old \"rapid\nburnout disguised as a moral epiphany\". But no -- in fact, Wittgenstein\nrealized that he could only learn what he wanted to learn by teaching grade\nschool, and set about doing that without fully explaining his thought process\nto the rest of the world, who probably would not have understood anyway.\n\n~~~\njpt4\nThough I have found no evidence of its inspiration by Wittgenstein's\nexperience, nonetheless one is reminded of the title character in Herman\nHesse's \"Magister Ludi\", who\n\n[Spoiler Alert]\n\nabnegates his position as head of the world's leading (perhaps only) academy\nto seek a reification of philosophy (to \"bring it into contact with the\nbroader world\"), in part through the tutoring of a childhood friend's young\nson.\n\nI must at some point comb through the accounts of both attempts at this goal,\nto see if the resemblance is more than superficial.\n\n------\nianamartin\nMy experience, for what ever this is worth, was interesting when I was\nteaching kids.\n\nI taught violin and music theory for a University prep program when I was in\nthe later years of my undergrad.\n\nA few things stuck out at me when I was doing this, and keep in mind--I had no\nclasses on education theory at all at the time. I was just a good, gifted\nperformer who had done some serious study of music theory. Music Theory\nemerges from the Philosophy of the time, so teaching about that is also\nteaching about the history of Western thought and also the social climate of\nthe different periods of time that you are covering with music. Along with\nthat comes the baggage of the Catholic church. The history of \"Classical\nMusic\" is much aligned with the history of the Church.\n\nSo there's a lot to cover.\n\nI learned a ton from this experience, and it was good for me, and -- I hope --\ngood for my students.\n\nSome things I learned from this in no particular order:\n\nIn a one-to-one setting with a young student, as in really young, like 4-5\nyears old, where you are trying to teach difficult things, get down on your\nknees. That young kid is looking at an unfamiliar giant who is now telling\nthem to do things they don't understand. They are still looking at you and\nwondering what the fuck is happening. Get to eye level with that kid. The kid\nwill be far more focused than if they are looking at what they think of as a\ngiant stranger.\n\nTime yourself. If you are going to work on some really demanding physical and\nmental things with kids like learning to hear and play an instrument, give the\nkid a break every 10 minutes or so. The formula I ended up with at this gig\nwas to do 10 minutes of supervised practice on instrument mechanics and then 5\nminutes or so of theory.\n\nAcross a range of \"talent\" levels, I was able to produce pretty amazing\nprogress with this method because you can keep a 5-year-old's interest for a\nlot longer if you are changing things up every so often.\n\nI could do an hour or two with a young kid, where other teachers were losing\nsteam and traction with the students after a half hour.\n\nI never beat any kids, or hit them in any way. I grew up in that environment,\nand I thought it was awful as a kid. As an adult I find it even more\nrepulsive. It's not, in my opinion, necessary for high achievement. And in my\npersonal experience, it was detrimental.\n\nIn a classroom situation, I feel like you are sort of stuck. You have to\npresent things as best you can and hope that everyone gets it. But you can\nhave some creative control sometimes. I remember teaching one theory class to\na wide range of kids. All of my students got locked into one history class at\nthe prep school. So I had kids who were 5-6 years old and kids who were close\nto my own age at the time (I was 19, and the oldest students were 17).\n\nThat's tough, and I don't have anything to offer someone stuck in that\nsituation. But it is possible to come up with a curriculum that can work for\nthis assuming that everyone in the class in equally ignorant. It's just hard\nto do.\n\nDon't be a male teaching any underage female past puberty one-on-one. Just\ndon't do it. I never got into trouble, but I know many totally innocent people\nwho have. I'm sure it works the other way. But there's a lot of emotion going\non in pubescent kids, and they are likely to have confused romantic feelings\nabout figures of authority who are not abusive. Just don't get close to that\nsituation.\n\nThe last thing I want to say from my experience is that kids like to be\ntreated with respect. That's part of the getting down on your knees thing.\nAnother part of respect is to just assume that they will behave well and\ncreate an environment in which it makes sense for them to behave well. Talk to\nthem like adults. Give them the freedom to fail and make mistakes.\n\nThey usually will not fail. They will usually step up to the challenge and do\nsome amazing things.\n\n~~~\neyan\nSir, I wish all teachers (and parents) learn from this. Well said.\n\n~~~\nianamartin\nThank you.\n\nI would like to point out that my observations as a music teacher are not\nlimited to that one experience of teaching the children of upper middle class\nwhite Texans.\n\nI've been involved with the El Systeme projects in South America and co-\nfounded a Systeme project in the Philippines a few years ago with my brother.\n\nThese projects target the poorest of the poor in these countries--the same\npeople that drug cartels and criminal gangs recruit from.\n\nWe offer an alternative to that life. And we take it not to people who can\nafford things like music lessons for their kids, but rather to families who\nhave no other options.\n\nWe set up a safe building where kids can go for their music lessons, and we\ntreat them with respect. We learn their language. We expect them to practice\nand get better, but we are not mean to them if they don't.\n\nIt's service to the world that gave me and my brother the talent and\nopportunities that we have.\n\nThose things I mentioned in my post are things that cut across cultural and\nclass boundaries. Those are things that bring children--who have every\nopportunity to go join a gang or deal drugs or go do whatever--back to the\nmusic program time and again.\n\nIt's completely anecdotal information, and I'm aware of that. But it's working\nin a small number of cases. Next year, we'll have a first generation of these\nstudents getting visas to come to the U.S. to study music at one of our\nuniversities.\n\nSome of them won't just study music. Some of them are intrigued by computers,\nand I've been teaching some comp sci at these programs as just an aside thing.\n\nThe U.S. is going to have a few more highly motivated, extremely talented,\nhard working, legal immigrants next year.\n\nI guess, if I can stop rambling for a moment, what I mean to say is this:\n\nA lot of education isn't really about what you study or where you learn. It's\nabout training your brain to think about things in a certain way. I think\nthat's what Wittgenstein was getting at, in his own way.\n\nI didn't get to be a software developer the normal way. But I learned to solve\nproblems through the lens of being a musician, which is all about solving real\nproblems.\n\nI don't know what these kids will do with their lives. These ones that I've\nonly ever taught music to. But I know that some of the ones I taught when I\nwas 19 have already grown up to be really competent physicists, computer\nscientists, and psychologists, and athletes.\n\nMaybe they would have done that anyway. It's true. We don't know.\n\nBut we know that the poor kids from the countries I'm working in right now in\nmy spare time will not have had that opportunity. So we'll see.\n\n~~~\nrogeryu\n> A lot of education isn't really about what you study or where you learn.\n> It's about training your brain to think about things in a certain way.\n\nIn university I followed courses in Computing, Psychology, Law and Theology.\nAll had different ways of learning, approaching the subject. Psychology was\n(for me) all about questioning: you can never be 100% sure and should always\nbe aware of another possible explanation. This has stuck with me, and I'm\nchampion finding alternative explanations.\n\nOne of my fellow students changed to medicine, and he told me that it was the\ncomplete opposite. If you questioned a method or theory (as first year\nstudent), you were completely out of line. These methods were tested thousands\nof times, and no stupid first year student could think of a better way, so\ndon't even try. I guess this changes over time because you have to change\nmethods to make progress, but it makes clear how different cultures can be.\n\n------\nigravious\nSome philosophers assume language. Aristotle assumed language, as far as I\nknow. It is unwise to assume language.\n\nPhilosophers manipulate concepts. This means that they create, destroy, morph,\nchange, add to, take away from, and so on. They put concepts into certain\nsorts of relationships with other concepts. If it is true in Ruby that\n_everything_ is an object, I think it is a fair analogy to say that in\nphilosophy everything is a concept. Concepts may be anonymous, like anonymous\nfunctions, but also concepts are labelled, and concepts have descriptions.\n\nPhilosophy has both a _what_ and a _how_. This is the same as any discipline.\nThere is the subject matter of the discipline and also the methods (or if you\nwant to be fancy, the methodologies) of the discipline. The difference between\nphilosophy and other disciplines is mainly the subject matter. In philosophy\nthe concepts are of a certain sort, abstract rather than concrete, though no-\none knows as yet how to draw that distinction, some even disagree that there\nis the possibility of drawing a clear distinction.\n\n[A side note. Even though humans are pretty adaptable, because humans have\nspent 99.99% of our evolutionary existence not being philosophers, we have a\nlot of systems in place that make us ill-suited for philosophizing. What I am\ntrying to say is that learning _how_ to do philosophy (for a human being) is\nas much about learning how to overcome human fallibility and bias and\nprejudice as it is about learning how to think logically (this is overrated)\nand learning how to manipulate concepts like a boss (this is underrated).]\n\nConcepts are conveyed from person to person using language. When one starts\nthinking about thinking you end up having to try to understand how it is that\nwe are able to manipulate concepts in the first place and also how it is we\ncome to acquire language. It is this conceptual and linguistic process that\nWittgenstein could observe first-hand while teaching kids.\n\n~~~\nsgt101\nSome concepts are conveyed using language, others fail to be conveyed and are\nthe focus of the attempts of humans to innovate in the use of language. The\npersonal experience of love is one of these that has kept poets busy for a few\nthousand years!\n\n------\ntimothybone\nHe was also hoping I think to debarb his relentless search to know philosophy.\nEverywhere he looked it seemed despair, even finding out his famousness in\nVienna, did not help him. He was utterly lost, and so looking to children,\nfound some light in their innocence. I've read quite a bit on Wittgenstein,\nand he seems to always be wandering, as if there is no one thing to explain\nanything at all. What is energy? Well it exists within the usage, as in, how\nwould you teach a child to use the word?\n\n------\ngnarbarian\nThanks for this. It prompted me to break out my old copy of The Wittgenstein\nReader for a second read.\n\n[http://www.amazon.com/The-Wittgenstein-Reader-Anthony-\nKenny/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Wittgenstein-Reader-Anthony-\nKenny/dp/1405135840)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: My weekend project gets engineers a girlfriend via command line - jonthepirate\nhttp://clidate.io/\n\n======\nwmat\nWhat's next, #geekdate on Freenode?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nOpendoor Launches - uptown\nhttps://www.opendoor.com/\n\n======\nLukeFitzpatrick\nNice looking site. Just letting you know, the video really slowed up the\nloading time. Took about 30 seconds+ for the second half of the page to load\nup. And, I've got a super fast connection.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFexl Version a3 now released - fexl\nhttp://fexl.com/code\n\n======\nfexl\nThe code page now includes some simple instructions for doing a quick download\nand test.\n\nI also made a very nice but simple enhancement to the grammar. Now when you\nwant to do a recursive definition, you must use \"==\" instead of the normal\n\"=\". That might sound like a pain, but bear with me, it's really great. In\nshort, the \"==\" syntax announces to the parser that you _intend_ to apply the\nfixpoint operator (Y combinator) to the definition, explicitly making it\nrecursive.\n\nFor example, here is the function which sums the numbers in a list:\n\n    \n    \n      \\sum == (\\list list 0.0 \\head\\tail double_add head; sum tail)\n    \n\nOf course, if you don't like saying double_add everywhere, you can easily\nabbreviate as follows:\n\n    \n    \n      \\add=double_add\n      \\sum == (\\list list 0.0 \\head\\tail add head; sum tail)\n    \n\nNow here's the great thing about requiring \"==\" for recursive definitions. It\nenables us to do ordinary \"procedural\" looking code, like in this snippet from\ntest_procedural in test/try.fxl:\n\n    \n    \n      \\show=(\\name\\value print name; print \" = \"; print value; nl;)\n    \n      \\x=3.0\n      \\y=4.0\n    \n      \\x=(add x x)\n      \\y=(mul y x)\n    \n      show \"x\" x; show \"y\" y;\n    \n      \\x=(div x; mul y 4.0)\n      show \"x\" x; show \"y\" y;\n    \n      \\z=(mul x; mul y; add 1.0 y)\n      show \"x\" x; show \"y\" y; show \"z\" z;\n    \n      \\z=(div z 5.0)\n      show \"z\" z;\n    \n\nIn other words, you can do incremental calculations which look like\ndestructive assignment, but really aren't.\n\nIn the old version \"a2\", a definition like this would have yielded infinite\nrecursion:\n\n    \n    \n      \\x=(add x x)\n    \n\nNow it actually means something useful.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSay Cheese: a snapshot of the massive DDoS attacks coming from IoT cameras - jgrahamc\nhttps://blog.cloudflare.com/say-cheese-a-snapshot-of-the-massive-ddos-attacks-coming-from-iot-cameras/\n======\nriskable\nI've been warning about this kind of thing for _years_ and years. Both\nprofessionally and in my personal life. On forums and anywhere people will\nlisten...\n\n _IoT is a security disaster_\n\nI hate to suggest things like this but we may need _legal_ remedies to solve\nthe problem before it becomes an Internet Zombie Armageddon (IZA). It's _that_\nbad.\n\nThere's going to be _tens of billions_ of IoT devices installed at businesses\nand homes in just a few short years. If they're not receiving regular, timely\nsecurity updates the Internet as we know it may just plain collapse from the\nsheer weight of all the zombies.\n\nI propose a mandatory \"nutrition label\" of sorts for IoT device packaging.\nSomething like this:\n\n    \n    \n        * Updates itself regularly\n        * Conforms to NIST security standards\n        * Public penetration test results: https://ptr.iot.nist.gov/A2L7P9D23345\n        * Shares data with 3rd party: No\n        * Administration by vendor: No\n        * Requires Internet connection to administer: No\n        * Requires 3rd party service to function: No\n        * Notifies of intrusion: Yes\n        * Logs all access: Yes\n        * Encrypts all network traffic: Yes\n    \n\nSomething like a publicly-posted penetration test would be incredibly\nvaluable. Especially if it was performed after each update of the device and\nat regular intervals. Even if it was an automated test (which in theory could\nbe 'gamed') it would still be better than what we have now which is _nothing_!\n\n~~~\npdkl95\nAs Dan Geer warned[1], embedded devices must not be both _unfixable_ and\n_immortal_. Either they have some sort of remove management interface and\nreceive regular security updates, or they _must_ have a limited lifespan.\n\nCreating embedded systems that won't be updated and live indefinitely is\nknowingly creating a hazard and nuisance to society.\n\n[1]\n[http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt](http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt)\n\n~~~\npavel_lishin\n> _or they must have a limited lifespan_\n\nThis seems like it would give free range to sell shitty devices that are\nobsolete the moment they come out of packaging - or worse, that brick\nthemselves on a timer for supposed security purposes (think HP ink\ncartridges.)\n\n~~~\npdkl95\nI agree, but the unfixable+immortal combination isn't really an acceptable\nsituation.\n\nThe solution for most devices is to simply keep them off the internet. Being a\nhost on the internet requires some level of care and maintenance so you don't\nbecome a hazard to others. I doubt most light-bulbs or thermostats are worth\nthe ongoing expenses of maintaining security updates into the indefinite\nfuture. In theory, traditional goods that last more than a few years should be\nmore successful on the market than self-destructing devices with dubious\ninternet features.\n\n------\nAnimats\nInteresting. This set of attacks is coming from real IP addresses. (SYN floods\nand single-packet UDP-based attacks use a totally bogus source IP address.)\nThe device can be talked to and potentially located. Somebody needs to be\nfinding some of those devices and analyzing them. How are they controlled?\nIRC? Some set of known domains or IP addresses? A self-healing mesh network?\nAll of those have been used, and most modern botnets have a quite\nsophisticated control network. This provides both robustness and conceals the\nactual controller. In modern botnets, everything is encrypted, so it's hard to\ntake over the botnet.[1]\n\nAttacks from real IP addresses are potentially blockable upstream. That's only\na temporary fix. The device, if behind a NAT, can request a new IP address and\nevade the block. It may do so periodically, just to confuse the issue. At\nleast you can block a hostile IP at a firewall, so it can't use server\nresources. That's what Cloudflare is doing.\n\nOn the legal front, it's worth suing makers of vulnerable devices for\nnegligence. Their EULA will not protect them, because the victim isn't their\ncustomer and isn't a party to the EULA. A few court orders to recall a product\nmight get the attention of the IoT industry.\n\n[1]\n[https://www.damballa.com/downloads/r_pubs/WP_Botnet_Communic...](https://www.damballa.com/downloads/r_pubs/WP_Botnet_Communications_Primer.pdf)\n\n~~~\nexhilaration\n_On the legal front, it 's worth suing makers of vulnerable devices for\nnegligence._\n\nWhere does one sue the no-name Chinese manufacturers of these devices? I have\na feeling a lawsuit won't get very far in Shenzhen Municipal Court. There's\nabsolutely no consequences to them building these devices and you cannot\nexpect a solution from them.\n\n~~~\nAnimats\nNolo Press: _\" In between the manufacturer and the retailer, there may be any\nnumber of wholesalers, suppliers, distributors, or other \"middlemen.\" Each and\nall are part of the chain of distribution of the defective product, are\ntherefore potentially liable, and should be named as defendants in your\ndefective product lawsuit.\"_\n\nCloudflare can start by suing a retailer. That's likely to result in the\nretailer pulling all merchandise from the offending vendor, even before the\nlawsuit gets very far. (Otherwise, they move to a higher tier of negligence\nand damages for knowingly allowing the problem to persist.) That will start to\nget the attention of manufacturers.\n\nSee this article.[1]\n\n[1] [http://www.techrepublic.com/article/lock-it-down-ddos-\nattack...](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/lock-it-down-ddos-attacks-may-\nland-you-in-court/)\n\n~~~\npixl97\nLots of this crap gets shipped straight from China by a distributor on Amazon.\nTry to sue them and I'm sure they'll just disappear and come back with a\ndifferent name\n\n~~~\nmynameislegion\nSue Amazon?\n\n------\nfalcolas\nStrangely enough, I think the solution is in devices like OnHub, Google WiFi,\nor other third party managed routers (yes, another IOT device).\n\nWhy? When attacks like this are first detected, they can be shut down at the\nsource. Known bad devices can be preemptively locked down behind a firewall.\nTraffic to specific IP addresses, or packets which spoof headers to cause\namplification attacks could all be detected and dropped before they even reach\nthe ISP.\n\nYes, there will be problems and bad diagnoses, no, I don't want one of these\nmanaging my home network; but it would be perfect for my mother, for my non-\ntechnical friends, and for the average Joe with a subverted IP camera.\n\n~~~\nhathawsh\nI like this idea a lot. Perhaps every IoT device should publish a profile of\nits expected behavior to the router. For example, a wifi-enabled thermostat\nmight tell the router that it only intends to connect to a particular range of\nservers, by DNS name. The router could then set up an automatic firewall rule\nthat stays in sync with DNS changes. The user should be able to disable that\nfirewall rule (to overcome technical issues), but most users will never have a\nreason to do so.\n\nWe could bootstrap this idea by having the router fingerprint IoT devices and\napply matching firewall policies from a database. If only we could install\n\"apps\" on routers, like we do on Android and iOS devices, someone could get\nstarted with this idea right now.\n\n~~~\nanchpop\nThe only issue is that after that point, the device can never connect anywhere\nelse.\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\nSo allow the device vendor a way to push a configuration change?\n\n~~~\njrockway\nThen the attacker would push that configuration change before DDoSing someone.\n\n~~~\nhathawsh\nWell, I would hope that any IoT device that accepts remote configuration or\nsoftware updates also checks digital signatures before applying changes. If it\ndoesn't, then I would want the automatic firewall on the router to block all\nupdates.\n\n------\ndanielcid\nThat's a problem that will only get worse. To give an example, last year,\nIncapsula recorded ~9,000 IoT cameras attacking them. A few months ago, Sucuri\nrecorded ~25,000.\n\nCloudFlare is seeing close to 50k. And that's the attackers just using a small\nportion of their real power for http floods.\n\nOur report from a few months ago breaking down the types of cameras and\nnetworking doing the attack - very similar to what CloudFlare saw:\n\n[https://blog.sucuri.net/2016/06/large-cctv-botnet-\nleveraged-...](https://blog.sucuri.net/2016/06/large-cctv-botnet-leveraged-\nddos-attacks.html)\n\n*I work at Sucuri.\n\n------\nMister_Snuggles\nI've got a bunch of cheap Wifi cameras and I don't worry about this kind of\nthing at all.\n\nAll of the cameras live on a separate Wifi network that is unable to connect\nto the internet. I use Zoneminder to handle all of the recording, motion\ndetection, etc. For remote access, I've got a VPN server running. Fortunately,\nthe cameras I use are perfectly happy to work without being able to talk to\nthe manufacturer's servers (though they do try!).\n\nIn a nutshell, I get almost all of the \"benefits\" of the cloud service (the\nonly missing thing is off-site storage, but a fix for that is in the works)\nwith almost none of the drawbacks.\n\nOf course, this is NOT easy for the average consumer to set up. They expect to\nbe able to plug the camera in and have things Just Work, which is why we've\ngot cameras that can open ports on routers/firewalls, register themselves with\ncloud services, etc, with minimal effort.\n\nAs for IoT in general, my future plans are to use this separate WiFi network\nfor all IoT-like devices that don't really need to connect to the internet.\nThe Philips Hue is a good example - it has a bunch of cloud-enabled\nfunctionality, but I don't actually need any of it.\n\n~~~\njoblessjunkie\nIt sounds like you actually worry about his kind of thing a great deal,\nconsidering the amount of effort you put in.\n\n~~~\nMister_Snuggles\nBelieve it or not, it was a whole bunch of little things that added up to this\nstate.\n\nWhen I started with the cameras I was just using the motion detection and\nemail features that were built into the firmware. I never bothered setting up\nthe cloud stuff because I didn't need it. Slowly I transitioned to having the\ncameras dump images onto a local NAS via FTP. Eventually I started using the\ncameras for more than watching the cats, so I needed something with better\nmotion detection and recording capabilities. I started with 'motion', then\nused a fork of 'motion' that seemed to work better, then finally ended up with\nZoneMinder.\n\nOn the VPN side, I decided many years ago that I wanted remote access to my\n\"stuff\" \\- file shares, etc. This started out with the PPTP VPN built into my\nrouter, which is terrible but sort of worked. The next step was writing a\nscript that would run SSH and set up a couple dozen tunnels, which is\ndifferently terrible but sort of worked. Eventually I got tired of maintaining\nthat and ended up with an IPSec VPN using racoon -- split DNS and split\ntunneling are truly amazing.\n\nThe extra Wifi network actually started as a misguided attempt to prevent\nother stuff (Netflix, mainly) from interfering with the cameras. I figured\nthat putting them on a separate Wifi network would isolate them and give them\ndedicated bandwidth. My first attempt involved using a Raspberry Pi as an AP.\nIt worked, but not very well at all. The second attempt used the Virtual AP\nfunctionality on my router -- it wasn't until I set this up that I understood\nthat Virtual APs don't quite work this way. Around this time I started to see\narticles about cloud-enabled cameras doing bad things and decided that this\nsetup was worth keeping.\n\nThe camera and VPN stuff both went on over the last 5-10 years or so, with the\nWifi changes being something I did within the last year.\n\nYou're right that there was a lot of effort, but as you can see it wasn't\nreally driven by privacy/security until the end. Most of these things were\ndriven by trying to find better ways to scratch various itches.\n\nThe next planned change is to re-address my network so that it doesn't use the\n192.168.1.0/24 range that every consumer router seems to use by default. This\nway I will be able to use VPN when I'm visiting friends without having to\ntether to my cell phone. Like everything else, it's just scratching an itch.\n\n------\njwmullally\nA general solution to IoT security would be for all IoT devices to only\ncommunicate to your personally owned home gateway, which would run open-source\ndrivers for each device to provide the networking/external communication\nfunctionality. The IoT device could even be assigned its own isolated network\nlink to the router (i.e. sandboxed).\n\nThat approach seems like the only logical conclusion for the device owners. I\n_hope_ this is how the field will eventually evolve.\n\nWhile its against the commercial interests of \"Internet data\" companies (who\nmight subsidize devices), in the long term regular consumer appliance\nmanufacturers will implement it _if_ theres enough market pull for it.\n\n~~~\nmtgx\nThat is kind of what Nest's Thread protocol allows IoT devices to do. But\nstrangely enough, Google is going the opposite direction with its devices,\nincluding coming up with such stupid ideas of controlling your (OnHub) Wi-Fi\nrouter _over the Internet_ through an app.\n\n~~~\njwmullally\nThread is just an IPv6 wireless mesh routing protocol right [1][2]?. On its\nown it doesn't solve 2 key security problems:\n\n* Any device can send arbitrary data to somewhere on the internet\n\n* Internally, any devices can send arbitrary data to any other device\n\n\\-----------------------\n\nAnother less-critical but important usability limitation is the short sighted\nnature of how device logic + APIs will evolve long-term for Device-to-Device\ncommunication.\n\nDevice-to-Device implies the application protocols are running on the devices\nthemselves, which can't be bugfixed or upgraded by the user and in the\nmajority of cases will likely never be updated by the manufacturer after\nrelease.\n\nIn [2] they give examples of devices like fridges and thermostats talking to\neach other. There's 3 long-term ways I see of handling device-to-device\napplication APIs:\n\n* Option 1: Raw device-to-device (Short term): How the hell will those APIs be agreed upon and evolve across multiple years and device products? Bluetooth now barely handles relatively simple interop use cases (files, contacts, audio...). Will Thermostat X support Fridge Protocol 8? How will the user handle more advanced use cases?\n\n* Option 2: Vendor managed (Currently the most likely): The devices will talk to the vendor servers which will talk to other vendor servers which will talk to your other devices. Terrible for the user for so many reasons but great for the vendor: its the simplest to implement, keeps protocols secret and locks user into giving that specific vendor endpoint all that juicy data.\n\n* Option 3: User managed (IMHO Preferable): Computer drivers are a much better model for this. Drivers sit over devices to transform the weird device API (fixed target) into a consistent interop API (community driven moving target) that does what people want. This still supports device-to-device: device A -> API call on gateway driver A -> gw driver interop API -> API call gateway driver B -> device B. This is what Option 2 (vendor managed) will actually have to do under the hood anyway. This could be implemented in a simple way e.g. with per-device(type) containers exposing a TCP/UDP port to the device.\n\nI predict Option 3 to become mainstream when the year of the Linux desktop\nlands :D\n\n\\-----------------\n\n[1]\n[https://www.threadgroup.org/portals/0/documents/resources/Th...](https://www.threadgroup.org/portals/0/documents/resources/Thread_Technical_Overview.pdf)\n\n[2] [https://www.infoq.com/articles/thread-protocol-for-home-\nauto...](https://www.infoq.com/articles/thread-protocol-for-home-automation)\n\n(Thread is a poorly chosen name for a new computer protocol:P)\n\n------\npbnjay\nI have a few cheap chinese ip cameras and I noticed that they have telnet open\n(I subsequently rooted them to fix this) and of course have them behind my\nhome firewall.\n\nHowever this and other IoT devices got me thinking that maybe it's time to\nstart an underground device hacking organization solely committed to not only\nrooting and reverse engineering these devices but also releasing new firmware\nfor all of them with open source internals. I'm sure this would have to be\n\"underground\" due to all the legal restrictions around the embedded device\ndrivers.\n\nWho wants to do this? I wouldn't know where to start besides a .onion site...\n\n~~~\nrasz_pl\n>not only rooting and reverse engineering these devices but also releasing new\nfirmware for all of them with open source internals\n\nI had the same idea, except in my version automated scan finds exploitable IOT\ndevices and updates them with new firmware straight from /dev/null. Problem\nSOLVED.\n\n~~~\nemp_zealoth\nActually it would be a nice thing to do. Wonder how long would it take\nmanufacturers of all this crap fix their shit after massive warranty claim\nflood came in\n\n------\nbhouston\nDoes Cloudflare still host (edit: proxy) the companies that do DDoS attacks\nthus serving to justify the use of Cloudflare services?\n\n~~~\njgrahamc\nWe don't do hosting.\n\n~~~\nbhouston\nQuoting Brian Krebs:\n\n> These two services, like most booters, are hidden behind CloudFlare, a\n> content distribution service that lets sites obscure their true Internet\n> address. In case anyone cares, Lizardstresser’s real Internet address\n> currently is 217.71.50.57, at a hosting facility in Bosnia.\n\n[https://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/12/lizard-kids-a-long-\ntrail...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/12/lizard-kids-a-long-trail-of-\nfail/)\n\n~~~\naurbano\nSo they don't do hosting... What you've quoted just explains how they act as a\nlayer in front of the actual server\n\n~~~\nbhouston\nHost/proxy - a non-relevant detail. I misspoke.\n\nEither way, Cloudflare appears to both help booters and then also sells\nservices to protect you from booters.\n\n~~~\njgrahamc\nCloudflare's CEO spoke about this here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWFX-\nzEYwN0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWFX-zEYwN0)\n\n~~~\ne40\nAn almost hour long talk. TL;DR?\n\n~~~\nmajke\n(I work at CF)\n\nI usually agree that spending 1h on a talk may be much. But I found this one\nto be really good. Matthew is both entertaining, and revealing some things\nthat weren't public before.\n\nI'd say the 1h is worth it.\n\n~~~\ncryptarch\nI think the point of a TL;DR is to allow those short in time to still take\nsome points away, or to give an overview and entice to consume the entire\nthing.\n\nI'd say \"Cloudflare recommends Cloudflare\" is pretty uninformative while a\nTL;DR isn't.\n\n~~~\nastrodust\nSometimes there isn't a TL;DR. Like explaining cancer or quantum physics in 30\nseconds misses most of the important details.\n\n~~~\ncryptarch\nSure, but GP seemed to focus on \"I know best how to spend your time\", whether\nintended or not. Irksome.\n\n------\nmerb\n> Connection: close\n\nwell if they would have keep-alive it would be probably even more disastrous.\nespecially if the botnet would have some intelligence that it would try to\ndetect the keep alive timeout and send requests exactly in this time frame.\n\n\\--\n\nalso a lot of these devices are probably built with linux. and here is\nsomething that is probably bad with linux, the lifespan of most linux iot\ndevices are probably outspanning the official lifecycle of any\ndistribution/kernel. this may lead to problems that the vendor will just\nabadonned it or doesn't care anymore, if he even provided a way to upgrade. on\nwindows this is probably as bad as well since most vendors will probably not\npay additional fee's after the next windows iot gets out of live.\n\nit's probably time to abadon most os's for these devices and create a new open\nsource project for these kind of devices, hardended from scratch. this would\nat least help with the unmaintained part of the os parts, which would make the\nsituation at least 1% better. well it won't fix the laziness of certain\nvendors.. but it would be a beginning.\n\n------\ndx034\nThe OVH write-up [0] is very interesting combined with this, as they had to\nwithstand an even bigger attack. Unfortunately, they don't publish as many\nstatistics. But apparently their attack came mostly from Spain, so different\nAS than Cloudflare.\n\nTheir plans to upgrade the Ddos mitigation sound very interesting, will be\ninteresting to see how long it takes until they need the 5Tbps:\n\n>will be replaced by a new technology developed in-house and based on FGPA\n(programmable integrated circuits) and codes that have been in development for\nthe past 18 months. This will allow us to offer up a VAC capable of\nwithstanding DDoS attacks with peaks up to 5 Tbps without slowing down our\nnetwork.\n\n[0] [https://www.ovh.com/us/news/articles/a2367.the-ddos-that-\ndid...](https://www.ovh.com/us/news/articles/a2367.the-ddos-that-didnt-break-\nthe-camels-vac)\n\n------\ncodedokode\nInternet is decentralized so there is no authority that could stop DDoS\nattack. We need a protocol that would allow a host to require peer or upstream\nnetwork to block/allow traffic from specific IPs or subnets. And of course the\ndenied traffic should not be paid for.\n\n------\nsupergeek133\nSeriously? I get the cameras scenario keeps coming up, but most of these (if\nnot all) are CCTV systems with a DVR with open remote management that either:\n\n\\- Is turned on by default (bad)\n\n\\- Is turned on without enabling even the slightest of security by the end\nuser (stupid but still bad)\n\n\\- If a or b aren't true, it has some sort of exploit that the company will\nnever fix (if they are still in business)\n\nThe \"rest\" of IoT in many cases doesn't have this problem at this scale.\nYou're either talking about proximal networks with no outside internet\n(z-wave, 15.4, etc) or something with secure communication with the home\nservice (PKI for example).\n\nI'm more and more frustrated with IoT fearmongering, if you want to talk about\nCCTV fearmongering? OK. But these aren't Nest cams, or Arlo cams. They're off\nthe shelf DVR CCTV systems.\n\n------\nthrow2016\nAt the moment a ddos is like an open weapon that can be deployed by nearly\nanybody to further any agenda; governments, extortionists, and anyone with an\naxe to grind.\n\nBut putting the burden on all devices that connect to the network is\nidealistic. Sure it may work for the 99 billion devices, but what about the 1\nbillion devices that may not be properly secured. This wack a mole strategy\nrarely works.\n\nThere must be a way for edge nodes to quickly detect a ddos and shut it down.\n\nWe should be extremely wary security hysteria often used by people with\nagendas to gain control and lock things down. Only 'approved' devices can\nconnect to the network or everyone on the internet must surrender their\npassport to the nearest authority and be surveiled 24/7 to prempt and prevent\ncriminal operations.\n\n------\nkingosticks\nThe first attacks were described as only lasting minutes. Is this the\nperpetrators stopping? If so, why? In case people start to notice their\n'smart' lightbulbs are glowing unusually bright? Otherwise what else stops the\nattack?\n\n~~~\ntehmaco\nProof of ability to potential customer? Checking that their command and\ncontrol software works?\n\nI doubt you'd notice a difference on the device unless you were doing\nsomething network/CPU intensive on it, even then, it'd just seem slow.\n\n~~~\nkingosticks\nAh OK that makes sense, thanks. It's handy for companies like Cloudflare to\nget a heads up on what's around the corner.\n\n------\nboulos\nNobody seemed to mention it, but the large payload query is designed to also\nDoS the hell out of old/insecure PHP binaries that will blindly accept (and\nkeep appending) as many items as you want. (In this case the array $a).\n\nSimilar attacks probably work against other CGI parsing things that don't\nexpect to have hundreds of thousands of qps each with long querystrings.\n\n------\nMrMullen\nThe only way I see IoT security being taken serious is when someone makes a\nbot that hunts down insecure IoT devices and permanently disables (bricks)\nthem. Only then will customers will force manufacturers to take the subject of\nsecurity seriously.\n\n------\nbogomipz\nDoes anyone if there's a commonality amongst these IoT security cameras that\nis facilitating this? Is it just non-sensible defaults or is something more\nlike the embedded webserver/SoC?\n\n~~~\nc22\nI think the biggest shared threat is the ability to punch holes in firewalls\nwith upnp. That and the fact that they're running ancient unpatched software\nstacks.\n\n~~~\nbogomipz\nIndeed, that gets back to not sane defaults though I suppose. The filet-of-\nfirewall was particularly troubling, Flash and DNS rebinding is all it takes\nif UPnP is running on your router. This worth read if anyone is interested:\n\n[http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/361684](http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/361684)\n\n------\nDenisM\nHow about this for a fix? Just thinking out loud here...\n\nLet's make a protocol that allows a server to specify to its upstream ISP to\ncut off all traffic from a particular IP address. The ISP can either soak up\nthe traffic, or go further up to its own upstream ISP and relay the request,\nand so on until the source of the attack is reached. Now it's between an IoT\ndevice owner and his residential ISP, it's up to them to sort it out.\n\nTo motivate all ISPs to play along let's make a law for each ISP to be\nfinancially responsible for failure to honor such requests, enough for a\nvictim to pay for defense plus some %% in penalties.\n\nSort of an automated \"Ceases and Desist\" letter, and a failure to abide is an\nautomatic tort.\n\nHm?\n\n~~~\nzzzcpan\nBGP flowspec works kind of like that. Also routers don't have unlimited\ncapacity to hold everyone's filtering rules, don't forget that.\n\n~~~\nDenisM\nYour typical large-scale attack has a few thousand IPs at most, so it's\ntechnically doable. All that's missing is the motivation for everyone to\nabide. With enough incentive hardware makers might accommodate, too.\n\n------\nt3ra\nTime probably time to name and shame brands. CP Plus is doing so much\nmarketing in India with TV slots.\n\nThey should probably invest that in doing some research and patching .\n\n------\nzzleeper\nIf things get too bad, can cloudfare pool with google, etc. and just block the\nIPs of those affected? (until someone fills a captcha)\n\n~~~\nmajke\nThere are researchers in many companies that are actively fighting the\nbotnets.\n\nSome links:\n\n\\- [https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/who-makes-the-iot-\nthings...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/who-makes-the-iot-things-under-\nattack/)\n\n\\- [http://blog.malwaremustdie.org/](http://blog.malwaremustdie.org/)\n\n\\- [https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/information-\nsecuri...](https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/information-\nsecurity/information-security-research.jsp)\n\n------\nfarhanhubble\nIt's high time we start fixing criminal liability for companies building such\npoor quality software and hardware.\n\n------\npolynomial\nSeems somewhat ironic that an article about DDoD is published on CloudFlare's\nblog.\n\n~~~\njlgaddis\nIronic? To me, it seems quite fitting that a company who has \"protecting you\nfrom DDoS attacks\" as one of their major selling points would publish an\narticle about (recent and relevant) DDoS attacks.\n\n~~~\nhueving\nIronic in the sense that they protect companies offering DDoS as a service.\n\n------\ngohwell\nTheir graphs mention Mrps and Krps, any idea what the R stands for?\n\n~~~\nkbuck\nRequests (i.e. HTTP requests).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMaybe the Low-End iPhone Is Really a Mid-End iPhone - antr\nhttp://allthingsd.com/20130503/maybe-the-low-end-iphone-is-really-a-mid-end-iphone/\n======\nttdan\nI think this would especially make sense considering the Lifetime value of\nthese iOS customers. Forcing (the majority) of users to pay for upfront for\nthe iPhone seems to drive a much better success rate on the iOS app store then\nwe see with Android where users are just getting the best free phone their\ncell phone provide is giving them and may not have interest in apps. IMO,\nforcing potential users to recognize the value of the device before purchasing\n(charging more upfront), leads to better lifetime value as well as increased\nmargin upfront.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMysterious Statistical Law May Finally Have an Explanation - joosters\nhttp://www.wired.com/2014/10/tracy-widom-mysterious-statistical-law/\n\n======\ne2e8\nSame article submitted with its original url discussed here:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8459264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8459264)\n\n~~~\njoosters\nThanks - I did a search before posting but it was based upon the wired\narticle's click-baity headline...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFunny money: How counterfeiting led to a major overhaul of Canada’s money - CaptainZapp\nhttp://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/currencies/funny-money-how-counterfeiting-led-to-a-major-overhaul-of-canadas-money/article2258968/singlepage/#articlecontent\n\n======\ndamnFineYarn\nInteresting article.I wonder if most of them could have gotten away if they\nweren't that greedy. Making 5 bucks to get some cigarettes would probably\nnever be uncovered.\n\nGet a new book every few days. Use it to buy groceries. Don't print yourself a\nyacht.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nRed Hat, Amazon deliver Linux on demand - shayan\nhttp://www.infoworld.com/article/07/11/07/Red-Hat-and-Amazon-deliver-Linux-on-demand_1.html\n\n======\ne1ven\nI think this is an interesting product, which will help bring EC2 into more\nbusinesses, but it seems to be added cost for little value for most startups.\n\nPerhaps I'm missing the value-add that Red Hat is bringing to the equation-\nThey're increasing the price over the standard EC2 image.. They're adding a\n$19/server flatfee, and then increasing the hourly cost by 10c - 16c/hr..\n\nGranted, they're bringing their name and reputation to the party, and you can\nuse official RHEL packages, rather than CentOS, but it doesn't seem worth it\nfor almost any startups.\n\nFrom: <http://www.redhat.com/solutions/cloud/faq/>\n\n` For Technical questions: Red Hat provides support for end-customer questions\nabout the services. Technical issues be addressed by Red Hat associates\nworking in concert with Amazon support and engineering in the event of issues\nwith the EC2 infrastructure.\n\nFor Customer Service issues: All customer service issues (Billing, EC2 Account\nActivation, etc.) should be forwarded directly to Amazon via application-\npayments@amazon.com. `\n\nIt looks like it's basically RHEL branded EC2, and the extra cost is to\nsupport the RH devs and tech support. That Laudable, but probably not enough\nof a value-add to be worth it.\n\n------\nshayan\nAwesome Move by Red Hat and Amazon (by Tim O'Reilly)\n[http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/11/redhat_amazon_ec2....](http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/11/redhat_amazon_ec2.html)\n\n------\nshayan\nMy love for Amazon is constantly growing ... I think Amazon's services are\nbecoming more and more interesting and innovative\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFacebook Patent Would Allow Lenders to Determine Credit - beauzero\nhttp://consumerist.com/2015/08/05/facebook-patent-would-allow-lenders-to-determine-creditworthiness-by-looking-at-your-friends/\n\n======\nAmorymeltzer\nLenders and credit score companies already have enormous influence and access,\ndo we really need to open the door to our friends and family? I suppose this\nis in line with previous reports of users getting different quotes based on\nwhat browser they use — admittedly your friends are probably a better measure\nof your credit — but it's yet another dive into your personal life by\ncreditors.\n\nI think Facebook's going to find that if your social network can directly\nimpact your money, people are going to behave differently. I can think of at\nleast 50 friends I'd cut today under such a scheme. How does that help\nFacebook if suddenly its users have fewer connections?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFacebook privacy, Chrome extension for 2-clicks \"like\" button - hayeah\nhttps://github.com/hayeah/FaceOff\n\n======\nindygreg2\nFor Firefox users, may I recommend ShareMeNot\n(<http://sharemenot.cs.washington.edu/>). It also nukes the tracking behavior\nof Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Google +1.\n\nOr, if you are an Adblock Plus user and want to kill Facebook on non-Facebook\nsites, add the following rule:\n\n    \n    \n      ||facebook.*$domain=~facebook.com|~127.0.0.1\n\n~~~\nfsaintjacques\nBlock all social garbage with adblockplus.\n\n[http://www.techairlines.com/2010/12/12/block-social-\nbuttons-...](http://www.techairlines.com/2010/12/12/block-social-buttons-\nwidgets/)\n\n------\nErrantX\nBetter to have posted it _after_ you've actually written it...\n\n~~~\nhayeah\nMVP. Sorry to disappoint :p\n\n~~~\nmtogo\nMVP stands for Minimum Viable _Product_. There has to actually be something\nfor it to be a Product.\n\n~~~\nhayeah\nMaybe I misused the term minimum \"viable\" product. But isn't it a standard\npractice for lean startups to run something like a potemkin village to test if\nthere's interest?\n\nI don't see why I shouldn't do the same with an open source project.\n\n------\nck2\nDoes everyone realize google tops Facebook by millions for cross site\ntracking? I mean ad scripts, stats scripts, +1 scripts, etc. etc. etc.\n\nGood luck on blocking google, I cannot even turn off javascript for their\ndomain because now their search requires it to function.\n\n~~~\nantimarketing\nYes, that is a very important point, precisely because people do not want to\nfocus their attention upon it.\n\nGoogle has gone from a company that does not do any \"evil\" to a company that\ntries to make a progressive / positive impact and therefore they feel entitled\nto collecting more information about their users than they ever thought they\nwould need at the beginning.\n\nIn that sense Google is like the government in the original Austrian\neconomics. From utility to expansive progressive force. But with what results\nthis time?\n\nEdit: this reminds me off the \"Faceback\" app from the movie Good Guys.\n\n------\nryanwhitney\nGreat Idea. Hoping for a Safari extension soon.\n\n------\nalxv\nThe Disconnect extension for Chrome is pretty good for that:\n\n[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jeoacafpbcihiomhla...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jeoacafpbcihiomhlakheieifhpjdfeo)\n\n------\ncsulok\ni love it when stuff backfires on evil/annoying companies. god i hope everyone\nstarts implementing the 2 click like buttons.\n\n~~~\nhayeah\nYou would violate terms of agreement. But if it's a Chrome extension, what can\nthey do?\n\n~~~\nYaggo\nNot a violation.\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2957957>\n\n~~~\nhayeah\nah. I stand corrected.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nJohnston Sans: The Tube typeface that changed everything - Jaruzel\nhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35916807\n======\njimothyhalpert7\n> \"Having the serifs on makes things more difficult to read, there's more for\n> the eye to take on,\" says Steel.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif#Readability_and_legibili...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif#Readability_and_legibility)\n\n> Serifed fonts are widely used for body text because they are considered\n> easier to read than sans-serif fonts in print. However, scientific study on\n> this topic has been inconclusive.\n\n~~~\nred_admiral\nI don't think that's a contradiction - I'd guess that sans serif is indeed\nmuch easier to read specifically on _signs_.\n\nWhen the UK designed its road/motorway signs they conducted all kinds of\nusability studies and ended up designing the Transport typeface; just about\nany country I've been to in Europe uses sans typefaces for roadsigns and\nstation/tube/airport signs.\n\nThe jury may well still be out for body text in books and other publications.\nThat's not the problem Johnston was asked to solve though.\n\n~~~\ntheandrewbailey\nThe US (and most of North America, it seems) also use sans serif road signs.\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Gothic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Gothic)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIt's Remarkably Easy to Lock a Pilot Out of the Cockpit - jabo\nhttp://www.wired.com/2015/03/remarkably-easy-lock-pilot-cockpit/\n\n======\nanigbrowl\nAmid all the talk of how the door locking system should or should not be\nmodified (eg always rotating another person into the cockpit or whatever), I'm\nastonished that there's no discussion of having a backup radio system on the\nplane. One of the saddest things about this whole incident is the idea of the\nsenior pilot futilely banging on the door with no way to get in, and no way to\neven communicate his predicament to the ground.\n\nAllowing ground takeover of a plane in distress would bring numerous problems\nof its own and is probably not feasible to implement in the immediate future,\nbut adding an extra radio would be technologically trivial, the protocols\nwould be easy to implement, and it would allow witnesses to (apparent) crimes\nof this sort to pass information that might save lives or at least give\ninvestigators a head start instead of a 3 day delay.\n\n~~~\nsoneil\nI think it's not a priority simply because it makes no difference. I mean, if\nyou had some Disney-style ability to 'go back' and change one thing, it'd be\nthe 48-hour delay in forming an initial conclusion?\n\nPersonally, I think it'd be much more productive to address the culture that\nleads to this - it is incredibly difficult for pilots to seek help for mental\nhealth issues. It's \"career suicide\", and puts them in a position where\nmedical professionals are their enemy.\n\nWorrying about the particular trivialities of this incident really doesn't get\nus anywhere - remembering that any tool put in place to help the \"good guy\" is\nalso available for use by the \"bad guy\". Ensuring \"good crew\" can rush the\nflight deck helps in the case that it's the \"bad crew\" flying - but also\nallows for \"bad crew\" to rush the flight deck while \"good crew\" are flying.\nYou can't win this one.\n\n~~~\nRockslide\n> it is incredibly difficult for pilots to seek help for mental health issues.\n> It's \"career suicide\", and puts them in a position where medical\n> professionals are their enemy\n\nExactly. Except that not so much the medical professionals, but the employers\nare the enemy. In the meantime, evidence was found in the pilot's appartment\nwhich shows that he was in treatment for a mental illness and was certified\nunfit for work on that day by his doctor. And his employer did not have a clue\nabout all that... (German reference e.g.\n[http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/a-1025956.html](http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/a-1025956.html)\n)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRumor: Third-party widgets on Facebook? - gibsonf1\nhttp://webware.com/8301-1_109-9709696-2.html?tag=cnetfd.mt\n======\nfar33d\nI doubt this. The main differentiator between facebook and myspace is that\nfacebook is clean and easy to use, vs. the maelstrom of crap that's tossed at\nyou in myspace.\n\nIf they do allow widgets, I'd imagine they'd go the opposite route as myspace:\ninstead of allowing all widgets and sites except the ones they block, facebook\nwill probably only allow sites that are approved.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Heroku-style deployments for private clouds - wereHamster\nhttp://scrz.io/\n\n======\nwereHamster\nI very much like Heroku, but due to technical restrictions (no WebSockets) we\nhave to use our own dedicated servers. And I wanted to have deployment as easy\nas Heroku where you just push to a repo and done. Scrz is not quite there yet,\nthough. It's more like: upload a slug to scrz and done. How you create the\nslug is up to you.\n\nIt's Heroku-style in the sense that the developers don't need to know on which\nservers the apps will be deployed to, and don't need to have ssh access to\nthose servers. There is also no need to have server addresses stored in the\nproject source code like it's usually done with capistrano.\n\nWe have our CI server configured so it automatically uploads the slug to scrz.\nSo for us it's really like Heroku, developers push to a git repo and the app\nis automatically deployed.\n\n------\ntectonic\nIs this an open source project?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n7 essential AI YouTube channels to keep you updated on AI - lonedune\nhttps://medium.com/p/d545ab401c4\n======\nlemmonii\nWhile not exactly centered around AI i would also recommend CodeParade\n[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrv269YwJzuZL3dH5PCgxUw/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrv269YwJzuZL3dH5PCgxUw/videos)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe San Francisco Rent Explosion: Part II - ryan_j_naughton\nhttp://priceonomics.com/the-san-francisco-rent-explosion-part-ii/\n\n======\ntwic\nThere is a special hell for people who present tabular data as images.\n\n~~~\ncalbear81\nI sometimes do this in emails because for some reason Gmail hates CUT AND\nPASTE from an Excel table into an email and none of the work I did to format\npadding, widths, etc. in cells are preserved.\n\n------\ndjb_hackernews\nI live in Boston and have visited SF a few times, definitely not connected to\nthe SF rental market like I am to Boston. What I am curious about is how new\nand how large these 1 bedroom apartments are in SF. My hunch is your dollar\nprobably goes further in SF than it does in Boston.\n\nA 1 bedroom/1 bathroom in the Back Bay (nicer, while not nicest part of the\ncity) will run about $2500/mo. But it'll be 100 years old, 400 sq ft,\noutdated, no laundry etc.\n\nI wonder how that compares to apartments in SOMA, which appear to be newer\nbuildings at least.\n\n~~~\nicedog\nI have a friend paying $2200 for a 230 sqft micro-apartment in SOMA. It's like\nhaving your bed in a tiny kitchen.\n\n~~~\nbaddox\nI'm paying $1800 for a ~250 sq. ft. microstudio in Soma. It's very much like\nhaving my bed in a tiny kitchen, but it's by far the cheapest place within a\n15 minute walk of work (FiDi) by myself with somewhat reasonable facilities.\n\n------\nnostromo\nI'm surprised that the Tenderloin has resisted gentrification for so long. Why\nis that neighborhood so impenetrable?\n\n~~~\ntwic\nAccording to their numbers, rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the Tenderloin\nactually _fell_ 12% last year. What's going on there?\n\n~~~\nsamstave\n> __* What 's going on there? __*\n\nghetto\n\n------\ngenwin\nDo coders (like at Twitter) typically make over $200K/yr? Or do they just eat\nramen every day?\n\n~~~\npotatolicious\nSome. Most do not. San Francisco's economy relies on young people not\nrealizing the importance of saving, and the consequent willingness to spend to\nthe bone.\n\nIn some cases the importance of saving is realized, but offset by the\ncertainty that they're going to cash out huge Any Day Now(tm).\n\n~~~\nsixQuarks\nAlso, I would think they are sharing 2-3 bedrooms with other co-workers.\n\n------\nmonkey_slap\nI'm currently interviewing for a position in SF that will likely be a dream\njob, but as a midwesterner, the rent situation terrifies me. Salaries\ncertainly seem to be inflated because of this, which is fine, but could anyone\noffer some insight or precautions about moving to SF at this time?\n\n~~~\ncesarbs\nI have a friend who recently moved to SF. The tip someone gave him was\nbasically to not take anything less than $150K for a salary.\n\n~~~\nfalsestprophet\nOnly 28 out of 638 startups on AngelList in San Francisco list software\nengineering jobs at over $150k.\n\n[https://angel.co/jobs?utm_source=home_gs#find/f!%7B%22locati...](https://angel.co/jobs?utm_source=home_gs#find/f!%7B%22locations%22%3A%5B%22San%20Francisco%22%5D%2C%22types%22%3A%5B%22full-\ntime%22%5D%2C%22roles%22%3A%5B%22Software%20Engineer%22%5D%2C%22salary%22%3A%7B%22min%22%3A150%2C%22max%22%3A200%7D%7D)\n\n~~~\npotatolicious\nThere's a growing gap between people who know how to negotiate and position\nand people who do not. Despite heavy competition for talent it's still easy\nfor an experienced, capable engineer to make \"only\" $120K in SF.\n\nIf you really have the chops, and know how to stick to your guns and position\nyourself in negotiations, companies _are_ willing to break the $150K barrier\n(even the $200K barrier). They're simply hoping you're not smart enough to\nknow how.\n\nThis includes not advertising the fact that they're willing to go above that\nbarrier.\n\n------\nthrowaway3333\nOne question I'm not seeing asked is, other than the wealth of interesting\njobs for those in tech, is SF even worth the price of admission as a city? My\nexperience here so far says \"no fucking way\".\n\n~~~\ngenwin\nSeems people tend to conflate the price of admission with desirability. There\nare plenty of reasons why rents can rise much faster than inflation, other\nthan desirability increasing.\n\n~~~\nmuzz\nYes, things like economic opportunity\n\n~~~\ngenwin\nCurrent biggest reason is likely that mortgage interest rates are being\nminimized by gov't so that banks can unload the houses they're holding at\nhigher prices. When house prices rise, rents tend to as well.\n\n------\ncesarbs\nThis is crazy. I pay $2300 for a large-ish 2 bedroom loft in an expensive\nplace in the Seattle area (Downtown Bellevue). I hope prices here don't get to\nwhat they are in SF.\n\n~~~\ngenwin\nIf you plan to stay in Bellevue long term, buy as soon as possible. The\nSeattle area's population is growing rapidly (mostly immigration it seems) and\nthe cranes aren't keeping up.\n\n~~~\ncylinder\nI can definitely see the Chinese diaspora becoming obsessed with Seattle in\nthe same way they have with Vancouver, Sydney, Melbourne, etc ...\n\n~~~\ngenwin\nI stopped short of mentioning that. It's harder for them to get into Vancouver\nnow, with a change in immigration law there. I think the ones who would've\npicked Vancouver now tend to settle on Seattle, willing to pay the same\n$million in cash for a house.\n\n------\nShivetya\none reason for sky high rents, with the rules so bent towards renters the\nhigher rents and deposits filter the majority of those people out.\n\nIts akin to renting homes, rent below 1k and your more than likely to get a\nbad renter.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe other kind of “flash” that we used to worry about - tbodt\nhttp://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/12/26/flash/\n======\nDunedan\nI was reading an article the other day and it took me a moment to realize that\nit was talking about flash as in software and not about flash as in flash\nstorage. Based on the headline I thought Rachel would write about the same, so\nI was quite surprised and amused to read that she was talking about an even\nolder meaning of flash.\n\n------\nsevensor\n> I should mention that there have been many variants on this theme. You could\n> jam those same fun escape sequences into a mail\n\nThis happened to me once as an undergraduate. I was in a lab full of dying\nSuns (they were replaced the following semester). It was late at night, late\nin the term and the hushed lab was packed with students wrapping up their\nprojects. I used Pine to open an e-mail from one of my friends at another\nuniversity, which turned out to be an animated Christmas tree, complete with\nblinking lights and beeping out \"We Wish You a Merry Christmas\" on the\ninternal speaker. I killed the terminal window as fast as I could, which\nwasn't very fast because the poor Sun was so busy rendering it. Everybody gave\nme dirty looks.\n\n~~~\nsubway\nA long long time ago, at a gig I desperately despised, I accidentally ran `cat\nMyResume.pdf`, causing a mix of garbage and readable ascii to print to my\nxterm. Unfortunately somewhere in that binary garbage were the escape\nsequences to turn on printerControlMode in the xterm.\n\nNot long after, my boss shows up at my desk with a sheet of garbage with\nsnippets of my resume mixed in. Learned an important lesson about accidentally\nspewing binary data into an xterm that day...\n\n~~~\nsevensor\nOuch!\n\n------\npascoej\nThis is still possible at CMU. Guaranteed to annoy your friends doing their\nhomework.\n\nmesg y is the default and write works. However when you try to run wall you\nget \"-bash: /usr/bin/wall: Permission denied.\"\n\n------\ngaius\nI knew about talkd and other shenanigans but I have never heard it called\n“getting flashed” before\n\n~~~\nrachelbythebay\nThis is probably the proof that I spent way too much time on IRC over the\nyears.\n\n------\nkacbskjbc\nSometimes I think this happens to me when I accidentally `cat` binary files!\nIt's particularly interesting that people used to add such strange features as\n\"automatic file transfer\" to their terminals.\n\n~~~\nsegfaultbuserr\nand the solution to this problem is still\n\n> _to suspend the program and hope they could blind-type out a \"reset\"._\n\nI find myself doing it a few times in a month, sometimes because of\naccidentally catting binary garbage, other time it was became a ncurses\nprogram crashed without resetting the terminal back to the normal mode.\n\nNext time I'll remember to call it \"getting flashed\".\n\nUnfortuately, ESR hasn't curated the Jargon File since 2002, and this word was\nnot included. AFAIK, Bob Mottram maintains his own fork of Jargon File,\n[https://code.freedombone.net/bashrc/TheJargonFile](https://code.freedombone.net/bashrc/TheJargonFile).\nI should request him to add the definition into the file.\n\n~~~\nsegfaultbuserr\n_Update:\nadded[https://code.freedombone.net/bashrc/TheJargonFile/src/652aff...](https://code.freedombone.net/bashrc/TheJargonFile/src/652aff1386b37f5dd333d4d0e88e9090f97244c9/entries/flash.txt)\n_\n\n------\nmr_toad\nYou can often find escape sequences embedded in requests in web server log\nfiles, waiting for some unsuspecting user with a vulnerable terminal to read\nthem.\n\n------\nicedchai\nSimpler times... I remember when running talkd, fingerd, etc. was the norm.\nNot to mention unshadowed password files.\n\n------\njaggederest\n\"Flash\" is also a term of art in manufacturing, where it's the excess material\nsqueezed out along the mold lines where the molds join.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nEntrepreneur Steps iPhone app (promo codes inside) - robsonw\n\nHey guys! Here are some more promo codes for you to evaluate my new iPhone app! It's a niche app with a todo list with pro tips, ready to help early stage entrepreneurs to start a small business.<p>EE4X6R4X3H67 366NYAAY3F9K TLE3XKNPXPRP WELPRL6AR7JR NPEXJRLWEYE7 Y7KYW9R6F6W7 XHN9X9YMFLTA HA4RHA7EFPFJ XA7WKYH3RLMM<p>Here the links: http://ooomf.com/entrepreneursteps<p>https://itunes.apple.com/app/entrepreneur-steps/id562140478?ls=1&#38;mt=8<p>Thank you for your comments and valuable feedback! Feel free to contact me anytime through: hello@foggylabs.com<p>Bob\n======\nrobsonw\nClickable link: [https://itunes.apple.com/app/entrepreneur-\nsteps/id562140478?...](https://itunes.apple.com/app/entrepreneur-\nsteps/id562140478?ls=1&mt=8)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEvidence of 'risk-taking' brain - tortilla\nhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7802751.stm\n======\ntokenadult\nHow does this study do by Peter Norvig's checklist?\n\n<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPhotographer sues Getty Images for $1B for being billed for her own photo (2016) - vezycash\nhttps://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-getty-copyright-20160729-snap-story.html\n======\ndredmorbius\nUnfortunately the case was thrown out of court:\n\n _The company said the suit was the result of several misunderstandings, and\nthat they would “defend ourselves vigorously.” Highsmith had no right to claim\nmisuse or infringement, said Getty, because she gave up that right when she\ndonated her images into the public domain._\n\n _In late October, the courts agreed with Getty, basically destroying\nHighsmith’s case._\n\n[https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-\nlaws...](https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-lawsuit-ends-\nnot-bang-whimper/)\n\n~~~\nkristofferR\nThere's nothing unfortunate about it. It would set a very bad precedent if\ncontent in the public domain, freed from copyright law, would still be subject\nto arbitrary usage limits.\n\nIf you want to release something for free with conditions, use other licences\nlike Creative Commons instead.\n\n~~~\ndiffeomorphism\n> would still be subject to arbitrary usage limits.\n\nDidn't the ruling achieve the exact opposite? Getty took public domain images\nand _added_ arbitrary usage limits on them by (fraudulently) claiming to be\nthe sole copyright holder.\n\nTaking the images and using them for whatever is fine, taking them and then\ntrying to forbid anybody else from taking them (the originals, not getty's\ncopies) is not and unrelated to the license.\n\n~~~\noliwarner\nPublic domain is special. You free yourself of all ownership which means that\nsomebody else can pick it up and relicense their distribution of it, including\n_saying_ you cannot do things with it. I emphasise \"saying\" because that's\npretty much all you can do unless they know they're the only entity\ndistributing it.\n\nThe problem here was trying to enforce on something that was obviously non-\nexclusive. This mistake happens with all sorts of content available through\nmultiple channels. Getty should have marked it as such on ingestion.\n\n~~~\ncturner\nPutting copyright matters aside, there is an issue of misrepresentation.\n\nA case that would be interesting would be one where Getty had represented that\nthey were acting on behalf of an exclusive copyright holder, and where a third\nparty had acquiesced to those demands, only to subsequently learn that Getty\nwas not the rights holder.\n\nThis is about basic contract issues. Getty falsely represented themselves to\nbe X, with the use of aggressive language, leading to a contract being formed\nbased on invalid premises. If it is a pattern of practice, it starts to look\nlike a RICO matter.\n\n~~~\noliwarner\nI disagree on the fundamental point that this was misrepresentation. They had\nevery right to enforce a claim, they were just stupid to assume others\nwouldn't have their own claims.\n\n~~~\nrndgermandude\nYou're breathing air. I own all the air. Pay me.\n\nNow, if I claimed this seriously, most people would laugh me out of the room.\nBut some might not and actually pay up. Especially if I threatened to sue them\nif they didn't pay up and the \"I\" was a big, well-known company.\n\nWhat Getty does is not just muddy grey misrepresentation, it's outright\nfraudulent.\n\n\\- They say it's copyright infringement in their letter. It is not.\n\n\\- They say you need a valid license to use the image. You do not.\n\n\\- They demand a license fee. Not a \"you used our service to find and download\nthis public domain work\" fee. A license fee.\n\n\\- There is no indication whatsoever Getty/Alamy had any role in how the\nphotograph got onto the website of Highsmith's foundation. Given it's her own\nphotograph, it's unlikely she used Getty at all. But they do not claim a fee\nfor using their services anyway, they claim a license fee based on copyright\nlaw, which they cannot.\n\nHighsmith gave up her copyright and cannot demand attribution or damages under\nthe copyright law, so I agree with the court there. What she instead should\nhave done is file a criminal complaint and a civil suit regarding the attempt\nto defraud her.\n\n~~~\noliwarner\nI take an amazing photo and give it to you with all rights to redistribute and\nsublicense it as you wish. You choose to redistribute it under a restrictive\nlicense for cash. As far as you know you're the only person selling this\nphoto.\n\nYou see my photo being used in a national advert. The advertiser is not your\ncustomer. Again, you think you're the only person with the right to\nredistribute this photo, and infer that your rights to a licensing fee is\nbeing infringed.\n\nAs I say, they were _stupid_ to treat this as if they had an exclusive\nlicense, but they had every right to redistribute under their license and ask\nfor a license fee. Just as the recipient of that demand had the right to tell\nthem go away.\n\n~~~\nrndgermandude\n>I take an amazing photo and give it to you with all rights to redistribute\nand sublicense it as you wish.\n\nThis is not what happened. They never were granted the rights to sublicense\nit. It is in the public domain. They can use it, redistribute it, or charge\nyou if you somehow use their services to do things with it, or even create\nderivative works which they then own. But they cannot relicense it or claim\nthey own it, or represent the owner.\n\nNow, the only thing I would let them bring forward as their argument is if\nthey themselves were defrauded by somebody claiming ownership of the\nphotograph. I see no indication that this is what had happened, tho.\n\n~~~\nfoo101\n> This is not what happened. They never were granted the rights to sublicense\n> it.\n\nThis is not what happened. They were granted the rights to sublicense it.\nPlacing a piece of work in public domain automatically grants others to do\nwhatever they want with it including sublicensing it.\n\n~~~\nMarazan\nThey were not granted the exclusive right to sub licence it.\n\nHappy now?\n\n~~~\nfoo101\nThe image was put in public domain. No further exclusive rights are required\nto sublicense it. You are allowed to pick work from public domain and\nsublicense it if you want to.\n\n~~~\nbcrosby95\nThe whole example was about having exclusive rights so anyone that had the\nimage must be infringing. That presumption is gone once the image is in the\npublic domain.\n\nThe problem isn't that Getty is trying to license an image, the problem is\nGetty is contacting people already using a public domain image and trying to\nget them to pay them money to use it.\n\n------\nkstenerud\nAs a business model it makes perverse sense:\n\n1\\. Use bots to vacuum up as many images as you can online, and claim\nownership.\n\n2\\. Use bots to search for infringement and automatically send claim letters\nagainst them.\n\n3\\. For any pushback, have a team of lawyers and clerks of various grades to\ndeal with situations as they escalate. Push or capitulate after sizing up the\nopponent.\n\nMost people either just want it over, or don't have the means to fight back\nfor any length of time. The money you make from such a scheme would far\noutweigh the legal costs due to the scale of the automated income.\n\nIt would only become problematic if someone else started a rival company, at\nwhich point they'd need to set up an oligopoly agreement to avoid destroying\none another with their bots.\n\n~~~\ndkdk8283\nMost people are indeed afraid of the law.\n\nLet’s not forget Getty is the reason we no longer have the “View image” button\non image search.\n\n~~~\ndredmorbius\nBrand D does:\n[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=view+image&t=h_&iax=images&ia=imag...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=view+image&t=h_&iax=images&ia=images)\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nUnfortunately DuckDuckGo’s image search is worse than their regular one :(\n\n------\npeteretep\n> As for the now-infamous collections letter, Getty painted it as an “honest”\n> mistake that they addressed as soon as they were notified of the issue by\n> Highsmith.\n\nI'd like to see the working on that. How did the mistake happen? How will they\nstop it happening again? Are they regularly emailing people threatening emails\nabout Library of Congress photos?\n\n~~~\nmadaxe_again\nIt’s automated.\n\nI ended up mediating a silly situation between Getty and a client about six\nyears ago.\n\nThe client is a manufacturer of consumer goods, mostly kitchenware. They own a\nboatload of brands. In 2014 or so they did a mountain of photography to\nreposition an existing professional cookware brand for consumers - lots of\nlifestyle shots, as well as your usual product shots. They made the images\navailable in an online, access controlled library for their customers to use\nin their marketing.\n\nAbout six months after this branding pack is made available, we hear from the\nclient that their customers are getting large payment demands (tens of\nthousands, in some cases) from Getty for the images that the client provided.\n\nWe approached getty on the client’s behalf, as they were just bewildered and\ndidn’t know where to even begin.\n\nIt took about two months to sort out - we had to repeatedly explain the\nsituation, while they argued that they owned the images, and had to go through\na lengthy process proving that the client owned the images. Burden of proof\nwas totally on us, and we were getting nowhere fast. While looking at some of\nthe supposedly infringing images, we noticed an incredibly faint watermark\nembedded in one of them that specified the site that the image had been\nrendered on - an unprotected image library on one of the client’s customer’s\nsites.\n\nFrom here, it transpired that Getty had hoovered up everything in that\nlibrary, assumed rights, and was selling it. Once we started pushing the tack\nthat they had broken several laws by accessing a computer system that was not\nintended to be available for them to access, and had stolen images from there,\nthe whole thing, along with all of the images on Getty from that library,\nvanished. They never even responded.\n\nOur takeaway here was that Getty use bots to find large collections of unique\nhigh-res images on sites that aren’t explicitly copyrighted, and just take\nthem, on the odds that they’ll get away with it.\n\nWe encouraged the client to sue them for damages, but they were so relieved\nthat the problem had gone away that they just wanted to move on.\n\nI’d wager this isn’t a unique experience.\n\n~~~\nthrow_m239339\n> I’d wager this isn’t a unique experience.\n\nIf your story is true frankly, then it makes Getty Images a bunch of\ncriminals, period. This is fraud and racketeering, no more, no less.\n\nIt's even worse than the \"Prenda Law\" story where lawyers were making money\nthreatening people who downloaded porn torrents illegally and forced them to\nsettle or be sued, because Getty Images does not own the content at first\nplace, they stole it, literally.\n\n~~~\njandrese\nThis justice department isn't going to take any action against businesses of\nany sort, so Getty is pretty much in the clear on this. They might get in\ntrouble in the future, but the end result is unlikely to be more than just a\nslap on the wrist (a few tens or hundreds of millions in fines) so there isn't\nmuch downside for them.\n\nIt's not illegal if a corporation does it after all.\n\n------\ndana321\nSo, they took public domain, added a watermark and claimed copyright?\n\nIts a case of using the wrong license if they didn't want this to happen. They\nshould have used Creative Commons.\n\n------\ndillonmckay\nSo, in the US, how does one put their IP into the public domain, without dying\nand waiting many years?\n\nI had thought this would be a license, not a waiver.\n\n~~~\nHeadsUpHigh\nMy understanding is that public domain means no license, no nothing. So anyone\ncan sell a copy of it( claiming copyright like in this case is a different\nstory). A licensed piece is not in the public domain. As the creator you can\ndictate the terms of use, and you do so with a license which basically allows\neveryone to use the piece( or for certain use-cases depending on the license).\nThink of it as a hack: a licensed piece is still copyrighted, and will enter\nthe public domain when the copyright expires( or the sun blows up, whichever\ncomes first).\n\n~~~\nJJMcJ\nLook at the Unlicense: [https://unlicense.org/](https://unlicense.org/)\n\nIt releases into the public domain, where possible, and has a paragraph that\ncomes as close as possible to the public domain in jurisdictions where that\nrelease isn't possible.\n\nI think the idea in the referenced case is that a release to the public domain\nmeans that the author gives up all interest in the work.\n\nNot to really defend Getty Images, which seems to be acting out of line.\n\n------\nArtDev\nI hope they make an example of Getty.\n\n------\nchoonway\nthe only way for all of this to work out (for all parties involved) is if\nthere is another superpower nation with nuclear weapons with laws that\npunishes these sort of behavior and all the tech talent flows there.\n\n------\nUrgo\nMods can we get a [2016] in the title?\n\n------\ndredmorbius\n2016\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAPNewsBreak: Evidence of 'God particle' found - brackishlake\nhttp://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/apnewsbreak-evidence-of-god-1468757.html\n\n======\ndotcoma\nIs this The Onion?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPython alternatives for PHP functions - weslly\nhttp://www.php2python.com/\n======\nmambodog\nI think in some cases, it would be better to explain why the PHP function was\na bad idea to begin with, rather than letting people bring it's mess over to\nPython. For example, Python doesn't need dumb shit like nl2br() [1].\n\n[1] <http://www.php2python.com/wiki/function.nl2br/>\n\n~~~\njiggy2011\nWhat's wrong with nl2br?\n\nSeems to do what it says on the tin.\n\n~~~\nmadjar\nExcept the problem most people actually want to solve is not \"convert newlines\nto <br>\", it is \"convert some text to html\", and this function may lead to\nthink that it does that, when it only does a tiny fraction of that. And that's\nhow injections are born.\n\n~~~\njiggy2011\nIf you're dealing with ascii plaintext the main significant difference is how\nit deals with new lines vs HTML.\n\nThe function never purports to do anything other than convert newlines to BR\ntags.\n\n~~~\ntolmasky\nWhat is being suggested is that the plaintext may contain a random html tag\n(Perhaps if supplied by a user, or perhaps because that tag is meant to be\ndisplayed as plaintext as well. The reason doesn't rally matter, \"tags\" in any\nsituation are still valid plaintext). By passing text to something that\nreplaces new lines with br the implication is that it is now safe to drop into\nHTML -- however now that tag from before can take effect (particularly bad if\nits a script tag). Thus, this function doesn't make sense unless it is at\nleast also coupled with HTML escaping.\n\n~~~\ntimdev2\n> By passing text to something that replaces new lines with br the implication\n> is that it is now safe to drop into HTML\n\nI don't see how that's implied at all. After all, the function is named nl2br,\nnot html2text.\n\n~~~\ntolmasky\nIt's implied because basically the only context under which <br>'s are used is\nwhen appearing in HTML. If someone is taking text, converting the newlines to\n<br>'s, then there's a 99.9% chance that the next step is that that text is\ngoing to be placed in a larger HTML document. Unless of course I'm forgetting\nsome alternative use of <br>'s.\n\nI agree the function does exactly what it says it will do. And if this was a\nprivate function used by something like text2html internally, then maybe it\nmight be a fine function. However, as a public function, the argument is that\nit inspires bad programming practices, since again, it is almost certainly\nbeing used as a primitive form of \"sanitation\" or \"conversion\" before\ndisplaying plaintext in a larger HTML document.\n\nI think if you could come up with an example of how this would be used NOT as\nan immediate precursor to dropping into HTML I could be convinced otherwise\n(and saying it is used after the other tags go through a sanitation process is\na poor response, since it means this function must always follow the other one\n-- further proving its uselessness as a standalone function).\n\n~~~\ntarabukka\nI have never, ever seen nl2br referred to as making anything secure or safe.\nIt just converts new lines to <br />s. That's what the manual says it does.\nThat's what tutorials say it does. That's what the function name very\nobviously shows.\n\nI think map() from Python should be removed. Its name implies to a new learner\nthat it will draw a map, but it actually does nothing to that effect at all!\nNo, it maps an array to a function. We must rename this dangerous function to\ncall_a_function_on_every_element_of_an_array - or, even better, remove it from\nthe language core ENTIRELY. If it was a private function used inside the\nruntime, maybe that would be fine, but it's a public part of the API.\n\n~~~\nufo\n>I have never, ever seen nl2br referred to as making anything secure or safe.\n\nThere is also no mention in the manual that it is _unsafe_! One of the big\nproblems with PHP is how easy it is to write dangerous code and how the\nstandard manuals and tutorials often give little explanation to this.\n\n~~~\nFirehed\nIt should be better documented to not directly print user input in HTML\ncontext, and there should be a very obvious best-practices[1] guide for\nnewbies explaining what to do (and what not to do). But nl2br could only be\ndangerous is you misunderstand the function's name, description, sample code,\nand everything else on the documentation.\n\n[1] as if they would read it...\n\n------\nkijin\nThought for a second that somebody had invented a Python library with\nfunctions that work identically with their PHP counterparts. Like php.js [1].\n\nTurns out it's much more than that. Rather than handing out ready-made\nfunctions to make Python behave like PHP, this site actually teaches you how\nto write Python like a real Pythonista. For example, str[2:5] instead of\nsubstr(str, 2, 3). Well done!\n\n[1] <http://phpjs.org/>\n\n~~~\nnaiquevin\n> Rather than handing out ready-made functions to make Python behave like PHP,\n> this site actually teaches you how to write Python like a real Pythonista.\n\nNot in my opinion. Here is my personal experience of using this site when I\nwas just starting with Python. I had landed up there looking for a function\nsimilar to PHP's `array_fill_keys`. And it showed me `dict.fromkeys(keys,\nvalue)`[1] without a slightest of warning that unexpected things will happen\nif its passed a mutable data structure such as an empty list as the value.\n\nSo IMO, for people coming from PHP background writing some of their first\nPython code, it can be helpful at times but not an alternative to learning\nPython from a book or some serious online resource. Moreover, the site itself\nsays that it won't teach you either PHP or Python.[2]\n\n[1]: <http://www.php2python.com/wiki/function.array-fill-keys/> [2]:\n<http://www.php2python.com/about/>\n\n~~~\nlloeki\nNot to mention the idiomatic way might just be one of:\n\n    \n    \n        # before generator expressions (generates intermediate list)\n        result = dict([ (k, value) for k in keys ])\n        \n        # with generator expressions (lazy iteration)\n        result = dict((k, value) for k in keys)\n        \n        # with dict comprehension (brand new, probably the fastest)\n        result = { k: value for k in keys }\n\n~~~\nd0mine\n\n        d = dict.fromkeys(keys, value)\n    \n\nis fine if value is immutable e.g., a string, number.\n\nYour code doesn't solve the mutability problem (each value is the exact same\nobject. If you modify it for one key; the values are modified for all keys).\n\nFor a mutable type you need to create a new value for each key:\n\n    \n    \n        d = {k: [] for k in keys}\n\n~~~\nnaiquevin\nThis works fine too,\n\n    \n    \n       dict((k, []) for k in keys)\n    \n\nAlthough I later realized what I really needed was defaultdict[1]\n\n    \n    \n       d = defaultdict(list)\n    \n\n[1]:\n[http://docs.python.org/2/library/collections.html#collection...](http://docs.python.org/2/library/collections.html#collections.defaultdict)\n\n------\njeffisabelle\ncool job right there, but just curious, why this is php >> python and not php\n<< >> phython ? does that need a lot more work?\n\n~~~\nredegg\nBecause mostly everyone hates PHP. This site serves to show the Python way of\ndoing things if anyone's interested, or is moving away from PHP.\n\nEdit: I am wrong, not everyone hates PHP.\n\n~~~\ndsl\nAs someone who doesn't know much in the way of Python, it seems odd to me that\nmany of the examples are blocks of code vs one line replacements for PHP\nfunctions. Is Python just more verbose?\n\n~~~\nnikcub\nI know both languages well. Python is much more succinct than PHP because of\narray literals, list comprehensions, lambda's and better native data types\nwith ways to navigate them (all the functional methods are there). Only PHP\n5.4 with a literal array syntax is beginning to approach some of the things\nyou can do in Python.\n\nYou think PHP is short because you have functions like xmlrpc_encode_request\nand the equivalent in Python is 20 lines. What you don't see if that\nxmlrpc_encode_request is pages and pages of C code and PHP macro's behind the\nscenes. That function should be in a library, not in a programming language,\nwhich is why PHP is more comparable to other web frameworks, not to other\nprogramming languages.\n\n~~~\nFirehed\nIt IS a PHP library - just one written in C rather than in user-land PHP code.\nWhy is this a problem? The XML-RPC extension isn't even enabled by default.\n\n------\nagentultra\nI actually found this quite useful today. A rare case where I needed to\ntranslate the Wordpress post decoding function to get the rendered HTML form\nfrom a post into Python. Soon pelican's importer will be better able to\npreserve content from Wordpress blogs.\n\n------\ntomjakubowski\nI was pleasantly surprised to see this wasn't a link to php.py, the somewhat\nbizarre port of the PHP standard library to python:\n\n[http://code.google.com/p/php-\npy/source/browse/trunk/src/php/...](http://code.google.com/p/php-\npy/source/browse/trunk/src/php/php.py)\n\n~~~\ngasull\nThere's also PyHP to use PHP templates with Python:\n<https://github.com/bendemott/pyhp>\n\n------\nniggler\nJust like with PHPJS (an effort to bring PHP standard library to JS) there are\nmissing implementations:\n\n<http://www.php2python.com/wiki/function.mt-rand/>\n\n------\nRossM\nI suffer from the 'does everything in PHP because it's comfortable' habit, and\nthis guide always helps when translating.\n\n------\nnodesocket\nVery nice and useful.\n\n------\neriksank\nPHP may have its flaws, but Python does not seem to be the answer either. By\nthe way, have they already found a fail-safe way to visually represent the\ndifference between a space and a tab? Since space is a keyword and a tab too,\nhow does the programming with invisible differences in whitespace combinations\nwork? Does it already support all possible unicode whitespace? I guess I\nshould ask a high priest in Python whitespace calculus ... Why not simplify\nthe whole thing and use brainfuck characters instead?\n\n~~~\nandybak\nNo one who actually uses Python has any day to day problems with white space.\n\nActually had one myself yesterday. Took me seconds to fix and was notable only\nbecause it was such a rare event.\n\n~~~\nsmsm42\nI do use python for work from time to time (not every day, but probably every\nweek) and I still occasionally have problems with whitespace. It's one of the\nmost annoying things with Python, especially if editing somebody else's code\nor working in foreign environment (another machine, etc.) where tools aren't\nconfigured in your standard way.\n\n~~~\nandybak\nPEP8: \"Use 4 spaces per indentation level.\"\n\nIf you're getting code from someone else in your company which doesn't, just\nhit them round the head with PEP8 until they learn.\n\n~~~\nsmsm42\nIt's easy to write a PEP, it's less easy to configure every editor in\nexistence to use exactly 4 spaces, especially when normal humans prefer\nhitting tab once instead of hitting space 4 times.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Looking for NYC-based technical co-founder for green meta-retail site - octavia\n\nFully-functional, uniquely positioned green/social impact ecommerce site seeks a co-founder to help oversee site development, co-raise capital, and grow the organization with the existing founder. The existing founder is strong in finance and business development and has founded three Internet startups to date. The perfect co-founder will be strong in technology but also capable of confidently co-pitching the company to potential investors.<p>This is the perfect opportunity for someone interested in the environment, helping small businesses thrive, and doing something positive for the planet to walk in as a partner and have an immediate impact on the direction of a startup that, with a small round of investment, can be launched in a very short amount of time. The site is real and it's 95% of the way towards being launch-ready in a basic form with plans for continuous improvement. Launch fast, update often.<p>The company is a for-profit venture, although it's social impact is beneficial, thus it fits the profile of traditional and social capital market investors. It is funded by the founder and friends&#38;family to date.  Co-founder salary will depend on successfully raising a round of capital. Existing founder realizes the importance of the role to be filled by this new co-founder and that will be reflected in the equity package presented to the right person.<p>If you have a strong business background, but not a technical one, and are looking for such an opportunity, feel free to contact us.  A third co-founder who significantly increases the company's potential is not out of the question.<p>The company is based in New York City and the code for the site was written by a reputable local contracting firm.<p>Contact egreen.site1@gmail.com\n======\nsmoody\nHNers,\n\nI have personally known the founder of the above startup for a decade and can\nvouch for her abilities as both a serial entrepreneur and as a genuinely good\nperson. This isn't her first time doing this, so she has a track record. And,\nalthough the funding climate is a bit bumpy these days, there are some unique\nopportunities specifically in NYC for startups, startups that help local (and\nnon-local) businesses, and for social impact startups in general.\n\nThere are plenty of 'looking for programmer to implement idea as described on\nthe back of a napkin' situations out there (and I'm not knocking them -- those\ncan be amazing), but this is different. And there is plenty of room for\ninnovation as the site evolves over time.\n\nI guess my post raises at least two potential questions:\n\n1) Why am I not stepping in as a co-founder? Answer: I'm busy with my own\nstartup. Additionally, she's a good friend of mine and I've learned again and\nagain that working with friends is, in the long term, often high risk with\nmore downside than upside.\n\n2) Who can vouch for me? No one on this site perhaps, but even if there were,\nit's turtles all the way down. :-)\n\n    \n    \n       Scott\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\n48 Hours Left: Crowdfunding Amphetamines Research & Metrics to Date - bmahmood\nhttp://www.perlsteinlab.com/round-table/anatomy-of-a-crowdfund-the-homestretch\n\n======\nbmahmood\nEthan Perlstein, as Princeton research fellow is crowdfunding his research on\namphetamines. So far, he's raised raised $18,246 from 258 donors, and needs\n$6,754 to complete the fundraising.\n\nThis is one of the first hard science crowdfunding campaigns I've seen, and I\nbelieve if successful, can be a testament to the power of crowdfunding to\nsupport scientific research in the future.\n\nThe researcher has promised to provide regular updates on his research in an\nopen-notebook fashion, and the preliminary metrics of the crowdfunding\ncampaign may represent the diligence with which he is already assessing his\nefforts.\n\nWe can help support the cause here:\n[http://www.rockethub.com/projects/11106-crowdsourcing-\ndiscov...](http://www.rockethub.com/projects/11106-crowdsourcing-discovery)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n‘Lede’ vs. ‘Lead’ (2011) - gruseom\nhttp://howardowens.com/lede-vs-lead/\n======\nscandox\nThis is great news. One of the most frustrating things on Twitter is everybody\npretending to be a hardbitten journo throwing this term around like they were\non a deadline...or even had a job.\n\n~~~\neli\nThough to be fair, actual hardbitten journos use it too. It's the accepted and\nmost popular formulation of the word even if the myth around its origin is\nbogus.\n\nEarliest reference in my OED is 1951 with \"lede\" listed then as an alternate\nspelling of \"lead\"\n\n~~~\nghaff\nYeah. I know long-time journos who use it and it seems to have become pretty\nwidely accepted. But, having been at least somewhat involved in journalism for\na long time, I probably had never seen that spelling before 15 years ago or\nso. I admit I tend to use it today. Here's a piece that William Safire wrote\nin the Times a long way back:\n\n[http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/18/magazine/on-language-\nhed-f...](http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/18/magazine/on-language-hed-folo-my-\nlede-unhed.html)\n\n~~~\ngojomo\nThis article also explains TFA's confusion about not finding examples of\n'lede' earlier.\n\nThe variant spelling was an old practice, well-known to Safire & the other\n\"old hands of journalism\" mentioned (such as Herb Caen), as inside-jargon –\nbut its initial practical value came from its distinction from the 'common\nspellings' for similar concepts.\n\nBut Safire writes about it, in 1990, because just around then it's starting to\nsneak out into wider usage. Safire concludes his reporting and wordplay-\naround-the-word with:\n\n _But [lede] has earned its place as a variant spelling, soon to overtake the\noriginal spelling for the beginning of a news article. That 's lexicographic\nnews, but I have learned never to put the story in the lede._\n\n~~~\nduggan\nSince this is an article about language usage, can you explain to me what\n\"TFA\" means to you?\n\nI've seen in pop up increasingly on HN, and as far as I've always known it was\na contraction of RTFA (from RTFM) and thus not generally a civil way to refer\nto an article.\n\n~~~\nghaff\nIt's just an in-group way to refer to \"the article\" or \"the article under\ndiscussion.\" If it bothers you. well, I guess that's your prerogative.\n\n~~~\nduggan\nNo need for the snark, I was just curious as to whether the meaning had\nshifted.\n\n------\nender7\nNote that journalism has a more overloaded space than most when it comes to\nlead vs. lead, so I'm not surprised someone started using \"lede\" to mean\nspecifically the one that sounds like LEED. \"Leading\", a common typographic\nterm describing the space between lines, is pronounced the other way, like the\nelement (and is in fact named for it).\n\n~~~\naxaxs\nBut the article states lede was meant to represent the one pronounced 'led',\nor did I misinterpret?\n\n------\nDoctor_Fegg\nFormer (UK) magazine editor. I’ve never seen “lede” on any publication I’ve\nworked on. “Standfirst”, “intro”, sometimes “lead” (though that was more often\nused to describe the positioning of a story on a page). But never “lede”.\n\nIt’s possible it was used in UK newspapers, but I doubt that: most newspaper\njargon found its way to magazines eventually (subbing markup was the same, for\nexample). I suspect it’s purely a modern US newspaper affectation.\n\n~~~\nbinaryriviera\nExactly. As someone who's only lived in commonwealth countries and consumes a\nlot of printed media, I've never come across this term before, it just looks\nodd to me.\n\n------\nsimias\nIt reminds me of a pet peeve of mine: the way most modern english speakers\npronounce \"celtic\" with a hard 'k' sound. I'm not a native english speaker so\nI always assumed the 'c' would be soft here, because even though as we all\nknow english pronunciation can be a bit... random at times, pronouncing \"ce\"\nas \"ke\" seems very out of place. When I first heard it pronounced that way it\nsurprised me.\n\nAfter looking more into it, it seems that it's a relatively recent shift in\nthe language, quoting wikipedia:\n\n> The ⟨c⟩ in the words Celt and Celtic was traditionally soft but since the\n> late 19th century the hard pronunciation has also been recognized in\n> conscious imitation of the classical Latin pronunciation of Celtae[...]\n\nSo it's just some late 19th century hipsters wanting to sound posh by randomly\nborrowing a foreign pronunciation rule. There's also the fact that in Gaelic\nthe C is hard, but that's kind of adding insult to injury because \"Celtic\" is\nnot a Celt word.\n\nIt falls in the same category as people insisting that the plural of \"virus\"\nis \"virii\" or that you have two \"octopi\" (both plurals being technically wrong\nIIRC). Given that about 50% of english vocabulary comes from french I guess\nthese people should start using french grammar everywhere to be consistent.\n\nOr should I say \"Given that about 50% of vocabulaire anglais come from\nfrançais I imagine that these folks should to start grammaire french\neverywhere for to be consistant\"? Am I fancy enough yet?\n\n~~~\nklodolph\n> So it's just some late 19th century hipsters…\n\nThat's a pretty caustic way of putting it. English pronunciation is known to\nbe a mess, and applying \"inapplicable\" phonetic or morphological rules to\nwords is just the way it works _everywhere._\n\nThink about it this way: we have a limited budget for language complexity.\nIt's too much to learn and remember that certain words conjugate according to\ncertain rules of the word's original language, so instead we say \"singular -us\nbecomes plural -i\". And then people judge each other poorly for getting it\nwrong.\n\n> Given that about 50% of english vocabulary comes from french I guess these\n> people should start using french grammar everywhere to be consistent.\n\nHonestly I don't follow this argument. English already has irregular nouns,\nlearning a few new ones or switching around the plural forms is not unusual.\n\n~~~\nsimias\nI completely agree with your point but in this case it's not a simplification,\nit's yet an other exception. I can understand exceptions or odd pronunciations\ndisappearing but that's the other way around.\n\nNormally words in english which have \"ce\" in them are not pronounced \"ke\".\nSimilarly words whose singular ends with \"~us\" do not usually become \"~i\" in\nthe plural. You don't say \"one bus, two bi\", \"one fetus, two feti\". Cherry-\npicking a few words that for some reason should follow latin grammar is more\nmotivated by sounding \"smart\" than linguistic necessity IMO.\n\n~~~\nklodolph\nI can't help but feel that the \"bus-bi\" example is disingenuous. Surely you\ndon't think I'm that stupid?\n\nMemorizing which words take Latin plurals and which ones don't is work that\nnot everyone has done. So we guess that \"virus\" is a second-declension Latin\nnoun, which is correct, but now we have to also remember that it's a mass noun\nand therefore doesn't take a plural in Latin, but since it's not a mass noun\nin English it has to take a plural anyway, and therefore we get \"viruses\".\n\nAnd when people get this wrong you can judge them poorly and accuse them of\ntrying to sound smart.\n\n------\nJacobAldridge\nI trained as a journalist in Australia in the late 90s/early 00s - although I\nwent down the radio/tv route rather than print so had only limited exposure\n(and a few bylines in nothing of note) to the latter.\n\nI never saw it spelled anything other than \"lead\" or spelled it myself any\nother way. Seeing \"lede\" later in life made me question what else I may have\nwilfilly missed - glad to learn I wasn't a complete moron through that part of\nmy life.\n\n------\njccc\nWhat in the world are you people talking about?\n\nHed, dek, lede, graf, etc. were all used in drafts when I was on the morning\ndaily newspaper in J School specifically because they'd get caught in spell\ncheck.\n\nStill used on occasion now by people in my very semi-journalism job because\nabsolutely everyone knows what they mean and where those spellings come from.\n\n------\nklint\nI've never heard the \"hot lead' explanation or heard the word pronounced as\n\"led.\" If I had to guess, I would guess that deliberate misspellings arose for\nthe reason I find them useful: they get flagged by spellcheckers, reducing the\nrisk that placeholder text will be published. I've wondered, though, whether\nthe funny spellings predated word processors. Lede, graf, hed, etc. would\nstandout to human copy editors and computer spellcheckers alike. A 1970s\norigin for \"lede,\" if correct, would suggest it emerged alongside word\nprocessors.\n\n~~~\ncarlmr\n>I would guess that deliberate misspellings arose for the reason I find them\nuseful: they get flagged by spellcheckers, reducing the risk that placeholder\ntext will be published.\n\nI was just thinking, they're using a stringly typed weak type system.\n\n------\nCPLX\nIn professional settings jargon is useful because it eliminates ambiguity.\nThat's what it's for.\n\nThe words lede, hed, dek, and graf (the latter three being curiously absent\nfrom this article) have no other usage except in journalism, they mean exactly\none thing, and there is absolutely no chance that they are words that appear\nin the actual story. They are spelled the way they are so you know what they\nare when you see them.\n\nWhen you're in a fast paced business of organizing words and getting them into\npublic hands on very short deadlines, those are _useful_ attributes.\n\nThings like this generally get adopted because they are useful, not because of\nsome oddball nostalgia. Ockham's razor suggests that's what has happened here\nas well.\n\n~~~\ninterfixus\nAnd Occam's too.\n\n~~~\nCPLX\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Ockham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Ockham)\n\n------\nsmnscu\nCan I just say that one of the many features of Mac OS that I love is force\nclick (or triple tap) a word to see its dictionary definition. Especially\nuseful for a non-native English and German (yes, you can configure multiple\ndictionaries which is pretty cool) speaker.\n\nExample: for lede you get the concise definition, even what \"bury the lede\"\nmeans [https://i.imgur.com/2jcKHkh.png](https://i.imgur.com/2jcKHkh.png)\n\n~~~\npkamb\nRelated: Lately I've been noticing just how bad/outclassed the Mac spelling\ncorrection dictionary is.\n\nOften I'll type a sentence and a word or two will get the red-underline.\nRather than figure out exactly which letters I transposed, I just right-click\nand select the word I meant to type.\n\nBut half the time Mac OS can't figure it out. So I copy my misspelling, paste\ninto Google, and the \"Did You Mean...?\" feature gets it right every time.\n\n------\njwilk\nLanguage Log post about \"lede\" and friends:\n\n[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004380.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004380.html)\n\n------\nfao_\nInterestingly enough Google Ngram shows high occurence of the word \"lede\"\n(with varying capitalization) in the 1800s with two peaks around 1815 and\n1860, and then heavily declining usage.\n\n[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lede&case_inse...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lede&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=2&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Clede%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Blede%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BLede%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BLEDE%3B%2Cc0)\n\nEDIT: Graphing lede,lead shows that 'lead' has always been in the lead with\nrespect to usage. However, expanding the corpus timeline shows almost\ncompeting usage in 1564!\n\n[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lede%2Clead&ca...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lede%2Clead&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1200&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=2&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Clede%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Blede%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BLede%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Clead%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Blead%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BLead%3B%2Cc0)\n\n~~~\nmysterypie\nUnder the graph, google has links to open up excerpts of usage from various\ntime periods. Looking at a bunch of them, it seems that most of them come from\nLede being a proper name. I also saw a couple occurrences as a verb as in \"it\nledes to water\".\n\n------\nInclinedPlane\nI always use this little mnemonic to keep things straight:\n\nLead rhymes with read, whereas lead rhymes with read.\n\n------\nSAI_Peregrinus\nI prefer the spelling \"lede\" simply because it differentiates it from the\nelement \"lead\" with symbol \"Pb\". Heteronyms are irritating and sometimes\nconfusing. I'd be happy if the \"lede\" spelling expanded to cover the other\nmeanings with that pronunciation.\n\n~~~\nzik\nThat still doesn't help with \"I put my dog on his lead\", \"Usain Bolt is in the\nlead\" or other cases where it's pronounced that way.\n\n~~~\ntacostakohashi\nIsn't that a leash?\n\n~~~\nClassyJacket\nIt's a different word for the same thing. I hear leash in American TV shows\nbut in Australia we call it a lead.\n\n------\nramshorns\nI had never heard of “–30–”. Apparently it marks the end of a story.\n\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%9330%E2%80%93](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%9330%E2%80%93)\n\n~~~\nghaff\nIt means end of story. i.e. it's what you typed (on the typewriter) to\nindicate there weren't any more pages which isn't necessarily obvious with\nstrict inverted pyramid writing. No one seems too clear on the origins AFAIK\nalthough a leading theory is that it came from a telegraph standard.\n\n~~~\nstan_rogers\nIt's three exes (XXX) written as Arabic numerals (though they were never Roman\nnumerals to begin with). \"XXX\" is an easily-identified marker; \"30\" is just\ncargo cult stuff.\n\n~~~\nghaff\nThat's one of a variety of explanations but no one seems sure of the actual\nanswer, e.g. [1] In any case, it was widely used for a long time.\n\n[1]\n[http://archive.saila.com/journalism/thirty/](http://archive.saila.com/journalism/thirty/)\n\n------\nunixhero\nInterestingly lede means to lead in Norwegian.\n\nI thought someone had some kind of semantic exploration going on about the\norigins of the word lead from it's beautiful origins of Norse Viking wisdom.\nBut alas, I was mistaken.\n\n------\npeatmoss\nAs an undergraduate journalism major who never worked as a journalist, I also\nremember learning that “headline” was often shortened to “head,” but was\nspelled “hed.”\n\nAt least according to one of my J-school profs who had come from industry. So,\nuh, take all that with a grain of salt, even though I believe it to probably\nbe true.\n\n~~~\npeatmoss\nAn an aside, the context we were given for “hed” and “lede” was that both were\nwhimsical in-jokes / jargon among old timers, and that if we wanted to appear\nskookum, we should at least be aware of this tradition.\n\n------\nrhapsodic\nReferring to a paragraph as a \"graf\" goes back at least to the early 90s, I\ncan attest.\n\nEdit: Wow, I must have a stocker who downvotes everything I post. This was\ndownvoted within a minute of posting it. It's true, and relevant to the topic\nof the post.\n\n~~~\ndaveguy\n1) commenting on downvotes often gets downvotes (not that it should) 2) It's\nspelled stalker. A predator stalks its prey. A grocery store employee stocks\nthe shelves.\n\n~~~\nrhapsodic\n_1) commenting on downvotes often gets downvotes (not that it should)_\n\nYeah, I'm aware of that. But I'm willing to burn a few karma points to call\nthis behavior out. It's really bizarre.\n\nWhen I first discovered HN, I was really pleased that the tone of the\ndiscussion threads was, unlike just about every other place on the net, really\ncivil. And it didn't even seem so much that it was the result of the\nmoderators or the downvoters policing the tone, although that no doubt helped\nsome. Instead, it simply seemed to be a byproduct of _who the people were_ who\nposted here. They seemed to be cerebral people who could have spirited\ndisagreements with someone, but stick to arguments based on reason and logic,\nwithout resorting to name-calling or personal attacks, as is common in so many\nother places. I really dug it.\n\nAnd I have to say, the tone here is still pretty civil. But there seems to be\na nasty passive-aggressive undercurrent that's developed in the last year or\ntwo where stories get quickly flagged into oblivion, and even the most\ninnocuous comments, like mine above, get hammered with downvotes for no\napparent reason. I again acknowledge that the Edit I added is a reason that\nsome choose to downvote, but the original part, can someone offer a theory as\nto why that would attract downvotes?\n\n~~~\nghaff\nIf I had to guess, other than complete randomness, it would be that a few\ndownvoters didn't recognize the connection to the original topic; i.e. they\ndidn't recognize that graf was journo jargon like lede is.\n\n------\nzitterbewegung\nI thought that lede had a different meatning from lead until now... I think it\nshould be Lead.\n\n------\nnonfamous\nI think there's a fair case to make that lede is a genuine neologism, though.\n\n------\njrobn\nOff-topic...\n\nBut this reminded me of English’s:\n\nLead, led Read, read? (Why not red?)\n\n------\nchasing\nAll language is made up. If someone prefers to use \"lede\" and it's not causing\ncommunication problems, then people should use it if they want.\n\n~~~\nrplst8\nIt is indeed made up but it's a lot easier to understand when it follows\nestablished rules.\n\n~~~\ntialaramex\nOne of the things that's definitely true (and might be important, or maybe\njust a coincidence) about English is that there isn't any agreed authority to\n\"establish\" rules. Plenty of folks would like to set themselves up in that\nrole, but none have anything resembling a consensus. The situation is so bad\nthat the last time spelling reform (a trivial matter for such an authority)\nwas \"successful\" for English it split the language in two, and all subsequent\nattempts have failed utterly.\n\nSo, the best we have is the descriptivist rule: whatever it is people actually\ndo, that's the rule. People actually write \"lede\" so, fine, it means what they\nsay it means. Humpty Dumpty was right... at scale.\n\nAnd that means that when people _change_ what they do, the rule changes and\nthere's no authority to say otherwise.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: A stopwatch for the iPhone with the option to disable screen auto-lock - fam\n\nI've always been annoyed at the fact that there's no way to disable screen auto-lock while using the built in stopwatch app so I finally got around to building my own.  Some of you may find this helpful so here you go!<p>There are some edge cases that I need to fix but for the most part it should be fine for basic needs.<p>http://thestopwatchapp.com\n======\ndutchbrit\nSimple idea but I can imagine that this could be very handy for people that\nuse the stopwatch functionality a lot!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Taking over a in life product – no documentation. What do I need? - rayray07\nI am taking over an existing product but there is no documentation&#x2F;very poor institutional memory so I am effectively starting from scratch. What are the key things I need to learn and document to make a success of managing it in life?<p>I have 30 days with the existing product manager before they leave the company.\n======\nzer00eyz\nPM's are gold or garbage, there is almost no in-between.\n\nYou want on boarding, monetization, metrics, goals attempted, successes and\nmost importantly \"what failed\".\n\nLet me say \"metrics\" again, what are they measuring, how, and what is and\nisn't working in NUMBERS. (If you don't have these god help you)\n\nWhile your looking at things from a customer perspective, you should be\nlooking at things from a storage perspective.\n\nWhere ever your data is stored, it is likely you can auto generate a schema\nfrom some sort of tool. Make these, print them out, hang them on the wall. Why\ndead trees? Because your going to wanna write notes on it, if you can't it's\nuseless.\n\nWhy does storage matter? Because knowing what is there, and was there and how\nits laid out are going to give you massive clues as to how the system evolved!\nColumn order in a lot of DB's is a hint at what came later. Is current\ncritical data tacked on to the end of a table? Is there something you THINK\nyou should be there sparsely populated because it is unused today or simply\nnot required.\n\nWireframes are fast an easy, even if you do them one paper and scan them in\nlater. I can't say enough how much having movable pieces for your work flow\ncan help. Doing these as your learning and getting feedback on what's missing\nfrom that PM is going to give you massive insight and expose dark corners and\nmissing thinking.\n\n------\ntwunde\nDon't panic. As someone who's done this a few times, this is typical for non\npure tech companies. Go looking for people in your company that are using the\nproduct or supporting it. Typically this will be customer/client services and\npotentially business operations. They should be able to talk to about what\ndoesn't work, what works well, the workarounds that have been adopted, etc.\nYou should also talk to account managers and marketing/sales to get a feel\nabout what clients are asking for (what features are wanted, what's missing,\nmajor flaws). Do go hunting for old specs, wireframes etc since often these\nare floating around but not in a central location. I've been amazed at how\noften these show up AFTER I've finished wrapping up a project. Often these may\nbe owned by other departments. Make sure to ask IT to not delete the old PM's\naccounts but give you access to their documents and email so you can try and\nfind old docs and email threads about decisions.\n\nNow for the good news. With the old PM gone, you now have a blank slate to\nmake changes, you're not beholden to their old decisions.\n\n~~~\nmattmanser\nI've also had great success sitting down with a real user for an hour and\ngetting them to go through what they do.\n\nOne particularly memorable product I did that with, I was sitting with a low\nlevel, call center type employee who was taking me through their daily job,\nand he pointed to a frequently needed report on screen and said \"this is wrong\nthough, I'll show you how we get the right report\".\n\nHe then proceeded to fire up SQL Server Management Studio, connected to the\nproduction db and ran a script he'd been given.\n\nAll of them had read permission to the entire, extremely large, highly\nsensitive, db.\n\nBecause that was apparently easier for one of the devs before me than fixing\nthe bug.\n\nThat company was bought for 9 figures a few months after that, just goes to\nshow shoddy code and practices certainly isn't a reflection of value.\n\n~~~\nrayray07\nThanks Matt, good idea - I will plan in some meet and greets with key\nstakeholders to watch and listen how they use/think of the product.\n\n------\ncodingdave\nWhat do you mean by \"taking over\"? Are you the new Product Owner? A new coder?\nA one-man show doing everything? Is this part of a larger organization, or did\nyou just pick up a codebase and you are going to try to make it into a\nbusiness?\n\n~~~\nrayray07\nI'm the new product owner, I don't code but manage the requirements for the\nteam that does. It's an existing product which has been in life for many years\nand is part of a large organisation.\n\n~~~\ncodingdave\nGotcha. In that case, I agree with some of the other comments. Sitting down\nand talking to the users to understand the pain points and ongoing needs is\nmost important. Past history is not as critical because it is your job to\ndefine the future, not maintain the past.\n\n------\nsloaken\nDocumentation, or the lack there of has always been a pet peeve of mine. I\nhave inherited many of these.\n\nFirst step is to resist the temptation to strangle the person before you. I\nassume they are leaving the company as opposed to being promoted for not\ndocumenting their work.\n\nSecond step is to have great contact information about the previous owner.\nIdeally develop a list of all people who touched the project. This will most\nlikely be a list of two people, you and your predecessor.\n\nMinimal things you need to know: 1) Where are the files? 2) How do you build\nthe project? 3) What is the typical input? 4) What is the typical output? 5)\nAre there any legal issue?\n\nIMHO most projects have a collection of major parts. Start documenting those\nparts. Personally, I like MS One Note, but a pad of paper is better than\nnothing. After each major part is documented – as in a paragraph on each,\nstart delving into each file. Create a paragraph about each.\n\nNext I would try and document the requirements. It is critical to know what it\nis supposed to do. This should cover details of the goes into and goes out of.\nAlso essential is legal issues. Everything legal you must inform management\nof, and have a documented reply! If there are no legal issues, you still need\na confirmation email saying that. Do not put your freedom at risk, because ‘of\ncourse there are no legal issue what do you think we are building’. You should\nnot become the patsy for someone else’s mistakes.\n\nBring all of this to your boss. Your boss should have some idea of the ‘Hell’\nyou have been inflicted with. Make sure your boss realizes: the ‘un\nprofessional’ people before you could not be bothered to document the bare\nminimal, but now you, ‘the professional’ has done so. Also tell them how many\nman hours this took.\n\nIf it looks like this is going to take more than a man week, enlist help from\nothers to get the above done. Get your boss to agree to ‘Compensatory time\noff’ or ‘over time’ to get this hand over done. Since you only have a month\nbefore the person leaves. Stress to your boss, an extra man day spend this\nmonth will save a man week in the future.\n\nNext understand how to make changes. Make some kind of needed change, and walk\nthrough the implementation. I recommend for the first one something like\nchange of wording somewhere.\n\nIf you get help, have people document routines. 1) Purpose of routine 2)\ninputs 3) outputs 4) side effects.\n\nNext document known problems.\n\nAlso obtain a list of customers who use product.\n\nAre there test scripts? How do you run them? How do you change them.\n\nWhen the month is over, analyze what you have documented. 1) Is there enough\nthat you will not be spending most of your time saying WTF? 2) Would it be\neasier to re write the code? Try to resist this, as it might be easier in your\nmind it is often harder, and not rewriting is part of this exercise for the\nlast month. 3) Does your boss appreciate what you have done, and how hard this\nis? Given the state of the project I would assume not. If your boss had any\nskills it would not have been left that way. Is there a bonus in your future\nfor this? I would also consider looking for a new job. Undocumented\ndevelopment is a key sign for a poorly run organization.\n\n~~~\nrayray07\nThanks Sloaken - appreciate the length you have gone to here. Some useful\nsuggestions but a few clarifications on my brief:\n\n1\\. It's an in life product that's been in the market for a number of years,\nno big recent development on it from what I see.\n\n2\\. I'm not responsible for the code - I work with the team that is but\nbecause it's in life don't think there is a dedicated code expert for this at\nthe moment.\n\n3\\. Boss is very aware and supportive - he laid his cards on the table when he\noffered me the job. They are in the same boat as they were parachuted in to\ntakeover due to previous manager moving on.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDoes anyone deserve to have a billion dollars? - smacktoward\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/us/politics/billionaires-democratic-candidates.html\n======\nmilsorgen\nNo one deserves anything but it's not up to a 3rd party to judge the validity\nof what one can generate when playing by the agreed upon rules of the system.\nFix the foundation rather then boarding up the broken windows upstairs.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPetition – Student loan payments reduce gross income so taxed just like 401k - SQL2219\nhttps://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/allow-student-loan-payments-reduce-gross-income-taxed-just-401k-and-medical-payments\n======\ndannypgh\nThese tax deductions make our tax system more regressive- the benefit of the\ndeduction is proportional to your marginal tax rate, and you have to be able\nto afford school for it to have any benefit.\n\nI've no objection to policy measures like this as long as they're coupled with\nother changes to increase the progressiveness of the tax system, but given the\noutcome of the recent election, I wouldn't bet that taxes are going to become\nmore progressive.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nYouTube: An open letter to our community - DLay\nhttps://twitter.com/youtube/status/950847377816113153\n======\naynsof\nContext: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/02/outcry-as-\nyout...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/02/outcry-as-youtube-star-\nposts-video-of-dead-body-in-japan)\n\nApparently a YouTube 'celebrity' released a video showing the body of a man in\nJapan who had committed suicide. YouTube is apologising for not having dealt\nbetter with the issue.\n\n------\ngizmo686\nContext?\n\nIts a bit ironic to open with \"You deserve to know what's going on.\", and not\nexplain the background prompting the message.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Scientist - rami\nhttp://www.the-scientist.com/\n\n======\nMuddyMo\nDude, check your link.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Boolean Satisfiability Problem and SAT Solvers - amirouche\nhttp://0a.io/boolean-satisfiability-problem-or-sat-in-5-minutes/\n======\nsjg007\nI've alway been interested in this problem. I feel like information theory,\nBayesian analysis including Markov chain monte carlo could give you some\ninsight into the distribution of truth values for a satisfiable configuration\nespecially around the phase transition. You can covert 3-SAT into a Bayesian\nnetwork but exact inference is still NP complete. There should be some higher\norder information in a graph of the k-SAT problem... But many of the\nalgorithms here are still NPC (e.g. finding a clique).. So then you discover\ntree width (tree decomposition) as an approximation (also in Bayesian\nnetworks) and find out that it is quite useful but still doesn't quite help.\nIt makes faster SAT solvers but we haven't found anything invariant yet.\n\nAnyway I still enjoy thinking about the problem, my random ideas have taken on\nmore structure based on diving into the different subjects and trying to use\nthem on this problem. I find it fascinating that you can take something simple\nlike these linear circuits and it turns out that they are not simple at all\nand that they scale through the different disciplines.\n\n------\nPhilWright\nI'm a little doubtful about the quality of the article. In the first section\nit says...\n\n\"A problem is NP-complete if it belongs to the set (or “class” if you prefer)\nof the hardest problems in NP - hardest in the sense that every problem ever\nexists in NP can be reduced to them. (Thus being able to solve a NP-complete\nproblem is equivalent to being able to solve every problem in NP).\"\n\n100% wrong. All problems in NP cannot be reduced to NP-Complete. All problems\nin NP-Complete can be converted between each other. I didn't bother reading\nthe rest of the article, if this basic information is so wrong the rest\nprobably is as well.\n\n~~~\nDerekL\nNo, the article is correct. Wikipedia says, “A problem p in NP is NP-complete\nif every other problem in NP can be transformed (or reduced) into p in\npolynomial time.” They cite the paper “The complexity of theorem-proving\nprocedures”, Stephen A. Cook (1971), which says:\n\n    \n    \n        It is shown that any recognition\n        problem solved by a polynomial time-\n        bounded nondeterministic Turing\n        machine can be \"reduced\" to the pro-\n        blem of determining whether a given\n        propositional formula is a tautology.\n    \n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NP-\ncompleteness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NP-completeness)\n[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&id=805047](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&id=805047)\n\n------\nopportune\n\"At the moment the most efficient algorithm (for integers larger than 100\ndigits) we can implement into pre-existing computers{3} has a sub-exponential\nrunning time. But we can’t say for certainty that the it is not in P.\"\n\nAuthor needs to fix this typo. Additionally, I think this is sloppy reasoning\nand will confuse readers. Sub-exponential algorithms include polynomial\nalgorithms, so saying that \"X is subexponential but we can't prove it is not\nin P\" is not as precise as \"Algorithm X is subexponential but at best\nsuperpolynomial, which is not to say that problem Y cannot be in P in\ngeneral\".\n\n~~~\nacchow\nAgreed, the wording is a little strange but I think readers of this will\nunderstand the meaning anyway.\n\n~~~\nschoen\nIt's probably no less incorrect than saying \"the suspect is now somewhere\nnorth of Mexico, but we haven't been able to rule out the possibility that\nhe's in Canada\" (with an unstated assumption that normally people said to be\nnorth of Mexico would be found in the United States).\n\nEdit: on reflection, I actually think I agree with opportune's concern after\nall, which I had slightly misunderstood at first.\n\n------\nzmonx\nThank you for sharing! A great reference for SAT solving is: Donald Knuth,\n_The Art of Computer Programming_ , Volume 4, Fascicle 6: Satisfiability.\n\nSAT is also an opportunity to point to an important family of data structures\ncalled _Binary Decision Diagrams_ , abbreviated as BDDs, and their variants.\nUsing BDDs, you can solve many interesting tasks that would be infeasible with\nmost other known methods.\n\nOf particular relevance are ordered and reduced BDDs, sometimes abbreviated as\nROBDDS, or also simply BDDs if it is clear from the context that they are\nordered and reduced. A second very important variant are zero-suppressed BDDs,\nabbreviated as ZDDs.\n\nMore information is available from:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_decision_diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_decision_diagram)\n\nand especially in:\n\nDonald Knuth, _The Art of Computer Programming_ , Volume 4, Fascicle 1:\nBitwise tricks & techniques; Binary Decision Diagrams, of which a fascicle is\navailable online:\n\n[http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/fasc1b.ps.gz](http://www-cs-\nfaculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/fasc1b.ps.gz)\n\nOne application of BDDs is found in the constraint solvers for Boolean tasks\nthat ship with some Prolog systems. For example, consider the SAT formula from\nthe article:\n\n    \n    \n        a∧(a∨x∨y)∧(¬a∨¬b)∧(c∨b)∧(d∨¬b)\n    \n\nWith SICStus Prolog and its CLP(B) library, we can express this task by\nposting the following query:\n\n    \n    \n        ?- sat(A*(A + X + Y)*(~A + ~B)*(C+B)*(D + ~B)).\n    \n\nIn response, the system answers with:\n\n    \n    \n        A = C, C = 1,\n        B = 0,\n        sat(X=:=X),\n        sat(Y=:=Y),\n        sat(D=:=D).\n    \n\nThis is an example of a SAT solver that is _complete_ , which is an important\nclassification that is also explained in the article. In this concrete case,\nthe Prolog system's answer means that A and C must _definitely_ be 1, and B\nmust _definitely_ be 0, to make the formula satisfiable at all.\n\nIn this concrete case, the other variables (X, Y and D) may each be assigned\nany of the two truth values: They have no influence on the formula's\nsatisfiability!\n\nUsing the predicate labeling/1, you can _generate_ all satisfying assignments\non backtracking. In this concrete case, they are:\n\n    \n    \n        ?- sat(A*(A + X + Y)*(~A + ~B)*(C+B)*(D + ~B)),\n           labeling([X,Y,D]).\n        A = C, C = 1, X = Y, Y = B, B = D, D = 0 ;\n        A = C, C = D, D = 1, X = Y, Y = B, B = 0 ;\n        A = Y, Y = C, C = 1, X = B, B = D, D = 0 ;\n        A = Y, Y = C, C = D, D = 1, X = B, B = 0 ;\n        A = X, X = C, C = 1, Y = B, B = D, D = 0 ;\n        A = X, X = C, C = D, D = 1, Y = B, B = 0 ;\n        A = X, X = Y, Y = C, C = 1, B = D, D = 0 ;\n        A = X, X = Y, Y = C, C = D, D = 1, B = 0.\n\n------\nthreepipeproblm\nFor small n: [http://www.kevinalbrecht.com/code/joy-mirror/jp-\ntrutab.html](http://www.kevinalbrecht.com/code/joy-mirror/jp-trutab.html)\n\n------\nandrewflnr\nA P-complete programming language seems like an interesting concept in cases\nwhere you want to allow programmability but guarantee that running programs\nfrom idiots or hostile actors doesn't take too long. Is there any work in\nusing Horn clauses as a sort of P-complete programming language, maybe a bit\nlike Prolog? Or are there nicer P-complete problems that get the same effect?\n\n~~~\nzmonx\nDatalog is a syntactic subset of Prolog, and Datalog queries can be evaluated\nin polynomial time. This does not fully answer your question, but I hope it is\nuseful for you as a starting point.\n\n------\ngfredtech\nNP-hard problems are quite interesting.\n\n~~~\nJPLeRouzic\nBut a NP-hard problem is not necessarily hard to solve in a specific case. So\nmost solvers try basically to enumerate possible solutions and prune them\nbefore solving them.\n\nI would expect a smarter approach in solvers' design.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSisyphus Kinetic Lego Sculpture - chaosmachine\nhttp://jkbrickworks.com/sisyphus-kinetic-sculpture/\n======\nmattnewport\nThe working combination safe is very cool too:\n[http://jkbrickworks.com/working-combination-\nsafe/](http://jkbrickworks.com/working-combination-safe/)\n\n~~~\nicebraining\nI really like his version of the useless machine as well, really playful :)\n\n------\nDiabloD3\nNow that, my friends, is art.\n\n~~~\ntajen\nAwesome! Omg there's also a particle accelerator. It seems like Lego is\nencompassing the trend of crowdsourcing with ideas.lego.com, but I'm\ndisappointed it's not a decentralized model where the everyone could sell\ntheir own construction and get a margin from it.\n\n~~~\nsteve19\nIt looks dead. Projects which hit the required 10k supporters 18 months ago\nare still \"being reviewed\" but Lego.\n\nYou are right, they should allow anything to be sold if a certain number of\npre-orders can be met and copyrights cleared.\n\n~~~\njerrysievert\nfar from dead, lego releases a couple of projects about every 6 months. the\nlatest is a doctor who set, that is just about to be released.\n\nit takes a couple of months to review, and usually they (lego) are active in\nthe comments section.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPosterous Acquires Fellow Y Combinator Alum Slinkset - ed\nhttp://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/23/posterous-acquires-fellow-y-combinator-alum-slinkset/\n\n======\nyan\nIs \"acquires\" just a fancy term for \"agreed to work together\"?\n\n~~~\njmtame\nthat's usually a partnership. an acquisition typically involves quite a bit\nmore on the business and operations side.\n\n~~~\nbravura\nHow can a company with only $740K\n(<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/posterous>) afford to acquire Slinkset?\nEquity?\n\n~~~\njmtame\nprobably a stock swap.\n\n------\nrms\nCongratulations guys!\n\n(even more so because there is a screenshot of my slinkset on Techcrunch!)\n\n------\nsachinag\nWell, that's one way to get exceptional coders (I assume Garry and the other\nSachin made them sign employment agreements).\n\n~~~\nzhyder\nSince the acquisition was likely done with stock, vanilla vesting would be\nenough to make them stick around.\n\n------\nFreeRadical\nDoes anyone have any ideas how posterous intends to make money?\n\n~~~\nwebwright\nWell, you could take a look at WordPress (whose revenue growth is pretty\nenviable). Hosted blogs, premium add ons.\n\n------\nprakash\nCongrats to both the companies, the future is bright for both kind of services\nas stand alone's or as an integrated service.\n\n------\nbrandnewlow\nIt's unusual for one YC company to acquire another, right?\n\n~~~\njmtame\ni think it will become inevitable. as yc increases its number of investments,\nthere will be more companies doing similar things and competing. i think the\nethos of yc is to prefer a partnership (or downright acquisition) over\ncompetition, as most times, you have other competitors, and you can find ways\nto team up and take on the big guys. why not work with the same people who\nwent through the same seed fund as you? the real question is: at what point is\nit acceptable to merge or get acquired?\n\npaypal and x.com were a great example of what can happen through a merger.\nthey could have spent their time killing each other, but they merged and set\ntheir focus on much bigger things: taking advantage of ebay's mismanagement\nand poor execution to deliver the world's leading online payment platform.\n\nprivate acquisitions seem strange, but i have always believed that the real\nreason large companies cannot form from start-ups is because people may be too\nresistant to team up with their leading competitors to take on an even larger\ncompetitor. i wonder what would become of microsoft had they not teamed up\nwith ibm, or apple.\n\n~~~\nFrocer\nFrom what I have read, I think the PayPal and X.com merger did more harm than\ngood. There were a ton of ego clashes, technology preference differences (unix\nvs. .net), etc.\n\nBut merging with the right team will certainly help, and I am sure the 2 teams\ncoming out of the same YC class probably know each others' capabilities fairly\nwell.\n\n------\nnostrademons\nCongrats Slinksetters!\n\n~~~\njjs\nThis doesn't appear to be their exit; more like a new beginning.\n\n~~~\nnostrademons\nIs that any less deserving of congratulations?\n\n~~~\njjs\nNot at all; I was just under the (mis?)impression that you intended to\ncongratulate them for something that hasn't happened yet.\n\n------\nvaksel\ndid some money change hands?\n\n~~~\nrms\nThey're not going to tell us, but it seems obvious to me that the bulk of the\ndeal was in stock. Crunchbase has posterous's funding as YC's 15k + 725k in an\nuber-angel round which doesn't make a cash acquisition realistic.\n\n~~~\nsachinag\nI am the other Sachin Agarwal (at Dawdle.com), and I know nothing, but I will\nsay this: I will bet you a beer that you're wrong.\n\nAs an acquiror, you want to do a deal as cheaply as possible. Given that\nSlinkset never really took off while Posterous has, a deal was probably done\nin the sub-six figures or perhaps none with just offers of employment. At this\npoint, even though you lose the cash, it's cheaper to use $50K cash than $50K\nin stock given that you'd reasonably expect the stock to appreciate in value\nat this point. Acquisitions usually only happen in stock in either \"pooling\"\ntransactions (i.e. Kayak/SideStep), where the acquiror cannot afford to pay\ncash (i.e. pick your _keiretsu_ deal from the late 90s), or the seller values\nthe stock more than cash (i.e. Twitter/Summize).\n\nWhy, yes, I _am_ a former technology M&A investment banker.\n\n~~~\nzhyder\nIt depends on how much you want them versus how much they want you. If you\ncan't attract them with just cash, you're going to have to give stock.\nConsidering the Slinkset guys are hungry entrepreneurs who'd probably want a\nstake, and an all-cash transaction in 6 figures wouldn't make them f@#$-you\nrich anyway, I'd guess this was a most- if not all-stock deal.\n\nIt also depends on what Posterous's cash situation is like; if much of the\n750k is lying around idle, they'd want to spend it, else they'd rather avoid\nhaving to raise money again, which would result in giving up even more equity.\nPlus, all else being equal, I'd rather share equity with cofounders/employees\nthan with investors.\n\n------\nmedianama\nIs it really newsworthy?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nOnce Upon Atari - hhm\nhttp://www.erasmatazz.com/library/Miscellania/Once%20Upon%20Atari\n\n======\ncomatose_kid\nNot immediately obvious, but this article is written by Chris Crawford,\nprogrammer of various games (war games) in the early / mid 80s.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPlsdr. Python-based software-defined radio (SDR) - auslander\nhttps://arachnoid.com/PLSDR/\n======\nbobowzki\nThere are many ways to generate an SSB signal. In particular the Weaver method\nis more common in SDR applications than the phase shift method he/she uses.\nThere're lots of literature online so I don't know why he couldn't find any.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: What is the most influential not-technology book(s) you have ever read? - rayalez\n\nHi, guys!! I am looking for great books to read, I&#x27;m sure people in this community can recommend something very interesting.\n======\nmorganf\nIt would be interesting if we answered the question, along with another: _why\n/how?_ (Is that two other questions?). Knowing why and how, say, Roger\nL'Estrange's 1715 Aesop's Fables influenced you so would be much more\ninteresting than just knowing that, it did influence you.\n\nMe? Jane Jacobs' _Death and Life of Great American Cities_. I read it when I\nwas 21 (1998) and it changed how I walk down the street, every single day of\nmy life since. Why this street is full of life, and that street is empty, for\nexample. But not only that: she basically argues that central planning is\ndisastrous for cities, and that cities should think on the street and human\nlevels, from the ground up, and then iterate from there (rather than top-\ndown). These ideas applied to other areas of life -- like software\ndevelopment, for example -- have been very powerful for me. I'd argue that\nJacobs' thought is a precursor to the whole XP/agile software movement, for\nexample. Both start with the same premise, _the spec is dead_ (in software\nlanguage). All this is probably obvious to y'all, but wasn't to me at 21 ;)\n\n------\nrobin2\n\"Influential\" can be tricky to pin down, but a couple of books that made a big\nimpact on me at a certain age were \"Prometheus Rising\" by Robert Anton Wilson\nand \"The Muse in the Machine: computers and creative thought\" by David\nGelernter. (The latter arguably counts as a technology book, since it's\nsupposed to be about AI, but it's more to do with psychology and literature.)\n\nMore recent sorta/kinda philosophy: \"The Craftsman\" by Richard Sennett; \"From\nNovice to Expert: excellence and power in clinical nursing practice\" by\nPatricia Benner; \"The Craft of Thought: meditation, rhetoric, and the making\nof images, 400-1200\" by Mary Carruthers.\n\nI also like to think that \"Asterix in Britain\" by Goscinny and Uderzo had a\nformative influence on me...\n\n------\nstevekemp\nBook recommendations and tastes are very personal.\n\nI suspect that if you're not specifically looking for technical books you'd be\nbetter off looking at the common lists of 100 most popular books, or similar.\n\nMe? I'd say \"Dune\", but that is only useful if you have an interest in sci-fi.\nIf not then the Count of Monte Cristo is a glorious tale of revenge and plot.\nBeyond that recommendations become vague: Steven Brust, Zelazny, Tolkien,\nPratchett & etc.\n\n------\nwalterbell\n_The Essential Rene Guenon_ (meta-tradition). _Last and First Men_ by Olaf\nStapledon (Spinoza-inspired scifi). _Embassytown_ by China Mieville. _Past\nMaster_ by R.A. Lafferty.\n\n _Aesop 's Fables_ by Roger L'Estrange, 1715 3rd ed. in 2 volumes, ~900 pages\ntotal, otherwise it's an abridged edition.\n\nHeraclitus complete fragments\n\n------\nslambam\nThe Bible. Harold Bloom's \"Western Canon\", Knausgaard's \"Min Kamp\", \"The World\nAccording to Garp\", Robertson Davies Deptford Triology, \"Anna Karenina\",\n\"Consilience of Knowledge\", \"House of Leaves\" \"The Apprenticeship of Duddy\nKravitz\" All these books messed me up to varying degrees.\n\n------\nwsc981\nThe book \"The Age of Reason\" by Thomas Paine really convinced me that\nsomething like a personal God doesn't exist. I've been raised a Christian, so\nchanging the Christian mindset was not easy for me, it took a course of\nseveral years to stop believing in a personal God.\n\n~~~\nlutusp\nMy favorite picture of god was Einstein's -- or Spinoza's, which is where\nEinstein got his idea: a god that isn't remotely like a religious person's\nidea of god, an entity roughly equal to nature, and one that couldn't be\nbothered with our small problems.\n\nWhen I see something in nature that speaks to a deeper level, that connects\napparently unconnected things, that's as close as I get to a religious\nexperience (i.e. not very close at all). For example, there's a cicada that\nhas evolved a survival strategy based on prime numbers:\n\n[http://arachnoid.com/prime_numbers/index.html#Mathematical_L...](http://arachnoid.com/prime_numbers/index.html#Mathematical_Locusts)\n\nI always like finding examples that connect mathematics with nature, so this\none was particularly satisfying.\n\nMy point? I can easily picture natural selection brutally filtering out\neverything that didn't make an ingenious (and chance) use of prime numbers to\nassure survival, but by the same token I can't picture nature caring at all\nwhat I think.\n\n------\nsunstone\nConsilience by E.O. Wilson is excellent.\n\n------\nDanBC\nMilk, sulphate, and Alby Starvation.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLibreTaxi – A free and open source alternative to Uber and Lyft - bpierre\nhttp://libretaxi.org/\n======\nspIrr\nI'll post a comment from ProductHunt, which might give a bit more context to\nwhere the founder sees this going, and why cash rides make sense under certain\ncircumstances he designed the app for:\n\n[…] I have gone to the founder's blog and it provides a better understanding\nof where he sees it going: Uber (and similar apps) will never reach many\nremote villages, cities and regions around the world (and don't have to), but\ntechnology could greatly help the local communities in solving their\ntransportation problems that are as \"simple\" as getting from point A to point\nB with no other feasible options available.\n\nFor more details, here's the founder's blog on this:\n[https://medium.com/@romanpushkin/how-i-made-uber-like-app-\nin...](https://medium.com/@romanpushkin/how-i-made-uber-like-app-in-no-time-\nwith-javascript-and-secret-sauce-94ef9120c7f6#.dc99pd5qm)\n\n~~~\nradarsat1\n> technology could greatly help the local communities in solving their\n> transportation problems that are as \"simple\" as getting from point A to\n> point B with no other feasible options available\n\nIn rural communities here in Chile, and also in smaller towns, there is an\namazing solution to this called Collectivo. I had never heard of it before\narriving, but man it's the greatest thing. It's something in-between a bus and\na taxi: a taxi with a predefined route. So if you're on a route, which there\nare many, you flag down a collectivo as it passes, and since both you and the\ndriver already know where it's going, it'll stop for you even if there are\nalready people in the car.\n\nWhat makes this amazing is that it's _cheap_ because the route is pre-set, and\nit's shared, and the driver can just go all day knowing there will be people\nalong the route, and doesn't have to finish one ride before starting another.\nBut meanwhile they'll generally go partially off their route if you request\nit, and it's not too much of a bother.\n\nWhy don't North American rural areas do this? It's a really great way to get\naround, and makes it so you can live (or at least visit) in rural areas\nwithout owning a car.\n\n~~~\nnicky0\nAmericans don't like sharing.\n\n~~~\nradarsat1\nRural Americans? I don't have any experience in rural America, but I heard\nthey're pretty friendly ;)\n\nBut maybe, yeah..\n\n~~~\npavel_lishin\nI grew up from 10 to 18 in a moderately rural area outside of Dallas. We share\nfine if and when we have to, but for the most part, we don't have to.\n\nI saw a lady walking along the side of a rural road - this was about 12 years\nago, so there weren't buses then, and there won't be in the next 12 years\neither - so I pulled over and asked her where she was going. Turns out she was\ngoing to walk, in the summer heat, to a grocery store about 10 miles away.\n\nWe shared my car just fine. But I certainly wouldn't go over to a neighbor and\nask for a ride to the grocery store if my car was running ok.\n\n~~~\nnicky0\nI think that's it. Needing to share or using someone else's car is seen as a\nsign of weakness. OK for an old lady maybe. But a Real American rides their\nown damn car, and pays for their own damn healthcare...\n\n------\nreubensutton\nMy concern with this is the problem of ensuring the safety of the person\ndriving the cab and the real identity of the rider.\n\nLots of drivers will be reluctant because they can be stiffed on the bill.\nLots of passengers will be reluctant to use it due to the inherent risk of\nriding with what is essentially a stranger.\n\n~~~\ngaldosdi\nShouldn't be an obstacle. This is already exactly how normal, hailable,\nregulated taxis work (at least in much of the USA, and certainly in NYC -- I\ncan't speak for elsewhere). That's why taxi driver is (at least in the US) a\nstatistically more dangerous occupation than police officer.\n\nFrom the point of view of a driver, this scheme is less dangerous than the\nstatus quo, at least there is potentially a little more paper trail to prove a\nrider rode.\n\nFrom the point of view of a rider, there is the advantage in regulated taxis\nthat the driver is licensed and identified, but in countries where it's\nfeasible, I don't see why LibreTaxi couldn't have an option to \"request\nlicensed driver only\" or something\n\n~~~\nSilasX\nI have to disagree that this is \"exactly how normal taxis work\". Notable\ndifferences (many apply to Uber/Lyft also):\n\n1) There's no check to ensure that the vehicle is ensured _for commercial\nrides_ before they start taking hails.\n\n2) Likewise, no background check.\n\n3) No regulatory body to investigate cases of e.g. scamming passengers out of\nmoney or refusal to comply with agreed-upon rates and dropoff. [1]\n\n4) The local PD doesn't stand ready to treat assault on a driver like assault\non a police officer, in terms of marshalling resources.\n\n5) No central registry, or even private registry of cars/drivers in operation.\n\n6) Drivers aren't trained in the relevant anti-robbery countermeasures.\n\n7) In NYC, the barrier to prevent the most obvious kinds of robbery.\n\nThat makes a big difference in safety of paying cash to a roving operator!\n\nSadly, I think the \"big corp middleman\" does add a lot of value that a free\napp can't replicate without similar investment, scale, and \"walled\ngarden\"-ness.\n\n[1] I know commenters here like to roll their eyes about the clumsiness and\nlackadaisical enforcement -- I'm one of them! But it's at least _something_ ,\nwhich prevents a major scale-up of this behavior.\n\n~~~\nusrusr\nAll those points would not be an obstacle to an open source solution that is\nnot trying to build a grand unified global Uber drop-in for random rideshare\ndrivers to sign up with, but instead only (\"only\") tries to be an installable\nturn-key solution for existing operators (or regional federations thereof) to\nadd the smartphone hailing user experience to their existing offering, without\nmuch investment.\n\nI did not find a clear answer on the site wether this project is aiming at\nindependent ridesharing or at being a turn-key solution for more conventional\ntaxi dispatch organisations. There is the idea of \"hack and tune it for your\ncity\", which is clearly not the global approach, but then they also advertise\n\"1-minute hiring\", which is definitely not what I would be looking for if I\nwere to customize it for my hypothetical preexisting organisation.\n\nSomething like wordpress or the myriad open source online shop systems, but\nfor taxi dispatch and with a unified smartphone client (or client protocol,\nactually) that can work with all installations. That might be the best way to\navoid a single gobally dominant private network that can set their \"tax\" on\nall rides at will. The app/clients might be supported for discovery by a\nglobal registry of regional installations and some trust management, but it\nmight actually be not only easier but also more reliable to just leave that to\nplain old web, with something like libretaxi:-URIs to connect the app to a\nregional network discovered by your search engine of choice.\n\n------\njasode\n_> , pay cash upon arrival. _\n\nPaying cash is a non-starter. I haven't been to a bank ATM in over 10 years. I\ndon't even know what my card's secret PIN is to make a cash withdrawal. Being\nvirtually cashless by using credit-cards _for everything_ is very common in\nprofessional circles.\n\nA credit-card is simpler and the exact line-item amount showing up on my\nmonthly statement helps me keep track of travel expenses. (Also, many credit\ncards transactions will download to the Quicken ledger for people that use\nthat personal finance software.)\n\nPaying by credit also helps keep drivers accountable and reduces fraud.\n\n~~~\nmschuster91\n> Paying cash is a non-starter.\n\nThat certainly depends on the country. Good luck living cashless in Europe,\nespecially in Germany where virtually no small store, food vendor etc. has a\nCC reader.\n\n~~~\npimterry\nReally? That's pretty surprising - I live in Barcelona, and I use cards 99% of\nthe time, and in the UK it was even easier. Even taxis here have card\nmachines, and every small shop definitely does. The only holdouts are the\noccasional tiny old wine bar here and there, but even most of them have moved\nwith the times.\n\n~~~\nschlowmo\nUnfortunately I didn't find more actual stats, but there is a report from\nDeutsche Bundesbank (German Federal Bank) from 2014 which states that in 2014\nthe share of cash payments in Germany was 79.1% and only 1.3% credit card\ntransactions.[0, page 27] If I remember correctly, there is no other European\ncountry with such a low percentage of credit card transactions.\n\n[0]\n[https://www.bundesbank.de/Redaktion/EN/Downloads/Publication...](https://www.bundesbank.de/Redaktion/EN/Downloads/Publications/Studies/payment_behaviour_in_germany_in_2014.pdf?__blob=publicationFile)\n[PDF]\n\n~~~\nlorenzhs\nThe relevant page is 31 (pdf-page 33), containing a figure \"Share of payment\ninstruments broken down into various transaction amount categories in 2014,\n2011 and 2008\". In particular, 96% of transactions below 5€ were in cash, and\n90% for transactions between 5 and 20€.\n\nA breakdown by age group is on page 33. Unsurprisingly, young people pay by\ncard more often than older people.\n\nVarious other figure breaking down card/cash usage along different lines are\non the subsequent pages. Poorer people use cash for a larger percentage of\ntheir transactions than richer people.\n\nPage 63 breaks down usage by occasion/purpose of payment\n(gas/restaurant/retail/...).\n\nLastly, 97% of Germans have a girocard (debit card), but only 1 in 3 have a\ncredit card.\n\n------\nbpierre\nAbout the trust and reputation issue, I think blockchain technologies could\nplay an important role for decentralized services like this.\n\nI would like to see a multipurpose reputation / trust system based on the\nblockchain, exposing all the needed features as a simple library and / or HTTP\nAPI, ready to be implemented by apps and websites.\n\nI think we are still in a period where a lot of products are built either in a\ncentralized way, or all on the blockchain and decentralized technologies (like\nIPFS). It makes sense as we are still in the experimentation phase, but it\ncould change in the near future. People could start using the blockchain where\nit is the most efficient today, as a brick part of a product (e.g. to build a\nsolid decentralized reputation system), instead of being the foundation layer\nof the product.\n\n~~~\nrepomies691\nI think most of this \"blockchain talk\" is just nonsense. Uber/lyft similar are\nvery complex services, which are pretty pain in the ass to maintain and\ndevelop. What would be the incentive to develop such an app in decentralized\nfashion? What if there are problems between rider and driver, who will act as\na middleman to resolve issues? What about basic support etc?\n\n~~~\nbpierre\n> What would be the incentive to develop such an app in decentralized fashion?\n> What if there are problems between rider and driver, who will act as a\n> middleman to resolve issues? What about basic support etc?\n\nSorry if I wasn’t clear enough, but I am precisely talking about this: using\nthe blockchain for what it is good at today, instead of trying to put\neverything on a decentralized system (which is really hard or just impossible\nfor now).\n\nUber / Lyft and others have a reputation system in place, opaque and developed\nspecifically for their product. It’s an important part, but it is just a brick\nin the complexity of the services they are building.\n\nI am talking about replacing this brick by an open, blockchain-based\nreputation service (that doesn’t exist AFAIK). That way, any app developer\ncould benefit from the transparency and guaranteed properties from the\nblockchain. It could even be easier to use than to implement it as a private\nsystem.\n\n~~~\nvosper\nWhat is \"the blockchain\" and what built-in features does it have that can\nreplace a purpose-built reputation system?\n\n~~~\nbpierre\nIn this context, you can see the blockchain as a database, always available,\nand containing entries (transactions in blocks) that you can not delete. It’s\nvery simplified, see the Wikipedia article [1] for more details about\nblockchain systems.\n\nThe specific features that I find interesting to build an “open trust system”\nbuilt on top of it, compared to a traditional database, are:\n\n\\- Transparency: anyone can explore this database, and verify that the\nsoftware is using it in a transparent way. It might sound not important for\nsomething like Uber, but if you build an open trust system that could be used\nby different services, it becomes very important for authors (Uber, Lyft,\netc.) to trust this system.\n\n\\- Reliability: because a blockchain is distributed, it is always running and\navailable.\n\n\\- Trust: transactions are immutable and a transaction can not be falsified\nonce confirmed (validated).\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain_(database)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain_\\(database\\))\n\n~~~\nvurpo\nThere is a problem: cryptographic solutions (like blockchain) cannot help\n_build_ trust, only to _maintain_ it. If a driver loses trust, they can just\ncreate a new private key and now they're up and running without any bad\nreviews again.\n\n~~~\nAlexAffe\nVery good point.\n\n------\nkiliankoe\nCompletely disregarding the rest of the page/service/post I kinda dislike that\nTelegram is being touted as the most secure messenger out there. That's not\neven close to true. By default all that Telegram offers is transport security\nand afaik unaudited end-to-end encryption with their own protocol if two users\nchoose to use it (and lock themselves into the platform they start that\nconversation on).\n\n~~~\ntommorris\nAlso having to have a phone number thing to set up an account sucks (same with\nSignal, WhatsApp etc.).\n\n------\njasonlfunk\nIt's definitely an interesting idea. Though one of the major features that I\nlove about Uber/Lyft is that I don't have to worry about paying in cash.\n\n~~~\npmyjavec\n_BitCoin integration is on the way!_\n\nI know what you mean, but the Bitcoin integration is going to be really\nexciting!!!\n\n~~~\ndarpa_escapee\nIf there is one thing people love to be paid in, it is a collectible whose\nvalue widely varies daily based on when its larger holders game the system or\nwhen online drug markets get shutdown.\n\n~~~\nbcook\nI'm not completely sure whether you're referring to cash or Bitcoin.\n\n~~~\nralmeida\nHow does cash vary in value? If you have a $50 bill, you can expect to buy a\nvery predictable amount of food (for example) next week, regardless of what\nhappens. Not so much if you have 0.0521 BTC.\n\n~~~\nbcook\nThere are plenty of cash currencies, aside from USD, that fluctuate wildly.\n\n~~~\nralmeida\nThat's true, but most vary fluctuate wildly with respect to the USD, not in\ntheir purchasing power within their country of origin, even less so in the\nspan of weeks or days.\n\nFor example, if I was paid the equivalent of a 50 USD ride in Bitcoin in Jan\n4, and were to go to buy food today, I could only buy 40 dollars worth of\nfood.\n\nWhich currency does that? Sure there may be a few examples in case of extreme\ninflation, etc, but it's not the norm at all.\n\n~~~\nbcook\nMy point is that both are flawed and have their uses.\n\nI won't be paying any bills with Bitcoin any time soon.\n\n------\ndvfjsdhgfv\nAm I the only one to see the irony of this? Uber and Lyft bring \"disruption to\nthe industry\", then a new player enters and has the potential of disrupting\ntheir business model... Now, their only line of defense against LibreTaxi is\nto use the same rhetoric the Taxi companies had been using against them.\n\n~~~\nTulliusCicero\nTheir real defense is having a better product. I have a difficult time seeing\nLibreTaxi take off; at least in developed countries, I doubt people want to\nnegotiate prices with drivers ahead of time and then pay cash.\n\n------\nanondon\n> Based on Telegram app, most secured and fastest messenger in the world.\n\nRed flag right there.\n\n~~~\nlucb1e\nIt's just a Telegram bot, it's not \"based on\" Telegram's source code (which is\nwhat I assumed when reading your comment before opening the page). That's like\nsaying Facebook is based on PHP and saying \"that's a major red flag!\"\n\n~~~\nDylan16807\nYes? That _would_ be a major red flag if it was being touted as a feature.\nEspecially if you add in a claim of \"the most secure and fast programming\nlanguage\".\n\n------\ncoffeedoughnuts\nRe: Credit Card Integration\n\nStripe doesn't really cost that much; you could support card payments and pass\nthe stripe fees along to both parties (50/50 to the passenger and driver)\n\nThis is a really good idea if it can take off, but I think cash only is a non-\nstarter, though I understand the restriction initially\n\n~~~\ntimthelion\nUnfortunately this isn't possible for a service like this. If money passes\nthrough the hands of the app-creator than they have to hire an accountant,\ntake on risk, and file tax returns. Not possible with a non-comercial service.\n\n~~~\ncolinbartlett\nStripe Connect lets a marketplace invite providers to create an account and\ntherefore Stripe handles a good portion of what you refer to.\n\n------\nmartin-adams\nInteresting idea. So does this skip on any verification that the person can\ndrive and car is safe to be in?\n\n~~~\nangry-hacker\nWhat does uber or lyft do to take care of the safety?\n\n~~~\nhorsecaptin\nProbably some kind of a criminal background check. A Driver history check.\nThey also make sure that cars are new enough.\n\n------\nnamlem\nI don't think this is the right approach. IMO, what we need a platform for\nregional driver co-ops. You obviously wouldn't have the consistency of Uber\nand Lyft, but the service would take only a tiny cut since they don't have to\nprovide anything other than the app. When you want to hail a car, you'd be\nable to choose from any local services, which are responsible for the vetting\nand insurance of drivers. It has its flaws, obviously, but such driver co-ops\nalready exist in some places, so I think it could work.\n\n~~~\nKalium\nIt's possible that consistency may be a large part of the value proposition of\nUber or Lyft. I can go across the country and get a ride with a company I have\nsome level of trust in. Regional co-ops do what taxi companies did, forcing me\nto re-evaluate everything all over again in every new place.\n\n~~~\nbogomipz\nWhere's the consistency in getting into a stranger's car every time you use a\nservice? The consistency would be the app? Often Uber drivers also drive for\nLyft and vice versa. If the same drivers also embrace Libre Taxi I fail to see\nany fundamental difference in the experience.\n\n~~~\nKalium\nConsistency in which app to use, the experience in using it, payment handling,\ninsurance, customer service, and driver vetting. All of these offer value\nindividually and in their consistency across locations.\n\nYou're right! It's absolutely possible that every driver may embrace Libre\nTaxi. In which case there would be no advantage whatsoever in terms of\nconsistency.\n\n------\njstejada\nIf becoming a driver is so easy, what about security for passengers? I'm from\na city that has been known to be \"dangerous\", and the main reason I use Uber\nthere over taxis is for security. How does LibreTaxi prevent bad actors from\nbecoming drivers?\n\n~~~\nfenwick67\nUber is not inherently safer than a taxi. Why do people always say this?\n\n~~~\nhehheh\nIt's not inherently safer but Uber does do things that most taxi companies\ndon't that help improve safety, albeit slightly. Really basic things like\nproviding the user with a photo of the driver and a description of the car\nincluding license plate so the user can be sure (well, more sure) that the car\nthat arrived is the car they requested.\n\nAs far as I'm aware (in my experience) the only way you can compare the taxi\ndriver's face to their license is by getting in to the back of the car, where\nthe license photo is visible.\n\n------\nCrLf\nAt the first glance, this seems to be a way to bring the 3rd world taxi\nexperience to the 21st century.\n\nReally, no taxi licenses, no requirements on cars, no driver verification, no\nGPS, paying cash... I feel safe already.\n\n~~~\nycmbntrthrwaway\n> no taxi licenses\n\nWell, this one is arguably a good thing.\n\n------\neloisant\nThere are actually taxi cooperative or call center that have their own app.\nBut they're each limited to one city.\n\nWhat they need to do is get together to release a high-quality app that works\nall over the world by relying on the local taxi call center partner.\n\n~~~\njagermo\nMytaxi (mytaxi.com) is a popular taxi app in germany. Since they are using\n\"real\" taxis, they get around all the problems Uber and Lyft face.\n\n------\nxrjn\nI'm surprised no one mentioned Arcade City[0], which is working on a peer to\npeer alternative to Uber and Lift, using a blockchain. Drivers set their own\nprices, and there are no georestrictions like on Uber.\n\n[0] [https://arcade.city/](https://arcade.city/)\n\n~~~\nrkeene2\nThis service apparently requires a facebook.com account.\n\n------\ntehabe\nI would love an app for calling and advising on regular unionised taxi service\nin any city.\n\n------\ngmisra\nIf app-fication of ride hailing is what you want, it's worth mentioning that\nin the SF bay area, Flywheel has done an excellent job of making a feature-\nrich app and network [0]. Personally, I have found it to be an excellent\nservice, the things that matter the most to me are availability of rides,\ntimeliness of driver dispatch and arrival, and communication with drivers\n(when necessary).\n\n[0] [http://www.flywheel.com/passenger-app](http://www.flywheel.com/passenger-\napp)\n\n~~~\nKalium\nI've used Flywheel!\n\nWithout being excessively negative, the experience showed me that Uber and\nLyft deliver value beyond the simple A-to-B transportation service.\n\n------\ndocdeek\nInteresting idea but not as convenient for someone who travels and doesn’t\nwant to organize a cash withdrawal to leave the airport. With Uber I can just\nget going.\n\n~~~\nlucb1e\n> doesn’t want to organize a cash withdrawal\n\nYou're not the first to mention this, but this is completely foreign to me.\nI'd love to get off of cash, but there are just so many places in Europe that\nare cash-only. The Netherlands is bad, but Germany is even worse. Lots of\nbakeries, fries stores, stands, etc. are cash-only; in restaurants big groups\nsplit and settle the bill with cash; and settling stuff between friends is\noften cash as well (though this is more and more bank transfer / wire transfer\n/ whatever it's called to IBAN within SEPA).\n\nYou're serious that \"organizing a cash withdrawal\" is 1) something you need to\ndo in the first place and 2) it's a hassle or something? I also read about\nhaving a separate PIN for cash withdrawals (I had no idea a card could have\ntwo PINs).\n\n~~~\nDylan16807\nGetting to a cash machine that won't charge you an arbitrarily large amount\nfor the privilege is nontrivial for many people.\n\n~~~\nsoftawre\nDon't you just pull out cash before you leave then? Stop by a bank ATM or by\nthe bank if you need a different currency.\n\n------\nhd4\nThis is an absolutely brilliant idea, especially love how they're building on\nRedis, Firebase and Telegram (regardless of whether you think it's secure or\nnot, that's hardly the point here), reinventing the wheel is what our industry\nneeds to stop doing, this may be the best example of \"Standing on the\nshoulders of giants\" technology I've seen yet.\n\n------\nfataliss\nI guess you need to think about this more as a monetized version of\nhitchhiking than a free Uber/Lyft. Cause in terms of liability there is about\n0 coverage. You can't even know if the driver is insured at all. While I love\nthe idea of the app and it's openness, I am not sure there would be a\nmarket/use for it where Uber/Lyft is available.\n\n~~~\ndorianm\nIt's very similar to what Blablacar was before it received VC funding. And in\nFrance we have [https://covoiturage-libre.fr/](https://covoiturage-libre.fr/)\ntoo\n\n------\nsergiotapia\nI would never use this or recommend it. Extremely unsafe. Any goon can create\na \"Taxi\" account and do whatever he wants.\n\n~~~\nfeelix\nI wonder if this issue could be helped with a good rating system\n\n~~~\nfb03\nyes an escrow system would definitely help. It'd need some initial 'trust\nseeding' tho, but if you're not too paranoid that's quite okay.\n\nMaybe one of the creators of the system knows someone or runs a car himself\nand he can initially start providing these initial \"ok's\" to the system.\n\n------\ngragas\nThe address shown on the phone is the address of a fantastic breakfast place\nin Potrero Hill. I'd recommend it to anyone.\n\n------\nbruceb\nRideconnect.com, A way to create your own ride network was posted here a few\ndays ago.\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13502133](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13502133)\n\nAll face chicken and egg problem but would be nice to explore uber\nalternatives\n\n------\nUweSchmidt\nCutting out the middle man - that's what an internet business is supposed to\ndo!\n\n------\ncreeble\nInteresting, (I think) this is exactly the kind of app/service I was talking\nabout with a taxi driver in Tahoe a month ago.\n\nIt's a rural area with several small taxi companies, but none offer real-time\ninfo or the convenience of a single app to use to call a taxi.\n\n~~~\ncreeble\nWait, oops - no GPS tracking?\n\nUm, that's the killer feature that makes Uber Uber. It's taxis with GPS.\n\n------\nhomulilly\nUsing this looks like a great way to end up stuffed into a suitcase in the\nbottom of a lake. Part of the appeal of Uber or Lyft is that they ostensibly\nconduct background checks of some sort to weed out the psychopaths.\n\n~~~\ninsulinrocks\nThis was my first thought. 1 minute driver hiring sounds like something a\nserial murderer would love.\n\n------\nem3rgent0rdr\nwith #DeleteUber trending, I think now would be a great time to promote this,\nbut I think needs the following:\n\n(1) ought to use a fully open-source messaging backend instead of Telegram\n(closed server). Would be great if could interface to the Telegram bot with a\nvariety of messaging systems.\n\n(2) needs to work without a dataplan if to be viable in rural areas (Silence,\nthe SMS-fork of Signal)\n\n(3) needs to easily accept a variety of payment mechanisms, including credit\ncards, PayPal(s), and crypto-currency, so can interface with people who don't\nuse cash.\n\n(4) needs to have a distributed p2p reputation system (hello blockchain).\n\n~~~\nem3rgent0rdr\nclarification: after testing out the app, it seems clear that passenger and\ndriver could agree on any mutually-agreeable payment method. But it would be\nnice to have something integrated.\n\n------\nespadrine\nIn France, a somewhat similar effort is being built:\n[https://le.taxi](https://le.taxi).\n\nExcept that it bootstraps its security on the existing vetting process for\ntaxi companies.\n\n~~~\ntom_mellior\n... and on the existing mechanisms to ensure that the driver has insurance,\ndoes not cut prices in a race to the bottom that harms everybody, and does not\ncheat on taxes.\n\n------\nSami_Lehtinen\nIn Helsinki Finland we had Kutsuplus, which was basically a shared minibus\ntaxi. It lasted five years and had to be subsidized heavily. It was about 50%\ncheaper than Taxi. Yet of course also slower.\n\n[https://www.wired.com/2013/10/on-demand-public-\ntransit/](https://www.wired.com/2013/10/on-demand-public-transit/)\n\n------\nthinkloop\nThings I like about rideshares:\n\n\\- no payment friction\n\n\\- easy gps integration\n\n\\- safety\n\nThings missing from this service:\n\n\\- see above\n\n------\nCodeWriter23\nIf you're in Los Angeles, I strongly recommend googling LAPD Bandit Cab\nEnforcement before using this app to give rides. Also, other cities may have\nsimilar enforcement operations.\n\n~~~\ntom_mellior\nWhy not just give a link if you know exactly what information you want to\nrefer people to?\n\n~~~\nCodeWriter23\nI thought LMGTFY links were frowned upon around here.\n\n~~~\nsoftawre\nNope. See the discussion we had about this a couple months ago on HN.\n\n------\nexception_e\nMight not be a bad idea to mark this as \"beta\" on the website and list some of\nthe roadmap ideas being worked on:\n[https://github.com/ro31337/libretaxi#technical-roadmap-\nunord...](https://github.com/ro31337/libretaxi#technical-roadmap-unordered) to\nease public concerns.\n\nThis is a _great_ idea, but it is really early on and needs a safety and open-\nsource-friendly CC integration before being advertised in my opinion.\n\n------\nhwestiii\nNice to see. Uber, Lyft, et al have always seemed like exactly the wrong\nsolution here. The availability of the vehicle and the demand for it are\ninherently local phenomnena, so why should some arbitrary company who knows\nwhere be the major broker for dealing with this issue worldwide? I understand\nnetwork effects, etc., but it seems that localized brokerage would serve all\nparties the best.\n\n~~~\ntekknik\nOne massive benefit is increased resources for vetting drivers. How is my\nsafety both ensured and insured with LibreTaxi?\n\n------\njacamat\nI never carry cash. Why not just integrate Stripe for debit/credit card\ntransactions? Or literally anything.\n\n~~~\nanigbrowl\nThey're working on Bitcoin integration. Cash is legal tender for all debts so\nit's the obvious place to start, plus people who may not want their activities\ntracked too closely may be safer with cash.\n\nBesides, you can't hand someone a suitcase full of electronic money. I mean\nyou can duct tape a black card into the suitcase or something but it just\nisn't the same. Do your part to save the attache case industry.\n\n------\ndaveheq\nSounds like a great way to get robbed... Drivers only take cash, robber\ndecides to rob driver of all cash.\n\nTransactoons need to happen through the phone, not cash.\n\n------\nSteeeve\nInstall link doesn't work, and it doesn't show up on the play store.\n\n------\nHandwash\nI don't like to bargain.\n\n------\nkixiQu\nIt could have great potential, and I see the virtue of this kind of thing\nglobally, but my first thought was \"This seems like a great way to get\nmurdered.\" Maybe that's a gender thing?\n\n------\nmbostleman\nCash only. That makes it practical for me about .01% of the time.\n\n------\nEndy\nHow will they deal with the issues of ADA compliance, ensuring that the\ndrivers and vehicles are safe, and compliance with local T&LC regulations like\nmedallions, etc?\n\n------\nTeeWEE\nThis wont work. Taxidrivers often dont speak your language, and always try to\nget high prices by being not so friendly. Uber/Lyft solves this problem.\n\n------\npugworthy\nI guess the days of names like, \"iTaxi\" and \"Taxer\" are gone. How long until\nall the \"Libre\" names are passe I wonder?\n\n------\nadultSwim\nTaxi companies need to band together now. They finally have apps but each one\nhas their own. They will keep getting crushed until they share dispatching.\n\n------\nfloatboth\n\"Get hired instantly\" doesn't sound good…\n\n------\nhobarrera\nThe \"install\" link forwards to some obscure URL that simply won't work on\nnormal browsers:\n\ntg://resolve?domain=libretaxi_bot\n\n------\npartycoder\nI wonder why kue. kue is a queuing system built on top of redis. Why not\nsomething like zmq, RabbitMQ, Kafka, etc.\n\n------\nyalogin\nHow is this different from me remembering a bunch of cab phone numbers and\ncalling them? What is this app doing?\n\n------\nmrmondo\nI like the idea, but the idea of having to carry and use cash is enough to put\nme off completely.\n\n------\ndotchev\nThis is a great fit for IPFS so you don't need central infrastructure\n\n------\nicemelt8\nUber and Careem are banned in Karachi, a city of 20 million.\n\nThis seems like a life saver.\n\n------\nmattspitz\n<Insert gratuitous joke about LibreTaxi vs. GratisTaxi here>\n\n------\nspectrum1234\nSounds great but the advantage the main guys have is the network effect, a\nlarge fleet. The fact that this is free suggests no marketing budget and\ntherefore less drivers and passengers, both which depend on each other to\ngrow.\n\n~~~\nomouse\nThat's not really an advantage. Cab companies are location specific, the\nnetwork effect is limited by the number of taxi medallions handed out.\n\nIt's also a good starting point for _local_ companies to be the Uber or Lyft\nof their city. For example in Toronto, Hailo doesn't exist and Lyft doesn't\noperate here either. It would be awesome if a company could just pick up\nLibreTaxi, pour in some $$$ for marketing and sales and start it up for\nToronto.\n\n------\nsharemywin\nMaybe allow taxis to pay for a background check.\n\n[https://checkr.com/](https://checkr.com/)\n\nAlso it would be easy enough to allow someone to send an invoice with their\nown payment options.\n\n------\nkylebenzle\nBitcoin finally making new applications possible!\n\n------\njoe563323\nThe Best thing about FSF is they never give up even when it seems like there\nis no chance of success at the present movement. True RMS spirit.\n\n~~~\nupofadown\nCould you please elaborate? I don't see any link to the FSF on the site.\n\n~~~\njoe563323\nSorry. It is not FSF project. I am not able to delete my comment. When i\nlooked at \"Libre\" i just assumed FSF(confirmation bias)\n\n------\nCodeWriter23\nNo Rideshare Insurance? NO PROBLEM!\n\n------\ndmitrygr\n> No vehicle restrictions.\n\nuuuh.... no thanks?\n\n------\njonthepirate\nIt is written in Javascript.\n\n------\nviach\nIt is disrupting the disruptors.\n\n------\nnovorool\nReally great tool, nice job!\n\n------\nthomasfl\nThis should have been implemented as a Facebook Messenger Bot.\n\n------\njijji\nthis thing isnt ready for primetime...\n\n------\nawinter-py\nfree as in ...\n\n------\nYan_Coutinho\nI thought it was created by the same guys whi created LibreOffice\n\n------\nmiguelrochefort\nWhy do we need a dedicated app for everything? Is it not time to build one app\nthat can be used for everything, including ride sharing, food delivery and\nitem listing?\n\n~~~\ncyborgx7\nYou mean like a webbrowser?\n\n~~~\nmiguelrochefort\nNo I don't.\n\n~~~\nsoftawre\nwhy do we need clocks, can't we just put a clock in everything else?\n\n------\nkkhire\nThis is the height of stupidity.\n\nIf you absolutely refuse to use any products built by C-suite execs that\nadvise and/or support Trump, then go live as a hermit in the wilderness.\n\nedit: Uber/lyft are built by smart and motivated technologists who spend\neveryday making the most sophisticated ridesharing platforms out there. To use\nan unvetted and unsafe knockoff is inane.\n\n~~~\ncyborgx7\nI've been looking for something like this. Not because of Trump but because I\nstrongly oppose the \"sharing economy\" that is explotative of workers,\ncircumventing legitimate market regulation and reaping profits in a\ncentralized manner.\n\n~~~\ntom_mellior\nHow is LibreTaxi _not_ \"explotative of workers, circumventing legitimate\nmarket regulation\"? You're right about the centralized profit thing.\n\n~~~\ncyborgx7\nIt is absolutely that as well. But if this is the direction we are headed in,\nlets at least make sure as much of the money goes to the workers as possible.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: What are examples of open source projects with excellent tests? - adt2bt\nOne of my biggest shortcomings as a developer is not knowing how to test my code well. I suspect I am not alone.\n======\ntbirdz\nSQLite has a lot of tests. You can read about their testing strategy here:\n[https://www.sqlite.org/testing.html](https://www.sqlite.org/testing.html)\n\n------\nColinCochrane\nSQLite is one of the best examples I can think of.\n\n[https://www.sqlite.org/testing.html](https://www.sqlite.org/testing.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHume the Humane - pepys\nhttps://aeon.co/essays/hume-is-the-amiable-modest-generous-philosopher-we-need-today\n======\nfaitswulff\n> ‘Be a philosopher,’ advised Hume, ‘but, amidst all your philosophy, be still\n> a man’\n\n...is by far one of my favorite quotes of his, and I'm glad they included it\nin the article.\n\nEDIT - they also got ‘Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the\npassions,’ which is another one of my favorites that I'd forgotten!\n\n------\nJeuelyFish\nI've always been a big fan of David Hume and, in general, empiricism. It's\nnice to see that there is attention made to his point that a healthy human\nlife consists of a 'mixed kind' between higher intellectual activities as well\nas common mundane activities.\n\nOften times, at least in academia, his philosophical skepticism is presented\nas the main and only point. From my perspective, his skepticism is way of\ntargeting those _already_ reading philosophy (and thusly more likely to favor\npursuing intellect over the body) in the hopes of persuading them into more\nhealthy balance. Because of that tho, I almost never suggest reading him as a\nfirst introduction to Philosophy for new students. Instead, he seems a nice\ncounter point to the works of philosophers who are better suited for\nintroductory texts (Plato, Descartes, Aristotle, etc)\n\n~~~\nfreedomben\nTotally agree. He was one of the few greats that really understood the\nimportance of balancing intellectualism with real life.\n\nWill also add that his skepticism (which I love about him) by nature requires\nunderstanding what it is that he is skeptical about. It's very dialectical in\nnature.\n\n------\nwoodandsteel\nMy view on Hume is that his philosophy was a version of Pragmatism. I mention\nthis because he is generally seen by analytic philosophers as some sort of\nmaterialist or radical skeptic.\n\n------\nfreedomben\nI do wish Hume was more included in academic philosophy curriculum. My first\nencounter with Hume was more based on following a footnote. Hat tip to\nPhilosophize This! podcast for including Hume front and center.\n\n~~~\nmrec\nHe was very much included when I was doing undergrad philosophy. (UK, ~30\nyears ago.)\n\n~~~\ncheckyoursudo\nI finished my undergrad in philosophy at a religious uni in the US about 20\nyears ago. We had a bit of Hume. The monks (most of the philosophy professors\nwere monks) were more into ancient and medieval philosophers, with the\nexception of Nietzsche and Heidegger. One monk in particular loved teaching\nNietzsche and Heidegger.\n\nI would have preferred more Hume, as I later discovered.\n\n~~~\nmrec\nWe were almost the exact opposite; I don't think we really touched on ancient\nand mediaeval writers at all. Not much in the religious vein either, we more\ntopic-centric (personal identity, ethics, formal logic etc) than philosopher-\ncentric.\n\n~~~\ncheckyoursudo\nI did one of my four years at a very large public university, and my\nexperience there was much more like you describe. I would have preferred that,\nultimately. I didn't know at the time.\n\nPossibly, college kids (or secondary school kids heading into college) don't\ncommonly understand there could be a significant difference in instruction. Or\nmaybe it was just me.\n\n------\nalexashka\nThis article used so many words, I still don't know what makes Hume unique or\ninteresting. I wish the author had more time, to make it shorter - or whoever\nis paying him, the wisdom to not pay per page of text.\n\n~~~\ndang\nMaybe so, but can you please not post shallow dismissals to Hacker News? This\nis in the site guidelines:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy is Lion downloaded from Facebook servers? - tudorizer\nhttp://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/580/bildschirmfoto20110720u.png/\n\n======\ngaryd\n$ dig static.ak.connect.facebook.com\n\n; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> static.ak.connect.facebook.com ;; global options: +cmd\n;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<\\- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 45796 ;;\nflags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 9, ADDITIONAL: 9\n\n;; QUESTION SECTION: ;static.ak.connect.facebook.com. IN A\n\n;; ANSWER SECTION: static.ak.connect.facebook.com. 858 IN CNAME\nstatic.ak.connect.facebook.com.edgesuite.net.\nstatic.ak.connect.facebook.com.edgesuite.net. 9684 IN CNAME\na1875.g.akamai.net. a1875.g.akamai.net. 20 IN A 69.64.227.14\n\n------\nsaurik\nOne would presume because they both use the same CDN, Akamai, leading to all\nof their content looking to share a few IP addresses.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLeaving “gifts” behind on dedicated server hosts - ivank\nhttp://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/04/14/flash/\n======\nDyslexicAtheist\nHetzner Cloud ;) came immediately to mind\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHack your brain: OpenEEG - geuis\nhttp://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/\n\n======\nluckystrike\nThis brought back some good memories for me. (I mean the post only). My final\nyear project at engineering was (an attempt) to build an EEG machine (design).\nI was not much of a hardware guy, and did it as a last chance (at least for a\nwhile) to learn a bit more. The other option in my mind was to may write a\nRTOS or something but i thought that can happen any time later as well.\n\nJoerg Hansmann (the leading hacker behind this hardware design) was simply\nawesome and very helpful with sharing his knowledge about the circuit design.\n(This was late 2001). It was actually the first time i realized the true worth\nof open source communities, and their role in sharing of knowledge and\ninformation.\n\nThanks geius for posting this, i ought to contribute back to this community\nfor sure, in one way or the other.\n\n------\nsown\nI looked into this one time and got scared away the the DIY part of the kit\nand the warnings that you could seriously injure yourself. :( This will\nrequire braver souls than I.\n\n~~~\nqwph\nSoldering up a bunch of electrodes, hooking them up to a power source and\nstrapping the whole lot to your head? What could _possibly_ go wrong?\n\n(I'd read this first though:\n<http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/WARNING.html>)\n\n~~~\nsown\nI might die.\n\n~~~\nkirubakaran\nYou might perform a lobotomy equivalent on yourself. That scares me much more\nthan the possibility of dying.\n\n------\ns3graham\nNeat. Is there any cheap \"commercial\" ones? If I could delegate the \"it-\nwon't-kill-you\" testing and pay double, I might go for that.\n\nWhat I _really_ want though, is that 100x100 tongue point video camera that\nHawkins mentions in \"On Intelligence\".\n\n~~~\ns3graham\nHmm, or maybe not. <http://science.howstuffworks.com/brainport2.htm> That\npicture's not really sellin' it.\n\n~~~\nntoshev\nYou can get the same input via the auditory channel. All you need is webcam\nand software, or a Series 60 mobile phone:\n\n<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3171226.stm>\n\n<http://www.seeingwithsound.com/>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nA Holographic Future - dain\nhttp://dain.io/post/117746721225/a-holographic-future\n\n======\nhsingh23\nWhao man, that's pretty cool. VR vs holograms - i think holograms win.\n\n------\nljk\ni wonder how these new technology will affect people's vision, but in that\nworld there's no use for good vision since everything will be right in front\nof you\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nRoy — small functional language that compiles to JavaScript - paulmillr\nhttp://roy.brianmckenna.org/\n\n======\nMiky\nIt makes me sad that having monad sugar is now just a given feature for a\nfunctional language.\n\nEspecially when that language has unrestricted side effects and the example\ncode using the monad syntax uses those side effects, completely obviating the\nneed for, and in fact rendering useless, monads as used in the example.\n\nThis is cargo cult programming at its worst. Including monad sugar because\nit's the thing to do, without even understanding what monads are or why\nthey're useful. This is quite clear from the \"tracing monad\" example code.\nThis \"tracing monad\" is like the Writer monad, stripped of all utility and\nsense.\n\nWhat drove you to unleash this horror on the programming masses, Moggi? Why\nhave you cursed us so?\n\n~~~\npufuwozu\nThe example sucks but is very simple.\n\nI didn't add monadic sugar just to be part of the \"cargo cult\". I added it\nbecause I'm eventually going to use it to implement an automatic continuation-\npassing transform. I've done a similar thing before with ClojureScript's\nmacros:\n\n<http://brianmckenna.org/blog/cps_transform_js>\n\n~~~\nMiky\nMonadic sugar is probably not the way to go for implementing an automatic\ncontinuation-passing transform. Why not just do macros?\n\n~~~\npufuwozu\nMonads suit the problem nicely and it's been done in quite a few languages\nalready:\n\n<http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4117>\n\n<http://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/100>\n\n[http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/F_Sharp_Programming/Async_Workf...](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/F_Sharp_Programming/Async_Workflows)\n\nThis is something that JavaScript desperately needs.\n\nMacros aren't so nice for this stuff in non-homoiconic languages.\n\n~~~\nMiky\nI previously had a someone antagonistic comment, but I decided to remove it.\n\nI think that finding ways to notate asynchronous code cleanly is a pretty\nawesome goal, and I hope you find success in your project.\n\n------\njoebo\nThe tracing monad is fascinating. What would be a practical application of it?\nI've been studying monads through Learn You a Haskell for Great Good but\nhaven't been able to put them into context (other than isolating side effects\nand enforcing order of execution).\n\n[https://github.com/pufuwozu/roy/blob/master/test/trace_monad...](https://github.com/pufuwozu/roy/blob/master/test/trace_monad.roy)\n\n    \n    \n      let traceMonad = {\n    \t  return: fn x =\n    \t\tconsole.log \"Return:\" x\n    \t\tx\n    \t  bind: fn x f =\n    \t\tconsole.log \"Binding:\" x\n    \t\tf x\n    \t}\n    \n      console.log (do traceMonad\n    \t  bind w = 1\n    \t  let x = 2\n    \t  bind y = 3\n    \t  bind z = 4\n    \t  return w + x + y + z\n    \t)\n\n~~~\nembwbam\nKnow what would be awesome? If you could use the monad syntax to clean up\nasync, cb-passing code. I've been learning a lot of Haskell lately too, and I\nlike to think of the monads as returning a set of instructions with side\neffects to be executed in order. I think this example is kind of trivial. I'd\nlove to see one that does something more than simple addition (IO!)\n\n~~~\nsamdk\nJane Street's Async library for OCaml does this:\n<http://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/100>. It's excellent, and I now miss it\nin every other language I use.\n\nCode looks something like this:\n\n    \n    \n        ...\n        (* long_running_call : unit -> string Deferred.t *)\n        long_running_call ()\n        >>= fun result ->\n        print_endline result\n        ...\n    \n\nRunning calls in parallel is easy. Say we want to run a couple of queries\nagainst a db at once, and only perform an action once both return:\n\n    \n    \n        ...\n        (* Db.query : Db -> Db.Query -> Db.Result Deferred.t *)\n        let d1 = Db.query db query1 in\n        let d2 = Db.query db query2 in\n        d1 >>= fun r1 ->\n        d2 >>= fun r2 ->\n        ...\n    \n\nIf you have questions about getting it set up/using it, the mailing list is\nthe place to ask: <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ocaml-core>\n\n~~~\nPeaker\nDoesn't this have the same problem that Python's Twisted does -- that async\ncalls may lack handlers for error conditions, and so errors may be silently\nignored?\n\n~~~\nsamdk\nAsync includes a module called Monitor that lets you correctly handle\nexceptions in async code. The signature of one of the most commonly used\nmethods is this:\n\n    \n    \n        Monitor.try_with : ?name : string\n                           -> (unit -> 'a Deferred.t)\n                           -> ('a, exn) Result.t Deferred.t\n    \n\nIt takes two arguments. Name is used to tell you what monitor the error was\ncaught by. The second is a function that returns some kind of Deferred.t. The\nwhole thing returns a (deferred) Result.t (: [`Ok of 'a | `Error of exn]),\nletting you either do something with the results of the async call or handle\nthe error. Usage might be something like this:\n\n    \n    \n        (* query_or_print : Db.t -> Db.Query.t -> Db.Result.t option Deferred.t *)\n        let query_or_print db query =\n          Monitor.try_with (fun () -> Db.query db query)\n          >>| function\n          | `Ok result -> Some result\n          | `Error e -> print_endline (Exn.to_string e); None\n\n------\narchivator\nThis looks great! It has all the essentials and compiles to readable\nJavaScript, should be a real productivity booster.\n\nLooking at the JavaScript, though, all those anonymous functions can't be very\nfast.. I wonder if the compiler could try to defunctionalize the output..\n\n~~~\nhammerdr\nThe only gratuitous functions I saw were the \"case\" statement and the \"with\"\nstatement. The with statement can really only be implemented with that\nfunction (though there is something to be said of only defining it once\ninstead of n times). The \"case\" statement may be gratuitous but it feels like\nthe compiler has a reason for wrapping it in a leakless function wrapper.\n\n~~~\npufuwozu\nFor \"match\", it needs to be an expression for some things so that means\nwrapping it in a function and returning the result. In the future I'm going to\ndo some optimisation to see if the expression is the last in a function and\nremove the wrapper. For example:\n\n    \n    \n        return (function() {\n            if(b instanceof True) {\n                return ifTrue;\n            } else if(b instanceof False) {\n                return ifFalse;\n            }\n        })();\n    \n\nCan just become:\n\n    \n    \n        if(b instanceof True) {\n            return ifTrue;\n        } else if(b instanceof False) {\n            return ifFalse;\n        }\n    \n\nThe output of `with` is pretty gross. Definitely want to hear ideas on how to\nclean it up :)\n\n~~~\njawher\nCan't you take te same approach ClojureScript took, i.e. to generate a\nstraitforward translation to JavaScript, and then let Google's closure\ncompiler take care of the optimizing thing ?\n\nFor instance, for this Roy generated JS:\n\n    \n    \n        var True = function(){};\n        var False = function(){};\n        var getBool = function(b, ifTrue, ifFalse) {\n            return (function() {\n                if(b instanceof True) {\n                    return ifTrue;\n                } else if(b instanceof False) {\n                    return ifFalse;\n                }\n            })();\n        }\n    \n    \n\nThe Closure compiler generates:\n\n    \n    \n        var True = function() {\n        }, False = function() {\n        }, getBool = function(b, c, d) {\n          var a;\n          b instanceof True ? a = c : b instanceof False && (a = d);\n          return a\n        };\n\n~~~\npufuwozu\nRoy has the same goal as CoffeeScript - create output that would be similar to\nhow a JS dev would write it. If you use Roy but then decide you don't like it,\njust take the output and keep going.\n\nI could rely on Closure for optimal performance but what I really want is\noptimal readability.\n\n------\nprpatel\nInteresting language. Feels a bit like Coffeescript with lesser use of symbols\nand (possibly less) syntaxic sugar. Going to play with it a bit more...\n\n~~~\ntjholowaychuk\nor... coffeescript looks like other languages that already exist.. and this\none just happens to have significant whitespace as well :p\n\n------\nepidemian\nIt looks very nice! I'm digging the simple Haskell-ish syntax.\n\nThe example on Types is not compiling as it is. The last line should be\nsomething like:\n\n    \n    \n        console.log (getName {firstName: \"John\", lastName: \"Doe\"})\n\n~~~\nmeric\nI do like Haskell syntax, but only because it allows partial application of\nfunctions.\n\nNo partial application allowed here, so what is the point? =\\\n\n    \n    \n       let add a b = a + b\n       let add2 = add 2\n    \n\nDoes not work.\n\n    \n    \n       let fact a = \n       if a == 0 then \n          1\n       else\n          (fact (a-1)) * a\n    \n\nDoes not support recursion like this either. The \"functional\" description\nbrought my expectations too high I think.\n\nIt compiles to very lean Javascript though, so that's a big plus.\n\n~~~\nepidemian\nFor some reason the parser breaks with that factorial definition, but adding\nspaces in between `a-1` seem to do the trick:\n\n    \n    \n        let fact a = \n           if a == 0 then \n              1\n           else\n              (fact (a - 1)) * a\n    \n        console.log (fact 5)\n    \n\nNow, it's true that the Haskell syntax does not make that much sense if there\nis no partial application. I think that the variadic-arguments-are-always-\nallowed nature of JavaScript is not very compatible with partial application\nthough.\n\n~~~\nmasklinn\n> I think that the variadic-arguments-are-always-allowed nature of JavaScript\n> is not very compatible with partial application though.\n\nIt could be implemented by compiling Roy functions to chains of 1-arg\nfunctions, but the amount of recursion and funcalling would probably be\nexpensive (JS is not very good at these).\n\nA SmartEnoughCompiler® you could also see partial application points and craft\na partial application right there:\n\n    \n    \n        let add x y = x + y\n        console.log (add 1 32)\n        let add2 = add 2\n        console.log (add2 5)\n    \n        var add = function (x, y) { return x + y; };\n        console.log(add(1, 32));\n        var add2 = function (y) { return add(2, y); };\n        console.log(add2(5));\n    \n\nAs long as the number of arguments can be understood at compile time (which it\ncan), it's not _that_ hard: if the number of arguments provided make the\nfunction's arity reach 0 you partially apply it (and decrease the arity of the\nresult), otherwise you fully apply it.\n\n~~~\npufuwozu\nI decided against outputting like that a while ago but after seeing that\nexample, I can't think of a great reason against it.\n\nI'll have a go and see how well it works. Thanks!\n\n------\nskrebbel\nI don't understand the monad because I'm too stupid, but I really really like\nRoy nevertheless.\n\nI've really missed static typing on Javascript and Coffeescript; little typos\nare so hard to find! Structured typing really sounds like the way to go for\nputting type checking into Javascript, and I like how, just like Coffeescript,\nRoy tastes a lot like Javascript otherwise - avoiding all kinds of leaky\nabstractions you get with less JS-like languages. Plus, it has a sexy syntax.\n\nI'd like to try this out in a real project. Is that being done already?\n\n------\nfalse\n<http://roy.brianmckenna.org/bundled-roy.js>\n\nThere are some characters that shouldn't be there in the middle of the file,\nthus demo is broken.\n\n------\ncheald\nThis may just be my ignorance talking, but isn't a functional language that\ndoesn't implement tail call optimization a Bad Idea?\n\n------\njaipilot747\nThe roy code looks very clean and readable, but what will the js output be\nlike for larger projects, I wonder.\n\n------\ng3orge\nI think this has the same disadvantage with coffeescript. The web is full with\njavascript and there isn't an easy way to swap between the languages. Also\nit's a pain to debug.\n\n~~~\nmhd\nLet's hope that Mozilla's SourceMap[1] gets finished then. Should alleviate\nmost of the debugging problems.\n\n[1]: <https://wiki.mozilla.org/DevTools/Features/SourceMap>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhat is the correct JSON content type? - andysandimas\nhttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/477816/what-is-the-correct-json-content-type\n\n======\nshawabawa3\nI usually hate people that say this but... why has this been upvoted?\n\nUsually these stack overflow posts have interesting answers, but this one is\nliterally \"use application/json\"\n\nIs there something I'm missing?\n\n~~~\nskore\nFirst submission of a barely 2 weeks old account with no other submissions or\ncomments takes 14 points to get to the frontpage. Definitely seems like some\nalgorithm isn't performing properly.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLicense plate tracking for police set to go nationwide in the USA - novok\nhttps://www.cnet.com/news/license-plate-tracking-for-police-set-to-go-nationwide/\n======\nAncalagon\nI guess I don't have a lot to say other than: this is pretty disheartening. We\nare going further and further down the rabbit hole that is the surveillance\nstate.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nOn Costliest U.S. Warship Ever, Navy Can’t Get Munitions on Deck - perfunctory\nhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-30/flawed-elevators-on-13-billion-carrier-miss-another-deadline\n======\nsramsay\nFrom the article: \"The elevators aren’t the only issue plaguing the ship,\nwhich has had problems with two other core systems -- the electromagnetic\nsystem to launch planes and the arresting gear to catch them when they land.\"\n\nSo let's see, the only the problem with this aircraft carrier is that it has\ntrouble with airplanes taking off. And landing. And carrying, you know, bombs.\n\n~~~\nzipwitch\nThe real scandal isn't that the _Ford_ is having (lots) of problems with it's\nnew technology. That can happen. It's not even that a decision was made to put\nmultiple novel, unproven systems into a major warship.\n\nThe biggest scandal is that the US Navy accepted delivery of the _Ford_ and\ncommissioned it when it was non-functional. This should be ending swathes of\ncareers at the top of both the US Navy and Huntington Ingalls Industries.\n\n~~~\nrootw0rm\nI still have an HII access card for when I worked on the USS Chosin and USS\nO'Kane right underneath the Coronado bridge. I was still in the custody of the\nSan Diego sheriff's department at the time. Many of the few hundred of us that\nworked there were either currently in a halfway house or ex-cons. None of us\nreceived any safety training on asbestos, yet we handled a-cloth every single\nday. We only had rudimentary safety equipment. Some guys would cut asbestos\ncloth with a hand grinder, sending fluff everywhere. Equipment marked \"TOP\nSECRET\" was covered with a simple piece of butcher paper...assuming it hadn't\ntorn or fallen off. It was pretty much a shit show.\n\n~~~\ngodzillabrennus\nThe United States government and \"unconventional\" approaches to labor for\nbuilding military equipment is not new.\n\nOne of the most interesting stories to me is how the Mafia helped break some\nbones of laborers during WW2 to ensure the USA was victorious. They knew they\ncouldn't operate without a free society.\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmMcD96bHak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmMcD96bHak)\n\nLots of other ways that the Mafia helped in Italy.\n\n[https://smile.amazon.com/Mafia-Allies-Americas-Secret-\nAllian...](https://smile.amazon.com/Mafia-Allies-Americas-Secret-\nAlliance/dp/0760324573?sa-no-redirect=1)\n\n------\nreadams\nIt's worth noting that problems like this are pretty normal for new weapons\nsystems. Th V-22 Osprey is a good example here: it seemed like a disaster when\nit came out, but it's now got its kinks worked out and is performing really\nwell.\n\n~~~\nkwindla\nIf you're interested in big engineering projects and how they work\nculturally/politically as well as technologically, Richard Whittle's book\nabout the V-22 Osprey is really worth reading.\n\n_The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey_\n\n~~~\nware_am_i\nThanks for the recommendation! I'm in the midst of a big and\nculturally/politically challenging engineering project and eager to learn...\nso much so that I signed up for a library card and checked out the ebook from\nthe LA Public Library!\n\n~~~\nJBlue42\nThat library card comes with tons of other benefits too. Free streaming on\nKanopy, NYT membership, museum discounts / passes\n([https://www.lapl.org/explorela](https://www.lapl.org/explorela)).\n\n------\nmaximente\n> “I am concerned overall that the Navy is under-equipped in key areas,” the\n> Oklahoma Republican said in a statement.\n\nif there was any - any doubt at all - that this machine feeds itself, this\nhilarious statement should remove all of it\n\n~~~\nvidanay\nThe only thing the US Navy is under-equipped for is something along the scale\nof the aliens from Battleship.\n\nAnd just as likely to actually occur.\n\n~~~\nUser23\nNah, the Russians and anyone they’ve shared the tech with could easily sink a\ncarrier or any other surface ship with hypersonic anti-ship missiles[1].\nThat’s assuming they don’t just ram into another ship on accident. The US Navy\nis in a very bad place now and the next war that isn’t just picking on some\ntotally helpless country will show it.\n\n[1][https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a25684396...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a25684396/zircon-\nhypersonic-missile/)\n\n~~~\ngreedo\nEasily? Nothing involved would be easy.\n\n~~~\neloff\nNonetheless, it seems the US Navy is still fighting the last war. Carriers are\nextremely vulnerable to missiles. I think fast missile boats and land based\nlaunchers probably make large warships obsolete. Tough to say for sure since\nthat hasn't happened, but it seems likely to me.\n\n~~~\ngreedo\nKilling a carrier isn't like a video game where you see a carrier on screen\nand issue a launch command. Killing a carrier involves a chain of events;\nbreak anyone of the links and the carrier is safe.\n\nFirst you have to locate the carrier. Easy to do in peacetime, in war time\nmuch more difficult. If you want to kill it with a ballistic missile, you need\nto locate it within a few square kilometers. This means either a radar\nlocation, or a satellite overhead.\n\nRadar is problematic because it has to deal with the curvature of the earth.\nThis is typically solved by using airborne radar. Well, carriers and their\nairgroups are very well versed in both detecting this surveillance and killing\nit. Either with aircraft, with SAMs, or with cruise missiles that target that\nairfields of the surveillance (ISR) aircraft.\n\nSo say that you somehow manage to get a location fix on a carrier battle\ngroup. Now you have to prep your missiles for launch which takes time. Let's\nsay 30-60 min. The carrier can steam at over 30 knots, so now your targeting\ndata is out of date. Again, not like push button warfare. Your ballistic\nmissile now has to find the carrier in a roughly 1000 sq mile area. Fine,\nmissiles are relatively cheap. So you just target each square mile with a\nmissile and hope its internal radar can pick out the CVN.\n\nSo you launch 1000 missiles, and just like in Battleship, one of your missiles\nmanages to be in the right spot. Now it has to deal with the SAMs protecting\nthe CVN. Aegis is pretty good these days, so you've got to make it past them.\nThat'll be tough. Then you have to make it past the ESSM missiles, as well as\nthe ECM jamming suite of every ship in the carrier group. Fine, you have\nrobust electronics.\n\nBOOM! You've hit. But it turns out that your radar on the warhead was small,\nwith insufficient processing power to discriminate between a carrier\n(especially with all the jamming going on) and an escort ship. You've sunk an\nLCS, or a refueler (they're big and have a big radar image), or maybe even an\nArleigh Burke DDG or Tico cruiser. Sucks for those crewmates, but that's their\njob. Protect the carrier.\n\nAnd what has this failed attack cost you? Well, ballistic missiles are cheap\ncompared to a CVN, but not that cheap. Say $5M a piece since it makes the math\neasier (though the DF-21 and DF-26 will cost much much more). 1000 missiles is\n$5B, plus the cost of all the ISR assets used to locate the CVN.\n\nNow if hypersonic missiles start to take off (pun intended) and become\ndeployable weapon systems, it will make things more difficult. But that's\nstill in the future.\n\n~~~\nCapricornNoble\n>>First you have to locate the carrier. ...This means either a radar location,\nor a satellite overhead.\n\nThese aren't just \"weather satellites\". It's highly suspected they are capable\nof tracking carrier groups via infrared:\n[https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/06/05/chinese-weather-\nsatell...](https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/06/05/chinese-weather-satellite-\nsuccessfully-boosted-into-orbit/)\n\n>> Now you have to prep your missiles for launch which takes time. Let's say\n30-60 min.\n\nChina's DF-21D and DF-26 are solid-fueled and fired from mobile launchers. In\na deliberate carrier-hunting attack the sensor-shooter killchain is also\nlikely to be streamlined, even taking into the account that the Chinese still\nsuck at Command & Control. Overall preptime and killchain delay should be\nnegligible (<30 minutes for the Chinese).\n\n>>> So you just target each square mile with a missile and hope its internal\nradar can pick out the CVN.\n\nNo. These long-range anti-carrier missiles have an almost vertical terminal\ntrajectory and are looking down from high altitude. AN AESA's fast scanning\nshould be able to find and fix a target with a signature as gigantic as a\ncarrier's over a 30km-radius circle without too much difficulty. I haven't\ncrunched the numbers on this personally, but I'll add it to my list of \"radar\nscenarios to do the math on\"...\n\n>>>But it turns out that your radar on the warhead was small, with\ninsufficient processing power\n\nThe DF-21 and DF-26 are both about 1.4m meters in diameter. You can stuff an\nAESA as good as any on a fighter into a nosecone that large.\n\n>>>Aegis is pretty good these days.......Then you have to make it past the\nESSM missiles.\n\nEven in controlled tests we don't have that great of a pK (probability of kill\naka \"intercept\") against high-speed ballistic missiles. The ships need to use\nSM-2s and SM-3s. 1x Tico + 2x Arleigh Burke are packing about 300VLS total,\nand that has to include Harpoons and Tomahawks. Let's assume ~250 SM-2/3s for\nair and missile defense. It's customary to launch 2 missiles per incoming\nthreat (again, due to that low pK we've demonstrated) but that is still enough\nto stop 100 incoming (probably bigger than any realistic incoming salvo\nanyway). Assuming you can LAUNCH the SM-2s fast enough. Each ship would need\nto fire off 80+ missiles in probably 30 seconds, and I think there is a\npractical limit for how quickly you can fire from VLS (due to the exhausts and\nwhatnot). It's probably something like 1-2 missiles per second, from non-\nadjacent cells.\n\n>>>> Say $5M a piece since it makes the math easier (though the DF-21 and\nDF-26 will cost much much more). 1000 missiles is $5B, plus the cost of all\nthe ISR assets used to locate the CVN.\n\nI've seen estimates of $10-20M for DF-21/26\\. -200(don't need 1000) x $20M =\n$400M -3 x $100M(??) surveillance sats = $300M -Sinking the centerpiece of\nyour opponent's Navy, exploiting their Critical Vulnerability to defeat their\nCenter of Gravity, AND achieve major Information Operation success (PR\nvictory)? Priceless.\n\n~~~\ngreedo\nWarheads on the DF-21/26 aren't the same size as the missile diameter,\nespecially if they're using MARV. So sensor size will drop. And the missiles\nwon't have that much maneuverability.\n\nPlus you're forgetting about SM6. This will eat these for breakfast, lunch,\nand dinner. Assuming that the DF21 can even burn through the ECM that will be\nblasting it.\n\nAnd it'll take more than one direct hit to kill a CVN. An 1100lb warhead will\nbe similar in effect to a Harpoon. You might get lucky and have a mission\nkill, but if you fire 200+ missiles at a CVN you better kill it.\n\nAnd if we go to war with the PRC, we won't be using one CVN. We'll be surging\n2-3 CVBGs, and they'll run out of missiles. I also think that it's more likely\nthat the PRC will be using nuclear warheads on the DF-26 in a purely defensive\nposture. The idea of them using as conventional weapons is too risky.\n\n~~~\nCapricornNoble\n>>>>Warheads on the DF-21/26 aren't the same size as the missile diameter\n\nFor some reason finding physical radar dimensions is not easy. Even if the\nwarhead is ~1m to the DF-21/26's 1.4m, that's still enough to stuff in one of\nthese: [1] one of the most powerful A2A radars ever. [2]&[3] are <60cm\ndiameter. [3] is known Chinese tech, and is therefore most within the realm of\nfeasibility for employment.\n\n>>>And the missiles won't have that much maneuverability\n\nThey shouldn't need much, just enough to turn a near-miss into a full miss\n(assuming a frag detonation and not a more difficult kinetic kill anyway).\nTopol-Ms are rumored to have evasive maneuver capabilities, to establish\nprecedent.\n\n>>>>Plus you're forgetting about SM6. This will eat these for breakfast,\nlunch, and dinner.\n\nNah I just lumped them in with the SM2/3\\. Regardless of the actual SAM used\nyou're going to shoot 2 of them per incoming contact. The SM6 tests listed on\nthe Wiki all used 2 missiles per MRBM target.[6]\n\n>>>Assuming that the DF21 can even burn through the ECM that will be blasting\nit.\n\nUmmmmm, pointing insanely powerful radio emissions into the upper atmosphere\nin an attempt to blind a ballistic missile is a great way to broadcast your\nposition. If anything, might be a good idea to configure several DF-21s for\npassive direction finding. Not sure if the DF-21s have any kind of datalink,\nthe speeds and atmospheric conditions will make that difficult, but P-700\nGranit missiles have a networked cooperative capability and those things are\ndecades old.\n\n>>>>An 1100lb warhead will be similar in effect to a Harpoon.\n\nA Harpoon has a <500lb warhead [4]. 1100lbs is closer to a Tomahawk. For\nreference, the P-700's warhead (and it's definitely considered \"carrier\nkiller\" ordnance) is ~1600lbs.\n\n>>>You might get lucky and have a mission kill\n\nA 500kg warhead with a vertical attack profile, if it hits, is practically a\nguaranteed mission kill. The CVN will lose catapults or an elevator at the\nleast, and suffer a gigantic detonation inside its hangar at worst. Either way\nit's a PR victory and its entire air wing is no longer contributing to the\nfight.\n\n>>>>>And if we go to war with the PRC, we won't be using one CVN. We'll be\nsurging 2-3 CVBGs, and they'll run out of missiles.\n\nIf they run out of anti-carrier ballistic missiles they'll send drone-\nconverted 3rd-generation aircraft, which is a great way to burn up our anti-\nair ordnance.[5] If anything they'll use those FIRST to exhaust our defenses,\nthen fire the DF-21/26s, then follow up with a land-based strike package to\nfinish the task force off. China's land-based strike aircraft all outrange the\ncombat radius of carrier aircraft + ordnance by a significant margin. We'll\nrun out of ordnance within the Nine Dash Line / First Island Chain before\nChina does.\n\nOh, not that I ever expect a 100-missile DF-21 salvo anyway. I don't think\nthey have anywhere near that many launchers, and our best bet would be\nTomahawk strikes from submarines against the launchers early in the war.\n\nFYI: I've spent ~5 years in the west Pacific Theater, 3 of those at a Corps-\nlevel combined arms headquarters that regularly wargames _ahem_ a \"peer fight\"\nagainst a fictional country with a ballooning blue water navy and an\nauthoritarian government, if you catch my meaning. I've spent a LOT of time\nreading exercise AARs, intel updates, and threat briefs from the past ten\nyears on this problem set, courtesy of the ///SECRET Intelink portal. But I'm\narguing entirely from open-source info here.\n\nOh, and check out RAND's site here:[7] It's 2 years out of date but if\nanything the US's relative situation has deteriorated. But it's a good quick\nsummary of the balance of power. [1][https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_44d3OT-\nxI3U/SOke7iN2vaI/AAAAAAAAA...](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_44d3OT-\nxI3U/SOke7iN2vaI/AAAAAAAAAJs/2pgY49MFzZ4/s1600/Phazotron+JSC's+Radars-4.jpg)\n[2][https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_44d3OT-\nxI3U/SOkeIyMnjDI/AAAAAAAAA...](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_44d3OT-\nxI3U/SOkeIyMnjDI/AAAAAAAAAJk/nsjPL6tqDlk/s1600/Phazotron+JSC's+Radars-3.jpg)\n[3][https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/jf-17-block-iiis-proposed-\naes...](https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/jf-17-block-iiis-proposed-aesa-radar-\nklj-7a.458854/page-18)\n[4][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpoon_(missile)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpoon_\\(missile\\))\n[5][http://aviationintel.com/as-highlighted-on-this-site-as-a-\nth...](http://aviationintel.com/as-highlighted-on-this-site-as-a-threat-for-\nyears-chinas-converted-surplus-fighter-drone-force-eyeballed-from-space/)\n[6][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-174_Standard_ERAM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-174_Standard_ERAM)\n[7][https://www.rand.org/paf/projects/us-china-\nscorecard.html](https://www.rand.org/paf/projects/us-china-scorecard.html)\n\n~~~\ngreedo\nFor maneuverability of the warheads, I was focusing more on them being able to\nadjust to a shifting target location, not avoiding SAMs. I don't think decoys\nand other countermeasures to ABM defences are currently relevant to non-ICBM\nplatforms for the near future.\n\nI think that the bigger issue with protecting the CVBGs isn't DF-21/26 but\nthat lack of missile magazine depth and reloading. We can't even fill most of\nthe VLS we have now, and as you mentioned, it'd be pretty simple to degrade\nour AD with threats that require a response but aren't as dangerous. And since\nreplenishment at sea for VLS is not currently practiced, ships would have to\ncycle through Yokosuka (assuming it's still a functioning base after whatever\nthe PLAN does) for reloads.\n\nAnd since we have relatively shortlegged \"interceptors\" for the CVNs, with\nshortlegged AAMs (as currently deployed), I wouldn't be surprised if the PLAN\ndecides that ALCMs still have tremendous value. Hell, we don't even deploy\nwith full airwings these days.\n\nAt least the PLAN is pretty far behind in subs. For now.\n\n~~~\neloff\nI just want to say this was a fascinating and eye opening discussion from you\ntwo. Thanks for the content.\n\n------\nchewz\nGerman Engineering Yields New Warship That Isn’t Fit for Sea\n\n> ”There’s a whole generation of German engineers who haven’t worked on a\n> major defense project,” said Mr. Mölling, the defense expert. “It’s not that\n> they lost this skill; they never learned it.”\n\n[https://www.wsj.com/articles/german-engineering-yields-\nnew-w...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/german-engineering-yields-new-warship-\nthat-isnt-fit-for-sea-1515753000?mod=rsswn)\n\n~~~\nHavoc\nSo they would have you believe...\n\n------\nhirundo\nI can't build a little software app without going over schedule by\napproximately double, if I'm lucky. And if I get it wrong the consequence is\nmy boss looks sad. These guys are building one of the largest most complex\ngizmos in human history. And if they get it wrong sailors die. So personally\nI'll cut them a little slack.\n\nSo it's probably a good thing that I'm not their project manager.\n\n~~~\npmontra\nThe USA built 4 to 6 carriers and their fleet per year during WW2 [1] [2].\nThey were complex gizmos too back at the time. Ok, the whole county was fully\ncommitted to that so it could be an unfair comparison but it shows the\ndifference between wanting to ship a product that works on a tight schedule\nand trying to build the dream project. Plenty of examples on the history of\nIT.\n\n[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex-\nclass_aircraft_carrier](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex-\nclass_aircraft_carrier)\n\n[2] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence-\nclass_aircraft_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence-\nclass_aircraft_carrier)\n\n~~~\nmythrwy\nI have a theory that on the rise of a civilization soon after comes the rise\nof career bureaucrats who proceed to strangle the civilization and this has\nbeen going on since at least the Sumerians.\n\n------\nnimbius\nThe question Ive been wondering is not whether the Ford is a total dud, but\nwere its changes even reasonable? or were they just tacked on as some\nmisplaced future-chasing value-add.\n\nFor example, the electromagnetic launcher. Why have a launcher at all? the\nUSSR's Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier solved the aircraft launching\nproblem ages ago and for far cheaper. just slope the deck.\n\nand Magnetic elevators? why? was there a specific concern or reason behind\nusing magnets instead of tried-and-true cables? why were we redesigning doors\nand hatches when the old ones ostensibly performed fine?\n\n~~~\nthunderbird120\nSTOBAR[1] carriers like the Kuznetsov are vastly less capable than CATOBAR[2]\ncarriers, they're the budget option. Using a ramp rather than a catapult means\nthat the types of aircraft you can operate are more limited and the weapons\nand fuel loads they can actually get into the air with are significantly\nreduced.\n\nAs for the new systems in the Ford class. The EMALS system replaces\nconventional steam powered catapults because it can be more finely tuned to\nindividual aircraft types. This means less stress on airframes which\ntranslates to longer operational lifespans. It also allows for easier\nlaunching of a wider variety of aircraft weights.\n\nIn the case of both the catapult and the elevators, the new systems are\nmechanically much simpler than the old ones leading to reduced operating\ncosts.\n\nAll of the changes mentioned exist for a good reason, the issue is that they\nweren't implemented competently.\n\n[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOBAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOBAR)\n\n[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CATOBAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CATOBAR)\n\n~~~\ndsfyu404ed\nPeople are gonna say \"how hard is it to send a marine down there with a grease\ngun\" or \"how hard is it to R&R a major system every 20yr\"\n\nWartime operations beat the shit out of things. Stopping a system so some\nmarine with a grease gun can do preventive maintenance is a low priority and\ngets skipped when you have to go from bombing dirt farmers one day to fighting\na peer the next. Systems like this is what you get when you're expected to be\nrunning a decade long low intensity conflict yet still be ready for a peer\nadversary.\n\n------\nchiefalchemist\nOne of the key tools of the 9/11 attacks were box cutters.\n\nIt's said the Russians influenced - and are still influencing (per Mueller) -\nour elections and (said) democratic processes with a few buckets of cash and\nsome well placed internet misinformation.\n\nThe threat of a cyber-attacked is very real.\n\nAnd we're still building multi-billion-dollar 20th century-minded war ships???\n\n~~~\nnordsieck\n> And we're still building multi-billion-dollar 20th century-minded war\n> ships???\n\nThat's the thing that gets me. If the US is going to buy naval ships, at least\nget ones with a real purpose.\n\nThe ships that are good against 3rd world nations are something like patrol\nboats. Cheap, small, fast boats with a shallow draft.\n\nThe ships that are good against 1st world nations are submarines. Everything\nelse will get sunk by ballistic missiles. One of the side effects of the\nsecond space race is that the knowledge to build medium range ballistic\nmissiles is becoming increasingly more common.\n\nTo a certain extent, it doesn't matter what the US builds; the last time it's\nbeen challenged militarily was the Korean War. It doesn't matter... until it\ndoes. And at that point, it'll be too late.\n\n~~~\nwbl\nWhat happened to Vietnam and Afghanistan?\n\n~~~\nnordsieck\n> What happened to Vietnam and Afghanistan?\n\nMy understanding of Vietnam is that the US was defeated politically, not\nmilitarily. Afghanistan poses even less of a military threat than Vietnam.\n\n~~~\nwbl\nAnd yet we're the ones walking away.\n\n~~~\nerklik\nnot just walking, negotiating with the Taliban ( what happened to \"we don't\nnegotitate with terrorists\" )\n\n------\nm0zg\nSounds like the same problem Germans had during WW2: weapons are too advanced\nand as a result very easy to fuck up when they see action, expensive to make,\nand impossible to repair. Same with planes: all that nice anti-radar coating\nloses effectiveness after a just few combat sorties.\n\nMilitary gear needs to be simple as a shovel, and not require a PhD to operate\nand repair. It also needs to be cheap and easy to manufacture (for some\ndefinition of \"cheap\" and \"easy\", given that this is an aircraft carrier), so\nyou could make more of it if needed, reasonably quickly. None of the stuff the\nUS military industrial complex has been producing for the past several decades\nfits this description even remotely.\n\nWhat was wrong with the older, tried and true systems? Sure, they were slower,\nbut nobody else in the world has anything that comes close anyway, and won't\nhave it in the foreseeable future.\n\n~~~\nmschuster91\n> Sure, they were slower, but nobody else in the world has anything that comes\n> close anyway, and won't have it in the foreseeable future.\n\nChina has a billion people combined with (thanks to spionage) modern aircraft.\nGive them a decade and they'll build their own aircraft carriers.\n\n~~~\nm0zg\nYeah, and they could land people on the moon, too. One day. Maybe.\n\n------\nduxup\nI'd like to know what the development cycle for new weapons is and how it\nusually works.\n\nIt's not the same but all new code I write doesn't work at some point / needs\nto be reworked / etc.\n\nI guess what I'm saying is it is really hard to know what not working at this\npoint really means.\n\nIt's so easy to walk into any situation and throw up your hands and panic when\nyou don't know.\n\n~~~\ncolechristensen\nDecades.\n\nThe JSF (F-35) program began in 1993, the first flight was in 2000, the first\ntime in combat was in 2018, and they're currently shaking out production bugs\non the few hundred which have been built. They're slated to be operational\nuntil 2070.\n\n------\nmjevans\nThe article seems to claim the issue is with fabrication tolerances. Two\nissues come to mind.\n\n1) How to fabricate to those tolerances reliably? (Robots come to mind).\n\n2) How easy is it to operate these shafts in a degraded capacity if there is\nphysical damage to the vessel during operations?\n\nThe first issue probably should be solved by improving automated construction\ntech. The second issue... these things need to operate well under worst case\nload scenarios, not just right out of the dry-dock... and it sounds like they\ncan't even get the ideal scenario working.\n\n~~~\nappleiigs\nRobots do not come to mind when you are producing custom pieces.\n\n~~~\nmjevans\nYou're thinking assembly line robots. I'm thinking more general purpose\nmachines that are designed to move independently and automatically adjust\nthemselves to the correct position relative to a design and perform the task.\nAlternatively, at least something that a set of humans can move in to place,\nbolt on, and have it do the above.\n\n------\nanovikov\nNo problem here really. It's best to debug the ship while it is already being\nused - issues come up more frequently. It's not a dangerous time in the U.S.\nhistory now - probably, safest time ever (no real enemies left since 1992 and\nnothing to fight for since the U.S. achieved oil independence recently). It's\nthe best to do it in exactly the way it's done - spend another 5 years\ndebugging the ship while it's being used in some sort of reduced capability\nmode, then another year to retrofit all fixes to the 2nd ship of class, and it\nwill still be okay.\n\nPeople who see delays in major weapon programs as catastrophic, forget that\nthe potential adversaries either protracted their equivalents for decades, or\ncancelled them altogether. F-22 looked like a mad dash to arrive to the 5th\ngeneration fighter ahead of Soviet Union, in 1991. It's been developed, all of\nthem are built, fully learned by their crews and already start to age, and\nRussian 5th generation is still nowhere on the horizon - their abortion sort\nof project has even been discarded by the Indians as not matching their\nminimal requirements, and is in limbo since then. It's more or less the same\nwith all similar projects.\n\n~~~\nmschuster91\n> no real enemies left since 1992 and nothing to fight for since the U.S.\n> achieved oil independence recently\n\nThere is one big enemy on the horizon: China, which gets ever more and more\naggressive. That trade war may very well escalate in a real war, with the\nChinese holding an absurd amount of leverage since the US doesn't have much\nmanufacturing at home any more.\n\nIn addition, there is Africa - which is the only market that hasn't been\nsaturated already and only needs a bit of kickstarting. China has seen this\nand massively invested, and _they_ will sell to Africa and grow on that, not\nthe US.\n\n~~~\nanovikov\nWhat's the problem with that? How does rich and prosperous China threaten U.S.\nsecurity? If anything, destitute and hopeless one does - they would have\nnothing to lose and would push through some radical agenda for the rulers to\nstay in power. If China becomes richer and more influential, there is nothing\nbad for the U.S. in that. World isn't zero-sum.\n\nSoviet Union was dangerous because it pushed through Communist ideas which\nthreatened to uproot everything the Western world stands upon, starting with\nfamily and religion. China isn't going to do any of that shit, they are a\nsuper-pragmatic nation and they don't believe into any \"ideas\" themselves for\nthat matter.\n\nIf their way of government threatens Western democracy i'm more on the side of\nthem rather than Western democracy: i strongly believe that market capitalism\nis incompatible with (universal) electoral democracy and for them to coexist,\nyou have to turn one of them, or both, into fakes. It's time for West to get\nback republican model of government back to it's roots when only responsible,\ntax-paying immovable properly/production asset owners voted. If Chinese\npressure will nudge them to do it sooner, good for them!\n\n~~~\nmschuster91\n> What's the problem with that?\n\nThat a superpower that basically shits on human rights has no one to tell them\nto fuck off?\n\n> If China becomes richer and more influential, there is nothing bad for the\n> U.S. in that.\n\nIt is, because (actually right now) China holds leverage over the US. They ban\nexports to the US, the US economy grinds to a halt.\n\n> Soviet Union was dangerous because it pushed through Communist ideas which\n> threatened to uproot everything the Western world stands upon, starting with\n> family and religion.\n\nWhat's the problem with communism, per se? And communism has nothing against\nfamilies.\n\n> China isn't going to do any of that shit, they are a super-pragmatic nation\n> and they don't believe into any \"ideas\" themselves for that matter.\n\nThey're only putting Uyghur muslims into concentration camps and exterminating\nanything visible from their culture (e.g. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-\nchina-religion-islam/sign...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-\nreligion-islam/sign-of-the-times-chinas-capital-orders-arabic-muslim-symbols-\ntaken-down-idUSKCN1UQ0JF)).\n\n> If their way of government threatens Western democracy i'm more on the side\n> of them rather than Western democracy\n\nChinese way of government threatens not only Western democracies, it also\nthreatens the entire concept of \"human rights\"!\n\n------\ncosmodisk\nLooks like a perfect ship for peacekeeping operations: you can't start a war\nwith a carrier that can't launch/land jet fighters or bring bombs from the\nstorage facility below the deck.Perfect. As always, this boils down to three\nmain things that have been valid since day one of the humanity: stupidity,\ncorruption and negligence.\n\n------\nAnimats\nAmazingly, this seems to be a software problem.[1]\n\n[1] [https://www.military.com/defensetech/2019/02/21/after-\ncarrie...](https://www.military.com/defensetech/2019/02/21/after-carrier-\nfords-elevators-failed-navy-building-new-test-site.html)\n\n------\npeterwwillis\nIt's useful to remember, when we end up with incredibly expensive and totally\nineffective weapons systems, that our military budget is more than double that\nof the next highest-spending nation, that it's about 3/4 of our federal\ndiscretionary spending, and the 3rd largest category of federal expenditure\noverall, at roughly 692 Billion dollars. We spend more on social security and\nhealth care, but _far_ less on Veterans, Transportation, Food & Agriculture,\nEducation, International Affairs, Housing, Energy, Science, and Labor.\n\n------\nruytlm\nRelevant from 2017: [https://warisboring.com/how-not-to-build-an-aircraft-\ncarrier...](https://warisboring.com/how-not-to-build-an-aircraft-carrier/)\n\n------\nchewz\n[https://youtu.be/IKQlQlQ6_pk?t=82](https://youtu.be/IKQlQlQ6_pk?t=82)\n\n------\ndwighttk\nI mean, they can, just at 2/11ths planned capacity.\n\n------\nCausality1\nCost+ needs to die. These massive companies should be required to deliver on\nbudget or bankrupt themselves trying.\n\n------\ncrb002\nGone are the days of Grace Hopper.\n\n------\nsimonblack\nIf it works, don't fix it.\n\n~~~\nsimonblack\n\"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.\"\n\nIt's best to have a steam catapult that works, even if not so well than an\nelectromagnetic catapult that doesn't work at all.\n\nDitto for the elevators.\n\n------\nspeeder\nUsually military wants cutting edge and precision-ly made tech, that often is\nalso very expensive...\n\nYet... I keep seeing stories like this coming from US, why?\n\nWhat changed between the construction of A-10 and the F-117 and the F-35 for\nexample?\n\n~~~\ndsfyu404ed\nA specific scenario to optimize for.\n\nThe A10 was designed to swiss cheese just enough Russian tanks and to buy the\ntime for C5s (designed to transport main battle tanks) full of M1s (meant to\nkill Russian tanks) to make it to France before the Russians could steamroll\nGermany.\n\nThe F117 was designed to slip past and strike infiltrate Russian air defense\nsystems so our bombers could make it to the target.\n\nAll the weapons systems of the cold war era were built to fight a specific\npeer adversary first and needed to fit into that portfolio. Capability to\nhandle other tasks was pursued (especially during and after Vietnam) but at\nthe end of the day systems had to be able to fit into a strategy in which we\nfight the Russians or if not they had to have some other specific and narrowly\ntailored purpose (e.g. AC130).\n\nRight now the armed forces are in this weird state where they have to be able\nto handle anything from some rowdy poppy farmers to WW3 in no particular order\nof priority and that manifests itself as poorly thought out feature bloat.\n\n~~~\ntheseadroid\nYou could say in some degree that not only the military needs a purpose. The\ndeteriorating of infrastructure, the lack of vision of politicians, the\nincreasing inequality are probably all the result of a lacking of a purpose.\n\n~~~\nvincent-toups\nMaybe absent the purpose, we don't need quite this much military. Its a rather\nfrightening prospect, the other way round.\n\n------\narethuza\nWell, at least you didn't build it to only be able to operate the F35B and no\nother fixed wing aircraft!\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Queen_Elizabeth_(R08)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Queen_Elizabeth_\\(R08\\))\n\n~~~\nmagduf\nI see no indication that that ship can only operate the F35B. It's designed\nfor VSTOL aircraft, so it doesn't have catapults like American carriers. This\nisn't new for the UK: they previously had carriers that only used the Harrier,\nanother VSTOL jet.\n\nThis new ship can surely use the Harrier, but of course the Harrier is pretty\nold at this point compared to the F35B, but if they needed to, they could go\nback to it. Or if someone built a different VSTOL jet, they could use that\ntoo. Maybe they could also buy some V-22s from the US.\n\nBuilding a carrier that only operates VSTOL aircraft is not an unreasonable\nthing to do. The US does it too, with their \"amphibious assault ships\" run by\nthe Marines: these are basically mini aircraft carriers that are just like\nthis ship in your link, and operate only VSTOL (F35B, V-22 Osprey) aircraft\nand helicopters. If it's good enough for the US Marines with their ships like\nthis one[1], why is it a problem for the Brits?\n\n[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America-\nclass_amphibious_assau...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America-\nclass_amphibious_assault_ship)\n\n~~~\narethuza\nThe US has loads of carriers though - the UK will only have two and to have a\ndirect link between the design of the carrier and a particular design of\naircraft seems particularly risky.\n\n~~~\nmagduf\n1) There's nothing stopping BAE or Eurofighter or whoever from making their\nown VSTOL jet.\n\n2) A carrier with catapults is a much, much larger and more expensive ship.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\n\"We must consider the possibility that the book may not be around much longer\" - ksvs\nhttp://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/people-of-the-screen\n\n======\nojbyrne\nI like that the article uses a word I thought I coined (but probably read\nsomewhere) - \"techno-utopian.\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nZenefits Adds $15M From A16Z To Become The All-In-One Solution For Startup HR - sohailprasad\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2014/01/22/zenefits-adds-15m-from-andreessen-horowitz-to-become-the-all-in-one-solution-for-startup-hr/\n\n======\njason_wang\nI'm a big fan of Zenefits.\n\nAt my last startup, we grew from 0 to 65 employees without the help of\nZenefits and it was painful. Employee on-boarding, HR paperwork, and\nhealthcare enrollment were all done manually.\n\nNow, Zenefits can handle all that for us. We could send new hires the\npaperwork they need to fill out before they even start. This makes onboarding\nso much easier.\n\n(Note, I'm not affiliated with Zenefits. Just a big fan.)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLet it crash (the right way) - EGreg\nhttps://mazenharake.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/let-it-crash-the-right-way/\n======\nmakecheck\n(2009)\n\nAlso:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9491313](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9491313)\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876911](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876911)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGender, Race, and Age Inclusive Makeup Recommendations Through Facial Detection - ajmurill\nhttps://www.facebook.com/BelloFacialDetection/\n======\najmurill\nFor Bello to be inclusive for all genders, ethnicities, and ages where anyone\ncan use our technology to pamper themselves and show self-love. We strive to\ndeliver consistently accurate and detailed results to our customers and to\ntake into account their needs, dreams, and wants.\n\nSteps to get beautified:\n\nStep 1: Like our page and click the blue \"Send Message\" button located in the\ntop right of this screen. Step 2: We will send you a quiz where you answer\nquestions like, “What is your favorite/least favorite feature on your face”\nand “Do you prefer drugstore or high-end products”? Step 3: You send us a\npicture and from there we run our facial detection software on your picture.\nWe gather information like your skin tone, age, eye color, blemishes, etc.\nStep 4: We send you personalized feedback, products, and advice based off your\npicture and the quiz. This can include eyeshadow colors that will make your\neyes pop or tips to deal with under-eye baggage\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSolar eclipse measured on Mars, affects interior - dnetesn\nhttps://phys.org/news/2020-09-solar-eclipse-mars-affects-interior.html\n======\nChris2048\nMars (mean diameter 6780 km) has two known moons, Diamos (mean diameter of\n12.4 km) and Phobos (mean diameter of 22 km). So Phobos is ~0.3% the diameter\nof mars, and Diamos is ~0.2%; for comparison the moon is 27% the diameter of\nEarth, though is considered abnormally large. Also, \"Mars may have moons\nsmaller than 50 to 100 metres\".\n\nI'm surprised there's no lower limit on what is considered a moon. Wikipedia\nsuggests smaller objects are called \"moonlets\", but I guess Russell's teapot\nwould count as one, but for the uncertain fact it might not be considered\n\"natural\"?\n\n~~~\nlizknope\nWe have changed the definition of \"planet\" multiple times so I'm sure we will\nredefine \"moon\" as well.\n\nPluto was recently demoted but this has happened before to Ceres and others.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAU_definition_of_planet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAU_definition_of_planet)\n\nBy 1851, the number of \"planets\" had grown to 23 (the eight recognised today,\nplus fifteen between Mars and Jupiter), and it was clear that hundreds more\nwould eventually be discovered. Astronomers began cataloguing them separately\nand began calling them \"asteroids\" instead of \"planets\"\n\n------\nandy_ppp\n\"Its orbit passes between the sun and any given point on Mars about once each\nEarth year. Each time it does so, it causes from one to seven solar eclipses\nwithin the space of three days.\"\n\nDoes anyone have an explanation of how this works? Seven solar eclipses seems\nlike a lot and I can't seem to visualise what is happening, presumably it's\nMars spinning and Phobos staying still that causes this, but I can't\nunderstand why the difference is so huge.\n\n~~~\nmercurywells\nPhobos is extremely close to Mars so its orbital period is only 8 hours. Its\ninclination is also very low compared to our own moon. Therefore it is far\nmore likely to cause an eclipse and it occurs in sets.\n\n------\nest31\nHas slightly more comments:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24383060](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24383060)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAdding Easy SSL Client Authentication To Any Webapp - scriptjunkie\nhttp://www.scriptjunkie.us/2013/11/adding-easy-ssl-client-authentication-to-any-webapp/\n\n======\ndeftnerd\nIt's sad that I didn't realize he easy this was to implement now. I'm building\nseveral sites that implement bitcoins and this has clear advantages over\nsimple usernames and passwords.\n\nMy thought is allow the user to authenticate with the SSL cert. If they're at\nan IP never seen before, require a password.\n\nThoughts? My concern is with people that have a compromised computer that has\na Remote Access Toolkit installed on it. Perhaps always require the SSL cert\nAND a password pair? Not that passwords would be safe on an infected machine.\n\nThese days it seems that the only way to be sure is to require additional\nauthentication from a second device such as a phone with a 2FA app like Google\nauthenticator or Authy or a hardware device like a Yubi key. Even sending one-\ntime text message confirmation xodes .\n\n~~~\ndeftnerd\nI'm embarrassed that I didn't notice my auto-correct mangling my comment. I'll\ncomment from my desktop in the future.\n\nI meant to say that it's amazing how easy this is to implement now and even\nsending one-time text message confirmation codes during every authentication\nattempt works.\n\n------\nnly\nImho the gaping hole with client certificates at the moment is that, in\ncurrent browser implementations at least, I don't think they are well secured.\n\nNotice when using his demo pages you are asked by your browser for\nconfirmation before you use your shiny new certificate, but otherwise no\ncredentials are required. It's relatively easy for someone to steal client\ncertificates from my machine whether I'm here or not.\n\n    \n    \n        [wf9bhh4z.default]$ pwd\n        /home/nly/.mozilla/firefox/wf9bhh4z.default\n        [wf9bhh4z.default]$ strings cert8.db | grep nly.*junkie\n        nly's scriptjunkie.us ID\n    \n\n... I'm not sure if this default behaviour is a switch that can be flipped\nsomewhere, or whether they are actually encrypted, but that protection can\nonly ever boil down to some other credential like the users Windows password\n(which will be weak).\n\nWhen it comes down to it today, I feel a mobile solution, like Google\nAuthenticator that can live comfortably in my pocket, is just more workable as\na 'something I have' credential, and I then don't have to entirely trust\nwhatever random PC I'm using. With QR codes it's even almost as convenient. (I\nalso don't think password auth need be totally disregarded, see :\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6767249](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6767249)\n).\n\nThat said, I commend the author for seeking alternatives to password\nauthentication and doing all this excellent work to make it easy to use. It's\ngood, desperately needed work.\n\n~~~\nderefr\nIn OSX, client certificates are stored in the Keychain, which must be unlocked\nwith your password. The problem with almost every \"security product\" comes\ndown to the fact that Windows (and Linux, I think) don't have equivalent\nprotected-storage APIs integrated throughout the desktop environment.\n\n~~~\nmhogomchungu\nlinux has \"equivalent protected-storage APIs integrated throughout the desktop\nenvironment\",KDE has kwallet[1],GNOME has libsecret[2] and lxqt has lxqt\nwallet[3].Firefox has an extension to store its passwords in KDE's kwallet[4]\nand GNOME's gnome-keyring/libsecret[5].Chrome has support for both wallets[6]\n\nall linux destributions ships with libsecret and that will be the API to\ntarget if anybody want to store sensitive information securely in a linux\ndesktop session.\n\n[1]\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KWallet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KWallet)\n\n[2] [http://lwn.net/Articles/490518/](http://lwn.net/Articles/490518/)\n\n[3]\n[https://github.com/mhogomchungu/lxqt_wallet](https://github.com/mhogomchungu/lxqt_wallet)\n\n[4] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/kde-wallet-\npa...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/kde-wallet-password-\nintegratio/)\n\n[5] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-Us/firefox/addon/gnome-\nkeyring...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-Us/firefox/addon/gnome-keyring-\nintegration/)\n\n[6]\n[http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/r65mTFM...](http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/r65mTFMrT9o)\n\n------\nmichaelmior\n\"Private keys cannot be guessed – Because users didn’t choose them!\" I don't\nfollow this logic. Sure they're likely to have more entropy than a user-\nselected password (and almost certainly be longer). However, there's nothing\nabout the fact that the key isn't selected about the user that makes it un-\nguessable.\n\n~~~\nscriptjunkie\nPrivate keys should have over 128 bits of entropy, which is enough to make it\nun-brute-forceable with at least the amount of energy likely to be obtained by\nany human organization on earth. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute-\nforce_attack#Theoretical_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute-\nforce_attack#Theoretical_limits) That's what makes it un-guessable. Also, some\nusers do choose passwords with at least as much entropy and are also\nunguessable. But most don't.\n\n~~~\ndmix\nI use automated high-entropy password-generators and a surprising amount of\nwebsites cap lengths to 30-50 characters (or even 8 chars sometimes like a\nCanadian bank I won't name). Allowing super-long passwords would be a good\nstarting alternative to SSL.\n\n~~~\ntmikaeld\nThe problem with this is that some sites still only support max 20 characters.\n\n------\njakozaur\nLove it so much! An easy way to detect user and could prevent quite a lot of\nphishings attack.\n\nOne issue is the browser compatibility. It work on Chrome, but I tried it on\nmy iPhone Safari and it doesn't work. Is there any way to fix it?\n\n------\nbsilvereagle\nAs far as I can tell, client certs can't be cross-device. You would need a new\ncert on every device you plan to use with the site.\n\n~~~\ndmix\nI've used PGP keys cross-device (using both android and osx clients), why\ncan't SSL?\n\n~~~\ngeofft\nYou can export and import certs between devices, the UI is just awful.\nPossibly more awful than all the PGP UIs, if such a thing is possible.\n\nCertainly you can't drive this flow from the website alone. The best you can\ndo is point your users at various browser-specific instructions.\n\n~~~\nzaraflan\nAt which point you're back to the same basic problem with passwords: the\nweakest link and root-problem is the average user's lack of knowledge. There\nwouldn't be such a mad scramble to find a decent alternative to passwords if\neveryone was using KeePass or the like, and no alternative is going to be\nnear-future viable if it relies on something too complicated for the nearly-\neveryone who isn't using strong generated passwords.\n\n2FA is working because all the user has to do is get a text. Anything beyond\nthat level of difficulty is simply a non-starter at this point.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: So, does my startup need an office? - BenjaminDyer\n\nI am a man of two hats, my first hat revolves around a very established business. We have customers, battle scars and have been in the space for years. Its a great company to work for, although I am very senior, I am not the founder and I wasn't there at the beginning.<p>My second hat revolves around my startup Powered Now. We are a 5 person team spread over the globe. Our product is a business administration platform for the Field Services world, we are hoping to launch into private beta within a few weeks.<p>My established business is a bit of a hybrid. We have two offices in the UK and a distributed workforce of about 20 working at home. I really get to see both the advantages and disadvantages of office / home working. It works for us, but we have been doing this for a long time and I wonder if I am being blinded by the convenience factor.<p>With Powered Now I have a distributed team, half of us are in the UK the other half are based in Budapest, we try to meet up to work together once every 4 to 6 weeks. When we do its insanely productive, but I wonder if it would be better if we were under the same roof?<p>If you believe the guys at 37 signals home working is the way forward, and to some extent I believe them, its enabled us to go to the best people instead of hiring in a limited area. However I'd be interested in your stories, have you consolidated a team into an office, or did you do the reverse? Are our productive meetups that good because they are a relatively rare event or would it be like that every day? Also if you were founding a startup today, how would you do it?<p>I'd love to hear your stories and advice.<p>Thanks,<p>Ben\n======\ngeorgespencer\nMy startup began life working from home/remotely. We had a team spread between\nLondon and Brighton.\n\nWe moved into a shared office space in London which an early investor helped\nto hook us up with. It sucked. It was a crummy, distracting environment. A lot\nof people there were working on pretty weird/lame projects (including a\nRussian \"get rich quick!\" motivational speaker, who was apparently had eight-\ndigit wealth but worked from a £100p/m office space).\n\nThings which are poisonous to your productivity:\n\n• \"Networking\" events of any kind • Talkative people who are working on\nprojects which they don't believe in • Talkative people who are working on\nprojects which they do believe in • People from other projects who want your\nadvice on something • People from other projects who have heard you just did a\nraise and want to ask questions • People from other projects who want you to\ntest something really quickly just this once • \"Oh you must just meet this\nperson they're so relevant to your project\" • Anyone talking on the phone for\nany length of time (this is personal. I find it annoying to hear one-sided\nconversations).\n\nWe just moved in to shared office space with a YC company and another company.\nIt has only been a week or so but already we're more productive and it feels\nmore like \"work\" (in a good way). Fewer meeting rooms but fewer distractions.\nMore focus.\n\nDon't go to a shared workspace. You'll do poor quality work with a ton of\ndistractions. Find another company who have some spare desks, and go there.\n\nWorking from home is not productive for most people (hence all the \"HOW TO BE\nPRODUCTIVE WORKING FROM HOME\" linkbait articles you see all over Lifehacker\nand occasionally on HN).\n\nIt's also a psychological help to have somewhere that you invite people: you\ninvite investors to your office, you don't go to them. Even being able to say\n\"we can do it at our place?\" makes you seem like you have clout.\n\nHTH.\n\n~~~\nBenjaminDyer\nThanks for the reply George,\n\nDid you bring the whole team under the same roof including the guys from\nBrighton?\n\n~~~\ngeorgespencer\nSo when we hired them (just after the start of the project) they worked\nremotely. They were a small agency who we essentially block-booked for large\nchunks of time. They would occasionally come to the shared office but not\nregularly enough to close all the gaps on the project. I estimate that to keep\nthings running reasonably smoothly (and there were still major problems which\nled to me firing them and hiring brilliant software engineers), I probably\nspent north of £1k on travel to and from their location to manage them, which\nwas painful both financially (I could be spending that money on almost\nanything else and it would be better-spent) and emotionally (it's a lot of\nenergy).\n\nNow everyone is in the same room and on the same page. I'm sure there are\noccasional productivity hits (conversations, phone calls, stand up meetings),\nbut it's a quick \"Hey I just deployed this\" instead of Email > New Message >\neveryone@startup.com > I just deployed the XYZ feature we talked about > Send.\n\nIt's also more helpful for me to work this way because I am a hands on product\nmanager. We can iterate things very quickly, I can break them and suggest\nimprovements, and we can then iterate them again. Irrespective of whether my\nbenevolent dictatorship is a good way of working, the fact is that I will\nalways work like this and to do that over any kind of distance greater than 5\nmetres is inefficient and frustrating.\n\n------\nchriskemm\nHaving an office makes such a difference to work flow and production. Also\ngood to have a hub, where people can always drop in.\n\nWe use a number of freelancers they like to work from home, but its great they\ncan always drop in and work in the office for a few days.\n\n~~~\nBenjaminDyer\nThanks for the reply Chris,\n\nHow has the office impacted the way you hire freelance staff, do you look for\npeople within reach of your office?\n\n------\nNick5a1\nA combination of co-working + working from home is low cost and provides space\nand collaboration when you want it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAppLogic - Grid Operating System for Web Applications - babul\nhttp://www.3tera.com/AppLogic/\n\n======\nbabul\nHave a look at the AppLogic live demo:\n\n<http://download2.3tera.net/demo/applogic20demo.html>\n\nAmazon AWS competitors are now emerging all over the place (and I found this\none is particularly interesting if you are scaling Django and and choosing\nbetween EC2 and others).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPreorder your Galaxy S5 Friday; Samsung Gear smartwatches arrive next month - periferral\nhttp://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/03/samsung-galaxy-s5-gear-2-and-gear-fit-prices-and-us-availability-announced/\n\n======\namits89\nIt would be interesting to see if Samsung Galaxy S5 can set up some new\nrecord.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n37signals' Chalk: a fun little browser-based app for iPad - eng\nhttp://37signals.com/svn/posts/2637-introducing-chalk-a-fun-little-browser-based-app-for-ipad-inspired-by-our-new-office\n======\njbail\nSeems like a remake of their Draft app with a chalky UI.\n\nTo really make a mobile web app be cool, it's still gotta work on the web.\nOtherwise, it's not cool. I'm making that a rule right now. Visiting a URL\nthat says I have to be on an iPad is not cool. It's like saying I need to\ninstall a plugin that costs $500.\n\n~~~\nderekdahmer\nIts still a work in progress, but check out my project <http://blotjot.com>\nIts a collaborative whiteboard that works in any browser that supports canvas,\nincluding mobile safari on the iPhone and iPad. Runs on node.js + socket.io\n\nExample: <http://blotjot.com/heyhn>\n\n~~~\njbail\nI made a little canvas demo app myself about a month ago. Works on web or\nmobile (least on Dolphin Browser in Android). I haven't tested a ton though.\n\n<http://napnote.com>\n\nIt's more of a concept app to draw on Chipotle or Starbucks napkins than a\nserious endeavor. Some fellow engineers and I were joking about it at lunch\none day and I promised to make a kick ass web 2.0 app that did indeed enable\nyou to draw on napkins. Then I added some other backgrounds because it seems\nthat whatever medium you draw on affects your thinking in subtle ways.\n\nSo yeah, it's more or less pointless. Google wouldn't even give me AdSense for\nit. :)\n\n------\nnopal\nAnd here's the magic: <http://chalk.37signals.com/chalk.js>\n<http://chalk.37signals.com/stylesheets/chalk.css>\n\nIt's fun to look at this stuff, especially from the perspective of someone who\nhasn't gotten into HTML5 yet.\n\n~~~\njbail\nit would be super easy to add support for mouse events.\n\n[tutorial]\n\nThey are attaching events using jQuery's bind method. Like:\n\ncanvas.bind(\"touchstart\", ...\n\nYou can add multiple events into bind. To add support for mouse events, you'd\njust add in the requisite mouse events, like so:\n\ncanvas.bind(\"touchstart mousedown\" ...\n\ncanvas.bind(\"touchmove mousemove\" ...\n\ncanvas.bind(\"touchend mouseup\" ...\n\n[/tutorial]\n\n------\nkilian\nCool little detail: the eraser actually removes a layer of \"chalk dust\" from\nthe chalkboard as well. Very nicely done.\n\n------\nsteveklabnik\nIf you're wondering if this still works in a non-iPad browser... it doesn't. I\nwas curious if I could still draw with the mouse.\n\n~~~\nRyanMcGreal\nI was hoping to swoop in with a \"User Agent Switcher to the rescue!\" message.\nHowever: switching user agents works in Firefox but the app layout looks\nbroken [1] and it doesn't do anything; and switching user agents doesn't seem\nto work in Chrome.\n\n[1] <http://postimage.org/image/1z21v9nhg/>\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\nThe events are touch-specific. Would be pretty easy to add in support for\nmouse events too, but they've clearly no immediate interest in that.\n\n------\ndestraynor\nI believe they're releasing this, as a fun way to test the water with HTML5,\nJavascript, etc.\n\nI believe they're pissed off with iOS development, as it's significantly more\nhassle than their usual routine of web development. I think they're lining up\nHTML5 as their solution to mobile. So we'll see Basecamp,Backpack,Highrise,\netc move to HTML5, this way they'll have iPhone,iPad,Android supported.\n\nI believe this based on the snippets of JS they've generously released, and I\nbelieve there is more to come.\n\nI think this is far more likely than it being a publicity stunt.\n\n------\nfourfour\nFor a 3 day side project this is pretty cool. Say goodbye to pen and paper at\nclient meetings. I think it'[s cool that it looks like their office too.\n\n------\nTamDenholm\nSeems to me like a free version of 37signal's iPad app Draft. Much simplier\nidea but still awesome.\n\n~~~\napgwoz\n> Much simplier idea but still awesome.\n\nWhy is this \"awesome\"? I don't have an iPad, so I haven't tried it first hand,\nbut it seems to be a simple drawing tool disguised as chalk instead of a solid\nline. They're a dime a dozen.\n\nI went back and re-checked it out to ensure that I didn't miss anything. This\nwould certainly have been more noteworthy if it was collaborative in real time\namongst multiple iPads (e.g. etherpad).\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nI missed the part of the blog post where they said \"this will revolutionize\nthe way you do work!\" It seems to me that they called it a \"fun little app\".\n\n~~~\napgwoz\nSure, but a \"fun little app\" is hardly news in my opinion, especially for a\nwell established company like 37 Signals. We're one step away from having\n\"OMG, DHH picked his nose\" blog posts on the front page.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nYou don't think it's a bit d$*chey to compare these guys spare time project to\nDHH picking his nose?\n\n~~~\napgwoz\nI think it's pretty obvious that I was exaggerating. I really don't see\nanything of value here. If you do, fine, go have fun with it.\n\n------\ntwymer\nSlightly unrelated, but anyone know why they put chalkboards in their offices\nand not whiteboards?\n\n~~~\ncpr\nSee [http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662465/for-a-company-that-\nsells...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662465/for-a-company-that-sells-\nproductivity-a-space-that-fosters-it) and find the part starting '\"I can't\nstand whiteboards,\" says Fried.'\n\n------\nparfe\nIs 37signals treading water? The frequency of these worthless blog posts\nattempting to draw attention to themselves has been increasing. They say they\nhave a lot of customers but something feels wrong.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nYou seem to be looking for drama where there's none to be found. Two guys\nwrote an web-backed iPad app and wanted to share it. If I dinked around and\ncame up with something like Chalk, I'd want to blog it too.\n\nYes, 37signals is wildly more successful than most people on HN, and yes, it's\nsometimes hard to tell the difference between their \"attempts to change the\nworld\" blog posts and their \"look what I did with my 3-day-weekend\" blog\nposts, but: it's a blog. They don't owe you anything more than blog posts.\nThis is an _above-average_ blog post; it came with a new app!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPassword generation and safe offline storage - hackthisuk\nhttps://www.hackthis.co.uk/articles/password-generation-and-safe-offline-storage\n\n======\n0x6C77\nNice to see some information that is clearly from a security expert, who has\nreal world experience of using such tools to try and break encryption.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGitHub faces more resignations in light of ICE contract - logic\nhttps://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/github-faces-more-resignations-in-light-of-ice-contract/\n======\nratsmack\nThat is how it works. If you have issues with your employers business\ndecisions, then you are free to leave and move to an employer that you can\nagree with.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nApp A/B testing startup raises money from ex-VP of FB and Cassandra co-creator - pratkar\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2014/04/01/appiterate-raises-seed-funding-from-saif-partners-joins-growing-list-of-ab-testing-startups/\n\n======\nalgoritmus\nThe video looks promising! Is it that easy to publish changes?\n\n~~~\nmayankkumar\nYes. The visual editor helps you do drag and drop changes and publish them in\nrealtime.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow to make breaking changes and not break all the things - mceachen\nhttp://matthew.mceachen.us/blog/how-to-make-breaking-changes-and-not-break-all-the-things-1315.html?hn\n\n======\nlsh123\nOne important point is missing from the article: make sure to have\nunit/functional tests to run to make sure your changes are indeed are not\nbreaking anything.\n\n~~~\nmceachen\nAbsolutely. Thanks. I've added Step 0 to reference this, and added an\nattribution at the end of the post.\n\nOne thing that surprised me when I started at Twitter was the requirement for\n_every line of code_ to be reviewed by another engineer—and if you change or\nadd implementation, you can't ship if there isn't corresponding test changes\nor additions. More tests isn't a panacea, of course, though. There's\ndefinitely a spectrum of good, explanatory tests and tests-that-just-cement-\nthe-implementation-details.\n\n~~~\nlsh123\nThe automated tests are not panacea of course. Yet, you need to have enough\ntests to give you confidence that the change indeed is breaking nothing. It is\none story to perform a deep refactoring on a C++ or Java code with 95% tests\ncode coverage where either compiler or tests will pickup things for you. And\nit is a completely another story to do a refactoring on a PHP frontend code\nw/o any compiler/static analyzer and w/o any tests where your best tool is\nsearch-and-replace. Even the \"depth\" of safe refactoring will be very\ndifferent in those two cases.\n\n~~~\nmtdewcmu\nSomething that works in PHP's favor is that you can write very concise and\nclear code.\n\nAt some level you have to trust your eyes.\n\n------\npolemic\nThis is a good starting point. One thing I'd add is the need to consider the\neffects of table locks during changes. It's a nasty surprise when you've\ntested your multi-stage process in dev, only to find during production updates\nthat a long running select is blocking, or that your change causes request to\nqueue until you exceed connection limits.\n\n------\njakozaur\nVery good approach. Also having some controls like feature flags per\ncustomer/user is very useful. Sometimes migration takes a while and it is\nuseful to move users gradually through those phases with ability to rollback.\n\n~~~\nMaxGabriel\nWhen we were switching a contained part of our codebase from Mongo to MySQL,\nwe ran both in parallel and stored a key in Redis to let us turn off the MySQL\nbackend (we re-used our feature flag utility for this).\n\nThis turned out to be quite useful. If we were throwing exceptions in the new\nMySQL code, or even just suspected the new system of causing problems, we\ncould switch it off. We also switched it off so that we could easily run\nmigrations without taking down the site.\n\n------\nquest88\nThanks for the article!\n\n~~~\nmceachen\nI actually wrote it for some coworkers at Twitter—they were struggling with\nthis, and it's a surprisingly non-trivial problem to tackle.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA BNF Parser in Forth (1992) - akkartik\nhttps://www.bradrodriguez.com/papers/bnfparse.htm\n======\nDonHopkins\nHere's a FORTH program to simulate a 7 bit paper tape puncher. Type PTAPE <cr>\nand then start typing. It will terminate and cut the tape when you type a\n<null>.\n\n    \n    \n        \\ FORTH PAPER TAPE PUNCHER:\n    \n        : PT# ( L --- L/2 )\n          DUP 1 AND IF \n            ASCII @ \n          ELSE BL THEN\n          HOLD\n          2/\n        ;\n    \n        : PT. ( N --- )\n          <# PT# PT# PT# \n             ASCII . HOLD\n             PT# PT# PT# PT#\n          #> TYPE\n        ;\n    \n        : CUT\n          .\" -----------\" CR\n        ;\n    \n        : PTAPE\n          CUT\n          BEGIN\n            KEY ?DUP WHILE\n            DUP .\" |\" PT. .\" |\"  SPACE EMIT CR\n          REPEAT\n          CUT\n        ;\n    \n\nPS: I rewrote PTAPE in PostScript for NeWS, so it makes a window with actual\nholes punched into it in the shape of a piece of paper tape with the text you\npass in as a parameter:\n\n[https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/news-\ntape/fun/ptape/...](https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/news-\ntape/fun/ptape/ptape)\n\nCan anybody write that for X11 using the SHAPES extension to punch the holes\nin fewer lines of code? ;)\n\n(The comments about an elliptical canvas and round shape must have been copied\nfrom some other old code, because the shape of the window (and icon) it makes\nis rectangular with lots of round holes punched into it.)\n\n------\ndvdkhlng\nThere's another parser generator written in Forth, that I have personally used\nmyself: Gray [1-3]\n\nThe zip file [1] has english documentation, the papers [2,3] are unfortunately\nonly available in german.\n\nThis [4] is a mostly working grammar for the Verilog language written using\nGray. It uses a lexer that sits on top of Gforth's regexp [5] package that\ndirectly compiles regexps into forth code (BTW quite a few bugs in the regexp\npackage were triggered by the lexer and subsequently fixed upstream).\n\n[1]\n[http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gray4.zip](http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gray4.zip)\n\n[2]\n[http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/papers/ertl89.ps.gz](http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/papers/ertl89.ps.gz)\n\n[3]\n[http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/papers/ertl97.ps.gz](http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/papers/ertl97.ps.gz)\n\n[4]\n[https://sourceforge.net/p/fourhdl/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/parse...](https://sourceforge.net/p/fourhdl/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/parser.fs)\n\n[5]\n[https://github.com/forthy42/gforth/blob/master/regexp.fs](https://github.com/forthy42/gforth/blob/master/regexp.fs)\n\n~~~\nsiraben\nHere's a toy parser generator I wrote that works for context-free\nlanguages[0].\n\n[0] [https://github.com/siraben/meta-yacc](https://github.com/siraben/meta-\nyacc)\n\n------\nChrisMarshallNY\nArgh. BNF. I had enough of that to last me a lifetime by 1986 (I used to do\nX.400 stuff).\n\nThat said, it’s pretty cool.\n\n------\nDonHopkins\nOh wow, that's old school, and brings me back. I haven't thought of \"SMUDGE\"\nin a long time! One thing I love about FORTH is how completely off-the-wall\nand arbitrary some of the words are, even weirder than LISP's CAR and CDR.\nMost modern FORTH don't have SMUDGE any more, which has been replaced by HIDE\nand REVEAL.\n\nPerl programmers may savor and fetishize their weird arbitrary unreadable code\nlike letter-sparse sigil-saturated line noise, but Perl can't hold a candle to\nthe subtle beauty and enigmatically punctuated surrealistic symmetry of FORTH\ncode:\n\n    \n    \n        8 : BNF:   [COMPILE] : SMUDGE COMPILE <BNF ; IMMEDIATE\n        9 : ;BNF   COMPILE BNF> SMUDGE [COMPILE] ; ; IMMEDIATE\n    \n\n>b) Line 9 shows a recursive production, <S>. During the definition of a\nproduction, its name is automatically unSMUDGEd.\n\nOf course it's still possible to write self documenting FORTH code:\n\n    \n    \n        : C(-; LICK SMILE NOSE WINK ;\n    \n\ncomp.lang.forth: Why smudge?\n\n[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.forth/olO-...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.forth/olO-\nVHXJa1Q%5B1-25%5D)\n\n>Does \"smudge\" have any other use than to stop the current word being found\nduring a dictionary lookup? If not, then its only use would seem to be to\nallow a word to be defined in terms of another (older) word with the same\nname. Are there some useful things that can be done with this ability that\nmake up for the (minor) extra complication?\n\nMy other favorite (and much more useful and powerful for metaprogramming)\nFORTH words are <BUILDS and DOES>, but <BUILDS has been replaced by CREATE\nnow, so they don't look as cool when used together.\n\n[http://amforth.sourceforge.net/TG/recipes/Builds.html](http://amforth.sourceforge.net/TG/recipes/Builds.html)\n\n<BUILDS is the older sibling of CREATE. It has been in use in pre-ANSI Forth’s\nand is still around as an supplemental tool. It is a parsing word that takes\nthe next word from the input source and creates a dictionary entry in the\ncurrent word list. Unlike CREATE it does not add an execution token. Thus the\nword list entry created is unfinished and calling it will crash the system.\n\nThe definition of the word list entry is finished with the DOES> section, that\nmakes the word list entry a proper callable word.\n\nThe big advantage over CREATE is that CREATE requires a rewrite of the\ncontents of the execution token. That is on microcontrollers with the flash\nbased dictionary only possible if a single cell can be re-programmed. The\nAtmegas can do that with little efforts, the MSP430 lacks essential ressources\nto do so.\n\nFrom the programming perspective there are no differences. <BUILDS can safely\nreplace CREATE in defining words that contain a DOES> section as well. All\nother occurances of CREATE should remain unchanged.\n\n    \n    \n        : constant create , does> @i ;\n        \\ or\n        : constant <builds , does> @i ;\n\n~~~\ndvdkhlng\n> Most modern FORTH don't have SMUDGE any more, which has been replaced by\n> HIDE and REVEAL.\n\nI think, the modern Forths (i.e. since 1994 ANS Forth standard) need neither\nHIDE nor REVEAL as these are made superflous by RECURSE.\n\nOther edge cases could be handled using a mechanism like DEFER [1] (which can\nbe implemented in terms of ANS Standard words).\n\nJust looking through the manual, even the modern Gforth has something like\nRECURSIVE [2] which is just a differently named implementation of REVEAL.\n\n[1] [http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gforth/Docs-\nhtml/Defe...](http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gforth/Docs-\nhtml/Deferred-Words.html) [https://forth-\nstandard.org/standard/core/RECURSE](https://forth-\nstandard.org/standard/core/RECURSE) [2]\n[http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gforth/Docs-\nhtml/Call...](http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gforth/Docs-html/Calls-\nand-returns.html#Calls-and-returns)\n\n~~~\nDonHopkins\nOne thing I love about SMUDGE is that SMUDGING again undoes the effect. If\nonly that worked for my glasses.\n\nDEFER is great! But the word that resolves it should have been named REFED.\n\n------\njava-man\nWhen I coded a Forth virtual machine in 8080 assembly in 1985, I soon realized\nForth is a write-only language.\n\nFun, but totally unusable for a mediocre programmer like myself.\n\n~~~\nhaolez\nIt has less syntax than any other language and it's very good for making a\nthin DSL layer above your hardware. Please share your experience on this :)\n\n~~~\nanadem\n\"My\" FORTH was done in 6502 assembler, and used for a water company records\nand billing system which included interfaces for the company to get the local\nwater flow rates! The meters reported with synthetic voices. Back then BT\nowned the phone system and were very resistant to letting us pass data from\nthe flow meters to the head office: was it voice or was it data? We argued\nover that for weeks.\n\n~~~\njava-man\nI am almost afraid to ask: is it still in operation? Some of these systems are\nkept for surprisingly long time (don't fix if it ain't broken)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFalcon 9 attempts ocean platform landing - butwhy\nhttp://www.spacex.com/news/2014/12/16/x-marks-spot-falcon-9-attempts-ocean-platform-landing\n======\nannapurna\n\"During previous attempts, we could only expect a landing accuracy of within\n10km. For this attempt, we’re targeting a landing accuracy of within 10\nmeters.\"\n\nI thought previous landing accuracy was more than 10km. Regardless, it's\nhighly impressive that they are working to improve the accuracy by 1000x. I'm\ncurious if this accuracy improvement is a combination of the grid fins and the\nautonomous spaceport drone ship (with the ship constantly communicating with\nthe Falcon to be an \"easier\" target).\n\n~~~\nsmackfu\nIt could also be a matter of \"expected\" vs \"actual.\"\n\n------\nalexggordon\nThis is an absolutely huge test. Musk's entire vision for SpaceX[0] involves\ncheap, reusable spaceflight, simply because there’s no other way to colonize a\ndifferent planet without it. According to Musk, abandoning “disposable” rocket\ntechnology would result in a 100 fold reduction of the cost of rocket\nlaunches[1]. While it might not be that significant, I fully believe than NASA\ncould utilize the minute budget it has much better without throwing away\nmillions of dollars of technology every launch.\n\nBased on that, landing this rocket perfectly is the proof Musk needs to show\nthe world he can launch that rocket again in 10 hours, essentially turning\nrocket launches into a daily—not monthly—occurrence.\n\nMusk’s vision aside, it would be so cool to land a fucking rocking on floating\nobject in the middle of the ocean. It’s basically a reverse missile maneuver.\nThey’re not ramming the object, they’re just gently touching down, but with\nall the more accuracy.\n\n[0] [http://www.space.com/25636-spacex-reusable-rocket-test-\nelon-...](http://www.space.com/25636-spacex-reusable-rocket-test-elon-\nmusk.html) [1] [http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/npc-luncheon-with-elon-\nmu...](http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/npc-luncheon-with-elon-\nmusk-2011-09-29) (paragraph 13)\n\n~~~\nsmackfu\nFor efficient re-usability, you need at least three things. The first is\nreliable launches that don't have lots of delays. The second is reliable\nrecovery. The third is efficient readying for another launch.\n\nThat last one is trickier than people think. It was the main thing that\nstopped shuttles from launching faster, for instance. It took months of work\nto verify that all the systems were as reliable as they were before launch. It\nwill be interesting to see how SpaceX handles that.\n\n~~~\nantimagic\nThe shuttle is in no way comparable with the SpaceX solution. The shuttle was\nnotoriously slow for turn around because it was a massively complicated\nmachine that had to be man-rated. A Falcon 9 first stage is a much simpler\nmachine. On top of that, the shuttle had to go through re-entry, with all of\nthe G forces, and thermal shock associated with that. The Falcon 9 first stage\nhas neither of these problems.\n\n~~~\njcoby\nThe Falcon 9 still has to deal with heat cycles, vibration, and soot/chemicals\nbyproducts from the engines. The heat cycles and vibration lead to work\nhardening and cracking or softening of components. Soot can and will get into\neverything and destroy bearings and connectors.\n\nEven the spray from the ocean combined with the heat from the latent heat in\nthe craft can lead to accelerated corrosion.\n\nThey're shooting for a final touchdown speed of 2m/s which seems fairly slow\nbut that's still a lot of mass to stop very quickly. The ocean helps soften\ntouchdown for sure.\n\nIt would not surprise me if the turn around procedure was to r&r the entire\nbottom third of the craft and (possibly) the fuel tanks. The removed\ncomponents could get inspected and rebuilt and flown again.\n\nIt won't be anywhere near the scale of the shuttle turn around but it won't be\nas simple as hosing it off and fueling it up.\n\nSpaceX has of course considered all of these things and it will be an amazing\nthing for space travel if they pull it off.\n\n~~~\nCrito\n> Even the spray from the ocean\n\nThe ultimate goal is to land at least most of the cores on land, not the\nbarge, in part to avoid this.\n\n------\ntechdragon\nDamn I can't wait for this. Its going to be great. Will be interesting to see\nhow the grid fins go. I'm wondering if there could be any trouble from\ngenerating too much load from drag while they are in supersonic flow as\nopposed to high subsonic flow and hypersonic flow where they are known to work\nfine.\n\nIf i were to guess, I would imagine they are going to deploy the fins after or\nduring the 2nd burn / the retro propulsion burn, so that they can only open\nthem after the reach their target speed.\n\nCourse I'm probably wrong since I have no idea just where in the powered\nreturn flight plan they are supersonic, and they could actually be using the\ndrag from the fins to 'slow down faster' and have engineered the fins to deal\nwith the drag load. Which wouldn't surprise me, but will impress me if its the\ncase.\n\n~~~\nantubbs\nThere's been Russian military use of grid fins on supersonic rockets and\nmissiles for many decades. It's my understanding that supersonic flow is not a\nproblem, rather transonic (mercifully a relatively short period on either an\naccelerating or decelerating rocket) behavior is the problem.\n\n------\nFD3SA\nThe SpaceX launch manifest states that their next mission is Dec. 16, and\nhasn't been updated to reflect their schedule change to Dec. 19th:\n\n[http://spacexstats.com/mission.php?launch=19](http://spacexstats.com/mission.php?launch=19)\n\nI know I'll be glued to the livecast for this one. If this works, it'll be the\ngreatest (early) Christmas present of all time.\n\n------\nphkahler\nIts very interesting how they get to use commercial flights to do landing\ntests. If 50 years from now rockets are reusable and there is competition,\nthey'll be depending on the cost saving of reuse. Any new competitor will be\nat a significant disadvantage. It's development that is dirt cheap by todays\nstandards, but will be considered expensive in the future.\n\n~~~\ntaf2\nHow to do it will also be easier to learn about because it would presumably be\ndone and published either openly or as a patent. People working in the field\nwould know how to do it lowering the barrier to entry - hopefully making the\nhigh costs to study and research today pay dividends to the rocket industry.\nYou are correct it would increase the cost to do similar research. Hopefully\nthough the economy of the sector will be so much larger one off rearch focused\nlaunches can be easily done with the excess capital... At least that's my\nhope.\n\n~~~\noroup\nSpaceX does not file patents. [1] The assumption is that the protection\noffered by the patent is outweighed by the downside of giving your competitor\na roadmap of how you did it. My guess is that just knowing it can be done will\nbe a huge part of enabling someone else to develop similar technology.\n\n[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-\npatents-2012-11](http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-patents-2012-11)\n\n------\niandanforth\nCan anyone shed more light on how the \"four hypersonic grid fins\" work? Why\nare they grids and not very small fins?\n\n~~~\nChuckMcM\nWatching their example video I'm guessing they act as steerable \"fins\" where\nthe working area of the fin is spread across a number of \"vanes\". Not clear if\nthere are two degrees of freedom or just one for each one.\n\nAs the rocket travels through the air each one can be rotated on its axis\nperpendicular to the body of the rocket. If all are rotated the same way they\nwould impart a spin, if two were rotated one way and other two rotated the\nopposite direction they would simply slow the rocket down. If two adjacent\nones are counter rotated the provide drag on one side (imparting a pitch\nchange).\n\nI was thoroughly impressed when I saw the video, that is a really cool\ntechnique.\n\n~~~\nmitchty\nOn the second video they show them gimbaling towards the rocket and down as\nwell as rotating so I think they have at least 2 degrees of freedom to aide in\ncontrol alongside the engine gimbal.\n\n------\nsparkzilla\nStupid question probably: Why are they trying to land it on a tiny barge in\nthe sea, instead of trying to land on land?\n\n~~~\nGravityloss\n1\\. You launch eastwards so you get the bonus speed from earth's rotation.\n\n2\\. You launch over the ocean (or other sparsely populated areas) for safety\npurposes. All rockets so far have dropped stages or engines on the way.\n\n3\\. To get to orbit, you have to do mostly horizontal acceleration (8 km/s or\nso). That's why the rocket points eastwards soon after launching, and staging\nhappens already far from the launch site and why the first stage has a lot of\nhorizontal velocity towards east. You don't want to fly a dog-leg as that\nwastes energy.\n\n~~~\ntrose\nYou have some valid points but I think you may be incorrect on this one.\n\n> 1\\. You launch eastwards so you get the bonus speed from earth's rotation\n\nOnce the ship leaves the ground the earth's rotation has little to do with the\nflight except for landing location.\n\nsource: I play KSP\n\n~~~\nGravityloss\nIn Florida (28 degrees north) the earth surface travels at 400 m/s eastwards.\n(earth circumference * cos(28) / day)\n\nA spacecraft that would launch from the ground and start _westwards_ , would,\nafter gaining the first 400 m/s relative to its starting point only be\nstationary relative to the earth's center. Then after 800 m/s, it would travel\nat 400 m/s westwards. Say if your orbital velocity is 8.0 km/s. Your total\ndelta vee would be 8.4 km/s.\n\nIn comparison, an _eastward_ flying rocket would start from 0.4 km/s , and\nwould need rocket propulsion only for the remaining 7.6 km/s. A 10% saving\ncompared to the westward rocket!\n\nIn reality it's a bit more complex as you don't launch straight east or west\nanyway, and ISS is at a 50 degree inclination etc...\n\n~~~\npeeters\nExactly, and this is maximized by putting launch sites close to the equator.\nThis is one reason why the European Space Agency launches from South America,\nby the way:\n\n> Kourou lies at latitude 5°3', just over 500 km north of the equator. Its\n> nearness to the equator makes it ideally placed for launches into\n> geostationary transfer orbit as few changes have to be made to a satellite’s\n> trajectory.\n\n> Launchers also profit from the ‘slingshot’ effect, that is the energy\n> created by the speed of the Earth’s rotation around the axis of the Poles.\n> This increases the speed of a launcher by 460 m per second. These important\n> factors save fuel and money, and prolong the active life of satellites.\n\n[http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Launchers/Europe_s_Spacepo...](http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Launchers/Europe_s_Spaceport/Europe_s_Spaceport2)\n\n------\nanseljh\nHilarious watching neighboring cows freak out at 2:26 and 4:23 of the grid fin\ntest video.\n\n~~~\nHackinOut\nWell not your regular cows, they surely belong to a spacex farmer! :D\n[http://www.spacex.com/careers/position/5749](http://www.spacex.com/careers/position/5749)\n\n~~~\nriffraff\nwait, why would they need this? Is this a joke I'm not getting?\n\n~~~\nprawn\nDiscussion here:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8679855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8679855)\n\n~~~\nriffraff\nawesome, thanks.\n\n------\nannythesillicat\nWill we see the barge landing live on webcast?\n\n~~~\nandygates\nr/spacex think almost certainly not - it's definitely going to be filmed and\nusually that footage gets released, but previous cams on the test stages\ndidn't transmit live. The actual mission's likely to get the livestream.\n\nOTOH, it would be incredibly cool to cut to the barge and a dainty,\nGernsbackian landing. So, who knows?\n\n~~~\nsmackfu\nThis is where you can really tell that SpaceX is a private company. If\nsomething has a chance of going wrong, and they can avoid live-streaming it,\nthey will.\n\n------\nrhia\nWhy is SpaceX not using a shuttle design? From a layman's perspective, having\nsomething that basically works like an aeroplane would be much easier to get\nreusable, or am I missing something here?\n\n~~~\nmadaxe_again\nBecause you have to haul up a great big airframe, and you need a landing\nstrip, and you limit your configuration.\n\nWith this variety of thing you can strap multiple first-stage rockets\ntogether, blast a great big payload into space, and then the first stages\nreturn safely for rapid re-use - while your payload stays up.\n\nThe space shuttle had a pretty small payload bay, and only came in the one\nconfiguration - no flexibility, like this provides.\n\nAlso, with a passively slowed vessel, like a shuttle, you have a huge amount\nof heat to dissipate, which requires thermal tiles (yet more mass and refit\neach launch), whereas this slows in several burns throughout re-entry, meaning\nthat the thermal stresses are nothing like you have on a shuttle re-entry.\n\n------\nkurokikaze\nWhen will it happen? I cannot seem to find this info in the article.\n\n~~~\njccooper\nWho knows? Weather and technical issues can scrub a launch, which is why they\ndon't say in their PR materials. But it's scheduled for Friday 19 Dec. 1:22\npm.\n\n[https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/events/2014/december/laun...](https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/events/2014/december/launch-\nfalcon9-crs5.aspx)\n\n------\nitalophil\nI always wonder how much fuel this rocket needs for landing and if this\nreduces the maximum payload compared to the disposable Falcon 9. Find they\never release that information?\n\n~~~\navian\n> In order to make the Falcon 9 reusable and return to the launch site, extra\n> propellant and landing gear must be carried on the first stage, requiring\n> around a 30 percent reduction of the maximum payload to orbit in comparison\n> with the expendable Falcon 9.\n\nFrom\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_reusable_launch_system_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_reusable_launch_system_development_program#Economic_issues)\n\n~~~\nmadaxe_again\nBut the point is that by making the stage re-usable, you significantly cut\nyour cost/kg, meaning that even with a decreased capacity it's more cost\neffective, as you could do several launches rather than just one to lift\nwhatever.\n\nOf course, also bear in mind that this isn't technology just for the Falcon 9\n- this is the test-bed. Once we have the systems in place for a reusable first\nstage, this can be applied to the heavy (which of course uses falcon 9's), and\nother future generations of craft.\n\nUntil we've got SSTO spaceplanes or space elevators, this is pretty much as\ngood as it gets.\n\n------\niamcreasy\nAnyone knows if we can see the retropropulsion form Florida coast via naked\neye?\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\nNot a chance. Here's the map:\n[https://mapsengine.google.com/map/u/0/viewer?mid=zp15b_P5ERV...](https://mapsengine.google.com/map/u/0/viewer?mid=zp15b_P5ERVk.koWeOnV6-O-o)\n\n------\nmarak830\nWow. I really hop they nail this landing (if not this timw then next time). A\nvery interesting read, ill have to make a calendar entry tobkeep an eye on the\nnews!\n\n------\nrobertfw\nOne thing I have not seen - what are the plans post-landing? Has there been\nany information on how they plan on securing the landed booster?\n\n~~~\njccooper\nI think for previous flights they've had couple of ships outfitted for stage\nrecovery, in case they were able to pluck them out of the ocean. Presumably\none of those can go pick it up off the barge. Or maybe just tie it down and\ntow the barge home.\n\n------\nsmegel\nCan someone explain to me the value of landing a tall, cylindrical rocket\nvertically like this?\n\nIt just seems like such an odd thing to do.\n\n~~~\nDuskStar\nRockets are extremely weak in any direction other than straight up/down. The\nreinforcement to allow a Falcon 9 core to even lay on its side unpressurised\nwould probably weigh more than the entire set of recovery hardware (legs, grid\nfins, extra rcs fuel, etc) to land vertically.\n\n~~~\nmarktangotango\nFalcon 9 stages are stored on their sides unpressurized, see any of the\nnumerous roll out videos, and factory images. There are launchers that require\npressurization for handling (atlas 5?) but falcon is not one. Musk has\nmentioned this as a cost reduction and simplification withyou respect to\nencumbent providers, don't have a link unfortunately.\n\n~~~\noutworlder\nYeah. But storing and gently moving are one thing. Flying and landing\nhorizontally would require much more structural reinforcement.\n\n~~~\nXorNot\nBingo it's all about dynamic pressure: to be reusable the hull of the rocket\nhas to land intact and not having undergone plastic deformation of any kind,\nso it's as close to \"factory condition\" as possible.\n\n------\nRoboTeddy\nWhat portion of the fuel in the rocket is burned to slow down and land?\n\n~~~\nduskwuff\nVery little, actually. Most of the weight of the rocket is fuel; once it's hit\nits target altitude, it weighs practically nothing, and takes very little fuel\nto land.\n\n~~~\nmotoboi\nIt weights so little that, in fact, they have to use just one engine, and\nthrottle it down to its minimum.\n\n------\ncuriously\ncurious why don't they deploy parachutes or floatables and then slowly do a\ncontrolled descent using the rockets? I mean is this most efficient way of\nlanding the rocket, essentially going backwards on re-entry? What if the\nrocket catches a gust of wind and flips on its side? Bad weather?\n\n~~~\nInclinedPlane\nFor exactly the same reason that doesn't happen when landing an airplane, it's\nnot efficient, it's complex, it's error prone. Parachutes means you have a\n_recovery zone_ not a precision landing. Efficiency is all about operational\nefficiency, and fuel is the cheapest thing in the whole system. Burning a\nlittle fuel so that you can have a fully powered, highly controlled, high\nprecision landing means that you are able to recover tens of millions of\ndollars of spacecraft reliably, and that's far more important than saving a\nfew dollars in fuel. Precisely the same reason why airplanes do powered\nlandings even though they have wings and it would be far, far easier for them\nto coast to a landing without using parachutes or whatnot.\n\nAs for wind, the rocket isn't going to be launched if there's a risk of high\nwind gusts regardless, and most anything else the vehicle is capable of\ncompensating for with its thrust and fins.\n\n~~~\noutworlder\nThey might use drag chutes after touchdown however.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nEsperanto is not dead: Can the universal language make a comeback? - hyperlingo\nhttp://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/06/13/413968033/esperanto-is-not-dead-can-the-universal-language-make-a-comeback?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150613\n\n======\nJohnyLy\nI personally think the language will become bigger and bigger in schools as it\nhelps to understand latin languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Romania and\nPortuguese). I believe in the future it will be more taught in classes than\nnow but I don't think it will ever become one of the main languages.\n\n------\nTomte\nPersonally I'd be more interested in a renaissance of the Latin language. I\nthink it's the \"logical\" trans-national language for Europe (and that's mostly\nenough for me).\n\n------\ndang\nRecently about Esperanto:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9625048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9625048).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGlossary of Stand Up Comedy Terms - rfreytag\nhttps://stand-upcomedy.com/glossary-of-stand-up-comedy-terms/\n======\nDyslexicAtheist\nI'm a big fan of stand-up. I love the old stuff a lot (Richard Pryor, Billy\nConnolly, Bill Bailey) and I'm happy to see so much emerging talent that has\nhit the scene in the past decade with smart+critical content. (Sarah\nSilverman, Bo Burnham)\n\nMy fav one right now is Stewart Lee. He is often called the _\" comedian's\ncomedian\"_ and I think people here appreciate smart content so you might enjoy\nhim. (\"Content Provider\" is his latest show\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1UCt5iItcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1UCt5iItcw)\nStewart Lee is incredibly smart without being overly offensive - something\nthat gets old after some time (e.g. Jimmy Carr or Franky Boyle I both like but\nit's a bit shallow imo and lacks an overreaching arc in their story).\n\nLee is more demanding than shows that are made for mass-audiences (Michael\nMacintyre, etc) and will probably always remain on the fringe. He also has\nsome great tips about writing vs not writing.\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXVaytvJtQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXVaytvJtQ)\nincredibly intelligent guy which seems to defy all the traditional rules of\nthe trade. He also helped Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett become popular with\n\"The Mighty Boosh\" material at the Edinburgh fringe. (TMB is incredibly\nobscure but once hooked people usually either love it or hate it (it's hard to\nfeel just partial about it).\n\n~~~\nmlevental\n>Sarah Silverman, Bo Burnham\n\ni don't mean to start a fight but neither of these comedians are even remotely\nsmart or critical (re silverman the episode of louie on fx about marc maron\nwhere she describes her own humor as \"gee did i do that\" and burnham is a meme\nstar).\n\ni'm surprised you appreciate pryor and lump them in with him. in my humble\nopinion you almost have to be poor and black to be funny these days because\nreally good comedy is about transgression (with a few standout exceptions like\nmitch hedberg/steven wright) and there's nothing transgressive about people in\npower either taking pot shots or being purely critical. it's why dennis miller\nwas never funny (and nor is bill mahr). you have to be outside of power for a\ncriticism to be transgressive. this is why chappelle's last two standups were\nhollow - he's too fat, too rich, too comfortable. go back to first hbo special\nwhere he talks about the hypocrisy of the lewinsky scandal, or to his second\n(post chappelle show) special where he talks about incongruence of how the\nmedia treated elizabeth smart and erica pratt. in his most recent special his\nattempt to contextualize cosby drew eye rolls because it's quite plausible he\nhimself will be eventually accused (this is not a statement about his moral\ncharacter but simply his relationship to power).\n\nbut of course it can't be purely criticism right - there has to be showmanship\nand surprises and vulnerability.\n\ni think hands down the funniest comic of the last 10 was patrice o neal. i've\nwatched his last special probably 15 times and what i admire about him is that\nhe gets you to be complicit in the transgression (e.g. the value of a white\nwoman bit, gender roles in the office, relationship dynamics) by a sort of\nsocratic dialogue where the you yourself actually (by virtue of acceding)\ndeliver the punchline. he's also incredibly smart and vulnerable in that show\nin discussing his diabetes and similar challenges most people face with things\nlike work ethic. sadly he died in 2011.\n\nand yes both chappelle and o neal are raucously vulgar but it's directly in\nthe service of punchline, rather than the punchline itself.\n\nlouis ck was an exception in that he was white and male and etc and still\nfunny but only because he often identified with power (e.g. the picking white\nvs black joke). it was in that identification that you grew to trust him over\ncourse of the show and warmed up to the more absurd jokes (like fucking a dead\nkid and bag of dicks). he also was very clever in how he revealed the\nirrationality of culture (raising my kids gay and cutting grass around gay\npeople on your lawn). but now (after his scandal) he's not relatable anymore.\nlisten to his leaked special where he tries to pretend to be ashamed of not\nbeing as politically active as the parkland kids and it's hollow - you end up\nsuspecting that he really doesn't empathize with them.\n\n~~~\njames_s_tayler\nWhere do you place Bill Burr?\n\nHe's the stereotypical 'oppressor' as one might consider it these days, but\nhis joke about moms having the hardest job in the world where he says 'Really?\nHow many moms died on the last season of Ice Road Truckers?' cracked me up.\nMaybe it's funny because he's just so willing to transgress that it's almost\nrefreshing.\n\n~~~\nFezzik\nI rank Bill Burr as a top comic right now - his off the cuff wit is just\nfantastic. He did election coverage with a bunch of other seasoned comics and\nhad them all in fits for the entire ordeal. His podcast is the same: him just\nbeing hilarious about everything. And his interviews are awkward and brilliant\nat the same time.\n\nThe one classic comedic tool I think he lacks is jokes that reference\nthemselves within bits (Eddie Murphy was great at this).\n\n~~~\nDyslexicAtheist\n> \"The one classic comedic tool I think he lacks is jokes that reference\n> themselves within bits (Eddie Murphy was great at this).\"\n\nI miss that too. Guess not every comedian uses all tools from the box\nconsistently. If you don't mind artists with \"funny accents\" :) then Ross\nNoble (guy from Manchester living in Australia) and Billy Connolly are\nbrilliant in this. Ross Noble is a genius in the way he spins elaborate\nstories and plots inside the mind of his audiences. His flavor is also often\nsurreal (e.g. never put a blanket over an owl\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFA7_Q-\ntpHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFA7_Q-tpHg) ... <\\-- needs to be\nwatched as a whole to see his back-referencing and layering ... but just to\ngive a taste) ...\n\n------\ngkoberger\nI've gotten really into standup, since it fills a weird niche. I love\nlistening to people who care about their craft talk about it (like Jiro or\nChef's Table, for example), however that's often hard to come by... except for\ncomedians! Since their job is to talk, and they all tend to be pretty free\nduring the day, there's thousands of hours of comedians talking about their\ncraft online.\n\nIf you're looking to get started with a podcast, I recommend WTF, You Made It\nWeird, Good One and The Old Ones. Guests worth listening to (on any podcast)\nare John Mulaney, Bo Burnham, Mike Birbiglia, Conan O'Brien [1], Bill Burr,\nLouis CK on WTF (I know I know), and Kumail Nanjiani/Emily Gordon. And all\nthree Harris Wittels episodes of You Made It Weird are heartbreakingly worth\nlistening to.\n\n[1]\n[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2eoAIsZClo4bnlNM3JCb0hoSlU...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2eoAIsZClo4bnlNM3JCb0hoSlU/view)\n\n~~~\nretsibsi\nThe Comedian's Comedian podcast\n([http://www.comedianscomedian.com/](http://www.comedianscomedian.com/)) is\nanother take on exactly that: comedians talking about their craft. The guests\ncome from all over the world, but the host (Stuart Goldsmith) is English and\nso it skews a bit more in that direction. Recommended guests depend on your\ntaste, but I think most people would find the Stewart Lee episode interesting.\nThe Jimmy Carr episode was also very enjoyable -- surprisingly so to me, as I\nalways considered his standup rather cynical, crude, mean-spirited. Getting a\npeek behind the curtain changed my perspective a bit. Of recent episodes, my\nfavourite was probably the one with (Finnish stand-up comedian) Ismo.\n\nA couple of others that half-qualify:\n\n* Adam Buxton's podcast is much sillier and more of a banter/chat show, but a lot of his guests are comedians so they sometimes cover similar ground.\n\n* Richard Herring (Leicester Square Theatre Podcast) is at least as silly as Buxton and much cruder, but again, many of his guests are comedians and occasionally the conversation is surprisingly insightful.\n\n------\nfitzroy\ncached version:\n\n[https://web.archive.org/web/20190202141614/https://stand-\nupc...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190202141614/https://stand-\nupcomedy.com/glossary-of-stand-up-comedy-terms/)\n\n------\nstblack\nThank goodness for reader view.\n\n------\ndefen\nWalk the room: Offend the audience so much or bomb so badly that everyone\nwalks out.\n\n------\nthebesthacker\nI've heard comic groupies also referred to as \"Chucklesluts\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDon't Start With a Monolith - When your goal is microservices architecture - SaintCroix\nhttps://martinfowler.com/articles/dont-start-monolith.html\n======\nSaintCroix\nYesterday's discussion for further context;\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14778685](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14778685)\n\n------\nGrumpyNl\nIts all about architecture and requirements. A well designed monolith is way\neasier to setup then microservices. Been there, done that several times.\n\n------\nSorreah\n\"If you are actually able to build a well-structured monolith, you probably\ndon’t need microservices in the first place. Which is OK! I definitely agree\nwith Martin: You shouldn’t introduce the complexity of additional distribution\ninto your system if you don’t have a very good reason for doing so.\n\nSo what would be a good reason? There are many, but to me the most important\none is to allow for fast, independent delivery of individual parts within a\nlarger system. Microservices’ main benefit, in my view, is enabling parallel\ndevelopment by establishing a hard-to-cross boundary between different parts\nof your system. By doing this, you make it hard – or at least harder – to do\nthe wrong thing: Namely, connecting parts that shouldn’t be connected, and\ncoupling those that need to be connected too tightly. In theory, you don’t\nneed microservices for this if you simply have the discipline to follow clear\nrules and establish clear boundaries within your monolithic application; in\npractice, I’ve found this to be the case only very rarely.)\"\n\nIn theory, you know before building a system whether you'll need the things\nyou deem important on deciding whether you're better off with microservices.\n\nIn practice you very rarely do.\n\nSo we're back at square one.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Syncrypto - theapurvap\nhttps://theapurvap.github.io/syncrypto/#/file_select\n======\ntheapurvap\nSyncrypto provides browser based AES-256-GCM encryption/decryption for your\nfiles using the standard Web Crypto API, enabling you to share/store your\nfiles on the internet without worrying! Checkout the help\n([https://theapurvap.github.io/syncrypto/#/help](https://theapurvap.github.io/syncrypto/#/help))\npage for more information.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Do you use oDesk/ elance / Fiverr? - gregmuender\n\nWe are trying to solve some pain points that exist with using these marketplaces. What can be fixed?<p>Contractor selection...are there too many choices?\nContractor accountability...do you worry about getting poor work?\nDoes it take too long to receive back finished work?\nIs it too hard to post on multiple marketplaces?\n======\ncanterburry\nI have used Elance extensively over the last 5+ years for everything from Logo\ndesign to web programming.\n\n1\\. Biggest challenge is finding contractors who are actually as good as their\nportfolios. I am not sure if this is a case of portfolio fraud or simply not a\ngood enough interview process on my part, however, after working with some\nproviders, I just can't believe all those 5 star ratings are real.\n\n2\\. Too many contracts bid without actually reading or understanding the\nrequirements. The best people I have found actually addressed each requirement\npoint by point.\n\n3\\. Too many contractors provide too little value. I expect them to manage\neverything they need to do on their side, and not just be the hands on the\nkeyboard. Too many times have I had to put THEIR test plan together because\nthey had no clue how to actually test their work.\n\nMy approach has simply been to hire lots over the years and then rehire people\nproven to be good. It's a crap shoot initially though.\n\n~~~\nhackerboos\nNumber 2 is easily solved by burying an instruction in the spec.\n\nExample - ask them to prepend the subject with a keyword or some other\ninformation only calculable by reading the job description.\n\n~~~\ncanterburry\nThat is exactly what I have been doing and it has worked up to a certain\npoint. Contractors have gotten used to this trick and now just look for that\none phrase and skip the rest.\n\nI just wish it wasn't necessary.\n\n------\nglimcat\nThe fundamental error with trying to fix such marketplaces via another\nmarketplace is that contractors are typically far better off relying on repeat\nbusiness and some elementary lead prospecting, while project owners are better\noff relying on networking and repeat business.\n\nYour target market is thus (more or less) restricted to people who don't yet\nmeet that level of experience and professionalism. You get the contractors\nthat have no existing clients and no clue how to approach companies, and you\nget the project owners who are out to get bargain-basement labor and firmly\nbelieve they'll be the one poster who gets lucky and finds a contractor who\nworks on the internet yet is too inexperienced to realize what that means for\ntheir billable rates.\n\nThis is still a potential market, but you've lost the more desirable end of\nthe pool before you even leave the gate. And even if that is the end of the\npool you want to provide value to - you can provide far more value by helping\nthem move upstream, rather than trying to stamp out another marketplace which\nis a bad solution from its conception.\n\n------\npalakchokshi\nI've used oDesk in the past and they have some really great tools to ensure\nyou can track what the contractors are doing when they bill you for hours.\ne.g. They will take a screenshot at random times when the contractor says they\nare working on your project so you can see that they were actually working on\nyour project and not just sitting around doing nothing.\n\nThe key to finding good contractors is to start out by breaking down your\nproject into smaller pieces and giving the contractor one small independent\npiece to implement for a fixed price. If they deliver on time and quality work\ncommission them to finish your project on an hourly basis.\n\nFor javascript and android development I would recommend an excellent\ndeveloper that I've worked with before. Oscar De Dios Rodriguez\n\n------\ndinae\nI'm a Fiverr and Elance veteran. There is a tremendous amount of choice,which\nis daunting for sure. You can narrow the choices by setting standards. As a\nnewbie, simply filtering for top rated sellers or Level 2 narrows your\nchoices. And should make you feel a bit easier about accountability & quality\nsince these folks have proven themselves by Fiverr standards. You can control\nwhen you get your work by looking at delivery or turnaround times. Add an\nextra day just to be sure. I use multiple sites based on my need on each\nproject. I don't shop the same project to multiple sites that's\ncounterproductive. It's better to decide what you want to use each platform.\nHave a look at Clarity, Elance and Fiverr; each has a slightly different\nfocus. I wrote a book for Fiverr buyers ( the first). You can get it at\n[http://infoproductdoctor.com/Fiverr-\nguide](http://infoproductdoctor.com/Fiverr-guide). It's free til 9/23\n\n------\nsixQuarks\nI use elance/odesk extensively. My biggest pain point is trying to figure out\nthe real rates charged for work.\n\nWhat would be perfect is to give each freelancer a 1-2 hour test that will be\nshown on their profile. It will show what they are capable of within 1-2\nhours. For example, a logo design. Each applicant does the same test.\n\n------\ngarysvpa\nYou just need to check the following...\n\n1.) reviews from previous employer\n\n2.) previous work sample (related to what you need)\n\n3.) completion rate (quality and accuracy)\n\nRemember: Freelancer is paid only after you approve the work.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMicroservices. The good, the bad and the ugly - EdwardDiego\nhttp://devweek.com/blog/microservices-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly\n\n======\nkidmenot\nLink broken for me. None of the articles in that blog seem to work, actually.\n\n~~~\nviktorbenei\nIt works for me (Chrome for Android) - though if you click on the X at top\nright, near the regular \"we use cookies\" notification, it closes the post for\nsome reason\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: GreatDJ – Create and save playlists that sync across devices - ruiramos\nhttp://great.dj\n\n======\nruiramos\nHi everyone, Wanted to show you a small side project I've been working on -\nGreatDJ, where you can create and save Youtube playlists and optionally have\nthem sync across clients/devices. They main use case was to allow everyone at\na party to push songs into a common playlist (say, a computer that's connected\nto the main speakers).\n\nLately I've been working on making that easier: if you have a computer on\n'party mode' and use a phone on the same network to access the site, you'll be\nautomagically redirected to the same playlist so you can start pushing songs\nstraight away!\n\nThe whole thing is also open source:\n[https://github.com/ruiramos/greatdj](https://github.com/ruiramos/greatdj)\n\nHave fun, feedback would be amazing, thanks!\n\n~~~\nal_james\nCongrats on shipping! I was at a party the other day and we needed a way to\nall contribute to the same youtub playlist. Now we have a solution!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTumblr: Hashing Your Way to Handling 23,000 Blog Requests per Second - aespinoza\nhttp://highscalability.com/blog/2014/8/4/tumblr-hashing-your-way-to-handling-23000-blog-requests-per.html\n\n======\nsargun\nSo, it looks like they're using BGP to \"program\" the adjacent router a la\n\"SDN.\" I'm curious as to two things:\n\n* Byzantine fault-tolerance: How does this system handle failures when a specific node fails in a way that it fails to withdraw its routes. When a node's haproxy fails, how is BIRD informed of its failure? What if the failure is in some way that internal fault detectors don't see the failure.\n\n* How is the ECMP hashing problem handled? ECMP hashing on most gear is just a plain hash, that means when a route is withdrawn, the rest of the systems see their traffic rebalance. How does this not result in all connections being severed?\n\n~~~\nnbm\nI'm not sure about how Tumblr might do it, but one can use a combination of\nECMP and ipvs (with a consistent hash) to do the lower-layer L4 load\nbalancing. This means that even if one of the L4 load balancers go down and\nthe connections originally going to that L4 load balancer by the switch/router\nget moved to another one, the consistent hash to the L7 load balancer handling\nthe request means the connections will not be reset (except in some\ninteresting and less-frequent cases).\n\nThis two-stage process also allows for good health checking from the much-\nsimpler Linux ipvs L4 load balancer servers to the more-complicated L7 load\nbalancer servers.\n\nThis was described in this Velocity 2013 talk -\n[http://velocityconf.com/velocity2013/public/schedule/detail/...](http://velocityconf.com/velocity2013/public/schedule/detail/28410)\n\n~~~\nsargun\nYeah, this is how Facebook does it, and how we did it at Microsoft / Yammer.\n\n------\ncagenut\nHi Michael, you wrote a whole post about varnish cache management without\nmentioning hit-rates! How effective was all this? How many of that 23K req/s\ndid origin have to handle?\n\n~~~\nmschenck\nThe cache effectiveness of this is actually quite good, but I'm deliberately\nbeing ambiguous about the ratio.\n\nThe reason for my ambiguity is that our cache-hit ratio is actually a result\nof our application. This architectural design afforded us the ability to\nmaintain our (very high) cache-hit ratio, even when we outgrew the total slab\nsize of a single varnish node.\n\nThat ability to maintain the same cache-hit ratio, the motivation for this\neffort, is the result of not needing to evict cached content prior to TTL.\n\nSo, if you have a low cache-hit ratio due to eviction (and you don't just have\nexcessive TTLs), then your cache pool is probably too small. If so, then you\nmight want to give this design a shot - it's an analog to using ketama for\ngrowing memcache beyond a single node.\n\n------\nCoffeeDregs\nRandom note on on scale-out, caching, etc: check out CloudFront's \"whole site\ndelivery\". You can set min TTLs to zero on CloudFront, configure your cache\nheaders correctly and get many of the benefits outlined in the article. See:\n\n    \n    \n       http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2012/05/cloudfront-dynamic-content-support.html\n    \n       http://blogs.gartner.com/lydia_leong/2012/05/14/amazon-cloudfront-gets-whole-site-delivery-and-acceleration/\n    \n\nWARNING: CloudFront will dutifully cache non-2xx responses, so you can get a\nlong-lived, but very fast, 500 response...\n\n~~~\njgrahamc\nOr you could not pay Amazon \"per byte fees\" and use CloudFlare and get the\nsame the type of functionality through out caching options and Page Rules.\n\n------\nbobjenk\nIf I was to use Varnish, would that make my need for Redis obsolete - should I\nswitch to a non-memory based key-value db and use Varnish on top of that?\n\nMy current stack: nginx/php-fpm/redis. Nginx and Redis serve me well, but php-\nfpm makes my website rather slow with high volumes of traffic, so I believe\nthe solution for that would be Varnish(?).\n\n~~~\ncodingjester\nso @ tumblr, we're using varnish for a full page cache (we use it for parts of\nthe API as well for response caching), and invalidate when a blog updates (or\nyour page can just TTL out).\n\nI definitely agree that I wouldn't use Redis (or memcache for that matter) for\nstoring entire pages and should be used for more of an object cache. Even\nthen, we use memcache for \"simple\" data structures and when we need more\ncomplex data structures, will use Redis.\n\nRedis is great if you need some kind of persistence as well (and it's fairly\ntunable), where as memcache and varnish, are completely in memory (varnish 4.0\nI believe is introducing persistence). So you kick the process, and that's all\nshe wrote for your cache until it gets warm again. (Which has its own\nchallenges).\n\nVarnish also gives you a language called VCL to play around with to maximize\nyour caching strategies and optimize the way varnish should be storing things.\nIt's got an easy API to purge content, when you need to purge it and it should\nsupport compression for your pages out of the box without too much tuning.\n\nIf you're having issues just speeding up static content, give varnish a whirl.\nSpend some time with it, and you won't be disappointed.\n\nI believe you can also look into using nginx as a caching alternative to cache\nresponses, but I don't have too much experience with that. I've heard it used\nwith some success though.\n\n~~~\ndallasmarlow\nvarnish has supported disk based caching for quite a long time, it's just that\nall the instances at tumblr are configured to only use memory.\n\n------\nandremendes\n>278 employees. That's a lot of people, I imagined they were way less.\n\n~~~\nbillmalarky\nKeep in mind that not all are engineers. They appear to do sales in house.\n\n~~~\nchojeen\nAlso, some Yahoo employees might have transferred over after the acquisition.\n\n~~~\nelliottcarlson\nNot really - especially on the tech side.\n\n------\nmaddalab\nApologies if this is not of interest.\n\nIf you found this interesting please checkout the jobs page [1] at Tumblr, we\nare constantly looking for new folks. Specifically [2] for positions on the\nteams that implemented everything described in the article.\n\n[1] [https://www.tumblr.com/jobs](https://www.tumblr.com/jobs) [2]\n[http://boards.greenhouse.io/tumblr/jobs/17886](http://boards.greenhouse.io/tumblr/jobs/17886)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\n10 marketing lessons for tech startups - quant\nhttp://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/27/10-marketing-lessons-for-early-stage-tech-startups/\n\n======\nshanebooth\nGreat story. I liked the whole \"to stealth\" or \"not to stealth\" angle.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nI Can't Figure Out What Facebook Is For - Flemlord\nhttp://www.overcompensating.com/posts/20080903.html\n======\nknown\nMe too.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Follow multiple live crypto charts on single screen - sercan\nhttps://multiplecharts.com\n======\nsercan\nI've built a simple tool to follow multiple coin charts on single screen. I'd\nlove to hear what fellow cryto traders think about it :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSalesforce.com Announces Two $1 Million Winning Teams for Hackathon - jhchen\nhttp://finance.yahoo.com/news/salesforce-com-announces-two-1-210000741.html\n======\ndraz\nHa. Still sticking to their guns: \"...while the Upshot mobile app used pre-\nexisting code, this did not violate the hackathon rules. Use of pre-existing\ncode was allowable as long as the code did not comprise the majority of the\napp and did not violate any third party's rights.\" I think it does more damage\nthan good\n\n~~~\npuredemo\n\"The internal audit team's review determined that Upshot's mobile app was\ncreated during the hackathon and met these criteria.\"\n\nThey just took an existing application made during a nine year tenure at\nSalesforce, threw it into a generic responsive / mobile app framework during\nthe \"hackathon\" and made a cool mil..\n\nIt helps if Salesforce is already an investor in your product, of course.\n\nAnd this doesn't address why most apps that were submitted weren't even ran.\nIt's not like 149 apps are all that hard to at least take a look at.\n\n------\njere\nFirst place:\n\n>Upshot was created by Thom Kim, who left Salesforce after nine years in\nJanauary, and Joseph Turian, with whom Kim had been friends since they\nattended Harvard University together.\n\nOh that sounds fishy? As a concession, we'll just award _another million_ to\n2nd place. Oh, who is second place?\n\n>Fisher and Oliveros are employees working at Taptera, a San Francisco-based\nstartup that received $2 million in August of 2011 from Salesforce and other\ninvestors in a Series A round of financing.\n\n~~~\neli\n_shrug_\n\nThis doesn't strike me as inherently scandalous.\n\n~~~\njere\nScandalous, no. The part that bothers me is that an event, presumably designed\nto introduce new developers to their platform, seems impossible to win unless\nyou're either a) directly associated with the company or b) make a living\ndeveloping for the company's platform already.\n\n~~~\nsbisker\nAre you sure that was the design of this hackathon? I was more under the\nimpression it was to incentive their entire developer base, not simply to\nencourage new adoption.\n\n------\ntenpoundhammer\nThis may be the largest back pedal in the history of backpedaling.\n\n~~~\nswang\nMicrosoft/XBox1 backpedal probably beats this one. SalesForce isn't giving up\nmuch here. What's another million to a company they've already invested in?\n\n~~~\ntenpoundhammer\nI don't know what this reference is about.\n\n~~~\niLoch\nXbox One? Microsoft took a huge gamble in their decision to all but eliminate\ndiscs from their consoles. They had planned that consumers would not be able\nto resell their discs once purchased with the promise that your friends would\nbe able to play the games in your games library without owning the game\nthemselves (ie. they download the game from your games library) so long as you\nweren't playing the game at the same time as them. People didn't like this\nbecause 1.) They couldn't resell their games and 2.) It required that you\nconnect your Xbox to the internet once every 24 hours. For some reason a lot\nof people felt like this would affect them (I don't know why.. I can't\nremember the last time my internet was disconnected for 24 hours.) As a result\nof all the negative feedback, Microsoft scrapped their whole DRM system in\nfavour of a more classic approach while Sony basked in the positive attention\ndespite bringing nothing new to the table.\n\n------\npriley\nThe issue is they specific said you can't start or use existing code before\nthe date (still there in the rules PDF). I know that many very talented teams\nfollowed that rule even though theycould have used some of their older repos\nand did something even more impressive than Upshot. Then they respond to a\nforum question, weeks after the hackathon started, saying \"yeah sure, just not\na significant amount\". Most programmers were heads down in their code and\ndidn't check the forum. That's wrong and they did nothing to explain or\ncorrect this.\n\n------\nyeukhon\n> The internal audit team's review determined that Upshot's mobile app was\n> created during the hackathon and met these criteria.\n\nLet's be honest. Upshot is pretty solid before the hackathon. It was\nfunctioning to some great degree. How many days did the event last? Three\ndays? A mobile app for this hackathon is small. What innovations / cool\nbusiness logic did they develop in the mobile app? I probably will see none.\nPretty UI... maybe that was the winning shot. I am sure.\n\nThe fact that Upshot guys haven't spoken is also ridiculous. Or have they?\n\n~~~\ncolinloretz\nI also competed. We had from when the hackathon was announced (October 25th)\nto November 17th to build our submissions.\n\n------\nfizx\nTo me, the most interesting part of this is buried. Whereas previously only\nthe five finalists were showcased, now many (all?) of the losing entries are\nnow published.\n\n[http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/submissions](http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/submissions)\n\n~~~\ncolinloretz\nThey reached out to all the teams for their permission to publish their\nsubmissions. Not all of the teams have agreed to do so yet.\n\n------\npc86\nMore than anything, I’m bothered that the submitter has submitted multiple\narticles[1] on the same subject. Is HN karma really this important to people?\n\n[1]\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6836581](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6836581)\n\n~~~\nJemaclus\nWell, this apparently bothers you, so it must be, right? :)\n\n------\nerr4nt\nWhy give them the publicity?\n\n------\nswalsh\nThat healthcare app is actually pretty cool, how did that not win 1st place?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: One link between you and the internet - attendos\nhttps://enter.bio\n======\nColinWright\nI don't understand what this is, or does, or could be. I can guess, but\nthere's no indication of what pain I'm currently experiencing that is taken\naway by this.\n\nIt would be really nice to have a proper blog post that talks about what this\naccomplishes for me, why I would want it. Don't focus on the marvellous things\nyou've done[0], describe for me how this will make my life better[1].\n\nIn the past when I've said that people haven't understood the differences\nbetween [0] and [1]. When you do - if you do - it will help you see how to\nconnect better with people like me.\n\nBut it might be that I'm not your target audience.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWired Science Blogs explains the physics behind cannonball flight - sathishmanohar\nhttp://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/cannon-balls-size-matters/\n\n======\npaulor2\nBeautiful text, this is how engineers should think. Make real assumptions\nusing all the knowledge they got.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFolha stops publishing content on Facebook [portuguese] - pablo-massa\nhttps://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2018/02/folha-deixa-de-publicar-conteudo-no-facebook.shtml\n======\npablo-massa\nGoogle translate to English:\n[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww1.folha.uol.com.br%2Fpoder%2F2018%2F02%2Ffolha-\ndeixa-de-publicar-conteudo-no-facebook.shtml&edit-text=&act=url)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE - cleverjake\nhttp://blog.reybango.com/2012/05/08/hey-paydirt-your-site-works-just-fine-in-ie\n\n======\njayferd\nIf I, as a developer, decide my site supports a browser, I know I'm going to\nhave to spend some time doing QA on that browser. Standards are cool, but I've\nrun into enough FF and Chrome bugs that I always test.\n\nThat being said, the cost of testing in IE is waaay higher than the cost of\ntesting in FF and Chrome. Why? Because FF and Chrome are cross-platform, I and\nmy fellow developers can test on our OS of choice. With IE, a testing\nenvironment costs my company about $300 per developer.\n\nNot to mention that setting up a VM for testing is the opposite of\nstraightforward. After shaving a few yaks to convert the stupid VHD format to\nsomething VirtualBox can understand, you need to hack your local network so\nthe VM can see its host.\n\nAlso, the developer tools are crappy. Has anyone worked on those in the last\n10 years? I use Chrome for development not because of \"web standards\", but\nbecause the debugging tools are _awesome_ (some people swear by Firebug, also,\nYMMV).\n\nSo I guess the point \"support\" is a little more complicated than \"look, it\nworks!\".\n\n~~~\nricardobeat\nWe just keep a couple spare, old win laptops around for testing on IE. They\nhave Win7 with IE9, plus VMs for <IE8, access over the local network. It's\neasy to create a bookmarklet that sends URLs over to them so you don't have to\ntype.\n\nAlso, neither Chrome, Safari or Firefox behave exactly the same on\nwin/mac/linux. Delicate layouts and javascript-heavy apps still have to be\ntested.\n\nIE9 has a large share of the web, and is still growing. It's a perfectly ok\nbrowser (except for lack of WebGL). Not supporting it or adding a \"not\noptimized for...\" message reeks of \"Optimized for 800x600\" in the old days.\nUsers shouldn't have to pay the toll.\n\nAnd please, if you are going to do this, do _not_ block browsers by UA. Show a\nwarning, whatever, but just don't lock them out. It's annoying.\n\n~~~\ntalmand\nCould you possibly share this bookmarklet?\n\n~~~\nricardobeat\nUsing OpenKeyVal (<http://openkeyval.org/>), the bookmarklet looks like this:\n\n    \n    \n        (function(){\n            var data = { data: location.href }\n            jQuery.post('http://api.openkeyval.org/myownkey', data)\n        }())\n    \n\nAnd on each client you have a screen-sized iframe + an \"update\" button that\ntriggers:\n\n    \n    \n        $.getJSON('http://api.openkeyval.org/myownkey', function(data){\n            iframe.src = data\n        })\n    \n\nYou have to remember to use your local IP address, not localhost. I ended up\nmaking a small nodejs server so we could use websockets and drop the update\nbutton.\n\n------\nbrlewis\nThis may be schadenfreude, but as someone who's been around the web a long\ntime, it really tickles me to see Microsoft have to fake their user agent\nstring to get around an arbitrary browser restriction. Other browsers used to\nfake the IE user agent string. I suppose it's full circle since IE originally\nhad to pose as Netscape's browser (Mozilla compatible).\n\n~~~\njpadvo\nSame circumstance in both cases, though: _developers_, not browser vendors,\nunnecessarily restricting functionality based on browser sniffing.\n\n~~~\nmistercow\nNo, MS doesn't get to dodge blame that easily. They blatantly used non-\nstandard features in their browser to stifle competition. Many developers were\ncomplicit in this but that was according to Microsoft's design.\n\n~~~\ngaius\nNon standard features like... XMLHttpRequest?\n\nThe entire AJAX industry, they invented. What were you saying again?\n\n~~~\nrpeden\nSeems to me there has, for a long time, been a double standard when MS is\ninvolved.\n\nThe response I often see is:\n\nSomething non-standard but cool in IE? \"Screw MS, they're trying to embrace\nand extend the web!\"\n\nSomething non-standard but cool in another browser? \"I don't understand why\npeople are complaining! Good ideas like these eventually become standards, and\nthis is how innovation happens!\"\n\n~~~\nmistercow\nThere is no double standard. If any single browser had the marketshare that IE\nhad in its heyday, it would be irresponsible and anticompetitive for them to\nimplement nonstandard features. But marketshare is spread much more evenly\namong the players today, so it's pretty much understood that a production site\ncannot _rely_ on a browser-specific feature. Hell, most people don't even rely\non modern _standard_ features because they still want their stuff to work in\nIE6. Comparing experimental features today with the IE-flavored-web of 2002 is\ncomparing apples to geese.\n\n~~~\nrpeden\nWeren't <img>, <li>, <ul>, and <ol> experimental, non-standard features added\nby Netscape? Due to Netscape's dominance, everyone ended up implementing them.\n\nI'm not saying non-standard features are always a good idea...but is everyone\nalways waited around for standards bodies to come up with new things, we'd\nnever see any new features.\n\n~~~\nyuhong\nNope, <img> was invented with Mosaic, and <li>, <ul> and <ol> was in Mosaic\ntoo.\n\n~~~\nmasklinn\nWhich doesn't detract much from the point: it was a proprietary extension by a\nspecific browser, later adopted by all others.\n\n~~~\nmistercow\nOK, NCSA was wrong to add those tags to Mosaic without going through standards\nchannels or making them \"experimental\" and accessible through explicitly\ntemporary syntax. However, I have not seen any evidence (much less the hard\n_proof_ we have as Microsoft is concerned) that they added those tags with\nanticompetitive _motivation_ , especially considering that Mosaic predated the\nbrowser war.\n\n------\ntnorthcutt\n_They were using many CSS3 features supported since IE9, like transforms &\nborder-radius, but just not adding the –ms vendor prefix entry_\n\n _They had the “-ms” prefix for CSS3 gradients which was added in IE10_\n\n _They added support for -khtml-box-shadow but not -ms-box-shadow???_\n\n _They didn’t support Opera either unfortunately_\n\nAll this crap recently about web standards and Opera adopting the webkit\nprefix and how bad some people think that is for the web? Paydirt, and people\nwho think like them, are a huge part of the problem. Please don't do stuff\nlike this.\n\n~~~\nrecoiledsnake\nI use Opera as my main browser and I cringe when clicking on a link in HN\nwhich supposedly shows off usage of cool new features in HTML/CSS/JS/WebGL\nwhatever. Then I hunt around the site which breaks on me with no message. Then\nhave to trawl through the HN comments to realize that it only works in Chrome\nand no one bothers to put that in the headline or on the site. Note that this\nhappens to lots of Google cool features or easter eggs. Is this really taking\nthe web forward or setting it back to the \"best works in IE\" days (just\nwithout that helpful message) ?\n\nAnd now Opera is pissed at the usage of browser specific extensions and is\nadding support for -moz and -webkit which is sure to further mess up things.\n\n~~~\nsnowwrestler\nHonest question, and I promise I'm not trying to be antagonistic: why do that\nto yourself? Why not Chrome or Safari or even Firefox? Why keep using Opera at\nall?\n\n~~~\ngebe\nI am an Opera user as well but I really tried to do the Chrome switch when I\ngot a new laptop and decided on a fresh install of everything. I was thinking\nthat it might be time to begin a new chapter in my personal browser-history-\nlife and hop on the Chrome bandwagon. It didn't take more than a day or two\nuntil I got drawn back to Opera though.\n\nI know it's just mostly/only about \"old habits die hard\" but I just feel that\nso much is amiss in Chrome. From small things like that I have to get an app\nto get a dropdown address bar list (I mean really?) or the lack of intuitive\nhotkeys (my favourite is Opera's ctrl + z for undoing a closed tab) to bigger\nthings like that I have to put up with Google's constant nagging about logging\nin to this or that or the lack of features that Opera has out the box (like\nOpera Turbo and such).\n\nAn old usage case before I got a no-limit data package plan was trying to save\nbandwidth while tethering from my phone. In Opera I could first put on Opera\nTurbo (like a proxy compressing service) and with another two clicks control\nwhat elements I want shown. I could easily and intuitively turn off pictures\nfor example and only choose show those that I may want to look at. It was\ngreat for surfing light!\n\nI am no rockstar web developer nor am I interested in figuring out what\nplugins/apps I need. I just want stuff to work, out of the box, while still\nhaving access to some cool stuff. And for that Opera works wonders for me\n(even though the support for it ain't that great ;) )!\n\n~~~\nnoveltyaccount\nCtrl + Shift + T in Chrome to un-close a tab.\n\n~~~\najanuary\nI think their point was that Ctrl+Z is more intuitive than Ctrl+Shift+T,\nthough I don't necessarily agree with that.\n\n------\nFuzzyDunlop\nSo, if Microsoft renamed IE10 to something entirely different, and packaged it\nas a standalone browser, would a site like Paydirt support it then? It seems\nto work fine, so why not?\n\nThis, and comments like _\"The site happening to work\"_ seem to have an\nunderlying prejudice about IE. \"It was IE, so it _must_ be fucked some way or\nanother.\"\n\nThe old versions are, but try running the site on Chrome 1, or Firefox 3.6 (I\nbelieve a lot of old Ubuntu LTS releases have that). They'll be exactly the\nsame.\n\nThis should not become a trend.\n\n~~~\nmoron\n> This, and comments like \"The site happening to work\" seem to have an\n> underlying prejudice about IE. \"It was IE, so it must be fucked some way or\n> another.\"\n\nIf it's my comment you're referring to, I said it \"happens\" to work in IE\nbecause if we are to believe the team, they didn't try to make it work in IE.\nIt just does, by coincidence, _for now_.\n\nSupport is a commitment, and committing to IE will mean work down the road\nthat these people have decided not to do, because it is not valuable to them.\nThis attitude of \"Oh, it works in IE right now so they must just be pedantic\nasses\" is short-sighted.\n\n~~~\nmikeryan\n_It just does, by coincidence, for now_\n\nSo you're saying its just a fluke that IE9+ supports the same standards as\nFirefox and Chrome? Amazing luck that.\n\n~~~\nrhizome\nHistorically speaking, yes, but perhaps intentional in the present day. Who's\nto say, and better yet, who's going to spend scarce developer resources on\nproving it one way or the other? Unless you're doing corporate, that is.\n\n~~~\nqw\n_who's going to spend scarce developer resources on proving it_\n\nThis was the argument many had a decade ago about IE6. Lots of people designed\nfor IE6 first and didn't spend time on alternative browsers. They were lucky\nthat IE6 continued to be popular for so many years, but in the end it has\ncaused a lot of problems. These days the markets move a lot quicker, so\nfailing to support IE9 today may prove an expensive decision in a year or two.\n\n------\nilaksh\nIE9 may have caught up on some things, but there are a lot of things it\ndoesn't do, that Safari/Chrome and Firefox (as well as Opera in most cases) do\ndo. So even if it might not be quite as hard now to get it to layout properly\n(it still is not the same as Chrome/Safari/Firefox/Opera, really, things just\ndon't behave the same unless you train yourself to avoid things that IE9\ndoesn't like), there are lots of other reasons to avoid IE:\n\n■ WebGL (3D) ■ WebSockets ■ HTML5 Forms (validation mechanism, CSS3 selectors)\n■ FormData ■ HTML5 multifile-upload ■ HTML5 video (only with certain file\nformats) ■ CSS3 Transitions (for animations) ■ CSS3 Text Shadow ■ CSS3\nGradients ■ CSS3 Border Image ■ CSS3 Flex box model ■ Application Cache\n(offline) ■ Web Workers (threads in JavaScript) ■ Drag’n Drop from Desktop ■\nSMIL Animations (SVG animations) ■ File API ■ JavaScript Strict Mode ■\nForeignObject (embed external content in SVG) ■ ClassList APIs ■ HTML5 History\nAPI\n\nWhy are most of these features either already implemented in other browsers or\navailable in development versions, but completely missing from Internet\nExplorer? Why haven't more of these features made it into the hands of Windows\nusers? Its not because Microsoft can't figure out how to implement or deploy\nthese features. Its because the web platform is fundamentally antagonistic to\nMicrosoft's business model with its dominant Windows monopoly on business\nsoftware, PC games and operating system deployment.\n\nThose features which enhance the web browser to make it most competitive with\nthe desktop MUST not be deployed to Windows users any faster than absolutely\nnecessary. It is an absolute business imperative for Microsoft to drag its\nfeet and disrupt the web platform as much as it possibly can, because when all\nweb browsers have web workers, 3D WebGL, WebSockets, File API, Gradients, Drag\nand Drop, HTML5 forms etc., it simply won't make business sense to write\napplications specific to Microsoft's platform. Pretty soon after that happens,\nit won't make sense to continue the Windows and Office licensing lock-in.\n\nSo the relationship between a web developer (who understands the nature of the\nweb platform) and Microsoft is fundamentally antagonistic.\n\n~~~\nmattmanser\nOh god, we might as well start asking why FF didn't support ellipse for what\nseems like decades.\n\nEveryone has different release schedules. IE is a lot more conservative\nbecause they support enterprise who are mighty touchy.\n\nGrow The Fuck Up Cry Baby. I'm all for IE6 and IE7 whining, they suck. I'm\neven for IE8 and the entire stop at XP whining. Damn MS for that.\n\nBut you just sound like a total privileged prat who doesn't have a clue what's\ngoing on when it comes to web standards. FF and Chrome have a lot more\nlatitude. If you want to know what happens when stuff starts moving too fast\nkeep an eye on the webkit mobile css support fiasco unfolding in front of us\nright now. There is such a thing as moving too fast.\n\n~~~\nchris_wot\nYou're equating ellipses with things like websockets?\n\nCan someone either downvoted or kill this? I've never seen such an abusive and\nhorrid comment on Hacker News!\n\n~~~\nchris_wot\nHey spqr, for the past 266 days you've been posting comments that virtually\nnobody can see. I read dead comments - call me crazy.\n\nJust thought you might want to know why nobody has been replying to you.\n\n------\ndpearson\nThe problem is, IE 9 and 10 are not everywhere. I know for certain that my\nschool (and, I'd be willing to wager, many businesses) only deploys IE 7 and\n8. IE 6 still isn't dead, despite Microsoft publicly encouraging migration.\nUntil Microsoft gets IE 9 and 10 adoption up, supporting Internet Explorer is\ntricky.\n\n~~~\njosefresco\nThe problem really is that they are lumping ALL IE users into one\n\"incompatible bucket\" irregardless of the version and features supported.\n\nThere's no need to get religious here, just support the browsers that have the\nfeatures your web app needs.\n\n~~~\npolitician\nYou're talking about feature testing and progressive enhancement. Adopting\nthat strategy doesn't mean that you no longer have to test every browser, it\njust means that you don't support a common level of functionality across\nbrowsers. Indeed, you'll still end up testing all the browsers all of the\ntime, just with different expectations.\n\nThese guys have been burned by IE to the point where they don't want to test\nit period. Feature testing doesn't get them there, but blacklisting does.\n\n~~~\neropple\n> These guys have been burned by IE to the point where they don't want to test\n> it period.\n\nAlternate Character Interpretation: they want some hits from HN because \"look\nat us, we don't support IE!!!\".\n\n------\njanlukacs\nit's just a publicity stunt to get traffic to their site. since web devs\nmostly hate IE it an easy way to get their attention...\n\n~~~\ngm\nWell may have gotten traffic but did it get sales? Goodwill?\n\nAttracting traffic because you are being a dick is not the same as attracting\ntraffic because you are making a world-changing awesome product.\n\n------\nsauravc\nIE may be annoying, and I certainly sympathize with the Paydirt crew. But this\nauthor makes a good point: \"it’s exactly this type of behavior (writing for or\nagainst specific browsers) that sets the Web back again.\"\n\nSometimes doing the right thing isn't the easiest path forward.\n\n~~~\nrhizome\nThe unspoken assertion in that point? The only basis for including \"again\" is\nthe past work of the IE team themselves.\n\n~~~\nsauravc\nYup. But two wrongs don't make a right.\n\n------\nrbanffy\nI can see why someone would do it. If you are on Windows, you _can_ use other\nbrowsers - every browser is available on Windows.\n\nWhen I allow an IE user to use an application, I have to start testing on IE.\nIn order to do that I'll have to make Selenium do some extra runs (IE 7, 8, 9,\n10, Metro mode) under a Windows VM. I also need at least one (Win 7) Windows\nlicenses (probably more, but I may be able to get away with permanently using\nit in preview) and, worst of all, when it breaks, I'll have to get the\napplication fixed for, at least a couple versions of Firefox, Chrome and IE.\nAnd that if it breaks during testing - if it breaks with a user I'll have to\nstart guessing what went wrong (if something did).\n\nNah... Windows users can use Safari, Chrome or Firefox.\n\nedit: as pointed out by recoiledsnake, aaronbrethorst and Impossible Safari is\navailable for Windows.\n\n~~~\ndarklajid\nI'm a Firefox user, working exclusively on Windows (although a Linux nut by\nnight).\n\nIf a site blocks any browser by user-agent _and I find out about that_ (as a\nuser of FF that's not a regular case) that site is dead. I will create some\nchildish rhymes about the creator of that thing, I'm going to compare it to\nacoustic couplers or pay phones and .. move on.\n\nThere are good reasons to avoid supporting every browser and the IE brand\n_had_ (and has) problems.\n\nBut user agent sniffing? That results in one reaction only (again, of course,\nlimited to 'what I can notice'):\n\nThis business isn't able to provide a usable web presence. I'm going\nelsewhere.\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\n> This business isn't able to provide a usable web presence.\n\nDefine \"usable\". It's certainly usable if you are not on IE and, if the\nresources they'd use to support IE in addition to others are diverted into new\nand useful features, I'm happy.\n\nEven if you use feature detection, you'll still have to test on IE (and, to do\nit right, you'1l have to test on a matrix of 3 or 4 OSs (XP, Vista, 7, 8) and\n4 browser versions (7, 8, 9 and 10). If IE breaks, you'll still have to fix it\nin ways other browsers don't break. That costs money.\n\n------\nLocalPCGuy\nIMO, I agree with those that say it is a publicity stunt. It costs very little\nto support IE9+. Even IE8 doesn't take a ton of time to make it work, although\nyou do have to do something about the CSS3 styles (CSS3PIE, for example.) But\nit is really dumb to make the choice to BLOCK a browser by user agent. How\nabout feature detection or if you must block by browser, at least do IE8 and\nbelow.\n\nNote, I am a front-end dev, and I know the pain of developing for IE6 and IE7.\nBut any front end dev with any professional skills can make a site that works\nin IE8+ without resorting to ugly hacks (I don't call polyfills hacks.) And\nIE9 supports a large percentage of the standards we use on a daily basis.\n\nSorry, dumb move by Paydirt, with no monetary payoff.\n\n------\namishforkfight\nJust a guess, but the inclusion of -ms prefixes indicate the use of a CSS\npreprocessor and some off-the-shelf mixin libraries for all the fancy crap.\n\n~~~\nreybango\nPossibly. Just seems odd that specific things are added but others aren't.\n\n------\nheelhook\ntl;dr the site works with IE9 and IE10.\n\nI find the style of writing of this post extremely obnoxious, was it really\nnecessary to say the exact same thing with slightly different order in the\nwords over and over? If your post is to be short because there's not a lot to\nsay, don't extend it unnecessarily, get to the point, move on.\n\n~~~\ndavidjgraph\nI thought that. Plus the commenter that tries to explain that Microsoft built\nup a good deal of \"trust debt\" over the IE 6-8 period for those who had to\ncode through it, gets the same repeated in the comments.\n\nIt's all very well that it technically might work, but we're dealing with\nhumans here, humans that have been annoyed for a long time...\n\n~~~\ndmix\nMicrosofts trust debt will start repairing when noone uses IE7 anymore.\n\nIt's still at about 10% worldwide so many of use still have to fix mystery JS\nbugs in IE7 and even still some CSS oddities in IE8.\n\n~~~\nJoeri\nNot to mention the joy of \"can't execute code from a freed script\" in IE9\n(code that works fine in every other browser, even IE6, magically broke in\nIE9).\n\n------\nSchizoDuckie\nIn my opinion this is the beginning of the end for Microsoft. People are\nshouting out that they're done with it, and Microsoft is trying the same trick\nas before: Creating unneccesary lock-in where there is absolutely no use.\n\nWhy did the first beta of IE10 work on windows 7 and now you need to download\na 3.2 gb unfinished operating system? It's bullshit, It's insane, and once\nagain the developers are being assraped by Microsofts marketeers.\n\nYou can shout from the top of the highest building that you release a new\nversion every month, Microsoft, but you _way_ overplayed your hands. Now\nthere's 4 major versions to support, hundreds of bugs to test. Developer\nenvironments to setup, weird registry hacks to do to get things working, and\nNO FRICKING DEBUG TOOLS.\n\nI'm one of the happy few people that are allowed to code for mostly webkit-\nbased devices, and even though there's loads of fragmentation there, it's no\nwere near as shitty as the experience i've had the past 8 years building IE\ncompatibility.\n\n------\ndutchbrit\nClaiming they no longer support IE means they'll stop writing \"hacks\" for IE\nfrom now (not as in last month) onwards.. But still, silly that they simply\nblock IE and don't just show an extra message saying use X for the \"ultimate\nexperience\". Maybe they should only block IE once they have an update that\nreally will interfere with IE users.\n\nBut on the other hand, that might piss of paying customers that actually use\nIE and refuse/aren't allowed to use anything else..\n\n------\nJVIDEL\nWhen I meet with investors all they talk about is traction and traffic.\n\nIf you have enough there are no more meeting, no calls, no demos.\n\nYou get funded, no questions asked.\n\nIE is no longer 90% of the market, but it's still the biggest browser by\nmarket share. There are many early adopters, but not anywhere as much as\nregular users. Regular users make the bulk of any popular site/webapp's\ntraction, and most of them use IE, period.\n\nA few years from now when IE becomes just another competitor and not the\nmarket leader we wont need to develop for it, and that might actually make\nmore regular users move to FF or Chrome.\n\nMeanwhile you have to support it, because IE development will never ever be as\ndifficult as getting enough traction.\n\n------\nHaloZero\nPaydirt is within it's full rights not to support IE9 when it's customer base\ndoesn't really use it.\n\nThe problem is that the author notices most things work (border radius) but\ndoesn't realize that IE9 is missing stuff we expect modern browsers to be able\nto support. Placeholder text and simple gradients are both not supported very\nwell and that takes time and effort to build into your product. It's not about\n90%, it's about getting that last 10% to work just right so the experience is\nclean and smooth for everyone involved.\n\nIE10 might be another story, but last time I checked IE10 isn't out yet. But\nit seems to me that Microsoft is always one step behind.\n\n~~~\nunderwater\nWhat kind of site needs gradient support to be usable? Placeholders are bad\nfor usability too; your shouldn't be relying on them.\n\n------\ntokenizer\nIsn't IE usually the only browser worth creating seperate stylesheets not to\nmention the browser who gives the most difficulty with your javascript?\n\nIf Microsoft truly cared about the web, they would adhere to strict standards\nsupport and compliance, force updates for IE9 and below, and begin auto update\ncycles for their browsers.\n\nThat may seem like a lot to ask, but it's the only things to me as a web\ndeveloper I can see that could remedy their horrible reputation in the browser\ncommunity. No one game app on their latest browser will change that.\n\n------\npippy\nSupporting IE has nothing to do with how well it renders a site.\n\nSupporting IE carries massive baggage as you have to pin yourself to\nMicrosoft's erratic, tactic based release cycles and limiting yourself with\nfuture features. Chrome and Firefox now how have rolling releases and are\nclosely tied with the developer community, so new features and rendering\nuniformity is what you gain.\n\nThere's also the ethos you buy into by supporting IE: you're supporting a\nclosed source, proprietary internet.\n\n~~~\nPaulHoule\nIE's moving to a similar \"rapid release\" schedule with other browsers.\n\nMicrosoft has played many sneaky pete tricks in the browser wars (such as\nsupporting a CSS standard that couldn't be correctly implemented in Netscape's\ncodebase) but you can't blame their release schedule entirely on that --\nWindows users tend to be a conservative lot who are terrified that Microsoft\nwill push something that will break their cheap-ass intranet that's held\ntogether with string and ear wax.\n\n~~~\nrhizome\n_conservative lot who are terrified that Microsoft will push something that\nwill break their cheap-ass intranet_\n\nDue to...everybody say it with me...lack of standards support.\n\n~~~\nbzbarsky\nNo, it's due to so many intranet applications being written as one-browser\nhacks completely ignoring standards.\n\nMozilla has had similar issues with intranets (though not to as large an\nextent, due to their smaller install base), and you can't exactly blame _that_\non lack of standards support. What you _can_ blame it on is things like people\nwriting intranet apps that depend on the user flipping some hidden pref in the\nbrowser to relax a security policy and then breaking when that pref is later\nremoved, say.\n\n------\ndrsim\nI'm calling link-bait on the original Paydirt post.\n\nEither that or Paydirt's prejudice against IE. But I believe they're smarter\nthan that.\n\n------\nandrew_wc_brown\nIn my current project, I've decided only to support the chrome browser and all\nother user agents are redirected to a not supported page asking them to\ninstall chrome.\n\nI dont see the point in sacrificing my programmer happiness.\n\n------\nxxyyzz\nThe problem with IE is it's poor track record. We don't trust you to keep it\nup.\n\nAbandon the project and let people who care about beauty handle things,\ngoogle.\n\n------\nyuhong\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3942003>\n\n------\ntony_le_montana\nIn my experience, supporting IE9/10 is different from supporting IE6-8.\nSupporting IE6&7 is real pain.\n\n------\nkadjar\nDid anyone else notice that font smoothing was significantly better in the\nWin7 screenshots than Win8?\n\n------\nBxstraz\nThis is a great post and should be read by every Web Designer out there.\n\n------\neagsalazar\nDoesn't anyone realize they just wrote that article and disabled ie9 to\nattract hipster freelance designers and developers? The whole thing is\nbasically a PR stunt since they realized 99% of their hits were from Mac\nanyway. Especially having their article on Hacker News was just to get\nattention from the large freelancer following on HN.\n\nI'm _no_ fan of IE. However explicitly blocking IE9 is just idiotic for any\nother reason. They could, at worst, just have a subtle notice letting people\nknow it is optimized for Chrome/FF and their mileage may otherwise vary.\n\nHowever, for the reason of getting Mac using hipsters excited, it was pretty\nbrilliant.\n\n(btw, I'm not a Mac or Windows user)\n\nDisclaimers: (1) This is just a theory. (2) I actually like hipsters. I just\nrecognize they can sometimes be manipulated. Like everyone, they have their\nbuttons.\n\n~~~\nrickmb\nFrom the way you throw the word \"hipster\" around like an epithet, I already\nguessed you are not a Mac or Windows user...\n\nSorry, couldn't resist. My point is, making all those assumptions about people\nand their motives is just as \"idiotic\" as blocking IE9 in the first place.\n\n~~~\nsliverstorm\nThe veracity of those assumptions has little to do with whether or not Paydirt\nshared that thought process.\n\n------\nbillpatrianakos\nIt's easy to say IE9+ works but in the real world people aren't upgrading\ntheir version of IE like users of other browsers tend to do. While IE9 and\nabove are much better than their predecessors by a long shot they still\nrequire you to jump through more hoops compared to any other browser. IE9\nsupports gradients but you have to feed it so,e conditional CSS for it to work\nas expected.\n\nOverall it's misleading to say \"IE9 and above work just fine you elitist\nhipsters\" when we all know damn well there are still so many users on versions\nof IE older than 9 because XP won't let you or simply because Mocrosoft has\ntraditionally not really encouraged or made it as easy to upgrade. To their\ncredit I'm glad they're running commercials for IE10 and for this case,\nconsidering PayDirt's audience, it could be fair to criticize them for leaving\nall IE users out because we can reasonably assume they're using the latest\ngreatest even if it is IE. But if you want to talk about IE being no problem\nto support in general then it's disingenuous to only mention the two latest\nversions because we know there are far too many users of the older ones to\nignore. Users of other browsers are upgrading regularly so it's trivial to\nsupport old FF or Chrome (plus even FF's and Chromes's older versions support\na hell of a lot more than comparable older IE's).\n\nYou know why we love to hate IE even when it improves? Because it feels like\ntoo little too late. Even the improvements are one step behind everyone else.\n\n~~~\nMicroAndMacro\nBill. Just wanted to let you know that Microsoft has been auto-updating all\nusers that have opted into MS updates on their Windows machines since January.\nA majority of XP users should now be on IE8, all other Windows machines should\nhave IE9. [http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/microsoft-decides-\nto-...](http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/microsoft-decides-to-\nautomatically-update-internet-explorer-for-everyone-20111215/)\n\n------\nmoron\nThe site happening to work is not the same thing as support. Trust me.\n\n~~~\nchc\nThat is quite true, but ultimately irrelevant to the article's point, which is\nthat they are seemingly locking users out just for the heck of it.\n\n~~~\nmoron\nNo, it's not irrelevant. Someday the site will change in a way such that it no\nlonger happens to work in IE. But since they don't support IE, it won't be a\nbug.\n\nSupport is a commitment to people, not a mere technical hurdle.\n\n~~~\nchc\nMaybe. I wouldn't really bet on the site becoming completely unusable in IE,\nbut I suppose it's a remote possibility. Let's be generous to your argument\nand call it a 25% chance. At any rate, you're right that it would be\nirresponsible to say they support IE if they aren't willing to fix it in such\na case.\n\nBut because there's a 25% chance that the site could break sometime in the\nfuture, they go out of their way to _break it right now_? That's what they're\ntalking about, and it's orthogonal to the idea of choosing what configurations\nto support.\n\nAt the company where I work, we don't support people trying to eat the\nnewspapers we put out, but we don't go out of our way to make the newspapers\npoisonous either.\n\n------\naneth\nWhat does it mean to \"not support\" a browser?\n\nDoes it mean you know your site is broken in the browser? Does it mean you\nblock that browser? Does it mean you intentionally broke your site in that\nbrowser?\n\nNone of the above. It means you don't want to waste your QA time testing and\nfixing minor quirks in the browser and you don't want your users having a\ndegraded experience on that browser. To protect your users, you may or may not\nprovide a warning or block the browser entirely.\n\nProducts are in constant development, and every CSS change or javascript\nfeature has the potential to break a browser and require fixes. Just because\nit works now, doesn't mean it always will.\n\nIt appears they successfully attempted to support IE, but decided it was not\nworth continuing, perhaps because of some breakage OP did not discover. Should\nthey have stripped out any IE supporting code? That seems unnecessary.\n\n~~~\nOllieJones\nThere's lots of enterprisey stuff out there that only \"supports\" various\nversions of IE, and bounces out other makes and models of browser. HN folks\nmay or may not see much of that, because that stuff is typically in various\ncorporate portal technology.\n\nIn health-care IT in particular, there's a popular radiology app that uses an\nActiveX control that is bug for bug compatible with IE6 and doesn't work on\nIE7. That's an important reason for browser-upgrade inertia in that business.\nAnother reason is the risk of hassles. What hospitals use now sorta works. An\nupgrade to IE7 might cause some patient-critical thing to break, and then all\nhell would break loose and the IT folks would get sacked.\n\nIt may or may not be good startup marketing to slam IE. For those of us who\nserve health-care and other institutional customers, it makes us green with\nenvy, no doubt.\n\nBut it is definitely good startup engineering, if you can get away with it, to\ncut down the workload of qualifying various browsers by simply eliminating a\nvendor from the test matrix.\n\nI don't notice Microsoft offering any labor or money to help developers\nqualify on their browser products, or to incent the big institutions (who\nprovide substantially all their revenue) to upgrade.\n\n~~~\nSapphireSun\nVery true, but in some cases (such as mine) an individual working on an app\ncan slowly work towards cross browser compatibility every time they touch a\npage. After a year, I'm almost there. :) There are several other apps... but\nyou do what you can.\n\n------\nlucian303\nThe author completely missed the point. It's about trust not technology.\nThat's why they're not supporting IE. Because of IE 6, 7, and 8.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: AMZN is set to be larger than APPL soon. How did AMZN pull this off? - rblion\nAMZN is currently at a $909 billion market cap. AAPL is around $960 billion. These numbers are insane to think about considering how close both companies were to &#x27;being dead&#x27; at some point in their history.<p>I&#x27;m curious to hear your thoughts, insights, analysis on how you think Amazon went from being an afterthought to many in the industry to being a force on par with Apple and Google, maybe bigger in a few years.\n======\nTokyoKid\nAs discussed elsewhere, both companies enjoy large tax breaks that give them\nhuge advantages. However, I think only Amazon sells so many items online\nwithout sales taxes across the US.\n\nApple still makes a good deal more revenue.\n\nFor quite some time, Amazon made almost no profit and just spent everything\nthey earned. I believe they recently started taking in more profit, and this\nhas probably excited the stock price a lot.\n\nAmazon also seems to do things Apple isn't willing to. Amazon hosts the NSA's\ndata, while Apple fights for privacy. Amazon has notoriously poor working\nconditions and unethical sources, while Apple leads in creating an ethical\nsupply chain, using green energy and making recyclable products.\n\nApple's strategy means they're virtually the only ones who can sell phones,\ntablets and computers for a decent profit margin. Amazon's strategy shows\nthey're willing to be cut throat. Both are attractive to traders in about\nequal measure, it seems.\n\n~~~\nrblion\nThanks, this is a very good summary and considers all factors.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Do you listen to country music? - 0xdeadbeefbabe\n\nDoes it help?\n======\nrelaunched\nI love country music. More so than other genres I've listened to, country\nmusic has such a range. It can be upbeat and cheery, pump you up, change your\nmood, sooth your soul, provide empathy, be simple & complex...It speaks to me,\nno matter what mood I'm in or what's going on in my life. I'm sure others feel\nthe same way about whatever music they listen to, but for me, it's country.\n\nIf you listen to it long enough, someone has sung about whatever exact, or\nalmost exact, experience you have gone through. I like that.\n\n------\nmod\nI like some country music, but don't listen to a lot of it.\n\nI listen to stuff that might be mistaken for it, though! The Avett Brothers,\nNickel Creek, Trampled by Turtles.\n\nFolk music, but people who think badly of country music usually don't like\nbanjos, either, and can't make the distinction in genre.\n\n------\nbenologist\nHelp what?\n\n------\npartisan\nNo and Yes!\n\n------\nRed_\nYes and No!\n\n------\nbrickcap\nYes I do and it helps me to relax :)\n\n------\njonnynezbo\nSturgill Simpson and Chris Knight.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nRobots Preparing To Defeat Humans in Soccer - ulvund\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV0WNO1c_4I\n\n======\nlizzy\nStill a ways off getting there with humanoids! The small size league is one of\nthe most fun to watch. It moves very fast, the robots work properly in their\nteams, and they even chip kick.\n[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNXiSE7MoVU&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNXiSE7MoVU&feature=related)\n\nI think a lot of people miss how cute the Sony AIBOs were though!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAre Atheists Genetic Mutants-A Product of Recent Evolution? - Melchizedek\nhttp://www.unz.com/article/are-atheists-genetic-mutants-a-product-of-recent-evolution/\n======\noldandtired\nSince atheism has been around for at least 4000 years, I don't think they can\nattribute it to \"bad\" genes. It is a choice by people to believe in a god or\ngods or no gods.\n\nThe funny thing I find is that intelligence is not an indicator of whether one\nbelieves in or does not believe in a god, or gods.\n\nFor example, there are those who were believers in Jesus Christ as God and\nhave come to the position that there is no god. These are at all levels of\nintelligence. There are those who didn't believe in a god and now argue\nstrongly for Jesus Christ as God. Again these are at all levels of\nintelligence.\n\nThere are those who fit in the autistic spectrum and sit on both sides.\n\nWhether or not you are an atheist boils down to what you choose, it is not\nyour genetics or intelligence. Based on the evidence that is placed before me,\nI have come strongly to believe that there is God, that He is Creator and that\nHe is Jesus Christ. How other people see and weigh that evidence will be up to\nthem and they have the choice to choose differently.\n\nTo say that atheists have \"bad\" genetics and that this is the reason for their\nchoice is not only bad science, it is bad for society and for allowing people\nto choose. If such an idea was to gain any sort of traction, it would be very\nbad.\n\n------\nraarts\nI'm missing the evidence that shows that people with autism, schizophrenia,\nhomosexuality, sex-dysmorphia, left-handedness, asymmetrical bodies, high\nintelligence, atheism are prone to having worse than average immune systems.\n\nAlso, where's the evidence that schizophrenia, homosexuality et al are on the\nrise since the industrial revolution?\n\n------\nderReineke\nIs this, like, a fundementalist Christian, click-bait, Facebook article?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMusic Sounds Better When It's on Fire - tomkwok\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2awbKQ2DLRE\n\n======\nASquare\nVery cool! I expect to see this in clubs by year end :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe three Google Graveyards documenting and tracking every Google's failure - stanislavb\nhttps://www.saashub.com/google-graveyard-by-saashub-alternatives\n======\nstanislavb\nDisclosure: I've built the Google Graveyard by SaaSHub.\n\nAlthough, I'm biased and think that the above is the best out of the listed, I\nstill believe the rest have merits and are better in some directions.\n\nKilled by Google: Simpler design, open source, good descriptions\n\nThe Google Cemetery: Nice design, well known.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAtlas Beta Program Launched - wooby\nhttps://atlas-beta.heroku.com/users/new\n\n======\nbonaldi\nI've been playing with this tonight. I had absolutely no problem paying for\nthe beta - I've paid Microsoft and Apple for betas and they need the cash a\nlot less than these guys.\n\nThat said, I wouldn't quite recommend it if you're on the fence or just want a\nquick intro to Cappuccino. It _is_ a beta -- there are a lot of polish issues\nwith the cocoa app, there are some bugs, and these are understandable. But the\nbiggest problem of all is the total dearth of documentation. There is a class\nguide, there are some non-Atlas tutorials, and that's about it. So, for\ninstance, my app template comes up by default with a menubar, but there's no\nobvious way I can see to remove or edit it. MainMenu.cib has no menu in it, so\nI can't even see how to make connections to it and there's nothing to read to\nfind out.\n\nIt's definitely impressive -- that they've done this in JS and running in a\nbrowser is a little marvel. However, I'm pretty used to Xcode and Interface\nBuilder, and in comparison it's really not there. Trying to work with multiple\nembedded split-views really highlighted the differences: it's tricky enough in\nIB, and proved almost impossible here. That they've achieved so much does mean\nthat you're into uncanny valley territory; if it looks like a cocoa app, I\nwant it to work like one too.\n\nHowever, the things I _could_ figure out how to do, worked well. I defined\noutlets and actions, hooked them up, and was basically thinking and coding\nexactly as I would in Cocoa and Objective-C. Nifty.\n\nIt has got a fair way to go, but I think they well might get there. If you're\nalready working with Cappuccino and don't need documentation, it could well be\nworth your time.\n\n~~~\nboucher\nThanks for the feedback. Accurate assessment. This is definitely still too\nearly to use for most people. We're not really trying to push the beta, we're\njust looking for dedicated users to help give us great feedback.\n\n~~~\neob\nCongrats you guys on launching the beta. I've been following Cappuccino for a\nwhile and, while I'm still on the fence about it as a developer, it is\ncertainly an impressive technical feat.\n\n------\nbarrkel\nForgive my complete cluelessness, but what is \"Atlas Beta\"? I can't find any\nsimple explanation for what this actually is.\n\n~~~\nmartey\nThis confused me as well. <http://280atlas.com/what.php> says:\n\n _Atlas is a development tool for building Cappuccino applications._\n\n~~~\nbarrkel\nAh, and Cappuccino is apparently a clone of Apple's Cocoa in Javascript, using\na preprocessor for Javascript called Objective J.\n\n~~~\nntoshev\nThis sounds like the same approach Microsoft ASP.NET has: try to fit web apps\nin the desktop GUI event paradigm. Is this correct?\n\n~~~\niamaleksey\nNot exactly. Cappuchino tries to do it on the client side, while classical\nASP.NET does it on the server side. The former has its uses, the latter is a\nterrible idea.\n\n------\nWesleyJohnson\nI was really looking forward to signing up for the beta this evening, but\nunfortunately I'm on Windows and the beta is currently Mac only.\n\nI'm surprised that more people haven't heard of 280 North or Objective-J and\nCappuccino in general. I would consider myself moderately inclined when it\ncomes to technology and I had heard of Cappuccino close to a year ago. I\nwatched the demo of Atlas some weeks back and I was really impressed with what\nthey've accomplished.\n\nI think they're doing the right thing by charging for the beta. It's a small\nteam of guys doing the development and I'm sure they could use the money. Not\nto mention, if you're paying for a beta then you've likely been following the\ndevelopment, have serious intent on using the technology long term and will\nlikely contribute more than a casual user would - which from what I gather is\nexactly the target market they're after.\n\nLooking forward to windows support in the coming month(s).\n\n------\nshib71\nHow is a signup form meant to be interesting? Perhaps I'm just out of the\nloop, but the only thing I know about Atlas now is that it's associated with\nHeroku and it will cost more than $20. That's not enough.\n\n~~~\nboucher\nWe're just hosted on heroku. If you'd like more info, there are a few videos\navailable on <http://280atlas.com>\n\nDon't worry though, this is a beta, and it's meant for people who already know\nwhat Atlas is and already want it.\n\n~~~\nshib71\nThanks. A blog post or something when you guys were ready would be great. But\nthis link is a bit premature and not very interesting.\n\n------\nicey\n\" _Membership does not include a copy of the final version of Atlas, but we'll\ndeduct the $20 from the final price._ \"\n\nHas there been any indication as to the neighborhood of the final price? I'd\nhate to invest a bunch of time learning a new tool to find out that it's\npriced outside of my budget when it releases.\n\n~~~\nboucher\nWe haven't set a final price yet. We're hoping to use our beta members as a\nsounding board for determining the right price point.\n\nIt's worth noting that all of the stuff Atlas builds is still usable without\nAtlas, though there will be no way to edit it without Atlas.\n\nOf course, most of the editing technology is also open source, so building a\ncib2nib (the reverse of our nib2cib) should be very possible, and give you\nalternatives.\n\n~~~\nicey\nI think it looks like a really cool product; I definitely want to use it. You\nguys are making the right decision by charging for it for sure. My only\nconcern is that I don't know how 280 North views pricing, so it gives me a\nlittle bit of pause.\n\nEither way, I'm looking forward to seeing how it shapes up - good luck!\n\n~~~\nboucher\nI can tell you that it will be a lot more than $20, and it will be less $1000.\nBig range, I know.\n\n~~~\ncmelbye\nWhat? Apple's development environment is essentially free (unless you count\nthe cost of the operating system, in which case it's still a lot less than\n$1,000). Even if you compare this with the iPhone Developer program, it's\nstill way overpriced.\n\n~~~\nboucher\nIt's impossible for something that has no price to be overpriced. But thanks\nfor the feedback.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCreate and delete branches - nicolasd\nhttps://github.com/blog/1377-create-and-delete-branches\n======\nartursapek\nSuddenly I can clearly see what must be one of Github's long-term goals: to\nmake git usable end-to-end in the browser, and in a way where that is\npreferable for certain situations.\n\nWe're going to continue spending more and more of our computer time in the\nbrowser. It's the universal platform.\n\n~~~\nSwizec\nGit in the browser is _exactly_ what we need to bring git outside programming\ncircles.\n\nWhat I've wanted for a while is a site where I could fork somebody's muffin\nrecipe, fix stuff and so on ... I've even considered building a site like\nthat, but how many people who cook are also handy enough with a console to\nmake that viable? My guess is not many.\n\n~~~\nartursapek\nHahah, recipes are actually a very interesting application. A program is much\nlike a recipe, after all. I could see a collaborative site where you build up\na personal cookbook by forking and trying out other peoples' stuff and\ncontributing your own modifications, etc.\n\n~~~\nMartinCron\nIf you think recipes are like code, you should look at knitting patterns\nsometime. It looks like assembly code to me.\n\n~~~\nderleth\nI have a grandmother who can debug knitting patterns.\n\nThe patterns in the books are, apparently, sometimes wrong somehow. She debugs\nthem when she knits.\n\nI can only imagine _every_ competent knitter can, if only because those books\nmust sell to a huge number of them.\n\n------\nh2s\nMy gut reaction to this was negative. As much as I like GitHub, I sympathise a\nlot with Linus Torvalds' concerns about the way it encourages low-quality pull\nrequests [1].\n\nHowever, thinking back through my own experiences with the kind of minor pull\nrequests I've occasionally made to projects in the past, I can see this being\nquite useful. Have you ever actually cloned a big repo like the kernel's? Even\nthe Node.js repo takes a fair old while. If you're just trying to submit a\ncorrection for a minor typo or omission in the project's README, then this\nfeature lowers the barrier from minutes to seconds. Hopefully that will be a\nnet positive for the community.\n\n[1]\n[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56599...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-5659933)\n\n~~~\navar\nWhy do you sympathize with his concerns? As valid as they are for the kernel\nthey aren't for most of the projects hosted on GitHub. Most people are happy\nto get a pull request at all, and when they get one it's usually some trivial\nfix they can merge automatically.\n\n------\nelliottcarlson\nSlight self promotion; here is a CLI tool I made to help clear up local and\nremote branches easily - in case it is still useful to people:\n\n<https://github.com/elliottcarlson/git-delete-branch>\n\n------\njonahkagan\nI can't believe it. I was looking for this functionality just yesterday and\nnow here it is.\n\n------\ngreghinch\nDelete a branch in the UI, thank you!\n\n------\npurephase\nThe create is nice, but the delete is absolutely essential. Thanks for\nimplementing this.\n\n------\ndavvid\nDon't forget to run `git fetch --prune` after someone deletes a remote branch.\n\n------\na1g\nYou guys are awesome! Thank you so much :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nYahoo shareholders approve sale to Verizon - artsandsci\nhttps://techcrunch.com/2017/06/08/yahoo-shareholders-approve-sale-to-verizon/\n======\ntechlekh\nholy shit.... this was bound to happen\n\n~~~\nganoushoreilly\nRight! It's like, hey we have one buyer and one buyer only, should we approve\nthis or roll the dice?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Ocean Cleanup Crowdfunding - Bolyuba\nhttps://fund.theoceancleanup.com/\n\n======\nsebastianavina\nso, this thing can survive a storm?\n\nI picture the waves can be way more aggressive than the ones simulated in a\npool.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe London startup scene: Too much funding and boozing - bensummers\nhttp://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/09/23/the-london-startup-scene-too-much-funding-boozing-and-not-enough-collaboration-and-execution/\n\n======\ncadr\nI'm not familiar with the _startup_ scene in London, but the tech seen was\nawesome. I met some great people (managed to hire some of them), had some\ngreat conversations, and learned a ton.\n\nThere _was_ a lot of boozing, though. :)\n\n~~~\nnotauser\nI agree with you about the tech scene. For example DevTank (the tech\ncounterpart to DrinkTank) has been excellent so far. The London BarCamps are\nalso great, as are the Hack Days.\n\nI also agree that the start up (and also the mobile) events aren't terribly\nuseful. They are more of a nice place to relax in the company of like-minded\nindividuals rather than places to generate business.\n\nAs for boozing... that's just London in the evening. Most people are bright\nenough to stick to one or two drinks and you still see everyone in the office\nat 7.30am the next morning.\n\nBy comparison I found events in New York to be a little free of personal\ninteraction. You turn up, spend 5 minutes talking to 5 people, listen to a\nspeaker, then go home. Great for collecting business cards, not so good for\nestablishing solid relationships. Perhaps someone can suggest better events\nfor me?\n\n~~~\njuliamae\nagreed on the new york tech scene. all the events i've been to are very\nnetworky and have little substance. i used to live in boston which had more\n\"techy\" tech events. i would love to hear about better events in new york.\n\n------\nig1\nWhile some of his complaints are valid (for example the bar London Minibar\nuses has terrible acoustics), there's a lot of value to be gained.\n\nA lot of it is about serendipity, you don't go out looking for solutions, but\nwhen you're there solutions have a way of finding you.\n\nI think if you go there thinking \"I want xyz\" you might not get a lot out of\nit. The author of the article says \"do we really want to hear other startup’s\npitches?\"\n\nI'm always happy to hear other startup's pitches, indeed on a few occasions\nI've met up with other HNers just to hear their pitches. I enjoy learning\nabout problems others are tackling and providing feedback where I can, and\nhearing other people pitch helps me understand the weaknesses in my own\npitches.\n\nIf you go in with the attitude that you don't care about what anyone else is\ndoing then you're not going to make many friends. Networking isn't about how\nmany hands you shake, it's about making deeper mutually beneficial\nconnections, and to do that you have to have an interest in other people.\nWithout that it's not going to work.\n\n------\nrantfoil\nThat's why startup scenes are a bit of a mixed bag. You can meet really\nawesome people who can help you a lot. But you can't let it get in the way of\nbuilding product.\n\n------\nmaxawaytoolong\nTo be fair, there is plenty of this in SF and Silicon Valley. For example, any\ntime a \"tech mixer\" event is held at Myghty, it's almost identical to what the\narticle describes.\n\nNew York \"tech\" events are mostly like this, too.\n\n------\nbinarymax\nI've been to MiniBar a couple times, havent been since I moved out of London.\nThere was definitely a lot of boozing - but there was also a great vibe and\nsome great ideas.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFish shell 3.0 - faho\nhttps://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/releases/tag/3.0.0\n======\nrobin_reala\nApart from the other good stuff in this release, I think this will make a lot\nof things much easier:\n\n _fish now supports && (like and), || (like or), and ! (like not), for better\nmigration from POSIX-compliant shells_\n\n~~~\nhinkley\nThat’s new? Suddenly I feel less guilty about dodging coworkers who have been\ntrying for years to get other people to try fish.\n\nBut maybe now it’s getting closer to production readiness.\n\n~~~\nStavrosK\nThe fact that it doesn't support your particular preferred syntax doesn't mean\nit's not production-ready.\n\n~~~\njhardy54\n> your particular preferred syntax\n\nI think it's called POSIX.\n\n~~~\nStavrosK\nYou seem to be making some sort of argument, I just don't know what it is. Are\nyou saying that fish is not production ready because it's not POSIX-\ncompatible?\n\n------\nElijahLynn\nMy favorite feature of fish is `abbr`, e.g. `fish abbr --add g git`. Then you\ntype `g` followed by space and it just expands it to `g` and you then get all\nthe autocomplete goodness and don't have to futz with adding autocomplete\nsupport to an alias, because it is the real command. It also helps for\npresentations because instead of some obscurely named alias, you can type an\nabbreviation and it just expands it out for the viewer to see and learn from.\nOn top of that, I make abbreviations with long options, that way I can see\nexactly what is going on and effectively edit the commands.\n\n~~~\nmodernerd\nYou can also type fish_config to launch the fish config web app in your\nbrowser. From there you can add, edit and remove abbreviations from the\n“abbreviations” tab directly.\n\nI find this a really user-friendly way of managing abbreviations I've created.\n\n------\nbuchanae\nAfter 15 years, I still struggle to test if a string is empty in shell\nlanguages. Do I use square brackets, double square brackets, equal sign,\ndouble equal sign, test -n, set -q, wtf mate? Do I need to wrap my string\nvariable in double quotes? single quotes?\n\nFish looks great, and I'm going to give it a try, but I ran into these same\nold shell scripting issues within 2 minutes of trying to configure my prompt,\nwhich is a bummer. Took me 10 minutes (I'm ashamed to say) to end up at `if\ntest -n \"$git_branch\"` (double quotes are critical).\n\nI'll be excited when someone invents a shell that feels natural in this\nrespect. Perhaps the nature of shells and commands makes this impossible? Or\nare we just stuck in a box?\n\n~~~\nduckerude\nIt feels a bit more natural once you've bent your mind enough to understand\nwhat the shell is doing.\n\nThe trick is that `test` and even `[` (which is essentially another name for\n`test`) are ordinary commands, that exist as stand-alone binaries as well as\nidentical-behaving built-ins. They masquerade as syntax, but they're really\nnot. You can even call them from other, non-shell languages:\n\n    \n    \n      >>> from subprocess import run\n      >>> run(('/usr/bin/[', '-n', '', ']'))\n      CompletedProcess(args=('/usr/bin/[', '-n', '', ']'), returncode=1)\n      >>> run(('/usr/bin/test', '3', '=', '3'))\n      CompletedProcess(args=('/usr/bin/test', '3', '=', '3'), returncode=0)\n    \n\nThat means that they're not allowed to do anything to variables, because the\nvariables are inside the shell. `test` doesn't see `\"$git_branch\"`, it only\nsees the content of the variable.\n\nPer the normal rules, `\"$git_branch\"` is an empty string iff $git_branch is\nempty or unset. Leaving the quotes off can do unexpected things, though a lot\nless so in fish. Using single quotes means you get a literal string, without\nany substitution.\n\nYou're just looking for an empty string anyway, so you might as well use the\nequality operator instead of digging through the 18 (!) unary flags prescribed\nby POSIX. So I'd write either `[ \"$git_branch\" = \"\" ]` or `test \"$git_branch\"\n= \"\"`. Some implementations support `==` as another way to write `=`, but `=`\nis standard.\n\nThis modularity makes the shell simpler, but it's not exactly sane. I think\nthat providing `[` was a mistake, because it doesn't look like a command, but\nmaybe having `test` as a command is better than having special expression\nsyntax just for these cases.\n\n~~~\nfaho\nThere are a few misfeatures in `test`, though.\n\nFor instance, one way to use it is\n\n    \n    \n       test somestring\n    \n\nto test if \"somestring\" is empty. POSIX mandates that test with exactly one\nargument succeeds iff that argument is a non-empty string, to allow that.\nFish's test is POSIX-conformant.\n\nNow, that means that\n\n    \n    \n        test -n\n    \n\nis true! Which is also triggered for\n\n    \n    \n        test -n $var\n    \n\nif $var has 0 elements.\n\nThis is a problem and should be improved.\n\n~~~\nCameronNemo\nalways quote your variables. POSIX won't change this soon, or likely ever.\n\n------\ndjsumdog\nI started using fish around 2013, back when it would occasionally crash and\nleave stack traces in the console. I'm really glad I stuck with it though.\nFish has come a long way and it's totally an amazing shell. I really love all\nthe functionality that's come out of the box and don't really mind learning\nnew syntax if it means I can get away from old cruft.\n\n------\nlinsomniac\nI made fish my default shell for around a month, and I really liked the smart\nsuggestions of what command I was going for when I started typing. But the\n\"vi\" mode had enough incompatibilities that it really irritated me, it was\nextremely incomplete. Discussions of it with devs went nowhere. Plus, there\nwere incompatibilities in the language that I could never bring myself to\ncommit to memory; I might have if the vi mode were better but as it was I\ndidn't want to get any further invested in it than I was.\n\nIn the end I switched back to zsh and enabled \"zsh-autosuggestions\", which\ngave me the thing I loved most about fish, without any of the parts that I\ndidn't. There's also some other extensions I'd like to try that enhance\nhistory like \"McFly\" (\n[https://github.com/cantino/mcfly](https://github.com/cantino/mcfly) ), based\non this previous zsh-histdb discussion:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15041772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15041772)\n\n~~~\ndmix\nZSH seems to have broader community support and there's a plugin for basically\neverything. This is why I chose to stick with it over Fish.\n\nIf I just wanted a very simple shell, with good defaults, I'd choose Fish. But\nmuch like why I use (Neo)Vim I prefer the DIY approach and have gotten my ZSH\nto the point over the years (and a hundred scripts later) where I love it.\n\nBut ZSH the language is pretty awful and non-intuitive (although way better\nthan bash when you dig into it). Even though I've been writing it for years I\nstill get it mixed up often.\n\nMy hope is that Evlish shell will be mature enough soon to use day-to-day,\nwhich is the only one I've seen with a modern scripting language (written in\nGo) and is 10x faster than my ZSH (which is very noticeable):\n[https://elv.sh](https://elv.sh)\n\n~~~\ndancek\nSimilar story for me, but I consider the POSIX shell language a worthwhile\nleast-common-denominator language. I avoid using bash or zsh extensions except\ninteractively (and in a zsh plugin I maintain [0]).\n\nAs I think you need to know the standard shell language anyway, new shell DSLs\nare a bit of a turn-off to me. If the language is trivial it's not very\npowerful and if it's powerful it takes time to learn.\n\nThat's why I have high hopes for shells that combine tried-and-true\nprogramming languages and their ecosystems to a thin shell layer. Like\n[http://xonsh.org](http://xonsh.org) or [https://docs.racket-\nlang.org/rash/index.html](https://docs.racket-lang.org/rash/index.html) .\n\nBut if I'm completely honest, I think bash will still be the standard choice\nin 5 years and weird shells you haven't heard of will still be weird shells\nyou haven't heard of.\n\n[0]: [https://gitlab.com/code-stats/code-stats-zsh](https://gitlab.com/code-\nstats/code-stats-zsh)\n\n~~~\nkbd\nQuick correction, the actual url for Xonsh is [http://xon.sh](http://xon.sh).\nMy understanding is that xonsh.org is an out-of-date unaffiliated mirror that\nthe author of Xonsh doesn't control :(\n\n~~~\ndancek\nOh, oops. Too bad I can't edit anymore. Sad that the out-of-date site os\nranked better on Google for \"python shell\".\n\n------\njeffbax\nI've been happily using fish for maybe two years now, just as a default shell\nand not doing anything fancy. Out of the box it is great.\n\nI'm not sure how to feel about only now learning its indexes start at a [1]\nthough (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻\n\nLove it otherwise.\n\n~~~\nnerdponx\nStarting at 1 is good for non-programmers, who IMO could benefit the most from\nswitching to Fish. I would love to see a distro using Fish as the default\nshell for non-root users.\n\n~~~\nAnthonBerg\nWhen I’ve been teaching people to program, explaining [0] has been a tragic\nexperience.\n\nStarting at [0] is _not_ objectively better than [1]. I actually believe it is\nobjectively _worse_.\n\n~~~\nStavrosK\nI would like to hear your counterarguments to\n[https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/E...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html),\nwhich seems to me like a compelling argument.\n\n~~~\nRenevith\nIt seems to be mostly about math, with the only mention of array indexing\nbeing that 0 looks nicer. \"starting with 0, however, gives the nicer range 0 ≤\ni < N. So let us let our ordinals start at zero\"\n\nThis doesn't seem to be much of an argument so I'm not even sure what to\naddress.\n\n~~~\nStavrosK\nHow would you do something like Python's `x[0:10] + x[10:len(x)]` in a\n1-indexed way? [1:11] + [1:len(x)+1]? That's uglier.\n\n~~~\nint_19h\nYou just make ranges end-inclusive, and then it's x[1:10] + x[11:len(x)].\n\nThe best of both worlds is when a language provides both end-exclusive and\nend-inclusive slice syntax, as in e.g. Nim: x[0..<10] is end-exclusive, and\nit's very clear that it is.\n\n~~~\nStavrosK\nBut then you no longer get back 10-1 elements, you get back 10-1+1.\n\n~~~\nthaumasiotes\nSo what? You're going to have off-by-one errors no matter what convention you\nadopt. Python glosses over it by providing the alternative syntax x[-1] for\nwhat you would otherwise have to write as x[len(x)-1]. But it's at least as\nvalid to provide alternative syntax for inclusive ranges. And logically, if\nthe first element of x is x[0], the last element _should be_ x[-0], not x[-1].\n\nHalf-open intervals are appropriate when you're thinking of them as subspaces\nof a continuum. When you're thinking of them as subsequences of discrete\nelements, closed intervals are usually more natural.\n\nRuby is the only language I know that really seems to have tried to address\nthe problem, providing different syntax for every way you might want to take a\nsubsequence from an array:\n\n    \n    \n        x[5..8]  # elements [5] through [8], including [8]\n        x[5...9] # elements [5] through [9], excluding [9]\n        x[5, 4]  # four elements, starting at [5]\n    \n\nIf you were working in pure, pencil-and-paper mathematics, you'd choose\nwhether to index a particular sequence from 0 or 1 based on what made your\nformula look nicer. Both are common. But that's not an approach I'd suggest\nfor a programming language.\n\n~~~\nint_19h\nOne thing I would add - using negative indices to index from end is a bad idea\nin general, because you may inadvertently end up with a negative index as a\nresult of a calculation that you expected to always be positive - and then\ninstead of an out-of-bounds error, you get silent wrong behavior.\n\nIMO, it's better to have dedicated _syntax_ for index-from-end, as part of the\nrange syntax. Again, Nim does that: x[0..^1] (although unfortunately they\ndidn't make it symmetric).\n\n~~~\nthaumasiotes\n> IMO, it's better to have dedicated syntax for index-from-end, as part of the\n> range syntax.\n\nThis is true, and note that my suggestion requires it -- the only way to\ndistinguish x[-0] from x[0] is to have the parser do it; -0 and 0 are the same\n_number_.\n\n~~~\nint_19h\nI mean, you could technically distinguish between positive and negative zero,\nif your numbers are all floating points (like JS or Lua). But that would be\neven more of a horror show.\n\n------\ndarkpuma\nStill no auto-escaping or quoting for pasted URLs, that's really\ndisappointing. I respect fish's stated goals of user friedlieness, but I just\ndon't think they've realized that goal in ways that other more mainstream\nshells have:\n\n    \n    \n        > mpv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBoF1e5YDdQ\n        fish: No matches for wildcard 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBoF1e5YDdQ'. See `help expand`.\n        mpv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBoF1e5YDdQ\n            ^\n    \n\nThis, to me, is not user friendly.\n\nFor reference, pasting the same URL into zsh with the often touted omz\n(incidentally I recommend you use antigen instead) auto-escapes the URL to\n\n    \n    \n        > mpv https://www.youtube.com/watch\\?v\\=LBoF1e5YDdQ\n\n~~~\nfaho\nWhat? That's been in for a few releases!\n\nTo trigger it, enter a single-quote, then paste the URL, then close the quote\nonce you're done.\n\nWe don't attempt to detect URLs because that can go wrong, and because we\ndon't know your intention. So we use the fact that you're inside single-quotes\nas the signifier that we should escape things - which also allows this to be\nused for e.g. pasting shellscript as a literal argument.\n\n~~~\ndarkpuma\nThere must be a disconnect here, manually entering a single quote, then\npasting my URL, then adding the closing quote is precisely what I wish to\navoid.\n\nHere is a demonstration about what I'm talking about:\n[https://i.imgur.com/d64lwaB.mp4](https://i.imgur.com/d64lwaB.mp4)\n\n> _\" We don't attempt to detect URLs because that can go wrong, and because we\n> don't know your intention.\"_\n\nThat much I've gathered from seeing this issue raised with fish people in the\npast, and in my humble opinion it's the wrong approach. In this mentality fish\nis forgetting it's stated goal of being user friendly which should in some\ncases, mean making sane educated guesses about the user's intent. How often do\nusers of the fish shell paste a string that starts with 'http' and contains a\n'?' that is _meant_ to be a wildcard? Not very often at all, if ever; fish is\nnow evidently planning on deprecating that ? wildcard so I think the fish devs\nagree!\n\nThe way I see it traditional shells aren't user friendly because they take a\nconservative approach, doing crap like not enabling fancy autocompletion\nfeatures out of the box because _\" what if the user is running on a\ntimesharing PDP-11 and can't spare the CPU cycles?\"_ Breaking from that mental\ntrap is bold and should be commended, but in the case of not escaping pastes I\nthink fish has fallen into that conservative mindset again. zsh/OMZ does it by\ndefault and I've never heard of anybody getting screwed over because of it.\nFish could and should do it by default too.\n\n~~~\nfaho\n> How often do users of the fish shell paste a string that starts with 'http'\n> and contains a '?' that is meant to be a wildcard?\n\nOkay. Now you can do it for http. What about ftp? Or \"file://\"? Do we detect\n_all_ kinds of URLs?\n\nAnd even if we do, and we don't miss some or see something as a URL that\nisn't, what about _other_ kinds of things? What about shellscript? E.g. if I\nwant to just execute a bash one-liner from the internet, I can do\n\n    \n    \n        `bash -c '`\n    \n\nand paste it and it'll work out. That won't be detected as a URL, because it\nisn't one.\n\nAnd I've seen a case of a URL with variables just yesterday (though I admit\nthat's a coincidence):\n\n[https://docs.travis-ci.com/user/deployment/custom/](https://docs.travis-\nci.com/user/deployment/custom/) has\n\"sftp://${SFTP_USER}:${SFTP_PASSWORD}@example.com/directory/filename\". How do\nI paste that with the zsh thing? Do I need to go back and edit all of that?\n\nSo, instead, we have one rule: If you paste it insde single-quotes, it'll be\nescaped. If you paste it outside, it'll be inserted as-is (but still not\nexecuted). No matter what the contents, no matter where.\n\n~~~\ndarkpuma\n> _Okay. Now you can do it for http. What about ftp? Or \"file://\"? Do we\n> detect _all_ kinds of URLs?_\n\nSome is better than none, that's the lesson learned from OMZ's implementation\nof this feature. It doesn't cover every single scenario, but it covers enough\nto make people's lives easier in the common cases. That is the sort of bold\ndecision making that the fish developers _should_ be doing.\n\n    \n    \n        `bash -c '`\n        sftp://${SFTP_USER}:${SFTP_PASSWORD}@example.com/directory/filename\n    \n\nBoth of these get pasted unchanged in zsh. I suggest you try it out. But more\nto your point, this would get improperly escaped:\n\n    \n    \n        http://${SFTP_USER}:${SFTP_PASSWORD}@example.com/directory/filename\n    \n\nAnd you know what? That's fine. Because whether you choose to auto-escape or\nnot, something will break. The question you and the fish developers should be\nasking is which is more likely? Auto-escaping works the vast majority of the\ntime and only fails some of the time. And when it fail in the rare case, the\nUX is no worse than when it fails in the common case.\n\n> _\" If you paste it insde single-quotes, it'll be escaped.\"_\n\nFirst of all, that's not what I see. Maybe you're talking about bracketed\npaste mode or something that's invisible to the user, but when I paste a URL\ncontaining wildcards into single quotes in fish, I don't see any escaping\ntaking place. I assume single quotes are the \"verbatim quotes\", e.g. `ls\n'*.txt'` doesn't show you all txt files because that wildcard isn't expanded\ninside those single quotes. With that in mind, it's not clear to me why a\nstring pasted into single quotes should be escaped, it doesn't need escaping\nand I don't see any escaping being done when I try it out myself.\n\nThere's nothing magic about making `mpv\n'[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBoF1e5YDdQ'`](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBoF1e5YDdQ'`)\nwork. Dumb old bash accepts that too.\n\n~~~\nfaho\n>Some is better than none, that's the lesson learned from OMZ's implementation\nof this feature.\n\nI disagree. I'd rather have predictability here.\n\n>when I paste a URL containing wildcards into single quotes in fish, I don't\nsee any escaping taking place.\n\nThat's because you've not pasted anything that needs escaping. In single-\nquotes, only single-quotes and backslashes are special, and they are escaped.\n\nEven if you paste script that itself contains single-quotes, it'll work.\n\n~~~\ndarkpuma\nThe truly unpredictable UX is when a noob tries to paste a youtube url into\ntheir shell and gets a bewildering error message about a wildcard (and the\nerror message carrot doesn't even point at the guilty wildcard!) That is very\nfar from the behavior the user was predicting, unless they've been around the\nshell block a few times already (in which case they could probably make due in\na shittier shell anyway. Is fish optimizing for _' user friendly'_ or _' user\nfriendly for experiences users'_?)\n\n~~~\nfaho\n>The truly unpredictable UX is when a noob tries to paste\n\nYes, and you've not solved that.\n\nYou've only solved that one special edge-case where they're pasting \"a youtube\nurl\".\n\nThis only pushes the confusing bit further along, and adds some more cruft on\ntop!\n\nQuoting is a fact in shells. The way these languages work is through loads of\nstring interpolation, so you kinda need to learn that. And I'd prefer to make\nthe rules there simple than add special cases for URLs.\n\n------\nmlrtime\nTo install on ubuntu if you don't want to build:\n\nsudo apt-add-repository ppa:fish-shell/release-3\n\nsudo apt-get update\n\nsudo apt-get install fish\n\n[https://launchpad.net/~fish-\nshell/+archive/ubuntu/release-3](https://launchpad.net/~fish-\nshell/+archive/ubuntu/release-3)\n\n~~~\nElijahLynn\nTo install on Arch (w/yay), `yay -S fish`. (just a plug for how easy it is to\ninstall packages on Arch)\n\n~~~\nmlrtime\nDoes yay come default on arch linux?\n\n~~~\nElijahLynn\nNo, but I'll say that it is the single coolest feature of Arch, and I think it\nshould be default. I have been able to install every single package with a\n`yay` command except for one.\n\nMy instructions I have for installing yay are:\n\nGo to\n[https://github.com/Jguer/yay/releases](https://github.com/Jguer/yay/releases)\nDownload the yay release and extract it, a clone won't have the build files,\ndownload the release. cd to the extracted copy ./yay yay (install the AUR copy\nof yay using your local copy of yay)\n\nThen `yay -S <package-name>` and done, it grabs the repo if it has to and runs\nthe build steps to build from source. It is the most frictionless package\nmanagement experience I have every experienced on Linux.\n\nAnd I have used `apt-get` on Ubuntu for many (10?) years (go find the PPA\nyourself dammit) and also `yum` RHEL7 for the past year. Fedora and Debian\nneed something like this too.\n\n------\nman-and-laptop\nFish Shell has been having some problems implementing process substitution.\nLast I checked, they tried two approaches:\n\n* piping to FIFO files, but it throws an error if you pump too much data into them\n\n* waiting until one process finishes before starting another. That's not a correct implementation either\n\nBash apparently resorts to black-magic.\n\n~~~\nyorwba\nThe Bash manual seems to imply that they use /dev/fd to implement process\nsubstitution like regular pipes, but passing the pipe file descriptor as its\nfilename under /dev/fd.\n\n[https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Process-S...](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Process-\nSubstitution.html)\n\n------\nhestefisk\nLong time zsh user here. Any reason one should try out fish?\n\n~~~\naequitas\nComing from ZSH, Fish is a shell that just worked out of the box for me. It\ndid everything ZSH did but I didn't have to touch a single configuration file\nto make it work. With ZSH I was forced to find all the options I wanted\nenabled and tuned or had to resort oh-my-zsh or templates from others to get\nall the good stuff. Managing dotfiles across workstations and servers. With\nFish about the only thing I do after installing is set a theme with Git\nstatus.\n\n~~~\narunix\nWith zsh, I can do ~1, ~2 etc to move around a directory stack. Does fish have\nanything like that?\n\n[http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Intro/intro_6.html#SEC6](http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Intro/intro_6.html#SEC6)\n\n~~~\nfaho\nFish does not include tons of syntactic shortcuts. We try to keep the syntax\nfairly free of opaque symbols.\n\nYou can use `prevd` and `nextd`, or you can use key bindings, like the default\nalt-left and alt-right bindings.\n\n~~~\narunix\nHow do you go to the nth item of the directory stack? Even bash lets you do\nthis:\n\n    \n    \n        $ dirs -v\n        0  ~/baz\n        1  ~\n        2  ~/bar\n        3  ~/foo\n        4  ~/spam\n    \n\nThen \"pushd +3\" will take you to ~/foo. This hardly seems \"opaque\".\n\n~~~\nfaho\nThat's included, just the `~2` shortcut thing isn't.\n\n~~~\narunix\nWhich is included? I couldn't find anything like \"dirs -v\" in the fish manual.\nWithout that, \"pushd +N\" isn't very useful.\n\n~~~\nnimih\nThere's a \"dirs\" command, which lists the directory stack, and a \"cdh\"\ncommand, which lists your directory history.\n\n------\nbase698\nFish still doesn't support !! or !command expansion.\n\n[https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/288](https://github.com/fish-\nshell/fish-shell/issues/288)\n\n~~~\ndavewongillies\nThe bang-bang plugin handles !! and !$\n\n[https://github.com/oh-my-fish/plugin-bang-bang](https://github.com/oh-my-\nfish/plugin-bang-bang)\n\n------\nentelechy\nCool stuff! Love the modest headline on\n[http://fishshell.com/](http://fishshell.com/)\n\n> Finally, a commandline shell for the 90s\n\nIt makes me wonder, how would a shell for 2020 look like?\n\n------\nduckerude\n>? as a glob (wildcard) is deprecated and will be removed in the future\n([https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-\nshell/issues/4520](https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4520))\n\nThis surprised me, but maybe it's for the best. It got in my way more often\nthan I used it. I'll still miss it.\n\n~~~\ndjsumdog\nhuh ... interesting. I missed that. I often quote URLs when running wget\nbecause of question marks, and I guess I don't have to now.\n\n~~~\naequitas\nYou still have to watch out for ampersands though.\n\n------\nCJefferson\nThe one thing I miss most in fish is subshells, because I love writing things\nlike ( (cd $dir && ./run_prog && cd PKG && ./do_stuff) & ), to run a series of\nthings in the background. Is there any way to do something similar in fish?\n\n~~~\nfaho\nWhat this does is two things:\n\n\\- It keeps the state separate from the main shell, including $PWD (so the\n`cd` doesn't affect the main execution \"thread\")\n\n\\- It executes some script in the background\n\nFish's backgrounding is currently limited to single external commands (not\neven functions). That's [https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-\nshell/issues/238](https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/238).\n\nIt also doesn't have the capability to keep $PWD separate, though other\nvariables can of course be declared locally. That's [https://github.com/fish-\nshell/fish-shell/issues/1439](https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-\nshell/issues/1439).\n\nThe workaround is, if you actually need this, to run it inside `fish -c`.\nWhich is essentially what this syntax is doing in the background anyway (it\nneeds to fork off because `chdir` applies to the entire process).\n\n(Disclosure: I'm a fish developer)\n\n~~~\nSomeHacker44\nForking off a subshell is very different, I would think, than forking and\nexecing a new shell, both from a resource standpoint and an open file\nstandpoint.\n\n~~~\nfaho\nNot really from a usage perspective though, and resources often don't matter.\n\nIf you're doing something like this in the background, then that usually means\nit takes a \"long\" time (or you'd just wait for it). So the overhead of\nstarting an additional shell simply isn't important.\n\nNot that it's always irrelevant, but that's why the issues are still open.\n\n~~~\nSomeHacker44\nAgreed, resources often don't matter.\n\nBut I do often do something like:\n\n( cd somewhere ; do_something )\n\njust so I can avoid having to do\n\npushd somewhere ; do_something ; popd\n\n(or the equivalent).\n\n------\njacobherrington\nI loved Fish while I used it. I recently stopped using it because I'm writing\na lot of documentation. I prefer to do thing using bash or zsh now so I can be\nsure it will work for others.\n\n~~~\njonathankoren\nI run tcsh. It won’t.\n\n~~~\nnaniwaduni\nYou know you run tcsh. fish users usually know they run fish. You don't expect\nto be able to run arbitrary copy-pasted shell snippets in the first place.\n\n~~~\nbeatgammit\nI try to run my scripts on /bin/sh (on a system where that's not just a\nsymlink to a fancier shell) before posting them. That means it's more\nportable, but still not universal. I don't typically have bash on my BSD\nsystems, and when I do, they're not installed to /bin, so this is also\nsomewhat out of self interest as well.\n\n------\nanderspitman\nSomething I've been thinking about this week as a vanilla bash user: Does Fish\n(or zsh, or others) have the ability to maintain some sort of a global command\nhistory? I often find myself wanting to run the same command in multiple\nterminals and currently just copy-paste.\n\n~~~\nexplainplease\nIn fish you can use `history --merge` to merge the current shell's history\nwith other instances of fish.\n\n------\nxkgt\nHow do people manage scripts to be used in such niche shells? I started using\nzsh at work recently, while I quite enjoy the shell experience it is a pain to\nrewrite all bash scripts to zsh or add lines of codes for compatibility. Any\npointers?\n\n~~~\nmixmastamyk\nYou don’t. ;-) Use fish/zsh interactively, sh for simple scripts, Python for\nthe more complex.\n\n~~~\nxkgt\nYeah I get that. But this method doesn't help for scripts that need to modify\nthe current session state (such as export session variables). I am guessing\nhere that such scripts are an edge case and most shell scripts can be simply\nexecuted with sh.\n\n~~~\nTheAceOfHearts\nCould you give a concrete example of a situation you have in mind? If I'm\nunderstanding you correctly, then one solution could be to create a small\nwrapper to exec bash, source your environment-modifying script, and then exec\nfish. Are you familiar with exec [0]? fish also has an exec command [1].\n\nI've been using fish for years and it hasn't been an issue. You can keep bash\ninstalled for any hardcore scripting, and just fish as your interactive shell.\n\n[0]\n[https://stackoverflow.com/a/38581329](https://stackoverflow.com/a/38581329)\n\n[1]\n[https://fishshell.com/docs/current/commands.html#exec](https://fishshell.com/docs/current/commands.html#exec)\n\n------\njoshschreuder\nIs there anything remotely like this on Windows?\n\nI use Cmder / Conemu now but it doesn't seem to have even 10% of the features\nof a fully fledged shell like this.\n\n~~~\nfaho\ncmder and conemu are terminals. They run shells, like bash or zsh, but also\nfish.\n\nI've not used it myself, but I know that fish is available in WSL and cygwin\n(though this release had some issues there).\n\n~~~\njoshschreuder\nYeah I realised after I posted that I was talking about terminals not shells\nbut it's too late to edit my mistake away :)\n\nInteresting about it working on cygwin / WSL. Maybe I'll give that a go. I'm\nsure someone's also made Powershell enhancements that add similar\nfunctionality too.\n\n------\nrbosinger\nSo weird. Last night I ran a bunch of updates and spent some time cleaning up\nand configuring my laptop. Preparing for the New Year. I tried to upgrade Fish\nand saw that it hadn't had an update since this time last year. I ended up\nlooking through the release logs and just reading the Fish docs a bit. I never\ndo this. Now, this morning, this is on Hacker News.\n\n~~~\nhnarn\nIt's not weird, it's a cognitive bias:\n\nFrequency illusion (or Baader–Meinhof effect): The illusion in which a word, a\nname, or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems\nto appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)\n\n~~~\nphirschybar\nI think it's more like a productive time of year for hackers to get things\ndone :). The week between xmas and new years is always super productive and\ncreative for me... it's quiet and there is a subconscious urge to wrap things\nup before year end.\n\n------\nchrisweekly\nCan anyone who's experienced with both fish and zsh comment on reasons fish\nmight be better?\n\n~~~\nokdana\nfish doesn't try to support all of the weird historical quirks of Bourne-style\nshells, so its grammar and built-in 'API' are far simpler and clearer. Its\nout-of-the-box configuration is much much nicer for most people than zsh's.\nCompletion definitions are easier to read/write. Its source code seems less\nbyzantine. And its GitHub-based development model is more accessible.\n\nThe down side is that it's functionally very limited compared to zsh. fish's\ncompletion functions are easy to maintain, but the trade-off is that they\ndon't offer the fine-grained contextual control over behaviour that zsh's do.\nFeatures like globbing, sub-shells, job control, co-processes, modules, &c.,\nare absent or extremely limited. There are fewer knobs and switches, though as\nmentioned it tries to do the right thing for most people by default. And a\nconsequence of the syntax being clearer is that it's also much more verbose,\nwhich i guess you may or may not appreciate.\n\nOver-all i think fish is a good shell for the (very common) type of person who\ndoesn't really care about shells but was drawn to zsh just because it has\nnicer completion than bash and lets you write fancy prompts. I don't think\nit's a good fit, yet, for people who write complex scripts or regularly make\nuse of stuff like extended globs, background jobs, and fancy parameter\nexpansions.\n\n~~~\nzanchey\nJob control should be fully featured - backgrounding, stopping/continuing, and\ndisowning are all implemented. If there's something missing we'd definitely\nlook at adding it.\n\n~~~\nokdana\nYeah, you're right of course. I think i was conflating job control with sub-\nshells, sorry.\n\n------\nBarrin92\nI like fish's auto completion speed and smoothness but one thing that has held\nme back when I checked out fish was that there didn't seem to be a `Ctrl+r`\ncommand that bash and zsh provide to quickly go through history commands.\n\n~~~\nrobin_reala\nYou start typing what you want, then hit the up arrow to fuzzy search back\nthrough history.\n\n~~~\nAdamGibbins\nIs this the only way? Arrow keys require I take my fingers off the home row,\nwhich is far from ideal with the frequency I search shell history.\n\n~~~\nwaterhouse\nControl-P does it too, and is what I normally use. (Generally, I use\ncontrol-{n,p,f,b} instead of arrow keys wherever possible. I also have caps\nlock mapped to control.)\n\n------\nhartator\nDoes anyone know how it compare to zsh with oh-my-zsh?\n\n~~~\nnerdponx\nZsh + OMZ is a slow, unconfigurable mess. If you are new to Zsh, avoid OMZ. If\nyou are experienced with Zsh, you already know to avoid it.\n\nFish \"just works\", and you won't have any lag. It is a delightful beginner\nexperience, too.\n\nA Zsh veteran could probably replicate parts of the Fish experience in Zsh,\nbut ultimately they are different tools. I use Fish at home for casual shell\nstuff, but I write shell _scripts_ in Zsh, and I use Zsh at work whenever\npossible.\n\n~~~\nh1d\nI guess I try to switch to fish again as like you said zsh with 10 plugins\ntakes so long to start a shell, like 5 seconds which feels forever when you\nwant to start typing right then, that I now never quit the shell from remote\nmachines but just disconnect from its tmux instance so I can go right back\nwithout initializing the shell every time I log in.\n\n~~~\nnerdponx\nThis is also a result of bad plugin design.\n\nFunctions should be on fpath, zcompile'd, and loaded with autoload. Otherwise\nyou have to read and parse 100s of lines of code every shell invocation...\nyikes.\n\n------\nsantix\nI was hoping to see that they added a `time` command, which is something that\nmakes me change to bash every once in a while.\n\n~~~\nscbrg\nThere's an actual program, usually installed in /usr/bin/time. The shell\nbuiltin is not really necessary.\n\n~~~\nkurtisc\nThere's an outstanding issue in the github because the binary doesn't let you\ndirectly time fish functions. You can do\n\ntime fish -c '[function]'\n\nbut that includes the time to launch fish.\n\nThis, of course, wouldn't matter for any reasonable usecase but I like a fancy\nprompt and don't like waiting for it to run.\n\n~~~\nscbrg\nAh, timing other shell functions is a use case I hadn't considered. Yes, then\nyou're out of luck I suppose.\n\n~~~\nbeatgammit\nI think $duration is a thing, which is the time it took to run the previous\ncommand. It doesn't separate things like time does, but it's still useful for\nsome cases.\n\nIn fact, I customized my prompt to pretty print the previous command's\nduration if it took longer than 3 seconds or something like that.\n\n~~~\navarun\nI use the Spacefish prompt plugin[0], which does that as well, and comes with\na whole lot of other goodness!\n\n[0]\n[https://github.com/matchai/spacefish](https://github.com/matchai/spacefish)\n\n------\nmilin\nLet me know when it's posix compliant.\n\n~~~\nkurtisc\nAs soon as your bash scripts run with /bin/sh.\n\nYou can still have bash installed and anything that requires significant\nscripting could probably be done easier with a language for scripting. I want\nmy shell for my terminal. This is also the reason I don't like the verbosity\nof Powershell, however much an OOP paradigm better supports scripting.\n\n~~~\nnaniwaduni\nYou can write scripts in the semantics-preserving common subset of POSIX sh\nand bash, which is not quite, but close to exactly POSIX sh.\n\nIt's a widely-touted meme that scripting is more easily done in a general-\npurpose language than in a shell, but this is mostly true of the (common!)\ncategory of tasks which use the shell to launch sed &c. to perform string\nprocessing which is built-in in general-purpose languages. It's comparatively\nhard (i.e. verbose and error-prone) to replace a shell language with a\ngeneral-purpose language in its core competence, viz. launching processes,\nmuxing I/O, and coordinating parallel processing.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPandora Founder Tim Westergren on the iPhone's Importance to Pandora - gordonbowman\nhttp://www.gordonbowman.com/pandora-founder-tim-westergren-on-charlie-ros\n\n======\nminalecs\nhe should be more concerned of his algorithms that continuously replay the\nsame songs every day.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe art of mastering airline loyalty programs -- Going for Elite - jaf12duke\nhttp://blog.flightcaster.com/part-2-the-art-of-mastering-airline-loyalty-p\n\n======\nben1040\nA few years ago I had a job that had me flying 5000 miles a week. I signed up\nfor AA's status challenge and qualified for platinum status in nearly a month.\n\nI think they charge for taking the challenge now (it was free then) but it's\nwell worth it. Not only do you get better seats, free bag checking, priority\nsecurity access, and earn upgrades, but that was 30,000+ additional bonus\nmiles I wouldn't have earned had I just skipped the challenge and qualified\nfor the status the normal way.\n\nAlso, if you're on the fringe between status tiers, often times it's very much\nworth it to spend a couple hundred bucks on a \"mileage run\" if it means the\nextra EQM will put you into top-tier status.\n\n~~~\nDornkirk\nI'm wondering if you know whether there's any program that allows earning\nmiles to spend on _any_ airline?\n\nI'm going to be doing a trip in two months that will take me from the Mid-West\nto SE Asia and then I'll hop a few places in SE Asia before coming back to the\nstates - I currently don't have any frequent flyer program as I hardly ever\nfly (a few times a year) - but I'd hate for this trip to go wasted - plus I\nmay be traveling quite a bit next year.\n\n~~~\nprawn\nLast time I undertook a major trip (37 flights through 20ish countries), there\nwere two main alliances - Star and OneWorld, from memory. If you stuck to\nairlines from one of those, your points would be combined.\n\nI don't fly all that regularly (maybe just above average) so things might've\nchanged since then.\n\n~~~\ngaius\nNow there is a third - SkyTeam. Plus there is Virgin Atlantic who aren't a\nmember of any alliance but have one-off deals with individual airlines.\n\n------\nmrb\nI NEVER understood, and still don't understand, why are people so attracted to\nairline loyalty programs? Are the benefits this important? It seems to me the\naverage frequent flyer can reduce his costs by ~10-20%. This is not much.\n\n~~~\nben1040\nIf you travel extremely frequently, like every week or every other week, the\nbenefits save you quite a bit of time and make the general air travel\nexperience suck a little bit less. For example, the priority security\nscreening line for passengers with status meant I could sleep an extra half\nhour on Monday mornings.\n\nOn the other hand if you don't travel that often at all, you probably won't\nsee much benefit. By reducing capacity and increasing the number of required\nmiles to claim reward tickets, the airlines keep moving the goalposts.\n\nI'd imagine there are plenty of people out there who choose a given airline\nbecause of the prospect of getting something for nothing through the loyalty\nprogram, but travel so rarely that they'll never accrue enough miles to get\nany reward tickets.\n\n------\nadambyrtek\nSomehow this reminds me of a scene from Up in the Air in which George Clooney\nreveals that his dream is to gather ten million miles in order to get\n\"lifetime executive status, meeting the chief pilot Maynard Finch, and getting\nhis name painted on the side of a plane.\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n16 days since last ruby drama - neXter\nhttp://rubydramas.com/\n======\nbdcravens\nI'm a manager of a user group (not Ruby or Rails, but ColdFusion) but when we\nhave celebs in audience, I always default to them. Members have purchased\ntheir books, and read their blogs; they respect them more than they respect me\nor the speaker (usually me, managers commonly speak at smaller communities).\nShould they be pricks? No. But that's a question for the universe to deal\nwith; as for our group, we like the celebs. (Ruby world's Katz's are CF's\nCamdens, Nadels, and Fortas - same difference...)\n\nHaving listened to Yahuda on various podcasts and whatnot, I get that he\ndoesn't keep his mouth shut. Sometime's he's a douche, othertime's he's the\nsmartest dude in the room and should be listened to. If you are a UGM and\ndidn't expect this, maybe you should decline Yahuda's chance to speak.. his\npersonality isn't exactly a secret, just saying.\n\ntl;dr pricks will be pricks; experts ditto. Take the good with the bad, and\nresearch celebs.\n\n~~~\nJohnBooty\nThe ColdFusion scene has stars?\n\nThere's... there's a ColdFusion _scene?_ Do you guys have dance-offs with the\nASP Classic guys or what?\n\n~~~\nbdcravens\nSeveral active conferences. A thriving open source community. ASP classic is a\ndead product; All three CF engines released new versions in the last year,\nwith support for REST, WebSockets, updated ORM support, etc. While you'll\nprobably never see it used in YC because it's not \"cool\", there's tons of it\nin Fortune 500 and the private sector.\n\n------\ndanso\nFrom the latest drama, this is a brilliant simile:\n[https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/0dd24728a088fcb4ae616b...](https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/0dd24728a088fcb4ae616bb5d62734aca5276b1b#commitcomment-1747128)\n\n> _I can't get behind a change like this. This isn't even syntactic sugar.\n> It's more like syntactic aspartame. It might slim down your code, but it's\n> also a carcinogen._\n\n~~~\nyen223\nHang on, I thought they debunked the whole \"aspartame is a carcinogen\"\nthing...\n\n~~~\nEwanToo\nThey did, yes\n\n[http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/artificial...](http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/artificial-\nsweeteners)\n\n------\novergard\nHeh.\n\nAs an outsider to the ruby community (though a fan of the language), I'm not\nsure I have the right to an opinion on these dramas, but as a frequent\nunwitting observer of these events (since these dramas end up on sites I\nfrequent and so on), I'd like to offer this thought:\n\nThe whole \"coders-as-rockstars\" meme, and the attendant treatment/fascination\nwith these people -- I would be a slightly happier person if the world let\nthat idea go. To me, it seems like this idea is where a lot of these dramas\ncome from. People whose \"celebrity\" is overvalued, and people who pay way too\nmuch attention to these people. Coders are not rock stars. They're just not.\nThey might be really good at what they do, they might even be 10x better than\naverage, but its just not the same thing as being a \"rockstar\" and all the\npreening that comes with that, culturally or otherwise.\n\nI can't think of anything less rockstarish than arguing with people over the\ninternet or being a jerk at a usergroup.\n\nThe fact that these \"dramas\" are even news to anyone is just a side effect of\nthe fact that people give certain drama queens way more attention than they\ndeserve. I mean I'll admit it's entertaining -- but at the end of the day I\nfeel like the fact that some guy was a jerk at a local conference, I mean, I\njust don't care. It's like intellectual junk food. I get a rise out of it, but\nit leaves me feeling like I haven't consumed something that makes me a better\nperson.\n\n~~~\nevilduck\nYou somewhat focus on being a jerk at user groups, but you're perpetuating a\nstory from a blog post of a third person account that simply speculated about\nhow someone might have felt without giving almost any context to the situation\nor first hand information from the speaker or Yehuda. I've been part of a Java\nusergroup where interrupting the speaker/presentation was not only acceptable\nbut often the norm. Without any context you can't really say how that behavior\nwas received.\n\nSometimes I think that Ruby's \"drama\" is equivalent to Rails' \"magic\", i.e.\nweak criticism perpetuated more by detractors and not really considered a\nproblem internally.\n\n~~~\nzampano\nI agree entirely. I started programming with ruby and rails about a year and a\nhalf ago and have made a habit of going to meetups and conferences in the\narea. I have seen nothing that wasn't intended to be constructive and helpful\nand I would argue that the ruby/rails community is one of the most welcoming\nI've run into. I have witnessed some misunderstandings that spun out of\ncontrol, but I don't think you can say this is something specific to the ruby\ncommunity and I'd argue that it has very little to do with celebrity-seeking.\nAny community is going to have some friction between elements at times, and I\nthink this site just contributes to the overblown perception that all rubyists\nare primadonnas and drama-queens.\n\n------\nrurounijones\nNote the last \"drama\" was not to do with yehuda. the page isnt very clear but\nit is\n[https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/0dd24728a088fcb4ae616b...](https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/0dd24728a088fcb4ae616bb5d62734aca5276b1b)\n\n(the \"Last Drama\" link, not the RSS links below)\n\n------\nyxhuvud\nI was a little disappointed when they didn't include the ruckus about Zed not\nstarting out teaching Array#each. That should probably have earned a spot.\n\n~~~\ngrandalf\nZed is a clever marketer and that was purely a marketing strategy on his part.\nIt probably would have cost $20K to get that amount of traffic via AdWords.\n\n------\nnicholassmith\nIn communities where the majority are incredibly passionate about the topic\nthere's inevitably drama. It's part and parcel of the process.\n\nAlthough it is amusing that the whole 'MINSWAN' has departed the community\nslightly, given that was a big motto for a lot of Rubyists a while back and\npart of the reason why learning Ruby was so fun, everyone helped everyone\n(mostly).\n\n~~~\nanthonyb\nIf you replace \"are incredibly passionate\" with \"have incredibly huge egos\"\nthen I'd agree with you. I don't see much of this happening in the Python or\nClojure community - they're all too busy programming.\n\n~~~\nveemjeem\nI don't really think it has anything to do with egos. Maybe this goes back to\nsteve yegge's conservative vs liberal languages. clojure & python have\ncommunities that are much more conservative than ruby's. Yegge's argument that\npython is conservative, is due to google's style guide which forbids\nmetaprogramming.\n\nYegge is fairly accurate with his conservative vs liberal rating in regard to\neach language community. Compare the type of mailing list posts in golang-nuts\nto nodejs; there's definitely more arguments in nodejs than in golang.\n\n~~~\nanthonyb\nIn terms what they can do, Ruby and Python are very similar, yet Python\ngenerates about 1/100th the drama of the Ruby community. I'd say that points\nvery strongly at ego, or at least the culture of the community. If that\ndoesn't convince you, have a look at the update at the bottom of this post\nfrom Giles: [http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/rails-went-off-\nra...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/rails-went-off-rails-why-im-\nrebuilding.html)\n\nPython programmers appear to be more welcoming and don't seem to have the same\nneed to wave enormous meta-programming wangs at each other. Not to say that\nmetaprogramming isn't useful, but that it's just another tool in the toolbox.\nTake mailsnake for example:\n[https://github.com/Leftium/mailsnake/blob/master/mailsnake/m...](https://github.com/Leftium/mailsnake/blob/master/mailsnake/mailsnake.py)\nCompletely classy :)\n\n------\nquesera\nMINSWAN is now DHHIAJSWAJ.\n\nBeing a jerk isn't always the wrong thing to do. But people who are not dhh\npropagate the tone without always propagating the situational awareness.\n\n------\njamesu\nIMO this site is a nice reminder that no development community is immune from\ndrama. Every line of code risks controversy. Every interaction has the\npotential to turn into a debate. A single action can lead to completely new\nways of thinking.\n\nAnd really, that's one of the things that makes software development great.\n\n~~~\ndanso\nThe thing that made smile most on the site was the \"Powered by PHP\"\n\n------\ntiminman\nMy favorite recent ruby drama was rails including Coffeescript by default:\n<https://github.com/rails/rails/compare/9333ca7...23aa7da> (You have to scroll\ndown for the images)\n\n~~~\njeremyjh\nThanks for mentioning this, very good stuff I never scrolled down to see.\n\n------\nyen223\nI'd like to see the Python version.\n\n~~~\nfreyrs3\nHonestly I don't see this kind of thing happening in the Python community.\nPython devs constantly complain about Py3 and unicode all the time but I don't\nthink it ever gets to the level of \"drama\" or vitriol.\n\n------\ncsmeder\n[http://thewebivore.com/why-you-shouldnt-invite-yehuda-\nkatz-t...](http://thewebivore.com/why-you-shouldnt-invite-yehuda-katz-to-\nyour-u)\n\nHow ironic is it for this person to call out Yehuda and say don't correct\npeople, when that is exactly what she is doing, she is correcting Yehuda.\n\nIf she followed her own advice she would have wrote the blog post about a \"un\nnamed\" person and maybe waited a few weeks. Instead she is doing exactly what\nshe is advocating against: Publicly telling some one they are wrong...\n\n~~~\ntylermenezes\nRead the article. The author is quite explicit that the issue is in the timing\n- you don't interrupt DURING a presentation. You're being extremely\nuncharitable.\n\n~~~\nprotomyth\nfrom the comments: bokmann on twitter\n\nI was not the speaker whose demo he redid, but was there with the speaker and\nhad a similar point in my metaprogramming talk.\n\nHere is the code from my talk, and a new file named 'yehuda_inspiration.rb'\nthat discusses Yehuda's change to the demo. <https://gist.github.com/1893359>\n\nIn short, the other presenter was not wrong... he had a piece of code that was\nstylistically different than what Yehuda would have written (see the 'include\nvs. extend' comments in that gist. Feel free to read that code example in that\ngist and make up your own mind.\n\nI know first hand the other presenter did not take offense to this - although\nYehuda claiming something is wrong when it is solely a style issue is a bit\nhubris.\n\n------\nmmahemoff\nSee also: <http://jsdrama.com/>\n\n------\npapsosouid\nIs any of this stuff actually ruby drama, or all just rails drama? I know the\nold ruby community has had a really hard time recovering from being infected\nwith the rails trash, do they still exist or were they pushed out by the\n\"rockstars\"?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHave Disneyland fans finally reached their limit? - spking\nhttps://www.mercurynews.com/2019/08/13/have-disneyland-fans-finally-reached-their-limit/\n======\nilamont\nThe article neglects to mention the huge drop in international visits to the\nU.S. in recent years. Quoting a USA Today article from last week:\n\n _U.S. visits as a portion of total global travel fell to 11.7% last year from\na high of 13.7% in 2015, according to the travel group and Oxford Economics.\nThat has resulted in losses to the U.S. economy of 14 million international\nvisitors, $59 billion in traveler spending and 120,000 U.S. jobs._\n\nSource: [https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/08/09/travel-\ninter...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/08/09/travel-\ninternational-visits-u-s-forecast-keep-falling/1942922001/)\n\nI know Disneyland and Disneyworld have traditionally been popular destinations\nfor foreign tourists; it's reasonable to assume that if overall international\ntravel is down the number of foreign visitors to the parks is also down, even\nbefore factoring in the high prices everyone has to pay to get into the parks.\n\n~~~\nstevenjohns\n> The article neglects to mention the huge drop in international visits to the\n> U.S. in recent years. Quoting a USA Today article from last week:\n\nPart of this might be the ever-stronger US dollar. Five years ago, AUD$1 would\nbuy about USD$0.94. Now it buys USD$0.68, making the trip to the US about a\nthird more expensive.\n\n~~~\ntortarga\nUS dollar is pretty much steady against the Euro from 2016 levels. The AUD\nfall is because of our mismanaged economy.\n\nThe fall in US tourism can better be attributed to Trump trashing America's\nforeign image.\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\nAs if most tourists care for politics? Changing trends in tourism and\nfinancial issues are far more likely reasons...\n\n~~~\nrfrey\nAs a previously frequent tourist to the US, I assure you politics is an\nimportant consideration for me and my family. Many people of my acquaintance\nhave also taken politics into account when making vacation plans.\n\nI’m not aware of any studies on this, so anecdote is all I have. But for me,\nit’s “obvious” that politics is a factor rather than “obvious” that tourists\nonly think of trends and exchange rates.\n\nIn fact, it’s now common (at least in my circle) for people to plan vacations\nto avoid changing planes in the USA, because of the delays in customs and the\nrisks of missing connections or being denied entry to the US (required in the\nUSA even if you never leave the transfer area).\n\n~~~\nTaniwha\npart of the problem is that airports in the US have no \"transfer area\" \\-\ninternational departure lounges are not set up to require passing through\nimmigration if you want to leave them - many are connected directly to\ndomestic departure lounges (SFO is an example)\n\n~~~\ntrianglesphere\nIt'a not a decision made by US airports, the US requires every person who\nlands on US soil to clear US customs even if that person's final destination\nis outside the US (ie. the US doesn't allow sterile transit).\n\n~~~\nTaniwha\nYes but the US is very unusual in this practice, I don't know of anywhere else\nin the Western World where this happens.\n\n~~~\ncafard\nWe traveled a couple of years ago to Milan via Amsterdam. My recollection is\nthat we did have to clear customs in Amsterdam.\n\n~~~\nTaniwha\nYou were entering the Schengen area - the group of European nations who have a\ncombined border - once you enter one of those countries you can freely travel\nto the others (so no passport booths on the roads on the borders between the\nNetherlands and Italy) - your flight from Amsterdam to Milan was an internal\nflight.\n\nIf you had flown into Amsterdam and transited to Moscow you would have gone\nthru metal detectors to the departure lounge, but not thru immigration\n\n------\nAloha\nI'm a former Disneyland CM, I strongly suspect lower attendance is a desired\ngoal.\n\nIf my memory is correct, Disneyland can accommodate around 60,000 (aka a 60k\nday) without having to shut the gates to prevent further entry - and the park\nfeels.. well packed - Disney over time has made AP's less viable for frequent\nvisits to reduce overcrowding, raising ticket prices accomplishes the same\nthing, a 45k day with everyone paying an average of 60 bucks a head, is just\nas profitable as a 60k day with and average of everyone paying 45 a head. The\ndifference is the 45k day is a whole lot more pleasant for everyone, and puts\nfar less strain on park infrastructure, on a 50+ day, an attraction going out\nof service puts a tremendous load on other things nearby (vending, merch, and\nfoods), on a 45k- day, the load is much much less.\n\nfor reference, a 50k day by the way, was not abnormal when I worked there in\nthe early 00's. - and a 55k day was seen weekly or more during summertime.\n\n------\nAlex63\nIt's a tricky trade-off. The last couple of times we visited Disneyland, the\ncrowds were so bad that it didn't feel worth it. However, I'm not sure I'm\nready to pay $100+ per person per day for less congestion. I think I topped\nout at $99.\n\n~~~\nnotafraudster\nThis, in addition to the Yogi quote below, is a known problem in game theory:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Farol_Bar_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Farol_Bar_problem)\n\n~~~\ncortesoft\nThis is EXACTLY the type of problem a market economy is designed to solve -\ndistribution of a scarce resource.\n\nYou solve it by setting the price of attendance such that the correct number\nof people choose to go.\n\n~~~\nhabitue\nWell, in Disney's case, you want to maximize profits, not optimize attendance\nrates. So you set the price such that it maximizes total returns, and whatever\nattendance rate that is, is the \"correct one\"\n\n~~~\nmcphage\n> So you set the price such that it maximizes total returns, and whatever\n> attendance rate that is, is the \"correct one\"\n\nI don't think it's that simple—they're not trying to maximize total returns on\na single day, but total returns overall. How many people are in the park\ndetermines the kind of experience you have, which then determines if you're\nlikely to come back. Plus all sorts of associated halo effects—if you enjoy\nyour time at the park, then after you leave you're more likely to purchase\nDisney branded merchandise, watch Disney movies, and subscribe to their\nupcoming Disney+ streaming service.\n\n------\nravenstine\nI grew up on Disneyland. At one point, my family was going nearly every\nweekend because my father worked for a subsidiary of Disney, so we got in for\nfree. Even for years after he left the company, we bought annual passes and\nwent rather frequently. Everyone I knew had annual passes.\n\nIt's probably been 5 years since I last went. Over time, annual passes became\nless worth it. Prices kept going up and more dates kept getting blocked out.\nEven ordinary tickets got pricey. Eventually, the park got so crowded that it\nreally wasn't fun to go. Then they added premiums to a bunch of things like\nFast Passes. I just kind of said screw it and chose not to go back.\n\nI'm sure that I'll go back for some reason, but I won't make an effort to.\nThis is coming from someone who LOVED Disneyland and wanted to build theme\npark rides as a dream job. It ended up feeling like they were doing everything\nthey could to squeeze pennies, which I know theme parks are designed to do,\nbut it used to seem like Disneyland at least partly cared about whether or not\nyou were enjoying yourself. Cast members, at one time, were pretty damned\nfriendly, though they're still much better than most other theme parks. When I\nlast went, you could _tell_ that they secretly hated their jobs. I don't want\nto pity lowly employees when I'm there to have fun. At least Six Flags doesn't\nseriously attempt to make their employees act cheery(I was once an employee\nthere BTW).\n\nAbove all, I really don't want to give Disney money. Sure, they became an Evil\nMegaCorp a long time ago, and have long ago slithered their tentacles through\nthe news and entertainment industry, but they control so much now and pretty\nmuch have no regard for artistry or the cultural significance of their films\nand characters. Star Wars just took the cake. Why would I pay Disney for a\nbizarro facsimile something I enjoyed _as a child_ where the characters I\nloved are losers only to be replaced by modern ripoffs? _Maybe_ they could\nhave attracted a new generation, which doesn't appear to be working out much\nfor them, but as someone who grew up with the original Star Wars, what they've\ndone only repels me from anything to do with them. I'm not even a Star Wars\nfan... and I don't think one has to be to respond that way to Disney.\n\nI'm not angry at Disney. It's just that, looking at my own behavior, it's no\nsurprise to me why attendance to their park would be in decline.\n\n~~~\nmdorazio\n> Prices kept going up and more dates kept getting blocked out.\n\n> Eventually, the park got so crowded that it really wasn't fun to go.\n\nIf prices were going up and attendance was still rising, Disney had two\noptions: 1) keep raising prices to the point where attendance rates dropped to\na manageable level, or 2) keep prices fixed and put stricter caps on\nattendance for specific dates. Being the cutthroat megacorp that it is, Disney\npicked option #1 because it's more profitable. If attendance drops enough,\nprices will go back down again.\n\n~~~\nepylar\n3) build more parks?\n\n~~~\ndelinka\nYou have to fund that somehow so ... prices go up! Real estate isn't infinite,\nbut Disney World in Florida is expanding now more than ever. If they ever have\nto build a new set of parks elsewhere, real estate prices are going to be\nridiculous, and you have to buy it somehow so ... prices go up!\n\nI don't see how increasing supply brings prices down at Disney - they'll hike\nthe price now to fund it, then they'll hike prices again to control\nattendance.\n\nBuy Disney stock.\n\n~~~\njjulius\n>You have to fund that somehow so ... prices go up! Real estate isn't\ninfinite, but Disney World in Florida is expanding now more than ever. If they\never have to build a new set of parks elsewhere, real estate prices are going\nto be ridiculous, and you have to buy it somehow so ... prices go up!\n\nWhy raise prices on consumers when you can fund a new park with the $12.6\nbillion in profit they earned in 2018?\n\nEdit: I'm not the most fiscally-savvy person, so it would be cool if someone\nexplained why I might be wrong rather than just hitting the downvote button\nand walking away.\n\n~~~\nAloha\nAnaheim is landlocked, it would cost them several billion dollars just to buy\nmore land in Anaheim alone, the odds of more park in Anaheim are basically\nzero.\n\n~~~\nspking\nIIRC, Walt Disney practically begged friends and associates to buy up the land\nsurrounding Disneyland, and always lamented the cheap motels and\nestablishments that quickly proliferated outside the park. But he maxed out,\nmortgaged and bet pretty much every penny of the studio (and personally) to\nget the park built at all. There was simply no money left to buy up any more\norange groves.\n\n------\ntempsy\nWill be interesting to see how low birth rates will impact theme park\nattendance going forward. I feel like young adults are already struggling with\nstudent debt and difficulty affording a home. Throw in a kid or two and makes\nme wonder how an average family could afford a 3 or 4 night vacation to\nDisneyland with flights and hotel and tickets for everyone. That’s at least\n$4k for 4 nights.\n\n~~~\npmorici\nI feel like going to Disney is something that the average middle class family\nmight do once in a life time. At least that is how it was in my family growing\nup in the 80's and 90's we went to Disney World once and every other vacation\nwas some variation on camping at a state park or going to the local Six Flags\namusement park for the day. When you look at it that way 4k doesn't seem as\noutrageous.\n\n~~~\ncortesoft\nProbably depends on where you are. As a California native, Disneyland trips\nwere much more frequent.\n\n------\nnerfhammer\nWhat do these prices actually look like? the article does not get into\nspecifics about how much it actually costs or how much it used to cost.\n\n~~~\nrobbiet480\nTicket price is based on age, demand, number of days you want to visit and\nincluded features (park hopper and MaxPass). The cheapest, adult, lowest\ndemand, 1 day, no features ticket runs $104 right now. The most expensive peak\ntime, single day ticket with park hopper and MaxPass is $214.\n\nAnnual passes provide extra benefits over tickets and are priced based on what\ndays you wish to be able to go (cheaper passes have more blockout dates or are\nlimited to southern California residents only). AP runs from $599 for Flex\n(only allowed in certain parks and sometimes must reserve park entrance in\nadvance) to $1399 for the Signature Plus which has 0 blockouts or\nrestrictions. (There is also the Premier passport which costs $2,099 and gets\nyou unrestricted access to both Disneyland and Walt Disney World in Florida.)\n\n~~~\nilamont\nFor a vacationing family of 4 coming to the park for three full days and\nstaying in a Disney resort for 4 nights in the spring or summer, what might be\nthe expected cost range including everything (except for flights and the\nrental car)?\n\n~~~\nrobbiet480\nIt really depends on what hotel you are staying at, whether on or off\nproperty. On property you could pay anywhere from $3000 to $5000 would be my\nguess off the top of my head. Paradise Pier is lowest price, Grand Californian\nis highest. Really depends on when exactly you are going too. I've seen prices\nlike $1200/night at Grand Californian during Christmas time.\n\nDisneyland's website has an excellent tool to calculate full price (even\nincluding flights). I'd recommend checking that out or calling them for a more\npersonal touch. You can book everything online (tickets, hotels, transport\nfrom the airport to the resort, dining and more).\n\n~~~\nilamont\nThanks. I wasn't interested for my own family, just curious about what people\ntypically pay for the experience these days.\n\nFWIW I went to Disneyland and Universal Studios in 1980 with my family, and it\nreally was a special experience - still remember the trip 40 years later.\n\n------\ntempsy\nI’d be curious how it compares to Universal Studios Hollywood. Personal\nobservation is that Universal Studios has gotten better, faster (with recent\naddition of Harry Potter area) and is more fun/interesting for the older\ncrowd. If you had to choose one or the other because both are expensive then\nUniversal Studios seems like a better option unless you have very young kids.\n\n~~~\npolalavik\nHaha not a chance. For the price Universal Studios is incredibly small, less\nwell kept, and there’s only really 1-2 interesting rides. The whole park takes\nlike 10 minutes to walk end to end. You can walk around Disney land all day\nand still not hit it all.\n\n~~~\ntempsy\n“Not a chance” what?\n\nLooking at 2018 data Disneyland grew attendance 2% vs Universal Studios at\n12%, and the source says almost all attributed to Harry Potter.\n\nBoth parks can be done in a day each...both are small relative to Orlando\ncounterparts.\n\n[http://www.ocregister.com/disneyland-still-worlds-\nno-2-theme...](http://www.ocregister.com/disneyland-still-worlds-no-2-theme-\npark-but-universal-studios-hollywoods-attendance-surges)\n\n~~~\nap3\nYou can do Disneyland in a day if it’s not too crowded\n\nUniversal Studios’ AP is a lot cheaper but the park needs to add a lot more\nrides to match Disneyland\n\n------\noceanghost\nTBH, I feel uniquely qualified to comment on this.\n\nI lived two miles from Disneyland for a decade (Old Towne Orange). I proposed\nto my wife there (now ex-wife). We named our daughter after the \"Emma\" from\n\"Once Upon a Time.\" We had an annual pass for about a decade, and my life and\nfree time centered around Disneyland.\n\nFor years I went to DL/DCA several times a week. But, gradually, it became a\nhorrid thing. Disneyland, when I arrived in the early 2000s was a place where\nI could forget the stresses of the daily world. I worked so close to it\n(Cypress and Santa Ana), that I would sometimes take an extended lunch and\nride one or two rides and then go back to work.\n\nPsychologically, Disneyland was a place that allowed me to let go and enjoy\nmyself.\n\nThen, they started offering financing on their Annual Passes. I used to have\nto layout 1k for my families passes. But now, you could get them on an\ninstallment basis. The parks were always crowded, and even when they weren't,\nthe powers that be understaffed the park such that ride times were long. I had\na friend who could barely afford food but had a $400 AP. She would often crash\nin our living room to go to the park.\n\nWhat was once my refuge from reality became this horrid thing where we were\nwaiting 60 mins for a 90-second ride. The last two years the (ex)wife and I\nhad passes, we just, would stand in line, look at each other, and think, \"Why\nare we here? We could be at home, not standing in the sun, not paying $7 for a\nbottle of water.\" We weren't enjoying ourselves, and it cost us about 1k/yr\nfor the passes and parking, plus incidental expenses in the park.\n\nThe company I used to work for was located a couple of miles from Dl, and when\nwe had guests from other countries, I would take them to Disneyland. It was an\namazing thing for the folks because I could give them a world-class tour of\nthe park (being a regular), and we would all have a great time. But gradually,\nthat became impossible.\n\nI remember the exact day I gave up on Disneyland. We drove over there, and\nthey were doing some construction, and detour, after the detour, we ended up\nat some nearly abandoned mall, which is only a little bit from my house, then\nwe had to board a bus which drove us to the transportation hub. It took 75\nmins to get into the park, and the whole time, I was literally one exit from\nmy home. It took 75 mins for us to get to the front gate back to our car.\nNever again.\n\nWhile my failures as a husband are my own fault, and my marriage was probably\ndoomed from the beginning... In a real way, my marriage was based on\nDisneyland. It was something my wife and I bonded over and looked forward to\nand, was special to us. When we stopped going, the magic in our relationship\ndied.\n\nSomeday I'll go back, but not today, and not anytime soon. I live 100 miles\nfrom Disneyland now. If it were enjoyable again, I'd move back to Orange\nCounty. But it's not. Disneyland is a broken dream, and their tilt towards\nStar Wars is a joke that is not funny. Disney must constantly reinvent itself,\nand the last decade has been a mistake.\n\nI interviewed for Disney Research a year ago and, was amazed by the brilliant\nfolks working there. Ultimately, Disney will prevail just because of the\namazing folks who work there. I don't know if I'm just an old fart wishing for\nhis more formative years, or if things are really different.\n\nAnyways, I love you Disneyland. I hope we can both get our act together. But\nyou've broken my heart and I'm weary.\n\n~~~\nravenstine\n> In a real way, my marriage was based on Disneyland. It was something my wife\n> and I bonded over and looked forward to and, was special to us. When we\n> stopped going, the magic in our relationship died.\n\nDamn. :(\n\nI had a similar situation with my last relationship, except we broke up soon\nafter we decided to go to Knott's Berry Farm for the first time instead.\n\n _(no joke, not that it had anything to do with the breakup, but kind of a\nfunny coincidence)_\n\n~~~\noceanghost\nKnotts has been a disaster even longer than DL. My grandmother used to work\nthere and take my brother and I regularly. I don't even think it's safe, to be\nhonest. Whatever I might say about Disneyland, at least it's safe.\n\nSorry about your bad luck.\n\n~~~\nAloha\nI think Knotts is about as safe as it ever has been, I'm saying this as\nsomeone who worked at both Knotts and Disney, Knotts in some ways in the early\nand mid 00's was actually better about doing some basic maintenance to keep\nthe park looking and feeling fresh.\n\n~~~\noceanghost\nThe last time I ever went to Knotts, admittedly 13 or so years ago... One of\nthe employees asked me not to lean on a chain that was strung between to parts\nof the que to rope it off. I gave him a sort of, \"Are you serious?\" look...\n\nHe was super nice and explained that it took him a whole year to get the\nchain, that Knotts doesn't like paying for things like that, and he didn't\nwant it, or the que itself damaged as he wouldn't be able to get a new one\nanytime soon.\n\nMy mind immediately started thinking about the cost of chains, and how safe\nthe park could possibly be if that were the operating environment. We rode the\nride because we'd waited 4 hours in the queue, and the friend that I had gone\nwith and I agreed this was not a place we wanted to be anymore.\n\nI also worked in Cypress, a few blocks from Knotts, and we'd always hear about\nhorror stories about people stranded on attractions. What worried me about it\nmost was, not that rides break down, they do. What was concerning was that\nKnotts didn't seem to have a plan for that.\n\nWhen a ride breaks at Disneyland, They have plan after plan after plan. I have\nnever felt unsafe at Disneyland, and I've had at least half a dozen incidents.\nI remember being stuck once on the Ferris wheel at DCA. My wife and I were\nstuck with 3, 13-year-old boys for 2 hours. We joked around, got to know each\nother other, assigned the barf bags to those most likely to need them-- the\nsunwheel is 160ft tall. Never felt unsafe for even a moment.\n\nKnotts, just seems to call the fire department when something happens.\n\n------\njdswain\nTheres some simple economics in this. If visitor numbers are down 3%, and say\nprices are up 5% then total profit is also up, variable costs are down, and\nparks are less crowded so everyone has a better time.\n\n------\nap3\nWent last week, very disappointed by the new Star Wars attraction, essentially\na glorified video game - I’ll be skipping Star Wars land next time\n\n------\nyding\nSurprise! The laws of economics still apply to you, even if you're a company\nwith a great brand like Disney and Apple.\n\n------\ncylinder\nOr more like, the USD is extremely overvalued right now. In addition, the US\nmakes travel to the US extremely risky and difficult, even for visa waiver\neligible applicants. Many people are starting to not bother.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLiterate Commits (2016) - pcorey\nhttp://www.petecorey.com/blog/2016/07/11/literate-commits/\n======\nsimonw\nI went through a phase a few years ago of writing ESSAYS in my commit\nmessages, on the basis that they were the only form of documentation which I\ntrusted to stay 100% synchronized with the code.\n\nEventually I realized that there's a better way to do this: keep your\ndocumentation in the same repo as your code, and construct commits that update\nthe documentation AND the tests AND the code all in the same unit. Now your\ncommit message can be much shorter, but you still guarantee that the\ndocumentation is exactly aligned with the code that it talks about.\n\nIt also means you can add unit tests that check that code is covered by your\ndocumentation! [https://simonwillison.net/2018/Jul/28/documentation-unit-\ntes...](https://simonwillison.net/2018/Jul/28/documentation-unit-tests/)\n\n~~~\nlytedev\nJust to bring up a neat point, this doesn't guarantee that the documentation\nand the code are the same, as you could change code without updating\ndocumentation.\n\nA very slick way of enforcing this that I've seen is having actual unit tests\nin your documentation (and of course a CI tool to enforce that tests pass).\nThis is something that I think is extremely cool about Elixir! It forces you\nto think about testing, documentation (with ACTUAL examples!!), and the\nproblem you're solving all at once. It's a very neat concept.\n\n[https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/mix-otp/docs-\ntests-a...](https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/mix-otp/docs-tests-and-\nwith.html#doctests)\n\n~~~\nsambal\nPython and Rust go the “documentation test” route as well.\n\nGo goes the opposite direction with “testable examples” that are written\nalongside test code and added to generated documentation.\n\n[https://docs.python.org/2/library/doctest.html](https://docs.python.org/2/library/doctest.html)\n\n[https://doc.rust-lang.org/rustdoc/documentation-tests.html](https://doc.rust-\nlang.org/rustdoc/documentation-tests.html)\n\n[https://golang.org/pkg/testing/#hdr-\nExamples](https://golang.org/pkg/testing/#hdr-Examples)\n\n------\nmannykannot\nOne of the biggest difficulties in understanding a code base is in identifying\nthe implicit contracts and constraints that exist between the various parts.\nEach time a feature is added, a fix is made, or some aspect is refactored,\nsome information about the set of things involved in the implementation of\nthat aspect is revealed. If your commits are usually each about one thing\nonly, and their comments simply allow you to identify all the commits needed\nfor a given change, you have already gone a long way towards making that\ninformation useful - it's the single-responsibility principle applied in a\ndifferent area.\n\n------\nshadowfiend\nI poked at this concept myself with a short-lived old side project called\nsophocles:\n[https://github.com/Shadowfiend/sophocles](https://github.com/Shadowfiend/sophocles)\n. At the time I was experimenting with displaying the diff and the commit\nmessage side-by-side, as well.\n\nThis post says:\n\n> I’m not advocating using literary commits in real-world software\n\nBut I think variations of the underlying thinking are very important for real-\nworld software, even if it's not the exact same thing. Brain dumped this\naround the time I was working on sophocles at\n[http://shadowfiend.posthaven.com/using-commit-messages-\nfor-d...](http://shadowfiend.posthaven.com/using-commit-messages-for-\ndocumentation) , and it's still a core part of how I develop software and how\nI want the teams around me to as well.\n\n------\ntobr\nThis seems very sensible, and completely at odds with the common “best\npractice” of keeping commit messages short. I find that the best way to\nunderstand why a piece of code is the way it is is not through comments in the\ncode, but by looking at history and commit messages. They are comments where\nit’s completely clear what code they describe, even if it’s spread out across\nthe code base, and even if the code has since been changed to the point where\nthe comment is no longer applicable.\n\n~~~\nUK-AL\nCommit titles should be short.\n\nCommit messages are often small essays. Especially in the Linux kernel\n\n~~~\ngunnihinn\nYeah. I’ve never been unhappy with reading a long commit message.\n\n------\nJoelMcCracken\nI've thought about this a good bit independently, and I want to be able to do\na few things:\n\n\\- Add line-change/diff-specific commentary. This needs to be within the\ncontext of a larger commentary/set of changes, as usually the changes are not\nindependent, and in fact relate to simultaneous constraints which inform your\nchosen solution.\n\n\\- Add some structure to a list of commits in a branch. I'd like a hierarchy,\nin fact. I've thought about trying to emulate this by making sub branches and\nthen merging them into a parent branch, but it seemed like it would be a big\npain.\n\nAnyway, I've love to see some software that could help with this!\n\n------\njostylr\nI wonder if the Peter Norvig comment mentioned in that article about the\ndifferent pathways is what led to my idea of stepping past literate-\nprogramming and into a concept I call pieceful-programming; I had just had\nback surgery when I read the John Cook article and perhaps it filtered deep in\nthe subconscious.\n\nWhile I am still working on my pieceful implementation, the hope is to very\nmuch elevate the role of the pieces and ideally generate graphs relating to\nall the pieces that might have code, tests, various documentations related to\nthe pieces, all being woven into their separate compilation targets.\n\n------\nstinos\nSort of an interesting idea, and I wholehartedly agree with\n\n _ensuring that each and every commit serves a singular purpose and adds to\nthe narrative history of the project has done wonders to reduce thrash and the\nintroduction of “stupid mistakes”._\n\n _Read in chronological order, these commits should paint a clear picture of\nhow and why this particular code came into existence and how it has changed\nover the course of its life._\n\nI'm not sure if this is particular to 'literate', to me it sounds more like\ncommon sense, but yes: that is how I like commit history.\n\nThe example [https://github.com/pcorey/delete-occurrences-of-an-\nelement-i...](https://github.com/pcorey/delete-occurrences-of-an-element-if-\nit-occurs-more-than-n-times/commits/master), even though the OP mentions it's\na toy, illustrates this pretty well. Without knowing much about the code you\ncan just read the commit messages and even though the style of the text is a\nbit too fuzzy for my liking at times (i.e. lots of words just to form nice\nprhases to make points which could be made with shorter and more to-the point\nsentences) there is a much larger problem (imo): the first line of each commit\nmakes no sense whatsoever wrt what actually changed in the code. This makes it\nimpossible to at first sight (in git user interfaces which use the first line\nin their commit lists, i.e. the vast majority I think) find out what is\nhappening and what a particular commit does. If that is an articfact of\nliterate commits, then sorry but that is just not very good. Here's an\nexcerpt:\n\n    \n    \n        # Getting Real\n        # Forging Ahead\n        # Keep it Simple\n        # Our First Test\n        # Take What We're Given\n        # Laying the Groundwork\n    \n\nSuppose you come back to this knowing you changed something in a recent commit\nand want to look it up. My strategy is then usually to just glance over the\nhistory for a few seconds to see if I can immediately find the commit I'm\nlooking for before starting an actual search. Works very, very often. Not so\nmuch in this case. Compared to what I'm looking at right now in a repository\nof a team I work with:\n\n    \n    \n        converters: Fix nullable double getting converted into NaN\n        plot: Use assembly reference instead of project reference\n        plot: Update code style and formatting\n        network: Add functions for element acces to Python scripting API\n    \n\nThe body of the commit message then goes on describing more detail and usually\nalso _why_ the change was made. As such creating the narrative the OP talks\nabout. But with the added benefit that the message header provides pretty good\ninsight into what a commit does, hereby providing some kind of index to the\nbook being written, making it much easier to discover things.\n\n~~~\npcorey\nYeah, I agree that the subject of those commits are far from helpful or\ndescriptive. To be honest, they were written as cheeky subheaders for the\ngenerated example article, and don't even do a job there.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe algorithms that detect hate speech online are biased against black people - SeanBoocock\nhttps://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/15/20806384/social-media-hate-speech-bias-black-african-american-facebook-twitter\n======\nCausality1\nDisappointed to see there was no manual comparison of the automated results to\nthe actual statistics of the tweets. The article mentions several times that\nboth automated and manual tweet reviewing flagged more tweets from black\npeople as hate speech but there was no attempt to quantify exactly how much\nhate speech each group generated. Tweets by African-Americans were 1.5x as\nlikely to get flagged as offensive but, hypothetically, if it happened to be\nthe case that African-Americans were 1.5x as likely to engage in hate speech\nneither the researchers or article readers would know about it. Not that\nthat's the case, but do some due diligence.\n\n------\nrasz\nWouldnt the more correct title be \"African-Americans 1.5x as likely to use\nracial slurs\"?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: What do we do with an iPad app built on a recently shutdown Google API? - thegrossman\n\nMy coworker and I have spent the last few months building an iPad app on top of the Google News API, which has just yesterday been slated to shutdown: http://code.google.com/apis/newssearch/<p>We were motivated to create the app based on a lack of quality \"hard news\" sources (for lack of a better term) on the iPad. There is no shortage of \"social\" news apps such as Flipboard and Pulse, and there exist a slew of quality RSS readers (Reeder is indispensable to me). But I also crave conventional, un-sexy, non-web2.0 journalism; a simple reporting of the news of the day.<p>I used to spend obscene chunks of my day parked on CNN.com, click the refresh button incessantly... before the quality of their reporting diminished. And while there are iPad apps for individual news outlets (the NY Times, CNN, etc all have their own apps), the great thing about Google News is the fact that they aggregate content from news outlets around the word, from the Times to Al Jazeera to my tiny local newspaper.<p>Google News doesn't have a spectacular web interface, especially when accessed on the iPad. We thought we could do better... and purely for our own use (at first), we built an app on top of their API. At this point it's 80% completed; here are some screenshots:<p>https://s3.amazonaws.com/jackadam_broadsheet/broadsheet.jpg<p>Now that the API is being shut down, we have an app with no data source. What do we do? On top of spending all that development time seemingly for naught, we love using our app, and don't want to go back to the old way!<p>So we're making an appeal to the HN community, in search of creative ideas on how to proceed.<p>We haven't been able to find any great news API alternatives. Yahoo News recently shut down their news API, and the Bing news search is missing a couple critical features. But maybe there are others?<p>[Also: I'd like to keep the conversation pragmatic and avoid the (perfectly valid) question of whether it's wise to build an app entirely reliant on some third party's good graces.]\n======\nmaresca\n_We haven't been able to find any great news API alternatives._\n\n _avoid the (perfectly valid) question of whether it's wise to build an app\nentirely reliant on some third party's good graces._\n\nIn my opinion, it isn't wise to build an app entirely reliant on a 3rd party\nAPI. Looking for a new API to migrate to says you haven't learned from the\nmistake you made. I've made the same mistake with an attempt at a SMS to\nSocial Message tunnel on facebook/myspace back in the day. Then facebook made\nit a native feature. It was an important lesson to learn.\n\nIf I were you guys, I'd stop looking for APIs and start building your own\nbackend. This way, you can pull in more than one source of data. Also remember\nthat there are other ways of getting data.\n\n------\nNonEUCitizen\nBuild your own backend so you can declare independence.\n\n~~~\nMatthewPhillips\nI think building your own backend before you have funding when a simple API is\navailable is a pretty bad idea. You don't know if your site/app will ever hit\ncritical mass, why waste the time and money in building an elaborate backend\nsystem when you can develop that down the road when/if you have something\nworthwhile on your hands.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSlack S-1 - bardworx\nhttps://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1764925/000162828019004786/slacks-1.htm\n======\nneom\n\"Our revenue was $105.2 million, $220.5 million, and $400.6 million in fiscal\nyears 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively, representing annual growth of 110%\nand 82%, respectively.\n\nOur growth is global with international revenue representing 34%, 34%, and 36%\nof total revenue in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively.\n\nWe continue to invest in growing our business to capitalize on our market\nopportunity. As a result, we incurred net losses of $146.9 million, $140.1\nmillion, and $138.9 million in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019,\nrespectively.\n\nOur net losses have been decreasing as a percentage of revenue over time as\nrevenue growth has outpaced the growth in operating expenses.\"\n\nNice work!\n\n~~~\nwill_brown\nIs there any other industry where a company can go public having lost\n$500,000,000 over the last 3 years?\n\nI get it their “market share” is increasing every year and the loses are\nstaying the same...and even that is not the full picture of a path to profit.\n\nBut if the company could turn a profit, then why not do it privately, show\nthat and then go public? My guess like Uber and Lyft...they can’t turn a\nprofit, and for any hope to turn profit they need this continual growth at a\nloss, and at some point the investors dump the bag on the public getting a\nreturn in a bubble they created and let the public fund the losses.\n\nI think to balance the playing field with VC and private investment, companies\nshouldn’t be able to IPO with loses.\n\n~~~\ntoasterlovin\nSlack has a huge opportunity in front of them (become the messaging platform\nfor every business that exists). They’re investing a lot of money to acquire\nall of that business (salespeople, travel, etc.). That is literally one of the\nmain purposes of capital and access to capital is why you would take a company\npublic.\n\nAnd, specifically re: Slack. Unlike, say, Uber or Lyft, Slack has customers\nwho have demonstrated that they are willing to pay what the service actually\ncosts. The ride-sharing companies have not. The entire investment thesis for\nthem is that they will somehow be able to increase prices at some point in the\nfuture, but they don’t actually have any indication that this is true. And I\nagree that they are most likely a bad investment. Slack, on the other hand,\nhas a huge and rapidly growing book of extremely sticky business. To turn on\nprofitability, they turn off their expenditure on sales people. They’re very\ndifferent models.\n\n~~~\nlispm\n> Slack has a huge opportunity in front of them (become the messaging platform\n> for every business that exists).\n\nHow about: being bought by Microsoft.\n\n~~~\ndylanmclark\nI don't think Microsoft would buy Slack given the money they've dumped into\ndeveloping and promoting Teams. Seems they're too far gone at this point.\n\nDisclosure: Work at MSFT, not on Teams.\n\n~~~\ndredmorbius\nWhatsApp.\n\nMicrosoft would buy to prevent someone else from doing so.\n\nThough its hold has weakened greatly, the Outlook, Exchange, and AD behemoth\nstill own enterprise communications.\n\n~~~\nirishcoffee\nI was under the impression Facebook owned WhatsApp...?\n\n~~~\ndredmorbius\nWhy they own it, and what they paid to do so, is the point.\n\n------\nrobhunter\nI think historical accounting practices and standards are not great at\nevaluating SaaS businesses.\n\nWe came up with the concept of depreciation/amortization as a way to better\nmatch up expenses with revenues in a given time frame.\n\nI think we need a similar mechanism for allocating sales & marketing costs.\n\nMy company spends about $1,000/year on Slack. We likely will in perpetuity, as\nlong as we/Slack exists.\n\nSlack spent marketing/CAC dollars on us all the way back in 2014 to acquire\nour LTV stream of cash flows.\n\nIf you \"depreciated\" Slack's sales and marketing costs ($104M, $140M, $223M)\nover the LTV of the average customer, they would show massive profitability\nalready, and even greater profitability in the future.\n\nWe do this already with depreciation - why not with sales and marketing for\nrecurring revenue software companies?\n\n~~~\nfloatrock\n> If you \"depreciated\" Slack's sales and marketing costs over the LTV of the\n> average customer...\n\nThis is starting to sound very similar to mark-to-market accounting, and the\none word associated with \"mark-to-market\" is \"Enron\".\n\nFrom [http://www.creditpulse.com/accountingfinance/lessons-\nenron/e...](http://www.creditpulse.com/accountingfinance/lessons-enron/enron-\nlesson-no-1-mark-market-fair-value-accounting)\n\n> Basically, mark-to-market is a type of accounting that enables a company to\n> book the value of an asset or a liability, not based on the cost of that\n> asset, but based on current market valuations or perceived changes in market\n> valuations.\n\nWhat got Enron started down the path to ruin is the SEC granted them a waiver\nwhere they could start pricing their projects by their perceived value.\nProblem was, the perceived value was anything that Enron said it was. So that\nlet Enron inflate their holdings, which gave them access to more capital,\nwhich let them keep on inflating their holdings until the whole thing came\ncrashing down.\n\nOf course, the asset values weren't _just_ what Enron said they were. They had\nauditors backing up their claims. One of the Big 5 financial auditors. And as\na result, Arthur Anderson also went down in flames along with Enron.\n\nSo, in your case, who decides what the LTV of customer cash flows is? The\nEnron lesson is let speculators use their hunches to guess the future, but\nkeep that speculation out of the official accounting documents.\n\n~~~\nrobhunter\nWell, just like there are objective levels of depreciation for certain classes\nof assets (property vs. equipment), perhaps there could be similar levels of\ndepreciation allowable for sales & marketing costs based on historic customer\nchurn?\n\n~~~\nfjp\nThe property and equipment depreciation rates are codified in US tax law.\n\n------\ndouglasfshearer\nSlack has a 5-year, $50M/year minimum commitment with AWS.\n\nFrom the document:\n\n> In April 2018, the Company executed an amendment to its existing agreement\n> with Amazon Web Services (“AWS”). The amended agreement was effective as of\n> May 1, 2018 and continues through July 31, 2023. The Company has minimum\n> annual commitments of $50.0 million each year of the agreement term for a\n> total minimum commitment of $250.0 million. As of January 31, 2019, the\n> Company had a remaining minimum payment obligation of $212.5 million to AWS\n> through July 31, 2023.\n\n~~~\nmoreira\nPerhaps I'm just not aware how things work in companies of Slack's size,\nbut... what do you think $4M/mo is spent on, for what essentially amounts to a\nchat app?\n\nI realise there a lot of extras in Slack (attachments cost S3 storage, video\ncalls take bandwidth, webhooks take some processing), but as of January 2019,\nthey had 10M daily active users. $50M/365 gives us $137K per day. $137K per\nday just to serve 10M active users? That's nearly $14 per day (over $400 per\nmonth!), for just 1000 users using a simple chat app.\n\nThis is not including any staff, development, nothing. Literally just hosting\ncosts, which should already be deeply discounted given the amounts and\nagreements involved. That seems... excessive?\n\nEdit: It's worth noting that $50M is the -minimum- commitment they have to\nAWS. One can assume the actual bill is higher.\n\n~~~\nraldi\nYou say \"chat app\" like that means it's easy.\n\nHow is running a chat app any easier than, say, running Facebook?\n\n~~~\npuranjay\nMy pet peeve with HN. People here boil everything down to a trivial\nengineering problem. That Slack is \"just a chat app\" is grossly underselling\nall the other parts of the business - sales, marketing, design, product - that\nmakes it tick.\n\n~~~\nraldi\nThe app itself is non-trivial, too. The scale is astounding.\n\n------\njscheel\n• We have a limited operating history, which makes it difficult to forecast\nour revenue and evaluate our business and future prospects.\n\n• We have a history of net losses, we anticipate increasing operating expenses\nin the future, and we may not be able to achieve and, if achieved, maintain\nprofitability.\n\n• We have experienced rapid growth in recent periods and our recent growth\nrates may not be indicative of our future growth.\n\n\\---\n\nFeel like this is essentially copypasta for tech IPOs now. Still, congrats to\nthem, their revenue growth is pretty dang impressive.\n\n~~~\nchimeracoder\n> Feel like this is essentially copypasta for tech IPOs now.\n\nIt literally is; the SEC requires companies to state that unless they have an\nestablished track record of profitability (which most tech IPOs do not).\n\n------\namrrs\nLyft, Uber, Zoom, Beyond Meat and now, Slack\n\nIs there any benefit of Public at this point of time? or Just a trend to grab\nas much as Wallet share from the average investor?\n\n~~~\nfratlas\nI've been seeing a lot of calls about this incoming downturn (especially HN),\ndoes anyone have any articles/analysis they can point me to? Would love to\nread up on the state of it.\n\n~~~\nraldi\nSure, here's a 2009 HN thread all about the impending market crash:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=712198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=712198)\n\nAnd one from 2011:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2868728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2868728)\n\nAnd here's one from 2012:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3947923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3947923)\n\nHere's one from 2014:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8338411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8338411)\n\nAnd here's one from 2016:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12218583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12218583)\n\n~~~\nAndrex\nThe boy who cried wolf did end up being right about the wolf, just not the\ntiming. :(\n\n------\ncozzyd\nMemory usage seems to mirror their revenue as well!\n\nI like slack, we use it on all the experiments I work on, but I'm seriously\nconsidering upgrading my workstation for the privilege of not restarting my\nslack tabs every day or so...\n\n~~~\nyour-nanny\nyou might consider Mattermost instead, if in research setting. It has better\nsupport, imo, for researcher use cases, and you can host yourself.\n\n~~~\ncozzyd\nand herein lies Slack's moat... it's just too much of a hassle to switch!\n\n------\njasongill\nCongratulations to the Slack team; a great product that has generally become\nbetter over time. Let's hope that going public doesn't change them too much\n(although things like the new logo debacle don't inspire confidence at times)\n\n~~~\narkitaip\nI think we're already seeing a backlash against the always multitasking, loss\nof focus culture that Slack has become the poster child for in the SASS space.\nJust like Facebook or Twitter, Slack is engineered for constant dopamine-\nfueled engagement, which quickly turns it into a bad and ultimately\nunproductive habit for companies that use it. I am already seeing competitors\nlike Level use Slack as a warning example and I think this is just the start\nof Slack's problems.\n\n~~~\nsnypox\nWeird opinion. I only know 1 colleague of mine who gets distracted by chat.\nFor me, and for most people an efficient team collaboration tool (Slack) is a\ngame changer though.\n\n~~~\narkitaip\nMaybe you haven't been following the news but this is a real concerns and\nthere have been several tech companies that have even moves away from Slack.\n\n------\nLandR\nI'm staggered that there are 575 companies paying slack $100k / year.\n\nI don't even have anything against slack but what is possibly worth $100k a\nyear from a comms software?\n\n~~~\nLeonM\nIf you run a company with 1000 employees, that just $100 per seat, that's not\nthat bad. Telephony is usually quite a lot more expensive than that.\n\n~~~\nmritchie712\nAnd you can make phone calls in Slack. The call quality and experience is\npretty solid too.\n\n~~~\njzymbaluk\nBetter than Skype for Business in my experience. It can even do video calls\nand screen sharing with the pro version\n\n------\nsinatra\nGreat product! Still don’t know why they don’t give the user the option of\ndisabling threaded conversations for self or for entire organization. People\nhave been asking for it for years. Ref:\n[https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/822064778269102080?lang=e...](https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/822064778269102080?lang=en)\n\nAt least allow me as an individual user to see all messages sequentially\nwithout any threads. I am willing to do mental context switches. I prefer\ndoing that to losing messages in old threads.\n\n~~~\njfoster\nI think threaded conversations become more important as an organisation's\nchannels become increasingly noisy. Threaded conversations can partly\nalleviate that.\n\nThey probably want to prevent organisations from disabling a feature that may\nassist with their scaling on slack.\n\n~~~\nsinatra\nThe problem is that threads lead to missed messages. That’s a bigger problem\nthan potential of noise. At least allow a user to decide if they want to see\nmessages in threads or not.\n\n~~~\nnp_tedious\nThreaded messages arguably allow for less fragmentation into other channels /\nDMs, and they have the checkbox for a particularly important message to be\nsent to both the thread and main convo.\n\nI'm a thread fan from the start, and I've observed many who were initially\nskeptical start using them heavily\n\n------\npengstrom\nI've been thinking about venture funding and how companies do not turn a\nprofit while growing.\n\nWouldn't using funding to sell a service/product under the market value be\nconsidered anti-competitive? I mean the businesses without funding would have\nto price their services high enough to turn a profit, while venture-backed\nbusinesses do not.\n\nAre there not chat services that would have thrived if Slack did not offer one\nfor free/relatively cheaply? What happens when Slack wants to increase prices,\nbut the market competitors have diminished in the meantime?\n\n~~~\nkortilla\nNo, being competitive and pushing down prices for consumers is not viewed as\nbeing anti-competitive.\n\nWhether a company makes money or not is its own problem. VC vs bank loan vs\nbootstrap is the same. Build a working product that brings in enough money to\nprofit before you run out of cash. It’s basically how every business started.\n\n~~~\nvlovich123\nPredatory pricing is generally considered illegal. The US happens to hold a\npretty skeptical view on the matter. The better truth is that startups/new\nbusinesses are just too small & by the time they get big their prices\ntypically have adjusted to not be flooding the market (i.e. too late).\n\n------\nbluetidepro\nI don't understand a ton about these documents, but I do always enjoy reading\nthe \"RISK FACTORS\" that they have to include. Here is the link to them on\nhere:\n[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1764925/000162828019...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1764925/000162828019004786/slacks-1.htm#sB72CD04E04ECEA6B3EA2567D8ACADBFF)\n\n~~~\ncocochanel\n> We have a history of net losses, we anticipate increasing operating expenses\n> in the future, and we may not be able to achieve and, if achieved, maintain\n> profitability.\n\nWell, that doesn't sound too good.\n\n~~~\nrwc\nObligatory “this is literally boilerplate language used in every S-1 filing”\ncomment.\n\n~~~\nbtown\nObligatory “this may be boilerplate nowadays, but there is nothing traditional\nabout unprofitable companies making public offerings” comment.\n\nEdit: I stand corrected. [https://www.wsj.com/articles/red-ink-floods-ipo-\nmarket-15383...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/red-ink-floods-ipo-\nmarket-1538388000) provides historical context that this is not a new\nphenomenon, though it is more common than ever.\n\n~~~\nicebraining\nThey are already profitable. They're just warning it's possible they might\nbecome unprofitable. Just like any other company.\n\n~~~\npwinnski\nNo, they're not already profitable. From the document on which we're\ncommenting:\n\n\"...we incurred net losses of $146.9 million, $140.1 million, and $138.9\nmillion in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively.\"\n\n~~~\nicebraining\nMy bad, I misread another post.\n\n------\nhendzen\nthe most interesting thing in this S1 is that Slack has a dual-class\nsupervoting share structure but has a sunset provision after which the class B\nshares convert to class A and all have the same voting power.\n\n------\nvital101\nZero to IPO in five years. Well done team Slack!\n\n~~~\nharryh\nSlack was founded in 2009. That was 10 years ago not five.\n\n~~~\nomarchowdhury\nSlack the product was launched in 2013. The company, formally known as Tiny\nSpeck, was founded in 2009. Their business and available products before 2013\nhad nothing with what Slack is today. So not absolutely farfetched to say\nlaunch to IPO in 5-6 years, if we're defining it by the relevant incarnation.\n\n------\nbparsons\nThe wave of IPOs this month is incredible.\n\nIt could either drive the bull market for another 18 months, or create the\nappearance of a panic by private investors looking to finally pull the chute\nbefore they hit the ground.\n\n------\nus0r\nAnother whale for Amazon:\n\n>In April 2018, the Company executed an amendment to its existing agreement\nwith Amazon Web Services (“AWS”). The amended agreement was effective as of\nMay 1, 2018 and continues through July 31, 2023. The Company has minimum\nannual commitments of $50.0 million each year of the agreement term for a\ntotal minimum commitment of $250.0 million. As of January 31, 2019, the\nCompany had a remaining minimum payment obligation of $212.5 million to AWS\nthrough July 31, 2023.\n\n------\npcprincipal\n> In September 2018, the Company completed its acquisition of all issued and\n> outstanding shares of Astro Technology Inc. (“Astro”), a pre-revenue start-\n> up company that provides artificial-intelligence (AI) enhanced\n> communications solutions, for a total purchase price of $43.3 million in\n> cash.\n\nAnyone care to explain how a pre-revenue company can be valued at $43mm? I\nknow the argument can be made Google paid much more for Deepmind, but Google's\nmarket cap is 51x more than Slack's on the secondary market right now.\n\n------\nolivermarks\nThe cynical perspective is that direct listing rather than an IPO lets large\nholders get out faster after the stock begins trading, which suggests a lyft\nstyle pop and deflation\n\n------\neconner\n> None of our stockholders are party to any contractual lock-up agreement or\n> other contractual restrictions on transfer. Following our listing, sales of\n> substantial amounts of our Class A common stock in the public markets or the\n> perception that sales might occur, could cause the market price of our Class\n> A common stock to decline.\n\nDirect listing!\n\n------\ndzonga\nWhat I don't understand is how, a messaging service losses 100mil. Their\ncompetitor's like DHH's Basecamp are printing money, so how would they lose\nmoney. Cutthroat competition overall with offering like MS Teams, FB Workplace\nn Whatever Google has or will kill.\n\n------\nadamw2k\nSurprised at Sales and Marketing expense given the low number of Enterprise\n(>$100k) contracts. Wonder what's baked in there beyond AE compensation? I\ndon't see a whole lot of traditional advertising, but maybe it's out there?\n\n~~~\ncosmie\nThey're doing quite a bit of TV advertising[1]. Production and flighting costs\non commercials, at a global scale, isn't going to come cheaply.\n\n[1]\n[https://www.ispot.tv/brands/Zyh/slack/](https://www.ispot.tv/brands/Zyh/slack/)\n\n~~~\nGordonS\nI wonder how effective TV advertising would really be for something relevant\nto such a small proportion of the population.\n\n~~~\ncosmie\nBased on the commercial contents, they're targeting pretty much any white-\ncollar employees. So the target population isn't as small as it appears at\nfirst glance.\n\nTheir operating model also leads to a pretty unique way of internal adoption.\nAt my last company (a smaller one), we had a paid Slack account and it was our\nofficial means of internal communication.\n\nAt my current company, a large Fortune 100 company, email is still the\npredominant form of internal communications. With Skype and Teams available,\nbut with a frustrating enough user experience that everyone falls back to\nemail. But there are a lot of pockets that unofficially use Slack, with some\nusing the paid form (and expensing it under their budget) and others using\nfree ones. Our central IT is finally giving in looking at getting an official\nsubscription to centralize usage under a single Slack account (for\nauditability, information security, employee attrition concerns, and ease of\nuser support).\n\nBy targeting end users directly in those commercials and enabling internal\nadoption without interfacing with IT (i.e. free accounts, web app for those\nthat can't install desktop apps, etc), they're able to gain adoption and\nmomentum in a guerrilla fashion that snowballs into eventual enterprise\ncontracts.\n\n------\nmrnobody_67\nChamath personally owns more of Slack than the founder/CEO....\n\n~~~\nomarchowdhury\nNot personally. According to the attached footnote (15): _consists of shares\nheld by the entities affiliated with Social Capital,_ it seems the principal's\nname is identified in lieu of the firm as they are the custodian in charge.\n\n------\ncodedokode\nTheir app has compicated and clumsy UI that looks like it was made by\nprogrammers rather than by a designer and very high memory usage. Here is an\nexample of memory usage from a small team with little volume of messages,\nreported by smem on Linux:\n\n\\- 5 processes\n\n\\- over 850M in swap\n\n\\- over 310M PSS (Proportional set size which is the only indicator showing\ntrue memory usage)\n\nThis is over 1 Gb total. Despite high memory usage, they don't provide 32-bit\nversion for Linux. It is surprising how such product can become profitable.\n\n~~~\nKovah\nProbably because those people who use the app most do not care about memory\nusage. Everytime somebody complains about how resource-hungry Slack is, it\nusually comes from a developer. I rarely see project managers or designers or\neven clients complain. And, looking at the company I work for, the developers\nchannel is the one with the lowest usage. This is why Slack became successful:\nit works for the people who need it most, not because it is very resource-\nefficient or well coded.\n\n------\nidlewords\nI understand why \"VC subsidized taxi rides\" runs at a loss, but how on earth\ndoes Slack lose money?\n\n~~~\nrockostrich\nTrying to grow as fast as possible. As others have pointed out, they could\nstop spending as much as they do right now to grow the company (employees as\nwell as customers) and probably be profitable. That's not to say that this IPO\nisn't a cash grab by investors though.\n\n------\njonnycomputer\nCould someone briefly explain the significance of this filing.?\n\n~~~\nMcDev\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_S-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_S-1)\n\n------\narnklint\nAre they even true to their mission statement?\n\n------\nfxfan\nDo traders track RAM firms using electron-primary-app-firms? Or use one to\nhedge against the other ;). Perhaps add Intel too in the mix somewhere!\n\n------\nHalluxfboy009\ntoo much to read, really\n\n------\nrobinaero\nDoes anyone else find the SEC disclosures format ugly? Might be time for them\nto adopt markdown\n\n~~~\nflazzarino\nTrump is on it, he has them working in shifts\n\n------\nwsdfsayy\nI remember at Uber we had tried Slack for a few months and it could not scale\nto that number of employees (at the time around 5000 worldwide)...\n\n~~~\nkemenaran\nDoesn’t Uber use Mattermost these days?\n\n[https://mattermost.com/blog/how-uber-uses-mattermost-to-\nenha...](https://mattermost.com/blog/how-uber-uses-mattermost-to-enhance-\nenterprise-wide-communications/)\n\n~~~\nwsdfsayy\nyes they have their own internal chat app now this was a few years ago\n\n------\nshereadsthenews\nAll that R&D but it’s still unreachable over IPv6.\n\n------\nyalogin\nSlack is a much better investment than Uber, lyft and Pinterest. Not sure why\ngoogle is not compettwith them yet. It’s proven that google cannot do consumer\nvery well but services they do very well. May be the corporation focused\nservice like slack is what they will excel at. Couple that with their other\nofferings it could work very well for them. Then again point being slack\ndoesn’t have the kind of red flags the other recent IPOs\n\n~~~\npaxys\nGoogle is competing (or at least trying to) -\n[https://gsuite.google.com/products/chat/](https://gsuite.google.com/products/chat/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Does anyone actually use /newcomments? - kaishiro\nJust curious - I&#x27;ve been banging around HN for a while and have never really understood &#x2F;newcomments. Was there orignally a driving idea around this? I&#x27;ve never really seen the concept of a contextless stream of comments before. I don&#x27;t even dislike it - just a curiosity.\n======\nniftich\nI use it very often.\n\nTo me, it's especially useful at lower-traffic times to gauge which threads\nare getting attention. At high-traffic times, it's utility is somewhat\ndiminished by presenting an almost-entirely new set of comments every time you\nclick it.\n\n------\nDanBC\nI mostly use /newcomments.\n\nYou get to see which articles have interesting discussion.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Do you stretch before coding? - nerdfiles\n\nFollowing http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html I have always wondered by there exists stigma/myth/folk-theory surrounding \"popping\" one's knuckles, or more generally, engaging in Asperger-esque self-stimulatory behavior (stressed finger-flipping, simply stretching fingers, rhythmic finger counting, talking out loud to one's self ((vocal stimming)), toe-walking). At the same time, I find that I cannot apprehend my hands and the rest of my body for use of vim/bash/coding/etc. unless I stretch well. (Coding, for me, is a full body experience, where music is also by and large essential.)<p>Holding a proper posture seems to, as a \"low-cost body hack\" strengthen the fluidity of thought. At various points throughout the day I notice that when I accidentally in engage in self-stimulatory behavior, either for need to reach a raised item on a shelf, before playing an instrument, even curiouser listening to noise music, and on, \"sharpening my tongue\" (guided vocal stimming: re-enacting preferred comedians), I find that various modes of thought are more  readily accessible.\n======\nxackpot\nI don't stretch before coding per se, because I am usually standing while\ncoding, so I am already alert. but I do stretches in between coding sessions,\nlike may be every 20-30 minutes. My wife is a physical therapist and I usually\nfollow most of her advise to keep myself energized throughout a marathon of\ncoding.\n\n------\ncodeonfire\nUsually if its something I'm not excited about coding I warm up with a sudoku.\nOther than that I sit down and immediately start working without a thought.\n\n------\nproject23\nNope.\n\n------\nmansigandhi\nNo.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Who Is Hiring? (June 2012) - whoishiring\n\n\tPlease lead with the location of the position and include the keywords INTERN, REMOTE, or H1B if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. Feel free to post any job that may interest HN readers from executive assistant to machine learning expert to CTO.<p>Please also see: \"Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?\" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4053078\n======\navar\nAmsterdam, The Netherlands. H1B[1]\n\nBooking.com is always on the lookout for good developers, DBA's and sysadmins\non-site in the center of Amsterdam. I'm a developer there currently working on\nsearch and relocated over there about a year and a half ago, and have been\nvery happy with it.\n\nWe have people from all over the world relocating to work with us and are very\nwell set up to handle relocation and visa issues, most of the people working\nin IT are expats so we've got a lot of experience with bringing people in.\n\nIt's a rapidly growing company that represents the biggest chunk of the\nPriceline (PCLN) group of companies where problems that look relatively\nmundane on paper become much more interesting due to the scale and growth\nlevels we're operating at.\n\nWe use Perl for almost everything with a MySQL backend and Git for\ndevelopment. We get our changes out really fast, it's rare for your code not\nto be on our live systems within hours of you pushing it. We're also very open\nto open sourcing code that doesn't contain any business logic, I've personally\nbeen involved in open sourcing a few of our internal tools, including\n<https://github.com/git-deploy> and a few CPAN modules.\n\nWe have a relatively flat hierarchy with minimum levels of bureaucracy since\nwe're very data driven and have a clear goal: helping our customers.\nEverything we do is aimed at solving problems for our customers, if it doesn't\nhelp our customers we're not interested in doing it.\n\nYou don't have to know Perl in advance to be a developer there. We've hired\npeople who've done C, Java etc. before. The sort of people we'd like to hire\nare good technically, excellent at communication, and can acquire a good sense\nof how they fit into the big picture.\n\nI'd be happy to answer any questions at avarab@gmail.com and/or forward your\nresume, I've posted in a similar thread here a couple of times before and have\nalready helped get one person hired, many others have had or are having\ninterviews, and I've fielded a bunch of questions from would-be applicants.\n<http://booking.com/jobs> also has some good information.\n\n1\\. Well, not H1B, but we'll take care of the Dutch equivalent.\n\n------\nhurdleress\nSan Francisco Bay Area (South SF, CA); Counsyl is Hiring Engineers (H1B and\nothers welcome to apply)\n\nApply online: <http://bit.ly/Counsyl_Engineering_HN>\n\n_About Counsyl_\n\nOver the last few years, we've grown from a dorm room startup to become one of\nthe largest clinical genome centers in the world. Our pre-pregnancy genomic\ntest is now prescribed by physicians for more than 1% of all births in the\nUnited States.\n\nAs you might imagine, handling this kind of volume puts us in terra incognita.\nOur situation is similar to the one faced by Amazon in the 90s, before anyone\nknew how to scale an operation with such highly interconnected physical and\ninformational components.\n\nTo solve the problems associated with scaling the medical genome, we hire\ngeneralists rather than specialists. Our engineers are pragmatists who know\nwhen to use machine learning and when to use a simple regex, and understand in\nwhat sense those approaches are at different ends of a continuum. Many did not\nhave a bioinformatics background before they joined, but all had strong\nfundamentals in data structures and algorithms.\n\nExperience in general means little to us as genomics is a young field; working\ncode means quite a lot more. If this sounds like your kind of company, we\ninvite you to apply.\n\n _About you_\n\nYou should have a BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science (or equivalent) and\nsignificant independent programming experience as demonstrated by Github\naccount, personal web page, or prior employment.\n\nYou should also be a generalist, interested in rotating through the\nengineering team and working in one or more of these areas:\n\n\\- Genomics: design, validate, and optimize clinical genomic assays for rare\nMendelian variants\n\n\\- Machine Learning and Data Science: extract meaning out of one of the\nlargest clinical genomic datasets in the world\n\n\\- Robotics: automate and scale our backend to do more clinical sequencing and\ngenotyping than anyone has ever done before\n\n\\- UI/UX: design the first widely adopted user interface for the medical\ngenome\n\n\\- Clinical Integration: solve the wide variety of practical issues associated\nwith translating genomics into a clinical context\n\n\\- Infrastructure: build and deploy the hardware and software systems that\nsupport secure, large-scale computations on genomic datasets\n\nFrom a skills perspective, you should have familiarity with several of the\nfollowing technologies. We obviously don’t expect you to know everything on\nthe list, but you should be nodding to yourself by the end of it.\n\n\\- Python: Django, Numpy, Scipy, Cython\n\n\\- HTML/CSS/JS: Coffeescript, Backbone.js, Twitter Bootstrap 2, HTML5 APIs,\nChrome Web Inspector\n\n\\- C++: STL, gcc/g++, Boost, C++11\n\n\\- Functional Programming: Haskell, underscore.js, functional reactive\nprogramming\n\n\\- Data Science and Visualization: GNU GSL, CUDA, Netlib/LAPACK, graphviz, R,\nMatlab, Matplotlib, Numerical Recipes\n\n\\- DevOps/System Administration: Amazon Web Services, Puppet, nginx, nagios,\nApache, Fabric\n\n\\- APIs: REST, JSON, SOA, and all that jazz\n\n\\- Biological Databases: NCBI, UCSC, 1000 Genomes, Hapmap, UK10K\n\n\\- Sequencing/Computational Biology: OLB, samtools/pysam, pygr,\ngalaxy/bxpython, kent utilities\n\n\\- Unix/Linux: bash/zsh, emacs/vim, git, GNU toolchain\n\n\\- PostgreSQL: psycopg2, hstore, replication\n\n\\- Security: skipfish, SSL, fuzz testing, preventing XSS & SQL injections\n\nAgain, please consider these guidelines, not absolutes. For example, if you\nknow Chef, we figure you can learn Puppet, and if you know Ruby, we figure you\ncan learn Python.\n\nIn general, you should enjoy taking care of the practical last mile problems\nneeded to actually achieve a societal ROI on the world's multibillion dollar\ninvestment in the Human Genome Project.\n\nWhat you'll do:\n\n\\- Move fast without breaking things :) \\- Start in the areas you're familiar\nwith, and grow to work on the full stack \\- Work closely with a small, tight-\nknit team \\- Develop algorithms and code for all aspects of clinical genomics,\nfrom machine learning to supply chain optimization to insurance billing \\-\nQuite literally save lives with your keyboard\n\nWhat you'll get:\n\n\\- Competitive compensation and start-up equity package \\- Excellent health\ninsurance \\- Catered meals every day plus a fully stocked fridge \\- Gym access\nto work it off \\- MacBook Pro, 30\" monitor, iPad, iPhone, and all the gadgets\nyou need\n\nApply online: <http://bit.ly/Counsyl_Engineering_HN>\n\n------\ndrags\nSF - Rails - HALF-TIME-ISH :)\n\nI've mentioned before that we have a couple of engineers who work half-time-\nish (and do their own things the rest of the time) and it got some positive\nfeedback: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3850480>\n\nWe're ready to hire a couple more in this vein, so if it sounds interesting\nlet me know!\n\n=========\n\n _Advantages for you:_\n\n\\- you get 2-3 extra weekend days for fun and profit\n\n\\- we provide health insurance and all that jazz\n\n\\- if some weeks you don't have lots to do and want to work more, and other\nweeks you have lots to do and want to work less, we can be flexible\n\n\\- we're profitable and growing! so if you decide \"wow I really love Verba and\nwant to spend every waking moment there\" we can make that dream come true\n\n _Advantages for us:_\n\n\\- you have more time to learn new things, meet new people and generally be a\nfriendlier, happier, more knowledgeable person in our workplace\n\n\\- we can hire faster with less anxiety (instead of the \" _gulp_ i just\ncommitted $100k/yr\" feeling, we have the \" _smaller gulp_ i just committed\n$50k/yr\" feeling :)\n\n\\- you get to be a part of what we're doing, we get to hear about all the cool\nstuff you're doing, and that can only lead to good things for both of us\n\nAnyway, I've included our spiel and \"what we're looking for\" summary below, so\nshoot me an email if you're interested (ragalie@verbasoftware.com).\n\n========\n\nThe college textbook market is currently being disrupted. Verba helps college\nbookstores transform themselves so that they a) understand and embrace the\npower of the nets, b) become agents of change in the textbook industry instead\nof agents of reaction and c) continue to make a healthy profit.\n\nWe're a B2B company working with just about 200 colleges and universities, and\nwe're looking for people familiar with Ruby, Rails, MySQL and JS who can help\nus grow faster. We (thankfully) don't have too many scaling problems, but we\nhave a ton of opportunities (product and partner-based) that we could move on\nmuch faster with a few more hands on deck. The ideal person has strong Rails\nknowledge, solid testing practices, a good head for architecture and knows\nenough JS to help out on front-end.\n\nBe sure to check out our website (<http://www.verbasoftware.com>) so you can\nread all about our current products and hear people say nice things about us.\n\n------\ndecklin\nSonian (Newton, MA) - Full time, local or remote\n\nWe're a funded (recently closed Series C) email archiving startup with many\nlarge corporate customers. We are looking for an additional engineer for our\noperations (or \"devops\" if you prefer) team, to take us from merely using\nconfiguration management and automated deploys to delivering our internal\nservices as dependable, multi-IaaS-portable tools that empower everyone from\nsupport engineers to Clojure backend developers to solve customer issues\nwithout paging us and use our monitoring API to automatically spin up\ninstances to process work.\n\nWe have offices outside of Boston (Newton), but our dev and ops teams are\nmostly remote, and we meet over VOIP and pair-program in tmux.\n\nSome highlights of what we do:\n\n    \n    \n      +   We manage hundreds of compute instances across multiple clouds, including over a petabyte of data.\n      +   We write the code to help facilitate deploying our application to new public clouds.\n      +   We automate everything we possibly can\n      +   We build up awesome applications, and then opensource them (Perhaps you've heard of our monitoring framework Sensu - https://github.com/sensu )\n      +   We build applications to manage every aspect of our compute and storage infrastructure, from deploying code, to provisioning systems on multiple clouds, to securing access control.  For every problem - there is a code solution.\n      +   We have an awesome time working together on technologies that very few (if any) other companies are doing today.\n      +   We have days where all we do is hack on a specific project (http://blog.petecheslock.com/2012/02/13/why-your-company-should-have-internal-hackdays/) - leave the day-to-day tasks for the next day.\n      +   We meet up 2-3 times a year in Boston - with the rest of the company.\n    \n\nWhat are we looking for in a new member of our team?\n\n    \n    \n      +   Excitement, energy and a willingness to learn something new.\n      +   The ability to take a task from idea to code to testing to deploy (all within a short amount of time).\n      +   Bring new ideas around project or processes to the team - if we like it - we'll do it.\n      +   You can work from home, from our Newton, MA headquarters, or your local coffee shop.  Anywhere with Internet access.\n      +   You'll be part of an on-call rotation with the rest of our team.\n      +   Flexible person who can work by themselves or pair with their team to teach or learn.\n    \n\nWhat are some things you should know or have worked with before? (Some, many\nor all)\n\n    \n    \n      +   Ruby (must know or want to learn)\n      +   Not required, but pluses: Python (used by some parts of our infrastructure), Clojure (used by our backend team)\n      +   Chef (or other configuration management systems), Fog\n      +   Rails, Sinatra (both also used by our front-end team)\n      +   Git or other DVCS\n      +   System administration with Ubuntu (includes security, logging, monitoring, web/SQL admin, etc, etc)\n      +   Knowledge of Openstack (especially Swift) is a plus\n      +   A love for making complex configuration and systems simple via automation\n      +   Continuous Deployment, Agile Development/Kanban\n      +   Contributing to open source\n    \n\nInterested? - Contact pete.cheslock@sonian.com or\n<https://twitter.com/petecheslock>, and let him know you saw this post. Please\ninclude a short summary of why you think you would be a good fit,\nresume/blog/etc, and a link to a Github account or other code samples.\n\n------\nBenS\nPalo Alto, CA - Full time, local, relocation\n\nPinterest is hiring engineers and designers. We're still a small team (~35\npeople). You can read what it's like to work at Pinterest here:\n\n[http://www.quora.com/Pinterest/What-is-it-like-to-work-at-\nPi...](http://www.quora.com/Pinterest/What-is-it-like-to-work-at-Pinterest)\n\nMillions of people use Pinterest to discover things they love. For many\npeople, Pinterest has replaced Google as their first place to find things to\nbuy, food to cook, and places to visit.\n\nWe have hard problems to solve at scale in areas like search, recommendations,\nand product design. We're still a young company so every person has a big\nimpact and knows everyone else's name.\n\n<http://www.pinterest.com/about/careers>\n\n------\nstreeter\nEducreations (<http://www.educreations.com>) - Full Time or Intern in Palo\nAlto, CA\n\nWant to help solve an important problem? We are looking for extraordinary\npeople who want to make a difference solving immensely challenging problems\nfor an industry in need of innovative solutions. If you’ve ever wanted to use\nyour technical skills and other talents as a force for good, here’s your\nchance.\n\nWe’ve made it extremely easy to teach online. We think that it should take\nsomeone five minutes to create a five minute lesson, and it is a principle\nthat has guided us along the way. Teachers and students love what we have\nbuilt and use our app and website every day. We were part of the first cohort\nof Imagine K12 and are looking to grow the team rapidly.\n\nWe are looking to make our first hires. If you want to change the world and\nare a strong Python hacker, have experience with Objective C or are an awesome\ndesigner, we want to talk to you.\n\n<http://www.educreations.com/careers/#jobs> or email jobs@educreations.com\n\nWe are looking for:\n\n    \n    \n        Full-stack Engineer (Python)\n        Lead Mobile Engineer (Objective C/Cocoa)\n        Lead Visual Designer\n        Technical Interns\n\n------\ncarterschonwald\nNY,NY (remote might be possible too, if you're sufficiently awesome and a good\ncommunicator)\n\nWellposed is a (very) small NYC based R&D firm that supports itself with a mix\nof products and consulting. We only build products (or consult for clients) if\nthere is a kernel of challenging research grade computer science / math /\nengineering to be done.\n\nTech We use: for our own projects, Haskell. For JVM based clients, Scala. For\niOS related work, some blend of obj-c and rubymotion (though Haskell might be\nviable in the near future). Also computers, those are important. (these are\njust the main tools. We believe in the right tool for the right job)\n\nCurrent general areas we are working in:\n\n• Machine Learning/Data Analysis/Mathematical Modeling (we think that there is\nplenty of room for improvement over current tools in this space, both in how\nthe data is handled and how the analytics are performed)\n\n• DSP as applied to both sound and radio, in conjunction with some interesting\nquestions about how to do robust fast peer to peer sharing on mobile devices\nover a local network and/or via a custom rf transport layer. (there is more\nthan one project in this blurb)\n\n• mathematical modeling of the traffic dynamics of the modern city. (and\nseveral other projects in our queue are in the operations\nresearch/optimization space).\n\n• a few of our projects also have a wee bit of hardware/device design\ncomponents that are needed to make the deliverable wellposed.\n\n• every other interesting area as the opportunity arises.\n\nthese are just the projects on our deck now, both it and the roster of great\norganizations we work with are growing and we hope to grow to.\n\nIf you are demonstrably awesome in at least one area, and would like to learn\nabout at least 50% of the other areas, lets chat! (Of course, we're a small\nenough business that we'll also need to get along and communicate well).\n\nif you'd like to get the conversation started, shoot an email to jobs atsign\nwellposed dot com, with subject: wellposed gigs and tell us a little bit about\nyourself, with some blend of resume, cover letter and/or links to previous\nwork. [note that we're looking to hire for mid-late summer, not next week, and\nlikewise I will reply to every email within a day (or week at most)]\n\nI look forward to hearing from you!\n\n~~~\ncarterschonwald\nalso: we strongly believe that more theory is more power (in practice)\n\n------\nafarrell\nPanjiva (Cambridge, MA: right above the Kendall Ⓣ) - Full time, Intern, H1B\n\nWe're small, fast, and profitable. Our mission? Make it easier to do trade\nacross borders. Setting up a production line and looking for a valve supplier\nthat won't flake out on you? Use us to search for suppliers (or buyers) of any\ngoods that go into or out of US ports and see credit reports, corporate\nresponsibility audits, and customs records. Then, use us to reach out to them,\ncommunicate, and close the deal.\n\nWe're looking for exceptional software designers and engineers who can solve\nhard problems and design beautiful systems for our users. As a designer,\nyou'll need experience both sketching out concepts and building them. As an\nengineer, you'll need experience with full-stack web application development,\nboth server-side and client-side: A given day’s checkins may include\nperformance tweaks to our backend data processing pipeline, an updated\nmultivariate landing page test, a parsing expression grammar for a new data\nsource, upgrades to our deployment infrastructure to make better use of our\nCDN, or new parallelizing queries to make Panjiva search faster. We're growing\nquickly, so our ideal candidates are ready to grow and learn just as fast in\norder to take the lead on critical projects.\n\nWe work in ruby on rails, but will teach you if you're coming from another\nplatform.\n\nIf you're interested, email me at andrew@panjiva with your resume and a link\nto something cool that you've made.\n\n------\njesstess\nCambridge, MA or REMOTE. Full-time.\n\nThe Ksplice group at Oracle\n\nDoes writing Python clones of your favorite childhood computer games sound\nlike a fun weekend project? Would you hack on an old-school graphics demo that\nfits into a DOS MBR in your free time? Have you ever told a joke whose punch\nline was a git command? If you answered yes to any of the above, we want to\nhear from you!\n\nAbout us\n\nWe are a small, tight-knit team of 12 women and men excited to work on\ntechnology that most people will tell you is impossible: updating an operating\nsystem kernel while it is running. Our product, Ksplice Uptrack, is a\nsubscription service for Linux that provides completely non-disruptive,\nrebootless kernel updates. (You can read more about the underlying technology\nat <http://www.ksplice.com/paper>)\n\nOur open positions\n\nKernel engineer: Help us bring Ksplice to new Linux distribution releases,\nbuild rebootless kernel updates, and improve and scale the infrastructure\naround distributing them to our users.\n\nFull-stack engineer with strong Python experience: Help us bring the Ksplice\nUptrack client to new Linux distribution releases, improve our server\ninfrastructure, and develop and extend our REST API and Django-based web\ninterface.\n\nIf this technology excites you, let's talk! Feel free to direct questions to\nme at jessica.mckellar@oracle.com or to jobs@ksplice.com. Oracle is an equal\nopportunity employer.\n\n------\nstochastician\nPrior Knowledge (SF), Full Time, Intern\n\nP(K) is a small team in downtown San Francisco pushing the frontiers of\nprobabilistic machine learning to the masses. Our first product is Veritable,\na predictive database. We like to think of it as a database for things you\ndon't (yet) know.\n\nWe're passionate about discovering the hidden causes behind data, and are\ncurrently split pretty evenly between machine learning experts, scalable\nsystems engineers, and people used to working with horribly messy, complex,\nand sparse data. We're backed by Peter Thiel's grou, Founders Fund, who share\nour commitment to long-term technical innovation.\n\nOne of our interns backed out last-minute (due to issues with his NSF\nfellowship) so we also have an open slot for the summmer!\n\n<http://priorknowledge.com/join-us/> describes a bit more about what we're\nlooking for, and you can always e-mail me (jonas@priorknowledge.com) for more\ninfo! Or swing by our offices at the intersection of 3rd and Market to meet\nthe team.\n\n~~~\nnjs12345\nMight want to drop that slash: <https://www.priorknowledge.com/join-us> works!\n\n------\njoelg87\nYou can be anywhere (we travel - UK, SF, currently Hong Kong, next stop Tel\nAviv, then back to SF).\n\nWe're Buffer, a smarter way to share - <http://bufferapp.com>\n\nLooking for devops - PHP (CodeIgniter), MongoDB, beanstalkd, Apache/nginx on\nDebian.\n\nWe have just two focuses - building an awesome product and wowing our users\nthrough outstanding, speedy, helpful and fun support. We work hard to focus\ncompletely on these two things.\n\nWe have over 200,000 users, great revenue and the most amazing investors and\nadvisors: <http://angel.co/buffer>\n\nWe care most that the whole team has a great day, every day. We work hard and\nmake a lot of progress. We also talk a lot about happiness and improving\nourselves.\n\nSound fun? Whether you're interested in the role or want to say hello, drop me\nan email directly: joel@bufferapp.com\n\n~~~\nJose_GD\nThe angel.co page lists an Android position too. Is it outdated?\n\n~~~\njoelg87\nHi Jose! We're not specifically looking for an Android developer anymore, as\nwe've decided not to focus on our Android app for a few months. However, we're\ncertainly still on the lookout for awesome Android developers so please get in\ntouch :-)\n\n------\ntwakefield\nSan Francisco (Union Square) - Full Time\n\n _Run Marketing / Developer Evangelism at Mailgun (YC W11)_\n\nMailgun's growth to date has been entirely organic. We are now looking for\nsomeone to build and run our marketing efforts.\n\nWe are looking for someone that:\n\n\\- Knows how to sell a BMW to people who think their Ford Pinto is good\nenough.\n\n\\- Has a technical background and wants to make the world a better place for\nother developers.\n\n\\- Believes in data driven decision making over intuition.\n\n\\- Has experience building scalable lead generation channels.\n\n\\- Can write engaging content about technical topics.\n\n\\- Enjoys attending meetups/hackathons/conferences and discussing hard\nproblems with other smart people.\n\n\\- Likes traveling.\n\nWe offer:\n\n\\- Competitive salary and benefits.\n\n\\- Meaningful equity.\n\n\\- A complete marketing greenfield with the freedom to create your own\nstrategies and implement them.\n\n\\- The confidence and satisfaction that comes with marketing the best product\nin the field.\n\n\\- The self-fulfillment of knowing you were essential to the success of\nMailgun and all of the fame and fortune that comes with it.\n\nAbout Mailgun:\n\n\\- YC W2011 company, funded by SV Angel, Paul Bucheit, Yuri Milner and other\ntop-tier investors.\n\n\\- Located in San Francisco (Union Square).\n\n _Email jobs@mailgun.net if interested._\n\n~~~\nkenrikm\nFYI - You need contact info.\n\n~~~\ntwakefield\nThank you!\n\n------\ndman\nEnthought - www.enthought.com\n\nPython development for scientific applications, financial applications and\nPython toolset development. Enthought has offices in Austin, New York,\nCambridge, Mumbai. If you use Python and love numpy / scipy then Enthought\nwould be a great place for you. Come work with numpy / scipy hackers on\nsolving interesting scientific analysis and data visualization problems. Also\nwe are building the next generation of Python development tools, so there is\nno shortage of interesting problems to work on. Send applications to\njobs@enthought.com and mention that you saw this on the hacker news Feb 2012\nthread. Looking forward to working with some of you. If you have any questions\nabout Enthought, what jobs are on offer and what problems keep us up at night\nfeel free to reach out to me at dsharma at enthought dot com\n\n------\nsnowmaker\nScribd (social publishing, top 100 website, YC '06) is hiring talented hackers\nand other technical people for a broad range of technologies.\n\nWe've hired TWO people from these \"Who is Hiring\" threads ... it really\nworks!!\n\nWe're looking for people who want to work with:\n\n* Ruby on Rails (we're the #2 largest rails site, after Twitter)\n\n* Javascript\n\n* iOS\n\n* Machine Learning / Data mining kinds of problems\n\n* Back-end problems: scalability, web crawling, analytics\n\nThat said, we care way more about your personality and general hacking skills\nthen what languages you've used so far, so if you haven't used these but want\nto break into mobile or web development, this could be a good opportunity for\nyou.\n\nWe're well funded and have a really fun office environment (go-karts + a\nzipline!). We've got flexible hours, a very engineer-driven company culture,\nand a really terrific team.\n\nScribd alumni have gone on to found 4 other YCombinator companies, more than\nfrom any other startup. We think this says something about the kind of people\nthat we like to hire.\n\nLooking for full-time and INTERN hires (junior year or older). H1B and\nrelocation are no problem.\n\nSee more at scribd.com/jobs and feel free to email me directly: jared at\nscribd.com\n\n------\nStaceyW\nTwo Sigma (SoHo, NYC) - Full Time, Intern, H1B\n\nAt our core, we're a technology company applying our talents to the domain of\nfinance. We've created a system that combines artificial intelligence and keen\nhuman insight—a system that's constantly improving and advancing.\n\nWe're looking for a diverse set of technologists to join our team. Our\nchallenges require mastery of areas such as kernel level development, machine\nlearning, and distributed systems. Our team includes a Unix Lifetime\nAchievement winner, Putnam medalists, ACM Programming competition finalists,\nand International Mathematics Olympiad medalists. We are proud of our\nindividual pedigrees, but even prouder of our teamwork.\n\nWe tend to hire people with at least a bachelor’s degree in a technical or\nquantitative field and experience with C or languages that target the JVM, but\nwe are open-minded in our search for critical thinkers who are passionate\nabout technology. We analyze the data-rich domain of finance, but financial\nexperience is not a requirement. We hope to hear from you!\nstacey.winning@twosigma.com\n\n<http://www.twosigma.com/careers.html>\n\n------\nbenhedrington\nBest Buy (Minneapolis, MN) - Full time, strong in HQ presence required, team\ngrowing quickly working on more flexible officing as they grow.\n\nBest Buy is looking for an entrepreneurial minded Product Manager to be key\npart of our fast growing \"Digital Experience Team\" business; focused on\nproducing a diverse array of Mobile and wider digital products; to help\nenvision new digital tools to deliver Best Buy's strategic goal of 'making\ntechnology work for you'. This role will bring to life new digital products\nthat empower consumers to learn, explore, and engage with consumer electronics\nacross Best Buy's digital and physical touch points.\n\nOfficial job post: [http://www.bestbuy-jobs.com/job/Richfield-Product-Line-\nManag...](http://www.bestbuy-jobs.com/job/Richfield-Product-Line-Manager-\nMobile-Digital%2C-Emerging-Platforms-Job-MN-55423/1611712/)\n\nI am the hiring manager, willing to talk over email, phone, etc. No need to go\nthrough the machine to simply learn more. ben dot hedrington at bestbuy.com or\n<http://linkedin.com/in/benhedrington>\n\n------\nKB\nCambridge, MA - Full time Engineers at Crashlytics\n(<http://www.crashlytics.com>)\n\nFrontend, Backend, iOS and Android. Mobile apps crash over 1 billion times a\nday - let's do something about it!\n\nCrashlytics is mobile crash reporting and analysis as a service. If you're\ninterested in the intersection of great UX, scalable systems, the mobile\ninternet, and big data analytics we want to talk to you!\n\nWe're an early stage startup looking for truly talented engineers with a\npassion for clean code and great products. Our team is fast, smart and\nindependent -- with previous startup success.\n\nWe're small and growing rapidly, so it's important to us to have a great\ncompany culture to support that growth. We offer all of the usual startup\nperks: snacks in the kitchen, flexible work schedule, top-of-the-line gear\n(Macbook Air, Thunderbolt display, iPad/Android Tablet), etc. Additionally, we\nfeel strongly that it's the culture created by shared values that really makes\nCrashlytics a great place to work.\n\nHere's a brief look at a few of the things we value:\n\nWe focus on the modern web - We don't support IE6, so you'll never have to\nworry about it! We love feedback - you’ll be able to connect directly with\ncustomers who are using what you’re building and use their input to make the\nproduct better. We’re self-directed - We trust you to manage your own\nschedule, vacation, etc. without complex policies or forms to fill out. We\nship - we're huge fans of TDD, build/measure/learn, and are moving towards\ncontinuous deployment. We give back - We encourage open source contributions\nand community participation. We’re hyper technical - Deep understanding and\noptimization are in our soul - what can your code accomplish in 18ms?\n\nInterested? Say hello to us at jobs at crashlytics dot com\n\n------\nmindcrime\nOSI - Chicago, IL / Durham, NC\n\nOpen Software Integrators is hiring, especially in Chicago. We're looking for\nsenior consultants and senior developers to staff our Brand Spanking New\noffice here in Chicago (headquarters is in Durham, NC).\n\nOSI specializes in helping our clients build and deploy solutions using F/OSS\npackages, with a big emphasis on Java related technologies: Spring,\nHibernate/JPA, JBoss, Tomcat, etc. We also have a focus on NoSql technologies,\nincluding MongoDB and Hadoop. In addition to green-field development we offer\ntraining, research, and remote support as well.\n\nOSI was founded by a former JBoss guy, who originally wrote Apache POI, and we\nhave a long history of commitment to supporting Open Source Software. The\ncompany has a really cool, laid-back culture, some seriously smart and\ntalented people to work with, and is generally a great place to work. Anyone\nwho's interested, feel free to shoot me an email and I'll get your info to the\nright people. prhodes (at) osintegrators (dot) com\n\n------\nih\nPalo Alto (California and El Camino), Engineers, Full Time\n\nUdacity is leading the way in massively open online courses by delivering\nquality higher education to people all around the world. We have new and\nexciting technology and classes in the pipeline and we need great engineers to\nhelp shape this movement.\n\nCheck us out at <http://www.udacity.com/> and <http://www.udacity.com/jobs>\nand feel free to send me a message if you're interested/have questions\nih@udacity.com.\n\n------\nepi0Bauqu\nDuckDuckGo (Paoli, PA) - LOCAL OR REMOTE.\n\nAndroid and Front-end.\n<http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216387>\n\n------\ndpryan\nByteLight (Cambridge, MA) - Full time, local, relocation\n\nWe're a funded, early stage start-up creating a revolutionary indoor GPS\nplatform using LED lights. We're looking for an experienced full-stack\nsoftware engineer to join our team as a senior developer. While the majority\nof our work is in software, we aren't afraid of blowing stuff up (our most\nrecent addition to the team was a blast shield).\n\nCandidates must have the experience and skills necessary to design and build a\nproduct platform from the ground up including server architecture, REST APIs,\nback office applications, automated testing, deployment procedures, and\nsupporting a stable platform while evolving it.\n\nWe're looking for people with the following skills/experience:\n\n-Multiple years creating database-driven web applications\n\n-Strong in Ruby, Rails and front-end technologies (HTML, CSS, JS)\n\n-A generalist that can work full stack: from database to front end\n\n-Modern software engineering tools and disciplines such as version control, TDD ,continuous integration, and agile process\n\n-Mature with lots of passion for creating great software\n\n-A great work ethic and the ability to consistently deliver high quality work\n\n-A need to be challenged, wear lots of hats, and create something great\n\nIf you're a fan of game changing technology, and not afraid of the occasional\nexplosion, email me at dan@bytelight.com. Also check out our complete list of\njob postings at <http://www.bytelight.com>.\n\n------\nmehuln\nPalo Alto, CA (moving to city post-summer), Full-Time, Interns (Summer & Fall)\n: <http://flutterapp.com>\n\nFlutter (YC W12, A16z, NEA funded) is looking for folks interested in\ninnovating, designing, and solving some tough problems. We recognize gestures\nover the webcam, and our first app Flutter has been very well-received - check\nit out on Mac App Store. We are looking for folks interested in computer\nvision, machine vision, using JavaScript to integrate gestures into browsers\nboth computers and tablets.\n\nHere's our link to iTunes Mac App Store page:\n<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flutter/id522248613?mt=12>\n\nWe're looking for: \\- JavaScript Engineer, Node.js, jQuery \\- C or C++\nEngineer \\- Python Engineers \\- Hadoop/MapReduce with Machine Learning \\-\nWriting API & SDK \\- Gaming Engineer - Design and build gesture based games \\-\nVisual Designers - this is a unique challenge to design UI for gestures based\ninteraction world. \\- Interaction Designers\n\nWe are still a small team, so you will have opportunity to set direction of\nthe company both eng/product wise. You will learn, you will be challenged, you\nwill have to strain your brain, and in many cases, solve problems that seem\nimpossible! If you're up for challenge than send an email to jobs [at]\nflutterapp.com.\n\n------\ne1ven\nWaltham, Ma (Near Boston)\n\nSavingStar is looking for Ruby web developers to help us transition the world\naway from paper coupons, and enable a digital couponing future.\n\nIf you can intelligently discuss page vs. fragment caching, if scaling a\nwebsite to millions of users sounds like fun and if you enjoy a fast paced,\nflexible environment with challenges to spare, we might be a good fit. We're\nspecifically looking for people who are \"Full Stack\", from the database to the\nview, and everything in between.\n\nWe're looking for someone who has experience creating web apps at Scale (Rails\npreferred), works well in a Unix Env (Mac/Linux), and enjoys working in a\nfast-paced, startup environment.\n\nOur primary database is MongoDB, so NoSQL/Schema-less experience is great.\n\nShoot me an email ;)\n\n------\nRichardPrice\nSan Francisco, CA. Full time.\n\nAcademia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers. The\ncompany's mission is to accelerate the world's research.\n\nAlmost every technological and medical innovation in the world has its roots\nin a scientific paper. Science drives much of the world’s innovation. The\nfaster science moves, the faster the world moves.\n\nIt's widely held that science is too slow, and too closed. We are working on\nchanging that, and re-inventing the way that scientists communicate. The\nstakes are high. If the inefficiencies in science can be removed, we may be\nable to accelerate science by a factor of 2, leading to a huge impact for\nhumanity.\n\nFor more on the problem Academia.edu is solving, see the guest post on\nTechCrunch last Sunday on 'The Future of Science' by Academia.edu's founder,\nRichard Price <http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/29/the-future-of-science/>\nAcademia.edu has over 1.3 million registered users, and over 3.5 million\nmonthly unique visitors. Both of these metrics tripled in 2011. Over 4,500\npapers are added to the platform each day, and over 3,500 academics join each\nday.\n\nWe recently raised $4.5 million from Spark Capital and True Ventures\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3297812>. Some of our angel investors\ninclude Mark Shuttleworth (founder of Ubuntu) and Rupert Pennant-Rea (Chairman\nof The Economist).\n\nWe need talented engineers to come and help us with the mission. We have a\nstrong engineering culture. We're an 11 person team based in downtown San\nFrancisco. The site is in Rails, and other technologies we use include\nPostgreSQL, Redis, Varnish, Solr, Memcached, Mongodb, Beanstalkd.\n\nFamiliarity with our technologies is a plus, but it's not essential. It's far\nmore important that you are a quick learner who can pick up new technologies\nquickly. There is more information about the company on our hiring page, at\n<http://academia.edu/hiring>.\n\nThe kinds of things you would be working on include:\n\n★ tools for scientists to share their work faster and more openly\n\n★ algorithms to mine our data, and to find out what research is trending in\nreal time\n\n★ back-end infrastructure to scale the site on AWS\n\nWhat we're looking for are:\n\n☀ 2+ years of web development experience\n\n☀ Experience with the full engineering stack\n\n☀ Passion for engineering\n\nAll the strategic decisions in the startup are made collaboratively, whether\nthey are about hiring, new feature development, user growth, user retention,\nfunding, or revenue. You can participate in those general startup decisions as\nmuch or as little as you want. We have found that our decisions are much\nbetter as a result of everyone contributing to them. If you like having an\nimpact, you will enjoy the Academia.edu culture.\n\nThere is more information here <http://academia.edu/hiring>. H1B candidates\nare very welcome. We will take care of the visa process.\n\nIf you are interested to learn more, please email Ryan Jordan at ryanj [at]\nacademia.edu\n\n------\ndale-ssc\nSocialserve.com - Charlotte, NC - on-site or remote\n\nWe need a system administrator and a developer!\n<http://www.socialserve.com/jobs/>\n\nSocialserve.com is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that has been around for more than a\ndecade developing and operating a variety of web-based software for\ngovernments and other non-profits, starting with our popular housing database\nproduct at <http://www.socialserve.com/>. We take pride in focusing on the\nneeds of our users and providing excellent value to our customers. Our\ncustomers love our work and constantly want us to do more for them.\n\nWe're a small company using Macs on the desktop and Linux on our servers with\na bevy of open source software including Python, PostgreSQL, PostGIS, Apache,\nGit, and Asterisk.\n\nSystem administrator position:\n\nYou'll be responsible for:\n\n* Supporting our Linux servers including web, database, mail, and file servers\n\n* Supporting users with Mac desktops and laptops\n\n* Supporting our networks\n\n* Automating tasks as much as possible\n\n* Maintaining relevant documentation\n\nWe're looking for someone with:\n\n* Experience administering Linux servers and the services running on them including e-mail (SMTP/IMAP), web, and NFS services\n\n* Networking experience, including a solid knowledge of common protocols like TCP/IP, HTTP, and SMTP\n\n* Programming abilities, including shell scripting, so you can automate your job (Python experience is a plus since that's our primary development language)\n\n* Excellent communication skills\n\nDeveloper position:\n\nWe need developers to create and maintain a variety of web-based applications.\nOur developers typically work solo or in small teams with a lot of flexibility\nto design and implement projects however they see fit. While we're not strict\nadherents to any single software development methodology, we gladly\nincorporate processes that produce better software and happier developers\nincluding continuous integration, automated testing, and code reviews.\n\nWe're looking for developers with good knowledge of SQL, web development,\nbasic Unix/Linux usage, and general computer science topics. Knowledge of\nPython is preferred, though may not be strictly necessary as we've found it\npretty easy to pick up as long as you have experience in a couple other\nlanguages.\n\nIf you're interested in either of these positions please send your résumé to\nemployment@socialserve.com!\n\nOnly candidates with a legal right to work in the United States, and no\nrecruiters, please.\n\n------\nmyenergy\nMyEnergy - Boston, MA - FULL TIME: Data & Rails Engineers, Frontend Devs, and\nDesigners - <http://www.myenergy.com>\n\nWe're building the consumer side of the universal energy internet, and we're\nlooking for talented engineers to bring it to life. Working atop datasets\nnever before accessed and assembled in the same place, you'll build\nexperiences and interactions that make a difference here at home and the world\nover.\n\nMyEnergy, formerly Earth Aid, was recently named to Fast Company's Top 10 Most\nInnovative Companies in Energy. We're venture-backed, with strong strategic\npartners and investors committed to our vision of building the people's energy\ninternet. We've been called \"the killer app for energy efficiency\" (\n<http://bit.ly/dZBy7q> ) and our work has been featured in publications such\nas Mashable ( <http://on.mash.to/hqyZqF> ), TechCrunch, The New York Times (\n<http://nyti.ms/ayzLHb> ), The Washington Post, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.\n\nWe're currently hiring for:\n\n* Rails Engineers to take ownership in dreaming up and building out new front and backend functionality => <https://www.myenergy.com/careers/rails_engineer>\n\n* Frontend Devs to craft and implement amazing and dynamic experiences in our user-facing platform => <https://www.myenergy.com/careers/frontend_developer>\n\n* Data Engineers & Scientists to embark upon ambitious projects leveraging machine learning and AI => <https://www.myenergy.com/careers/data_engineer>\n\n* and UI Designers (in Boston, or Irvine, CA) to make the whole of the user experience astounding => <https://www.myenergy.com/careers/ui_designer>\n\nWe're HQ'ed in a conveniently located, sunny two-story loft by Faneuil Hall in\nBoston, and we offer very competitive salaries, excellent benefits, a fun\ncompany culture, and a small arsenal of office helicopter drones. If you might\nlike to join us, send us an email to introduce yourself to jobs at myenergy\ndot com\n\n------\nmattlong\nCrocodoc’s (YC W10) next-generation HTML5 document viewer reaches tens of\nmillions of users, and our business is growing fast. Our company was founded\nby four MIT-educated engineers who have been working together for four years.\nAs we evolve Crocodoc, we’re pushing browsers and mobile devices to the limit\nand are solving incredibly difficult challenges along the way. Crocodoc's\nclients include top web companies like Dropbox, LinkedIn, and Yammer.\n\nWe're looking to expand our talented team. Come join us!\n\nOpen positions:\n\n    \n    \n      * Senior Developer\n      * Business Development\n      * Sales and Marketing\n      * Administration and Support\n    \n\nYou can find the job descriptions here: <https://crocodoc.com/jobs>. If you\nare interested in working at Crocodoc, email jobs@crocodoc.com and tell us why\nyou’d be a perfect fit.\n\n------\nbrandonb\nSan Francisco, CA | H1B ok\n\nSift Science uses machine learning to predict user behavior. To start with,\nwe're predicting whether a user about to use a stolen credit card on a web\nsite. There's $4B in credit card fraud per year, and it literally drives\nonline merchants out of business. We're helping our customers take a stand,\nbuilding a machine learning and data visualization system to detect the bad\nguys before they strike.\n\nWe have a strong team of six engineers, including five ex-Googlers and two ex-\nCTOs. We recently raised an angel round from top investors and we'd love to\nbring on:\n\n    \n    \n      * Amazing engineers with expertise in machine learning, data visualization, NLP, and/or scaling distributed systems.\n    \n      * An awesome product designer with expertise in data visualization\n    \n\nIf that sounds exciting, shoot us a resume at jobs@siftscience.com!\n\n------\nsascea\nSascea (Toronto, Canada) - Full Time, Local\n\nWe're a self funded startup (funded by existing clients) thats been in\nbusiness for 1yr. We have internally built a platform for the rapid\ndevelopment of enterprise SaaS. Focused entirely on the business market, we\nare creating web & mobile business apps for our customers. We also dedicate\nsome time to work with local charities and provide them with better systems.\n\nWe dev mostly in JavaScript; working with NodeJS, MongoDB, jQuery.\n\nWe're looking for junior, intermediate, experienced developers to help grow\nout our team. Our team is relatively small, but super talented. Everyone is\nfun to work with.\n\nIf you think this is a fit for you, email info@sascea.com and include HN:\nHiring in the subject line! Thanks!\n\n------\nmlinsey\nCrowdbooster is looking for a full-stack engineer in Palo Alto, CA.\n\nWe've built the best way for businesses to get fast, actionable data about\ntheir social media accounts. Tens of thousands of businesses use us every day,\nincluding Fortune 500 companies, advertising agencies, coffee shops, sports\nteams, rappers, politicians, and more.\n\nSome more things about us:\n\n-We have a legit technical team including two Stanford engineers with backgrounds in machine learning, human-computer interaction, and databases.\n\n-We believe in simplicity, minimalism, and creating things that are a joy to use.\n\n-We're here to help businesses use social media to build real relationships, not spam, and we’ll never compromise on that.\n\n-We're funded by some of the best early-stage investors in the valley, including SV Angel, Charles River Ventures, Y Combinator, and several early investors and employees of Facebook, Twitter, and Slide.\n\nWhat we'd like to see from you:\n\n-While your peers might describe you as a rockstar, the term embarrasses you. We love rockstars (many of them are Crowdbooster users!), but we've made a conscious decision to have a culture that revolves entirely around our product, not our egos.\n\n-You've wrestled with big data before. Crowdbooster requires storing terabytes of data, extracting insights using statistical learning techniques, and making it available to our users in real-time.\n\n-That said, you like working at every level of the stack, not being pigeonholed as a backend developer.\n\n-You care a lot about the products you ship, and don't need a manager or \"product guy\" to motivate you to get every detail right.\n\n-You're familiar with several parts of our stack, and willing to learn the rest. We use Python, Django, MySQL, Redis, Memcached, jQuery, Protovis, RabbitMQ, Celery, HAProxy, EC2, git, and more.\n\n-You have projects of your own to show us. It doesn't matter whether it's an open source project, a startup idea, or just a really fun toy project. Just as long as you shipped it.\n\nIf this fits you, email jobs@crowdbooster.com\n\n------\nlpolovets\n* We love Clojure programmers! *\n\nFactual is hiring engineers and data lovers of all levels in Palo Alto, Los\nAngeles, and Shanghai. Remote work is possible for exceptional candidates who\nare US citizens and living in the US ('exceptional' meaning you are a great\nengineer and have lots of machine learning/data extraction/NLP/etc. experience\nthat is relevant to what we do).\n\nFactual's vision is to be an awesome and affordable data provider that enables\ndevelopers, startups, and big companies to focus on innovation instead of data\nacquisition. We have a terrific team that is still fairly small and an\nincredible CEO who was previously the co-founder of Applied Semantics (which\nwas bought by Google and became AdSense). Factual has venture funding from\nAndreessen-Horowitz and our partners/customers include Facebook, Yelp,\nFoursquare, Trulia, and Newsweek.\n\nThere are many challenging problems to work on at all layers of the stack:\ndata cleaning and canonicalization, deduping, storage, serving, APIs,\nimproving data using machine learning, etc. If you love data, Factual is the\nplace to be. Our main criteria are that you're smart and get things done, but\nyou'll get bonus points for experience with Clojure, machine learning, NLP,\nalgorithm design, or Hadoop. Our LA office is our headquarters and our Palo\nAlto office recently opened so new hires would have a huge impact on the\nculture there.\n\nYou can email me personally at leo -at- factual.com, or view our job postings\nand apply directly via Jobvite:\n\nPalo Alto Software Engineer:\n[http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?cj=oTR1Vfwq&s=Hackernews](http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?cj=oTR1Vfwq&s=Hackernews)\n\nLos Angeles Software engineer:\n[http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?cj=oQR1Vfwn&s=Hackernews](http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?cj=oQR1Vfwn&s=Hackernews)\n\nLos Angeles Data Engineer:\n[http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?cj=oSS1Vfwq&s=Hackernews](http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?cj=oSS1Vfwq&s=Hackernews)\n\n------\nmatrix\nSalt Lake City UT - Black Diamond (blackdiamondequipment.com)\n\nBD is one of the iconic outdoor industry brands - we make equipment for rock\nand alpine climbing, skiing, and other outdoor sports. We're not in the\nsoftware industry, but working here is far more fun than I ever had in that\nindustry. BD has a smart, driven software team that is helping the company\ngrow internationally at double-digits every year.\n\nI'm looking for someone with strong SQL and development skills to join my team\nin a role that's part business analyst and part developer. This is not your\ntypical corporate position - this is an opportunity to play a significant and\nhighly visible role in the company.\n\nYou don't need to ski or climb to work here, but it's a plus!\n\n~~~\nbramski\nHey BD. I am a software engineer & skiier climber. Would love to work for you\nguys. There's no contact info here though. Can you email me? bramski _at_\ngmail.\n\n------\n200902\nCyrus Innovation - Boston, MA\n\nSenior Developer\n\nCyrus Innovation (www.cyrusinnovation.com) is a Boston and NYC-based Agile\ndevelopment consulting firm that was founded in 2003. Since then, we have\ngrown into a 45 person company that has never needed outside seed money and\nbelieves quality people, practices, and code are the foundation of success.\nFor almost a decade we have been Agile pioneers that have helped both start-\nups and enterprises embrace the latest technologies (Rails, Java, Scala,\nnode.js, Groovy, MongoDB, HTML5) and strive for continuous process\nimprovement.\n\nSo what makes Cyrus different from everyone else aside from competitive\ncompensation, generous vacation, and other great benefits? \\- We believe in\nstrict 40 hour work weeks. No late nights or weekends. Period. \\- We only hire\n1% of all applicants and are not afraid to let the bad ones go \\- We give you\n40 hours a quarter and a budget to learn and make yourself a better developer\n\\- We have a diverse set of clients that allow for you to work on many\ndifferent projects \\- We like to have fun! (Bagel Fridays, Hackfests, Game\nNights, and fridge full of beer!)\n\nAt Cyrus, we strive to continuously enhance our day-to-day methods that keep\nus at the top of our game and help everyone improve on what they already do so\nwell. Because happy developers produce the best work, we do everything we can\nto find, hire and keep the most talented minds in our industry. Whether we are\nbuilding web applications and products, introducing new technologies and\ndevelopment practices, or just helping a great team get their work done, our\nspirit of joyful collaboration inspires everything we touch. We are serious\nabout our commitment to our employees and invite you to join our team.\n\nIf you are interested in learning more or would like to apply for a position,\nsend an email with your resume and cover letter to Marc Rosenberg at\nmrosenberg@cyrusinnovation.com\n\n------\njordanlewis\nKnewton: New York (NYC) - FULLTIME, INTERN, H1B <http://knewton.com>\n\nWe're a funded startup seeking passionate software engineers interested in\nmachine learning, distributed systems, and \"big data\" problems.\n\nInvestors include Peter Thiel (Founder's Fund), Reid Hoffman, and Pearson, a\nleader in educational publishing. We were recognized as a Technology Pioneer\nfor 2011 by the World Economic Forum in Davos and one of the top 25 best\nplaces to work by Crain’s New York Business.\n\nWe have about 80 employees right now. We pay full market salaries plus stock\noptions, and you can take as much vacation as you need. Hours are typically\n40-50 per week. Our product is an adaptive learning platform, which means we\nuse machine learning and \"big data\" techniques to deliver an individualized\neducation to each student. Our eventual goal is to make a high-quality,\nadaptive education available to everyone in the world. The product is used by\nArizona State University right now, and we recently signed a deal with Pearson\nto power many of their products.\n\nWe're looking for new members of our technical team who are interested or have\nexperience in:\n\n* Using technology to democratize education.\n\n* Machine learning and data mining, including approaches such as probablistic graphic models (PGMs), Support Vector Machines (SVMs) and Monte Carlo Markov Chains.\n\n* The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) internals and performance optimization.\n\n* Big data processing using NoSQL techniques like Cassandra, Hadoop, Hive\n\n* Designing, implementing, and maintaining fault-tolerant service-oriented architectures that scale horizontally\n\n* Thrift (the RPC protocol).\n\n* Cloud computing (Amazon Web Services, Unix) and distributed systems.\n\nInterested? Take a look at our job posts here <http://jobs.knewton.com/>.\n\n~~~\nachompas\nI'll chime in and say that, as one of Knewton's former interns (now a current\nemployee), I had the opportunity to work on significant problems, learn as\nmuch as I wanted, and collaborate with some talented engineers.\n\nKnewton is an excellent place for interns--I'd strongly recommend applying if\nyou're interested.\n\n------\neisokant\nWeb developer for Tyba in Madrid, Spain (www.tyba.com)\n\n(EU only)\n\nJob description:\n\nDo you think CVs are outdated and LinkedIn doesn't do a good job at presenting\nyourself professionally online? We do! At Tyba we have launched in March a\nwebsite that let students and young professional easily create their page and\nshow visually their curriculum, their personality and their portfolio with a\ncreative but professional design. We want them to have a website they are\nproud of, they like to play with and that they can spread around , show to\nemployers or that employers find when they google their name. We want to give\nrecruiters the possibility to browse through high-quality profiles and have a\nbetter overview of who they will hire or request for an interview.\n\nWe work with a freemium model and give the users the possibility to upgrade\nfor TheirName.com and for additional features such as themes against a monthly\nor yearly fee.\n\nWe are lucky do all that from a bright and comfortable office located in the\nthriving and sunny city of Madrid, in the beautiful neighborhood of Salamanca.\n\nWe are now seeking an oustanding developer to join our international team of\ngifted talents. Our developers are responsible for exploring Tyba's potential\nand growing its user base, helping them to get hired and companies to find\ntalents. This is an amazing opportunity to be part of an exciting project, to\ngrow with the company and have an impact on numerous people's lives.\n\nResponsibilities\n\nAt Tyba, you will work on a fast evolving product within our small team and\ntogether with our developer Tristan, our designer Zuri, our Manager Eiso and\noccasionally with our back-end developer Parminder located in the US.\n\nOur work atmosphere is that of a startup, casual. Everybody is aware and\nsometimes involved in the startup different aspects : the sales to the public\nand to universities, our high-level customer service, the decision making and\nthe product development.\n\nAs one of the two developers, you will have the chance to have a major impact\non the product. We have a long list of small to large features and\nimprovements we would like to implement and that you will work on. New ideas\nwill be also coming on the way from the whole team. We will constantly test\nthe product, try to get as much feedback as possible and think about ways to\nmake it better.\n\nOn the technical aspect we use the best tools we find out there to date to\ndevelop the product. We work mainly with PHP on the server side, JavaScript\nusing the jQuery library on the client side and MySQL for the database. We\nmight have to use Python or Ruby on the server side in the future. On the back\nend we run our nginx server with Amazon Web Services (EC2) and we store our\nfiles using their Content Delivery Network S3.\n\nWe work with several APIs, especially Google Analytics and Google Charts APIs\nto display the users' website analytics. Facebook API to allow the user to\nconnect to Tyba with Facebook and to share or post content on Facebook.\nNamecheap and DNS Made Easy APIs to buy and propagate domains chosen by the\nusers. In the future we will certainly use others. Since all of them have good\nlibraries, there is usually a fast learning curve.\n\nWe use Github for version controlling to have a nice and clear workflow.\n\nTo give you an idea of what we are doing on a daily basis, here is a list of\nrecent projects our developer has been working on:\n\n\\- Creating a referral system that allow the user to select their Facebook\nfriends who they want to post on their walls. We use a unique link for each\nuser and award points for new visitors or users brought. \\- Building a search\ntool that allow users and potentially recruiters to browse through the users\nprofile according to specific criteria. \\- Creating an expanding work module\nthat let the user upload presentations, videos, documents or create an image\ngallery to illustrate their work experience.\n\nRequirements\n\n\\- Engineering or scientific studies. \\- Fluency in English. \\- Rigorous\nprogramming skills, the knowledge of a strict object-oriented languages such\nas C++ is a big asset. \\- Good knowledge of PHP, JavaScript (jQuery), AJAX and\nMySQL. Having worked with Github and with Google or Facebook APIs is an asset.\n\\- Fast learner, you should be willing to pick up a new programming language\nif we need it. \\- Showing flexibility in the work development, you should not\nbe scared to restart part of the project from scratch if we realize there are\nbetter ways to go do it. \\- Being exited about the product, it can be in a\ncritical way of course but you should believe in the potential of our startup.\n\\- Dedicated to make the Product better and get users excited about it. \\-\nHard-working, good communicator and having excellent abstraction and critical\nskills.\n\nTo apply please create a profile on <http://tyba.com> and send us your Tyba\nsite with a cover letter. You can either upload your CV on your Tyba site or\nsend it to us separately.\n\n------\nthingsilearned\nSOMA San Francisco, CA - Full time\n\nChartio is hiring front, backend and sales/support engineers. We're building a\nnew interface to data bringing analytics into the hands of a whole new group\nof people. We've got a talented and passionate team and need to expand.\n\n<http://chart.io/jobs>\n\nSend resumes to jobs@chart.io\n\n------\nbdimcheff\nOlark - YC S09 - Ann Arbor, MI (<http://olark.com/jobs>) is looking for a\nDevOps engineer.\n\nWe're growing fast and we need somebody to help our infrastructure keep up.\nWe're profitable and you'd be #12 on the team.\n\nYou'd be doing infrastructure automation with puppet, helping us scale our\nmessaging infrastructure so we can grow, and building tools to help us monitor\nour servers and our business.\n\nFor the curious, we use: Python, Ruby/Rails, Thrift, ejabberd, rabbitmq/amqp,\nmysql, mongodb, couchdb, redis, node, and more!\n\nCheck out the link above for more info on the position and to apply.\n\n------\nmikebabineau\nRumble - SF Bay Area (Redwood Shores)\n\nWe're a new, well-funded startup making and publishing AAA games for browser\nand mobile. We're making real games for a large audience. Not ultra casual,\nnot niche-y.\n\nOur first title is a cooperative multiplayer 3D action-RPG. Think Diablo on\nFacebook. But free-to-play, and no big download. No obscure plugins, either --\nwe use Flash, but you wouldn't believe it. Adobe says they've never seen a\nhigher-quality in Flash.\n\nSeriously, check out our trailer: <https://www.rumblegames.com/kingsroad>\n\nWe're in closed beta. Let me know if you want to give it a test drive.\n\nRumble is backed by Google Ventures and Khosla Ventures ($15mm series A). We\nhave one of the strongest founding teams the gaming industry has ever seen.\n(No, really: <https://www.rumblegames.com/about/our-team>)\n\nWe're both a developer and publisher of games, and we need help on both sides.\nIf you want to develop the next generation of top-quality games, or you want\nto build and scale infrastructure to 1mm+ concurrent players, this is for you.\n\nPositions: <https://www.rumblegames.com/careers>\n\nEngineers\n\n* Platform -- Java/Groovy/Grails/AWS (esp. Senior/Architect)\n\n* Web -- HTML+CSS+JS+(PHP/Python/Ruby)\n\n* Game -- Flash+AS3/Java/C/C++/C#\n\n* Data -- Hadoop/R+ML/Stats\n\nOther\n\n* Producers\n\n* Product Managers\n\n* Analysts\n\n* Artists\n\n* Designers\n\nDrop me a line if you're interested: mike.babineau@rumblegames.com\n\n------\njesseendahl\nC&T Publishing is looking for a Mac IT/IS Specialist in Concord, CA (East Bay\n--about 45 minutes from San Francisco).\n\nAbout You: You have a passion technology, love to problem-solve, have a desire\nto grow and continue to improve your skill set, and understand how IT can\nimpact the big picture. You have strong analytical and troubleshooting skills,\nespecially under pressure. You have great communication skills with both\ntechnical and non-technical colleagues. Finally, you have a love for\ntechnology combined with curiosity and dedication. If this sounds like you,\nthen you should apply.\n\nAbout Us: We are an established craft book publishing company that understands\nthe value of great IT. We are an all Mac environment, with some exceptions. We\nare an equal opportunity employer.\n\nDescription: The IT/IS Specialist person's primary area of responsibility is\nto support the staff by maintaining their computers and the servers that they\nwork from, so that they can accomplish their work utilizing the tools provided\nas efficiently and productively as possible.\n\nOngoing Goals: Maintain computer systems (hardware and software) ensuring that\nall operate at maximum efficiency, and ensure that all data is accessible and\nsecure.\n\nDuties & Responsibilities: This position is authorized to recommend purchases,\nmake approved purchases and install approved hardware and software.\n\n• Solve day-to-day help desk issues.\n\n• Ensure all IT infrastructure and configurations are documented, create SOPs\nfor help desk issues and position tasks, and post SOPs on file sharing server.\n\n• Cross-train staff members to handle IT issues in absence.\n\n• Software/hardware recommendations and make approved purchases.\n\n• Maintain company hardware and software purchasing records and system\ninventory.\n\n• Create annual IT budget with monthly and departmental breakdown. Reconcile\nactual spending with budget at end of each month and at end of year.\n\n• Software updates, installation and troubleshooting for ~50 client computers\nand 4 servers.\n\n• Perform hardware installations including replacing RAM and hard drives.\n\n• Maintain all back-ups (tape and cloud) and hand off tapes to manager for\noffsite storage every week.\n\n• Ensure that all servers, storage devices, internet, phone system, VPN access\nand firewall are operational.\n\n• Troubleshoot printing devices as necessary.\n\n• Responsible for new employee onboarding. Ensure that all accounts (email,\nfile sharing, etc.), phone, and computer are work-ready by new employee start\ndate.\n\n• Reset all passwords, clear off and back up staff-member computer when\nemployees leave the company.\n\n• Maintain and troubleshoot PRI/VOIP based phone system (Fonality).\n\n• Maintain filesharing server: FreeBSD/ZFS/Netatalk/LDAP.\n\n• Work on strategic objectives and other duties as assigned.\n\n• Must be available on-call for highly critical IT issues.\n\nKnowledge & Experience\n\nEducation/Experience: CS degree or 1-3 years experience.\n\nRequirements:\n\n• Thorough knowledge of OS X (10.6--10.7) required. We are an almost\nexclusively Mac based environment, so this is an absolute must.\n\n• Experience with Mac based computer imaging.\n\n• Some command line experience.\n\nPluses:\n\n• Experience with imaging and/or configuration management software such as\nJAMF suite, Puppet, DeployStudio, or Radmind.\n\n• Experience with FreeBSD.\n\n• Apple Certified Technician.\n\n• Experience with Nagios.\n\n• Experience with HTML, CSS, and XML.\n\n• Experience with Adobe CS Suite a plus--especially InDesign.\n\n• Experience with Filemaker a plus.\n\n• Experience with Acumen (4D) a plus.\n\n• Experience with Universal Type Server or other font server software a plus.\n\nPhysical Requirements:\n\n• Able to talk and hear.\n\n• Able to work on computer for 40 hours per week.\n\n• Able to walk up to 1 mile per day.\n\n• Able to stand up to 2 hours per day.\n\n• Able to lift up to 40 pounds (think 27\" iMac, or a server).\n\nPlease contact Jesse Endahl about this position by emailing it-\nposition@ctpub.com\n\nPlease attach your resume, along with a cover letter outlining why you are the\nright person for this job.\n\nCompensation: 40 hours per week. $40,000 - $45,000 annual compensation, plus\nbenefits.\n\n------\ndanberger\nSocial Tables is!\n\nSocial Tables, a DC-based, venture-backed startup is looking for an\nexperienced Engineer to join our growing team. We’re rendering dust templates\nthrough our Node backend and writing frontend SVG and HTML5. The ideal\ncandidate...\n\n\\- Has at least 5 years software architecture experience. \\- Holds a computer\nscience, computer engineering, or comparable degree. \\- Loves building\nbeautiful, well-designed products. \\- Enjoys teamwork and realize its a\ncompetitive advantage. \\- Lives startups and be excited by the higher reward\nthey may bring. \\- Thrives in environments that foster entrepreneurship and\npersonal growth.\n\nAbout our software\n\nSocial Tables is changing the way events are planned and attended. Our\nsoftware platform helps event and meeting professionals design and manage\ntheir events. It has social features that allow their guests to interact\nbeforehand or afterwards. It has been used to add 80,000 guests for over 2,000\nevents and has been featured in over 40 publications.\n\nAbout us\n\nWe are a team of 5 working out of DC's first tech accelerator, The Fort, two\nblocks away from the White House. Our advisors include some of the most\nrecognized pros in the industry and we're backed by top-notch angels from the\nMid-Atlantic.\n\nHow to Apply:\n\nWe're serious about compensation: salary and equity commensurate with\nexperience. Shoot me a note (dan@socialtables.com), a note with a couple lines\nabout yourself and your LinkedIn page so we can get the conversation started.\nThanks!\n\n------\njasonshen\nWe're hiring our first engineer at Ridejoy (YC S11), a community marketplace\nfor sharing rides.\n\nWe care deeply about working with the best. So we are looking for a friendly\nengineer with an itch to tackle a huge unsolved problem in order to make the\nworld a better place. We have cash, revenue, and a growing community of users\nwho love us.\n\nWe've raised $1.3M in seed funding we're located in San Francisco in SOMA\nbetween Caltrain and BART.\n\nInterested? Learn more, and apply here: <http://ridejoy.com/jobs>\n\n------\ndmarble\nSpurfly - Palo Alto, CA or Arlington, VA - LOCAL or REMOTE\n\n    \n    \n        • Designer (Android and iOS primarily, as well as web)\n    \n        • Front-end developer for desktop web and/or mobile web\n    \n\nIf you happen to be both of the above, that'd be awesome. Help us scale and\nmeet demand for real-time location-aware planning. Our focus is on groups and\nevents (\"spur of the moment, on the fly\"). We've launched the first version of\nour iOS app and are working on a web and Android version.\n\nThe founders are straight shooters who value clear communication and getting\nstuff done. We're obssessed with creating a product that fills what we see as\na major hole in social networking software -- helping people more efficiently\nconnect in real-life with close networks so they can spend more of their time\nbuilding and enriching real relationships.\n\nTechnologies:\n\n    \n    \n        • frontend: coffeescript, jQuery, backbone.js, socket.io, compass\n    \n        • backend: python, django, gevent, gunicorn, nginx, postgresql\n    \n\nImmediate front-end needs include many web design tasks and coffeescript/js\ntemplates for our single-page architecture web site. We're also on the lookout\nfor a good mobile app designer to help us design our first Android release and\nupdate our iOS app UI as we gather feedback from users.\n\nSupport what's going to potentially be a wild ride as we do launch events over\nthe next few months.\n\ngmail - davidmarble (main tech guy on the founding team)\n\n------\nurlwolf\nBerlin (Germany), CTO/ lead developer\n\nWe are a funded (seed) startup working on a customer analytics tool for online\nretailers.We are two people looking for a head of development / CTO. We have\noffices in Berlin, funding for one year and the package includes very generous\nshares for the right candidate. We use lean startup methods, and can\nsystematically test hypotheses on any market. Hundreds of customer interviews\nalready done. Our approach is the ‘startup of startups’, that is, iterate fast\nand discard what doesn’t work, even if the new product looks like a completely\nnew application (and startup!).\n\nWhat we do:\n\n\\-----------\n\nCustomer Lifefitime Value (CLV) is the mythical ‘magic number’, the amount of\nmoney a particular customer will ever bring in. Knowing your CLV makes it\ntrivial to: \\- optimize marketing spend for different inbound channels. \\-\nidentify your highest value customers, \\- identify those in danger of never\ncoming back.\n\nMost shops have a ‘gut feeling’ of what their CLV is, but no way of knowing\nfor sure. Yet this is the number that would make the largest impact to their\nbottom line, if only it was possible to have it. Ah! Predicting the future is\nhard, right?\n\nIt turns out CLV can be computed with surprising accuracy (10% error) at the\nindividual level. At Fluidshopping, we use sophisticated bayesian models to\nestimate CLV. We look beyond what has happened in the past (which you get with\nsay google analytics). CLV changes often, due to your marketing actions,\nseason, or changes in the market. We retrain our models weekly to reflect\nthose changes, and then suggest the actions that would make the largest impact\n(email campaigns, popups with offers triggered by user behavior on your site,\netc).\n\nRequirements:\n\n\\-------------\n\nYou can apply with any language. But we need code samples. Let us see\nsomething you build; please explain what it does and how to run it if it’s not\nobvious. We prefer github projects. Do not send code samples that do not make\nsense out of context. We are looking for a difficult problem you solved, or a\ncommon problem that you solved in a novel way.\n\nYou need to be within 5 years of your last academic appointment, or\ngraduation. That is, if you graduated from university more than 5 years ago,\nyou are not eligible. You can also apply if you had a job in research settings\nwithin the last 5 years. We do not care about you having a title, but we are\nfunded by the government, and they do. They want to see someone with a\ncompSci-related title. We are really sorry in advance if the requirement\nexcludes you, a great hacker who doesn’t have a title.\n\nResponsibilities:\n\n\\-----------------\n\nYour responsibilities will be to work on new key features, help us scale,\ncontribute to the product and optimize performance. You’ll be the CTO in an\nagile development environment. Customer interviews tell us our solution\nattacks a very obvious pain point for online retailers, a large market that is\nripe for disruption. As a CTO, you will make decisions to make sure our\nsolution ‘just works’ for clients. We have excellent talent for both front-end\nand back-end development, so you are free to concentrate on the problems that\nmatter most (architecture, models, etc). But of course, in a small team you\nwill need to write production-quality code yourself.\n\nNice to have:\n\n\\------------\n\nMongo or similar NoSQL db JavaScript, Backbone.js, node if you have used it in\nproduction python/django, ruby/rails or any other web framework Familiarity\nwith HTML5 (websockets) R or any other data-friendly language with lots of\nlibraries Familiarity with probability theory and modeling\n\nPerks:\n\n\\------\n\nWork from home (optional) Stock options in two-digit range Dog Terrace with\nbarbecue In the center of the Berlin startup ecosystem Continuous deployment,\nstrong testing culture\n\ncontact: jobs@fluidshopping.com\n\n------\nipster\nAllTrails - Consumer / Outdoors\n\nFULLTIME Rails / Mobile Engineers, Community Manager, Sales Account Executives\n\nSan Francisco (preferred) / Los Angeles / NYC / Remote / H1B\n<http://alltrails.com>\n\nAllTrails is hiring! We're building Yelp for the outdoors - the best way to\ndiscover and share hiking trails and outdoor activities around you. We're\nhelping people rediscover the outdoors and having lots of fun in the process.\nCamping benefits, anyone?\n\nWe just launched our brand new site in partnership with National Geographic\n(<http://alltrails.com/partners/national_geographic>) and have the #1 outdoors\napp in the Apple and Android stores (try searching for 'Hiking').\n\nOur company was AngelPad incubated, is funded by 500Startups and consists of a\nstrong team from Google / Microsoft / Facebook with previous startup\nexperience. We also have the author of an O'Reilly Android book on the team.\nWe're looking for exceptional full stack Rails and mobile developers (Android\nand iOS). We're also hiring for a community manager and sales folks.\n\nIf your idea of sunlight is more than just sitting in front of a really bright\nmonitor all day, we'd love to hear from you!\n\n<http://alltrails.com/jobs> or jobs@alltrails.com\n\n------\ntrefn\nSan Francisco, CA\n\nFULLTIME\n\nMixpanel (YCS09; <http://mixpanel.com>) is the most advanced advanced\nanalytics platform available for web & mobile applications. We're making\nmillions in revenue, we're cash-flow positive, and we're growing like crazy\n(on track to hit 7 billion events this month, up from 5 last month). We also\njust raised a $10M round from Andreessen Horowitz.\n\nWe're hiring for a number of positions, but I'd like to highlight a few:\n\n1\\. Solutions Architect - hybrid support/sales/marketing/engineering role.\nReally awesome for developers who want to do more client-facing stuff. See\n[http://mixpanel.theresumator.com/apply/Eoh3qJ/Solutions-\nArch...](http://mixpanel.theresumator.com/apply/Eoh3qJ/Solutions-\nArchitect.html)\n\n2\\. Backend/ops engineer - we have a large amount of infrastructure (~200\nservers) for a company our size & need someone to manage it. This role is all\nabout automation. See [http://mixpanel.theresumator.com/apply/Xm0tLy/Software-\nEngin...](http://mixpanel.theresumator.com/apply/Xm0tLy/Software-Engineer-\nOperations.html)\n\n3\\. Office manager - looking for someone super smart & organized to keep the\nwheels greased around here. No job post yet, but you can email me directly.\n\nIf you're interested, please email me - tim@mixpanel.com.\n\n~~~\nc00w\nI got hired for a summer internship off of hackernews. The total time from my\nresponse to a job offer was about two weeks. We're serious and we have some\nvery intriguing problems to solve related to how to scale existing systems\nwith custom database backends (Not just mongo or mysql or riak) to higher\nlevels of performance.\n\n------\nzg\nLONDON -- Web Developers (front and back-end)\n\nTrialReach is a VC-backed startup solving a huge problem in the healthcare\nindustry.\n\nOur recent (tongue-in-cheek) recruitment video:\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyRxOTJXBII>\n\n• This is a company you can be proud to be a part of.\n\n• You’ll be working alongside a small but highly talented multi-disciplinary\nteam.\n\n• Our gorgeous riverside offices in Richmond provide a change from the urban\njungle whilst being just 10mins from the tube.\n\n _The Role:_\n\nOur stack is Linux/Postgres/Python/Django. One day you might be translating\nvisual designs into HTML, the next day you might be working our search and\npatient matching algorithms. The one certainty we can offer you is that you’ll\nnever be bored.\n\nIdeally we're looking for people to work on our whole stack, but we're also\nhappy to talk to front-end (HTML/CSS/JS) specialists.\n\nIf you don't have experience with Python but have worked on something similar\n(Ruby, PHP etc) then that's fine too!\n\n _Where do I apply?_\n\nWe're happy to consider full or part-time applicants as wells as students\nlooking for internships. You must have the right to work in the UK.\n\nWe're starting interviewing candidates from next week, so if you're\ninterested, please get in touch - zeshan at trialreach.com\n\n------\nfrancesca\nNew York, NY/Palo Alto, CA/London UK - Software Engineers - Fulltime\n\n10gen(With a recent funding round from NEA, Sequoia, USV, Flybridge funded)\nare looking for C++ engineers to work on the MongoDB kernel, building new\nfeatures for MongoDB, working with MongoDB users such as foursquare, eBay and\ncraigslist. We are also looking for Java engineers to work on our Applications\nteam and Ruby, Python, Node.js and PHP engineers to work on our drivers team.\n\nMore details and how to apply 10gen.com/careers\n\n~~~\nfrancesca\n<http://www.10gen.com/careers>\n\n------\nbijanv\nToronto, Canada - Full-time\n\nEventMobi - <http://eventmobi.com>\n\nWe're a self-funded team of 16 (5 engineers) and we develop a platform that\nallows event planners to create mobile apps for their own attendees.\n\nWe're looking for talented and experience engineers to help build out new\narchitecture and features, help manage / scale our infrastructure and innovate\nour mobile experience. We take testing, well architected code very seriously\nand are always looking at ways to incorporate new tech into our platform\n(we're using backbone to build offline capable mobile web apps, node and\nsocket.io to enable real-time communication between attendees / push\nnotifications, Redis based caching for a few features, etc)\n\nCheck out <http://eventmobi.theresumator.com> for the positions we're looking\nfor and more detail!\n\nIn more detail EventMobi is the leading mobile platform for shows and\nconferences, having been used by over 700 events, nearly 2 Million users, and\nare served in 7 languages across 5 continents. Clients like Disney, Intel,\nMotorola amongst others have used EventMobi to disrupt and enhance the\nattendee experience at their events.\n\n------\nvrikhter\nNextPunch / B2B SaaS / Sales [Manager] (first sales hire)\n\nSan Francisco, CA.\n\nNextPunch (<http://www.nextpunch.com>) is a product for businesses with mobile\nservice employees to keep track of where their employees are working from,\nwhat they're working on, and the hours they are working.\n\nWith 21 MILLION mobile service employees in the US, our market is an extremely\nlarge and fragmented SMB market. We're looking for our first sales hire to\nhelp educate the market about our product! We've gotten great responses from\nour early [paying] customers and eager to go get more.\n\nAbout the job:\n\n\\- Work directly with founder (me) to build sales process.\n\n\\- Heavy focus on one vertical to start and then build sales process for\ndifferent vertical markets.\n\n\\- Expect to start hiring for sales team in the next 4-6 months.\n\n\\- Set compensation structure, quotas, and operational process for all new\nsales hires.\n\nAbout you:\n\n\\- A couple years experience in selling B2B SaaS products.\n\n\\- Experience with SMB market.\n\n\\- Managed a team of 2-10 sales people.\n\n\\- Experience with setting compensation models (nice to have).\n\nsend email directly to vladik at nextpunch dot com. Thanks!\n\n------\njarnold\nFULLTIME Python Engineers, Systems Engineers San Francisco (preferred)\nSwiftStack - <http://swiftstack.com>\n\nSwiftStack is building out large-scale object storage systems based on the\nOpenStack Swift project. Our customers are top 5 web properties and fortune 50\nenterprises who want something that works like AWS S3 / Rackspace Cloud Files\n-- but provide it as an in-house offering. SwiftStack provides a distribution\nof OpenStack Swift and controller software to manage a deployment.\n\nWe are looking for engineers at all levels of the 'stack'. Python is the\nlingua-franca. Our management controller uses django, zeromq, graphite and all\nthe math required to run a distributed storage system. To build the runtime\ncomponent we are well versed in linux tuning, systems programming, load\nbalancing, authentication, and filesystems.\n\nWe're big contributors to open source. Not just in OpenStack, but also the\ntools we use to deliver our product. Check out our github page:\n<https://github.com/swiftstack>\n\nPlease email me at joe@swiftstack.com if you're interested. Thanks!\n\n------\nmbeebe\nMountain View, CA - Matterport is looking for a Full-stack Web Developer and\nComputer Vision Engineer\n\nWeb Developer:\n\nScanning is only half of the Matterport experience. What happens after\nscanning — viewing, annotating, and publishing scanned 3d content — is\nessential to giving users a seamless and pleasurable experience.\n\nThe Work:\n\nBuild out the Matterport website and server infrastructure, including both the\ndatabase of scanned 3D content and the user interface for browsing it. You\nwould be the first web developer we hire, so you will have a chance to set\nyour choice of language, framework, and best practices for web development at\nMatterport.\n\nPreferred Skills:\n\nWell-versed in Ruby on Rails.\n\nPast experience scaling a website from inception to large numbers of users\nwhile maintaining reliable performance.\n\nPast experience doing user experience design for new categories of product.\n\n\\---\n\nSoftware Engineer with Computer Vision & Algorithms focus:\n\nA creative Engineer who can invent new algorithms, not just apply known\ntechniques. There are still big, interesting problems to solve which are\ncentral to our product.\n\nThe work: You will be working on 3D alignment and mesh reconstruction\nalgorithms, improving robustness and quality. The ideal candidate is\ncomfortable with messy data and uncertain results.\n\nPreferred skills\n\nPast experience in computer vision or a related field such as machine\nlearning.\n\nExperience with high-performance code (optimization, parallelization, CUDA) is\na plus.\n\nVery comfortable coding in C++.\n\n\\---\n\nA bit about us: Matterport (YC W12) creates a low-cost easy-to-use 3D scanner\nthat lets you turn reality into 3D models.\n\nWe scanned Y Combinator shortly before demo day -- you can see the scanning\nprocess and the automatically generated 3D model on our demo video starting at\n0:40 <http://matterport.com/#video>\n\nWe're proud to be creating something incredibly _useful_. This is going to\nbecome a vital tool for the millions of professionals who work with 3D spaces\non a daily basis, including construction companies, film studios, building\noperators, real estate companies, industrial engineers, remodelers,\narchitects, retail designers, insurance companies, and more. Our site is being\ndeluged by requests for new uses for the system every day.\n\nWe're starting our beta testing program with several large companies, and\nwe've already finished raising a very sizable seed round.\n\nWe are all experienced founders and were previously early employees at PayPal\nand Google. We like to work hard and get stuff done. We are intellectual and\ncurious. We know how to communicate and get along. We have fun. We feature a\nbrogrammer-free workplace. :-)\n\nMost of all, we're driven to change the world in a deep and meaningful way.\n\nWe feel that it's worth giving larger than typical equity compensation for\nearly employees -- we want you to do really well if the company does really\nwell.\n\njobs@matterport.com - put a 1 in the subject for the vision position or a 2\nfor the web development position.\n\n------\nmikeryan\nSan Francisco, CA\n\nA Different Engine is looking for a UI Engineer and INTERN in our San\nFrancisco office.\n\nADE is a small interactive agency with offices in San Francisco and New York\nwho focuses on designing and building the next generation of user applications\nfor our customers. We build apps that run in web browsers, on mobile devices\nand on emerging platforms such as connected TVs. We're looking to expand our\nteam.\n\nA UI Engineer will work with our design and development teams in building\napplications across a variety of platforms. They’re apprentice craftsmen who\ntake the vision from our design team and turns it into a reality for our\nclients.\n\nThis is a junior or entry level UI engineer (Freelancer? Drop us a line\ntoo...)\n\n _Here’s what’s cool about working for us._\n\n1\\. You’ll have fun. We’re fun and we work with fun clients like NBC, CBS, the\nUFC. We might have some late nights but we’ll keep it interesting.\n\n2\\. You’ll become a better software engineer. There’s really no choice, from\nproject to project you might be working in Javascript and HTML to pure\nJavascript, you might need to hack together a php script and then update some\nObjective-C. We don’t expect you to know how to do all this when you start,\nbut you’ll learn. That’s how we’ve done it.\n\n3\\. You’ll ship. Again small shop, fast projects that ship. You will be able\nto show your friends an app on TV or your mobile device and say, “I built\nthat”.\n\n4\\. If there’s a platform out there you want to learn (Xbox, Nodejs, iOS,\nAndroid?) we’ll probably give you chance to learn it. We work on the cutting\nedge and we aren’t tied to large legacy systems. This gives us the ability to\nuse whatever tools we like. We use Redis, Nodejs, Websockets etc. In\nparticular we do a lot of work on embedded platforms using WebViews (and will\nlikely do more as Moore’s law keeps going on mobile devices) so HTML5 skills\nare great\n\n _Here’s a few things that we can’t provide._\n\n1\\. An Exit. We’re not a startup, we’re an agency so there’s no big exit. That\nbeing said we do do bonuses at the end of the year based on how well we’ve\ndone.\n\n2\\. Stable work on a single project working on a single language or framework.\nAgain not what we do, we tend to do short 2-6 month engagements on projects\nfor our clients we design an app, build it and then ship it. We do it right\nand we do it fast.\n\n3\\. A lot of management overhead. We’re small (tiny really - you’d be one of\nour first hires) so we can’t watch over you all the time. Best if you’re\nsomewhat self-sufficient.\n\n _Nice to have?_\n\nHere’s some skills that will help you get this job (a few of these would be\nnice).\n\n1\\. HTML - in particular its good to know new HTML5 display elements.\n\n2\\. CSS(3)\n\n3\\. Javascript - this is our primary language. But we’re not snobby about it.\n\n4\\. Objective-C\n\n5\\. Android\n\nThink you’ve got what it takes? Drop us a line! Please if your resume isn’t\nlong take some time to write us a quick note or cover letter telling us why\nyou’re the right person for this job and why you’re interested.\n\njobs@adifferentengine.com\n\n------\ncapkutay\nWebAction (<http://www.webaction.com>) - Full Time or Intern in Palo Alto, CA\n(Downtown Palo Alto)\n\nWebAction is a start-up looking to fill the gap between big data and\ntransaction data. We have our initial funding and we are now building out our\ncore engineering team. Our seasoned founding team has multiple successful\nexits; including some of the key enterprise infrastructure software that you\nuse today.\n\nWe are located in a newly-renovated office in famous downtown Palo Alto. You\ncan walk to the Apple store in 7 minutes, Starbucks in 8 and the train station\nin about 15.\n\nSkills you should have or at least be interested in learning:\n\nLarge-scale distributed systems, Highly available, highly scalable\narchitectures, Hadoop (MapReduce / Pig / Zookeeper), Data Serialization (Avro\n/ Thrift / Protocol Buffers), Bytecode generation and injection, NoSQL /\nBigData (MongoDB / Cassandra / HBase), Real-time messaging (0MQ / Kestrel /\nKafka or similar), Real-time event processing, Continuous Queries\n\nIf you are interested in joining, email us at jobs@webaction.com\n\n~~~\ncapkutay\nWe can also accomodate foreign applicants, H1B ok.\n\n------\nuniwiz\nBottomline Technologies - Portsmouth, NH / South Portland, ME / Wilton CT -\nFull Time local\n\nPosition: Sr. System Administrator\n\nThe Senior Systems Administrator will be an integral part of the team that is\nresponsible for the installation, configuration and maintenance of mission\ncritical SaaS applications providing payment and legal spend management\nservices. This position will be a key role for the SaaS team, providing\ntechnical leadership, driving execution of complex technical initiatives, and\nproviding proactive communication and documentation.\n\nYou:\n\n\\- Demonstrated technical leadership experience evaluating and recommending\nprocess and infrastructure improvements.\n\n\\- Excellent communication and document skills.\n\n\\- Proven experience in driving infrastructure projects in a matrixed\norganization\n\n\\- Management of Linux and Windows hosts on virtual and physical Intel\nplatforms. Management of associated storage and backup infrastructure.\n\n\\- Management of software commonly found in an SaaS application\ninfrastructure, such as Apache, Tomcat, Weblogic, IIS, Active Directory, DNS,\nSMTP, etc.\n\n\\- Demonstrated experience managing operational security and stability of SaaS\napplications.\n\n\\- Support of 24x7 SaaS web applications including on-call\n\n\\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nPosition: Application Engineer\n\nThe Applications Engineer is part of an autonomous, fast-paced team that works\nto ensure successful software deployments across Bottomline’s suite of\nSaaS/cloud solutions. This position will combine a strong technical background\nwith great organizational and communication skills to ensure successful\ndeployments with minimal manual effort. They will bring a sense of urgency to\ntroubleshooting, identifying root cause, establishing priorities, and closing\nissues, as well as working with internal teams to appropriately respond to\ncustomers’ needs.\n\nYou:\n\n\\- 2-3 years of related experience or proven technical skills automating\nprocesses and procedures.\n\n\\- Understanding of standard concepts, best practices and procedures for\nRelease Engineering.\n\n\\- Experience and understanding of change management processes.\n\n\\- Knowledge and experience in scripting languages such as shell, Perl and\nPython.\n\n\\- Experience with Apache, Tomcat, Lotus Notes, WebLogic, WebSphere, IIS,\nMSSQL, DB2, Oracle\n\n\\- Experience supporting and troubleshooting server operating systems, web\nservers, application servers, and database systems.\n\n\\- The ability to configure and deploy Java applications in a SaaS\nenvironment.\n\n\\- Strong attention to detail with excellent organization skills as well as\nexcellent written and verbal skills\n\n\\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nTo apply: Send an email to zmitrovic@bottomline.com with your resume and\ncouple lines about yourself.\n\n------\nvecima\nSaskatoon, SK, Canada - Vecima Networks (www.vecima.com)\n\nSoftware Developer (full-time, no remote)\n\nEmbedded C developer in Linux userland applications. Vecima does full-stack\ndevelopment in-house including: metal works, PCB design, FPGA development,\nMicro-controller development and Linux kernel and userland development. Work\nin a small software team in conjunction with the above larger cross-functional\nteam to bring Cable products to market.\n\nE-mail: human.resources@vecima.com\n\n\\-- Vecima Networks designs and manufactures products that enable broadband\naccess to cable, wireless and telephony networks. With global deployments, a\nproven product library and a team of more than 600 employees worldwide, we\nprovide our customers with advanced solutions.\n\nVecima's extensive Research and Development initiatives result in pioneering\ntechnology and intellectual property that flows directly into our cutting edge\nproduct design and manufacturing. We pride ourselves on innovative solutions\nand our continually expanding library of designs.\n\n------\nsbisker\n_[We've modified this posting from last month to put a focus on our new San\nFrancisco office in Lower Nob Hill, where we'll be doing most of our hiring.\nWe're also happy to announce a $4M Series A from the likes of General\nCatalyst, SV Angel, Lowercase Capital and Lightbank, to name a\nfew.[http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/23/data-focused-locu-\nraises-4m...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/23/data-focused-locu-\nraises-4m-series-a-from-general-catalyst-lowercase-lightbank-sv-angel/)\n-sbisker]_\n\nSan Francisco, CA - Full Time or Intern Web Developer at Locu\n(<http://www.locu.com>)\n\nFront-enders, \"desingineers\" and full-stack all welcome for this position - as\nlong as you enjoy hacking on cool new products and features. :D (We're not\nexplicitly recruiting for pure backend or pure design positions right now, but\nwe're open to resumes there as well - see <http://locu.com/#jobs> for details.\nIf you're a perfect fit, we'll find a way to make it work.)\n\n# Exceptional software engineering talent\n\n# Exceptional cross-browser JavaScript/jQuery, HTML and CSS skills, or the\nability to learn quickly\n\n# Experience with Python / Django is a plus\n\n# Previous experience building rich, interactive websites\n\n# Basic design skills (Photoshop), ability to work with designers\n\n# Experience in designing dashboards and user interfaces is a plus\n\n# Previous start-up experience is a plus\n\nLocu is developing technologies to change local search ($35bn advertising\nmarket by 2014) by creating the world's largest semantically-annotated\nrepository of real-time small-business data. We are about to launch\nMenuPlatform <[http://www.menuplatform.com>](http://www.menuplatform.com>),\nour first product, which helps restaurants better manage their online\npresence.\n\nInterested? Drop us a line at jobs@locu.com. Please specify which position\nyou're applying for, as well as \"HN\", in the subject of your letter. Learn\nmore about our open positions at <http://www.locu.com/#Jobs>\n\n\\-------------------------------------\n\nFounded less than a year ago by MIT graduates and researchers, Locu\n(<http://www.locu.com/>) has the backing and support of some of the best angel\ninvestors in the country.\n\nWe are looking for more exceptional talent to join our team and help us\nachieve our vision. We are committed to building a cutting-edge technology\ngiant with a fun and challenging work environment. We have a culture optimized\nfor learning and continuous improvement. We are 10 people with very diverse\nbackgrounds, and growing.\n\n------\nsethbannon\nWant to save the world with your code / design?\n\nJoin our NYC social good for-profit. We're venture backed by some of NYC's top\ninvestors, have quickly growing revenue streams, and are helping great non-\nprofits do what they do better.\n\nCheck out our openings here: <http://jobs.amicushq.com/>\n\nNew York, NY. Fulltime.\n\n~~~\njaysonelliot\nI just filled out a referral for a brilliant UX designer that's looking to\nmove into non-profit, but your jobs page is returning server errors upon\nsubmit.\n\nI sent the info separately to the email address on your site, but I thought\nyou'd want to know about the server error.\n\n~~~\nsethbannon\nFixed now, thanks!\n\n~~~\nblacklooksgreat\nFirst job for world saver, fix the web script!\n\n------\namacinho\nJunior Research Engineer, Crimson Hexagon, Boston, MA.\n\nDo you have excellent programming skills in Java and at least one of the\nfollowing languages: Python, Ruby, or R? And an interest/demonstrable\nknowledge in machine learning, data mining, and statistics?\n\nWe are looking for a Junior Research Engineer who will be part of our research\nteam. You will be responsible to research, investigate and test new\ntechnologies for big data storage, processing, and analytics. In particular,\nyou will build scalable systems that can efficiently process petabytes of\ndata, build and maintain storage systems that are continuously updated and\nrequire holding tens of billions of records each with millions of fields. You\nwill work closely with the research scientists in a challenging and nurturing\nenvironment.\n\nRequirements:\n\nSuccessful candidates will be able to demonstrate achievement in some or all\nof the above, and you will also be heavily evaluated for your attitude,\napproach and other intangibles. With that, more definitive criteria for the\nideal candidate follow:\n\n* Working with large datasets\n\n* Unix command line tools\n\n* MapReduce paradigm, Hadoop and HDFS\n\n* HBase, Cassandra, MongoDB or similar key-value storage systems\n\n* Social media, Web application development\n\nAbove all, we are looking for an engineer with a strong passion for working\nwith large social datasets, who is not afraid of getting his/her hands dirty\nand who never gets tired of trying and learning new technologies. Our research\nteam provides a spirited, supportive and creative environment where we can\nlearn from each other and build the next-generation social media analytics\nframeworks.\n\nIf we have triggered your interest, send us your resume and cover letter\ntelling us why you would like to be part of our team. Be sure to provide\nconcrete examples of your programming skills, such as sample codes that solve\nyour favorite toy problems, demos, web applications you built, public code\nrepositories such as GitHub where you contribute to open source projects. If\nsuch examples are not available tell us that, and instead provide short\ndescriptions of previous projects you have been involved in previous jobs or\nduring your education. This is our Van Halen Brown M&M’s test. Please be sure\nto provide this extra information along with your application.\n\nWe look forward to seeing if you have what it takes to achieve something\nextraordinary with Crimson Hexagon!\n\nFor details: <http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/junior-research-engineer/>\n\n------\npaolodona\nDublin - Full time - Ruby On Rails Developer & Lead Developer\n\nWe're a young and dynamic startup and are looking for a talented developer\ncapable of delivering large scale/high traffic webapps.\n\nThe developer will lead and play a critical role in the growth of the systems.\n\nWe're looking for:\n\n\\+ 3/4+ Years Ruby/Ruby on Rails development \\+ Strong OO / Design patterns /\nrefactoring skills \\+ Proficient in Javascript Prototype/jQuery \\+ Ability to\nscale high traffic web applications \\+ HTML/CSS design from scratch \\+ Good\ndatabase design skills, SQL/MySQL \\+ Ajax / Memcached \\+ Git/GitHub – source\ncode version control \\+ TDD/BDD with Rails/Rspec/Cucumber \\+ Experience with\nqueuing systems, NoSQL databases, advanced caching & key-value storage engines\n\nRequired skills:\n\n\\+ Self starter & self motivated – keeps up with the latest trends &\ntechnologies \\+ Experience in designing/maintaining Rails applications in\nproduction \\+ Ability to be pragmatic and implement the right solution\naccording to the business requirements / deliver within agreed timescales \\+\nAbility to lead a team and manage/mentor junior developers\n\nWhy is Homestays.com a great place to work for:\n\nWe’re a young, well funded, startup and we just started growing. It’s a great\nenvironment with a friendly and supportive team, and this is an opportunity to\njoin the team very early, so you get to contribute to the success of the\ncompany and shape how the technology stack will grow.\n\nIt’s an environment in which developers can do their best without the burden\nof heavy processes or hierarchies. You’ll get to work closely with the\ninvestors and the business side of the company to put you in the position to\ndeliver the best code and architecture possible.\n\nThe Ideal Candidate:\n\n\\+ Is passionate about clean, concise code that is readable and easy to\nmaintain. \\+ Has designed and developed his own projects or products and\nunderstands what it takes to bring a product to life. \\+ Has a great GitHub\nprofile – proven track record \\+ Has extensive experience with non relational\ndatabases (couchdb/mongodb), queuing systems, key-value storage engines\n(Redis/Riak) \\+ Can program in different languages \\+ Is entrepreneurial &\nexcited to make things happen quickly \\+ Has a strong work ethic. We’re a\nsmall team and you will be expected to work hard. \\+ Is a nice person, easy to\nwork with\n\nHow to apply:\n\nSend an email to jobs@homestays.com\n\nInclude a resume, and links to any projects (personal or commercial) and link\nto your github account & personal blog if you have one.\n\n------\ndtwhitney\nFull-Stack Web Developer / Boulder, CO\n\nPellucid Analytics is looking for several full-stack web developers in Boulder\nto work with us on building our quantitative finance application. We're a\nJVM/Java/Scala shop, and you'll have the opportunity to work with the full\nTypeSafe Stack, focused mainly on The Play Framework, building both a standard\nbrowser based application as well as a mobile application for the iPad. We're\nan Agile/Lean shop, which means we're dedicated to lean principles throughout\nthe company as a whole - there will be no struggle trying to sell these\nprinciples to management. Also if you've taken any of the advanced computer\nscience courses through Stanford, like Machine Learning or Probabilistic\nGraphical Models, and you're interested in seeing how those are applied to the\nfinancial world, Pellucid Analytics is for you.\n\nTo give you a better idea of what you'll be working on, we're a quantitative\nfinancial analytics company called Pellucid Analytics. Our product is going to\nmake it easy for a team of investment bankers to pull together a massive\nnumber of analytics and visualizations from our quantitative analysis, focused\non either a specific company or industry, and arrange the data and\nvisualizations into a presentation that fits the story they are trying to\ntell. Our clients engage with a different Fortune 500 company every day of the\nweek where a different analytics presentation is needed. These presentations\nare put together by a small team and can be as large as 100 pages long, so the\nease with which our analysis can be put together is our highest priority.\n\nExperience Requirements * 5+ years of JVM Development * A Desire to learn\nScala and other JVM languages * 5+ years of Linux use * 5+ years of web\ndevelopment (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) * Experience with many varieties of\ndatabases, i.e. relational, non-relational, column-oriented, graph-based *\nExperience with git (our ideal candidate makes frequent, small commits) *\nExperience working with Amazon Web Services * Experience working with\nwireframes and comps\n\nExperience Pluses * Bachelors Degree in Computer Science or a related field *\nExperience with Scala * Experience with the TypeSafe Stack * Experience with\nthe Play Framework * Experience working with continuous deployment * Finance\nExperience\n\nPlease respond with a resume and links to previous work to jobs at pellucid\ndot com\n\n------\nalfredp\nOyster.com, the Hotel Tell-All - NYC, New York - Full time, local\n\nOyster's expert hotel investigators visit hotel properties in-person, take\nevery photo, and write objective reviews. We currently have over 3000+ hotels\non our website and there a lot more to come! We've been on TV and have been\nwritten up by The New York Times. We are in partnership with the Travel\nChannel and have appeared on location with Hotel Impossible.\n\nOn the technical side, we are looking to fill the following roles: \\-\nEngineering Manager \\- Senior Software Engineer \\- Data Analyst\n\nWe largely use python and some C++ in the backend, with Postgresql being our\ndb of choice. Have you checked out our beautiful iPad app? Apply here:\n<http://www.oyster.com/about/jobs/>\n\nIf you have any questions, feel free to email alfred at oyster dot com.\n\n------\njerryr\nSan Francisco, CA (25 Kearny St) - MindTribe Product Engineering, Inc.\n\nHi, I’m MindTribe’s CTO. I’m searching for people who enjoy learning and\nmaking embedded systems. MindTribe is a small company, and I am looking for\npeople with whom I would personally like to work and who want to work with me\nand my team. We've moved from Palo Alto to SF and we're finally settled into\nour new location. Now, besides experienced SENIOR embedded software engineers,\nI am looking for JUNIOR engineers as well. If you enjoyed your microcontroller\nclasses in school, come join us in SF for continuing education.\n\nHere are the tools I use regularly: The C programming language (specifically\nISO/IEC 9899:1990); Eclipse, Make, Subversion, Git, Python; Linux, Embedded\nLinux, Android, iOS; ARM processors (TI OMAP, TI Stellaris, NXP LPC); Atmel\nAVR/AVR32, Microchip PIC, TI MSP430, Cypress PSoC\n\nHere is what I enjoy doing at work: Writing embedded software that runs on\ncool hardware; Figuring out how to apply agile techniques such as test-driven\ndevelopment to embedded product development; Reducing regressions and\nsupporting customer development with agile techniques; Developing embedded\nlibraries for things like USB, TCP/IP, graphics displays, sprites, fonts,\nencryption, etc.; Having long, dorky conversations with coworkers about\nprogramming languages, physics, DIY sous-vide setups, whether it should be\ncalled \"firmware\" or \"software\", etc.\n\nHere is what I enjoy doing outside of work: Hiking, walking around San\nFrancisco; Pseudonymous humor blogging; Cooking and baking; Photography;\nReading. Recently: \"Test Driven Development for Embedded C\", \"The Clean\nCoder\", \"The Four Steps to the Epiphany\", \"Norwegian Wood\", \"The Mind's Eye\",\nand currently \"Sealab: America's Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean\nFloor\"\n\nYou can see examples of how I’ve applied my tools and passion here:\n<http://mindtribe.com/portfolio/>\n\nI ask that you bring some C and microcontroller experience--other than that,\nyou don't have to use the same tools and you don't have to enjoy the same\nthings. But if you're excited about similar stuff, drop me a line at\nhn@mindtribe.com to let me know.\n\nWe're also hiring ELECTRICAL and MECHANICAL engineers!\n\n------\nvictoriastodden\nRunMyCode (<http://runmycode.org>) - Full Time, New York or REMOTE\n\nChange the future of scientific collaboration and publishing at RunMyCode.org.\nWe are hiring two fulltime engineers to expand a prototype platform that\nenables scientists to openly share the code and data that reproduces their\nresearch publications. We are founded by top professors from Columbia\nUniversity and HEC Paris. We are looking for:\n\n* back-end infrastructure to scale the site on AWS, both for users and for scientific publications;\n\n* C++, and experience in scientific languages such as R, S+, Matlab, python a plus;\n\n* possible outreach to the scientific community and citizen science groups if interested.\n\nIf this sounds exciting to you, email your CV and cover letter to Victoria\nStodden vcs@stanford.edu\n\n------\nxyzzyb\nPhishMe (Chantilly, VA) - Full time, local or remote\n\nWe're growing our Rails development team by one. We're a cool team that's (so\nfar) entirely remote.\n\nDetails:\n\nPhishMe is seeking a motivated individual to join its software development\nteam. While our primary SaaS web application is a Ruby on Rails project, the\nsuccessful candidate will be well-rounded in various languages with solid,\nhands-on Rails experience.\n\nThis is a full time position working for PhishMe, Inc. Outsourced or software\ndevelopment contractors should not apply.\n\nQualifications\n\nSuccessful applicants must have:\n\n    \n    \n        1 - 2 years of professional development experience with Ruby or Python.\n        Must be fluent in the fundamental components of web application development.\n        Thorough understanding of source control management. You should know how (and when) to make branches, how to merge changes, resolve conflicts, etc.\n        Able to work on a team, independently when necessary, to escalate problems when appropriate, and to thrive in a small business environment.\n        Good oral and written communication skills.\n    \n\nBonus!\n\nThe following attributes are preferred, but not required on day-one:\n\n    \n    \n        BS or BA in computer science, management/computer information systems, or related field.\n        Able to research, debug, and resolve cryptic error messages.\n        Experience writing triggers and stored procedures, when necessary.\n        Solid customer support experience (retail, help desk, consulting, etc.).\n        Familiarity with Moonshine, Capistrano, and/or Shadow Puppet.\n        Ability to do simple image creation and manipulation with the GIMP or Photoshop.\n        Mobile application development (iPhone and Android).\n    \n\nCompensation\n\n    \n    \n        Competitive salary + stock\n        Pick your workstation and OS\n        Retirement plan with 3% company match\n        Health, vision, dental, telecommuting expense reimbursement, etc.\n        Peers that enjoy appropriate use of internet memes e.g. <facepalm> vs. <double facepalm>\n        Enjoy your nights and weekends!\n    \n\nApply at <http://phishme.com/careers.php#senior_developer>\n\n------\njohnkoscielak\n1 point by johnkoscielak 0 minutes ago | link | edit | delete\n\nMobile Developer Location: Malvern PA\n\nJob summary:\n\nUs: The emerging technologies group at FIS; the world’s largest global\nprovider dedicated to banking and payments technologies.\n\nYou: Mobile developer, hacker, innovator.\n\nJob: Work with a talented team of architects, U/X engineers and thought\nleaders to assist with ongoing proof of concepts and research.\n\nGeneral duties and responsibilities: • Researches, tracks and understands new\ntechnologies to provide technical leadership in developing service\napplications and analyzing business requirements as they pertain to intranet\nand external Internet-based systems. • Builds applications • Provides written\ndesign documents, test plans and test results. • Manages, develops, integrates\nand implements related applications components, including front-end\ndevelopment, server-side development and database integration. • Plays a\ndirect role in programming, maintenance, technical support, documentation and\nadministration of the applications. • Establishes and communicates standards\nto manage cost and ensure continuity of applications. • Suggests technical\nalternatives and improves/streamlines processes and systems • Completes\nproject assignments and special projects commensurate with job expectations •\nConducts planning, analysis and forecasting activities to plan projects and\ntasks • Performs other related duties as assigned.\n\nRequirements: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related\ndiscipline; or equivalent combination of education and experience that is\nrequired for the specific job level. Post-graduate education is desired.\n\nADA Disclaimer: In developing this job description care was taken to include\nall competencies needed to successfully perform in this position. However, for\nAmericans with Disabilities Act (ADA) purposes, the essential functions of the\njob may or may not have been described for purposes of ADA reasonable\naccommodation. All reasonable accommodation requests will be reviewed and\nevaluated on a case-by-case basis.\n\nEEO/AA Employer\n\nPlease contact John Koscielak at john.koscielak@fisglobal.com\n\n414-357-9199\n\nwww.fisglobal.com\n\n------\ncadr\nSan Francisco, CA - Blurb\n\nBlurb lets people tell their stories - currently through print-on-demand\nbooks, but increasingly through other venues.\n\nWe are both established and growing like mad (we were #47 on last year's Inc\n500). We have a great group of people and a lot of fun challenges in the year\nahead. We just launched a bevy of new products (our iPhone app is getting\ngreat reviews).\n\nWe play with fun tech: Ruby, Rails, ember.js, git, RSpec, Cucumber, Haml,\nSASS, RabbitMQ, Puppet, Obj-C, and more. We have great benefits, a great\nwork/life balance, and we're in a great location close to the BART, CalTrain,\nand lots of food options.\n\nWe are currently hiring for many positions - front end, back end, QA and more\n- at all levels.\n\n<http://www.blurb.com/about/jobs>\n\n------\ndonohoe\nNew York, Backend and Frontend Developers & Designer. Full-time.\n\nI'm hiring for a number of positions for a new global business site from\nAtlantic Media. We're based in NYC with an office in Soho. Each role is a\nhands-on position and you will be working closely with other developers on\nyour team and editorial. There is the opportunity to work on a large number of\nfun and challenging problems as the site and team grow. Backend Developer -\nExpert level Django/Python or WordPress/PHP experience. You will work with\nother developers to build a solid backend and devise solutions for our unique\nset of editorial and application needs. Expertise optimizing code for high\ntraffic sites a must (scalability, caching etc).\n\nFrontend Developer - We're not beholden to any JS framework (yet) but lets\nassume jQuery as a start point. Emphasis on building solid user experiences\nand web applications. Focus on new and emerging \"HTML5\" technologies and APIs\n(localStorage, geo, offline) and a view to mobile first.\n\nDesign - Looking for a strong design lead to work with product and dev (we're\nall on the same team, literally). You'll be given wide creative voice and\nactively encouraged to push in new directions as opposed to traditional\nmethods. You’ll be working with other great minds from Atlantic Media, WSJ,\nNiemanLab, Gawker and many others. The cast is assembling.\n\nInterested? You should be. I’m not leaving the West Coast just for the bagels.\n\nTake a look at the postings linked below from Atlantic Media’s site.\n\nUse those as a guide and feel free to contact me directly: md@qz.com\n\n    \n    \n      Web Designer\n      http://bit.ly/IyjuA7\n    \n      Mobile/Frontend Developer\n      http://bit.ly/JlE8dn\n    \n      Senior Developer\n      http://bit.ly/IyjBvC\n    \n\nGet in touch. Traditional resume is fine but bonus points:\n\n\\- Links to your work on GitHub or other public repos\n\n\\- StackOverflow profile\n\n\\- Links to websites or services where you've had a primary development role.\n\nFor Design, any work on Dribbble or other portfolio platform is great. Please\ndraw attention to any mobile work or UI ideas you've explored.\n\nOnly job enquires please. I'm not interested in your consulting company\nservices or recruitment agency at this time. Thanks.\n\n------\ndcreemer\nPalo Alto, CA; (or potentially New York, NY).\n\nFlipboard [1] is hiring. We have specific openings listed on our jobs page\n[1], but are always looking for great engineers of all sorts, and can sponsor\nH1B visas if needed. We're located in downtown Palo Alto, just a short\ndistance from Stanford University and Caltrain. IMHO we have an ambitious,\nclear vision that we have been executing against since the beginning, and we\nhave an amazing, diverse, honest and passionate team. Not a day goes by that I\ndon't learn here -- it's really an amazing place to work.\n\n[1] <http://flipboard.com>\n\n[2]\n[http://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?c=qB89Vfwx&...](http://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?c=qB89Vfwx&s=Indeed&page=Jobs)\n\n------\ndabent\nLos Angeles, CA - Full time\n\nTrueCar is changing the way people buy and sell cars. We are well funded,\nearning revenue and growing. Most of our code is in Python, Java and\nJavascript. We have a great work environment and some great problems to solve.\nI love it here.\n\nWe have several openings right now. If one sounds like it might be a fit,\nshoot me an email (address is in my profile)\n\n* Senior Manager of Search Engine Marketing - Responsible for the day-to-day management of the internal paid search program. This includes everything from keyword expansion to weekly reporting as well as strategy and leading search meetings. The ideal candidate will be well versed in the fundamentals of search and the ability to understand a purchase funnel and where it makes sense to drive investment. 3-5 years of search engine marketing experience required.ce building database-driven, web-based systems in a Linux environment.\n\n* Senior Linux Systems Engineer - Will be involved from the design stage through production troubleshooting, from DNS to networking to application behavior and ultimately responsible for making sure our production systems are reliable and perform well. Redhat Linux administration, including configuration, troubleshooting, and automation. At least 5 years of experience with Linux/UNIX system administration.\n\n* Director of Core Data Engineering - Lead major software and testing efforts on back end Core Data platform. Work with CTO to define strategic direction for our data platform that drives our all of our products. Proven success implementing Hadoop.\n\nMore positions:\n\n* Java Architect\n\n* Senior Java Developer\n\n* Senior .NET Developer\n\n* BI SQL Analyst\n\n* Data Analyst (SAS/SQL - Looking for an MS in Statistics, Econometrics, Operations Research, Data Mining, or Math)\n\n* Front End Developer\n\n* Front End Engineer/Designer\n\n* Statistician/ Data Mining Specialist\n\n* Vice-President, Partner Development\n\nI found TrueCar at PyCon, relocated across the country to join them in the\nfall and haven't regretted it once. Come join me by the beach:\n<http://picplz.com/user/dabent/pic/tpc4v/>\n\n~~~\nlocnguyen\nIs there an option to telecommute full or part time? I moved back to OC after\nliving in Santa Monica and working at business.com for a year and a half. I\ndon't want to move back or drive on the 405 every day.\n\n~~~\ndabent\nSorry, I don't think there are any telecommute options at this time.\n\n------\nwkral\nVancouver, B.C., Canada\n\nTwenty Year Media, we're an early stage funded startup, and we're trying to\nchange how you find movies to watch.\n\nWe're currently looking for a full-stack generalist developer. Someone with a\ngood work ethic and a willingness to learn new things. We follow an 80/20 rule\nfor functional over OO programming.\n\nThe stack:\n\n    \n    \n        * Python\n        * Flask\n        * Redis\n        * Riak\n        * Linux\n        * uWSGI\n        * Nginx\n        * Javascript/HTML\n    \n\nWith aspirations towards mobile development in the future. You don't have to\nknow everything up front as long as you can pick it up quickly. If you're\ninterested please send your github, bitbucket or anything else you're proud of\nto william@20yearmedia.com with a bit about why you might be a good fit for\nus.\n\n~~~\nmkmcdonald\nYour site isn't loading. Is there anything you have for visitors to look at?\n\n------\nkittkat\nJana (Boston,MA)-Full time Full-Stack Web Developers, Head of Engineering, Web\nDevelopment Interns, Associate Product Manager (Mobile and Facebook), PR\nSpecialist, etc.\n\nWe are a well funded startup that is building a new style of marketing and\nadvertising company focusing on underserved, understudied communities in high-\ngrowth markets. We are actively recruiting individuals who share our passion\nfor making a lasting, positive global impact while growing a thriving,\nexciting business.\n\nWe are changing century old industries in the developing world through cutting\nedge mobile technology. We help big players (like the World Bank, The\nEconomist, Unilever) get feedback from hard to reach groups in days instead of\nmonths and test innovative products with the push of a button. We have a\npowerful mobile rewards platform to send free airtime minutes to more than 2.1\nbillion people around the world. We're earning revenue in 50 countries and\nhave raised almost $10M from premier VC investors.\n\nOur teams bursts with talent from MIT, Harvard, Stanford and Google but we're\npretty relaxed, except during weekly Settlers of Catan battles in the office,\nice-cream runs on Wednesdays or beer runs every Friday.\n\nInterested in global + mobile + data? <http://jana.com/about-us/careers/>\n\nOn the Web Developer front: Early stage means you'll have major influence We\nlove Open Source (CouchDB, Flask, and more) Roots from the MIT Media Lab\nGlobal Impact (Asia, Africa, Latin America) We gather and analyze massive\namounts of data\n\nGood candidates have:\n\n    \n    \n        Experience across the entire open source stack\n        UI/UX implementation, web design\n        Experience with web frameworks\n        Experience with Python - or very strong in at least two other web-related languages\n        3+ years of software development\n        Demonstrable analytic ability\n        Passion for web software development\n        Ability to both learn from and teach other engineers\n    \n\nAny questions you can email me at katrina at jana.com\n\n------\njulianwa\nFiftyThree (New York, NY and Seattle, WA) - creators of Paper for iPad\n\nAt FiftyThree we build tools for mobile creation. Two months ago, we launched\nPaper , the simplest and most beautiful way to create on the iPad. Within two\nweeks, Paper was downloaded 1.5 million times and used to generate over 7\nmillion creations.\n\n<http://www.fiftythree.com>\n\nOur ambition is no less than to change the way people create, and we're just\ngetting started. We're building world-class engineering teams in NYC and\nSeattle — spanning hardware, software, and services — to take on this\nchallenge.\n\n<http://www.fiftythree.com/jobs>\n\nWe look forward to hearing from you!\n\n------\nsofuture\nNew York, NY - Software Engineer - Fulltime\n\nCanvas Networks (USV Funded) is looking for engineers #3 and #4 to join a\nsmall close team building the rich-media community platform of the future.\n\nThe job title says \"Software Engineer\" but really we're looking for \"Software\nEntrepreneur\" or a \"Startup Engineer\". Yes, your day job will be writing code.\nBut that's the only similarity to a big company software job. You'll be\nchallenged to take big ideas and turn them into concrete testable hypotheses.\nShipping a great feature is important, but positively changing user behavior\nis the ultimate success criteria. Built-to-spec takes a backseat to moves-the-\nmetrics.\n\nMore details and how to apply: <http://canv.as/jobs>\n\n------\nryen\nCoffee Meets Bagel - San Francisco, CA. Full time - Experienced Python/Django\nweb developer Coffee Meets Bagel ( <http://coffeemeetsbagel.com> ) is a new\ninnovative online dating startup making waves in New York and Boston and\nlooking to expand to the west coast soon. We've recently been featured in\nTechCrunch, Glamour, BostInno, and several other major blogs and publications.\n\nAbout the Job: We're looking for an experienced Python/Django web developer to\njoin our early stage team as we scale our service in terms of geography and\nusers, apply machine learning techniques to our algorithms, refine our revenue\nmodel, and continue to keep our customers happy. You will have an opportunity\nto work with and learn from a highly experienced technical advisor and great\nengineers. This is a market with huge opportunity and we will look to you for\nbest practices around architecture, deployment and scaling the service to\nmillions of people.\n\nRequirements: - 2+ Years of Python development experience with some knowledge\nof Django or similar web frameworks. You will be able to contribute to our\nDjango code base from Day 1. - A strong knowledge of the fundamentals of\nnetworking, operating systems, and security. - A Bachelors Degree in Computer\nScience or Computer Engineering or related discipline from a 4-year program. -\nAgile. Intelligent. Creative. Problem-solver. Startup lover. You like finding\nand working with outstanding engineers and want to help us build an awesome\nengineering team.\n\nBonus: - Experience building back-end systems on a high-traffic, low-latency\nweb site. - Knowledge in Machine Learning/Graph Theory/Large-scale Data\nAnalysis is a plus - Experience working with, and contributing to open source\nsoftware projects is a plus—show us your github account or other online\nprojects if available.\n\n*Also looking for engineering interns, front-end developers, and marketing/PR intern. <http://coffeemeetsbagel.com/jobs/>\n\n------\nmquirion\nBaltimore, MD / New York City, NY\n\n<http://www.lotame.com/about-lotame/marketing-technology-jobs>\n\nLotame is hiring across the board. Web app devs, data scientists, big data\ndevs, infrastructure, support, QA, account exec, etc...\n\nWe've created a SaaS solution that enables publishers, brands, and marketers\nto manage all of their audience data from any data source (web, mobile, CRM,\noff-line retail, etc...).\n\nGreat, challenging environment where you get recognized for doing great work.\nIt's a complex industry that lets you use all the big buzzwords in day-to-day\nconversation without feeling ridiculous.\n\nIf interested, e-mail me at my HN username at lotame dot com.\n\n------\nbb_mn\nJAMF Software - Full Time - Minneapolis, MN and Eau Claire, WI\n\nJAMF Software is the creator of the Casper Suite, the only suite of client\nmanagement software developed exclusively for the Apple platform. We help\nthousands of customers to manage their Macs and iOS devices, and we're\nfortunate to work in a space that is evolving and growing at a fast pace. This\nis a great place to work, and we're conveniently located on the top floor of\nthe Grain Exchange in downtown Minneapolis.\n\nWe're looking for a driven web developer (Symfony/Zend, jQuery, HTML5, CSS,\nPHP) to join our team. In this position, you will hit the ground running and\nhelp us build a better website, evolve and mature our development process, and\nintegrate with internal and external systems using a variety of APIs. You'll\nalso probably suggest some things we haven't thought of yet.\n\nRESPONSIBILITIES\n\n• Collaborates with communications team to create and publish timely, accurate\ninformation about products and offerings\n\n• Manages and improves development and production environments\n\n• Evolves development process to maturity through the use of content\nversioning systems, deployment tools, backup systems and increased redundancy\n\n• Integrates with external systems (for example, Salesforce) using APIs\n\n• Measures the success of web initiatives and campaigns\n\n• Increases efficiency, improves processes and leverages emerging capabilities\n\nWe are growing quickly and are also hiring for a number of other positions,\nincluding Software Engineer (Objective-C or Java), Software Engineer - Test,\nand QA engineers. All jobs are listed on our careers page:\n<http://www.jamfsoftware.com/about/careers>.\n\nInterested? The first step is to check out our careers page and submit your\nresume to our recruiting team. If you could mention that you saw the job\nposting here, I would appreciate it. I've asked them to keep their eyes open\nfor resumes that mention HN.\n\n------\ndefrex\nToronto, Canada (King St. W.) - Django Developer - <http://shopcastr.com>\nShopcastr is a social marketplace for independent retailers and local\nshoppers. We’re backed by Mantella Venture Partners and are seeing great early\ntraction. We have a solid team so far and need someone to help make up the\nfoundation of the company as we grow. We’re looking for a developer with some\nPython and Django chops who isn’t afraid to pick up new skills when needed (we\nuse CoffeeScript and SASS, for example). We’re looking for someone self-\ntaught, though we won’t hold it against you if you’ve also been to school.\nEmail us at aron@shopcastr.com with whatever you think we need to see before\nfollowing up with you.\n\n~~~\npyre\nI'm curious why people are down-voting this. If people think that they are a\nbad place to work, etc, it's more useful to others to say so (even with a\nthrow-away account), than to just down-vote the posting.\n\n------\nkabir_h\nCambridge, MA - Shareaholic makes tools for publishers and users to help them\nfind and share the best content on the web. We're a small, funded startup\n(with killer investors: Dave McClure, Dharmesh Shah, General Catalyst) that\nreaches 300 million unique users via 200K publishers. We've got an awesome\nteam culture that avoids bureaucracy and gives everyone a meaningful chance to\ncontribute. Everyone codes, even our marketing person.\n\nWe're hiring a Product Designer, Front End Developer and looking for a DevOps\ncontractor: <http://www.shareaholic.com/careers>\n\nFeel free to email me direct if you're interested or have questions: kabir at\nshareaholic dot com.\n\n------\nnurey\nQuandl.com (Downtown Toronto, Canada) – Full Time, Local\n\nWe are a funded startup about to launch an intelligent search engine for\nnumerical data. We use Github for source control and you will have an\nopportunity to open source the code you write. We also use Pivotal Tracker,\nIRC, and Jenkins for continuous integration. We use the best tools money can\nbuy. You get a sizeable budget to setup your work environment. Aeron chair?\n27'' Thunderbolt Display? Basketball net? You got it!\n\nYou are an exceptional full-stack RoR software engineer. You love RSpec, TDD,\nRuby and Javascript. You understand the architectural difference between\nAngular, Ember and Backbone.\n\nEmail to jobs at quandl dot com with subject RoR.\n\n~~~\n3pt14159\nUpvoted for the well written post, but a quick question:\n\nWhy are you guys using Ruby? Is it the better libraries for client side JS\nlibraries like Ember? It seems that you may eventually need some of the tools\nthat Numpy or Scipy provide and the difference between Rails and Django (or\nPylons or Flask) don't seem like a big enough gap. Of course you could use\nZeroMQ (or whatever) to communicate between the two, but unless there is a big\nreason, why divide up your back end?\n\n------\ngozman\nAppifier, Montreal (Canada) - Seed Funded\n\nWe're hiring a full-time iOS developer who wants to help bring visibility,\ndiscoverability and monetization to the millions of blogs and online\npublishers across the web by creating awesome mobile/tablet app experiences\nfor them.\n\nDetails on our job posting are here:\n\n[http://matchfwd.com/opportunities/ios-developer-\nextraordinai...](http://matchfwd.com/opportunities/ios-developer-\nextraordinaire-in-montreal-quebec-ca)\n\nSend your resume to jobs@theappifier.com Compensation is a fair mix of salary\nand equity.\n\nWe prefer local candidates or anyone who can relocate but are willing to\nconsider remote working for the right dev.\n\n------\nmuntzen\nAtlanta, GA - MailChimp (<http://mailchimp.com>)\n\nSoftware Engineer\n\n+++++ What we're looking for +++++\n\n* Solid engineers. We don't care about pedigree or what languages or stacks you've worked in, we just want great engineers. In fact, if you don't want to \"polish up the ole resume\" and want to send code instead, that's great with us (though we'll take a resume in lieu of code).\n\n* Developers who will thrive without explicit supervision or constant guidance.\n\n* Developers located anywhere, but willing to work in Atlanta. We allow for flexible hours and some telecommute options, but you've got to be in the office here in downtown Atlanta on a regular basis. Relocation is an option.\n\n+++++ Why it's great to work here +++++\n\n* While we agree that PHP isn't the world's greatest language (<http://blog.mailchimp.com/ewww-you-use-php/>), it's our main language and our framework allows us to get a lot done without feeling the pain of PHP.\n\n* We do use other languages also, such as python, C and more - <http://blog.mailchimp.com/language-at-mailchimp/>\n\n* Our scale is interesting and fun and just keeps growing - <http://blog.mailchimp.com/mailchimp-numbers/>\n\n* We are allowed to be creative. We're actually required to. Without process, managers, and meetings getting in the way, we get to concentrate on what we love to do without barriers - [http://www.fastcocreate.com/1679207/creative-cultures-mailch...](http://www.fastcocreate.com/1679207/creative-cultures-mailchimp-grants-employees-permission-to-be-creative)\n\nEmail us at engineer-hiring@mailchimp.com\n\n------\nphillytom\nMonetate - Conshohocken, PA (Philly suburb) - No remote, but we will help you\nrelocate.\n\nMonetate is a SAAS provider to internet marketers. We do real-time DOM\nmodification on our clients’ sites to put the right experience in front of\ntheir users. We’re looking for engineers who want to do highly visible work on\ngreat brands and solve tough problems with great coworkers.\n\nAbout us:\n\n* Founded in 2008\n\n* Funded by First Round and OpenView\n\n* Market comp\n\n* Respect - it's our core value. We have a great team and we work well together. Our vacation policy is the same as Netflix (we don't have one). Our technical teams have full authority over (and responsibility for) the problems they work on.\n\nWhat we're looking for:\n\n* Problem solvers who like to code - we take things apart, figure out how they work, then build software to solve problems\n\n* People who like to ship - we're focused on building and shipping great products - if you like to see your work in production quickly you'll see it here\n\n* Use the source - Google Closure to Python, Hadoop and Mahout to Solr and Lucene - we're open source across our stack\n\n* People who like hard challenges - we have great problems across our products - data, UX, 3rd party JS, high volume / low latency APIs - we have no shortage of deep problems to work on\n\nWe're looking for people not positions. We have people who have joined the\nteam with no background in our primary languages and people from non-\ntraditional backgrounds. Check out our blog at\n<http://engineering.monetate.com/> and see more about our open jobs at\n<http://monetate.com/jobs/>\n\nWe've hired great people from HN in the past.\n\nFeel free to email me with any questions or to apply - tjanofsky monetate com\n\n------\nrujulz\nCincinnati, OH - INTERN Frontend/Backend Django Developers for FlightCar\n(backed by The Brandery):\n\nFrontend:\n\nWe're looking for someone who has an eye for design and can realize their\ndesigns with code. Strong working knowledge of CSS, HTML, and Javascript is a\nmust. Graphic Design Skills is a huge +, Django is a +\n\nBackend:\n\nWe're looking for someone who can setup a server blindfolded and who has a\nstrong working knowledge of Django (Python) and Javascript.\n\nWhat will the experience be like?\n\nA lot of learning and a lot of work, accompanied with a lot of fun--expect the\nsort of environment you had seen in The Social Network, except now there are\n12 other teams in the building with brilliant programmers and designers for\nyou to learn from and teach. We also have top notch mentors, thanks to the\nBrandery, as well as a world class design firm, a bank team, and a legal team,\nalong with dedicated support server side.\n\nIf selected for the position, you'll be working at The Brandery from late June\nuntil school starts. Depending on the specific dates you work, you'll get\n$1-3k upfront, along with $4-6k promised upon us receiving our next round of\nfunding, and a little bit of equity, a bonus we give so that you'll have a\nvested interest in our company (imagine how much that'll be worth if we hit it\nbig!). Not to mention, you'll have free housing in an awesome house with the\nrest of the team and the opportunity to network with some of the most\nbrilliant entrepreneurs in America--think of it as a way to get your foot in\nthe door of the startup scene.\n\nSince we're in the early stages of development, we cannot publicly disclose\nour business model, but we're working to disrupt an industry and we think we\ncan hit it big.\n\nSend shrig94@gmail.com a resume and a portfolio of previous works if you're\ninterested!\n\n------\ndavidblondeau\nBurligame, CA - Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD)\n(<https://www.collaborativedrug.com>)\n\nCDD is growing and financially stable. Our software helps scientists manage,\nanalyze and collaborate around their drug discovery data (chemistry and\nbiology). We are are in a great position to support the evolution towards more\ncollaboration, specialization and distribution in a market that has been\nhistorically closed and secretive. The model has been successful with academic\nlabs, small biotech startups and very large collaborations (like the Gates\nfoundation TB initiative or MM4TB in Europe). We are now gaining some traction\nwith government agencies and the big pharmaceuticals.\n\nWe are hiring two full-stack software developers\n(<https://www.collaborativedrug.com/pages/employment#h-1>). As one of the core\ndevelopers, you need to be comfortable working or interested in building\nexpertise at every level of the stack. Experience or interest in system\nadministration and operations is nice to have though not required. We have\nmany projects involving web development, data visualization, data processing,\nscaling, security, privacy and other software challenges to make our\nscientific application collaborative, engaging and rewarding.\n\nIt is perfectly OK if you do not have experience with any of the languages or\ntechnologies we currently use (Rails/Ruby/JS/MySQL/Solr...) as long as you can\nlearn those quickly. CDD is a great place if you want to have a lot of impact\nand like to take on projects and responsibilities. We offer market salary and\nmeaningful equity.\n\nIf you are interested, contact work@collaborativedrug.com, you will get an\nanswer from one of the developers.\n\n------\nkeyajay\nSan Francisco, CA - Chief Data Scientist // Rails Engineer\n\nElectNext translates political data into tools that help build a more\ninformed, engaged and effective democracy. Starting with voting, we are\nbuilding the database on your candidates and facilitating your access to it\nwith matching technology, so that you can easily vote your values all the way\ndown your ballot. Like OkCupid for elections.\n\nMost importantly, we are looking for people who can’t wait to deliver\nbreakthrough technology in the service of a more informed and participatory\ndemocracy.\n\nSpecifically, we are looking for:\n\n1) A Chief Data Scientist to found and run our data lab. You have: PhD-level\nmathematics, statistics or computer science; deep familiarity with Bayesian\nstatistics, predictive algorithms and machine learning; statistical\nprogramming especially R; Ruby on Rails.\n\n2) A full stack rails engineer with a passion for big data and back end\narchitecture. Ready to take on a big role on a small team as we expand our\nplatform through a critical growth stage.\n\nPlease contact: keya at electnext dot com with a link to your github or other\ncode samples, and tell us why what we're doing resonates with you.\n\nA bit more about ElectNext: we are a 3-person, funded, SF- and NYC-based\nstartup. We won the O’Reilly Web 2.0 startup showcase (2011 NYC) and were a\nGovFresh “best civic startup” of 2011. We have spoken at TEDx and Ignite, and\nWharton and Harvard Business Schools. We have been featured in TechCrunch,\nFastCompany, the Huffington Post and the O’Reilly Radar. We provide data and\ntechnology to The Economist, Comcast, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the National\nConstitution Center and others. Our advisors include both past presidential\ncandidates and first Facebookers. We launched in November.\n\n------\nnewhouseb\nSan Francisco, IOS Developer. Full Time.\n\nWe’re inventing a new kind of photography for when photos just aren’t enough.\nClose your eyes and imagine your favourite memory - say christmas morning as a\nkid. You’re probably not thinking of a rectangle in a void (i.e. a picture),\nnor are you thinking of a moving rectangle in a void (i.e. a movie), you’re\nprobably thinking of an entire world that you’re standing in the center of. We\nmake an IOS app that allows you to save this entire moment into a seamless\nspherical photograph called a bubble that you can save and share with others.\n\nWe’re a small, three person team - the intern who made Yelp’s Monocle, a\ndesigner from Cooper Union and a computer vision genius. We raised $2 million\nin a heavily oversubscribed round of funding from August Capital. We spoke at\nTED (sorry, no video!), have offices on union square in San Francisco and have\nan app that has an unparalleled ability to induce uncontrolled smiles of glee\nwhen people first see it.\n\nWe’re looking for someone to be our point person for IOS development. We\nactually all have IOS experience (and really cool app in progress), but we’re\nlooking for someone to grab the bull by the horns and focus on IOS full time\n(as the two engineers are focused on computer vision and ‘all the other boring\nengineering’ respectively). You’ll be a pretty big deal at our company. We’re\npretty lucky in that our technology spans everywhere from advanced computer\nvision to WebGL and HTML5 to Python, PostgreSQL and Memcached to low-level\nrun-loop optimizations for UI responsiveness and Core Animation magic. It's a\nlot of fun.\n\nSend me an e-mail at ben@bubb.li\n\n------\nsilent_void\nWuaki.tv, Barcelona, Spain. <http://jobs.wuaki.tv> : Several open positions:\nRails Developer, DBA, SysAdmin... We are building a Video On Demand Platform\nfor web and Connected Devices. We have launched in Spain, but we are growing\nand expanding the team and project Internationally. We are a young and funny\nteam. We look for a team builder, with strong knowledge of Rails that will\nbring more “power and muscle” to the team. Someone that knows how to deal with\npressure and work with a multidisciplinary team. The position is full-time job\nin our Barcelona offices.\n\n------\ntimanglade\nApigee (Palo Alto, REMOTE, H1B) — Java Developers and Mobile Developers\n\nApigee is the API company. We are helping thousands of developers build API-\ndriven applications every day. Our technology powers the APIs of Netflix,\nX.com, GameSpy, ConstantContact, and hundreds of others. We are actively\nhiring for <http://usergrid.com/>, our Mobile Backend-as-a-Service. Our stack\nis fully open-source (<https://github.com/apigee/usergrid-stack>) and our\nhosted service is about to enter Public Beta. We are built on top of Jersey,\nJackson and Cassandra (we gutted a lot of the latter and built our own\nindexing system, query system, storage format and multi-tenancy strategy on\ntop of it).\n\nWe are looking for Java Developers to join our Core team and help us overcome\nthe next generation technical challenges, from Websockets to multi-DC, log\nrouting and beyond! Not much is required except familiarity with at least one\nNOSQL database, a good understanding of the Spring framework, and solid\nexperience in having fun.\n\nWe are also looking for Mobile developers proficient in at least one of iOS,\nAndroid & JavaScript+HTML5, who want to become an expert at all three, and\nhelp make it easier to write mobile apps without a backend team.\n\nWe offered catered lunches, full health/dental/life/401k, above-market\nsalaries, options, unlimited vacation and flexible hours.\n\nWant to apply? Have some questions? Want to join but don’t match either\nposition? Then get in touch; I joined them this year and I’m loving it ➝\ntim@apigee.com\n\n------\nseldo\nSan Francisco, CA (Mission District) - awe.sm\n\nWe're looking for front-end, back-end, and full-stack engineers. (H1B okay)\n\nWe're building conversion tracking for social media -- \"SendGrid for sharing\",\nif you like.\n\nMost sites and apps are currently doing a really poor job of measuring where\nsocial traffic comes from, and how valuable it is in terms of page views,\nsignups and sales. We save people from reinventing the wheel by providing a\nset of APIs to integrate into their application that make it easy to generate\nshares and track the performance of different networks and campaigns. The APIs\nare written in Ruby and PHP right now, sitting on top of a mixture of MySQL\nand Redis, but we are pretty language-agnostic and pick the right tool for the\njob. The back-end challenges are all about taking lots of data and processing\nit scalably, as fast as possible.\n\nWe also have a GUI, a modern Javascript single-page app written using Backbone\nthat sits on top of our APIs. It's all about allowing custmers to explore\ntheir data and find what's important.\n\n<http://totally.awe.sm/jobs>\n\nWe're currently 13 people, with a goal of 14-16, of which 8 will be engineers.\nWe have a great location in an awesome neighbourhood with an amazing view (\n<http://www.flickr.com/photos/seldo/6326815086/in/photostream> ) and have\ncatered lunches, full health, vision and dental coverage.\n\nWe use an internal IRC server for team communication. If that makes you say\n\"yay!\" then you will definitely fit in.\n\n------\nzinxq\nPalo Alto, CA - H1B - Full Time\n\nFunded (Series A) start-up building first engineering team. Looking for\nSoftware Developers across the stack.\n\n<http://www.refresh.io/jobs>\n\njobs@refresh.io\n\nYou're a crack-shot software engineer. Not necessarily because of where you\nwent to school, but because simply put - you love this stuff. You know at\nleast one mobile/web-related computer language cold. Whether it's Objective-C,\nRuby, Java Javascript, or others - we're not too concerned about which one\nbecause no matter which one (or ones) we end up using, you'll not only be able\nto pick it up fast, you'll be excited about doing so.\n\nYou understand the latest technology. From NoSQL to Backbone to Node. You\naren't technically religious and gain as much satisfaction in picking the\nright tool for the job as you do implementing it.\n\nYou've built stuff. Web sites. Mobile apps. Whatever. You can show us. You\ncan't wait to show us. You're not only excited of what users can do with it,\nyou're proud about how it's implemented and to a technical audience, and you\ncan't wait to talk about it.\n\nAs part of the first engineering team, you're excited by the prospect of\nworking with smart people. Because you're smart and you know it - and you know\nthat working with other smart people simply makes you better (all the while\nmaking them better too). As a bonus, being part of this initial team gives you\nthe opportunity to strongly affect future engineering hires - insuring the\ncaliber of the team.\n\nYou live within commuting distance to Palo Alto, CA or are willing to relocate\n(paid).\n\n------\nLauraSeeker\nSeeker Solutions - Full time - Victoria, BC and Vancouver, BC - Canada\n\nAt Seeker Solutions, we build solutions to real-world business issues using\nnatural language processing and machine learning. Our development teams\nsupport existing solutions, build new projects and enhancements, and research\ncutting-edge natural language processing techniques. As we expand our client\nbase into several new industries, we're undergoing a major growth stage.\n\nWe're currently hiring the following positions: * Software Development Team\nLead [Victoria] * Software Architect [Victoria] * Software QA Analyst\n[Victoria] * Senior Software Developer [Vancouver] * System Operations\nEngineer [Vancouver] * Intermediate/Senior Software QA Analyst [Vancouver]\n\nWe are primarily Java-based, with heavy use of Hadoop/HBase, although our\nresearch team mostly works in Python, and our processes are fairly agile. Our\noffices are full of happy people who enjoy awesome perks (Nerf gun fights,\nbringing dogs to work, gym memberships, a well-stocked kitchen, plus more) and\nare passionate about what they do. If you're not in our area and are open to\nmoving, Victoria and Vancouver are beautiful cities, boasting vibrant cultural\nscenes and nearby locations for skiing and surfing.\n\nIf you're ready to help shape the future of our company and bring new NLP\nsolutions to market, please check the full job postings and apply online via\n<http://seekersolutions.com/careers> \\-- feel free to contact me\n(laura.bowles@seekersolutions.com) if you have any questions.\n\n------\ngoodside\nOkCupid -- New York, NY\n\nThree positions:\n\n* Product Designer\n\n* Software Engineer\n\n* Data Scientist\n\n<http://www.okcupid.com/careers/we-are-hiring>\n\n------\nmaxaf\nNovus (New York, NY - Midtown East): hiring hacker generalists\n\n<https://www.novus.com/>\n\nAt Novus we're building the next generation of real-time financial analytics\nplatforms. We use Scala, Akka, and MongoDB, and are looking for bright,\nmotivated, eager to learn, and eager to add value hackers. There's no\nparticular skill set that we require other than a good combination of depth &\nbreadth, a keen eye for great design, ability to reason about code, and simply\nbuild things.\n\nIf you're interested, let's talk! E-mail me: max at novus dot com\n\n------\nzuvikomx\nSEEKING FREELANCER OR INTERN: Mexico City\n\nWe're expanding our web services and want someone keen to get their feet\nreally wet with Javascript front-end development with a focus on both desktop\nand mobile. You've got experience with JQuery and maybe you're in love in\nPython. If you want to play with MapReduce, write an API, scale web services\nand work with real-time data, there's a lot of fun yet to be had. We really\nlove our industry and are the current leading service provider in our field,\nworking with top clients internationally. Email us at hire.me.mex@gmail.com\nwith some work you've done.\n\n------\nnikhilpandit\nGrubwithus (YC W11) - Venice, CA - fulltime\n\nGrubwithus helps users meet awesome people over tasting menus at top\nrestaurants. We are looking for engineers to help us build features and\nprovide a great experience for our users. Specific positions:\n\nBACKEND DEVELOPER POSITION\n\nRequirements\n\n    \n    \n      - Strong experience with server-side programming (preferably in Ruby on Rails)\n      - Example projects that demonstrate this ability\n      - Strong background in computer science fundamentals\n    \n\nGood to Haves\n\n    \n    \n      - Experience with deep social-network integration, recommendation engines, payment systems, analytics systems\n      - Experience with building an API for a web-service\n      - jQuery / CSS experience in a production environment\n    \n\nLink to apply: [http://grubwithus.theresumator.com/apply/7r1rjn/Developer-\nBa...](http://grubwithus.theresumator.com/apply/7r1rjn/Developer-Backend.html)\n\nFRONT-END DEVELOPER POSITION\n\nRequirements\n\n    \n    \n      - Proficient in jQuery and CSS\n      - Strong understanding of UI and UX\n      - Example projects that demonstrate this\n    \n\nGood to Haves\n\n    \n    \n      - Ruby-on-Rails experience in a production environment\n      - Experience with deep social-network integration\n      - Personal projects that showcase ability to design and implement great UI / UX\n      - Experience with Illustrator or other design tools\n    \n\nLink to apply: [http://grubwithus.theresumator.com/apply/pVmZt1/Developer-\nFr...](http://grubwithus.theresumator.com/apply/pVmZt1/Developer-\nFrontend.html)\n\n------\nrileywatkins\nInstaEDU — Software Engineers — San Francisco, CA\n\nInstaEDU is an on-demand video tutoring marketplace. We're making personal\nstudy help accessible and affordable for everyone.\n\nWe just raised a $1.1M seed round\n(<http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/30/instaedu/>) and we're looking for ambitious\nfull-stack engineers who love working on a wide variety of challenges to join\nour team. As we transition from prototype to a global web application, we need\nnew teammates to help develop key features, scale our infrastructure, and take\nan algorithmic approach to improving product effectiveness. This is a unique\nopportunity to play a major role on a small team and help millions of students\nget personal academic attention.\n\nOur tech stack includes Python/Django, JavaScript, and MySQL. We also use a\nnumber of third-party APIs such as TokBox, Facebook Chat, and Firebase.\n\nBenefits:\n\n* Small team where everyone has a major impact\n\n* Competitive salary with great equity compensation\n\n* Casual, open office environment\n\n* Medical, dental and vision insurance\n\n* Downtown San Francisco location close to awesome food and easy transit\n\nRequirements:\n\n* Extremely strong Python programming skills\n\n* Proficient with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript\n\n* Passion for InstaEDU’s product and mission\n\n* BA/BS degree with a strong academic record (or equivalent work experience)\n\nSend your resume, GitHub profile, blog, and/or any projects that you're proud\nof to jobs@instaedu.com. If you're awesome, we want to hear from you!\n\n------\nurgeio2\nBERLIN/GERMANY, FULL-TIME, LOCAL\n\nWe have several open positions, you find all of them on <http://urge.io> with\nfull text, requirements and contact email\n\nOPEN POSITIONS:\n\n=> Lead Software Engineer Ruby on Rails\n\n=> Lead Software Engineer UI/UX/Frontend\n\n=> Lead Software Engineer iOS\n\n=> Lead Software Engineer Android\n\n=> Lead Software Engineer Node.js\n\n=> Head of Operations\n\nURGE IO, a startup headquarted in Berlin-Mitte, is building a consumer online\nproduct with groundbreaking technologies in the field of AI and Natural\nLanguage Processing. The product has launched and we are growing\nfast—currently showing an organic traffic growth of 2.1x per month, having\nalready more than 400 #1 positions on Google SERPs while providing content in\n17 languages including Chinese.\n\nWe offer:\n\n=> Be with an amazing team and top-notch architects\n\n=> Contribute to a cutting-edge product employing newest technologies from day\none\n\n=> Be right in the center of Berlin-Mitte, one of the coolest neighborhoods\nand startup communities\n\n=> Be part of Europe's new tech hub Berlin and a vibrant ecosystem of smart\npeople and many career opportunities\n\n=> A top salary\n\n=> Help and bonus on relocating/moving to Berlin\n\n=> A long-term perspective at a fast growing company\n\n=> Perfect software development environment\n\n=> Work on a Mac\n\nPlease find all the job positions with full text and requirements on\n<http://urge.io/jobs>\n\n------\nsquirrel\nNotting Hill, London, England.\n\nOur web application is at the heart of our busy e-commerce business; every day\nit serves millions of product images and handles thousands of purchases - but\nwe can and do update the live site with new code anytime we want without\nmissing a beat. Our systems are written on the LAMP stack and we are migrating\nto Symfony 2 as our MVC framework. Developers choose the tools that work best\nfor them - for instance, we have a mix of Linux, Windows, and Mac workstations\nin the team. We are adopting and adapting agile development techniques such as\ntest-driven development, pair programming, and continuous integration. We hold\nregular retrospectives to improve our working environment and lightning talks\nto share cool ideas whether work-related or not. We expect developers to be\ngeneralising specialists, ready at the drop of a hat to refine an algorithm,\nwrite a tricky integration test, tune a SQL query, or discuss feature nuances\nwith a product manager. Our team is growing to five developers and we'd like\nto hear (at careers@secretsales.com) from any of you who'd like to join us.\n\nEstablished in London in July 2007, Secretsales.com is one of the UK's leading\nprivate shopping clubs, offering limited-time online sales with current name-\nbrand goods at deep discounts. Brands include fashion, beauty, homewares and\nlifestyle categories, many familiar from the high street. The company has\nabout 55 employees and a substantial annual turnover. The firm is growing\nquickly after a recent investment round.\n\n------\naliya_bhatia\nDash Technologies, Inc. seeking lead front-end web engineer - Part time/Remote\nare lovely\n\nWhat if, instead of scribbles on a clipboard, teachers could instantly\ntranslate a fleeting thought to call a parent into a playlist in their phones?\n\nCheck out what we’ve done to solve this pain point at\n[http://aliyabhatia.posterous.com/private/tunrgdjyaI#!/slides...](http://aliyabhatia.posterous.com/private/tunrgdjyaI#!/slideshow)\n\nAs Lead Engineer, you would:\n\n\\- Build a product that teachers and principals are begging to see in their\nclassrooms and schools \\- Work with an Emmy Award-winning designer to develop\nweb portals, mobile apps, and our main website \\- Manage a team and build a\ncompany\n\nWhat we are looking for:\n\n\\- Experience integrating web and mobile APIs into web development \\- A\npassion for education and education technology \\- Demonstrated ability to\nmanage a team \\- Excellent communication skills \\- A discriminating eye and\nwillingness to vet options and make the right decision for the product \\- An\n“all-hands-on-deck” mentality and willingness to support in any area needed \\-\nStrong preference for candidates with past experience in mobile development \\-\nAt least 15 hours per week to devote to Dash’s development needs\n\nTo apply:\n\n\\- Send a resume, cover letter, and links to portfolio pieces to Dash founder\nAliya Bhatia at aliya_bhatia@mac.com \\- Qualified candidates will undergo\nbetween 1 and 3 interviews with various members of Team Dash for fit, team\nchemistry, and domain expertise\n\n------\nMattRogish\nFundingGates (<http://fundinggates.com/jobs/>) - NYC - Ruby on Rails,\nJavaScript (Ember.js), or Django experts! _Local (or relocatable to NYC)\nonly._\n\nLooking for _senior_ Ruby on Rails, JavaScript rich client, or Django\ndevelopers for our young, privately-funded startup (no plans to take any more\n$$). You'd be engineer #1 aside from the CTO (me). We're building technology\nto help disrupt the small/medium business recevables space. Our software will\nhelp mom-and-pops collect money that is owed to them; without us, their\noptions are pretty bleak (try and recover themselves or go to the guy around\nthe corner who will do the proverbial \"baseball-bat on kneecaps\" ploy).\n\nRequirements are: Super smart, amazing at Ruby on Rails OR JavaScript OR\nDjango. You must be willing to attend and/or present at meetups, conferences,\netc. and represent Funding Gates so that other awesome folks want to work\nhere, so you must have great written and verbal communication skills.\n\nOur company is optimized for developer happiness, have unlimited vacation and\na Results Only Work Environment (<http://www.gorowe.com>), and is run by folks\nthat know how to treat developers. See one of my submissions:\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3729302>\n\nContact rogish at fundinggates.com with your github, stackoverflow, etc.\n\nThanks!!\n\n\\--\n\nMatt\n\n------\nAloisius\nSan Francisco, CA - SeatMe\n\nSeatMe is hiring! We're a cozy 15 person _restaurant reservation startup_ in\ndowntown San Francisco and we need your help! We're in search of:\n\n    \n    \n      * iOS developers (Objective-C for iPad and iPhone)\n    \n\nWe offer a very competitive salary, benefits, moving costs, equity options,\nregular company dinners at restaurants around SF, catered lunches and an\nawesome culture for all full-time employees.\n\n<http://www.seatme.com/jobs/> or email jordan@seatme.com!\n\n------\nkevbo\nEvanston, IL\n\nJunior Python Test Engineer at Leapfrog Online\n\nWe're the leading independent digital direct marketing firm in the country,\ndeveloping programs for Fortune 500 marketers to find and convert the right\ncustomers. We build complex app ecosystems with frameworks like Django and\nRails sitting on top, with a mound of open source software supporting them.\n\nWe're looking for a junior-level Python Developer to join our Test Engineering\nteam, writing functional, integration, and unit tests in Python for our\nDjango-powered business platform. As part of the Operations team, we also do\nlight system administration and help write monitoring tools.\n\nRequirements: an intense attention to detail, a love of learning, a passion\nfor problem-solving, and a good attitude and sense of responsibility. You\nshould also have experience with Python (or be willing to transition from\nanother dynamic language like Ruby or PHP); be comfortable working on a *nix\ncommand line; and have general knowledge about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.\nExperience with mobile device testing is a plus.\n\nWe're committed to agile and open source; we use packages like mechanize,\ntwill, Selenium (including Selenium Grid), and nose every day.\n\nInterested? If so, we offer a competitive salary plus an incentive and\nbenefits package, and a close-knit team who likes what they do and has fun\ndoing it. If you think you're a good fit for this position, apply with your\nresume and salary history. kboers (at) leapfrogonline.com\n\n------\nhellopat\nCOMPANY (Philadelphia, PA) OneTwoSee <http://www.onetwosee.com>\npclark@onetwosee.com\n\nA funded social television startup focusing on companion applications.\n\nBASIC DESCRIPTION (Front End Developer) Cut up and implement layouts from our\ngraphic designer. This isn't just building static web pages from mock-ups. Our\npages display real-time data via AJAX and involve complex behaviors and\nanimations. Many of our designs involve implementing custom meters and graph\nwidgets based on statistical data from our application server. You must be\nable to implement these using HTML5, CSS, and Javascript.\n\nNECESSARY SKILLS Expert level knowledge in HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Expert\nat troubleshooting and building around cross-browser/cross-platform\ninconsistencies. Experience with, but not total reliance on, Javascript\nlibraries and CSS frameworks (e.g. jQuery, Twitter Bootstrap, etc). Hand code\nyour HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Make mobile-friendly versions of pages using\nCSS media queries. General knowledge of Photoshop. Good design and UX sense.\nExperience with version control software. Preferably git. Love discovering and\napplying new technologies and techniques.\n\nBONUS Experience with compiled CSS systems like Less and Sass. Experience with\nNodeJS and the ExpressJS framework. Experience with backbone.js. Experience\nbuilding vector graphic widgets with RaphaelJS or, even better, your own\nlibrary.\n\n------\nalexgandy\n6fusion - Raleigh, NC.\n\n6fusion is an innovative Utility Metered Cloud company that has emerged in\nthis new era of utility computing with a refreshing vision for the future,\ncutting-edge technologies and a unique commercial business model.\n\nWe're looking for:\n\n1) Front-End Developers ([http://www.6fusion.com/company/careers/job-\ndescription-front...](http://www.6fusion.com/company/careers/job-description-\nfront-end-developer/))\n\n2) Full-Stack Engineers\n\n3) QA Engineers\n\nEmail jobs@6fusion.com for more information.\n\n------\nbrianmwang\nNew York, NY - Fitocracy (<http://fitocracy.com>)\n\niOS Developer\n\nWho We're Looking For \\- Considerable experience building and shipping iOS\napps.\n\n\\- You are obsessed with delivering a great user experience.\n\n\\- You work well with small, tight-knit teams.\n\n\\- You prioritize strong communication above all else. A team that stays in\nsync is a team that gets shit done.\n\nAbout Us Fitocracy is a fitness social network powered by game mechanics to\nmake exercise a more addictive, accessible experience for all. Nearly half a\nmillion people use our web and mobile apps to track their progress, compete\nagainst their friends, and get real world results. We turn life into the\nultimate RPG where you are the hero that levels up, beats quests, and finds\nthe best version of yourself.\n\nWe aim to provide the motivation, information, and community necessary to \"re-\nwire\" people's brains so they make sustainable, impactful changes in their\nlives.\n\nWe are a small, 6-person team based out of NYC that recently raised money from\na variety of VCs and angels, including 500 Startups and Eniac Ventures. The\nfounders, having gone through significant fitness transformations in their own\npersonal lives, originally started Fitocracy in late 2010 as a way to marry\ntheir love of fitness with their years growing up playing classic role playing\ngames like Final Fantasy and Everquest.\n\nContact\n\nEmail me at brian@fitocracy.com\n\n------\naxylone\nSeattle, WA - ExtraHop Networks - Software Engineers, Testing Engineers,\nSupport Engineers, Sales Engineers, and more.\n\nExtraHop is a ~4 year old, fast growing startup building network appliances\nfor application analysis. Think HTTP/DB/memcache/NAS/etc processing times for\nall the servers in a datacenter, all by passively watching the network.\n\nI'm a software engineer at ExtraHop and here's why I love my job:\n\n1\\. The team is amazing and everyone makes a difference. The two founders,\nJesse and Raja, designed and built BigIP v9 when they were at F5 Networks\nbefore founding ExtraHop, and are still very much involved in engineering.\nIt's a great working environment and we have a lot of fun.\n\n2\\. Hard problems at all levels. We parse a bunch of different protocols at\n10Gbps by writing high-performance multithreaded C and our own linux kernel\ndrivers. Our datastore handles 200,000 inserts a second with 10MB/s of data.\nOur UI has a ton of charts and tables, with data going through django and\ntornado. We use python, C, javascript, flex (slowly moving to a new UI with\nhtml5 + javascript), and a modified yacc+bison for some of our protocol\nparsers. You can hack anything from C to the front-end design and anywhere in\nbetween.\n\n3\\. Our customers love it. It's awesome to see problems diagnosed and solved\nwith our box.\n\njobs@extrahop.com\n\n<http://www.extrahop.com/company/jobs/>\n\n------\nderwiki\nSan Francisco, fulltime systems/ops and engineering, Causes -\n<http://www.causes.com/joinus>\n\nAt Causes, use your programming powers to help nonprofits effect change on the\nworld! Ruby on Rails + jQuery stack, 12-ish person engineering team, the usual\nstartup perks (catering, snacks, soda, etc), gym membership reimbursement,\netc. Ways we're trying to make ourselves better engineers:\n\n\\- deliberate practice with our tools. If you are a vim user, we have the\nprogrammer who wrote Command-T on staff and he's a great person to learn from\n- every changeset gets pushed to Gerrit where it waits to get a +1 from our\nbuild suite (that runs in 3 minutes) and a +1 from a human reviewer\n\n\\- over the last 4 months, we've upgraded from Rails 2.1 to 3.2.3 and are\nusing the static asset pipeline, SASS/Compass, and HAML. We're the largest\nsite I know of on Rails 3.2.\n\n\\- everyone is encouraged to take one hour from their day to learn about\nsomething they wouldn't otherwise\n\n\\- every story is scoped so that it can be completed in less than a day. We\ndon't branch, we just work on top of master. We've found that the closer we\nstay to master, the less needless work we create for ourselves\n\nCauses is a great place to better yourself and better the world. We're\nparticularly looking for a systems/ops/network engineer to help wrangle our\ncolo. Apply through the site or adam@causes.com if interested!\n\n------\nruckusred\nMoviePass is looking for an authoritative Dev Leader, with the ability to\ncollaborate across departments. You are confident inheriting legacy code that\nneeds improvement. Testing frameworks should be part of your daily workflow -\npreferably RSpec/Cucumber/Web as well as Continuous Integration (both setup\nand use). You have experience with:\n\n'separation of concerns', 'skinny controllers / fat models', 'progressive\nenhancement' External API's - producing/consuming XML-based data feeds Payment\ngateways and e-commerce solutions. Creating mobile sites Not required but a\nbig plus -\n\nExperience deploying/managing apps on EngineYard iOS or Android Develop\nexperience Required Skills:\n\nMust have excellent communication skills - both verbal and written, able to\narticulate ideas Able to break a job into smaller tasks and accurately\nestimate time to complete overall project Able to plan and develop a coherent\nsystem across various platforms - desktop, mobile, mobile apps HTML5 & CSS3 -\nbest practices and graceful degradation Should be very comfortable with\nJavascript/JQuery/Ajax Git - should be comfortable with not only basic usage,\nbut more advanced features as well i.e. push/pull branches, gitflow, etc.\n\nWe're located in NYC, SoHo area.\n\nSend your info to kristina@moviepass.com or apply via our website -\n<http://moviepass.theresumator.com/apply>\n\n------\ndavedd\nRemote.\n\nThis position is remote and affords a semi-flexible working schedule.\n\nJob Position: Senior Security Support “Ninja” Analyst\n\nDescription: As a Senior Analyst you will be responsible for:\n\n-Handling our most complex security cases (hacked servers, broken sites, hidden malware, etc)\n\n-Troubleshooting broken websites (WordPress, Joomla, osCommerce, Magento, vBulletin, Drupal, and more)\n\n-Direct engagement with the research team to expand our engine\n\n-Queue wrangler, engaging with Junior staff and streamlining processes\n\nAs you might imagine, its not all unicorns and rainbows we’re looking for a\ntechnical type and specifically someone with the following traits:\n\n-Advanced Linux experience – CLI\n\n-Server hardening and security experience (using firewalls, NIDs, HIDs, etc)\n\n-Experience with log analysis, malware analysis or forensics a big plus\n\n-System administration experience with WordPress, Joomla, ,etc osCommerce or other CMSs\n\n-Shell scripting required\n\n-PHP and C coding experience useful, but not required. -Open source and community participation and contributions a plus\n\n*We love to see active community engagement. If you’re already assisting on forums (WordPress.org, open source project, github, stackoverflow, stopbadware) please include your account name as a reference\n\nLink: <http://sucuri.net/company/employment>\n\n------\ngommm\nWeb Age Corp is looking for developers in Shanghai, China.\n\nWe're a small company doing mostly consulting in Ruby on Rails and Python in\norder to fund our own products eventually. Most of our customers are new\nstartups that want to build an MVP and test the market, so it's pretty\nexciting! We get to see a project from the very beginning.\n\nOur work environment is relaxed and flexible. Working from home is ok\n(although we do think that meeting a few times a week in the company is\nhelpful).\n\nWhen it comes to technical decisions, you get a real say and we will really\nlisten to you, we don't just want drones that take no initiative and are\ncontent to follow orders when they really think it's wrong.\n\nWhat we're looking for:\n\n\\- You like learning new technologies, when you see a new framework like\nMeteor or Derby, you get excited and try to play with it to form an opinion.\n\n\\- You like to be given a lot of freedom and taking initiative. You don't\nexpect someone to tell you everyday what needs to be done.\n\n\\- You've got experience in Python or Ruby (but frankly if you don't and have\na lot of experience in Clojure, OCaml, Lisp, Go, Dart, any other language,\nstill contact us)\n\n\\- You can show us some projects you've shipped. It can be anything: a fun\nweekend project, an open source project, ...\n\nIf you're interested and want to learn more, contact us at jobs@webagecorp.com\n\nWe're also interested in Interns.\n\n------\nbostonpete\nBurlington, MA - Exa (www.exa.com)\n\nWe've got a number of positions open, but I'll focus on the position in my\ngroup. We're a small team doing ongoing development (C++, Qt, multi-platform)\non the preprocessor for our flagship CAE simulation product while\nsimultaneously ramping up the design effort for the next generation of the\nproduct, which will expand its scope significantly.\n\nHere's the description of this position: <http://exa.com/sr-sweenng-\ncae-c.html>\n\n------\nj8weeks\nSeattle (Kirkland), WA\n\nServiceNow is hiring in all areas. My group is looking for:\n\n* Strong software developers primarily with Python and Scala experience to work on distributed systems, advanced complex event processing (CEP) and real time analytics (e.g. Storm, Esper, RabbitMQ, Zookeeper, NoSQL).\n\n* A UI/UX engineer with a strong javascript, HTML5, CSS background to work with libraries and tools such as D3, Cubism, Crossfilter.\n\n* Motivated systems engineers looking to integrate distributed data centers and related tooling into a seamless, autonomic, industry-leading operation. Puppet and Python experience helpful.\n\nServiceNow has filed for IPO, and is a positive, egalitarian and progressive\nwork environment with a strong customer focus. Here are some relevant links:\n\n[http://www.forbes.com/sites/markfidelman/2012/04/12/the-25-h...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/markfidelman/2012/04/12/the-25-highest-\nrated-ceos-that-are-hiring-now-chart/) [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/service-\nnow-aims-for-higher-pr...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/service-now-aims-for-\nhigher-profile-doubling-of-revenue/55221)\n\nHiring page here:\n[http://newton.newtonsoftware.com/career/CareerHome.action?cl...](http://newton.newtonsoftware.com/career/CareerHome.action?clientId=8aa00506334a02da01334beeedb23712)\n\n------\njcstauffer\nWoburn, MA - True Fit (<http://jobs.truefit.com/>)\n\nTrue Fit, the global leader in fit personalization, delivers proven fit\nsoftware to retailers selling footwear & apparel online, allowing retailers to\npersonalize their catalog to each consumer’s personal fit and style\npreference.\n\nAmericans spend $300 billion on clothing and footwear every year, but less\nthan 10% of that is purchased online and 40-60% of those products are\nreturned. Our software is proven to dramatically reduce the number of products\nreturned, increasing the confidence of shoppers so that they become buyers,\ndramatically improving conversion rates and driving huge value for our retail\npartners.\n\nLed by a team of Software, Apparel, and Retail veterans, we are getting a ton\nof traction: We are currently live at Macys and Nordstrom, have hundreds of\nbrand partners, and were recently profiled by WSJ (behind paywall, but see\nvideo here:\n[http://online.wsj.com/video/82F25EDC-59F6-4330-BD76-96924F5D...](http://online.wsj.com/video/82F25EDC-59F6-4330-BD76-96924F5D5359.html)).\n\nWe are looking for Ops, SW, and Machine Learning engineers (see\n<http://jobs.truefit.com/> for detailed job descriptions), but we're expanding\nquickly and always interested in meeting smart people.\n\n------\ngtuhl\nAtlanta, GA - Full time, local, relocation possible\n\nMailChimp is looking for infrastructure engineers to join our team. This is a\nfull time position in Atlanta that will help build, support, and monitor the\ninfrastructure our company depends on. We handle tremendous volume and support\nmillions of users that love our products.\n\nWe are looking for people with independent troubleshooting skills, strong\nexperience with Linux, and a desire to monitor and automate everything.\n\n\\- Linux experience, especially at higher server counts\n\n\\- Scripting and coding\n\n\\- Familiarity with pieces of our primary stack (nginx, apache, php, memcache,\nmysql)\n\n\\- Experience building high volume systems is a big plus\n\n\\- Strong experience with mysql is a huge plus (sharding, replication, HA)\n\nMailChimp is a self-funded and profitable Atlanta-based company that is\ngrowing fast. We offer competitive salaries, exceptional benefits and perks,\nphone plan coverage, coffee, snacks, top tier equipment, and an environment\nthat empowers engineers to have a big impact. We work in small teams, there\nare no project managers, no product managers, and engineers are trusted to\nwork autonomously and make good decisions.\n\nAlso, in addition to the above, I am looking for somebody with tremendous\nnetworking and colo experience.\n\nYou can email me directly at infrastructurejob@mailchimp.com\n\n------\neblah\nOnline Commerce Group is looking for a PHP developer in Montgomery, AL.\n\nJob Description and Responsibilities With big initiatives planned in 2012,\nOnline Commerce Group is looking for a driven, motivated PHP software\nprogrammer with experience distributing and supporting enterprise level\nsoftware.\n\nDesired Technical Skills\n\n\\+ Object oriented design, design patterns, and data structures\n\n\\+ Experience with PHP\n\n\\+ Strong demonstrated RDBS experience with at least one of the following: SQL\nServer, Oracle, or MySQL\n\n\\+ Working knowledge of at least one JavaScript framework (eg: Prototype.js,\njQuery) along with strong Ajax experience is a plus\n\n\\+ Experience working with a version control system; GitHub is a plus\n\n\\+ Experience in releasing a software related package\n\nIdeal candidates are those who possess the following attributes:\n\n\\+ Those who are PASSIONATE about their work and desire to learn and grow in\ntheir craft\n\n\\+ Those who think outside the box of conventional thinking\n\n\\+ Those asking and answering the question: “How can we make this easier to\nuse?”\n\n\\+ Those who love semantics and well-structured code\n\n\\+ Looking to bring networking and connectivity to the current team\n\n\\+ Those with great character who are servants to those around them\n\n\\+ Those who believe the impossible is possible\n\nE-mail justin@onlinecommercegroup.com if interested.\n\n------\nHovertruck\nChartbeat is hiring in NYC (Meatpacking District). H1B possible.\n\nWe're a real-time analytics platform focused on providing data to the people\non the front line (people who can take immediate action), rather than the\nanalysts in the back office. Our stack is Python (django/tornado), C, MongoDB,\nand Google Closure for our JavaScript needs. Hiring engineers, designers,\nsupport, sales... Pretty much everything.\n\n<http://chartbeat.com/jobs/>\n\n------\npetermorano\nTrainSignal is looking for a JavaScript developer in Schaumburg, IL (Chicago)\n\nHelp us craft beautiful, engaging, user-friendly websites and mobile\napplications. In this role, you’ll work closely with the development team to\nimplement client-side solutions to support our user experience initiatives.\nYou’ll be primarily focused on building and maintaining a scalable, lean\nframework responsible for loading data and handling user interactions after\nthe DOM is loaded.\n\nYou are a successful candidate if you are an innovative developer, a team\nplayer, and are eager to create interactions that engage our users.\nAdditionally, you have a working knowledge of modern JavaScript frameworks and\ntechnologies, such as Backbone.js, Ember.js, Require.js, Node, SignalR or\nVideo.js. Also, you admire the beauty of JSON, both visually and conceptually,\n\nThe ideal candidate has a passion and vision for conceptualizing and\ncommunicating interactions to the development team and business stakeholders.\nWorking directly with other application developers to integrate client-side\ninteractions with application data through API calls.\n\n[http://trainsignal.theresumator.com/apply/wD8RD7/JavaScript-...](http://trainsignal.theresumator.com/apply/wD8RD7/JavaScript-\nDeveloper.html)\n\n------\ngarysieling\nPhiladelphia, PA (Blue Bell) Full-time, Intern - Software Engineers &\nOperations\n\nJoin a small, but rapidly growing technology company in the Philadelphia\nsuburbs. We're building a hosted, cloud-based offering for clinical trials\n(Java/Postgres). The engineering group is very self-directed and is\nexperimenting with new technologies ranging from an iPad client to Scala.\n\n<http://www.wingspan.com/careers/>\n\n------\njackfoxy\nSan Francisco\n\nSenior Web Designer\n\nDo you have a passion for design?\n\nDo have the desire to create something unique that will allow people to\ninteract and share worldwide?\n\nDo you have the ability to take massive library of online content and present\nit simply yet with style and élan – like the elegant interface of an Apple\nproduct combined with the visceral excitement of a Ferrari?\n\nIf you answered yes to all of the above, this is an opportunity you should\ncheck out.\n\nWe are creating something big and exciting. It has to do with media, games and\nsharing.\n\nLooking for a senior UI and UX designer to work at a tech start-up in San\nFrancisco\n\nHTML, CSS, HTML5, experience in Mobile a plus\n\n5+ years of experience in professional web development\n\nCompensation is a combination of salary and pre-A Round equity\n\nWe are a small, tight, dedicated team.\n\nYou will be getting in on the ground floor and building something big.\n\nWe are going redefine how people play and interact with digital media.\n\nWe are still in stealth mode – we can provide more details to qualified\ncandidates who sign an NDA\n\nFor more info, please contact Clint O’Conner at clinto@product-pro.com Please\nsend a resume, and tell us who/what are your major design influences and why?\n\n------\nsmellypantsman\nCambridge, UK\n\nAllYearbooks is looking for one or two talented full-stack developers to help\nus build our Node.js single-page collaborative, real-time web-app (phew... bit\nof a mouthful that one!) for creating real, hard-copy printed yearbooks.\n\nYou'll be using: node.js, coffeescript, html5 canvas, backbone, jquery, ubuntu\nservers, redis, postgresql etc etc.\n\nMore at: <http://allyearbooks.co.uk/jobs/dev>\n\n~~~\nPeroni\nWarning: This is a combination of a shameless plug as well as a legitimate\nattempt to help you out!\n\nYou should try <http://www.hackerjobs.co.uk>\n\nWe set it up for this exact purpose. It's also free, which helps.\n\n------\nJaneStreet\nJane Street - New York (H1B ok), London, Hong Kong\n\nJane Street is looking to hire great software developers, researchers, and\nsystem administrators with an interest in functional programming. OCaml, a\nstatically typed functional programming with similarities to Haskell, Scheme,\nErlang, F# and SML, is our language of choice. We've got the largest team of\nOCaml developers in any industrial setting, and probably the world's largest\nOCaml codebase. We use OCaml for running our entire business, supporting\neverything from research to systems administration to trading systems. If\nyou're interested in seeing how functional programming plays out in the real\nworld, there's no better place.\n\nThe atmosphere is informal and intellectual. There is a focus on education,\nand people learn about software and trading, both through formal classes and\non the job. The work is challenging, and you get to see the practical impact\nof your efforts in quick and dramatic terms. Jane Street is also small enough\nthat people have the freedom to get involved in many different areas of the\nbusiness. Compensation is highly competitive, and there's a lot of room for\ngrowth.\n\nApply here: <http://janestreet.com/apply>\n\n------\nchrisdinn\nmDialog - Toronto, ON - Local\n\nAt mDialog, our product powers video delivery for some of the largest, most\nwell-known brands in the world and helps bring the most popular shows to\nconnected devices like the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Android, and Roku. We\npartner with the most successful device manufacturers and are considered\nthought leaders in the future of television broadcasting. We believe we are at\nthe dawn of new age in broadcasting and are the technology leaders enabling\nthe shift.\n\nWe're looking for developers willing to help us unleash the power of Scala and\nAkka (<http://akka.io>), two core technologies powering the mDialog platform.\nWhile there aren't yet many experienced Scala developers, we have successful\nteam members with backgrounds in Ruby, C#, C++ and, of course, Java. At\nmDialog you will gain experience with functional programming, distributed\nsystems, messaging and adaptive bitrate video streaming. If you've got a\npassion for software you'll succeed on our dev team, regardless of your\ncurrent day-job language.\n\nIf you're interested, please visit <http://www.mdialog.com/careers.html> or\nemail cdinn@mdialog.com.\n\n------\njmburros\nGetGlue is hiring in NYC - full time, local, relocation.\n\nGetGlue is an awesome place to work. We are focused on innovation and value\nspeed and iteration. We are looking for smart, passionate people who love\nbuilding things to join our team. We offer a competitive salary, full\nmedical/dental benefits, 401k, 3 weeks vacation, gym reimbursement, and other\ncool perks.\n\nWith over 2M users, GetGlue is building one of the largest social networks for\nentertainment. We have also partnered with 75 major television networks and 10\nmovie studios. GetGlue is based in New York City and backed by prominent\nventure capital firms. GetGlue won Mashable's 2011 Breakout Startup of the\nYear award and has been covered by CNN, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired,\nFast Company, Billboard, and many other publications.\n\nYou can email us at jobs at getglue dot com.\n\nMobile Engineer: <http://getglue.com/jobs/mobile_engineer> Python Engineer:\n<http://getglue.com/jobs/python_engineer> Data Scientist:\n<http://getglue.com/jobs/data_scientist>\n\n------\nsmackjer\nTerrible Labs is looking for a Lead UI/UX Designer to help us build great apps\nand an even greater team!\n\n<https://sites.google.com/a/terriblelabs.com/careers/>\n\nYou’ll collaborate closely with our clients and our world-class development\nteam to craft gorgeous, intuitive experiences that people are thrilled to use.\n\nYou’ll teach. You’ll learn. You’ll create.\n\nYou’ll build and lead a world-class design team.\n\nYou should have experience in web and graphic design, typography, UX, and\nmobile. Ideally you’re an expert at HTML5, CSS3, Sass, and maybe even some\nJavaScript or CoffeeScript.\n\nABOUT TERRIBLE LABS\n\nTerrible Labs is a Boston-based consultancy that builds web and mobile apps\nfor some pretty awesome clients. We specialize in Ruby on Rails and HTML5. We\njust got started in 2011 but have already built a great brand and have big\nplans for the future!\n\nWe offer all employees a competitive salary, 100% paid health and dental\ninsurance, a take-what-you-need PTO policy, a gym membership, RailsCasts Pro\nsubscription, Intelligent.ly stipend, and we'll pay your smart phone bill\n(even though we don't expect you to be on call 24/7).\n\n------\nJackHerrick\nPalo Alto or REMOTE in PST timezone\n\nwikiHow\n\nSoftware Engineer\n\nwikiHow is the world's how to manual. Think \"Wikipedia for hot-to\ninstructions\". Over 30 million users a month. Here is why working at wikiHow\nis unlike anything else in Silicon Valley:\n\n* We are profitable and offer a profit sharing plan. * We are self-funded. We have not accepted VC or angel money. We don't chart our strategy based on the whims of investors. * We don't think working crazy startup hours is productive or healthy. We have rich lives outside of work. * Our team is gender balanced. 50% female, 50% male. * We like walking. We have a few treadmill desks and we all have FitBits. * Our small, cohesive team loves to innovate. * We take wikiHow's educational mission seriously. We put our mission above short term business goals. * We all work from home one day a week. * We work in a homey downtown Palo Alto office, 2 blocks from Caltrain and University Avenue. * wikiHow is one of the top 200 sites on the web. Over 30 million readers a month. Your mom will use and love your product. * We're delightfully quirky. But you probably figured that out already.\n\nEmail me, the founder directly, Jack@wikiHow.com\n\n------\nrb2k_\nBurlington, MA - Acquia (www.acquia.com)\n\nLots of open positions. The team I work with is looking for an automation\nengineer ([https://www.acquia.com/careers/job-listing/automation-\nengine...](https://www.acquia.com/careers/job-listing/automation-engineer)).\nLots of internal and external tooling with Ruby on EC2 in a CI environment for\nweb-based products. Some of the buzzwords: Ruby, Cucumber, Capybara, Jenkins,\nEC2, S3, Varnish, NginX. We're basically looking for somebody who knows their\nway around linux and the web stack from DNS to XPATH.\n\nThere are another cool job openings going in the same general direction:\n\n[https://www.acquia.com/careers/job-listing/cloud-sys-\nenginee...](https://www.acquia.com/careers/job-listing/cloud-sys-engineer)\n\n[https://www.acquia.com/careers/job-listing/cloud-software-\nen...](https://www.acquia.com/careers/job-listing/cloud-software-engineer)\n\nFeel free to reach out before uploading your resume using the page\n\np.s. also hiring marketing/sales/... <https://www.acquia.com/careers/open-\npositions>\n\n------\nladon86\nClassDojo\n\nFULLTIME or INTERN in PALO ALTO, CA\n\nClassDojo is used by thousands of teachers to manage students’ behavior in the\nclassroom, using real time feedback and rewards that can also be shared with\nparents. We're an edtech startup funded by some of the biggest names in the\nvalley, and we're one of the fastest growing education companies of all time.\nPG has invested in us, but we didn't do YC.\n\nWe've built a product that makes a real difference and gets huge engagement\nwith millions of kids, and we're about to take it to the next level, hopefully\nwith you on board.\n\nIf you're a strong hacker who wants to use JavaScript to change the world,\napply here:\n\n    \n    \n      --------------------------  \n      https://classdojo.wufoo.com/forms/join-classdojo/  \n      --------------------------\n    \n\nOr email jobs@classdojo.com\n\nYou can read about the work and environment here:\n<http://www.classdojo.com/jobs> We are looking for:\n\n    \n    \n      Lead Software Engineer  \n      Lead Front-end Developer  \n    \n\nIf you think you're a good developer but don't fit into those buckets, get in\ntouch anyway.\n\nCheers, Liam\n\n------\njyeung001\nCareCloud: Miami, FL - FULLTIME, INTERN (<http://www.carecloud.com>)\n\nWhat we do: CareCloud’s mission is to create a digital ecosystem by leveraging\ncutting-edge technology to connect a disjointed healthcare industry and\nultimately improve the healthcare experience for patients, providers and\nhealthcare professionals. We’re disrupting the status quo and giving medical\npractices elegant, easy-to-use software solutions to increase profitability\nand productivity.\n\nIf you are passionate about technology, obsessed over user experience and\nthrive on solving complex problems, we want to meet you.\n\nWe're looking for talented front-end and back-end developers to join our team.\nSome of the basic requirements are: * JS/HTML/CSS of course * Experience with\nRuby, Ruby on Rails a plus * Understand design/architectural patterns (mvc,\nfactories, singletons, etc) * Experience working with Source Control systems\n(git, mercurial, etc) * Some experience working in agile development\nenvironments\n\nInterested? contact me at <https://twitter.com/jyeung001> for more details.\n\n------\ngnubardt\nBrightcove - Boston, MA; Seattle, WA <http://brightcove.com/careers>\n\nWe're hiring Software & Systems engineers in Boston & Seattle to help build\nand scale our video publishing platform. We use Java, Clojure, Node, Rails &\nGroovy to build the service that streams over 750 million videos a month\n(second most after youtube).\n\nWe just moved our headquarters to a LEED Platinum building on the Boston\nwaterfront (5 minutes from South Station), complete with the Aeron chairs at\nevery desk, plentiful whiteboards, an R&R area and fully stocked kitchen. We\nhave frequent social gatherings (from board games to a company wide talent\nshow) and offer excellent benefits (health, vision, dental, life, 401k,\nunmetered vacation).\n\ni've been here for 4 years and love it! There's a really great culture of nice\npeople who are wicked smart. Send me an email if you have any questions!\n\nWe're also hiring Account Directors in DC, Atlanta & London, Technical Support\nEngineers in Boston & London, a Sales Director & Engineer (Atlanta & London,\nrespectively), and a Product Designer in Seattle.\n\n------\nslawomir\nPoland, Warsaw\n\nBusiness operations\n\nCam on Duty (<http://camonduty.com>) is innovation-driven startup that\ncombines technology with great user experience. You'll join team that is\nfocused on creating great product and changing the way people use webcams.\n\nThis role will require creating high level strategies and executing them.\nYou'll help find out where Cam on Duty should be headed, and help us to get\nthere.\n\nYou'll work directly with all parts of the Cam on Duty team - product,\nengineering, design to help company to grow. You'll help identify the right\npartners, negotiate and close business agreements.\n\nResponsibilities:\n\n* Identify and company’s biggest challenges\n\n* Create analyses on strategic decisions and execute them\n\n* Continually refine those decisions as environment changes\n\nRequirements:\n\n* Analytical with ability to process information\n\n* Great organizational skills\n\n* Outstanding communication skills\n\n* Ability to execute concrete action plans\n\n* Comfortable working with minimal guidance\n\n* Passion for technology\n\n* Great skills in Excel\n\nEmail: ssadziak@bluesoft.net.pl\n\n------\ngsiener\nC3 (fka Efficiency 2.0) - New York (NYC) Senior Rubyist/Craftsman - Be proud\nof your code and our mission <http://bit.ly/N3QiHT>\n\n__About Us __\n\nWe're building the future of energy efficiency. C3 (formerly Efficiency 2.0)\nis a NYC-based startup tackling the world's biggest problem - the conservation\nof our planet - and we are getting results. We offer consumers personalized\nadvice, tools to help track progress and rewards for reducing their energy\nconsumption. We are a multi-disciplinary team of motivated energy scientists,\ntechnology engineers practicing agile development, and energy gurus working to\nshape the future of energy efficiency.\n\n __What We’re Looking For __\n\nThe right person for the job will have a strong commitment to engineering\nexcellence and a drive for continuous process improvement. The other engineers\non your team come to you for help with their problems because of your deep\ntechnical knowledge and your ability to distill complex business logic into a\nclean, maintainable set of classes and algorithms.\n\nWant to hear more? Email me at Graham.Siener at C3energy dot com\n\n------\nleeny\nTrialPay - Mountain View, CA (F/T, will cover relo)\n\nFor the last 5 years, we've been quietly changing the world of online\nadvertising. We work on getting users to try new products and services,\ninstall new mobile apps, play new games, and visit new stores by giving them\nstuff that they already want for free.\n\nWe're looking for strong back-end engineers and people who like playing with\ndata (we have a lot).\n\naline@trialpay.com\n\n------\nadambrod\nTagit (Mountain View, Ca) - Full Time, Local\n\nTagit needs a backend developer who is passionate about working in a startup!\nWe are currently re-designing and re-vamping our website and mobile apps.\n\n-\n\nIdeally you are:\n\n• A CodeIgnitor wiz (or can port PHP to Ruby or Node).\n\n• You can use and maintain MySQL\n\n• “The Big Lebowski” is on your top 10 list\n\n• Are passionate about the startup culture\n\n-\n\nIt would be awesome if:\n\n• You are knowledgeable in web scaling\n\n• You enjoy beer and/or coffee\n\n• You can maintain a web server\n\n• You know how to port MySQL to something like MongoDB\n\n-\n\nWe are currently using CodeIgnitor PHP, and MySQL. We are also very open to\nmigrating to more easily scalable technologies in the future, such as MongoDB,\nRails, Padrino, & Node.js.\n\nWe can potentially offer free housing in Mountain View. Payment/salary is\nnegotiable according to experience, skill set, and overall passion for what\nyou do\n\nIf this sounds like you, contact adamb@playtagit.com\n\n<http://playtagit.com>\n\n<http://angel.co/tagit>\n\n------\nAdamGibbins\nLondon, UK and Boston, MA - Full time.\n\nTIM Group, previously youDevise.\n\nWe're a 100 person financial web development firm looking for developers and\nLinux system administrators. We like JVMs, pairing, dashboards, metrics and\nSSD/Xeon powered workstations.\n\nWe've been known to sponsor Visa's.\n\n<http://www.timgroup.com/careers/current-vacancies>\n\n------\ncurtis\nRedwood City, CA\n\nTidemark Systems (<http://www.tidemark.net>, note \".net\") is hiring. We're\nlooking for backend and UI developers and a whole bunch of other positions as\nwell. The jobs page is at <http://tidemark.net/company/careers>. The company\nis well-funded but it's still in the very early growth phase.\n\nTidemark is building a cloud-based business analytics system, which is way\nmore interesting than it might sound.\n\nWe've had a particularly difficult time finding good UI developers. Our UI is\nweb-based but we initially focused on the iPad as our primary platform. Now\nwe're generalizing the UI for laptop and desktop use. We're using Sencha Touch\nfor iPad and Ext-4 for the other platforms, and most of our client code is in\nCoffeeScript. We're really pushing the frameworks beyond what they were\nintended to do, so we're looking for people who know really know the ins and\nouts of developing rich UIs with JavaScript/CoffeeScript, the HTML DOM, and\nCSS.\n\nIf this sounds interesting, my email is on my profile page.\n\n------\namrox\nSan Francisco, CA (INTERN, H1B welcome)\n\nMindSnacks - <http://www.mindsnacks.com/>\n\nWe build wonderful educational games in San Francisco. If you are nice and\nwant to help us make splendid products, we'd love to heard from you.\n\nWe're hiring in lots of areas! Here are a few:\n\n* Backend engineer: So much data, so little time! If you can extract the signal from the noise, and want to improve the way people learn through our products, let's talk! Experience with scaling multiplayer games or web services is a huge plus.\n\n* Mobile engineer: You build pocket-sized awesomeness on iOS and/or Android. We make games that teach people stuff. The perfect combination! We have plenty of fun and challenge projects for both mobile app and game developers.\n\n* UI designer: We believe that great design is essential to build products people love. If you live to make jaw-dropping UI experiences (web and/or mobile), this is the place to be!\n\nEmail us at jobs@mindsnacks.com More details:\n<http://www.mindsnacks.com/careers/>\n\n------\nchrisjconlin\n2tor, New York City, FULL-TIME\n\nContribute to building the future of online education! Looking for everything\nfrom Javascript engineers to create tools that make the online learning\nexperience engaging to those interested in building infrastructure that keeps\ndata flowing between the components of our application to graduation software\nstack.\n\nSome things you should be familiar with:\n\n    \n    \n      * Salesforce. Yes, a platform famous for it's click around declarative interface, \n        but also very powerful for building workflows and business processes when you know\n        how to code for it.\n      * Most of the tools we work with: Java, Python, Javascript, Unix/Linux (bash or zsh), \n        git, MySQL, MongoDB.\n      * You've worked closely or directly with AWS. Most importantly EC2, ELB, S3, \n        and CloudFront.\n      * Working with and building elegant HTTP-based APIs\n      * Working in small teams to build smart, beautiful web applications \n        that are a pleasure to use.\n    \n\nSee full job description and apply here:\n\n<http://jobvite.com/m?3kg3lfwI>\n\n------\nsmilliken\nSan Francisco - Engineer\n\nMixRank (YC S11) is a search engine for ads; we crawl the web and index ads,\nplacements, keywords, landing pages, and pretty much everything that makes up\nan advertiser's campaign. With all of the data we collect, we provide\ncompetitive intelligence and analytics to advertisers, agencies, and ad\nnetworks. Along with this comes many interesting technical challenges, like\nscaling web crawlers, distributed analytics, and training predictive models to\nmake intelligent recommendations to our customers.\n\nWe're looking for engineers that are interested in things like big data, web\ncrawling, distributed analytics, and machine learning.\n\njobs@mixrank.com\n\n[http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/30/want-to-see-which-ads-\nperfo...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/30/want-to-see-which-ads-perform-best-\nyc-backed-mixrank-is-a-spy-tool-for-adsense/)\n[http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/13/display-ad-data-\nintelligenc...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/13/display-ad-data-intelligence-\nstartup-mixrank-raises-1-5m-from-mark-cubam-500-startups/)\n\n------\ntoponium\nBoston, MA -- Full-time LuckyLabs\n\nOur motto is \"If you're going to squander your life, please, do it with us.\"\nAnd we feel the same way about our careers. So if you, like us, are excited\nabout devoting your brief, precious time on Earth making mindless\nentertainment for the vast messy mass of humanity, you have found the best\nplace to do it. Welcome!\n\nWe are committed to producing the finest \"snackable entertainment\" ever to\nclog a router or cause a traffic snarl. (Of course we don't advocate playing\nour games while driving. Just at red lights. And maybe stop signs, depending\non the intersection. Or just pull over, will ya?)\n\nWe are looking for smart, talented software engineers, app developers,\ncreative designers and social-media/marketing geeks. Experience helpful but\nnot required. More details here <http://angel.co/luckylabs#recruiting>\n\nIf you want to have massive fun and stimulation creating apps and content that\nprovide massive fun and stimulation to the human race, please let us know...\njobs@luckylabs.com\n\n~~~\ntutufan\nNot sure about the social value, but +1 for the motto.\n\n------\nfinken\nPark City, Utah - earthmine inc. - Full-Time - <http://www.earthmine.com>\n\nWe’re looking for:\n\n* Lead Software Engineer - immediate need for development in C# with .NET\n\nMore details:\n\n* <http://www.earthmine.com/Company?Jobs>\n\n* <http://www.youtube.com/user/earthmine>\n\n* Being based in Salt Lake or Park City you’ll of course have the opportunity to leverage the powder rule: we’ll see you in the office at noon because a foot of fresh fell the night before.\n\nUs:\n\nearthmine collects, processes, and delivers high-resolution, 3D street-level\npanoramas. How are they 3D? Every non-sky pixel in the panorama has a 3D\ncoordinate: latitude, longitude and elevation. earthmine data is powering\napplications ranging from innovative local search and augmented reality to 3D\nmapping, GIS and asset management systems.\n\nInterested?\n\n* contact me directly: josh [dot] finken [at] earthmine [dot] com\n\n------\nstevewilhelm\nUI/UX Designer, Palo Alto, CA, Euclid, euclidelements.com,\n\nHelp Euclid digitize the physical world. Through innovative sensor technology\nand data engineering, we’re arming brick and mortar retailers with a new class\nof analytics to help them improve their profitability and shopping experience.\n\nThe dataset we’re providing is revolutionary, and we want our product\nexperience to be just as special. Current retail business intelligence tools\nare clunky, ugly, and tedious. Euclid wants to break to mold by delivering\ninsights AND a beautiful and effortless product experience.\n\nThe Product Designer will work closely with the Product and Engineering teams\nto create this experience. Primary responsibilities will include prototyping\nand designing user interfaces, producing gorgeous visual design, and\ndelivering production ready assets. The Product Designer will also help make\nsure the product is well represented on our website and in our marketing\ncollateral.\n\n<http://euclidelements.com/about-us/jobs>\n\n------\ntwohey\nLos Altos, CA -- Ness (likeness.com) -- Local, H1B\n\nNess Computing's mission is to make search personal. By combining its\nunderstanding of human nature with its expertise in search, recommendations\nand social networking, Ness delivers experiences that are more deeply personal\nthan ever before.\n\nNess is looking for an eager, fast-learning iOS developer with a passion for\ncreating software that delights users. We’re looking for someone who wants to\nhelp push the platform to its limits, with implementation approaches beyond\neven Apple’s first-party apps.\n\nYou are someone who shares our love of beautifully designed, immersive\nproducts. You are detail-oriented, believe the little things matter, and won't\nconsider a task complete until everything is just right. These qualities are\nmore important than experience, but practice implementing user interfaces and\niOS applications is a plus. An ideal candidate will know Objective-C and Cocoa\nTouch well, but is always ready to learn more.\n\nIf this sounds like something you'd like to help build, please shoot me an\nemail.\n\n~~~\njacklei\nwould love to get in touch regarding this job opportunity... let me know your\nemail... mine is rohit.neotheone@gmail.com\n\n------\njwegan\nPalo Alto, CA\n\n(H1B welcome)\n\nShopkick - <http://www.shopkick.com/jobs.html>\n\nShopkick is cross-retailer loyalty platform with over 4 million users. Macy's,\nBest Buy, Target, Old Navy, General Mills, and Proctor & Gamble are just a few\nof our partners. We are backed with $20 million in funding from Kleiner\nPerkins and Greylock Partners. We're still small, but we are growing fast.\n\nHere is a recent Times article on our national rollout with Target:\n[http://moneyland.time.com/2012/05/25/scan-this-target-\nencour...](http://moneyland.time.com/2012/05/25/scan-this-target-encourages-\nshoppers-to-scan-items-with-smartphones-nationwide/)\n\nA few of the positions we are hiring for:\n\n* Mobile developers (iOS & Android)\n\n* Server side developers\n\n* Data engineers\n\n* Marketing, Customer Service, & more\n\nGo to <http://www.shopkick.com/jobs.html> for more details and to apply\nonline.\n\n------\nsuhail\nMixpanel is hiring Solutions Architects: Support, Sales, Marketing, and\nEngineering. You wear 4 hats and talk to customers every single day and\nactually _help_ them.\n\n<http://mixpanel.com/jobs/>\n\nWe're in beautiful San Francisco and are still under 15 people.\n\n$11M+ raised by Andreessen Horowitz, Max Levchin, Sequoia, etc.\n\n------\ndaveambrose\nMountain View, CA - FT + Internships, Product for Mobile + Social @ Travelzoo\n\nHelp 25 million subscribers push boundaries on local commerce, deal publishing\nand media via mobile and new social tools. We're looking for smart, forward-\nlooking entrepreneurs who have a passion for local, traveling and scratching\ntheir own itch.\n\nWe're a small team (group of folks who previously built/sold companies) where\neveryone gets their hands dirty in guiding product, solving big problems at\nscale and makes an impact each quarter for our shareholders (Travelzoo is\npublic on the NASDAQ).\n\nWhat we offer:\n\n    \n    \n      * Top salary \n      * Great perks, like the Travelzoo Experience (eat your own dogfood on any of our deals published throughout the world!)\n      * Medical, Dental, Vision\n      * Excellent career advancement opportunities\n    \n\nIf you're interested, drop me a line (dambrose at travelzoo dot com) or apply\non our Careers page: <http://www.travelzoo.com/jobs/>\n\n------\nshakefon\nLas Vegas, NV (+1 position in San Francisco, CA)\n\nZappos (<http://www.zappos.com>) is an online retailer, a subsidiary of\nAmazon.com and has multiple positions open. I'm not a recruiter, I'm a current\nemployee and I can speak honestly to the work environment here being a great\nplace to be.\n\nFor technical people concerned by public images of the crazy offices with\nparades and so on, that is not the environment you will work in. In our\nbuilding, you will be free to express yourself and you'll have a great time,\nbut it's a place you can concentrate and learn from others too.\n\nFront-End Developers there are 3 positions open right now:\n<http://jobvite.com/m?3omIlfwx>\n\nLots of other opportunities including Information Security, Data Architect,\nJava Engineers, Software Engineering Manager & Senior Developer:\n\n<http://jobvite.com/m?36nIlfwg>\n\n------\nelliottcarlson\nNew York, NY\n\nLot18 (<http://www.lot18.com>) is revolutionizing the way people buy wine and\nepicurean products online.\n\nHiring:\n\n* Software Engineers\n\n* Frontend Engineers\n\n* QA Engineer\n\n* Data Engineers\n\nWhy you should work here:\n\n\\- We work with a ton of great technologies: Python, gevent, gunicorn,\nTornado, JavaScript, Chef, git, Vagrant, PHP, MySQL, Linux, Apache, nginx,\nHAProxy, Amazon Web Services, Varnish, memcached, Capistrano, jQuery and more.\n\n\\- Well funded. We’ve raised $45M from NEA, Accel & FirstMark.\n\n\\- People actually use our product. Over 1M registererd users since we\nlaunched in Nov 2010.\n\n\\- We have a real business model and process 7 figures a month in\ntransactions.\n\n\\- Benefits: Competitive salary, stock options, medical/dental paid in full,\nunlimited vacation, plenty of wine, dev kegerator, foosball/ping pong lots of\nchallenges and interesting business/tech problems to solve.\n\nApply by emailing anthony@lot18.com.\n\n------\nrslifka\nSharethrough - <http://www.sharethrough.com/engineering> San Francisco, ~Ferry\nBuilding, Full Time, Great Relo Package (we've done Canada and Australia;\nwe're pretty good at it :)\n\nSharethrough is...\n\n\\- A technology company fixing what's broken about video advertising\n([http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/12/5-ways-native-\nmonetization-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/12/5-ways-native-monetization-\nis-changing-silicon-valley/)). \\- Working with brands like Old Spice, Xbox and\nMLB. \\- On modern, great tech responsibly (Rails 3.2.5, Backbone, Hadoop,\nCascading, etc.). Sorry, no MongoDB! \\- Well-funded with continuous investment\nin engineering (training, materials, conferences, etc.!). \\- One of the \"2011\nBest Places to Work in the Bay Area\". \\- Serious about bringing on great\npeople. We'll turn around an offer in as little as 24 hours.\n\nGive me a shout directly - rslifka@sharethrough.com\n\nRob\n\n------\nbri3d\nBoulder, Colorado - Full-time Rails, iOS, Android development at Gloo.\n\nGloo is an exciting platform which changes the way people enrich and\nstrengthen their most important relationships, and allows champions of strong\nrelationships, families, and marriages to deliver their ideas and content to\nthose seeking them.\n\nLooking for skilled developers with an interest in developing an early-stage\nproduct. Rails, iOS, or Android experience a large plus. Fun, experienced,\nsmall team, both on the business and dev sides, and plenty of opportunities to\ncontribute to open-source and try out cutting-edge technology. We're very\nmodern: iOS 5 app (blocks + GCD! View Controller containment!), IE6-free web\nfrontend using HAML and SASS, Rails 3 + Postgres 9 backend.\n\nWell-funded. Competitive salary, design your own workstation / development\nsetup, fun but heads-down startup environment. Nice office in downtown Boulder\n(West End of Pearl Street).\n\nInterested? jobs at tangogroup dot com.\n\n------\nBraintreeR\nChicago, IL - Braintree - FULL TIME Developers\n\nBraintree helps businesses process credit card payments by providing a\nmerchant account, payment gateway, recurring billing and credit card storage.\nWe're unlike others in the industry; we think and do things differently.\n\nOur team is talented, our practices are collaborative (pairing, agile), we\nwork on challenging problems (high availability, quality of service, scaling,\nsecurity), and our devs have 10% time to work on whatever they want.\nDevelopers use and love our product. Although we mostly work with Ruby, we\nalso work with Python, Node.js, PHP, Java, .NET, Perl, and Objective-C\n\nMore about our people, practices, and software:\n<http://www.braintreepayments.com/devblog>\n\nApply at <http://www.braintreepayments.com/braintree-careers> .\n\n------\nkpete\nTurboVote! ([http://blog.turbovote.org/2012/05/were-still-growing-\nknow-a-...](http://blog.turbovote.org/2012/05/were-still-growing-know-a-\ndeveloper/))\n\nMust love Rails and democracy (maybe not in that order). We're based in\nBrooklyn but have a remote developer in Denver who would love to expand the\nsatellite \"office\"...\n\n------\ncvb\nBorderJump (Nashville, TN) - LOCAL or REMOTE, relocation assistance\n\nDirector of Software Development\n\nWe're a well-funded startup building an easy way for U.S. merchants to sell\nglobally, connecting the best shipping and logistics providers with extensive\nlocalized payment services. We're looking for an experienced engineer to lead\nour development team.\n\nResponsibilities include: designing platform applications and RESTful APIs,\nsupervising code deployment, conducting code reviews, mentoring junior\ndevelopers, and planning for security, reliability and scalability of cloud-\nbased services.\n\nRequired experience: Python/Django, PHP/CodeIgniter, MySQL and SOAP/REST.\n\nWe have flexible hours, a great work environment and talented coworkers.\n\nFind more info at <http://www.borderjump.com/jobs/> or email me directly:\nchuck.bryant [at] borderjump.com\n\n------\npeterure\nLondon, UK\n\nBetStars is a seed stage startup working on a social football competition for\nmobile and facebook. This is an exciting project with a strong concept -\naiming for a large potential market.\n\nWe're looking for a back end software developer to build the structure and\nwork with our designer/ front end developer and marketing guys.\n\nThis is in exchange for an equity stake. 5 team members are already on board\nand have broadly defined the core product. The role could work in conjunction\nwith a day job, if you're prepared to put the time in.\n\nYou should have experience of creating software apps using the latest\ntechnologies, be London based and be up to speed on social media developments\n- and like football!\n\nIf you have a the right background and are interested in our project then\nplease get in touch.\n\npete at betstars .co.uk\n\n<http://betstars.co.uk/>\n\n------\nscottw\nProvo/Orem, Utah - BetterLinux/BetterServers\n\nWell-funded startup, full benefits. We're looking for Linux kernel hackers, QA\nengineers, and full-stack engineers. We use a lot of different technologies,\nso the ability to learn new things quickly is the most important skill. We're\nsmall (currently 20-ish employees) and we love foosball and table tennis. Lots\nof free sodas and food in the breakroom, etc. It's a nice gig :)\n\nFor Linux kernel hackers:\n\n\\- familiarity with cgroups, scheduling algorithms, etc \\- exceptional C\nskills\n\nFor QA engineers:\n\n\\- knowledge of TAP \\- solid Perl skills \\- ability to think like a customer\nand look at our products with fresh eyes\n\nFor full-stack engineer:\n\n\\- working knowledge of HTML/CSS/Javascript \\- solid Perl skills \\-\nfamiliarity with Mojolicious a plus \\- Python/PHP skills also comes in handy\n\\- REST API design skills\n\nEmail résumé to scott@betterlinux.com.\n\n------\ngyardley\nLe Mans, France or New York City, with possible remote work for the right\ncandidate.\n\nJirafe (<http://www.jirafe.com>) provides customer intelligence, analytics,\nand insight for ecommerce businesses, so they can make more money. Thousands\nof merchants use our analytics tools, from small sites to massive department\nstore chains.\n\nWe're hiring Scala developers, Symfony2 developers, systems engineers,\nscalability experts, and more - see <http://jirafe.com/jobs> for the full\nlist. Our development's centered in France, but we'd be delighted to work with\nyou in NYC as well - we could use a strong development lead here to help build\nout a local engineering team.\n\nIf you're interested, mail jobs@jirafe.com. Any questions, you can shoot them\nmy way - my email's in my profile.\n\n------\ndavidandgoliath\nAnywhere, anywhere. Fused.com is seeking sysadmins with a hint of dev.\n(Devops?)\n\nfused.com/careers.php Equity available, bootstrapped, no desire to exit\nanytime soon. ~40 hours or less of work per week. Prefer to keep things\noperating top-notch so you can have hobbies instead of fighting fires? You may\nfit in well :)\n\n------\nmarkvoelker\nCisco (RTP, NC preferred but location flexible)\n\nSystems Test Engineer - Massively Scalable Data Center Architecture\n\nWe're looking for an engineer to join our Massively Scalable Data Center team\nin the Systems Development Unit. Help develop scale-out data center\narchitectures (network, compute, storage, operations, distributed app\nworkloads, etc), build them in the lab, and test them to validate the design.\nWork in a small team on a mix of technologies including Software Defined\nNetworking (SDN), Big Data, network overlays, routing/switching, DevOps tools,\nopen source software, distributed systems, and more at scale. Raleigh-Durham,\nNC preferred but other locations (New York, Boston area, San Jose, Seattle,\nREMOTE) available to well qualified candidates. For more information and/or to\nsubmit a resume, contact mvoelker at cisco dot com.\n\n------\nsink\nBookish is hiring in NYC - full time, local\n\nBookish aims to be the main destination for consumer book discovery and news.\nWe are a small company, well connected to the publishing industry, comprised\nof editors and software developers located in the Flatiron district.\n\nWe are looking for software developers who are passionate about books and the\nfuture of publishing.\n\nWe have a startup culture with a small, intense dev team. We believe in strong\nopinions, varied backgrounds, rapid prototyping, and taking risks. Along with\nbooks, we are excited about new technologies and innovative solutions to\nproblems involving large, rich data sets, machine learning, and an immersive\nuser experience.\n\nWe are using Scala, Akka, MongoDB, and ZeroMQ as part of our tech stack.\n\nSounds fun and interesting? Shoot me an email: scott [at] bookish [dot] com\n\n------\nsgrock\nPortland, OR/San Francisco - <http://newrelic.com/about/jobs>\n\nNew Relic is growing and we're looking to add several Ruby, Java, .NET, and\nDevops Engineers to our teams. If you want to join our fun dynamic company,\ngive us a shout.\n\nWe are passionate, possibly even crazy, about application performance\nmanagement (APM). Our mission is to make web applications run better, to make\nthe internet more productive, and to make life easier for developers and\ndevops. We are turning the APM marketplace upside down by providing SaaS\nproducts that deliver high-value functionality previously only available\nthrough enterprise software. We are well above 24,000 customers. And with your\nhelp we’ll get to 10x that number.\n\n[H1B] is fine. Usually no [REMOTE] but we have made exceptions.\n\n------\nfelipellrocha\nComics Headquarters is looking for developers, designers, writers and artists!\nWe are looking for our first employees. We are based in Dallas, TX. Interns\nok. Remote ok.\n\nMore details at this page: <http://comics-headquarters.com/page/jobs/>\n\n------\ntriggit\nTriggit, Inc.\n\nSan Francisco, CA - Full-Time - NO REMOTE - H-1B friendly\n\n<http://triggit.com/careers>\n\nTriggit, a San Francisco ad technology startup, leverages massive amounts of\ndata to do ad retargeting in real time. We currently see 150,000 requests/sec\n(yes, per second) and about 15 billion ad impressions per day. We have\ninteresting engineering challenges and an ownership-based, meritocracy\nculture. Engineers also get their own office with a door.\n\nAvailable positions:\n\n    \n    \n      Senior Engineer: Ad Serving Systems (C/C++, Redis, ØMQ)\n    \n      Ruby on Rails Developer (SLIM, SASS, Rails 3.2, Redis, PostgreSQL)\n    \n    \n\nWe're hiring very aggressively. You can apply via:\n<http://triggit.com/careers>\n\n------\nxentac\nOprius Software - Victoria, BC, Canada - Full Time, remote\n\nPosition: Chief Technical Officer\n\nOprius' Chief Technical Officer is responsible for the maintenance and\ndevelopment of the Oprius web-based software.\n\nOprius is a CRM web app designed specifically for individual sales people. It\nis designed to be approachable by people without a lot of computer experience\nand yet still powerful. It tracks contacts, appointments, calls, tasks, and\nemails; lets users create complex sales processes; and includes a powerful\nphone assistant for use during calls.\n\nThis position is a work-from-home/telecommute position.\n\nFind out more and apply at [http://oprius.theresumator.com/apply/ZuOK64/Chief-\nTechnical-...](http://oprius.theresumator.com/apply/ZuOK64/Chief-Technical-\nOfficer.html)\n\n------\nzkirill\nNutrivise - Mountain View - (full time, intern, frontend)\n\nWe're turning the problems of nutrition, health, and weight-control on their\nhead by inverting the current standard for how software helps people decide\nwhat to eat. Current market solutions are broken and tedious and we're\nbuilding a way for people to be healthy and achieve their goals without\npreventing people from living their normal day-to-day lives.\n\nWe are an engineering driven company of 5 who are very product driven and love\nbuilding things that solve peoples' problems. Our stack is Python (Flask) and\nMongoDB on the backend and we use a modern combination of HTML, CSS, and\nJavaScript on the frontend. People who have portfolios, interesting projects,\nor funny little hacks will be noticed the most.\n\nContact us via chris at nutrivise.com!\n\n------\nmartian\nSan Francisco\n\nSoftware Engineer, Front-end and back-end engineers\n\nThumbtack is hiring awesome software engineers to transform the way services\nare bought and sold online. We're Amazon for services. A quarter of a million\nsmall businesses have listed on Thumbtack, and we connect those businesses\nwith new customers everyday. We're well on our way to being profitable and\ngrowing quickly.\n\nOur team is young and passionate and dedicated to good engineering. We have\nextensive benefits, including a in-house chef, a gorgeous office in SOMA, and\nmoney to spend on Thumbtack services every month.\n\nOur delicious food culture was recently the top story on Inc.com.\n\nApply at <http://www.thumbtack.com/jobs>\n\nOr email chris at thumbtack with any questions.\n\n------\nalenlpeacock\nSalt Lake City, Utah, Full Time Software Engineers at Space Monkey\n(<http://spacemonkey.com>)\n\nSpace Monkey is changing how the world stores data, forever. Winner of the\n2012 Launch Festival (<http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/08/space-monkey-launch/>)\n\nSome of the deep tech we're working on: immensely distributed systems, p2p\n(DHTs, NAT traversal, fairness mechanics, etc), distributed filesystems (and\nlocal interfaces to them via FUSE et al), hardcore crypto, mobile, web, and\nmuch more. We use a lot of python, but also C/C++ and Go.\n\nIf you think you might fit in on a team of super bright, hyper-productive\nfolks, please drop us a line at our jobs@ email address.\n\n------\nzds\nCodecademy is looking for designers and developers of all stripes in NYC.\n\nWe're the easiest way to learn to code and we reach millions of students all\nover the world. Help us teach them to be future readers of Hacker News (and\ndevelopers too!).\n\njobs@codecademy.com or codecademy.com/jobs\n\n------\nvictoriastodden\nNew York, full-time, REMOTE\n\nChange the future of scientific collaboration and publishing at RunMyCode.org.\nWe are hiring two fulltime engineers to expand a prototype platform that\nenables scientists to openly share and reproduce the code and data that\nunderlies their research publications. We are founded by top professors from\nColumbia University and HEC Paris. We are looking for:\n\n* back-end infrastructure to scale the site on AWS, both for users and for scientific publications; * C++, and experience in scientific languages such as R, S+, Matlab, python a plus; * possible outreach to the scientific community and citizen science groups if interested.\n\nIf this sounds exciting to you, email your CV and cover letter to Victoria\nStodden vcs@stanford.edu\n\n------\ntdonia\nTribeca, New York City - Frontend/PHP Developer for The Daily Voice\n\nWe're looking for someone that's passionate about HTML/CSS/JS to join our\ntechnology team and help us publish local news for our growing audience.\n\nImportant:\n\n    \n    \n      HTML / CSS - semantic, crossbrowser and crossdevice markup\n      JS - jQuery\n      PHP - 5.3+\n      SQL\n      Git or other source control\n    \n    \n\nNice to have:\n\n    \n    \n      Drupal (API and/or module development experience, for 6 or 7)\n      SASS or LESS experience\n      JS Lint\n      Objective C\n      Unit Testing\n      Profiling code\n      A/B or Multivariate Testing\n    \n    \n\nInterested?\n\n    \n    \n      Send your résumé and/or github links\n      Recommend a book\n      Tell us about a cool project\n    \n    \n\nGet in touch: travis@dailyvoice.com\n\n------\nGaiaAir\nREMOTE/NYC, INTERN\n\nTravtar is an online travel startup our mission is to make it easier for\ntravelers to choose accommodations that keep all your travel companions' needs\nin mind. Our beta (Travtar.com) is live and I hope that you will poke around\nand have a look.\n\nRight now we are looking to expand our (tiny) team to a Tech Lead (with the\npossibility of eventually assuming the CTO role). Although it would be good to\nhave someone who knows Python/Django and machine learning/algorithms, it is\nmore important to us to find someone who is a fast learner and a problem\nsolver. Compensation will be equity.\n\nWe are also looking for a UX Intern to work closely with our Lead Designer.\n\nIf you're interested, contact hr [at] travtar [dot] com.\n\n------\nnbclark\nDoubleDutch (mobile, social, enterprise apps) San Francisco, CS\n\nWe've already racked up an impressive client list:\n\n    \n    \n      Cisco, HP, Adobe, TED, Macworld, RightNow, ...\n    \n\nand are looking for senior caliber developers to help us shape the future of\nthe company.\n\nSpecifically we are looking for:\n\n    \n    \n      senior iOS and senior Android developers,\n      who want to own a significant part of our mobile development.\n    \n\nWe offer:\n\n    \n    \n      competitive salary, generous equity + benefits,\n      and have already gained significant traction.\n    \n\nIf interested, please contact me at nclark@doubledutch.me, or visit\n<http://doubledutch.me/jobs>\n\n------\nstevem_newrelic\nNew Relic has revolutionized app performance analytics with an enterprise-\ngrade SasS offering. And as a result is growing like crazy. Oh, and is\ncertifiably a Best-Places-to-Work (#2 in SF)!\n\nIf you are a talented Ruby, Java, or PHP engineer or QA specialist, and you\nwant to work in Portland OR or San Francisco, you can find out more and apply\nat <http://newrelic.com/about/jobs>\n\nWe are also looking for * Very talented software managers in Portland * A\nRuby-skilled Web Developer in San Francisco.\n\nPlease tell us about why you are the right person to help drive growth AND\ncontribute to our fabulous work environment. We look forward to hearing from\nyou!\n\n------\ndhyasama\nNew York, NY - Local, full-time and intern\n\nRallyverse is hiring a full-time back-end dev and a front-end intern. We are a\nteam of six and growing and signing paying customers.\n\n<http://rallyverse.com/jobs>\n\n------\nmeganelacarte\nE la Carte (Palo Alto, CA) - Front End Engineer (local - FT or contract), User\nInterface Graphic Designer (local - FT or contract), & National Account\nExecutive (local FT)\n\nE la Carte's Presto touch-screen tablets increase restaurant efficiency and\nprofitability, as well as guest interaction by enabling guests to browse\nappetizing pictures of the entire menu, place orders, split checks, make\npayments, and play interactive games – all from the comfort of their\nrestaurant seats without having to wait!\n\nWe're backed by Y-Comb, SV Angel, & Lightbank (Groupon). Small tight-knit team\nworking out of a house in downtown Palo Alto.\n\nFor details on the jobs, go to www.elacarte.com/about\n\n------\nmemoryhole\n3D Avatar School (Hong Kong) - Full time, part time, contract, local or remote\n\nWe are an expanding Hong Kong-based startup that is harnessing 3D gaming\ntechnology for language education. In our online virtual environments,\nteachers and students learn together by participating in games and activities.\nWe are very passionate about what we do and work in a very exciting space. Our\nteam is highly distributed, agile, and we know how to have fun. We currently\nneed experienced:\n\n* LAMP Developers\n\n* C++/OpenGL Developers\n\n* C# Developers\n\n* Linux Systems Administrators\n\nIf you are interested, please send your CV to our HR director, William Lee:\nwilliam.lee@3davatarschool.com\n\n~~~\nexim\nVery interesting project indeed.\n\nDoes someone with an expertise in C++ but with a basic knowledge of OpenGL\nqualify for the \"C++/OpenGL Developers\" position? Plus a good knowledge of C#\nand LAMP development (but I'm looking for a C++ centric position).\n\n~~~\nmemoryhole\nYes, we are definitely interested in people with your skill-set. Please pop\nWill an email :)\n\n------\nganjianwei\nTellApart in Burlingame, CA.\n\nPredictive analytics for ecommerce retailers. Hiring software engineers--\ngeneralists, machine learning specialists, storage specialists.\n\n\\- We use machine learning to predictively model online shopping behavior and\nuse that data to power smarter marketing applications for top ecommerce sites\n\\- Featured in a Amazon Web Services Case study\n(<http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/tellapart/>) \\- Funded by\nGreylock and Bain Capital Ventures \\- Ex-Google founding team\n\nContact me at wei@tellapart.com if you'd like to learn more.\n\nWe sponsor H1Bs.\n\n------\nkateray\nscroll kit (<http://scrollkit.com>) - Ruby/JS developer (NYC) and designers\n(freelance, intern, or fulltime, potentially remote)\n\nWe want to teach the web to make the web, by building a tool that makes\nwebsite creation as intuitive as drawing.\n\nWe're a seed-funded two-person team, so anyone who comes in at this point will\nbe getting their fingerprints all over the product.\n\nEmail hey at scrollkit dot com. We'd like to see some projects you've done\nbefore, and learn about what you care about making. Our jobs page:\n<http://www.scrollkit.com/s/127>\n\n------\nflippyhead\nJavaScript / Ruby Developers REMOTE WORKING ENCOURAGED\n\nWe're hiring JavaScript and Ruby developers to help us build social software\nfor conferences and events. We're based in Seattle but you can work from\nanywhere. Full benefits, great salary and equity. Our team includes core\nbackbone.js committers and we're working on some fantastic open source\nprojects in support of the same. We've been profitable for over a year and are\ngrowing quickly.\n\n<http://www.pathable.com/careers-at-pathable/>\n\nApply here:\n\n<http://jobsco.re/ADjuWq>\n\n------\nmattsears\nLittlelines (Dayton, OH) - Full time, local.\n\nWe're looking for rails and front-end developers to work with us in our new\nheadquarters. We're a small and talented team of designers and developers that\nlove making clients happy.\n\nYou'll have the opportunity to learn, hone your skills, and contribute\nvaluable work to real projects.\n\nWe work exclusively on Rails web applications, so some familiarity with Rails\nviews and how a Rails project is set up is a plus. Ideal candidates will be\nable to work with us at our headquarters.\n\nSend us an email: jobs@littlelines.com.\n\n<http://littlelines.com>\n\n------\nklochner\nRentMineOnline - San Francisco, CA (SOMA)\n\nCome transform the apartment industry with us. We are former Seedcamp and\nFBFund participants, currently profitable, looking for our third on-site\nengineer to join our team of 7 (with a few additional developers in Belarus).\n\nWe're currently looking for full-stack Rails developers, and a lead designer\nas well.\n\n    \n    \n      - Our stack is {ubuntu, nginx, unicorn, ree, rails 3.07, jquery+coffeescript} \n      - We develop on macbooks, either an air or pro+SSD\n      - We use git and deploy at will\n      - We promote a flat development hierarchy\n    \n\nemail: jobs@rentmineonline.com (subject: HN Job Post)\n\n------\nc4urself\nMountain View, CA\n\nNimbula\n\nCore Engineer - Distributed Systems Team\n\nCloud Computing is turning into one of the most significant technology trends\nof the last decade. Nimbula (www.nimbula.com) was founded by cloud computing\npioneers (with team members from VMware, Amazon Web Services, and Cisco) and\nbacked by Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners to deliver the benefits of public\nclouds on private infrastructure. With Nimbula, customers can both provision\ntheir own private clouds, while also leveraging the capabilities of public\nclouds.\n\n<https://nimbula.com/company/careers/>\n\n~~~\ntutufan\nNimbula, Nebula, one of you is going to have to rename...\n\n------\nesigler\nSan Francisco, CA - Minted\n\nFrontend & backend developers needed!\n\nMinted is a social commerce site, crowd-sourcing graphic designs and art from\naround the world. Behind the scenes, we're running Python on MySQL running in\nEC2 and Rackspace environments.\n\nWe provide competitive compensation, generous benefits, and a brightly lit\noffice environment that's 5 minutes walking distance from the Ferry Building\nin downtown San Francisco. We're backed by Benchmark Capital & IDG Ventures,\namong others.\n\nSee <http://www.minted.com/jobs> for more, or send me an email at\neric@minted.com\n\n------\njann\npocketvillage, Berlin (Germany) - Full time & intern - Python\n\nWe're developing solutions for travelers to discover and book activities &\ntours and ways for small operators to be found by travelers.\n\nWe are 5 founders (2 tech, 3 non-tech) and are now looking for additional\nengineers (Python, full-stack) to join us. As one of our first employees,\nyou'll have the chance to influence the product and the company in many ways!\n\nInterested? Have a look at <http://blog.pocketvillage.com/careers/> or contact\nme at: jann@pocketvillage.com or @JannKleen on Twitter\n\n------\nadam1010\nRentStuff.com -- Chicago, IL -- Full Time PHP Developer for a venture-backed\nstart-up working out of 1871 in Chicago (in the Merchandise Mart)\n\n<http://www.rentstuff.com/jobs/php_dev>\n\nWe connect people that are looking to rent stuff (anything from bikes to\ncameras to construction equipment) with rental shops that have those items. We\nalso function as a marketplace for individuals to rent out their stuff to\nothers.\n\nIntimate, small team environment with lots of authority and great perks!\n\nMysql, jQuery, Bootstrap, LAMP, EC2, AWS, Javascript, FT, Full-Time\n\n------\nJun8\nChicago, IL\n\nFULLTIME, for Motorola Solutions, Inc. Not having H1B is not problem, we'll\napply, but must be in the US.\n\nOur multimedia analytics team is looking for an all-around good hacker, good\nwith C and C++. Knowledge of OpenCV, machine learning, and computer vision is\na plus but is not necessary. The responsibilities range from designing and\nimplementing prototypes on Linux to quickly throwing together a web server and\na Android client for a demo.\n\nWe have a _great_ work/life balance, great atmosphere, cutting edge technology\nand great benefits.\n\nFor more details and a formal job description contact me.\n\n~~~\nzura\nMay I ask you - if H1B is not a problem, what's wrong with not being in US? Is\nthis relevant to H1B quotas?\n\n------\nsciurus\nAthens, GA\n\nAt EuPathDB, we're providing scientists with online research tools to help\nthem decipher parasites that infect hundreds of millions of people worldwide.\nWe need a sysadmin with lots of linux knowledge, solid scripting skills, and a\nwillingness to occasionally get hands-on with hardware. Languages and\ntechnologies in heavy use include apache, java, jenkins, libvirt/kvm, nagios,\npuppet, perl, rpm, tomcat, and just about every bioinformatics tool and\nrelational database you can think of.\n\nThere will be a posting at <http://jobs.eupathdb.org/> shortly.\n\n------\nphilippb\nSan Francisco, SOMA. Fulltime first hire, >3m downloads\n\nWe at KeepSafe are two co-founders who are looking for our first engineering\nhire. We have over 3m downloads and a killer retention. When you're interested\nto join a smal and successful startup where you have impact and server a lot\nof users, we should talk. Job post:\n[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/620820/SF%203m%2B%20Startup%20first%...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/620820/SF%203m%2B%20Startup%20first%20hire.pdf)\n\nSalary, equity + benefits. (and yes, we already raised money and have it in\nthe bank)\n\nContact us at jobs@getkeepsafe.com\n\n------\njachwe\n~sedna GmbH, Berlin , Fulltime, local, Frontend Developer \\-------- Infos on\nwhat we're doing on <http://www.sedna.de>\n\nNo conventional Web Development. :-)\n\n(edited for proper link)\n\n------\nblo\nSan Francisco, CA (SOMA) - Backend and/or Frontend + Design engineers - Full\ntime\n\nStealth - consumer web and mobile\n\n\\--\n\nWe are a stealth, funded startup focused on improving how people fundamentally\nbrowse and interact with online services. Our new web-based experience\ncombines UI/UX innovation with data algorithms to allow users to accomplish\ntasks in a more usable, efficient, and social manner.\n\nWe work mainly with JS (jquery and node.js) and HTML5. Mobile developers\nshould be familiar with iOS/Android.\n\nCurious? Contact [my username] at alum.mit.edu. Including your portfolio is\npreferable!\n\n------\nbentlegen\nSan Francisco, CA\n\nDisqus (YC07) is hiring front and back-end engineers in San Francisco.\n\nOn the front-end, you'll be pushing the boundaries of what's possible with\ndistributed JavaScript. We're currently deploying what might be the world's\nmost trafficked Backbone.js app - over a half-billion visits per month.\n\nOn the back-end, you'll be help scale the web's largest Django app as part of\na tight-knit team of pros.\n\nIf that interests you, send me an email: ben at disqus dot com. Or check out\nour jobs page: <http://disqus.com/jobs>\n\n------\nanandiyer\nSan Francisco, CA - Full time, local\n\nWe're a tech company based in SF, backed by some of the best investors in the\nvalley and we are trying to revolutionize the sports industry. We're a group\nof product minded engineers and designers and we're expanding our team with\ndevelopers. We're a Django/Python shop hosted on Google App Engine, and our\nmobile apps have been consistently rated as some of the best in the AppStore.\nWe have millions of users, and we're still growing.\n\nIf this sounds exciting to you, and you want to join our team, drop us a note\n- jobs@onsports.com\n\n------\nmelissatrahan\nSan Francisco - full time\n\nMassive Health is a small start-up of just 12 people that's based in San\nFrancisco, and combined our team has previously shipped products to over half\na billion people. Led by cofounder and CVO Aza Raskin, we're using this\nconsumer product expertise to improve healthcare by creating beautiful tools\nthat deliver useful insights for getting and staying healthy. We've already\nlaunched an app called The Eatery, and there's lots more to come.\n\n<http://massivehealth.com/jobs>\n\n------\njaos\nTimesys Pittsburgh, PA (intern, full-time,remote)\n\nWe are a small, fast, profitable company providing embedded Linux solutions to\nbig and small customers all over the world.\n\nWe are looking for embedded Linux kernel developers, build system gurus, gnu\ntool experts, userspace application developers, and support engineers.\n\nWe have a great team, a fun office environment, and a lot of interesting\nproblems to solve.\n\n<http://www.timesys.com/company/careers>\n\n------\nAdamN\nNY - Python\n\nYou will work with the best 13 person team of developers in the city. Onsite\nonly.\n\nJust email me directly: adam@yipit.com\n\nWe sponsor visas and will help with relocation.\n\n------\nmarkvoelker\nCisco (location flexible, RTP, NC or San Jose, CA preferred)\n\nCisco is hiring OpenStack solutions engineers, QA, and developers. Multiple\nbusiness units and the Office of the CTO. Raleigh-Durham, NC and San Jose, CA\npreferred for some openings, but locations flexible including REMOTE work for\nwell qualified candidates. Search for keyword OpenStack on\n<http://www.cisco.com/careers> or send inquiries/resumes to openstack-\njobs@cisco.com.\n\n------\nclay\nRally.org - San Francisco\n\nBuilding tools to help non-profits, charities, and other organizations\nfundraise and spread their message better.\n\nLooking for:\n\n    \n    \n      - Full stack web developers (Rails, Capistrano, chef, etc)\n      - Data Scientists (machine learning, visualization, and front-end web development)\n    \n\nOur jobs page has more info <https://rally.org/jobs>\n\nEmail me at clay.woolam@rally.org and I'll get you connected\n\n------\nbtfh\nLondon, Full-time\n\nChaffinch is hiring a junior web developer with knowledge of some or all of\nthe following:\n\nHTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, Coffeescript, Jade, Stylus, Handlebars,\nBackbone, Underscore, Node, Express, PHP, CodeIgniter, Amazon AWS.\n\nRemote work is possible, but working from our offices in East London is\npreferred.\n\nPlease send relevant links (e.g. portfolio, github, live work) and at least\none code sample of something you're proud of to jobs@chaffin.ch\n\n------\nemcienjobs\nAtlanta, GA - Emcien - Full Time, No H1B, No Remote\n\nSoftware Engineer for Complex Web Applications\n\nWe are open to training someone with expertise in a non-Ruby language who\ndemonstrates mastery of web development concepts, experience with complex\napplication architectures, or is somewhat amusing.\n\n[https://jobs.github.com/positions/502652e6-a9a5-11e1-95e7-05...](https://jobs.github.com/positions/502652e6-a9a5-11e1-95e7-0599ab24122b)\n\n------\njgilliam\nLos Angeles, CA\n\nNationBuilder is hiring developers and a designer. We build tools for leaders,\nmostly focused on politics right now.\n\nWe're backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Sean Parker, and many others.\n\n<http://nationbuilder.com/jobs>\n\nOur stack is Ruby/Rails/Postgres/Redis/Mongo, details here:\n<http://dev.nationbuilder.com/about>\n\n------\nargvzero\nBasho is hiring! Many (>20) positions, many locations:\n\n<http://bashojobs.theresumator.com/>\n\n------\nrjsjr\nSoFi <http://sofi.com/> is fixing Student Loans with better rates, alumni\ninvestment, and great social integration. We're looking for Engineers, QA, and\nDevOps to come work with an experienced startup engineering team and build\ngreat products. Located in the beautiful Presidio with free shuttle to\ndowntown. Contact me at rseymour@sofi.com for more information.\n\n------\njlevetin\nRoR developer for green tech startup (Durham, NC) Full Time, Remote, H1B\n\nA green tech, well funded startup is looking for an RoR developer to join the\nteam. We help businesses and individuals reduce their power bills using smart\nelectric meters. Our algorithm analyzes overall meter data, calculates\nindividual appliance usage, and makes appropriate recommendations. Beta users\n(in 18 states and counting) have cut electric bills by as much as 50%. You'll\nhave the opportunity to contribute to a new company and steer the evolution of\nits consumer facing website.\n\nIs this you?\n\n* True hacker mindset\n\n* Ruby on Rails developer with aptitude for creating an elegant user experience\n\n* Can code dynamic web apps using CSS and Javascript\n\n* Degree in Computer Science or Engineering\n\n* Any experience level, provided you have the programming chops\n\nNice to haves\n\n* iPhone/iPad/Android development\n\n* Python\n\nBenefits:\n\n* Help save the planet with smart, passionate, and eco-friendly engineers\n\n* Competitive compensation blending equity and salary\n\n* Retirement and healthcare\n\n* Rural setting on six acres with hiking trails and an on-site dog\n\n* Relocation, remote development, and H1B sponsorship possible\n\nInterested?\n\nTo apply visit:\n\n[http://www.elmtalent.com/apply-open-\nposition/?job_id=ETG0800...](http://www.elmtalent.com/apply-open-\nposition/?job_id=ETG08001)\n\nPlease include a cover letter or (preferably) a link to an RoR site you\ncrafted\n\n------\nmrlebowski\nTheFind.com is also openings for UI engineers also, in Mountain View/San\nFrancisco, CA.\n\nHere's are the full reqs:\n<http://startuply.com/Jobs/Web_UI_Architect_2519_2.aspx>\n\n<http://startuply.com/Jobs/Web_UI_Engineer_2519_1.aspx>\n\n------\nsinglow\nAustin, TX - Fahrenheit Marketing - Full time\n\nWe're looking for a junior/intermediate level web developer with a few\nprojects under her/his belt. Most of our projects are in PHP, many in Drupal.\nThis is a full time permanent position with a couple of experienced developers\non the team offer guidance and plenty of opportunities to learn new things.\n\njobs@fahrenheitmarketing.com\n\n------\ncoffeemug\nRethinkDB (rethinkdb.com) is looking for a full-time Bash/Python/Perl hacker\nin Mountain View.\n\nWe're bringing continuous integration to what traditionally has been thought\nof as a _really_ long release cycle, and we need someone with the chops to\nbuild the tools to do it. E-mails jobs@rethinkdb.com. Not a single person who\njoined RethinkDB regretted it to date.\n\n------\nvpayette\nSeattle, WA (Belltown), Full Time, early stage startup\n\n2 positions open:\n\n\\- Web UI designer. Microsoft stack. Lean startup, Small team, you'll have\nimmediate impact\n\n\\- Systems engineer to install our server at clients sites and do general IT\nsupport for our office.\n\nIf interested, send your resume to vpayette@hotmail.com and I'll fill you in\non the details.\n\n------\nngvrnd\nKiva Systems is hiring in North Reading, MA. A great place to work, a\ntransformative technology, robotic excellence in concept and execution. Full\ntime positions. See the web site [http://www.kivasystems.com/about-us-the-\nkiva-approach/career...](http://www.kivasystems.com/about-us-the-kiva-\napproach/careers-at-kiva/)\n\n------\nsitespect\nBOSTON, MA\n\nSiteSpect.com is hiring for a handful of engineering and analyst positions.\nWe're a web analytics/optimization startup, located in downtown Boston. Please\nsee <http://www.sitespect.com/careers.shtml> for all position listings.\n\nThanks for reading!\n\n------\nolegp\nMobile Backstage (Helsinki, Finland)\n\nLooking for a web developer with Java, MySQL experience & interest in\ninfrastructure and cutting edge technologies such as server side JavaScript.\n\n<http://www.mobilebackstage.com/server_programmer.php>\n\n------\nsontek\nWe are looking for graphic designer/UX expert.\n\n<https://gist.github.com/2838122> \\- Our official job posting.\n\nSmall start-up bootstrapping in Santiago, Chile because we got accepted to\n<http://startupchile.org>\n\n------\ncr4zy\nScottsdale ~ AZ ~ mobile / machine learning / python\n\n~ YOU will be the 5th employee and carry major weight, because we need you to.\n\n~ Extremely ambitious gameplan\n\n~ Open to full and partial telecommute\n\n~ New and best Apple hardware\n\n~ $80k and up\n\n~ Will pay moving expenses\n\ncquiter@gmail.com\n\n------\ndgurney\nNew York, NY.\n\nConcert Window is bringing the live concert experience online. We are fully\nfunded, working out of General Assembly, and already selling to paying\ncustomers.\n\nWe're bringing on a lead developer. Rails preferred. Love of music is a big\nplus.\n\nContact dan@concertwindow.com\n\n------\nrsoto\nWe are a marketing agency in Mexico City and we are looking for a\nwebdev/hacker to build amazing web products.\n\nThere's a small landing on what we do and what we're looking in the following\nlink: <http://bit.ly/buscamoshacker>\n\n------\nwifast\nPalo Alto, CA - Full-Time, Generalist Eng at WiFast. H1-B OK.\n\nWe are making internet access more affordable, ubiquitous, and fast.\n\nOur founding engineers come from Google, Facebook and Apple. Our team is\n5-strong, experienced, and well-funded.\n\nCome say hi. jobs@wifast.com\n\n------\nmikek\nKiwi Crate - Mountain View, CA\n\nWe have the following open positions, and more:\n\n* Front End Developer\n\n* Web Designer\n\n* Web Developer Intern\n\n* Business Analyst\n\n<http://www.kiwicrate.com/jobs>\n\n------\njoshfraser\nTorbit in Sunnyvale CA Lots of open positions including:\n\n\\- JavaScript developer\n\n\\- Go developer\n\n\\- Big data engineer\n\n\\- Front end developer\n\n\\- Performance engineer\n\n<http://torbit.com/jobs>\n\n------\nmrlebowski\nTheFind.com is looking for iOS developers in Mountain View/San Francisco, CA.\n\nHere's the full post: <http://pastebin.com/j4DWSzyr>\n\n------\nbwb\nTwo Jobs for Perl Devs :)\n\nWork from home, 100% remote!\n\nFull listing at: <http://jobs.perl.org/job/16056>\n\nThanks, Ben\n\n------\ngeorgespencer\nWe're looking for Rails developers with good commercial experience who want to\nmake a dent in the Universe. Based in London. Competitive salary. Contact\nzetter+hn@gmail.com.\n\n------\namduser29\nLife360, San Francisco SF, CA\n\nDirector of Engineering: come help us scale out our engineering team as we\nscale out our user base past 20 million users.\n\nalex@life360.com\n\n------\ndavvid\nWalt Disney Animation Studios, Burbank, CA\n\n<https://careers.disneyanimation.com/job_groups>\n\n------\nelietoubi\nUnpakt is looking for a senior rails developer and a head of product more info\nhere <https://www.unpakt.com/jobs>\n\n------\nhtilford\nEnsighten, Cupertino CA\n\nMultiple Fulltime local positions\n\n<http://ensighten.com/company/careers>\n\n------\nSkeletor\ndrchrono is hiring amazing hackers, designers, SEM marketers, and sales\npeople! See more here: <https://drchrono.com/jobs>\n\nWe sponsor H1B, hiring full time and remote work is an option for most\npositions.\n\n------\nvduquette\n(Toronto, Canada) - Full Time, Local\n\nDesperate developer seeks accomplice to stave off lonliness. Passionate and\ncomitted ruby developer looking for lasting code-relationship. Must be willing\nto commit code changes, and be okay with sharing a repository. Brogrammer\ntendencies a nice bonus, but not required.\n\nvince@sprouter.com\n\n------\nsharksandwich\necoScorecard - Atlanta, Ga\n\nWe're a fast-growing startup focused on making green building easier. We're\nlooking for an excellent Rails developer with an interest in sustainability.\nemail stuart at ecoscorecard dot com\n\n------\ntikhon\nParse <https://parse.com/jobs>\n\n------\ngoogoobaby\nAnything in Seattle that's not Amazon?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Where are optimized solutions to leetcode problems being used? - rahulskn86\nOf-course sorting problems are being used everywhere but I am trying to understand other applications which require that level of algorithmic knowledge as part of the day to day engineering work.\n======\nkeyle\n\\- 3D rendering in game engine\n\n\\- geo-spatial related problem, path finding etc.\n\n\\- geo positioning\n\n\\- low level networking\n\n\\- shaders code\n\n\\- physics and fluid simulation\n\n\\- GPU stuff\n\nI mean everywhere there is a problem to solve, there is depth to explore.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAnybody Can Fire This 'Locked' Smart Gun with $15 Worth of Magnets - kevination\nhttps://www.wired.com/story/smart-gun-fire-magnets/\n======\nadvisedwang\nThe range extension and lock circumvention is bad, but only weakens back to a\nregular handgun. The jamming is more scary to me as it makes the product\nactively worse than if it wasn't smart at all.\n\n~~~\nalex-\nI could imagine some firearm owners being willing to trade 100% reliability to\nprevent a casual accident.\n\nI imagine some firearm sales are for more recreational purposes.\n\n~~~\ndogma1138\nThis isn't any more likely to prevent negligent discharge than existing\nsafeties.\n\nBasic fire arms etiquette is to treat any firearm as loaded and ready to fire\nunless it's been explicitly cleared.\n\nIf you do not use guns for self defense then keeping them clear and keeping\nammo separate is much easier and safer.\n\nAny type of safety can fail and relying on it is just how you get some of\nthese accidents.\n\n------\narielweisberg\nThe description makes it sound like if you are firing weak hand (or strong\nhand) you might be outside the range of the watch?\n\nThey say \"just a few inches\" which implies less than a foot. That's not going\nto work for law enforcement or anyone really.\n\nHonestly sounds like they didn't think too hard about real world usage. That\ndescribes most handgun manufacturers though and isn't strictly limited to\nsmart gun manufacturers.\n\n~~~\ntraek\nThe intention clearly seems to be for the watch to be worn on the same arm\nthat you hold the gun with.\n\n~~~\narielweisberg\nIt's not safe to assume the arm that has the watch will be available to\noperate gun.\n\nPeople practice one handed reloads and failure drills.\n\nEven in competition you are regularly required to alternate no strong hand\nonly and weak hand only so it isn't possible to put the watch on the right\nhand. Proper technique also has you anchoring the unused arm.\n\n------\nLyndsySimon\nTo be fair, you can build a working shotgun for less than that.\n\n------\nDeonPenny\nIf you're doing all this bring your own gun.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBitcode Demystified - happy-go-lucky\nhttps://lowlevelbits.org/bitcode-demystified/\n======\nHHad3\nWhen the author pointed out that bitcode may impact security, I expected to\nread about how compiler optimizations that happen during compilation of LLVM\nIR to machine language may introduce security issues.\n\nHowever, the article only mentioned that decompilation is easier with LLVM IR,\nbecause it is a more high-level language. It certainly is a valid point, but\naddresses the topic of binary obfuscation instead for algorithmic security.\n\nI'm thus wondering if anyone can shed some light on the real security aspects.\nFor example, let's say that I compile C that is supposed to run in constant\ntime to LLVM IR and submit it to Apple. Does Apple guarantee that their\nblackbox optimizations do not introduce branches or other factors that may\nresult in variable timing into a constant time algorithm? Can I do anything to\nensure that my code will always run in constant time despite unknown\noptimizations being applied to it in the future?\n\n~~~\nesrauch\nIt seems trivially obvious to me that there is no way to guarantee and code\nyou write won't be transformed into any runtime under arbitrary \"optimization\"\n(transformation).\n\nAs in, you can have just a single numberic constant in your code and Apple is\npermitted to insert a for loop up to that constant.\n\n------\nbla2\nI only skimmed, but I found several mistakes. With bitcode, you still get one\nbitcode slice per arch since LLVM bitcode isn't platform-independent. Pointers\nare for example sized differently, which causes the same C file to compile to\ndifferent bitcode; preprocessor macros are different, which also causes the\nsame C file to compile to different bitcode; and so on. App thinning can be\nimplemented without bitcode, so that whole \"What problems Apple’s Bitcode aims\nto solve?\" section is bogus.\n\n~~~\n0x0\nAgreed, my impression is that the main benefit of bitcode is that it allows\nApple to rebuild apps for the purposes of fixing compiler backend bugs and\nperhaps introducing improved micro-optimizations for newer CPUs generations\nwithin the same architecture, but it certainly does not work as a \"java\nbytecode\" layer - it definitively wouldn't enable Apple to change to a\ncompletely different CPU architecture in newer iPhones or Macs. The LLVM IR\nand the ObjectiveC/Swift/libc ABI is too architecture-specific to work as a\nportability layer.\n\n~~~\nglhaynes\n_my impression is that the main benefit of bitcode is that it allows Apple to\nrebuild apps for the purposes of fixing compiler backend bugs and perhaps\nintroducing improved micro-optimizations for newer CPUs generations within the\nsame architecture_\n\nThis is my impression, too, but it's always seemed strange to me - are the\nrare fix for a compiler bug and a few micro-optimizations worth all the\neffort?\n\n~~~\n0x0\nMaybe they expected more compiler bugs than usual when bringing out Swift?\n\n------\nJdeBP\nAnother problem with the article is the description of how compilers work. In\nmy experience over the years, the compilers that use assembly language as an\nintermediate form, and that require an assembler, are in the minority; and the\nmajority of compilers that I have encountered go straight from (lowered) IR to\nmachine code generation.\n\nAs bla2 points out, it seems that the author has got entirely the wrong end of\nthe stick. App thinning isn't related to bitcode. It's about delivering a\nprogram image that only contains the program for the instruction architecture\nof the downloading client. LLVM bitcode use is, rather, about holding off\ngenerating that final machine image until the point of download, rather than\nwhen the developer compiled the program, theoretically allowing improvements\nin code generation and IR lowering to be taken advantage of after a developer\nprovides a compiled application to Apple.\n\nA better treatment of the subject appears to be [https://imore.com/app-\nthinning-ios-9-explained](https://imore.com/app-thinning-ios-9-explained) .\n\n------\nsomeguydave\nIt sounds to me that Apple is preparing for the day when they ship a non-x86\nmac but don't want to slow everything down with emulation.\n\n~~~\njcranmer\nBitcode is still architecture-specific: you generally can't take LLVM IR\nproduced for x86-64 and expect it to run on ARM without issues.\n\n~~~\nsomeguydave\nUnderstood, but I suppose what I meant was that you could write an emulator\nthat works at a higher level than machine-code which _could_ interpret IR on a\nforeign arch.\n\n------\neridius\nThis article is presumably from 2015 as it says Apple introduced Bitcode “a\nfew months ago”.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy I Don't Call the Police - smacktoward\nhttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/08/michael_brown_eric_garner_debra_harrell_just_three_examples_of_why_i_don.single.html\n\n======\nJoeAltmaier\nTitle amendment: when a black person is involved, and the issue is not urgent.\nBecause the response is disproportionate based on race.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBuilding a raspberry pi into a laptop - azeirah\n\nHey, I had this kinda crazy idea when I saw a friend log in remotely to his PI using X-server. Programs would run on the pi, and he would see them on his laptop.<p>I had this idea of, what if I build a raspberry pi 2 into my laptop. Not like any other pi-top project. I&#x27;ll have a hybrid intel&#x2F;pi laptop. I can use it to do Linux-stuff, have a portable gpio prototyping thing, I can host some local webservers, use it as a build server or<p>My laptop has a cd-drive that I&#x27;ve never used, people suggested me to put an SSD in there, no way, I&#x27;m getting a separate computer instead :D<p>What are your thoughts on this? What would you do with a second computer inside your laptop? Just wondering...\n======\ncamhenlin\nI installed a Raspberry Pi and an LCD with a battery in inside of an old Mac\nPlus. That's kind of a laptop right?\n[http://i.imgur.com/ID7chQk.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/ID7chQk.jpg)\n\n~~~\nmore_corn\nCounts! My Mac SE at least had a handle and optional carrying case (which I\nsadly didn't have). I think they were originally advertised as portable.\n\n------\nCyberFonic\nI have a couple of old laptops. So when I saw your post, I thought about\npulling out the old motherboard, etc and installing a Raspberry Pi 2 in its\nplace. Might be tricky to get the old LCD to work correctly.\n\nHas anybody successfully got this sort of re-engineering working?\n\n~~~\nundersuit\nA number of people have been successful with the DSI connector on the Pi, but\nthe monitors you can use are radically different that what you'd find in a\nlaptop.\n\n[http://elinux.org/RPi_Screens#Interfacing_to_non-\nmonitor_LCD...](http://elinux.org/RPi_Screens#Interfacing_to_non-\nmonitor_LCD_panels)\n\nOh and there is a HDMI to LVDS breakout board floating around somewhere.\n\n------\nEzhik\nWouldn't it be more practical to just use a virtual machine in your main OS?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTwitter Chirp live broadcast on Justin.tv - evansolomon\nhttp://www.justin.tv/twitterchirp\n\n======\n_pius\nI'm streaming this on my 27\" iMac and I must say, the video quality is\nabsolutely gorgeous, with no stuttering. Great job guys.\n\n~~~\nmarkkoberlein\nI'm also impressed by the quality. I hope live streaming like this becomes the\nstandard for tech events/conferences.\n\n------\nsant0sk1\nAll I see is a giant Chirp logo on a blue background. Are they in intermission\nor something?\n\n~~~\ntcdent\nYeah, you just missed it. They'll be back at 11:00.\n\n~~~\nsamratjp\nLooks like I missed it as well. Anything noteworthy so far? Something that\neven non-devs would get excited about?\n\n~~~\ntbgvi\nLibrary of Congress announced that they're archiving every tweet since\nTwitters inception. Not sure if they said anything at Chirp about it yet.\n\n[http://www.facebook.com/notes/the-library-of-congress/how-\ntw...](http://www.facebook.com/notes/the-library-of-congress/how-tweet-it-is-\nlibrary-acquires-entire-twitter-archive/110775778955250)\n\n------\ntlrobinson\nApplication defined annotations is the most interesting thing I've heard about\nso far.\n\n------\njayliew\ndoes anyone know if this can be replayed again afterwards? i missed the early\npart\n\n~~~\nevansolomon\nYes, all the video is archived and clips will be made for each talk. We'll\npost the clips here later.\n\n~~~\njayliew\nThank you, we'll be looking forward to those!\n\n~~~\njdeseno\n<http://www.justin.tv/twitterchirp/all#r=QcLevkA~>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSquare Closes $200M Series D - misiti3780\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2012/09/17/square-closes-200m-series-d-from-starbucks-citi-rizvi-at-3-25b-valuation/\n\n======\nbane\nSo to the stock-optioned employee what does this mean? Somebody who started\nearly with the company vs somebody who starts after this round? Keeping track\nof the value of options after several rounds seems to be quite complicated.\n\n~~~\nbduerst\nDepends on a few factors.\n\n\\- What is strike price of the option?\n\n\\- What is the expected market value of the company?\n\nIf a company is valued at $1billion dollars and has 10 million shares, then\neach share is expected to be worth $100. This is a rough estimate, and assumes\nthat the valuation accounts for future revenue, violatility, etc.\n\nIf you have options that gives you the right to put (sell) the shares at $150,\nthen you are making $50 on each option, since you can buy your $100 share in\nthe company and sell at $150, guaranteed. 1,000 options would be $50,000\nprofit at that share market price and stock option strike price.\n\nThis means you can expect the option to be worth $50, except that options\ntypically have a date at which the options expire. The price of the option\nchanges relative to this date, and is worthless after the date.\n\nThis is also dependent on you being able to exercise your stock options, which\nis unlikely unless the company is being publicly traded. A series D funding\nmeans the company is still privately traded, and the market price isn't set\nyet.\n\n------\ndude_abides\nIn comparison,\n\n\\- Facebook raised $200MM in its Series-D round with DST in 2009, at a\nvaluation of $10B.\n\n\\- Twitter in 2010, with plateauing growth, raised $200MM (series F), with a\nvaluation of 3.7 B.\n\nSquare has strong growth and a proven revenue model and still just got a\nmultiple of 16x. Clearly the market has adjusted its expectations quite a bit.\nIn other words, it is going to be quite hard for a Pinterest to raise money at\n1.5B valuation today.\n\nI'm going to have to conclude that reports of another tech bubble burst were\nquite exaggerated.\n\n~~~\nmrkurt\nProven revenue can be counter intuitive when raising money. On the one hand,\nit makes it much easier to raise. On the other, it's such a solid metric that\nyou can't build a story for investors that gives you insane valuations.\n\nIt would not surprise me to see a hot startup with really good traction/growth\nand a fuzzy but credible \"here's how we make money\" raise at another crazy\nvaluation soon. If you can paint a picture of a huge market, show impressive\nownership of that market, you can let investors use their imaginations from\nthere.\n\n~~~\ndude_abides\nAgree with you that proven revenue model doesn't help create growth multiples.\n\nBut in Square's case, the story for investors would likely have been: here's\nways x, y, z, in which we can make money, and even in case none of these\nworks, here's our proven revenue model.\n\n------\nstevencorona\nWonder how much of that 8 billion in payments/year they see. 2.75% (their fee)\nof 8 billion is 220 million. How much of that do they have to pay out to the\npayment networks?\n\n~~~\njonknee\nA lot of that depends on their average transaction size. Square charges a flat\nrate despite there being per transaction fees, so 10 $1 charges are a lot less\nprofitable for Square than 1 $10 charge.\n\nThey almost certainly actually lose money on the $1 transactions (their fee is\nunder 3 cents but you'd typically have north of 20 cents of interchange fees).\n\n[http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/regii-\naverage-i...](http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/regii-average-\ninterchange-fee.htm)\n\n------\nprogramminggeek\nI'm curious what the plan is for that $200 million. Obviously Square is\nprinting money at this point, but what other direction do they see to move out\nfrom mobile payments?\n\nMy guess is maybe they are going to go after other parts of the small biz\nsegment like making e-commerce easier and so on. Ultimately, if Square can get\n3% off the top of every transaction a business makes for the vast majority of\nbusinesses, there is a lot of money to be made for sure.\n\n~~~\njonknee\n> Obviously Square is printing money at this point\n\nNot so sure that's obvious. They're processing a lot of payments for sure, but\nnot all of them are profitable. They spend a lot of money on hardware and\ncustomer service. Fraud surely costs a bundle too. It's a business that only\nmakes sense at a very large scale.\n\n~~~\ndrusenko\nAgreed. 3% is an overly optimistic estimate for how much they are making off\neach transaction since they are charging 2.75% and no per transaction fee and\ninterchange isn't too much lower than that (maybe around a 2 or 2.2% blended\nrate?) Then you have to account for per-transaction fees, chargebacks, etc.\n\nGiven the pricing, I am guessing that they are making anywhere from break-even\nto 1% on each transaction. At my most generous estimate, that's $80M of annual\nrevenue before any costs, but I'd wager they are pretty damn close to break-\neven and not making too much, yet...\n\nSo I agree with you, they are growing very quickly and have pretty tremendous\npotential, but I'm not sure I'd say they are \"printing money\".\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nFCC Chair Genachowski declares himself Top Cop of the Internet - Calamitous\nhttp://www.reason.com/news/show/136278.html\n\n======\nmiked\nA Washington power grab at its finest. The FCC has announced that it, and it\nalone, is ruler of the internet, although of course the announcement was\ncouched in terms of \"openness\". It will be interesting to see how this plays\nout in the courts against First Amendment issues, when they finally collide,\nas they will.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe age of the independent creator - joss82\nhttp://tynan.com/independentcreator\n\n======\njoss82\nSeriously? No one liked this one?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Future of Layout with CSS: Grid Layouts - zastrowm\nhttps://medium.com/@patrickbrosset/css-grid-layout-6c9cba6e8a5a\n======\nexodust\nI avoid grids, actually hate them. But if they were part of the spec then I\nmight take a look when the browser support ramps up.\n\nThe problem I have with grids is they don't play nice with fluid resizing. I\naim for liquid smooth responses from desktop down to tablet, then just one\nbreakpoint for anything smaller than a tablet. Works for me. Any more break\npoints is a ticket to pain.\n\nWhat I wish was easily possible with CSS alone, is a method for specific\nposition of an object within a list item, or properties of the list item\nitself _depending_ on where and how many list items are currently present.\nThat way, if we have 3 list items each containing a thumbnail, the list item\ncould be set to 33% width. If two list items, 50% and so on. Things like a\nlist of thumbs could remain nice and neatly aligned at any point in the\nresponsive page resize. I'm not interested in hacking this with pre-\nprocessors, we need CSS to have these tricks up its sleeve. But instead, we\nget grids?\n\n~~~\nexodust\nJust adding that I've finally given flexbox a go and it basically provides a\nsolution to the problem I mention above, so that's great. This demo is\nexcellent: flexboxin5.com\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAll major UK ISPs prepping network-level porn 'n' violence filters - alan_cx\nhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/06/big_4_isps_will_all_embrace_network_level_filtering_to_protect_children/\n======\nphilbarr\nForgive me for being glib, but at least one good thing out of this is that a\nlot more teenagers will be inspired to become hackers.\n\n\"So when did you first get into hacking Mr. Famous Hacker X?\"\n\n\"Well, I remember that, like a lot of the lads in my generation at the time, I\nwas trying to get round my ISPs porn-filters.\"\n\n~~~\nrobotmay\nThis is actually pretty accurate for when I was in school; I learnt a lot\nabout proxies and networking whilst bypassing the school's content filters :D\n\n------\nandyking\nSo, in order to get around this DNS-based filtering, all a teenager has to do\nis change the DNS servers on their computer or device to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4?\nThis seems like a move designed to placate rather than provide any real\nprotection - like all such schemes.\n\nThere's no alternative to supervising young people's internet use. Teenagers\n_will_ look up porn - it's best to be adult and intelligent about it, and\nprotect them from its worst _effects_ , rather than trying to filter the\ncontent itself.\n\n~~~\nretube\nYes it is impossible to completely block the distribution of such content, and\nyes maybe this is a particularly weak solution. But that doesn't mean that\nthis or simialr efforts should not be made: they will reduce the ease of\navailability which will cut down exposure to this type of material.\n\nI actually believe that all pornography should be behind a paywall, and any\nwhich is not is blocked (somehow). And no I am not abdicating responsibily of\nmy children to the state - they still need to be taught responsible online\nbehaviour - as I agree above such material will always be available for those\nwho make the effort to circumvent restrictions.\n\nWe don't not lock our houses because someone can still break in - but it\ndramatically cuts down on such attempts (and we still educate our children on\nwhy breaking into other peoples homes is a bad thing to do).\n\n~~~\nm0nty\n> all pornography should be behind a paywall\n\nYou mean this?\n\n[http://uploads0.wikipaintings.org/images/henri-de-\ntoulouse-l...](http://uploads0.wikipaintings.org/images/henri-de-toulouse-\nlautrec/the-medical-inspection.jpg)\n\nOr this?\n\n[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Gustav_Kl...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Gustav_Klimt_010.jpg)\n\nThis is particularly naughty, ought to be censored:\n\n> Yet she multiplied her prostitutions, in calling to remembrance the days of\n> her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt. For she\n> doted on their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose\n> issue is like the issue of horses. Thus you called to remembrance the\n> lewdness of your youth, in bruising your teats by the Egyptians for the\n> breasts of your youth.\n\n~~~\nretube\nNo, you are being deliberately obtuse. I am talking about material available\non the tubes etc.\n\n~~~\nm0nty\nNo, I'm not. Those pictures are sexually explicit and should be censored. The\ntext I quoted is not suitable for children and should be removed.\n\n------\nshocks\nHey parents, instead of trying to filter your internet connection to 'protect'\nyour child, why not... Er... Parent? Teach him/her what not to do online, why,\nand how to stay safe. Filters will always be on step behind.\n\n~~~\nlutze\nChildren shouldn't be using the internet unsupervised, full stop.\n\n~~~\ntakluyver\nAnd, like lots of other things that shouldn't happen, they will. Their parent\nwill be desperately trying to get some work done, or cooking dinner, or\nwatching another child. Children now increasingly get to use tablets for\nentertainment, and a parent won't be constantly watching the screen, even\nthough it can access the web.\n\nI don't think network-level filters are the best way to address it. But let's\nstop pretending this is as simple as telling some lazy parents to get their\nact together.\n\n~~~\nworkbench\nIf you hand your tablet off to your child like that unsupervised you're a bad\nparent anyway.\n\nFinding it really hard to sympathise with these people who can't look after\ntheir own offspring responsibly\n\n~~~\ntakluyver\nWhy? It's an interactive device that they can play Tetris or Angry Birds on.\nIt's not a stick of dynamite. Most parents will be more worried about what the\nkid does to the tablet than vice versa. It's only a risky item because some\npeople can't stand the idea of there being any way to access the internet that\ndoesn't include all of the less salubrious bits.\n\n------\nZariel\nAs long as its opt-in then I am all for giving parents the choice to filter\ntheir networks, but as soon as it becomes opt-out I will be very angry about\nit.\n\n~~~\nretube\nwhy?\n\n~~~\nvenomsnake\nBecause an ISP should be dumb pipe. They should only provide connectivity and\nnot mess with people connections. Opt in is enabling. Opt out is intrusion.\n\n~~~\nretube\nyou cannot broadcast what you want on radio or television, you cannot print\nwhat you like in newspapers or magazines - there are rules and regulations\ngoverning content. why should the internet be any different?\n\n~~~\nvenomsnake\nBut I can say what I want on the telephone and write it in a mail. Internet is\npoint to point bi-directional communication. It is not broadcasting.\n\n~~~\nretube\nUmm.. that is precisely what it is! TCP/IP maybe directionally agnostic, but\napplication layer protocols vary. HTTP for example is very much a broadcast\nprotocol.\n\n~~~\nanExcitedBeast\nI'm not sure you know what \"broadcast\" means.\n\n~~~\nretube\nWell you're just arguing semantics. Just because HTTP is a 1-to-1 connection\ndoesn't mean web content is not \"broadcast\". It's there for anyone that wants\nto view it, so functionally it is exactly the same as traditional broadcast\nmedia - it's just the mechanics of delivery which are different.\n\n~~~\nanExcitedBeast\nA broadcast, by definition, is a data transmission initiated by the\nbroadcaster to a number of recipients. HTTP doesn't fit this definition in any\nway, shape, or form. Every transaction is initiated by a request from you, the\nclient. Right now radio waves are being forced through you and your computer\nby radio and television towers. Those are broadcasts. Hacker News is not. You\nmade a specific request for the content of news.ycombinator.com. If you do not\nspecifically ask for all this violent pornography you seem so concerned about,\nit simply can not find its way to your computer. Know why? Because it's not\nbeing broadcasted.\n\nBeyond the \"semantics\" (your dismissal of which indicates you don't hold much\nregard for the rule of law), you are sorely mistaken if you think state\ncensorship will be used exclusively to guard our fragile, sexually frustrated\nyouth from gangbang clips. This is how a marketplace of ideas becomes a menu\nof state approved thought.\n\n------\nweavejester\nIf these filters are opt-in, as the article suggests, what's the problem? They\nmight not be particularly effective, but if they're not active by default, and\nno-one's forcing them on anyone, this hardly seems like news.\n\n~~~\nmuyuu\nI've been put behind opt-out filters (Three mobile). Only found out I had this\nfilter randomly browsing and facing their wall page (it wasn't even porn or\nanything remotely questionable, just a suspect URL name).\n\n~~~\npeteri\nSimple to fix for three.\n\nChange the APN to 3internet from three.co.uk\n\nThis hasn't caused me any problems on my \"one plan\" phone, I don't know if\nthis will cause issues on lower tier plans.\n\n~~~\nmakomk\nNote that, last time I checked, the 3internet APN gets you a globally routable\nIP address that isn't behind any firewall. Which is handy but you need to be a\nlittle careful about it.\n\n~~~\npeteri\nDidn't realise that but it kind of makes sense.\n\n------\nmortov\nAll UK ISPs have compulsory blocks already - courtesy of the unaccountable\nCEOPS under the guise of Thinking Of The Children/Child Porn. All sorts of\nURLs/IPs are blocked (many of which should be blocked because they _ARE_ CP\nbut some are not, just judged by The Powers That Be as being unacceptable\n[e.g. pirate bay]). There is no way to know what is on the list and no way to\nfind out - anyone inquiring is automatically classed as a CP supporter and\nsubject to investigation.\n\nCoupled with the English removal of right to silence (discussed a few days\nago), the UK long ago became a scary place for anyone interested in freedom\nand justice. [Scotland retains the silence right but don't expect that to help\nyou much.]\n\nWe're just seeing an extension of this as people have been prepared already so\nit is time to extend the state monitoring and intrusion as everyone now\nbelieves it is a Good Thing(tm) because they know deep down that they truly\nlove Big Brother.\n\n(edit:spelling, twice. That's embarrassing)\n\n~~~\nporker\nI can't believe we let the removal of right to silence go. When did it happen?\nDid I entirely miss it, or was it before my time?\n\n~~~\nmmcnickle\nAs far as I know, the major change came in the 90s in the form of \"it may harm\nyour defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later\nrely on in court\". In other words, the court can draw conclusions about\nsomething you initially refused to comment on, but then later answered as part\nof your defence.\n\n~~~\ntimw6n\nActually it was even earlier than that; adverse inferences could be drawn from\nsilence after the passing of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.\n\n~~~\nKliment\nWhat a fitting year!\n\n------\nFuxy\nGreat another way for them to slip in a couple of websites that are not porn\nrelated like say... political parody. Just look at T-Mobile for an example\nthey block \"objectionable content\" like say... some links that show up on\nhacker news because they include \"hacking\". Damn it now i need a VPN to the\nfree internet.\n\n------\nworkbench\nIf people can't be responsible for their own children maybe we need to start\ncontrolling who has children.\n\nWhat passes as \"parenting\" in this country is an absolute joke.\n\nJust set up broadband in a new house today, this news makes me ecstatic that I\ndidn't go with BT and went with an independent instead.\n\n~~~\nFuxy\nDon't most of them rely on the BT pipes anyway? So you're getting filtered\nregardless.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIf seeing is believing... never point your smartphone's camera at a propeller - benz145\nhttp://www.carrypad.com/2011/07/25/if-seeing-really-is-believing-never-point-your-smartphones-camera-at-an-airplane-propeller/\n\n======\nRonkdar\nThis isn't a revelation for most people (or maybe I'm biased, a lot of my\nfriends are pilots), but the second video there is the best demonstration I've\nseen so far of why this occurs.\n\n------\nColinWright\nFrom 15 months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1301295>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Is bioinformatics/computational biology a valuable field? - rubatuga\nI’m wondering if these jobs will be valued&#x2F;be in demand in the future, and how much I would earn. I’m currently doing an undergrad Bioinformatics&#x2F;comp. bio. (BCB) at my university, but I’m unsure if the job market looks very good, and some google searches lead me to believe the pay isn’t great. Furthermore, to get further in the field, a PhD is generally required, which is certainly not appealing. I’m currently aiming to apply for medical school, but am also considering doing a joint degree with BCB and a comp sci major to be more competitive if I don’t get in. However this would mean graduating a bit late. Any thoughts on either my degree, or what the future holds for this field?\n======\nJPLeRouzic\nI could tell you non-specific tips about jobs.\n\nDifferentiating yourself is important if you want to get the best pay in your\nfield. Some jobs are quite repetitive and could be automated easily. And a lot\nof jobs in bioinformatics are re-inventing the wheel, sometimes awfully. It\nwould pay IMO to think at a higher level, standardize the toolset and\nprocedures, use the excellent tooling that the profession has already adopted.\n\nGalaxy is a step in this direction, so it would not pay to be a good\npractitionner, but it would pay to be the guy that can automate bio-\ninformatics jobs.\n\nYou can have also a niche competency, like knowing how to operate a specific\nhardware or software. I would not bet on that approach.\n\nYou can also try some professional certification, or knowing regulations in\nyour field or be expert on some quality assurance procedures.\n\nYou can also try to be able to manage large bio-informatics projects from\nproject design to operation and strategic steering.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAn Intuitive Explanation of Phase Conjugation - 100ideas\nhttp://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/PhaseConjugate/PhaseConjugate.html\n======\n100ideas\nExample: This video shows a crystal of photorefractive BaTiO3 acting as a\nphase conjugate \"mirror\" adaptively un-distorting scattering introduced by a\nsheet of ground glass between it and the image source.\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RuHEliwJnA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RuHEliwJnA)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Tech companies which do not allow telecommuting?  - tlogan\n\nThe only two big companies I'm aware that they don't allow \" working remote\" are Google and Apple.<p>What about Facebook?\n======\nwilllll\nYahoo\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCreative spam? - snipek\nhttp://snipek.com/web/11fd7a3d-0df0-4ce2-862c-b26f9b5d84a5\n\n======\nsnipek\nWhat's the most creative spam you've received? Forward that spam message to\nweb@snipek.com, and you can get a URL for that spam mail and share here.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBitcoin’s Technical Flaw - nanzhong\nhttps://medium.com/@nanzhong1/bitcoins-technical-flaw-3569fc0f7c2d\n======\nA2017U1\nThis reads like an ad for a closed source messenger only available in a few\ncountries. Have no idea how its related to bitcoin. Clicks perhaps?\n\nI have plenty of criticisms for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general but\nsome of the claims here are amazingly absurd.\n\nNote to author: I have used a bitcoin wallet with no troubles in China, it has\nbetter uptime in the last decade than Amazon where you worked with\n\"distributed computing systems\", can your messenger app do the same?\n\n> just imagine that the Great Firewall blocks Bitcoin packets for a week,\n> creating a Chinese fork and non-Chinese fork. Then it unblocks. All of a\n> sudden, the non-Chinese fork would disappear. The Bitcoins that went into\n> your wallet six days ago would vanish\n\nThe fact that the author doesn't understand how wrong this is despite\napparently studying Bitcoin as an AWS employee back in 2010 is scary.\n\n~~~\nnanzhong\nI am the author. I'd love to understand your point. Can you give specifics?\nThanks.\n\n~~~\nA2017U1\nYou essentially point to a very large reorganisation and say all the tx's on\nthe global chain will disappear once the GFW opens up again. All orphaned\ntransactions go back in the mempool as unconfirmed and will be processed\nlater.\n\nSimply blocking all global traffic already creates a huge monetary incentive\nfor miners to sidestep the rules and it's easily achieved with obfuscated\ntransports.\n\nSuch an action would be noticeable and considered hostile. Were they causing\nnetwork disruption you'd likely see a hardfork to memory hard algorithms or\nclients blocking Chinese IP ranges.\n\nThere's certainly attacks they could try but I'm not convinced of the\neffectiveness. Miners need the outside world to pay their bills as exchange\nfor RMB is impossible.\n\n~~~\nnanzhong\nYes, you can put the orphaned transactions back in the mempool to be processed\nagain. But what if the Bitcoins in those transactions are already spent on the\n\"winning\" fork? Does it now mean that the wait for a transaction to be\nconsidered \"confirmed\" needs to be longer the conventional six blocks and\npotentially arbitrarily long?\n\nChina already banned non-state sanctioned VPNs in 2018. Anyone circumventing\nthe Great Firewall via \"obfuscated transports\" could get into legal trouble by\nthe Chinese authority. The Chinese government successfully suppressed all\ndissidents and millions of protesters in 1989. Underestimate its force at your\nown peril.\n\nThe whole point of the article is that a centralized entity (the Chinese\ngovernment) may be able to attack Bitcoin without controlling any mining\npower. A hard fork in response to actions of a centralized entity could\nshatter people's confidence in Bitcoin's promise of being decentralized.\nBlocking Chinese IP ranges in a 100% reliable way is going to very difficult.\nThis defense is also rendered useless if someone does use a VPN to propagate\nthe Chinese fork (perhaps intentionally by a centralized entity).\n\n------\nbrokenmachine\n_> If the Great Firewall blocks Bitcoin packets, the Bitcoin network would be\npartitioned and thus fork. Upon unblocking, the shorter Bitcoin chain would be\nwiped out. Ignoring complicated attacks, just imagine that the Great Firewall\nblocks Bitcoin packets for a week, creating a Chinese fork and non-Chinese\nfork. Then it unblocks. All of a sudden, the non-Chinese fork would\ndisappear._\n\nIs that true? Is it only based on how long the fork's chain are?\n\n~~~\nnanzhong\nThe Bitcoin protocol resolves conflicting forks by choosing the longer one\nwhile dropping the shorter one.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: How to Give College Students a Taste of Real World Development? - xerophyte12932\n\nHi! I am arranging a sort of workshop for college students and I want to expose them to professional development. A tentative list of things I want them to learn:<p>- How to write code with long-term considerations<p>- How to make our code flexible to future changes<p>- Importance of User Experience<p>- Developer-Friendly Code<p>- How Business considerations affect Technical decisions<p>- The right way to work in a dev team<p>Does anybody have any suggestion on what to add to the list or general tips on how to go about teaching them all this?\n======\ndalke\nI once taught a short course in usability. I used an exercise I learned from\nsomeone else: design the controls for a microwave oven. Given them a set of\nrequirements and have them do a paper prototype. Partway through, change the\ndesign slightly. (In mine, started with the assumption that the time could be\nset automatically from the mobile phone network, then I added the requirement\nthat it needed to be set manually.) Then have them do user testing for\nscenarios which test those requirements.\n\nI used someone who wasn't in the class as the test subject, which was also a\nchance to mention the ethics of human testing: make sure that the test\nsubjects know they can stop at any time, let them know the goals of the\nproject, etc.\n\nThis is small enough to do in a couple of hours.\n\nI've heard of a technique for teaching some of the ideas you want to teach.\nHave them develop a code project. Part way through have the teams switch code\nbases, or form new teams using the original code bases as the start. I have no\nexperience with that technique, and it probably takes longer than you have\ntime for your workshop.\n\nAs for things to cover, get a copy of Rapid Development and review it for the\ntopics you think are the most important. There are way more things to cover\nthan is possible in a workshop for inexperienced developers.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWolfram: The Modernization of Educational Publishing - mazsa\nhttp://blog.wolfram.com/2013/06/20/wolfram-technologies-the-modernization-of-educational-publishing/\n\n======\nmathattack\nI was a little disappointed because I thought the title suggested that Wolfram\nhad found a way around the academic journal scam/stranglehold. Still happy\nwith the article.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApple's Macintosh Commercial (1984) - searchableguy\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I\n======\nbradknowles\nTo quote Bugs Bunny: “What a maroon.”\n\nIt’s 1984, not 1948.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code (2000; Still relevant?) - OoTheNigerian\nhttp://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html\n======\npatio11\nSome parts of that have aged better than others.\n\nYou should be using source control. It might sound shocking to the Github\ngeneration, but there was a time _not too long ago_ where important work with\nmillions on the line routinely got done with one copy of the code sitting on a\nsingle workstation, and collaboration happening over network shares or email.\nI worked at one of those places. It sucked. The Joel Test was part of an\nevangelization movement which changed standard practices in our industry\nradically, for the better.\n\nBuilding in a single step? Still relevant for many projects. Less relevant\nfor, e.g., Rails web apps. I migth substitute \"can you deploy to staging and\nproduction in one step\".\n\nSpeaking of which, a Joel Test in 2010 should include \"do you have a fully\nfunctional staging environment\" and \"can you recreate a dev environment from a\nfactory new machine in under an hour\".\n\nFixing bugs versus writing new code, well, one might quibble with that in some\nscenarios. There exist businesses where the marginal business value or\ncustomer value of squashing an edge case bug is measurably less than new\nfeatures. I have a known bug in my shopping cart that permits abuse of\ndiscounts. It has never been exploited. The minimum cost of fixing is several\nhundred dollars. Of course I write new code rather than fixing it. You can\ncome up with quite a lot of similar scenarios if you're doing a lean startup\n-- there is little point to rigorously debugging code which might have an\nexpected lifetime of a week.\n\n~~~\nedanm\n\"there was a time not too long ago where important work with millions on the\nline routinely got done with one copy of the code sitting on a single\nworkstation, and collaboration happening over network shares or email. I\nworked at one of those places. It sucked. The Joel Test was part of an\nevangelization movement which changed standard practices in our industry\nradically, for the better.\"\n\nI'm all for the Joel Test, and I've definitely seen places without source\ncontrol, or with terrible or no source control.\n\nBut do you really think the Joel Test was on of the real pushers for change? I\nknow Joel is popular, but I'd bet the Joel Test has been read by all of 1-2%\nof programmers. Moreover, I'd guess that it's the 1-2% who were already using\nsource control.\n\nDon't mean to nitpick, I'm honestly wondering if I'm underestimating the\nimpact of this article. Completely agree with the rest of your comment.\n\n~~~\njasonkester\nSounds like you might not have been around back at the turn of the century.\n\nBack then, there were no blogs. There were no programmers who wrote stuff.\nJoel was pretty much the first. And his stuff was really good and actionable.\n\nSo if you cared to read about your field, you were reading Joel. If you sent a\nprogramming link to your team, chances are it was one of his articles.\n\nComing into the field today, it's understandable that you might not have heard\nof the guy. But if you were around in the late 90s and you'd heard of\n_anybody_ , you'd heard of Joel. If you were on a team in the late 90s and you\nwanted to improve things, you sent around a copy of the Joel test.\n\nSo yes, I do think a lot of the credit for the higher standards we have today\ngoes to him.\n\n~~~\nnostrademons\nThat's not really true. Greenspun was the hot pundit before Joel. A bunch of\npeople hung out on SlashDot. And the C2 Wiki, which arguably was filled with\nmore experienced practitioners than Joel, has been around since 1995.\n\n------\njasonkester\nFor the audience it was written for, I'd say yes.\n\nThere are still plenty of shops that score close to zero on the Joel Test.\nTalk to your non-startup friends working for a big company where software is\nconsidered a cost center. They'll tell you about the big battle they had to\nget the company onto source control, and how deploying a new version of the\ncompany website still involves copying files by hand and running some wacky\nfreeware database comparison tool to get the new schema changes across.\n\nHell, just last year I did a consulting gig for a shop that didn't even make a\ndistinction between dev and production before I got there. Changing the site\ninvolved creating \"index_new4.php\", making your changes, smoke testing, then\nrenaming (or repointing links). No source control, and they didn't even have a\nbackup of the production database.\n\nThat's the sort of place that needs to get a copy of the Joel Test forwarded\naround the dev team, up to management, etc. The things on that list are as\nimportant today as they were 10 years ago. If anything, it carries more weight\nwhen you show it to management by virtue of _being_ 10 years old.\n\n------\nfrankus\nSince so much software development is now web development, and since so much\nof that lives or dies by keeping customer data safe, something like \"Have you\npracticed restoring from backup lately?\" should go on the list.\n\n------\ntyn\n\"7. Do you have a spec?\"\n\nI've written succesful applications without any spec, just talking with users,\nwritting things down myself, showing them prototypes, repeating. In some cases\nusers are not able to produce a spec and even if the do they don't always\nreally \"know what they want\", that's why prototyping is so important.\n\n~~~\npornel\nThat only works if you can have short iterations and client that cooperates.\n\nI've worked on projects that didn't have usable spec, and monthly meetings had\nclient saying \"oh, that's not what I've meant, can you redo this like that?\".\n\n------\nthijsc\nI think \"Do you write tests\" should be included. And \"Do you have continuous\nintegration running\" would be a nice replacement of having a daily build.\n\n~~~\nInclinedPlane\nThe \"daily builds\" item should at least be a \"daily build & smoke test\", but\nfor the rest I think it's at an appropriate level. Keep in mind, these are\nsimple questions which have the greatest differential in quality between\nyes/no answers.\n\n------\nAliCollins\nI have a print out of the 12 rules on the walls in my cubicle...if only for\nthose non-techy people in my office who then ask what it means!!\n\n------\nryanteo\nMaybe for small teams and microISVs, you could merge the advice from Patrick's\narticle too: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/04/20/building-highly-\nreliable...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/04/20/building-highly-reliable-\nwebsites-for-small-companies/)\n\n------\nfrankus\nI think even Joel might update number one to \"Do you use distributed version\ncontrol?\", not so much for the \"distributed\" part but for the \"branching and\nmerging that just works\" part.\n\n~~~\nInclinedPlane\nI doubt it. The leap between proper version control and excellent version\ncontrol (distributed being the peak) is significant but not the same as the\nleap between no version control and any version control. _That_ transition is\nas significant as coming to use structured programming languages (over raw\nmachine code and assembly), or the invention of fire.\n\n------\nmathgladiator\nThey all are relevant to someone.\n\n------\nrun4yourlives\nAlways relevant, which is the brilliance of it.\n\nI say this even though I disagree with the spec rule.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMicrosoft Leaks Details of 128-bit Windows 8  - silkodyssey\nhttp://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/enterprise/352270/microsoft-leaks-details-of-windows-8-and-windows-9\n\n======\ncodedivine\nIs this site like the onion?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk YC: How to start becoming an entrepreneur while still being an employee - wallflower\n\nThis short piece from the NYTimes (below) piqued my interest. It offers some advice on how to act like an entrepreneur as an employee.<p>If you are not a burn-your-boat-on-the-shore type of person, how do you go about making the transition to full-time entrepreneur. Is it abrupt or gradual. I'm guessing gradual. As I make the transition, I'm working on building some web applications that I would find of use (language learning, memorization)<p>How many of you look at creating your own startup as a hobby, rather than a business, or as both?<p>What steps (most notably - to expand your comfort zone) do you recommend.? I've heard some crazy advice like lie down in a Starbucks for 10 seconds to desensitize yourself to what you think other people think. I'm thinking seriously of taking a break from my career to learn Spanish in a Latin American country.<p>[http://tinyurl.com/2k2jdf]\n\"First, act more like an entrepreneur at your current job. Be a maverick. Put in longer hours, give yourself a crash course on your company’s operations and strategic goals and, most important, locate a problem outside your realm of expertise and solve it. “Your boss will notice,” Mr. Corbell said. If you lack sales experience, ask for a transfer to the marketing department.\"\n======\nwebwright\nI realized my comment was too damn long, so I wrote a blog post.\n\n[http://www.tonywright.com/2008/half-assed-startup-how-to-\nsta...](http://www.tonywright.com/2008/half-assed-startup-how-to-start-your-\ncompany-and-keep-your-day-job/)\n\n~~~\nph0rque\nNice blog post, but I object to the \"half-assed\" phrase in the title, which\nimplies a lack of passion for the startup. Sometimes, I think that one _must_\nkeep a source of income out of necessity (and consulting is not always\nfeasible).\n\n~~~\nnostrademons\nI worked on my startup part-time for 9 months before taking the plunge and\nquitting my day job 5 months ago, and \"half-assed\" is pretty accurate, even if\nit is a little unpleasant. In terms of the scope of what you can accomplish,\nyou're _severely_ handicapped by moonlighting, much moreso than the difference\nin available time would suggest. Being able to think nearly continuously about\nyour project lets you try much more ambitious projects, which you wouldn't be\nable to hold in your head otherwise.\n\nOne thing that helped me was to think of my salary as \"buying time\". If you\nmake $60K but live on $20K, then each hour you work buys you two hours of\nstartup time. If you make $100K but live on $40K, each hour you work buys you\nan hour and a half. Shows you how important it is to get your living expenses\ndown.\n\nAnother thing that helps is to live like your least-successful classmates\nwhile working like your most-successful classmates. I have English-major\nfriends who graduated, couldn't get a job, took a string of temp jobs and\nsecretarial positions, spent as much time on unemployment as off, rarely had\nmoney to spend, and went back home to live with their parents. So, I went back\nhome to live with my parents, rarely spent any money, and worked at a\nfinancial software startup. I pocket the difference between a Starbucks salary\nand a financial software salary. That's given me about 4 years living expenses\nto work with, even assuming I were to move out of my parents.\n\n------\npowerflex\nI've tried the \"just do it\" approach in the past and now believe its nonsense.\nBe calculating and methodical, not impetuous.\n\nDo's/Dont's: Don't work on your stuff on employer time. Make sure you have\nenergy left after work for your project (sometimes that means not being the\nstar performer at the day job). I work my day job from 8-5, and my startup\nfrom 6-11 EVERY WEEKDAY. Weekends its ALL DAY developement. Have a product\nroadmap, release dates, and work your tail off to meet them. Do your\narchitecture design work during the week at lunchtime (off site). Cut anything\nfrom your time that isnt helping you meet your goal (ie I dont even drink beer\nanymore because it hinders coding).\n\nRead this for inspiration (its short):\n<http://loiclemeur.com/english/2007/12/the-idea-does-n.html>\n\nFinally, only quit your day job when your startup is making your salary.\n\n~~~\nbootload\n_\"... I've tried the \"just do it\" approach in the past and now believe its\nnonsense. Be calculating and methodical, not impetuous. ...\"_\n\nNice description of _\"project management\"_ which seps boys from the men [0]\nand makes a difference in completing a project. Does it allow you to be\nflexible enough to adapt to experiment & change?\n\n[0] Max Levichin talked more about this in StartupSchool '07 - (I think).\n\n------\nnikiscevak\nErr yeah sure that will work. My advice: read the four hour work week. Not for\nthe four hours but for putting you in a position to work for yourself and work\nas an employee.\n\nFocus obsessively on your productivity on your current job and take on no new\ntasks. Hopefully get your tasks done in 10 hours per week (very easy if you\nget rid of all possible meetings and phone calls). Use the extra time to work\non your own startup.\n\n~~~\nbrlewis\nIf the extra time belongs to your employer, then so does the copyright on any\nwork you do during that extra time. Don't write any programs, documentation or\nmarketing literature on employer time. Do focus on productivity, though. You\nneed to be in the habit of being productive.\n\n~~~\nTekhne\nIt's probably wise to consult a lawyer about this, but for my part, I say go\nahead and work on your employer's time. Understand that you are taking a\ncalculated risk. If the risk (e.g. getting fired, losing ownership of your\nwork) isn't worth it, don't do it. But if it is, then stay as productive as\nyou were before at work while trying to be as efficient as possible (e.g. by\nusing methods in the Four Hour Work Week) to squeeze out extra time for your\nproject. On your own time, work as hard as you can without skimping on your\nother obligations (e.g. family, bills, etc.).\n\n~~~\nkingnothing\nI believe California has a specific law that whatever you do for yourself is\nyour own property, in regards to IP. I assume other states have similar laws\non the books, but it isn't universal.\n\n------\nmisterbwong\n<disclaimer>I'm still in the process of starting my first business and still\nworking for 'the man.' Take what I say with that in mind.</disclaimer>\n\nI've mulled over this question a lot. After reading all kinds of articles and\nbooks about founding a business, it seems to me that the key to becoming an\nentrepreneur is \"just do it.\" Nothing will teach you more about being one than\nactually doing it. There is tons of GREAT advice out there but none of it will\nactually become applicable until you're put in a situation where you need to\napply it.\n\nFinish your app, start the business on the side, and see where that takes you.\nNothing like market forces to expand your comfort zone for you. If your\nbusiness starts taking so much effort and time to iterate that you need to\ndecide between your job and your business, take it as a good sign. If it\nfails, so what? Almost all the big name founders had at least 1 failed\nbusinesses before hitting gold-some of them had multiple failed businesses.\n\n------\nandr\nPersonally I've never been able to really combine work with startups. You are\nsingle-threaded, so to speak, so doing things sequentially (work -> quit ->\nstart company) works better than multi-tasking. Plus, staying on the job gives\nyou too much comfort. Here are four things that I have done or considered\ndoing:\n\n1) Try to sell your startup idea to management. Chances are it won't work, but\nit's worth a try - the company might invest money or people in it. This one\nactually never worked for me.\n\n2) Try to steer your work at the job so it overlaps with your startup. E.g.,\nif you think your startup should use Python, but you don't know it, persuade\nyour boss to use Python for your next work project, so you can get the hang of\nit. Persuade your company to open source some code that could help you for\nyour startup.\n\n3) If you work in a place with good bonuses (50%+ of annual salary), work\nhard, wait for the bonus and quit. That's what I planned to do, but my hedge\nfund went bankrupt three months before bonus time. Still, I got a decent\nsettlement, so it worked even better.\n\n4) Decide you are quitting, but don't announce it. Become a bad employee. Note\nthat this is immoral, dangerous and potentially illegal, plus faith has its\nway to play jokes on you, so after you burn the bridges with your boss you\nmight meet her again in a different scenario (e.g., she becomes a VC). Leave\nthe office earlier, start working from home more often (while actually working\non your startup), try to take a 1-2 month vacation/sabbatical, etc. Unless you\nwork at a 7-11, you would usually have 2-3 months before management starts\ncoming down on you. This way you can work on a prototype and if two months in\nyou realize it's not worth it, you can still recover things at the job.\n\n~~~\nwallflower\nAlready working on #1 and #2. In alignment with some others, trying to sell a\nproject that would be perfect with Ruby on Rails to the powers-that-matter. I\nthink #3 and #4 aren't in my nature.\n\n------\niamdave\n\"act more like an entrepreneur at your current job. Be a maverick. Put in\nlonger hours, give yourself a crash course on your company’s operations and\nstrategic goals and, most important, locate a problem outside your realm of\nexpertise and solve it.\"\n\nI think this is more reflective of someone looking for growth, than an\nentrepreneur, and I say that to say this: standing out from the crowd and\nworking like you're worth they money they're paying you will most certainly\nbring you the kind of attention outstanding entrepreneurs get and you may just\nget a promotion out of it\n\nHowever showing the spirit of someone who is supposed to start things should\nmirror actions that look like you're wanting to start something. Make\nsuggestions, present solutions like the second half of the quote says to, but\nin addition to this build momentum behind your ideas and show why they matter\nand how they'll make improvements.\n\n------\nmpc\nJust start working on your startup when you're not at work. The extended work\nhours and work load will get you ready for when you make the full transition.\n\n------\nivankirigin\nI'm not sure they recall that I'm the same guy, but I sent an email to YC 16\nmonths ago that I'm almost embarrassed by. I asked how to take action on good\nideas while staying at a job I loved at a company likely uninterested in the\nideas.\n\nIf I could go back to myself 16 months ago, I'd say: \"Grow a pair and do what\nyou want, and only that -- ohh, and short the home mortgage industry\"\n\nIt's all about the focus.\n\n~~~\nwallflower\nLike drunk dialing, sometimes sending embarassing emails help remind you that\nyou've improved.\n\nWhen did you reach the tipping point (was it a group or individual decision)\nwith Tipjoy?\n\nThe best quote about focus that I've ever heard: A 100 watt lightbulb can\nlight up a room but that same energy focused in a laser apparatus can cut\nthrough steel.\n\n~~~\nivankirigin\nTalking about Tipjoy is what made my cofounder (also my wife) and I decide to\ngo for it. She was at iRobot. I was at Nokia. Both of us had excellent jobs.\n\nThe clincher that made us quit was when it became perfectly clear that those\njobs, or their equivalent, are readily available should we fail. If the worst,\nworst case scenario is the status quo, why not go for it?\n\n------\nbootload\n_\"... how do you go about making the transition to full-time entrepreneur\n...\"_\n\nMake stuff [0], release early, get some feedback and sell it.\n\nIt doesn't have to be software but it helps. If you make things nobody wants\nyou quickly find you can't sell it. You have to listen & adapt. It's much like\na multi-levered machine that only stays afloat if you are constantly adjusting\nthe levers finely adjusting the final product according to users. Input\nproduct, make sure people know about it, adjust the 'want' lever. Listen to\nwhat the machine is telling you. Adapt.\n\nThis process can be observed from renovating houses, art ... from sausages to\nsoftware. It is no substitute for the real thing. So burn your boats now.\n\n[0] Stuff could be sausages, software etc, but make sure that it's product not\nservice or skills for hire ~\n<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FiveWorlds.html>\n\n------\nsonink\nAssuming it is a web startup.\n\nBuild a content website on something you consider yourself good at. Try to get\nusers, make money through adsense, put up analytics and test it out. You would\nlearn a ton about how(and what) works on the internet - and possibly be making\nenough by the time you are ready to quit to bootstrap your startup .\n\n------\nwatmough\nWell, I've started a stationery shop in my cube...\n\nSeriously, though, I think one way would be to become more entrepenurial at\nwork, and try and apply some of the kind of fairly ruthless behavior that I'd\nimagine you'd need to survive in a startup.\n\nIn no particular order: Focus. Get Things Done. No Fluff. Delight Customers.\nPlay Necessary Politics.\n\nAnother way to think of this, might be to look at all the employees that, in a\nstart-up environment, would sink like lead bricks, and do exactly the\nopposite.\n\n------\nedw519\nYour first lesson as an entrepreneur:\n\nYour last paragraph is exactly what NOT to do. You will need every single\nounce of resources (time, energy, attention) for your start-up. The only\nreason to ever do anything above the call of duty as someone else's employee\nis to learn it for yourself.\n\nStart your planning on how you will extract yourself from your current\nemployment, going part time or as a contractor. You will need every spare\nnanosecond for your startup.\n\nAnd don't sign anything. (If you already did, get a risk assessment from a\nlawyer.)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nKidnappers Demand $10M MONERO (private cryptocurrency) for Tycoon's wife - wiggler00m\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/world/europe/norway-kidnapping-monero.html\n======\nsmexi\nthey demanded futuer bitcoin check monero price prediction\n[http://icoviral.today/2019/02/monero-price-\nprediction/](http://icoviral.today/2019/02/monero-price-prediction/)\n\n~~~\nwiggler00m\nwhat?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAnnouncing TypeScript 2.2 - pingec\nhttps://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/typescript/2017/02/22/announcing-typescript-2-2/\n======\npixie_\nWoo :) whenever I have to work with an old javascript code base now I always\nadd typings to it first. It makes it orders or magnitude easier to work with\nand refactor after that.\n\n------\nng12\nSpeaking of tooling -- has anyone had a good experience with Typescript in\nIntelliJ/Webstorm? It does a fantastic job figuring out ES6 code but seems to\ntotally choke on Typescript. I'd like to avoid switching to Visual Studio.\n\n~~~\nXaspR8d\nFor passersby who were confused like I was: IntelliJ _Community Edition_ has\nabsolutely no support for Javascript or Typescript, which is not noted clearly\nin the help docs. You apparently need Ultimate Edition to get it.\n\nI was real excited that I could finally use the same IDE for front-end and\nback-end too... :/\n\n~~~\nkakarot\nThe price gets lower each year for the first few years you renew your license.\n\nMy company pays for my license but I think it's hella worth it and I'd pay it\non my own if I had to.\n\nI avoid VS like the plague and I've never really felt at home in an IDE until\nI started using IntelliJ.\n\nIt's the only thing that was able to get me off of Notepad++\n\n~~~\nSquareWheel\nI also avoid VS, but VSCode is nothing at all like its big brother. It's\nactually very quick and lean.\n\nIf you're interested in TypeScript at all, the two were made for each other.\nI'd suggest giving it a try.\n\nJust note it's closer to a text editor with IDE functionality, rather than a\nfull-blown IDE itself.\n\n~~~\nkakarot\nI can pretty much get that and more with Notepad++ or Sublime, though. I've\nmoved back to vim for simple text editing, N++ for casual writing and\norganizing my thoughts. Is there any specific feature that makes it better\nthan other editors in your book?\n\n~~~\nkwood\nApart from Intellisense completion, a full featured integrated debugger,\nversion control integration wich supports line wise staging, a diff viewer, a\nfast integrated terminal that even gets link detection in the next release,\nproper variable renaming and a working \"Go to Definition\" that is even\nimplemented in most of the third party language plugins?\n\nNo. Pretty much the same as Notepad++.\n\n~~~\nkakarot\nIntelliJ has all of those things. I'm not sure you understood my question. I\nuse Webstorm daily, I'm using it this very moment. I was asking about VSCode\nand where it falls between IntelliJ and N++.\n\n~~~\nkwood\nI understood the question – and that IntelliJ has all of those things is\nexactly the point I was trying to make.\n\nYou get most of the features from a heavyweight IDE, but they managed to get\nthe architecture incredibly lightweight so you can use it as a \"daily driver\"\neditor as well.\n\nIt is snappy enough to quickly edit some configuration or Markdown files (with\nlive preview and clickable links), it has text based configuration files, its\neasy to write plugins with a couple of lines of code – and all sorts of other\nthings that previously could only be found on the \"editor-side\" of the\nspectrum (export VISUAL=\"code -w\", anyone?).\n\nUnique selling points are quite hard to find, most things where invented\nsomewhere else. Its more the combination of things and walking the thin line\nbetween the text editor and IDE worlds.\n\n~~~\nkakarot\nOh ok, I just didn't understand your answer. My apologies!\n\n------\ndandare\nI have to admit I am getting lost in all these new language constructs :(. I\nworry that soon I will not be able to read TS code of more experienced\nprogrammers.\n\nThat being said, the only way forward is to learn! But there seems to be total\nlack of solid learning resources with plentiful of examples and most\nimportantly \"best practices\" that explain why the new construct is better and\nwhen to use it over the old way.\n\n------\ntreehau5\nI know this probably comes up each typescript thread, but I still cannot\nfigure out why I should use TS instead of flow + es6, and maintaining the\ntyping definitions always discourages me as it's one more thing that needs to\nbe kept up to date. Am I working on old information here?\n\n~~~\nNemcue\nWhy would flow + es6 be better?\n\n~~~\nMehdiHK\nAvoid vendor locking. Someday in near future if you don't like flow anymore,\nyou can just strip all type annotations with Babel and move on. You are not\nrisking ending up like coffeescript.\n\n~~~\ndangoor\nTypeScript compiles to JS in a straightforward manner as well. If you wanted\nto move away from TS, you could simply have the TS compiler compile to ES6 and\nyou're done.\n\n~~~\nMehdiHK\nBut that'd still be transpiled code, right? After getting rid of flow it will\nbe exactly same minus the type annotations. Same cannot be said about\ntypescript considering various language features and syntactic sugar TS\noffers. Will it run? Yes. Will it feel that it was written by me? That\ndepends.\n\n~~~\nwhatever_dude\n> Same cannot be said about typescript considering various language features\n> and syntactic sugar TS offers\n\nI think you're vastly misinterpreting what TS is.\n\nIt's not anything like CoffeeScript. It's JS plus types and a few other\nfeatures like Interfaces or advanced ECMAScript features when targetting older\nversions of the standard.\n\nIf you strip away types by exporting to your ECMAScript target of choice,\nyou'll get real JavaScript with the same style as it was written in\nTypeScript.\n\nIt's exactly the same thing you'd get with Flow in that sense. The only\nadditional code you'd get would be for polyfills, but a) those are minimal and\nb) those will only appear if you export to an older ECMAScript version than\nthe one you wrote it in.\n\nThere is no vendor lock.\n\n~~~\nshados\nthere are a few minor things like enums and decorators that will need to be\ncompiled because they're not standard and are not just types either (well,\nconst enums are i think?, but the rest are not?).\n\nThat's about it though.\n\n------\nbcherny\nObject type, better index access, and the quick fixes are all great additions.\nAwesome job TS team, keep it coming!\n\n------\naduffy\nMy favorite: the new `object` type. Non-nullable and cannot refer to\nprimitives.\n\n~~~\ndsp1234\n_Non-nullable_\n\nThis is incorrect, as is the announcement. The following is valid.\n\n    \n    \n      class Bar{}\n      let foo:object = new Bar()\n      foo = null\n      foo = undefined\n    \n\nedit:\n\nFor the people mentioning, --strictNullChecks. That applies to all types not\njust object. For example, \"let x:string = null\" would also be an error. That\noption applies to any type that is not of type Any/null/undefined, and has\nbeen in place since 2.0. In that way, \"object\" is non-nullable under\nstrictNullChecks just as every other type is.\n\n~~~\nwhatever_dude\nNo, object is not a nullable type.\n\nFor your code to work, you'd need to run it with strictNullChecks disabled.\nThat's probably what you're doing, since it's the default.\n\n~~~\ndsp1234\n_since it 's the default._\n\nIt's not the default for the command line compiler. Also, all types (except\nAny/null/undefined) are non-nullable under that option, so that's not what\nmakes object special (it's the no primitive types that is important).\n\n    \n    \n      >tsc test.ts\n      >tsc test.ts --strictNullChecks\n      >  test.ts(3,1): error TS2322: Type 'null' is not assignable to type 'object'.\n\n~~~\nwhatever_dude\n> you'd need to run it with strictNullChecks disabled. That's probably what\n> you're doing, since it's the default\n\nI think you misinterpreted my reply. I meant the default is off. That's what\nyour code shows.\n\n~~~\ndsp1234\nI did, sorry about that.\n\n------\nFifer82\nI love you Microsoft!\n\n------\nihsw\nRelaxing index-signature access is definitely great as it will make writing\ncode easier. Dynamic properties can lead you to hairy code but it's hard to\nignore the reality that it's used everywhere.\n\nFor example, no more awkward `e[\"code\"]` where `e.code` is just as valid.\n\n------\ncodr4life\nCrumbles from the design-table. Oh look, a new object type. I'm not even sure\nthis is an improvement to straight JS any more, it just fails in more exotic\nways from pretending to be something it isn't. Once the choice is made to\ncompile to JS, there are plenty of real languages to choose from.\n\n~~~\nNemcue\nI don't think you're familiar with what TypeScript is trying to achieve. It's\nnot supposed to be another language entirely, but a standards-compatible type-\nsafe version.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEU stipulates immediate Open Access in 2020 - Vinnl\nhttps://www.scienceguide.nl/2018/09/nwo-wil-weg-van-de-impact-factor/\n======\nVinnl\nThis is fantastic news for science! Google Translate is pretty accurate [1],\nbut a summary:\n\nThe EU, European Research Council, and funders from eleven European countries,\nhave agreed that from 2020, European researchers can, in the general case, no\nlonger publish their research in journals that\n\n\\- place that work behind a paywall for a certain amount of time (embargoes)\n\n\\- require a transfer of copyright to that journal\n\n\\- charge excessive publishing fees (\"Article Processing Charges\")\n\nFurthermore, from 2021 (due to existing licensing agreements), European\nresearchers are generally no longer allowed to publish in journals that are\nnot fully open access (\"hybrid journals\"). That includes e.g. Science and\nNature, unless they change their business models.\n\nSome exceptions apply, e.g. when doing industry collaborations, or for\nmonographs. Overall, though, this appears to be a great step forward.\n\nMore details in the official announcement [2].\n\n[1]\n[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scienceguide.nl%2F2018%2F09%2Fnwo-\nwil-weg-van-de-impact-factor%2F&edit-text=&act=url)\n\n[2]\n[https://www.scienceeurope.org/coalition-s/](https://www.scienceeurope.org/coalition-s/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Very Difficult Problem of Notifications - showngo\nhttp://brooksreview.net/2011/03/notifications/\n======\nQz\nIt's almost like the author has never used android, seeing as android\nnotifications don't have any of the problems described. Notifications show up\nin a part of the UI you constantly look at but can't actually interact with\n(the status bar at the top), therefore you always notice when there are\nnotifications but it doesn't really get in your way. You can see all\nnotifications at once by swiping down from the status bar which drops the\nnotification screen in over whatever you were doing, showing all the\nnotifications at once. Because of this, you _can_ have a clear all button. If\nyou don't want to deal with a notification right away, you can just swipe back\nup and go back to whatever you were doing. Doesn't seem quite so difficult.\n\n~~~\njsz0\nThere's room for improvement in Android's notification system. I get serious\nnotification fatigue with Android. I see that there are 5 or 6 tiny\nindistinguishable icons up there but I have to pull down the tray to get any\nuseful information. In this sense it's more like an Inbox than a notification\nsystem to me. It also treats all notifications equally. To me a missed phone\ncall is a lot more important than application updates. I would prefer to get\nthe higher priority notifications (voicemail, SMS, etc) pushed at me more\naggressively. Ideally show them on the lock screen like WebOS does so you\ndon't have to unlock the device and goto the notification tray to check\nmanually. There's also the problem of third party apps using the notification\ntray for SPAM which I do not care for one bit.\n\n~~~\nthwarted\n_I would prefer to get the higher priority notifications (voicemail, SMS, etc)\npushed at me more aggressively._\n\nYour example \"higher priority\" notifications are two that I care the least\nabout. I rarely use my phone for actually talking to people, and I don't\nlisten to voicemail, so those I don't care about. I do care that I missed a\ncall however -- who it was that called is much more important than the message\nthey left.\n\nI also get so many text messages, they need to be ranked in importance by who\nsent it, not that it's a text message. But setting up priorities based on\nsender is a lot of work, so I wouldn't do it. _Maybe_ if it worked like\ngmail's priority inbox.\n\n------\nfrisco\nI see this and I think, \"notifications aren't a Very Difficult Problem; DNA\nsequencing is a Very Difficult Problem.\" Living in the echo chamber can be\nfun, but the way we can lose perspective is incredible.\n\n------\njoshhepworth\nBen does a great job of simplifying a host of issues down to just two, but in\nthe end, he seems to end up blaming the user rather than the system for the\nproblems in notification systems (though he does say that the systems aren't\nas good as people at notifications, which is true to an extent).\n\nThe biggest issue I had with the article (besides omitting the \"come back to\nold notifications\" problem plaguing some systems) was its overlooking of\nimprovements. Innovation doesn't have to come overnight, and in the mean time,\nI'd love to have a better system than currently implemented. Even still, there\nare systems out there that get pretty close to his nirvana. Mobile Notifier\nfor iOS\n([http://www.flickr.com/photos/piair/5492412910/in/photostream...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/piair/5492412910/in/photostream/))\nstill covers up some of the screen (forcing you to take action to access that\narea of the screen), but it also lets you dismiss a notification with a quick\nswipe and quickly access all pending notifications.\n\nThe biggest praise I can give for the article is it's identification of people\nas a problem. It's true, we likely want to know more details about more events\nthan in the past. It seems pretty needless all things considered, but why\nshould a system be terrible at meeting our needs? We create the systems to\nchange with our wants, after all.\n\n------\nmegaduck\nI'm curious what flaws he sees with the WebOS notification system. It's hands-\ndown the most elegant notifications I've seen on _any_ platform.\n\nInitial notifications are minimally intrusive (similar to Growl on OS X). From\nthere, they can be trivially dismissed or minimized and left for later. This\nmakes triaging incredibly easy and lightweight.\n\nOn my Pre, I'll often set alarms on my to-dos and then use them as kind of an\non-demand dashboard of my daily tasks. As something gets finished, the\nnotification gets dismissed with a flick of the thumb.\n\nOn WebOS, notifications actively make me happy. In comparison, Android is kind\nof clunky and the iPhone is horribly broken.\n\n------\nhuge_ness\nmaybe this can be of some help one day:\n\n[http://talkingpengwin.com/re-design-of-the-ios-\nnotification-...](http://talkingpengwin.com/re-design-of-the-ios-notification-\nsystem)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "PhpTree, a fast library to plays with trees - drupol\n======\nlioeters\nHere's the link:\n[https://github.com/drupol/phptree](https://github.com/drupol/phptree)\n\n~~~\ndrupol\nThanks !\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRepublicans working on legislation to strip Twitter of liability protections - sehugg\nhttps://thehill.com/policy/technology/499814-republicans-working-on-legislation-to-strip-twitter-of-federal-protections\n======\nfoobarbazetc\nSo what?\n\nNever passing the House.\n\n~~~\nFjolsvith\nBefore November.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nInteractive film built with Three.js and WebGL - mhax\nhttp://thecarpandtheseagull.com\n\n======\nevanbbb\nHi, the director / coder here. Crazy to see on hacker news. We had to have it\non just Chrome because of the twin pains of time (never enough) and money\n(added code, more testing, etc). For most of the project there were only\nmyself and one other coder doing the work.\n\nIf it isn't working for you or have questions, feel free to let me know...\n\n~~~\nbsenftner\nWhat aspects of this are not compatible with other browsers?\n\n~~~\nevanbbb\nWebGL isn't supported by IE. Firefox and Safari have patchy WebGL service.\n\nFirefox works but grinds to such a slow pace, so we disabled it.\n\n------\ngkanai\n2002 \"This site is best viewed with Internet Explorer\"\n\n2012 \"The film is optimised for viewing on Chrome.\"\n\nNot interested in a browser-specific web experience.\n\n~~~\nunconed\nMicrosoft hasn't bothered to touch WebGL, clearly more interested in their own\nproprietary Direct3D and Xbox ecosystem.\n\nApple has had partial WebGL support for years now (started with iAds), but has\nnever switched it on by default, not on OS X or iOS.\n\nWhat exactly do you expect web developers to do? Keep making the same shitty\nsites?\n\n------\nEddieB\nWow that was incredibly trippy, a great mix of technical ability with an\nartistic side, it's nice to see..\n\n------\ndavidwparker\nPretty disappointed by the top comments here.\n\nIMO, this is a pretty cool \"interactive film\" (I'd call it a video game) that\nis extremely well done via Three.js (and therefore WebGL). Good job to the\ndevelopers.\n\nI will say that due to time, I didn't figure out what to do in each chapter.\nInstead, I clicked a few things and then moved onto the next chapter.\n\n------\nCharlesmigli\nWebGL is really the trend at this time! Good job. Really liked the interactive\npart.\n\n~~~\nculshaw\nI think trend is the wrong word, possibly shift?\n\nIt's been pushed more mainstream than other new elements for the web because\nof the visual appeal.\n\n------\nrossmckegney\nThis is trippy and awesome :))\n\nHere's hoping we see a lot more interactive experiences soon!\n\nIf anyone is inspired to try to build something of their own using Three.js,\nwe're working on tools that will help. More here:\n<http://verold.com/blog/2012/11/6/threejs-needs-a-cms>\n\n------\ndanvoell\nHi guys great job on the technical aspects!\n\nI feel like the emotional and film aspects are still slightly a leap. I didn't\nreally feel much for the fisherman or the seagull, I was just banging away on\nmy spacebar.\n\nThe initial description got me interested, you are definitely trying to\nexplore a new concept and for that I give you props!\n\n------\nmotters\nNo, I don't want to download Chrome.\n\n~~~\nritcho\nwhy not?\n\n------\nbsenftner\nlatest version of Chrome, on OS X 10.7.5 and it's only rendering wireframes.\n\n~~~\nevanbbb\nIt supposed to be wireframes. There should also be some fog that's not? Try\nchapter 3. Has loads of colour once you get started.\n\n------\nwavesounds\nI love these artsy indie video games I seem to be noticing more and more of\nlately. The graphics and music are really cool!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\n3 big surprises from the Apple Watch event - stevep2007\nhttp://www.networkworld.com/article/2894531/opensource-subnet/3-big-surprises-from-the-apple-watch-event.html\n\n======\nstevep2007\nThe highly anticipated Apple Watch event brought some unexpected announcements\ninvolving new products and partnerships for Apple.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat Is Google Chrome Helper, and Why Is It Hogging My CPU Cycles? - dsr12\nhttp://www.wired.com/2014/10/google-chrome-helper/\n======\nalistair75\nShort version: the Wired journalist doesn't really understand what they're\ntalking about. I can't believe no-one has pointed this out yet.\n\nThere is a Google Chrome Helper process for each tab you have open, for each\nextension you have installed, for each plugin that is currently running and\none to talk to the GPU in your system.\n\nIf you enable \"Click to play\" and open Chrome with one empty tab you'll still\nhave at least two Google Chrome Helper processes. One for the empty tab and\none for the GPU process. If you've installed any extensions you'll have more.\nThere is no way to \"destroy the Google Chrome Helper\".\n\nThat article is very badly written.\n\n~~~\nvteven\n> In many cases, the plug-ins and processes they’re handling aren’t listed by\n> name because the APIs don’t allow it. Google Chrome Helper is a martyr.\n\nThe author's chief complaint is that Google Chrome Helper obscures the source\nof crashes/hangs, making diagnosis that much harder. The article is badly\nwritten, sure; but the workaround does allows you to isolate suspect content\nfrom everything else.\n\n------\nMithaldu\nShort version: It's the process that runs extensions and plugins like flash.\n\nInterestingly the solution to problems with it is the same as implemented in\nOpera 12 years ago: Configure the browser to run plugins only when the user\nexplicitly activates them.\n\n~~~\ngabrielhn\nInfo on how to set \"Click to Play\" in chrome settings:\n[https://security.berkeley.edu/content/how-do-i-enable-\nclick-...](https://security.berkeley.edu/content/how-do-i-enable-click-play-\ngoogle-chrome)\n\n~~~\nmaxmwood\nDid this on my 2008 MacBook, still running Snow Leopard. The speed was\nimmediately noticeable when browsing the web.\n\nI'd recommend it if anyone else has noticed a slow down at all.\n\n~~~\nniels_olson\nI gotta ask: why are you still running Snow Leopard?\n\n~~~\nmaxmwood\nI don't feel there are any real benefits in upgrading. It'll just slow down my\nMacBook even more.\n\n~~~\nniels_olson\nThanks for the honest reply. I wasn't trying to be judgemental, just trying to\nunderstand specific reasons, rather than admit the nebulous cloud of\n\"because\".\n\n------\nNinjaWarrior\nThis article won't help much. Many people are saying this issue occurs without\nany plug-ins. I doubt it is the true cause. There are many Google Chrome\nHelper CPU eating up issues. Some are obviously not plug-in and extension\nrelated.\n\nChrome for Mac is almost useless because of this issue. I first encountered\nthis just after Maverics release and Google has not fixed it until now. Very\nodd.\n\nIssue 373923 - chromium - Google Chrome Helper Process Taking up >100% CPU on\nMacs\n\n[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=373923](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=373923)\n\nIssue 397642 - chromium - Google Chrome Helper (not responding) on Yosemite\nBeta 1\n\n[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=397642](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=397642)\n\nIssue 399960 - chromium - Video playback, CSS transitions, and other GPU\noperations drastically heat up 13\" Retina Macbook Pros\n\n[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=399960](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=399960)\n\nIssue 367593 - chromium - Multiple Google Chrome Helpers are spawning and\nslowing severely slowing down my browser\n\n[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=367593](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=367593)\n\nGoogle Chrome Helper using far too much CPU power - Google Group\n\n[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/LfBqIl...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/LfBqIlfFoSo%5B1-25-false%5D)\n\n------\ngchokov\nSwitched to Safari for casual browsing because of similar issues and much\nbetter battery life on many occasions.\n\n~~~\ntonyplee\nBest solution for me is firefox + noscript. Super clean and fast.\n\n~~~\nvacri\nYou also get to see which sites are pulling javascript from 20+ other\nlocations. Sometimes it's an almost-fun game of 'hunt the snipe' to find the\njavascript source that will present the actual content to you...\n\n~~~\nrecursive\nWe have much different ideas of almost-fun.\n\n~~~\nmcovey\nIt really does get quite amusing when you see \"oh, two blocked scripts and one\nlooks like their CDN, no problem\" and temporarily enable them. Then the page\nreloads and 13 more scripts are blocked, so you make some reasonable guesses\nand it turns out the site won't play the goddamn video unless you also load\nsome disqus comments, send a referrer header, allow something that looks like\nan XSS attack and sacrifice a goat.\n\nI end up just leaving two browsers with different profiles loaded half the\ntime, one of them tweaked to be as revealing as possible, for loading stuff I\njust want to see and don't want to play unblocking games with. Then when I\nclose it all the cookies, localstorage, etc. goes poof. As he said, it's\nalmost fun. Not actually fun.\n\n------\nfifthesteight\ni have been wrestling with this for weeks, both professionally and personally.\nI'm fairly certain that in this process/before we noticed the problem we\nburned up one of our machines.\n\nThe thing is, there's no flash involved. We've narrowed it down to css3\ntransitions running amok. In other cases we've poorly constructed JS loops\ncausing problems.\n\nRecently i've noticed it on everything (even gmail, drive and calendar) in\nchrome.\n\nNo problems elsewhere, although in a side-by-side comparison with mozilla\nshowed mozilla nearing similar cpu usage (30-60%) but never sustained (lasting\nseconds)\n\nNot sure if this helps anyone, or if this is just 'duh.' The css3 transitions\nbeing involved i have not read out in the wild, so i thought i'd toss that\nidea out.\n\n------\nmanifesto\nRelated bugreport:\n[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=373923](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=373923)\n\n------\nnewman314\nOne of the most annoying things about Chrome is that I can't kill individual\ntabs via the task manager. Occasionally one tab will go crazy, then I have to\nclick around trying to figure out which tab. Task manager can only close group\nof tabs.\n\nI know this isn't the same issue just a whole bunch of annoying things about\nchrome\n\n~~~\nwamatt\nChrome actually has a built in Task Manager which can be super useful for this\nsort of thing.\n\nFor example, it allows one to see CPU & Mem usage per tab. It also has the\nability to kill problematic tabs, extensions and background processes with\nease.\n\nChrome's Task Manager can be found under Menu Icon -> (More) Tools.\n\nIn fact, this feature was being used often enough, that I ended up assigning\nit a shortcut. (for me: command-shift-1)\n\n~~~\nspeeq\nDoesn't it have a default shortcut? I think \"Shift + Esc\" opens it.\n\n~~~\nmh-\non windows. doesn't on mac for some reason.\n\n------\npeatmoss\nDoes that come along for the ride if you use Chromium rather than Chrome? I'm\nnot next to my Mac, but I believe I remember chromium being available through\nthe homebrew cask system.\n\nI don't care if I don't have flash (actually I care to NOT have flash). So\nwhat reason would there be to not simply run Chromium? Or am I forgetting\nsomething useful that I'm likely using?\n\n~~~\n_asummers\nCertain YouTube videos use Flash instead of HTML5, particularly at higher\nresolutions. You can probably live without this, but it's worth noting.\n\n~~~\nkuschku\nNot anymore—all videos can be viewed in Chromium as well (except those with\nspecial DRM).\n\nThey’re using DASH with small .mp4 snippets. It’s also the reason why videos\ndon’t load completely anymore and why audio and video sometimes go out of\nsync. Also the reason why nothing works as expected.\n\n~~~\n_asummers\nThat's good to know, thank you. I knew that they transitioned to DASH but I\ndidn't think that brought HTML5 everywhere. For live stream events (e.g.\nApple's announcements), do they still use Flash?\n\n~~~\nneilkathok\nApple's announcements usually use the Quicktime plugin, at least if you're\nviewing on OSX. You can also usually extract the source stream and play it in\nanother app if you dig through the markup/scripts/etc.\n\n------\nrenaudg\nOn the topic of Chrome performance tips, if you always have dozens of open\ntabs in different windows, this nifty extension will freeze them out (unload\nthem) until you actually want to look at them again :\n[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-\nsuspende...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-\nsuspender/klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg?hl=en)\n\nIn theory, this is what memory paging is for. In practice, this is higher\nlevel and seems to work much better.\n\n~~~\nbitcuration\nI disabled it after a while. Its time lapse can't be changed although\navailable from setting. It tends to suspend tab within a couple minutes and\nconstant reload when switching between tabs. Very poorly developed, a nice\nidea though. A similar addon in firefox has done this long time ago and I can\nkeep over hundreds tabs in firefox almost all the time, while only a few is\nloaded.\n\n------\ngojomo\nWhile I haven't noticed 'Chrome Helper' problems, sometimes Chrome slows my\nmachine with a ton of 'lsof' processes. I suspect an updater going haywire;\nmore details here:\n\n[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/26gO8swn...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/26gO8swnI8E/8ySgJvsejCAJ)\n\nAnyone else seen or worked-around this? (It's been a while since it's\nnoticeably recurred, so maybe it's been fixed.)\n\n------\nAnimats\nMaybe plug-in execution ought to stop when the relevant page is in the\nbackground. At least on battery-powered devices. Some Flash content tends to\nrun in the background, doing who knows what, probably something related to\nadvertising, tracking, or general obnoxiousness. On phones, \"Run in\nBackground\" is usually a privilege that's discouraged.\n\n~~~\nkeeperofdakeys\nMany people expect to be able to listen to say, music on youtube in one tab,\nwhile browsing the internet in another. So it's a bit of a hard problem (not\nto mention that a plugin just keeps running, and you have no real control over\nit). However, all the major browsers try to throttle javascript in background\ntabs. Usually by making setInterval return only once a second.\n\n------\nmsoad\nIt doesn't go to (Not Responding) mode if you use Chrome canary with OSX\nYosemite\n\n------\nbenaiah\ntl;dr extensions and plugins.\n\n------\nlucio\nWho is General Failure, and why is he reading my disk?\n\n------\nbenguild\nAFAIK this has only been a real problem since Yosemite. I noticed it when\nrunning the GM Candidates but never saw it in Mavericks.\n\n~~~\nmariehaynes\nI'm on Mavericks and I see it as my top CPU hog occasionally too.\n\n~~~\nbenguild\nWell, everyone's downvoting me, but I swear I never noticed this until\nYosemite.\n\nEither way, the weird thing is that if you go to the Window menu and hit Task\nManager... you can monitor extension CPU usage, etc.\n\nI never had a problem until recently, and yet now I'm seeing red in the\nActivity Manager due to Chrome. It's bizarre.\n\n~~~\ntjl\nYou're probably downvoted because it's been pretty widely known that Chrome is\na CPU hog on OS X. Checking the energy shaming feature, Chrome is pretty much\nalways in the \"Apps Using Significant Energy\" section. I did a quick search on\n\"Chrome energy OS X\" and found a number of pages that mention it, all of which\ndate back to Mavericks which is the first time energy usage was reported\n(separate from straight CPU usage).\n\nI only use Chrome if I need to use a site with Flash and I use the \"Open Page\nWith\" item in Safari's Develop menu to open the appropriate page. Then, I quit\nonce I'm done with it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nInequality and Democratic Responsiveness (2005) [pdf] - clarkevans\nhttps://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/inequality_and_democratic_responsiveness.pdf\n======\nEarthIsHome\nEvery few years the oppressed get to vote on who we want to oppress us.\n\nIt's a very powerful illusion to placate the masses by tricking us into\nthinking that our voices are being heard and we are participating in a\ndemocracy.\n\nAn excerpt from Howard Zinn's \"A People's History of the United States\":\n\n> We have here a forecast of the long history of America politics, the\n> mobilization of lower-class energy by upper-class politicians, for their own\n> purposes. This was not purely deciption; it involved, in part, a genuine\n> recognition of lower-class grievances, which helps to account for its\n> effectiveness as a tactic over the centuries.\n\n^^ This was in the lead-up to the American revolution where the upper-class\nneeded to gain support from the lower-classes. The wealthy colonists were able\nto redirect the lower-class's ire from wealthy colonists to the British. One\nway of gaining support was allowing some lower-classes to participate in\npolitics or give some of them land. However, the concessions given to the\nlower classes by the upper classes never materially change the power dynamics.\n\nA contemporary example of this is the response by politicians to the George\nFloyd Protests. Most politicians aren't entertaining the significant demands\nof the protesters. Instead, politicians try to placate the masses (and it's\neffective) by offering concessions that don't really change the root the power\ndynamics that have led to the protests: e.g. remove statues, changing names of\nstreets to BLM, \"8 can't wait\" policies, etc.\n\n------\npetermcneeley\nThe system just works as designed.\n[https://chomsky.info/commongood02/](https://chomsky.info/commongood02/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Snapbugz – The easiest way to discuss bugs. - grexi\nhttp://www.snapbugz.com/\n======\nnwh\n> \" _Your browser is too old for Snapbugz._ \"\n\nLatest Chrome probably shouldn't have this.\n\n> _\" As not yet seen on:_\"\n\nPutting this at the bottom of the page with a list of popular website's icons\nis disingenuous to say the least.\n\nIt's also not clear to the user, but this service silently proxies any site\nyou go to with little concession for what the user might be doing. Given that\nthey're already being so unpleasant with the bottom links, I wouldn't hesitate\nto think that they are capturing user content as well. Even if they aren't\ncollecting private data, they're stripping SSL data and serving it back up in\nplain text.\n\nCompletely unacceptable.\n\n~~~\njamessb\nWith Firefox 27 (or Safari 7.0.1) on a MBP running Mavericks I get the error:\n\n\"Bummer! Creating a Snapbugz currently only works on desktop computers.\"\n\n~~~\npornel\nWhere can I discuss that bug? ;)\n\n[http://i.imgur.com/IGuNEzT.png](http://i.imgur.com/IGuNEzT.png)\n\n~~~\ngrexi\nFor all having this \"desktop\" issue on real desktops - please give us more\ninformation via hello @ snapbugz.com. Kudos!\n\n~~~\npornel\nMy suggestion is instead of chasing UA sniffing (which is a losing\nproposition), just give up on blocking \"mobile\" or any kind of browser.\n\nFWIW my mobile browser is just as capable as my desktop and as long as you\ndon't block zooming I can deal with an \"unoptimized\" layout.\n\n~~~\ngrexi\nThe creation part of snapbugz is just not ready for mobile/touch usage as UX\npatterns on the annotation part are different. However, the result /\ncollaboration part is already finished:\n[http://www.snapbugz.com/p/88a7a69a](http://www.snapbugz.com/p/88a7a69a)\n\n------\nsmoyer\nI'm against bug-tracking systems that fork a program's (or web-site's) own\nbug-tracking system. You end up with multiple problems:\n\n1) The same bug in both places, with different buy useful discussions in each.\nHow do you merge these two bugs? How do you mark one as a duplicate?\n\n2) The developers of the program (or web-site) probably don't know you exist,\nso while there might be a great discussion related to the bug, the person who\ncan actually resolve it doesn't know.\n\n3) Assuming you're not the only \"foreign\" bug-tracking system for a program\n(or web-site), how do you interact with the other \"foreign\" systems?\n\n4) There's no barrier to entry, so there's no incentive to creating anonymous\nbugs or to using the platform to rant at the developer.\n\nYou're not alone with these problems - GetSatisfaction and UserVoice have the\nsame issues. My suggestion would be to create such an amazing bug-tracking\nsystem that the developers _WANT_ to use it as their primary source. Then get\nbought by Github.\n\n~~~\ngrexi\nThanks for your points.\n\nIndeed we tried to solve some of your points at\n[http://usersnap.com](http://usersnap.com) (the technology behind snapbugz).\nWe integrate with different, existing bug trackers but made the experience\nthat there are many people who still rely on email as a bug tracker.\n\n------\nchigley\nI like the fun feature when I type the site's own URL into the search box.\nFirst a message that reads \"Do you really want to see the internet implode?\",\nfollowed by a redirect to the \"Google into Google\" sketch from The IT\nCrowd[0].\n\n[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqxLmLUT-\nqc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqxLmLUT-qc)\n\n~~~\nbazzargh\nI didn't. I actually wanted to report a bug with their site, that it lacks any\nexplanation of what it does and why you'd want to use it (eg, does the\nfeedback actually go anywhere?)\n\n------\nplatinumdragon\nPretty asinine that I can't even read about what snapbugz is in my mobile. It\nmight be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I'll never use it, because\nI tried to find out more info and got slapped in the face for it. If it were\nof interest, _then_ I would email myself a reminder to use it on desktop.\n\n~~~\ngrexi\nCreating on mobile is on our agenda for the next week. In the meantime, have a\nlook at the result page for mobiles please:\n[http://www.snapbugz.com/p/88a7a69a](http://www.snapbugz.com/p/88a7a69a)\n\n------\ndavidjgraph\nI tried one of our sites, we force https, it seems the 's' is stripped and\nloading fails. If the site is about discussing bugs, I would think a target\nmarket is web applications, pretty much all of which will be using https.\n\n~~~\ndeanclatworthy\nAnd most bugs are often found before going into production, so client's will\nbe accessing the site behind an IP restriction or HTTP auth most likely.\n\n~~~\ngrexi\nFor full HTTPS / IP-Restriction / Auth / external bug tracker support, please\nhave a look at [https://usersnap.com](https://usersnap.com) \\- this could fit\nyour professional requirements.\n\n------\ntokenizerrr\nImages didn't seem to load in the produced screenshot, though they did load in\nthe preview where I marked the area. Unfortunately I could not snapbugz\n[http://www.snapbugz.com/result/minichan.org/a5a77fcb-f86a-4a...](http://www.snapbugz.com/result/minichan.org/a5a77fcb-f86a-4ad6-acc0-62eae7df6d91)\nas instead it took me to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqxLmLUT-\nqc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqxLmLUT-qc)\n\n~~~\ngrexi\nLooks like the page minichan.org does a referer-check for all images to\nprevent hotlinking.\n\n------\nFreshCode\nLove the \"As not yet soon on:\" logos at the bottom which tweets to those\npublications about Snapbugz. Great marketing hack.\n\n------\nhigherpurpose\nSeems somewhat similar to how Google did it for Google+ in the early days. I'm\nsurprised it took this long for someone to replicate that feedback system to\nbe honest. I thought it was brilliant from the moment I saw it.\n\n~~~\ngrexi\nHave a look at [http://usersnap.com](http://usersnap.com) :-)\n\n------\nf_salmon\nPlease stop the background requests to tons of 3rd party servers. It's such an\nunhealthy trend. (Now that we know that everybody and their mother tracks and\nprofiles us all the time.)\n\n------\ndomas\nIf you type snapbugz.com into snapbugz.com, you can break the Internet. So\nplease, no one try it—even for a joke. It's not a laughing mater. You can\nbreak the Internet.\n\n------\ngrexi\nFor all on mobiles - here is an example result page:\n[http://www.snapbugz.com/p/88a7a69a](http://www.snapbugz.com/p/88a7a69a)\n\n------\nchoult\nI wonder how many bug reports Gizmodo.com is going to have...\n\n~~~\ngrexi\na lot. really a lot.\n\n------\nnodata\nI thought this was for discussing bugs in bug trackers like bugzilla. Then I\nthought this was related to FogBugz, but it's neither.\n\n------\nrikf\nLooks very useful to me.\n\nOne things I would do is make the permalink visible as soon in the flow as\npossible.\n\n~~~\ngrexi\nThanks for the input!\n\n------\nswah\nSo, how does one render a website properly into a PNG? Headless Chrome?\n\n~~~\ngrexi\nIt's done by Usersnap: [https://usersnap.com/](https://usersnap.com/)\n\n------\nWednesdayBass\n> Easiest way to discuss bugs\n\nNot on mobile it's not\n\n~~~\neatfish\nI thought it was neat that they let me email myself with a reminder. This is\nan MVP, it's just the right response.\n\n------\nvespaceballs6\nthis is very cool, I definitely plan on using it.\n\njust curious, why only store the bug for 7 days?\n\n~~~\ngrexi\nYou can extend the storage time by inviting others to discuss - 1day per\ninvite. (If you already have sth like a bug tracker / pm in place - look at\n[https://usersnap.com](https://usersnap.com) ).\n\n~~~\nvespaceballs6\nnice. Is the storage time simply an up-sell mechanism? or is there a technical\nissue at play? again, just curious.\n\n~~~\ngrexi\nNo, no technical issues :-)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThree years later, Mr. Moore is still letting us punt on database sharding - jlangenauer\nhttp://37signals.com/svn/posts/3089-three-years-later-mr-moore-is-still-letting-us-punt-on-database-sharding\n======\nshanemhansen\nA lot of startups engage in a sort of cargo-cult architecture. Their reasoning\ngoes something like this:\n\n1\\. Amazon/Facebook/Google have a lot of traffic.\n\n2\\. Amazon/Facebook/Google use X to scale horizontally. ergo:\n\n3\\. My little startup should use X and scale horizontally.\n\nWhat they fail to realize is that most of these companies would be ecstatic if\nthey could scale machines vertically, if they could focus on great user\nfeatures instead of having to figure out how to shard in the application\nlayer. You should never forget that Amazon, Facebook, and twitter all started\nout as pretty basic LAMP stacks and built the tools when it was obvious that\nno other tool would do. I think google's an exception because their MVP was in\nfact a web scale application. So by all means, vet your idea, get some\ncustomers, get traction, and scale the cheap way by buying more ram for as\nlong as you possibly can.\n\n~~~\nspudlyo\nAmazon did not start out as a LAMP stack, it was more like a \"DNBC\" stack.\n\nD igital Unix\n\nN etscape Commerce Server\n\nB erkeley DB (NoSQL!)\n\nC code (linked into the HTTP server)\n\n~~~\ncperciva\n_B erkeley DB (NoSQL!)_\n\nI'd call BDB \"pre-SQL\" rather than \"NoSQL\".\n\n~~~\nshanemhansen\nGranted I'm speaking from second hand experience, but for the last couple\nyears I worked closely with some former and current amazonians who worked on\ntheir frontend and order workflow team. I do know for a fact that much of\ntheir frontend is/was in perl, and that oracle databases have their place. But\nI guess that wasn't what they started with.\n\n------\nkrupan\nHe mentions Fusion-io drives getting faster. What's interesting about iodrives\nis that you don't have to buy a new one to get more speed, just updating your\nCPU or RAM will speed up an iodrive:\n\n\"Because VSL leverages powerful host CPU cores and memory for block mapping,\nioMemory performance automatically improves as organizations upgrade host CPUs\nor memory\" (<http://www.fusionio.com/overviews/vsl-technical-overview/>)\n\nVSL (Virtual Storage Layer) is the Fusion-io software that makes an iodrive\nlook like a block device to the OS, among other things.\n\n(Yes, I'm an engineer at Fusion)\n\n------\nohashi\nFor some reason, I don't imagine BaseCamp's use is really exploding like some\nother startups might in terms of database usage.\n\nIt could very well be a case of their growth is scaling in-line with Moore's\nlaw, so it just happens to work out well.\n\n~~~\npatio11\nEven among startups, web scale data requirements are the exception, not the\nrule. Facebook and Google are ginormous. There are many, many very impressive\napplications whose database wouldn't tax a single commodity server.\n(Similarly, there are applications that make terrible businesses but which\nconsume computing resources like losing a byte of information would doom\nhumanity.)\n\nI mean, go through a list of YC companies or other startups you respect,\nwinnow it down to the ones that exited or otherwise achieved some level of\nsuccess, and play guess-the-size. How many terabytes of storage do you think\ne.g. Airbnb needs?\n\n~~~\nj_baker\nOne thing I've found is that scaling rarely means solving difficult problems.\nRather, it means putting more time into finding optimal solutions to problems\nthat are trivial at smaller scale. For example, should your startup use\nApache, nginx, or HAProxy as a load balancer? If you're just launching, the\nanswer is \"Who cares, just ship the fucking thing!\". If you reach the point\nwhere you start measuring page views in the billions (and yes there are start\nups that are at this point), it matters a great deal. Or should you use\nPostgres, MySQL, or some shiny NoSQL thing? Again, probably doesn't matter for\nsmall websites. But for larger services, it matters.\n\nAlso, don't underestimate how large log files can grow in a data-driven\nbusiness (like AirBNB seems to be). I could easily believe that they have many\nterabytes of data just from logging actions their customers have taken.\n\n~~~\nadgar\n> Also, don't underestimate how large log files can grow in a data-driven\n> business (like AirBNB seems to be). I could easily believe that they have\n> many terabytes of data just from logging actions their customers have taken.\n\nLogs don't have remotely the same access requirements as the databases used to\nserve a product.\n\n~~~\nj_baker\nIndeed, but it's worth pointing out that in this case \"different\" doesn't\nnecessarily imply \"easier\". Instead of having to access the data across many\nconcurrent connections, you have to be able to store the data efficiently so\nthat it doesn't take up too much space and you can do jobs on them that don't\ntake 3 weeks to complete. And let's not get into how you collect and merge\nthem together. There are open source tools to do these things, but you're\nstill looking at a decent amount of infrastructure to make it work.\n\n------\nkyledrake\nI did a presentation on a game I made at Geoloqi that talks about the Fusion\nIO drives and why I think local hardware with SSD is the best solution for\npersistent data stores right now:\n<http://www.slideshare.net/KyleDrake/building-mapattack>\n\n~~~\nkyledrake\nThe one warning I want to provide though is that not all SSDs are created\nequal: Make sure you get one that writes its cache to the disk on power\nfailure, or you're going to be in a world of hurt.\n\n~~~\nkrupan\nCan you explain more? You aren't talking about writing data that is cached in\nthe SSD to a regular hard-drive, are you?\n\n~~~\ntesseract\nI think he's talking about writing data in the SSD's DRAM cache into the\nactual flash.\n\n~~~\nkrupan\nThat's what I thought too. Fusion-io drives all flush their write buffer to\nthe nand flash on a power cut event, I wasn't aware that some SSD's didn't.\nPeople use iodrives as a caching layer in conjunction with tradition spinning\nhard drives, so wondered if possibly he was referring to that kind of setup.\n\n------\ngroggles\nPedantry -- that isn't Moore's Law related, aside from the loosest\ninterpretation that computers as a whole get faster.\n\nThis is so true, though. Much of the horizontally scalability need comes from\nthe land of extremely underpowered VPS machines on platforms like AWS. Yet the\nmind-boggling scale of performance you can inexpensively* (*-term used\nrelatively) acquire for database servers is astonishing. SSDs (and plug-in\nflash drives) and boundless memory have changed everything.\n\n~~~\n_delirium\nGiven all the problems they've had with AWS, I wonder what the overall\ncost/benefit would be for someone like Reddit moving from the flexed-\nEC2-servers model to just one high-powered db server and some caching\nwebservers in front of it.\n\n~~~\nadestefan\nReddit's probably was using trying to use EBS as a backend for a transactional\ndatabase. The issue is that EBS makes no guarantees on latency, only that\nthey'll never lose your data.\n\n~~~\nbad_user\n\n         they'll never lose your data\n    \n\nAmazon is not saying it, but EBS is probably lying when doing an fsync().\n\nIn this post [1] explaining why Reddit was down, one problem was that the DB\nslave got _ahead_ of the master, with the most probable explanation being that\nthe master flagged the data as being safe for replication, before committing\nit to disk and I trust PostgreSQL more than I trust EBS.\n\nIn this forum answer Amazon is giving about this potential problem [2], they\nare dodging the question by saying that fsync() guarantees durability for\ninstance failures, but not for volume failures, with the anual failure rate\n(AFR) being given as 0.1% - 0.5% for volumes (how accurate that is, it remains\nto be seen).\n\nSo EBS is probably lying about fsync's success, especially since the behavior\nof fsync in virtual environments is always a surprise. So you can definitely\nlose your data more frequently than if you had your own hardware.\n\n[1] blog.reddit.com/2011/03/why-reddit-was-down-for-6-of-last-24.html [2]\n<https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=27590>\n\n~~~\ncperciva\n_Amazon is not saying it, but EBS is probably lying when doing an fsync()._\n\nGiven that POSIX says \"the nature of the transfer is implementation-defined\"\nand they've defined what fsync does on their implementation: No, they're not\nlying.\n\nI wouldn't say that they're being misleading, either. On a local physical\ndisk, once fsync returns your data is safely stored unless/until the disk\ndies. According to the forum post you linked to, semantics on EBS are exactly\nthe same.\n\nfsync does _not_ mean \"has been written to spinning magnetic media\".\n\n------\nbitops\nWhat never seems to get mentioned is energy cost. Sure, you can keep throwing\nhardware at the problem, but eventually that will lead to a substantial power\nbill.\n\n~~~\nrorrr\nSharding will lead to an even much higher power bill.\n\n~~~\nwildwood\nAgreed, sharding takes \"throwing hardware at the problem\" to a whole new\nlevel.\n\n~~~\nbitops\nI agree with what both of you have said. It's possible that, in the not-too-\ndistant future, \"green programming\" will become a new field. If you can design\nan architecture (both hardware and software) that demonstrably reduces power\ncosts, that's a valuable skill.\n\nAnd, I'd argue, on two fronts: lower costs for the company, plus good\nmarketing. Every forward-thinking company (at least from what I've observed)\nare eager to brand themselves as \"carbon neutral\", \"eco-friendly\", etc.\n\n------\ndkhenry\nThis is nothing more then trying to pay the interest on your technical debt\ninstead of paying off the balance. The longer you wait the more it grows and\nthe bigger the problem becomes down the road. Right now its 20K for a new\nsystem, And for your troubles you still get no redundancy. Yes ram is cheap\nand you can just buy a bigger system next year, but hopefully you will hit a\nlimit (growth is like that) then you will need to scale your now large and\ncomplex system. Code will need to be reworked. Interfaces will need to be re\narchitected. The guy who wrote that bit of code for you that runs your whole\nbusiness he may not be with you any more, even if he is that hack he put in\nplace because you had the horsepower to spare, he doesn't really remember why\nhe did it at 3:00am that one morning when stuff got out of hand. Now you have\ndowntime and huge development costs, because you ignored a problem and instead\nthrew hardware at it.\n\n------\nwazoox\nOne of the most common similar occurrence I meet regularly is people grossly\nunderestimating how many bytes per second you can really get from basic\nhardware such as hard drives, gigabit ethernet cards, etc. People often still\nremember that in 1998 the fastest FC 10k rpm drives hardly topped 12 MB/s, and\nthat you needed an 8 CPU Origin2000 to push 80 MB/s through a GigE link (given\nthat you had a terrific RAID array at both ends).\n\nNowadays, even the most basic PC can saturate a GigE link (115 MB/s), and the\nslowest hard drives go 100 MB/s. Any SSD sustains several thousands IOPS, and\nso on.\n\nOne of the most unfortunate result is that people often buy hugely powerful\nhardware when very basic stuff would have done the job just fine. How many\npeople have I seen running puny workloads on 100k bucks 3Par or EMC arrays,\nwhere a handful of SSDs in a server would have done as well or better? Pulling\n40Gb fibre across the room when cat 6 cable would have sufficed?\n\n------\nwes-exp\nFor those with custom hardware setups like this, how much time do you estimate\nyou've spent designing, building, and maintaining custom servers?\n\nI can see how it would be less effort than sharding, but it seems like\nthrowing hardware at the problem is not a completely \"free lunch\" when you get\nto the scale of having to custom design a server supercomputer and source\nspecially made SSDs and terabytes of RAM.\n\n~~~\nsciurus\nYou don't need to \"custom design a server supercomputer\". This stuff is as\nmainstream as Dell. You can go to dell.com and order a Poweredge R815 with 64\nprocessor cores and 512GB of RAM for $16,000. If you want SSDs, you can\npurchase SATA or PCIe ones from Dell as well.\n\n<http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-r815/pd>\n<http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/fusion-io-drive/pd>\n\n------\nmhartl\nI think they mean \"Dr. Moore\". \"Mr. Moore\" is a hack documentarian. _Dr.\nMoore_ , on the other hand, has a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Caltech.\n\n------\nbwooce\nGah, stop abusing the word punt. The headline is nonsensical.\n\nPunt does not mean avoidance. It has much closer associations to \"attempt\"\n(punter, plus rugby usage).\n\nI totally agree with the rest of the article, why shard or otherwise\ndistribute your database before being required? Although I think I would build\nmy DB as shard 1 of 1 to allow for the future case.\n\n~~~\nellyagg\nYou're thinking of British English. In America, punt means avoid, and most\npeople here probably think of an American football punt--which is the\nvoluntary end of a failed offensive possession--so suggests you're giving up\nfor now and will try again later. We probably bastardized it, sure, but that\nship has sailed.\n\n~~~\nbwooce\nThanks. Such a great word, lost forever :)\n\nSo if I said \"take a punt\", would that be to take, or not take?\n\nI should build a guide of \"words not to use on presentations\".\n\n------\nalexjipark\nhmmm\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nVim: reorder tabs - simonreed\nhttp://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2520\n\n======\nsimonreed\nMy preference however is to use Shift-Left, Shift-Right to move the tabs:\n\nmap <silent> <S-left> :call MoveCurrentTab(-1)<Esc> map <silent> <S-right>\n:call MoveCurrentTab(1)<Esc>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAdi Shamir couldn't get US visa to attend RSA Conference named for him - ereli1\nhttps://www.cnet.com/news/adi-shamir-couldnt-get-us-visa-to-attend-rsa-conference-named-for-him/\n======\nlocacorten\nI really hope this event is picked up by the media. This is truly worrisome\nbecause it unnecessarily erodes US's ability to be at the forefront of\ntechnology research.\n\nThis is not about H1B visas. Not about the Muslim ban. Not about China.\n\nThis is about a famous scientist from a friendly country who has already\ntraveled to the US countless times. Oh, and due to him, we can conduct secure\nelectronic transactions on the Internet now.\n\nIMO, somebody at the US State Department should be fired.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Best way to find front-end/UI developers? - capkutay\n\nMy company has spent some time trying to recruit front-end and UI developers in the Bay Area. We want to spend at least another month searching before we go through a recruiter.<p>Does anybody have any advice as to which job sites work best specifically for finding front-end/UI devs? dice.com? stackoverflow.com? Thanks! Ping me if you have any other ideas.<p>john@webaction.com\n======\nzinssmeister\nA good front-end/UI engineer is in general hard to find, because these\nindividuals ideally need to live at the intersection of development and\ndesign. You should also consider searching <http://dribbble.com/> for\nengineers with design/UI interest. Another good destination would be to post a\njob at <http://jobs.37signals.com> and make sure you have the right job\ndescription. Good front-end guys/girls are usually looking for specific\nrequirements in a job post, to make sure their potential employer is aware of\ntheir unique position within the technology stack. Feel free to reach out to\nme if you wanna know more...\n\n------\nmnicole\nI'm going to piggyback onto this and hopefully get a good collective together.\nAs someone that mostly fits this description I've been trying to find similar\nfolks on Dribbble to add to my Developer inspiration list\n(<http://dribbble.com/mandynicole/lists/4584-Developers>). If you have an\naccount and fancy yourself a dev/designer combo (or even just a dev with a\nDribbble account), let me know so I can add you!\n\n~~~\ncapkutay\nThanks! I am a dev but not a designer. Just created a dribbble account and\nadded you!\n\n------\nmichaelpinto\nYou might really be looking for two people: Separate out the UI from the\nfront-end development. Yes there are some people who can do both tasks well,\nbut even then they tend to be stronger on one side than the other.\n\nAlso in the Bay Area there would be a ton of competition, so you may want to\nbroaden your geographic scope (or even recruit people to come to the Bay Area\nif you hit a wall).\n\n------\nwhichdan\nI maintain a small ad-free site that links to a bunch of job boards[1]. There\nare definitely a few good sites out there.\n\nYou can also wait until tomorrow morning and post in the monthly WhoIsHiring\nthread.\n\n[1] <http://careers.sh>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLuadns, managed DNS with Git and Lua scriptable back-end. - sramov\nhttp://www.luadns.com/\n\n======\nrelix\nThe Lua-code doesn't appear to be executed once for each lookup - as I first\nimagined how it would work. So sadly, one cannot point different region users\nto the closest server IP.\n\n~~~\nvitalie\nHello,\n\nI'm Vitalie Cherpec, the founder of the Luadns project. :)\n\n@relix It's a design choice, Lua code is used only to generate records.\nExecuting user code on each lookup it's just too dangerous.\n\nWe wanted fast lookups and security. User code is executed in a restricted Lua\nenvironment in background.\n\nIf we'll have enough requests we'll add special functions to handle geo-aware\nDNS load balancing.\n\n~~~\nreginaldo\nDo wildcard records work?\n\n~~~\nvitalie\nYes, we have support for wildcard records. Example:\n\n<https://github.com/luadns/zones/blob/master/example.net.lua>\n\n------\ndfc\nAfter reading the title I was a little surprised when I skimmed the\ndocumentation. It seems like a better title would be:\n\n\"Luadns, managed DNS with Git and Lua scriptable _front-end_ \"\n\nIt seems like tinydns is your back-end. Which in my opinion is nothing to be\nashamed of. When I thought the service was a new dns server written in Lua I\nwas less intrigued. There are a ton of pitfalls when writing your own dns\ndaemon, tinydns is a good choice.\n\nWhat are you going to do when dnssec becomes a requirement?\n\n~~~\nvitalie\nThank you for your suggestions!\n\nWe are trying to avoid reinventing the wheel. :) TinyDNS served me well more\nthan 10 years, I like the design of this piece of software ( although it needs\n2 pairs of glasses to read it :) ), so it was a natural choice.\n\nTo provide IPv6 and DNSSEC support we'll provide another set of name servers\nwith NSD/PowerDNS as we designed Luadns with flexibility in mind (it's already\n100% compatible with PowerDNS).\n\n~~~\ndfc\nThat's awesome. Do you mention that on your site? I don't remeber seeing it\nbut I might have not looked for ipv6/dnssec after seeing tinydns.\n\nKnowing the path forward includes ipv6/dnssec definitely makes me more willing\nto signup...\n\n------\nreginaldo\nHistory: (from <http://www.luadns.com/about.html>)\n\n _I was a happy user of a free DNS hosting service for many years, when this\nservice was acquired by a competitor in august 2011, I was forced to move\nsomewhere else.\n\nWhile migrating my zone files I realized that I don't like Bind syntax files\nneither administering tens of domains through a web interface. I've started to\nexperiment on how it should look a perfect DNS service for me. I've realized\nthat I would love to store my configuration files in a Git repository and I\nwould need some configuration language for templating (Lua).\n\nThis is how Luadns was born on October, 2011._\n\nI don't know if this is an after the fact explanation, but either way it's a\nvery good story about scratching your own itch.\n\nBy the way, they had me at _I would love to store my configuration files in a\nGit repository_. As soon as I have a use for this in a new project, I'll be\ntheir user. The examples are pretty cool too.\n\n~~~\ndsl\nThe dates line up. August 2011 was when Dyn bought EveryDNS and fucked\neveryone.\n\nI have been helping people move off the Dyn platform and encouraging the\ndevelopment of efforts like this (both technically and financially) ever\nsince.\n\n------\nzdw\nWill you support DNSCurve? It would be nice to get more people on that\nparticular bandwagon.\n\nI set up a git/rake/djbdns/curvedns setup in an afternoon with a few VPS's,\nwhich has been quite solid for me.\n\n~~~\njevinskie\nHow has curvedns been for you? I need DNSCurve for a research project of mine\nbut I'm very frightened to see that curvedns is the only forwarding\nimplementation and gdnsd is the only authoritative implementation. Speaking of\nimplementations, what the heck do you use for a client/resolver!?\n\n~~~\nzdw\nThat's the chicken/egg problem. The only real clients I've seen right now are\nthe python testing implementation, OpenDNS's servers, and the DNSCrypt\nimplementation that OpenDNS released:\n<http://www.opendns.com/technology/dnscrypt/>\n\nLooking at one of my CurveDNS logs for the last few days and doing some very\nbasic math:\n\n    \n    \n        $ grep \"query too small to be DNSCurve packet\" *.s | wc -l\n        27539\n    \n        $ grep \"DNSCurve shared secret\" *.s | wc -l\n        2282\n    \n        2282/29821 = .07652\n    \n\nSo about 7.6% of all DNS queries are being answered via DNSCurve. Doing\nreverse IP lookups on the querying servers, nearly all of these requests are\ncoming from OpenDNS.\n\nbtw, gdnsd dropped DNSCurve support in recent builds, so it's only curvedns\nnow.\n\n------\nPkeod\nMy humble suggestions:\n\nYour pricing page \"Sign Up\" buttons should go to a sign up screen not a sign\nin screen.\n\nOn sign up you should collect credit card information. You will get less sign\nups but more revenue, and you won't have to shut off free people if they go\nover their query quota. Auto upgrade if they do? Send an e-mail saying they\nare close to meeting their query quota and that they will be auto upgraded if\nthey do?\n\nAfter sign up you should display a message saying for them to open their\ne-mail client and click the confirm e-mail - not just a login screen.\n\nKill the $39 price point. Just have $9, $27, $69 and then below those three\nhave the free option, and explain if they go over their quota they will be\nupgraded (thus requiring cc information on their account).\n\n~~~\nvitalie\nIndeed, free users are notified to upgrade their account upon hitting quota.\n\nWe are not collecting CC information as we chose Avangate to process our\norders. Dealing with CC it's a big hassle, we wanted to allocate more time for\nthe service itself, maybe in the future it will make more sense.\n\nThank you for your suggestions!\n\n------\nchrishas35\nAny chance of you guys allowing AXFR transfers? I really like the ideas behind\nthe service, however, I have reservations about moving production DNS given\nyour relatively young age. Being able to have secondary DNS elsewhere\neliminates the risk of switching over but maintains all the upside of your\nexcellent interface.\n\n~~~\nvitalie\nAXFR support it's on our priority list, we'll release an update soon. Please,\nsubscribe to our Twitter feed or Blog's RSS feed and we'll make an\nannouncement when it's ready.\n\nYes, it's a young service, we have launched on February 10 (in production\nsince December 15) and we are aware of great responsibility involved by this\nservice. We took many measures to ensure quality of this service. All servers\nand services are monitored with Nagios and we are notified by email and SMS.\nWe are adepts of test-driven development, so everything it's tested before\nreleased in production.\n\n~~~\nchrishas35\nThanks for the reply. I look forward to switching over as soon as you are able\nto implement AXFR.\n\n~~~\nvitalie\nAXFR support is ready, check _slave_ function from the manual:\n\n<http://www.luadns.com/help.html#functions>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc? - cl42\nCurious if people use any personal email tools. I like gmail but also realize I haven&#x27;t looked for an alternative in several years.\n======\nreacharavindh\nFastmail. Paying $30/yr for my email hosting. Pros:\n\nI don't have to worry about my emails being scanned to create a profile of me.\n\nI got my <firstname>@fastmail.com which I could not with Gmail.\n\nAs a paid customer I get support for if/when something is wrong.\n\nHas solid Web UI that is minimal and fast. Email client for ios works great.\n\nCons: Not the cool new thing. Setting it up for shared calendar with others\nwas a bit unintuitive.\n\nEvery now and then someone sends me a Google Doc, and I need to think about\nhow to open it without a Google account.\n\nSpam filter is not as good as Google's. A phishing email gets to the inbox\nevery now and then. But, I report them.\n\n~~~\nLeoPanthera\nNot getting <firstname>@ shouldn't really be a problem. Everyone should buy\ntheir own domain name for email. It's cheap, easy to setup (and natively\nsupported by Fastmail), and it means that you're not locked into one mail\nprovider ever again.\n\nDon't be <firstname>@fastmail, be <firstname>@<lastname>.me - or whatever you\nprefer.\n\n~~~\n0x00000000\nI have an uncommon last name - about 3 families in the world with it as far as\nI can tell. Some asshole has been squatting <mylastname>.com for over 20 years\nand said he \"hadn't considered selling it\" then wanted $100,000 for it. The\nsame guy has been squatting hundreds of domains since the 90s, many of them 1\nletter off from major websites.\n\nWhat can I do against this scum? I saw that there have been many successful\ndisputes against him so I was thinking of constructing one in a similar vein\nsaying that his use of my unique last name to serve malware and ads is\ndamaging to my reputation but it seems a little weak.\n\nAlso no other TLD is even an option for an email address because people always\nassume you made a mistake and just send things to .com anyway in my\nexperience.\n\n~~~\ntrue_religion\nFor 100 thousand you could just buy a tld and be firstname@lastname\n\n------\npbiggar\nI'm excited by superhuman ([https://superhuman.com](https://superhuman.com)).\nAlas I haven't got an invite. Also, dunno if they're going to support my style\nof email use out of the box (I'm strict adherent to the Andreas Klinger style:\n[http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-\nhow-t...](http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-\ngmail-more)).\n\n~~~\nOJFord\n> I'm excited by superhuman ([https://superhuman.com](https://superhuman.com))\n\nThat looks like any other Electon-based email client that someone decided\nwasn't cool enough any more...\n\n~~~\npbiggar\nCan you explain? I don't see how you got to that conclusion.\n\n~~~\ncyphar\nThe first screenshots on the homepage. It looks like every other electron\nemail app (and also messaging app). Also the overuse of the word \"brilliant\"\nis quite grating too.\n\n------\nnkkollaw\nGoogle Inbox is really amazing, it groups email automatically and its spam\nfilter is awesome.\n\n~~~\npatrickdavey\nI also like Inbox, except that the desktop experience is so utterly woeful.\n\n~~~\nkoymas\nI use Inbox because I cannot find any other free alternative. It is awesome on\nthe phone....but on the computer it takes forever to load.\n\n------\nrevanthc\nHello,\n\nI work for Zoho Mail, so I may be slightly biased here but I would recommend\nZoho Mail :). Let me try to convince you about why you should move to Zoho\nMail. 1\\. Privacy - We are a 100% ad-free email service. We always have been\nand always will be. We don't scan your emails for keywords, we don't show ads,\nanything. We are 100% committed to maintaining your privacy.\n\n2\\. Cost - We have a free plan that is free for up to 25 users. Through our\nreferral program, you can get another 25 users absolutely free. That's a total\nof 50 free users, which is plenty for most small businesses. Our free plan is\nperfect for that. Above that, our paid plans start at $2/user/month. You can\ntake a look at our pricing here -\n[https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html](https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html).\n\n3\\. Reliability - We have a 99.9% uptime guarantee for Zoho Mail, which is the\nindustry standard. We constantly work on upgrading our infrastructure to\nmaintain that reliability. In the odd event of a downtime, we have contingency\nplans in place for you to access your email.\n\n4\\. Features - We are constantly innovating with email, to make it fit into\nthe modern workplace. We've introduced a new feature called Streams, which is\nperfect for teams and combines slack like real-time collaboration with email.\nWe also have a host of exciting new features for email.\n\n5\\. Integrations - Zoho Mail is part of 30+ apps from the Zoho family. All our\napps are well integrated with each other, and can be used to run your entire\nbusiness from the ground up. In addition, we are also integrated with 3rd\nparty apps like Dropbox, Asana, Trello, and more.\n\n6\\. Migration - We make it easy and hassle free for people to migrate their\nemail to Zoho Mail. It is free of cost, and there is absolutely no data loss\nat all.\n\nTo begin with, I recommend you try our free plan. All the features of the paid\nplans are available in Free as well, so you will get a clear picture of what\nZoho Mail is. If I can help in any other way, please feel free to reach out to\nme at revanth@zohomail.com.\n\nThanks!\n\n------\ndangom\nI'm really happy with posteo.org\n\n1\\. Ad-free, bloat-free, 1 Eur / month.\n\n2\\. Privacy respecting, with clear transparency reports.\n\n3\\. Support for IMAP/POP3.\n\n~~~\nmajewsky\nSeconded. Happy customer since 3 years here. The only thing that's not nice is\nthat they do not offer Bring-Your-Own-Domain. You can only have a @posteo.tld\naddress (with a certain range of TLD).\n\n------\nmindcrash\nProtonmail: 100% guaranteed E2E encrypted, nice UI, servers based in\nSwitzerland, Android/iOS apps available aswell. Oh, and open source.\n\n[https://protonmail.com/](https://protonmail.com/)\n\nAs a nice addon they also recently launched a interesting VPN solution. Also\nheadquartered in Switzerland with core infrastructure located in Switzerland\nand Iceland. No logging, and Tor routing is available with a single mouse\nclick.\n\n[https://protonvpn.com/](https://protonvpn.com/)\n\n------\nalnitak\nI have been looking for an alternative to the Google apps ecosystem, to\nsupport mailing, calendar, contacts and document editing, but most importantly\nit should allow me to have \"guests\" contributors to documents I can share with\nthem.\n\nAnybody knows of a company providing such a service?\n\n~~~\nswsieber\nSandstorm.io? I don't think it would cover everything... but it might work.\n\n------\nrrggrr\nMIXMAX. It adds many great features to Gmail. Its too expensive, its pushing\ntoo hard to integrate with Salesforce, its probably too dependent on Gmail.\nBut, all that said, I really cannot live without it. The founder Olof is a\ngenius.\n\n------\ntgragnato\nTutanota\n\n[https://tutanota.com](https://tutanota.com) \\-\n[https://github.com/tutao/tutanota](https://github.com/tutao/tutanota) \\-\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutanota](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutanota)\n\nThe company is based in Germany and benefits from BDSG.\n\n~~~\nOJFord\nNo pricing information without signing up for the free tier?\n\n~~~\ntgragnato\n[https://tutanota.com/pricing](https://tutanota.com/pricing)\n\n~~~\nOJFord\nOh, thank you. I feel a bit stupid for not just trying that URL, but I\ncouldn't (can't) find a way to navigate there from the home page...\n\n------\nSephr\nPaid Gmail & Inbox (G Suite).\n\nPersonally, it feels like Google's spam filtering is still superior to the\ncompetition, so it would take quite a lot to get me to switch to a new vendor.\n\nNot to mention the integrated action buttons that Gmail and Inbox have\nsupported for years. Those buttons are a great productivity enhancement that I\nhave yet to see from most of the competition.\n\n------\nEverula\nJust started using Spark [https://sparkmailapp.com](https://sparkmailapp.com)\nfor Mac and iPhone (couples of weeks now) and quite like it, generally overall\npositive experience and great UI. PS., I am not working in the company, just\nusing couple of their products.\n\n------\ncl42\nTHANK YOU EVERYONE! What an amazing set of answers. I'll be exploring a lot of\nthese over the coming weeks.\n\n------\nbusymichael\nI have looked around but haven't beat a paid g suite account.\n\nI have also coded some custom extensions to Gmail that make it more useful.\n\nThe most popular one I run is [https://dndemail.com](https://dndemail.com). It\nbasically adds do not disturb to Gmail.\n\n------\nkureikain\nI'm using Zoho. I have no issue so far. You can easily register and point your\ndomain to them. Free if you have less than 5 users. You can then configure\ncatch-all email to forward everything to you.\n\nWork pretty well on any IMAP/SMTP mail client.\n\n~~~\nrevanthc\nThanks for recommending Zoho Mail. Appreciate it :)\n\nJust want to let you know, however, that we've changed our pricing, and now we\nare free for 25 users. We have a great referral program as well that lets you\nearn a further 25 free users, should you need them.\n\n[https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html](https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html)\n\n------\nsheraz\noutlook on mobile and web is great. I happily throw my $8/ month at them.\n\nMy only peeve is the confusing admin tools -- it is still Exchange on the\nbackend, so there are a ton of features and settings that are simply in the\nway.\n\n------\nreaper7\nI also have thexyz.com as my email provider, very reliable service and I like\nhow there are unlimited aliases included so I can have\nsomeotheremail@thexyz.com or 2news@thexyz.net also sent to my main address.\n\n------\ncarrotam\nI find thexyz.com a really good alternative they have a $20 per year plan and\na $50 that adds more storage and syncs your contacts and calendars also. It\ndoes a great job of keeping spam out too.\n\n------\nleke\nIt would be great if telegram incorporated email into their system.\n\n------\ndesster\nTake a look to ox.io, an European safe and secure mail provider. It take 1 to\n2 days to get an invite.\n\n------\nthe_common_man\nRainloop with cloudron is awesome\n\n------\nalkhatib\nzohomail.com\n\n------\ncrispytx\nprotonmail\n\n------\nalansmitheebk\nI use protonmail (protonmail.com). It's encrypted email developed by the\nscientists at CERN. The data is hosted in Switzerland and therefore subject to\nSwiss privacy laws. There are app for iPhone and Android. They just came out\nwith a VPN product, too.\n\n~~~\nwheresvic1\nThe free plan is only limited to 500 Mb though.\n\n~~~\nLeoPanthera\nPay for your email or you are the product.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA Little Better Advice - sant0sk1\nhttp://mattmaroon.com/?p=617\n======\naneesh\nMatt, that's one of the first \"advice\" pieces I've read that acknowledges that\nall people don't (and shouldn't) make the same decision in the same\ncircumstances.\n\nHelping people weigh the tradeoffs is MUCH better advice than \"yes\"/\"no\". I\nwish more bloggers would take 5 seconds to think about that before posting.\n\n~~~\nhelveticaman\nSo true. I was doing a financial analysis of American professional sports a\nfew months ago. I assumed height was a known variable (which is true; a doctor\ncan predict a child's adult height within an inch), but talent was dependent\non hours spent practicing (the whole 10,000 hours thing). That's all that\nreally matters. What I came up with was that you have to be something like\n6'7\" or taller to have a reasonable shot at success. If you're going to be\nthis tall or taller, it becomes a wise investment to work at becoming good at\nfootball, basketball, or baseball. By this I mean you have a reasonable\nexpectation (like 1 in 5) of getting drafted to a major league.\n\n------\nrokhayakebe\nSo should I do a startup or not?\n\n~~~\nmattmaroon\nNo :)\n\n~~~\nmedianama\nWhat would you say about <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=381492>\n\n~~~\nmattmaroon\nGiven the information presented, and assuming I felt I could get another job\nin a year if things went poorly, I'd probably go for it. That's just my first\nimpression based on decent but not complete data, and applying my own loathing\nfor having to be somewhere at 9 a.m.\n\nI find it interesting that his comments were killed, even though they seem\nreasonable, due to some very unpopular comments on other posts.\n\n~~~\nmedianama\nWhat more data points would you need to make a better decision? Some more info\nbelow:\n\nRevenue - $200 last month (Ad - 80%, Premium Services - 20%) Average time on\nsite: 7 mins Bounce rate: 21% Daily new users: 27%\n\nBusiness: Its a sub category in a mature and proven industry.\n\n~~~\nmattmaroon\nWhat are his non-mortgage expenses? How long can he last assuming he wants to\neat? (Those always add up to more than one thinks until he tracks them.)\n\nDoes he have people counting on him? A wife or children?\n\nWhat are the benefits of quitting rather than continuing it moonlighting? Does\nhe need to seek funding? Is that a preferable option to continuing on with the\njob? Might be if his runway isn't all that long after all expenses are\ncounted.\n\nWould he be better keeping the job and plowing the monthly profits into\nAdWords for the time being?\n\n~~~\nmedianama\nThere are hardly any non-mortgage expenses.. Wife earns and can contribute\n30-35% of the mortgage. mortgage is about $1500/month\n\nDon't want to seek funding but want to invest more time in promoting/marketing\nthe product and also launching similar products in other sub-categories...\n\n\"Would he be better keeping the job and plowing the monthly profits into\nAdWords for the time being?\" - That makes me think!!\n\n~~~\nmattmaroon\nWell, I don't know if you'll ever get a better chance to do it in your life.\n\n------\nph0rque\nSo what's up with the closed comments?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPassword Party: distributed password cracking in Javascript - goldmab\nhttps://github.com/goldmab/password-party\n\n======\ngoldmab\nI wrote this thing and would like suggestions on how to improve it. Thanks.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nStartupPR: It Isn't Just Buzz, It's About Relationships - crystalrichard\nhttp://www.onboardly.com/startup-pr/startuppr-it-isnt-just-buzz-its-about-relationships/?__lsa=c7f3ab80\n\n======\nheatheranne\nThanks to Tyler for this post. Good perspective. Agree 100%.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCSS-In-JS and Static Rendering - jamesknelson\nhttps://frontarm.com/james-k-nelson/css-in-js-static-rendering/\n======\nLeonM\nI recently tried to use a popular UI combo (React + Material UI) and wanted to\nuse static CSS. Just good ol' regular CSS files included in the HTML head.\nThis so I could host my frontend on a static webserver (AKA a CDN) and use\nContent-Security-Policy.\n\nI had to jump deep in a rabbit hole of build systems that no-one seems to\nunderstand and a dependency hell that I haven't experienced since my Python\ndays. Any Github/Stackoverflow post I could find on the subject was already\nobsolete.\n\nThe 'advise' most devs gave would boil down to disabling CSP by allowing\nunsafe-inline, or serving the index.html through a NodeJS server and injecting\nCSP nonces through a templating system. Both are not solutions, but\nworkarounds to a problem that shouldn't exist.\n\nOnce again, I had to conclude that the modern webdev frameworks are not mature\nenough to use for any serious work. I'll try again in 2020.\n\n~~~\nChyzwar\nYou used a framework that specifically uses CSS in JS and tried to use it as a\nserver-side rendered website.\n\nThere is plenty of react frameworks that are geared toward traditional CSS:\nreactstrap, semantic-ui-react and ant design. Not to mentions that you could\nhave used any css framework.\n\n~~~\nLeonM\n> You used a framework that specifically uses CSS in JS and tried to use it as\n> a server-side rendered website.\n\nNo, I _DONT_ want server side rendering. That's the whole point. I want an\napplication that renders client side, but without the dynamic CSS injection\nthat breaks CSP.\n\nThe only current solution that is being offered [1] would be using server-side\nrendering to inject CSP nonces into your client-side rendered app... it's\nmadness.\n\nIt should be possible to compile the CSS-in-JSS into a .css file and serve\nthat css file statically.\n\n[1]\n[https://github.com/cssinjs/jss/blob/master/docs/csp.md](https://github.com/cssinjs/jss/blob/master/docs/csp.md)\n\n------\ngirst\nTo me, this looks like a solution looking for a problem, especially when the\nauthor talks about all the workarounds that become necessary just to get back\nto square one.\n\nIt also switches up the pyriamid of reliability[1].\n\n[1]:\n\n    \n    \n            /----\\\n           / CSS  \\\n          /--------\\\n              /\\\n             /JS\\\n          /--------\\\n         /   HTML   \\\n        /------------\\\n\n~~~\nmartin_drapeau\nDefinitely agree. CSS is there to provide uniformity across an application's\n(or website's) UI. Its global for a good reason.\n\n------\nforsythe\nPersonally, I don't mind the concept. I can write CSS on a microwave if I have\nto. But CSS is supposed to be simple, not to be mixed with JS.\n\nThere are good designers out there who know HTML and CSS but not JS. This will\nlead to a problem for those people.\n\nLet's be honest, you cannot just jump into a React component and edit CSS if\nyour knowledge of JS is slim to none.\n\n~~~\nggurgone\nsimple != reliable\n\nWhat is so hard about writing CSS in JS?\n\n~~~\nyowlingcat\nScoping. The way you style a large, complex application is going to be very\ndifferent using CSS-In-JS vs pure CSS.\n\n~~~\nnullandvoid\nI think you're missing the point you can do both? If you want to load a global\nstylesheet for common theming and then provide component level CSS in JS then\nthat's absolutely fine and even suggested. Having dealt with many styling\nsolutions in my time I find using styled components with the style mentioned\nis one of the greatest developer experiences I've had in many years. Being\nable to interpolate your react state within your css is just great and opens\nup the doors to massively simplify dynamic layouts which the state of which\nare much better represented in JS\n\n------\nTheodores\nIt is all getting a bit silly really. The web needs to be accessible and not\nrestricted to those under thirty that know lots about build tools and little\nabout the world. I prefer the web as originally envisaged with the HTML being\nessentially human readable rather than obfuscated machine code. It doesn't\nneed to be some data rendered on the frontend by scripts that embed CSS,\neverything works fine if done old school but properly.\n\nAfter the browser wars, the iPhone, RWD and frameworks we were left with a\ncomplicated mess. But CSS Grid, CSS variables and HTML5 semantic tags have\ncame along with Javascript that you can just use without some silly 'jQuery'\nthing to make it cross browser.\n\nThe choice is ever more complication - which is not accessible - or back to\nbasics with sensible document structure - Tim Berners Lee style - and\neverything accessible. By accessible I mean code that mere mortals can edit\nand update.\n\nNobody is asking if what they make can be edited and maintained in ten years\ntime. If you are making the next app, e.g. Instachat for Squirrels so they can\nfind their nuts then yeah, go with the mountain of here today, gone tomorrow\nbuild tools. Otherwise, if you are primarily just writing stuff for people to\nread then all the assumptions of modern web development have to be questioned.\n\nThere is a movement out there to 'intrinsic design' and using what the browser\ndoes rather than reinventing the wheel. Part of this is to use the CSS Grid\nlayout engine, the HTML5 inputs for validation and CSS variables to make\neverything responsive. Pages written this way are just plain quicker, easier\nto maintain and likely to last.\n\n~~~\narvinsim\n> There is a movement out there to 'intrinsic design' and using what the\n> browser does rather than reinventing the wheel. Part of this is to use the\n> CSS Grid layout engine, the HTML5 inputs for validation and CSS variables to\n> make everything responsive. Pages written this way are just plain quicker,\n> easier to maintain and likely to last.\n\nThis will only work when all browsers have feature parity.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhat happened to AltaVista and Yahoo? From innovator to imitator to forgotten - venturefizz\nhttp://venturefizz.com/blog/what-happened-altavista-and-yahoo-innovator-imitator-forgotten\n\n======\nprat\nMy question is only this. in the heyday of altavista or yahoo, could PG have\nknown that a hackercentric culture is whats most essential. Remember this is a\ncompletely new economy and business - just like the automobile industry in\n20th century, could anyone have predicted who would be the most important\nplayers then ? dealers? mechanics? engineers? manufacturers?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSo much for recession proof: U.S. video game sales take a 17 percent dip in March - peter123\nhttp://venturebeat.com/2009/04/16/us-video-game-sales-take-a-17-percent-dip-in-march/\n======\npotatolicious\nEhhh I think it'd be wise not to jump to conclusions. I'm a pretty avid gamer\nmyself, and this year has seen an absolute drought of interesting games.\n\nAt any given point in a normal year I would have a want-to-buy game that's\ncoming out shortly. So far in 2009 I have not bought a single game simply\nbecause none of them are that interesting. I was looking forward to both HAWX\nand Resident Evil 5, but playing the demos for them convinced me not to buy.\n\nThe movie industry has been through this before - prompting predictions of the\nend of cinema as we know it. Except then Hollywood started producing movies\npeople wanted to watch, and last I checked the industry is thriving.\n\nI'm sure the recession has something to do with it - but I don't think it\nexplains all of the 17 percent drop.\n\n~~~\nDannoHung\nHAWX was awesome. The demo doesn't really give you enough of an idea of what\nthe full game is actually like.\n\nLet me paint you a picture: There are escort missions that are actually really\nfun.\n\n~~~\npotatolicious\nI actually later managed to play the first 4 missions on a borrowed copy... I\nstand by my impression of the game :) It's decent fun if you have no other\ngame to compare it with, but coming in as a fan of the genre (Ace Combat et\nal) it was a sore disappointment.\n\nAircraft handling felt sticky, and I found myself fighting it constantly just\nto point the plane in the right direction - which may do well in a realistic\nsim, but this is an arcade game. The \"evasion vector\" feature is also kind of\npointless - if you relied on it to get an attack vector on every opponent you\nwould _never_ pass the missions, seeing as it takes a solid 30 seconds to lock\nonto your opponent.\n\nBoth art style and setting could use some work also. Ace Combat 6 (which is\nthe only real same-gen same-platform comparable game) had the skies filled\nwith hundreds upon hundreds of enemies, and it felt like a real _battle_\n(unrealistic as that may be). HAWX felt like miles of nothingness with a few\nbogeys (which is more realistic, but less fun).\n\n~~~\nDannoHung\nThe first 4 missions are like... training levels.\n\nThe game _seriously_ picks up a couple of missions past that. You don't even\nhave the ability to disengage your alpha limiters until mission 5 or 6 (the\none presented in the demo). As for the HUD vector thing? It's useful at\ncertain points in the game, but it's best employed in the campaign during a\ncouple of really awesome sequences where they require you to use it.\n\nMy biggest gripe is that it was short. But I think there's some major\nreplayability in there, particularly if you get some buddies to fly wingman.\n\n------\nchaosmachine\nVideo games are a cyclical market.\n\n<http://trends.google.com/trends?q=video+games%2C+santa+claus>\n\n------\nelectromagnetic\nHaving worked as a reviewer for 3 years, my personal opinion is that it\ndefinitely didn't help that no truly good games came out this March.\n\nThe only actual new game (not a sequel) that appeared to be good to me was\nH.A.W.X.. However, from the demo I couldn't say higher than an 8/10.\n\nResident Evil has always done reasonably well, however I've never liked the\nseries. Empire: Total War interests me, but I gave up on trying to follow PC\ngames after the whole DX10 only games and now they're bringing out D3D11! That\nleaves GTA: Chinatown; I'd be interested in Pokemon Platinum, but these ones\nalways feel like such a cheat.\n\nThis leaves the only games I'd have bought as H.A.W.X. (not at $70 for a game\nI don't trust to be amazing) and a DS game.\n\nIt doesn't help that prices of some of the big games haven't dropped in over 6\nmonths from their original release price. Hopefully the recession and now this\nhuge drop in games sales might get them to drop the prices of games to get\ntheir sales up. What seriously pissed me off was when the recession started,\nFallout 3 went _up_ in price.\n\n------\nwastedbrains\nI bought half life 2 this year, I am helping by buying really old games...\nhooray!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBill Gates' new startup  - nick007\nhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704409004576146061231899264.html#printMode\n\n======\npedalpete\nIs it fair to the founders of terrapower to call it Bill Gates' new startup?\n\nThough he has done a great job in getting them publicity, telling there story,\nand opening doors, is it really is startup?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSanitizing Sensitive Data: How to Get It Right (or at Least Less Wrong)[pdf] - mcguire\nhttps://proteancode.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/ae2017_final3_for_web.pdf\n======\nmcguire\nThe slides from the presentation (also PDF) are:\n[https://www.auto.tuwien.ac.at/~blieb/AE2017/presentations/ae...](https://www.auto.tuwien.ac.at/~blieb/AE2017/presentations/ae2017_chapman.pdf)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRate my Startup: SnapBill - Automated recurring billing - qixxiq\nHey guys,<p>We're a small team from South Africa that have finally decided our startup is ready for release (been in private beta here for a while).<p>* Our main focus is on creating Services, and selling them. Once you add a new service to your account, we'll automatically generate signup forms (based on custom fields you specify) and deal with all the monthly invoicing.<p>* We do provide standard invoicing (ala Freshbooks/co) but its not our focus at all and is purely intended for the once-off invoices recurring billing companies need every so often.<p>* We only support PayPal for automated payments at the moment, but more support is coming soon - promise!<p>I'd love to hear any thoughts or comments anyone has.<p>http://www.snapbill.com\n======\npetervandijck\nI am reading the homepage but don't understand why I would use this.\n\nSentences like this don't help: \"SnapBill is an online invoicing and billing\nsystem with service provisioning capabilities.\" Compare with the writing here:\n<http://aws.amazon.com/fps/>\n\nYour explanation here (\"Our main focus is on creating Services, and selling\nthem.\") isn't really clear either. Find a good way to explain that main focus\nin 2 sentences, and put that on top of the page.\n\n------\nSilhouette\nI write this in the hope it will be taken constructively: I think you\ndesperately need a good information architect and copywriter to redo your home\npage, tour, etc.\n\nI have spent much of the past two days looking at various options for\nrecurring billing and related automation for a start-up. It sounds like your\nservice ought to be of interest to me, right now.\n\nUnfortunately, I have absolutely no idea after scanning your home page and\ntour page what your target market is. Are you aimed at invoicing for\nfreelancers/agencies with a few repeat clients? Monthly billing for end users\nof subscription web services?\n\nYou have written a lot (probably far too much) on your home page and tour\npage, but without enough detail about what your service _actually does_ to\ndecide whether it's worth investigating further. For example, you mention tax,\nbut not whether you automatically handle VAT based on location (without which\nyou aren't going to get very far here in Europe). You mention payment\ncollection and credit cards, but without a clear statement of your level of\nPCI DSS compliance and whether clients need to handle any card data on their\nown systems to use your service (without which you probably aren't going to\nget very far at all).\n\nYou aren't short of buzzwords and transparent marketing drivel, though, and\nthere are a few silly spelling errors and the like as well. That all paints a\nvery unprofessional picture given that you're asking clients to trust you with\nvital financial matters.\n\nFor what it's worth, I did spend about 15 minutes looking over your site\nbefore writing this post, partly to try to be honest but constructive in the\ncriticism, and partly out of genuine interest. In roughly the same amount of\ntime looking at the web site of another business this morning, I had confirmed\nthat they offered broadly the service the start-up was looking for, identified\nmost of the details about how the start-up's pricing plans could be\nimplemented using their system, identified a few specific details to ask about\nand an e-mail address where the questions could be sent if and when the start-\nup was ready to explore more deeply, worked out approximately what the monthly\ncosts would be for adopting the service, and begun exploring the\ncustomisations and APIs to see whether they could address any of those\nquestions I mentioned before.\n\nOn a more constructive note, your site does look attractive, and I expect most\nof the bad impression it made on me really could be overcome quite quickly\nwith a bit of professional help to structure the content, so that the\nimportant details come across and the general feel is more professional\nservice and less budget store TV ad.\n\n~~~\nqixxiq\nPoint taken, we are going to get a copy writer to go over the site as soon as\npossible.\n\n~~~\npetervandijck\nYou should be able to do this yourselves. (Good copywriters that understand\nyour business are very very, _very_ hard to find.)\n\nHere's a random example paragraph:\n\n\"The SnapBill billing system is a fully-featured online billing automation\nengine. The system is secure and easy to use.Sending invoices, quotations and\nstatements for recurring or subscription based services has never been so\nsimple. Add your own services to SnapBill and allow your clients to order them\nvia a branded and secure online order centre. Accept payment from your clients\nthrough any of our supported payment collection channels.\"\n\nSo what did you just tell me there? \"We let you easily bill people, send\ninvoices and accept payments\". That's a much better sentence, but even that\nyou can remove because by the time we've arrived at this paragraph we know\nthat you do online invoicing and payments. In other words: remove this entire\nparagraph. And most of the homepage is like that.\n\nAnother example: your first paragraph:\n\n\"SnapBill is an online invoicing and billing system with service provisioning\ncapabilities. SnapBill is perfect for all businesses, especially those\nproviding services requiring an automated recurring or subscription billing\nsystem and payment collection facilities.\"\n\nAre you trying to say that this is aimed at Saas companies? Then just say it.\nNo real person will understand that paragraph, at least not anyone you'd want\nto date. Just say something like (if I am right): \"Invoicing and billing for\nonline subscription services.\"\n\nRemove redundancies and marketing speak.\n\nAs an example, \"SnapBill is perfect for all businesses, especially those\".\nRead that twice. You're basically contradicting the first part of the sentence\n(perfect for everyone) in the second part (perfect for some especially).\n\nSo guidelines to do your own copy-editing:\n\n1\\. Remove, remove, remove. Remove words. Remove filler. 2\\. Think what you're\ntrying to say. With every sentence and paragraph, what are you trying to say.\nThen say it as clearly as you possibly can. 3\\. Show it to target audience and\nask what questions they're trying to answer. Then answer those.\n\nGood luck!\n\n~~~\nSilhouette\n> (Good copywriters that understand your business are very very, very hard to\n> find.)\n\nFWIW, this is why I also suggested an information architect. First you need to\nfigure out what the relevant information is, and to separate introductory\nmaterial for the home page and tour from finer details for prospects who need\nto know more about specific areas. Then you need to present that information\nclearly and in a suitably professional voice. These are different goals,\nthough of course they are related.\n\n~~~\npetervandijck\nMuch appreciated (since I am an information architect) :)\n\nTo do this yourself, find your target audience (some of them in this thread),\nand call them on Skype. Put a screensharing app. Have them go over your site\nand speak-out-loud, focusing on what the info is that they want to find. Don't\ntalk a lot yourself, the only words you should be saying are \"why do you say\nthat\" and \"what are you thinking/looking for now?\". Make HEAPS of notes. Then\nhave them go over your competitors sites. Make HEAPS of notes. After each call\n(don't wait, don't go for lunch) immediately have a long discussion with your\nteam. Make a long list of things they are trying to answer.\n\nDo this with 2, 3 people in your target audience (then send them an Amazon\ngift certificate of 100$), and you should have enough information to make this\nwork.\n\nBetter than hiring a consultant :)\n\n------\nqixxiq\nClickable: <http://www.snapbill.com>\n\n------\njaggs\nToo much on the home page. Pick the top four features which you feel will\nappeal to your target market and feature those solely on the front page, with\na 'more detail' type link so those who are interested can find out more.\n\nYou need more than a copywriter, you also need a more modern design. It's\nrather dated in a funny sort of way. Take a look at some of your rivals to get\nan idea of what modern looks like. (freshbooks.com)?\n\nModern web application sites focus intensively on helping the user make up\ntheir mind within seconds as to whether to continue investigating your\nservice, which is why the Take a Tour button, and Try it Now options are so\nprominent on most web app sites.\n\nIt's not that you're doing it wrong, it's just that you're giving yourself an\nuphill battle to attract and sign potential customers.\n\nHope that helps for a starter. :)\n\n------\nJonoW\nGood luck guys, eager to see a SA startup make it big (well post Thawte at\nleast)\n\n------\nJoelB\nSmall thing: I think having the name be the first item in the title is much\nbetter as far as tab navigation:\n\n\"SnapBill - Online Invoicing and Billing System\" as opposed to the current\n\"Online Invoicing and Billing System - SnapBill\"\n\n------\nSeanNieuwoudt\nOne more piece of UI advice, the \"Tour, Packages & Pricing Sign up!\" menu is\nnot visible enough. I find myself constantly looking over it while on pages\nother than the home page.\n\nS\n\n------\npjy04\nI would also look into doing an automatic video about your product and do a\nquick demo reel. (no sound)\n\n------\nSeanNieuwoudt\nGreat stuff guys! well done, looking forward to seeing more about SnapBill in\nthe media\n\n~~~\nqixxiq\nWe've got a lot in the pipeline :D\n\n------\ninstakill\nRock on Jaco. Great to see some Safrican representation on here with great\nproducts.\n\n------\njorangreef\nAmandla\n\n~~~\nqixxiq\nAwethu!\n\n~~~\n3pt14159\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amandla_(power)>\n\n(for the interested)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Ketchup.today, Dynamic Newsletters for Reddit, Twitter, and Hacker News - charleshan\nhttps://github.com/charleshan/ketchup-chrome-extension\n======\ncharleshan\nIt's on the front page of the Chrome Web Store!\n[https://twitter.com/charleshancom/status/1140849864286228481](https://twitter.com/charleshancom/status/1140849864286228481)\n\nThe Chrome extension is only three lines long so I'm not sure if it deserves\nthe spotlight but hey, it gets the job done :)\n\n------\nNanocurrency\nThanks for making this. I just signed up and the first email looks great. I\nthink you should link the channels page on the landing page of your website.\n\n[https://ketchup.today/channels/](https://ketchup.today/channels/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAMA with Gayle Laakmann Mcdowell - theamydance\nhttps://medium.com/ladies-storm-hackathons/lsh-presents-gayle-laakmann-mcdowell-4a281088c98b\n======\nhallie1337\nShe spent so much time (over two hours!) going through each of these\nquestions, and giving long, well-thought-out, individual responses. It was\nreally great, and I hope to see more stuff like this in LSH's future!\n\n------\ngailees\nDoes anyone know of any other AMAs Gayle has done?\n\nThis AMA was full of wisdom and I would love to see how she would respond to\nother questions that I forgot to ask this time around.\n\n------\nLyoness\nAwesome\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Neuroscience of Trust - kyle_morris_\nhttps://hbr.org/2017/01/the-neuroscience-of-trust\n======\nkyle_morris_\n_Former Herman Miller CEO Max De Pree once said, “The first responsibility of\na leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the\ntwo, the leader must become a servant.”_\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Texas Instruments 99/4: World’s First 16-Bit Computer - rbanffy\nhttp://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-texas-instruments-994-worlds-first-16bit-computer\n======\nlispm\nIt was't the world's first 16bit computer. See:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16-bit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16-bit)\n\nMaybe it was the first 16bit HOME computer... as mentioned in the text.\n\n~~~\nIrishJourno\nHi -- I'm one of the editor's at IEEE Spectrum. You're absolutely correct: as\nthe article does make clear, it was the first 16-bit HOME computer. We should\nhave been more specific in the headline, our bad.\n\n------\nschlupa\nThe Basic was slow for several reasons. 1\\. Double interpretation: As other\nalready pointed out, the interpreter was written in an interpreted language, a\nkind of byte code if you prefer. 2\\. GROM routines: What added to the pain was\nthat a lot of the routines necessary for the program were not in ROM but in TI\nspecific GROM. All the \"CALL something\" (CALL CHAR, CALL HCHAR, CALL VCHAR,\nCALL SOUND, etc.) commands were GROM routines. GROM were a kind of serial ROMS\nthat only TI manufactured (one of the reasons third parties had such a\nstruggle with that machine). 3\\. VRAM: the worst offender why TI-BASIC (and\nTI-EXTENDED-BASIC) were so slow was that the basic console only had a wopping\n256 bytes of memory. Yes, you read it right, the CPU only had 256 bytes of\nfast 16 bit memory. This memory was used by the system and were not accessible\nto the programmer. So where was the BASIC code then? It was stored in the\nvideo RAM and the CPU had no direct way to read and write to it. It always had\nto go through the TMS9918 video chip. This has 2 consequences, it was\nobviously slow and it clogged the video RAM. So unless one bought the 32K RAM\nexpansion (which was outrageously expensive) or the mini-memory module (but\nthen no Extended Basic was possible) it was impossible to use the graphic\nmodes, making that incredibly advanced graphic chip a dud.\n\nIt's probably the strangest machine (aka f..d up) of the home computer era.\n\n------\nicedchai\nMy parents got one of these when I was 7... It was a TI/994A, actually. I have\nfond memories of playing Parsec on it! I also taught myself Basic...\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsec_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsec_\\(video_game\\))\n\n~~~\nMichaelMoser123\ni think TI basic was much easier than comodore basic; (still it really needed\nthat extension cartridge)\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI_BASIC_(TI_99/4A)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI_BASIC_\\(TI_99/4A\\))\n\nAlso it turns out that the interpreter was slow because it was written in an\ninterpreted language, but it was good enough for simple games because they had\nbuilt-in sprites.\n\nInteresting that they have emulators/simulators for it.\n\n[http://www.99er.net/emul.shtml](http://www.99er.net/emul.shtml)\n[http://www.99er.net/win994a.shtml](http://www.99er.net/win994a.shtml)\n\n~~~\nflomo\nNo idea if this is true, but the meme was that you could only write BASIC for\nthe TI99, assembly was forbidden somehow. For the most part, hackers avoided\nthis system like the plague, despite all the advertisements starring Bill\nCosby.\n\n~~~\npmiller2\n100% not true. There was an editor/assembler cartridge that let you program in\nASM.\n\n~~~\nnsxwolf\nYour other option was the Mini Memory cartridge, which added a scaled down\nversion of Editor/Assembler as well as 8K of RAM and a battery backup.\n\nIt was an economical way to dabble in assembly without springing for the 32K\nRAM expansion and disk system.\n\n------\ngbin\nMy first computer! I was 6. Started with TI invaders and ended up playing with\nassembly with minimemory a couple years later. Not unlike the Amiga, this\nmachine was so in advance on its time for example with its hardware sprites.\n\nThis thing alone sparked my entire career.\n\nIf there are original TI engineers in the audience, it would be amazing to get\na kind of AMA.\n\n------\nIrishJourno\nHi Folks -- Stephen Cass here, one of the editors at IEEE Spectrum. Rather\nthan replying to a bunch of comments individually, let me say here that the\nfolks pointing out it wasn't the first ever 16-bit computer are absolutely\ncorrect. As the article quickly makes clear, it was the first 16-bit HOME\ncomputer: we should have been more precise in the headline, and that's our\nbad.\n\nSpeaking personally, I really loved having this article in Spectrum and\nreading everyone's comments, as I too was a 99/4A O.G. from the 1980s, (the\nmachine was my first computer before I moved onto the BBC Micro). And word,\nyes, the system was squirrely, but I did at least learn to count in hex in my\nhead trying to turn user-defined characters into poor-man's sprites in TI-\nBASIC\n\n------\nCamperBob2\nHere's a don't-miss article on the internal politics and strategy behind TI's\nearly personal computing efforts:\n\n[https://books.google.ca/books?id=wy4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA63&lpg=PA...](https://books.google.ca/books?id=wy4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&dq=ti+99/4a+lawsuit&source=bl&ots=vWNx4mFFgg&sig=jkeSAPUwPQCTPoBj-\nAJy2d3lYtA&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=ti%2099%2F4a%20lawsuit&f=false)\n\nThe rest of that magazine issue is pretty interesting too, including the\ninterview with Ann Winblad, fresh off her $15M exit. (\"The male mystique was\nkilled for me at age 2.\")\n\n------\nprotomyth\nOur school had one with pretty much everything in the way of expansions. It\ntook up a lot of space on the table. I loved the voice synthesizer module\nwhich I fiddle around enough with to make it speak Dakota (Sioux) with a\npassable tone.\n\n------\n80211\nIt may have been the first 16-bit home computer, but it certainly wasn't the\nfirst 16-bit computer. Or even the first 16-bit computer with a CPU on one\nchip.\n\nAnd there were many, many bit-sliced 16-bit computers that predated it by\nyears. Like the AYK-14:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/AYK-14](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/AYK-14)\n\n~~~\npinewurst\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlwind_I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlwind_I)\n\nWhirlwind, circa 1950, was probably the 1st 16-bit computer.\n\n------\nempressplay\nI love the TI-99/4A but what about the SuperPet 9000? It had a second 16-bit\nCPU you could use (the 6809) in _the same address space_ as the 8-bit 6502\nCPU!\n\n[http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=675](http://www.old-\ncomputers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=675)\n\n~~~\nido\nThe 6809 was an 8 bit cpu (albeit an advanced one).\n\n------\nnobleach\nThis was my first computer. I remember the huge RF modulator that came with it\nto hook up to my TV. I didn't get any games until quite a bit later (TI\nInvaders) I spent many hours trying to program tic-tac-toe from a book I got\nfrom the library.\n\n~~~\nT-hawk\nThe RF modulator is huge because it's also the power supply. Yet another odd\nquirk of this machine's design.\n\n~~~\nnobleach\nOh wow, thanks for that! I've often thought of picking up one of these\nmachines again... but I quickly realize that I'd really have little to do with\nit other than boot it up, and look at it. I think I'm probably more suited for\nan emulator.\n\n------\njasode\nThe most enduring memory from TI-99 wasn't the games like MunchMan and Parsec.\nInstead, it was a specific oddity of the TI-BASIC language.\n\nIn the free TI-BASIC (built into ROM), the language had no boolean operators\nlike \"OR\", \"AND\". Instead, what programmers did was use math tricks to\nsimulate those booleans ... something like this:\n\nSimulate \"OR\" boolean:\n\n    \n    \n      IF (X=3) + (Y=5) THEN\n    \n\nSimulate \"AND\" boolean:\n\n    \n    \n      IF (X=3) * (Y=5) THEN\n    \n\nAs a child, it was extremely confusing to read those lines of code. _Why in\nthe world are we adding or multiplying nonsense like that?!?_ It turns out the\nprogrammers took advantage of any value greater than 0 as \"TRUE\", and 0 as\nfalse. Therefore, if either side evaluated to 0, multiplying the conditions\nwould be FALSE.\n\nHowever, you paid $100 extra for TI EXTENDED BASIC cartridge[1], that language\nhad extra fancy features like the keywords \"AND\" and \"OR\". No more workarounds\nusing \"+\" and \"* \" operators. That was progress in 1980s.\n\nThat early lesson in \"inherent complexity\" has affected how I view arguments\ntoday about \"language simplicity\". Not having things like \"AND\" \"OR\" makes the\n_language syntax 's formal specification_ simpler on a superficial level but\nit ends up making it more complex in user code.\n\n[1]\n[https://www.google.com/search?q=ti+extended+basic+cartridge&...](https://www.google.com/search?q=ti+extended+basic+cartridge&source=lnms&tbm=isch)\n\n~~~\nnsxwolf\nI've always heard that TI-BASIC conformed to a \"strict ANSI BASIC\" standard,\nwhereas almost everyone else licensed Microsoft's version of BASIC.\n\nMaybe that's why?\n\n~~~\nschlupa\nMay be. TI BASIC was also limited in a lot of other ways. It didn't have ELSE\nand the THEN clause didn't allow for anything other than a line number as jump\ndestination. Only one statement per line. So doing something as simple as 10\nIF a=1 THEN v=10 ELSE v=50 would have to be written as 10 IF a=1 THEN 40 20\nLET v=50 30 GOTO 50 40 LET v=10 50 ...\n\nThis was IMHO the worst restriction of that BASIC.\n\nThe only feature on the plus side of that BASIC was that it used the BCD\nfloating format they also used in their calculator. So 13 digits precision\nwith numeric range of 10^-99 to 10^99. When I switched later to the Apple II,\nI was shocked at the ridicule binary floating point format that couldn't even\nadd 2 simple numbers correctly :-)\n\nThe TI-EXTENDED BASIC was an absolute must if you wanted to do serious\nprogramming. It enabled the sprites, had fancy stuff like named subroutines\n(that could even be called recursively) and a lot of restriction of the\noriginal BASIC were lifted.\n\n------\nXoros\nMy school had a 4A (which was pretty unusual in France back then) and it was\nthe first time I touched a computer for programming.\n\n2 friends and I were the only ones in school interested in it so we basically\nwere in the \"computer room\" every lunch break :) We didn't have any recording\ndevice so it was just programming little stuff that will disappear at the end\nof the session. Had really great times !\n\nI was 12. It was 33 years ago. Still developing.\n\n------\nFrogolocalypse\nMy first computer was the 4A. I still have the ti-basic programming manual.\n\nWhen I was 11 I used it to create fully-leveled NPC characters for dungeons\nand dragons.\n\n------\nblackguardx\nI had one of these as a child in the '80s. My family had it hooked up to a\nblack and white TV and I didn't know it could do color until seeing\nscreenshots online in the early 2000s.\n\n------\nchrisseaton\nSomething interesting that I learned recently is that the Manchester 'Baby'\nmachine was a 32-bit computer, back in 1948.\n\n------\nUncleSlacky\nThere was a good article recently in El Reg about the TI community that still\nexists:\n[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/27/community_builds_ar...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/27/community_builds_around_ti_99_4a/)\n\n------\nnsxwolf\nI wouldn't ordinarily pimp my own (poorly made) video, it's not even\nmonetized, but I have the only TI-99/4 demonstration on YouTube if you're\ninterested:\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBgxOaUU7lQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBgxOaUU7lQ)\n\n~~~\nmikejmoffitt\nI'm sorry, but I genuinely don't understand what you mean. There are thousands\nof videos of people demonstrating use of this computer. Is there a specific\nproperty of a demonstration you are looking for?\n\n~~~\nnsxwolf\nThe TI-99/4? Not that I've seen. 4A, yes. Maybe I'm in some kind of filter\nbubble, but I've searched far and wide for another demonstration of the 4.\n\nCan't imagine there are thousands of videos of the 4 since there were barely\nthousands of them sold.\n\n------\nagumonkey\nDidn't TI also had a dispute about the first microprocessor ? something\ninternal they didn't really market or .. I forgot.\n\nps: I always loved the 99 design, especially with the side modules. Reminds me\nof old analog Meridian hifi modules\n\n------\nnsxwolf\nAs an owner I can attest to the terribleness of the keyboard. I've used most\nof the bad chicklet keyboards out there - ZX, PCjr, Atari 400... this takes\nthe cake.\n\n~~~\njustin66\nI remember the Atari and TI being about the same level of horribleness. With\nthe ZX and PCjr being unimaginably worse.\n\n------\n_Codemonkeyism\n3 Mhz in 1981, very nice.\n\nThe games (Alpine, ...) I've looked up on YT look like C64 basic games though.\nWhy was that?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nA Well-Funded Startup Emerges From the Unemployment Lines - jyu\nhttp://www.wired.com/business/2012/08/learnup/\n\n======\nbriggsbio\nThis is one of those \"wow, so perfectly obvious no one has never done it.\"\nThis could (and probably should) the hiring process at many retail and service\njobs. In my teens I would have been all about proving myself by taking\nwhatever quiz or prescreening training available to get the job. This could\nhave micro impacts on allowing the most tenacious to get the job rather than\nthe most experience, which for the level of jobs they're focusing on initially\ncould be a positive force. Just imagine if Wal-Mart was filled with the most\nproactive, not just the one with 6 months more of register experience.\nCertainly many caveats to these statements, but with some evolution and\nexecution this could have really important impacts on the way low-level wage\nemployment is conducted. The interesting aspects would be to see it move up\nthe org chart. Also love the customer development of them walking the\nunemployment lines to understand the market.\n\n------\nsimantel\nThis sounds like a great way for big employers to require what would otherwise\nhave been on-the-job training be completed in advance of even applying. Which\nis undoubtedly fantastic for employers, but probably less so for the\nunemployed.\n\n~~~\nforensic\nOn-the-job training is already dead.\n\nLearnUp, by recognizing it first, will profit as the middle class further\ndisintegrates into various strata of indentured servitude.\n\nCorporations hold all the chips and so the labour force is obligated to take a\npaycut--but since there is a minimum wage the paycut has to come somewhere\nelse. The market treats regulations as damage and routes around them.\n\nInstead of the paycut coming in dollars, it comes in the form of pre-\napplication training requirements, internships, strange work hour\narrangements, complicated contracting situations, etc.\n\n~~~\ntrue_religion\nOn-the-job training emerged because there was no way for workers to gain\ncertain skills they needed without working under a corporation.\n\nSometimes the limiter was capital expenses....You couldn't go to your toolshed\nand train on how to work in a steel mill, so instead you got trained on the\njob.\n\nSometimes the limiter was social.... such as with lawyers---they receive on\nthe job training because you can't just graduate and start taking cases for\n\"practice\".\n\nOn-the-job training will remain alive and well for people who are hiring into\nspecialized positions (e.g. database scaling specialists, engineers for\nfinancial firms, anything to do with hardware, etc.).\n\nWhy do you think it's dead?\n\n~~~\nforensic\nIt's very easy to train for eg steel mill work in eg community colleges.\nSpecialized jobs can easily have their training outsourced. When a job pays\n>minimum wage OTJ training can be paid fr by an apprentice paycut. When a job\npays close to minimum wage, this is impossible, so the OTJ training is\noutsourced and the employee must pay out of pocket. This amounts to a paycut--\nan innovation of the market in response to the artificial market distorting\nminimum wage.\n\n------\nsurferbayarea\nThis is a great idea!! Also there is a lot of useful content already on the\nsite, even on topics like programming/startups. This was the missing link in\nthe hiring chain.\n\n------\ndreamdu5t\nAm I crazy or does Wired have the best tech startup journalism? These are the\nkind of startups that should be covered by TechCrunch and funded by YC.\n\nMore evidence that public education is completely broken in terms of job\ntraining.\n\n~~~\nahi\nPublic education is about citizen training not job training.\n\nOnce upon a time, employers would actually train their new employees. These\ndays they have managed to push those training costs onto publicly supported\ncommunity colleges and the unemployed.\n\n~~~\nn_time\nprivatize profits and socialize losses. :D\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPharen: A lispy language that compiles to PHP - Scriptor\nhttp://github.com/scriptor/pharen\n\n======\nScriptor\nThis was very much a learning experience and I'm sure there will be lots in\nthe code that isn't done properly. If you find something wrong, please let me\nknow!\n\nPharen was also started to eventually abstract out things I don't like about\nPHP's syntax, and maybe add some new ones. It's not meant as a competitor to\nother lisps!\n\nSome special features are micros (closer to C macros than true Lisp macros)\nand partials (partial evaluation). Documentation for those can be found near\nthe end of the linked page.\n\nIt is by no means close to completion. Although lisp should be entirely\nexpression-based, parts of Pharen can't really be used as expressions yet\n(namely conditionals). Closely related is that returning something other than\nthe last expression in a function has to be done manually.\n\nAny questions, glaring (or subtle) problems, or suggestions you have are\ndefinitely welcome.\n\n------\npetercooper\nNicely executed this one! Is it me, though, or has writing cross-language\ncompilers become a sort of open source fad in the last 12 months? There seem\nto be a ton popping up lately. It'd be cool to have a list actually..\n\n~~~\njashkenas\nTo add one to your list: I just pushed out CoffeeScript 0.2.5 a couple of\nminutes ago. (CoffeeScript is a Ruby/Potion/Python/Harmony-ish to JavaScript\ncompiler, for those who haven't seen it.)\n\nI'm doing a talk about it tomorrow (Thursday) night at NYCJS, and if you live\nin New York and work on a source-to-source compiler, you should come and\ndiscuss implementation ideas.\n\nResources for doing this sort of thing are hard to find on the web. There's\nhardly space for comparison between \"serious compilers\", and things like like\nCoffeeScript and Pharen, which are both well under two thousand lines of code.\n\n~~~\nScriptor\nLooking at CoffeeScript was definitely an inspiration to pick up the pace on\nPharen. :)\n\nI'm actually a student in New York but can't be there Thursday. Will you be\ngiving this talk at any other events?\n\n~~~\njashkenas\nThat's too bad. I don't have any plans for other events at the moment, but if\nyou're in New York we should go grab a coffee sometime and talk shop.\njashkenas(at)gmail, if you want to get in touch.\n\n------\nieure\nNice start. I was considering something simliar, but I just didn't care enough\nabout PHP to work on it.\n\nStuff that I'd like to see improved:\n\n1\\. if/elseif/else syntax is pretty ugly. What are the chances of getting\nif/when/unless/cond?\n\n2\\. Nicer array syntax. Maybe coopt the vector literal syntax, since PHP\ndoesn't have anything similar: [1 2 3]. Failing that, quotes: '(1 2 3) ->\narray(1, 2, 3). Not sure how to handle cases where you would have something\ninside the quote that would eval, though.\n\n3\\. Not thrilled with the superglobals/array syntax, which are more verbose\n(or the same, in the case of superglobals).\n\n4\\. It isn't clear if/how this interacts with objects. Does it work like:\n(object->method arg1…argN)? What about static methods?\n\n~~~\nScriptor\nThanks for the suggestions.\n\n1\\. Pretty likely, though I'm a little hesitant to replace the current syntax\nfor if. The others shouldn't be hard to implement.\n\n2\\. I've been planning to use the vector literal syntax. I've basically been\nlazy since PHP's array() construct makes it easy to cheat.\n\n3\\. Indexing into arrays presents a problem. Pharen doesn't know what's a\nscalar, array, or function name at the moment so a special function for\nindexing is needed. One possible solution is to prefix an array's name, so it\nwould be (:some_array 4) or something similar. I personally think the\nsuperglobal syntax is cleaner, if not more succinct. Any suggestions?\n\n4\\. I haven't implemented an object system yet because I want to try something\nnew here instead of simply copying PHP's syntax.\n\n~~~\nieure\n1\\. Perhaps you could keep the PHP-style syntax around under a different name.\n\n2\\. Sweet.\n\n3\\. (:some_array 4) seems perfectly reasonable. Would that interact with\nsuperglobals the same way? e.g. ($:server \"PHP_SELF\"). I believe that PHP 5.3\nor 6 has return value dereferencing, so I don't think it's necessary to know\nthe type - you could just do (:(array 1 2 3) 1)\n\n4\\. If you haven't played with Clojure, you might find inspiration there. It\nhas interop with native Java instances, though I find it a little too syntaxy\nfor a Lisp, and PHP doesn't have such deep class structure.\n\nThanks for responding.\n\n------\nTrevorBurnham\nI don't understand the proliferation of cross-language compilers. As an\nacademic exercise, great, but for a large project, surely debugging is going\nto be a pain when the errors refer to code that you never wrote?\n\n~~~\nScriptor\nRight now I certainly wouldn't use it for any large projects. It's a pain to\ndebug so it's really a tradeoff between better syntax and features and\nproblems in the development cycle. Making the output code nicely formatted\nhelps greatly.\n\nThe debugging problem can also be lessened by keeping each file small, so that\nsyntax errors are easier to localize. In the future, it's possible that I'll\nmake a debugging system that can read the PHP errors and find the Pharen code\nresponsible for it.\n\n------\nThinkWriteMute\nThis looks pretty good, I like how it structures out.\n\nYou should write an example pastebin or some other simple web app that could\neasily be done in PHP.\n\n~~~\nScriptor\nDone! <http://github.com/Scriptor/pharen/tree/master/pastebin/>\n\nNote that html.phn, which contains a few simple html-element functions, should\nbe compiled before the pastebin works.\n\n~~~\nThinkWriteMute\nThat is so much easier to read than PHP. Wow, consider me \"sold\".\n\n------\nmahmud\nWhy so arcish? Lisp used def* forms from day ONE, like God/McCarthy indented.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSales for Startups 101: 3 Rules to Success - koichi\nhttp://okdork.com/2010/08/12/sales-for-startups-101-3-rules-to-success/\n\n======\nkadavy\nI like the thought that \"sales is not selling, its understanding.\" Sales\npeople are way more pleasant when they really take the time to understand your\nsituation and needs.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Tools for containerizing external services for dev - pinglamb\nhttps://github.com/pinglamb/stocker\n======\nksafranski\nHave you seen DevLab?\n[https://github.com/TechnologyAdvice/DevLab](https://github.com/TechnologyAdvice/DevLab)\n\nBuilt it to get around some issues we had with Docker-Compose.\n\n~~~\npinglamb\nwow, that's great. I really like the before-task/after-task concept, which\nmakes that a more complete workflow.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nOn sufficiently smart compilers - YAFZ\nhttp://osa1.net/posts/2015-08-09-sufficiently-smart-compiler.html\n======\nusername223\n> Unreliable optimizations and performance-critical software\n\nThis is why we will not have, and should not want, a \"sufficiently smart\ncompiler,\" but instead a \"sufficiently predictable compiler.\" If the compiler\nis an enormously complex inference system, then tiny language-level changes\ncan result in huge performance changes (see \"space leaks\" in Haskell, or\n\"auto-vectorization\" in basically anything). The solution isn't adding more\nknobs to the compiler; it's adding easier inter-language communication.\nScripting languages like Matlab, Perl, Python, and R have been doing this\nright for decades: make a good effort at a specific domain (math, text,\nstatistics), and make it easy to call into lower-level code for the key\npieces.\n\n~~~\ncodygman\nSpace leaks are a bad example imo since they happen in other languages as\nwell.\n\n~~~\nTyr42\nYeah, but having a chain of functions failing to fuse properly can be quite\nsurprising.\n\n~~~\ncodygman\nThere seemed to be an implication that Hindley Milner type inference leads to\nunpredictable performance, you can see that is untrue with ml and ocaml.\n\n------\nnhaehnle\nCompiler optimizations as part of libraries is definitely something I would\nlike to see more languages explore. I think this is something that could fit\nquite well into Rust, actually, with its philosophy of allowing compiler\nplugins.\n\nA simple example: Most high-level array implementations have a _reserve_\nmethod that allows you to specify the expected number of items added to the\narray. This allows allocating all required memory up front and hence avoids\nre-allocs and the associated copies.\n\nIn many cases, it would be trivial for a compiler to automatically determine\nthe size of the array and add a reserve call automatically (because the\nentries are added in a loop with an easily-determined iteration count). Yet\ncompilers cannot be allowed to do that, because doing so changes the visible\nbehaviour of the program.\n\nHowever, _the library in which the array is implemented_ is free to define the\nsemantics of the array. So that library could provide some hint to the\ncompiler, in essence a library-provided optimization pass, which allows such\nreserve calls to be added automatically.\n\nI'm not saying that coming up with a good DSL to describe such optimization is\neasy, but it may well be worthwhile in the long run.\n\n~~~\ndbaupp\nHaskell's GHC offers optimisations-in-libraries via its RULES pragma[1], which\nallows specifying rewrite rules. These are an important part of the\ndeforestation[2] that makes, for instance, lists and vectors fast.\n\n[1]:\n[https://wiki.haskell.org/Playing_by_the_rules](https://wiki.haskell.org/Playing_by_the_rules)\n\n[2]:\n[http://hackage.haskell.org/package/vector-0.7.1/docs/src/Dat...](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/vector-0.7.1/docs/src/Data-\nVector-Generic.html#line-212)\n\n~~~\nnhaehnle\nYeah, that's actually mentioned in the article ;)\n\n------\ncom2kid\nTools already exist for doing run time traces of compiled programs and then\noptimizing accordingly. A lot of what they focus on is improving locality,\nmoving portions of the executable that are run together near each other so\nimprove the instruction cache hit rate. They also much more aggressively\ninline, to the point that the overall code size increases but hopefully so\ndoes performance.\n\nYou actually get a huge amount of perf gains just from improving locality, a\nlot of in-depth optimizations are possible but I am not sure what compilers\nnow days actually do, it has been a long time since I worked on a compiler\nteam!\n\n~~~\nhaldean\nGot any links? I'd love to check out the tools you're talking about.\n\n~~~\nvilya\nProfile Guided Optimisation is the search term you're looking for. For one\nexample: GCC does it (you may need to use gprof as well, can't really\nremember).\n\n------\nstcredzero\nI'd like to see projects that can integrate the runtime information provided\nby a JIT VM. What if such a project used this information from the start?\nThen, the programmers might be able to use information like: This variable has\nonly ever had an int in it, ever, over the entire lifetime of the app.\n\nSuch information might be problematic to integrate into a legacy project, but\nin a language which allowed for optional type annotation, such information\ncould be fed into programmer tools and more easily analyzed. (Example: So,\nthis code here where it's not an int -- do we really need to have this, or\ncould we move the error checking elsewhere, so we can just say that's an int?)\n\n~~~\ndouche\nOr you could use a language with static typing. It might be the line of work\nthat I'm in, but I've never encountered a case where dynamic typing has really\nbeen helpful - more often it's been a source of errors, where non-obvious type\ncoercion has been performed by the interpreter/runtime. I can only think of\none case where dynamic typing was necessary, but I'll chalk that up to a\nreally poorly designed COM API that I had to work with.\n\n~~~\njcranmer\nThe problems most people have with static typing are related to explicit\ntyping, not static typing per se. (And somewhat inane conversions tend to give\ndynamic typing a bad name as well).\n\nThere are two cases I can think of where the static typing in the most common\nlanguages are insufficient. The first is union types--you can't easily express\na data structure like JSON in Java (although one could argue this is a\nfeature, not a bug). The second case is where you need to map types to\ninstances of those types, something akin to a Map<Class<T>, T> in Java syntax.\nWhile you can generally specify the latter at a method syntax (e.g., public\n<T> T get(Class<T> clazz)), there's no way to write that method without having\nto resort to subverting the type system.\n\nDynamic typing can be beneficial if you would otherwise be stuck subverting\nthe type system more often than following it, although that's as much of an\nargument for more powerful static type system as it is one for dynamic typing.\n\n------\ncaf\nIt seems like errors in the rewrite rules themselves would potentially create\nvery hard-to-debug problems with the runtime code.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nVenture Capitalist Becomes Web 2.0 Entrepreneur - jasonlbaptiste\nhttp://www.pehub.com/23798/venture-capitalist-becomes-web-20-entrepreneur/\n======\nkschrader\n_I can’t imagine an ex-VC launching such a company without one._\n\nReally??? He can't be serious here. I know a number of ex-VCs who have done\nthis.\n\n------\nsabat\nFail.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nOSX For Hackers - zackattack\nhttps://gist.github.com/2260182\n======\njamessb\nThis seems to be a copy of Mathias Bynen's Dotfiles\n(<https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.osx>, 'sensible\nhacker defaults for OS X'), with a few minor changes. Specifically, comments\nexplainung each line have been changed to echo statements, and the following\nlines have been inserted:\n\n    \n    \n      echo \"Use current directory as default search scope in Finder\"\n      defaults write com.apple.finder FXDefaultSearchScope -string \"SCcf\"\n    \n      echo \"Show Path bar in Finder\"\n      defaults write com.apple.finder ShowPathbar -bool true\n    \n      echo \"Show Status bar in Finder\"\n      defaults write com.apple.finder ShowStatusBar -bool true\n    \n      echo \"Set a shorter Delay until key repeat\"\n      defaults write NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat -int 12\n    \n    \n\nAlso, some commands have been commented out:\n\n    \n    \n      # Automatically hide and show the Dock\n      # defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool true\n    \n      # Show remaining battery time; hide percentage\n      # defaults write com.apple.menuextra.battery ShowPercent -string \"NO\"\n      # defaults write com.apple.menuextra.battery ShowTime -string \"YES\"\n    \n      # echo \"Always show scrollbars\"\n      # defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleShowScrollBars -string \"Auto\"\n    \n      # Disable window animations and Get Info animations in Finder\n      # defaults write com.apple.finder DisableAllAnimations -bool true\n    \n      # Don’t animate opening applications from the Dock\n      # defaults write com.apple.dock launchanim -bool false\n    \n      # Disable opening and closing window animations\n      # defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool false\n    \n      # Empty Trash securely by default\n      # defaults write com.apple.finder EmptyTrashSecurely -bool true\n    \n      # Remove useless icons from Safari’s bookmarks bar\n      # defaults write com.apple.Safari ProxiesInBookmarksBar \"()\"\n    \n      # Disable send and reply animations in Mail.app\n      # defaults write com.apple.Mail DisableReplyAnimations -bool true\n      # defaults write com.apple.Mail DisableSendAnimations -bool true\n    \n      # Disable Resume system-wide\n      # defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false\n    \n      #Fix for the ancient UTF-8 bug in QuickLook (http://mths.be/bbo)\n      # Commented out, as this is known to cause problems when saving files in Adobe Illustrator CS5 :(\n      #echo \"0x08000100:0\" > ~/.CFUserTextEncoding\n\n~~~\naes256\n_# This is script with usefull tips taken from:\n\n# <https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.osx> _\n\n~~~\nmathias\nYeah… But still it’s a bit confusing. It’s almost an exact copy, and no real\nfunctionality has been added (except for the four commands jamessb mentioned).\nI feel like I’m missing something — this is something you would expect to see\nin a fork, rather than a separate gist.\n\nOh well, glad to see my dotfiles are of use!\n\n~~~\nrichbradshaw\nI reckon the original author didn't expect it to get any traffic, and just\nmade it for themselves. Thanks for collating all these anyway!\n\n------\nnikcub\nIf you are worried about some of these settings before running them, you can\nbackup your preference files\n\nAll that the 'defaults' command does is alter values stored in plist files,\nwhich are located in /Library/Preferences (and for the user in\n~/Library/Preferences).\n\nYou can add something like this to the top of the script:\n\n    \n    \n        echo \"Making a backup..\"\n        tar -pzcf ~/preferences-`date \"+%Y%m%d-%H%M%S\"`.tgz ~/Library/Preferences /Library/Preferences\n    \n\nYou may need to sudo to read some of the machine plist files\n\n~~~\nNHQ\nThis is what I was looking for. Thanks!\n\n------\nmitsche\nBefore I saw this gist I had been completely unaware of the fact that Snow\nLeopard disables subpixel font rendering on non-Apple displays. Font rendering\nis something that drives me crazy if it's not done right. It's one of my main\ngripes with Windows (YMMV).\n\nThanks to the respective hack my Samsung 24\" has suddenly become acceptable to\nwork on again. Awesome.\n\n~~~\njaylevitt\nDon't you hate being a font-rendering snob and then realizing you've been\nstaring at something ugly for months without realizing it?\n\nI'm not being snide; it's happened to me. I used to be a typesetter, and yet\nwhen I had trouble using Inconsolata in Sublime Text, I reverted back to\nMenlo, which I hated - and spent the next few months preaching about how hard\nI'd worked to find the Perfect Programmer Font For Me, not realizing I wasn't\nactually looking it in the editor. Worse, I _was_ seeing it in Terminal; I had\nno excuse.\n\nIt's the visual equivalent of the classic audio production goof: You spend\nhours tweaking a particular equalizer setting, everybody agrees that it sounds\nperfect now, and then realize the EQ hasn't been patched in at all and you've\nbeen changing nothing.\n\n~~~\nmitsche\nI just stopped using the monitor after half an hour of using OS X on it and\ngave it to my roommate, since I'm hardly ever home anyway. Now it's back on my\ndesk again.\n\nIt bugs me that I thought I needed a better screen instead of instantly seeing\nwhat's the issue. Especially since I used to play around a lot with the\nFreetype settings in Ubuntu and should have known what makes the fonts look\nthe way they do.\n\nBut then again I trusted Apple to not let this kind of stuff happen.\n\n------\nTamDenholm\nThis is totally awesome, however one of the biggest things for me since i've\nrecently bought a mac and coming from linux is the focus follows mouse issue,\nwhich i know has been attempted to get working but failed.\n\nOther things i miss are basics like double clicking the title bar to maximise,\nright clicking to create a new file and a few other things i miss from linux.\n\n~~~\npigs\nI know OSX does a lot of things right, but focus follows mouse and copy-on-\nselect/paste-on-middle-click are two things that I can't live without.\n\n~~~\ngregwebs\nYou can have both of these in iterm2. There are also copy-on-select plugins\nfor browsers.\n\nJust got my Mac. I am trying to figure out how to efficiently run a Linux\nvirtual machine.\n\n~~~\nxaritas\nTake a look at Vagrant (<http://vagrantup.com>). It's a command line driver\nand library manager for VirtualBox VMs. It's integrated with Chef and Puppet\nif automated provisioning is your thing.\n\n~~~\ngregwebs\nI am. It is ridiculously slow. But I realized it is just a networking issue\n(hitting the host-only network from a browser on my Mac), so hopefully I can\nfix it.\n\nEdit: Figured it out, DNS issue: sudo apt-get remove libavahi-common3\n\n~~~\nX-Istence\nedit /etc/nsswitch to remove mdns from the list... that takes care of the\nissue and you can keep avahi for some of the other things it provides (such as\nautomatic discovery of printers, and the likes).\n\n------\nsofuture\n\"OSX for Hackers\" would have a real tiling window manager.\n\n~~~\ncgag\nIt doesn't compare to using something like i3, but size up 2 makes it a little\nless painful.\n\n~~~\ncbrinke1\nAlong the same lines I am enjoying <http://manytricks.com/moom/>\n\n------\nmaxer\nmy biggest gripe with mac os having recently moved from windows is hitting the\nmaximise button on finder and it barely filling half the screen.\n\nother well documented one is the ability to turn the laptop screen of when\nusing another screen but still the laptop keyboard\n\n~~~\ncrb\nHold Shift while hitting the green plus (\"resize window\") button to make it\nmaximise the window.\n\n~~~\nvbo\nCheers for that, I've been mildly annoyed with the resize button for years but\nnever enough to look for a solution. This works great.\n\n~~~\nVecrios\nstill, doesn't work for me! what version are you using?\n\n~~~\nvbo\nUsing Lion, but I recall doing this for some time (Tiger?); I may be wrong. Do\nyou have tap to click enabled?\n\n------\njohnpowell\nI just use secrets. It was found here. <http://secrets.blacktree.com/>\n\nI'm not sure why the site is down. But I mirrored it here.\n<http://stfudamnit.com/ryan/Secrets.prefPane.zip>\n\n~~~\nmathias\nSadly, Secrets is a bit outdated. Lots of useful hidden tweaks aren’t listed\nthere.\n\n------\ngaving\nStill waiting for a god damned \"disable swoosh effect\" defaults key for\nswitching between desktops as you could in snow leopard.\n\n~~~\nhomebrewalright\nIf you mean how slow mission control is it's this one: defaults write\ncom.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -int 0; killall Dock\n\n~~~\ngaving\nNah, not that one but that's good too.\n\n------\nmiles_matthias\nA 2D dock is what hackers need? Is this really for hackers or just someone's\npersonal preference?\n\n~~~\nuxp\nI honestly don't have a preference on the eye candy present in most operating\nsystems, but I do know that I dislike the agonizing wait introduced to open a\nnew window, watching it's open animation progress frame by frame after I've\nput my workstation under _Heavy_ load. Removing a lot of the visual fluff can\nhelp keep someone productive, even when their machine isn't being the most\nresponsive.\n\nIt's entirely preference, dependent on the specs of the workstation and the\nuser's ability to open a couple hundred web browser tabs, 5 VMs, and 2\ndifferent O(log n) sorting operations on some database all at once while still\nmaintaing a Skype conversation with a co-worker.\n\n------\nCyph0n\nGreat list of modifications. I believe Deeper for OS X has many of these\ntweaks bundled into a nice interface.\n\n<http://www.titanium.free.fr/download.php>\n\n------\nastrange\nDoes changing every single default really make you feel better about yourself?\n\nAt least one of these changes (disabling local backups) doesn't even increase\nperformance. Unless you just like data loss.\n\n------\ntrimbo\nFor me, the biggest problem with OS X is the command key / meta key situation.\nI have an impossible time going between Linux, Windows and Mac because of\nthis. Any hacks people know of for this?\n\n~~~\ntravisjeffery\nGo to System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys... and configure them\nhowever you want.\n\n~~~\ntrimbo\nHm, I feel like I've tried this and couldn't get the behaviors I wanted. How\ndoes this accomplish e.g. overloading control-C to copy across the system? You\nwouldn't want to map command to control, since you still want control-C to be\ncontrol-C in a shell. Know what I mean?\n\n~~~\npacketslave\nI use Keyboard Maestro to remap ctrl-X/C/V to copy/paste everywhere except\nTerminal/iTerm. Same for Chrome so that the Ctrl shortcuts from Linux work on\nOSX as well.\n\n~~~\ntrimbo\nSweet! I'll give it a try.\n\n------\ndustingetz\nand now my osx is like my emacs - nobody can use it except me, and i can't\neven keep my configuration straight across all my machines.\n\n~~~\nemidln\nPut your config files in your favorite online vcs (private repo or encrypted\nif you must).\n\n------\ndgallagher\nI through together a (rough) Cocoa version: <https://github.com/dave-\ngallagher/OSX-For-Cocoa-Hackers>\n\nBinary: [https://github.com/downloads/dave-gallagher/OSX-For-Cocoa-\nHa...](https://github.com/downloads/dave-gallagher/OSX-For-Cocoa-\nHackers/OSX%20For%20Hackers.zip)\n\n    \n    \n        git clone git@github.com:dave-gallagher/OSX-For-Cocoa-Hackers.git\n    \n\nIt's not as robust as the script, but it lets you choose individually what\nsetting you want changed, and also added defaults.\n\n------\npixelcort\nIt seems down right now, but there was a nice database of secret preferences\nat <http://secrets.blacktree.com/> and included a Preference Pane to access\nthem.\n\n------\njasonkester\nI'm still waiting for the \"Quit asking me to retype my password every time I\ntry to do anything\" setting. You'd think that the fact I typed it in 30\nseconds ago when I logged in would be sufficient proof that I'm me.\n\nThis is the type of security that actually leads to _less_ security.\nEventually I'll get so sick of not being able to hit the back button on my\nbrowser (or whatever similarly impactful action that OSX decides is going to\ndestroy my machine) without special one-time-only admin privileges that I'll\njust remove the password from my account altogether.\n\n~~~\ndakotasmith\nSounds like you need to fix some Keychain Access settings. Grasping at\nInternet straws, but perhaps something like this will help?\n\n[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2108355?start=0&tst...](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2108355?start=0&tstart=0)\n\n(Fair warning, I'm presuming the back button of which you speak is a Safari\nback button. I have not experienced this problem myself and I have full-disk\nencryption on, which requires you to enter a password for most anything.)\n\n~~~\nchc\nThis is quite possibly the case. OS X doesn't normally ask for your password\nonce you're logged in except when you're doing something that will affect\nmultiple users (e.g. updating the system). The big exception is when it has\nsomehow lost your keychain password, in which case it will ask for your\npassword every time it needs to look at the keychain.\n\n------\njluxenberg\nIf you're looking for \"Alt-Tab\" style window switching on OS X, the best thing\nI've found is Witch (<http://manytricks.com/witch/>)\n\n\"Alt-Tab\" switches between windows in the order you last focused each window,\nso it's ideally suited to a stack-based workflow where you may have many\nwindows open but are only using a few of them. OS X already has \"Command-Tab\",\nbut that switches between applications, not windows.\n\n~~~\nSchwolop\nTry Cmd+Tilde.\n\n------\nralfd\n> MacBook:~ ralf$ defaults write enable-spring-load-actions-on-all-items -bool\n> true\n\nOkay. Now just to check…\n\n> MacBook:~ ralf$ defaults read com.apple.dock enable-spring-load-actions-on-\n> all-items 2012-03-31 12:46:35.173 defaults[33945:707] The domain/default\n> pair of (/Users/ralf/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist, enable-\n> spring-load-actions-on-all-items) does not exist\n\nHm?\n\n~~~\nmoeffju\nThat should probably be\n\n    \n    \n        defaults write com.apple.dock enable-spring-load-actions-on-all-items -bool true\n\n------\ndeepkut\nYour changes to the dock are nothing short of spectacular. Thanks for this!\nSimple, easy to install, and in accordance with the hacker ethic.\n\n------\npkamb\nReplace Snow Leopard Exposé (terrible) with old Leopard-style Exposé\n(amazing).\n\n[http://superuser.com/questions/118424/old-leopard-expose-\non-...](http://superuser.com/questions/118424/old-leopard-expose-on-snow-\nleopard-for-mac)\n\nUnfortunately it won't help those of you who have \"upgraded\" to Lion...\n\n------\njoedevon\nOK, any of these \"bad\"?\n\n~~~\nlalc\nThey're largely harmless. Some of them seem pointless or purely resisting-\nchange, like disabling menu bar transparency. Subpixel font rendering could\nlook pretty bad on the wrong screen.\n\nA lot of those Finder options are just going to increase noise on the screen.\nIt's rare that I ever need to know the full path of something in OS X. Either\nI'm already on the command line, or I just use Spotlight.\n\nDisabling the “Are you sure you want to open this application?” dialog seems\njust wrong. Confirming once per program downloaded from the net seems like a\nsane default.\n\nAnyway these are pretty subjective things. Good thing they're so easy to pick\nand choose from and revert.\n\n~~~\ndoktrin\nSubpixel font rendering being disabled by default caused text to appear\nabsolutely horrible on my brand new 23' IPS display.\n\nCan you provide an example of an external display on which it's not necessary\nor harmful?\n\n~~~\nastrange\nA projector.\n\n------\nasmosoinio\nWhy would one disable Time Machine logal backups?\n\n------\nphilip1209\nGreat tips. Thanks for sharing. I did everything except the track pad right\nclick hack and removing the top bar transparency.\n\n------\nbillsix\nI am surprised that this article made the front page.\n\n~~~\nmathias\nMe too, given that the original (<http://mths.be/osx>) made the front page 200\ndays ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2974911>\n\n------\nctingom\nFor OS X I love TotalFinder - better finder.\n\n------\ntamasss\nthank you so much for sharing!\n\n------\npiger\nfor hackers? LOL.\n\n------\nwildtype\nAh, i don't have enough money to buy Apple stuffs, can't be hackeer :(\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nRails vs. Django - kyro\n\nJust curious, and I want to see which framework I should pursue more aggressively.<p>So, how about pros/cons of each.\n======\nSwellJoe\nDeployment of Rails sucks.\n\nDjango is far better thought out, and can be deployed in a very sane manner. A\nfleet of Mongrels is just an embarrassingly bad way to handle concurrency. \"I\nknow, let's write a crappy barely functional web server, spawn a metric ass\nton of them, and then balance between them with a proxy. It'll be most leet\nand super fast! We'll call it a Best Practice. It'll be awesome.\" In fact,\nit's fragile, doesn't scale very well, and is complicated to configure. It's\nalso a huge distraction from solving the problem in a sane way--people seem to\nthink \"deploying Rails\" is solved by this and Capistrano, when really, it's\njust a new stack of problems.\n\nOtherwise Rails kicks ass, and I like Ruby better than Python (but I'm a perl\nmonger, so I might be brain-damaged into not seeing the beauty of Python). But\nI do tend to feel like Django is being written by grownups who've got years of\ndevelopment experience, while the Rails folks are making it up as they go\nalong...sometimes going down really poorly chosen paths (I believe Mongrel is\nan example of this, but I'm no expert).\n\nThen again, I think if I were starting an app from scratch I'd pick Catalyst.\nBut I haven't spent enough time with any of them to know which one is really\nmost productive for the way I work. I think you'll want to try them out, and\nnot take advice from random dudes at news.yc.\n\n~~~\ndavidw\nI went for rails myself, and agree about Mongrel. It seems like the Rails guys\nare all anxious to throw the Apache baby out with the bathwater, and spend a\nlot of time fooling around with dodgy ways of doing things.\n\nFor now, I use the mod_fcgid Apache module, and it seems to work ok for what I\nneed.\n\n~~~\naltay\ni heard through the grapevine that zed shaw, the dude who wrote mongrel, is\ndown on it and isn't actively developing it anymore. hopefully someone else\nwill pick up the slack, but i'm afraid that 95% of the folks using ruby+rails\nare know-nothing newbies (like me). =P\n\nanyone have any experience with lighttpd + rails?\n\n~~~\nlojic\nOh really? Why don't you either stop spreading FUD, or back up that statement\nwith some reality. \"heard through the grapevine\" - give me a break.\n\n------\nhsiung\njesusphreak has a pretty good writeup that's worth reading on the pros of\nusing django: <http://jesusphreak.infogami.com/blog/why_django>\n\nHaving come from a rails background and later switching to django I think it\ncomes down to a matter of preference. Django's ORM gets the job done but\nleaves something to be desired (ugly syntax, no multiple database support,\nalso watch out for implicit cascading deletes!). Conversion to using\nSQLAlchemy was supposed to address the gaps, but the branch for the upgrade\nseems pretty dead... But overall I'm pretty happy due to the transparency of\ndjango's framework code. I've implemented some customizations that would have\nbeen a lot harder to pull off in rails.\n\nIf you had to choose a python web framework, I'd suggest taking a look at\npylons which is more flexible (also, by default it uses mako templating which\n> django's templating and supports SQLAlchemy).\n\n~~~\nkashif\nActually SQL sucks and hence all wrappers suck too. The over-engineered\nSQLAlchemy sucks most. If you are python user you should find SQLAlchemy ugly.\n\nAs far as frameworks goes, for most deployments(not for all) I would suggest\npylons over django.\n\nMako is very useful.\n\n~~~\ndood\nI'm curious what you dislike about SQLAlchemy, the ORM, the SQL toolkit, or\nboth?\n\n~~~\nkashif\nBoth, but the ORM more. I am curious, why do you ask?\n\n~~~\ndood\nI've been learning it recently and I'm not sure what to make of it,\nspecifically the ORM component. It certainly has a good reputation as far as\nORM's go, but I'm not sure if even a good ORM fits a large, popular, or\ncomplex app, or is perhaps more suitable for protoyping and low-traffic uses.\n\nBut since SQL is pretty necessary for most web apps, it makes sense to pick\nsome abstraction layer, and as far as I can tell SQLA is best of breed for\nscripting languages, so I'm trying to work out how to apply it most\neffectively.\n\n~~~\nkashif\nThings I learnt, that might help.\n\n1\\. You don't have to use SQL.\n\n2\\. If you are going to use SQL, Find a wrapper that is minimalistic for your\ncurrent needs. Work with lesser and you will work more but you will also work\nwith more freedom and sanity.\n\nBest of luck friend. :)\n\n~~~\ndood\nThanks for your thought-provoking comments, actually I had quite forgotten\nthat I didn't necessarily need SQL (despite reading all the threads about that\nhere)!\n\nTrouble is, I understand the theory of in-memory data logged to disk, but as\nI'm just a humble hacker (self-taught amateur) there seem a lot of unknowns in\nsuch an approach. SQL, though a pain, is at least familiar and abundantly\ndocumented.\n\nGuess I'll do a little more research, and a little more hacking, since I would\nbe quite happy to drop SQL entirely!\n\n~~~\nkashif\nActually, I am self taught too and most hackers here are probably much better\nthan me. I use python, if you do the same then try out Zope DB and schevo.org.\nThese are Object based DBMS - non SQL. The problem like someone pointed out is\nthat such systems are not language agnostic.\n\n------\ndood\nPylons is deserving of attention. There is a small comparison of Django and\nPylons here\n[[http://wiki.pylonshq.com/display/pylonscookbook/Concepts+of+...](http://wiki.pylonshq.com/display/pylonscookbook/Concepts+of+Pylons#ConceptsofPylons-\nArethereotherwebframeworks%3F)].\n\nI'm playing around with Pylons and have been impressed so far. The whole\napproach strikes me as more of a hackers framework; less magic, more flexible,\nextensible. Though the docs need a little work, and the community isn't as big\nas Django yet, Pylons seems to be blossoming into quite an excellent\nframework.\n\n~~~\nkashif\nYou are on the money dude, I have been using pylons for a while and it is much\nmore usable than Django.\n\n------\nJMiao\nWhat type of app are you looking to build? The scope of the project would\ncarry weight here.\n\n~~~\nandyn\nThat and whether you're more comfortable using Python or Ruby.\n\n------\nnanijoe\nA search on amazon.com for 'ruby on rails' yielded 48 books, a search for\nDjango comes up wuth 3 unpublished books.\n\nThe stats above, made the decision for me.\n\n------\nhello_moto\nkyro, why don't you do this instead:\n\n1) Pick a very easy tutorial for both of them 2) Do them 3) Choose\n\nFramework will only get better each day so if today Rails deployment sucks,\ntomorrow it'll become better unless the growth is stagnant. Same case with\nPylons or Django or the 100000000000000001 python frameworks out there.\n\nNow if you're looking for a job, Rails would be a better choice because the\nhype marketing has converted a lot of people (they drink the kool-aid straight\nfrom the hose).\n\n~~~\ndood\nI don't think this is a good way to evaluate a framework; tutorials don't\nnecessarily bear much relation to the reality of using the tool.\n\n~~~\ncnu\nAgreed. Most of the frameworks have the 20 minute tutorial which (most of the\ntime) is no way comparable to the type of work we will be doing with it.\n\n~~~\nhello_moto\nThat's right.. in a way.\n\nYou need to love the platform you're going to develop on top of. Guys like\nhim, that ask which one is better, needs to at least give both of them a try\nand see which one he likes it the most.\n\nJust like the most common comments from the Rails vs Django: it's up to which\none you're comfortable/love.\n\nI tried Rails, Django, TurboGears and I ended up with ASP.NET.\n\n------\nkashif\nWhat are you designing? One might be better suited.\n\n------\nyrashk\nRails looks to be more DRY than Django. Though I'm on Rails and don't really\nuse Django.\n\n------\nrms\nWhat about Pylons?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nI Tried to Train a RNN on Donald Trumps Tweets - wyattferguson\nhttps://github.com/wyattferguson/trumpbot-rnn\n======\np1esk\nFine tune gpt-2 instead, you’re likely to see much better results\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIn Recession, Japanese Lay Off Robots  - peter123\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/technology/13robot.html?_r=1\n======\npatio11\nThis is just a subset of \"capital investment goes down in economic downturns,\nand up in boom times\". The local robot manufacturers are doing poorly because\nthe local automobile industry (which is the largest driver of _every_ industry\nin central Japan) is doing poorly.\n\nAfter the economy recovers and A Certain Automobile Manufacturer starts\nselling its Ridiculously Popular Hybrid to Americans by the container ship\nagain, the factories around here will get spun back up again. Until then\neverybody is just waiting it out, with a lot of belts being tightened and\nbudgets being squeezed. The companies who are in a position to concentrate on\nthings other than survival are doing R&D to have something to attract the\ninevitable tidal wave of cash that will accompany a recovery.\n\n~~~\ntc\n_After the economy recovers and [Toyota] starts selling its [Prius] to\nAmericans by the container ship again_\n\nI would not so casually assume that this will happen. The current downturn is\nin many respects unprecedented, and all of the long-term trend lines are bad.\n\nPeople tend to look at a limited set of examples that show the US recovering\nfirst and leading the world out of the bust. But this is a bit like flipping a\ncoin, seeing four heads in a row, and calling a 'trend.'\n\nThe government spending problems in the US are catastrophically bad, getting\nworse, and there is zero political will to meaningfully address them at the\nfederal level. Demographics is working against us, and we no longer live in\nthat post-WWII world where the US wins by default -- that is to say, for at\nleast a couple of decades after 1950, much of the rest of the world was still\n1) recovering from being bombed back into the stone age, 2) had never really\ngotten out of the stone age to begin with, or 3) was crawling slowly back\ntowards the stone age by virtue of Soviet-style communism.\n\nIf the US is going to rise above this time, we're going to have to do it fair\nand square. We'll need to actually work to be the best place in the world to\ninvest long-term capital.\n\n(That is, unless the rest of the world decides it wants to continue shipping\nus stuff for free indefinitely. If foreign governments double-down on America,\nthen all (short-term) bets are off.)\n\n------\nnostrademons\n\"At a large Yaskawa Electric factory on the southern Japanese island of\nKyushu, where robots once churned out more robots...\"\n\nThe singularity has arrived!\n\n------\nmynameishere\nAs long as keepon keeps on keeping on\n\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPdP1jBfxzo>\n\n~~~\ndan_the_welder\nI Love Keepon!\n\n~~~\ndan_the_welder\nTwat a bunch of crabs.\n\nKeepon is a sophisticated multi-axis robot that incorporates extremely complex\nkinematics with pseudo-emotional responses and rhythm recognition all bundled\nup in a painfully cute package.\n\nFTW\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Jooseph – Playlists for Learning - firatcan\nHello HN,\nEvery time I tried to learn new subject through internet. I am confused by the resources.<p>- Which one will worth my time?<p>- which ones are reliable or relevant?<p>Eventually I open infinite amount of tabs and close them without browsing.<p>Finding right material and resource is hard in this era. Yet we believe lifelong learning is a meaningful way to live your life.<p>I&#x27;m Firat co-founder of Jooseph: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jooseph.com&#x2F;<p>Jooseph is basically playlist for learning.<p>You can follow modules curated from different resources. You can also your learning journey to guide other users. Curate list of resource and share on the relevant topic.<p>If you&#x27;re an infinite learner, we would like to hear from you.<p>Thank you HN community.\n======\nhmlwilliams\nWhy not embed the videos into the site? It is a bit of a hassle having to\nswitch between tabs all the time.\n\n~~~\nfiratcan\nThis is our MVP and we have only demo modules right now. We'll be launched in\n2 weeks. There'll be embeded videos and more features such as goals and\nprogress bar.\n\nIf you leave your mail from site or send me a mail at firat@jooseph.com I\nwould be happy to reach you when we launch.\n\n------\nsvsashank\nThis is interesting... How do you monetize this if all the playlists are\nYoutube links? Also how is it different from Youtube playlists that many\neducators have created?\n\n~~~\nurupvog\nCan you guide me to one such playlists? Quite interested.\n\n~~~\nfiratcan\nActually there are few demo playlist on Jooseph right now.\n\nYou can check from\n\n[https://jooseph.com/modules](https://jooseph.com/modules)\n\nI recommend\n\nUI/UX Go-lang Simplicity\n\nYou can also contact me at firat@jooseph.com\n\nIf you have a topic in mind that you want to learn we try to create module for\nthat.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHackers are breaking into websites and adding links to game Google - Lagogarda\nhttps://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/hackers-website-links-backlinks-seo-spam\n======\nskilled\nIt's a fairly lucrative \"business practice\". Getting _juicy_ links from\nauthoritative websites can skyrocket your rankings within a few days, even if\nthat. Yet, this isn't a new thing or something that someone just came up with.\n\nSuch gamification has been going on since the early 2000s, it's just kept\nlowkey enough that people don't see it as the biggest deal ever. However, it's\na big deal for people who pay for such services.\n\nIf you look at certain job advertising websites for bloggers/marketers, you'll\nfind plenty of job listings where the employer is looking for writers with\n\"access to high-authority editorials\" \\-- because naturally, they know that\nthose links are worth a hundredfold more than 50 links from an average blog.\n\nWhether it's a problem on Google's side is up for discussion. Giving sites\nhigh authority and then bumping up other sites who are linked from those\nplaces is definitely a weird way to implement a ranking system. But rest\nassured, it's there and it works.\n\nAnd as for the title, it should read \"bloggers are paying hackers to break\ninto websites\", rather than blaming one side only.\n\nA lot more could be said on this, especially from experience, but there's\nreally no point. Addressing an elephant this big would require Google to be\nactively involved in the discussion. And that's unlikely to happen.\n\n~~~\nwalshemj\nGoogle does take action and completely drop hacked sites like this.\n\nHappened to a client of mine back in 2008 ish hackers added thousands of links\nto porn sites by creating thousands of pages\n\n~~~\nbredren\nWhat did the client do? Were they able to recover the site's standing?\n\n~~~\nehvatum\n“We hacked thousands of porn sites and replaced their content with links to\nour own commercial porno offerings, now that we’re in that business.”\n-Blackhat Dominatrix CEO Chick\n\n------\ngeekamongus\nThis has been going on for well over a decade. Not sure why it's news just\nnow.\n\n~~~\ncolechristensen\nRun _any_ website and your logs will eventually be full of hits to /wp-admin\n/cgi-bin etc. from zombies scanning the net for known vulnerabilities. This\nhas been going on forever.\n\n~~~\nwalshemj\nAnd buzfeed could see this happening to them if they looked at their logfiles\n\n------\nsystematical\nYes and sometimes you don't even need to break into the sites. When I was\ndoing some \"blackhat seo\" about ten years ago I discovered a high PR forum in\nthe same niche that allowed anchor links in the username field. This meant\nthat I could I put something like <a href=\"mysite.com\">keyword</a> as the\nusername and it would just appears as \"mykeyword\" on the forum index page.\n\nJust one of the many ways I've learned to game Google. Social engineering also\nworks well for link building and plenty of other grayhat methods. While I had\nconsidered the possibility of outright breaking into systems to place links, I\nnever believed it worth the risk. Not surprised others have started doing it\n(or started getting caught doing it).\n\n------\npraptak\nI see a distant analogy with something I got to know from a private\ninvestigator. Burglars also changed their game in the similar spirit. Instead\nof stealing your big TV, jewelry or other physical goods they try to escalate\nthe physical breach into digital one, e.g. installing spyware on your laptop\ninstead of stealing it. Wiping a bank account pays better than stealing\nphysical stuff.\n\n~~~\nsmelendez\nDo you know where this is happening and who exactly is doing it?\n\nMost residential burglaries I hear of are disorganized smash and grab type\nsituations, with desperate people and drug addicts looking for cash, jewelry,\nlightweight electronics and other things to easily liquidate.\n\n~~~\npraptak\nThe PI guy operates in Eastern Europe - mostly in Poland. He has not shared\nany more details with me.\n\n~~~\nskocznymroczny\nSounds like an urban legend. I am Polish and have never heard of such\noperations.\n\nAlso, why bother with breaking in, if you could just drop an infected USB\ndrive on their doormat.\n\n------\npartiallypro\nCan I just say \"duh?\" This has been going on forever, and/or people will do\nthis to comments, or forums.\n\n~~~\nozi\nexactly.\n\n------\nkitsunesoba\nYears ago (2006-2013) I ran a personal site that used Wordpress for its front\npage/blog, with the remainder using very simple hand-rolled PHP templating and\ntext files. The front page was a constant source of trouble — if I didn’t stay\nperfectly on top of keeping Wordpress up to date I’d get hit with the same\nkind of hidden link stuff mentioned in the article. Crazy thing is that my\nsite barely even had an audience to speak of… can’t imagine what it must be\nlike for more popular blogs.\n\nIf I were to spin up a new personal site I think it’d be with something like\ngohugo.io deployed on Netlify, making it as static as possible with no room\nfor exploits.\n\n~~~\nlunchables\nI think security is one of the reason that static CMS have become so popular.\nAlso it lets you easily separate content from the CMS (in the form of\nmarkdown, asciidoc, rst) and, maybe most importantly, it makes it very, very\nfast and makes it easy (and cheap) to host almost anywhere.\n\nI use hugo with aws s3 bucket static web hosting + cloudfront currently. Costs\nme absolutely nothing with the AWS free tier (5GB of S3 and 50GB of cloudfront\nfree per month). Generate the site in hugo then use the aws cli tools to sync\nto s3. Because it's almost entirely html with very few images I don't think I\ncould ever hit those AWS free tier limits.\n\nedit: I actually just checked and the free tier is only 12 months. My last\nmonths bill total was $0.01 for s3.\n\n------\nchatmasta\nIt's amusing to me that three of the four comments on the Buzzfeed article are\nlink spam.\n\n------\nfierarul\nGaming Google is an old sport. Long ago we had a company here give free\nhosting for small sites. The catch was the their server inserted porn links\nwhen Google Bot visited the page. So many people were merrily creating their\nsubdomains while secretly helping the porn rankings. It was infuriating and\namazing at the same time.\n\n~~~\nnkurz\nDo you have more details? The twist of only serving the inserted links to the\nGoogle Bot but not to normal users makes sense, but isn't an approach I've\nseen before.\n\n~~~\nfierarul\nI didn't look into it very much back then. They were giving free hosting and\nsubdomains back when such a thing was expensive and jumped on it for my\nhomepage. Somehow I saw the Google cache of my page and it was surrounded by\nads.\n\nSo they were serving different content to different clients based on user\nagent and/or IP block.\n\nWhen I found out I deleted my account.\n\nI see the site still exists, they might do the same thing. It's 3x on the .ro\nTLD.\n\n------\nackbar03\nNot exactly related but I realized quite often now that sometimes when I\nsearch for very specific things, usually like some sort of coding bug or\nerror, Google returns some results that look seemingly legitimate with\nsensible preview text and stuff but when I click on it it's a full on Japanese\nporn site. Yummy. At first I thought it was some sort of malware in my\ncomputer but then I realized it really was something wrong with google's\nlinks. It's happened enough frequently to be noticeable now\n\n------\ntopherPedersen\nThe whole backrub/pagerank/backlink thing was from the 90's. Don't you suppose\nGoogle is weighting other things more highly in their search algorithm these\ndays?\n\n~~~\ntyingq\nSeo contests are a fairly good way to see that backlinks still work well.\n\nThis one was able to rank a website written in Latin, where that makes no\nsense, at the number 2 spot for a competitive local term:\n\n[https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-\nloophol...](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-\nloopholes/278093/)\n\n~~~\ncoder1001\nKyle did great there and got his sites banned because of it!\n\n~~~\ntyingq\nAnd likely banned manually as a result of the publicity.\n\n~~~\ncoder1001\nIt was insulting to Google really! Nice to see someone bold enough to compete\nwith lorem ipsum on the site. You are right most likely a manual penalty!\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nMissed opportunity to tweak the ranking algorithm to detect this sort of\ntrick.\n\n------\nricardo81\nThe amusing thing I get from this is pleading ignorance to what's being sold\nafter being rumbled.\n\nI've seen some of those 'vendors' lord it up about how great they are at SEO,\nand when it comes to them getting limelight outside their own circle, they are\nacting like they were born yesterday and had no idea.\n\nTheir service pillows the hacked links with other sources like SAPE to provide\nvolume.\n\nAll lucrative of course, but quite scummy IMO and SEOs should stick to legal\navenues of promotion.\n\n------\n8bitsrule\nRe title: I think the phrase 'bad actors' in place of 'hackers' paints a less-\nbroad portrait of the a-holes that do that kind of stuff. Takes a real dope to\ndrop the kind of stuff that Molly found in her blog.\n\nOf all the places to find the term 'hackers' abused ...\n\n------\namelius\nDoesn't Google check by now how prominently a link is visible on a website?\n\n------\nkemonocode\nA strange emphasis in mentioning the \"open-source version of Wordpress\" is the\none being hacked into. I doubt a proprietary solution would be any less\nvulnerable.\n\n~~~\nprostoalex\nThey probably meant to differentiate from the Wordpress.com managed hosting.\n\n------\nrootsudo\nThis is nothing new this is plain and simple backlinking.\n\n------\nasdf333\nits kind of a stupid crime though since its obvious who paid for it :D\n\n------\nchrismmay\nI posted this article 3 days ago.\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21858520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21858520)\n\n~~~\njwilk\n(0 comments)\n\n------\nqwerty456127\n> There were [links] for, you know, anal bleaching, which is apparently a\n> thing. I mean, just truly, incredibly inappropriate things. And there was\n> even some links to Russian pornography sites. I mean, we're talking about\n> horrible, horrible things.\n\nDoes she mean anal bleaching and porn to be \"horrible, horrible things\" or was\nthere something else, really horrible? Perhaps porn is something many old-\nfashioned people still are uncomfortable of talking about but I wouldn't rate\nit as horrible - most of the people watch it and are okay.\n\n> runs on the open source version of WordPress\n\nEverybody knows this: running WordPress without 24x7 professional support\nmeans you are 100% guaranteed to get pwned.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNASA's Curiosity rover is now driving itself - diminish\nhttp://www.theverge.com/2013/8/28/4667794/nasa-curiosity-rover-is-now-driving-itself\n\n======\nFortaymedia\nI was just about to post this myself. Damn you :) - Its amazing isn't it. If\nI'm not mistaken didn't one of the photographic satellites do something\nsimilar and it went all the way to Saturn and took some amazing pictures?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTop 5 Fascinating Books on Languages and Linguistics - yanis_t\nhttps://medium.com/candl-blog/top-5-fascinating-books-on-languages-and-linguistics-9140ce2b5e79\n======\nDanParson\nIf you want to take your interest further, you can venture into the world of\nconstructed languages, which is basically applied linguistics. Arika Okrent's\n_In the Land of Invented Languages_ is a great book about conlangs in general,\nand David Peterson's _The Art of Invented Languages_ focuses on conlangs in\nmovies and TV.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nbangin – a primitive, portable shell script which enables DuckDuckGo-like bangs - samhh\nhttps://github.com/samhh/bangin\n======\nsamhh\nHello, author here.\n\nThe idea came to me yesterday as I wanted to use a bang for ProtonDB. I didn't\nfancy waiting around for it to be added to DDG following submission, and that\nled me to ponder the other harms of this really useful feature being locked\nbehind DDG's service.\n\nIn theory, with the script being so simple and working on the basis of mere\ninput and output, it should be easy to write other tooling around it, which\nI've briefly touched upon in the README.\n\nThe shell script is extremely simple, but anyone with experience in writing\nthem might be able to spot problems with it, please do let me know if you do.\n\nI'm unsure about how best to package banglists. One option would be to provide\na config file with a list of lists, a bit like you do with some adblocking\nsoftware, but that'd presumably require some sort of intransience.\n\nAnyway, feedback welcome!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCompleted my SaaS project yesterday. Looking for the first thoughts - going_to_800\nhttp://chatpage.co\n======\ngoing_to_800\nHey guys,\n\nI've been working on my new SaaS for about 3 months now, yesterday I finished\ntesting it online. Now I'm looking for feedback and the first users.\n\nIt's a customer communication tool (chat) with nice features like sending\nsurveys/polls during conversation. It's perfect for gathering feedback, lead\ngeneration, support etc so you don't have to waste time centralizing text\nanswers or use separate survey tools which break the conversation flow with\nexternal links.\n\nIt's not a live-chat widget, instead you get a fully customizable page with a\nchat panel inside. If you want to get feedback or other details(like address)\nduring conversation, you can easily send the form from the admin zone and your\ncustomer will see the form on the left of the chat panel. You can see the\nsubmission live and respond accordingly.\n\nSome features it has * your own chatpage.co/your_business or custom domain *\nget links that enable certain forms before the conversation, to include in\nemails or other websites * easy-to-use form builder * export submitted data as\nexcel/pdf * view data as charts for analysis * email fallback when you are\noffline * 8 themes, customize over 50 attributes(from background image to\nfonts and colors)\n\nAt this stage, feedback is critical so I appreciate any thought you have about\nthis. It's free now so you can start using it right away to communicate with\nyour clients.\n\n~~~\nedgeman27\non your example page I can't see any text, only images and text boxes:\n\n[https://www.dropbox.com/s/8hgvdkk2blxbt7t/Screenshot%202016-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/8hgvdkk2blxbt7t/Screenshot%202016-01-28%2012.45.22.png?dl=0)\n\nSafari 9.0.3 (11601.4.4)\n\n~~~\ngoing_to_800\nThanks for the screenshot.\n\nThat's very strange...probably is something with the font not being loaded.\nI'll debug this.\n\nThanks again\n\n------\nbrudgers\nThis might make a good \"Show HN.\"\n\nI like that there is a demo to play with that does not require logging in or\ngiving up anonymity.\n\nGood luck.\n\n~~~\ngoing_to_800\nThanks.\n\nI'm still working on it so I'll make one when it will be ready.\n\n~~~\nbrudgers\nShow HN is intended for projects in process. Product announcements are fine,\nbut I don't think it's meant as a Demo Day.\n\nGuidelines:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)\n\n------\npunee\nWhy/when should I use it over Intercom?\n\n~~~\ngoing_to_800\n1.It's a separate page instead of widget which allows the user to engage more\nin the conversations, no distractions.\n\n2.It has the liveforms(survey/polls) during conversation to get better/faster\nfeedback or include the link to chat + form into emails\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTesla Motors wants another $250 million (IPO) - transburgh\nhttp://valleywag.com/357770/tesla-motors-wants-another-250-million\n======\ndkokelley\nTesla has a great idea and product. What they lack is a solid mass-\nproduction/distribution system.\n\nAs much as I'd hate to see it, I think Tesla needs to be acquired by GM or\nsome other American brand and then use their technology with their new owner's\nproduction and funding capacities to get the car to market. Current 2008\nmodels have sold out, and they haven't produced any yet! to get one, you have\nto get on the 2009 waiting list, which should ship sometime in 2010, at this\nrate (Tesla is silent on anticipated delivery dates, I'm only speculating 2010\ndelivery). They're already producing and selling their battery system to\nToyota I believe.\n\nA Tesla - GM/Ford combo I believe would be what it takes to effectively\ncompete against Toyota and Honda, who both already have the production\ncapacity and electric cars in the works.\n\nThey could always partner with upscale car makers like BMW, too.\n\n------\njdueck\nI hope Tesla succeeds, but I wonder whether it's even possible for a new North\nAmerican car company to succeed, regardless of their technology. With the\nfalling dollar, maybe their odds have increased. And yeah, a Democrat\npresident will likely make it easier for electric car companies. But we're\nonly a couple of years away from Tata Motors cars, air cars, mass-produced DIY\nelectric kits, etc. And in the midst of a recession, Tesla's cars are\nespecially expensive! Brave souls, they are.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow can I fix a computer that is literally too slow to do anything? - nemoto\nhttp://superuser.com/a/511024\n\n======\nunfamiliar\n> a program called 'Optimizer Pro' is demanding money to 'remove 5102 files\n> slowing down my computer'\n\nHave the malware applications that do this sort of pitch have the ability to\n\"slow down\" the computer without anything strange showing up in the task\nmanager? If so, how do they accomplish this and how to fix the problem?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Review my startup, bakeoff.co - Drei01Matt\nhttp://www.bakeoff.co/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=click&utm_campaign=hackernews\nHi HN. I&#x27;ve love some feedback on my new app BakeOff. Good and bad, everything helps.<p>www.bakeoff.co\n======\nDrei01Matt\nThis is my first submission, would love to know what HN thinks!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\n[Ask HN]How many of you still uses SKYPE? - neoyagami\n\nIm just wondering (with a friend) if all this surveillance over calls and Skype are just method to get stats on &quot;how many people we piss off&quot; if whe tell that we are spying on them. just to end passing a law to make it legal because &quot;not to many people protest on this&quot;<p>im not from EEUU but this clearly affect me because i sed skype some time ago and now im afraid of just starting it\n======\npearjuice\nIt is non-freedom respecting software so I see no reason why anyone would\nvolunteer to use it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMarathon Business - Jaggu\nhttp://www.entrepreneur.com/management/operations/article185854.html\n\n======\nmyoung8\nAm I missing something or does this seem like a very profitable business?\n\n~~~\nrun4yourlives\nScreaming for a web 2.0 ish management tool as well... think google map route\nmanagement with mashed-in plots for aid stations etc...\n\nUnfortunately, I don't know enough about setting up a marathon...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMS unveils Digits wrist mounted hand-gesture sensor, for phones, games and more - evo_9\nhttp://www.edge-online.com/news/microsoft-unveils-digits-wrist-mounted-hand-gesture-sensor-for-phones-games-and-more/\n======\nannymsMthd\nI bet Gary inspired this one.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nUntrusted – A Code-Based Adventure - rosstex\nhttp://alexnisnevich.github.io/untrusted/\n======\nKiro\nPrevious discussion (when it was posted as a Show HN):\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7547942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7547942)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nInstagram sued over contract changes - gasull\nhttp://www.france24.com/en/20121224-instagram-sued-over-contract-changes?ns_campaign=editorial&ns_source=twitter&ns_mchannel=reseaux_sociaux&ns_fee=0&ns_linkname=20121224_instagram_sued_over_contract_changes\n======\nBrianPetro\nYet another repeat of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4963838>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow to convert any 3D printer or CNC router into cutting or engraving machine? - reangeorge\n\nIntroducing Endurance L-CHEAPO diode laser<p>Endurance L-CHEAPO is a 445 nanometer diode laser which easily mounts on your 3D printer or CNC mill\nNo additional power supply is necessary, and it will not interfere with normal use of your hardware\nYou can readily switch from laser to print&#x2F;mill mode, use your existing software (Slic3r, Skeinforge, etc), and with no tools the laser can be removed in about 2 minutes\nEndurance L-CHEAPO can cut paper and wood up to 3&#x2F;16ths of an inch, and can engrave most non-metallic materials<p>Easy to Use and Open Source<p>No special software or hardware required – not even a power supply! All you need is to mount the laser, create a special extrusion profile on your standard software and<p>get to work. Video in action available here: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;endurancerobots.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;laser-cutters-accessory&#x2F;video-in-action&#x2F;\nEngraving samples: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;endurancerobots.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;laser-cutters-accessory&#x2F;laser-cutter-accessory-engraving-samples&#x2F;<p>Low-cost, High-yield<p>Laser cutting requires a significant initial investment, but opens up a lot of making possibilities — laser-cut parts are tougher than 3D printer parts. With Endurance L-<p>CHEAPO, the initial dollar investment goes from thousands to hundreds, and the module requires very little space.<p>We hope this product will allow high school shop classes, small universities and local hackerspaces to be able to work with a wider variety of materials and techniques<p>without breaking the bank.<p>If you are ready here is a quick start link: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;endurancerobots.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;laser-cutters-accessory&#x2F;quick-start&#x2F;\n======\ngus_massa\nClicky: [http://endurancerobots.com/products/laser-cutters-\naccessory/...](http://endurancerobots.com/products/laser-cutters-\naccessory/video-in-action/)\n\nIn the video, it looks like the laser passed trough the target. Is that safe\nfor the building bed? Is that safe for the floor? Is that safe for your foots?\n\nFrom the other thread:\n\n> _Would you like to write a review about our laser? We can send you one for\n> test or we can give any answers as you need to write a review._\n\nIs that still available? (Not for me, I don't have the necessary equipment at\nhome or at work.)\n\n~~~\ndetritus\nI run a 40W laser which wouldn't cut through the building bed (although if\nleft running in place would make it quite hot).\n\n~~~\nreangeorge\ndo you want to try ours?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCython 0.23 released - Yakulu\nhttps://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/cython-users/lfq9CtqGdzY\n======\ngrinalope\nCython is amazingly productive for me. I am so happy to write typed pythonic\ncode.\n\nIf there's one thing missing it's more people showing off their Cython style\nand tricks, like how they do macros (since it's not supported in the\nlanguage), when to turn off safeties, and balancing pure python with typed.\n\nFor instance, I like C macros in header files, but I've played around with\nusing a jinja2 pipeline in my setup.py to write cleaner looking pythonic code,\nand have done generics this way.\n\nmore posts like the one using cymem would be welcome.\n\n~~~\nsyllogism\nUsing Jinja2 for macros is an interesting idea. You could try cog instead?\n[https://www.python.org/about/success/cog/](https://www.python.org/about/success/cog/)\n\nCurrently I don't do any macros at all, although the temptation is definitely\nstrong. I have some code that could otherwise be more generic than it is.\n\nI guess a quick tip/pattern would be to use structs as data containers, with a\ncdef class defined as a \"shell\", to provide access, but not actually hold the\ndata.\n\nAdvantages of this over standard cdef class: Data is contiguous in memory;\nData can be stack allocated; Data can be stored in C arrays or C++ containers;\nData can be created without GIL.\n\nAdvantages of this over numpy array: More Pythonic syntax (i.e. data.attr,\ninstead of data[column]; No fussing with memorybuffers, compiler declarations\netc; Data can be created without GIL\n\nDisadvantages: More code\n\n(I wrote that cymem blog post -- I'll write up this pattern as a post when I\nget a chance.)\n\n------\nPythonicAlpha\nTo answer the question, that came up:\n\nYes, the 0.x number also put me down at first. But I am using this tool now\nseveral years, since 0.13 or maybe earlier and did never find a bug or\nproblem.\n\nCython is great, in-spite of its version number!\n\nI also inspected the generated code several times and it looks rock-solid.\nAlso one big advantage (for me): It can produce code that runs equally on 2.x\nand 3.x versions (there are some limitations, though, like several really\noutdated versions are not supported any more).\n\n------\nstesch\nPeople should really think about the message a 0.x version number is sending.\nThis project is 8 years old. Why is this still 0.x?\n\n~~~\nwilliamstein\nI'm the guy who started the Cython project and made up the name, so here are\nsome random remarks that don't answer your question. Not only is Cython about\n8 years old, it started as a fork of Pyrex\n([http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/greg.ewing/python/Pyrex/](http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/greg.ewing/python/Pyrex/)),\nwhich is itself over 11 years old, since I remember using it in 2004 when\nevaluating languages in which to implement\n[http://sagemath.org](http://sagemath.org). The people who did the most work\non Cython on probably Stefan Behnel and Robert Bradshaw (who was my Ph.D.\nstudent). I had to sort of twist their arms to get them to be involved in the\nproject, and they both still only do it in their spare time basically for fun.\nDespite Cython being an incredibly useful and powerful tool for certain\nspecific problem domains (e.g., for SageMath it is critical), and being very\nheavily used in some scientific python applications, there's no company behind\nCython and few people involved in the project are interested in publicity.\nCython is an open source labor of love and an extremely useful tool. People\nthat know Cython very well, know how amazingly powerful it is, and have\nwatched many other attempts to solve similar problems come and go over the\nyears.\n\n~~~\nPythonicAlpha\nI agree, that it is extremely useful, since before I knew Cython, I\nimplemented some Python C extension modules by hand. That can become rather\nugly and costs much sweat.\n\nToday, I can use Cython. Or when I need even more speed, than I use Cython as\nwrapper-generator for a pure C module, that is still much, much easier to\nimplement, as when I would have to do the wrapping work myself.\n\nCython is really enormous useful and precious to me!\n\nThank you for it!\n\n------\nketralnis\nIf you use Python for anything remotely performance sensitive, I highly\nrecommend giving Cython a shot. The trick is to find your computation-\nintensive inner loop stuff, move it off to its own module, add types, and go.\nIt makes your build a little more complicated (i.e. most Python projects have\nno build process at all) but if you're in the niche where it's useful, it's\ndamned useful.\n\nHere what it does. Take a look at this Python code:\n\n    \n    \n        import math\n        def distance(x1, y1, x2, y2):\n            return math.sqrt((y2-y1)**2+(x2-x1)**2)\n    \n\nIt looks simple, but it's doing a lot behind the scenes. It respects\n__sub__/__add__ metamethods, respects and promotes between floats/longs/ints\nand even Bignums, it has to do a __getattr__ on the `math` object to find the\nsqrt function in the first place, etc (and can't cache that because this is\nPython so you may have changed it in between calls). After every one of these\ncalls, a Python exception is checked for, and many reference counts are\nincremented and decremented. Every now and then, the interpreter checks to see\nif it's time to release/reacquire the GIL and if any OS signals have come in.\nAnd it does all of this by compiling Python to bytecode and running that\nthrough its interpreter.\n\nHere's the same code in Cython:\n\n    \n    \n        from libc.math cimport sqrt\n        cdef double distance(double x1, double y1, double x2, double y2):\n            return sqrt((y2-y1)**2+(x2-x1)**2)\n    \n\nCython takes that code and compiles it to this C code (a bit simplified):\n\n    \n    \n        #include <math.h>\n        double distance(double x1, double y1, double x2, double y2) {\n            double a = y2-y1;\n            double b = x2-x1;\n            return sqrt(a*a+b*b)\n        }\n    \n\nSo now instead of running through dozens of intermediate internal Python\nfunctions, you're just loading the numbers into your FPU and doing the\ncomputation there.\n\nOf course, you've given up all of your Python dynamicness. Now this won't work\nwith Bignums, it can't be monkey patched, and now you have a compiling step to\nrunning your Python code. You can do this to your existing code one function\nat a time, so you don't have to give those things up for your entire project,\njust where it matters. And where performance matters, it's a godsend\n\nI ported a small number of pieces of reddit to Cython. Here are some simple\nexamples:\n\n* [https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/db/_s...](https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/db/_sorts.pyx)\n\n* [https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/utils...](https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/utils/_utils.pyx)\n\n* [https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/mr_to...](https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/mr_tools/_mr_tools.pyx)\n\n* [https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/wrapp...](https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/wrapped.pyx)\n\nAs the underscore naming implies, these are only selected performance or\ncompute sensitive functions factored out of their normal non-underscore Python\nmodules which generally wrap them. These functions were coming up\ndisproportionately in profiling because they're called very often and/or do a\nlot of arithmetic, and afterwards they are entirely nonissues. Often something\nlike a _sorts.pyx:_confidence call got over 25 times faster.\n\nI've also talked about the downsides in a thread here[1]. Go in knowing that\nstuff too, but after my excellent experience with Cython I'm a True Believer.\n\n[1]\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/2xlya2/anyone_willi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/2xlya2/anyone_willing_to_share_experiences_of_cython/cp1ct6a?context=3)\n\n~~~\nhakanderyal\nIt's also provides great benefits for quick scripts.\n\nI had to write a one-off parser for a big csv file, that needed to be parsed\nlots of times, and fast. Pure python solution was taking a few minutes, so I\ndecided to give Cython a try. Installed, read the docs for a few minutes,\nconverted my parser's inner loop to cython, and the duration went down to a\nfew seconds.\n\n~~~\nngoldbaum\nThe \"%%cython\" magic for the IPython notebook is great for quickly prototyping\ncython code in the context of a larger Python workflow. You can also view a\nnice annotated HTML performance report with \"%%cython -a\".\n\n------\nmixmastamyk\nDoes it support/is-compatible with the new python type hints?\n\n------\nraymondh\nI'm glad to see that this import project continues to get updates.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy downloading Firefox is like getting into college - Alex3917\nhttp://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/04/why-downloading.html\n\n======\nAlex3917\nI don't understand why Seth is pro-college on the blog all of the sudden.\nEvery single one of his books takes at least a few passing swipes at college,\nand some of them downright trash the institution in general. I understand that\nthis is about the social signaling value of school, not the pedagogical\nfunction. However, this is what is said in The Big Moo about the social\nsignaling value of school only three years ago:\n\n“The new secret of success is that winning the game has absolutely nothing to\ndo with hard work and paying your dues. In the old days stable industries\noffered young workers a pyramid structure. If you did the work and stuck it\nout you’d move up.”\n\n“In our fast-moving media crazed culture, the opposite is now true. Those who\nfit in now won’t stand out later. Those who follow the rules are never noticed\n- because the system has broken their spirit. There’s plenty work for the\nundifferentiated masses, so you can have as much as you are willing to handle.\nThe fast-rising stars are those that question authority and refuse to do\nwhat’s done before.”\n\n~~~\nh34t\nThis article is not pro-college. He's talking about correlation != causation.\nie. going to college doesn't necessarily _teach_ you anything you wouldn't get\nelsewhere -- rather, it is an indication of what kind of person you are (the\nkind of person who goes to college... who is more likely to be smart than the\nkind of person who _doesn't_.)\n\nHence the relation to Firefox: just like college, using Firefox doesn't\nactually make you smarter (though an ignorant view of the statistics might\nmake you think so) -- but the fact that you are using it in the first place,\nsays something about the kind of person you are.\n\n~~~\nAlex3917\nI did edit my post to make it clear that I was referring to the social\nsignaling value of colleges, not the pedagogical value, but you may have\npulled up my comment before this.\n\n------\nwallflower\nSeth must be starting to run out of things to talk about. If he had simply\nstated the fact that 50% of Squidoo users who make pages on Squidoo use\nFirefox to do so that would have been fine, Equating going to college with\ndownloading and installing Firefox is a weak reference.\n\n~~~\nAlex3917\nI think the idea of treating Firefox users differently is interesting.\n\n~~~\nphaedrus\nWell we already get treated differently (badly) by IE-only sites! It would be\nnice to see the tables turned.\n\n~~~\nbrk\n(honest question)\n\nWhat IE-only sites are actually worth visiting?\n\nI've been using Firefox forever, and Netscape before that, it's been more than\n5 years (maybe even more) since I found a browser-specific site that had any\nvalue.\n\nMy wife and I both use Mac's (hers at home, mine for home/work), so I can be\npretty sure that I haven't had to resort to IE for some odd site.\n\n~~~\nHarkins\nUtilities (my gas company) and some banks with good interest rates.\n\n------\nbrk\nI agree with the spirit of his post. The college reference seems a bit off,\nand I'm not a big fan of college == success/smart. This is both because I\ncouldn't bring myself to pay others to teach me things I mostly already knew\n(or could figure out for myself), and because most of the worlds top richest\npeople are all non-college educated (most have some college, but no degree,\nnot sure about Slim off the top of my head, but I doubt he has any).\n\n------\nchengmi\n_The reasoning: In order to use Firefox, you need to be confident enough to\ndownload and use a browser that wasn't the default when you first turned on\nyour computer._\n\nFirefox is standard on Ubuntu. If I download and install a new OS, does that\nmake me a super power user? Don't some Dells come with Ubuntu pre-installed?\n\n~~~\npchristensen\nVery few, and you'd still have to be a bit of a ballsy user to buy an Ubuntu\ndell instead of a Windows (unless it's significantly cheaper).\n\n------\nnoonespecial\nHmmm by observing people's behavior, you can estimate what kinds of people\nthey are. There's a shocker. I'm still not quite sure what college had to do\nwith it all. Another observed behavior I think was his thought.\n\n------\nxlnt\nso, how do safari users stack up?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMIT undergrad's reactions to working at a startup - adamsmith\nhttp://www.xobni.com/blog/2007/01/31/kevins-thoughts/\n======\nced\nHe claims that algorithms are not so important, but they are what propelled\nGoogle above Yahoo and co. Reddit today is very much in the vulnerable\nposition that Yahoo was in. Someone with a recommendation engine that works\nwell could pull the rug from under their feet.\n\n------\nscylla\nHmmm ... the author has nothing but praise for PG, but one of the main thrusts\nof his article was that college students should learn more Java and C#.\n\nIsn't that derided as blub programing languages around here?\n\n~~~\nmrgordon\nYou make a good point, although it is my experience that MIT does not echo\nPaul's feelings with regards to programming languages. There is obviously the\ngroup of hackers at CSAIL (Sussman et al.) that swear by LISP and the\nfunctional paradigms in general, but almost every class that involves a large\namount of programming is in Java. Even 6.001 is being phased out for courses\ntaught in Python.\n\nAs a current undergrad at MIT, I find myself sometimes struggling to determine\nwhether I agree with Kevin or not. It does seem that my greatest selling point\nis my knowledge and experience with specific programming languages like Java\nand not any background I have in algorithms, discrete mathematics, etc. I feel\nthat these other tools will prove more useful over the long term, but it's\nsometimes hard to continue to feel that way when the need for a summer job\nforces one to put away the common lisp book to read javadocs.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLyft says drivers tampering with surge pricing could be booted - bruceb\nhttps://abcnews.go.com/Business/lyft-drivers-tampering-surge-pricing-booted/story?id=63101962\n======\nyhoneycomb\nI mean, they're literally gaming the system. I don't see anything wrong with\npunishing them for that.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBeing a Professional - sgdesign\nhttp://blog.folyo.me/being-a-professional/\n\n======\npefavre\nAlways good to remember, as these rules of thumb apply to any kind of\nprofessional relation.\n\n------\nryoma0421\nVery thoughtful post as always :)\n\n------\nsidcool\nWell written.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nModern C++ for C Programmers – Part 3 - signa11\nhttps://ds9a.nl/articles/posts/cpp-3/\n======\nsigna11\nprevious versions are available here (part-1):\n[https://ds9a.nl/articles/posts/c++-1/](https://ds9a.nl/articles/posts/c++-1/)\nand here (part-2)\n[https://ds9a.nl/articles/posts/cpp-2/](https://ds9a.nl/articles/posts/cpp-2/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAny startups with \"splash pages\" announcing a future launch date? - streo\n\nI wanted to know if anybody is willing to share strategies for their \"coming soon...\" pages for their startups.  I have read Tony Wright's awesome blog entry regarding this subject here<p>http://blog.rescuetime.com/2007/07/05/web-biz-how-to-have-4000-users-waiting-when-you-launch/<p>I wanted to know if anybody else here has other strategies that they are willing to share.<p>Btw, I will also add that this place is awesome.  Thank you all in advance!\n======\nnextmoveone\nThis company doesn't have a product yet: smoothstart.com\n\nYou can check out their strategy, which is very similar to tony's for getting\nusers before having a product.\n\nWelcome to News.yc, I think you'll gain alot of valuable insight here.\n\n~~~\nstreo\nI have gained more within the last 2 days than I could have imagined!! Thanks\nfor the insight.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhat to expect when dealing with potential investors - Ztrain\nhttp://www.antiventurecapital.com/valuations.html\nBrace yourselves.\n======\nshogunmike\nThe article emphasises the importance of equity (for a founder) but I'd be\nhappy with 10% of $100 million as opposed to 90% of $10,000.\n\nSurely a more important (but perhaps slightly more subtle) point is that VCs\nwill perhaps impose additional constraints on the company. A good example is\nbringing in a new \"business savvy\" CEO (and/or board of directors) to\npotentially replace you.\n\nAre there any legal tools that allow a founder to maintain control of the\ncompany (in a voting sense) even if the VC firm wants 50% or more equity?\n\nIf Sequoia invested in your startup and asked for 50% would YOU complain?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow to access a PayPal business account from any country - p17b\nhttps://medium.com/e-residency-blog/how-to-access-a-paypal-business-account-from-any-country-f5360419fed8\n======\njaclaz\nThe point of the article is about how to access anything _from Estonia_ ,\nafter having accessed Estonia \"from any country\".\n\nTL;DR:\n\nOnce you become an Estonian e-resident, and have registered a company in\nEstonia, you can use Paypal but also forget about it and choose instead any\ndifferent payment provider such as \"this\" (but mentioning Paypal business\naccount in the title gets more views/reads than mentioning \"this\").\n\n------\njfries\nPayPal are notorious for semi-randomly closing accounts, especially when the\nusage deviates a little bit from the norm. I wouldn't go the route described\nin the article if I depended on this income, even if it seems innocent.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow do you make important decisions quickly? - mikeypuff\n\nOr, in general, what&#x27;s a good method for decision making?\n======\nmatryoshka\nI gather facts and listen to my gut feeling. If my gut feeling tells me\nsomething is off, it overrides the facts and I go with my gut feeling.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLiquid hydrogen UAV flew for two days straight - wslh\nhttp://gizmodo.com/this-liquid-hydrogen-uav-just-flew-for-two-days-straigh-504876691\n\n======\nwslh\nCan I put those batteries in my mobile phone? ;-)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nScientists discover new magnetic element - dnetesn\nhttps://phys.org/news/2018-05-scientists-magnetic-element.html\n======\nmasonic\nClickbait title.\n\nThey discovered previously unknown magnetic _properties_ of an _existing_\nelement. They aren't alchemists.\n\n~~~\ndozzie\nFrom the title alone I was expecting something with a half-life measured in\nseconds.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe data is in – stop the panic and end the total isolation - mrfusion\nhttps://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/494034-the-data-are-in-stop-the-panic-and-end-the-total-isolation\n======\necpottinger\nI just noticed, your number one point boils down to who cares about the old\nfolks, they are going to die soon anyway. Tells us a lot about you.\n\n~~~\nquickthrower2\nI notice this HN habit of reading something until you find something\ndisagreeable and then presumably stop reading (which is the most generous\nassumption) and then post a negative comment.\n\nThe writer could have done better in the ordering of the article to avoid this\nreaction in general, but at least HN should give it a fair chance by reading\nto the end. Otherwise its like taking a sentence out of context.\n\nHe also said:\n\n> Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding.\n\n> The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence\n> already in hand, is to institute a more focused strategy like some outlined\n> in the first place: Strictly protect the known vulnerable, self-isolate the\n> mildly sick and open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent\n> large-group precautions.\n\n~~~\nrobocat\nIt’s wishful thinking that we can somehow protect the elderly from getting\ninfected while the rest of the population is getting infected. Possibly for\nindividuals at home, but surely not for anyone in a home or hospital who needs\nnursing. Assuming that very few people remain infectious after catching Covid\n(jury is still out: there are cases of relapse and continual low level\ninfection - we don’t know how common either is yet).\n\nThe writer mentions the problem, but lacks suggestions for how we can prevent\nthe infirm from getting infected over the long term. Perhaps in a world with\nunlimited PPE?\n\n~~~\nmrfusion\nThat’s a good point. There would still be an element of risk but that’s true\nfor any plan. The lockdowns certainly aren’t without risks of their own. I\nguess it comes down to which option is least bad.\n\n------\necpottinger\nReally?\n[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries)\nsays you are full of it if you don't think the virus is serious.\n\n~~~\nquickthrower2\nHe didn't say the virus is not serious\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhat if apple tv partners with a Cable Company - ptjackson\nhttp://ptjacksonok.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-finally-cracked-it.html\n\n======\nzmonkeyz\nI'm thinking they'll create a software platform for their tv so that if you\nhave a cable provider they will install their \"app\". Not only that but it'd be\nreally crazy if other cable companies could install their own apps with their\nown \"on-demand\" services. If they can't get you to buy their service the old\nfashion way why not ride someone else's line.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nRover, A \"Dogbnb\" Site, Raises $3.5M And Nabs Commercial Promotion From Petco - philipkimmey\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2013/07/30/rover-a-dogbnb-site-raises-3-5m-and-nabs-commercial-promotion-from-petco/\n\n======\nadambard\nDogbnb in more ways than one: You can choose to pay a sitter to put up your\ndog for x nights, or you can pay someone to LIVE IN YOUR HOUSE and take care\nof your dog. It makes sense, of course, but sounds a bit odd.\n\n~~~\nphilipkimmey\nIndeed - I've talked a sitter on Rover who was planning on listing their\nprofile in NYC as a traveling sitter as a way to get a free stay in the city,\nwhile also watching someone's home & dog.\n\n------\nante_annum\nI honestly never thought \"It's like [x], for dogs\" would be a real thing. That\nthis is even getting off the ground amazes me.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Commandline Passphrase Generator Using EFF Wordlists - yarwelp\nhttps://asciinema.org/a/2znuSiyoonwpDB7QriovrrC0V\n======\nyarwelp\nImpatient? (Aka. tl;dr)\n\n    \n    \n        mkdir -p ~/src/github.com/yarwelp\n        cd !$\n        git clone git@github.com:yarwelp/pgen.git\n        cd pgen\n        cargo build --release\n        ./target/release/pgen\n    \n\n\\---\n\nSlightly more patient but still don't want to watch the 10 minute screen\nrecording?\n\nRead the README at\n[https://github.com/yarwelp/pgen](https://github.com/yarwelp/pgen)\n\n\\---\n\nI prefer passphrases to passwords. Previously I was using a function I wrote\nwhich makes use of seq and head and tail and reads its words from\n/usr/share/dict/words. That had two main problems:\n\n1\\. It was slow even for a small amount of words.\n\n2\\. The words in that wordlist were not great for typing, because there were a\nlot of weird and obscure words in the list.\n\nRecently there was an article posted here on HN where someone from the EFF\ntold about a set of optimized wordlists they'd made.\n\nI decided right then and there to implement a program to make use of these\nlists that would solve both of the two problems mentioned above.\n\nI chose to write this program in Rust, and the result is excellent. Fast,\nsecure and user friendly :)\n\nAnd you can have it for free!\n\n[https://github.com/yarwelp/pgen](https://github.com/yarwelp/pgen)\n\n------\nyarwelp\nI have now published pgen on crates.io [1], and you can install it simply by\nrunning\n\n    \n    \n        cargo install pgen\n    \n\nNo need to clone the repo manually or anything.\n\n[1]: [https://crates.io/crates/pgen](https://crates.io/crates/pgen)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIs the Solar System Really a Vortex? - swamp40\nhttp://www.universetoday.com/107322/is-the-solar-system-really-a-vortex/\n\n======\nswamp40\nIt's not often you get to hear an astrophysicist say \"...then we’re all\nbuggered.\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIn-App Purchase Scams in the App Store - okket\nhttps://daringfireball.net/2017/06/in-app_purchase_scams_in_the_app_store\n======\nfred256\nSee also the discussion at\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14526156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14526156)\n\nI just can't fathom why any $5k/year in-app subscription should be legitimate.\n\n~~~\nkranner\nYou think an app can't provide more than $5000 in value to a customer in a\nyear? Under any circumstances? Any kind of app?\n\n~~~\ndanielhooper\nIt should be enough to raise a flag for someone at Apple to thoroughly review\nthe app before approving it for release. Not to mention that software worth\n$5,000/yr isn't often, if ever, paid for through an app store.\n\n------\ndkarapetyan\nIsn't it in Apple's financial interest to look the other way? The scam\ngenerates money for Apple so the incentives here are misaligned.\n\n~~~\nUnfalseDesign\nI highly doubt that these apps are generating such a significant amount of\nincome for Apple (when taking into account their entire income from the App\nStore) that they would consider looking the other way.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBreaking Smart - lukasLansky\nhttp://breakingsmart.com/season-1/\n======\nantisugar\nI wrote up a very rough summary/set of notes. Please excuse all the errors in\npunctuation, spelling, and formatting. Thought it might be helpful for people\nwho want to skim, as the whole thing is more-or-less a book.\n\n[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rWspzjvnv4a3bRkVaaFFMWU_...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rWspzjvnv4a3bRkVaaFFMWU_IwAfXh4U6ZUlAxK5XYA/pub)\n\n------\nvezzy-fnord\nThis is a very syncretic fusion between computing, dialectical materialism,\nentrepreneurial laissez-faire idealism and a bombastic techno-optimism.\n\nUnsurprisingly, it harbors plenty of confusion.\n\n\"Towards a Mass Flourishing\" makes the outrageous claim that the hacker ethos\nis best embodied in Silicon Valley. In reality, SV is one of the most detached\nfrom the MIT hacker ethos, instead having its own entrepreneurial hacker\nculture that is markedly distinct.\n\nThe \"Purists versus Pragmatists\" essay romanticizes the release of Mosaic and\ngives little credit at all to Ted Nelson's ideas, who is shoved aside as a\npurist crank. It's a false dichotomy through and through.\n\n\"Agility and Illegibility\" again romanticizes widespread access to personal\ncomputers as some entrepreneurial Randian vision, that of Bill Gates\nspecifically.\n\nThe \"Rough Consensus and Maximal Interestingness\" essay misquotes Knuth and\nincorrectly attaches philosophical meanings to technical terms like dynamic\nbinding and lazy evaluation. It further espouses the \"direction of maximal\ninterestingness\" and grand visions in the post-dot com bust era, when in fact\nsystems software research is becoming increasingly conservative compared to as\nrecent as the 90s.\n\n\"Running Code and Perpetual Beta\" presents the dogmas of \"release early,\nrelease often\" and constant chaotic flux in software as a natural result of\ngreat ideas, as opposed to being the result of a cascade of attention-deficit\nteenagers. Note that fault tolerance, stability and security are not mentioned\n_once_.\n\n\"Software as Subversion\" equivocates \"forking\" as being a Git terminology that\nsomehow reclaimed its negative stigma, when it is purely a GitHub\nredefinition. The author makes no distinction between a clone and a fork. Also\na misrepresentation of OS/2's mismanagement to argue in favor of \"worse is\nbetter\" (ignoring all other great systems besides OS/2) and babble about how\nblockchains are pixie dust.\n\n\"The Principle of Generative Pluralism\" sets up the false dichotomies of\nhardware-centric/software-centric and car-centric/smartphone-centric. I\nsuppose it somewhat reflects the end user application programmer's\nunderstanding of hardware.\n\n\"A Tale of Two Computers\" prematurely sets up mainframes as obsolete compared\nto distributed networked computers (they are not exclusive) and makes the\nerror of ascribing a low-level property to an ephemeral, unimportant\nabstraction - its marvel at the hashtag when the core idea of networking has\nenabled the same for much longer, and will continue to.\n\n\"The Immortality of Bits\" is one of the worst, and makes this claim:\n\"Surprisingly, as a consequence of software eating the technology industry\nitself, the specifics of the hardware are not important in this evolution.\nOutside of the most demanding applications, data, code, and networking are all\nlargely hardware-agnostic today.\" This reeks of an ignorant programmer,\noblivious as to how just how much hardware design decisions control them and\nshape their view. In fact, this is a very _dangerous_ view to propagate. Our\nhardware is in desperate need of being upgraded to handle things like\ncapability-based addressing, high-level assembly and thread-level over\ninstruction-level parallelism. This stupid \"hardware doesn't matter\" thinking\nwill delay it. The essay also wrongly thinks containerization is a form of\nhardware virtualization. It further says the \"sharing economy\" will usurp\neverything, which is ridiculous.\n\n\"Tinkering versus Goals\" again sets up tinkering for the sake of it as leading\nto disruption and innovation, and not churn and CADT.\n\nThe \"Free as in Beer, and as in Speech\" essay clumsily and classically gets\nthe chronology and values of open source and free software wrong. Moreover,\nthe footnote demonstrates a profound bias for the \"open source\" ideal of\npragmatism. This is in spite of the fact that many of the consequentialist\ntechnical arguments for OSS like the \"many eyes make all bugs shallow\"\nargument have proven to be flawed, whereas free software making no claims of\ntechnical superiority and using ethical arguments has a much stronger, if less\npopular case.\n\n\\----\n\nOverall, I do not recommend this.\n\n~~~\nenraged_camel\nThere's something about the HN users that makes them enjoy taking a shit on\nother people's work without including positive or at least constructive\nfeedback.\n\nI've been a member for almost four years and I still haven't figured out what\nit is, but it makes me shake my head every time.\n\n~~~\nmwcampbell\nWhat would constructive feedback look like in this case? Padding the comment\nwith something like \"While I understand that the author put a lot of work into\nthese essays...\" would merely lower the signal to noise ratio. The way I see\nit, HN commenters who don't mince words are merely doing the same as HN's\nfounder, Paul Graham. To quote from his talk \"Great Hackers\"\n([http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html)):\n\n\"I didn't mean to make the book controversial. I was trying to make it\nefficient. I didn't want to waste people's time telling them things they\nalready knew. It's more efficient just to give them the diffs. But I suppose\nthat's bound to yield an alarming book.\"\n\nAlso, comments that amount to \"I like this\" can be compressed to an upvote. So\nwe don't see many of those.\n\n------\nphaemon\nThe first essay on that list starts talking about \"soft technologies\" without\ndefining what they are.\n\nThey don't match other definitions of \"soft technologies\" and I'm having\ndifficulty figuring out what the definition is here that only includes\nwriting, money and software (frankly, I suspect if anyone other than an\nAmerican had written this, money wouldn't be on the list).\n\n~~~\npetejansson\nI was comfortable with the notion. It seems to me that \"soft technologies\" are\nthe ones that cause ideas and thoughts to be materialized in the world. The\nother technologies seem to be physical transformations of matter and energy.\n\nWhat I'm really curious about is how to best consume these. I suppose a\nmailing list would be the norm, but I'd like to see them automatically land in\nInstapaper or Pocket. I'll have to see if there's a way already.\n\n~~~\ndanprisk\n\"What I'm really curious about is how to best consume these. I suppose a\nmailing list would be the norm, but I'd like to see them automatically land in\nInstapaper or Pocket. I'll have to see if there's a way already.\"\n\nIt was a little laborious, but I went through each essay and used dotEPUB\n([http://dotepub.com/](http://dotepub.com/)) to convert it to epub, then\ntransferred to my ereader manually.\n\nI considered looking for a more automated solution, before realising that it\nwould take more time looking for a solution than just manually doing it.\n\nSimilarly for pocket I imagine with the frequency these are coming out it\nwould be easiest to simply manually add each essay to pocket.\n\n~~~\nilzmastr\nhere is the script that I use for doing this:\n[https://gist.github.com/ilyakava/47aedca7bc39483d7a94](https://gist.github.com/ilyakava/47aedca7bc39483d7a94)\n\nAll you have to do is input a txt file of links, in this case:\n[http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=8PTFJ2x4](http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=8PTFJ2x4)\n\nHere is the output epub for all to enjoy:\n[http://cl.ly/022V1Y1t2I24](http://cl.ly/022V1Y1t2I24)\n\nIn cases when I care about formatting/metadata, I might use pandoc to merge\nall the \\d+.html files, regex or edit, and then use pandoc to output *epub\n\n~~~\nfirun\nI've deleted some \"Share this\" and such stuff if epub and it's available here\n–\n[https://www.dropbox.com/s/ws3xakwcd6dqbss/Breaking%20Smart%2...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ws3xakwcd6dqbss/Breaking%20Smart%20-%20Venkatesh%20Rao.epub?dl=0)\n\n------\njordanpg\nUmm, who is Venkatesh Rao and why should I read _30_ essays by him?\n\n~~~\nzvikara\nI read some very good posts he wrote and would highly recommend reading this\none:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881296](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881296)\n\n~~~\nto3m\nHere's another good one:\n[http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepre...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepreneurs-\nare-the-new-labor-part-i/)\n\n------\nj_lev\nTIL \"polyannish\" [sic] is a word.\n\nAgree Ribbonfam peaked with the Gervais Principle essay. Agree with some of\nthe criticisms here. Will add my own: the first three essays are somewhat\naccessible but after that the author is talking to the echo chamber which is\nhis regular blog audience.\n\n------\nandrewtbham\nI sense this may coin several new phrases, much like \"software is eating the\nworld.\" breaking smart, Promethean mindset /pastoralist mindsets.\n\nAlso lots of references to previous great insights: Alan Kay, Carlota Perez,\nJeff Bezos,\n\n~~~\nkzhahou\nCoining a phrase is every tech pundit's ultimate dream.\n\nI refer to this as \"cementing the drive.\"\n\n------\nvonklaus\nSo this is a blog that will write 1 article every 5 weeks and batch release\nthem in 2017? I am all for thoughtful content, but binging isn't a concept\nthat can be applied to blogs. This makes no sense.\n\nEdit: i get what turned me off by this. It was the positioning as a radical\nnew media concept and the convoluted and confusing explanation.\n\nWhat do you call the development and research of a text based narrative which\nis catalogued for direct and total consumption online?\n\n> an e-book. Got it now guys.\n\n~~~\njavajosh\nIt's a valid thing to do because the ideas are all interrelated in complex\nways. Releasing them all at once allows you to read a little, get inspired,\njump around, check another intriguing title, and then come back tomorrow to\nread a little more (if you are inspired).\n\nA somewhat darker view (from a certain perspective) is that he wanted to say\nhis piece without being contradicted or argued with. To write a series of\nessays that don't have to respond to \"the community\" and get weighed down by\nreaction. One could even say that it's an expression of a pastoral utopia of\npedagogy! :P\n\n------\nbluishgreen\nHoly negativity batman!\n\nThis is a great collections of essays, I'd say bed time reading for the\nbudding entrepreneur and/or VC.\n\nIgnore (or misunderstand) at your own peril.\n\n------\nalexashka\nCan somebody provide cliff notes? This is too long and I strongly dislike what\nhas been written in the first few essays. Maybe somebody can sum this up in\nshorter form.\n\n~~~\ncuriousjorge\n\"I'm too lazy to eat this steak because I have to chew, can somebody please\nturn it into liquid so I can drink it?\"\n\n~~~\nmeritt\n[https://www.soylent.com/](https://www.soylent.com/)\n\n------\nPuffinBlue\nThe text on the site is too small and too wide to read comfortably on a\nscreen.\n\nThe lines are over 120 characters long at 16px. On a 1080p screen this is just\nto small and wide to follow properly.\n\nThis sort of thing is bearable here on HN when skimming comments but for\nreading over '30,000 words' it's just too off putting to even start reading.\n\n~~~\nnpizzolato\nYou realize you can shrink your browser window width and increase the text\nsize to make the layout how you want?\n\nFor some reason there's always some highly-rated complaint on HN comments\nabout the website layout, and I do not understand why. They are honestly the\nmost boring comments to read.\n\n~~~\nmercer\nPerhaps dang should answer this, but is flagging these kinds of comments a\ngood use of flagging? I generally find the rules governing flagging a bit\nmurky (even after searching around HN for dang's posts on this).\n\nI would much appreciate an answer as I've tried taking up the responsibility\nof doing my part in keeping HN a great place with valuable comments and\ninsights!\n\n~~~\nPuffinBlue\nI commented in this case because of what the website is 'providing'. It's a\n30,000 word collection of essays, of READING material. It greatly bothers me\nthat such effort is put into the content but such lip service has been paid to\nthe presentation.\n\nTo divorce the content and the presentation is simply not feasible and pretty\ninsulting to the good work of designers/typesetters and indeed readers.\n\nI suspect the frequency of this sort of comment is due to the frequency of bad\ndesign.\n\nPerhaps in other cases this sort of comment isn't relevant, I can accept that\nargument. I argue that here it is relevant because the entire premise of the\nmaterial is that it's for reading and the presentation makes that unviable.\n\nDo we also stop positive comments like this[0] one?\n\nPerhaps what I should have done is make a more detailed post outlining the\nissues with the content and perhaps linked to well accepted design practices\nthat help improve the reading experience. But to suggest 'these types of\ncomments' are without relevance (*and deserving of flagging) is to deny\nconversation about an important part of the submission content.\n\n[0]\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9990140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9990140)\n\n~~~\nmercer\nThat's a fair point, and there's definitely a difference between being\npedantic about design details and commenting on a relevant design-related\nissue.\n\nI definitely would not flag _every_ design-related comment, but I was mostly\nwondering if it is _ever_ justified to do so.\n\n(and just to be clear, I had no particular opinion on your comment - it just\nreminded me to ask about flagging etiquette)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: What software would you pay for right now? - tixocloud\nLooking for some ideas on what to build for small-medium sized businesses&#x2F;startups.\n======\nkrmmalik\n1.Better automated webinar software. The existing solutions are good feature\nwise but the UX's are awful. This space needs some serious innovation.\n\n2\\. Customer journey automation tools. Autopilot is really good but its good\nto see competition in this area\n\n3\\. Something that makes the burden of making data more accurate at the\nlogging end better to report to business intelligence tools\n\n4\\. Something that allows me to leverage my knowledge expertise as a\nconsultant and better helps me deploy group coaching and accountability. Again\nthere's some software out there for this already but nothing I like\n\n6\\. Most important. A really good CRM. I've tried soooooooo many. Not a single\nsilver bullet solution. Can't believe it given its 2016.\n\n~~~\ntixocloud\nWow. Many ideas and all of them seem really good.\n\nFor 6, what's the biggest problem will all the CRMs out there these days? What\nmakes you cringe?\n\n2\\. is something that I did think about but am unsure about the market for the\ntool. I'd also like to learn more about 1. and 4. in greater detail.\n\n3\\. I know how you feel - I've been in BI and logging data accuracy is just a\npain. You'll also have to balance to make sure that the UX is not affected by\nhaving all these logging events.\n\n~~~\nkrmmalik\nGlad you like :)\n\nFor 6, all the tools despite promising minimal data entry don't actually\ndeliver on their promise (at least not in my experience) and don't play as\nnice with other tools as they could. Customer journey automation is a growing\nmarket and CRM systems are not paying that area enough attention. It's not\nthat they need to build something that can address automation itself -- they\njust need to play nice , very nice, with other tools.\n\nFor number 1 check out Stealth Seminar and EverWebinar. They're the two best\nin the business which says a lot.\n\nFor 4. What else would you like to know? What kind of detail would you like me\nto share?\n\n~~~\ntixocloud\nThanks. Would love to discuss with you further about 6 .. and the customer\njourney automation piece. Maybe something we could collaborate together.\n\nWould love to know what's out there for 4.\n\n~~~\nkrmmalik\nHappy to chat further and happy to collaborate in some way, but you should\nknow I'm not a coder/developer. I don't have any skills -- coding or otherwise\n-- that would help in building anything. I'm good for collaborating with in\nterms of domain research. I.e. what are the challenges users are facing and\nwhat is or isn't a good solution.\n\nI'm on twitter @khurammalik\n\n------\nrgovind\nI would pay for a way to manage my google search results. I sometimes go to\n10th page on google, I make extra effort to avoid some websites and I keep\nexpanding my search words. If I search for Donald trump now and two minutes\nlater I search for \"Donal Trump, Hillary comment\", I don't want to see the\nresults I got from my first search query. Either google should have a way of\nnot showing these results or some 'note taking chrome addon' can remove those\nresults for me.\n\nFor what it is worth, sometimes my search string is as follows (India\nrelated). As you can see, I am searching for narendra modi minus major news\nsites. narendra modi -timesofindia -ndtv -ibnlive -thehindu -Firstpost\n-facebook -indianexpress -hindustantimes -news -indiatimes\n\n~~~\ntixocloud\nWhat it sounds like you're describing is a way to filter out certain websites?\n\n~~~\nrgovind\nYes. But the list to be filtered varies with the query I make.\n\n~~~\ntixocloud\nSounds like an idea that the Google Search PM should pick up on :)\n\n~~~\nrgovind\nYes. But I am not going to hold my breath about it.\n\n------\nmuzani\nA portal where small companies could apply for bespoke enterprise technical\nprojects, without the hassle of bribing officials or writing long tenders.\n\n~~~\ntixocloud\nWould it be something like a job board for small companies? I've been in a\nconsulting firm and I'm still trying to understand whether a portal would help\nsolve that issue.\n\n~~~\nmuzani\nSorry, I meant for something like government projects and huge companies like\nbanks.\n\nBecause a lot of them have nowhere to list. The process is not fair, and in\ndeveloping countries, people exploit this. Usually one person has the power to\nrecommend and significantly affect the decision. That one person tends to get\na lot of free lunches and free phones.\n\nThe lack of competition also leads to overinflated prices on the buyer's end\nand over promising on the seller's end. If the average applicant offered to\nProject A for $1,000,000 in 4 months, and suddenly company 13 offers to do it\nfor $400,000 in 1 month, something sticks out.\n\nIf there were only 1-4 applicants, as usually happens for this situation, the\nshady inexperienced one will not stick out so much. As a result, a lot of\nthese companies take these jobs and get burned, which damages the industry as\na whole.\n\n~~~\ntixocloud\nI can see it working for governments but for private banks, not sure. Even in\nCanada, we see a lot of value placed on business relationships and even though\nthere's plenty of transparency, many times there are things that get swept\nunder.\n\nHowever, in Canada, we do have a system like that for government projects so\nit could definitely be a step in the right direction. Especially for\ndeveloping countries.\n\n------\nsharemywin\nI had a pretty good idea that I thought would be good to sell to small-medium\nbusinesses but I realized I'm not a sales person and so I \"pivoted\" to a\nbusiness that only required the skills I had. Just don't want you to fall into\nthe trap I was in. If you or a partner don't want to spend all the time\ncalling on businesses I would find something else to go after. my 2 cents.\n\n~~~\ntixocloud\nThanks for the tip. It's definitely a concern of mine. If you don't mind me\nasking, how did you pivot to a business that only required the skills you had?\n\n------\nmiguelrochefort\nI would pay for one app/service that does 80% of what all other apps/services\ndo.\n\nOne app which I can use to sell things, buy things, send messages, review\nthings, control things, get notifications, track my health, learn things, etc.\n\nThis doesn't seem like something that would be too hard to do, considering\nthat all apps pretty much do the same things. But that would make people's\nlife so much better.\n\n~~~\nprmph\nI think this is a major challenge facing software technology now. Seems to be\nrelated to my question at:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10883322](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10883322)\n\nOne way to solve this is to create a modular super-app for which developers\ncan write components. This is much more than just the idea of plug-ins or\nextensions, because the super-app will be built from the ground up, and at\nvarious layers, to be highly modular, which almost every aspect being\nreplaceable with user-chosen components. Also, the basic structure of the app\nand the its extension points cannot be changed unless by majority vote of\nregistered users.\n\nFor example, imagine a task super-app. The user should be able to choose from\nvarious competing workflows, UIs, or 3rd-party integrations. These components\ncould be purchased outright from a gallery, subscribed to, or paid per use. So\nif I have a little idea about how to improve todo lists, I don't have to build\nan entire app from scratch to do it, I can just define a UI flow.\n\n~~~\ninsoluble\n> One way to solve this is to create a modular super-app for which developers\n> can write components\n\nI am pretty sure they call this an operating system. Moreover, most operating\nsystems do provide built-in or pre-installed functionality, such as for\nscheduling, messenging, and note-taking.\n\n~~~\nprmph\nOk, but most consumers have no stomach to go mucking around with OS\ncomponents. The modularity of OSs is at too technical a level. And most third-\nparty apps are trying to solve slightly different issues, with lots of overlap\nin functionality. There are no well-defined, standardized extensibility points\nare needed\n\nIn any case, if I were to write an app for any OS, I still have to think about\nauthentication, UI, storage, etc. There is no tight environment where I can\njust submit a more performant file sorting algorithm, for example, and be paid\nby users who choose to use that in the OS. That is the idea.\n\n------\nhumbleMouse\nI would pay for a stripped down better designed version of soundcloud that was\ntargeted for music producers and djs to share samples.\n\n~~~\naskafriend\nCan you explain the problem that you have that something like a stripped down\nSoundCloud would solve?\n\nWhat are your thoughts on bandcamp?\n\n~~~\nhumbleMouse\nI am a triathalon biker and also go to the gym multiple times per week. As\nsuch, I always have my phone strapped to my arm. Soundcloud's interface for\nliking/saving songs is basically unusable with my phone strapped to my arm.\nThe whole mobile app is a complete piece of shit in terms of UX desgin and\nusability. As a producer, there is not even a button to click to access a list\nof my own tracks I have posted on soundcloud! I test mixes on different\nspeakers all the time and it is a major headache to have to search for your\nown damn song on soundcloud just to be able to find it!!! I should be able to\nclick a button called \"my tracks\" and see a list of all my tracks I have\nuploaded instantly.\n\nAlso, soundcloud is just unreliable in general. Even on my laptop with fiber\ninternet I find myself running into ajax calls that timeout. I always have to\nrefresh the page and whatnot to get songs to play.\n\nI could honestly write a small book about all the things I hate about\nsoundcloud. Now that they have ads I really hope that a small competitor\nsteals their pie. If I didn't have to work a silly enterprise job 9-5 I would\njust write a new platform myself....\n\nA stripped down version of soundcloud would include:\n\nno stupid animations when I click any buttons.\n\nno 100 ajax calls every time I load a page.\n\na mobile interface that didnt suck - and had an easy button for getting to \"my\ntracks\".\n\nA page that showed a history of every song I have ever played in chronological\norder so I could go back and find things I missed.\n\nSmaller album art for each song (ie. more songs displayed per screen space\nunit).\n\nNo ads.\n\nNo fullscreen play/next buttons on mobile - screws me up all the time while\nbiking/running/driving. The buttons are too big.\n\nAs for bandcamp - I don't use it. The few times I have used it have been fine\nthough.\n\nTLDR: I think soundcloud is the best source for finding new artists and music,\nbut the platform from a UX and technical standpoint is shitty.\n\n------\nalok-g\nI am always struggling to find good educational games for kids. Something like\n[http://betterexplained.com/](http://betterexplained.com/), but for younger\nkids (mine is currently ~8 years), would be great.\n\n------\nthiht\nA Linux desktop environment that:\n\n* works as well as Windows or OSX _out of the box_\n\n* is beautiful and usable\n\nIt just doesn't exist at the moment unfortunately, but I'm confident PapyrOS,\nPantheon or Cinnamon will come to solve this soon.\n\n~~~\naspirin\nElementary OS gets pretty close:\n[https://elementary.io/](https://elementary.io/)\n\n------\nOhSoHumble\nI would pay for a service that allows me to view an aggregate of all the board\ngame meetups in my area.\n\nIn fact, I've started a project to make that a reality.\n\n~~~\nafarrell\nI'd be interested in seeing that once you're done\n\n------\nkliao\nYouTube offline mode\n\n~~~\nangryasian\nIf you sign up for youtube red you can download videos.\n[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6308116?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6308116?hl=en)\n\n------\neecks\nA cheaper but as useful dropbox\n\n~~~\nbanterfoil\nDo you find that the prices are too expensive? I have always thought that\ntheir prices were quite reasonable\n\n~~~\neecks\n9.99 a month makes me consider dropping it but something like 6.99 would be\nlovely.\n\n~~~\nnstart\nDoes amazon cloud drive @5 per month fit the bill? Not sure if the experience\nmatches your expectations.\n\n------\ntmaly\ngoogle analytics with automated filtering of referral spam\n\n~~~\npcmaffey\nI'm consistently amazed that Google doesn't do this already.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFor Students Accused of Campus Rape, Legal Victories Win Back Rights - ourmandave\nhttp://www.npr.org/2015/10/15/446083439/for-students-accused-of-campus-rape-legal-victories-win-back-rights\n======\nsupdog\n\"Legal\" victories win back rights but don't cure the harm.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAmplify the OSS community with data - iopeak\nhttps://asyncy.com/blog/oss-community\n======\niopeak\nWould be a pleasure to hear your feedback and questions. We have a bold\nmission, but sometimes big dreams come true. Our in-app Intercom chat is a\ngood place to drop us a line <3\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: How do you stay in shape? - aphextron\nI&#x27;ve found that any time I&#x27;m employed full time, I&#x27;ll inevitably gain 20-30 pounds. Sitting all day and eating out for lunch adds up quick. What&#x27;s worse is after a full day + 1 hour commute each way there&#x27;s no time or energy left to exercise. How do you avoid this?\n======\ndeanstag\nI was late to the game, but the last few years have been a steady progress for\nme.\n\nI am not someone who can stick to a routine for really long. I am trying to\nbuild that skill and I admire those who do that. Building the habit is the\nbest!\n\nNow, things that have worked for me. \\- The 7 Min Workout on weeks when I\nabsolutely have no motivation to spend 1-2 hours at the gym was what I started\nwith. Doing it in the mornings has worked out better. Because mustering up the\nmotivation to do it in the evenings is much much harder. \\- Note that just one\nset of 7-min is not enough and you should atleast build it up to 3-4\nrepetitions to make it worthwhile. \\- Once I got comfortable with a few of the\nexercises, I switched them with a few kettlebell exercises like swing, turkish\nkettlebell etc.\n\nI realize time is a factor with your commute, but if you can, the time you set\napart will be worth it.\n\n\\- Group classes worked a long way. Crossfit/Crossfit like intense classes of\none hour. The group dynamic helped me push a lot more than I would have\notherwise \\- Stronglifts 5x5 - This is what I stick with now. Strength\nTraining has given me huge improvements with just the few simple exercises.\n\n~~~\npfarrell\nMorning exercise was a game changer for me, too.\n\n------\npfarrell\nAs much as I can, trying to make each of the following goals and being honest\nwith myself that I will fail occasionally, but won’t have to give up\neverything if I do.\n\nWalking over lunch hour and then eating at my desk. Tracking steps and\nstriving to break 10k daily. Small sugar/junk food snacks less than 1x weekly.\nCut down on alcohol. No eating after 7 pm. Get 10 hours of sleep every night.\nDrink lots of water. Apples and almonds for snacks. Have a scale and track\nyour weight.\n\nLike learning to play music, keeping your weight down is an investment in your\nfuture happiness.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nUnexplored Areas in Data Compression - ingve\nhttps://medium.com/@duhroach/unexplored-areas-in-data-compression-c256f70ba0c7\n======\nAidanChurch818\n`Entropy is a broken measurement. The fact that [0,1,2,3] and [0,3,1,2] have\nthe same entropy value is annoying...' This is incorrect. There is no concept\nof entropy for a specific finite sequence; entropy is a property of random\nvariables. Assuming a finite string is generated (i.i.d.) from a random\nsource, then one way to estimate its entropy is using the histogram but this\nis not always optimal. Also several other parts of the article are over-\nsimplified or incorrect.\n\n~~~\nnabla9\n1\\. Entropy is a broken measurement\n\n2\\. This is incorrect\n\n3\\. There is no concept of entropy for a specific finite sequence\n\nDo you see what you did there? Entropy is limited concept if you want to\nadvance compression beyond certain limit.\n\nGeneral note: There is tendency of commentators to nit-pick blog posts as if\nbeing in debate where the goal is to win. It would be more valuable if we\nwould read the article and try to interpret the intended meaning behind them\nfavorably. Of course there are parts that are over-simplified or incorrect.\nThis is just writing in the blog, not fully thought out edited and peer\nreviewed writing.\n\n~~~\ngajomi\nWhile I agree with your general comments about the attitude we should have in\nevaluating/commenting on blog post I have to disagree with the specific\ncritique of the above comment. The favorable interpretation of the article is\nthat the OP understands the basic definition of entropy but didn't realize\nthat it could be extended to other models that account for permutation\nsymmetry. But if you have read about any authoritative accounts of information\nentropy (Shannon's 1948 expository article, which discusses permutation\ninvariance, is an example) you would be aware that it is more generally\napplicable.\n\nEntropy is a famous concept, but it is also a famously misunderstood concept,\nand misunderstood frequently enough that I think we should err on the side of\nbeing charitable to the critics as long as their commentary is technically\nsound and focused. The OP could have probably done without last two sentences.\nNevertheless, I would like to think that the article could have been greatly\nimproved or possibly avoided entirely if the auothor had consulted\nAidanChurch818.\n\n------\nbeagle3\nI have a compression issue much closer to my heart that is not being properly\naddresses: AES-256 encrypted plaintext files. Seriously! If you just figure\nout the 256-bit key, it would compress well with any compressor - there's a\n_huge_ class of files which would only need 256 additional bits! Why isn't\nthere any advance on this front? /s\n\nEntropy is not a broken measurement - in fact, it's the perfect measurement\n(proof: Shannon's source coding theorem and its converse), its only downside\nis that it is only defined with respect to a model.\n\nIf you measure it on the output of one model (permutations) with respect to\nanother model (i.i.d) then, duh, it's wrong. And general permutations are so\nrare, that they might bug the author but there's no incentive to consider\nthem. Non general permutations - e.g., addition-modulo permutations, often ARE\nreasonably well compressed by markov/tree/fsmx model algorithms and their\ndelta counterparts. (And they're still too rare to consider on their own).\n\nKolmogorov complexity is interesting, but it is too vast and complicated to\nconsider as a whole (proof: equivalence of computing Chaitin's omega to the\nhalting problem), other than as a very useful reasoning device. Therefore,\nlike with the halting problem, we focus on specific subsets that seem\ninteresting.\n\nFrankly, this rant reads like \"But I don't understand why they don't yet have\na car that runs on water\". Compression is math, and it's a part of math we\nunderstand quite well. BWT, for example, is an amazing algorithm - but if you\ntake a step back, it's just an efficient implementation of a compression\nscheme that was known before. (IIRC, the last gap in understanding the\nequivalence was closed by Effros et al in 2002)\n\n~~~\nraverbashing\nWell, that's why you compress then encrypt first\n\nEntropy is a good measurement _but it 's not the goal_. The goal is a smaller\nfile size\n\nYeah, I guess that for 'generic compression' the advances are going to be slow\nand few. Without any knowledge of the type of file it's only bytes so you have\nto work with that. Also disk space and network speeds are getting cheaper, so\nwhat might have needed compression in the past might not need today (even\nthough compression got much cheaper)\n\n~~~\ndetaro\n> Well, that's why you compress then encrypt first\n\nJust be careful of CRIME-style attacks...\n\n~~~\npella\nwiki: \"CRIME (\"Compression Ratio Info-leak Made Easy\") is a security exploit\nagainst secret web cookies over connections using the HTTPS and SPDY protocols\nthat also use data compression.\"\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRIME](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRIME)\n\n------\nArnt\nThere's a great big unexplored area: Optimising the expression.\n\nI had a hack back in the previous millenium that improved on .tar.gz,\ncompatibly. I think it used find, but the current expression would be:\n\n    \n    \n      tar zcf $(file **/*(.) | sort -T: -k2 | cut -d: -f1)\n    \n\nThe use of file is a bit of a hack, but the idea is good: let the compressor\ncompress all of the source code together, without being distracted by\ndissimilar files. Ditto for other types.\n\nCompressing a byte stream is not the same as compressing the data. Reordering\na tar file doesn't change the meaning, and IMO the big, big gap in compression\nresearch is to identify such expression transformations.\n\nCompression algorithms regard the input as god-given, but in reality much\ninput can be reordered or otherwise transformed. The order of the files in a\n.tar could be reordered if the compressor could say anything about what's\nbeneficial; the order of glyphs in a font could be reordered too. That sort of\ncommunication between the compression subsystem and the data source could be a\nvery fruitful area of research.\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nNow that's a clever trick. I just tried it on a random subdirectory here (a\nwebsite source) and it actually made the resulting file _larger_ so it may not\nalways work but the idea makes sense. Wonder why it does not work in this\ncase.\n\n~~~\nArnt\nZlib and most others use dictionaries; the dictionary is adjusted as\ncompression (and decompression) proceeds. When the input data type changes\ndrastically, continuing with the formerly well-adjusted dictionary can\nactually be worse than issuing a flush and starting from scratch.\n\nI saw the same thing happen during the work on RFC 4978 (IMAP compression),\nwhich is why that RFC recommends issuing a flush before and after large\nattachments. A compression state based on typical IMAP chatter isn't good for\ncompressing a random attachment, and one based on the attachment isn't good\nfor compressing the IMAP chatter.\n\n------\nAnimats\nAnd that's all for lossless compression. For lossy compression, there are lots\nof unexplored areas.\n\nI still like the FrameFree approach to video compression. Motion estimation\ndecomposes sequences of images into a set of layers which move and morph, much\nlike the way 2D movies are converted to pseudo-3D. This is hard, but can be\ndone, and there are several software packages for it, of varying quality.\nDecompression is done by morphing each layer between keyframes, warping a\ntexture-mapped mesh in a GPU. Decompression can be done to any frame rate,\nincluding ones much higher than the original. This approach is often used to\ngenerate ultra-slow motion.\n\n(FrameFree was demonstrated around 2006, but the company behind it, Kerner\nOptical, went bust for unrelated reasons.)\n\n~~~\nsigterm\nHow is this different from motion estimate in HEVC?\n\n~~~\nAnimats\nIt's not block-oriented. Image components are meshes, and they're filled with\ntextures. Between frames, the meshes change position and shape, and the\ntextures dissolve. It's a full morph.[1][2]\n\nThis got to the demo stage, and there were a plug-in and an SDK around 2008.\nThe playback side worked fine, but the compression side was really slow at the\ntime.\n\n[1]\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHHfNZFuM0g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHHfNZFuM0g)\n[2]\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBfss0AaNaU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBfss0AaNaU)\n\n------\nalex_hirner\nInterestingly, all envogue tech of today like ML and Bitcoin converge around\nthis topic. In essence, PoW is just (partly) figuring out the seed of a RNG,\nwhich in return is compression at its finest.\n\nThus, the author has a point in saying \"Basically, once we’re done w/\nstatistics, we’re done. But this mentality may be one of our biggest faults\".\nEven seemingly random data can be represented by incredibly short descriptions\n(as in MDL). I'm fascinated by compression since I was a child hacking in x86\nassembler.\n\n------\nwillvarfar\nI was expecting this to be an ignorant rant by someone not steeped in the art,\nand was all ready to puff my chest out and correct someone saying something\nwrong on the Internet, but actually this is pretty spot on instead ;)\n\nPeople interested in data compression may like to browse the\n[http://encode.ru](http://encode.ru) forums, where the experts hang out.\n\n------\nJoachimS\nGood questions. Especially where all BWT-cousins are. An amazing algorithm\nthat should have spawned more research and variants by now.\n\n------\njs8\nNot sure if this is good place to ask, but is there some Unix utility to\npresort files, based on content, to feed them into tar or zip in correct order\nso they would compress better by virtue of being similar?\n\nI think it would be very useful if tar or zip could do that automatically, and\nit seems like low-hanging fruit in compression.\n\nActually, thinking about it, the tool could later in more general fashion\nrearrange the content _inside_ the files. So it would map each file into\nblocks of similar characteristics that would then be compressed in correct\norder across files.\n\n~~~\ncastratikron\nI think what you're describing is called the knapsack problem, so I'd guess\nthe answer is no. The best you could do is randomly order the files and\ncompress them, and do that a few times and pick the best ordering.\n\n~~~\ngwern\nYou can do much better than that: you can use summaries or hashes to get a\nshort version of each file and then compare the hashes for similarity. (Much\nlike using perceptual hashes to find similar images.) A tool that does this is\n'binsort'. It's O(N^2) IIRC, because of all the pairwise comparisons, but it's\nusable for up to a few hundred or thousand files.\n\n------\nrdtsc\nWonder if BWT can be improved (i.e. make it sort better) with a help of extra\nadditional information. So it is not a choice of all (complete sort) or pure\nBWT but something in between. Maybe group things a bit better (close to a\nsorted order) but needed a little map/error-correction/otherthing..? to help\nit decode.\n\nIdea came from seeing Kolmogorov right under BWT's section. Maybe the extra\ninformation is a small FSM in a compact representation that works before or\nafter BWT.\n\nAnother useful thing in practice is ability to quickly recognize already\ncompressed data. There are enough encoded images, sound and are already fairly\ncompress. Outer compressor can be quicker if it quickly detects that.\n\n------\nfaleidel\nI tried to add 1 to the first byte of a file, 2 to the second, 3 to the\nthird... and see how it effect the compression rate.\n\nOn a small text file that could normally be compressed by 71% the modified\nfile only got 16%.\n\n~~~\nrasz_pl\nNow try it other way around. Compress with 7zip first, then XOR with known\nrandomness and try compressing again. There is a random number generator X out\nthere for data Y that will let you produce low entropy this way.\n\n------\ntechdragon\nIn my childhood I had the wishful idea that some sort of \"1d\" fractal could\ncompress huge amounts of data based on much shorter inputs. Assuming the\ninputs to the fractal could be computed effectively, which I was fairly sure\ncould only be done by brute force which was never going to be useful.\n\n~~~\nroywiggins\nIt has been tried with images:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_compression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_compression)\n\n------\nespeed\nI have started to converge on this space from a different perspective --\nthinking about how to design a graph database in terms of discrete topology,\nwhich has led me to thinking in terms of the holographic principle: \"the\ndescription of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a boundary to\nthe region\". Specifically, I have been exploring how to use shape to\nsuccinctly and uniquely define an object/relation in terms of the composition\nof its constituent parts in a way that enables fast decomposition back into\nits constituent parts.\n\nFor example, picture a spatial structure resulting from a the prime\ndecomposition\n([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization#Prime_de...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization#Prime_decomposition))\nof all the positive 64 bit integers [0 to 2^63-1]. In this space, the prime\nnumbers are the base of this discrete topology. Picture the trees resulting\nfrom all the decompositions, with the roots jutting up into space like peaks\nin a mountain range. This gives the numbers shape and provides a foundation to\nanchor more abstract objects representations.\n\nTo further illustrate the point, we could define a discrete topology with each\nunicode character\n([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode#Code_point_planes_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode#Code_point_planes_and_blocks))\nas a base element. Now define an algorithm to decompose strings into its\nconstituent parts. Similarly, we could do the same thing with dates and time,\ndecomposing them into trees, and likewise with geo coordinates in space. Or,\nwe could map all of these structures onto a tree of its binary representation.\n\nNow with these discrete elements as anchor points existing in multiple\ndimensions, define relations betweens them, and use the elements and relations\nto compose higher-level objects.\n\nFor example, in a property graph\n([https://github.com/tinkerpop/gremlin/wiki/Defining-a-\nPropert...](https://github.com/tinkerpop/gremlin/wiki/Defining-a-Property-\nGraph)), each vertex can contain key/value attributes, and traditionally when\nadding a new vertex, a vertex ID is assigned using a sequence generator. Edges\nare composed of two vertices, a label, optional key/value properties, and an\nedge ID is commonly assigned using a sequence generator. Each vertex and edge\nis traditionally stored as a row in the database, and traversing the graph is\na process that begins with looking up the \"start vertex\", looking up its\noutgoing edges, traversing the outgoing edges to the incoming vertices, and\ncontinuing this process while using constraints to direct the traversal and\nfilter out vertices and paths. For large graphs distributed across multiple\nmachines, finding optimal ways to partition the graph across multiple machines\nis a challenge.\n\nWhat if instead of identifying each vertex and edge by a meaningless integer,\nwe uniquely define each vertex and edge by a compact representation of its\nconstituent parts, like the cells of a body compose to form a person?\n\nFor example, consider the key/value properties in a vertex, such as:\n\n    \n    \n      {type: \"person\", handle: \"espeed\", location: \"Dallas, TX\", age: 38, updated: 20151205112207}\n    \n\n...using our discrete topology, each key/value pair is uniquely represented as\na point in space, and the set of points are grouped together in a cell.\nMultiple cells compose together to form a cell complex\n([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CW_complex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CW_complex)).\nWhen the set points are in general position, there exists a unique Delaunay\ntriangulation\n([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaunay_triangulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaunay_triangulation)).\n\nUse Delaunay triangulation to encode a unique ID for each vertex, and then use\nthe resulting vertex IDs, label, orientation, and optional key/value\nproperties to compose edges. Edges then compose together to form a graph.\n\nHere's the question I'm exploring: Can we encode a graph in such a way that\ntraversing the graph is reduced to a geometric algorithm?\n\n------\nTlDrBot\nSummary: Kolmogorov complexity for compression is completely unexplored.\n\n    \n    \n       Orig wordcount: 1325\n       TlDr wordcount: 7\n       Saved: 99.47%\n\n~~~\nasdfzxc\nBut is it lossless?\n\n~~~\nlogicallee\nyes! (by definition)\n\n------\nzigo3\nmiddle out?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Movienr - Discover Movies You Will Actually Enjoy - Made with Meteor - ccan\nhttp://www.movienr.com\n\n======\nUdo\nI quite like it!\n\nMy criticism is that after a while movies that I already marked as \"liked\"\nstill appear in the Discover tab. By the same token, simplify the 5 different\nratings modes into at most 3:\n\n    \n    \n      - liked it\n      - dislike(d) it\n      - put it on the \"to watch\" list\n    \n\nThe rationale for this being that I'm not going to rate all the things I\nwatched with 0-10 stars, and if I heart an entry that should train the filter\nand it should imply that I already watched it.\n\nI get that you want as much data as possible about who watched and liked what,\nbut if it's tedious to provide all that detail people won't do it.\n\n------\njs7\nDoes it just show everyone the same stuff? Or is it personalised to my\nratings?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNew Device May Revolutionize Computer Memory - atularora\nhttp://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wmsfranzondfg/\n======\njoshrule\noriginal paper:\n[http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/MC.2010....](http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/MC.2010.366)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFive charged with felonies for tweeting or retweeting a cop’s photo - ryanwatkins\nhttps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/five-charged-with-felonies-for-tweeting-or-retweeting-a-cops-photo/\n======\nklyrs\n> Update (~4pm ET): Mid-afternoon on Friday, August 7, the Essex County\n> Prosecutor's Office dropped its cyber harassment charges against all five\n> defendants, the Asbury Park Press reports. These charges stemmed from an\n> incident involving a Tweet attempting to identify a New Jersey police\n> officer. Our original story on the situation appears unchanged below.\n\nSometimes a little publicity is all the defense you need.\n\n------\nspinny\n\"If anyone knows who this bitch is throw his info under this tweet.\" \\- it's\nnot just \"tweeting a cop's photo\"\n\n~~~\nklyrs\nTrue, it's not just a photo; it's also a request to identify a police officer,\nwhich has legitimate purposes.\n\nUnless you think that calling a police officer a bitch is a felony.\n\n~~~\nMaximumYComb\nWorded as such it does appear threatening. If someone tweeted that about me I\nwould feel worried about my personal safety and that of my family. The law\nspecifically states that placing a reasonable person in fear for their safety\nvia online communications is a crime.\n\nIf you're going to request personal information for a legitimate reason then\nyou should word it in a non threatening manner.\n\n~~~\nkn0where\nIRL, cops behave far more threateningly than calling someone a “bitch” on\nTwitter, and yet they don’t get charged.\n\n------\nechlebek\nI hope they get good lawyers and tell the prosecutors to pound sand. What a\nsick joke.\n\n~~~\nquickthrower2\nYes and can they sue for this too? Not sure how it works but this does sound\nit is like creating unfair stress for people to have to now defend themselves\nbecause they retweeted something or expressed an opinion on twitter.\n\n~~~\n9HZZRfNlpR\nFreedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, in most of the\njurisdictions harassment is a crime and its for the courts to decide.\n\n~~~\nquickthrower2\nThats the question. Is this harassment? Is the retweet harassment?\n\n------\nzxcvbn4038\n“People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should afraid\nof their people”\n\n[https://nypost.com/2020/08/07/nypd-backs-down-from-bust-\nof-c...](https://nypost.com/2020/08/07/nypd-backs-down-from-bust-of-cop-\nassault-suspect-sources/)\n\n------\naspenmayer\nThe behavior of these cops is deplorable.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIs this DFW line a run on sentence? - agbell\nhttp://english.stackexchange.com/questions/66063/is-this-dfw-line-a-run-on-sentence\n\n======\nagbell\nI love the stack exchange sites, but I find they can be very hostile to\nnewcomers.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAnd so I'm giving up the Mozilla project -  Jamie Zawinski (1999) - Andrew-Dufresne\nhttp://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html\n======\nasadotzler\nLots of things on the Internet can move quickly but browsers are not Internet\nsoftware the way that Google or Facebook are. Browsers are still desktop\nsoftware and things don't move as quickly there thanks to slow PC upgrade\ncycles and the absolute dominance that software like Windows, Office, and\nInternet Explorer had a decade ago. Turning that massive ship took longer than\nmany imagined but it is happening.\n\nJamie gave the open source Mozilla project about a year and a half, including\nthe months of pre-source release preparation (and I think that's being\ngenerous.) Brendan Eich and Mitchell Baker didn't give up so easily and\nthirteen-plus years later they're still giving all they've got to make sure\nthat Mozilla continues to be successful in promoting choice, opportunity, and\nparticipation on the Web.\n\nSome things are worth fighting for and I believe that the Web is one of those\nthings. I'm proud to work with some of the founding members of mozilla.org and\nthink it's a phenomenal thing that such talented people are willing to commit\ntheir professional lives to the Mozilla mission when there were and still are\nfar sexier opportunities available to all of them.\n\n~~~\nlovamova\nWhen Firefox 1.0 came out, it was one of the lightest browsers available on\nthe market. What happened until version 4.0? Even the latest Firefox beta is\none of the slowest browser available. I’m not talking about the JavaScript\nengine, I’m talking about the user experience of your product.\n\n~~~\nglenjamin\nI'd say that in the 10 or so years since firefox 1.0, the average computing\npower and requirements of the firefox user have shifted enough that the\ngoalposts have moved.\n\nFirefox 1.0's USP at a time when browsers were bloated was its lack of bloat.\nIMO thats less of an issue now.\n\n~~~\npetsos\nI'm sorry but this mentality is everything that is wrong with software\ndevelopment. How is bloat not an issue now? We expect that hardware is getting\nbetter and better, but it is ok for software to become worse and worse just\nbecause it can sort of get away with it?\n\nIn this case Firefox has even managed to outperform Moore's law. It managed to\nbecome slower in a faster rate than computers get faster.\n\n~~~\nglenjamin\n\"Worse\" in this case is subjective. Perhaps firefox today is objectively not\nas good for me (as a developer) as it was at 1.0.\n\nMy argument is that I'm not necessarily the main target demographic any more,\nFirefox 3.6 is fast enough and has the features that Joe average wants.\n\n------\ndiego\nI interviewed at Netscape shortly after they announced they would release the\nbrowser as open source (June '98, ended up going to Inktomi). I remember being\nvery excited about this, and downloading the source when it first became\navailable. I found out that my (decent) desktop machine was not powerful\nenough to compile it. When I found a machine that could compile it, it took\nabout 8 hours.\n\nNo surprise that it remained a Netscape project for so long.\n\n~~~\ndaimyoyo\n\"When I found a machine that could compile it, it took about 8 hours.\"\n\nThank you. It never occurred to me that you need a lot more processing power\nto compile code than you do to run the software you're creating. You just\nsaved me a lot of heartache in a few months once it's time to start compiling.\nI love HN.\n\n/srsly\n\n~~~\nSimucal\nThis isn't always the case. It is highly dependent on the language, the\ncompiler used, the size of the code-base and many other factors.\n\nMost of the small to medium sized project I have worked on compile in what\nseems like an instant.\n\nHowever, I work on a medium-to-large code-base at work and it takes around 8\nminutes to compile on our build server and around 12-15 minutes on my dev\nmachine. Even these speeds seem tremendously slow to me. I can't imagine being\na developer on a huge C++ project and having to wait tremendously long build\ntimes. When your compile times aren't near instant it really changes how you\nprogram. That feed back loop of code-compile-run-repeat becomes more like\ncode-double check code-code some more-compile-surf the web-run-repeat.\n\n~~~\nrayval\nIdeally, you should not be in this situation where you have to compile large\namounts of code to go through the code-test-debug cycle.\n\nEven in a large project, there should be subysystems that a developer owns and\nworks on that can be partitioned or isolated from the rest, and execute within\na test harness on a dev machine -- a harness that feeds the subsystem inputs\nand records outputs.\n\nSuccessful projects either begin with or evolve to a state where they have the\narchitecture, the toolset, the process and the culture to allow devs to enjoy\na fast code/debug cycle.\n\n~~~\nAndrew-Dufresne\nBesides subsystems, tools like make and nmake utility can also reduce the\ncompile time.\n\n _Make figures out automatically which files it needs to update, based on\nwhich source files have changed. It also automatically determines the proper\norder for updating files, in case one non-source file depends on another non-\nsource file. As a result, if you change a few source files and then run Make,\nit does not need to recompile all of your program. It updates only those non-\nsource files that depend directly or indirectly on the source files that you\nchanged._\n\n~~~\nvoxcogitatio\nYes, but large projects often need to use recursive makefiles, which are\nnotoriously flaky at detecting what has changed (if anything).\n\n~~~\ndrothlis\nNo project _needs_ to use recursive make.\n\n\"Recursive make considered harmful\":\n<http://miller.emu.id.au/pmiller/books/rmch/>\n\n------\nIsofarro\nExcellent documentary on YouTube covering the year long open-sourcing of\nMozilla, right up to the point of jwz leaving Netscape.\n\n<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u404SLJj7ig>\n\n(via codinghorror: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/01/lived-fast-died-\nyou...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/01/lived-fast-died-young-left-a-\ntired-corpse.html) )\n\n~~~\nAndrew-Dufresne\nCode Rush can downloaded from <http://clickmovement.org/content/code-rush-\ndownload>\n\nOther links for unused footage and annotated version:\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Rush#External_links>\n\n------\nthought_alarm\n5 short years later, mozilla.org shipped a product that was finally ready for\nprime time.\n\n~~~\nasadotzler\nAnd today that product is used by more than 400 million people around the\nworld -- far more users than Netscape ever had.\n\n~~~\nseldo\nSpecifically, it was Phoenix (aka Firebird, aka Firefox) that made that\nhappen: a version of Mozilla that threw out everything but the browser,\nincluding the mail client that jwz considered essential. It made it smaller to\ndownload and faster to run, but most importantly it made it faster to _write_\n: they could ship improvements to Firefox way faster than they could to\nMozilla, simply because there was so much less of it.\n\n~~~\nInclinedPlane\nYup. A classic example of minimum viable product (although for phoenix far\nmore than minimum). Phoenix was a breath of fresh air back then. Mozilla was\nas bloated and cumbersome as Netscape ever was, but Phoenix was fast,\nstreamlined, and a joy to use.\n\nThe turning point was when the RSA patent expired and Phoenix could fully\nsupport SSL out of the box without any wonky add-ons. At that point there was\nno longer a good reason not to use Phoenix/Fire{bird,fox} and it started\ngaining huge amounts of momentum.\n\n~~~\nyuhong\nThe RSA patent expired back in _2000_.\n\n------\nnickpp\n\"you can divide our industry into two kinds of people: those who want to go\nwork for a company to make it successful, and those who want to go work for a\nsuccessful company\"\n\nAwesome insight. Absolutely breathtaking. Explains so much of what happens at\nlarger companies.\n\n------\nDEinspanjer\nThat was a good post and I had forgotten about it over the years.\n\nIt prompted me to write up some of my own thoughts on the current day Mozilla\nCommunity: <http://daniele.livejournal.com/80677.html>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nVotecastr real time election day data - binarymax\nhttp://votecastr.us/\n======\nbinarymax\nThere isn't any data yet, but they started capturing at 08:00-5.\n\n------\nstatictype\nIs there some kind of API for this?\n\n~~~\nbinarymax\nFrom what I've seen, Slate and Vice have exclusives on the data - so probably\nno. But if it is successful and the company can stick around until the next\nelection, perhaps they will consider syndication of some kind.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Semi-technical co-founder? - ParameterOne\nWhat would you call a guy that knows hows things work and can ask for specific things to get done but can&#x27;t write a lick of code?  Non-tech or semi-tech?\n======\notoburb\nThree off-the-cuff options based on your vague description:\n\n1) Designer\n\n2) Marketer\n\n3) Management Consultant\n\nTaking a step back, it feels like this question is being asked without a clear\nunderstanding of the underlying \"why\". Could you elaborate further?\n\n~~~\nParameterOne\nJust trying to find out where the tipping point might be between technical and\nnon-profit technical....And if there is a middle ground between the two.\n\n------\nhsikka\nCould you give an example of asking for specific things to get done? I think\nthat the level of specificity and clarification of dependencies there makes\nthe difference.\n\n~~~\nParameterOne\nProbably more like \"On the title, we'll probably have to prevent clicks on it\nto improve UX\"\n\nAnd not \"Use css pseudo elements :after to provide the correct bookmarklet\ntitle.\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTiller: Dynamic configs generated from (Consul|Vault|Zookeeper|HTTP|etc) - orangepenguin\nhttps://github.com/markround/tiller\n======\norangepenguin\nNot my project, but I use it. It has helped me containerize older apps that\nare config file dependent. Helps bridge the gap without requiring a full\nrefactor of the legacy application.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhistle-based login using HTML5 audio - shuma\nhttp://popdevelop.com/mmhw/\nblogg post: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;popdevelop.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;whistle-based-login-using-html5-audio&#x2F;\n======\njarnix\nThat's totally useless :(\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCable and Sat TV companies lost over 670,000 customers last quarter - marklabedz\nhttp://www.marketwatch.com/story/cut-your-cable-tv-bill-by-cutting-the-cable-2012-08-15?mod=e2tw\n======\ncurtismch\nCertainly no surprise. In the 10 years I've been married we have never paid\nfor cable. Just never been worth our money to get 100 channels we don't want\nto see for 2 we do. They simply no longer have a good value proposition.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCrank up your Productivity with these 11 Mac apps - rickdronkers\nhttp://rickdronkers.com/post/40338237583/crank-up-your-productivity-with-these-11-mac-apps\n\n======\nricho\n> Internet marketing blahblah, (Web)technology blahblah, Lifehacking &\n> Productivity blahblah, Entrepreneurship & Business blahblah.\n\nI love how this literally is distilled down to <buzzword> blah blah blah.\n\nSeriously though, couple of decent suggestions.\n\n~~~\nrickdronkers\nYeah, you have to be honest right ;). I'm a internet marketeer that rolled\ninto the entrepreneur-role at a web-tech startup. In my spare time i like to\nread about lifehacking and productivity.\n\nCould put drinking beer and barbecuing on there as well, but I like to just\nexercise those activities, not blog about them.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSSH Keys on GitHub - MichaelTieso\nhttps://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=filename%3Aid_rsa&type=Code&ref=searchresults\n\n======\nGuyag\nPersonal favourite\n[https://github.com/valeriangalliat/dotfiles/blob/b227cf9b252...](https://github.com/valeriangalliat/dotfiles/blob/b227cf9b252f3c8c43a776bc20e1f1b5d0acfc13/src/ssh/id_rsa)\n\n------\nakerl_\nI feel like this gets posted every other month or so. I appreciate the\nawareness, but it doesn't seem like there's much new discussion or debate to\nhave on the matter: folks continue to be a bit more careless with credentials\nthan they ought to be / don't think about what pushing something to a public\nsite means / etc, it would rock if GitHub was more proactive about messaging\naffected users, it sucks that it's hard to safeguard against this via\ntechnical means.\n\nIf anything, I'd love to see somebody do a blog post instead about how they\nstarted scraping these results and/or the commit data firehose and messaging\nusers who posted credentials\n\n~~~\nherge\nWasn't that the point of lulzsec?\n\n~~~\npeterwwillis\n_Ian Paul of PC World wrote that, \"As its name suggests, LulzSec claims to be\ninterested in mocking and embarrassing companies by exposing security flaws\nrather than stealing data for criminal purposes.\"[16]_ \\--\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LulzSec](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LulzSec)\n\n------\nmosburger\nHmmph. I just found a bunch of free AWS keys by searching for amazon.yml, too.\n\nWhat is the best way to share things like API keys among a team of developers,\nanyway? I'm surprised this hasn't been solved already (perhaps it has and I\njust don't know about it). I know you can share passwords with tools like\nLastPass and 1Password, and I suppose you could use those for API keys as\nwell?\n\nIt'd be nice if you could, e.g., include a gem in a Rails project, get a\nsingle key/password/token from one of the team members on that project, and\nuse that w/ a third party API to set all the requisite API keys for all the\nthird party services used on a project. You could also rotate the master\npassword when team members leave the group.\n\n~~~\nCouto\nI'm not sure if there are other ways, better or not... but blackbox[1] can be\nused to store secrets.\n\nAnd it might be possible to achieve some success with git filters[2], at least\nto avoid pushing secrets into the repository.\n\nStill... just my two cents, I'm not exactly a pro-user of those two features\n\n[1]([https://github.com/StackExchange/blackbox](https://github.com/StackExchange/blackbox))\n\n[2]([https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6557467/can-git-\nignore-a...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6557467/can-git-ignore-a-\nspecific-line))\n\n~~~\nmichaelmior\nIf you decide to take the git filters approach, git-crypt[0] is a good choice.\n\n[0] [https://github.com/AGWA/git-crypt](https://github.com/AGWA/git-crypt)\n\n------\ndaenney\nI see your SSH keys and raise you a .netrc:\n[https://github.com/search?p=1&q=filename%3Anetrc&ref=searchr...](https://github.com/search?p=1&q=filename%3Anetrc&ref=searchresults&type=Code&utf8=)\n\n------\nbagels\nDoes Github have a responsibility to help people out with this kind of thing?\nWhat do you all think?\n\n~~~\ngrhmc\nNo. There are valid cases to upload SSH keys and other certificates or\nsecrets. Preventing it would be annoying, and near impossible to be very\neffective.\n\nJust my $0.02.\n\n~~~\njethro_tell\nI agree with you, but I can't imagine a use case for a secret that's not\nsecret.\n\n~~~\nmikegirouard\nI believe Vagrant uses (or previously used) an insecure, public keypair[0] to\nkeep things simple.\n\nAside from things like that, I can't see it being a _common_ use case.\n\n[0]:\n[https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/tree/master/keys](https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/tree/master/keys)\n\n------\njnevill\nYou can search out private GPG keys as well, which is crazy-bananas.\n[https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=filename%3Aasc+BE...](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=filename%3Aasc+BEGIN+PGP+PRIVATE+KEY+BLOCK&type=Code&ref=searchresults)\n\n~~~\nKenji\nSo much for no forward secrecy :D\n\n------\navinassh\nAnd if you want to get the public key also:\n\n[https://github.com/<username>.keys](https://github.com/<username>.keys)\n\nex.: [https://github.com/avinassh.keys](https://github.com/avinassh.keys)\n\n~~~\nbradleyland\nNo need. You can recover the public key from a private key using ssh-keygen's\n'y' option:\n\n-y This option will read a private OpenSSH format file and print an OpenSSH public key to stdout.\n\nFor example:\n\nssh-keygen -y -f id_rsa > id_rsa.pub\n\n------\ngeographomics\nLooks like they've blocked it now. Searching via Google still works though:\n[https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agithub.com+inurl%3Aid...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agithub.com+inurl%3Aid_rsa)\n\n~~~\npeterwwillis\nid_rsa is being blocked right now, but id_dsa and id_ecdsa still work.\n\n~~~\niamroot\nadding wildcards works as well, eg: id_rsa?\n\n------\norbjuice\nThey have blocked the search for private keys (id_rsa) but they still need to\nblock the search for public keys (id_rsa.pub); they're usually stored together\nanyway. I just did this search.\n\n~~~\nnetik\nI don't think they've blocked it. I can still search on id_rsa without issue.\n\nHowever, The majority of the keys I'm seeing are either encrypted, test\nfixtures, or otherwise. There are many unencrypted keys available, though!\n\nIt's still surprising that people continue to check in private keys. No one\nlearns.\n\n------\nH2CO3\nUpdate: This is no longer working:\n[https://imgur.com/uT1fCRT](https://imgur.com/uT1fCRT)\n\n~~~\niamroot\nadding wildcards works, eg: id_rsa?\n\n------\nallworknoplay\nThis is matching both \"id\" and \"rsa\" individually as well, so not all results\nare actually files with id_rsa in the name.\n\nExample:\n[https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=filename%3Aid_rsa...](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=filename%3Aid_rsa+whatever&type=Code&ref=searchresults)\n\n------\nadelevie\nI'd love to see an open source project around scanning the GitHub API and\nsubscribing to alerts for your org's repos.\n\n------\nxiata\nPeople always forget about the other keys...\n\nfilename:id_ed25519 filename:id_rsa filename:id_dsa filename:id_ecdsa\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nA man who is ageing too fast - imartin2k\nhttps://mosaicscience.com/man-who-aging-fast-werner-syndrome-japan-epigenome-epigenetics\n======\nRichardHeart\nSummary of pro death arguments, one of which I've seen in this thread\n(immortal tyrants.)\n\n    \n    \n      Fairness\n          Only rich people will get it. (No tech has ever done this.)\n          Better to give money to the poor than science. (family, city, state, nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.)\n      Bad for society\n          Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.)\n          Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistent)\n          Overpopulation (colonize the seas, solar system, or have a war.)\n                Stop having kids\n                Worse wars (nukes are more dangerous than having your first 220 year old person in 2136)\n          Dictators never die (they die all the time and rarely of age)\n          Old people are expensive (50% of your lifetime medical cost occur in your final year. Delay is profitable.) \n          Old people suck.  (death is an inferior cure to robustness.)\n      Bad for individual\n          You'll get bored. (your memory isn't that good, or your boredom isn't age related)\n          You'll have to watch your loved ones die. (so you prefer they watch you?)\n          You'll live forever in a terrible state. (longevity requires robustness.)\n          Against gods will (not if he disallows suicide, then it is required.)\n          People will force you to live forever (They already try to do that.)\n         \n\nDo you think less people make progress faster? What's your target level of\ndepriving life of existence? How do you plan to keep mankind robust from\nextinction events on a single planet? You might just need more people. What do\nyou think our technology would look like if we had 10x less people for the\nlast 100 years?\n\nMore people make more progress faster. Aren’t you glad your parents didn't\ndecide the world would be prettier or work better without you in it? If great\nminds like Einstein, Bell, Tesla, Da Vinci etc., were still alive and\nproductive today, the world would be a better place. You're literally asking\nfor others to die out of your fear. The burden should be higher. Have courage.\nIf living longer comes with too many disadvantages, we'll know 100 years from\nnow and decide then.\n\nMan up, save your family, save yourself.\n\nP.S. Curing aging isn't immortality. You die at 600 on average by accident,\nand if the parade of imaginary horrible things comes true, even earlier.\n\n~~~\ndanieltillett\nOften wondered why deathism is so popular and I have come to conclusion it is\na protective mechanism against disappointment. People really don’t want to\nage, but they don’t think anything can be done so they come up with all sorts\nof reasons it is good.\n\n~~~\nmemling\n> Often wondered why deathism is so popular and I have come to conclusion it\n> is a protective mechanism against disappointment. People really don’t want\n> to age, but they don’t think anything can be done so they come up with all\n> sorts of reasons it is good.\n\nOne reason—not one I necessarily endorse, but a possibility—might be a\nconviction that people really aren't very good, deep down. Perhaps its cousin\nconviction that I'm not really all that good deep down.\n\nPut another way, it may be rooted not in a protective mechanism about\ndisappointment as much as a persuasion about human nature.\n\n------\ndyeje\nI really like the random blocks forming around the highlights effect.\n\n~~~\nhombre_fatal\nI came here to say the same thing. Not overused, but unique and a cute take on\n\"mosaic\" branding.\n\n------\nzan2434\nThis is unbelievably sad. What a tragic existence.\n\n    \n    \n      Beneath, his skin is raw, revealing red ulcers caused by his disease. “Itai,” he says. It hurts. Then he smiles. “Gambatte,” he says – I will endure.\n\n------\nxvector\nI hope I live to see the day when we humans can die on our own terms rather\nthan it being forced upon us.\n\n~~~\nASalazarMX\nIt would be cool, but I fear some world leaders (be it politics, economy,\nscience, etc.) would never want to die, stagnating the status quo for\ncenturies until they die from accidents.\n\n~~~\ntaneq\n\"Humans should only die on their own terms... except for the most influential\npeople, who shouldn't live longer than I say they should.\" Hmm.\n\n~~~\nnitwit005\n\"Dictator for life\" is definitely less of an issue than \"Dictator for\neternity\".\n\n------\nausbah\nI hope the time is soon that we have some way of detecting and, hopefully,\nfixing generic abberations like this in embryos (or even among those diagnosed\nwhen they are older), anyone having to endure this is truly heartbreaking.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIn Praise of Inefficiency: A Manifesto - grellas\nhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704479404575087241182091582.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion\n\n======\npw0ncakes\nThe problem is that we, as a society, _aren't ready_ for the level of\nefficiency that technology is making possible. We don't have the values or the\ntools to survive a society without certain inefficiencies. The worst example\nof this is the tangle of buttfail known as private health insurance. Lobbyists\nfor those companies are fighting to the death against efficiency and progress\n(nationalized health coverage) because, for those firms and their employees,\nthis is a matter of \"life\" (employment) and death (layoffs).\n\nIn 50 years, only a minority will be able to earn a living on a free labor\nmarket. The current economic model (no basic income; minimum wage on which\nit's impossible to live, but that can't be raised to a liveable level without\nexacerbating the unemployment problem) cannot survive this change.\n\n~~~\nlmkg\n> \"In 50 years, only a minority will be able to earn a living on a free labor\n> market.\"\n\nMarxist communism was predicated on this assumption, based on the increasing\nefficiency of industrialism. It's an interesting idea, but historically the\ntrend has been that increased efficiency leads to increased production and\nincreased consumption, not static production and reduced labor. I see no\nreason why this would cease to be the case.\n\n~~~\njules\nThere will come a time where it's pointless for some humans to work because\neverything they do machines can do better.\n\n~~~\ngojomo\nAt which point, they will be connected to the ZyngaBook pleasure orbs and\nallowed to live the rest of their natural lives in engaging but meaningless\nbliss?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLiberouter Combo Cards – FPGA boards focused on network data processing - kerdop\nhttps://www.liberouter.org/technologies/cards/\n======\nairesQ\nThere was an article at Ars [1] that explained how Microsoft uses FPGA powered\nnetwork cards at Azure.\n\nThe idea is to move \"network decision making\" (load balancing; maybe firewalls\nand other assorted stuff) from the CPU to the FPGA, where this kind of thing\ncan be done faster, and more reliably (e.g. you can have hard timing\nconstraints on a FPGA).\n\nGuess the other players in this field are pure software switches, which can be\nvery flexible, but sometimes slow. And ASICs, which are very fast (potentially\nfaster than FPGAs) but not as flexible.\n\n[1] - [http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-\ntechnology/2016/09/micr...](http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-\ntechnology/2016/09/microsoft-azure-fpga-supercomputer-details/)\n\n~~~\nderefr\nI always thought the \"best-practice\" architecture for these sort of high-speed\nSDN switches was to have a custom ASIC \"data plane\" (hard realtime) that can\nbe signalled from a CPU \"control plane\" (running something soft realtime like\nErlang.)\n\nWould an FPGA really give advantages over such a setup? I can't imagine it'd\nbeat the CPU at being a control plane—so it'd mostly have to be that it has a\nlower TCO as a data plane than an ASIC. That might be true, if the code in the\ndata-plane would ever need updates (which, for ASICs, mean new hardware revs.)\n\n~~~\nnickpsecurity\nYeah, it would have an advantage: you could deploy it without spending\nhundreds of thousands of dollars on ASIC production or prototyping. It's the\nmain use for FPGA's. They're better so long as unit price is cheaper than\nmasks and such for ASIC's.\n\nIn this case, each customer would have a relatively small number of the\nswitches where volume doesn't justify an ASIC. Might be enough switches &\ncustomers to justify licensing a FPGA core with development cost spread out\namong many customers.\n\n~~~\nvvanders\nAlternatively you can also re-configure the FPGA for specific loads where ASIC\nis always fixed. Downside is of course lower speed and higher power\nconsumption.\n\n~~~\nnickpsecurity\nI shouldve mentioned that. Tks for catch. Reconfiguration is huge selling\npoinf for them. Gone from HTTP 1 to 1.1 or 2.0? Just upload the new bitstream.\nGot a better algorithm or bug fix? Upload new bitstream.\n\nASIC folks be like, \"You gonna neef to bring a soldering iron for that update.\nOr buy our latest model.\" Haha.\n\n------\ntrapperkeeper79\nI saw the page via wayback machine since the site was down at the time. Seems\nlike a cool academic project. I've been getting into FPGAs personally, with\nthis exact application in mind.\n\nI've been really stymied by how to process packets in hardware. The obvious\napproach seems to be to run an RTOS or even full-fledged linux if your FPGA\nhas hard IP cores on it. But is there a better way? How much performance would\none lose? I'm also a bit confused about how to communicate on PCI-Express (I'm\na software guy ... so learning about DMA). I have seen soft IP for TCP/IP\nstacks but it seems too crazy. I'm doing this as a hobby education project\nbtw. It has been great fun so far! Wish there were meetups on this topic.\n\n~~~\npjc50\n> run an RTOS or even full-fledged linux if your FPGA has hard IP cores on it\n\nLetting the OS touch more than a small percentage of the packets would be a\ngross waste of resources. If you want to write a _program_ to process packets,\nuse a real processor. (Putting an FPGA in a computer and then running a soft\ncore on the FPGA is even sillier for performance.)\n\nThe main reason to use an FPGA for this is to build structures that\neffectively encode your firewall or other layer processing rules in tables in\nthe hardware, so the hardware can make a decision without having to consult\nthe processor. MPLS and VLAN routing is the obvious case, but you can usually\nkeep a short IP routing table in there too. Ideally you'd be able to make this\ndecision early on while recieving a packet so you can start transmitting it\nwhile the last bits are still coming in. What you want to avoid is buffering\n(\"bufferbloat\").\n\n~~~\nwtallis\n> What you want to avoid is buffering (\"bufferbloat\").\n\n _Excess_ buffering is a problem, but a little bit is fine unless you're\ntrying to do high frequency trading. If you don't move packets to an external\nDRAM, you're in no danger of having bloated buffers with just the memory on\nthe FPGA.\n\nOr you could implement an active queue management algorithm to keep your\nbuffers from inducing too much unnecessary latency even when they are\ngenerously sized. There are a bunch of AQMs out there to pick from, of varying\ncomplexity. And it doesn't seem like there's near enough research into\nhardware implementations suitable for use in switches or network co-\nprocessors.\n\n------\ntheocean154\nWorking on a pcie card, not 100gbps but hopefully not $10k also:\n[https://github.com/theocean154/fpga-\nboard](https://github.com/theocean154/fpga-board)\n\n------\ntyingq\nI wondered if an FPGA approach would be worth it now that Intel has their DPDK\napproach.\n\nSearched a bit, and found a terrific comparison of doing the same work three\ndifferent ways. It compares serving up a Key/Value store using traditional\nsoftware, then DPDK, then an FPGA based approach:\n[http://www.hoti.org/hoti23/slides/lockwood.pdf](http://www.hoti.org/hoti23/slides/lockwood.pdf)\n\nSkip to slide 22 if you're impatient.\n\n------\ndouglasfshearer\nAmazon announced they were doing network processing in hardware at Re:work\nlast week [1].\n\nCustom silicon, rather than the FPGA or ASICS they were using when they\nstarted the project in 2012.\n\nThey tout not only the freed CPU resources, but lower latencies and increased\nsecurity of isolating the networking from the CPUs running hosted VMs.\n\n[https://youtu.be/AyOAjFNPAbA?t=1822](https://youtu.be/AyOAjFNPAbA?t=1822)\n\n------\ndelinhabit\nI can't open the site on my Android phone due to an SSL error. Is it just me,\nor there is a problem with the certificate?\n\n~~~\nRadio2034\nI'm getting a database error. Here's the Google Cache:\n[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UrEvnt...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UrEvntvYCwgJ:https://www.liberouter.org/technologies/cards/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)\n\n------\nxenophonf\nLooks like we hugged them to death. Here's the Wayback Machine's most recently\ncached copy of the page:\n\n[http://web.archive.org/web/20160604121207/https://www.libero...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160604121207/https://www.liberouter.org/technologies/cards/)\n\n~~~\nlucb1e\nHaving recently tried to read a lot of old-ish research (10 years maybe,\nthat's old for malware research), I really appreciate the value of the Wayback\nmachine / Archive.org team. Donated €15 at some point just to feel a little\nbetter and will decide on another donation later. Was about to post the same\nlink!\n\n~~~\nnickpsecurity\nWayback Machine is so critical it should get public funding. It may already\nbut stuff should be in the Congressional Budget. Leave control of it where it\nis, though.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nJapan's fertility rate is rising - MaxQuentero\nhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/07/japans-birth-rate-problem-is-way-worse-than-anyone-imagined/\n\n======\nmikeyouse\nNoah Smith (Econ professor at SUNY Stony Brook with a background in Japanese)\ntook umbrage with this article;\n\n[http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/japans-\nfertility-...](http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/japans-fertility-\nrate-is-rising-and-you.html)\n\n    \n    \n        Except that is not what the graph shows at all. Yes, \n        government forecasts are way off (forecasting is hard).\n        But for over a decade, the Japanese government has\n        been too pessimistic about the fertility rate.\n    \n        Just Look. At. The. Graph! Since 2005, the black line\n        - the actual fertility rate - has been going up! It is now\n        higher than the blue line representing the forecast\n        from 2002. It is even higher than the blue like\n        representing the forecast for 2008. The graph only\n        looks like it goes through 2010, but a quick Google\n        shows that the fertility rate is still over 1.4, i.e. higher\n        than the 2002, 2006, or 2012 forecasts.\n    \n        In other words, Japanese fertility has been surprising on\n        the upside for ten years and counting!\n\n~~~\ndang\nAlright, since the title of the WaPo piece is both misleading and linkbait, we\nchanged it to Smith's title.\n\nShould we change the URL as well? The rebuttal seems pretty convincing.\n\n~~~\nCanSpice\nThe rebuttal seems pretty convincing if you only look at the graph between\n2002 and 2008. You could lop everything off after 1985 and have the same\nrebuttal.\n\nThe rebuttal would be convincing if he went into detail as to why the\ngovernment forecasts are wrong, but he doesn't. He just says \"hey they're\nwrong\" without delving into any of the history of the forecasts, how the\nforecasts are made (which would be interesting, because then he could really\nsay why he thinks they're wrong), what his forecasts might be... But instead,\nhe just says \"hey they're wrong\" without anything else.\n\nIf anything he's guilty of cherry-picking, which is something we rage against\nwhen climate change denialists do it. Why is this guy convincing while they're\nnot?\n\n~~~\nmikeyouse\nI think you're missing some nuance..\n\nThe original article's premise was reflected by its title;\n\n\"Japan’s birth rate problem is way worse than anyone imagined\"\n\nBut it's not worse than anyone imagined, at all. It's actually better than\npeople 'imagined' (i.e. forecast) in 2002, 2008, and 2012. Japan's fertility\nrate might be a big issue still, but it's been beating the forecasts for 10\nyears now.\n\nAs for expounding on why the forecasts are wrong, or more substantive articles\nabout fertility and gender issues in Japan, you'll have to read some of his\nprevious posts. I'd suggest:\n\n\"Time for gaijin to take a second look at Abe's Womenomics\" [1] Where he\ndiscusses how the landscape is changing for women to enter the Japanese\nworkforce and how that might affect birth rates further.\n\n\"The Japanese tragedy, causes and consequences\"[2] Where he discusses why\nforecasts for GDP and growth rates have been notoriously bad in Japan.\n\nI didn't post his original article to serve as a complete and thorough\ntreatment of the birth rate issue in Japan, but only to counter the original\nWaPo article that was pretty misleading.\n\n[1] - [http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/time-for-\ngaijin-t...](http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/time-for-gaijin-to-\ntake-second-look-at.html)\n\n[2] - [http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-japanese-\ntrag...](http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-japanese-tragedy-or-\nlack-thereof.html)\n\n------\neip\nJapan, much like the earth, has limited space and resources. So I don't really\nthink of declining population as a problem.\n\n~~~\nSomeone1234\nIt is in practical terms.\n\nThere are too many people on earth right now, it is unsustainable and growing.\nHowever in Japan if they have a lot of older people and nobody to do the\nactual work society needs (e.g. food, utilities, transport, etc) and or to\ntake care of those older people, then you'll run into a problem.\n\nThe problem for Japan isn't a decline, it is too fast of a decline. If the\ndecline happened much slower it might be a non-problem.\n\n~~~\nMLR\nJapan's labour force is proportionally higher than at least that of the UK and\nUSA, their debt crisis is much more pressing than any labour issues right now.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway90446\nYes. A debt crisis that the US is walking into almost exactly alike, but a\ndecade behind. And nobody cares.\n\n------\nSomeone1234\nIs there any reading material that covers WHY this is? Is it actual fertility\nissues (i.e. trouble having kids), people having smaller families (e.g. two\npeople, one baby), people skipping kids entirely, or something else?\n\n~~~\nr109\nFrom what I understand, it's the culture. Watch VICE documentaries on Japan's\nsex culture. No one wants to have kids when the price of living is high, 80\nhour work weeks, both male and female are the work force, and sex is viewed as\na non-romantic \"come and go\" as you please pass time. Having kids in Japans\nhigh level business/work culture is a tremendous setback. They can't afford\nthat kind of downtime.\n\n------\npm90\nI'm not an economist, but Japan has accumulated a lot of capital. If they\nsimply invest it well, shouldn't it be able to provide enough income to the\naging population to take care of their needs?\n\nOf course, the economy cannot follow the usual template of growth: more people\nproducing and accumulating wealth leading to continued prosperity for\neveryone. I don't know what the situation is with Immigration, perhaps the\nJapanese should consider making it more attractive for immigrants? But I\nbelieve Japanese society is very homogenous and maybe not that accepting of\nother cultures as, say, the US.\n\n~~~\nmikeash\nThere are limits to savings and investment.\n\nUltimately, finance is just a game. A really complicated and extremely useful\ngame, but money itself is useless. What matters is what people can produce.\nFinance is merely what convinces them to put effort into production, and what\nconvinces them to hand over some of the output to other people.\n\nFor an extreme example, consider if they just stopped having babies\naltogether. By the time the current crop of newborns reached retirement age,\nit wouldn't matter how much money they had saved up. There would simply be\nnobody to take care of them.\n\nUltimately, retirement savings schemes are just a way to address the question\nof what proportion of future productive capacity goes towards retirees, and of\nhow to convince future workers to hand it over. If the pool of future workers\nis too small, it doesn't matter how much you save in the meantime.\n\n~~~\njtzhou\nIf Japan and other aging countries created a sovereign wealth fund funded by\ntaxes during \"boom\" times, like Norway has done, then it wouldn't be as\ndependent on a pay-as-you-go system. This fund would be held in other\ncurrencies and could be drawn down as necessary to keep the local currency\nstable in the absence of exports.\n\nTrue, much of the domestic economy would be providing care to older people\n(and few tangible exports) but distributions from the sovereign wealth fund\nwould ensure the Japanese still have a high standard of living.\n\nPay-as-you-go social security systems are the real problem, not low birth\nrates.\n\n------\nsteven777400\nI have to disagree with the article's claim that the forecasts have all been\nbad. Since 2002 the forecasts have been realistic, although probably not\nuseful. The more interesting bit is what, if anything, can be made of the\nuptick since 2005 in actual birth rates.\n\n------\nFootballMuse\n> An aging population leaves the country with fewer workers and more\n> dependents.\n\nHow does a low birth rate create more dependents? If the birth rate was zero,\nthen there would be no dependent children in 20 years. Increases in the\nbirthrate would create more dependents in the short-medium term, but would\nonly create more workers in the medium-long term.\n\n~~~\npixl97\nOld people are dependents too, the middle age people take care of them.\n\n------\n_random_\nMaybe \"Japan's birthrate spike consequences are slowly settling down\" is a\nless scaremongering title?\n\n------\nkseistrup\n— and so is their mutation rate… ;)\n\n------\nshinta42\nKARMA from rape of Nanjing. You learned your lesson.\n\n~~~\ndang\nComments like this are not welcome on Hacker News.\n\n------\nPaulHoule\nNo wonder why I haven't made it with my wife since I put a Miku Hatsune poster\non the wall.\n\n------\nctdonath\nCan't pin down now what I researched a while ago, but do recall that a\nreplacement rate under 1.4 is unrecoverable - the culture just isn't, and\ncan't, reproducing fast enough to avoid a complete population implosion.\n\n~~~\ndebacle\nThat doesn't even make sense. Any sort of replacement rate is recoverable over\nthe short term. The replacement rate could be zero for several years and the\npopulation could still recover with vigor.\n\nIf you assume an established nation (which Japan is for the most part if you\nignore WWII), the realistic maxima for replacement is about 8%. So you could\nsustain population loss for quite a while (which brings down that maxima) and\nstill recover.\n\n~~~\nctdonath\nCould in theory, but how practical? Fertility is limited to a theoretical\nmaximum of roughly once every 2 years for 30 years (a friend has lived it,\nhaving 15 kids), but the cultural changes to go from sub-1.4 to \"recover with\nvigor\" are drastic; couples living in high-density micro-apartments and\nthriving on high technology are a long way from living on a farm (as my friend\nhad to resort to).\n\nObviously this isn't a binary issue, so what constitutes \"unrecoverable\" is\nsubject to debate - one has to consider what constitutes \"cultural collapse\"\nand, in a highly mobile world population, what other distinct groups will move\nto fill the relative void.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nStartup docu teaser #02: Steve Huffman (Reddit / Hipmunk) - e_w\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjQBbNSlfNo\n\n======\ne_w\nThis is material from a 2h interview with Steve Huffman,\n<http://www.hipmunk.com/> It consists of scenes that I probably won't use in\nthe docu but wanted to share with folks anyway.\n\nBlog about the docu: <http://startup-dna.tumblr.com/> Twitter:\ntwitter.com/@startup_dna\n\nThe docu is about startups, venture capital, programming and education. I'm\nbootstrapping this out of my own pocket and it's my first documentary. My\nambition is to make this film as authentic and 3-dimensional as possible. I'm\nshowing accomplished entrepreneurs and underdogs who just started their\nbusinesses side by side and capture their insights about startups on screen.\nIf you have ideas for people I should interview and can provide intros as\nwell, please post their names below so readers can upvote candidates they\nwould like to see. Feedback is much appreciated. Thank you!\n\n~~~\ndouglascalhoun\nGreat work, Ed! Very interesting and informative....\n\nLooking forward to seeing more quality content in the future!\n\n~~~\ne_w\nThanks, happy you like it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBookmarklet: Reddit-like Collapsible Threads for Hacker News - akirk\nhttp://alexander.kirk.at/2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-hacker-news/\n\n======\nakirk\nIt always happens to me that I get lost in long threads on Hacker News that\nget started from the highest-ranking comment.\n\nIn order to be able to easily view the second-ranking (top-level) comment I\nwrote a small bookmarklet to achieve just that. Enjoy :)\n\n~~~\nakirk\nFor your convenience, here is the source code:\n[http://alexander.kirk.at/js/hackernews-collapsible-\nthreads.j...](http://alexander.kirk.at/js/hackernews-collapsible-threads.js)\n\nThe bookmarklet first loads jQuery from the Google Ajax libraries, then that\nscript. Both should be cached by the browser so that upon the next use of the\nbookmarklet it should not need to ask a server.\n\n------\nGroxx\nVery nice. Though it apparently needs a bit of polishing, this is something\nI'd love to have on the site, rather than having to use bookmarklets.\n\nMaybe Firefox & Chrome quick plugins to do this automatically? The dev channel\nfor OSX-Chrome finally accepts plugins.\n\n~~~\nakirk\nWell, maybe we can get Paul to integrate it into Hacker News :)\n\n------\nqeorge\nThanks for making this, collapsing comments is one of reddit's best features.\n\n------\njohnfn\nJust a little note: I read hacker news from hackerne.ws, and you currently\nhave it domain restricted to news.ycombinator.com. Not a big deal, but why not\njust remove the domain restriction? Seems like more trouble than it's worth.\n\nOther than that, fantastic. I can't believe you made this - I was honestly\nthinking to myself earlier today that HN needed a collapse comment link.\n\n~~~\nakirk\nI saw in the server referrers that people were trying it on other pages where\nit has no effect, or might have strange effects, so I think it's good to have\nit there to be sure people understand where it's to be used :)\n\nI have added the hackerne.ws domain to the check and also added a no-domain\ncheck bookmarklet to the blog post.\n\n------\nilitirit\nI've written a greasemonkey script that does the same thing. Unfortunately the\ntest page I used didn't have things like downvoted comments and a few edge\ncases that caused it to fail. It would be much easier if comments were given a\nunique class name or id.\n\n------\npieter\nIt's a bit buggy if you collaps a child before collapsing the parent, and then\nexpand the parent again\n\n~~~\nakirk\nI know, see the \"PS\" in the blog post. For now, I think it's probably not\nworth the trouble fixing that.\n\n~~~\nakirk\nThat bug is now fixed, too.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Please, review my poetry website (Poeticous.com). - poeticous\n\nIt is a site for those interested in poetry where people can read poems, analyses, translations, recitations, etc, in English and Spanish. It's also a place to post your own work, if you are a poet.<p>Thanks!!\n======\npoeticous\n<http://www.poeticous.com>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSimple SaaS listing based on your growth stage, pain-points and industry - Ozzie-D\nWe built toolbase.io to help makers, product managers and digital transformation specialists to find the SaaS tools that would be best for their specific pain points, industry and stage.<p>Start the three-step user journey here. https:&#x2F;&#x2F;toolbase.io\n======\nOzzie-D\n[https://toolbase.io](https://toolbase.io)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAppStore Developer Payout Hits $50B, July Sets Record, Biggest Month Ever - heshamg\nhttp://www.macrumors.com/2016/08/03/app-store-50-billion-paid-to-developers/\n======\nsebbean\npokemon go IAP\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMultiple ways to compute e in Raku - gbacon\nhttp://blogs.perl.org/users/damian_conway/2019/09/to-compute-a-constant-of-calculusa-treatise-on-multiple-ways.html\n======\nvvillena\nThis article is a love letter to both mathematics and programming. It is\nawesome to read something and grasp the joy and playfulness of the author. The\nmaths are explained in a simple way. The programming concepts go from the\nstraightforward to the delightfully weird (and let't not kid ourselves, Raku\nshines the most the weirder things get). And the final result is downright\nfun. I love it.\n\n~~~\nalfiedotwtf\nDamian is a magician in the way how he teaches different subjects. His talk on\ncalculating PI was fun too.\n\n------\nMrEldritch\nThis looks surprisingly neat, honestly. I've never used Perl, let alone Perl\n6, but I think I see why people cared about it.\n\n~~~\nianai\nIs it officially appropriate to talk about Perl in the past tense?\n\n~~~\nlmkg\nI think technically yes, because the present tense should be referring to Raku\ninstead.\n\n~~~\nmclehman\nRaku is not the direct successor to Perl, active Perl development continues.\n\n------\ntzs\nComputing e to thousands of decimal places is an interesting exercise for the\nmathematically inclined students in a beginning programming class. If you use\nthe ∑1/n! series you can fairly easily do it even in a language that does not\nhave built in arbitrary precision or an arbitrary precision library.\n\nLet's say you want to deal with numbers to 1000 decimal places. Pick a base\nthat is a power of 10, such as 10000. Represent a number as an array of 251\nbase 10000 digits, with the first item of the array being the integer part,\nand the remaining 250 being 250 base 10000 \"decimal\" digits.\n\nYou need two of these arrays. One represents 1/n!, and the other is the\ncumulative sum of the series so far.\n\nYou need two large precision operations. To go from 1/n! to 1/(n+1)! involves\nsimply dividing by n+1. As long as we limit n+1 to under 10000, we only have\nto handle division with a single digit denominator. Limiting n thusly is not a\nproblem--it's enough to actually support calculating e to over 35000 decimal\nplaces, so our modest goal of 1000 is no problem.\n\nImplement the division exactly like you would do division by a single digit\nwith pencil and paper. The only thing you have to worry about is dealing with\ncarry. You can have intermediate values as large as the carry x the base +\nbase - 1, and since carry can be as large as base - 1, this means you can have\nintermediate values as large as base^2 - 1. Just pick base (10000 in my\nexample) so that base^2 - 1 doesn't overflow the basic integer type of the\nlanguage you are using.\n\nThe other large precision operation you need is addition, to accumulate the\nresult from the division into the sum. Same as with division--just write it\nusing the same algorithm you would use with pencil and paper. Add digits right\nto left, with carry.\n\nBy using a base that is a power of 10, it is easy to figure out the base 10\nrepresentation of the final result for printing.\n\n------\nmhd\nThis also shows one of the things that Perl was great at in the past:\nPersonalities. Despite \"Just Another Perl Hacker\" being a common meme, there\nwere some people who just stood out. Wall, Schwartz, Christiansen, Conway.\n\nI think this is important for a language and IMHO current Perl can't compete\nwith that. For a while Ruby had a pretty colorful and productive batch, and of\ncourse Go has some elder statesmen of the industry.\n\nJavaScript... Well, it certainly has a lot of coaches.\n\n------\nkvakil\n> Maksymilian Piskorowski found that if you happen to have a spare eight 9s,\n> you can compute 𝑒 = (9/9 + 9^(-9^9))^(9^(9^9)), which is accurate to a\n> little over 369 million decimal places.\n\nSure, because 9/9 = 1 and if you take x = 9^9^9, you get back (1 + x^(-1))^x,\ni.e. the first formula. It's cute, but I don't know if you could call it a\n\"discovery\".\n\n~~~\nshakna\nYou can see the formula Piskorowski used here [0], under \"Best Approximations\nto e with n Copies of the Digit k\". (All formulas marked with \"MP\").\n\nHe did in fact build up (1 + x^(-1))^x to slowly increase the accuracy of the\nformula.\n\n[0]\n[https://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/mathmagic/0804.html](https://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/mathmagic/0804.html)\n(The page may say 2004, but has been actively updated, and has references to\n2019.)\n\n------\ndbaupp\nWhy does the Bernoulli formula take exponentially long in the exponent?\nPython’s native form (using either an integer or float exponent) and even an\narbitrary percision computation to 1000 decimal digits using mpmath (also with\neither an integer or float exponent) are fast even for much larger exponents,\nand are accurate.\n\n    \n    \n       >>> import math, timeit\n       >>> x = 2**52\n       >>> math.e\n       2.718281828459045\n    \n       >>> (1+1/x)**x\n       2.718281828459045\n       >>> timeit.timeit(lambda: (1+1/x)**x, number = 10**6) / 10**6\n       2.1324560802895575e-07\n       >>> timeit.timeit(lambda: (1+1/x)**float(x), number = 10**6) / 10**6\n       3.0082468304317444e-07\n    \n       >>> from mpmath import mp\n       >>> mp.dps = 1000\n       >>> (1+1/mp.mpf(x))**x\n       mpf(‘2.7182818284590449335703801338125114…’)\n       >>> timeit.timeit(lambda: (1+1/mp.mpf(x))**x, number = 10**3) / 10**3\n       0.0004724335519131273\n       >>> timeit.timeit(lambda: (1+1/mp.mpf(x))**mp.mpf(x), number = 10**3) / 10**3\n       0.00047394841397181155\n    \n\n(Times in seconds.)\n\n------\nlelf\nAlso, Eccentric Euler’s one-liner:\n\n    \n    \n      > '𝑒'.uniname\n      MATHEMATICAL ITALIC SMALL E\n      > say 𝑒\n      2.718281828459045\n\n------\nnayuki\nHow to compute e _properly_ , with consideration for error bounds:\n[https://www.nayuki.io/page/approximating-eulers-number-\ncorre...](https://www.nayuki.io/page/approximating-eulers-number-correctly)\n\n------\ncoolreader18\nI can't connect to this page, as Firefox is automatically redirecting me to\nthe HTTPS version of the page even though it's not supported. I guess I don't\nrun into this that often given how common HTTPS is, but maybe someone else has\nthis problem with this site? If you are, have you fixed it before? I've tried\nall of the methods mentioned on this[0] page, and I'm on Firefox 70 on Linux\nMint.\n\n[0]: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30532471/firefox-\nredirec...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30532471/firefox-redirects-to-\nhttps)\n\n~~~\nbigiain\nAre you sure it's Firefox doing that? I've got 70.0.1 on macOS and it's\ndisplaying fine (with the red crossed out padlock in the address bar).\n\nYou sure you don't have HTTPS-Everywhere or something similar running?\n\n(There's noting in the response headers or html meta tags that look like it'd\nbe redirecting you too https there...)\n\n------\n0db532a0\nI am not convinced by the interest charging analogy. It is back to front. The\nyearly interest is by definition the total interest that would be paid given\nthe already agreed charging period. The loan shark does not advertise a 100%\nyearly interest (on a single yearly payment) and then suddenly increase his\nwinnings by cranking up the number of payments. It is then no more a 100%\nyearly loan.\n\n------\nalexeiz\nI'd rather there was a single way to do something useful in Raku than multiple\nways to do something completely useless.\n\n~~~\nfirethief\nIt sounds like your goals for Raku are incompatible with the aims of the\nproject, to the extent that making Raku into what you want would be \"use\nsomething else\" with extra steps.\n\n------\nvkizl\nRaku = Perl 6, just in case you're wondering.\n\n~~~\nbigiain\nSort of.\n\nMore like \"Raku (nee Perl6)\" I think.\n\nIt's (now) called Raku, because it isn't really Perl any more - even though it\nstarted out that way. \"Perl\" is Perl 5 now.\n\n~~~\ngpvos\nSpiritually, it is very much a kind of Perl, in a more concentrated form.\n\n~~~\nbigiain\nOh sure. It used to be Perl. But it's \"married out\" now and taken a new name,\nand is off doing new things.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMultiple Vulnerabilities in IBM Data Risk Manager - Daviey\nhttps://github.com/pedrib/PoC/blob/master/advisories/IBM/ibm_drm/ibm_drm_rce.md\n======\nreader_1000\nThe way IBM handles this is pretty bad. No company, especially the ones\nselling a security product, should ignore security researchers reports and\nfeedbacks\n\nAlso the bugs described in article are quite surprising since for a IBM-sized\ncompany, you expect them to have solid authentication/authorization framework\nwhich they use for all their products. Is this a acquired product?\nAuthentication mechanism is very unusual. Why would anyone save a session id\ncoming from the user? This is more than trusting user input, I think.\n\nAlso ../../etc/passwd attack is a kind of vulnerability that almost every\nautomated vulnerabilty scanner scans.\n\nMost people assume that authenticated pages do not need that much security\nprecautions however as articles shows, when combined with authentication\nbypass vulnerabilities, you basically give keys of your systems to the\nattacker.\n\n~~~\nosipov\n>you expect them to have solid authentication/authorization framework which\nthey use for all their products\n\nhaha\n\n------\nteepo\nAccording to IBM this is not even an active product [1]. Although after some\nreading it does appear that if a client was still using this solution and was\npaying for extended support that IBM would take care of them.\n\nI wonder if the security researcher knows if this is a COTS product. I could\nnot find it to download, isn't generally available, and appears to be\ndeprecated by IBMs more cloud centric security solutions\n\n[1][https://www.ibm.com/support/lifecycle/#/details?q45=I355654S...](https://www.ibm.com/support/lifecycle/#/details?q45=I355654S22480A00)\n\n~~~\nphonon\nWrong version, newer versions are still supported.\n\n[https://www.ibm.com/support/lifecycle/#/details?q45=U977729P...](https://www.ibm.com/support/lifecycle/#/details?q45=U977729P09903E32)\n\n------\nphonon\nThis appears to be IBM's response.\n\n[https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/ibm-data-risk-manager-\nvuln...](https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/ibm-data-risk-manager-\nvulnerabilities)\n\n------\njbob2000\nThe thing about enterprise services is that they _don 't_ operate in the same\nenvironment as ones on the open internet. So while these vulnerabilities look\nbad on their own, they aren't that bad when you stack the enterprise's other\nsecurity services and processes on top.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLet’s not demonize driving, just stop subsidizing it - chrismealy\nhttp://cityobservatory.org/lets-not-demonize-driving/\n======\nfrgtpsswrdlame\nAs much as the idea is nice I think it's just a political non-starter. Making\nthis about \"personal responsibility\" is a pretty see-through cover. This is a\nstick and a stick wielded by \"liberal elites who live in cities\" against rural\ndrivers and mega-commuters won't work in this environment.\n\nPeople will move to cities and use roads less if cities are affordable. If we\ncan lower rent in the city, automobile usage will go down on its own. This is\nwhere the fight should be pointed I believe.\n\n~~~\nnnq\n> People will move to cities\n\nWhy tf would you want this? As an European, what I _loved_ about US was that\npeople don't like being all crammed up in small, old and disgusting cities,\nand they are OK with long commutes as the price for their \"house with lawn\"...\n\nPopulation _dispersal_ should be _encouraged!_ It dramatically increases\nquality of life, and if you take a look at google maps you'll see that the\nEarth is full of unused space.\n\nYeah, energy and climate change and all that are serious problems... but let's\nsolve _so that_ having solved them _we can enjoy un-crammed living..._\n\nIdeal world imho would one where cities and towns simply don't exist: it's\nindividual homes or small-group-homes sprinkled around the planet, with\n\"leisure centers\" and \"shopping centers\" and \"health centers\" sprinkled\nuniformly between them, and large chunks of forest here + agricultural land\nhere in-between them. It may sound extremely inefficient, but we have the\ntechnolgy to make it work now, so let's do it. Find something else to\noptimize, like making agriculture vertical instead, and let people live in the\nwide open spaces they enjoy! _Why TF do we insist creating and optimizing\nthese Urban Hells and then complain that anxiety and depression are eating us\nalive?!_\n\n~~~\nxtreme\nThis is something I don't get about the HN crowd. I grew up in India, where\noverpopulation is a huge problem. However, if you look below the surface, it\nis not overpopulation; it is uneven distribution. There are only a few cities,\nand they are way too cramped with people. The decrease in quality of life is\nreal. And most Indians do not own cars, they rely on public transit. If there\nwere more smaller towns and good connectivity, people could live a lot more\ncomfortably.\n\nOne big issue with decentralization is that industries tend to congregate.\nHowever, there is no solid reason why modern offices need to be all located in\nthe same downtown. Decentralization reduces density and discourages rent-\nseeking behavior by existing residents.\n\nI might be biased but I like suburbs. I think (without any data to support)\nthey approach the optimal density for most people. Of course, some people find\nthem bland and boring. Urban density is more efficient, no doubt, but I don't\nget the hate for people enjoying large backyards and the peace and quiet\nsuburbs afford.\n\n~~~\nlmm\n> there is no solid reason why modern offices need to be all located in the\n> same downtown\n\nMy experience is that working in downtown is more productive - and,\nfundamentally, much more _fun_ \\- than working in an office park or at home in\nthe middle of nowhere. You can learn a lot from bouncing off people who work\nin similar-but-not-quite-the-same fields, and just having good lunch options\nis a huge win.\n\n~~~\njschwartzi\nYeah, in my morning life I've developed a disgust with the modern office park\nand its wide open fields of asphalt. There's never anywhere to walk to to buy\nlunch, and they die after 6pm.\n\n------\nzaque1213\n> Driving is a choice, and provided that drivers pay all the costs associated\n> with making that choice, there’s little reason to object to that.\n\nI mean, kind of. I'm not sure where the author lives, but in Houston, I don't\nhave much of a choice. I already pay tolls and taxes, gas prices and my car\nnote. I live as close to work as is affordable, and still have to drive.\nThere's no bus route from my apartment and I'm not about to ride my bike on\nI-10. I ask this next question in seriousness, because I'd love to change my\nhabits without moving to a more expensive city with good public\ntransportation: what are my options here? I'd rather not be \"disinsentivized\"\nfrom doing something I have no choice but to do.\n\n~~~\nClubber\nI live about 10 or so miles from work. I live in a hot state. If I rode a bike\nor walked to work, I would stink and everyone near me would forget about the\nplanet while experiencing their olfactory assault. I'd probably get out of\nmeetings, but I wouldn't make any friends.\n\n~~~\napsec112\nVery likely, the major reason you live so far from work is that it's illegal\nto build densely, and it's illegal to build houses, stores, and offices within\nreasonable walking distance of each other. Of course, most people don't\nrealize that - they just look for houses near their work and don't find any,\nor the handful they do find are super-expensive, so they live far away and\ncommute. But the underlying reason why these houses are super-expensive or\nnonexistent is that it's illegal to build more of them.\n\n~~~\ngydfi\nOr people don't like living on top of one another.\n\nGive me a nice half-acre and a self-driving car to get me where I need to go.\n\n~~~\ndashundchen\nThe fact is not everyone can live on a half acre. The tax revenue isn't dense\nenough to support the infrastructure people expect (ignoring the awful\nenvironmental and land use effects that would have).\n\nThe US is seeing fiscal and infrastructure problems across the country from\nmunicipalities who spread themselves too thin the past 60 years. They don't\nhave the funds to maintain, much less improve, their infrastructure. We need\nto make it easier to build denser and start thinking about how to develop more\nsustainably going forward.\n\n~~~\nosdiab\nExactly! People don't take into account how expensive it is to maintain long\nroads, electrical lines, water pipes, and much more to remote places; higher\ncost of maintenance on said infrastructure; and how most of that area doesn't\nproduce any revenue to fund itself. Like it or not, you're receiving enormous\nsubsidies to live that way, and if you had to pay the true costs of your\nlifestyle, you might reconsider how idyllic it really is.\n\n------\nmegablast\nWhy? It is not just about the cost. It is about over a million people dying\nevery year. It is about pollution. It is about noise. It is about ugly roads\ntaking up huge amounts of space. It is about entire cities messed up because\nof urban sprawl.\n\n~~~\ncloseparen\nIt's about people getting to work in a reasonable amount of time and comfort\nfrom housing they can afford.\n\nRich urbanites having ugly roads in their field of vision is not remotely\ncomparable to middle and working class people having to move in with roommates\nor triple their commute times.\n\n~~~\ndashundchen\nWhen density is so low outside a city's relatively tiny core, like in most\nAmerican cities, it's no surprise areas with short commute times are so\nexpensive. Maybe if we densified our cities prices wouldn't be so out of\nwhack.\n\nIt doesn't have to be Manhattan like densities either. Many German cities, for\nexample, are full of 4, 5, 6 story buildings. Dense enough to support frequent\ntransit and common enough to not have astronomical rents.\n\n~~~\nobstinate\nMuch of Manhattan is not that dense either. I mean, it's denser than most\nplaces, but a decent chunk of it is the exact type of thing you're describing\n-- five to six story buildings.\n\n------\nrenlo\nThis is going to make peoples lives worse. People who still need to drive are\ngoing to drive, but will instead end up paying more.\n\n> That’s because most people, correctly, can’t imagine any time soon when they\n> won’t need to use a car for most—even all—of their daily trips. As a\n> practical matter, the fact that for seven or eight decades the entire built\n> environment and most transportation investments have been predicated on car\n> travel means that we can’t quickly move away from auto dependence.\n\nSo, let's build better public transportation (light rail, subways, buses /\nself-driving buses) or other solutions (bike lanes / roads, affordable housing\nnear commerce) before we start making life harder for people. Once we've\nreached a state where there are convenient options then we should enact such\ntaxes and fees, not before.\n\n~~~\nhvidgaard\nThat sounds nice, but you will not get that movement going unless there is a\nreason for people to give up their car.\n\nThe obvious suggestion would be to gradually make it more expensive to drive,\nand then gradually improve transportation and housing to deal with less cars\npr household.\n\n/Edit: I meant to say you do both simultaneously. LEaving the original text up\nbecause the replies were made in that context.\n\n~~~\nehnto\nOur city made it more expensive to park in the city through taxation. The\nresult was people pay more for parking. Cars and buses are just as backed up,\nand there are no new rail services.\n\nThe public transit system was already failing to deliver it's existing\ncustomers. Infrastructure must come before taxation as a way to motivate\npeople. It just doesn't make sense to make people pay for a failing of public\ninfrastructure as a way of encouraging them to use said failing\ninfrastructure.\n\n~~~\nhvidgaard\nI meant to say, do both simultaneously.\n\n~~~\nehnto\nAh I see, in fact you said it well already I was just too quick to reply!\n\nThis is definitely an issue I am passionate about, mostly because I want to\nlive in the city that eventually gets this right.\n\n------\nkasey_junk\nI worry that we are fighting the last war instead of the next one when we talk\nabout using cars less. The business models that led to centralized white\ncollar work forces in city cores are going away.\n\nAutomation means those work forces are smaller. More decentralized companies\nand work from home means that there is less reason to have them all in one\nplace and its usually easier to provide modern utilities cheaper and easier\noutside of the context skyscrapers and dense city centers.\n\nAs that happens, places that do have public transit infrastructure, largely\nbuilt on the commuter model, will find it ever less efficient as you aren't\nshuttling people to the same places or in the same patterns. And places that\ndon't have existing transit will have to experiment with untried models in a\ncontext where experimentation is very expensive.\n\n------\ncletus\nWhy not demonize driving? Roughly 1.3 _million_ people die in or from cars\nevery year worldwide [1]. In the US that's 37000 per year, roughly equivalent\nto 10 9/11s. Yet we not only subsidize car ownership (roads, parking, etc) and\nseem blasé to this carnage, we defend this practice as some kind of freedom.\n\nIt's utterly insane. Self-driving cars will imho be utterly transformative to\nsociety that one day we will look back on this century of driving vehicle\nourselves as the barbaric hocum that it is.\n\n[1] [http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-\nsafet...](http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safety-\nfacts/road-crash-statistics)\n\n~~~\nxtreme\nIt's a rather recent phenomenon that we have enough computing power to make\nself-driving cars a viable reality and not just science fiction.\n\n------\nnether\nWould this disproportionately hurt lower income earners who live in the\ncheaper suburbs and have longer commutes? Easy to ask for that pigovian tax\nwhen you've got that sweet downtown loft.\n\n~~~\nlmm\nThe other stereotype is that the poorest people are crammed into high-crime\ndowntown areas while the middle class live out in the suburbs. I don't know\nwhich way the statistics line up.\n\n~~~\nnether\nA gas tax is basically regressive according to this paper (pdf page 9):\n\n> The gasoline tax’s tendency to place a greater burden on low-income\n> households is often stated as one of the strongest arguments against the tax\n> [West, 2004a, 755]. Taxes on gasoline have been shown to be regressive in\n> numerous economic studies. A 1989 study by Poterba concluded that gasoline\n> taxes were about 15 percent of pre-tax income for the lowest income groups\n> in the U.S., compared to 2.8 percent for the highest income groups [Poterba,\n> 1989, 325].\n\n[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.554...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.554.7122&rep=rep1&type=pdf)\n\n~~~\nlmm\nThose stats could be true even if lower-income people drove a lot less than\nwealthy people - it's talking about what proportion of income they spend on\ngas on average.\n\n------\ngcatalfamo\nYou guys may all be right, but what if actually LIKE driving, and therefore\ncherish finding moments to drive for pleasure and not just for the daily\ncommute?. Does this make me a dinosaur in the age of self-driving Teslas?\n\n~~~\nTulliusCicero\nThere's nothing wrong with driving, but since it takes up a ton of space,\nthere's no reason for it to be subsidized in urban areas; quite the opposite,\nin fact.\n\n~~~\nexprA\nSpeaking as an European, can you really call driving subsidized (if it is in\none single area, such as building code) when much more cash is spent in social\nservices paid by fuel taxes?\n\n~~~\nTulliusCicero\nI'm less familiar with the economics of it in Europe, where gas taxes are\nmuch, much higher than in the US, and there's not nearly as much road and\nhighway sprawl.\n\n------\n_Codemonkeyism\nEye opener to me\n\n\"The High Cost of Free Parking\", Donald Shoup (book not the paper)\n\n~~~\nnwah1\nI second this recommendation. Car culture is hugely subsidized. It is arguably\nthe largest social engineering project in world history, buttressed by endless\namounts of regulation, zoning, and huge expenditure paid for by everyone,\nincluding non-drivers. It is certainly not a spontaneous outgrowth of the free\nmarket.\n\nWe waste enormous amounts of prime land on trivial things, such as curbside\nparking. Mandatory minimum parking requirements impede new construction, and\nare a hidden subsidy to car culture. And simple concepts to improve efficiency\nand fairness, like smart parking meters and congestion pricing, are ignored.\nPeople hate the concept of paying so much, even though they will ultimately\nend up paying for it via queuing (congestion).\n\nIt is interesting that much of what people actually hate about our economic\nsystem boils down to aspects of car culture. Atomization, sprawl, etc have\nmany causes, but certainly car culture is one of them.\n\n------\nZomad\nWouldn't there also be an associated rise to the cost of living? As the cost\nof transport rises, food produce etc. will all become more expensive as a\nresult? These costs typically impact the lower-income population more quickly\nand heavily than the middle and upper income earners.\n\n~~~\nosdiab\nJust because you prioritize transit in cities, doesn't mean that transport\ncosts in general rise. Transportation between cities can remain car driven as\nthose are inherently sparse areas anyway; you don't need to reduce use of all\ntypes of cars in cities, industrial use / deliveries can still exist in those\nsystems anyway; and as a long term idea, self driving deliveries may also\ndrive some of these costs later on. Additionally, while cost of transport\nrises for car commuters, it very well may fall for transit ones and especially\nfor those car commuters who switch to transit. So it's not a given that prices\nwould uniformly rise.\n\n------\nneumann\nI can see where the argument is going, but it is too simplistic and so ignores\nthe plethora of reasons we have developed to use cars after this many decades\nof IC. The problem is with public transport, and urban traffic, not cars. The\nproblem is with poor rail infrastructure and cheap fuel that has allowed a\nnationwide and global distribution infrastructure that relies on trucks.\n\nAlso: [https://youtu.be/zcAqR-Hs9II](https://youtu.be/zcAqR-Hs9II)\n\n~~~\nosdiab\nWe get poor public transit in part because we disproportionately fund car\ninfrastructure, and car infrastructure often makes neighborhoods less walkable\nin the first place. A sprawled out city means that you need a much more\nextensive rail network than a dense one; massive roads make actions as simple\nas crossing the street take a long time, intimidating, and dangerous; big\nparking lots offer nothing for pedestrians who walk buy to do, and need to be\nin the very places that people want to go in order to be useful.\n\nThis is a chicken and egg problem, where investing in cars harms ease of\ntransit, but reallocating investments into transit harms those car users. So\nwe as a society have to make choices about what we deem to be more important,\nor be prepared to spend significantly more capital to make the two coexist (by\ntunnels and subterranean parking structures, densification of cities, major\ntransit investment and what have you).\n\n------\nprklmn\nSimply put - people like living in houses and having a yard. Until this\nchanges, much of the public will continue to drive.\n\n~~~\nuiri\nThere are plenty of neighborhoods in San Francisco where one can get a house\nwith a yard; take, for instance, Noe Valley. It is San Francisco so housing\nprices are expensive but I am inclined to believe that it is cheaper to live\nwithout a car in San Francisco than with a car in the suburban Bay Area. The\ndifference, of course, is in the square footage of your living space.\n\nThis isn't a phenomenon that is unique to SF either.\n\n~~~\nsantaclaus\n> it is cheaper to live without a car in San Francisco than with a car in the\n> suburban Bay Area\n\nEast Oakland is pretty cheap!\n\n------\ncoding123\nWith self driving looming, no policy changes should happen until the self\ndriving stuff shakes everything up. Far fewer people will be using their own\ncar when that happens. Also this identical argument can be said about\nANYTHING, replace cars and roads with police and protection. This feels like\nthere would be no end to this line of thinking. Just people wanting to be\ninvolved in something \"drastically different\".\n\n~~~\njkaptur\nThe fact that changes might be coming is no argument against changing policies\nin the world that exists today.\n\n------\nbogomipz\nI am interested in this idea posited in the post:\n\n\"We shouldn’t require third parties such as homebuilders or renters or local\nbusinesses to subsidize car travel and parking. This isn’t about creating a\n“disincentive for car use,” but, as a matter of fairness and practicality,\ndropping what have essentially been subsidies for financially and socially\nexpensive and dangerous behavior.\"\n\nThey don't mention how how third parties are subsidizing car travel and\nparking but I am assuming they are talking about taxes no? I agree with this,\nif I live where I don't need to own a car then I understand not wanting to pay\nthe same taxes towards roads as someone who uses a car every day.\n\nHowever part of my tax dollar that subsidizes those roads also goes to\ncommercial traffic that brings my food and essentials into the city where I\nmight live and shop. How do you implement this without increasing the costs of\ngoods even further in our cities? The delivery costs of goods into cities\nalready makes those same good more expensive in a city with the current\npricing scheme.\n\n~~~\nCalRobert\nParking minimums.\n\nForcing people to build off-street parking is a subsidy to everyone else who\nenjoys their on-street parking welfare. It can add tens of thousands to the\ncost of a unit.\n\nThis illustrates the problem well:\n[https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/420062](https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/420062)\n\nConsider - how many times have people complained about a lack of parking, but\nreally mean a lack of FREE parking? I mean, how ludicrous is that??? I don't\ncomplain about a lack of free hotel rooms! We've decided the government (aka\ntaxpayers, including those who don't own a car) should pay for places for cars\nto sleep, while making it challenging to even _build_ places - when there's a\nmarket demand!- for humans to sleep.\n\n\"The delivery costs of goods into cities already makes those same good more\nexpensive in a city with the current pricing scheme.\" \\- do you have a source\nfor this? The expense of land in a city must have a lot to do with it. The\nexpense of providing free parking to customers in a city with expensive land\nmight have even more to do with it. If a shop has free parking, everyone who\nwalks there is paying for the drivers' parking.\n\n~~~\nacdha\nI live in DC and this came up on every development discussion because it was\nso absurdly against good policy. You could be building a neighborhood bar next\nto a metro station in a place where 80% of the residents walk, bike, or take\ntransit and still be required to pay for bunch of parking spaces.\n\nIn the neighborhood where I live there's a big development proposal literally\non the same property as a metro station. The design and image is squarely\naimed at a transit / bike / car-share lifestyle (why pay the premium if that's\nnot what you want?) but even the reduced city requirements are greater than\nthe number of spaces for which the developer anticipates renter demand and\nthere are a few vocal obstructionists demanding more because they still think\nyou need at least one car per resident. That attitude is so deeply entrenched\nin our culture that they literally make excuses for why the older building a\nblock away has something like a 40% usage rate, because it's just\ninconceivable that there won't be a big demand spike in the future.\n\n------\npanic\n_We learned that higher gas prices, for example, had a large and sustained\nimpact on driving behavior. After growing steadily for decades, vehicle miles\ntraveled per person peaked and declined after 2005 (as gas prices shot up).\nThis produced knock-on changes in housing markets, and helped accelerate the\nmove back to cities._\n\nIt's too bad raising these prices intentionally using taxes is so difficult!\n\n------\nLordKano\nCities are growing again, don't kill them.\n\nI get the feeling that this was the author's semi-intellectual tantrum because\nhe got cut off by a car when he was in the bike lane.\n\nHe comes in long on agenda and short on facts. For example, he says that\ntrucks should pay for the damage they do to roads but he is completely\nignoring the fact that they do. Diesel fuel is taxed so heavily specifically\nto compensate for the amount of damage big trucks cause to the roads. It's\nalso why there are spot checks for un-taxed agricultural diesel.\n\nI see formerly crime ridden, low income neighborhoods being gentrified and\nyoung professionals are moving in. There are parts of the city where one could\nhave bought a house for less than $50,000 ten years ago where the same house\nis going for over $200,000 today. You will ruin that trend and reverse that\ngrowth if you make it too difficult, inconvenient and expensive for people.\n\nI have chosen to live my life in such a way that car-free, urban living is\njust not going to happen. I can easily put my three children into my vehicle\nand go to the mall just to browse around and spend time together. I'm not\nloading three children onto a bus.\n\nI have a three bedroom house about 14 miles away from the center of the\nnearest urban area and it sits on 1/6 to 1/8 of an acre of land where I'm free\nto grow a garden, have a swimming pool and still pay less for my mortgage than\nI'd pay in rent for a three bedroom apartment in the city.\n\nThere are a lot of people like me who will never live in the city and if you\nmake it too inconvenient to travel into the city, we'll stop going. You will\ncreate more sprawl due to the fact that just because we don't go into the city\nfor goods and services doesn't mean that we won't require them. We'll still\nneed and want these things and someone will service those needs in a way that\nworks for us.\n\nAutomobiles are not going away. If you stop planning for and accommodating\nthem, you are going to cause many more problems than you resolve.\n\n~~~\nsoperj\nIf you've been anywhere with a half decent bus system, it's really easy to\nbring three kids on the bus. My kids love the bus, it's an adventure.\n\nAlso there's no way that this would encourage more sprawl. Places that don't\nrely on the car are not sprawled, they just have more compact town centers\nthat are close by. Look at Denmark or the Netherlands.\n\n~~~\nLordKano\nI currently ride the bus to and from work. Our mass transit system is adequate\nbut it'll never replace my automobile.\n\n------\ndriverdan\nIn economics these issues are called negative externalities and are well\nknown. If you're not familiar with the term I suggest reading the Wikipedia\narticle about it:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality)\n\nThere's even a page about the externalities of vehicles, although it's fairly\nsparse:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externalities_of_automobiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externalities_of_automobiles)\n\nAs a society we're better off by eliminating these externalities. They're a\nmarket imbalance that harms people.\n\n~~~\nfrogpelt\nAnd I submit to you the Wikipedia article about Unintended consequences:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences)\n\nWe can outlaw cars but what will be the consequences?\n\nOne reason Americans have a fascination with cars is because Americans have a\nfascination with freedom.\n\nWhen governments attempt to eliminate imbalances they usually take away\nliberties. This is not necessarily an improvement.\n\n------\nstrictnein\n> \"Every car driver ought to pay for their parking space they use—whether it’s\n> in the public or the private realm.\"\n\nI do pay for private parking spaces already. Stores and businesses provide\nthem and they're paid for by the money I pay them.\n\n~~~\npseudonom-\nYou pay for private parking spaces, in part (i.e. in combination with other\ncustomers). I also pay for parking spaces, in part, by my patronage but never\nuse them. Consequently, your share of the usage is higher than your share of\nthe payment. So again, even private parking of this sort is subsidized.\n\n~~~\nstrictnein\nThe store didn't add parking spots in case you decided to buy a car.\n\n~~~\npseudonom-\nI don't follow. You're saying that the store didn't provide parking to help\nsome future, possible me-with-a-car? How is that relevant?\n\n------\n6d6b73\nWhy can't we have small cities where in the center we have libraries, medical\nfacilities and schools. Next let's build parks and recreational areas. Around\nthat we should have residential area. Next zone retail, and another one\nindustrial . This, or a similar setup would change how cities work. Kids could\nwalk to school, libraries and parks. Adults could walk/bike to stores and to\nwork. Medical facilities would be close to most of the population. The whole\narea from retail to the center of the town could be car free, with just few\nareas for transportation, but even that could be moved underground.\n\n~~~\nmarcosdumay\nOh, Brasilia was designed that way.\n\nPeople don't want to restrict themselves only to the nearby school, and the\nnearby hospital, and the nearby groceries. And they want to compete for far\naway jobs.\n\nGood thing the city was also designed with a huge collection of streets going\naround those neighborhoods, because everyone is on those, all the time.\n\n~~~\nkortex\n> Oh, Brasilia was designed that way.\n\nHardly. A 3-lane highway plus frontage roads cuts straight through the center.\nThen you have L4, which hugs the waterfront and cuts off much of the city in a\nvery Robert Moses-esqe fashion. Its metro/rail system is completely anemic.\n\n> Good thing the city was also designed with a huge collection of streets\n> going around those neighborhoods, because everyone is on those, all the\n> time.\n\nI'd say that is _precisely_ why it has more driving and less walking/public\ntransport.\n\n(disclaimer: never actually visited it, but this much is apparent from maps\nand such)\n\n~~~\nmarcosdumay\nBetween the highways are blocks designed basically the same way the GP is\ntalking about. That were expected to provide everything, and completely\nwalkable.\n\nNever worked as designed, because people don't work that way.\n\n------\ndidibus\nOne size does not fit all. Each state, city, town should adopt local policies\nthat make sense. I think that was missed in the article, since the \"city\" they\ntalk about in question seems to be an abstract generalization.\n\n~~~\nosdiab\nI think this stuff makes sense for somewhat dense and populous cities; that\nsaid, I do think that the fragmentation of cities in places like the Bay Area\ncould use some generalization (way too many independent, disagreeing suburbs\nthat prevent rational coordinated action. Ridiculous numbers of transit\nauthorities and inconsistent coverage with existing rail make the experience\nterrible).\n\n------\ndangjc\nI did a road trip in New Zealand where petrol is $2 a liter, ie about $8 per\ngallon. It made us much more conscious about how much we were driving. It's\nthe only place I've seen hitchhiking still socially acceptable and not creepy.\nA gas tax that size would help pay for roads and encourage gradual\ndensification. Maybe everyone could receive a refundable credit during the\nfirst few years of phase in to avoid sticker shock.\n\n------\nbougiefever\nI think it's a wrong approach to focus on incentives or disencentives of\ndriving and car ownership. Why do people drive? A lot of it could be\neliminated. Shopping is one reason. If it becomes more feasible to order\nthings online and have them brought to us, that would cut down on driving. I\nknow, it would arrive by a vehicle, but it would be one vehicle instead of the\nmany it delivers to. Work - many jobs could easily be done from home. I work\nremotely, and it cuts down on driving a lot for me. I think the culture needs\nto catch up on this one. We absolutely need to travel to see our friends and\nfamily, Skype notwithstanding, but if public transportation was better, we\nwouldn't need cars for that either. I live in a rural area, so not having a\ncar for me would not work at all. I carefully plan my trips to the store\nbecause it takes so much time to drive there and back. Another thing, why are\npeople saying street parking is free? Have you never received a ticket? That\nquadruples in the amount you owe if you don't pay it in 5 days?\n\n------\nShivetya\nSelf driving cars and EVs will just give people more freedom to live where\nthey want and the mobility they desire. So much of his belly aching is already\non the way out.\n\nPeople won't give up driving and living where they want but they will change\nto the EV/FC side provided it doesn't curtail either of those and in the next\ndozen years or so that move will be well underway.\n\nThe one truth always ignored is that many cannot live where they want too.\nJobs change and married couples have the double limitation that one may end up\nwith a job further away than is desirable. they just cannot get up and move\nwhen work is ten to twenty miles further out and some won't burden their\nchildren with new schools and having to find new friends.\n\non a per mile case we spend more to subsidize mass transit than other forms of\npeople movement and sadly we aren't even paying the upkeep on what we already\nhave. you think the roads and such need work, just wait till the bills come\ndue to mass transit maintenance being skipped because of over priced\nextensions and such.\n\n------\njtokoph\nIn the current world of automated tolling with FastTrak, IPASS and EZ Pass I\nfeel like we should have already put tolls up all over the place.\n\n~~~\ndsfyu404ed\nNo, screw that.\n\nToll roads everywhere just creates another revenue stream that can never be\ngotten rid of. Automating it makes price hiking easy and silent. By putting\ntolls everywhere You've succeeded in raising costs and increasing congestion\neverywhere tolls aren't\n\n~~~\nbryanlarsen\nJust building a road creates a massive obligation on future taxpayers to pay\nfor maintenance for that road. It's even harder to get rid of a road than it\nis to get rid of a toll.\n\n------\nimpala454\nAs someone who lives in a giant spread out city (Houston) I have attempted to\nbus in from the suburbs on occasion and it was fun, but hardly a reasonable\neveryday occurrence. Our city is just too spread out. I've visited NYC and\nit's large as well but everything is so compacted together you don't have to\ngo far from a train station to get where you want to go.\n\n~~~\nConsultant32452\nI feel like this is a chicken and egg problem. Without the transportation\ninfrastructure you can't get the population/business density, but without the\npopulation density you can't justify the infrastructure. Houston could\nprobably build decent rail transportation to get you where you needed to go,\nbut it won't happen. I live in a city like yours, our public transportation is\natrocious. It takes at least an hour to get anywhere.\n\n------\nkrisroadruck\nHow the heck do people shop without a car? Do you hand lug 50+ lbs of\ngroceries several blocks on foot? What if you need to buy something larger\nthan will fit in a backpack? I'm absolutely mystified by people who live sans-\nvehicular transport.\n\n~~~\nCaptSpify\nWhen you live in a city that doesn't assume you have a car, they put grocery\nstores in more logical places. Additionally, you end up only buying what you\nneed. I just have two bags that I fill with groceries, and I only walk a\ncouple of blocks. I generally only buy what I need for that day.\n\n~~~\nkrisroadruck\nDo you not find that buying in small batches drastically increases your\ngrocery bill vs buying in bulk?\n\n~~~\nCaptSpify\nI wouldn't say it drastically increases the bill, but it probably does\nincrease it a little bit. However that increase is a joke compared to the\ncosts of owning a car.\n\nEDIT: However no, I have not done an actual cost-difference analysis on\ngroceries.\n\n------\nnorea-armozel\nIf only this desubsidzation was met with an offset on mass transit because\nsadly many folks either have a home in town and have to commute to the burbs\nbecause the company built their campus that way or vice versa. In the Midwest,\nthere's no real push to augment mass transit even with BRT and dedicated lanes\nfor it. All kinds of NIMBY complaints seem to be holding back any kind of\nprogress on such things. So odds are that it'll still be politically easier to\nsubsidize the roads and cars until the cities break apart under the pressure\nof infrastructure maintenance costs and loss of tax revenues as working\npopulations move or age out.\n\n------\ngeorge_ciobanu\nInterstate roads and highways are also critical elements of national security\n- they act as the internet for transportation (by providing multiple redundant\nroutes that can be easily patched, unlike railways)\n\n------\ngaius\nIn the UK taxes paid by drivers (e.g. on fuel) raise £50Bn/year and transport\nspending in total is £25Bn. The idea that drivers are \"subsidised\" is\nludicrous.\n\n~~~\nlmm\nWhat would be the annual rent on the public land that's currently dedicated to\nroads?\n\n~~~\ngaius\nPaid by whom to whom? Or aren't drivers \"the public\" in your worldview?\n\n~~~\nlmm\nDrivers are a subset of the public; giving them almost-exclusive use of\nvaluable public land for free is a subsidy to them in the same way that\nhanding them them tax money would be. How much value would we get out of the\nland that's currently used for roads if we used for other public purposes\n(social housing, mass transit, government offices, police stations, parks and\nmuseums, or even just renting it out commercially and returning those funds to\ngeneral taxation)? However much value that is, that's how much we're\nsubsidising drivers by by giving them free use of the road network.\n\n~~~\ngaius\nHow much value would any of those things be without access to them?\n\nEven if you don't sit behind a wheel yourself, if you use shops, the post\noffice, or anything that involves goods being moved from A to B then you\nbenefit from the existence of the road network.\n\nBy all means build your \"social housing\" in long thin strips in the middle of\nnowhere, if you think that will help or thats what anyone wants. But it isn't.\n\n~~~\nlmm\n> Even if you don't sit behind a wheel yourself, if you use shops, the post\n> office, or anything that involves goods being moved from A to B then you\n> benefit from the existence of the road network.\n\nSure, and I can and should pay market rate for that. Yes a subsidy to drivers\nis indirectly a subsidy to shops and post offices, and even more indirectly a\nsubsidy to parts of the wider population. So? It's certainly not an equal\nsubsidy to everyone.\n\n> By all means build your \"social housing\" in long thin strips in the middle\n> of nowhere, if you think that will help or thats what anyone wants. But it\n> isn't.\n\nOut in the middle of nowhere there probably isn't a better use for that land\n(reflected in the fact that rent for it would be pretty cheap). In the city\ncentres is where the land is valuable, and that's where I'd look to reclaim\nroad space for more valuable uses (and perhaps introduce things like the\ncongestion charge if some road access is absolutely necessary, so that the\ncosts drivers pay reflect the land they're using up).\n\n------\nMrsPeaches\nSlightly off topic but I've seen it repeated a few times that it is illegal to\nbuild shops near houses in parts of the US.\n\nTo me this seems kinda crazy. What is the justification?\n\n~~~\ndec0dedab0de\nTo keep the neighborhood quiet.\n\n~~~\nAstralStorm\nAnd a boring wasteland? It is not shops that generate the most noise.\n\n~~~\nCalRobert\nThere are people who agree with you in the US, but far too few of them are on\nplanning councils.\n\n------\nintopieces\nSurprised this article missed the opportunity to point out that the fuel\ntaxes, both federal and state, have not been sufficiently raised in years to\ndecades in most states. To my mind, that's step 1: raise the fuel tax in each\nstate such that it adequately pays for the construction of roads. As it\nstands, the fuel tax in most states only services the interest on road\nprojects, with the rest being siphoned from the general budget.\n\n------\njackskell\nDriving is a choice... Unless you're crippled...\n\nMaybe you'd prefer I just vegetate at home (on whose dime?) instead of being\nemployed.\n\nRemote work is a reasonable possibility to consider, but having to start a new\nfield, it makes sense to keep an office presence for training, mentoring, and\nother intangibles that come with human contact.\n\nI like drive-thrus at restaurants, too.\n\n~~~\nTheCoelacanth\nTransportation subsidies for people who are crippled is a conversation worth\nhaving (and some public transportation systems actually do this), but\nsubsidies for everyone just to benefit a small number of people who need it is\nsilly.\n\n------\nhelthanatos\nI don't understand what thought process was used to write this: driving is\nnecessary and will be until we decide to live as we did in the 1800s.\nSubsidize driving? Gas tax, taxes, etc are not inexpensive by any means.\n>>\"When we experienced the epidemic of drunk driving, we didn’t go back to\nprohibition. Instead, we raised penalties to make drivers more responsible,\nset tougher limits on blood alcohol content, and put more money into\nenforcement. People still drink—but there’s a different level of understanding\nof responsibility and consequences, and fewer people drive drunk.\" I have to\ndisagree. The fact they were drunk is just hidden from the public. The\npenalties for drunk driving are not nearly harsh enough to expect people to\nnot do it. The past 3 accidents involving death I've seen have involved people\nthat were certainly drunk, but the toxicology reports were never released and\nwill never be. The public should know. I drive 25 miles to school each day.\nBeing forced to live on campus because of the dangerous pollution would be\ninsane. There should be no penalty for driving besides the costs of\ninfrastructure, which are, in fact, well covered by taxes or would be if it\ndidn't take 2 years to do something that should take a month, cities didn't\nrandomly decide they need to change intersections or randomly add them. 4 deer\nran in front of my car this morning. Nothing would have helped besides\ninsurance if I would have hit them. Driving is dangerous but there is no\nreason to penalize it or hinder it. Yes, I support walking to work if you live\nin a city and you're near it, but that is purely logical. The pollution caused\nby cars is one factor of many in climate change. It will not magically stop or\neven drastically decrease by penalizing driving. Gas is usually $2.40 - that\nis expensive enough.\n\n~~~\nsoperj\nIf driving was more expensive there'd be more options than driving 25 miles.\nYou could take a bike to the nearest train station which would arrive fairly\nfrequently and take that to campus.\n\n~~~\nhnal943\nThat's great unless you are anything but a commuter, carrying little and\ntraveling by yourself.\n\n~~~\nsoperj\nAnd yet people in Europe do it every day. They just have different kinds of\nbicycles, like a bakfiets. Which you can put pretty well anything in. I've\ndone 2 kids and a stroller easily.\n\n------\nniftich\nAs others have said, driving really isn't a choice in much of the US, but\nrather an artifact of finding a residence with desirable attributes (price,\nsize, form-factor, noise level, green space, school zone) in the same metro as\none's workplace. Just as the article notes that framing driving with\nmoralistic terms is a recipe for ruin, so is framing it as a conscious choice\non parts of perfectly average people who \"decide\" to _drive_ to work that day.\nSo quit focusing on driving -- driving isn't the problem, despite the\npollution deaths, despite car crashes, despite whatever evil cars and trucks\nbring upon the world -- they're tools, like just like fossil fuel power plants\nand oil refineries and other terribly unpleasant things that enable a modern,\nglobalized, distributed, and hyper-specialized society.\n\nAs this and other articles find, driving is a symptom of land use, but car-\ncentric suburbia was not build _because_ of cars, but merely enabled by them.\nGreenfield land has many perks, not the least the lack of pre-existing baggage\nlike badly configured buildings, under-sized streets, and aging underground\ninfrastructure. In the US, this wave was helped by white flight and the\nincreased demand after WWII, but demographically homogeneous countries in\nCentral and Eastern Europe are going through a wave of suburbanization right\nnow, driven solely by income inequality. I've said it before [1], as car\nsuburbs are aging themselves, they're becoming worse places to live, which\nmakes it harder to pay for their upkeep, and those who can afford to move move\neither further out to brand new exurbs that have a better balance of\ncommercial vs. residential, or back to revitalizing urban cores, leaving only\nthose who can't afford to leave.\n\nCapitalism works within the same metro too; local governments compete against\neach other for businesses and residents. The low-populated outskirts are often\nat risk for annexation by a nearby town, so they can instead incorporate\nthemselves to capture local tax base and keep it from paying for \"somebody\nelse\". There is no free lunch and income is redistributed either way: either\nthe city annexes a far-flung reach of greenfield land to build some high-\nprofit industrial park to help pay for the city's aging infrastructure or its\nattempts to gentrify, or the local residents organize into smaller and smaller\nindependent municipalities that focus on fostering the character of the\nparticular neighborhood while keeping the tax income closer to the site, but\nfragmenting the metro into entities that compete for the same dollars. This is\nfundamentally an economic problem, one that's not _driven_ by regulation and\nNIMBY, but mostly by average people looking to maximize their self-interest\nfor 5-to-15-years at a time, but much longer if they're unlucky.\n\n[1]\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11880084#11880937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11880084#11880937)\n\n------\naanm1988\n> Many people—transit boosters, cyclists, planners, environmentalists, safety\n> advocates—look at the end result of all this, and understandably reach the\n> conclusion that cars are the enemy. The overriding policy question, then,\n> becomes: “How do we get people out of their cars?”\n\nMany people live in their own version of reality. One where no one lives with\nkids in the suburbs. Where stores just get their products airdropped or\nsomething. Where it's not cold and snowing large chunks of the year.\n\nI'm all for more walkable/bikeable cities, and public transit is good too. I\njust feel like so many of these people arguing just live in a totally\ndifferent world.\n\n------\nHermel\n> Travel monitoring firm Inrix reported that in 2008, the 3 percent decline in\n> vehicle miles traveled led to a 30 percent decline in traffic congestion.\n\nDoes that also mean that increasing street capacity by 3% would lead to a 30%\nreduction in congestion? That would sound like a worthwhile investment to me.\n\n~~~\noverlordalex\nInterestingly the opposite occurs: increasing street capacity tends to lead to\nmore congestion.\n\nHere is a Wired article that explains the problem:\n[https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-\ndemand/](https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/)\n\n------\nmarcrosoft\nLet's remove ourself from government dependence first please.\n\n------\nandy-x\nGood roads are incentive to drive, let's destroy all roads then.\n\n------\njasonmp85\n<zoidberg>Why not both?</zoidberg>\n\n~~~\nwtallis\nPeople who feel like they're being attacked won't listen to reasonable\narguments and explanations.\n\n------\nSFJulie\nAmerican drivers used to be demonized for 3 years, and it gave outstanding\nresults: it seems that without moral incentive and ethic considerations the\ndriving problem does not find a solution magically without frictions.\n\nPS most efficient ways of using cars that \"worked\" in USA (WWII) were about\ndemonizing the privatization of cars and make it a common.\n\nWhen you ride alone you ride with Hitler:\n[http://www.learnnc.org/lp/multimedia/13293](http://www.learnnc.org/lp/multimedia/13293)\n\nPatriotic \"saving gas\" poster [http://gonzalocamacho.com/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2015/09/ww2ride...](http://gonzalocamacho.com/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2015/09/ww2rideshare-14.jpg)\n\nHelp with the war squeeze one more [http://gonzalocamacho.com/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2015/09/ww2ride...](http://gonzalocamacho.com/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2015/09/ww2rideshare-15.jpg)\n\nAnother propaganda poster on cars [http://gonzalocamacho.com/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2015/09/ww2ride...](http://gonzalocamacho.com/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2015/09/ww2rideshare-11.jpg)\n\nSave the food [http://gonzalocamacho.com/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2015/09/ww2ride...](http://gonzalocamacho.com/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2015/09/ww2rideshare-20.jpg)\n\nList of WWII USA poster for conservation\n[http://gonzalocamacho.com/2015/09/](http://gonzalocamacho.com/2015/09/)\n\nWWII was won partly due to the USA production effort and notably thanks to the\nchange of behaviour of citizens accepting to (temporally) adopt a more\nconservating and frugal way of life.\n\nSo, the point is: american citizens can do it, because they already did it.\nWhat is lacking is for them to reproduce this is their own government to\nliterally shame them into correct behaviours like kids. Which is depressing.\n\nIs a new war required for USA to stop being the biggest contributor per capita\nto the global warming effect? [http://www.english-\nonline.at/environment/copenhagen-climate-...](http://www.english-\nonline.at/environment/copenhagen-climate-\nsummit/co2%20emissions%20per%20country.gif)\n\n------\ngydfi\nNo actual numbers. After registration fees, fuel taxes, et cetera, to what\nextent are drivers actually being subsidised?\n\nLet us assume that roads need to exist anyway.\n\n~~~\napsec112\nFalse equivalence fallacy. Every country has roads, but Tokyo-style roads are\na hell of a lot cheaper to build and maintain than American roads, where every\ncity is a maze of six-lane highways intersecting ten-lane highways.\n\n------\nJohanGB\nWhat viable alternatives are there to cars in large countries like the United\nStates, where it is not feasible to create the infrastructure for public\ntransportation?\n\n~~~\nwtallis\nWhat does size have to do with anything? This is a discussion of _density_.\nIt's a foregone conclusion in discussions like this that the proposed changes\nprobably won't apply to places like Wyoming, but that's not the kind of\nenvironment that most Americans live in.\n\n~~~\nJohanGB\nI understand that this is mainly a discussion about density, but the US is\nsuper diverse in its population densities. I was just curious because I happen\nto live in a very rural area, but if you travel 30 minutes you would be in the\nmost densely populated area of my state. Correct me if I'm wrong, but most of\nthese increased fees would be implemented at the state level and could\nseriously impact those that live _close_ to dense population centers, but have\nno available transportation other than cars.\n\n~~~\nwtallis\nIf you live _close_ to the population center but not actually in it, then\nyou're probably highly reliant on its services. How far do you drive to buy\ngroceries? Aren't you contributing to the congestion and pollution of the city\nevery time you make the trip into town? Why _shouldn 't_ you have to bear some\nof their infrastructure costs, instead of just leeching off the city's tax\nbase?\n\nWhere I live (East coast) the counties are too small to cover the whole region\nof people who make daily use of the city. We don't really have an\nappropriately sized regional government to fully address the matter with any\nmethods other than toll roads.\n\n~~~\nars\n> Aren't you contributing to the congestion and pollution of the city\n\nObviously it would be better if no one came to the city, right? They should be\ndeserted with no people?\n\n> Why shouldn't you have to bear some of their infrastructure costs, instead\n> of just leeching off the city's tax base?\n\nYou keep acting like people going to the city are hurting it, they are not.\nThey are helping it - cities should do all they can to attract people from all\nover, not just those inside the city.\n\nTo the city, the roads they build to make it possible are well worth the\ninvestment.\n\n~~~\nwtallis\n> You keep acting like people going to the city are hurting it, they are not.\n> They are helping it - cities should do all they can to attract people from\n> all over, not just those inside the city.\n\nTake a look at a typical suburban shopping center. The stores are single-story\nbuildings and yet there's still significantly more acreage devoted to parking\nthan to the store itself. Yes, it's good for the economy of a city when people\nfrom outlying areas commute in for work and shopping. But there's a huge\nopportunity cost when you size all your infrastructure to accommodate a car\nfor every commuter and then render the city so inaccessible to pedestrians\nthat most of the city's residents also need to get cars and the roads and\nparking lots need to be expanded even more to accommodate that. If those\ncommuters were coming in to the city by public transit or driving their cars\nto a parking deck and carrying out their business mostly on foot, they'd\nprovide the same economic benefit to the city as a whole without making the\nurban lifestyle impossible and requiring even the minimum-wage shop employees\nto own a car.\n\nThe commuters aren't the problem. Their cars are.\n\n~~~\nars\nThe stores geared for pedestrians are usually much much smaller, and people\nbuy a lot less at a time and have less selection.\n\nI personally never shop in such stores, I hate them for being overpriced and\nnever having what I want. They have them in my area - a whole street of them,\nand I could walk to them, but I never do. I prefer to drive to the larger\nstores that I find FAR more useful. I fill up my car with FAR FAR FAR more\ngroceries than I could possibly carry by any other method, except perhaps\ntaxi.\n\n> But there's a huge opportunity cost\n\nHardly. The stores are not interchangeable. I find the stores you like to be\nuseless, and I would never live in a place where that's all they had.\n\n> they'd provide the same economic benefit to the city as a whole\n\nThey would not. Typical purchase amounts are not even close. And you would\nneed a lot more stores to cover the same amount of merchandise as those large\nstores, but of course a lot of small stores is far less efficient than a few\nlarger ones.\n\nI would have to shop every day in your world (no thank you), and I would spend\nmore since I could not buy in bulk. I would probably have a smaller house, so\nI could not store in bulk either.\n\n> Their cars are.\n\nSo your plan is for people to take public transit for 2 hours, every day, to\nbuy small amounts of groceries, only what they could carry home on public\ntransit?\n\nAnd what kind of public transit could serve rural areas anyway?\n\n~~~\nRapzid\nI hear you. I think places like Phoenix, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, San\nAntonio.. Well, just about most of the US would absolutely blow the minds of a\nlot of the commenters here. The way a lot are talking is like they have no\nconcept of the massive suburban sprawl of the DFW metroplex with very few\n\"downtown\" areas to speak of.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIs URL submission via bookmarklet broken? - joshwa\n\nhttp://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbrockerhoff.net%2Fbb%2Fviewtopic.php%3Fp%3D2417%232417&#38;t=Solipsism%20Gradient<p>The title keeps going into the URL field, and then when I submit, I keep getting redirected to news.ycombinator.com/mismatch, with the message:<p>\"Dead link: users don't match.\"<p>Submission via http://news.ycombinator.com/submit works fine.\n======\npg\nOops, something does look broken. Will fix.\n\n~~~\npg\nFixed; sorry.\n\n~~~\njoshwa\nThanks!\n\n------\nnreece\nYeah it seems to be broken.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGuide to Programming Clojure For Beginners - swannodette\nhttp://blackstag.com/blog.posting?id=5\n\n======\njcromartie\nThere's a need for good Clojure tutorials for beginners. I have a whole lot of\ntechnical nitpicks with the content, but this is a good start and a good thing\nfor the Clojure community. Great work.\n\n~~~\nmark_l_watson\nI hope that you give the author a list of things to fix, etc. I write a lot\nand I can tell you that authors really appreciate feedback and corrections.\n\n~~~\nblackstag\nAgreed. ;)\n\nI am no expert by any means, so feedback is always welcome and I am always\nlooking to improve.\n\n~~~\nhoprocker\nDo I get an hexidecimal dollar? ;)\n\n------\nsramsay\nSo, I wanted to start a blog. But then I discovered that all blogging\nplatforms suck, so I decided to write my own. Then I decided that all\nprogramming languages suck, so I had to learn a new one to write my blog.\n\nI would say Lisp's world domination plan is coming along swimmingly.\n\n~~~\nrfrey\nC'mon, be gentle - he said a big reason to write a new blogging platform was\nto learn the new language. That's legit - dunno how many file system browsers\nI have lurking around my archives for the same reason.\n\n~~~\nsramsay\nYeah, just kidding. It struck me as funny, because it's exactly the kind of\nthing hackers do (including me -- and I'm also a big Lisp/Clojure nut).\n\nAs far as I can tell, this is more-or-less exactly how TAOCP was written.\n\n------\njrheard\nIn Chrome, zooming in on this website makes the layout wider, but the text\nstays the same size. This is slightly inconvenient.\n\nThanks for the guide, though! Bookmarked.\n\n~~~\nblackstag\nI hadn't noticed this. Thank you - I'll need to take a look.\n\n~~~\nroryokane\nThe culprit seems to be “-webkit-text-size-adjust:none” set for all elements\nat the top of blog.css.\n\n~~~\nblackstag\nFixed & Thanks. I put that in for viewing on the iPad, but forgot to target\nthe iPad only. ^_^\n\n------\ndusklight\nI don't know if this is the right time to be introducing clojure to beginners\nyet. The language is still undergoing some basic fundamental changes. If you\nlook at 1.3 there is so much that is different and breaks stuff from 1.2 and\nbefore. Right now the main strength of clojure is that the only people using\nit are the people who are good enough at shipping real software to understand\nwhy it's worth the trouble. I would hate for it to become the next fashionable\n\"me too\" language like Ruby and get punished by being stuck with supporting\ntoo many newbies.\n\nRuby got stuck at 1.8.6 for so long because it was really difficult to\nintroduce code breaking changes in new versions, due to the number of people\nwho were already using it. It would be better to evangelize clojure after the\nclojure/core team is closer to finalizing the language design and has shifted\nfocus to performance and growing the ecosystem.\n\n~~~\nswannodette\nHaving survived the transitions from pre-1.0 -> 1.0 -> 1.1 -> 1.2 -> 1.3,\nthere's been surprisingly little in the way of breakage, usually just a bit of\nsearch and replace.\n\n~~~\ntechnomancy\nThe changes in 1.3 (which honestly should have been called 2.0) have caused a\nlot of upheval to people using the alpha releases. Even things as basic as\nring-devel were broken. But new users should have enough sense to stick with\nthe stable releases. Now that 1.3 has entered beta the number of libraries\nthat remain unpatched are few and far between. It's the folks who are using\ngit master in the middle of the release cycle who are feeling the pain, not\nthe newbies.\n\n------\npraptak\nA possible improvement to the tutorial would be a part of how to work with\ncode stored in files. If I haven't missed anything, the current version seems\nsolely REPL-based.\n\nOn the other hand this would into the IDE territory which maybe something that\nthe author intentionally avoided.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHealthcare.gov will soon be hosted by HP rather than Verizon - sgloutnikov\nhttp://www.theverge.com/2013/11/27/5153226/hp-takes-over-healthcare-gov-web-hosting-duties\n\n======\nbenologist\nRewrite of\n[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230356290...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303562904579224491970912988)\n\n------\nus0r\n$38 million contract.\n\nTripAdvisor spends $1.3 million per year on hosting.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Paid, an API for invoicing - ryanwjackson\nhttps://www.paidapi.com\n\n======\nAnimats\nIt's just an invoicing program. There are lots of those. Intuit's is widely\nused. Oracle is also in that business. There's \"Anytime Collect\", \"Zencash\",\n\"Esker\", \"Celtrino\". and many others.\n\nThe more advanced players support electronic data interchange (EDI), where\nyour accounts receivable system connects to the buyer's accounts payable\nsystem. Many large companies require EDI for suppliers who generate a lot of\ninvoices, so they aren't re-entering invoice data into their own systems.[1]\nAny new system should have EDI interchange with at least all Fortune 1000\ncompanies.\n\nThere are \"gateway\" companies which handle talking to large numbers of other\ncompanies.[2] Once you get this all working, your invoice goes out to the\ngateway, the gateway formats it and sends it to the paying company, the paying\ncompany's systems validate the bill, and they do a funds transfer to your bank\naccount, which is matched to another EDI transaction indicating payment. For\nmost routine transactions, there's no human intervention.\n\nMake that all work for small/medium businesses, and you have a unique product.\n\nThe API is \"dead simple\" because it doesn't handle any of the hard cases. Like\n\"We ordered 1000 but 200 didn't arrive. We're paying for only 800\".\n\n[1] [http://www.aepedi.com/apay.htm](http://www.aepedi.com/apay.htm) [2]\n[http://www.b2bgateway.net/](http://www.b2bgateway.net/)\n\n~~~\nsleepyhead\n\"Paid is a simple API\" and you are comparing to Oracle?\n\n\"Paid is a simple API\" but yet you \"Many large companies require EDI\"?\n\n\"It's just an invoicing program.\" aka \"Instagram is just a photo sharing app\".\nBtw invoicing programs aren't trivial (speaking of experience). Even when\nlooking at basic features it is still about actual money.\n\n------\nxrstf\nI really like the clean API docs, well done! Did you build it on your own or\nis that some REST doc framework?\n\nThe only thing I was missing from the API (maybe those are there but left out\nin the docs, which would be totally fine) are links between your resources (to\nmake it a bit more actual REST). You already more promimently documented the\nusecase (\"create an invoice\") instead of listing URL endpoints, but with links\nbetween the resources, the API becomes even more discoverable for new\ndevelopers.\n\nOh, one more minor thing: \"Paid uses UTC unix timestamps for all dates and\ntimes.\" \\-- I was under the impression that unix timestamps are always UTC\nanyway (i.e. it's defined as \"seconds since 1970-01-01 UTC\")? If I'm wrong,\nplease correct me :)\n\n~~~\nryanwjackson\nThe docs are an awesome repo by TripIt\n([https://github.com/tripit/slate](https://github.com/tripit/slate)). They\naren't perfect, but they get you pretty far pretty quickly.\n\nNot sure what you mean by \"links between your resources.\" Have an example? May\nbe there (or we can build it if not).\n\nCorrect on Unix time. Just being extra redundant.\n\n~~~\nxrstf\nRoy says[1] that to be truly RESTful, your resources (documents) need to be\nlinked between each other, just like HTML pages. There are no definite\nstandards yet (that I'm aware of), but JSON HAL[1] seems to be on the IETF\nstandards track to be the one solution we settle on (just like we \"settled on\"\n<a href> in HTML). See also [3] for a broader overview on links in JSON and\n[4] for more information on resource linking and stuff in general.\n\n[1] [http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-\nhyperte...](http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-\ndriven)\n\n[2]\n[http://stateless.co/hal_specification.html](http://stateless.co/hal_specification.html)\n\n[3]\n[https://www.mnot.net/blog/2011/11/25/linking_in_json](https://www.mnot.net/blog/2011/11/25/linking_in_json)\n\n[4]\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS)\n\n~~~\njerven\nWhat about JSON-LD and linked data platform. At least JSON-LD comes from the\nW3C Web payement workgroup\n\n~~~\nxrstf\nI haven't looked into the available techniques for a few months. JSON HAL\nworks fine for me for now. ;)\n\n------\ntarr11\nThis is pretty cool. So, I am using Stripe, which is great, but has a few\ndrawbacks right now. I'm also using churnbuster, which is nice (does your\n\"chase\" feature do what they do?)\n\nHere's my problems:\n\n1\\. Some of my customers pay by check\n\n2\\. Sometimes my customers have an out of date credit card, or haven't given\nit to me yet, and Stripe won't let me change their subscription to one that\ncharges them.\n\n3\\. I occasionally do both charges, credits and invoiceitems for in Stripe\n\n4\\. I have written a lot of Stripe specific code, and would prefer to\ngradually try out your solution (it might not work, no offense) Can I try it\nout without moving completely over?\n\n~~~\nryanwjackson\n1\\. Many of our customers get paid by checks. We receive checks for some of\nthem, and our goal is to make as easy as possible to reconcile those payments.\n\n2\\. If your customer's card is out of date, we prompt the customer to update\ntheir card and store it back to Stripe for you.\n\n3\\. You aren't alone. Some customers use us for pieces of their transaction\nvolume (i.e. only the invoiced customers or only customer paying via ACH)\n\n4\\. A la #3, you can send us a portion or all. We're also happy to help you\nget started. It's free to get set up, so you can try it out. We also provide a\ntest environment so you can play around with it as much as you want.\n\nFeel free to always shoot us an email at hello@paidapi.com.!\n\n------\nminimaxir\nIt should be noted that this is a pivot of a failed YC startup:\n[http://blog.shoptheorem.com/post/109312542795/an-end-and-\na-b...](http://blog.shoptheorem.com/post/109312542795/an-end-and-a-beginning)\n\n~~~\noh_sigh\nWhy should that be noted?\n\n~~~\nminimaxir\nThere's no About page or any context to the team and qualifications for\nrunning a high-responsibility service, so this is the only information\navailable about the quality of the platform.\n\n~~~\noh_sigh\nBefore reading that comment, it should be noted that minimaxir has been\nrejected from Stanford.\n\n------\nbrettcvz\nAre there any companies who are using this currently? Can anyone speak to how\nit's working for them?\n\n~~~\njoncalhoun\nWe (nomadbits.com) have been using it and everything has been great so far.\n\nWe help companies with APIs improve their developer onboarding process, which\nmeans we invoice both monthly services (like creating and maintaining high\nquality API libraries), as well as one-off consulting (like updating\ndocumentation and creating \"Getting Started\" guides), and Paid has been great\nfor both use cases.\n\nDo you have any specific questions?\n\n __Full Disclosure __\\- Paid is a customer of ours as well, so we may be\nslightly biased :D\n\n------\nmarquis\nHow does this compare with something like Xero?\n\n~~~\nedmack\nIt's really quick to start using. It's like a mashup of Segment and Stripe,\nyou just start pinging events and it starts getting you money.\n\n~~~\nmarquis\nCould you integrate it with Xero? (Rather than relying on Zapier)\n\n~~~\nmikeknoop\nI'd love to hear why you don't want to rely on Zapier for this, any feedback?\n\n~~~\nmarquis\nSome of the APIs we use break often with Zapier (not Zapier's fault). It's\neasier to have direct integration and let the vendor deal with it.\n\n------\nrpedela\nI don't see a \"security\" page. Did I miss it?\n\n------\nlostsock\nIs there support for multiple currencies? Could I use this from Australia to\ninvoice clients in multiple currencies (e.g. USD, AUD, CAD GBP)?\n\n~~~\nAdamRoberts\nNot yet. Started with USD, but hoping to expand that offering soon.\n\n------\ndeluvas\nI'm curious, on the technical side, what stack/technologies have you used?\nAlso, did you scaffold the typical crud endpoints or manually wrote them, for\neach resource?\n\nI'm trying to gain experience in building APIs and yours seems like a good\nmodel for doing so :)\n\n------\npehaada\nDo they actually process charges? I can't find a cost / transaction and a %\ntaken.\n\n~~~\nAdamRoberts\nWe use whatever payment processor you us. So, for example, you'd connect your\nStripe account and we process all credit cards using that account. Our pricing\nis at www.paidapi.com/pricing and based of the revenue tracked/invoiced.\n\n~~~\nBallinBige\nare u the gateway?\n\n------\ncannikin\nDoes the laptop in the splash photo bother anyone else? It looks like they\nphotoshopped the keyboard to be much shorter. Look how tall the screen is,\nthen imagine you folded that down to meet the keyboard. That's no laptop I've\never seen!\n\n~~~\nclogston\nThe whole image is being stretched vertically in CSS (\"background-size: 104%\n160%;\"). You can see the same distortion on the man's arm, the phone, and the\npencil holder.\n\nDefinitely a \"once seen, can't unsee\" type of thing but I'll admit I didn't\nnotice it initially. :)\n\n------\njaviramos\nUseful useful!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDIY, Outsource, Partner... How should I approach creation? - jaypreneur\n\nHi all. I come here for some advice. Like plenty of others, I have an idea for an internet business. I know that an idea isn't worth much though if you don't act on it and execute. So, I've been trying my hardest to do what I can. I'm not technical, but I've been been working in all the ways I know how and learning what I don't.<p>I've developed the idea, asked potential customers questions, got feedback. I know it has potential. So, I designed the website wireframe, business model, marketing model, logo...<p>But now comes the time where something useable needs to be created. I can show potential customers a wireframe and ask them questions, but until they actually show they are willing to use (and pay) for it, I know I don't have any real traction.<p>I come here asking for advice on how I should approach creation. There seem to be three approaches:<p>1. Do it yourself\n2. Outsource\n3. Find a co-founder<p>Now, I am determined to learn to the technical side regardless. I've started on that journey, tackling HTML, CSS, and Javascript. I'm no expert, but I understand. I want to go after PHP as well. However, I know I don't have time to be professionally proficient in a reasonable time. It won't stop me from learning, but I'm not sure if it's the smartest way to approach this. But please, tell me if I'm wrong. I don't underestimate the amount of work/experience needed to be a great coder though... so I don't expect to be good enough in a few months.<p>In regards to outsourcing, I have a good amount of money saved, enough to hopefully create something. However, that something might not even be close to the end goal... and then what? What about when customers ask for more? What about maintenance? What if I do go to investors and it's just me... sure, I consider myself valuable on both the business and design end of things, but with no one to cover the technical aspects, who will want to invest? Which brings me to...<p>Finding a technical co-founder. I'm from NYC and plan on going to some startup meetings I've found out about. However, I know this is a scary proposition as well. For one, I have nothing created, so will anyone want to even come on board? Then I guess I need to assess options 1 &#38; 2.<p>I just am looking for some guidance here. I'm at this standstill and I feel overwhelmed with all the options and just pick a direction and go. If that's outsource and then find a technical co-founder once something is implemented, then I'll tackle outsourcing now. If it's DIY, then pick up my pace (hell, quit my job, live at home and make studying and creating my new job) so I can get things going. If it's find a technical co-founder, than go out there and prove myself.<p>Anyway, I apologize for the length of this post, but I guess I have a lot on my mind here. But any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!\n======\ndlf\nCheck out this blog from one of the founders of Yipit, starting here:\n[http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/09/07/guide-to-finding-a-\ntec...](http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/09/07/guide-to-finding-a-technical-co-\nfounder/)\n\nAlso, hack! Not just code, but think of ways to validate product-market fit\nwithout actually having to build the whole damn thing. Set up a landing page\nwith a button or two that mimics the feature you want to test. If someone\nclicks on it, at least you'll know there's interest. If not, no big deal.\nAssuming they click on it, instead of sending a 404 error, put something like\n\"We're building [description of awesome, world changing web app]. If you want\nto be one of the very first users and brag to all your friends about how in\nthe know you are, sign up below.\" Then just put a nice tidy email field with a\nbig ole' submit button. Done. You've proven people want what you're building\nand you have a list of emails of people you know will use your product once\nyou've built it. Use that to convince some superstar to become your technical\ncofounder.\n\nStartup Weekends and that sort of thing are a great way to meet potential\ncofounders as well, where people share their idea for a startup, form teams\nand hack all weekend. Whatever you do, don't waste your money on outsourcing,\nespecially at this point. Startups are a long road. Get out to events, get to\nknow people, and share what you're working on (no one is going to steal your\nidea). Good luck!\n\n~~~\njaypreneur\nThanks! That's a great link.\n\nI will take that idea regarding a landing page heart. Especially considering\nit's something I can manage to put together myself. Perhaps even throw a\n\"comments\" field for suggestions on what features customers would want? I\ncould even respond to said customers personally in regards to their\ncomments/suggestions. Let me know if you think going that far would be\nbeneficial or bothersome to potential customers (I personally would like that\ntype of attention as a customer).\n\nAnyway, sounds good about not outsourcing. I won't bother with that,\nespecially since my website cannot be implemented properly without a\nsignificant amount of time and effort... and therefore, money. I feel as if\njust a landing page with email and suggestion form would be 100 times more\nuseful than some minimally featured, half-assed version of a website I paid\nfor. Since that website might actually end up turning people away.\n\nAny advice in regards to startup events? For instance, there is one in NYC on\nOctober 11. I will go, but I won't know anyone. Now, I'm decently outgoing, so\nI'll try to introduce myself, but should I try to contact people before\nattending? Then at least I'll have someone to meet and it won't be as\ndifficult. I don't know.\n\nI understand it's a long road. But it's exciting.\n\nThanks for the luck. I'll be trying my hardest to ensure success. We'll see\nwhat happens.\n\n~~~\ndlf\nNo problem. Regarding the landing page, just keep it dead simple. The more\nstuff you add, the higher your bounce rate (people will leave). Just test some\nminimum feature. You can always follow up with an email with a link to a\nsurvey, which you can build on Survey Monkey or something (there may be\nbetter/cheaper tools).\n\nFor startup events, I would say just go and strike up some conversations.\nPeople are generally helpful and will share their experiences. It's a good way\nto learn. Speaking of, when I was first learning about startups I listened to\nthe podcasts at the Stanford E- Corner basically non-stop:\n<http://ecorner.stanford.edu/>\n\nI would consider studying Eric Ries and Steve Blank as well regarding \"lean\nstartups\". \"Four Steps to the Epiphany\" and \"The Lean Startup\" are books worth\nspending the money on.\n\nIt's good that you're in NYC. There's a strong community there.\n\nCheers!\n\n~~~\njaypreneur\nAnother great resource with that ecorner link and book recommendations,\nthanks. I've already got the books on my kindle now.\n\nI will keep the landing page simple. Although, I'm not testing a feature with\nthe landing page, but more the concept... to see the interest and perhaps even\nget suggestions based on what potential customers want.\n\nQuick question in regards to the landing page for you (or anyone else reading\nthis thread):\n\nWould it work to have successive landing pages?\n\nEssentially, the first is signing up to show interest for those who want to\nget notifications, be part of future testing and perhaps give suggestions.\n\nOnce you have submitted your email address, there will be a confirmation page.\nFor those willing to go a step further, I'd have an additional CTA, linking\nyou to a short survey.\n\nI know that having both on the first landing page would probably deter people\nfrom signing up in the first place. Yet is having the survey on the\nconfirmation page going to guarantee no one will answer the survey?\n\nJust looking for some conventional wisdom on landing pages. That's the best\napproach I could think of, but I'm open to advice/suggestions. Thanks!\n\n~~~\ndlf\nHey. I tried to respond yesterday but it didn't post for some reason.\nSuccessive landing pages is a decent idea. Try to get out and do some surveys\nin person too. The response rate is higher in person. My cofounder and I\ngathered 30 responses in the space of two hours by getting out with pen and\npaper. Our online survey, shared on Facebook and Twitter, got 20 responses in\n4 days... not too good. Now, people who actually submit their email address\nare probably fairly likely to go ahead and do a survey, but there's nothing\nbetter than getting out and talking to people. Users stop being anonymous and\nyou can put faces, ages and occupations on those you're building a product\nfor. It's strangely motivating.\n\nDon't say anything on the first landing page about future testing and giving\nsuggestions. I would use that email list solely for the purposes of notifying\nonce the product is launched. Don't send anything to those emails until after\nthe product is launched. It's sort of \"the boy who cried wolf\" thing. People\nonly want to hear from you when there's actually something they can use. Also,\npeople hate spam and you don't want them to start blocking and deleting your\nemails without reading them because then they'll never know when you actually\nlaunched.\n\nGive your survey takers the option to sign up for future surveys by having an\nemail field at the end of the survey.\n\n~~~\njaypreneur\nThanks for the suggestions on in-person surveys. I will definitely do that.\nI've asked various people (family, friends, friends of friends, and others I\nfeel are potential customers), but I think it'd be a good idea to get a formal\nsurvey out there. I'll be doing that soon for sure.\n\nAlso, I really like the idea of putting another email input to sign up for\nfuture surveys. So that I can get the emails of those who are interested for\nlaunch and those who want to be a part of the process.\n\nSeriously, thanks for the help!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThings people would still buy even if the price doubled - jkuria\nhttps://capitalandgrowth.org/answers/2981212/What-are-some-things-you-would-keep-buying-even-if-the-price-doubled\n======\nta17711771\nFTA: Water.\n\nWhether its the Bush family in Central and/or S America, Harvard with\nCalifornia vineyards, or the Walton family in Colorado, everyone with money\n(read: with advisors/paid insight) is buying land with water rights.\n\nFury Road.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGoogle cannibalizing their assets? Isn’t it a bit early for that? - joop\nhttp://thenextweb.com/2008/12/02/google-cannibalizing-their-assets-isnt-it-a-bit-early-for-that/\n\n======\njerf\nThey know that only a fraction of the user base will ever use it (because they\ncertainly won't ship with it, anymore than Firefox does). They know people\nshutting off ads aren't clicking anyhow. They know that the people savvy\nenough to use the ad blocker are also the leading edge people who recommend\nbrowsers to other people.\n\nFinally... how would they block ad blockers, even if they wanted to? Ad-\nblocking proxies are just as feasible as ever. And Chrome is supposed to be\nopen source.\n\nConclusion: Instead of fighting what you can't fight, roll with it, get the\nleading edge people on your side, then cash in on the marketshare of the\nmasses who don't block ads.\n\nIt's not really that mysterious... unless you're trapped in first-order\nthinking.\n\n------\njrockway\n_a few months ago we visited an Internet start-up where the CEO told us a\nfunny story of how one of his developers used an Ad Blocker. He took the\ndeveloper aside and explained to him that their whole business, his company\nand his salary depended on income on ads. He explained to the developer that\nif he wanted to work in this business it would be odd to fight the economic\nsystems that pay for your food. The developer ended up removing the ad\nblocker._\n\nThis is some of the worst writing I've read in a while. Good work. (What\nexactly is funny about this story? Employee does something, boss says no,\nemployee complies. I guess the funny part is that the employee is wiling to\nwork for a micro-manager like this \"CEO\"?)\n\nAnyway, I used to work for an ad company. We all blocked ads. Ads are annoying\nand ugly, and we were not our company's revenue source, so it didn't matter.\n\nI am looking forward to an IE release that blocks Google ads, and a Chrome\nrelease the blocks non-Google ads. That will be very fun to watch.\n\n------\nBenS\nI think Google knows the success of Chrome depends on the plugin community.\nThe open support of AdBlock is a signal that Google will prioritize user\ninterests over everything else.\n\nSeems like a smart move to me -- getting Chrome out is strategically important\n-- browser diversification mitigates bigger risks, such as MS pushing a\ndefault ad blocker through ie; and helps them raise the bar on all browsers\n(esp. js rendering) to make their web apps run better.\n\n~~~\nsmwhreyebelong\nWell, I would think it's safe to assume that most people who have Google\nChrome are trailblazers in the online world and probably don't click on a lot\nof ads and make them money anyway. Also, looking at the browser statistics\n(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers>) Google Chrome is\njust about 0.74% of the browser market.\n\nRight now it's important for them to get Chrome on more computers. It will be\ninteresting to see if this strategy changes when Chrome starts getting more\ntraction.\n\n------\nntoshev\nWhat are some examples of companies cannibalizing their own business and\nsuffering because of that? Has it ever happened?\n\n~~~\nnostrademons\nSun, perhaps, with Java. Business-wise, it makes very little sense for a\ncompany that makes expensive proprietary hardware to develop a programming\nlanguage that lets you write once and run anywhere.\n\nThe connection is pretty tenuous though - Linux may've eaten Sun's lunch\nanyway. But it would've been a little harder if we had to port all our\n#ifdef'd C++ software from Sun servers to commodity Linux Dell boxes, instead\nof just moving a few JAR files over.\n\n~~~\nteej\nI'm still not seeing that connection, as it lowered the barriers to entry of\nusing their product and gave them the platform to say \"we have the best\nhardware for running Java\".\n\n~~~\nnostrademons\nIt lowered the barriers to entry for using everybody else's product too,\nthough. I think it probably helped other people more than Sun, though. IIRC,\nthe Sparc had a pretty advanced development environment in the mid-90s, yet\ndeveloping on/for a Linux system in the same time period was pretty painful.\n\nAnd they said \"we have the best hardware for running Java\", but the average\nbusiness doesn't care. They just want their software to run, cheaply and fast.\nEverybody I know runs their Java apps on commodity Dell servers. Maybe it was\ndifferent in the first dot-com boom; IIRC, Sun servers were the big thing back\nthen.\n\n------\njosefresco\nWhat's the install base for AdBlock on Firefox?\n\nI don't think Google has anything to worry about, only the geeky are going to\nblock ads (and invite all the headaches involved in doing so)\n\nAs a web designer, I need to see the web as my customer does, which means I\ndon't use AdBlock or Greasemonkey etc.\n\n------\nTrevorJ\nMakes perfect sense. Somebody will be providing an ad blocker no matter what.\nIf it is Google then they get to control how it works, why it works and when\nit works.\n\n~~~\njustindz\nI instead thought \"Other browsers will have ad blockers, so there are people\nwho won't use Chrome if it doesn't have one.\" Implying that Google might\nconsider that market segment and the browser strategy pretty darn important.\nJust a different take.\n\n~~~\ngills\nI think I agree with you. As an outsider Chrome looks like an application\nplatform/sandbox for Google apps ('Google's AIR') that is just disguised as a\nbrowser. With their own platform they can move features more quickly than by\nfitting the apps into whatever box Apple/MS/Mozilla build. It could be the\nearly MS playbook all over again. So...\n\nBuild whichever browser components remove barriers to entry for users (ad\nblock, compatibility with many existing web apps, better\nperformance/stability/ease of use, etc.) => build widespread adoption =>\ncommoditize desktop operating systems.\n\n------\nalexandros\nproducts of large companies traditionally suffer by having to strategically\nsupport other products of the same company. This is a major reason why\nproducts of large companies often get beaten by products of smaller uncommited\nones. If Google has truly decided not to go this route with Chrome (or any of\nits products), I think is pretty great.\n\n------\nredorb\nThe next big step for chrome would be if it could use any firefox plugin ;) I\nknow its almost an oxymoron.\n\n~~~\njrockway\nFirefox extensions use too much of Firefox's internals to be portable to\nanother browser. That's why extensions often break between minor releases of\nFirefox.\n\nIf you want portability, write a user script (greasemonkey), not an extension.\n\n------\nllimllib\nI think, people who write, should perhaps, and want, read just the basics\nabout grammar, and how to use, commas.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: A startup idea in your inbox, every day - jonnygoodwin\nhttps://www.startupsfromthebottom.com/\n======\njonnygoodwin\nThanks for checking out Startups From The Bottom, a free newsletter where\nyou'll receive a startup idea every day. This is a side project that a friend\nand I started.\n\nJust a little disclaimer about this service: Creating a startup is not just a\nmatter of implementing some fabulous initial idea. An initial idea is just a\nstarting point. That's it. It should not be an assertion of the final product.\nAfter testing and iterating, most startups don't end up anything like the\ninitial idea. The point of this newsletter is to get you thinking. To\nencourage you to start. Don't get hung up on the idea. Pick one and start.\n\n------\njessiebbs\nI couldn't find a privacy policy. What do I agree to if I submit my email?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: 84 cents per month? - ParameterOne\nIf your favorite free app started to charge you $.84 a month would you get rid of it?\n======\n19eightyfour\nNot necessarily get rid of. But I would wonder how they could afford the\ntransaction fees on 84c monthly transactions instead of fewer larger\ntransactions.\n\n~~~\nParameterOne\nprobably something like paypal micro-payments\n\n~~~\n19eightyfour\nInteresting had not heard of that.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Extract main ideas in your texts with SummarizeBot - postagger\nhttps://www.summarizebot.com/\n======\nmichaelmior\n> Hi, I am AI and Blockchain-Powered SummarizeBot!\n\nI assume the expected reaction is \"Cool! They use blockchain.\" My reaction is\nmoreso, \"What on earth does this have to do with blockchain?\"\n\n> We apply decentralized architecture to train and test our AI models. Using\n> blockchain technology helps us not only to get more training data but also\n> to improve the trustworthiness of our algorithms.\n\nI still don't understand what this has to do with blockchain.\n\n~~~\nlibdjml\n> I still don't understand what this has to do with blockchain.\n\nFunding from VCs?\n\n~~~\ncodegeek\nTrue story. I met a guy who was looking for a tech co-founder and had an idea\nthat will use blockchain. I challenged him on the reason behind the use of\nblockchain and he literally said \"Investors like to hear buzzwords and at this\ntime, I am looking to raise funding\". His idea wasn't bad but he couldn't\njustify using blockchain to implement it. I pressed him further and asked if\nhe was willing to implement the idea without blockchain and he just wasn't\ninterested. he said \"blockchain is the hot thing right now and I want to build\nthis using blockchain\". So in other words, it was more important for him that\nblockchain was used than focussing on the actual idea.\n\n~~~\nadtac\nHonestly, that's hysterical even for HBO's Silicon Valley. As someone who has\nnever lived in or experienced Silicon Valley, I always assumed the show was a\nbit of an exaggeration. But people like this are proof that it's not. It's a\ndocumentary with a comedic element.\n\n~~~\nmiketery\nAssume not, many of the moments in the show have been lived by myself and\nothers. More so - I think the reality is that the truth goes even further than\nthe fictional works we see.\n\n------\ntxcwpalpha\nA couple thoughts:\n\n1\\. Summarizing entire bodies of text down into \"bite-sized\" chunks isn't\ninherently a good thing. It seems the main use case (and at least the one\nsuggested in the demo) is to be used for news articles. Now, I'm totally\nunderstanding of the fact that not everyone has the time to read every news\narticle, but as it is, only reading part of the article (or more commonly,\nonly reading the headline) is a _huge_ issue with current consumption of\ncontent. This attempt to further summarize articles into small, context-less\nbites seems to be going in the wrong direction.\n\n2\\. On the demo page, there is a \"Fake News Detection\" feature. I threw a\ncouple of articles at it and it left me with so many questions I don't even\nknow where to begin. For a few articles, it just gave me a binary \"Real:1 ,\nFake:0\" output. For others, it spit out a couple of numbers for stats like\n\"conspiracy\", \"irony\", \"bias\", \"pseudoscience\". Why are these the attributes\nchosen to measure? How are they calculated? Is something like \"irony\" even\nmeaningful when trying to detect fake news?\n\nViewing the documentation section of the site, there is a small blurb claiming\nthat it uses \"custom AI classifiers\", \"custom machine learning models trained\non fake and biased articles\", and \"database of trusted and biased websites\ncreated by our experts\" to calculate these numbers. AKA, there is absolutely\nzero meaningful explanation as to how these numbers are calculated and why\nthey should be trusted. This entire feature is a complete black box, and for\nall we know, the \"database of trusted websites\" could be created by Russian\nspies trying to sow misinformation.\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nHere's a summarization I'd like (and would pay for[0]): chats. I mean IRC\nlogs, Slack & Telegram groupchat logs, etc. Between work and local\nHackerspace, people produce so much text on IM that I can't really keep up\nwith it. I'd love a solution that I could feed such chat logs, and get back\ne.g. list of topics covered.\n\n\\--\n\n[0] - as long as it wasn't a cloud SaaS where I have to share my data with\nvendor's machines.\n\n~~~\ncharris0\nTotally agree, I tried to prototype this but the datasets to train ML\nsummarizations from are pretty much all from news articles. Trying to take\nthat model and summaries chats resulted in gibberish for me. The salient take-\naways from Chats and other non-factual / loosely structured text seems so\ndependent on what _you_ care about, summarisation is difficult.\n\n------\netaioinshrdlu\nIs it abstractive or extractive?\n\nWhat exactly does this have to do with blockchain?\n\nThe landing page is more marketing than technical and may not really be a good\nfit for this site.\n\n~~~\nBjoernKW\nFrom their \"Technologies We Use\" page (\n[https://www.summarizebot.com/summarization_business.html#tec...](https://www.summarizebot.com/summarization_business.html#technology)\n) I gather that they use a Blockchain for storing their training data and\nlanguage models.\n\nIn theory that makes the language models auditable and tamper-proof. I'm not\nso sure about the supposed benefit of that, though. Yes, it means that the\nmodel itself cannot be tampered with (in order to introduce bias to the\nsummaries, for instance) but as long as the algorithm itself remains closed\nsource you could still alter the results by for example boosting some values\nwhile attributing less significance to others.\n\nSimply publishing both the algorithm and the model as open source alongside\nwith an SHA-2 hash to make sure neither has been tampered with would achieve a\nlot more in terms of reproducibility and trustworthiness.\n\nThen again, they would've had one buzzword less in that case ...\n\n~~~\ntherein\nRight but you could also commit your changes to your model into a Git repo and\nuse the \"blockchain\" that Git provides.\n\nWhen people say blockchain the meaning that there is a distributed consensus\ncomes into the picture. In this case, there is no reason for a distributed\nconsensus on ordering or anything.\n\nBut if you are suggesting there are many text parsers that train the model,\nand there is a central modal that's held by the network state, sure. But I\ndon't know what's the benefit to that as I don't think simply training on more\ntext will allow this bot to produce better summaries.\n\n------\nanon1253\nAs others have mentioned, I have no idea what any of this has to do with\nblockchain, or how it could even conceivably help with anything other than\nriding a hype train. That being said, would be curious to see how it holds up\nagainst the standard state of the art (e.g.\n[https://github.com/sebastianruder/NLP-\nprogress/blob/master/e...](https://github.com/sebastianruder/NLP-\nprogress/blob/master/english/summarization.md)) as summarization (especially\nthe abstractive kind) is very hard, but also has a surprising amount of useful\napplications\n\n------\ndiegoperini\nIs Show HN becoming more and more a \"roast my buzzword aggregator project\"\ntool or is it my selection bias?\n\n------\nwj\nI guess it is like that software that Yahoo bought from a 15 year-old that\nsummarized articles:\n\n[https://gizmodo.com/yahoo-shutters-that-30-million-app-it-\nbo...](https://gizmodo.com/yahoo-shutters-that-30-million-app-it-bought-from-\na-te-1796375197)\n\n------\nmelicerte\nThis page. Summarized. For your consideration.\n\n[https://www.summarizebot.com/api/378d4eec8d0e4ddeb8142c84433...](https://www.summarizebot.com/api/378d4eec8d0e4ddeb8142c84433b7afd.html)\n\n------\nbryanrasmussen\nWhat kind of a person writes enough that it becomes useful to summarize what\nthey write, but is incapable of summarizing what they have written so that a\nsummarizebot becomes useful to them?\n\n~~~\nproxygeek\nIt probably would be more helpful on the pull side rather than the push side\nof the channel. Useful for consumption of content in certain situations by\ncertain segments of readers.\n\nSay, someone scanning through a list of legal docs to identify the most\nrelevant ones. A short blurb would be pretty helpful.\n\n~~~\nbryanrasmussen\nsure, I was obliquely referring to the headline - Extract main ideas in YOUR\ntexts... - seemed to prompt the question.\n\non edit: fixed misspelling, just woke up from nap.\n\n------\namelius\nAre there any benchmarks for this kind of task, and how well does this tool\nperform w.r.t. them?\n\n~~~\nteam-o\nIn terms of measurement, there's ROUGE\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROUGE_(metric)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROUGE_\\(metric\\))\nIn this paper they discuss a few benchmarks in their introduction and describe\na new benchmark.\n[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.08745.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.08745.pdf)\n\n------\nabhisuri97\nIdk about the blockchain stuff, but it is semi-featureful since it can extract\ntext from images (I'm assuming its just using Tesseract OCR. At least it could\nget the text out of this\n[http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/msword_...](http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/msword_text_rendering.png)),\nand I assume audio (but I am having difficulty testing it out). Tbh the\nformats it accepts as well as the fact that it is available over messenger are\nhuge \"selling\" points for me and should be way more emphasized on the product\npage than blockchain and AI.\n\n------\nArtWomb\nThe end goal is wider distribution of content. Here, for example, are\nsummaries (json) of all 1008 academic papers accepted to NeurIPS 2018:\n\n[https://github.com/contentinnovation/NeurIPS-2018-papers](https://github.com/contentinnovation/NeurIPS-2018-papers)\n\nIt would be really cool to be able to translate via ML high level AI progress\ninto standard American journalistic english. To some extent Bloomberg TicToc,\nJinri Toutiao are already generating short form video for breaking news\nstories.\n\n------\nanotheryou\nWhy not have a paste text field for a quick demo on the landing page? Best\npre-filled (some cherry picking is ok :) ).\n\n------\ndecentralised\nI'd be curious to learn more about the use case for blockchain here.\n\nFor instance, Ocean Protocol plans to use TCRs for data quality, meaning that\ndata providers and data consumers evaluate the quality of a dataset in a\ncontinuous way, so that certain assets can be moved up/ down the ranks in near\nreal time.\n\n------\ndominotw\ncan i see an example\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDrupal Solr Next Gen - the refactoring - caludio\nhttp://groups.drupal.org/node/92799\n\n======\nauxbuss\nLike most folk, I've heard of Drupal. But I'd not heard of Solr. I read it as\n\"soir\" and, not surprisingly, searching wasn't finding anything.\n\nAnyway, for those, like me, who haven't heard of Solr, here's a brief\ndescription and a couple of related links:\n\nSolr is the popular, blazing fast open source enterprise search platform from\nthe Apache Lucene project. Its major features include powerful full-text\nsearch, hit highlighting, faceted search, dynamic clustering, database\nintegration, and rich document (e.g., Word, PDF) handling. Solr is highly\nscalable, providing distributed search and index replication, and it powers\nthe search and navigation features of many of the world's largest internet\nsites.\n\n<http://lucene.apache.org/solr/> <http://drupal.org/project/solr>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLaunching Fluther.com - Comments from YCers? - jobenjo\nhttp://www.fluther.com\n======\njobenjo\nIt's similar to Yahoo Answers or Ask Metafilter, with some new twists like\nreal-time discussion, questions filtered for you, and IM integration.\n\nNow that we finally completed it we're climbing out from our cave and\nwondering if the site can fly, and how we help attract people to it.\n\nAny comments or advice?\n\nLink: <http://www.fluther.com>\n\n~~~\niamyoohoo\nSo why would I use fluther.com instead of yahoo answers which has a lot more\npeople answering. What is the unique proposition now that there are several\nothers like askville.com (from amazon) and others that have significantly more\ntraffic ? I want to answer the question, but didnt want to join another site -\nwhy can i not answer anonymously ?\n\nJust pointers to questions I ask myself as a potential user\n\nHope it helps ...\n\n~~~\njobenjo\nYeah, that's useful to hear. Right now, certainly our user base is much\nsmaller than the big guys, but that smallness also gives it a real sense of\ncommunity--plus lots of our users are quite smart. This is a challenge,\nthough.\n\nAs far as anonymous questions/answers, we've thought about it a lot and we\nthink it's a necessary tool in maintaining the community and ensuring people\ntake it seriously. But it wasn't an easy call.\n\nThanks for the feedback.\n\n------\nmaxklein\nBy the way, I have an idea for you as to how you can differenciate yourself.\nThis idea will seem silly, but it's something I've wanted for a long time.\n\nI use ask.metafilter.com. I'm a daily user. What is really the worst thing\nabout it? There is no sense of community. The site forces you to stay relevant\nto the question, and you cannot interact with the users directly. You cannot\ngo offtopic, even though many questions just BEG to go offtopic. Think of how\nusenet used to be. After a while, you knew all the regulars, you knew the\npersonalities, etc. ask.metafilter does not have this because no real\ndiscussion is allowed, just answers to the question.\n\nOf course, it's clear why they do this. If you allowed discussion, the answers\nwill become irrelevant.\n\nI have an idea how to solve this problem:\n\nMake each user have a personal \"space\", \"blog\", \"diary\", \"miniblog\", \"question\narea\", \"twitter\" or whatever you want to call it. When an answer goes off\ntopic, it's moved to the personal area of the user. There, the person can rave\nand rant as he wishes, and the threads can go in any direction he wants.\nPeople can also cross link their answers on frontpage items into their\npersonal area.\n\nThis is going to unfocus your site, but you will create a REAL community. The\nfrontpage Q&A; will be just as relevant, but behind scenes, there will be a\nlot of general chatting going on.\n\nA bit like the diaries of K5 or the journals of Slashdot.\n\nDo so, and you'll have a winner. A BIG site. Don't do so and in 6 months,\nyou'll have Alexa of 60.000 and having $700 a month.\n\nAnd when you get big with this idea, don't forget to send the check to maximus\nklein at gmail.\n\n~~~\nmaxklein\nAnd by the way, another idea you should follow up on: Occasionally, people\npost these really interesting questions about breaking up with their boyfriend\nor something. WE ALL want to know how it goes on. What happened next!? But it\nnever comes, because we lose track of the question. One should have this\nquestion as a sort of miniblog or so, so people can post updates, and the\ninterested stay subscribed to the blog. People get notifications that an\nupdate or so has been posted.\n\nThis is gold I'm giving you here. If you don't get it yet, someday, someone\nwill, and that person will have a huge site.\n\nThe core philosophy I am pushing here is that you should not disassociate the\nperson from the question. Human life is all about social interaction.\nMetafilter kills the social interaction. You should weave it in. Each question\nshould have the capacity to be a mini story, leading to further questions and\nso on, till you have an interwoven mesh of question and answer, cliques and\ngroups, and real friendships developing on the site. Mirror humanity where you\nwant people to flock to.\n\n------\nimp\nPretty good looking. It could be a nice community. Here's my thoughts on\nimprovement:\n\nPut the active questions on the top of the home page instead of a big blank\nform. I really didn't know what I was supposed to ask a jelly-fish the first\ntime I loaded the page. Try easing visitors into contributing to your site.\nThey're first going to only read questions, then they'll reply to them, and\nthen they'll start asking their own. Make browsing the first thing to do on\nthe page.\n\n~~~\njobenjo\nHmmm, this is interesting feedback. One reason we put the ask in the forefront\nis to help make it obvious what the site's about, plus to encourage new\nquestions (which is also the best way to get into the site).\n\nBut I see what you're saying about flow. I'll have to digest this one. Thanks.\n\n------\niloveyouocean\nAn idea to differentiate and make some money: Take the questions that have\ngood and well thought out answers and then figure out which products/services\nthe answers pertain to.\n\nExample: What is the best alarm clock?\n\nKeyword them and also figure out which Google Adwords they fit with. Also,\ncreate an appropriate affiliate link to the product/services mentioned in the\nanswers. Have a script that buys the appropriate Adwords and creates a link to\nthe product that was chosen to be the 'best'. When people search for \"alarm\nclock\" on Google they see an ad for the question/answer/discussion at Fluther,\nthey go there to read about it, then buy it via the link. You earn affiliate\ncommissions. Also, you establish yourselves as the \"useful, action oriented\nanswer site\". Or whatever.\n\nThere are many obvious permutations of this scheme.\n\n~~~\njobenjo\nThis is an interesting idea... I worry that the outgoing revenue would not be\nenough to offset the adword costs, but it's something to consider.\n\n------\nmaxklein\nYou seem to have a fixed idea, and you are not listening to feeback. You have\na concept, now learn from your users.\n\nMake it that answering a question is possible anonymously with a captcha. To\nask a new question, you need to register. You'll hold on to more users this\nway.\n\nDon't be obstinate. You don't know best. Everyone here is saying the same\nthing about anonymous answers, do listen.\n\n------\ncmars232\nNice design, I like the wallpaper on the edges, the borders around the form\nfields. Also the h3 Rockwell font, don't see that one too often.\n\n------\njsjenkins168\nThe interface is pretty slick looking. However, I would size down the fonts a\nbit.. they are slightly large for smaller monitors IMHO.\n\nFluther is a bit hard to say but its unique and sufficiently catchy. I would\nstick with it.\n\nTo expand you should try attacking some focused niche areas.. Make it highly\nuseful to a small group of people first.\n\nGood work\n\n~~~\nlizherring\nDon't touch the fonts. They're perfect. The bigger font gives the feeling of\nsimplicity, don't lose that.\n\nIf you allow anonymous posting (and manage to control spam at the same time),\nyou could have a winner. People hate to register to do a simple thing like\nasking or answering a question.\n\nThe UI is nice and easy to use. Great job there.\n\n------\ndfranke\nA couple interface suggestions:\n\n1\\. Let me disable live preview. It seems to slow down my entire system.\n\n2\\. Show me a list of all questions I've answered, not just those I've asked\nor that I'm specifically monitoring.\n\n~~~\nsemiotomatic\nGreat feedback. You can view a list of all the questions you've answers under\naccounts activity you're following. We'll look into simplifying that\nnavigation.\n\n------\ntocomment\nHow well is the \"Tell a friend\" feature working out for you?\n(<http://www.fluther.com/tellafriend/)> How many people use that?\n\n~~~\nsemiotomatic\nTell a friend has been a great boon to our traffic -- especially because we\npresent an interstitial after your third visit. It's significantly boosted our\nnew user registration.\n\n~~~\ntocomment\nI'll have to do that then. What is an interstitial?\n\n~~~\nsemiotomatic\nWe basically have a funny upsell for tell a friend on the site when you log in\nafter a few days. It's similar to mozilla's \"spread firefox\" message on the\nmoz FF homepage.\n\n------\nbyrneseyeview\nSlick design -- I especially liked the serene, nerdy Cthulhu in the corner.\nI'm not sure a real-time question preview is especially useful, but it sure\nlooks good.\n\n------\ntx\nGreat looking site. The idea... in spite of tons of very similar sites out\nthere... A little weak. Unless I am missing something.\n\nGood luck though.\n\n------\nbrianmckenzie\nI answered a question, thus I had to register. Twenty minutes later, my answer\nhas not appeared.\n\nDid I do something wrong? Doubtful.\n\n~~~\nsemiotomatic\nBrian, That's troubling -- we haven't seen that problem before.\n\nIf you email me at andrew /at/ fluther.com with the discussion I can see what\nwent wrong.\n\nSorry you had trouble with the site.\n\n------\ntocomment\nThere seems to be no way to see a list of answers I've posted. Am I missing\nsomething?\n\n------\ndanielha\nNice -- I love the design and feel.\n\n------\npramodbiligiri\nOpenId Integration, definitely.\n\n~~~\nsemiotomatic\nWe totally agree -- OpenID integration is in the works.\n\n------\ntx\nI would seriously consider _not_ requiring people to get an account in order\nto answer a question.\n\n------\npalish\nUnfortunately, this idea doesn't scale. I hope all the best to you and\nmillions of greens, though.\n\n~~~\ndanielha\nYahoo! Answers is doing quite well.\n\n------\nyubrew\nfluther is such a hard name to say. <http://www.grabagooddomain.com/> (taken\nfrom davidw's comment)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN my christmas project: Focus.app, cut off your Internet so you can focus - benofsky\nhttp://therealfocusapp.com/\n\n======\ncallahad\nThe comment on FocusHelper's allowAllOutgoingExceptions is pretty amusing:\n[https://github.com/benofsky/Focus.app/blob/master/FocusHelpe...](https://github.com/benofsky/Focus.app/blob/master/FocusHelper.m#L69)\n\n~~~\nshadowpwner\nIf the guy who wrote the comment ever reads this, it's \"brightened\". :)\n\n~~~\nbenofsky\nha, it looked wrong at the time, thank you :)\n\n------\ntoisanji\nthis is already available, SelfControl, its open source and I use it all the\ntime: <http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/>\n\n~~~\nzenspider\nand freedom: <http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/27958/freedom>\n\n------\nDetrus\nIsn't there an OSX app that does this?\n\nI remember people on an extremely distracting forum using it, ultimately it\ndoesn't work. Those same people are still spending a lot of time on that\nforum, they've stopped turning it on.\n\n~~~\ngrep\nSelfControl\n\n~~~\nbenofsky\nHadn't seen that, only a pay for app (and I'm cheap :))! Anyway, Focus is\ntailored perfectly for me, hope some other people can find use out of it too.\n\nEdit: Clarification (I'm sorry I can't reply to your comment, it won't let\nme), I meant I had only seen a pay for app and not this one.\n\nEdit 2: (reply to comment also) also doesn't appear to have exceptions, maybe\nI'm wrong.\n\n~~~\nwtn\nSelf Control does the same thing and it's been open source on Github since\nMarch 2009.\n\n<http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/>\n\n------\nbenofsky\nPlease be careful, I intentionally made there to be no easy way (it can\nactually be reversed in one command but not in the interface) to re-enable\ninternet access before the timeout. Hope you like it!\n\nGithub: <https://github.com/benofsky/Focus.app>\n\n------\nalanh\nI can’t seem to add an exception.\n\nEdit: Literally clicking [+] does nothing, so there’s nothing to save. I’m\nalso not convinced 5 is enough: I want dropbox to be connected, github, our\nbug tracker, our team chat, my email, and basecamp — that’s 6 already.\n\n~~~\nbenofsky\nOk, quite a few people are having this problem. I'll have a fix soon\nhopefully!\n\nEDIT: It's working now download the new version at:\n<http://therealfocusapp.com/focus-alpha-0.1.app.zip> — thanks to all who\nhelped fix!\n\n------\nnestlequ1k\nA really nice paid alternative (I use it every day) is\n<http://getconcentrating.com/>\n\n------\nmarkbao\nI can confirm that this method is a pretty effective method for getting me off\nTwitter and on TextMate.\n\n------\nbrc\nI actually use my hosts file, and block all the common time wasting sites I\nlike to waste time on. There is no time period - the sites are off limits for\nthe computer, period.\n\nI have another computer in another room for time-wasting - with no\nrestrictions. But sitting there is acknowledging that you're wasting time. You\ncan't fool yourself or anyone else that you're being productive, otherwise\nyou'd be at the 'real' computer.\n\nI find this to be far more effective than a periodic-blocking application.\nBecause anything you can turn off with the click of a mouse, will get turned\noff just when you need it the most. Editing a hosts file is a major PITA in\ncomparison.\n\n~~~\nbenofsky\nThis cannot be turned off with a click of the mouse (see my warning below) :-)\n— although, one who spent 5 minutes reading the source, could turn it off! But\nstill, not click of the mouse.\n\nAnd yes, a second time wasting computer would be ideal but ye I don't have one\n:)\n\n------\nbarredo\nFirst, great app.\n\nI use SelfControl.app, because when I need to focus, I need internet access\nJUST to the sites/domains/IPs I work with.\n\nBenofsky, is there a posibility to add a whitelist of IPs/domains to this app?\n\n~~~\nbenofsky\nYou may add 5 in the settings. :)\n\nEDIT: Thanks btw!\n\n~~~\nbarredo\nSuperb, you should make this feature clear on the site\n\n------\npygy_\nIt looks excellent. I like the fact that you can specify an arbitrary time,\nwhereas SelfControl restricts you to 15 minute intervals.\n\nIt would be nice if it were scriptable (which SelfControl is).\n\n[http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/AppleSc...](http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/AppleScript/Conceptual/AppleScriptX/Concepts/osa.html)\n\n------\nVoid_\nI don't think disabling internet connection will help you focus. If you want\nto focus for some time, then you will.\n\nAlso, I made something similar just a week or two ago. It doesn't disable\nanything, it just shows you an icon in status bar.\n\n<http://zone.codingwithlove.com>\n\n------\nbricestacey\nFound a small bug:\n\nI set the default minutes to 15, yet when I go to start focusing the default\nappears to be 60.\n\nI thought maybe they'd go into effect after restarting the app, but no, it\nstill defaults to 60.\n\nIt does default to the last value of the Start Focusing form, so long as you\nkeep the app open.\n\n~~~\nbenofsky\nYe there're some problems with the preferences, I'm working on it. Are you on\n10.6.5 by any chance?\n\n------\nfarhadabas\nDoes anything like this exist for Windows?\n\n------\njfeldstein2\nMy computer comes with this built in: <http://cl.ly/3sRk>\n\n------\nsquasher\nSeems similar to Freedom: <http://macfreedom.com/>\n\n------\nninguem2\nifconfig down; sleep 100000; ifconfig up (add parameters as needed) Does this\nneed an app?\n\n~~~\njason_slack\nClick a button or type all of that or run a shell script, hmm. I would\nclicking the pretty buttons.\n\nThis app seems to work.\n\n~~~\nmrleinad\nOk, turn the previous command into a shortcut. Done!\n\n------\nbricestacey\nWhen I opened it, I didn't realize it went to my toolbar. If you want this to\nbe used by a broader audience you should have a \"run once\" to let people know\nhow to use it.\n\n~~~\nte_chris\nYeah completely agree. I was looking everywhere, opened it twice, then,\nscratching my head glanced randomly @ the tool bar. The prod version will\ncertainly need some sort of pointer to what's going on re: this. Config wizard\nor similar i guess\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNew prosthetic hand gives amputee life-like sensation of feeling, gripping - hallieatrobohub\nhttp://robohub.org/lifehand-2-prosthetic-grips-and-senses-like-a-real-hand/\n\n======\ncolinlewis\nSimply awesome\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Semantic Versioning for Natural Language - computerlab\nhttps://github.com/ptsteadman/semver-for-natural-language\n======\nmbrock\nThis ties into a vague idea I have bouncing around my head about viewing\nnatural language works \"structurally\", especially in terms of premises,\narguments, conclusions, etc.\n\nAnalytic philosophers are pretty good at this already, as well as good science\nwriters and thesis authors.\n\nThey can present the high level \"type signature\" of their work: something\nlike, I assume the premises X, Y, and Z, (see books 1, 2, and 3 which argue\nfor these premises) and then deploy arguments of kind A and B in order to\nstrengthen the conclusion C.\n\nInterpreted with a programmer's vocational damage, that text would be a\nfunction from (X, Y, Z) to C, using A and B as implementation patterns or\nalgorithms, and recommending books 1, 2, 3 as concrete providers of the types\nX, Y, Z.\n\n(Some kind of hand-wavey metaphorical Curry-Howard equivalence extended to\nrhetoric?)\n\n~~~\ncomputerlab\nI like the phrase \"programmer's vocational damage\", I think there's often a\ntendency to attempt to over-extend programming concepts to other realms (for\nexample, natural language). The irony is that a lot of the concepts used in\nprogramming are abstractions of patterns from other fields.\n\n~~~\nmbrock\n:) Here it makes sense to me partially because rhetoric and logic are closely\nconnected already—but I still want to avoid the trap of, like, using \"Gödel's\nincompleteness theorem\" to prove that \"you can't really know anything, man\".\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nJavaScripts in the JavaScripts [pdf] - sctb\nhttps://wingolog.org/pub/ffconf-2014-slides.pdf\n\n======\nLerc\nIt's quite hard to follow without the associated talk.\n\nI do recall past threads where JavaScript natives were rewritten in JavaScript\nand shown to be faster, then they were shown to be non-standard because of a\nheap of weird edge cases that have to be supported correctly. It hadn't yet\nbeen shown that a fully standards compliant implementation would be faster.\n\nI think a huge amount rests on slide 8 \"No JS/C++ transition cost\". It should\nprobably be the subject of significant analysis on it's own.\n\nThe calulation is min(Ctime + TransitionCost, JStime). Knowing all of these\nvalues individually would give a better picture. Is it better to Minimize the\ntransition cost or eliminate it? It depends on how much less Ctime is compared\nto JStime.\n\n------\nrichdougherty\nHere's a link to the author's blog post:\n[http://wingolog.org/archives/2014/11/09/ffconf-2014](http://wingolog.org/archives/2014/11/09/ffconf-2014)\n\nI really got into this stuff a while ago, even fixing a few bugs in Continuum,\nan awesome (but fairly buggy) JS-in-JS implementation by Brandon Benvie:\n[http://benvie.github.io/continuum/](http://benvie.github.io/continuum/).\n\nFor those who like this kind of thing, I compiled a little list of JavaScript\nlibraries for working with JavaScript:\n[http://notes.richdougherty.com/2014/03/javascript-\nlanguage-l...](http://notes.richdougherty.com/2014/03/javascript-language-\nlibs-in-javascript.html). Let me know if you have any more suggestions!\n\n------\nascotan\nI stopped reading when I got to the part about js being faster than C++.\n\n------\npconner\nIs there a video of the presentation?\n\n~~~\ndreen\nthey will be here [http://2014.ffconf.org](http://2014.ffconf.org) at some\npoint i assume\n\nexcellent conference, by the way\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Find a co-founder or side project buddy - makemoves\n\nMe and some friends just released a new app. It is matchmaking tool for thinkers and makers. It&#x27;s a MVP(Native iOS - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itunes.apple.com&#x2F;app&#x2F;id883667173)<p>We would love some feedback on the app before launching and going into the growth state. You can also read more about our vision here: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.makemove.se&#x2F;<p>Have a nice one!\n======\nkbart\nInteresting project, but iOS only? Is there any reason behind that? I don't\nuse it and don't intend to (as the majority of other geeks I know). Webapp\nwould be a much better choice imho.\n\n~~~\nmakemoves\nGood idea with the webapp. Thanks! / Makemove Team\n\n------\narisAlexis\nI would like to use it but of course I can't (iOS). You should really launch\nthese kind of MVP in a normal website accessible to as many browsers to have\nmaximum audience. Here you do the opposite and target a small percentage of\nthe world that uses iphones.\n\n~~~\nCalRobert\nI have to agree - I know this opinion is unpopular but there are some things\nfor which computers are still ideally suited, and this seems like one of them.\nWould I want to restrict my audience to the 15% or so of people who use iOS?\nWhy does this need to be an app at all, for that matter?\n\n~~~\nmakemoves\nThanks for feedback! /Makemove Team\n\n------\nVendan\nInteresting idea, but literally everyone I know at the local hackerspace has\nAndroid or (company provided) Windows phone. Any particular reason you are\nonly starting out with an OS commonly seen from programmers and computer folks\nas locked down and impossible to play with? After all, your target audience\nseems include people who enjoy messing around with hardware and software....\n\n~~~\nmakemoves\nGood point. Thanks! We actually aiming for all types of\nentrepreneurs./Makemove Team\n\n------\nmakemoves\nFor all the awesome people with android: Right now we will focus solely on iOS\nand then come back with an amazing Android app when we feel that we are\ngetting more close to our vision with iOS. The reason for that is that we are\nsmall team and we had to pick one device.\n\nThanks for your support!\n\n/Makemove Team\n\n~~~\ntatalegma\nI use android and don't have an iOS device, so I can't see your app. But even\nif you made it an android app, I wouldn't use it because I don't see any\nreason why I would install an app for this.\n\nI think a website would reach the broadest audience, and I would actually try\nit out.\n\n~~~\nmakemoves\nThanks for your feedback Tatalegma\n\n------\nbluewolf\nI would enthusiastically sign up for this, except I don't have an iPhone.\n\n~~~\nmakemoves\nSoon my friend / Makemove Team\n\n------\nN0user\nInteresting idea, looking forward to try out the Android release!\n\n~~~\nmakemoves\nThanks!! / Makemove Team\n\n------\nmoubarak\nout of my network and out of my location is what i'm looking for. My location\nis my biggest problem and i need to be able to connect with people abroad.\n\n~~~\nmakemoves\nCool! The app is both local and global. You can choose that yourself :)\n/Makemove Team\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDeclaring C String Constants - eklitzke\nhttps://eklitzke.org/declaring-c-string-constants-the-right-way\n======\niainmerrick\nThere's a big mistake here:\n\n    \n    \n      // Bogus function, just to see how arguments are passed.\n      void bogus();\n    \n      // Invoke bogus using ptr.\n      void do_ptr() { bogus(&ptr, ptr); }\n    \n      // Invoke bogus using arr.\n      void do_arr() { bogus(&arr, arr); }\n    \n\n\"&ptr\" and \"&arr\" are not the same. &ptr gives you a pointer to a pointer\n(char * *), but &arr just gives you a pointer to the array data. That's why\nthe code is different.\n\nThis would normally show up as a compilation error, since &ptr and &arr have\ndifferent types. It's disguised here by the variadic bogus() function.\n\n(I didn't know that no-arg functions in C are implicitly variadic! That's\nbizarre. I would have expected modern compilers to disable that by default,\nbut I can't get Clang to warn me about it even with -Wall.)\n\n~~~\ndrt1245\nAdditionally, he keeps talking about dereferencing the pointer, which I don't\nthink is right. The pointer never gets deferenced in the code shown.\n\nI'm not an x86 guru, but I think that \"movq ptr(%rip), %rsi\" is different\nbecause ptr needs to be moved from relative to the instruction pointer\n(because it is on the stack, as a non-const variable).\n\n~~~\nbonzini\nIt's a global variable, it's not on the stack. It's in the data section.\n\n$arr is copying the address of \"arr\", so it must use an immediate move\n(possibly 64-bit). It could also use RIP-relative with the \"lea\" (load\neffective address) instruction.\n\n$ptr(%rip) is accessing memory, so it uses RIP-relative addressing with the\n\"mov\" instruction.\n\n~~~\nmagnetic\n> It's a global variable, it's not on the stack. It's in the data section.\n\nAnd because it's a const, it's in the .rodata section... (read-only) Playing\ntoo liberally with the data often leads to a SEGV (as it should).\n\n------\ntonyg\nInterestingly, we get\n\n    \n    \n            .LC0:\n                    .string \"Lorem ipsum\"\n            [...]\n                    movl    $.LC0, %esi\n                    movl    $ptr2, %edi\n                    xorl    %eax, %eax\n                    jmp     bogus\n    \n\nfor the same experiment done with a const pointer to const data,\n\n    \n    \n            const char * const ptr2 = \"Lorem ipsum\";\n    \n\n(Incidentally, this kind of thing is why I prefer to write 'char const STAR\nconst' rather than 'const char STAR const', and 'char const STAR' rather than\n'const char STAR'; it systematically places the 'const's.)\n\n(PS. HN really doesn't work well for trying to write either unicode or ascii\nstar characters.)\n\n~~~\nbsder\n\n      char const * const ptr2 = \"Lorem ipsum\";\n    \n\nEdit: Said exact same thing as parent but formatted differently. Sorry. :)\n\n------\neridius\nAll this talk about do_ptr being slower because it copies from main memory is\nmisleading. Yes, it's slower, because it's _doing something different_ than\nwhat do_arr does. It's not just a slower version of doing the same thing. So\ntrying to compare do_ptr and do_arr makes no sense. And the whole thesis of\nthis piece, that declaring string constants as arrays is better, has no\nsupporting evidence. You know what's better? Don't dereference a pointer if\nyou don't need to. That's it.\n\n~~~\nsqeaky\nWasn't that sort of the point or using arrays instead of pointers? There is\nless dereferencing to get to the data, so you need to dereference fewer\npointers.\n\nI would like to see more empirical measurement in articles like this. There\nhas to be a reason both compiler decided to emit that pointer based code,\nsurely there is some advantage.\n\n~~~\neridius\n> _Wasn 't that sort of the point or using arrays instead of pointers? There\n> is less dereferencing to get to the data, so you need to dereference fewer\n> pointers._\n\nNo, and that's why the article is confusing. It makes it seem like that's true\nbut it's really not.\n\nIf you remove everything else and just look at passing the pointer itself, the\nfundamental difference between the pointer version and the array version is\nthe pointer version isn't constant, and therefore has one level of\nindirection. This is because you can reassign to the `ptr` variable. But the\narray is constant, you can't reassign `ary`. All you really have to do here is\nput `const` on the `ptr` variable and suddenly you get the exact same code. Or\nin other words,\n\n    \n    \n      const char * const ptr = \"Foo\";\n    \n\nbehaves the same way as\n\n    \n    \n      const char ary[] = \"Foo\";\n    \n\nAnd the only practical difference between the two at this point is how the\nsizeof() operator works.\n\n------\nswolchok\nOr you could just #define STR \"Lorem Ipsum\" and be sure that it's going to be\nefficient.\n\n~~~\nstd_throwaway\nThis is a joke, right?\n\n~~~\nDSMan195276\nWhy would it be a joke? Using `#define` for a string constant is perfectly\nreasonable for C code, IMO I'd argue it's the idiomatic and best way to do it.\nString constants that are `#define`d can take advantage of C's automatic\nstring-literal concatenation, allowing you to avoid lots of unnecessary string\noperations in some cases. If you declare it as a pointer or array instead,\nthen you can't do that.\n\n~~~\nquotemstr\n> Why would it be a joke?\n\nA certain influential segment of the C and C++ development community, the kind\nthat tends to worship \"best practices\" and \"consistency\", has been preaching\nfor years that C preprocessor macros are evil, even in cases where they allow\nfor much clearer code.\n\nI'm not sure these people were born with the ability to experience joy.\n\n~~~\nmarcosdumay\nThe biggest problem with C macros is that they are too opaque. The compilation\nstack will complain about code that is different from what you have, and leave\nyou with little hint about what in your code is generating the broken code.\nIt's also confusing when debugging.\n\nThat said, yes they can lead to large gains so when they are worth it, go for\nthem. Just mention in the documentation that they are macros, in big letters.\n\n~~~\nmagnetic\n> Just mention in the documentation that they are macros, in big letters.\n\nThe macros themselves are usually in BIG_LETTERS already... that generally\ngives it away.\n\n------\nmnarayan01\nAs others have noted, this is a little bizarre as the two functions are doing\ndifferent things; one being less performant than the other is not really\nsurprising. That said, there can be advantages to using array syntax rather\nthan pointers for strings (even when also declaring the pointer to be\nconstant), e.g. the compiler \"knows\" the array \"pointer\" is non-null:\n\n    \n    \n      extern const char arr[];\n    \n      void do_arr() {\n        if (arr) {\n          dummy();\n        }\n      }\n    \n\nallows the compiler to optimize out the conditional:\n[https://godbolt.org/g/FwBeWx](https://godbolt.org/g/FwBeWx).\n\n------\nrussdill\nOther comments have already deconstructed much of the article, but I'll add\nthis. The primary factor will be your CPU architecture. Can you put the string\nin the same cacheline as the code or an adjacent cacheline? If so, awesome.\nHowever, if you have a microcontroller with a harvard architecture, such as a\ncortex M3, it's may be better to put your strings in data memory rather than\ncode memory. The processor can simultaneously load your string and the next\ninstructions via the two memory ports.\n\n------\npetters\nThe author took the time to write a blog post, but not trying the code for\nanything else than that bogus() function. Had they done that, they would have\nrealized their mistake.\n\n------\ndroithomme\nArrays and pointers are not the same in C, nor have they ever been. The\ndifference is more than that of mere syntax choices for equivalent concepts.\n\nIn the pointer version of the code, the pointer is reassignable. Only the data\nit references can't be modified, the pointer can. To prevent the pointer from\nbeing modified, the declaration should have been:\n\nconst char * const ptr = \"Lorem ipsum\";\n\nWith the array version, there is no pointer to be modified and so no need or\nability to have a second const.\n\n------\nkccqzy\nAnother difference: if you use sizeof, the pointer version gives you the size\nof a pointer, but the array version gives you the actual number of bytes in\nthe string.\n\n------\ncarlsonmark\nWhile I do enjoy this sort of analysis, I feel the decision to choose one\nmethod over another should be based on benchmarks (preferably with more than\none size of string.) After benchmarking, then do an analysis of the assembly\ncode.\n\nGuessing about pipelining, memory access times, and the effect of generated\ncode size is much less valuable than real measurements.\n\n~~~\na_t48\nBeyond this,\n\n    \n    \n      &ptr\n\nand\n\n    \n    \n      &arr\n\nare different types! The signature for\n\n    \n    \n      bogus(arr, &arr)\n\nis something like\n\n    \n    \n      void bogus(const char* arg1, const char (*arg2)[12])\n    \n\nWhile they do point to the same data, it's pretty rare to actually want to\ndeclare a\n\n    \n    \n      const char (*)[N]\n\nas a function argument - template magic code excepted, you don't gain much\nover a\n\n    \n    \n      char *\n\nand it's not the same as a\n\n    \n    \n      char**\n\nThe two lines do different things, so of course they will generate different\ncode. What do you know, the one that actually lets you do useful things is a\nfew bytes longer.\n\n------\nbsder\nWhat I find funny is that through all this he never actually mentioned the\nfact that sizeof() a string constant _includes the NUL character at the end_.\n\nThis has bitten me more times than I care to admit.\n\nNowadays, I almost always use the array form and actually declare my strings\ncharacter by character so that I _see_ the NUL if I actually meant to use it.\n\n------\nmark-r\nI wonder how the results would have differed if those were automatic variables\ninstead of static? That's a much more real-world situation. You wouldn't be\nable to ignore the overhead of re-initializing the array, since it would be\noccurring at run time instead of compile time.\n\n------\nAnalemma_\nAny programming language that needs an entire blog post about how to declare\nstring constants \"the right way\" is a programming language that needs to\ndisappear.\n\n~~~\ntorstenvl\nAny poster that needs to post comments about how any language requiring real\nunderstanding needs to disappear needs to disappear.\n\n~~~\nirundebian\nHaha, real understanding. Any language which requires a standard of 700 pages\nshould be seem suspicious. And any language, which lead to thousands of\nvulnerabilities needs to disappear.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAuthentication and the Have I Been Pwned API - mhaehnel\nhttps://www.troyhunt.com/authentication-and-the-have-i-been-pwned-api/\n======\nMattConfluence\nFrankly, USD3.50/month for API access is still an incredible bargain for a\nservice of this quality. Normal users can still use the webpage form to look\nthemselves up for free, API users pay a nominal fee that should cover the cost\nof the resources they consume.\n\nThe only concern I can think of is that this opens the gate to raising the fee\nin the future to profit from it, considering that Troy is \"selling out\" soon\n[1] and will not be in control of the service for ever. HIBP is the kind of\nservice I think ought to be provided by a non-profit entity. But Troy's record\nis good, so I have faith that he will do his best to pick a good new home for\nHIBP.\n\n[1] [https://www.troyhunt.com/project-svalbard-the-future-of-\nhave...](https://www.troyhunt.com/project-svalbard-the-future-of-have-i-been-\npwned/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nChange Your Old Amazon Password Now To Avoid Cracking Risk - fwdbureau\nhttp://consumerist.com/2011/01/old-amazon-passwords-have-big-security-flaw.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter\n======\nmdaniel\nIs it short-sighted of me to think that a web presence the size of Amazon\nwould have detection measures in place to notice a brute force attack, or are\nthe so busy that one can hide in the noise?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTop 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors - darragjm\nhttp://www.sans.org/top25errors/?cat=top25\n\n======\nbrianto2010\nThis article has already been posted here.\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=431063>\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=430577>\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=431995>\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=432996>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBeijing struggles to defuse anger over China's P2P lending crisis - lnguyen\nhttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-lenders-p2p-insight/beijing-struggles-to-defuse-anger-over-chinas-p2p-lending-crisis-idUSKBN1KX077\n======\n21\nIn the last 5 years retail Chinese investors had massive losses in bitcoin,\ngold, the local stock market, bitcoin again, now P2P.\n\nIs it fair to say that they rush from one investment fad to the next,\ntypically buying the top? This is how it looks from far away, can someone with\nlocal knowledge comment?\n\n[http://static.atimes.com/uploads/2015/07/retail-\ninvestors.jp...](http://static.atimes.com/uploads/2015/07/retail-\ninvestors.jpg)\n\n~~~\nSuoDuanDao\nI remember a significant anecdote about Chinese assumptions when a Chinese-\nCanadian I was dating explained she always goes to busy restaurants on the\nassumption that a lot of customers means they have good food. The western bias\nis towards being the first to discover an unknown restaurant with great food\nthat just hasn't had time to build a reputation, but that's not how a typical\nChinese person would approach the restaurant problem.\n\nAbstracting that decision-making style to retail investing in a country with a\nbias towards savings, and the nature of Chinese equity markets makes a lot of\nsense.\n\n~~~\nsremani\n>> always goes to busy restaurants on the assumption that a lot of customers\nmeans they have good food.\n\nIt is actually good heuristic, I would just modify it ever slightly.. lot of\ncustomers means that they will not serve \"stale\" or yesterday's food.\n\n~~~\nfinebalance\nThat's actually a very useful heuristic because, unlike perhaps in the US, in\nmany parts of the world food standards even in higher quality restaurants are\nrather lax.\n\n~~~\nLarrikin\nEven in the US I learned the hard way about eating lunch early. Chipotle is\nperfectly fine with serving old steak from yesterday if you're one of the\nfirst customers of the day.\n\n~~~\nreaperducer\nI was told once that Wendy's chili is made from the hamburgers that weren't\nsold the day before. I don't know if it's true or not, though. Even if it is,\nthat's some fine chili for a chain fast food restaurant.\n\n------\nvfulco2\nThere is a huge structural issue when investors of all asset classes believe\nthe central government will bail them out. It happens to a vastly lesser\ndegree elsewhere. We saw the folly of it in the US in 2008.\n\n~~~\nbilbo0s\nI don't know if the structural issue was people _believing_ the US government\nwould bail them out. The issue was probably more that we _actually_ bailed\nthem out. I can't really blame rich and powerful bankers for thinking we were\ngonna do something that we normally do for them.\n\nStop bailing them out, and they'll stop believing they're gonna be bailed out.\n\n~~~\nkoboll\nIf we're in a position where the options are a bailout or the catastrophic\ncollapse of the world economy, we've already failed.\n\nThis is why regulation is necessary.\n\n~~~\nmaxxxxx\n\"bailout or the catastrophic collapse of the world \"\n\nIn 2008 this is what the bankers told us but are these really the only\noptions? I have my doubts.\n\n~~~\ncm2187\nI worked for one of the large banks that got out of this crisis pretty much\nunscattered. The Friday before TARP was introduced, which ended the succession\nof large banks collapses in the aftermath of Lehman, we were told internally\nthat we didn’t think we could last more than a couple of weeks in the current\nmarket. And if we only had a couple of weeks left, most of the other (weaker)\ninstitutions had much less.\n\nLike for the cuban crisis, I think it is easy to forget how close we got to\nthe brink. We have already witnessed a complete collapse of the banking system\nin 1929, in a world that was much less inter-dependent than it was in 2008. It\nis survivable but it is ugly.\n\n~~~\nmaxxxxx\nNobody wants a banking collapse. The question is whether the people who caused\nthe collapse and profited greatly should get bailouts and keep their money.\n\nIn my view the government should have supported the system but not single\nbanks. Let them go down and make sure that executives end up with zero money.\nTheir lifetime contribution to the economy was negative so their bank accounts\nshould reflect that.\n\n------\ndmortin\nI wonder if the average Chinese is aware of these problems if not affected by\nthem directly. If it is not reported in media and you don't know anyone who's\naffected then how would you know about this?\n\nAnd knowing about is this important, so you don't put your money in such an\ninvestment.\n\n~~~\nyellowcherry\nIt's reported in the Chinese media almost daily right now.\n\n~~~\npentae\nProbably not the part about protestors having their doors kicked in and being\nrounded up and put into holding centers, I imagine. This is probably the most\nimportant thing people should know about.\n\n~~~\nlozenge\nChinese people know that protesting is illegal and that their government is\noppressive. It largely doesn't matter to them because they don't want to\nprotest.\n\nHow they are investing their life savings is clearly the more important thing\nthey should know about.\n\n~~~\ndmortin\nThere are many protests every day in China, so people do want to protest, but\nmany people don't, because they are afraid of repercussions.\n\nIf peaceful protests were allowed then much more people would go to the\nstreets to protest.\n\n------\neverybodyknows\nFor longer historical context, check out the inglorious record of prosper.com,\nhere in the U.S.\n\n------\nAnimats\nIt's striking how terrified the government of China is of protests.\n\n------\nruang\nSo it's the responsibility of smart investors to bail out dumb investors?\n\n~~~\natr_gz\nThe government, including Li Keqiang, was officially promoting this industry a\nfew years ago. The government also tightly controls the flow of information in\nChina, keeping people from seeing alternate opinions. In addition to that,\ntight currency controls mean the middle class is starved for worthwhile\ninvestments.\n\nI don't know whether these people should be bailed out or not (the companies\ndefinitely shouldn't be), but I can see why they're upset with the government.\nIt's not really the same situation as in the US.\n\n~~~\nbaybal2\n>In addition to that, tight currency controls mean the middle class is starved\nfor worthwhile investments.\n\nBut that is kind also the only reason China is not completely sank in the\nsaving glut. They want to make it appear to people that they have no better\nalternative to use their money than just spending it right away.\n\nThis is one of reasons that a thing as bizarre as that bitcoin took off her.\n\nIn reality, Chicoms have no effective way to stop capital bleed. The learned\nthat the stronger signal they send that \"tomorrow it will be harder to get\nyour money out of the country,\" the more money actually leaves.\n\nAll kinds of eCurrencies is one side of that, but insane loan schemes is\nanother: the current most popular funds exfiltration scheme is following - a\nguy loans money to some fund in China, and in exchange gets an interest free\nor very low interest rate load abroad. The fund then finds more a legal front\nfor \"investing abroad\" or just bangs money away inside China on pump and dump\nschemes.\n\nIt is borderline tragicomic that whatever seemingly makes sense,and made in\ngood faith policies made up by Chinese government end up acting with opposite\neffect:\n\n1\\. The 50k USD limit on foreign remittance - actually aggravates capital\nflight, by sending the signal that domestic capital markets are so bad that\ngovernment has to resort to such extreme measures.\n\n2\\. Prohibition on private ownership of major assets (real estate, land,\nmining licenses, ownership of private business over the revenue limit, sea ad\naircraft, and on) - was made to ease saving glut, by making people rent that\nstuff rather than own, but... you know: an average Chinese citizen save like\ncrazy just to get the 50 year rent.\n\n3\\. Salt tax - apparently is still being kept to force people buying Iodinised\nsalt, but everybody knows where to buy salt around the state monopoly\n\nAnd on and on and on\n\n~~~\nbobthepanda\nThe problem is that China's economy is based on keeping the genie in the\nbottle. The moment they let it out, all hell will break loose, and it'll be\n1998 all over again.\n\n------\nbitxbit\nI really don't understand what the Chinese gov't expects when they are trying\nto control damn near everything. I honestly believe they are convinced they've\nsuccessfully hacked capitalism.\n\n------\nbayesian_horse\nA bank is a bank, even if it's not called a bank.\n\nThis kind of wild west capitalism will eventually halt or at least stifle\nChinese progress and growth, just because the risks of investments is too\nlarge.\n\n~~~\nberbec\nI don't think the risks aee two large it's that the people putting the money\naren't properly informed/educated. If you want to lend to people who have a\n50% default rate, feel free! Just make sure there is an actuary who can help\nyou manage your risk. I doubt these p2p companies were helping people weigh\nrisk.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPaul Allen, Microsoft’s Co-Founder, Is Dead at 65 - Bud\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/obituaries/paul-allen-dead.html\n======\nksenzee\nDiscussion of Paul Allen's death at\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18224227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18224227)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDo Not Track Me - hanspagel\nhttps://scrumpy.io/blog/do-not-track-me\n======\nluckylion\n> We don't use tracking. For example, there is no Google Analytics installed\n> in this blog.\n\nSure, but there is Google Analytics installed on the main page. \"We don't use\ntracking ... on this particular page where we boast about not using tracking\"\n\n~~~\nhanspagel\nYou're right, we have to remove it there. We removed it from the app a year\nago and the blog is new and never had Analytics or similar tools.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPostmortem on Steambirds and the Flash game industry by Andy Moore - benologist\nhttp://www.casualconnect.org/content/Seattle/2010/steambirdsseattle10.html\n\n======\nbenologist\nThere's also a great breakdown of his monetization of the game here:\n\n<http://www.andymoore.ca/2010/03/steambirds-by-the-numbers/>\n\nAnd of course the game:\n\n<http://armorgames.com/play/5426/steambirds> or\n\n<http://www.kongregate.com/games/weasello/steambirds> with badges\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTikTok Agreed to Buy More Than $800M in Cloud Services from Google - jmsflknr\nhttps://www.theinformation.com/articles/tiktok-agreed-to-buy-more-than-800-million-in-cloud-services-from-google\n======\narvinaminpour\nTikTok seemed to run off of Alibaba Cloud (from what I read which may be\nwrong) so it's an interesting move to buy Cloud Services from Google. I\nprobably read this as a way of strengthening the case that they're an\n\"American\" software company since they run on the same infrastructure as any\nSV startup.\n\n~~~\ned25519FUUU\nAccording to Chinese law, the government can quietly demand any information\nthey want on anyone. A warrant in China? Hah.\n\nAll they have to do is say \"Give us the data stored on GCP host\" and TikTok is\nlegally obligated to comply.\n\nTo be fair, it's not much different than in the United States unless the data\nbelongs to a US citizen, which is why many companies are attempting to\ndomicile cloud data in their own country.\n\n~~~\nrussli1993\nTiktok' parent is bytedance is incorporated in Cayman islands. It has a US and\na Chinese subsidiary. Chinese subsidiary runs douyin is subjected to the\nintelligence law. The US subsidiary runs tiktok and is managed by US employees\nand is not subject to the same law. The intelligence law would be problematic\nif bytedance is incorporated in China but it's not. The data and the code for\ntiktok is stored in the US and Chinese subsidiary cannot view that data.\n\n~~~\nfiblye\n>The US subsidiary runs tiktok and is managed by US employees and is not\nsubject to the same law.\n\nWhich leaves us with the question as to whether or not the government cares\nwhat the law says or whether they would back down if employees in China said\nthey can't easily hand over foreign data.\n\n~~~\njusticezyx\nEventually tiktok will run anything that is remotely sensitive inside us soil.\nThat has already began.\n\n------\nbigtones\nFor comparison, another reference GCP customer is SnapChat who signed a 5 Year\n$2 Billion dollar contract with Google Cloud, as they disclosed in their IPO\nProspectus. At that time (2017) they were by far the largest single customer\non the Google Cloud Platform by spend. They spend the majority of that on App\nEngine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and bandwidth.\n\nEven after this disclosure of the TikTok $800M Agreement - SnapChat is still a\nmuch larger customer in spend per year.\n\n[https://www.vox.com/2017/3/1/14661126/snap-snapchat-ipo-\nspen...](https://www.vox.com/2017/3/1/14661126/snap-snapchat-ipo-\nspending-2-billion-google-cloud)\n\n------\nbaskire\nMakes sense. It ensures google faces repercussions from removing tiktok from\nthe Android play store.\n\n~~~\nbadrequest\nThis deal is from May 2019, well before anybody was talking about banning\nTikTok.\n\n~~~\nkutorio\nIt's not hard to imagine them planning ahead. In fact you can argue that the\nparent company ByteDance has planned for such existential risk by setting up\nTikTok as a separate entity from Douyin.\n\n~~~\njusticezyx\nThat of course was the case. Mega corporations are as powerful as small\nsovereign nations, they have to behave like one...\n\n------\nArtWomb\nI believe it. 1B daily users globally. Processed events per day probably\nsomewhere in the trillions. In case you missed it, they recently shared some\ndetails on their algorithmic curation system ;)\n\n[https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/how-tiktok-recommends-\nvide...](https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/how-tiktok-recommends-videos-for-\nyou/)\n\n~~~\nsoared\nNo chance they have 1B DAU. That doesn’t pass the sniff test.\n\nThat’s like 1.5B MAU, which is even more ridiculous. But let’s look.. 7\nbillion people, 4.5B have internet access. So more than over 15% of humans\nwith internet access are using tiktok every day.\n\n3.5B humans have a smart phone, so 1 in 3 are on tiktok every day? Nah.\n\nAnd honestly, I’m fairly even on china but I don’t really believe numbers the\nput out for most things.\n\n[https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-\npopulatio...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-\nworldwide/)\n\n[https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-\nthe-w...](https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world)\n\n~~~\ngibolt\n1.5B MAU is not unreasonable. A majority of Chinese users are using it. It is\nsuperfluous when you ride the subway or eat in a restaurant. Everyone. That\nalone could be .75-1+B.\n\nThen you only need a relatively small percentage of the rest of the world to\nreach that number.\n\nJust because you can't see it, doesn't mean it is not real.\n\n~~~\nponker\n> superfluous\n\nI do not think that word means what you think it means.\n\n~~~\nfragmede\nI’m guessing they meant “ubiquitous”\n\n~~~\nperl4ever\nMellifluous?\n\n------\nscarface74\nJust for reference, GCP earns $10 Billion a year and this deal is $800 Million\nover three years. Whether this is a big deal is an exercise for the reader.\n\n[https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-cloud-\nhits-a-10b-annual...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-cloud-\nhits-a-10b-annual-revenue-run-rate/)\n\n~~~\npcl\nThat comes to 2% of this year’s revenue. I’d say that’s a pretty big deal. I\ncan’t imagine Google has many individual customers representing more than 2%\nof revenue. Math says that at the least, they are one of the top 50 customers.\n\n~~~\nscarface74\nThere are two types of customers that every B2B company wants - customers that\nbring in a lot of money and “referenceable” customers that are willing to\nstand up on stage and have their companies listed in marketing documents.\n\nTikTok being referenceable means a lot more so sales people can go out and\ntell CxOs “look we are a safe choice because $x company trusts us”.\n\nDisclaimer: Just in case I get called out. I work for AWS consulting but I am\nso far removed from the sales process it’s not even relevant. All opinions are\nmy own. I’ve been in the room more when “enterprise deals” were being made in\nsmaller B2B companies.\n\n~~~\naubeards\nnice!!! let's get this referenceable asap!\n\n~~~\nscarface74\nYeah. I’ve heard that a previous companies. I am afraid that I’m going to\nbecome “that guy”....\n\n------\ncairoshikobon\nAm I missing something? The article says this was a May 2019 deal. Why is this\nnews now?\n\n~~~\nyogue\nDitto^\n\n~~~\nandy_ppp\nInteresting, I suppose a little reminder to Google not to remove Tiktok?\n\n------\nrwmj\nI wonder if there is a salesperson getting an insane commission from this\ntransaction.\n\nMore generally/seriously how exactly does this conversation go? I've seen\ndeals at my company which have been in the 7 figure range (involving many,\nmany people) but never anything so large. Is this the kind of thing discussed\nonly at C* level?\n\n~~~\nJoe8Bit\nI was tangentially involved as a consultant when a major bank bought a few\nbillion USD in GCP services.\n\nOthers have mentioned whole 50 person deal teams from both sides, multi year\nprocesses, all of Google’s most senior execs pressing the flesh etc.\n\nBut to your question this type of deal usually goes beyond even the C Suite,\nto a companies board and shareholders. The bank I was involved with held an\n‘Extraordinary General Meeting’ for reps of major shareholders, to present its\ncase and get sign-off. This part of the process was actually the longest, it\ntook ~6 months.\n\nThat was because the shareholders of the bank had interests to be\naccommodated, for instance one of them was also a major holder of Amazon stock\nso they had a vested interest in having the bank choose AWS. They needed to be\nworked around or convinced choosing GCP would create more value for them than\nportfolio synergies.\n\n~~~\nswyx\nthat sounds like a conflict of interest if a board member's shareholding has\nto be accommodated.\n\n~~~\nJoe8Bit\nWasn't a board member, it was a pension fund who held stock in the bank.\n\n------\njonplackett\nI think snapchat have a similar massive deal with Google.\n\nIt really does solidify a kind of class structure within these tech giants.\nGoogle, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon at the top and everyone else, even massive\nplayers like snap and tick tock are completely reliant upon them.\n\n~~~\njonas21\nThat's an odd way to look at things. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are in turn\nreliant on Intel for the CPUs that power their cloud services. Does that put\nIntel in a class above them? No -- it's just companies buying stuff from other\ncompanies so they can focus on what they're good at.\n\n* _and going one step further, all of these rely on a handful of janitorial companies to operate. so maybe the ABMs of the world are in the top class?_\n\n~~~\ntapoxi\nAmazon has AWS instances running their own custom ARM silicon. It's not hard\nto imagine Microsoft and Google doing the same, which will eventually become\ndominant for cost reasons alone.\n\nWe'll have three platforms that control most non-Chinese computing. It's hard\nfor smaller players to compete with that kind of inertia.\n\n~~~\ndodobirdlord\nLast year’s Gartner report concluded that less than 10% of cloud computing\nworkloads were running in public clouds. With respect to technology, most of\nthe companies of the world are consistently living 20+ years in the past.\n\nIt’s certainly hard to compete at running a public cloud, but it’s hard to\ncompete in any industry that requires $X00B capex to get the ball rolling.\n\n------\nvarbhat\nAren't US going to ban TikTok?(i heard something like this previous week)\n\nIf US banned TikTok, willn't that decision affect TikTok? (like it affected\nHuawei)\n\n~~~\nsyshum\n>>If US banned TikTok\n\nAny attempt to ban it to the wider public would be immediately be met with a\nlegal battle that the US government would lose as there is no legal way for\nthem to implement such a ban, our constitution would forbid it\n\nAt most they could bar employees of the federal government (and its\ncontractors) from using it, which given the federal government is one of the\nlargest would have a large impact. Even that limited action however would be\nmet with a large legal challenge and would have a good chance of failure for\nanything that is not a Government Computer / Phone / Network\n\n~~~\nparliament32\nAll they need to do is poke the Play Store / App Store the right way and,\npoof, it's gone. They don't need to legally ban it, just send a strongly\nworded letter.\n\n~~~\nsyshum\nWell given that Google is anti-trump I am sure they would not simply do what\nTrump says.\n\nNow if Biden was elected I am sure it would be different\n\n------\njeffbee\nMust be all on the backend because everything they serve that I can see flying\npast is coming from either AWS or Akamai.\n\n------\nsubsubzero\nTikTok/Bytedance seems to be growing like crazy, I had three different\nrecruiters from that company reach out to me in the past month. I declined for\nmany various reasons, but mainly what would happen if they were banned in the\nUS which seems like it could happen( I would prb be without a job in short\norder!). Would all US operations cease and a contract like this be voided and\nrefunded?\n\n~~~\nxvector\nByteDance pays INSANE compensation. Significantly more than any of the FAANG.\nYou should consider it.\n\n------\nct520\nIf tiktok had was under the influence with Chinese government why wouldn't\nthink do this to keep things on the up and up. Look at us guys - we put data\nin US. All good nothing to see here. (as china still can request whatever it\nwants). I dont see the point in this.\n\n~~~\nrafiki6\nI really think this is just a company that went to get the best deal because\nthe homegrown offering wasn't as competitive. I still think having TikTok\nisn't in the best interest of the democratic west, but you're right. There is\nnot sinister play here.\n\n~~~\nct520\nMan my iphone really butchers my messaging with weird auto correct now and\ndays. Anyways I think you got the gist. Makes sense about best deal, thought\ndidnt cross my mind.\n\n------\nDevX101\nTikTok could have had hosting for cheaper from Alibaba, but now Google has an\n$800M incentive to keep TikTok alive in the U.S. Smart.\n\n~~~\ndodobirdlord\nAlibaba has a whole 2 regions in the US, and they’re much smaller than AWS/GCP\nregions. They are not a significant infrastructure player outside of China,\nand an app like TikTok is high bandwidth and latency sensitive. It’s not\nfeasible to host something like that entirely out of datacenters in China.\n\n------\nrawoke083600\nWasn't one of the promises of cloud - \"it will save us money ?\" It's hard to\nvisualise the end result of \"savings exercise\" for ppl to put funny video's on\nthe internet is 800M /s :)\n\nYea I know they big and there is a lot I don't graps/knows about their system\n\n------\nfooblat\nGoogle Cloud sales are very aggressive with discounts and offers. They offered\nmy company great prices vs AWS and they even offered to pay for local\ncontractors to do some of the migration work from AWS for us.\n\nWe took the deal and it's worked out well in both price and performance.\n\n------\ngowld\nByteDance runs two video services. One is TikTok, which runs on non-China\nservers. The other is Douyin, a regular Chinese app. Of course TikTok is still\nsubject to Chinese law governing Internet services provided to foreigners,\nwhich is cause for concern.\n\n------\nposnet\nInteresting, I wonder what discount rate they are getting, or if 'buy'\nactually just means 'use'. GCP was throwing discounts and credits at companies\nnot too long ago, if you were willing to publicly announce your move from a\ncompetitor to GCP.\n\n------\njyriand\nI might have missed the train somehow. First time I heard about TikTok was\nabout half an year ago and now it's already buying services for 800M. How did\nit get so big so fast or was it already huge deal in China before it reached\nus?\n\n------\nleptoniscool\nThis might be a bit off-topic, but why is the US worried about Tiktok? They\nonly show short funny/interesting videos that have almost no political\ncontent. If anything, apps like these bring people around the world together.\n\n~~~\nx3n0ph3n3\nIt's believed that TikTok scoops up more data from your device than you think\nand is a major data collection source for the CCP.\n\n~~~\nhackerman123469\nNot just believed but actually proved with reverse engineering. They even have\nthe app download remote files and executing them which no app should ever do.\n(Only on Android since iOS does not allow that!)\n\n~~~\nGigablah\nI mean, downloading remote files and executing them is literally what every\nweb browser does.\n\n------\ncaretak3r\nIt would be nice to have articles that don't force you to pay for a\nsubscription.\n\n------\nngcc_hk\nMoney can buy you everything. The country is so poor that what is left is\nmoney. Done. No; when is infrastructure is just a hardware where you run your\nsoftware. When is the software hack that push a button send info back to China\nor analysing in American soil using American expert but helping communist to\nslightly bias and ... Is an American firm can be trusted even. And a Chinese\ncontrolled one?\n\n------\ncoronadisaster\nMakes sense, now the US Government also gets their data.\n\n------\nqserasera\nBribery always works at suppressing outrage and information dissemination\n\n------\ntimvisee\nThis page presents me with an (email) paywall.\n\n------\nhabosa\nOT: Can we stop sharing The Information links on HN? They seem to have the\nstrictest paywall of anyone. I doubt many commenters here actually subscribe\nwhich means we're just discussing the headline.\n\n~~~\nNextgrid\nI believe The Information gives out free access links to HN, or at least used\nto. Maybe we just need to wait a bit for them to notice.\n\n~~~\nocdtrekkie\nI'm not sure if it's a specific policy for HN, but often for popular articles\nthey aren't too upset if a subscriber shares the full article. (Which we can\ndo.)\n\nI think it's worth noting that The Information is an _incredible_ journalism\noutfit that does incredible work. I subscribe not for access to the content\n(which other sites reblog within hours), but to support legit journalists\ndoing real, original research.\n\n------\ntechntoke\nExplains why they ignore the obvious violations and still publish the app in\ntheir store. Seems like a major conflict of interest.\n\n------\ncoliveira\nGood move. Google will think twice if it is a good move to remove clients from\ntheir platform. I think TikTok has to show they cannot go around banning apps\nleft and right without financial repercussions.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShadowBrokers Bitcoin Transactions: Now There’s Some Taint for You - sjreese\nhttps://krypt3ia.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/shadowbrokers-bitcoin-transactions-now-theres-some-taint-for-you/\n======\nnickodell\n>If you were the gubment and you wanted to maybe trace these fuckers would you\nmaybe try to chum the bitcoin waters to see what wallets are used for any\nliquidation of the bitcoins later?\n\nThe address of the auction is public. Sending more bitcoins to the address\ndoesn't make sense. The only way it would make sense to send Bitcoin to the\naddress is if you waited until the Bitcoins had been spent, and send a bit of\ndust to the address, in the hope that their wallet spent it along with some\nother Bitcoins.\n\nThe more likely explanation is that somebody is messing with the people\nobserving the auction. By my count, there are only two serious bids that\nfollow the rules set out by the shadow brokers.\n\n------\nmoyix\nI haven't been following the Silk Road coins, but I thought they'd been\nauctioned off?\n\n[http://www.coindesk.com/four-winners-44000-bitcoins-final-\nsi...](http://www.coindesk.com/four-winners-44000-bitcoins-final-silk-road-\nauction/)\n\n------\nJumpCrisscross\n> gubment\n\nWat.\n\n> I am LOVING the l337 status on those transactions hahaha\n\nWhat does this mean?\n\n~~~\njameskilton\nThe screenshots are low quality, so here's a link to the transactions page\nitself\n\n[https://blockchain.info/address/19BY2XCgbDe6WtTVbTyzM9eR3LYr...](https://blockchain.info/address/19BY2XCgbDe6WtTVbTyzM9eR3LYr6VitWK)\n\nYou'll see a bunch of transactions for 0.001337 BTC, which apparently can be\ntraced back to coins in government agency-seized funds. That's what the post\nmeans.\n\n~~~\nmattcanhack\nAlso happens to be a rickroll if you look at the addresses.\n\nOther source: [http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/someone-rickrolled-\nth...](http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/someone-rickrolled-the-bitcoin-\nauction-for-nsa-exploits)\n\n~~~\nHillRat\nThis is surely the weirdest governmental communication _ever_. I'm fascinated\nby the idea that someone had to tell the NSC and White House, \"NSA wants to\nrickroll the Russian government using DoJ-owned bitcoins seized from a dark\nweb drugs-and-assassinations forum.\" Evidently our branch of the multiverse is\na pasteup being collaboratively written by Grant Morrison, Charlie Stross and\nNeal Stephenson.\n\n~~~\nkakarot\nI just feel like clarifying that it was in no way an \"assassination forum\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNo CEO needed: These blockchain platforms will let ‘the crowd’ run startups - maxwellnardi\nhttps://venturebeat.com/2017/12/03/no-ceo-needed-these-blockchain-platforms-will-let-the-crowd-run-startups/\n======\nwesturner\nMentioned in the article are Aragon, District0x, Ethlance, NameBazaar, Colony,\nDAOstack; all of which, IIUC, are built with Ethereum and Smart Contracts\n(DAOs).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nJavaScript can double your codebase so make sure you need it first - invalid_arg\nhttp://mat-mcloughlin.github.io/2013/08/12/javascript-can-double-your-codebase-so-make-sure-you-need-it-first.html\n\n======\nlucisferre\nThere isn't a lot of detail on exactly _how_ javascript is used in this\ncodebase so it is hard to comment. Having worked in .NET web shops there is a\ntendency to be very back-end (and .NET) oriented and not really having a lot\nof deep expertise in the web, particularly on the front-end. I don't want to\nassume this (the author mentioned UX and some other things which tends to lead\nme to believe they do have this kind of expertise). There is also a tendency\nto avoid technologies that can make working with the web easier. I'm talking\nabout things like Ember or Angular, build tools like Grunt or some kind of\nasset pipeline for work so javascript can be more organized and structured and\nyou can write less of it.\n\nIn the end web development on the .NET platform (can be) is harder and front-\nend development doubly so. I'll admit this is my experience so YMMV.\n\nIn the author's defence though I agree Javascript, when compared with many\nother languages, particularly Java or C# is often unwieldily, there is little\nhelp for how code is structured or organized and architecture of any sort is\nmore challenging. That said it can be done, just not the way you might be used\nto in a more OOP C# or Java.\n\n------\njoshuacc\nI'm working on a fairly substantial SPA now, and while I think these costs are\nworth it for my use case, they certainly are real costs and should be\ncarefully considered.\n\n~~~\nville\nWhat does 'SPA' mean? The author does not open it and the acronym is quite\nungoogleable.\n\n~~~\ngreg5green\nSPA = single page app\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nPirate Bay completely banned in The Netherlands - vitorspencer\nhttp://www.expatica.com/nl/news/local_news/Pirate-Bay-website-banned-in-Netherlands_55024.html\n\n======\njacquesm\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=732590>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: What should our value proposition be? - timjahn\n\nIf you're a freelance developer, we'd love your feedback here:\nhttps://matchist.com\n======\ntimjahn\nClickable link: <https://matchist.com>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIs Python really supplanting R for data work? - bsg75\nhttp://blogs.computerworld.com/big-data/23204/python-really-supplanting-r-data-work\n\n======\nedtechdev\nThat is an awesome response to the original article.\n\nThe only data she can find (KDnuggets survey) indicates that both R and Python\nare growing in popularity, not one at the expense of the other. 61% use R and\n39% Python.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThings I learned from OpenSSH about reading very sensitive files - jsnell\nhttps://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/programming/ReadingSensitiveFilesLessons\n======\ngargravarr\nThere is quite some irony here - I was always taught to code by using standard\nlibraries because they've been tested to destruction and back in ways I'd\nnever be able to work out, and that rolling my own was destined for failure.\nAs far as good practise goes, OpenSSH seems to tick all the right boxes. This\narticle seems to criticise this, but the deeper meaning is that the standard C\nlibrary is not designed with security in mind.\n\nThere's no inherent problem with the approach taken (not like OpenSSL\nreinventing several wheels and causing things like Heartbleed). In fact, the\narticle's conclusion that the OpenSSH team should have rolled their own memory\nmanagement code rather than use tried, tested and approved libraries doesn't\nsound like a good recommendation to me.\n\n~~~\nHerrMonnezza\n> In fact, the article's conclusion that the OpenSSH team should have > rolled\n> their own memory management code rather than use tried, > tested and\n> approved libraries\n\nThat's not the conclusion I draw from the article.\n\nI rather read it as warning that even innocent and quite common operations\nlike realloc() or using buffered I/O can have security implications, so one\nneed to be extra extra _extra_ careful when writing code that handles\nsensitive data. In other words, security can be even harder than security\nprofessionals think.\n\n~~~\nmaxlybbert\nI agree with you. And while I don't think there's any secure way to use\nrealloc(), I would like to remind people that stdio does give you control over\nthe internal buffer (setvbuf()), which you can potentially set to a buffer\nthat can't get swapped to disk and which you can zero out at the appropriate\ntime. You can also call fflush() to be sure that the data in stdio's buffer\ncan be zeroed even before the file is closed.\n\n------\ntwic\n> Part of how they are so easy to overlook is that we are trained to think in\n> terms of abstractions, not the details underneath them.\n\nThis is a problem in direct proportion to how leaky the abstractions are. C's\nabstraction over memory is comically leaky, so indeed, if you're using it, you\nneed to think about the details underneath it.\n\nBut the solution isn't for everyone to forget about abstractions, it's to use\nbetter-made abstractions.\n\nFor memory in particular, it's been understood what it takes to have a safe\nabstraction for quite a long time now, and numerous widely-available languages\nprovide one. Use one of those instead of C.\n\n~~~\nAnimalMuppet\nCould you be more specific on what you have in mind here?\n\nAs far as I can see, if something like Heartbleed exists, you can't rely on\n\"safe memory abstractions\" at a lower level, because Heartbleed let the\nattacker look at the internal memory of those abstractions. They quit being\nabstractions; their raw memory is open to the attacker.\n\nOr is your claim that safe abstractions would have prevented Heartbleed (and\nall other possible attacks that let the attacker read memory)?\n\n~~~\ntwic\nFor Heartbleed, you need an abstraction like \"container that i can write bytes\nto and then read the same bytes from\" which has the leak \"sometimes you can\nread other bytes too\".\n\nIn C, the memory abstraction the language gives you has that leak, so it's\nreally hard to build a container on top of it that doesn't have that leak.\n\nIn safer languages, the memory abstraction doesn't have that leak, because\nbounds are checked, and new byte buffers are initialised to zero. You can\nstill build an abstraction which _does_ have that leak - say, by writing your\nown reusable byte buffer class which doesn't check bounds or zero on reuse -\nbut at least you have the option of getting it right.\n\nIn an even safer language, the type system might make it impossible to make\nthat mistake, or the library might supply a safe implementation of that\nabstraction already.\n\nRemember, Heartbleed is not about the attacker doing some kind of Jedi memory\ntrick to read your secrets: they are relying on _your own code_ to read things\nit shouldn't. If the abstractions your program is built on don't allow that,\nthen there's no way for it to be used to that end.\n\n~~~\ncuckcuckspruce\n>In C, the memory abstraction the language gives you has that leak, so it's\nreally hard to build a container on top of it that doesn't have that leak.\n\n>In safer languages, the memory abstraction doesn't have that leak, because\nbounds are checked, and new byte buffers are initialised to zero.\n\nMost of the implementations of these safer languages are in C, so clearly\nthere's a way to do this correctly in C.\n\n------\neliteraspberrie\nThe bug is in the compiler, not OpenSSH. The OpenSSH developers explicitly\nerased memory with memset. GCC decided to remove those lines without any\nwarning. There's the bug. (Here come the language lawyers...)\n\nWhat's the difference between GCC deleting parts of your code, and an attacker\nhacking into the source code repository and deleting those parts of the code?\n\nThe C standards committee addressed the problem in 2009 with memset_s. [0] The\nGNU developers reject patches and state they hope this feature is never\nimplemented. [1]\n\nThe bug fix is to stop using GCC for sensitive code. Use CompCert instead.\n[https://github.com/AbsInt/CompCert](https://github.com/AbsInt/CompCert)\n\n[0] [http://www.open-\nstd.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1381.pdf](http://www.open-\nstd.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1381.pdf)\n\n[1] [https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-\nalpha/2014-12/threads.html#00...](https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-\nalpha/2014-12/threads.html#00506)\n\n~~~\nlawnchair_larry\nPretty much every claim you just made is wrong, but at least you provided the\nsources to demonstrate such. In short, dead store removal is not a bug, it is\nexplicitly allowed. C11 Annex K is optional, and the rejection was not based\non this feature, it was based on other problematic requirements imposed on a\nconforming implementation.\n\n------\nviraptor\nThis of course is all true and important. But there's an alternative here -\nkeep private data unreadable. I believe if you use smartcard authentication\nvia gpg-agent, ssh simply has no access to your key. The only thing that could\nbe leaked is the session key (which the other side could get via standard\nexchange anyway).\n\nI moved to yubikey some time ago and don't regret it.\n\n~~~\nmakomk\nThe downside of Yubikey is that if it was manufactured before April and you\nused OpenPGP card mode, anyone who manages to steal your Yubikey could use it\nto log into your servers without needing to know your PIN/password because PIN\nauthentication was completely broken and bypassable on the earlier Yubikeys.\nYubiCo also heavily downplayed the importance of this issue, claiming in their\nannouncement that it didn't matter because anyone who got hold of your Yubikey\ncould get hold of your PIN anyway. See [https://developers.yubico.com/ykneo-\nopenpgp/SecurityAdvisory...](https://developers.yubico.com/ykneo-\nopenpgp/SecurityAdvisory%202015-04-14.html)\n\n~~~\nviraptor\nEvery system had, has, or will have issues. That's why you have multiple\nlayers of protection from cpu rings to user training. Sure, they had issues,\nbut I'll still take hardened box, with ssh, with yubikey over ssh on its own.\nI don't trust any of those layers, but each provides more difficulty in\nexploitation.\n\n(Also, this still doesn't provide the key itself. That means even with the\nvulnerable yubikey you can only spoof connections while it's plugged in)\n\n~~~\nmakomk\nIt means that anyone who can swipe your Yubikey for a couple of minutes or\neven just wave an NFC-enabled phone past it can SSH to your server and then at\ntheir leisure convert that connection into a persistent backdoor. How often do\nyou check your .authorized_keys? Your list of running processes? Your .bashrc\nfor a line redirecting sudo to a small binary that logs your password for\nlater use? Arguably this even made it less secure than a normal USB key with\nyour SSH key on it encrypted with a strong passphrase.\n\n------\nvidarh\nI remember people groaning (and I was probably amongst them) about DJB for\nbeing unnecessarily paranoid for implementing his own IO functions instead of\nusing stdio (for Qmail for example).\n\n------\njimrandomh\nI think the real answer to this sort of problem would be to set up a unit test\nthat involves making a full memory dump and scanning it for private key\nmaterial. The traps here are just too subtle to try to catch all the failure-\nto-zero bugs in any other way.\n\n------\nim2w1l\nSome people used to claim that you should never use your own crypto code\nbecause the libraries are designed by people infinitely smarter than you who\nthought of everything.\n\nThat is starting to ring hollow to me.\n\n~~~\nnextw33k\n\"you should never use your own crypto code\"\n\nThe sentiment behind that is to keep out those that don't know how to code. If\neverybody followed that advice there wouldn't be crypto code.\n\nIf you have the ability to create good code and are confident you can\nunderstand the maths of cryptography then by all means contribute to the\ncommunity. If the past year has taught us anything it's that the crypto\ncommunity needs more good engineers.\n\n~~~\ncreshal\nThe sentiment should be \"write your own code, but don't use it without\nindependent audit\". There's another recent discussion about it here:\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/418nyl/write_crypto...](https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/418nyl/write_crypto_code_dont_publish_it/)\n\n~~~\nrhinoceraptor\nPeople write their own toy kernels or malloc()s all the time, and there's\nnever the assumption that they would actually try to use them for real, and\nthe security implications are just as real there as for toy crypto.\n\n------\nHello71\nZeroing buffers is insufficient:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8277928](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8277928)\n\n------\nmarcosdumay\nFunny thing. I just thought it was yet another memory leak, that could be\navoided by higher level code handling dangerous network data.\n\nBut if all the lessons the author took are that secure code should be lower\nlevel than this, well... I can not agree with it.\n\n~~~\nmakomk\nHigher-level code is just an abstraction layer over the lower-level workings,\nand if that abstraction layer doesn't clear memory properly there may be no\nway to fix that without bypassing it altogether.\n\n~~~\ntwic\nIf the abstraction layer doesn't let you read memory that's left over from\nsome previous use, then it doesn't matter (for this vulnerability) if it\nclears it or not.\n\n~~~\nkuschku\nExcept, it does.\n\nRemember RowHammer?\n[https://github.com/IAIK/rowhammerjs](https://github.com/IAIK/rowhammerjs)\n\n~~~\ntwic\nRowhammer is a great demonstration that the memory abstraction in almost all\nlanguages _does_ let you statistically modify the memory of other processes on\nappropriate hardware!\n\nI don't think rowhammer lets you read memory, though; does it? There are\ncertainly some cache timing attacks that do, though.\n\n~~~\nkuschku\nI’m not sure, but it’s a great demonstration that, just because the\nabstraction limits direct access, it can not limit indirect access.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nA brief visual intro the biggest currency bubble, Bitcoin. - skhamkar\nhttp://www.graphnote.com/ddb965cb\n\n======\nbayesianhorse\nI wonder what would have happened to the Internet if it had been called a\nbubble as persistently as bitcoin is...\n\nIt's almost as if \"real\" economists have an emotional need to say \"I'm not\nstupid! I can recognize an obvious bubble!\"\n\n~~~\nskhamkar\nSeems like everyone is looking to call something a \"bubble\" after 2008. In\nthis case, this type of increase and crash seems to correlate with other\nbubbles like the 1987 crash or the Japanese crash in 1989.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTwitter Should Decentralize (And Make Money) Via Twitter Server  - mgcreed\nhttp://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/04/twitter-should-decentralize-and-make-money-via-twitter-server/\n======\nmh_\nThe current value of Twitter is not in it’s technology, it’s in it’s userbase.\nYou could write a better engine to do what they do, but you can’t convince\nenough people to use it. Your suggestion to decentralize essentially has them\ngiving credibility to external sites (who licence their engine) at a cost of\nwhat they value most (their users). Once I’m buying t-server from them, a new\nstartup can compete on features..\n\nI’m sure there are lots of good ways for Twitter to make money, but I don’t\nthink that diluting their user base is one of them..\n\n------\ncredo\nThe Exchange analogy doesn't apply to Twitter. For starters, most people want\nto keep their Exchange email confidential. IOW, the rest of the world can\nneither see the contents of the \"inbox\" nor the \"sent mail\" folders. OTH most\npeople want their twitter status updates to be seen by others and there isn't\nmuch incentive to host it securely.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIs the Internet Making Us Stupid? - edw519\nhttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91543814&ft=1&f=1013\n\n======\nsah\nThis is a summary of this longer article from the Atlantic Monthly:\n<http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google/>\n\nThe author is complaining that the internet is teaching us to skim more, and\nI'm not sure that's a bad thing. I don't do less involved reading than I did\nbefore the internet, but I do spend a lot more time skimming to find things\nthat are worth reading.\n\nHe also claims that \"Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is\nindistinguishable from deep thinking.\" I don't find that to be true at all! If\nI'm reading something thought-provoking, I often have to stop reading to\nthink.\n\n------\nmaurycy\nReminds me:\n\n[http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-\nhuman/mg18624973.4...](http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-\nhuman/mg18624973.400-infooverload-harms-concentration-more-than-\nmarijuana.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nValley \"Meritocracy\" = Stanford, Harvard, or MIT - ghein\nhttp://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/09/13/silicon_valley_meritocracy_reuters_story_finds_connections_background_matter.html\n\n======\nanovikov\nIt almost sounds like there's something bad about it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: What do new MBA's do in tech? || Self-marketing via RE - schodge\n\nShort question: Various stats got tossed out that x% of Stanford&#x27;s&#x2F;Harvard&#x27;s&#x2F;Etc.&#x27;s graduating MBA class went into tech this&#x2F;last year, instead of the &#x27;normal&#x27; MBA fields (e.g., finance).  What are the job titles these MBA&#x27;s are winding up with?<p>Motivation, brief bio, see LinkedIn (profile) for longer:  I did my Master&#x27;s in electrical engineering, but turned to the dark side and went off to law school and spent a few years practicing as an IP&#x2F;patent litigator.  (Defending against trolls - the turn to the dark side was incomplete).  I then got my MBA (Santa Clara, based in SV), and have been trying to find a suitable role in a tech company.  I&#x27;m currently consulting as an electrical engineer in a biomedical company (mostly writing Matlab and Python for data analysis, plus designing measurement equipment), but would like to find something more permanent and, preferably, more interdisciplinary.  I&#x27;ve yet to find an effective way of branding myself.  I like hard problems, my programming skills are excellent for a business-type (mostly Python) but not what you&#x27;d want in a software engineer, and my best fit has traditionally been interfacing between tech-savvy and tech-unsavvy areas (e.g., engineers &lt;==&gt; lawyers).  Excellent at wearing many hats, and very good in several specialties, but not a world-class expert in any of them.  (Not looking to found a company, student loans necessitate cash flow).  Hence, the initial question above, to figure out what exactly it is other generalists are landing in tech companies as.\n======\namac\nBusiness development in most cases i.e sales of ads, licenses or whichever\nunit(s) they use to make revenue.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSome unpleasant truth - eccstartup\n\n* Coders will become cheap in the near future.\n* The `boomer` of coders are getting old.\n* You always need to learn mathematics if you gonna be a coder.\n* Computer science is a topic who deals with fancy words and abbreviations.\n* Statistics is not pure mathematics.<p>You can add to this list whether you agree with these or not, because it is GPLv3 license.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;eccstartup&#x2F;8bea6bf21f77054d3e4b\n======\ncsirac2\nAs someone who studied engineering I have to say my maths skills have only\natrophied enormously since becoming a full-time developer.\n\nWhich is a shame, I see software sometimes that appears to have some special\nheuristics in there when I'm sure a standard statistical technique would've\nachieved the same or better result.\n\nI have a theory that the info-sec industry would benefit from folks with\nrobust stats/data-mining/\"big data\"/algorithms training (in a lot of ways\nbioinformatics people are solving similar-looking problems).\n\nEdit: Yes, [http://securabit.com/2014/10/03/securabit-\nepisode-129-bioinf...](http://securabit.com/2014/10/03/securabit-\nepisode-129-bioinformatics-and-infosec/) said the same thing... :)\n\n~~~\nBahamut\nAs someone who studied mathematics at the graduate level & also moved to\nsoftware engineering, my math skills have also atrophied, but my problem\nsolving ability is still as top notch as ever - that is probably the biggest\nbenefit of mathematics.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nJudge in Apple Case Seen as Unfazed by Stress, Even a Plane Crash - pavornyoh\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/technology/judge-in-apple-case-seen-as-unfazed-by-stress-even-a-plane-crash.html?ref=technology&_r=0\n======\nbonniemuffin\n...yes, but does the judge understand technology? \"Unfazed by stress\" doesn't\nseem like a very relevant trait. \"Judge has aptitude for understanding the\nnuances of encryption\" would be a much more relevant story.\n\n~~~\naustinjp\nMy personal, anecdotal, highly limited experience of judges is that their\nparticular skill is to cut through technical complexity and fit it to the law.\nThey are briefed by technical experts if there are facets of a case that they\ncannot reasonably be expected to grok.\n\nThere are of course pros and cons to this.\n\nOne con of a technical expert being a \"judge\" is that they cannot see the wood\nfor the trees. Actual judges should, ideally, avoid this situation. Mileage\nvaries, obviously.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: In the wake of recent Gmail migrations, where do I host my address book? - e_proxus\n\nI&#x27;m currently trying Fastmail which seems very good for email, but their address book does not sync with iOS 6 (LDAP not working) and can&#x27;t in any case be updated from mobile. Do you know any hosting service providing address book hosting, with LDAP and CardDAV?\n======\nCasseres\nI haven't tried ownCloud yet, but from what I've read so far, it seems\npromising. It supports CardDAV [0]. The software is free, but you have to host\nit on your own server. There does appear to be some services that offer it as\na service, and one service that has a free tier [1].\n\n[0]\n[http://owncloud.org/support/calendars/](http://owncloud.org/support/calendars/)\n[1] [http://owncloud.org/providers/#free](http://owncloud.org/providers/#free)\n\n~~~\ne_proxus\nYeah, it looks interesting. Only thing for me is that most of the providers do\nnot look very trustworthy.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe 10 Dumbest CEO Remarks of All Time - curiouslurker\nhttp://www.inc.com/ss/geoffrey-james/10-dumbest-ceo-remarks-all-time?cid=ps01902innovate\n\n======\nbichiliad\nI really hate articles like this. This isn't buzfeed, and it doesn't culture\nanything.\n\n------\ncyphax\nI can't read this article without registering with their site, or am I missing\nsomething?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nStates Eye Taxes on Streaming Video and Cloud Computing - shahryc\nhttp://www.wsj.com/articles/states-eye-taxes-on-streaming-video-and-cloud-computing-1440095146?mod=e2fb\n======\ntired_man\nGo ahead a tax it. Who cares? All that does is cut the content producers out\nof any cash they may have earned from website ads where people access their\nstreams.\n\nIncreasing its cost with a tax will drive people to access content based in\nother regions, from USENET, from filehosts, from torrents, etc....\n\nThe people who have these ideas are quite obviously still living in the era of\npaper and video tape, where the only content was provided by an original\ncontent producer.\n\n------\nshahryc\nthis approach may lead people to seek lower-cost, untaxed mediums (like\ntorrents) rather than a heavily taxed alternative\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: “Active Code” in Markdown - chriswarbo\nhttp://chriswarbo.net/activecode/\n\n======\nonaclov2000\nI really like this, I imagine it would be really helpful if you were writing a\nbook/blog post, you could \"print\" the code you were using as an example, then\n\"run\" it and output all of that into your generated HTML, this would ensure\nyou have a \"working\" example at all times.\n\n~~~\nNullabillity\nA while ago I wrote something similar (though only for Scala) for a school\nproject. It would basically fake a REPL session, which had the con of being\npretty tightly coupled to the language, but it would give you nice automatic\noutput that would match what the user would get.\n\nExample:\n[http://www.kodknackning.se/gettingstarted/types](http://www.kodknackning.se/gettingstarted/types)\n\nSource: [https://github.com/teozkr/scala-repl-\nsampler](https://github.com/teozkr/scala-repl-sampler)\n\n------\napenguin\nI love the idea of Literate Programming, and moreover pandoc is one of my\nabsolute favorite tools. As such, I find this very interesting.\n\nHowever, I take issue with your complaint about Emacs being so huge -- pandoc\nis right up there, too (134 vs 89MiB on my system). Not to mention its\nseemingly endless stream of dependencies (50 packages according to my\nmanager), as well as GHC which is over 700MB on its own. If you work with\nHaskell, this might not be too big of a deal, but otherwise you might need all\nthis for pandoc alone. This is actually an issue for me with my tiny laptop\nSSD (this ends up consuming more than 5% of my root partition) -- I'm always\ndebating removing pandoc, but never do because it's just such a great tool.\n\n~~~\nchriswarbo\nPandoc doesn't seem as bad as you suggest. GHC, dependencies, etc. are only\nneeded for compiling; according to\n[http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/installing.html](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/installing.html)\nPandoc can be compiled into a standalone binary. The Windows build on\n[https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases](https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases)\nis 17.1MB and the Debian package in Wheezy is 18.9MB with reasonable-looking\ndependencies.\n\nThe scripts I've written (PanPipe and PanHandle) require a Haskell\nimplementation and the Pandoc library in order to be compiled or interpreted.\nOnce they're compiled with GHC, they're completely standalone.\n\nMy plan is to have my server recompile my site when changes are pushed to Git.\nI like having Emacs, GHC, etc. on my laptop, but not on my server.\n\nI actually tried to integrate Babel with Hakyll originally, but hit a bunch of\nproblems. I didn't include that in the page since I thought it would be\ndistracting. Most of it boils down to Org-mode's HTML exporter being awkward\nto invoke as part of a UNIX pipeline:\n\n\\- Emacs can't handle stdio\n\n\\- Org-mode has breaking changes between the version bundled in the latest\nstable Emacs (24.3) and that in ELPA (which I use)\n\n\\- Syntax highlighting depends on the current Emacs theme\n\n\\- Whole HTML pages are generated, which makes templating harder\n\n\\- Anything which uses the filesystem leaves artifacts around\n\nI did manage to hack together a shell script which created and switched to a\ntemporary directory, saved /dev/stdin to a file, opened Emacs in batch mode,\nloaded Org-mode, opened the temp file, tangled the file, exported the file,\nexited Emacs, ran the result through some XSLT transformations and Python\nscripts to extract the data needed for templating, spliced the results through\nthe templates, spat the result to /dev/stdout, switched out of the temp\ndirectory then deleted it. Needless to say, it was _very_ fragile, and much\nmore complex than writing these Pandoc filters!\n\n~~~\napenguin\nRegarding the Windows build: I just installed it, post-install size is 69.1MB.\nI feel like a factor of two means my point about emacs not being _that_ big\nstill stands :)\n\nStatic builds also pose somewhat of a problem when it means I have to rebuild\nall the dependencies for every update... I've run into this on Arch when\nclearing out makedeps for hard drive space (those 50 packages probably aren't\nall hard deps but I don't want to go against the will of my package manager).\nI know this is a solvable issue, I just wish it was easier.\n\nAlso, I recognize the issues it poses here, but syntax highlighting inheriting\nfrom font-lock is one of my favorite things about the HTML exporter.\n\nEDIT: Accidentally duplicated a predicate by duplicating a predicate.\n\nEDIT2: I'll just expand my response\n\nThe whole-page templating thing is a problem I've been trying to work around\nmyself, but I've had too much fun thinking about it to actually get started on\nanything. At some point writing another HTML exporter feels kinda mundane and\nI get the idea that I need to work on a ConTeXt exporter since it hasn't been\ndone before.\n\nI like Markdown's syntax more than that of org-mode, but I don't like the lack\nof standardization. I kinda wish all the (popular) flavors were a subset of\nPandoc Markdown so as to keep compatability... But that's never going to\nhappen.\n\n------\nhk__2\nThis reminds me of “Pastek”, a markdown-inspired language created by a friend\nof mine which supports the inclusion of the output of some code run through an\nexternal command, with a similar syntax: [https://pastek-\nproject.github.io/cheatsheet.html](https://pastek-\nproject.github.io/cheatsheet.html)\n\n~~~\nchriswarbo\nInteresting, although I specifically avoided defining a new language. The\nsource to these pages is all written in Pandoc's version of Markdown, detailed\nat [http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/demo/example9/pandocs-\nmarkd...](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/demo/example9/pandocs-\nmarkdown.html)\n\nIf the PanPipe and PanHandle filters aren't used, the code blocks will just\nappear in the output verbatim. The `pipe=\"abc\"` attribute and `unwrap` class\nwill become regular HTML attributes and classes, just like any other.\n\nPandoc also supports more formats than just Markdown. These filters operate on\nthe parsed AST, so will work for any format where Pandoc can parse a 'Code' or\n'CodeBlock' element, with the ability to attach 'attributes' or 'classes'. The\n\"native\" and \"json\" formats can do this, since they're just Pandoc's\nintermediate datastructures. I just tried it on HTML and it works there too!\n\n    \n    \n        $ echo '<pre pipe=\"sh\"><code>ls /</code></pre>' | pandoc -f html -t html --filter panpipe\n        <pre><code>bin\n        boot\n        dev\n        etc\n        home\n        lost+found\n        media\n        nix\n        proc\n        root\n        run\n        sys\n        tmp\n        usr\n        var\n        </code></pre>\n\n~~~\nhk__2\nReally interesting, thanks for the explanation!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNon-Robust Arithmetic as Art - mourner\nhttps://observablehq.com/@mourner/non-robust-arithmetic-as-art\n======\ndromen\nSome syntax errors re.: \"chosenOrient\" and \"orientRobust\"? I'm on Firefox 60.8\nand uBO but not blocking stringently, just Google Analytics from the logs.\n\nI got overloaded by the page being fully editable/interactive AND with errors\nAND with foreign mathematical constructs. Somehow the possibility to edit it\nmakes me walk on eggshells, even if it's just a local edit.\n\nIt otherwise looks good, I'd probably enjoy reading it if I was more fit. I'm\ngoing to take a walk outside now, thanks for the unintended inspiration.\n\n~~~\nmourner\nInteresting, can you share the exact log of the errors you're seeing? There\nare none for me on both Firefox & Chrome with uBO.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBlockchain Is Merely a Marketing Instrument - leifg\nhttp://blog.leif.io/blockchain-is-merely-a-marketing-instrument/\n======\npollyannas\nYour arguments don't hold. The point about blockchains in general is: it's an\ninteresting new technology. Do you disagree?\n\nSince we can agree on that, what is wrong about people trying to put that\ntechnology into practice? No one has ever claimed some specific blockchain\napplication would be profitable, but people are trying to put that thing into\nuse. What is the problem with that?\n\n~~~\nYizahi\nIs it interesting though? People put to forefront that it is distributed, but\nI think that being distributed is a secondary attribute (after all you can run\nthis software solo). Mainly it is immutable and public. Immutable public\ndatabase - is it that much interesting? And for what exactly? I don't see many\npossible applications, even for government since they all come with multiple\ncases against this tech - e.g. voting on blockchain, cool, now it is very hard\nto falsify voting but it comes with a neat option to harass and discriminate\npeople afterwards since blockchain is public. And so on.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTSA plans to reduce airport lines by opening enrollment for Pre-Check program - adamnemecek\nhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/tsa-plans-push-to-reduce-airport-lines-opening-enrollment-for-its-pre-check-program/2013/12/03/3cac8e5e-5c2f-11e3-be07-006c776266ed_story.html\n======\nmolecule\n> A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such\n> as for a problem that does not actually exist, will not be affected, or\n> would not otherwise exist. Conducting a racket is racketeering.\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(crime)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_\\(crime\\))\n\n~~~\njoshdulac\nWhile you were likely pointing out that the problem \"would not otherwise\nexist\", I'd like to propose that the problem might \"not actually exist\".\n\nI was flying a few weeks ago and the pre-check line was backed up with 30+\npeople, while the normal security line was empty and I passed right through in\nseconds. I haven't been to Dulles in years (described in the article), so I'm\nnot sure if it is worse there.\n\n------\nb6\nI don't want the TSA to be made tolerable, I want it to go away. I'm not going\nto enroll in this program. I opt out of the intrusive type of scanner every\ntime I go through security. It's troublesome and annoying to them, and I enjoy\nthe symmetry.\n\n~~~\nblisterpeanuts\nWow, I'm always running late--that would definitely make me miss my flight, 7\ntimes out of 10!\n\n~~~\nmikeash\nSounds like you should leave for the airport earlier.\n\n~~~\nblisterpeanuts\nUh, yeah, I already figured that out :) However I usually am dragging along a\nwife and child and that adds 50% more time to everything.\n\n------\nalooPotato\nIs it just me or does it seem like the bottle neck at most of the checkpoints\nis NOT ppl taking off their shoes/coats/laptops out of the bags/etc.\n\nIt always seems to me like the bottleneck is the actual xray machine. Ppl seem\nto always be waiting to push their stuff through the xray machine before going\nthrough the body scanner.\n\nThe human looking at the screen is either the bottleneck or the machine itself\ncan't run that fast, I'm not sure which.\n\nIf a significant proportion of ppl get TSA-Pre then we'll have the same\nproblem no? It will no longer be fast unless they increase the # of xray\nmachines per passenger. In which case, why not do that now, without the need\nfor TSA pre.\n\n~~~\nadamnemecek\nIn my experience both are a bottle-neck. Any queuing theory experts here?\n\n~~~\nexistencebox\nAt the risk of oversimplifying, I think you're overcomplicating it. What's\nhappening is the forced serialization of more \"jobs\" than there is \"processing\npower\" to deal with it. the problem I've always seen is simply one of, if you\ntry to cram 500 people through 2 tiny doorways , no matter how efficiently you\ndo it, it's going to take a while, especially if more people keep on coming.\n\nI don't mean to say that the bottlnecks within the serialization don't make\nthings worse, but that primary problem is just one of raw pipe width. (to keep\nusing the beating-dead-horse-computer-metaphor.)\n\n~~~\nadamnemecek\nThe thing though is that you can't really start taking your shoes off, laptop\nout of your bag etc. until you get to the conveyor belt and at that point you\nare blocking. Furthermore, they seem to adjust the speed so that the bags on\nthe other side don't pile up as the people who went through are putting their\nshoes on again.\n\n------\nchrsstrm\nIt's actually a better move to enroll in Global Entry\n[[http://www.globalentry.gov/](http://www.globalentry.gov/)] which gets you\nexpedited entry at border crossings, includes you in the Trusted Traveler\nprogram (which is what Pre-Check is), and only costs $15 more ($100).\n\nThat being said, I don't know why we still need to remove our laptops from our\nbags. I look at my SSD MBP and my iPad and wonder, what's the difference? Does\nanyone still use those early 2000's 8lb doorstops we used to call laptops?\n\n[edit: Trusted Traveler previously identified as Known Traveler, which was\nwrong]\n\n~~~\nadamnemecek\nAs far as I can tell, Global Entry is for re-entry to the US. Selected members\nof the program were offered to be in Pre-Check but they don't go hand in hand.\nAnd starting tomorrow, you will be able to apply for Pre-Check directly.\n\nEDIT: Okay, I'm not sure about the relationship between Global Entry and Pre-\nCheck. The TSA website says \"Certain members of CBP's Trusted Traveler\nprograms, including Global Entry, [...] that have been invited to opt-in\nqualify to participate.\" but other sites say that they are eligible\nautomatically.\n\n~~~\nchrsstrm\nTrusted Traveler is what you could call the list that Pre-Check vets you\nagainst, so Pre-Check is really just Trusted Traveler. Yes, Global Entry is\nonly for returning to the US (you couldn't imagine it would be more, it is a\nUS-run program), but it does also enter you into the Trusted Traveler program.\nThe only reason I know this is a recent client of mine is a travel industry\nexpert who spent time clarifying the programs and how they interact with each\nother. Their frugal recommendation is, if you travel outside the US, the smart\nmove is to do Global Entry, more bang for your dollar.\n\n~~~\nMultiplayer\nGlobal Entry is actually available for entry into other countries as well.\nWell, at least one. I just used it in Australia.\n\n------\nskwirl\n\"Opening the enrollment centers, 300 in all, will be a step toward TSA\nAdministrator John S. Pistole’s grander plan to reduce the security hassle for\nlow-risk passengers so his workers can focus on those who give some reason for\nsuspicion.\"\n\nGet ready for cries of profiling. Get ready for endless articles about people\nwho were denied entry into this program with no reason given.\n\nThe reason grandmothers have to take off their shoes and jewelry and be groped\nis not for security. I don't know how the TSA plans on implementing this\nsystem without backlash.\n\n~~~\nmikeash\nThe TSA is probably not _using_ these reasons, but there are security reasons\nto screen everybody. Any time you make an easy path through security, you\ninvite your adversary to use it. You talk about screening grandmothers as if\nthis was irrational; do you think there are no old ladies out there who harbor\na deep hatred of the United States and are willing to carry a bomb onto an\nairplane? There certainly aren't a _lot_ of them, but they don't need a lot,\nthey just need one.\n\n~~~\nCamperBob2\nAnd it's not worth the cost of stopping her.\n\n~~~\nMrUnknown\nI agree with this. I have a much better chance being killed by a local cop\nthan anything to do with terrorism.\n\n~~~\nmikeash\nI also agree. But _if_ you accept the premise that you want to put a lot of\neffort into stopping these people, _then_ it makes sense to search everyone,\neven \"little old ladies\".\n\n------\nmalandrew\nAFAICT this is just a backdoor attempt at a national ID system.\n\nAnything that requires fingerprints is a huge step towards the same national\nID cards required of Permanent Residents.\n\nA huge question is whether fingerprints from a crime can be run against this\ndatabase. IMHO, the fingerprints gathered for this program should come with a\nlicense where you only grant them usage of the fingerprints when IDing you in\nairports. Any other use of the fingerprints constitutes misuse and a gross\nprivacy violation.\n\nPersonally, I am a permanent resident (looking to get citizenship), but I\nwould hope that every American that cares about their individual rights and\nthe principals that this country was founded upon would fight back hard\nagainst this sort of program.\n\n~~~\nkoenigdavidmj\n> _Any other use of the fingerprints constitutes misuse and a gross privacy\n> violation_\n\nAnd just how do you expect that to be honored? Last time someone revealed that\nthe government lied about this stuff was...well, Snowden.\n\n------\nGrinningFool\nWhen you can pay more (\"Preferred Access\") to get into shorter security lines\nand get through security more quickly, that just serves to underscore how\nlittle actual 'security' is really present. And I say this as someone who has\nstood in both the slow line and the fast line - this isn't me being grumpy\nbecause \"those people\" go through the line faster while I'm stuck.\n\nAnd now \"Pre-Check\" is letting us get back to the level of actual security we\nhad pre-911: reasonably effective and not in the way. Only now it's a\nprivilege that must be applied for and paid for.\n\nQuite the racket.\n\n~~~\nsaryant\nI'm not sure how the elite lines underscore that. It's the same security, you\njust have fewer people in line in front of you.\n\nThose aren't even controlled by the TSA—the elite lines are handled by the\nairport because their customers (the airlines) ask them to.\n\n------\nblisterpeanuts\nThis seems like a great idea. It would be more like the pre-9/11 era when you\nbasically put your stuff on a ramp and then walked through a metal detector,\nno messing around with shoes, laptops, and bags of toiletries.\n\n(Now I'd really love it if they could revise the liquids and gels restrictions\nso that I can bring 4 oz. yogurts again. Why did they make it 3.4 oz.? Is .6\noz. really the difference between a safe and healthy drink/food and a\npotential terrorist weapon?)\n\n~~~\nmalandrew\nWhat I don't get is what I do with this presciption medicine I take that comes\nin a 4oz bottle if I remember correctly. It's a schedule 3 controlled\nsubstance sold by only one pharmacy in the whole country. Taking it in any\ncontainer but the original would be suspect since it's also a known street\ndrug.\n\n~~~\nkoenigdavidmj\nMedical liquids can be brought through in any necessary quantity. Sai (link:\n[http://s.ai/tsa/](http://s.ai/tsa/) ) tried this with juice but found that\nagents were not particularly willing to play nicely since juice doesn't seem\nlike a medical liquid...whatever that means. I expect that yours should be a\nbit more obvious. In theory.\n\n~~~\nmalandrew\nThere's good information there. Thank you.\n\n------\njoelrunyon\nIf enough people join the pre-check program - won't we have the same issue\nthat we currently do? It seems the more people that join this service, the\nless valuable it is.\n\n~~~\nblisterpeanuts\nMaybe so, or else it might be like the highway toll transceivers (EZ Pass\netc.) -- lots of people get them, and then they can zip right through, yet\neven today there are always really long lines piled up in the cash-only lanes.\n\nI suspect that not a lot of people will fork over the $85, either because it\nsounds expensive or just on general principles. I would pay, but I imagine a\nlot won't.\n\n------\nalttab\nSo wait a second. TSA gets introduced and it makes lines long and horrible. To\nget around that, give us full spying rights and $80.\n\nThis is a little too problem-reaction-solution for me.\n\n------\nFiloSottile\nWow, so finally TSA went full-out on discrimination. \"If you look ok, skip\nsecurity\"\n\n------\nmmagin\n\"TSA Pre✓™\"\n\nAre government agencies actually given trademark protection under the law?\n\n~~~\nmalandrew\nI don't see why not. There is value in protecting the mark from unauthorized\nuse that could mislead people.\n\nWhat I don't understand is giving government agencies any copyright or patent\nprotection.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy now is the best time to study quantum computing (2014) - Phithagoras\nhttp://arxiv.org/abs/1501.00011\n======\ndheera\nAlthough I have studied the basics of quantum computing, I don't think it will\nbecome necessary for computer scientists to know the gory physics details of\nquantum computers. All they will need to know is that a certain function that\nis normally O(n^2) now has a magical implementation that is O(n), and another\nfunction that is normally exponential is now polynomial.\n\nQuantum computers will likely manifest themselves as co-processors, and you'll\nhave a nice well-abstracted API to access those implementations within\ntraditional languages, i.e.\n\n    \n    \n        #!/usr/bin/env python4\n        from quantum import qc\n        qc.init(device=\"/dev/quantum0\")\n        factors = qc.factor(15)\n\n~~~\ns_q_b\nLater in the game, sure. Who's going to build the early toolset? Who's going\nto own it? Will their be a FOSS API, or will we be locked in?\n\nAll of that design infrastructure needs to be built by somebody, and that\nsomebody stands to make a forunate. The tasks you listed are a decent summary\nof the likely eventual outcome.\n\nBut:\n\n• Who will do the work to create this beautiful API? • Who will create this\ncoprocessor architecture? • Will this theoretical stack be built by Microsoft,\nAmazon, Google, etcetera, or be FOSS?\n\nThese questions are completely unanswered, and will affect my users of\nwhatever quantum. When analyzing data, one cannot usually just gloss over the\nunderlying math. All abstractions, by definition, are incomplete.\n\nBut that's the exciting thing about right now. Most inventions occur when\nscience outruns engineering. When engineering and cutting edge science _just\nabout_ to finally converge, that's when market opportunities are most\nprevalent.\n\n~~~\neslaught\nHow many people/companies did it take to build GPUs? A lot of people, to be\nsure, but as a fraction of all software engineers, that number is incredibly\ntiny.\n\nThe vast majority of software engineers---even if we filter to just the set\nwho have actually used GPUs for a project---only know the high-level APIs\n(OpenGL for graphics, CuDNN for AI, etc.). Fewer engineers are familiar with\nthe more general-purpose APIs (CUDA, OpenCL, etc.), and even fewer still know\nany of what goes on underneath those layers.\n\nBottom line: it takes a relatively small community of people to build tools\nfor everyone else to use. People will need to know how to use the highest\nlevel of APIs, but most need not understand what goes on underneath that.\n\n~~~\nyeukhon\nOr a better way to put it in my own opinion: in the early days of any emerging\ntechnology, most of the founding members have little clue what to do except\nthe concepts and ideas, so implementing toolsets which can be used on both\nquantum computers and non-quantum computers will be a learn-on-job work for\nmost people, leaving a very very very small pools of experts who devoted\nhis/her life to this area.\n\n------\nThePhysicist\nI gave an introductory talk about experimental quantum computing at the 31C3\nwhere I explain how a basic two-qubit quantum processor works and how we can\nrun a very simple quantum algorithm (Grover search) on it, here's the video\nlink:\n\n[https://youtu.be/1PcseLsYZ9Y](https://youtu.be/1PcseLsYZ9Y)\n\n~~~\nrburhum\nThat was the best and easiest-to-follow overview I have seen of a quantum\ncomputing architecture. You clearly have a talent to explain complex concepts\nin a way that anybody with a CS undergrad background could understand. Thank\nyou!\n\nDo you any other videos on this topic you would recommend watching?\n\n~~~\nThePhysicist\nThanks for that great feeedback, I really appreciate it!\n\nI don't know any other videos, but I really like Nielsen/Chuang's book on\nQuantum Information. The first chapter is available for free:\n\n[http://www.michaelnielsen.org/qcqi/QINFO-book-nielsen-and-\nch...](http://www.michaelnielsen.org/qcqi/QINFO-book-nielsen-and-chuang-toc-\nand-chapter1-nov00.pdf)\n\nMichael Nielsen has a great blog btw where he talks not only about quantum\ncomputing but about machine learning and other interesting subjects as well.\n\n~~~\nmichael_nielsen\nGlad you like the book and blog. I did a short video series on quantum\ncomputing: [http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/quantum-computing-for-the-\ndet...](http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/quantum-computing-for-the-determined/)\nNever completed, but some people tell me they find it useful.\n\n~~~\nThePhysicist\nNice, I did not know those! Your book really helped my to implement quantum\nstate & process tomography during my PhD btw (much more than most journal\narticles on the subject), thanks again for writing it. I think together with\nDavid Mermin's \"Quantum Computer Science\" (which is much shorter though) it's\nstill one of the best books on the subject.\n\n------\nd0m\nIf I was still a student, I would definitely go in quantum computing. So much\nopportunities for innovation on a very cool subject.\n\nI often wonder what will happen at the 0-day quantum machine where it's not\njust a few qbit but the real deal.. I think anyone in possession of such\ntechnology will be able to crack any SSL certificate, and thus gain access to\nalmost anything online. I wonder if criminal organisations aren't secretly\ninvesting in such thing? And, not to be paranoid, but we're almost certain it\nwill be possible to build them, wouldn't it be prudent to start investing in\nthe defense against such things? What kind of security could we have to\ncounter a quantum computing? Would it only be possible to use quantum\ncomputing to defend against quantum computing?\n\n~~~\ndigler999\n> If I was still a student, I would definitely go in quantum computing\n\nTiming the market would be hard. I remember seeing an article in 1999 talking\nabout quantum computing, as if it were \"just around the corner\". Tons of\nadvances have been made in the field since then, but we could still be 10-20\nyears out from QC being available/ubiquitous.\n\n~~~\nmarvy\n20 years sounds optimistic for \"ubiquitous\". Consider: it took over a century\nto go from Maxwell's equations (1861 and 1862) to modern cell phones. It took\nover a century from the time that Babbage proposed his analytical engine to\nthe first working general purpose computer. The dawn of quantum computing can\nbe traced back to, maybe, at earliest, the early 1960s. (Based on cursory\nWikipedia browsing.) It took several decades to get Shor's algorithm, which\nfinally got people to take quantum computing seriously. If we have quantum\ncomputers comparable to ENIAC by 2060, I'll be pretty impressed.\n\n~~~\ndavnicwil\nI really don't want to just bang the 'exponential progress' drum but you're\nprobably not accounting for it enough with these examples. The ubiquity of\ncomputers and phones isn't just a consequence of the theory underpinning them\nbeing developed into industrial applications, but of the myriad related ways\nthat industrial engineering, society, and the economy had to develop to\nsupport and necessitate their existence. Those last two were indeed probably\nthe most viscous factors in the way of technological progress, up to this\npoint, more so than the science and engineering challenges involved, though\nthey are clearly all interlinked.\n\nNow, however, it's probably the case that the scientific and engineering\nchallenges are the biggest hurdles - we already have the society and economy\nhungry for more computing power. Assuming the necessary breakthroughs can be\nmade to make quantum computing a reality in the next 10-15 years (obviously a\nbig assumption, and not intending at all to sweep that aside, it could take\ndecades, but just let's make that assumption) it's not at all difficult to see\nhow it could rapidly find its way into production and then ubiquitous\nindustrial application, and 20 years then does not sound outlandish at all.\n\n~~~\nmarvy\nI admit that if you postulate that all needed breakthroughs are done within 10\nyears, then it starts looking plausible. But as you said, that's a BIG\nassumption.\n\n------\nQaw\nAre there slim definition-theorem-proof-exercise-repeat style papers meant to\nbe an introduction into the field? Maybe something in the style of\n[http://www.jiblm.org/downloads/jiblmjournal/V090212I/V090212...](http://www.jiblm.org/downloads/jiblmjournal/V090212I/V090212I.pdf)\n\n~~~\ndbranes\nNielsen and Chuang certainly isn't slim, but chances are you won't need to\nread every chapter. The style is certainly what you're asking for though.\n\n------\nkjaer\nArjen Lenstra was my professor for a year. When he we was asked about quantum\ncomputers he replied something to the effect of:\n\n\"Back in the 90s, I asked leading quantum computing researchers when quantum\ncomputers would become available, and I was told 'in 10 years' time'. I asked\nthem again 10 years later, in the 2000s, and was met with the same reply. And\nI've asked again just recently, and I was told, once again: 'in 10 years'.\nNow, I'm a computer scientist, so I my prediction of the future can only be\nthat what has repeated itself will continue to do so. According to this logic,\nquantum computers will never be available.\"\n\n(I'm quoting very loosely, because this was just an off-topic remark during a\nlecture I attended a year ago, so I don't remember the exact phrasing. But I\ndo believe that this was the gist of it).\n\nI'm genuinely afraid that quantum computing will just remain a purely\ntheoretical field, and that we won't see any practical applications to it. To\nme, that does not make it worth pursuing. I'd love to be wrong, though,\nbecause it sounds super interesting.\n\n~~~\nycmbntrthrwaway\n> According to this logic, quantum computers will never be available.\n\nNo, it just means that time until quantum computers are available is\ndistributed exponentially.\n\n~~~\nkjaer\nI don't think I really understand what you mean. What he said was that it\nstays at 10 years indefinitely. Either way, x+10 and e^x both go to infinity,\nso I guess the conclusion is the same, right?\n\n~~~\ntgb\nI think the joke was to say that 'quantum computing being discovered' follows\na Poisson distribution which models occurrences of events that arrive in a\nmanner so that each one is independent of the previous one. Such as letters\narriving in the mail or winning at roulette. Regardless of how long it's been\nsince your last letter, you still guess that the next one will come on\naverage, say, 5 days from now. Regardless of how long its been since you won\nat roulette, you should still expect your number to come up on average 38\ntries from now.\n\nThe exponential part is more like e^(-x) and refers to the exponential\ndistribution [1] that gives the distribution of intervals in between Poisson\nevents. So if its 'distributed exponentially' (whatever that means for a one-\noff event), the joke is that this would then give rise to the situation where\nresearchers are always correct guessing 10 years off, even if they've been\nsaying that for decades.\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_distribution)\n\n~~~\nycmbntrthrwaway\n> So if its 'distributed exponentially' (whatever that means for a one-off\n> event)\n\nOne-off event is not a problem. You can clone the world many times at the\nmoment when scientists made their prediction and find the distribution over\nensemble instead of over time.\n\n------\nivan_ah\nLearning quantum mechanics is not a big deal if you have a good background in\nlinear algebra. I wrote a book on linear algebra that covers the basics of\nquantum mechanics as an application.\n\n _No bullshit guide to linear algebra_\n[https://gum.co/noBSLA](https://gum.co/noBSLA)\n\nHere's an excerpt from Chapter 10 on QM:\n[https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSguide2LA_previ...](https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSguide2LA_preview.pdf#page=107)\nI also give a (non-hype) overview of the potential and obstacles associated\nwith quantum computing.\n\n------\npowercf\nHas a quantum computer been built that can solve a problem faster or cheaper\nthan conventional hardware? Afaict no. From an outsiders pov quantum computing\nseems to be advancing, but until the science and engineering can overcome the\nchallenges and build something that can do something useful, then it seems too\nearly to study it (outside of curiosity, the theory is kind of interesting).\n\n------\nRexxar\nIs there any theoretical proof that quantum computing is inherently more\nefficient than current technology ?\n\nWe can theoretically make a lot of simultaneous computations but are we sure\nwe will not need exponentially more energy or time to get the result of\ncomputation when we add more qubits in future quantum computers ?\n\n~~~\ndavorb\n> are we sure we will not need exponentially more energy or time to get the\n> result of computation\n\nThe minimum free energy that must be expended to operate a computer is\ntheoretically very close to zero, since it is not strictly _necessary_ to use\nirreversible primitives[0], such as NAND gates, which is something that we do\nin traditional computers. For irreversible elements the theoretical\nrequirement is about kT*ln(2) at temperature T. DNA uses about 100 kT per bit\ncopied.\n\nI really recommend that you take a look at Feynman's introduction to quantum\ncomputing[1].\n\n[0]\n[http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall04/cos576/pa...](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall04/cos576/papers/bennett73.html)\n\n[1]\n[http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall05/frs119/pa...](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall05/frs119/papers/feynman85_optics_letters.pdf)\n\n~~~\nRexxar\nThanks for the links !\n\n------\ncoldcode\nI took several classes in Quantum Mechanics around 1980. I am sure it would be\nfar more interesting today. At least we have a more practical understanding of\nwhat it can do. I do wonder if we have any understanding of how it will change\nsociety?\n\n------\ncarterschonwald\nAnother really fascinating connection is with linear / resource logic and\nquantum computation. A lot of really neat resource logic connectives have\ninterpretations as setting up quantum experiments.\n\n------\nmathgenius\nSome of my noticings.. Many of the \"founders\" of the field are still quite\nyoung, which is refreshing. Although they tend to say how back in the old days\nit was so much easier to get new stuff published. Maybe that is so, but my\npersonal opinion (as an apprentice) is that we haven't reached the hockey\nstick yet.\n\n------\nbchjam\nHeisenbugs, what will become of you?\n\nin all seriousness though, I heard someone talk about their qc research a year\nor so ago and it was fascinating but I imagine debugging such systems could be\nquite the challenge\n\n------\nonion2k\nIf we know now is the best time to study quantum computing then we can't know\nwhere the best place to study it is.\n\n~~~\nyomritoyj\nIf we know now is the best time to study quantum computing then we can't know\nhow much energy it will take to study it.\n\n~~~\ncuriousgal\nWhatever you two are talking about is not a particle so whatever.\n\n~~~\nfuturavenir\nSimultaneously a buzzkill and realistic.\n\n~~~\nFalling3\nIsn't there generally an overlap?\n\n------\nmrdrozdov\nHow does this compare to Justin Trudeau's explanation?\n[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rRmv4uD2RQ4](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rRmv4uD2RQ4)\n\n~~~\nsupergirl\nhmm, they both talk about quantum computing? the guy in the video says one\nphrase about it. the article says a bit more. strange question.\n\n~~~\ndyarosla\nThe 'guy in the video' is the prime minister of Canada- the question had value\nas it asked about someone's understanding of quantum who is in a position of\npolitical power.\n\n~~~\nmrdrozdov\nWhat's more interesting in the video is quantum computing being explained to a\ngeneral audience. For young people looking for direction, both the video and\nthe paper serve as persuasive pieces.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Girlfriend hacked by this script. What does it do? - Person6666\nhttps:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;person666&#x2F;3027738764ce31fdc761074c078a4a36<p>My girlfriend&#x27;s email sent out spam when she clicked on a link that ran this script on android?\nWhat exploit is it using?\nWhat is it doing?\n======\ndanielvf\nI didn’t see the actual exploit, but I’m laughing that the script kiddies are\nnow using webpack+Npm and creating multi megabyte files with hundreds of\ndependencies. I saw react in there, as well as quite a few crypto libraries\nand primaries.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBootcamps should be more transparent - Dangeranger\nhttps://medium.com/@novohispano/bootcamps-are-lying-to-you-67f74fe4ed73\n======\ncwp\nAs someone trying to hire web developers, it looks to me like Bootcamps are\nmore like finishing school than trade school. Candidates that come out of a\nbootcamp have learned how to signal membership in the Silicon Valley in-group.\n\nTheir resumes have all the right keywords, and refer to \"projects\" they've\nworked on, built with all the frameworks and tools currently in fashion.\nThey've practiced their interview technique and can talk confidently about\ncontinuous integration or opine about React vs Angular or describe how well\nthey cooperate with their teammates.\n\nIf they don't get the job, they'll politely ask for advice on how they can do\nbetter, and maybe ask for a coffee date, so they can learn about the industry\nand how to find a mentor.\n\nIf you don't look closely at the resume or ask explicitly in the interview,\nyou might think they have actual work experience, but they don't, it's all\njust coursework.\n\nSo I'm a bit ambivalent. Yeah, we desperately need more developers in the tech\nworld. Yeah, startup culture is ridiculously tribal and unfairly biased\nagainst those who don't know the secret handshakes. But 3 months does not a\ndeveloper make. When I'm hiring, I now look very skeptically at candidates\nthat have been to a bootcamp. Experience has taught me that interviewing them\nis usually a waste of time.\n\n~~~\nmathgeek\n> Experience has taught me that interviewing them is usually a waste of time.\n\nSo we have a situation where hopeful individuals spend a ton of money on\nquestionable bootcamps for the promise of a shot at a job... and the employers\nthink interviewing said individuals is a waste of time. That's a lovely\nthought. :/\n\n~~~\nxemdetia\nIt's the same thing that happens with tech certifications which are providing\na similar service. It often doesn't tell you anything unless you happen to\nknow and are familiar with the ones that have value. It does make it harder to\nread a resume or get a good feel for a candidate. They may be able to say the\nright things but without the true insight that makes it valuable. It often can\nland you with someone who understands the motions but didn't develop the\nintuition. It's one of those weird self selecting groups- the people who think\nthey need a bootcamp or a technical certification to get the job might not not\nbe the right type of person to begin with, is instructed the wrong sort of\nway, or ends up with the illusion that they are near the end of their learning\nrather then just starting at the beginning.\n\nOn the other hand there are people who really make the most of it and come out\nextraordinarily better. But those top of class folks are by definition a\nminority. Other people succeed, but don't exceed. Other people pass. It's the\nsame reason why some people devalue college graduates.\n\n------\nantiffan\nLove this. Some bootcamps are doing the world a great service, but there are\nalso an increasing number of sharks in the water.\n\nI run a 4-week \"pre-bootcamp\" program to help advise students on making the\nright choice. I hold my classes in the evenings so students can try out coding\nbefore they make the HUGE commitment of quitting their jobs and shelling out\n10-20k for a bootcamp.\n\nSometimes, the right choice is to not try to be a coder. People get excited\nabout six figure job prospects, but the truth is that coding isn't for\neveryone. The right approach is allow students to \"fail fast,\" just like a\nstartup. I do believe everyone should at least be exposed to coding so they\ncan make an educated decision about it though.\n\nOn a slight tangent, I'd love to see more coding schools putting their money\nwhere there mouths are by offering income-based repayment (IBR). I've worked\nas an instructor at a coding school offering IBR, and I've seen first hand how\nmuch of good thing it is for everyone when success incentives are aligned.\n\n~~~\nFLUX-YOU\nIf someone would have told me I would suck at coding two years ago, I'd be\nthanking them immensely.\n\n~~~\nantiffan\nInteresting. Would you mind elaborating?\n\n------\ndanreedx86\nI like the idea of transparency from these bootcamps, it'd be a great way to\nvet them before committing $20k and several months of your time. It makes\nsense that bootcamps wouldn't be willing to divulge that information though,\nespecially if their numbers aren't great.\n\nBut it feels a little unfair to hold the bootcamps completely responsible for\npeople not being able to find jobs. Seems like people have this idea that just\nshowing up is enough. It's not enough to just show up with a piece of paper\nlike 'hey I finished a bootcamp/degree, gimme a job!'\n\nI got my first job out of school with a combination of luck (knowing how to\nimplement conway's game of life) and passion (a side project I had just\nshipped). Most every job after that has been because of passion. Whether or\nnot you went to school for CS (or at all), or finished a bootcamp is\ncompletely irrelevant imho. I probably know more about von neumann\narchitecture, big O and sorting algorithms than my friends without CS\ndegrees... but I've worked with or admired plenty of people who never took a\nCS class and have mastered lots of things that I haven't. And I can definitely\nrecall a few friends in undergrad who I was sure would go far and never found\na single job cuz they sat around waiting for Larry Page to call them\npersonally.\n\nSo yeah, tl:dr; school doesn't matter all that much if you're not motivated to\ncontinue learning. And if you don't enjoy programming enough to learn &&\nexperiment/play you're probably not gonna do well.\n\n~~~\nscottwhudson\nI almost went through one of the bigger bootcamps in Austin a couple of years\nago, and I'm so glad I didn't for several reasons.\n\nEverything about the application process felt like a for-profit university:\nthey constantly blasted their impressive placement and salary figures at me,\nmaking it sound almost like I was guaranteed a $100k job right out of the\nprogram. A 96% placement rate and an average starting salary of 100+k allows\nthem to paint a certain picture in applicants heads, and most people have no\nidea how hard it is when they sign up.\n\nFunny enough, this bootcamp had all of their current students use the same job\ntitle on LinkedIn to show the bootcamp as work experience, which made finding\nalums VERY easy. I sent several alums who didn't get jobs quick messages\nasking about their experiences, and the responses were eye-opening. They were\ncoached on how to go to networking events, where they wound competing against\nall of their classmates for junior gigs. After a few months, they went down in\nthe bootcamp register as \"failures\", so they didn't count towards the glowing\nplacement figures.\n\nBut the icing on the cake came years later, when this same bootcamp contacted\na friend about recruiting some of their students. During the conversation,\nthey disclosed that they were a contingency recruiter for their students:\nthese junior candidates were going to cost the company six figures with the\nrecruiting fee, which was crazy.\n\nThese students shell out $20+k for these programs and become unattractive\ncandidates because the school wants a recruiting fee for someone that's been\ncoding for 12 weeks, and the students probably don't even know what's going\non.\n\nThere's absolutely a need for transparency here.\n\n------\njthree\nName three great for-profit colleges.\n\nOk, name one.\n\nNow you see the average for-profit bootcamps being acquired by traditional\nfor-profit colleges.\n\nThe duty to make financial returns for investors necessitates extracting money\nfrom students. Like an ecosystem with the oxygen slowly extracted out, the\ngood things happening there eventually die.\n\nI believe the only two non-profits in this space are Ada Academy in Seattle\nand our Turing School in Denver. At Tuting, we believe in a world where the\npeople building technology represent the people using it. We'll still be here\nin 10, 25, and 100 years working towards that vision.\n\n------\nmmgutz\nCode bootcamps have become the modern ITT and Phoenix Universities. Seriously,\nyou DO NOT need to go to a bootcamp. When I hire and someone tells me they're\nfrom some \"prestigious\" bootcamp, do they expect me to believe they've become\nawesome by going through one?\n\nWhat did you do until bootcamp? Show me you had initiative on personal\nprojects. Show me non-trivial projects on Github. Show me pull requests that\nyou can read and understand other people's code. Show me submitted issues that\nyou diagnosed a bug and gave enough information for another developer to\nreproduce it. Github tells me a lot more about you than graduating from a\nbootcamp.\n\n------\nyaddayadda\nI'm a graduate of an after-hours web development bootcamp who wants to move to\na full-time web dev job.\n\nI certainly can't move to a full-time web dev job at a reasonable salary after\nthe bootcamp I attended. If I was willing to intern for 6-12 months at minimum\nwage, I would be able to - but I could have done that without the bootcamp.\n\nThe bootcamp doesn't share stats, only a post-graduation \"employment\"\npercentage. Which is pretty meaningless, for example, I'm employed but not\ndoing web dev.\n\n~~~\nelliotec\nEvery after-hours bootcamp I've heard of has had awful reviews. You're missing\nout on the whole \"immersive\" part of it, which is really what matters in a lot\nof ways.\n\nLike how you learned Spanish a couple days a week in middle school. Do you\nremember more than how to count to ten and ask where the bathroom is? No, but\nif you had to live in Mexico for 3 months you'd get pretty adept and be able\nto make your way around and likely have conversations, assuming you put in the\ntime to actually learn.\n\n~~~\nyaddayadda\nI would have preferred to do an immersive, in large part for these reasons,\nbut couldn't afford both the tuition and loss of income for months.\n\nThe BC I attended claimed to have a flipped classroom model, which would have\nbeen _better_ that in instructor in the front of the class demonstrating code.\nIn addition, I was apparently one of the few students who actually did want to\nchange careers, so my \"peers\" were never willing to work outside of class.\nDespite my day job, I put in at least 2 hours outside of class for each how in\nclass.\n\nEven with the after-hours approach, if the classroom model had actually been\nflipped, and there were several peers to work with outside of class, it would\nhave been significantly better, and I think I could get a junior dev job.\n\n~~~\nelliotec\nI think you could _still_ get a junior dev job, if you just do a bunch of\nprojects, even if trivial or done before, that demonstrates you know what\nyou're doing. If you don't know what you're doing, the projects will help you\nlearn. Win-win.\n\nIf you don't mind me asking, what program did you go to?\n\n~~~\nyaddayadda\nYour main competitor that was just sold.\n\n~~~\nelliotec\nYour feedback is exactly the same that I get from others coming from that\nprogram. Thanks!\n\n------\nalienasa\nI like how forthcoming you are in your report, and agree that all bootcamps\nshould do the same.\n\nPerhaps we'll see an effect where bootcamps that do high quality reporting\nwill actually be chosen more frequently and thus push other bootcamps to do\nthe same.\n\n------\nwonder_er\nTitle is a bit click baity, but I agree with the author's points.\n\nHe sees it as a negative thing, but I see it as a massive improvement on\ncollege/uni/grad schools, who wouldn't even know where to start with\ngathering/publishing this data.\n\nBootcamps are subject to market forces in a way most colleges are not, and\nit's initiatives like this (what the author is proposing) that give me a sense\nof optimism for how they'll evolve.\n\n~~~\nalienasa\n> He sees it as a negative thing, but I see it as a massive improvement on\n> college/uni/grad schools, who wouldn't even know where to start with\n> gathering/publishing this data.\n\nThis isn't true in the US. Many schools do actually try to collect this data,\nbut they're typically dealing with far larger populations with far less\nresponse rate to surveys, so it isn't as readily available.\n\nLaw schools especially report the number of students with jobs, but they're\n_notorious_ for gaming the system by doing things like hiring their own\ngraduates for a year post graduation and similar nonsense.\n\n~~~\nwonder_er\nTrue - many schools collect employment data, but unlike the author, they don't\ntend to shine light on \"total costs of program\" (like four years of $30-50k/yr\nsalary + housing expenses + books)\n\nAh, law schools...\n\n------\nmy_username_is_\nThanks for actually getting into the details on graduation outcomes. I've\nconsidered doing a bootcamp but I've been held back by a lot of uncertainty\nabout graduation outcomes. Being able to go through the raw data and find\npeople like me is really helpful.\n\nI would be interested in knowing more about the background of people before\nthey joined. Do they have a STEM background, what was their job title before,\nhow old are they/how long have they been working, etc. Also if you could\ncategorize the types of companies they work for (startup, large tech\ncompanies, non-tech companies, etc.) that'd also be interesting to see.\n\nThanks for providing transparency to your program!\n\n~~~\nantiffan\nSomething else to consider - how sure are you that you enjoy coding and it's\nsomething you can be good at? I highly recommend taking the time to evaluate\nthis before you commit to a bootcamp as well. Feel free to email me (address\nin my profile) if you'd like me to elaborate.\n\n------\nvonklaus\nI went to a bootcamp, I have a pretty varied but useful skillset in growth\nhacking, front & back end dev, the tech industry & tech trends, software &\nframeworks ect. I'm unemployed, however I attribute this moreso to moving from\nLA to a tiny east coast town, ect. I am just being transparent about my bg to\ngive context. Also, I have had freelance & worked at a startup, ect. I\nfinished General assembly ~2 years ago.\n\nI agree with the author but the issue is that it is both very difficult to\nmeasure, track and maintain data and it varies wildly. Consider it almost like\na vc portfolio. some years, everyone applying to bootcamps will get a job\nbecause of timing & numbers ect. However, more bootcamps spring up, and pre\nexisting ones do more cohorts. All of a sudden, there aren't any \"hot\ncompanies\" to invest in(to carry on the vc analogy). You have to keep putting\nthat fund to work though so the pool becomes diluted.\n\nAnother issue is accounting for massive disparity within schools & within the\nwider ecosystem. Some people in my class were very talented & had a lot of\nperipheral experience. Some codecamps are not selective. I taught myself\nhtml/css/js a bit of rails and jquery ect BEFORE, i ecen applied. I laugh at\neven typing that now as it is trivial, but some students had never even looked\nat web inspector. not only does that change demographics, but 1-2 students can\nkill productivity here.\n\nThis is why unoversities evolved into what they are. Some schools carve out a\nniche as elite and their rep allows them to be selective. sone don't, because\n10s of $1000s per applicant is crazy to just add 1.\n\neveryone knows this so i wont beleagure the obvious anymore, however, the last\nbit is tracking. I have a job interview tomorrow, and have been working on my\nown startup ect. I am financially unsuccessful and sonewhat professionally so.\nHowever, I consider it a success in that I can hacn out projects and build\nshit and as long as I can eat, I love it. Other people got jobs for 2 months\nright out of bootcamp, were terrible and got fired. Schools with \"great\"\nnumbers have no idea how they actually look outside of that snapshot. its\ntech. and its a first job. people have freelance gigs and then go to 1-3\nconpanies within a year or so.\n\ntl/dr\n\ntransparency is inportant and I am for it 100%. However, if you cant/wont be,\nthen be selective and protect your brand and rep. Being a long term\ninstitution that is selective & well known will help you retain teaching\ntalent, attract top applicants and be worth way more than the short term $$$.\n\n~~~\nshoemai\n> the issue is that it is both very difficult to measure, track and maintain\n> data and it varies wildly.\n\nAlso went to a bootcamp and I agree with this. I think the variance in ability\nbetween students is greater than the variance between bootcamps. People come\nin with different levels of experience and backgrounds. People are looking for\nwork in different places.\n\nI think reviews from former students are a better solution than just numbers.\n\n~~~\nvonklaus\nReviews and speaking with someone who attended is huge, and I agree. My cousin\nwent to a different campus than I did General Assembly NYC and had a much\ndifferent experience. Ryan Dahl, used to hang around at NYC and even did a\ntalk on using Node.\n\nIt really is exactly what you said. Speak with teachers, former & current\nstudents and read reviews.\n\nHow was your exp. btw?\n\n------\nuntilHellbanned\nActual data: [http://report.turing.io/](http://report.turing.io/)\n\n------\nhanginghyena\nSpeaking as a hiring manager, I place a much higher value on verifiable\nproject experience (either I can see it or you can walk me through your\nunique/non-trivial app in our interview) than any credentials. I've seen a lot\nof candidates who are focused on credentials crumble in the technical\ninterview.\n\nGranted, there's a huge universe of people out there who are more than willing\nto take your money (including Microsoft), but the really good people I've\nhired blew me away with their project descriptions and not their list of\ncertifications.\n\n<edited>\n\n~~~\nbeetlejuice235\n/s/guys/people\n\n------\nshawndrost\nI'm a cofounder at Hack Reactor, and I also attended this meeting. (Sup\nGregorio!) Here's my 2c on the 3 things he says we could not agree on:\n\n1\\. \"All programs must report their graduation rate and what constitutes a\ngraduate (not only their completion rate).\" I can't remember this being a\ntopic, so I feel like I must have missed something.\n\n2\\. \"All programs must report how many graduates are employed as full-time\nsoftware developers, and separate other tech-related jobs, and non-full-time\nforms of employment from this metric.\" Gregorio is right about this: bootcamps\nshould be transparent about this. Reasonable people can disagree about whether\na bootcamp should count eg \"growth hackers\" in employment figures (Hack\nReactor would not, per our methodology[1]) BUT bootcamps should DEFINITELY\nmake that data available. This was shot down.\n\n3\\. \"All programs must make available the raw data that they used to base\ntheir metrics.\" Again, I can't remember when we talked about this. It's kind\nof a good idea, but unless you have robust non-employment data, an anonymized\ndata dump is a csv with like 3 columns. Ours just had salaries, outcome codes,\nand time-to-hire (which we already published in histogram form), so we didn't\nbother publishing it. (Turing's has lots of fun demographic data that would be\nout-of-scope for an industry standard about employment.)\n\n~~~\nshoemai\nDo you find that every student wants to be a full time developer though? What\nif the student were fully capable of finding a job as a developer but that's\nnot what they wanted to do? Or maybe they were just open to many\npossibilities. Seems like just have a simple statistic like % of students that\nbecame devs would be 1. misleading and 2. acting against the bootcamp's own\ninterests.\n\n------\ndrewrv\nIn my mind including \"tech-adjacent jobs\" is a more interesting number. These\nprograms attract a lot of professionals who are trying to add programing to\ntheir resume, but not necessarily become full time code monkeys.\n\nA designer who can write html/css/js is more valuable than one who does not. A\nPM who cannot code is a nightmare to work with. Working with a marketer who\ncan hook up their own jquery plugin is a godsend.\n\n~~~\nrunandcode\nWhy not include both sets of stats? There are a large number of bootcamps\nthese days and I obviously cannot speak to all. However, for the program I\nattended, I'd say 90%+ of students were interested in full-time dev jobs. I'd\nwant to know if most post-course jobs were not highly technical.\n\nAside from that reasoning, I see this as a means to differentiate different\ntypes of programs, if they do in fact exist. I don't actually buy that\nargument; while I obviously have not read the entire internet, I do have yet\nto encounter a bootcamp whose marketing strategy ISN'T centered around the\npromise of becoming a full-time developer upon matriculation.\n\n------\nadrice727\nReactor Core, the parent company of Hack Reactor, recently proposed a\nstandardized methodology for the industry.\n\n[http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/reactor-core-\nannounc...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/reactor-core-announces-\nnew-method-for-standardizing-coding-school-student-outcomes-300262363.html)\n\n~~~\nBahamut\nWhere's the link to the supposedly methodology? That's a pretty crappy press\nrelease...\n\n~~~\ndaveguy\nThey will teach you that methodology in their bootcamp. Sign up today!\n\n~~~\nmathgeek\nThe first step is free, just for signing up for the email list?\n\n------\nlowglow\nI agree. I originally wrote this article \"Are dev bootcamps a scam? A hacker's\nperspective.\"[0] which actually caused quite a bit of drama when I then had\ndev schools up in arms about opening up the books and proving their\nsuccess/placement rates, etc.\n\nThen I decided there should be a better way to find reliable, quality\nbootcamps so I built a review site for Dev Bootcamps.[1] The response has been\ngreat and what was once reviled by dev schools is now seen as a source of\ndistribution and qualification for validation because we help so many people\ndecide where to go.\n\n[0] [https://www.techendo.com/posts/are-dev-bootcamps-a-scam-a-\nha...](https://www.techendo.com/posts/are-dev-bootcamps-a-scam-a-hacker-s-\nperspective) [1] [http://schools.techendo.com/](http://schools.techendo.com/)\n\n~~~\nxentronium\n[https://schools.techendo.com](https://schools.techendo.com) certificate is\nexpired\n\n~~~\nlowglow\nYep. In the middle of taking care of that now. Thank you for the heads up.\n\n------\nthe_watcher\nI agree with the author that bootcamp \"statistics\" should have some kind of\nstandard (that bootcamps are free to use or disregard, but that way applicants\nwill know the methodology being used is either the published standard or one\nthat is not published). My one quibble is with his claim that no one goes to\nthese schools to become product managers - plenty do. There are enough PM jobs\nthat require software development experience (reasonably - the best PM's I've\nworked with could all code well enough to bang out a prototype or proof of\nconcept) to justify learning to program. Outside of that, couldn't agee more.\n\n------\nbogomipz\nIsn't the problem along with these somewhat dubious \"Hacker Schools\" or\n\"Bootcamps\" the demand side for a \"shortcut\" to an instant developer title or\nless likely an instant $100K/year job?\n\nThe reality is that there are no shortcuts. What ever happened to the good old\nfashioned \"take an entry-level support position and work your way up\"? That\ngets you both a foot in the door and get real rubber on the road experience?\nIs it sexy? No. Does it work? Yes.\n\n------\nshoemai\nI feel like it's very easy to fudge the numbers just due to all the different\nfactors involved. Would student reviews be a better way to evaluate bootcamps?\nI know I've seen some bootcamps on yelp with reviews. This seems like it would\nbe better than a self-reported statistic.\n\n------\nsoham\nIn California, the Bureau of Private PostSecondary education is coming to\nimplement transparency standards in a big way. In the next year or two, you\nwill see several bootcamps forced to be more transparent via approval to\noperate, or be forced to shut.\n\n------\ndevalicious\nWent to Maker's Academy London, lots of flavour of the week development\nlanguages,corporate cult vibes, and too expensive for what it was.\n\n------\nfuzzybassoon\nGeneral Assembly is working towards just such an approach:\n\n[https://generalassemb.ly/blog/measuring-what-\nmatters/](https://generalassemb.ly/blog/measuring-what-matters/)\n\nNote: Most of the interesting stuff there is in a PDF.\n\n(Also, I work for GA, but am not speaking on behalf of the company.)\n\n~~~\ndbpatterson\nThe PDF is interesting, but reports no actual data from GA... Seems like that\nwould be relevant, if they are trying to push for more transparency!\n\n~~~\nrunandcode\nAgreed - why make a big deal out of publishing a \"framework\" and then not\nrelease any data to go along with it?\n\n------\njust_aint_right\nSo tired of bootcamps. I went. It sucked. Don't go.\n\n------\nitake\nMany people that attend code schools have no interest in getting a software\nengineering job. I think asking code schools to base their metrics on\nemployment rates would have bad side effects.\n\nThis would cause schools to reject applicants that are interested in learning\ncoding for alternatives reasons. These reasons range from Mom's wanting to\nlearn so they could teach their children, wantrepreneur's wanting to build\ntheir MVP on their own, or just someone that is happy with their career path,\nbut wants to take a break to learn coding for fun.\n\nDo you think Mom's wanting to teach their children coding should be rejected\nfrom code schools, because they don't want to get a job and thus would hurt\ntheir numbers?\n\n~~~\nrunandcode\nDo you really think that people spend tens of thousands of dollars and\ncountless hours (away from family, might I add) learning to code just so they\ncan teach their children?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: WizAtHome – Work From Home Wellness Management - rog4truth\nhttps://www.wizathome.com/\n======\nfrompdx\nI saw this posted a while ago and I would like to provide some feedback.\n\n1\\. The new layout is an improvement over the previous. It looks more modern.\nHowever, the navbar and footer are not responsive so if you are using a small\nbrowser window or mobile device half of the nav and footer are hidden.\n\n2\\. The login links are confusing. \"I'm the wiz\" is a login page, the login\nlink is a login page. There are two additional login links for employers and\nemployees at the bottom. I think it will be helpful to simplify this.\n\n3\\. If your target market is in the United States you may want to consider\nsomewhat different branding. I understand that the term \"wiz\" in this context\nis intended to refer to wizard or expert. However, in the part of the United\nStates I am from, and perhaps all parts, the term \"wiz\" is also a slang term\nfor urination. For example:\n\n\\- \"I need to take a wiz\" = I need to use the restroom.\n\n\\- \"My job is making me take a wiz quiz\" = My employer is making me take a\nurinalysis drug test.\n\nFor me, \"wiz at home\" has similar connotations and it was the first thing I\nthought of when I saw the name.\n\n~~~\nrog4truth\nHey, thanks for the feedback!\n\n1) We are aware of the problem that navbar and footer are not responsive for\nvery small browser window. However, we did test it on mobile devices. It is a\ndifferent layout but both navbar and footer are showing up correctly on mobile\n(just tested on iPhone). Can you clarify what problem you are seeing on mobile\ndevice?\n\n2) Agree that login links can be simplified\n\n3) We did talk to a branding guy rather informally. He mentioned the chance of\nmisinterpretation, but that the chance is very very small. An alternative is\nto use whiz instead of wiz. Looking up the urbandictionary.com, even \"whiz\"\nhas this alternative connotation, but much lower in the list of possible\nmeanings. What do you think? Is Whiz better than wiz? Thanks\n\n~~~\nfrompdx\nApologies for not replying earlier. From my perspective it's not the spelling\nof the word wiz. It's the phrasing.\n\nComputer wiz: No negative connotations. Computer wizard is implied.\n\nWiz kid: Also fine. Wiz is an adjective implying competence or intelligence.\n\nTake a wiz: Now the meaning of wiz has changed because wiz is the action.\n\nWiz at home: It's easy to read wiz in this context as an action one is doing,\nwhich is why I say it is the phrasing rather than the spelling.\n\n> We did talk to a branding guy rather informally. He mentioned the chance of\n> misinterpretation, but that the chance is very very small.\n\nIn the right context this person is right. Used as noun or adjective its\nunlikely people will misconstrue the meaning. When it is easy to\nunintentionally interpret the use of wiz as an adverb or verb it becomes much\neasier to misconstrue the meaning.\n\n~~~\nrog4truth\nThanks!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThis Week in Servo 43 (submitted via Servo itself) - Manishearth\nhttp://blog.servo.org/2015/11/30/twis-43/\n======\nlarsberg\nThe killer feature in this week's newsletter is an image of using Servo itself\nto post this link to HN :-)\n\n~~~\nbttf\nI can appreciate the honesty of that video.\n\n~~~\nperlgeek\nThis bug (input field doesn't scroll automatically, but spills its text into\nthe surrounding elements) is a good demonstration of just how many, many small\ndetails you have take care of when implementing a browser engine.\n\nA really monumental task. The servo devs have my respect!\n\n~~~\noneeyedpigeon\nMaybe I'm missing something hugely obvious, but shouldn't the input field be\nrendered using a native control which would preemptively eliminate that bug\nand reduce the need for rewriting code that's been written countless times\nbefore?\n\n~~~\npcwalton\n> shouldn't the input field be rendered using a native control which would\n> preemptively eliminate that bug and reduce the need for rewriting code\n> that's been written countless times before?\n\nBroadly speaking, native controls don't like being composited into OpenGL\nscenes (which are necessary for things like 3D transforms).\n\n------\npcwalton\n(Copying my comment here from Reddit /r/rust:)\n\nJust to repeat, because this was somewhat buried in the article: Servo is now\na multiprocess browser, using the gaol crate for sandboxing. This adds (a) an\nextra layer of defense against remote code execution vulnerabilities beyond\nthat which the Rust safety features provide; (b) a safety net in case Servo\ncode is tricked into performing insecure actions.\n\nThere are still plenty of bugs to shake out, but this is a major milestone in\nthe project.\n\n------\nthwd\nYou mentioned the URL-parsing macro twice.\n\nCongrats to the whole team!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMarketers Have Given Up on Context, and Our National Discourse Is Suffering - memexy\nhttps://battellemedia.com/archives/2020/06/marketers-have-given-up-on-context-and-our-national-discourse-is-suffering\n======\navmich\nCan search engines replace advertisement? Do we need to invent a way to\ncompare options for consumers, or is it a dead end?\n\n~~~\nmemexy\nThe semantic web was meant to be the substrate on which personal agents would\nserve people by doing the type of thing you described but it didn't happen\n\n> The entertainment system was belting out the Beatles’ “We Can Work It Out”\n> when the phone rang. When Pete answered, his phone turned the sound down by\n> sending a message to all the other local devices that had a volume control.\n> His sister, Lucy, was on the line from the doctor’s office: “Mom needs to\n> see a specialist and then has to have a series of physical therapy sessions.\n> Biweekly or something. I’m going to have my agent set up the appointments.”\n> Pete immediately agreed to share the chauffeuring. At the doctor’s office,\n> Lucy instructed her Semantic Web agent through her handheld Web browser. The\n> agent promptly retrieved the information about Mom’s prescribed treatment\n> within a 20-mile radius of her home and with a rating of excellent or very\n> good on trusted rating services. It then began trying to find a match\n> between available appointment times (supplied by the agents of individual\n> providers through their Web sites) and Pete’s and Lucy’s busy schedules.\n\nI think Alan Kay is right, the computer revolution hasn't happened yet. There\nis much potential that computer networks can unlock but we haven't done the\nwork to unlock it.\n\n\\--\n\n[https://twobithistory.org/2018/05/27/semantic-\nweb.html](https://twobithistory.org/2018/05/27/semantic-web.html)\n\n------\nrmdashrfstar\n“For those of you who want a TL:DR summary, here it is: It’s time to get back\nto the work marketers used to be really good at: Deciding on the appropriate\ncontext in which to engage your audience. And it’s time to pull back from a\nhabit most of you have fallen into: Letting the machines choose your audience\nfor you. Thanks to new approaches which fuse at-scale ad targeting with high-\nquality editorial product, you can step into this renewed role without\nsacrificing the reach, precision, and targeting afforded by the likes of\nFacebook, Google, Twitter, and their kin.”\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPornhub: Bug Bounty Program - Immortalin\nhttps://hackerone.com/pornhub\n======\nachievingApathy\nNow there is finally a legitimate excuse to spend hours scouring pornhub -- to\nfind security vulnerability, yeah, that's it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy is Homejoy still quoted on the YC landing page? - louisswiss\n\nA few weeks after Homejoy announced that they&#x27;re closing down, YC still has a quote from Adora Cheung on the landing page --&gt; &#x27;Homejoy would not be where it is today without YC...&#x27;<p>Is this an oversight or is there a reason for still displaying the quote so prominently?<p>Of course I&#x27;m not asking whether it was a mistake to invest in Homejoy at all, it just seems like a funny decision to leave them up there when I&#x27;m sure they have enough quotations from founders who&#x27;s companies are still going strong...<p>What am I missing?\n======\nmarina_shumaeva\nLouisswiss, haven`t you thought that today is weekend and maybe administrators\nof the web site just didn't have time to change this?\n\n~~~\nColinWright\n\n        > A few weeks after Homejoy announced\n        > that they're closing down, ...\n    \n\nIf it's been weeks, then maybe the question is valid. Their blog post[0] on\nJuly 17, 2015 announced their imminent closure.\n\n[0] [http://blog.homejoy.com/homejoy-says-\ngoodbye/](http://blog.homejoy.com/homejoy-says-goodbye/)\n\n~~~\nmarina_shumaeva\nHomejoy officially closed its doors on July 31st.\n\n~~~\nColinWright\nSo you think that YC should ignore the announcement, and still wait not only\nuntil after the announcement, and after the actual closure, but after the\nweekend after the closure after the announcement? That's what the original\nposter was asking. Why wait so long?\n\nThe announcement was two weeks ago.\n\nThe closure was Friday - two days ago.\n\nWhy is the quote still there? Why was it not even set up on the 18th to be\nremoved programmatically on the 31st? It wouldn't be hard - even I do that.\n\nSeems a valid question to me. Given what I know of YC, I find it hard to\nbelieve that it's just because the closure actually happened on a Friday,\nthey're not working over the weekend, and they'll do it on Monday when they're\nback.\n\n~~~\nlouisswiss\nMy thoughts exactly.\n\nI'm not assuming that YC _should_ replace the quote, I just don't understand\nexactly why they haven't. Perhaps it's to show that failed experiments are a\nvalued part of the process?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nInstant 8-bit alpha PNG converter - ck2\nhttp://www.8bitalpha.com/\n======\npornel\nI've got improved pngquant that gives significantly better results than\noriginal version, gd2 library and often rivals pngnq:\n\n<https://github.com/pornel/improved-pngquant>\n\nIt is a bit slow (converts image several times feeding back result's quality\nback to the algorithm), but difference in quality is significant:\n\n<http://geekhood.net/8bitalpha.png> \\- converted via website\n\n<http://geekhood.net/imagealpha0.7.png> \\- converted with pngquant 1.3\n\n~~~\naw3c2\nAny chance to build this with libpng14? I think compiling fails for me because\nI do have that modern version installed and not libpng12.\n\n~~~\npornel\nIt definitely works with 1.4.1, but the bundled Makefile sucks.\n\nJust compile *.c and link it against libpng in whatever way your system\nrequires.\n\n~~~\naw3c2\nThanks!\n\nI am clueless when it comes to compiling though so for me that stop right at\n\"linking\". I only know that that has something to do with those .o files. :-)\n\nI did find <http://pngnq.sourceforge.net/> and just installed that.\n\n------\nthingsinjars\nWow, I go on holiday away from a decent internet connection and next thing you\nknow, HN front page. Urk.\n\nHope it all works well for everyone. As mentioned, the source is all on github\n(<https://github.com/thingsinjars/8bitalpha>) so if there are any\nimprovements, fork away.\n\nI'll try and keep an eye on it in case something breaks but I'm a bit limited\nto an iPhone SSH client on a foreign country's network so play nice. :D\n\nI'm glad people are finding it useful, though.\n\n~~~\nck2\nGreat work, many thanks for the source.\n\nAh, now I see it's a far cry from pngng/pngquant\n\n[https://github.com/thingsinjars/8bitalpha/raw/master/image.p...](https://github.com/thingsinjars/8bitalpha/raw/master/image.php)\n\nSome php gd2 conversion, gets the job done but it's not as sophisticated.\n\nStill, huge potential to slide in other solutions, even via shell.\n\n------\nnathos\nMac users should check out ImageAlpha for optimizing 8-bit PNGs:\n<http://pornel.net/imagealpha>\n\n~~~\nck2\nI was actually looking for a Windows equivalent to that when I found this\nwesite.\n\n------\nhecticjeff\nSource code is available on GitHub:\n<https://github.com/thingsinjars/8bitalpha>\n\n------\npedrokost\nThank you a lot for the tool. I had no idea I could compress PNG so much,\nwithout loosing too much quality. I will be a heavy user of this.\n\n~~~\nck2\nTo clarify, I didn't make this site, just discovered it while googling how to\naccomplish this without Fireworks.\n\nThe \"beauty\" of 8-bit png is how it degrades acceptably in IE8, IE7 and even\nIE6.\n\nTry comparing a large round icon in 1-bit alpha (ie. gif) vs 8-bit alpha, it's\nmuch much better.\n\n~~~\ndavej\nIE7 and IE8 can display 32bit (24bit for RGB + 8bit for alpha channel) PNGs\nfine by the way. IE6, of course, only supports alpha transparency on 8bit\nPNGs.\n\n~~~\nrimantas\n\n      IE6, of course, only supports alpha transparency on 8bit\n      PNGs.\n    \n\nIE6 does not support alpha transparency, in this case it treats colos with\nalpha component as fully transparent i.e. PNG8 with alpha transparency is\ntreated as with index transparency.\n\n~~~\ndavej\nYes, you're correct.\n\n------\naw3c2\nWhat is the difference to using say optipng?\n\n~~~\nbeej71\nHere's a real example, using a test image that has a lot of different alpha\nvalues in it, and a 24-bit alpha channel:\n\n    \n    \n        Original:    87047 bytes\n        optipng -o7: 82489 bytes\n        this tool:   22585 bytes\n    \n\nThe main difference, other than size, is that optipng produced an exact copy\nof the the original, while this tool is lossy, and threw away a bunch of data\nfrom the alpha channel. The win is that for the majority of all web cases, 8\nbits of alpha is plenty.\n\n~~~\nck2\nNote that it's not perfect for all cases, but it's certainly acceptable for\nsmall icons.\n\nHere's a 32x32 icon I converted down to 8-bit alpha and then 1-bit, and then\nresized the whole group so they could be more closely examined:\n\n<http://i.imgur.com/XTksy.png>\n\n~~~\npornel\nI was able to convert it without noticeable degradation down to 7 bit:\n\n<http://geekhood.net/bitcoin-32bit.png>\n\n<http://geekhood.net/bitcoin-7bit.png>\n\n(using my pngquant)\n\n~~~\nck2\nYah, after looking at the source I saw they are only using php's gd2 library\non 8bitalpha.com which is definitely inferior to your work.\n\nThe problem is lack of Windows binaries, this is the most modern I can find:\n\n<http://sites.google.com/site/bitdepthtools/downloads>\n\nBTW this is the original image I am resampling down to icon size, it seems\nvery challenging because of the multi-layered round edges and many gradients\ninternally:\n\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bitcoin.png>\n\n~~~\npornel\nFor me OS X screenshots are the toughest — lots of shades in transparent\nshadow, smooth gray gradients (can't use posterization) AND three small\ngradients in close/minimize/zoom and couple of odd pixels for anti-alias of\ncorners (can't use pick-most-popular algorithm).\n\n------\netherealG\n<3\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDataTau: HN for Data Science - gk1\nhttp://www.datatau.com/\n======\ngwern\nI check in on DataTau occasionally, but it's not an active community. You're\nbetter off with\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBanned by YouTube, gun lovers are taking their videos to Pornhub - mmhsieh\nhttps://therooster.com/blog/banned-by-youtube-gun-lovers-are-taking-their-videos-to-pornhub\n======\nwalshemj\nthis is a 2018 article bit late hasn't stopped a number of the gun channels I\nwatch on youtube.\n\n~~~\nLinuxBender\nAgreed. All the firearm channels I have been subscribed to still exist. The\nonly words they appear to be afraid to use are related to the pandemic. One of\nthem holds up a Corona beer instead.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nBorn in the USA? Some Chinese plan it that way - drewse\nhttp://www.npr.org/2010/11/22/131513165/born-in-the-u-s-a-some-chinese-plan-it-that-way\n\n======\nalanh\nAmazing someone who immigrated here at 10 years old could never be President,\nbut someone who was in the US _only_ for their birth — until much later in\nlife — _could_ become President.\n\nEver since reading a first-hand account of a grade school student quietly\nthinking about how their teacher’s pronouncement that “any of you could become\nPresident!” was incorrect for that student, an immigrant, I have seen this\nclause as a bit excessive.\n\n~~~\ndoyoulikeworms\nAgreed. I may come across as xenophobic, or uber-patriotic, or whatever, but I\nthink the laws regarding eligibility for presidency should be changed, not\nrelaxed.\n\nFor example: Required to be a citizen and resident of the USA for the majority\nof his/her life (>50%). Required to renounce all other citizenship. Required\nto have spent the last 10 years of his/her life in the US.\n\nSomething like that seems fair(er) to me.\n\nEDIT: Clarification.\n\n~~~\nmahmud\nThose are already the requirements for a basic security clearance.\n\n------\njordan0day\nTo be honest, I'm not especially bothered by this. You could (and many cable\nnews and talk radio hosts have) make the case that this is just plain _wrong_\n, but isn't there worse things than having the children of affluent foreigners\nbe American citizens? We're still a \"nation of immigrants\", I say the richer\nthe better!\n\nI'll admit my analysis of this is only cursory, so feel free to correct my\nreasoning.\n\nObviously if these children just take advantage of the system, get a cheap(er)\neducation and return to China, it's a net loss for the USA, but it seems to me\nthat a great many would stay here, presumably as \"productive citizens\".\n\n~~~\ndrewse\nYes, I'd assume that most of these immigrants described by the article will\nbecome productive citizens and will benefit the USA. I don't find anything\nwrong with what these people are doing, except for the fact that they have to\n\"work around the system\" to achieve their goals. There will be many more\npeople who will move with their children to the US shortly after their births\nand then live in the US longer than those mentioned in the article. Why should\none group of people be able to become citizens immediately while the others\naren't able to [until they apply for citizenship]? In short, I feel no hard\nfeelings against those who only come to have their children here, but rather\nfeel that the system needs to be changed in some way.\n\n~~~\nRickHull\nYes, and also we expose them to our ideals. It's a win-win. Either they stay\nhere and produce and inform, or they go back home and produce and inform.\n\n------\naugustflanagan\nMy college roommate's parents did this (he's from the Philippines) 24 years\nago. Once he was born they went back to the Philippines and his first\nexperience in America was at age 18 when he came to the U.S. by himself for\nschool.\n\nIt worked out pretty well for him. He has since graduated with a top notch\ndegree and sponsored his family to come to the U.S. Kudos to them for having\nthe foresight to do this in the mid 80's.\n\n------\nmakmanalp\nI don't know what part of the world you guys are from, but it's a fairly well\nknown strategy in Turkey. I've had a friend who did that growing up. He had\ndual citizenship, one by right of birth and the other by right of parents.\nWhen you think about it, doesn't it make so much sense?\n\n------\nLocke1689\nInteresting. The Constitution is pretty clear here -- if you're born on US\nsoil, you're a US citizen. However, there's no requirement that the State\nDept. issue visas to people who are 6-9 months pregnant.\n\n~~~\nsigzero\n\"if you're born on US soil, you're a US citizen\"\n\nActually there IS debate about what that section actually means. Some take to\nmean in context that your parents had to have been under the laws (a citizen)\nalready and subsequently you cannot just hop the border, have a baby, and the\nbaby is a citizen. I happen to believe that as well.\n\n~~~\nanigbrowl\nNot among legal scholars, at least not since 1898.\n\nOops, left out the citation: US v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 US 649.\n[http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3381955771263111...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3381955771263111765)\n\n~~~\nJustACommenter\nThis case, and the idea that being American has a lot more to do with ideas\nthan with your ethnic origin, are important to my family history.\n\nMy grandmother was born in the US. Her mother died when she was young, so she\nand some of her siblings were sent back to the old country to live with\nrelatives for a while. Eventually my grandmother and her siblings returned to\nthe US, and she married my grandfather, leading to me, a proud American.\n\nThe reason this law was important was because my great-grandparents weren't US\ncitizens. In fact, they were prohibited from becoming naturalized US citizens\neven if they wanted to be (\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1790> ). Without the 14th\namendment, I might not be a US citizen.\n\nNor would my great-uncle, who served in the US military. It turns out that in\n1940 the US military suspected they had a need for Japanese translators. What\nbetter way to learn Japanese than to have gone to school in Japan?\n\nMy last thought on this topic is a joke:\n\nQ: Who was the greatest German general of World War II?\n\nA: Eisenhower.\n\n------\njulius_geezer\nThis was popular with Korean moms some years back.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDeep Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Manipulation - gwern\nhttps://arxiv.org/abs/1610.00633\n======\ngwern\nvideo:\n[https://sites.google.com/site/deeproboticmanipulation/](https://sites.google.com/site/deeproboticmanipulation/)\n\nblog: [https://research.googleblog.com/2016/10/how-robots-can-\nacqui...](https://research.googleblog.com/2016/10/how-robots-can-acquire-new-\nskills-from.html) \"How Robots Can Acquire New Skills from Their Shared\nExperience\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nComparison of Linux Software Update Technologies [pdf] - transpute\nhttp://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/Comparison%20of%20Linux%20Software%20Update%20Technologies_0.pdf\n======\nchriswarbo\nUnfortunate to see no mention of Nix or Guix :(\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe FCC just defined broadband as 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up - jcater\nhttps://gigaom.com/2015/01/29/bam-the-fcc-just-defined-broadband-as-25-mbps-down-and-4-mbps-up/\n\n======\nsuperobserver\nWhy not 100Mbps D&U ?\n\nThe ISP's in the US are atrocious. It's only thanks to Google Fiber that we're\nreally starting to see a difference. And that's 1Gbps down and up!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTech founders want California to secede - empressplay\nhttp://money.cnn.com/2016/11/09/technology/shervin-pishevar-california/index.html\n======\nmoyta\nHah, that is highly unrealistic, tech \"leaders\" have much less power in\nCalifornia than they realize, and there isn't a sufficient critical mass to\nget anywhere near real independence movements like the Catalonian independence\nmovement.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nScaling Erlang cluster to 10k nodes at WhatsApp [video] - anarchyrucks\nhttps://codesync.global/media/maxim-fedorov-scaling-erlang-cluster-to-10-000-nodes/\n======\nMawKKe\nDirect link to video:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJQyv26tFZ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJQyv26tFZ8)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAre coming soon pages, like this, actually effective? Discuss: - applebiz89\nhttp://www.spunlondon.co.uk\nI see this link earlier on today on Hacker News - wondered what peoples thoughts are on successful coming soon pages.<p>The reason for them is acquiring validation, but are there other methods which can be adopted to acquire this insight other than market research?\n======\nbt3\nLanding pages are inherently vague so as to not limit their potential\naudience. It's a trade off, but being too specific can limit the amount of\nusers who ultimately convert (enter their email). With the goal of a \"coming\nsoon\" page being to build interest, this is usually well accomplished by\nrequesting a simple email.\n\nObjectively, yes, coming soon/ landing pages are effective.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: My time tracking tool for your text editor - welder\nhttps://www.wakati.me/\n======\nlolnope\nGreat concept, but I'm not sure how comfortable I would be with a plugin that\nsends a list of active files to a website (even if it is SSL-secured).\n\n~~~\nHeliosmaster\nIt would be a great concept for a \"unhosted\" application.\n\n------\neblume\nA really cool idea, but probably not useable by anyone working on proprietary\nsoftware, I'm afraid. I'd love to use it as a productivity app - particularly\nif you could segment the data based on the active git branch - but\ntransmitting file information over the wire is a non starter for myself (and I\nimagine many others).\n\nHave you considered maybe supporting output via some sort of graphing language\ninstead? (R springs to mind.)\n\n~~~\ncadwag\nJust curious, would you have made the same arguments against RescueTime? It\ntoo transmits your activity data (and who knows what else) over the wire.\n\nI don't know if you use(d) RescueTime or not, so I don't mean it as an attack\nagainst you. I guess I just don't remember these types of arguments being\nleveled against RescueTime (maybe I'm wrong about that, but a quick search\ndidn't reveal anything) and I'm curious as to the reason. Is it b/c of the\nrecent privacy concerns being raised by the US govt's actions, that RescueTime\nhad more cachet when it launched, they got the messaging right to alleviate\nthese concerns, or something else?\n\n~~~\neblume\nI actually have used RescueTime. I would have probably raised the same concern\nexcept that I was using it, at the time, at the encouragement of my employer.\nIf they were fine with it, then so was I.\n\nI haven't continued to use it, but to be honest I haven't given it much\nthought.\n\n~~~\nAshuu\nI would like to know your thoughts about using Codeivate. Also what other time\ntracking app do you use?\n\n------\ngokulk\nI would be able to use it if there was a way to just keep the data only in my\ncomputer.\n\n------\ngoatslacker\nFor those looking for a local-only version of time tracking; I've had this in\nmy vimrc for some time now. It's quite vanilla but gets the job done\n\n[https://gist.github.com/goatslacker/6004481](https://gist.github.com/goatslacker/6004481)\n\n------\nccallebs\nJust some somewhat-constructive feedback: It's always a pet peeve of mine to\nsee the default bootstrap theme on new web apps. It doesn't take a lot of\neffort to customize it and doing so goes a long way to provide a sense of\nauthority about your application.\n\nI know it doesn't seem like that big of a deal (and for all I know, I could be\nalone with this sentiment) but it makes a world of difference for me.\n\nThat being said -- this looks awesome and I look forward to getting some\nconsulting work to try it out.\n\n~~~\ncanthonytucci\nDoesn't bother me in the least.\n\nBootstrap offers sane defaults and presents users with a familiar experience.\n\nIf my choices are color/design decisions made by someone who's specialty is\nsomething else, or just vanilla bootstrap, I'd encourage the latter.\n\n~~~\nRodericDay\nI agree.\n\n------\nCalinBalauru\nCool idea,\n\nMy problem with this type of granular time applications is that they are to\ngranular :)\n\nI don't only work on a project when I'm typing on a text editor. I actually do\na lot of thinking before using a editor in fact the actual time I spend in the\neditor is maybe 60% of the time I work on a project.\n\nSo for my case I will have to use it with some other time tracking tool witch\nis to much of a hasel.\n\nKeep us the good work, I am sure there is a market out there for this.\n\n~~~\nwelder\nYea it's not perfect, but you could just open a file and leave the editor open\nwhile you do other things for the project.\n\n------\nagentultra\nCool. I just use org-mode in Emacs which tracks all of my tasks and puts a\nnice little timer in my status bar. It saves everything in plain-text and I\ncan export it to various formats such as HTML or PDF as needed. I'd take a\nlook at it for inspiration if you're interested.\n\n~~~\nwelder\nI was using Org-mode but found it hard to actually use the data I was logging.\nThat's where WakaTime started.\n\nI also hated when I forgot to check-in or check-out from a task in Org-mode\nand had to guess about a timestamp. The whole experience was tedious.\n\nWith WakaTime I have many possibilities for data visualization and reports for\nmy side-projects and contracts.\n\n------\npantoine\nFor those of you who were commenting and looking for a local only timetracking\n, I have a git plugin that supports Redmine timetracking, and is git friendly.\nAlso, works for gitbranches and git repos, tracks by repo/by branch or\nannotated tag - does some other stuff - got to stop adding random features.\n\n[https://github.com/PAntoine/TimeKeeper](https://github.com/PAntoine/TimeKeeper)\n\n(EDIT: correct url/project)\n\n------\nbrbcoding\nCool idea... It took over my ST2 though. When trying to enter the API key, the\nconsole flashed wildly with a _couldn 't find api key_ message of sorts. Then,\nwhen I finally got the API key to be accepted, I was unable to access package\ncontrol via ctrl+shift+p. That functionality was replaced with another cmd\nwindow that instantly closes. Not sure what the deal is with it, but I'm\nuninstalling for now.\n\n~~~\nadeaver\nHow did you uninstall? If I remove it from the packages folder it just\ninstalls it again.\n\n~~~\nbrbcoding\nI just opened my User/AppData/Roaming/Sublime Text 2/Packages folder and\ndeleted it... It hasn't re-installed for me.\n\n------\nmilin\nHow does it know if I am doing useful work? If I just leave me vim window on\nand leave for lunch, will it know I am idle or log the time? Also, opposite\nscenario, when I am concentrated on something, I basically read the code for a\ngood 30-35 minutes, without typing anything into vim. Can it distinguish it as\nuseful work rather than otherwise?\n\n~~~\nwelder\nScenario 1: You leave Vim to read HN for a while.\n\nWakaTime will ask you when you return if you want to log that time to the\ncurrent file or not. This happens if you're away for > 15 mins.\n\nScenario 2: You are reading code without editing it for 30 mins.\n\nAt wakati.me you can check the \"save\" checkbox to filter out any\nfiles/projects that were not written to. That file where you did not make\nedits won't be shown on the website.\n\n------\njamesbrennan\nGreat idea for a plugin, but it made my Sublime Text 2 install unusably slow.\nI'm not sure what could be doing that - the fact the developer suggested\ninstalling bind to cache DNS requests makes me think it checks in with the\nsite very often and I have a poor internet connection where I am right now.\n\n------\njbrooksuk\nI'm currently making use of Codeivate -\n[http://codeivate.com/](http://codeivate.com/) \\- it's pretty awesome!\n\nYou can check my progress here,\n[http://www.codeivate.com/users/jbrooksuk](http://www.codeivate.com/users/jbrooksuk)\n\n------\ncivilian\nDo you have a bug tracker?\n\nWhen I left my computer for awhile, I'm now getting infinite \"You were away 17\nminutes. Add time to current file?\"\n\nIt's possible that it's not infinite and I just have THAT many files open, but\ngah. I have to uninstall this plugin for now. Let me know when it's fixed!\n\n~~~\nwelder\n[https://github.com/wakatime/sublime-\nwakatime/issues](https://github.com/wakatime/sublime-wakatime/issues)\n\nI've temporarily switched to using Sublime instead of Vim so that bug will get\nfixed today.\n\n------\nterabytest\nDoes this track time even when the window is unfocused? If possible, it\nshouldn't: I often leave my editor open but idle even for hours, and this\nmight skew the tracking by counting a lot of time on a file on which I didn't\nreally work for that long.\n\n------\njanlukacs\nWe do something pretty similar with PaymoPlus but it works with any app\n[http://www.paymo.biz/paymoplus](http://www.paymo.biz/paymoplus) \\- not sure\nwhy you would limit the app only to text editors.\n\n~~~\nwelder\nI limited it to text editors because I was making this for myself and I'm a\nprogrammer.\n\nI wanted to visually see the data I was already tracking with Org-mode and\nalso wanted my time tracked without my involvement.\n\n------\ndiggan\nTried it out, the search in file went really slow. Also, when I was away, it\nasked me if I wanted to log the away time. That's fine but opening up dialogs\nuntil Sublime crashes, not ok.\n\nWill try it out more when/if those two things are fixed.\n\n~~~\nwelder\nIt's probably slow now because of the HN load.\n\nRight now I don't have a better way to log AFK time besides the dialog. Just\nto clarify, are you worried about Sublime crashing while you're away?\n\n~~~\ndiggan\nNo, the whole plugin is slow. When I search for things for example, Sublime is\nslow. The website is not slow.\n\nAnd no, I'm not worried about Sublime crashing when I'm away. The dialog that\npops up when it asks you to log you time, popped up like a thousands of times\nand then Sublime crashed.\n\n------\nmkramlich\nsome portion of my project time is while in an text editor. some portion is\nnot. and use a variety of editors and tools. so if it only captures a narrow\nsubset of my actual spent project time, it's not a net-win for me personally.\neasier to start/stop a stopwatch of some kind. since that's out-of-band, it's\nautomatically inclusive of all activities, whether an editor involved or not.\nreading time counts, thinking time counts, meetings, phone convos, etc.\n\n~~~\nwelder\nWould a day planner view solve this? That view would show you blocks of time\nfor the day so you could see when you started working and when you stopped\nworking without worrying about the meetings or breaks in the middle.\n\n~~~\nmkramlich\nI think the MUT (minimum useful tool that nails it) would be like a stopwatch\napp/command, that also lets you specify what project (and optionally task\nwithin the project) is being started/paused/resumed/completed. Then it can\nshow you total breakdowns by project, task, etc. In a completely private and\nlocal way. In a terminal. With GUI only as an optional bonus. This may already\nexist and I just am ignorant of it. Seems like an \"old\" problem that should\nhave been solved by now and I just haven't stumbled upon it. I could write it\nI guess. But yeah, I don't want a desktop GUI or web app, by default. Give me\na CLI in a Terminal. With text, I can then have lots of easy/obvious ways to\nslice and dice that, script it, etc.\n\n------\nfrankcaron\nAwesome idea. Getting devs to track time is always a pain, and this kind of\nthing is a great way to get the data needed for less-annoying project\nmanagement.\n\n------\njaxn\nHow is this different from [http://rescuetime.com](http://rescuetime.com)\n(other than only tracking the text editor)?\n\n~~~\nwelder\nGood question. WakaTi.me knows what project your working under while\nrescuetime.com only knows that your inside your text editor.\n\n~~~\njaxn\nThat makes sense.\n\nRescueTime gives me information about how much time I spent in each file and\nis showing me the project as part of that info, but it doesn't rollup time\nspent in a project.\n\nStill seems of limited use since it wouldn't show me time spent debugging in a\nbrowser, working in the database, etc. From a productivity standpoint\nRescueTime lets me dictate that [http://myproject.dev](http://myproject.dev)\nis \"debugging\" time, Sublime Text is \"IDE\" time and that Terminal is also\n\"development\" time. If I could change how Sublime Text displays info in the\ntitle bar then I could probably set it to know that \"Sublime Text -> My\nProject -> file\" was time spent in \"development/my project\".\n\n~~~\nwogg\nActually, RescueTime does know and report on what file / project you have open\ninside the text editor, as long as the info is in the window title (which both\nthese apps do). And it's keyword-searchable by whatever is in that data\npoint-- usually filename, project name, directory tree etc. It works this way\nwith just about all text editors.\n\nThe key word search method is how people usually accomplish the idea of\nproject reporting-- but is admittedly not perfect, like you could get if we\nactually could consume that meta data.\n\nHowever, the \"document\" level details are only exposed to you in the premium\nversion-- in the free version you just get an open document count, so that is\na significant difference.\n\nI've always thought the long term path for an enriched time measurement\nexperience would involve plugins like this one. Great to see someone working\non it.\n\nDisclosure: I'm a RescueTime employee.\n\n~~~\njaxn\nAh, I am a premium member, so that makes sense that I saw that in my\ndashboard.\n\n------\nadambom\nNice. I signed up for an account and installed the sublime plugin. Is there\nany way to export data? Even if it's just an API for now.\n\n~~~\nwelder\nYes, I have a JSON api that the Backbone.js website uses. To export all of\nyour logged time, just page through this resource:\n\n[https://www.wakati.me/api/v1/actions?page=1&show=file,is_wri...](https://www.wakati.me/api/v1/actions?page=1&show=file,is_write,project,tags,time,endtime)\n\nI'll publish api docs soon to make writing your own plugin easier.\n\n------\nthesorrow\nThis is a great idea but would love to have the same thing for org-mode with\ngit commit message integration\n\n------\nferonull\nThere is bug on the windows when I changed file terminal window popup.\n\n------\nkarlhadwen\nIf it worked with TM2 I'd use it.\n\n------\nlucaspiller\nReally nice idea. I like it :)\n\n------\nmarkdown\nDat inserted content\n\n    \n    \n        <div id=\"wrap\">\n            <div id=\"page-header\"></div>\n            <div id=\"page-content\"></div>\n            <div id=\"push\"></div>\n        </div>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Turn articles to read into podcasts to listen - liaboc\nhttps://remarkboard.com/?hn1\n======\noldschoolrobot\nCool! I prefer listening instead of reading so this is a great service to me!\n\n~~~\nliaboc\nThanks a lot! Do you find it hard to understand how the app works?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIs this Animal Magnetism at work? - zupreme\nhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039520/Stuck-The-magnetic-cousins-attract-lot-attention--odd-knife-fork.html\n\n======\nchad_oliver\nThat looks like a total sham. In the pictures, every utensil is positioned so\nthat it could be held there simply by gravity and friction.\n\n------\nandrewflnr\nSo has anyone tested this with a compass or some other magnetic field\ndetecting device?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWhy Programming Language X Is Better Than Y (2013) - sanspace\nhttp://joelgrus.com/2013/12/24/why-programming-language-x-is-unambiguously-better-than-programming-language-y/\n\n======\ndottrap\nOriginal HN thread:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6960398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6960398)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPyjamas: build AJAX apps in Python (like Google did for Java) - soundsop\nhttp://pyjs.org/\n======\ned\nI'd also suggest checking out pyjamas-desktop (<http://pyjd.org/>), which\nallows you to deploy pyjamas apps to the desktop\n\n~~~\nmichaelneale\nyeah it looks great. I think its a great idea to use more of the web for the\ndesktop - there is so much work going on in browsers/javascript it makes sense\nto use it for offline work as well.\n\n~~~\nlkcl\nwell, the point of pyjamas-desktop is that you can, if you choose, run an\n\"online\" app that happens to be a stand-alone dedicated app that runs on the\nuser's desktop.\n\nlet me rephrase that :)\n\npyjamas-desktop can be used for \"online\" apps just as much as it can for\n\"offline\" ones. in fact, you _still_ need a web server, even if it's running\non localhost, because applications that conform to the pyjamas API will\n_still_ have to use XMLHttpRequest to interact with the rest of the world.\n\nthat interaction is done behind a neat abstraction module, HTTPRequest.py, but\nit's still necessary.\n\nso - offline / online, there's no difference.\n\nwhat you _do_ get with pyjamas-desktop is a speed-increase in your\napplication, thanks to no longer being forced to utilise javascript. in cases\nwhere your application morphs into something that requires 10,000 on-screen\nwidgets (not inconceivable for complex business apps) the speed-up of direct\naccess to the blindingly-quick WebKit (<http://webkit.org>) underlying library\nis absolutely essential.\n\nnot even GWT can offer this, because google haven't bothered to port GWT to\nthe desktop: they believe that the \"hosting\" mode - running from the Eclipse\nDevelopment Environment - a whopping 150mb download on its own - is perfectly\nsufficient.\n\n~~~\nmichaelneale\nBut GWT doesn't require eclipse to run? that 150Meg I assume must mean the 10\ntonne eclipse IDE? Not GWT.\n\n~~~\nlkcl\nif you want to run \"hosted\" mode, where the javascript and java is executed by\neclipse, then yes, GWT requires eclipse.\n\nGWT itself does not have a \"desktop\" mode, it does not have a \"desktop\"\nversion, and so GWT apps cannot themselves be run as a \"desktop\" app unless\nyou use the GWT Eclipse-basesd \"hosted\" mode - or you run the GWT-compiled\njavascript under Adobe AIR, Mozilla's Gecko / Spidermonkey, etc. etc. etc.\n\n~~~\nmichaelneale\nRight yes I don't think GWT is really interested in desktop - unless like you\nsay you compile it, but then its quite different.\n\nI have run it hosted just fine with no eclipse components (only for dev of\ncourse) - just the JVM and about 10 meg of jars (or 9 meg dev jar) - I am not\nsure where you get the 150 meg from though?\n\n------\nSingAlong\nThis is really cool. But wouldn't it be better to generate docs from comments\nthan refering to GWT docs?\n\nAnyway, they also have an online demo which you won't find on the site. Their\nBookReader <http://pyjs.org/book/output/Bookreader.html> (ongoing\ndocumentation) is itself a demo.\n\nEDIT: Oh! just noticed that the Bookreader docs is very linux oriented.\n\n~~~\nlkcl\nThere are several bits of documentation auto-generated from the docstrings -\nhere's one: <http://lkcl.net/pyjamas-desktop/docs/output/docui.html>\n\nthis is one i made by hacking the standard python 2.5 pydoc.py to auto-\ngenerated pyjamas code, which you then either run with pyjamas-desktop -\n<http://pyjd.org> \\- or you run through the pyjamas compiler -\n<http://pyjs.org> and you get the documentation.\n\nso it can and has been done.\n\nre the docs being linux-orientated: yep, i'm a linux baby :) and i haven't\nencountered too many windows people who use pyjamas, surprisingly. it's self-\ncontained and OS-independent, so works perfectly.\n\n------\ndefrex\nHmm, can this be used for only javascript? As in, I write my own html but use\npyjamas to generate my js (which can manipulate the dom of my html).\n\nI'm down with abstracting javascript (good riddance), but I like to be picky\nabout html.\n\n~~~\nlkcl\nyep, that's right. pyjamas has three components:\n\n* a stand-alone javascript compiler\n\n* a DOM-model library that can be used to do things like getElementById\n\n* a UI-widget library that has things like HTMLPanel, Label, Tree, Image\n\npyjamas-desktop rips out the first of these, rips out all javascript in 2) and\n3) and replaces the javascript with Webkit/Glib, thus providing the _exact_\nsame functionality. it's blindingly quick.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nWays iPhone Users Get Ripped Off - Freebytes\nhttp://news.google.com/news/section?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&topic=t&ict=ln\n\n======\nseancron\nI'm going to take a guess that you actually meant:\n\n[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9178836/5_ways_iPhone...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9178836/5_ways_iPhone_users_get_ripped_off)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nViking school is switching its program from rails to Fullstack JavaScript - aecorredor\nhttps://www.vikingcodeschool.com/posts/learn-full-stack-javascript-in-12-weeks-with-viking-immersive\n======\nDrScump\nUm, I tried on both Chrome and Opera, and in both cases the email-signup box\ncannot be entered into.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: How often you take Android device full file backup and store it on cloud? - gkrisub\nThe full file backup means the device folder structure is maintained when stored on cloud (for e.g. Google Drive).\n======\nkrishnaycombi\nBy full file backup are you referring to copying all the data under\n/storage/emulated/0, /sdcard mount points?\n\n~~~\ngkrisub\nYes. Storing as it's on cloud. I should be able to browse on cloud storage as\nI do on device. Basically, maintaining replica of device on cloud.\n\n~~~\nkrishnaycombi\nThat sounds like a good step in the backup strategy.\n\n------\npavan123\nNever. I just took backup of my contacts twice in my lifetime when I was\nformatting my mobile.\n\n~~~\ngkrisub\nHow about backup of SMS, Call log, photos, music and other files, to avoid\nloosing data in case of device lost? The existing backup apps require\nscheduling apriori, and I'll loose new data between schedules, when device\ngets lost.\n\n~~~\npavan123\nIt's a good practice to take regular backups of the entire device. Probably I\nshould do more often.\n\n~~~\nsubramanyamgv\nIt's painful to schedule backups. I believe users are less predictable on what\nand when to backup. Chances are that users regret on their backup strategy,\nafter loosing the data for e..g, that they should have scheduled daily rather\nthan weekly\n\n------\nselckin\nnever\n\n~~~\ngkrisub\nHow do you handle the situation when device gets lost or stop functioning?\n\n~~~\nselckin\nbuy a new one install software, wait for everything to sync?\n\n~~~\ngkrisub\nFor iOS devices, iCloud syncs everything. There is no similar alternative for\nAndroid devices. Google Play syncs some: Contacts, Apps and Gmail etc. But to\nsync app data, other files and folders, Google play doesn't have a copy. And\nare lost with the device.\n\n~~~\non_and_off\nActually, with Marshmallow, Android apps can now backup themselves just like\niOS ones.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHas the Salvator Mundi Really Gone Missing? Unpacking the Latest Theory - hecubus\nhttps://hyperallergic.com/479260/has-the-salvator-mundi-really-gone-missing-unpacking-the-latest-conspiracy-theory/\n======\ndrcode\nWhenever I hear about this painting I wonder if such expert-based attribution\ncan really be trusted... then I look at the picture again and think \"damn,\nthat is such a fantastic painting, who else could have made it?\" And I wonder\nif the \"experts\" are just using the same emotional assessment as I am, at the\nend of the day.\n\n~~~\nDataWorker\nJerry Saltz points to the perspective being unlike his other work.\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhzpRYP48is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhzpRYP48is)\n\n~~~\ntlarkworthy\nGreat burn\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Why can't we solve the app store monopoly problem? - jonas_kgomo\nFor the longest time, application distribution has been generally a sport for big companies like Apple and Google. Why hasn&#x27;t there been enough innovation in terms of creating alternatives despite a healthy improvement of web application distribution like PWAs(Progressive Web Apps). WeChat uses microapps that help users access a lot of other mobile applications. Some interesting innovation might be Dapps inside the Coinbase Wallet or Status IM.   What are some reasons it is futile to take on this marketplace.<p>Most of us here do not want to promote the rhetoric&#x2F;marketing of DHH but just want to bring attention to important problems that need to be solved.\n======\ncocktailpeanuts\n> Why hasn't there been enough innovation in terms of creating alternatives\n> despite a healthy improvement of web application distribution like\n> PWAs(Progressive Web Apps)\n\nThis is because those who think these solutions will change things have no\nidea where the problem is coming from. Basically they are solving the wrong\nproblem. They must first sit down and think hard about why it is that Apple\nand Google have so much power. It's because they have built products people\ncan't live without on a daily basis (Android and iPhone)\n\nPWA won't get you anywhere because at the end of the day your success is still\nat the mercy of those platform providers. Currently Google and Apple just let\nthem be because they're just cute experiments that don't threaten their\nbusiness model. But when it does become threatening, they may easily shut down\naccess to PWAs overnight and there's nothing we can do about it other than\nbitching on public forums like HN.\n\nThe point is, if you want to beat Google or Apple you need to start from a\nplatform that doesn't rely on them at all. PWA completely fails there.\n\n> Some interesting innovation might be Dapps inside the Coinbase Wallet or\n> Status IM. What are some reasons it is futile to take on this marketplace.\n\nFor the same reason, this \"DAPP\" is even sillier. Unless these \"DAPP\" guys are\ngoing to build their own device, at the end of the day they still rely on iOS\nand Android for their users to interact with their \"Decentralized\" app. What a\njoke.\n\nThe solution is not about building a \"decentralized app store\" or \"fight\nagainst Apple and Google\". It's about building something that comes out of\nnowhere and disrupts the current status quo in ways never expected. No other\nway around it.\n\n~~~\nmbrevda1\nHow do you \"shut down\" a PWA? At the end of the day, it's just a website?!\n\n~~~\nirrational\nMany of the functionalities of a true PWA simply aren’t available in Safari on\niOS. And since all browsers on iOS must use the Safari engine, there is no way\nto get around this limitation.\n\n------\nCrazyontap\nGoogle services are a huge drain on the battery. Have ou ever tried to\ndegoogle your phone? Such an amazing increase in battery life [1].\n\nMy stock android (samsung) was like having a parasite running on your hardware\nthat eats your battery and maybe also tracks what you're doing all the time.\n\nI wish there was another OS like what Linux is to Windows and Apple that had\natleast the few basic apps like Uber, Youtube, etc. It is really the need of\nthe hour\n\n[1] [https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-m30s/how-to/guide-\nde...](https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-m30s/how-to/guide-degoogle-\ndebloat-m30s-install-t4042883/amp/)\n\n~~~\nlifty\nCheck out /e/ ([https://e.foundation/](https://e.foundation/)). It’s an\nAndroid rom that is privacy oriented and that removed google services. They\nalso sell devices that have /e/ preinstalled.\n\n~~~\nleefalk\nI use /e/ it and it works great. It is great for privacy.\n\n------\nH8crilA\nLack of support for antitrust. People are still enjoying massive corporate\nprofit margins and S&P500 gains. Literally the entire pensions system depends\non super high profit margins.\n\nThis is by no means unique to our times and tech. Happened many times in the\npast.\n\nPS. When was the last time that Wilshire 5000 actually had 5000 companies in\nit? Google tells me it was in Dec 2005.\n\n------\nmritun\nIf you’re saying why we don’t have multiple app stores run by multiple people\nand even self hosted apps then I can help add an answer.\n\nIt was exactly like this before Android and iPhone. I had a Nokia E71 and\nbefore that a Sony Walkman phone. They could run J2ME apps and games and you\ncould download from a site called getjar.com and others. Nokia Symbian could\nrun more powerful native apps - I wrote one myself.\n\nThey all sucked. Most of the apps were full of malware and you never knew\nwhich one would lock up your phone, infect your phone, or upload all your data\nto somewhere.\n\nAppStore and Playstore exist for the same reason that CA certificates exist -\nmost people are good but some are terrible and they damage the ecosystem. For\nCA we have LetsEncrypt now. But phones are way more complex than that. Most of\nthe phone stack is thankless but highly specialized work - you won’t get that\nfor free in volume anytime soon.\n\nIt’s more complicated because people expect the latest phones. Older\ngeneration mobile technology is worthless right now. Cutting edge technology\nneeds investment and has substantial market. This market is also winner takes\nall. There is maybe place for 3 players but not anymore in an efficient,\ncommodity market that’s also capex heavy.\n\n~~~\nBrian_K_White\nWhat I remember was enjoying a totally full ecosystem of PalmOS apps that I\ncould install from anywhere on my Samsung sph-i300 6 or 7 years before the\nfirst iphone even came out, and they were mostly all great.\n\nAs great as the hardware and cell network of 2001 allowed anyway. The worst\nthing an apl ever was was sucky or stupid, never harmful.\n\nI had apps to do every random thing you could think of from trivial little\nthings like calculating a netmask or decoding resistor color codes, to fully\nfunctional clients for ssh, irc, email, web, even vnc, audible.com, several\ndb-app-dev type apps like handbase (like access right on the phone), a phone\ndialer app that integrated with the contacts db because the built-in dialer\ndidn't even do that yet...\n\nIt was like all the good parts about dos & windows where anyone could write an\napp and anyone could install anyone's app.\n\nIt was 100% great with no downside or horror story at all. Certainly dos/win\ngained malware, and surely some harmful palmos apps must have existed, but\nsomehow from the first Kyocera palmos phone, through the SPH-i300 & 310 or 330\nwhatever the updated model# after i300, through a few Treos, and finally the\nPalm Pre, I never once ran into one.\n\nIn 2001.\n\nIphone came out in 2007, with no 3rd party apps at all.\n\nI say this argument is at least questionable.\n\n------\nericflo\nEither government has to intervene and make the marketplace competitive, or\nwe'll have to spend a decade or more routing around the app duopoly.\n\nI used to think we could build a new platform in a sandbox on top of the old\nplatforms (like a browser), but the duopoly has gotten so confidently\naggressive that they'll squash out of existence any new platform before it has\na chance to grow.\n\nI actually thought Expo (the React Native runtime) had a chance to do this\n\"platform on a platform\" thing, but Apple wouldn't even allow their debug tool\nto exist once they realized you could preview apps by plugging a URL into\ntheir runtime client, and that those apps were actually good.\n\nSo yeah: government intervention, or a few decades of lost progress and value\ncreation. Thankfully for those of us still living in a democracy, we get some\nchoice in the matter.\n\n------\nkingkongjaffa\nBecause the same people who make the devices also run the app store. Therefore\nthey get to stay 'No other app stores allowed' on our devices and OS.\n\nIsn't this extremely obvious?\n\n~~~\nekr\nThey don't get to say that due to antitrust laws. Hence why you can use\nAmazon's appstore on Android, or FDroid etc. I'm not really familiar with the\nApple ecosystem.\n\n~~~\nkick\nThey do get to say that. Apple has a minority of the market and wouldn't run\ninto legally-justifiable antitrust problems.\n\n~~~\nbouk\nApple certainly has a monopoly in the iPhone app market.\n\n~~~\nkick\nSure, and Frigidaire has a monopoly on Frigidaire refrigerators.\n\nI said legally-justifiable antitrust claims. Apple has a minority of the\nsmartphone market. You can make anything into a \"monopoly\" if you define it\nnarrowly enough but that's not legally justifiable in any way.\n\n~~~\nNullabillity\nBut that's not what the discussion is about. Frigidaire doesn't try to limit\nyou to only putting stuff you bought at Walmart into their fridges.\n\n~~~\nkick\nNor does Apple: you can have as many PWAs as you want. As JS is Turing\ncomplete, you can then have every sort of app. They've always encouraged PWAs.\n\nUnless you want to legally force every company to surrender their source code\n(which I enthusiastically would support), there's no legal basis for Apple not\nbeing able to have their proprietary feature phone locked down.\n\nThough if you'd like, you can look at Keurig, which does limit what you can\nput into it to \"only Keurig products\" or one of the _millions_ of other things\nthat limit what you can put into it.\n\n~~~\nanoncake\n> Though if you'd like, you can look at Keurig, which does limit what you can\n> put into it to \"only Keurig products\" or one of the millions of other things\n> that limit what you can put into it.\n\nWhatabout...\n\n------\nAbishek_Muthian\nIronically it was Steve Jobs who announced No SDK web apps as primary model\nfor app delivery in iPhone and later when he realised it could mint money;\nnative apps via App store became de facto.\n\nInitial set of iPhone app developers made a whole lot of money from App store,\nif not money they scaled their business to new heights - Whatsapp, Instagram,\nSnapchat etc. Since android was late to catch up in the developed economy,\nApple got away with its ridiculous monopolistic practices with Appstore.\n\nBut now times have changed, people care more about apps than the platform they\nrun on e.g. Spotify. WhatsApp on KaiOS on a single device in a single\ncountry(albeit large population) made that OS a significant player in the\nsmartphone ecosystem - a feat which even Microsoft failed to achieve; that\nexplains the importance of apps over the platform currently.\n\nI think Apple might showcase the support for PWA in Safari as a way to defend\nits anti-trust litigations in the future. Although I personally want the PWA\nto succeed as it's the only way pure Linux smartphone ecosystem could capture\nmarket i.e. it's more important to break the smartphone duopoly than to break\nthe app store monopoly (IMO), for security and sanity of mobile computing.\n\n[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_application#Ba...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_application#Background)\n\n~~~\nwayneftw\nI would bet money that Steve Jobs never intended to actually have web apps as\nthe only type of apps on the iPhone.\n\nTheir native SDK was probably just not ready yet for the release and they knew\nabout Android which they wanted to beat to market.\n\n------\nstephc_int13\nThe App-Store was a huge improvement over existing distribution at the time.\n\n30% wasn't super generous but it was much better than anything else, and Apple\nwas a kind of underdog in the mobile market, at first.\n\nToday, things are different, we have a duopoly, in practice that's the same as\na litteral monopoly.\n\nAntitrust laws should apply, but it will take time, a lot of time, big\ncorporations have huge lobbying power.\n\n------\nalexashka\nBecause it's expensive and difficult to directly compete with trillion dollar\ncompanies?\n\nThat's why we have a government, because when companies get big enough, that's\nthe only entity left that can restore the balance of power.\n\nSince we're living in a corporatocracy, it has become unclear which corporate\nabuse gets a slap on the wrist and when, because there are so many. It's\nbecome profitable to do what you want now, ask for forgiveness later. It turns\nout you can even ruin the world's economy and instead of getting punished,\nreceive a bail-out and your usual hefty bonuses!\n\nI can only assume these decisions get made behind closed doors by groups of\npoliticians and multi-national corporations. When a consensus gets reached,\nthey announce it to the public, not unlike when crime syndicates get together\nwith the police and give them a few sacrificial lambs, to continue business as\nusual.\n\n------\ndreamcompiler\nThe only real solution to this problem is to completely reverse-engineer the\niPhone and iPad down to the level of the ISA and device drivers and load a\nfree operating system.\n\nAnd no the ISA is not ARM. It resembles ARM but it contains secret Apple\nsauce. And there's lots of crypto chip voodoo going on; we'd also have to\nfigure out how to disable all that.\n\nIn any case the requisite reverse engineering could be done with enough money.\nIt's not a technical problem. But it definitely is a money problem: I don't\nknow how to make a good enough business case for offering IOS device owners a\ncompletely alternative OS because most of the muggles just don't care.\n\n------\nzdragnar\nBecause we keep buying devices locked into app stores, and we tell ourselves\nthat is A Good Thing for security.\n\nI have an android device and never considered a third party app store. It is\nhard enough to trust most apps in the approved store, let alone a stranger's.\nAt best, I go straight to the content owner and use their website.\n\nSandstorm tried something like this, but never took off because most people-\nproducers and consumers alike- don't find them more helpful than what already\nexists.\n\n------\nkccqzy\nIt would help to look at the situation of the Android marketplace in China. As\nwe all know Google Play Store isn't available in China, so has app\ndistribution been decentralized and innovative in China? Is there a benefit?\n\nThe answer is of course no. You have the same Chinese Big Tech dominating,\nlike Tencent or Qihoo. You have tech companies that have nothing to do with\napps, but make app stores nonetheless just because they can. You _still_ have\napp stores operated by carriers (China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom).\nAnd then you have small app stores that struggle to survive, and even then\nusually resorting to unscrupulous measures that would be utterly unacceptable\nelsewhere.\n\nDoes this approach of multiple app stores benefit app developers? I don't\nthink so. Developers would rather have one single store and their rules and\nrequirements to deal with. So much so that there are now intermediaries in\nChina whose job is to get apps distributed on multiple stores so that\ndevelopers don't have to worry about it. It's just become another middleman\nthat eats into the profits. Or they decide app distribution is so difficult\nthat they make their app a simple web view wrapper, and lose many benefits of\na native app like tighter integration with the rest of the system.\n\nDoes this help consumers? I'm afraid not either. Do you really want consumers\nto remember which store they downloaded an app from? Not to mention app stores\noverwriting apps downloaded by other app stores, a dark pattern to boost their\nown numbers, or an app store forcibly silencing the update notification from a\ncompeting app store, etc.\n\nSo what are the innovations you are expecting?\n\n------\nlibertine\nThis is the point of view of a marketer that thinks that the solution should\nbe to regulate ALL MARKETPLACES, or to require an independent entity to be the\nreferee/regulator.\n\nI think most people disregard what conditioning does to human behavior.\n\nConditioning takes a long time and consistency, and you have OS's that\nfunneled users during YEARS of usage to use what they provided as a way to\nfind and install applications.\n\nApple is an extreme of enforcing the App store, but for Android you could\ninstall other appstores/distributors, hell manufacturers tried this (Samsung,\nHuawei, and many others) to bring their proprietary solutions. Yet it didn't\nscratch the Playstore marketshare. Why is that? I think it's because for a\nlong time, the Playstore was the only solution and that was just enough time\nto be established for users as well as developers.\n\nWhy, on the other hand, for Windows people don't gravitate towards windows\nstore?\n\nHere I think it's because windows had apps for their OS being sold from\nshelves on shops, given away as demos on magazines, to .exe files you could\ndownload from the web, or that could be transfered by your neighbor via\nFloppy/CD/USB Stick. People are used to look for Windows Apps in a plethora of\ndistribution channels. Hell people still factored the possibility of having\nvirus on the apps according to the distribution channel.\n\nIf you look at MacOS, people are conditioned to look at one place - and it\ndoesn't take too long of usage to achieve this.\n\nPeople are lazy, in a good way. We want the most effective way to achieve our\ngoals, with the right conditioning it becomes extremely hard to shift.\n\n------\ntuckerconnelly\nWe need to build our own phones, and run whatever OS we want on them. Why\nisn't it easier to build your own smartphone?\n\n~~~\nunix_fan\nno common drivers, hardware, or software.\n\n------\nRazengan\nI do NOT want to go back to the chaos of pre-App Store world where you had to\nvisit NN different websites to get your software, multiplied for every\nmachine, then revisiting them regularly for updates or putting up with noise\nfrom N different update mechanisms.\n\n~~~\nanoncake\nOkay. Let's only ban making app stores mandatory then, not app stores\nthemselves.\n\n------\nkitsunesoba\nPWAs still have a long way to go before they're fully viable replacements for\napps. Even on Android, which supports them vastly better than iOS, they're\nstill lackluster. This is partially on the shoulders of mobile OS/browser\nvendors, but I think there's also an unavoidable ceiling to what current web\narchitecture can do in terms of UX.\n\nFront end web architecture is going to have to undergo a more radical\nevolution before native apps can reasonably be displaced. React and family\nwere the first step of that, and I would guess the next step is building\nsomething like it into browsers themselves.\n\n------\nWaterluvian\nThe app stores work incredibly well for the overwhelming majority of users.\n\n------\nPaulHoule\nA political answer would be for governments to take action.\n\nSince the Euro zone is lucky enough not to have an app store in it, they might\nbe able to force Apple to open up the app store, maybe even publish the\ninformation and tools to develop iOS software without a Mac.\n\nAnother answer is to develop web applications instead of apps. Almost always\nwe get pestered to first use the app, second use the mobile web site, third\nuse the desktop web site, but usually the quality of the user experience is\nthe other way around.\n\n------\nsupernova87a\nEveryone is free to innovate and create alternatives. Go ahead -- go out and\nbuild something that people want and is a platform that people are willing to\n/ want to develop on, and can be charged fewer fees (or no fees at all).\n\nAn app store is not a public utility or place of public accommodation that\nentitles people to a certain kind or level of access. Or a right to sue,\nclaiming that a certain price is fair.\n\nFeel free to make something newer and better.\n\n------\nlookupthere\nIt's the fundamental economics of platforms. At the same time that they are\nvery democratic, they are also very monopolistic. It's weird and not something\nyou should analyse without undoing your intuition about companies. The\neconomics is very different.\n\nBook recommendation: Modern Monopolies by Alex Moazed\n\n------\nvoisin\nEveryone seems upset (publicly, though I suspect it has been kept private for\na long time) right now about the App Store’s commissions on sales. How does\nthis differ From, and why isn’t there an equal level of outrage over, the\n“service fees” that AirBNB or Uber charge?\n\n------\nphreack\nYou literally can't sideload any app on an iPhone and Apple will never relent\non that unless they're compelled by law. So either you get people to stop\nbuying iPhones or lawmakers to admit that's a problem, and neither is likely\nto happen nowadays.\n\n------\nxwdv\nThere's an easy way to solve the monopoly problem. Redefine app stores as\nutilities.\n\n------\nysavir\nThe problem is cost of entry into the market with diminishing returns.\n\nWhat we have is not a technology problem. The problem is that what you build\nis worthless unless you get people to adopt it. And right now, that requires:\n\n* Building a phone/piece of hardware that can run apps and replace the iPhone/android phones * Investing in a marketing campaign to get your hardware into the mainstream, so people will buy your phone instead of an android or iphone. * Convincing companies and app makes to build for your new hardware.\n\nThat breaks down to a tremendous amount of R&D, building a cloud network that\ncan rival Google's and Apple's cloud systems, convincing app makers to build\nfor a platform despite it not having any users, and convincing users to buy\ninto your platform despite not having any apps.\n\nIt's tremendously expensive.\n\nIt was a worthwhile expense for Apple: they literally invented the new\necosystem and were the only option at the start. Their return was guaranteed.\n\nIt was a worthwhile expense for Google: they already had the cloud services,\nwere a household name, operated arguably the largest ad network to market\ntheir new platform, and had plenty of cash on hand to get things moving fast.\nThey may not have been able to match Apple's competition-less returns, but had\na low cost to entry and even half of the pie is great value.\n\nFor any new competitor, having to share the pie with Apple and Google limits\nthe potential return. Couple that limit with having huge expenses to build out\na competing product and getting people to use it, and it's not a very\nappealing investment. At best, you get what's left after Google's and Apple's\nshares. At worst, you spend millions (billions?) for nothing. We've already\nseen the Windows Phone and the Fire Phone fail to enter, and if giants like\nMicrosoft and Amazon deemed it not worth their while, who will?\n\nSo that's where we are now. So long as the masses use Apple and Google\nproducts, they will continue to default to those app stores. And it doesn't\nmake financial sense for anyone to enter the market and compete with them\n(with any significance, at least _).\n\n_ I could see some very niche phones/tools coming into play, but with very\nlimited functionality and only a narrow user base that actively seeks that\nniche. Eg. security-seeking engineers. Someone could make a phone with very\nlimited features (at least, \"native\" functionality ala gmail) and see success\nwith an audience seeking that subset, but it wouldn't be a mainstream option.\n\n------\nykevinator\nWhy did Ubuntu for mobile fail? Feels like that's the kind of thing we need\n\n------\nGrumpyNl\nNoticed toady, you cant even download firefox on android without a app store.\n\n~~~\nderision\nI was able to find an apk in 5 minutes by googling \"Firefox apk download\" and\nit installed just fine\n\n~~~\nGrumpyNl\nIts an older device, all those links give https certificate errors\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Data on job market for entry-level Rails devs? - BrainScraps\nHi HN,<p>I'm about to pivot my life from using my marketing degree to devoting myself to becoming a Rails developer. My wonderful and analytical wife wants to see some hard data on the number of open junior Rails dev positions vs the number of applicants, or anything of that sort. She's too careful to believe my \"everyone says we're in the middle of a Great Dev Drought\" protestations.<p>Please help me find the right data. And if you have some anecdotal evidence, we'll consider that too!<p>Thanks a ton!<p>@brainscraps<p>EDIT: Since there is a consensus that having an active GitHub profile is a good thing, no matter how messy, here's a link: https://github.com/BrainScraps\n======\nnateberkopec\nAs someone trying to hire Rails devs right now, I have two things to say - one\ngood, one bad.\n\n* The Good News: I started coding 18 months ago, and now I'm a lead developer at a funded startup and a two-time contributor to Rails (along with other contributions to open source).\n\n* The Bad News: While there is a hiring drought, there is NOT a drought for hiring guys who just learned Rails three-to-six-months ago at a dev bootcamp somewhere. We get literally dozens of cold emails a week from people like this. The amount they can contribute is almost nothing and 95% aren't capable of holding down a FT junior position.\n\nI think my point is don't think that you'll go to some bootcamp at have a job\nfor 90k with benefits in 6 months. You need to work your ass off to be\nemployable in that amount of time, although it's possible.\n\n~~~\npiratebroadcast\nCurious - What city are you in?\n\n~~~\nnateberkopec\nNYC\n\n------\ntechiferous\nGood Rails devs are hard to find and in large demand. As a beginning Rails\ndeveloper, though, you'll need to convince your new employer that you are a\nnet gain. A junior dev can need so much hand-holding that they can steal away\nprecious time from a senior dev.\n\nPut some good Ruby code on github. If you can, you'll improve your chances of\ngetting hired quite a bit. If you can't then you're not ready to be hired yet.\n\n~~~\nBrainScraps\nThanks for the feedback!\n\nI'm actually making a part of my transition plan to attend an intensive course\nlike those offered by General Assembly and CodeFellows.org\n\nThose programs are designed to give me plenty of opportunity to put up live\nprojects and public code. I have some stuff now, but it's so messy and noob-\ntastic that I'm not showing it to anybody for fear of being put in the stocks.\nIt's that bad. :/\n\n~~~\ncheald\nI'm a tech lead who does interviews and makes hiring decisions for Rails\ndevelopers, and I completely understand your sentiment, but I encourage you to\npush past that and publish anyhow.\n\nMore published code is better than less published code irrespective of\nquality, because it tells me that you're engaged and devoted to your craft,\nand it gives me a sense of what projects and technologies you're interested in\nand have been exposed to. Additionally, publishing code gives me a way to see\nyour progression through the craft, and to get a sense of not only how\ndeveloped you are as a programmer, but how you're growing.\n\nA junior programmer who shows growth and improvement is a much better hire\nthan a junior who is competent but shows no growth. When I hire people, I want\nto hire people who will grow into strong senior developers over their career,\nwhich means that I'm primarily looking for ability to learn and grow rather\nthan a specific buzzword checklist. Hiring a junior comes with the expectation\nthat I'm going to have to train and hand-hold them, but I want to hire a\njunior who will progress out of that stage, and will be able to start taking\ncare of those things for new hires down the road.\n\nPublishing code on Github doesn't mean that you're asking other people to use\nit; it just means you're publishing it. A Github profile on a resume is a +1\nfor me; a Github account with a lot of forks is another +1, an account with\noriginal code is yet another +1, and an account with original code that other\npeople use is the big cherry on top. In all cases, though, I'd rather see an\nactive account filled with \"noobish\" or \"messy\" code than an empty account.\n\n~~~\nsbank\nI'm curious about GitHub and the code you review. Like many, I can hate my own\ncode and sometimes feel that it will be used against me in a hiring process.\nSo I guess what I'm asking is how much does it count against a potential hire\nthat they have bad code and/or bad ideas on GitHub?\n\n> More published code is better than less published code irrespective of\n> quality\n\nThis is the path I try to walk. I'd rather put something out there than\nnothing at all.\n\n~~~\ncheald\nCrudely speaking, no code < bad code < good code. However, what I tend to be\ninterested in is curiosity and improvement in the case of a junior programmer.\nOne technique I've seen that's worked well with me is for the applicant to\nlist their 3 favorite repos on their resume, which guides me towards looking\nat them, rather than just poking around randomly at the \"bad stuff\".\n\nAs an interviewer, I don't care that you've written bad code in the past (any\ndeveloper who says he hasn't is lying). I _do_ care that you have written code\nup to the standard of the job I'm hiring for (which is going to be quite\nlenient for a junior position), but I'm mostly going to be looking for cues\ndemonstrating improvement and curiosity. The more technologies, languages, and\nconcepts you touch, the better. To me, your Github profile is a showcase of\nyour interests first and foremost.\n\nI'm much less interested in hiring someone for their hard skills than I am for\ntheir potential. I can hire outsource hard skills for pennies on the dollar;\nwhat I want are people who can become proactive owners of the projects they're\non, not just code monkeys who turn specs into code. For example, one guy I\nhired saw that we were looking for a dev with front-end chops, so he re-coded\nhis resume with backbone.js just to show off a bit. This caught my attention,\nnot because of his ability to write Javascript, but because his proactive\nsolution to the question of \"how do I get this company to hire me?\" told me\nthat he was the kind of person I wanted to work with, not just that he had a\nspecific skillset that I could hire.\n\n~~~\nsbank\nThank you for an informative response! I'm gonna keep this in mind when I\nstart applying for jobs. Currently I spend evenings and weekends programming\nand learning on my own.\n\n------\nitsprofitbaron\nThere are 211 jobs available with Ruby on Rails positions advertised on\nAngelList. 47 of those jobs advertise $100-109k positions & 64 are offering\n.5-.9% equity.\n\nYou can enter your area etc for a more detailed range etc:\n<https://angel.co/salaries>\n\n~~~\nBrainScraps\nThanks a ton for these data- helpful stuff!\n\nI've shown her some raw data from Indeed and DICE, but the reason why I've\nturned to the community is this:\n\nShe's not impressed with the _raw number of open positions._ If that were a\nconclusive indicator, then getting a marketing job would be a snap in the Bay\nArea, but I assure you that it is not. I tried explaining to her that price\n(or salary) is a good indicator of the saturation rate of the market, but\nshe's not convinced by that argument. (I'm not sure that I am either. It could\nbe that the salary averages are being driven up by more senior ruby positions\nthat I wouldn't be able to qualify for in less than a few years.)\n\nThat's why I'm hoping to get some data points from employers who know whether\nor not there is _actually_ a dev shortage like many people claim.\n\n~~~\nitsprofitbaron\nWanted Analytics released a press release on January 8 2013, showing that \"The\nnumber of product management or product development job ads posted during\nDecember rose 23% compared to December 2011, 30% versus 2010, and 99% from\n2009\"[1] which, is a good indicator of growth in the market.\n\nThere is definitely a shortage of good talent across the majority of languages\nas a _good_ developer is in demand. However, you have to prove to potential\nemployers that you're a _good_ developer which is why they usually as to see\nGithub profiles etc in the application (and if you haven't got one already you\nshould definitely make a Github account). Likewise, since you're learning you\ncould even blog about learning Ruby on Rails and even create some mini-working\nproducts on Heroku to show that you're capable of shipping & able to\ncommunicate in technical terms.\n\nFurthermore, for further evidence of employers trying to attract Ruby on Rails\ntalent then, you should have a look what LivingSocial are doing to attract\nRuby on Rails devs with <http://www.hungryacademy.com>\n\n[1]\n[http://www.wantedanalytics.com/press/2013/01/08/innovation-i...](http://www.wantedanalytics.com/press/2013/01/08/innovation-\nin-demand-product-managers-and-developers-see-23-growth-in-hiring/)\n\n------\nauctiontheory\nI'm sure you'll get some good data here.\n\nBut you give no indication that you enjoy programming. As someone who has made\nsignificant career changes myself, I caution you that choosing a profession\nsolely to follow demand, and not based on your true interests, can turn out\nbadly.\n\n~~~\nBrainScraps\nThis is great advice that I was pretty certain I'd see here.\n\nI do enjoy programming! I've been working with HTML/CSS/jQuery for a couple of\nyears and PHP/mySQL for about a year on and off and I absolutely enjoy the\nfeeling of accomplishment when everything clicks and you get that one little\nline of output in the console that you've been driving at for 3 days.\n\nI enjoy it enough to build things at hackathons just to see if I can. And\nsometimes I win and get interviewed on TechCrunch. Okay, so maybe that just\nhappened _one_ time.\n\n[http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/12/meet-the-vetsintech-\nhackath...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/12/meet-the-vetsintech-hackathon-\nparticipants-and-its-winner-bugl-co-tctv/)\n\n~~~\nglitch273\nahhh... there's our good friend Adria Richards at it again.\n<http://i.imgur.com/uKnGbb8.png>\n\n------\nsherm8n\nThere are so many jobs and freelance projects available for Rails developers.\nThe thing I find amazing is that anyone I talk to looking for Rails developers\nis that they can't find enough talented people.\n\nAlso, Rails is so easy that you can slide by being junior.\n\n~~~\nBrainScraps\n>that they can't find enough talented people.\n\nInteresting nuance here. Maybe there are a lot of hacks out there who can\nGoogle their way through a Rails Tutorial, but cause more trouble than help\nwhen brought on to a production app?\n\n------\npiratebroadcast\nI have recently been accepted to www.launchacademy.co, which is a full\nstack/Rails developer \"bootcamp\" in Boston, and I am also interested in this\ndata. Entry level Rails devs get paid differently, regionally. That being\nsaid, I know 30 of us have put our life on hold to do this school. I am sure\nyou made the right decision.\n\nEDIT: Quora has a lot of data about this. I am told that junior Rails\ndevelopers in Boston can expect to make between 70-90k salary starting out. SF\nand NYC is higher.\n\n------\nDenzel\nYou are correct, we are in the middle of a \"Great Dev Drought,\" keyword being\n\"Great\" or rather talented. I don't have any hard data for you per se, but I\ncan tell you that of the ~100 candidates we've interviewed for a junior Rails\nposition, we've accepted approximately 2%.\n\nOur entire pool is filled with software engineers and web developers that look\nvery qualified on paper. However, it's hard to find someone with a good mix of\n(1) theoretical computer science knowledge, (2) practical programming\nexperience, (3) problem solving skills, and (4) the drive to be truly great.\n\nI have one piece of advice: If you are simply looking to \"pivot\" into\nprogramming for a job and because it's the hot thing to do, then don't! But if\nanything programming and computers is truly your passion; if it excites you so\nmuch that you have trouble sleeping; if you couldn't imagine your life doing\nanything else, then go for it by all mens. The odds are stacked against you,\nbut you can beat them if you work hard. Good luck!\n\n~~~\nBrainScraps\n100 candidates for a junior Rails position? Egadz. That's not super\nencouraging.\n\nWhat are some things that you find disqualify candidates when you interview\nthem?\n\nOr conversely, what makes candidates look especially good when you're\nnarrowing it down?\n\n~~~\nDenzel\nI can't talk about specifics in public, but shoot me an e-mail (address in\nprofile) and I will provide you with some guidance if you'd like.\n\n~~~\npiratebroadcast\nFYI on hacker news, your email address is only visible to you.\n\n------\ncpursley\nI asked a similar question on Quora that's had some really great answers:\n[http://www.quora.com/Ruby-on-Rails/What-are-the-minimum-\nleve...](http://www.quora.com/Ruby-on-Rails/What-are-the-minimum-level-of-\nskills-for-an-entry-level-RoR-job)\n\n~~~\npiratebroadcast\nThat was great.. Thanks!\n\n------\ntommypalm\nI've worked with Rails for 2 years after finishing University. One email to\nthe London Ruby User Group got 15 replies and out of those I got 6 interviews\nand 2 job offers.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThis site crashes Mac completely if you open it with Chrome - turshija\n\nI don't know who else to ask to try this, but I've noticed that more and more people are reporting that when they visit my portfolio with Chrome (www.turshija.com) their computer crashes completely ...\nI have the same problem with my MacBook Pro with newest stable Chrome, If I open the page, my screen freezes and sometimes I hear weird beeps (same as RAM failure), but that thing happens to almost all Macbooks and iMacs I've tried (to be precise exactly 2 macbooks and 1 iMac) ..\nAnd recently more and more Windows and Ubuntu users started reporting the same problem, but most of them say that they can kill Chrome without reseting PC ...\nI've reported this issue here: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=121089\nBut they don't look so interested, even though I think this can be exploited badly, like making invisible iframe on some page or masking it with some url shorteners and make people click on it ...\nThe main problem is that sometimes after crash, my Chrome profile gets corrupted, so I have to reinstall it or delete some files to be able to access bookmarks or password storage ...\nCan anyone else confirm this by visiting www.turshija.com with Chrome (be prepared for crash, so save all your work before visiting the link) ?\n======\nhifi\nI'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on a Core 2 Duo with the newest version of\nChrome (19.0.1084.46) - no crash!\n\nI haven't had the time yet to check the code properly but why do you have a\n5090x6640 pixel canvas element?\n\n~~~\nturshija\nWell, its created by scrollPath plugin: <http://joelb.me/scrollpath/> Do you\nknow anyone with MacOS Lion 10.7.4 who can try opening the page ? I've also\ntried to narrow down the problem and came to this:\nwww.turshija.com/chromecrash One page crashes my mac, other one doesn't, and\ndifference is only in one line ...\n\n~~~\nstanley\nOpened with the newest version of Chrome on MacOS Lion 10.7.4 and it loaded\nwithout crashing.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRacket v6.11 - nickmain\nhttp://blog.racket-lang.org/2017/10/racket-v6-11.html\n======\nButtons840\n> Typed Racket supports refinement types and dependent function types.\n> Previously an experimental feature, refinement types allow types to describe\n> more interesting properties of values, especially integers. For example,\n> this type shows that the max function always produces a number at least as\n> big as its inputs: (-> [x : Integer] [y : Integer] (Refine [z : Integer]\n> (and (>= z x) (>= z y))))\n\nDid Racket become a better Haskell while I wasn't looking? What's the catch?\nThose look like some powerful type system features.\n\n~~~\nswlkr\nI was thinking the same thing, that's a really cool feature.\n\n------\nspdegabrielle\nWhat are refinement types and dependent function types?\n\n~~~\nchriswarbo\nDependent function types allow the _return type_ of a function refer to the\n_argument value_ of the function. The classic example is \"vectors\", which are\nlike lists but have a statically-checked length. Here's an example function\ninvolving vectors:\n\n    \n    \n        duplicate : (t : Type) -> t -> (n : Nat) -> (Vector n t)\n    \n\nThis type signature says that `duplicate` is a function of 3 arguments: `a ->\nb` means a function from argument type `a` to return type `b`, and `a -> b ->\nc` can either be interpreted as \"a function taking an `a` and returning a `b\n-> c`\" or (equivalently) \"a function taking an `a` and a `b` and returning a\n`c` (see\n[https://wiki.haskell.org/Currying](https://wiki.haskell.org/Currying) for why\nthis is equivalent).\n\nArgument types are written in one of two ways: if they're written like `a`\n(for example `Int` or `String`), then the type of the argument is `a`; if\nthey're written `a : b` (for example `age : Int`) then the argument type is\n`b`, but later types can refer to the _value_ as `a`.\n\nSo this signature says that the first argument of `duplicate` is called `t`,\nand it is a `Type`. The second argument has type `t`; this means the _type_ of\nthe second argument _depends_ on the _value_ of the first argument: if we call\n`duplicate` with `Bool : Type` as the first argument, then the second argument\nmust be a `Bool`.\n\nThe third argument is called `n`, and has type `Nat` (natural numbers: i.e.\nthe positive integers including zero). The return type is `Vector n t`, i.e. a\nlist of length `n` containing elements of type `t`.\n\nNote that we're referring to argument values by name, but we don't know what\n_particular_ value they will be (i.e. which number `n` will be, or which type\n`t` will be). We can think of `a : b` as being `for _all_ a of type b`.\n\nIf we think about functions returning lists, like `map` or `reverse`, we can\n\"cheat\" by having them always return an empty list; such functions satisfy\ntheir type signature (they return a list), but don't behave in the way we\nwant.\n\nIn contrast, the \"for all\" nature of dependent function types can be used to\nprevent this sort of \"cheating\". The `duplicate` function can't just return an\nempty vector, since it must return a vector of length `n`, and the\nimplementation must work _for all_ values of `n`. We're _forced_ to write a\nfunction which constructs a vector of the correct length: empty when `n` is\nzero, or non-empty otherwise.\n\nTo construct a non-empty vector, we need to put a value inside it. What value\ncan we use? We can't \"cheat\" by using, say, the value `\"hello\"`, since that\nwould give us a vector containing `String`, whilst our return type forces us\nto make a vector containing `t`. Whatever our function does, it must work _for\nall_ values of `t` (`String`, `Bool`, `Int`, `Vector 5 (Int -> Bool)`, etc.).\n\nSince we don't know what `t` will be, we can't \"invent\" a value of the right\ntype. The only thing we can do is use an _existing_ value which will always\nhave type `t`. The only way something can have type `t` is if it appears in\nour type signature, since that's the scope of the name `t`. The only thing in\nour type signature which has type `t` is the second argument. Hence we _must_\nuse the second argument as the elements of our vector (if it's non-empty).\n\nOne implementation which satisfies this type is the following (assuming that\n`Nat` is encoded as Peano numerals\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Successor_function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Successor_function)\n):\n\n    \n    \n        duplicate t x n = case n of\n                               zero   -> vectorNil t\n                               succ m -> vectorCons t x (duplicate t x m)\n    \n\nThis isn't the only possible implementation, for example we might choose to\nsend the recursive call through a `vectorReverse` function (although it would\nbe pointless), but such differences cannot alter the input/output behaviour of\nthe function.\n\nOf course, we don't have to use dependent function types to restrict _all_ of\na function's behaviour. If we think back to the `map` example, we take a\nfunction of type `a -> b`, a `List a` and must return a `List b`: the easiest\nthing to do is return an empty list, which satisfies the type but isn't what\nwe want.\n\nIf we instead make a `vectorMap` function, where `List` is replaced with\n`Vector n`, then that \"cheat\" no longer works (since an empty vector doesn't\nalways have length `n`). We _could_ still mess around with the contents, like\nreversing it or doing some other permutation, but that's _harder_ than just\ndoing the right thing. The path of least resistance is to write a correct\nimplementation!\n\n~~~\nfiddlerwoaroof\nI like the way Edwin Brady talks about this: a dependently typed language is\none in which types are first class. That is, you can use them as values in\ncomputations and return them.\n\n~~~\nchriswarbo\n\"First class types\" and \"dependent types\" are actually two different things.\nWe can have first class types without any dependencies. For example:\n\n    \n    \n        isEven : Nat -> Type\n        isEven  zero           = Unit\n        isEven (succ zero)     = Empty\n        isEven (succ (succ n)) = isEven n\n    \n        fortyTwoEven : isEven 42\n        fortyTwoEven = unit\n    \n\nHere the `isEven` function calculates a type based on the given number: if the\nnumber's even, it returns the `Unit` type, of which there is a value `unit`;\nif the number's odd, it returns the `Empty` type, of which there are no\nvalues.\n\nThe value `fortyTwoEven` is a \"proof\" that the number `42` (which would\nactually be `succ (succ (succ ...))` nested 42 times) is even. The proof is\nthe value `unit`, which will only work if `isEven 42` returns `Unit`, which\nwill only happen if 42 is even, so everything works out. We can write a type\nlike `isEven 43`, but that will return the type `Empty`, which there's no way\nto satisfy.\n\nWe can use this sort of thing to do static checks of reasonably simple data;\nfor example, if we have a bunch of config parameters which need to be related\nin some way.\n\nDependent types add the \"naming\" part, which we can use in functions (as\nexplained above), but also in other \"compound\" datastructures like tuples `(n\n: Nat, isEven n)` and records `{ n : Nat, evenProof : isEven n }`\n\nThe annoying thing is that few languages seem to have first class types _at\nall_ , so every explanation of dependent types has to start by introducing\nfirst class types, _and then_ explaining the \"dependent\" parts.\n\nIt's like trying to explain something like interfaces, if all mainstream\nlanguages were dynamically typed. We'd have to begin by explaining what types\nare, and _then_ go on to explain interfaces. Readers might easily confuse\nfeatures of _types_ with features of _interfaces_ , which would lead to much\nconfusion.\n\nI think that's kind of happened with \"dependent types\" and \"first class\ntypes\", although I haven't seen any/many systems which have one without the\nother, so maybe it's not too bad :)\n\n------\ntombert\nPlease forgive some ignorance here, but I thought that LISP couldn't have a\nproper type system since it would muck with homoiconicity. Clearly I'm wrong\nabout this, but now I'm curious why more LISPs aren't typed.\n\nCan anyone here enlighten me?\n\n~~~\nmadmax96\nWhat do you mean by a \"proper type system\"?\n\nIn SBCL, if you set the optimization (SAFETY 3) then the system can catch many\ntype errors in advance.\n\nFinally, homoiconicity simply means that the text of a program generally\nresembles the AST of the language. Adding type annotations (which you can do\nin CL, clojure, and typed racket) is therefore not incompatible with the\nprinciple of homoiconicity.\n\n~~~\ntombert\nI think that I got confused based on some post talking about difficulties of\nimplementing a Hindley Milner type system in Lisp. So much for relying on\nthree-year-old memories.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Please be more thoughtful when downvoting - guynamedloren\nLately I've noticed far too many constructive comments that have been downvoted (usually without any explanation). Please stop this. It's okay to have comments that are not in support with the original post or your own thoughts. We don't have to shoot them down.<p>Downvoting is meant as a management tool to filter out comments that negatively impact the community, or ones that provide no substance or insight.  Please do not downvote legitimate comments.<p>Thank you.\n======\nepenn\nI fully agree. I've seen far too many comments that are meaningful or\ninsightful - even ones I don't agree with - get unnecessarily downvoted\nwithout proper cause. On a discussion forum where one of its main objectives\nis to be a safe haven for intelligent discourse this is unacceptable. With\nthat said, this is my officially unofficial guide to downvoting:\n\nNEVER downvote:\n\n1) Just because you disagree with a post.\n\n2) Because you dislike the poster.\n\n3) Because others have downvoted a comment into oblivion and you want to jump\non the bandwagon. i.e. No need to kick a comment when it's already down.\n\n4) When you have not explicitly reasoned out why you are downvoting\nbeforehand.\n\nDO downvote:\n\n1) Because the comment is derogatory or offensive.\n\n2) Because the comment is factually incorrect.\n\n3) Because the comment is off topic and/or does not add to the conversation.\n\n4) Because the comment lacked any meaningful content. Ex: \"Yes!\", \"Nice\npost!\", \"LOL!\", etc.\n\nUltimately the golden rule applies here. Do not downvote any comment for a\nreason that you yourself would be upset over if someone used that same reason\nto downvote a comment of yours. In short, just put some thought into it.\n\n~~~\nchimpinee\nBeing on-topic, polite and factually correct are all virtues that I would\nexpect in a typical HN poster. We should prefer comments which reflect these\nvirtues!\n\nHowever, regardless of what we intend, I think upvoting and downvoting equate\nto 'I like' and 'I no like'. We should embrace this de facto reality.\n\nPeople, including good people with sound judgments, cannot always explain\ntheir choices at the time they make them, nor is this desirable.\n\nWhen people downvote foolishly, in many cases they will have lost their\ntempers. In such cases sober rules like 'only downvote comments which do not\nadd to the discussion' may go out of the window.\n\nThis can't be fixed by exhorting users not to get angry or not to comment when\nangry, for people can be _goaded_ into anger in subtle, malicious ways (which\ncannot themselves be easily captured and prevented by other rules). And people\ncan _deny_ that they are angry, even to themselves.\n\nAnyway, effective rules must remain stable under such conditions, which is no\nmean task.\n\nOne way is to engineer new rules into the system itself.\n\nFor instance, improvement might be brought about if downvoting, in addition to\ncosting the downvotee one point, cost the _downvoter_ one karma point. People\nwould then refrain from frivolous downvoting, but I believe would still\ndownvote inappropriate, thread-damaging comments. This is partly because good\npeople tend to have more karma and well as better judgment. It also reflects\nhuman psychology. Getting angry always costs the angry person.\n\n------\nctide\nI downvoted your comment (and probably was the first to do given that it was\nstill black when I downvoted it) here:\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782072> which lead you to immediately\npost this. Considering you clearly think your comment was constructive (or\nelse you wouldn't have posted this) I'll explain why you were downvoted into\noblivion.\n\nYour comment was ridiculous self promotion with a splash of topic relevancy.\nIt was laced with narcissistic bullshit. If you don't want to get downvoted,\nstick to the topic, not how you (at 23, with 13 years of design experience)\nare better than 99% of the designers and then link to a bunch of sites that,\nwhile certainly are not unattractive, are not what I would include in my list\nof greatest websites ever designed.\n\n~~~\nguynamedloren\nYes, those downvotes were deserved, as was your comment. I don't deny that. I\nwas offended by the article (which stated that a type of person with x skills\ndoes not exist), took it personally and commented accordingly. But while this\npost was submitted around the same time as that comment, the two are\nunrelated. My comment only had a single downvote at the time, anyway, and I\nwill be the first to admit that it was not constructive by any means.\n\nWhat bothers me, however, is when I see constructive and helpful comments by\nothers (typically respected, productive HN members) that have been downvoted\nfor no apparent reason. I almost always try to upvote these, as they do not\ndeserve negative karma for merely speaking their minds and contributing to a\nhealthy discussion.\n\n~~~\nlucisferre\nNo the article said they do exist but rarely are available.\n\n~~~\nchrisbroadfoot\nJust like unicorns.\n\n------\nDanI-S\nPeople downvote to express one of two things:\n\n\\- The post doesn't have a tone that fits the HN ideal.\n\n\\- The post says something that they disagree with.\n\nThis is a problem, because those two cases should not be treated the same. A\npost containing an unpopular opinion should not be considered equivalent to a\npost that is insulting or derogatory, for instance.\n\nFrom a user interface perspective, the sensible approach would be to provide\nan outlet for the user to do express two things independently, rather than\nattempting to modify behaviour through appealing to their better nature.\n\nA separate 'flag' option would make a lot of sense.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nThere is a separate flag option. It's hidden. For example, clicky the [link]\nURL in the menu bar for my post.\n\nAIUI flagging comments (posts in a thread) is for spam or blatant nastiness,\nand down-votes are to encourage better behaviour. (\"not a nice tone\" /\n\"factually incorrect\" / \"big claims with no evidence\" / \"missed point of\nthread by wide mark\" etc.)\n\nIf a post gets down-voted and you really don't understand why either leave it,\nand wait to see if other people up-vote. (People can accidentally down-vote,\nalthough they'd normally mention that.) Asking politely for more information\nusually works.\n\n~~~\nDanI-S\nOops - I somehow wasn't aware of that! If flag isn't helping, perhaps this is\ntrue:\n\nIn HN's UI, the downvote is presented as directly equivalent to the upvote.\nSince the upvote button is to be used if one agrees with the tone, sentiment\nor facts within a comment, its visual link to the downvote button causes\npeople to infer that the downvote button should be used when one _disagrees_.\n\nIf this isn't the intended purpose of downvotes, the UI should change so that\nit isn't the exact mirror of an upvote.\n\n------\nrobomartin\nThis is the one aspect of HN that cast a bad light on the nature of the\ncommunity. There seem to be what I've come to call groups of \"fan-boys\" who\ndownvote based on ideology rather than on the merits of the comments.\n\nThe problem is that this very quickly starts to feel like any other forum\nwhere things generally degenerate to the point where only seven people are\nposting because anyone else becomes afraid of the wolves attacking.\n\nMy opinon: Down-voting ought to cost you (the down-voter) a significant chunk\nof points, say, 10%. And, you should be obligated to post a reason. And, if\nthe reason is bullshit and it gets downvoted, you loose another 10% of your\npoints.\n\nIn other words, it better be valid.\n\nThe rules could be a little more elaborate than that, but this might be a good\nstart.\n\n~~~\npavanky\nStack overflow does this, but I think only under certain conditions. Like if\nthe question has been upvoted, or if you are the first person. I am not too\nfamiliar with how they do it.\n\nI disagree a bit on the fan-boy downvotes. From what I have observed,\nanecdotally ofcourse, there are many fan boy comments with no downvotes than\nthose that get downvoted by fanboys..\n\n~~~\nnextstep\nYour comment doesn't make a lot of sense...\n\n~~~\npavanky\nSorry, I was talking about two completely independent things in the same\ncomment.\n\n1) About the negative points for the downvoter 2) The concept of \"fan-boy\ndownvotes\".\n\n------\ndmlorenzetti\nIt feels to me as though downvoting simply to express disagreement started to\nincrease after the point display got removed from individual posts.\n\nI think in the past, if people saw a comment they really disagreed with, but\nit had only 2 or 3 points, there was a tendency to say \"Of course it's got no\npoints, nobody agrees with it.\" But once points went away, there's now a\ntendency to say, \"I'd better downvote this stupid comment, just in case there\nare idiots out there voting it up.\"\n\n~~~\nricardobeat\nI concur with that. Visible points lead to a natural equilibrium.\n\n~~~\nsounds\nHow about showing the points below a cutoff, maybe 3 points?\n\n------\nspindritf\n> It's okay to have comments that are not in support with the original post\n\nThat's not really the problem, top comments very often contain counterpoints\nto the submission. It's deeper in the comments where you can easily slip into\nthe light grey even with pretty uncontroversial posts citing scientific\nsources but I think that's just caused by a low number of votes in general for\nthose comments, not particularly \"unthoughtful\" downvoting.\n\nOh, and it's apparently OK to use up/downvoting to express dis/agreement:\n<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171>\n\n~~~\nfuryofantares\nI really don't understand the view that it's OK to use downvoting to express\ndisagreement.\n\nI think that what a downvote says, regardless of what's intended, is \"I do not\nwant to see this type of post anymore.\" This makes sense if someone is\nmisbehaving. I think it also makes sense for very extreme opinions.\n\nBut for simple disagreement? Just because I disagree with you does not mean I\nwant you to stop expressing your viewpoint.\n\n------\nfomojola\nDoes downvoting a comment cause the voter to lose karma, or is it in essence\nfree? StackOverflow does this (you lose a point each time you vote something\ndown), and it is actually a meaningful deterrent: maybe it would help here.\n\n~~~\nComputerGuru\nThe voter loses karma. One downvote is one karma. One upvote is one karma.\n(StackOverflow is 1 upvote for 10 karma for answers, 2 karma for questions;\nand 1 downvote for 1 karma everywhere, I think.)\n\n~~~\nwhy-el\nThe voter or the person who asked the question? I am confused.\n\n~~~\nAnimus7\nTo clear up the confusion, the grandparent is simply wrong.\n\nThe only person to lose karma is the one that gets downvoted.\n\n------\nfleitz\nIt's a number in a database, who cares...\n\nI used to get pissed about it and want an explanation, but the consequence of\nposting on controversial threads is getting downvoted. If you don't want to be\ndownvoted just preface your comment with something like \"I'm not dissing X,\nbut <something that points out some major flaw in X>\" it seems to mostly do\nthe trick.\n\nWhat's the bar for downvoting anyway these days still 200 points?\n\n~~~\ncorysama\nI care about a number in the database because that database is the mechanism\nbehind a community I care about.\n\nIt has been observed that as online communities like HN grow, the signal-to-\nnoise ratio falls on a progression that can be summarized as HN -> Reddit ->\nDigg. No one knows how to permanently stave off the Diggization of HN. But, in\nthe mean time, it is worth trying to delay as much as possible.\n\nAs we become more complacent regarding downvotes on well-written comments\nbecause we disagree or not downvoting empty, witty fluff, HN slides farther\nand farther into the noise pit.\n\n------\nHardyLeung\nThis is sadly so true. It's hard to play devil's advocate sometimes because\nunless you are going for the \"conventional wisdom\" some people are bound to\ndisagree with you, and disagreement is often expressed in the form of\ndownvotes. Since offering a different point of view is discouraged, the\ndiscussion inevitably trends towards being bland or rah-rah in nature.\n\nWhat to do? The wise solution is to just ignore Karma -- who cares about that\nexcept for the egomaniacs? But the truth is that we are all human, and when I\noffer something that adds to the discussion but got downvoted to oblivion in\nreturn, it hurts, at least sometimes. And in those cases when I couldn't care\nless, I feel a little bit wiser.\n\n------\nanthonyb\nThe other thing to bear in mind is that when you downvote new members to the\npoint that their karma goes negative, they will automatically be hellbanned --\ntheir comments won't show up except to themselves.\n\nEDIT: So, be nicer to new users, otherwise they'll end up like dailyllama:\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dailyllama>\n\n------\nfirefoxman1\nI would like to propose a small change to the commenting system: _Don't shade\ndownvoted comments grey._\n\nI've noticed it's like a snowball effect. I've commented on a post and for\nhours it wasn't downvoted or even upvoted. But as soon as one person noticed\nthat it had been downvoted, it would get 2 or 3 more.\n\nAnd I've noticed this impulse in myself. I feel _much_ more compelled to\ndownvote a comment that is already grey than one that isn't, even though the\ngrey one may be a perfectly valid point.\n\nMaybe a good idea would be to only show it greyed out after 3+ downvotes. That\nway people wouldn't have that knee-jerk reaction to downvote just because\nsomeone else has.\n\n~~~\njiggy2011\nI'm sort of the opposite, sometimes I see a gray comment that I wouldn't\nnormally have bothered to vote on either way and think \"it's not _that_ bad\"\nand upvote to get it out of gray.\n\n~~~\nfirefoxman1\nYeah, I've done that a few times as well. I guess it could go either way. I\nthink that's why only displaying as grey after 3+ downvotes would keep people\nonly voting based on their own thoughts and not on how other people have acted\non that comment.\n\n------\nwyclif\nI think downvoting should be thoughtful, but I'm not so sure about the burden\nof having to provide an explanation for doing so. IMO users should be able to\njudiciously downvote without doing anything else.\n\n------\nrobomartin\nPeople are discussing this because they care about HN. They don't want to see\nit go to shit, like many other communities tend to do.\n\nThis is a good thing so long as these opinions trigger actions to return the\ncommunity to a reasonably balanced state.\n\nIt'd be nice to hear from HN management on thoughts and potential remedies for\nthis issue. And, of course, it'd be nice to see some of these changes\nimplemented ASAP.\n\n------\nCushman\nI don't think this is a recent trend... I've noticed it since I've been active\non HN. But it's very true. I've noticed that very controversial comments will\nreceive a lot of downvotes, but relatively few comments that disagree with\nthem.\n\nI'll confess I've been guilty of this in the past: downvoting comments I\ndisagree with, or those which I think are false. On reflection, that is\nobviously wrong. Downvotes are for comments which are off-topic, unnnecessary\nfor anyone to read. Not those with with there is legitimate disagreement. For\nthose, commenting is the appropriate response.\n\nI can only reinforce the OP: Downvotes are for off-topic, irrelevant, spam\ncomments. If you disagree with a comment, comment to say why, or upvote a\ncomment that expresses your disagreement. Downvoting a comment signifies\nnothing.\n\n~~~\nchc\nFactually incorrect or relevant but info-light statements are often just as\nmuch noise as off-topic comments. For example, the top-voted comment on a post\nabout Clojure says \"Clojure is such utter shit. It doesn't even have integers.\nDon't use this crap.\" Are you really saying we shouldn't downvote that? The\none bit of signal (it doesn't have integers) is false, and the rest of it is\njust flaming. By your metric, it's a good comment — it's on topic and it's not\nspam. But by any reasonable metric, it's a terrible comment, and I would like\nto discourage such mindlessness.\n\n------\nzrgiu_\nAlso related to downvoting: how/when do you receive the permission to downvote\n?\n\n~~~\nAdamGibbins\nSome place above 472..as I can't down-vote yet (despite being here 3 years).\n\n~~~\nteach\nYeah, it seems we're expert lurkers. I've been here more than 4.5 years and\nhave less than 350 karma. I feel pretty confident about my downvoting skills,\nbut I've never been allowed to use them.\n\n------\nbenologist\nLegitimate comments are incredibly subjective. That down arrow helps me\nclarify what _I_ consider legitimate.\n\n------\nypcx\nI guess that is why Facebook doesn't have a Dislike button. In the end, it\nnever works. We are emotional creatures and sometimes we feel like we need to\nvent off somewhere. And during that time, we are highly likely to vent off on\nthings unrelated to the source of the feeling we feel we need to vent off.\n\nI think to fix that, either remove downvoting entirely, or add a secondary\nsystem where downvotes are reviewed, and the downvoting right is taken from\npeople who abuse it.\n\n------\ndsrguru\nI wonder what the best solution is. This definitely does seem to be a trend\nthat's increased recently, possibly as a result of points no longer being\ndisplayed for each post, and possibly as a result of an increasingly larger\ncommunity whose new members resemble the reddit crowd more than the Silicon\nValley crowd.\n\nI don't like the idea of having a cost to downvoting. People shouldn't have to\nmake the choice between receiving a small punishment for legitimately trying\nto improve the forum or letting others do it. Perhaps get rid of a downvote\noption altogether and make flag more visible? Or get rid of downvote and don't\nmake flag more visible? Maybe require a comment to go along with flag? I\ndefinitely think the visual symmetry in the up and down voting gives people\nthe impression that the downvote's function is disagreement. Then again, I\nseem to recall pg saying that he was okay with the downvote being used that\nway and wasn't afraid of HN becoming\n[http://www.collegehumor.com/video/3980096/we-didnt-start-\nthe...](http://www.collegehumor.com/video/3980096/we-didnt-start-the-flame-\nwar)\n\n------\nuptown\nIf you're going to complain how others are supposedly misusing a feature of\nthe site, why would you do so by apparently misusing the \"Ask HN\" lead-in?\n\n------\najdecon\nPeople downvote for various reasons, and there really isn't a lot of agreement\non a good criterion. Some downvote only \"harmful\" comments, some downvote for\ndisagreement. I'm guessing you're in the first camp, but given that pg has\nok'd the second option as well, I doubt downvoting for disagreement is going\naway any time soon.\n\nSpeaking only for myself, I don't often see substantive comments which are\ndownvoted into oblivion: at worst, they hang out at -1 or -2 until someone\nnotices them and upvotes. Most good comments eventually recover; mediocre ones\nmight stay at barely-downvoted. ( I see substantive comments go [dead] because\nthe user's been hellbanned, but that's different.)\n\nMaybe the solution is just to not start graying text until -2 or -3? Then one\nor two early downvotes would have less effect.\n\n------\ndanilocampos\nHN's community is a pit of sexist villainy, unnecessary pedantry, empty\nsycophancy, and vapid self-aggrandizement.\n\nBut yeah, let's make sure we get on this _downvoting_ \"problem\" post-haste.\n\nPS: I downvoted every single comment in this thread that rubbed me even a\nlittle bit the wrong way, regardless of its constructiveness. I left no\ncomment in explanation. I took special delight in doing so for comments with\nan especially righteous tone. The world is no worse for my having done so. The\ncommunity would have been no better had I restrained myself.\n\nDownvotes are not the problem.\n\n~~~\naptwebapps\nAll right, I'll bite.\n\n>HN's community is a pit of sexist villainy, unnecessary pedantry, empty\nsycophancy, and vapid self-aggrandizement.\n\nThen why are you here? I'm not asking you to leave, but that is such a\nthorough indictment that I do wonder why you stay. There must be more to the\nsite than that.\n\n>PS: I downvoted every single comment in this thread that rubbed me even a\nlittle bit the wrong way, regardless of its constructiveness. I left no\ncomment in explanation. I took special delight in doing so for comments with\nan especially righteous tone. The world is no worse for my having done so. The\ncommunity would have been no better had I restrained myself.\n\nOne person downvoting like this is not much of a problem. If very few people\nbehaved like that the OP would not have needed to post this. If everyone\nbehaved like that the site would be unusable.\n\n>Downvotes are not the problem.\n\nThoughtless downvoting is _a_ problem. I don't know if it's the biggest\nproblem the site has but why would you let that stop you from addressing it?\n\n~~~\ndanilocampos\n> Then why are you here?\n\nThe obvious reason – occasional boredom. Oh, and the inherent joys of venting\nmy spleen.\n\n~~~\nfirefoxman1\nThe better question: _Why do you engage in the community?_\n\nYou could just browse articles without creating an account.\n\n~~~\ndanilocampos\n> Why do you engage in the community?\n\nSame deal. Occasional boredom.\n\n------\nKevinMS\nI would like to see minority upvotes weighted in some way to avoid mob rule.\nHowever I'm not sure of the math of this, or how it could be gamed. But I do\nknow, if a story or comment gets 10 upvotes and 90 downvotes, I want to be\ngiven the chance to see what those 10 users saw upvote worthy.\n\nAlso, I'd like to see the number of upvotes and downvotes, not just the total.\nI would find it much more informative if there were five hundred upvotes and\nfive hundred downvotes, rather than just a zero.\n\n------\ndlss\nTitle indicates question, no question present. Downvoted :p\n\n------\nAnimus7\nBy chance I noticed your earlier comment:\n\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782072>\n\nand I'm trying to get over the dissonance between what you said there and what\nyou're saying here.\n\n~~~\nchc\nWhat is the dissonance between \"Don't downvote to disagree\" and \"I have many\nskills\"? They seem completely unrelated. Did you link the wrong comment?\n\n------\nmaxbernstein\nAm I totally wrong in that I thought we had no downvotes on Hacker News?\n\n~~~\nprodigal_erik\nYes, downvoting is a feature available to users with 500+ karma (according to\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782217>)\n\n------\nrickdale\nI don't care if this comment gets me downvoted to the point of extinction on\nHN, but seriously this shit is the number 1 story right now? Quit being such a\nfriggin' baby. Your comment sucked(just like this one) and then you received\nand a downvote. I bet you are creaming in your pants now that you are the\nnumber 1 story.\n\nBEG HN: Quit UpVoting Total Bull Shit Like This!\n\n------\nwebwanderings\nVoting is dumb in a text-based world of writing.\n\n~~~\nwebwanderings\nYou see why I said it is dumb? You downvoted without adding dialog (counter-\npoints as your disagreement). If this was an offline world, what would you\nhave done to me and my voice? Punch me as downvote? Leave me alone as\ndownvote? Ignore me? It is totally dumb to have downvotes on text/writing\nbecause it gives you an easy way out.\n\nThe same is the case with Like buttons and upvotes, there's no difference.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRobot Pizza Trucks Hit Some Bumps - hhs\nhttps://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-14/robot-pizza-trucks-hit-some-bumps\n======\nrmason\nThis begs the question does the Vision Fund do any due diligence? Like\nactually ordering a couple of pizzas on different days to evaluate the end\nproduct? Or going to talk with customers?\n\nI thought this was something all venture people did before making an\ninvestment but apparently it's just a Midwest thing.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSonos is too expensive, I'm using my existing speakers with \"audio|acacia\" - ubermusik\nhttp://www.plethra.com\n\n======\njohng\nTrying it out. Pretty neat software.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTurning on WebRender in Stable Firefox - miohtama\nhttps://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/Quantum_Render\n======\nmiohtama\nOn macOS Catalina seems to to work ok.\n\nJust set\n\ngfx.webrender.all to true\n\nin about:config.\n\nRestart.\n\nYou can verify it is enabled in about:support\n\n[https://twitter.com/moo9000/status/1213064185963335680](https://twitter.com/moo9000/status/1213064185963335680)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: An App Store for CLI Apps - adius\nhttps://cliapp.store/\n======\nadius\nThanks for the feedback you gave me last time on HN:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18107198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18107198)\nI incorporated it and released a new version. Here's my blog post explaining\nwhat I changed:\n[https://www.feram.io/blog/2018-10-05_how_i_screwed_up_launch...](https://www.feram.io/blog/2018-10-05_how_i_screwed_up_launch/)\nPlease take another look and let me know what you think! Thanks!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLive Pictures from Startup School - edawerd\nhttp://futurique.com:8080/pingplog/yc/\n\n======\nedawerd\n...and contribute to the album by emailing your pictures from your mobile\nphone to yc@erclab.com\n\n------\nbigbang\nsmall suggestion - can you guys make it easy to save the image. from cursory\nlook, when i tried to save one of the images i was in, i had to type out the\nurl.\n\n------\nechamussy\nWe added a link to the original file next to each picture. Sorry for taking\nthis long to reply. Thanks for your feedback, Cheers.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGuccifer2.0: Game Over? - cairo_x\nhttp://g-2.space/guccifer2_gameover.html\n======\ncairo_x\nCheck for yourself:\n[https://guccifer2.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/1.doc](https://guccifer2.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/1.doc)\n\nOpen in editor:\n\n{\\info{\\title _TITLE}{\\author Warren Flood} {\\operator\n\\'d4\\'e5\\'eb\\'e8\\'ea\\'f1\n\\'dd\\'e4\\'ec\\'f3\\'ed\\'e4\\'ee\\'e2\\'e8\\'f7}{\\creatim\\yr2016\\mo6\\dy15\\hr13\\min38}{\\revtim\\yr2016\\mo6\\dy15\\hr14\\min8}{\\printim\\yr2016\\mo6\\dy15\\hr13\\min45}\n\n'operator' metadata tag (\\'d4\\'e5\\'eb\\'e8\\'ea\\'f1\n\\'dd\\'e4\\'ec\\'f3\\'ed\\'e4\\'ee\\'e2\\'e8\\'f7) decodes to ФеликсЭдмундович\n(FeliksEdmundovich).\n\nIn RTF Word, 'operator' is assumed to be 'last saved by' ('revtim' half an\nhour later). source:\n[https://books.google.com.au/books?id=6iM2xNZ6dAIC&pg=PA120&l...](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=6iM2xNZ6dAIC&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=microsoft+word+%22operator%22+metadata&source=bl&ots=lm9kHk9n5Z&sig=fwQ10AtT8ShO8SbJfUpQW78o9yk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjPtpWhrITSAhXGopQKHYnnDIgQ6AEIOjAF#v=onepage&q=microsoft%20word%20%22operator%22%20metadata&f=false)\n\n------\nexabrial\nWhat's the TL;DR? This is a huge timeline\n\n~~~\ndanielvf\n1) Guccifer2.0 appeared a few days after the DNC found out they had been\ncompromised and Wikileaks announced upcoming DNC releases.\n\n2) Nothing Guccifer2.0 personally released was either actually harmful to the\nDNC nor exciting.\n\n3) Everything tying Guccifer2.0 to Russia was simple things anyone in the\nworld could do.\n\n4) Guccifer2.0 first document releases contain metadata showing they were\nmodified minutes before by a tech guy who worked for democrat campaigns.\n\nArticle postulates that Guccifer2.0 was a front to discredit the real leaks\nthat had happened and point attention to Russia.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe OTCA Metapixel in Conway's Game of Life (2015) - dEnigma\nhttp://www.instructables.com/id/OTCA-Metapixel-Conways-Game-of-Life/\n======\nconsto\nIf you want to see what this OTCA Metapixel can be used for, besides\nsimulating Conway's Game of Life inside Conway's Game of Life, I _highly_\nrecommending reading:\n\n[https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-\na-w...](https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-working-\ngame-of-tetris-in-conways-game-of-life)\n\nOver four years a number of users from StackOverflow built Tetris using the\nOTCA Metapixel. To summarise, they built layers of abstraction to move from\nthe Game of Life, to Metapixels, to wires, to logic gates, to a RISC computer.\nThere they developed their own assembly language to write tetris and finally\ncompiled and ran it. In total the world is 2,940,928 x 10,295,296 blocks in\nsize.\n\nHere's an interpreter for that language running Tetris:\n[http://play.starmaninnovations.com/qftasm/#jllHdnBGSP](http://play.starmaninnovations.com/qftasm/#jllHdnBGSP)\n\n~~~\nhammock\nWhat the fuck. It's comments like this that make me realize computers are\nsomething special.\n\nI would love to see a sophisticated comparison to biology and the layers of\nabstraction there.\n\n~~~\nmonk_e_boy\nOr from strings to particles to elements to people who build computer then\nprogram them :)\n\n------\nvog\nNice covering of a certain well-known GoL pattern.\n\nIf you like GoL, you should check out LifeWiki which is the largest and most\nup-to-date pattern collection (kind-of encyclopedia for the GoL universe) out\nthere:\n\n[http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/Main_Page](http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/Main_Page)\n\nIf you are interested in latest research and news about the subject, the\nfollowing blog aggregate is the best I'm aware of:\n\n[http://www.conwaylife.com/](http://www.conwaylife.com/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIs Quality Assurance still relevant with Agile Development Processes? - vpsingh\nhttp://99tests.com/blog/is-quality-assurance-still-relevant-with-agile-development-processes/\n\n======\nvpsingh\nas more and more software development teams move toward Agile, with multiple\ndeployments of the code into production system each day, do we really need\nAssurance of the software functionality?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNew York to Discard Prescription Pads in Digital Shift - esturk\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/nyregion/new-york-to-discard-prescription-pads-and-doctors-handwriting-in-digital-shift.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below\n======\nesturk\n\"New York is the first state to require that all prescriptions be created\nelectronically and to back up that mandate with penalties, including fines and\nimprisonment, for physicians who fail to comply.\"\n\nThe benefits are less fraud and errors. The drawback however is that patients\nwill need a primary pharmacy at all times and there may be issues with going\nto another pharmacy for pickup which requires another confirmation from your\ndoctor.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: How Do You Come Up With Blog Post Ideas? - lemcoe9\n\nIt seems like every one in technology has something to say, and many of them have their own outlet for saying those things (that end up getting posted on HN!)<p>What is your source of inspiration for deciding what to put on digital paper and share with the world?\n======\nnamenotrequired\nI don't blog a lot so far, but I do have a list of possible topics somewhere.\nI tend to add to it when:\n\n\\- I feel like I've come to realise something new (for me) that others might\nfind insightful too. These don't turn into blogs often, but it's helpful to\nhave it written down somewhere nonetheless.\n\n\\- An opinion of mine keeps popping up in my mind and I feel it would be\nrelevant to others.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: NBA Games Played vs. Games Above .500(source in Comments) - cmpolis\nhttp://www.bytemuse.com/post/nba-games-played-win-record-vis/\n======\ncmpolis\nsource: [https://github.com/cmpolis/nba-seasons-\nvis](https://github.com/cmpolis/nba-seasons-vis)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nResilient Web Design - robin_reala\nhttps://resilientwebdesign.com/\n======\naesthetics1\nFor a book about web design, this surely is poorly designed. I can't resize\nthe text with my built-in browser zoom to make it comfortable to read.\nEverything seems to be based on the size of the browser window.\n\n~~~\npkinchla\nIt uses viewports units for type sizing. You can always turn off CSS\n\n~~~\nsimlevesque\n> You can always turn off CSS\n\nYeah but that kinda obliterates the whole point of reading something about\ngood design.\n\n~~~\npkinchla\nNot trying to troll but good web design is about a lot more than CSS.\n\n~~~\nsimlevesque\nI know but I'm not talking about CSS, I'm talking about: try to read your own\nwebsite before releasing it.\n\n------\nsimlevesque\nStupidly unreadable. The rest must be bullshit if they can't get \"readable on\na desktop\" right. It's literally the most important aspect of a web design.\n\nHere's a screenshot for posterity:\n[https://s29.postimg.org/5tx77lset/unreadable.png](https://s29.postimg.org/5tx77lset/unreadable.png)\n\n~~~\nRaphmedia\nHow is this unreadable? Are you unable to read after a certain size?\n\nI am not a fan of their design but it's not really unreadable.\n\n~~~\nsimlevesque\nIt's unbearably hard to read. I might do it if my life depended on it.\nOtherwise it's nothing but torture.\n\neg: You need to scroll down a whole page after just 4-5 sentences.\n\n------\njackreichert\nLooks like he read these comments, it seems to be resizable now (chrome).\nPeople can be pretty brutal here sometimes.\n\n~~~\nbebe3000\nWhy is pointing out that it is unreadable brutal? You know what's brutal? The\nh2 tag that covers half of my screen.\n\n------\nJorgeGT\nThe design I don't know, but the hosting doesn't seem very resilient.\n\n------\nat-fates-hands\nThe design and font seem a bit. . large? I'm on a 27\" monitor and I could\nstand back 10ft from this and still read it. Is this a thing now in Web\nDesign? Do we need to make every font 36px and up?\n\nMy only other gripe is the jolting red and white hover states. You get this\nnice light blue that's pretty easy on your eyes then BOOM! super bright red\nhover.\n\nI downloaded the PDF and will read later.\n\n~~~\nfny\nI think this was intended for mobile devices. It's formatted beautifully on my\nphone.\n\n------\nintjk\nSo... plenty of comments about font size. What do y'all think about the actual\ncontents of the book? I've looked through it a bit and seems like an\ninteresting concept--understanding why certain decisions were made in the\nhistory of the web, and extracting \"resilient\" design patterns out of those\ndecisions.\n\nI'm reminded of the first Feynman lecture, explaining how physics was\ndiscovered through a historical lens. I find it immensely helpful. Hopefully\nthis web book is helpful as well!\n\n------\nmetaloha\nI have to agree with some others here - on my larger monitor, the text is far\ntoo large to be easily read. The large spacing between letters and lines,\ncombined with the excessively large body text is just causing eye fatigue, and\nI literally can't be bothered to pop an aspirin and keep going.\n\nThat said, it looks great on my phone.\n\nMaybe there should be a maximum size on the text, or on the width of the site\nitself, to keep it in that \"readable\" zone. I want to read it at my desktop,\nbut literally can't right now.\n\n~~~\nmetaloha\nFor example, changing the font-size calculations at widths greater than 50em\ncould use 80vw instead of 100vw. At 60em go to 70vw, and at 75em use 55vw.\n\n------\ndsego\nI believe the QWERTY layout origin mentioned in the first chapter is a myth.\n\n[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-\nfiction-t...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-the-\nlegend-of-the-qwerty-keyboard-49863249/)\n\n------\nsledgehammers\nI really like the design and the big font on my screen (1440x900). I find it a\njoy to read.\n\nIf there's a lot of text and the font is relatively small, I usually end up\njust quickly skimming the content or have to zoom the page a lot.\n\n------\ncryptarch\nResilient to what, reading?\n\nIt's a \"history book\" about web design, in case you're thinking it's anything\nto do with resilience and thus find it interesting.\n\n------\nachairapart\nTL;DR: React is the new Flash.\n\n------\nKevanM\nThat font size makes it so hard to read on a big desktop.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow to Write a BitTorrent Client, Part 1 - networked\nhttp://www.kristenwidman.com/blog/33/how-to-write-a-bittorrent-client-part-1/\n======\ncheatdeath\nI recently went through the same thing – building my own simple BitTorrent\nclient, mostly just due to curiosity about how the protocol works. There were\nsome tricky parts, most of which are outlined in this but I found the\nunderlying concept so simple. I guess simplicity is a requirement for scale\nand resilience.\n\nI wrote up my adventure too:\n[http://seanjoflynn.com/research/bittorrent.html](http://seanjoflynn.com/research/bittorrent.html)\n\n------\nzielmicha\nFor \"Writing BitTorrent Client\" workshops I've made, I have created\n\"introductory\" tracker and peers (they, for example, display friendly errors\nif you make invalid protocol requests):\n[https://torrent.zielmicha.com/](https://torrent.zielmicha.com/)\n\nThe source is on Github: [https://github.com/zielmicha/torrent-\nworkshops](https://github.com/zielmicha/torrent-workshops)\n\n(unfortunately you need to register before using it, but you can even use fake\nmail)\n\n------\nallenkim6\nIf anyone is interested in a similar writeup for a bittorrrent client for\nnode.js, check out my tutorial here:\n[http://allenkim67.github.io/bittorrent/2016/05/04/how-to-\nmak...](http://allenkim67.github.io/bittorrent/2016/05/04/how-to-make-your-\nown-bittorrent-client.html)\n\n~~~\nsiculars\nLove! Thanks!\n\n------\nSlashmanX\nFeross has some great implementations of the different pieces of BitTorrent\n(including parsing torrent files, magnets etc) in JavaScript on his GitHub[0].\nWould recommend people take a look if they find this blog post interesting.\n\n[0] -\n[https://github.com/feross?tab=repositories](https://github.com/feross?tab=repositories)\n\n------\nandreicon\nthis is actually pretty cool. i think cryptocurrencies could benefit from the\nimplementation of some design features from the bittorrent protocol.\n\n------\njoeblau\nThis is something that's been on my list of things to do for a while and I've\nnever gotten around to it. Thanks for this post.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCan vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa? - riffraff\nhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans-stomach-unpalatable-truth-quinoa\n\n======\nwesticle\nIf my startup was selling a product which was so successful I couldn't afford\nthat product myself, it would be a good problem to have.\n\nI don't understand this article. Either Bolivian farmers want to sell their\nproducts for the best price they can get (in which case more power to them) or\nthey want to subsidise their neighbours' quinoa-based diet. This is a simple\nquestion of utility. And I can't blame them for choosing to bring more net\nvalue into their country by exporting a prized foodstuff to richer countries.\n\nI'm sure the USA would be happy to trade them comparatively low-value corn or\nwheat to quinoa. Am I missing something?\n\n------\nbonesskier\nThe author, Joanna Blythman, has a grudge against vegans for some reason. I\ndon't think she actually cares about bolivians, she just wanted to blame\nvegans for something, no matter whether the accusation is correct or not. She\nis even blaming vegans for deforestation which is actually caused by meat\nconsumption. Go figure.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHarvard student database hacked, posted on BitTorrent - vegasbrianc\nhttp://www.news.com/8301-10789_3-9893174-57.html?tag=cd.blog\n\n======\nhenning\nHarvard (Haaahvuhd): we might leak your personal information, but at least we\nnever use dangling participles in sentences.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe 90-9-1 Principle - mef\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90%E2%80%939%E2%80%931_principle\n\n======\nmichaelpinto\nLudic fallacy: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludic_fallacy>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe One Question to Ask Developers Before You Make a Hire Decision - DustinOfDenver\nhttp://thinkingcollective.com/2015/07/14/the-one-question-to-ask-developers-before-you-make-a-hire-decision/\n======\nkabouseng\nWhat about young developers who haven't done any side projects, just trying to\nskill up at their company or spent all their time graduating?\n\nWhat about older developers who worked before Github and so had their own\nprojects dissolved to obscurity?\n\nWhat about developers who don't do side projects but give 120% to the company\nproduct, even at home? (Some of us actually enjoy working on the products we\nbuild during the day :D )\n\nYou'll get exactly the same mileage by just asking the potential hire to tell\nyou about something they built - full stop. You'll be able to gauge passion,\nif they actually did the work, how it solves a problem. You just won't be able\nto play with it, but I suspect the minimum of side projects is in any case\nlive, and more about scratching an itch.\n\nAnd even with non-disclosure agreements etc they'll be able to tell you enough\nof the technology to be able to make a call.\n\n~~~\nDustinOfDenver\n\"What about developers who don't do side projects but give 120% to the company\nproduct, even at home?\"\n\nExcellent point! I would hope that would be the response to the question... It\nwould still provide the value the question seeks.\n\n------\nrm999\nI've built up a solid work-life balance with an amazing girlfriend, a wide\nvariety of interesting (and close) friends, and some cool hobbies. I'm content\nwith not being considered by employers who don't respect that.\n\n------\nVikingCoder\nI've been a paid, professional software developer since 1995. In all of that\ntime, I've been between jobs for a total of 4 weeks. And during all of that\ntime, I've had employment contracts that said my work was for-hire, and the\ncompany owned all of the software that I wrote, even on my own computer on my\nown time.\n\nSo, the answer to your question is, I haven't written anything I can legally\ndescribe to you without permission, since 1995.\n\nIs that seriously the ONLY question you want to ask me?\n\n~~~\nDustinOfDenver\nYour description of the companies you worked for - tell me a lot. Not that you\nare not a great developer, but the types of employers you like and filter you\nuse to select your next job - that too is important.\n\n~~~\nVikingCoder\nSo then the title should be \"One of the Questions...\"\n\n------\ncirclefavshape\n/me sighs\n\nCome _on_. Isn't this getting old for anyone else? Do you check if your\ndentist goes to dentist meetups, or extracts teeth in his spare time? All\nyou're doing with this question is asking \"are you one of us\".\n\n~~~\ngommm\nYes I definitely do check if my dentist go to conferences, presents or\nteaches.\n\nEver since a dentist fucked up and caused me a lot of pain and to spend a lot\nof money to fix the damage, I've become very careful about how I chose health\ncare professionals. And while I don't know enough about dentistry to judge\nseeing a dentist go to conference documents himself on the newest techniques\nand teach or present at conferences is a good signal to find out if he is\ngood.\n\nThere are people who are passionate about what they do and they are people who\ndon't care all that much in almost every case the passionate ones will be\nbetter.\n\n~~~\nfalcolas\nYou missed the important part of that statement, the \"in their spare time\".\n\nLearning and practicing on the job is one thing, expecting it in the remaining\n1/3 of your life is too much.\n\n~~~\nDustinOfDenver\nIf you LOVE something - you do it in your \"spare\" time. That was the core of\nmy point. I will take a dentist, butcher, developer who LOVES their work in\nsuch a way that the line between work and fun is blurred over someone who is\nworking for the weekend - any day!\n\nYou can be a fine developer who just clocks in and out. But if I had a choice\n(and sometime I don't). I would choose the guy who loves what they do and does\nit in their \"spare\" time.\n\n------\njawns\n\"It would be useful to keep a diary, but I don't like writing unpaid. I don't\nlike writing checks without getting paid.\"\n\n— Christopher Hitchens, 2010\n\nI understand the rationale behind asking what you've built without being paid,\nbut if you're hoping, by that question, to identify people who are really\nsmart ... then isn't it really smart to figure out how to get paid for your\nwork, rather than doing it unpaid?\n\n~~~\nDustinOfDenver\nThat is why I don't ask for \"open source\" contributions. Ideally, the\ncandidate built their project to make money!\n\nChristopher Hitchens- \"Long describing himself as a socialist and a\nMarxist...\"\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens)\n\nI am a hardcore capitalist so he need not apply for my gigs :-)\n\n------\nanders30\nIn my experience interviewing candidates, cultural fit largely outweighs other\ntechnical merits. I try to keep this in mind when I'm asked for my opinion.\n\nWhile the questions in this article appear biased towards a 60/40 work/life\nbalance, I would say they're spot on in detecting a very specific cultural\nfit. If nothing else, these questions would get a candidate talking. They're a\nlittle on the aggressive side for my interviewing style, but I imagine they're\nquite effective.\n\nKeep in mind, the job candidate should also be interviewing the company. If\nsomeone were to ask me what unpaid work I have done in the past, I would\nconsider the cultural ramifications of the question. In this case, I would\nneed to be okay with an aggressive internal culture.\n\nCome to think of it, it's important to realize that when you interview\ncandidates you may very well be the first impression of the company. Articles\nlike these offer a glance of a company/interviewer without having to go\nthrough the trouble of applying.\n\nI would really like to find a way to study the effectiveness of interviewing\nstyles. I wonder what metrics would even apply?\n\n~~~\nDustinOfDenver\nGreat comments! I agree. A number of commenters have said, I would not want to\nwork for a company like that and I think that is good. Who wants to take a job\nto, only 6 months later, realize they did not like the culture.\n\nHowever, the point about 60/40 work life balance is not 100% accurate.\n\nI am constantly reading Product Management literature not for work - but\nbecause I love it. I am finishing the Disney Biography because I love learning\nabout leadership styles. In other words, I do a job that complements my\n\"spare\" time activities... and ANYONE who manages that is a good hire.\n\nThis is not to say - go to these things FOR work - that is not the gal/guy I\nam looking for. You should not do things FOR work that you are not paid to do\n(that is not fair). But, if you love the work you do and that extends into\nyour life - all the better.\n\n~~~\nanders30\nMy statement on the 60/40 work/life balance was a conclusion based on my own\nbias, which I forgot to specify.\n\nThank you for your feedback! You are correct that the best hires tend to\npursue employment that complements their \"spare time activities\".\n\n------\nscarface74\nMy answer to that question would be, when I am at work I give 120% of my\neffort to my job. I build skills and I do research the latest trends in the\nindustry. However I believe a good work life balance is important. When I\nleave work, I spend quality time with my family and at the gym.\n\nWhen I was looking for a job eight months ago. I had interviews with 10\ndifferent companies in the course of three weeks. I was not offered one job\nprobably because of the attitude I expressed above. I accepted a job where the\nmanager emphasized his belief in a work life balance.\n\nIt's a buyers market for qualified experienced software developers. I won't\njumped through unnecessary hoops to get a job.\n\n------\nmratzloff\n> What are your interests?\n\n> you don’t care that they like cats – what you want to hear: they love their\n> hoodie and their code\n\nWell, speak for yourself. I look for people with outside interests beyond just\nprogramming. If the only thing they have going for them is their code, their\nego and emotions are way too wrapped up in what they produce. They can't take\ncriticism about their work as well as someone who has other things going on in\ntheir life. I'm not saying passion is not valuable; it is, but there needs to\nbe a balance.\n\nI understand that hiring someone with no life or interests outside of code and\nyour company is a great way to build a cult, but a great way to build a\n_company_ is by ensuring that it has a culture. That happens by hiring\ninteresting people that have shared values _and_ outside interests.\n\n~~~\nWorldWideWayne\nIt sounds like everything is just black and white for you too though.\n\nI assure you that it's possible for someone to only have one great passion\nwithout being an egotistical narcissist.\n\n~~~\nDustinOfDenver\nMy hope that someone who is passionate - cares more about building the best\nproduct they can (than even I do). As a result, they should welcome \"valid\"\ncriticism.\n\n------\nlotsofcows\nThe one question to ask interviewers: \"Do you ever use the word 'passion' to\nrefer to anything other than sex?\"\n\n...I'll make an exception for religious feelings too.\n\n------\nIgorPartola\nThis one weird trick to hiring great developers.\n\nThe manager asked the job candidate one question. You won't believe what\nhappens next.\n\nStartup hires an unemployed developer. The reason will shock you.\n\nSorry, I couldn't resist.\n\n~~~\npc86\nWhen I read #1? Wow.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nSwift 2.0: Understanding flatMap - ingve\nhttp://natashatherobot.com/swift-2-flatmap/\n\n======\njohntyree\nAnd the functional programmers of the world collectively sigh...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: KDE vs. GNOME, which is better? - Scott_MacGregor\n\nWhich of these two do think is better, and what makes it better?\n======\njamesbritt\nBetter for what?\n\nI like kde3 over gnome for assorted config options (like different backgrounds\non each desktop) but maybe that makes no difference to others. On the other\nhand kde4 copies the most annoying ui features of Vista so I avoid using it.\n\nThese are also not the only windows and desktop managers, so why is the choice\nbetween those two?\n\n~~~\nmakecheck\nYes...for instance, I've always used Window Maker on Linux.\n\n------\nr11t\nGnome-Do which in-spite of its name works with both Gnome and KDE is basically\na Quicksilver inspired launcher : <http://do.davebsd.com/> is the perfect\npower tool for Linux Desktop users.\n\n------\njcapote\nWindowMaker\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMore details on MAINWAY and MARINA - brown9-2\nhttp://theweek.com/article/index/245694/minimize-this\n======\njdp23\n_Individually analyzing each incoming email is impossible. So the NSA\nautomates the minimization procedures as much as it can. Based on dynamic link\nanalyses done by computers, scores are assigned to emails and associated\nprofiles inside the system. Every bit of data associated with an email address\nthat might belong to a U.S. person \"updates\" the score. Analysts can query the\nsystem for individual names, and email addresses, and even subject lines. They\ncan add, if they want, the place and time that the email was collected, too.\nIf the \"score\" associated with the email indicates that there is a 51 percent\nchance or higher that it belongs to a person overseas, the analyst can start\nmonitoring content right away and not do anything further. If that score is\nless than 51 percent, the analyst can, if directed by a superior, start to\naccess the content, if it's available, but the large team of lawyers the NSA\nhas will be instantly notified, and a FISA order will be sought._\n\nAs I interpret this:\n\n1) analysts are able to access email metadata without a specific court order\nor warrant\n\n2) analysts are able to access email content without a court order or if\nthere's a 51%+ chance it's a non-US person\n\n3) analysts with the approval of supervisors are initially able to access\nanybody's email content without a court order, although the FISA court then\nhas to approve it\n\n~~~\njdp23\nJulian Sanchez has some thoughts on this at [1]:\n\n _Legally speaking, the analysts don’t have carte blanche. In other words,\nthis isn’t “warrantless wiretapping” so much as “general warrant wiretapping.”\nThey can’t just tap any old call or read any old e-mail they strikes them as\n“suspicious.” They’ve got to be flagging content for interception because they\nbelieve it’s covered by a particular §702 authorization, and observe whatever\n“targeting procedures” the FISA Court has established for the relevant\nauthorization...._\n\n _None of that would be too surprising in principle: That’s the whole point of\n§702! It means analysts get discretion to decide what particular accounts fall\nunder a very broad order. A key question, of course, is just what the checks\nin the process are. Can an analyst technically (if not legally) plug in any\nselector to start collecting on and just start getting material? Does anyone\ncheck their work before call and e-mail content starts flowing in? How closely\nare their error rates checked after it does? Again, legally, they don’t have a\nblank check, but it’s the details of the system architecture that determine\nwhether you’d be able to tell the difference in practice._\n\n[1] [http://www.juliansanchez.com/2013/06/15/nadler-and-\nmueller-o...](http://www.juliansanchez.com/2013/06/15/nadler-and-mueller-on-\nanalysts-getting-call-and-e-mail-content/)\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nJulian Sanchez has been doing great work covering this stuff. I think the\nevidence strongly suggests the answer to his question about analysts\n\"[plugging] in any selector and start collecting on and just strt getting\nmaterial\" is no:\n\n* Google and Yahoo have categorically denied that it's so\n\n* The Guardian has released a follow-up story recategorizing the NSA's access\n\n* The full court order linked by the NYT in the Yahoo FISA case shows the court having to demand Yahoo turn over material, which wouldn't have been necessary if NSA had direct access\n\n~~~\ndiscostrings\nJump to conclusions much? Perhaps they can't pull user data at will from\nGoogle and Yahoo without a bit of legal process and human intervention at the\ncompany. I imagine we'll find out soon. But that only applies to Prism.\n\nIt looks like email they catch on the wire, which is probably their main\nsource of email, as well as phone calls, may well be fair game for the \"plug\nin any selector...\".\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nI'm not sure what conclusion your comment suggests I've jumped to.\n\n~~~\ndiscostrings\nYou've jumped to the conclusion that if user profiles that haven't yet been\ndelivered through Prism can't be reached with \"plug in any selector...\" that\n\"plug in any selector...\" has been debunked.\n\nHowever, it appears that in the telephone and over-the-wire email interception\nprograms, \"plug in any selector\" is quite possible.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nI'm only interested in and commenting on email and Google/Facebook's supposed\n(but false) entanglement with NSA. I'm right there with you on the over-the-\nwire stuff.\n\n~~~\ndiscostrings\nI realize you're interested in defending these companies' involvement. That's\nfine when it's on topic.\n\nHowever, you've just replied to an article and comments that focus on the\ncontent that's being intercepted outside of Prism. You don't even mention in\nyour comment that what you're saying applies only to Prism. I know you're\nsensitive to the Google-bashing, but that's not going on here. It's important\nwe discuss the other aspects of this story and not get too caught up on Prism\nuntil we have all the details.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nIf you reread the Julian Sanchez quote above, you'll see I'm responding to it.\n\n(You're right that the Sanchez piece this is taken from concerns itself\nprimarily with telephonic surveillance; I take your point. Thanks.)\n\n------\ncaptn3m0\n>If the \"score\" associated with the email indicates that there is a 51 percent\nchance or higher that it belongs to a person overseas, the analyst can start\nmonitoring content right away and not do anything further.\n\nAs a non-US citizen, this hits me hard. Basically, the NSA can read all my\nemails without a single warrant, if I'm reading this correctly. Is my\ninterpretation correct?\n\n~~~\nsamastur\nYes. It's one of few things nobody has disputed.\n\n------\ndiscostrings\nThe 51% determination is one of the most ridiculous aspects of this.\n\n1) 51% is a very low bar to meet\n\n2) How detailed could this confidence algorithm be?\n\nIf a message is intercepted from overseas, and no other data is know, is there\nautomatically at least 51% confidence that it is from a non-U.S. person? I'm\nsure other factors go into the calculation, but whatever factors they are, I'm\nsure a lot of American data is being sucked into this thing.\n\nGiven not only that Americans travel, but that VPNs are common, I find it very\ndifficult to see how the NSA could be justified in conducting this sort of\nprogram within their \"foreign-only\" mandate.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nChasing Returns - DanielH\nhttp://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/chasing-returns.html\n\n======\nalexwestholm\nI think part of what's so scary about institutional investors failing to\nunderstand the means by which their investments produce returns is that their\nvery job is to act as a proxy for those that don't understand the investments.\nThat is to say, part of their job is to mediate between investors who lack the\nability to understand that they're chasing pipe dreams and the investment\nopportunities they're after in order to ensure that the investment doesn't\nimplode. Sounds like the guy with 40 years on Wall St. gets this. Sounds like\nmany of the banks didn't.\n\n------\nmkramlich\nI think part of the reason there's a current boom in demand for startup\ninvestments is that returns elsewhere, like interest on simple savings\naccounts, are essentially zero, at least in the US. Add to this the fact that\nfor software-centric startups so many of the costs have dropped (including\ndevelopers, if you go with offshore devs.) Plus add to this all the good free\ninfo being shared on the web about startups and investment. It all adds up. I\nthink most of those factors won't go away, except the near zero interest rates\non savings.\n\n------\ncletus\nIn the wake of the dotcom crash the Fed was forced to lower the cash rate to\n1%. Cheap and easy money was a huge contributing factor in creating the\nsubprime disaster.\n\nNow the rate is 0%. This can end no other way than badly.\n\nThe words \"too big to fail\" should send a chill down your spine. Wall street\nas it stands now has absolutely no aversion to risk because if everything goes\npear-shaped the Fed will probably bail them out.\n\nI call this welfare for investment bankers. And it's a terrible, terrible\nidea.\n\nAnyway, back to VC, we already see the early signs of a bubble: a system awash\nwith cash, high seed valuations, some fairly dubious enterprises being funded,\netc.\n\nWe all know how this song ends. At some point the house of cards will\nfall.some companies, VCs and investors will go under. Money will tighten up.\nSome real businesses will get caught in the crossfire and die. Valuations will\ngo down. Companies won't get funding as a result (we've already seen this with\ncompanies seeking funding with 2007/2008 valuations; Mark Suster has written\nabout this).\n\nOh and the other consequence of that collapse is that it will be a great time\nto start a business as talent will be much cheaper.\n\n~~~\nj_baker\n\"We all know how this song ends. At some point the house of cards will fall.\"\n\nYou know, both vigilance and long-term thinking are admirable traits. But\ndon't you think it's a bit premature to become gloomy about the next\nrecession? I mean, our economy hasn't really started to recover from the last\none.\n\nBesides this, I doubt the financial markets had this level of introspection\nbefore the housing collapse. Most banks regarded subprime mortgages as a sure\nthing and were largely caught unaware (even if they were unaware because they\nignored the facts). Don't assume that a collapse is inevitable. A bubble\ndoesn't grow if investors don't let it. So there's a good chance that a\ncollapse will either be averted or won't be that bad.\n\n~~~\ncletus\nIf history has taught us anything it's that cycles ofboom and bust are\ninevitable. The lengths of e cycles varies. The degree of the booms and busts\nvaries. Bu the cycle is constant.\n\nIt's a fundamental part of human psychology: markets are riven by fear and\ngreed. They overbuy on greed and oversell on fear. There's your cycle.\n\nI'm not predicting the next recession other tbqnthere will be one but guarani\nmore prophetic than saying \"it will rain eventually\".\n\nThe problem is that governments tend to make these things worse and more\nfrequent. Letting banks fail would be q good first step to weeding out the bad\nparticipants.\n\nWe may not be put of recession but the Internet/VC cycle is closer to the peak\n(IMHO) than you might otherwise think.\n\n------\nJSig\nThe federal reserve has everybody speculating with %0 interest rates. I\nsuggest they raise interest rates! This will be a good thing as it will\nencourage capital formation.\n\n~~~\ntomjen3\nThe US government has a large debt, as does most of its population. While your\nsolution is entirely correct, I doubt that there is that many who are\ninterested in actually implementing it.\n\nIt isn't all bad though: siliconvalley may just ride the secession out,\nprotected by a nice bouble. It sure beats unemployment:)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLawmaker Says Snowden Leaks Will Cost Country 'Billions To Repair' - aet\nhttp://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/05/272151126/lawmaker-say-snowden-leaks-will-cost-country-billions-to-repair\n======\nofficialjunk\nlost me at \"repair\" ...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRIP Medical Debt: Nonprofit buying and forgiving medical debt in the U.S. - _bxg1\nhttps://ripmedicaldebt.org\n======\ndencodev\nIt's really depressing we live in a world where this is a thing people need.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLinux File Security Training at the ACLU - linuxmag\nhttp://www.linux-mag.com/id/7772\n======\npasbesoin\n_Access Control List University (ACLU)_\n\nI wondered what the heck the American Civil Liberties Union was doing\npublicizing Linux security (who knows, it might not be a bad idea).\n\n~~~\nilkhd2\nYeah, indeed. To teach people how to protect their data...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java - computerlab\nhttps://federalnewsradio.com/tom-temin-commentary/2018/01/irs-clutches-its-modernization-holy-grail/\n======\nTimJYoung\nWow, what a cool project to work on: working out the logic flows in\n_assembler_ and breaking them out so that they can be translated into a\nhigher-level language.\n\nI've always thought that this type of government work should be open to bids\nfrom _anyone_. If the government is worried about trojans, malware, etc., then\nthey can easily hire an auditor to audit the code and vouch for its\nauthenticity. The fact that only very large, well-connected corporations get a\ncrack at these types of problems is insane and a complete waste of taxpayer\nmoney.\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nThe big trick is the proposal itself. Writing that is only possible if you are\nalready tied in at all kinds of levels. I've seen some of these tenders up\nclose, the companies that land the deals submit phone book sized proposals to\ntenders that are officially open but actually closed unless you are in a very\nselect circle already. It's not uncommon for the proposal writer to then pass\non the actual work to a whole slew of subcontractors at substantially lower\nrates.\n\n~~~\nryanmarsh\nAre you saying this is how contracts are awarded on FedBiz Ops?\n\nI know a handful of small players, myself included who have won IT contracts\nwith the gov't and it is not at all like you stated.\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nSmall contracts are an entirely different matter. Try bagging something >> $1M\nor defense related.\n\nI've worked for the government on small jobs here in the EU a couple of times,\nas long as you stay below a certain amount you can bypass a ton of\nrequirements. But once you go above that threshold the number of players drops\nvery rapidly and there is no escaping the formal process.\n\nIf you are capable of selling large contracts to the US Federal Government\nwithout having to submit a typical bid proposal then you are in a very\nfortunate position, but the people that I know that have done this in the past\nhave all worked on stuff that either required their fairly unique skills or\nthey were working on extremely small contracts (< $250K).\n\n~~~\nwoobar\nHere is one of the two young entrepreneurs (19 and 23 years old) that secured\n~$300M DoD contract. So obviously, it is not as bad. ;)\n\nIn 2005, Packouz (23 years old at the time) joined Efraim Diveroli (19 years\nold at the time) in Diveroli's arms company AEY Inc. By the end of 2006, the\ncompany had won 149 contracts worth around $10.5 million.[1] In early 2007,\nAEY secured a nearly $300 million U.S. government contract to supply the\nAfghan Army with 100 million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, millions of rounds\nfor SVD Dragunov sniper rifles, aviation rockets and other munitions\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Packouz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Packouz)\n\nEDIT: added quote from Wikipedia\n\n~~~\nepmaybe\nsince nobody mentioned already, there is an enjoyable film that was recently\nmade about these two individuals called \"War Dogs\".\n\n~~~\ncharlesdm\nI was about to say the same -- great movie!\n\n------\nTheSoftwareGuy\nJava seems like a good choice for the IRS. There are legions and legions of\nprogrammers well versed in Java, since its among the most commonly used\nprogramming languages to introduce programming at universities. This means the\nIRS should be able to focus its hiring on \"People who know tax law and can use\nJava\" instead of \"Java experts that know enough tax law to be dangerous\".\n\nIts not the flashiest language, but I think its the right choice for them.\n\n~~~\nwarrenm\nWhat makes you think the developers have to \"know tax law\"?\n\nIt might be a peripheral plus for an applicant, but it's more important they\nare a competent programmer.\n\n\"Tax law\" changes constantly - you truly cannot _reasonably_ expect a\ndeveloper to \"know tax law\" __and __be a competent programmer.\n\n~~~\nTheCoelacanth\n\"Know tax law\" in the context of a software developer I would interpret as\nunderstanding the core concepts and terminology involved in tax law, not\nknowing all the intricacies involved in every single piece of tax law. They\nneed to be able to understand the specific pieces of tax law that they are\nworking on with the help of an actual expert without too much friction; they\ndon't have to be actual experts on tax law.\n\n------\nchx\nWhat this article implies is not entirely correct: this codebase is not S/370\nassembly, oh no. It's IBM 7074! Check also the reports which said the Master\nFile age was over 55 years -- the S/370 is too new for that.\n\n[https://books.google.ca/books?id=3iEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA88&lpg=PA...](https://books.google.ca/books?id=3iEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=%22IBM+7074%22+%22irs%22&source=bl&ots=A_DZmgVBL7&sig=2cAXb5oG_JypmSU_jCa5fqbPqaY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjpvuvM2qbZAhVGwWMKHdbXA0YQ6AEINjAD#v=onepage&q=%22IBM%207074%22%20%22irs%22&f=false)\n\n~~~\nlobster_johnson\nThere was an interesting article/HN story a year ago about the government\nworking Java into an ancient IBM 7074 system: [https://thenewstack.io/happens-\nuse-java-1960-ibm-mainframe/](https://thenewstack.io/happens-use-\njava-1960-ibm-mainframe/)\n\nHN discussion here:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13464675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13464675)\n\n------\nmooneater\n> Converting assembler code won’t be such a simple input-output matter [as\n> turning a dog into a sausage and back again as shown in the linked b/w film]\n\nActually this is the best analogy I could possibly imagine.\n\n------\nCryoLogic\nFunny how it's always the same companies producing code for the government\nbased on political relationships - but the outcome of government software is\nalways so bad.\n\n~~~\ndsfyu404ed\nPolitical relationships aren't the entire problem. You have to be a BigCo with\nan established relationship with the government to be able to comply with the\nrules and lobby for a contract that favors you.\n\nIf anyone could land a contract just because a senator owed them a favor you'd\nsee a lot more diversity in who the government does business with.\n\n------\nAlexCoventry\nIt sounds like the effort might have been a step in the right direction, but\nhardly a solution in its own right. The result would be a literal case of the\naphorism \"You can write assembly in any language.\"\n\nThe translation would have some minor benefits: interop with java libraries\nwould be nice, it could help to plug the system into better infrastructure\nlike a modern testing framework, and it might run a little more securely. (I\nwonder whether you could craft a tax return to crash this system.) But it\nwouldn't have magically produced readable modern java code.\n\n~~~\nfwip\nIf you can separate areas of functionality, you can upgrade it piece-by-piece.\nSo while it starts off as 98% inscrutable assembly-in-Java, you transform it\nover time until it's only 2%. Ideally, backed with strong tests and fuzzing.\n\n~~~\nAlexCoventry\nAbsolutely, but it's a long way from a solution.\n\n------\ncodemusings\nOne has to wonder whether it really makes sense to port instead of taking a\nlook at the workflow and simply implement it from scratch.\n\n~~~\nnicolaslem\nI maintain a code base written by others and I fight this feeling all the\ntime.\n\nIf (re)writing software has taught me anything is that sentences that start\nwith \"simply\" or \"just\" actually mean that you don't fully understand the\nproblem.\n\n~~~\ndajohnson89\nTo be fair, there's a tendency to fight starting from scratch, on the\n(arguably incorrect) assumption that starting over introduces higher risk, and\ngreater time & cost.\n\n~~~\nTheCoelacanth\nIMO, all-at-once rewrites are almost never a good option. Ship of Theseus\nstyle rewrites where every component eventually gets replaced but there is\nnever a hard dividing line between old product and new product can be a good\nidea.\n\n------\nzitterbewegung\nThe best argument to new development is working code. I assume that they can't\nhire people to upgrade or maintain Maniframe software anymore.\n\n~~~\ncosmie\nWorking code is king, but in the IRS's case it's a very expensive king.\n\nA huge amount of fraud happens by exploiting a timing attack against the batch\nprocessing architecture of the existing process. The system only has\nvisibility into data from previous batches, it's blind to what's been done\nduring the the currently processing batch. One exploitable artifact of this is\nthat if you try to claim someone as a dependent (and potentially get child tax\ncredits, EIC, etc) and they've already been claimed in a previous batch, your\nreturn will get rightfully rejected. But if multiple returns claim that person\nin the same batch, and they haven't been claimed in a previous batch, they'll\nall get accepted. The IRS will catch it after the fact, but by that point\nthey've already paid out the fraudulent returns. If it's something like a\nmisunderstanding between spouses on who claims a kid, it's likely they'll\nstraighten it out and get their money back. If it's outright fraud, then\nthey'll probably be out that money completely (plus investigative costs).\n\nThat's just one example, but there are billions of dollars worth of fraud that\nhappens every year which could be prevented by migrating the IRS systems from\noffline batch processing to an online/real-time transactional architecture.\n\n~~~\nwarrenm\nTheir batch processing is definitely an interesting case, as it how it\nprocesses failures (had them as a customer of mine a couple years back where I\nwas working on improving their responses to failed jobs (and accelerating the\ntime between reruns)).\n\n------\njimrandomh\n> Wang was working under streamlined critical pay authority the agency has had\n> since its landmark 1998 restructuring. It gave the IRS 40 slots under which\n> it could pay temporary, full-time employees higher than GS rates. Former\n> Commissioner John Koskinen pointed out Congress did not re-up this authority\n> in 2013, despite his entreaties to former Congressman Jason Chaffetz’s\n> Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.\n\n> He says he applied to become a GS-15 or Senior Executive Service member so\n> he could see through the assembler-to-Java project. But his approval didn’t\n> come through until a week before his employment authority expired. By then\n> he’d accepted another job.\n\n(GS-15 is $103k-$134k.\n[https://www.federalpay.org/gs/2017/GS-15](https://www.federalpay.org/gs/2017/GS-15))\n\nSo, basically: the IRS can't fix its software because it can't pay market\nrates for software engineers. It can't pay market rates for software engineers\nnot because it lacks the budget for it, but because Congress won't let them.\nThis is how it ends up with huge armies of bureaucrats doing things that could\nbe easily automated.\n\n~~~\nabtinf\nThe actual federal pay schedules are here: [https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-\noversight/pay-leave/salaries...](https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-\noversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/2018/general-schedule/)\n\nThe GS-15 range for the DC area is $135k-164k. For federal government\nemployees, salary only represents about half of their total compensation,\nwhich includes a lifetime inflation adjusted pension and medical benefits.\n\n~~~\njelling\n...and any sizable employer offers healthcare and a 401(k). So at best you\ncould say they're betting on an inflation-adjusted pension? That's not going\nto sell many candidates.\n\n~~~\nsoVeryTired\nI'm not from the US, but I'm guessing a 401(k) pension scheme is defined\ncontribution: you pay in cash in a tax advantaged way, and the risk that the\npension scheme loses money or doesn't make enough of a return to support you\nin retirement is borne by you.\n\nI'm also guessing that the government's pension scheme is defined benefit: the\nrisk that the scheme loses money is borne by the government, and you get your\npre-determined payout unless the government goes bankrupt.\n\nDefined contribution pensions are typically much more valuable, since they can\nobviate the need to save for retirement (or at least part of that need).\n\nIn the UK, it's extremely competitive to become a civil servant despite the\nmediocre pay. The reason is security, both in your job and in retirement.\n\n~~~\narglebarnacle\nYes that's right, but you've got the terms reversed. Defined contribution is\nthe one where you bear the risk, and defined benefit is where the government\nbears the risk.\n\n~~~\ngbacon\nA _portion_ of the risk. PBGC pays out at a significant discount.\n\n------\nthrowa32582657\nI’m sorry but this seems like a fool’s errand. Perhaps Jian Wang is a genius\nthat figured out a way to map IBM 360 assembly to Java that would map to the\nJVM. Maybe he’s brilliant or maybe his efforts are overhyped by this news\npiece. It seems that a direct mapping from 360 to the JVM might have made more\nsense. I suggest that you go look at Rick Hickey’s Clojure code to see how\nthat might look.\n\nGovernment IT is rife with corruption and incompetence. I have worked for a\nnumber of agencies and worked in federal government for many years. Projects\nare often steered in the direction of contractors and federal employees that\nbenefit from technologies. This is often done to bias incumbent legacy\nstakeholders and technologies that benefit the federal employees and the\ncontractors that collude to control the systems for their own gains. I have\nseen the sleaziest contractors enrich themselves at SV IPO levels.\n\nThen came 18F, the hipster government IT revolution. As a senior developer,\nand maybe I am just some cranky old developer, but the thought of being vetted\nby this douchebag, fuckin blows my mind: [https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/04/08/day-\nin-the-life-of-talent-man...](https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/04/08/day-in-the-life-\nof-talent-manager/)\n\nYep, most government and corporate IT is fucked.\n\n------\njmclnx\nWell, I guess once the system is rewritten, we will not get our refunds until\n3 years later.\n\nI wonder if I get 2x by expected refund the IRS can come at me to claim the\nextra amount :)\n\n~~~\ntytytytytytytyt\nWow, that joke would have been hilarious back in 2000.\n\n------\nmonksy\nJust imagine if this new system was converted to groovy or scala. That would\nbe pretty amazing.\n\n~~~\n_asummers\nAre people writing new non-Jenkins Groovy code in 2018? What's the use case?\nLegitimately curious. My experience with Groovy is always frustration and I\nliken it to the Coffeescript of Java.\n\n~~~\nderherrf\nWe use it for an embedded DSL to describe business logic quite successfully.\nEasily extendable via categories and embeds naturally in a larger JVM\napplication.\n\nAnd there is Gradle.\n\n~~~\n_asummers\nTotally forgot about Gradle. Fair enough!\n\n------\nrnestler\n> Assembler is like Shakespearean English. It’s dated. A shrinking number of\n> people can deal with it. But it’s also elegant and highly functional.\n\nWhat is considered elegant and functional about assembly?\n\n~~~\nwhataretensors\n> Assembler is like Shakespearean English.\n\nAuthor has no idea what assembler is.\n\n~~~\ncoldacid\nYeah, it's more like the individual phonemes that make up each word of every\nstatement.\n\n~~~\narchgoon\nThat, or instructions for controlling tongue positions and vocal chords.\n\n~~~\nIzkata\nAh, but with how English has shifted over the centuries, the necessary domain\nknowledge has slowly been disappearing. Shakespeare's plays now and then [0]\nare slightly different (and back then, dirtier) because of it. (Jump to 2:30\nfor an explanation and example, then at 7:58 is the dirty pun that doesn't\nexist in modern pronunciation.)\n\n[0]\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s)\n\n------\nhnaccy\nIf you machine translate assembler to Java won't you still end up with\nconfusing code?\n\n~~~\nzmonx\nYes, very much so.\n\nIn addition, some of the automated translators I have seen also apply\nautomated refactoring: They tend to merge similar sections of code and\nminimize the delta (similar to _diff_ ) that is factored out. This can create\na maintenance problem especially in the context of a system like the IRS's,\nwhere presumably the code that performs calculations for different _years_ or\nother periods (legislations etc.) is similar but not identical, but must be\nretained as fully as possible to reliably perform calculations that are\nsubject to earlier regulations.\n\nSuch portions of code should be kept distinct, but an automated conversion may\nconflate them, and it may require additional and error-prone fiddling to\nenforce the separation.\n\n------\nmonocasa\n> in theory, there’s no way to translate assembler code. They way it runs is\n> not how it reads\n\nWat?\n\n~~~\nslededit\nIf you do crazy \"tricks\" to get the space down like self modifying code or\njumping into data then it won't run how it reads. It's a lot easier to do this\nin assembly because data and code aren't distinct.\n\n~~~\ntzs\nOn the other hands, there are some \"tricks\" that someone trying to duplicate\nthat functionality in a higher level language can do, too.\n\nFor example, our computers nowadays are much faster and have much more memory.\nSo suppose you have some long, tricky section of assembly code that you know\ncomputers some sort of function of a single 32-bit input.\n\nYou could simply run that section, in a simulator, with all possible 32-bit\ninputs and make a table of the results. Then instead of trying to understand\nwhat is going on by following the convoluted assembly, your task is to\nimplement the function given by that table. With the function in table form\nyou can do things like look for sections that are linear, or constant, of\nfollow other common patterns.\n\nHopefully you can get some idea from context in the assembly code what, at a\nhigh level, the function is doing, and that should further help you see\npatterns in the table.\n\n~~~\nslededit\nAt that point you might as well embed an emulator with a facility to call\nto/from plain java code. Then you could gradually move things over as needed.\n\n------\ngregoriol\nIt's quite simple actually: just make very long names for everything, instead\nof very short ones.\n\n------\nnice_byte\n> assembler\n\n> elegant\n\n> functional\n\nGood one, mate\n\n------\ncrb002\nOr rewrite it in LLVM.\n\n------\nCyberDildonics\nJava? Hope they don't need an unsigned byte.\n\n~~~\njnordwick\nWorking with a mix of signed and unsigned in java is a nightmare.\n\n------\nnvahalik\nSounds like a great reason to simplify our tax system!\n\n~~~\ntopspin\nI wonder how many \"jobs\" depend on the complexity of the byzantine US tax\nsystem.\n\n~~~\ns73v3r_\nI'd say at least 40% of those at Intuit, for starters.\n\n------\ntest6554\nI feel like if the IRS had a software provider that was privatized, this would\nnot be an issue.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTaskRabbit Confirms Layoffs As It Realigns To Focus On Mobile And Enterprise  - JimWillTri\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2013/07/08/taskrabbit-confirms-layoffs-as-it-realigns-to-focus-on-mobile-and-enterprise/\n======\ntemphn\nTaskrabbit is a great idea and very useful. Here are a few things they could\nimprove:\n\n1) Take a page from Exec and do flat-rate pricing in different verticals (e.g.\n$25/hour for Exec Errands). Doing a price auction every time is too time\nconsuming, but that's the UI default at the moment.\n\n2) The refocus on mobile/realtime (like Exec) is also good.\n\n3) Figure out a way to incentivize people to do more transactions through the\nsite. Once you meet a good service provider, right now there's an incentive to\ndo all future interactions outside the site.\n\n4) Re: enterprise refocus: do some sales calls with all the admin assistants\nof VC funds and funded startups in the Valley. Set up a bulk enterprise\naccount for $Xk per month and have them go crazy assembling Ikea furniture.\n\nTaskrabbit is a great concept and really should succeed with some tweaking.\n\n------\njareau\nI think collaborative consumption companies changing their business to focus\non a specific niche or vertical is quite common. Getable (fka Rentcycle) did\nit. Zaarly did it.\n\nI'm head of sales at balancedpayments.com, a payments company that works with\nonline marketplaces, so I interact with dozens of marketplace founders in a\ngiven week, and in my opinion the true P2P/collaborative consumption movement\nis a few years away.\n\n[1]\n\n~~~\n2pasc\nThe problem of Taskrabbit is that they could not be associated with one clear\nrepeatable need that people had, which lead to a sub par experience for almost\nall use cases.\n\nMost marketplaces in this space are pretty \"directed\" by the Company\n(Postmates: deliver food, Instacart: delivery grocery, Lyft: deliver people\nwith car, HomeJoy: deliver cleaning ladies).\n\nLyft is a good example of a P2P system that worked when everybody before them\nfailed because Zimride \"directed\" the marketplace when all previous tentative\nwhere about \"grab people on your way to work\".\n\n~~~\nrbucks\nGreat point. As co-founder of Scripted, I whole-heartedly agree.\n\nI think Leah is great -- I've never met her but have heard and read good\nthings. However it's hard to be one size fits all anymore. Craigslist and\noDesk may be the last two marketplace leaders without single focus.\n\n~~~\n2pasc\nIndeed, especially in the era of mobile which tend to focus on remote control\nsolutions to problems. I like Scripted a lot - funny that you work with Paul\nB. also ;-)\n\n------\neverettForth\nMaybe the new people can make an iPhone app that doesn't crash every time I\ntry to use it, and lets me message people who bid on tasks?\n\nThe web version works fine, but the mobile version has serious issues.\n\nI'm almost certain that whatever they're doing, this is an example of where a\nv2.0 rewrite makes sense.\n\n------\ninthewoods\nI think it is pretty tough to see how this works on a such a low-margin\nservice - in order to reach scale, they need to do a massive education of the\nordinary consumer. Huge costs. Looks to me like they raised their money on\nthat vision, but have found that $30m actually doesn't get you that far.\n\nSo it looks to me like they're shifting to the B2B side - which is smart but\nalso difficult given the competition in that space. oDesk has been shifting\ntheir model away from the 10% commission on small account model to a more\nenterprise sale - I expect TaskRabbit to move that way as well.\n\n~~~\nkrilnon\nAs an oDesk intern… is it really a shift so much as an expansion? It seems\nlike we still do plenty of work on \"small\" accounts.\n\n~~~\ninthewoods\nGood point - it is likely an expansion - I would ask this: what is management\nsaying is the focus for this year? Enterprise or small accounts? My guess\nwould they would say \"Small accounts are still important and our core, but the\nenterprise is where our next stage of growth will come from.\" The reality is\nthat small accounts don't provide the same kind of reoccurring revenue that\nVCs and Wall Street likes to see. And to grow beyond a certain point, you have\nto have a massive number of small accounts and acquisition to make up for the\nchurn. Large enterprises, by contrast, are a longer sales cycle but more\npredictable revenue and generally, in my experience, lower churn.\n\n------\ndr_\nHope they are able to grow their consumer service. I've found it tremendously\nuseful. I used it when I proposed to my girlfriend, to hire talent. I also\nused it to pick up something very important from Jfk airport that I had left\non my flight. If you use if for the right reasons, it's a magnificent tool.\n\n------\ncallmeed\nI think their move to business is really smart. The times I've used it was to\nget data for small MVP projects (eg to get happy hour menus from several SF\nrestaurants) and it was awesome for that.\n\nI never like their consumer model—but if they could become the \"LinkedIn for\ntemp workers\", I think it could be a hit.\n\n------\nmattbarrie\nThe problem with taskrabbit is there is no global liquidity in the\nmarketplace, so you need to boil the ocean building local micromarkets. Too\nmuch can go wrong with local jobs so you need deep touch in checking IDs,\nbackground checks and so forth. It's the opposite of Freelancer.com (my\ncompany).\n\n------\nnedwin\nRemember when TaskRabbit launched followed by a hundred clones?\n\n~~~\ndanso\nI actually have a hard time thinking of clones in this space (not counting\ngeneral freelance sites like odesk and fiverr)...who was TaskRabbit's biggest\ncompetitor (not counting Zaarly, which also pivoted)\n\n~~~\nsdhull\nwww.taskisland.com [http://taskpandas.com/](http://taskpandas.com/)\n[https://sortedlocal.com/](https://sortedlocal.com/) etc... there are lots\n\n~~~\nsmartwater\nThose 3 wouldn't even be considered competitors. All have an Alexa higher than\n1 million, so they are barely known. Depending on how long they've been\naround, one might say they've failed.\n\n~~~\njpursey\nHi, I'm one of the Founders of Sorted\n([https://sortedlocal.com](https://sortedlocal.com))\n\nFirstly, Alexa data isn't fresh, I'm pretty sure it's up to 3 months old...3\nmonths ago we weren't live.\n\nThe UK isn't as receptive to task marketplaces as the US, hence why nobody is\nreally killing it over here, but times are changing and traction is starting\nto come through.\n\nWe started out as a clone to the original Zaarly, but realised that the data\nwas screaming at us to do something different.\n\nSorted is now a profile driven marketplace, our Sorters (task do-ers) create\nprofiles and Customers simply search what they want, so a cleaner near\npostcode x. They browse profiles and request the Sorter, payments still run\nthrough the platform.\n\nIt opens up a lot more marketing opportunities by leveraging the Sorter base,\nand the model is being pretty well received in the UK.\n\nWe launched and MVP about 2 months ago learnt from the data, iterated and\nlaunched another version about 2 weeks ago, we've gone from 800 users on the\nZaarly model to 15,000 on the search model, and we're optimising the funnel as\nwe speak.\n\nI assure you, we have not failed, we're a very young business and it's a steep\nlearning curve, but the UK is a tough nut to crack.\n\n------\npiratebroadcast\nI make good money on TaskRabbit. I hope it doesn;t move too far away for a\n\"Regular guy\" like me to make use of it...\n\n~~~\naarondf\nwhat kind of stuff do you normally do? what is \"good money\" in terms of USD?\n\n~~~\npiratebroadcast\nI do mostly engineering, and by that I mean I may do anything from backing up\nsomeones data to assembling Ikea furniture at an office in Midtown. I bring in\nsometimes $600 extra a month for meeting cool people and doing shit I\ngenerally like doing anyway.\n\nEDIT: I'm learning Rails right now and doing Tasks to bring money in while I\nlearn... It would be so rad to work for them as a Rails dev one day. Circle of\nlife, man.\n\n~~~\nenko\n> engineering, and by that I mean I may do anything from backing up someones\n> data to assembling Ikea furniture\n\nI thought I'd heard pretty much every creative interpretation of the word\n\"engineering\" possible but have to admit - you got me with the IKEA furniture\nassembly.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n11:57 – A short virtual reality horror film made for Oculus Rift - pmcpinto\nhttp://1157.pm/\n======\neliasdelatorre\nI downloaded it for Windows. It has a mp4 file inside the zip. I was able to\nwatch it using VLC on Ubuntu. Despite being a 360° image all cramped on a\nsquare screen it was still pretty scary =P\n\n~~~\nohwhen\nCool, thanks for the feedback :)\n\n------\naleyan\nRan the Mac OS version on Yosemite with 0.4.2 version of the Oculus SDK on a\nDK2.\n\nLoved it. Awesome job. Feels like a haunted house that moves around you\ninstead of you moving through it. Very immersive. Will show this off to other\npeople.\n\nIPD was kind of weird though. I felt like a giant in the dungeon. What kind of\ncamera setup did you use to film this, and how far apart were the cameras?\n\nAlso, I did not feel the 3D sound, though the issue may have been with my ears\nor me not paying attention to it. I will retry again later tonight and report\non the results.\n\n~~~\nohwhen\nSo the camera setup was a fairly standard 6 GoPro rig (Freedom Rig).\nUnfortunately we didn't have the budget for the 3D VR GoPro rig (needing 12\nGoPro's).\n\nWould love to hear your feedback on the sound, as audio was a big focus for us\non this production\n\n------\nfoobarqux\nHas the adult film industry developed anything with Oculus? I would have\nexpected them to be early adopters.\n\n~~~\nprawn\nThere are these guys: [http://oculusrealporn.com/](http://oculusrealporn.com/)\n\nNot going to pretend I haven't tried it out of curiosity, along with the usual\nRift demos.\n\nIt's quite immersive but there's no getting past the fact that you have a big\nmask strapped to your head. However, trying it, you can see how once the Rift\nis more popular and less bulky, and the providers in this space can justify\ninvesting a bit more, it will take off.\n\nJust as interesting will be new types of cinema-style experiences and short\nfilms, hopefully!\n\n------\naresant\nIf you download on a PC you should also:\n\na) Use VR Player\n[https://vrplayer.codeplex.com/](https://vrplayer.codeplex.com/) or equiv.\n\nb) Set to dome projection\n\nc) Set to barrel distortion\n\n~~~\nohwhen\nthanks for the tips :)\n\n------\ntogilvie\nThis was cool - very scary!\n\nOne suggestion: On my first view, I ended up looking \"backwards\" for ~75% of\nthe movie. I might have hit something at the beginning, but my forward-facing\norientation couldn't see any of the action and there weren't any visual cues\nto tell me that if I turned around there were things happening until late in\nthe movie. May be one of those weird things that VR needs to handle\ndifferently.\n\nExcited to see more!\n\nPS - I have a mac and DK2 but it's brand new, so could have been user error.\n\n~~~\nanigbrowl\nThis actually strikes me as the #1 limiting factor for this technology and\ninteractive fiction in general. A good story depends very much on causality.\nIf the viewer in a virtual environment can get stuck in the corner (ie failing\nto direct attention/activity to key narrative elements) then the basic options\nare to a) move the viewer along automatically, as in some videogames or b)\nwait for the viewer to get un-stuck and pick up the story again. Unfortunately\nthe first approach ends up more as a ride than an interactive experience,\nwhile the second baldy undermines the suspension of disbelief.\n\nThis is not to say there's no way to do it - if you establish the basic\nnarrative grammar early you can certainly tell an interactive story, but\nprobably at the cost of limiting complexity. The most effective examples I can\nthink of are from ThatGameCompany, especially Journey.\n\n------\nmrt0mat0\nhey, i would love to see this work for google cardboard (i'm too poor for rift\n;) - i see there's a get notified when it comes to mobile, but i can't click\nit.\n\n~~~\nohwhen\nYes, we're actively working on getting a mobile version out, we expect to have\nan Android version this week, and iOS shortly after (obviously pending app\nstore approval as well). If you shoot us an email at press@1157.pm we'll let\nyou know when you can download it.\n\n------\nvr-freak\nFirst you need to setup VR Player as follows:\n[http://www.vrcircle.com/post/how-to-watch-movies-on-the-\nocul...](http://www.vrcircle.com/post/how-to-watch-movies-on-the-oculus-rift-\ndevelopment-kit-2-dk2)\n\nIn VR Player, I found the best options were as follows:\n\nMedia Menu Option, Format: Mono, Projection: Sphere, Effects: None,\n\nDevice Menu Option, Layout: Side By Side, Distortion: Barrel, Tracker: Oculus\nRift DK2,\n\n------\nohwhen\nWe've updated the copy to make it a little more clear what version to\ndownload. This is a little side project we've done besides our regular day job\nso every piece of feedback is helpful, thanks :)\n\n------\nCephalopodMD\nWill this work with Google cardboard? Occulus is great, but I'd like to use my\n$25 digital viewfinder instead if possible.\n\n~~~\nohwhen\nYes, we're actively working on getting the Android version up and running so\npeople with Google cardboard can view it as well (and any other VR cardboard\nofcourse)\n\nShoot us an email at press@1157.pm and we'll let you know when it's ready\n(hopefully this week)\n\n~~~\nandybak\nIsn't it as simple as uploading it to Youtube or similar and telling people to\nuse any Cardboard (etc) aware video player?\n\n~~~\nCephalopodMD\nYou could watch a static video, but head motion would not be tracked in that\nconfiguration. They probably recorded with some sort of non standard fish-eye\nlens, so no video player will exist that could achieve the desired effect. A\nbunch of transformations have to be done to make the video work with cardboard\n(source, I have developed a quick demo with cardboard and OpenGL before).\n\n~~~\nandybak\nThere's multiple video players for Android that take 'oculus' style side-by-\nside video and allow you to watch it with head tracking. OK - the inter-eye\ndistance and distortion<>lens mapping might not be 100% but it mostly works.\n\n------\nhauget\ndoes it require dk2 or will it work with dk1?\n\n------\nAdmiralAsshat\nTypo in the submission title: \"Oulus\"\n\n~~~\ndang\nThanks! Fixed.\n\n------\nsillysaurus3\nRequires OS X Yosemite. If you've chosen not to upgrade, for example because\nyou value your privacy and disagree with Apple's recent data collection\npolicies which are enabled by default in Yosemite, then you won't be able to\nrun this.\n\nI don't understand why. As far as I know, there's no such thing as an\nexecutable that requires Windows 8. Or, if there is, then no one would think\nof excluding those who are running Windows 7. So why exclude those who are\nrunning older OS X versions? Are there any legitimate technical reasons for\nthis decision?\n\nIt would be cool if you could watch this on Youtube. I know you won't get the\nsame experience as if you had a Rift, but there are hundreds of thousands of\npeople who would love to watch a reaction video of someone experiencing it,\nalong with seeing their perspective.\n\nEDIT: Okay, this was a dumb thing to say. It came across as a complaint, but\nreally I was just trying to ask a question. Sorry.\n\n~~~\nohwhen\nHi,\n\nI'm one of the makers. I run Mavericks and can run the Mac app (that has 3D\nsound), but you will need to hold down Control when opening the app (its in\nthe README).\n\nIf you still can't run it, you can download the PC version (which is just the\nregular movie file) and use any Oculus Rift compatible player (though you\nwon't have 3D sound unfortunately).\n\n~~~\nsillysaurus3\nCool, thanks! What sort of libraries are used for crossplatform 3D sound\nnowadays? FMOD used to be the gold standard for this. I'm wondering if it's\nstill sufficient, or if that's changed. Thanks for your time!\n\nEDIT: Oh, I see. The PC version is just an MP4 file. Neat hack. I wonder if\nthere are any video formats which embed 3D sound...\n\nEDIT2: Hmm, just to let you know, it seems the mp4 file is somehow corrupt:\n[http://i.imgur.com/Zn44nvJ.png](http://i.imgur.com/Zn44nvJ.png) It plays, but\nonly one frame every five seconds or so are showing up. I'll try redownloading\nit.\n\n~~~\nJonnieCache\nWhat is 3D sound in this context? At the end of the day you've got however\nmany channel to work with, and that's it. You can do lots of fancy phase\ntrickery to make things sound like they're going up and down on the Z axis,\nbut it's still delivered in stereo or 5.1 or whatever.\n\nWhen I think of 3D sound I think of stuff like ircam spat[0] but that just\noutputs normal audio like anything else.\n\n[0]\n[http://www.fluxhome.com/products/plug_ins/ircam_spat-v3](http://www.fluxhome.com/products/plug_ins/ircam_spat-v3)\n\n~~~\nbencoder\n3d sound in this context means when you turn your head the sound remains in\nthe same '3d' position(so if the sound was coming from the side and you turn\nto face it, it now sound like it's coming from ahead), which is important for\nvr (with headphones). This isn't really possible with a prerecorded video file\nunless you have a clever player that can do the 3d transformations from the\noriginal sound channels, but I'm not aware of any that can do this yet\n\n~~~\nJonnieCache\nI suppose this would be pretty difficult with \"live\" recorded sound. Stereo\nmicrophone arrays are a complex business already, AFAIK there's no audio\nequivalent of the 360 degree cameras they use for recording VR. Microphones\nsimply cannot be made as directional as speakers.\n\nHowever with a multichannel surround sound recording, panning/fading the\ntracks dynamically according to head movements is trivial, all games do this.\nSo I guess you would want a file format that placed all the channels in 3D\nspace over time. That's the kind of thing the spat software I linked in the\nabove post does, except it's also doing cutting edge acoustic modelling and so\nforth. It needs a hefty computer.\n\n~~~\nohwhen\nAbsolutely true what you're saying. That's why we didn't use live audio for\nthis, but all the sounds were made by a sound studio and placed in a virtual\nroom around a head. We just didn't have the budget to record binaural audio,\nso we're faking it, till we making it :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy everyone should learn to drive - akhilrex\nhttp://akhil.me/2013/why-everyone-should-learn-to-drive\n======\nclaudius\nThe logic of this seems to be that driving has certain properties, these\nproperties are worthwhile to experience and hence everybody has to learn how\nto drive.\n\nWhat a silly idea.\n\nWhile it is certainly true that driving might have these properties – I can’t\nreally comment, as I don’t own a license, much less a car – but assuming that\nthe only way to experience ‘accidents happen’ is by driving a car is rather\nstrange. This especially holds since the idea that ‘accidents happen’ is a\ngood experience is only remotely sensible _because_ accidents not only happen\nin car traffic but basically everywhere else in life, too!\n\nThe same holds for the rest of the paragraphs: You have to plan irrespective\nof your mode of transportation (and of course outside of transportation, too),\nyou have to replace the items in your possession after a certain time, be they\nsocks, jeans, notebooks, washing machines or cars and of course you need\nsafeguards outside a car, too.\n\nTo me, this article reads as if the author was unsatisfied with the original\nassessment that a car provides independence (which, of course, is not true: a\ncar actually decreases your independence as you always have to return to it\nafter a hike, for example) and tried to prop it up with equally unsatisfying\nextras.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe European Atrocity You Never Heard About - cs702\nhttp://chronicle.com/article/The-European-Atrocity-You/132123\n\n======\ncafard\nSpeak for yourself, Chronicle. The broad outlines of the Prussian\ndisplacements were in my 11th grade world history text. The NY Times has dealt\nwith the case of Silesia within the last 10 years, and there were books about\nthe displacements from Bohemia not that long ago either.\n\nI will say also that it is seldom that anyone comes out of a war with clean\nhands, which is all the more reason for hesitating to start one.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTime to fork the FSF - pjhyett\nhttp://larrythefreesoftwareguy.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/time-to-fork-the-fsf/\n======\nsgentle\nI don't get it, personally. Yes, Stallman's a loon - although as an aside I\nthink that every good movement needs its loons. Who's going to say \"you know\nwhat? I believe in Free Software so much that I will use nothing else, and\npublicly and harshly declare that anyone doing otherwise is a moron and a\ntraitor to the future of humanity\"? Anyone who is willing to sacrifice the\nusefulness of the last 30 years of proprietary tech to make a point has to be\na bit barmy. But who else will make that point? All progress depends on\nunreasonable men.\n\nAnd I agree that it would be helpful to have a moderate voice in Free\nSoftware. I use a Mac - sorry, it's really nice to use and I code a lot. I\nlike my Kindle - sorry, it's better than the others and I read a lot. I live\nand work with proprietary software, but I believe in Free Software too. WebKit\nis popular because of Apple and Google. OS X is the most popular BSD, and the\nmost popular consumer Unix. Non-free and free can and have worked together to\nmutual benefit. Is there anyone out there who can help me walk that line? If\nLarry is proposing to make that organisation, I would welcome it with open\narms.\n\nBut what of this Jobs nonsense? Are we so timid and flammable that we can't\nhandle a complex opinion that we don't agree with? Can you not accept that\nJobs was a great leader who didn't deserve to die, but that he left a scary,\nproprietary footprint all over the mobile and tablet space? \"I'm not glad he's\ndead, but I'm glad he's gone.\" is an opinion I don't agree with, but I don't\nthink it's ludicrous, tactless and heartless.\n\nNot everyone has to respect the things I respect, and feelings don't suddenly\ntrump debate because of death. Jobs is one of the hacker community's sacred\ncows, and we wouldn't accept this level of sanctification on any other topic.\nI'm sure when Bill Gates or the Dalai Lama dies, there will be posts saying\n\"let's not forget that Windows Vista was awful and religion is the other\nopiate of Tibet\" Will they cause the same outcry?\n\n~~~\njpadvo\nThe issue is not at all with his opinion. It is that he expressed it in a\nhorrendously, gratuitously crass and offensive way. Here is a transliteration\ninto humane language of what he said:\n\n\"My heart goes out to Steve Jobs' family in their time of grief. And my heart\nalso goes to the millions of people who looked up to him as an icon and\ninspiration. But we need to not get so carried away honoring the dead that we\nforget the damage that Jobs' work had on the Free Software movement.\n\nHis pioneered the software walled garden, which destroys freedom and choice.\nAnd he targeted it at people who would not understand what they were\nsacrificing by giving up their freedoms.\n\nWe can only hope that his successors make Apple a more free company, or\nfailing that, are not as effective at spreading it as he was.\"\n\nWasn't that better? And it communicated substantively the same thing, but\nwithout all the name calling and the seeming glee over the death of another\nhuman.\n\nDisclaimer: I typed this on my Macbook Air.\n\nEdit: One more thing to add. Saying \"I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's\ngone\" is tripe. Being gone is a euphemism for being dead. The reason we mourn\nwhen a loved one dies is _precisely because_ that means they are gone.\n\nMaybe RMS sees a subtle distinction between death and gone-ness in his head.\nBut I promise you that people in grief see absolutely no distinction between\nthe death _and the loss_ of the person they mourn.\n\n~~~\nforensic\n>horrendously, gratuitously crass and offensive way.\n\nAnd?\n\nIt's rms. He's the biggest nerd in the world. Nerds are expected to be\nhorrendously, gratuitously crass, offensive and insensitive of people's\nemotions.\n\nThis is like being mad that the sky is blue. Pointless outrage.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nIt's not outrage at Stallman's comments, but asking whether someone who is\nhorrendously, gratuitously crass, offensive and insensitive of people's\nemotions should be \"cheerleading\" free software.\n\nSee also RMS's disappointment at the developer busy with a new child - start\nhere (<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/36137>)\n\nHis inability to understand people is distracting from the aims of FSF.\n\n~~~\nalain94040\nIndeed:\n\n>It doesn't take special talents to reproduce--even plants can do it. On the\nother hand, contributing to a program like Emacs takes real skill.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nThat wasn't the first time RMS had said something like that, but to say it to\na fellow dev, when you're asking that person to fix someone else's bug, seems\nparticularly unaware.\n\nFor sure, Asperger's or Autism explains it, but doesn't make it much easier to\ndeal with.\n\n~~~\neliasmacpherson\nIt's black humour.\n\n------\nbcrescimanno\nI tweeted earlier that I see RMS as the Fred Phelps (Westboro Baptist Church)\nof Free Software. He may not have started out this way; but these days he's\ncompletely single issue. If you're not doing free software 100% his way; you\nnot only disagree with him but you are actually evil. Not just free software;\nbut free software as RMS defines it(see GNU/Linux) or you're wrong. He's so\nblinded by his own zealotry that I'd argue that beyond the inner, hard-core\n\"free software circle, he's seen as much of an embarrassment to the notion of\nfree software as Phelps and Westboro are likely seen by other Christians.\n\nI've felt this way a long time about RMS; his comment about Steve Jobs's death\nwas uncalled for--but it really was well-within character. Just like Phelps\nand Westboro are expected to show up at soldier's funerals to protest, we've\ncome to expect this type of shit from RMS--and I agree with the OP that it's\ntime to stop just accepting it.\n\n[Edit] I want to state that RMS, like everyone, is fully entitled to his\nopinion and that opinion carries no more or less weight than my own. Moreover,\nyou're completely entitled to agree with him. What I do have a problem with is\nwhat the OP described: he doesn't belong at the head of a major organization,\nnor does he belong at the apex of the free software movement. Beyond my\nearlier described \"inner circle,\" in the past several years, he's done more to\ntarnish the image of the free software community than to help it.\n\n~~~\nlearc83\nWhile I don't always agree with RMS, I think he truly believes everything he\nsays.\n\nI don't think the same of Fred Phelps. I long ago reached the conclusion that\nhe tries to say the most inflammatory thing possible wether he really believes\nit or not. I have no idea why, but I believe he has some other agenda than\njust the condemnation of homosexuality.\n\nI've even almost seriously entertained the idea that he is a closet extreme\natheist out to discredit theists.\n\n~~~\nkristopolous\nSome think he's just a novel con-artist:\n\n1\\. [http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-\nfiles/gro...](http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-\nfiles/groups/westboro-baptist-church)\n\n2\\. <http://kanewj.com/wbc/>\n\nLooks like it equates to fairly decent take-home pay given that he probably\nworks far less than the 2080 full time hours a year for it.\n\nAnd remember, it's a church, so it's all tax free.\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\nI would say that a very significant contingent of Protestant church men are in\nit for the money. We shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that they're all\nsincere -- cons often come with a generous helping of scriptural glaze.\n\n~~~\nwanorris\nUnless you're working a seriously crazy angle like Phelps, there's generally\nmore money to be made outside the church than within it. I think most people\nwho have devoted their lives to a church are either sincere, or they started\nout sincere and started working an angle after becoming disillusioned.\n\n------\ncookiecaper\nOS X would not be possible without RMS.\n\nYou have to remember that Stallman was around before Jobs' day -- he was\nperforming real work at MIT when Apple was initially conceptualized. Stallman\ntherefore is apparently less vulnerable to the reality distortion field and\ndoes not unduly offer oblations to a guy who was obsessed with shininess at\nthe expense of hacker culture. Jobs went to lengths on many products to\nprevent tinkering in an age when computing was still very open and very\nacademic, because Jobs didn't want any little peons messing up his perfect\ndevices. Hence Stallman's quip that Jobs made computers as a jail cool.\n\nIf you think about this statement from Stallman's perspective it really makes\na lot of sense, and I think it is ridiculous that the Steve Jobs hero worship\npervades so deeply as to not recognize that Jobs _was_ a control freak even\nafter Apple products were sold and in the possession of customers, and that\nsome people, particular contemporaries of Stallman's stripe, may not have been\nfond of that. I doubt that the release of the iPhone really did much to\npersuade that set of people.\n\n~~~\ndrivingmenuts\nThis isn't about OS X. This is about Stallman being effective as the leader of\nthe FSF, which apparently he feels entitles him to say any damn thing he\nwants, regardless of how tasteless it is. That's not the mark of a leader.\n\nThat's the mark of a self-inflated ass.\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\nI didn't find it tasteless. Is it really such a criminal thing to say that you\nare glad Jobs's influence is gone? Can't reasonable people disagree on that\npoint?\n\nPeople totally go overboard wrt Steve Jobs, as they do his company, Apple. RMS\ncomes from a time when computers were generally open for tinkering, and Apple\nstrove to make its products impenetrable lest Jobs' pain-stakingly \"perfected\"\ndesigns be gaudied up by consumers. From the original Mac which didn't have\nexpansion slots to today's iDevices that don't allow the consumer to do so\nmuch as change the battery, Apple has a long history of tight lock down.\n\nDo you not see how an old-school hacker could be disgruntled by that\nphilosophy? The beliefs and experience of that group runs deep enough that\nthey are not hoodwinked into deifying Steve Jobs because the iMac is the\nsleekest desktop computer around.\n\n~~~\nakg0\nI don't think it was anywhere near offensive, but once people start loudly\ncomplaining about how offended they are, the conversation inevitably focuses\non their feelings instead of our freedoms.\n\nIn the end, they _will_ win. Either RMS will tone down to focus on the \"real\"\nstuff, or he won't, and his influence will wane in favor of more widely-\nacceptable voices. In this as in many other parts of life, watered-down\nmoderates will be the only ones able to maintain relevance, and uncompromising\nadvocates will be marginalized.\n\nIt's just how humans are.\n\n~~~\nRusky\nSo Steve Jobs was a watered-down moderate?\n\n~~~\nakg0\nNo - my point is that RMS isn't.\n\n~~~\nRusky\nI should have been clearer. If it's inevitable that the influence of someone\nlike RMS will wane because he's an uncompromising advocate, doesn't that\nsuggest that Steve Jobs' influence would have waned as well?\n\nMy point is that someone's relevance depends on much more than if a majority\nof people find their views acceptable. Steve Jobs oversaw products that people\nloved by uncompromisingly advocating improvements on the status quo in design,\nwhile RMS uncompromisingly advocates something that, for many people in the\nworld's present state, is impractical.\n\n------\nbrendoncrawford\nGo ahead... fork it. Then what happens?\n\nWill you travel the world tirelessly promoting free software, speaking at\nuniversities and other events for very little money?\n\nWill you maintain a job board, mailing list, hardware database, software\ndirectory, year after year?\n\nWill you find lawyers to donate hundreds of hours to write and revise\nlicenses?\n\nWill you hire lobbyists to fight software patents?\n\nWill you tirelessly fight the RIAA, day after day?\n\nWhen you've done all these things, sign me up.\n\n~~~\nalecco\nAnd never mind code. This basher is a complete nobody who seems to profit from\nopen source more than contribute. It's not like the heads of several major FSF\nprojects are banding a revolt.\n\nThe sinister anti-Stallman/GNU sentiment on HN is reaching incredibly high\nlevels. Luckily it's mostly nobodies like this big mouth bozo.\n\n~~~\npotatolicious\nWhile you do have a point, I disagree strongly with the way you've expressed\nit. There is no need for name-calling and personal attacks on this board.\n\nCalling someone a \"nobody\" and a \"big mouth bozo\" is uncalled for.\n\n~~~\nalecco\nHe is extremely agressive and out of place, calling for a split on a major\norganization he didn't help in any meaningful way and feeding the hate\n[sentiments of a particular faction of _users_ ] against it. Also,\n\n    \n    \n      > I’m really tired of having to make excuses for Stallman\n      > when he goes off half-cocked like this, which is why I’m\n      > no longer a FSF member.\n\n~~~\nuxp\n> He is extremely agressive and out of place, calling for a split on a major\n> organization he didn't help in any meaningful way\n\nHe was a member, and while his member number (5030) isn't low enough to argue\nthat he helped found the movement, he did explain that he has advocated on\nbehalf of the FSF for quite some time. I too think his post was a step too far\nin the wrong direction, but saying that regular supporters of the FSF, long\ntime contributors and everyday members don't \"help in any meaningful way\" to\nthe FSF is a tad bit disingenuous.\n\n------\nkeyist\nRMS has the FSF and Defective By Design sites as soapboxes if he wished to\ngain more attention from Jobs's death. This was a post on his political notes\npage. He did nothing to publicize it.\n\nHe didn't post to aggregators or tweet to ask for upvotes (technically it was\nposted on his Identi.ca account which is linked to his political notes feed,\nbut it got no special treatment).\n\nIf some major sites hadn't picked up on it and provided the publicity, most\nreaders would never know. So RMS wrote a politically incorrect opinion on his\npersonal page. Can we move on now?\n\n~~~\nugh\nHey, you seem to be as clueless about communication as he is.\n\n~~~\nvacri\nWhat an excellent way to make your point: with an ad hominem attack!\n\n~~~\nugh\nI think I’m justified in saying that someone is clueless about communication\nif that person honestly believes that a statement by a very public\nspokesperson in any public place – no matter how obscure – will or should\nremain obscure.\n\nThat’s not how communication works. Sorry.\n\nI thought that was sort of implied by my comment, no need to explicitly say\nit, because it’s so damn obvious. But I’m sorry if you though that my comment\nwas nothing but an attack.\n\n~~~\nvacri\nI understood what you meant, I just found it ironic in the extreme that you\nchose to complain about poor communication by genuinely using poor\ncommunication, especially given the context of the thread.\n\nYou've been commenting that Stallman should have deported himself better, and\nyet you break out with a comment like that yourself.\n\n~~~\nugh\nMy argument doesn’t require me to lead by example. I’m some random commenter.\n\nAnd since you understood me perfectly well there doesn’t seem to be a problem\nin this specific case.\n\n~~~\nvacri\nUnderstanding you perfectly well isn't the issue at point, it's the manner of\nhow you present yourself - witness all the crap in this thread about RMS from\nthose people who now accept that he didn't wish Jobs dead, but still say he\nshould have been more polite about it. You don't have much of a credible leg\nto stand on if you don't engage in that which you request of others.\n\nEdit: changed 'moral' to 'credible' to avoid semantic bickering about the\nloaded word.\n\n~~~\nugh\nMorals? I think I have been talking squarely about effective communication,\nnot morals.\n\n------\nBigCanOfTuna\nCrass and insensitive but in line with everything I've ever heard him profess\nto believe. He's never strayed from his goal in making great software\navailable to millions of people around the world, and he's never given a shit\nwhy it shouldn't or couldn't be done his way...damn, that sounds familiar.\n\n~~~\nleot\nYes, but RMS is simply wrong, here. Jobs has put great software into more\nhands than RMS ever did. Jobs might well have (indirectly) had an even more\npositive influence on FOSS by spreading BSD.\n\n(I'm not saying that there isn't a ton of FOSS out there in lots of hands --\nbut RMS isn't responsible for its being there in the same way Jobs is\nresponsible. Jobs is responsible for the iPhone. RMS _isn't_ responsible for\nAndroid.)\n\n~~~\nmarshray\n_Jobs has put great software into more hands than RMS ever did._\n\nYou do realize that Apple has been dependent on GCC to build its products for\nmost of Jobs' second tenure, don't you? Some of that is code that RMS\npersonally wrote.\n\nThe GPL license that, again, RMS personally wrote covers the kernel of the\nAndroid system. \"Great software\" that's in \"more hands\" than Jobs' devices.\n\nJobs was a slick businessman like Gates. RMS wrote fucking GCC.\n\nGuess who's contribution I value more.\n\n~~~\nleot\nThat RMS wrote the GPL, or extended LLNL's Pastel compiler into GCC, does not\nendow him with responsibility for the success of all free software. Do you\n_really_ think, given the influence of academia, that there would be no FOSS-\nequivalent compiler available but for RMS's efforts?\n\nJobs _is_ responsible for Apple's success. For repeatedly creating devices\nthat have disrupted industries. RMS deserves credit for his contributions, but\nit is not all-thanks-to-him that we have FOSS.\n\nYes Apple's software has been closed. But has this been at the expense of\nFOSS, as RMS claims?\n\nHas Apple actively tried to subvert the GPL by lobbying governments to avoid\nFOSS? Has Jobs publicly whined about the GPL? Has he engaged in OOXML-esque\nbad-faith efforts to keep data formats proprietary?\n\n~~~\nalecco\nKeep moving the point of the conversation to fit your anti-Stallman flaming.\n\n~~~\nleot\nThe point was that RMS is wrong when he asserts[1] that Apple and Jobs have\nhurt the development of free software.\n\n[1] RMS: \" _we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's\ncomputing_ \"\n\n~~~\nmarshray\nMy understanding is that Apple restricts the applications that it \"allows\" to\nrun on users' iOS devices to the point that programming language interpreters\nwere effectively banned until about a year ago, now they're merely severely\nrestricted. Users of iOS devices are effectively prevented from running GPL\napps because of the restrictions Apple is putting on other peoples' code on\nusers' devices.\n\nIt's not just against the development of Stallman's brand of Free Software.\n\nIt's an attack on _all_ software developers.\n\n~~~\nrimantas\n\n      > It's an attack on all software developers.\n    \n\nI am a software developer and I don't think I am under any attack. Heck they\ngave me one more platform to develop for. And there is lots of open source\ncode written for it already.\n\n~~~\nburgerbrain\nStockholm syndrome.\n\n------\nzalew\nso... it's perfectly ok to publish tons of linkbaits about 'how steve jobs\nchanged my life' even if they are vague and repetitive boring opinions, but\nnobody can state his negative views on this occasion. gimme a break. death is\nsad, but it's good that there are people who had decided to stay out of this\nbubble.\n\n~~~\nandrewljohnson\nHere, I'll let someone with much more eloquence than me explain to you why\nStallman's diatribe is poorly wrought.\n\n _If Stallman had to make a statement emphasizing his dislike of Jobs'\ninfluence, he could still have done so respectfully. Consider this; \"I didn't\nshare Steve Jobs' vision of computing, and I wish he'd chosen to embrace free\nsoftware. I'm very sorry that he's gone and we've lost the opportunity to have\nthat conversation. My sympathies are with his family at this time.\" There's no\nneed to pretend that Stallman liked Jobs, but his post is contemptible._\n\n[http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/10/why-fsf-\nfound...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/10/why-fsf-founder-\nrichard-stallm.php)\n\n~~~\n_delirium\nIt _was_ posted on his personal \"politics\" mini-blog, which consists of\nbasically _nothing but_ 2-3-line annoyed and not very nuanced statements on\nvarious topics. People who read it expect what they get there, and most people\ndon't read it. Here's an example the quality of political cartoons you can\nalso expect...: <http://stallman.org/images/cartoon-6.jpg>\n\nAs can be seen from the Update to that linked article, I think a big part of\nthe problem is that these Web 2.0 \"journalists\" don't read, so in a game of\ntelephone it's been turned into \"FSF head Richard Stallman issues press\nrelease saying Jobs sux\". If we're going to do that, you could manufacture\nabout 300 scandals from his blog; \"FSF head Richard Stallman equates U.S.\nPresident to Saddam Hussein!\", etc.\n\nMaybe it's still contemptible as it stands, but I think people are either\nmissing or deliberately ignoring the context when evaluating it. I take his\n\"politics\" ticker as closer to an IRC chat than a place for carefully thought\nout statements (that's what his Essays are for). I _like_ that in geek culture\nwe don't have this weird demand for people to be 24/7 ensconced in a\nprofessional PR-oriented persona, like a CEO or politician, but allow people\nlike RMS, ESR, and Theo de Raadt to have crazy personal opinions. (Heck, Jobs\nhad some pretty offensive and harmful opinions about science and alternative\nmedicine, and we allowed that.)\n\nHonestly I'm more offended by this level of shameless profiteering with Steve-\nJobs-death linkbait. Huffington Post, for example, shat out _188 separate_\nSteve-Jobs-death posts within 24 hours:\n[http://exploreto.tumblr.com/post/11114571981/huffingtonpost-...](http://exploreto.tumblr.com/post/11114571981/huffingtonpost-\ncom-188-articles-on-steve-jobs-death)\n\n~~~\nsabat\nStallman has made himself a public figure, and is a spokesman. Even on a\n\"personal\" blog, he has a responsibility to be tactful and not to make angry,\nhurtful, and unnecessary comments.\n\n~~~\n_delirium\nI guess that's an idea I fundamentally disagree with, and even find a bit\noffensive. As I said above:\n\n _I like that in geek culture we don't have this weird demand for people to be\n24/7 ensconced in a professional PR-oriented persona, like a CEO or\npolitician..._\n\nIf people are pulling things out of a personal blog and broadcasting it across\nthe web in sensational terms, I blame the yellow journalists more than him. I\nmight still disagree with him, but I don't blame him out of context of his\nblog, as some kind of always-on spokesperson.\n\nPlus, it's not like he hasn't telegraphed, _for almost 30 years_ , that he\ndoesn't plan to be that kind of PR-oriented spokesperson, so one can hardly be\nshocked about it in 2011.\n\n------\nloup-vaillant\nThis is a common pattern: (i) someone famous dies, (ii) someone else says\nsomething bad about that celebrity, (iii) everyone else is scandalized. Thou\nshalt not bash the dead.\n\nNow, I don't think Stallman's lines were _gratuitously_ offensive. He was\nmerely clear and concise. He spent no word on niceness, but he spent no word\non rudeness either. And by the way, he is factually correct: Jobs _was_ \"the\npioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed [among other things] to\nsever fools from their freedom\" (or, if not _the_ pioneer, at least the most\neffective apologist).\n\nNow should he have just shut up? Probably not. Every one now is praising Jobs,\nand that may trigger even more sales for the iPhone and the iPad. Praise Jobs,\nand soon you will praise Apple's most locked down products. At least a word of\ncaution is needed.\n\nNow I do understand that Stallman knows next to nothing about how not to\ntrigger bad feelings. I do understand that he should work on that. But please,\ndon't be offended by something that most probably wasn't intended to be\noffensive.\n\n------\n24bit\nHere's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The\nround pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.\n\nThey're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo.\n\nYou can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them.\n\nAbout the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things.\nThey push the human race forward.\n\nAnd while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the\npeople who are crazy enough to think they can change the world - are the ones\nwho do!\n\n~~~\nsabat\nNote that this does not begin, \"Here's the the assholes, the heartless, the\ntactless, the people who think they are above the rest of humankind, who\nalways know better than everyone else, who must teach us how to think.\"\n\nRMS has done some admirable things, but he's in dire need of some mental help.\nSeriously.\n\n------\nfletcher\nWhat Stallman said is just, analytically speaking:\n\n1) I don't like when people die.\n\n2) But this happened to Steve Jobs, unfortunately.\n\n3) However from my point of view he was doing so much damage to the world of\nsoftware that this is a good thing. Not the fact he died but the fact that we\nno longer have his influence.\n\nNote: I don't agree. But I don't think it should be a problem to say the\nabove.\n\nIt is like if you are the leader of a movement against the practice of killing\nwhales, and there is one guy that kills 100,000 whales every year. If he dies\nyou can legitimately say: \"I'm sorry he died, but this is a good thing for\nwhales\".\n\nHe used the wrong words, the wrong time, and so forth, but the concept is\nnothing of extraordinary from his point of view. It is important to have the\nfreedom of saying what we want.\n\n~~~\ngurkendoktor\nNobody wants to take this freedom away, but it hurts the cause he is supposed\nto advance, and that's what the posting is saying.\n\nI can't see how mentioning human life and software licensing in the same\nsentence is ever a good idea if there is a chance that interested non-nerds\nare reading up on your ideals.\n\n------\ntommorris\nWait, isn't there a whole stack of organisations that support FLOSS or the\nsame sort of values as openness that the FSF support other than the FSF\nalready?\n\nOff the top of my head: Apache Software Foundation, OSI, GNOME Foundation,\nLinux Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Python Software Foundation, Open\nKnowledge Foundation, Software Freedom Law Center, Software in the Public\nInterest, Wikimedia Foundation.\n\nIf you feel like you want to throw money, power or sexual favours to the open\nsource community, there are plenty of ways to do it that don't involve RMS or\nthe FSF. Or you could just find some free/open source script or app or library\nyou use and like and chuck the creator $20 and a nice email saying \"I really\nlike your code, go buy yourself a pizza and a beer on me\".\n\n------\ntzury\nI fully understand this Larry, and think FSF would have been doing much better\nif there was someone else at its cockpit.\n\nRMS is a fanatic about free software, like ultra religious people are to their\nreligion.\n\nFor instance, for me, being free, means, at first and above all, being free to\nchoose. Being able to install _proprietary nVidia driver_ which does not crash\nmy linux box every half a day, and have this driver built and available for me\nin my linux distro repository.\n\nYears ago, RMS was a guest of honor in IBM Tel Aviv. These were the days,\nLinux was something left-field, obscure, that no one wanted to know or hear\nabout it. There were hundreds of developers in the hall who came to hear about\nthe \"Gnu/Linux thing\" from the Freedom Guru.\n\nAll of a sudden, in the middle of his lecture, out of any imaginable context,\nRMS took of his left shoe, and then the sack, and start rubbing his toes with\nhis fingers while preaching about free software.\n\nYes, imagine that, a man is playing with his barefoot on a stage, would you\nremember anything he said? Would you listen to anything he has to say? Or\nwould your brain being busy understanding and categorizing the extraordinary\nshow you are in?\n\n(Those were not the days of youtube and smartphone, I bet if that would have\nbeen happening these days, this was the most viewed video on youtube amongst\nhackers.)\n\nIt is sad, but successful open source project does not seemed to get along\nwith RMS at all, see Ubuntu/Canonical as a good example.\n\n------\nchanon\nI agree with this comment by \"tom robinson\" in the blog post:\n\n _To those saying you agree with what RMS wrote: that’s fine, but irrelevant.\nAs a spokesman for FSF he shouldn’t be pandering to his already devout\nfollowers, he should be trying to convince others that the ideals of the FSF\nare worth pursuing, and he’s been doing an absolutely TERRIBLE job of that\nlately.\n\nSilly campaigns of immature puns, lashing out at people who don’t say\n“GNU/Linux”, insulting a recently deceased man who much of the world admires,\nand making otherwise inappropriate remarks on a regular basis is an excellent\nway to alienate the people you’re trying to win over.\n\nHow have these tactics been working out for FSF? I don’t have stats, but\nanecdotally most new open source projects I come across have rejected the GPL\nlicenses for BSD, MIT, Apache, etc.\n\nNow imagine what FSF could accomplish if they had a spokesman with the skills\nof Steve Jobs_\n\n------\nskrebbel\nI'm sorry, but - what a nutcase. Silently accepts Stallman's years of nasty\ncomments, cynical attitudes, world-wide conspiracy theories and downright\ncondescension all through. Then Stallman says something unfriendly about\ngod^H^H^H Jobs, and he resigns. Oh, come on.\n\n------\nmrb\nI think RMS's statement is completely misinterpreted. Don't forget the first\npart of the sentence: \"I'm not glad he's dead\", which literally means RMS is\n_not_ glad that Jobs died!\n\n\"I'm glad he's gone\" is only a complaint towards Jobs' influence on personal\ncomputing. You may disagree with RMS (I certainly do), and it is certainly an\ninappropriate comment to make at this time, but this is nothing to make a\ndrama of RMS' comment... Geez people!\n\n------\ngfodor\nAll you really need to do is consider what Steve Jobs would have said about\nRMS if he were still here when RMS is no longer. At worst, he'd say nothing,\nat best, he'd say something that would have touched you and made you think\ndeeply about what the two men had in common despite their deep differences.\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\nI upvoted this, but meant to downvote it.\n\n~~~\njwhite\nI upvoted you to encourage you to tell us why you downvoted it.\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\nI downvoted it because it's incredibly presumptive. OP posits that \"at worst,\n[Jobs] would have said nothing...\" apparently on nothing but his assumption\nthat Steve Jobs would never do a controversial thing, or a thing that the OP\nthought was tasteless.\n\nUnless OP is a close friend of Steve Jobs and knew him well on a personal\nlevel, this is completely baseless speculation based on OP's general good\nfeelings for Apple and the assumption that because Apple products make him\nfeel good, Steve Jobs would never say something rude after a colleague died.\n\nNone of these people know Jobs and yet they assume he's some super great dude.\nMaking such assumptions about the CEO's personal character based on your\naffinity for the products of that CEO's company is very juvenile, yet it's\nirritatingly common.\n\n~~~\ngfodor\nIts not hard to imagine that Jobs would react much the way most of his own\nrivals have reacted, the way normal decent human beings do, with class and\nrespect. My post was less about guessing something about Steve Jobs's\ncharacter and more about letting readers reflect upon just how abnormal and\nderanged RMS's comments are compared to any others.\n\n------\nFice\nAs I said already, today's hacker culture is crippled. So called \"hackers\"\nhere have lost their principles, forgotten the value of freedom, worship the\nwrong idols. How come an entrepreneur be a hero much more important than any\nof the researchers who pioneered the modern computer technology? How can the\nman who worked against the values and principles of the hacker ethic be an\nidol for so many hackers? There is no real hacker community here on HN, only a\nflock of spineless ship.\n\n~~~\nburgerbrain\nThe title \"Hacker News\" is a lure designed to draw more people in. It would be\nbest if this place went back to it's old and far more honest name \"Startup\nNews\".\n\n------\nRexRollman\nAfter reading this, all I can say is that some people are too sensitive.\n\n~~~\ndaedhel\nOr are opportunistic assholes who capitalize on any occasion.\n\n------\njosephg\nI'm aware of Stallman's advocacy on free software issues, but (completely\nhonest question), what else does the Free Software Foundation _do_ ?\n\nSoftware is at a point where its basically impossible to make anything useful\n_without_ opensource software. Proprietary code is a minority in my stack both\nas a developer and as a user. Proprietary software is often good before\nopensource software is good, but consistently opensource implementations\neventually outpace their proprietary counterparts. We saw this trend first\nwith UNIX -> Linux. Today, just reading this webpage I'm using Chrome\n(Chromium + WebKit) which communicates via POSIX to the BSD network stack in\nmy kernel (Darwin). The browser has been compiled with either GCC or LLVM.\nHackernews is probably hosted on nginx / apache behind varnish or something,\nrunning on linux.\n\nIn short, I feel like the opensource movement has already won. Aside from\nRMS's crusade against software patents, how is the FSF still relevant?\n\n~~~\ntlrobinson\nThey've won that battle, but not the war. Servers, databases, frameworks,\nlanguages, etc are often open source, but the majority of applications are\nnot.\n\n~~~\ndrzaiusapelord\nThat's the problem, you're the problem if you refuse to accept that the best\nsolution is going to be the freedom for people to sell commercial closed\nsoftware as well as use open software. The idea that this is a war is exactly\nwhy RMS is wrong. The idea that we must win it and we must make everyone use\nthe new hot open license is wrong.\n\nThe idea should be to encourage people to use open licenses, and to promote\nthe good of open licenses, not declare war on everything and become some\nbitter asshole neckbeard when you see guys like Jobs doing well with a\nslightly different approach.\n\nThe FSF doesn't do much. They're little more than negative campaigners\n\"Windows 7 Sins\" etc. I'm not sure what its purpose or real world effect is\nother than to scare middle management from FOSS as much as possible. Stick vs\nCarrot. FSF is all stick and people have noticed.\n\n~~~\nkragen\n> the best solution is going to be the freedom for people to sell commercial\n> closed software as well as use open software.\n\nThe \"freedom\" you're describing involves government-granted monopolies\nenforced by pervasive surveillance, unannounced office raids to audit\nlicenses, serial numbers to ensure trackability of all CD-R media, and\nprosecution of people for disabling malicious software running on their own\ncomputers. Certainly it's a kind of freedom; but can't we do better?\n\nStallman had a slightly different viewpoint about that \"freedom\":\n\nThe \"freedom to choose a license\" which denies others essential freedoms is\nnot really a freedom. It is a form of power, of domination over others. Your\ndescription makes it sound like a matter of individual freedom by obscuring\nthe presence of the others in the situation.\n\nThe GPL is designed to protect the essential freedoms for everyone, by denying\nanyone the power to take them away.\n\n(He wrote that in 1999, but I imagine he still feels the same way.)\n\n------\nmotters\nAlthough Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his statement I agree\nwith his concern overall. Software should serve the user in accordance with\nthe ideal of individual empowerment with technology and not become a sort of\njail controlled by a central authority that you have to struggle to break out\nof. The problem of impersonal computing is by no means isolated to Apple\nthough.\n\n~~~\nnarag\n_Although Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his statement I agree\nwith his concern overall_.\n\nThat seems oddly similar to my tl;dr from the article: \"Although I agree with\nhis concern overall, Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his\nstatement\".\n\n------\naaronbrethorst\nEmacs Virgin thing: [http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/emailing-\nrichard-...](http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/emailing-richard-\nstallman.html)\n\n~~~\ngroovy2shoes\nThis is the first I've heard of this incident, and I find the comments on that\npost shocking. That so many people can take RMS's side on that issue is\nappalling.\n\n------\nthu\nStallman didn't say he's glad Steve Jobs died. I understand he's glad that\nSteve's influence on computing stop, as that influence is driving computing in\na closed ecosystem.\n\nYou can take it in a non-emotional way. A is, in your opinion, a bad thing. If\nA stops, you're glad. If A stops because of a sad B event, you can be both\nglad for A to end, and sad for B to occur.\n\n------\npoink\nThis is kind of like wanting a \"toned down\" PETA. People don't devote their\nlives to marginalized causes without either having or picking up a twinge of\nzealotry. If you want those people to stand up for causes you mutually believe\nin, you have to take the bad with the good.\n\nRMS might not be the best possible Free Software advocate, but I'm glad\nsomeone's doing it, and nobody else seems to be volunteering for the job.\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\n> This is kind of like wanting a \"toned down\" PETA.\n\nIs that so horrible a thing? It seems to me groups like the Humane Society\nhave done a lot more for animal welfare than PETA.\n\n------\n_delirium\nIf you want an advocacy organization with a better ear for public\nsensibilities and business, that's what the Open Source Initiative was\ndesigned for, wasn't it? Why not join them instead of starting yet another\norganization?\n\n~~~\ngonzo\nNo. OSI was Eric's attempt to hijack the work of RMS. Eric is no better than,\nand in many ways, much worse than, RMS.\n\n~~~\nkragen\nThat's more or less how Stallman saw it, but the other dozen or so free-\nsoftware luminaries that Raymond brought onboard from the beginning didn't see\nit that way. Stallman was literally the only one on the original Cc: list that\nopposed the new \"open source\" movement.\n\n------\nfmadot\nI won't say I am supporting RMS or not. Actually I think Jobs was a man with\ngreat talent, but I don't like him. I think most of you overreacted on \"I'm\nnot glad he's dead, I'm glad he's gone\". RMS expressed clearly that he don't\nagree with the achievements that Jobs reached in his short life. This is a\npersonal opinion. You can't force everyone to agree with what Jobs has done.\nAfter all RMS said \"I'm not glad he's gone.\" That's enough. I think there is\nnothing to argue for.\n\n------\nSandman\nWhile most of the commenters here discuss what Stallman said and what he\nactualy meant, whether it was distasteful or not, and whether Jobs was a\nmodern day messiah who single-handedly changed the world we live in or just a\nsmart business man with a very good sense of choosing the right people to\ncreate the products that he envisioned, I'd like to take a minute to think\nabout what is actually proposed in this article - the forking of FSF. It's\nquite obvious from the article that the reason the author suggests something\nlike that is not because his views on software freedom somehow differ than\nthose of Stallman, but because he has issues with Stallman himself, or more\nprecisely, with his publicly expressed opinions. He feels that they hurt FSF\nand free software in general. Isn't then the solution to the problem to,\nthrough some electoral process, replace Stallman and put a new figure at the\nhead of FSF? Somebody more tactful, more careful about how they say what they\nmean (if that's truly the kind of a person memebers of FSF would like to see\nin charge)? Starting a new foundation with exactly the same goals as FSF, just\nbecause you don't like Stallman's public statements, seems pointless to me.\n\n------\nnohat\nRMS and Jobs seem very similar to me. Both were monomaniacal perfectionists.\nBoth were undiplomatic and unwilling to compromise or cater to unbelievers.\n\n------\nTichy\nI have never heard of Larry, so my guess would be: chance that Larry will\nfound and lead the FFSF (Forked Free Software Foundation) = 0%\n\n------\ntbourdon\nMuch worse will be written about RMS when he dies and many will applaud what\nis written, never mind their contributions to technology had the same scale of\nimpact on society... It's all in the perspective.\n\n------\nendgame\nOh, give it a rest already. rms was actually pretty tactful. Did people\nactually read what he wrote?\n\n> Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people\n> guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs'\n> malign influence on people's computing.\n\n------\nAmazingBytecode\nI support open source on a pragmatic level as a way for people to share code\nso that they no longer have to \"re-invent the wheel\". Because of this I feel\nlike it's petty and counter-productive for the FSF to refuse to share their\n\"free\" software with people because of the way that those people want to use\nthe software. Truly free software should be released to the public without\nlimitations on how and where it should be used.\n\nTo clarify: I know that my preferred model ignores the scummy/greedy\ntendencies of people to leech off work that others have done. However, I'd\nlike for people to think of open source software as a gift given with no\nstrings attached.\n\n------\nspitfire\nIn the marketplace of ideas Stallman has a simple remedy for his woes with\nApple. Make better software than them.\n\nGo on Richard, I dare you to.\n\n~~~\nProduce\nHe already does. The only difference in the perceived quality is the learning\ncurve. Learn the *nix way and you will be enlightened. Learn the Apple way and\nyou will remain ignorant (but have lots of time for shopping, cos math is so\nboring, right?).\n\n~~~\nrimantas\nApple way? You mean the one where OS _is_ unix? The one which comes with perl,\nphp, python, ruby, etc? The one which comes with fee Grapher app?\n\n~~~\nProduce\nThat's like saying that Android preaches the nix way because it runs a Linux\nkernel. This is obviously false since the interface presented to the user\npushes a completely different way of working and thinking. Using any of the\nlisted software requires knowing what you're doing. It's the same situation on\nLinux and Windows, you can install PHP or Python all the same and need the\nequivalent amount of knowledge to do so. If you seriously can't see the 'Apple\nway' then take another look at their whole business model, which is making\nthings simple enough for people with little training to use. The nix way\nconsists of understanding how the system works, which is in direct opposition\nto the Apple way.\n\n------\ndaedhel\nSo it's time to fork the FSF because this guy does not agree with one comment\nRMS did?\n\nHow is this not overreacting in the first place...\n\n~~~\nvacri\nTo be fair, the author does state it's a 'straw that broke the camel's back'\nscenario; the punctuation at the end of a long line of disliked behaviour, not\njust one comment.\n\n------\nsharmajai\nFuck you RMS. I have been and still am a staunch believer in open source, but\nwhen I read comments like this from the person who's motto once was that\neverybody writing software should contribute the source back to the community,\nnot because it delivers better software (due to the more eyeballs resulting in\nfewer bugs), but because it results in moving software forward quickly by\nvirtue of helping each other out, I agree with the OP, it's time for a change.\n\nLet me tell you something, free software or not, it was Steve Jobs, who told\nus what forward direction for software actually means, first by making GUI\nmainstream, then by making capacitive touch mainstream, and lastly by defining\nwhat a tablet form factor should and should not be.\n\nIf you think Steve's products hamper your freedom, I can argue the exact\nopposite, it was Steve who taught us ways to make technology more accessible\nby making groundbreaking innovations in user interfaces, which enables the non\ngeeks of the world to use computers in the first place, I am pretty sure those\nusers will feel more trapped in the command line interface that you envisioned\nfor them, than they feel by not having access to the source of the painting\napp they have fun playing with on their ipad.\n\nSo if you cannot come out the frog hole that you have created for yourself,\nand give credit where it's due, then maybe you should shut the fuck up.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\n>If you think Steve's products hamper your freedom\n\nTry and explain how to boot a MacBookPro from USB stick to someone, and\ncompare that to booting almost any other computer.\n\nOr explain how to dual boot a Mac with OSX and Linux, vs anything else with\nWindows and Linux.\n\n~~~\nastrodust\nTry and explain how to restore a MacBook from back-ups over the phone to a\nfrantic parent who's just lost their hard drive.\n\nI did that. It took two minutes. It worked flawlessly.\n\nSometimes to gain more command over your technology you have to give up some\ntheoretical freedom, but that's freedom you'd never have been able to\nexercise.\n\nAn F-16 pilot would find the controls in a typical car so disappointing.\nWhere's the lever to adjust the fuel/air mixture? The GPS waypoints? The brake\nbias dial? The air pressure indicator? The temperature of the tires? All of\nthese things are theoretically important to driving, but they're not of any\nconcern to someone simply trying to get from point A to point B.\n\nThat's all most people using computers are trying to do.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nSure, there are a lot of important benefits to having firm design choices made\nby someone, rather than just not ever making the decision and cramming a\nmillion options into a multi-tab options dialog (or a config file). I own (and\nuse every day) a mac. I've recommend mac to everyone I know, fo rthe reasons\nyou mention.\n\nBut you can't have it both ways - not having those options available means\nyou're not as free to use your machine as you are with other OSs. Trivial eg:\nOS X windowing behaves a certain way. You want to maximise a window? You\ncan't, unless you know some secret trick. You want to tile windows? You can't,\nunless you install some 3rd party software. These aren't power-user functions.\n\n~~~\nastrodust\nMaximizing windows _a certain way_ and tiling windows is something only very\nfew people need. You're presuming they're problems because you have\nexpectations that the software behaves in ways that it does not.\n\nPeople without any expectations do not have the same problems.\n\nSo many technical people see the \"App Store\" as something that limits choice.\nConsumers see it as freedom, since they are free to install anything they find\nwithout fear that it will wreck their system or actually be a trojan.\n\nJust as you'd see using a wheel-chair as something that's severely limiting,\nthe same thing for someone with no legs it's freedom to get around\nindependently.\n\nWhat Apple's products tend to do is trade one kind of freedom for another.\nThey don't eliminate or reduce freedom, they transform the essential nature of\nit.\n\nSome people might be justified in complaining about how it limits the freedom\nthey need, but they're probably trying to use a product for a purpose it was\nnot intended for.\n\n~~~\nprodigal_erik\n> trying to use a product for a purpose it was not intended for\n\nGood for them. Using things in novel unanticipated ways is toolmaking, quite\nliterally what makes us human. I suspect people who surround themselves with\nappliances which resist tinkering are harming themselves through learned\nhelplessness.\n\n~~~\nastrodust\nI respect hackers, yet I don't want to have to endure someone whinging about\nhow their washing machine doesn't also do dishes like the 1920 model did.\n\n------\nthe_mat\nMany of the comments following that story are deranged, and I mean that in the\nstrongest sense of the word. \"Software extremists\" like that really exist?\nThere are people who honestly think Steve Jobs was evil? And most\ndisturbingly, there are people who will flat out bash on the reputation of\nsomeone who so recently died? Wow. Just wow.\n\n------\njwr\nRMS deserves praise for starting the Free Software movement, but he has been a\nliability to it for quite some time now. Leaders that start movements are not\nalways fit to lead them when movements grow.\n\nAnd before you protest — have you met the man in person? If you haven't, you\nwon't understand.\n\n------\nubasu\nRelevant pg essay?\n\n<http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html>\n\n------\n5hoom\nStallman & Jobs are both giant figures in the tech world to anyone who knows\ntheir history. I would also imagine that anyone who has followed Richard\nStallman over the years would be surprised if he hadn't made a statement like\nthis.\n\nHe is an outspoken & tireless champion of an incredibly worthy cause he\nbelieves is greater than himself (and c'mon, the guys hacking skills are\nlegendary).\n\nSteve Jobs was a uniquely amazing entrepreneur & visionary leader. His impact\non the way people everywhere use technology is both profound & undeniable.\n\nBoth men are worthy of the deepest respect IMHO, even if their goals were in\nconflict.\n\n------\nJarred\nI agree with forking the FSF, but not just having someone whose nice is\nnecessary. It needs to be led by someone who gives a damn about user\nexperience. This is an issue with not all open source applications, but many.\nIt is getting better, but I still prefer Windows or OS X to using Gnome, KDE.\nI've never needed to use any of the bundled software with Ubuntu (except the\nsettings apps, gedit, and Firefox). It can't just be about open-source\nalternatives, because most people don't care if something is open or closed\nsource, they care if it gets the job done well.\n\n------\nchanux\nJobs loved what he did and believed in it. RMS certainly is same.\n\nI respect Jobs for `the inspiration` while I respect RMS for what `he offered\nto the world`.\n\n------\nkragen\nOther related thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3085417>\n\n------\nepo\nRMS is clearly on the autistic spectrum, probably far enough on it to be\nregarded as having a 'learning difficulty' in the rather twee PC UK-ism.\n\nThere is IMHO, an interesting litmus test where people who share his\nmonomaniacal obsession, or think it 'reasonable', probably have the same\nissue.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nUK (at least, England, I have no idea what Wales or Scotland do) \"Learning\ndisability\" is related to IQ. Autism and Asperger's syndrome do sometimes lead\nto a \"Special Educational Need\" (SEN). This isn't just language; there's some\naccess to medical services stuff involved.\n\n~~~\nepo\nThanks for that correction.\n\n------\nabrimo\nI've attended one of Stallman's talks and it was more of a comedy than\nanything else. I don't actually take him seriously, he did some great work in\nthe past but the world has moved on.\n\n------\nDecember\nI'm so tired of political correctness and \"sexism\" posts. At times half of\nthis site seems to consist of posts made by people offended by something.\n\n------\nmtraven\nDidn't this fork happen quite some time ago? <http://www.opensource.org/> And\nfor pretty much the exact same reasons being given now?\n\nAlthough some of the people behind that are almost as embarrassing to be\nassociated with as RMS.\n\n------\ngoodweeds\nIf it were RMS who had died, I wonder what Steve Jobs would have said.\n\n------\nBasDirks\nStallman is a degenerate.\n\n------\ndbbo\nAt the risk of getting repetitive: I think rms was speaking strictly from a\nutilitarian perspective-- that is, Jobs' absence is overall a good thing for\nthe FOSS movement (even though that might not actually be true, unless Cook is\nmore committed to FOSS than Jobs). I can see how some find his statement\ntactless, but I'm not offended by it because Jobs was not an important person\nin my life. That doesn't mean that his life had no value, but his life wasn't\nmore valuable to me than the life of any of the thousands of people who die\nevery day from preventable causes. I honestly don't understand why so many\npeople claim to be sad because Jobs is gone. Why did they feel so connected to\na CEO? Steve Jobs was not your uncle. You have no rational reason to be upset\nover his death, and especially over what a coot like rms says about him. If\nyou're upset enough to \"fork the FSF\" you're probably suffering from some\nillusory feeling of connectedness towards Jobs. I don't agree with a lot of\nwhat the FSF says, but one single comment made by one single guy is not going\nto make me turn my back on the whole organization. I will no longer be reading\nLarry's blog if he thinks this kind of flighty and ostentatious display of\ndisapproval is warranted.\n\n~~~\nEiZei\nStrictly from an utilitarian perspective RMS should keep his big fat mouth\nshut when someone -especially somebody as popular as Jobs - dies.\n\n~~~\ndbbo\nI don't really think popularity is a reason to suppress rms' constitutional\nrights (he is a US citizen as far as I know), no matter how crazy or\nalienating his opinions are.\n\n~~~\ncyrus_\nCome on, no one is saying he shouldn't have the right to express his opinion,\njust that he could have worded them in a way that didn't make people cringe.\n\n~~~\ndbbo\nCould you give an example of what he could have said to express the same idea\nat this time _without_ offending people?\n\n------\nmaximusprime\nBest way to deal with extreme fundamentalists is to ignore them.\n\nHe's a joke.\n\n------\nUhhrrr\nI have to flag this for being utterly asinine. If you're really a \"free\nsoftware guy\", RMS's statement should not even partially raise an eyebrow.\n\n------\ncoldnose\nAnd today is the day /usr/bin/gcc changes from \"deprecated\" to \"deleted\". I'm\nglad something finally pushed me over that hump.\n\n<http://clang.llvm.org/>\n\n------\njsilence\nIn other news: Autistic Reporter: Train Thankfully Unharmed In Crash That\nKilled One Man\n\n[http://www.theonion.com/video/autistic-reporter-train-\nthankf...](http://www.theonion.com/video/autistic-reporter-train-thankfully-\nunharmed-in-cra,20098/)\n\n------\nmkup\nI think RMS is doing perfect trolling to get more attention to his\nGNU/FSF/commie stuff.\n\nThe net effect is the people talking about RMS, about FSF and GNU. More people\nget to know about this stuff, more people get involved.\n\nJust a little trolling replaces zillions of bucks spent on advertising, PR\netc. Commies don't have money to pay, so they must troll.\n\n\\---\n\nJust don't spread this hype and don't feed the troll.\n\n~~~\nwazoox\n> _GNU/FSF/commie stuff._\n\nBingo, you've just made some tasteless, insulting passing remark. Some sort of\nreverse-Godwin point. So much for not feeding the trolls.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBill Gates: Textbooks are becoming obsolete - sumitsrivastava\nhttps://www.gatesnotes.com/2019-Annual-Letter#ALChapter8\n======\nwaste_monk\nI greatly prefer text to video and/or interactive elements for learning.\n\nThe pacing of video content tends to be much slower than I'm capable of taking\nin, so watching lectures becomes a frustrating exercise. I usually watch the\nvideos at 1.5 speed or just read the transcript, if it's available. And\ninteractive elements are usually so clumsy to use that they become worthless.\n\nI also don't want my learning materials spying on me and reporting back about\nmy progress. That's just creepy, and is one more step in the march towards\nmaking the world a particularly dreary cyberpunk dystopia.\n\nI think the problem is that most textbooks these days are hot garbage -\ninstead of building a professional library, you end up with irrelevant dead\nweights. I have textbooks from back at University which I still refer to today\n(data structures and similar topics), but most modern textbooks seem to really\nfocus in on particular technologies and frameworks, which become useless in\njust a few short years.\n\n------\nvertline3\nI find textbooks painful, but I also think I grow the most when reading them.\nThis is because textbooks are organized, the material often goes into more\ndepth than a blog post, and most importantly for me, I can be away from\nelectronic distractions.\n\n------\nksec\nMay be, but Textbooks provide a single purpose usage that doesn't distract you\nin ways in the back of you mind you know what these iPad could do ( Gaming,\nYoutube ) etc.....\n\n------\nrezahandzalah\nThe title is somewhat misrepresenting. Textbooks as _teaching means_ are\nbecoming obsolete.\n\n------\nmaceurt\nTextbooks will always be relevant as long as states use standardized testing.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nRegex Edit Distance - psygnisfive\nhttp://languagengine.co/blog/regex-edit-distance/\n======\npsygnisfive\nThe general idea here is that you can calculate not only whether or not a\nstring matches a regex, but if it doesn't match, precisely by how much (in the\nminimal case).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nProperty manager application - panbhatt\nI have created a property manager application, whose aim is to manage the properties for the project for multiple environments &#x2F; releases.<p>Complete appliation is deployed on HEROKU at \nhttps:&#x2F;&#x2F;vast-cliffs-8955.herokuapp.com&#x2F;#&#x2F;<p>Project Detail is available at : \nhttps:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;panbhatt&#x2F;propserv er<p>Clients are available in : \nJava\nNodeJS\n======\nDrScump\nyou might get more response as a \"Show HN\" posting\n\n~~~\npanbhatt\nThanks. i m trying that.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nDo you still read Slashdot? - kashif\n\n\n======\nSwellJoe\nI started reading Slashdot when it was Chips and Dips...but I had completely\ndiscontinued Slashdot for about two years and reddit took its place. Now that\nreddit has declined from a \"have to read nearly every link on the page\" to\n\"maybe two or three articles per day\" habit, I find myself going back to\nslashdot at least once every couple of days.\n\nI read news.YC more often than either now...but the volume here is still low\nenough to where it's not a problem. I drop in more than I need to (I'll come\nback not really expecting anything new) kind of as a nervous tick while I'm\nwaiting on software to build or virtual machine images to copy (I manage our\napt/yum software repositories, and do all of the QC testing, so I twiddle my\nthumbs more than I'd like).\n\nLately, there's a lot more of that, as may be seen in my ridiculous increase\nin comment volume this week...I'm kind of embarrassed looking over it\nnow...because I'm in the midst of rolling out a new version of our installer--\nso lots of testing and packaging. I need to find something more productive to\nturn into a nervous tick. Blogging, or smoking crack or something.\n\n------\nepi0Bauqu\nNope. I haven't for several years now.\n\n------\nbootload\n_\"... Do you still read Slashdot? ...\"_\n\nStarted reading in '96, uid of 2774 and I used to read it as much as I read\nhacknews.yc but stopped after ads started appearing and the sig/noise became\nunbearable ~ <http://slashdot.org/~goon>\n\n------\nredsymbol\nI've made several unsuccessful attempts over the years to go more than a few\ndays without reading slashdot :)\n\nI still read it almost every day, at least to check what the stories are. For\na while, about eight months ago, I found myself going to it less, in favor of\nthe main reddit page. Now that www.reddit.com has... evolved, I start a lot of\nmy free-range browsing time from programming.reddit.com and slashdot (as well\nas news.yc, suddenly).\n\nThe firehose is intriguing. Good to see Malda et al. continuing to experiment\nwith novel approaches (and it IS novel - it's not a straight digg/reddit\nclone, as some opine). Will be interesting to see how that plays out.\n\n------\nrams\nMy slashdot visits have become rather infrequent over the last couple of\nyears.To be honest neither reddit nor news.yc still get the kind of quality\ncomments/analysis that a lot of the slashdotter comments >= 3 provide.\nprogramming.reddit.com is better. Add to that humour - there used to be a\ncouple of sites that collected humorous comments from slashdot. You can't\nbuild a community overnight - it takes years; something that most people don't\nwant to hear. I know for a fact that a lot of older hackers hang out on\nslashdot - that could account for the more insightful comments and great sense\nof humour. The trick is to experiment with the filters.\n\n------\ninklesspen\nEvery day, man. Beats the hell out of reddit and digg. Sure, there's a lot of\npointless articles there, but at least I don't have to see tracksuitceo\narticles every day there, either.\n\n------\nKaizyn\nSlashdot is useful in that it aggregates content differently than do\nreddit/digg. As such, you find stories there selected by the editors that the\nrabid mob at reddit would otherwise ignore. Also, because the comments are\nmoderated and scored, I find them to be fairly useful when viewed at a high\nenough filtering threshold.\n\n------\nabarrera\nI read it daily, but it's true it's value has been declining with time. If you\nread many feeds, you'll keep getting duplicated news with a one day delay in\nSlashdot. Of course, comment reading is a no-no except you are really, really\ninterested, in which case I only read top score comments from the first page.\n\n------\npramodbiligiri\nNot as much as I used to. programming.reddit and news.yc have replaced it\nalmost entirely. Whenever I check Slashdot nowadays I feel the stories are too\npolitical and trollish. Is it just me or has the comments quality on Slashdot\nactually declined significantly in the last year or so?\n\n------\ncdr\nAbout the only time I read it anymore is when something else links to a post\nthere.\n\nThe editors are Slashdot's twist on tech news, but the editors are almost\nuniformly awful. The stories they break are consistently days behind\nDigg/Reddit, and of no better quality.\n\n------\npg\nI check occasionally but often I find nothing worth clicking on. The range of\nstories seems narrower now than it was a few years ago. It seems like they\nreacted to the arrival of digg and reddit by deciding to focus on their core\ncompetency, new OS releases.\n\n------\nAlex3917\nIt's still my homepage out of loyalty but I rarely actually read it. How\nmessed up is that?\n\n------\nryanpc\nYes. The commentary on /. tends to have an infinitely higher quality than\nfound elsewhere (particularly digg.) Digg and Reddit are great for breaking\nnews, but when I'm looking for an interesting (quality) discussion /. can\nrarely be beat.\n\n------\nstaunch\nDaily from around 1997 until 2004 or so, since then maybe a few times a year.\n\n------\nsandoh\nI also used to read it a couple times a day. Now I scan it maybe once in a\nwhile.\n\nThey don't break any stories to me anymore, it is always a delayed link to\nsomething I already read in reddit / digg yc.\n\n~~~\n0123456789\n> \"They don't break any stories to me anymore\"\n\nCare to explain why breaking news stories are relevant at all? I don't see\ntheir point.\n\n------\naaroneous\nI used to read it multiple times a day. Now I read it every few days. News.YC\nhas replaced /. (and Digg too) as my source for interesting articles and\nrelevant commentary.\n\n------\nprakash\nHaven't read slashdot in years. neither do I read digg. prog.reddit sometimes.\nYC News everyday.\n\nThe million $ question is when do I move away from YC News, and when?\n\n------\nmichaelneale\nOnce a day. Given up on reddit and digg. Now its news.YC and Slashdot. I\nreally need to work out a better way to get \"local\" news - I feel really out\nof touch at times.\n\n------\nks\nI get all my news through my RSS reader. If it doesn't have RSS (or Atom) it\ndoesn't exist :-)\n\nSo I look at the headlines and reads at least one article a day\n\n------\ntrekker7\nAbsolutely. I still find a lot of interesting things there, and the comments\nare really great. I especially like the comment tags (informative, funny,\netc.).\n\n------\npiers\nI get the daily email. Occasionally there are a couple of things that I've\nmissed from the day before, but I agree. It's not as \"breaking\" as it used to\nbe.\n\n------\nmynameishere\nNever did. Whenever I looked at it, it just felt like a bunch of Microsoft-\nhaters resentful of the fact that they still lived in their mom's house.\n\n------\nforgotmylastone\nYes, but only in the following way: sorted by highest score, -2 funny\nmodifier, and with a plugin to allow thread collapsing.\n\n------\nsteve\nI stopped for a while when reddit was at its peak, but now I'm back to\nslashdot every once in a while.\n\n------\nnrohan\nOnce in 1 or 2 days to check if there is anything interesting. No regrets if\nI'm not able to visit!\n\n------\nmdakin\nI scan the stories using a once-a-day RSS update but I never bother with the\ncomments.\n\n------\nrandallsquared\nA coupla times a week. Back around 1999, I was there multiple times a day.\n\n------\nrms\nYes, but I mostly just scan the links, I click a link less than once a day.\n\n------\n0123456789\nOnce a day for the headlines and insightful or interesting comments.\n\n------\nashu\nsomewhat regularly, with comments having score 5 only.\n\n------\nawt\nNo. Security + Copyright Law = BORING\n\n------\nhenning\nno.\n\ngave up on reddit, too, which now consists mostly of iran conspiracy theories.\n\n------\nkashif\nI do.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPublic API vs Open API - apievangelist\nhttp://www.apivoice.com/2012/05/30/public-api-vs-open-api/index.php#.T8Z9FCB0IvI.hackernews\n======\njack-r-abbit\nI was hoping for more substance. The title implies the article would\ncompare/contrast Public vs Open for APIs. But it doesn't really do that. There\nis a bullet list of \"what makes an open API?\" but not one of \"what makes a\npublic API?\". Some examples of each with reasons why it they fall into the\ncategory they do would be nice as well.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Stream music between iPhones - ludite313\nhttps://itunes.apple.com/us/app/music-stream-free/id914026908?ls=1&mt=8\n\n======\ndang\nYou guys... I realize it can be frustrating to try to get your stuff attention\non Hacker News, but trust me, this is definitely not the way to do it.\n\n------\nDSBOX\nYes.\n\n------\nNolanZunder\nDoes it work for Android?\n\n------\nblue4berryB\nAwesome.\n\n------\ncomeon331\nIs this much better than airplay?\n\n------\nstreaking314\nSeems to work well when the app is open, what about background modes?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Why has visual programming not caught on? - jshharlow\nIt seems like the concept of visual based programming (think visual basic, or drag/drop components that make code...) keeps on reappearing, do other hacker news visitors ever think it will truly succeed? It always seems to be limited imho, but the idea never seems to die, wondering what others think...\n======\nnostrademons\nIt already has succeeded in one very limited area: GUI component layout.\nPeople use XCode/Netbeans Matisse/DreamWeaver all the time to build their UIs.\n\nIt fails in other areas because code is remarkably info-dense, and if you\nsplit that out into individual components, it takes a huge amount of screen\nspace and visual manipulation for even simple subroutines. I encourage you to\ntake a simple function and draw out the parse tree for it. It's surprisingly\nlarge, with lots of different node types all strung together in unusual ways.\nThink about how much people complain about the parentheses in Lisp; now\nimagine that each set of parentheses is a box on screen.\n\n~~~\ndavid927\nGUI layout is not programming; it's GUI layout. (Or, more concretely: it's\nspecifying a dataset.)\n\nWhen software construction is finally \"solved\", visual representations and\ninterfaces will be common. Our current mechanisms are simply too crude,\nlacking sufficient methods of abstraction, to work well. In fact, they do the\nopposite and point out what deep flaws exist in the current state of the art.\n\n~~~\nnostrademons\nHTML, CSS, XML, SQL, JSON, YAML, and other configuration languages are also\nnot programming; they're specifying a dataset. I can basically guarantee that\nany large project will have large quantities of them, though, and that code\nwill have bugs.\n\nFor that matter, Lisp is not programming; it's specifying a dataset. Except,\nwell, it actually is programming, because you can execute that dataset. When\nyou push it far enough, the distinction between code and data disappears.\n\nThis is probably an indication that software construction will never be\n\"solved\": once an acceptable representation has been found for one level of\ncomplexity, someone will quickly build on that and take it to the _next_ level\nof complexity, and then the abstractions will once again prove inadequate.\n\n~~~\ndavid927\nIf I draw a picture, did I program? Are artists programmers? What if I try to\nexecute that binary of a digital image? I would say: no to the first, yes to\nthe last. I think it's a big difference: the aesthetic and basic syntax\nqualities of markup, the completeness of a list of invitations to a party, and\nexecutable code.\n\nTo me, HTML, CSS, XML, etc. are not code and do not have real bugs; they have\ndesign flaws and syntax flaws, just as a picture may need more red or blue.\n(But note that I'm not sure there's a right answer here, and I certainly\nrespect you and your opinion.)\n\nI also think that it's not about abstractions but better abstraction\n_mechanisms_ which work to reduce complexity at any level. It may get more\ncomplex, but you can manage that complexity much more skillfully. I am\nabsolutely confident that we can find better abstraction mechanisms.\n\n------\nkanzenryu\n[http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Customer-\nFriendly_System...](http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Customer-\nFriendly_System.aspx)\n\n~~~\njshharlow\nVery nice :-)\n\n------\nCyberFonic\nWe find visual based programming in the form of CAD used in construction,\naviation, semiconductors, etc. They are big complex programs and, of course,\nexpensive. If you can use visual tools to layout billions of transistors, then\nyou could use it to write programs. But ... the techniques for moving between\nlevels of abstraction in software haven't been understood yet. Systems like\nScratch and Alice provide visual programming, but quickly become tedious for\nall but the simplest programs because they don't allow us to introduce\nmultiple levels of abstraction. The CAD systems used for semiconductor design\nencompass hundreds of different views, each for addressing specific\nengineering issues.\n\nThere is quite a lot of research going on with visual programming, but the\nreturn on effort in most cases is most discouraging.\n\n~~~\nippisl\nDoesn't the reason you use visual representations in CAD, construction ,\naviation and layout is to be close to the domain ? i.e. visual objects.\n\nA second reason is that higher level languages for mechanical design hasn't\nbeen successful. my guess it's because mechanical objects are very cost\nsensitive, so people use low level tools, similar to embedded developers using\nc+asm.\n\nOn the other hand , if you look at fpga and chip design , where complexity has\nexploded and transistors price really plummeted , you see a move to higher and\nhigher level textual languages, from the schematic systems used in the past.\n\nAnother interesting use case for visual languages is visual domain specific\nlanguages. metacase has some success with this. my guess is that visual\nlanguages can be much easier for domain experts to use and understand, in some\ncases.\n\n------\n_0ffh\nBecause it is a crock of shite, that's why. Ask anyone who ever used an actual\n(general-purpose) \"visual programming system\" for any (nontrivial) real life\ntask. I have extensive experience in one, and a little in another, and both\nsuck balls. The problem is that, while the diagrams you are constructing might\nlook fancy and intuitive to a layperson (i.e. your pointy haired boss), they\ndo usually not help you to structure the complexity of the task at hand in any\nmeaningful way. Usually, they make everything worse. Having said that, there\nis a rather big exception: Domain specific visual programming systems, if they\nare well designed and the problem domain lends itself to it, can be quite\nuseful.\n\n~~~\nactionbrandon\nI think this is part of it. The people who would have to write/design the\nvisual programming system think that it is for losers and are thus not\ninterested in working on it. Most hardcore coders I have met are quite proud\nof their chops and kind of brush off those who can't cut it (which is fine\nimo).\n\n------\njdietrich\nSyntax is the easy part. The hard bit is abstraction, as proved by\nFizzBuzz[1]. The core syntax of a language like Ruby or Python can be learned\nin a couple of hours. Learning to write useful, maintainable software takes\nyears.\n\nHow do you create an intuitive, visual representation of recursion? Iteration\nover an array? The task isn't creating a visual representation of current\nprogramming paradigms, it's creating a whole new conceptual approach. I'm not\nsure that such a thing is even possible.\n\n[1] [http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-\ndev...](http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-developers-\nwho-grok-coding/)\n\n------\nhrasm\nA visual language called G exists. It is forms the backbone of LabVIEW (a\nproduct of National Instruments [NI]). You could use it like any other\nprogramming language to solve problems. IMHO it is quite powerful. However,\nLabVIEW's real strength lies in providing an easy interface for data\nacquisition from cards, again by NI, specifically built for the purpose.\nLabVIEW is pretty much ubuquitous in university labs.\n\nEdit: There is also Agilent VEE.\n\n------\ndumbphone\nI like the idea of using a web-based interface for tasks that are normally\ndone in framework code: Altering data structure/models, etc. Drupal already\nhas this (CCK), but it's not exactly a lean/small framework, so it's not the\nideal solution unless you actually need the CMS feature (the ability for non-\ntechies to edit content on the website).\n\nAnyway, I think a framework that includes a web-based data handling thing\nmight be a success.\n\n------\nextension\nThe same reason visual writing hasn't caught on. Our brains are wired for\ntextual language. It's generally hard to express highly abstract ideas with\njust pictures.\n\n~~~\nbartonfink\nThe Egyptians would like to disagree with you. The Chinese, Japanese and other\nideographic cultures are right behind them in line.\n\n~~~\nextension\nIdeographic writing is still sequential text.\n\n~~~\nbartonfink\nIn the same sense that picture books are sequential text.\n\n~~~\nextension\nI've never seen a visual programming system that was anything like a picture\nbook. Rather, every one that I've seen uses some sort of graph visualized in\ntwo or occasionally three dimensions.\n\nIn contrast, every natural language that I've seen, along with every remotely\nsuccessful programming language, uses a one dimensional sequence of words\nand/or symbols with an implicit grammatical structure. That is probably no\ncoincidence.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nStrangers with Similar Names Meet Through Emails Sent to the Wrong Address - sohkamyung\nhttps://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/strangers-with-similar-names-meet-through-emails-sent-to-the-wrong-address\n======\nJoshTriplett\nMy email is firstname at firstname lastname dot org. I always read that to\npeople very carefully, sometimes spelling it out, and over the phone I\ngenerally have someone read it back to me to make sure. And despite that, I've\nhad regular conversations with the person who has firstname at lastname dot\norg and is forwarding me a bit of misdirected mail.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nProcessed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science - zsupalla\nhttps://medium.com/@zsupalla/processed-meats-as-bad-as-cigarettes-bad-reporting-on-good-science-ac43a97be603\n======\ndspillett\nMy first thought was that the report is only talking about rectal and colon\ncancers, so yes diet might affect them as much as (or even more than) smoking.\n\nBut that really isn't even close to to being a good comparison when discussing\noverall effect of risk factors: talking about the effect of smoking while only\ncounting damage to the bottom end of the digestive system is like talking\nabout the effect of drink driving while only counting uni-cyclists.\n\nSo the reporting is _massively_ misleading, the inference that the risks\ncaused by smoking and those caused by eating processed meats are even of the\nsame order of magnitude is simply wrong. I shall have to read the actual\nreport to get any real meaning from it.\n\n~~~\ntkyjonathan\nSorry, guys, but you are all wrong. WHO is a huge and difficult body to get\nagreements from. After years and 800 studies, they decided today to label\nprocessed meats as carcinogens.\n\nBtw, 15% of lifelong smokers get lung cancer whereas 15-19% of meat-eaters get\nsome sort of cancer (mainly, colorectal, prostate and breast).\n\nI can appreciate that this is a surprise, but the data has been there for more\nthan a decade.\n\n~~~\nAlisdairO\nYou haven't established that cancer in meat eaters is largely caused by eating\nmeat, whereas it is quite clear that overall cancer rate drastically increases\nin smokers.\n\nIn fact, while vegetarian diets do reduce the risk of cancer, the difference\nis by comparison modest - the overall risk of cancer in vegetarians is ~10%\nlower.\n\n~~~\ntkyjonathan\nThat isn't true. There are causal links between meat and cancer. You have:\nIGF1, saturated fat, sulphar-based animo acids like methionine, mycobacterial\nload, oxidative stress, purification in the intestine and more recently, that\nnuXX sugar found in protein.\n\n~~~\nAlisdairO\nDid you read my comment?\n\nI didn't deny causal links between meat and cancer. I denied that the causal\nlinks between meat and cancer caused anything close to as much additional\ntotal cancer risk as smoking does. That's a viewpoint that is supported by any\ncredible source you care to name.\n\n------\ncperciva\nAlso worth noting: The same \"known carcinogens\" list also includes birth\ncontrol pills and sunlight.\n\nNot all carcinogens should be avoided.\n\n~~~\nChlorus\nAnd sure enough, the formally-respectable tabloid known as Ars takes the bait:\n[http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/its-official-bacon-\nho...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/its-official-bacon-hot-dogs-\nother-processed-red-meat-cause-cancer/)\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nYou've misunderstand the submission.\n\nThe quality of the evidence is very good - now we are sure that eating red\nmeat and processed meat increases the risk of cancer, although that risk is\nstill very small. We are now as sure of that as we are that smoking causes\ncancer, although the risks from smoking are very much greater.\n\nThe Ars head line is accurate. The second and third paragraphs are clear and\neasy to understand and accurate.\n\n> Today, in a sizzling announcement, the International Agency for Research on\n> Cancer (IARC) officially marked processed meat, such as bacon, hot dogs, and\n> sausages, as “carcinogenic to humans,” a “group 1” designation. The agency,\n> an arm of the World Health Organization, also classified red meat, such as\n> beef, pork, and lamb, as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” a “group 2A”\n> grade.\n\n> (The group designations refer to the confidence health experts have in the\n> link between the meats and cancer; it does not refer to the potency of the\n> meats’ cancer-causing abilities.)\n\n~~~\nChlorus\nI understand now, thank you.\n\n------\nmoskie\nThe first line of the Guardian's article is:\n\n\"Bacon, ham and sausages rank alongside cigarettes as a major cause of cancer,\nthe World Health Organisation has said, placing cured and processed meats in\nthe same category as asbestos, alcohol, arsenic and tobacco.\"\n\nIs that correct? If the WHO did indeed put these all into the same category,\nthen I'm not sure this article is at fault. Should the author of this post\ninstead take issue with how the WHO categorized these things?\n\n------\nbatbomb\nFor processed (cured) meats, they must assuredly mean sodium nitrite (which\nsodium nitrate turns in to) and/or salt is known carcinogens. In which case,\nit should be \"sodium nitrite known to cause cancer\".\n\nAlso, people should know that even \"no nitrates/nitrites added\" doesn't mean\ndevoid of nitrates or nitrites, because most companies add tons of celery\nsalt, and, for the most part, you end up with an equivalent amount of sodium\nnitrite in your processed/cured meats.\n\n[http://ruhlman.com/2011/05/the-no-nitrites-added-\nhoax/](http://ruhlman.com/2011/05/the-no-nitrites-added-hoax/)\n\n~~~\njohansch\nThe term \"processed food\" seems so overloaded that it's largely pointless.\n\nNevertheless, this page seems to explain its popular usage well, while adding\nsome much needed sanity:\n\n[http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/goodfood/pages/what-are-\nprocessed...](http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/goodfood/pages/what-are-processed-\nfoods.aspx)\n\n------\nanunderachiever\n\"Processed meat was classified as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1), based on\nsufficient evidence in humans that the consumption of processed meat causes\ncolorectal cancer.\"\n\n[http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-\ncentre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr240_E.pdf](http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-\ncentre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr240_E.pdf)\n\nand here you find tobacco:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_1_carcinoge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_1_carcinogens)\n\nSo processed meat IS ranking next to tobacco according to IARC.\n\n~~~\nicebraining\nThe groups have nothing to do with \"ranking\", they're based on the amount of\nevidence that we have for the link. From the IARC's FAQ:\n\n> The classification indicates the weight of the evidence as to whether an\n> agent is capable of causing cancer (technically called “hazard”), _but it\n> does not measure the likelihood that cancer will occur (technically called\n> “risk”) as a result of exposure to the agent._\n\n(Emphasis theirs)\n\n[http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/News/Q&A_ENG.pdf](http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/News/Q&A_ENG.pdf)\n\n------\n6t6t6\nWhat apparently a lot of people fails to understand is that the IARC list\nreflects is how sure we are that a substance is carcinogenic, but not how much\nit raises the risk of cancer.\n\nSo we can equally be sure that plutonium and bacon are a risk for health. But\nwe also know that eating plutonium is more dangerous than bacon.\n\n------\nvldr\nAny thoughts on\n\n[http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2015/10/world-health-\norganisation...](http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2015/10/world-health-organisation-\nmeat-cancer/)\n\n?\n\n------\ndang\nAlso\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10451259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10451259).\n\n------\nXzetaU8\n\"The Nitrate and Nitrite Myth: Another Reason Not To Fear Bacon\"\n\n[http://chriskresser.com/the-nitrate-and-nitrite-myth-\nanother...](http://chriskresser.com/the-nitrate-and-nitrite-myth-another-\nreason-not-to-fear-bacon/)\n\n------\ndebacle\nBad reporting but good traffic.\n\n------\nanunderachiever\nKinda funny how hard some people try to reject a finding which is as well\nsupported as it is obvious ... red meat is bad. Same logic applies here as\nwith cigarettes - _you_ decide if you want to take the risk.\n\nBeyond your personal consequences - meat and dairy industry is also directly\ndestructive to the environment and society on a global level\n([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3302820/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3302820/)).\n\n[http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Anature.com+%22red+meat%22](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Anature.com+%22red+meat%22)\n\n~~~\nmorley\nThat has little to do with the linked article, which is only rejecting the\nbombastic headlines comparing the two.\n\n~~~\nanunderachiever\nIs it really _that_ bombastic? Lot of people are smoking and will readily\njustify it with anecdotal evidance proving that smoking isn't really _that_\nbad at all - \"you know there was this 105 year old Japanese guy and they asked\nhim how he got that old and he said he stopped smoking at the age of 99 ...\"\n\nFurthermore - people need those \"comparisons\" \\- only few will change their\nbehavior based on purely statistical reasoning.\n\n~~~\nDanBC\nThe WHO report tells us that the quality of the evidence is very good, which\nis why red meat and processed red meat have this new classification.\n\nIt doesn't talk about how strong the cancer-causing effects of red meat and\nprocessed meat are. They are nothing like as risky as cigarettes. We know that\ncigarettes are very harmful.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBackpage.com’s Vicious Battle with the Feds - gok\nhttps://www.wired.com/story/inside-backpage-vicious-battle-feds/\n======\nzadkey\n\"Since March 2018, federal prosecutors have seized more than $100 million in\ncash, real estate, and other assets from Lacey and Larkin. The strategy is\nsimple: No money? No lawyers. QED.\n\nThe asset freezes raise all kinds of thorny constitutional questions.\nGenerally speaking, federal prosecutors are permitted to freeze a defendant’s\nassets based on probable cause alone, even before the defendant has a chance\nto challenge the government’s case in court. But regular forfeiture rules do\nnot apply in cases involving forums for speech—newspapers, films, books,\nmagazines, websites. The US Supreme Court has decreed that when the government\nseizes these expressive materials, or the proceeds derived from them, it must\nimmediately hold an evidentiary hearing to determine whether the seizure is\nvalid.\n\nBut the Backpage defendants have a problem: So far, they can’t get a court to\nhear their claims. Since last summer, the Justice Department appears to have\nbeen playing a clever shell game. They’ve brought cases against the Backpage\ndefendants in two federal districts—civil seizures in Los Angeles, criminal\nmatters in Phoenix—and they’re making the defendants spend what money they\nhave left chasing Uncle Sam from place to place. So far, judges in both\ndistricts have agreed with the government’s suggestion that they should defer\nto each other, effectively denying the defendants a forum to challenge the\nasset freezes. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will hear\narguments in the case in July.\"\n\nThis kind of tactic definitely rubs me the wrong way. I am not saying that\nbackpage should exist.\n\nBut I don't buy into ends justify the means arguments for the way the\ngovernment is going about it.\n\n------\ntptacek\nI don't understand the thru-line of this Wired story. It effectively concedes\nthe government's case: Backpage built a system that coached users to post\ntrafficking ads without setting off its controls. If you posted an ad\ncontaining “lolita,” “rape,” “fresh,” or “little girl” (the article's\nexamples), the system would _alert the user_ so they could use different\nterms, and then _accept their new ad_.\n\nThere's lots not to like about SESTA, but the Backpage people weren't (AFAIK)\ncharged under SESTA.\n\nWhy am I meant to care about the Backpage owner's colorful history? Isn't the\nimportant thing I actually need to know to understand what happened here\nburied towards the bottom of this story, in a couple paragraphs discussing\nwhat they were actually charged with? Agree or disagree with the prosecution,\nbut _that 's the story_.\n\nI feel like people on message boards are sold on a narrative about how child\nsex trafficking never happens, which is easy when it's an abstraction. But it\ndoes happen.\n\nA middle aged man I briefly worked with, and that a friend of mine worked\n_for_ \\--- Peter Privateeer, the former CEO of a company called Reflex\nSecurity --- just finished serving 12 years in prison for buying a 14 year old\ngirl. The pimp who sold her had been holding her at gunpoint and forcing her\nto \"service\" his customers. Where did the pimp meet the CEO? On Backpage. The\ngirl cost $600.\n\nThe ads for teenaged children Backpage was handling were real. Not all of\nthem, I'm sure. But it was really happening. And Backpage _helped it happen_.\n\nShould a safe online market for sex workers exist? Perhaps. But we should be\nable to at least agree that the people who operate it should take their\nresponsibility as a steward of the public safety seriously. That's not\nBackpage. Backpage did did at least as much to set back the cause of\nsafeguarding sex workers than any misguided lawmaker.\n\n~~~\nmindgam3\nThank you for stating this so clearly. Something always seemed off to me about\nthe argument that punishing Backpage was going to backfire because all it\nwould do drive exploitation and child abuse more underground. This claim would\nhave merit if Backpage hadn’t been explicitly enabling a market for this\nterrible stuff via those keyword suggestions. I’m not going to shed any tears\nfor the poor site owners having to face penalties for this.\n\n~~~\nadisinom\nAt least according to the article it was a keyword ban, not keyword\nsuggestions. To my reading the intent of the ban is to (1) avoid the\nappearance of carrying advertisements of sex with children and (2) discourage\nsuch advertisements.\n\nThe critical view is that this is intended to help child traffickers write\nclandestine ads so they can continue using the platform however that seems\nunlikely. The problem with any keyword-based filter is false-positives such as\nkink content. Such filters operating opaquely and dropping bans in other\ncontexts such as banking and copyright draw deserved criticism. We should be\nno less critical here.\n\n~~~\nmindgam3\nI need to dig up my original source, but my understanding from when this news\nfirst broke has been that the implementation was somewhat less innocent than a\nsimple keyword ban and involved some kind of suggestions or workarounds for\nbanned keywords. I’ll try to find something concrete to back this up.\n\n------\ndevoply\nSomeone must not have hired a lobbying team and lined some pockets in\nWashington.\n\nAlso the crooked US justice system, you don't have the right to defend\nyourself using your own money:\n\n> The asset freezes raise all kinds of thorny constitutional questions.\n> Generally speaking, federal prosecutors are permitted to freeze a\n> defendant’s assets based on probable cause alone, even before the defendant\n> has a chance to challenge the government’s case in court. But regular\n> forfeiture rules do not apply in cases involving forums for\n> speech—newspapers, films, books, magazines, websites. The US Supreme Court\n> has decreed that when the government seizes these expressive materials, or\n> the proceeds derived from them, it must immediately hold an evidentiary\n> hearing to determine whether the seizure is valid.\n\n> But the Backpage defendants have a problem: So far, they can’t get a court\n> to hear their claims. Since last summer, the Justice Department appears to\n> have been playing a clever shell game. They’ve brought cases against the\n> Backpage defendants in two federal districts—civil seizures in Los Angeles,\n> criminal matters in Phoenix—and they’re making the defendants spend what\n> money they have left chasing Uncle Sam from place to place. So far, judges\n> in both districts have agreed with the government’s suggestion that they\n> should defer to each other, effectively denying the defendants a forum to\n> challenge the asset freezes. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit\n> will hear arguments in the case in July...\n\n------\nmodule0000\nWell, if you take away a website were bad things happen, all the bad guys will\nmagically disappear...right?\n\nI enjoyed the article, a good read. I hate the topic; government overreach.\n\n------\nkilo_bravo_3\nAnyone who sits down and reads the Senate report (not mentioned in the article\nuntil about 75% of the way though) and is still on the side of Backpage.com is\nprobably a monster.\n\nThe report makes no allegation not directly derived from internal company\npolicies, documents, emails, and sworn employee testimony.\n\nBackpage.com was an active participant in human trafficking.\n\n~~~\nmonksy\nThe only thing that is supporting the human trafficking \"industry\" (let's face\nit.. it's organized and it's filling a demand in the market) is having that\nkind of work made illegal. It forces the demand and supply into the black\nmarket.\n\nThere is and always has been a demand and (willing and consenting) supply for\nthose services. The best you can do is to put in a framework in which they can\ndo so legally and safely. It's not going to knock out all trafficking. But\nwhen you have a superior service that's legal, safe and reliable. You're going\nto lose the financial benefit of running it on the black market. (Also you'll\nend up having an entire framework to deal with crimes related to the work\n[i.e. abuse, violence related, etc])\n\n~~~\nanbop\nSo the solution to trafficked 14 year olds is to legalize 14 year old\nprostitutes?\n\n~~~\nskinnymuch\nNo. Is there a good reason we don’t have a well regulated set of laws and\nenforcement for legal sex work for people 18 (or 21) and up?\n\n~~~\nanbop\nBecause legalizing sex work has empirically not reduced the amount of sex\ntrafficking / nonconsensual sex work that occurs. That’s what happened in\nAmsterdam and why they reduced the size of their brothel economy.\n\n~~~\nmsla\nTake as an axiom that you cannot meaningfully reduce the demand for\nprostitution.\n\nGiven that axiom, I find it very hard to believe that legal sex work which is\nclosely monitored for any signs of human trafficking would have the same\namount of that associated with it as illegal prostitution which is impossible\nto monitor meaningfully. I suspect the amount of sex trafficking associated\nwith illegal prostitution is grossly underestimated.\n\n~~~\nanbop\nYou absolutely can reduce the demand for anything by making it more costly.\nProstitution is far more prevalent where it less costly in dollars and\npunishment (e.g. Canada vs USA) You can’t just assert a falsehood as\naxiomatic.\n\n~~~\nmsla\n> You absolutely can reduce the demand for anything by making it more costly.\n> Prostitution is far more prevalent where it less costly in dollars and\n> punishment (e.g. Canada vs USA) You can’t just assert a falsehood as\n> axiomatic.\n\n _Meaningfully_ reduce. The only meaningful reduction is to near zero, the\npoint where human trafficking becomes impossible to profit from. That doesn't\nseem to be the case even in the USA.\n\n~~~\nanbop\nThe only meaningful reduction is to near zero? Reducing human trafficking by\n50% is not a meaningful reduction?\n\n~~~\nmsla\nReducing prostitution by 50% wouldn't reduce human trafficking the same\namount, but thanks for equivocating!\n\n------\nJamesBarney\nFor those who are interested, this reply all goes into the effects of\nbackpage's closure on sex workers.\n\n[https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho97/119-no-\nmore-s...](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho97/119-no-more-safe-\nharbor)\n\n~~~\nscarface74\nI’ve listened to the episode before, but after reading the Wired article and\nseeing the comments here, the Reply All episode now feels very one sided. I\ndon’t remember them mentioning the underage aspect.\n\n~~~\nJamesBarney\nYeah but I also don't think the question \"is Carl Ferrer a scumbag?\" and \"was\nthe closing of Backpage good for sex workers and at risk youth\" have to have\nthe same answer.\n\nThe wired article talks about culpability and most focuses on the first\nquestion where as the reply all seemed to exclusively focus on the second.\n\n~~~\nscarface74\nThere are two parts to your second question.\n\nWas Backpage good for _adult_ sex workers. Yes. Also, I don’t think\nprostitution between consenting adults should be illegal.\n\nDid Backpage facilitate child trafficking- Yes. Anything that makes that\nharder is a win. Backpage _should_ have worked with police to help catch the\nadults who were selling kids for sex.\n\nI haven’t heard about any of the well known porn sites getting in trouble for\nkiddy porn. So obviously it is possible to run an adult oriented site without\nexploiting kids.\n\n~~~\nJamesBarney\nFrom the little I've researched into it, it seems like there is more teen\nprostitution that is due to coercion from circumstance as opposed to force.\nBasically kids who ran away from or don't have a home and are trying to\nsurvive as opposed to trafficking at gun point.(which has been incredibly hard\nto find numbers for). And it seems like backpage made it safer for the former\nand but increased the risk of the latter.\n\nHere's the wikipedia page that goes into some details.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_trafficking_in_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_trafficking_in_the_United_States#Commercial_sexual_exploitation_of_children)\n\n~~~\nscarface74\nI left off something Backpage should have both helped police catch adults\npumping out kids _and_ worked with agencies to help the kids who were involved\nwith prostitution whether they were forced or not.\n\n------\nupofadown\n>“I could make arrests off Craigslist 24 hours a day, but to what end? ... \"\n\nWell, enforcing the law is actually the job of law enforcement. It sounds like\nthe ultimate goal is to keep the bad stuff where the general public can't see\nit.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNextGuide iPad app adds Amazon, gestures and more - jtoeman\nhttp://www.engadget.com/2012/10/12/nextguide-ipad-update-amazon-gestures/\n\n======\nmarkdrocker\nNice addition of Amazon content!\n\n------\nKThornton\nBeautiful app!\n\n~~~\njtoeman\nthanks, let us know if you have any suggestions or other feedback!\n\n------\njaxxie\ngood way to discover shows!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nUber poaches 40 people from 'partner' Carnegie Mellon - amalantony06\nhttp://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-uber-a-friend-or-foe-of-carnegie-mellon-in-robotics-2015-05-31-14103924\n\n======\ndylanjermiah\n\"40 people voluntarily leave CMU to join Uber\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAn Ambitious Plan for Putting Kickstarter Out of Business - KenjiCrosland\nhttp://www.mrteacup.org/post/an-ambitious-plan-for-putting-kickstarter-out-of-business.html\n\n======\nthegrossman\nKickstarter is nothing more than a web hosting company? Pardon?\n\nI recently raised more than $38k from Kickstarter. There is absolutely no\ndoubt in my mind that I wouldn't have been able to raise nearly that amount by\nthrowing up a website and going it alone.\n\nHere are some stats (for this project:\n[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jackadam/dark-sky-\nhyperl...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jackadam/dark-sky-hyperlocal-\nweather-prediction-and-visuali))\n\n1) 32.26% of our funds came from visitors who found our page through the\nKickstarter newsletter.\n\n2) In total, 56% of funds came from visitors finding us via other Kickstarter\npages (their home page, category sections, etc).\n\n3) 44% were referred to from external sources.\n\nBut here's the thing: the external links were primarily due to the publicity\nwe got from Kickstarter's promotional efforts. We got mentioned on Wired, Fast\nCompany, the New York Times, and CNN.com -- not because we reached out to\nthem, but because of the large number of people talking about us after finding\nus on the Kickstarter site itself.\n\nIn the end, Kickstarter enabled us to raise tens of thousands of dollars and\nin return took a measly 5%.\n\n------\nbrador\nIt's called a marketplace. They bring people with \"stuff\" together with people\nwith \"money\". That's the business concept, not production, not advertising,\nnot selling webspace for 4 pages as this article suggests.\n\nIs it a scam? no, not directly. The scam \"sellers\" on kickstarter take\n6-months to a year to be found out, at which point, few people care if they\nget their product or not, and since their is always the implicit understanding\nthat some of the kickstarter projects will not deliver, few complain.\n\nHence, yeah, kickstarters customer base is ripe for a good scamming and you'll\nlikely never be called on it. Free money.\n\n------\ntomwalsham\na) Trusted space for collecting backed pledges. Try doing that with PayPal and\nsee how quickly you get shut down.\n\nb) Well branded name with first-mover advantage which brings higher CTR on\nsocial campaigns.\n\nc) Centralization of PR - contacts with traditional media which increase\nchance of mainstream coverage.\n\nd) Volume of curated content makes it interesting to third-party developers,\nincreasing 'virality' (see Twitter's media-in-post for any posted KickStarter\nlink.\n\n...\n\nI could go on. It's pretty easy to build the same strawman argument against\nmany businesses by focusing on a weakly analogous service and conveniently\nignoring the laundry list of benefits. The whole 'socially interesting causes\nshouldn't be for-profit' argument is completely unsupported and drowned in\npseudo-intellectual non-sequitur, which incidentally appears to be the raison\nd'être for this blog.\n\nName me another form of fundraising for arbitrary projects which doesn't\nrequire giving up significant equity at such an early stage. If you want a\nreal target for a poorly-balanced funding arrangement maybe take aim at\nDragon's Den. People who KickStart their projects are fully aware of what\nthey're giving up for their seed capital - 5% of cash and no equity. Sounds\npretty damn good to me.\n\n~~~\nsp332\nA) is a thin wrapper around Amazon Payments.\n\nB) gives KS an advantage in the market. But as the article mentions, it\ndoesn't justify gouging your customers just because you can.\n\nD) Is \"curating\" content really worth 5%? Would you pay e.g. HN 5% for 6 weeks\nfor linking to your site?\n\n~~~\ntomwalsham\nI hardly see it as gouging customers when they are happily, voluntarily\nentering into the agreement with full awareness of the terms and alternatives.\n\nAll of these poor souls were perfectly capable of setting up\n'bobsdiyproject.org' and attempting to get popular support. Individuals trying\nto do this would have fixed up-front costs for developing all the 'little'\nstuff that KS does, zero access to an existing base of people interesting in\npaying, and no access to mainstream media to promote their idea.\n\nThe curation aspect is a large part of what creates value in KickStarter. The\nnotion of 'SelfStarter' proposed in the blog completely misses the benefits to\nthe community provided by centralised screening. If any and all projects were\napproved it would be chock full of scammers and opportunists with poor ideas -\nthe SNR would be so low as to drive interest away.\n\nWould I pay 5% of all cash raised specifically from HN members donating\nthrough a 6-week link to my project with no money upfront? Yes, absolutely.\nZero-risk, $0 down traffic which only pays out if you hit your own projected\ngoals?\n\nIs Etsy a scam? Is eBay a scam? I'd say KickStarter has more favourable terms\nthan these (still valuable) sites as they require money upfront regardless of\nthe success of your listing.\n\n~~~\nsp332\n_I hardly see it as gouging customers when they are happily, voluntarily\nentering into the agreement with full awareness of the terms and\nalternatives._\n\nThis seems like the exact same defense the banks were using when they were\nforeclosing on homeowners. Of course such behavior is \"allowed\" by a free\nmarket. The question is: is this behavior morally defensible?\n\n------\nnhangen\nKickstarter is awesome. It helped bring light to this newly born industry in a\nway never been done before, and it's been responsible for scores of people\nbeing able to raise money to build really incredible things.\n\nBut then you have the people on the other side - those that might have raised\n10, 20, 50, or even 80% that didn't meet their mark, and did all of that work\nfor nothing. At the end of the day, the only thing they have left is a dead\ndream, and a burned out list of supporters.\n\nI imagine it would be incredibly heartbreaking to walk away with nothing after\na failed campaign.\n\nOn the money side, yes it's expensive, but that's not what I didn't like about\nit. My beef with Kickstarter is that I don't want to fill out an application\nand wait weeks before getting approved. I also don't want to send all of the\nSEO benefit to them.\n\nYes, I agree they should curate their marketplace, but it does filter out a\nlot of worthy projects.\n\nI wanted to be able to raise money for a variety of projects, each in my own\nway and in my own time. I worked with my co-founder to build IgnitionDeck\n(<http://ignitiondeck.com>) to be able to do that.\n\nIt's actually doing pretty well, which I don't think would have happened\nwithout Kickstarter's popularity. In many ways, I view them as the MySpace of\ncrowdfunding. It will certainly be interesting to see how they adapt and\nevolve as people get burned out from crowdfunding...or will they?\n\n------\nsp332\nIf you thought the first part was just wrong or ignorant, you really should\nkeep reading all the way to the bottom.\n\n------\njoelgrus\nIt's sort of hard to take seriously an article that lists the \"benefits\" of\nKickstarter without including \"the ability to solicit and collect pledges\".\n\n------\nforgottenpaswrd\nI don't want to feed the troll, someone that calls kickstarter a web host\ncompany could not even discern between hosting web pages and videos.\n\nIt's only six orders of magnitude...\n\nI won't lose more time with this, hats off for what the kickstarter guys had\ndone. One of the good things in a free society is being able to choose who you\nwant to help and who you don't.\n\n------\nerable\nOne has to wonder that, services and technologies comparison aside, perhaps\nthere's something appealing about the Kickstarter brand/community.\nContributing to a random website out in the wild vs. contributing in an\nenvironment where there's a critical mass are _very_ different. Whether or not\nthe value is extracted from being a part of Kickstarter depends on many more\nvariables than the article choses to mention. Perhaps a viable alternative\nwould be a similar product but with a more de-centralized approach (ie. a\nmechanism placed on individual sites but with a recognizably safe community &\nbrand).\n\n------\nk0mplex\nThat was the most beautifully typeset rant I've ever read\n\n~~~\npartoa\nI hadn't noticed the typeset :D....\n\n------\nswalsh\nDoes anyone know if Kick starter subtracts credit card fees from their 5%, or\nis that an additional fee?\n\n~~~\nAqua_Geek\nKickstarter takes 5%. Amazon takes another 3-5% for payment processing.\n\n[http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creating%20a%20project#F...](http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creating%20a%20project#Fees)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: MakerUpdates.com – Highlighting your favorite makers milestones - scottatmu\nhttps://www.makerupdates.com\n======\nscottatmu\nLets call this a soft launch as I'm still working on adding more milestones to\nthe website.\n\nSo far, what do you think?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThey Don't Make Computer Manuals Like They Used To - blasdel\nhttp://www.ironicsans.com/2010/02/they_dont_make_computer_manual.html\n======\nblasdel\nIt's like he's _why's godfather or something: \"The Ancestral Territorial\nImperatives of the Trumpeter Swan\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nKogan Violating GPL - Benjamin_Dobell\nhttp://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=46737250\nKogan refuse to supply source code for GPL licensed software running on Kogan branded Android devices.\n======\nbelorn\nNoted a few other things:\n\nTheir manual/documentations has no mentioning of BSD licensed software. While\nits possible that bsd license is included in paper form with the devices with\nreference to each software package, it is unlikely. As such, 99% sure that\nKogan is violating BSD licensed software too.\n\nKogan is aware that they are using open source software\n([http://www.kogan.com/uk/newsroom/kogan-\nreleases-119-android-...](http://www.kogan.com/uk/newsroom/kogan-\nreleases-119-android-tablet-55/)), as is indicated by their press releases. As\nsuch, if an infringement is found, it likely to be seen as intentionally and\nwillingly regarding that product.\n\nOtherwise, it seems as a common misunderstanding by Kogan in _how_ one provide\nsource code to users. Its not very complicated, but hand waving users towards\nGoogle is not enough. Had the kernel been gplv3, then they could just given\nthe user a link, but since the kernel is gplv2, the options are either a\nwritten offer for minimum 3 years or to include the source code alongside the\nbinaries. GPLv3 changed the license text regarding source distribution because\nthey did not want to still live in 1990s.\n\nKernel drivers however are a separate issue as the primary author of the\nkernel (Linus) has given explicit permission to produce \"some form\" of drivers\nwithout having to follow the license. For most people, that is enough safety\nagainst lawsuits, even if copyright do not care who is the primary author, and\ngives equal copyright rights to each author of a project.\n\n~~~\nDylan16807\nSo if I'm reading you right, they are in full compliance of the improved GPL\nterms that don't apply in this case.\n\nMeaning their noncompliance is an accident of history, not a violation of the\nspirit of the license.\n\nIn that case, I don't see why anyone should care.\n\n------\ntzs\nThis could be a bit more subtle than it might first appear. Most countries\nhave in their copyright something that allows an entity that has a lawfully\nmade and lawfully obtained physical object that they obtained from someone\nelse to resell that particular object without violating copyright.\n\nThis is why used bookstores can exist legally.\n\nThis is also why when you buy a Samsung TV from Best Buy, and want the GPL\ncode, you have to ask Samsung rather than Best Buy. Best Buy did distribute\nthe TV (and thus the binary software contained therein) to you, but since that\ndistribution did not require permission of the copyright owner Best Buy has no\nGPL obligation.\n\nNote that this works for Best Buy because they are essentially receiving\ncopies of the software and then just passing those copies through to their\ncustomers, in a one to one manner. If Best Buy were modifying the code in the\nTV, of if they were copying the code into other TVs (say copying the code from\na high end TV model to a lower end model to enable premium features), then\nthey would no longer be operating in a one to one pass through fashion, and\nwould need permission of the copyright owner--and then WOULD have GPL\nobligations and you would turn to Best Buy for the code to your television.\n\nNow suppose some OEM makes a generic TV platform. It consists of the guts of\nthe TV (display, power supply, electronics, and firmware), ready to be put in\nto a case. A company like Kogan or Best Buy that wants a house brand TV can\nbuy the guts from the OEM, put it into a case they have someone else make for\nthem that has their name on it, and sell it as their own.\n\nSuppose also that the firmware consists of a minimal Linux system, configured\nto automatically start a shell running as user 'tv' after boot, and the\nstartup scripts for the 'tv' user start a minimal X server, and then run\n~/tvapp, which just puts up a minimal TV GUI that lets you change channels and\nadjust the volume.\n\nThe company buying these and rebranding them (who I shall call \"the store\") as\ntheir own writes their own version of tvapp that puts up a full featured GUI\nthat allows for control of all the TV features (or they license a full\nfeatured tvapp from someone else and just replace the graphics and modify the\ntext so it looks like it is theirs).\n\nIf the OEM that made the generic TV guts was careful, all modifications the\nstore makes consist of just replacing ~/tvapp. They do not do anything that\nwould create a derivative work of any of the open source code that the OEM\nused, and that code is just passed through from the OEM to the consumer one to\none with no copying, and the net result is that the store does not end up with\nany obligation to provide anyone with copies of the source to the open source\ncode in their TV.\n\nApplying this to the present case, the big question then is just what is Kogan\ndoing to produce their branded phones and tablets and TVs? Are they dealing\nwith an OEM like the hypothetical one I described above, and just adding user\nmode applications to a generic system that is being treated as a black box? If\nso, then they in fact not be violating any licenses, and it would be the OEM\nthat people need to turn to for their copies of the source.\n\nOn the other hand, if they were doing something like getting generic devices\nfrom one OEM, and taking firmware that got from a contractor, and installing\ncopies of that firmware into the OEM devices, and the contractor used open\nsource in that firmware, then Kogan would be responsible for providing the\nsource code. In this case, they are making copies, not just passing on copies\nthey received one for one to their customers.\n\nBased on a quick (and perhaps imperfect) read of the article, I was not able\nto tell which of the above best describes what Kogan is doing. Do we know?\n\n~~~\ntzs\n(Adding this as a self-reply rather than incorporating it into the above,\nbecause it is not directly relevant but interesting enough to maybe be worth\ndiscussing)\n\nSuppose Kogan does in fact fall into the case where they are just modifying\nseparate user applications and are just passing the GPL binaries they receive\nfrom the OEM on to their customers unmodified one to one, and so in fact do\nnot have a GPL obligation (since they are not doing anything that requires\npermission of the copyright owner).\n\nSo you track down that OEM (which could be hard...) and ask for the source.\n\nThe OEM was smart when they decided to use GPL software. They read and\nunderstood the license, and learned that they basically have two choices when\nit comes to providing source.\n\n1\\. When they distribute GPL binaries to someone, they can accompany the\nbinaries with the corresponding source, or\n\n2\\. The can distribute the binaries without source, but make the source\navailable to anyone who asks.\n\nBeing sensible, they do not want to deal with the hassle that option #2 can\nbe, and go with #1. Every single TV guts box they ship to a Best Buy or a\nKogan is accompanied by a CD-ROM containing the complete source for every bit\nof software in the TV.\n\nThis completely satisfies the OEMs GPL requirement to provide source. They can\nlegitimately tell you to go talk to Best Buy or Kogan or whoever's name is one\nfront of your TV.\n\nThe end result is that you end up with a bunch of GPL code sitting in your\nliving room--and NOBODY is obligated to provide you with a copy of the source\ncode!\n\n~~~\ntzs\n(Might as well add one more interesting little copyright twist that might have\nsome interesting consequences for free software, and that has been almost\ncompletely overlooked)\n\nIn the US, there is a very interesting thing in copyright called the\ntermination right. It probably won't have much affect on software (it is\nmostly a music and book thing), but there is a remote chance it could be\nsignificant in some cases.\n\nThe termination right was meant to address the situation where you have a\nyoung artist who produces a great work when they are early enough in their\ncareer that they are unknown and have almost no bargaining power, and the\nartist ends up making very little money from the work--it is the music company\nor book publishers that signs them that ends up making a ton of money.\n\nWhat the termination right does, basically, is 35 years after the artist\nsigned away their copyrights to the music company or book publisher, the\nartist is given a window in which they can take back the copyright. They can\nthen negotiate a new deal with the publishers, with much better terms now that\nthey are an established artist instead of an unknown kid.\n\nYou might expect publishers would be smart, and include in their contracts\nwith new young artists that the artist agrees not to invoke the termination\nright when it vests. Congress was smart enough to realize that publishers\nwould do that, and so made it so that you cannot contract away your\ntermination right.\n\nAs I said, this is generally irrelevant for software. First, termination\nrights do not apply to works for hire. Almost all closed source software is\nwritten as a work for hire, I suspect. So, as amusing as it would be for some\nretired COBOL programmer to reclaim copyright on some major bank's ancient but\nstill in service mainframe software, it probably is not going to happen.\n\nSecond, not much software survives 35 years. Even if something does not\nofficially get replaced or retired, over 35 years it will usually accumulate\nenough piecemeal rewrites that nothing is left of the original--not even as a\nderivative work.\n\nStill, with open source, we now have a lot of code in wide use that was NOT\nwork for hire. Could there be fragments of open source projects that actually\nmake it through 35 years intact, and make the termination right actually\nrelevant?\n\n~~~\nbelorn\nCorrect. The termination clauses has an interesting - if somewhat unlikely -\neffect on software.\n\nFLOSS software which depend on the ability to distribute new copies could have\ntheir license terminated after the 35 years, given that said software still\nexisted in large enough volume to qualify for copyright status. The first\nthing I can think of would be the TCP/IP stack that was created in BSD, that\nif terminated could cause some serious problems for Apple and other OS that\ndepend on that code.\n\n------\nthejosh\nno fucking shit.\n\nKogan is as shady as they come, they rebrand cheap chinese hardware with their\nown firmware, rebrand hardware with a Kogan sticker and once you restore it\nyou're back to the manufacturers firmware.\n\nThey do have to abide by Australian consumer laws though, which is always a\nplus.\n\n------\nnucleardog\nDidn't have much better luck with HTC.\n\n\"Hey, you only have the source for Android 1.5 for this phone on your website\n- can you please provide me the source for the Android 1.6 binaries you\nreleased.\"\n\n\"The only source available is that on our website.\"\n\n\"Okay, but under the terms of the GPL (which covers some of the code released\nas part of that binary), you must provide source code on request. You have the\nbinary on your site and no associated source code. Please either provide the\nsource code or a direct link to where it exists on your website.\"\n\n\"We only provide the source code on our website. Stop contacting us and have a\nnice day.\"\n\nI mean, they did make an effort in releasing _most_ of the source code, so\nthey're by no means at the level of this company, however they're still in\nviolation.\n\nCool story bro, I know. Just really irked me.\n\n------\nblueblob\nSorry for the naievety, but it's not just modules that are inserted into the\nkernel that provide the support that they need (I am not a systems/kernel\nprogrammer)? And in that case, could they license the modules separately?\n\n~~~\nXylakant\nSort of a grey area, but given that binary drivers exist for video cards they\ncould at least cite a precedent.\n\n~~~\nArgorak\nI don't know about how this is done currently, but isn't that the reason why\nthose drivers often don't ship installed but have to be installed by user\nrequest?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nUpdated Ask HN Archive - michaelfairley\nhttp://remembersaurus.com/askhn.html\n\n======\nRiderOfGiraffes\nThis is brilliant, but didn't I see it submitted just a day or so ago? And yet\nI've looked, and not found it.\n\nRegardless, I've added it to my ante-pre-alpha \"Great Articles\" project.\n\nThank you.\n\n------\nadrianwaj\nA \"back to top\" would be helpful.\n\nOr, I'm not a big fan of vertical static menus, but because the page is so\nlarge, using something like:\n[http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/omnislide/index.ht...](http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/omnislide/index.htm)\n<http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/staticmenu3.htm>\n\n------\nepi0Bauqu\nThank you for picking up the torch!\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nMaybe you could link to the new list from the old one too?\n\n~~~\nepi0Bauqu\nI will.\n\n------\njacquesm\nGreat work! Maybe you could ask Gabriel for permission to merge the lists ?\n\n------\nelbenshira\nAwesome stuff. Did you write a script to find all the Ask HN posts?\n\n~~~\nmichaelfairley\nI used a couple of different script for all of this. The first intelligently\ncrawled HN, trying to minimize the amount of total hits to the server while\nstill grabbing every post. It also dumped most of its internal state to file\nevery few seconds, allowing me to kill and restart it at my convenience and to\neasily grab only the new posts when I update the archive.\n\nThe second took each post on HN (all of which were saved to disk), found those\nthat were ask posts, and then generated a document with the title of the post,\nthe score and number of comments it received (allowing to me rule out looking\nat 90% of posts, as they had < 3 comments on average), and markdown ready for\ncopy/pasting into the final document.\n\n------\njs4all\nI like it, thanks.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown - breitling\nhttps://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/fewer-premature-preterm-babies-born-during-pandemic-calgary-around-the-world-1.5665089\n======\ntomerico\nLet's not ignore the possibility that the reduction in pre-term birth could be\ndue to women receiving less pre-natal screening, leading to conditions that\nwould warrant immediate induction going undetected. In fact, data collected\nfrom a hospital in the UK indicates a 4X increase in the incidence of\nstillbirth.\n\nFrom:\n[https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/934056](https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/934056)\nedit: Non-paywalled: [https://outline.com/MZUPk3](https://outline.com/MZUPk3)\n\n> The incidence of stillbirth was significantly higher during the pandemic\n> period (16 of 1,718 births; 9.31 per 1,000 births) than the prepandemic\n> period (four of 1,681 births; 2.38 per 1,000), a difference of 6.93\n> stillbirths per 1,000 births.\n\nA hypothesis put forth by the authors on why this is:\n\n> they say the uptick in stillbirths may be due to indirect effects such as a\n> reluctance to go to the hospital when needed (such as in the case of reduced\n> fetal movements), fear of contracting COVID-19, or not wanting to further\n> burden the National Health Service. Changes in obstetric services may also\n> have played a role.\n\n~~~\nirjustin\nInteresting, is the data there to show COVID infections of stillbirth? Can\nthat account for at least some of them to offset?\n\n~~~\ndahfizz\nConsidering only 0.4% of the UK population has gotten covid ( 300,000 cases /\n68,000,000 population) I would say it's incredibly tenuous to blame the 400%\nstillbirths increase on covid infections.\n\n------\nnostromo\nHeart attacks are similarly down 40-60%.\n\n[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-\ndoc...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doctors-\nhospitals-emergency-care-heart-attack-stroke.html)\n\nAnd cancer diagnoses are down by half.\n\n[https://youtu.be/TWF8KLKy-I0](https://youtu.be/TWF8KLKy-I0)\n\nOf course, no, they aren’t down, it’s just that people that absolutely should\nbe going to the hospital aren’t and they’re endangering their lives trying to\navoid COVID-19.\n\nCould something similar be at play here?\n\nI laughed out loud when they suggested that this is a “low stress” time to be\npregnant. All indicators show the opposite.\n\n~~~\ncolordrops\nSo you're saying people are just pushing through heart attacks then going\nabout their business?\n\n~~~\nnostromo\nThat’s exactly what the NYTimes piece I linked to postulates:\n\n“The most concerning possible explanation is that people stay home and suffer\nrather than risk coming to the hospital and getting infected with coronavirus.\nThis theory suggests that Covid-19 has instilled fear of face-to-face medical\ncare. As a result, many people with urgent health problems may be opting to\nremain at home rather than call for help. And when they do finally seek\nmedical attention, it is often only after their condition has worsened.\nDoctors from Hong Kong reported an increase in patients coming to the hospital\nlate in the course of their heart attack, when treatment is less likely to be\nlifesaving.”\n\n------\nmoralestapia\nAir pollution is something to be taken _very_ seriously,\n\nRegarding that (and since we are hackers here), I bought myself one of these\nlast year:\n\n[https://m5stack.com/products/pm-2-5-sensor-usb-power-\nsht20](https://m5stack.com/products/pm-2-5-sensor-usb-power-sht20)\n\nPretty affordable and it works really well, readings match another device I\nhave which was much more costly.\n\nSince then I turn it on from time to time, I live in an apartment near a\nhighway, I am impressed by:\n\nHow much air quality changes between days, during the day and depending on\nwhether there's traffic or not,\n\nhow much it changes due to household activities (cooking, cleaning).\n\nand how it changes when someone is smoking, even outside of my unit.\n\nThanks to this I have developed a routine of opening/closing windows at\ncertain times that allows me to improve the average air quality inside my\nplace. If I had the time (and some actuators) I could probably automate that,\nthat would be cool yeah :D.\n\nI highly recommend getting one of these or a similar sensor. Also, I'm looking\nto find something similar but capable of measuring CO and CO2, if anyone knows\nlet me know.\n\n~~~\nrckoepke\n> I highly recommend getting one of these or a similar sensor. Also, I'm\n> looking to find something similar but capable of measuring CO and CO2, if\n> anyone knows let me know.\n\nI have some suggestions for bare boards/chips that you can program yourself\nand run your own self-hosted IoT cloud over WiFi.\n\nCO: $8 [0] + [1] and very very easy. Great place to start, but these sensors\nhave a reputation for being somewhat garbage (see downthread discussion for\nmore detail). I wouldn't use it as an emergency carbon monoxide alarm but\nit'll do sensitive measurements (10 to 500ppm), even if it's not accurate and\nI'd guess not particularly repeatable over time. There are more expensive ones\navailable which may be more reputable. Just need an arduino or any other micro\ncontroller. I personally like [2] because it has built-in WiFi but still very\ncheap. I run a basic web server on them that exposes the data to\nPrometheus/Grafana. See [3].\n\nCO2[4]: $60 here and you'll want a $10-20 ESP32 or ESP8266 to go with it.\nArduino libraries are already written for it and the Arduion IDE has good\nsupport for ESP32 so I doubt it would be much work at all to test on / port to\nESP32 and fix any porting bugs when they pop up. Alternatively if you feel\nlike writing the interface from scratch you can go down the $40 for equivalent\nparts from Arrow, DigiKey, or Mouser. Honestly - interfacing with these things\nis generally not complicated at all as long as there aren't hardware bugs or\nundocumented behavior.\n\ntVOC: $20 here[5] It looks like your PM 2.5 sensor does not also measure total\nVOC, so this could be handy. For a very scientific breakdown of how a metal-\noxide detecting chip can be used to calculate VOC's, see the following[6].\nThankfully, there is free firmware supplied by sparkfun which does all the\nheavy lifting, but whenever you're using a chip cross-purposes its good to\ndouble-check the math and science.\n\nI personally combine these kinds of sensors with the WiFi-enabled ESP8266 or\nESP32 microcontrollers, which make for ~$20+ USB-flash drive sized sensors I\ncan litter around the apartment/outside. I like controlling my own cloud,\nbecause I can't stand how Nest only provided 7 days of historical data, or\nreliance on cloud servers for things like itead.cc / EWeLink apps. It's\nstupidly simple to set up Prometheus and Grafana to self-host your own cloud.\nSee mine here[7]\n\nIf anyone decides to go this route and gets stuck anywhere, feel free to ping\nme. Email in profile.\n\n0: (CO sensor)\n[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9403](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9403)\n\n1: (Board for easy soldering/mounting)\n[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8891](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8891)\n\n2: (Cheap ESP32) [https://www.microcenter.com/product/613822/inland-\nesp32-wroo...](https://www.microcenter.com/product/613822/inland-\nesp32-wroom-32d-module)\n\n3: (HTTP server running on $10 microcontroller)\n[http://esp32.rosskoepke.com/](http://esp32.rosskoepke.com/)\n\n4: (CO2 sensor)\n[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15112](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15112)\n\n5: (MOx sensor which is programmed to output tVOC -- I would not trust the CO2\nthough)\n[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14193](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14193)\n\n6:\n[https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/12/1441/2019/amt-12-1441...](https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/12/1441/2019/amt-12-1441-2019.html)\n\n7: [http://grafana.rosskoepke.com:3000/d/MrL-NKnMz/ross-home-\noff...](http://grafana.rosskoepke.com:3000/d/MrL-NKnMz/ross-home-\noffice?orgId=1&refresh=5s&from=1595306888709&to=1595911688709)\n\n~~~\ndurkie\nfor what it's worth, i wouldn't trust any sensor in the form of the sparkfun\nCO sensor (link 0 in your comment) -- there was a fellow in denmark who did a\nton of research with these sensors to create an electronic nose that exploited\ntheir huge lack of sensitivity. most of them are sensitive to a huge range of\ngases beyond what they are ostensibly labeled for, so he would drive them at\ndifferent voltages and could basically get fingerprints of various substances:\nthe nose could smell the difference between different types of olive oils or\ndetect different spices. they are also very finicky to changes in temperature\n/ humidity.\n\n~~~\nrckoepke\nOh, I completely agree. Particularly the ones for various flammable gases.\nI've tested some of them in a lab and found them lacking for scientific\nanalytic data collection, although I still found use for them as binary\n\"presence\" sensors to provide additional leak-point monitoring. I wouldn't\nrecommend using them to meet safety requirements; I only used them to go above\nand beyond the minimum safety measures. I found they worked well enough to\nalert humans \"hey this fitting might be coming loose\" well before a whole-room\nLEL monitor on the wall noticed anything.\n\nI'd love to see that Danish fellow's research to get a sense for how terrible\nthe non-flammable gas sensors are as well.\n\nI might have suggested a more expensive/reputable sensor but as I remarked in\nanother reply -- it's my opinion that any solid-state gas sensor should\nprobably be verified and calibrated against reference gas compositions. Let me\nknow if I'm mistaken though! I just find it difficult to trust any\nmanufacturer's datasheet claims.\n\nI also tried to state in my original post that the CO sensor shouldn't be used\nin a safety-critical application. But I'll make another note to make sure\npeople read these down-thread discussions so they're not mislead.\n\n------\ndzink\nHere is entirely anecdotal speculation as to why this is happening\n(credentials - mom of two). In the late stages of pregnancy the uterus starts\npreparing for birth by doing Braxton hicks contractions. The uterus flexes its\nmuscles. They get stronger and physically push the baby down like a ping pong\nball coming out of a balloon. BH contractions are also like clock ticks to\npregnancy, the closer you get to delivery the more frequent and stronger they\nget. If you get dehydrated, they accelerate. If you get stressed out or\nexhausted, they accelerate. If you skip a meal, they accelerate. Late stage\npregnancy mothers legitimately need less physical strain and more opportunity\nto take care of their bodies or the baby comes early. Keeping the same active\npace of work for a few weeks in the third trimester can cost years of\nadditional effort and suffering as a premature baby may accrue permanent\ndamage. Remote work allows for your body to rest while your brains can work at\nfull speed for longer. It is challenging to make “remote“ work right now, but\nfor my part, I’m constantly prototyping and brainstorming ways to make the\nexperience better. We can do so much more in our lifetimes if reduce the\ndangerous commutes.\n\n~~~\ntasogare\n> Late stage pregnancy mothers legitimately need less physical strain and more\n> opportunity to take care of their bodies or the baby comes early. Keeping\n> the same active pace of work for a few weeks in the third trimester can cost\n> years of additional effort and suffering as a premature baby may accrue\n> permanent damage.\n\nYou are rediscovering why in traditional societies woman stop working when\ngetting pregnant. This is not a plot by the so-called patriarchy but something\nthat have been intuitively understood by humanity for millennia: woman need\nlot of rest before and after the baby is born.\n\n~~~\nmotakraxxer\nThe plot by patriarchy is not asking women to stop working during the third\ntrimester. The plot is to ignore those needs and punish women who stop working\nby not paying them maternity leave or holding their pregnancy against them\nwhen they come back to the workforce.\n\n~~~\nstanfordkid\nI think we need to move past the genderization of capitalism (an abstract\nforce) into \"patriarchy\" \\-- Capitalism has no interest in gender, age, or\npretty much anything relating to human qualities. The trending force for\ncapitalism is to have humans automated away -- let alone be given free money\nto have a baby.\n\nI actually find the notion of \"patriarchy\" incredibly sexist -- were not men\nthe canaries in the coalmine -- the original victims -- for the dehumanization\nof capitalism?\n\nI happen to support capitalism as a means of production -- but it should be\nunderstood as an abstract, inhuman force like an optimization algorithm.\n\"Patriarchy\" is a red herring.\n\n~~~\nben_w\n> I actually find the notion of \"patriarchy\" incredibly sexist -- were not men\n> the canaries in the coalmine -- the original victims -- for the\n> dehumanization of capitalism?\n\nGiven that women didn’t have a vote when the Industrial Age made coal mining\ninto a primary power source, and given that marriage was seen as making the\nconcept of rape logically impossible until 1992 in the UK [0], I disagree.\n\nSeparately, I would argue that while capitalism will exploit such prejudices,\nI don’t think it is the origin of them.\n\n[0] obvious trigger warning applies:\n[http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1991/12.html](http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1991/12.html)\n\n~~~\nnearbuy\n> Given that women didn’t have a vote when the Industrial Age made coal mining\n> into a primary power source, and given that marriage was seen as making the\n> concept of rape logically impossible until 1992 in the UK [0], I disagree.\n\nI'm not following how this relates to the comment you're replying to. Are you\nsaying that women are the original victims of capitalism? Or that capitalism\nwas created by men? Or something else?\n\n~~~\nben_w\nI’m denying the claim “were not men the canaries in the coalmine -- the\noriginal victims -- for the dehumanization of capitalism?”\n\nLots of men had their humanity disregarded, but women were treated worse, and\nthat legacy continued for a very long time.\n\nThese issues still exist in some places, based on what I’ve seen reported by\ntrans people who transition so successfully that people who knew them before\nthe transition mistook them for their own opposite gendered siblings and\ntreated them differently in accordance with gender stereotypes rather than by\nmerit.\n\n~~~\nnearbuy\nThose examples don't contradict the claim you're denying. The claim wasn't\n\"men had it worse than women\". It was that capitalism originally hurt men\n(coal miners, specifically). The commenter was arguing that capitalism is not\na plot by the patriarchy devised to oppress women. To contradict their claim,\nyou need an example of capitalism originally victimizing women.\n\nI doubt anyone here would disagree that women have suffered more from sexism.\n\nIncidentally, and unrelated to that point, you chose oddly mild examples of\nbad treatment of women. I'd much rather live in a society where I couldn't\nvote or charge my spouse with rape than be a coal miner and suffer from black\nlung and be in significant danger of dying in a workplace accident. You could\nhave gone with the awful treatment of women under the Taliban, to name one\nexample.\n\n~~~\nben_w\nNoted, and thanks for keeping it polite. :)\n\nI find your preferences shocking, considering when childbirth anaesthetic was\ninvented, when abortions and woman-centric contraceptives became commonplace,\nand when the idea of doctors washing their hands between autopsies and the\nmaternity ward became common sense rather than being treated as an insult.\n\nI really couldn’t use the Taliban. They’re (1) modern day and (2) primarily a\ntheocracy.\n\n~~~\nnearbuy\nI think we're just interpreting how the hypothetical choice works differently.\nYou're right, I wouldn't want to live in the 18th or 19th century at all. But\nI'd prefer to not be able to vote (in isolation of other factors) to being a\ncoal miner (in isolation of other factors).\n\n------\nelevenoh\nPotential upstream causes:\n\n\"One is social distancing, which may have cut down on the amount of general\ninfection from contact with others.\n\nAnother is less air pollution, from fewer cars being on the roads.\"\n\nI'd love to see increased incentive for cities to act hastily on reducing\n<pm2.5 air pollution. Talk about a covert inequality exacerbator.\n\n~~~\nstevenwoo\nIt’s possible one of the worst long term pollution problems is from tire wear\nwhich is not addressed by cleaner running vehicles, so there’s multiple\navenues to address there but most solutions only address the fuel/exhaust, was\na hacker news story earlier this year.\n\n~~~\npeter5878\nThe contribution of tire and brake pad wear is really quite low compared to\nother sources of air pollution.\n\nFrom Evangeliou et al. (2020), Atmospheric transport is a major pathway of\nmicroplastics to remote regions, page 3:\n\n\"Surface concentrations of tire wear particles (TWPs) range between a few\nng.m−3 and 20 ng.m−3 for PM2.5 and up to 50 ng.m−3 for PM10 (Supplementary\nMovie 1). Brake wear particle (BWP) surface concentrations reach 50 ng.m−3 at\nmaximum (Supplementary Movie 1). The highest concentrations were calculated\nfor eastern USA, Europe and South-eastern Asia. All concentrations (TWPs 0.4\nμg.m−3 for PM2.5, 1.8 μg.m−3 for PM10; BWPs 0.8 μg.m−3 for PM2.5, 1.4 μg.m−3\nfor PM10) were far below air quality limits for PM (annual mean 10 μg.m−3 for\nPM2.5, double for PM10) and lower than typical black carbon (BC)\nconcentrations in remote regions.\"\n\n[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17201-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17201-9)\n\n~~~\nswsieber\nBut the type of pollution does matter. An important question is does it have a\ngreater impact. And given the studies linking health to distance from the\nfreeway, I think that question needs further investigation.\n\n~~~\nnovok\nElectrics have less brake wear and probably more tire wear due to weight\nincreases.\n\n------\nulrikrasmussen\nHere's a study from Denmark showing a 90% drop in the rate of extremely\npremature births (gestational age below 28 weeks - the HN article talks about\n32 weeks, so the drops cannot be directly compared):\n\n[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109793v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109793v1)\n\n------\njb775\nMy guesses (in order of likelihood):\n\n1) More sleep, and easier to respect their circadian rhythm\n\n2) Reduced un-conscious stress levels related to: the comfort of being at home\nin a safe place...the comfort of knowing they won't go into labor early while\nfar from home and around non-family members...the comfort of knowing they're\neliminating unforeseen risks that come with venturing out into the world\n\n3) Significant reduction of non-natural movements/processes such as: getting\nin/out of car, sitting in stiff desk chair all day, work-schedule dependent\nrestroom use, commuting related stress\n\n4.) Reduced air pollution\n\n------\nspenczar5\n> \"By staying home, a pregnant woman may have less stress from commuting and\n> from work, and that might have helped them,\" Alshaikh said.\n\nAh yes, I'm sure my 7-months-pregnant wife would agree that this has been a\nlovely, low-stress time. Wouldn't have it any other way.\n\n~~~\nanoncareer0212\nYou seem to be dunking on them for making a qualitative judgement, but they\nmade a comparative one.\n\n~~~\nklyrs\nI think spenczar5's reaction is fairly understandable in the context. Live in\nclose quarters with somebody in their 7th month of pregnancy and 5th month of\nlockdown and we'll see if your goto reflex is to explain further.\n\nThere's a need for a lot of sensitivity in this conversation. It's easy for us\nto armchair-expert this to death... that isn't necessarily a good thing.\n\n~~~\nerulabs\nI mean, \"armchair quarterback\" doesn't really apply to posing a hypothesis,\ndoes it?\n\n~~~\nklyrs\nI didn't say quarterback, did I? For all that HN loves to rip on studies with\nsmall sample sets or sketchy statistics, or worse, deriding people sharing\ntheir experiences as anecdotal, this community is sure fond of positing\nalternative hypotheses with zero evidence.\n\n------\nwrnr\nInteresting, their is also a big difference of % premature births between rich\ncountries up to a factor of 3:\n[https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1471-...](https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1471-0528.14273)\n\n------\njonathanlydall\nI have some anecdotal experience here which is not in the same trend.\n\nOur baby was born 10 weeks premature on the 4 June, although her being\npremature seemed to be entirely unrelated to COVID-19. I'm happy to say\nthey've been doing super well and we expect them to come home this week.\n\nAlthough not related to prematureness, of interest in regards to pregnancy and\nCOVID-19 was that the gynaecologist mentioned during pregnancy that they had\nanecdotally noticed that during our lockdown here babies in utero were on\naverage noticeably bigger than usual. They supposed that it might be related\nto moms on average being more relaxed due to not needing to do things like\nstressful work commutes.\n\nOur baby was quite a bit bigger than average for their maturity which was\nquite fortunate given how early they arrived.\n\n------\naaron695\n> By staying home, a pregnant woman may have less stress from commuting and\n> from work\n\nClassically in Psychology the stress of planning a holiday is more than the\nstress of the death of a loved one.\n\nThis might now be considered wrong (?), but you are taught this because stress\nis not what the average person thinks it is.\n\nThat said, shopping and going out is now really stressful, it's an ongoing\nchanging conditions we are not used to, so surely they mean physical stress,\nbut not sure why they did not say that?\n\nIs it because you can't politically say if women rest at home when pregnant\nit's better for the baby?\n\n------\nDoreenMichele\n_Another is less air pollution, from fewer cars being on the roads.\n\n\"This might actually help because studies in the past showed that air\npollution actually increases the risk for preterm birth,\" Alshaikh said._\n\nOne takeaway that doesn't involve arguing about the so-called Patriarchy and\nwhat not: Let's just try to lower pollution rates generally. It's good for\neveryone, including but not limited to pregnant women.\n\n------\nThomPete\nMy son was born 10 weeks (started having issues 14 weeks) too early. One of\nthe primary reasons he was born that early was that my wifes Cervical was\nexpanding too fast. The remedy lay down don't move.\n\nA simple explanation could simply be that by people having stayed at home they\nare less likely to be physically active and stressed.\n\nI'll bet you that's the primary reason.\n\n------\na0-prw\nA similar thing has been reported in Denmark (\"big fall in extremely premature\nbirths\").\n\n[https://www.tvmidtvest.dk/coronavirus/stort-fald-i-\nekstremt-...](https://www.tvmidtvest.dk/coronavirus/stort-fald-i-ekstremt-\ntidligt-foedte-boern-under-coronanedlukningen)\n\n------\nmensetmanusman\nHospitals furloughing workers and fewer premature babies are definitely\noutcomes I did not expect.\n\n------\nferalimal\nNevermind the 3 causes they are looking at.\n\nI think that this is very likely due to removal/lessening of the impact of\ndoctors on what is a natural process. If doctors are less involved, things\ntake their natural course without problems.\n\nLet's not forget, that the third largest cause of death (higher than covid) is\niatrogenic death: [https://www.globalresearch.ca/drug-induced-iatrogenic-\ndisord...](https://www.globalresearch.ca/drug-induced-iatrogenic-disorders-\nthe-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-us-and-britain/5626283)\n\nThere is, in fact, a strong case to be made for closing doctors, hospitals,\netc down, in order to increase the populations health!\n\nEDIT - I don't know why my comment is being downvoted. I think I'm making a\nrational, reasonable argument! If you disagree, no problem! But perhaps state\nwhy you think what I'm suggesting is wrong.\n\n------\nlearnstats2\n'Don't give birth during a plague' is reasonable as a biological imperative.\n\n------\ndesktopninja\nI theorize its because the \"pace of (modern) life\" has slowed down.\n\n------\njariel\nThe stress of non-cummuting may have been offset by the stress of 'OMG there's\na pandemic' \\- a more existential kind of things.\n\nThe Scientologists have some very aggressive rules about 'quiet' around baby\nand birth, rather extremist, but I think there is something to it.\n\nEven in the womb, we are picking up information - imagine all the noise,\nhormones, moving around etc. we get from pre-birth to age 1.\n\nI wonder if we should head out to the countryside 3 months before and after.\n\nIt would be powerful to see more research into this, because the results could\nbe revelatory not just in relation to birth, but in other life activities.\n\nEdit: I'm not suggesting there's any 'Science' in 'Scientology', rather, it's\nan expansive and odd cult with just a ton on out-of-the-box thinking, a lot of\nit initiated way back when treatment of mental illness was actually draconian\n(ie lobotomies, arbitrary detention, brutal treatment) and there are often\n'kernels of truth' in some of these things. The 'quiet during and around\nbirthing' always struck me as something actually rational in a way. Not\nscientific either but Glenn Gould attributed his musical genius to the fact\nhis mother would play softly while he was still the womb (thus he's literally\nbeen playing 'before he was born') and I don't think it's unreasonable at all\nto think 'maybe there is something to it'. Early childhood events have\nincredible impact on our lives. I think of it like 'the time when the kernel\ncode is established' and things gone wayward at that level cause\nidiosyncrasies for the rest of one's life.\n\n~~~\nViliam1234\nI am pretty sure most people don't remember whether someone said something\nduring their birth. Generally, people remember very little from their first\nyears. For a child below 5 years, if you talk about something that happened a\nyear ago, from their perspective it never happened (unless you remind them of\nthe thing repeatedly, in which case they actually remember your repetition,\nnot the original event). Also, the babies themselves contribute some of the\nnoise.\n\nThe \"something is to it\" part is probably that you shouldn't play loud metal\nmusic in the hospital. Which probably no one does anyway. But being afraid to\nsay a word... that's just superstition.\n\n~~~\njariel\n\"whether someone said something during their birth. Generally, people remember\nvery little from their first years\"\n\nYou're missing the context here. Babies don't understand speech, so it's not\nlike words are going to matter.\n\nAnd this has nothing to do with 'memories'.\n\nLoud noises, unnatural humming sounds like vehicles, the constancy of it all -\nis highly unnatural.\n\nThe possibility that hormones can alter our development is implied in the\narticle, it's not entirely unreasonable that other stressors can affect us as\nwell.\n\nWe were 'designed' to come into a very quiet world (granted, it was a rugged\nplace) but it was audibly very quiet.\n\nSince all of us - adults, children, react in a variety of ways to sound\n(stressing, soothing etc.) I suggest that audio, in the very earliest phases\nof one's life can possibly be a stressor.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWould you propose with a diamond grown in a lab? - rezist808\nhttp://qz.com/630512/would-you-propose-with-a-diamond-grown-in-a-lab/\n======\nexabrial\nYes? Diamonds aren't a rare rock anyway though, amazes me they are so\nexpensive\n\n------\nmizchief2\nWon't marry a woman who would want to waste money on a shiny rock.\n\n~~~\nseanp2k2\nI wish you good luck in finding a spouse. It's not about the shiny rock, it's\nabout the financial commitment to a symbol of your enduring love, or\nsomething.\n\n~~~\nJoof\nThere has to be something way more awesome than a diamond ring that costs a\nbundle.\n\nI'm probably fucked; I don't like hanging on to stuff as momentos. That goes\ndouble for expensive momentos. Triple if it breaks some societal norm.\n\nMy college had a class ring that was kind of a big deal. College buddies\npester me years later about when I'm going to get mine. They teased the guy\nwho got silver instead of gold (seriously).\n\nNever. Why do I want a $1000 reminder of something I already have? It's also a\nhuge psychological ploy to get people to rep the school and donate whether or\nnot it deserves it.\n\nI guess buying an expensive ring could make somebody think of me constantly.\nI'd vastly prefer to have some crazy experience or donate to something we care\nabout and buy a regular priced ring to use as a social symbol.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe internet is broken. Starting from scratch, here's how I'd fix it - thegeomaster\nhttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/internet-broken-starting-from-scratch-heres-how-id-fix-isaacson\n======\njstewartmobile\nLeave it to the CEO of CNN to suggest \"fixing\" the internet by making it as\nsubservient to power as the traditional mainstream media.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCourt: Violating a site’s terms of service isn’t criminal hacking - LinuxBender\nhttps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-a-sites-terms-of-service-isnt-criminal-hacking/\n======\nphkahler\n\"Criminalizing terms-of-service violations risks turning each website into its\nown criminal jurisdiction and each webmaster into his own legislature,\" Bates\nwrote.\n\nIMO that is the most important part of the ruling. You cant have criminal\npenalties and then delegate the definition of the crime to each website.\n\nLying or breaking TOS is different than hacking. You are granted access by the\nsite, and it's no different than the access they grant every other user.\n\n~~~\nalasdair_\n>You cant have criminal penalties and then delegate the definition of the\ncrime to each website.\n\nHow does this differ from criminal trespass, where each landowner can define\npermitted use versus trespassing however they wish?\n\n~~~\nDylan16807\nThe only criminal act in trespassing is coming back _after_ being banned.\nWhatever you did to _get_ banned is not a criminal issue.\n\nAnd as far as I know trespassing bans have to be a manual blacklist or\nwhitelist. You can't define some arbitrarily complex behavior that makes you\ninto a trespasser. Maybe I'm wrong on that?\n\n~~~\nthrowaway17_17\nThat would depend on the jurisdiction. Typically in the US, most states define\ntwo separate criminal statutes for each situation:\n\n1) Criminal Tresspassing - typically defined as the entering the property of\nanother without express permission from the owner (this tends to include\nintruding via drone these days)\n\n2) Remaining or Reentry after forbidden - which is for those cases where entry\nwas permitted, but the owner subsequently revoked that permission.\n\n~~~\nalasdair_\n>this tends to include intruding via drone these days\n\nCan you elaborate on this point? There are a LOT of FAA rules and federal laws\nthat allow aircraft to fly over your property without your permission. I could\nsee the argument for a ground-based device or perhaps an extremely low-flying\ndrone but not for general drone use.\n\nOf course, there are other laws (like requiring line of sight, not flying over\nhumans or livestock, etc.) that are probably broken by anyone flying a typical\nnon-commercial light drone over someone else's property at a level low enough\nto be annoying.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway17_17\nI happen to have this handy from a Motion:\n\nLaws traditionally related to state and local police power – including land\nuse, zoning, privacy, trespass, and law enforcement operations – generally are\nnot subject to federal regulation. Skysign International, Inc. v. City and\nCounty of Honolulu, 276 F.3d 1109, 1115 (9th Cir. 2002). State and Local\nRegulation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Fact Sheet Federal Aviation\nAdministration Office of the Chief Counsel, 2015.\n\n------\nUweSchmidt\nWho is really reading a site's terms of service, or EULAs etc.? We mandate\nfood companies to clearly label items with standardized, readable and compact\ninformation, but software companies can confront users with text that could\nonly ever be interpreted by bored lawyers. The idea that this could be\n'binding', let alone leading to a 'crime', is silly to me.\n\n~~~\northecreedence\n> Who is really reading a site's terms of service, or EULAs etc.?\n\nI do. I make a point to take the first five to six hours of every working day\nreviewing the ToS for each website I'm projected to visit that day.\n\nI diff the text against known past versions and if there are significant\nenough changes to any particular ToS, I stop using that site until I can sit\ndown in-person with my $550/hr lawyer (usually I only do this once or twice a\nweek) and review the changes to make sure I'm clear of all liabilities for my\nprojected use-cases. Once I get the go-ahead, I resume access to that website.\n\nOverall the process only takes on average 30 hours a week, and the costs are\naround $2000/week. It's worth it though, I wouldn't want to break any rules\nset by private land owners (whether virtual or not).\n\n~~~\nvbezhenar\nWill your lawyer be accountable if you would break some rule because of his\nerror? Did you sign any papers about his accountability? Were those papers\nreviewed by independent lawyers?\n\n------\nds\nFeels like this is going to create some headaches for prosecuting CFAA cases\nif the verdict stands.\n\nI suspect the definition of 'unauthorized access' will need to be more clearly\ndefined since I know many cases in the past relied around users doing shit\nthat was unauthorized by the TOS.\n\n~~~\nCiPHPerCoder\n> I suspect the definition of 'unauthorized access' will need to be more\n> clearly defined\n\nI've been saying this for years! For reasons unrelated to TOS rulings, too.\n\nA little bit of background...\n\nIn 2011, I was charged with _unauthorized access to a protected computer_. The\nwebsite in question (Infragard Tampa Bay, run by the FBI through a company\ncalled Sylint) was running an older version of DotNetNuke that had a 2008\nvulnerability.\n\nThe nature of the vulnerability was as follows: If you accessed a specific URL\nwhich required no authorization, you could upload files to the server and\npresumably execute them. (I say presumably, because I didn't.)\n\nI wanted to fight the charge because I never exceeded \"authorized access\" by\nusing a publicly accessible web form on the public Internet, and the CFAA's\nterms were vague.\n\n* The website was publicly accessible, without needing authorization\n\n* The file upload form was publicly accessible, without needing authorization\n\n* The folder that files were uploaded to was publicly accessible, without needing authorization\n\n* All of my conduct was authorized by the software they ran on the public Internet, and therefore the _unauthorized access_ I was accused of never actually occurred\n\nMy overworked public defender didn't have any fight in him. The EFF wouldn't\nhelp either (the person I talked to didn't see the significance of this CFAA\nambiguity for civil rights). I grew up in a poor family and couldn't afford\nlegal counsel, so I ended up pleading guilty, which has _totally fucked my\nlife up_ ever since. (It really doesn't get better, even 8-9 years later.)\n\n> since I know many cases in the past relied around users doing shit that was\n> unauthorized by the TOS.\n\nGood. I hope this becomes a precedent that frustrates prosecutors and helps\ndefense cases in appeals court.\n\n~~~\ngoogle234123\nJust because something is connected to the public internet doesn't mean that\nyou can hack it. Most homes are accessible from public roads, that doesn't\nmean you are allowed to climb through any open window that you see.\n\nYou used a vulnerability to hack into some server associated with the FBI, I\ndon't see any ambiguity here.\n\n~~~\nCiPHPerCoder\n> Just because something is connected to the public internet doesn't mean that\n> you can hack it.\n\nI never said or implied that.\n\nAll I said is, because all of my conduct involved publicly accessible\ncomponents of their web application, I never exceeded authorized access.\n\nWhich means that the CFAA's clause about \"unauthorized access\" _in particular_\ndoes not apply, since none of my packets exceeded or bypassed an\nauthentication or authorization control on their web app.\n\n> Most homes are accessible from public roads, that doesn't mean you are\n> allowed to climb through any open window that you see.\n\nA better analogy is knocking on someone's door, only to discover it swings\nopen, then walking away. And then getting charged with breaking and entering\nfor their failure to shut their door, and then paying for damages for leaving\na muddy footprint on their exterior welcome mat.\n\n> You used a vulnerability to hack into some server associated with the FBI, I\n> don't see any ambiguity here.\n\nI won't argue that I'm fully without blame.\n\nThe mistake I made during all of this was, upon discovering they were running\nan outdated version of DotNetNuke (right click > view source; not exactly\nsomething I had to go out of my way to detect), I panicked. And to assuage my\nown anxiety, I tested the file upload to confirm that it was real.\n\nThat was the mistake that let them prosecute me at all. And it's a mistake I\nhave learned from:\n\nIn the years since, I have never sent a packet with security implications to\nanother network even for projects with a public bug bounty. I constrained\nmyself henceforth to reviewing source code and reverse engineering, since that\ndoesn't involve sending packets over a network and invoking a law that was\nwritten before the concept of a public network existed. (And that law being\nproblematic is my entire point in this discussion, not appealing for amnesty\nin the opinions of HN users. Anyone who decides to hate me won't be the\nfirst.)\n\nEven if I knew not to do that then, I still would have informed them of their\nvulnerability as soon as it was discovered. Because that was the right thing\nto do.\n\n~~~\nMaximumYComb\nIs obfuscation a type of authorisation? If you knowingly exploited a\nvulnerability to access a non-standard URL then it's pretty obvious you\nshouldn't have been there. This isn't you navigating to a websites home page,\nthe information I've found reads the following for CVE-2008-6541:\n\n>Access Complexity Medium (The access conditions are somewhat specialized.\nSome preconditions must be satistified to exploit)\n\n~~~\nCiPHPerCoder\n> Is obfuscation a type of authorisation?\n\nNo.\n\nAnd even if you tried to argue that, the exploit was public on exploit-db for\nyears, and therefore the expected security from the broken obfuscation is zero\nbits; so in this case, it would not count.\n\nMore pertinent:\n\n> Authentication Not required (Authentication is not required to exploit the\n> vulnerability.)\n\n------\npeter_d_sherman\nHere's an interesting legal question:\n\nIf you use the public internet to go to a public website's landing page, by\ndoing that, do you automatically accept a website's Terms Of Service\n(contract)?\n\nI would argue no, because the social custom is that public-facing websites are\nintended to be accessed by the public, and until and unless they explicitly\naccept a contract (such as a Terms Of Service agreement), there is no\ncontract...\n\nNow... I could be wrong.\n\nIn fact, lawyers could argue that there is a social contract, an implied\ncontract (they do this with Negligence claims) even before there is a written\ncontract...\n\nSo, I'd be interested in arguments, both for and against, with respect to the\npresence or absence of a contract, either express or implied...\n\n(We can all agree that if a website creates a pop-up or page which says \"By\nusing this site, you accept the terms of service\", and if you click \"Agree\",\nyou agreed (well, unless you do not have the capacity to do so, or other\nfactors apply... <g>)... that's _not_ what I'm soliciting arguments for\nhere...)\n\n~~~\nSpivak\nAt minimum I think most people would agree that the \"default ToS\" probably\nwould cover malicious actions and unintended access in both directions.\n\n~~~\npeter_d_sherman\nMy question is not about what the default ToS covers or doesn't cover, my\nquestion is about when/where/how/if -- someone on the Internet accepts a\nToS...\n\nAnd it's not really a question.\n\nIt's a solicitation of opinions.\n\nTo understand what I'm asking for, you must have an understanding of Contract\nLaw.\n\nThat is, what is a contract, when are they accepted, how are they accepted,\netc.\n\nOK, now given those understandings, apply that to a public website.\n\nHow does/would someone in the public accept a public website's ToS, _other\nthan_ clicking \"I agree\", when presented by a page or requester saying \"Do you\nagree to accept this website's ToS?\".\n\nDoes it happen?\n\nIf so, why so?\n\nIf not, why not?\n\nI'm looking for compelling arguments, both for and against, both pro and\ncon...\n\n------\nmicrodrum\nThe right decision.\n\nAnd why would it be? Why should private actors be able to invent new criminal\nliabilities simply by publishing various terms of service?\n\nSpotify: \"If you listen to The Jackson 5 on our streaming service from a\nlocation in Ohio on a Tuesday, that is a violation of our Terms of Service.\"\n\nFederal judge: \"You heard the man. Off to jail!\"\n\n~~~\nduxup\nDistantly reminds me of the \"annoy\" website (I forget the exact URL) that was\ncreated as a sort of protest of some legislation in the early days of the\ninternet that referenced \"annoying\" someone (I forget the exact language).\n\n~~~\nperl4ever\nSome system that I use at work prohibits \"mischievous\" use in the banner.\n\n~~~\nduxup\nMan I wonder what happened to cause that term to be selected.\n\n------\ncl0rkster\nTOS is too vague a term and too broad to cover the complexities that proper\nlegislation in the matter would require. Not to mention, I can write anything\nI want in my TOS, but you can't enforce illegal terms. People know bad action\nlike they know porn when they see it.\n\n------\nkingbirdy\nWorth noting this is only a district court ruling, and as the article notes\nthere are a number of conflicting circuit court rulings on the issue. Until a\ncase makes it to the Supreme Court, it's not safe to take this as a given\nnationally.\n\n------\nsprite\nHow does this correlate to for example accessing a 3rd party API that has some\nsort of protection, for example an API key or request signature algorithm.\nWould those be considered a 'password'?\n\n------\ntyiworld\nYikes\n\n------\n101404\n\"US court\" _\n\n~~~\nLinuxBender\n_updated title_\n\n~~~\nLinuxBender\nIt was changed back to the original title.\n\n~~~\ndang\nIt's a well-known US publication. Readers are smart enough to figure these\nthings out, and it's best not to get too punctilious.\n\n~~~\nLinuxBender\nCompletely understand. Ty Dang.\n\n------\nipnon\nThis really begs the question: what is?\n\n~~~\ngoda90\nBreaking past security systems. So like scraping publicly facing data might\nviolate TOS, but you can't call it hacking. Using exploits to get the password\nhashes would be criminal hacking.\n\n~~~\nds\nIts really not that clear and we will need to wait for the courts to figure\nout what means what.\n\nFor instance this: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/18/at-\nand-t-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/18/at-and-t-hacker-\njailed-ipad-email)\n\nAll they did was \"scrape publicly facing data\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPythonJS now faster than CPython - tyrion\nhttp://pythonjs.blogspot.com/2014/05/pythonjs-now-faster-than-cpython.html\n======\nchubot\nCan it run real programs (i.e. not benchmarks)?\n\nIf so I will be impressed. Glancing over the code, it looks pretty short, and\nI can imagine benchmarks will run, but not real programs.\n\n[https://github.com/PythonJS/PythonJS/blob/master/pythonjs/py...](https://github.com/PythonJS/PythonJS/blob/master/pythonjs/pythonjs.py)\n\nIt's true that most programs don't use all the dynamism of Python, but they\nprobably depend on something that does (e.g. Django). Python is more dynamic\nthan JavaScript, in that it has __getattr__, __setattr__, __getitem__, etc.\n\nIf not, it's not fair to compare it to PyPy... PyPy actually runs arbitrary\nPython programs.\n\n~~~\nbelandrew\n> Python is more dynamic than JavaScript, in that it has __getattr__,\n> __setattr__, __getitem__, etc.\n\nNo, it's not. You can do equivalents to all of those in Javascript. Javascript\nobjects are all mutable with a few exceptions. They are just maps of\nproperties, very similar to Python's. Properties can be added or changed at\nruntime.\n\nFor example, setattr(obj, item, value) in python is basically just obj[item] =\nvalue in js.\n\n~~~\npygy_\n__getattr__ and friends allow to customize the getters and setters.\n\nJavaScript is in the process of getting similar capabilities with Harmony\nproxies, but the spec has yet to be finalized:\n[http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:direct_proxie...](http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:direct_proxies)\n\n~~~\njonpacker\nI'm slightly confused by your wording but I think the functionality you're\nreferring to is already available via Object.defineProperty's \"get\" and \"set\"\noptions: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-\nUS/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-\nUS/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Object/defineProperty)\n\n~~~\npygy_\nObject.defineProperty allows to overload get/set for a single key at a time.\n\nHarmony proxies catch everything, and really overload the getter/setter\nmechanism.\n\n------\nJeremyBanks\nI also wrote an interpreter, and it's 500x faster than CPython or PyPy.\n\n(As it happens, my interpreter can only run a single fixed program, but I'm\nnot worried: most people won't read past the headline when I announce it.)\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\n> _I also wrote an interpreter, and it 's 500x faster than CPython or PyPy_\n\nThat's great!\n\nEven if your new interpreter doesn't run all the code that's out there it can\nserve as a base for further work, it's a nice proof of concept and it's just\nplain cool hacking. It certainly beats all those people merely posting snarky\ncomments on project announcements.\n\n> _(As it happens, my interpreter can only run a single fixed program, but I\n> 'm not worried: most people won't read past the headline when I announce\n> it.)_\n\nWith sarcasm off now, yeah?\n\nThey worked on something and they are enthusiastic about the results they get.\nPerhaps they want to oversell them, in a headline. So what? If people \"won't\nread past the headline\" then they also won't be using this PythonJS. So no\nharm done to them.\n\nAt worst, you'll be lured to read an interesting article. And if you have any\nunderstanding of compilers/interpreters at all, you'll know before the end of\nit who real-world-usable it would be or not.\n\n~~~\nzobzu\nThis kind of thinking generally hurts more than it does good. Large amounts of\npeople will register it in their memory as CPython bad, PythonJS, or really,\nanything else good.\n\nDon't know why, don't know why it's FUD, etc. Next time when they get a\nchoice, they'll bash CPython. Not figuring why everyone uses CPython probably.\n\nAnd you're encouraging that. Probably just thinking it puts you on a higher\npedestal or something of the sort. I think its pretty shitty.\n\n~~~\nlucian1900\nWell, CPython is embarrassingly slow.\n\nThe damaging thing is claiming things like PythonJS are implementations of\nPython, when they merely share syntax and some semantics. They might be fast,\nbut that's not very relevant.\n\nRuntimes like PyPy is where we should be looking, since they implement the\nfull Python language _and_ are fast.\n\n~~~\nmjolk\n>Well, CPython is embarrassingly slow.\n\nCompared to what? Please be specific in your definition of \"slow.\"\n\n>Runtimes like PyPy is where we should be looking, since they implement the\nfull Python language and are fast.\n\nWhy should 'we' be looking to PyPy? Have you run a non-trivial application\nwith pypy (v. standard cpy) and found it to be significantly faster?\n\nEven if your code would benefit from JIT, and your code is compatible for\nrunning on PyPy, does it benefit more from a compiler switch than CPython +\nPandas?\n\n~~~\nlucian1900\nCPython is very slow at various things that are common, like function calls\nand attribute lookup. There is no good reason for this and few runtimes are\nquite this slow. This sort of overhead adds up and is often annoying to deal\nwith.\n\nYes, I have run non-trivial applications on PyPy and they were significantly\nfaster. Its only downside is libraries that depend on CPython extensions, but\nthere are few of those left.\n\nPandas doesn't do much for removing function call overhead. I don't\nnecessarily have large mathematical datasets, I just want my web service to be\neasier to write, by not having to care about what CPython is terribly slow at.\n\n~~~\nmjolk\nInteresting. Did you profile your code to see where your hot spots were?\nWhenever I've run web-services on PyPy and got a nice little speed bump, I've\nfound that I could have also made small changes to optimize and get near the\nsame result.\n\n~~~\nlucian1900\nYes, the slow bits are often part of complex validation, directly proportional\nto the number of function calls. Sometimes in arbitrary computation, but that\nis not so common.\n\nI could've manually inlined lots of functions to avoid the overhead on\nCPython, but I'd have a horrible code base. On PyPy I can simply not care\nabout this aspect, just like in most other languages.\n\n------\nchuckup\nThe other interesting and recent \"Python in the browser\" project is\nRapydScript -\n[https://github.com/atsepkov/RapydScript](https://github.com/atsepkov/RapydScript)\n\nUnlike PythonJS, it does not have the goal of being 100% Python compatible,\nbut instead takes the CoffeeScript approach. So, like Coffeescript, you get\n(mostly) clean Javascript output, no huge library dependency, runs nearly as\nfast as Javascript, etc.\n\nCheck out the \"ants\" demo -\n[http://salvatore.pythonanywhere.com/RapydBox/default/editor](http://salvatore.pythonanywhere.com/RapydBox/default/editor)\n\nI've been playing around with both PythonJS and Rapydscript, and I like both.\nDifferent goals. PythonJS can output to Lua, too - so there's the whole Python\nin LuaJIT angle which could be very interesting as it matures.\n\n~~~\namirouche\nStill, it's written in JavaScript. Not aiming full compatibility is not only\nhumility. They can't do it.\n\n------\nWizKid\nAccording to the footnote he tested with pypy 1.9. There was just a post here\na day or two ago that pypy 2.3.1 was release. Seems like one should at least\nuse the latest version when testing. Pypy 1.9 was release 2 years ago.\n\n~~~\nsrean\nYes, but am quite happy and impressed to see how well Pypy is holding up.\n\nSomething that I have learned about reading benchmarks is to pay attention to\nwho is coming consistently second. Usually that is the most informative part\nof a benchmark.\n\n------\nrch\nThis just translates Python syntax into JavaScript, assuming a direct\ntranslation is possible.\n\nNeat, but a more compelling post would compare with CoffeeScript and check\nbuild times, high-level syntax, and features like generators, list\ncomprehensions, itertools, functools, and so on.\n\nEdit: why the downvote? Am I incorrect about something? If so, I'm genuinely\ncurious to know what I'm overlooking here.\n\nEdit 2: I went over to the github page and it is in fact a 'transpiler',\nthough it can run self-hosted in node, and the features list includes both\nlist comprehensions and yield (i.e. generator functions). It looks like the\nitertools and functools libraries aren't supported yet, but doing so really\nwouldn't be too difficult. CoffeeScript is a direct output option too.\n\n~~~\nPacabel\nDon't worry about the downvotes. Things have gotten pretty bad around here\nlately, especially after the whole \"downvote if you disagree\" policy was\nencouraged.\n\nA lot of totally correct and perfectly valid commentary ends up getting\ndownvoted these days, often with no attempt made to explain why. It's\nparticularly likely to happen when members of the Mozilla, JavaScript or Rust\ncommunities are involved. They're particularly sensitive to anything that\nmight contradict their beliefs, and apparently they're particularly eager to\ndownvote, for whatever reason.\n\nThese days, many of us have started to read all of the downvoted comments.\nAside from occasional spam, they're often among the most insightful comments\nin any given thread.\n\n~~~\ndbaupp\n_> often with no attempt made to explain why. It's particularly likely to\nhappen when members of the Mozilla, JavaScript or Rust communities are\ninvolved_\n\nYour repetitive comments about Rust's instability almost always receive a lot\nof feedback about why they are incorrect and/or invalid.\n\n~~~\nPacabel\nThe Rust mis-votings are quite absurd.\n\nIn no way can Rust be considered \"stable\". The most recent version is 0.10\n(that is, it's still very pre-1.0), it's undergoing significant breaking\nchanges on an ongoing basis, and even its home page warns that \"Rust is a\nwork-in-progress and may do anything it likes up to and including eating your\nlaundry.\"\n\nAnyone who points out that Rust is just not stable yet is absolutely correct.\nAnyone who points out that it's looking unlikely that it will be stable before\nthe promised end-of-2014 deadline for 1.0 is also correct.\n\nIt doesn't matter who points out these facts, or how many times they do so.\nThe facts are still facts, and whoever expresses them is totally correct.\n\nMy suspicion is that the inappropriate downvoting is just immaturity on the\npart of the Rust developers. I realize that it can hurt to face valid\ncriticism of one's work, but an important part of being a professional adult\nis to consider such criticism rationally, and to learn how to improve based\nupon it. Engaging in censorship of facts, however, completely contradicts with\nself-improvement.\n\nIt renders the voting system useless when it's incorrectly used to censor\nothers, due to a lack of emotional control on the part of the person misusing\nthe system.\n\nIt's one thing to downvote blatant commercial spam that has no inherent value.\nIt's harmful to downvote perfectly legitimate commentary that you may just\nhappen to disagree with, however.\n\n~~~\ndbaupp\nIt has been demonstrated time and time again why your comments are either\nincorrect, or a mischaracterisation of the situation.\n\n~~~\nPacabel\nIt's clear that Rust isn't stable yet, and won't be for a long time. It's\nimpossible for me or anyone else to be incorrect when we point out that very\nreal fact.\n\nIf you feel the need to vote down perfectly legitimate comments merely\nexpressing a truth that you dislike, so be it. I can't stop you, and the\nothers you've chosen to target can't stop you, either. However, reality will\nbe reality, regardless of the voting. Rust will still remain unstable no\nmatter how many down arrows you click.\n\n~~~\ndbaupp\nThe problem is not saying that Rust is currently unstable, it is you taking\nthe leap to saying that Rust will never be stable.\n\n~~~\nPacabel\nWell, the trend so far has been a serious lack of language and library\nstability, and there's very little to suggest that the situation will change\nany time soon.\n\nStability isn't something that happens overnight. It takes a lot of\ndiscipline, and this discipline has to be ingrained within the very project\nitself. I don't see this as the case with Rust.\n\n~~~\nkibwen\nIf you were following Rust at all you would know that they are aggressively\nrejecting requests for new features in order to produce a stable release, and\nhave five full-time developers working on clearing release blockers.\n\n------\nmillstone\nPython has bignums by default. I was curious how PythonJS implemented bignums,\nso I tried it, and the answer is: it doesn't. It just uses ordinary JavaScript\ndoubles.\n\nThis is a critical difference that ought to be called out, especially in the\n\"add\" micro-benchmark, which is measuring two very different things in the two\nimplementations.\n\n~~~\nbretthartshorn\nPythonJS has support for 64bit integers using the Long.js library. You just\nneed to type your variable as \"long\". Numbers larger than 64bits could also be\nsupported with another library and simple modifications to the translator.\n\n[http://pythonjs.blogspot.com/2014/06/64bit-integer-long-\ntype...](http://pythonjs.blogspot.com/2014/06/64bit-integer-long-type.html)\n\n------\nvomitcuddle\nIf this project gains more traction, maybe it will get more people interested\nin Dart. (which is essentially javascript with a standard library reimagined\nfor the things people are using javascript for today: async APIs, stream\nprocessing, mapreduce, webapps, etc.)\n\n~~~\nshadowmint\nNothing wrong with Dart (other than lack luster adoption) but I'm not sure a\nsurge in interest of people using it as a dropin backend for compile-to-\njavasvript targets is really going to drive the sort of developer adoption\nyou'd really be looking for.\n\n------\nspullara\nNear as I can tell, because CPythong is so tied to native code at every turn,\nnone of the other VMs have any real chance of success without bridging to\nthem.\n\n~~~\nShish2k\nNice to see I'm not the only one who has a habit of accidentally adding a \"g\"\non the end of \"python\". Still no idea _why_ that happens though...\n\n------\nzorbo\nAh yes, the old X is faster than Y pointless nonsense. Let's ask the basic\nquestions that always come to mind:\n\n\\- Does X do all or at least most that Y does?\n\n\\- Are the benchmarks sane? I.e. not the pointless arithmetic fibonacci that\nnobody really uses, but the useful stuff such as regexps etc.\n\n------\npfraze\nPython in the browser would be pretty fun. Congrats on the speed improvements.\n\n------\nanilshanbhag\nPyPy uses JIT to generate optimized code during runtime. As many comments\nnoted, PythonJS may not support all Python features but still don't understand\nwhy PyPy performing worse than PythonJS.\n\n~~~\namirouche\nYou know JIT? I mean does it scale to run the JIT in the browser? I will say\nmaybe. All people that do compiler stuff I asked the question think that it's\nnot.\n\n------\nSnowLprd\nThe comparisons to PyPy would be much more meaningful if they weren't based on\na version of PyPy that's _over two years old_ : PyPy 1.9 was released in 2012.\n\n~~~\nbretthartshorn\nI've posted updated benchmarks with the latest PyPy 2.3.1\n[http://pythonjs.blogspot.com/2014/06/pythonjs-faster-than-\ncp...](http://pythonjs.blogspot.com/2014/06/pythonjs-faster-than-cpython-\npart2.html)\n\n------\npandler\nI'd be interested to see how it stacks up against other python-to-js\nconverters in terms of both speed and supported python features.\n\n------\ncoherentpony\nIt'd be interesting to see a comparison with CPython with the 'numpy' backend\nusing a vectorised code.\n\n~~~\nbretthartshorn\nHere is a new benchmark testing PythonJS using SIMD vectorized code in the\nDartVM vs CPython with NumPy. [http://pythonjs.blogspot.com/2014/06/pythonjs-\nsimd-vectors.h...](http://pythonjs.blogspot.com/2014/06/pythonjs-simd-\nvectors.html)\n\n------\nzzleeper\nNitpick: vertical text is really hard to read, sp if the image is compressed\nlike that. Next time please use some bars instead of columns!\n\nAsides from that, this looks quite promising!\n\n------\nbayesianhorse\nPythonJS might win importance if there was a framework to build webapps with\nit. Otherwise it's only a curiosity...\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Request your college application with comments from admissions - tommygibbons46\nhttp://ferpaAccess.com\n======\nbojo\nLack of any information about what is going on with this webpage does not make\nme feel confident about putting my information in there.\n\n~~~\ntommygibbons46\nThat's great feedback bojo, what type of information would you like? I've been\nusing it mostly with friends, so figured I would keep it barebones\n\n~~~\nunholygoat\nIt'd be nice to see an example of what is sent (before it's actually sent) as\nwell as resource links to how it's possible (i.e. Family Educational Rights\nand Privacy Act info).\n\n------\nkidcoder\nMy University (fairly large, big 10) isn't listed, despite all our satellite\ncampuses being there.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe codebreaker who saved 'millions of lives' - tpatke\nhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18419691\n\n======\najuc\nWould be nice to mention the whole effort, not only Turing. Like the fact that\nPoles were reading Enigma encrypted messages before the WW2, and send all\ninformation they aquired to France and Great Brittain.\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma#Pol...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma#Polish_breakthrough)\n\nI mean - Turing was brilliant, but why everybody only tell the story from the\nmiddle ?\n\n~~~\nm0nty\nI have always felt that Tommy Flowers' incredible contribution (i.e. building\nthe first electronic, programmable computer) is all-too-frequently overlooked.\nI suppose it just makes a better story to talk about a lone genius rather than\na group of collaborators.\n\n~~~\nmonk_the_dog\nI recently learned about Tommy Flowers and Colossus from this book:\n[http://www.amazon.com/Colossus-secrets-Bletchley-code-\nbreaki...](http://www.amazon.com/Colossus-secrets-Bletchley-code-breaking-\ncomputers/dp/0199578141/ref=sr_1_5) The British kept Colossus secret for a too\nlong and Flowers did not get enough credit (and von Neumann seems to get too\nmuch). BTW, I do recommend the above book. But we warned that it's a\ncollection of essays by different authors so it can be uneven reading.\n\n~~~\nm0nty\nThanks, I'll take a look at the book. Sometimes essays are fine because you\ncan cherry-pick the good ones.\n\n------\nrmc\nIt's a shame that even now, Alan Turing, since he was gay, wouldn't be allowed\nto get married in the UK.\n\n~~~\nTazeTSchnitzel\nThe UK Government just finished accepting entries for a consultation on plans\nto allow same-sex (as well as transgender marriage) in England and Wales, and\nthe Scottish Government is also running a consultation.\n\n~~~\nrmc\nYes, and it's very encouraging. Especially seeing Cameroon, a Conservative\nPrime Minister say \"I support gay marriage _because_ I'm a conservative\".\nThankfully things are changing. The people's attitudes are changing.\n\n~~~\nTazeTSchnitzel\nCameron, not Cameroon (although that's also a valid last name ;)\n\nBut yes, indeed, it is good to see things changing. And cross-party support,\nwith the exception of the Euroskeptics.\n\n------\ndsirijus\nIf this article piqued your interest, be sure to read Cryptonomicon by Neal\nStephenson.\n\n~~~\ndavidw\nSpeaking of which, I recently read this:\n\n[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005LW5JL2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005LW5JL2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=dedasys-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B005LW5JL2)\n\nWhich is about WWII in the Pacific, up to the battle of Midway. He talks about\nthe code breaking efforts in Hawaii, and I immediately recognized one of the\nminor characters from Cryptonimicon - the guy in charge of the cryptanalysis\nefforts - who was apparently a bit eccentric, and not big on military\nformalities. I didn't realize that the character in the book was based on\nsomeone real.\n\nIt's a very well written book, and I'd highly recommend it, as well, as, of\ncourse, Cryptonimicon.\n\nEdit - here's a link that talks about him some:\n\n<http://www.worldwar2history.info/Midway/mission.html>\n\n~~~\nsophacles\nSeveral other characters in that book are also based on real people, albeit\nliving (at time of writing anwyay) ones, so names and some details were\nchanged, as well as adding some more speculation. For example the character\nEarl Comstock was pretty much Robert McNamara. A lot of the people in the 90's\ntimeline seem to be based on real people Stephenson wrote about in his factual\narticles. (particularly the ones about cable laying in the pacific).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "Ask HN: Installing Linux on a Mac. Fedora or Ubuntu? - webmasterraj\n======\nLarryMade2\nIve found ubuntu to be the most painless route, usually a resolution to a\ndriver issue is a google search away.\n\nThe best path is to pro-actively google your model Macintosh with Ubuntu\n(version number) and another with Fedora (version number) and see what pops up\nin compatibility issues and resolutions. Really, its pretty much that easy to\nfigure out.\n\n------\nbsg75\nAlso interested in this, mainly to know which ships with drivers that don't\nrequire too many driver shenanigans.\n\nXubuntu \"looks nicer\", but Fedora is more familiar to us CentOS users on the\nserver side.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Great Toilet Paper Scare of 1973 (2014) - luu\nhttps://priceonomics.com/the-great-toilet-paper-scare-of-1973/\n======\nDonHopkins\nThe old story about John Draper calling up Richard Nixon and warning him about\na toilet paper crisis in LA is beginning to make a lot more sense, now...\n\n[https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2015/11/the-hacker-who-\ninspire...](https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2015/11/the-hacker-who-inspired-\napple-john-captain-crunch-draper/)\n\n>The legendary antics of phone phreaks in the 70s are as numerous as they are\nunverifiable. There's the story of a couple of phreaks — of which one was\nallegedly Draper — who called up the White House, dropped President Nixon's\nsecret codename 'Olympus' and were soon put through to the President himself —\nonly to tell him of a 'national emergency' that was occurring because Los\nAngeles had run out of toilet paper.\n\n[https://web.archive.org/web/20060226021102/http://webcrunche...](https://web.archive.org/web/20060226021102/http://webcrunchers.com/crunch/play/history/stories/toilet.html)\n\n>We had the code word that would summon Nixon to the phone. Almost\nimmediately, another person was starting the process of dialing the number. I\nstopped them just in time and recommended that they stack at least 4 tandems\nbefore looping the call to the White house. Sure enough, the man at the other\nend said \"9337\", my other friend said \"Olympus please!\", the man at the other\nend said \"One moment sir!\"... About a minute later, a man that sounded\nremarkably like Nixon said \"What's going on?\". My friend said \"We have a\ncrisis here in Los Angeles!\", Nixon said \"What's the nature of the crisis?\",\nMy friend said in a serious tone of voice \"We're out of toilet paper sir!\".\nNixon said \"WHO IS THIS?\" My friend then hung up. Never did learn what\nhappened to that tape, but I think this was one of the funniest pranks, and I\ndon't think that Woz would even come close to this one. I think he was jealous\nfor a long time.\n\n>To the best of my recollection, this was about 4 months before Nixon resigned\nbecause of the Watergate crisis.\n\n~~~\nbryanrasmussen\nI think with some preparation he could have taken it a bit further, the\nhanging up came too fast.\n\n------\nlisper\nThe run on toilet paper started here (San Francisco Bay area) a week ago when\nthe shelter-in-place order was announced. I figured I'd wait for stores to be\nrestocked, since by then all the hoarders wouldn't need to go out an buy more.\nBut I went out yesterday and the TP shelves were still empty. No pasta either.\nCanned tomatoes and coconut milk (which we cook with a lot in our house) are\nall gone too.\n\nHappily, we were reasonably well stocked before this all hit the fan, but I'm\na little surprised to still see empty shelves after a week. How long does it\ntypically take to restock non-perishables?\n\n~~~\ncletus\nHere in Australia, one of the major supermarket chains (Coles) made a\nstatement about this. They said their biggest week of the year is the\nChristmas week. They spend 6 months preparing for this. Each of the last 3\nweeks has essentially been a Christmas shopping week. That's the scale of the\nproblem.\n\nWe have enough food and supplies. We have the distribution to get it to\nstores. We have the capability to sell it in store. The only scarcity we have\nis because of the hoarders. That hoarding and resulting scarcity is creating\nmore hoarders.\n\nIt's textbook illusion of scarcity.\n\n~~~\nnl\nIn Australia here too.\n\nSupermarkets have introduced limits on the number of toilet roll packets you\ncan buy (which is sensible).\n\nHowever, last weekend I was at the supermarket when it opened, and I observed\nsomething I haven't seen noted elsewhere.\n\nManufactures seem only to be shipping _enormous_ packages of toilet paper (24\npacks). This means people buy 1 packet of 24 rolls, because that is all that\nis available. These huge packets also take more shelf space, which results in\nmore shortages.\n\nSome smaller, independent supermarkets have taken to re-packaging the rolls\ninto smaller packets, which is a win/win for both the shop and the consumer.\n\nBut the manufacturer behaviour is interesting and unfortunate.\n\n~~~\nlmm\nI think most people are happy to buy a 24 pack at the moment (and would\nprobably buy multiples of smaller packs otherwise), and it's probably easier\nto distribute _only_ 24-packs than a mix of sizes. I'm all for manufacturers\nprioritising throughput over convenience for the duration of the crisis.\n\n~~~\nnl\nExcept that means that less households get supply, which forces them into more\nextreme measures.\n\nPeople are happy to buy anything at the moment. Making sure each household can\nget supply seems like it should be a priority.\n\n~~~\nandromeduck\nYou're assuming people don't split with friends downstream.\n\n~~~\nnl\nNot really.\n\nI think that happens, but from observation it's a downstream event usually in\nreaction to shortages one of the friends is having.\n\n------\ndownerending\nThey might be over-thinking it. Toilet paper is incredibly cheap to produce,\nbut most people put a very high price on their last roll, when they know there\nmight not be more. That makes for some interesting economics.\n\nThe \"answer\", at least for those with space, is to keep and rotate three or\nsix months of it, even though that sounds ridiculous. Or, alternatively, do\nthe bidet thing or even have a standby outhouse in back.\n\n~~~\nineedasername\nAn outhouse doesn't actually solve the need for paper though. My backup plan\nof last resort is to cut up a few old t-shirts into tp-square sizes. Wipe &\nrun them in a washer load by themselves and repeat as needed. I think I'd\nchoose darker ones-- it's not like they'd be any cleaner after a washing, but\nI'd feel better about it.\n\n~~~\nr00fus\nIn India, we'd use a water jug and do a \"manual bidet\" \\- you can even have\nwarm water - just fill up in the sink before sitting down. You do have to use\nyour hands but they're gonna get washed anyway.\n\n~~~\nsooheon\nWould rather do this and wash thoroughly than mess about with strips of cloth.\n\n~~~\nandai\nIn much of the world, it is considered offensive to shake hands with your left\nhand, because the left hand is used instead of toilet paper.\n\n------\nremote_phone\nMy friend owns a pharmacy in Canada. She said that it started with the\nprevious Wednesday when in a single night they suspended the NBA, Tom Hanks\nannounced he had coronavirus, and I think Trump stopped flights from Europe.\n\nHer store and others were caught in a flurry of buying. Her daily sales were\ndouble or triple what they normally should have been and her shelves became\nempty because they didn’t anticipate it. It caused multiple days of empty\nshelves because they order on Wednesday for the Friday and Saturday for\nMonday, so basically they got hit hard Wednesday evening and then they could\nonly order for Monday. So the shelves were empty from Wednesday to Monday.\nThat creates fear.\n\nHowever all the stores were hammered so the warehouse was empty. Since then\nshe has been getting half orders and the further shelter orders caused more\nbuying. So it hasn’t abated yet.\n\nShe has been sold out of masks since January and hand sanitizers for weeks.\nOnly recently did she get sold out of rubbing alcohol and cleaning products.\nAnd then after the Wednesday she started selling out of basically everything.\nIt hasn’t stopped yet but she is getting shipments of sanitizer and cleaning\nproducts but they are getting bought up immediately.\n\n~~~\nScoundreller\nI went to a Toronto Wal-Mart last Friday, and they were out of just about\nevery pain-reliever. Like, that's not going to save you your life from\nanything!\n\n~~~\nmprev\nOne symptom of Coronavirus is a high fever and what we in the UK call\nparacetamol can reduce the fever thereby reducing the risk of organ damage.\n\n~~~\nrsuelzer\nReducing fever, especially with NSAIDs has shown to lead to a higher mortality\nrate, it suppresses your immune response. Moderate to high fever is good and\nis natural response to infection Organ damage needs a very high temperature\n106+. If you are below this, taking fever reducers is not a good thing to help\nyou recover from an infection. Fever reducers resulted in a 5 percent\nmortality increase in flu. France has warned of a link between higher\nmortality in young adults taking anti-febriles and Coronavirus.\n\n[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) › pmc The effect\non mortality of antipyretics in the treatment of influenza infection:\nsystematic ...\n\n~~~\nleoedin\nParacetamol (acetaminophen/Tylenol) is not an NSAID, is not an anti-\ninflammatory and there's no evidence that it has any negative effect on\noutcomes. You're mixing it up with ibuprofen (Advil), which is an NSAID and\nmay result in worse outcomes.\n\nThe current medical advice is take paracetamol, but not ibuprofen.\n[https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/paracetamol-for-\nadults/](https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/paracetamol-for-adults/)\n\nIt helps to understand what you're talking about before writing in such an\nauthoratitive tone.\n\n~~~\nScoundreller\nThe study linked systematically reviewed animal models of influenza and and\nantipyretic use and found that aspirin, paracetamol and diclofenac increased\nmortality.\n\nThey lamented that there weren’t any good trials in humans available to\nreview, so the impacts of antipyretics on influenza is still an open question,\nbut the animal models aren’t looking promising.\n\nIn other words: should you take antipyretics for the flu? Dunno for sure, but\nI’ll avoid it based on the data that we do have.\n\n------\nLordAtlas\nWait till you folk discover a hand faucet or a bidet like we have over here.\nIt will change your world and leave your butts cleaner.\n\n~~~\nmbrameld\nAs a toilet paper user I've never experienced any problems that I can trace\nback to having a dirty butt. I don't think my wiping technique is anything\nspecial. Are you saying when you use toilet paper you're unable to clean\nyourself well enough that it becomes an issue for you? What exactly is the\nissue? What about your world changed other than the lack of toilet paper?\n\n~~~\nnetsharc\nIf a bird shat on your arm would you just use tissue to wipe it away or would\nyou wash the arm with water, and soap if available?\n\nIn most parts of Asia, people use water, in combination with TP. Western\nhygiene standards seem to be lacking in this area.\n\n~~~\ntedk-42\nAhahaha I love this because of how accurate it is.\n\nFor most its the unfamiliarity with the idea which prevents the rational\nthinking behind it\n\n~~~\nmbrameld\nIt's not accurate at all, though. I use my arm and my asshole for completely\ndifferent things. There's no danger I'm going to accidentally wipe my asshole\nacross my face. If I shit on my counter I would clean it and disinfect it\nimmediately, but I shit in my toilet every day and only clean it every few\ndays and never disinfect it.\n\nI like to live in reality and not a world of what-ifs. About 50% of my shits\nare immediately followed by a shower. As far as I (or anybody else so far) can\ntell, whether or not I followed the toilet paper up with a shower has\nabsolutely zero impact.\n\n------\ndivbzero\nIf you pause to think about it is toilet paper _actually_ an essential good?\nThere are other ways…\n\n~~~\ncheschire\nTwo of my siblings were raised in cloth diapers due to our finances in those\nyears. A clean butt isn’t difficult to achieve cheaply. It just requires\ngetting a little more dirty than normal.\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nWhich only shifts the demand to soap and other cleaning products.\n\n~~~\nim3w1l\nLye and fat and salt makes soap and glycerin. Should lye run out you can make\nit from hardwood ashes. Should salt run out you can make it by evaporating sea\nwater. Mix glycerin with alcohol to make hand sanitizer.\n\n~~~\nbb123\nHave you tried getting hold of isopropyl alcohol (or similar) recently?\nImpossible :(\n\n~~~\nim3w1l\nA pot-still seems like a doable weekend project.\n\n------\nfroindt\nI wonder what the current toilet paper manufacturers are going through right\nnow? I'm an industrial engineer, so production issues and supply/demand issues\nare always of interest to me. A few possibilities:\n\n* Adding shifts at overtime pay to meet demand (lower profit/unit, but more equipment utilization and total profit)\n\n* Potentially higher freight charges (entirely unsure how freight rates are going these days compared to normal)\n\n* Calloffs from employees from illness, exposure, or fear\n\n* Lacking supply if they're working on a Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) system - where the supplier owns inventory until pulled by a customer, at which time the supplier gets paid. These agreements often have parameters about stocking and forecast levels, which are typically fine, but then Sales talks about the \"customer relationship\" and wants to make drastic changes to how the factory runs (sub-optimizing production) to keep $bigCustomer happy.\n\nPer the manager, the grocery store near me averages 10 units/day of toilet\npaper sold (good size town in the Midwest, with many grocery stores). One day\nabout 2 weeks ago they sold 3,000 units. They have ~75 feet of shelf space (4\nshelves high) dedicated to toilet paper. Literal semi's full of toilet paper\nflying off the shelves. They now have a limit if 1 unit per trip.\n\nI've been to the store twice since then and always check the toilet paper\naisle as a gauge of how they're doing. Still completely empty when I visit\nafter work.\n\nCOVID-19 doesn't show GI issues as a symptom. Consumption isn't going up\nnotably, but demand has been bonkers. _Everybody_ will have months of toilet\npaper in their inventory at home, causing demand in the coming months to drop\nsignificantly. They may need to reduce the number of shifts or eliminate\novertime at the factories.\n\nShelf space at grocery stores is expensive. If the toilet paper companies pay\nfor less shelf space, they may not get it back. Grocery stores won't be\nexcited to use that much space for a product that's moving at <50% of previous\nvolumes.\n\nIt really is a weird issue and I don't envy the people figuring out how to\ndeal with it.\n\n~~~\njiveturkey\nYou missed one obvious reaction, the one I'd use: business as normal.\n\nWhy? Because spiking supply now will hurt them later. Usage hasn't/doesn't\nactually go up. In fact, usage will go down by whatever percentage of the\npopulation succumbs.\n\n~~~\nfroindt\nI agree from a purely production point of view. But then the marketing\ndirector says \"if we're the one on the shelves, people will remember our brand\npositively and drive up brand loyalty/future sales\".\n\n------\ndang\nDiscussed a bit at the time:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8648333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8648333)\n\n------\ngraton\nRelated is this video from The Atlantic about the same thing:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX_FTiRB5QI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX_FTiRB5QI)\n\nJohnny Carson jokes about it and then people rush out and buy toilet paper\ncausing a shortage.\n\n------\nbooleandilemma\nThe shortages in NY could be solved if shops just placed a limit on how much\nyou could buy. It’s all these wannabe preppers buying more than they need who\nmake it difficult for everyone else.\n\n~~~\ngridlockd\nThe reason _not_ to do that is that you don't want to cause customers -\nespecially those from NY - to have \"that argument\" with your staff, multiple\ntimes each day.\n\nThe same amount of toilet paper - all of it - gets sold either way.\n\n~~~\nandai\nThe other day I heard, a store in Denmark put in tiered pricing to counteract\nhoarding of hand sanitizers. Legally they can't limit the amount per customer,\nbut they can add a \"limited quantity discount\". So the regular price is $133\nbut the \"just one\" price is $5.\n\n[https://nypost.com/2020/03/21/danish-store-instills-\npricing-...](https://nypost.com/2020/03/21/danish-store-instills-pricing-\ntrick-to-stop-hand-sanitizer-hoarders/)\n\n------\nmmhsieh\nThis reminds me of the current situation we are in because of coronavirus.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow do you really \"Meet people at networking events\"? - japanesejay\nHi HN!<p>For the last few years, I've been venturing into the consulting business, I mainly do UX focused web development and have built some mobile apps for my clients. It started as part-time freelance work and has slowly built up where I have a business partner and a few good people working with me on a part-time basis. I really want this to grow so I can stop moonlighting and treat this as a full-time gig (hard to do with the high cost of living in the bay area).<p>I've been trying to \"network\" and \"meet people\" but even at the last event (Vmworld), but everybody seemed chummy chummy with each other, the bloggers had their circle, the sales folks had their own circle and as an introverted \"tech\" guy, I couldn't create an opportunity for myself to jump into a conversation. I ended up talking to a few people but it all ended in small talk.<p>So HNers, I look to you guys for some advice. How do you approach people to initiate the conversations? I know having a hook helps, any other tactics worth noting?\n======\nlimedaring\nFirst, smaller is easier for meeting people and actually have worthwhile\nconversations (jumping into a large group of well-known people at a conference\nafterparty isn't going to create any new friends, normally).\n\nFind any local meetups first and go there. I went to my first networking\nconference, SXSW a few years ago, and met one person, who intro-ed me to three\nothers. Contact continued when we were all on the same flight home, and I\noffered to drive them from the airport. These three then intro-ed me to new\npeople, who then intro-ed me to more... this is the best way, imho, to create\nhonest connections that don't disappear once you leave a party.\n\nAlso, Twitter is a pretty easy way to continue connections after you've met\nsomeone briefly.\n\nAs for approaching people to initiate conversations, just do it. Jump in, say\nhi, start listening, and speak up when you have the chance. But if you want to\nactually add someone to your \"network\", find a way to follow up after so they\nremember who you are.\n\n~~~\nGeneralMaximus\nI'll add something to this: tag along with a friend who knows a few people at\nwhatever meetup you're attending.\n\n~~~\nlimedaring\nDefinitely helps, though it sucks to be in situations where you don't know\nanyone but still got to go meet people!\n\nAlso, coming with friends can have a downside, where you don't spend any time\nmeeting anyone new. I will often split up from whomever I arrived with to meet\nnew people on my own — sometimes it's better to do it apart.\n\n------\ndctoedt\nWhen I've been at business events where I don't know anyone, I don't even\nbother trying to introduce myself to the \"important\" folks. I seem to have\nenjoyed such events the most when I've looked around for people in the same\nboat as I; introduced myself; and asked them about themselves. I'll interject\nbits of my own story when appropriate, but I try to keep the conversation\nfocused mostly on the other person.\n\nSome open-ended questions I've found useful: _How did you end up at X company?\nWhat got you into X field? What challenges do you see ahead for X field?_\n\nAfter a few minutes, I'll smile and say, \"hey, it's been great talking to\nyou,\" maybe swap business cards, and move on - rinse, repeat. If I can play\nmatchmaker and help get multiple new acquaintances talking to each other, so\nmuch the better.\n\nI figure life isn't a snapshot, it's a movie; if I keep going to these events,\nand keep focusing on making others feel welcome and included (even if only by\nme), in due course I'll end up getting to know the movers and shakers.\n\n------\nskowmunk\nI am sorta similar, in the sense used to be more of a introverted/shy person.\nA tip that I came across in an audio book helped - go early to such meetings\nwhen there aren't so many people. Then, the 'circles' wouldn't have formed yet\nand the early birds themselves would be looking for someone to converse with.\nIt would be easier for you to approach them and make some small talk.\n\nOnce you get to acquaint yourself with a few, you will find it easier to join\na circle later without being held up by the thought that you don't know\n'anybody' in that circle.\n\nGood luck.\n\n~~~\njapanesejay\nI'll have to try harder on meeting the early birds. The last few events where\nI arrived early, most people were hiding their faces behind their laptops,\nipad, smartphone, etc.\n\n------\nnolite\ngo with a partner or two.\n\n------\nShaan\nOffer to help in area where you r n expert. Do background research on people\nyou know r attending and prepare a list of things they might find interesting\n- do small talk - take it to a point where u can offer your service - even for\nfree.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEC2 Instances with FPGAs Now Generally Available - jeffbarr\nhttps://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/ec2-f1-instances-with-fpgas-now-generally-available/\n======\nfreesecurity\nNice. Sounds amazing.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThoughts on Lance Armstrong [video] - kennyma\nhttp://danariely.com/2013/01/18/thoughts-on-lance-armstrong/\n======\nchubot\nI like Dan Ariely, and most of what he says in this video is true. However he\ndoesn't address the whole Lance Armstrong story, and there is one correction\nto be made.\n\nHe says that it's possible that Lance Armstrong took EPO as a cancer patient,\nand that made it easier for him to keep taking it as a performance enhancing\ndrug.\n\nLance tried a similar tactic in his interview last night -- he explained that\nhis cancer changed him. It made him more of a bully, and more of a fighter,\nand he kind of justified taking testosterone since he had testicular cancer.\nHowever, Oprah had to point out that he was taking performance-enhancing drugs\nBEFORE he had cancer. So the cancer is a scapegoat.\n\nSecond -- people don't really fault Lance Armstrong for doping. I'm sure it's\ntrue that everybody was doping. And Ariely correctly points out that that\nmakes it much easier for someone to justify to themselves.\n\nWhat distinguished Armstrong is going over the top to destroy people who were\ntelling the truth. He was vicious about attacking and suing people who told\nthe truth, and trying to ruin their reputations, while he knew he was in the\nwrong. Oprah confronted him on this and he was like \"oops ... sorry\"\n\nI watched the whole Oprah interview last night. I don't have a big interest in\ncompetitive cycling, nor have I really followed the Lance Armstrong story very\nmuch. But I did come away with the impression that he is emotionally\n\"different\" or verging on psychopathic. I don't want to venture too much into\npop psychology, but he does seem to follow the stereotype of a \"psychopath\nCEO\". The only thing he cares about is results (and it worked spectacularly\nfor a time), and he has literally no emotions about the tactics that got him\nthere. I'm not trying to cast moral judgement, but just saying what is pretty\napparent.\n\nBut in retrospect this is obvious... anyone who could so viciously and baldly\nand publicly lie for decades, when so many people knew otherwise (all the\ncyclists he rode with), has some weird psychology going on. It's not normal.\n\n~~~\nTillE\n> Second -- people don't really fault Lance Armstrong for doping.\n\nOf course they do. Why wouldn't they? He's a cheat. The fact that many other\npeople were cheating too is irrelevant to how he's judged for that. That just\nmakes professional cycling as a whole look terrible too.\n\nEven if he had been a saint in every other way, he's still a disgraceful\ncheat.\n\n~~~\nchubot\nWell, Ariely in this video is making the point that, as far as human nature is\nconcerned, it does matter that everyone else cheated. It makes it socially\nacceptable.\n\nIf I were an honest competitive cyclist at the Tour de France level I would\ncare that he doped. But if you believe the common wisdom, there were almost no\nsuch people :)\n\nAnyway, Barry Bonds doped and so did a million other athletes. My point was\nthat Lance Armstrong took it to an entirely different level by trying to\ndestroy others to cover up what he did, and what he KNEW that others knew he\ndid. It is really beyond brazen.\n\n------\nclicks\nIf anyone saw the Oprah interview, I think it's clear by now that Lance\nArmstrong is a sociopath. Even his admittance was a very calculated move\nintended to curb additional financial loss (even though it was supposed to be\na tell-all interview, he chose not to talk about a handful of things; and a\ngood half of things were straight lies: UCI gifts he made were not 'bribes',\nhe did not use drugs after 2005, etc.). His appearance on Oprah was a\ncalculated move to avoid jailtime and position himself for the coming\nonslaught of legal trouble.\n\n------\ndonebizkit\nIrrelevant points. He tries to deflect the issue from Lance and he shouldn't.\nI don't care if Lance cheated. I don't care if any athlete cheats as long as\nthey get their deserved penalties from their respective sports authorities.\nThe issue here is the hypocrite image that Lance and his PR team drew to the\nrest of the world. Everyone through of him as superman. He sold his image as a\nbeliever and fighter while he was none of that. Again, I don't care about\ncheaters but I despise hypocrite preachers.\n\n~~~\nbrudgers\nWe've heard of Lance Armstrong because his performances were entertaining. To\npretend now as if our interest was his moral purity is disingenuous.\n\n------\ndefrost\nBearing in mind that Lance Armstrong is as much a cyclist as Red Bull is an\nenergy drink it might be of interest to watch an advertising and marketing\ncentred discussion of whether the strategy of losing the doping war but\nwinning the PR battle is a good one.\n\n> Is there a point where running away is the right PR move? How much immunity\n> does a cancer charity buy you? Why are his sponsors standing by their\n> cycling-man?\n\n<http://www.abc.net.au/tv/gruenplanet/pages/s3583424.htm>\n\nEpisode on Vimeo:\n\n<http://vimeo.com/48928785> (Lance Armstrong discussion starts @ 3 minutes in)\n\n------\njmix\nI always find these video logs to be a very inefficient way to communicate.\nHaving watched through the whole thing, the main argument that Ariely is\nmaking here is that there is a much larger problem than just the \"Lance\nArmstrong problem.\" People do these PEDs because they have a sense that\n\"everyone else is doing it.\"\n\nNow, it's not clear if everyone else was doing it in this case, or whether the\ncrooks were convinced (falsely) that everyone else was doing it. Ariely\ndoesn't draw this distinction, but it is critical. If you want to clean up the\nsport, it's not sufficient to make sure that everyone is clean. It has to be\nso sparkling clean that no one should even suspect that others could be\ncheating. Unless all the participants are convinced that everyone else is\nclean, they will have the motivation to cheat themselves, which in turn makes\nothers cheat, and so forth.\n\nAnd the vlog didn't get into Armstrong's psychology. I would have liked to\nhear how the cognitive dissonance between his private reality and public\n(fake) persona change his personality. I would suspect that, even if one does\nnot begin the game as a sociopath, living for decades with a lie would turn\none into a sociopath.\n\n~~~\nsnogglethorpe\n> _Now, it's not clear if everyone else was doing it in this case, or whether\n> the crooks were convinced (falsely) that everyone else was doing it._\n\nIt's professional cycling... pretty much everybody that made it to the top was\ndoing it.\n\nYeah there are probably exceptions, but the pervasiveness of doping in cycling\nis surreal. If you're actually in the top echelon and stand a chance of\nwinning, there's a very good chance that some of your chief competitors are\ndoping. Obviously this puts even good people in a real quandary...\n\n------\ncrazycatmum\nHe was very controlled until he talked about his Son (fake or real tears?).\nHis answers seemed text book and learnt. He is arrogant and seems incapable of\ngrasping just how 'low' he's behaved . I feel sorry for his children who will\nforever be tainted with 'your dad's a cheat'. He should face criminal\nprosecution. This interview doesn't cut it. He's definately a Sociopath. I\nthink it teaches us that if you weave a web of lies you can actually start\nbelieving them to be true. Crazycatmum warsash\n\n------\nrikacomet\nThough, I'm believing it now that the confession closes a chapter, A few\nthings still linger in my heart about this whole thing.\n\nA. They still can't prove, how he did it, how he was not caught for so many\nyears, and barely proved that he did it, which in itself is not concrete.\n\nB. It appears he is being forced to make all these statements, to do what? So\nhe can be allowed to come back to sports again, his life's passion. If I'm a\nsportsmen, of that degree, I might would be vulnerable to blackmail if they\ntook my one passion away.\n\nC. After I read his Wiki page, it appears, to be case of sour grapes for some\nof his competitors, who pursued these charges against him over and over again.\nI mean, ok, we know now they were right, but what before that? They were no\nforensic experts, all the accusations were based on doubt and jealousy back\nthen.\n\nD. There is something terribly wrong with how this case has been pursued\nlegally, a lot of things don't sum up. Like until 2009, UCI had him clear in a\nrow with a doping official, at least officially, meaning, if any doubts, they\nwere not being actively pursued by UCI. The biggest bolts in this story were\nby 2 of his former subordinates, who were both \"Fired\" before turning hostile.\nAnd it was actually Times Newspaper, that followed it up with a reprint of a\n2004 book in 2012 (8 years later), the same time when another newspaper\n'interestingly' sued a sportsman, i.e Armstrong.\n\n~~~\nrobinhowlett\nA. We know pretty well how he did it - all he needed to do was stay within the\nlimits and there is considerable evidence that the UCI and testing labs were\nsuggesting to him how to do that. When the UCI picked a max hematocrit number\nof 50%, it was an invitation to the athletes to dope up to that limit. When he\ncame back to competition in 2009 & 2010, the USADA report clearly states that\nhis blood passport profile shows almost certain non-legal manipulation.\n\nB. He isn't being forced to do anything. He had the opportunity to challenge\nUSADA's report in arbitration; he declined and again denied he had ever doped.\nGoing on TV to speak with a talk-show host after you have retired is not a\ncoerced move, especially to say that you have been lying for 15 years. Yes, he\nmay want to return to some kind of competition (triathlons) and needs his life\nsentenced to be reduced to the minimum 8 years to do this. But oh look, he\nsays the last time he ever doped was 2005 (not when he raced in 2009 or 2010,\nhow about that?), which would mean he could return to sport in 2013.\n\nC. George Hincapie never tested positive either, had an even longer career\nthan Armstrong and was a long-time friend of Armstrong. He admitted to doping\nfor years and testified against Lance. There's a rather simple truth here and\nit isn't driven by doubt and jealousy.\n\nD. I'm not even sure what you are trying to say. But I imagine it is similar\nto arguments made before about scored rivals and journalists seeking\nvengeance. I've followed pro cycling for many years now; the truth is much\nmore boring. The sport was rife with drugs, Armstrong would do anything to win\nand I don't think to this day he thinks he did anything truly wrong.\n\nI watched the movie \"Shattered Glass\" two nights ago. It had this great scene:\n\nCaitlin Avey: What the hell did you do to Steve? He called me from his car,\nhysterical. I asked him what was wrong, he said, \"ask Chuck?\" Chuck Lane: I\nfired him, okay? Not suspended, fired. Because this wasn't an isolated\nincident Caitlin. He cooked a dozen of them, maybe more. And we're going to\nhave to go through them, you and I. We're going to have to go through all of\nthem, now. Caitlin Avey: No, the only one was Hack Heaven. He told me that\nhimself. Chuck Lane: If he were a stranger to you, if he was a guy you were\ndoing a piece about, pretend that guy told you he'd only did it once. Would\nyou take his word for it? Of course not! You'd dig and you'd bury him! And\nyou'd feel offended if anyone told you not to.\n\n~~~\nrikacomet\nI will check the movie out, well, I only said what I said, on a \"what if\"\nbasis.\n\nA. Indeed they have a idea of how he did it, but not exactly how, 7 years\nwithout getting caught is not something, you can only pull off with the little\nbit of sophistication you described.\n\nB. He is being forced partially, from what I read, he has been given a\nlifetime ban from all competitive sports, unless he confesses it under oath\nand names accomplice.\n\nC. Indeed its valid, what you said about Goerge Hincapie, but it is as same as\nsaying, \"You are a criminal if your neighbor is a criminal\"\n\nD. What I meant is that, that it was not UCI that were actively pursuing the\ncase of Armstrong at least until 2009, but, it was reopened in 2012, after\nTimes published a extract of a book written in 2004, which contained\nstatements of Lance's ex-masseuse, who made these allegation without concrete\nproof herself, and was fired EARLIER for reasons unknown. The second big\nstatement was by another Ex-employee, his personal trainer.\n\nCheck the Lance's wikipedia page:\n<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Armstrong>\n\n------\nAndrewWorsnop\nIs there a transcript?\n\n------\nalpeb\nLance says he wasn't caught because the drugs were already out of his system\nduring the races. So was the doping just for training? I'm not clear on that\npart.\n\n------\nrayiner\nUgly couch, but I love Ariely and it's an interesting little talk.\n\n~~~\njustinator\nI like this guy a whole lot, too. Let's give this guy a mic!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nResearchers can slip an undetectable trojan into Intel’s Ivy Bridge CPUS - gabemart\nhttp://arstechnica.com/security/2013/09/researchers-can-slip-an-undetectable-trojan-into-intels-ivy-bridge-cpus/\n======\ntptacek\nNo, researchers _could theoretically_ slip a difficult-to-detect trojan into\nIvy Bridge _if they controlled the manufacturing process for the chip_. The\npaper is extremely interesting and important, but this headline does it a\ngrave disservice. There is actually nothing specific to Ivy Bridge about the\ntechnique; Ivy Bridge is simply a case study in the paper for how the\ntechnique might be valuable to an attacker.\n\n~~~\npetermonsson\nThe choice of BIST over scan/ATPG makes this attack theoretically possible on\nIvy Bridge. If Intel had used scan/ATPG then this attack could not have worked\neven in theory. Unfortunately, I don't have the insight to understand why\nscan/ATPG could introduce a backdoor.\n\nDisclaimer: I don't think that this attack is even theoretically feasible\ngiven just a few real world constraints. I am just nitpicking\n\n~~~\narcher174\nScan chains by design, give you the ability to load each flop with whatever\nvalue you want. Then you can toggle the clock and see the result. If you were\nvery resilient about this you may be able to gather information about the\nstructure. Without a GDS or netlist this is all very far fetched and unlikely.\nI've said before, but it is far more likely to bribe a rogue designer than to\nintroduce back doors at this level.\n\n------\nddalex\nAlarmist title - you can't execute code undetected, as you would think from\nthe title, you can alter the manufacturing process to poison the random number\ngenerator. The alteration is not detectable using current testing procedures.\n\nIt's not any big deal, people already are treating the RDRAND instruction as\npoisoned.\n\n~~~\nmakomk\nBefore: it's no big deal, how likely is is that someone could compromise\nRDRAND without anyone noticing After: what's the big fuss, everyone who counts\nalready treats RDRAND as compromised\n\nWhy does this always happen with stories like this one?\n\n~~~\ndenosa\nPossibly because almost every single post like this brings out the same\napologists. The same apologists get voted sky high.\n\nThe proper question is how do the same apologists get voted to the moon and\nposts such as this get deleted?\n\nWe already know of corporate astroturfing. Could that be happening on HN? Nah,\nunpossible.\n\n~~~\nharshreality\nAre you suggesting NSAstroturfing?\n\nThe government has engaged in that sort of thing before.\n[http://rezn8d.net/2012/10/19/us-defense-contractors-sock-\npup...](http://rezn8d.net/2012/10/19/us-defense-contractors-sock-puppet-\nscheme-busted-your-social-media-is-infected/)\n\n------\nlawnchair_larry\nWorst headline ever. Ars is very bad at reporting on security issues.\n\n------\nchacham15\n> In an e-mail, Paar stressed that no hardware trojans have ever been found\n> circulating in the real world and that the techniques devised in the paper\n> are mere proofs of concept.\n\nNo need to get all worried about this type of hack. First of all, it is just\nan idea, not something actually found. Secondly, the hack would be all too\neasy to detect: run rdrand 2^31 + x times and see if x is a repeated sequence.\n\n~~~\nchatman\nIt is not \"too easy to detect\" a bad PRNG from a good one.\n\n~~~\nambiate\nI agree. Sounds like a number theory halting problem.\n\nGenerate sequences of numbers continually, ad infinitum, and determine if\ndistribution rates are (?).\n\nHow would one begin to fill in that question mark? A PRNG that spits out three\nmillion 'zeros' and a single 'four' is as reliable as a PRNG that spits out an\neven distribution of random numbers.\n\n~~~\nclaudius\nIsn’t the problem with detecting bad randomness that you can’t be _sure_ about\nyour decision?\n\nThat is, if you accept a certain probability of falsely identifying a RNG as\nbiased, I don’t see why this should be a fundamentally difficult problem, at\nthe very least for the generator with four million 0s and a single 1: The\nprobability that a good RNG spits out less than a thousand 1s in four million\nqueries is negligible compared to the probability that it returns between 1.5\nand 2.5 million 1s.\n\nOf course, it will be harder to detect more sophisticatedly broken generators,\nbut still, without requiring certainty, it should be possible to make some\nsensible claims?\n\n~~~\nSomeone\nFor background info, read the art of computer programming, chapter 3.\n\nFor practical help, see\n[http://www.stat.fsu.edu/pub/diehard/](http://www.stat.fsu.edu/pub/diehard/)\n(linked from\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diehard_tests](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diehard_tests))\n\n------\ntsaoutourpants\n<3 the Trojan Horse from Burning Man 2011 :D\n\n------\nfoldor\nThis is interesting, but I wonder what the real world application of this\nchange would be. According to Linus, the Intel RdRand is only used as one of\nmany sources of entropy in /dev/random. So even if it were compromised it\nwouldn't have a large impact on security.\n\nSource: [http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/linus-torvalds-\nremove-...](http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/linus-torvalds-remove-\nrdrand-from-dev-random-4/responses/9066)\n\n~~~\nchm\nSomebody posted this link on another discussion: [http://cm.bell-\nlabs.com/who/ken/trust.html](http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html)\n\nThere's no way to know for sure, but I don't think this is a problem for the\naverage consumer. I'd like to think serious black hats are not amateur\nfishermen who use a bait to catch anything that passes by. I picture them more\nlike a sniper waiting for the perfect shot on a valuable target. In other\nwords, yes every system could be compromised, but the ones that are will be\nthe ones holding more valuable information. And those are few relative to the\nmass of average joes. But then one might get an advantage from controlling a\nbotnet, and use it to attack more valuable targets.\n\nI don't really know :)\n\n~~~\nsliverstorm\nIt's the same as security always is. \"What are my enemies capable of\" is an\nabsolutely critical component of the security equation that cannot be\noverlooked.\n\n------\nffrryuu\nNSA can do much better than that. US tech can no longer be trusted.\n\n------\nphazmatis\nDoesn't sound undetectable to me. Isn't this what the die hard tests are for?\n\n~~~\nSae5waip\nNo it's not. The die hard tests don't help against malice.\n\nConsider this PRNG:\n\n`\"random\"_bitstream` := AES('00000000...', NSA_KEY)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAndreessen-backed virtual workforce MobileWorks (YCS11) does 1M tasks in year 1 - anandkulkarni\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/mobileworks-seed-new-direction/\n\n======\npbreit\nI really like seeing all of these companies like MobileWorks, Exec, Uber, et\nal that are solving problems that are very challenging but in more of an\noperational way than technical (although technology obviously plays a large\nrole).\n\n------\nphyscab\nI'm impressed with the accuracy of MobileWorks over mechanical Turk (or pure\nMT- not sure if MW just filters workers heavily). I tried a receipt\ntranscription task where I fed the same instructions and same photo to both\nservices. Out of the box, MW was 100% while MT was about 90% for the same\ncost.\n\n~~~\nprayag\nAs Anand said we have a separate workforce. We have a bunch of algorithmic and\nsocial elements that we have developed for improving quality. In fact,we have\nwritten an IEEE paper on how to improve quality in crowdsourcing.\n\n[http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bjoern/papers/kulkarni-\nmobilewor...](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bjoern/papers/kulkarni-mobileworks-\nieee2012.pdf)\n\n------\nkurtvarner\nWhere do they hire their workforce from? Are they overseas or American\nworkers?\n\n[edit] The main reason I was asking this, was I find it really surprising that\nyou're able to hire skilled/educated workers at an outsourcing rate. It's even\nmore surprising that you're finding them organically through press. I'd\nimagine most TechCrunch readers are over qualified for that kind of work.\nKudos to you for making it happen though.\n\n~~~\nprayag\nTechCrunch is not the only press we get. A TV station in Jamaica covered us\nand we got a lot of workers from there.\n\nEven when we are in press in the tech circles we get a lot of worker growth by\nthe workers are referred from the work at home or stay at home mom forums. My\nguess is that someone reposts about us at the more appropriate forums and that\nsets the ball rolling.\n\nHaving said that we have seen that some very qualified people (who might be\nreading techcrunch or MIT tech review) have joined our workforce.\n\n~~~\nomegant\nhow much it is the average salary currently?. I mean for somebody doing 40\nhours/week.\n\n------\njayzee\nThis is awesome stuff. I am glad that they are attacking the accuracy angle\nsince for a lot of tasks I care a lot about accuracy and not so much on saving\nthe last $.\n\n------\nprayag\nWe are also launching a new and improved API today.\n<https://www.mobileworks.com/developers/>\n\n------\nbravura\nI do a lot of crowdsourcing (see here <http://weusethat.com/metaoptimize>) and\nI'm curious to use MobileWorks.\n\nWhat is the pricing for small jobs?\n\nI have a lot of small jobs, so \"contact us for a quote\" isn't appropriate when\nmy jobs change often.\n\n~~~\nanandkulkarni\nPricing is $5 per worker per hour.\n\n~~~\nbravura\nIs there a way to achieve \"guaranteed\" high quality on non-easy tasks?\n\nI have a binary classification labelling problem. The labels are very\nunbalanced (95% no, 5% yes). Answering each question takes a few minutes of\nweb research.\n\nI ran this job on CrowdFlower with gold standard data for quality-control, and\nusing 5 annotators for each question. Nonetheless, I received 99% no answers.\n\nRight now I have about 1000 instances to label. There could be more in the\nfuture, if I am confident that I will get high quality labeling.\n\n~~~\nanandkulkarni\nYes: you can achieve high quality with only a few respondents because the\nworkforce is higher quality and the data is reviewed by a human in the crowd.\n\nDrop us a line and we'll set it up: support@mobileworks.com\n\n------\ndm8\nI've worked with everyone on their founding team at Cal and they are all\namazing! Kudos to MW team :)\n\n------\nzio99\nAnand, congrats on the milestone!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBehind Steve Jobs’ Macworld exit - Flemlord\nhttp://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/12/17/behind-steve-jobs-macworld-exit/\n======\nsidsavara\nDude what a domain!\n\napple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com\n\nI almost thought my browser had been hijacked. But it's ok - all is well.\n\n------\nhalo\nWell, that didn't really tell us anything.\n\n------\nrms\nSteve Jobs got tired of going in public and have people speculate about his\nhealth based on his appearance.\n\nOf course, we all have good reason to speculate about his health, given the\nsurvival rates for his condition.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAmEx's answer to PayPal/Square/etc. - taylorbuley\nhttp://www.serve.com/\n\n======\napress\nThey are indeed charging the Paypal standard 2.9% plus 30 cents. See section\n10 \"fees\" here <http://www.serve.com/legal.aspx#Serve_User_Agreement>\n\nI don't quite get what they have over PayPal, let alone any less expensive\nservices.\n\n------\naidenn0\nI assume this is what they did with their acquisition of revolutionCard?\n\n------\nviggity\nI couldn't find their fees anywhere on their website, so I can only assume\nthey're going to charge the traditional 2+% + $.30 for each transaction.\n\nI'd much rather use Dwolla (<http://www.dwolla.com>). They charge $.25 flat.\nThat's it. And they have iPhone and Android clients. They don't have a limit\non how much you can transfer, either (serve limits to $1000/day and\n$2500/month).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe *Santa* Brand Book - GotAnyMegadeth\nhttp://www.quietroom.co.uk/santa_brandbook/one\n\n======\nGotAnyMegadeth\n\"Our brand essence is the very essence of our brand\"\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMacintosh.js: Mac OS 8 as an electron app - PStamatiou\nhttps://github.com/felixrieseberg/macintosh.js\n======\ndmitrybrant\nI really struggle to not be an Electron hater, but... why, oh why??? Basilisk\nII is already a thoroughly cross-platform piece of software that runs\nbeautifully as a native Windows/Mac/Linux app. What can possibly be the appeal\nto re-compile Basilisk into Javascript, so that it runs at less than half the\nspeed, packaged in a full Chromium/Node installation?\n\nThe total download size of the native Basilisk II is about 8 MB (not counting\nyour disk image). The size of this Electron monstrosity is about 180 MB! I\nfeel like I should be wearing a straitjacket. Does no one else see things\ngoing terribly wrong?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIf It's Important, Don't Hack It - vazquez\nhttp://insideintercom.io/if-its-important-dont-hack-it/\n======\nprogramminggeek\nThe tricky part is getting people to understand what really drives their\nbusiness and at the right level. It's not even just picking the right metrics,\nit's understanding them enough to take action on them.\n\nMy metric for metrics is to track things that will change your behavior. If a\nmetric changes and you don't, then it's a pointless metric.\n\nI've seen many companies track reasonable metrics, only to do nothing about\nthem when they change. They just try to \"do more\" of whatever they were\nalready doing.\n\nDoing the right things with the right metrics is not a skill that everybody\nhas and not everybody can learn.\n\n~~~\neinhverfr\nThis is true. Also beyond these problems, I am going to say something else.\n\nMarketing is not the result of a few actions. It is and should be something\nwoven into _all_ business activities. It should be part of your email\nsignatures, participating on social networking sites, etc. All of the little\nthings build up and the thins which really help with building a presence.\n\nThere are legitimate marketing hacks but they don't involve tricking users.\nThey involve living and breathing marketing, and realizing that building your\nbusiness means a billion _little_ marketing hacks, not a few big ones.\n\n~~~\nlukethomas\nBest thing I've read on HN in a while.\n\n------\njtbigwoo\nThis is why the the Silicon Valley high-growth game is so strange.\n\nIn a normal company, the metrics would center around, \"Are we making money?\"\n\"What sort of things point to us making more money?\"\n\nIn the SV game, it's \"Are we attracting attention?\" \"What sort of things will\ncause us to get more attention?\"\n\n~~~\nmbesto\n> _In the SV game, it 's \"Are we attracting attention?\" \"What sort of things\n> will cause us to get more attention?\"_\n\nIt's not particularly strange if you break down the business models that\ndominate the SV ecosystem. These companies you speak of are merely procurement\nchannels. Think of them as oil drills that suck up as many attention spans as\nphysically possible. And largely they are all competing with each other to\nstrike the next big oil well. Not unlike the oil industry they put massive\namounts of capital into the discovery and refinement of such oil wells. The\nlikes of Facebook, Google, etc are simply refineries who sell this attention\n(refined by analytics and insight) off to the Fords, Coca-Colas, etc of the\nworld.\n\n~~~\ntomrod\nThat's a solid analogy. Thank you.\n\n------\njlebron2\nI hate when apps ask to post to Facebook or Twitter on my behalf. It's\nuncomfortable and puts the user in an awkward position. Great article, hope\nsome of these companies take note!\n\n------\njustin_vanw\nThis article is right.\n\nBut, what's the point of articles like this?\n\nFew people are so stupid that they believe moving some number is the same as\ndoing well. There are lots of times when moving some arbitrary number is\nrewarded, and we know that humans respond to incentives. It's perfectly\nlogical, and even the best strategy in some situations.\n\nPeople who pull tactical games like this might be able to get by, or do well,\nor become captains of dying industries, but fundamentally we can probably\nagree they are assholes. Plenty go along because they are playing the junior\nedition same game with the junior edition of the same strategy. When there\nisn't a risk of repercussions, or when they feel like they have a chance to\ngain credibility, or whatever motivations big smart apes really act out of,\nthey loudly laugh at and mock the asshole; because of the hurt they feel at\nwasting the part of their life that was spent doing something so obviously\nworthless, and because of the shame and regret of compromising themselves, and\nbecause it's a good move.\n\nSome people have real problems. Some people don't get enough food to eat.\nSomeone could say that it's a form of privilege to have problems like \"I don't\nbelieve in my job\". It almost certainly is.\n\nSomewhere in some country where people die of things that people just don't\ndie of other places, there are people officially working on things, and money\nbeing spent, all kinds of activity done because someone feels like that is\ntheir best strategy, and the people involved know it's stupid and pointless\nand a waste, and they know there are people suffering that could suffer less.\n\nIt's easy to play along. It's easy to play a strategy that maximizes personal\noutcomes. In fact, the people at the top almost certainly got there by playing\nsuch a strategy. It seems likely that it's an evolutionarily stable strategy,\ndespite the implication that a lot more suffering is going to happen.\n\n~~~\ndestraynor\nI wrote the piece, it seems to have been very well received.\n\nI've read your 5 paragraphs and I can't really understand what you're saying.\n\n~~~\njustin_vanw\nI'm saying that your advice is pointless, because nobody who could benefit\nfrom your advice chases a metric because they don't realize the things you say\nin the article. The things you say are obvious, and anyone who doesn't find\nthem obvious is so profoundly stupid that there are thousands of basic skills\nthey lack besides the one your advice corrects.\n\nThey chase metrics because they are in a situation where moving those numbers\ndoes something. In the case of the startup you mention, they could use the\nuser count graph to raise money, which is probably what they were trying to\ndo.\n\nI go on to say that doing things like moving a metric for its own sake is\nreally an example of deceptive signaling, which is pervasive in human affairs.\nOn the way I point out the fact that deceptive signaling is often performed by\na team of people, and many of the team members or employees actively work on\nsuch things despite having to grapple with moral reservations, and I talk\nabout that for a bit, and point out they are not really innocent, but are\nacting primarily out of self interest.\n\nNext, I talk about how many or most of the major problems in the world are due\nto resources being wasted because someone calculates that they can benefit\nmore by using those resources to engage in deceptive signaling than by helping\npeople, and they have many accomplices that recognize what is happening but\nassist anyway.\n\nFinally, I point out that this is likely a dominant strategy, so there is\nalmost no way to become powerful or remain in power except by engaging in such\nactivities (using available resources in the way that maximizes power rather\nthan any other consideration, such as preventing starvation), and I close by\nexpressing my regret that this is so.\n\n------\nmarcamillion\nThis article is dead on the money. I think this comes back to people having a\nhard time discovering the value that their product offers customers.\n\nThey may hear that 2+ invites, and 3 projects 'activates' the customer - but\nthey don't truly understand what that means and why that provides value.\n\nI have noticed that with some of my clients too, and other entrepreneurs I\ntalk to.\n\nThat's one of the reasons I am starting to write more about\ndiscovering/understanding value.\n\nThe first such post is 'Redefining MVP to Minimum Valuable Product'[1] because\nI think that's a perfect place to start - plus it is where I have been\nnoticing this issue pop-up more and more in my work.\n\nI think the entire industry does need to take a step back and really start re-\nevaluating the way we analyze/discover value. It feels like it has been lost\nwith everybody trying to go too fast and 'hack' everything.\n\n[1] - [http://5kmvp.com/blog/2013/09/17/redefining-mvp-minimum-\nvalu...](http://5kmvp.com/blog/2013/09/17/redefining-mvp-minimum-valuable-\nproduct/)\n\n------\nmistercow\nI'm glad that I know a good term for \"false proxies\" now. It seems to be a\nproblem that comes up all the time in wildly different contexts. I sometimes\ncall it \"painting a banana yellow\", but that doesn't necessarily convey the\nmeaning to someone unless I've previously explained the analogy.\n\n------\nsirtel\n[Google+ growth-hacked their way to 170 million users,...]\n\nIt is just like a math expression: Google+ growth-hacked.\n\nIf \"Yahoo!\" can be inserted in this sentence, it would be funnier.\n\n------\njoeblau\nIs this the correct use of the term \"Growth Hacking\"? I thought it was a\nperson who works on side projects to increase their personal development\noutside of work.\n\nAs far as the meat of the article, I feel like this is spot on. The challenge\nI think is that a lot of people, including PG, have said they want to see 10%+\ngrowth [1]. Customer acquisition is a very easy thing to hack if you know how\nto play the social game, but in the end, it comes down to product.\n\n[1] -\n[http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html)\n\n~~~\nJonnieCache\n_Did you laugh at the bill hicks routine about marketers killing themselves\nwhen you were a teenager, but now want to take that highly paid SV position\nwithout an existential crisis? Have we got the job title for you!_\n\n------\nhawleyal\nMisleading title.\n\n~~~\ncalinet6\n_Intriguing_ title.\n\n------\ncorresation\n\"Had Google+ focused on a metric of “Users who choose to go to Google+ and\nshare at least 2 updates per week“, they would have focused their efforts on\ndelivering value to users rather than popups that drive numbers.\"\n\nThe Google+ foundation is all there -- they already focused on that: it really\nis the foundation of a brilliant social network, and I prefer it purely given\nthat they don't decimate photos by the horrid overcompression that Facebook\ndoes. Their problem now is purely a network problem in that people don't see\nthe point of sharing updates there given that many of the people they share\nthem with aren't there. I fail to see how this example supports what they are\nsaying whatsoever.\n\n~~~\naidos\nOT My recollection of the G+ scenario is that they stunted it themselves - for\nwhatever reason. By the time the people I knew actually had access I'd lost\ninterest in waiting for my friends to show up. They arrived to find that after\na month nothing was going on and they lost interest. I'm not sure how it's\ndoing these days but it felt like a massive missed opportunity.\n\n~~~\ndarth_aardvark\nCompletely agree with this. Me and some other friends were legitimately\nexcited for Google+ when it was released as beta but couldn't get an invite.\nBy the time it went public nobody cared enough to fill out a profile.\n\n~~~\ndrzaiusapelord\nDont worry, if you use gmail, youtube, or android you already have a profile\nready for you.\n\nThis idea of shoving everyone into G+ as your default google sign-on and\nidentity is pretty controversial. Most everyone I talk to about it finds it\nannoying. So they went from being exclusionary to being almost mandatory. Not\nsure what the long term plan is here. Google probably doesn't know either.\nThey rushed a facebook clone for their own reasons and now here it is, a\nvirtual ghost town.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: How much copying another person's software idea is frowned upon? - MiaDavis\nI have recently discovered a really beautiful and brilliantly designed SaaS app that I am now using every day. I wanted to learn from it, and, as an exercise, to practice my frontend dev skills, I have essentially copied this app.<p>My design is a bit different, and I&#x27;ve improved a couple of things, but it&#x27;s still essentially the same app(it&#x27;s really hard to significantly improve upon, the original author has really done it right).<p>Now I realize, that if I will launch my version to the public, I could make a lot of money and achieve my dream of running a profitable SaaS. I&#x27;m highly confident that it will work, and there&#x27;s plenty of space in the market for both of us. I&#x27;m also pretty sure that I won&#x27;t run into copyright issues - my app is using a different tech stack and doesn&#x27;t share any of the code with the original.<p>But I&#x27;m feeling a bit guilty for doing this, it feels like stealing. The original app is built by two very smart and good people, and is beloved by many users. Even though I will probably end up evolving this project in a different direction&#x2F;niche, I&#x27;m still unsure if it&#x27;s an okay thing to do.<p>How would you guys look at this? Do you think it&#x27;s evil? Will it harm my reputation? Would you strongly dislike a person who&#x27;s done something like this?\n======\nabstractspoon\nI know this is software and software is unlike other stuff, but if we were\ntalking about a sport shoe, car design or other 'thing', where a lot of time,\neffort and money had clearly been spent then I would consider it unethical to\ncopy it too closely without being clearly innovative in some area.\n\nIt's not just an 'idea' that you are copying, it's the actual design and UX\nimplementation.\n\nImagine you were talking about MS Word or Photoshop...\n\n------\nmindcrime\n> How would you guys look at this?\n\nNeutral\n\n> Do you think it's evil?\n\nNo.\n\n> Will it harm my reputation?\n\nProbably not.\n\n> Would you strongly dislike a person who's done something like this?\n\nNo.\n\nIdeas are cheap... execution counts. For any profitable business, there are\nalways going to be people who come along and deploy the \"fast follower\"\nstrategy or otherwise copy the core idea. Do you hate Walmart for copying the\nidea of Sears or Kmart? Do you hate Linus for copying the idea of Unix? Do you\nhate Apple for copying the idea of a GUI for PARC? Do you hate Microsoft for\nthen copying the same idea from Apple?\n\nAs long as you're sure that you are on solid legal footing as far as not\nliterally copying anything that is copyrighted by the other company (including\nthings like images and CSS styling, etc.) then I don't see a problem with it.\nEspecially if you do have ideas of you own that you plan to incorporate, that\ndeviate from the existing site.\n\n~~~\nMiaDavis\nThank you for your reply! This is good.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nKeep your source code SIMPLE - kevingoslar\nhttps://medium.com/@kevingoslar/keep-your-source-code-simple-d5873cb854dc\n======\ntaberiand\nMy feeling is these paradigms, SOLID and SIMPLE, boil down to basically: small\nobjects, connected minimally, though interfaces.\n\nSIMPLE appears to be leaning even more towards the functional programming side\nof things; I think we should probably just get it over with and accept that\ncomposition of functions operating on immutable data structures is just the\nright way to go.\n\n~~~\ntobr\nIs there a language that leans heavily towards immutable data, but steers\nclear of the, shall we say, _dorkier_ side of functional programming?\n\n~~~\nISO-morphism\nThis is Clojure. It's functional, but more as a side effect of focusing\nintently on simple, immutable, persistent data structures and their\ncompositions. I'd strongly recommend looking into it, along with many of the\npresentations by its initial author Rich Hickey.\n\n~~~\nBoorishBears\nImo no Lisp variant can claim to not be in the \"dorkier\" side of things\n(\"dorkier\" being read as \"hard to approach\" in my eyes).\n\nI'd say Kotlin over Clojure.\n\n~~~\nadamkl\nI’d suggest you watch Rich’s talk “Simple made easy”. [1]\n\nIt’s one of his main points that something like a language being “hard to\napproach” can be overcome by spending a little effort to learn it (as opposed\nto sticking with something like Kotlin just because its easy to pick up\nbecause it’s familiar). The benefits of learning the unfamiliar (in his case,\nhe’s speaking specifically about Clojure) being that it allows you to write\ncode that is much simpler to reason about.\n\nI have no particular beef with Kotlin (or most any languages... right tool for\nthe job and all), but I have lately become infatuated with Clojure and many of\nRich’s viewpoints.\n\n[1] [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-\nEasy/](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/)\n\n~~~\nBoorishBears\nEh, I've used languages that were \"hard to approach\", one of my favorites\n(Erlang) is one of those (I use quotations especially because learning all of\nErlang's syntax takes about a day).\n\nThis is a misapplication of the presentation really. It speaks to a level\nabove selecting a language and is really about the design of systems.\n\nPicking up Kotlin or Clojure is not \"harder to approach\" by virtue of what's\nprovided in this context, it's harder because Clojure syntax uses parenthesis.\n\nLike that's literally it.\n\nClojure with the same exact constructs represented with more C-like syntax\nwould, at the level the presentation speaks to, allow the same level of\nsimplicity.\n\nI think a lot of developers feel \"It looks funny\" is not a fair critique of a\nuseful tool, but just look at Erlang vs Elixr. I love Erlang, much more than I\nlike Elixr, but Elixr gained mind share in large part because it's Ruby-like.\n\nCognitive overhead is lower working with a language that at least \"looks\nlike\", what you're used to, and more developers know C-like languages, thus a\nlanguage like Kotlin is \"easier to approach\" but necessarily \"easier\" in the\nway the presentation talks about\n\n~~~\nISO-morphism\n> Clojure with the same exact constructs represented with more C-like syntax\n> would, at the level the presentation speaks to, allow the same level of\n> simplicity.\n\nI don't think this is true. I think it would be _easier_ for \"most people,\"\nbut definitely not _simpler_. Easy meaning close at hand, simple meaning one\nstrand, one braid, independent, less context necessary. Clojure syntax is the\nAST of the program, right there in front of you, in literal notation. There\nare fewer special cases, fewer moving parts interacting. C syntax requires\nspinning up a virtual machine in your mind and executing multiple statements.\nC is _easier_ because we've already spent the time and effort to _familiarize_\nourselves with it, but it has more complexity. Compare a 954 line ANTLR\ngrammar for C [1] with a 261 line Clojure grammar [2].\n\n> Cognitive overhead is lower working with a language that at least \"looks\n> like\", what you're used to, and more developers know C-like languages, thus\n> a language like Kotlin is \"easier to approach\" but necessarily \"easier\" in\n> the way the presentation talks about.\n\nI would agree, using Rich's definitions of simple and easy, that Kotlin is\neasier for the majority of developers than Clojure. This follows immediately\nfrom the definition of easy.\n\n> This is a misapplication of the presentation really. It speaks to a level\n> above selecting a language and is really about the design of systems.\n\nI would recommend Rich Hickey's talk \"The Language of the System\" [3]. The\nprogramming language(s) used are part(s) of the system and have an effect on\nits design. I don't think this is a misapplication of the \"Simple made Easy\"\npresentation, I think it hits the nail on the head.\n\n[1]\n[https://github.com/antlr/grammars-v4/blob/master/c/C.g4](https://github.com/antlr/grammars-v4/blob/master/c/C.g4)\n[2]\n[https://github.com/antlr/grammars-v4/blob/master/clojure/Clo...](https://github.com/antlr/grammars-v4/blob/master/clojure/Clojure.g4)\n[3]\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROor6_NGIWU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROor6_NGIWU)\n\n~~~\nBoorishBears\nI feel like this comment is throwing semantics in a blender and pouring it out\ninto the shape you want... but I guess that's the thing about arguing\nsemantics, it usually devolves to that...\n\nSo I guess I'll just keep my recommendation to Kotlin and you can keep your\nrecommendation to Clojure\n\n~~~\niLemming\n> I feel like this comment is throwing semantics in a blender and pouring it\n> out into the shape you want\n\nI don't think it is, though. But it is clear that you are arguing with\nabsolute confidence about a thing you have never given a heartfelt attempt to\ntry first. You are debating like a medieval 13th-century mathematician that\nRoman numerals are elegant and more comfortable to understand, and people been\nusing them for centuries and no need for this Indo-Arabian numeral non-sense\nthat Leonardo, son of Bonacci so passionately keeps talking about.\n\nI don't want to sound patronizing (I guess I'm already are, although not\nintentionally), but let me give you an advice - never trust your inner\nskepticism, fight it, dig for the answer - why are you so skeptical about it.\nProgress pushed forward by individuals who continuously challenge their\nbeliefs. And from what I can see - you are not a mere consumer of progress,\nyou too, do want to be at the front line where it is being made.\n\n------\nthinkpad20\n> Error: ENOENT, no such file or directory '~/foorc'\n\nI can’t count how many times I’ve seen error messages that look like this,\noften with no context at all, in JavaScript apps, even widely used ones like\nnpm and webpack. Proper error handling is never easy, but the JS community\nseems particularly given to avoiding it.\n\n------\nhinkley\nComplexity is combinatorial. If you compose your code of overly complex\ncomponents the end result will have much more emergent behavior.\n\nIf everything at the bottom is straightforward, then people will spot more\noverarching concerns, instead of bogging down in minor details.\n\nI’d really love to see some cognitive science applied directly to UX and code\nquality concepts. Surely some of the things we espouse but don’t enforce are\nspot on, and others are cargo culting. Refining that list might make it harder\nto ignore.\n\n------\norenkt\ncan author of that medium post show real world example of an app, build with\nthose principles and rules from start to end?\n\nit would be also very educational to see decision and design process of an app\nbuild with those rules.\n\n------\nlostgame\nI couldn’t agree more.\n\nAlso; keep it _clean_. Don’t over-comment, but comment.\n\n~~~\ntchaffee\nCan you define \"over-comment\"? Without a clear definition, it's just\nsubjective opinion.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway35784\n\n      //increment i in for loop\n      For (i=0;i++....\n    \n      Var x; //define variable x\n    \n      X=4; //give value of 4 to x\n    \n\nEveryone knows what that code does. The comments aren't necessary.\n\n~~~\ntchaffee\nThat's a good concrete example of bad comments. I suppose you could throw that\nin the \"over-commenting\" category.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway35784\nAnd, strangely, it's the only response to the gp's request to define of over-\ncommenting, yet it is downvoted to below definitions of _good_ commenting.\n\nSo. Weird. The other responses didn't properly implement the requirement\nspecification.\n\nI am _so_ confused.\n\n------\ndplgk\nBut wait, I want all my code to work in linear space and time, look like\nassembly code and scale to 4 billion servers.\n\n~~~\ndang\nPlease don't post unsubstantive comments here.\n\n------\navmich\n\"Keep the story going. Sign up for an extra free read. You've completed your\nmember preview for this month, but when you sign up for a free Medium account,\nyou get one more story.\"\n\nSorry, can't read behind paywall.\n\n~~~\nkevingoslar\nAgreed, sorry for the paywall. Is there a better place to post such stories\nthan Medium?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNext major release of PHP to be named PHP 7 - sp8\nhttp://news.php.net/php.internals/76254\n\n======\nmetabrew\nWhy skip a version? Wasn't clear from that thread.\n\n~~~\nmsantos\nPHP 6 existed (check commits in the public repo) but was abandoned and never\nreleased to public.\n\nThe voting page lists more info\n[https://wiki.php.net/rfc/php6#vote](https://wiki.php.net/rfc/php6#vote)\n\n~~~\nRossM\nAnnoyingly, a few authors decided to jump the gun and publish books around PHP\n6. I think this was the main deciding point. On the one hand, it might be\nconfusing for a newcomer who thinks that they're getting a book on the latest\nand greatest; on the other, perhaps they should check publication dates.\n\nEither way, it wasn't a particularly important decision - any number\nsignifying a major version bump, greater than 5, would have been fine.\n\n~~~\nramy_d\nYeah,\n[http://www.amazon.ca/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=php+6](http://www.amazon.ca/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=php+6)\nI wonder if publishing against \"vaporware\" (not exactly, but anyway) is an\nexpected risk in the industry. Would be interesting to hear what the people\nwho are affected in that sense think of this.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy Nightingales Are Snubbing Berkeley Square for the Tiergarten - Tomte\nhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/13/nightingales-snubbing-london-for-berlin-tiegarten-germany\n======\n__m\nNot an ornithologist, but I suppose they want to lose easy access to the\nworld’s biggest single market\n\n~~~\nar0\nAnd, luckily for them, they don‘t need an airport to be able to land in the\ncity.\n\n~~~\ngumby\nLuckily for the rest of us the new airport should be ready by 2012.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe History and Adaptability of the Islamic State Car Bomb - jacobr\nhttps://zaytunarjuwani.wordpress.com/2017/02/14/the-history-and-adaptability-of-the-islamic-state-car-bomb/\n======\nSlipperySlope\nDisturbing.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWelcome to DNS, or Saving the DNS Camel [pdf] - okket\nhttps://indico.dns-oarc.net/event/29/contributions/658/attachments/641/1039/Welcome_to_DNS-final.pdf\n======\npeterwwillis\nI would argue we do need a real DNS replacement. The stupid 512 byte limit has\nbeen a scapegoat to prevent new important features from being implemented\nforever, and the stateless nature has been abused by bad actors. We want and\nneed something like QUIC, and a more sane way to adopt changes to features.\n\nThe obsession with backwards compatibility is crazy. Imagine if we took real\nphysical infrastructure in the world and insisted we continue to build it only\nin a way compatible with technology from the 1800's. We live in a modern\nworld, where firmware upgrade doesn't require a UV light source, and where we\ncan probably get two or three companies to push for the rapid adoption of new\nindustry standard formats - just looked what happened to enable tech like\nEthernet to become a defacto standard.\n\n~~~\nbluejekyll\nYou might be interested in DNS-over-QUIC:\n[https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-huitema-quic-\ndnsoquic...](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-huitema-quic-dnsoquic/)\n\nAlso, the 512 byte limits hasn’t been an issue for many years, as EDNS allows\nfor much larger packet sizes, generally up to 4K. (Edit: although, some DNS\nrecursive resolvers have started limiting UDP connections to 512, and only\nallowing larger packets in TCP, to reduce the effect of reflection attacks)\n\nAs to backward compatibility, don’t underestimate the number of old devices on\nthe network that need DNS to operate and haven’t been, or won’t be updated for\nyears.\n\n~~~\npeterwwillis\nThe 512 byte limit is still a significant issue because literally nobody\nenforces the use of EDNS. Anyone can just put an arbitrary limit on udp\npackets on port 53, either at the service provider or at any intermediate\nnetwork. Nobody is willing to say \"you MUST use EDNS to use our service\"\n(because they don't like rejecting cash-paying customers due to technical\nrestrictions), so everyone just gives up and says, fine, I guess we just won't\ndepend on EDNS, so it becomes an optional feature that you can't depend on.\n\nI would be very happy if a variant of QUIC became its own OSI layer 4 protocol\nso we could start re-engineering all higher level protocols to use QUIC rather\nthan UDP or TCP. If we had done that decades ago, not only would a majority of\nour network security issues have been nonexistent, we would have had extra\nperformance and bandwidth to advance the state of the art. (If you ask \"why\nnot just implement it as UDP now and be backwards compatible\", it's because\noperating systems generally don't provide APIs for network protocols higher\nthan layer 4, and we need the protocol to be natively supported by all TCP/IP\nstacks to grease wider network protocol adoption and reap the benefits for all\nnetwork applications)\n\n~~~\nzamadatix\n> it's because operating systems generally don't provide APIs for network\n> protocols higher than layer 4, and we need the protocol to be natively\n> supported by all TCP/IP stacks to grease wider network protocol adoption and\n> reap the benefits for all network applications)\n\nI think the exact opposite is true in reality, people want to nimbly implement\nprotocols so badly they'd rather shove everything on top of UDP/TCP or even\nHTTP than deal with waiting around for whole operating systems to age out.\nFrom a pure technical design standpoint I agree a lot of things should be done\nat lower layers but I don't think it's possible for this to happen as quickly\nas a lot of people are wanting.\n\nNot to mention the second travesty of the layered protocol model in the real\nworld: hardware and configurations have started to grow around it. A lot of\nnetworks can't handle QUIC simply because UDP 443 won't go through their\nfirewall yet people are expecting everyone to just jump up and start NATing\ncompletely different L4 protocols? Remember IPv6 has been around since the\nlate 90s yet people are still sticking to the same NAT solution.\n\nBecame more rambly than I wanted but I'm just a network guy frustrated that we\ncan't keep building up the protocol stack nor can we tear it down.\n\n------\nokket\nSee also his presentation at OARC:\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AquYPF1hvH0&t=0h45m0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AquYPF1hvH0&t=0h45m0s)\n\nAnd the discussion about \"Hello DNS\" from 6 months ago:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16714679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16714679)\n(42 comments, sic!)\n\n------\nahubert\nauthor here - actual project is on [https://powerdns.org/hello-\ndns/](https://powerdns.org/hello-dns/)\n\n~~~\npmoriarty\nThank you for writing this.\n\nIt looks like the content on that site is really just plain, static text. It\nwould be nice if it could be read without requiring the user's browser to\nallow javascript.\n\n~~~\nrnotaro\nI thought it was a plain text document. My JSON reader browser extension was\npreventing MarkDeep to render for some unknown reasons.\n\n------\ntotalperspectiv\nI clicked because of the camel. Super cool project! DNS has always been one of\nthose black box layers to me. This looks like a great resource for learning\njust a little, or going all the way down the rabbit hole.\n\n------\nokket\nAnother one for the camel, fresh from the IETF:\n\nRFC 8484: DNS Queries over HTTPS (DoH)\n[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8484](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8484)\n\n------\nca98am79\nDNS needs to be decentralized, like on a blockchain. The internet won't really\nbe free until this happens. Currently ICANN, the top-level domain registries,\nand even the registrars have too much control and can take down and censor\ndomains.\n\n~~~\nqznc\nWhich would be [https://namecoin.org/](https://namecoin.org/)\n\nI agree that DNS might be a better use case for blockchains than money.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGoogle partners with Kia Motors to integrate Google Maps - ForFreedom\nhttp://www.appy-geek.com/Web/ArticleWeb.aspx?regionid=3&articleid=5876620\n\n======\nnvr219\nLink to original article: [http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/01/02/google-\npartners-with...](http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/01/02/google-partners-\nwith-kia-motors-to-integrate-google-maps-and-places-into-new-car-models/)\n\n~~~\nForFreedom\nChanging it..\n\ngrrr.. can't change it..\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhen it comes to composition and length, passwords mostly don't matter - deegles\nhttps://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-Active-Directory-Identity/Your-Pa-word-doesn-t-matter/ba-p/731984\n======\ndillutedfixer\nIn my opinion, Microsoft's implementation of MFA on Office 365 (at least our\ninstance) is broken. SMS MFA is inadequate and should not be used, the SS7\nnetwork is apparently trivially hackable in some circles and text messages can\nbe rerouted. So they want us to use MS Authenticator, great. However the 365\nlogin screen always has the \"Sign in another way\" option in which I can just\nbypass the Authenticator app and use an SMS text. I cannot remove my mobile\nnumber from my profile to disable the option to SMS text because they are\nworried about me losing access to my app. I don't know if this is a limitation\nof Office 365 through our VAR or what, but it just seems pointless to offer an\nAuthenticator app if there's an easy way to fall back to SMS and no way to\ndisable SMS. If someone has my password and can reroute my text messages, a\nfancy shmancy Authenticator app is pointless. If this is not how it is for\nothers with 365 I would love to know that, I hope it's not a limitation or\npolicy put in place by our VAR.\n\n~~~\ndjakjxnanjak\nDoes anyone know if there’s a way to prevent your SMS from being rerouted, or\nget a special protected number?\n\nThe ability to do this would not mitigate Microsoft’s responsibilities here,\nbut at least it would allow some people to help themselves.\n\n~~~\nred_phone\nI'm not a subject matter expert, but a Google Voice number can be used to\nreceive texts and is protected by the relatively robust security of your\nGoogle account.\n\n~~~\nkortilla\nIf the issue is the SS7 network, that won’t help unless the originating text\nis also in Google Voice.\n\n~~~\ntestvox\nThat seems pretty possible though, if SS7 is the only issue then providers of\n2factor SMS auth should just have a number on each network and when a 2factor\nrequest comes in they should determine what network its being sent to and then\nactually send the SMS from the number they have on that network.\n\n------\nmquander\nI think the thesis of this article is rather forced. The actual claim is\nsomething like:\n\n\"Passwords don't matter, as long as your password isn't in the top few dozen\ncommon ones, it's not in any credentials breach accessible to attackers, it's\nlonger than 8 characters or so, and you don't reuse it.\"\n\nThat was a lot of criteria that seemed to matter, if you ask me.\n\n~~~\npadobson\nAnd also \"Passwords don't matter as long as you aren't important enough or\nconnected to a person or organization important enough to try more than the\nmost routine password vulnerabilities\"\n\n~~~\nmikekchar\nThat would be a shocking statement to make. However, I don't see anything like\nthat in the original article. Did I miss it somewhere?\n\n~~~\nH8crilA\nYes for example in password spray - attackers often try just < 20 passwords.\nIf your account is high value they could try a lot more.\n\n~~~\nmikekchar\nBut the original article literally never says that. It doesn't talk about the\n\"value\" of different kinds of accounts at all (and I just reread the \"Spray\"\nsection to make sure I didn't miss it).\n\nIt would be incredibly naive to think that one account has significantly more\nvalue than another because once you are in the system, your ability to\ncompromise it skyrockets -- no matter what kind of account you have. Sure,\nyou're probably trying to work your way up to administrative account level,\nbut there are _so many more_ local attacks than remote attacks that it isn't\neven funny.\n\nI'm not sure there is an accusation that the article is being naive in this\nway or not (there seems to be some confusion). It would be really shocking to\nsee a blog post from Microsoft talking about security that would say something\nso naive. But as far as I can tell, they didn't.\n\n------\nrkagerer\n_If you are using a password manager, use the maximum possible length –\nthere’s no usability downside if you are already cutting and pasting._\n\nThat's fine and dandy until you need to manually type it in somewhere (e.g.\nreading it from your phone, typing it in on another device). Has this guy ever\neven used a password manager? He understands how they work in theory, but in\npractice it's not always quite so clean. Humans will be human.\n\n~~~\nsxates\nThe best is typing that 20 character mixed-case-plus-numbers-and-symbols\npassword for Netflix into your TV app using an on screen keyboard and\ndirectional arrows...\n\n~~~\nfunction_seven\nThis is a huge benefit of AppleTV and having an iOS device. When the password\nis prompted for on the TV, my phone buzzes and I use the LastPass vault on the\nphone to paste the gibberish automatically.\n\nI'm sure there are similar schemes for other devices (Chromecast/FireTV?). But\nwhen the TV itself is \"smart\", I bet it's infuriating.\n\n~~~\ntestvox\nChromecast doesn't have its own UI or authentication, it just uses the\nauthentication of the device the stream was started from (being able to\ndelegate that is a requirement for chromecast support). So it solves the same\nissue but in a very different way. Its a pretty clever solution but requiring\nall interaction with your tv to happen through another computing device can\nget annoying.\n\n------\nSomeone1234\nThe number one reason I don't turn on MFA has nothing to do with the effort in\nentering the MFA code/pressing a confirm button. The lifecycle of MFA is the\nproblem.\n\nThe backup/recovery options are just terrible. You either print out a sheet of\n\"one time codes\" (which I need to not lose forever), my phone simply needs to\nnever break, or I need to configure an insecure recovery account (creating a\nwhole chicken/egg problem).\n\nThis is in no way mitigated by using physical keys either. Which can also be\nlost/broken/stolen/etc. You still need recovery/backup.\n\nPlus a ton of vendors allow customer support to trivially turn off MFA via\nsocial-engineering, so what is the point? If people want MFA to be more\ncommon, make the lifecycle better. Right now the backup/recovery situation is\nall over the place and frankly bad.\n\n~~~\nmquander\nI was blown away when I discovered that there was no way for me to export my\nGoogle Authenticator TOTP secrets from my locked Android phone, since\nunlocking it wipes the disk. I guess I will not make the mistake of not\nimmediately unlocking an Android phone again.\n\n~~~\nwinrid\nSo what do you do? How did you get your account back?\n\n~~~\npaulie_a\nI ran into a similar issue. I had 1100 dollars in an account secured by\nauthenticator and did not save the recovery codes when I set it up. I had to\njump through hoops to get it back, which is good.\n\nBut I didnt realize I would have to reset up every single code on\nauthenticator on the new phone. When you have a lot of accounts it's pretty\nobnoxious even with recovery codes. It didnt help that google support directly\ntold me that they would be automatically be restored on the new phone along\nwith the rest of the settings.\n\n------\ndefault-kramer\n> Your password doesn’t matter, but MFA does! Based on our studies, your\n> account is more than 99.9% less likely to be compromised if you use MFA.\n\nI'd be much more interested what that percentage is when you only consider\npeople who use password managers. (Which is not to imply that MFA isn't good.)\n\n~~~\nq_queue\nFurthermore many sites make it difficult to use a password manager because\nit's hard to block automated password guessers and not interfere with password\nmanagers trying to enter passwords.\n\n~~~\nneotek\nMy old bank used to \"encrypt\" your password as you typed it into the input\nfield, on keydown it would take the character you typed and — and I'm not\nmaking this up — _ROT13 it_. This had the effect of making it impossible to\npaste anything into the input field since the script would capture your ctrl+v\nand replace it with the letter \"i\".\n\nThe icing on the cake is that when I called to complain about it, the support\nagent insisted in very sombre tones that it was a measure to stop keyloggers.\nI don't use that bank any more.\n\n~~~\ngruez\n>since the script would capture your ctrl+v and replace it with the letter\n\"i\".\n\nnot an issue on firefox because you can toggle the\ndom.event.clipboardevents.enabled to false, and sites won't be able to hijack\nyour pastes.\n\n~~~\nneotek\nThe only problem with that is that the stupid ROT13 step wouldn't be performed\nso the site would reject your login attempt anyway. It was one of the dumbest\ndesign decisions I've ever seen, honestly.\n\n~~~\nZancarius\nI'm guessing the solution would've then been to 1) disable the update event\nand 2) paste the ROT13'd password, either into the browser or into the input\nfield value via the inspector.\n\nLike you, whenever I run into sites that do weird things like that, I always\nfind it hard to shake a bit of suspicion about how their backend is\nimplemented (or not, depending on the case). For instance, when they start\nrejecting characters like \"%\" or \"'\" which have special meaning in SQL. I\ncan't help but wonder if they're storing things in plain text.\n\nI've run into at least two vendors I can think off the top of my head that\nlimit what characters you can use for a password. That always makes me uneasy,\nand I don't buy anything from them on principle. Who knows what else they're\ndoing that's not immediately obvious.\n\n------\ndanShumway\n> Based on our studies, your account is more than 99.9% less likely to be\n> compromised if you use MFA.\n\nAn important thing to remember here is that MFA works _with a password._\nOtherwise, that 99% goes down dramatically because I can just steal your\nphone/Yubikey/whatever.\n\nThis article isn't suggesting that we get rid of passwords. It's suggesting\nthat the energy we spend making sure that passwords are _good_ would be better\nspent encouraging users to enable MFA.\n\nIn other words, having two relatively weak authentication mechanisms that must\nbe used in tandem is still better than having one strong authentication\nmechanism.\n\n~~~\nSpivak\n> Otherwise, that 99% goes down dramatically because I can just steal your\n> phone/Yubikey/whatever.\n\nIf this were true your car would probably get stolen a lot more often. You're\nless secure from targeted attacks from people who know you IRL but that's a\nlot rarer than the attacks you'll actually encounter.\n\n~~~\ndanShumway\nEh... cars are really big. A better way of phrasing this is, \"if this were\ntrue, your wallet/phone would get stolen a lot more often.\"\n\nBut aren't wallet/phone thefts relatively common?\n\n> You're less secure from targeted attacks from people who know you IRL\n\nI'm also not completely certain this is true. If a YubiKey is the only thing\nsecuring most people's accounts, I don't need to target you. I can walk into a\ncoffee shop, or locker room, or office and steal as many YubiKeys as I can\nfind.\n\nAnd then I can check later whether or not any of them are linked to bank\naccounts. I don't know the stats; are most petty wallet/phone thefts targeted?\n\n~~~\nkortilla\nA wallet is useful to a thief, a yubikey is not.\n\nThere is little overlap between petty thieves and people trying to get into a\nparticular target’s account.\n\n~~~\ndanShumway\n> There is little overlap between petty thieves and people trying to get into\n> a particular target’s account.\n\nBut isn't that the point? There's little overlap because right now we have a\nmulti-factor system where stealing one part of the authentication mechanism\nfrom a random person in the street isn't enough to get into their account.\n\nIf everyone's account is secured with just a YubiKey, then you don't have to\ntarget a specific person. What's to prevent any petty thief from grabbing a\nbunch of wallets and/or YubiKeys, walking into a library, and just checking a\nfew of the most common banks to see if any of them log in?\n\nMaybe I'm missing something? It's not clear to me why an MFA attack would ever\nneed to be targeted in a world without passwords. I guess maybe you're hoping\nthat petty thieves can't figure out your username? But that's just treating\nyour username like a password.\n\nFor a lot of bank accounts, your username will be some variant of your first\nand last name, which is helpfully printed on the drivers license in the wallet\nI just stole. I don't need to know who you are beforehand.\n\n------\nmethodover\nThis is a good article. However, in regards to credential stuffing:\n\n> Some guidance says to ban all passwords on this list. Try that and see how\n> successful your users are at choosing passwords at all.\n\nWe're doing that. We don't let you choose any password that's been discovered\nin a prior breach.\n\nDid Microsoft implement the same thing and discover a high rate of users\nbouncing off the registration page?\n\n~~~\njessriedel\nDo you guys specifically alert the user that the password has been exposed\npublicly? If I got that sort of message, I would be grateful to the website\nrather than annoyed I couldn't use my favorite password.\n\n~~~\nzaroth\nNot the password _for you_ , just that password, for someone, on some site,\never.\n\nIf that’s happened thousands of times, sure, that’s the sign of a relatively\ncommon/weak password. If it’s happened once? I’d be frustrated if I was trying\nto pick something memorable and got stuck because of that.\n\n~~~\njessriedel\nYes, I understand it was whether it's exposed anywhere, not just for this\nuser. If it was someone else's password, I would still find it super valuable\ninformation to know I'm using something that's common enough to have been used\nby a stranger.\n\n------\noceliker\nThis is somewhat unrelated, but I think the Microsoft 2FA (in Outlook, Skype,\nXbox, etc.) has a lot of unnecessary friction.\n\nAfter entering my password, the app usually takes me to a second page where I\nam required to type out my email address. I'd much rather prefer that I get an\nemail immediately, because the way things currently are, I won't be notified\nof any attempts that breach my password but not my 2FA. It provides no\nperceivable security benefit to me (and if someone did hijack my email\naccount, then they know my address anyway).\n\nIf I pick the text message option, then (after confirming my number the same\nway as above) I get a 7-digit code. For some odd reason, I find it much more\ndifficult to remember a 7-digit code than a 6-digit one, which seems to be\nstandard for most other companies. I don't see any extra security benefit in a\nlonger 2FA code, but maybe there's a valid reason for this one.\n\nThe issues above are mildly annoying on a PC. In an Xbox, however, with the\nonscreen keyboard, it honestly makes me want to throw my console out the\nwindow.\n\n~~~\nwill4274\n> It provides no perceivable security benefit to me (and if someone did hijack\n> my email account, then they know my address anyway).\n\nI think you're over focused on targeted attacks. Consider: some company gets\nhacked. Hackers take the credential list, try all the passwords for @outlook\naccounts against Microsoft using cloud VMs to avoid IP blocking. If Microsoft\ndisplayed the full email address without having the user re-type it, the\nattacker has now discovered the TFA email address and will try the same hacked\npassword against that (usually Gmail) account. If Microsoft displays nothing,\nusers with multiple emails get confused about which inbox to check. Displaying\na starred out email address and asking for a re-type solves both problems. It\nalso prevents Microsoft from having a huge SMS bill each time a big company\ngets hacked and the hackers try all the passwords.\n\nThe solution for Xbox is really for Xbox to use a flow designed for low input\ndevices, like the OAuth device flow which allows you to do all the typing on\nyour computer of cell phone, not the Xbox controller.\n\n~~~\noceliker\n> Displaying a starred out email address and asking for a re-type solves both\n> problems.\n\nSure, but why not simply show the starred out email without asking for the re-\ntype?\n\nI agree with the Xbox idea, that would perfectly solve the problem.\n\n------\nTimTheTinker\nNote this is from the perspective of a security decision maker, like an IT\nadministrator. Policy-wise, users can't be forced or trusted to create\nexcellent passwords on their own.\n\nBut as an individual, your passwords do matter. It makes a world of a\ndifference to use a password manager and long, completely random passwords -\nsuch passwords are immune to all sorts of cracking attempts, and using them\ncan often make MFA unnecessary/redundant (though using MFA always reduces your\npersonal attack surface).\n\n~~~\nsmacktoward\nThe point of the article is that many common attacks work just as well against\ncompletely random, unique passwords as they do against weak/reused ones. If\nyou get phished, it doesn't matter if your password is strong. If your machine\nhas a keylogger on it, it doesn't matter if your password is strong. Etc.\n\nLots of attacks boil down to the attacker convincing you to unknowingly\ndivulge your password, and if that password is the only thing securing your\naccount, you're boned no matter how strong it is.\n\n~~~\nTimTheTinker\n> unknowingly divulge your password\n\nWhat's to keep you from unknowingly divulging your MFA token's current\ngenerated code?\n\nYou're right that being phished/keylogged pwns a password-only account no\nmatter how strong the password, but MFA isn't immune to\nphishing/keylogging/clipboard stealing either. Yes, the generated code will\nonly give them access for 30 seconds (or whatever the algorithm's time\nwindow), but that's more than enough time for an attacker to get substantial\nwork done.\n\nI maintain that strong passwords in a password manager are probably good\nenough for security-conscious/appropriately skeptical people. For folks like\nthat, MFA likely isn't worth the trouble - at least not quite yet.\n\n~~~\njarfil\nMy main gripe with MFA, is that once you have 20+ services each one with a\ndifferent token, it becomes tedious to sift through them to find the right\none. I'd much rather have some MFA app capable of detecting where you're\nlogging in, and a \"click to authorize\" option.\n\nThat wouldn't completely stop someone from being able to steal the token, but\nit would thwart most simple keyloggers.\n\n~~~\nTimTheTinker\n1Password has that :-)\n\nSo if you auto-fill on a login page, it will place your username, password,\nand 2FA codegen into the site's authentication fields. It will _not_ auto-\nsuggest a login if you're not on the site it originated from - which is often\nenough to cause people to take a second look at the URL (which really helps\nthwart phishing).\n\nPlus, it sends your authentication info to the browser via a secure connection\nto the 1Password browser extension, so (a) your credentials can't be\nkeylogged, and (b) they never touch the clipboard, so they can't be stolen\nfrom there either.\n\nBut all of that is also true of non-MFA logins from 1Password. So again, I\ndon't see the added benefit of MFA if you're already using 1Password with long\nrandom passwords.\n\n------\nmnm1\nThis kind of shit coming from Microsoft is fucking rich. Then why do I have to\nchange my password constantly on outlook and get routed to at least two\ndifferent types of password change servers, one with rules stupider than\nanother? Especially when I'm trying to use a password manager with a strong,\nlong, random password and they are preventing me from doing so with their\nshitty UX and their limitation on characters? They should take their own\nfucking advice because you know what else reduces security? The stupid\nbullshit I described above. Now I just use a base password (that's probably\nbeen compromised) and increase the last digit by one each time. Insecure? You\nbetcha. But it's for work and it was work's decision to use outlook so not my\nproblem. Microsoft should either shut the fuck up about this shit or fix their\nown fucking systems. Of course it doesn't matter what password you use in such\na shit system (outside of a password manager generated one). And they have\nintentionally created a situation that makes the passwords even less secure.\n\n~~~\ncodeulike\nSounds like the place where you work has assigned some dumb password policies,\nand has a clumsy federation setup for password changes.\n\n~~~\nmnm1\nNo, we have nothing custom set up. It's just Outlook 365. They send you to one\npassword change page sometimes and another at other times. They both have\ndifferent password policies. Microsoft is just shit as far as security is\nconcerned. Or it could be a bug. Either way, it's garbage and it encourages\nnot using a password manager and not using strong passwords since the length\nis limited. I just wish they would shut up with their fucking research into\nsecurity if they won't bother to implement it themselves. Do as I say, not as\nI do. That's Microsoft and frankly, I'm fucking tired of their stupid\nbullshit.\n\n------\nDecoPerson\nIf we start thinking passwords don't matter, we go back to single-factor\nauthentication.\n\nWhat makes the \"second\" factor in 2FA more secure than the first? Is that it's\nusually a time-based generated key? Or is it that users usually use a physical\ndevice for this second key, hence removing a lot of internet-only attack\nvectors?\n\n~~~\ncloseparen\nTOTP and U2F both perform a single authentication from a captive secret,\nrather than revealing a reusable secret.\n\nU2F does even better, and ensures you are authenticating to the right website,\nnot an intermediary.\n\nIf we eliminated passwords in favor of onboard U2F chips, we'd be much better\noff than today, though not as amazing as U2F + passwords.\n\n~~~\ntialaramex\nArguably what's inside a U2F/ FIDO token isn't a secret but a private value.\n\nThe TOTP secret is known to the authenticator, they calculate the same TOTP\nvalue as you to verify that yours is correct.\n\nIn U2F / WebAuthn the device just proves it still knows a private asymmetric\nkey that it can use to sign messages, the authenticator learns the _public_\nkey, but not the private one, it can authenticate these signatures but not\nproduce its own.\n\nTo deliver pseudonymity the device doesn't use a single public/private pair\nfor everything but instead generates them randomly from a seed or key it knows\nand _this_ private value is what makes your FIDO Security Key different from\nmy FIDO Security Key so that you can be authenticated, whilst not making it\npossible to fingerprint you and see where else you use these credentials.\n\nSingle Factor FIDO is a thing, Microsoft offers it. The device takes a PIN\n(something you know) and incorporates that into the results, so that anyone\nwho doesn't know the PIN now can't authenticate even if they've stolen your\nSecurity Key. You need a suitable device, the Yubikey Security Keys with a \"2\"\nemblazened are suitable.\n\n------\nThorrez\nThe article seems to contradict itself. The table says password strength\ndoesn't matter for brute force unless you're using an unusable password. But\nthen in the conclusion it recommends you use a 9+ character password because\nthat protects you from brute force.\n\n~~~\nwillvarfar\nyeah. What the table needs is a column of how to mitigate each risk. Besides\nMFA, there's also all the things that the very first para says aren't\nimportant, e.g. avoiding password reuse (HIBP is now a Microsoft thing)\n\n------\nAnonymous4C54D6\nThis article is slightly inconsistent.\n\nAll those arguments for why a password's strength doesn't matter because the\nattackers gets the exact one have one important conclusion: Don't reuse your\npassword.\n\nAnd then there are a bunch of arguments that the strength mostly doesn't\nmatter but the password shouldn't be _too_ weak.\n\nSo we end up with having to remember lot's of non-trivial passwords and now\nthe conclusion should be to use a password manager and certainly not that your\npassword \"mostly doesn't matter\".\n\nWhat sadly mostly still doesn't matter is MFA because it is a site-specific\npain to set up and use.\n\n------\nkerng\nThere is some very bad analysis or interpretation done here.\n\nJust with one or two minor tweaks the analysis falls flat.\n\nFor instance, they seem to only look at mass scale script kiddie sprays, a\ntargeted attack will likely not use the mentioned passwords. As one can come\nup with much better and more likely to succeed candidates.\n\nIt also entirely misses attacks that come from a more privileged position\n(like in Windows directly authenticating to the domain controller) where an\nadversary can do millions of attempts in short time because of typical\nmonitoring gaps.\n\n------\npier25\n> _500M is ½ a billion, home rigs can run 100B guesses a second – so that\n> complete list just takes 5ms to try._\n\n5ms?\n\nIt would take more than that to just read the 500M passwords into memory, no?\n\n~~~\nfloo\nWell yeah. But you, presumably, only have to do that once. After that you get\n5ms per account, which seems to be the important takeaway.\n\n~~~\npier25\nBut even then, 5ms seems extraordinarily fast on a home machine.\n\nA couple of years ago I tried to bruteforce my WPA wifi handshakes and also\nplayed a bit with Hydra and I don't think I got even close to such speed.\n\n------\ndusted\nWhich is why we use hardware password managers and randomly generated unique\npasswords for every account. _pets finalkey_\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Hacker News For Money - davidsmith8900\nhttp://www.boredbanker.com/\n\n======\nczbond\nAbsolutely awesome. I see myself spending a lot of time on this.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSmithsonian Releases 2.8M Images into Public Domain - ChrisArchitect\nhttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/smithsonian-releases-28-million-images-public-domain-180974263/\n======\nblackbrokkoli\nAw, man!\n\nI really don't have anything substantial to say, but this is incredibly\nrefreshing: No dark patterns, no marketing ploy, no signup, no bullshit. No\nlicenses, no traps, no business interests!\n\nJavascript not required, but smooth UI & UX! Just pure knowledge. API access;\nmillions of files! Works right down to Lynx, an has a 3D previewer which is\nsmooth and gentle to my mid range laptop.\n\nI think this is gonna be my new example if someones says that commerce & ads\nare the backbone of the internet. If anyone of the responsible people happens\nto read HN, please continue to do good in the world!\n\n~~~\nzacharycohn\nThis is a great example of tax dollars at work. The Smithsonian is part of the\nUnited States government.\n\n~~~\nwpasc\nIt's a 501c3 which is ~half funded by taxpayers and half funded by\nphilanthropy. Almost like it forces you to recognize the benefits of both\ntypes of funding\n\n~~~\nxxpor\nI think it's more complicated than a pure 501c3. Their vehicles get US Gov\nlicence plates from the GSA.\n\n~~~\nTkTech\nIndeed, the Smithsonian is completely unique under US law[1].\n\n[https://www.si.edu/ogc/legalhistory](https://www.si.edu/ogc/legalhistory)\n\n------\ncarapace\n[https://www.si.edu/openaccess](https://www.si.edu/openaccess) The actual\nthing.\n\n> Welcome to Smithsonian Open Access, where you can download, share, and reuse\n> millions of the Smithsonian’s images—right now, without asking. With new\n> platforms and tools, you have easier access to nearly 3 million 2D and 3D\n> digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes\n> images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research\n> centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.\n\n------\nnessunodoro\nIf you're into natural history, search the 3D models. The in-browser viewer\nworks great.\n\n[https://www.si.edu/object/3d/490b6301-3869-455a-ba71-a89f5b6...](https://www.si.edu/object/3d/490b6301-3869-455a-ba71-a89f5b6c482c)\n\n~~~\ndTal\nHoly crap. \"Works great\" doesn't do it justice. I'm on mobile and I was not\nexpecting a buttery-smooth, photorealistic, flawlessly erogonomic multitouch\nexperience with an abundance of advanced powertools like section analysis.\nThat thing would be one of the most impressive _apps_ I've ever seen, never\nmind Web Apps!\n\nI want this as a Jupyter plugin, very badly.\n\n(where do I find more examples? The viewer is a work of art but did I miss the\nhyperlink to \"more cool stuff\"?)\n\n(edit: [https://3d.si.edu/](https://3d.si.edu/) )\n\n~~~\nyorwba\nLooking at the source, it seems like their viewer is based on OpenSeadragon:\n[https://openseadragon.github.io/](https://openseadragon.github.io/)\n\n~~~\nframefactory\nVoyager, the 3D viewer uses Three.js for WebGL rendering and a custom\nentity/component architecture for both the scene tree and the general\narchitecture of the application. The UI is built using custom Web Components\nwith the help of LitElement and LitHtml. The viewer itself is a web component\nand super easy to embed.\n\nThe tool suite also provides an authoring environment for annotating and\nediting scenes. Documentation: [https://smithsonian.github.io/dpo-\nvoyager](https://smithsonian.github.io/dpo-voyager). Contributions are very\nwelcome!\n\nFull disclosure: I'm the developer of the Voyager 3D suite.\n\n------\ntzfld\nHow much time until getty start sending copyright notices on these?\n\n~~~\nraister\nWhat if someone created a service like \"do I need a license for using this\nimage?\" \\- the system search by image somewhere and return its availability in\nthe public domain (perhaps someone already thought of this though, it's too\nobvious...\n\n~~~\nShorsHammer\nNot universal, but here they seem to be using iiif, you can simply add\ninfo.json after the identifier path and get the licensing info.\n\n------\nwst_\nThis reminds me of Polish National Library web site. They did the same thing\nsome years ago. They went into great effort to scan and publish digitally huge\namount of books, publications, postcards, images, etc. Some books are\ncenturies old. A lot of Polish content but not only. Have to admit, looking at\nold prints is a magical experience to me.\n\n[https://polona.pl/](https://polona.pl/) (change language on the bottom)\n\nEdit: I can see now, both, Smithsonian and National Library of Poland are part\nof the IIIF Consortium.\n\n------\nanigbrowl\nGetty's litigation department is gonna be so busy\n\n~~~\nkkotak\nThis.\n\n------\nlootsauce\nIs there a comprehensive list of all such large collections that have been\nmade available. I recall the Metropolitan Museum of Art released hundreds of\nthousands of images a while back.\n\n~~~\nlootsauce\nAh here is prior discussion on the Met release\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7781846](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7781846)\n\n------\nsimonsarris\nThis is great.\n\nI keep a list of 'High Quality Collections of Digitized Art and Archival\nFinds' and will add this one.\n\n[https://simonsarris.com/art-collections](https://simonsarris.com/art-\ncollections)\n\n~~~\nlootsauce\nHere is a great collection of maps you might want to add.\n\n[https://www.davidrumsey.com/](https://www.davidrumsey.com/)\n\nLicense there is CC BY-NC-SA 3.0\n\n~~~\nsimonsarris\nThanks, this very cool.\n\n------\nacd10j\nHow can we prevent sites like Getty images to claim copyright on these images\nand suing users who use these images ?\n\n------\ngowld\n\"Releasing to the public domain\" isn't something that can affirmatively be\ndone. The best you can do, which Smithsonian did, is CCO\n\n[https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)\n\nThanks to Creative Commons team for teaching the government how to do its job\n.\n\n~~~\nchipsa\nUnless you're the US government, in which case everything is public domain. A\ncopyright cannot be claimed on USG work product.\n\n~~~\nzozbot234\nAssuming that you _actually_ control the copyright, of course. This used to be\n(and may still be) a significant issue wrt. the Smithsonian itself; they host\nall sorts of content on their websites for which the actual copyright-\nownership situation was apparently entirely unknown (to the Smithsonian\nthemselves and anyone else).\n\n------\nbillfruit\nLooks like you one needs to use a search box to view images. Though it is\nbeing provided free of cost, and one shouldn't count the teeth of a gift\nhorse, it would have been better if there was some type of catalogue to see\nwhat exactly is in the dataset.\n\n------\nstfwn\nThis is awesome!\n\nI typed in 'jazz' and got a page on Charlie Parker's saxophone, a King Super\n20. It has 8 very high quality and nicely composed photos that you can\ndownload in TIFF format, some up to ~300MB in size. Each photo has a detailed\ndescription in text, as well as the dimensions of what's seen in the shot,\ninfo on when/where it was made and by whom and lots more! What a great\nproject.\n\n[https://www.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2019.10.1a-g](https://www.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2019.10.1a-g)\n\nE: One of the images has already been added to the Wikipedia entry for Charlie\nParker a couple of hours ago. How cool is this data set.\n\n------\nnomercy400\n..and Getty gains 2.8M images they can use to send copyright infringement\nletters...\n\n------\nreaperducer\n\"CC0 only applies to copyright so you may still need someone else’s permission\nto use a CC0-designated digital asset.\"\n\nSo, not actually \"public domain,\" but about as close as we get in 2020.\n\n~~~\ncolonwqbang\nNo that's not how I read it at all. A museum doesn't originate anything, they\nget donations. \"You may need someone else's permission\" because the\nSmithsonian doesn't guarantee that noone else in the world has a (good or bad)\nIP claim to one of the donations.\n\nThat's the kind of guarantee that you will never get unless you pay for it.\n\n~~~\nnl\n_You may need someone else 's permission\" because the Smithsonian doesn't\nguarantee that noone else in the world has a (good or bad) IP claim to one of\nthe donations._\n\nThat's not the intention of CC0:\n\n _In contrast to CC’s licenses that allow copyright holders to choose from a\nrange of permissions while retaining their copyright, CC0 empowers yet another\nchoice altogether – the choice to opt out of copyright and database\nprotection, and the exclusive rights automatically granted to creators – the\n“no rights reserved” alternative to our licenses._ ... _Dedicating works to\nthe public domain is difficult if not impossible for those wanting to\ncontribute their works for public use before applicable copyright or database\nprotection terms expire_ ... _CC0 helps solve this problem by giving creators\na way to waive all their copyright and related rights in their works to the\nfullest extent allowed by law._\n\nIn this case Smithsonian seems to have done the work to make sure they are out\nof copyright, and now they don't reserve any rights to the work.\n\n[https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-\ndomain/cc...](https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/)\n\n------\nriazrizvi\nTax dollars, invested into an institution that creates a public good, that is\nthen made available to the public, where any entrepreneur can recycle it for\nprofit and create more tax revenue. Beautiful fair capitalism at its finest!\n\n~~~\noblio\nWhat's \"fair capitalism\"?\n\n~~~\nriazrizvi\nSystems that encourage money to move into the hands of people that earn it, as\nopposed to lucky people who were born into it. Key examples of fair capitalism\nboosters (all be them for limited groups of people): 1217 England (Magna Carta\nfor English lords), 1618 North America (when the Virginia Company introduced\nprofit sharing for white settlers in the failing Jamestown), 1688 England (the\nGlorious Revolution for property owners), 1776 North America (where the new\nUSA codified equitable rules for European men).\n\nIn all these cases Royal monopoly power was curtailed, allowing more people\nthe opportunity to profit from their efforts. And there were relative economic\nbooms as a result. But we strangle growth when we reinforce monopoly power, or\nwhen we reinforce laws that keep money in the hands of people that didn’t earn\nit (and also strengthen the political power that money alone has).\n\nWhen monopoly power is a temporary reward for innovators, it works. Anyone\nthat seeks to extend the time limits of monopoly powers beyond the sweet spot\nis trying to restore one of those unfair capital systems that kill economic\ndevelopment. They generally don’t care because for them, it is about enriching\nthemselves whatever the cost to society.\n\n------\nbluedino\nTorrent?\n\n~~~\ntoomuchtodo\nI asked for a data dump via email, waiting to hear back. Ripping it all out is\ngoing to cost someone a pretty penny since it's hosted in AWS, better to ask\nsomeone to fill and ship some SATA drives. Then off to the Internet Archive!\n\n~~~\nzorm\nI saw a companion AWS blog on this:\n[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/smithsonian-3-mill...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/smithsonian-3-million-\nimages-smithsonian-open-access-initiative/)\n\nLooks like its part of the public dataset program so you can probably just ask\nfor the bucket name and get full free access to everything.\n\n~~~\npeatmoss\nI can confirm that this dataset is indeed part of the AWS Public Dataset\nProgram. We were finalizing some details, but this dataset is now listed in\nthe Registry of Open Data:\n\n[https://registry.opendata.aws/smithsonian-open-\naccess/](https://registry.opendata.aws/smithsonian-open-access/)\n\nEnjoy! I’m personally very excited about this dataset, and couldn’t be more\nimpressed with the people, mission, and, well, everything at the Smithsonian.\n\nSource: I work on the AWS Open Data team / had a small role in this (normal\nlawyerspeak caveats apply that my views and opinions are my own)\n\n~~~\ntoomuchtodo\nThank you!!\n\n------\nprojproj\nOh, cool. They have a search API. I'll plan to add this as a source to\ncanweimage.com.\n\n~~~\nnessunodoro\nOT- Neat, have you considered incorporating non-Wikimedia Commons images in\nyour public domain-only search? Flickr in particular has a surprising amount\nof quality highres images that the authors have released into the PD.\n\n~~~\nzozbot234\n> Flickr in particular has a surprising amount of quality highres images that\n> the authors have released into the PD.\n\nArguably, such images should be mirrored onto Commons ASAP (if they plausibly\nhave educational value and are PD in most of the world). It is unwise to rely\non a single profit-oriented company like Flickr to keep hosting this sort of\nstuff for the foreseeable future, whereas Commons is independently supported\nand specifically intended as a host for permissively-licensed media content.\n\n~~~\ncarlinmack\nthere are bots that patrol Twitter, upload permissive content with the correct\nattribution and link back to the source. See more here:\n[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Flickr2Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Flickr2Commons)\n\n------\ncenkozan\nWhile there, think of subscribing to their mail list as well! Unbelievably\ngood!\n\n~~~\ngxnxcxcx\nThe si.edu list or the smithsonianmag.com one? Maybe I'll try both just to be\nsure. :)\n\n------\nilamont\nUsing these images may not be so easy on established media platforms. Amazon,\nfor instance, screens ebooks for PD content.\n\n------\npeter303\nHow many 'Library of Congress' datasets is that?\n\n1 LOC = 15 TB according to google\n\n------\nrussfink\nInverted Jenny ... flex much? (J/K - awesome gallery!)\n\n------\nmarkdown\nThe search feature seems to be getting a hug of death.\n\n~~~\nlerie1982\nAPI is handling well, give it a go.\n\n------\nryan_lane\nCC0 license on assets, which is pretty great.\n\n------\nlerie1982\nThe API is great.\n\n~~~\ndanem\nLink to the API docs? I can't find them.\n\n~~~\nadventured\n[https://edan.si.edu/openaccess/apidocs/](https://edan.si.edu/openaccess/apidocs/)\n\n------\nalexcnwy\nVery cool\n\n------\nbotwriter\nUntil Getty starts suing people for using them!\n\n------\nKoshkin\n> _for patrons_\n\n~~~\ngjm11\nI don't think that means anything like \"for people who have physically visited\nthe Smithsonian\" or \"for people who pay us some sort of subscription\"; if you\nuse their website then you're a patron in the relevant sense.\n\nTheir webpage says \"Welcome to Smithsonian Open Access, where you can\ndownload, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images—right now,\nwithout asking.\" And everything's CC0-licensed.\n\n------\nWalterBright\n> and forbidding commercialization\n\nIt's nice to see the Smithsonian get over their distaste of the market economy\nin the US.\n\n~~~\nthaumasiotes\nWell, not quite.\n\n> the Smithsonian is featuring less than 2 percent of its total collections in\n> this initial launch. Much of the rest may someday be headed for a similar\n> fate. But Kapsalis stresses the existence of an important subset that won’t\n> be candidates for the public domain in the foreseeable future, including\n> location information on endangered species, exploitative images and\n> artifacts from marginalized communities.\n\n> “The way people have captured some cultures in the past has not always been\n> respectful,” Kapsalis says. “We don’t feel we could ethically share [these\n> items] as open access.”\n\nIf they don't trust you to think the right things about their artifacts,\nthey're not letting you use those artifacts.\n\n~~~\nzozbot234\n> If they don't trust you to think the right things about their artifacts\n\nIt's not about you or us, it's about anyone who might complain that the\nSmithsonian Institution is (as they see it) \"endorsing\" unethical practices by\nreleasing that particular content (a minor part of what they currently hold,\nsince \"much\" is in fact up for release) out in the open. Whether people \"think\nthe right things\" about the Smithsonian's actions can have real consequences,\nso it makes sense for them to care quite a bit about that.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAt the World's First Cybathlon, Proud Cyborg Athletes Raced for the Gold - timgluz\nhttp://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/bionics/at-the-worlds-first-cyborg-olympics-manmachine-hybrids-raced-for-the-gold\n======\npilom\nVideo highlights from the event and from the pre-trials:\n[http://www.cybathlon.ethz.ch/en/for-the-media/video-\ngallery....](http://www.cybathlon.ethz.ch/en/for-the-media/video-gallery.html)\n\n------\nkensai\nI was there! :) They have many photos on their Facebook pages, go check them\nout.\n\n------\nourmandave\nYou can't spell Cybathlon without Cylon!\n\n#SoSpellWeAll\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nHow I made six figures coding the year I dropped out of school - sunjieming\nhttps://lambdaschool.com/how-i-made-six-figures-coding-the-year-i-dropped-out-of-college\n======\naustenallred\nI think if I left my pregnant wife for three months she'd kill me\n\n~~~\nsunjieming\nYeah, it was really hard on our relationship. I work from home now though so\nthat has helped heal any damage that was done.\n\n~~~\nryanallr\nWhat if you left your fiance to sleep in a car for 3 months?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBoeing's 737 NG was manufactured using unsafe structural components (2010) - the_fonz\nhttps://www.flyertalk.com/forum/practical-travel-safety-security-issues/1201276-aljazeera-claims-737ng-structurally-unsafe.html\n======\nmjevans\nI think there are two things that would actually satisfy me at this point.\n\nAudited by an independent (E.G. EU's) agency, with open records...\n\nEITHER: A review of the actual paper trails and sources of the news story and\nbuild logs.\n\nOR: A randomized sample of like 5-10% of the planes from the suspect time\nrange looking at the suspect parts in question.\n\n~~~\nspectramax\nAre you suggesting that you’d rather trust EU agency than FAA?\n\nI think FAA had a fantastic record until this whole MAX PR nightmare - they’ve\ncertainly damaged their reputation. But I feel like domain experts at Boeing\nor Airbus definitely are going to have an edge vs a lowly paid government\nauditor. EU’s agency or whatever are still going to have to rely on Boeing\nengineers input.\n\nHaving worked in the aviation industry (I was designing C-130 fuselage\nsection) as a Mechanical Engineer, I can tell you that the whole enterprise\nsometimes feels like it’s supported on stilts, it’s a house of cards.\n\n~~~\nmjevans\nI'm saying that, BECAUSE of the loss of trust, yes. I currently would prefer\nthe EU to review US made air-frames, and the US to review EU made air-frames,\nwith the results open and reviewed by the other global agencies.\n\n~~~\nfmajid\nAs do the Ethiopians. They sent the black boxes to the French NTSB, clearly\nthey don’t trust US investigators not to be leaned on by Boeing.\n\nIn any case the root cause of the problem is Boeing cheaper out on the Angle\nof Attack detector, by default only one is installed, a second one as an\nadded-cost option. To be fault-tolerant, you need a quorum and thus a minimum\nof 3, as Airbus does. I would also add the 3 need to be made by different\nmanufacturers to avoid systemic issues, if disk array manufacturers can do it,\nso can Boeing for safety-critical equipment.\n\n~~~\nsalawat\n>Boeing cheaper out on the Angle of Attack detector, by default only one is\ninstalled, a second one as an added-cost option.\n\nThis is incorrect.\n\nThe 737 MAX 8 comes with two AoA vanes.\n\nThe paid upgrade package is to wire them both into the flight computer, and to\nadd an AoA disagree notification light.\n\n>To be fault-tolerant, you need a quorum and thus a minimum of 3, as Airbus\ndoes. I would also add the 3 need to be made by different manufacturers to\navoid systemic issues, if disk array manufacturers can do it, so can Boeing\nfor safety-critical equipment.\n\nThis is correct, but not infallible. It's really complicated as the last\nbatches of discussion here have gone into great length on.\n\nBoeing fubar'd by not accurately categorizing MCAS as a safety-critical\nsystem, as their original classification was \"Hazardous\" instead of\n\"Catastrophic\".\n\nThe original implementation had only +/\\- .6 degrees authority. After the\npaperwork was filed, they upped the gain to 2.5 degrees up to maximum trim\ndown over time, without reclassifying the subsystem as safety critical.\nTherefore no-one ever made sure that subsystem chain was bulletproof.\n\n------\nrurban\nReiteration of the whistle blowers lawsuit from 2005.\n[https://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-195565.html](https://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-195565.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Test coverage in side projects - Jackypot\nHave you guys noticed a difference in the number of tests you are inclined to write for your side project stuff as opposed to at work?<p>I have noticed that I write significantly fewer for my side projects. Is this normal or am I being lazy&#x2F;reckless?\n======\npizza\nIt's probably worth it if you work on the side project regularly enough for it\nto occasionally regress in known faulty ways. Otherwise I wouldn't worry about\na more low-maintenance approach.\n\n------\npmontra\nDon't feel alone. I usually have much less time to work on my side projects\nthan on customers projects so I tend to bang things together quickly. And so I\nwrite much less tests.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTell HN: Cricket Application for iPhone - Champions Cricket FREE - obaid\nhttp://www.championsapp.com\n\n======\nobaid\nLooking for reviews on the application. Thanks\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCountUp.js - electic\nhttp://inorganik.github.io/countUp.js/\n\n======\nzackbloom\nYou might also want to look at Odometer:\n[http://github.hubspot.com/odometer/docs/welcome/](http://github.hubspot.com/odometer/docs/welcome/)\n\n~~~\nianstormtaylor\nWow, really nicely done on that landing page. Curious, why'd you make the API\ndepend on a class name instead of assuming something more common like:\n\n    \n    \n      odometer(el, 42);\n\n~~~\nzackbloom\nWe've been having fun building things lately with transparent APIs. e.g. You\ndrop Pace[1] in a page, and it figures out how to create a progress bar from\nit.\n\nOdometer is nifty in this way because you can still just set the value with\ninnerHTML or .html, and it will animate it, so the overhead of adding it\nbecomes just adding the class to whatever elements you'd like.\n\nYou can actually also manually instantiate one pretty much exactly as you\ndescribed:\n\n    \n    \n        new Odometer({el: el, value: 42});\n    \n\n[1] -\n[http://github.hubspot.com/pace/docs/welcome/](http://github.hubspot.com/pace/docs/welcome/)\n\n~~~\nianstormtaylor\nWow, Pace just blew my mind. You guys are releasing some really awesome stuff\n:) random other thing is would be sweet if these were component[1] friendly.\n(Dunno if you've already checked out component, but it is insanely good for\nfront-end work.)\n\nOne pattern I picked up from reading TJ's code is the transparent\nconstructor...\n\n    \n    \n      odometer(el).value(42);\n    \n\n...which I like using to make things that share a bit of state, but are still\none-offs, a bit terser. (Coupled with avoiding options objects in general.)\nAchieved with the following:\n\n    \n    \n      function Odometer (el) {\n        if (!(this instanceof Odometer)) return new Odometer(el);\n        ...\n      } \n    \n    \n    \n\n[1]\n[https://github.com/component/component](https://github.com/component/component)\n\n~~~\nzackbloom\nWe try to include component.json files, but we don't use component, so it's\nusually left to a benevolent pull-requester. We've been using bower more and\nmore, and liking that a lot, but it's essentially arbitrary. It's a bit\nannoying that npm, bower and component all require their own files to say\nessentially the same thing.\n\nI agree with wrapping the constructor function. Requiring the consumer to\nremember new adds one more tripping point for users. In this case, I suppose\nmy thought was that the manual-creation path was such a small percentage of\nusers that it wasn't a huge deal.\n\n------\nniceguyneil\nSuggestion: allow passing in target as a DOMElement, rather than by id. That\nmakes this more useful when template rendering in done off-DOM, or when IDs\naren't used.\n\n~~~\nzackbloom\nIf it's an object treat it as a dom node, if it's a string, run it through\ndocument.querySelector.\n\n------\ninorganik\nThanks to the open-source community, a bunch of improvements and fixes have\nbeen made on this:\n\n\\- merged @lifthrasiir's PR. \\- counts in both directions \\- easing optional\n\\- supports IE8 \\- optional callback on animation complete \\- coffeescript and\nminified versions available\n\n------\nagildehaus\nIf I have it count up to 1 in 20 seconds, it only takes 10 seconds?\n\nIt also doesn't seem to be linear, which is fine, but there should be some way\nto make it linear\n\nAnd why just up? It'd be great if it could also count down.\n\n------\nGigablah\nLooks like the behaviour is limited to the first 2 decimals.\n\nYou can see this if you put 6 random decimal numbers and set the duration to\n20.\n\nI tried putting 10 decimals and it just shows a string of 0s after the 2nd\ndecimal.\n\n~~~\nlifthrasiir\nIndeed. It should use the scaling factor of 10^6 (instead of 60). I have\nsubmitted a pull req:\n[https://github.com/inorganik/countUp.js/pull/2](https://github.com/inorganik/countUp.js/pull/2)\n\n------\nCatsoCatsoCatso\nIt makes the figure comma formatted, most excellent.\n\nI've now implemented this in my ridiculous stock-market simulator game. Looks\nfantastic. Many thanks OP.\n\n------\nkevinastone\nWhy would you set `user-scalable=no` but not re-flow for tablets? I really\nwish Safari would provide an override for these incorrect viewport\ndeclarations.\n\n------\nricardobeat\nNothing happens on mobile safari, looks like the button is not clickable?\n\n------\nskrebbel\ndoesn't work at all on browsers without requestAnimationFrame support (e.g.\nOpera 12). I guess that that's fine, but then better display the final number\ninstead of 0.\n\n------\nasqwe\nso easing... really does this need to be library\n\n------\nthe1\nthat easing\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIntel Disables TSX Instructions - wglb\nhttp://www.anandtech.com/show/8376/intel-disables-tsx-instructions-erratum-found-in-haswell-haswelleep-broadwelly\n\n======\ncomex\nIncidentally, it's obnoxious that the enthusiast K series CPUs always had them\ndisabled, as well as VT-d (IOMMU) and vPro. While the current implementation\nof TSX may be immature, and mainly useful 'just' for hardware lock elision,\ni.e. some percentage boost (although isn't maximizing performance the whole\npoint of K series?)... in principle it could eventually allow new models of\nprogramming to be practical, without the huge overhead of STM, so it should be\nas widely available as possible. And VT-d, while useful for server-level\nvirtualization (as the name suggests), is also required for security against\nDMA attacks.\n\n~~~\ncclements\nI agree, that's really annoying. Thankfully it looks like they may be slowly\nintroducing some of these features to the K line. The 4790k for example is the\nfirst k chip that advertises support for VT-d. Still no vPro though.\n\n[http://ark.intel.com/compare/80806,80807](http://ark.intel.com/compare/80806,80807)\n\n------\nJoshTriplett\nEverybody still seems to be referencing the original news story, which in turn\nreferenced a tweet. Nobody seems to have a clue what the actual errata is;\nlooking forward to seeing the explanation of the bug and the conditions under\nwhich it can occur.\n\n------\nkazinator\nMuch discussion under this four-day-old submission:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8168569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8168569)\n\n~~~\nacqq\nMy favorite comment there:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8169697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8169697)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nUS Supreme Court rules DACA rescission was unlawful [pdf] - andrewla\nhttps://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-587_5ifl.pdf\n======\nrrss\nSetting aside for a moment whether DACA is 'good' or not, this seems like a\nbit of a strange decision to me. If rescinding DACA via memorandum was\nunlawful as a violation of the APA, why was implementing it by memorandum\nlawful?\n\nI haven't yet read the entire majority opinion, and maybe it will change my\nmind, but right now I tend to agree with Thomas:\n\n> Perhaps even more unfortunately, the majority’s holding creates perverse\n> incentives, particularly for outgoing administrations. Under the auspices of\n> today’s decision, administrations can bind their successors by unlawfully\n> adopting significant legal changes through Executive Branch agency\n> memoranda. Even if the agency lacked authority to effectuate the changes,\n> the changes cannot be undone by the same agency in a successor\n> administration unless the successor provides sufficient policy\n> justifications to the satisfaction of this Court. In other words, the\n> majority erroneously holds that the agency is not only permitted, but\n> required, to continue administering unlawful programs that it inherited from\n> a previous administration. I respect-fully dissent in part.\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\n> why was implementing it by memorandum lawful?\n\nBecause both implementing it and rescinding it are potentially lawful. SCOTUS\nhasn't ruled on that.\n\nThe Court simply says rescinding it _in a particular manner that violates the\nAdministrative Procedures Act_ is not lawful. It's a technicality; \"go back\nand try again\". The administration didn't dot their Is and cross their Ts, so\nthey got a smack on the wrist for it.\n\n~~~\nrrss\nbut what's weird is that the Obama administration didn't 'dot their Is and\ncross their Ts' either. The rescission of DACA has been held to this\n\"arbitrary and capricious\" standard, but the implementation never was.\n\nThe Supreme Court declined to review the lawsuit that challenged DACA as a\nviolation of the APA (probably because the plaintiff didn't have standing). It\nseems like the States that challenged DAPA will now challenge DACA on the same\ngrounds, so this decision is just the Supreme Court intentionally stalling -\nthe majority opinion is that the rescission is not sufficiently justified, and\nit seems like whether the implementation was unlawful is pretty important to\ndecide whether the justification was sufficient.\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\n> what's weird is that the Obama administration didn't 'dot their Is and cross\n> their Ts' either\n\nThis decision explicitly says otherwise; that they created a specific program\nwith specific requirements that follow the APA's rules.\n\n> Based on this directive, USCIS solicited applications from eligible aliens,\n> instituted a standardized review process,and sent formal notices indicating\n> whether the alien would receive the two-year forbearance. These proceedings\n> are effectively “adjudicat[ions].”\n\n> In short, the DACA Memorandum does not announce a passive non-enforcement\n> policy; it created a program for conferring affirmative immigration\n> relief.The creation of that program—and its rescission—is an “action [that]\n> provides a focus for judicial review.” Id., at 832. The benefits attendant\n> to deferred action provide further confirmation that DACA is more than\n> simply a non-enforcement policy. As described above, by virtue of receiving\n> deferred action, the 700,000 DACA recipients may request work authorization\n> and are eligible for Social Secu-rity and Medicare. See supra, at 3. Unlike\n> an agency’s refusal to take requested enforcement action, access to these\n> types of benefits is an interest “courts often are called upon to protect.”\n> Chaney, 470 U. S., at 832. See also Barnhart v. Thomas, 540 U. S. 20 (2003)\n> (reviewing eligibility determination for Social Security benefits).\n\n~~~\nenraged_camel\nYeah, that's one thing most people don't understand about Obama: he may have\nissued a lot of executive orders, but his administration spent a considerable\namount of time on making sure the provisions and programs created by those\norders were extensive and thorough.\n\nSCOTUS is basically saying, \"nope, you can't just declare your predecessor's\nwork illegal and null and void and call it a day, you need to actually provide\ngood reasons for why each part is illegal and should be undone.\"\n\n~~~\nmasonic\nThe Obama had the worst record of any administration at having actions\noverturned by the Supreme Court... and having the most overturned\n_unanimously_.\n\n[https://freebeacon.com/politics/study-obama-worst-record-\nsup...](https://freebeacon.com/politics/study-obama-worst-record-supreme-\ncourt-modern-history/)\n\n------\nest31\nA bit unrelated but as it's hn, I wonder about which tools they used to write\nthese documents. The metadata says they used Acrobat Distiller, but that only\nconverts .ps files into .pdf. What creates the ps files?\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nIt’s word documents that get converted to PDF via the Adobe PDF printer\ndriver.\n\n~~~\nest31\nThanks! Amazing that you can get documents look so nice by using Word only. It\nlooks almost as good as if they used TeX.\n\n~~~\nsupernova87a\nWell, they have had hundreds of years to get the format right... lol.\n\nBtw, since you bring up this topic, I'll say that one thing that courts,\nlegislatures simply cannot seem to get right is the use of graphics, charts,\nand important data figures when they would do wonders to clarify about some\nissue. The most a SCOTUS opinion ever has is a map. See also the Federal\nRegister. It's like the typewriter still rules our discourse for these things.\n\nBut for many more modern issues, where graphics and explanatory visual data\nwould clarify things immensely, our legal/legislative system only seems to be\nable to handle 12-point double spaced words.\n\nThis is sometimes a big hindrance to understanding.\n\n------\nanilshanbhag\nIt increasingly seems like the Supreme Court of the US is becoming a political\ntheatre because Congress can't get its act together. Supreme Court shouldn't\nlegislate but it is forced to as lawmakers in Congress can't do their job.\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\nWhat was legislated here?\n\nThey ruled that the White House didn't _follow_ the _existing legislation_.\n\n~~~\nkyrra\nMy understanding is that DACA originally was entirely created out of an\nexecutive order, ie: there is no legislation backing it. The main argument\nI've seen is that it was created out of the executive, so any future executive\nshould be able to come forward and revoke it, assuming they follow the proper\ncomment process and notices.\n\n~~~\nlisper\nThe legislation requires the administration to justify its actions. The\ncreation of DACA provided such a justification, the repeal didn't. So stopping\nthe repeal is just temporary. The Trump administration will try again, just\nlike they did with the Muslim ban, and eventually they will succeed unless the\nclock runs out first.\n\n~~~\nzaroth\n> The creation of DACA provided such a justification, the repeal didn't.\n\nI quoted this below from Justice Clarence Thomas, but it also directly\nresponds to your point;\n\n> _DHS created DACA during the Obama administration without any statutory\n> authorization and without going through the requisite rulemaking process. As\n> a result, the program was unlawful from its inception._\n\nThat’s from the dissent. The majority ignored this like it doesn’t matter.\nRules for thee but not for me.\n\n~~~\nlisper\nYou should consider the possibility that the majority ignored it because it\nisn't true. DACA started in 2012 so the Republicans had four years to mount a\nlegal challenge on those grounds. The fact that they didn't is evidence that\nThomas is simply wrong.\n\n~~~\nzaroth\nThe judicial history is complex. Expanded DACA from 2014 actually was\nchallenged under APA grounds, the 5th circuit upheld the stay, it went to the\nSupreme Court, which ruled 4-4 on it meaning the 5th court ruling stood which\nheld that it violated APA;\n\n> _On November 9, 2015, a divided panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals\n> upheld the district court’s order granting the preliminary injunction. The\n> majority accepted the lower court’s findings that Texas has standing to\n> bring this lawsuit based on the additional costs it would incur to issue\n> driver’s licenses to beneficiaries of expanded DACA and DAPA. The court\n> acknowledged that judicial review is unavailable under the APA where a\n> matter is committed to agency discretion and that the government’s\n> immigration enforcement priorities fall squarely within this category;\n> nonetheless, the majority also found that the plaintiff states were likely\n> to prevail on their claim that the federal government should have pursued\n> notice-and-comment rulemaking because DAPA and expanded DACA determinations\n> are non-discretionary. In addition, the majority held that the new deferred\n> action initiatives are arbitrary and capricious because the federal\n> government did not have authority to promulgate them under the Immigration\n> and Nationality Act._\n\n[1] - [https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/legal-\nch...](https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/legal-challenges-\nexecutive-action-on-immigration)\n\n------\nandrewla\nNot a slam dunk as the court has ruled that it is within the executive\nbranch's power to rescind DACA. They ruled that the government's justification\nat the time of the rescission did not meet the standards of the Administrative\nProcedure Act.\n\n~~~\naddicted\nTrue but doesn’t this dismiss the argument that DACA itself is unlawful?\n\n~~~\nzaroth\nIn Clarence Thomas’s dissent;\n\n> _Today the majority makes the mystifying determination that this rescission\n> of DACA was unlawful. In reaching that conclusion, the majority acts as\n> though it is engaging in the routine application of standard principles of\n> administrative law. On the contrary, this is anything but a standard\n> administrative law case._\n\n> _DHS created DACA during the Obama administration without any statutory\n> authorization and without going through the requisite rulemaking process. As\n> a result, the program was unlawful from its inception. The majority does not\n> even attempt to explain why a court has the authority to scrutinize an\n> agency’s policy reasons for rescinding an unlawful program under the\n> arbitrary and capricious microscope. The decision to countermand an unlawful\n> agency action is clearly reasonable. So long as the agency’s determination\n> of illegality is sound, our review should be at an end._\n\n~~~\ndariusj18\nMan, that opinion is a bunch of bull. If one President does something and\nanother wants to undo it, they can't just leave everyone effected by it in a\nlurch, even if DACA was brought to the courts and ruled unconstitutional, it\nwould still be the responsibility of the executive to deal with the people\naffected by it.\n\n~~~\ndiebeforei485\n\"Deal with\" people affected by it - for how long?\n\nIf they gave everyone say an extra year to get one more renewal in, and\nallowed even more time for specific cases (people serving a tour of duty in\nthe military, or people who are in college, or people going through medical\ntreatment), would that be sufficient?\n\nThe majority opinion suggests it would be sufficient (pages numbered 25-26).\nAfter all, a program created by the administrative branch can be ended by the\nadministrative branch.\n\n~~~\ndariusj18\nThe main difference between Thomas's opinion and the majority's seem to be\nthat Thomas thinks the Obama administration didn't have authority to implement\nDACA, whereas the majority doesn't seem to want to rule on that, but doesn't\nbelieve that the government can just pull the rug out from underneath someone\neither way.\n\nAdditionally I'm not sure if \"DHS can terminate or renew deferred action at\nany time at the agency’s discretion\" is as open ended as all Thomas seems to\nimply. Certainly that discretion itself has to be legal. ex. They couldn't\njust decide to deport people who don't donate to a political candidate. It has\nto follow some legal process.\n\nIMO it is a failure of the Legislative branch to deal with this.\n\n------\nwhoisvibe\nAs a software engineer under the DACA program, who just sent his renewal\nyesterday, and should arrive at the USCIS lockbox by noon today. This is a\nrelief.\n\n~~~\nscarface74\nThis is what I find so amazing on the face of Trump trying to get rid of DACA.\n\nTrump said he wanted “the good immigrants” (yes this in an of itself is\ncringeworthy) that added value to America. DACA does exactly that. The\nadministration is just pandering to the worse part of his constituency.\n\n------\ntmaly\nThis type of ruling may have some unintended consequences. If the court gives\nthe green thumb to this type of executive order abuse, who is to say that the\ncurrent president won't use this same tactic to tie the hands of the next\npresident?\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\nIt _should_ be somewhat difficult to end a program affecting 700k people,\nespecially when that has enormous impact on those people.\n\n~~~\ntmaly\nI don't think the number of people affected was at issue in the ruling. It was\nmore about some administrative law. Am I understanding this correctly?\n\n------\nnindalf\n“We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies. We\naddress only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that\nit provide a reasoned explanation for its action.” - Chief Justice Roberts\n\nTrump's justification was \"creating or maintaining the program was beyond the\nlegal power of any president.\"\n\nThe SC wants a better justification.\n\n~~~\nepistasis\nThis sort of rank incompetence about executive power and legal justifications\nhas been a persistent trend with the Trump administration. I've been following\nenergy policy closely for a while, and despite appointing a head to the\nDepartment of Energy who said in his presidential campaign that he wanted to\nabolish the DoE, there has been almost no significant change in policy. There\nhasn't even been any policy on coal that could stand up to the least bit of\nscrutiny as being legal and authorized.\n\nIf there was even a basic level of competence from Trump and appointees, we\nwould be living in a far different nation by now.\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\nJust a note: Coal's largely within the purview of the Department of the\nInterior. DOE is confusingly named.\n\n~~~\nepistasis\nThe DOE sets policies for the grid, however, and the only way coal could have\nsurvived is massive amounts of subsidies for burning coal, since it is no\nlonger an economical way to generate electricity.\n\nRick Perry met with coal execs, and ended up proposing extremely bone-headed\nrules for require long certain amounts of stored fuel (or something)which he\nthought would benefit coal. However the whole ordeal was too poorly defined to\ngo forward. Fortunately, as it would have raised electricity prices for the\nbenefit of more COPD deaths in the US.\n\n------\nDigory\nRoberts is trying to run out the clock on Trump. This decision comes out\ndifferently with another President.\n\n~~~\nscarface74\nRoberts did the Republicans a favor. The Democrats would have trotted out\npeople who have benefitted from DACA and were deported and rightfully used it\nto beat up all Republican politicians.\n\n------\nisabelc\nMaybe just me, but I think Trump had no intention of actually rescinding DACA.\nThis was a show for his voters to make it look like he tried. It was a\npurposely weak try that he knew would not hold up.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nCompiling an application for use in highly radio-active environments - ingve\nhttp://stackoverflow.com/q/36827659/563941\n======\ntgamblin\nAnother place this use case comes up is supercomputing. Not because of the\nunusual levels of radioactivity, but because of unusual numbers of processors.\nWhen you have more components, a single bit flip somewhere is increasingly\nlikely. Resilience has been a research area in HPC for a while now, and people\nhave looked at fault tolerant algorithms, redundancy schemes, faster\ncheckpointing, and other ways to make sure your HPC application running on a\nmillion cores won't die because one core gets a bit flip.\n\nSo far this has luckily remained a research area in practice, because the\nvendors tend to do a good job of hardening their machines against errors as\nthey get larger (most of the gloom and doom predictions take the error rates\nof current hardware and extrapolate). It will be interesting to see if it\nremains that way.\n\nRelevant article:\n[http://superfri.org/superfri/article/view/14](http://superfri.org/superfri/article/view/14)\n\n~~~\nams6110\nSame reason RAID-5 doesn't work on for large disks. If you have a dozen 3TB\ndrives in an array and one dies, the probability that you'll get a read error\non another drive during the rebuild is quite high.\n\nGiven enough bits, random errors that individually are almost impossible\nbecome almost a certainty.\n\n~~~\nbrokenmachine\nWhat level of RAID would you use for an array involving a dozen 3Tb drives?\n\nIf the drives can't be trusted, then you'd need some kind of error correction\nin software, I'd presume. I thought the drives should auto-correct any read\nerrors.\n\nI'm not talking about in a radioactive environment, just normal usage.\n\n------\nexabrial\nI remember learning in my embedded programming class about state machines and\nhow certain states cannot be reached.\n\nIn the lab, I accounted for every possible valid state with a transition out\nto another state.\n\nI left my microcontroller running when I went to get lunch, came back and it\nwas frozen. I did a dump, and discovered it was idling in a state that has no\nentry into it, and because I had no exit, it would just sit there.\n\nI 'fixed' the problem by adding a transition to reset the controller from\nevery state that shouldn't be reached.\n\n~~~\npeterwwillis\nThis is considered a minor security feature. When a program unexpectedly finds\nitself in a routine, or a routine ends abruptly, it's possible it was a code\njump, or the after-effects of a payload... Neither of which are good things.\n\n~~~\nTazeTSchnitzel\nIf you use a switch(), have a default:, even if it's seemingly impossible.\n\n~~~\njakub_g\nand print \"call Brian\" in it (anecdote from a HN thread a month ago):\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11397251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11397251)\n\n------\nNormal_gaussian\nSo the use case here is particularly interesting.\n\nMost of the answers are talking about spaceflight, because it is one of the\nonly radioactive environments that has a particle distribution that can be\neffectively fought.\n\nMost earthbound environments have particle distributions that are practically\nunsolvable in software, and should instead be solved by using mechanical and\nnoise tolerant analogue methods of sensing and manipulating and then massively\nshielding your computation (normally by controlling from a different\nbuilding).\n\n*Note. By particle distribution I am refferring to both rate and charge\n\n~~~\nphkahler\n>> Most of the answers are talking about spaceflight...\n\nAnother place to look is in safety critical systems. IEC 61508 in general and\nthe automotive variant xxx26262. There are several dual core processors\navailable now that run two copies of the code and check for any errors. That\ndoesn't tell you which one failed, but it does catch the error. There are\nmethods defined for creating fault tolerant systems too.\n\nWe've been doing this shit for years - your electric steering system, brakes,\neven throttle control (with certain exceptions of course ;-)\n\nThe funny thing in cars is that most of those systems have mechanical backups\nor consider \"shut down\" an undesirable but reasonable failure (vs steering\nleft or dumping brake fluid). Your car can coast to the side of the road under\ndriver control without any power. All this self driving stuff will require\nfully redundant components for some of these systems (including LIDAR or\ncameras) to really be safe.\n\n~~~\nexplanibrag\nI once read that NASA control engineers have three independent teams code up\nthree versions of their guidance systems. If the systems disagree, they go\nwith the majority vote.\n\n~~~\nbrandmeyer\nThe jargon for this practice is multiversion programming. Its based on the\nidea that different people will make different errors when implementing a\ndesign. However, in practice we find that errors are actually moderately or\neven strongly correlated between different programmers. So this practice is\nrather uncommon.\n\n~~~\nnickpsecurity\nIt's one of techniques I used to recommend although for anti-subversion\ninstead of safety. I was worried whst you said might turn out true. My\nsolution and hypothesis is that using three, very-different languages should\ncounter that effect. Hard to imagine the same error happening in PreScheme,\nSPARK, and C.\n\n------\ndkopi\nThese type of posts are what bring me to hacker-news.\n\n------\niliis\nAnother interesting case apart from spaceflight where radiation hardness is\nimportant: Particle accelerators.\n\nCERN for example has a lot of material, a quick search leads to e.g.\n[https://lhcb-elec.web.cern.ch/lhcb-\nelec/html/rad_hard_links....](https://lhcb-elec.web.cern.ch/lhcb-\nelec/html/rad_hard_links.html) or the Radiation to Electronics workgroup\n[https://r2e.web.cern.ch/R2E/](https://r2e.web.cern.ch/R2E/)\n\n------\nderekp7\nI'm reminded of an old game called Core War, where the object is to write code\nthat corrupts your opponent's code while simultaneously protecting your own\ncode. I wonder if people who are good at that game would be the best\ncandidates for this type of fault tolerant programming?\n\n~~~\ndkopi\nIsrael has had its own version called \"codeguru extreme\" that's been going on\nfor the last 11 years. The rules are significantly different, but the idea and\ninspiration is from core wars. (Sorry, hebrew only:\n[http://www.codeguru.co.il/xtreme/about.htm](http://www.codeguru.co.il/xtreme/about.htm))\n\nIt's sponsored by IBM, A large Israeli college, A technological high school\nchain - And Several Israeli Technological Military Units (Air force,\nCommunications, Cyber). So yeah, that's probably a really good indicator you\nmight be on to something.\n\n~~~\nunexistance\na few more resources\n\n[https://github.com/codeguru-\nil/corewars8086-survivors/tree/m...](https://github.com/codeguru-\nil/corewars8086-survivors/tree/master/cgx2005)\n\n[http://cyber.org.il/assembly/codeguru-\nguide.pdf](http://cyber.org.il/assembly/codeguru-guide.pdf)\n\n------\njacobsladder\nDoing any modification to the source code to prevent this is not a good\ndesign. C/C++ is not designed for this use case, so it's going to create a\nmess if one will try to work around this. This might lead to similar problems\nthat premature optimization does to the code. Instead the solution should be\non hardware level, like in airplanes. Put three computers in radiation\nenvironment. Then put a forth computer that'd analyze the computing results\nfrom the three computers and do action only when there 3 out of 3 or 2 out of\n3 computers agree on the result. Or average / median can be applied, depending\non the task. Ideally the fourth computer needs to be put in non-radioactive\nenvironment. If not possible, that still simplifies the problem somewhat.\nBecause only the final forth computer who collects the data and selects the\ntrustworthiness can contain bugs, not the rest of the code.\n\n~~~\njacobsladder\nTo clarify, each piece of the puzzle must do what it is expected to do,\notherwise it will be hacky. It's not expected for C++ program to detect its\nunderlying hardware problems, there are no tools, nothing for that. So any\nsolution would then look like and feel like a hack, temporary workaround. It's\nhowever expected for the computer as a whole to produce buggy results, it's\nnormal and there are many existing design solutions that can take that into\naccount and work around that. So that's why you take three computers and judge\ntheir output. Then each piece of the puzzle does it what it is intended to do,\nit does what it is expected to do and it doesn't do stuff outside of its\nresponsibility.\n\n~~~\njacobsladder\nSorry it looks like a flooding, but to add to that, having program self-check\nitself is also unnecessarily ties the program to its usecase in the radiation\nenvironment, it creates unnecessary strong dependency to its execution\nenvironment, and that just goes against all the good principles of design.\nIt's like having a software for clock in the microwave machine be aware that\nit is placed in the microwave machine.\n\n~~~\nnitrogen\nGood principles of software design are simply different in different\nenvironments.\n\nThe microwave clock knows it's a microwave because it controls the microwave.\nIt would be wasteful to put extra layers of abstraction in such a small\nsystem.\n\nLikewise, a system designed for radiation tolerance will expect a close\ncoupling between software and hardware; the whole point of the software in\nthat case _is_ the hardware.\n\n------\nbeagle3\nAs far as I can see, no one mentioned fluidic[0] computation so far. I am not\naware of a fluidic processor that can run C++ compiled code, but .. if you\nwant hardware that can withstand 1000 degree celsius, there's pretty much no\nalternative that I'm aware of.\n\n[0]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics)\n\n------\nUnklejoe\nI write code that is executed in rad environments.\n\nThe fist thing I learned is that any plan that I come up with to help mitigate\nrisks always ends up being proven less effective than I initially thought. The\nidea that the hardware can flip bits or latch up behind your back is rarely a\nconsideration for most software design work, so it really requires an entire\nnew way of thinking. In the end, it's all about reducing probabilities, but\nsometimes your mitigation techniques can be borderline useless. This could be\nbecause of my relative lack of experience though. I'm sure there are people\nwho have been doing this a while and have converged on a design process that\nworks well.\n\nCouple this with the fact that code in the failure path very rarely gets\nactually tested with _real_ failures during design, and you end up with\nsituations where your entire test/precaution/recovery technique is rendered\nuseless by a single oversight.\n\nIt kind of reminds me of how some bootloaders perform a DRAM test during power\nup. The only problem is that these tests are usually executing after the\nbootloader is already running from RAM itself. Sure, it's better than nothing\nand may help to find some obscure errors like a bad address line pin or\nsomething, but the issue here should be obvious - if there was a real problem\nwith the DRAM, it's likely you wouldn't even get to that test, so now what?\n\nAnother example: suppose you have a PI bus connecting to an FPGA, and you are\nrelying on the PI_done line to pace transfers. Now, a common test to verify\nthe bus is working would be to read some magic word from the FPGA or maybe use\nan XOR test register, but what happens when there's an actual failure like a\nbad connection to the bus or bad power to the FPGA? Well, the CPU throws an\nexception and resets because the timeout for the PI_done expires. This all\nhappens before your test has a change to even print anything to the console.\n\nI run into these kinds of issues all the time when designing software routines\nto self-test the hardware on our devices.\n\nEverything is all good when the hardware works, but as soon as hardware starts\nactually failing, all of those diagnostic tests are suddenly useless.\n\nI've gotten kind of off topic here, but the thought process is what I'm\ngetting at.\n\nIt usually goes a little something like this:\n\nPossible solution: Always have a backup OS image. Caveat: There's only one\ncopy of the bootloader, so if that area of the flash gets screwed, we're done.\n\nPossible solution: Scrub the contents of RAM to check for errors. Caveat: The\nscrub routine is running from RAM.\n\nPossible solution: Use a watchdog timer to force a reset if the CPU runs away.\nCaveat: What if the watchdog timer latches up and the CPU hard locks?\n(Unlikely, I know).\n\nIn the end, you can do a lot in SW to make a system more rubust, but the\nultimate solution is probably on the mechanical side. You're better off\nspending your efforts modifying the enclosure and submerging the thing under\nwater than you are spending hours designing in software techniques to try to\nrecover from HW errors.\n\nTLDR: Most people agree that software techniques for mitigating risks in a rad\nenvironment are all about reducing probabilities, but I feel that such\ntechniques have a good chance of being less effective in practice than people\nmay think. I don't know what the point of this comment really was though,\nother than being negative. :)\n\n~~~\ncm2187\nStupid question. For any other use than a satellite where weight is critical,\nisn't it easier to protect the computer with a heavy enough layer of metal and\nnot worry about radiations, or are we talking about radiations that are so\nhigh that it wouldn't help?\n\n~~~\nUnklejoe\nGood question. I'm not sure about the specifics of the stackoverflow poster's\napplication, but for my case, they're used in space.\n\nIt's my understanding that you would need a very thick layer of metal to\nactually protect a device. Generally, lead works, but the thickness required\nwould mean that your device would be extremely heavy. However, like you said,\nthis isn't a problem for ground applications.\n\nAlso, apparently water works well too.\n\nThis is all honestly beyond my knowledge though. Our customers do their own\nqualification since these are COTS devices, so any failures may be handled on\ntheir end by making separate enclosures or using another vendor's system as a\nbackup. They haven't actually asked us to implement any software based risk\nmitigation, but I investigated it on my own.\n\n~~~\n0xFFC\nAnother stupid question, can you suggest a reading about reliable software\ndevelopment ? (I prefer book)\n\nBTW thank you for excellent information in your comment.\n\n~~~\nUnklejoe\nSadly, I don't know of any good resources. It's kind of a specific topic, and\nit wasn't really part of my task to consider these issues, so I only spent a\nsmall amount of time researching it myself.\n\nI believe most of the studies were conducted by NASA, so incorporating that\ninto a search should help.\n\n------\ndkopi\nInterestingly - A lot of the advice here (such as having an \"Active\" module\nand a \"Standby\" module with a heartbeat between them, Watchdogs, reducing\nsingle points of failure, error detection codes) is applicable to a lot of\nother High Availability scenarios. Think load balancers, databases, routers\nand high scalability networking devices for example.\n\n------\ntechnion\nI appreciate it may not be the right tool in an extremely resource constrained\nembedded environment, but the \"my hardware can't be relied on\" on problem is\nalmost exactly what's described several Erlang guides.\n\n[http://learnyousomeerlang.com/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-\nconcu...](http://learnyousomeerlang.com/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-concurrency)\n\n------\nSapphireSun\nI wonder if there's a specialized debugger that injects random faults into\nyour code while its running (e.g. flipping booleans or IO to peripherals). Not\njust fuzzing the inputs to the program, but fuzzing the contents of memory and\nregisters as routines run. You could set the fuzz rate at different levels to\ndetect different kinds of errors (e.g. maybe one error happens frequently but\nanother requires a timer to tick up to a certain level before errors can\naffect it).\n\nEDIT: Thinking about this a bit more, for messing with registers, you probably\nneed specialized hardware or you need to intercept the data on the way to the\nregister.\n\n~~~\nbjackman\nYou could do this with an emulator I'm sure. At my company we have fairly\nhigh-fidelity models of the hardware we use/develop which could probably\ninclude on-chip peripherals in the things fuzzed. Also I guess in irradiated\nenvironments you use very simple hardware (no caches, MMUs, complex memory\nbus/controller) so that would make it more feasible. Would probably be really\nfun to develop!\n\nEdit: if you had the resources maybe you could even fuzz simulations of the\nRTL. Our systems take about a week to boot Linux on simulations but I guess\nthat would drop dramatically for simpler MCU systems.\n\n~~~\nSapphireSun\nThat does sound like an incredible start. I fear that for the kinds of\napplications we're talking about speed could be an issue. For instance, if the\nsystem has to respond to events it can't control, queues of events can build\nup or things that are likely to be synchronized might not be etc. I feel like\nin many situations, you'd want to run at full speed for official tests though\nearly testing could use an emulator. Of course, if you're emulating a much\nslower hardware as you mentioned, the test is more realistic. ;)\n\n~~~\nbjackman\nAh the timing thing is not actually an issue because you simulate or emulate\nthe entire system, including timers and even the PLLs that drive them. There's\na globally consistent timeline. Of course this places constraints on the\nthings you can simulate (e.g. networking is out the window).\n\n------\nash\nThere was an interesting 2012 interview with John Muratore (SpaceX director of\nvehicle certification) about radiation tolerant design on SpaceX Dragon:\n[http://aviationweek.com/blog/dragons-radiation-tolerant-\ndesi...](http://aviationweek.com/blog/dragons-radiation-tolerant-design)\n\n------\nscribu\nOn a more trivial note, this reminds me of the radiation-hardened quine:\n[https://github.com/mame/radiation-hardened-\nquine](https://github.com/mame/radiation-hardened-quine)\n\nWould be amazing if the method used for implementing it could be generalised\nsomehow.\n\n------\nswayvil\nOff the top of my naive head.\n\nHave 3 or 5 or a dozen copies of the thing running in parallel. As many as it\ntakes.\n\nEvery action calls for a vote among the copies. Majority rules.\n\nPeriodically validate the data. Again, majority determines what's valid.\n\n~~~\noutworlder\nMake sure that the code that does the \"ballot\" is not a single point of\nfailure itself.\n\n~~~\nswayvil\noh good point. That makes it more interesting.\n\n------\ndheera\nFor ground-based applications, why can't this be solved by building a lead-\nshieled chassis? Like everything else in the software engineering world,\nabstract out the radioactivity problem and solve it separately. The other\nfunctional units shouldn't have to know or care about whether they are running\nin a radiactive or non-radioactive environment.\n\n~~~\njotux\nThere are actually processors designed specifically to prevent issues like\nthis [1]. They use ECC flash, ECC RAM, and dual CPUs that run in lock-step.\n\n1\\. [http://www.ti.com/product/rm48l550](http://www.ti.com/product/rm48l550)\n\n------\nkylehotchkiss\nCoolest SO question I've seen in a while.\n\n------\ni336_\nWhile not about radiation hardening or redundant hardware, this article shows\nhow StarCraft's developers discovered and handled random hardware failure:\n[http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/whose-bug-is-this-\nanyway](http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/whose-bug-is-this-anyway)\n\nThe bug webpage mentioned in the article is dead, and clicking the link subtly\nredirects you. Here's the archived version:\n[http://web.archive.org/web/20140824005145/http://www.guildwa...](http://web.archive.org/web/20140824005145/http://www.guildwars.com/support/en-\nhardwarefailure.php)\n\n------\nsickbeard\nisn't this like trying to do numerical analysis while having alzheimer's? if\nthe hardware is bad, your software will be bad.\n\n~~~\nbaq\nyou're pessimistic. the optimist would say 'how much numerical analysis can i\ndo at varying levels of alzheimer?' and responses to the question are very\nwell worth reading.\n\n~~~\nsickbeard\nAll good, except most of your mitigating code/tricks cannot be tested reliable\nto know they actually work.\n\n~~~\nVLM\nLiberal arts types say engineers are not creative, but they're wrong. Find\nsome creative engineers, it won't be much of a challenge.\n\nWrite 5 lines of perl that run logical AND and logical OR on a randomly\ngenerated bitmap emulating flash memory error rates at 1e-3, 1e-5, 1e-7, then\nrun a billion emulation cycles (depending on code complexity this might take a\nlong time, or maybe not).\n\nIf you're doing it right, you have the code for the emulator, never use closed\nsource for this kind of work unless you trust it with your life (LOL) so\nimplement statistical error injection in your emulator. Guess what, your CPU\nadder now has a 1e-5 bit error rate.\n\nThis is before the dreaded \"programmer with a soldering iron\" is unleashed. A\nwhite noise source is attached to pin D0 of the CPU and levels are increased\nwhile behavior of the system is analyzed in the test jig.\n\nSimplistically, radiation is linear, so running at 100x intensity for a month\nis the same as running at design intensity for 100 months. Talk to your local\nnuclear physicist or radiologist. Especially about neutron activated decay\nproducts, LOL. In more detail, if it takes xenon 12 hours to build up to a\nproblem level, you can't just test at 100x intensity for an hour and call it\ngood because 11 hours after the test ends you'll finally have 100x the xenon\ndecay product as a contaminant, but that's a weird situation.\n\n~~~\nmturmon\nOne implementation of a single-event-upset testbed that I worked with used the\nvalgrind infrastructure to inject faults in running code, purely in software.\n(Example: [http://www.sts.tu-\nharburg.de/research/fitin.html](http://www.sts.tu-\nharburg.de/research/fitin.html), earlier work:\n[http://dus.jpl.nasa.gov/projects/solar/Papers/granat-abft-\nsv...](http://dus.jpl.nasa.gov/projects/solar/Papers/granat-abft-svm-09.pdf))\n\nYour larger point is right: some commenters are giving up on problem analysis\nor solutions \"because the problem is hardware\". That implication does not\nfollow. Perhaps people are too used to highly abstracted software systems?\n\n~~~\nsickbeard\nI think you guys just misunderstand. The question you should be asking should\nbe \"is this this right solution\", rather than \"can this be done?\".\n\nIf you want to build robust systems, picking the right solution is paramount.\nIn this case the consensus seems to be to fix it in hardware rather than\nmessing out with software (it takes longer to implement a verifiable solution,\nharder to test, etc).\n\n~~~\nmturmon\nI wrote to push back against some sweeping claims that are made nearby, such\nas \"if the hardware is bad, your software will be bad.\" This is simply not\ntrue for many values of \"bad\". Another comment nearby regarding testing also\nsurrendered prematurely.\n\nI worked and published in the area for a few years, so I have a definite POV.\nI find it appealing that software can, in some cases, make up for the failings\nof hardware.\n\nThe topic area is fascinating. It has some of the intellectual aspects of\nsecurity research: you can get somewhere by breaking through abstraction\nbarriers in surprising ways.\n\n------\nbrillenfux\nIs it concerning, that I see a question like that on Stack Overflow or am I\ntoo pessimistic?\n\n~~~\ndanesparza\nI'd personally rather it get asked in a transparent way (like this) vs some\nprogrammer making some stupid assumptions in some cube somewhere.\n\n~~~\nMichaelGG\nI think the implication was \"why is it possible for a programmer to make a\nstupid assumption\". In such a critical environment, one would hope there's\noversight and understanding of all of this, eliminating the need to ask on SO.\n\n------\nkisna72\nI goota say, this is the most fascinating thing I have seen all week.\n\n------\nawinter-py\ngenetic code has a lot of the same protective mechanisms (multiple copies of\ngenes, for example), and is highly focused on radiation protection.\n\n------\nboomlinde\nAn entirely different approach could be to make it more likely to crash to\nminimize the harmful effects of executing corrupt code.\n\nI don't know how these corruptions manifest themselves, but if for example a\nsingle bit gets flipped every now and then somewhere (probably a naive\nassumption), a CPU that had a 0b11111111 nop instruction and 8 reset\ninstructions at 0b01111111, 0b10111111, 0b11011111 etc., you could interleave\nyour code with tons of nop instructions to minimize the possibility of\nexecuting corrupted code. You'd then be more likely to reset than to execute\nsomething that will lead to further corruption.\n\nAs for data, I like the idea of storing/reading it redundantly in 3 or 5\nplaces and assume that the majority of a read to all of them (bit by bit) is\ncorrect and rewrite the supposedly corrupt data. Again, not sure how well a\nsolution like this actually applies to radiation corruption. You can of course\nuse any existing techniques for data error correction, like Hamming coding\n(used in for example teletext to correct errors).\n\n~~~\nPhasmaFelis\n> _I don 't know how these corruptions manifest themselves, but if for example\n> a single bit gets flipped every now and then somewhere (probably a naive\n> assumption), a CPU that had a 0b11111111 nop instruction and 8 reset\n> instructions at 0b01111111, 0b10111111, 0b11011111 etc., you could\n> interleave your code with tons of nop instructions to minimize the\n> possibility of executing corrupted code. You'd then be more likely to reset\n> than to execute something that will lead to further corruption._\n\nI like this. It's functional, yet wildly impractical.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThis Is Your Brain on Gluten - jalter789\nhttp://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/this-is-your-brain-on-gluten/282550/\n\n======\nun_publishable\nDr. David Perlmutter should be ashamed for contributing to the trend of\nlumping ADHD in with huge lists of symptoms such as (quote): \"dementia,\ndecreased libido, depression, chronic headaches, anxiety, epilepsy, and ADHD\"\n\nADD and ADHD may not be as crippling as some mental conditions, but there is\nreal peer-reviewed medical research out there concerning diagnosis and\ntreatment. Hint: counseling and doctor-prescribed medication is more effective\nthan homeopathy and trivial diet changes. People just want an easy solution\nand someone to blame.\n\n------\njoeblau\nWhat is the TLDR please?\n\n~~~\nanigbrowl\nCarbs rot your brain, so you should avoid grains and eat like a caveman. Or\nmaybe not? One thing is for sure, people like reading about diets more than\nthey like sticking to them. Meantime, you can subscribe for only $$ a year.\n\n------\njoeclark77\nWhere would you find a control group for this kind of study? People who never\ntasted anything made from wheat?\n\n~~~\nanigbrowl\nSmall indigenous groups like the Inuit maybe? but then you've got a bunch of\nother factors to screen out. I presume Perlmutter's hostility to grains\nincludes rice and other high-carb grains, which rules out Japan and other\nAsian countries where wheat is less popular.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Cap'n Proto, by the ex-maintainer of Protocol Buffers - kentonv\nhttp://kentonv.github.com/capnproto/\n======\nhaberman\nI have a lot of respect for Kenton and I'm sure this is high quality work.\n\nThe idea of a fixed-length encoding of a protobuf-like structure is a good\nidea, and something I have seen explored elsewhere. To me, though, it's\nunfortunate to create an entirely new schema language for it, instead of just\nmaking it an alternate encoding of the existing protobuf data model, which it\nclosely resembles. To have two schema languages that are nearly, but not\nquite, isomorphic means that you get no interoperability benefits with any\nexisting protobuf-based code or data.\n\nThe way I see it, the most important feature of protobufs is _not_ the on-the-\nwire encoding, but rather the schema. If you start from a schema (and its\nassociated data model), then you can create as many different encodings as you\nwant, and convert between them losslessly at any time, while taking advantage\nof their different performance characteristics.\n\nFor example, Dremel (as described in this paper:\n<http://research.google.com/pubs/pub36632.html>) is an extremely fast SQL-\nbased query engine at Google, which powers the Google cloud product BigQuery\n(which I work on). Because Dremel uses Protocol Buffers as its data model, any\nset of Protocol Buffers can be dumped into Dremel for fast querying, _without\nany kind of data massaging or converting step._ I think this is a really\npowerful idea.\n\nI can see reasons why Kenton might have chosen not to use .proto schemas\ndirectly, but I hope that they can eventually converge, because having a\nshared schema language is a powerful idea.\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nThis is a good point, and something I considered. There are a few reasons I\ndecided against using the .proto format:\n\n* In .proto format, it's generally assumed that _removing_ a field, or having a gap in field numbers, is OK. In Cap'n Proto, it's not OK, because offsets of subsequent fields are affected.\n\n* The language frankly has a lot of little ugly quirks that I wanted to get away from.\n\n* I want control over my format so that I can add features that protobufs may not be interested in, like the ability to define constants.\n\n* After proto2 I'm kind of tired of working around legacy. :)\n\n* I'm not working for Google anymore, so I don't have any particular reason to cater to what would make the most sense for Google. Why not use Thrift or POJOs or anything else as the base language? :)\n\nI think most of the benefits you describe could be achieved by writing a\n.proto<->.capnp translator, which should not be very hard given that, as you\nsay, the languages are pretty much isomorphic.\n\n------\nnecubi\nProtobufs are awesomely useful, and this seems like a great enhancement.\nHowever, I'm disappointed that there's no map representation. That's a been\nmajor issue for us with protobufs compared with thrift or json. While you can\nrepresent maps as lists of pairs, it's awkward and lacks the key uniqueness\nconstraint.\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nI agree! I actually intend to add maps at some point, just haven't worked out\nthe details yet. It's a little weird in Cap'n Proto since the in-memory\nstructure is also the wire format, and the right in-memory representation of a\nmap is not perfectly obvious (Hash table? B-tree? Red/black?).\n\n~~~\njustin66\nThumbs up. Maps are important.\n\nRed black trees are probably the standard. I'd want to sit down and think\nabout how the wire format sharing the in-memory structure effects things. :)\nDo we need to be able to determine the amount of memory used by the map ahead\nof time?\n\n~~~\nkentonv\n> Do we need to be able to determine the amount of memory used by the map\n> ahead of time?\n\nThat's a very good question and I debate it a lot. Since Cap'n Proto messages\ntend to be arena-allocated, dynamically growing space can be problematic.\nCurrently, for lists, you must specify the list size before filling in the\ndata. That could be improved in a few ways, but maps will likely be harder.\n\nIf you do know sizes in advance, I think hashtables make the most sense. If we\nwant something that allows dynamic additions and maybe even removals (and can\nfigure out how to reconcile that with arena allocation), B-trees might be a\nreally nice approach. Maybe you could even use a huge mmap'd Cap'n Proto file\nas a database (warning: very speculative, lots of obstacles to resolve).\n\n------\nstephen\nOkay, protocol buffers are awesome, so as constructive feedback, I think using\nC++ as the source-generation language is a mistake.\n\nWe use Thrift, which uses the same approach, and it's a huge PITA to install\nthe native compiler just to generate some .java files. To the point where,\nunlike basically everything else, we don't run the thrift compiler locally on\ndev machines, but instead run it on a Hudson machine with thrift carefully\nsetup and then hope we never have to touch it.\n\nGranted, the runtime library for each language needs to be in that language\n(or more likely it's C/C++ bindings), but jumping from \"the runtime is\nprobably C/C++ under the covers\" to \"let's use C++ to generate the source\ncode\" is a mistake IMO.\n\nPersonally, with Thrift, it has kept me from submitting pull requests to help\npatch/maintain the generated Java bindings (which were pretty bad at one point\nin time).\n\nAlong the same lines, I haven't used it yet, but I'm a wanna-be fan of\nScrooge, which uses the Thrift runtime libraries, but does it's own source\ncode generation:\n\n<https://github.com/twitter/scrooge>\n\nI'm not necessarily saying each language's source code should be generated by\na program that is also written in that language, as I understand it's nice to\nreuse the IDL/spec parsing logic ... but, on the other hand, I think that\nwould maximize the quality of each language's generate source code, since the\nbarrier for it's own users to maintaining/tweaking would be so much lower.\n\n(I understand you live & breathe C/C++, this feedback is just from a \"if you\nwant to maximize potential contributions to your project\" point of view.)\n\n~~~\nalexchamberlain\nI completely disagree. C++ is a great general purpose languageand 99% dev\nmachines will have a compiler installed. I know mine doesn't have Java\ninstalled.\n\n~~~\nbrown9-2\nBut you would likely have Java installed if you were interested in generating\nJava language bindings.\n\n~~~\nalexchamberlain\nVery good point, very well made.\n\n------\nneilk\nMy first question was: whoa, security? But you answer it in the docs, a bit.\n\n<http://kentonv.github.com/capnproto/encoding.html> (at the end)\n\nHow do we know that cycles/deep-nesting are the only possible attacks?\n\nMaybe I'm overreacting - when you say pointers, these are really pointers to\nother locations in a file, not to code. I'm trying to think of what you could\ndo with malformed data, but the worst thing I can think of is seeking to\nimpossible positions. Maybe you could confuse or crash certain poorly written\nlibraries, maybe by declaring a size for a data structure larger than the\nfile. But the damage seems containable.\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nOh yes, security is a high priority. It's definitely wrong if malicious data\ncan crash the receiver. The security notes on that page are not a complete\nstory, just mentioning a couple of the less-obvious concerns. It's my intent\nthat the Cap'n Proto runtime should protect the application from all security\nissues related to decoding, so that apps don't have to worry about it.\n\nThe pointers are not actually native pointers, and when you dereference a\npointer, the implementation does bounds checking to make sure it points within\nthe message.\n\nI am a security wonk myself and have been thinking carefully about these\nthings, but I also hope to get a formal security review from a third party\nbefore any production release.\n\n~~~\ncodexon\nDoesn't this mean you are just pushing the decoding overhead into the runtime\ninstead of upon receiving?\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nTo some extent, yes. But the total overhead of bounds-checking pointers in a\nCap'n Proto message is orders of magnitude smaller than the overhead of\ndecoding an equivalent protobuf message. (You can see this in my benchmarks.\nLook for \"object manipulation time\". It's usually a bit slower for Cap'n\nProto, but the total time is dwarfed by I/O time.)\n\n------\nshin_lao\nBig fan of protobuf here. Awesome work.\n\nWe did something along those lines for our product except we used Boost.Fusion\nto generate the serialization code which enables us to skip the interface\ncompilation phase altogether.\n\nBasically you have any structure, you Boost.Fusion adapt it and bam!, cross-\nplatform binary serialization at compile-time.\n\nThe best is that this approach works for everything. Want JSON? Bam! You got\nJSON.\n\nOne trick we used is to zero-copy the big chunks of memory. Don't know if\nthat's the case here. It's tricky though because if you do asynchronous I/O\nlater you have to make sure the original buffer stays alive long enough.\n\n(ps: getters and setters, this is soooo last century ;) )\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nThanks!\n\nYeah, getters and setters are old school, but still necessary in C++,\nespecially in this case since the underlying data isn't necessarily in native\nformat. In more modern languages I'd hope to use properties. :)\n\nI do hope to write a JSON transcoder as well, so that for those cases where\nyou really need to send/receive JSON, you can do that, while still using the\nsame protocol spec.\n\n~~~\nonedognight\n> Yeah, getters and setters are old school, but still necessary in C++\n\nWhy isn't operator= usable in this case?\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nBecause you need an lvalue to assign to, which turns out to be pretty painful\nwhen the underlying data is not (quite) in native format. The lvalue can't\njust be a reference to the underlying data, so instead you need to set up some\nparallel set of objects somewhere that wrap the data, and each of these\nobjects probably needs to contain a pointer, so they may end up being bigger\nthan the actual data they are wrapping. It really isn't worth the effort.\n\n------\nprodigal_erik\nI have to question the value of avoiding deserialization. With no type tag\nspace reserved in structures or pointers, are there any strongly-typed\nlanguage runtimes (i.e., not C) which can actually use this as the definitive\nin-memory representation? If you have to wrap proxy objects around a Cap'n\nProto blob, the cost of continual indirections will quickly exceed the cost of\njust deserializing into native objects.\n\nI'm glad to see efforts to move away from encoding the schema (ids and types)\ninto every field of every message, though. I can't remember the last time I\nfound a use for self-describing data of a type that was completely unknown\nwhen I wrote the code. And the suggested packing format looks feasible, where\ntoo many protocol designers think everyone can afford to gzip everything by\ndefault (and make a general-purpose library re-deduce where the redundancy is\nin your schema, when certain bits are inevitably constant for every message\nyou could ever send).\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nThis will tend to depend on the details of the language.\n\nIn Java, there is java.nio.ByteBuffer which (I think) can basically do\neverything that is done with pointer arithmetic in the C++ implementation.\n\nIn, say, Python, it may make more sense to decode the message to Py objects\nupfront. You could use Python's struct packing library to do this fairly\nefficiently, and you could lazily decode sub-objects. If you are using Python,\nyou probably aren't going for blazing speed anyway.\n\nAnother possibility in many languages is to write bindings that call into C++,\nthough that obviously has a bunch of trade-offs.\n\nFinally, if you're communicating with browser-side Javascript, you probably\njust want to transcode the object to/from JSON on the server side. I intend to\nprovide libraries that make that easy.\n\n------\njmillikin\nOverall, I love how this looks -- it's a nice evolution of protobufs.\n\nI had a couple issues/questions while reading through the site, so I'll just\nthrow them in here:\n\n    \n    \n      > struct Date {\n      >   year @0 :Int16;\n      >   month @1 :UInt8;\n      >   day @2 :UInt8;\n      > }\n    \n\nThat's a fairly awkward syntax, even more than .proto files. I notice your\ncompiler is written in Haskell, so it should be pretty easy to define a human-\nfriendly syntax and parse it with Attoparsec and friends. In particular, the\nuse of colons and semicolons here seems unnecessary.\n\nAre you set on that syntax, or would you accept patches to change it? I don't\nknow how much breaking change you'd be willing to accept at this point.\n\n    \n    \n      > Fields (and enum values, and interface methods) must\n      > be numbered consecutively starting from zero in the\n      > order in which they were added.\n    \n\nI disagree with this decision. Being able to set tag numbers in arbitrary\norder makes reading the text format of a proto message (e.g. during debugging)\nmuch nicer, because fields can be grouped according to their purpose rather\nthan whenever they happened to be added to a message.\n\nSpeaking of which, I don't see any specification for a text-based\nserialization format on this site. If I were you, I'd just steal Protobuf's\nbecause it's simple and easy to read/write.\n\n    \n    \n      > Unlike Protobufs, you cannot skip numbers when defining\n      > fields – but there was never any reason to do so anyway.\n    \n\nFor me, the reason to skip field numbers is when some older version of the\nmessage defined some field, but new messages removed it and clients should not\nknow about it. Typically, I indicate this by replacing the field definition\nwith a comment to ensure the field number isn't accidentally re-used. This\nreduces the amount of legacy cruft in .proto files.\n\n    \n    \n      > GCC 4.7 Needed\n      > \n      > If you are using GCC, you MUST use at least version\n      > 4.7 as Cap’n Proto uses recently-implemented C++11\n      > features. If you are using some other compiler…\n      > good luck.\n    \n\nOne of the best features of protobufs is that they are easily portable between\nmany platforms and languages. If the C++ implementation requires advanced\nmodern compiler features, that will severely reduce the number of developers\nwho are able to use it. It would be better to write the reference\nimplementation such that it's supported even by ancient compilers, so that\nusers don't have to worry about upgrading lots of other packages just to try\nout CAPNP.\n\n    \n    \n      > For example, exceptions are thrown on assertion\n      > failures (indicating bugs in the code), network\n      > failures, and invalid input. Exceptions thrown by\n      > Cap’n Proto are never part of the interface and\n      > never need to be caught in correct usage.\n    \n\nI'm fine with making assertion failures throw exceptions that \"never need to\nbe caught\", but network failures and invalid input are very much things that\nshould be treated as common events.\n\nError reporting (via return values or out-parameters) will make the interface\nslightly less elegant. This is fine. The benefit of having proper error\nhandling by far outweighs minor verbosity of error checking.\n\n    \n    \n      > Text: Like Data, but the content must be valid\n      > UTF-8, the last byte of the content must be zero,\n      > and no other byte of the content can be zero.\n    \n\nIf there's a length prefix, why bother with a terminating NUL? D-Bus does the\nsame thing, and it serves no reason except to add another possible error\ncondition.\n\n    \n    \n      > So when Directory.open is called remotely, the\n      > content of a FileInfo (including values for name\n      > and size) is transmitted back, but for the file field,\n      > only the address of some remote File object is sent.\n    \n\nIt's not obvious how such address-passing can be implemented, without falling\ninto the black hole that is CORBA. I don't see anything on the encoding page\nabout it, either. Is an address some sort of 64-bit cookie, a string, or\nsomething more complex? How does using addresses work when the server is\nwritten in a language that doesn't have the concept of addressable values?\n\n    \n    \n      > The Cap’n Proto RPC protocol is not yet defined.\n      > See the language spec’s section on interfaces for a\n      > hint of what it will do.\n    \n\nRoughly what is the timeline for defining the RPC protocol? I've been working\non a Protobuf-based RPC protocol for a while (it'll replace my use of D-Bus\nfor inter-machine and low-overhead inter-process communication), but it\nprobably won't be in even a beta state for at least another two or three\nmonths. If you don't have any immediate plans, I'd love to merge my work into\nCAPNP.\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nThanks for the feedback!\n\n    \n    \n      > Are you set on that syntax, or would you accept patches to change it?\n    \n\nI'm not wedded to the syntax. Maybe start a thread on the discussion group and\nsee what people think?\n\n    \n    \n      > Being able to set tag numbers in arbitrary order makes reading the\n      > text format of a proto message (e.g. during debugging) much nicer,\n      > because fields can be grouped according to their purpose rather than\n      > whenever they happened to be added to a message.\n    \n\nI think a text format should write fields in the order in which they appear,\nnot the order of the numbers. These don't have to be the same order. The\npurpose of the numbers is to allow you to insert a new field in an arbitrary\nposition in your struct def without breaking wire-compatibility, rather than\nrequiring you to add all new fields at the end.\n\nMaybe the wording in the docs is confusing?\n\n    \n    \n      > Speaking of which, I don't see any specification for a text-based\n      > serialization format on this site. If I were you, I'd just steal\n      > Protobuf's because it's simple and easy to read/write.\n    \n\nI intend to support JSON transcoding. The protobuf format is kind of quirky,\nalthough it is nice that it doesn't require as much quoting. Maybe the JSON\ntranscoder could have a \"less quoted\" mode that breaks standards somewhat.\n\n    \n    \n      > For me, the reason to skip field numbers is when some older version\n      > of the message defined some field, but new messages removed it and\n      > clients should not know about it.\n    \n\nIn practice, you actually shouldn't do that even with protobufs, because if\nyou accidentally reuse that field number, you might misinterpret old data.\nHence the convention with protobufs is usually to rename fields to\n\"OBSOLETE_N\".\n\nCap'n Proto can't allow you to remove fields because that would change the\noffsets of subsequent fields. But you can certainly rename fields.\n\n    \n    \n      > If the C++ implementation requires advanced modern compiler features,\n      > that will severely reduce the number of developers who are able to\n      > use it.\n    \n\nThis is true, but C++11 features are really useful, and the implementation\n(and even its interface) simply would not be as good without them. If this is\na big problem, perhaps someone will start maintaining a back-port to C++98, as\nif it were another language.\n\n    \n    \n      > I'm fine with making assertion failures throw exceptions that \"never\n      > need to be caught\", but network failures and invalid input are very\n      > much things that should be treated as common events.\n    \n\nI think my wording in the docs may be a little off, in that it isn't\ncompletely clear what I mean by \"correct usage\". Yes, clearly you should catch\nnetwork errors in a distributed environment. But typically the only things you\nreally want to know about the error are:\n\n* Should I retry? * What error message should I log / display?\n\nCap'n Proto exceptions can be caught and will carry this information. The\npoint is more that these are logistical issues, not correctness issues. The\n\"correct\" output of your program never depends on what exceptions were thrown\n-- if any exception is thrown, either you don't produce output at all, or you\nsolve the problem and produce the same output that you would have otherwise.\n\nExceptions are somewhat necessary in Cap'n Proto because validation happens as\nyou walk the message tree. Having every getter possibly return an error code\nwould be pretty painful. You can, however, configure it so that getters flip\nan error flag and then return a default value on error. As long as you check\nthat error flag before outputting garbage, you should be fine.\n\n    \n    \n      > If there's a length prefix, why bother with a terminating NUL?\n    \n\nIt's helpful if the recipient intends to use the strings in C/C++ code -- they\ncan avoid a copy. For example, if the message contains a file name and the\nrecipient wants to open() it, they need a NUL-terminated string, and\nmalloc()/copying one is kind of sad. Although I want to support many\nlanguages, I expect Cap'n Proto users to be biased towards C/C++ since those\nare the people who care deeply about speed.\n\n    \n    \n      > It's not obvious how such address-passing can be implemented...\n    \n\nThis is certainly a complicated problem, but solvable. I wrote some comments\nelsewhere:\n\n<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5482782>\n\nI look to things like the E programming language and Tahoe-LAFS for\ninspiration here.\n\n    \n    \n      > Roughly what is the timeline for defining the RPC protocol?\n    \n\nI'm working full-time on Cap'n Proto right now. It's always hard to predict\ncoding timelines, but I am hoping to have something within a month or two.\n\n    \n    \n      > it'll replace my use of D-Bus for inter-machine and low-overhead\n      > inter-process communication\n    \n\nHey, that sounds like exactly the main use case I'm interested in. I want to\npass messages in shared memory, so making an IPC is basically no more\nexpensive than posting to a semaphore. This makes it more plausible to have a\nsandboxed process which essentially makes all its system calls via IPC to the\nsandbox, without as much of a speed hit.\n\nPlease do join the discussion group and tell us about your work! I'd love to\nhave your help, or at the very least exchange notes. :)\n\n------\n_chrismccreadie\nAs a user of the excellent Protocol Buffers this is great news. I was\nespecially interested in the Inter-Process communication and random access.\nHopefully we'll see some ports to other languages soon.\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nThanks! Anyone who wants to own the implementation in their favorite language\nshould let me know. :D\n\n------\nfamousactress\nAwesome! I'm a huge fan of binary protocols like this. Couple questions:\n\n1\\. It appears from the encoding docs that length for TEXT fields are in\nbytes, not characters.. is that correct? Hessian made this awful flaw which\nmeant writing an efficient parser was painful because the entire string\ncouldn't be copied into a buffer in one shot.\n\n2\\. I'm unclear on first reading how references are supported. One of my\ngripes with formats like Java's Serialization is that it's effectively un-\nstreamable since a parser needs to hold every object in memory for the life of\nthe stream in case they're referenced later. I read the 'far pointers' and\n'serialization over a stream' stuff.. Am I to understand that the idea is that\nyour stream would be batched up into these frame-chunks of multiple segments\nand the far-pointers would be valid only within those frames?\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nThanks for the feedback!\n\n> 1\\. It appears from the encoding docs that length for TEXT > fields are in\n> bytes, not in characters..\n\nCorrect. Text is UTF-8 encoded, and the length sent on the wire is bytes.\n\nYou make a good point that this can be frustrating in languages where UTF-8\nisn't the standard representation for text. Though, is it really a character\ncount that you want, or is it a UTF-16 length? Depends on the language, again.\nHmm, this could get ugly...\n\nI think we can optimize around this problem by taking advantage of the fact\nthat Cap'n Proto implementations will generally use arena allocation (since\nmessage objects must be allocated in contiguous segments). Just start by\nattempting to encode the string into whatever space is left in the current\nsegment. If it turns out to be enough, which it usually will, great! Mark the\nspace as allocated. If not, you have to back-track and try a slower path.\n\n> 2\\. I'm unclear on first reading how references are supported.\n\nUsually you send a whole \"message\" (composed of N \"segments\") at a time, and\nthat message cannot have pointers to any data objects outside the message (but\ncan have pointers to interfaces). A sophisticated protocol could send one\nsegment at a time, and the receiver could request additional segments when the\nfar pointers pointing into them are first accessed (this could all be\ntransparent to the application). In general, though, if you want your message\nto reference things outside the message, you probably want to use interfaces.\n\n<http://kentonv.github.com/capnproto/language.html#interfaces>\n\nThese let the receiver call back at some arbitrary time in the future. (The\ndetails of how these will be implemented is not specified yet, but it'll be\nsomething like what E does.)\n\n~~~\nfamousactress\nTo be clear, I think a character count isn't what you want. That's easy enough\nto do post-parse. A byte count is most useful so that can make a single call\nto pull the value into memory. A buddy and I wrote python bindings for Hessian\nand the fact they were encoding character counts and not byte count caused us\npain.\n\nMakes sense regarding pointers within messages, and interfaces.\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nOhhhhhh, yeah, I misread what you were saying. Yes, the count on the wire is a\nbyte count. :)\n\n------\njoshrotenberg\nBest commit message:\n\nDay 1: Learn Haskell, write a parser.\n\n------\n_pmf_\nThere's a huge opportunity for serialization protocols between PC based hosts\nand embedded systems. Protocols that are able to serialize without dynamic\nallocation are really hard to find, so I'll definitely be looking into this.\n\nThe dependency on C++ and a rather recent version of GCC is a deal-breaker for\nsome of the embedded platforms I work with, however.\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nHmm, I think you'd probably want to treat embedded C/C++ as if it were a\ndifferent programming language -- so, a separate code generator and runtime\nlibrary would need to be written. Then you could really make sure everything\nworks in an appropriate way for the platform, without fighting with the\ndesktop/server devs.\n\nBut yes, Cap'n Proto would probably be a great fit for that environment, and\nI'd love to see someone take on this target. :)\n\n------\nskybrian\nHow large will interface pointers be? It seems like they'd have to be at least\nas large as an auth cookie since that's basically what they are.\n\nAlso, it seems like in a cluster, you'd need the ability for any server to\ngenerate many auth cookies that will work on any other server when the client\nmakes its next request.\n\n~~~\nkentonv\n> How large will interface pointers be? It seems like they'd have to be at\n> least as large as an auth cookie since that's basically what they are.\n\nThat's one possible implementation. 128 crypto-random bits should be enough.\n\nAnother possible implementation is to say that the interface can only be\naccessed through the same connection over which the pointer was sent. In this\ncase you don't need any crypto (other than SSL on the connection, perhaps).\nThe interface pointer can just be an integer, sequentially counting from zero.\n\nThe latter approach of course means that in case of network failure you lose\nall your pointers. Depending on the use case this may be fine -- perhaps you\njust need to fetch them again on re-connect. If it's not fine, then yes, you\nneed some sort of unguessable capability string.\n\n> Also, it seems like in a cluster, you'd need the ability for any server to\n> generate many auth cookies that will work on any other server when the\n> client makes its next request.\n\nFor long-lived capabilities, yes, you'll probably want them to be backed by\ndata in a database so that they can easily relocate to a different machine.\n\nBut for the all-pointers-break-when-the-connection-closes approach, there's no\nissue.\n\nI expect the first iteration of the RPC system will only support this latter\napproach. The former approach clearly requires help from the application, so\nwill take longer.\n\n------\nwging\nAnd it's (partly) written in Haskell! _swoon_\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nHaskell was a lot of fun to learn, but I'm a n00b. My Haskell code probably\nsucks. :( Luckily since it's just a parser/code generator it probably doesn't\nmatter too much. :)\n\n~~~\nky3\nHave you tried running hlint?\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nYep, it was pretty helpful for learning.\n\n------\nKequc\nI love this tongue in cheek speed comparison.\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nIt was especially funny because I originally announced the project on Google+\n(where my former Google coworkers follow me) on April 1st. Half of them\nthought it was a joke. :)\n\n~~~\nmikeash\nI saw it today (the 2nd) and still thought it was a joke.\n\n------\nrevelation\nTheres still a serialization step, so this is not an infinite improvement.\n\nThe real \"zero serialization\" is writing stuff 1:1 from memory to disk (or\nwhere you want it to go). This works great in languages like C where you can\nmake assumptions for memory layout and use mostly POD-types [1]. But even\nthen, you still have to fixup pointers.\n\n[1]: I guess this is the reason why fread has split the amount of bytes to\nread into a \"size of item\" and \"items\" parameter:\n<http://linux.die.net/man/3/fread>\n\n~~~\nkentonv\n> Theres still a serialization step, so this is not an infinite improvement.\n\nThere is? What happens during the serialization step?\n\n> The real \"zero serialization\" is writing stuff 1:1 from memory to disk\n\nIs that not exactly what Cap'n Proto does?\n\n------\ntomp\nIt's unfortunate that in 2013, we're still developing protocols and formats\nthat have weird Unicode support. Cap'n Proto only seems to support Modified\nUTF-8, which doesn't include NULL bytes[1]. Though I believe support for full\nUTF-8 would be a trivial change, requiring no changes to code.\n\n[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8#Modified_UTF-8>\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nYou're right. Someone brought this up on the mailing list, and I agreed that\nthe no-NUL-in-content restriction could be dropped. A NUL byte will still be\nrequired at the end, and it will be up to apps to decide if they want to add\nfurther restrictions.\n\n~~~\ntomp\nI agree with ending null bytes. It eases cross-language compatibility, and it\nusually costs nothing because it fits into the padding bytes anyway. Btw,\nthat's exactly what OCaml does (string have length, can include nulls, but\nstill end with null bytes, to be passable to C functions).\n\n------\nSwannie\nSorry, I thought this was an April Fools!\n\nI saw \"Infinitely Faster\", and though uhh huh, of course. Then I clicked to\nthe next page and \"Note: Cap'n Proto is not ready yet\" made me even more\nsure... only when I came here was it clear that the technical discussion\nwasn't a continuation of the joke!\n\n------\nrburhum\nCan somebody comment about this vs MessagePack please?\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nWell, I'm obviously biased, but:\n\nMessagePack is a binary encoding of JSON, which actually makes it pretty\ndifferent from both Cap'n Proto and Protocol Buffers, both of which require\nyou to explicitly specify your type in an IDL (interface definition language).\n\nThere are trade-offs. The IDL is extra work. But when you encode an object in\nMessagePack, the full names of every field must be encoded on the wire. In\nCap'n Proto (or Protobufs), those names are elided, saving space.\n\nMessagePack is also primarily a sequential format (like protobufs). You have\nto parse the whole message before you can operate on it. Cap'n Proto is\nrandom-access, which is why it needs to parse step -- it can just operate on\nthe raw bytes in-memory as you go.\n\nThe down side of a random-access format is that it will tend to be fatter\nsince all the widths are fixed. E.g. Protobufs or MessagePack will encode an\nint32 up to 127 in 1 byte, but Cap'n Proto will always use 4. That said, Cap'n\nProto mitigates this by offering a simple \"packing\" scheme that compacts zero-\nvalued bytes, and that tends to bring it to parity with protobufs for message\nsize (haven't compared with MessagePack). The down side of this packing is\nthat it of course means the protocol is back to being sequential, since you\nhave to unpack it first. The packing is very fast, though, as it can be\nimplemented in a tight loop with almost no branches.\n\n------\nwololo\nhey kenton, any public thoughts on russ smith's similar project several years\nback?\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nI'm not familiar. Do you have a link?\n\n~~~\nwololo\nwill respond off-thread\n\n------\npeterwwillis\n_\"Note: Cap'n Proto is not ready yet\"_\n\nOkey doke. _Closes window_\n\n(i wonder if you put half the effort into the code that you did this web site\nwhether you'd have a finished product...)\n\n~~~\njamesaguilar\nMeasurably less effort has been put into the docs than the code. You can\nverify this for yourself by checking the commits:\n<https://github.com/kentonv/capnproto/commits/master?page=1>\n\nAlso, wow, your attitude is horrifically bad.\n\n~~~\npeterwwillis\n_Also, wow, your attitude is horrifically bad._\n\nYou have an intense feeling of fear, shock or disgust because I don't want to\nuse an unready product that I feel has an unnecessarily polished web site?\n\nI'd hate to see your face once I review the code.\n\n~~~\njamesaguilar\nOo, and you like to do the thing where you look up the dictionary definitions\nof words used to criticize you for their literal meaning. Cool.\n\nMy problem is not with your choice to use or not use. It's with the words you\nuse to dismiss something that is well-within the norms of what's posted on\nhere. Unfinished products go on HN all the time.\n\nAnd, the website's not even that polished! It's a bunch of markdown design\ndocuments with two or three graphics attached. So, you have a bad attitude and\nyou're wrong. That's off-putting, and apparently not just to me.\n\nOh, big bad Peter's going to review some pre-alpha open source code and\ndislike it. That is sure something that's going to make my face scrunch up.\n\n~~~\npeterwwillis\nI'm glad you think i'm cool. Sorry I don't tow the party line and blow every\ndev who releases a _lack_ of a product so they can build interest based on\npromises (though I realize there is code available in this instance). I'm also\nsorry you don't like the website. And thank you for mentioning my name, I so\nlove to see it in print. And sorry about your scrunchy face.\n\n~~~\njamesaguilar\nI'm fairly sure your sexual services would not be required by \"every dev\" who\nposts their unfinished open source projects on HN. Courtesy, on the other\nhand, or barring that, silence, could be useful.\n\n<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: What are some of the best open-source projects for beginners? - jacorreia\n\nI know for myself it was a huge decision, what to contribute to at first. I&#x27;m sure there are tons of beginners out there who would appreciate a step in the right direction!\n======\naustincheney\nAs a web developer I enjoy contributing to projects that help me to identify\nstupid things, because there is an abundance of stupid in web technologies. I\nenjoy contributing to things like JSLint and Pretty Diff.\n\nSometimes contributions can be as simple as bug reports or feature\nsuggestions. This kind of information is golden for complex projects\nmaintained by very few individuals.\n\n------\nsmurfpandey\nIf you are a javascript developer than you can start with libraries available\non Github. I started with a small plugin called jPulse, few days back i sent a\npull request to an yeoman plugin. Easiest way is by looking into the projects\nthat you use yourself, that way you will have an understanding of how\neverything works, and you will be in a better position to contribute\n\n------\nmmaunder\nI'm not sure what languages you know, but WordPress is a great one if you can\nprogram in PHP. The code is easy to read and there's plenty of room for\ncontributions and improvement in WordPress core. Also the community is really\nfriendly and welcoming.\n\n~~~\ncsixty4\nThere's even a list of \"Good First Bugs for New Contributors\":\n[https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/good-first-\nbugs](https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/good-first-bugs)\n\n------\ncnst\nThe best is start with what you use, and are passionate about.\n\nI started with Mozilla, then moved on to OpenBSD, FreeBSD, *BSD.\n\nFind something that you love, with a part that annoys you, fix it, see how it\ngoes.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEgypt discovers 40 mummies in ancient chambers in Minya - BobbyVsTheDevil\nhttps://www.timesofisrael.com/egypt-discovers-40-mummies-in-ancient-chambers-in-minya/\n======\nretSava\nAs far as my understanding goes, finding mummies in Egypt is similar to\nfinding dinosaur fossils - it's common and rarely something that gets/should\nget broad attention. It's more a marketing thing, which the article also acks:\n\n> Egypt has made a series of archaeological finds recently, and it has been\n> heavily promoting them to revive its tourism industry\n\nThis find seems to be along those lines.\n\nVisited Egypt a couple of times, really incredible to walk around in primarily\nLuxor temples. A tip for tourists - buy an egyptian newspaper (in arabic) and\ncarry around visibly. Learn to say \"no thanks\" in as good arabic as you can\n(something like \"la-a shukran\"). That makes things easier.\n\n~~~\nrblion\nCame here to say this. I want to visit Egypt for the history but I honestly\nthink I'd be content with the museums in NYC and London.\n\nOnly Giza and Luxor are my list still, I'll have to wait until a safer time\nthough according to friends who just went and didn't have a pleasant\nexperience.\n\n~~~\nthekid314\nIt's perfectly safe here. Come now before the crowds get much bigger. Around\nthe tourist sites you will meet plenty of people trying to get you to ride a\nhorse, or pay a tip for any little service. You can just ignore them, and\nthere's no tip necessary. Take Uber everywhere and you won't even have to\nworry about taxis.\n\nThe real locations in Luxor and the Egypt Museum are much more interesting\nthan the exhibit in London (though the exhibit in London has better labels).\n\n*I'm a white guy writing this from Cairo. [https://www.DavidDegner.com](https://www.DavidDegner.com)\n\n~~~\nrblion\nThanks for the nudge and the tips, I'll definitely refer back to these!\n\nMost of my fears are in my head and can be circumvented with proper planning\nand Couchsurfing.\n\nI challenge myself with travel/adventure every year. I think this is the next\nleap of faith I need to take. In 2017, I went to Colombia and last fall, I\ncamped out in WY/MT during bear/elk/moose season.\n\nIs there a decent dev community there? Maybe I can make some friends before\nlanding, that always makes things easier.\n\nI love your site BTW. I'll look through it all later!\n\n~~~\nthekid314\nFind my email on my website and I can hook you up with some dwvwlopers\n\n------\ndr_dshiv\nBest point of interest here -- did they use old manuscripts as part of the\nwrapping?\n\nI wish we spent a fraction of the money for LHC on finding ancient texts, for\nwhich we know (statistically) are undiscovered. The benefits to society and\nscience are just as profound (e.g., to decode charred scrolls of Herculaneum)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMaking Science a Presidential Priority - muriithi\nhttp://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2008/db2008028_503873.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives\n\n======\nyummyfajitas\nSounds great, in principle. Here is what would happen if it actually occurred:\n\nVarious big projects of dubious value (particle accelerators, LIGO) will go\nbegging for money. Any candidate who doesn't want to support them will be\nportrayed as anti-science. The majority of the effort will be placed here\n(scientists care more about grants than politics).\n\nStandard science issues where the science doesn't fit the party line will be\nhighlighted: evolution, climate change and sex ed. For the most part, science\nwill be used as a club to beat republicans with. They certainly deserve it\n(1), but not only them.\n\nNon-standard science issues that cut against democrats will be mostly ignored\n(race/sex differences in intelligence, lawyers suing doctors without\nscientific evidence, the possible link between abortion/miscarriage and breast\ncancer) . No one will ask the candidates what they think about Larry Summers\nor James Watson.\n\nIt sounds like a great idea. But I know my colleagues well enough to know that\nif it happens, it will simply turn into a \"give us money, we hate republicans\"\nevent.\n\n(1) At various points, I noticed birth control (non-condom) includes the\nwarning \"Does not prevent aids or other STDs.\" Until I heard McCain speak on\nthe topic, I didn't think anyone was actually dumb enough to think it did.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLet Kids Rule the School - robg\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/opinion/15engel.html?hp\n======\nRiderOfGiraffes\nI have said repeatedly:\n\nWhy should students do PhDs? For the _vast_ majority of people a PhD is of\nabsolutely zero value.\n\nWhy should students go to college/university? For the _vast_ majority of\npeople a degree is of absolutely zero value.\n\nWhy should students finish High School? For the _vast_ majority of people a\nHigh School diploma is of absolutely zero value.\n\nSchool is all about assessment, but life is about abilities and skills. Why\nare we teaching math that's targeted at the pinnacle of calculus, when\nabsolutely no one uses calculus outside of a very, _very_ small percentage of\npeople in highly technical, extremely uncommon professions or jobs?\n\nIt's the underlying abilities and skills that these kids, and then young\nadults, need. (Actually, there's much more needed if you want to go on to\nprogramming, engineering, physics, _etc,_ and I haven't forgotten that. But\nwhat percentage of people do those? What percentage _want_ to do those?)\n\nBut they don't get to develop or exercise those abilities and skills. And the\nreason is that these can't be assessed _en masse_ \\- which is required for\nschools.\n\nSo how can we develop these skills and abilities in the students, and then\nmake sure that they have the evidence of them with which to go into the job\nmarket? Employers really no longer care about diplomas, degrees and\nqualifications, because they no longer trust them. Instead, every employer\nthat I know of now asks for those out of habit, but administer their own\naptitude tests.\n\nRemember, though, that we can't let potential employers drive education,\nbecause the students don't yet know what they might want to do, because they\ndon't know what's possible.\n\nIt's hard, and experiments such as those reported here are tremendously\nvaluable and interesting. I just hope we see them bear fruit, in the form of\nbalanced, valuable, _educated_ young adults.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIntroducing The New IFTTT - johns\nhttp://blog.ifttt.com/post/25506427600/thenewifttt\n======\namolsarva\nNote to hardware hackers: IFTTT almost certainly started with some musings\nabout \"wouldn't it be cool if I could make my household X trigger web API Y\"\nand for many entrepreneurs would have led to a startup about smart gadgets.\nThere have been many over the years.\n\nThe very clever thing about IFTTT is they sat and cheaply began the process of\nbuilding the web layer.\n\nI like it!\n\nWeMo is likely the first of many many gadgets and interfaces where they can\naccept links.\n\nNow they wait and see how quickly the China Ecosystem and the gadget makers\nlike Belkin deliver lots of nice cheap easy trigger devices.\n\nBugLabs...Nest...Dropcam...LG Smart Refrigerators...Toyota Prius...\n\n~~~\nasmithmd1\nIt would be more exciting if they had an API.\n\nI don't see any way to add channels - either a hardware one or a software one.\nYou could use RSS but that is it. And I don't see any way to add an action.\nThey could very easily add a \"web hook\" URL for a custom action.\n\nI get really annoyed when I see sites like this that anoint winners. They\nalready have an API to work with outside sites but they just don't publish it\n\n~~~\njohns\nI started last week to work on the API. Stay tuned.\n\n~~~\nwillwhitney\nExciting stuff! That seems like an interesting way to bring back in the\nhardware possibilities from the comment above - using an ifttt API in tandem\nwith smart devices could eliminate a ton of work in developing automation.\n\nAlso, what's ifttt like to work for so far?\n\n~~~\njohns\nVery fun and small team of 8 with great vision. Starting the week before this\nredesign was a little hectic, but it was worth the effort. Only big things to\ncome :)\n\n------\ngraham_king_3\nPeople who know seem excited about this, so I spent two minutes following\nlinks. I still have no idea what ifttt is.\n\nThis would help:\n\n\\- Change the tagline from \"Put the Internet to work for you\" to something\nmore descriptive.\n\n\\- Have a prominent \"About\" link on the blog. Write an About page, or better\nput some content on your home page.\n\n~~~\njohns\nI'll work on getting better info on the blog. In the mean time, here's our\nabout page <http://ifttt.com/wtf>\n\n~~~\nplanetguy\nEven that needs a lot of work.\n\nOkay, so I can create \"connections\" on an \"if this then that\" basis. I need\nmore examples of the sorts of thises and thats that I can use as input and\noutput, though. Like, apparently I can control my home appliances? And... what\nelse?\n\n~~~\ndandelany\nReally? The second heading on the page clearly gives five examples with an\nobvious link to 46 more.\n\n~~~\nCGamesPlay\nWhy do I need another website to do Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, Email, or\nWeather? I already have apps that do whatever it is those things are.\n\nNo, the page in question does have 1 really good example, the if Instagram\nthen Dropbox example. I think the homepage of IFTT would benefit from a nice\nanimation where the \"this\" and \"then\" options cycle through various options.\nIt would show how any tigger can be combined with any action and highlight a\nfew of the good use cases.\n\n------\nnewman314\nThis is a little off-topic but I would still like someone from ifttt to answer\nin more detail the method that they use to store passwords for 3rd party\nsites.\n\nI think this is an important detail for an app like ifttt as they necessarily\nhave to store the actual passwords in a form that they can reverse encryption\n(for websites that do not support something like OAuth) for in order to submit\non the user's behalf. So it's important to get some transparency on the\nmechanism by which ifttt does this.\n\nI also posed the question here a while ago: [http://www.quora.com/How-does-\nifttt-securely-store-passwords...](http://www.quora.com/How-does-ifttt-\nsecurely-store-passwords-for-sites-that-do-not-use-OAuth-or-similar-methods)\n\n~~~\nJoshTriplett\n> I also posed the question here a while ago: [http://www.quora.com/How-does-\n> ifttt-securely-store-passwords...](http://www.quora.com/How-does-ifttt-\n> securely-store-passwords-for-sites-that-do-not-use-OAuth-or-similar-methods)\n\nAnd you appear to have received an answer there, as well. Anything using OAuth\ndoesn't need to store passwords, and for anything else ifttt stores the\npassword in an encrypted (but obviously retrievable) form. I don't see how\nthey could do otherwise; at most, they could refuse to interoperate with any\nsites not supporting OAuth, and I don't see the benefit to that.\n\n~~~\nnewman314\nTo be clear, I was looking for more detail around _how_ they were doing the\nreversible encryption.\n\n------\nmasonhensley\nIt is a bummer that the Belkin WeMo's are going to be so expensive.\n\n<http://www.belkin.com/wemo/> ($50 switch, $100 for switch + motion sensor)\n\n<http://ifttt.com/wemo_switch>\n\nIf I was looking to dip my toe into some home automation toys, I would rather\npick up a Nest($250) and one of the iOS/Android powered home locks (~$300)\nthan the equivalent # of WeMos(at $50/per)... but that's just me. To get real\nvalue out of a WeMo system, I figure you need at least 10 spread around your\nhouse.\n\nIf the WeMo's were $20-25/ apiece and they had a wall switch version, I think\nBelkin & IFTTT would be a game changer in the home automation space.\n\n~~~\npaulgerhardt\n>one of the iOS/Android powered home locks (~$300)\n\nCheck out Lockitron! (<https://lockitron.com>) - we come with an API, no\nmonthly fee, and a variety of locks that will work on most doors or apartment\nbuzzer systems.\n\n~~~\nkoide\nWhat's the solution when your phone is stolen/offline/out of order?\n\n~~~\njroll\nLockitron also offers locks with a keypad, and every lock comes with a\nBluetooth keyfob for emergencies like this. <3 lockitron.\n\n~~~\nPoiesis\nI don't see any keypads on the site. Is this true?\n\nA keypad backup is a very desirable feature to me. Possibly to lots of others\ntoo, I would think.\n\n~~~\npaulgerhardt\nAh, yes, a bit of a secret those. We're currently doing field tests with our\nkeypad locks.\n\n------\nckluis\nHell yeah for marketing this is cool:\n\nIF retweeted\n\nThen Turn Strobe Light On\n\nThen Wait 5 seconds\n\nThen Turn Strobe Light Off\n\n~~~\nKronopath\nSounds like it could give you a seizure if your tweet went viral.\n\n~~~\nckluis\nHa! It could be a lot of fun to think of potential dashboard (1 for each\nsale/sign-up seems like a good metric for some startups) related\nhardware/software interfaces.\n\n------\nperlgeek\nI've skimmed the first two screen-heights of that page, and I still have no\nidea what it actually is or does. Maybe link to an explanation somewhere?\n\n~~~\njohns\n<http://ifttt.com/wtf>\n\nEdit: Sorry for the trouble. We're working getting a link to our About page\nfrom the blog. If you hit the home page, the giant 'Learn more' link has been\nreally successful at getting people there.\n\n------\nnemo1618\nWow, how have I not heard of WeMo before? Though Belkin is typically a little\noverpriced, I think they've opened the door for other companies (Phillips,\nmaybe?) to offer their own version. I'm definitely looking forward to\nautomating my dorm next year.\n\n~~~\nfollower\nI wondered the same thing as I've been researching controllable power sockets\nfor a while (although more looking at digital IO/USB control).\n\nI only discovered WeMo today via a comment on Twitter. Though they were\nannounced back in January as available in \"US summer\" it seems they've been\npretty much under the radar since then until now.\n\n------\nneutronicus\nMy first thought on seeing the name was that it had something to do with\nFourier transforms.\n\n------\nleejoramo\nI would use IFTT if I could pay them money.\n\nI am wary of building on top of any third party web service, but I free\nservices like this I may play with but never depend on for personal or\nbusiness use.\n\n~~~\nfrio\nI've upvoted you, but I really want to second this verbally too. I don't see\nany adverts on IFTTT (and even if they were: once setup, I wouldn't be\nvisiting the site often and seeing them), and don't understand how they're\nmonetising. This is a service I'd really like to use, but I don't want to come\nto depend upon it, then find it folding (either due to monetary problems, or\nacquired by a third party and being shut down).\n\nSome information on how they intend to stay alive would be fantastic.\n\n~~~\njleader\nI wondered about that too, and one thing that occurred to me was that if they\nget popular, they've got access to combine data about their users across all\nthe source and sink services the users use. That is, they can get all my\nreadily available Facebook data (friends, likes, etc.), my Twitter feed and\nfollower/followee/favorites lists, etc.\n\nI doubt IFTTT is doing such data fusion today (their userbase is probably too\nsmall to make it worthwhile), but I wonder if that's the eventual plan. To\nadvertisers, that sort of data could be immensely valuable for ad targetting.\n\n------\nCogito\nI very much like it, two comments:\n\nThere doesn't seem to be any interface for adding multiple channels of the\nsame type. My use case: a personal gmail account and a google apps email\naccount. In general, it would be good to be able to add multiples of any\nchannel, eg\n\n\\- multiple time channels for different time zones\n\n\\- multiple twitter accounts\n\n\\- multiple sms accounts\n\nThe ability to share recipes is great, however it is too hard to browse them.\nOf the ~35000 shared recipes I suspect many are variations on a theme, and\nwhilst the ability to filter by channel and the ranking by popularity are\nuseful much more could be done. In particular,\n\n\\- being able to choose existing tags when creating new recipes\n\n\\- being able to browse existing tags\n\n\\- suggesting recipes that are similar to the one I am adding, or even\ncreating!\n\nLove to see how this progresses, especially as the API opens up.\n\n------\nmikemoka\nI am happy about their foray into the physical world but there is a much more\ncritical feature still missing in my opinion: the possibility to check for a\ndesired trigger (e.g. stocks) at a specific time/date or, in general, the\npossibility to combine multiple triggers at once\n\n------\nsp332\nI'm not clear on the difference between a trigger and a quick trigger. Is it\njust that regular triggers are run in batch jobs, and quick triggers are\nprocessed individually?\n\n~~~\njashmenn\nMost of the triggers on IFTTT require polling to receive updates. We poll the\nsources roughly every 15 minutes.\n\nQuick triggers, on the other hand, are event-driven.\n\nSo, for instance, if you had a task that was \"IF I send IFTTT a Google Chat\nTHEN post to Twitter\" we'll now post your tweet within a couple of seconds\n(vs. before it would have been within 15 minutes)\n\n------\ncjdavis\nIf you are looking for 'microcontrollers <-> webservices with full restful\napi' then Cosm looks pretty good. Arduino, Nanode, mbed, devices running\nOpenWRT...\n\nThey just changed names from Pachube.\n\n<https://cosm.com/>\n\n------\nMaro\nThis is the first time I hear about IFTTT. I like it very much. The name is\nterrible though. The other similar startup on HN, Zapier, has a much better,\neasier to remember name. I'd go as far as to suggest to change the name.\nHere's one: apibit.com is still available.\n\n~~~\nicebraining\n\"If this then that\" is a terrible and hard to remember name?\n\nIFTTT is just the acronym.\n\n------\nneilparikh\nThe Belkin WeMo looks useful, but looking over its site quickly, it doesn't\nappear to be programmable through an API.\n\nDoes anyone know of a similar product which can be programmed through an API?\n\n~~~\nrubergly\nit sounds like IFTTT is its API.\n\n------\nesente\nNot really excited. There are not many new channels, and those are mainly for\nsome additional devices. Some may find them useful though.\n\n~~~\njohns\nThe key thing for the new channels is that it's the first expansion outside\nthe screen and into the physical world. A lot more to come in that area, stay\ntuned.\n\n~~~\njedahan\nlike the pebble yea?\n\n~~~\njohns\nYep!\n\n------\nalttab\nIf its an introduction, how can I read the entire post without knowing what\nthe hell it is?\n\n------\nrjwillers\nIs there any updates on the ifttt api? When is the ETA?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Visualize Kickstarter Projects - Written in Clojure with C2 - dwwoelfel\nhttp://canhekick.it/\n\n======\ndwwoelfel\nA few cool things about CanHeKickIt:\n\nThe entire app is written in Clojure, with the exception of some less for css.\n\nI'm using ClojureScript, a compiler for Clojure that targets JavaScript. This\nmeans that I'm able to use the same code on the front-end as I do on the back-\nend. The code that draws the graph, for instance, is exactly the same in\nClojure and ClojureScript. Most everything works even if javascript is\ndisabled (try <http://canhekick.it/togglejs>).\n\nIt uses a kd-tree to store the points in the graph. This lets me efficiently\nplace the tooltip when someone hovers over the graph.\n\n------\ndanso\nSome design comments:\n\n\\- far too much space is used for the colored boxes, which shout the stats\nthat should be easily apparent from the visualization.\n\n\\- categories need to be included...the titles can often reveal nothing about\nthe project\n\n\\- you might as well add the thumbnails of the projects\n\n~~~\ndwwoelfel\nThanks for the suggestions! I really appreciate you commenting on my work.\n\nThose colored boxes are meant to serve as a legend for the graphs. Maybe I'll\nbe better off with some tooltips on the horizontal bar instead.\n\nI shrunk the boxes and put them all on one line for now. Thanks again for\npointing that out. What I have now isn't perfect, but it's much better.\n\nAs far as categories and thumbnails go, I'm not sure that's the direction I'm\nheaded. I don't want to replicate anything Kickstarter already does and I'd\nprefer to categorize things based on the data.\n\nI'm working on applying a bit of the machine learning I learned from the\nCoursera class to predict success. If I can do that, I'll be the first to\ncategorize the projects by probability of success.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nProposed new schedule for JDK 8 - austinbv\nhttp://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk8-dev/2013-April/002336.html\n\n======\npswenson\nMy proposed security fix: kill the Java Browser Plugin.\n\n~~~\nmoondowner\nI agree. All the bad rep Java gets is from the Applet 0-day hacks.\n\nJava 8 to deprecate the Browser Plugin, Applets and all related stuff to it,\nand for those who need this technology can use Java 7 and other previous\nreleases.\n\n~~~\nmdmarra\nThen you're going to have all kind of apps stuck on older Java versions\nforever. While I'd love to see it happen, it would be Oracle shooting\nthemselves in the foot with their enterprise customers, which - let's face it\n- is who they actually care about.\n\n~~~\nbradleyjg\nAlthough I don't have numbers, I'm not aware of very many enterprises with\nextensive fleets of java applets. Java in the enterprise tends to be either\nstand alone programs (i.e. Swing), or EJB driven middleware with JSP on the\nfront end.\n\n~~~\nsmackay\nBig chunks of dealing with the government (taxes, etc.) in Portugal are in the\nform of Java applets. I think this is repeated across Europe.\n\nMost of the apps are little more than forms - there's a lot of logic in the\nway the different fields are filled out and the validation and business logic\nis probably quite complex. Since everything must be checked on the server\nanyway there's nothing stopping it from being migrated to pure HTML.\n\n~~~\niso8859-1\nThere is nothing stopping any web app from not using applets.\n\n------\nhugi\nKill the Java browser plugin. Also, delay by another year and use the\nopportunity to bring in Jigsaw. Lambdas are nice, but in the big picture,\nJigsaw is huge.\n\n~~~\nbatgaijin\nwhat does jigsaw bring to the table? what does its existence imply?\n\n~~~\nsuyash\nRead about it and ask more specific questions:\n<http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jigsaw/>\n\n~~~\nwarmwaffles\nI had no idea this existed. This would be nice. I used to like Java's\npackaging, until I was introduced to better methods of packaging, like Ruby,\nPython, etc... Glad to see that this is on the table.\n\n------\nsuyash\nWe can wait till 03/2014 for JDK 8. I don't want to jump on buggy code. Good\nidea by Oracle not to scope creep by delaying but fixing security bugs and\nmaking the code base more stable.\n\n------\niso8859-1\nI am happy about the renewed focus on security. As far as I remember, people\nwere pretty skeptical and didn't think Oracle would fix the JRE once the\nexploits started getting discovered so frequently.\n\n------\nJulianMorrison\nVersioned jarballs with versioned dependencies PLEASE. Seriously, Ruby is\nlaughing at you.\n\n~~~\nmoondowner\nJarballs? I don't know why Ruby would be laughing. Maven and Gradle are doing\ntheir job fine of handling project dependencies.\n\n~~~\nJulianMorrison\nBuild dependencies, yes.\n\nRuntime dependencies for upgrade in situ, not so much.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nNature manages information, the currency of life, with exquisite efficiency - dnetesn\nhttp://nautil.us/issue/7/waste/nature-the-it-wizard\n\n======\ndchichkov\n_\"...Not only does DNA store information at a density per unit volume\nexceeding any other known medium, it can achieve one quarter of the maximum\ninformation density allowed by the laws of physics...\"_\n\nHmm... That number 1/4 of the Bekenstein bound seems suspicious. A quick\nsearch gives:\n\n[http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/05/22/can-data-\nstorag...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/05/22/can-data-storage-ever-\nreach-an-absolute-limit/)\n\n _\" A gram of dry DNA is about one cubic centimeter, so the radius is 0.0062\nmeters. So, the best DNA storage can do with those dimensions is 5.6_10^15\nbits. A Bekenstein-bound storage device with those dimensions would store\nabout 1.6 _10^38 bits. \"_\n\nThat's 10^22 difference. Not 1/4\\. That's more like it ... A Bekenstein bound\nis Plank-level. Around 8mb per something like a volume of an electron. And DNA\nuses chemical level. Configurations of atoms.\n\n~~~\nzallarak\nAgreed. The interesting thing about DNA is not its raw storage capabilities,\nbut with how it interacts with itself and its environment to expose and\nwithdraw certain portions of itself for protein synthesis.\n\n------\ntrhway\n>A fractal drawn on a two-dimensional sheet of paper, for example, has a\nhigher dimension—say, 2.1. This is a useful feature, allowing nature to pack\nsome part of a fourth dimension into three-dimensional space.\n\nif i remember correctly fractal can't have dimension higher than the space it\nis embedded in. It can have dimension higher than its local dimension though\n(that what makes it a fractal :) - a fractal drawn on a 2D plane using lines\nhas local dimension of 1 while it's fractal dimension can be anything up to 2,\nyet can't be greater than 2. The same way with nervous system, blood\narteries/veins - these are just 1D pipes locally, yet as fractals they get to\n2.x thus achieving good density in 3D volume of the body with amount/size much\nless than just a regular network of pipes would do.\n\n~~~\ngus_massa\nShort version: Yes a fractal in a 2D piece of paper must have dimension at\nmost 2.\n\nLong version: There are a lot of definitions of fractal dimension\n([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausdorff_dimension](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausdorff_dimension)\n,\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski%E2%80%93Bouligand_dim...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski%E2%80%93Bouligand_dimension)\n, ...) but they are not equivalent.\n\nIn all the sensible dimensions, if X is included in Y then dim(X) <= dim(Y).\nI'm tempted to write that this holds in every possible dimension, but I think\nthat there are no official criteria to classify something as a fractal\ndimension. Anyone can propose a new definition of a new fractal dimension, and\nif it does not have some minimal property it will be simply ignored. The\nproblem is that the set of minimal properties is not well defined, it's more a\nmater of mathematical taste and usage adoption in the mathematical comunity.\n\nMore technical details:\n\nFor example, a nice property is that the dimension is countably additive. The\nHausdorf dimension has this property, but the box counting dimension doesn't\nhave this property. Should we eliminate the box counting dimension?\n\nOn the other hand it's easier to estimate the box counting dimension than the\nHausdorf dimension. So, what definition is more useful?\n\n------\nsinkasapa\nI found the lack of citations in this article to be both disappointing and\nsuspicious. When you conclude \"we will need a vastly different approach to\nscience in order to understand the higher-order, emergent capabilities of\nnature’s self-organizing structures\", I feel like more evidence is required.\nThough the author did mention some exciting ideas and research, she left it to\nthe audience to follow up on where she might have gotten them from.\n\n------\njasode\n>Not only does DNA store information at a density per unit volume\n\nI'm surprised the author didn't mention that the human DNA sequence is ~750\nmegabytes of data.[1] And that 750MB is replicated billions (or trillions) of\ntimes across all living cells of the body. A sort of living organism RAID\nredundancy.\n\n[1][http://newsroom.ucr.edu/1776](http://newsroom.ucr.edu/1776)\n\n------\nmrqwerty\nThis article takes a broad view of an interesting subject. You twits are\narguing over the tiniest of minutiae and completely missing the big picture.\nBoth the fractal dimension inaccuracy and the issue of information density\nwithin DNA are entirely irrelevant to the thesis being put forward. This is\nsomething I really dislike about hacker news.\n\n~~~\nsinkasapa\nThis is something I like about hacker news. There are people here who\nrecognize that a thesis stands on the accuracy of its arguments.\n\n------\nAardwolf\nThe article implies fractal dimension, e.g. a 2.1 dimensional fractal on a 2D\nsheet, could allow more computation.\n\nIs that true? Could one make CPU on a 2D chip surface in a fractal pattern and\nuse that for faster computation? Or fancy supercomputer topologies?\n\nI always thought fractal dimension was more of an abstract concept, not\nactually practical. Sounds awesome though.\n\n~~~\nHCIdivision17\nI think `trhway above has it right. A 2.1 dimensional fractal would be very\nmuch like a bumpy sheet in 3-space. A 2.9 dimensional fractal would be a\nfairly convoluted crumpled sheet. [0]\n\nYou'd be amazed how much of the fractal stuff is practical. You don't need to\ndeal with infinities before it becomes useful. For example, fractal antennas\ncan filter for multiple frequencies well (instead of tuning for just one\nperfectly)[1]. On this topic, check out space-filling curve - it's pretty cool\nstuff, and the wiki page has a nice diagram of the Peano curve[2].\n\nIt's sort of like imaginary numbers. At first glance they seem like a very\ntheoretical construct, but it soon becomes apparent they're everywhere. You\ncan't hardly do any sort of electrical engineering with out them. Likewise\nwith fractals (and the oft associated field of chaos).\n\n[0]\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_dimension#Introduction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_dimension#Introduction)\nSee paragraph 3. It makes intuitive sense as you see a 1-dimensional line fill\nthe space of a 2-dimensional plane.\n\n[1]\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_antenna](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_antenna)\n\n[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-\nfilling_curve](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-filling_curve)\n\nEDIT: whoops, missed a reference. (And sorry they're all Wikipedia - there's a\nton of great material on this stuff. Many books on chaos will talk about\nfractals extensively, but the best don't shy from the math!)\n\n~~~\nRetra\nI don't think putting 'fractals' on the front of a discussion is very useful.\nA line segment is a fractal. A dot is a fractal. Everything can be a fractal\nin the right light. Of course they are useful -- but not usually just because\nthey are fractals.\n\nIt's too much woo.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: How do you define a toxic workplace? - ANPEQ-1\nI&#x27;ve seen a lot of people talking about how non-toxic&#x2F;worker friendly workplaces can be a strategic advantage, and I tend to believe it - but I&#x27;d be curious as to what you folks define as &#x27;toxic&#x27;.<p>Is it diverse demographic representation? If so, what&#x27;s the right mix?<p>Is it just high retention?<p>Is it a good Glassdoor rating?\n======\ntlb\n\"A toxic workplace is a workplace that is marked by significant drama and\ninfighting, where personal battles often harm productivity\". More at\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_workplace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_workplace)\n\n------\nBlakestr\nWhen you are in love with the work but don't want to go into the workplace\nbecause of the people who are there.\n\n------\n943_924\nGlassdoor has made themselves next to meaningless since they'll take money\nfrom anyone who wants their bad reviews taken down and honestly we need a new\nplayer in the area who actually cares about transparency over taking bribes.\n\n------\ntwoquestions\nIn addition to what others have said, it could also be where your're evaluated\non non-work factors. Nepotism is the classic case, but it's still very\nfrustrating when your status at work is decided on factors that aren't\ndisclosed to you.\n\nOr worse, when working to create value _reduces_ your status, because you\n\"should\" be able to keep employed on your social status alone. Having to\ncreate value to keep that paycheck coming signals social weakness.\n\n------\nbwb\nWhen you realize there are cameras watching every desk at the office.\n\n------\ngshdg\nA workplace that’s dehumanizing or that forces you to be your worst instead of\nyour best self in order to survive or succeed.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHurricane Sandy donation sign on Apple home page - soupboy\nhttp://www.apple.com/#sandy\n\n======\nsoupboy\nI can't follow the link because I don't have iTunes installed on my work\ncomputer, but I find this really interesting because I can't remember ever\nseeing something like this on the Apple home page\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMaking remote working secure, resilient and reliable (UK) - bdfh42\nhttps://www.innovateuk.org/competition-display-page/-/asset_publisher/RqEt2AKmEBhi/content/making-remote-working-secure-resilient-and-reliable?p_p_auth=DS6E30vo&utm_source=http%3a%2f%2fengage.innovateuk.org%2ftechnologystrategyboardlz%2f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Making+remote+working+secure%2c+resilient+and+reliable+C1&utm_term=Funding%c2%a0Available+-+Making+remote+working+secure%2c+resilient+and+reliable&utm_content=110504&gator_td=Levqfc3Qfs2%2fKfoJEIotibbqJiDXJG%2bfWjY8mJyeQP0fzgz%2bPXWT9aURBiMaOi%2fIP%2flE8nfRIU4jQqK4f5UplxA2oe28aOr1Xgb6J44tEHQJ4hWclCCN0v5kBJ2l6dHPfVdVT0mqHoySLPtBL0LbujSyfcTq0zmmPSZ4jxE1VtYBsQ%2fGKDFAAXTUYbeZKgaYpE%2b1i%2fSN2TAQyvNraMdaAh3Ahh3rq8wWHl775yEQ21o%3d\n======\nbdfh42\nAn interesting arena for a start-up with 60% funding ready and waiting.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nRegulators looking at antibacterial in soap - frankus\nhttp://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63759M20100408\n\n======\nchaosmachine\nADA seems to think Triclosan is just fine in toothpaste:\n\n[http://web.archive.org/web/20071024144101/http://www.ada.org...](http://web.archive.org/web/20071024144101/http://www.ada.org/prof/resources/pubs/adanews/adanewsarticle.asp?articleid=1375)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nLayoffs and Loyalty in a Liquid Valley - tim_sw\nhttps://medium.com/@louisgray/layoffs-and-loyalty-in-a-liquid-valley-4b42bd5e26d7\n======\nhwstar\nYou need to be prepared at all times. You never know when (not if) they are\ngoing to come for you. I lasted 25 years and 11 months at one company before\nthey came for me. (In hindsight, I should have quit long before the company\ngot into such dire straits, but it was an easy commute, and the co-workers\nwere great people to work with)\n\nLayoffs in the tech industry will happen. An emergency fund or F.U. money is\nrequired to deal with it. Once you are over 50 like me, you need to be in a\nposition financially to live several years without a paycheck because it could\ntake years for the job market dynamics to change and become more favourable\nfor the employee.\n\nDuring the time you are out of work for a long stretch take some time to learn\nsome new skills, contributing to open source software is an excellent way to\ndo this.\n\nYou must always place your interests ahead of the company you are currently\nworking for, the company is not going to place your interests ahead of it's\nown. You are just a pawn to them. If the companies interests start to conflict\nwith yours, then you must be prepared to leave (either voluntarily or they'll\ndo it for you at their time and place of choosing).\n\n~~~\ncarsongross\n> 25 years and 11 months\n\n> You need to be in a position financially to live several years without a\n> paycheck because it could take years for the job market dynamics to change\n> and become more favourable for the employee.\n\nHow insane is that?\n\nAdd to the fact that cost of living is so high now in the Bay Area, and safe\nreturns are so low, that building up any sort of true emergency savings is\ndifficult... Insane.\n\n~~~\nnostrademons\nSave 20% of your income for 25 years and you'll have 5 years living expenses\nsaved up. That's assuming _zero_ returns on capital, beyond inflation. It just\nmeans assuming that your $125K/year salary is actually $100K, or your\n$100K/year salary is actually $80K. There are people - even in the Bay Area -\nwho live on less than half of that.\n\n~~~\nnaveen99\nDo you mean 20% excluding retirement programs ? Remember to do that after\nmaximizing contributions to your 401k, ira, etc... At layoff time you might be\nable to extract some money without penalty and with minimal taxes.\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nThis is a pretty straight call on things. Nobody likes getting laid off, even\nif they had the day before been wishing they would get laid off. It feels\nwrong, it feels personal, and it feels bad.\n\nThat said, it forces you to look at new opportunities and that can be a good\nthing. There was a person I knew at Sun who was layed off and that forced them\nto find a new job and they landed at a company that then went public and they\nmade several million dollars. It really struck me how what seemed like\nsomething horrible for them really was the key to their future success.\n\nThe key for me was realizing that different people, in different situations,\nrespond very differently to the folks around them. I've seen it work both ways\nwhere a \"star\" from Company A was recruited to work at the company I was\nworking at and they flamed out miserably, and I've seen people that were very\nunproductive get layed off an blossom in a new environment into superstars.\n\nI wish sometimes someone would do a long duration study of folks in the bay\narea to quantify the expected value of staying or leaving. My instinct tells\nme that the smart ones leave, the \"loyal\" ones pay a price for their loyalty\nthat they don't expect.\n\n~~~\ngopalv\n> My instinct tells me that the smart ones leave, the \"loyal\" ones pay a price\n> for their loyalty that they don't expect.\n\nThe opportunities that come up for a \"smart\" person is many-fold for the ones\nwho're not acknowledged as smart - the difference in productivity might be\nminimal, but the label can be sticky purely due to narcissism.\n\nDon't get me wrong. Self belief is an important part of signing up for a\nchallenge that is bigger than anything you've done before - instead of being\ngiven a new badge & the same job elsewhere.\n\nThen, there's the trouble with the signaling of \"loyalty\".\n\nNot looking for another job is too easy to qualify as loyalty. But that's what\nmostly gets put up as being loyal, which is fairly low-bar for anyone.\n\nNow, the trouble is removing the \"just not looking\" confounding factor from a\nproper study - relying on self-reporting for that is going to produce bias.\n\nLoyalty as a word has come to mean a pseudo-virtue which is papered over the\nactual rational decision to stick with what you've got, considering all the\nrisks. And people who can't see opportunity over the horizon rarely get to\nbetter places.\n\nThe fact that people blossom when they get laid off takes away that illusion -\nthere is no status quo bias or loss aversion to overcome. Immediately people\nare less risk averse to new roles, knock on more doors & grow.\n\nLoyalty as practiced would mean acting in mutual benefit always - not\nsacrifice.\n\n------\nalain94040\nLoyalty works at the person level. That engineer you got along with great?\nThey are your best source of future employment. When they move to a new great\nopportunity, they call who they know and trust. It better be you.\n\n~~~\na3n\nExactly. If there's any loyalty, it's in these personal relationships within a\ncompany. Regardless of how loyal you are to each other, if the company bottom\nline says you're gone, then you're gone, and the notice will probably come\nfrom a person to whom you are loyal.\n\nIt's just bidness.\n\n------\nacjohnson55\nLoyalty shouldn't be thought of as synonymous with ongoing employment. Loyalty\nis staying true to the deal you made when you were hired. And for most people,\nthat's at-will. Going above and beyond the call of duty as an employee is\ngreat, but that should be out of symbiosis, not sacrifice.\n\nYou can be loyal to a company and to your colleagues while moving on to a new\njob. If you're advancing on the world, you may well find ways to send\nopportunities to the people and businesses you've worked with in the past.\nLikewise, good employers (companies and bosses) are loyal by putting people\nfirst, even when the employment relationship is ending.\n\n------\nxacaxulu\nStay loyal, but always keep your options open. Never stop networking, never\nstop exploring new opportunities.\n\n------\nmschuster91\nWhat I don't get is: can you really be terminated without notice in the US?\n\nIn Germany, you have iirc minimum 4 weeks delay.\n\n~~~\nhdctambien\nMost states in America (all of them?) have an At-Will Employment law.\n\nThat means you can quit your job at any time, for any reason, effective\nimmediately.\n\nIt also means you can be fired at any time, for any reason (Except illegal\nreasons). effective immediately.\n\nThis is a description of the law in Texas:\n[http://www.davidcholmeslaw.com/blog/what-is-the-at-will-\nempl...](http://www.davidcholmeslaw.com/blog/what-is-the-at-will-employment-\nrule-in-texas/)\n\n~~~\nkrapp\n>It also means you can be fired at any time, for any reason (Except illegal\nreasons). effective immediately.\n\nIn practice this means you can usually be fired for illegal reasons as well,\nas long as the company can maintain plausible deniability.\n\n------\npkaye\nLoyalty should be to individuals, not companies.\n\n------\n20years\nWow this highlights how brutal and vulnerable working in the tech space really\nis.\n\n~~~\nthrway2busy\nyeah I knkow - you might need to spend up to four weeks and go through, I shit\nyou not, _dozens_ of unpaid interviews - robbing you of 2 hours each, and not\njust once but often two or three times - before you get your next $80K-$140K\njob offer. The tech space is absolutely brutal. Nobody other than 90% of\npeople would think this is a tenable lifestyle.\n\n~~~\nshopinterest\nIt all depends, tech/developer vs BD/Marketing - Have experienced the up/down\ntoo of the Bay Area, and sometimes it takes months to get back in the saddle.\nEveryone wants the perfect employee, ready to go, nothing to train, Knows all\nstacks, all systems, liked by all 6-8 people who interview him/her, asks for\n10% less than market rate.\n\nSome companies want you to be an unicorn yourself, I've gone through stuff\nlike:\n\n'So you have years of mobile ad marketing and also years of online security\nservice experience, years doing app marketing, already know our reporting and\ntracking systems, but you DONT have experience specific marketing on an online\nsecurity app? Thanks for coming'\n\n------\ndudul\nLoyalty is a one way street in business, don't be a fool, do what's right for\nyou.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\n25 Billion App Countdown - Apple - sinzone\nhttp://www.apple.com/itunes/25-billion-app-countdown/\n\n======\ntree_of_item\nI wonder if I could write a bot to game this in time. Pick an app with a known\nsize and see how much the counter changes in the time it takes to download it.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSolo founders - epi0Bauqu\nhttp://jmillerinc.com/2010/07/06/solo-founders/\n======\nlimedaring\nOne major point missed by this article is motivation — with a team of\nfounders, drive to work is very high. You have someone else to interact with,\nwork with, and keep you on task. I've found that working on projects solo,\nit's a lot easier to \"fall off the wagon\", so to speak — get distracted\nworking on the wrong things, working without feedback, or stop working at all.\nThis obviously differs from person to person, but it's one of the reasons why\nI believe more in a team rather than a single founder.\n\n~~~\nDenisM\nOn the flip side - if your partners are demotivated you will lose motivation\ntoo. It's just an echo chamber.\n\nIt's much better to draw inspiration from your users and solid metrics about\nyour business.\n\n~~~\nlimedaring\nNot always. When one partner is demotivated, he/she has the other partner to\nturn to, discuss the problem, and pivot/change the project if necessary. The\nmotivated partner can also start this conversation as well. Compare that to a\nsolo founder who wouldn't have this support.\n\nI'm not saying drawing inspiration from the users isn't important (ideally,\nall founders should be doing this anyways), but having another person on the\nteam significantly helps to start.\n\n------\nrdl\nOne of the biggest reasons solo founder projects fail more than multiple\nfounder companies is that a multi-founder company has already passed some\ntests of market, product, and team.\n\nIf an idea is incredibly stupid, but it's your idea, you can easily become\ndeluded into thinking it's actually a great idea. Being able to convince\nanother person that the idea is good is definitely a sign that the idea is\ngood.\n\nIt's also a good check on the quality of the team -- if someone is obviously\nsuch a screw up that you'd never want to work with him, you wouldn't work with\nhim. Even fairly defective people can notice flaws in others. Therefore, a\ngroup of 2+ people probably means the members are at least tolerable.\n\n~~~\nkranner\nPre-launch marketing or blogging can give you a lot of feedback about your\nidea.\n\nI wouldn't consider a cofounder unless they could add serious value beyond\nfeedback.\n\n------\nlhorie\nThe link at the bottom has better content on the \"why be a solo founder\"\nquestion\n\n<http://www.somestartup.com/?p=36>\n\n~~~\ndaniel-cussen\nThanks for the article, I just posted it.\n\n------\nTawheed\nThere are a number of disadvantages to being a solo-founder; however, as long\nas you are cognizant about it, you can take steps to compensate.\n\nThe real question you want to ask yourself is why you're going the solo-route.\nAs a solo founder myself, I'm fine with the tradeoffs because it affords me\ncertain other liberties. Do some soul searching and get in synch with\nyourself.\n\nOne of the compensating measures I have is a Braintrust with other solo\nfounders. It's a pretty good place to bounce ideas off of other people in\nsimilar situations. Let me know if you are interested in joining.\n\n------\ndamoncali\nIsn't a solo founder just a team waiting to happen?\n\n~~~\navk\nI don't think so. If by team you mean co-founders, then no; as a single\nfounder I spend 0 time and effort on recruiting co-founders. If by team you\nmean other employees, then optimistically, sure, but again, it's not something\nI'm spending any time on now.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFolders : a language where programs are encoded as hierarchies of folders - tangue\nhttp://danieltemkin.com/Esolangs/Folders/\n======\nreidacdc\nThis is fun, esoteric programming languages can help you think about things\ndifferently, and often change your perspective.\n\nBut I think one of the central conceits is wrong? They claim folders take up\nzero space on disk. I assume they're pulling my leg.\n\nI'm not a Windows expert by any stretch, there are certainly accounting rules\nthat I don't know, but things that persist across reboots and travel with the\ndisk between computers definitely are stored somewhere on the disk.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nStep-By-Step Fundraising Tactics from an NYC Founder Who Raised $750M - imartin2k\nhttp://firstround.com/review/step-by-step-fundraising-tactics-from-the-nyc-legend-who-raised-750m/\n======\nnawgszy\nNot really a criticism, but this read a bit like a slimy dating guide.\n\"Remember, like everyone else they want to feel wanted for more than their\nmoney\". \"Keep them all interested until you've made up your mind\". \"Subtly let\nthem know that you're wanted by others\".\n\nOn an unrelated note: I don't know why I can never contribute constructively\non this site, but here I am.\n\n~~~\nCalChris\nGiven that this was published by a VC and that the writer has been on both\nsides of the table, I think you're misreading it.\n\n~~~\nnawgszy\nI wasn't really trying to imply it's bad advice or isn't ethical or anything.\nI get that the parallel I decided to draw does indeed somewhat imply that, but\nmy intentions weren't as such. Just struck me as funny.\n\n------\nbsder\n> “When I plan to be raising in six months, I’m already out there, proactively\n> connecting with VCs, having coffees, making as many of them aware of my\n> company as possible,” says Ryan. “The conversation is safer when I’m not\n> raising money.”\n\nYeah, because so many of us can pick up the phone and have VC's go have coffee\nwith us for no reason at all. <rolls eyes>\n\nStarting off an article on fundraising with \"Have a lot of rich friends\"\ndoesn't actually add credibility to the rest of the article.\n\n~~~\nbadspeler\nI mean, being rich is by far the most important factor for success followed by\nhaving rich friends.\n\n------\niamleppert\nDoes it strike me odd that CEOs and founders complain about fund raising?\nThat's one of the most important parts of their job. And I don't see how\nhaving 20 VC pitch meetings lasting 30 minutes on average over the course of\nthree months is exactly \"hard\" work. I'd expect nothing less, and perhaps even\nmore. Or at least some kind of analytical approach to the process that is both\nreasoned and strategic as it is diligent. I'd assume after the first few\npresentations you'd pretty much have it down save for some specific research\non the firm. If its a lot of e-mailing and paper/busy work, one can hire an\nassistant or PT contract staff to help.\n\nThis is the kind of work I'd relegate as a skill, but not a pure talent if\nthat makes any sense. Some people are probably more natural than others but\nthe skills required aren't worth staking your life on, and this is very much\none of those things where all the value comes from experience and knowing the\nright people.\n\nIf people don't want to fundraise, the solution is simple: don't be a CEO or\nstart a company.\n\n~~~\nadventured\n> Does it strike me odd that CEOs and founders complain about fund raising?\n> That's one of the most important parts of their job.\n\n> If people don't want to fundraise, the solution is simple: don't be a CEO or\n> start a company.\n\nThat has to be heavily qualified, as it applies to a _very small_ subset of\nCEOs and founders. Your last statement is radically off-base vs the reality of\nwho starts most new companies in the US. The extreme majority, 99%, of all\nCEOs and founders in the US do not actively fund raise as part of their jobs.\nThey have actual operating businesses that require their attention and pay for\nthemselves with sales, or otherwise are bootstrapping on variations of self-\nfunding. _Few_ start-ups in the US are backed by venture capitalists or\ninvolve VC fund raising.\n\n~500,000 new businesses are started every month in the US. ~400k-500k new\nemployer businesses are started each year. Less than 1% of all of those\nbusinesses are backed by venture capitalists.\n\n------\nkosei\nFrankly, this seems like a great article pointing out exactly why the VC and\nstartup space is such a male dominated area. So many clear male biases here\n(exude confidence, fake it until you make it, etc)\n\n~~~\nsnappyTertle\nAre you saying non males don't have confidence and can't fake it until they\nmake it?\n\n~~~\nDeltaCoast\nI think they may be referencing a confidence gap[1]. 'Fake until you make it'\nseems like it's referring to imposters syndrome[2]. I haven't found any\nevidence that it's more prevalent in women than men. Anecdotally women's\ncredentials & skills in tech are often more scrutinized than men which makes\n'faking it' seem less possible.\n\n1.[https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sarsons/files/confidence_f...](https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sarsons/files/confidence_final.pdf)\n\n2.[http://www.paulineroseclance.com/pdf/ip_high_achieving_women...](http://www.paulineroseclance.com/pdf/ip_high_achieving_women.pdf)\n\n------\nhoodoof\nI deeply hope to never raise money in my life.\n\n~~~\nowens99\nThe wealthiest among all my investors (who are also self-made) never raised VC\nfor their startups. All bootstrapped.\n\nToo many founders pour their life into a project and end up making less than\ntheir investors do from the sale of their own company.\n\nThat said, if you can raise a lot for very little equity in a short time, it\ncan be worth it.\n\n~~~\ndanieltillett\nThis is the real secret of the VC industry. Bootstrapping is only harder at\nthe beginning.\n\n------\nyosho\nOne of the better fundraising guides out there for sure.\n\n------\nsimonebrunozzi\nThis is a joke. \"You basically start to believe your own bullshit after a\nwhile, and that’s a good thing.\" How can this be taken as serious advice?\n\nI hate this guy, and what this guy represents. I am not a bullshitter, and I\nwill never be one. I'd rather not raise money and fail, than bullshit my way\nto IPO.\n\n------\nceeker\nProbably one of the best articles I have read about fund raising. It is much\nmore tactical than the typical advice you see on this topic. First Round has a\nlot of fluff articles but this one is really worth reading.\n\n------\njuskrey\nBullshitology\n\n~~~\nbob_theslob646\nWhy?\n\n~~~\nmoocowtruck\nthe entire thing is a step by step guide how to bullshit people so you get\ncash; that's probably why\n\n------\nmoocowtruck\nso the name of the game is lie through your teeth, and learn about your\nopponent so you can lie better..\n\n------\nLeoJiWoo\nIs this still applicable? I've been hearing seed funding is dramatically\ndrying up.\n\n------\nflyinglizard\nThis was the best article I remember reading about the subject.\n\n------\nfencepost\nKevin Ryan, of DoubleClick, Gilt, Mongo DB, BusinessInsider, and Nomad Health.\n\nEdit: fine, no snarky comments\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAlgolia raises a $18.3M Series A - jlemoine\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2015/05/20/algolia-grabs-18-3-million-from-accel-for-its-search-api-on-steroids/\n\n======\nthomasfromcdnjs\nCongratulations team Algolia! We loved all the help Sylvain gave us with the\ncdnjs.com search. It just works, and faster than anything I've ever seen.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMy Setup: Passwords, 2FA, and Yubikeys - captn3m0\nhttps://captnemo.in/blog/2020/01/04/security-setup/?2\n======\ncaptn3m0\nI recently moved to running my `pass` setup against my Yubikey and wrote about\neverything surrounding it, including the various failure modes I could think\nof.\n\nRunning GPG/SSH alongside `pass` on the Yubikey was a gradual process, but I'm\nso glad I managed to get it working correctly. Open to suggestions if there's\nanything HN thinks can be improved :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNASA Spacecraft Dives Between Saturn and Its Rings - danparsonson\nhttps://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-spacecraft-dives-between-saturn-and-its-rings\n======\nahmeni\nAs someone working on what amounts to fairly trivial applications in the\nenterprise, it's amazing to see engineering efforts like this take place over\nnearly 20 years of in-flight time.\n\n------\nhackuser\nIt's amazing to me how normalized these accomplishments has become. Humanity\ndidn't master rocketry until the mid-20th century, and now we regularly have\nrobotic vehicles flying around other planets (and sending photos to us).\n\nPerhaps it's an example of how humans naturally notice only change. This is\njust more of the same, I suppose.\n\nAnd we also hear how incompetent and inefficient NASA and the whole U.S.\ngovernment are. They certainly could improve but they also just flew a craft\naround Saturn, for 12 years. What was it that you were working on again?\n\n~~~\nKattywumpus\nYou also have to compare NASA's incredible success rate to others in their\nfield. In 2013, China's Yutu moon rover broke down in less than a month. In\n2014, the ESA's Philae lander failed to launch its harpoons and fire the\nthruster necessary to attach the probe to the comet's surface, and ultimately\nbounced into a dark crater. In 2011, Russia's ambitious Phobos-Grunt mission\nto return a sample of Martian soil never got beyond low Earth orbit because of\na rocket misfire.\n\nI'm not saying other space agencies aren't doing impressive and amazing work.\n(Both Yutu and Philae were able to keep functioning and achieve at least some\nof their mission objectives.) I'm just saying space exploration is Really\nHard. And NASA and its partners keep succeeding, even when they try crazy new\nthings, like landing the SUV-sized Curiosity rover with the Rube Goldberg-like\n\"Sky Crane maneuver\", or sending a nearly two-decade-old spacecraft through\nthe narrow gap between Saturn's rings and the planet's atmosphere.\n\nWe take their successes for granted, like this stuff is easy, but it's not,\neven for teams of well-funded geniuses. Worth taking a second to appreciate\nthe engineering achievement as well as the science.\n\n------\nobeattie\nCassini has been the most incredible mission… so many fascinating discoveries\nand wonderful imagery. We really need to do more (far more) missions like\nthis.\n\n~~~\ncyberpunk\nI've really been enjoying it also, we're so far past the expected lifespan of\nthis mission every new picture and reading is a gift; well done to all\ninvolved! We get things right sometimes! The software onboard remains a bit of\na black box though; I'd really love to know the software architecture of these\nthings...\n\nI'm not too up on the capabilities of Cassini, but considering how long it's\nbeen in action would I be right to guess we're not going to get any kind of\n'steaming video' of the final dive? Some pics will get picked up before it\nmeets its end in saturn's atmosphere would be great anyway!\n\nI'm hoping we can find enough out with Cassini's swan song to get interest up\nenough to fund lander missions to Europa and Titan (if we can work out how to\ntotally sterilize things, right?) but I don't think anything is on the cards\ncurrently..\n\nWishlist stuff: I really love the pics; but having HD video streams from twhat\nhe next gen of craft will be would be so amazing, I really hope we get there\nsomeday...\n\nI'm very much looking forwards to the James Webb scope when it gets launched\ntoo!\n\nEdit: You can see some pics here [0] and one of my favourites [1].\n\n[0] : [https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/raw-\nimages/](https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/raw-images/) [1] :\n[https://saturnraw.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGF...](https://saturnraw.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGFullS99/N00280312.jpg)\n\n~~~\ntherein\nThose raw images are mind blowing. Kerbal Space Program isn't too far off. :)\n\n[https://saturnraw.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGF...](https://saturnraw.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGFullS95/N00265856.jpg)\n\n~~~\ncyberpunk\nJust to geek out even more-- I really liked this one of enceladus too [0] ...\nI wish I knew an astronomer who could explain what that 'shooting star'\nlooking thing is in that pic..\n\nDo you have any ideas?\n\nI'd expect every bit of light to be streaked if it was a long exposure, so it\nhas to be something moving? Massive \"I'm totally uneducated on all this stuff\"\ndisclaimer -- but if this pic was taken from inside saturn's atmosphere; did\nit capture a 'shooting star' ??\n\n[0]:\n[https://saturnraw.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGF...](https://saturnraw.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGFullS99/N00280320.jpg)\n\n~~~\nmturmon\nIt's probably a cosmic ray, which overloads the CCD detector in a streak-like\npattern as it flies through the focal plane. All uncorrected deep space\nimagery has them.\n\n~~~\ncyberpunk\nAha; thanks! I'm pretty sure I like the effect even more because of your\nexplanation though!\n\n------\neu\nThe FAQ[0] about the images has some interesting things in it:\n\n> Why are there images of different sizes?\n\n> The Cassini cameras are 1-megapixel cameras. A normal image is 1024 x 1024\n> pixels. Using a technique called \"summation\" the cameras have the ability to\n> combine pixels together to get smaller but less noisy images. This results\n> in smaller images that take a lot less time to readout out and take up less\n> data volume. Summation is very useful if a scientist needs to conserve both.\n> In the 2 x 2 mode, the camera takes a 2 x 2 pixel square and averages those\n> values into a single pixel. Images in this mode will be 512 x 512 pixels. In\n> the 4 x 4 mode, the camera takes a 4 x 4 pixel square and makes that a\n> single pixel. Images in this mode are 256 x 256 in size.\n\n[0]\n[https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/faq/#raw_images](https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/faq/#raw_images)\n\n------\nDonbunEf7\nAmazing\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: How do you manage cloud costs? - edcr\nIn large teams it is pretty easy to end up with things like unused vm&#x27;s, files stored and forgotten about in s3&#x2F;blobs etc, machines left running over weekends etc when not in use.<p>How do people make sure they aren&#x27;t wasting money like this or don&#x27;t they?<p>Thanks!\n======\nmattbgates\nI use DreamCompute, which is DreamHost's OpenStack cloud computing. The\nsmallest instance cost just $4.50 a month at 512 MB and $6.00 for 1 GB. Each\ninstance comes with 80 GB SSD + 100 GB block and bandwidth is currently\nunmetered, though DreamHost has stated they will likely be charging in the\nfuture. I can't imagine they would charge a fortune for it and would likely\nkeep it very competitive. Having scoured the Internet for a better cloud\nsystem than that and better rates, I haven't seen anything that beats it.\n\nI currently have a fair-amount-of-traffic website sitting on the 1 GB server,\nwhile I have several web apps, which aren't getting traffic at the moment,\nsitting on a smaller single server.\n\nI don't have teams, but it is pretty easy to know what instances I spin up and\nwhich ones I'm using. Regardless of whether the server is being used or not,\nyou still get charged. So to not get charged, I only use what I need.\n\nI remember using AWS once, really just for testing, and somehow wracked up a\nbill for $90 or something like that, despite not getting much traffic. I think\nI set up a portfolio website, WordPress with like 6 pages, and forgot about\nit. I doubt it was getting a lot of traffic. Luckily, Amazon actually refunded\nme. So sometimes pay-for-usage is not always the best way to do things.\n\nBut as far as uptime for DreamCompute, so far, other than figuring out how\nmuch I had needed in the beginning.. because I had originally set my 1 GB\nserver to 512 MB, the website kept crashing. Once I figured out I needed more\nRAM and put caching in place, the uptime has been 100%.\n\n~~~\nedcr\nCheers Matt - it is more how do I make sure we aren't spending money on things\nwe don't need - we have lots of developers and whenever I go through\neverything manually I end up seeing things that aren't being used.\n\n------\nQuinnyPig\nIt's harder than it looks. Solving this problem is my entire business model.\n\nStopping unused resources is half of it-- the overlooked other half is\nunderstanding what the bill shows you. Finance doesn't care about how much is\ncompute vs storage, they care about COGS vs R&D spend.\n\nOne-off cost reductions are relatively easy; coming up with a longer term\napproach takes significantly more work.\n\n~~~\nedcr\nCool I'm thinking of doing something for azure but not sure if anyone cares\n(anyone seriously using azure gets lots of free credits) :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTesting HTTP caching in Go - santiaago\nhttp://www.sanarias.com/blog/215TestingHTTPcachinginGo\n\n======\nalimoeeny\nThe article is very good, I read it all the way to the end and learned quite a\nfew things. But the title is just a bit misleading, it is more like \"test\ncoverage in go, with an example using http cache\". Thanks for writing and\nsharing.\n\n~~~\nartifaxx\nThat is very true, but at least the article has links to the previous\ntutorials that fill out the background of the topic.\n\n------\njzelinskie\nSerious question: is properly handling the \"Not Modified \" status code really\nconsidered caching or is there a better name? Maybe client-side caching? HTTP\ncaching in my mind is associated with something like varnish.\n\n~~~\ngarfij\nYes, that along with dealing with Last-Modified, If-Not-Modified, ETag, and\nother similar HTTP Headers is what is meant by HTTP Caching.\n\nFrom what I can tell Varnish uses these same concepts to do what they do\n(caching HTTP reverse proxy).\n\nSee\n\n* [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7234#section-1](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7234#section-1)\n\n* [http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec13.html](http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec13.html)\n\n* [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Caching_FA...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Caching_FAQ)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nEdward Snowden says British spy agency GCHQ 'worse' than NSA - SonicSoul\nhttp://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/united-kingdom/130621/edward-snowden-gchq-tempora-worse-nsa-prism\n\n======\ndaledavies\nTime to dust off the IP Over Avian Carriers RCF maybe?\n\n~~~\nmilliams\nThen all they have to do is stop the pigeon\n([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dastardly_and_Muttley_in_Their...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dastardly_and_Muttley_in_Their_Flying_Machines)).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Smart CSS viewer  tailored for Designers - csspeeper\nhttps://csspeeper.com/\n======\n23andwalnut\nIt's well designed. It would be nice if the export functionality generated a\ncss file with typography + colors.\n\n------\negfx\nHome site seems to have CSS layout issues on my Nexus 6p.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nI've never felt less in control of my own hardware - mildbyte\nhttps://kimonote.com/@mildbyte/ive-never-felt-less-in-control-of-my-own-hardware-14804/\n======\njimmies\n>In 2016, when I got a new phone, the default setting changed and I would just\nwake up to my device stating, \"Tinder has been updated. Deal with it\".\n\nI turned off auto-updates on my phone.\n\nSo this happened. Last year or so I traveled to SF and tried to call an Uber\nhome after a long day of walking around. My phone had 5% battery left. I\nopened the app and there it was... The maps and everything showed up, but then\nit blocked the UI with the message: \"You haven't updated the app in a month.\nUber won't work if you don't update it right now.\" It really rustled my\njimmies. In the next 15 minutes, 3 of us (2 are foreigners with no cell\nconnection) had to stand in the freezing rain when the damn thing was updating\nwith my 2.5G connection. When the Uber arrived, I had 1% left and not long\nafter I got in the car, my phone shut down. I was so worried the phone would\ndie before the car arrived.\n\nThe other day I talked about how backward-compatible Google Maps is and\nunfortunately it made the news on Slashdot. Some people were like, oh yeah,\nWindows is backward compatible with 30 years old apps. Are you a millennial/a\nshill for praising them for supporting their API for 10 years? Yeah, keep\ntalking about Windows, until you fucking use some of the apps nowadays that\nwouldn't work when you haven't updated them in a month.\n\n~~~\nradarsat1\nI agree with you. But..\n\n> \"Tinder has been updated. Deal with it\".\n\nis an interesting choice of example. The anger at updates only really makes\nsense for apps that are entirely local to your hardware. As soon as you have\nan app where part of it runs on a server that you don't control, that logic\ngoes out the window. They can stop your non-updated app from working with no\neffort, just by making the server API incompatible. As long as you are\ndepending on someone else's server to be up and responding and not changing,\nyou give up your rights to be in control of local updates.\n\nIt sucks, but that's the reality of SaaS. I'm a fan of using local apps\nwhenever possible. For instance, Google Docs is just too damn useful not to\nuse sometimes. But I still, majority of the time, will choose to use a local\nword processor whenever I can get away with it. And when I'm done working on a\nGoogle Docs project, I download it in several formats and put it in the\ndrawer.\n\nIn the meantime I'd really like to see more take-up of open source, federated\nhosted solutions based on open document standards and open protocols. But so\nfar the big corporations are winning that game.\n\n~~~\nryandrake\nThe anger is still valid because at the end of the day, the software (that\nused to work) no longer works due to a choice made by the company that makes\nthe software. To the end user there is no difference between \"making a\nbreaking API change on the server\" and \"pushing a native update that disables\nthe app\".\n\nThis may be the current sucky reality of SaaS, but it could be fixed if the\nmarket demanded it.\n\n~~~\nAnalemma_\n> but it could be fixed if the market demanded it.\n\nMeaning, effectively, that it will not be fixed.\n\nI understand the frustration. I work on a mobile application that, like Uber,\nrelies on a lot of server-side communication and deliberately stops working if\nthe client is out of date. And I do know that this sucks.\n\nBut the reality is, our API is non-public, and so there is no pressure from\nanyone to maintain backward compatibility. And I have a thousand features that\nneed to ship, with not enough time as it is, or I will start getting heat from\nmanagement. Abandoning the cadence of \"constant breaking changes bundled with\nclient updates\" would slow development considerably, for no gain except the\none-hundredth-of-one-percent of HN weirdos who care about this stuff. It's\njust not going to happen.\n\n~~~\nyousir\n> but it could be fixed if the market demanded it.\n\nThe market (my mom for example) is unaware there is a fix.\n\n> there is no pressure from anyone to maintain backward compatibility.\n\nYou and your manager are both part of the problem. And the phone makers,\nbecause they invented a market place for shit companies that wants to ship\nunfinished software and push daily updates to their users to eventually reach\na point where their API is stable.\n\nThere used to exist software developers who took great pride in (API)\nbackwards compatibility. These days, where are they? My guess is they have\nbeen overrun by the a huge crowd of new people who have never maintained a\nbackwards compatible API and who don't know how to. Management love fast-\nmoving people who say \"yes sir\" and \"not a problem sir\".\n\n~~~\nryandrake\nThis is a good point too. There are people unaware of the better way! The\nworld is coming, where one day there won't be anyone left alive who remembers\nthings like:\n\n1\\. Software that would work, un-modified, for decades.\n\n2\\. Software that worked without access to some back-end.\n\n3\\. Software that didn't require permission from a third party to run.\n\n4\\. Software that didn't collect personal data from users.\n\n5\\. Having root/admin access to your own computer/devices.\n\nWe can still prevent this from coming true, but it's going to happen if nobody\npushes back on these practices.\n\n~~~\nRcouF1uZ4gsC\nThere is no money in selling software apart from a service these days. Part of\nit is due to the open source movement and expectation that the software is\nfree while you pay for support/services. Software as an entity that you buy\napart from a service has been devalued.\n\n------\ntherealmarv\nAuto Updates without user interaction is the biggest security benefit I can\nthink of for a normal user. Yes you read that right. It's f*cking great that\nmy parents can use an always up to date browser and OS and I don't need to\nworry if they have updated all their stuff. Update mechanisms like for Java\nand other stuff which pop-up and require user interaction are a thing most\npeople will not get right. Actually I really like the Chrome OS approach where\nit's done continuesly in the background. Not all people want to know what's\ngoing on under the hood and how the motor of their car works exactly. Some\npeople just want to drive securely from A to B.\n\n~~~\nrobotsonic\nI agree that there are certainly benefits to auto-updates, but where I tend to\ndislike them (especially on the phone), is where I have infrequently used\napps.\n\nTo stick with the Uber example, I don't live in a city with Uber, but have it\non my phone for when I am. Why do I need to be burdened with using my data to\nconstantly update an app I use once a year. This applies to a lot of apps\n(airlines, games, etc.). Games are really the worst offender as they tend to\nbe quite large. Where release notes are provided in the app store, I will\nupdate if it is related to a critical security vulnerability, or something\nlegitimate, but find it hard to rationalize constantly downloading 100+MB apps\ndoing this for minor bug fixes that impact 0.001% of an apps user base.\n\n~~~\nafterburner\n> burdened with using my data\n\nThere's usually a setting that forces updates to only download over a Wifi\nconnection.\n\n~~~\nrobotsonic\nI do only do updates on wifi, however, internet is both expensive and data\ncaps are quite low where I live. I'd rather watch one more Netflix show than\ndownload an app I don't often use four times a month.\n\nI agree with the comment below about this being an argument for delta updates.\n\n------\nohazi\nYou know, you could have even stopped at the car analogy, because modern cars\nare actually doing this and it's fucking terrifying.\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16374464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16374464)\n\n~~~\ngnode\nI can certainly imagine the dashboard becoming real estate for ads.\n\n~~~\nsamfriedman\nWhen your car is fully self-driving, I'm sure you will be able to get a\ndiscount on the sticker/rental price by agreeing to view some ads on the in-\ncar screens while you ride.\n\n~~~\nryandrake\nSure, it will start that way. But we all know how that feature will progress:\n\n1\\. ads play by default, with an option to pay to remove\n\nthen to:\n\n2\\. forced ads with no option to remove, and the car won't run unless they're\nplaying\n\n~~~\ntokai\n3\\. dynamic rerouting our your drive to maximize utility of cityscape ads\n\n------\nPascLeRasc\nI've been thinking about this a lot lately. I just reactivated my old Android\nphone yesterday for fun and as soon as I put the sim card in the phone started\nblowing up with notifications about old voicemails, ones I never saw on my\niPhone I had just had it in. There were about a dozen voicemails from the past\nsix months from jobs I had applied to and heard nothing back from, or had a\npreliminary phone interview with, asking me to call them back to schedule\nsomething. I mentioned it to my sister, who moved from Android to iPhone the\nsame time I did, and she did the same thing and found a bunch of voicemails\nfrom a college she's recently applied to asking if she can send them some\npiece of paperwork. It's so frustrating that we didn't know that these\nvoicemails existed.\n\nI think the fundamental problem is that to make these technical products like\nmobile OS's and email apps you need to be so far into tech that you can't\nreally imagine what it's like to be a casual user. This is why I don't\nconsider software engineering to be on the same tier as other disciplines of\nengineering. Yes, civil engineers make bridges, but they use them in daily\nlife exactly the same as regular people do - the same goes for electrical\nengineers and power in the home, and mechanical engineers and vacuums/air\nconditioners/bicycles. When you make software, you look at all software\ndifferently and you lose the perspective of a regular person.\n\n------\namelius\nAnd the worst part, for me, is that we engineers are inflicting this upon\neachother, driven by money and business-types with lock-in business-models.\n\nWe desperately need a code of conduct for engineers.\n\nAnd/or we need certain types of businessmodel to become outlawed.\n\n------\nzanny\nThis is why I go out of my way to only buy phones that are going to be very\nwell supported by LineageOS for a long time.\n\nYou can go Google-less on such devices if you want.\n\nThe only real limitation is that you cannot do anything about the super-\nprivileged proprietary modem that simultaneously can spy on you at any time\nthat also prevents you from running newer kernels on your hardware because of\nhow evil every Android vendor is with their proprietary bits.\n\nAt least there is finally momentum to kill the ME / SP backdoors on desktops.\nIts going to be much harder to do that on mobile since the only way to use\ncellular networks is through these proprietary black box modems.\n\n------\nbhnmmhmd\nWe were afraid that AI will take over and take away our freedom, but I think\nsome companies have done a great job at ruining their products, and our lives\nas well.\n\n~~~\nTAForObvReasons\nWe are finally facing the ramifications of short-sighted decisions years ago.\nIn the race to the bottom where a plurality of people opted for \"free\" or\n\"cheaper\" options, not enough people cared about how money is made. Companies\nlike google aren't charities, so profits would have to be extracted\nirrespective of the dubiousness of the approach. The current situation was\npredicted by many.\n\n------\nseorphates\nIt's an interesting (but mostly depressing) problem. The insistence that\n\"others must be in control of what you own\" doesn't really sit well with me,\nat all. I won't drive a phone without root, for instance. Otherwise the\nplethora of updates I have sitting around not being updated would do nothing\nbut eat data with garbage updates with naught but a new roll of advertisements\nand, if you're unlucky, new garbage access requests. Update the os? Yeah, no.\nNot on your watch, at least.\n\nA firewall, for instance, is a basic necessity. Even the crude android\nflavors. It includes the ability to lock out your \"vendors\" selectively and\naccurately.\n\nMy build is, hm, approaching it's fourth year, I think. No auto updates save\nfor select apps. No complaints. No surprises. But I'm special, I don't do\n\"phone for fun\" and so have a fairly limited and hardened short list of\nrequirements.\n\nThe most annoying thing on android is Google XXANY - by a wide, wide margin.\nI'll be itching to build a google-go-around on my next handset, for certain.\n\nSave all those apps you like, for sure, I still depend on side-loading quite a\nfew that have since gone by the wayside. At this juncture I have to take\nabsolutely every bit of control that I can get my filthy paws wrapped around.\n\n------\ntpaschalis\nI understand that powers have shifted, and the majority of the people prefer\n\"free\" email/chat/spreadsheets/storage, when \"free\" means \"welcome to our own\nspecial walled corner of the internet, give us your personal data and watch\nthese ads\".\n\nBut why should in 2018 be so hard for one to be able to simply pay _once_ for\nhardware or software, that puts the _user_ first? Is it impossible for such a\ncompany to succeed at scale?\n\n~~~\nsuprfnk\n> But why should in 2018 be so hard for one to be able to simply pay once for\n> hardware or software, that puts the user first? Is it impossible for such a\n> company to succeed at scale?\n\nApple seems to follow that plan. For your \"email/chat/spreadsheets/storage\",\nthey have iCloud mail, iMessage, Numbers and iCloud Drive. You pay once, and\nget software support quite a lot of years later. They don't seem to be selling\nor gathering much data. They won't show you ads.\n\nNow, it won't be RMS approved, but that's another debate.\n\n~~~\nCaptSpify\nHow is a company that gives you a locked-down device that they _drastically_\ncontrol, and refuse to provide source for \"putting the user first\" ?\n\n------\nkevin_b_er\nAnd the DMCA prevents you from repairing the problem. Ostensibly to protect\ncopyright, but instead used to deny you ownership.\n\n~~~\npishpash\nJust like you use software by license and don't \"own\" it, hardware makers have\nrealized they can bilk with the same business model. It's no coincidence that\nslime software companies are the ones making the current hardwares that have\nsuch \"features\" \\-- Apple and Google chiefly among them, along with the\necosystem they created in their own image.\n\n------\njim_dow_jones\nRichard Stallman was right. We didn't listen!\n\n~~~\nacomjean\nI heard Stallman talk at graduate school in the early part of this century.\n\nI though he was a bit extreme at the time, but over time I've come to\nappreciate his position. Having software be open and modifiable is really\nquite an amazing thing. those open building blocks lets us do amazing things\nwith software quite easily.\n\nIts time for an open source desktop os and software to go mainstream. We\nrealize that apple is not reliable making developer grade notebooks and their\nunix underpinnings show that it is possible. Then onto phones. I feel open\nsource software will keep the hardware from being too weird\n\n~~~\nwvenable\nAll the open source software I use on daily basis auto-updates.\n\n~~~\ncarapace\n> “Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community.\n> Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute,\n> study, change and improve the software.\n\n[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-\nsw.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)\n\nCouldn't find anything specific in re: auto-updates though...\n\n------\nadreamingsoul\nSo, back to land lines with analog phones?\n\nSerious question, do any phones exist that can fully owned by the user? For a\nperiod, I was excited about the Ubuntu phone because of the fact that I could\nhave full control over it. Sad to see that project terminated.\n\nI'm also interested in \"dumbphones\" that can use CDMA or GSM networks.\n\n~~~\nsnark42\n> Serious question, do any phones exist that can fully owned by the user?\n\nMany (HTC, Google, ASUS, etc. - NOT Samsung) unlocked android phone can be\nloaded with a variety of bootloaders and then flashed with the ROM of your\nchoice where you have full root access. Of course without google apps (Google\nPlay Store) your phone isn't all that useful, but you can install google apps\n( maybe from a questionable legal/copyright stand point, I don't remember) and\nhave more control over the device.\n\nNot sure if this matches what you mean by fully owned though. Checkout XDA\nForums ([https://forum.xda-developers.com/](https://forum.xda-\ndevelopers.com/)) to see what interesting things are out there you can do.\nThere's also LineageOS\n([https://www.lineageos.org/](https://www.lineageos.org/)) formerly\nCyanogenMod.\n\n~~~\nsummm\nYes, but by unlocking you lose every bit of physical security that device had.\nAnybody having physical access to your phone can then dump the phone's content\nto a usb drive in kinutes and without any other tool than a otg cable. The\nmakers of the alternative recovery don't bother (who can blame them, they are\nvolunteers) and the manufacurers don't care to implement a proper bootloader\nthat would support reliable re-locking after installing a modified recovery.\nBesides that, all this alternative software is distributed binary on shady\nsharehosters by more or less random people on forums. Not exactly a good basis\nif you wanted to re-gain trust in your phone.\n\n~~~\nsilverdrake11\nYou can install LineageOS without root / usb debugging enabled\n\n------\nlisper\nI have an iPhone 4S running iOS 7 (jailbroken of course) and an original MBP\nretina running Mavericks. I don't update them because the risk of updating is\nhigher than the risk of not updating. Right now everything is working, and\neverything is set up the way I like it. If I don't update, things might break\nsome day, but there is also a greater-than-zero chance that everything will\ncontinue to work for quite a while. If I update, those odds drop to zero. Not\neven a statistical approximation of zero, but actually zero. Updating is just\ntrading one set of risks for a different set of risks. I choose the devil I\nknow.\n\n~~~\nthinkythought\nAs someone also still rocking the original MBPr, the peak for it software wise\nis actually El Capitan\n\nI really, really wish i had never updated from that. It was faster, smoother,\nand more stable there than it was before and after. Definitely way better than\nMavericks. I push this thing hard with premiere/ableton live/etc too.\n\n~~~\nlisper\nMy main problem with El Cap is that iPhoto won't work any more. I have a huge\ninvestment in iPhoto -- tons of curated albums with no way to import them to\nPhotos (what were they thinking?), and no obvious alternative.\n\nAlso, I absolutely despise the El Cap design. The flat look control widgets\nand icons, the barely visible grey text, the secret hidden controls that only\nappear when you mouse over them, it all makes me cringe. (Yes, Mav has a few\nhidden controls as well, but at least now I know where they all are. If I\nupgrade, I have to go on the secret control easter egg hunt all over again.\nLife is too short for that kind of bullshit.)\n\n------\nsuperasn\nAlso these updates drain the battery all the time and there is no way to tell\nthem to please stop.\n\nAt least on Android you can install \"greenify app\" but for that to work\nproperly, you need to have root and for that you have to unlock the bootloader\n(for which you have to wait 14 days and also void your warranty). I mean wtf,\nit's my phone but the design is such that a shit ton of crap always needs to\nrun in the background (looking at you google play services) and dozens of\nuseless apps that are always connecting just to show me more push\nnotifications.\n\n~~~\naidenn0\nMy android phone was configured out-of-the-box to only run autoupdates when\nplugged in and on wifi. It's easy to see because if I haven't plugged my phone\nin for a few days, as soon as I do it starts updating like crazy.\n\n~~~\nrhizome\nI do this too, and the most annoying thing is just to arrive home at the end\nof the day and my phone becoming unusable because something, somewhere has to\nupdate ASAP on WiFi. I don't even keep that many apps installed, but as sure\nas eggs, something always needs an update.\n\n------\nbonsai80\nAgreed. Looking forward to when I get my new phone:\n[https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/)\n\n------\nscarface74\nI can choose whether apps auto update on iOS devices but more importantly,\nwhen I download something on my computer, I have no control of what the app\ndoes. On my iOS device, I can be somewhat assured that it's going to be\nsomewhat trapped in a sandbox and only be allowed to do what I specifically\ngive it permission to do.\n\nI wish that Apple would give you an option to not allow an app to access the\ninternet and not just disallow the use of mobile data.\n\n------\nBlinks-\nIncreases in complexity up the barrier of entry to any advanced system, but\nlately it seems like things are made with the intent to make that barrier\nimpossible to overcome within the lifetime of the hardware. The right to\nrepair and open hardware standards are something we need to organize and push\nfor if we want to see improvements. After all it's been demonstrated time and\ntime again that we can't trust black box hardware.\n\n~~~\nmaxxxxx\nI think we are going more and more into the direction of renting almost\neverything. If you use ebooks like Kindle you don't accumulate a book\ncollection. Same for record collections. Devices become useless once the\nconnected cloud service shuts down. Eventually we'll probably have cars that\nget obsoleted quickly. I bet the same will happen for household and other\nrobots once they get more powerful. You will have to pay monthly rent to use\nthem.\n\n~~~\ndeckard1\n[https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-\ndeere/](https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/)\n\nAlready happening. But everyone called RMS a kook. He looks funny. He talks\nfunny. He's a socialist. He smells. And here we are. People are praising\nApple-- _Apple_ \\--for letting people pay money for closed software that, at\nthe very least, lives on their own device.\n\nThat's a low bar.\n\n------\nmakecheck\nWhen obtaining new apps or devices, you can’t tell if it is a worthwhile\ninvestment because it could break in any number of ways. For your money, are\nyou buying 2 weeks of functionality or 5 years of it? It’s not even enough to\nhave a reputable seller because good apps are sold to terrible companies that\nruin them later, or the developer just decides to add new money-making schemes\nlater.\n\nIt seems that we need more guarantees (legally enforceable, i.e. you said you\nwouldn’t update your gizmo to do X but you did so I get compensation).\n\n------\nDannyB2\nGoing through a \"Linux phase\"?\n\nI started my \"Linux phase\" in 1999 and have never finished going through that\nphase.\n\n~~~\nrconti\nApparently the author went through a \"Linux phase\", yes.\n\n------\nm_fayer\nThe GDPR is going in the right direction by creating a \"bill of rights\" for\nyour data, so ownership is firmly delineated and all 3rd party use of data\nrevolves around clear revokable granular consent.\n\nWhat we need now is a \"bill of rights\" defining and preserving the notion of\nownership for digital devices. Part of that should be that the device should\nonly do what it's explicitly asked to do. Updates should be opt-in in nearly\nall cases, and mandatory updates should meet stringent requirements similar to\nvaccines. That is, only to combat major threats that apply to users as a\ngroup.\n\n------\noblib\nYeah, I feel that too.\n\nAfter pressing the \"later\" button every time I picked up my iPhone for a few\nweeks Apple quit asking and updated the \"iOS\" this past month.\n\nIt has \"new features\" they keep telling me I need and I've been pressing\nbuttons to ignore their \"Learn how to use the new...\" prompts since then.\n\nWith the exception of security updates I'd like very much if Apple left my\nphone alone but it's not really \"my phone\". I just have a license to use it\nand it says they can make changes to it.\n\nThe way that's been working for me does not entice me to buy new phones from\nApple.\n\n------\nPricelessValue\nThat's exactly how I feel about software ever since I got acquainted with\nwindows 10. Do you best to remove all the junk. Then they keep reinstalling\ntheir \"malware\" until they finally remove the option of disabling or removing\ntheir malware.\n\nIt feels like we are losing more control and access over tech - both software\nand hardware. Some companies are trying their best to turn tech into a black\nbox which we aren't allowed to peer into.\n\n------\nwozer\nEspecially nice when the updates break your computer, as it happened for a lot\nof people with the Spectre mitigations.\n\nI dread the Internet of Things.\n\n------\nHasknewbie\n> \"Thankfully, running a System Restore worked and the next update didn't have\n> these problems, but since then I stopped allowing automatic updates\"\n\nIt is now possible to disable automatic updates in Windows 10? (Asking because\nforced updates is what made me switch to Linux in the first place.)\n\n~~~\nstordoff\nIn Windows 10 Pro, you can with Group Policy. My machines are set to \"Notify\nto install\" \\- it's not ideal, as Windows Defender updates use the same path\nso it's triggered at least once a day, but a small system tray notification of\n\"You need some updates\" is an improvement over the more forceful notifications\nand unexpected reboots.\n\n------\ntrue_tuna\nThe real issue is loss of control. “Ask me again later” is dehumanizing\nbecause it robs the user of agency. I can’t imagine how a forced windows ten\nupdate would have felt. Studies have shown (not to mention common sense) that\na feeling of lack of agency is depressing. I recently quit the Mac OS after 20\nyears of rabid fandom, over the feeling that I wasn’t the one in charge of my\nMac. Linux still lets me own my gear and I have to say that a few unpolished\nareas are worth the renewed sense of agency. Unfortunately there’s no user\npositive answer for mobile. Android is even worse than iOS. Maybe the black\nphone will free us from this insanity and put the user first again.\n\n------\nneves\nNow I fell that I can't buy a piece of hardware or install a software that\ndoesn't install an server and an update service. My powerful desktop machine\nhas dozens of services, from Adobe, Google, Microsoft, Razer, Logitech, etc.\n\nI must turn them all off by hand.\n\n------\njurschreuder\nFirst you had the motherboard, processor and ram. Now they are on one board.\n3x less control. Plus you want a super slim design so you cannot get a desktop\nanymore. Actually you've never been more in control of your own hardware. Tiny\nteams make their own computer like the Raspberry Pi now.\n\n~~~\njrs95\nYeah, it seems like the name is a little misleading. The _reason_ for \"I've\nnever felt less in control of my own hardware\" is the software for the most\npart.\n\n------\nv1nc\nFirst thing I thought after reading the headline was \"another windows user\ncomplaining about updates\" and i think that's just how it is after reading the\nwhole article. The author shows up some problematic points of the development\nof handling updates. But if he spend the time thinking about these problems in\nactively doing something about it, there only would be a few things left to\ncomplain about. I'm sure there are some services that are not replaceable and\nuse update methods like mentioned in the article. But this doesn't happens by\naccident. If the developes of a service choose such update methods, either\nit's likely that you can see some other problematic decisions the developers\nmade, or the old service you are trying to run is not safe to run and has to\nbe updated before it's safe to run. As i notice such problematic decisions, I\navoid these services or search for alternatives before I would complain about\nit, and this never happend.\n\n------\nrafi_kamal\nAs a developer, it makes sense to break backward-compatibility if only a very\nsmall percentage of your user base is using the old version. Supporting old\nversions often requires extra resources that I can otherwise spend on building\nnew features.\n\n------\nbatmanbury\nApple won't even let me delete auto-downloaded iOS updates anymore. They just\ndownload when I'm not paying attention, in the background, and take up\nanywhere from 500mb to 1gb of hard drive space, forever. Unless of course, I\nupdate.\n\n------\nenlightenedfool\nIf there are enough people that don't want stuff to happen, it won't happen.\nUnfortunately you are in a minority. People do have power and choice.\n\n~~~\nTheRealPomax\nThat is a statement I would really love for you to investigate the validity\nof, because there is nothing in the real world that supports that as a\nuniversal claim. If an industry has an established pattern and the only people\nwho want that pattern to change have no influence (for instance, \"not buying a\ncell phone\" is not an option, whether you live in the US or rural Vietnam)\nthen it doesn't matter how many people \"want\" that change, they have no\nleverage to effect it.\n\n------\nbrwsr\nI have a HP zbook laptop that cost me about 3500 euro's. Recently I changed\nsome trivial settings in the BIOS. After I saved and reboot the laptop hung at\nthe bios stage. There was no way to get back into the bios and the keyboard\nwas blinking a code that I had to contact HP.\n\nThey had to replace the entire motherboard due to a corrupted BIOS. So it was\ncaused by a bug? The repair cost were about 800 euro's..\n\n------\nnofunsir\nI _thought_ something was fishy at google images today! What a shame.\n\n------\ncodedokode\nNew version of Skype RT and Opera Browser have no option to disable automatic\nupdates. Probably they understand that nobody wants their updates that only\nbring new bugs and more ads.\n\n------\nisaiahg\nI agree wholeheartedly with everything except for pocket. I've never had a\nservice like that become so integrated in my life so fast. I don't even use\nbookmarks anymore, it's just easier to pool it all together and tag it\nrelevantly. The suggested news is astoundingly fine tuned to my interests as\nwell, much more so than other services that claim to do the same thing. It's\nbecome my favorite time killer now just to go through my suggested articles.\n\nNow if only they can keep from screwing with it and mucking up the great\nservice with updates. They could literally do nothing else to it and I'll be a\nlifelong user. I'm not optimistic though...\n\n~~~\nTheRealPomax\nDo you disagree with the fact that it popped up without notice, or do you\ndisagree with the fact that the person who wrote this article didn't like\nhaving it get installed without notice?\n\nBecause the most important part of this writeup is that it's almost devoid of\njudgement calls on whether what the updates do are actually good or bad, it's\nabout the lack of control and the lack of any ability to beforehand tell\nwhether it's going to be good or bad.\n\nIf you love pocket, rock on, but maybe you would have also discovered that if\nyou had been suggested to opt in to it for a few days, to see if you'd like\nit, rather than it suddenly being not just on your computer, but fully and\nirrevocably integrated into your web browser. And that maybe is literally\nthat: maybe. We'll never know, because you were never given that option.\n\n~~~\nisaiahg\nMy perception is probably warped by the fact that I used pocket before I moved\nto firefox. So after I downloaded firefox after years on chrome, it was a very\npleasant surprise to see pocket already there. And to me it was an added\nvalue.\n\nBut that makes me wonder, is this just an age old gripe with change in general\nor does this actually add anything new to the conversation. Will we get\narticles in the next 10 years about how pocket was better and they don't feel\nin control of their computers because firefox moved to a new system and\nchanged a menu entry?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFormer Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Creates Tech Startup Incubator - utopcell\nhttps://finance.yahoo.com/news/former-yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-010100774.html\n======\nhknd\nI really like how this appears on the yahoo frontpage (:\n\n~~~\nutopcell\nYahoo news are not biased!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Job board dedicated for employees accepting payment in Bitcoin? - noidax\nI always found taking payments in bitcoin a lot easier than accepting bank transfers, etc. Is it a good idea to start a job board dedicated to employees who are willing to take payments via bitcoin. Share your thoughts please.\n======\nsharemywin\nme personally I would stay out of the transaction part of it. pay for a\nlisting or for contacting. probably would be freelancers I would think.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHTML5 Security Cheatsheet - thibaut_barrere\nhttp://html5sec.org/\n\n======\nvog\nI find the title very misleading. Although this website seems to be a nice\nsummary about HTML5 security, I don't see anything that qualifies as \"cheat\nsheet\". That title seems to be pure link bait.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGo implementation of Apache Arrow - throwaway894345\nhttps://github.com/influxdata/arrow\n======\narnon\nI admire people who go through libraries and re-implement them, especially\nbecause I found Arrow (and Parquet) code very annoying to understand.\n\nThe documentation doesn't cover the design decisions that the crew took, and\nwhat the concepts are in-depth.\n\nAt least Arrow improves upon Parquet, by actually adding a type for INT_8 and\nINT_16, which for some reason Parquet actually stores as (a less efficient\ncolumn of) INT_32s.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n128-bit storage: are you high? - iuguy\nhttp://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/128_bit_storage_are_you\n======\nacabal\nThe most interesting thing in this article is the reference to \"Ultimate\nphysical limits to computation.\" It's something I never thought about before\nand honestly it kind of blew my mind a little bit...\n\n~~~\nsammcd\nA proffessor once told me never to believe the physical limits. He mentioned\nhow a wavelength of light was the smallest we could etch silicon. He then\nmentioned that today (at the time of the class) we were etching with 1/20th\nthe wavelength of light.\n\nHe then said that he could not explain how the new 1/20th of of a wavelength\ndrawing works because new physics had been learned, and it had not been in his\nphysics book.\n\n~~~\njessriedel\nYour sentiment is healthy, but you should distinguish between \"we don't know\nof a way to do X\" and \"X is impossible under the current laws of physics\". The\nformer is like etching sub-wavelength silicon. The latter is like moving\nfaster than the speed of light.\n\n> new physics had been learned, and it had not been in his physics book.\n\nAgain, there is a difference between learning new techniques and phenomena\nrunning on top of known physical law, and learning new fundamental laws. When\nengineers say \"new physics\", they refer to the former, but when physicists say\n\"new physics\", they refer to the latter. And there hasn't been any new\nphysics, more or less, since the 60's.\n\nThe computational limits are thought to be encoded in the fundamental laws, in\na way very analogous to the limiting speed c.\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\n> \"X is impossible under the current laws of physics\"\n\nI think the keyword here is \"current\".\n\nWhile the development of \"new physics\" is unlikely, those developments have\nnever failed to surprise us before. We have ever increasing capabilities to\nboth explore and observe the world around us. I find it highly unlikely that\nwe have cracked all there is to physics.\n\n~~~\nithkuil\nbtw, even with the \"current\" laws of physics the energy required to boil\nearth's oceans is not that big [http://pinktentacle.com/2010/09/animated-\nsimulation-of-aster...](http://pinktentacle.com/2010/09/animated-simulation-\nof-asteroid-hitting-earth/)\n\nWhile all this discussion about the actual laws of physics is very important,\nI would like to underline the fact the the other half of the reasoning about\nwhether 128 bits are enough is centered around the fact that we are of course\nnot able to handle that amount of energy, it sounds so obvious for all of us\nthat this argument is used as a punchline.\n\nWhile I cannot imagine how it could be done (or why), this is the kind of\nthings doesn't involve changing our knowledge about basic physical laws.\n\n------\nMaxMorlock\nThe 128-bit storage of ZFS reminds me a bit of TeX. As far as I can remember\nreading the TeX book, Don Knuth also wanted to play it safe. Internally,\neverything relies on integers (no floating point operations), and the smallest\ninternal unit of measurement is less than the wavelength of light (don't\nremember the color ;-) ).\n\n~~~\nandrewf\nAt least one game programmer is recommending sticking with integers for\ndistances. \" 64 bits of precision gets you to the furthest distance of Pluto\nfrom the Sun (7.4 billion km) with sub-micrometer precision. \"\n\n[http://home.comcast.net/~tom_forsyth/blog.wiki.html#%5B%5BA%...](http://home.comcast.net/~tom_forsyth/blog.wiki.html#%5B%5BA%20matter%20of%20precision%5D%5D)\n\n------\nsedachv\nFun fact: the AS/400 virtual instruction set uses 128-bit pointers (that get\ntruncated when executing on a real machine). It's not excessive considering\nthat the AS/400 is not only a flat-memory architecture, but a single-level\nstore.\n\nI think storage will eventually move to the Venti model of hash addressing. It\njust makes much more sense on a network and with current archive-everything\npractices (there are some really big wins to be gained from compression and\ndedup there). BitTorrent is doing this already.\n\n~~~\nkonad\nventi rules hard :)\n\n------\niwr\nOne day, aliens will use our oceans as heat sinks for their great galactic\ncomputer. And even then, ZFS will serve them well.\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\nWe can use a ZFS storage system to make the moons of Saturn inhabitable.\nThat's Sealand taken to a whole new level.\n\nThe network latencies are terrible, however.\n\n~~~\ncount\nCharles Stross wrote a book loosely incorporating this concept (Accelerando, I\nthink).\n\n------\nvilhelm_s\nI'm not sure that the computation is completely to the point -- he starts out\nasking \"what is the _smallest_ storage unit that could fit this many bytes\",\nand then goes on to consider how much energy it would take to do so. But if we\nare primarily worried about energy usage, we can write it cheaper (at the\ncost, I guess, of using more mass for the storage medium).\n\nThe usual limit that is mentioned for storage is Laundauer's principle\n(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle>), which states that we\nneed to use at least ln(2)kT Joules of energy to write one bit, where k is\nBoltzmann's constant and T is the temperature of the storage system.\n\nAssuming the best case T=Cosmic Background Temperature=2.7K (although this is\noptimistic since we will also be heated up by the sun and by the Milky way),\nthis give 8.8e15 J to write 2^128 bits, or 3.6e19 J to write 2^128 512-byte\nblocks.\n\nThat's much less than what Bonswick calculates, and less than the energy to\nboil the ocean!\n\n~~~\nvilhelm_s\nIn fact, here's a more down-to-earth idea of a high density storage: use a\ndiamond crystal, with C-12 atoms for 'zero' bits and C-13 atoms for 'one'\nbits. (I learned about this idea from Charles Stross' blog). While it's not\nobvious how to read and write this, the concept is clearly not ruled out by\nthe laws of physics.\n\nThen storing 2^64 512-byte disk blocks requires 1.5 grammes of diamond (7.5\ncarats), while storing 2^128 blocks requires 3e16 kg (a ball of diamond with a\nradius of 12 km).\n\n2^128 is a big number, but perhaps not big enough to last us through the\nsingularity.\n\n------\nTheNewAndy\nIt can be useful to have a large address space, even if you don't have enough\nhardware to actually populate the whole thing.\n\nFor example, you might split the address space into smaller sections\n(executable, read only, read/write, shared, etc) which immediately cuts down\nthe space you have. Or you might decide that your method for allocating space\nis to pick a random part of the address space, and check if it is taken (or\nperhaps something slightly cleverer). In this case, you will get better\nperformance if there aren't as many collisions.\n\n~~~\nceloyd\nOr you might have some highly drive-abstracted representation where every\naddressable thing in every _version_ of a filesystem-like dataset has its own\naddress. No one’s asking to do that now (as far as I know), but if we get 128\nbits I bet we’ll come up with ways to use them.\n\n------\npyre\nA (2004) at the end would be nice.\n\n    \n    \n      > I've had people tell me every year, for years, that Moore's Law was\n      > about to end. I've said the opposite, and have yet to lose the bet.\n      > Limits on spot density are fundamentally arguments about 2D storage.\n      > Once we move into 3D -- and this work is already underway -- we will\n      > get many more orders of magnitude to play with.\n    \n\nThis comment was made in 2004. Where are our '3D' storage devices?\n\n~~~\nspace-monkey\n[http://www.electroiq.com/index/Semiconductors/sst-\nblogs/chip...](http://www.electroiq.com/index/Semiconductors/sst-\nblogs/chipworks-blog-display/blogs/sst-\nblogs/chipworks/post987_7451506051585892995.html)\n\nI doubt he was thinking flash memory at the time, but 3D storage is already in\nuse. One of the bigger limitations with this is heat, so we have people\nwriting papers like:\n\n[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Thermal+via+placement+in...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Thermal+via+placement+in+3D+ICs&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2001&as_sdtp=on)\n\n~~~\npyre\nI'm not sure if that really counts as 3D storage though. I'm pretty sure that\nthe commentator was referring to holographic storage, which would\ntheoretically have a higher information density, and actually _use_ the third\ndimension for data storage.\n\nUnless I'm reading those links wrong, they are just stacking flash memory on\ntop of each other. How is this different than finding a way to pack hard drive\nplatters closer together? You're just taking several 2D storage mechanisms and\nstacking them on top of each other. You're not using the third dimension for\nanything.\n\n------\nten7\nNice article, great calculation. There's a much simpler argument for 128 bit\nstorage though: the observable universe has at minimum 10^79 atoms in it. Even\nif you could use each and every one of those atoms as a bit to store data,\nyou'd still have more than 50 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE left in ZFS for the rest of\nthe data. We're probably safe.\n\n~~~\naw3c2\n10^79 =\n10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000\n\n2^128= 340282366920938463463374607431768211456\n\n~~~\nten7\nAhh shit, totally lame brained that.\n\n------\nmayank\nWouldn't a better calculation involve (2^64 + 1) bytes of storage, or even\n2^65, instead of going for the upper bound at (2^128)? In other words, what's\nthe _minimum_ energy requirement for 64 bits to be insufficient?\n\nA neat calculation for the wow-factor, but not really very informative.\n\n------\njing\nYes, this is theoretically cool and all, but when I hear something like:\n\n\"Let's start with the easy one: how do we know it's necessary? Some customers\nalready have datasets on the order of a petabyte, or 250 bytes. Thus the\n64-bit capacity limit of 264 bytes is only 14 doublings away.\"\n\nIt raises a huge red flag from a business point of view. In 2004 \"some\ncustomers\" had datasets that would cause issues sometime around 2015 - a\nproblem that ZFS purported to solve (among admittedly much more relavant\nfeatures). In planning for a future that was possibly ten years away for \"some\ncustomers\" instead of focusing on what was relevant to the larger customer\nbase, Sun managed to continue their slow profitability death march until\nOracle finally snatched them up this year.\n\nSomething to keep in mind when you decide to add \"cool theoretical feature X\"\nor \"unparalleled scalability\" to your four month old startup...\n\n~~~\nnl\nZFS has been one of the biggest selling points for Solaris over the last 5\nyears. There are a huge number of places that use Solaris _only_ for ZFS\nsupport. For example, the SmugMug people have written about it a number of\ntimes.\n\n~~~\njing\nZFS may have been, but not the 128 bit support. I mentioned that there are\n\"admittedly much more relevant features\" which are in fact what smugmug likes:\n\n\"ZFS is the most amazing filesystem I’ve ever come across. Integrated volume\nmanagement. Copy-on-write. Transactional. End-to-end data integrity. On-the-\nfly corruption detection and repair. Robust checksums. No RAID-5 write hole.\nSnapshots. Clones (writable snapshots). Dynamic striping. Open source\nsoftware.\"\n\n<http://bit.ly/bg2xlf>\n\nI never disputed ZFS being a good file system. I claimed that 128 bit support\nwasn't a key feature and was in fact a potential waste of time.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIs there a company that sells meal planning? - loorinm\nI&#x27;m spending so much $ on Munchery, because I am not good at planning my shopping &#x2F; cooking &#x2F; eating. I have a small repertoire of cooking recipes, I don&#x27;t know whats seasonal, etc. Also, planning just takes a lot of time.<p>Is there a service I can pay to just give me shopping lists and quick easy tasty recipes each week?<p>Then I can just put the shopping list into instacart and be ready to go.<p>I know there are a lot of shitty recipe websites and outdated cooking blogs but I&#x27;m looking for something quality and reliable, with an easy-to-use experience.\n======\nRannath\nThe Ontario government has you covered:\n[https://www.eatrightontario.ca/en/MenuPlanner.aspx](https://www.eatrightontario.ca/en/MenuPlanner.aspx)\n\n~~~\nloorinm\nHAHAHA\n\n------\nretroafroman\nIsn't that what Blue Apron is for?\n[https://www.blueapron.com/](https://www.blueapron.com/)\n\nStill kind of pricey at $10/meal.\n\n~~~\nloorinm\nno but they sell you the food too. I want to just get the food from the cheap\nmexican market near my house.\n\n------\njustsorneguy\n[https://emeals.com/](https://emeals.com/)\n\n~~~\nloorinm\nyeah that looks like the right idea but that site looks 20 years old. is it\neven still working?\n\n~~~\njustsorneguy\nYes, it is. I use it (the featured meal this week is Cuban-Stuffed Pork\nTenderloin), and like it quite a bit. They have menus for restrictive diets as\nwell as menus to take advantage of sales at certain food retailers. Their menu\nis better than their website (which actually is better than it used to be),\nand they have a decent android app.. They have a free trial, check it out -\n[https://emeals.com/account/trial.php](https://emeals.com/account/trial.php).\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: How hard would it be to allow 120 character titles? - curtis\n\nHacker News currently limits submission titles to 80 characters.  Brevity is often good, but I&#x27;ve found 80 characters painfully short more than a few times -- especially for science articles.  I can&#x27;t imagine that it would be technically difficult and I don&#x27;t think we&#x27;re likely to see any major increase in title abuse (Reddit-style editorializing in the title, for example) since the HN community is pretty ruthless about flagging submissions if they see a problem.\n======\nchris_j\nDo you have any examples of specific articles with titles that would benefit\nfrom a longer limit?\n\n~~~\ncurtis\nHere's a couple of examples from my submission history. I've probably got\nbetter examples if I search farther back.\n\n    \n    \n      a) Isaac Asimov wrote a “paper” about a time-hopping compound called thiotimoline\n      b) In 1947 Isaac Asimov wrote a hilarious spoof of scientific papers about a time-hopping compound called thiotimoline\n    \n\nThe first version is the title I submitted under. The second title is the one\nI would have liked to use. The first is 78 characters and the second is 115.\n\nHere's another one (66 and 115 characters):\n\n    \n    \n      a) Saroo’s Google-Earth Quest: How an Orphaned Boy Found His Way Home\n      b) Years after getting lost at a train station, Saroo searched for his birth home using hazy memories and Google Earth\n    \n\nAnother thing of note is that you can often squeeze a title down to 80\ncharacters or less, but it really takes a lot of time.\n\n~~~\nchris_j\nFor me, I don't think that the longer titles are any better than the shorter\nones, at least for the examples that you give above. Looking at the articles\nthemselves, they have completely different titles to the ones that you picked\n(both the short and longer versions). This goes against the Hacker News\nGuidelines [0] which state: \"...Otherwise please use the original title,\nunless it is misleading or linkbait.\" Indeed, a general rule on Hacker News is\nnot to editorialize headlines (ie make up headlines that look good in order to\nattract people to click on the link).\n\nThis does of course raise the question of whether the Hacker News Guidelines\nare a good idea or not and I am torn on this one. On the one hand, I suppose\nthere are occasions where a headline can be made clearer and more useful by\nrewriting it. On the other hand, I see the current guidelines as a backlash\nagainst the state of linkbait headlines on Reddit when Hacker News was first\ncreated all those years ago.\n\n[0]\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)\n\n------\nkrapp\nOr at the very least, add tooltips to the title links on the list views\n(comments, new, etc) so we can read the entire title when they get truncated.\n\nFor example:\n\n    \n    \n        \tAsk HN: How hard would it be to allow 120 characte...\n    \n\n_why?_\n\n------\ncogburnd02\nWell, this would be weird for those who use terminal clients that assume the\n80 character limit,(if any exist) on 80-column-wide hardware terminals.\n\n~~~\nkrapp\nI know it's Hacker News and there are likely to be more such users than\naverage, and probably just enough to be worth worrying about.\n\nBut maybe they (kogir, dang, whomever) can add ?cols=n as a parameter or\nsomething so they can adjust it to their heart's content. Most of us have room\nfor 80 characters and plenty to spare.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\n3rd Shellshock Vulnerability Found - propercoil\nhttp://seclists.org/oss-sec/2014/q3/741\n\n======\nskuhn\nThis is not a vulnerability, it is intended functionality. Some scripts\nundoubtedly depend on overloading a shell builtin command with a function\n(even though it is gross).\n\nThe post's proposed exploit path is not possible on Linux and most OS's,\nbecause you cannot have a setuid script.[1]\n\n[1] [http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/364/allow-setuid-\non-...](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/364/allow-setuid-on-shell-\nscripts)\n\n~~~\nbodyfour\nEven if you have a setuid script it appears that bash won't import functions\nin that case.\n\nHowever the fact that the script isn't setuid isn't really the concern for\nthese shellshock, since a setuid program could indirectly run /bin/sh.\n\nAgain, though, this doesn't seem to another shellshock problem. In shellshock\nyou only needed to control the value of an environment variable, not its name.\nIf you can control the name _and_ the value then there are plenty of other\nways you can attack programs.\n\n~~~\nkentonv\n> However the fact that the script isn't setuid isn't really > the concern for\n> these shellshock, since a setuid program > could indirectly run /bin/sh.\n\nA setuid program which runs _any_ child process without having first cleared\nthe environment or authenticated the caller for root access is already broken\nby means of LD_PRELOAD.\n\n------\nlambda\nIf you're vulnerable to this, then you're vulnerable to someone setting PATH\nand changing all executables that you refer to.\n\nThat's not the \"shock\" part of \"shellshock\"; that's a long known issue.\nApplications which pass arbitrary variables from the network through\nenvironment variables already add a unique prefix to the variables, to prevent\nthis kind of problem. That unique prefix also prevents them from accidentally\nconflicting with the name of an actual executable for this case.\n\nNow, there are still going to be bugs with suid executables not sanitizing\ntheir environment, but those apply in many other ways, such as via PATH and\nLD_PRELOAD.\n\nThe \"shock\" part of shellshock was that it was possible to execute arbitrary\ncode, upon just loading a variable in Bash, regardless of what its name was,\ndepending only on the contents, which in many cases can be attacker\ncontrolled.\n\n~~~\nkentonv\nExactly. If you are letting an attacker define not just the values of\nenvironment variables, but also the _names_ , then you've already lost.\n\nForget bash. LD_PRELOAD by design lets you load arbitrary code into any child\nprocess. Many other environment variables affect libc and other common\nlibraries in arbitrary ways. setuid programs must clear their environment at\nstartup to be safe. Programs like sudo can restore that environment once the\nuser is authorized for root access.\n\n------\nmzs\nWow this is getting out of hand, that's not really a security vulnerability\nanymore. That's how bash passes exported functions, I'll get back to that.\n\nThere is some misunderstanding though regarding the suid shell script. I can't\nthink of any modern unix other than solaris that allows those by default any\nmore. It's just not a concern anymore unless an admin twiddles some sysctl or\nwhat not. And in the case of solaris /bin/sh is not bash. Also /bin/sh does\nit's own setuid after comparing to 100 (unless the -p option is passed) so\noften if people are not adding users to a group or sudo, they would create a\nksh or perl script instead. Anyway that's just rambling, sorry, the short\nanswer is that I would be really surprised if there was any modern system that\nused bash as /bin/sh and also allowed suid interpreter scripts.\n\n~~~\nmzs\nDoh, forgot to get back to the first point, sorry.\n\nMy thinking is that at this point the whole exporting functions (and anything\nelse other that environment variables, like arrays) is just a bad idea in the\ndefault case. I actually do do it, but for a stupid reason and can totally see\nhow I should just put those functions in bashrc for the same effect anyway.\n\nSo I really would like to see that all disabled by default in bash and a\nshellopt added to enable it if anyone really needed it.\n\nI've heard about other ideas like prefix, suffix the name, or add a\nBASH_FOOBARBAZ that lists exported functions, but it's just not something most\npeople do, and it would be a pita for the people that do need it now needing\nto change how they do it cause I can totally see people that made use of this\nhaving done it in C and perl knowing that if they did added to ENV 'cat=() {\n...' or what not it would change what they needed in the subshell after they\ncalled system. That would really be annoying for those people to have all that\nbreak in a way they would need to change all that baroque code instead of just\nadding an option, something like system(\"exec /bin/bash --foobarbaz ... \")\nnow.\n\nPlus there are other programs like sudo that already know how to deal with the\n'() {' style env vars and clear them-out by default, people would have to\nupdate all those (plus what ever ancient suid C launcher programs they already\nhad doing this kind of env var clean-up in their own broken ways from before\nthe time sudo became the way to do this stuff) now too.\n\n~~~\njoeyh\nDebian has already released a batch patched to only treat BASH_FUNC_FOO() as\nexported functions.\n\nIt's the second half of the security fix, so I recommend upgrading.\n\nThere is a small potential for breakage as you mention, but less than ripping\nthe feature entirely out.\n\n~~~\nmzs\nI should not have replied until I had more time to respond clearly, sorry.\n\nThe BASH_FUNC_foo()=() { ... is nice, it's how it should have been from the\nget go. Besides having a nice prefix that owns them all (what about arrays\nthough)it makes it hard to set an exported function from the shell using =\ncause of the () suffix. That's clever, promotes the use of export -f basically\nfrom bash itself.\n\nUnfortunately it breaks how to do it from everything other than bash cause\nit's not backwards compatible, and people like me had done that. Now I realize\nthat I had done it for not great reasons with other better ways to do what I\nwanted. I think most everyone else that had exported functions would have felt\nthe same. So very few people actually need exported functions, most can come-\nup with a work-around.\n\nTaking that into account what is trying to be accomplished here with any\npatch? Really it's to prevent a future vulnerability, that should be the goal.\nGoing back, the first vulnerability was that when the shell was initializing\nmore got executed than intended. Then the next (which I can't figure-out how\nto exploit) was because of state from that initialization being kept around\n(in this case from an error bailing) and then messing-up later execution.\n\nIt's sort of a hackish way to do all this, right? It only took a day for\nsomeone to find another bug, I was able to get bash to seg fault left and\nright when I was looking into it myself before the patches. What is the chance\nthat there is another bug in that parser say? Noby knows for sure.\n\nThe netbsd approach goes: Fix the current bugs, because there are so few\nreasons to export functions, so few people do so, most people can find another\napproach, and the way that they are implemented might be found vulnerable =>\ndo not ever export functions by default. As a courtesy to those that have and\nthat still must, provide an option to allow them and do not break backwards\ncompatibility so those with the most trouble need only add the option instead\nof changing other complicated squirrelly things.\n\nThe redhat approach goes: Fix the current bugs, because there are people that\nexport functions, let us do it in a more sensible way. Now since we have a\nprefix and suffix, we protect against an attacker being able to create\narbitrary function definitions. If an attacker could control BASH_FUNC_foo()=,\nthen they would go after lower hanging fruit anyway. As a courtesy, if the\npeople used export -f, it is compatible.\n\nSo it's a philosophical thing. The limitation of the redhat approach is there\nare people like me that feel there will be more bugs in bash. The parser is\ncomplicated, it is being called in this early place, state remains for later,\nI expect that it will not be too much to get bash to segfault again, and then\nit's careful analysis to see if payload can be crafted to get it to execute\ninstead of simply seg fault. So I would like a way to have it just not do any\nof that by default. The redhat approach does not give me a way to do that. I\nvalue that more, plus being backward compatible. The redhat approach values\nhaving a safer way to pass functions, one that continues to allow that by\ndefault, but breaks compatibility and does not allow me to disable it at all.\n\n------\nacqq\nIt's actually not \"new\" it's a \"feature\" that everybody became aware it\nexisted since long ago only once Shellshock bug became known.\n\nChristos Zoulas from NetBsd has the arguments that I really like: it's a\n\"feature\" that was widely unknown and that should be disabled by default:\n\n[http://openwall.com/lists/oss-\nsecurity/2014/09/25/31](http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/09/25/31)\n\n------\nacdha\nCan we go straight to the part where this is disabled behind a --insecure flag\nand everyone can spend a release cycle migrating untrusted input handling to\nlanguages which were designed for it?\n\n~~~\nderefr\n> languages which were designed for [untrusted input handling ]\n\nWhich languages would those be? There are a few languages with a concept of\n\"taint\" (Perl, Ruby), but I've never actually seen a language where everywhere\nuntrusted input could come from _actually_ starts tainted, and every secure\nfunction _actually_ disallows tainted input. Especially where third-party-\nnative-FFI library calls are involved.\n\n~~~\nacdha\nThere's an argument that we should be making an effort to add something like\nPerl's taint mode (which predates the web by half a decade!) or the stronger\nvariants in some academic languages everywhere but even that's overkill for\nthis class of bugs.\n\nThe problem here, as anon1385 pointed out is that shells in general, and Bash\nin particular, were designed to execute things and maintained at best weak\nseparation between code and data – in no small part because the concept\noriginated 40 years ago when computing was a much more trusted place and\nnetwork connections were rare and not seen as a conduit for never-ending\nattacks. As a class, makes shells a bad idea for anything which crosses a\nprivilege boundary; almost any normal language would avoid this particular\nexploit.\n\n------\nschrodingersCat\nI just tried this in zsh 5.0.6 (x86_64-apple-darwin13.3.0). It reports\nvulnerable as well.\n\nedit: Yes, this feature works when formatted correctly for zsh as \"function ls\n() { echo vulnerable }\". However, I was wrong in that zsh -c will not run the\nfunction (of course running \"ls\" in the same session will). I'm going to call\nthis not a problem.\n\nedit: When trying this one-liner in zsh: \"env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable'\nzsh -c 'echo hello'\" (as suggested by\n[https://superuser.com/questions/816622/does-the-\nshellshock-b...](https://superuser.com/questions/816622/does-the-shellshock-\nbug-affect-zsh)), the output indicates my shell is vulnerable. Could someone\nplease try and replicate?\n\n~~~\nArkanosis\n> I just tried this in zsh 5.0.6\n\nDo you mean that you run bash -c in zsh, or that you run zsh -c ?\n\n~~~\nschrodingersCat\nGood call. I posted an edit to my original comment. zsh -c won't run the\nfunction outside of the current session. The \"extra step\" needed to add\nfunctions to the environment variables seems to make zsh much more secure than\nbash in the context of this discussion (perhaps?). This SE thread was really\nhelpful to me in clarifying:\n[https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/33255/how-to-\ndefine...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/33255/how-to-define-and-\nload-your-own-shell-function-in-zsh)\n\n------\nrootbear\nIf this is how passing functions is supposed to work in bash, then why do I\nget different results, depending on which system I'm on? I've been madly\npatching my systems since yesterday and on a RHEL 6.5 system I get a different\nresult than from an Ubuntu 12.04 system:\n\n    \n    \n        [RHEL-6.5 tmp]$ uname -a\n        Linux hostname1 2.6.32-431.23.3.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Jul 16 06:12:23 EDT 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux\n        [RHEL-6.5 tmp]$ bash --version\n        GNU bash, version 4.1.2(1)-release (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu)\n        [RHEL-6.5 tmp]$ ls\n        file1  file2  file3\n        [RHEL-6.5 tmp]$ env ls='() { echo vulnerable; }' bash -c ls\n        file1  file2  file3\n    \n    \n        Linux hostname2 3.8.0-44-generic #66~precise1-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jul 15 04:01:04 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux\n        Ubuntu 12.04:~/tmp$ bash --version\n        GNU bash, version 4.2.25(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)\n        Ubuntu 12.04:~/tmp$ ls\n        file1  file2  file3\n        Ubuntu 12.04:~/tmp$ env ls='() { echo vulnerable; }' bash -c ls\n        vulnerable\n    \n\nIs this a basic difference in the feature sets of Bash 4.1 and Bash 4.2? Like\nseveral posters, I was unaware of this feature and have certainly never used\nit. Perhaps it should be off by defaults? How big of a mess would that make? I\nwould also like to see more distributions use something other than bash as\n/bin/sh, but that's another discussion, I guess.\n\n~~~\nmzs\nYou need to use export -f now, the specifics of how functions are exported\nhave changed in the redhat patch, ls='() { ... is not sufficient anymore.\nNothing has broken unless you had something calling bash that was not bash and\nyou used this internal to bash implementation hack-like knowledge that 'foo=()\n{' is how those pre this redhat patch versions of bash did it.\n\n~~~\nrootbear\nThank you! I haven't had time to read the documentation for Red Hat's change.\n\n------\ndahjelle\nIf I'm looking at this correctly, it appears that the Red Hat patches aren't\nvulnerable to this particular vulnerability. (I believe they patched bash\ndifferently than upstream, as per\n[https://securityblog.redhat.com/2014/09/26/frequently-\nasked-...](https://securityblog.redhat.com/2014/09/26/frequently-asked-\nquestions-about-the-shellshock-bash-flaws/.))\n\nEDIT: I tested on CentOS 6.5 and Fedora 18 (for which we'd manually backported\nthe Fedora 19 patches).\n\n~~~\ndaveloyall\nI've read the page you linked and it's not clear to me how to reach that\nconclusion based on that information. Help?\n\n~~~\ndahjelle\nSorry! My conclusion (i.e. that RedHat was patched against this 3rd\nvulnerability) was just by running\n\nenv ls='() { echo vulnerable; }' bash -c ls\n\non my recently patched CentOS box. If I'm reading that right, if I was\nvulnerable, I'd get the output 'vulnerable'? But, instead, I got the correct\noutput of the `ls` command.\n\nThe linked article was pertinent because RedHat did patch bash in a different\nway than upstream. Here's the relevant quote:\n\n> Our patch addresses the CVE-2014-7169 issue in a much better way than the\n> upstream patch, we wanted to make sure the issue was properly dealt with.\n\nThat help?\n\n~~~\ndaveloyall\nYes, it helps, thanks!\n\nAnd the post below which shows the contents of the RH patches should help, if\nI knew how to read it. :)\n\nBut... it seems to me that if this doesn't work:\n\n    \n    \n        env ls='() { echo vulnerable; }' bash -c ls\n    \n\n...then some scripts are now broken. Sorry, I don't know which ones. Needless\nto say, most bash scripts in existence don't take input from the wild wire. A\nsad day for those innocuous scripts.\n\n~~~\ndahjelle\nmzs had some info about this in a separate comment[1] if you missed it. I've\nhit the edge of my knowledge about it. :-)\n\n------\nufo\nI know this is not really an issue but is there any use for this \"function\nexporting\" feature in the first place? I had never heard about it before and\nwhen I did it kind of sounded like an ugly hack.\n\n------\nEclyps\nI was not able to replicate this on Amazon's linux distro after the second\npatch was applied. After only the first patch, though, the server was still\nvulnerable.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHD Trade Services (YC S12) Lets Small Logistics Providers Track Shipments - dsugarman\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2012/08/17/pics-or-it-didnt-happen-yc-backed-hd-trade-services-lets-small-logistics-providers-track-shipments-like-the-big-boys/\n\n======\nthesash\nI wish I didn't have to read Techcrunch's hollow journalism to learn about the\nlatest YC class, because many of them seem like legitimate business cases\nworking on fairly ambitious ideas.\n\nThe problem is, every Techcrunch post about a YC startup reads like a press\nrelease; completely devoid of any independent research, analysis, or, well,\njournalism. This author's most insightful analysis about the market is that\n\"shipping and distribution\" are \"an essential part\" of global trade. Wow! I\nnever thought about it that way!\n\nWhat's the size of the \"small logistics services providers\" market, who are\nthe major potential customers and partners? How hard will it be to compete\nwith established players like UPS and FedEX? How much is the company charging\nfor the product? Isn't it ridiculous that the founder thinks he can pull a\nviral coefficient of 50?\n\nI know this is nothing new, but seriously Techcrunch: you can do better than\nthis.\n\n~~~\nrdl\nThe startups need TC to reach other publications, but maybe there's a market\nfor a YC (or all major accelerator) focused journalist who does in depth\ninterviews and analysis of each startup. I'd trust an entrepreneur or investor\nin that role, rather than a journalist.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nProfile: David A. Huffman (1991) - ehudla\nhttps://www.huffmancoding.com/my-uncle/scientific-american\n======\ntankerdude\nI had classes with him for the last few years that he taught at UCSC. He never\nhad a text book for his classes that I took (graph theory etc). He also almost\nnever used his computer in his office it seemed and enjoyed the theory quite a\nbit more.\n\nFun classes but alas, he passed away a few years later from cancer.\n\n------\nehudla\nI loved these Scientific American profiles as a kid. I guess there's nothing\nlike it these days?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nLots of Ideas But Have Little Resource To Start Project - AngeloAnolin\n\nI have a lot of ideas for projects which I believe has the potential to hit big on the market.  The only thing I lack is the resources and the drive to actually starting them off. Would anyone be willing enough to collaborate with me in turning some of these ideas into reality?\n======\nmindcrime\nAre your ideas software related? If so, what resources do you need? Your\nprofile says you're a software developer, so presumably you have coding\nskills. You're logged onto HN, so I think we can safely assume you own a\ncomputer. Compilers, editors, IDEs, VCSs, databases, frameworks and libraries\ngalore are freely available as open source... Cheap VPS servers can be had for\nsomething like, what, 10, 20 bucks per month; and Amazon AWS makes ridiculous\namounts of computing power available \"on demand\" in affordable increments.\n\nI think you'd get more mileage out of posting a request like this on HN if you\nat least started building something and then got to a point of maybe saying\n\"Hey, I've got this prototype, but to take it to the next level I need\nsomebody with expertise in $WHATEVER, would anybody like to jump onboard?\"\n\nNow if you're talking about an idea for a fusion reactor or a new hardware\nproduct or something, then OK... but you'll probably still get a more\nenthusiastic response if you post more about what you have in mind.\n\n------\namock\nAlmost everyone here has lots of ideas that have the potential to make it big,\nso unless you have something special to offer it will difficult to find\nsomeone willing to work with you. If you have the skills to get started so you\ncan show people an at least partially working product that would greatly\nincrease your chance of attracting a collaborator.\n\n------\ntimrosenblatt\nWithout putting too fine a point on it -- if you don't have the drive to start\nit, why should someone else have more drive than you?\n\nHere's some things you can do since it sounds like you've got more time than\nmoney (like most entrepreneurs): break your idea down into a few simple\ncomponents and see if you can build any aspect of them. I know people who have\nstarted companies with sketches on napkins -- you can too.\n\nGo find 10 people who would be ideal customers. Talk to them about what your\nidea is going to do for them. Do they really have a need? How much is it worth\nto them? Would they _actually_ pay for it?\n\n------\nAngeloAnolin\nThanks to all those who replied. I think I may need to draw up something more\n_relevant_ so that I would be able to convey more clearly what I am trying to\nget across.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTop Product Management Books? - skotzko\nRecommendations for top product management books? Either \"how to\" books or just ones that will make me better.<p>Current favorite is \"Inspired\" by Marty Cagan.\n======\nbdickason\nI've been 'product managing' for 4 years now in NYC and haven't found very\nmany books useful. Here are a few:\n\n-Getting Real / Rework (37 signals) - Build a lean product\n\n-Don't Make Me Think - Usability 101\n\n-Web Analytics 2.0 - Metrics are your best friend\n\n-Viral Loop - Great companies and how they did it\n\n-Delivering Happiness - Last 50 pages are phenomenal for building your company's \"culture\"\n\n~~~\nskotzko\nAwesome, thanks! Really appreciate the suggestions here and below.\n\n------\nShimrit\nCheck out Blackblot's new book on Product Management \"The Product Manager’s\nToolkit\". In adition You'll find some good reading in this field on the\nfollowing resource page <http://bit.ly/9qOjwB>\n\n------\njamesshamenski\n\"the art of project management\", Scott Berkun. From O'reilly media.\n\nThis book is gold. but when berkun said that the job is essentially just\ncreating/updating lists for people, i liked my job less and the book more.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTraits Of Stellar Managers, Defined By Googlers - amirmc\nhttp://www.businessinsider.com/8-traits-of-stellar-managers-defined-by-googlers-2011-3?op=1\n\n======\ncitizenkeys\nWhat's interesting from the article is the internal Google survey revealed\n\"Technical skill\" was the absolute least important trait that Googlers sought\nin a manager.\n\nThis is not unlike the brief failed experiment years ago where Google tried to\nget rid of managers entirely and have teams report directly to engineers. The\nlesson from that was engineers are best left to do engineering and managers\nare best left to manage.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow to add a brain to your smart phone - syswsi\nhttp://petewarden.com/2014/04/08/how-to-add-a-brain-to-your-smart-phone/\n\n======\ndekhn\nI think most people aren't aware of how significant these kinds of\ntechnologies will be, in mobile and embedded computing.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWill Planned Obsolescence Kill Silicon Valley? [video] - sappapp\nhttp://breakoutroom.co/#/webinar/498\n======\nvarelse\nIsn't it great that we can outsource our toxic e-waste?\n\n[http://www.theguardian.com/global-\ndevelopment/2013/dec/14/to...](http://www.theguardian.com/global-\ndevelopment/2013/dec/14/toxic-ewaste-illegal-dumping-developing-countries)\n\nBut besides the 800 lb gorilla in the room, what worries me more than planned\nobsolescence is an entire ecosystem primarily composed of glorified MVPs\nrather than refined products. And that is doing more to disenchant me with\ntechnology and applications than any other force, one crash to the desktop at\na time.\n\n------\nanalog31\n_However, unlike the decisions that eventually led to Detroit’s downfall,\nplanned obsolescence is a good thing for both consumers and hardware vendors\nalike._\n\nAs I understand it, the original academic paper introducing the concept of\nplanned obsolescence, described it as an economic boon -- essentially a form\nof stimulus. At the time, the intent was not to sabotage the lifetime of\nproducts, but to keep introducing desirable new features.\n\nNow, anecdotally, I think that I've witnessed planned obsolescence of a sort,\nin some kinds of products. I remember the home appliances in my house when I\nwas a kid, being much more reliable than those sold today. I've had to repair\nliterally every appliance in my house over the past decade, in some cases two\nor even three times. We're already on our second fridge. The cause may simply\nbe due to relentlessly driving the cost out of those products while keeping an\neye on the one-year warranty.\n\n~~~\nbrunoqc\nHow can you tell that it was planned obsolescence and not just lowering the\nquality to lower prices?\n\n~~~\nanalog31\nDon't know. I agree that your hypothesis is probably the best one. But\nlowering quality is a conscious decision.\n\n------\nkenrikm\nApple has actually been doing really well on the software side of this iOS9\nwill support the iPhone 4S (released in 2011) through to the upcoming 6s.\nThat's 5 generations of devices that will be on the latest version of the OS.\nTo put it into perspective, how many other cell phones out there are able to\nrun the latest version of the OS 5 years after their release date?\n\n~~~\nhn9780470248775\nHow many other ~$1000 devices are obsolete after four years?\n\n~~~\nqq66\nElectronic devices don't get \"obsolete\" as much as they get better so fast\nthat the old device seems lame in comparison. A four-year-old PC is as fast as\nwhen it was new, but modern PCs are 10 times as powerful for the same price,\nso the old PC seems obsolete. My 9-year-old Canon 5D camera takes incredibly\ngood photos, but the modern cameras are so insane (shoot a full movie in\nmoonlight) that the 5D seems like an amateur in comparison.\n\nAn iPhone 4S is a great phone compared to everything except newer phones.\n\n~~~\ntsotha\n>Electronic devices don't get \"obsolete\" as much as they get better so fast\nthat the old device seems lame in comparison.\n\nWhich would be fine if the device still did what you want it to do. But in\nfact connected electronic devices _do_ go obsolete as soon as vendors stop\nproviding security updates.\n\n~~~\ncortesoft\nI am a bit confused as to how they stop doing 'what you want it to do' when\nthey stop getting security patches. Sure, they won't have the latest security,\nbut you can still 'use' the device in every way you did before... they might\nbe vulnerable, but they were vulnerable before and you still used it.\n\n~~~\nnsxwolf\nLet's not forget about the reliance on services. My second generation Apple TV\ncan no longer view YouTube because it will not be updated to Google's new\nauthentication scheme. So I have a product that does less today than the day I\nbought it.\n\n~~~\nSilhouette\nThis is one of the reasons I have no interest in a \"smart TV\".\n\nI want a good quality screen, a good quality sound system, and enough\nconnectivity to get signals to them at the highest quality they can use.\nUpdates to where those signals come from should not require physically\nswapping large and extremely expensive equipment. That is just crazy.\n\nAnd yet today my TV can hang while showing broadcast TV because someone\nchanged a compression algorithm and caused the decoding software to glitch,\nand when I put a Blu-Ray in my player often the first thing I see is a warning\nthat I might have to update the firmware in the device just to watch the\nmovie.\n\nThis is not progress, and the sooner we go back to separating communications\ndevices/protocols/software from the main hardware in this sort of situation\nand then using appropriate safeguards and updates on the things that actually\nneed them with everything else properly isolated, the better the world will\nbe.\n\n------\nTodPunk\nPlanned obsolescence through sabotaging a product (or at least its quality) is\na universally bad thing in my opinion. Planned transition to an upgrade is\nnot. Terms are probably going to muddy the conversation around the importance\nof these topics, I think. Maybe we shouldn't borrow the term of planned\nobsolescence at all.\n\n~~~\ncbhl\nPlanned obsolescence can be looked at another way: using less expensive\ncomponents because you know you don't need them to last longer than (say) 5\nyears, which results in cheaper, faster, smaller products.\n\n~~~\nvezzy-fnord\nCheaper is evident, but I don't know why \"faster\" and \"smaller\" are being\ntaken for granted here.\n\n~~~\ntoufka\nMechanically, this tends to be true. I don't know about for electronics. The\nvehicle engine is a good example - a diesel John Deere from the 70s has a\nmassive block that will last through my grandchildrens' lifetimes. The newer\nengine blocks are not designed to last as long, and thus have tighter\ntolerances allowing them to build smaller, lighter, more powerful engines for\nless money - given, again, that they are not intended to last for as long.\n\n------\nswozey\nCan't we deter planned obsolescence by having stronger consumer protection\nlaws? The USA is so far behind in consumer protection it's crazy. If a company\nhad to warranty up to 5 years maybe they'd be more concerned with keeping the\nproduct as good as it can get.\n\n~~~\nAdams472\nIs Apple a monopoly? In a normal market, competition and market forces should\ntake care of this.\n\n~~~\nanalog31\nIn my view, the idea of market forces taking care of things depends on\nassumptions about public access to information, that probably can't be met. It\nmay be prohibitively hard for consumers to get information on a reasonable\nexpected life span of something like a refrigerator.\n\n~~~\nsokoloff\nMy strong belief is that all of them are \"more than 10 years\". Beyond that,\ndoes it really matter? That's a couple dimes to a dollar a day for convenient\nand safe food preservation in your house.\n\nWhat would be the basis for predicting the life span of a new design anyway?\n\n~~~\nanalog31\nMy anecdotal experience is that fridges last a few years before requiring\nrepair. In the space of 10 years, my home fridge failed once, ran for a few\nmore years, and then just stopped cooling. Over that time period, I've\nrepaired nearly every appliance in the house. They were all new when we moved\nin, because we bought a house that was empty of appliances.\n\nDehumidifier: Defective potentiometer. Repaired, then it ultimately wore out\nand stopped cooling. Folklore is that the seals in the compressors are short\nlived, system loses the ability to compress the refrigerant sufficiently. This\nalso causes a gradually rising power consumption until it can no longer hold\ntemperature.\n\nChest freezer: Starting relay / capacitor failed. Replaced with unit bought\nonline. Currently idle, as we have nothing to freeze.\n\nMicrowave: Failed, tried to repair, to no avail.\n\nCooking range: Loose connection in heating element caused wiring to burn up.\nRepaired by silver-brazing new wire to Nichrome element material.\n\nDryer: Repaired twice. First time was an over-temperature sensor. Second time,\nthe motor bearings failed, and the unit was squeaking like crazy.\n\nWaffle iron: Repaired once due to heating of loose connection, second time it\nwas unrepairable.\n\nI've also repaired the furnace, but it was a pretty old unit.\n\nOne basis for predicting life span of new design is to base it on known\nperformance of old design. Of course this can't happen if cost reduction\nresults in multiple, radical design changes, including use of lower cost\nmaterials.\n\nOn the plus side, the Internet has opened up a bonanza of repair information\nand spare parts, so I have saved a boat load of money by being self sufficient\nfor repairs.\n\n~~~\nsokoloff\nI agree on the \"Youtube repair manual\" aspect and I've saved a ton of money as\nwell. We've been in our place for 8 years, and in that time, I can only recall\nfixing the fridge (bad defrost element-$20 or so), throwing out a slow cooker,\nreplacing the igniter on the gas stove, and replacing a working dishwasher and\na not working washer (bad bearing seal on a front loader and the bearing was\ntoo seized to remove before I damaged it irreparably).\n\nThat's in a place with two kitchens, plus a chest freezer, two washer/dryers,\nand numerous small appliances, plus most of the items were old when we bought\nthe place. I'm sure I'm averaging less than a repair per major appliance per\ndecade.\n\nI don't doubt your contrary experience, but it seems to skew on the unlucky\nside IME.\n\n------\nffk\nThis becomes more troublesome when modification of the device is made illegal.\n_Forced obsolescence_ with legal lockout when attempting to \"repair\" the\ndevice.\n\nPerhaps we should call obsolescence over time as the market changes as\n_natural obsolescence_?\n\n~~~\nasift\n>This becomes more troublesome when modification of the device is made illegal\n\nIs this just a theoretical consideration or is there good reason to believe\nlegislation is moving in this direction?\n\n~~~\njdmichal\nIt already has. This is why DMCA exemptions [1] exist.\n\n[1]\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-\ncircumvention_exemptions)\n\n------\nrm_-rf_slash\nI imagine in the future manufacturing and supply chain tech - augmented by 3D\nprinters - will put hardware products into a recycled lifecycle, wherein you\nwould trade in your old iPhone 27 to be stripped of its component materials in\norder to get a discount on your 27S.\n\n------\nsliken\nExpensive phones with epoxied batteries drIves me nuts.\n\n------\njxramos\nI do a lot of amateur repair of various things around the house, washing\nmachines, TV, etc. I remember being really struck by the commentary of this\nrepair book I read:How to Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic by Michael\nGeier. He has some insight into this arena in terms of labor costs, and\ngrowing complexity of components...\n\n\"When I was a kid, there were radio and TV servicers in many neighborhoods. If\nsomething broke, you dropped it off at your local electronics repair shop,\nwhich was as much a part of ordinary life as the corner automotive service\ngarage. These days, those shops have all but disappeared as rising labor costs\nand device complexity have driven consumer electronics into the age of the\ndisposable machine. When it stops working, you toss it out and get a new one.\"\n\nHe makes some other points too from a deep technician perspective citing how\ncompanies began to view and deal with complexity and liability of having their\nproducts be user servicable...\n\n\"...\"No user-serviceable parts inside. Refer service to qualified personnel,\"\nreplaced the [repair/service] diagrams. Is it any wonder they call today's\ngadgetry \"consumer electronics\"? Service manuals were cheap and plentiful, and\nshops kept huge rows of filing cabinets bursting with them. In addition to\nmanuals generated by the products' makers, the Howard W Sams company produced\nits own comprehensive line of Photofact schematics for just about everything\nout there. If you couldn't get a schematic from Zenith, you could get a Sams\neasily enough for a buck or two. As products got still more complex, manuals\ngrew from a few pages to a few hundred, with large, fold-out schematics and\nvery detailed, color pictorials. Producing these big books became quite\nexpensive, so their prices skyrocketed. Shops continue to buy them--they had\nlittle choice--but no consumer would spend more for a manual than the product\ncost in the first place! Companies gradually reduced and finally abandoned the\ninfrastructure for selling manuals to the public, and today's age of \"use it,\nwear it out and toss it\" was in full swing. Many manufacturers will no longer\nsell schematics or service manuals to consumers, thanks in part to fear of\npotential lawsuits by injured tinkerers. Some companies won't even sell\nmanuals to service shops unless they're factory-authorized warranty service\nproviders. And, believe it or not, some even refuse to provide diagrams to\nthose facilities! Secretive computer makers, in particular, only let\nauthorized servicers swap boards; the techs work on their machines for years\nwithout ever seeing a schematic of one.\"\n\n~~~\njxramos\nHis books is solidly amazing,\n[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0071744223/ref=rdr_ext_tmb](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0071744223/ref=rdr_ext_tmb),\ndefinitely valuable reading if you're into that sort of thing. Another thing\nto keep in mind with what may be confused as planned obsolescence can be tied\nto the well done story about the One Horse\nShay..[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Deacon%27s_Masterpiece](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Deacon%27s_Masterpiece)\n\nGive it a read, you'll come to realize that for any failure something has to\nbreak, some component, otherwise for a failure to occur every single component\nhas to go at once simultaneously. I realized this concretely when I had\nrepaired our garage door opener. I could see the designer using substandard\nmaterial on the teeth of this horizontal slider cog that allowed it to fail\nfirst, and it happened to be an easy part to replace, rather than say having\nthe corkscrew fail, which would be much more complicated to replace. I\nremember reading about the part in amazon reviews where people criticized it,\nbut I felt it was a good choice and had a reasonable lifetime to it. If\nsomething has to break, let it be the more serviceable part!\n\n------\nspiralpolitik\nPlanned Obsolescence is common lots of other industries. Your washing machine\nfor example is now only designed to last 5 years before replacement is needed.\nWhile repair is possible, a lot of non-computing products are now designed to\nbe taken away and recycled and replaced with new because its easier and\ncheaper to do so.\n\n------\nrasz_pl\nYou can at least try to fight it\n\n[http://www.digitalrighttorepair.org/](http://www.digitalrighttorepair.org/)\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcuAF3OJIoU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcuAF3OJIoU)\n\n------\nFando\nPlaned obsolescence and similar repulsive concepts are products of shallow\nminds and unchecked human flaws. I hate it.\n\n------\nthetrb\nEasy:\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)\n\n~~~\njxramos\nGood one! Makes me think about those crazy reality shows where they're on the\nhunt for some sea beast/monster crazy thing. The scale of the lore of the\nobjects they hunt would be so huge that you wouldn't be hearing about such\nbreaking news first by watching the next 30 minutes of characters bumbling\naround in dark forests and deep seas, etc.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nMost people are bad at arguing. These 2 techniques will make you better (2016) - pella\nhttps://www.vox.com/2016/11/23/13708996/argue-better-science\n======\nlarnmar\nIf you are arguing with the goal of changing your opponent’s mind, you’re\nalready doing argument wrong. These techniques will not make you better.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTour of a real toy Haskell program - ihodes\nhttp://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2010/10/tour-of-real-toy-haskell-program-part-1.html\n\n======\nkwantam\nMy transition to \"real\" Haskell programming happened with some parallel signal\nprocessing stuff, but my best example toy is my two-player tetris clone,\ntriHs: <http://web.jfet.org/~kwantam/TriHs.tar.gz>\n\nNote the \"bastard\" key, where you can swap your opponent's next piece. >:)\n\n------\ndjhworld\nInteresting article, some of it went a little over my head but I'm pleased to\nsee articles like this as I've always wondered how people make that transition\nin Haskell from writing fibonacci sequence generators and one-line FizzBuzz\nfunctions.\n\nWould be interested to see if this thread becomes popular and has the\nincentive for people to post their Haskell projects and how they did them\n\n------\nzaphar\nThis is great. One of the barriers to entry for me into haskell hacking was\nfinding a useful app to look at. Yi the editor was what finally got me over\nthe hump. It's great that more people are recognizing this need and meeting\nit.\n\n~~~\nhappy4crazy\nIs Yi still being developed? I've also encountered the fibonacci gap with\nHaskell, so looking at Yi would be pretty fun, but I was unable to install it\nvia cabal the last time I tried.\n\n~~~\nzaphar\nThe development had slowed but I've started submitting patches now so at least\none new developer has joined the ranks there :-) There are at least three\nother developers who are are responsive on the development list so you can\nprobably get your questions answered.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAdvice for the young scientist (by John Baez) - gtsnexp\nhttp://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/advice.html\n======\ngtsnexp\nAnd in Portuguese: [https://logic-forall.blogspot.com/2020/05/telling-stuff-\nas-i...](https://logic-forall.blogspot.com/2020/05/telling-stuff-as-it-\nis.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n'I'm either too black or not black enough': One teenager's experience - sonabinu\nhttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-47866741\n======\nscarface74\n_The N-word is something that African Americans have carried for generations,\nand when we use this word in our music and to one another, it is as a form of\nempowerment._\n\nI’m Black and hate this excuse. I bet the average White kid hears the N-word\nmore from rap music and Black people than White people.\n\nRichard Pryor expressed it better than I ever could.\n\n(Profanity, NSFW)\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp4ouYY-8zQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp4ouYY-8zQ)\n\n~~~\nmc32\nI agree with you. I don’t know of any other group for which there are epithets\nwhere said group embraces the epithet in order to “water it down”, “empower”,\netc.\n\nThat’s different from the situations in some places where the word for a\npeople in translation is an epithet but it’s the only word for those people,\nnot that it’s embraced. (think “gaijin” thirty years ago, as an accessible\nexample).\n\n~~~\nsteanne\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SlutWalk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SlutWalk)\n\n~~~\ntashi\n\"Queer\" is the word that springs to mind immediately because it seems like the\nproject to reclaim it has had almost total success. Many other examples here\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reappropriation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reappropriation)\n\n~~~\nmc32\nYou could also add geek and nerd, but I don’t think those rise to the same\ngross denigration. If it were the other f word, I think you’d have a point.\n\n------\ntreis\n>Brown, my last name, is the fourth most popular surname in the US. It was\ngiven to my ancestors by white slave owners who decided that they weren't\nworthy of being called anything other than the colour of their skin.\n\nThis isn't accurate (or at least probably isn't). Brown is a common surname in\nEngland and also in other countries in the local language (e.g. Braun in\nGermany). Her ancestors were probably owned by someone with the surname Brown\nand that's where they got the name from.\n\n~~~\nbasetop\nExactly. There are white people with Black and Green as surnames. It isn't\nbecause their skin color is black or green obviously.\n\nIt isn't a secret that most african american's last names are derived from\nslave owners. It's one of the reasons why some african americans change their\nlast name.\n\nOne of the legacies of slavery and colonialism is that a significant portion\nof the world was given european last names. The most popular surnames in the\nphilipines are spanish surnames because the indigenous filipinos didn't have\nsurnames and they took the name their spanish masters and priests assigned\nthem. Of course that also applies to their country since the Philippines was\nnames after a spanish king.\n\n~~~\nNikkiA\nThey (Brown, Green, Red/Redd, and Black) usually derived from hair or eye\ncolour at the point in the middle ages when surnames evolved out of nicknames.\n\n------\nmikekchar\nI hate to talk about this. I'm a minority in the country in which I'm living.\nI've experienced racism -- more explicit than anything described in this\narticle. And yet, I do not believe that the country in which I live is racist.\nI do not believe that the community in which I live is racist. There are a few\nracist people. Some are friends of friends of mine. Some are even my friends.\nSomehow. I'm not sure how that works, to be honest.\n\nBut I'll say something which I shouldn't say. It's too personal to say it in\npublic, but if you've never been a minority, then you'll never know. So to\nspare you from having to move to another place where you are a minority, I'll\ntell you.\n\nThe biggest racists is you. Every time you compare yourself to others and\nwonder if you fit in, you are dividing yourself from the others. Every time\nyou celebrate _your_ culture as if it is different from _their_ culture, you\nare dividing yourself from others. Every time you say \"they\" instead of \"we\"\nyou are separating yourself from others.\n\nYou can say it is their fault, but it's not. Nobody can control another\nperson. Even if they _are_ racist, it doesn't mean _you_ have to be. How does\nit sound to say, \"We are racist\"? Pretty weird when it's _them_ throwing the\nslurs, or denying you business, or just treating you like crap for no\nparticular reason. It's still your choice. In or out?\n\nIt's hard. If you become \"them\", don't you throw away \"you\"? If you hate them\nbecause they are racist, because they treat you badly, are you part of the\nproblem? If you accept it, aren't you part of the problem? Why can't you be\n\"you\" without having to give in to \"them\"? What's wrong with being different?\nWhat's wrong with being the same?\n\nThose are hard questions. I haven't been a minority long enough to be able to\nanswer those questions. Probably my life will not be long enough to answer\nthose questions. That's part of the problem. The only thing I know is that you\nwon't find peace waiting for others to give you answers. It's something that\nyou have to work out for yourself. Maybe that's not fair, but it's the way it\nis.\n\n~~~\nrimliu\nDo you think that all cultures are the same?\n\n~~~\nthrowawayrstory\nGenerally, yes. About all as racist and trying to take advantage of others.\n\nI read the article, and I liked it.\n\nBut I chuckle when the authors says \"We have reclaimed that word as our own.\nWe can use it, and white people no longer can\"\n\nMaybe this rules apply in polite company? I don't are about polite company. I\nhave been called too many bad names. I can use any word I want - including\nnigger, when appropriate, like in that story. Sorry to people who don't like\nthat and want to impose me things just because of my looks.\n\nBecause growing more taboos words, trying to retract in pocket of self\npreserving culture while crying cultural appropriation is wrong.\n\nI did that. The author also. I just hope our kids won't have to leave with\nthat, can fix their DNA any way they want (the transgendered, wouldn't you\nlike that too?) and integrate in any way their want once the human race will\nhave taken grown out of these stupidities and realized we are all in the same\nboat.\n\nDNA doesn't matter much. How people treat you because of your DNA on which you\nhave no control, that matters to me.\n\nFunny thought: I really think we will become capable of altering appearance\nand DNA way before we grow up to become more accepting to people \"not like us\"\nand \"minorities\".\n\n------\naxilmar\nI'd never understand racism.\n\nHere is a true story: when studying in London, I met there another Greek in\nthe same course and we became friends; in a parallel course of ours, there was\nthis black dude from the Carribbean, to which we occasionally chit chat about\nour countries, our experiences, mostly over launch in the University\ncafeteria.\n\nAfter some time, we were regularly been eating together with this carribbean\ndude, we became sort of friends.\n\nAnd then my Greek friend dropped the bomb: \"I don't want to eat with Jim,\nbecause he is black\". I was dumbfounded!!! I didn't ask why, because it was so\nstupid...\n\nHere is another true story: my and my buddy (not the person in the above\nstory, another one, close friend of mine) had the chance of meeting some nice\ngirls at a local cafe. We approached them, and us being young and eager to\nmeet some ladies, made the first move. Within them, there was this gorgeous\nblack lady, tall, slim, amazing face, etc. I was natually inclined to her, so\nI made my move...after a few times we went out, me, her, my buddy, and a white\nfriend of her, I noticed my buddy refused to shake hands with my date...I said\n'what's up? why don't you shake hands with her?\"...he looked at me with a\nblank stare and said 'I just don't want to'. Excuse me, what the fsck? It\nturned out my 'buddy' was an extremely racist person and considered all black\npeople to be inferior. He wasn't my friend after a bit of time though.\n\nI truly have a serious problem understanding the people that are racists. It's\none thing to be cautious when meeting someone, especially one that you don't\nknow their value system, but to be blatantly racist and consider others\ninferior like that? I will never understand that...\n\n~~~\nTheChaplain\nYou don't understand because you don't take time to sit down and actually\nlisten to the person.\n\nIMO racism mostly stems from fear and plain ignorance, but that is easily\ncured if someone just takes a moment to listen, understand and then with\ngentle attempts to counter their fears or lack of understanding.\n\nSo far I have not failed once to make people more understanding and accepting\nof diversity and equality, and that just by taking a moment with them.\n\n~~~\nthrowawayrstory\nOn some people, there is fear and ignorance.\n\nBut some know very well what they're doing. I have posted my personal story\nbelow.\n\nYou are free to disbelieve me\n\n------\nsiedes\n>Yet I know for a fact that if you dropped them in Southside Chicago, where my\nfamily is from, they would suddenly know better than to behave like this. They\nwouldn't toss their gang signs around or speak that word… ever. And that is\nbecause they know that these things would undoubtedly be met with\nconfrontation, and they only get away with their actions because of the lack\nof African presence in this community.\n\nI can't be the only one who thinks the racist you know is better than the\nracist you don't.\n\nAlso, the sentiment here that people wouldn't dare use the word if there were\nmore blacks around, in fear of intimidation and violence in return, doesn't\npaint a very good picture of black people.\n\n~~~\nscarface74\nWhat do you think would happen if you went to a bar with a bunch of White\nbikers and started insulting them?\n\n~~~\nShaanie\nAre you being intentionally racist by comparing black people with bikers?\n\n~~~\nscarface74\nNo. I’m saying that any group when they are in the majority will have a\ntendency to behave more violently when they are in a position of power if\ninsulted than when they are in the minority.\n\n------\nholografix\nOn the topic of music I’m repeatedly surprised at how rap/hip-hop music has\ngained popular acceptance and become what’s “cool”.\n\nThere are definitely some songs in that genre that I enjoy but most of it is\nunbearably mysoginist, vulgar, materialistic and shallow.\n\nI have brought this up with friends in the past and been told “we just like\nthe rhythm and the beat” - which often I do too - but I can’t separate it from\nthe lyrics.\n\n~~~\nfinnthehuman\n>There are definitely some songs in that genre that I enjoy but most of it is\nunbearably mysoginist, vulgar, materialistic and shallow.\n\nEver think they might like it exactly because the lyrics aren’t pleasant or\nagreeable? And can do so without agreeing with the ideas in the lyrics?\n\nIn other words: People don’t have to be suicidal to enjoy Hamlet’s exploration\nof suicide, do they?\n\n~~~\nholografix\nI upvoted your comment and value your insight.\n\nHowever imagine if you spent a significant amount of time reading and\nlistening to explorations of suicide and people who committed suicide started\nto be interpreted as role models.\n\nI have no issue with bad language and the full spectrum of human experiences\nbut I can discern what is positive for myself and society.\n\nI’m just a bit tired of how it’s normalised. I’d rather not hear about drug\ndealing, murders, prostitution and gold Rolexes with my Sunday brunch or while\nI buy a new pair of joggers.\n\nCan’t we listen to Lupe Fiasco’s “Kick Push” instead?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSirix 0.9.1 released (time travel queries and versioning made easy) - lichtenberger\nhttps://sirix.io\n======\nlichtenberger\nHi all,\n\nI want to release version 1.0.0 soon, but would love some input, as I added a\ncomplete native JSON storage about three weeks ago (several layers) :-)\n\nI've just published an article called Asynchronous, Temporal REST with Vert.x,\nKeykloak and Kotlin Coroutines: [https://hackernoon.com/asynchronous-temporal-\nrest-with-vert-...](https://hackernoon.com/asynchronous-temporal-rest-with-\nvert-x-keycloak-and-kotlin-\ncoroutines-217b25756314?source=friends_link&sk=5eabb36b2984cf61a2dff3f9fe45addc)\n\nAnd another one about some use cases and internals:\n[https://hackernoon.com/sirix-io-why-copy-on-write-\nsemantics-...](https://hackernoon.com/sirix-io-why-copy-on-write-semantics-\nand-node-level-versioning-are-key-to-efficient-\nsnapshots-754ba834d3bb?source=friends_link&sk=f2a13ece73f08f494aebea3ef0ceb594)\n\nI've also added a bunch of documentation on the website :-)\n\nHave a great weekend :)\n\nKind regards Johannes\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Number of New Bitcoin Accounts Is Skyrocketing - petethomas\nhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-27/new-crypto-accounts-proliferate-as-bitcoin-flirts-with-10-000\n======\nblackflame7000\nAt what point does it become speculation? Perhaps someone with more knowledge\ncan shed some light on what exactly people are buying when they buy a bitcoin.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nThe Three Types of ‘Computer’ People - _mikey\nhttp://blog.jwegener.com/2010/12/17/three-types-programmer-best-cofounder/\n\n======\nmathgladiator\nI think it is important to note that everyone can be a hybrid of all three.\n\nI do it all the time, and I just wrote about it:\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2042017>\n\nI find that looking at the problem enables me to pick which hat to wear. Do I\nneed to bust out some spurs and cowboy up and hack a way? Or, do I need to sit\ndown and identify the state of the problem formally? Or, do I need to write up\na specification and ship it overseas?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNew Jersey Lawmakers Are Trying to Tax the Rain - andrenth\nhttps://fee.org/articles/new-jersey-lawmakers-are-trying-to-tax-the-rain/\n======\nseeker61\nThe title is bogus, as the article eagerly admits: \"To be perfectly clear,\nwhile the new tax is being referred to as the “rain tax,” it doesn’t actually\ntax the rain itself ...\"\n\nIn a perfect world, storm sewers would fund themselves.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTrucking 'bloodbath': 4,500 truck drivers lost jobs in August - elorant\nhttps://www.businessinsider.com/trucking-bloodbath-4500-truck-drivers-lost-jobs-in-august-2019-9\n======\nJauntTrooper\n4,500 / 3,500,000 = 0.1% decline in truck drivers.\n\nThe industry probably has outsized exposure to the escalating trade wars and\nincreasing tariffs.\n\n~~~\npaulddraper\nAFAIK there is a greater percentage of trucking businesses going down than\ntruck drivers. Consolidation. Amazon, etc.\n\nArticle even says \"It was the first time since March that truckers saw job\nlosses.\"\n\n~~~\nrandogogogo\nThis point wasn't clear to me reading the article. I got the impression that\nmany of those bankruptcies were independent owner/operators but that the\nreporter was trying to downplay that and rather let us believe these were\nlarge operators on the brink of collapse.\n\n------\nMerrill\nOrders for new Class 8 trucks are down about 80% year over year.\n[https://ftrintel.com/news/latest-\norders/index.php](https://ftrintel.com/news/latest-orders/index.php)\n\n~~~\nzachsnow\nIt seems however that 2018 was a “record year” so maybe it’s just back to\n“normal”?\n\n~~~\nThePadawan\nApparently they are \"[the] lowest since 2010\":\n[https://www.truckinginfo.com/337568/july-class-8-orders-\nlowe...](https://www.truckinginfo.com/337568/july-class-8-orders-lowest-\nsince-2010)\n\n~~~\nFjolsvith\nProbably waiting to see how the electric trucks pan out before purchasing.\n\n~~~\nahartmetz\nProbably not. Demand for investment goods just varies very strongly with\neconomic cycles.\n\n------\njiveturkey\n4500? That's almost noise level. Certainly it's not anything close to a\nbloodbath. Truck drivers are the #1 job in the US, @ 3.5mm drivers.\n\nBut then again, it's BI so ...\n\n~~~\nnewnewpdro\nWhat is 3.5mm supposed to mean? Million? What's the second m?\n\n~~~\nHEHENE\nIt's a matter of preference.\n\nM = mega (in metric) = one million\n\nMM = two of the roman numeral M = one thousand thousand = one million.\n\nBoth are correct.\n\n~~~\nnewnewpdro\nI see, so when people use nMM they're using roman numerals to indicate million\nunits?\n\nTIL\n\nThat seems rather spurious and ambiguous, considering people generally use nK\nfor thousand units, and mixing roman numerals now makes metric nM a collision\nwith thousands.\n\n~~~\njiveturkey\nMM is a financial abbreviation. It used to be \"the standard\" but nowadays they\nalso use M.\n\nCompare with the \"M\" in CPM, which is not the roman 'M' but the French\n'Mille'.\n\nSo, \"M\" is sometimes ambiguous. In this case it wouldn't be, but I always use\nmm or MM to mean million, and bn or BN to mean billion.\n\n------\nsaargrin\ni dont understand, everybody was saying theres a million trucker jobs unfilled\n\n~~~\ntoomuchtodo\nIt’s PR to keep truck driving wages artificially suppressed.\n\n~~~\nsocalnate1\nThen a bunch of unfilled jobs would do the opposite (it would raise wages).\n\n~~~\ncardiffspaceman\nIf there is in reality a glut of drivers, then repeating that there was a lack\nof drivers would bring in more drivers in spite of the glut, depressing wages.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nObama pick for NSA review panel wanted paid, pro-government shills in chat rooms - Libertatea\nhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/23/obama-pick-for-nsa-review-panel-wanted-paid-pro-government-shills-in-chat-rooms/?tid=rssfeed\n======\nthrowaway_yy2Di\nThis guy is staggeringly authoritarian. He doesn't stop at \"correcting\" the\nviews of radicalized nutjobs. He wants the bulk of US political speech\nactively managed, regulated:\n\n _He outlines six specific reform possibilities to improve exposure to diverse\npoints of view on the Internet: 1) creation of \"deliberative domains\" where\ndiverse exchange of views can occur online; 2) disclosure of relevant conduct\nby Web producers; 3) voluntary self-regulation by Web producers; 4) publicly\nsubsidized programming and Web sites; 5) government-imposed rules that would\nrequire the most popular Web sites to provide links to sites with diverse\nviews; and 6) government-imposed rules that would require highly partisan Web\nsites to provide links to sites with opposing views._\n\n[http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/sunstein2.html](http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/sunstein2.html)\n\n~~~\nmd224\nIt seems like he wants to force people to be exposed to diverse/opposing\nviews... isn't that kind of the opposite of authoritarian?\n\n~~~\nferdo\n> It seems like he wants to force people to be exposed to diverse/opposing\n> views... isn't that kind of the opposite of authoritarian?\n\nForce = authoritarian.\n\n~~~\nmd224\n> Force = authoritarian\n\nAre you opposed to all forms of coercion?\n\nAnyway, I'll concede that force is probably the wrong way to go about it...\nthe government could provide incentives for exposing people to diverse\nviewpoints, but forcing people to do so is a bit extreme.\n\n~~~\nferdo\nForce and fraud are the basis of all anti-social thinking and behavior, so\nyes, I'm opposed to coercion in all forms.\n\n~~~\nmd224\nAh, so you consider yourself an anarchist then? (Not asking this pejoratively;\nit's a legitimate political philosophy, just one I don't happen to subscribe\nto.) I feel like coercion is kind of inevitable in some circumstances; I don't\nthink anyone is opposed to forcing a rapist to submit to punishment.\n\nAnyway, that's a different discussion altogether. While I think force may be\nnecessary in some aspects of society, I concede that applying force to the\nrealm of discourse is probably a bad idea.\n\n~~~\nferdo\nI leave it to others to apply labels. I just despise criminality and\nsociopathic assumptions, especially in government.\n\nWhen someone, such as a rapist or a politician, has proven that they're\nincapable of peaceful behavior in society, we have the right to defend\nourselves from them.\n\nIOW, self-defense isn't coercion. The coercion has already been committed by\nthe criminal. If you're walking down the street and I mug you, I'm applying\nthe force. You, in self-defense, aren't being \"violent\" in your intent to\nprotect yourself. You're trying to stop the violence I'm committing against\nyou.\n\nI guess what I'm saying is I wish people would worry less about labels and\nmore about principles.\n\nTo get back on topic a little, the government using the tactics as laid out by\nSunstein is a fraud being perpetrated by the force of government so it rings\nall kinds of bells.\n\n------\nrayiner\nFor context, Cass Sunstein is a prominent law professor (formerly at U\nChicago, now at Harvard). He writes a lot about law and economics and also\nabout the mechanics of democracy.\n\nHe writes a lot about behavioral economics and is a proponent of government\nmechanics to get people to do the right thing when they would ordinarily fall\nprey to fallacious reasoning:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_%28book%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_%28book%29).\n\nThe referenced article arises from the intersection of his interest in\ndemocracy and his interest in behavioral irrationalities. Essentially, it\nasks: \"how do you have democracy when lots of people believe nutty irrational\nthings?\" E.g. most people, when polled, regularly believe that the U.S. spends\n> 5% of its budget on foreign aid. They also think that something like half\nthe U.S. population is black and the other half is Hispanic. How do these\nideas impact democracy?\n\nThe article tries to paint him as some scary pro-surveillance type, but he's\nnot. He's no anarco-libertarian--he has a very strong belief in the ability of\nthe state to improve society. But he is a professor and likes to throw out\nideas and the paper should be viewed in that context.\n\n~~~\nZigurd\nYou see no irony that, last year, thinking the NSA had implemented a\ncomprehensive surveillance state would be an irrational belief that should be\nsuppressed by active management of public discussion?\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nI think it's an awful idea, but then again, most ideas that come out of\nacademia are awful. My point is that it should be viewed as what it is: a\nprofessor toying with a concept under a certain set of premises, not the\nsinister thing the article is trying to make it out to be.\n\nSunnstein is no lover of government suppression of speech. He has written at\nlength about the importance of vigorous debate to democracy. I think he fails\nto appreciate the ways in which many of his proposals could backfire, but\nthat's hardly a failing unique to him (how many people on this very chatblog\nopposed Citizens United, and think its a good idea to let the government\nprosecute companies for airing unauthorized political movies critical of a\nfront running Presidential candidate?).\n\n~~~\na3n\n> Sunnstein is no lover of government suppression of speech.\n\nThe Guardian: \"He has also proposed reformulating the first amendment, arguing\nthat in some instances it goes too far in protecting damaging forms of\nspeech.\" [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/22/nsa-\nsurveillanc...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/22/nsa-surveillance-\nreview-panel-insiders)\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nThe Guardian doesn't give a citation so there is no way to evaluate the claim.\n\nI don't think Sunnstein's views on speech are in general inconsistent with\nwhat you typically find on say HN:\n[http://mtprof.msun.edu/fall1994/TrRev.html](http://mtprof.msun.edu/fall1994/TrRev.html)\n(\"Sunstein's focus is on the relationship between the media--newspapers,\ntelevision, radio--and political culture. For him, the media, increasingly\nowned and controlled by a dwindling number of privately owned conglomerates,\nare in the propaganda and bread-and-circuses business. They make sure that the\nAmerican public is not exposed to radically new viewpoints and that it is\ndistracted from serious issues by an endless array of tabloid topics, from\nNancy Kerrigan's knee to John Bobbitt's penis.\") See:\n[http://mtprof.msun.edu/fall1994/TrRev.html](http://mtprof.msun.edu/fall1994/TrRev.html).\n\nHe favors restrictions on e.g. hate speech and political speech by\ncorporations, which is not inconsistent with what many (most?) liberals\nbelieve. But he's also made it clear he thinks such restrictions should\ngenerally be based on harm, not ideas.\n[http://www.gvpt.umd.edu/lpbr/subpages/reviews/sunstei2.htm](http://www.gvpt.umd.edu/lpbr/subpages/reviews/sunstei2.htm)\n(\"A subject matter restriction on unprotected speech should probably be upheld\nif the legislature can plausibly argue that it is counteracting harms rather\nthan ideas.\"). I don't agree with him on any of these points, but his views\nare not outside the mainstream, and are consistent with those of say European\ncountries that have outright bans on hate speech.\n\n------\nadolph\n[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585)\n\nAuthors Cass R. Sunstein (proposed member of a panel to review the\nsurveillance practices of the National Security Agency) and Adrian Vermeule,\ndated January 15, 2008\n\nAbstract: _Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that\npowerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some\nimportant practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief,\nwidespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9 /11 were carried\nout not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who subscribe\nto conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence,\nand the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy\nand law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which\nconspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such\ntheories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of\nidentifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational\nand reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is\ntheir self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be\npersuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize\nthat very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold\nconspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in\naccordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response\nconsists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy\ndilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut\nconspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light._\n\nFile under \"elite panic\"\n[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/04/elite_panic.h...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/04/elite_panic.html)\n\n~~~\ntootie\nConsidering that his proposal is geared towards defusing their anger as\nopposed to entrapment or proactive punishment, this seems like a pretty decent\nidea. And it's not like conspiracy theorists don't foment criminal and even\ndeadly behavior sometimes.\n\n~~~\nbetterunix\nSometimes people need to be angry at their government. When the army is\nknowingly and deliberately irradiating a town in secret, people need to get\nangry. When the President is part of a conspiracy to break into the offices of\nhis political opponents during an election, people need to get angry. When the\ndirector of national intelligence is lying to Congress about the intelligence\ncommunity's violation of civil rights, people need to get angry.\n\nIf we silence conspiracy theorists, we ensure that conspiracies will never be\nunraveled because nobody will be allowed to bring them to light.\n\n~~~\ntootie\nYeah, but this one doesn't really make me mad. Also, I still don't respect\nconspiracy theorists because they seem to just live finding conspiracies to be\nmad at. The Iraq invasion happened on live TV and was trumpeted as a patriotic\nsuccess . It was worse than every conspiracy real or imagined during the Obama\nadministration.\n\n------\nihsw\nOnce again, the US Government takes a page from the Stasi:\n\n> By the 1970s, the Stasi had decided that methods of overt persecution which\n> had been employed up to that time, such as arrest and torture, were too\n> crude and obvious. It was realised that psychological harassment was far\n> less likely to be recognised for what it was, so its victims, and their\n> supporters, were less likely to be provoked into active resistance, given\n> that they would often not be aware of the source of their problems, or even\n> its exact nature. Zersetzung was designed to side-track and \"switch off\"\n> perceived enemies so that they would lose the will to continue any\n> \"inappropriate\" activities.\n\nDon't get confused, it's an inevitability that these techniques for attacking\nsubversive groups will instead be used on innocent people not suspected of any\ncrime.\n\n------\npyre\nWhile the headline is a bit over the top, I agree with the general sentiment.\nThe idea that the government will infiltrate these groups, but limit\nthemselves to just influencing the discourse in positive, truthful ways,\nwithout creating dossiers on the parties involved seems fantasy to me.\n\n~~~\ntonyarkles\nYou lost me at \"positive, truthful ways\". :)\n\n~~~\npyre\nI get that. You're lying about your identity to help influence people to know\nthe truth. If you're already willing to lie about who you are, then you're\nalready more willing to do things that might not be so ethical in the first\nplace, which means you probably can't be trusted to limit yourself to only\nsteering people towards the truth.\n\n------\nfiatmoney\nIf you're interested in issues like this, you should look into why Elgin Air\nForce Base is the \"most Reddit addicted city\".\n\n[http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1dz470/most_redd...](http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1dz470/most_reddit_addicted_city_over_100k_visits_total/)\n\n------\nTorgo\n\"By this we do not mean 1960s-style infiltration with a view to surveillance\nand collecting information, possibly for use in future prosecutions.\"\n\nTo paraphrase James Clapper, \"Such information will not be collected (under\nthis program.)\"\n\n------\npatrickg_zill\nSunstein is an effective argument for the limited powers of government. Would\nyou really want a guy like this having enough power to enforce his arrogance\nupon the rest of us?\n\n------\npeterkelly\nI support Sunstein's nomination for the review panel, and you should too.\n\n~~~\nspoiledtechie\nAnd who are you to convince me?\n\n~~~\nyebyen\nA paid government shill? [woosh]\n\n------\nsamstave\nThey are all over any major story on reddit. And the HBGary release proved\nthis to be actively implemented fact.\n\nThe fact that a significant amount of Reddit traffic comes from Eglin AFB,\nindicates that this may be where these MISO agents are based.\n\n------\ncma\nCass Sunstein wrote an op-ed a few weeks ago saying Larry Summers should be\nconsidered a candidate for Fed Chairman because he has been pushing for\nregulation all along, the problem is we just haven't heard about it. This is\nabout the guy who pushed for repealing Glass-Steagall and also pushed for\nallowing commercial banks to use governement- insured deposits to speculate in\nderivatives.\n\n[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-06/summers-s-\ncritics-d...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-06/summers-s-critics-\ndistort-his-regulatory-views.html)\n\n------\nferdo\nSunstein tries to weasel out of words with his name attached at about the 2\nminute mark:\n\n[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OIiOztc52g](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OIiOztc52g)\n\n------\nunclebucknasty\nGovernment should be shaped by the people, not the other way around.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nGuerilla Launch Tactics, or Manufacturing Buzz for Bootstrappers - mixonic\nhttp://madhatted.com/2012/4/25/guerilla-launch-tactics\n\n======\nlobotryas\nWouldn't asking friends to upvote your HN submissions count as gaming the\nsystem?\n\nI'm sure people do this regardless, but to just admit so on your blog seems a\nbit careless.\n\n~~~\nsp332\nVoting rings, where a group of people upvote each other's posts all the time,\nare generally discouraged on forums. The behavior could lead to banning on\nsome sites, but on HN, the behavior is automatically detected and the votes\nsimply don't count.\n\nBut asking some friends to upvote an individual post is what all HN submitters\nare doing anyway! That's not gaming the system.\n\n~~~\njohn41\nI agree completely. I mean, you can't get noticed at all initially unless a\nfew of your friends upvote your stuff...just the way it is.\n\n------\nchadyj\nVery useful post, thank you. I'd love to see some charts in there too.\n\n------\nzashapiro\nThere's a point you make in the article that I think will get overlooked:\nThanking people.\n\nI'm fascinated with the human psychological flaw looking at short term vs.\nlong term. We tend to optimize for short term without giving much thought to\nthe long term.\n\nYou're most likely going to want people to help out again so thanking them for\ntheir time and effort, no matter how minimal, has never gone unnoticed.\n\n------\njohn41\nI like the hangman idea...how did you promote that? How many visitors to the\ngame actually continued on to spinto?\n\n~~~\nmixonic\nLooking at the numbers now, I see 13.5% of visitors went through to Spinto.\nWe're only talking about 350 visitors to playhangman.net though. Most were\nprobably from a discussion about Ember.js on meetup.com.\n\nI spent a little time optimizing hangman for iPad and iPhone, I want to make\nthe games easy to share and play on those devices. So, there is more that can\nbe done.\n\nIn general, making games or projects on Spinto is obviously a win. Plus, yeah,\nit's fun to send people messages with playhangman.net they need to guess to\nread :-)\n\n~~~\njohn41\nyeah it's a great idea...the more I think about it, the more ways I can see to\nuse this myself in different ways. Thanks for the great idea!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhat's Up with Those Voices in Your Head? - lermontov\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/books/review/voices-within-charles-fernyhough.html\n======\ncairo_x\nI find when reading fiction, or certain kinds of literature (not including\navant guard lit), using an inner voice is vital to get the full meter and\nrhythm. Then with slowing down my thoughts -- self talk -- rational thinking,\nhaving an inner voice helps too.\n\nWhen reading non-fiction I can more easily drift into a sub-vocal whisper, to\nnothing at all speed read, skipping over to points I'm interested in, going\nback over points, etc. I suspect this is why a lot of non-fiction has\nstandards and formats and certain clichés that make visual comprehension less\nintensive.\n\nA friend of mine said she had no inner voice at all.\n\nI've noticed when using Ketamine that I can do this sub-mental-vocal speed\nreading incredibly well for certain kinds of avant guard literature or\nphilosophy lit, like Camus and David Foster Wallace, or Pyncheon, where the\nvoice can change from chapter to chapter -- or rather the content is very info\ndense.\n\nI had great trouble 'getting' Hunter S. Thompson before I'd ever heard him\nspeak. When I heard his voice it suddenly all made sense. Same for William S\nBoroughs, for his more avant-guard lit works. Junky, on the other hand, has a\nmore more straight forward voice and I was able to get into that quite easily\nwithout having heard his actual voice beforehand.\n\nThis is why I don't buy into the bicameral mind crap. Non-vocal thinking seems\neasier for more info dense material, wheras a voice is helpful for very\nemotive things like poetry or some kinds of lit.\n\nThen again I could be simply confusing standard voice with non-standard. Hard\nto be objective.\n\n------\nwccrawford\nWait... Some people can't turn them off? Some people don't have them at all?\n\nI've always been able to think without voices in my head, or deliberately use\nthem to focus my thoughts. I never even considered that others might be stuck\nin one mode or the other.\n\n~~~\nNoGravitas\nI can't turn off my internal voice at all, except in meditation, and even then\nit's difficult. I have to spend quite a lot of time where my internal voice is\ndoing nothing but counting breaths, before eventually/sometimes, I can just\nobserve the breaths without counting them. Otherwise, I have a continuous\nmonologue, mostly in my own voice.\n\nI _can_ think in images, but the images are never completely without\nnarration.\n\n~~~\nBroken_Hippo\nThis is soooo much me, except that I've never had it during meditation. This\nactually caused me some problems trying to learn to meditate - I can't grasp\nfocusing on something if I can't have the internal vocalisation with it. I\nfinally settled on making inner sounds along with monotonous drumming - the\nvocalisation will kinda tune out or get quieter, at least.\n\nThanks for describing it for me, btw :)\n\nI have that monologue as well - complete along with your description of\nimages. If I narrate them, they are much better.\n\n------\nStavrosK\nWhat about those of us who don't have internal voices?\n\n~~~\nFilligree\nVoiceless people, represent!\n\nI had a long discussion on this subject over on Lesswrong, back in the day.\nSuffice to say that a lot of people have trouble imagining it's even an\noption.\n\n~~~\nJoof\nIt would have to be. People didn't start out with language, but could\nundoubtedly think.\n\nI'm fairly mixed, probably like the majority. Some things are images or words\nand occasionally just ideas (although I'm not certain how to describe that).\n\n~~~\nStavrosK\nI know exactly what you mean. It's that process where an idea just forms,\nwordlessly, and you just \"know\" it now. Sometimes I start narrating it to\nmyself, but then stop mid-way, realizing it's pointless, since I already know\nit.\n\n------\nistorical\nThere's an interesting Reddit thread that's somewhat related to this as it\npertains to reading:\n\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/4wttu4/do_you_hear_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/4wttu4/do_you_hear_a_voice_while_you_read/)\n\n------\nzw123456\nThis reminds me of Bicamealism\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_\\(psychology\\))\nhis book is a free read [http://s-f-\nwalker.org.uk/pubsebooks/pdfs/Julian_Jaynes_The_O...](http://s-f-\nwalker.org.uk/pubsebooks/pdfs/Julian_Jaynes_The_Origin_of_Consciousness.pdf) A\nvery interesting theory, not sure I agree with all of it but he raises some\ninteresting questions for anyone who finds this topic fascinating.\n\n------\nmrec\nSSC had a good piece about missing \"universal\" experiences a while back;\nlighter than his usual fare, with more anecdotal examples in the comments.\n\n[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-\nex...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-\nare-you-missing-without-realizing-it/)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nTheUnFunded.com - a place for VCs to rate entrepreneurs - theunfunded\nhttp://www.theunfunded.com/\n======\nivankirigin\nMarch 31 is probably the best day for April 1 jokes. Is this one?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Is WSL2 stable enough for devs to switch from MacOS to Windows? - asenna\nFor developers who&#x27;ve switched back to Windows, how is the experience like? Is WSL2 as smooth as actually working on Linux? or does it still crap out on random Node libraries at times (like on WSL1)?<p>I&#x27;m in the market for a new work laptop and a lot of people I know are in the same boat - holding onto older Macbook Pros (2015 and earlier) looking for alternatives, but scared to jump from MacOS. Obviously Apple is busy making the next pro devices thinner which is just.. wonderful for them.<p>Yes, switching to Linux is an option for many. But I also have to use Adobe CC tools which needs Windows (Wine is not a good option). Hence it&#x27;s either dual-booting Linux&#x2F;Windows or Windows full time as the two options for me.\n======\nWorldMaker\nWSL2 is not technically stable yet at all. It's still only in 20H1 Insider\n[\"public beta\"] builds for the version of Windows 10 to be released in the\nfirst half of 2020.\n\n(WSL1 on the other hand has been stable and available for production versions\nof Windows 10 for months now. But yes, it has some known rough parts and\nperformance issues expected to be smoothed over in WSL2 depending on your\nworkflows and needs. Some of those have gone away with updates, WSL1 has seen\nsome improvements over the months from some of the earliest horror reports,\nagain all of which depending on your exact use cases.)\n\n------\ngroovebits\nActually docker for windows with docker compose workdir syncing might be\nenough. Gonna try it over the weekend\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDear HN: Please don't start a response with the word \"wrong.\" - samd\nExample:\nDave: The sky is green.\nBob: Wrong. The sky is blue.<p>It just makes you look like an asshole. Be more tactful and civil in your discussions. I promise you people will respond more favorably if you don&#x27;t come out the gate blaring a buzzer like a game-show host.\n======\nseiji\n_Be more tactful and civil in your discussions._\n\nNot every opinion is valid or deserving of civil rebuttal. It's a result of\nmodern \"every opinion is equally valid as fact\" syndrome. We don't have time\nto cordially try to rewire your brain to think the sky isn't green.\n\nAlso, when trolls are trolling, they _want_ elaborate thought out responses to\ntheir drivel. It's easier to shut them down with \"wrong.\" And, as we know, you\ncan't distinguish an intentional troll from someone with sincerely warped\nviews of the world.\n\nIn short, shut it all down. They should be inspired to research their\nwrongness to turn into more right-thinking apes.\n\n[relevant life story: one of my high school math teachers had a big \"WRONG\"\nstamp (with red ink) he would enthusiastically smash onto your work if you\nwere, well, wrong.]\n\n~~~\nmgallivan\nWe should shut down other people who are being needlessly facetious.\n\nBut to suggest that rejection should be our default behavior is absurd.\nDiscussion should be encouraged because, more often than not, neither side is\n100% correct. The way we further ourselves is by talking to those people with\ndissimilar views.\n\n~~~\nseiji\n_more often than not, neither side is 100% correct._\n\nYou are very right. The problem is when one side stands up and says: \"We are\nobviously right. We will never change our opinions or ideas. You must agree\nwith us or die.\"\n\nAt that point, the reasonable side doesn't have any options left. You can't\nargue with crazy.\n\nTake the current US Congress situation. One side is saying, \"We want to hurt\nyou.\" The other side isn't saying \"Okay, how much do you want to hurt me?\nLet's find a compromise where you can just cut off my hand.\" No. The only way\nto stop American elected terrorists is to tell them \"No.\"\n\nIf people have valid points, you can draw out truth. If they have points based\non pride, ego, or falsely implanted childhood memories, you can't do anything\nproductive except stop them. If that doesn't work, ignore them.\n\nTopics of note which regularly draw out crazy people from one side: nobody\nneeds college, X city is better for startups, religion Y is right, bitcoin is\na \"currency,\" (or anything else getting 400+ comments around here).\n\n------\nifyoumakeit\nI'm dealing with that right now. Completely negating someone's opinion only\nshuts down communication. It's all in the phrasing and makes it sound like you\nare on different teams, especially in a work environment.\n\n~~~\npalidanx\nWhen doing consulting and engaging a sensitive issue, I always begin with,\n\"Correct if I'm wrong, is this how this feature is supposed to work...\"\n\nWhat this does is diffuse a tense situation and allow the client to issue a\ncorrection without feeling bad.\n\n~~~\nifyoumakeit\nI think that's a great approach, especially when handling a new client. The\nworst situation is landing a client who also personally designed or developed\nthe last iteration of their website or app. They need to be dislodged from the\nwork they've done and sometimes that takes kid gloves.\n\n------\nkohanz\nOf any of the proponents of the \"Wrong. ...\" response, I wonder how many would\nuse this phrasing face-to-face as opposed to online. Unlike my younger days, I\ndo my best now to converse online as I do and would IRL and I find that this\nis one of those phrases that does not pass that test. IRL it would be\nconsidered plain rude and obnoxious.\n\n------\nfrou_dh\nIf this is pet peeve time then I'll go with the alarming number of sentences\npeople want to start with the word \"So\". It makes you sound like you're in\nconstant rebuttal mode and trying to lay out the one true world view.\n\n------\nmarssaxman\nYeah, I've noticed this. It doesn't work.\n\n------\ninformatimago\nWrong. People should learn to make the difference between an sentence they're\nissuing being wrong or false, and they being bad. \"wrong\" does not mean\nthey're bad persons. Perhaps at most that they're lazy or bad thinkers. That's\nall. In any case when something is wrong, it would be wrong not to stop it\nimmediately, telling it wrong.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nShow HN: GraphQL Queries with React and GUN, the Graph Database - marknadal\nhttps://github.com/brysgo/graphql-gun\n======\nanilgulecha\nIs there an update on server-side persistent storage for gundb? This was the\nbig missing piece the last time I looked at it.\n\n~~~\nmarknadal\nWe've added a couple more storage engines, like SQLite which should also be\ncompatible with Postgres.\n\nHowever I'm not very satisfied with the performance of them or any of the\nothers. So it seems like ultimately I'll be forced into building my own\nstorage engine, which I plan to do based on a radix. But that is pretty far\ndown the pipeline.\n\nWhat were you needing it for? Our latest load test handled on low end hardware\n1750 table inserts a second second across a federated/distributed system.\nWe're hoping to get that up to 10K on cheap/free hardware. :) Be curious to\nhear about your needs/use-cases! Let me know.\n\n~~~\nanilgulecha\nI was thinking a pouch-couch situation for offline-first usecase.\n\nBasically I'd use gun-gunserverside on multiple clients, and get sync free on\nthe clients, when the clients come online.\n\n~~~\nmarknadal\nWould you explain again, I don't think I understood? You are wanting gun to\nhave a server-side Couch storage adapter? Or something else?\n\nGUN is offline-first already, so you don't need pouch/couch to achieve that,\njust in case that is what you were thinking? Let me know if I am\nmisunderstanding you.\n\n~~~\nanilgulecha\nRight now gun has multiclient offline-first capability. If the clients go away\n(and the data destroyed), there's no way of loading data on the new client.\n\nWHat I'm looking for is a \"gun-server\" with persistent storage, which can act\nlike the persistent storage node, always ready to provide data to new clients.\n(Couchdb does this for pouch clients)\n\n~~~\nmarknadal\nAh, yes! Thank you for clarifying. (sorry for the late reply)\n\nThis actually works out of the box, sorry if if this wasn't clear. When you\nrun a gun server ( `npm start` or see [https://github.com/gundb/gun-starter-\napp](https://github.com/gundb/gun-starter-app) ), it by default saves persists\ndata to disk.\n\nThis way the gun server acts as a storage node, ready to provide the data to\nclients. The default options are, and extensions for:\n\n\\- Dump JSON to disk. \\- Backup to S3. \\- Level adapter\n[https://github.com/PsychoLlama/gun-level](https://github.com/PsychoLlama/gun-\nlevel) \\- SQLite adapter\n[https://github.com/gundb/sqlite](https://github.com/gundb/sqlite)\n\nNote, that the Level adapter is also compatible with many other storage\nengines.\n\nIs this what you were looking for?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nCould Flight MH 370 Have Been Hacked? Probably Not, Most Experts Agree - blogreader\nhttp://thesurge.net/could-malaysia-airlines-flight-370-have-been-hacked-probably-not-most-experts-agree/\n\n======\ncoreymgilmore\nI see this as possible, if only slightly. But then again, a plane is still\nmissing so anything is possible.\n\nMy theory: the plane never existed in the first place!\n\n------\nblogreader\nInteresting theory, but sounds like there isn't much support for it. Of\ncourse, at this point none of the theories have much support for them.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nClinton campaign chair: Americans 'can handle the truth' about UFOs - ZoeZoeBee\nhttp://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/clinton-campaign-chair-americans-can-handle-the-truth-about-ufos/ar-BBrwmu5?ocid=ansmsnnews11\n======\nmindcrime\nSounds like an attempt to score votes from frequent callers to the UFO Hotline\nand the \"Coast to Coast AM\" crowd.\n\n------\nZoeZoeBee\nThe Reactions from the Religious Heads and their followers would be one of the\nmost interesting things to watch unfold.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMy Tiny TodoList: A simple open source todolist written in PHP and jQuery  - edw519\nhttp://woork.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-tiny-todolist-simple-open-source.html\n\n======\nshaunxcode\nThat's actually quite a nice design and looks like it would work well on the\niphone as well.\n\n------\nBatsu\nI like it.\n\nI'm not sure what it is about lists that I like, but I must say I'm enjoying\nthe fact that they seem to be the next step past tutorial lately. Lots of fine\nlooking projects coming from it.\n\n------\nmojaam\nNot to take anything from this, but there is Todoist.com for the lazy like me.\nI do wish todoist have a few more features but it does what it's supposed to\ndo.\n\n------\nnopal\nWhat's happening with this link? It looks like it redirects to itself,\npreventing a single back button click to HN.\n\n~~~\nnixme\nNot seeing that behavior. History remains intact and back works fine.\n\n------\npope52\nCleverly done. This is much better implementation than many of the more\npopular to-do sites out there.\n\n------\nsimonw\nWarning: the zip file unzips itself in to your current directory, rather than\na sub-directory.\n\n------\ndxjones\ncool. thanks for sharing this nice example code.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHow to beta test your mobile apps - ashok_varma\nhttp://blog.appstark.com/post/26209583662/7-tips-to-beta-test-your-mobile-app\n\n======\nDenisM\nThe article is devoid of content, entire text can be summarized as \"strategize\nyour strategy\", \"do the right thing at the right time\", and other such\ngibberish.\n\nThe point of the article is to plug something called \"appstark\", which as best\nI can tell is a library + service combo to collect and aggregate user feedback\nfrom inside iOS apps. Their web site a train-wreck of an attempt to explain\nwhat the service does, papered with \"free trial start now!!!\" buttons.\n\nFrankly, a short and to the point explanation of what the service does would\nbe more welcome here than this spam.\n\n~~~\nluckymurari\nFeedback is awesome. But, I guess you could've reduced a bit of causticness in\nit.\n\nThis is the video, I want everyone on internet to watch - \"A real person, a\nlot like you\" - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfwwHa-7Ux8>\n\nPS/Disclaimer: Not directly affiliated to them. Founders are my friends!\n\n~~~\nDenisM\nYou're probably right, I was (still am) irked by the amount of nonsense I had\nto wade through before I got something tangible out of my time investment. In\nmy defense I provided something useful to go with the my \"causticism\", so I\ncan claim my heart was in the right place all along. :)\n\n------\nmmackh\nThe one thing that I find most difficult is how to actually recruit new,\nquality beta testers, which the article doesn't really touch upon. I've had\nsome success from sending out personal tweets, giving sneak peeks of upcoming\nprojects on dribbble and emailing bloggers to give me a shout out.\n\nNever the less, the signal to noise ratio has always been very high.\n\n~~~\nashok_varma\nPrior to Appstark, we were building games and we had to recruit beta testers.\nWe recruited around 800 beta testers for our game on Android, all without a\nsingle blog covering us. I will do follow up post about it.\n\n------\niNate2000\nI don't know what I was expecting. The title was, after all, \"How to beta test\nyour mobile apps\".\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nSam Altman: 'The greatest threat to this country is incompetence of governance' - dkasper\nhttp://www.businessinsider.com/y-combinators-sam-altman-on-government-incompetence-2015-9\n======\nwaterlesscloud\nWhy should cities build more densely now if truly massive job displacement is\ncoming in as little as 10 years?\n\nWhy do people need to live in cities? To be near jobs that won't exist? Why\nshouldn't they be moving to less expensive low density situations if they're\nnot going to have jobs?\n\nIf you're going to think and talk about these massive fundamental structural\nchanges to the economy, then it's best to step 5 or 10 steps further back and\nstart looking at the really big pictures.\n\n~~~\nefoto\n> Why do people need to live in cities? Short answer: economy of scale. Higher\n> population density is ecologically more sustainable as well as it lowers the\n> cost of services.\n\n~~~\nZeroGravitas\nIt's a bit of a paradox then that city living is generally considered more\nexpensive given that the economies of scale should kick in.\n\nPresumably someone is making money here, probably owners of the land, which\ngoes up in value thanks mostly to the efforts of the other people in the city,\nnot anything the land owner does, as proponents of a Land Value Tax would\nargue.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nIf Everyone Ate Beans Instead of Beef - screamingninja\nhttps://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/if-everyone-ate-beans-instead-of-beef/535536/\n======\njbdigriz\nKind of telling the article makes no mention of what degree this shifts\n\"greenhouse gas\" generation from cows to people. Quite ironc considering they\nare suggesting beans to be used.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNew York deploys National Guard to New Rochelle, establishes containment center - smacktoward\nhttps://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/10/new-york-gov-cuomo-to-deploy-national-guard-to-new-rochelle-establishes-containment-center-to-stem-coronavirus.html\n======\nStanislavPetrov\nHere on nearby Long Island cases are popping up all over the place with no\nknown links to other diagnosed cases, including 2 school bus drivers. Despite\nthis, barely anyone is being tested, even those who are symptomatic. This\ncrisis is being terribly mishandled.\n\n[https://www.fox5ny.com/news/two-long-island-bus-drivers-\ndiag...](https://www.fox5ny.com/news/two-long-island-bus-drivers-diagnosed-\nwith-coronavirus)\n\n~~~\ntaborj\nI've not been keeping up; what's the obstacle to getting tested? Insurance\ncompanies not covering? Hospitals not willing? Patients not going in?\n\n~~~\nsmacktoward\nThe CDC completely dropped the ball on providing test kits, so all the\nindividual states and localities have had to source them themselves. Which,\nentirely predictably, they are not doing a great job at.\n\nIt didn't help matters either that those test kits the CDC _did_ provide early\non turned out to have flaws that caused inaccurate readings (see\n[https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/after-missteps-\ncd...](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/after-missteps-cdc-says-its-\ncoronavirus-test-kit-ready-primetime-n1145206)).\n\n~~~\nSkyPuncher\nFrom my understanding, state and local labs HAVE been able to source them. The\nCDC has been refusing to authorize them for testing.\n\nUniv. of Washington seems to be an outlier as they were able to get approval\nunder an existing research study they have.\n\n~~~\nalfiedotwtf\n> The CDC has been refusing to authorize them for testing.\n\nThis is new to me. Link?\n\n~~~\nclaudeganon\nSee this reporting:\n\n[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/health/coronavirus-\ntestin...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/health/coronavirus-testing-\ncdc.html)\n\n[https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-06/chaos-at-\nho...](https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-06/chaos-at-hospitals-\ndue-to-shortage-of-coronavirus-tests)\n\n------\ndownerending\nMight not sound like it, but the fact that they're taking this seriously is\ngood news. If there are cases in New Rochelle, probably large numbers of other\ncommuters taking the New Haven line down into Manhattan have been exposed.\n\nWe need to start practicing on what's coming, and right now, China's looking\nlike the most successful model.\n\n~~~\nfgonzag\nIt's basically impossible to quarantine entire cities in a democracy,\nespecially with an election coming up.\n\nI mean, you _can_ , but it's going to cost you so much political capital that\nyou'll be out of the game entirely. And I don't see many politicians willing\nto put their jobs on the line for it.\n\n~~~\ncatacombs\n> I mean, you can, but it's going to cost you so much political capital that\n> you'll be out of the game entirely. And I don't see many politicians willing\n> to put their jobs on the line for it.\n\nJesus. Putting people's lives at risk, just so you can keep your government\njob? How low can we can go?\n\n~~~\nta999999171\nAre you new?\n\n~~~\ncatacombs\n> created: 4 months ago\n\nNah. You must be new.\n\n------\nRickJWagner\nHere's an article from CBS, it seems to urge calm and reasonable containment.\n\n[https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/03/10/dr_drew_p...](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/03/10/dr_drew_pinsky_coronavirus_panic_must_stop_press_needs_to_be_held_accountable_for_hurting_people.html)\n\n~~~\njonahbenton\nThat story and his individual points fall apart upon analysis.\n\nThe below is the best current analytical distillation I've seen of where we\nare:\n\n[https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-\npeop...](https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-\ndie-f4d3d9cd99ca)\n\nThe upshot is:\n\na) there is a huge diff between localities that act aggressively and prepare\nand those that dont\n\nb) the ones that prepare and act aggressively to reduce exposure see death\nrates below 1%. This is still 5-10x more deadly than the flu, and is best case\n\nc) the ones that dont see death rates above 5%. This is 50-100x worse than the\nflu.\n\nIn the US Washington and San Fran are failing to act aggressively enough in\ntime.\n\nThe article doesnt discuss NYC, where I live, which has similar levels of\ninfections as Washington tho far fewer deaths. The piece explains how the\ndifference in death rate indicates NYC is in a far better position than\nWashington, and my own analysis is that we may still have time to stop the\nworst case, but it is really about what happens in the next several _days_.\n\nEven in worst case, _most_ people will themselves be fine, but _everyone_\nknows at least someone immune compromised or elderly or otherwise much more\nsignificantly at risk. So _everyone 's_ social or familial network will be\nimpacted.\n\nIn terms of the future, it seems likely that even in best case, there will be\nsubsequent waves that hit pockets that were missed the first time around. The\ndifference in impact again will be in how overwhelmed the local hospital\nsystem will be. In the US this is likely to be highly variable as healthcare,\nbed availability, etc, is non-uniform.\n\nAnd, yes, a vaccine in 12-18 months is pretty much the dream scenario. No\nguarantee we get there.\n\nThe dynamics of this are not something most of us have ever experienced.\n\n------\nRickJWagner\nI wonder what will happen after this first wave passes.\n\nWill people then need to get 2 shots each year, once for flu and once for\ncorona and it's descendants? Can the two be handled with a single shot?\n\nI wonder also what will become of small population centers that manage to\navoid the first wave. Will they suffer more greatly in the future, when the\nvirus finally finds them?\n\n------\nkyuudou\nLiving up to its name, Empire state\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nKing James Programming - BenjaminRH\nhttp://kingjamesprogramming.tumblr.com\n======\ntgb\nIs there some way to just see the popular/best ones? I enjoy the premise but\ndon't care to read too many.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nOffer HN: Help understanding online video - jon_dahl\n\nOnline video is complicated. You have to worry about competing codecs, encoding settings, delivery protocols, player technologies, etc.<p>Ask me anything video related. Email address in my profile.<p>(Not mentioning my video startup because I don't want to turn Offer HN into spam, but it's in my profile if you're interested.)\n======\nvgurgov\nHi Jon, I'd appreciate your advices on my video startup <http://videolla.com>!\nI dont think mentioning Zencoder is spam in that topic, its great! :) Sent you\nemail\n\n~~~\njon_dahl\nGot it! I'll respond soon.\n\n------\narb99\nhi, thought i'd ask in a comment rather than emailing, others might be\ninterested to.\n\nWhat sort of settings are \"best\" for flash videos? eg bit rate/resolution?\n\nEvery time i go to encode in flv i tend to use default settings, never really\nknowing if its a good idea to increase (/decrease) the bit rate etc? I have\nsome sites where i know most people view the videos in full screen, so want\nhigh quality, but at the risk of it running slow (both because of internet\nspeeds + flash videos are choppy on slow computers)\n\n~~~\njon_dahl\nHi!\n\nThere is no one \"best\" setting, unfortunately. Here are some guidelines,\nthough.\n\n\\-- You have two real codec options in FLV: VP6 and H.264. H.264 compresses\nsignificantly better than VP6.\n\n\\-- Bitrate and lossiness are directly linked. Increase bitrate and visual\nquality will go up (within limits, of course), and vice versa.\n\n\\-- When using H.264, use Baseline profile if you're concerned about choppy\nvideo on slow computers. Main and High profiles compress better, but require\nmore CPU to decode.\n\n\\-- Use one of two encoding modes: 2-pass Variable Bitrate (VBR), or one-pass\nConstant Quality (e.g. CRF). One-pass VBR doesn't look good.\n\n\\-- CRF mode (for x264) is great. It targets a fixed visual quality/loss, and\nthe bitrate adjusts to match that. Think of it as an \"auto-bitrate\" feature.\n\nThis is a really general starting point. Any more specific questions I can\nanswer?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nI'm sorry, HN. I built an open-source coding platform but I need help - arthtyagi\nhttps://github.com/the-domecode\n======\narthtyagi\nTo all the readers who have already read about my platform on HN, I apologize\nfor constantly posting the same thing. It might come off as rude and indecent\nand I can assure you that those are not my intentions.\n\nI'm in highschool right now and over the past ~8 weeks, I made an open source\ncoding platform called DomeCode. \"DomeCode is an open source platform to help\nyou advance your coding journey with pre-existing resources to learn\nprogramming concepts ( in Python as of now ), take notes, plan tasks, practice\ncoding problems in 6 different languages including, Python, Go, Java, C++, C\nor Rust. You can also discuss interesting stuff on the forum, meet other\ndevelopers and most all even get to listen to music conveniently without ever\nleaving this open source platform to navigate to paid platforms.\" This is what\nthe description on my platform's landing page suggests and for the most part,\nthat explains it well.\n\nHowever, the issue is that it's kind of hard to acquire users, all the users I\nhave gotten till now ( 237 in all ) are through Reddit and a few through HN\nand organic searches but I don't see a fast user growth. I launched the\nplatform on 5th August ( the alpha version ) and I'm very much against the\nidea of advertising so I haven't tried that yet. On top of that, I want\nDomeCode to be a profitable startup. So far, I haven't received any\ndonations/sponsorships. If you could help me with that, I'd be more than\ngrateful to you. And if there's any contributor who likes open-source, I'd\nlove for you to contribute at [https://github.com/the-\ndomecode/](https://github.com/the-domecode/)\n\nI really don't want to cause any chaos or disturb you with spam on HN but I\ndon't seem to have any other option it seems. You can contact me at\nfounder@domecode.com with any proposal you might have or if you wanna mentor a\nhighschooler like me who's into programming. And ofc, feedback is more than\nappreciated.\n\n~~~\ntroydavis\nStop trying to pour gas on something with no flame. Compose individual, truly\npersonal emails to each of the users who have signed up so far. Ask them what\nthey were expecting to get, what they got, and what software-related problems\nthey have. Open your heart to them - explain that you're committed to trying\nto understand and improve their daily work and would love 5 minutes of their\ntime to chat.\n\nThis will take at least a month, maybe two or three. Don't submit anything\nelse to HN or elsewhere until you've heard from them and adapted your site.\n\nStart here: [https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6g-how-to-talk-to-\nusers](https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6g-how-to-talk-to-users),\n[https://www.ycombinator.com/library/66-biggest-mistakes-\nfirs...](https://www.ycombinator.com/library/66-biggest-mistakes-first-time-\nfounders-make). Watch the other intro videos that basically boil down to: ask\nyour users to tell your their problems, rather than forcing your solution on\nthem. Everything else - money, user growth - comes after your product is\nthrilling 5, then 10, then 20 people. Go ask your users what would thrill\nthem, then go thrill 5 of your existing users.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nJeffCroft.com: On Flash - webology\nhttp://jeffcroft.com/blog/2010/feb/01/flash/\n======\nvaporstun\nOne of the things I see almost no one addressing in all of these flash\narguments is how there is an inherent problem with flash games on a device\nlike the iPad, iPhone, or any other phone on the market with a virtual\nkeyboard.\n\nMost analysis when questioning games, this one included, point to the app\nstore and claim it is due to the existence of the App Store and Apple's desire\nto control game content on their devices.\n\nBut they seem almost always to gloss over the fact that the controls would be\na huge stumbling block. First, most Flash games use the keyboard for the user\ninput. How would this work on something like a Nexus One? If the controls for\nthe games use the arrow keys to navigate and the virtual keyboard has no arrow\nkeys, how does the user control the game?\n\nLikewise, many follow the mouse movement. However, on touch screen devices,\nthere is no graceful way to track the mouse movement because there is no\nmouse. Swipes are generally used to indicate scrolling and touches selection.\n(like a mouse click)\n\nSo even if they allowed Flash on these devices, many users would be screaming\nabout how Game X doesn't work and Game Y doesn't work only because the\ninterface doesn't translate gracefully.\n\nI am just constantly surprised that I haven't read any blog posts that address\nthis (seemingly) obvious issue.\n\n~~~\nfatjonny\nMy guess is that not very many people are talking about it because with Flash\n10.1 Adobe added support for multi-touch. Once Flash becomes available on a\nlot of devices that support multi-touch, you will probably see developers\nadding proper support to their games. If a mouse is present, use it. If multi-\ntouch is supported, use it. And so on. Granted, the current support has\nproblems in some browsers and on some operating systems, but that will (most\nlikely) only get better as long as the multi-touch input information is\navailable through the browser.\n\nSome more information on multi-touch support:\n<http://theflashblog.com/?p=1678>\n\n~~~\nvaporstun\nPoint taken, but that doesn't touch on the large majority of flash games and\nweb applications that use the keyboard as the main source of input.\n\nThis helps for Flash on these devices IF the developers build in support for\nthem, but that defeats the original purpose which is to give users the ability\nto interact with the current content on the web the way it currently exists.\n\nAdding support for mulitouch in Flash does not solve the issue of keyboard\ninput having prevalence in Flash-based games and web applications. Nor does it\ntouch the issue of the many that currently track mouse movements. Sure,\ndevelopers could all rewrite their games and applications to support this\nfeature in the future, but that is hardly a solution to the present issue.\n\n~~~\nmoe\nI think you're missing the point a bit here.\n\nUpgrading an existing flash-game to multi-touch is much less work than re-\nimplementing the entire game again in ObjC.\n\nWe want Flash on all devices (including apple stuff) not because we like Flash\nso much, but rather because it is the only platform that enables 'build once,\nrun everywhere'.\n\nThe situation we will have very soon is that developers are forced to maintain\none version for apple devices and a flash version for all others. That already\nis an improvement over the current reality of needing a native port for _each_\nindividual platform; but naturally it'd be best to have one and only one\ntarget.\n\nJust put yourself into the shoes of a mobile developer. With a flash impl of\nyour $game you will reach 90% of the audience. A second impl will be needed to\nreach the remaining 10%. Would you bother with that second impl?\n\n------\nmdasen\nMy organization is dealing with this problem right now. We're going with Flash\nbecause we have to. It's what most people use, it's a lot better than the\nhodgepodge of WMA, QT, and Real stuff that we've had, and you can't get fired\nfor doing what YouTube is doing.\n\nHowever, I did insist on H.264 flash videos in an MP4 container (rather than\nusing VP6 in an FLV or something else). That way, we can easily serve HTML5\nvideo to Safari and Chrome as a straight MP4 file if we so choose in the\nfuture. It doesn't help us with supporting Firefox/Ogg/a truly open standard,\nbut it does mean that we can support Flash and HTML5/MP4 off of one file. I\ntruly hope that Theora takes off. I hope even more that Google open sources\nVP8.\n\nI just wanted to point out that one could serve video to both Flash and the\niPhone/iPad off of one file with current technology.\n\n~~~\nZeroGravitas\nYeah that's what basically everyone is doing, but I think it would have ruined\nhis straw man if he'd mentioned it.\n\nedit: actually I've reread it, and it appears he doesn't know that you can\nserve the same H.264 files via Flash and HTML5.\n\n _\"I wouldn’t blame you at all if multiple encodings of every video you\nproduce is a non-starter, and you decide to just roll with Flash for now,\nignoring the minority of devices (iPhone/Android, etc.) that don’t have Flash\ninstalled.\"_\n\nNo wonder he's pissed off.\n\n------\njsz0\n_\"Flash is still the best way to make video content accessible to the largest\nnumber of users\"_\n\nChoosing any one option is rarely the best way to do anything. Offer whatever\nusers need. In the early days of Internet video it was not uncommon to see 3\nor 4 different video types available for download. This was in an era of\nconsiderably slower computers to do the encoding on the backend and expensive\ncommercial video encoding software. It's not that hard to just offer FLV,\nstraight H264 and even Theora. For other common uses of Flash offering\nalternatives may be a bit harder but not out of the question. If you have\ninteractive data presented via Flash just give non-Flashers a boring ole'\ntable of the same data. If you build games in Flash Adobe is going to give you\nthe option to publish onto the iPhone and get into the App Store. If you are\nserving up Flash ads just serve a static image file instead when there's no-\nFlash -- many sites are already doing this today.\n\n------\npan69\nOK. I might be missing the point about the whole Flash thing but as far as I'm\naware the SWF format is an open format just like e.g. HTML. Does this mean\nthat your browser that displays the HTML needs to be open source for it to be\nconsidered a standard? IE isn't open source. Is that an issue? OK, IE is crap\nas displaying HTML but I guess that's another issue.\n\nSure the SWF format is currently controlled by Adobe and I'm not sure what the\ncurrent status is on implementing your own Flash Player, but there are already\nalternatives like Gnash[1]. Adobe already has donated their Tamarin[2] AVM2 to\nthe Mozilla foundation. There is definitely work in progress when it comes to\nopen source at Adobe.\n\nThen there is the Open Screen Project[3] that basically tries to standardise\nFlash. I mean, 99% or so of all web user has Flash installed. That looks\npretty standard to me.\n\n[1] <http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/> [2]\n<http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/> [3]\n<http://www.openscreenproject.org/>\n\n------\nbombs\n\"[HTML5] works only in the minority browsers\"\n\nWhich includes Safari on the iPhone, the iPod touch and the iPad.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nKrugman reviews Geither's book - mooreds\nhttp://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jul/10/geithner-does-he-pass-test/?insrc=hpss\n\n======\nwarmfuzzykitten\nThe man's name is Geithner.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGo’s Type System Is An Embarrassment - mikeevans\nhttps://functionwhatwhat.com/go%E2%80%99s-type-system-is-an-embarrassment/\n======\ncolin_mccabe\nWhat's embarrassing is that people are still evaluating programming languages\nlike they were bags of features. The more features you stuff in the bag, the\nbetter it must be!\n\nThe reality is that generics aren't free. They result in difficult-to-\nunderstand error messages and more cognitive complexity.\n\nTo quote Yossi Krenin, \"You may think it's a StringToStringMap, but only until\nthe tools enlighten you - it's actually more of a...\nstd::map<std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char>\n>, std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >,\nstd::less<std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char>\n> >, std::allocator<std::pair<std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>,\nstd::allocator<char> > const, std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>,\nstd::allocator<char> > > > >\"\n\nOf course, it would be nice to have generics, or something like them, for\nwriting typesafe containers. But there are other goals in the language like\nfast compilation, easy-to-understand error messages, and overall simplicity. I\nhope they can come up with an implementation of generics that can keep those\ngood properties of the language. But if they can't, it shouldn't be added just\nto get a feature bullet point. Use the right tool for the job.\n\n~~~\nalok-g\nI am not convinced that C++ examples are valid as a generalization of the\nfailures of generics for other languages. C++ libraries are often overly\ngeneralized with means to \"configure\" the generics by passing additional type\narguments. I do not think it has to be like that.\n\n~~~\nAnthonyMouse\nSome of it is also the fault of the compilers for being too explicit in their\ndefault error messages. You get that horrible output because string is really\na typedef to \"basic_string<char>\" and basic_string takes two more template\narguments with defaults. But why is the compiler resolving the typedef in the\nerror message by default? At least let it be \"std::map<std::string,\nstd::string, std::less<std::string>, std::allocator<std::pair<std::string\nconst, std::string> > >\" instead of that inscrutable noise.\n\nAnd if you really need to provide the information that \"std::string\" is\n\"std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >\" then\nput it on a separate line in the output, once, instead of repeating it\ninternally within every recursive template instantiation.\n\n~~~\nnikbackm\nMaybe the typedef:s have been resolved and discarded at the point in\ncompilation where the error is reported?\n\nSo using it in the error message would require extra work.\n\n~~~\nrapala\nSo why do we pass that work from the compiler,the tool, to the programmer?\nExcept that I think I know the reason, as I have looked upon the specification\nand it was not sane.\n\n------\nnostrademons\nMy biggest beef with the Go typesystem is that they didn't get rid of nil.\nTony Hoare (the guy who invented null) has acknowledged they were his \"billion\ndollar mistake\" [1], common practice in Java and Haskell is moving away from\nthem, and yet Go included them anyway - in a language that's supposed to be\nrobust because you're supposed to handle every case. The Maybe (or @Nullable)\ntype is a much better idea, because it flips the default from \"any variable\nmay be null\" to \"only variables explicitly declared as such may be null\".\n\n[1] [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The-\nBilli...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The-Billion-\nDollar-Mistake-Tony-Hoare)\n\n~~~\nkkowalczyk\nHoare didn't invent 0-valued pointer. It was there since the beginning of\ntime. Or at least the beginning of the CPUs.\n\nPeople talk about getting rid of nil like it's actually possible.\n\nIt's not.\n\nIf you have pointers, they sometimes have to start the life uninitialized\n(i.e. with a value of 0) hence nil pointers.\n\nAs you admit yourself, the proposed solutions don't actually get rid of\nanything. At best they can force you to handle nil value by wrapping it in\nsome wrapper.\n\nGuess what - if you have that kind of discipline, you can do the same in C++.\n\nWhy aren't people doing that?\n\nBecause it comes at a cost. There's a cost to the wrapper and when it comes\ndown to it, you still have to write the code to handle the nil pointer whether\nyou're using a wrapper or a raw pointer.\n\nIt just doesn't buy you much.\n\nFinally, fixing crashes caused by referencing a null pointer is downright\ntrivial. Spend a few weeks chasing a memory corruption caused by multi-\nthreading and you'll come to a conclusion that fixing a null pointer crashes\n(which can be done just by looking at the crashing callstack most of the time)\nis not such a big deal after all.\n\n~~~\nnostrademons\nAs others have pointed out, I'm not talking about nil as the zero-valued\npointer at the hardware level. I'm talking about nil as the additional member\nof every type in the language's typesystem. A typesystem is an abstraction\nover the hardware, designed to catch programmer errors and facilitate\ncommunication among programmers. There's no reason it has to admit every\npossible value that the hardware can support.\n\nAnd people _are_ applying that sort of discipline - see the NullObject pattern\nin any OO language, or the @Nullable/@NotNull annotations in Java, or !Object\ntypes in Google Closure Compiler. The thing is, they have to apply it manually\nto every type, because the type system assumes the default is nullable. That\nmakes it an inconvenience, which makes a number of programmers not bother.\n\nI'll agree that null pointers are comparatively easy to track down compared to\nmemory corruption caused by multi-threading. Threads are a broken programming\nmodel too, and if you want a sane life working with them you'll apply a\nhigher-level abstraction like CSP, producer-consumer queues, SEDA, data-\ndependency graphs, or transactions on top of them.\n\n~~~\ntwic\n> Threads are a broken programming model too\n\nOh come off it. Threads are in no sense 'broken' \\- compared to CSP or actors,\nthey just give you a larger set of things you can write. Some of those things\nare bugs. Others are very useful. For example, a disruptor:\n\n[http://lmax-exchange.github.io/disruptor/](http://lmax-\nexchange.github.io/disruptor/)\n\nNulls are broken because they let you write bugs, but don't let you write\nanything you couldn't write with options or whatever.\n\n~~~\nwaps\nReally ? How would you even encode Maybe or Option in Java, if you can't use\nnull anywhere ?\n\nThe problem is that Maybe doesn't work without Algebraic Data Types.\n\n~~~\nanon4\nOh come on, that's trivial\n\n    \n    \n      public interface Maybe<T> {\n          boolean hasValue();\n      }\n    \n      public final class Just<T> implements Maybe<T> {\n          public final T value;\n          public Just(T value) {\n              this.value = value;\n          }\n          public boolean hasValue() { return true; }\n      }\n    \n      public final class Nothing<T> implements Maybe<T> {\n          public boolean hasValue() { return false; }\n      }\n    \n\nYou can even get rid of hasValue (but then you need to pay for instanceof each\ntime); or of the Nothing class and make Maybe a class. You may ask what the\nvalue of Just.value is before the constructor runs - the value is a machine\nnull and if you somehow manage to access it before the ctor runs, that's a\nNullPointerException; or what writing \"Type varname;\" in a function would do -\nthat would be perfectly legal, but you won't be allowed to use it if the\ncompiler can't prove you've initialised it first (which it does right now).\n\n~~~\nwaps\nProblems :\n\n1) How do you get at the value itself ? (Casting ? That's bad)\n\n2) How do you prevent in Maybe<Integer> x; x == null ?\n\n3) How do you prevent someone from extending Maybe<T> ? e.g.\n\n    \n    \n        public final class LetsHaveFun<T> implements Maybe<T> {\n          public boolean hasValue() { throw Exception(\"Can't touch this\");\n        }\n    \n\n4) (you need a null check in the constructor)\n\n5) (I dislike the autoboxing this uses)\n\n~~~\ntwic\n> 1) How do you get at the value itself ? (Casting ? That's bad)\n\nYou could add the usual map method to the Maybe type - a Maybe<T> can take a\nFunction<T, U>, and returns a Maybe<U>. If it's None, it doesn't call the\nfunction, and just returns None; if it's Some, it calls it with the value, and\nwraps the result in a new Some. If you want to do side-effects conditionally\non whether the value is there, you just do them in the Function and return\nsome placeholder value. You could write a trivial adaptor to take an Effect<T>\nand convert to to a Function<T, Void>, etc.\n\n> 2) How do you prevent in Maybe<Integer> x; x == null ?\n\nYou're right that using a Maybe does not exclude the ability to use nulls.\nNobody can deny that. The point i was making is that there is nothing useful\nthat you can do with nulls that you cannot do with a Maybe instead.\n\n> 3) How do you prevent someone from extending Maybe<T> ? e.g.\n\nYou can trivially control extension by making Maybe an abstract class, giving\nit a private constructor, and making Some and None static inner classes of it.\nIt's a kludge, but it works!\n\n------\nfrou_dh\nThis masterclass in clickbait titling pulled in 735 comments and counting on\n/r/programming. Watch and learn, bloggers!\n\n~~~\ndkuntz2\nIt did something similar here before the outage.\n\n~~~\njjsz\nWas it cached?\n\n~~~\ndkuntz2\nI don't think so. For the most part people were either curious about why Go\ndid what it did (let you export the `NewHidden` while keeping `hidden`\nunexported: requires `hidden`s to be created using the specific constructor),\nor defending Go's choice in letting you export functions that return an\nunexported type.\n\n------\nthinxer\nWhat's wrong with leaking un-exported element? Your code wants it to be\nexported. If you care about it, please return an interface type.\n\n~~~\nrfw\nAs I posted before the outage, I don't think leaking un-exported elements is\nactually that broken either -- Haskell gets by fine with it (you can omit the\ntype and its constructor in the module export list and have types \"leak\" into\nthe code importing said module). It can be a useful way to keep types opaque\nand not allow users to construct instances directly.\n\nThe actual issue, in my opinion, is the weird behavior of the reflect package\nwhich allegedly cannot reflect on the leaked element despite its members being\npublicly accessible anyway.\n\n~~~\nDrJokepu\nAuthor here. What I’ve written regarding the reflect behaviour isn’t entirely\ntrue and I should probably update the article to reflect that. It’s possible\nto get (but not set) the value of unexported fields as long as they are of a\nbuilt in type (e.g. int). What’s not possible is to get access to unexported\nfields as empty interfaces, which means you cannot type assert them to structs\nor other types. This seems like an arbitrary limitation (although I’m sure\nthere is a reason for it) and somewhat limits the usefulness of the reflect\npackage.\n\n------\nvectorpush\nI love go, but my personal gripe with the type system is that there is no way\nto pass type information around without using a zero valued (or fully\npopulated, it makes no difference) instance. For example, I have a factory\nstruct with a New method that returns interface{MySignatures()}, but I cannot\ninform the factory of the concrete type I want it to produce without passing\nin something like new(ConcreteStructWithMySignatures). Some have suggested I\npass in a string, but what is the point of a type system if I have to use\nstrings to reason about my types?\n\n------\nkristianp\nGo is designed to be a small, simple language, it's not hard to release that.\nIf you want a fully featured type system, go program in Ocaml, Haskell or\nanother 'big' language.\n\n~~~\nTylerE\nThat falls flat on it's face as a cop out when you look at a language like\nnimrod that manages to be practically as simple as go while including full\ngenerics. Oh, it's faster too.\n\n[http://nimrod-lang.org/tut2.html#generics](http://nimrod-\nlang.org/tut2.html#generics)\n\n~~~\nrdtsc\nNimrod is a gem. Just needs a big company to host release parties and sponsor\nit.\n\nI am convinced, a good part of Go's popularity is Google. As a language it is\nok. Has good stuff in it. Quite often the argument for adoption is \"Google is\nbehind it, and it is becoming really popular\". Which, is not completely\nirrational -- it is nice to have a large company throwing away perhaps years\nof quality full-time dev work at a language.\n\n~~~\nxkarga00\nHow come Google plays a good part of Go's popularity while the language per se\nis open-sourced and a fair amount of its contributors don't relate to Google\nat all? If you had observed what's happening around Go and Google since the\nlanguage was released, you would have noticed that everything that happens\ninside Google is due to its creators motivation to push the language into the\ncompany rather than Google being \"behind it\". Dart on the other hand is backed\nby Google for good. Go? Except Google App Engine, i don't see it.\n\n~~~\ntwic\nQuite. The idea that Google is \"behind\" Go is mistaken. The situation is that\n_some people inside Google_ , some of them quite well-known and influential,\nare behind Go. There are also people not inside Google who are behind Go, and\npeople who are inside Google who aren't keen on Go.\n\nTherefore, Go is certainly not in the same position as things like Chrome or\nAndroid, where the company as a whole has a stake in their success.\n\n~~~\nrdtsc\n> The idea that Google is \"behind\" Go is mistaken.\n\nDoes Google pay full time salaries and lets primary Go creators work on Go\nduring the day?\n\nDoes Google blog about implementing and deploying Go based services?\n\nLet's just put it this way, Google is a lot more behind Go than it is behind\nNimrod.\n\nPretty sure there are developers at Google that like Nimrod but there is night\nand day difference between associated of Google and Go and Google and Nimrod.\n\n~~~\nxkarga00\n\"Does Google pay full time salaries and lets primary Go creators work on Go\nduring the day?\"\n\nHave you ever read any interview or watched any presentation about Go by Rob\nPike, Andrew Gerrand, or any other Go/Google engineer? If so, you wouldn't say\nthat so easy. Just browse through Google Jobs and tell me if you find any Go\njob.\n\n------\nletstryagain\nAre we complaining about generics again?\n\n~~~\nalok-g\nI see nothing wrong with that. I would like to keep on complaining till they\nlisten! :-)\n\n~~~\nkisielk\nIt's not that \"they\" aren't listening. There's a limited number of developers\nworking on the language, there are many other problems being solved.\n\nSo far despite all the people lamenting the lack of generics in Go I've yet to\nhave seen someone propose a viable (eg: backwards compatible, realistic to\nachieve with the current compilers and runtime, etc.) way to implement,\nnevermind someone who's produced a prototype.\n\nMaybe that sort of thing will be easier once more of the toolchain is\nrewritten in Go later this year.\n\nI don't think anyone is denying that generics make writing certain types of\ncode easier, but it's worth getting them right since major language additions\nare something you need to support for a long time.\n\n~~~\nclhodapp\n\n       So far despite all the people lamenting the lack of generics in Go I've yet \n       to have seen someone propose a viable (eg: backwards compatible, realistic \n       to achieve with the current compilers and runtime, etc.) way to implement, \n       nevermind someone who's produced a prototype.\n    \n\nThis seems to make it even more of an issue that they weren't included in the\nfirst place. Based on your statement, it's likely that when generics are\nfinally added, they will initially cause the community some pain or they will\nfeel tacked on.\n\n------\nbsaul\nType system power really is the only question i have left relative to go. I've\nalways seen go being used for low level very technical stuff, where you don't\nneed lots of abstraction, but rather powerful primitives and libs. I've always\nwondered how it scales to business process modeling, and the lack of generics\nalways worried me.\n\nOn another aspect, 2013 was the year of Go being unanimously praised, and i've\ngot the feeling 2014 is going to be the year of the backlash.\n\nStill, i don't see any other languages able to take the crown back. Rust looks\nway too unpolished and has not only one but multiple pointer types.\n\n~~~\nTheCoelacanth\nRust really doesn't target the same uses that Go targets. Go basically targets\npeople who need a faster Python or a simpler Java. It doesn't have enough low-\nlevel control to be used for most of the things that C is still used for.\n\nRust targets the low-level uses where a high degree of control over memory\nmanagement is necessary. One of it's main goals is to make it possible to\nstatically reason about memory ownership.\n\nYou would never try to implement something like a modern browser or a\nproduction-quality language runtime in Go. On the other hand, Rust is targeted\ndirectly at that kind of thing, and the multiple pointer types are absolutely\nnecessary for those use cases.\n\n------\npuppetmaster3\nAre we trying to make Go into Java or JavaScript as it relates to dynamic or\nstatic?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nIOS 7 now blocking third-party Lightning cables - lukashed\nhttp://9to5mac.com/2013/09/19/ios-7-now-blocking-third-party-lightning-cables-after-earlier-warning-shot/\n\n======\nxbigdanx\nI haven't had any issues with mine. Granted, mine is from Amazon so there is a\nhigh chance it's \"certified\". Still considerably cheaper than the cables from\nApple.\n\n------\nBetaCygni\nI'm not sure this is legal, or should be legal. I hope the EU will do\nsomething about this.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPalm - chrisdroukas\nhttps://www.palm.com\n======\naarpmcgee\nI feel like the only one who thinks this is kind of awesome. I want a small\nphone. As small as possible, that can still text and act as an LTE hotspot,\nwith very basic browsing, and Spotify. I want that. The iPhone SE was perfect\nfor me.\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nPhones are my go-to real example of different people expecting mutually\nexclusive things from the same type of product. You want a phone as small as\npossible. I want it as _large_ as possible.\n\n~~~\nanfilt\nI don't understand the need for a large phone. If I need a large screen, I\njust use my laptop or desktop. Moreover, without a proper keyboard I mostly\njust read a tad bit of text. You don't need a massive screen for that.\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nPhotos look better on a larger screen. Especially when you want to show them\nto other people. Say, you meet some friends in a café, and want to show them\nyour vacation photos.\n\nYou can fit more text on a larger screen, which makes it better for reading.\nYou can fit more icons, widgets, etc. It's easier to do precise taps.\n\nBasically, I want a phone as large as it's possible without losing ability to\noperate it with one hand (that's when you get a tablet).\n\n------\ndrewm1980\nHow about a smartphone brand that promises to never change the UI again after\nversion 1.0? Users can move their buttons around or change their appearance,\nbut their investment in muscle memory is sacred. Before javascript hit the\ninternet everyone used (and frequently declined to update) native apps, and\nlargely controlled their UI, but as a society we just gave that control to web\ndesigners. Many Vim and Emacs users never let go, but it used to be GUI users\nas well; I remember tech savvy mac using university professors with 1000 icons\non their desktop that are all there for a reason. They didn't search; they\njust reached.\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nOne thing I miss from the pre-touchscreen era: never-changing UI with _soft-\nrealtime guarantees_. When e.g. using my old K800i, I had memorized sequences\nof actions and delays (eg: \"down, 3, ok, wait ~1 second, down, down, ok\"). The\n_delays_ were consistent. This meant I could operate my phone without looking\nat it, without even pulling it out of my pocket. This is impossible in the\nsmartphone era, not just because UIs change, but because delays are completely\nunpredictable.\n\n------\npcurve\nI love seeing new product ideas, but I'm baffled at how this one made it all\nthe way to production.\n\nBasic premise is.. \"Hey, we're going to make our smartphone so undesirable\nthat you won't want to use it except when you absolutely need it. However,\nwe'll make sure it looks well-built so people know that you've made a\ndeliberate lifestyle choice and that this isn't your primary phone.\"\n\n~~~\nleetbulb\nSeriously. Plus you can buy these things on AliExpress for 1/5th the cost. And\nif you don't want to give up your smart phone completely, you can buy slick\nlooking \"bluetooth dialers\" on AliExpress for even cheaper.\n\n~~~\njoecool1029\nThe general cheap small smartphone on aliexpress are MTK chipset phones\nrunning android gingerbread (or some other ancient version). You get what you\npay for, unless I’m wrong and you actually have some decent products to link.\n\n~~~\nleetbulb\nYeah good call on the MTK chipset, looks like that's the case. :(\n\n------\nanfilt\nYay a small phone. Oh it's tied to only Verizon, and costs 350 dollars...\n\n[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/palm-rises-from-\nthe-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/palm-rises-from-the-dead-as-\na-zombie-brand-launches-tiny-smartphone/)\n\n~~~\nbubblethink\nYeah, I misread it originally as $34.99, which may make some sense as a\nkitschy novelty thing, even if only marginally.\n\n------\nWaterluvian\nWhat an irritating webpage. Just a bunch of pretentious photos with text that\nloads way too late.\n\n~~~\nJdeBP\nIt's actually a zero-content WWW site if one has not turned on Javascript.\nAside from the script and <meta>, it comprises just a <title> and some empty\n<div>s and appears as entirely blank.\n\n* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18225645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18225645)\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nIt's a zero-content WWW even with JavaScript enabled. Just load of lifestyle\nmarketing crap, and you have to dig in a bit to get an actual product\ndescription.\n\n------\nbunnycorn\nThis thing has to have a massively crappy battery life (in the real, real\nworld)...\n\nSeriously, 800mah?\n\nThe only reason that smartphones \"work\" is because they have big screens,\nwhile big screens obviously consume a lot of power and therefore require big\nbatteries, there's more space for the battery inside as the PCB doesn't need\nto be big like the screen.\n\n------\nmikestew\nOMG, you can almost hear the giant props of the B-52 required to drop this\nbomb. As other commenters have pointed out, it can't decide if it wants to be\nan iPhone SE or an Apple Watch. It _could_ succeed, but it is going to have to\nbe cheeaaaap. Which it won't be, 'cuz you know, lifestyle.\n\n------\nbengotow\nThis is a device with a unique approach to mobile user experience, but there\nare literally no photos of the UI on the site.\n\nMaybe the idea is that it feels like a phone, so you pull it from your pocket\nthanks to extreme smartphone muscle memory. You find your hands have selected\na black glass slab that says \"PA LM\" in the middle, which is quite\nuninteresting, So you put it away. Distraction crisis averted.\n\n(Kidding obviously, but nothing on the site says otherwise! Honestly I wrote\nmy first mobile app for the Palm V and I would love for this to be a killer\nrebirth of the Palm brand. Guess we'll have to wait and see though!)\n\n~~~\nskeoh\nNot sure if this is what you're referring to but there's pictures of the UI on\nthe product page: [https://www.palm.com/product](https://www.palm.com/product)\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nAnd it turns out it's _just a small Android phone_. There's no unique approach\nto any kind of experience.\n\n------\nnathan_long\nNot\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm,_Inc.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm,_Inc.),\nmaker of the Palm Pilot. :(\n\n~~~\nesdott\nFYI: [https://www.palm.com/about](https://www.palm.com/about)\n\nThey reference/sort of say they are the original Palm.\n\nAlso, you don’t need another phone line/connection. It will use your same\nphone number. I’m sure Verizon will figure out a way to charge for it but it\nlooks like it won’t be a whole new line.\n\nWe’ll see I guess.\n\n------\nlostgame\nI was deeply disappointed to see this is not a return of the original Palm, in\nkind of perhaps a return to a ‘non-internet’ ‘traditional’ PDA or something.\n\nOr...I don’t know. _Anything_ remotely interesting. And yeah, someone else\nmentioned the payload of the header of the site, it’s no wonder it behaves so\npoorly on my iPhone SE.\n\nIf this does have anything to do with the makers of the original Palm, that’s\na damn shame.\n\nP.S. WebOS was freaking awesome. Even if it never had good hardware to back it\nup.\n\n------\nparliament32\nIt seems this device works even when it's nowhere near your \"full\" phone. Too\nbad it'll basically require a second data plan.\n\n~~~\npeatmoss\nTo be fair, so do the untethered watches.\n\n------\ntorbjorn\nYes buy a second phone. What better way to be more present in your daily life?\n\n------\nNicksil\nThat website is something else. This is _only_ the JavaScript payload fetched\nwhen you visit. (A favorite is the 2 versions of the \"lodash\" library):\n\n    \n    \n      cdn.trackjs.com/releases/current/tracker.js\n      connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js\n      ding.wix.com/asdk/dispatcher.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/js-sdk/1.96.0/js/wix-private.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/promote-analytics-adapter/2.62.0/analytics-event-adapter.bundle.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/app/main-r.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/components/components.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/core/core.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/coreUtils/coreUtils.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/dataFixer/dataFixer.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/first-load/first-load.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/layout/layout.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/linkBar/linkBar.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/mediaContainer/mediaContainer.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/platformInit/platformInit.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/santaProps/santaProps.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/skins/skins.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/stripColumnsContainer/stripColumnsContainer.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/tpa/tpa.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/utils/utils.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/viewerCompsService/viewerCompsService.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/warmup/warmup.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/warmupUtils/warmupUtils.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/wixCode/wixCode.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/services/third-party/requirejs/2.1.15/require.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/@shimil/remote-dom@5.0.6/dist/local.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/data-capsule@1.0.83/dist/statics/frame-listener.bundle.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/fedops-logger@3.0.10/dist/statics/fedops-logger-module.bundle.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/focus-visible@4.1.1/dist/focus-visible.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/gsap@1.19.0/src/minified/plugins/ScrollToPlugin.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/gsap@1.19.0/src/minified/TweenMax.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/hls.js@0.8.9/dist/hls.light.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/image-client-api@1.1151.0/dist/imageClientApi.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/lodash@4.17.10/lodash.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/lodash@4.17.11/lodash.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/mobx-react@4.2.2/index.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/mousetrap@1.4.6/mousetrap.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/pm-rpc@1.0.11/build/pm-rpc.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/react-dom-factories@1.0.2/index.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/react-dom@16.3.3/umd/react-dom.production.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/react@16.4.2/umd/react.production.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-bundle@1.273.0/dist/bundle.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-components@1.572.0/dist/santa-components.prod.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-core-utils@1.914.0/dist/coreUtils.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-core-utils@1.914.0/dist/warmupUtils.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-data-fixer@1.249.0/dist/santa-data-fixer.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-external-modules@1.66.0/color-convert/0.2.0/color.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-host-platform-services@1.77.0/dist/host-platform-api.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-host-platform-services@1.77.0/dist/host-worker-init.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-mobile-core@1.550.0/dist/mobileLayoutUtils.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-multilingual@1.398.0/dist/languages.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-platform-utils@1.568.0/dist/platformUtils-bundle.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-renderer@1.169.0/dist/santa-renderer.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-skin-utils@1.379.0/dist/skin-utils.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/wix-ui-santa@1.0.537/dist/statics/compsToPackages.bundle.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/wix-ui-santa@1.0.537/dist/statics/dataRefs.bundle.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/wix-ui-santa@1.0.537/dist/statics/viewerComponentService.bundle.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/xss@0.2.12/dist/xss.min.js\n      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/zepto@1.2.0/dist/zepto.min.js\n      www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js\n      www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js\n    \n\nThis doesn't include the CSS, images, fonts, video, etc.\n\nRemarkable.\n\n~~~\nkennydude\nPart of that seem's to be Wix's React components ([https://github.com/wix/wix-\nui#readme](https://github.com/wix/wix-ui#readme)) which means they didn't even\nbuild it themselves\n\n------\nApocryphon\nHow many of these zombie branded products are there? Remember the vaporware\nCommodore PET phone?\n\n[https://www.wired.com/2015/07/commodore-\nsmartphone/](https://www.wired.com/2015/07/commodore-smartphone/)\n\n[https://pocketnow.com/commodore-smartphone-\nvaporware](https://pocketnow.com/commodore-smartphone-vaporware)\n\nAnd how many bonafide spiritual successor products exist? The Gemini PDA\nsprings to mind.\n\n------\nakoster\nI wonder how much they paid to acquire that Instagram @palm account (unless\nsomeone who works for them registered it early... Let alone the palm.com\ndomain)\n\n~~~\nr0fl\nDoes anyone here know the legality of selling an Instagram handle that is also\nthe name of a company? I have a 4 letter (with the same repeating vowel)\nInstagram account from 2010. There are multiple companies that have that name\nin different fields. Can I approach those companies to see if they want to buy\nmy account or will they sue me to oblivion ?\n\nIt’s alwyas been a personal account and is my nickname since I was a child.\n\nOn a side note, someone has tried to reset my account dozens of times\nthroughout the years.\n\n~~~\njoecool1029\n>Does anyone here know the legality of selling an Instagram handle that is\nalso the name of a company?\n\nMy guess would be it would depend on what the original use was. If you had a\nbrand in a different sector and offered it I’m sure they could complain but\nthey likely wouldn’t win. (see nissan.com)\n\n------\nhit8run\nThe idea was chased by the original palm with a phone called Veer. After the\nHP acquisition of Palm it was released as HP Veer and I really really liked\nthe Pre and Veer. Too bad that stupid Leo Apotheker killed of the Phones\nbefore they even had a chance.\n\n------\ndamm\nWe've been here before with Palm; is there a reason we should try again or are\nthey going to pull these devices from the market after a few weeks of selling\nthem?\n\nP.S. If it's cheap it's going to break a lot... you know palm the cheaper it\nis the worse it is\n\n------\nanta40\n3.3\" display. Hmmm a bit smaller than iPhone 4?\n\nBeing used to big phones like those Galaxy Note series (yes I use them a lot\nfor taking notes and reading ebooks), I guess this won't be my main phone.\n\nAnd too bad it's locked to Verizon, yes? I live in Southeast Asia...\n\n------\nforkLding\nThis is likely going to go the way of the Essential phones\n\n------\nzwaps\nPalm Pre was easily thr best phone i ever used\n\nThis.. Not so much\n\n------\narountheworld\nWhy not just buy a second smartphone?\n\n------\nasprouse\nIsn't this just an iPhone SE?\n\n~~~\nfetus8\nI think you meant to say \"Apple Watch\".\n\n~~~\ncalypso\nIt’s trying to be a phone companion, like a smart watch but in your pocket.\nPhones are getting bigger and bigger so this is a way to get a second screen\nexperience without constraining that experience to a 1” screen on your wrist.\n\nI think that’s what they are trying to do. It instantly reminds me of the\nmemory cards of the Dreamcast.\n\n------\nunixhero\nI am bullish!\n\n------\nmicrocolonel\nA phone with... a piece of string!\n\nIn all seriousness though, a reasonably-sized smartphone is a good idea,\nhopefully they don't ruin it somehow.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nBuilding Filtron, a new photo editing platform for Mac and iOS - bootload\nhttp://blog.drewwilson.com/building-filtron\n======\nmichaelbuckbee\nTL;DR (though you should read the whole thing) - they've spend $100k+ dollars\nand just launched a free app with some IAP filter upgrades.\n\nThe article starts with saying how hard and crazy it is to build and an app\nand then runs through the empirical experiences as just why that's the case.\n\nHowever, I think there's a flaw in the initial idea here where the level of\ndifficulty in pulling something like this off nowdays is just astronomical.\n\nI've been using the 3Axes framework [1] for evaluating ideas like this and\nthis just seems incredibly difficult to execute on profitably.\n\nVery consumer focused, more a tool than a done-for-you service and really no\npain that it's solving.\n\n1 - [https://medium.com/@mbuckbee/the-3-axes-of-startup-\ndifficult...](https://medium.com/@mbuckbee/the-3-axes-of-startup-difficulty-\ncad7c1ff6950#.5fbswu6ew)\n\n------\ndanpalmer\nThis development process seems to exemplify Apple and the old-school third\nparty ecosystem Mac ecosystem (that in part transitioned to iOS).\n\nWhere is the constant iteration to find exactly what users want?\n\nThat said, if the aim is to become a sustainable small business, rather than a\nbillion-dollar VC funded company with no profits, maybe you don't have to get\nit right, maybe you can afford to be a way off the mark and still do ok?\n\nI'm not saying that Filtron is way off the mark, but what are the chances they\nmade exactly what users want, straight off?\n\n------\ncoryl\nCurious about the rationalization behind creating yet another photo filters\napp. There are quite a few of them on iOS, its very competitive and they are\nall quite polished.\n\n~~~\nearlyriser\nFor months I've been waiting for something like Priime for Mac, I know iOS is\ninundated with this kind of apps, but I couldn't find something enjoyable to\nuse as Priime and ready to work with the thousands of pics living in my\ncomputer (faster, bigger screen, all my pics live there). I even wrote the\nteam with the suggestion and I'm fine with paying a fair amount for it. I\nstill haven't used Filtron but it looks promising, congrats to the team.\n\nEDIT: What could be a greta addition is to suggest filters based on the\npicture. Or at least indicate in what's the best use of each filter... the\nnenufar demo doesn't make it evident.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n16 lenses on one camera - XioNoX\nhttp://www.light.co/\n======\njay-saint\nThis camera is not only doing bracketing, it is simultaneously capturing\nmultiple images at multiple focal lengths and exposures. It is then stitching\nthis data in software to make composite images that can be re-focused, re-\nzoomed and change depth of field after an image is composed.\n\nThey are calling it the first multi-aperture computational camera.\n\nedit: Just discussed this some around the coffee pot, that the real value of\nthis tech will be in new cell phones 2-3 generations down the road. I then saw\nthis press release about light.co and Foxconn. they have already licensed this\ntech. [http://spot.light.co/light-partners-with-\nfoxconn/](http://spot.light.co/light-partners-with-foxconn/)\n\n------\nan_ko\nTo skip to the content:\n[https://vimeo.com/141273968](https://vimeo.com/141273968)\n\nThis is a great product, but the landing page needs work.\n\nThe first video on light.co shows people taking photos with what looks like a\nsmartphone, with no further explanation. I almost left at that point.\n\nThe rest of the page's text is very general, never explaining to me why having\nmultiple cameras is a good idea, other than wishy-washy \"this is amazing\ntechnology\" self-praise. It sounds gimmicky.\n\nThe /camera page is much better. It explains your value propositions; great\nUX, great low-light performance, great DOF control. Make that your landing,\nwith that vid above the fold.\n\n------\nksmithbaylor\nThis is a really cool idea! I'd love to see more specs on the 16 individual\ncameras, but the theory seems solid. The only image I didn't like in the\ngallery was the macro shot of the chessboard. If you look at the pieces in the\nbackground, you can sort of make out different layers (which I presume come\nfrom the multiple lenses), and it looks a little unnatural. But for anything\nbesides macro photography, this looks awesome!\n\n------\nPaul_S\nI can't see the point beyond simultaneous (rather than consecutive)\nbracketing. If all you want is quality - get a bigger lens and sensor.\n\n~~~\nnotacoward\nYou don't think simultaneous rather than consecutive bracketing matters? I\nguess it wouldn't, if subjects were all perfectly still and cooperative, but\nthat's hardly what real life is like. Giving a greater effective depth of\nfield for a single shot is pretty cool IMO. It would be even cooler if they'd\naddress over/under exposure to do single-shot HDR at the same time, but maybe\nthey're saving that for v2.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nTeam USA Giant Robot Duel - cjm\nhttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/megabots/support-team-usa-in-the-giant-robot-duel?new=yes\n\n======\nJoeAltmaier\nCool; but what are Suidobashi Heavy Industry up to in the mean time? This will\nbe epic.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nAre Web Apps An Insult To Users? - nephics\nhttp://www.stateofcode.com/2011/06/are-web-apps-an-insult-to-users/\n\n======\npgroves\nIn a free market, the needs/wants of the consumer eventually overrides the\ndesires of the producers. Sometimes it takes a long time, but it always\nhappens eventually. Walmart is an excellent case study in why it's great to be\na consumer in today's economy but sucks to be a worker.\n\nWhen the consensus is \"yeah, thick apps are better for users but web apps are\ncheaper to build and deliver,\" we can safely say thick apps will eventually\nwin out.\n\n------\nSakes\nFor some reason this article rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's because I feel\nlike the author is using a link bait title to \"teach me\" something that\nalready seems pretty obvious. The whole question answer setup is annoying.\n\nThe title suggests that this article is about user experience when it really\nfeels more like a rehash of pick 2: fast/cheap/quality.\n\n1) Reasonable Time To Market (fast)\n\n2) Flawless user experience (quality)\n\n3) Big Reach (Cheap: big payoff for time/money invested)\n\n------\nneovive\nWhat happens when desktop App Stores (e.g. Mac App Store) start taking hold as\nthe primary delivery platform for the desktop? Will they erode some of the\nbenefits of web apps on the desktop?\n\nWhen development and deployment are easier, the end user will benefit from\nmore frequent updates, fixes and new features.\n\n------\njbwyme\nI agree that native apps are the way to go in a perfect world. And yes, we are\ndeveloping for the users. However, you are over simplifying the issue.\nDepending on the type of development you are doing you may also be doing it\nfor the money. So when you are determining HOW to deploy your product you must\ntake into consideration the costs of developing specialized native apps vs\nbrowser-wrapped apps. You should also consider the impact it'll have on your\nuser base. Are they going to still use your product if it's non-native?\nSometimes the juice just isn't worth the squeeze.\n\n*edit: grammar\n\n~~~\nChrisLTD\nExactly.\n\nNot many organizations are going to have the time, money or expertise to make\nnative apps for all the platforms popping up. With some CSS media queries you\ncan have one web app that works on PCs/laptops, iPhones, android phones,\niPads, Blackberrys, Palms, Windows phones, etc. Or you can try to build and\nmaintain native apps for 10+ platforms to serve the same audience.\n\n------\njinushaun\nI have to agree with the article. Native apps \"feel\" better. I think some\nusers feel uncomfortable with going to a web browser on their phone to use an\napp. Feels fragile and brittle. Like they might accidently close a tab or hit\nrefresh and lose all their data or something. How do I get to it? Where is it\nin my bookmarks? How many people know about and use Home Screen Web Apps?\n\nI think solutions like PhoneGap is the best of both worlds. Users get their\n\"native\" app. Developers get to keep their web app.\n\n~~~\nflyosity\nExcept PhoneGap is not really the best of both worlds. Users prefer native\napps because of the quality and consistency of the user interface frameworks\navailable to developers. If you're building your app with HTML/CSS and\ndeploying it within a PhoneGap container, you don't have access to UIKit to\nbuild your interfaces, you're still rolling your own which leads to huge\ninconsistency, not to mention it's within a UIWebView which is much slower\nthan native components.\n\nJust because the app is in an executable and not a URL doesn't mean it's a\n\"native\" experience for the end-user.\n\n~~~\nMatthewPhillips\nWhy isn't this the case on the desktop?\n\n~~~\nglhaynes\nIsn't it? What do you mean?\n\n~~~\nMatthewPhillips\nI was referring to this comment:\n\n> Users prefer native apps\n\nWhy don't they on the desktop?\n\n~~~\nglhaynes\nI think they do, for a lot of things at least. There certainly are _some_\nthings that desktop users prefer in a browser (I see way more desktop users\nusing Facebook in a browser than via a native app, even though native apps\nexist), but if I think of the apps that I see people using day-to-day, there's\na _huge_ swath that aren't in a browser and it's not clear to me will be in\nthe foreseeable future.\n\nI mean, browser-based email has gotten _really_ good... yet there are still a\nton of people that use native email clients. Hell, I and lots of other people\neven use a native Twitter app on our computers - if there's anything that\nseems replaceable with an in-browser app, it's Twitter.\n\nReplacement of many native office/productivity/image/media apps with in-\nbrowser apps seems a long way off to me. And it's not just because HTML\ndoesn't yet fully provide rich/\"native-feeling\" capabilities, it's also that\npeople don't want to run all their apps in rectangular browser tabs — maybe\nOSes will evolve to not be as app centric so that all of a user's in-browser\napps won't be organized under a single icon in their dock/taskbar (though I\nwouldn't bet on it), but I don't see a lot of movement toward that. I wouldn't\nbe shocked if _20 years_ from now everything's HTML, but it sure doesn't seem\nlike it'll happen in the next 5.\n\n------\ncgranade\nIf it's easier for a developer to make interesting things, that can translate\ninto a better user experience as it means more interesting things will get\ndone. That (mobile) webapps sacrifice a bit of usabilty for ease of\ndevelopment and portability doesn't mean that users don't derive real value\nfrom their existence.\n\n------\ntweekgeek\nDeveloping with a cross-platform kit like PhoneGap solves most of the issues\nhere. You'll develop for multiple platforms simultaneously, and can tie into\nthe native capabilities of the platform when necessary.\n\n~~~\nTuring_Machine\nPhoneGap is pretty sweet, but I found it a little too sluggish for my needs. I\nswitched to Appcelerator Titanium. Like PhoneGap, it's a FOSS package that\nlets you write cross-platform code in Javascript, except that it compiles the\nJS to native code. It feels much snappier to me.\n\n------\npspeter3\nI agree with the sentiment of this but sometimes it seems like webapps are\nfaster than native apps. Also, I wonder if Facebook's Project Spartan will\nchange this paradigm\n\n------\ncalloc\nDoes anyone have the text of the page? It is not loading for me here.\n\n~~~\nZef\nIt's back up now.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApache Pulsar (Incubating) - mmerli\nhttps://pulsar.incubator.apache.org/\n======\nnurettin\nActiveMQ, Apollo, Camel, Pulsar. Apache foundation has a lot of redundancy.\nAnd what's with all the Java?\n\n~~~\nbdibs\nMost projects are from large enterprises, and large enterprises use Java.\n\n------\nrsrsrs86\nHow much overlap does this have with Kafka?\n\n------\nzhaijia\nseems a great pub/sub messaging system\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nDesign principle: IKEA effect - jodooshi\nhttps://uxplanet.org/design-principle-ikea-effect-2d908b2de81\n======\nbambax\n> _People had the need to be emotionally invested and get rewards from the\n> process of making the cake not just the end result._\n\nYes! Not sure it really works with Ikea, but it works in other contexts. See\nthis (excellent) video from Ooshma Garg of Gobble telling the story of her\nstartup:\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A21qyXsAfME](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A21qyXsAfME)\n\nGobble was at first a marketplace where local people could sell their ready-\nmade food to other people who don't have time to cook but don't want to order\nordinary take-out.\n\nIn order to grow her startup she asked customers what they wanted; they said\nthey wanted instant orders and it failed.\n\nThen she produced excellent food, and all you had to do was heat it up in the\nmicrowave. People loved the food but sales were sluggish.\n\nThe main insight was gained by watching customers use the product inside their\nhomes; they discovered that although the food was good, people were ashamed to\nserve microwaved food to their loved ones.\n\nSo Gobble offered ready-to-cook elements that you can prepare in a pan, and\nthe startup really took off then.\n\nMaybe she would have saved some time by reading this post! ;-)\n\n~~~\nvosper\nIt's sad that the stigma persists of microwaved food being somehow lesser than\n\"real\" cooked food. A microwave is just another tool in the kitchen. People\nshouldn't be embarrassed to use it.\n\n~~~\nnom\nNo, what's sad is that so many people can't cook anymore. It's especially bad\nin the United States.\n\nIt's impossible to prepare a good tasty meal with a microwave. And oven-ready\nfood is garbage. You can't even re-heat most of your left overs properly. Ever\ntried to re-heat a slice of pizza in a microwave? Use a skillet or a grill,\nand it's as good as new.\n\nCooking real tasty food requires many many tools (most of which have been used\nfor many centuries), a lot of ingredients and skill. It's an art form,\nessentially. And a couple decades ago, everybody knew how to do it.\n\n~~~\nfragmede\n> It's impossible to prepare a good tasty meal with a microwave.\n\nThat's bullshit. That's so bullshit that France (they might know a thing or\ntwo about good food) has discussed passing laws to require restaurants to\ndenote which food on their menu is heated up in a microwave.\n\neg.\n[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/business/international/in...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/business/international/in-\nfrance-a-battle-to-keep-menus-fresh.html)\n\n[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/french-\nrestauran...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/french-restaurants-\nacknowledge-serving-factory-frozen-\nfood/2013/07/09/9857b69a-dda2-11e2-b797-cbd4cb13f9c6_story.html)\n\nIt was a huge scandal when it came out, because most people didn't even\nrealize their food was being microwaved!\n\nYes, the microwave does a terrible job of reheating the slice of pizza that\nwas left out overnight, but using the wrong tool for the job doesn't mean the\ntool is bad. A really good, properly seasoned cast-iron skillet is _terrible_\nfor making coffee with, but that's no reason to throw it out.\n\nDon't microwave pizza that's been left out overnight. Instead try food from\nPicards ( [http://www.picard.fr/](http://www.picard.fr/) ). They don't exist\nin the US but they sell exclusively microwave food, and it's just not on the\nsame level as the sad microwave TV dinners for one that they sell at Safeway.\n\nThe microwave's just another tool in a modern kitchen, next to the sous vide\nmachine, the Thermomix, and the Tnstant Pot. The way the microwave cooks food\nmakes for healthier steamed vegetables, though regardless of how you steamed\nthe veggies, slathering them with butter negates some of their health\nbenefits.\n\n~~~\nnom\n> That's so bullshit that France (they might know a thing or two about good\n> food) has discussed passing laws to require restaurants to denote which food\n> on their menu is heated up in a microwave.\n\nDoesn't that proof my point? How do you think that food was cooked? With real\ntools, that's how. Not in a microwave. You can't cook food in a microwave.\n\nBut yes, I should clarify that I've meant 'store bought oven-ready food'. It's\nawful and probably the main cause for the stigma.\n\nAnd yeah I agree that the microwave is just another tool in the kitchen and\nawesome for some things, but you can't cook most meals with it, just prepare\nparts of it quickly.\n\n~~~\ndragonwriter\n> You can't cook food in a microwave.\n\nIf you can heat food with it, you can cook food with it. Obviously, microwave\ncooking has different behavior than, say, baking in a conventional oven, but\nso does braising, pan-frying, cooking in a convection oven, or, well, any\nother cooking method.\n\n------\nSpringtime\nI vaguely remember reading about this effect before but honestly, I've never\nmet someone who expressed this feeling about Ikea products. Whether it's my\nown set-ups, friends, or the dozens of people I've bought and sold Ikea\nfurniture from/to. If anything some have expressed frustration at the\ndifficultly they had in putting together some builds.\n\nIt's also said to cause sellers to place a higher value on the second-hand\nsale price due to the bias of assembling something of their own effect,\nhowever those I've bought from rather price their items substantially lower as\nthey're looking to see them gone for various reasons. Perhaps this bias holds\nmore true for things like home renovations as described elsewhere in articles\non the effect.\n\nThe application of this concept in tech for the examples I've read seems to be\nmostly in allowing customer customization which I do think helps give a\nfeeling of creating something a little unique but personally I'd call it by\nsome other name.\n\n~~~\nwongarsu\nI have yet to experience (in person) anybody expressing frustration about\nputting together IKEA furniture. The closest thing are some friends who have\nexpressed bewilderment at \"the internet's\" view that IKEA furniture might be\ndifficult to assemble.\n\n~~~\nweaksauce\nIKEA furniture is not \"hard\" to assemble per say. It's annoying and\nfrustrating because the qc on hole alignment and how well they tap the holes\nis lacking. Coupled with cheap veneered particle board lowering the overall\nbuild quality.\n\nI am pretty handy and have a ton of nice tools and have worked with my hands\nbuilding things for a living for about 6 years or so and a software developer\notherwise.\n\nI actually just had to \"fix\" a crappy ikea chest of drawers because the\nparticle board popped out of the dado in the rear piece so the drawer would\nrub on the next drawer down. Some cheap brackets were installed as a temp fix\nbut a real fix would be to install a better bottom board that flexes less and\nto glue it in place rigidly.\n\n~~~\nSpringtime\nAgreed about the build quality. Something to consider about assembly is also\nthe circumstances of the installation. Was talking with a person recently who\ntogether with an engineer assembled one of the Pax systems with the large\nsliding rail doors in a space that had literally about a half an inch gap\nbetween the top and the ceiling. Because of this it ended up mostly being\nassembled upright, not to mention the task of affixing the upper clips in the\nnarrow space at the top to hold the slider for the rather hefty dual doors. So\nat times there can more factors involved with the frustration than something\nlike the instructions themselves.\n\n------\nmxfh\nWith IKEA, at least I, don't value my efforts, but the savings compared to\nhaving to pay someone for a perceived(!) zero-skill job, while still getting\nthe same product.\n\nFor me it's the over-embellishment of the general trend of transitioning\nthings over from the production and retail to the consumer, charging only\nmarginally less to beat the competition, while reaping in the profit, while\nmarketing the whole thing as _empowerment_.\n\nThe build and material quality of an IKEA furniture is almost never anywhere\nnear a well made furniture, it's only big plus is in being affordable due to\neconomies of scale and low transport and storage costs.\n\nRecently IKEA seems to get just outright greedy. Their material quality and\nthickness went from solid to barely tolerable in the last 10 years. For me\nthey are at a borderline point of becoming disposable furniture, where it\nmakes no sense to disassemble to move furniture even in your own house due to\nthe one-time only quality of the connections.\n\nPeddling in an urban or more relevantly marketing myth, doesn't even help\neither:\n\n«The key marketing innovation that Dichter’s analysis spurred was not the\nfresh-egg cake mix, but rather the repositioning of cakes as merely one\nelement of a larger product, an overall creation that entailed a much greater\ndegree of participation and creativity from homemakers and emphasized\nappearance[!] over taste»[1]\n\nIt's a trick! You get a less tasty product, a mere product transitioned into\nan outlet of ego. I you're not only into marketing, but also want a good\nproduct it's important to be aware of that deceptive effect.\n\n[1]\n[http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp](http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp)\n\n------\nDubiousPusher\nMaybe I'm a snob but I begrudgingly buy IKEA products, view assembling them as\ntedium in which I gain 0 improvement in a translatable skill and despise the\nsight of their borderline cardboard junkiness until the day I can replace them\nand send them off with some stranger.\n\nedit: On the flip side, IKEA actually sells some really nice pulls and handles\nfor a price far below what I've seen anywhere else.\n\n------\nappleflaxen\nthat plot of \"the sweet spot of getting to the ikea effect\" is a mediocre\nvisualazation... it implicitly puts \"contribution\" and \"value\" on the same\naxis with no way to decouple them.\n\nmy biggest question that isn't answered is \"how do you define contribution?\".\nIt's not a lot of work (because that's effort), and it's not how much it's\nworth in the end (because that's value). So... what quantity are we talking\nabout, exactly.\n\n _edit: remove extra words_\n\n~~~\nCodeWriter23\nI found the plot a bit odd also. But I don't consult designers for\nmathematical problems. The text communicated to me that contribution and value\nare not directly proportional.\n\nThe \"quantity\" of contribution is measured on an emotional scale. It's how the\nindividual feels about the impact of their effort. This is different than the\nvalue of their effort. For example, someone telling a joke, the value stays\nthe same, x% laugh at it. But if the joke were to go viral and tens of\nthousands of people laugh, the contribution is increased (making more people\nlaugh). But the value is the same. The audience had x% chance of laughing.\n\nA different example is the original Star Trek. The value of showing fictional\ntechnologies like videoconferencing and cell phones was very low. It was part\nentertainment value and mostly expedited storytelling. But the contribution to\nhuman society is hugely significant, just by prompting people to action, to\npursue the development of such tech, and also by helping people visualize how\nsuch tech would simplify things and make time spent more productive.\n\n------\namelius\nIf this were true, then an unnecessarily difficult user-onboarding-procedure\nwould make them like the product better.\n\n~~~\nFiveDegrees\nVim or Emacs?\n\n~~~\nsplicer\nand most Linux distros\n\n------\nrdlecler1\nThis feels dubious. People go to ikea because it is cheap but stylish, and\nflat back saves shipping costs.\n\n~~~\nouid\nThe cake mix example was much more compelling to me.\n\n------\ntetrep\n> The solution was to get out the egg of the dry mixture and allow people to\n> add it themselves.\n\nI'm no foodie, but wouldn't dehyrdated/dried eggs be far less appealing taste\nand/or texture-wise? If not, why don't we see them around grocery stores? It\nseems like it'd be great to have non- or even just less perishable eggs.\n\n~~~\nluhn\nDried eggs are definitely less desirable, but in cake batter they are there\nfor neither taste nor texture, but rather for their chemical properties as a\nbinding agent. Swapping out traditional egg for dried eggs wouldn't make a\ndifference as long as the chemical effects are the same.\n\nAlso, I'm not sure, but I'd guess that the \"egg\" previously in the cake mix\nwas not actual dried egg, but some alternative binding agent.\n\n~~~\naaronblohowiak\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powdered_eggs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powdered_eggs)\n\n~~~\nluhn\nI'm not sure why you're linking to that. Care to elaborate?\n\n~~~\naaronblohowiak\nThe history of the powdered egg is based on a cake manufacturer that was\nsourcing liquid egg from china. By dehydrating the egg, they were able to save\nweight/space. So, I think it is likely that the powdered egg in cake mix was\nalso the powdered egg variety.\n\n------\nkleiba\n\"People tend to place high value on products they partially have created.\nHence, the name IKEA effect.\" \\- Frankly, I've never met anyone who thought\nthat IKEA products are of particularly high value. They're great because they\noffer modern-looking furniture that even students can afford, but at least\nwhere I live, the middle class stops considering IKEA once they leave student\nstatus behind, unless it's for book shelves or stuff like that in the study or\nthe basement, i.e, not for rooms you actually live in.\n\n~~~\nandai\nWhere do you live? I guess I've only lived in poor and/or stingy countries,\nwhere frugality has a high status.\n\n------\nH_Romeu_Pinto\n> The article is inspired by the book “Universal Design principles” by William\n> Lidwell.\n\nThe book doesn't talk about this specific design principle. But the same\nauthor has a course at Lynda.com where he explains exactly that, giving the\nsame name and using the cake mix as an example, too.\n\nBut Dan Ariely is probably the first guy that came with the idea:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkaWYKlnli0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkaWYKlnli0)\nalso with the cake example.\n\n------\nreal-hacker\nThat's why there are tens of thousands of toy web frameworks out there. It's\nquite a simple task (basically assembling routing/template engine/ORM, etc),\nbut programmers just cannot resist the sense of accomplishment from such a\nproject. Because the end product looks so valuable, people just ignore how\nlittle value was added in that process.\n\nBTW, I am not talking about full-featured production-level web frameworks.\n\n------\nhdhzy\nVery interesting principle. Now when I think about this games utilize this\ndesign heavily. For example in Final Fantasy X you can select which statistics\nto improve or skills to learn on a Sphere Grid. The Grid is designed so that\nits effect is mostly predictable and similar to previous games (in terms of\nskills learned and stats increased) but the player has a feeling like he was\nin control here.\n\n------\ndennyis\nI just recently bought my first piece of nicer furniture, not Ikea, but a bed\nfrom Crate and Barrel.\n\nNot only did I love the style of the bed, but they scheduled delivery to my\nhouse.\n\nI assumed I still had to put it together, but the delivery guys assembled the\nbed in my room and put the mattress on top.\n\nIMO This is way better than spending 2 hours driving to Ikea, wandering\naround, buying, loading, unloading, and assembling the item.\n\n------\nzzalpha\nFor further coverage, this is also discussed in the (kinda disturbing) book\nHooked as the Investment part of their cycle.\n\n------\nRexxar\nIf the effect applies to programming languages, it could explain why some\npeople love lisp so much.\n\n~~~\nandrewflnr\nIt kind of shades into post-purchase rationalization, which is (in my\nexperience), the standard theory of why programmers get attached to all kinds\nof tools, notably text editors with high learning curves.\n\nBear in mind that I am a bit of a Rust enthusiast myself, but I wonder if this\neffect is a contributor to Rust hype.\n\n~~~\nhueving\nPost purchase rationalization doesn't apply in the rust example because you've\nreceived gains that no other language offers.\n\nI learned it knowing well up front that it had a difficult learning curve and\nthat was the price to pay for safe/performant code.\n\n~~~\nandrewflnr\nHumans being what they are, the _actual_ benefits don't necessarily come into\nthe equation. :) Sure, Rust's manifold qualities contribute to its popularity,\nbut post-purchase rationalization could still be one of the reasons that\npeople get excited about it.\n\n------\ngallerdude\nIn my experience, if someone has a vague interest in something, then any new\ninformation (in an easy and digestible fashion) goes a long way in making them\ncare a lot more about what you do.\n\n------\nemanreus\nAlso known as Stockholm syndrome :)\n\n------\neternalban\nGolang for furniture.\n\n------\nwilliamle8300\nThe only problem is that IKEA furniture smells like formaldehyde (more often\nthan not).\n\n------\nobstinate\nHoly shit. This really does describe my relationship with my IKEA furniture.\nThis is amazingly insightful.\n\n------\nlogicallee\nThis is very interesting and new to me. Not mentioned in the article, but it\nalso explains these yogurts you mix a dry side into (\n[https://www.google.com/search?q=yogurt+with+separate+topping](https://www.google.com/search?q=yogurt+with+separate+topping)\n)\n\nHowever, I am concerned with the description I just read. I see many classes\nof products where the IKEA effect could be done very easily, yet is not. Does\nit really apply across the board?\n\nI wonder if anyone has done a very strict AB test against user satisfaction:\nfor example, shipping boxes of hardware product that are fully assembled, or\nwhere the user must snap one thing together (that is easy and obvious).\n\nDo they observe a difference in user satisfaction?\n\nI am not certain I believe the effect is as described in this article, or as\nstrong as described in this article, and wonder if anyone has done blinded AB\ntests.\n\n~~~\nhammock\nThe two part yogurts are just so the granola doesn't get soggy...\n\nEdit: The greatest example of IKEA Effect in food is the story of how all-\nincluded cake mix (vs from scratch) didn't sell, until they removed the egg\npowder and required the addition of your own eggs. Which apparently is an old\nwives' tale\n[http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp](http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp)\n\n~~~\nlogicallee\nSays you. :) I've seen versions that would do just fine with the separated\npart mixed in. (They're not just with Granola.)\n\nAt least we can agree that if there is an Ikea effect, then it is present in\nmixing your own Yogurt.\n\nHowever I am not convinced about the presence of the Ikea effect, as there are\nmany classes of product it could apply to but, I don't see such product\npackaging. don't.\n\nIf you go into an electronics store (a demographic that you would think\nresponds stronger than average to the Ikea effect) most items are absolutely\nfully assembled. There is nothing to snap on, pull off, a sticker to apply, a\nthumb screw to screw in or unscrew, nothing.\n\nSo if the Ikea effect is real (across a variety of product types), I am sure\nsomeone has done a test like to see it demonstrated by someone doing a blind\nAB test using two shipped versions and comparing customer satisfaction.\n\nI'm not going to blindly believe it because someone says it's real. It would\nbe one thing if this explained an aspect of all the products of every category\nthat I see everywhere - but it's just not the case. Companies aren't in the\nbusiness of turning down free money, so if the Ikea effect were real then\nyou'd see it in products everywhere. More likely, the theory is just false:\nthat an AB test shows no increased customer satisfaction from token user-\nassembly, or even decreased satisfaction.\n\nThis is why I asked if anyone has, in fact, done such a strictly controlled AB\ntest.\n\n~~~\nsmacktoward\n_> I've seen versions that would do just fine with the separated part mixed\nin. (They're not just with Granola.)_\n\nMy guess is that, if you're going to be offering a version with granola,\nyou're going to be designing/fabricating packaging with a separate mix-in\ncontainer anyway; and since you have to have that package, it's just\neasier/cheaper to re-use it for other mix-ins that don't technically need to\nbe separate than it would be to come up with another package just for them.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk YC: How Big Is the HN Team? - Kinnard\nHow big is the HN team @ Y-Combinator?\n======\nmtmail\nBest way to reach the moderators is to email hn@ycombinator.com. They've been\nquiet responsive in the past. Personally I think it's one person only.\n\n~~~\nMz\nNo, it is not one person. There is one paid moderator who is the face of HN.\nBut, I know there are others who do moderation work.\n\nI am not clear on the details. My impression is they have no plans to divulge\nall the details.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nNvidia GEFORCE RTX 20 SERIES - rshm\nhttps://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/20-series/?nvid=nv-int-gcxxpn-56595\n======\nzymhan\nThis is barely even a release announcement, it's literally just the product\npage. It doesn't explain any about what is new here.\n\n~~~\ndang\nWe moved the comments moved to\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17802237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17802237),\nwhich has a bit more background.\n\n~~~\nzymhan\nThanks Dang!\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAll Apple stores could close for 30 days in Italy over warranty case - imaginator\nhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/02/apple_italy_closure_warranty/\n======\nraquo\nApple's disregard for local laws is not specific to Italy. A warranty repair\nfrom Apple in Russia would have taken \"a few months\", way more than the\nallowed maximum of 21 days. I had to send my laptop to US with a friend for\nrepairs.\n\n------\nrmc\n_Italian law states that consumer electronics devices must be sold with a two-\nyear free warranty_\n\nFor the record, this isn't just Italian law, but it EU law. All half a billion\n(or so) people in the EU can benefit from this sort of protection.\n\n~~~\nmkaltenecker\nNope, they can’t. Local implementations differ wildly.\n\nIn Germany, the burden of proof reverses after six months (i.e. after six\nmonths the buyer has to proof that a defect was present when they bought the\nproduct – I have not idea how you can do that short of hiring some sort of\nexpert), making the two year warranty basically useless. No company will do\nanything for you after six months.\n\nAlso, I can very much understand why Apple found itself in the situation it is\nin Italy. In Germany there is a very clear difference between a „Garantie“\n(lit. “guarantee”) and a „Gewährleistung“ (≈ “defects liability”).\n\nA „Garantie“ is a contract between seller (or a company which made the\nproduct) and buyer with certain guarantees and conditions the seller provides.\nThat’s exactly what Apple does with their one year warranty. The conditions\nare very different from those of the law.\n\nA „Gewährleistung“ is what the law requires the seller to do if there is any\ndefect in the product that was there when it was sold. How that is implemented\nin detail differs from country to country. Also note that I’m talking about\nthe seller here. Apple provides their warranty no matter where you buy your\nApple product. You can go directly to them if you have a problem, no matter\nwhere you bought it. That’s not so in the case of the „Gewährleistung“. To\nmake it easy for buyers, they can always go to their sellers with problems\nthat are covered by the law.\n\nThey probably were too broad in their EU policy and ignored that Italy is so\ndamn finicky about this.\n\n~~~\nmrich\nThere are quite a few companies who will replace a broken product after the\ninitial six months warranty without asking questions. That Apple does not even\ntell customers about their rights reflects rather badly on them, especially\nconsidering the already high price of most of their products.\n\n~~~\nmkaltenecker\nApple will do so, too, in many cases. They are, in fact, pretty generous when\nit comes to replacing something they don’t have to. It’s, however,\ninconsistent and if there is any dispute the company always wins. That’s the\ncase with any company.\n\nAgain, in Germany there is no confusion because we have two different words\nfor it. Well, there is some confusion but the two words is how all companies\ndo it. I don’t think companies are even allowed to advertise something that is\nyour right anyway (like the mandated warranty), that’s probably the reason why\nthey don’t say anything.\n\n------\nduiker101\nAs an Italian Apple behaviour really makes me rage. They believe to be above\neveryone, even governments. And this is the proof that Apple only cares about\nthe money and not really about the customer.\n\n~~~\nbeedogs\nAgreeing from here in Australia, where the iPad can no longer be called \"4G\ncompatible\".\n\n~~~\nvacri\nApple is extraordinarily US-centric, it's just convenient for them that people\nin other countries like their stuff enough to buy it too.\n\n------\ndanmaz74\nIronically, one of my friends just yesterday contacted Apple about his iPad\nnot recognizing the SIM card anymore. His iPad is 18 months old, and we live\nin Italy.\n\nFrom customer care they said \"er... wait ten minutes please... I have to\ncontact my boss over this, I'm not sure if the product is covered\". Two\nminutes later my friend was recalled and the Apple guy confirmed that they\nwill handle the problem as if it was still in the first year of the guarantee.\n\n------\nLuc\nAs far as I know, Apple DOES acknowledge the two year guarantee under European\nlaw, it just ADDITIONALLY has its own 1 year guarantee with different\nconditions.\n\nHere, for example, is the Apple page for the Dutch market detailing the\ndifferent guarantees (in Dutch): <http://www.apple.com/nl/legal/statutory-\nwarranty/>\n\nIt seems then that the issue is about communication, not about actually\noffering a lesser guarantee and ignoring EU law.\n\n~~~\nfesja\nNot really, Apple is not obeying European law.\n\nLooking at the UK warranty page: <http://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-\nwarranty/>\n\nThey are clearly saying that they are only going to fix problems within the\nfirst year (Apple One-Year Limited Warranty). They say that the EU law says:\n\"Defects present when customer takes delivery\". But that's very open and\nmisleading. If I hard drive breaks on the 15th month, is my fault or Apple's?\nIf the battery drains too quickly? If the screen starts doing faulty things?\n\nThe European law is very clear, if something breaks within the first 2 years\nbecause of a factory/design problem, it's Apple fault. They have enough margin\nnot to be cheap about that and making European customers angry.\n\n~~~\nLuc\n> They are clearly saying that they are only going to fix problems within the\n> first year (Apple One-Year Limited Warranty).\n\nThat's simply not true.\n\n> They say that the EU law says: \"Defects present when customer takes\n> delivery\".\n\nAnd that's what EU law says, although several countries have gone further in\ntheir local implementation of it.\n\n> If I hard drive breaks on the 15th month, is my fault or Apple's? If the\n> battery drains too quickly? If the screen starts doing faulty things?\n\nApple's if it breaks during normal use, yours if it's due to abnormal use.\n\n> They have enough margin not to be cheap about that and making European\n> customers angry.\n\nWhat you mean is that some wrongly informed people are angry after reading\nsome biased press articles and are taking sides in a supposed 'Apple VS EU'\nbattle - the big mean corporation against the little consumer.\n\nIf you ever have this problem, take it to small claims court and it will get\nsorted in no time. Caveat emptor.\n\n~~~\nthatjoshguy\n> take it to small claims court and it will get sorted in no time\n\nHope you're not under the impression that Apple will just 'cave in' and fix it\nout of court to minimise hassel.\n\nCheck out [http://www.seattlerex.com/seattle-rex-vs-apple-the-\nverdict-i...](http://www.seattlerex.com/seattle-rex-vs-apple-the-verdict-is-\nin/)\n\n> If Apple could have replaced my logic board at no cost to themselves, then\n> why in the hell did they drag this out for so long, and why did they send\n> two people to court to try and make sure that I got absolutely nothing?\n> Friends, this is a question I have been asking myself for three months, and\n> it is a question that I do not have the answer to.\n\n~~~\nLuc\nThat's apples versus oranges. We're talking about the 2 year EU consumer\nprotection law, in which case they will cave in or get a judgement against. No\nneed to count on them settling out of court.\n\n------\nfesja\nThe same happens in Spain. They don't (initially) respect the 2 years\nwarranty. I believe Spanish authorities should do the same: fine them as much\nas they can until they start obeying local laws like everyone else.\n\nHowever if you protest you get the 2 year warranty, but not everyone knows how\nto protest and what do say to convince Apple employees ;)\n\n------\nd3r42\nItaly isn't the only place suffering from poor Apple service.\n\nI experienced the worst service of my life from Apple South Africa. My iPad\nUSB cable frayed, and I was first told that it was not under warranty. Then I\nfound it was, from the call centre who asked me to take it in to the nearest\niStore. When I took it in, the salesperson refused to help until I made an\nappoinment. I phoned their local call centre which instructed him to help me,\nand the he still refused to help. I had to get the manager involved. Three\nweeks later -after they lost my serial number twice- I finally got a\nreplacement cable.\n\nYou can't use the local App Store to buy games (since they haven't bothered to\narrange for self-rating like other app stores). This is never mentioned by\nApple South Africa in their marketing material.\n\nMy theory is that their overseas branches/distributors were set up for an\nolder era, and they can't keep up with Apple's sudden rise.\n\n~~~\nglhaynes\n_You can't use the local App Store to buy games (since they haven't bothered\nto arrange for self-rating like other app stores)._\n\nCan you say a bit more about this? I don't follow.\n\n~~~\nd3r42\nGames in South Africa have to be individually rated by the Films and\nPublications Board. Mobile App Stores can apply for an exemption from this\nrating process and self rate (Nokia and others have done so). Apple hasn't\nbothered:\n\n[http://www.thyon.com/blog-entry/items/apples-lack-of-\ngames-m...](http://www.thyon.com/blog-entry/items/apples-lack-of-games-music-\nmovies-tv-in-south-africa.html)\n\nThere are workarounds for South Africans, some easier than others, but it is\nvery annoying, and Apple never mentions that you can't buy games with a South\nAfrican App Store account in their advertising.\n\n~~~\nglhaynes\nOh, I see. Wow, that seems crazy for that not to have been done. Thanks for\nthe info.\n\n------\nkmfrk\nI wrote an explanation of this, the last time this was discussed on HN:\n<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3783687>.\n\nFor those who are confused by the European concept of guaranteed two-year\nwarranty.\n\n------\nsjaakkkkk\nI won't be surprised if there are only a few official Apple stores in Italy.\nHere in the Netherlands there is only one, and Italy is only a couple of times\nlarger than the Netherlands. Any Italians that can confirm this?\n\n~~~\ncoob\nItaly is an order of magnitude larger than the Netherlands:\n\n[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=size+of+italy+vs+nether...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=size+of+italy+vs+netherlands)\n\n~~~\nvacri\n17 million vs 60 million is not an order of magnitude.\n\n~~~\nbatista\nWell, it has an order of magnitude more Applestores, anyway.\n\n------\ngianpaj\nIn 2013 Italy will be one of the first countries to have more Android users\nthan iPhone ! Awesome\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nPolice Post Racist and Violent Messages on Facebook, a Review Shows - boapnuaput\nhttps://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilyhoerner/police-facebook-racist-violent-posts-comments-philadelphia\n======\npizza\n> \"Two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families\n> experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10% of families in the general\n> population,\" the National Center for Women & Policing says. \"A third study\n> of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24%, indicating that\n> domestic violence is 2-4 times more common among police families than\n> American families in general.\"\n\n[http://womenandpolicing.com/violenceFS.asp#notes](http://womenandpolicing.com/violenceFS.asp#notes)\n\n~~~\nthrowaway1492\nSurely there's a segment of the population with similar personality traits\npredominant to police officers that don't become police officers. One would\nthink they'd also have similar incident of domestic violence if this were a\npersonality trait?\n\nPersonally, I would have no interest in dealing with the horrible things\npeople do to one another, on a regular basis, as part of my job. No thanks.\nReading the news is bad enough, I wouldn't want to live it.\n\n~~~\ndaeken\nNo one is claiming it's a personality trait, though that absolutely could be a\npart of it. More likely, it's because police officers can act with impunity in\npretty much every scenario. Add in a high-pressure job, and you've got a\nrecipe for abuse.\n\n~~~\nHarryHirsch\nNevermind the fact that steroid abuse is common in the police. The BMJ has a\nlovely factsheet on anabolic steroid abuse:\n[https://bestpractice.bmj.com/topics/en-\nus/987](https://bestpractice.bmj.com/topics/en-us/987)\n\nRisk factors: \"employment as nightclub bouncer, professional male dancer,\nprofessional wrestler, or law enforcement officer\"\n\n------\nJumpCrisscross\nDo we have evidence around whether this is a selection effect or a\ntransformation effect?\n\nThat is, do racist assholes disproportionately gravitate towards the police\nforce? Or does the police force disproportionately turn ordinary people into\nracist assholes?\n\n~~~\nsquarefoot\n\"do racist assholes disproportionately gravitate towards the police force?\"\n\nThis one, probably, as usually racist+fascist assholes are the ones who dream\nof wearing an uniform and carry weapons so they can \"feel the power\" over\nother people. It's a selection problem, which I'm sure those responsible are\nvery aware of and have no intention to change. A violent cop is a perfect\nweapon for corrupt governments and politicians: he does nasty things for you\nand when he retires he becomes part of your private \"police\" as eternal\ngratitude for having saved his ass multiple times for those nasty things. That\nis also very likely the reason why there are many accounts of cops abusing\nsteroids (side effects very similar to cocaine) but so far it seems no serious\ninvestigation has been started.\n\n~~~\n0815test\nThe pattern with \"the racist+fascist assholes\" typically is that the craving\nfor power (and sometimes for brutal violence) comes _first_ , and then ideas\nare sought in a bid to normalize it. A position of authority, or purposely\nfanning widespread hate towards some socially marginalized or despised group\nthat few people will bother to counter, are two things that are _very_ often\nused to get away with all sorts of brutality and inhumane behavior. It's\nessentially a smaller-scale version of what the Nazis did, and the sort of\nthing that should _actually_ be decried as such, in the strongest possible\nterms.\n\n~~~\ncannonedhamster\nThe police shouldn't be associated with the Nazis here. There's no wide scale\norganised plan to wipe out an entire race. The number of truly rotten officers\nis in the minority or there would be more bright line evidence of horribles.\nMost actions caught by police aren't outright actions of intentional\ncorruption or malice, they are improper or bad policing that goes unpunished,\nwhich is the real problem.\n\nYou can't be expected to punish the police when you need them to do your job,\nwhich is the position DAs are in. If they were to lose the trust if the police\nthen they wouldn't have the super they need to go their job. A statewide role\nof internal enforcement that's separate from the DA and is an unelected role\nappointed by the governor or legislative body would likely be the best one\ncould do for this role and provide the freedom to do the job effectively.\n\nAdd to that punishments should come out of the insurance funds for the force\nmeaning police organizations that are truly terrible would get shut down when\nthey could not afford their insurance. Also a national police database with\nall punitive actions against officers that is permanent and not removable\nunless ordered by a judge would go a long way to prevent officers who get\npunished in multiple locations from just moving to a new job.\n\n------\nsome-guy\nDirect link to The Plain View Project itself:\n[https://www.plainviewproject.org/](https://www.plainviewproject.org/)\n\n~~~\nmindgam3\nWhich is itself part of Injustice Watch:\n[https://www.injusticewatch.org](https://www.injusticewatch.org)\n\n\"a non-partisan, not-for-profit, multimedia journalism organization that\nconducts in-depth research exposing institutional failures that obstruct\njustice and equality\"\n\n------\nthrewnaboot7656\nNow can you imagine what they say in perceived safe spaces, like WhatsApp or\nthe local, cop-friendly dive bar?\n\nI can, because I've been in their midst in both of these places and it's as\nbad, and likely worse, than you'd imagine. It's happened more times than I can\ncount, but it still never ceases to amaze me what some of these people will\nsay to someone who they don't know, but could pass for one of them.\n\n------\ndahfizz\nAs it turns out, when you have a position in society that allows people to get\naway with hateful violent actions, it will attract hateful and violent people.\n\n------\nmalvosenior\nHaving grown up in a poor community I got to know a lot of police officers and\ntheir children. Racism and thuggish behavior was definitely a huge problem.\nThese posts sadly don't surprise me.\n\nThat being said, Buzzfeed and their ilk routinely make excuses for people on\nthe left posting the same type of racism and thugish messages. \"Ironically\"\ncalling for old white men to be punished, routinely calling for violence\nagainst Trump and Trump supporters (not ironically), sexist comments against\nmen and so on.\n\nI feel the need for freedom of speech is so great that we shouldn't censor any\nof this stuff but neither should we endorse or support it in the media\nregardless of what side of the political spectrum it's being perpetrated on.\n\n~~~\nphxrsg\nI don't think its a hard distinction to make that the bar is higher when you\nare issued weapons and authority by the state.\n\nLeftist asshole talking about \"old white men\" online = bad\n\nCop who has the power to use force against you or arrest you talking about how\n\"thugs deserve slugs\" = worse\n\nThis isn't hard.\n\n~~~\nmalvosenior\nThe media is extremely powerful and has amplifying effects on violence. Both\nthey and the police are strong and dangerous.\n\n------\nhoophoop\nDespite all the sentiment analysis algorithms those posts are not routinely\nspotted and taken down...\n\n------\nsorokod\n> \"A Facebook page called Chicago Code Blue attracted attention for\n> inflammatory comments — such as “Every Thug Deserves a Slug” — after an\n> officer was found guilty in the death of Laquan McDonald.\"\n\nOh dear, speaking of \"people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones\"\n\n~~~\nmasonic\n... because one comment on social media becomes a just characterization of all\nmembers of a class?\n\n~~~\nsorokod\nDepends on the number of likes I guess.\n\n------\nvbuwivbiu\nwhat is wrong with these people\n\n------\nmilitaryguy-63\nMost of these comments aren't racist but \"just\" inhuman and they show how\nastonishingly incompetent some cops are in social situations.\n\n>“I would of pulled the trigger.” This sentence on its own does not show any\nracism.\n\n~~~\nmicrowavecamera\nThat was covered in the headline...\n\n\"Police Post Racist _and Violent_ Messages on Facebook, a Review Shows\"\n\n------\ndsfyu404ed\nPeople who face little to no consequences from being violent endorse violence.\nWater is wet. More breaking news at 11.\n\n~~~\nnoir_lord\nLots of things are 'obvious' but we do the research to both confirm them and\nto exclude our biases.\n\nWhen you have enough evidence one way or the other then you can begin\naddressing the problem properly.\n\nEvidence lead policies are the most rational way to addresses things.\n\n~~~\nprojektfu\nExactly, I've seen for a long time that cops have the most toxic online\nforums. I mean, I've felt that they're often as bad or worse than the Neo-Nazi\nones I've come across. But how do you know that these are real cops, and how\nrepresentative are they of the force? Proper study shows that they are real\ncops, many of them are of higher rank in their departments, they make it hard\nfor their coworkers to be treated with respect, they disproportionately harm\ncivilians, and they cost their municipalities tons of money.\n\n------\nadolph\nGiven a lack of per capita numbers and comparison to the general population\nthis seems like concern trolling by an advocacy organization.\n\n~~~\nsome-guy\nFrom the article:\n\n    \n    \n      Of the pages of officers whom the Plain View researchers could positively identify, about 1 in 5 of the current officers, and 2 in 5 of the retired officers, made public posts or comments that met that threshold — typically by displaying bias, applauding violence, scoffing at due process, or using dehumanizing language. The officers mocked Mexicans, women, and black people, celebrated the Confederate flag, and showed a man wearing a kaffiyeh scarf in the crosshairs of a gun.\n\n~~~\ndeogeo\nThat's an incredibly broad range of subjective infractions. Looking at the\nexamples from the article, one is the \"I would of pulled the trigger.\" \\-\nthat's in response to an _armed_ robber, a clear case of hypothetical self-\ndefense. The other is \"Execute all involved,\" \\- is it wrong to believe the\ndeath penalty is appropriate punishment for the murder of a _six year old\nchild_?\n\nI wouldn't characterize using lethal force when someone pulls a gun on you, or\nadvocating for the death penalty for child murderers, as unreasonable\npositions.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nExclusive Interview: Hacking The iPhone Through SMS  - edw519\nhttp://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hacking-iphone-security,2384.html\n\n======\ntptacek\n_Charlie: The iPhone bug has to do with telling the phone there is a certain\namount of data, and then not sending it as much as you said you would. The\nfunction that reads the data starts returning -1 to indicate an error, but the\nother parts of the program don't check for this error and actually think the\n-1 is data from the message. This shows how complex it can be to write secure\ncode, as separately, each part of the program looks correct, but the way they\ninteract is dangerous!_\n\nOUCH.\n\nIf there's an industry contest I'd like to referee now, it's fuzzers vs.\nstatic analysis. Industry spends a cubic shit-ton on static analysis (for\ninstance, find an F-500 that doesn't have a couple copies of Fortify gathering\ndust). But fuzzers appear to be kicking ass in terms of actual findings, and\nvendors don't invest nearly as much into them.\n\n(Static analyzers parse and symbolically analyze source code or binaries\nagainst rules, like taint propagation and API blacklists; fuzzers mimic actual\ninputs to real running systems and vary those inputs maliciously over minutes,\nhours, or days).\n\n~~~\najross\nI continue to find it amazing that people don't routinely fuzz their protocol\nhandlers. It's a test that you can literally write in 10 minutes.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nEspecially if you're the actual developer. 80% of the time it takes to write a\nthird-party fuzzer goes into reconstructing the target's protocol or API from\nscratch.\n\n------\neuroclydon\nThe SMS handling process runs as root. The protocol is used for all kinds of\ndevice <\\--> network traffic. Developers have the ability to make these SMS\nmessages look however they want them to. Users have no indication when a\nmalicious SMS is received.\n\nI think we may see some real exploits happen soon.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Is there an algorithm to generate coherent color palettes? - shivekkhurana\nDesigners come up with a collection of colors that are aesthetically pleasing.<p>Colors on electronic screens are just numbers. So by first principles, designers are in fact picking some numbers from an infinite set.<p>This selection process is certainly not random. It&#x27;s common knowledge that blue works well with red on flags.<p>My question is: can a computer come up with a color palette (ie hex codes) that will work well together?<p>Is there any literature around this topic?<p>PS: I&#x27;m working on a side project that needs to generate color palettes and I have no clue about it.<p>Thanks\n======\nmuzani\nThere's the standard color theory.\n\nYou look at a color wheel. Colors on the opposite side of the wheel look good.\nIt's just opposite (complementary), but also tertiary, and so on.\n\nYou can also cut out a block from a color wheel. There's some nice examples\nhere:\n[https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25396.0](https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25396.0)\n\nHex code might seem tough, better to look at it from HSL (Hue, Saturation,\nLightness) and focus on only Hue.\n\n------\nthedevindevops\nI'm a fan of [https://paletton.com/](https://paletton.com/) but someone has\ntried to apply AI to the problem: [http://colormind.io/](http://colormind.io/)\nthough beauty as ever remains in the eye of the beholder...\n\n------\ntlb\nAlthough there are general principles, there's no accurate theory for what\nlooks good. But I think you could train a ML model on data, such as from\n[https://www.colourlovers.com/palettes](https://www.colourlovers.com/palettes).\n\n------\ncborenstein\nI like [https://coolors.co/](https://coolors.co/) for color palette\ngeneration. Not sure what their algorithm is.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThere Are 13 Quotations in a U.S. Passport. Guess How Many Are from Men? - cbhl\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/travel/american-passport-quotes-women.html\n======\ndownerending\nGiven that nobody even looks at these, it doesn't seem very important.\nPersonally, I'd prefer a raise instead.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nHire: Equity for talented developer - mikmo\n\nHello,<p>I'm looking to find an equity partner to help develop an exciting idea for a site. It will be all about community participation with the community choosing and ranking the best ideas/users.<p>We want a partner with serious enterprise, initiative, creativity and coding skills. I don't know much about hacking but don't think it's a simple job, at least not to do it right. We'll talk in detail about features but community participation, voting and live community activity updates to keep it fresh are a given.<p>The aim of this project is to help start ups with great ideas, like a lot of the guys on here, to get in front of serious VCs.<p>I'm in Corporate Finance and have the relationship with VCs, the other partner is a Strategy Consultant at a big firm and now we need a skilled hacker. I think we have the pedigree to make this happen!<p>Sorry if this is a bad job spec, I'm no expert in hacking.\n======\nowkaye\nPlease post your email address here, or at least put it in your profile, so\npeople can contact you privately instead of posting their own email addresses.\nI'm more than qualified, my email is in my profile (just click on my name) and\nI might be interested in working with you on a reciprocal basis if you're\nwilling to consider such an arrangement.\n\nPlease email me because this forum doesn't alert me via email to new posts, so\nI seldom visit a thread more than once. Thanks.\n\n------\nmikmo\nWe're based in London, there's a well documented funding gap in Europe. No\nY-Combinator, etc. The money exists we just want to create a mechanism to get\nthe best ideas to the money.\n\nThis idea fills a gap in the US too, it's a different approach to helping\npeople get start up funding.\n\nI'm not sure about the location thing. I can see how it would be really\nhelpful to be able to sit down together, is it essential in the experience of\nyou guys?\n\n------\nbrand\nHere's hoping News.YC doesn't become \"Job board for suits looking for\nhackers\"...\n\n------\neprijer\nHi this is rather vague , but I'm intrigued to find out more. 15+ years\nexperience in IT, creative, founded & ran company in gaming sector for several\nyears etc. etc. Get in touch at eprijer@gmail.com\n\n------\ncollint\nWhere are you located? Do you need a local hacker?\n\nI'd like to know more send me a message: collintmiller@gmail.com\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nWhy Web APIs Won - johns\nhttps://blog.apigee.com/detail/why_web_apis_won\n======\nangersock\n_Requests and responses are encrypted using TLS and secured using OAuth_\n\nErm, at least in the case of OAuth 2.0, no?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nEinstein's travel diaries reveal attitudes towards people he met in Asia - Sjenk\nhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/12/einsteins-travel-diaries-reveal-shocking-xenophobia\n======\nliveoneggs\nAfter your death all of your life's browser history, every\nfacebook/youtube/reddit/HN/myspace/etc comment and submission you ever wrote,\nevery photo you ever took, every off-hand remark you ever made in the presence\nof a smartphone with facebook installed .. will be published for all of the\nworld to read and judge.\n\nBetter get that road rage under wraps!\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\n> _Better get that road rage under wraps!_\n\nAfter my death I could not care less...\n\n~~~\nloblollyboy\nAfter my death nobody else will care either\n\n------\nposter123\nWhy is it so \"shocking\"? Discussing racial differences was more common in his\ntime, and being a great scientist does not necessarily coincide with general\nwisdom.\n\nI hope this story will help people realize that we should not ban the work of\npeople who have said problematic things.\n\n~~~\nSZJX\nThis is also addressed in the original article:\n\n> Rosenkranz told the Guardian that although views like Einstein’s were\n> prevalent at the time, they were not universal. “That’s usually the reaction\n> I get – ‘we have to understand, he was of the zeitgeist, part of the time’ –\n> but I think I tried here and there to give a broader context. There were\n> other views out there, more tolerant views,” he said.\n\n~~~\nmikeash\nEinstein was a great physicist, but I’m not looking to him for moral guidance.\nIf he was awful for his time that would be sad, but if he’s merely average, I\ndon’t see why we’d care.\n\n~~~\nBartweiss\n> _I’m not looking to him for moral guidance_\n\nI suppose this is the question. Einstein is certainly more known for his moral\nlegacy than most scientists.\n\nHe was a WWII refugee and a pacifist, he authored (and later regretted) the\nletter sparking US nuclear ambitions, he joined the NAACP and his offer of\ntestimony in W.E.B. DuBois' trial led to the charges against him being\ndropped. To me, this isn't merely the halo effect around his academic work -\nEinstein was at least a modest player in morality and social politics in his\ntime, and his work fighting racism in the US does add particular relevance to\nthe story.\n\nI agree, though, that the story is already being overblown; we're getting news\nstories with Einstein's picture edited to look demonic. This is a scientist's\ndiary from the 1920s containing views less racist than ones openly stated by\nUS politicians from the last 50 years.\n\n------\nstanfordkid\nI don't see what the big deal is ... everyone thinks stuff like this in their\nhead, and it's a personal diary. Only recently do we live in a globalized &\ndiverse economy which makes it less _polite_ to say stuff like this. It is a\nbig stretch to equate _lack of politeness_ with _racism_.\n\n~~~\nzimzim\nnot everyone\n\n~~~\nYouAreGreat\n... is an Einstein\n\n------\nclassicsnoot\nWithout taking any sides in this particular case, i highly recommend everyone\nread Intellectuals and Race[1] by Thomas Sowell. It is a concise, well\nresearched, and largely damning look at how the same intellectual class that\nis leading the charge of globalized western morality (particularly in regards\nto enforced diversity, ethnic erasure, race based policies, and\nidentity/victimhood politics) is cut from the very same cloth of their\npredecessors in the early 20th century (the Progressives) who championed\nSocial Darwinism, racial segregation, and eugenics. He draws many parallels\nbetween the two groups, including but not limited to the perceived unanimity\nof thought amongst the \"greatest, leading minds,\" the utter\nincomprehensibility by the status quo to even consider dissenting ideas, the\nostensible moral superiority, and the faith based reliance upon unproven\nassertions. It is a brief and powerful read. Regardless of one's politics,\nSowell forces the reader to honestly confront preconceived notions not with\nemotional exhortation, but rather hard facts and verifiable data.\n\n[1][https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Race-Thomas-\nSowell/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Race-Thomas-\nSowell/dp/0465058728)\n\n------\nxutopia\nI think if Einstein were alive today he would see his words and repent to\nthem. Especially in light of other things he has said like: \"Nationalism is an\ninfantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.\". Though this had nothing to\ndo with race he understood something in those times that many others didn't in\nregards to human nature.\n\n------\nAngostura\nThese comments, particularly those about toilet habits don't really look too\ndifferent from the comments I was reading 5 years about about the behaviour of\nChinese tourists, so I'm not sure what to think about this.\n\nIf you took a contemporary Chinese sophisticate and transported him or her\nback to 1920s China, what would his or her comments be like?\n\n~~~\nthe_af\nShock at different toilet habits is actually the least racist and more\nunderstandable reaction. But some of his assertions are indefensible:\n\n> _“I noticed how little difference there is between men and women; I don’t\n> understand what kind of fatal attraction Chinese women possess which\n> enthrals the corresponding men to such an extent that they are incapable of\n> defending themselves against the formidable blessing of offspring”_\n\nand\n\n> _“It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the\n> likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.”_\n\nWhite supremacists could easily hold these views as well.\n\n~~~\nmooseburger\nThose statements boil down to \"I think Chinese people are ugly\". Do men have a\nmoral obligation to find women of all races beautiful?\n\n~~~\nthe_af\nI can say \"I don't find most Chinese women attractive\". Or I can say \"Chinese\nwomen are so ugly, I cannot understand how people manage to reproduce in\nChina\". Do you see the difference? One statement is not racist and the other\nis.\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\nActually both are not racist. Both are subjective statements.\n\nOne needs not explicitly add \"I, personally\" to his personal correspondence.\n\n\"Chinese women are so ugly, I cannot understand how people manage to reproduce\nin China\" should be read as: \"I find Chinese women so ugly, that I cannot\nunderstand how people manage to reproduce in China\".\n\n~~~\nthe_af\nI don't understand your point.\n\nIt's understood that in personal correspondence everything stated is the\nopinion of the author. Both my fictional examples were written from a personal\npoint of view.\n\nThe actual difference was that one expressed a personal preference without\nbeing offensive; the other called a vast group of people \"ugly\", which is\noffensive, and expressed incredulity that they even managed to find each other\nsexually attractive enough to reproduce (which is naive as well as offensive).\n\nRacism is _primarily_ subjective, so that's no excuse either. Rational\njustifications for racism are more often than not _a posteriori_\njustifications.\n\n~~~\ntrue_religion\nIf racism were subjective, we wouldn't ban it in the public scope as there\nwould be no clear standard for anyone to follow in their self-censorship.\n\nRacism should reflect an attribute that can be factually proven---\nintelligence, strength, moral character at birth, etc.\n\nIt should not reflect a totally subjective physical attribute like beauty.\n\n~~~\nthe_af\nI've never heard your definition of racism (\"attributes that can be factually\nproven\"?). In my experience, racism is subjective and every rationalization is\ndone afterwards. How often have you heard of someone convincing an avowed\nracist of anything based on arguments?\n\n\"I've always thought <class of people> were dumb, weak, morally bankrupt, and\nhave brought decadence to our country, but now that I look at this scientific\nstudy I'm convinced otherwise\".\n\n~~~\ntrue_religion\nEvery racist position I have ever heard of has been defanged by the truth, and\nproof. Racism is not bad because it makes you feel bad, it is bad because it\nis demonstrably untrue and basing your society on the bedrock of racist lies\nis simply shooting yourself in the foot.\n\nI don't know why you disagree.\n\nDo you think racist views are true, but we should ignore them out of political\ncorrectness?\n\n------\nthe_gastropod\nThis is one of those examples of holding a man born in the 19th century to the\nstandards of the 21st. I'm pretty sure lots of the things we think, say, and\ndo will be seen as very problematic in the 22nd century.\n\n~~~\ndevnonymous\nIndeed. I hope someday people would hold as much disdain and shock as this for\nstatements justifying/rationalising things like gun ownership, immense private\nwealth when others around you suffer and need for private transport.\n\n------\nyaseer\nThis is more click-bait journalism; I'm not sure why Einstein should be\nsingled out for sharing the same beliefs as others in the society in which he\nwas raised. \"Europeans in 1922 were Xenophobic\" is not worthy of an editorial.\n\nThe writer claims that Xenophobia was not Universal, and therefore this is\ninteresting. No view is universal; there are people alive today who believe\nthe earth is flat, although they are a minority. In 1922 Europe, only a very\nsmall minority of people would not have been Xenophobic.\n\n------\nsimonh\nI think people in those days had a very exaggerated idea of the scale of\ngenetic differences between people of different ethic groups. Nowadays we know\nsuch differences are a rounding error and that looking at differences in\ngenomes between individuals, those attributable to ethnicity are generally a\nminority. Back then, this wasn't known.\n\nEDIT - I had a bit of a laugh at the quote about the Chinese supplanting other\nraces. I'm a WASP, but my wife is Chinese and our kids are pretty obviously\nhalf Chinese.\n\n~~~\nuniformlyrandom\nDoes knowledge of genome proximity help you to find women of other races more\nattractive?\n\n~~~\nsimonh\nI've always found Chinese girls attractive, long before I knew anything at all\nabout population genetics. Not that I know a whole lot about it now, but\nstill. I was lucky enough to go to a school in the UK, but with a large\nproportion of foreign students from all over Africa, the Middle East and Asia\nso maybe that had an influence.\n\n------\ntrue_religion\nIt strikes me as odd that anytime a person references a characteristic of some\npeople from _some particular_ country, it is generalized into racism against\nall people who even vaguely look like them so long as the people in question\nare not white.\n\nIf one says \"the French are cowards\", no one takes it to mean that you believe\nthat all white people are cowards.\n\nThis is true even if the speaker is not white themselves, but merely living in\na 'white' country.\n\nTo me, this means that no statement really stands on its own, but we\nconstantly filter it through our lens of expectations, and current context.\nGiven that, it's hard to look at someone from the past---a fundamentally alien\ncontext---then damn them using modern morals.\n\n\\---\n\nAs a personal example of how we see racism within an implicit context, this\nposter[1], mentions \"negroes\" and my immediate feeling is to damn him for\nracism as in the modern era using that terminology is a sign of racism.\n\nThis is despite the fact that my CV could list me as a beneficiary of the\n_Negro_ College Fund.\n\n20 years ago, the term \"coloured\" was considered racist to some segments of\nthe USA. Any variations of it, would be simiarly damned. Now, we are all\npeople \"of colour\" as an accepted truth, and using 'black' is seen as vulgar,\nand 'african american' is seen inaccurate. Context matters immensely in these\ntopics.\n\n[1]\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17303571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17303571)\n\n------\nteilo\nThe more they pull this historical muckracking crap, the less people are going\nto care when real racism is happening right in front of them.\n\n------\nBartweiss\nIt goes unnoted in the article, but you could probably get an entire second\npiece out of the phrase \" _...defending themselves against the formidable\nblessing of offspring._ \"\n\nAt the time it was written, Einstein had three children (though his first\nchild's story is basically unknown, and she was either adopted or died in\ninfancy). He was also divorced from their mother, with whom both his sons\nlived, but corresponded with them throughout their lives. I'd be rather\ninterested to see an ambivalent comment like \"formidable blessing\" put in the\ncontext of these relationships.\n\n------\nbelorn\nThe quotes are translated from german into very specific english word that\ncarries connotation. Going by the translation however, I find the\ninterpretation made by Rosenkranz to be with odds of my own. I see a comment\nabout too high population growth, while Rosenkranz claim it is about \"how\nChinese men can find their women sufficiently attractive to have offspring\nwith them\". A question about why there is a too high population growth is not\nthe same as a question about why there is any population growth.\n\n------\nAcidRambler\nAnd where is the relevancy of looking at someone's thoughts that he never\ncommunicated publicly or acted upon whatsoever? Are we doing a psychoanalysis\nor something?\n\n------\nempath75\nIt’s hard to visit a different culture for the first time and not notice their\ndifferences as a group. It’s only with extended interaction with people from a\ndifferent culture that their individuality stands out.\n\nI’ve always thought that the cure for xenophobia is travel, but it’s more than\njust travel that’s required. You can’t just breeze through as a tourist, you\nhave to spend an extended length of time and get to know people as people.\n\n------\nosazuwa\nWhen a white person in historic America encountered the negro slave trade for\nthe first time, becoming aware of the harsh living conditions of millions of\npeople, he have to either conclude that their values regarding justice and the\nhuman condition were either in obvious conflict with their own society and\nculture, or accept the narrative of white supremacy, i.e. blacks were less\nhuman and so suffering was OK because it was their natural state. Most chose\nthe latter, as it had the least cognitive dissonance.\n\nA Westerner observing a typical 1920's Chinese person's life for the first\ntime would have experienced the same assault on their fundamental values,\nespecially more humanist values. It was a feudal society, where quiet\ntolerance in the face of extreme hardship is a cultural value, as is producing\nas many (male) offspring as possible. Moreover, given harsh standard of living\nand the large population, human life (especially those of children) was cheap\nand easily discarded. Finally, post-Qing China would have seemed extremely\nunsanitary to Western eyes -- even today Chinese authorities struggle with\npromulgating basic 20th century standards of hygiene (since hygiene is a norm,\nnot a trait).\n\nThe foreigner would have been aware that 100's of millions of people lived\nthis way (no one knew China's population was a billion plus until the CCP did\nthe first modern census).\n\nIt would have been all to easy to take a dim view on the Chinese as people.\n\n------\ndiehunde\nSounds more like \"Chinese culture\" phobia to me. He said good things about\nJapanese people.\n\n------\ncoldtea\nIndiscriminate application of BS modern fad notions like \"xenophobia\" reveal\nshallow journalism.\n\n------\nrawTruthHurts\nNewsflash: Einstein was as human as anybody else.\n\n------\nhellbanner\nHow is this relevant to HN?\n\n~~~\nloblollyboy\nBecause Einstein\n\n------\nuniformlyrandom\nThis is disgusting. I mean, publication of private diaries is disgusting.\n\nFuck you, Rosenkranz. I see why Hamlet did not like you that much.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n   Flash Exploit Shows the Dark Side of Web 2.0  - nickb\nhttp://gigaom.com/2008/05/28/flash-exploit-shows-the-dark-side-of-web-20/\n======\npmjordan\nThe real beef here is:\n\n<http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1189>\n\nand the update\n\n<http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1198>\n\nThe submitted article is just a \"we're doomed\" post.\n\nWhat I find bizarre about some of these exploits is the amount of effort these\npeople go to in order to _steal World of Warcraft passwords_. I mean,\nseriously. Wouldn't you think they'd go after something a little more\nvaluable? \"I risked being hunted down by Interpol, but the level 70 paladin\nwas totally worth it\".\n\nEDIT: I'm aware that they're probably hijacking accounts so they can run\nbots/goldfarmers on those accounts without paying for them. (or having their\ncredit cards blacklisted) That doesn't really make it any less bizarre or\namazing to me.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nInc. Magazine: Is it crap? - ambition\n\nInc. Magazine brands itself \"The Handbook of the American Entrepreneur.\" I'm curious to know what the Hacker News collective intelligence thinks of it.<p>I recently picked up a cheap subscription to see if there was anything to learn. Topics vary month-to-month, but there are usually case studies on successful entrepreneurs, tactical articles on subjects like marketing or management, and general interest essays.<p>I wonder, though, whether I ought to ignore everything inside and spend that monthly hour elsewhere. There are ads for shady companies. They have annoying 'special advertising features' that pose as articles. The back pages swell with MLM-type scams. It seems like the sort of advertising that would target dreamers and fools instead of busy entrepreneurs looking for tips during downtime. This leads me to question the reputability of the editors and thus any advice inside. Hence this post.<p>What do you think?<p>And if not Inc. etc., where's the high signal-to-noise entrepreneurial reading?\n======\nShooter\nI've had a subscription to Inc. for 10-12 years. I can attribute a great deal\nof time/money savings to things I've learned or found out about in Inc.,\nespecially regarding general management and HR issues. I consider it a solid\ninvestment. Granted, quite a bit of what they publish is common-sense type\nstuff, and their slant is definitely NOT towards the small tech\nstartup...although I've bought a few companies I've read about in Inc. and\nI've discovered new business trends by reading it over the years. It's a great\nway to get a feel for the small business market, which is my primary customer\nbase in many ways...it also helps me figure out when niche products/services\nI'm already following are likely to break out into more mainstream popularity.\nMany internet startup guys tend to have 'Silicon Valley goggles' on and they\nwould laugh at the technical expertise of the average Inc. reader, yet the\nInc. readers are often slightly ahead of the tech curve when compared to the\nbroader small business market. Anything that helps you to get into the\nshoes/mindset of your potential small business customers is worth the time.\nEven if you don't market DIRECTLY to small businesses, you would be a moron\nnot to be aware of their purchasing power.\n\nYou can also learn a great deal from the less 'glamorous' industries featured\nin Inc. - lessons that you can transfer to software startups in sometimes\nsurprising ways.\n\nRegarding the ads/advertorials: that is their business. The advertorials are\nmarked as such. They are not going to turn away ad dollars unless the ad is\nclearly illegal. I wouldn't either if I were in such a competitive industry. I\nwouldn't judge, say, 37Signals based on the customers they accept money\nfrom...so I feel it would be unfair to do so to a magazine. You just have to\nthink for yourself and view everything with a critical eye. Just like anything\nelse. I don't think their ads unduly influence their actual editorial content.\n\nI also read Entrepreneur magazine, which is even sleazier ad-wise (and I must\nsay I lost respect for them when they started publishing the lies/idiocy of\nRobert Kiyosaki in an actual monthly column) but the occasional gems I learn\nmore than make up for the time spent reading magazines like that and the\nsleaziness/crap factor.\n\nI read almost every business magazine I can get my hands on (Fast Company,\nFortune, Forbes, Business 2.0 before it was killed, FSB, etc. - as well as\nabout 30 industry-specific business magazines.) I think the more you read, the\nmore likely you are to understand business and to see new opportunities before\nothers do.\n\nI almost bid on Inc/Fast Company when they sold to Mansueto, but I knew I\ndidn't have the time to follow-through on it. I now regret the decision not to\nat least bid.\n\n------\npg\nCuriously enough, they were the first print publication ever to write about\nYC, the very first summer. But the editors killed the story, presumably\nbecause at the time we were so obscure. They could have scooped the NYT.\n\n------\njakewolf\nCoffee at barnes and noble while reading through their magazines for free. Can\nget everything in worthwhile during a single cup.\n\n------\ndcurtis\nInc. is the only magazine I regularly read. If I don't have time to skim\nthrough the entire thing, I always read the section that documents an\nentrepreneur's story. Many of those stories are informative and inspirational.\nOne of them a few years ago about the Xerox CEO's humble beginnings kick-\nstarted my entrepreneurial spirit, I guess you could say.\n\nIn my opinion: definitely worth subscribing, if only for that section.\n\n------\nrun4yourlives\nWhat do you think? It's your hour afterall.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nThe Mindful Programmer - vfc1\nhttp://victorsavkin.com/post/128785099226/mindful-programmer\n======\nvfc1\nThis is some great stuff on how to build code, from one of the core team\nmembers of Angular 2\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nFighting to Save the Real-Life Pharmacy from ‘Ulysses’ - pseudolus\nhttps://lithub.com/fighting-to-save-the-real-life-pharmacy-from-james-joyces-ulysses/\n======\nmaw\n_[...] exclusivity is antithetical to the spirit of the place, of the\ncommunity, and of the idea that Joyce wrote for everybody, especially the\nordinary person._\n\nLet us say that that is not how I would have phrased that sentence.\n\n~~~\ndang\n\" _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A\ngood critical comment teaches us something._\"\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nMeslo Font – great monospaced font for development work - krawchyk\nhttps://github.com/andreberg/Meslo-Font\n\n======\nkps\n\n      > The LG in Meslo LG stands for Line Gap. The idea behind it is to allow\n      > the user to have some control over vertical spacing by choosing one\n      > of three line gap variants\n    \n\nOS X provides for user-specified leading in the font selection panel.\n\nMany X11 terminals have a ‘--lsp’ or similar option for that purpose.\n\n------\naugustl\nNo screenshots in the readme is a bit of a bummer for adoption, at least for\nthis particular picky individual :)\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nApple’s App Store fees are ‘highway robbery’ – House antitrust committee chair - walterbell\nhttps://www.theverge.com/2020/6/18/21295778/apple-app-store-hey-email-fees-policies-antitrust-wwdc-2020\n======\nageitgey\nI don't think the pressure on Apple is going to let up. Smart phones are no\nlonger a tech toy and have become a literal part of government and commercial\ninfrastructure. Apple's arbitrary power over the platform is pissing off and\nembarrassing governments in the COVID era.\n\nDuring COVID, governments around the world have been making major decisions\nbased on mobility data from Apple and Google which shows trends of where\npeople are visiting and what mode of transit they are using. The real-time\nmobility data from Apple and Google is far better than anything the government\nhas itself. This is a big wake-up call to the governments that they have been\nbasically supplanted by private companies. I'm sure no president or prime\nminister likes having to give a press conference where they have to say\n\"According to Apple, we see good compliance with government regulations....\"\n\nYesterday, the UK announced it was abandoning its own COVID contract tracing\napp and moving to the Apple model because they couldn't figure out how to make\niPhones wake up via bluetooth (because that's a private API only available to\nApple). A major western government is facing huge public embarrassment in a\npublic health crisis over what comes down to not having permission from Apple\nto use a specific API in an app. That's the kind of thing that pisses off\npoliticians, regardless of whether or not you think the UK followed the best\ntechnical path.\n\nCombine all that with Apple now forcing companies to adopt their sign-in\nsystems and payment methods in order to reach what is now part of the public\ninfrastructure and Apple has created a situation where they've managed to piss\noff everyone across the political spectrum, from the hard-core free market\npeople to the leftist public good people.\n\n~~~\nkjakm\n>> Yesterday, the UK announced it was abandoning its own COVID contract\ntracing app and moving to the Apple model because they couldn't figure out how\nto make iPhones wake up via bluetooth (because that's a private API only\navailable to Apple). A major western government is facing huge public\nembarrassment in a public health crisis over what comes down to not having\npermission from Apple to use a specific API in an app.\n\nI would not take the government at its word here. Their entire contact tracing\nprogram has been a shambles. They contracted the work out to their friends,\nput the ex-CEO of one of the countries worst ISP's in charge and wasted months\ntrying to hack together their own soution that was never going to work in the\nfirst place. If it was really an Apple issue they could go ahead and release\ntheir Android app.\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nMaking an iPhone do work in the background is fairly non-trivial, and not\nlaunching for that platform is suicide for a contract tracing app.\n\n------\nmatheusmoreira\nApple wants to own iPhone consumers so that anyone who wants access to that\ndemographic must pay the toll and follow their rules. It's far too much power\nfor one corporation. Nice to see authorities are starting to take the matter\nseriously.\n\n~~~\nsjwright\nThat's fine, but how are you going to construct legislation that specifically\ntargets Apple's walled garden without breaching the Fourteenth Amendment?\n\n~~~\nmirchibajji\nGenuinely curious. I was under the impression that Constitution applies to\npeople, and the govt. I'd appreciate if you point to any references for\nConstitution being applied to corporations.\n\n~~~\ntomatotomato37\nCorporations have had personhood for a while, it's why they also have free\nspeech protection and stuff. 14th amendment protection specifically was\ndecided in 1886\n([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southe...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad_Co.))\n\n~~~\nsjwright\nCorrect.\n\n------\nstunt\nI believe Apple just don't see any reason to be nice. And probably that's what\nmany companies would do if they were in that position.\n\nWe know that we can't stay dominant forever,\n\nWe know someone will force us to reduce Apple-tax later,\n\nSo we have to get as much as we can, for as long as we can.\n\n------\n0xy\nIf you could choose between a fee decrease to 15% _or_ the ability to sideload\napps bypassing the store, which is more important? To me, the _only_ reason I\navoid iOS is specifically because I cannot install my own apps without using\nthe store.\n\n~~~\nLeherenn\nI think capping fees would make it even worse, it would entrench the practice\nas acceptable.\n\nAllow sideloading and the price should move towards the equilibrium price.\nWhich very well might be 30%, since Google manages this despite allowing\nsideloading.\n\nThe tricky question I would say is the accessibility of the alternative\nstores. First there is the default/non-default install thing, we've seen how\nit worked out for Microsoft. Then there are all the warnings/toggles about\nunsafe external apps. This is much more difficult, since it's quite useful for\nsecurity, but at the same time it makes it much harder for alternative\nstores/apps.\n\n~~~\n0xy\nVisa and MasterCard charge somewhere between 1-3% (depends who you are and the\ndetails of the purchase). PayPal charge around 5%. Some two-way marketplaces\ncharge upwards of 40%.\n\nI think Apple is providing more value than PayPal, but less value than a two-\nway marketplace.\n\nFor me, 30% is extortionate and predatory. 5% is too low for the value they\nprovide. 15% is quite high, but it can be justified given the value adds\n(advertising, content delivery, reviews, last resort QA, security etc).\n\n------\ngremlinsinc\nImagine if Credit card processing companies took 30%. I mean it's a little\nmore than that being a marketplace too, so maybe since Stripe takes 2-3%,\napple could take 5-8% that would seem more 'reasonable'. IMHO.\n\n~~~\nrouterhash\nThat would work if apple force eCommerce companies that has an app in app\nstore to sell through apple payment system and give a cut of 2-3% to apple\n\n------\nmakecheck\nOne of the things I never understood is why Apple doesn’t have _tiers_ of\npricing and support.\n\nWhy not “5% for app-upload capability and a plain store page with nothing\nelse”, up to “30% for lots of nice bells and whistles” or even “50% for\nregular featuring to potential customers”?\n\nPeople would not complain about 30% nearly as much if there were any\nalternative. (And they are right to complain about how little 30% gets them\ncurrently.)\n\n------\nnewbie578\nApple has over 50% marketshare in the U.S. in the mobile market, so by\nmarketshare they have a case for a monopoly.\n\nSo for 150 million people Apple are the Gatekeepers, you have to pay the Troll\nit's fee or it won't let you past.\n\nAnd people here are saying if you don't like Apple, don't make apps for iOS?\nPlease try to do a business project in a market where you ignore 50% of the\nmarket and let me know how you fair out :)\n\nJason Freid of BaseCamp gave a good argument: If you are handling the search,\nmarketing and production of the app by yourself, why do you STILL need to pay\nthe 30% tax? Imagine paying AWS 30% of your revenue just for hosting\nprivileges :)\n\nAnd don't forget that even IF you try to make the argument for hosting, they\nare hosting the app on Apple Store because Apple doesn't allow ANOTHER way of\ndownloading an app. This is a really important fact. Imagine if you used\nWindows and you couldn't download programs except over Windows Store. Just try\nto imagine Windows not allowing Steam to distribute over the web...\n\n------\nrydre\nAnyone who cares about this issue, just upvote, don't comment. HN's algorithm\ndownranks posts where the comment to upvote ratio is too high.\n\n~~~\nbluesign\nYeah and there is a reason for that and it’s working well to be honest.\n\nGaming the system is never good option.\n\n~~~\nrydre\nMaybe they should change the algorithm then. There is an important discussion\ngoing on and the dumb algorithm thinks its better to just brush it away and\nkick the can down the road.\n\n------\nApocryphon\nPerhaps this is apophenia, but it appears that societal tensions are boiling\nover from all corners, against all kinds of established authorities, no?\n\n~~~\nloopz\nThis is the expected outcome from introspection (Corona period).\n\n~~~\nnunodonato\nastrologers will have a different interpretation ;)\n\n~~~\nagustif\nEclipse + Solstice in 48h\n\n------\nt0ughcritic\nGenerally only gaming companies can afford to pay or money losing vc\ncompanies. Let me just state generally again, most other companies just don’t\nsell via IAP as it’s too expensive. I’ve been saying this here for months and\nGoogle is guilty too 100%. These two control discoverability (search and ads),\nhosting (all data to copy your app), and monetization (charge tax on any\nprofit you make). Why? Because they can and are evil. Doesn’t leave room for\nnew consumer startups anymore and increases prices for consumers.\n\n------\nLarrikin\nAs much as I agree with the stance against I hate the coverage and the press\nthis is getting with people evangelicizing the CEO. He's regularly referenced\non this site by his initials (which even as a regular reader of tech news I\nhad to look up) which comes across as cult of personality at best and\nastroturfing at worse.\n\n~~~\ndeltron3030\nHe actually is a kind of cult personality in the tech world because he wrote\nRuby on Rails (which itself was kind of contrarian to most other things in\nthat space), and it's the foundation lots of web software startups are build\non. There would be no Twitter or Github without him.\n\n------\nsjwright\nIf the US Government wants to place limits on certain fees, they should pass a\nlaw limiting such fees.\n\nMeanwhile, it's a bit hypocritical for the US Government to accuse private\ncorporations of ‘highway robbery’ when they themselves are committing (or\nfailing to outlaw) literal highway robbery in the form of civil forfeiture.\n\n~~~\nAnthonyMouse\n> Meanwhile, it's a bit hypocritical for the US Government to accuse private\n> corporations of ‘highway robbery’ when they themselves are committing (or\n> failing to outlaw) literal highway robbery in the form of civil forfeiture.\n\nIndeed it is. So they should address both, not use the current existence of\none to excuse the other.\n\n~~~\nsjwright\nTo be clear, I wasn't saying that one excused the other. I was only commenting\non the congressperson's poor choice of words.\n\n------\nkmlx\nhelp me understand. why such big fuss for such a small platform? isn't\ngoogle's android much much bigger? if apple's app store is still the place to\nbe due to profits made on the platform then apple is doing something right,\nno? if they stopped would the app store still be the place for apps?\n\np.s. haven't installed an app in over a year. i have no interest in mobile\napps whatsoever.\n\n~~~\nlm28469\nThe market share of the iPhone in the US is around 50%\n\n~~~\ngreggman3\nYes, and the next largest phone maker's market share is Samsung at 20-25%.\nAndroid doesn't make phones. Google makes some phones but their market share\nis tiny.\n\n~~~\nkmlx\nah, this is an interesting point. thanks.\n\n------\nNasrudith\nPerhaps it is a matter of my preestablished cynicisms but this seems like a\ncampaign contribution shakedown/stupid election year publicity stunt where\nthey rail against a big bad company for complete bullshit reasons. I don't get\nwhy people go with the Apple locked down system personally but they aren't\neven a majority of the market nor a plurality.\n\nThere is absolutely no reason to believe that the House gives a shit about\ninteroperability given the DMCA and lack of right to repair laws.\n\n~~~\nkoheripbal\nGoogle isn't much better. I suspect the government is going to force both of\nthem to open their app store with anti-trust suits.\n\n------\nsooheon\nApple may be robbers, but they're not trolling a public highway, they're\ndemanding fees if you want to drive on the highway that they built. Build a\nbetter ecosystem around better devices, better software, better marketing, and\nbetter services, and you can also charge whatever you want, or make it free.\nThat is competition. Wanting to drive on someone else's walled highway (which\nleads directly to eyeballs and open wallets) and also refusing to pay their\nfee is not competition.\n\n~~~\nHamuko\nSo are we establishing that if you want to create a paid email service with a\ncustom app without wanting to pay 30% of your revenue to Apple, you need to\ncreate a competing mobile ecosystem that can rival that of Apple's ($260\nbillion yearly revenue) and Google's ($162 billion yearly revenue)?\n\nHow is this beneficial for innovation and for consumers?\n\n~~~\nsooheon\nWhat's beneficial for consumers is the fact that the Apple ecosystem exists at\nall. People pay because it's a good experience. Everyone is welcome to create\ngood end-user experiences with open technologies like PWA, and distribute\nhowever they wish. It's strange to me to say on the one hand \"we could not\nsurvive without the iOS customer pool, we _need_ to make a native app because\nit's the greatest experience, but we don't want to pay the platform that makes\nit all possible\".\n\n~~~\nHamuko\n> _Everyone is welcome to create good end-user experiences with open\n> technologies like PWA_\n\nEveryone who isn't targetting Apple devices that is.\n\nI'd also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that it is not\npossible to publish an application on the Apple App Store without paying.\nPeriod end.\n\nI also don't see why there's an expectation that Hey has to pay Apple for\nproviding the app. They are trying to bring out an app to allow their\ncustomers on Apple devices to be able to use their service. It's not like\nthey're just putting their app there for marketing because the App Store is\nabsolutely horrible at any kind of marketing.\n\nThis is a bit like expecting Netflix to pay Comcast, AT&T and every other ISP\nfor the priviledge of using their networks. Netflix's customers are already\npaying those companies just like how Hey's customers are paying for their\nApple devices.\n\n~~~\nsjwright\n> I'd also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that it is not\n> possible to publish an application on the Apple App Store without paying.\n> Period end.\n\nI'd also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that the same is\ntrue for games on the Xbox, PlayStation and nearly every mainstream games\nconsole for the past thirty years. Pretty much every games console software\ntitle included a healthy cut for Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft, or Sony. And if\nyou didn't have the explicit blessing of these companies, you couldn't publish\nyour games at all. Period end.\n\nWhere was your outrage then?\n\n~~~\nHamuko\n> _Where was your outrage then?_\n\nWhere was the game publishers' outrage? Where was the game developers'\noutrage?\n\nGaming console makers and game developers have way better relations than Apple\nand the people developing for the App Store. And the game console makers' cut\nisn't just pure greed. Sony took an estimate loss of $240-$300 on every PS3\nsold at launch just in order to widen out the install base.\n\n~~~\nsjwright\n> Where was the game publishers' outrage?\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade)\n\n> Gaming console makers and game developers have way better relations\n\nLet's set aside the unproven assumptions; so your logic is that if you're a\nnice platform monopolist, you can charge arbitrary platform access fees. But\nif you're a bunch of meanies, different laws shall apply to you. I'm sorry, I\nwas under the misapprehension that you were making a serious point.\n\n> Sony took an estimate loss of $240-$300 on every PS3\n\nNow I know you're not being serious. Such behaviours are anti-competitive as\nit would be exceedingly difficult for a new market entrant to compete with\nsuch artificially low console prices. What you're saying is that the US\nGovernment should enact laws which favour dumping and loss-leader activity.\nRidiculous.\n\n~~~\nApocryphon\n> Let's set aside the unproven assumptions; so your logic is that if you're a\n> nice platform monopolist, you can charge arbitrary platform access fees. But\n> if you're a bunch of meanies, different laws shall apply to you. I'm sorry,\n> I was under the misapprehension that you were making a serious point.\n\nYou're not entirely wrong:\n\n[https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-\nsteams-30-cut...](https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-\nsteams-30-cut-is-actually-the-industry-standard)\n\n> One source explained that although Steam only takes 30%, other fees and\n> deductions mean they are usually collecting closer to 65% on their end,\n> while they say console sales return much closer to the full 70% but are\n> stingier with refunds and the like.\n\n> Another source also stressed that just because a retailer takes 30% doesn’t\n> mean the developer of the game actually gets the other 70%, saying\n> publishers often earn between 30-70% of a sale themselves depending on the\n> deal that has been struck. There are also engine licensing fees to consider\n> (games that use Unreal have its 5% fee waived if they are sold on the Epic\n> Store), taxes, and other costs not factored into what many people assume the\n> actual creator of a game earns. One source said their takeaway from a\n> physical retailer at the end of the day is often between just 10-15%.\n\nYou know, maybe this doesn't have to end with Apple. The Google Play store\ncharges a 30% service fee as well. Maybe the entire pricing system of the\nindustry is fucked, and worth further scrutiny. Furthermore, it's been\nrepeatedly brought up in the discourse over the publishing industry's recent\nlawsuit against Internet Archive that the industry standard for book\npublishing are contracts where the publishers pocket 75% of book sales, while\nthe author retain the rest. Meanwhile, you hear horror stories out of the\nmusic industry where artists are paid a pittance. This can be an endemic\nproblem that's afflicting multiple industries at once. Maybe we can confer our\nrighteous indignation both at Apple, and the rest. And maybe we ought to\nfigure out a better way to help creators, whether app developers, game\ndevelopers, authors, or musicians, get the pay they're due.\n\n~~~\nsjwright\nFWIW, I completely agree with everything you wrote. I'm not opposed to new\nlaws that set a limit on platform access fees—but such laws can't be targeted\nat Apple exclusively. They have to be applied to any company which charges\nfees for access to an exclusive market.\n\n~~~\nApocryphon\nCertainly, but maybe this public outcry and exposure from an antitrust\ninvestigation will educate people about the structural problems in this\nindustry and lead to greater change that will apply to more companies than\njust Apple.\n\n~~~\nsjwright\nI'm totally cool with that.\n\n------\nhyko\nWhy should I pay $99 per year for a hey.com email address? Robbery! I demand\nthe courts lower this to 9¢ immediately, which I deem to be the true value of\nan email address. Hey are abusing their monopoly power over the hey.com\ndomain...this will not stand! Burn it to the ground! Write to your\ncongressman! I’ll spend my millions fighting this! Over my dead body!\n\nI’ll chase them round the moons of Nibea and round Antares Maelstrom and round\nperdition's flames before I pay $99 for a fucking email address!\n\n* I’m available for podcast interviews to promote my wares for a very reasonable fee. Hating hey.com is optional. No purchase necessary. Other email providers are available.\n\n~~~\nkoheripbal\nThe rules change when a company has a near-monopoly and practices anti-\ncompetitive tactics to nerf their competition.\n\nThat's why we have anti-trust laws.\n\n------\nnatch\n>It’s crushing small developers who simply can’t survive with those kinds of\npayments.\n\nOh I don't know. The \"small developers who can't survive\" he's talking to here\nhave multiple hypercars and I don't think they are small or facing survival\nchallenges.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagani_Zonda#HH](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagani_Zonda#HH)\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koenigsegg_Agera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koenigsegg_Agera)\n\nSure there are smaller developers. But the sense of entitlement is a bit much.\nOnce you've written some software, that does not mean you are entitled to have\npeople pay for your life from here on out.\n\nI mean you have developers who have written software once, do not maintain it,\nand would charge subscription fees if they could, for software they don't\nupdate. There is a spectrum of behaviors, and there is a cost for running a\nstore to corral all those behaviors into some order that average consumers can\ndeal with. And then there are even legal bills to pay, for fighting off people\nwho own hypercars and feel wronged.\n\nThere could be some room for the fees to come down now that the App Store is\nwell established. But it's not quite how it's being portrayed… highway\nrobbery? Way too dramatic.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nApple Ipad Being Used As An Educational Resource - techsavys\nhttp://www.techsavys.info/2011/01/apples-ipad-goes-educational-being-used.html\n\n======\ntechsavys\nFor the first time a tablet is being used as an educational resource what do\nyou guys think? Isn't that cool?\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n\nKotlin M12 is out - orangy\nhttp://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2015/05/kotlin-m12-is-out/\n\n======\ntauchunfall\nFor those who want to try it out: There is a small web-based editor with\nsyntax highlighting, compile checking and code completion at\n[http://try.kotlinlang.org/](http://try.kotlinlang.org/).\n\nIt currently runs on 0.11.91.1, but will (hopefully) soon be updated to\n0.12.200 (M12). The reference documentation was already updated for M12:\n[http://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/](http://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/).\n\n------\njan1021488\nIts a shame nobody cares, since this is a really nice language IMO.\n\n~~~\nzserge\nKotlin is a really good language. I really want it to be my primary language\nfor android development. The only problem I have now is build times. It's\nabout twice as slow to build a Kotlin app than Java app.\n\n~~~\nk__\nIs this a jvm specific problem? Scala seems to have huge build times too.\n\n~~~\nzserge\nBig programming languages are built from big JARs (compiler, runtime, stdlib).\nLoading those each time in memory is a long process. Using nailgun saves ~10\nseconds on my laptop.\n\nAnother problem is compiler performance (both Kotlin and Scala compilers\ncompile less statements per second than Javac), but it's not that dramatic.\n\nFinally, dexing languages with runtime (kotlin - ~200KB, scala - more than\n1MB) takes time.\n\nLuckily, Buck optimizes most of it.\n\n------\nzserge\nI'm now trying to use Buck build system with Kotlin. It looks like in the M12\nkotlin-compiler.jar the annotation NotNull.class is embedded twice.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\nGrooveshark in HTML5 (ios compatible) - pitdesi\nhttp://html5.grooveshark.com/\n======\n1880\nI'll be using this a lot on my underpowered Linux netbook. Flash had a very\nhigh CPU usage even for simple audio streaming.\n\nIt needs accounts support, though.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}
{"text": "\n'Father of Financial Futures' Seeks Cryptocurrency Hardware Patent - elmar\nhttps://www.coindesk.com/father-financial-futures-seeks-cryptocurrency-hardware-patent/\n======\nlawless123\nsounds like a hardware wallet...\n\n~~~\nelmar\nyes, a hardware wallet tailored for derivatives trading.\n\n", "meta": {"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"}}